The house

Well, it's been a while since I've blogged anything. In retrospect, we had high hopes for building our first house. To make a long story short, we're now involved in litigation with our contractor. He wanted a considerable sum of money after we closed on the house in May. We hadn't made any changes to anything and he never told us anything was going to cost more. No change orders were filed on any of the overages he sent us in the final bill.

What I don't get is why he didn't tell us about any/all of the overages during construction. I have a feeling that he simply underbid the entire project just to get the work; coupled with the fact that he just wasn't managing our money correctly. We've been nothing but nice over the whole project. I never once asked why it was taking so long. It was supposed to be done in 6 mos. As of May, when we closed, he still hadn't completed a bunch of stuff. Not to mention the fact that I find out the fireplace doesn't work.

I wish we'd never built the house and that we stayed in good ole Roanoke. Times were happier there.

new house notes

Me & Steph stopped by the house this weekend and a lot of it is done. Looks great! Fireplace is done, kitchen cabinets are going up, hardwood flr & tile is done. most of the trim appears to be done. not long now.

homesick blues

Had a gig last night in Moline. It went ok. Definately need new heads on the Catalina kit. And I obviously need to get into practicing some solo-like ideas, wasn't happening during the meters tune.

Stop by the house-in-progress: All flooring appearst to be complete, except carpteting. Most of the trim is up. Our builder must have either picked up the cabinets himself or they were delivered. If he picked them up himself, I feel bad he had to do that. My guess is he wanted to get started this weekend. Another thing is that it appears that the fireplace is done. Looks sweet. Some of the Fan/lights were installed too. He's really busting ass to get done. good. It's going to look really nice when it's all done. Really pro job. It's going to suck to move all our shit.

The driveway, sidewalks, back porch are going to have to wait to get poured as it's too cold out. I'm wondering about gutters, A/C, outdoor lighting trim, appliances and ultimately what our final price is going to be when he's all done. We bought all new appliances too. I'll be one broke mofo in about a month. Student loans kicked in also.

house update

went by the house today. Looks like they got more of the flooring done, some of the master bath tile done. It's gonna be real nice when it's all done. Didn't do anything tonight, although it's Friday. Didn't feel like going anywhere. Martini's wasn't enticing enough. I did get ahold of a bunch of Brecker Bros. stuff though. My hard drive is filling up too fast, damn torrents. I also got a Herbie Hancock DVD w/Vinnie Colaiuta. This is the shit. Best thing I've seen in a while.

ER

Went to the ER tonight to get myself checked out. Amazing how fast they respond when you say you're having chest pains. got an EKG, blood work, X-Ray, all came back fine. That's the good news I guess. Bad news is I don't know why I feel like poo. I'm sure it's stress related.

blah

This is an old Vinnie ad from the 80's. No reason I posted it.


Not feeling well today. Should go get checked out. Very cold outside though.

I've decided to join a local gym and get in shape this year. Perhaps the jolt of exercise Monday has made my body angry with me. I spent an hour there Monday, half on the bike, half on the treadmill. Don't think it was much of a workout, no sore muscles today. I 'rode' 4 miles and 'walked' about 1 mile. Perhaps tomorrow I'll kick it up a notch.

The new house is still not done. Work on the tile flooring is almost complete and the fireplace looks to be all done. Looks good so far. I'm hoping it's done by the end of February, living where I'm living is getting to me.

open source notation software for drummers

I have probably spent hours on this search term. Using google, sourceforge, freshmeat, etc. The reality is that there isn't a good piece of software out there (for windows anyway). I've tried numerous examples of software and none of them do this simple thing: provide a platform where I can transcribe or create drum patterns using hi-hat, snare, toms, etc. Finale Notepad sucks ass. And forget the text editor software packages, if I wanted to type out notes in a code-like format, I might as well write it down manually then trying to learn text based editing. And I don't want to have to download this pkg, and this pkg and compile this pkg, then this pkg. wtf? Isn't anyone taking advantage of any tablet type software? At this point I'm stuck to writing out things manually. I've checked for what it seems like 1-2 yrs and everything sucks.

GabCast

I'll be trying out some new GabCast technology soon, let's you post blogs via telephone. Hopefully I can talk faster than you can read...

In other news, the new house is almost complete (thank god). And I can 't wait.