Hey there internet,

Yeah I know it’s been a while. I’ve got a list of those ‘I hate my job’ posts in the works, I swearz it. All that’s needed is till fill in the blanks, etc. etc.

But anyway it’s after 3am and I’ve already wrote long-ass emails to my mom and the owner of the BSC so what’s a little blog-post gonna hurt anyone? Also, I have consumed more than my usual share of wine tonight. Be forewarned…

But my only subject right now is this really - why can I not get to sleep at a reasonable house of the evening? I would consider myself a morning person, in that when I am able to get myself out of bed in the morning I thoroughly enjoy the sunrise, dew in the grass, and birds singing. I love it, having the whole day ahead of me, endless possibilities, etc. But in fact it rarely happens, cause I can’t get to sleep at night. I have had periods over the years, mainly when I had an 8am job or class to get to, that I managed to get to sleep by midnight or so. But for most of my adult life I’ve slipped time and again into staying up till 2-3am or later. And the thing is, I’m not one of those people for whom this type of schedule is a good thing. I’m not a night-owl, as it were. My body *needs* 8 hours of sleep a night or I start getting cranky. Not only that, but I’ve consistently proven that those 8 hours should ideally come between 11pm and 7am. At least, that’s what I remember from grade school, cause I think that’s the last time I routinely went to sleep at 11pm. If I routinely go to sleep at 2am and get up at 10am (like lately) I will become a walking zombie within a few days.

And so it has been for the last few weeks. I moved in recently with my girlfriend of five years, Maryjo. Ohhh, you didn’t hear about that internet? Yeah, it’s my official excuse for having no time to write anything here for the past two months. I took it as an opportunity to start getting to bed earlier, and it worked for a few weeks. But old habits, they die hard. Maryjo now has an official fancy job at an officially fancy new library, meaning she has to be at work in Raleigh, NC at 8am. Our new place, it’s west of Carrboro, 45 minutes away from Maryjo’s fancy new job and library. So Maryjo hits the sack at 11pm now during the week, and since there is NO WAY I can make myself fall asleep at 11pm, I’m once again left by myself to spend the wee hours of the morning with you, dearest internet.

So true to word, it’s 3:27 AM, and tomorrow I will be a walking zombie. But for some *reason* I always feel wide awake after midnight. It’s like my final chance to relax and do whatever I wanted to do but didn’t get to during the day. Also, the internet does not help. Shame on you internet! For always being on 24/7, like a late-night white-trash walmart. But I should not blame just the internet, cause even before I had my first dial-up AOL account, I was staying up late cranking up the headphones or watching the MTV. Maybe it’s because my mom made me go to bed at 9pm when I was young. As I got older that hour was extended to 10pm, but still I think once I moved in with my dad at the age of 16 and he said ‘go to bed when you feel like it’ it was like a revelation to me. Like the door to the secret underground world of ‘late-night’ had finally been opened! Now not only could I watch Letterman on a regular basis if I wanted, I could even watch whoever came on AFTER Letterman!

And so it went through the years, to the point where for whatever reason my brain wants to keep going as long as possible at the end of the day. Most nights I have to finally tell myself ‘you really need to get some sleep now’ before I finally hit the hay and turn out the lights. It’s almost never because I’m actually to tired to stay awake. In fact, in the past couple of years I’ve started to even get a paranoia about it. Like, I’m afraid of sleep. Because you know, once you pass that point of no return, just where the hell does your brain *go* for several hours? I feel like I have to let go of my consciousness, and I don’t want to. I don’t want to give up control of my mind for several hours. It seriously freaks me out some nights when I’m laying in bed.

Sometimes I wish sleep was not necessary. I mean, imagine what you could get accomplished if you could stay up all night, every night! Food and sleep, these are things that I feel sort of waste my time a lot. Now food, it does have some upsides to it, but sleep… I just wish we were evolutionally beyond it already. I could be so much more productive!

But, alas it is not so. If I don’t get to sleep soon, I’ll be worthless tomorrow. At least until tomorrow night when the cycle starts again. I tell ya, I’m getting older now and my body is seriously suggesting to me at that now is the time I ‘get better eating habits’ and ‘get better sleeping habits’.

