End of 2015

2015 is almost at an end, and I haven't posted in over four months, so I guess I should give an update.

I've been busy as fuck the past few months. My friend got evicted. I moved out and got a place with her. And just as soon as I'm getting ready to move, which was the beginning of October, my work decided to start mandatory overtime. Great.

In early October, I saw that there was an opening for a Monday-through-Thursday or Tuesday-through-Friday daytime shift at another building, and put in for it. The catch was that I'd either have to work Sunday-through-Wednesday, or Wednesday-through Saturday, from the beginning of November until Christmas. I got the Tuesday-through-Friday shift, meaning I had to work Wednesday-through-Saturday for November and most of December. The two weeks that I got to do Tuesday-Friday were nice, but the Wednesday-Saturday was awful. Black Friday and the week following it were pretty bad, and I don't even want to talk about it right now. I'm just glad that it slowed down after that Sunday, even despite that Monday being Cyber Monday. But anyway, now that Christmas is over, and my schedule is reverting back to Tuesday-Friday, I can breathe a little sigh of relief.

You know, I've never really come up with a nickname for my employer of the past three years. The tv show "Maron" gave me some inspiration. From now on, I'll refer to it as Steel Johnson.

I've lived here for three months, and not only do I not have my turntable set up, it's still sitting at my mom and dad's. Oh well, hopefully I'll have it over here pretty soon.

Blah

I just finished Week 3 on my new shift. I love having my Sundays off again, and it's easier to binge watch tv shows and movies. The only problems I have with the shift itself are that I have a hard time getting up before 2:00pm on my days off, and there are fewer people on the night shift than there were three years ago, meaning there are fewer interesting people. I've realized that a lot of my issues are with the company itself, and that that place has sucked my soul so dry that changing shifts won't make me any less miserable. I really don't know how much more of the ten hour days, micromanaging, and being sent to other departments I can take. But I'm also making $13 an hour, and with my limited skill set, I don't know where I'm going to go where I can start out making at least that much. And I don't feel like I have the brain power to look for another job, look for a therapist, or look for an apartment, and work at the same time. The only other reason to stay is that I'll be getting more vacation time in January.

My life outside of work hasn't been much better, which makes the work situation worse. I was hoping to get to hang out more with the new friends I made last year, but everybody seems to be too busy. I'm no closer to getting my own place now than I was six months ago. A lot of that is my own fault, between being bitten by the collecting bug, and engaging in "retail therapy" when I need to get out of the house, but have no one to hang out with. But I've also spent a good deal of money trying to keep one of my best friends, who deals with thyroid and depression issues, from getting evicted, which ultimately amounted to prolonging the inevitable. And too many people I've known have died.

I'm also tired of the general mediocrity of Louisville and the surrounding area, much like I was in 1998. A lot of online articles try to paint Louisville as some Hipster mecca, but the Hipster element is mostly confined to the original city limits, which is nowhere near as big as Austin, TX even was in 1998. The greater Louisville Metro area is made up of people who are content to see mediocre cookie cutter acts like Luke Bryan or Shinedown, and don't have much interest in movies beyond the major releases. As far as terrestrial radio goes, if it weren't for 91.9 WFPK, I'd go nuts. Looking back, Louisville Mojo was the main reason I came to like Louisville in the 2000s, and now that Louisville Mojo seems to be on life support, it figures that my love for the city should dwindle as well. I so want to travel, but I've not mastered the art of traveling on little money, plus I don't have the vacation time for it. I'd also like to relocate, but if I can't make it in a relatively affordable place like Louisville, then I don't know how I could make it in a place like Austin or San Francisco.

Shift update (July 2015 edition)

I always give myself three or four weeks before I ultimately decide if I like the shift I'm on or not. Anyway, I found myself hating the new shift, and wished I had made the new night shift my first choice. Further irritation was caused by not getting partial days off for the day after the Kentucky Derby, Mother's Day, Father's Day, or the morning after July 4th.

This month, an opening for my department's night shift finally opened up, so I put in for it, and got it, starting on July 27th. I'll be working the same days I worked before the shift change in April (Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday), but instead of working 6:30a.m. to 5:00p.m., I'll be working 5:30p.m. to 4:00a.m.. My Friday nights are pretty much fucked, but I have my Sundays back, and without the annoyance of trying to get up around 5:00 on Monday mornings.

Work news and Movie sadness

This entry brings up some topics related to what I posted in Cutting back on fun stuff over four years ago.

It's been over two months since my last entry, and I'm still no closer to moving out. Work had been slow during January and February, and then we got the big snow dumps in mid-February and the first week of March, so my checks were pretty crappy. Thankfully, that kind of snow seems to be a thing of the past in Kentucky, at least until next Fall or Winter, and things at work have picked up. Sadly, my Monday-Tuesday-Thursday-Friday shift has been eliminated, and I start working a Sunday-through-Wednesday shift starting April 12th. Getting up so early on a Sunday morning blows, and working four consecutive ten hour days again will suck, but the change isn't all bad. Some of the more positive aspects of the new shift:

• I get three days off in a row, two of which will feel like entire days off. That Wednesday in the middle of my former shift never felt like a full day off, and neither did Sundays.
• With Fridays off, I'll get to go to early showings on most movies' opening days again. I kind of missed that.
• My previous designated overtime day had been Saturday, now it's Thursday. That might make it easier for me to work voluntary overtime, though I'll probably still only do half days, at least until I get my own place.
• I get to work more with some of my favorite coworkers, and less with my least favorite coworkers.

I considered maybe looking for a new job in June, but I just realized that if I make it at my current job until January, I should be getting more vacation time.

In some ways, this would also make it easier for me to get a second job, but I'd only be able to work on two of my three days off, and I don't know what the hell I would want to do for a second job.

One thing I was looking forward to doing when I moved to Louisville was renting from Wild and Woolly Video. Sadly, it was announced in January that they would be closing in March, and they had a big closeout sale in the two months leading up to the closure. The last thing I needed was another music or movie store closing. Tons of money was spent. It was depressing flipping through those movies that I had no desire to buy, but would've been eager to rent, especially since there is no guarantee that you'll be able to find some of these movies on Netflix or on any other streaming services. The decline of physical media, and finding bands/artists to obsess over, still has me spending collecting like a maniac, I really need to slow my roll.

I still consider myself a fan of indie/art films, but I've been underwhelmed by some of the movies that my film lover friends have been fond of recently, namely Birdman, Maps To The Stars, and It Follows. But for what it's worth, I did love Whiplash and What We Do In The Shadows. I hate that I've become the kind of person that will mostly see big event movies in the theaters, but movie going is so expensive now that I'd rather not take a chance on flushing $9+ down the toilet on a movie I would've rather watched at home.

Lastly, I've been reading some of Hunter S. Thompson's work lately. He seemed to spend a lot of his writing time on drugs or alcohol, or if not writing under the influence, then writing about being under the influence while on assignment. Similarly, I feel like I need sodas or blended frozen coffee drinks when I'm writing. Amazingly, all I've had to drink for this entry is plain old water.

Hey there! (Plus more Vlado talk)

I'm okay, I just haven't had time to blog between working, sleeping, getting caught up on TV shows, and getting out of the house. I'm hoping to get a place of my own soon, preferably in Louisville. I'm simultaneously thrilled and terrified. Thrilled because I'll have my own place, I get to set up my turntable for the first time since I boxed it up six years ago, and because living with mom and dad has been killing me, literally and figuratively. Terrified because I only make $12.50 an hour, and am afraid that something will happen that will make it harder to pay rent, among other things, than it already is. I'll likely not be getting out so much, giving me time to do things like work on this blog.

I've taken down my "Vlado: The Music Impaler" post. It was my most popular post, but I'm not so sure now that Vlado Meller deserves to be as demonized as he's been. He's no Greg Calbi, Bernie Grundman, or Vic Anesini, but he is capable of doing decent work, and I'm not sure that he's the Worst (dedicated) Mastering Engineer Ever, so much as he is the CD mastering engineer on some of the worst recorded or mixed popular music of the past twenty years. I'm more bothered by people who try to fill all the roles of producer, recording engineer, mixer, AND mastering engineer. An exception is Jack Endino, who I thought did a decent job with mastering The Decline Effect's self titled LP, and on remastering Soundgarden's "Screaming Life/FOPP".

However, I'm not letting Vlado off that easy! I had mentioned before that I thought his remastering of Living Colour's "Vivid" was tolerable. The truth is that I had never owned the original CD or vinyl of it until recently, so the only thing I had to compare it to was hearing "Cult of Personality" on the radio. Broadcast radio is very compressed, and so the remastered "Cult of Personality" sounds pretty similar to what I remember hearing on the radio. I was content to keep it since I was satisfied with the sound, and it's worth keeping for the bonus tracks. After reading that Greg Calbi was listed as mastering the original "Vivid" CD*, I had to check it out. The original CD sounds so much better than the remaster! I swear I heard stuff in it that I never noticed before. The EQ-ing on the remaster might be okay, but the dynamic range has been squashed badly enough to make it virtually useless. One odd thing about the remaster is that "What's Your Favorite Color?" is way shorter than it originally was, down to 1 minute 41 seconds from its original 3 minutes 56 seconds. I don't know what the story with that is, I can't even find much info about it doing a Google search. Vernon Reid was a producer on the reissue, so the shortening of it was probably his idea, and he probably approved of the overall sound as well. Between having the original "Vivid" CD and having the Japanese import version of "Biscuits" which includes a few tracks that ended up as bonus tracks on the "Vivid" reissue, the only real reasons for me to keep the reissue are for those few bonus tracks that had never been on CD, and the novelty of the shortened version of "What's Your Favorite Color?". By the way, the Japanese import version of "Biscuits" was mastered by Vlado Meller. I don't own the Bob Ludwig-mastered U.S. version, so I can't compare the sound, but Vlado's version sounds fine to me.

I am hoping to post more about the Loudness War and the mania of music and movie collecting, probably even updating older posts with recent revelations. That might be a while, though.



*Greg Calbi might have mastered the CD version, but it's hard to tell who actually mastered something sometimes. Back in the 1980s, CD credits often just listed the mastering engineer for the vinyl version. These days, you're more likely to see the CD mastering engineer listed on the credits for vinyl albums, but the deadwax (that part of the vinyl between where the music on a side ends and the center label) usually include the initials of the vinyl mastering engineer, or some indication of who or where it was mastered.