Brad Barrish

Home Improvement: Week 1 Summary

Audrey and I bought our first house in Venice, CA. We bought it with the intention to fix it up and sell it in a couple of years. We have until the end of the month to at least finish the walls, flooring and painting. It's an odd-shaped house that has been added onto a couple of times. Our main goals with the first phase of renovation are to completely redo the kitchen to open it up, replace the windows, put in bamboo flooring and paint the inside.

Last weekend I started demolishing the kitchen, so the contractors could come in and start working on Monday. It saved us a lot of money and I got to spend some quality time with the house, which I can't do during the week. I don't know how Audrey does it. She's a total rock star. She has basically been playing general contractor since we started and continues to oversee everything.

There were a few of freakouts this week. I totally freaked about the kitchen walls and ceiling coming down. It was traumatic to see so much damage to this house we just spent a lot of money on already. The good news is, we're using the general contractor that worked on Audrey's first store. He wants her business for the next ones, so he's doing a favor. Needless to say, it's saving money.

The second freak out was about the size of the range Audrey got. We had previously agreed on a 30" because of the small size of the kitchen and the limited counter space. She ended up ordering a 36", which I made quite a stink about. After some yelling and screaming, I think we agreed that a 30" would be better. We hope it's not too late.

The third freak out was about a decision to put a 3/4 bathroom in the garage, which will be Audrey's office. Quite simply, it's not necessary. She got convinced by the plumber that because the additional cost wouldn't be much and would add value to the house, she should do it. First of all, it's not going to add much value to the house, the garage will be shown as an office and no one expects to see a 3/4 bathroom in the office and it's just going to take up additional space that she could use for storage. Screaming, crying, yelling and hugging ensued.

Today we got to see how the walls were shaping up. It was a dramatic improvement from yesterday. I called my dad tonight because I had emailed him the URL for the slide show and he said, "I'm glad I was sitting down when I looked at those photos!" Out of context, they do look pretty bad, but the work they got done today was great.

I'll be ripping out the carpet in the master bedroom this weekend, painting the samples on walls, getting ethernet cable so the electrician can install outlets in a few of the rooms and picking up some lighting.

Appliances were ordered this week:

Live 8 Coverage: 1 Day To Go

Our resident technical advisor, Christopher Levy is in Philadelphia for the Live 8 show. He snapped some pics of the backstage area as well as the front of the stage and recorded a bit of footage while he was surveying the grounds.

He was also kind enough to give me a moment of his time for a quick interview.

B: Hey Christopher. I just realized I have no idea what you're doing in Philadelphia. Explain.

C: I am a Technical Advisor to Kevin Wall's (Executive Producer and our CEO) Philly team working with John Rubey (CEO of AEG-Live) to provide coordination support to the Broadcast Services Team. We are overseeing all broadcast and transmission of the World Feed and all Global Feeds.

B: So you're doing a lot of sitting around.

C: Yes, I am telecommuting to the Live 8 site.

B: What has the atmosphere been like around there?

C: Hot, Hectic and Humongous. This is a gargantuan effort unseen in the history of music. The city is literally come to a halt.

B: How many people would you say are involved?

C: We have over 2000 people on site to make this show a reality. Verizon had to install a Company Office in the middle of a field to support all of our voice, data and video needs. Everyone from union workers to erect the stage to Verizon, XM, All Mobile Video, Show Power, Volvo, AOL, MTV, etc.

B: What about the technical stuff like equipment, bandwidth and stuff like that?

C: Without disclosing anything proprietary we have setup a platform that uses three different satellites, 16 fiber video feeds, and over 300 phone lines to operate the broadcast. It will be live on AOL.com and we expect to hit 20+ Gbps of sustained peak bandwidth.

B: Wow. That's a lot of internets!

C: Internets... yeah... umm, right... I have to work now.

Live 8 Coverage: 3 Days To Go

I'll be watching on Saturday from the comfort of my own home. Even though we're not directly involved with the show, Kevin (our CEO) is the Executive Producer. There are some articles that quote him here, here and here. I have no idea how he does it. He was back and forth between London and LA every other week. I'm going on 4.5 hours of sleep and I'm not functioning very well. Time for a little caffination.

LIVE 8

See that little banner to your left (near the top of the page)? Click on it and read about the ONE campaign, then head over to the LIVE 8 site to read about how you can take a stand against world poverty, support third world debt relief and watch a free concert. While I'm not directly involved with the concert, the CEO of the company I work for is one of the producers and it's a cause I feel strongly about. Get involved, give some money to the ONE campaign and work out some of that karma you have for allowing Bush to get re-elected. Let the G8 world leaders know we're watching.

Yay, [The] Adam Brown

I bookmark so much stuff, it always amazes me when I can't figure out how I came across something. I vaguely remember reading something about The Adam Brown, but can't remember where. In any event, I bought whatever I could (a two-year old CD) and forgot about it. When I got my mail, I had a package with French (Canadian) writing on it. Upon opening it, I was greeted by the aforementioned CD with a letter and some new demos. This is the kind of stuff that makes me a music geek. The music is infectious, raw and oh-so-smart pop music. If you like J Mascis era Dinosaur Jr., The Pixies, Brendan Benson and maybe even early Soul Asylum,  you at least owe it to yourself to check out what he's doing. Word is he's working on an album for fall release. Keep your eye out for this one.

Sneaking Up On Michael Miller

I saw Michael Miller play at the Hotel Cafe on Wednesday evening. When I walked in, I saw michael messing around on stage and was able to get right in front of him without having him notice.

The show was fantastic and he even broke out a couple of new songs. My favorite was a song that had "suicide" in the chorus, but I don't know the name of it. Minnie was in attendance, which was kinda neat. She even gave Michael some English candy. I think she may be crushing.

A band called Goldspot played after Michael. Apparently everyone was there to see them because the crowd went crazy. According to their site, they're playing every Wedensday evening in May at 9pm. I highly recommend them. You can pick up their album at the iTunes Music Store, which I did.