DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

Let me just say for the record that A Decade of Rock and Roll is a great classic rock album. I’m not ashamed to admit that I used to be a big fan of REO Speedwagon. On the other hand, I own two CDs from Marillion, which maybe ought to tell me something.

The Decade album, as we call it, contains a live version of the arena-rock classic, Ridin’ the Storm Out. Kevin Cronin’s introduction belongs in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, or maybe the Camp Hall of Fame (right next to his Gloria Vanderbilt jeans):

My friends, I’ve got time for one last story for you before we have to leave tonight. You see, if you’ve ever been in the Rocky Mountains after the wind comes up and the sun goes down, you can find yourselves in a whole lot of trouble, people. But what you’ve got to do is keep yourselves together, keep everybody warm, and always remember… to keep riding the storm out people! Come on with us one more time!

OK, you can put your Bics down now. Believe me, I understand.

Anyway, I was hiking in the Rockies a couple months ago when the sky went from gorgeous to ominous to dangerous in the space of 10 minutes. When the rain started to fall (sideways), everyone in my group was fumbling for emergency ponchos — those collapsible Hefty trashbag things that fit in a pocket. They’re hard to manage when the wind is tearing them from your hands. We were an hour’s hike from cover (trees don’t count) and had no alternative.

I was wearing a waterproof jacket already, so I had time to shoot a few pictures of my unfortunate hiking companions. The images don’t capture the stress of the moment. I mean, nobody really thought we were about to die, but lightning likes hikers. Especially wet ones. I thought my pictures might help the rescue team identify our smoking remains.

We zipped up and marched through the rain, promptly got separated, missed a turn, backtracked, sent out scouts, waited, courted death, and finally, once regrouped, started busting ass down the mountain. Which is a pity, because this hike — part of the Bierstadt Lake trail — comes down into a valley through a series of switchbacks. The views would be incredible, assuming the sky isn’t dark gray and you’re not running for your life.

Raphael thought this was a gas. Running is fun. Actually, to an 8-month old, just about everything is fun. Apparently being rained on is fun, because he kept poking his face out of my jacket, blinking away the raindrops and grinning up at the sky as if to say, “bring it on!” I guess that’s as good a reaction as any — certainly better than mine, which could be summed up as “please, not today!”

I guess that’s part of fatherhood. I thought I was pretty used to the idea of my own mortality after having ridden a motorcycle for 10 years. My 40-mile commute was an hourlong meditation on death, interspersed with cursing.

Needless to say, we survived the weather and lived to tell the tale, even dress it up a bit for dramatic effect. (You didn’t think I was really afraid of a little rain, did you? Wait, don’t answer that.)

And now for a moment of total nostalgia overload: apparently REO is co-headlining a show with Styx tomorrow night. Tomorrow night! Anybody want to fly me to Clearwater for the evening? Or at least, send me a concert baseball T with the 3/4 length sleeves and the vinyl band logo on the front. I can get my hair feathered in no time.

As seen from the deck.

In late August, my bassist friend Andrew (of Groove95 fame) went into the studio to mix down the first six songs for his upcoming solo CD. I was astounded when I heard the results — having heard most of these songs in every conceivable incarnation, from scratchy cassette demos to low-fi solo bass+click MP3s to my own questionable rough mixes, I never imagined they could shine. But, wow.

I’d played drum tracks for three of these songs in 2000. Drew and I actually rehearsed them in person once, but of course this was back before the internets. And we got together to track the drums, which were engineered by a mutual friend, now the proprietor of Creamy Sonic Studios in Dublin, who came to my old rehearsal studio to record me. We tracked six songs that day — a feat that blows my mind now, i.e. lately it takes me two months to record six songs.

So anyway, three of those tunes from 2000, plus Groove95, the drums for which I tracked here last Fall, were among the six tunes that have just been mixed down. Listening to them is the aural equivalent of picking up a dusty stone and rubbing it a few times to reveal a thousand-dollar hunk of opal. The production is first-rate — the mix engineer, Evan Rodaniche of Cage9, worked some kind of magic I don’t understand. The contributions of the other players are all extremely happening. These songs, especially the one-off pop/punk tune that still makes me laugh every time I hear it, belong on the radio. But I have to admit to a small amount of bias.

