FilteringCraig

The short story is this. The Cavs played the Wizards in the opening round of the playoffs. The Wizards despite pussying out on the name “Bullets” felt that it would be a good idea to beat the crap out of LeBron James and then call him a crybaby when he said he wasn’t going to bend from all their shots that they were throwing his way.

Papa John’s in Washington thought it would be a fine idea to print some Crybaby t-shirts with the number 23 on them for the sixth game of the opening round where LeBron scored a triple double and sent the Wizards to the golf course for the season. Didn’t you all look silly with those t-shirts on as you left early due to the pounding that LeBron gave you in your home arena?

The problem with Papa John’s opportunistic promotion was that Cleveland is a decent market for Papa John’s. Clevelanders eat a lot of pizza, apparently. I counted on the website and there are at least 10 locations that come up when I search my zip code. That means that there are ten within striking distance of Cleveland and LeBron fans. How does that guerrilla marketing plan look now?

Boycotts were mentioned. Cleveland fans were riled up. You will remember that this is the same sports town that sent John “Big Dawg” Thompson (right) to testify before congress after Art Modell and the NFL stole our professional football team.

Well, Papa John’s was scared so they have apologized and are going to offer large one-topping pizzas to Cleveland residents on Thursday for a small price of 23 cents in honor of LeBron James’ number 23. The big joke will be when they only offer the food to “Cleveland” residents. You see, the way we draw the lines for our cities and towns around here means that almost nobody actually lives in “Cleveland.” Out of the 10 stores listed on the website as being near my home, only 3 are actually in the city of Cleveland. Are the near suburban residents out of luck? We will see.

After getting my MacBook Pro a couple months ago, the band started laying down audio tracks in my basement. I have been spending a lot of time figuring out what kinds of mistakes I have made in our initial round of recording so that we can get a polished product together. As a result, I haven’t really written anything lately on this website. I know that is bad, but there it is.

It has been a lot of fun, but at the same time, it is unnerving. I am pushing forward because, quite frankly, I have never been afraid to try something and fail, but I am really nervous that I am wasting my time and that we should just go into the studio to get an expert to put the sounds together.

And this should be interesting. Let me just tell you the things that I have been thinking about.

We all listen to music, but how loud should the drums be?  Drums are an integral part of any recording, but they are a bit more of the focus in certain bands like Tool, Dave Matthews Band and others.  The drums aren’t the focus of our band.  After I answer the volume question, should I pan different sections of the drums to different sides?

How loud should the guitars be?  Should I put Todd’s guitar on the one side and mine on the other?  Should they work together on the same side?  If I pan one guitar to the side, and the other guitar to the other side, where do I put the bass guitar?

Should I leave the lead vocals centered?  How much delay and/or reverb should I put on the vox?  How about backing vox?  how high should they go, and how many effects should I put on those?

These are the questions that I have been asking myself, and what I am running into is that their are so many different ways to do things that I need to just come to a conclusion sooner rather than later, because I can’t afford the time it would take to experiment with every variable.

Maybe I will post some samples to let you hear what I am hearing.

At least that is the only conclusion that I can come up with after a few pieces of evidence have come to light.

I read this article from ArsTechnica today about a proposed “Amazon tax” that seems to only affect Amazon.com and other Internet businesses that sell items to New Yorkers over the web. The law states that Amazon must collect sales tax for all orders sold to New Yorkers even though the online retailer has no physical presence in the state.

Right now, I am rooting for Amazon to win their forthcoming legal action against the state because of my own interactions lately. My family’s business is attempting to get licensed in the state so that we can take care of a few token properties and situations that affect some of our Ohio-based customers. We are not going to open an office in New York state, but we would like to sell a couple of insurance policies that cover the state of New York. So we started the process of getting a license in New York.

Well, after 5 (count’em 5) iterations of mailing our application along with a check and having that paperwork get returned, I am officially pissed off at the state of New York. You see, every time they send it back, they send the same form letter not really explaining what was wrong with the current application. Also, they will stop reviewing your application when they find the first mistake. So, in a complicated form I can fix one mistake, send it back and then have it returned based on another mistake that wasn’t called out the last time I updated the form.

On top of that, the Ohio department uses a Certificate of Good Standing as their standard form to give people incorporated in the state of Ohio. Then New York state claims that a certified copy of that Certificate of Good Standing is UNACCEPTABLE for their application.

No matter what, I have officially deemed the State of New York relatively hostile to new business. I would think that the state would prefer to make it easier, not harder, to do business in their state. I realize that what we are looking to do in the state isn’t exactly high profile and high reward for the state of New York, but that shouldn’t matter.

But I guess this is indicative of the state of customer service in this nation today. People use call centers in India as the example of bad customer service today, but I am here to tell you it doesn’t stop there. The government, state, local, and federal, have lost any sense of customer service too. From the post office, to the Bureau of Motor Vehicles, to the IRS, there is absolutely NO focus on customer service by the people who are employed using tax dollars. That shouldn’t be the case, and I wish someone would change the culture starting at the top.