Image from here

The stupid mile long pier.    It’s located in Huron, Ohio and at the end of the pier is the Huron Lighthouse.   Growing up in Vermilion, Ohio there wasn’t much to do that we didn’t do on a regular basis.  One of the odd-ball things we did was go out to the mile long pier.   The official name wasn’t the mile long pier, but it is supposedly a mile long – so the local nickname stuck.  For some reason the trips were a bit more frequent once I managed to get the woman who would one day be my wife.

My wife always enjoyed the mile long pier, except when she managed to get to the end of it she had to use the restroom.  This almost always made it a pain since as soon as we made to the end of the end of the pier we immediately had to turn around and head back in most occasions.   When a group of us wanted to head out there we started making her use the restroom at the Riverview Bowling alley just up the street from the pier.

It was one of those places that youth go and hang out in groups.   Usually the minimum number of people we took was three, but I can think of a couple times it was almost a dozen of us.   Climbing from rock to rock to make it to the end of the pier.  Since most the time it was in the evening or close to it, we watched the sunset down.   Otherwise we just headed out and stared into the darkness that was the water of Lake Erie at night time.

Was it a fantastic experience, not in anything that I say that you must do.  It was a time period where the friends and the memories make it important.   Too many times the pier started off as a springboard for other activities.   Whether it was friends in high school or friends from my early twenties.   It was a gathering spot of sorts.  Eventually I’ll get around to heading back and taking some pictures – for now it has to exist solely in memories.

The above picture was from the VCMA’s performance of the Christmas tree arrival.  I don’t have a video of that performance, what I do have is a video of the VCMA Concert Band’s performance at Kingston of Vermilion which took place on Dec. 11. 2008.   Enjoy!

The VCMA Community Concert Band is currently looking for a director.   If you know someone in the area of Vermilion, Ohio – or they are willing to drive to Vermilion, Ohio – please have them contact me.  Yes it is a paying position, but it’s only enough to be a supplmental income source.   If you know someone that is interested have them email me at creeva (at) gmail.com.

You would think from the image I chose for the header that I was doing something cool with the Nintendo Entertainment System.   This unfortunately is not the case.  Where the Nintendo came into play was that it was the object of my desire.   I desperately wanted an NES.  This was sometime around seventh or eighth grade so the years would have 1988 -1989 and the Nintendo was in full swing, you can see one of the commercials below.

Now my father didn’t believe in video games.   About five years earlier he got us a Commodore Vic-20, this is all fine and dandy – my parents fell for the whole “give you kid a computer and he’ll be computer literate for life” crap that they were handing out in the eighties.  A computer was meant for learning and yes there were a few games we had for it, but it was meant to learn something on.   I learned I never wanted to be a programmer, that’s what I learned.  I could go to my neighbors and play the Atari 2600 or play Ultima on his Mac Classic – but me – I was going to have the Vic-20 and like it because I wasn’t getting anything else.

Picture from here

We moved to Vermilion the summer before my seventh grade year.   I’m sure I started begging for a NES around that time if not earlier.   I’m sure the logic explained to me was that if I wanted a Nintendo I was going to have to earn it.    This meant getting a job.   I don’t know about your area but for Vermilion, OH there wasn’t much call in the work force for 12-13 year old kids.   The one thing that did open up was the ability to get a paper route.  The area where we lived in Elyria was a bit too rough for a 11-12 year old to deliver papers, but Vermilion was a quiet small town where such things almost seem nostalgic.

Picture from here (not me)

Another boy was giving up his paper route that was a year younger then me (should have been a sign) and did a week long transition with me so that I could learn the route.   By the end of the week I learned the route, I had my little punch card slip ring for billing, I had a carrier bag, and I also had baskets on the back of my bicycle to carry newspapers in.   I would try to say it was pimp, but I can’t even type that with a straight face.   I rode my bike to school and I got mocked by how stupid it looked.  Of course being a geek on the nth degree anyways there is always other things to get picked on then a bike, so I struggled through it.  I was a newspaper boy for the Lorain Morning Journal.

You may say that I learned character and fiscal responsibility because of that job.   You would also be wrong.  I hated that job with a passion.   I struggled for the first couple months to get through it.  The NES was the apple of my eye and I was going to save the 99.99 (plus tax) for the Action System which included Super Mario Bros. and Duck Hunt (and the pimp NES Zapper).   I was impatient to get it, so impatient that I gave my mother the money to get it while I was at school.   You would think this being the first large purchase of my life I would have wanted to go and hand over the money and buy the system myself, nope I just wanted the damn thing home.

I get home, my mother isn’t there.   I go do my paper route and get back home, my mother isn’t there.   I sit in the grass on the front yard and wait.   Eventually my mother pulls up in that blue dodge caravan (minivan) we had.  She had done other shopping and had a ton of bags.  Which one was my Nintendo?????