Needless to say, I will be shipping Evan my stillborn mixes from last Fall very soon. One song is ready to go, and the other will be in about 48 hours. I’ll post the final mixes here.

By the way, Andrew’s pending CD release also means I’m about to get my first engineering credit. Excuse me, I think that’s Bob Ludwig calling!

Jonathan Miller, head of the Time Warner’s Internet division, was at Web 2.0 last week. I was not paying close attention because I was busy surfing the web (a little conference humor there).

I heard him and John Battelle, the conference host, discuss a number. I missed whatever it was the number meant.

“25 million?” said Battelle.

Miller motioned “up” with his hand.

“50 million?”

Miller motioned “up” again.

And so on. Battelle stopped guessing around 100 million. Miller shook his head and said “660 million.” And all the while I was thinking, what the hell are they talking about? My notes actually read: “aol - 660 million what??”

I had a sense of what the number might be, what it could only be. It couldn’t be anything good or the number wouldn’t have been a surprise — AOL would have published it long before.

My suspicion turned out to be correct, as unbelievable as it was. 660 million is the number of AOL CDs the company produced.

The good news is that AOL doesn’t make these CDs any more. I thought Miller stated that they’d stopped sending CDs, but readers immediately reported having received them within the past week. So, I’m not sure whether AOL is still sending them or not.

A stack of 21 bare CDs weigh 335 grams and stands 3cm tall. So, 660 million bare CDs would weigh 10,528,571,428.571 grams (or 23,211,526.7 pounds), and stand 94,285,714.286 cm (or 585.86 miles) tall. This doesn’t include the packaging.

I used to see the AOL CD displays at the post office and wonder if anyone ever takes them. Hasn’t everybody already had one at some point? AOL sent me a half-dozen personally, and two more showed up attached to the newspaper. I believe I may have also seen them inside the 4-pack of toilet cleaner at Costco.

I found a study indicating that as of late 2004 there were 185M Internet users in the US. AOL printed 3.5 CDs for each of them.

Web 2.0 was a schwagfest. Welcome back to the bubble! Please put the foosball table into the break room.

In order of appearance:

• Conference Sachel
• Yahoo wifi-finder
• AT&T Zigaboo.com CD
• Outcast PR Mints
• Akamai Binder Clip
• Microsoft Music Coupon
• Google Ice
• Google LED Fan

The sachel is not what I was expecting, but more useful, as it turns out, because the shoulder strap on my beloved and near-antique Adobe bag, which I’ve been carrying around since Adobe bought Aldus in 1994, broke on the second day of the conference. And it’s a whole lot flashier than the cotton sacks they used for Etech and the MySQL conference.

The wifi-finder would appear to be a smart choice for the Web 2.0 crowd, but I haven’t actually taken it out of its package yet. It’s useful, but not immediately so. I already know there’s a wifi network in my house.

Akamai’s binder clip, if that is in fact what this thing is, is a hilarious choice. Because, you know, nothing screams “high-speed, high-availability, globally distributed content delivery network” like a binder clip.

The tin of mints from Outcast PR was purely a selfish choice, I think. The Outcast reps were on a mission to sign up as many clients as possible. This meant talking to as many attendees as possible, at length, and shaking hundreds of hands. They probably considered issuing commemorative Web 2.0 Alcohol Swabs too.

Microsoft bought everyone dinner, and put a card worth $20 in free music downloads at every place. I left mine behind. I couldn’t think of $20 worth of music I was eager to get, especially not when I’d have to sell my soul to get it.

Google’s two contributions are utterly useless, but were the most talked-about items of the conference. Who ever heard of faux ice cubes? They’re not cold, but they light up. They represent an unequivocal victory of form over function, yet conference attendees left with pockets bulging (and glowing). OK, maybe that was just me.

The handheld fan is the least-effective fan I’ve ever seen. But! The blade lights up and makes cool geometric patterns as it spins. Who doesn’t need one of these? I ask you.

Read more on conference schwag from Robert Kaye.