Van Blog

Man oh man. Iowa was great, I'm back and warm in So Cal. I've actually been back for three weeks now. There is no good excuse for my lack of blog entries as of late. I have been working on a new project in my spare time lately, which I'll share sometime soon, I suppose that's my bad excuse. I'll go ahead and give an overview of the last week in particular.

On Thursday, bird and I went to see G-Love and the Special Sauce. They were pretty funky. The best part was the bass players un-canny resemblance to Phillip Seymour Hoffman (see picture). There were also two drummers that dueled for a good 5 minutes... I cryed tears of joy. Fortunatly, the music didn't stop there.

First off, I have this friggin cold that sucks my face off. The morning after my birthday I was rolling around for hours hot than cold, stuffed up than runny nosing all over the place, achy than numb, you know the drill. One good thing about my alement is my complete lack of desire to devulge in any of my vices. Tonight marks 3 days without nicotine, and 2 1/2 without meth... Seriously, I'm gonna try and use my headstart to kick the smoking issue. We'll see, I've been here before. Anyway, to the point. I recently reorganized my music collection, and I figured I would share my favorites with you guys.

I figured the first I would share would be Sigur Ros, Takk (album cover above). An earlier post describes the night Bird and I went to see them. Absolutely fantastic, specifically Hufupukar, Saeglopur, and Heysatan are great tunes (there Icelandic). My personal favorite is Gong. I was first turned on to them by there previous album (). A great song from that album can downloaded on Sigur Ros's website. For more great music, read on.

It's my birthday, so I decided to reskin the site. I have stayed up way too late, but now there is an incredible mustache on every page of this puppy! I'm still tweaking, so drop a comment if you have any ideas. What a great way to start out my 24th year of life... I'm so pathetic. Or am I out of this world?

I finally did it. I went to court today. It couldn't have gone better. As you may recall from an earlier post, a police officer "kicked my ace with citations". It was four to be exact, totalling $1269.00 and a point on my license if I didn't attempt to correct the citations. Well, I registered my car, came up with proof of insurance, and got a California license. I had been fearing the temptation to lie about my move to California. I had already stretched the truth by telling the DMV that I had offically became a resident of California in the beginning of July of this year. This was to avoid an extra $160 in registration fees, which I had already paid to the state of Iowa. Since my first real full time job in California didn't start until the middle of June, and I was ready to move back to Iowa until that point, I figured it wasnt too much of a stretch. Anyway, I didn't speak an unhonest word today, and what unfolded was an answer to prayer and a weight off my back...

Wow, allot has happened and some how my last post got lost. It was a fantastic tale of how some food I had when I went to Virginia gave me some problems while I was in a car with my co-workers. Anyway, I'll just go ahead and recap the events of the last month or so.

1. Went to Virginia on business, good times, hellish travel.
2. Bought an Ipod video. It's nice, the battery life sucks.
3. Quit the GTB band. Just too busy with work, and not passionate about the project.
4. Started a study group with a few people at Harbour Presb (where I've been playing drums), it's about managing finances. Been good.
5. Went to Vegas to see my dad. It too was a good time. Lost about $25 dollars. Went to a few drag races. Saw some cool art at the Wynn, and sweet cars at SEMA. Was too short. My dad sat in an airport for 6 hours so that I could get back to SD at a decent time. Gotta love the man.
6. After returning had one day to prepare for my trip to NYC. I missed my 10pm flight to JFK on account of a friend convincing me I needent be there more than 20 minutes in advance. I was put on a flight the next day at noon. I had a day to spare, all was good.
7. Spent a week in New York. Bird went there too. Worthy of a seperate post. For now, check out flickr.
8. Came back early for a big business meeting with Yellow Frieght. It went well.
9. A new boss was hired at work. He seems allright, things are in constant flux at work. It's confusing.
10. We started the process of bringing all tech in house, a nightmare.
11. My car was broken into again, took my CD's and a ratchet set... I don't live in a bad neighborhood...
12. Decided to finally post in the F'ing blog.

Here's the deal, too much happened this month to go unspoken of. I will blog about NYC, Art at the Wynn and the Met, and few good movies I've seen. Keep a look out.

