for anyone who has non-music jobs

[I'm Painting Again]

I have a well rounded job I like it..its a good mix of creative and physical, challenging but not busting your hump..Sometimes I feel good about it sometimes I feel a little depressed about it..you just have to make the best of whatever comes..life gives you lemons make some lemonade..

[Mr. Dipity]

Most of the day, followed by my commute home, and then usually most of the evening while I try to pick up where I was yesterday. So then I spend a great deal more time here, during the day, than I should.

what do you do at work?

I head up a small streaming media video production team for a high tech company. Before you think there's any creative video stuff involved - we clock over 80 hours+ of completed video a month (and I started this group 4 years ago - so you can imagine how much stuff we have taped), so it's not the kind of video that involves anything more than pointing cameras and setting up encoders - there's no pre, or post production at all. It's like the work of building out and managing studio, rather than working in one.

[bad_dude_69]

yo, yo, same here (but in the alternate universe that is litigation support).

[craigloom]

Yeah, I totally don't wanna be here. I get very bored and daydream about song choruses and screenplay ideas all day. It's kind of ironic considering I work for an "entertainment" company writing computer games.

[;ivlunsdystf]

What about Charles Ives, a heavy hitting insurance exec by day and one of the major innovators in composition during his off hours?

I once heard that he INVENTED estate planning.

Bach had a day job too, as a musician though.

Nick Drake was a computer programmer. Bad example though, if you're worried about depression.

[craigloom]

What about Charles Ives, a heavy hitting insurance exec by day and one of the major innovators in composition during his off hours?

I once heard that he INVENTED estate planning.

Bach had a day job too, as a musician though.

Nick Drake was a computer programmer. Bad example though, if you're worried about depression.

No, Drake never was a computer programmer. His dad tried to get him into it and he had a job interview...but backed out pretty quickly. I remeber this from his biography I read a couple of years ago.

[;ivlunsdystf]

I stand corrected. Is that Drake biography any good?

[trashy]

sometimes I get to the studio and go "aw shit, this sucks" and remind myself that it pays for fun stuff like adventures.

You know what an adventure is? Teaching 7th graders. If you'd like to try it, my rates are really affordable...

[Rick Hunter]

your mom taught me as a seventh grader. Her rates were really affordable...

[trashy]

your mom taught me as a seventh grader. Her rates were really affordable...

How's this for an affordable rate?

1.3


worst non-creot mom zing ever.

[tommymakestapes]

i just moved from boston to portland or, this past year. i now work as a security guard and all i can do is watch an 8 hour episode of "the front parking lot" all evening. all i think about is music but i think what is really depressing is this is how i've ended up after going through a recording arts program. at least i have a room in my house dedicated as home studio. I should really get my ass in gear and look for an internship somewhere.

[marqueemoon]

Yep. Work is depressing. My involvement in the "music industry" work-wise is making sure chain stores have their music playing in order to lull their customers into a stupor.

I've been MUCH happier since I started riding my bike to work every day though. I used to be stressed out all the time. Now it's just when I'm at work.

[craigloom]

I stand corrected. Is that Drake biography any good?

It's wasn't awful but not that great either. I suppose the more fanatical you are about Drake, as I was -- and still to a point, the more interesting it'll be. It went into a lot of the relationships he had with the other British folkers. I have read much better music bios, IMO, like Shakey (Neil Young) and No Direction Home (Dylan). Those were excellent. Actually, I can name quite a few more better music bios. THis Band Could be Your Life (80s American indie underground bands) was the best music related book by far.

[Mr. Dipity]

i just moved from boston to portland or, this past year. i now work as a security guard and all i can do is watch an 8 hour episode of "the front parking lot" all evening. all i think about is music but i think what is really depressing is this is how i've ended up after going through a recording arts program. at least i have a room in my house dedicated as home studio. I should really get my ass in gear and look for an internship somewhere.

I came into my work studio one day, a couple of years ago, and discovered that someone had installed Kazaa, with all it's glorious spyware, and downloaded a whole load of porn and punjabi music videos the night before. Now, there are only two people apart from me who have been issued keys to the room: my assistant Ed, and my boss. My boss has his own office, definitely no need to go skulking around downloading stuff, and is technologically savvy enough to cover his own tracks, let alone download all that spyware. So who do I blame?

"Hey Ed, someone's downloaded kazaa and all this spyware on to my machine."

(Ed mumbles something non-commital and changes the subject. The guilty bastard.)

He must have been downloading a whole load of porn and punjabi music videos - since he need to use my machine as well as his own. Shit.

So I delete all the porn and punjabi music videos (Ed is korean. He likes crappy pop music: english, korean, punjabi, it all sounds the same to me. More power to him, stretching his musical boundaries. Maybe he was doing some kind of joke remix ,or something). The porn is the grossest, fakest, nasty-girl-looks-at-her-watch-halfway-through kind. The where's-my-boner-gone kind. If it was sold in a can, it would be all white with 'XXX Porn' written on the side.

I get on with my day and try not to think about it.

A few days later, it happens again.

"Hey Ed - someone's installed Kazaa and downloaded all this shit on my computer again."

"Mumble, mumble."

This is so gross, I can't even confront him about it. What is the fucker doing, staying late, and downloading nasty shit on my computer?

It happens again. And again. And one day I come in and the computer's crashed in mid-download. This is getting really creepy: what the fuck is he doing to my computer, and why? And why is he leaving it for me to find like that?

Later that morning, my boss takes me aside, and mentions that a few personal belonging had been stolen from our department - a couple of girl's handbags, and a DVD burner. He is pretty certain that one of security guard's did it: nothing else makes sense. A lightbulb goes off in my head, I tell him about the studio's porno-ghost, and we hatch a plan. $20 and a visit to Fry's Electronic's later, we've installed a USB camera the size of a pen rigged up to one of the other rendering boxes in the room. It's set to email our blackberries and start recording when it sees any movement. We figure that whoever it is will be back in a week or two, and get caught on tape.

That night, at around 1 pm, my blackberry starts to buzz. After half an hour of continuous notifications, I turn the damn thing off.

Mr. Goodhands was in and out of my studio for the whole night, mostly in. His adventures are captured in excruciating detail, at about 5 frames a second. At around 6 am - the end of his shift, he does a half hearted attempt to 'delete' all the files he's downloaded, but he doesn't even know enough to empty the recycle bin.

I'd would actually pity the guy: working a minimum wage (or thereabouts) job, in a foreign country, probably sleeping in the living room of his parent's condo rental in the bad part of town, with his brothers and sisters. No privacy, no education, no chicks, no hope of any of the three. All he knows about computers is how to browse to kazaa and click open this garden of eden on the screen.

Would pity the guy, except for the fact that he stole people's personal stuff: straight up, unconscionably uncool (let alone stupid). That, and the fact that when he was done, the video shows him pulling up his pants and then


















HE WIPES OFF HIS HANDS ON HEADREST OF MY CHAIR.

[megajoe]

Holy Crap! That was the greatest story I've read all day!