blast! cricket (my howling cat) is a little under the weather and i've to take her to the vet today... but not my vet, cause they're full up... i've gotta drive to ebensburg! i was hoping i could miss three hours of work today! argh. mainly i just hope that she's allright, she is twelve years old, but she's a small, thin cat, and they can live a good fifteen or twenty years, especially if they live indoors all their life. goodness sakes.

now spinning: nothing yet... either every night fireworks or Kid A are coming up soon though...

it's friday, it's the last day of the week. let's rejoice and celebrate and do things that are festivious. yes, i just made up that word 'festivious.' please feel free to distribute it amongst the dwellers of the planet.

i've often wondered. how does one come up with a new word? is there a rule book for that sort of thing? i mean, who came up with the word computer or internet?

lance, you're no putz. how long have you been playing stringed instruments? i've been working at 'em since i was seventeen, which gives me about five and a half more years of experience... keep working man, and i guarantee it ain't gonna take you three months. just keep playing it every day and don't worry about how long it takes you... know that at the end, you'll be better than when you started learning it (pinkie stretches, more familiarity with power chords, coordination)...

btw, if you print out another copy of the tab i can put in the straight-up power chord implementation of the song... it sounds a lot better that way than using the crack-fiend approach that the tab lays out.

i love being a putz. it'll take me probably close to three months to come anywhere close to playing 11 to your 7. i suck.

gabe, its that classic SG style that brings you back to the The Stud every time!

i learned up some hey mercedes the last couple days (every turn, eleven to your seven, haven't been this happy, and let's go blue) and i agree that the 11toyour7 tab is a little off... its very possible that those aren't just straight up power chords being played, but i don't think its quite as dischordant as the tabbed version is. next up i intend to learn our weekend starts on wednesday cause that intro riff sounds like a lot of fun. one of the reasons i love the new hey mercedes and the new fugazi are because they do some things that are very much like the guitar things i do from time to time... so maybe i'm not as dumb as i look.

my new guitar ~might~ have some intonation problems... its more likely that my ears aren't in tune right now (cause i haven't played much guitar for the last six months)... blasted 9 volt batteries running out...

No practice last night. Friends were over and we watched Enterprise and some other various shows that were found on TV. I plan to continue to finish up the webpage(s) for the Richmond trip from this past weekend. I'm waiting for the Photo CD from our 35mm camera we had. That will pretty much sum up the whole trip then. If you all want to check out our trip so far, give it a look.

CPR: 0%
PPR: 70%

spinning:death cab for cutie: we have the facts and we're voting yes

scott, you provide good insights. don't think that i take my job for granted; i'm making buku bucks for this area. i think we all need to look at where we are in life. what are spending money on? if we're broke and always behind on the credit card bills because we're "keeping up" with that new computer, that new car, that new bike, that new guitar, that new cable modem, that new TIVO bill, that new cable bill, and we're obviously not satisfied by those things, yet our spending on those things is what's keeping us "in the hole", well then, take it by the reins and change!

cut your expenses. live on a tight budget. pay off the credit card bills. use the fine job you have as a stepping stone, take advantage of how cheap it is to live in the johnstown area and sock away as much money as you can... not money to "buy the next big thing", but money to live off of when you take the plunge and decide to live the life you want to live... that life you lived in carolina, gabe, that life you lived moons ago, scott, that life on the road and making music that i want to live.

scott, if i ~didn't~ have to work and was provided with $28K a year, i'd spend about 21,000 of that on my bills and food and gas money. the rest would support whatever crazy band stuff i was doing, expenses on the road, guitar and drum equipment, that kind of thing. i would play in a band in town at bars to make some money, play in a serious band and spend a couple of months a year on tour, and i'd work with local bands as a producer when they went into the studio, trying to help them flesh out their songs and make the most of their potential.

in addition, since i wouldn't be spending 40 hours a week at work, i would use my time for the Lord and for the good of people in need. there are a lot of organizations in this town that need volunteers (habitat for humanity, red cross, salvation army, new day, etc...) and every town has a lot of people that need help from their fellow man. that is as big a goal as music is for me... to give back to my neighbors as God has given to me.

man, last winter jayna and i rode up the incline in pittsburgh and stood there looking at the city at night... and i was thinking the whole time, "i need to see every major city in america like this, from the top of a distant hill, in the middle of an adventure."

whatever you do, make it your adventure. if it isn't an adventure, you're gonna hate it and lead a miserable life. unless you're a tool, then you'll never notice that you hate it.

it's funny when you think about it. kindergarten you can't wait til you leave and go to the grade school and learn to read. then you get to grade school and think, wow, i can't wait to be one of the bigger kids and be so smart and be like one of them. you reach sixth grade and go 'wow, i'm going to go to high school and kiss girls and drive a car and get a job and have money! high school rolls around and you think, great, i have no weekends left because of my part-time job, make minimum wage, drive a crappy car, but hey, college is coming and soon that'll change EVERYTHING. college comes, you have even LESS personal time (that is if you WANT to do good in college) and feel like the world is coming down around you if you don't get those silly little letters like 'A', 'B' or at the worst possible case, 'C'. college ends and you feel like you have freedom again.

that's pretty much how i always felt about school and life in general. but when i reflect back on it, i wished my life away for where i'm at now. i believe everyone has this feeling at one point or another. work used to provide a good feeling for me too. there were times i wanted to get to work and solve that pesky problem or do some coding. i can't necessarily say i looked forward to it, but there wasn't a point at which i said "boy, i really don't want to go to work today." as i've spent some time here now, i find i have more things i do outside of work that i'd rather do than be AT work.

one of the most scary things that i can think about is "for 30 or 40 years of my life, i will work 5 days a week from 8 to 5." the prime of every human's life will be spent the majority of the day within the confines of a building staring at a computer or a desk. i just feel that there should be more to living than that.

hey flash, that's the crap right there! europe gives you like five or six weeks of vacation a year standard! you could actually take a shot at LIVING!!!

grandfather: "don't you let that music stuff interfere with your work, boy."

oh, so sorry old man! heaven forbid i attempt to live my life the way i want to, instead of spending seventy years as a slave to the almighty dollar bill!!!

