HighCastle of Geek

​A blog/journal about my life and the stuff I like. Popular subjects include music, guitars, gear, books, movies, video games, technology, humor.

One more finish, and some other tentative choices

Above is the kitchen tile. We compromised on the standard size tile and glazed ceramic, although I definitely envision us going with stone tile that we will install ourselves in the future. We wanted to go with different sizes but the standard options are limited to single size and ceramic or porcelain. Since we feel we can probably replace an existing floor without too much difficulty, this is an upgrade we will perform when the time is right. 

This is a basic idea of what we want for the front of the kitchen eating counter. This isn't what the island itself will look like, but we just wanted a reminder that we want wood paneling and not stone or brick facade. We've discovered that while the stone/brick facade looks nice, it also can be hard on knees and toes if you're not paying attention. 

This is the basic idea for the cooktop we want to get. We will try to stay within our appliance budget, but I think the cooktop is the one item we may go for a bit higher option. 

This is in the zipcode of what we want to do with the outdoor fireplace. We want a ledge that's conducive to sitting, as well as small firewood storage area next to the fireplace itself. We haven't decided on how much brick and/or stone facade will use. The material will be the same as the choices for the house. 

 

 

Finishes

Above are the countertop choices. The top left granite with the red flecks and copperish streak will be the kitchen countertops. On the right the slightly darker flecked granite that continues the copper color will be all the other countertops in the bathrooms, home theater, and outdoor kitchen. The white sample on the bottom is cultured marble that will be used only in the laundry room. We managed to get colors we were happy with within our allowable choices.

 

The stone tile above will be for the kitchen backsplash. We're going to use the darker tiles on top in the larger size with the lighter color in the bottom picture for smaller tiles so it will be sort of the accent color. Many of our finish choices are lighter since the cabinets and hardwood floors will be darker.

I'm also looking at getting a custom painted set of tiles for behind the cooktop. We're trying to see if we can get this asian floral/tree pattern that has similar colors to the countertops and would look nice and understated. We have to see if the company in question will expand the image across multiple tiles.

The Gold tiles (not to scale) are the choice for the bathroom floors and wall/shower tiles. These are ceramic (or maybe porcelain?) but they have a variety of textures as seen above to give them more of a stone feel.

That very descriptive and interesting picture above is the wall color. We ended up settling on a fairly neutral beige that is really similar to the wall colors in our last two houses, but it's a compromise that's unavoidable when you start considering the other colors and the need for some contrast so we're not overwhelmed by dark colors.

The chateau brown (as used in chateaus, apparently) is the choice for the home theater walls. We were given two paint color choices and we could have used them however we wanted, but we decided to go with beige in every other room. It's all flat paint, not counting trim colors. The home theater walls needed to be a bit darker to absorb reflections.

The 3 pictures above show the hardware. This is a pretty standard material & color in home construction now, it's almost identical to what we had in our first Carothers home in Killeen. We like the color & material both, so why fix what isn't broken.

We had multiple options for the interior doors but we ended up liking what Royal Crest had in their office so we chose that, as well as the trim colors.

The old world texture on the right (not the color) is an option for two rooms in the home where they will go ahead and manually apply the texture when painting. We chose the two biggest rooms, the living room and home theater.

We didn't find the specific door we wanted. The two doors above represent what we hope to combine. The door on the left is a bit too "prison doory" to use Aeyong's real estate jargon, and I agreed. The door on the right's glass insert was bigger than we wanted. We're asking RC to give us the door on the left with the upper pane all glass so we have a half door sized glass insert (with a pattern to be chosen later). We really like how the wooden planks in the door evoke the hardwood floors we hope to get. That's another finish you won't see yet, because we're trying to find out if it will cost us more for our preference. We were quoted for scrubbed hardwood floors in the office, dining (library), and living room, but that was for 3 inch planks. We definitely prefer the 5 inch, so we're going to try and get them to change to those. We originally envisioned those being a really dark stain, but we're starting to think a little less stain will be preferable since we have dark furniture.

Yes, we actually got to choose the roof color. We went wild and chose the weathered wood, which is apparently what every other home in Mustang Creek already has (or close to it). We just couldn't see having some bizarre roof color that would call attention to itself. We figured the pink elephants and flamingoes next to the car on blocks would take care of that.

The Dominion?

...or perhaps the demesne? The seat of House Hightower? The Dominion of House Hightower. Adequately pompous and douchey if I do say so myself. And I do be do be do.

