master_control

Multnomah County Library takes me back to 10th grade

2008-04-12T16:20:03Z

Oh, hello, has it been more than a year?

2007-12-21T21:02:47Z

Why yes, yes it has been more than a year since I've posted anything...how selfish of me to frequently check in on friends near and far while maintaining complete silence from my end.

Attempting to sum up the past year would be ridiculous...let's focus on the now, plus a bit of the future. Right at this moment, I'm at my new job as a QA tech at a software company - been doing it since 4 days after I graduated from PCC at the end of June. So...yeah I work full-time, 9-5ish. My last full-time job was during the summer of 1995. I'm not doing the best job of making a new routine - I keep telling myself it'll happen naturally, but it's been about 6 months and I still live in the reality I was afraid of - go to work, come home, eat dinner, hang out in a leisurely manner, repeat M-F, and the weekend vanishes in a blur of being psyched that I don't have to go to work. Project ideas, to-do list items, and of course electronic-pieces-of-shit-to-be-fixed continue to pile up just like they did when I was in school, except now my excuse for not getting to them is just miserably mundane. Ummm...hey at least I've got plenty of fodder for New Year's Resolutions....?

I'm looking forward to going south for the holidays and having nothing to do except cook and eat. Tonight and all through the weekend I'll be mixing The All Girl Summer Fun Band, don't ask me why I decided to book a recording session right before leaving town for the holidays. I mean obviously I'm super psyched to do the project, it's going to be rad and I love the band. But why didn't I just say that the weekend before Xmas wasn't available!? (OK I'll tell you - I need money bad.)

I also need some more coffee.

Other news...Mer and I have new housemates who just moved in this month and so far it's working out really really well, they are both mellow dudes with sunny dispositions. The studio bought a new computer so I got to take my computer home, and it's pretty awesome to have a nice computer in my basement, I can work on groadies recordings (rough mixes of new songs here). I've been listening to a lot of Deep Purple, Uriah Heep, and Yes.

And finally - FUCKIN' ROCK BAND

sweet keyboard

2006-12-14T08:30:05Z

download this file here:

http://www.romagnatone.com/misc/LAB_6.EXE

and run it on your computer - if your computer is an IBM PC compatible, that is.

you'll see a blank dos emulator window. use the number keys 1-8 to play a note, and the letter keys asdfg to select the octave. The sound will not come out of your sound card, just the the PC's built-in speaker, unless you took yours out or something...so every computer sounds different!!!

When you're done hit the left shift key to exit.

yaaaaaaay!

THRONES + JX:ATG

2006-12-08T20:20:40Z

I'm 30.

2006-12-07T19:04:12Z

I really, really wanted to post a link so people could download a computer program I wrote, but when I ran it on my computer at home it crashed. It works just fine in the XP dos emulator and I doubt anyone but me is still running win98 but it would have been bad form to tell people to run my buggy-ass program. It makes your pc speaker (not the sound card, the little speaker inside the case) play notes in a major scale when you hit 1-8 on the keyboard, and ASDFG control the octave. The problem is when you exit the thing it makes something go crazy - at least that's what it does on my computer. It was my final lab for my assembly language class.

So yes, I'm 30 years and one day old. The best parts about my birthday were a) meredith made me cookies and invited people over to hang out with me because I was too scatterbrained to do it myself b) the groadies bought me a new keyboard. I need to post a picture of it, I'd find one online but I have to go to class like right now.

the way things are going for me

2006-08-30T13:18:37Z

It's 5:59AM. I'm sitting in front of the computer with no pants on because they're in the dryer. They've been in there since last night, but they're not dry because someone put the dryer on the "fluff" setting. Hopefully they'll be dry in 15 minutes so I can walk down the street to get a ride out to powermax from my coworker. I'll be there from approximately 7 until noonish, at which point I get a ride back to my house. Then I'll get on my bike and ride to Type Foundry and work on the studio, probably until at least 8 or 9. Tomorrow, repeat. Friday, repeat. Hopefully without the pants fiasco. What the fuck is up with the fluff setting??

Yesterday my day was even better - wake up at 6, bus to work, try to take the bus to type foundry around 12:15, stand in the rain waiting for 25 minutes, realize bus has been missed, eventually get a ride home with a friend, ride bike to TF around 5:45, ride really fast to meet nate to get a ride to groadies practice at 7:15, eat a sickening amount of chimichanga, somehow not finish practice until 11 fucking PM, ride home really really fast, inducing the worst cold-ears headache I've ever felt in my life, get in bed, fall asleep. (oh, I guess before I fell asleep, I got out of bed and went downstairs to put my clothes in the old fluff-dryer, just for kicks.) Ever since I was young, my ears have been super sensitive to the wind. Like, maybe if it's 95 and humid I can ride down a long hill with no ill consequences, but usually a bike ride of any length is accompanied by ear discomfort, if not pain, depending on the temperature. If I put my helmet on over a hood, then it's way better. I didn't have one last night and I didn't think it would be like 61 degrees at 11PM on august 29th. I seriously felt like my head was in a fucking vise. Plus I wanted to puke from exertion / chimi grease.

