billroper | Entries tagged with ovff

I was on the way back from dropping K off at Ball State and was looking for ways to stay awake while driving. Although I had already written a song for this year's OVFF songwriting contest (Theme: Steer by the stars), I thought about what I might have written if I didn't already have a useful pair of songs to add a third part to with "Four Stars", which I posted several weeks ago. And I got the chorus for this together and sang it over and over again until I got to a gas station where I could write it down. :)

When I was done, I decided I liked this song better, so I entered it in the songwriting contest. And although it didn't place, it was fun to get up there and sing it and see people tapping along to it and singing along with the choruses.

And if nothing else, it is another exemplar for Brenda to use as she looks at *her* Bill, who seems to have more of a problem coming up with romantic songs. :)

I hope you like it!
( Lyrics inside... )

We got back from OVFF at about 1 AM last night, which is causing me to strongly contemplate the wisdom of staying over for the Sunday Dead Dog. But that wasn't really an option once the kids were in school. This will not be true next year.

But this was *this* year and Gretchen and I both had a great time. Gretchen didn't do any singing, because her knees were bothering her greatly, but she had a lot of good conversations as did I. And although I didn't manage to spend a lot of time in the open filking because of schedules and dealer table, I *did* get to sing six different songs from the stage, three with Amy accompanying me, and two by the greatly missed Tom Smith during the Pegasus Concert. That makes a pretty good weekend of singing all by itself. :)

We also sold a goodly number of copies of the new "Amy & Me" album and a good number of "Liftoff to Landing" as well, which bulked up the sales considerably over last year. This is also a good thing. :)

But it was good to see friends. And new people! I am in favor of new people, because they make the whole affair more interesting.

We are still catching up on sleep, so I think I will head in that direction now.

The dogs have been liberated from their kennels and will get breakfast in a moment. Then I need to take Calvin off to be boarded for the weekend, as he is too much for Julie to handle. By the time all of that is done, Gretchen should be back and we should be ready to hit the road for OVFF.

If I can manage to finish packing...

The week before OVFF is really not the time to have meetings downtown on Tuesday and Wednesday. But that's the way that the schedule worked out, so...

To add to the general entertainment, Julie had a root canal today. Calvin had his last lesson of puppy school and has graduated. More training is likely in order, but it's progress.

And the new CDs are tucked into inventory and the van is packed, save for our luggage.

I should really feel better about this, but it's being a bit of a treadmill. It will be better when we hit the road. :)

I'm prepping things to get ready for OVFF. I don't expect any major problems, but it's good to keep knocking off tasks, especially because work wants me down in the Loop next Tuesday and Wednesday.

One of the things that I did was to buy a new watch. My Seiko Kinetic was over 20 years old and the battery died months ago. I have missed having a watch. You'd think it would be easy enough to get that battery replaced, but it's a unique design for that watch and the entire watch has to be disassembled to get at it, because it was originally a capacitor that went many years between failures. Then Seiko "improved it" by switching to a lithium rechargeable battery. But since you don't know how long the battery has been sitting on the shelf, you don't know how long it's going to last. The second-to-last replacement lasted a year, which is ludicrous. The current replacement lasted maybe three years. And Seiko has abandoned the whole line.

So I have a new watch now. It is a Citizen Eco-Drive that looks very much like my old watch. The only problem is that I need to get a link put in the band to make it just a bit looser. The nearest watch shop that can do this repair is closed on Monday.

Did I mention that Tuesday and Wednesday I am supposed to be in the Loop?

But it's nice having a watch again. :)

If I have counted on my fingers correctly -- this was a challenge, because I needed two hands -- I am scheduled to sing six songs at OVFF next weekend, assuming that I manage to get my entry for the songwriting contest in on time. This is more songs than I manage to sing in open circles some years.

Time to go practice! :)

It's still Bandcamp Friday (for a little while, at least) and I figured out how to post the Amy & Me album for digital presale. This means you can buy it now, get three tracks now, and the rest will be available on the release date when we get to OVFF.