Well, we all must be slaves to our physical bodies in the end, but I tell ya I still thinks it’s a waste of time. Honestly, if I ever *really* need to relax I can just put on the headphones, and meditate to some classic Letterman…

Okay, I’m trying this thing again. AGAIN, I said! Let’s see if we can’t keep it up this time. My GAWD, there is so much that goes on in my life that you people need to know about. I’m sure of it…Umm yeah anyway so I’m checking out the internets a while back like I like to do, when I read that Wordpress 2.5 has just been released. And with fancy new gallery features no less. So I decide that if I can import my photos into wordpress itself using the new gallery feature, then I won’t have to keep an install of wordpress and gallery2 up to date. Nor will I have to fiddle with making themes for both of them work together every time I update them both.

And that’s exactly what I did. I installed wordpress 2.5, found me a new theme, and spent a week or so tweaking it to my liking and making it work nice with the gallery feature. Strangely, this ‘exciting new feature’ does not actually have too many options just yet and the ones it does have are not well documented. So it took a few days to get the galleries looking like I wanted them to in my new theme.

But now the work is done. Wordpress updated, theme galleryized, and photos imported from the old gallery2 database. Now all of my content is in one handy dandy place. Enjoy!

Oh, and I may even post some new content/photos soon. See above paragraph re: trying this again. Thanks to my one surviving faithful reader. I couldn’t have had the strength to go on without you…(psst, it’s me).

Hello.

Oops, I accidentally spent the last three months organzing my back catalog of digital photos going back to 1999 or so, importing them into iView Media, tagging, and uploading to the website the ones I felt web worthy. In the meantime, I forgot to tell my dozens of faithful readers about all the great things going on in my life. No doubt they’ve become bored and moved on - leaving my readership in the single digits I’m sure.

I know you will hate me for it, but honestly shouldn’t you work on your own life insteading of worrying about mine? Let’s just say we have an official website for the studio now, Jon Shain’s album was released to rave reviews, Jackson and I are well into crafting a new live band for ourselves, and I’ve designed a crapload of show horse ads with more on the way. The defining word for that last bit was CRAP by the way. More on all of this later…

For now, check out ‘Pretty Things’ on the right. I have lots of great stuff to see. No, really I do. It will change your life. I swear.

Oh also, apparently in the 3+ months since I put all of this up, like seven new versions of Wordpress and Gallery have been released. Like I don’t have enough computer stuff to keep up with as it is? Sheesh.

As a shameless plug, please let me formally introduce SJ’s ‘Pretty Things’s section of the site. Below is from the gallery ‘Hi-N-Dry’. Check it out, if you please.630And in other news, Jackson and I had our first rehearsal last night for a new project that’s in the works. That’s right everyone, you read me right. We’re moving out of the studio and back onto the stage. More info as it comes along…

And rehearsing, by the way, is something I want to do more of. It’s on my ToDo list. If you picked up a thread of bitterness in the last post, your observation would be right. On my ToDo list is more practicing of bass, guitar, and drums. More working with ProTools to learn all the nooks and crannies. More ear training with Golden Ears. More buying of quality mics and preamps. More writing and recording. More rehearsing. More cycling of new stuff onto the iPod, and more listening of new stuff. More seeing of live shows. And those are just the music related ToDo’s. I seemed destined to spend all of my time in front of a computer. I do so wish I could chuck them all out a window some days. And oh, how I do rue having an actual job and having bills to pay. Why can’t someone just pay my bills and work for me? And give me money to buy new equipment for the studio? WHY??

Oh, and does everyone know that the Police are reuniting for the Grammys on Feb. 11? Is it possible Sting is finally getting over himself? Let’s all tune in to find out…

SJ

So you should know this about me - I am obsessive when I want to finish a project. Don’t get me wrong, I’m plenty lazy, but when I decide to accomplish something…I won’t stop for days. In fact I’m pretty lousy at multitasking, as I can only really concentrate on one thing at a time. Big thing or small thing, it doesn’t matter, as I’m totally unable to prioritize the long list of things I want accomplished.

