Blogging from Burlington

It's been quite a while since I've done a concert review on here, but I'll be spending the next several days at the Burlington Discover Jazz Festival, and it's my intent to review the four concerts we'll be seeing starting tomorrow night: Dr. Lonnie Smith Trio and John Scofield's Uberjam Band on a twin bill; Bobby McFerrin; the Branford Marsalis Quartet, and Dave Douglas.
The wi-fi at the hotel is rather spotty at this point, so the reviews may not be as timely as I'd like them to be, but they will be completed after I get home at the latest. Here's hoping that these reviews will become a regular part of this blog again...

Blogiversary

Just a quick note to mark my ninth anniversary of blogging. While I certainly haven't gotten things completely figured out with regard to proper maintenance of this blog in the era of Facebook and Twitter, it's still in my long-term plans to keep this thing alive and viable. If nothing else, it will continue to be a collection of "Facebook's Greatest Hits" (the Kids Say the Darnedest Things and Playing This Week in the Kevmobile series), as well as longer-form things that don't fit as well on the social networks, such as essays, CD and concert reviews, and so on.

For those of you who visit here regularly (or even irregularly), thanks for stopping by; I'll try to always make it worth your while.

Bad Blogger! Bad Blogger!

OK, it's been waaaaay too long since I've updated this thing; for a while, I was at least good for some "kids say the darnedest things" posts and my weekly "playing in the Kevmobile" updates, but even those have fallen by the wayside during what has turned out to be my busiest semester ever, bar none. (Facebook hasn't helped either, of course.)

So I'll go back and try and fill in the cracks of the past month or so, and I'll attempt to be better about updating in the near future. This time, for those who have stuck around, I can really say, "Thanks for your patience."

Blogiversary

It's hard to believe, but it was eight years ago today that I started The Musings of Kev. Why did I begin this? Well, let's review what I said at this time last year:

I began blogging for several reasons: To have an outlet for creative writing; to vent about a few things in a larger forum; to satisfy the journalism bug that bit me in college (writing CD and concert reviews, among other things); and, well, because a lot of my friends were blogging at the time (I guess that's the "all the cool kids are doing it" line of reasoning).

I started out doing very short posts--things that would probably be Tweeted today. Eventually, the Blogger software went through a few updates, and suddenly, my posts had headlines, tags and so on. As I learned more and more about HTML, things like links and embedded videos would make their way into various posts. As I read more and more "A-list" bloggers, some of their styles inevitably crept into mine.

And in the year since I wrote those words, The Musings has run into its most formidable adversary: Facebook. I finally caved and joined the social networking behemoth a year ago this month, after holding out for quite some time. It's been a great experience, as I've reconnected with plenty of old friends from college and high school, kept up with former students and met a lot of new brothers in my fraternity, Sinfonia.

So what does all that have to do with blogging? Well, I've always had a limited amount of computer time during the business day, since I'm teaching lessons or directing ensembles for most of the day. And when something as immediate as Facebook (which I read and update from the phone) gets the bulk of my attention, my other forms of online presence seem to suffer. (I've also been practicing and arranging more this year, both of which also cut into my limited non-teaching time.)

But nonetheless, I remain committed to this blog, and one way I've done is by a slight duplication of effort. Every Sunday has become a recap of the new music I'm listening to in the Kevmobile (which itself grows out of a daily series of tweets on Twitter that simulpost to Facebook), and some of the shorter posts on Facebook about the unusual things I run across in daily life (such as the perennial "Kids Say the Darnedest Things" series) will become posts here as well. I may not always have time to do a long post with links (as has been the custom over the past several years), but I usually have something to say every day, so I may end up saying the same thing (in various states of brevity, or not) across all three platforms. If nothing else, my blog readers, Twitter tweeps and Facebook friends don't have all that much overlap, so it's not as if too many people will be bombarded with the same post several times a day.

And for those of you who stop by regularly, whether for a short time or for the entire eight years (is there anyone out there in the latter category?), I thank you for your patronage, as well as for your patience when I do get backed up on posting. It's a big, wide Internet out there, and I appreciate your visiting my little corner of it. (And if you really want to get this thing going bigger, start up a discussion in the comments. It's nice to know the thoughts and opinions of those who read this.)