My mother stopped me and said she talked to the sales person who told her the Sega Master System was the better system to buy since it was faster and supported more colors.  WTF?  I had worked my butt off in a job hated to have my mother go out and buy me a Sega Master Sytem.  No one owned a Sega Master System, only people with no friends owned a Sega Master System.   I was not going to own a Sega Master System.    I told her with certainty that she had no right to spend the money I earned to buy a Sega Master System.  We were going to get back in the car right then, go to the store and exchange it for a Nintendo Entertainment System.

My mother then started laughing.  Out of the back of the van she pulled out a Nintendo Action Set.   You do not mess with a pre-teen in that way – ever.   She said she was going to go upstairs and use the restroom, after which she would come down and help me hook it up to the TV.  I think by the time she flushed the toilet I was already on World 1-2 of Super Mario Bros.  I had hooked up the Vic-20 so many times that I knew how to do it in my sleep.   The NES was more of the same.

At this point I did not want to do the paper route any more, but my grandfather thought it was good for me so I kept plodding along.    I delivered papers a 3 AM Christmas morning wasn’t that quite the thrill, not.   I would definitely preferred to have been sleeping.    More and more of my customers were moving to prepaid accounts, which cut into my money.   You would think it wouldn’t have effected  my bottom line, but I lost out on tip money from these customers – and to this day I believe the Journal used some creative account billing to the paper boys.    My grandfather thought I was just doing it wrong, but I was let off the hook after about a year.

Me and my grandparents a year or so after the paper route.

My brother took over the paper route with the help of my grandfather and my mother in delivering the newspapers.   Now I don’t know about you but if someone would have driven me on the route every day, I may have been more likely to actually like the job.   He is five and half years younger then me, so they were not going to let him go off alone to do it.  The funniest thing was after about a year they started loosing money also and it became not financially viable for them either.    I guess it wasn’t just me.

You would think that this would end my families relationship with the Journal after so many bad experiences, it didn’t.  For the last few years my sister (now 22) has a motor route in Vermilion delivering papers.   I guess she makes really good money at it.   It would seem the third time is a charm.   I don’t think my brother or my sister ever hated it as much as I did.   I did get my NES though.

Below is a link to Google Maps that shows the actual route location of my paper route.

Picture From Vermilion Ohio News

I originally wrote this for the VCMA website – original story is here.

On December 6th, 2008 the hardiest of the VCMA members were down at Red Clay for the arrival of the Chrismas Tree ship. Temperatures were below freezing, but the band played on. It wasn’t in the vein of the Titanic’s band since luckily the members that showed up did not go down with the ship. The ship made it through the ice and arrived safely to deliver trees to the wonderful citizens of Vermilion.

From this performance the band was featured on the Vermilion Photojournal’s front page and a video on the Sandusky Register’s website.

A friend of Ruth Tanner’s took these following pictures of the band (click through to see larger versions):

Tonight the VCMA is playing at Kingston of Vermilion Nursing & Rehabilitation Services for our final christmas concert.  I’ve charged the camcorder and packed up up the tripod, so I should be able to get some video of the concert.   The last concert footage I’ve posted online was the Alumni Band Festival,  I’m next to positive I still have a VCMA summer concert that I haven’t posted yet, so that may be coming also.

The real reason this is interesting is after this concert I’m taking a break from both community bands I play in.  Because the babies birth should occur around the same time that both bands start up again for the spring season, my priorities for the spring have changed.   I should be back for the summer season of the VCMA, but the Ashland Community Band doesn’t have one, so I won’t be back with them until next fall.

It took alot for me to get back into music and playing with bands.  I’m really hoping that a vacation doesn’t put a lull over me that causes me not to return.  I guess I better return to the VCMA since I am vice president of the organization now.

Now as soon as my kid can hold a cornet, he’ll be learning how to play it.   That’s the plan anyways.  My luck he’ll be a woodwind player.

If you don’t know I’m the one on the left.  Saturday it was in the teens temperature wise, but the VCMA played (sight read) christmas music for the arrival of the Vermilion, OH Christmas Tree Ship.  I’m very glad that I was not clean shaven and have grown out a beard for the winter.   Some more pictures of me to ogle at.

I didn’t get video for everyone (I’m afraid my camera would have broke from the cold) – Here is a link to last year’s event that I did and shot video at though.

Yesterday VCMA was featured in The Lorain Morning Journal in their living section.  The article highlights the diversity in the groups membership and musical selctions.   Here are a couple excerpts from the article:

The Vermilion Community Music Association grew from its initial focus on the concert band to include two other performing groups, a mixed chorus and the WindJammer Big Band, which specializes in the swinging dance music, popular songs and jazz of the 1930s and later. No dues are paid, but musicians are asked to bring their own music stands and a sense of humor.

