For whom the bells toll

Today, I attended what was the final weekend of what may be my last renaissance festival in this area (Does Wyoming even have these?). This year, they had a rather unique new act: A masked man with the world's only portable Carillon, ringing out some beautiful music every one and half hours, calling his show Cast In Bronze.

For those of you too lazy to click the link, a carillon, is essentially twenty or thirty some bells affixed to a frame, with the clappers rigged up with levers and cords, so all the bells can be played by one man at the helm. These aren't the little hand bells you may have heard in your church choir. These are heavy bronze beasts that range in size from "Oversized Coffee Mug" to "Liberty Bell."

Anyway it's worth listening to the audio clips on his website, but if you ever get the chance to see this live, take it. Because this thing is so unheard of, the artist takes the opportunity to flavor his act a bit, putting on a black suit and mask, referring to himself as the "Spirit of the Bells," and playing with a kind of Phantom of the Opera flourish. Several of my friends thought this was over the top, but it's a friggin' REN FAIRE. If you play a 4-ton, virtually priceless instrament that almost no one has heard of, you should get to ham it up a little, especially at an event where everyone is wearing armor, puffy shirts, fairy wings, or corsets.

First Post... EVAR!!

For years I've avoided blogs and web jornals like the plague. There's countless blogs that started out with people eager to let the world know what they have to say, only to quit because they didn't have as much to say as they think, or continue to kick out poorly written, incoherant babble, as they clutter up the intarwebs with their brain droppings.

My first exposure to the newfangled Information Superhighway with its World Wide Web was probably about 1995 or '96 in a summer vocational technical progam through my middle school. Web 1.0 was a horrid thing, filled with those vanity websites like Strongbad spoke of.

So since about 1997, I vowed to NEVER create a website without a purpose, direction, or topic. And if I should create a website, I would not simply abandon it, unloved and collecting dust. So I thought I'd kick this off with a bit of a mission statement and personal background.

About Me: Born and raised in the Pittsburgh area, I recently took a job in southwest Wyoming, where the little missing piece of Utah is. I've never lived more than 30 miles from my hometown in almost 27 years, as I find myself across two time zones where I'll be starting from zero, trying to network both socially and professionally, and learning the general layout of the area. I leave this town within two weeks of this post.

Purpose: To keep family and friends informed of my (mis)adventures in the West.

What to expect: Mostly personal data, mundane anecdotes regarding my job, my life. No one I've never met face to face will find this at all interesting. I'll try to keep it coherent, with as little rambling as possible. Other topics will include my hobbies, mostly gaming of the tabletop and electronic variety.

Tone: My Mother is going to be reading this, so I'm going to keep the vulgarity to a minimum. This is not to say I think the big 7 words are to be avoided at all costs, but if I think that I can do without, I will.

Ice Cream: I think it's yummy, as do most people, but it has nothing to do with this blog.

Posting Frequency: At interesting times, I'll be posting more often, less durning those times when I'm in the typical work->eat->sleep cycle for extented periods of time, but over all, I'd expect a post a minimum of 3 times a week. That seems like a reasonable goal, but it can change as I'm feeling either ambitious or lazy.

That should do if for now. Stay tuned, I'm headed for interesting times.