[sub]norml

Russ Chimes - Targa (Original Mix)

2011-11-11T08:13:00.008-05:00

I've tried to fight, I've tried to hide it
But I want you, want you
Tonight
I'm going to bite the bullet
And I'll chase the night with you

Baby, we'll be dancing all night

I'm following your every move
Gonna chase the night with you

[Download]

-K

Out of Time

2011-11-10T09:01:00.004-05:00

So it's 11/10/2011.

In less than 48 hours, I am going to be married.

I am freaking out.

I mean, I've known that this day was on its way for a little over six months. It's not exactly catching me off guard or anything. But the fact that it's 100%-real-and-happening is almost too much to take in. I mean, seriously. I'm sitting at my kitchen table, trying to hack this post together, and I've got a man from Scotland in my shower. For those not in the know, Tim Max Power Morriss, my best man, is a bit of an import model. I literally met him in person for the first time a week ago today, but I've known him for over six years. We met on InternetDJ, where he responded to a collab request. We quickly discovered that we had much more in common than music, and we developed a truly amazing friendship. And now he's here in the states, feeding me a steady diet of PG Tips and home-made bread with Marmite, and it's awesome and wonderful. We've played videogames and worked on music; we went to see Carl Cox live in Detroit last weekend; and we've just been doing everything we can to catch up on all of the 'bro-ing out' that we missed out on during high school.

This wedding represents all that I've been working towards for the last 3 years of my life. All I've wanted was to marry Caitlin, settle down, and to make a life for myself. And it's all coming together, and very nicely. But it's still pretty terrifying.

I mean, this is real. Super-real. I'm never going to ever be able to be unmarried, now. No matter what happens, I will permanently be a part of Caitlin's family, and she a part of mine - for better or for worse. It's scary. This is the Real World. This is the "adult stuff" that I always thought of as 'happening in the distant future'. Well, it looks like the future is now.

Tonight's my last night as a single man. It's also my last night of getting to hang out with Tim. The last week has just FLOWN by. I can't believe how quickly everything's happened. It's just a whole lot to take in at once. This time next week, I'll be getting back from the freaking BAHAMAS. And a week from Monday, I'll be going back to work as a married man, supporting a family.

Later on this afternoon, I'm going to be signing some papers regarding a mortgage. That house we've been waiting to hear back on, the little two-bedroom ordeal in downtown Goodrich, a bike ride away from the coney? Yeah, if all goes well, we'll be closing on it in a month or so.

I've never been more scared in my entire life... but I've also never been more excited.

-K

Stay golden.

2011-10-04T19:38:00.001-04:00

It's a real shame that last summer was so hectic. I spent most of my time working - and by "most of my time", I mean "well over half of the hours that I spent awake were spent engaging in some form of work-related endeavor". I don't hate work - on the contrary, I rather like my job (and that's probably the only thing that made this last summer even remotely tolerable) - but I wish I'd had more of a chance to just sit back and be a human. It sounds kinda pathetic, but I've grown to take real pleasure in the most mundane of tasks - doing the laundry, cleaning the kitchen, going grocery shopping, and tidying up around my house - because when I'm doing those things, well... that means that I'm at home.

I spent virtually no time at home this summer. I woke up every morning sometime between 7a and 9a, flew to work, and got home late every night. Yes, there were exceptions - but by and large, that was the rule. The last summer of my life as a single man was spent being a card-carrying workaholic. I don't necessarily regret it... but, well... opportunity cost, people. I'll never have a summer as a 20-year-old again.

A lot changed over the summer, though. I've learned so much about programming - I'm about 90% of the way to putting a real and serious web app into production, I feel extremely comfortable doing systems-administration-type server automation (with bash and ruby, the latter being the most pleasant language that I've ever come into contact with), and I've even gotten pretty good at using vim. (I'm actually writing this post up in vim right now - it feels really natural. There's something very, very beautiful about being able to do just about any text-editing operation with only one or two keystrokes.)

But I've missed writing - I've missed it a lot. I've fallen very out of touch with my inner writer. Right now, I'm sitting on a park bench outside my apartment. The evening air is cool and refreshing, and I just finished a slightly-strong-but-drank-it-anyway cup of Earl Gray, and I have to say that I haven't felt this relaxed in a very long time. There's something awesome about writing - you get into this zone where there's almost a direct link between your mind and the words on-screen, and it's as if everything else in the world fades away, if only for a moment. I mean, seriously - I'll be the first to admit that my blog isn't terribly interesting, and that I highly doubt that very many (if any) people actually take the time to read it. This place is just place for me to dump my thoughts from time to time - a memoir that's being written as it happens - and that's probably the beauty of it. I don't have to worry about writing funny or interesting material so that I can keep a loyal readership, and that's extremely liberating.

It's so gorgeous out here right now. I really wish I'd gotten to spend more time outdoors this summer. I guess that it's taken me this long to realize how much I miss Gaylord. I don't necessarily miss all of the people or situations that are inseparable from the experience of "living in Gaylord" - I'd never go back to stay - but I really miss just being able to go outside whenever I wanted. The woods were my haunt - in retrospect, I did a whole lot of growing up on those trails systems, out behind my house. When I was a kid, if I wasn't on the computer, I was probably out in the woods with my dog. Summer or winter, there was always a lot to do and see out there. In the warmer months, I'd spend hours biking back there. (Before the DNR cracked down on ORV stickers, and before they started really patrolling the cross-country ski trails, I even used to spend countless hours zipping around on my minibike. I never hurt anything - my tires were too big and the bike had too little torque to rip up the terrain - and it was a blast to race around back there.) When I was maybe 14 or so, my buddy Donald and I discovered some massive hills (I've written about them here plenty of times) and we were back there ALL THE TIME. The Hills were a place of wonder - it always blew my mind that they even existed - that I had the good fortune to live in such close proximity to those sandy slopes of awesomeness, and that they'd been there all along and I'd never known about them. We'd go flying down them in the summer (never crashed, though most of my friends did at least once) - and in the winter, it was the perfect spot for sledding. School would get out at 3:10p, and if the stars aligned just right, my buddies and I would all be home by 3:30p. We'd suit up, vow to do our homework after dark, and be on our way through the woods by 4p - I'd be lugging my snowboard, and my buddies would be hauling sleds. We would sled and snowboard and carry on until dark. When it got too dark to see clearly, we'd haul all the way back to my house - probably half a mile or so, by my estimate - where my mom would be waiting with hot chocolate and cookies (or occasionally, muffins). We would hang out and play videogames - sometimes Warsow, sometimes they'd bring down their Gamecube - until their parents called and demanded that they GET HOME RIGHT NOW YOU GUYS WERE SUPPOSED TO BE HOME AT SIX! - and I'd go do my homework and listen to trance on my laptop. Those were good days.

But these days are good days, too, and I'm sure that in two or three years, I'm going to be sitting outside with my laptop on a cool autumn evening, writing about the time that I wrote about the time that I went sledding and biking in the woods. Life is funny like that.

-K

Modding a Sega Saturn!

2011-08-11T23:27:00.007-04:00

I'm going to get this out of the way really fast here, before I forget... about two weeks ago, I wrapped up the track that I was talking about during my last post here, so here it is on SoundCloud:

Silver Lining - Something Someone Said (Original Mix) by silverlining

Direct Download

It's a glitchy, hard-hitting breaks track in a style all my own. Everything's from scratch, blah blah blah - the usual. I've never really done a proper breaks track before, but this one was a whole lot of fun.

Moving right along! So over the past few months, I have become a thoughtful modern Redditor. I tend to spend most of my time in /r/sysadmin and /r/gamecollecting. I've really gotten into collecting older consoles over the last few months - my current collection includes 2 Sega Genesises (Models 1 & 2), a SNES Mini, a N64, a modded XBox (with tons of SNES, NES, and Genesis games), a Dreamcast, and most recently, a Sega Saturn. I've had my eyes on a Saturn for years - I remember finding out about NiGHTS into Dreams back in... man, that must have been back in the summer of 2006 - and ever since, I have been dying to play it. I was at my local shop - Retro Replay - last weekend, and I finally decided to bite the bullet - I walked out of there with a Model 2 Sega Saturn, 2 regular controllers, and a 3D Controller. That was pretty much one of the best days of my life as a game collector. Something just really excites me about having an older, kinda-rare console with a ton of history behind it; the fact that there are a lot of awesome exclusive titles for the system doesn't hurt things, either!

The only problem with the Saturn being kinda-rare is that the games are also kinda-rare. As I collect for fun, not value, I see no reason to take rare games from the market (and therefore out of the hands of the value collectors), so I knew that as soon as I got a Saturn, that I was going to have to get a modchip for it, too.

For this, I turned to none other than Racketboy. I'd recommend him to anyone looking to do this - the shipping was fast (now granted, I apparently only live 1.5 hours from Rackeboy HQ, but still!), and the chip worked perfectly the first time. Installation was extremely straightforward.

Speaking of installation... I promised the guys at /r/gamecollecting that I'd do a write-up on the installation process. While there's already a comprehensive tutorial on the subject at Racketboy, I figure that it can't hurt to do one of my own, too, so let's get to business.

MATERIALS:
- Sega Saturn (Model 2)
- Modchip
- CR 2032 batteries (optional)
- electrical tape
- solder
- small, thin pieces of cardboard (easily sourced from battery packaging)

TOOLS:
- t-shirt
- soldering iron
- long, thin Philips screwdriver
- scissors
- nail file (optional)

NOTE: Just to get this out of the way, this modchip WILL NOT allow you to play original (i.e., not burnt) import game discs. You need some sort of Action Replay or something for that. You CAN, however, download the disk image and change the region with the Sega Saturn Region Patcher, then burn it.

I got home from Vacation Bible School around 11:30p on Thursday night, modchip in hand. Despite the fact that I needed to be at work at 9a the next day, I figured that I'd waited more than long enough to make this happen. I was about to start tearing my Saturn apart when it hit me like a ton of bricks - I had no CR 2032s. This was a problem because the Saturn, being a disc-based system, manages its gamesaves via onboard memory that runs from a battery backup. If I got my Saturn modded and was able to play any games that evening, I wouldn't be able to save my progress, so I made a quick Meijer run and grabbed some batteries.

Here's a shot of the modchip. The Saturn's copy protection scheme involves a a ring of data around the outside edge of the game disc; the modchip intercepts the cable that runs from the CD drive's laser to the motherboard, and fakes the system into thinking that it's read the copy protection data. Pretty clever!

The hardest part of the whole process was probably disassembling the Saturn. Some of the screws were super tight (there are 5), so to keep from damaging the table or the top of the console, I put a t-shirt between the table and the Saturn.

Here's a shot of the Saturn, topless.

See that white cable there? That's the cable that goes from the laser to the motherboard. Gently pull it from its socket...

... then plug it into the modchip, like so. Now, at this point, you could plug the modchip directly into the motherboard, but I found it easier to solder the wires in place first (as it gives you a bit more room to move - the wires on this particular chip were just the right length for the job; your mileage may vary).

Remember how I mentioned that cardboard? It's about to come in handy. I took these photos with my iPod Touch, so this probably isn't the clearest action shot, but what you see there is two small squares of cardboard, cut from the packaging from my batteries. The next major step in the modding process is to solder the blue wire to the pin 14 of the chip that's on the left side of the circuit board that runs the CD drive, in the front. Anyhow, to simplify the process of soldering the wire directly to the pin, wedge the cardboard between the pins on either side of pin 14 to form a sort of makeshift cover for the other pins, and solder away! (Note: pin 14 is the 14th pin to the right on the side of the chip closest to the front of the console.)

Look to the left side of the console. The brown circuit board is the console's power supply. On the bottom right corner of the board, there's a small white plug (or something) with 4 pins. Solder the red wire to the second pin down.

I used some electrical tape to hold the wires down and out of the way of any moving parts, but probably any decent tape will do. Now is also a good time to actually plug the chip into the motherboard, seeing as how everything's all soldered into place now. In the rare event that the chip doesn't fit, you might have to shave a tiny bit off the sides of the connector with a nail file. The fit should be pretty tight, but DON'T FORCE IT. The chip is pretty fragile, and it's better to be safe than to be sorry!

Well, if you did everything right, the chip is installed, and your Saturn should be ready and raring to play backups! Put the top back on the unit and screw it back together.

If you pop the cover off the back, you'll see where the CR 2032 save battery goes. If you're like me and you had to run out and buy one, now's a good time to pop it into place. The battery goes in positive-side-up.

So I plugged my Saturn into my TV, and put in my burnt copy of NiGHTS Into Dreams. It passed the disk check...

... booted...

... and there you have it, people. The chip worked perfectly, the first time!

Now, sometimes if I put a burnt disc in while the system is on and running, it will read as a CD+G, not a game disc. In that situation, simply turn the system off (via the power button - the reset switch doesn't seem to work for this) and turn it back on so that the system boots to the game, not to the Saturn OS.

If anyone has any questions, feel free to ask in the Comments section and I'll be glad to try to help in any way that I can! Modding this little guy was a whole lot of fun, and I'm just blown away by the games that I've gotten so far - like Sega Rally, Batsugun, Cyber Speedway, NiGHTS Into Dreams, Virtua Fighter 2... I could go on.

Racketboy is an AMAZING resource for the Saturn - really, for all things retro. Most of the information from this article was adapted content on his site, so here's credit where credit is due. To be honest, this is basically a re-picture and re-write of a tutorial that I followed to mod my Saturn - I just wanted to document the experience on my blog, in hopes of sharing it with others more effectively.

Well, I'd keep blathering on about the wonders of the Sega Saturn... but I think I'm gonna go play mine. :D

-K

Checking In

2011-07-12T17:29:00.004-04:00

A great many significant things have happened since I wrote in here last. I am finding that unless I am very consistent and strict with my personal time management, that I don't have time to do the things that I have to do - which means that I never end up with time to do the things that I want to do. These days, I spend 90% of my time at work (or at church); what little downtime I do have usually ends up getting devoted to my beautiful fiancee (more on that later!), and when she's done with me, well, I end up getting around six hours of sleep a night.

But that's okay with me. I love my life. I have a great place to live (the Man Cave!, and I'm surrounded by wonderful people. After so many years, I finally have a working relationship with my mother, father, and brother - all at the same time. (I won't go into details, as I don't think that it's appropriate for me to air my dirty laundry on my blog, which is fairly public... but I've not always had the greatest relationship with my immediate family. It brings me a lot of happiness to say that this is no longer the case.)

I've taken on a lot more responsibility lately at work. When I first started at Ideal Machinery - almost a year ago - I was just an extra pair of hands in the warehouse. We buy and sell manufacturing machinery and parts, so I spent a lot of time cleaning and identifying parts, and tearing electronics cabinets apart and sorting the components (which I actually really enjoy doing). Well, a few months ago, my boss decided that my talents would be better used elsewhere, so he moved me into the office and put me in charge of making all the computers run smoothly. I've been doing some lightweight web development and database optimization, and I've had the priviledge of building and deploying a few new machines. As a newly-converted Mac guy, I don't see myself getting to build new systems for personal use in the near future, so I enjoy getting to do that at work. I've gotten to learn a lot more about *nix, too... I've been able to pick up quite a bit of bash and ruby, and I've learned a lot about how *nix systems work (which is important, since all 5 of my servers run SME Server, Ubuntu Server, or Mac OS X 10.6 Server!). I've been earning a lot of geek points lately. :D

As I mentioned earlier, I'm engaged now! On May 9, 2011, I finally broke down and hooked the love of my life up with a ring and a promise. I made her go on a bike ride with me, and while we were out on the trail, I dropped to one knee and popped the question. With great enthusiasm, she let me know that she had no intention of refusing such an offer... she literally grabbed the ring from my palm, shoved it onto her finger, and started jumping up and down, screaming. It took me a good five minutes to get a real, actual "yes" out of her, and I made her let me re-propose so that I could put the ring on myself, like I was supposed to! We've set the date for November 11, 2011 (11/11/11! I'll be in a whole lot of trouble if I ever forget my anniversary!), which is not only an awesome calendar date, but also the date of our third anniversary of being together. If you read through this post, to the part where I mention "meeting Lynn at the library" (that's what I called her, back then), well... that was the day that we first realized that we needed to be together for life. This realization came upon us at the library that evening. It's just kinda crazy that I've been writing in this blog for over three years, I guess... I've never kept up with anything for this long.

I've been forcing myself to allocate time to work on music. I've switched back to FL 8, as it's easier on the system resources; I really tried to use Ableton Live on my MacBook, but right now, I just don't have the time to devote to learning a new piece of software - I want to spend what little time I have to work on music by working on songs. I've been using a few new techniques lately, too, and they have really helped me to actually complete songs. I've got two songs that are about 90% done - all I need to do is mix them down properly and tweak a few things - and I'm about 70% of the way through another (so expect more music posts soon!). I just picked up some M-Audio AV40 near-field monitors; last summer, I picked up a used pair of M-Audio BX5As, but they were really beat-up, they didn't match (one was a Deluxe monitor, the other just regular-sized), they had power supply issues, and one died on me (I think the power supply went) a few months ago, when I was wrapping up a song. In light of this, I got the AV40s new. I got a pretty good deal on them, too! I haven't gotten to actually use them for production yet, but I have listened to music with them a bit, and they sound phenomenal. I can't wait to put them to proper use!

In closing... here's a track that I have really been enjoying lately:

Neal White - Hobby Buddhist (Original Mix)

It's somewhat of a minimal breaks track... I've never heard anything like it. It's very pretty. Highly recommended.

Well, I have to be going, for now... maybe my next post won't be three months from this one! 0_o

-K

Enter the Man-Cave

2011-04-18T23:38:00.009-04:00

After living in various basements, tents, and dormitories for the last two years, it's finally happened.

I am writing this blog post at my kitchen table.

My kitchen table. Let that sink in.

What I'm saying right now is that I am sitting in a kitchen that I have claimed for my own, at a table that belongs to me (and that no, I haven't finally taken over the upstairs of my girlfriend's parents' house). I HAVE A MAN-CAVE.

It's actually pretty nice, believe it or not. I got an extremely good deal on a nice little one-bedroom apartment, and I now proudly call it my home. Yeah, I'm sleeping on an air mattress, and yes, I have a ridiculous-looking floral-patterned sofa (which, by the way, is the most comfortable sofa on which I've ever sat or slept), but it's ALL MINE and NOBODY CAN MAKE ME WEAR PANTS WHEN I DON'T WANT TO.

It's almost intoxicating. I'll be brushing my teeth in the morning, when all of a sudden, it dawns on me - THIS IS MY HOUSE. Finally, after TWO YEARS, not only do I have my own room again, I have the entire house that it's in, too!

The apartment's just great. I'm in a dog-friendly building, so that means that the apartment complex had to put brand-new carpet in before I moved in. The faucets and sink all look new and shiny, and there's a fresh coat of paint on the walls. It's got a ton of closet space, and it came with a refrigerator, a stove / oven, and a dishwasher! It's absolutely perfect, and for the price, I plan to be here for a good long while.

I don't have all my music gear set up yet, unfortunately - I managed to blow the power supply on one of my M-Audio BX5a near-field monitors while working on my last track (which has not been released yet, by the way... stay tuned!) and I've not yet been able to tear it apart to see if I can fix it. Honestly, though, with work and such, I've not really had much time to work on music lately anyway. Maybe later on this summer I'll bite the bullet and spring for a new pair of BX8a's, or perhaps some KRK Rokkits (I've heard great things about those).

I did get a chance to work on some music stuff last night, though. I don't think I ever mentioned this, but I "discovered" techno and minimal last summer, and I'd have to say that it's changed my life. I still enjoy trance, and I love indie dance / blog house / electro / whateveryawannacallit to death, but there's something refreshing about being able to enjoy something that's so raw, stripped-back, and atonal as minimal. I guess it gives me some sort of false sense of sophistication or something; all that I know is that I've gradually adopted a personal philosophy of minimalism - doing only what I need with as little (and as simply) as possible. It's a little hard to explain, and it's a bit out of the scope of this blog (as I don't really feel comfortable discussing my personal beliefs and philosophies on here), but it's changed me somewhat - for the better, I'd like to think. It's helped me to think a little more abstractly (at least with regard to art, anyway) - and that's never a bad thing.

Here's a solid minimal track that I've been listening to a lot lately:

Digital Mess - Miss the Reason

... anyway! I totally got sidetracked there. As I was saying, I got the chance to work on some music last night. I just picked up a MacBook (secondhand, from a friend, and for work, so no judging), and I've been trying to learn to use a native DAW. (I miss FL terribly, but this thing's infinitely faster and more stable than my Windows machine.) I've shifted my attention back towards Ableton Live, specifically because I like the idea of playing my stuff live. As part of the creative process, I hooked my iPod Touch up to my MacBook via S1 MIDI Trigger and custom-designed a controller layout:

I used it to make an extremely simple tune, and I just jammed with it for awhile, tweaking the S1 layout as I went. It was a whole lot of fun, and I'd eventually like to incorporate some of my other MIDI controllers with the setup soon. (Free plug for S1: It's an AWESOME iOS app. I wish I had an iPad because of apps such as this. I can create a MIDI controller with as many knobs, sliders, x-y controllers, and trigger pads as I wish, and I can link ANYTHING to ANY note-on, sysex, or MIDI-CC event on any channel. It's a thing of beauty. The editor's a little fiddly (as are the knobs, at least on such a small screen), but it's more than worth it.)

Maybe I'll have to record a minimal jam and throw it up here. I do a lot of cool things that I should better document... I feel like I have the means to make some of my memories more indelible, but that I never take advantage of it (for time's sake, or just because of laziness/indifference).

Well, I need to minimal-jam my way off to bed. I've got work in the morning, and I need to get up in time to make myself a lunch... from the food that's in MY fridge. My life is way more awesome than I deserve for it to be.

-K

FL 9: Making the Jump

2011-03-12T04:10:00.002-05:00

Anybody who knows me as a musician knows that I'm a big proponent of Image-Line FL Studio. It's the software that I've spent the most time in, and the workflow is just awesome (for me, anyway). It's not that I think that other workstations are inferior, either - I've spent quite a bit of time in Ableton Live and Propellerheads Reason, as well - but FL just has some features that I can't function without.

That being said, anybody who knows me as a musician well enough to know that I'm a FL guy also knows that, for the longest time, I've refused to upgrade from FL 8 to FL 9. FL 9 has been out for some years now - at least two, possibly more - but I've just not seen any reason to make the jump. I'm an old man in some respects - I really, reeeally don't like change. Well, about a week or so ago, I got a new hard drive for my laptop. I don't have everything reloaded yet, and a friend of mine approached me and asked me if I wanted to do a quick collaboration with him. He's a FL user as well, but he's been using 9 since it came out and has no reason to move back to 8... so, as an experiment, I installed 9 and gave it a shot.

Within five minutes, I was hooked. I hate to say it, but it's true.

The UI is a lot slicker and easier on the eyes. That's a big deal for me, as I usually end up working on music late at night (it's what, almost 4:30a right now? Yeah, this is when I have the time to do my own projects). Also, the whole situation where you can mute pattern clips from the Playlist is pretty nifty - that's been a long time coming, IMO. (Pattern clips just rock, period.) I'm not the biggest fan of the new sidechaining method - I feel that strapping 8 Peak Controllers across one mixer channel and running the sidechain kick through that is a whole lot more flexible, but that's just me, and I'll be the first to admit that the Peak Controller method is not very intuitive (but boy is it ever efficient when you wrap your head around it!).