Now that we have that out of the way (for today, at least) on to updates. This part will be really short. There aren't any to speak of, not really. We did have a meeting with Ben the Builder on Monday to discuss changes to the back patio. Our original request was based on the home theater extending towards the backyard and thereby providing a longer wall to put the outdoor kitchen/fireplace against. When we changed the direction of the home theater towards the left side of the house, we lost about 10 feet of wall. Unfortunately no one (including RC) thought to have another look at the outdoor kitchen and what affect the shorter wall would have.

With only about 10 feet of wall to work with now (there's a door in the corner), it would have been ridiculously tight to have the countertop, sink, barbecue top, and fireplace all in that space. We settled on having RC create a square pad at the outer border of the covered patio to place the fireplace, giving us 10 feet of space for the sink, countertop, and barbecue grill. That way we will maintain the view (for what it's worth) out of the living room and keep everything flush (ish) against the left wall. The fire place angles out at 45 degrees to cover the main seating/table area that we intend. Our porch isn't overly spacious at the moment, but it will be adequate for us two and the dogs, and it should be okay for entertaining.

We envision expanding the patio size outwards and adding some landscaping features over time. These are mostly upgrades that we intend to tackle ourselves. If we do expand the patio with concrete or equivalent, that is one exception where we might hire someone because we hear it's more cost effective if you are going to pour a large amount of concrete. I'm not sure how expansive we will want to go at this point. We will definitely want more space, and we're thinking about a hot tub at some point in the future as well. I don't see a pool happening, neither one of us would use it enough to justify the expense.

That is one nice element of having the one acre plot and well water. We can see eventually adding a koi pond and some japanese/asian influenced landscaping (I'm especially fond of their minimalist approach that engenders multiple interpretations) but still being able to maintain a big enough yard for the dogs to do their thing.

The other "update" is that we will meet with RC on Saturday morning to discuss finishes/colors (brick, flooring, countertops, cabinets, paints, orangutans, breakfast cereals, etc.). We have a good idea of what we want, now we just need to find out if we can afford it. Our price already includes granite countertops in all areas except the laundry room, and hardwood floors in the office, library (dining room), and living room. The relative quality level of the finishes will affect the price however. I don't think we necessarily care about the fu fu level (real estate term) on the cabinets, but we do want nice countertops and ideally we would like one of the more visually striking very light (almost white) colors to offset our dark cabinets & floors. I have a feeling that won't be available in the level 1 list. As I understand it there are 3 levels of granite countertops (at least for RC) and we were quoted the price for level 1s as part of our overall home price. Hopefully we can find something we like without adding to the budget.

BL Item 7

Actually, I don't have a specific bucket list, but there are things I want to do before the inevitable return to stardust. Although saying I ran a marathon is a bit generous, I did finish my first marathon yesterday, and I ran most of the way (about 22 of the 26 miles were at faster than a walking pace). Because of the way the course is mapped out and because I took a wrong turn at the detour for the half marathoners, I ended up running about 27.5 according to my phone. Either my phone is generous, the Cowtown Marathon mappers are a bit stingy, or it's a combination of both. I know I definitely ran further than 26.2, but I'm not sure it was 27.5.

As far as my pace and finish time, my primary goal of finishing was met, although I was way too optimistic in my prediction. I ran my first (and only) sponsored half marathon (I've run that distance multiple times, just not in official events) in 1:43, so I mistakenly thought I could run under 4 hours with no problem. Maybe I should have planned for 5 hours, although I ended up missing that with a total of 5:10. Even counting my temporary detour, I don't think it added 10 minutes. My biggest time suck were the walking miles, which numbered around 4 total. There's just a point where you run out of gas, and it's a struggle to just keep moving forward. I was so close in the 19-22 mile range of quitting and calling Aeyong to come pick me up. This is the point that's often referred to as "The Wall". Somehow I just kept telling myself to make it to the next mile marker and surprisingly at around the 23 mile mark I started jogging again and got a slight burst of energy and was able to "run" most of the way in.

I think I can improve that time and I'm tentatively looking towards the Dallas Marathon in December. I know during the race yesterday I was telling myself this was the only marathon I would ever run, but 20+ hours of rest and refueling is giving me some renewed optimism that I can do better. Since I didn't set the bar too high, that goal should be attainable.

The Framing...

a new TV series from CBS, possibly. John Deter was a honest cop, and in this town, the life expectancy of a honest cop is about, well, let's just say it's less. Less than normal. Because honesty is not valued as highly in this town, is what I'm saying. Because, criminals, obviously. Anywho...

