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Archiving the Past…

…in which I talk about the ultimate mix tape (er, CD).

The Black SideMix tapes, who among us that grew up in the 80’s (or ealier) hasn’t made at least one mix tape for a friend, platonic or otherwise. I used to make mix tapes for all of my friends simply because I had a more eclectic taste in music than most of my peers and I love to introduce people to new things. About seven years ago, my wife’s nephew was young, impressionable, and very interested in my tastes in music, so I made what can only be called the ultimate mix CD. It was the culmination of all of my musical history and design sensibilities. In an effort to keep this project alive years after it’s disappearance (as I have no idea where it lives at this time), I am going to repost the track listing as accurately as possible.

As a part of this immense collection, I created a full packaging ensemble for it. The BookI bough two six-disk cases and created art for all visible surfaces and even wrote a book detailing why each song was chosen in the collection. The book was composed while listening to the music, and thus has a kind of stream of consciousness feel. It was intended to be read as you listened to the music. The book, of course, was no simple matter either, being laid out with graphics and even hand bound. Finally, I wrapped the entire thing in a slip case to hold it all, again with full artwork. All the artwork, I will admit, was appropriated from various anime resources, but re-colored, re-composed, or re-edited to work with the new layout.

This is not what I would call a traditional blog entry, but it’s something I want to share and remember. Be forewarned, this was a twelve disk collection. Be sure to scroll all the way to the end of the track listing for a surprise…

Read the rest of this entry »


Originally posted at K. Close III
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The Soundtrack of my Life…

…in which I talk about nostalgia.

I have over 20,000 songs in my iTunes collection. Yes, that’s a lot of music! Every now and then I try to organize it, I try to define the genres, or create a “tag” structure for them, but really, the only organization that seems to work is simply rating them with stars. In order to do this, I have created several “Smart” playlists that keep the un-rated music flowing while I’m at my desk at work, while my iPod is constantly loaded with only rated music. That means, that while I’m out and about, I hear only the best music, but while I’m at work, I only hear songs I haven’t heard in a while (if ever). Every now and then, a song comes on that I completely forgot that I loved, and I’m taken back to a time in my past when that song was “important.” And sometimes, those moments extend into the internet, as I look for the important people from my past who have gone missing.

I’m not going to say we moved around much when I was a kid, in fact, in my recollection, our family only moved twice. The first time, I was four and we moved from Rhode Island to Connecticut. I don’t know that I had too many friends to miss at that time, though I do remember going to visit my parents’ friends who had kids around my age pretty frequently for the few years after the move. The second move, I was finishing up second grade and we moved across town. We had lived right next to an elementary school and I had several friends who could come over and visit right after school, and when I started third grade, I kind of had to start all over again. Those friends from my first elementary school showed up again when we all went to hight school, but things had changed too much, and it was reminiscent of some of the scenes in Can’t Buy Me Love.

Throughout my life, however, music has always been an important factor, I’ve always loved collecting and listening to music. I think I got it from my dad who had a pretty extensive record collection and was always trying to get the best sound out of his stereo. Over time, I started to build a fairly impressive cassette collection, and then inevitably, a very respectable CD collection, but now its all MP3s and I’ve sold of an awful lot of my CDs. There isn’t a giant wall of music threatening to fall on anyone now, but instead there is the constant parade of larger and larger hard drives and the constant fear that someday it will all be lost, irreplaceably. But enough of those fears, on with the story.

I can’t remember much of what I listened to before High School, well, aside from Goin’ Quackers, which was possibly my favorite Disney Sing-Along album that I have recently found in MP3 format and now have started playing for Ansel. Like most of us, however, High School was probably the most defining years of my younger era, and thus it is punctuated by the music that I was listening to at the time. The music is the soundtrack to a movie I watched years ago, half asleep, in which I remember all of the characters vividly, but all the events surrounding them have become hazy and inconsistent. Every song from that time brings back an emotion that was surely precluded by some string of seemingly earth shattering events, that have since faded away into obscurity. I have dreams that are more fluid than the memories I try to scrape together from my teen years. But when I hear a song from that time, I remember how I felt; I don’t remember at all why I felt that way, but I remember the feeling of my throat choking up as with the anticipation of a new crush, or that sinking feeling of heartbreak, or the desperation of being surrounded by sucking loneliness. All of those guttural feelings persist in the lyrics and tunes, but the history is completely awash. I may remember a split second, like a single frame of a film, but all the rest of the footage is lost, consumed in a nitrate fueled inferno. To be fair, though, Estée Lauder Beautiful will still pull me across a mall.


