Winters Back

Today started out with a surprise. Woke up, looked out back and realized that old man winter was not done with us yet as I had hoped he may be in a previous post due to all of the spring-like weather we were having. Overall there was about an inch of new snow covering the valley. I know, an inch of snow is hardly anything but the snow and ice we had from the other storms had literally just finished melting this past week.

New snow meant I had to chug some coffee to put a little fire under my butt and get my ass outside to shovel. I generally like to get the shoveling done as soon as I can. If I get it done while the sun is out the driveway and walkways clear up fast once the blanket of snow on top is scraped away. My original plan to sit on the couch and veg this morning was over-ruled, yea shxt happens. In all honestly its a good thing though, it helps get me going so I don't waste the day away.

Supercross - Round 4, Oakland

Once I finished shoveling the driveway, sidewalks and the back patio I decided it was time to do some cardio on the treadmill and watch Supercross on my iPad with my kick-ass new TiVo Stream. Dang that device works awesome compared to the Slingbox Solo that I had been using / trying to use for the past few years. Anyway, as mentioned, the boys were in Oakland today (actually it aired last night). The track looked pretty crazy and ended up being just as crazy as it looked.

The main rider that I follow, #7 James Stewart managed to have a great heat race and finish in second place which would give him the opportunity for a great gate pick in the main event. Something that he needed because of his injured knee, the faster he can get out front and away from everyone the better his day will be.

As luck would have it, the black cloud would continue to follow James Stewart and having a decent gate pick would not be enough. In the main event, going into the first turn #22 Chad Reed got out of control and turned left when he should have been turning right and t-boned Stewart and piled up a bunch of other riders. James looked hurt and sorta limped to his bike, managed to get the bike back up right and looked as though he was going to continue on and at least get some points for the day. Unfortunately his throttle was broke from the crash and sticking wide open so he had to pull off the track and sit out the main and take a second to last place finish for the day in 19th.

The 450 racing action was great otherwise with more elbows being thrown and bars banging together than I have seen in quite some time. Mostly a product of the technical, tight track in Oakland. In the end it was Ryan Villopoto (Kawasaki) on the top of the podium in first, Davi Millsaps (Suzuki) in second and Ryan Dungey (KTM) taking the final spot on in third. Next week they will be back in Anaheim, California once again for the 3rd and final time before the series heads east to end up in my hometown of Missouri for the first race of the eastern part of the series.

Low End

Was able to play my bass some more today, but NOT with that stupid-ass Rocksmith game that I bitched on-and-on about yesterday. I have always preferred to use tablature that I have on my iPad which in my opinion is a much better way to learn how to play familiar songs that appeal to you, 1000 times better even. Foolishly I let my guard down and gave Rocksmith a chance. Live and learn; lesson learned!

Since I brought it up, the application that I use on the iPad is called Songsterr. It's friggin' awesome how many songs it has in the database (80,000 the last time that I checked) and how accurate they are if you compare them to the actual musical notation. Most of the songs include music for guitar, bass, drums and vocals. This means all guitars when a song has multiple, as well as extra instruments the artist may be using like a cowbell for example.

So if you are in the market for a kick-ass tablature application for your iOS device I would check out Songsterr for sure. If available it would be a little small on the iPhone, maybe even on an iPad Mini but it's great on the normal size iPad. I actually just stream the applications output via airshare to my Apple TV so I can see the notation on my TV in a nice big format. I guess if someone did that then it would work just fine on a smaller iOS device.

The app is only $19.99, and that is all that you pay. All of the songs and all of the tablature for all instruments are included in that price. Most of the apps I have tried have a tendency to suck you in with a song or two at best, then make you pay for everything else you may want to learn. Doing it this way gets expensive fast and does not give you the freedom to try a lot of musical variations.

With Songsterr Online you can simply use your Mac or PC to view the tablature. It's a little more expensive and has a month-to-month fee if I remember correct. Even so, I still think that it is totally worth it as I have tried many of the sites and apps like this and few are even 1/16 as good.

Rest Of The Day

For the rest of the day I plan to do some stuff around the house that I have been putting off like painting the nicks and scratches that we have put into the walls while doing the entertainment center modifications the past month. I always cringe whenever painting anything that was last painted when we had the house built because the paint we have never quite matches and that is something that drives me nutty. But at this point it's better than black scratch marks.

In all honesty we need to buckle down and paint the entire living room and then give the kitchen a new coat of paint while we are at it. I think that project will have to wait until this summer, or spring. It's a much bigger task than meets the eye the more we start looking at what has to be moved, masked-off and so on so the last thing we want to do is rush into it. No matter it will be a fun project, Cicely and I always have a good time doing that kind of stuff.

Done

That is all for this entry I think. I still have some of my Sunday left and I want to use it to just sort of hang out. I have yet to setup my AR.Drone with the new traditional RC controller but I plan to do it this week or next weekend. Even though spring-like at times, overall the weather has been just shxtty enough to not be able to fly it. Yep that is the excuse I am going with as to why I have not been in a rush to get the modifications done. Why go through all of that work and then have to let it sit in the house until the weather turns? All right, enough outta me, have a great Sunday!

Photo: Oggy Taking Advantage Of A Sunday Nap