In the context of this post it's considerably less dramatic as I'm talking about 2x6's and home construction. RC put out the frames for the foundation and they will ensure it's up to atomically precise standards with ye olde surverory rangefinder things on legs here in the next day or so. Aeyong had dropped by and snapped the pics (including the future home theatre, and yes it's spelled theatre, because I said so) and we'll go back and make sure the numbers match up with what we requested. The home theatre (see, you're not even noticing it now), is really the only critical room as far as precise measurements go. If the other rooms are generally close to what was promised we'll be fine.

I'm still working on a title for our home. I've read too many epic fantasies and played too many video games to not have a formal name. If I can't have a moat and a drawbridge I can at least have a pretentious title with a seal or something equivalently douchey.

Oh kids...

how ya doin? Anywho, not much new here. We're going to drop by the property (I haven't come up with an appropriate title for it yet, but I want it to be palatial, majestic and rocking, so I'll probably go with "our place") this evening to check stake placement. I got a voicemail from someone with RC, I think it was the dude who went over the blueprints with us (I should probably remember his name), and they need us to approve the positioning of the stakes so they can proceed.

I'm not sure if they got the updated blueprints, so before I give them the approval I will ask whether this factors in the correct home theater dimensions. I'll probably take our rangefinder with us to shoot the stakes and see if it matches up with the dimensions we're expecting. We wanted to go last night but we had an ill timed thunderstorm sweep through and I didn't particularly want to go four wheeling in the mud.

Once we approve the stakes they should be able to proceed. I guess foundation is next, although we don't know the precise schedule. We'll be meeting to discuss finishes and colors in the near future as well.

On the gear front, Winter NAMM was recently held in LA and although there's plenty of new gear to be had, I haven't seen anything especially interesting that I want to drop some plastic towards. The most important upcoming event is the impending release of the new version of Axe Edit for the AxeFx as well as firmware 10.

This firmware is supposed to employ a newer approach to analyzing and tone matching amps and cabinets and it apparently has resulted in more precise and accurate models. I honestly thought they couldn't get much better about 4 firmwares ago, and after being proven wrong four times in a row, I've quit setting limits on what they can achieve with that magical black box. Another plus is that Cliff Chase (owner and lead designer of the AxeFx and Fractal Audio) just bought a mint Dumble 100W Amp (at a hefty price, enough to get a new Corvette if I understand correctly) so I expect that to be modeled and added with FW 10 or a later update.

The Dumble is one of the all time most sought after boutique amps, used by guys like SRV, Robben Ford, and Eric Johnson. It will be interesting to get a chance to try it out, so to speak. There are no other big gear events or purchases on the horizon. I'm trying to limit any expenditures until we're settled in the new home and get an idea of where our budget is at. Plus, we're going to be paying back the loan we took on my 401K for the 2.5 years, so that's a significant deduction from my monthly take home pay currently.

Groundbreaking (literally)

We had gone out for our favorite vietnamese noodles on Saturday, and since we were out we decided to drive by our homesite. It was a good thing we did because we got to witness the groundbreaking of the lot. At this point they're just grading the lot since I think they'll need the new blueprints to stake the property and those will probably take until next week. Nevertheless we got a few pictures and met our neighbors to the back side. Don't ask me about Aeyong's facial expression in the last picture, I was just snapping quickly. She'll probably have a few choice words for me in the future. We're on our way...

Blueprints discussed

We met with them yesterday (a day later than planned thanks to a long day at work courtesy of our perennially absent examiner, no names mentioned), and went through the blueprints and discussed our changes. They seemed surprised by the home theater dimensions but we were able to show them we requested 15x25 on the original documents, so they're going to fix that. We are waiting for an estimate on the cost of the bar, but they predicted it could be done for around $3K, so that's definitely worth it for us. We were able to move some lights around as they had recessed lights in several places that we didn't really care about so we changed four of them for in the home theater. We also got them to agree to install an equipment shelf on the left wall of the theater that will open up to the guest room closet and give me access to my a/v rack from behind. That should eliminate the frustration of installation and upgrades to my a/v gear in the future.

We made a few other modifications here and there but it's fairly close to what we originally requested. They predicted 10 days to get the blueprints back, so that means they'll probably not break ground until the first week or so of February. That will push us into an August completion and most likely a September closing date. Maybe they'll be able to build faster than predicted, but I'm not holding my breath. We will be having ongoing meetings with them to choose cabinets, counters, and other finishes and colors. It's nice to be involved in each step, but we always have the feeling we're missing something critical. We at least have the experience of our first house to know a little better about our preferences.

No house can be perfect because there will always be little tweaks and changes you want to make, but this house is shaping up to be really close to our ideal. This house gives us a slight case of deja vu because the front layout and kitchen area are really similar to our first home. The foyer, office, dining room, and kitchen are almost identical with only a slight difference in kitchen design. The locations are all the same, so we get the same feeling walking in the front door of this house as we did in our first house. It's probably not that uncommon because there are only so many basic home designs among all builders. Things can get decidedly different with custom builders or in other countries, but in Texas at least, the home builders only have so many stock plans and they just make tweaks to separate themselves.

