Weekend's over with.

This weekend was fairly restful. Friday night I went and listened to Gulliver at the Brick. It was okay (there were a lot of new members) but not as rockin as the "old" band. Came home smelling like an ash tray and crashed.

Slept a good bit Saturday. All the rain made staying in bed sound like a better and better idea. I ended up doing some stuff around the house but finally got the urge to get out. Headed over to HSV to the mall in search of some things. Found what I was looking for on sale (schwing!). I also found some cool stuff at Bananna Republic but I'll have to go back there when I have more time and can also bring someone along with me to get some opinions. Now that I'll be dressing more "business casual", I have to change my wardrobe around a bit. I actually prefer that to dressing slouchy though slouchy has its place. Some folks consider anything remotely being "dressed up" as being equal to "not comfortable". That could not be farther from the truth. You just have to get the right clothes. But I digress.

Tinkered around with my drums a little then watched TV till I was sleepy.

From all the sleep I got Saturday, I ended up waking up at like 5:30 AM Sunday. Whoops. Played some Joint Ops online for a while till it was time to get breakfast going and packing up all my cymbals and stuff for church. Stepped outside into a freakin SAUNA. My contact lenses even fogged up. SHEESH! Set up all my stuff and also put my shiny new portable tornado into service. (I got a new floor fan yesterday). It gets hot up on stage with the lights and activity. Things were much improved with the airflow. I got my breeze on. Church went well - had a good crowd out. Music went off without a hitch which is always nice.

After church, an equally large crowd headed to Logan's for lunch. The Spooners join us which was a nice addition. They were talkative and a lot of fun to be around. I sure hope they connect with us and join in the fun. Watched some of the Nascar race while eating. Little E ended up having some kind of malfunction and swapped out with John Andretti for driving duties. Anyway, ended up eating too much then went home for a nap.

Headed to the B's later for some dinner with everyone. It was the usual crowd. Props go out to Heavy E for all the lasagna.

First week at the new job...

was GREAT. I've really enjoyed my new office environment - nice atmosphere, surroundings, pleasant people, clear direction... it's just all a breath of fresh air! Had a chance to meet several new folks and also to learn more about the print side of the business. Got to go to 2 "press checks" where the designer reviews a print at the press prior to running a job. That way, there's on last review to make sure the printed result matches what the designer intended. The 4-color press I looked at was quite an impressive piece of machinery. The print people I met were VERY helpful, offering tips to make both our lives easier. Very cool.

Got the email situation on the way to being fixed. Swapped our domain and email service over to another host. Hopefully, the DNS changes I made will go into effect in the next few hours making our transition complete. We'll see.

For lunch today, I met up with Sarah at The Brick. Had a good time catching up on the latest with her. Going to be heading back there tonight to check out Gulliver with some friends and co-workers. It's also nice to once again be developing a social life. Ahhhh... Normalcy.

Last night, I met up with another friend at Simp McGhee's for a DELICIOUS meal. Going to have to do that again soon!

Start of an era...

Today was my first day at my new office. The first order of business was to get some photos made of me and the other new employees at the agency for the company website. Later, Michael (one of the designers) and I headed over to the newspaper office for some press release photos as well. Before lunch we had a staff meeting with the goal of getting everyone up to speed on the current business.

Worked on a Macintosh today for the first time in a VERY long time. That's going to take some getting used to. Luckily, it's a temporary situation as I'll soon be ordering a PC as my regular workstation. Ugh... our email situation is in need of help. I could never sucessfully email myself today. Our webhosting partner is implementing some type of spam control system and they're saying it could be the end of August or September before they are done with the implementation!?! I'm going to look into that more in depth tomorrow to see if I can rectify that sistuation. It's unacceptable.

Email issues aside, everything else is pretty nice. I can actually say I had a nice day at work today. That's something I haven't been able to say for quite some time now. It feels good to be able to say it, that's for sure.

After work, I met up with the crew at the Guad. All the usuals were there plus Dabney. Her sister joined us later for our walk down the mall. Headed home after that.

Now THIS is interesting...

I was a little bored tonight so I thought I'd Google my old high school's name back in Knoxville to see if there was any good info out there to peruse. One of the first hits I got was the above link for MTV's Johnny Knoxville's bio. I thought, "what the heck" and read through it. To my surprise... Johnny was a buddy and classmate of mine! I was a senior and he was a freshman but we hung around some of the same circles. I yanked out my senior yearbook and sure enough, there he was. What a small world. I went to school with "THE" Jackass. That's hilarious.

End of an era.

My last day at Intergraph was yesterday. YA-HOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

I showed up for work around 10 but it looks like I could have waited until after lunch just in time for my exit interview. Oh well. It gave me some additonal time to finalize packing my things and being sure I got everything. I did a secure delete on all my files so that the next person to get my PC can start with a fresh slate.

Headed over to HR for my exit meeting and talked things over with Annette before I hit the road. It was an amazing feeling, the weight of a job where there was no light at the end of the tunnel has been lifted off my shoulders (and unfortunately has been put on someone else). My former director called me on my cell as I was out and about needing more information about what I did.... sigh.

Me and A#2 headed to HSV to catch The Bourne Supremacy since the only theater in Decatur that was showing it was Tetanus Cinemas. That's my new name for the Carmike here since it's a dump. You need to wear old clothes and shoes since you'll get crap on you AND your shoes will stick to the floor. Hopefully some bulldozers will drive around that place soon.

Movie was great. Some of the camera work left a little something to be desired but it was enjoyable, much more so than the previous one.

It's almost over.

Tomorrow is my last day at the 'graph. While I'm sad that I'll no longer see some of my friends on a daily basis, I'm excited about the new ones I'll be getting to know. I swung by my new office last night on the way home and checked on things over there. Got a brief run down on their server and backup system. It's a straightforward setup, nothing complicated. One of the first things I'm going to do when I get over there is evaluate their current IT environment and see what, if anything needs to be changed or upgraded for better performance. Wheeee!

Once I got home, I warmed up on my drums for a while then packed up my stuff for band practice. That went well and went fast. The usual group (the b's, the a's + Sharon - Stacey's sister) mounged it over to O' Charleys for some Irish food. Had a fun time there! My food was decent for the 2nd time in a row so things look to be be improving there for sure.

Oh, in other news Kailyn and I had an "incident" the other night as I was babysitting... I was teaching her how to say "My name is Kailyn" when I noticed that my legs suddenly felt damp under where she was sitting. Lifted her up and found that both legs of my jeans were soaked with pee. Nice. Brought her downstairs to her mom. There was a ladies get together thing going on in the kitchen and when they saw me and what happened, everyone was rolling. I think someone asked if I was okay or needed another pair of jeans to which I replied, "No problem, it's just urine". I don't think I ever envisioned myself saying that. My jeans remained slightly mounge for the rest of the night.

Ok, I know you might be wondering what "mounge" is. Sharon, who is from Minnesota, was inventing words last night. "Mounge" was the first one which quickly turned into things like:

Mounge chair
Teacher's Mounge
Mounge-tain range
Look's like your dog has mounge
My mounge is acting up again, etc.

Something also happened with the mis-use of the word "contents" but I can't recall exactly how we made fun of that. Maybe Kevin can elaborate in his blog.

In other travesties of the English language, my manager's manager came in and asked me how to spell "solemn" yesterday. I spelled it for her and she went back to her office. I followed her there and when I walked in, she looked at me and said "it still doesn't look right". "It doesn't look right to you because you didn't know how to spell it in the first place" (heh). I took her to www.websters.com to show her that my spelling was correct. I think I rolled my eyes at this point.

Cars, water, sun and orange juice.

The past weekend was lots of fun. As I had planned on Saturday, me and the Burns' headed to HSV for some fine lunchtime dining at Macaroni Grill. I had one of my favorites, the grilled salmon on a bed of spinach and orzo pasta (looks like rice). After that, we trotted down to Toys-R-Us for some gift-age for Kailyn. There's a LOT of toys out these days. Holy crap. After I picked up what I wanted to get her, I went next door to the bookstore to pass the time with some magazines on cars and music.

Next stop was the Nissan dealership. George, the guy who helped me before was there and he had me sign some papers and then me and the crew could go driving by ourselves in whatever I was interested in. Went riding in the Armada first. I've pretty much come to the conclusion that the Armada's a little too big for me. It's really a lot like a Japanese Humvee... The Maxima fit me much better. Nice engine in it too. Plenty of power. Anyways, I'm not sure what I'm going to do yet. I'm really adverse to getting a new car and taking that initial depreciation hit. Since I'm in no rush, I'll be doing some checking into used vehicles before making any kind of decision.

Church was great Sunday. I was off drumming duties so I was out in the crowd. I got Kerry to move out of the Baptist back row and get up in the front. Music was great! I especially dug the mandolin playing by Steven. Nice touch.

Had to make a quick run by Wal-Mart afterwards and get some supplies. Dropped stuff off at home then headed over to the pool for Kailyn's birthday party. Had a great crowd there! Jack resurrected the party favorite of all insurance agents... pool surfing. The surfboard is made of 2 floats, one on top of the other. The bottom one is your standard "I don't wanna be white anymore" tanning float while the top is a thick foam rubber one that gives you a somewhat firm surface to stand on. Someone centers the float in front of the diving board then the surfer takes a run down the board, lands on the float and tries to stay up as long as possible. It's a good time for everyone. See pictures of the actions below.