There are some new features and tools that I've not checked out yet, but I plan on getting more familiar with it when I have time (and there's no telling when that'll be). I'd like to get back in the habit of posting clips and WIPs on here like I used to, way back in 2008 or something. (I am so old.)

Speaking of such, I think I'm going to go work on a track now, then maybe crash for an hour or two. I've gotta get up around 8a tomorrow... I've got an impossible amount of calculus to do this weekend.

Oh joy.

-K

PS - Oh. Also. I'm considering a re-skin for this blog soon. We'll have to see.

Still Alive

2011-02-17T14:04:00.002-05:00

... mostly. Hi, Internet. This is John, breaking the silence before a full year passes without me saying anything.

There's a whole lot going on right now. I'm working 30 hours or so a week at my 'regular' job, and I am picking up a lot of side work doing computer repair. School is trying to kill me - I'm at the University of Michigan-Flint, studying computer science.

I never post here anymore. For awhile, when I first started this blog, I was all focused on 'being a writer' and such. While I do like writing, I just don't have time anymore to write for an hour before I go to sleep every night. I don't even go to sleep, some nights - I end up doing homework the whole night through.

I should probably start writing about my life again, as it's been quite exciting lately. We'll have to see.

-K

Mesh - Friends Like These

2010-08-15T06:08:00.006-04:00

I've fallen in love with a photograph
A moment of youth that I can't get back
The days when you're here it returns again
Emotions that feed on me everyday

And every night I watch it fading
It's safer just to write my whole life down
With every breath the words betray me
It's easier to face the truth

I've taken a vow that I'll make it up
I'll dig in the past and I'll rake it up
Making amends to the friends I miss
Breaking the mould that I'm frozen in

And everyday I know I'm lazy
It's easier to let the good times pass
And now it seems the memory's hazy
It's time for me to face the past

We tell them lies, we do sometimes
We live and die for friends like these
When all is said
We turn instead
And give our lives for what's beneath

And we do sometimes

I'd be a fool to slide again
I'll be like you and try again

I've fallen in love with a photograph
A moment of proof that can't love me back
The way that it cuts at me everyday
The images mark me and melt away

And everyday I feel it clearly
It's easy just to save the worst until last
And maybe I could see it really
It's painful what we do

We tell them lies, we do sometimes
We live and die for friends like these
When all is said
We turn instead
And give our lives for what's beneath

And we do sometimes

We live and die for friends like these
And we do sometimes

^{To Heather, Reese, Zack, Nick, Jolene, and in memory of Chris.}

[Download]

-K

in this life alone, i'll be so hard pressed to even carry on...

2010-08-15T02:06:00.007-04:00

Hello, world.

I swear, every time I decide to sit down and actually write a blog post, I forget every single thing that I have been thinking of writing about for the last month or so. Where to start, where to start...

... might as well go with the whole car wreck debacle, I suppose. (Disclaimer: It's 2 AM and I'm at work. If, at some point, this post stops making sense, blame that. Thanks.)

So anyhow, a few weeks ago today, Caitlin and I were on our way to the Sunday evening service at our church. Her grandparents were out of town for the day, so we had agreed to let their three-legged Golden Retriever out so that she didn't use the bathroom in their house. Well, we forgot all about the dog until we were about halfway to church. We turned left instead of right at an intersection to start heading back to their house.

Since I have been pulled over a few times this summer for speeding (one for doing 57 MPH in a construction zone - I honestly have no idea how the charges got dropped on that one), I have been making it a point to always follow the speed limit in better interest of keeping my spotless driving record spotless. (Yep, that's right... I got off clean both times that I got pulled over for speeding. I can't see that happening ever again, though.) That being said, I'm a huge fan of cruise control, so I know for a fact that we were doing exactly 55 MPH down Saginaw Road when the little old lady in the burgundy Buick pulled right out in front of us

and stopped.

I slammed on the brakes and braced for impact. It all happened so fast that I didn't even have time to be scared - it was kind of like, "Well, I guess I'm going to hit that car now". One second I was driving down the road, and the next I was choking on chemicals and dust from the airbags. I looked over at Caitlin and asked her if she was okay. She just sat there in shock for a second then started bawling. She wasn't injured (bruises notwithstanding), but she was really shaken up. Satisfied that my girlfriend wasn't about to leave this life and pass into the next, I jumped out of the car to make sure that I hadn't killed the little old lady. (For the record, she made it out of the car under her own steam.)

Fortunately for us, several pedestrians saw the whole thing play out, so we didn't get a ticket or anything. I got a pretty nasty burn on my left arm from the airbag, but that's almost healed now. The car, Caitlin's 2008 Chevrolet Aveo that she'd had for around 2 weeks, didn't fare so well; the insurance company is trying to tell us that there is more money in repairs than the car is worth, so we're still dealing with that situation.

It was a pretty sobering experience. I'd never been in a car accident before, let alone one where I was driving. It made me think a lot about what would have happened if I had gotten seriously injured or killed. Also, I jump a little every time someone pulls out in front of me. 0_o

Otherwise, things have been pretty okay. I work a ton these days... I've been working the third shift at Tim Horton's lately (10p-6a) on weekends, and I work for Bory most of the rest of the time. I actually spent a lot of last week trying to cobble together a working computer for my boss. (Despite my best efforts, I think he's going to end up buying a new computer anyway. There's only so much you can do with an old Dell and a few aftermarket parts, especially when you have a motherboard fry and a hard drive fail. Don't get me started. I'm really starting to rethink computer science as a major, but that's another rant for another day.)

Oh. I almost forgot. I've been actually making some money these days, so I picked up a pair of M-Audio BX5a monitors the other day for about $100 off eBay. They're a little beat up, but they still sound beautiful. I had to go get a ground loop isolator from RadioShack to get rid of the hum, but after that, well... they sound beautiful. I've wanted those monitors specifically for a few years, so this is honestly the realization of a dream of mine. It's a pity that I have NO FREE TIME these days, as I haven't even been able to fool around with writing any music on them yet.

While I'm going on about audio gear, well... see, I have this terrible weakness for old keyboards. They don't necessarily have to be 'synthesizers' - as long as they are old enough to have mostly analogue circuitry (like my prized Casio CTK-310), I'll have a hard time not buying every one that I ever see for sale. I picked up a Yamaha Portasound PSS-480 for $5 at a garage sale that came with the box and instruction manual. As I was walking it into the house, I was reading the back of the box and I did a double-take when I read that it had MIDI in and out. Then, after playing with it for a little while, I realized that it also has a basic FM synthesizer built in! It's a lot of fun to program - I have gotten some pretty evil and gritty bass sounds out of it, alongside the requisite generic bell and lead sounds. It sounds very 80s, which is great, in my opinion. Once I figure out how to configure it to accept MIDI signals and get an audio interface, I look forward to recording with it.

^{Pictured: the most awesome thing that a $5 bill has ever purchased.}

Last week, I made a trip back down to the southeast part of the state to see some family. I spent some time with my nieces (that I haven't seen since I moved out last May) and with my father. I tried snapping a few pictures with the girls, but they came out kinda blurry:

I blame it on the fact that they are little more than breathing perpetual motion machines. Seriously, look at them. They are climbing all over me. They did that pretty much the whole time that I was there.

Well, that about summarizes everything important that's happened lately. I'm starting school again at UM-Flint in a few weeks - maybe I can get back into a rhythm and start posting more again, but I'm not making any promises this time.

-K

It's Been Awhile

2010-07-05T00:49:00.004-04:00

Hello, Internet. It's nice to be back.

The last month and a half or so of my life have been especially tumultuous. I've transferred to the University of Michigan-Flint, I now live in the Flint / Burton area, and I'm working two jobs - I transferred to the Tim Horton's in Burton, and I am also working for Bory Landscaping.

In spite of all this, life is absolutely wonderful. I don't know how it could be better right now.

Today was pretty amazing. Rather than brave the crowds and traffic of going to a local park to watch fireworks, we spent about $20 on some cheap fireworks from a stand alongside the road, and we had a blast with them. Instead of just setting them all up and lighting them, I spent some time taking a few of the smaller ones and making chain reactions. For instance, I taped a small flare to a small fountain and put the fuse of the fountain at the base of the flare's fuse - kind of like a time delay. The flare would go off, lighting the small fountain. The small fountain in turn lit a sparkler; the sparkler was used as another fuse to light a larger fountain. We did about 5 or 6 chains like that, and all but 1 worked flawlessly. It was honestly more fun than buying a bunch of huge fountains, or than going to see fireworks somewhere else. It was really nice to just get to spend some quality time together. It was one of those evenings that I'm sure I'll look back on years from now and say, "Hey, remember the 4th of July in 2010, when we made all those cool firework chain reactions and had a huge bonfire?".

Well, I'm pretty much exhausted. I don't have to work for Bory tomorrow, but I do have to work at Tim Horton's from 3p-10p, and apparently I'm training a new guy.

Oh, the joy.

-K

Tutorial: FL Studio - Link Selected Channels Starting From This Track

2010-05-15T12:43:00.012-04:00

So Caitlin and I haven't been mountain biking. Every weekend since my last post, we have been foiled. I've either a) had to work, b) it's been horrible outside, or c) both. I'll post about that when it happens. :P

Anyhow! Enough about my personal life. In response to a post over at Forbidden Fruity, a great blog full of tips and tricks for Image-Line FL Studio, I am writing up a tutorial on one of my favorite FL Studio tricks that I stumbled across a few months ago. As always, click the pictures to see a larger version.

In a typical project in FL, it's not uncommon to have upwards of 10 or 15 different channels of Sampler for individual percussion hits. In better interest of keeping the mix clean, it's prudent to link them each to their own track on the mixer - a chore that can prove to be tedious if you have 15 or 20 channels that you want all linked up. Well, fortunately, there's a really easy way to do this in FL Studio.

So first, load up all your samples:

I find that it really helps to rename all your samples before you link them; there's less clutter that way.

Next, select the ones that you want to link. For now, I'm going to link just my hi-hats (the ohat [open hat] and chat [closed hat] channels). Select them with the Channel Selector. (Tip: Right-click on the selector to select / de-select them one at a time.)

So far, so good! Next, open up the Mixer and select the channel that you want to start from. I recommend starting from the first empty channel that is after the last "taken" channel - this will ensure that nothing that is already linked will be messed up or overwritten.

Finally, click on the little arrow in the upper left corner of the Mixer to open the Effects Options menu. Mouse down to 'Link Selected Channels' then click on 'Starting From This Track'.

There you have it! Beautiful, eh? If you did it right, your mixer should now look like this:

Now, each hi-hat has its very own mixer track. These can then be routed to a submix, which can be routed to a drum submix, which can be routed to your master. (Submix everything, if you can - it makes it easier to get the levels right when you have a lot of elements in the track.)

Also, if you'd rather, after you select the channels that you want to link, and after you select the channel that you want them to link starting from, you can just press Ctrl+Shift+L. It's a bit quicker.

Anyhow! I hope that this has been helpful - if it has, let me know in the comments!

-K

Mountain Biking Is Awesome (Again!)

2010-05-04T15:05:00.009-04:00

Last September, I discovered the local mountain biking trails. I went there, had a blast, and even blogged about it. Well, shortly after that, my back tire mysteriously turned up deflated, and being broke and far too busy with college, I put mountain biking on hold until I got out of school for the summer.

A few weeks ago, Caitlin got a brand-new Diamondback Lustre 2 for her birthday. (She failed to blog about it, too! I'm going to have to get on her for that.) Since I was finally out of school myself, when I went to her house for the weekend, I brought my bike and picked up a new inner-tube for the back tire. I installed it and we went riding; all was well. We were going to go riding again last weekend, too, so I pulled my bike out of the Man Van, only to be greeted by ANOTHER flat back tire! I pumped it up anyway, figuring that it was a small leak. We went for a short ride and it was fine, but by the next day it was flat again.

Frustrated by this new development, I went to the store and got ANOTHER inner-tube. While installing it, I decided to take a close look at my tire - lo and behold, there was a thorn sticking out on the inside of the tire! I grabbed some pliers and worked it out, then installed my new tube.

Today, I finally got to go back to the trails for a ride. I took my camera with me, too, so I got lots of cool pictures. As always, click the picture to see a larger version!

There were a lot of pretty wildflowers growing everywhere, too. It felt really, really good to get out and actually do something. No thanks to schoolwork and the weather, I was cooped up inside on the computer for most of the winter; I really haven't been able to get much physical activity up until now. I want to really get into mountain biking this summer - I'm really excited about Caitlin having a decent bike, too, because mountain biking is something that we've wanted to do together for quite some time.

For anyone who's interested, I uploaded all the pictures that I took to MediaFire. Here's a link:

[Download via MediaFire]

Caitlin and I are supposed to go out biking again this weekend - if we do, there will be pix and details!

-K

PS - I decided to change the blog back to the original template that it was, back in 2008 when I first started it. I've been feeling pretty nostalgic lately, I guess.

Where Have I Been?

2010-05-02T22:53:00.003-04:00

So I haven't posted in a month or so. It's not like that's not par for the course around here, but that's not the point. I haven't posted in a month.

I'm not going to lie. I am starting to feel as if my writing abilities are slipping away from me slowly as I gain skills in other fields that are more relevant to my current interests - particularly, the noble calling of math. Over the last semester, I spent a lot of time on math, and as little time as possible writing (Hist/Hum 261 with a sweaty old guy will do that to you), so it follows that my writing skills are deteriorating somewhat. I mean, it could be worse. Let's leave it at that, shall we?

Anyhow - I'm FINALLY out of school for the semester, so I figured that I should write up a quick post about it. Also, for the heck of it, here's a quick video my semester project from Intro to Engineering:

I led a team of guys that built a Rube Goldberg Machine. We did most of the assembly in a solid 12-hour block, and I wrote the paper that evening. (No, I did not sleep.) The machine's goal was to launch a ping-pong ball 10 feet to hit a target; on the first launch, ours hit the bulls-eye. The actual detailed explanation of the design is in the video's details on YouTube. It was a really exciting project, and I had a lot of fun with it.

Anyway, I need to get to sleep. I have a lot of vacationing to do tomorrow. ;D

-K

iPad: First Impressions

2010-04-04T01:12:00.002-04:00

Note: This post was originally posted at The Serious-Sounds Network; it's by me, of course, but this is just a repost of a post that I made there. Just saying.

This morning, I rolled out of bed around 6:20a, threw on some pants, and drove out to meet a friend who had the iPad on pre-order at the local Apple Store. We got there around 7:25 AM. There was a pretty decent line going already; there were two lines out in front of the store for the pre-orderers only. Apple, in better interest of keeping it all classy, was giving out free Nutri-Grain bars, SmartWater, and Starbucks coffee for those in the pre-order line. We were about 10th in line; some guy had been camping out there since 1 AM, and he pretty much was wasting his time, as half of the world wasn't chomping at the bit to get ahold of Apple's new iThing.

It was pretty awesome being a smug Microsoft geek while in line with a bunch of rabid Apple fanatics. I even got some guy to admit that Visual Studio > xcode.

So anyway, the news was there and the Apple people got everybody all excited and what-have-you, and my mate got his iPad. We took it back to his house and opened it up.

After fooling with it for a few minutes, I finally started to realize what all the fuss was about.

First of all, one of the things that I thought would be the most poorly-implemented - the touch keyboard - is absolutely beautiful. When the iPad is in landscape mode, the keys are spaced enough so that even my huge hands have no trouble at all typing on it. The lack of tactile response is a little disconcerting at first, but it's really not at all bad.

Second of all, it's a big iPod Touch. It's nothing more and nothing less - but that's the beauty of it.

Remember when Twitter first came out? I remember. I remember wondering what was the big deal, how could anything important be said in under 140 characters, etc. But now I can't live without it, and neither can half of the rest of the world. It took awhile to catch on, mostly because it's so hard to explain to someone that's never used it before how Twitter can actually be useful. In my opinion, the iPad is heading in the same direction.

The difference between the iPad and the iPod Touch is essentially that one is more optimized towards portability and music playback, while the other is more centered around the internet. Browsing the internet on the iPad is a beautiful experience - a vast improvement to browsing on an iPod Touch. It's very thin, light, and portable - moreso than a Tablet PC, that's for sure - and that's coming from a proud Tablet PC owner. It may not be more portable than the iPod Touch, but it's still really really portable. It's a really fast, seamless, and intuitive way to browse the Internet. The increase in screen size makes browsing a much more pleasant experience than it is on the iPod Touch.

Historically, Apple has engineered their devices around the experience that they think their user should want to have. This isn't necessarily a bad thing; just for the record, this is 2010 and the iPad is how Apple thinks that you should be experiencing the internet when you're away from your computer.

Anyway, what have I said all this to say? The iPad is a really cool intermediate device. It's not meant to replace the computer or the cell phone / mp3 player, so its usage isn't immediately apparent... but once you start to use it, it starts to all make sense.

So, to anyone who is wondering what the iPad is all about and what its purpose is: it's cool, it's a beautiful internet experience, and it's fun to use - nothing more, nothing less. Don't hate it because of what it isn't.

Keep in mind that I am not a Mac user or Apple fanboy.

-K

Second Lives

2010-03-11T12:17:00.003-05:00

... and now for something less whiny and depressing.

Lifelike is an amazing producer. He's got his own special blend of blippy, shimmering nu-italo going on that's unlike anything that anybody else is making. (I mean, some of his basslines and the huge flange / chorus that he uses is slightly reminiscent of some of Rex the Dog's work, but the tracks "feel" completely different from each other.)

Anyhow, I just stumbled across his absolutely brilliant remix of Vitalic - Second Lives, so I decided that I'd post it up for anyone who wants it...

Vitalic - Second Lives (Lifelike Remix)

Roll your windows down and blare this at intersections for maximum damage.

-K

as soon as i hit 'publish post', i am probably going to regret this...

2010-03-08T12:18:00.002-05:00

I'm sick of change. I'm sick of my life being turned upside down. I'm sick of the gut-wrenching sensation that shows up every time I remember a figment of my childhood or adolescence.

I'm sick of being alone. I'm sick of not being able to be with the people that I care about. I'm sick of having to pretend to be someone that I'm not when I'm around the people that I live with. I'm sick of not being close to anyone my age - of not having any real friends my age other than my girlfriend. I'm sick of whatever social anxiety disorder I seem to have. I'm sick of never going anywhere and never doing anything.

I'm sick of my family - of their past and the way that their actions have affected my life. I'm sick of being in the middle of everything.

I'm sick of myself. I'm sick of the way that I act and treat others. I'm sick of trying to solve my problems and coming up short. I'm sick of being confused.

I'm sick of what I've been brought up to believe - I'm sick of finding inconsistencies and inaccuracies every time I turn around.

I'm sick of college. I'm not enjoying it. I'm not making any friends, really. I've got a lot of 'acquaintances' and people that I like to be around, but I barely know any of them. I'm sick of studying for courses that have literally nothing to do with my major, simply because I wanted to fit in with the other people in Honors. I'm not making any memories or doing anything interesting. My life is a mundane cycle of work, study, and housework. Weekends are my only bright spot; if it weren't for my girlfriend, I would probably have quit by now. She is the world to me, and I owe her everything.

I just want to get a decent job, work that job, get married, and have a house - a place to call my own, where no one can tell me what I can or can't do, who I can or can't be, or how I should or shouldn't be spending my time. I want to be successful in whatever vocation I put myself into. Money is only important to me as a symbol of my success; my material needs are few. I just want to make money for self-validation.

Is that really too much to ask?

I haven't felt depressed like this in a really long time - not since Autumn and I broke up. I used to be depressed all the time. After I left Gaylord behind, I thought everything would be better. It's not. I just have different problems to deal with now.

Really, everything in my life is a quest for self-validation - all I ever do is try to convince myself that I matter or that what I'm doing really is important and not a waste of time. So far, I've not succeeded in convincing myself of this.

-K

... in one...

2010-01-31T22:30:00.004-05:00

In one minute, I will still be writing this blog post; I will be listening to Mitglieder by stockfinster.; I will still be awake.

In one hour, I intend to be asleep, dreaming of who knows what.

In one day, my next-to-youngest niece Madelyn will be two years old; her party will be over, and several more balloons will certainly have met their doom.

In one week, I will be at Caitlin's house while my brother throws a Super Bowl party. We will probably be playing Mario Kart on her Wii, and I will probably beat her.

In one month, it will be almost March... no, wait - it will be March, as February only has 28 days; then again, it depends on how you define "month". Is a month an arbitrary number of days, or is the length of a month dependent on what month it is? I usually assume a "month" to be "four weeks", I guess. I don't know.

In one year, I will be in the second semester of my sophomore year of college. I plan to be living on my own by then, with or without roommates. I will likely be sitting on my couch or bed on my laptop, remembering that I wrote this post a year ago and looking it up (I have an oddly specific memory sometimes, and I don't doubt that I will remember this in a year). I will be a teenager no longer. I want to get a promotion at work, but only time will tell.

In one decade, I will be out of college, married, and possibly with a child or two. I want to be working full-time in the career field that I study in college (at this point, possibly computer or electrical engineering (or both)). I want to marry Caitlin; only time will tell. Ally will be a sophomore in high school; Lila will be in the 8th grade; Maddie and Lexi will be in the 6th grade.

In one century, I will be dead, my only legacy present in the lives of my children and their children in the form of the influence that I had on them as a father and grandparent.

...

This is my life now, and this post is written from that perspective. Things change, and so do people... even memories can deceive us sometimes. That's why I blog -

so that I'll always remember.

-K

Silver Lining - Every Second (Safeword Remix)

2010-01-21T14:23:00.004-05:00

Right now, I'm in class. Class is boring, and I have decided that I don't actually need to pay attention to the lecture, so I am taking this opportunity to blog a little.

I'm in the second week of the semester, and things are going smoothly so far. I've decided to devote a lot more effort to school this time around, and so far, it's paying off. I am (for the most part) caught up with all my classes, and I feel like I know what's going on in each of them (this one notwithstanding).

Musically, I've been fooling around a bit with some stuff, but I've really not finished anything since my track Every Second...

Silver Lining - Every Second (Original Mix) by silverlining

BUT that doesn't mean that nothing's been going on. Notably, my man Dan Byer has cranked out a proper banging trance remix of Every Second...

Silver Lining - Every Second (Safeword Remix) by dmbyer

Dan is a trance guy through and through. He's not been producing for too terribly long (a year or so, I think) but he makes up for his lack of experience and studio hours by already having read and absorbed more material on production and mastering theory than I ever will.

To be honest, the riff for Every Second was kicking around my brain for months before I actually made a proper song out of it... several months ago, it was originally heading in the direction of being a trance anthem, but I couldn't get anywhere with it, so I scrapped the idea. After learning quite a bit more about myself (most notably, the fact that I'm just not wired up to be a trance producer), I reworked it in a style more appropriate for my personality. That said, listening to Dan's remix is a very interesting experience, as it makes it so that I can listen to a trance remix of a nu-disco track that started out as a trance track.

Anyway, Dan did an amazing job of this remix. If you like it, say so in the comments. I look forward to hearing more output from him... expect to see it posted about here.

Well, class is finally almost over (thank God), so I'll be wrapping this up. Stand strong and disco!

-K

Here I Go Again

2010-01-05T21:37:00.003-05:00

^{This post was originally typed up on my BlackBerry this morning... I'm just now getting around to posting it here. Just saying.}

So... no end-of-the-year slideshow. Sorry guys, it just didn't happen. Moving right along!

