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June 29, 2007

Facebook Song

Posted by Kirk Ward at 5:20 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

June 28, 2007

Facebook: the Opiate of the Masses

My wife and I were introduced to Facebook a few weeks ago and now I am a lot less motivated to blog. Once more blog guilt has set in and I start to feel like my blog is mad at me.

I enjoy Facebook, but it just seems to take up all my online time. I have also reached a point where the initial surge of building a list of "friends" and creating little groups has plateaued and now I just open up the news feed and read about other people's "status" or that they removed "I Know What You Did Last Summer" from their "favorite movies".

Another problem is that I made the unfortunate mistake of including several of our church's youth in my list of friends. Of course, I don't have a problem with these folks, it's just that with school out, it seems that they have nothing to do but mess around on Facebook. I have changed my preferences on the news feed to show as little as possible from the youth, but their activity still dominates the Facebook community. What can I do now? Ask them to become my ex-friends?

I also toyed with the "Applications" features. I can't get past the page where they tell you that all your information will be accessed by some third party. My "Big Brother" alarm goes off. I imagine my email being flooded with spam and whatnot. Has anyone added applications to their Facebook with success?

Ah, my good old blog. You won't let me down.

Posted by Kirk Ward at 10:48 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

June 7, 2007

Bedrock Amps

I am in the market to buy a new amplifier. I have a really nice one already, but I would like to get another one so that I don't have to haul my one amp back and forth all the time.

My current amp is called a Bedrock. When I was in 10th grade I was in a band called "Celiac Spru" and I needed to get an amp that rocked. Our primary influences included Smashing Pumpkins, Nirvana, Rage Against The Machine, Primus, Dinosaur Jr, and Sonic Youth (although I was the only one interested in Sonic Youth). So my parents surprised me and bought me my first guitar amp, the Bedrock, with the understanding that I had to paint my dad's studio by the end of the summer. My parents picked the Bedrock because it was only $300 marked down from $900. Today I learned why it was marked down so much...

I was totally thrilled about the amp. It wasn't a Marshal Stack, which would have been more appropriate to the style of Celiac Spru. But I was still glad for it. The Bedrock can be extremely loud when it wants to be and I definitely had the power to blow away the amp stack that our other guitarist was using. Later when I moved on to being interested in jazz, the Bedrock came right along with me. I started out playing my Fender Strat, but the Strat is very uncool in the world of traditional jazz. You have to get something more resonant to play traditional jazz. So, I ended up buying a friend's Gibson Howard Roberts. Ever since, the combination has been my tonal canvas on which to create. Now, guitar players are often commenting on the quality of my tone, and it all happened by accident.

So today I was looking on the internet to find out more about my little friend the Bedrock. I found out that Bedrock went out of business a few years back, which explains the price reduction. They began as a source for quality tube amps when Fender and Marshal started only making solid state amps. When Fender and Marshal repented of their past sins and went back to tubes, Bedrock went under.

Here's the Bedrock newsletter from better times: (you can see my good ol' Lead 50C in the bottom left hand corner. Mine looks a little more "loved.")

Posted by Kirk Ward at 3:09 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

June 4, 2007

Accidents Happen

Tonight, I was holding Joanna on my lap and together we were watching the Mo's (Nemo and Elmo) on YouTube. I made the mistake of waiting until bedtime to change her diaper. I started to feel a warm sensation growing and realized that the diaper had reached maximum capacity. I stood up and had a wet patch right on my crotch and on the bottom of my T-shirt. Somehow, Joanna's clothes were completely dry. So, I changed her diaper and put her in her PJs and let her watch one last Elmo video before bed. After I set her up in front of the computer with her Elmo and sippy cup, I had to change all my clothes. Coincidentally, this was the clip she was watching. It seemed eerily appropriate.

Elmo and Grover, thanks for understanding.

Posted by Kirk Ward at 8:00 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack