A New Adventure
July 1, 2009
Adventure – an unusual and exciting, typically hazardous, experience or activity. Is it unusual? Even in the bay area where the unusual is fairly usual, this isn’t something that the majority does. How about exciting? If it wasn’t exciting I wouldn’t be able to even get to this point. Hazardous? Compared to my outdoor activities, hazardous is a little strong but it’s not void of risk either. So yeah, the word adventure feels like a good fit. But a fit for what?
Starting my own company.
That’s right, in the midst of what I hope will be the worst economy in my life, I’ve decided to leave my comfortable and well paying job at Mark Logic behind and do my own thing. It’s not a decision that I made lightly, in fact I’ve been pondering it since Thanksgiving of 2008. I’ve given the concept plenty of time to soak in and as the weeks have passed I’ve increasingly felt like it’s something I have to do.
I had this moment in high school where I decided that the secret to my life was to minimize regrets and after 14 years it’s still serving me pretty well. Yes this is a risky move. Yes I could blow all of my savings on it. Yes I could end up regretting that. But what overshadows all of those could be regrets is the certainty of regret if I don’t try. Plus, I’m at the point in my life where doing something like this only gets harder.
The more time you spend in financial comfort, the harder it is to live a life of minimalism. Plus, for most people their thirties are a time of increased responsibilities in the form of houses and families. These things seriously raise the bar on funding your own startup.
But the biggest motivator to take this risk is that I’m very excited about what I’m working on. I haven’t felt this kind of excitement since I was working on my search engine in college. I’m not ready to share all of the details about my project in such a public place but I will say that it’s very closely tied to my biggest passion, music. So not only am I going to get to work on my own stuff for my own good, I’ll be forced to listen to music while doing it, what a hard life.
As usual I’ll do my best to share the details of this adventure on this blog. Of course, if history is an indicator of the future I might get distracted for a while and have some gaps, but we’ll just have to see.
Many thanks to all of those that have encouraged me to give this a go as well as those that have given me a moment of pause, my determination is stronger thanks to you.
What is Our Metric for Progress?
April 26, 2009
Yesterday I was listening to a presentation about lean startups and a topic in the presentation really struck a chord with me. The presenter was talking about measuring progress and how frequently progress is measured in ways that are totally incorrect. Such an obvious observation in hindsight but one that I had never made. Hello dots, meet your new friends the connections.
Immediately I started thinking about all of the projects that I’ve worked on and tried to identify how progress was measured on each one. The most disastrous project had a huge specification jammed down the throats of the developers and progress for that project was measured by how much of the specification was implemented. There wasn’t much about this project that felt right, but the self centered metric for measuring progress should have been the biggest indicator of failure. At least 10 man years were spent on that project, it never made any money and has now been shut down.
The next project I worked on at that company was one of my own making. Personally I was measuring progress by how much the company was able to innovate. Admittedly that too was a stupid metric because you can have progress without anyone else caring. Consequently while the site is still around, the original projects on it were a bit of a flash in the pan and died a slow death.
More recently I was working on a project that had a pretty clear metric for progress, traffic. But I suspect that this metric was a bit too vanilla and thus provided little value. However, the bigger problem was that different parties had different metrics for progress. Our group was measuring traffic and saying that generating more of it was the most important thing to work on. While the CEO was measuring our progress by how much money we were making, which was none. So it strikes me that not only is it important to have a good metric for progress, it’s something that all parties need to agree upon.
So I feel like a real idiot. I strongly believe that asking questions is a fundamental part of making anything that’s successful. I’m not talking about asking random questions, I’m taking about asking the hard questions and having the endless curiosity to ask why. But I feel like I’ve neglected to ask the hardest and seemingly most important question of, what is our metric for progress.
So today I’m thinking about all of the other aspects of my life and it’s surprisingly refreshing to realize the places where I’ve been measuring the wrong thing.
A simple example. When I started climbing I measured my progress by how hard of a climb I could complete. Typical male stupidity. That metric had me focusing on pure strength instead of technique which has caused me a tremendous amount of physical pain. Or take this blog for example. It’s very easy to measure my progress by looking at beautiful charts that tell me how many people are reading what I’m writing. But is that really what I’m after? No. I’m just trying to share things in my life with those that are interested, not make more people interested in my life.
When taking a macro look at the things around me I really start to wonder what metrics are being used in other areas. What’s being measured when we bail out banks and automotive companies? Simply not dying? How about the housing market? More homes being purchased? What about the economy as a whole? Please tell me we aren’t using the stock market.
I’m hoping like crazy that someone in a position of power has answers to those questions. But even if we have the metrics, what I fear is that the people in power don’t agree or even communicate what they are. What would happen if every law we passed had to have a metric of success tied to it and we voted on both the law and the metric? Then we would have real data that can be used to decide if the removal of our rights as Americans has a proportional increase in our safety.
Humm… much to think about.
Sad Face in my Taxes
April 12, 2009
So in typical Ryan fashion I filed my taxes yesterday. Some people may call this type of behavior procrastination but I prefer to think of it as lazy evaluation. I am pretty proud of myself because this year I managed to get them filed a whole three days earlier than I did last year. At this pace, by the time I’m 60 maybe I’ll have them taken care of in January.
No Spouse Sad Face
I filed them online and in the process of filling out their forms they asked if I had a spouse. While it’s always fun to play pretend, I don’t think the IRS enjoys the game so I fessed up and admitted I didn’t have one. After I was all finished they showed me a summary of my information which is where I saw the image to the right. When I first saw this I thought they had a sense of humor and had put in a sad face because I didn’t have a spouse. This of course made me smile and for a moment I was amazed that a tax website could have a sense of humor. But then I realized that they were trying to output and underline a social security number that wasn’t present and all I was seeing was the dashes that usually follow the third and fifth digit.
So I guess this isn’t a sign of humor at all but more of an oversight. Either way, it made my taxes a little more entertaining and I’m only paying in $38 so I’m not complaining one bit.
Why I Climb
April 11, 2009
This last January I joined a small group of people (8 in total) for a half day rock climbing class. I’d done a very small amount of climbing before and figured it would be a good time, but honestly I was hoping to just meet some women. Much to my surprise, this was the start of a new love affair… one with rock.
Climbing has taken a toll on my hands
In February I joined a climbing gym (Planet Granite) and have been spending about 10 hours a week torturing myself on its walls. This is a huge amount of time for someone as busy as I am but for some reason I really can’t help myself. Just like any other attraction, there is a certain amount of mystery behind it and I like to solve mysteries.
So I’m making a list. A list of feelings and skills that showcase themselves while climbing. I doubt this list will be able to fully express things enough to come to any conclusions but I’ve got to start somewhere. And just like Columbo, I’ll probably have to come back in the room and add in “just one more thing”.
Forced Social Behavior – Pretty much all of the outdoor activities that I’m into are ones that you can do by yourself. Climbing is refreshingly different. Because every climber needs someone to belay them (take in the rope as they climb) it’s kind of a hard activity to do by yourself. This makes it very easy to approach others and strike up a conversation and so far almost everyone has been receptive of this. In a world where most people avoid saying hello to strangers, climbers seem to encourage it.
Freedom – For years I’ve been exploring various parts of the wilderness and seeing rock walls that looked impossible to scale. Being an idiot, I naturally want to conquer such things and it’s this kind of desire that I think worries my parents. But as it turns out, acting on those desires can be really empowering. The ability to traverse over any physical object opens up whole new worlds. No longer is that island plateau off limits, no longer is the view from the top of that mountain out of reach and no longer are you simply stuck to foot paths. It’s physical freedom on a level I have never experienced.