Musicians hail from areas around Vermilion including Sandusky, Elyria, Ashland and Lorain. The earnest Christmas music, with all its promise of peace and redemption, offers a welcome reprieve from the argumentative ad campaigns of another political season and the relentless drumbeat of a plunging stock market.

I missed being quoted in the article since I took an extra day to get back to him.   My 13 year old sister was also going to be interview, but there seem to be a problem with her phone.   Regardless this is a boon for the VCMA and it’s great that we have been noticed.

To read the full article please go here, if you would like to watch the accompanying video it is located here.

I also did a similar write-up for the VCMA’s new blog.

Saturday was the VHS Alumni Bands 22nd performance at the Vermilion High School Band Festival.   I originally marched for the Vermilion High School Sailor Marching Band from my Sophomore to Senior years (Senior Year Video) which encompass the fall of 1991 through the summer of 1994.   I had the option to put on the band uniform one last time for the Vermilion Fish Festival in 1994, but I declined that was the first time I performed with the VHS Alumni Band.

My first band festival (Fall 1994) outside of high school I didn’t get a chance to perform, I was marching with earlier that day for a home game with the Ashland University Marching Band.   I did show up that evening to watch the performance and hang out with friends.  I heard a lot of people say that this was their best year in Alumni Band, no disrespect to Joe, but I have to disagree, at least for myself.   The best year for me was my first festival back with the group at the Band Festival of 1995(?) which was Willy B’s (William Burt’s) last year as the Band Director for Alumni.   If it hadn’t been for Mr. Burt and his loyal students there wouldn’t have been an Alumni band today, so all of us can look back and thank them for making this possible.

I’ve marched many years with Alumni at the festival (1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2006, 2007, and 2008) and I only missed it five times because I was living in Oregon.  I can say I was extremely tempted to spend the money for a plane ticket and fly back for it during those missing years.  I’m extremely happy that I was there for Mr. Henry’s final year as both a high school director (my senior year) and his last year as an Alumni Band director.  Last year when he announced he was retiring as the Alumni director I had tears in my eyes (HEY I’M A SENSITIVE GUY!!).   David Henry is probably one of the greatest influences on my life, and I don’t know where I would be today if Jeff Luther hadn’t tried to convince someone who didn’t know how to play a note to join the marching band.    Someday I’ll write a whole article on Mr. Henry, today isn’t that day though.

My own personal tradition is to show up early for Alumni practice, I was always the first to arrive and just enjoyed being there sitting in the back of the band room anticipating the day.   This year I was dropped off and there already was another car there, three majorettes beat me.  For the first time I wasn’t the first one there.   Next year I guess I have to arrive at 6 AM.   My wife dropped me off, then she went a visited the grave of a friend to tell him about the new pregnancy.   Later in the day I told that friend’s sister, who is now in Alumni,  that we are planning on giving our child his name if it is a boy.

Mr. Price ran us ragged through out the day for the performance.   I’m not saying it wasn’t worth it, I’m just saying….   After lunch was practiced our closing routine for the first time and at the end we practiced the high step.   My ankles felt like they were going to break at any second.  It may have been the shoes, but I think it was age catching up with me.    I went out and bought a pair of ankle supports at dinner time.   I wore these for the rest of the night.   I managed to high step and I didn’t break an ankle.   On Sunday however I could hardly walk on my ankles at all.  By Sunday night it had migrated to just my left ankle.  It is still sore and tender four days later.

Pain and sickness isn’t new to me at Alumni Band though.   Two years ago I blew out and gave myself a sore throat in the morning practice.   Compound that by the fact that it was raining that night and eventually it got bad enough they moved the festival inot the high school gym – I was laid up sick in bed for four days afterward.  Last year I got the sore throat again, but it didn’t develop into anything more.  After last year I decided I wanted to be in playing shape – no sore throat and no dead lips.   I joined two community bands and that corrected the issue from that side.  I do think I’m going to have to start running again just to get my ankles in shape for next year.   These are the the things I do for Alumni Band.

Some things are funny, like the people being amazed that the current seniors were freshmen when they were seniors.   I pointed out that the current seniors weren’t even in preschool when I was a senior.   You have the differences in band style from the Burt to Henry to Price eras, and of course all of us think that our own era was the best.  There are things I missed from the past in Alumni.  Large groups of us used to sneak in Alcohol in water bottles and get lit before marching.   Before he did Dennis Pintur used to be notorious for that.   He was also notorious for blowing out his lip playing tuba and showing everyone his bloody white beard also.   The tuba’s back then actually did tuba chases, which I haven’t seen in the last few years.  During the drum breaks our tubas also used to twirl their instruments.   My first year in the band festival Mike Lewandowski put me on his shoulders during the drum break and we did a dance in our section of the field.