Originally posted at K. Close III
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A Movie of Depreciating Value…

…in which I talk about my love for movies, even the bad ones.

I love movies. I mean, I really love movies. I will watch the worst movies you’ve seen and enjoy myself, usually finding at least one small part that is redeemable. I watch some really bad movies sometimes, just because of a particular actor, director, writer, or theme. I have a really bad habit of adding movies to my Netflix queue simply because the description “sounds interesting.” As a result, my Netflix queue has over 400 movies on it, many of which I don’t recognize or even remember why I added them in the first place.

Last night we watched Miss Cast Away and the Island Girls and while it takes a really deplorable movie for me to do this, I rated it a one out of five stars. To be honest, though, it wasn’t really because of how bad the movie was (but don’t get too excited, it was a atrociously bad movie), but more because the description lied to me. More specifically, the “featured cast” list on Netflix lied to me. Here, take a look at who is supposed to be in it:

  • Evan Marriott
  • Eric Roberts
  • Joyce Giraud
  • Colleen Shannon
  • Stuart Pankin
  • Michael Jackson
  • Charlie Schlatter
  • Somaya Reece
  • Eugene Greytak
  • Anna Nicole Smith
  • Bob Denver
  • Pat Morita
  • Lou Ferrigno
  • Bernie Kopell
  • Jerry Lewis

Now I can only guess that I added this movie, regardless of its star rating (1.9) simply because of the fantastically diverse cast. Even when the disk arrived, I didn’t remember anything about the movie but as soon as I saw all these names in the description, I was once again excited to see all these people working together. As I sat, watching the movie with Heather (who only gave it a chance for the same promised cast), I started to notice that in light of the lack of a plot and the abysmally cartoonish special effects, no casting choices were ever going to save this feature. Eric Roberts, a B quality star, made his appearance early on, and Charlie Schlatter (yeah, I had to look him up, but he looked really familiar) entered immediately afterwards, but all those other big names up there seemed to be taking their time showing up. Eventually, there was a gag in which Charlie Schlatter, stranded with the beauty pageant contestants on the deserted island, finds an unconscious Gilligan lookalike (that’s Bob Denver for those of you who are not good with names) and goes through his pockets. This lookalike never speaks, nor even looks at the screen. There is no way to even suggest that it was, in fact, Bob Denver but we are to assume that it was. It turns out that even IMDB has taken Bob Denver’s name out of the credits, if not by request, then probably out of respect. Shortly afterwards, Michael Jackson made his appearance, and it was a surprisingly sizable part. To be fair, though, the writer/director has a prior relationship with Michael Jackson and a particularly talented small boy. Even still, his footage looked like it was filmed with a webcam and submitted via email.

Of the remaining stars, Lou Ferrigno was superimposed on a special effect, Jerry Lewis was possibly there in name only (as in, his name was mentioned), I never saw any reference at all to Anna Nicole, Pat Morita or Bernie Kopell. In all honesty, the movie did make me chuckle more than once, and for that, I was going to give it two stars (to get an idea of what I deem a one star film, watch Porn Theatre) but dropped it to one star because I felt lied to and cheated. Before putting the disk in the mail to go back to its hellspawn origin, I even crossed out all the names on the label that were arguably not even in the movie.

Oh, and Jurassic Pork didn’t make me chuckle at all.


Originally posted at K. Close III
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The Oracle Says “No…”

…in which I talk about frustrating work issues while stalling in the office because some guy needs to get into our server room every 45 seconds.

I’d much rather be outside going to get a YooHoo or even a chocolate coke at Sonic, but instead I have to sit here in the office and hold the door open (not literally) for this guy who is doing some installs in our server room.