Hallo there...

Not much new happening here in strumville. We did go ahead and sign the build contract and we're moving forward with the home in Mustang Creek. We've done the preliminary design and we meet with them tomorrow to see the blueprints, to which we're already going to make some tweaks. We asked for a 15x25 home theater (we now have a 13x20, and it's a decent size but needs a little more elbow and furniture room) and the blueprints are showing a 16x22 which is dangerously close to a bad ratio with the 10 foot high ceilings. I don't profess to really know what I'm talking about, but in acoustic room design you never want to have a size dimension that's half/double of one of the others. This creates standing sound waves which I think is equivalent to feedback which can be a serious detriment to good sound mixing. 19-21 feet is a no fly zone with the 10 foot ceilings, so we're going to insist on the 15x25 that we requested (the inner dimension, not the outer walls).

We're also asking them to add a bar to the rear of the home theater and I have a feeling that's going to add another $5K to the price at least, but if they can do it for that much, we'll get it done. We're hoping to make this home a true turnkey experience where we don't have any sense that we should change things substantially. There will always be tweaks over time, but we're hoping they'll mostly be cosmetic diy projects that we can handle and not major home renovations. We're hoping to get our dream home that we'll be satisfied with in the long run.

We move forward

It's Friday or 금요일 as our allies in the Pacific Rim are fond of saying. By the way, the trailer for Pacific Rim came out this week and it looks tasty. Directed by Guillermo Del Toro (who has done some great work in the past) but produced by Michael Bay this thing looks like a Transformers meets Godzilla type flick but with Del Toro directing, it's sure to have his very crafty spin on it.

We're about to pull the trigger on getting a new house. We sold the Killeen house in September and we were contemplating waiting for a few years but we've decided we don't want to wait too long and have the interest rates and housing prices start to climb back up on us. We may be proven wrong, but I don't think mortgage rates can go much lower than now at ~3%. We've been looking at some acre sized properties in a few newish developments in Benbrook since we moved here and we've settled on Mustang Creek.

We're meeting with Royal Crest Custom Homes next week and will try and get the ball rolling. Luckily the owner of our current rental house has agreed to let us stay a few months past the current lease if the house can't be completed by July 1st. I have a feeling since it's already mid-December that it will be July or later before it can be finished. We're stretching our comfort zone on the price but we're essentially getting our dream home and we should be comfortable staying there indefinitely barring some major unforeseen event or change in our status.

Aeyong is getting a larger property which will give her the freedom to further develop her green thumbs & fingers and it will also be a great boon to our four legged children. Probably the nicest part of a larger plot for me is the separation from your next door neighbors. Less concern about wearing out my welcome via Les Paul. We're going to have a home theater as well as a nice covered patio with outdoor kitchen and fireplace. We're going for upgraded finishes inside as well to include granite countertops in kitchen/bathrooms and scrubbed hardwood in the office/dining/living rooms. I'll get a bonus room above the garage for my glorified music studio. It's a bit odd shaped by the square footage is large enough that I should have plenty of room.

It's probably a lot more house than we need, but our home has always been the one great investment/expenditure that we both agreed on being the top priority. We like to get out and travel, see concerts, etc. but we're homebodies at heart. Hopefully we're going to finally be planting roots after 25 years.

On the concert calendar (how could I not include a concert calendar update? it's like the daily weather), we're going to be seeing Yes and then Jim Gaffigan on back to back nights in March. Fleetwood Mac also went on sale this week for a June show at AA center but by the time I found out about it the AMEX presale was a few days old and all the great seats had already been snatched up by the online scalpers. We may skip this one unless we can get a decent deal, which is too bad since we haven't seen FMac since 2004 and Aeyong likes them, which can't always be said about the shows we attend. The Yes show has yet another different new lead singer from a Yes cover band that started touring with them this year when Benoit David took ill. I hear good reports, but it would be nice if they could just work things out with Jon Anderson. Nevertheless, it's still Steve Howe, Chris Squire, Alan White, and Geoff Downes and they are going to be playing The Yes Album, Close to the Edge, and Going for the One in succession. That means I'll get to hear CTTE and Awaken live for the first time, which will be very cool.

Zee latest...

