Seven songs in a row to start the show.

At least I've got one other singer right now...

I now have SC-2324, which adds to the David Allan Coe, and another grab-bag of downloads, some requested, some that just seemed kinda cool.

The track count is now 14,955 (almost time for new business cards), and the unique song count is 11,094.

Updated songs page, new update sheets, the works, what.

Mood: accomplished

So, I got to New Jersey's in plenty of time, to be told - as I walked through the door - that since last week didn't make much money, they'd decided to not have me back until December 1st.

They just didn't get around to telling me.

Of course, this is the first night that I've had enough advance warning to actually tell people about the night.

Blah. I've got the card of what I believe is actually one of the owners. I'll see if I can negotiate with 'em.

Meanwhile, I've got a night off, which so far I'm celebrating by shopping at Fry's. Later, I might even do more laundry. Woo-hoo!

Mood: annoyed

I just added 15 new songs to the collection, because I've been feeling unproductive.

Or something.

Anyway, the new track count is 14,936, and the new unique song count is 11,077.

The songs page is, as always, up-to-date, and the new update sheets are printing.

Mood: accomplished

It's time yet again to dig into the archives and figure out what the hell I've been doing.

So, Monday, I did make it over the mountain, but raven2000 had decided against the Tuesday thing. So we just had another nice dinner at the Boulder Creek Brewing Company, and I headed back over (late, of course) to the Monday show.

I got there at 8:15pm. Due to extensive setup help from timenchanter, I started at 8:30pm.

Which was good, because we were quite busy fairly shortly, for no known reason I can think of. No complaints, mind you.

But, yeah, 24 singers, 7 rotations, and enough money to bring us to just under target for the weekend.

Kathy and David J came out, lasted two rotations, and went home (they hate busy nights). We had qzar_mystik, Sean (of the Dev crowd), megcn86, quite a bit of the Baycon crowd (tychobrahe, Elissa, and Vikki, at the least), a rare appearance by spawrhawk, a mostly post-laryngitis snafflekid, kshandra, lucydogstringer, Adonis & Michael (who were apparently passing by on their way back from a date), synkitty, supersniffles, Terry, and more.

I'm sure I did something on Tuesday during the day. "Sleep" seems likely. That evening was the new regular spot at New Jersey's, which was predictably slow. A total of 12 individual singers over the length of the evening, and 22 rotations.

Well, "rotation" might not be the best term. Let's just say that I sang 22 times. The place was pretty dead until a birthday party rolled in, around 10:30pm. They were a lot of fun - and the two birthday boys (Wally and Stacy) were pretty good singers.

Ashley was there again for a bit, and still an astoundingly good singer. Katie and Laura were also both pretty good.

Shannon had also been there for the previous show. It's been a challenge both times getting her to sing, but fun. This time she was with a guy named Josh, who definitely had the right attitude. Not to mention being able to translate my shirt...

All-in-all, a good time, and the owners are happy with me.

I got home from there, dumped the speakers, caught up on the 'net, then headed back over to Boulder Creek. The theory had been that I'd take Raven into town to deal with some paperwork, but we'd both forgotten it was Veteran's Day. So most of the day was spent sleeping.

I got going back to civilization at a reasonable-ish time.

The plan had been to pick up tankgirl_13, then head up the peninsula to the Cat Club. There was a slight communication breakdown, as she was in her pajamas when I got there. So I grabbed some Popeye's on my own, and headed northward.

I try to be at the Cat by 7:30pm. I made it by about 7:50pm, which is still OK.

And joined Kym (and shortly Rachel) hanging around outside the club, waiting for someone to let us in. Alethea was on a road trip, Randy was promoting in the Castro (and drunk), and Steve had to wake up and grab a cab to get to us.

He was a little grumpy. Which is kinda hard to tell from his normal state...

So yeah, I didn't get to start setting up until 8:30pm, and was sorta ready by 9:30pm, delayed a bit further by having Steve help me with the sound. Sigh.

Got it reasonable, anyway.

It turned into an insane night - 46 singers (though 7 dropped out before I could get to them), and 4 rotations - and that 4 rotations only because I ran way late.

Still no Scott, but jannypanlj, the Carly group, Oni & Thalia, Brian (minus Stephanie - they apparently just broke up), Pain, Jade, Marcus, a large part of the French contingent, Wil, Evan (though he left before he could sing), John M, a very drunk Randy, and a cast of, well, 46, plus non-singers.

Just keeping the chart up to date became a bit tricky.

But, y'know, I managed.

The big excitement of the night, as I've previously mentioned, was finding that someone had broken into the car to grab my overnight stuff from Boulder Creek.