Learning experiences! They're fun.

Bandcamp link

I guess we have solved the problem of what to do about taking care of the dogs over OVFF, because OVFF has posted their health policy for 2025 and it appears that Gretchen will not be coming.

Meanwhile, in a glorious triumph for *someone* of *some* kind, I now have to decide whether I am going to be vaccinated against RSV or whether I am going to be tested for COVID three times during the course of the convention. Logic here is, of course, completely absent. But last year, my oldest child had to decide between getting a test that was unavailable or getting vaccinated in order to attend the convention, so I suppose this year's policy is a small improvement in that it doesn't mandate an unavailable test.

I checked before posting this, because I couldn't sleep before posting this -- and since I was up until 2:30 AM debugging, I would *really* like to go back to sleep! -- and the latest study from the CDC says that over a five month period, you were 54% less likely to contract COVID if you received the booster in September, 2024. Thus, there *is* a study indicating that it does *something*. (Now, I *agree* that it does *something*. If you have never had or been exposed to COVID before, it is clear to me that getting vaccinated improves your chances of not dying of the disease. At this point, of course, everyone except The Boy in the Bubble has either had COVID at least once or been vaccinated against it at least once or both.)

Having spent still *more* time looking for studies instead of sleeping, I fail to find one that quantifies how much less likely a *vaccinated* person who contracts COVID is to transmit the disease that someone who is *not* recently boosted, although I find one that indicates that the vaccinated person is likely to remain contagious for about 6 days, while the unvaccinated person remains contagious for about 7.5 days. My calculator tells me that's about 80% of the time, because I am not going to try to do math in my head on this little sleep. And when I multiply that by the 54% above, I get a number that's something like 43%.

Let's take that number in the absence of a better one. A vaccinated person who walks through the door would have a 43% chance of giving someone COVID as opposed to an unvaccinated person. The vaccinated person is not required to test at all. The unvaccinated person is required to test on each of the three days of the convention, just in case they develop the disease at the con. The vaccinated person could develop the disease at the con too (54% less likely!), but they don't need to test at all.

Given those sorts of numbers, it feels like the testing policy is simply punitive.

And given that -- as written and posted -- a failure to be vaccinated against RSV means that you need to be tested for COVID, it's not very scientific either.

I'm going to go back to bed now.

And I am going to *hate* going to OVFF without Gretchen.

But the dogs, I suppose, will be happier.

A while ago, I mentioned that I had managed to write two songs for the OVFF Songwriting Contest (Theme: "Steer by the Stars"), which is one more than I can enter in the contest, so I needed to decide which one to enter. And now I have.

This is the other song. It is the third song in the set that was started by "It's All Right", followed up with "End of the Line", and now, I assume, finished up with "Four Stars" -- unless some *other* participant in this story needs to pipe up and say something.

I hope you like it!
( Lyrics inside... )

I am late to this particular party of posts, but I have been distracted for the last several days.

The results of the Pegasus Brainstorming Poll were posted a few days ago and it was nice to see Gretchen's and my name pop up in several places. I discover that you are never too old for ego-scanning and it is always interesting to see what songs have been mentioned as someone's particular favorite.

(I admit that I went to submit a brainstorming poll just shortly after it closed. Oops! My bad.)

So thank you to everyone who thought of us. If you're a member of the filk community, you almost certainly know where to go look for the nominating ballot, which is the next step in the process, so I will refrain from linking here. (Hint: look on the OVFF website. :) )

And while all that is going on, I think I'll write some more songs...

I've kicked a lot of thoughts around about the annual Pegasus Nominees Concert over the years and this current set of thoughts crystallized after this year's concert. This does not necessarily have anything to do with this year's nominees or performances.