The band has changed and grown up.  This isn’t really a bad thing.   It may be why some of hte older members don’t show up still, but that happens.   The experience isn’t the same, people move away, people are busy – there are alot of reasons people don’t show up.   The rest of us… Well the the rest of us want to relive our glory days like Al Bundy.   In a way we are sad like some people think.   It is also glory.   The excitement of going onto that field, feeling the rush, and doing it one more time.   I’ll be there as long as I am physically able.  I’ll be there in a wheel chair and play for the middle songs only.   In the end I’ll be there.   I’ve lasted longer playing with the band then the band has played in the Vermilion Fish Festival (which BTW I think they need to start doing again).   I’ll survive and do it until there isn’t a band festival to march at anymore.   If it ever comes to that point I’ll just invite all the band members that want to show up on a fall Saturday, pull out some music, and play on the football field even if it’s just for ourselves.   Those that understand that, they are the ones that really want to “Do it One More Time”.

Videos:

Star Spangled Banner – Google Video Link

Festival Show – Google Video Link

Sideline Footage – Google Video Link

If you somehow missed it you can also always watch last years video here.

If you want to see the pictures I took – scoot on over to my Flickr set.

Image from here

You know how your browser tries to guess where you go by what your typing in?  These are the sites that come up as my suggestions (from browsing history) when I go through each letter of the alphabet:

A -Google Analytics

B – The Other Guild

C – Creeva’s World 2.0

D – Digg

E – Gmail

F – Feedburner

G – General Discussion -Vermilion News

H – Slashdot

I – The Other Guild

J – Journey To Get Paid

K – Kwippy

L – My Lifestream

M – VCMA

N – Network Solutions

O – Oh My Yod

P – Ping.fm

Q – Disqus

R – Google Analytics

S – Slashdot

T – Twitter

U – Yahoo Login

V – General Discussion -Vermilion News

W – Statcounter

X – Yahoo Login

Y – Yahoo Login

Z – Dad Hacker

Interesting?  Not really.   I found this post amusing however.

I’ve done the community band circuit for a year now and I’ve played with two community bands.  The one thing I have noticed is that the bands don’t really seem to be growing.  When they do grow it’s usually by an older member decides to join in the band.  The youth market seems to be completely disenfranchised.   I can understand part of that, though I declined to the join the VCMA when it was first formed due to not liking the director.   It wasn’t because I didn’t want to play, I still had the yearly Vermilion Alumni Band to play in, then I moved to Oregon.   While there I hardly ever pulled out my trumpet and when I did it was just for a half hour stint every few months.   My lips didn’t have the range or stamina they once did.   After blowing out my lip the last couple years at Alumni after moving back to Ohio, I decided I need to bring more regular playing in my life.  This led me to community band.  Since I am young(er) I have a different perspective on the band.

The first thing is that the music (at least over the summer) is extremely heavily weighted to music written before I was born.   If we play anything done after I was born it was an arrangement of a pre-existing piece.  I hear the director say things like, “we’ll play this piece because everyone will know it”.   Most of the time this is said, I neither know it, nor do I recognize the melody.  I feel attached and not a part of something I can recognize.  This is not to say that I think the old music should be ignored, no matter how much I dislike traditional marches.  I think we should play a wider variety of music that encompasses all eras.  Young people that really aren’t in to band music should have something that is recognizable to them and not just something that there parents kind of remember or their grandparents danced to on their first date.    There needs to be a mixture.   A mixture that should appeal to all those involved.

Rules I would follow to achieve this if I was choosing the music:

1.  Choose at least one movie/television theme song- preferably something recognizable to all ages.   While we are playing Moonriver in the VCMA and I adore, it is not something that the majority of under-forty crowd would recognize.  I think you would have to go to the over fifty crowd to truly appreciate and remember it.  My wife said she would forever be in love and be inspired to work harder at learning an instrument if she hears The Muppet Show Theme Song.  My personal favorite is video game theme music, something as traditional as The Legend of Zelda Theme Song or a number from the Final Fantasy series.   There is a national company that tours and just does live concerts on video game music, it sells out pretty quickly.  These types of concerts have a great deal of appeal to the under forty crowd and that should be taken into consideration.

Some TV themes I would like to hear:

• Batman the Animated Series Theme
• The Muppet Show Theme
• The A-Team Theme
• The Adam’s Family
• The Star Trek Theme
• Farscape Theme
• Benny Hill Theme
• Monty Python’s Circus Theme
• Futurama Theme
• The Incredible Hulk Theme
• Inspector Gadget Theme
• Macgyver Theme
• Mission Impossible Theme
• Quantum Leap Theme
• Bonanza Theme
• Scooby Doo Theme
• Twilight Zone Theme
• X-Files

Movie Themes I would like to hear:

• Anything by John Williams
• Anything by James Horner
• Harry Potter
• Anything large movie made in the last 20 years.