Made a quick run home to get cleaned up and changed then headed back to the Burn's for our group get-together. Big crowd there again! Had a good time talkign about ministry and church in general then a fun time grilling, eating and reading trivial pursuit cards. We are all like a brain trust of odd knowledge. You wouldn't believe some of the junk we know about. It's scary for sure.

The Cake

The birthday girl!

Presents!

Jack showing good form on the pool surfing.

Jordan taking a stab at it...

Dave with more "Y-axis" velocity than "Z".

A festival of open-toed footwear.

Candi the pool critter

One week to go.

The days till my departure are rapidly counting down. As a result, I have been showing others how to do what it is I do every day. I received a compliment the other day from one of my co-workers who mentioned that I had gotten to the point in a relationship with many of the vendors I have the opportunity to work with to get them to do things to help me and the company out that they may not be contractually obligated to do. They only do so since we're not only business associates but friends as well. That's something I never really thought about before, but in retrospect, I can see that now. That's not really anything I can train someone into doing though, you just kind of have to BE that way. I like to have fun while I work and what's more fun than working with your friends?
 
On another front, a buddy of mine hooked me up with a tape drive to use for backups. I scrounged around and found one of my SCSI cards to connect it to. You know, tape just isn't a fast media to work with. Backing up to tape is definitely a "start it and go do something else" operation. I did at least back up all my mail, document, and digital camera files to tape so if something were to happen to my hard drives, I can restore my critical files.
 
Looks like a blah kind of weekend due to the weather. Probably going to try and get some things done around the house and also mess with my drums a bit. Kev and Stacey are having a birthday get together for Kailyn tomorrow so I need to get out and get her something. I think we'll head to Huntsville after awhile and do some shopping for her and also have lunch at Macaroni Grill. Might go test drive some cars again too. I did get to drive a couple the other day at the Nissan dealership - an Armada, Murano and a Maxima. I liked the Maxima the most I think followed closely by the Armada. I really didn't care for the styling of the Murano after getting in it. Really though, I'm leaning towards the Maxima at this point. That's a good handling vehicle right there.
 
Talked to Kevin's brother Gareth last night. Kev had shot me some pictures of his new DW kit. Very nice looking set of tubs... the finish was tobacco satin. It's a classy kit for sure.

I'll bet it's raining...

We've been all about the rain here lately. It seems like it's rained everyday for the past week! Late this afternoon some strong storms moved through Madison - there was also a tornado on the ground NE of Huntsville. The tornado warning sirens were in full song. It was a bit creepy to be outside with the sirens blaring and the wind gusting. I was out in it briefly after picking my car up from getting the tires roated and balanced. I quickly made it back to the office and hung out there till it all passed.

Work was interesting to say the least. I've stirred up a nest of activity due to my resignation. At this point, they are looking at a combination of up to 3 people to manage my heavy workload. Hmmm. Got a lot of comments from my co-workers as well: "You dawg!", "Lucky B*stard", "So you escaped?", "You look much happier!", "Do they need anyone else?", "So, how hard is it to do your job?". I'm going to miss working with my friends there of course, but I've got to move on. I'll stay in touch with all them anyway since they're all on IM - it's not like I'm moving away either so hopefully things will stay close to the same.

Met up with the B's for dinner (shocking, isn't it?) and put a small dent in the chicken population. After that was a fun run to Wal-Mart. Band practice was last night to accomodate the schedule of others (I'm off drumming duty this week anyway). I think Asian #2 is off this week as well so A1 & A2 will be in the crowd this Sunday. It's nice to have a break every once in awhile.

Got some new hi-hats today that I had ordered over the weekend. They're the 12" Meinl Alien Hats. Very cool sounding set. The bottom cymbal has jingles mounted to it giving it a different sound from my regular hats. Also, they're smaller in diameter making them very "fast" and slightly crisper than even my 13" K/Z set.

Oh, want to send happy birthday greetings to my sister and dad. Solita's was Monday and dad's was today. I'll add a year to my count as well next month. Crap, this getting old thing stinks.

No F1 racing this weekend. :-(

And so it begins...

It's been awhile since my last post simply because a LOT has been going on with me lately. At any rate, I've got some big news to announce...

I'm finalizing a career change!

As you can tell my my history of posts, my current job has it's few high points but the majority of the time is filled with low points. While I like the IT industry, my actual day-to-day tasks are wearing me thin with no real end or turn around in sight. There were some rays of hope that things would change soon but it wasn't anything concrete, just more uncertainty.

There are several benefits to my move (in no particular order):

1) working with old friends
2) less driving
3) interesting work
4) "family" environment
5) still work with technology
6) better growth opportunities

and that's just a few of them!

More to come...

Yippy-Skippy

Went into the office late today since I would be staying till 7 in the evening due to a "special" client requirement to move their network at 6:30 PM. That'll cost em. Spent the day largely on that and also getting things in-line for a lot of activity next week. Thank goodness for Angela at one of my subcontractors. She's got her act together and makes things happen for me. While on the subject of subs, I've got a great relationship with all the ones I work with:

@ the BIG phone company: Cheryl & Jackie

@ my wiring contractor: Angela, Jesica & Tamra

@ my network mgt. partner: Gail, Ben, John, Brad & Rob

We can all be ourselves on conference calls, reach each other via IM, we've all got each other's private contact numbers... even home numbers in some cases! There's a certain level of trust in that you only use these alternate contact numbers in emergencies - but it's not something they are required to give out. If it wasn't these folks, I couldn't make half the stuff I do happen.

Oh, thanks to the band for moving practice to Thursday night this week on short notice to accomodate my late night at work. Luckily, even if I would have had to miss out, I know all the music this week already so it wouldn't be such a big deal.

Gonna drum a little then call it a night. I got plenty of sleep last night and felt great all day today. Maybe that's what I need more of.

Yep.. a 3-day weekend's where it's at...

While floating in the pool today, I have come to the conclusion that a 3-day weekend is the presciption to alleviate the symptoms of work stress. Amazingly enough, I'm actually looking forward to going to work tomorrow. Of course, it could be Mr. Cuervo talking too... (whassup Jose'!)

Slept in a little this morning but finally reached operating temperature around 8:30 or so. Messed around a little then stepped out into an EXTREMELY HUMID day and gave Kelsey a bath. She seemed to enjoy the cool water. Since she's so well-behaved during bathtime and it only take about 10-15 minutes, I'll try harder to bathe her more frequently. I'm sure she'll appreciate that.

Printed out some of the photos from all the pics I took yesterday then got cleaned up to head over to Anderson Sr.'s house for grub: ribs, corn, beans, potato salad, hot dogs, etc. After eating, we inched our way to the comfortable chairs in the den and watched... Sponge Bob, Square Pants... for an HOUR. Some of the kids were watching the show so for some reason, no one took the initiative to change the channel. It wouldn't have mattered anyway, most of us had dozed off. The decision was made to move the fun to the pool so we all packed up our stuff and hit the pool for the remainder of the afternoon.

Had the usual Guad-squaddage and the requisite walk down the mall. I found some sale items at Dillard's that I picked up. Kev got something too. Kyle found some items at Parisian (see his blog for details) and Kev found something else to get at EB Games.

Got a busy week this week. John races this Friday so I hope that by then he has the high-speed miss issues sorted out. We'll see.

Peektures

Some random pictures from the pool party this afternoon.

Dave "Speedo" Anderson

A barrage of water bombs is about to be unleashed.

Kyle "I've worked out for 8 years on these muscles" Root.

Some of my friends, Kailyn, Jo-Jo, and Kandi. Oh, that's Muscles in the background.

Kevin trying to look like Johnny Bravo by not breathing.

Humidi-tay

The only thing worth noting from Saturday is that Kyle, my sister and I headed to Hunts-vegas to see Spiderman 2. Excellent flick. Solita originally wanted to see it here in town but the only theater showing here was the crappy Carmike you'd need a tetanus shot to venture into. That place really just needs to be bulldozed. After the movies, we made our way to McAlister's for some foodage. Ran into Jimmy P from my old church there. That was a surprise.

Called it a night after a short stop at Barnes & Noble. Oh, I did manage to see the end of the Nascar race before conking out.

Got up at dawn's crack to catch the French Grand Prix. My boy Fernando Alonso of Renault came in 2nd despite putting up a great fight with The Michael in his Ferrari. What an exciting race!

Church was good this morning. We had our standard technical glich that was eventually worked out. Music was good - I played louder than I normally do, but it felt good to play that way. I did have a malfunction of my own when I bumped my snare strainer - turning it off and turning my snare into a timbale. No biggie, just fixed it and only lost one snare hit. It all went real well.

Ate lunch with the folks and grilled out. I took over grilling duties and let everyone else relax. Shrimp, steaks, beans, salad... it all added up to a filling lunch. Next stop was Dave's where the pool party was already in full swing. Good crowd over there. Had a great time with everyone not to mention more than enough delicious food. More steak for me! Swam around and relaxed till a freak storm blew in out of nowhere. We had just gotten out of the pool when suddenly the wind REALLY picked up and got bad really fast. That little squall blew through as fast as it had come in though so the cookout resumed and we went back to enjoying the outdoors. I took a bazillion pictures. I'll post a few.

A 4th of July 2004 memory.

Another shot... 

Thomas tearing it up on the kit... 

Me and Mr. Drums. 

WOW! Thomas Lang is awesome.

