What's been going on...

First things first, I met a girl named Courey...you can ask how we met, and we'll come up with a different story each time if you like. She is great and within two months of knowing her, we've been all over the place. We spent a weekend in Detroit at the Detroit Maker Faire, we spent a weekend in Central PA visiting my parents and grandparents, and finally we spent a weekend in WV at the State fair and having dinner with her parents. It's been a busy few weekends.

As far as work goes, I am about all travelled out, but when there is work to be done, ship me off! I have not been home for more than a few days straight in the past month. I've been on the road a lot for work, and I'm getting to see a lot of amazing places and meet interesting people. More so I'm getting to eat amazing food that I normally would not get to eat. Tonight was a lobster roll and fresh calamari with a view of the ocean at Jimmies of Savin Rock. Last night was the most amazing Chicken and Dumplings at the Southport Brewing Company, I will be going back for more chicken and dumplings.

Music unfortunately has taken a bit of a back seat, and I have not had time of recent to do anything crazy. I'm still playing with the the Neon Swing X-Perience and having a great time! Our summer tour had many memories that will not soon be forgotten. I currently have aspirations to start a bluegrass Jam session once a month in Pittsburgh. I have a location scoped out in Mt. Lebanon, I just need to start talking to people and see if there is enough of an interest.

The house is coming along great, as with any house, there are bunch of things that always need worked on. Being away from the house doesn't help with that, but I'm slowly chewing away at my self induced honey-do list. Once the weather cools down a little, I firmly intend to get a bunch of yard work done!

My New Job....

My new job is pretty cool. I'm writing this post to test something out...One big thing I'm looking into currently is Search Engine Optimization. So in order to get higher ratings supposedly you need have links from other sites to get to the site. I'm going to try putting some links on my blog to see if that improves the other sites search-ability.
The site that I created is Facilities Survey Inc.'s website. The company is a Facilities Management company that focuses on solutions such as...Software, Asset Inventory, Building Documentation among other services. Please feel free to browse the site.

The software portion of the site is designed to explain CMMS, or in our case our Custom Maintenance Software. This system allows facilities managers to keep track of assets and work orders and generate useful data.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changessss.....

A lot has happened in the past 4 weeks for me. I thought rather than have to explain it to a large number of people over and over again, I could alleviate some of that with this blog post, some of you might be getting here from the land of twitter, other from the town that is facebook, and others yet from google BUZZZZZ. Regardless, here are the updates.....

1) New computer - I have gone to the dark side and now have a MacBook Pro. I have to say, I'm still getting used to it but I love the adventure. I have a trusty copy of Windows 7 virtualized on it so I'm safe if I run into any WINDOWS ONLY! applications. I also got the Magic Mouse, and must say, it's pretty nice!

2) NEW JOB!!! Although I will be sad to finally leave Duquesne behind, I am happy to start a new adventure with Facilities Survey Inc. out here in Pittsburgh. I will be a "Field Engineer I". I will split my time between traveling and working at home. It will allow me to use some of the knowledge I gained here at Duquesne as a technician, and allow me to keep furthering my skills with multimedia and over all tech support. Facilities Survey Inc. is a company run by Mr. Serwinski.

3)HOUSE!?!?!?! Yup you read it right, I'm settling down for the time being and have put in an offer and had the offer accepted on a house in Churchill, Pittsburgh (more specifically Turtle Creek). It is the house pictured above. Thanks to my great realtor Kaedi Manly, I should be closing on April 30th, 2010. The house is a great little house and the people that live in it now have it done up real nice. Needless to say I am excited. I can turn my amps up to 11 now and now worry about bothering the neighbors.

snOMG!!!! 2010

Just wanted to say a few things about this whole SNOW STORM! First off, WOW, it was great to see people pulling together to help others out. While stuck inside, I had a chance to look out my window a lot and I saw so many people helping other people dig out and push cars among other things. Pittsburgh as a whole has greatly impressed me, and the amicable neighborliness has never shown brighter than these past few days here in the burgh. Secondly, the city has done a great job, despite taking what seemed a day or two to get to it, they really did a great job, they had a HUGE task in front of them and they handled it like none other. With the help of outside contractors and the help of the National Guard, Pittsburgh will easily recover and dig out of this mess!
All in all, what a great experience despite the hardships!

My New Hammond organ and Leslie Speaker!!!!

Here is my "new to me" Hammond C2 and Leslie Speaker. The hammond was so graciously donated by Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, PA and I just picked up the Leslie from the organ Legend, Gene Ludwig. It is currently being housed at Red Caiman Media in downtown Pittsburgh. Thanks to Red Caiman, I can crank the Leslie 122 as loud as I like! I am aspiring to become a great player and I'm just starting to get the hang of the feel of the keys and the foot pedals. It's been a dream of mine to own a set up like this and now that I do, I am excited to play!

Proof of Concept - Midi Organ Bass Pedals

Here is a proof of concept of a project I've been wanting to do for a little now. I took a set of pedals from an old Hammond M2 organ and have wired them into an Arduino programmable micro controller. A friend helped me do the coding for the Arduino and it now sends Midi out. In the video I am using a free VST. The pedals will eventually be finished and used with a Roland VK-8 Clonewheel organ. You can see videos of the organ on my youtube site. Also, eventually I will have a second manual that will be able to have the original keyboard mounted on it.

When I am done with the project I will post a link to either an instructable or a further post with more details and the sketch (arduino code).