KDHX's Art Attack 4

 Got to hang out at KDHX's Art Attack 4 this past weekend.  It was a pretty neat event.  It put up 32 local artists head to head against each other.  The popular paintings got to move on while the losers got to be auctioned off for KDHX.  The even bigger losers paintings that did not get to the threshold bid amount got brutally destroyed by the wheel of destruction.

Some Photos of Summer/Fall 2012 (Part 3)

More shenanigans.  The upper two are some images from Loufest.  While I was only there for the second half of the first day, it was a pretty cool event.  Lots of great music.  Would of been there longer but I did have the Tie Dye event just before this one.  Long day though.  You should check it out.

Next handful are from the U City Jazz Festival It was a good event with a few minor tweaks that could be made.  Lots of great jazz going on and good food.  It was also slim picking on food as well.

Should be caught up with photo's at this point.  If you got this far, I hope you enjoyed my summer.

Curiosities: Wobbly Tables

Sometimes curiosities happen when you least expect them to.  I've moved a lot of tables in volunteering and a curiosity that I stumbled upon was the possibility of an easier solution to wobbly tables.  Turns out that there is an easy way to take care of the issue of wobbly tables.  Mind you I have not tried it yet but I do intend to with the intent of reporting back the results here.  The solution turns out to be pretty simple.

The solution assumes that the legs are of the same lengths or are in the same plane.  If they are not then the problem is that you have a wobbly table.  According to my second souce, tiled floors may also cause problems.  The solution should work for any uneven surface even your back yard.  The solution turns out to be to turn the table around it's center.  If you can keep the table roughly centered, the table can be rotated and a stable (non-wobbly) position can be found.  Pretty simple, pretty elegant.

Like I said above, I haven't verified it yet but my second source seems pretty good at assuring that it does work.  Assuming that the legs are of equal length (on the same geometric plane) and not on tiled floors.

Source 1: Scientific American
Source 2: Original Paper: Mathematical Table Turning from November 14, 2005.

Some Photos of Summer/Fall 2012 (Part 2)

More photos of stuff that I did this summer. First one is from one of the Thursday's at the Intersection out in front of The Fox.  JC Brooks & the Uptown Sound were the main act for this concert.  The concert also doubled as a fairwell party for one of the KDHX directors.  It's not to far off from Circus Flora that I've mentioned before in other posts.  

Movie:Hotel Transylvania

Hotel Transylvania

During Credits: yes

After Credits: no

Wine, DIne, and Jazz 2012

Past weekend was the Wine, DIne, and Jazz Festival.  Pretty good event.  Unfortunately the weather didn't fully cooperate.  Friday night (Oct 19th) was cold and the St. Louis Cardinals were in the NLCS playoff series.  But we did have a screen out there to watch part of the game that night.

Saturday (Oct 20) was busier.  Loads more people relative to the night before.  Seemed to taper off during the night.  The night went smooth though.  Certainly kept busy throughout the night helping folks out.  That's the way it goes sometimes.

Uni-vall Vision Shameless Plug

Just trying stuff out and seeing what happens with stuff.

Uni-ball Vision Stick Roller Ball Pen - Blue - Rollerball Pens (Google Affiliate Ad)  are great pens.  Overall the Uni-ball folks can do no wrong by me.  There was a point when I would "borrow" pens that I could use for writing.  But when I discovered Uni-ball, just wow.  Very nice smooth writing and very clear lines.  It's about the only pens I'll ever use for writing.

Only major complaint is that the ink can smear sometimes.  Otherwise it is the only pens that I'll ever use.

Anyways that is all.  See what happens with this.  Mostly curious to see what happens with the Google Affiliate Ad thingy.  Full disclosure about this post.  I'm just trying it out.  But besides that I do seriously love these pens, they are awesome.

Some Photos of Summer/Fall 2012 (Part 1)

I've been meaning to upload photos of what I've been doing.  So for starters here are some photos from Circus Flora from back in June.  I don't claim them to be great photos.  That being said, what you are getting are photos of passing by stuff while being stuck in that point of view.  

