How to service a bottle jack...

I wrote a sort of how-to on my wiki:

http://themdg.org/wiki/how_to_service_a_bottle_jack

It's about how to repair a hydraulic bottle jack. I bet it works for a hydraulic floor jack too.

Anyway...just throwing that out there.

DCI 2009 post season wrap up...

I had a million posts I never wrote about the 2009 DCI season, but neglected them all. This will have to serve. Here is a screen shot from my favorite dci score checker website, dciscores.com.

It's large, but I think the guys running site do a fantastic job, and their artwork is a bit looked over. So, use it for your desktop for a while, and visit their site a few times.

Here are the top 12 for 2009. A fantastic year for Drum Corps.


Some Highlights and Lowlights:

• Crown! Talk about an up-and-comer. The new kids on the block Carolina Crown continued their upward sprint in the DCI world, landing in an unprecedented 2nd place. Look at their placement from 1992 to 2009: 16, 10, 7, 7, 8, 6, 4, 2. In a word...unstopable. Their past 3 shows have been among my all time favorites.
  
• Troopers (from Casper, WY), one of Americas longest running corps is back in the top 12. (Everyone performs for Quarterfinals, top 18 for Semis and top 12 for Finals.) Troopers haven't been in the Finals for 23 years. Their show was fantastic (West Side Story), and it's nice to see them doing to great this year.
• Vanguard. The Santa Clara Vanguard took 5th place. A bit lower than I'd have liked after seeing their show and warmups several times. Glad to see them in 6th or above though...means they get to keep their director another year. This year also marked the return of J.W. Koester as Tour Director. It's been far too long since J.W.'s been involved with the Vanguard. Welcome back, and please stay!
• Phantom Regiment, what happened? You amazed us last year with your last-second victory over Blue Devils on Finals Night. Give me chills to recall it. Your 2009 show was great, but the scores were not in your favor. Maybe because you lost J.W. Koester this year? Either way...I'm looking forward to what you bring next year. You're one of the most consistently entertaining corps out there. Keep it up.
• Cadets...Thank You! It was so nice to see a normal Holy Name Cadets show this year. After several years of shows being dominated by controversial in-show amplified narration, and NPR like feel-good political correctness, it's nice to have our inside-the-box Cadets back. And what better way to reward your loyal fans than with the old standby, West Side Story.
  
• Blue Devils. I'd really like to know...is it easy for them to win this much? Their 09 show was good. No one could really touch them, as usual. With an impressive lead for Finals (and with their counterpart Blue Devils B corps already winning the Open Class finals), they swept up their 13th Championship with relative ease. Watch out for Crown next year though...they're hungry.

A great year for Drum Corps. Still too much synch and otherwise amplified sound coming from the field. That's a tick if I ever heard one. I didn't cover them here much, but have a look at the open class scores too. So many good corps there. And signup for the DCI Fan Network to view/listen to past shows. (Or come over, and we'll watch them at my place.)

I have a project in the works dealing with past and future DCI scores. It's ambitious, and has some good potential. Stay tuned for that. Or email me if you want to help. Keywords: DCI Scores, Database, Charts/Graphs, PHP, MySQL, Flex. It's a work in progress...it may never be finished.

KNRS on FM...

Good news for talk radio listeners. KNRS (570 am) has made the move to FM. You'll find Lonsberry, Beck, Hannity, Limbaugh and Ramsey on there, not to mention Noory. You can keep Laura. With a growing number of devices featuring FM-only receivers (like my phone), it's nice to have an FM choice besides the increasingly annoying KSL. I can finally dial my listening time on that one down to zero.

The only downer I see is that KNRS is turning off their AM presence soon. Some AM stations come in stronger in remote areas than FM stations. We are gaining some clarity, but could lose some coverage. With stations moving to FM, will AM become a thing of the past (or has it already?)...a place where only strange local stations and foreign music can be found?

This weekend, as I tooled around the Heber and Wasatch valleys on a photo shoot, I found an AM station that was nothing but a guy with a monotone mechanized robot voice repeating cliches, movie lines, and song lyrics along with an occasional announcement of when his CD would be released. I listened for an hour, memorized. Come on...that's good radio. Lets not take that away.

Anyway, give KNRS a listen. It's a nice alternative to the "hey KSL...the early 90's called...they want their broadcasting style back" station on the FM "dial".