So I got to drive back down the peninsula with one hell of a draft.

I didn't make it out of the house until 4:00pm on Thursday. Still, got the window repaired, and got most of the vital stuff replaced, minus little things like the prescription I need to pick up tomorrow. It gave me an opportunity to shop, which was fun.

And then to the Thursday show, only slightly late, which was also relatively insane, though it was a mere 38 singers, and a full 5 rotations.

Though, let's face it, the first of those was just myself, Timmie, James, and a guy named Michael that had taken a date there.

It was dionuse's birthday, and a rather impressive crowd came out for that. Among other things, the first time I've seen Colleen in ages.

There was moahb, and trivialt, and little Rachel, and the Alex group (with actual Alex!), Hex, Wayne, quite a group out with Hanan (Allen, Brian, and Annie, at the least), moonshae & bluize, rackstraw, Debbie & Rebecca, justnate, twitchet, supersniffles, redstreets, and definitely more.

An incredibly good party, and we apparently more than made up for last Thursday, which is all good.

Though I could not seem to make the vocals sound right...

I of course made less money than most Thursdays, because the only variation is in tips, I didn't have the time to send someone around, and so made a whopping $4. On the other hand, the bar is more likely to stay open.

Timmie and I had some Denny's, I got home, and collapsed in a heap. I'd been feeling a little sick for the last two weeks or so, but nothing serious. This, on the other hand, was. Tearing up your throat, can't see straight, hard to stay upright sick.

So that's been my occupation for Friday, Saturday, and a good part of today. I had a few recreational things scheduled, but nothing major, fortunately. Also fortunately, I'm feeling much better, which is good - I've got a 6 day marathon to look forward to.

Mood: cheerful

Every Tuesday, I'm going to be at New Jersey's in Campbell from 8:00pm to midnight.

It's a cute little sports bar/restaurant at 923 W. Hamilton.

Come check it out - especially since right now, I'm scrambling for singers. It's that whole "starting a new show" thing.

Mood: cheerful

I'm again sitting in the waiting room at Lotus Glass, waiting for yet another window to be replaced.

I made the cardinal mistake of leaving something visible in my car in the SOMA, so some time between 2am and 4am last night, a window was broken, and a small backpack stolen.

The expensive part being the damn window. The backpack itself was nice (leather, had sentimental value to the ex, but, well, she didn't end up with it (I'd be less nonchalant if she hadn't latched onto a bunch of stuff that had sentimental value to me)), and I've gotta replace the toiletries, but otherwise it just had a change of clothes.

Of course, those clothes included my integral shirt, and my Baycon 2009 staff shirt.

So if you see a derelict wandering the streets of the City wearing a Baycon staff shirt, you'll know where it came from.

Mood: annoyed

I'll be doing a show tonight at New Jersey's, in Campbell, at 923 W Hamilton Ave.

Hopefully, in fact, I'll be doing a regular show there every week.

I'll be playing from 8:00pm until at least 11:00pm, and likely closer to midnight.

It's a pleasant little sports bar/restaurant, with an extremely pleasant staff.

923 W Hamilton Ave
Campbell, CA 95008

Mood: cheerful

Sunday was very much low-key - most of it spent snoozing. 'Twas rather nice.

Grabbed dinner at Panera again, late, with the result that I got to the bar half an hour late.

And was set up half an hour late.

Half an hour after that, I had people and enough songs to start.

The players for the night were megnc86 (who brought her friend Hillary, who was too scared to sing), tychobrahe (who was appropriately horrified at the change of décor), kizmet100 and foxypinkninja, ajayav and chiendarrendor, lucydogstringer and Gia, supersniffles, swanhart, Honey, trivialt, James, and Michael.

Michael is an actor up here from LA for some project. The boys were all over him, which worked out well - he was all over the boys.

Gia's back from her latest jaunt to wildest Utah. Apparently she took Steven out to Effie's this last Tuesday, where he had the horror of being fawned over by females. Well, fawned over by females he didn't find attractive. Poor Judy...

He also met Sean and Dev, both of whom he found hilarious. Apparently Dev didn't respond well to "You're not gay with those eyebrows?"...

Otherwise, I still find it amusing that Justin showed up the day I was having MySQL issues - after a couple of months of absence.

Fun little night. 15 singers, and 8 rotations. The bar didn't exactly do wonderfully, but it did OK, so I did OK.

I managed to get everything shut down by about 2:30pm, and then timenchanter, Cindi, and I visited April.

Then home, and eventually sleep.

