Speed Racer and Giant Robot Come In Handy

I am assigned to two different programs. The first is for ONO, the largest cable TV company in Spain. They are currently buying two products from us and want to buy two more. I am assigned to these two new products. The program manager is a guy I like and he likes me so he was very very happy I joined him to get this stuff done. I've done such a good job so far he wants me to take over the other two products, too. These two are problematic because a year or so ago a decision was made to let our Taiwan-based manufacturing group do these designs as well (design work and manufacturing work are two different things). They've dropped the ball on it big time and now they want me to straighten everything out.

So, that program has a customer in Spain and a development and manufacturing team in Taiwan. I have morning conference calls with Spain and evening conference calls with Taiwan.

The other program I am assigned to is for KDDI, a very large telecommunications company in Japan. This program is for a product that allows you to watch TV like a cable TV box and also transfer videos and music from the box to your phone (watching videos on your phone is a big thing in Japan, something we in the US are way behind on). This is a complicated program because there are many companies involved; we here in San Diego are specifying the requirements and doing hardware design, there is a Motorola division in Stockholm, Sweden and St Petersburg, Russia involved in some software and other software companies in Japan also involved. This program has visibility at the highest level in Motorola, too, so that adds to the pressure.

I expect to be fully occupied through January with a few trips to Sweden and Spain through the first or second quarter of '07.

I've been in all day meetings with the development team on Wednesday and now today and tomorrow with the customer and the development team. Last night I took the Swedes (software stack developers and a recent acquisition of ours) to Il Fornaio in Del Mar last night to get to know them and to let them know that they aren't working with a typical clueless American and we got along great. We talked about guitars at one point and photography and other stuff. A successful evening and I think I will bring in to the meeting tomorrow my Rickenbacker bass to show (off to) them.

Tonight I initially begged off on going out with everybody as I was tired and am trying to kick my chest cold once and for all (I promise I will be 100% next week) but later I was specifically requested that to go since the key upper managers were not available. I was the ONLY Mot San Diego guy there. Eventually someone with some financial fire power did appear and he picked up the tab. I was not looking forward to having to pay for 20 guys at Roy's (very nice Asian Fusion place in UTC).

I sat with some of the Japanese guys and the translator. At one point one of the guys says to me, "You must know about Japanese animation." I replied that I was aware of anime (the style of Japanese animation/cartoons with schoolgirl superheroes with big eyes and long legs) and other sorts of these types of things but I had never watched any of it. I started thinking about my childhood in LA and so I decided to try something. I said, "But, I remember as a kid two cartoons I liked. One was 'Kimba the White Lion' and the other was 'Speed Racer.'" We had been speaking in English so I asked the translator to help me out. Kimba didn't ring any bells and I knew that it wasn't called "Speed Racer" in Japan but I described the cartoon and the guy lit up and said, "Mach Go Go Go!" "Yes!!!" I replied remembering what the Jap name was since he'd said it. They were VERY impressed.

Then I said, "I remember one more..."
"OK..."

"Giant"
"Robot"

and all three of them went through the roof! "Giant Robotu!" So they start talking about Giant Robot. "The very last Giant Robot episode was verrrrrry sad." said one of them. "Oh, you MUST come to JAPAN!!!" the VP said.

So we bonded, me the SoCal native USian and these three Japanese guys from Tokyo because I, as a kid growing up in near-inner city LA had been privileged enough to be able to watch Speed Racer and Giant Robot as a kid 35 years ago. How many times has something I did innocuously or weirdly or whatever because I was a nerd or a bookworm or whatever I was back then as an awkward 10 year old kid come back to pay off in my life, even in a small way?

I drove home tonight wondering the what and why of these strange coincidences in my life and asking myself how many more times will I be able to claim a bond with a stranger because of them.

Late Summer Update

The RE market in SD county has cooled off; we did not sell the condo and instead decided to re-rent it (for more money than we were getting with the previous tenant) . I am fine with this; I want to keep the property.