2010: The Year in Blogging

It seems a little odd to do the traditional end-of-year blog review when I've admittedly been such a slacker at blogging lately; it really has come in fits and starts throughout the year, and it was almost certainly made worse over Easter weekend when I finally caved and joined Facebook. But this blog is still a great outlet, and it's very different from the day-to-day Facebook stuff (not to mention that it's mostly a different audience), so even though I'm not a big resolution-making type, it's a goal of mine to be more consistent with blogging in 2011.

Once again, this is a month-by-month list of posts that either got the most comments of any post at the time or just stand out in some other way on second glance. So here we go:

JANUARY: Metheny Deserves a Pat on the Back For His Latest Effort
FEBRUARY: Another Great Way to Fix Congress
MARCH: Performing for a Less-Than-Perfect Audience?
Perhaps Keith Should Just Grin and Jarrett
APRIL: For Many of Us, This Program Was a Real Clunker
MAY: Today's Situation in a Nutshell
JUNE: Music Meets Art--In the MIddle of the Sidewalk?
JULY: Straight from the Funny Pages
AUGUST: Advertising As Art (or, The Greatest Song You Can't Download...Yet?)
SEPTEMBER: Extreme Makeover: Concert Hall Edition
OCTOBER: Words to Live By
NOVEMBER: Farewell to Fouts
DECEMBER: Kids Say the Darnedest Things About Geography

As always, thanks for stopping by; I'll try to have a lot more for you to read in the year ahead.

Lots to Blog About, No Time to Blog It

There is so much that I want to talk about this week, but thus far, the clock hasn't been my friend.

Most of my waking hours at home lately have been devoted to a fairly large arranging project for one of my combos at school; it involves not only making parts to all our music for some new players, but also entering them all into notation software, so that I have a permanent copy of everything (and so that the players don't have to read my handwritten parts anymore). It's finally done, but not with enough time to blog tonight (if nothing else, I "curfew" myself at midnight on days when I have to wake up at 6 a.m. the next morning, though I'd prefer to hit the sack at 11 most of the time).

So thanks as always for your patience, and the discussions from the last two days (as well as the conclusion of last week's three-part series on teaching and technology) will be up before too long.

A Light at the End of the Blog Tunnel?

OK, I've been pretty bad at blogging (or at least being able to finish posts that I've started, before looking at the clock and saying, "Yikes, I have to get to bed now!") for quite some time now. As I looked over my list of posts tonight, I realized that I have more "pending" ones than real ones for the past month or so.

So why is this? Certainly, joining Facebook is (as expected) partially to blame; my online time is still finite during any given day, and I've devoted a lot of that time catching up with people I haven't talked to in years. Some of it can also be attributed to having a new TV and wanting to watch programs as they air in HD, rather than catching them later on a (greatly inferior) VCR rendering (yes, I'm still in my pre-TiVo phase).

But despite all the new distractions, I'm still firmly committed to doing this blog, and I have a solution to the time problem: If I'm going to watch TV during the week, then I can certainly blog during the time on the weekend when I'd normally be watching those taped shows. This weekend looks to be pretty chill, so I should get at least half of the 12 pending posts done in that time, and I'll link to all of them in a giant "catching up" post like I always do.

I've said this a lot, but, to those who haven't given up on The Musings yet: Thank you for your patience.

Blogiversary

It was seven years ago today that I started The Musings of Kev. I began blogging for several reasons: To have an outlet for creative writing; to vent about a few things in a larger forum; to satisfy the journalism bug that bit me in college (writing CD and concert reviews, among other things); and, well, because a lot of my friends were blogging at the time (I guess that's the "all the cool kids are doing it" line of reasoning).

I started out doing very short posts--things that would probably be Tweeted today. Eventually, the Blogger software went through a few updates, and suddenly, my posts had headlines, tags and so on. As I learned more and more about HTML, things like links and embedded videos would make their way into various posts. As I read more and more "A-list" bloggers, some of their styles inevitably crept into mine.

There have been a few pleasant surprises along the way: I never expected for this blog to get a hundred hits from all over the place in a single day, as has happened a few times when a post was linked to a prominent site (among the most-viewed posts are the one supporting the UNT stadium referendum and my review of the Maynard Ferguson tribute in St. Louis. And while I still have yet to receive the beloved "Instalanche" (a link from Glenn Reynolds' mega-blog Instapundit, I have been frontpaged by Althouse in a post about lolcats--something I discovered at Althouse in the first place.

And it has certainly been a pleasant surprise to occasionally meet people via blogging who have morphed into friends in real life; that was something I never expected when I first started putting my "random thoughts and rants" online.

