27. December 2008 by Ivan F. Alvarez.

Hangovers are not just alcohol related…although alcohol helps.  Here it is the 27th of December and I am wondering what happened to the 26th.  Christmas day we had two families over with their kids.  Wonderful people and wonderful food carefully prepared by my wife.  My contribution was the side of a pig I was to prepare and it came out great.  A couple of hours in the oven and then on to the BBQ filled with wood charcoal for that wonderful earthy flavor.  Add some wood chips and you have a smoked pork complete with crispy skin (chicharrón)…too bad my dog ate ALL the leftovers.  Turn around for a minute and then…gone!!!  Oh well, less to clean up.

Posted in Personal | Print | 1 Comment »

24. December 2008 by Ivan F. Alvarez.

I went to the opening of the Normandy Shores Golf Club today.  What a great place.  The fairways and greens are gorgeous even though the day was pretty brutal as South Florida weather goes.  The clubhouse, which is nothing more than a modular while they build the new permanent one, is surprisingly nice.  There is a pro shop, bar and decent hot menu.  It was kinda like those cartoons where you go in the small tent and the space inside is huge.

I live and work on this island so it was a pretty short commute for me.  The whole thing is starting to feel very clubby and thoughts of taking a lunch at the clubhouse during the week are pretty appealing.  I’m starting to get a sense of community.

Posted in Personal | Print | 1 Comment »

22. December 2008 by Ivan F. Alvarez.

So I have this really “clever” contact system which I use to reel in my unwieldy database of close to 5,000 contacts.  Now, I have spent years  (since 1992) building a contact database using Act! for Windows then, because I can, I switch to Mac which is 99% better except that I can’t use Act! in the Mac environment.  After using a few contact databases, I settle on Daylite.  It has some great features and is powerful enough for my needs but the synch feature, well,  sucks.  I need my stuff on my crackberry so I have to have a web of Exchange and Enterprise servers to get eveything in line…still does not work well.  Even tried a subset of contacts…still not very good.

So why am I talking about this under the heading of holiday crunch time?  Well, my clever system does email merges which lets me set up and send close to 600 emails in a fraction of the time and personally addressed to each contact (shh, don’t tell anyone).  Trouble is, the system screwed up and they are now all named Javier…Oh well, another thing it can’t do right.  Act! for Mac anyone?  C’mon, it almost rhymes!

Posted in Funny Business, Personal | Print | No Comments »

22. December 2008 by Ivan F. Alvarez.

First entry…So I have been venturing deeper and and deeper into the virtual world.  This quest is for both personal and professional purposes as I am on a mission to re-define how music gets nurtured, created, marketed and sold.  Overall, I hope to change how the money gets made and distributed.  Equity is key…

To that end, I present to you, my blog.  No idea who reads this crap or how I even tell people to read it but for thos who do find and follow, I hope that my missives are helpful, thought provoking and stimulate a smarter industry in some small way.

Ivan

Posted in Funny Business, Personal, Music Business | Print | 1 Comment »

21. December 2008 by Ivan F. Alvarez.

Posted in Funny Business, Personal, Music Business | Print | No Comments »