Left the office early yesterday to catch a drum clinic with Thomas Lang, a talented drummer from Austria. Before leaving, I had to swing by my insurance agent's office to get a new homeowners insurance policy in place. Yay. Arrived home to find even less trees in my yard as a result of 5 trees being removed from my yard. The house and yard will be much brighter now, less leaves to deal with in the fall, less bird poop on my patio and no more sap issues parking under trees in the driveway. All in all, it's for a good cause.

Kyle showed up and we headed north. Stopped in at a Kyle Recommended™ eatery, Famous Dave's Pit BBQ and had a filling dinner. I had some surprisingly good cornbread with my meal. I'm usually not a big fan of it but this was exceptional. Made another pit stop to drop video stuff off at Shane's place before we continued on to our destination. After realizing that I didn't figure the estrogen factor into the driving directions I had been provided, we made course corrections and arrived at Soundcheck Studios only a few minutes late. Got in our chairs and spent 2 hours dazzled by Thomas' skill. WOW. HE'S AMAZING. Afterwards, I was able to get him to autograph my DVD of his as well as a poster. Also got a goofy shot of he and I as he was signing my stuff. Ran into Kusi up there too. Gave Jennie a hard time about the driving directions then took off.

Headed back homeward but had to make another pit stop at Shane's to pick up some stuff. Got to talk to Melody a bit and play with the dogs. After a long ride home, I finally got in bed around 1 AM.

I'm a little tired this morning.

Another weekend gone...

Friday was a good day. Stayed busy at work for the most part. Bill got moved out of the office into the next one and it looks my new officemate Tom will be moving in over the weekend or on Monday. We'll see how that all works out. I take extreme care to be as inoffensive as possible to others - use EFFECTIVE deodorant, no bad breath, no excess gasses emitted, etc. and I trust others to do the same. Again, we'll see how all this works out.

On the way home, I swung by the church to pick up my audio gear since I had mentioned I was going to use a minimal setup there until some upgrades to the main PA happened. That stuff's heavy.

Hooked up with Kyle that evening to shoot some pool at The Brick. Ran into David, Bernie's manager eating dinner with his family and a friend of his daughters. Seemed like a nice group of folks. After $6 worth of pool (Kyle might have some video on his bLog) we stopped back over at my place so he could check out the episode of Friends where Ross and Monica's cousin Cassie stops by to visit. Very funny stuff there.

I spent Saturday cleaning up my office. I'm still not done with that yet though. I also put all the sound gear I picked up yesterday away, neatly putting everything in their respective cases/zipper bags and winding up cords so I don't end up having to untangle a huge mess the next time I need to use them.

Got started on my personal website as well. That's going to take a bit of work but hopefully the end result will be worth it. It's been a long time since I've worked on web stuff so I'm looking forward to getting back into it again. I'll post a link to it as I get more of it done.

Sunday had a rainy start. Packed up my gear and headed to church. I got my mics set up the way I wanted and got them plugged in. I also relocated my IEM transmitter to the back of the room and got it all plugged in and working. In my mix, everything sounded pretty good! Music went pretty well this morning although I felt my kick drum work in "Refuge in You" left a little to be desired. I've got to work on that. Kevin did a good job with the message filling in for Dave who just got back from vacation.

Went over to Logan's for lunch. As usual of late, had another malfunction that resulted in me getting my 9 oz. filet for free. I think we're going to take Logan's off the rotation for a little while till they get their act together. When we were all done eating, we all parted ways, some of us to take naps, others to... whatever. ;-)

Met back up with same group at The B's later for an evening of pizza, Mario Kart, Colin McRae Rallly racing and Monkey Ball golf (which I won by the way). I'm back home and it's time for bed. Tomorrow begins another week of fun.

Almost Friday...

I've had an extremely busy week so far at work. Whew, can't wait till the weekend to get my mind of the office again for 48 hours.

The other day I talked to Sandy, the manager of the cleaners I use to make sure she could press the Renault shirt I picked up in Indy. It has a lot of embroidery on it making it incredibly difficult to iron by hand. It was best left to a commercial pressing operation for sure. I picked it up today and was pleased with the results. It's nice to have a friend in the cleaning business for sure!

Band practice was last night - Kevin thought it went well although I wasn't too happy with my drumming. I'm going to have to bear down and get my playing back to where it needs to be. Also on the drumming front, Kyle and I will be heading up to Nashville next week for a drum clinic by Thomas Lang, a very talented Austrian drummer. That should be good. It will also give me a boost I think. I'm in a bit of a lull at the moment and could use some inspiration to get me out of it.

Sound issues - I was kind of disappointed to find that all the drum channels were off, both on my mixer and the main mixer which pretty much tells me that all the trouble and expense I went to so that the drums could sound decent in our building was a waste. I'm going to pull the majority of my equipment and only use a kick mic, overhead mic and my IEM system. It's not like it's going to matter anyway, they're never turned up so no one will notice a difference. Again, the PA *cannot* currently get louder than the acoustic volume of the drums. You can at least turn the drums mics up to add some of the attack to the toms and sizzle of the cymbals since the shield cust most of that out. Without the added mic inputs, there is no high end on the drums making them sound dull and lifeless. I guess that's what they want to hear - so be it. That's what you're gonna get.

Shifting gears again, I'm trying to get together some photos from Indy. Hopefully I'll have some to post on here soon. But for now, it's time for bed.

Sunday, continued...

Headed to the track after eating breakfast. We made our way to our assigned seats over in section J. Let the cooking begin! Fortunately, I covered myself with sunblock to avoid any additional issues with my already dark parts.

The race was spectacular from our vantage point. Most of the action took place right in front of us. I got some great pictures. Ralph Schumacker from the Williams/BMW team had a scary accident on the front stretch. We later found out that he wasn't seriouly injured but all were really concerned there for a while. Congrats to the Ferrari's and to B.A.R. Honda's Takuma Sato for his first podium finish!

Bernie and I hustled back to the corral to take care of some last minute things then said bye to everyone as we hopped back into the car and headed south. There were some traffic snafus on the way home, but other than that, it was a fairly uneventful ride. Cleaned up and crashed when I got home. I can't wait till next year.

Have you been out in the sun?

WOW! What a great few days in Indy! So much happened, but I'll do my best to recap all the high points. As you can imagine, bloggin wasn't high on my list of priorites while on vacation so this roll-up will have to do.

Woke up early Friday morning and ate some breakfast at the hotel then headed to the BMW Corral. Once we got there, I picked up my car plackard that would allow me through the police barriers on race day. Also, Bernie and I got our armbands/nametags/meal tickets so that we could take part in all the corral stuff - food, drinks, facilites, etc. Got to the track and positioned ourselves on the stands next to the pit row exit so we could see the cars take off and also watch them practice their starts. Got some excellent photos there! Took some video also that I can't wait to pull off the camcorder. Got to hear the glorious sounds of the F1 V10's running wide-open! Between practice sessions, we moved over to a different set of stands to watch. Also, I stayed true to my plan - I would do my souvenir shopping on Friday while they had my size in stock. Picked up BAR Honda shirt first. Next on my list was to get a tobacco Renault shirt; Bernie spotted one and was joking about the price. I think I surprised him when my face lit up and I bought it. I also got a couple of hats and a Mercedes shirt as well. I pretty much got everything I was looking for.

We stopped at the plaza to have lunch and met up with three older guys from San Diego. Tom was an ex-drag car racer. This other guy was a current formula Ford racer and the oldest of the group raced in the past but now apparently collected cars. They seemed like a fun bunch especially after hearing about their strip-club escapades the previous night. After all the F1 events were over on Friday, we headed back to the corral for dinner. Met up with some F1 fans from Missouri - Ron and his son Randy. Great guys! Randy had just traded in his BMW M5 for a mini-Cooper Sport which they drove in. Ironically, the guy who bought his M5 ALSO drove in which was a tremendous coincidence! That guy would be Ken, an architect. After a fun time, BH and I headed for the hotel. It was still early so we ended up going to go see the latest Harry Potter movie. It was pretty good. I got lost a little in the story but BH had read the books so he filled me in on everything.

Saturday morning was an even earlier start. Headed to the corral for some food then met up with Ron and Randy. Made our way to the track to watch the practice and qualifying. Did a little more shopping between sessions then decided to take in the events from the covered stands at turn 13, the area where the cars have left the twisty infield and were flying down the front straight. FROZE OUR BUTTS OFF!

After that was all over with it was nice to get back into the sun! Went back to the corral for a late lunch. Spent the rest of the day there and had dinner then a raffle followed by an auction. I got a hat in the raffle and Bernie got a bag of goodies... including a very pink shirt. Heh. Left the auction early and it was back to the hotel to crash.

Sunday morning was a little easier. Loaded up the car and headed for the track. As expected, our pass got us through the police barricades so we got to our parking space in just a few minutes.

More in a bit.

Are we there yet?

Got up this morning at my usual time and wrapped up my last minute packing. Played some video games to kill the time till Bernie showed up. Hit the road and headed north. First stop was for a bathroom break in Franklin, TN at Best Buy. Mmmmm... big tv's GOOD! Next was Macaroni Grill. Followed a cute waitress that was coming into work then was pleasantly surprised when it turned out she was going to be our waitress. Had a sumptuous meal then hit the road again. Finally got into Indy and checked into the hotel then headed back out again to swing by the speedway and drop by the BMW corral to make sure all our arrangements are in place - hospitality stuff and the all-important car placard that will permit us to pass through the police barriers on raceday. The BMW folks were busy setting things up for Friday so we made our way back towards the hotel. Dropped in at Red Lobter for another delicious meal. I'm back at the hotel now and getting ready to crash. Going to try getting up early in the AM to make it to the first F1 practice.

