http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pcb5K2jl0pXFq6H0JVNXgdw

Sex it.

I started off as a customer at the 7 Bamboo Cocktail Lounge in 1998. It was a time of change for the 7 Bamboo. I read a review from around that time that said, "This is a place waiting to be discovered" Heh, if only the author knew at the time how prophetic their words would be.

It was great times though. The crowd was "Mostly Asian" as another reviewer put it. Mostly Asian meaning, mostly Japanese. That was fine with me, my best friend at the time is a hapa and I spent many years being force fed food by his grandparents to know just how nice Japanese folks are. I fondly recall Kay Hisatomi saying things to me like "God dammit Cortese, if you don't eat another plate, you can never come over here again!" The Japanese folks that hung out at 7 Bamboo during that period were awesome. I don't ever remember there being a fight even once inside the bar. People didn't smash stuff or knock over tables.

The karaoke was different then too. The Japanese would respectfully stay quiet for one anothers performances. You didn't have problems like mic thieves. We didn't need 240watts worth of studio monitors. Rotation was small, so we could wait a bit for our turns.

So Saturday night we were sort of oversold.  The new FE software doesn't always lock the terminals down when we're sold out, and if one slips in we end up having an extra entry with a big fat "STANDBY" next to it.   A bunch of singers were begging to sing, including Phil after we were oversold.

Phil begged and pleaded and begged. "I'll do ANYTHING toqer."   Jokingly I said "Draw a spiral around your nipple."  "You know better than to ask me something like that!" he said.  Phil spiraled his nipple in an attempt to forcefully gain entry into the queue.

"PLEASE TOQER I DID IT! NOW YOU GOTTA PUT ME IN QUEUE!" Now the argument was weighing in his favor.  I had little to no other choice.  "YOU WON'T HAVE TO SUFFER ALONE!" I cried as I reached for the pen with one hand and pulled up my shirt to expose my nipple with the other.   

 I took great care in drawing my spiral.  I wanted its perfection to be hypnotic.  God dammit, I was PROUD of my spiralled nipple.   I took off towards the stage. Along the way I grabbed a folding chair and wore it on my head like a hat.

So this week we started rolling out singers cards.   Along with the cards came some new kiosk software, and a new dependancy on a new service, a mysql server.

 Twice this week we had a mysterious hiccup where the kiosk just quit taking requests.  Luckily I still had the skills of over 130wpm and quick reading so I just manually made short work of the remaining slots in the evenings on both nights.

We chalked it up to when the kiosk grabs the playlist,  kjfubar made another lovingly crafted build without the playlist and shupped it up for me.  Hopefully this is what the problem is..  Bugs in new versions of software are always fun to chase down.  We found another bug where we can break left.txt.  Fun!

I know that rotation went whacked Saturday night.  Thanks for pointing it out Nick Fill. 

Since the new kiosk uses a mysql backend, I quickly made an ODBC connection to it, and started futzing with the tables in open office base.  I'm always amazed at my craftyness.Look, I gave myself 10,000 credits=D

The karaoke system at 7b is in a constant state of flux whether it's the equipment, the software, or how things are run. At some point, at some time, we learn from our mistakes and try to change how things to be either more efficient, or fair, or better.

Heh it's funny.  Anyone remember the night Butch, Sly and Umlaut ruled the queue? It was an all night show of the 3 musketeers LOL! >:'D Yeah, they're regulars now and we can all look back and laugh at what was a night of extraordinary imbalance.  The reason rules have to happen is so we can achieve a balance.  In this case balance is the exact opposite of favoring any one group or individual so everyone can get a fair share of stage time.

Think of this another way, if you're a regular that likes getting down here in the later hours (past 10pm), the new rules in effect should allow you to arrive with some slots still left in the queue.  

The rules of rotation have to change.  OK before I get moaning from the peanut gallery, we all know I've been talking about this at the club for the last few weeks.  Here are what the changes are going to be.

We will be open tonight.   Party starts at 7.  Tell your friends.   No cover.

--toq

blank_page
So as the saying goes "Every cloud has a silver lining", with the recent
closing of AOL's Uncut video service, the silver lining is the video uploads
will not be going away.  Thanks to the l33t coding of our technology benefactor
in the video uploads department, uploads will now be happening on Youtube.

http://www.youtube.com/sevenbamboo

I am now off to change links accordingly.  

--toq

I decided to change this article around a bit, since nobody seemed upset or panicked by it.   Give it a snazzy new title, spray a little perfume on it.

Basically AOL is going to trash uncut. Over 12,000 + videos of karaoke singers are going to be trashed along with it. 

AOLMemberInfo@dc.aol.com

Dear AOL Video Uploads User,

We’re writing to inform you that the AOL Video Uploads site is no longer accepting new video uploads and will close on Dec. 18, 2008. We hope that this does not cause you an inconvenience.

The good news is that we can help you move your existing videos to Motionbox in a few, simple clicks. Motionbox is a free service that makes it easy to upload, store and share personal videos, and supports all of the features you enjoy with AOL Video Uploads -- including fast and reliable uploads, secure sharing, high quality video playback and more. To transfer your videos to Motionbox, all you need to do is click on the “transfer” button next to each video on the My Uploads page and follow the instructions.