2.  Choose at least one pop arrangement – the VCMA did the Beatles and this would fit into this category.  The real problem with pop music is that so little of it actually sounds good for a concert band.   The fifties and sixties popular songs actually sound the best, though there are a few later pieces that sound quite good also.

3.  Choose one classical piece that easily recognized, so far in neither of my community bands have we tackled any classical music.  We have done some “traditional” pieces, but nothing classical.   Where is the Bach, Beethoven, or Chopin?  There is an abundance of this that has been arranged for concert bands, but the bands I belong to seem to overlook anything pre 1880 and post 1960.  Christmas music doesn’t really fall under “classical”

Out of these 3 areas community bands should be able to play one piece from each of these genre’s through out there year of performing.  I’m not saying it has to follow that one of each of these pieces get played every concert, but out the forty or so pieces I have played in both bands, they should be able to accommodate one of each of these in their play rotation.

There are other rules I would follow also.

4.  No more then 20 percent of your music can come from any decade.  If it was all arranged in the eighties, that’s fine but the melodies and original music was composed according to this guideline.   I’m not going to pick on arrangers for doing a modern arrangement of In the Mood, its swing era song.   With this rule you could also still fit in easily a whole concert and still have music written from before I was born.

5.  No more then 40% from any single genre.  Whether this is marches, swing, classical, theme music, etc., etc. – variety makes more people take notice unless you’re doing a theme concert.

6. Theme concerts (usually X-mas concerts for community bands) – In a theme concert you should play a maximum of 80% of the music that follows the theme.   One or two pieces should be reserved for something unexpected and interesting that doesn’t fit the norm of a particular theme.  Whether this is a Christmas march or a summer playing of Sleigh Ride, the unexpected brings peoples attention by breaking monotony.

7.  While conductors normally choose the music in most circumstances, there should be one or two pieces chosen by the band members themselves to work through and play.   These people are there to have fun, play something they really want to play.

8.  Encourage your members to compose or arrange something for your band to play.  This makes the music all their own and gives your band something special.

That covers my notes from music selection.   So how do you attract new members?   Other then people moving into the community or the rare person finding out about you and showing up, there is little in the means of growth.  Community bands are competing with the Internet, Social Networking, video games, hanging out with friends, going to the bar, or clubbing.   Having lived through my twenties already most of these are more fun at that age then community band.  You need to hook members while they are still young.

I’ve always played for the love of playing.  I really started when I was a sophomore in high school, by my junior year you couldn’t keep me from auditioning or volunteering to play for whatever group was available.  This alone helped me grow into a much better musician.  I used to be able to transpose music from the key of C or the Key of F in my head automatically and play along from that sheet music.   My range and stamina were much better then they are still today.   My technique today is better in a lot of ways, but I feel I was a better player in a larger scope back then.  That was after only a year of playing back then, I have some of that memory still in my head and I’m old enough to have gained wisdom.  My knowledge should have grown.   After my single year of college I stopped playing with any group outside of Alumni band.  It wasn’t out of disinterest as much as effort.   If I didn’t love playing I wouldn’t stay with the community band, there is no one in my peer group and for a large part of it it’s not really “fun”, at least not in the sense it was fun back when I was in high school.

Most players fall off because they are not engaged early enough into the community band cycle.  To give an example what non engagement with playing can do, for alumni band out of the 160 of us that went through 3 years together, only 5 showed up last year to Alumni Band, only two of us regularly play now.  That’s hovering around a 1-2% rate of a player likely to stick with their instrument after school form my personal experience.  Almost all community bands explicitly state that will accept members that are in high school with their band director’s permission.   Now while I would have gladly played with a community band when I was in high school I was not going to go up and have Mr. Henry sign a permission slip or call to ask if I could join the band.   This is a turn off.   What should happen is that community band should be actively engaging the high school and middle school band directors for members every single year.  If community band members are worried about middle schoolers, then they should make a junior community band where the regular band can show up if they so choose and the younger players can show up.

Younger players are looking for people to emulate, to try to sound like.  Having mentoring by accepting is only going to raise their skill level.   Players that show up are not getting school credit, they are not getting paid, and so why have any stipulations.   If the music is too hard for them they are not going to stick around.   If they don’t really enjoy playing and are only in the school for socialization or the fun from that they are not going to show up.   If community bands are there to make its own members better, then the younger the better, they can make the band as a whole be better.  The older players get the benefit of mild teaching and understanding of what they are doing and the younger players gain a mentor.