OK let's go get these pants out of the dryer...ahhhhhh. Dry and toasty warm.

this face recognition celebrity lookalike thing that's goin around

2006-08-19T03:17:06Z

What, no Macauley??

What, no Corey?? (meredith told me to "do Corey," and then coached me)

???

I think this is "the sultry one" ?? Or maybe I was supposed to look..."suave"

Obviously, poses are pretty much ignored, and, even more obviously, I don't look like any of those people.

"Why no shirt?," you ask? That's what I call COMEDY.

"Marketing" Advice

2006-08-17T14:59:24Z

Seriously - I want to fix people's amps and I need to come up with some sort of name. There is also the potential that I will design and build amps/pedals/hi-fi stuff as the same entity.

I have like 3 ideas:

romagnatone (encourages mispronunciation of my last name (plus magnatone is an old amp brand))

solstice repair (hippy?)

valence electronics (shit, there's a company called Valence Technology, I really liked that one)

???

portland, come downtown tonight

2006-08-03T15:45:01Z

Meredith made some paintings for you to look at!

TONIGHT, 8/3/06
6:oo pm - 9:oo pm

at:
Reading Frenzy
921 SW Oak Street

master_control @ 2006-07-20T15:45:00

2006-07-20T22:47:25Z

I'm still a newcomer to wikipedia and I find myself using it way too much when I don't know about something...

anyway, this is fucking insane.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_satellite

my mind is blown

2006-07-16T07:03:31Z

I just watched Trapped in the Closet.

Damn.

the best iPod personalization ever

2006-05-23T19:22:20Z

this is engraved on the back of an iPod I'm about to send back to apple for repair:

3.1459265358979323846264

I AM A HUGE NERD

2006-05-10T10:49:39Z

It's 3:50AM. I've been working on these since 9:45PM.

tax.exe multiply.exe

Written in C and compiled for your pleasure. License = Freeware. Use the MS-DOS emulator of your choice. Or use MS-DOS if you can.

(If you're expecting these to do something cool...don't.)

nobody likes me

2006-05-02T02:20:21Z

RISK

2006-04-10T06:13:03Z

I lost, pretty badly, but it was fun.

Early on in the game, I was worried...

Decisions were made, risks taken, dice rolled, and then I was dead.

excited about Type Foundry

2006-03-25T06:47:27Z

this shit should be on its way across the country pretty soon...it's supposed to arrive around april 4th. It's gonna be fun carrying it up the stairs...

good news...for a nerd

2006-03-14T20:22:40Z

03-14-06

JEREMY D ROMAGNA
3613 SE 10
PORTLAND, OR 97202

The items you requested are being held at the library
listed below. Please pick them up by the date shown.

AUTHOR: Prince.
TITLE: The Hits 1
CALL NO: CD Popular PRINCE
BARCODE: 31168081207332
LOCATION: Hillsdale Media
PICKUP AT: Central Lib BY: 03-20-06

AUTHOR: Petruzzellis, Thomas.
Build your own electronics workshop
CALL NO: 621.38154 P498b 2005
BARCODE: 31168078349022
LOCATION: Central
PICKUP AT: Central Lib BY: 03-20-06

term #2

2006-02-06T18:11:10Z

So school is still more or less kicking ass, but my second term is way different than the first. For one, I have a part-time job: about 20 hours a week, working at Powermax again (this time I'm taking iPods out of and putting them into different boxes - pretty easy, in fact that's where I am right now). My favorite teacher is no longer teaching me, because of a weird scheduling screw-up. I think I'd be doing better in that class if he were setting the pace. I don't like the replacement teacher's style at all and I've been skipping that class more often than not, which has caused me to fall way behind. The other reason I'm behind is that this term is just harder. Capacitors and inductors are more complicated than resistors and ideal DC sources. Also, sequential logic is just harder than combinational logic. But luckily, everything is way more interesting, more applicable to the real things I actually care about. I was reading about hysteresis curves and transformer core saturation and I realized that I'd read about these things before in books about tube amps but it totally went over my head - now I'm like "Oh, I get it." Also, this term's pre-calc class features lots of problems I used to LOVE doing in high school - figuring out all the sides and angles in a triangle when you only know 2 sides and one angle...seriously I could do that shit all day long.