So take the month of January. After a fun and productive trip to Boston to watch an actual engineer mix an actual album in an actual studio (see the proof here)…I then spent about a week converting, importing into iTunes, and tagging all of the videos we now have scattered around hard drives in Fenario. What seemed like a simple and cool idea (thanks to isquint) took a lot more time than I imagined. I wanted to have all of our video selection tagged and available from an always running copy of iTunes on our backup machine, ready to be streamed to anyones computer (thank you iTunes 7). But my frustration increased every day, as I felt I was wasting a lot of time for not a lot of gain. Is it really easier to fire up iTunes and watch a shared video, or just mount an external drive and play it with videolan? Still, it was a project i just had to finish. Often, these projects involve a computer somehow. Most things I do involve a computer. If the problem at hand involves a computer, I am 500% more likely to be driven to solve it.

And so then, after that was done I spent 10 days playing World of Warcraft (free trial). Now just stop right there. Don’t you be judgin’ unless you’ve played yourself. Unless you’ve felt the thrill of leveling up a character you created. Watched as he or she grows and learns new abilities. Begins to kick butt where once one’s own butt was kicked. Explores new lands, saves damsels in distress, rides hippogryphs across vast oceans. Sicking your pet tiger on some bad guys. Making some new friends and creating strategies for kicking but together. You get the idea. They don’t call it warcrack for nothing. I’m an old school gamer from back in the day, but I haven’t found myself sucked into a game like that in a few years now. Which is why I knew, when my free trial ended, that I simply could not allow myself to purchase the thing. I just have too many other things I want to accomplish right now. No time for game playing. Not of that calibre. No thank you. My free trial ended 9 days ago. It gets a little easier each day. Thanks for asking…

And so how did I spend the next week? I started this blog. And the matching photo gallery, as seen here. This seemed like a simple task as well. I’m quite proficient enough with computers to install wordpress and gallery2. And to install some cool themes. Getting the two to work seamlessly together though, was a whole new bag. Lots of tweaking and editing of code I have done in the past week, kids. Lots. And finding a new way to manage all of the photos scattered around my hard drives, start tagging them, and finding an easy way to upload them to gallery2, with descriptions and tags intact? Not an easy task kids, not at all. Some IT professionals get paid serious dough to do this for people. I’m talking about walking around money here. But not me, I’m too much of a schmuck to make such obvious use of my talents. Anyway, the tweaking is done.

And why do you ask? Why all the trouble? As I said before, it was a problem involving computers. So it just had to be solved. But mainly, so I could ramble on aimlessly here at 2 in the morning for all to read. And, so I could post my photographic work, showing how wonderfully amateurish I am behind the lens. And, so I would have something to feel a little better about at the end of the day, then having spent a metaphorical 12 hours playing a videogame….Um, ok, so maybe not metaphorical. Yeah, that’s why. And so endith january of 2007. Thank you and goodnight!

Oh, and now I will be stuck at work for the next 2-3 weeks. That I will save for a future subject. If only my lvl18 Night Elf Hunter could do the work for me…

SJ

Once again I shall attempt a blog. Long ago when I decided to have my own website, I knew it would be called ‘All of the Above’, due to my soul containing so many parts this and a few parts that. My parents were polar opposites, and so I am eternally pulled in two different directions on so many subjects. But that’s another story…I never did make that website (although I been designing other sites off and on for years). And this would be about my third attempt at my own blog (as all personal websites seem to gravitate towards now). So will anyone care? Do I have anything worth saying to the world? Because there’s a crapload of blog entries about nothing in particular to be found already.

Well, I will care, because I have some things that need to be released into the world once and for all. If only to satisfy myself. That also is why I am setting up my own blog instead of going with one of the well-established pre-made blogsites. It just feels a little more personal and meaningful this way. And yet, I am using a pre-made theme (albeit a very nice one). And also yet, less people will see it this way…So there you go. Anyway, I already have a myspace page so I’ve certainly thrown my towel into the ring of masses. AAAnyway, I hope to be posting some of my new photographs soon. Stay tuned for that at least…