one of the coolest things I’ve heard in weeks and weeks and weeks. Built to Spill, one of the greatest bands you could possibly know, is playing in Bend!!! Word. big time kick-assness right here in Bend. One of the bands I absolutely NEED to see. Yes. word.

So, the two-man improvisational electro-jazz outfit my guitar player buddy and I have talked about for years became reality tonight. In my garage, with my XP laptop running Reason 2.0, and Jason busting out on my Pan ES-335 copy, we jammed something fierce tonight. It was completely awesome, and we didn’t really even know what the fuck we were doing. Sometimes, with music, that’s better though.

It’s incredibly akin to the tracks I banged out years ago with Cakewalk and then Acid. But with far more depth. Plus, since I’m actually PLAYING Reason, the percussion parts have a much more natural feel than the looped stuff I got by with in the past. Live drum machine programming is something of a bitch. But it’s also not something one hears every day.

It will grow into something quite cool, methinks. I already have a better feeling about it than I did my last band. Fully awesome. I wished we would have recorded it.

maybe next tuesday.

So, Cid loves his Mac. Sure, it’s vintage, but hardly anyone gets to start with a BMW M5, you have to start with an 87 325i. Anyway, I love that he loves it. I have been convinced about Macs my whole life, but I knew they could finally be appreciated a much larger audience with the unveiling of Mac OS X. Actually, X 10.2 was really where it took off, and became a usable, kick-ass OS. And today, it is hands-down the best on the market. Apple released 10.4.1 yesterday, and my G5 is back. 10.4 was pretty buggy, but I noticed improvement instantly after the 10.4.1 install/reboot process.

So now, Cid will learn that he needs at least a G4. Which is okay, because they can be had on eBay for a song, and that truly is the baseline performance standard for today’s Apple hardware. If he can wait, I have one I can ship him near the end of the year. But that reminds me….I need a new one at home! My aging G4 500 Dual Processor is really starting to chap ye old balls. I dream of a G5….please put it in the PowerBook! I really don’t want to buy a desktop computer again, since mass storage via FireWire is so cheap and accessible, and it would be quite easy to implement a docking solution so that I could still have a big screen to stare at at home.

Macs Macs Macs Macs….

/geeky mac love fest

Okay already, I’ll post again.

I have been working too long and too hard to have anything worthwhile to say. Mad people are out of my office, and thusly, I am picking up slack from every angle. I enjoy that the days pass quickly when I’m playing the deadline game, but it really takes its toll.

It’s still hard for me to believe that I have found myself in such a go-go-go, high-stress line of work; it wasn’t that long ago when I couldn’t have dealt with anywhere near this amount of pressure. Nowadays, it just keeps me on my toes. I am incredibly thankful that I have learned to better manage stress and expectations and such. It has done wonders for me. I think in some way I learned by watching my dad suffer from stress mismanagement.

Case in point: my dad and I used to golf a lot, especially during my summer vacation. I remember when I was younger, I would get frustrated and stop having fun, wishing I could play better or at least just adequately. My dad always had a hard time having fun playing golf. He was almost always frustrated with himself or his game. So he would often tell me, in quite a stern voice, things like “we’re out here to have fun damnit!” Though he had a hard time following his own advice.

It took me a while to be able to golf again after he died, but now when I do, I have a blast, and never getting worked up about how I’m playing actually allows me to play better. A bitch of a way to learn a lesson, but there’s no better way to make sure you remember it.

Nothing like making yourself well up with tears (at work) while writing a blog post. Damn.

Anyway, my day is just about done here at the shop, so I can go home and play with my wife and daughter and cook dinner and read some crazy Elmo book for the 4,962nd time (she still loves it).