Once the younger players are hooked they are more likely to stick with music, since they then have a place to play after they graduate.  They will be informed about the community band and will be regular members.   If they are anything like I was they will find a great relief about having some place to play over the summer.  Older members may even make a little bit of side cash by giving lessons, even if they aren’t as good as a true instructor they could still impart wisdom and teach a student to the edge of their abilities, at which point the student could move onto someone else. My high school self could play rings around my present self. I think community bands under estimate the skill levels of these players.

Is there a strong future for community bands?  It depends.   The older generations need to realize that playing in band is not “cool” at least not until your in your thirties, and I still get the occasional snicker about it – I just don’t care.  A community band is considered a tired thing by the younger generation who would prefer most of their live music to contain electric guitars.  The ability to evolve and bring new members in is essential for most community bands to last another twenty years.   Showing players it can be fun by playing music they can identify with and accepting them as peers within their membership.  You could still have a stipulation where the younger members couldn’t vote in elections, I’m sure you wouldn’t want your board run by four sixteen year olds – but having one of them in a position with a voice may give you greater possibilities then someone like me who is already twice that age and out of touch.

I’ve gotten the VCMA website in a stable place.  I can quickly edit it and make changes, so before any radical redesigns I’m now working on moving them over to Google Apps for internal paperwork.  I plan in the near future signing the VCMA up for a Myspace page and a Facebook account.  People in the younger peer group will be able to see it as an organization to identify with.  The older members need to realize why they started a community to begin with, which includes – hanging out with friends, playing for people, becoming better musicians, and having fun.  None of what I have written breaks any of that.  It may take them a little bit out of their comfort zone, but the mantra of business these days is to embrace and extend.   Growth happens once some of these things are followed.  If the bands I play with don’t start embracing this I’m not sure they will last another twenty years and things will get shaky in another ten.   Growth has not continued, but rather it has stagnated, unless there is something done to counter-act this, the downward trend will continue.

In my band I’m still considered just a kid, though my father had his fourth child by my age.   I’m too young to them to be anything but a kid so what do I know.  I’m too old for any of the young people to truly listen to me, plus I’m over thirty so I’m to young to be trusted.  If we go by Cory Doctorow’s book Little Brother – they don’t trust anyone over 22.   Somehow I’m stuck in the adult version of the tweens.  So no one will truly pay attention, but that doesn’t mean this shouldn’t be said.

Picture from here

Tonight the VCMA will be having it’s final summer concert at the Lorain County Fair.   It’s been a wonderful summer season and I appreciate everyone that has come out to watch us perform.  I only missed one concert this season (though I did manage to arrive in the middle of the first song at one of our concerts).    The only concerts I have until the winter season are next month.  The first of which is September 16th playing in the Ashland Community Band at the Ashland County Fair.   The second is September 27th at the Vermilion High School Stadium playing with the Vermilion High School Alumni Marching Band at the high school’s annual marching band festival.

Hope to see some of you around.

Picture from here

Yesterday I wandered into a forum that contains random population members from my ex-hometown.  There was a thread about the teacher strike going on in town.  I don’t really self promote by going and saying hey read my site here and there around the net, but I did leave a post in the thread stating:

I rarely post here – rarely read it also – but today boredom struck  – I agree with the parent of this thread – ironically a few weeks ago I actually wrote on my blog on this subject here: http://creeva.com/2008/07/28/teachers-on-strike-in-my-hometown/

That aside – I’ll be very happen when teaching becomes a non-union position.

Though it was in general to a thread a user named Homersazdoh wrote this:

Where do you people get off thinking all the teachers are members of the peace corp.?  They have every right to try and get more money just like everyone else.  If you’re so concerned with the quality of teacher, then you want the best package to draw the best talent.

My next response was:

The problem is under a contract scenario with unions or large groups of employees you need to pander to the lowest common denominator – this means that better teachers are going to make less because the large number of average or below average teachers will bring them down.

But I’ve recently had siblings go through the vermilion school system (some still going, I graduated in ’94) – over time the quality has only gotten worse, the education is not as werll rounded due to block scheduling, more and more restrictions on individuality, and the lack of money being poured into the system that has nothing to do with teacher wages.

Oh well, I’ll drop out of this conversation, my child is probably going to be home schooled.

This is what I got from Scott:

Now of course I wasn’t going to let that by, but I excused myself from the thread with this:

Be careful – my wife is home schooled – I’m a college fail out/drop out – yet I’m in an extremely competitive white collar career.

My child will always be challenged – the common misconctption that’s I’ve always fought for public schooling is socialization – I never found it competitive nor strived to be more competive – I’m a member of a few social and group organizations.

BUt believe what you want – and thank you for derailing the conversation any further – I apologize to everyone for my detour I helped on this thread – I’ll drop out.

BTW – I don’t care either way the teachers strike and union goes -I’m not a vermilion resident – I moved out in 2001 – I won’t move back but I have friends and family there – I’m friends wiht a couple teachers there, and I’m a member of vermilion community organizations.