A BIG thanks to Kyle for loaning me some video equipment. Thanks buddy.

And they're off!!!

Today I mainly tried to stay below the radar but still also accomplish a few things to make my absence for work for a couple of days less noticable. Hopefully all will go off without a hitch.

Bernie and I ran over to the airport to pick up a rental car for the Indy trip. We'll be in a Chevy "Classic". It's basically a 1 seater Malibu. Seriously though, it's small for what the rental company calls a "mid-size" car but it's new and it only has 6k miles on it.

Spent the evening packing up all my crap. Swung by band practice to check it out for a few and also pick up a camcorder Kyle was graciously loaning me. Popped over to Wal-Mart to get some other small items then met back up with some of the band for dinner at Logan's. Gonna pack a little more then hit the sack then finish up in the morning.

Who's leaving all the freakin bananna peels all over the place?!?!

The answer to that question would be - Kevin.

Work was bizzy, bizzy, bizzy Monday. I was glad when 5:00 finally rolled around. Ran a few errands on the way home then headed for Guadalaja Grill to meet up with the others. Ended up being me, the B's, and the Kyle. Carlos was there so we naturally had excellent service.

Did our usual walk down the mall. Kev picked up a new game while I looked around to see if there was anything I couldn't live without. Suprisingly, I didn't buy anything.

Went over to the B's afterwards to play video games. There were 4 of us so Super Mario Kart was a blast. Kevin was the bananna peel bandit. If he was in front, you can guarantee that he'd be flingin peels everywhere. Peels are bad by the way... they make your kart slide and you lose time. Next, we played a classic - Gauntlet. Kevin was the Warrior, I was the Wizard, Stacey was Valkrie and Kyle was the Elf. Man, that brought back some good memories. The copyright date on that game was 1985. I would have been a junior in high school. We played through 18 or 19 levels I think. There was a LOT of yelling going on! It was hilarious. 10:30 rolled around and I had to head out. 5:50AM comes early in the morning if you don't get enough sleep.

It's a rainy Tuesday morning. Only one more day at the office before I leave for Indy. W00T.

On another note, passed Heavy E on my morning flight into the office. That was unusual. He's usually already at work by the time I roll out of bed. Wonder what he's up to?

$%*@... I got a cramp.

Saturday I spent most of working on my drums at home. After I got them sounding the way I wanted, I think I played everything I knew how to. Whew! That was a lot of drumming! Did some other mundane things as well, laundry, dishes, played with my dog, etc. I also watched qualifying for the Canadian GP. Also on TV was coverage of the 24 hours of LeMans. That was interesting to watch for sure.

Around dinnertime, I got a jingle for the B's asking what my eating plans were. They came and picked me up and we went to eat bird parts at KFC. It the usual scene... Kevin & Stacey then me holding Kailyn. I thought to myself that this must be what being an "Au Pair" is like (and I do NOT know what that means). After that, we stopped at Goody's coz I was needing to pick up a few extra pairs of shorts for my Indy trip. I got what I was looking for but as expected, the B's didn't sit idly by... they picked up several things as well. On the way home, Kevin came to the intersection where you normally would turn right to go towards my house - and went straight. Sigh. So, he drives around another way to get back to my street. Once heading the correct direction, we pass my house - and keep going. I sigh then ask "what the $#*% you doing?". We're all laughing as it seems that alzheimers is settling in a bit early for him.

Got up for church early Sunday morning and set the VCR up so that I wouldn't miss any of the F1 race today. It would start while I was still at church. Got all my paraphenalia set up and we eased into warm up while some technological drama played out back at the control table. Eventually, we got rolling and everything worked out nicely. Good to see several guests this morning! My buddy Kerry and his family were there. He later told me he enjoyed our rendition of "Ancient of Days" as the only version he had heard was the "choired up" one that apparently wasn't nearly as rockin. Right as we were getting ready to play the first song, I got a cramp in my left pec. THAT was special... Erik and Kevin were laughing at me as I tried working it out to keep it from getting worse. (must need some potassium). At any rate, all the music sounded good from what I could tell. I had one hiccup in the last song where I evidently couldn't count and was too short on one fill. No biggie though, I just adjusted when I came back in and it sounded normal.

After church, I packed up and trucked it out the door so I could get to my race. Got home and realized it had started earlier that I had expected but luckily I had my VCR taping it. I'll have to go back and watch the beginning.

Took a short nap and now I'm getting ready to head over to the B's place for our usual Sunday night get together. Woot.

So glad it's the weekend.

Another stellar day at the office... Got a lot accomplished though, the main thing being the billing for last month. After that, I've still got one report to do that hompefully I'll get done with on Monday. I also got the next project I'll be working on - moving each of a client's 320 sites from one WAN carrier to another. I can feel the love.

Got home and took a short nap as I was drained from work. It's like Kryptonite to Superman. Gave Cameron a call when I got moving again as we had planned to get out and about a bit this evening. We took his week old Lexus SC430 out... WOW, what a nice automobile. Headed to the Hard Dock first for some food and drink. I saw Donny working back in the kitchen. There seemed to be a lot of action going on back there that kept him too busy to come out to say hey. Ran into Vickey, the wife of James (who I met up with in Tunica for the billiards thing in Feb.). Ended up sitting with her till James could join us. He was driving in from Tennessee. Ran into Kathy, a friend of mine from a church I used to attend. Also, our waitress used to be the operations manager for Princeton's - I helped her out a LONG time ago when their order system (computerized) went down the tubes. They called me at home freaking out asking for help. About 2 hours later, I got them fixed. I had free food there for quite some time. Now that I think about it, I missed that.

After realizing that the crowd at the Hard Dock was a bit older and that I may be one of the few people in there still sporting my own teeth, we decided to make our way to The Station over in Madison. My buddy Danny owns that place. It was a pleasant surprise to find Scott's band, Blackeyed Susan playing. SAid hey to him briefly then spent the rest of the evening people watching. Talked to a few folks then decided to call it a night.

Sigh.

Work has been hectic lately. Pretty much every day so far this week has been jam packed from start to finish with stuff.On the home front, band practice got moved to Thursday night this week leaving me free Wednesday evening. Kerry, a buddy of mine that drums at another church in town came by to check out my "supa-fly" drums at the house. Had a good time getting together and swapping fills and song intro ideas. I definitely have to get into more of that with others. It'll speed up the learning process considerably. Afterwards checked out some drum videos of mine. I practiced a bit then hit the sack shortly thereafter.

Picked up Kevin's other wireless rig today at FedEx for him. He's set now... wireless IEM, wireless mic and then the option to do either another wireless mic or use it as a wireless guitar transmitter. He's gonna have to school any other vocalist he loans the extra mic to as to the fact dropping the unit is *not* an option. Replacing *any* of the wireless gear will cost some serious $$$ so as long as that's understood, he won't have to worry. Other than that, the mics sound flat out AWESOME with their Beta 87 heads. I am really pleased with all our Shure gear. Excellent stuff.

Practice went well... (Kev: naive) Things sounded good so we're ready to go for Sunday I think. Headed to Applebee's for some food and drink afterwards. Kyle met us up there and Wendy showed up as well. Had a great time reminiscing about old video games. Spent most of the time making video game sounds.

On the way home I put $27 of gas in the tank. SHEESH.

I need a small WAN, hold the onions and a Coke to drink please...

Monday night consisted of the Guad Squad. After finishing eating at the "dark tables", Kev and I headed to EB Games so he could pick up Mario Kart for the Gamecube. Stacey was rubbin her head like she was expecting a genii to come out but as it turns out, she had developed a headache. She took off for the house so she could partake of some drugs.

Picked up the game then gave Kev a lift to his place. There was a crowd over at Dave's house. The guys were all muddy and the girls had pulled up chairs to watch the excitement. Seems that as Dave was digging holes to make room for some plants, he struck water... his water main that is. (He got it healed I found out later) Tried out the new game over at Kev's for a bit then went on home.

Tuesday was hoppin at work as I had all sorts of projects with data coming in... reports, emails, etc. Then, Bill said "we're gonna need you in the lab..." A few minutes later I was up to my ears in Cisco, Verilink, and Paradyne gear with the assorted cables and adapter going in all directions. I was to set up a WAN environment to test on. This environment would emulate one of our client's remote locations and their HQ. After an hour or two, I was done.

Later I got involved with a new version of one of our custom applications that had come out last night. Discovered a couple of bugs that needed to be corrected. All should be ready to go by Wednesday morning so I'll give it a go again then.

Met up with Suzanne for lunch today. On the way to meet her I hopped on Research Blvd. and who did I pull up next to? The Kyle. What a coincidence. I called his cell to see if he wanted to join us and he was evidently having a low-hygine day and had planned to do a drive-by and bring food back to the office. Heh. Lunch was fun - got caught up on what's going on in her life and also talked about old times. During lunch, this major downpour came about. I was going to wait it out but I had to get back to the office to get that WAN thing I mentioned going. Ended up getting soaked on the way to the car. On my way back to the office, the rain got REALLY bad. When I finally arrived back in Madison, it hadn't even rained there!?! So I walk in from lunch soaking wet while outside it's sunny. Sigh. I look like I just jumped in a pool then strolled in. Oh well.

