I'm pretty amazed that people allow you to play that loudly in a residential area (I'm guessing it's a residence). Here in Germany you can play music loudly in clubs but not in your house. Neighbors don't care for it

Yeah, it's fairly rare. In fact, back in Texas City, it was illegal for one of my bands to play

if we ever got caught it was a ticket for each band member (I think like $125, which might as well have been $1,000,000 for 17 year old us). For us to be able to practice, we would show up at a party, play a set, and bail out. One time we played at a day care (I have pictures somewhere

) and once we played in an empty store while they were doing construction (we knew the new owner in a friend of a friend type way).Kinda got off topic there... This house is somewhat in the ghetto, so the neighbors are pretty chill. It helps that they are on a corner lot, across the street is a vacant lot, and the lot adjacent is empty (I believe it's a part of the property, they have a garden there). They have shows a couple times a month, and in late December they're planning a couple day "festival" with people camping in the garden lot.
So you guys earn most of your money through merch? I didn't expect that.
I think most bands (even the big names) do. It's all new to me since "back in the day" we never had the "seed money" to make the initial investment. This time around I threw in a couple hundred of my own dollars and after that is recouped it'll go toward more merch, recording, etc. I just put the "store" online today (
http://store.ReaganEraRejects.com ) and already have to make a trip to the post office

I've never played for money though. Even when I was dead broke I just play because I like it.
Hardware updates are never simple

. "We're just going to shut down and change this one part .... hmm I don't know why it doesn't start up again, can't be that new part we put in."

I've seen and heard that once too often

The worst part about this one was that the issue was not related to the part, and was very strange (plus we had done a lot of work in the past couple months that could have caused a similar issue)... turns out the internal/external NICs were swapped... I guess tech had to unplug them to slide the server forward to open the lid and plugged them in swapped...
I'm not taking a long vacation, more of an extended weekend. Our niece will be studying in Dublin this fall, and she and her family are vacationing in Ireland so they can say goodbye for the semester. The problem was that they didn't want to drag all her extra clothes, which she'll need during the semester, with them while on vacation. So my sister-in-law purchased my wife and I flight tickets to Dublin where we get to spend a few days seeing the sights and then on our last day dropping her suitcase off before flying home. I'm kind of looking forward to it, as I've never been to Ireland and love the Irish culture.
So rather than them dragging the extra clothes, y'all get to do it?

Sounds like a good time regardless

I told my wife that we can see all the cultural things that she wants, but at least one evening I want to spend in an actual Irish pub listening to the music, having a meal, and drinking a beer.
That sounds divine! I'm not much for traveling, but I'm a little jealous.
Three day weekend here in the states. My to do lists are pretty full. Our next show is September 21st (and unfortunately there are two other shows that night that our crowed would go to so competing with those) so we only have three weekends to practice (we can only practice once a week). On top of that, I've been asked to fill in for a band that I've been a big fan of for a couple years (they only play a few times a year), for a show in Austin, so I have my second practice with them this weekend. Half the band lives in Austin so 1st practice was just the guitarist and I, not sure who will be there Sunday. On top of that... I have two different freelance clients chomping at the bit for their projects to progress