Problem Solving – Unless you’re on a ladder, climbing isn’t a straightforward task. You need to plan your moves, anticipate the crux and find places to rest. It sounds simple and logical while on the ground but these are easy things to forget when you’re getting mentally and physically tired. This is what makes the sport so challenging. You know where you want to go but just need to find the right combination of movements that will get you there while staying coordinated, balanced and under control.
Focus – Problem solving requires focus. You can’t think about what is below you or how the last sequence of moves didn’t go as well as you planned. You need to be looking ahead and knowing what your next few moves are so you can execute them logically. At the same time you can’t forget about proper foot placement, keeping your hips close to the wall, progressing using your legs and so on. You get so tuned into the task that you forget about the other things around you and feeling them reappear when you’re finished adds to the sensation.
Grace – Grace is just another word for control. While keeping your temper and frustrations under control is very important, I’m actually talking about control of movement. Making smooth movements to adjust your center of gravity helps you be a more efficient climber and use less upper body energy. Watching the fluid movements of an experienced climber really is like watching someone dance on the rock, very graceful. While the less experienced climber looks more like the portrayal of a white guy dancing. I am a white guy and I think I stand a better chance of being graceful on a rock than I do a dance floor.
Physical Strength – Climbing is a full body physical activity. Every muscle group can be used at different points but only some of them require real strength. You discover pretty quickly that the muscles you want to use the most (your forearms) are the ones that are the weakest. I may be in the minority, but I truly love pushing my body to its limits and feeling like I’ve done something at the end of the day. If climbing doesn’t do that for you, it’s time to move up a few levels.
Mental Strength – Focus is the product of mental strength. As a climber gets tired there seems to be a tendency to climb in a less efficient manner, this is clearly a downward spiral. So having the mental strength to remain focused in the face of increasing pain is a valuable tool. Being able to trust yourself to hold onto a grip is also an aspect of mental strength, if you can’t do this all you’re doing is closing off options. There is also an aspect of dealing with fear. Falling is a very natural and healthy fear, but if gone unchecked it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.
Achievement – The feeling of accomplishment after finishing the hardest climb in your life is simply fantastic. You struggle through it, push through the pain and come out on top. Then down the road you find yourself able to do the same climbs that you once struggled on without an issue. Because the routes follow a (sometimes rough) rating system it’s pretty easy to see improvement over time.
Endless Challenges – There is always a harder route to climb and many different types of rock to play with. You can work on slabs (rock that isn’t quite vertical), overhanging rock, cracks, chimney climbs/stemming (using pressure with your feet and hands to scale up two parallel or adjacent faces), routes that require a lot of balance, routes with a lot of crimping holds, etc. You can have some fun on some sport climbs or get the full rack of gear out for some traditional climbing. This translates into a lifetime of goals.
Nope, that list doesn’t solve the mystery but perhaps it’s the mystery itself that is so appealing. Afterall, one of the things that drew me to start climbing was the mystery of what’s at the top. It seems kind of fitting that the mysterious journy to the top is what keeps me coming back. So maybe this one should go unsolved.
Climb on.
SGI Follows the Path of their Hardware, Sadly Shut Down
April 2, 2009
For at least the last eight years SGI has been slowly dying a painful death but this seems to be the end of that road. Yesterday they declared bankruptcy and sold themselves to Rackable Systems for $25 million in cash (at their peak they were doing about $4 billion in revenue per year). While this news isn’t shocking, it does leave me feeling a little sad and reminiscent of my hacking roots.
Back in 1997 I first visited the Virtual Reality Applications Center at Iowa State University as a high school senior. I was so taken back by the things they were doing in their lab that I simply had to get my hands dirty with it. I ended up attending Iowa State after high school and one of the first things I did was to walk over to the VR lab and get more information about what they were using to build these virtual worlds. Enter SGI, stage left.
I walked away from the lab that day knowing that these SGI computers played a big part of making these virtual worlds. At this point in my life the only thing I had ever programmed was my TI-86 calculator and I had never even heard of UNIX based computers. Somehow none of this discouraged me one bit. I simply saw a toy that I wanted to play with, end of discussion.