It's official: John Pavlick doesn't sleep anymore. Ever. If it isn't the call of the dignity of labor at Tim Horton's for the morning shift, it's school - and if I'm on winter break, my lfe has to find a way to compensate for the lack of school and find other, more creative ways of robbing me of the standard 8 hours of sleep every night.

For instance, I am sitting in the parking lot of my old school in Gaylord, typing up a blog post on my BlackBerry at 5:25 AM, waiting to be picked up to go to basketball practice.

As always, my life is strange... but never boring.

-K

Every Second

2009-12-21T18:30:00.003-05:00

So I wrote a new song:

Silver Lining - Every Second (Original Mix) by silverlining

This represents about three weeks of my free time. The main riff for this song has been kicking around in my head since last February, but I've just now turned it into a song.

The song has a lot of meaning to me... the title is a nod to how much I value the time I spend with my woman. Sappy? As all heck - but it's got a nice groove to it.

I'm sending this song out to a few record labels, so I'm not posting up a download link on here; however, if anyone wants the mp3, I'd be more than thrilled to hook them up with a copy - just ask. By 'just ask', I mean either...

Leave a comment on this blog post with your email address
Email me at jmpavlick@gmail.com
Or if you're really super ambitious and awesome, make an account at SoundCloud and leave me some timed comments, along with contact information so I know where to send the file.

Here's the deal... I love when people listen to my music, but most of the time, I never know who those people end up being. I would love to connect with my audience on a more personal level. I don't want fame or glory - I just want for people to listen to my music, and for those who like it to simply say so. It's hard to accurately convey how much a simple "Hey, I liked your song" means to a musician like me.

So yeah - I'd love to know if anyone enjoys this. Thanks for your time.

-K

PS - If any other producers read this and are interested in remixing it, I would be open to sharing out the project files and/or stems, too... just ask.

Finals.

2009-12-16T22:52:00.002-05:00

I'm not even going to hype this post on Twitter or Facebook... just calling to let you all know that it's FINALS WEEK, hence the lack of posting.

I should be back before too long.

-K

... and finally, a snowfall...

2009-12-09T00:01:00.008-05:00

I love winter. I love the first snowfall - how it makes everything so peaceful and quiet. I love the flood of memories that come rushing back every time the ground is covered in a soft blanket of white. I love being able to look out the window and see the ashen light as it reflects from a gray sky onto a white ground. A lot of people get depressed around this time of year; the beautiful melancholy of winter has the exact opposite effect on me. I feel the old, familiar surge of musical inspiration flow through and consume my entire being. I play out old songs that I discovered when it was winter. I long for the feeling of absolute freedom that can only be experienced from charging down a freshly-groomed black diamond slope at 40 MPH, with nothing but a precarious grasp of the laws of physics keeping me from catching an edge and flipping end over end down the mountain, snowboard and all.

I miss my friends from Gaylord - I can remember days like this that my schoolmates and close friends Zack and Nick and I would bundle up and drag our sledding gear half a mile or so back into the woods, where we would spend the afternoon flying down a series of hills that just happened to be in a clearing. We wouldn't even think of leaving until it was quite dark; many times we didn't get home until long after the sun had faded over the horizon. Then we all would usually head to my house or theirs and relax over a cup of hot chocolate (with marshmallows, of course), where we would spend the remainder of the evening, talking about the adventures that we'd just had. And it's not like sledding was the only winter activity that we shared; one fine snow day last winter (my old school had a lot of those - in an area where getting 8 inches of snow in one night is, at the least, a twice-monthly event, snow days are kind of a given), Nick and I decided to tackle the daunting task of removing the 4 or so feet of solid snow that had accumulated on his roof. Armed with two shovels and a heaping helping of determination, we worked all day; in spite of our efforts, at sunset, we only got half of the job done - it's not that we were lazy, it's just that there was so much snow that there was only so much we could remove in the time that we had. (Oh, and there's the small matter of the aluminum extension ladder that I broke later on that month when I tried to remove it from the snow that it had been encased in - you know, the ladder that was neither mine nor his that I ended up having to pay for? Yeah, that was not cool.) [link to original post regarding roof adventure]

I remember nights last year where I would grab my camera, PSP (back when I used it as my mp3 player), boots, coat, and dog, and head out on a walk down my street. I would listen to trance, take photos of everything that was photographable, and have a sort of cathartic experience out there. I really had some meaningful experiences in the cold, snowy darkness.

Therefore, after I got off work tonight and noted the blizzard-like conditions, I had no choice but to grab my coat and camera, head outside, and get some photos of the snow. There just wasn't any other set of actions that seemed appropriate.

_{[click on each picture to see the full-size version]}

Another action that had to accompany this special evening was the ritual resurrecting of my older musical interests - namely, trance. I used to be a huge trancer. I loved the stuff to death and couldn't get enough of it. However, as my musical tastes have refined and changed, I have to admit that I have lost a lot of my affinity for the style; personally, I have to say that a lot of it really all is the same thing, over and over again. But there will always be that handful of tracks that will always stick out and be special to me. They aren't necessarily new, and they weren't necessarily ever famous... but they're special to me. The tracks that I am about to post were, for a time, the soundtrack to my existence; I literally watched my life fall apart in front of me while listening to The Blizzard - Kalopsia (Intro Mix) over and over again. These songs have a great deal of emotional significance attached to them. I don't know if anyone else will get anything out of these songs, but I hope that they will at least be enjoyed and appreciated...

The Blizzard - Kalopsia (Intro Mix)
Daniel Kandi - I Found The Way (Original Bangin' Mix)
Selu Vibra - Stargazing (Original Mix)
Kirsty Hawkshaw Meets Tenishia - Reasons To Forgive (The Blizzard Remix)
Mike Foyle - Pandora (The Blizzard Remix)
The Doppler Effect - Beauty Hides In The Deep (The Blizzard Remix)
Monotape - Everything Continues

You may have noticed that The Blizzard pops up in that list quite a bit. This is because The Blizzard is awesome and can literally do no wrong. Their sound has, believe it or not, influenced and inspired me, even to this day, even though I'm experimenting mostly with house / indie dance / nu-disco.

Speaking of my stuff, I feel kinda obligated to re-post this:

Silver Lining - Falling In Love On Accident

This was, as far as I am concerned, the first, last, and only true trance anthem I have ever written. This is old - over a year old - and I have progressed a lot as a producer in that year... but the raw emotion that I've always put into my work is there - oh, is it ever. (For those who are curious, this is the original post that I made when I first finished this song. There, now you have proof that it's old.)

But, I've really been rambling, haven't I? I need to get to bed.

-K

sveden.

2009-12-06T22:10:00.002-05:00

First and foremost, it's Layout Update Day! I'm back to my good old [sub]wintr theme that I was totally rocking this time last year. I love this theme. :D

Secondly it's also officially Karin Dreijer Andersson Day here at [sub]norml.

I was scouring the blogs the other day for some good tunes, and I stumbled upon this track. It was said about this track that it would inspire one to "dance relentlessly". As an individual who favors music that produces this sort of effect, I downloaded it and added it to my library. After the first play, the "producer" part of me said that this track was no good, that it had no depth, and that it was just another rubbish track that I'd found on the Internet.

After the second play, my ears and body revolted against my producer sensibilities and basically told them to shut up and DANCE.

Ladies and gentlemen, I proudly present one of the catchiest electro-saw-wave-enhanced basslines to ever warp itself around Karin Dreijer Andersson's voice (more on her in a moment):

Röyksopp - Tricky Tricky (Horror Shower Remix)

So who is Horror Shower, and who the heck is Karin Dreijer Andersson?

You may have, at one point, heard of a band called The Knife. Karin Dreijer Andersson provides the vocals. She also has a solo project called Fever Ray, and she has been known to associate and collaborate with Röyksopp from time to time. Why is this significant? Because it allows me to talk all about Rex the Dog!

Rex the Dog is on a one-dog mission to single~~handedly~~pawed-ly bring back italo disco (but with less cheese this time around). Rex is definitely doing a lot of good things in the way of bringing back that retro sound that we all love. And why does this allow me to bring up Rex the Dog? Because he loves to remix basically anything that Karin Dreijer Andersson sings. for instance:

Röyksopp - Beautiful Day Without You (Rex the Dog Remix)
The Knife - Marble House (Rex the Dog Remix)
Fever Ray - Triangle Walks (Rex the Dog Edit)
Röyksopp - This Must Be It (Rex the Dog K-DART Remix)

K-DART Remix? What? Yeah. That stands for Karin Dreijer Andersson Remix Team. This is because Rex the Dog remixes so many tracks with KDA's voice on them (do you see what I did there?). There's a reason for this, too - it works. Download the tracks to see what all the fuss is about!

... oh, and about Horror Shower? Their MySpace doesn't give much information, but they're from France, which, as we discussed already, means that they are awesome. (Look near the end of the post.)

Well... I'm about done with typing now! I have written three psychology papers in the last weekend, and I'm only really blogging right now because I want to feel like I've accomplished something important. ;D

Also, it hasn't escaped my attention that my blog is getting more readers! I thank you all for your support - you guys inspire me to keep going on and on about nothing in particular. You're all awesome.

***BONUS REX THE DOG***
Rex the Dog - Italian Skyline

-K

Cossus Snufsigalonica

2009-12-02T12:28:00.005-05:00

Yeah, I know that last post,I promised a "... sweet music-related post that combines showers, knives, dogs, and Sweden". And I plan on making good on my promise - the aforementioned post has been saved as a draft and will be published soon - but something vastly more important has occurred, and this occurrence has made it necessary for me to post something other than what I intended to post last time.

Fear of Tigers dropped his debut album yesterday, and it is awesome.

"Awesome" is hardly the word. We here at [sub]norml (and by "we", I mean "I") have decided that we are totally and completely in love with Fear of Tigers's sound. For more details on how awesome I think Fear of Tigers is, see the last two out of four posts I have made. ([link], [link])

It's pretty rare for an album to be completely awesome. I have a few albums in my collection that will always reign as my favorite albums of all time - but they all have overlook-able tracks. My Chemical Romance still wrote "Cancer" and "Sleep"; Shinedown still wrote "The Crow and The Butterfly" and "Second Chance"... but every single track on this album could likely stand on its own as an A-side. There is no moment of weakness - there is no filler material. All this album does is bang. Fear of Tigers goes right for the jugular on every single song.

Also worth noting that the album version of "The Adventures of Pippi Longstrump" is longer and has a killer intro. I cannot recommend this album enough. This is the best early Christmas present I've gotten in a very, very long time.

Here's the MediaFire download for you guys:
Fear of Tigers - Cossus Snufsigalonica

Everybody, get out there and show this man some love.
Fear of Tigers on Facebook
Fear of Tigers on MySpace
Fear of Tigers search on HypeMachine

To me, it is literally unbelievable that a musician of this caliber would release music this amazing for free. Download this album. NOW.

-K

[HPPY THNXGVNG]

2009-11-26T21:12:00.004-05:00

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

The above photo is something that I made. Last week, at college, a sorority had a table set up in the cafeteria where they were encouraging people to make hand-turkeys; the plan was for the sorority to use them to decorate a local nursing home. Since they were giving delicious cookies to the participants (and since, of course, I am an ardent Doer of Good Things), I promptly set to making one of my own.

I regularly tell people that I'm horrible at visual art, but to be honest, that's kind of a mis-statement; the truth is just that I can't draw. I'm good to go when I have rulers, contrasting colors, and some sort of pattern that I can come up with. But really, music is my main love and I'm more versatile with it, so I just tell people that I'm rotten at visual art so that they'll not expect me to make any for them (since it usually involves drawing anyway). While I was making the above turkey, most of the sorority members commented extensively on how "cute" it was. One asked me if there was a reason that I used pink and green - I replied that, of the colors provided, they contrasted best; another asked me if I was an art major. I guess that I kind of made an impression... it was a pretty cool experience.

Today was pretty awesome; my good friend Reese was down to visit his grandparents in Ann Arbor (he's one of the Gaylord clan), so we decided to catch up this morning and get brunch.

We didn't count on almost every single restaurant, ever, being closed.

I mean, even McDonald's closed at 11 AM. Yes, it was really that bad. We spent a good hour driving around in search of sustenance. My BlackBerry's GPS mis-lead us to the opposite of Bob Evans (Telenav strikes again!), and when we finally found it, it was closed too. After a lot of searching, we stumbled across a little pancake house / diner that was open. The food was actually really good - for my side (I got a Mexican omelet), the waitress asked me if I wanted toast or pancakes. Seriously? Toast or pancakes? I mean, that's not even a choice... that's like saying, "Would you rather put butter on crunchy bread, or would you like to put syrup on fluffy awesomeness?". The pancakes were just as awesome as I'd hoped.

After that, I stopped in Ypsilanti to pick up my sister-in-law's grandmother and aunt. I drove us all to the house, where we dined on a wonderful Thanksgiving feast including, but not limited to candied yams cooked with peaches, deep-fried turkey, and cranberry Canada Dry ginger ale. It was delicious.

This is the first Thanksgiving that I've had that I haven't been with my immediate family; it was a pretty good experience, all in all. I continued my annual tradition of playing Sonic the Hedgehog 2 on my Sega Genesis; this was my fifth year. ;D (I got to Oil Ocean Zone, Act 2, before I got too tired to play anymore... I really wasn't in the mood to play The Metropolis. 0__o)

Well, that about wraps this post up. No music here - I am working on a sweet music-related post that combines showers, knives, dogs, and Sweden. It should be ready within the next few days. I gotta get to bed - I have to get up at 1 AM to get some sweet deals online at Kohl's, who is having Black Friday pricing on their website. Christmas shopping with huge savings from my chair? Yes, please! Oh. Then, I have to get up at 3 AM to be at work by 4 AM - I'm guessing that I'm working the Black Friday Crazy Shopper Moms Shift - 4 AM - 10 AM.

*shudder*

So... Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

***BONUS: SHORT AND INCOMPLETE LIST OF THINGS I AM THANKFUL FOR***

my God and my faith
my awesome girlfriend
a family that loves me
my laptop
this nation
the Man Van
all the awesome friends I've made at Dearborn and all my friends from Gaylord
electronic music
this blog, and the people who read it
GMail
The Facebooks
the bed I'm about to crash in

Seriously? I could go on, but the last item on that list is screaming my name. Later!

-K

Keeping The Saw Sharp

2009-11-23T23:02:00.005-05:00

If anyone has noticed (and I'm sure that you all have), I've been blogging a lot more lately. I'm just trying to keep the old saw sharp. See, in the next two weeks, I have around eight (8!) papers to write. (Procrastination strikes again!) Therefore, to make things easier, I'm writing in my blog a bit more than usual. "How does that help?", you might ask. Well - if I write every day, then the actual process of writing is a lot easier, because I'm always warmed up for it.

Also, it's a great way to fool myself into thinking that I'm being productive without actually getting anything done. ;D

Since I love you guys so much, here are some jams to make your lives better:

Hammer & Herbick feat. Boytronic - You (Dyor's Big Room Remix)
Does It Offend You, Yeah? - Dawn of the Dead (Fear of Tigers Remix)

What's that? Main-room trance? John, are you losing your mind? Nope. Not really, anyway... I was trying to study tonight (huge sociology exam tomorrow, yikes!), and I wanted to listen to some music, so I decided to throw on di.fm's trance channel. I haven't listened to much trance in awhile. I'm still stuck in the sound of late 2007 / early 2008. The original version of The Blizzard - Kalopsia (the one with the long orchestral intro) is still my favorite piece of trance. When I do listen to trance, I usually go with some of the old-school Andy Moor or Rank 1 tracks. I'm honestly not too taken with this new breed of "electro-trance", what with the glitchy breakdowns and buzzing basslines that it blatantly stole from house (which, by virtue of its longevity, funkiness, and disco heritage, is vastly superior - at least in my ~~humble~~ elevated, pretentious, self-important opinion)... although, I gotta say, I am pretty down with what Wandii (who, with Andi C., is also Karanda) is doing right now. (In fact, I am really looking forward to their new remix of that track by Code 64. That's gonna be good.)

Oh, and of course, that Fear of Tigers remix does not disappoint, either. That man has officially entered my list of People Who Can Do No Wrong.

***BONUS KARANDA TRACK FOR YOU GUYS***

Bobina - Time & Tide (Karanda Bootleg Remix)

-K

Blogging My Way Through The Animal Kingdom

2009-11-22T23:53:00.005-05:00

So it seems that posts about animals are all the rage these days; after giving it a bit of thought (and as a nice follow-up to my previous tiger-related post), I've decided to go on about how awesome Australian music is.

Again.

After a quick search of my previous postings, it seems as if I haven't yet given Australia the credit it is due for being the home to some of the greatest musicians of the 21st century. Do I need to start naming bands or something? Here's a quick list from the top of my head:

Seriously, I could go on and on for a long, long time. But instead of doing that, I will Get To The Point.

There's yet another amazing Australian electro group on my radar - a boy / girl duo (that are also a couple, from the noise I've been hearing) by the name of ZZZ.

Remember how I said that I was currently blogging my way through the animal kingdom? Well, my last post was about tigers; this one is about lions!

More specifically, it's about ZZZ's killer piano-driven nu-disco track, Lion.

ZZZ - Lion (Bag Raiders Remix)
ZZZ - Lion (Lowbrows Remix)

Seriously, the piano makes this track AWESOME. It's more prominent in the Bag Raiders remix, which has the bouncier vibe of the two that I've posted... however, the Lowbrows remix goes in a totally different direction and gets funky and disco-y in a very nice sort of way (without overdoing it).

Wait, is it even possible to overdo disco? I'm pretty sure it's not. Regardless - if you're still a stranger to the Australian vibe, now is the time to get enlightened!

***BONUS AUSTRALIAN AWESOMENESS***
For all those who are still strangers to the Australian vibe, here's a proper introduction:

THIS/Is - W.H.S.L. (What Happiness Sounds Like)
Bag Raiders - Fun Punch (Bag Raiders Remix)
Bag Raiders - Turbo Love
Shazam - Pool Party

You're welcome.

-K

The Adventures of Pippi Longstrump

2009-11-19T10:14:00.006-05:00

So before everyone goes off yelping about how strange of a post title I have, I'd like to kindly link everyone to this post on Lynn's blog.

Dear Lord. I don't even know what to say.

Moving right along... the picture and post title actually have something to do with each other, and they make sense and work in a logical fashion. Just bear with me. You'll get it in a minute.

My life is, admittedly, strange. I make no effort to conceal this fact. I could go on and on about that for awhile, but I'll shut up and get to the point. Occasionally, something that I desire will magically pass into existence by no merit of my own or action on my part. (I wish I knew how to control this better.) I remember the first time this happened - I thought to myself, "Hey, wouldn't it be AWESOME if shoes had like... little wheels that you could pop out of the bottom and skate around on?"... an hour later, I went into town and saw a store window display for the first generation of "roller shoes". While I never owned a pair (I have always had big-as-heck feet), it was pretty awesome.

Yesterday, I was thinking to myself... "Man, someone needs to write a sweet, synthy dreamwave anthem with cut-up, sampled MALE vocals - I wonder what that would sound like?" Almost immediately, I thought, "Man, what if this was one of those times where I wanted something, and it happened?"

So later, when I checked Google Reader and saw two new tracks by Fear of Tigers, I was almost not even surprised when they were the tracks that I had been wanting to exist.

Apparently, Fear of Tigers is dropping a totally free album on December 1, and these fresh new tracks are a nice little taste of the awesomeness that is to come. So, I've decided to post them up here for my lovely readers to hear!

Fear of Tigers - The Adventures of Pippi Longstrump
Fear of Tigers - The Adventures of Pippi Longstrump (Diamond Cut Remix)

What's that? Diamond Cut remixed something else? That's no surprise, as Diamond Cut is one of the most active and consistently amazing remixers around. However, usually Diamond Cut's remixes are also more banging and edgy than the original... but The Man is apparently getting tricky on us, as this remix is the more calm and relaxing of the two. But... they're both great tracks - this is a perfect example of two producers approaching the same theme from two different perspectives, resulting in two great tracks with two different personalities that can stand on their own as amazing.

So yeah - download, listen, love, and enjoy.

And while we are speaking of downloading, listening, loving, and enjoying... Silver Lining (that's me!) is about to drop a new track - stay tuned! It's nothing like I have ever done before (no surprise there either), and it's turning out really well. I'm excited about it, at least.

BONUS ITALO DISCO TUNE:
Sally Shapiro - Miracle (Bogdan Irkuk Remix)

-K

This Boy's In Love

2009-11-11T23:02:00.005-05:00

On this day, one year ago, I made a decision that would change my life forever.

I stood there and got hugged.

Granted, there were a lot of decisions that led up to that point in time. There was the small issue of the three different girls that I actively pursued and / or was pursued by within two months that I either dumped or was dumped by. There was the small issue of not wanting to be in a relationship at the time because I didn't want to 'be tied down' to 'a woman'. And, of course, there was the small issue of the fact that I had no idea what I was getting myself into.

Eventually, it got to the point where I realized that Caitlin LeAnne DeMasellis was the only girl that I wanted in my life. Then, I realized that to be with Caitlin LeAnne DeMasellis was essentially the only thing that I wanted in life.

It's been a crazy year. I'm not going to lie. We've had our arguments. We've had to work out a lot of issues - little personality conflicts and whatnot. I've had to a metric crapton of growing up. We've had to learn a lot about what it's like to live with another person and tolerate all of their nuances and idiosyncrasies.

But all in all? It's been the best year of my life. I wouldn't do it over any differently if I could.

I love you, Caitlin LeAnne DeMasellis. I am going to marry you so bloody hard one day.

The Presets - This Boy's In Love (Lifelike Remix)

-K

[sun]vembr

2009-11-08T22:05:00.005-05:00

Today, on the 8th of November, 2009, in Canton, Michigan, the weather was warm and balmy - and by 'warm and balmy', I mean 'about as hot as it gets in August in Gaylord'. To be fair, I'm exaggerating on both counts - but seriously, it was AT LEAST 60 degrees Fahrenheit this afternoon. I seriously contemplated wearing shorts this afternoon while cleaning around the house. That's... a pretty far cry from the post that I made last year, about this time. (INTERESTING SIDENOTE: I have realized that the more interesting my Real Life is, the less time I have to blog about it... and the less interesting my Real Life is, the more time I have to blog about it - therefore, any event that could have in any way, shape, or form been even remotely interpreted as 'interesting' Back When I Was Quite Bored Last Year got blogged about to death. In retrospect, 1) that is depressing, and 2) I don't know how interesting of a sidenote that just was, so I may have just made a lie. Sorry. It kinda puts things in perspective, though... so I guess that's at least somewhat useful.)

So yes. Instead of [sno]vembr, we have [sun]vembr.

The other day, I finally broke down and got a new skateboard! It's been quite awhile (a few months) since I got to skate, and I have been missing the sport terribly... so when I was in Ann Arbor the other night at a classical symphony performance at the University of Michigan (against my will / to fill a music appreciation requirement for college), I stopped by Launch Board Shop and picked up a shop deck (because I cracked my old board the last time I skated):

As you can see, it's a clever parody of the Arizona Iced Tea can graphic. (This is quite fitting, as from what I can tell, Arizona's line of canned beverages has become quite popular with skaters - my old crew from Gaylord, anyway - over the last few months.) I got to go skate last Friday at a park in Belleville that I just found out about. It's kind of old and worn down, but it does have a decent 4' miniramp. I have discovered that I really like skating ramps... there's something infinitely satisfying about being able to throw down a long line of tricks without having to stop and go set up all over again.