Circus Flora tent out behind Powell Symphony Hall

  See more below.

KDHX Fall 2012 Membership Drive

Helped out with the KDHX membership drive this past weekend.  If you haven't donated yet, you should.  KDHX plays such a wide variety of music that you are guaranteed to find something you like on there.  You want electronic, you got Beep Beep, Boop Boop on Wednesday nights from 9pm to 11pm.  You want blues, you got:  Soul Selector,  Blursday,  Blues in the Night to name a very few. International music:  Radio Rio,  Folks of the World, or  Reggae Reunion.  Check out the show schedule.  There is so much to explore at KDHX.

Seriously check out the show schedule page and find some great music.  There is seriously lots of good stuff there.  If you can't afford to send in money but happen to be be in St. Louis, you can volunteer with the station and do lots of cool stuff there.  

Strange Folk Festival 2012

Spent last weekend at the Strange Folk Festival.  I got to help out with setting up the 10 different bands that the event had.  Special thanks go out to the The Luminary Center for the Arts for also helping out with the bands and getting them scheduled to preform and a bit of the set up.  Really need to learn more about sound engineering but I'm getting there.

Both days seemed to have a very nice sized crowd in attendance.  Lots of interesting vendors this year showing off their warez.  Very cool event as always.

Volunteer hour wise it put me at 300 hours on the nose.  Pretty rare to land exactly on a number but cool.

Think the complaint towards the event being gay friendly is crap.  It's everybody friendly and it happen to use Nyan Cat as part of the advertising.  Because NyanCat is funny in an annoying way.

Balloons, Peanuts, Jazz, and Sound Cloud

2nd weekend of selling peanuts for the Kiwanis but also made balloon animals for the kids.  Pretty good times.  Still much to learn in terms of making art with balloons.

Helped out at the  U City Jazz Festival with KDHX.  Overall a good event for it's second year.  Lots of jazz to be had there and giving out stickers.  Just needed a few more food vendors and lights at sunset.

Also can't forget to listen to Sound Cloud.  You should listen to the KDHX Sound Cloud Page.  Lots of hardworking people uploading 25 years worth of live performances recorded at the KDHX studio/station.

I'm up to 275.5 hours of volunteering.  It's not about numbers but still interesting number.

Weather: It sucks sometimes.

Yet another night of an event that got rained out.  The Shiloh, Illinois Homecoming is tonight (9/7/2012) and tomorrow (9/8/2012).  Luckily only tonight is forecasted for some rain.  That's the way it goes sometimes.  Much like boomerangs, you can do everything perfect and something out of your control with throw you off.

Still have the O'Fallon Kiwanis and American Red Cross blood drive tomorrow as well as the Shiloh Homecoming for tomorrow.  Can't quite give blood this time around because of some poison sumac.  It sucks.  Still can help out with setup and tearing down and maybe a bit of studying for my midterm.

I found that the medicated body powder (Gold Bond has a version but I got the generic stuff) is good stuff for the oozing that you get with the poison sumac.  Seemed like it was oozing for a while.  A good cleaning and dusting of the powder and it just stopped right up.  Still have the itchies though and that totally sucks.  I have been using some of the Cortisone 10 for those and it's been helping for a little while.

Midterm wise, it's a basic finance class.  Interesting stuff.  Covers corporate finance and touches a  very little bit of accounting.  Pretty straight forward and covering the important topics.  Feel overall pretty confidant with it, except for maybe the essay questions but a little more reading should help out.

That's whats going on tonight.  Lots of volunteering tomorrow.

.

Weather....It doesn't always play nice

This upcoming weekend was suppose to be the Midwest WingFest (Aug 31 - Sept 1).  Always a bummer when things get rained out.  Sometimes its a few minute thing and be okay for going on but sometimes not so much.  Local forecasts are predicting 3+ inches of rain over Friday and Saturday with the possibility of 10".  May just get some wings from one of the list of participating wings places and that should cover me for wings this weekend.

If boomerangs have taught me anything, its that everything can be set up perfect but can still be thrown off by weather.