I've been up for a few hours, and need to get myself together and over the hill. raven2000 needs to be over here tomorrow afternoon, and the best best method of doing that would be to grab her now.

So to speak.

The rumor of the day is that Julz's "Venues" has been closed down by the city of Santa Clara. Take that with as many grains of salt as you'd like, since I have only one source, and that not official.

If true, I'm sure it's not her fault. After all, nothing ever is...

Mood: awake

I just tried changing a few fields over to UTF-8, so I could use the utf_general_ci collation (it's the only one that handles ÿ the way I want it to). I'm still simply playing with the web interface, and the interesting thing is that I now can't do a query that returns a large number of fields.

Like artists that contain "a".

I get "error 12" returned, which is apparently "out of memory."

The older stuff is working fine, so it just looks like the effort of dealing with character format translations is taking up huge amounts of memory.

When I have more time, I may just have to see what happens when I translate everything over to UTF-8.

Of course, I could also make snapshots of a lot of my "on-the-fly" modifications that occur during the sort process...

Mood: amused

So now I'm going to be at the Mardi Gras Lounge in Redwood City the 1st and 3rd Friday of every month - plus the 27th this month.

Guess they liked me...

Mood: cheerful

So, I left off just under a week ago...

Well, Sunday afternoon was mostly devoted to the new discs. The Sunday show was pleasant, if a bit slower than we were hoping, given the costume thing an'all. Some good ones, though. Jill W. came in this frighteningly good Elvis thing, megnc86 was a gypsy, kizmet100 was all fanged up (and kinda miffed at me for giving her songs about kissing, since she couldn't do esses), foxypinkninja was a kid with bunny ears, pajamas, and a huge stuffed rabbit, sjgrrrl wore her Starfleet uniform, bluize and moonshae were sailors, Honey brought in a date, Laurel, who made a very attractive bee, tazja714 did a cape&horns thing, lucydogstringer was Jack from Will&Grace, and more - that's mostly what I remember right now.

At the end, we had 24 singers, and 7 rotations - not only were there not a huge number of people, but they faded early. It was almost like everybody'd been partying for a couple of days...

I have no idea what I did during the day on Monday the 2nd. I suspect I mostly just slept, because I still wasn't exactly feeling great. The Monday show was slowish, but not too bad - 14 singers, and 12 rotations. Three of those rotations were actually 10 people long.

Kathy and David J, trivialt and qzar_mystik, a very cute lesbian named Jen (good singer, too!), Honey and Uva, James, a new couple (I think), Paige & Jackie, and gratifyingly large amount of stuberyl (6 songs!). In the end, bar income was down 20% for the weekend, which isn't too bad.

Tuesday, I mostly tried to shake this low-grade sickness thing. I canceled a trip to my parents, got to Musson before it closed for some gaff tape, mailed a letter to a collection agency (they apparently don't know my number, and I'm gonna keep it that way), and spent most of the evening at Chevy's, online, where I bought some stuff for future Psycho Donuts shows (We're going to run some coax through the wall to make my TV hookup easier).

And a lot of sleep.

Wednesday, I did some more stuff about incorporating music, then got ready just in time to head up to the Cat Club. Rachel was off having fun in Hawaii, so Steve bartended, which was, well - let's just say it's a good thing it wasn't a hugely busy night. It started out quite slow - I think it was nearly 10:00pm before I had any singers - but picked up nicely. When the dust settled, 27 singers and 5 rotations.

And what would have been a reasonably nice amount of money if I were still getting the level of tips I used to (they used to nearly always match the amount I made from the bar). As it is, well, I made more than the cost of getting there.

The French contingent brought some new people (Jim and Marouen), "Pain" sang quite a bit, Justin brought in some friends for his birthday (and invited me to any future kink.com parties, without exactly telling me how I'd go about, y'know, finding out about them), Benita (the bartender trainee) actually got the courage to sing once, jannypanlj was herself as always, and, of course, more.

Thursday I was up early-ish to handle some taxi duty and minor shopping for raven2000. Got that done, and bounced straight back over the hill to pick up tankgirl_13 and head to the bar.

A nice little Thursday, though it felt more like a Sunday - 19 singers, and 9 rotations. I assume the bar made considerably less than target.

moahb and Rick, trivialt, synkitty, James, Kymme, Caeylin, Caeylin's friend Dee, some of the Filipino contingent, a bit'o'Honey (with Jen in tow), and supersniffles.

I'm not totally sure what I did Friday during the day. I suspect not much. I got up just in time to grab a quick bite at Panera and head up to the Mardi Gras. Interesting little dive with a very friendly crowd - and nice owners and staff. Hopefully they'll have me back, though I haven't heard from them yet. The customers seemed to like me, anyway.