Does anybody remember this post, from way back when? I'm guessing no. Well, lately, I have been thinking about my blog quite a bit. (Really, although I don't post a lot, I'm almost always thinking about posting - 'hey, I could blog about that, hey, this would make a cool post, why don't I write about this, etc' - and so on and so forth.) I have realized that the answer to the question that I asked in the aforementioned post (i.e., "Why does this blog exist?") is quite simple: it's to document my life. I don't want to be a Famous Blogger and have thousands of readers - if that was my goal, I would have quit long ago. I don't really want to be a professional writer... I'm sure that I could pull it off, but quite frankly, I feel that my talents would be put to better use elsewhere. I'm not doing this for my readers. Don't get me wrong - I love you guys, all ten (maybe eleven) of you - but while some of the things that I write about are entertaining, and while I try to make my blog fun to read, I'm not doing this For You Guys. This blog is for me - so that I can look back on it and read it and remember all the things that would have otherwise vanished from my memory. I plan to have this blog for a long time - maybe my entire life. At this point, it's much too soon to say. But regardless, I want to be able to show my kids the kinds of things that I wrote about when I was a young man - a young man, coming of age and trying to grow up in a world that confused and terrified him. I want to be able to read this and remember where I came from so that I can remind myself where I'm going - or why I didn't do what I thought I was going to do - or so that I can laugh at how stupid and petty I used to be.

I love posts like this - where I get to open up my head and thrown my brains down on the table via my trusty QWERTY keyboard. I seriously don't do this enough.

I feel that it's worth mentioning that MediaFire, the best free file-hosting service possible, just underwent a major upgrade and now works beautifully with Google Chrome. (I used to have to fire up the clunky beast that is IE 8 to upload files to my account.) This is relevant because, as I type, I am uploading something to MediaFire to post on my blog:

The Orange Lights - Life Is Still Beautiful (Alan Braxe Remix)

This song has been running through my head (and through my speakers) a lot lately. It's a beautiful, synth-driven remix of a melancholy indie rock track. (Alan Braxe is French, and The Orange Lights hail from jolly old England; nobody does synth-driven stuff better than the French (FACT), and the British are masters of melancholy indie rock (DOUBLE FACT), so there's no escaping the fact that this version of this song that combines these two powerful musical forces is amazing (FACT ATTACK).) I highly recommend it. The lyrics are pretty meaningful, too...

Even when the sun goes down on
All the things you thought would last so long,
It’s alright, life is still beautiful.

-K

GRAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!

2009-10-20T23:25:00.011-04:00

I am a monster. I am a monster at Wiard's Night Terrors. I make adults soil themselves and get paid for it. It's not a half-bad job, really. My life in Gaylord acclimated me to the cold quite nicely, and otherwise, there's not much to complain about.

I work on the haunted hayride. Until last weekend, I worked a strobe light and The Barrel, but since things have gotten busier, I have been reduced to working just the strobe.

Here's how the whole thing works... the wagon enters the woods, then other various people (scarecrows, Freddy Kruger, etc.) jump out and scare / attempt to scare / occasionally fail humorously at scaring the people on the wagon. After a few moments, it is my turn to do what I can to make these people get the involuntary bowel movement that they paid for. (I just thought of something... maybe we can also market the haunted hayride as a laxative next season - I'll have to get with marketing on that ASAP.)

When it's my turn... well, I'm cleverly positioned on a stand around a blind corner. When the tractor comes around that corner, I switch on a strobe, jump from the darkness, and scream "GRAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!" for all I'm worth (hence, the post title). If I time it right and if the people on the wagon are caught up in what's going on around them, I usually get some screams, a few startled expressions, and a laugh or two. Then, until last weekend, I would run AS FAST AS POSSIBLE to make The Barrel happen. The Barrel is... well... look at the dang picture:

That barrel is on a cable. I would hoist the barrel up, wait, and when the wagon was at the right spot, let go of the cable. The barrel would then roll down the roof and launch off of the end, appearing to be heading straight for the wagon. Fortunately (and, I suspect, in better interest of avoiding lawsuits / murder), the cable keeps the barrel from actually hitting anyone on the wagon. I mean, at least it has so far. 0__o

Well anyway, running FULL SPEED AHEAD through the woods to try to drop the barrel in time just wasn't cutting it anymore - apparently, since we are in the busy part of the season, they have to run the wagons through a bit fast, and it's just not possible for a person to reliably get the barrel ready in time. Therefore, they put someone else on the barrel for me.

My new mandate was simply to terrorize people at my stand, then put the barrel back up on the roof after the new Barrel Guy lets the barrel fly (made a rhyme now, didn't I? Don't think I didn't hear that sigh. Okay, I'm done now.). On Sunday night, though, I realized that I had a new opportunity to terrorize people even further. Here's how it works - I start things off by screaming and scaring people. They roll up the trail a bit and get scared by the barrel - or maybe they don't get scared, but at any rate, it gets their attention focused on what's happening ahead of them on the trail. This gives me the perfect opportunity to scamper up behind the wagon, jump on the back, and scream "GRAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!" for all I'm worth.

It freaks people right out. I mean, they're not expecting it AT ALL. It's about twenty times more terrifying than the barrel and the strobe / stand put together, too, if the customers' reactions are anything to judge terrifying-ness by. Even if people see me coming, they are going to be terrified. It's just what's going to happen.

Well, in other news, today we had unseasonably beautiful (read: warm and sunny) weather, so I went on a walk with one of my nieces and took a great deal of pretty photographs! Here are the highlights of the stroll, for your viewing pleasure.

^ Our shadows are so tall.

^ No, I don't live on Picadilly Court, but I sometimes wish that I did. Picadilly is such a cool street name...

^ Trees tend to look awesome from below (i.e. lying on one's back on the ground).

^ Lila's just so cute. I hope she never grows up. ;D

^ Lila posing with her scooter. She's getting pretty good at riding it.

^ <3 macro mode <3

^ The sun streaming in from behind the trees makes for a nice shot, in my opinion.

Well, I am exhausted, and I have school tomorrow. But... before I go, I have to share a link with you all:

SYNCHRONITY.

I met Sam at school, in the honors lounge (that I'm technically not supposed to even be in, seeing as how I am not actually an honors student!). I friended her on Facebook today. I saw that she had a website, and I went there.

...

The girl can write. I feel intimidated. That doesn't happen often - really, it doesn't happen often enough. I've never met anyone my age that can make me feel insecure about my writing ability - that is, until now. Let me know what you think of her writings.

-K

New Laptop!

2009-10-08T09:30:00.007-04:00

I just got a new laptop. Basically, it's relentlessly awesome. It's a HP tx2-1275dx. Here's a quick rundown:

12.1" multi-touch display (1200x800 resolution)
4 GB RAM
AMD Turion X2 64-bit dual core processor, 2.40 ghz / core
350 GB hard drive
ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3200 graphics card
Windows 7 Ultimate x64

Everything else is just details, like the fingerprint reader (which I don't use, at least not yet anyway) and the integrated sound.

The main draw for my wanting this computer so badly that I would actually go and buy it is that it's the world's first consumer laptop to feature a multi-touch display. It's a Tablet PC, which means that the screen rotates 180 degrees and then folds back. It's got a pen / stylus that can be used to interact with the screen, but a finger will work almost as well. As [sub]norml regular edlinfan put it, I can FINGERPAINT... something that could also be accomplished with $0.01 worth of paper and $0.50 worth of poster paint. ;D

Seriously, though, it's really cool. It's definitely revolutionizing the way I use my computer, that's for sure. When I switched from a desktop to a laptop, I swore I'd never go back to using a desktop as my primary machine... now that I've switched from a laptop to a Tablet PC, I am afraid that the same thing has happened. :D

Otherwise, my life is going pretty well. I'm doing pretty good in college - my exams haven't been that hard yet, and I have been spending a lot of time studying for them (I hear that helps or something). In fact, I have another one today, in Intro to Music Appreciation.

... and while we're talking about college, I'm actually there right now. I'm sitting outside, on my shiny new laptop (that actually has BATTERY LIFE!). I'm in a nice little secluded-ish spot on campus... there's this little courtyard out behind one of the main buildings that I never see anyone in, and it has these benches / metal seats / whatever, and they are under some trees... so that's where I am right now. The air is pretty cool... it's definitely fall. I like this kind of weather a lot, though. Being cold makes me feel more alive for some reason. I'm still wearing my infamous transvestite hoody (might I add, much to my older brother's chagrin - he thinks that it makes me look t3h gh3y. 0_o); it keeps me warm, and it looks totally 80s. People notice me, too - at least once a week, someone from one of my classes introduces themselves to me and tells me that they see me around a lot. College is awesome.

Also, college is about to start. Let's hear a big round of applause for SOCIOLOGY 200! </sarcasm>

-K

In Apology...

2009-09-18T18:05:00.002-04:00

*sigh*

Have you ever written something, posted it, and then like two weeks later realized that it was probably the worst, most insensitive thing that could have possibly been written?

No? Nobody?

Well... I am writing this post to apologize to the Erickson family regarding what I wrote about Drew previously in this post. It has since been edited, and anything that was not 100% factual has been removed. Anything that was written that was at all offensive has been removed.

I'm not here to make excuses. I'm not here to try to explain away my actions. All I am doing is apologizing and simply asking for forgiveness. I am not a sick, deranged individual; I simply wrote before I thought. There is no excuse for that, and I am fully aware of this. As a writer, it's my responsibility to 1) make sure that I have my facts straight, and 2) make sure that I write in a way that's respectful, considerate, kind, and humane. For about three sentences in the aforementioned post, I completely and totally failed at both of those things. I am publicly admitting that I am at fault, apologizing, and asking for forgiveness.

If there is anything else that I can do to make amends for this situation, I ask that those offended or hurt let me know. You all know how to get in touch with of me.

-K

Mountain Biking Is Awesome

2009-09-15T17:56:00.005-04:00

Really fast before I start this post... I was thinking about blogging today (I do that a lot, you know) and I realized that if my posts were shorter and more frequent, that my blog would be infinitely more interesting... so I'm gonna see if I can say all that I want to say in under 15 minutes. This is gonna be a challenge. :P

The other day, I was done with all my chores and responsibilities around the house, and my schoolwork was all caught up, and I had nothing important left to do... and it was only around 4 PM. Since I've been down here, I really haven't had the chance to do a lot of physical activity. I mean, I'm from Gaylord - I am used to lots of wide-open spaces between acres of woods. Canton is awesome, yes, but I can't exactly walk out my door and go running in the middle of the forest. After the whole Bob Evans gig (which involved me riding between 50 and 60 miles a week ON MY BIKE just to get to a crappy minimum-wage job), I got kinda soured on riding my bike up and down the road. Also, the nearest skatepark is 20 minutes away AND it costs $5 just to skate for a few hours - and when I was up in Gaylord for the funerals, I decided to go to the skatepark to chill with my bros once more, and I managed to snap my skateboard. I am not yet good enough at traditional team sports to go play basketball with people who play every day all day long (and may never be, for that matter), and there really aren't a lot of physically demanding chores around the house, so I have kinda been not getting a lot of exercise.

I started feeling the need to GO DO SOMETHING. My lungs started missing that familiar burn. My body felt like it needed to sweat. My arms started asking me why they hadn't done anything cool lately. It began to dawn upon me... the time had come to GO FIND SOME GOOD SINGLETRACK TRAILS. (For the unenlightened, 'singletrack' refers to a very narrow trail through the middle of the woods, often made difficult by trees everywhere, roots, bumps, hills, and the occasional log across the trail. Singletrack trails are usually reserved for mountain bikers (or incredibly adventurous runners). Mountain bikes exist, in my humble opinion, for the sole purpose of navigating these paths of awesomeness.)

I hit up Google and found that there was a trail system not 10 minutes from my house. I grabbed my old beat-up shoes, threw my bike in the Man Van, and headed out.

When I got there, I was pretty impressed with what I found. The trail system isn't as big or awesome as Aspen Park (in Gaylord), but then again, it has only been around for a few years. (I ran into the guy who spearheaded the clearing of the trails - he's a prominent member of one of the local Michigan Mountain Biking Association chapters.)

Anyway - to cut a long story short (as I am WAY over 15 minutes by now), I went back yesterday, rode pretty hard, and took some pictures for you to see! As soon as I wrap up this post, I'm going to grab some socks and head out again to catch a quick ride before the night's over.

Behold:

Well, that's it for now. I'm running low on time, and I really want to ride tonight. Catch you all later!

-K

In Loving Memory

2009-09-03T20:34:00.005-04:00

I had been waiting for awhile to make the 100th post on this blog. I kept waiting for something 'important' and 'awesome' enough to be worthy of the 100th installment on probably the longest-running thing I have ever done. Then, something 'significant' would happen, but I would neglect posting about it, forget what I meant to say, and put off the post again.

Well, probably the most significant thing possible has happened.

Three of my best friends and my soccer coach died in a car wreck.

I won't re-hash the details. Click the link. Read the article for yourself. For those who don't want to read, here's what happened...

Dan Firman (my soccer coach) worked for his older brother in the family irrigation business. Drew Erickson (my first girlfriend's little brother) and Aaron and Chris Hunley (two of the most talented, amazing young men that I have ever had the blessing of knowing personally) were working under Dan. It was summer employment for the boys - Drew was going to be a senior in highschool, Aaron was going to be a junior, and Chris was headed off to Pensacola Christian College in Pensacola, Florida.

They were coming home from work on US-131, a 2-lane highway. The car ahead of them in their lane swerved over into the other lane, causing an oncoming semi to swerve into their lane. Dan, Aaron, and Chris were killed instantly; Drew died the next day from complications. The accident happened on Thursday, August 20, 2009.

That evening, my friend CJ called me and told me the news. I called Caitlin and told her, and she started bawling immediately. I got in my car and drove up to her house to comfort her. The next day, I drove back home to gather my things, and on Saturday morning, I left to make the four-hour-drive back up to my old home, Gaylord, Michigan.

It was probably the most heart-wrenching thing I have ever had to endure. The funerals were awful. I mean, as far as funerals go, they were beautiful - but there's nothing beautiful about such a tragedy. Seeing everyone again was nice, of course, but not under the circumstances.

This post is dedicated to Chris. Of the four, Chris was undoubtedly the one that I was closest with. We had been acquaintances through high school - we never really got along very well for the longest time. Last summer, however, we started to get closer - if you remember, from the early days of [sub]norml, I painted with Chris and Drew - it was my job, and I loved it. Then, a few months before I moved to Canton, we became good friends. One Sunday night after church, he came up to me out of the blue and asked if I wanted to come over and watch the Red Wings game with him.

See, I was never popular / liked / invited over to people's houses during high school. (This is because, as I have learned, I was heartbreakingly immature and obnoxious during that period of my life. Only after having to drop out of Grace Baptist College and work for Norm Arlt III, quite possibly one of the manliest and toughest employers in the history of auto and diesel repair, did I grow up enough to be accepted by my peers.) This was a big deal. Naturally, I was thrilled to oblige. Thus began a friendship that I will forever hold dear. We started hanging out a lot - I was always over at his house for something - from helping him write a book for Grammar to watching the Wings kick the crap out of the Ohio Blue Jackets, we did it all. In fact, the last thing that I did before I moved was hang out with Chris. Right after church got out, he came up to me and said "Hey man, do you want to hang out one last time before you leave?" I am unspeakably glad that I did not say "No, I have to leave" - that would probably have gone down as one of the major regrets of my youth. We got in Big Blue (his large, midnight blue 1990 (1991? 1992? I don't remember) Ford E-Series 15 passenger van) and went to 7-11 to get a Slurpee, just like "in the old days" ( making a run to 7-11 to get a Slurpee after work was a tradition for us last summer). Then, we went to his house, watched a little of the hockey game, and ate some food... then I told him goodbye - for the last time.

If there's Wi-Fi in Heaven, Chris, and you're reading this, I love you man. I'll see you again. Count on it.

-K

(You can use this space to give your post a title.)

2009-07-05T21:35:00.004-04:00

My dear readers, stuff has happened, is happening, and is about to happen. In my entire life, I have never had so much stuff happening at once. I can honestly say that I have never been busier than I have been since I moved down here. Every day is a new adventure, and when I say 'every day', I mean it. (When's the last time you shared a house with three girls under the age of six? You basically see everything in a different light... going shopping becomes an exercise in patience, dinner becomes a free-for-all, milk is consumed at an alarming rate, and I wake up every morning (every morning) before 7:30 AM to the thumps and bangs that accompany the actions of small children shortly after they literally vault out of bed, ready to carpe the living heck out of the diem.)

I am also having the opportunity to learn lots and lots of new things. Learning is becoming one of my primary sources of joy (third to Caitlin and music, unless it's learning about Caitlin or music, in which case it's first). Recently, I have been reading a book that I checked out from the library - Analog Synthesizers by Mark Jenkins. I checked it out last summer while I was down here, but I really didn't understand it much... however, the book has helped me quite a bit on my journey to better understand the mysteries of analog synthesis. I finally learned how to properly use a LFO. In fact, I am almost done working on a song (I will post it here, of course) that has only one automation clip (and all that it does is switch the reverb unit off one one of my effects channels) - all the other movement is derived from LFOs. Can you say "texture"? ;D

One thing that I never thought I'd get much into is DJ-ing. I have never been too impressed by the idea of being a 'laptop DJ' - somebody who pre-arranges mixsets in Ableton Live (or comparable software), and until very recently, I'd never had the chance to use actual decks. Last week, my brother showed up at the house with a B-52 Prodigy DJ workstation and some M-Audio Studiophile BX5a monitors, and a pair of AKG K44 headphones, and my life has not been the same since. Apparently, he used to DJ on the side when he was a bit younger. He spins mostly rap and hip-hop, but he lets me use the decks whenever he isn't. I've been practicing a lot lately... so far, I am pretty okay at mixing uplifting / melodic trance. Indie dance is a bit harder (the intros and outros aren't 2 minutes long each, and there aren't as many breakdowns, so it's kinda hard to beatmatch sometimes), and I haven't tried house or anything else yet. However, it's really a lot of fun. Maybe if I get to where I can beatmatch and make good, smooth transitions regularly and reliably, I might record a mixset and post it up here.

Without going into a ton of details, I finally got around to resolving some computer issues. I'm now running Windows 7 RC1 as my primary (and only) operating system, my hard drive is now 100% accessible, and, after two months, I finally have hassle-free access to my music library. That last one is a biggie... it's like somebody just gave me roughly 50 GB of music that I love and have never heard before. I finally found a media player for Windows that I'm comfortable with; I am a major Rhythmbox fanboy, but it only works under Linux, so I've spent quite a bit of time looking for a good alternative / substitute. Songbird is probably the closest thing to Rhythmbox that I can find. Plus, it gets Nifty Points because it is also a web browser (and I am using it right now to listen to music and blog at the same time - I mean, how awesome is that?). It has good ID3 tag editing capabilities, a slick / minimal interface, and best of all, a proper Now Playing / quick playlist pane. I was going to get a new laptop, but I think that I'm going to keep on with this one for awhile longer, now that it is running like I want it to.

My relationship with Caitlin is blossoming into quite possibly the greatest thing that has ever happened to me. I get to see her a few times a week, and being with her is the highlight of my existence. It's nice to be able to afford to pay for dates now, too. ;D So yeah... if there was ever any question as to whether we're still together or not, the answer is a resounding "YES!".

August is approaching, and college is on the horizon. I am trying to get into U of M Dearborn; I will post more on that when I get the good word from them that I'm accepted (which should be soon).

I've been playing video games a bit more than usual lately... I finally got a new screen for my PSP (the screen on it broke for the second time last December, and I just got around to fixing it), and my brother has an XBox 360 (speaking of which, my gamertag is 'kivetros' - add me if you are on XBox Live). I am a notoriously picky gamer, so I don't play a wide variety of games, but I am very passionate about the ones that I do play. I will play (and adore) anything developed by Q Entertainment (the geniuses who brought us Lumines, Every Extend Extra, Rez, Gunpey, and several others) - they make the most trippy, synesthesia-inducing action/puzzle games to ever hit consoles, period. I recently got Rez HD for XBox 360; I have been wanting to play Rez for years, so this acquisition was one accompanied by intense joy. If you have never heard of Rez, go look it up. It's quite possibly the best game ever.

Well, it looks like I have at last succeeded at making a long, detailed, and somewhat-rambly post - the kind I used to make all the time last summer. I hope to make a permanent return to this stream-of-consciousness / narrative style of blogging; a month or so ago, I was reading my older posts and I realized that I have gradually been putting less and less thought and effort into blogging. I want to change this.

I'll see you all around.

-K

Something Significant...

2009-06-10T14:44:00.001-04:00

Wednesdays are turning into my 'official day off' from work (well, Wednesdays and Saturdays). So far, I have been spending my Wednesdays feeling strange because I'm not at work. ;D

Work is going rather well, I have to say. Everybody that I work with seems to like me well enough and I'm getting a LOT of hours - and by 'a LOT', I mean almost 40 a week. ^_^

A lot of interesting things have happened lately, and I haven't been writing about them. Soon, though, I am getting a cellphone, and I plan to get a really good smartphone with a data plan so that I can blog while on the go. I think that would be more interesting, anyway... some of my favorite posts that I've ever made have been made from odd and unusual locations.

But I digress. I need to start blogging again like I used to - remember those super-long posts that went into lots of details and were about awesome things? I should start making them again. I think I'm gonna go back and re-read some of my old posts to get a feel for the way that I used to write again.

Or maybe I just need to start making it a point to have adventures again. I'm not sure. My life seems to be starting to fall into a routine, and that's kinda scary.

Anyhow... something significant is coming up in the history of this stellar blog. The first person to comment and tell me what it is gets like 9000 Internets!

-K

Inbox Wars: The Revenge

2009-05-30T01:01:00.001-04:00

When I posted last, I mentioned how proud I was that I had replied to all the emails in my inbox.

Well, thanks to everyone on the Internet, I now have over 50. I'm behind on everything again and work is basically killing me, so it may be awhile until I make another decent post.

-K

Inbox Wars

2009-05-20T14:30:00.004-04:00

My inbox hasn't looked like this in about six months. Finally, finally, finally, I have caught up with all my unread email. It took a lot of doing, but it was worth it... and I am proud of myself!

Yesterday was a pretty good day! I went in for orientation at Bob Evans, and after that, I went to watch the Red Wings game with some friends (on someone's TV, not at the Joe Louis Arena). We won in overtime, 3-2, so that went pretty well.

Other than that, not a lot is going on. The backlight on my laptop screen is threatening to go out, so that's kind of bothering me... but otherwise, everything is pretty okay. I start work tomorrow at 9 AM, so that should be interesting.

Well, I need to go... I'm working on a computer for my dad.

-K

!sorry

2009-05-18T21:54:00.002-04:00

Hey everyone, remember how I said that I was 'going to start blogging everyday again'? Well, I still want to do that, but the last few days have been really really crazy. I plan to get back on schedule with decent daily posts tomorrow-ish.

-K

ADVENTURE

2009-05-14T13:45:00.004-04:00

Here is how my life works... anything that happens to me has to happen in the most adventurous, exciting, and dramatic way possible. Anybody who's spent any amount of time around me will attest to this. The following is a sampler of what it's like to be me.