I believe that the nominated songs are best served by not asking the sound engineers to do an impossible job. I am not *at all* trying to disrespect the work that Mark Peters and Dave Ifversen have been doing -- exactly the opposite! They are doing the best possible job under what are frequently bad circumstances.

"And what *are* those bad circumstances?", I hear you asking. Simply put, it is putting too many signals onto the stage, creating something that is very, very hard to balance on the fly. And if the song cannot be balanced on the fly, then the audience doesn't hear the best possible representation of the song under the circumstances of the concert.

Look, I've been an amateur sound engineer for a long time now. What I've learned is that the more familiar I am with the people on stage, the better the job that I can do. I will not say that I can mix Wild Mercy on the fly in my sleep, but I am familiar with what they do, what type of arrangements they have, and many of the songs that are going to be performed in any given set. My chances of getting a good mix from a standing start are really good.

If you put six people on the stage who I have *never* seen perform together before, I am now engaged in a guessing game and that guessing game is more complex depending on what the performers are planning to do. The mics and direct-ins are color-coded and I'm guessing that's reflected on Mark's board, but it requires a *lot* of attention to keep track of what's where. So our engineer is trying to listen to this and *maybe* he can figure out that someone is going to play an instrumental break and he can pick it up and boost it above the rest of the mix, because that's one of the tricks that makes the mix good.

But this is just *hard*. And I have to ask: is this what is going to present the song in its best light? Or is it better to use a less complex arrangement where the engineer can easily follow what's going on, emphasize the parts that need to be emphasized at any given moment, and everything is very, very clear?

Now there are going to be occasions when you really, really need to get a bunch of people on stage. (*cough* "Midichlorian Rhapsody" *cough*) But if you're going to do something like that and you want to be able to switch between voices, then the *minimum* that you ought to do is to provide a marked-up lyric sheet in *large* print with the names of all of the people participating and who is carrying the lead at any given moment. And this gives the engineer a fighting chance.

Or maybe the chorus that you need for this song can be picked up by a mic that's catching the vocals from the whole chorus so that they become one source and the mix becomes simpler to put together.

I'm going to take myself as an example, because I'm the example I'm most familiar with. If I'm doing a song with Amy McNally accompanying me and it's time for her to play a fiddle break, I will step away from the microphone (easier if my guitar is direct-in!) and turn in her direction, which tells the engineer that Amy is now the featured player. And when we're ready to go back to vocals, I will step back up to the microphone. An engineer as experienced as Mark will *easily* see this kind of big, broad signaling.

This requires some thought, of course. All good things do. But it's a skill that *everyone* can learn.

But if you can fit your arrangement into three people at the most, that's great, because not only do you become easier to mix, but you become easier to move on and off stage. This leaves less dead air during the concert, which means people are more attentive, which means they are paying more attention to *your* performance when you're ready to go. That's all good, right?

And if you really *do* need a lot of people, then know where you are going on stage, be prepared to go there when the previous song ends, and then get in position, help adjust mics and mic stands as required, and go.

As a rule of thumb, I suspect fewer is going to be better.

Your mileage may vary.

Let's talk about OVFF, although it won't be nearly as long as it should be.

Other than spending an hour and a half in the lobby waiting for our room, apparently because they forgot to tell me that the room was ready after telling me to go wait there for them to call me, I had a fine time. The room was in good enough shape (although the lamp wouldn't reliably hold a plug, but I had an extension cord and a free outlet :) ), so that wasn't a problem.

The Pegasus Concert was great fun and I really enjoyed getting the chance to perform "The Prophecy Hotline" with K. This is what happens after four years of high school drama...

We grabbed dinner with Erica and Steve. After that, it was time to go off to bed. I had gotten up early so that I could have a chance of getting the table set up in the dealers' room on Friday afternoon, but waiting 90 minutes for the room took care of that plan. And I decided that I would rather have more sleep than breakfast, so I headed directly down and got things set up, opening only about half an hour late. Trace was good enough to bring lunch, which was a fine thing, conversations were good, and business was, well, meh. Sales were down 30% from last year and 17% from two years ago, which is noticeable. But happily, this is not how I make my living. :)

More good conversation at the Pegasus Banquet, a lot of well-deserved awards were distributed, and then it was off to the songwriting contest. I drew the next to last slot for "It's Propaganda", which won the audience choice award, which made me happy. The Interfilk Auction was suitably silly and raised a goodly amount of money.