During the summer after my freshman year I started going to these surplus sales that the university had. One week I walked in and couldn’t believe my eyes, sitting on a shelf was a SGI Indigo Elan. This was a computer that once sold for tens of thousands of dollars and could now be mine for $225. It came complete with a 19″ monitor, 64MB of memory, a 500MB hard drive and a R3000 processor at 33MHz. Not exactly a barn burner in 1999 but like U2 says, “love is blindness”.
So I got the damn thing and had absolutely no clue what to do with it. The university wiped the hard drive so I had no OS to run on it. I knew that somehow I had to get a copy of Irix 5.3 to install but that wasn’t an easy thing to come by. But with the help of some folks at ISU somehow I managed to get the thing to going. It was now officially my first computer and would end up being the most influential.
I can’t imagine how different my life would be today if that computer was a Windows machine instead of an SGI. My SGI allowed me explore in depth the wonders of networked computers. Being able to login to a remote machine, pipe windows over a network and mount network drives. It fostered my love with the command line which is a fundamental requirement for being a productive geek. I loved this machine so much that I ended up purchasing two more just like it.
By the end of my second year at ISU I had my three Indigo’s and also a R5k Indy at 175 MHz. After finding a copy of Irix 6.5 the Indy became my primary workstation. But my collection didn’t stop there. Over the next few years I got a couple more Indy’s and a couple of green Indigo 2’s. Then came my favorite machine, my purple Indigo 2 R10k. I have so much respect for that machine.
That machine served as the database server for my search engine for two years, handling millions of queries each month with grace. However it was also the last SGI that I owned. Eventually my needs outgrew what this pile of hardware could provide. Just like the next generation of startup companies, I too was making the transition to commodity hardware running Linux. Exit SGI, stage right.
When I moved out to California I left behind my old flames. They now reside in my parents basement in Iowa, collecting dust and probably dreaming of being useful once again. Somehow I can’t imagine the thought of actually getting rid of them. There is a part of me that would like to fire them up again and just look back at that time in my life. What was on my desktop? But I can’t bring myself to do it at this point in my life. What’s the point of looking backwards when there is so much in front of me? Besides, it would just make me crave the days when I had so much time to simply learn.
Maybe I’ll compromise and pay a visit to the Computer History Museum and see if they have any old SGI boxes on display. Not only is the hardware and software they produced of historical significance, the museum now occupies a building that SGI once owned so it only seems appropriate.
Who Loves… me?
March 7, 2009
My brother has given our Dad the nickname “stat master” because of his ability to remember endless amounts of statistical data as well as his desire to acquire said information. While I haven’t earned such a nickname, I must admit that I love looking at stats, especially search logs.
It amazes me what people type into search engines that ends up landing them on various posts in this blog. Most of them are very logical and not surprising (eg: a search for my name). But every now and then I come across one that catches my eye. For example, this week someone searched for “jack johnson guitar” and somehow landed on my blog. This is surprising because there are hundreds of thousands of pages with those words on them and somehow someone found one of mine.
But this week I stumbled on one of the greatest search referrals in my life. Someone searched for “I love Ryan Grimm”, I actually let out a little laugh when I saw that. Immediatly I started to wonder if a celebrety or artist popped up with my name, thankfully it doesn’t look like it. So what was someone looking for when they typed that into a search engine? Is it possible that they were actually looking for me? I doubt it. But it at the very least, it’s nice to know that someone out there is searching for their love of a Ryan Grimm.
Concert: Cake @ The Independent
October 11, 2008
I’ve enjoyed Cake’s music for many years but I really got into them when my friend Andy and I started listening to the song “Nugget” in order to get through some frustrations we were having with a project for work. But the first time I actually saw them in concert was at the Outside Lands Festival and it was fantastic. So when I saw that they were doing a show at The Independent in San Francisco I simply had to go.