Bekki didn't make it out, but I managed to get tlsthatsme to come up the peninsula with a little bit of prompting. There used to be karaoke there with the previous owners, and some of the group reflected that (there were some very good singers), but still, getting songs was a little like pulling teeth. 15 singers and 15 rotations. I managed to keep things flowing (especially after Tobi got there), and even had some dancing going on towards the end of the night.

Then Tobi bought me supper at IHOP, and I came home to collapse.

Saturday, I was supposed to do some shopping for Raven, and possibly visit the parents. After finally getting myself together around 5:00pm, I decided to do neither. I still have some persistent throat issues, wanted to take it easy, and decided to just have a low-level "me" day.

Which involved more Chevy's, and a stroll through Fry's. We all relax in our own way...

Mood: blah

So I've managed to recover as much as can be from CB-90018, giving the collection a little more George Strait.

A little more. Of the 11 tracks added to the collection, all but 2 (Round About Way and You Look So Good In Love) are repeats.

So the track count is now 14,921, and the unique song count is 11,062.

Songs page up to date, new update sheets printing out, the usual, what.

Mood: accomplished

I'm still trying to read a particularly gnarly disc, but until that all settles out, I should tell you about the recent stuff, yes?

Another grab bag.

Which brings us to 14,910 tracks, and 11,060 unique songs.

The songs page has been up to date for a while, and I'll print new update sheets once I get this other disc included, or when I run outta time and have to head off North.

Mood: accomplished

This Friday, November 6th, I'll be doing a show at the Mardi Gras Lounge in Redwood City, from 9:00pm to 1:00am. Well, given me, more like 9:10pm to 1:45am...

Come visit!

Mood: cheerful

Since I'm still kinda sick, I've got the evening free! Spare time!

...OK, that's kinda pathetic.

Mood: cheerful

I've just incorporated a couple of new discs, CB-30106, which contains some recent hits, and CB-90341, which gives me more than just one Taylor Swift song.

The number of tracks is up to 14,901, and the unique song count is at 11,051.

The songs page is up to date, and as usual, the new update sheets are printing.

Mood: accomplished

Tuesday I headed over the mountain, picked up raven2000, and eventually headed up to San Mateo to pick up some of her stuff - basically, what would fit in my car, which ended up being three large bins and a couple of plants.

Got back to Boulder Creek, got her internet and wireless router situation sorted out, then I slept. A lot. Basically, early Tuesday evening to early Wednesday afternoon was spent asleep or dozing.

'Twas very nice.

Cleaned up, took a walk out with her and the dogs, then headed back over the hill to pick up the equipment and get up to the Cat Club.

Fun little night at the Cat, if a tad slow. The French contingent wasn't out in full force, so there wasn't that big block (Mostly just Isabelle and Maëlys, though there was also a bit from Ben, Joe, and Manuel), and it seems a lot of the others have been driven off by the students.

Got a bit of a lecture from Rachel about the Europeans scaring off the tipping customers, which I can understand. I'm just not too sure what to do about it. My instinct is that they're also cute, and have the potential to bring in many drinking non-singing customers - but that hasn't exactly happened yet.

Scott didn't come in, which worries me slightly - he left early last week, shortly after someone else sang one of the songs he'd put in. At the time, I just figured he had 5 songs in, and losing one wouldn't be a problem. I just may have been wrong, there.

Not that we were dead, mind you - there were still 26 singers, and only 6 rotations. But the income was mostly enough to pay for gas and dinner.

Carly and Kevin brought some friends (Melissa, Esteban, and Kristi), and Carly & Kristi ended up spending most of the night. There may have been some drama involved.

And some new people, and some regulars (jannypanlj got 5 songs, and Oni, who was giddy about her wedding dress all night, got 6). 'Twas fun, as always.

I'm still working with the new sound - mostly by turning down the midrange amp settings. What I really need to do is take a snapshot of the new box, and find out what the various pieces do. I suspect one of the pieces is a crossover that might just solve my problem. The issue being that the amp rack is kept in a corner of the utility closet behind many other large pieces of equipment, so playing with it is a chore. I suspect this is intentional...

Despite all the sleep, I was pretty tired - I think I'd somewhat reset my body clock to a "normal" schedule - so the trip back home was kinda scary. Ended up napping on Whipple Road again, and then forewent my usual visit with April for some fast food, and a quicker collapse in my bed.

I don't remember much from Thursday afternoon. I discovered a couple of new discs had arrived, but didn't have time to do anything with them (still haven't), picked up tankgirl_13, had a pleasant dinner, and then made it to the bar early, for a change.

