christ, 2009 already?

Yeah, yeah, New Year, resolutions, whatever.

There are a few I could make. Stuff about eating healthier,¹ exercising more,² taking better care of myself, getting out of the house more, attempting to socialize more...

You know what? Fuck it.

I don't really care about any of that. What I really ought to do is sit here and practice trombone until I either become a successful musician or burn out in the attempt. To hell with everything else.

Everything I do should be preceded with the question, "How will this make me a better musician?" And if I can't come up with a concrete, cause-and-effect answer, then maybe it needs to go... or at least be put off until after 10:00 PM, when I can't practice any more for the day.³

There's a New Year's resolution for you.

"But," you may ask, "what would you be changing then?"

Isn't it obvious?

I need to practice more. Clearly I have been slacking off.

Seriously, though... can anyone definitively prove that mental health is necessary to being a good musician?

I want to see charts. And graphs.

1. which probably involves more than one meal a day[↩]


2. actually doing okay on this, but only because I need the extra lung capacity[↩]


3. And I should be listening to recordings as I do it, which means I need headphones.[↩]

so, how did it go?

So, first an update on the last post:

It was the best of all possible outcomes... he hired a sub. Words cannot express how relieved I was.

As for the rest of the concert?

Well.

This particular gig had two performances: Saturday evening and Sunday afternoon. We were playing a few movements from a ballet suite, a piano concerto and a symphony, with an utterly forgettable Christmas medley for an encore. Two rehearsals, only one of which had low brass, resulted in a slightly frustrated section.¹

The Saturday performance was about what I expected it to be. We all ended at the same time, which is about all one can really hope for.² And then there was the Sunday performance...

We walked in and were met at the door by one of the other musicians. She may have been the orchestra librarian; I’m not really sure.

“Oh, hey, you guys have some new music on your stand.”

?

“Yeah, the soloist can’t be here today, so we’re playing some other stuff instead. You, uh, might want to warm up on stage and take a look at it.”

!

You know, I have sight-read at a performance before, but having a soloist not show was a first for me.³

I sat down on stage and the first words out of my mouth were, “This is going to be the greatest concert ever.” This was quickly followed by, “Why haven’t I invested in a hip flask yet?” The level of sarcasm in the back row only went up from there.

We rehearsed a few spots before the concert, in a slap-dash sort of way.⁴ The music wasn’t that hard... at least, not for the trombone section, and considering the circumstances, it went better than expected.⁵ I especially liked the part at the beginning of the concert where the conductor told the audience what had happened, and essentially apologized on behalf of the orchestra for any fuck-ups. Now that’s classy.

Sadly, that also appears to be the last of my gigs for the holiday season. If I were a real musician I’d have a few more, but alas, I am not. So, back to my hole practice room I go until after the New Year. Here’s hoping I survive the holidays.⁶

1. Oh, we’re not taking repeats in this piece? Good to know. Would have been better to know before we started the piece, of course.[↩]


2. I don’t really think Dvorak intended his 6th symphony to be quite that atonal, but whatever.[↩]


3. Incidentally, we never did find out what happened to the pianist. He seemed fine Saturday night, and while I don’t know what could possibly take someone down that quickly, it’s probably something pretty serious. So, I hope he’s okay.[↩]


4. All this while the audience members were milling around in the lobby, probably wondering what the hell was going on.[↩]


5. In other words, we didn’t train wreck.[↩]


6. Alcohol will probably be involved.[↩]

it's true, you never really leave high school

Oh. My. God.

This weekend? There could be drama.

Wait, let me back up.

My high school music experience was less than stellar. My first year, our instrumental program consisted of one band with maybe twenty people in it. My high school was only offering the band director position part-time, which made it difficult to find good candidates. My first trombone instructor actually considered applying for this job until he found this out. Apparently he also had a fascinating conversation with the school principal about why you can’t really march with only twenty people.¹

So, for my first two years of high school they had newly hired this one fellow. And, he was incompetent. Staggeringly so. So much so that even a high school freshman could tell he had no idea what he was doing. There are many anecdotes I could recount... like the time he wandered off during a playoff game to get a cheeseburger and left a student conducting the pep band for the entire second half of the game. Or the time he made my normally calm and laid back friend so furious that he punched a wall and broke his hand.