For those of you that aren’t familiar with The Independent, it’s a smallish venue that holds, by my guess, about 300 people. There is a regular stream of good artists on their calender, but getting to see a band like Cake in such a intimate setting doesn’t happen very frequently. Even at $50 a ticket the show was a bargain considering the experience.
Speaking of money, the reason Cake was putting on such a special show was to raise money for Proposition H which is on the ballet this November in San Francisco. If it passes, San Francisco will become the first city in the U.S. to be 100% powered by clean energy sources. Cake has a long history of finding creative ways to help environmental causes and it’s one of the reasons I love their music so much.
Naturally the place was packed and the crowd was fantastic. Very enthusiastic and clearly big fans. The set was almost two hours long which is amazing considering that John McCrea (lead vocals) was feeling a bit under the weather with a sore throat. But this fact didn’t seem to get him down much as he frequently addressed the crowd, interacting with us, asking us questions, making us laugh and (in typical fashion) giving away a tree.
This show was so unique that it’s really impossible to truly describe in words. But thankfully I did manage to get a couple videos that at least give you a feeling for how personal the setting was. Take a look and be jealous if you weren’t there :).
Comfort Eagle
Wheels
Mount Diablo Challenge
October 6, 2008
Top of Mount Diablo
A couple months ago Evan talked both John and I into signing up for the Mount Diablo Challenge which is a road race up Mount Diablo with the goal of raising money to protect the mountain. To get to the top, cyclists have to ascend 3,250 feet over a winding 10.8 miles with roughly a 18% grade for the last tenth of a mile before the finish line.
This year roughly 1,000 cyclists participated in the race and a new record of 41 minutes and 19 seconds was obtained by Howard Love. But you don’t have to be anywhere close to that fast to feel at home going up the mountain because the race attracts all types of cyclists including very young children, mountain bikers and unicyclists.
Start of the Mount Diablo Challenge
Because the three of us are at fairly different levels of fitness we sadly couldn’t be in the same starting wave. Being the fastest, Evan was in the second while I was in the third and John was in the fourth. Evan’s goal was to finish in under an hour, I wanted to get in at 1 hour 20 minutes and John wanted to make it to the top.
The day was sunny but rather cool overall with some significant winds on the upper half of the mountain. I was feeling pretty good for the first 6.5 miles of the race. I’d ridden this section of the road before which really helps with the mental aspects of a race. However the last few miles of the ride required an increasing amount of mental tricks to constantly push out the fact that I didn’t totally know what was ahead of me.
I was actually quite confident that my time was nowhere close to what it needed to be in order to accomplish my goal so I forced myself not to look at the clock in fear that it would be depressing. However, in retrospect this was actually a mistake because in reality I was actually doing quite well. I discovered this after I crossed the line and to my complete surprise I had managed to finish only four minutes behind my goal. While it would have been nice to meet my goal I’m still quite happy with my results given how little training I did for the race.
As for Evan and John, I couldn’t be happier for the two of them because they both accomplished everything they wanted to with the race. Evan finished in exactly one hour and John crossed the line in under two. Earlier in the year Evan was doing the math for how much more energy he would have to pump out in order to make it in under an hour which to me seemed like it might not be obtainable. Even more impressive is the fact that prior to the race John hadn’t made it to the top of the mountain at all. Congratulations to both of them.
John, Evan and Ryan at the top of Mount Diablo
Next it looks like we’re going to do some of the climbs in the low key hill climbing series, we’ll see how they treat us.
Me and My (MicroTrack II) 424
October 1, 2008
One of my favorite John Vanderslice songs is titled “Me and My 424“. The song is all about his love and attachment to his Tascam 424, which is a 4 track recorder. This song was the first thing that popped into my head when I sat down to write this post and it was too perfect of a connection to ignore. For those of you that got this reference, congratulations on your good taste. For those of you that didn’t, you should really brush up on your bay area indie artists.