Nowadays, my biggest challenge is finishing the posts that I start in a timely fashion. My teaching days are long, I occasionally still have work to do when I get home, and things like Twitter and, for the past week, Facebook, are competing for my online attention. But my commitment to this forum remains unwavering, even if I seem to get a lot of it done on the weekends (indeed, the only reason this post is going out so early is that the public schools have a holiday this morning).

Thank you for your attention and continued visits. I'll work hard to make what you read here worthy of your time.

Overworked and Underblogged?

I have quite a few major projects that I'll be working on this week, so I don't know how much blogging will take place in the next few days. As always, I thank you for your patience.

The Latest Roadblock (Road-Blog) to Blogging

I've been really bad about starting posts and not finishing them lately (because of sleepiness, overscheduled days, catching up on work, or a combination thereof), but I have to say that the Winter Games have created a logjam of, well, Olympic proportions on this blog. I like the WInter Games a lot more than their summer counterparts (Michael Phelps notwithstanding, of course), so it seems like there's always something cool to watch. But the end result is, once again, more unfinished posts at the blog. Hopefully, I can catch up in the next few days.

But in the meantime, I've been tweeting quite a bit about the Games and some other stuff, so if new material is slow to come up here, please feel free to visit me there.

2009: The Year in Blogging

Seeing as how it's New Year's Eve, it's time for my annual roundup of "posts of note" from the past year. As I've said in previous editions, a post may have been chosen because I think it bears repeating, or it's my favorite post of that month, or maybe it brought this blog quite a bit of traffic. At any rate, here we go:

JANUARY: Drunken Lemur Alert
FEBRUARY: More Than Just a Place to Lay Your Head
MARCH: With This Blog, I Thee Wed
APRIL: An Interesting Day
MAY: A New Take on "Old Home Week"
JUNE: PETA Peeved by Pike Place's Piscatorial Projectiles
JULY: Let's Wish This Iconic Jazz Educator a Happy Birthday, Starting in "1, 2, 1, 2, 3, 4"
AUGUST: There's Still No Place Like Home
SEPTEMBER: Last NIght, We All Got Wiested
OCTOBER: Happy Halloversary, KNTU!
NOVEMBER: Thinking About This Dress Code Makes Me "Emo"
DECEMBER: Christmas Lights and Music: The Next Step

I actually have a New Year's Eve gig this year for the first time in several years, but it'll take a few hours of driving to get there. Back tomorrow with more, and remember, if you celebrate tonight, be sensible about it.

I'll Get Caught Up on Posting Again...

...when I stop getting detoured by sites like this. (Don't get me wrong--it's a great read, and tons of local information, but it can become a gigantic time-suck if one is not careful.)

Tomorrow is a fairly easy day, so I might well get caught up then.

Trying to Get Back on Track(pad), or I Wish There Were a Mouse in My House

Apologies for the lack of posting so far this week; it's not even the usual excuse (lack of time), though that certainly figures in. Rather, this week, it has to do with a computer problem--namely, the trackpad on my MacBook Pro. It just won't, well, track sometimes. I'll move my finger around and around, but to no avail; the arrow just stays in place for a while. It's almost like a very mild version of what it must feel like to be paralyzed in a limb.

The idea has hit me that perhaps the hard drive is getting full, which I realize could affect performance somewhat. To that end, I've been doing the Great Music Purge of '09 whenever I've been on the computer during the past 24 hours. I topped out at 25 days of music, so I've been deleting anything that I already had on a physical CD, saving my iTunes space for things I've gotten through eMusic or Amazon Downloads or the iTunes Store. I'm seeing slightly better performance since I've done that, but the occasional paralysis continues.

So, a quick bleg to my fellow Mac users: Is there anything else that I'm not thinking of which could be causing this problem? A repair is not really in the cards right now, due to budgetary concerns. I also realize that I could just throw down for an actual mouse, bypassing the trackpad altogether, but I'd like some information about that as well: Of the Apple mice, which one have you found to be the best? And how about any other mice that aren't made by Apple but work on Macs--any yays or nays there? Feel free to enlighten me in the comments, as this is driving me nuts; it's taking up to five times as long to do simple tasks, and there are just some things that I can't farm out to the iPhone. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

OK, I'm Taking On a Project

As I acknowledged the other day, I'm woefully behind on posting; as I look at my list at this moment, there are at least twelve unfinished posts spanning the past three weeks. So with a fairly unscheduled weekend, I'm going to try and finally get caught up. Posts will appear in the November portion of the Blog Archive over on the sidebar, and once I'm done with everything (tomorrow?), I'll link to everything new in one of those "All Caught Up" posts.

Thanks as always for your patience; it's been a challenging semester.

I'm Getting Rather Blogged Down Here

As I sat down tonight to possibly catch up on one of the many unfinished blog posts from the past few weeks, I managed to look at the main list of posts, where I discovered a troubling thing: Over half of the posts from that time period are unfinished! And I'm afraid that it's not going to get any better tonight either, as other things got in the way, and it's time for bed now.

I'll get caught up eventually, of course, but I thank you for your patience, and I wanted to at least put up something new today, so that regular visitors aren't continually greeted by last Thursday's post (which was, ironically, about how my workload just got lighter; I guess that hasn't translated to blogging yet).

Here's hoping for more stuff in the next few days, and, as always, I'll link to the old posts once they're done.

If This Was My "Early" Day, Then Why Didn't I Get Home Till 9:15?

There was a slight deviation to my schedule today that allowed me to finish at 6:00--about 45 minutes earlier than usual. (And yes, when my day started at 7:30 in the morning, there's something kind of sad that a 6:00 stop time is "early," but that's the way things are around here at the moment.) I started eating dinner when it was still light outside, ran a quick errand, and had one more thing to do before I got home; things were looking good.

And then I ran full tilt into a stack of midterm grades to average, and one makeup test to grade. Over two hours later, I was finally done. (Thank goodness my corner of Starbucks was quiet for the duration; not a single person--or a married one, for that matter--shared the area with me.)

I'm not complaining, mind you; I love what I do. And I could have done this over the weekend, but I chose to turn Saturday into a Very Chill Day. Having that day was worth the extra time tonight.

But I suppose this is all a way of saying that, while there are already a few things that have come up which I plan to blog about this week, they'll have to be put off till at least tomorrow (which means, if you read yesterday's post, that they might not be done until the weekend, LOL). Thanks again for your patience.

So how early did your day end today? Anyone go later than I did? Comment away if you wish...

Neither rain, nor snow....OK, well, maybe snow: My high schools' marching contest was rained out last Wednesday, and I was amazed at the swiftness with which that decision was made (they'd called it by ten that morning). The rain day was today, and it rained pretty much the whole time. But if the region's website is to be believed, they held the contest anyway (the rain day for the rain day would have been this Wednesday, and rain was again in the forecast). I guess they just said "to heck with it--we need to get this done." But I feel bad for the kids with nice horns and the schools that used electronics, and I hope none of my students got sick being out in the cold rain. (I can't imagine anyone but the most die-hard parents sitting in the wet bleachers, either.) But if they'd kept kicking the date down the road, we'd be getting into November, and the next thing you know, the contest would be getting snowed out. If it was indeed held, I know that the kids (not to mention the directors) will be happy that the 'meat" of marching season is over. Now, let's make some music...

Looks Like It Might Be One of Those Weeks...

It's been quite an, umm, "active" past several days: Gigs on all three days of the weekend, a Rangers game nestled in between two of them, and another gig tomorrow night, which puts my first "time off" in the evening around Friday afternoon sometime (the teaching day only cut short because of an appointment with the knee doctor). I feel, as often happens during the year, like a perpetual motion machine.

The long and short of it is that, while there are plenty of things to blog about, I'll be lucky to even get the posts started, much less finished. So pleae be patient with me this week, and I'll try to have new things up from time to time. And with a four-day weekend for the public schools on the horizon, I should be able to get caught up once I get a little breathing room.

One of Those Weeks

I seem to be mostly over the allergy crud for now, but time is still at a premium for a while. I'll blog when I can during the week, but I may have to catch up on weekends here and there (until those get busy too, LOL). Have patience, and try following me on Twitter for more frequent updates.

Audition Day

Spent all day at the college, and there's still some work to be done. Blogging will resume tomorrow, with any luck.

(It's too bad that Blogger doesn't have a character count; I bet this post would be short enough to go on Twitter. I'll probably post something there before the night is done.)

Lazy Day

This is my first true day off in almost three weeks, and I'm enjoying it to the hilt. Slept in late (for me) and have been lazing around all day. I have some posts to catch up on from the past few days, but I'll do that--along with all the work I was going to get done today--sometime tomorrow. That's what slow weekends are for.

Blowing out the candles: Happy birthday to my sister Kristen. She and her family just got back from a fun trip to Colorado--undoubtedly a nice way to escape the scorching Central Texas drought.