In the mean time, I’ve been trying to install this stupid room scheduling software on a new Staff computer and it turns out that our decision to switch from XP to Vista may have been a less than stellar choice. The lab had to switch to Vista because the newest version of AutoCAD only runs on Vista. There was no real compelling need for the faculty & staff to switch, but we strive for consistency whenever we can, so the new faculty & staff computers have been getting Vista as well. However, this being the first computer running Vista to need this scheduling software, it has now been brought to my attention that it may not run right, if at all.

The problem goes deeper than simply the scheduling software (Resource25 or R25 for short). R25 uses Oracle for its data management, so before even installing R25, I need to install Oracle. Now, for those of you who don’t know but still care for some reason, Oracle 9 (the ipso facto standard on campus for the most part) does not run on Vista. Oracle 10 runs fine on Vista and the other applications that we’ve needed oracle for in the past all work fine with Oracle 10. Not so with R25. R25 requires Oracle 9 and will not work with Oracle 10.

A dealbreaker you say? So did I, but apparently not so. It turns out that you can actually take an install of Oracle 9 from a windows XP machine, copy it to your Vista machine, copy all the registry keys and all associated parts and pieces, and then direct things like R25 to that instead of Oracle 10 and everything is supposed to run fine. I can’t say if it does or not because I’ve not gotten that far, yet. Like I said, I’m stuck in my office for the time being. I’m not saying that I want, or even expect it to work, but I have to try it before I can call it a write-off.


In other news, music has been mysteriously disappearing from my iTunes library. Its not bad sectors on the hard drive, because the library would still think it was there, even if it can’t find the track, and its not disappearing just from iTunes because its not on the hard drive either. Its completely missing. I’m not sure how or why, but its really upsetting me. For example, I used to have (legally) almost every Nine Inch Nails album (up to a point, at least). When I checked for my Nine Inch Nails music the other day, it turned out that I now only have five songs. So I’ve spent the last couple of days trying to figure out what is actually missing and how to get it all back.


Lastly, I got my new tires yesterday. They are definitely different that what I’m used to, but I should be come accustomed to them before too long… though I may need a new seat.


Originally posted at K. Close III
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One Year Ago…

…in which I make a quick note about Ansel’s Birthday.

IMG_8351Yesterday was Ansel’s first birthday. There was no great hoopla, not riotous celebration, just a day out shopping and dinner at home. We went out to Frisco to go to Ikea to buy a gift for Ansel, but it turns out that the item is no longer available at Ikea. We’ll have t get a slightly more expensive one at Target, now.

Either way, we had a pretty good day out shopping with my Mom and Dad. We ate a late lunch at Ikea and then headed back home. There really was no great celebration, that comes tomorrow at Ansel’s big birthday party.


And on another note, I finally picked up my Rock Band 2 guitar at Best Buy. I got tired of waiting for GameStop to ship it and found out Best Buy had 12 in stock. I can honestly say, its fantastic. Its such a nice improvement over the old guitar. The fact that its wireless is great, but the sturmmer is the real improvement. Its a lot more responsive wiht a much shorter throw. My only concern is that the orange key is a little sluggish on the bounce back. I’ll have to keep an eye on it and see if it needs replacing. I haven’t noticed and gameplay issues, it just feels mushy under my finger. Actually, if all the keys felt the same, I wouldn’t even notice or care, but that one key just feels out of place.

Anyway, we have a relaxing day at home before the big party tomorrow. We’re looking forward to it and hope Ansel has a great day!


Originally posted at K. Close III
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Where did the Weekend go…

…in which I talk about the loss of time

So this weekend, like most, flew by almost imperceptibly. I know I did something this weekend, but nothing that would be considered a responsible thing. I had wanted to do things like change out heather’s license plates, put up a clothesline, fix the toilet. You know, grown up, homeowner, husband, father type things.

Instead, I pretty much watched movies, played games, and wasted time with my Xbox. I know the responsible part of me is locked inside somewhere, I’ve seen it before. It usually surfaces with a flurry of activity, then drinks a beer and hibernates for several months, but lately, its been wracking at the bars and trying to get out, but I somehow keep distracting it and just waste time. Sunday, it almost won, but fortunately, Jason and Stephanie came over and showed it some little plastic figures and it ran in the corner and played army men.