Anyway…
This last weekend I attended the Austin City Limits Music Festival and sadly two of my best friends couldn’t attend the festivities. So I figured the next best thing to being there is getting to hear live recordings from some of the sets. I’d never done any recording so I knew the chances of me getting something of quality wasn’t likely but worth a shot. Plus, the endless string of shows over three days would allow me to cram a ton of learning into a short time frame.
Before making my purchase, I did some research online. I managed to find this fantastic article by Mark Nelson on the O’Reilly Digital Media site comparing the M-Audio MicroTrack II to the Edirol R-09HR. Mark leaves it up to you to decide which recorder best fits your needs and it was the 48 volt phantom power on the MicroTrack II that sealed the deal for me. That and the fact that I found a brand new recorder on CraigsList for only $225.
Shure SM57 with TRS cable
The MicroTrack II came with a simple stereo microphone that seems to be of good enough quality for unplanned recordings, but my desire for better quality required the use of a nicer mic. A few weeks prior I had purchased a Shure SM57 dynamic mic to play around with and I wondered what kinds of results it would produce. So I picked up a TRS to XLR cable to go from the MicroTrack to the SM57 and did some test runs using my home stereo. Right off the bat I noticed that the mic that came with the MicroTrack was much more sensitive than the Shure. I wasn’t sure which one would do a better job at the festival so I decided to take both and experiment.
Ideally in this situation I’d have a nice condenser mic but I didn’t know how much I’d enjoy making the recordings and I didn’t want to dump more money into this if it wasn’t going to yield any pleasure. Fortunately I found out quite quickly that the stages at the festival were loud enough to drive my dynamic mic and I left the small clip on mic in my bag for the rest of the weekend.
Austin Texas tends to be fairly hot this time of year and while recording, the MicroTrack actually generates a little bit of heat on its own. The first set I recorded was Yeasayer and things went off without a hitch. I kept an eye on my levels throughout the show keeping them low enough not to clip. After the set I wanted to listen to the recording in a bit quieter setting to get some immediate feedback. I started playing the track back but to my surprise, I couldn’t adjust the volume on the headphone output. This had me a bit worried so I decided to power cycle the recorder.
The combination of the heat from the sun and the internal heat that the recorder generates was clearly upsetting my new device because after turning it back on, it immediately turned itself off. After biting a couple fingernails I decided to let it sit in the shade for a while to cool off with the hopes that it would come back to life. It did.
For the rest of the afternoon I continued to play around with various settings and was quickly finding myself very comfortable with the layout of the device. It’s operation is really straightforward with a minimal amount of buttons and only the ones you need quick access to. My first real complaint was the fact that when recording from a mono source (left channel only) you only get audio in the left channel of the headphone output, even when setting the recorder to mono mode. This seems like an oversight on M-Audio’s part, making it slightly annoying.
The last set I saw on Friday was Donavon Frankenreiter and I so desperately wanted to get a good recording of what I knew would be a fantastic show. I managed to get a great spot on the right hand side of the stage and it felt like a pretty good place to setup shop. At the end of the set we headed back to the hotel and I got my first chance to hear what I had captured in detail.
It was amazing, I could hardly contain myself. The last time I felt this type of magical experience was making prints in a dark room. The recording didn’t have the same quality as a sound board recording but for such a simple and portable setup I’m truly shocked at the results. Here’s a video that Will shot, I replaced the audio from the camera with my recording.
Encouraged by Friday’s results, I went into Saturday with a lot of enthusiasm especially because Iron & Wine was playing in the evening. Once again, the recording went off without a hitch but I’m discovering that it would be nice to roll off the bass a bit before the signal hits the MicroTrack. I want to do this because some of these shows have so much bass that it’s difficult to keep the input from clipping like crazy and still capture the rest of the detail. In photographic terms, it’s a lot like trying to take a picture of something in the shadows while staring at the sun.