Got back to work this week after a very nice extended Thanksgiving holiday. We spent T-Day with le fam at my sister Debbie's house. All in all a decent day. The Cowboys found a way to lose to the skins at home on T-Day, which is apropos of the last 15 years. The highlight of the break was seeing Rush on their Clockwork Angels tour at AA center in Dallas. We went for the VIP tix and weren't disappointed. We got 3rd row center just a few seats off center of mass for Neil's drum kit, but with a perfect view regardless. Luckily we had a short lady in front of us, so Aeyong had an unobstructed view which is a rarity on the floor for her. It was a great show with an 80's centric set list which I initially wasn't thrilled about but I eventually warmed up to the idea and it was really nice hearing some of those tunes for the first time in a long time. It was about 27 years ago when I saw Rush at Reunion Arena for their Power Windows tour and a few of those tunes hadn't been played since that tour. Even better, they filmed this tour's DVD in Dallas & Phoenix (and the rumor is that it will be mostly Dallas) so we'll have a video record of the show to enjoy in the future. I've only had that experience once before, at the Crossroads Guitar Festival in Dallas and out of that whole video I probably only attended 50% of those shows in person. There's a chance we may even be able to spot ourselves in the crowd shots since we were that close, so we're looking forward to that as well, although I'm not holding my breath.

We're trying to move forward on the housing front. We've had a few back & forths with a local custom home builder and they are quoting a bit high for our preference at this point. Hopefully we can talk them down to our range and get the house we want. If so, we may be moving in to a new home this summer. Time will tell. There's still a bit of uncertainty about the housing market and mortgage rates. Everything points to a rebound (it's already happening essentially) and that means housing costs and mortgage rates will rise. The big uncertainty revolves around the "fiscal cliff" looming for our government and the good chance that tax rates will increase across the board. If this happens I expect home sales to flatten out and we may be better off waiting to see if the prices will drop again. All that being said, if this builder will respond to our requests and give us our minimums within our price range, we'll probably press Go.

I think since the last post I moved some things around in the music room. I decided to bring the roland piano back onto the desk so I would be more inclined to play it and to give me access to a full 88 key midi instrument as well for recording. I also started practicing bass again. I had focused on acoustic for several weeks in preparation for my grandmother's memorial service back in August and I hadn't ever gotten back to my regular schedule of piano in the morning and then bass for about 30 min to start off my evening practice session. I'm still trying to work on the songs I was putting together for my "Guitar Hero" (not the game) project. That is a slow process since I'm exploring a few songs that involve relatively new techniques for me. Just "Rock Around The Clock" alone is quite the challenge. It's a very fast, clean solo and there's nothing to hide behind when you play it. You either play it right or it's obvious if you don't. Similar to many acoustic songs in that respect.

There's been such a large amount of transition in my practice area, computers, gear and practice time in the recent past that I'm just now starting to feel as if I can settle into a regular schedule again and start prioritizing my practice schedule. It's funny how that although you don't practice something you may still notice improvement. I think our nervous system takes longer to respond to our demands and it doesn't necessarily stop working just because we stop. I have noticed on various occasions in the past that if I have had a break in practicing an instrument that when I return to it I will sometimes find certain things slightly easier to play than before. I think when you practice something every day that if you are making progress it's so slow that it doesn't seem to be happening, but I believe even when you stop practicing for awhile your body is still trying to adapt to the demands you placed on it before, so in a sense, progress is still being made.

Troops...

It's another glorious Friday in the dee-eff-dub...

Tonight we're going to see Asia for the third time, this time in support of their XXX album as well as a sort of 30th anniversary of the original Asia album. They're supposed to play most of the album (although it doesn't appear to be in album order) as well as few from the new album and select songs from the others. They're playing at the Granada which is a decent small venue on Greenville in Dallas. We saw Eric Johnson there in October and I would swear I had seen shows there way back in the past before I joined the Army but I couldn't find any ticket stubs to corroborate that. I know I saw a lot of shows at the Arcadia, which is not too far away, so maybe I just remember the name. We originally had gen admission tickets but luckily they offered seats as an upgrade later after the original on sale so we took advantage. I hate asking Aeyoung to stand for two hours, especially when it's a band that only I really get into.

Next week is a short week before Thanksgiving on Thursday and starting on that day I have 11 days off in a row. Which is nice. We don't have any special plans other than decompressing. Well, there is the Rush show the following week. That's kind of a big deal, at least for me. Rush announced two days ago that they would be filming Phoenix and Dallas for the next DVD which was a pretty big surprise. I'm not sure what motivated them to shoot in these locations, but I'm pretty happy about it. The only other concert video I have of a show I actually attended is the Crossroads Guitar Festival in Dallas from 2004. That's a compilation DVD and I didn't attend all the shows on the DVD. I did make a very brief appearance (in the audience) in the small set by Union Station (Man of Constant Sorrow), which was the band a set or two before the real reason I was there, Eric Johnson. We have VIP tickets for Rush and our purchase was complete at one minute past the on sale time, so I'm cautiously optimistic we'll be somewhere close enough to actually show up on the DVD at some point. Even more important, we'll have a concert video of a show we attended to enjoy for the rest of our lives. That is a great thing.