Now why did I give you this?  I figured I would give you some back story to what inspired this post.  Xie and I have had many disagreements about public schools versus home schooling, she wasn’t always homeschooled so she has the advantage of first hand experience on both sides of the coin.   She is also one of the most intelligent (and quiet) people I know.   I had a good experience with public schools, she did not.

However with the random inspections, school uniforms, the crushing of individuality, and the loss of personal liberties that kids go through today to “make them better citizens” and to “keep them safe”, has made me think twice on sending my child to public schools.   My argument in the past was the social aspect and the ability work with and meet people.   The competiviness of school was never a selling point for me.   Heck the overly competitive people were the ones that made my life hell in school and were the super jocks, the bullies that had something to prove, or the grade whores who thought straight A’s would give them the good life when they graduated.

I wasn’t a straight A student, nor did I try to be.   When I was in elementary school I was on the honor role and merit role all the time, so what?  My parents then changed schools on me and I then almost failed fifth grade.  My wife says I don’t respond well to change and I’m better with routine.  This is obvious when I went from good grades in a competitive private school moving to a sub par public school.  I should have excelled from an academic perspective, but I didn’t.   I was a fish out of water.

The same thing happened two years later when we moved to Vermilion.  At one point my father stated the best thing he could at me to alleviate my stress and to ease his concern of his son failing a grade.  He said that he would be fine if I was a C student.  This was all I needed to alleviate the strain.  I high school I only failed two classes, Spanish 1 and Algebra 2.  I did maintain a C average throughout school.   I was so much a C student that I graduated around 100th in a class of 250ish.  This didn’t stop me from going anywhere.   I managed to get into a good private college (which I then proceeded to fail out, but that was from lack of wanting to go to class).

Was I really a C student?  Not really.  I could have easily made honor roll, I just didn’t like homework.  I scored in the top 10% in the nation on my ACTs and in the top 1% on my PRE-SATs, I’m sure this helped me to get in college.   I just wanted to take the tests to prove I knew what I was talking about, the busy work held no interest for me.  The only competition I really participated in school was who could hit the highest trumpet note.

Now I have a good job.   There are articles kicking around the Internet about why going college is a waste of time and money these days.   I don’t feel I’ve lost out on an education.  Life is about learning and loving to learn.   To build upon what you have learned already and never stop growing.  Why would I put my child in the bad aspects of that, pointing out that my child would not be competitive because he may not go to public school is moronic.   Also when I saw the college valedictorian delivering pizzas when I was making 35k a year 9 years ago made a big impact on me.

I think that traditional schooling leads to more socialization and more social activities then traditional schooling, however saying I need to send my kid to traditional schooling for him to remain competitive?  That’s moronic.

Picture from here

Picture from here

So I’ve taken over the position of webmaster for the VCMA (Vermilion Community Music Association).  This is going to start a new series as I’m going to use them as guinea pig’s for what I’ve felt non-profits need to do to survive and thrive in the web 2.0 world.   They are not a big organization, and I’m sure I received this position for my background and not my witty personality.

I’ve been working on the site for a couple of weeks and here is what I’ve found so far.   They had a private member’s section on the old site to share files and personal data.  This section was password protected, but the username field was just a front, as long as you nkew the password anything you put in the username field was accepted.  Since I’m a security engineer, this just wasn’t going to work for me.  I’ve ranted before the illusion of security and how illusionary security wasn’t worthwhile at all anyways.  The other problem was that their member page “password protected” section was just a javascript that rewrote the “HTTP GET” to a file named a combination of the requested page plus the password.   So if the page was index.tml and the password was “password” the ending HTTP in the “HTTP GET” command would be indexpassword.html.   Since it was still a plain text file without any encryption on it, in theory it could still be spidered and stored by google, thereby completely undermining any security it was giving them.

I’m working on a better and more secure solution while maintaining the balance of ease of use.   I don’t want to burden them too much on the security side.  I’m sure some of the older members would blink at me with a blank stare if I handed them secureID tokens to access their newsletters.

Picture from here

The next thing I discovered is that code each web page by hand, ugh.  There was no way I was going to maintain each HTML manually and hope for any semblance of style and continuity between pages (an issue they had in the past).   They had been using FrontPage and offered to buy me a copy.  First no, no and no – currently I’m using Linux on my main computer (Ok I dual boot into XP and between WoW and Netflix streaming I don’t get into Ubuntu as much as I should), so Frontpage was out.  They were insistent at first that this is how it was done, I however readjusted things.  I moved them to WordPress which I’m not using as a blog but rather as a CMS (Content Management System).