Finished my Competent Communicator

About a month ago I did manage to finish my Competent Communicator from the basic manual from Toastmasters.  Did speech 10 with a "Retrospective Icebreaker" that covered where I've been since I've been a Toastmaster.    I've gotten my advanced manuals, got the Entertaining Speaker and the Humorous Speaker.  May possibly be a theme there.  It's all good though.  It gives a continuity to it.  Should be able to play each book off of each other and learn more than the sum of the parts.  Will be interesting to see where all of this goes.

Art, Tie Dye, LouFest, and Running Totals

Busy weekend over August 24-26, 2012.  Hung out at the Midwest Salute To The Arts, The Shanti & KDHX Tie Dye Fundraiser, and LouFest.  Pretty neat.  Got to help out artists on Friday and Sunday and talk with them.  Got to meet a neat lady that makes didgeridoos.  Also tore down the event and consolidated rental equipment and electrical cords.

The Shanti and KDHX tie dye event was cool.  Got to tie dye a few shirts for other volunteer events.  Turned out pretty well.  Pretty simple process of scrunching up your shirt and wrapping rubber bands where you want them.  It's kinda cool knowing that I can now tie dye my own shirts.  The "tie dye" shirts you can buy at the store seem so generic.  They all look the same.  When you actually do your own tie dye you get the imperfections and that's the way it should be.  No two shirts should ever be the same.  Similar at most but very unique and different.  A lot like boomerangs in that regard.  No two boomerangs should ever be exactly the same, as much as they look like it.  Boomerangs should fly similar but different.  All part of the fun in tie dye and boomerangs.

Got to hang out at LouFest.  Saw Little Barrie, Son Volt, Phantogram, and Dinosaur Jr.  Lots of great music at the event.  Meet a lot of fans of KDHX as well.  Gave away a lot of stickers, fans, and station info.  Even wandered the crowds to give away stickers.  The musician were very melodious and gave me an idea for a new KDHX give away.  The idea has been passed up to the station folks and we shall see where it goes.

I do enjoy the process of spending a weekend volunteering at local events and radio stations.  It gives people a chance to meet their community.

On a side note, it does get me to wonder about organized service groups.  I am a member of the Kiwanis and frequently hear about Rotary.  Seems like they are all in need of members but I still never hear about them, at least from members themselves.  If I weren't a member of Kiwanis, I probably would not know about them, nor Rotary.  Attendance policy is another story.

Think I will try to include stats of how far I've gone hour wise with volunteering as I do them.  I'm not going to retroactivly update posts but I will continue them forward from here.  Therefore I will give the stats as of the details of this post.  Started logging at the 2011 Midwest Salute To The Arts last August.  Moving forward I will only post the cumulative for 2012 and then at some point stand out the year end total.

The totals as of the completion of these events are:
Event year (Aug 2011 to Aug 2012 Midwest Salute To The Arts): 330 hours
Cumulative 2012: 247

KDHX, Thursdays @ The Intersection, and JC Brooks & The Uptown Sound

Volunteered at yet another very cool KDHX and Grand Center event that featured  JC Brooks & The Uptown Sound.  It also happend to be a fairwell party for one of the KDHX fellers.  It was a good show with very awesome soulful sounds.  The band had a merch table for your collections and I did pretty well there.   Love volunteering at a radio station.  Get to see a lot of great events around town and hang out with awesome people.

Volunteering End of June, Start of July

It's been a bit since I've put up a volunteer post.  It's been a slow July for the most part.  Since Circus Flora in June, I got to usher at the Sheldon Concert Series with KDHX where John Henry & The Engine warmed up the crowd.  Jason Isbell & The 400 Unit was the headline group. It was a light crowd but a very good show.  Combination of country and rock with a tones of the blues. That was on the 29th of June.

On June 30 I helped out at Spencer Kennel and Pet Rescue.  It's a neat place with a lot of animals that need homes. If you need a place for your pets to stay for a bit, it's a good place to board your pet for a few days.