The entire band hated him. Those of us that did honor bands were ashamed to admit what school we went to, and couldn’t bring ourselves to applaud when asked to thank our music teachers. I almost quit band because of him.² Even now if you mention his name to any of us that were in that band, you will probably see open hostility... and as bitter and cynical as I am, I am rarely actually hostile. After he left, a formerly retired band director took over, and it was like night and day. I couldn’t believe what he managed to do with our sad little group in just one year, and it only made me feel more cheated.

We later heard through the grapevine that he had taken another teaching job with a middle school, and then had had a nervous breakdown. And we laughed. The people that didn’t know him thought we were horrible... all those that did remember him laughed along with us. The last I heard, he was doing construction.

This could be shrugged off as the biased memories of an overdramatic teenager.³ And, you know, we weren’t exactly easy on him. You’d be amazed at the shenanigans you can get away with when you’re 14 and your teacher doesn’t know what he’s doing, and the trombones were the worst offenders. Now I look back on those days and shake my head a bit. I was the token voice of reason in that group,⁴ but I didn’t really try as hard as I could have, because I had lost all respect for our teacher.

However. My undergraduate school just happened to be the same place that he got his teaching certification for this state. And the faculty there remembered him. Oh, did they. And they took great pains to make sure I understood that he had never actually attended the school as a student and that the music faculty had had no say in the certification procedure. I believe the words "we all knew he shouldn’t have been teaching" were used.

Oh, and also? Apparently he had to do his student teaching twice... because he failed the first time.

I could say more, but you probably get the idea.

Anyway. The other day I had to go pick up some music for a gig I’m playing this weekend. And as I was initialing the sign-out sheet, guess whose name I saw under second clarinet?

I actually physically backed away from the clipboard.⁵

Now, it’s been a long time, and I would personally rather just let it all go and never speak to him again. I have this feeling, however, that he’s going to come up and talk to me and act like we’re all buddies, and I’m going to end up biting my tongue and being politely insincere. Or, you know, maybe he blames my classmates and I for being less than cooperative. An actual fight would be hilarious, but I rather not deal with the resulting drama. I’m not a big fan of drama, and prefer to avoid it whenever possible.

So, here’s hoping he never looks behind him. I’m shooting for quiet and anticlimactic here. However, if he does decide to start some shit?

Oh, it’s on.⁶

1. My band never marched. It was the only good thing about high school.[↩]


2. My youth symphony is what saved me... I don’t know what I would have done without them.[↩]


3. I know, this is redundant.[↩]


4. and because of that I never actually got into trouble for any of it[↩]


5. It’s a good thing no one was in the office at the time, because that would have looked quite strange.[↩]


6. Note: this will probably not happen.[↩]

a thanksgiving interlude

I hope everyone has a lovely Smallpox-Blankets Thanksgiving Day. Mine will be spent in the kitchen, doing prep work and asking the important questions like, "How long has that been in the oven? Did you set the timer?" I prefer this, because it means I spend less time talking to family.¹ I have also made an apple pie and cranberry sauce from scratch,² although we still had to buy the canned stuff because some people in this family will only eat jellied cranberry sauce that is the same shape as the can. I will admit to a certain amount of nostalgia here, but seriously.

I told my mother that my terms for helping in the kitchen were an unlimited supply of both caffeine and alcohol, which she felt was reasonable. There's a certain technique to surviving a holiday dinner with the family, and while I did pretty well last year I'm hoping to refine my technique.

1. I start with coffee. This is key, although too much too soon can have its own hazards.³

2. At an appropriate time during the day,⁴ I switch to beer. Not too much, because there is still cooking to be done and cooks to be monitored, but enough to take the edge off.

3. Dinner goes with wine. Especially handy because no one can really keep track of how much I've had.

4. For dessert I usually switch back to coffee, only maybe with a shot of something. Maybe a couple of shots. It'll be a judgment call.