Picture from here

I manually migrated the data from the old HTML files, I spent hours converting the front page data to be “clean” data that i can migrate and copy paste anywhere.   I was a dumbass though, I should have just copy and pasted the text into notepad or a generic text editor, then I wouldn’t have had all the background crap.  This is my nore to myself to now be stupid next time.  I added images and a javascript navigation menu, but essentially the page was just a cleaned up (easy to maintain now) version of what they already had.

Now the next step is to migrate them to Google Apps for their member related information……

Somehow I always end up volunteering for Vermilion non-profits, now if only I could get one of them to pay me……

If you’ve wanted to see me (or the rest of the VCMA) in concert this weekend is you chance.   You may have missed our previous concerts (I didn’t even write about the one that happened last Thursday), but now you can see us live and in person.

Here is the times and location information:

08-09 Sat 07:00 – 08:00 PM Midway Mall, Elyria
08-10 Sun 07:00 – 08:30 PM Vermilion Gazebo, Vermilion

Picture from here

A couple weeks ago when the VCMA had their concert in Vermilion, OH there were school teachers wandering around the downtown area (the picture above is not my hometown) protesting.   I can’t say I understand completely what they were protesting, but before I go into a rant about the protesting – I’ll give you my understanding from what I got out of it and what others told me.

The contract from the local school district had been changed; previously the school district paid for the retirement of its teachers or supplied a portion of it.  Recently however this had been changed to put the burden on cost to the teachers who will have to pay their own retirement compared to the school district footing the bill.  I don’t even live in the same county as my past hometown, so my diatribe has no bearing other then outside views since my taxes will not be raised, nor will the quality of education my children receive be impacted.

The first thing that comes to mind – welcome to the real world.   I know a ton of people that went into public service or civil servant positions for the retirement.   It didn’t matter what the job was, it just mattered that at the end of the career they received that fat benefits and nice retirement package.   They could be a janitor or they could be a mailman, as long as the benefits were there at the end of the career they would be happy.   I’m so I care about what I do now and though I should be worry, I’m not thinking about the end of my career yet.  No one I know professionally get’s their retirement paid for by their employer anymore, that notion is old and out of date.

If a company in this day and age announced it was going to have an all inclusive retirement package for its employees there are a few things that come to mind.   The first being, what person is going to stay with a company for the 25-30 it takes to qualify for a retirement package – jobs don’t work that way anymore, very few people in this day and age start at a company at 18-20 and retire from that same company.  It’s idiotic and small minded in so many ways, to believe that you will be with the same employer.  The second is how far would a stock drop in a publicly traded company that announced something like this.   In the age of profits and margins an announcement like this would be considered fiscally irresponsible by the share holders.   However our tax money goes out to support all the public servants of our local, state, and federal governments.  Personally I understand the point of unions – but I don’t think anyone should get the guaranteed contracts that union works receive.   It should be dog eat dog and fight for the best value for the dollar instead of bringing down the people at the top and raising those at the bottom.  This is my tax money and the billions that the government could save by not offering automatic benefits are enormous.

There is another reason though I don’t have respect for the protest.  My freshmen year in high school my (then future) band director was up for retirement.   He decided that he wasn’t going to retire and he was going to keep teaching for another 3 years.  The next year was my first in band (other then a brief stint in 5th grade) and David Henry is now the metric I judge all other band directors against.   My senior year was his final year.   In a side conversation with him one day I asked him why doesn’t he just keep going?  He told me and a friend that he lost 15% (these numbers maybe wrong but it’s been 14 years and the intent is still the same) of his pension because he went on and taught the last three years.  He was happy to do it and would have done it again.   However, if he continued for another three years he would lose another 30% of his pension, and that he could not afford to do.

David Henry at the VHS Alumni Band Practice in 2007

Why is this relevant?  Well the teachers I saw protesting were all obviously younger then I am, and I’m not that old at 32 – the most they could be in their career is 10 years and that would still be stretching it.  I’m sure that most of them got into it for the idea of having summers off and the decent retirement package.  Some did it for the pure joy of teaching, and for those I would hope they would have done the job diligently regardless of the benefits at the end of the career.   One of the largest arguments that I’ve heard is that teachers are underpaid.  I won’t argue that, but at the same time almost all of them knew the pay rates before they started.   Feeling bad because they make 30-40k a year is just as bad as feeling sorry that the check out clerk makes minimum wage.  There is no surprises, they knew the scale and the pitfalls going into the game.   They could have done something else if they wanted to make more money.  They should do what they want to do because they enjoy it, not because of the money they make now and in the future.  I don’t see any of the love in teaching in them that I saw in David Henry.

Maybe it’s unfair to compare them to Mr. Henry.  He is one fo the two teachers that influenced me most heavily in my young life, though both of those teachers taught at teh same school district that these teachers are protesting in.   These are just my thoughts, take them to heart or throw them aside as you see fit.