Yesterday, I was scheduled to have a second interview at Bob Evans here in Canton. Now, for anybody else in the world, here is how it would go: Normal Person Man would get in his car, drive to the interview, have the interview, and drive back home. Exciting? Eventful? No, but normal. There's a reason that I have named this blog [sub]norml - because it's mostly about my life, which is just that.

About 1:30 PM, Kristy got home. I was downstairs, wasting my time on the computer (kind of like I am doing now). She opened the door and yelled down the stairs,

"Johnny, Jimmy John's called and left a message."

I scampered up the stairs. See, the other day when I had gone up and down Ford Road, getting applications and whatnot, I had grabbed one from Jimmy John's. Jimmy John's is a sandwich catering restaurant - kind of like Subway, but apparently better.

I called Jimmy John's after Kristy left. They wanted an interview at 2:30 PM. My interview at Bob Evans was at 3:30 PM, and it was about 1:45 PM then. It was going to take about twenty minutes to get to Jimmy John's (I still don't have my license, so I am BIKE MAN). I was in the middle of lunch. All of a sudden, I had a serious time crunch going on.

I got out the door as fast as I could. I left my house about 2:10 PM. I knew that it was a bit chilly, so I grabbed my transvestite hoody and headed out the door.

After several moments, it occurred to me that water was falling from the sky. I inwardly groaned when I realized that white hoody + rain + dirt roads was going to == very dirty hoody (because about a mile or so of the route I take into town is on dirt roads). Really, though, I didn't have a choice - it was either soldier on through the precipitation, or miss out on getting some job-have.

I rode my tail off and got to Jimmy John's about 2:31 PM, which is pretty good, all things considered. It really hadn't been raining that hard, so I was just damp, not completely soaked.

The interview went about as well as could be expected. The franchise owner asked me some stuff about my work experiences at Taco Bell and what-have-you, and after about eight minutes, she sent me on my way with a "we'll call you if we need a second interview next week". Apparently, they're looking for extra summer help, and they are processing a lot of applications.

After the interview, I walked outside and got back on my bike. It was now raining harder. I had about 45 minutes to kill between then and my interview at Bob Evans. What's a car-less, broke kid on a bike supposed to do in Canton for 45 minutes in the middle of a downpour? Thankfully, Guitar Center (a huge and awesome music store) was right down the road, so I rode down there.

By 'right down the road', I mean about half a mile away, past the intersection Ford and 275, and on the other side of the road. For the record, riding down Ford Road in the middle of a downpour on the shoulder with oncoming traffic less than three feet from you at times can be incredibly unsettling, to say the least. However, my perseverance was rewarded - at Guitar Center, they had just set up a Moog Little Phatty, and I got to play on it for half an hour or so. That was cool. ^^_

I left Guitar Center, rode back across Ford then across Junction 275 (shudder), and got to Bob Evans early. I was basically soaked by this point, so I ran into the bathroom and freshened up as much as I could before the interview (which basically consisted of squeezing as much water out of my hair with a towel as possible).

The interview was short and sweet. The manager liked me well enough, I suppose, because she wants me to come back on Tuesday at 3 PM for orientation. ;D I am pretty happy... I've been down here for less than three weeks, and I already have a job. I'm going to be bussing. It's not the best paying job in the world, but I'm going to be getting decent part-time hours, and it's a job - something that apparently every one in five people in Michigan are without.

After the interview, I decided to celebrate. I stopped by Arby's. They had a special promotion going on yesterday - get a Roastburger free with the purchase of any size drink! For less than two dollars, I got a huge medium drink and a Roastburger. ;D

That was basically the highlight(s) of my day yesterday. I also began work on a new track, but I don't know if I'll get anywhere with it or not. I'll post it if it turns into something good.

Well, I need to get going... I need to go eat some more nachos. I'll see you all around.

-John

JOBS

2009-05-12T22:19:00.003-04:00

Since I really didn't post much yesterday, I will explain what happened then now.

To cut a long story short, I spent four hours riding around Canton, picking up job applications. Then, I spent another three filling them all out by hand. ;D

Also, I picked up a sweet MIDI cable from Guitar Center... more on that later (likely in a future post that is dedicated to it).

So today, Lynn came over around 9:30 AM. We spent the morning dropping off all those applications. Then, at 4:00 PM, I had an interview at Bob Evans. Apparently, I said some things right, because they have me scheduled for a second interview tomorrow at 3:30 PM with the Main Boss. I really hope that I get a job there.

After that, I went to the park and played some tennis.

To be honest, I really, really summarized stuff. I just made this post for the sake of posting. I am far too tired to write anything decent at the moment... I mean, on top of everything else, according to Google Maps, I rode my bike seventeen miles today. Yaay calf muscles.

Goodnight, everyone. I'll make that post about the MIDI cable probably tomorrow... other than the interview, I don't have a lot going on.

-K

why am i not doing the sleep thing

2009-05-12T01:53:00.001-04:00

I am exhausted. Sorry guys, although I had an extremely interesting and eventful day, I'm not writing about it now.

I'll comment back at everyone else tomorrow, likely.

-K

This Is A Blog Post...

2009-05-11T01:08:00.004-04:00

... and you are reading it! ^_^

Anyway... here's how my day went today...

I got up and got ready for church. My dad and I (yes, I made up with him... I might write about that a bit more later, but if I don't, it's really none of anyone's business anyway) decided to go check out a church. See, I just moved down here (to Canton), and I haven't found a decent church to go to on a regular basis yet, or at least I hadn't until this morning.

We checked out this church called Calvary Baptist. Sunday School started at a bright-and-early 9:15 AM and lasted until 10:30 AM. The first twenty minutes or so were set aside for the consumption of sweet baked-goods-type foods (this week was brownies and Swiss Cake Rolls, heck yes!) and coffee; the lesson occupied the rest of the time. The lesson was actually really good - the class is in the midst of a pretty in-depth study about Isaiah. I really liked the environment; it was an open-discussion type thing, so everyone - including yours truly - participated. I really, really liked it.

The morning service was from 10:45 AM to 12:00 PM. The preaching was a little wimpy in my opinion, but we had a guest speaker so I can't criticize too harshly about that (at least, not yet anyway). Regardless, the people were super friendly and made an effort to make us feel welcome.

This afternoon, after my brother and I had an inspirational / motivational / man-to-man talk, Lynn picked me up and we had dinner with her family at the Outback Steakhouse up by where she lives. The DeMasellises are wonderful and beautiful people (except Jordon), and I would still be saying that even if they hadn't gotten me that AWESOME BURGER. (Seriously guys, thanks!) Then, we (Lynn and I) came back to my place and chilled for a little while.

The service for college-aged young people at Calvary was at 7:30 PM, so Lynn and I went. We both really enjoyed it - the music was exciting, the lesson was funny and informative, and the other young people there were really nice. I made like three friends! 0__o All the girls surrounded Lynn while I was talking synths with one of the guys that I met and they were all sad that she wouldn't be coming back on a regular basis. Even if this church isn't exactly the kind of church that I was brought up in, I am fairly confident that I will be okay. I don't believe exactly everything that they teach there, but I am pretty grounded in my faith. Right now, the big thing for me is getting involved somewhere and finding people around my age and with my interests to associate with that love God and won't try to get me to do wrong things; I think I have found just that.

Of course, today was Mothers' Day, so I gave my mom a call later on in the evening. I had tried calling several times earlier in the day, but I couldn't get through. However, I finally got to talk to her, and we had a pretty good conversation. (Contrary to popular belief and opinion, I really do miss Gaylord and my friends and my mom and my dog... I'm just here for the opportunity.)

Well, I am basically exhausted. I just applied for a job at Toys R Us to be a bike assembler! I really hope that I get the job, as I really like bikes. I'll keep everyone informed.

-K

The Groove and Other Things

2009-05-10T00:24:00.004-04:00

I'm getting back into the groove of daily blogging, and I'm liking it so far. Instead of living my life day in and day out with the nagging feeling of 'man, I need to blog,' I can just spend my time feeling twice as bad about all the emails that I have yet to answer (sorry, guys!).

Today was pretty epic and awesome and win. If you're not browsing this in Text Only Mode *cough*edlin*cough*, then you have already noticed the awesome picture above. That is my lovely lovely girlfriend and I. (While I am talking about Lynn, allow me to put in a plug for her blog, for she has been writing in it some lately.)

Anyway... we basically spent the whole day together today. We went to Biggby Coffee this morning and got some - guess - coffee. Then, we went to the mall and shopped for a bit - I got a brand new pair of jeans in my size (32x34, w00 for being PENCIL MAN) at Pac-Sun (my favorite clothes-type store ever) for FIVE DOLLARS. Then, we went mountain biking for a little while. I took Lynn out on some Real Trails for the first time in her life; that proved to be uh, incredibly interesting. (She wasn't expecting logs or hills or almost running into the lake or mud or tree roots or sharp corners. Really, though, for her first time she did very well!) After that, we played some tennis (we are both getting into it together, as it looks like fun and we both have racquets), came back to my place, hung out for a bit, and then the day was over. We basically had a complete blast. ^^_

Well, I am very very tired. I have to be up for church in the morning - the church that I'm checking out tomorrow starts their Sunday school at 9:15 AM. 0__o

Later, everyone!

-K

Windows 7

2009-05-08T13:39:00.002-04:00

I am going to start posting daily again on a trial basis - we'll see whether or not it works out for our (fearless) hero.

I was pretty down in the mouth yesterday. However, my mood has improved drastically since then. "Why such a mood swing, John?" you might ask. The reason is simple: Windows 7 has come to my computer.

I'm giving it a shot. If you will remember, I was dual-booting Ubuntu Linux and Windows XP for awhile there. This morning, I backed up my data from my Windows partition to my Linux partition and installed 7 over XP. The installation was straightforward and painless - so far, the only drivers that I've installed are for my video card and for my laptop's built in touchpad mouse (the little scrolly button thing wasn't doing what it was meant to do - the touchpad worked otherwise)... everything else is working beautifully out-of-the-box.

Right now, I'm using Internet Explorer 8, just to see how it is. It hasn't annoyed me badly enough yet for me to want to quit using it (yet), so we will see. The Accellerator feature is pretty nifty, if you ask me... but the question is, 'Is it nifty enough to lure me away from my beloved Google Chrome?'. Again, we'll see.

So far, my two Big Issues That Need Resolving are this:

1) I need to edit uh, something in Linux that will allow me to use GRUB as my boot loader, and
2) I need to get some sort of ext2 to NTFS reader working in Windows 7 (so that I can see my Linux partition while in Windows).

The first one won't be too hard. It's the same exact thing that I had to do when I made the decision to install XP alongside Ubuntu. I have to boot from a Live CD and change uh, something... I don't remember exactly what, but a quick Google search will help me to find the article that I found last time. Basically, when you install Windows on a hard drive, it says "A ha! I am the king of ~~the echo people!~~ this hard drive!" and sets itself as the boot loader... or something. (Yes, I am a geek, but that doesn't mean that I know everything off the top of my head. I just know how to look for things.)

The second issue is looking to be a bit tricker. See, ext2 is the filesystem format that my Linux partition runs on. I was using my Linux partition as my only partition for awhile, and when I added XP I just decided to leave most of my files (i.e. my >45 gigabyte music library) on there and use an ext2 reader to give me access to my Linux partition while in Windows. (Ubuntu has built-in NTFS read and write support, so there was never any worry there.) HOWEVER... in Windows 7, the applications that I used to do this in Windows XP all run, but in a semi-broken state. I am still working on this one and I hope to have a solution soon-ish.

At the moment, it's too early for me to form an opinion of whether or not I am as in love with Windows 7 as I am hoping to be. If Windows 7 ends up being as awesome and amazing as I am hoping that it will, I plan to run Windows 7 only and maybe virtualize Linux if I need to. I'll definitely write about it if I do.

-K

!stressout!

2009-05-07T17:07:00.003-04:00

Hey everyone. To cut some long stories short, I moved. I am moved in down here in Canton, Michigan with my brother and my sister-in-law. Most things are okay so far.

My eyes are burning right now and I wish I could just crawl off somewhere and expire. Today is not a very good day so far.

At least the weather outside is tolerable. :P

I'm not too sure what I'm doing with my life at the moment. I'm considering starting to blog on a daily basis again. I'm not sure. We'll have to see, eh?

I'll be around.

-K

The End Of An Era

2009-04-26T01:56:00.005-04:00

^{Because there are just some things that you can't live without, amirite?}

I don't have a lot of time, so I'll keep this short and relatively sweet.

No, I'm not shutting the blog down (if anybody was thinking anything along those lines). However, this is the last blog post I am ever going to make while living at home.

Tomorrow afternoon (actually, this afternoon, according to the clock and calendar), I am moving in with my brother, down in Canton (Michigan, not Ohio).

This... is a very significant event in the life of John Pavlick. In less than twenty-four hours, I will be a full-fledged adult.

To be honest, I'm scared right now. I'm absolutely terrified. I'm not sure what's going to happen with my life. I might end up in college. I might end up in the Air Force. I might end up being an astronaut. I might end up in journalism. I might end up working a hot dog stand for the rest of my life. I just don't know. I'm at the 'make-it-or-break-it' bit of my life right now, and I'm scared to death of the 'break' bit happening. Sometimes, I can't even find myself in the choices I make. (Bonus points to anybody who correctly identifies the song that I just quoted... even more bonus points if anybody correctly identifies which mix of said song is my favorite.)

Well, I need to get to sleep. I'm gonna post this, shut down my computer, pack it up, and get some sleep. I have a big day ahead of me tomorrow.

To all my mates from the small town of Gaylord: I am gonna miss you guys. I love you all. Keep in touch, okay? I promise to answer my email sometimes. I'll be back to visit. You will never completely get rid of John Pavlick.

To all my mates from the Internet: I might have more time to spend with you guys, since I won't have many Real Live Friends for awhile (likely). Even so, I want to get back in the swing of daily / bi-daily blogging.

To Rave-J: Dude, what else is there to say? Keep in touch. There's no telling where I'll turn up, so keep your eyes peeled. Also, you smell like a puppy.

To C H Ris: I heard that Drew can do it twelve times better. Go Wings! Oh, and send me a copy of The P-Files, if you can.

To Heather: Yes, I am starting to miss high school about now. Are you happy?

To Zack and Nick: I'm gonna miss you guys. I'll see you around... how about some Warsow online? We will see what we can do.

To Crafty Don: I have your manga. I am taking it with me. I will bring it back when I come to visit. Otherwise, I miss you too, man. I will return.

To my girlfriend: See you Monday, beautiful. ;D

-K

So I'm Still Alive, After All

2009-04-14T12:12:00.005-04:00

Friday, April 10, 2009 5:10 PM

Hey everyone! At the moment, I'm riding down I-75 with Lynn's grandfather. (I am writing this post offline in OpenOffice.org Writer – I'm using the 'dead time' that I have right now to do something productive... you all should be proud of me. Also, Lynn's grandfather is an evangelist that preaches at prisons, and he's heading up to a prison near where I live to preach, so he volunteered to drive me back. He's the man.) After about two weeks, I am on my way home. I was at my wonderful girlfriend's house doing Many Things, some of which I plan to write about.

Where to start? I'd love to go in chronological order, but unfortunately, my brain doesn't quite work like that. I wish I could just open the folder with all my memories inside and click 'Sort by Date (Descending)', but no, I don't have that option. (Note to God: Please include a 'Sort by Date' in the explorer shell of the next release of the firmware for the human brain. Thank you.) My brain likes to remember things in order of importance, so I'll try to write about my experiences thusly.

I went down to Lynn's for the primary purpose of working for her father, who owns his own plastic injection molding machinery and parts business and can usually use some extra help around the shop. (To those who would object and say that I went down just to see my girlfriend, please see this post about how I went down to work for her father once before while she was still up in Gaylord at college.) Work proved to be pretty okay. I mean, it wasn't terribly exciting or anything – manual labor tends not to be very exciting, if you know what I mean – but it was not at all bad. I got to listen to my mp3 player while I worked, so that helped to pass the time rather quickly. For the first few days, I worked outside, picking up all the trash that was scattered about the premises. Then, later on in my stay, I worked in the shop. A few years ago, Lynn's dad built a room (approximately 60'x60', I'd say) within the shop to use as a workshop (like tools and workbenches and vices and whatnot). Well, since then, he has gone from only renting out half of the building to renting out the whole building, and the 60'x60' room wasn't really helping him much, so he decided to demolish it. That was pretty interesting. I've never really done much construction work, but I have experience with tools, so it wasn't too foreign of a venture for me. I ripped drywall from the walls, helped to get the insulation from the room, undid a lot of the wiring, took a lot of screws out of a lot of boards, and did other things that somehow had to do with tearing down the structure. I'd say that when I left the shop for the last time yesterday that there was maybe 35-40% of the building left to disassemble. We managed to save most of the supplies – the only major part of the room that was ruined when we removed it was the drywall.

No matter how hardcore you are, life can't be all work. I won't say that I had an inordinate amount of free time, but there was some time for relaxation and recreation. I actually got to relax and play some video games! (Wait... you went to your girlfriend's house and played video games? Yes. Yes, I did.) Lynn's mom, the eBay ninja, had picked up a Super Nintendo with some games for a rather low sum of money at a garage sale with the intent of selling it on eBay. However, it hadn't sold, so I set it up in the loft and played me some Star Fox. I got all the way to Venom (the final stage) on Path 1 (the easiest way through the game), but then I shut the game off because I was tired and had to go to bed. (I'm kind of a Star Fox fan. Star Fox 64 is probably the best in the series, but I rather like the original, myself.) Also, Lynn's family has a Wii, so I played me some Mario Kart Wii! I could go on and on about that for awhile – Mario Kart Wii is a stellar piece of video game software. To summarize, it feels a lot like Mario Kart DS (which I own and consequently rock hard awesome at) but with better graphics, better online gameplay (from what I could tell, as I didn't spend much time online), and uh... well, a lot of it is very very similar to Mario Kart DS. You can play with the Wiimote and 'steer' your kart, but I didn't much like that – I prefer plugging in an GameCube controller – the control is much tighter that way. But yeah, they kept the realy tight feel of the drifting from MKDS and added minibikes (and a few other awesome things), so it's a definite win. Man... I almost want a Wii now. Lawl.

Well... we are almost back to Gaylord now, so I'm gonna pack up and finish this later.

Friday, April 10, 2009 5:45 PM

Tuesday, April 14, 2009 10:55 AM

Woah. Talk about 'later'... I haven't had any time since I last worked on this post to finish it. Anyhow... I'll pick up where I left off, if that's okay with you guys.

Since I've lived in Gaylord (and not really gone anywhere very often) for most of my growing-up years, I really haven't had the chance to go to malls much, so Lynn and I went mall-ing (if that's a word?) quite a bit when I was down there with her. There's this really awesome mall about half an hour from her house called Great Lakes Crossing that we went to. They basically have everything that you could ever want in a mall, I guess... but personally, the only store that I really ever get terribly excited about is Pacsun. They had a killer sale on while I was there, and Lynn insisted on buying me a mega-awesome pair of jeans for $10! We also went to TJ Maxx, where she also insisted on buying me a really nice brown polo by American Eagle. (I'm not really a huge AE fan, but I really like their polos.) She insisted on buying me a lot of things, actually. She said something along the lines of “If I want to buy my hot boyfriend clothes that make him look hot, I am going to and there is nothing that you can do about it”. ^_^

While we were down there, Lynn decided to get a rat. At first, I was skeptical about the whole idea of owning a rat, but once we got Elly home, my skepticism vanished. Rats are awesome. They are cute, clean, smart, and really friendly. A lot of people get gerbils and hamsters because they're cute, but really, they're not too friendly or smart. Rats can be trained to do things. They're really friendly and outgoing, and they only bite if you get them really, really mad. I am planning on getting one sometime. I'll post pix of Elly later, as I don't have any on me at the moment.

AND LASTLY...

I have been needing a new watch for quite awhile. While I was down at Lynn's, my old watch finally gave up the ghost – the part of the watch that holds the band on broke, and I couldn't wear it anymore. On the last morning of my stay at the DeMasellises' house, Lynn and I went watch-shopping. We went to the local Kohl's to see what we could find. After a few minutes of searching, I found this beauty:

Yeah, this bad boy was marked down from $90 to $20! I felt like the man. It's probably the best watch I've ever had, and it's likely the best deal I've gotten in I don't know how long.

Tuesday, April 14, 2009 12:13 PM

So yeah... that was basically what I have been up to for the last two weeks. A bunch of other exciting stuff is about to happen in my life, too... I'll write about that soon. Watch this space!

-K

High Adventure

2009-03-27T12:32:00.002-04:00

Next week is going to be a week full of High Adventure!

On Sunday, I'm heading down to Caitlin's house for the week. I'm going to get to work with her father and make some extra cash... but not only that, I'm going to get to hang out with Caitlin, too! DOUBLE WIN.

Meh. Other than that, my life's been pretty boring lately. I have a lot of organizing that I need to do on my computer (what with the tons of music that I'm always getting)and I have some emails to reply to, but for the most part... it's boring stuff and I don't feel like it.

I've been skateboarding a bit lately (still). I'm getting better, which is really really encouraging. Maybe I'll take some pictures of myself skateboarding sometime.

On the musical front... I'm about to release a track into the wild. I'm thinking of sending it off to some labels, so everybody please wish me well! I'll probably post it here (but in streaming format, not downloadable format (for obvious reasons)).

-K

Sunburnt In March!

2009-03-18T17:10:00.003-04:00

It is March. I live in Gaylord, Michigan. I have a sunburn.

This is probably the first time in my life that I have been able to say all three of those statements in the same sentence and not be lying. You see... normal weather for Gaylord in March does not ever include 60 degree (Fahrenheit) weather. But it's been really warm all week so far - so much so, in fact, that I started skateboarding again.

When I was in about sixth or seventh grade, I played Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 on Game Boy Color for the first time ever. My life has not been the same since. THPS3 was the single most influential video game that I have ever played, period. After playing it, I really, really wanted to skateboard. I bummed an older (but not too bad) board offa my brother and started practicing nonstop. This was around 2002 or 2003. Back then, I didn't even know that you were supposed to wear skate shoes (and you are, by the way - they are actually incredibly useful), so I just rocked it out with a pair of tennis shoes. What I lacked in natural ability, athleticism, and coordination, I made up for with raw and unbridled enthusiasm. However, enthusiasm fades, and as I really wasn't getting anywhere with the sport (mostly because nobody ever showed me how to do things properly), I kinda quit... for awhile. Then, the skatepark opened up here in Gaylord and I took my skateboard there, but I really couldn't do much. I was too scared to ride the miniramp, and I couldn't grind for anything (and I was still wearing tennis shoes).

A summer or two later, I got a Razor microscooter. I actually got pretty good on it. I took it to the skatepark and stuff. I couldn't really do any of the really cool tricks - to this day I can't do a tailwhip - but I learned a few grinds and a few flatland tricks, and I could ride the ramps with it pretty well. I had a lot of fun that summer.

Then, the next year after that, I discovered aggressive inline. I got some really crappy skates, but they had grind plates and everything. Within not too long, I was actually turning some heads - I could jump over just about any obstacle in the park (including the picnic table), and I caught on to most of the basic grinds pretty quickly. However, my skates were really crap and they hurt my feet, and they didn't allow enough freedom of movement of my foot to allow me to do any of the more advanced grinds. That was around the summer of 2006.