Movie: Ice Age: Continental Drift

 Ice Age: Continental Drift 

During the Credits:  Extra animation with the stars singing the theme song.
After the Credits: None

Source:
http://www.mediastinger.com/ice-age-continental-drift-2012-extras-during-the-credits/

Movies:Ted and People Like US

Movies opening June 29 on IMDB.com

Ted
During Credits:  No
After Credits: No

People Like Us

During Credits:  No
After Credits: No

Circus Flora 2012

Got to help out at Circus Flora.  Pretty neat show and a neat place to volunteer at.  One of the easy opportunities out there for a show.  It has death defying "stunts".  It has comedy and ooh's and aah's.  Check it out sometime.

Show business is a fickle beast.  Things definitely went wrong.  Most people wouldn't of noticed.  When you watch the show multiple times though, the variations are noticeable.  The cast handled those moments perfectly.  I've helped out over several shows and there were subtle differences.  One on the ariel acts was injured during part of the show.  Didn't see that show.  She is fine, just ended up with a dislocated shoulder.  Unfortunately out for the rest of the run.  It's a neat show to volunteer at.

Relay For Life 2012

Did the Relay For Life last night into today.  Honestly I am kind of a slacker when it comes to some stuff, like raising money for stuff.  It's just that I do a lot of stuff that would need money and to ask for money for each cause, seems wrong.  I'm involved in so much stuff that it would be hard to ask for money for each individual thing when I just asked for money for something else.  So I don't, I let other people do it.  They are all equally important so I support them all with my time and effort.  In these blogs, I do my best to describe my experiences and you may choose to support them in your own way.

Interesting Weekend

So this past week has been an interesting one.  If you haven't seen my list you should check it out at some point.  This past weekend (June 9/10 2012) I got to volunteer at Circus Flora.  Not hard work at all. Clean a few seats coated in popcorn and fill a few programs.  Followed by being super friendly ushers and showing people to their seats.  Easiest volunteer work ever.  Get to see the show for free.  Pretty sweet deal.

Twangfest 16

Got to work late into the night with Twangfest 16 Day 2 with line up of Kelly Hogan, Wussy, Deano & the Purvs, Pretty Little Empire.  Amazing line of acts. KDHX sure knows how to pick them with music.  Still two nights left if you guys are in the area to check it out.

First time in the Duck Room at Blueberry Hill.  There is a lot of references to ducks down there.  It's also where Chuck Berry plays once a month in St. Louis.  You can definitely say I found my thrills.

KDHX is an awesome radio station.  Glad I'm one of the kick butt volunteers.

The St. Louis 48 Hour Film Project

Worked the The St. Louis 48 Hour Film Project on June 6 with KDHX as the ballot hander outer and collector uper guy at the very cool Tivoli theater.  I didn't catch up all the submissions but from what I did see there were some great, some good, some not so much, and some could be bad enough to be good/funny.

25th Gateway Classic

Memorial Day weekend means its time for the Gatway Classic Boomerang Tournament.  Lots of boomerangs and great throwers.  My favorite events of the year are always the boomerang events.  Not that the other events aren't cool but, come on, boomerangs.  Feeling the sun and wing.  Smelling the air, grass, trees, and maybe corn and cows.  There are so many cool boomerangs and throwers out there.  People that aren't throwing are seriously missing out.  Got to stock up on some boomerangs from the Mark Legg milk crates of Lincoln rangs, all going for $5 each.

Art On The Square 2012

The Art On The Square 2012 has commenced for the year.  Pretty interesting to see an area go from regular car traffic to fully packed with people and artists over a four day period.  There is so much that goes on behind the scenes to make it happen.  While just showing up you don't fully get how much goes on.  Volunteering for these events gives a different perspective on these events.

KDHX Midwest Mayhem

Got a chance to hang out at the KDHX's Midwest Mayhem last night.  That is a neat event.  Lot's of music and people and burlesque from Show Me Burlesque.  The City Museum is a pretty neat place.  There is so much to explore in there.  It's an easy place to get lost in.  There's big whales, fake caves, turtles, tunnels, and fake trees.  It is a neat place to just hang out.  Lots of slides too.  One that is 3 stories high and one that is about 6 stories tall.  The 6 story one is worth the walk up the 6 flights of spiral stairs.  If you want to come hang out next year, support local, independent music with KDHX.