Got a call from Jesus on the way home. He was needing to know how to hook his camcorder up to his PC. I schooled him in the art of Firewire. When I got home, I got behind the drums and played for awhile. I heard some new stuff to try on a CD I listened to.

That's about it. Gonna do some laundry then call it a night.

Oh, here's a special "WHAT UP!" to my buddy Brad in Austin. He's doing the bachelor thing as his wife's out of town for a few days. Enjoy the peace and quiet! ;-)

A lazy Sunday...

Woke up after a restful night's sleep to a slightly overcast morning. I packed up what drum equipment I needed and ironed a shirt fpr church to go ahead and get that out of the way. Watched a little TV then got cleaned up before driving to church.

I got everything set-up the way I wanted on my church kit then I put my acrylic shield back up. Kyle was running behind which I discovered after I called him at Kevin's request. Can't really blame him though, read his blog entry for Saturday and you'll see why. Kevin had some technical glitch with his 12-string guitar that turned out to be... I don't know. He mumbled something that sounded like "battery" but I think it was user error. :-D

Church went well. Dave had a great message on salvation and evangelism. Music went well too although I'd have to agree with Kevin that it wasn't "tight". No biggie though; everything went smoothly and we were probably the only ones to notice it could have sounded better.

After church we patronized Logan's; me, The B's and the A's. Had some good food then we took off to do other things. Picked up some stuff at the church with The B's then took them over to Lynn's house to check his palacial residence on the river. After that, Stacey went home and Kev and I ran to the grocery store to pick up "stuff". Went home and took a nap till time to head back over to the B's for our Sunday night get together. We all had fun and ended the night playing Monkey Ball Golf on the Nintendo 64. Eli took some pictures that I'll post as soon as I get them.

Oh, Dave and Chuck got some new cellphones. We were all comparing technology. Luckily, my Samsung was still pretty cutting-edge. Still, Kyle's got the big gun with his video phone.

Off to bed.

Johnna and I manning the Look Mom Video table Saturday night. 

Lights, camera, action!

Got up Saturday morning ready for a busy day. Did a few household things then went ahead and got ready for Lara's wedding. Dana called me as I was pulling out of my driveway - Kailyn was needing to be babysat... by me (per previous arrangements). I got there and was promptly handed the kid.

Everything went smoothly during the ceremony. All who were involved did great. Kudos to Jack for keeping the technology running like a well-oiled machine. Also kudos to Stacey and Dana for keeping the people aspect of the wedding ceremony moving along as well. I had a "situation" with the baby and had to hand her back to her mom. It would involve an EPA air-quality infraction. (what did you feed that kid anyway?!?)

I have come to a realization that the current church group really hasn't seen me "dress up" before. Before Crosspoint, I was typically in a suit of some sort on Sundays. As such, I've got quite a wardrobe that I only use pretty much on special occasions. I got plenty of compliments which is always nice but they came as a surprise. The funniest moment though was provided by Doris, one of the seniors that attend our church (also Heavy E's grandmother). She came up to me, wrapped her arms around me and said "you are beautiful...". I got a little uncomfortable as she kinda hung on for a bit longer but then she said... "If I was 99 years younger, I'd MMMM!!!" LOL!

That had to have been one of the funniest things that had happened to me lately.

Anyway, I picked up some lunch and inhaled it then went back to the church to get my drums set up on the stage again. We had moved them for the wedding. Kevin had already set up the rest of the stuff. After I got done positioning everything and connecting all the microphones I went home to change for the next event... the dance recital. As a favor to Kyle, I got a friend of mine to take orders for videos at the recital. I came along to help her and also because Johnna wouldn't know anyone there. She came by and picked me up then we made our way to the Princess Theater. Tag was already there and had setup a table for us. We sat down and went right to work. In the middle of it all, Shane came by and gave me 4 hours worth of work to get done in 90 minutes; install XP on this laptop, format this USB drive, install this new drive in this carrier chassis, load Adobe Premier on this laptop, etc. Several things were wrong with this picture as there wasn't much I could do in the time I was alotted. Plus, I had no tools. Sigh.

I saw plenty of folks I knew that had kids there. Wow, there are a LOT of kids that go to dance school. Amazing!

After that was over with, Johnna and I went and picked up something to eat then went our separate ways. Got to bed a bit late. What a long day.

The crew: Frank, John, Mark, Me and Bernie. 

Taking a break after the first practice session. 

Gentlemen, start your engines!!!!

It was a great night for racing - cool weather and low humidity. John did a good job qualifying with both laps in the high 13's. We're still not fast enough though. We did get a chance to try and make a sway bar adjustment during a caution lap so it was a good experience for us having to do something "under the gun". In the end though, an ignition module malfunction retired us from the race. We also messed with shifting some weight around after John looked at another car with a simiar chassis and set up to ours. I was the only one skinny enough to crawl into the frame to move the weight blocks around. THOSE THINGS ARE FREAKIN' HEAVY!!!!! They're made out of lead.

On the way to the track I was able to get hold of Johnny Rabb about scheduling some drum lessons. He's a pretty nice guy and an accomplished drummer. Hopefully we'll get something lined up soon. After that, we talked about some spider malfunction he had going on over at his place. Apparently, a bunch of brown recluse spiders just showed up out of nowhere. I'd have to move somewhere till they were gone if it were me.

ALMOST to the weekend.

Today was overcast for the majority of the day - a side benefit was that it kept the temperatures low; only got into the upper 70's today. Very nice.

Got cranked up on getting my monthly reports rolling. Hopefully I'll get that knocked out in just a day or two. Bill and I headed to lunch at Main Street Cafe. I had some REAL food for lunch, clam bisque to start then a ribeye with a demi-glace sauce done medium, seasoned potatoes and green beans. Afterwards, I stopped by a muffler shop recommended by several of my co-workers. I ended up dropping my car off later to get a new muffler installed. No fuss, no hassle; GREAT service! The place is in Madison - Clanton Muffler Shop. I highly recommend it.

John is going to be racing tomorrow so I'm back to pit crew duty. It will be a great night for it though, the low humidity continues and temps should be in the lower 70's by race time. Hopefully we'll do well! Bernie will probably be snapping some pics and I'll post anything noteworthy.

Looks like Kyle's video company is going to be doing some shooting at an event in Decatur this weekend. I had originally lined up a girl to come out and take orders for videos but something came up and she had to cancel. I made a few phone calls and got someone else to fill in so we should be in good shape. I'll probably come out one night and help for awhile.

Think I'm gonna watch some tube for a bit then it's off to bed.

Mid-week fun.

Work was insane this morning - had 3 facilities whose servers and network gear I was taking offline and getting packed to ship. That pretty much took up all morning.

After lunch, I swung by Wal-Mart to restock the goody drawer at the office. Got one dozen cups of ramen noodles and a bag of Smartees.

Band practice went quickly tonight. When we were done we had to clear off the stage since it will be used for a wedding this Saturday. Afterwards, we all headed to Ruby's for some grub. It was the B's, the Asians and then Jo-Jo Holesock. Dinner was fun until Jo-Jo had a short-bus moment and poured her water all over me. :-/ This would be right after "the incident" that also spawned "the comment". Kyle has a photo I believe.

As a service to a friend of mine, please contact me for information on how to donate to the "Get jo-jo some footies" fund.  

Memorial day wrap up

Got up to a nice morning. Slept in and took it easy. At noon, me and the family headed over to Andy and Dixie's for a cookout. The whole Anderson clan was there as well as Andy's neighbors from across the street, The Burns and then us. We all ate till we got to the last notches in our belts... and those who ran out of notches relied on the miracle of elastic bands to keep things from getting out of control.

The Burns and I headed to Home Depot as I needed to pick up some filters for my A/C system at the estate. Had to look at everything while I was there of course for ideas on projects I can do. After that was done, it was nap time.

Met back up with the Burns and Asian #2 at Pizza Hut for dinner. I couldn't fininsh the baked spaghetti I ordered after eating so much for lunch. Next stop was the mall to take our usual stroll. WOW! That place is depressing. Kyle and I remembered back when we used to work there and a lot more was going on. That was a LONG time ago though.

Back in the office Tuesday. Yee haw.

Stopped over at Holly's for a haircut then met up with my dinner group at Red Lobster. Ate there twice in 3 days! I think I'm all caught up on my seafood eating now. I may have to eat at Applebees to clean out my system now...

Speaking of cleaning out my system, I seem to be feeling better now after all the weekend tummy trouble. Ahhhh...

What is going on?!?

SHEESH! I just got to feeling slightly better after a headache I had earlier today turned into some kind of freak fever and major headache this afternoon... I was really wanting to heave over to Dave's to hang out with everyone but felt so bad that I didn't even want to try. That's rare.

I got up this morning to watch the European Grand Prix. Once again, it was a great race after you just skipped over the fact that the Ferrari's were out front again. Plenty of action as usual. 3 more weeks and I'll be watching the show live and in-person at Indy. I can hardly wait!

Packed up my gear and headed for church. I brought along an additional stand and mic for my hi-hats. They seemed pretty weak during Wednesday's practice so I thought I'd take some steps to fix that. I also brought along an extra mounting bar to add a second splash cymbal to kit since "History Maker" is a 2-splash song. Got warmed up and ready to go. It was a pleasant surprise in that it looked like no changes needed to be made from Wednesday night's IEM mix! Now, the whole band will pretty much have a consistent mix each time. Ahhh....