5. Once everyone leaves, anything goes. Hard alcohol helps counteract all the coffee I had at the beginning of the day, so that I can fall asleep. Probably should wait until the dishes are done, though... it's only courteous.

Wish me luck.

1. No, no, I love answering questions about how my career's going nowhere. Please, ask some more.[↩]


2. I actually volunteered for this... I think it's a subtle form of self-harm.[↩]


3. If you can feel your eyebrows, you've probably had a little too much.[↩]


4. like, say, when your guests start to arrive[↩]

another one? already?

Yes, I'm trying to post more frequently. No, I don't know how long it'll last, but I figure I owe it to my three (3) readers to give it a go. Maybe if I keep these short I won't run out of material as quickly.¹

Anyway. In honor of my last day at the repair shop, I present the following phone conversation.²



"So, you're calling to ask about a... red flute? What's the serial number? [Pause.] It doesn't, huh? Well, you know what the deal is with those flutes with no serial number, don't you? [Another pause.] They can only play really lame music."



Thank you and good night.

1. Does anyone else believe that? I didn't think so.[↩]


2. Well, half a phone conversation... I couldn't hear the other half.[↩]

overheard in a private lesson

"So, what are you guys working on?"

"We got a bunch of Christmas music this week."

"Yeah, it is that time, isn't it? Okay, let's see. [papers rustling] Hmm... 'Coventry Carol'... written out in pencil... and then photocopied. Awesome. Okay. A medley, that’s nice... wait, what’s this? 'Jingle Bells Forever'? [Pause.] This is... a combination of 'Jingle Bells' and 'Stars and Stripes?'"

"Um. Yeah."

"...Why would you do that?"

"I... I don't really know."

"Right. Okay. We... won't be working on that one. Ever."

"Yeah, I don’t blame you."

a manifesto of sorts

(As you can see, I’ve been sitting on this one awhile, and after you read it you’ll understand why. Some parts of this may be serious. Some may be satire. I leave it to you to decide which is which.)

--------------------------------------------------------------


I am a bit preoccupied with musicality.

Trouble is, I don’t really have the vocabulary to explain my thoughts about it. There's a quote by Steve Martin that is apropos: "Talking about music is like dancing about architecture." And I certainly don’t have the ability to reproduce it yet when I play, which means that when I go off on a rant¹ no one knows what the hell I’m talking about.

This has sometimes led to the following exchange during a lesson:

"I’m having trouble with [insert piece], I need help."

"Okay, let’s hear it. [I play.] It sounds fine to me, what’s the problem?"

"I don’t know! It’s just not right, and I don’t know how to fix it."

"...Right. Let’s move on for now, and we’ll just...come back to that later."

Pete and I had a discussion once, when he was describing a recital that was "so perfect it was boring." My points were 1.) doesn’t that imply that the only way to create musical interest is to make a mistake? And 2.) isn’t boredom an imperfection? In other words, if it was boring, was it really perfect?²

I set my standards high, I know.³ In my practice I’m lucky if I achieve "well, I can’t hear anything wrong," and even if I could reliably reach this tepid form of supposed perfection I couldn’t settle for it. Ultimately I will never match my idea of how I ought to sound. Trying to explain this to others makes me appear slightly unbalanced.

So what is it I want, anyway?

...

I want the audience to be wide-eyed and awestruck. I want to break them and remake them, all in the space of an hour-long concert. I want tears and euphoria and rage and fear. I want people that are passing by, people that don’t even like the trombone, to stop in mid-step when the music starts, and I want them on their knees by the time it finishes. I want to reach straight through their conscious mind into the primal center of their brain, and I want their souls to tremble.

I want to make music that shines so brightly it hurts.

I might possibly be asking too much.⁴

...

