Wotta Weekend, with Video!

Wow, this was a really fun, full weekend. I'll be concise here and get the videos into this post; I'm sure Doni will tell a fuller story. Dean came for a visit on Friday. On Saturday, we drove to Valencia and watched Paige perform with the Ramona Percussion Ensemble in a high school competition. Dean used her digital camera to make a video of it, which really turned out well.


Here's a video of Paige's Drumline in Valencia.

When we got home Saturday night, Kyle and Lindsay were here, so we practiced "Why Not?", a song by Kyle that we were performing at the Claremont Folk Center Open Mike Night on Sunday.

Here's a cute (thanks, Dean!) video of one take of the song during rehearsal.

Sunday morning, I helped Doni fabricate some new straps for my accordion (thanks, Doni!).

Sunday afternoon, Dean, Kyle, Lindsay, Doni and I went to Claremont, had a nice lunch, and watched the show.
It was the best open mike night I've seen there so far!

Dean took some more great videos:


Brother Atom Bomb Of Reflection did a powerful version of "Little Red Riding Hood"


We had a great time playing "Why Not",
man that was a real gas!


And then after we got home, Kyle pitched "Weird Eddie" for Dean and us (thanks, Kyle!)

Enjoy the videos if you have the bandwidth!

etsy

Etsy is a site for selling your handmade arts and crafts. You can sell anything that has had some personal attention. Signing up to sell is free, and they charge a dime per item, plus 3.5% of the sales price. They have some pretty nice flash interface sections (you can pick items by their color, the seller's location, or through a "sampler" gallery for example), and there are certainly some interesting items for sale there. Another cool feature is called "Alchemy", which is like an "Items wanted" classified section, where you can find people who want you to make the kind of stuff you make, or list thinkgs you'd like someone to make, and what you think a "good" price would be.

The site says it's in "beta" (test), so there are still some clunky spots, but I think that it's pretty cool overall.
Artists, check it out! http://www.etsy.com

Savart's Wheel

Musician Bart Hopkin of Point Reyes has been the director of Experimental Musical Instruments for 18 years. He has made many different instruments, and his new CD Instrumentarium Hopkinis spolights many of them, such as "The Open Siren", a siren capable of playing musical scales, and "Disorderly Tumbling Forth", an instrument loosely based on the toy piano.

But one instrument stands alone: Savart's Wheel. Hopkin describes it as making "the most obtrusive, obnoxious and irritating sound imaginable."
Having seen many claims for instruments over the years such as the ability to create "any sound imaginable" etc, I had my doubts, but this instrument really delivers! The sound sample of the wheel playing the melody for "Baby Please Don't Go" reminds me more than anything else of a chicken in distress yet singing. Or maybe musical screeching brakes. Totally appropriate for the mood of that song, it had me in tears of laughter by the end of the sample. Deliciously obnoxious!

Don't be scared, just click here to hear what I'm talking about. If it scares you, just hang in there, the whole thing is only about 20 seconds long.

Windshields To Go: The amazon.com of windshields

As many of you probably already know, Lindsay was involved in a collision in January which totalled her car.
Last weekend, we bought a Ford Taurus at the Orange County Auto Auction, and, in the process, won a Pontiac Grand Am in the auction's raffle. As I've come to expect from auction cars, both cars need some work. In particular, the Taurus has a lens-like bubble in its windshield in the middle of the driver's view, so that things are kind of distorted. The day before yesterday, I wondered if I could find out the replacement cost for a Taurus winshield. After a bit of web searching, I found Windshields To Go, a web-based windshield replacement service. Their website has a pretty good interface where you choose the year, make, and model of your car, and it gives you instant quotes for an installed replacement or for just the windshield (but I'd never replace a windshield on my own). The Taurus full-replacement quote was $220, which seems quite reasonable. This got me thinking about my other car with a windshield problem, the Chevy Venture van.

We bought our 2000 Chevy Venture at the Riverside Auction in 2003, back when they still were doing government-owned vehicle auctions open to the general public. I didn't notice the little rock ding in the upper-right corner of the windshield until we got it home. The next week I was in Santa Rosa, and phoned a local windshield repair place for an estimate. I was pretty shocked when they told me they'd replace it for $1750! The windshield guy said that it was the second-most-expensive windshield he knew of, after the Hummer. So... I thought I'd just live with it. Later that year, I discovered a very nice windshield shop in San Bernardino, and took it in to have the ding vacuumed and epoxied to keep it from spreading. They did that for $48, and said that they'd do the replacement for $750. While that was a big improvement, it still seemed like a whole lot to spend on a windshield. So I didn't replace it. Well, as the years went by, that little ding grew into a crack that went halfway down the passenger's side of the windshield. I'd been putting off getting the windshield replaced, but it looked like replacement would be necessary.

So I decided to go ahead and check Windshields To Go for the Venture, and I was just amazed to get a quote for $368. After discussing it with Doni, we decided to go ahead and order it. When you buy a windshield from them, you tell them where you live and they give you options for an appointment window (yeah, four hour windows, just like cable guys). So I set it up for yesterday AM, and around 11 AM a guy with a Venture windshield in the back of his little pickup truck showed up. I've long been curious about how windshields are replaced, so I watched him replace the windshield. He did a meticulous and complete job which took about an hour, and it looks great. The windshield was manufactured by a third-party Japanese vendor, which might explain the lower price, but it looked and fit just like the original to me.

I think this is a really good business for several reasons. They have a pretty good web interface, did what they said they'd do with no additional hassles, and, since they are national and web-based, should have lower business overhead costs. And I like the idea that people like this windshield tech, a competent Mexican-American with not-really-good English skills, can work through them and still present an effective communication path with customers. After he arrived, he asked me if my insurance was paying for it, and I said no, I paid with a credit card on the web. He seemed surprised and he used his cellphone to call the company's office, which then phoned me and assured me that it was all set and paid for. Not necessary, but a nice touch.

So... if you find yourself in need for buying a replacement windshield not covered by warranty (ie, a "pre-existing condition"), I highly recommend Windshields To Go.

By the way, my suspicion that windshield replacement is a specialized skill requiring specialized tools that probably shouldn't be attempted by shade-tree mechanics was confirmed by watching this fellow. He used at least 5 specialized tools to loosen the windshield from its caulked-in mounting and planed the remaining original caulking down before adding new (specialized) caulking material and placing the windshield. The $80 installation fee looked like a very reasonable price to me. I noticed that the same company sells specialized tools and adhesives, but this one I think I'll leave to the pros.