@#$%

whatever happened to whistle whilst you work?

spiders are nice tho. i have some friends who are spiders, they take great offense when you call them eight legged freaks.

gimme some damn bananas to load on a boat, man! at least that would be something tangible, when the work was finished you could look at the boat, riding a foot lower in the water, and say, "hey, i loaded those bananas onto that boat."

patience is something that i need to learn, especially with playing. i started way to hastily last night as i tried to learn up "Eleven To Your Seven" last night. so i slowed myself down and did warm up techniques and got my fingers a little more limber before i just dove right into the song. after that, it seemed to help a little bit more. practice will more than likely be on pause tonight, but the acoustic is here at work for some practice.

oh, by the way ladies and gentlemen. for those who want a motorcycle, Kawasaki is having an 8 weeks of christmas sweepstakes. You can win a ZX-6R motorcyle. yes, i know some of you detest sport bikes, but realize that's an $8,000 motorcycle you could sell and then buy a bike you like. It can't hurt to enter my friends. Go to the sweepstakes page NOW!

indie rock is the vehicle gabe! or photography! or being a full-time roadie, coming off a tour with one band and heading out the next week with another (jerry busher did that for fugazi and other DC bands for like fifteen years, now he's in a band and playing second percussion for fugazi). there's gotta be a vehicle for change!

the day ends... jason, check these pics out:

some pics from the show

rock n roll! one hour before band practice... if the eight friggin hours i waste every day in the office are my "work life", does that mean the time i spend in bands is my "band life"? and when i'm asleep its my "sleep life" and when i eat its my "food life"??? think about it, eh.

well this afternoon has been composed of reading hey mercedes lyrics and cursing the company xmas party. angst abounds in many forms.

goal for tonight: play guitar for a really long time...eating is NOT an option.
goal for week: buy a decent radio w/CD player and place this downstairs with the guitars so i can listen to music and practice.
goal for month: learn ONE song from start to finish (this is a VERY unrealistic goal)

my comment from yesterday afternoon was eerily prophetic: "its all we want, to die with our boots on." but i didn't mean in a traffic accident... i meant out working the fields, in the garden, walking around. not being hit by a car.

i'll comment on the show later, reading the news article and learning that the person in the accident died has lent me to a very somber disposition.

yet another great show lastnight. hey mercedes just completely rocked the place. lots of pictures taken...some a lil blurry and some dark..but we can fix that quite easily.

and every trip is always an adventure. as we approached our destination, it seems one person was killed in the accident. it's always nice to see someone with a pool of blood around their head. that put a damper on the show..but other than that, the night went without incident. thank goodness.

now, i must get back to my code reviews.

CPR: 0%
PPR: 80%

its what we all want, to die with our boots on.

goal: stop eating mass quantities of junk food.
step 1: destroy candies at home..finish them off and be done with them
step 2: buy more healthy eats (aka fruits and veggies)
step 3: buy that bike trainer and bring home the weight bench this weekend!!

result: perpetuate this thing called life and hopefully have a healthy old age and die in my sleep

CPR: 90%
PPR: 90%

now spinning:Hey Mercedes everynight fire works it's groovy, everyone should listen to it.

ah, i was really hoping for "the return of random chest sensations"... perhaps i'm subconsciously stressing aboot my current project here at work... or maybe i've been on the run too much lately and not eating well... or perhaps i'm just slated for an early winter 2001 death... who knows!

nothing like an impetuous trip for tonight....off to pittsburgh we go to see hey mercedes yet one more time...

i think we're going to get a picture with lead singer robert nana....yay for stalking...

of course we've all heard of urban ledgends, but have you heard about Bert (from sesame street) appearing in a propoganda picture with USA's #1 criminal?

http://www.snopes2.com/rumors/bert.htm

it's good to know i'm not the only one who has bizarre dreams. but a dream with bruce campbell is always good one...even if there is dismembering in the dream.

let me re-iterate:
"The all of the sudden my mom and dad show up and we go out back, apparently to watch some sort of asteroid collision with the earth. It's either that or we're watching the movie Armeggedon which is somehow being broadcast in the sky."

sheer genius people! sheer genius!

ahhh, what a great weekend this was. the show was spectacular, many good bands, many good tunes, and many good times. plus my first experience with an ihop. a sad note tho, i was hoping to experience the waffle house yet again, but we opted for the ihop.

anyway, as an experiment for my friends, i've decided to post the temperatures from the beautiful state of alabama. now please, i implore my southern friends (who do post from time to time) to tell the tales of winter chill and cold!

Johnstown, PA 32°F
Ashville, AL 37°F