There haven't been any other world shaking developments on the homefront. We're starting to put money away each month with the eventual home purchase in mind. I transferred most of the music related artwork & paraphernalia from the big bonus room to my studio/home theater room. It seems trivial, but having all that music memorabilia on the walls and scattered about the room really enhances the vibe. I'm actually pretty happy with the overall size of that space and I think it would be fine for our eventual home. I definitely plan to separate the home theater and music studio at our eventual home, but I know I don't necessarily need a huge room for my music studio.

I've learned a few hard lessons thanks to Apple, Inc. lately. Mainly that they have started to morph into a more MS Windows kind of experience in the recent past. The more systemic chronic problems really began with my purchase of Mountain Lion when the installer informed me my hard drive was about to die. Too bad I didn't know then that Apple would eventually deem these hard drives defective and offer free replacements (3 months and one new hard drive too late for me). Adding to the Apple frustrations were my even longer standing issues with Itunes and my portable devices (iphone/ipad). My problems always stem from not being able to get complete information transferred from my computer to the device when adding new music. I still buy new music several times a month and for whatever reason, itunes just arbitrarily (it seems) will fail to copy album art, or the complete album, or some other frustrating element whenever I try to copy new music over to my devices.

After multiple attempts to fix the problem manually I eventually have settled on periodic complete wipes and restores of the devices. This seems to be the only effective way to ensure that everything from the mac will transfer to the device. I'm not really ocd about much, but my music collection (and the problems associated with itunes) can make me certifiable. I don't know why with the long age of itunes software that it's still such a common problem to just transfer media files between the mac and the device. I understand the need for DRM, but I don't download much of my music at all. It's about 99% (literally) ripped from cd's I have purchased, because that's still the way I prefer to buy my music. Knock on wood, it seems to be working for me.

Right along with the itunes/media devices frustration I started to experience problems with mountain lion itself. The two most important peripherals (not counting my backup hard drive) I use are my presonus mixer and axefx. These both worked as audio devices initially when I upgraded to mountain lion. But for some reason over time, one and then the other stopped being recognized by the system. I went through the whole nutroll with deleting all traces, reinstalling, updating, lather, rinse, repeat with both devices. I reinstalled mountain lion several times. Then I got desperate. I wiped the mac and installed mountain lion clean. No joy. I then jumped through several hoops until I could get Lion installed on a usb drive so I could perform a complete wipe and fresh install of Lion. This also now seems to be working for me.

All of this with no significant changes on my end, just wanting to add music to my mac/devices and to use the gear that had previously been working. During the process I got to a point that I thought my mac was truly dead and I was going to have to replace it. I had also been thinking about getting a pc at the time (mainly so I could play guild wars 2) to use separately because for some reason along with mountain lion, the mac no longer wanted to let me install a bootcamp partition. So I got the pc during the time I thought the mac might be truly dead but it made a comeback once I went back and wiped everything and started over. Now I have the mac dedicated to music and just basic mail/internet browsing. Hopefully that will provide some more longevity so I'm not compelled to upgrade too soon. With the software I own, I still feel the mac is better suited for music production. Unfortunately I'm starting to get the feeling apple is more concerned with selling portable devices since that's where the real money lies, and they are going to continue marginalizing the power users.

Updates

A lot of this info is way after the fact due to my inconsistency in posting as well as the squarespace app on the ipad not getting along well with IOS6.  I had typed up a few updates in the last month or so only to find out I couldn't save or post them because the app is basically inoperative. 

Most importantly, we sold our house at the end of August (and paid $30K for the privilege) so we're now fully disconnected from Killeen and beginning the next chapter which should eventually result in our permanent residence here in DFW. 

In the gear section updates, PRS finally released the Angelus Custom SE to dealers and I got the first one from Sweetwater. I'm really happy with it so far, it reminds me alot of the Taylor I previously owned although I prefer this sound more (despite the Taylor costing 3x as much). I also was able to sell the Maton on Ebay and I got my buy it now price almost immediately. It's out for delivery today to the buyer and hopefully I'll get positive feedback and funds release from paypal not too long after. 

