Knowing is Half the Prattle.

Saturday, December 20, 2008

New Song Advice

I play acoustic guitar for the 6 month olds and it really seems to quiet them down or they start to make happy sounds. Here are the top 5 songs that they respond well to.

  1. Punk Rock Girl - Dead Milkmen

  2. Science Fiction Double Feature - Richard O'Brian

  3. Vibrator Dependent - Mojo Nixon

  4. Fake Plastic Trees - Radiohead

  5. The Grand Old Duke of York - folk song

Alot of other songs they listen to but don't really react to, but funny enough they usually get upset when I play "Got You (where I want you)" by the Flys. But that's pretty obvious why because it's only two chords and it bugs me too.

Any suggestions for new songs?

Yes I already tried Freebird. Luke warm reception. The songs should be playable on acoustic guitar, so Chemical Warfare by the Dead Kennedys is out.

Subliminal Messaging

Friday, December 05, 2008

You Wanted Me to Type How Fast?

When I was first out of college I applied for entry level jobs and they always said something like "must type 50 wpm +" or "must type 60 wpm +". Of course I could never type that fast at the time and would wonder if the 4 years I spent on college would have been better spent just practicing typing. College doesn't prepare you for an entry level job, it prepares you to be the boss. Anyway, at the time everyone in the world didn't have a computer so the number of people who could type was much less. You'd think that the average typing speed was very low and the standard for your average Joe would also be less. OK, now fast forward a few years to today when everyone and their grandmother has a computer. You can reasonably expect that people on average are faster at typing. So now I play the game "typeracer". I still don't think I'm a fast typer, but according to the game, I type around 54 words per minute. On their scale, I'm somewhere between a "pro" typer and a "megaracer". Megaracer! So all that time when I was applying for those entry level jobs I was expected to be not just a decent typist but an incredible, off-the-scale typist? I'm not sure if I should be happy that I can type that fast now or livid that such an unreasonable expectation was put on me (and scores of other recent graduates) at the time. I can tell you that I was livid at the time since a 4 year education to which I gained (what I thought was) excellent experience amounted to nothing.

By the way, if I didn't go to college, I was offered both a full time radio DJ job (at WRKL) and a job working for the high school in the TV studio. After college .... "How fast can you type"?

Awesome! Time Machine Operator.

Opportunity to operate a full time machine!

http://newyork.craigslist.org/brx/lab/944873702.html

oh... maybe not