US First Robotics Competion 2012

Pretty cool event this year at the US First Robotics Championships.  Got to be a part of the Expedition Team.  Pretty cool.  Get to experience a lot of different events over several days.  Actually got to see part and be part of the competition this year.

First day got to be a pit runner for the FIRST Lego League (FLL).  Mostly involved queuing up teams to go to their practice events.  Involved a lot of running around as one might expect.  Ultimately I helped these kids that worked really hard to get to their rounds while being the awesome leader that I am.

The afternoon involved the FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) as a field reseter for the official first day of completion for them.  These are the high school kids with the smaller bots.  Their mission was to "bowl" over crates to release raquet balls and stack the crates back up right side up with at least one ball in them.  There's more to it than that and a lot of was to score lots of points.

Movie: Tales From The Crypt

Just saw the TV edited version of the movie Tales From The Crypt.  It's different from the TV show.  Their is no scary dead dude crypt keeper.  Just a monk like crypt keeper guy.  The story goes something along the lines of people wandering into a crypt and get trapped.

KDHX Membership Drive

The KDHX Spring 2012 Membership drive has completed.  Pretty stellar that the station raised 101% at the time of this writing.  It's pretty neat that I was one of the phone volunteers and helped make that happen.  I helped make part of that goal happen.  Yes, I do have a few bucks in there too.  Keep listening folks.  Lots of great stuff coming up.  Get a sticker from me if you see me on one of the many KDHX events.  Don't guarantee I'll be at all of them but I will make what I can.

I have thrown boomerangs in the station using what I could find in the station.  Not sure if it's a first or anything but I'd probably say it was.  New members are not calling full time, so got to fill the time in interesting ways during the down time.

KDHX Concert Series with Guster

Volunteering at a radio station has it's perks.  Got to usher and see Guster with Golden Bloom as the opening act at the Sheldon Concert Hall over in St. Louis, MO.  It was a good show.  Lots of energy flowing with the band and the crowd.  Great random funny stories.  There was even great art.  Michael Landon holding a squid.     Whoa.  There was even a Demon fire drill where the fellas had to play an instrument they were not familiar with.  It was funny.  You should give these guys a listen sometime.

Three out of four is not bad....

Busy day for March 31, 2012.... Started at 7:15am with a Kiwanis Blood Drive.  Got the room all set up and situated for the drive. Food table was stocked with snacks, food, and coffee.  The problem was that the supply truck for the Red Cross never showed up.  GRRRRR.  Don't know the details of what happened yet but I will let you know when I find out.  Early April Fools Joke?

Next up Toastmasters Division 6 contest.  Got to be the Sergeant at Arms and Ballot counter.  Escorted contestants to the sound proof booth and preparation areas.  Interesting experience for doing both duties for the first time for the Toastmasters at a contest.  The after contest hang out was cool at the IHOP too.  Tasty.

Also helping KDHX with their phone drive to collect funds for the station.  It's a 10 day process biannually.  It's a great station.  Member supported.  They can play pretty much anything, as long as it complies with the rules of broadcasting stuff.  You should give it a listen.  I'd bet there is something there for you, if you give it a sufficiently long listen.

Three out of four events that happened successfully is not bad at all.

Change The World

Changing the world is not as hard as it seems.  It does not matter if you're the small fish in the pond or the top dog.  We can all do things that can have an impact on the world.  It can be the little thing such as picking up a piece of litter.  The little things count even if no one is around to observe it.  You can make a different.

The cool stuff I'm doing, you can do to.  You can have the influence over your world.  You can be the person behind the scenes too.  It does not have to start out as some big thing that you have to organize.  There are organizations out there that are out to improve situations of the community and the world.  The Kiwanis, Rotary, or United Way are all great places to start out volunteering and making a difference.  Alternatively if you feel shy and reluctant to meet up with new strange people you can work on it with the Toastmasters.