See? I have somehow managed to take what should have been a perfectly innocuous discussion of musicality and turn it into the megalomaniacal ramblings of a mad scientist.⁵ I am not sure how this happened. As it stands it reads less like casual entertainment and more like something that would make a psychiatrist raise an eyebrow and reach for the panic button.⁶

I will drive myself crazy trying to achieve this. I can’t learn to settle for what is "good enough," even if it’s good enough to get me a real job.⁷ Instead I will wear though the threadbare fabric of my sanity while sitting in a practice room for hours upon hours, struggling towards an ideal I can’t really describe and can only barely imagine.

No, I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Maybe I just need to drink more.

1. (as I am wont to do)[↩]


2. Thanks to all my teachers for putting up with what is clearly obsessive insanity on my part, by the way. Clearly I am not the easiest student, and you all have my profoundest sympathy.[↩]


3. Stop laughing.[↩]


4. Let's not even mention the clichés I've abused here.[↩]


5. I'll show them all, though. Fools.[↩]


6. I don’t actually know that psychiatrists have a secret panic button that summons doctors in white coats to throw you in a straitjacket and carry you off, but it seems like something they ought to have, doesn’t it?[↩]


7. And right now I am so far from this that I shouldn’t even be considering what lies beyond it any time soon.[↩]

i get the best gigs

So I wrote this post about musicality the other day, and it took a different path than I was expecting, and I’ll need just a little more time to edit it into something resembling sanity.

Meanwhile, this happened.

...

I played a pops concert recently. Pretty basic pops concert fare, which is all that needs to be said about that. It was an outdoor concert, in a field overlooking the water. I wasn’t familiar with the singer we performed with, but apparently she has a significant following. It should have been a wholly unremarkable concert.

So, how many things can go wrong with an outdoor gig?

Transportation. The original plan was to have us park in a cemetery parking lot a few miles away and then bring us in on shuttle buses, because there was no parking at the venue (although a few people questioned this once we saw the venue). Anyway, the shuttle buses were an hour late.¹

Rain. We’re in the northwest, so this is a contingency that must always be planned for. The stage was covered, but was not properly equipped to deal with the possibility of both rain and wind. It was okay at first when it was barely a sprinkle, but then it started pouring, and the brass players got soaked, and the roof started dumping water on the timpani, and the string players around the edge of the stage huddled desperately over their instruments, and then the orchestra manager stopped rehearsal and sent us all to seek sanctuary in the tent that had been set up behind the stage.² We resumed rehearsal once the deluge had passed, but we watched the sky for the rest of the day, and I had to play a concert while sitting on a wet chair.

I started learning about union rules that day. I was unsurprised to learn that no one can make union musicians play in the rain, but I also learned about the minimum temperature for an outdoor gig.³ This subject came up during the performance, when I started to wish I had worn a heavier concert black.⁴ The woodwinds got little heaters to keep their instruments safe, but the brass had to tough it out. Not unbearable by any means, just a little chilly.

Also? Train tracks running behind the stage, with trains that went by at inopportune times during both the rehearsal and the performance, loud enough to drown out the music. The audience took it in stride, and I tried really hard not to laugh too obviously.

Good times.

1. Yes, this means there was a large group of people dressed in all black loitering in a cemetery parking lot. No, the irony was not lost on us.[↩]


2. A tent with a grass floor, even. I didn’t mind, but apparently people with allergies were suffering a bit.[↩]


3. It was either 60° or 65°, depending on who you asked. I’ll have to look it up one of these days.[↩]


4. If I had been smart and looked at a map I’d have seen we were next to the water and dressed appropriately.[↩]

walking the line between mockery and self-deprecation

I've been losing taking auditions lately. And while most have been unremarkable, I've come across a few things that were... peculiar. Orchestra names have been omitted to protect the innocent.¹

1. A lot of auditions have been opening with a solo lately. I had been led to believe that this was more of a semifinal/final round thing, but apparently times are a-changing. It's kind of refreshing, actually.²

2. Why would any orchestra take their audition materials out of an excerpt book? I mean, it's a good resource for students, but one would think an orchestra would want the actual parts for an audition. It just makes me uneasy when I pull out my copies of the original parts and the organizer starts to look worried.