We did, however, spend nearly two hours at Lowes on Sunday not only buying a deep freeze so that Heather can really devote some effort to the Grocery Game , but also meandering back and forth and back again between the fencing, plumbing, and hardware departments trying to figure out how to make a removable post for the retractable clothesline I’m going to put up for Heather. After much deliberating, I think I finally found the right combination of items to create a ground socket within which to install a fence post that can then be removed in the event that we want to have people over on the patio. I’m going to begin construction on it tonight if I can keep the Xbox from grabbing my attention.


Speaking of the Xbox, my addiction to it must be worse than I thought. Not only does the enticement of downloading and watching old TV shows almost completely disable my fatherly productivity (I’ve watched three seasons of Two Guys, a Girl, and a Pizza Place almost completely back to back), but games that just make me mad for two hours at a time will keep me hooked even in misery. I played Culdcept Saga for several hours this weekend, and hated almost all of it. Why can I not stop playing when I’m enjoying it so little? I think it is, in part, due to the fact that Culdcept is a combination of a board game and a collectible card game, both of which are weaknesses of mine, but at the same time, the rules eluded me and I didn’t understand why certain things were happening from time to time, so it just made me mad when I thought I understood and found out that I was wrong. This happened quite a bit. I finally determined that the root of the problem, was that in a live game where you are playing with other people, if something happens and its not what you expected, you can go back and figure out what’s actually going on. In a video game, events happen, and then the cards are wiped off the table and you’re on to another round before you even know what you miscalculated. You can’t go back and see what you mixed up.

Also, the game loved to surprise you with abilities that you’d never seen and didn’t know what they did, so you wouldn’t know how to prepare for them.


And finally, I’m now on my second day at work without Heather around and its still awkward. I got to ride my bike in to work today (it took a leisurely 16 minutes and I was actually not completely exhausted or sweat soaked), which is something I’ve been really looking forward to doing again. Today’s ride makes me confident that I can do that almost every day, depending on the weather. Its still unusually, however, to be going off to fix a computer problem (and usually the most asinine problem) and not be able to stop by Heather’s office and rant about it first. Heather and Angela were my biggest confessionals and while Angela is still here, she’s not on the way to most of the computers I deal with. Every time I go out to work on a computer, if I pass by Heather’s office, I look in expectantly, knowing that she’s not there. I know she’s home and happy with Ansel, but its going to take some adjusting for me. Heather and I have worked in the same building for 10 years, and its just not the same to not have her here anymore.

At least now I’m getting tons of comp time again, now that I’m not longer taking lunches. Eating at my desk, FTW!


Originally posted at K. Close III
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Welcome to the Social…

…in which I talk about blogging etiquette and whatever else comes to mind.

So even in my failing to be a more regular blogger (I strive for one update a week and have been a bit more slack, lately), I’m trying to be a more socially active Webbite. When people comment on my Flickr photos, I try to give them a comment back. When I see a good LiveJournal post, I try to give some kudos. I’ve been trying to share stuff and just be more proactive in my internets.

It is through these efforts that I’m trying to make people feel more apt to comment, more apt to engage in a dialog about the things I’m posting or responding to. I am trying to make my internet experience more interactive rather than just a fire and forget blogging space. So even though I don’t have the time to put together a decent and relevant blog post, I just want people to know I’m still reading what they’re writing and I’m appreciating what they’re saying.


In other news, I’ve been thinking a lot about what my next entry is going to be about. I have a lot of subjects that would probably make good posts, but I just haven’t had the time to compose anything. Part of that is work, part is the baby, and part is the xbox. That accursed beautiful thing has been the most joyous bane of my free time ever. I can’t remember the last time I went more than 24 hours without booting it up. Damn you xbox and all your entertainment glory.

Oh, and damn you GTA IV for having unachievable (by me, at least) achievements. I was up way too late last night trying to roll my car five times. Blah.


Originally posted at K. Close III
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