Sunday, October 31, 2004

Seoul

I'm off to Seoul today. I will never truly experience tomorrow, Monday. My flight leaves at 8:35pm tonight and after a quick connection in LAX, I will land in Seoul on Tuesday morning at 6:30am.

I expect the trip to be quite productive especially after being at CTIA all week. I have quite a few new product ideas and it will be great to see how much further ahead the South Korean's are with wireless technology.

With the short notice for the trip I realized I would not be here for the elections. Last Tuesday I faxed in an absentee ballot request form and received it on Thursday. As of Friday morning I had voted. Who do you ask, W. of course.

Ever since I've been voting there doesn't seem to be a clear cut winner. I try not to think of myself as republican or democrat, however I realize that the upper middle class seems to be a big fan of republicans. So I can't tell if this is a function of who I've become or if the candidates really do speak to my concerns. Regardless W. got the vote this time around, and I'll call it now, if Hilary runs in 2008, Cheney better look out.



Thursday, October 28, 2004

Duran Duran

For the week ending October 30, 2004 Duran Duran had the #1 album on the US Internet Sales charts. I guess this shows that housewives buy cds on the internet. Oh and did I mention that my wife bought hers on the internet as well!!!

Jacki just got her tickets to the Jingle Jam with Duran Duran here in December. Several of her friends, Janice, Jennifer and Owen are flying in for the show.

Tuesday, October 26, 2004

Hot Ringtones Chart

A flash from the conference I'm at today. Billboard, starting November 6, will publish the Hot Ringtones of the week. A few stats I heard this morning. The top ringtone is downloaded over 100K times a week and the Top 20 account for 500K a week. Expect to see explosive growth much like we saw with iTunes a year back. 1M downloads a week for the Top 20 by the end of the year won't be surprising.

http://www.billboard.com/bb/daily/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000684908

Sunday, October 24, 2004

Travel

I'm heading out for a couple of weeks. First to San Francisco for CTIA. I'll be there for the majority of this week. I'm also putting the Powerbook to the test. I've moved nearly all of my work files from the 1Ghz Dell laptop to the 15" 1.5Ghz Powerbook. I've decided to travel light and only carry the Mac. We'll see how it works out. Since I'm only out of the office for 4 days this week I know I can catch up on Friday if I end up needing the Dell for some reason. As far as I can tell the only program I really need is Visio. and I have not found an acceptable work around on the Apple yet.

The following week I'm making my trip to S. Korea. The travel visa has arrived and flight arrangements have been made.

Unfortunately all this travel delays the recording plans for the band as well as being away from the family for the better part of 2 weeks.


Saturday, October 16, 2004

The trip that wasn't meant to be...

As I type this I was supposed to be in South Korea on a business trip. After planning, visa applications, and changing previsou plans, the trip ended up not happening. I would like to blame it not happening on FedEx but after all that happened it became quite obvious I wasn't meant to go at this time.

It all started a week ago Wednesday. My manager at work informed me that he'd like for the make the trip so I'll need to bring my passport to apply for the work visa tomorrow. That Thursday I brought in everything I needed, obtained a passport photo for the visa application, and filled out all paper work and FedEx'd overnight to Arlington, Virginia for processing. The plan was to get the visa back on Saturday and after the Falcons game gig I'd leave.

Friday morning I call the visa processing company to inquire about timing and they inform me that they never receieved the application. I then spend the bulk of that Friday calling FedEx trying to find the overnighted package. They couldn't say why it wasn't delivered, just that it wasn't going to happen that day. So the original plans to leave on Sunday after the gig were changed.

Monday morning I receive a call from FedEx stating they delivered the package. This would have been great had it not been a government holiday. Tuesday morning I called the visa processing place and they had received and were pushing through the system. We had an overnight rush for processing but 24 hours to process and 24 hours to process and return mean two different things. So it was a wait and see. The next flight out to South Korea was Wednesday afternoon. If I didn't make that flight the next flight out would be Friday. Wednesday morinng came and no visa arrived. At this point I realized the trip wasn't meant to be. I informed my management and said we can try again in a few weeks.

Thursday morning arrives, in comes my visa and I'm still here in the states. Maybe in a few weeks I'll get to update the map of visited places with South Korea.

Sunday, October 10, 2004

Falcons Game

We played the Atlanta Falcons pre-game today. By far our largest crowd, although not a crowd necessarily there to hear live music. The day started bright and early, actually it was still dark when I left the house.

We played two sets. The first set was pretty rough. Or at least it felt that way. We took the tunes a little fast. I must say having a cool wind blowing with the sun in your eyes isn't anywhere close to rehearsing or playing in a dark smoky club. Not to mention this show took place 12 hours before our usual sets.

Highlights of the set include a crowd pleasing When The Levee Breaks by Led Zeppelin. The only cover we played, but big outdoor shows like this the crowd seems to appreciate hearing music that is familiar. My guess is we played to 100-125 people that were near the stage and in the general vicinity there were probably 300-400 people walking around, tailgating and just having a good time.

Here was today's itinerary.

6:45am - wake up
7:25 - leave the house
7:50 - arrive at the gulch
8:00 - set up
9:00 - sound check
9:45 - first set
10:20 - break
11:00 - second set
11:45 - end set
12:15 - break down gear
1:00pm - return home

Here is a picture taken from behind the stage of my drums. Why, because I like it.


Monday, October 04, 2004

Atlanta Falcons Pre-Game

We just found out The Superlatives will be playing the Atlanta Falcons Pre-Game at The Gulch. This should expose us to quite a few people and we may even get to take in a little of the game.

The Gulch - Lot A down at the Georgia Dome.

We will be playing 2 sets
9:45am - 10:30am
11:00am - 11:45am

Hope to see you at the game.

The Official Web Site of the Atlanta Falcons

Saturday, October 02, 2004

Battle at Andrews

We played Thursday night at Andrews Upstairs for the final battle in the battle of the bands. We didn't win but we had a great time.

One thing that caught us by surprise included the fact that we had the second most votes from the audience, but only a single vote out of the four judges. We had made the final round because of the judges the Thursday before but it was great to hear that people liked our music.

Out of 15 bands we came in 3rd place which I think is respectable. Andrews did a great job of packing the venue. We played to 100-150 people in the venue which was by far our largest crowd yet. We typically play to 30-40 our in the case of Smiths on Monday to 10.

The high profile gigs have gotten us a few calls this past week and we have lined up a show at the Brandyhouse in October and will probably play at the Masquerade again in the next month. In the meantime we will get back to recording and continue to keep up our profile around town.

Thursday also marked our 20th public performance.

The Superlatives

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