3. In my (admittedly limited) experience, the first round of most auditions is usually less than five minutes. Between five and ten minutes seems a bit long, but certainly not unreasonable. Twenty to thirty minutes is right out.³

4. When there aren't very many people auditioning, I can see how there might only be one round. Deciding to e-mail everyone the results later instead of making a decision that day was a little unorthodox, but didn't really bother me. Announcing that the finalists from that first round will each play a trial concert with the orchestra before a final decision is made isn't unheard of, but seems a little odd for a small per-service group. When all of this adds up to an acknowledgment that a final decision probably won't be made until close to a year after the audition? Man, I dunno. I'm not complaining, just... baffled.⁴

All of these observations are made purely in a spirit of love and compassion and personal amusement, I swear. And if anything mentioned here is actually perfectly common and normal and I've been horribly misled? Please, let me know so I can be prepared for the next time it happens.

1. I mean, so far they've all been really nice people, and I don't want to imply that any of these things caused me to lose any auditions. No, that was all my doing.[↩]


2. I'd probably be happier about it if I didn't hate our solo literature so much.[↩]


3. Honestly, I should have been cut after the first five.[↩]


4. Yes, I am one of the finalists, which is how I know about this. I really wasn't expecting it after how I played.[↩]

but i don't even have a woodshed

So, how do other brass players manage to practice after they graduate?

I am currently staying with family. I didn’t think my sanity would survive this long, but somehow it remains intact. This can probably be attributed to my current schedule, which consists of hiding in my room and practicing all day. One of the side effects of this lifestyle is that I have completely lost the ability to hold a conversation with non-musicians, because I simply don’t do anything else. As for "balance" or "mental health," well, I’ll get back to you after I have a job. Mental health is clearly overrated, and I can’t do anything about it anyway until I have a job that provides health insurance.¹

I tried practicing at my father’s condo a few times, but finally one of the neighbors complained, and so now I can’t really visit him until after he finishes his move.² In the woman’s defense, she was extremely nice and apologetic about it. On the other hand, it was the middle of the day and there were no mitigating circumstances offered.³ Basically what it comes down to is that I can’t comfortably practice when I know that it’s pissing people off. As it stands, I am currently living in a house with five other people, and while no one here has complained and they’re all gracious enough to pretend that they enjoy it, I still feel a little guilty from time to time. Trombone practice is not the most enthralling to listen to, nor is it the quietest.⁴

So, what is everyone else doing? Apartment practice is highly impractical and makes people angry. Those of us that need to practice the most can’t exactly afford a house. Now that I’m no longer a student I can’t live in use the school practice rooms anymore. And the Silent Brass system and/or practice mutes are only temporary solutions and will do strange things to your playing if used exclusively, as most brass player can probably attest to.

Living with my family does make me a little twitchy, but I could go get a crap job somewhere and make enough to move out if I really needed to. However, not only would a job severely impact my current practice schedule⁵, I would also be hard-pressed to find a place to rent that I could practice in for 5+ hours a day without making others’ lives miserable. I can’t be the only musician in this situation. So... what is everyone else doing?

Seriously, tell me. I need to know.




(yes, i am still enamored with footnotes. i'll get bored with them soon enough.)

1. Although being uninsured is pretty awesome. [↩]


2. I can hear you thinking the word "obsessive" right now. Stop it.[↩]


3. i.e. “someone’s trying to sleep”[↩]


4. Long tones and slow slurs at fortissimo for an hour? Rock on.[↩]


5. and my will to live[↩]

also, zarathustra is on notice

My family has been enduring my practice schedule for months now. Overall they've been gracious about it, considering that it takes up most of the day¹ and is not exactly quiet. They'll even occasionally attempt to compliment me, which while well-meant is usually good for a laugh.

"Oh, I enjoyed your trombone playing."

"...I was playing long tones, but thanks."

I'm pretty much the only musician in the family. There are a few people on my father's side of the family that remember playing in high school band, but by and large the concept of orchestral trombone mostly escapes them. Classical is definitely not their genre of choice.

So out of the numerous orchestral excerpts, concertos, cello suites, etudes and everything else that I work on daily, what is the one excerpt that everyone comments on specifically? The one they like so much?