Summer of 2007 hit, and I ended up being in Kentucky for most of the summer with nothing at all to do. I had brought my skateboard, so I skated a ton. I finally got my first pair of skate shoes (by Adio, the brand I still buy / love), and my skateboarding skills increased dramatically. I still wasn't very good, but I could ollie (the skateboarder's way of jumping, which is quite tricky and takes a lot of practice) really high and do some stalls on ledges and whatnot.

Last summer was really really busy, and I didn't have time for much of anything, let alone time to go to the skatepark. I did get my mountain bike, and I did some jumping with it, but I worked a lot and went to college some and stuff, so I didn't have time to skate.

Lately, though, I've had a lot of free time, I've been bored a lot, it's been really nice outside, and I have wanted to Go Do Something... so on Monday, I started skateboarding again.

I rode my mountain bike ALL THE WAY TO THE SKATEPARK (like six miles) with my skateboard on my back (backpack with skateboard straps ftw). When I got there, there were two other skaters there already. They turned out to be really nice guys, and they taught me a lot in a very short timespan. As it stands, there is still a lot of snow in the park, but some of the guys have had the miniramp (basically like a three foot tall halfpipe) clear since mid-February. I skated there for about five hours on Monday and for about six hours on Tuesday. My legs are absolutely killing me right now, but I have learned a lot already. Maybe I'll post some video sometime.

So yeah... I have a nice sunburn on the back of my neck from skateboarding. How about that?

Well, I need to start getting ready for church... see everyone later!

-K

As Promised...

2009-03-18T15:22:00.004-04:00

Here are those pictures that I promised that I would post awhile back. I took then while we were on the roof of Buy-Low. I only got three because we might have maybe been running...

-K

The Saga Continues...

2009-03-06T19:21:00.004-05:00

TeenSpec is still happening. A lot of it has been interesting, so I am going to write about it.

Last night, we had this activity that was called "The Main Event". Our church rented a vacant grocery store (Buy-Low, in case anyone's wondering) and set it up with a makeshift basketball court, some video games (Wii FTW), and some other cool stuff. Luke, Zack and I were a basketball team in the 3-on-3 tournament, but we pretty much got wasted in our first game. Oh well.

I played some Mario Kart Wii for the first time last night. I'm a natural at it, if I do say so myself. I'm pretty much unstoppable at any Mario Kart ever, except for Double Dash (which I despise). I really like MKW - the graphics are nice and the control feels really tight. (I was afraid that tight control would be an issue, due to the fact that the Wii-mote is what it is, but those fears were put to bed after I actually tried it for myself.)

All that stuff was fun and good... but I had the most fun jumping rope. When I first got over to the rope-jumping-spot, it was nothing but girls. It was a little awkward at first, actually... but I really, really, really like to jump about. Instead of just jumping up and down, though, I started throwing combinations of spin moves. It was actually a lot of fun, even though right now my legs and rear are in INTENSE AND SEVERE PAIN (from being so sore and all).

There was also a handrail that was about waist height and maybe twenty-five feet long. I love handrails. As an individual that has spent a lot of time snowboarding, skateboarding, and skating aggressive inline, I am very familiar with them (from grinding / attempting to grind them). I am a balance junky. While my schoolmates spent their free time perfecting that fadeaway jumpshot or learning to dribble between their legs, I spent my free time jumping off of / over things, balancing on things, climbing on things that were not intended to be climbed on, and doing extreme sports that had a strong emphasis on balance. Now, the rest of my body is catching up and I'm becoming a halfway-decent athlete as far as traditional sports are concerned, but my main love has always been and will always be the pursuit of balance.

So yes... handrail. (I am easily sidetracked, huh?) I spent a bit of time balancing on it (I can pretty much walk along the top of a chain-link fence) and doing a few tricks on it. If it were outside, I would have been grinding on it. (When I am near a handrail or similar object outside and it's at all wet or slippery, I grind across it with just my skate shoes on. I have never fallen.)

Last night was pretty fun, all in all. Coming next post: exclusive photo evidence of the fact that I was on the roof of the aforementioned vacant grocery store. ^_^

-K

<3 Remote Blogging <3

2009-03-05T14:42:00.002-05:00

I think my favorite time to blog is when I am out and about.

Right now, I'm sitting in the Treetops Convention Center. I'm at TeenSpec 2009. It's a break between the sessions, so I figured that I'd hop on really fast and bring everyone up to date with my precious little life. (It's only because I know you all care so much. ^^_)

TeenSpec usually tends to be pretty interesting, but it seems that we're really down in numbers this year. Oh well. I am just excited because Caitlin's coming tomorrow evening.

Well, preaching is about to start again, so I gotta go. 0__o

-K

Apoptygma Berzerk - Lost in Translation

2009-03-01T11:34:00.004-05:00

Apoptygma Berzerk - Lost in Translation
You And Me Against The World, 2005

Fragile you are
And yet the strongest by far
Who's to save us now that you've turned weak?
I can see it in your eyes
I can feel it in my gut
Now we've really reached the point of no return

We've both been traumatised
We were all a part of the revolution
We called the truth a lie
Too much got lost
In translation

From my heart to your ears
Transforming words to tears
As vibrations of a string becomes a sound
I realise we're frail
Burned out and pale
Do you think we'll ever learn to love again?

We've both been traumatised
We were all a part of the revolution
We called the truth a lie
Too much got lost
In translation

-K

Sega Game Gear - Battery Pack Mod

2009-02-23T14:27:00.001-05:00

The video pretty much explains it. ;D

I have been pretty scarce around here lately, and for good reason. I won't let the cat(s?) out of the bag yet, but some pretty interesting things are going on with John Pavlick's ongoing relationship with the Internet. ^_^

See you all around!

-K

Employment Enjoyment

2009-02-14T10:28:00.002-05:00

Hey everyone. I realize that it's been OVER A WEEK since my last post and that I haven't commented back on anyone else's blog lately, either.

In that over-a-week, though, a lot has happened. (A lot always happens. I need to stop saying that, because I feel as if I am repeating myself here.)

I have three jobs now! Yes... I have three jobs. Let's do this with a list:

I am working again at N & J Auto Diesel on an as-needed basis

I am working part time with my mother and her marvelous cleaning business

I am now a Taco Bell employee!

See? There I am, after my first day of work (which just so happened to be last Thursday), all decked out in my sweet uniform. I really like it - it's a really fast-paced job, and it's not like a burger joint... it's not all dark and greasy, because we don't fry very much of our food. The people there are nice and friendly and likable and seem to like me pretty well, too... so that's a bonus. I worked Thursday, Friday, and today. I don't know when I'll work there next, but I am hoping that it will be soon.

So yeah... it's really nice to be working again. I don't feel like a bum anymore (imagine that!). Now, I can save my money for a car and a license... then, I can move out!

Exciting things are in store for our friend John. Watch this space!

-K

The Unthinkable!

2009-02-05T11:47:00.002-05:00

About ten minutes ago, I got a phone call.

I got my old job back at N & J Auto Diesel Repair.

I start today, at 1 PM.

I have got to get a move on. See you all around, eventually. 0__o

-K

I Have Ruined My Health

2009-01-31T18:04:00.003-05:00

Yes, it's true... several solid weeks of computer-ing until God knows when at night later, I am more or less dead. I feel like someone has microwaved my brains. :P

But in other news, my neglect of my friends here in the blogosphere has come to an end! I have discovered the awesomeness of Google Reader. More or less, it's like the Reading List on the Blogger Dashboard, but on steroids. It feels like my GMail inbox, but for my blogroll instead.

What that means is that I am now immediately notified when someone blogs, and I can go read their post right there in Google Reader. Then, if I have anything to say (and I usually do) I can open their blog in a new tab in Firefox (only 'cos I'm in Ubuntu and Google hasn't gotten their act together and released Chrome for Linux) and comment, all without breaking my workflow! Isn't that awesome?! I encourage everyone to head over to Google Reader and set it up - it only takes a few seconds... just mark everything but the newest posts on the blogs you are following as "read" and maybe organize the blogs that you follow into folders (if you have a lot of them - I follow around 30 or so, so that was a good idea for me, but if you only follow like 5 blogs, then I wouldn't bother). Then, you are ready to start experiencing the awesomeness that is Google Reader.

Well, my head is totally killing me again from being behind the computer. I really hope you guys appreciated this post, because it is killing me.

Literally. ;D

-K

Pride and Prejudice Zombies

2009-01-31T02:41:00.004-05:00

In what John Pavlick is calling "incredibly awesome", some genius has decided to modify the story of Pride and Prejudice and add a whole part about how there are zombies.

As a person who is truly a fan of the movie (not the five-hour-long British Brodcasting Corporation-produced snorefest, the short version with Keria Knightley - the one where Mr. Darcy has killer hair and sideburns), I will probably be picking this up.

I mean, it really doesn't get any more awesome than regency romance mixed with zombie-slaying mayhem. You know what? They need to re-make the movie (the Keira Knightley version, obviously) and add in the zombie bits. Oh, to see Mrs. Bennet try to eat Lady Catherine De Bourgh's brains...

-K

PS - I must add... I do hate movies - generally speaking. There are several exceptions, Pride and Prejudice being one of the more notable of the bunch. (Also, it is the only chick-flick / romance movie that I think I have ever enjoyed. Heh... movie date with Caitlin, here I come.)

Numb!

2009-01-28T15:51:00.003-05:00

Hey everyone!

Since my last post, several rather significant things have happened...

I turned 18 on January 23, 2009

I got my permit

edlinfan informed me that he's finally got around to starting a blog of his own

I went to the dentist twice in three days

Yeah, I've had a pretty action-packed schedule.

For my eighteenth birthday, among other things, I got to go get my permit! That was exciting. When I got to the Secretary of State office, I was greeted by a rather mean and rude lady. She gave me my test. I don't feel like elaborating, but she was quite a jerk. I missed 7 out of 35 on my test, which isn't bad considering that I didn't study at all.

Also, Lynn got me an extremely awesome pair of jeans and an extremely awesome hoody. That girl... she continually amazes me.

So I've been getting my mouth drilled on quite a bit lately. On Monday, I went in to the dentist's to get the left side of my lower jaw drilled and filled. When I was a child, I never went to the dentist - my first proper visit was last summer. Because of that, I had a LOT of cavities. Between now and then, I have had my mouth worked on three times.

The first time was with this cranky old man. I will die proclaiming that he did something wrong. My poor mouth was sore for like a month afterwards, and my teeth hurt very badly for about the same amount of time. He also put these crufty silver fillings in there. It was a pretty bad first experience.

Monday was a very different story, however. The dentist I had was this very nice lady from Romania. She must have done something differently, because I can barely tell that I got worked on. She also used this awesome teeth-coloured filling, so I don't look like CAVITIES MAN where she worked.

At the end of my appointment on Monday, the nurse said, "John, we have an opening on Wednesday. Would you like to come in then?" I said, "Uh, sure!" So... I went back today. I had the same dentist again, so things went very smoothly. My mouth is still a little numb, but other than that, I am in pretty good shape.

On a more exciting note... as previously mentioned, our beloved regular commenter edlinfan has started his own blog. So far, it is chock-full of interesting things - I like the post about Tetris in particular.

Well, I am going to go try to set up a PSX emulator in Linux. See you all around!

-K

Beardsicles!

2009-01-22T14:43:00.005-05:00

I will start out this post by apologizing for two things:

Not blogging in awhile

The fact that you just had to see that beard on my face

But to be honest, having that beard was an [AWES0ME EXPERIENCE] that I will never regret or forget. It was like a tiny and powerless god of sorts. It commanded worship, but if you didn't bow, there wasn't much it could do.

Really, that was a little less than two weeks' worth of growth. Half of me is a smooth-skinned Pavlick - we're Hungarians, and my dad's side of the family would make awful lumberjacks because they can't grow beards. But the other half of me - the Hatfield half - is from Kentucky and is quite uh... manly, I suppose. :D I apparently got my hair characteristics from the Hatfield side, as you can plainly see.

But that beard is history... Caitlin LeAnne abhors beards, and she was up to visit on last Sunday. But I'll get to that later.

I am quite sorry for not blogging or commenting on blogs for awhile - I've really been tied up with Real Life lately. I don't want to let this blog die... but as a warning, my posting schedule is probably going to be sporadic at best. I'm going through a lot of changes in my life right now (some of which will be documented here, and some of which won't), and I am having to do things other than be an internet junkie all day long.

Anyhow...

A week ago today, I went snowboarding for the first time this winter with my friends Reese and Kevin. Boyne has this sweet promotion going on - every Thursday, night skiing is only $10 for lift tickets, so that's what we were doing. (In fact, this post might get cut a little short because I'm supposed to be meeting Reese at his school at 3:20 PM again today 'cos we're doing it again.)

So I hadn't shaved at that point. The picture you just saw was taken on Friday morning, right before I shaved. My beard was more or less like that on Thursday night when I went snowboarding.

Man, was it cold... it was like 0 F outside. I figured, "My beard will most certainly keep my face warm!"

I could not have been more wrong. I got beardsicles. Somehow or the other, ice built up in my beard! I seriously spent part of my night pulling ice out of the hair that was on my face. :P It was not a good experience, I can tell you that much.

Well, Caitlin LeAnne decided to grace Gaylord with her presence last Sunday, and it was the most awesome thing ever. I won't go into all the mushy details, but here's a picture:

Yeah, it pretty much rocked.

Well, it's been fun to blog again. I'll try to be more regular with my posts in the future... but for now, I gotta get outta here - as usual, I'm running late. :P

-K

Right now, my life is pretty boring.

2009-01-12T20:42:00.003-05:00

...

I mean, the title says it all.

These days, I get up, take a shower, call Caitlin and tell her good morning, eat food, and spend the rest of the day on the computer.

HOLD IT RIGHT THERE

When I say "spend the rest of the day on the computer", I do not mean "be an internet junkie". Since I'm currently unemployed, I'm doing things that will allow me to get a [REAL J0B] sometime soon. I usually work on my mom's website for her cleaning business for several hours, then I code C++ for the rest of the time. Sometimes, I get to bed around 2 AM because I don't quit coding until 12 AM or so.

Consequently, I've not had time for a lot of the things that I usually make time for - such as blogging, emailing people, and commenting on other people's blogs. If I've dropped the ball at all, I apologize.

In some other news, it looks like Lynn's cousin has started a blog of his very own! Go check it out and tell him how cool he looks in a fedora.

Well, that's all for now. I'll catch up with you guys later... after I climb from under this mountain of email and such.

-K

Windows 7

2009-01-09T03:13:00.003-05:00

To cut a long story that's been cut short even shorter, I've been BUSY MAN lately. I've been devoting myself completely and wholly to learning to program in C++, because if I can learn it quickly enough, I'm going to have a job programming. I need a job, and I want to code... so I'm sorry for letting [sub]norml kinda fade out of reality over the last few days - I've just been focusing my efforts elsewhere.

Right now, I am inside Windows 7 Public Beta. I'm running in under VMWare Workstation 6.5 in Windows XP Professional. Surprisingly enough, I have Windows 7 via legitimate means - I actually have a MSDN subscription. More or less, that means that I have full access to every piece of software that Microsoft has EVER WRITTEN... up to and including the public beta of their latest-and-purportedly-greatest operating system ever, Windows 7.

I could go way into detail about what I think about Microsoft, the direction they're heading in, and whether or not I think that Win7 is going to save Microsoft from the failure that was Vista, but I am going to save that for later. I am incredibly exhausted at the moment, and right now, sleep > ranting on my blog.

Rest assured, though, that I will probably keep posting more about Windows 7, because I plan to use it a bit. So far, so good - it installed Chrome without the slightest complaint. ;D

-K

2 0 0 8

2009-01-03T22:41:00.004-05:00

Here's the post I promised, guys. It took some doing to get a slideshow up - it took forever to figure out how to get one to work for free without having to learn how to use Adobe Flash. :P

So yeah... there's my tribute to 2008.

-K

Happy New Year!

2009-01-01T12:59:00.002-05:00

Ok ok ok... I know that I've been twitting about a [SPECIAL POST] for the last few days. This is not that post. I'm running into some problems - I'm trying to do something really cool but it's just not working out - yet. I'll try to have the [SPECIAL POST] up in a few days at most.

Until then, HAPPY NEW YEAR!

-K

Fragging?

2008-12-27T21:13:00.003-05:00

I return with another post about my latest obsession / interest / hobby - fragging! More specifically, I have taken to playing Warsow.

Warsow is a free, cross-platform (as in Linux, Mac, and Windows) first-person shooter with incredibly fast-paced gameplay and shiny graphics. It's really hard, too... or at least it is, for me. I've been playing it mostly on deathmatch and instagib deathmatch. ("Instagib" means that each player is armed with an incredibly powerful gun that takes awhile to reload but can kill with one hit... it's like "sudden death".) I tried to play it online a bit, but it's sickeningly hard online, because the guys there are really, really good.

I'm also working it into an exercise routine. See, I'm uh... well, I could be in better physical shape. (I'm not at all fat - actually, I'm pretty skinny - but I could use some muscle mass), so every time I lose a match of Warsow, I subtract my score from the match winner's score, multiply it by two, and do that many pushups before the next match. (I did around sixty pushups last night. :P)

If anyone wants to download Warsow (the Windows version), I hosted it myself, 'cos otherwise you have to wade through a bit of stuff to get to the file...

warsow_0.42_setup.exe

If you're using Linux, you should know how to get it via a repository already... and if someone that reads this has a Mac and wants to play too... well, you can go find it on your own. ;D

If anyone else gets into this, let me know and we'll see about playing against each other online.

In other news, I hope all of you had a wondrous Christmas and got just what you wanted. I would make a Christmas-y post, but several of the other blogs I'm affiliated with already covered that.

Well, I'm gonna probably go and frag some more bots on Warsow. I'll talk to you all later!

-K

Fragging!

2008-12-24T11:44:00.003-05:00

I've been meaning to post about this for the last few days, but other stuff just kept coming up.

On Monday, I was down at my friend Nick's house. He was playing Metriod Prime 2: Echoes on his Gamecube - he had borrowed it from his older sister's boyfriend. Now, I'm not too big on first-person shooters - I am generally really bad at them - so I watched him play through the campaign mode for awhile. After a bit, he asked me if I wanted to play against him in Multiplayer. I accepted.

We picked our map and got on our way. I'd played a Metriod game for Gamecube once before, but I didn't really remember the controls - I just knew enough to know that they were really different from other FPS games I'd played. The other different thing about the Metriod series is that you can turn into a "morph ball" - your character rolls up into a little sphere that can move quickly and drop little bombs.

Nick had apparently played the map before - he went straight for the turret. There's a turret at one end of the level that has incredible range, unlimited ammo, and is capable of one or two hit kills. It can access almost every area of the map, too. He fragged me about four times in the first two minutes of the ten-minute match and wouldn't shut up about how much he was killing me. The following conversation ensued:

Nick: Hahahaha, got you again! +gloat gloat+
Me: Dude. You're in the turret. That's not skill. You just have a huge gun. That's pretty much not fair.
Nick: What, do you want me to get out of the turret?
Me: Yeah I think you shoul-- No. Wait. Stay in the turret. I'm gonna figure out how to kill you.
Nick: Ok, whatever.

He fragged me a few more times in short order as I tried several different approaches, mostly those related to running up to the turret and getting shot. After dying a few more times that round and losing by a large margin, I decided that I needed a different approach.

The next round, I noticed something. In one of the few areas that was safe from the mighty turret's reign of terror, there were item pads that awarded different timed upgrades - for instance, invincibility or invisibility. I ran over an item pad, got me some invincibility, switched to morph ball mode, and stormed the turret.

Nick: +shoots me several times+ Why aren't you dying?!
Me: +silence+

I discovered that back behind the turret, there's some sort of port that accommodates a morph ball. I slid back there and pushed myself into the port. Nick's health started dropping rapidly... then his screen went black and I was awarded a kill.

Nick: What did you just do?!
Me: I killed you.

Then, he had no choice but to come out and fight me like a man. Since it took me a few tries to get to the turret before my invincibility ran out or whatever, he had killed me enough times so that I didn't have time for a comeback, so I lost the round. But, I developed another strategy... if lock on to your opponent and strafe, you can stay locked on to him and you kind of shuffle around in a circle. If you press B while doing this, you dash quickly in whatever direction you're strafing. Nick didn't quite get this at first... he'd run up to me, guns blazing, and I'd lock on, strafe in a circle around him, and kill him before he was quite sure what was going on.

I won the last round. ;D

The rounds prior, Nick had been gloating of his victories. See, I don't believe in gloating. I let my performance speak for itself. That way, if I lose, I don't feel like an idiot... and if I win, the person who was gloating feels pretty dumb. So at the end of the third round, when the results popped up and my number of kills was greater than his, I just kinda smiled while he read off the scores with a sheepish look on his face.

So what's the moral of the story? Strategy can unseat even the biggest of turrets... and gloaters never prosper. ;D

-K

Ceci N'est Pas Une Post

2008-12-22T23:45:00.002-05:00

Surreality... it's such a beautiful thing. It's even more beautiful when you get to watch it happen - to someone other than you.

You could say that Sunday was a pretty surreal day for me. I started it at 4:30 AM, when that disco ball fell on me and woke me up. I couldn't get back to sleep for about an hour, and I had to be up at 6 AM... so that was rather unpleasant.

Of course, I woke up late - my phone rang at 6:45 AM. It was my bus captain's wife, reminding me to be at the church at 7:15 AM. I scampered and scurried about the house at a rather high rate of speed, getting ready and such. (Once, I got totally ready for the bus route in five minutes flat - I'm talking I was dressed and out the door within five minutes of waking up.)

On the way to pick up some kids, my bus captain / driver decided that he didn't need to drive on the road, so he backed way up into a snowbank. Twenty minutes, an awesome spade shovel, two tired arms, and a playlist including THIS/Is, Just A Band, Alex Gopher, and Cicada later, we were rolling down the road again. ^^_

Then, on the way to drop kids off after church, my bus captain / driver decided that he was too cool not to fishtail around corners, so he put us in another ditch. Guess who was integral in removing the bus from the ditch?

I got dropped off at home, only to discover that my van was stuck in my driveway. Talk about a fail Sunday. It was... pretty wacky. 0__o

But, on Saturday, something pretty good happened. I bought myself a new MP3 player. My PSP screen got broken (again) a few weeks ago, and I've been needing a MP3 player anyway... so I broke down and actually spent some money on myself. I got a good deal, though - I got a 4GB Creative Zen Mozaic LX for only $50! It's a pretty slick little unit - it supports playlists (pre-made and on-the-go), and it works fine under Linux, using Amarok as the MTP client. And... I can put pictures of Caitlin LeAnne on it. ^_^

Well, I'm all blogged out - I've posted on my blog thrice today (a record, I think) and I posted a big long comment on a certain post of Lynn's. I'll write at you guys later.

-K

x = y + 1

2008-12-22T22:17:00.017-05:00

#include <iostream>
using namespace std;

int main(int arg, char* pszArgs[])
{
    int y, x = 1;
    cin >> y;

    for (;((x*x)<(x*y));x++)
    {
        cout << x << "... " << (x*x) << " < " << (x*y) << "\n";
    }
    cout << x << "... " << (x*x) << " = " << (x*y) << "\n";
    x++;
    cout << "\n" << x << " = x because " << (x*x) << " > " << (x*y) << "\n";
    return 0;
}

I wrote some nifty C++ code to more or less prove that in the inequality x² > xy, that x = y + 1... always. Lynn is awesome... she let me call her up on the phone and rant for a few minutes and explain it to her so that I was sure that I understood it myself.

