Kicker's Retired :-)

Hi - thanks for dropping by ... and yup, I've retired.

For friends, I'm still Faced and Tubed and, of course, email still works ;-)

I mean, the last 26 years of Internet related stuff have been interesting - and, I guess, a sort of fun way to close a 40+ year software career HA HA!

Oh heck, it's all been fun ... wellll - mostly fun heh heh ... but I'm done :-)
Horace 'Kicker' Vallas

Offers for the hav.com name

I get a LOT of offers to buy the hav.com name - most, apparently, from name brokers or site developers - and most around the $30K range.

So, if you're looking to buy the hav.com name, just know that hav.com has been my online persona for the last 24 or so years - well, since @ 1996 anyway - and, while I'd be willing to sell, it will take an astronomical offer to convince me to do so ... just sayin' ...

Anyway - Thanks - it's been fun! ... I hope this side of the bridge will be as well ...
... I'm thinkin' it will be HA!

Shalako's Sidekick for Kicker - aka Kick-kick

Just a Couple of Silly Videos for Fun

HEY!! Well, I broke down and put her in the shop for an overhaul. Greg Tringas of Tringas Music, here in P'cola, did a terrific job and, I had threat... I mean - promised to make a vid when I got her out - so here's a pass at a terrific piece by Andrew York, written for steel but performed, mostly, on classical these days... I plugged her into the q3hd so no tone control as I played (first time she's been plugged into anything or played publicly in - what - maybe 45 years or so HA HA) - and we're still getting reacquainted so not much of a performance (terrible slurs and missed harmonics etc.) - but fun anyway!!

Canco Trista - l'avia (Cancion triste) - by Paco Talarn - This is simply a beautiful little piece by Paco Talarn, a Delcamp friend, written in memory of his grandmother. It was one of the first things I recorded after picking up the guitar again after so many years. Probably not the best thing for my mental health at the time - but somehow soothing to my spirit or something. And yes, I still had my sackcloth hair back then. ... A friend reviewing the video, when first made, commented on the chair in the background being a bit distracting ... serendipity, I guess - it was my late wife, Dena's, chair sitting in the, by then, empty family room.

Anyway - old recording using a mono webcam of the day HA! best I could pull off at the time.

I Dream of You - So I ran across this beautiful little piece by Per-Olov Kindgren the other day and really wanted to take a stab at it. I don't have a score, so this is just a first take of me sort of faking it - off in a couple of spots but close.

I squashed one critical note very badly ... dern it! ... and I'm still a bit mechanical - but I'm working on a better recording setup and I'll make a better version once I get that in place.

Anyway - thanks to Per-Olov for writing the piece and for letting me take a shot at it. You should also go enjoy his YT vid of the piece which is, of course, soooo much nicer.

Anyway, I was playing around with video editing so I cut in a clip of some dolphins playing with bubble rings and added some sort of "under water" reverb during the clip insert - kind of neat. I've tried to locate the original source of the dolphin video without luck so I hope it's ok. Actually, I think the dolphins fit pretty well with the piece HA HA!