Of course it's the Ride. How could it not be?

As many people know, the Ride and I have History. Those of you who don't know probably shouldn't ask. No, really. You might think you are interested, but I can assure you that you are not. Besides, to some extent every low brass player has History with the Ride.

It isn't my worst excerpt.² It is simply the excerpt that pops up again and again, mocking me and my career choice. It represents hours and hours of my life that I will never get back, and I still can't play the damned thing quite right. It is also the one excerpt out of all trombone literature that everyone in the world knows (or, at least, thinks they know).

Again and again, the scene plays out. "I really enjoyed that one song you were playing. You know, the one that goes..." followed by a feeble attempt to sing something that might bear a passing resemblance to Wagner if you use your imagination. And I smile and nod, and attempt to keep from cringing.

Now, don't get me wrong. I am not suggesting that anyone in my family should be able to sing it accurately. One of the many reasons that this excerpt plagues us all is because it is fucking hard to play well. All I'm saying is that if you take the above scene and play it over and over and over again throughout the years, and then add hours upon hours of Wagnerian self-flagellation dedicated practice, you might understand why trombonists sometimes feel as if no one plays the Ride correctly. Ever.³

Ever.

It has become my personal nemesis. We each have one, and it looks like the Ride is mine.

The solution? More practice, clearly.

1. It's pretty much all I do now, because what most people would call "unhealthy obsession" I call "getting things done." [↩]


2. No, you don't want to ask me about that either. See above. [↩]


3. If you enjoy living on the edge and want to make a low brass player twitch, just walk up to them while they are practicing the Ride and say, "Your rhythm's wrong." After that you should probably run away very quickly. [↩]

sometimes it's a stereotype because it's true

So, as one of my friends may have mentioned, there's this website out there called Ravelry. It's sort of like Facebook for knitting and crochet, and I've been wasting a lot of time there lately. However, I have been knitting more because of it, so it counts as being productive.

(shut up it does too)

Like Facebook, people can form their own groups with different themes. While there are no trombone-related groups (shocking, that), I did stumble across a group geared toward french horn players that knit. It's basically exactly what I would have imagined such a group to be, especially if you browse through the group discussion threads.

"What effect would wearing fingerless gloves while playing have on my sound? Would it make the horn flat?"

"How would a knitted hand guard affect the tone quality? How would it compare to a leather/vinyl one?"

I love you guys. I really really do.

it's probably quantum

My practice sessions are beginning to warp the fabric of space and time.

Lately I've been starting at about 2PM with the Breathing Gym. This takes me about an hour. If I had the book I could probably make it shorter, but sadly all I have is the dorktastic DVD. (Slightly irrelevant: is it weird for someone to knit while doing breathing exercises? Or is it just multitasking?)

I've been using this warm-up lately. Supposedly if you pick and choose your exercises it should take about 30 minutes. I probably picked and chose a few too many, and then I started "supplementing" it with other exercises that I've picked up here and there. It now takes me an hour and a half. I have no idea how this happened. I'm counting it as fundamentals work.

I don't know exactly how long I spend on scales, because I usually whip through them as quickly as possible to keep my quality of life from degrading too rapidly work on my technique. 15-20 minutes? Then there's my daily Rochut, where I do the whole "as written/8vb/tenor clef/tenor clef 15vb" rigmarole. This should take me 30 minutes, except that I'm working from book 2 now and so it's more like an hour. (Some etudes are pages long. What the hell? I'm afraid to even consider getting book 3.)

I've been doing the tone exercise from the Vernon book every other day, which is half an hour. On alternate days I started doing some exercises from this routine (mainly the Schlossberg-related slow slurs) for endurance purposes. (I shamelessly stole this idea from a friend.) I haven't decided how many to do yet... last time I stopped after an hour had gone by.