If anybody can further optimize this code, I'd love to see it. I like learning new stuff, even if it's at the expense of not looking as smart as the other guy.

EDIT: In case anyone read the above code and noticed the severe lack of <iostream> in the #include statement... well, it didn't occur to me that I needed to code in the angle brackets, and I didn't notice that it didn't show up. Thanks to korendir for catching that.

EDIT EDIT: I changed the code a bit. y is now a user-defined variable, as it illustrates the point better that way. Also, I fixed it so that it doesn't output two equal numbers as one being greater than the other (the loop breaks on (x*x)>=(x*y), not (x*x)>(x*y).

EDIT EDIT EDIT: I shortened it even MORE by using for loop's built-in condition and iteration commands. I'm not sure why I didn't do that in the first place.

-K

Quickly now...

2008-12-22T10:36:00.002-05:00

I'm going to do a nice long post later, 'cos my day yesterday was crazy... but at the moment, I feel the need to mention a few layout changes before I forget. Behold!

Changed blog description (the text under the title) from "now with 100% more wintry flavor" to "i saw you kick that puppy"

Added a few people to my blogroll - Stinky Feet and Soggy French Fries, and Sure Things Happen To Everybody...Don't They?!?. More on those colorful characters later.

Changed the way that my blogroll looks. (Go look at it and spot the differences!)

I'm not the only one doing layout updates, either... everyone's favorite Liquid Lady has revamped her blog, too... but she used a template. (Blargh!) Even so, it looks nice.

Well, I'm headed out to get my chores started. As previously stated, I'll post more later.

-K

Industrial Counter-Espionage

2008-12-18T22:06:00.003-05:00

Well, I just had quite an adventure.

I got back from Lynn's house yesterday, where I was doing some industrial counter-espionage. To be honest, I ended up not having any time for the counter-espionage... I was too busy!

We arrived not too long after I finished my last post. I unpacked my stuff, got set up in my room, nervously joked with Lynn's mother and father and little brother Jordon for a few minutes (I would have been socializing with Lynn, but she was not there), realized that Ubuntu was being a pain and not letting me connect to their wireless network (they have security enabled and good ol' Linux just was not cooperating), and went to bed.

I got up at 6 AM the next morning for work and went to take my shower.

At 6:15 AM, I was on one of the family computers, texting Lynn to get help with making the water in the shower come out of the shower head. 0__o

Needless to say, it was a pretty eventful experience. On Monday alone, I worked for around 16 hours. I only got five hours of sleep a night from Saturday to Tuesday (last night I slept a TON). I learned the definition of "hard work", and I learned that it is something that I truly enjoy. I learned all about ultimate omelettes. I learned that not everyone in the world likes sarcastic humour. I learned that I am capable of more than I think I am. I learned what it's like to be destroyed at Wii Bowling and Wii Tennis. (Jordon learned that he had better brush up on his Shooting Range, Charge! (aka Cow Racing), and Laser Hockey techniques. ^_^) I learned that I don't mind eating salad that has bananas in it. I learned that Goodrich, MI is incredibly windy. I learned that "rolling" has two Ls and one O, not the other way around. I learned that mostacholi is amazing. I met Lynn's Aunt Kim (my opening line was a cockily-delivered "I'm not 'fraid of you!").

Man... I learned a ton of stuff. I could go into detail, but I don't want to bore anyone. A lot of really cool stuff happened and I learned a lot, and I even got to make a bit of money to buy Christmas presents with!

But something else happened while I was down there - something of incredible significance.

I met Lynn on August 21, 2008. Since that fateful instant, when I took off my headphones and put down my laptop and stood up and looked her in the eye and extended my hand and announced my name, my life has changed profoundly. First, I was afraid of her. (Seriously.) Then, after I learned that she didn't bite (too hard), we started spending a lot of time together. (We started spending so much time together that the college decided that we were a "dating couple" and that we had to sign the "dating log", to which we responded that we were "just friends" [and we were at that point] and *almost* went to the extreme of getting a courting pass signed so that we wouldn't have to put up with the college anymore.)

Then I dropped out of college and she almost cried, at which point I realized that Something Significant Was Going On That I Was Obviously Only Subconsciously Aware Of.

Then, to be quite blunt, I fell in love.

Not all at once, of course... but bit by bit, I found myself going out of my way to be with her, thinking of her when I should have been thinking of other things (i.e. my job, videogames, computers, music, and other important things like that). I found myself running a mile and a half after a hard 9-hour day of work to the local coffee shop to spend a few minutes with her. I even wrote a song for / about her.

Well, one thing has led to another, and yesterday, I got her father's permission and blessing to continue on in my relationship with her.

So if you will notice, the "About" section on the right-hand side of my blog doesn't say that I have a crush on someone anymore.

Really, our relationship is a sacred thing, and I do not feel at liberty to write about it at length, so I am going to end this post before I reveal anything that I should not... because I could go on and on about Caitlin LeAnne for hours. But... should something significant happen (i.e. if we were to get married next April or something [and no we are not engaged]), I will likely write about it here... that is, if I feel like it. ;D

-K

Remote Blogging!

2008-12-14T22:00:00.003-05:00

First things first... I didn't do so hot on my ACT. I nailed the grammar section and I did really well on the reading comprehension section (this should come as no surprise, I hope)... but I didn't do so well on the math section, and I absolutely gave up the ghost so to speak on the science section. I mean, it was bad. I spent a good part of the rest of Saturday in depression. :P

Also on Saturday, I worked another catering job with my mom and Mrs. Long, but it was nowhere near as exciting as the last one. Really, that's a good thing, because the last one was a bit much. :P (Srsly, go read about it!)

So today has been one of those days where it's like you are on the Gravitron, and the floor drops out on you and you're stuck to the wall, wondering what happens next. Currently, I am rolling down I-75 with two adults that I just met about six hours ago. No, I'm not being kidnapped (well, in a way, I kind of am)... I am going down to Lynn's house for a few days. The adults are her parents, and I am not being held against my will. Her father is going to be putting me to work for a few days, so I will be able to make some sweet cash and maybe even build some muscles.

I mentioned a moment ago that I am rolling down the road. But yet, I am on the internet... how can this be? Well, Lynn's mom has one of those sweet-action wireless broadband cards, and she is letting me use her laptop! I must say, it is a most excellent diversion. This is the first time I've ever gotten to use a wireless broadband setup, so I'm really enjoying this.

Well, we are almost to their house, I think, so I will end this post now. I'll definitely keep everyone posted on how my adventure goes. Watch this space for tales of intrigue, sweat, adventures in buying audio hardware, wedgies, and international counter-espionage! (Ok, so I was kidding about the wedgies part... but you get the idea - this is gonna be exciting.)

-K

ACT and Pizza!

2008-12-12T22:21:00.003-05:00

I spent most of my day today helping my friend Nick shovel off his roof. He hadn't shoveled it since the beginning of the winter, so there was around three to four feet of solid snow on top of it. We only got over half of it done, despite the fact that we worked on it for several hours. I got home around 6 PM, and I was exhausted, so I took a "fifteen-minute powernap" that ended up lasting until just a few minutes ago. :P (I hate doing that. I hate taking naps in the middle of the day.)

You may have noticed the picture of the delicious pizza. About three weeks ago, I quit pizza - I had been eating so much of it that I got absolutely sick of it. I was pretty much addicted to it, too. It was bad... so I quit it.

Last Tuesday, I decided that I could start having pizza again... but instead of eating store-bought frozen pizza that is chock-full of preservatives and other nasties, I decided to make my own, and it turned out to be rather amazing. I have decided that from now on, I am going to eat less pizza, and any pizza that I eat at home is going to be lovingly hand-made. It's so much better that way. (I made it, by the way... like all by myself! Isn't everyone proud?)

Well, I've gotta be wrapping this up... I need to get to bed (again) because I have to take my ACT in the morning. (I uh, managed to not-take it last April with everyone else in my class for some reason.) I am really, really not looking forward to it. Meh. Ah well.

I'll let everyone know how I do. See you all later!

-K

Being Sick Used To Be Fun

2008-12-06T15:42:00.003-05:00

Remember when you were a little kid, and you woke up in the morning on a school day, and you just didn't feel so well? Your mom would put her hand on your forehead, and she would declare that you had a "low gray temperature" (for years that's what I thought it was, seriously), and that you should go back to bed. The rest of the day was usually spent watching movies and playing videogames while eating Jell-O and popsicles and soup. (Or, if you were me, you would run around the house excitedly until my mom said that if I didn't settle down, that I was going to school.)

But yeah... being sick used to be fun. You got waited on by your mom, you ate "comfort foods," and you basically didn't do much of anything.

All that changes when you get older, I guess. I wasn't feeling so hot last night, and when I woke up this morning, I had a pounding headache and one heck of a sore throat. I've spent most of the day in bed... for me, that's just pure misery, 'cos I like to be up and about. :P

Well, I've got a nice playlist going, at least. Music is helping to make the headache less painful, somehow.

Also worth mentioning is that when I get sick, for some reason I just spend hours trawling Wikipedia. So far today, I've learned more than I care to know about Teletubbies, early Apple iMacs, Richard Stallman, Bunny Lake Is Missing, early portable computers, school violence in the 1920s, LUXO Jr., Pinhead the Cenobite, Kriss Kross, Altair BASIC, Flower Pot Men, INXS, Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch, Seanbaby, the Microsoft Halloween Documents, pub rock, Puppet Master, and Red's Dream, among about a million other things. 0__o

See you all later... I'm going to try to sleep a bit more.

-K

Falling In Love On Accident

2008-12-05T22:20:00.004-05:00

Early this morning, I did something that I have not done in a very long time.

I wrote a song.

Not only did I write a song, but I wrote a good song. Not only was it a good song, but it was a full-length trance anthem.

And not only did I write a full-length trance anthem, I did it in one sitting - from 12 AM to 4:30 AM. (I got up at 9:30 AM - 5 hours of sleep for the win!)

Silver Lining - Falling In Love On Accident

I'm pretty tired, and I think I am coming down with some sort of sickness, and I have a basketball tournament to attend (read: watch) tomorrow, so I'm gonna cut this post short. But please download Falling In Love On Accident, and let me know what you think of it. I think I finally crossed the threshold from "kid who plays with virtual synths" to "electronic musician".

Before I go... I need to mention a few other things. First, I updated my SoundClick today for the first time since last March. Here is the address: http://www.soundclick.com/silverlining. Second, I also added a SoundClick Player Widget to the right side of my blog - from it, you can listen to any of the songs that I have on my SoundClick (although, to be honest, most of it is rubbish).

Blog to you later, everyone!

-K

28 SNAKES

2008-11-29T20:34:00.004-05:00

First of all... I must apologize for not posting yesterday. Yesterday was a pretty meh day for yours truly... I was actually sick. I didn't get to bed until 2 AM on Thanksgiving (which I blame somewhat on Lynn for keeping me up on GTalk but mostly on my new-found Loudcrowd addiction). I was really not in any shape to be writing that day - I couldn't think very clearly, and I just felt awful.

Well, those changes that I vaguely alluded to? Well, nothing is changing too violently for me now after all. Some plans that I was making kinda fell through, so nothing too major is happening.

However, this should be a pretty interesting blog post, so keep reading!

Last summer, I began regular contact with edlinfan. We've known each other for a few years via Team Mage and Sodaplay, but we really only started talking a bit last August or so. Well, he emailed me a bleepy version of "Deck the Halls" that he had made in Cakewalk. It was pretty simplistic, and I was feeling strangely artistic, so I decided to hack up the audio file he'd sent me and remix the song. Seeing as how I have strange and strict policies about not doing anything even remotely Christmas-y until the day after Thanksgiving, I filed it away, intending to post it then.

The time has come.

edlinfan - Deck the Halls (_glitch_'s Disco Rework)

Blare it from the sound system in the family room after dark, turn out the lights, and rave in the glow of blinkers on the Christmas tree. ;D

Now that I have that out of the way, I can explain the title of tonight's blog post.

Today is Saturday. Since I didn't have work (AGAIN), I got to go on bus visitation. At my church, we run buses on Sunday mornings to pick up little boys and girls (and sometimes teenagers, although it is usually harder to convince them to come) and take them to Sunday school. I work on one of the bus routes, and on Saturday mornings, we drive around to visit the children to see if they plan on coming that Sunday or not. Some of the kids don't come from the best home situations, so every now and then something incredibly unusual happens when I am at one of their houses.

Take today, for instance. Thaddeus, my visitation partner and fellow bus worker (who, by the way, just successfully proposed to his woman! Go Thad!), and I walked in to a house today that I had never been to before.

The first thing I remember was being told not to get too close to the monkey, because he would grab my coat. The next thing I remember was the monkey grabbing my coat.

I am not making this up.

The house that we were in was home to two monkeys, three or four dogs, two strange little rodents from Peru, a bunch of rats, and twenty-eight or more boa constrictors.

That's right. They had twenty-eight snakes. I guess the man of the house really, really likes snakes. He even named his daughter (who is now a teenager) Boa. I mean, seriously... at least half of those snakes were big enough to kill me; some of 'em were something like eight or ten feet long, at least. (For the record, as strange as her name and home life is, Boa is a pretty normal teenage girl.)

So while we were there, Thaddeus got talking to Boa's older sister (who had brought along two of her little daughters and a niece (who had coaxed the next-door neighbour girl to come and visit)) about the Bible and such, so we were there for a good hour. During that hour, I became a chick magnet.

0__o

Those four little girls (I'm guessing the oldest couldn't have been any older than five years old) took a liking to me. When I say "took a liking to me," I mean that they were getting in line to hug me, hugging me, then getting back in line. I uh, got hugs for like half an hour solid. It was a very bewildering experience. Boa just watched us... she was probably as confused as I was. So yeah, I'm a chick magnet now. I just hope that I start attracting older women, else some serious problems could arise. :P

After we got out of the zoo / house, our next stop was at the house of a rather faithful rider who has been coming for a few years. She has a steep driveway. It is cold and snowy here in northern Michigan.

Not surprisingly, we got stuck. We spent the next hour of our lives trying to get out of there. It was pretty bad... we ended up having to dig through the ice clear to the asphalt to get any sort of traction to get ourselves going up the hill. Eventually, some people in a huge truck had some pity on us and helped to pull us out more... but overall, it was a pretty bad experience.

So finally, after all of that, I'm home.

Well, I hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving, and I hope everyone has a wondrous Christmas season! Coming soon: The list of all the stuff that I want (read: that I want you, the reader, to buy me) for Christmas!

-K

Coming Soon...

2008-11-24T23:25:00.001-05:00

... is a large-ish post. I'll probably type it up on Friday.

A lot is going to change between now and then, I think, so I will wait until then to post.

-K

Gleeful Acts Of Mayhem

2008-11-18T17:36:00.009-05:00

Sunday was quite a day. Many unusual things happened, and I shall write about them now.

As previously posted, I woke up really early - at 4:30 AM. At first, I figured that I was going to have a very bad day. After showering, doing my devotions, getting dressed, and getting on the computer for a bit, it was time for my weekly trek down to Heidi's house.

On Sunday mornings, I run (as in literally) down the street to Heidi's house. Her mom takes us in to church so that we can ride on our bus route. I am usually there by 7 AM. We are supposed to leave as soon as I get there, but that never happens.

Well, as my luck would have it... I got there at 6:50 AM, and we didn't leave until about 7:15 AM - the time that my bus was supposed to be leaving. (Heidi's mom drives for us sometimes, but she was driving for a different bus that particular morning.) The roads were pretty slick - it habeen snowing all night - (more on slick roads later), and we got to the church about 7:25 AM.

My bus was long gone, so I located Lynn and rode the bus with her instead! That turned out to be great loads of win. It was a nice surprise - getting to hang out with a friend when you didn't think you were going to see her for a few more hours.

After the bus route, we had Sunday school, and after that, we had the main Sunday morning service. Those were rather uneventful, to be honest.

After church, I got on my bus route and explained what had happened (giving blame where blame was due, of course). A few hours later, the bus dropped me off at my house.

The Kinkles were over, as usual - Mr. and Mrs. Kinkle have been coming to our house for Sunday dinner for years. They've been good friends (Mr. Kinkle taught me just about everything I know about chainsawing, splitting, and stacking firewood), and my mother really enjoys their company.

When I arrived, my mother told me to change into clothing more suitable for outdoor activity; another church friend, Mr. White, had decided to park his Pontiac Vibe in the ditch that morning on the way to church, and we were going to go pull him out. I got some killer boots on, ditched my new jeans for plaid pants (that are most assuredly not pajamas, they are real, live pants), and we left in Mr. Kinkle's Oldsmobile Bravada.

We got to the Vibe, and Mr. White showed up in his Blazer shortly thereafter. Mr. Kinkle pulled him out of the ditch with the Blazer, and I got back in the Bravada.

Mr. Kinkle then got in. I asked him what was going on; he told me,

"You are going to drive the Vibe back to Mr. White's house."

I am 17. I do not have my license yet. (Yes, I know, I'm not too happy about it either.) Therefore, the prospect of driving was rather thrilling. I got in the Vibe, figuring that someone would tell me where Mr. White lived.

I was on the right side of the road; Mr. Kinkle was behind me in his Bravada. Mr. White, for some reason, was on the left side of the road in his Blazer. Nobody told me what to do or where to go... so after spending about three minutes trying to figure out how to turn the hazard lights off, I started driving down the road. I assumed that Mr. Kinkle would somehow guide me from behind. (That's what I get for assuming... I'd never driven down a main road on my own before up until this point.)

So, I started driving. I started turning at all the appropriate corners to get to my house; once again, I assumed that Mr. Kinkle would stop me if I did something wrong. I kept going.

I arrived at my house, turned off the car, and got out.

I looked at Mr. Kinkle. He looked at me.

"I thought you were going to guide me to their house."

"I thought you knew where you were going."

At this point, we both burst out laughing. The laughter continued for several minutes,; to be honest, I still do not know if the Whites know what happened.

Then, we had the evening service. I was there early because my mom had choir practice at 5 PM (the service doesn't start until 6 PM), so Lynn and I met up and spent some time together.

We were witness to a horrifying scene... a cow committed suicide in the 3rd and 4th grade classroom.

I will neither confirm nor deny whether or not I had a part in this... this tragedy of bovine proportions.

The family has been contacted, and the funeral will be held next week. I hear they're having burgers at the reception.

So yeah... Sunday was a pretty cool day. ;D

-K

... one of those mornings...

2008-11-16T06:22:00.003-05:00

I'm having one of those mornings.

You know... the kind where you wake up at 4:30 AM with misery-inducing pain in your teeth 'cos the dentist probably did a dodgy job of filling them, only to realize that the only pain reliever in the house other than Tylenol + codeine (which would most assuredly knock me out until noon) is caffeinated and that you won't be doing any more sleeping for a long while.

So... does anyone have any spare sympathy lying around? I could use some. (Yes, I am being an attention-monger right now.) :D

Here's hoping that this day gets better.

-K

[snow]vembr

2008-11-11T22:40:00.013-05:00

Well, it seems as if winter is finally here!

First things first: You probably noticed that there's something different about this site. If you can't put your finger on it, then you are probably 1) senile or 2) colorblind. I redid the color scheme to look wintry - you know, green, brown, gray, and white - just like the woods in the wintertime! Tell me what you all think. If I get an overwhelmingly negative response, then I'll put it back to the way it was; I copied down the hex values for the last theme's colors, so it won't take but a few minutes to fix.

These last few days have been pretty interesting.

Saturday morning, I got my beloved laptop back from Acer! It was a really good thing that I had backed up all my data - they wiped the hard drive and installed Vista again. Being a good geek, I immediately started doing a Windows XP reinstall.

The reinstall went fine at first - my laptop had XP on it when I sent it off. Then, after I started to install the drivers, stuff just stopped working. I'm not even sure why - I didn't do anything that I haven't done before. But when I tried to drag and drop an icon from my Start menu to the desktop and it didn't work, something clicked inside of me and I realized that I had enough.

I had been planning on dual-booting XP and Ubuntu 8.10, but I threw that plan out the window (no pun intended). To be honest, the only reason I was keeping XP around is to produce music, seeing as how the digital audio workstation I have been using, Image-Line FL Studio 8 XXL is Windows-only; and right now, I don't really have any sort of time to be working on music. So, I decided to go all Ubuntu.

I am having the time of my life.

So far, the only thing that isn't working is the Wi-Fi, and I plan to have that resolved by the end of the night. Everything runs faster, crashes / freezes less, and is just so much more of a joy to use. My productivity has increased exponentially - GNOME's interface is very easy to think logically within. (I tried fluxbox, and it isn't for me - it's too minimalistic for my likings, but that may change.) I feel less limited in what I can and cannot do, and as a result, Just Doing It is getting to be a lot easier.

On Sunday, I woke up in the morning and there was a few inches of snow on the ground. I absolutely love snow. Snow is to me what catnip is to cats... it makes me incredibly euphoric for no reason other than that I am around it. I like the way that the light reflects off of it. (Also, I don't like sunlight or other yellow / orange colored lights; i.e., the light that you get during spring, summer, or fall.) I like how the light filters through the clouds and takes on a beautiful shade of gray, and how that light is reflected off of the white snow. Seriously, it makes me really really happy. So of course, Sunday was a really good day for me.

After church that night, Lynn and I went outside to engage in some photography. Lately, I've been doing a lot of black and white photography; I am finding that I love black and white. There's a subtle beauty in a black and white picture that color can't come anywhere close to capturing, in my opinion.

And while I'm blathering on about photography, I encourage you to check out my Flickr. I updated it tonight for the first time since last May or so. I think I'll be using it a bit more often here in the immediate future.

Monday was... interesting. I had a dentist's appointment, so I had the day off from work.

I spent most of the morning working on getting Ubuntu running smoothly (which, to be honest, wasn't all that hard to do). After that, it was off to get drilled on. 0.o

I'd never had my teeth drilled and filled before until yesterday. I must say that I do not like any part of the process one bit. My mouth is very upset at me at the moment for an incident involving me thinking that I was dislodging a wisdom tooth when in reality, I was crushing the inside of my cheek. (I was on oral painkiller for the first time, too.) :P

The rest of yesterday was pretty meh, due to the unhappy condition of my mouth.

But today has been a different story altogether.

Today, I woke up and got ready for work. As I was on my way down the road, my mom happened to check her voicemail on her cell phone. There was a message from my boss's wife - they were having a slow day at the shop, and they weren't going to need me. So, I got the day off!

After I got home, I accomplished a rather amazing feat.

For years, I've been hoarding old computers and old computer parts. I've been keeping them in my shed. At first, it was just a hard drive here and a monitor there. Then it was "Oh, we have these 5 old computers here with Windows 98 on them, 4 of which aren't even marginally functional. Would you take them to the dumpster?" to which I replied "I SHALL HAVE THEM FOR MY VERY OWN!" This sort of thing kept up for a few years... and none of it was ever thrown away - I have a very strict policy about not throwing away electronics. (Some people save the whales... I save the old hard drives. It's all about whatever you're into, y'know? I'm like the PETA for old electronics!)

Today, I realized that those computers were so obsolete that they were more or less totally useless. (Actually, my mom kinda convinced me, but it didn't take much convincing.) Goodwill has this partnership with Dell; you bring any amount of old computer parts to Goodwill, and Dell buys it from them and recycles it.

So, I decided to lower the back seats in my van and load it up with all the old computer parts that I had.