I went to New York from the 8th to the 13th. The 9th and 10th were for business, the rest of the time was play. It was fantastic. I flew into the city about 14 hours behind schedule because of a missed flight. I took the E into manhattan from JFK and met up with Bird who had been there for a few hours. I stayed at the Roosevelt courtesy of work. The place sucks, tiny room for $260 a night (discounted from $420). I was there for the WebSideStory conference. It was informative enough, I thought it was interesting that google released there free analytics package the day after I got back... Anyway, I met up with a bunch of freinds around the city, and I think the Bird found his new home. For the a play by play and some great maps read on.

Holy F, it's been busy lately. Life being it of course. The main contributer has been work, but I've been all over the place lately. I was in Chicago & Michigan the first weekend of this month, and last weekend was Mexico. Pictures of both will be posted in Flickr soon enough. I was actually pretty close to not having my Mexico trip because of work. It was a debauchel (not a word, don't care) this past Friday. We have a huge meeting tomorrow and all the crap leading up to it has been a suck. I won't go into detail. This posting is about thought and reflection (as the picture suggests). So let's have it.

So last night Bird and I went to see Sigur Ros at the Copley Symphony Hall in San Diego. Not a month earlier Tim and I saw Ruphus Wainwright and Ben Folds at the same venue. Ok, enough crazy links. Both shows were great. The Sigur Ros show was superb. The lighting effects were off the chain. The experiance sureal. A band called Klink opened up and also played strings for Sigur Ros. They played all sorts of crazo instruments. Including but not limited to a saw, crystal glasses, and a glockenschpel. I will forever remember the night, especially since a pig pulled me over and kicked my ace with citations. (By pig I mean a law enforcement agent, read on)

Ok, this post is fast and short... like my fingernails. I don't know what that means... Well, since I basically brought flickr into the blog on my last post, I've decided to take you to flickr on this one. Last week I went to San Francisco on business. It turns out that business travel is not as much like a vacation as I had dreamed. I was still able to take some decent pictures so check them out.

Well, it hasn't quite been a month since the last post. Allot has happened, but no excuse's. I'll go ahead and do a run down of any major life events that occured this past month with the aid of flickr. click on the images to see them full size

The day after I posted my last entry, I was coming home from work and saw a great photo opportunity

A few days later, I saw a huge thunder head, this time on my way to work.

These two events, for one reason or another, inspired me to grow this.

Oh yes, there is more. Continue reading...

It all started at the end of July. Adam and I went to see a play on friday night in Balboa Park at The Old Globe theatre. It was a great show. Dan Castellaneta, the guy that does homer's voice played the main character in Moonlight to Magnolia. Anyway, during the intermission we met a woman named Zura. She was studying at the theatre and wanted to get away, so we arranged to have a drink after the show. We went to a wine bar and mentioned the fact that we had to take a buddy to the airport at 5:45 in the AM. She offered to have Adam and I pull an all nighter at her flat in Hillcrest. We took her up, and now we have a mediocre story to tell. Oh, but wait it doesn't end there...

Recently I moved to a new apartment. We decided to cancel service and get service with a new provider. Adelphia SUCKS. They questioned me for "illegal" server activity. I made an FTP server to back up one of my servers back home, and the freaked out because they saw activity on port 21 and 22. Anyway, it turns out that Adelphia is the only cable company that offers service in my area. A month ago I made an appointment with Adelphia to "set up" my Internet. It just so happened that during the 2 hour window they gave me to be home, I had other arrangements. I asked them to come towards the end of the window, instead they came at the beginning and all hope was lost. The next available slot was a week from the following Saturday from 1-5. I wasn't going to commit a four hour time slot on a Saturday afternoon, so I said 'F' it and bought an external WIFI antenna for my laptop. That's when the fun started.

Mr. Eastwood has not lost his touch, his voice on the other hand has gotten even more gristly. The Million Dollar Baby was fantastic. It's Hoosiers mixed with Schindlers List, who could ask for more? The story is the strongest point of the movie, but everything else is strong too. The acting, cinematography, even the music (composed my Westwood himself). He won his second best actor Academy Award with this film, and rightly so. Enough of the applause, I'll dig in a little...