So I've ordered a book from Amazon, and it shipped out on March 1st.

Tracking the package reveals only that it's on its way and should arrive around March 21st. Twenty days.

A Google search shows that the distance the package must travel by road is 1320 miles, from Salt Lake City to St. Louis. That's 66 miles per day. Which is 5.5 miles per hour, if you allow 12 hours per day for travelling.

So what does all this mean?

Someone from USPS is walking (or very casually running) 1320 miles from Salt Lake City to deliver my package.

Ziusudra album soon!

My current project is getting the tracks released that I recorded with my band Ziusudra around 2000. The challenge is that the location of the original tapes is unknown, and I am working only with some digital tracks copied from various temporary mixes from CDs and cassettes.

Ziusudra is the name for the man that was later made famous by the Book of Genesis, commonly known as Noah. There are older parallels to the Noah flood story, and the first known version, in Sumerian, called the flood hero by the name Ziusudra. I wrote a song by that name, which was a very concise version of the story, in 1993 and the guys in the band somehow agreed that this would be a good name for us.

Anyway, I hope to have these tracks out around October, 2015 or so -- a mere seventeen years after we started the recording!

I wanna play this chord on that guitar!

A couple of years back, I bought this guitar:

It's a Schecter Damien Elite 8 8-String electric guitar. Yup, 8 strings! Eight-string guitars are growing in popularity, particulary in the Metal community, and are used in bands like Meshuggah and Animals as Leaders.

I figured I'd play it like any guitar, but with the benefit of the added lower strings.

For one thing, you have more real estate on the fingerboard on which to improvise. Also, you can add another, lower 5th to your standard barre chords (E-shape) on the 7th string. In addition, you can just play chords not possible on a 6-string guitar.

Many of them have a longer scale length. The main benefit of this is better sound for the lower strings. It's the reason a grand piano's bass strings sound much better than an upright piano - the grand piano has much longer bass strings than the upright.

So I'm pretty happy with this guitar. It's beautiful, well-made, and fun to play, however, the one thing I'm having trouble with is... string spacing.

Now I'm talking about the space between the strings. It's narrower than that of a 6-string guitar, and the problem with that is it is more difficult to play chords, and just feels odd, plus it's pretty easy to get your left hand on the wrong string when you're used to a 6-string.

On many of the websites where you can order a guitar, they have a list of specifications, but string-spacing is generally not listed! This is a problem I hope is remedied soon.

I don't know anywhere where a guitarist can play a number of these things to compare them. These days, you just have to order a guitar, try it out and then decide whether or not to keep it.

Ring of Fire

Back in the 90s, one of the bands that caught my attention was Catherine Wheel, a British band that was heavy on the effect-laden guitars; they were considered to be one of the better shoegazer bands of that era. I remember going down to Mississippi Nights at Laclede's Landing on Election night to see them.

Unfortunately, I missed most of their show as I had to work that night, and they switched headlining duties with the other bands (which might have been House of Love and Ocean Colour Scene, or something like that).
Still, I caught enough to see that they were at least as great live as they were on their debut Ferment. Unfortunately, being election night, and maybe since these bands weren't super-big, there just wasn't much of a crowd at that show.

After the show the bands and some of us in attendance went to the bar next door, but it was just kind of a weird, slow night, and probably a bit of a sausage-fest (lack of girls, you know)..

Today I was looking at their bio on Wikipedia and noticed that (supposedly) they named themselves after the firework-in-a-wheel known as a Catherine Wheel. Interesting, I thought, since years before, when my brother and I were little more than toddlers, we had a run-in with one of those. I guess my dad had lit the damn thing after nailing it to a tree, and it came loose, and I swear this thing was chasing after us in the backyard!

It must've been quite a sight.

Got website?

Lately I've been spending a little too much free time on my website http://tung.co. Earlier in the year I revamped a website for Chopstix Asian Kitchen using ASP.NET, and that energized and inspired me to get something up to market myself.

Maybe it's a bit geeky, but I really do enjoy this stuff. I'll admit, getting CSS (cascading style sheets) to work properly is a bit of a pain in the booty. However I learned a few things along the way, like how to:

• use the master page feature of ASP.NET, which keeps your code modular and easier to maintain
• display an rss feed from another source on a website
• display a YouTube feed (not working :-/ ) (similar to the rss feed)
• create a form-based guestbook with field validation

It will probably always be a work in progress; there's always room for improvement or more (and better) content. But at least I've got something there.

On Chopstix and Chopsticks

We had a pleasant surprise in our little slice of St. Louis a few years ago. The new Buzz Westfall Plaza on the Boulevard (another Sansone property) opened where the old Northland Plaza had been, and alongside the new Schnucks, Target and the many little shops was a cute little Chinese food joint called Chopstix Asian Kitchen.

We eyed it suspiciously as we drove past for a few days on our way to the Schnucks grocery store. Then, on one of these drives, a pleasantly fragrant odor reached our noses and we had to check it out. We knew it was Chopstix, since there was nothing else in the way of restaurants in that little area, plus this was the distinct smell of Chinese food!

Once inside, we ordered some lettuce wraps, and probably the Singapore noodles. It's not a huge restaurant, but tastefully decorated, with seating for about 30.

We found the food to be fresh, hot, and delicious. And unlike most local Chinese joints, the food at Chopstix is cooked to order in an open kitchen. The staff is very friendly and courteous, as well.

More than three years later, we are still regular customers at Chopstix. In fact, I recently took over their webmaster and email marketing duties.

Of course, they do have chopsticks at Chopstix, and I do recommend using them! It takes just a moment to learn it, and maybe a little longer to really get the hang of it, but the benefit is that the metallic flavor of the fork is no longer an issue. And you can always use the fork when your hand gets tired.

Chopstix Asian Kitchen
Hours: Mon-Sat 11AM-10PM, Sun 12PM-9PM

Tied Down - Or Not

What's the deal with highway drivers not tying down their loads? I get the impression they don't realize the danger they are causing for other drivers.

Today I ran over what must have been an aluminum gutter, or at least a long, bent up piece of sheet metal of some sort. I don't know if it did any damage, but it hit the underside of my car.

Yesterday I found myself stuck in the right lane on Highway 70 - semi on my left - unable to dodge a couple of large plastic trash cans. Some cars and trucks ahead of us hit them.. they were airborne, and then the semi on my left hit one of 'em.. and then of course, I hit one of them. As far as I could tell, little to no damage, luckily.

A few months ago, I was driving east on Page and heading toward the 170 south entrance ramp. There was an overloaded pickup truck with furniture, and it looked like the load wasn't tied down at all. He made it through the stoplight, but I had to wait.

By the time I made it onto 170, this guy was a good deal ahead of me. But then (of course), I see furniture on the highway. Not surprised! He was pulled over just before the Olive exit, trying to collect his load off the roadway.

Last year I had to dodge a queen-size mattress on 270. What would that do to your car at 60mph? It's just insane. My brother was a ways behind us, so I called him to warn him.. of course, he doesn't answer his phone when he's driving!