Aeyong made her trip home for her mother's 70th birthday and had a good time while she was there. It was nice for her to be able to make the trip, and paying for it with bonus credit card points was nice as well.  The only bad thing about it was April coming down with a really bad case of the runs and me having to stay home with her for a few days until she recovered enough that I wasn't worried about the house becoming a biohazard. I think it was a combination of stress from the separation and I might have fed her a bit too much cottage cheese one night. You live and learn. 

There are more details to relate but I wanted to at least get this update down while it was on my mind

Concert Calendar Update

It's a good thing I periodically check artist websites, because I would otherwise miss out on some great shows. A random check of Eric Johnson's website showed he was playing the Granada in Dallas in October and then checking their website I found out Asia is playing there in November, and performing their eponymous first album in its entirety. So tickets have been purchased for both. I got Aeyong a seat for EJ and I bought a gen admission ticket for myself so I can get close. Asia is all gen admission so we didn't have a choice for them.

So September is actually looking light with only Slash (an understatement, I've been wanting to see him and Myles Kennedy for awhile now), October has Australian Pink Floyd, Eric Johnson, and Joe Bonamassa and then November will have Asia and Rush. 2012 has been a pretty good concert year. I've seen Opeth, Mastodon, Ghost, Roger Waters, Boston and Tenacious D for the first time(s). You could add Led Zeppelin 2, who, despite being a cover band really did nail LZ in all aspects. It was really close to what seeing them circa 1977 must have been like. Add Tommy Emmanuel, Van Halen, and Iron Maiden to the repeat concerts and the previously mentioned upcoming shows proves it's been a fairly stellar concert year. We're at a point now that we're still fairly selective about who we see.

There are a few shows we skip depending upon the night of the week, venue, whether we've seen them recently, and other reasons. We missed Tool since they were the same night as LZ2 and we already had tickets (no, I would never have skipped Tool for a cover band otherwise). We skipped Coldplay, because although I really like their 2nd album, their subsequent albums have progressively lost a little bit of what made the 2nd album great. I would still see them, but I really didn't feel like hanging out with loads of iFans at American Airlines. No disrespect to Chris Martin, but, the few times I've heard him live I've been less than impressed as well.

There are still a few big gaps in our concert history. Right now among the large venue bands it would have to be Foo Fighters and The Killers. Hopefully we'll get chances to see both although I don't relish the large venue ticket sticker shock I'm sure will be the case. I know Aeyong would enjoy Jason Mraz, and Mark Knopfler as well. Knopfler's playing as opener for Bob Dylan and I'm tempted, but we'd probably rather see him do a full solo show. I respect the hell out of Dylan's songwriting, but I've never gelled with his vocal/music style live.

Acoustic & Bass considerations

As an addendum to the gear updates, I'm going to need to figure out a good way to combine the capabilities of the Fishman Aura with the AxeFx. The Aura is a brilliant preamp/guitar modeler for lack of a better description, but when I run it into the Atomic, I am giving up any reverb or other effects (the little Roland AC33 actually has onboard reverb and chorus) and I find that I really prefer at least reverb, even if it's used in a subtle manner. I think I can use the line level input on the back of the Axe, although I'll probably have to tweak the I/O settings for that to work. I don't think going into the instrument level input on the front is the right way to do it. As far as the bass, there's nothing special to do other than it will only really work with the Atomic. It might work with the Mesa as well, but I'm sure I'll be giving up low end that I don't want to lose.

Updated Gear List and future planning

Guitars
Gibson Les Paul Custom Black
Suhr Modern Black Cherry
Fender Eric Johnson Stratocaster Tobacco Sunburst
James Tyler Variax Tobacco Sunburst
Maton EBG808 Acoustic
Fender Geddy Lee Jazz Bass Tobacco Sunburst
Yamaha Classical

Keyboards
Roland RD700GX Digital Piano
M-Audio Oxygen 25 Midi Controller/Keyboard

Preamp/Processors
Fractal Audio Axe Fx II
Fractal Audio MFC 101 Floor Controller (Mission Engineering EP-1 Expression Pedals (2))
Fishman Aura Spectrum DI/Acoustic Guitar Preamp/Modeler
TC Helicon Voiceworks Plus

Mixing/Signal routing
Presonus StudioLive 16.4.2 Digital Mixer
Line 6 Relay G50 Wireless

Amplification/Sound Reproduction
Matrix Amplification GT1000FX SS Amplifier
JBL EON 515 (2)
Atomic Amplification Reactor Powered Wedge
Mesa Stiletto 4x12 Cabinet
Roland AC-33 Acoustic Amp
M-Audio BX5A Studio Monitors (2)