Well, the DHL truck just showed up so I have to get to work...

this dude is funnier than me anyway

2006-01-24T02:52:39Z

so why don't you read what he has to say? A post from me would be a waste of time. (School, work. No recording. There, see, I only wasted about 3 of your seconds.)

why kiefer?

2005-12-23T21:08:13Z

Because I leave myself signed in to LJ on pablo's computer...and we're watching 24, season 4.

awesome dream

2005-11-29T18:59:56Z

First of all, before I went to sleep I got a long-awaited email saying that the 24-track had just been fixed. Later, I was remixing Metallica's "...And Justice For All", using the newly fixed 24-track, when I noticed that even though it was working fine it was sort of dirty. I tried to clean it with head-cleaner on some cotton swabs as per normal procedure, but that wasn't cutting it. The machine seemed to have some sticky, sort of oily red substance splattered all across the moving parts. I got out some paper towels and was looking for a heavy-duty cleanser, feeling really embarrassed for wasting Metallica's time (they were just talking amongst themselves), and then I saw that there was a big chunk of something on the wall right behind the machine, and that it was marinara sauce. "Who the fuck dropped a plate full of spaghetti in the control room??"

The rest of the dream involved a hydro-electric power station (specifically diving/swimming in its vicinity), among other things I'm sure, but I don't remember...

(just to be clear - the 24-track is actually fixed, in reality and everything.)

slipper guy

2005-11-06T17:48:18Z

On thursday morning it was raining hard and I had to walk to the bus to go to school to take a math test. I had walked to the bus in the rain on tuesday and my feet didn't get dry until 10 that night, so I knew something had to be done or else I was going to be uncomfortable and distracted all during my test. At first I was going to put plastic bags over my shoes but I couldn't find any rubber bands. So I grabbed an extra pair of socks, plus my slippers, and put them in my bag. When I got to the classroom five minutes early I took off my waterlogged shoes and socks and replaced them with my dry socks and slippers. My feet were the least of my worries for an hour and fifty minutes while I took (and hopefully aced) my test. I guess I felt a little weird when I had to go to the bathroom (all the classroom buildings have their bathrooms in separate little structures - basically, you have to go outside to go to the bathroom).

I am slipper guy.

OK, a real update, so there

2005-11-04T03:15:29Z

This is what I've been doing -

I. School

1. Got a 100% on my first Introduction to Circuit Analysis test. Forgot to write my name on same test.

2. Finally used the oscilloscope for a lab, but it was just to verify that a timer/counter/NAND-gate circuit worked at 200Hz as well as .5Hz. When do I get to build the amplifiers dammit.

II. Groadies

1. Haven't played a show in a while, next show booked is Jan 7th in Portland, winter "tour" is looking like a couple/few shows in the Pacific Northwest (this is my fault, mostly - because of school, and family holiday plans using up a significant chunk of what little time school gives me for winter break)

2. The garage still isn't done, but all the sheetrock is now at least inside the garage, not sitting in a sodden pile in the driveway with drastically ineffective tarps lumped on top. Pretty soon it'll all be dried out. The garage door presents a soundproofing challenge we still haven't fully come to terms with.

III. 3613 SE 10th

1. It's fucking cold. We need

a. Storm windows which are not 1) covered in digusting mold 2) barely attached to the house.
b. Clean furnace ducts so that it doesn't smell like generations of dust when you turn the heat on.
c. A cat door so we don't have to leave the bathroom window open or deal with the cats meowing at all hours.

2. We did manage to make a bunch of progress on another room (downstairs bathroom) but we still haven't reached the milestone of having one room completely finished. Now that it's cold I have way more incentive to turn on the heat gun...

IV. Type Foundry

1. The fucking tape machine is broken. I seriously don't even feel like saying any more about it.

V. ETC.

1. I'm going to be in a play called Vampire Problems. I've never been in a play before (well, in third grade I was Prince Not-So-Charming-Anymore and in 4th grade I was one of Thomas Edison's staff...I bet there's more but I don't remember)

2. I'm going Arizona for thanksgiving to see the Krutzsch-Butners in Tuscon and the Falasco-Romagnas in Phoenix.

3. Hopefully this winter I will eat out less often than I did this summer, and see more friends.

some songs for you to listen to if you want

2005-10-31T00:24:33Z

Silentist - "Vital Recital"

The Better To See You With - "Crib Death"

master_control @ 2005-10-27T23:38:00

2005-10-28T06:38:04Z

http://www.computertorture.com/noncompliant/parallel/index.html