And now it was finally time to filk. I saw Katy set up in German Village, dropped my checkbook on a chair there, and went to retrieve my guitar. No one moved the checkbook while I was gone, so I had apparently succeeded in buying the chair. The room switched into a theme circle on "Reaching Out" shortly after I arrived, so I contributed "A Distant Song", which was about someone *else* reaching out (and a bunch of aliens who I think I like *much* better than humans). Later, I got to introduce "Wind and Water", which was my other new song for the con (along with "It's Propaganda"), and it seemed to go over well. "You Should Know" started a brief cycle of love songs, and when it was time to go, I pulled out "Third Planet From the Sun".

(On my way home, I had switched to the "Beatles Channel" on the satellite radio, where they have the 24/8 tag referencing -- of course -- "Eight Days a Week". I was contemplating that was something that would be extremely difficult to file the serial numbers off of and repurpose when I realized that "Third Planet" is structurally similar to "The Green Hills of Earth". Just written by *me* instead of Rhysling/Heinlein.)

And that was the extent of my singing for the convention, but it was a fun circle to be in, which was the objective.

The next day, we woke up, packed out of the room, skipped the hotel breakfast (which I'm told was a wise decision), and headed back to the dealers' room. Some time around 3:30, the last customer came through. And I managed to find (with Trace's help) everyone that I owed a check to for new CDs and get those written. I still need to write the rest of the checks and get them in the mail, but work has not been cooperating.

K and I grabbed dinner with Trace and then lit out for Chicago, making it in the excellent time of about six hours and fifteen minutes, accompanied for part of the journey by the USB stick of this year's Pegasus Concert.

Some year, I will find a way to do more singing at OVFF. Staying for the dead dog would help. When I no longer have children at home (or in school), that may be more feasible.

That day is coming much faster than I had expected. I'm not sure that I am going to like it...

You would think that some time during the day, I would have managed to type out a longish report about OVFF.

You would be wrong.

But maybe tomorrow.

(The drive home was accomplished with remarkable efficiency, taking six hours and fifteen minutes roughly, with only three short stops. But it helped that we had already had an excellent dinner with Trace before leaving town. :) )

The van has the inventory in it, all of the inventory having been added to the inventory list on its way into the boxes as I unpacked it. Checks will have to go out on Monday, because I am out of time. I am going to pack up the guitar in just a minute, having checked to see that the battery in the tuner is dead, so I've replaced that. A wise man would check the battery in the guitar too. Let me be wise for a moment...

Ok, battery nominally good according to the mini-amp in the office. Music tablets are updated, additional sheet music for Pegasus Concert and songwriting contest are in the folder and going into the filk bag momentarily. All of the dealers' electronics were checked out in the last 24 hours and seem to be ok and updated.

I'll pack my bag in the morning and we can get on the way.

Assuming, of course, that I remember to put the bag in the car. :)

I spent most of the afternoon today trying to clean up some things in our setup at work. The fellow who made the suggestions tells me that I'm generally on the right track, so that's a good thing.

Meanwhile, back at the "Getting Ready for the Con" category, I have pulled out the electronics and am now starting to make sure that everything is charged and updated, because it is *so* much better if I don't discover that something needs to update over Wi-fi at the con.

Charge!

Congratulations! You have won and achieved your goal of taking control of my child's medical needs, no matter what they or their parents might believe.

I scheduled the PCR test for K that is required for her to go to OVFF without getting a COVID booster which is of dubious value for teenagers. I took time off from work today to take her to Walgreens to take the PCR test, which was going to cost us $99.99, because it is not covered by our insurance.