My folks came out this morning. We all had a good time and they got a chance to meet several new folks. I'm gald they had a chance to come out. Dad spoke briefly about the ministries he's involved with in the Philippines and gave the group a glimpse into what's going on. Dave then followed with an excellent message regarding becoming an "effective" Christian.

Me, The Burn's, my parents, and my sis and Daniel headed to Red Lobster for some lunch. Ran into the Drakes there as well as Ray Solley. I hadn't seen them in awhile. On the way to our table I ran into Emily. It was nice to see her again. From what she tells me, she passed her classes last semester - she was struggling last time I talked to her so it's good that things turned out okay.

On the drive home, my headache kicked into high gear. Laid down and napped pretty much the rest of the day after I realized how crappy I felt. Is this what happens when you get old? Stuff going wrong all the time? That sucks.

Looks like we're going to be in for some rough weather overnight. I'll probably end up sleeping through it though.

On another note, from the sounds of Kyle's blog, he sprayed a healthy dose of time-release female repellent on yesterday. You should market that stuff man... it would sell big at monastaries and certain cities on the west coast.

What is up with this?

When you take a step back to consider how goofy some of the things people do are, you run across something like this that just confirms your suspicions.

It's the weekend!!!

Woo hoo! Made it through another week. I'm another week older though. You know, I sometimes just look back on a day or a week that's gone by and ask myself truthfully... have I *REALLY* done anything with my time? Yeah, I worked... but is anything that I did there going to really matter or be remembered into the future? That's doubtful. From the time I woke up this morning to the time I laid down in bed, did I just fill the time with "stuff"?

Whoops, sorry... getting all depressing there.

Dropped by and visited my pal Lynn over at his place on my way home. He was busy trying to organize a bunch of paperwork into storage bins. Caught up on all the latest happenings in our lives before I made my way on home. Spent some time playing this new pinball game I got and played all the pinball games I enjoyed growing up. That was a nice break from the usual games I play. I also took some time getting my snare drum all sorted out after I fooled around with it's tuning last night.

Finished up the Fellowship of the Ring with my folks and also got through The Two Towers as well. Guess we'll wrap it up with Return of The King sometime over the weekend. It's actually kind of cool to watch a movie with my parents. Had to keep mom on track with all the action though since there's a lot going on in these movies.

Read Kevin's blog entry about "issues". I strive to be as "issue free" as possible. As a result, I tend to stay single. With me, there's only so much crap I have to deal with. Add another person to the mix and you're wide open on the level of crap you're exposed to. Let me qualify that, add THE WRONG person to the mix and you're hosed.

My issue right now is that it's late and I have to get up in a few hours to watch qualifying for the European Grand Prix. I'm going to bed.

Wasabi.

Had a good lunch yesterday with Tom, Brent and Bill over at Edo's. I had mentioned to Tom that I was going to get my car repainted soon and needed to also get my wheels up to looking new. Conincidentally, he and Brent were friends and Brent own a wheel repair/restoring business that I checked prices on about a year or two ago! At any rate, we all had a good time discussing F1, video games, Cuba and cigars.

Band practice was a unique experience as the rest of the band was now equipped with IEM's. While they were working on that, I was struggling with the sound of my drums. I hadn't played them in almost a month. They sounded off and the setup was a little different since Jeremy changed things to suit his time on the throne. I of course don't mind anyone else playing, esp. Jeremy but what I don't like is if anything changes. I'm also not a big fan of having young children up on stage either. Everything on stage it seems has a knob or a switch on it and the settings they are at were usually arrived at after much trial and error. Anyway, something got weird on my drums and I'm not too happy with the sound.

Donny, the mains sound better when you turn the amp on. (LOL)

I'm debating bringing my good drums out for this weekend. I'll see how that goes. Don't want to make a waste of them just sitting at home.

After practice, me and the B's headed to Ruby Tuesday's where I amazed them with my rib-eating-with-a-fork-and-not-using-my-fingers technique. I discovered that Stacey and I share a trait... if we're hungry, we ain't happy. I'm quite cranky, man and short-tempered if I'm missing a meal. Ya'll might want to note that down.

Woke up this morning with some sort of sinus headache malfunction. I thought that some drugs and more rest would make it go away faster but it didn't. As a result, I had an unscheduled day off.

Photos and stuff.

Trying out a new service to more easily publish pictures on my blog. Got some action from Friday night at the track as well as an older photo of me and my drum teacher.

Almost ready to start... the driver's were signing autographs for the fans. We were just waiting around to push the car off once the engine fired. 

Getting ready to push John out for his qualifying run. 

Straining. 

Here I was Friday afternoon torquing up the new tires to get scuffed up for the last practice before qualifying. 

Here's a picture of me with my drum teacher - Chester Thompson of Genesis. 

Another weekend older.

After my late night Friday night then early morning Saturday, I was left tired at about 9 Saturday. Back to bed I went for a few more hours. Once I finally got rolling, I saw the folks take off to Tennessee and I continued to take it easy. I did manage to complete at least 4 loads of laundry though. Once that was done I practiced on the drums for several hours as I didn't have a chance to play for a couple of days. I really didn't do much else Saturday. My yard people came by and cut the grass - much appreciated when you're in "slug mode" as I was. Nothing much happened the rest of the day.

Got up early Sunday to watch the Grand Prix of Monaco. WOW!!! What a race! Lot's of excitement and drama. Once that was done, I got ready for church and headed out. Things went well even though I was playing hand percussion which is not my favorite thing. Without regular playing, it's hard on your hands and forearms. Kevin did a good job with the message.

Applebee's won out as the lunch venue even though I threw Macaroni Grill out as an option. Stacey lit up at that suggestion but eventually AB's won out. Crap. Got to work on getting more friends that don't freak out so easily at the idea of having to wait for a good meal. It's better than waiting for a crappy meal I'll tell ya. Anyway. Lunch company was good. Suprisingly, Merideth provided much good lunch conversation. She was actually a lot of fun.

Got home and slithered into bed once again for another nap. You can't have too many of those on the weekends. Got up a few hours later to head to Dave's for the pool party. There was a good crowd there! Nice to see plenty of new faces participating in the group. We've got some entertaining people that are starting to open up. After all the food and fun it was getting late so I went back to the homestead to retire for the evening.

Monday started off with a less-than-intelligent phone call. That set the tone for the rest of the workday. Bernie and I headed to Atl. Bread Co. again for lunch then examined new video capturing technology next door at Comp USA.

After work was the regular Guad squad. It was a bit thin tonight but fun was had nevertheless. Kyle joined the party late but still made the rounds with Kailyn. Speaking of her, she was quite pleasant this evening... sedate, smiling and quiet. Ah...

Made a Wal-Mart run later for some needed stuff for the house. Ran into several people there including my parents. That about wraps it up. Woo hoo!

I've been busy...

I'm still alive, but been so busy I haven't had a chance to make any updates. Had a late night last night on pit crew duty for my buddy John. It was me, Bernie, Mark, Brian and his son, Frank and of course, John in the pits. Bill, Diane, Daniel and Lisa were in the stands. John managed to finish the race without any major damage, but he really didn't put up much of a challenge. I was timing his laps and while in testing he was lapping at 13.8-13.9, his qualifying time was about 14.1. His race pace was between 14.3-14.5 but the leaders and most of the field were lapping un 14 seconds. The leaders were lapping at 13.6-13.7. As you can imagine, being over half a second slower each lap makes a big difference in a 100 lap race.

I was Mr. Tires, checking pressures on both sets - the sticker ones mounted on the car and the spare set. Once the tires were mounted up, I torqued up the whole set. That was my overall contribution for the evening. There was no need for any major work like the last time I was there when John hit the wall so in comparision, it was a quiet night. The driver one stall over from us was from Sevierville, TN, my old stomping ground. His name was Gary Helton. WOW! He had an awesome car. He had one other races in the series and it was nice to take a peek to see the differences in his car and John's. First was the frame, Gary's engine sat MUCH lower to the ground lowering his center of gravity. His crew was also very good, getting some major carbureator work done between sessions. With only 3 laps to go, Gary suffered a flat tire on the front right side!!! He was in 2nd place too! His crew managed to change out his tire in about 10 seconds. 3 laps wasn't enough to get back to the front though. He's racing in B'ham tonight so hopefully he'll fare better there.

Let's see... had band practice Thursday night. It was the only night that Steven could practice with us. He and Derek will be joining us in the band this Sunday. I'll be providing conga and bongo sounds. I'm not a big fan of playing hand percussion since I don't do it regularly and it hurts my hands. Waaaaaaaah! Seriously though, it is rough. Everyone except Derek (who had to go to work) went to eat at Logan's afterwards. Late night though! Got home at 10:30. Sheesh.

Just got through watching the qualifying for the Monaco Grand Prix. The first Ferrari is in 5th place! Congrats to Jarno Trulli of Renault for taking pole position. Should be an exciting race tomorrow.

Hair, food and books.

Got a lot accomplished at the office. That felt good for sure. Ate lunch with Bernie at Atlanta Bread Co. with the obligatory walk-thru of CompUSA. Didn't buy anything though.

 

After work I stopped to see Holly for my haircut and also brought her some "manly" magazines to read instead of all the girly crap she has. The last batch of magazine I brought her got taken home by some of the other customers. Gee... why do they leave those other magazines there? Because they SUCK! That's why.