Anyway's I'm going to be at the KDHX radio station tonight (7p to 9p) and tomorrow (5pm to 7pm).  Give me a call and support a great radio station.  The number is 314-664-3688.

FIRST Robotics Regional March 2012

This past weekend the FIRST Robotics Regional competition were held this past weekend (March 22 - 24, 2012).  It is a neat event.  This years goal for the FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) is the Rebound Rumble, where teams are tasked with collecting and shooting foam basketballs into basketball hoops.  The first day had more cooperation on some of the bridges.  It got more interesting as the day progressed and bugs got worked out of the robots.  The second day really got good.  Robots were tweaked and got better in time.  Scores evened out between the red and blue teams.  There were many more rounds where there were higher scores of 50+ points for teams.  The final rounds really got good with really good shooting and balancing on bridges.  Teams really got aggressive on defense and attempting to get three bots on the balancing bridges.  Lots of robot tipping as well.

It is a neat even to volunteer for.  Sign up to volunteer for them if you get a chance at www.usfirst.org

Edit (4/15/2012):
Finally got around to emptying the camera.  Photos are below of some of the neat stuff going on.

Great concert at Sheldon Concert Hall with Hayes Carll

Got to hang out at the Sheldon Concert Hall with KDHX on March 18, 2012.  Neat show.  Got to see Hayes Carll and the opening act of Honey Honey.  Not a bad gig to put in a few hours of work for a show with awesome music.  There were funny stories, great music, and great people.

Should be an interesting start to the volunteering season.  Coming up next weekend is the FIRST Robotics Regional completion.  The following weekend of March 31, 2012 there is going to be a Kiwanis Blood Drive at the Public Safety Building in O'Fallon, from 9am to 1pm.  I then run over to the Toastmasters Regional Contest later that afternoon and a KDHX phone drive.  Looking forward to the madness.

Slow Winter...or not.

Winter time is the slow time of the year.   There is not much that goes on.  I did manage help out KDHX with a few concerts at the Sheldon.  The specific shows were Jay Farrar show and the Todd Snider show.  Volunteering is cool.  Some times you get to be behind the scenes and see stuff not many people get to see.  I didn't see a large part of the Sheldon Concert Hall but I've seen more than most.  KDHX membership drive is coming up again.  Seems like it was only a few months since the last one in October.  If you would like to send in a few bucks, it wold be appreciated. 

Also helped out the O'Fallon Kiwanis a few times in the last few months.  There was the Salvation Army Bell Ringing in December.  Recently we has spaghetti dinner.  It was good as always.  Don't know how we did by the numbers though. 

I am also a fully trained secretary by the Toastmasters.  Kinda sucks that I've been out of service since mid-December.  Life of a student but I am only 4 classes away from a Masters in Information Technology Management.  I am on a mission to document all of these experiences.  I've got 87 hours between August and December for 2011 and I want to beat that this year.

And I have moved this blog over to blogger.  Figure I'd try it out for a while.

2011 Volunteer Approximate Stats.

Since I do a lot of Volunteering I figure that I would post how many hours that I have put up in a consolidated post.

August 2011 through December 2011 Total: 90 Hours

These are the events that I have logged information for.  These are what contribute to the 90 hours of volunteer time.  I have volunteering at the following:

Midwest Salute To The Arts
Kiwanis of O'Fallon and Fairview Heights
Red Cross
Salvation Army
Pork With Passion
Wingsfest
KDHX
Sheldon Concert Hall
Shiloh Homecomming
Strange Folk Festival
Belleville Chilli Cookoff

Unfortunately I didn't think to start logging events till August of 2011.  Not fully sure of all the organizations that I helped out before August of 2011 but I'm certain that I did help out with the following organizations.  It also means that I probably have more that 100+ hours of volunteer time for 2011.  Alas I'll never be sure. It all helped me get good at volunteering.  Keep an eye out for 2012's stats

Pre-Logging
FIRST Robotics
Art On The Square
Wine, Dine, And Jazz