What a whirlwind, I tell you what. The usual cliche's about this being the busiest time of my life seem to pale against reality, so I'll just dive into the thick of it all. I've spent the past 3 weeks working intensely on getting the new studio up and running. Thanks to the help of my brother Ryan, my dad Ray, and a good friend, Jeff Stock, th...

So, I just got off the phone with my wife, and she was at our new home-to-be this evening, and apparently, almost everything is done.  The carpet isn't in, nor are the toilets, nor are the cement stairs leading down to the basement, but everything else - yeah - it's done.  I'm just beside myself.  We could be moving in as early as la...

 So... I don't even know where to begin. Honestly, my life is so full right now, I feel as though I might decide to curl up into a remote corner of the world somewhere and hide for a few months. That said, each day I seem to manage to get up with a renewed strength to attack the day's duties with a renewed vigor.  Even though it's cl...

 Well, I'd say last week was a success for the progress of the studio!  I'd also say it was a pretty big failure for the state of my body.  Man, I'm getting old.  Even my 70-year-old dad out-did me, and that's just sad.  Even though my fingers are swollen, and my feet hurt, I've gotta say it was 100% worth it. We started ...

I chose "Amazed" as the mood for this entry because it just fits.  I had no idea what would be involved with getting this studio build ready to go, but it seems as though it's all coming together. We've got a truckload of materials coming on Monday of next week, and I have the entire week off to begin the build. Hopefully I remem...

 So today marks my first day of a long awaited journey to weight loss. I currently weigh 260 lbs, which is a number i never thought in my whole life i would ever reach. I choose today because my boyfriend woke me up this morning and told me he'd feel much better knowing my health was better and all this weight is literaly weighing me down. And...

So, I was on my way to work today, when my phone rang - displaying an unfamiliar number.  With everything going on in my life, I decided it would be a good idea to answer it anyway. Turned out to be a really good idea. Last week, I decided to take the time to draw out plans for the studio and turn them in to the city for approval.  I ...

 So...  In what has turned out to be my monthly updates, I don't have much to report this time, as progress on the studio portion of the house has been waiting for the actual house to be built.  Right now, the studio is comprised of two large concrete boxes in my basement. What I do have to report on is something I hadn't expected...

 So, I just had a great day here in the basement where I live, while me and my family are waiting for our new home (and studio) to be built, and I found myself sort of pensive, so I thought I'd come down and write a few words, and see what comes out. Advanced Budget Studios began taking clients in August of 2009, using a single AT 3525 conde...

The studio walls are up!  ... and they are ... HUGE!  Honestly the level of excitement I have for this studio build is right up there with the excitement of my marriage and the births of my children.  I can't believe this is actually happening! Anyway.... I'll be posting more random updates on Facebook (which will link to publi...

I just finished putting my 5-year-old and my 3-year-old to bed. Earlier today, they both went to the dentist to have a check-up, and for Luci, it was a semi-traumatic experience.  She did really good, but at one point, she was seriously distraught about this gun-looking thing which sprayed water everywhere, and the vacuum they were going to ...

Well I was going to do this last night but it was just to much to do.  So here it goes.  Wow what a life changing event.  This might be a little bit graphic for some but I am going to tell it how it is.  So here it goes.  Yesterday I worked at the airport I transport people to and from the airport.  I was called to go ...

Oh....my....goodness... Yesterday was simply beautiful.....simply beautiful. I don't have NEAR enough time to write down exactly my feelings nor what happened...however - suffice it to say, yesterday was beautiful. I got up yesterday morning and started packing up my drums almost immediately. I was supposed to be at Dane's house at 1:00pm and...

Update:  Due to the popularity of this post, some people are having a hard time viewing the video posted above.  If it won't play for you, simply wait until the gray progress bar has filled 1/4 to 1/2 of the way before you press play.  That should do the trick. Yesterday I took the day off work to go to my bother's sealing to his w...

I've recently become interested in integrating video into my journal and blog.  As such, I realized that my 4-year old digial camera just wasn't gonna cut it anymore, so I went out and bought the cheapest camera I could find that would shoot 30 frames per second which happened to be the Nikon S210 digital camera.  It takes pretty good vid...