 

Checked with my dinner club members to see what we were in the mood to digest this evening. I threw out Dead Lobster as a suggestion and we eventually convened there. Dinner was excellent. My top shelf frozen margarita was excellent too... till I saw what the liquor tax was on a $6 drink... $1.40!!!!! WTF is up with that? I never noticed that before. Hmmm. While there, we were able to add another item to Kailyn's growing phobia list, translucent window shades. Not sure what was going on with that but I assured her parents that it would probably come out in therapy later on in her life.

 

Popped over to the mall for a few minutes to make the salespeople nervous thinking we were going to continue to browse past closing time. Next stop was the bookstore. Nothing really new there, but Kevin picked up a few items. After that I went home and relaxed.

Toto, we're not in Kansas anymore...

A torrential downpour kept us in the mall a little longer than planned tonight. The core Guad squad was there sans Stacey - she was earning the coins down in Cullman today and wouldn't be in town till well after 8:30 or so. After eating, we all took the usual stroll down the mall each doing his or her own thing, Kevin off to do something video game related, Eli entertaining her child and the Asians... well, our usual. I followed the kids into the toy store just messing around. As luck would have it, I ran across one of the big Matrix Sentinel models I secretly wanted since I first saw one in one of my myriad of catalogs. Not only was I surprised to find it but it was 50% less than what it was in the catalog!!! I plan to put it on my desk or monitor as a conversation piece. Kyle was making fun of me buying toys till he realized he wanted some G.I. Joe stuff. Both of us strolled out with bags. I found a great deal on a shirt a Parisian that I picked up. Kyle missed out on a meet and greet opportunity apparently. Kyle (who is known for his keen sense of his surroundings... yeah right) was oblivious to what was going on. Here's the thing though, I think the outcome would have been the same even if he had noticed her. ;-)

Chatted with the girl at the sunglass place a little more and found out she was a Calhoun student studying elementary education. That's a good sign. We see her every week so it might be time to pass her a connection card and invite her to church. We'll see how that goes. Speaking of that, I need to remind Carlos to try and come out one Sunday. He'd make a good addition to our group.

Thanks for the hat Kev. Think I'm gonna head to bed now. I didn't sleep too well last night when one of the burgers I ate the other day decided to attack.

Just a lazy Sunday...

Had a very leisurely morning - ate breakfast and actually played a few rounds of UT2k4 online before showering and getting dressed for church. I was off drumming duty today for the first time in a LONG time so there was no need for me to be at the church by 9. The crowd was a little thin when I arrived but quickly filled up right at 10:30. Jeremy did a great job drumming of course. It's nice to hear songs you play as their done differently by someone else. It definitely gives you some new ideas to try. Sound-wise, everything seemed pretty good. What's a pain is that the room sounds totally different from the emptiness of Wednesday practice to the full room of Sunday morning. That's just something we have to deal with. I really enjoyed everything.

Big group went to Ruby Tuesday's for lunch; the Burns, the Asians, Tania and her mom, and John and Sharon. It was especially nice to have John and Sharon there. Hopefully they felt comfortable around us nit-wits. They seemed to enjoy it. Our waitress was Nicole. She usually has the personality of a wet towel but today she appeared to be a little more personable.

Stopped in at Lowe's to pick up some storage bins for the loads of winter/fall clothes I have. While I was there I was checking out some of the grills. There are some really nice ones there especially the one with the buil-in deep fryer and rotisserie. It was by Coleman I think. There were some others there by Jenn Air and Char-Grill. I'll have to look into those more seriously soon. The B's picked up a piece of storage furniture for their kitchen to organize things.

Relaxed a bit when I got home then decided to take a nap. Wrapped up the evening with some dinner at the B's and watched the majority of "Anger Management". That's about it. Time for bed again to get rested up for the usual Monday shenanigans at the office.

Random thoughts... and a little poo.

After listening to band practice the other night (when I wan't playing) I realized something. Pretty much nothing you do on the soundboard relating to drums does anything to the sound. Oh, you might PSYCOLOGICALLY think you have done something but no, not much has changed. The simple reason is that for changes at the soundboard to be evident, the PA system has to be able to "overpower" the natural acoustic sound of the drums - which ours doesn't. With Jeremy playing, I pulled the main faders for the drum channels all the way down and listened. Then, I pushed them up to 80-85% and listened. No change. Donny looked over at me with that "SEE WHAT I'VE BEEN TELLING YOU" look on his face. The only thing we can possibly do with our PA (relating to drums that is) is possibly make them slightly louder (by turning up the trim and going 100%) which isn't going to happen. Making them softer through the PA isn't going to happen either because if you turn the PA off... the drums are just as loud nonetheless. The one comforting thing is that with my kit being miked, even though I'm not "really" running through the PA, it does provide me with the sound I need to hear myself playing. Am I frustrated? Actually, no. We're not putting on a rock concert by any means but that also doesn't mean we have to compromise on sound either. I know that not everyone is a fan of drums or loud instruments for that matter. For those folks, the least we can do is make what they don't like, sound good. At least that way we have a chance to change their thinking. If we make what they don't like sound like poo, then there's little to no chance their feelings toward drums and loud instruments will change.

We'll soon be able to go all IEM on stage and get rid of the floor wedges. This will be interesting for sure. On one hand, we'll have more room on stage, a few less cables running around, everyone will be able to hear themselves (probably the most important) and there will be less volume from the lack of wedges (4). The guitar and bass amps will still be going though. Here's the OTHER side of the equation - the floor wedges were partly filling in the sound coming from the middle of the stage. Now, that will be diminished significantly. This is what I call the "poo effect" or P.E. for short. Because our left and right main speakers are so widely spaced and there is nothing to fill in the space in front of where their output converges, P.E. will be in full force for the majority of the front rows. I'm not complaining mind you, just making a prediction. What can I do about it? I don't know, I'm just the drummer. ;-)

At any rate, took it easy Friday night. I was going to go to HSV to check out Scott's band but I was a little tired. Kyle was up for it though it seems. I invited the Burns' along but I never heard back from them. I'm guessing they might not have been able to get childcare on short notice. Come to think of it, they've never went to HSV to check out any of the bands that I'm aware of. Bishop Black, who we saw in the studio earlier this week will be playing tonight in HSV. I wonder if anyone will be going?

It's a tad gray out today so I'll probably try and get some work done at the homestead. I've got some more minor cleaning and straightening up to do. Whee!

WOW! What a shot!!!

Just got through watching the last few minutes of the Spurs/Lakers game. WOW! What a shot from Derrick Fisher!!! Made the game winning shot with .1 second (a tenth) of a second left!!! Amazing stuff. Lakers win 72 to 71.

Quiet night at the homestead. Ate at home then did 2 loads of laundry. Woot.

Steamy Thursday

Yesterday evening, I went by to check on band practice to see how things were going. Things sounded good overall, but the drums were pretty loud... and a bit muddy. I talked with Donny about fixing the muddy part... send him the overhead mic output directly so he can add the high end as he needed to into the main mix. The loud part is going to be the difficult piece. Jeremy plays louder than I do, so I'm not sure it's too much of an issue when I play. When we go all IEM and no wedges, the drums will stand out even more. We'll have to figure out something for sure.

After practice, me, The Burns', Donny and Kyle headed to Logan's for some foodage. Not much to report from there other than that Kyle needs to work on getting his cellphone camera out and operational much quicker than he does now... like maybe while the subject to be photographed is still there...

Woke up to a rainy morning today. Luckily, I had no "plumbing" issues and started the day off well. Wrapped up my server report this morning and now I'm working on the billing. Ate lunch with Bernie at Zaxby's. Oh, we got new badges and crap at work today. We revamped our logo so in addition to badges we got a t-shirt, a pen, and a badge reel all with the new graphics on them. How nice.

Snatch the pebble from my... WHAT?!?!

Everything was going well last night until a routine bathroom trip turned into a very long saga. Apparently, a small kidney stone that should have passed normally DIDN'T. It got hung up on the way out. Without going into detail (which is unusual for me), it was rather uncomfortable. It was difficult sleeping but I managed to doze off a bit. Woke up this morning still in the same condition so I thought it best to stay home and not move around much and drink LOT'S of fluids. A little after lunch, things were MUCH improved. I rested a while to try and catch up on the sleep I lost out on last night.

Luckily, things cleared up by themselves without having to make a Dr. visit. I have a suspicion that what they do to fix the situation just might be a little more uncomfortable than what I would like. At any rate, I'm glad that's all over with.

Late in the afternoon I ran some errands with Kevin & Co. I picked up a DVD and he got a new case for one of his guitars. Also had a chance to talk to Kira a bit. She's got some excitment coming up next month as she and Gisele are heading to France for two weeks. I hope she has a great (and safe!) time over there. They'll be staying in Paris just a few blocks from the Louvre.

I stopped by the church on the way back home to hook up the IEM system so that Kyle and Eric will be able to hear what's going on. After that I went back home to rest a little more.

Quiet night.

I was a slug all day after my pasta lunch. Sheesh. When I got home, I piddled around a little then took a short nap. Ate some dinner then drummed for awhile. Got a call from my buddy who located an IEM system for the church and got us a rockin deal on them!!! Saved us over $1k!!!!! That's awesome. Can't wait to hear how we'll sound afterwards for sure. There's gonna be a lot of tweaking to get things just right since we only have 2 mixes right now but we'll be miles ahead of where we used to be.

