My father-in-law (Rick) called me up on Friday and asked me if I wanted to go see the Trans Siberian Orchestra in Rupp Arena. I had never heard of any such group, and was kind of thrown by the name, but I decided to go with him anyway. I thought it would be some New Age type concert (I like New Age music, but I can’t imagine going to a New Age concert) so I wasn’t expecting much.

I was extremely surpised by their sound. It was like listening to Metal mixed in with some neo-classical sounds. The two guitarists, Chris Caffery, and Alex Skolnick, were freakin’ awesome! I didn’t realize it at the time, but I had heard these two play before in their other bands (Chris with Savatage, and Alex with Testament). These guys can shred!

Chris played a Jackson RR1 USA Randy Rhoads Guitar quite a bit, but he and Alex both played Les Pauls. I’ve been wanting a Les Paul for a year or so now, but I have never wanted one as badly as when I left that concert. Man, those guitars have some heavy rhythm tones, and an unbelievable lead tone. I had a Les Paul Studio model back when I first started playing guitar, but I got rid of it and bought the Ibanez RG550. Some people would think I’m crazy for doing that, but I’m not sorry that I did it. I still say the Ibanez is the best guitar I’ve ever played, and I feel honored to own it. Anyway, that Les Paul tone just captivated me.

I ran upon an old cassette that a friend of mine had made back in the 4-track days, and he played his Les Paul Standard on every song. It sounds soooo heavy on there. Then you have me and my Ibanez playing a solo on top of it, and it came together rather well. The bottom line is…I want a Les Paul again. I don’t know how I’ll ever manage to get one, but somehow I MUST HAVE A LES PAUL!

Now that I’ve rambled on about the Paul for a while, I’ll get back to my original subject, the Trans Siberian Orchestra. If you ever get a chance to see them play, definitely go see them. It was absolutely awesome. I’m definitely going to see them again next year. It got me so fired up that I had to come home and do some shredding of my own. But those Les Pauls…..*sigh*

I’ve had the domain name compiledcode.com for two years now, yet I’ve not really done anything with it. It’s probably one of the coolest domain names ever, but I can’t seem to find anything constructive to do with it. It spent most of the first year with a “Coming Soon” message on it, and for the last year it’s been used as a platform for me to distribute (for free) the little utility programs I’ve created. The problem is that I don’t have that many programs to give away. I mean, I do have some neat little apps, but I don’t think they’re very useful. It’s like they’re specialized, and therefore, only useful to a small group of people.

Troy has been a regular user of my Access SQL Utility, and thinks it’s an awesome program, but I’m not sure it’s really that useful, or that great. If I did post it to my website, I’d have to re-program the whole app, as it was written in VB6, and I don’t want to support a program that’s built on that language. I haven’t used VB6 for a long, long time now, and I don’t plan on going back. So I’d re-write it in C# now, if I were to re-write it all.

Troy and I have talked about my website (compiledcode.com) several times, and I never really listened to what he suggested until Thursday when he emailed the following to me:

“Got to get a goal. If your goal is to get people to your site got to make sure you offering them something. And then find things to do to get them there. Write a blog that people can sign up to that points to your site. I don’t know. It can’t just lay in the Siharra Desert and wait to be discovered. It has to be found!”

This was in response to my whining and crying about why Google never visits me anymore. After reading that, I realized that he was right. I don’t have a purpose right now, and I’m not really doing anything with the site that would drive me to keep it going, and to post more stuff to it. I need a purpose. I can’t just keep posting stuff I don’t care about to my website, because if I don’t care about it, who will? Troy really made me think about the site by emailing that to me. So at that point, I decided to take down the whole site until I could think of a direction that I wanted to take that website. Some would wonder why I would take the whole thing down. It’s simple…If I leave the old site up there, I’d just be satisified with it being like it is, and never do anything about it. But if I took it down, I’d be more likely to get something up there ASAP so that I’m not wasting $20/month for web hosting.

I can honestly say that it’s working, too. I’ve done a lot of thinking about compiledcode.com (more than I’ve done in the two years I’ve had it) and I’m getting some ideas. None have really stuck with me so far, but at least I’m brain-storming.

Troy also came up with the idea for me to make kevinadams.info a site for my blog (which I don’t use that often, either). I’d like to eventually post some music (my music) to kevinadams.info. That’s what I had in mind when I got this domain name. I’d also like to post some pics of the town I live it, as I think it’s the best place in the world to live. We’ll see how it goes.

Thanks Troy!