If this were the Cold War, I would have been able to build a very functional bomb shelter out of those parts. Seriously, the entire back end of the van was FULL TO THE TOP, and that stuff is solid! I figure that I could protect at least three people from death by a nuclear bomb. 0.o

Then, this afternoon, I sold my kayak. In a relatively wacky series of events, a few years ago, my mother won an Old Town Otter kayak. I have been meaning to take it out every summer, but I've just never managed to get around to it. Well, I need a ton of cash to get my snowboarding gear out of layaway, so my mom gave me the kayak to sell on Craigslist. I posted it yesterday... a few hours later, I got a call on it, and I sold it today. :D

We dropped the computer gear off at Goodwill and headed over to the library, where I ran into Lynn. We chitchatted and made fun of kitschy books for a few hours... then I did some stuff in town with my mom, came home, did some stuff on the computer, and started typing up this massive blog post.

So life has been treating me pretty awesomely lately.

In other news... trance heavyweights Daniel Kandi and Robert Nickson have dropped a new track - Rewire. Click here for a Mediafire download link, courtesy of yours truly. Download it, listen to it, and if you love it, head on over to Audiojelly and buy some of their other tracks and support these guys! (I am not saying that as a hypocrite, either, because I paid for Rewire - all $2.45 that it cost me (actually, $2.75, counting the $.30 charge for using a debit card.))

Wow... this has been a long and epic post. I hope you all have enjoyed reading it, 'cos it's been really fun to write!

-K

I Met Bob!

2008-11-06T23:41:00.006-05:00

Well... to be honest, Lynn already really covered this one, but today, the two of us met Bob Fish of Biggby Coffee fame. He even gave us a sweet video interview!

Link to the post on Bob's blog

It was a lot of fun, and I think that it was really really cool for Lynn... see, a few months ago, she blogged about how awesome Biggby Coffee was, and Bob somehow stumbled upon his blog (see this post), and he really liked her style of writing and such. She got to tell him in person who she was, and he immediately remembered her. I'm really glad I got to be in on this whole thing with her.

To be honest, it went better than we had expected it to. We got some cool pix (head over to Lynn's blog to see more), and we got featured in a video on Bob's site.

And to top it off, I got a free grande Mocha Mocha Big Chill!

-K

PS - Yes, I do have style... I stopped in on my way to work, ok? No nasty comments about my grungy T-shirt, please.

1) Put Van By Tree 2) ??? 3) Profit!!

2008-11-06T00:20:00.006-05:00

An alarming number of incredibly odd, strange, threatening, and potentially dangerous things have been happening to me lately, so I apologize for the not-posts. (Sadly enough, I'm not making this up at all. Chances are you know what's been going on if you are close to me (or know someone who is that has a big mouth)... but if not, you likely won't find out.)

And yes, that is my van in the middle of the woods. I wasn't kidding.

-K

Streams of Consciousness

2008-11-01T22:03:00.007-04:00

Hey everyone!

Usually when I make a blog post with a title like this, it's all deep and introspective. But that's not what it's gonna be like today. Today, it's just going to be me doing a what I hope to be a good blog post about the stuff that's going on in my life. And since I haven't really got much of a theme or central topic to write about tonight, I'm just going to type about whatever comes to mind.

Right now, I'm multi-tasking. I have been multi-tasking on the computer all evening. At the moment, multi-tasking means that I'm waiting for Lynn to get online so that we can GTalk, I'm MSN-ing with edlinfan (after about a month of failing at being on MSN at the same time as him), I'm sitting here with my main GMail inbox open in another tab in Chrome (I finally managed to reply to all my emails, so it's empty), and listening to some good trance in di.fm's streaming trance channel. I apologize for the severe lack of updates; work has been killing me lately (no seriously, my health is suffering from all the bacon) and this is honestly the first time that I've been able to dedicate myself to doing the things that I normally do on the computer in quite awhile.

Tonight is Daylight Savings Time Night. That means that I get an extra hour of sleep! This is very encouraging to me; I'm really tired and stuff, so this is a Very Good Thing.

I still haven't fixed the whole 'subnorml.com' issue yet, but I plan to contact the proper people about it soon, so stay tuned!

I'm still on my mom's laptop. If you all will remember, my laptop was experiencing screen failure. Well, I got in contact with the people at Acer, and on Monday...

I got an email from them this morning stating that they've received it and that I'll be notified via email when they send it back. I'll keep you all posted.

Ohh. Last Monday...

The snow persisted until about Wednesday. It was very beautiful... almost magical, I daresay. There's something about the first snow that's almost enchanting. I love snow a lot. Prepare to read a lot of writing about snow as winter approaches (yaay!).

So on Monday night, I went out for a walk in the darkness and snow with my camera (hence the picture of wood on sticks). It's really pretty in the woods at night (don't worry, I was just at the cul-de-sac at the end of my street [which I happen to know very well], and no bicycles were involved). It was like an experience, really. Every time I go on a walk / bike ride at night while listening to music, I come back different. I'm not sure quite how to put it into words... but I feel different - almost like I've had some sort of weight lifted from my shoulders. I don't understand it, but believe me... I will be making it a point to experience the phenomenon on a regular basis, and I will be examining and evaluating the experience in hopes of finding a new light to shed upon this topic.

Well, it's been really good just to type about things for awhile. Thanks for reading, everyone. Wednesday is my day off, so I might be blogging more then... we'll have to see.

-K

Unjustifiable Feelings Of Anger And Rage

2008-10-25T01:43:00.004-04:00

These days, it seems like it's just one bloody thing after another.

Seriously though. I am wondering when the madness will end.

I was gonna take my ACT tomorrow / today. But instead of preparing for it, I screwed around for awhile before bed (awhile being well past 1:30 AM). Then, as I lay there thinking sleepy thoughts, it occurred to me that I was going to fail the ACT's math section because not only have I not touched Algebra since last May, but I have no idea where my handy-dandy graphing calculator is and I don't have any batteries for it. So I had to reschedule.

Now my test date is sometime in December. Now instead of being in Gaylord, it's in Boyne City - a 25-minute drive away. And it cost $20 to reschedule.

This is just great. Forget sleep... I'm turning up the trance (YES THAT IS RIGHT YOU HEARD ME TRANCE NOW GO AWAY AND BE PRETENTIOUS SOMEWHERE ELSE PLZ I AM TOO TIRED TO WARRANT BEING ARGUED WITH RIGHT NOW*) and studying some programming.

-K

* Just throwing that out there, just in case somebody has a problem with trance.

John's Life (Uncertain Future Remix)

2008-10-24T11:27:00.004-04:00

Well, it seems that all the cool kids are having existential crises and blogging about them, so I'm gonna jump on the bandwagon! Yaay!
_{Seriously, I'm not making fun of you, Lynn. Just couldn't help myself (can I ever?).}

So I dunno what I'm gonna do with my life now, either. Right now, I've quit college, and I'm working full time.

It's not like I don't have options - I've got those. It's not like I don't have a dream, either - I've got one of those, too. In fact, I've got a few of those.

It's just that I have the kind of dream that usually doesn't get realized. I want to be a musician.

I'm already working towards this dream - I have been for years. But I'm behind - a lot. One of my friends, Matt, has been producing since he was about 14, and he's exactly a year older than I am (we share a birthday - January 23, if anyone is interested in buying presents - buying us music from Beatport or Audiojelly is just fine, thank you). Here's some of his work. As far as I am concerned, he's about as close to being a professional producer as anyone I know.

Compared to Matt, I'd have been better off having my eardrums perforated with a drillbit. Seriously. Here's his latest work - Sarah Baker - Lucky Star (Dragor Remix).

I hear stuff like this and I want to quit altogether 'cos he's reached a level of excellence that I don't think I will ever reach, and he's not even signed yet.

So I really, really want to be a musician, but the chances of that actually happening are pretty slim-to-none.

Then there's the route of becoming a computer programmer.

I've been trying to learn code for years... well, maybe not 'trying' so much as 'convincing myself that I can't do it'. I think I could become a programmer, and that would pay the bills... but I wouldn't be able to realize my dream of becoming a musician.

Arrgh, this is all very frustrating, and I should be using this time off that I have to do something productive, like learn how to program. :P

Sorry for the short, whiny post, guys.

-K

Cook Your Pork Chops In A Toaster!

2008-10-18T23:27:00.010-04:00

First things first - much as I'd like to claim it as my own, the blog post title wasn't original. It was a mangled gem of randomness that I got as the subject line of my most recent email from my friend Heidi. Heidi doesn't have The Internets at her house, so she invades my friend Crafty Don's house and gets on his computer to email and such. I should pester her to show up and comment here sometime, shouldn't I? (Yes, John. Yes, you should.)

Well, this is my 51st post on [sub]norml! Most places have this huge celebration for the 50th thing they do - some people have 50th anniversary diamond thingys that they give to their significant others; some people do 50th anniversary barbecues (it's rib rack time somewhere, guys); and some places give away free balloons on their 50th year of doing whatever it is that they do.

But, since we're not exactly uh, very predictable, rational, or normal around here, we didn't celebrate our 50th post. (I'm denying that I failed to notice that last post was the big Five-O... me? Forget something? What are you, crazy?) So yeah... maybe we'll do something cool on Post 100. Come back in like... what, at this rate, about three years and we'll see what happens on Post .1K!

The above picture is yours truly engaging in a strange and wonderful activity that I like to call 'getting my picture taken while looking like a homeless guy.' This isn't the first time I've done it, either. It all started one cold day in Niagara, while on Senior Trip...

And since I'm in The Mood now, I'm gonna post another pic from me on Senior Trip. However, instead of looking homeless, I'm at the top of the Empire State Building wishing that I were at a disco / rave instead:

Man, this post is off track. But it's nice to finally be posting a ton of stuff that's by and large meaningless in and of itself, because it's fun to give a new perspective (and sometimes a dose of humor)to everyday events. I finally feel like I'm really blogging again.

So today was a little off center and out of tune. (Yes, I am referencing a song by a band. I do that all the time with obscure music. One of these days, I'm gonna do that in public and a complete stranger is gonna say "OH WOW YOU LISTEN TO THAT TOO?" and he/she is gonna get a huge and unexpected hug. Cookies and juice (read: cheap Oreo-ripoff creme sandwich cookies that taste like undershorts and watery Kool-Aid) for the first person to tell me the correct song and band name to the aforementioned reference.) This morning, I went and bought a new coat. I'd link to it, but I can never, ever find web links for the clothes I buy. But it's by Burton, and it's really nifty. It was marked down from $220 to $110, so I got a good deal. It's gray with some purple and white accents, and it's got a removable liner that doubles as a track jacket! It's really awesome.

Then, I got to bus meeting. I ended up having to go visit my bus kids with Mr. Lancaster. He doesn't work on our bus route, but my bus captain had to work. It was kinda weird. We got a little lost in Lakes of the North a couple of times.

After that, I went over to Holy Grounds for a little while. I hung out with Lynn, Jacky, and Foresty. Then, I ran (literally) to Culver's and grabbed a burger. After that, I went to MC Sports (again). I met Lynn there, and we looked at snowboarding gear. I am going to put a setup on layaway soon.

We went back to Holy Grounds. Lynn had a song on her computer that I'd sent her that I wanted on my PSP. However, since I didn't have my USB cable with me, since her laptop won't accept my Memory Stick Pro Duo, and since my PSP refuses to access my GMail account, I had to jump through some hoops. I had to download FileZilla onto her laptop, upload the song to my FTP, then download it. However, since the wireless internet at Holy Grounds is so dodgy, I ran (again, literally) to Culver's again and downloaded it there. It was worth it! When I do stuff like that, it makes it seem like life is a videogame - I make these little geeky quests for myself, and then I do them, and then I'm happy. :D

The next significant event that happened after the Song Downloading Adventure was that we went on the college activity, which was a trip out to Boyne Mountain. They have one of the chairlifts open for sight-seeing purposes. The fall colors were in full effect, so it was really cool. Oh, fine... here's a picture:

So we (Lynn and I) got there and we hit up the chairlift, as planned. Since she hasn't yet brought her wintry coat up from her house in Goodrich / Gladwinrich / Sandwich / Goodwill / wherever-it-is-that-she-lives-downstate (and since it was rather cold), Lynn had had the foresight to bring a warm quilt / blanket, which we shared.

We got to the top and since there wasn't much going on, I climbed inside this little shelter-thing and did my homeless guy impersonation (see top of post). Then, we rode back down again. I'd never downhill loaded on a chairlift before, so it was actually a lot of fun. It seems faster when you're going downhill.

We got to the bottom, jumped back in line, and went up again! :D

On our way up, at least four (4) members of the college faculty told us that 'we shouldn't have ridden it up again!' They hadn't really bothered to tell us otherwise, to be honest. Besides, what were we supposed to do - jump off and run down? I think not. A few college students asked us if we were going up again. We told them 'no.' :D

When we got to the top again, Lynn was really cold, so I removed the outer shell of my coat so she could wear it. I wore my inner shell, and we again blanket-shared on the way down. At least ten (10!) people going up the lift let us know that we were very smart to have brought a blanket. I told Lynn, "This blanket obviously makes people think that we're intelligent. We should start taking it more places! Like we're at Burger King - 'OH WOW BLANKIE THOSE PPL R SO SMART!'."

We got to the bottom and received a few impatient-ish looks from some people. Then we got back on the bus and rode back to Gaylord.

When we got back to Holy Grounds, I gave Lynn some money, and she and Jacky went to Burger King and got food. We fared sumptuously on burgers. (Actually, I think Lynn had a salad, but I dunno.)

At Holly Grounds, they were showing a movie on the big screen TV - specifically, Open Season. I'm a movie-hater, really, and for lots of reasons. It wasn't hard to hate Open Season. Here are some reasons from off the top of my head:

It had a very strong 'HUNTING IS TEH BAD!' vibe. In my opinion, hunting is just fine if it's done properly (i.e. in a sportsmanlike fashion - spotlighting deer = fail). Hunting puts food on the table. Hunting is a noble activity to participate in. Guns are good, if placed in the right hands. If you disagree with my views, too bad... I'm no hunter, but I think that it's silly to say that all guns are bad and that all hunting is wrong and unethical. Hey, deerslaying is WAY more ethical than eating battery chickens, so throw away your McNuggets or shut up. (This is not aimed at Tim, who is a vegetarian and who is anti-gun. No offense, bro... I know you live what you preach. Just file this with my trance-lovin' and treat it the same way.)

It was very predictable - you could pretty much tell what was going to happen next without too much difficulty. Every movie cliche that exists was exploited to its fullest - the whole thing was really, really lacking in originality, bringing me to my next point...

It was a direct and obvious ripoff of the classic CGI cartoon Ice Age - small and annoying supporting character buddies up with big and mature lead character; supporting character creates a conflict; lead character gets upset with supporting character and lets him down / gives up on him; lead character has a total eclipse of the heart and reconciles; supporting and lead characters join forces to defeat a greater evil. It used the term 'herd' to refer to their friendship (sound familiar?). Heck, it's even got the really-small-punching-bag-character - little bunnies are the new Skrat. Is nothing sacred?!

But, in spite of the rancid movie, I managed to have fun by hanging out with Lynn and Jacky.

Then, I went home. My mom picked up a new and awesome phone for the house. I might post about it later - there's no telling now, is there?

Oh. While I'm going on and on and on and on, note that I have linked to Andrew Ford's blog, Interstellar Bump. This guy is producing some awesome music - go over there, download it, and leave him comments! Heck, next time he drops a full track, I might just go into music-blogger-guy mode and do a music blog style post about it. You never know.

See you all around. It's been really, really good to blog like this again. I'm gonna have to do it more often!

-K

<--! blog post title goes here !-->

2008-10-16T09:15:00.005-04:00

Life has been full of an unprecedented number of ups and downs (and lefts and rights and diagonals and well you get the point) lately, so I apologize for not keeping my blog updated on a regular basis.

One such aberration to my regularly scheduled existence is that I'm having to quit college. I can't exactly say why here on this blog, 'cos I don't want everyone to know all about why I can't stay in... but if you're close to me at all, you either a) know by now or b) will know very soon when I tell you.

I'm really going to miss my friends. College was my social life; now my social life consists of a) GTalk, b) church three times a week, and c) the guys at work. And since I spend most of my time at work now, it's not like I can be on GTalk all the time.

But, on the flip side, I'll have more time to spend on the computer, so I'll be able to start producing and audiosketching and collabing again. (Oh, and I might get this blog regular again.) But yeah... there's even a new project in the works as far as my music is concerned - details will be released when I have more done on it.

Well... I should really get going here - I need to work on learning more C#.

-K

Vacant

2008-10-13T23:51:00.003-04:00

My, but it's getting a touch dusty around here, eh?

Well, first things first - if you look to the right, you'll see a new addition to my blogroll. My geek mentor has started his blog back up. He's really smart, and he takes the time to routinely harass me to get off my lazy rear and do some code, so he's a really awesome guy. Anyone reading this that likes programming / code / general geek-fu needs to go check it out and comment.

This post is about to devolve into exhaustion-induced whining about how I don't have time for anything anymore, so I am going to try to steer it in a different direction.

Oh yeah... my web hosting (gratis, compliments of my geek mentor) is going to be down for a bit soon. I'm backing up the Nok-Out website and all my files that I've got hosted as I type this.

Know what? I'm going to do some exhaustion-induced whining about how I don't have time for anything anymore.

*whines* I am tired and I don't have time for anything anymore!

Sadly enough, even though my mind is buzzing with stuff right now, this is seriously all I have in me for tonight.

And that being said, I leave you with this:

THREE-HANDED FAIL

-K

Lapse

2008-10-08T08:44:00.003-04:00

My life is still for most intents and purposes a wreck. I am posting because right now, the other "productive thing" that I could be doing is installing and playing Descent 3 (which, to be honest, isn't a bad idea and is probably on the schedule for... uh, sometime not too long after I hit "Publish Post").

I just finished my American Literature midterm. I did okay - I'm expecting a medium to high B. I would rather have scored a lot higher, of course, but I didn't study much, so I'm happy with how I did.

There's a really good reason why I haven't been blogging or replying to emails and PMs. In a rather unusual twist of fate, I got a job.

My mother and I were in Wal-Mart one evening after church. We ran into some friends from church that we hadn't talked to in awhile. Well, they happen to own and run a local auto diesel shop.

I am a computer geek. I spend most of my life behind a screen, hitting buttons and thinking about stuff. I don't know anything about cars. I mean, I don't even drive yet - I won't have my license until I am 18 (January 23, 2009 is D-Day). But I know how to take orders, I know how to follow instructions, and I know how to learn.

Apparently, Mr. Arlt knew this, because when I asked him if he needed help around the shop, he told me to stop by the shop the next day.

Eighteen or so hours after I asked him for the job, I was employed. I started Monday.

I'm not making as much as I was painting, but I don't care - working in a garage is infinitely more interesting than painting. Seriously - painting consists of staring at a wall all day while you wipe stuff on it. I've learned a ton of stuff already, and I've only worked two days at the job.

For instance - yesterday, I learned how to replace the tires on a truck.

And when I say 'truck,' I mean 'semi'. *pauses for effect*

And that's just the beginning. This job is about as good as it gets - I can more or less work as much as I want, I'm learning a totally new trade, and I get to play about in grease.

Well, I'm running out of intelligent things to blather on about, so I'll end this post. I'll let you all know how Descent 3 goes. :D

-K

I Never Finish Anyth

2008-10-03T22:36:00.002-04:00

You know when you set out to do a million things in a single day? Know how you usually only get one of them done and how you make a huge mess of everything else?

Know how you get behind, and the more you don't do, the less you want to do?

I'm there right now. I've got some catching-up to do.

Posting of long walls of text broken by the occasional sound, picture, or video will resume when I get my life back in order, and only God knows how long it's gonna be before that happens.

-K

Everything Is Happening, And All At Once

2008-10-02T10:50:00.005-04:00

Wow. Uh, my life's been pretty ridiculously crazy lately, hence the obvious lack of blogging. Here's a list of what's been going on for the last few days...

I had a serious stalker commenting on my blog and on Lynn's blog yesterday - it turned out to be her little bro, Jordon. Email him with your feelings of outrage.

I ended up writing that Fibonacci sequence program. Download it, run it, and if you can figure out what a Fibonacci sequence is without Google, then you win.

edlinfan (also referred to by himself as 'E^'), one of my mates from my days at Sodaplay, read and was amused by my tale of the Italian Polka Rave. As a fellow-producer, he felt the need to make a song that would encapsulate such an event. Well, he did.

edlinfan - Italian Polka Rave (Download)

Lynn and her blogging ways got a shout-out from the CEO of Biggby Coffe. Go comment on his post for your thirty-four seconds of fame!

I'm sure there's more, but I can't think of it at the moment.

-K

Head Wound!

2008-09-30T11:54:00.003-04:00

First and foremost, here's a blog shout-out to my bro Geekthras. He's got a pretty rawkin' awesome blog that has been referred to as "xkcd, but in stream-of-consciousness format." (Warning: May contain a bit of foul-ish language. I assume no responsibility for anything Geekthras says (and neither does he).)

But anyway, you are probably by this time wondering why there is blood running down the side of my head.

Last night, I decided to go on an epic bike ride.

In the woods.

After dark.

In the rain.

On a trail that I didn't know very well that wasn't DNR-patrolled.

That turned out to be a rather not-wonderful idea.

Indeed, I was riding down the aforementioned non-DNR-patrolled trail (i.e. not routinely cleaned and maintained). All was going swimmingly until my front wheel struck a log. I wasn't paying attention to the ground, because I was looking for the trail that I planned to turn onto next. Well, I went over the handlebars. Then I hit the ground.

Then, the back of my bike swung around and smote me with epic force on my head.

When I got home, I looked in the mirror, and lo and behold - blood!

Needless to say, I'm not going to be riding after dark on unfamiliar territory any more.

I was weak for the rest of the evening... I managed to lose a bit of blood. Head wounds bleed forever, regardless of severity.

I actually wrote that Fibonacci sequence program, but I have no way of uploading it to my server right now, so I'll post it later.

Well, the words just aren't flowing too well today, so I'm gonna end this post and maybe get some lunch. See you all around!

-K

Creativity Overload

2008-09-29T01:44:00.006-04:00

I made a Big Mistake.

About midnight, I decided to go out for a quick adrenalin-booster of a bike ride with my dog. We only went up and down the street for about twenty minutes, but we did it with incredible speed. Therefore, tired though I may be, I am hopelessly plagued with insomnia right now.

I've got so many projects that I want to work on that I don't know where to start. Here's a partial list:

Build a Sodaplay model for the first time in well over a year

Write a program in C# to output all the Fibonacci numbers under 300 (which will be used in creating the Sodaplay model... I have an idea...)

Write a lengthy blog post about a few new ideas I have regarding human communication (well I don't know if they're new or not, but I came up with them on my own with a bit of help from someone who doesn't even know that they helped me yet)

Clear off my bed (it has managed to accumulate junk all day long, and there's nowhere to sleep!)

Work on a song for Heart-Shaped Box, the new musical project that Tim and I are currently doing - I've got this awesome concept for a song in my head, but I haven't been able to work on music in days 'cos I've been so busy

Read more of House of Leaves - that book is amazingly long and I've barely dented it thus far

Sleep, eventually

Indeed, it seems that I won't get hardly any of this done tonight. And I don't think that I will even attempt most of it. However, clearing off my bed and sleeping are not up for debate - those are going to get done. And while I'm at it, I think that I will start on the Fibonacci program, just to say that I started something.

I'll post about my progress on these creativity quests as the progress happens.

-K