I'm going to get in bed early... like right now.

Change in plans.

Since my original Indy travel buddy is now all gimped up, the Bernie-meister will be replacing him for the USGP pilgrimage to Indy next month. Got all the financial details to him so he can see what the dollar damage will be. He got an "all clear" from his cruise director so he's all set to go.Should be a blast! He's never been to an F1 race before but he follows the action just as closely as Bill and I. I went ahead and took advantage of my AAA membership and got maps and travel stuff to go along with my plans.

Hmmm... might have to bum a camcorder off someone. :D

Late start.

Hmmm, had a late start this morning and had to break the sound barrier a few times to get to the office. Just in front of me was Bernie's manager - he too was a low-flying jet as well. He would be another driver that can be certified as "knowing how to drive" during the morning rush.

Arrived at Stalag 15 only to be surprised by the presence of CRUTCHES in my office! Apparently, Bill is broken. He did not climb down off a ladder successfully. Tore a bunch of ligaments in his right ankle that will keep him in a cast for weeks then over a YEAR for complete recovery!?!? Dang. That's rough.

Guaddage

Work was okay today. MAde progress on my reports and such. I should be able to get one of them out tomorrow. Next will be the billing stuff. The programmer working on that is pretty good so hopefully we'll just have one painful time getting this first one together then have smooth sailing in the future. Work's just kind of frustrating these days. It's not interesting like it used to be.

Came home and played drums a little then laid down before meeting up with Kev/Stacey/Kailyn/Kyle at the Guad. Carlos and Rey hooked us up as usual. Our drinks were being made as we walked in. Nice.

Afterwards, went walking down the mall and talking to different folks and making new friends. Saw Tanya and chatted a little. She was dealing with an irate customer on the phone. Big fun for her I'm sure. My buddy Nick hooked me up with a Zelda t-shirt (LOL)! It will be a cool drumming shirt I think.

A friend's band was in the studio recording their new album so Kyle checked to see if it was cool for us to check out the session. It was and he, Kevin and I went over to listen to them work on one track. I think we'll be recording there sometime in the near future. We need to put a new, better demo together now that we've been playing longer and have upgraded our gear and skills. I'm looking forward to that.

I'm off drumming duty this week so I can take a breather. I still plan on working on new stuff though. Talked to Kerry today as well. He's the drummer I mentioned that visited church yesterday. I'm going to get with him soon as he was wanting to watch me play and "steal" some of my stuff... he's got some good licks too so I'm sure we'll be able to trade things out. It'll be nice to hang out locally with some other drummers. It's a great way to learn stuff and develop new ideas for sure. Now if I could only make money at this...

Technology upgrade

Kyle ACTUALLY upgraded his early 90's cellphone with the latest and greatest Sprint had to offer. Now he's got color screens (inside AND out), picture ability, video WITH sound and the list goes on. I predict his blogs will become heavier with media content going forward...

Spent Saturday cleaning up around the house. I especially took the time to clean my desk which had gotten piled up with mail and crap. It's much better now. I also got in plenty of drumming time. That evening, Kyle and I rode out to HSV and grabbed some food then made our way to the Jazz Factory for some pool shootin. Got all smokified before heading back home.

Got up at Dawn's crack to watch the F1 race in Barcelona. The Renault of Jarno Trulli took off like it was shot out of a cannon. Unfortunately, he could not hold off the Ferrari juggernaut. Even when Michael's exhaust broke at lap 11, he managed to stay in the lead and finish without his car failing. Ferrari just has all the elements, best driver, best car, best team, big budget... you name it.

Church was good as usual.Plenty of guests there! That continues to be encouraging. Dave had a really cool 3D walk-thru of the area where the Ark of the Covenant was kept. That was a great visual piece. Music went very well. The drummer from another local church checked us out and enjoyed it! He complemented my playing which is nice to hear especially when it comes from another drummer.

BIG CONGRATS TO JACK AND PAM for the birth of their daughter Claire!!!! That's pretty exciting. Pam and Claire should be coming home today.

Had our evening get together at the Burns'. Lot's of folks there. Even saw someone's kid playing with a dog turd. I do't care how old you get to be or how dry your sense of humor is, a kid with a turd is just a funny sight.

Ate some grilled chicken then sat down to watch an Eagles DVD. Not too much happened after that.

Shiny and new...

Got my spiff on this morning during lunch and revamped the bloggage. Kevin re-did his this morning making mine look fairly blah in comparison. Not one to be left behind, I too made the change. Things might not work quite right for a day or two till I get everything the way I want it so hang on to your horses and be patient.

Busy, busy, busy.

Had a very busy week at the office, nothing out of the ordinary. Friday, on of our customers got the SASSER virus. That made things exciting. Enough about work though.

Band practice went well Wednesday night. Kevin's new mic sounded really good. Be nice if we had more of those. ;-) Jo-Jo Thongbottom was in quite a mood. She apparently had some kind of field trip school bus malfunction. Ah... if only my problems were as simple. Got through the music just fine then made a run to the Guad for a little Cinco de Mayo celebration. Carlos was there ad hooked me and Kev up with our shrimp nachos. DE-licious.

Thursday night I headed over to Kevin's to watch the final episode of Friends. Kyle joined us then Stace came home. Enjoyed the show although it was sad that it was ending. I'm going to have all the episodes on DVD so I'll contiue to enjoy them for sure.

Friday, I ate burgers over at the Burns'. Afterwards, watched some of my Phil Collins DVD to see my drum teacher play.Very cool stuff.

A perfect day.

Headed out early for a friend's place about 45 minutes away. It had been years since I had been there and a lot had changed. First off, there was a cabin Ray built about a year ago. It had 2 bedrooms, a kitchen, bathroom and a living/dining room. This cabin was located across the lake from his main residence. Dad and Lito (the missionary visiting us) took off to go fishing and I busied myself setting up targets to shoot. I burned through several magazines and got back to my shooting form of old when I used to do it in competition. Next, Ray hooked me up with an ATV so I could go explore all the trails. It took me a little while before I felt comfortable on it as I had no idea how well it would handle. All I knew is that I didn't want to flip (or worse). Luckily, I had no problems. Ray caught up with me later after he and dad ran out to get some bait. He showed me around the areas I hadn't checked out yet. Man, he's got a LOT of land.

The took off in a boat to check things out on the other side of the lake as they weren't having too much luck fishing off the bank. They were out there for a few hours so I went back to exploring and shooting some more. When they got back, I let them shoot to their hearts content. It was the first time Lito had handled a gun so I went over all the safety stuff. I get kind of nervous around new shooters for some reason. He did great though! Dad also sent a lot of lead flying. All in all, we had a great time out there. It was DEFINITELY a nice way to spend a Tuesday for sure.

Headed back to Decatur in time to get my hairs cut. Afterwards, I went and got some of that famous Scottish fast food... McDonald's. Hehe. Chowed down then hit the drums for about an hour or so. Oh look... it's time for bed again.

Wow, that was a stretch...

Sorry for the lack of updates fans... I've been busy.

Last Friday, a missionary friend of mine and my parents came into town. He's from very close by where my parents live in the Philippines. Had to put him up in my drum room so things are a tad bit cramped in there for now. He's only here for a week so it's not a big deal. Nothing much else happened that evening. Just took it easy for the evening.

Saturday found me working on my equipment rack from church. Rather than work on it there, I drug it home. I pulled out one of the compressors I wasn't using and rack mounted my in-ear transmitter. It's less likely to be damaged that way than when it's sitting on top. I also spent a LOT of time fixing how my drums sounded through the PA. It is MUCH improved now. For the time being, Heavy E is sharing my mix. Got confirmation from him Sunday that things were much better this time around. Ate dinner with the Burns that night. Dana and Stacey had been working on a project all day and had a mess they didn't want to leave behind. So - met Kevin up at New China for take-out. Ivy saw me some in and asked "Same thing?". Shrimp with lobster sauce is my "same thing". It's delicious.

Woke up to a rainy Sunday morning. Loaded up my stuff and headed to the church to get set up. VERY pleased with the IEM system I'm using now after Jesus tweaked it a bit (no really...). Everything sounded amazing through it. E and I realized, since we're currently the only IEM users, is that we're in a sonic utopia where everything sounds great! It may sound like crap out in the audience but we won't know. It's not our problem anyway as that's someone else's job. Hopefully though things are turned up to where it sounds good and musical. All went well. Lot's of folks there... more people are becoming "REGULARS"! That's very encouraging. Afterwards, the usual crew headed to Dead Lobster for some lunch. Ran into some old friends in the lobby then sat in Emily's section. It was good to see her again.

Post lunch we went to Best Buy/Circuit City and Old Navy to do some shopping. We all picked up something then went home. Met up later at the Burns where we ate, drank and were merry. I mentioned to Kevin that I would buy the subwoofer if he would buy the amp... or vice versa. He made some high-pitched noises which I took to mean something other than "ok" or "yes". Heh.

Work Monday was... work. Nothing to note there.

Had the regular Guad squaddage with the associated post eating fun in the mall. Went to Office Depot to pick up some supplies then hung out at the bookstore with everyone till I was too tired to stay up. Went home and here I am.

Taking the day off tomorrow to head to the lake to do some fishing and some shooting. Haven't had a chance to do that in a long time. I'm looking forward to it for sure.