| StoreTags: work, music, time off, life
Author: Zanf on May 31 2007 Viewed 2523 times. 23 people liked this blog. You can rate it below if you haven't already.
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I realised that i haven't really finished any music for about 8 months. Thats the time that Ive been on this contract Ive been working on.
I havent had time as Ive been doing 10 hour days and sometimes commuting for upto 3 hours each way. Other times I was staying in hotels for the week and couldnt focus at the end of the day enough to write.
But because of this work Ive been able to treat myself to quite a few new bits for the studio and has got me inspired to make stuff.
Im currently finishing off cabling in a new desk [mackie SR24] so that I can work in either the digital and/or analogue domains. I come from a hardware background and for the 5-6 years I was using mostly softsa, I found it incredibly frustrating making music with mostly a mouse.
My latest purchase is a Studio Electronics SE-1.
A friend used to have one, whos studio I used to use about 10-12 years ago and used to get awesome basses out of it. in the short time Ive played with this, Ive got a scope of what more it can do. Unfortunately it didnt come with a manual so Ill have to dig around dicyphering the modulation pages until my order for one arrives.
In complete polarity to unknownforces work blog, my job is superb. well......
I was on an XP deployment project, going around the country swapping out users NT & W2K machines and providing technical support in the changeover period. Ive now moved over to doing deskside support with a specified RFS [request for service].
I am only to provide support to one division of this company [there is about 3 or 4 in this particular building] and will have to provide support for ad hoc projects they develop and deploy. One of these, that Im looking forward to, is config'ing users laptops so it uses their blackberry's GPRS as a wireless modem.
The latest thing Ive been doing is trying to get a users machine to be able to access a 'catastrophy stratagey assesment' package using an SQL db. It does huge calculations for insurance risk assesment of natural disasters and potential loses.
The weirdest part is that the server and db is covered by support that my employer provides but somehow the actual software got left out.
total WTFuckery
Now consider this: the licensing costs for the s/w and support is about $8million per year. It saves the company potentially billions in liability and it got overlooked when arranging the support contracts and so is subsequently unsupported.
I have spent the day trying various solutions to remedy a problem with it [i wont go into it as its lengthy and boring and I have to face it again tomorrow] and I am constricted by the fact that I dont even have a network logon nor an email account.
Its been fun and a great challenge as Im learning loads, being kept busy, constantly having to think on my feet and getting paid a nice sum as well. [not a massive amoount but enough to keep me with all the synths I can eat!].
I did have a bad run last week though:
I was offline for 1 week more than promised by my ISP as the engineer failed to show up 3 times. [my flatmate lost money with ebay sales]
My Blackberry arrived but the SIM card was munted and took a few more days to resend and the phone wasnt functional.
I got a virus over the bank holiday weekend that started as sneezing, progressed to migraines ten snotty nose before mutating finally into a chesty cough
and I lost an auction for a G2 by a few pounds in the last minute. [i bid with 15 secs to go and the winner bid with 2 secs]
This week has been great though. My internet is stable finally [last ISP was always disconnecting]. The weather is gorgeous and I enjoy getting up in the morning!
So I should finally, after 8 months, get some music finished [2 remixes and a bunch of old tracks] and soon start writing some new stuff. Also now the job has settled into a rythym, I can start with some of collabs that Ive chatted to others about.
All in all, exciting times!
[the 2 pics are the atrium from work, my rack with SE-1 & my new TX81z and a general overview pre-SE-1] | |
Comments
05/31/07
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Squeal
Good stuff.
About the bidding:
link
In case you didn't know....
05/31/07
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Zanf
I should also say that the coffee machines at work are the best ones Ive used in this company, across all their sites Ive been to [about 11]. They have hazelnut coffee that is great when you have a 'mochachino' with chocolate.
This morning I got this cute girl Ive seen about, who always smiles at me but I havdnt spoken to yet, to switch over to the darkside by making her one.
05/31/07
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Zanf
Thanks squeal but I already use it.
I did actually bid manually but laughed when I got outbid at the last second. I probably would have lost unless I bidded really high and outmaxed them.
05/31/07
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filarion
hurry up, i need a tune for the compilation soon!
and good going man! :D
05/31/07
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jdg
thats a lot of typing
05/31/07
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mlbot
lol, yeah if U have that much time to type, you can write us a song.
05/31/07
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jdg
yah. really.. c'mon you tetchy old bastard.
05/31/07
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bodo
that SE-1 is one nice beast, heard it a while ago and it massaged my tummy in more ways that one
how are you liking the adams?
05/31/07
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Zanf
the Adams are excellent.
the clarity from them has made me realise that my ears are not as screwed as I first though. It felt like my hearing was muffled but with those monitors and geting those custom olded earplugs has realy sorted them out.
Also, I was plaing this 1/2 finished remix Im workingon and I didnt think the volume was that loud [it wasnt really] but the definition of the range as blasting my flatmate with bass.
Ill try to find some time to make a little video for the SE-1 and post on youtube as there is only one and its of a broken one: /watch?v=4oVlyRtYi3Y
05/31/07
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ignatius
sexy se-1 will sound dope w/fx from the DP4. glad you are settling in to a different pace w/the job. that's killer. viruses suck! take some grain alcohol and rub it on your sinuses.
good to get an update. look forward to the new tunes.
05/31/07
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frnortnr
yay new stuff from you soon!!!!!!!!!!!!
05/31/07
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skab
as i was reading this Porm Affari started playing on systrum.net. It's a sign!!!
zanf the elder said: "those custom olded earplugs" . they have to age earplugs now? to match the user's age? 
good luck with making lots of new hardware/software music. and sniping people
06/01/07
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yghartsyrt
sounds cool about the job.
now make new tunes.
and get on with ttat girl.
06/01/07
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crabster
Awesome, except perhaps for the virus part!
But seriously, are we the same person? You have a way more awesome (awesomer?) studio, but other than that we seem to be some kind of cosmic twins or something. I haven't made anything in ages, but I do have replaced the stuff that wasn't seeing any use, and feeling all the more inspired by it.
06/01/07
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Zanf
If you have a squidgy nose, a tendency to mumble and turn into an over-enthusiatic child when drunk, then we were seperated at birth!!
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