Ya know...  I thought that with 4.5 hours of sleep last night, I'd feel a heckuva lot sleepier than I do.  I guess miracles do happen. Since our wonderful Samuel was born, my wife and I have been getting considerably less sleep than we otherwise would.  This is to be expected; it comes with the whole package of parenthood. I ha...

Man...  I was having a downer of a day until this evening when Fatigi came to record 3 new songs.  I was really, really tired throughout the day, and thought I was sure to have a hard time focusing when Fatigi came over. Then I heard them play. Honestly, I haven't been this awake in a long time.  Music just seems to envigorate my...

I just got done reading the book "A Man Named Dave", after reading "The Lost Boy", and 6 years ago, "A Child Called It". Ya know...  To a certain extent, I enjoy doing things from time to time, to keep myself grounded.  To keep myself living in a reality close to what is real for everyone else.  I do t...

Well.. I got to verse 3, when a concept which, for some reason, has been pounded into my spirit throughout pretty much my whole life, came ringing true and clear.  What is that concept, you ask? Don't assume to know anything about the effect you may have on others.  Sometimes you can tell, but sometimes you can't. Because of the honesty...

Tomorrow before lunch I'm leaving school to go to a camp with my twin best friends. They suggested that me, my mom, and them could go to a camp and we were ECSTATIC!!!! There's gonna be a zip line, and cabins, and games and a lakeand its gonna be so fun! Becaus of this, I won't be able to write for the next  few days. See you!...

Wow... I can't believe I'm still awake.  For future reference, the day after Thanksgiving is a day of pain.  It is a day of fear and dread.  But today was better. When I got married to my wonderful wife, she told me she would marry me on one condition.  Okay, okay... That's a lie.  But if I wrote down all the conditions u...

 First off, I don't like at all that the congregation was laughing during the initial parts of the talk.  This interpretation of humor, to me, tells me people aren't really trying to empathize with someone who could ask that type of question.  Considering the implications of polygamy, the question of living in one's own house vs. liv...

So, a little over a week ago, I made a phone call on an offer I simply couldn't refuse...  A person online was claiming to be selling a MXL V77 tube microphone brand-new in-the-box for incredibly cheap.  This microphone didn't mean much to me at the time, but something intrigued me about it.  After 20 minutes or so with google, I kne...

I was sifting through some old voicemails today, when I found this treasure.  I almost deleted it when it was originally left, but I'm glad I didn't. This will be fun to show Luci when she's older. The voicemail itself is attached as audio in this entry....

Last spring, I modified my car - and then modified it again. The 2nd modifications entailed me re-programming (or flashing, or tuning) my car's computer.  One thing I didn't realize at the time was that evidently, a standard protocol for most tuners out there is to turn off the O2 sensors which monitor emissions after the catalytic converter...

Oh, man...  I haven't had a day like yesterday in quite some time.  Possibly years. My day started at 6:00AM with about 4 hours of sleep in me.  Ah well...  Caffeine has its purpose, right? We started out thinking there would be 4-6 cars out there on the salt with us, but it ended up being just Steve and me.  As it tu...

Today, an audio file was sent to me in an email.  This audio was compressed and encoded using the aac codec for compression and wrapped in m4a.  In order to use it, I had to convert this file to a wav format.  Usually, I receive files in mp3, ogg, or flac file types, and use lame, oggdec, or flac to decode them back to wav.  Wit...

This is an audio recording of tonight.  FHE is included. That's about it....

Ya know...  Sometimes I hate open source.  Most times I love it, but sometimes I hate it. I recently updated my gentoo gnome installation to 2.24.2, and didn't think much of it.  I then tried to connect my Nikon S210 digital camera to my usb port and perform the simple task of importing photos.  I have done this probably 100 t...

*sigh* As programming techniques become more and more complex, and the programmers continue to be just as, or more, diversified, companies who insist on being the industry standard while tossing away organizations such as the W3C, make life as a web developer increasingly difficult. If that didn't make much sense, let me rephrase:  Micro...