Bill Roper's Journal

This is interesting. I'm working on a new song. And the patterning is odd.

It has a ten line piece that was originally constructed as a chorus, but I realized that it was too long for a chorus, so it's really a verse that has repeating elements.

And then there's a four line piece that isn't a chorus either, so I think it's a bridge.

So far, I've got two ten line segments and one four line segment and I think it's trying to come together, although -- since it's based on something -- I'm checking my sources to get some of the references correct.

We'll see how this goes.

I promised to send Smac digital transfers of the raw tracks for the projects he did with Dodeka. Today, I managed to get the ADAT and the Apollo unit to talk to each other and have now transferred the three tapes that made up "Reap the Wind" into digital format. They are currently (slowly) uploading to Dropbox.

But this is very encouraging. :)

(I sent the stuff as Cubase 13 projects, but even without that, it will be easy enough to extract the audio files for the tracks. Each ADAT tape ends up as a collection of eight 40 minute long WAV files. Which are huge...)

This is not an immediate problem, but it is a problem that I may have a year plus from now, so naturally, I am choosing to worry about it now.

In May 2025, if everything goes according to plan, K will graduate from high school and will start college. At that point, it may be really helpful if she has access to her own car, depending on where she is going to college, which is something that is still on the list of things that we don't know about.

Now, if K needs a car, I could buy her a used car. Or I could pass her my Ford Edge, which will be about seven years old with low mileage and which (as my dad used to say) will surround the child with plenty of steel.

At which point I could buy myself a new car. (Aha!) All things being equal, what I'd really like to buy is a hybrid Ford Edge. But by that time, there will still not be a hybrid Ford Edge. In fact, it looks like there will not be a Ford Edge at all, as the model is supposed to be discontinued. Exactly why Ford is doing this is unclear, as the number of Edges that I see on the road in the Chicago area is huge. But here we are.

So what I'd like to have is a small hybrid SUV with no moonroof (because I don't fit in cars with a moonroof) which is bigger than a Ford Escape, because the Escape will not hold enough cargo and passengers once a guitar is involved. Right now, the contender would be a hybrid Toyota Highlander.

But maybe there's something I haven't found yet.

Or maybe there will be something in 2025. Who knows?

The only thing that is certain is that this discussion will make Gretchen crazy.

I am not generally inclined to defend Joe Biden, but on the issue of remembering the year that his son, Beau, died, I am sympathetic. I desperately do not *want* to remember when my parents (or Gretchen's mother) died and reconstruct the year that these things happened via happier events, which takes a moment.

My mother died the year after I married Gretchen.

My father died in December, just before the Rams won the Super Bowl.

And Gretchen's mother died just before the Chicon where I was running the Exhibits Division.

That's how I remember these things.

But it takes a minute.

I've spent some time the last couple of days going over the new APBA baseball card set in advance of the draft a couple of weekends from now. As opposed to last year, which had no starting pitching available in the draft but a whole lot of hitting, this year has not a lot of hitting available but a whole lot of starting pitching available under the pitching cap for our league.

I am drafting last again this year (which is a good thing, as it means my team did well, as in a combined record of 107-55 worth of well), but it means that my draft strategy is like a leaf upon the wind, dependent on the whims of the other seven teams drafting in front of me. On the other hand, there is *so* much starting pitching that will be available in this draft that I should be able to find *something* that I can add to my rotation, which has a lot of good names that spent a lot of the season injured last year. I have two full-time starters spread out across four different names (Ohtani, Fried, Woodruff, Kershaw), which is going to make roster construction entertaining.

In other amusing news, I got all of those pitchers save Kershaw in the same rookie draft back in 2020. Which we held in my back yard due to COVID. Kershaw is the longest tenured player on the team, as I drafted him in 2009.

I have a number of monstrously good position players coming back -- Ohtani, Acuna, Freeman, Soto, and Julio Rodrigues -- and the quite serviceable Ozzie Albies at second base, but shortstop, third base, and catcher are about to be problematic with very few better solutions available in the draft or -- I suspect, having looked at the other teams! -- by trade. There are some teams that have assets that they could move, but finding a good matchup is going to be difficult.

Last year, I was able to flip Zac Gallen from a surplus of starting pitching for the rights to draft Julio Rodriguez, which worked out well for both teams. This year, my only surplus asset is Bryce Harper and he is going to cover DH at bats when Ohtani can't play and back up Freddie Freeman, so I *could* deal him, but it would have to be a really good offer to move him.

We'll see what happens.

Gretchen spent much of today cleaning up the bedroom and getting things sorted out there while I worked on laundry. After I hung up my shirts, I spent some time digging through my closet and drawers and got rid of a bunch of things that I didn't need and consolidated a lot of CPAP supplies. It looks like I have four masks that I have accumulated when I found them on sale, which means I can skip buying masks for a while.

There is also a ginormous box/pile of stuff that does not meet either Gretchen's or my needs that is going off to Goodwill tomorrow. That's our theory anyway. We'll see how it goes. (Away would be good.)

The dryer shut down on one load claiming a blockage. This seems unlikely, because we just had the vent cleaned, but I cleaned out the lint trap (again) and vacuumed the interior trap out. I'll go see how this did in a minute. I also picked up a bunch of stuff from the right side of the dryer that didn't need to be there and have brought it upstairs of to dispose of tomorrow.

This is not an exciting way to spend the day, save for the fact that clean surfaces are exciting.

Trust me!

So I didn't expect to get new TV tonight, but it turns out that CBS decided to drop new episodes of "Young Sheldon" and "Ghosts". And it turned out that *very* interesting things happened in each episode.

Articles tomorrow are going to be *full* of spoilers. :)

I went to the dentist for a routine checkup today. I've had a chip in one of my front teeth for years now and the dentist thinks that he can patch things across all of my front upper teeth fairly easily now, so we're going to try that next week and see how it goes.

Work is proceeding, if not as quickly as I might hope. I expect to get a number of things finished up tomorrow.

And tonight, I have downloaded some new native plugins from Universal Audio before the free download coupon expires. Mind you, it won't expire until March 27th, but my capacity for pushing things off to the deadline is legendary, so doing it now is better. :)

I think that most of the things that I needed to get done before leaving for Dorsai Thing tomorrow are completed.

And, if not, there's always tomorrow morning.

The grout went into the additional tile for the backsplash behind the stove today and looks good. Once it has a chance to dry, we'll do any remaining cleanup and spray it with the sealer and the project will be done.

Now, I just need to fix the light fixture on the ceiling fan in our bedroom. *That*, I am doing myself. :)