Computer Hardware/Software
Apple iMac desktop (primary DAW)
Apple Macbook Pro (secondary - used with roland setup)
Apple Logic Studio
Native Instruments Komplete 7

Miscellaneous
Blue Chip picks (regular & thumb)
Slick Pick Thumbpicks
Elixir acoustic strings
D'Addario electric strings
Lava Cables
NYC Pedalboard

Future plans - I've essentially decided (see below) to get rid of the Mesa 4x12 and replace it with a larger FRFR solution. Basically the large venue version of the Atomic Wedge. I want to have a unified and compact(ish) solution for my guitar rig. That will mean a 6u or 8u rack case to put the AxeFx, Matrix GT1000, and whatever else I deem necessary, the pedalboard case with the MFC and pedals, and the speaker cab which will be the Atomic Wedge (1x12 equiv) for smaller venues, or the Jet City 700DP (essentially a 2x12 but full range and essentially taking the place of a 4x12 in sound capability). I'm getting a nicer multi-guitar rack for my home studio and I'm also considering whether I want a portable case rack for gigging. A lot of this is very tentative planning based on the supposition that I will be gigging at some point in the future. If I need the ultimately small gig setup, I can go with one guitar (probably the Suhr if I need just one), and just the Axe provided I have a FOH/PA at the site of the gig. This would leave out the pedalboard, so I'm not sure if that's doable or will even be necessary in the long run.
Future Gear: Jet City 700DP, 6u/8u rack case, PRS Angelus Custom, Roland E Drums, nicer monitors.

Gear, Gear, Gear...

why do you vex me so? The very nature of gearheads is that we're never content. There are fortunately some items that fulfill their role well and so remain one of the pillars of our sound construction. For me, several of my guitars fit that role. The Les Paul, Strat, Suhr, and Jazz Bass are unlikely to ever get swapped out. They do their job as intended and they do it well. Okay, I might swap the EMGs out of the Suhr, but the guitar itself is brilliant. Most of the elements in my signal chain have also met my expectations (after much trial and error) and so the overall setup is fairly stable at this point. As my primary tone shaper, the Fractal Audio AxeFx is probably the best option for the foreseeable future.

I would never say permanent since technology continues to progress at exponential rates. The pinnacle of sound modeling five years ago now falls woefully short when compared to the AxeFx. Along those lines, my current vexation is related to speakers/cabinets. I originally was running the Axe through cheap M-Audio monitors. When I upgraded to the Atomic wedge, it was a revelation. Not long after I had purchased JBL EONs for my keyboard and other FR PA needs and before long I decided I liked the stereo FR option compared to the wedge.

My Mesa 4x12 had been gathering dust for the past few years but I kept the option open to run it as my cab with the Axe amp modeling running and the cabinet modeling bypassed. When I saw Pete Thorn's demo of the Matrix GT1000FX, I was sold on pursuing that route. I had been thinking I needed a more traditional amp/cab look/sound if I was going to play with a band. After experimenting with the Mesa 4x12, I've found that while it's possible to dial in great tones, I feel limited since I was so accustomed to running all the custom cab options with the AxeFx.

I think I've finally come full circle and I plan on selling the Mesa and embracing FRFR only. I plan on selling the Mesa, and perhaps even the JBL EONs and replacing the Mesa cab with an FRFR cab or equivalent. My vision is to have the Atomic as my smaller gig amp and the new Jet City FRFR half stack as my larger/louder venue amp. I can see myself selling the JBLs and M-Audios, and replacing them with a good set of studio monitors. The Jet City would be the more powerful large venue option, and the atomic would be for smaller venues and/or acoustic with the small Roland ac-33 for the smallest size venues.

Of course, we eventually want to build our permanent home in the next few years so I may find the JBLs will be needed if I'm going to ever host band practice or equivalent. Having a constantly shifting set of desires and needs is part of what keeps it interesting I suppose.

Gear update addendum

After running the Axe through the Mesa 4x12 for several days, I couldn't help but feel a bit constrained with the cab tone. I slid my seldom used Atomic powered wedge over alongside the Mesa and resumed running the full amp/cab emulation patches on the Axe. I don't know why, but I guess since I've been running the JBL EONs for so long, I had forgotten the relative loudness and amp/cab rigness of the Atomic. It holds its own alongside the Mesa, especially at bedroom volumes. I have only been turning the volume knob on the Atomic to about 25% and it's been plenty loud. I actually think it should be enough for most smaller gigs I'm likely to play. I have to put it up next to a regular drum kit to see if it will be enough. Now I'm rethinking the whole keep the Mesa decision. I think I'm going to try and sell it on Ebay and then look at some full cab size FRFR options coming out later this year, such as Jet City's 700DP.