They did not actually *have* the test kit, because -- unsurprisingly! -- there is apparently no demand whatsoever in the real world to pay $99.99 for a PCR test. Much like the famous Seinfeld episode, they are good at *taking* the reservation; they just aren't actually good at *administering* the test.

They offered to try to find a Walgreens *somewhere* that had the test in stock. No telling where. No telling *when*. And the test has to be administered today in order to receive the results on a timely basis because the PCR test requires 48 hours to get the results back.

I gave up. I submitted to your demands. And I asked my child if they were willing to take the booster shot and they said it would be ok.

And so they have taken the vaccine, against our and her better judgement, because the little gauntlet that you set up to be run turned out to be a choice that didn't actually exist.

K has a lot of things that she needs to finish before we leave for the con. Hopefully, she will not have any of the minor (or major) bad reactions to the vaccine and will be able to complete them on a timely basis. Tonight, she's running the livestream camera for a band concert. Thursday, she'll be in a concert with the chorus. Somewhere in between, we need to send her college essay off to her Uncle Jeff to give a quick once over, because if there's a professional editor in the family, it's sort of stupid not to take advantage of it.

There's a word that many of you like to throw around, despite having zero clue about what it actually means. And that's the word that I'm thinking right now, although I know that it's the wrong word.

There's a better word to describe this. I know exactly what it is.

But I don't plan to be using it right now.

Well, I've made the appointment for K's required PCR test for OVFF tomorrow at Walgreens. They aren't accepting our insurance for this, so we will have to pay $99.99 and see if there is any hope of getting it reimbursed by our health insurance.

And then, she will have to take a rapid test at the convention, because paying $99.99 and testing clean on Tuesday is not enough to make some people happy.

But such is the price of not being a "good person", although there is no reason to believe that COVID vaccination is a good idea for young people. Given how long the CDC spent covering up the reports of myocarditis side effects in young people from COVID vaccination, I have no reason to trust whatever they have to say on that subject.

Tomorrow is the first performance of the fall play over at the high school and I have now purchased our tickets. Sam and Bonnie are coming to join us, which should be fun.

Tomorrow is also when the recycling goes out and we have a lifetime supply of cardboard that needs to be broken down for recycling. This would be simpler if we weren't going to the play, but we will figure out how to make this work.

In other news, I have been tapped to cover a song in the Pegasus Concert at OVFF and I have tapped K to accompany me. This should *also* be fun!

I think I have sent off all of the CD orders for OVFF to people who I don't expect to see there. I will catch up with everyone else shortly.

The kids are off from school tomorrow (although K has a lot of rehearsal), but I will be back at work.

Meanwhile, Ruby has figured out that if Gretchen manages to get out into the garage without taking Ruby with her *and* the back door is open, Ruby can figure out a way through the fence so that she can come join Gretchen at the van.

Ruby the Dog: Intelligence 16, Wisdom 3. (So Gretchen estimates...)

The fence will be fixed soon. Just not soon enough.

The TV mostly works, although finding the set top box on the TV managed to annoy Gretchen this afternoon. I'll play with things tonight and see if I can find the problem. It may just be a setup thing.

I am playing with the new version of the JDeveloper IDE at work and almost have it working under both Linux and Windows. Close, very close...

And I need to place CD orders for OVFF. *Really* soon...

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billroper

Filker.com

January 2026

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Bill Roper's Journal

Entries tagged with ovff

Lonesome Star

Back From OVFF

Woof!

Prep Work

One Step at a Time

Practice, Practice, Practice

Pre-release Sale

Following the Science Off a Cliff

Four Stars

Pegasus Nominating Season

Pegasus Concert Thoughts

The Not-Long-Enough OVFF Report

Home Again

Packing It In

Charge!

Done

Taxation

The Play's the Thing

Making Orders Out of Chaos

Keep On Running