I was even ready to go on time.

An interesting Thursday - the energy was different than usual. 23 singers, and 5 and a half rotations. There was, obviously, Angela, but also chiendarrendor & ajayav, the new James (who gave me a disc I still need to work on - it's pretty scuffed up) and "Kymme", kizmet100 and foxypinkninja (who was obsessively asking programming questions again), synkitty and Joel, Bekki, sjgrrrl (!!!!), trivialt, moahb, a lil' bit o'Honey, supersniffles, and the new people.

The lesbian table had Emma, Ezra, and Syreeta. Emma had an adorable british accent - her mother and sister had been in before, but I'm too lazy to look for the reference. It was very good they were there, because Bekki was supposedly having a bachelorette party, but none of her guests showed up. So timenchanter had the girls lapdance her while he sang You Can Leave Your Hat On. She perked up quite a bit after that.

Emma and Ezra had a lot of fun during their songs. Syreeta has a beautiful voice. The rest of her ain't bad either...

We also had Sandy, Hans, and Richard, who hid from me by the door.

And Adrian, who was lucky enough to get a song in after 1:00am.

And that's the players. Not a huge number of people in the bar, but sales were just a tad below target, I believe in large part because of Emma's group - I had to chase one of them out from behind the bar when she got irritated at having to wait 10 minutes for a drink (Timmie was taking a smoke break).

I was kinda slow shutting down, and Angela wasn't feeling the Denny's bit, so I took her home, grabbed some Carl's, and tried to do something about the new discs before I keeled over.

The difficulty being that I had to be up by 9:30am on Friday.

Actually somewhat managed to get myself up and clean, headed over the mountain, got Raven to her appointment, and also dealt with some last-minute drama involving a potential foreclosure.

John owes me some money, now. I really need to have some "white knight" business cards printed up.

Had a nice long walk with Raven (about 4 miles), then packed up and headed back over here to, well, sleep. I was tired for some reason.

I still felt tired when I got up at 6:00am to get ready for the Psycho Donuts show. It was kinda surprising when I was actually ready to go just a little after 10:00am. No one else was, per se, but I was.

It started out pretty slow. kshandra came out to shill for me, one of the counter girls ("Nurse Anna") had a great time singing, rackstraw showed up, sang a song, and took off (without his free donut), and we got some occasional songs from the guys at the KSJS table out front.

But things really didn't start to pick up until 11:00am. And then, as always happens, they got kind of busy. I was supposed to end at noon - I didn't actually finish until a little after 1:00pm.

I think my favorite costumes were the TV Batman and Catwoman. Very good jobs on the costumes, and one of his utility belt items was a player cycling theme music from the show - at just about the perfect volume.

I made $12 in tips, a sandwich, and got a Psycho Donuts shirt. On the other hand, I had kids singing, which is always fun. Will probably do again.

Got home, unloaded the car, dropped off some costuming pieces for Angela, and headed over the hill to pick up Raven for a party in San Mateo.

As we were leaving her place, I got a call for an "emergency party" that evening in Campbell. I had just enough time to drop her off at her party (I would have liked to have gone, but at least they all were her friends), bounce back down, reload the damn car, and head off to Campbell.

Turned out the place was New Jersey's, a sports bar. I assume their original KJ bailed, but whatever. I was supposed to run from 8:00pm to 10:00pm. I think the last song was at something like 11:20pm. As always.

There weren't a lot of people there, but a fairly nice energy, especially for a sports bar. The main problem I had squeezing songs out of people was Ashley. The girl had an amazing voice, and a great stage presence. Scared a whole bunch of people from singing.

But she left, and the alcohol kicked in.

Debbie, the person who hired me, apparently likes me well enough. I start a regular gig there on Tuesday the 10th.

Grabbed some Del Taco on the way home, did some laundry (all my pants were dirty), and crawled into bed, feeling sick - nasty sore throat, sniffles, everything. It's either something pretty fast, or I was collapsing from the pace. Dunno. I don't feel great right now, but definitely better.

Might sleep some more, though...

Mood: groggy

If you haven't heard already, we're having a costume karaoke party this Sunday at KoC.

Come out and show off whatcha got before packing everything away for another year.

Mood: cheerful

This Halloween Saturday, I'll be running karaoke at Psycho Donuts from 10:00am to noon.

Everyone who performs a song in costume will receive a free regular donut!

Come on out, enjoy the Psycho Donuts atmosphere, the excellent donuts, and sing from the padded cell!

The store is at 2006 S. Winchester in Campbell.

Mood: cheerful