I try to spend some time on solos and/or excerpts. You know, actual music? However, at some point I look at the clock and realize that it's almost 8PM and I'd better wrap it up because my stepfather's mother will be going to bed and I don't have it in me to keep playing while a 97-year-old woman tries to sleep. So where did that six hours go? Sure, there are breaks between practice sessions (I've started to use pain as an indicator again. Not smart). Yes, I do have to stop for dinner because apparently I have to eat on a regular basis or something. Still, either I regularly devote six hours to this and still don't have enough time to play any real music, or time flows differently when I pick up my trombone. I'm not ruling either explanation out.

Starting earlier in the day might be helpful... or I might just continue to add on more and more routines until I die. Or I could try and accept that there's no way for me to practice everything I want to work on every day. I think we all know that's not going to happen.

At least I have my instrument back. It was in the shop for a week. A stressful, anxious, highly despondent week.

I think we can all agree that I have some issues.

this is what happens when i can't practice

Okay, so Jen talked me into this.

My Johari Window
My Nohari Window

Here's your chance to let me know what you really think of me (because I'm sure all two of my readers have been holding back all this time).

In other news, I really really want my trombone back. After this, I may never have it repaired again. I'm not angry, because apparently the main repair technician has been down with the flu and a fever for several days. I'm just suffering from mild separation anxiety and have been frantically knitting to ward off the shakes. I can quit anytime I want.

a technology tangent

So, my parents got a new computer for the holidays. 24 inch wide-screen monitor, ridiculously big hard drive, more RAM than they really need... and Windows Vista. I’ve only been working with it for a few days, and already I think I might hate it. About all I can say in its defense is that it is shiny. Shiiiiiiiiny.

Why am I the one working on it? I, apparently, am the de facto “computer person” in the household, which is a glorified way of saying that I know how to point and click. My parents are a little technologically-challenged, which is a nice way of saying that they began their journey into the world of computers with AOL. Thankfully, they’ve moved past that dark and dismal stage, but there’s still work to be done.

There were a few settings I had to turn off. Like the annoying little prompt that pops up every time I tell the computer to do something and asks for permission to do what I’ve just told it to do. That had to go. I also sneaked in one night and turned off half the sound settings. I doubt my parents have even noticed.

I had to convince them that moving a program from one computer to the other is not a matter of putting the program files on a CD-R and pasting them into a new computer. I agree with them that it should be that simple, but since it’s Microsoft I know it really isn’t, and they’ve either lost track of the original installation files, or it just hadn’t occurred to them.

I’ve been helping them transfer files from the old computer to the new. It hasn’t been pretty. We have the cable, and after a few false starts we finally found one program that mostly works, except for when it freezes up and shuts down. (The first time it didn’t exactly freeze; it vanished completely. No error message, just *poof* gone.)

I finally narrowed it down to one folder that the program refused to transfer no matter which computer I was working from. It was just a folder filled with image files of flowers and birds and similar pictures, but apparently Laplink PCSync hates springtime because it would not transfer it, period. That’s what CD-R’s are for, I guess.

And then I had to figure out where the files went, which wasn’t easy because Vista has moved everything around. They’ve done away with My Computer. In fact, they seem to have done away with putting “My” in front of everything. So now it’s just “Documents” and “Pictures” and such. I actually kind of prefer this, except that it makes things much harder to find at first. And while the “Turn Off Computer” menu is still under the Start menu, it is now hidden behind this tiny button with a tinier arrow on it. I have to come out and find it for my stepfather every time he wants to shut it off.

Oh, and then there’s this:

I have dubbed this the Fisher-Price desktop. Apparently the normal icons are just too hard for my parents to see, even on a screen the size of a small planet, so the icons have been resized to resemble small continents. The scale might not be entirely obvious from the picture, but I swear to you that you could hold up a 50¢ piece and it would be the same size. This is not an exaggeration in the slightest.

They’ve already had to do one forced restart, which involved unplugging the computer entirely because it would not shut down any other way. And while I am not a computer tech in any way, I do know that if your computer is offering to boot up in Safe Mode it is usually a bad sign.

So, Vista? The jury’s still out, but the more I use my parents’ computer, the more I appreciate my XP laptop.

It is awfully shiny, though.