Whats New In Barrett Land?

Actually it has been surprisingly quiet by my estimation, although I am sure that to regular folks what we class as normal would be classed as anything but by regular folks!

As I survey what most people were call their Living Room, you know TV, stereo, couches, etc, I see all of those, plus a large table that is covered on computers, two desktops and a laptop, two portable DVD players, and the worlds most expensive alarm clock! On the floor I see two more computers and monitors, and box after box of stuff in my to do pile.

When we left Canada, I also left hundreds of CD's and DVD's with my daughter, it appears that it is taking me no time at all to amass a new collection. The mail man doesn't even bother with the mail box most days, he just pulls up in front of the house and honks his horn, a sure sign that more stuff has arrived. UPS know me so well that a package was addressed incorrectly, the guy knocked on the door and said, "address is wrong" but I realized it was for you!"

None of this is new, you move 2000 miles and it is all shades of deja vu.

What is interesting though is I have connected with a PR guy who reps a lot of prog bands from the 70's. Prog rock is one of my favorite genres, and I have had some great access to some great bands. In fact in early 2009 I am hoping to get to talk to Ken Hensley (Uriah Heep).

If you want to check out some of the interviews take a look at my profile on BTR.

Got This In The Mail...

The email simply read 'Can You Spot The 44th President'?

Too Funny!

AT & Bloody T

Why can't life every be simple? I suppose it could be argued that that would take the fun out of the whole thing. My latest challenge is our great tecom provider AT&T. I used the phone yesterday morning and everything was fine. I had an interview arrainged with Christian Torres of Los Difuntos scheduled for 1 5pm live radio broadcast, so as usual 15 minutes before we go on the air I dial into New York to get the show staged up, with Christian dialing in 5 minutes later so we can go over the format of the show before we hit prime time.

To my absolute horror I discover a terrible buzzing sound on my damn phone line. In a race to fix the problem I change phone cords, hand sets, and DSL filters. No damn go! Maybe its the DSL modem? So I reboot my computers, the modem, and the router. Still no go. It is now two minutes to air time, poor Christian is sat listening to dead air! I dial back in, and with 90 seconds to spare get the show set up.

Damn humming persists throughout the entire broadcast but luckily it is fairly indistinct on the recorded version.

So I get on the phone with AT&T and after playing twenty questions with the voice activated annoyance system that AT&T employ to dissuade customers from being able to report problems, I finally get a human. This numskull asks the same twenty questions and finally asks me what the problem is. "Can't you hear the damn problem" I ask him. "Oh, all that noise on the line, yeah that would get old" is the helpful reply.

So the unhelpful tech writes up a trouble ticket and drops the bombshell that they likely won't get to it till Monday.

This is just great! We have a one hour talk show scheduled on Sunday!