Liars Dice

Matthew Heick Leave a comment

Thanks to the Pirates of the Caribbean I’ve been introduced to this game that uses dice and a wager component, with the movie using “years of service” as it was the only thing the pirates aboard the Flying Dutchmen had as currency. As a young 20-something I used to Play 7’s and 11’s, where if you rolled 7, 11, or a pair you’d get to tell someone to drink. A simple game that I don’t want to pass to my youth just yet, and I feel a simple gambling game is better to pass along.

Liars dice is easy:

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This one time in Symphonic Band…

Matthew Heick Leave a comment

I’ve harkened back to the American Pie days in 1999 just to find a proper title for this post. I’m feeling good so far.

I’ve nearly completed the initial spreadsheet, extracting as many names from the 1996 Sweet Home High School yearbook and getting them sorted and organized. I also added the deceased Producer and Guidance Counselor John Daken, and the “Disney” Band Conductor John Wade.

Overall I have 81 names, 2 being Teachers and 79 being Students, and one that I’m sure the yearbook staff misnamed in the band images and I couldn’t initially locate in my searching. I also learned that I do not have absolutely everyone that would have attended that trip, as I was not part of the band photos and was not listed as a “not listed” individual, which adds to the difficulty of finding and communicating with all souls present.

Otherwise, the next steps are going to be logical:

  1. Get a gmail address so that I can communicate with all these people
  2. Set up a website, complete with purpose and status updates that I can move this conversation to.
  3. Prepare general scripts for both digital and written communication
  4. Maybe create a post card and get that mass sent out.
  5. Get ready to scan Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and other social media sites
  6. …
  7. and other things I can’t think about right now

Albeit the journey has begun, every step is a small battle looking to accomplish a win and completely dominate this awesome war.

The Hunt for a 25 Year Old Video

Matthew Heick Leave a comment

After getting my hands on a 1996 Sweet Home High School yearbook (courtesy of EBay seller quasimodo) I was able to get some names and start my journey to finding a 1996 Band Trip Video for the Disney Magic Music Days.

If memory serves me correctly the original Guidance Counselor that filmed this trip was John Daken:

High School Yearbook / Staff

I’ve also got the Wind Ensemble and Concert Band, a plethora of names of people to track down and figure out if they have a some copy of the original video.

So, my first goal is to get all these names into a Google Spreadsheet and scan social media and old address books and track everyone down.

Bon voyage à moi!

The Hunt for a 20 Year Old Video [6 Years Ago…]

Matthew Heick Leave a comment

Editors note: I wrote this back on 7 February 2015

The 1995-1996 school year I was a freshman at Sweet Home High School[a] and had participated in a trip to Walt Disney World to participate in a Band Performance with my peers (Disney Magic Music Days). This entire event, from the loading of the busses to the trip from Buffalo, New York to our destination and back had been recorded on an 8-hour EP video tape.

I had originally possessed this specific video tape as a teenager. Over the course of time, however, I had lost this amazing heirloom as I’m sure a lot of other have. I’m sure that there is a copy of this somewhere that I can acquire so I can digitize it and be able to enjoy it though the future times.

This iswas my tiny blog on my progress in locating this by working back 20 years in my brain.

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How I made Plex work for me

Matthew Heick Leave a comment

As I’ve written before, I run a Plex Media Server at my home, and have run many different configurations of set ups for almost 4 years. We originally ran the client off of our XBox 360 until the App was obsoleted, and now we enjoy it on desktops, mobiles, and on our Samsung TV, delivering high-quality content to our family.

Our current Plex Media Server is run on a 4-core/4GB laptop with an external USB-attached 6TB hard drive complete with a library of 1708 Movies and 111 TV Shows. It’s not an expensive set up and has paid itself off time and time again.

For the longest time i’ve used plex.tv to access my Plex Media Server remotely, and painfully have had to endure poor quality streaming because I wasn’t really aware about how Plex works behind the scenes. After some time I’ve learned the “why” and the “repairs” to be able to take my remote Plex Viewing up a notch.

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