Aaron Traffas Band

Played for the first time in Wichita Saturday
Sat in with the Lucas Maddy Experience
The L is a desert eagle in the logo

We opened for Mike McClure Band
It was their sixth anniversary
Hard to believe it’s been so long since the Great Divide
They played a very nostalgic set
Out in the Fields and Skies are Turning Red
Haven’t heard those in years

Last night we watched Role Models
Erica, Emily, Diane and I did
Cute movie, nearly an hour of deleted scenes
Loving the Blu-Ray while they still make the discs for it

I’m getting ready to start loading
Pick-up game tonight
I’ll be playing the white bass
Through a keyboard amp

Mason bought a new hi-hat
At the auction last night
I bought an air compressor
It’s bigger in the picture than it is when it holds your papers on your desk

I pulled the twitter posts from the main calendar. I found that I was using them as a crutch, relying on them to be content updates. I’m going to see how often I write when I can’t rely on the aggregation of the microblogs.

I launched a new website this last weekend called AuctioneerTweet. It aggregates all the auctioneers on Twitter into one, central place. I also created some commotion with my April Fools release of “AuctioneerTool“, a fictional, open-source auction software and bidding system.

I can hear the highway calling
It’s saying, hey dumbass
Drive three hours to play bass
Because you’re good at it…really…you are…

Come see the Lucas Maddy Experience tonight at the Cocky Fox in Kingman. It’s a nice, family restaurant.

see more pwn and owned pictures

What would you do if a hundred dorks showed up while you were on the phone?

Verizon Wireless Surprises Customer – Watch more

“I’m sorry”, she said. And she meant it.

I awoke early this morning. It was cold, but not the bone-numbing cold that oft plagues Kansas winters. I unloaded my equipment at the storage unit, having played a show Friday night and traveled to Lawrence yesterday for practice, only to return too late and too tired to unload it last night. I updated a couple of scripts for Purple Wave and packed my things for my trip to Charleston this week to teach another Auction Technology Specialist course for the National Auctioneers Association.

My departure from Kansas City International Airport was uneventful, and as I find myself in other airports I find my impression of KCI to be less and less the gargantuan complex unlike any I’d ever seen and more and more the small-town convenience store that reminds you of home whenever you get the opportunity to stop by.

We arrived in Atlanta after a surprisingly short flight. I spent my time working on a new Wordpress auction management plugin I conceived this morning, causing me to scramble to install LAMP on my Asus EeePC before leaving Manhattan. I barely had time to learn how to integrate with the Wordpress admin before we were told to turn off all our electric devices. I smiled, knowing my phone was on in my bag in the overhead compartment.

I glanced at the layout of Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport in the complimentary Sky Mall magazine and saw how it looked like several buildings separated by an underground train. The magazine, though well-intentioned, gave no impression of scale. The Atlanta airport has, for the last 10 years, had the most number of passengers over the course of the year of any airport. In the world.

I entered on one end of one of the long terminals and spent what felt like a half hour walking the length of it to find my connecting flight. I stopped once in the middle as I realized that I couldn’t see the end in the direction I was walking. I looked behind me and couldn’t see the end in that direction either. While it may not be the size of Denver’s airport, it sure had a staggering amount of people. I can only imagine how large it really is and hope next time I return to have time to travel between the terminals on the train.

We boarded another McDonnell Douglas MD-88 and I no sooner got out my computer before we were descending to Charleston. My first impression of Charleston, located between the Ashley and Cooper rivers as they lead into the Atlantic, is that of a water town. I wasn’t prepared for the amount of waterways and rivers as I should have been knowing I was headed to a city on a delta.

Francis Marion Hotel, Charleston, SC

The Francis Marion Hotel is located on Marion Square across from the old Citadel, the skyline of which I could make out in the dark, city-lit sky. It’s an old hotel, unlike the vast majority of lodging I’ve experienced, with evidence of multiple paint jobs, electrical outlets in the baseboard – much more like a grandmother’s house than a modern resort.

Like the hotel, the rest of Charleston reminds me of the past, at least the past from the movies. Robert Mayo and our southern guide Tom Jordan from North Carolina and I left to find some food. From the cobblestone roads to the arrangement of the wares in the various shops we passed, the feeling of an impending, deep history was only broken by an Apple store, as anachronistically out of place as the Delorian in 1885 Hill Valley.

We elected to eat at a barbecue joint called Jim ‘N Nick’s Bar-B-Q. The waitress took our order and left, while Tom and Robert began to debate the benefits of the vinegar-based barbecue of the South versus the tomato-based sauce we love in Kansas City.

When the waitress returned, Robert ordered a rare steak. She did a visible double-take as she asked, “Rare?” Tom explained that Robert is from Kansas, making the obligatory addition regarding our preference for meat that is still animated and perhaps even vocal.

“I’m sorry,” she said. And she meant it. She didn’t mean it like I mean “I’m sorry” when I say it to someone when I find out he owns a Macbook. She didn’t mean it like I mean “I’m sorry” when I say it after spilling my drink on my friend’s lap. She meant it like I say “I’m sorry” when I learn someone’s father has just passed away.

I had a great weekend, playing Friday at Pat’s with Lucas Maddy and Saturday at Bobby T’s with the long lost Trevor Burgess. I saw friends on Saturday I hadn’t seen in over three years. It was a great reunion that took me back to the glory days at Fats.

The new song Enter: The Wind was well-received. The lyrics are now posted on a page in the songs section and a recording made at the Bobby T’s show is posted in the downloads section. Let me know what you think of it in the comments.

Thanks to everyone who tuned in or came out to last night’s show. We got a good recording, so I’ll be tracking it and posting excerpts soon. Here’s the feed for tonight’s show with Trevor Burgess!

- feed removed after show -

We’re launching, booting, loading and prepping. Here’s the post. We’ll hope to be fully streaming right here soon. The stream will be on and off between now and showtime. If you have problems with the video after the show starts, call us at 620.886.1538 and we’ll work on it.

We’ve got some exciting shows on the books, including two this weekend. You won’t want to miss them, as I’ll be breaking out a brand new song called “Enter: the Wind”. We’ll be posting the lyrics on the site in the songs section after this weekend, along with some recordings of it.

We’re going to try streaming the audio and video of the shows this weekend live on the website, so if you can’t make it to Aggieville tonight or Bobby T’s on Saturday, you can tune in to www.aarontraffas.com after 9 p.m. each night to view the feed. We’re going to be counting on a Sprint USB stick to deliver our 1s and 0s, so say a prayer for CDMA EVDO in Manhattan.

Tonight is the first Aaron and Lucas show at Pat’s in Aggieville. Tomorrow is the first Aaron and Trevor Burgess show since December 2005 – AND it’s on Valentine’s Day. All bets are officially off. Bring your girl, we’ll take care of the rest.

See the complete calendar at http://www.aarontraffas.com/shows

I hope to see you tonight at Pat’s or tomorrow at Bobby T’s.

I caught this link over on the Bad Astronomy blog.