A few months ago I quit the Christopher Cash Band basically before I was fired; others' patience was wearing thin and my interest was waning. Too much pointless and in some cases bad gigs and not enough time fo rme and my own artistic pursuits (which are profitable for me unlike the band).

I passed on an opportunity to go to a spin-off/start-up place; the position ended up being too much of a lateral move.

My trip to Germany was a success; here are some photos.

Wow! Three Months!

I was reviewing my server logs tonight just to see what I could see about my visitor trafffic for May. As usual I have well over 2000 hits to the site and the vast majority are for Rome restaurants or aqueducts.

It's funny/frustrating also to see people leeching my images even though they are never doing it maliciously. Some guy linked to my St Peter's Square From the Top of teh Dome picture, another person linked to my St Chappelle interior shot.

Summer is here and the band is gigging regularly still; we have our big Band Camp thing on June 10. My brother and I decided to sell the Oceanside condo so we spent all of May getting it ready, with two weekends of long days getting it over the hump. It looks pretty good now so we are hopeful.

The Local San Diego Music Scene

We did two gigs in 4 days this month; we played at the San Diego Mission Bay Boat and Ski Club Saturday night and then our regular once a month O'Connell's gig on Wednesday night. We were all tired but we blasted through our set with little fanfare - it was teh day after Valentine' Day and no one was out anyway.

The variety and weirdness of the local music scene just makes me laugh, scratch my head, and/or roll my eyes sort of depending on what I'm watching at the time.

We've been on the same stage with some guys who are monster players and some people who barely can play. The previous O'Connell's gig we played we were on second after a guy who we have gotten to know a little bit because we've done O'Connells with him a few times now. He is a great acoustic guitar player who can't really sing and has no stage presence, but Mark and I just sit there, jaws agape at what he can pull off musically. After us was a three piece with a guy playing a silver sparkle Gretsch Duo Jet (I think) with a pompadour and cowboy boots and a bass player playing a Hofner copy. They were rock and roll/blues based. I told Mark those guys should have had a unified look with cowboy boots, jeans and those western shirts with the embroidery on the front and pearlescent snaps down the front playing ZZ Top guitar based blues riffing stuff.

At the Boat and Ski Club that same acoustic guitar guy was also billed but he was late so we went on first and then he followed. After him was a band that was fronted by a headset-wearing acoustic guitar player and a electric violin player. These guys were very progrockish but didn't have that sense of style that I always associate with that genre - the leader wore khakis and beat up white sneakers. Definitely 50 year old nerds in real life.

We have also played O'Connell's gigs with an 8 piece white guy reggae band (one guy was dedicated to playing ukelele) whose lead guitar player looked like he was straight out of Creedence Clearwater Revival in contrast with the Phillipino bass player (who shredded on his fretless 6 string bass) and the front man and drummer who both were full on natty dread, mon and a 7 piece band whose front woman fancied herself to be the new Grace Slick/Janis Joplin (apparently, since they played a bunch of cover tunes of those two plus a few of their own that sounded a lot like those). Wednesday at O'Connell's the opener was another of those cookie cutter "chick strumming an acoustic guitar" types. Very attractive, very vivacious and fun with great stage presence but couldn't play to save her life.

Play!? Crap, Mark and I would have been happy if she could just tune her guitar correctly.

Wow! Three Months!

Lots has happened. I've:

1. Started and finished the kitchen but need to paint the walls (which I am working on)

2. Sent off ugly and received back beautiful my Rickenbacker 4003 which is now my daily player with The Christopher Cash Band.

3. Have had several successful gigs with said band.

4. Bought another property

5. Had a good Xmas because my brother bought me a Vox AD50VT amp so I had something to play my Rickenbacker 330 through.

My art.com gallery is going great; I sell somewhere between 3 and 5 images a week nowadays.