Sunday was a big day. I wanted to get a recording of Tristan Prettyman, Neko Case and The Raconteurs. All was going well with the Tristan set when I realized that twenty minutes into the set I ran out of space on my CF card. This was confusing to me at first because I had removed all the old recordings from the previous day and my 4GB card should have had enough space for over three hours of recording. Being a geek, I had a theory for what went wrong.
When deleting the files I didn’t use the delete button on the MicroTrack, instead I deleted them via the Finder on my Mac and it seems as though the files weren’t actually deleted, just hidden. The file browser on the MicroTrack only shows you audio files that it can read which in normal situations is nice. But when you’re out of space because of clutter it would be great to be able to remove that clutter while in the field. So I’d highly recommend that M-Audio adds a feature to allow you to browse all of the files on the device for these kind of emergencies.
Because this feature isn’t present, I found myself running around the festival looking for a usb cable so I could hook my recorder up to one of the computers that Dell had at its tent. This was a fruitless task and I was left with no option but to reformat my CF card, loosing what I had of the Tristan set. But thankfully the reformatting worked and I was able to grab the other two.
So the bottom line is that I love my new toy and I highly recommend it. It’s friendly to use, affordable, portable and produces amazing results. The only reliability problem I had was when it got excessively hot. As for features, I’d love to monitor a mono signal in both ears and be able to manage the non-audio files on the device.
Austin City Limits: Day Three
September 29, 2008
That's a big bunny, even for Tate
Ah the third and final day. The strangest thing about this year’s festival is that Friday and Sunday had the best lineup (in my mind) and yet neither day was sold out.
First up for the day was Priscilla Ahn. Will had seen her when she opened for Amos Lee a while ago and suggested we check her out. She was a last minute replacement for Adele which had to be somewhat difficult, especially given that it was just her on this huge stage. But she delt with the pressure really well, in fact she’s pretty damn funny. One of her songs in particular titled “The Boob Song” was really enjoyed by the crowd.
At the same stage after Priscilla was Tristan Prettyman. I’ve been a Tristan fan for over three years now and I’ve seen her in concert a number of times and always look forward to each performance. I was especially excited for this show because I wanted to get a recording. Things were going great, Tristan was playing some of her new material which I really enjoy, but when I looked down to check my levels I realized that my recording had stopped. I tried to start things back up but it would immediately stop recording once it started. What the hell. After a few moments I realized that it was out of space. So I abandoned the recording process for the rest of the set and simply enjoyed the set.
I suspected the problem with the recorder was that when I deleted the old files from the CF card that they really didn’t get deleted. Sadly I needed a computer to remove these old files and Dell and AT&T had a booths setup with laptops so I figured one of them might have a USB cable. No such luck. My only option was to reformat my CF card to free the space but that meant I’d loose my Tristan recording. Given that there was two more shows that I wanted to record, I saw little option.
With free space at hand, we headed over to see Neko Case. When buying some cables for my recorder I started talking to this fantastic guy that works at Gleb Music and along the way I mentioned that I was going to ACL. He immediately stated that he’d love to get his hands on a Neko Case recording and told me stories of how he’d traveled from California to Washington to see one of her shows. How couldn’t I check her out after hearing a story like that.
We then hung out for an hour, keeping our spots a few feet from the stage to see The Raconteurs. Their show was amazing. As much as I love Tristan, I think The Raconteurs edged her out just a little bit. Unfortunately Jack White (lead vocals) had a slipped disc in his back but somehow managed to pull himself through the show. Their studio albums most definitely have a rock feel to them but their live performances are much more intense, but how couldn’t they rock with a guy like Brendan Benson on guitar?
Initially I wasn’t sure about this years lineup, but thankfully those feelings were unwarranted because in the end I had just as much fun this year as I did the last two. Plus, this year was a lot cooler (temperature wise) than previous years and the grounds were much more enjoyable thanks to volunteers picking up bottles in exchange for t-shirts. I was really glad that Tate could join us this year and am hoping that we can have an even larger group for the next festival.
Ryan Grimm 