I’ve added back in the “Music” section, which isn’t complete yet, but it’s almost all of the lyrics to songs I’ve written in my lifetime.  I haven’t written in years, and I’m hoping seeing all of my past stuff on the site every time I come to will inspire me to write something new.

So, there you have it.  Read away. Comments are turned off for the lyrics, but feel free to send me a message if you’ve got any feedback, or even comment on this post.

Note of warning, try not to read anything from the ’90s, I was just a kid and wrote cheesey meaningless crap back then.  2000 and 2001 were good years for me, at least I think so.  Anyway, enjoy. Or not.

I use it to rip music, and store it.  Between Christine and I, we’ve got just over 80 gigs of music, which is all digital now. (I’m sure there’s plenty more CDs I opted not to rip, when I ripped ‘everything’ we own.)

I have one playlist, and I only created that so I could sync it to my iPhone.

I’m a terrible iTunes user. I know.

I’m home alone this weekend, and just upgraded to iTunes and decided to give this “Genius Mix” thing a shot.  I’m usually too impatient to wait for it to finish “delivering” results.  After all, it takes a while for iTunes to index that much music.

I let it finish (it took about 6 minutes or so), and have to say it’s pretty accurate.  It created 12 playlists for me. 12 Genius Mixes, I should say.  Here’s what it grouped, based on the 4 albums it makes thumbnails out of:

• Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Green Day, Nickelback
• Queen, Led Zeppelin, The Who, Aerosmith
• Disturbed, Dream Theater, Metallica, System of a Down
• Foo Fighters, No Doubt, Lifehouse, (more) No Doubt
• Kelly Clarkson, Christina Aguilera, Madonna, David Cook
• Bon Jovi, Tesla, Firehouse, Poison
• REO Speedwagon, Billy Talent, Waltham, Hits of the ’80s
• Van Halen, Queens of the Stone Age, Journey, Guns ‘n’ Roses
• Linkin Park, Papa Roach, Limp Bizkit
• Katy Perry, Jason Mraz, Howie Day, Teddy Geiger

Not bad mixes.  It’s certainly better than just playing all 13,000 tracks on random and skipping ten in a row, till I find something I like.

I’m gonna give the Genius Mixes the benefit of the doubt and let them play for a while.

Another new year brings all sorts of new things, for a lot of people. New Year’s Resolutions are a big thing, of which I made quite a few, and am doing okay 6 days into the year.   That’s a good thing.

I’ve begun the official job hunt yesterday.   Now that the end of the year’s happened, more people will be filling open jobs, and I’ve got to get one pretty soon.   As much design work as I’ve been doing the last 6 weeks, I’m getting pretty bored sitting at home all day.   Hopefully something good comes along soon.

As you may have read in an earlier post, I’ve been typing up buttloads of lyrics over the last few months.   I’m about halfway done.   I think, at last check, I had completed the J lyrics.   And am going alphabetically. So it’ll be a while longer before anyone can get to that page, and read some of them. (Unless Google already indexed the hidden page, and you happen to search for something I’ve written about.)

There’s still been no update on the Peerflix/LiveUniverse situation.   I’m giving them to the end of the month to contact me to pay me, or I’m going to Channel 5′s “Buyer Beware” to see if they’ll do a piece on the situation.   From what I’ve read, there’s at least 60 people that have been vocal about being screwed out of money.

We launched the new design on MovieSnobs back in late December, ahead of schedule. I think it came out pretty nice, and there’s a bunch of new feature which I’m proud of.   It may look pretty similar to the last design we had, and that’s intentional.   It’s just more streamlined now, with more information, and a better UI to help find stuff faster on the site. (At least I think so, anyway.)

That’s about all I can update on my life right now.   Not much else is going on in the life of me.

You may have noticed that the “music” section of the website’s gone.   You’re not dillusional, it really is gone.   I took it down, while I redo it.   I started typing up the lyrics to all of the songs I’ve written.

It was misleading before, since there were only 12 songs up there, that were the 12 most recent.   In actuality, I think I’ve written well over a thousand.   I’ll know for sure, once I’m done typing them all.

As it stands now, they’re in various manila folders and hanging file folders on the floor in our office at home.   I’ve typed up about 30 so far, and haven’t had time to keep going, with all the other things going on.   I’ll get there, I promise.

Other than that, status quo.   Websites are still going well, working a redesign for MovieSnobs that’s about 70% done.   Rock Band 2 still kicks ass.   Christine still loves her job.

Life is good.   Nay, life is great.   And “Chuck” comes back tonight, and I love that show.   Now, if I can fix my internet at home, and get onto XBox Live to see what this big update today was, I’ll be happy.   Hopefully it’s the Netflix integration, which’d rule, since I just signed back up last week.   Online streaming is pretty bad-ass.

As any good Dream Theater fan would (I’ve got 30+ of their CDs), I immediately turned on the XBox 360 when I got home from work last night, and began feverishly downloading the new track pack (as I do most every Tuesday.)

My cockiness got the best of me: “I can do this on Expert, no problem.”   After all, John Petrucci’s only one of the best guitar players on the planet. No problem.

Fail.
Saved by the wife.
Fail again.
“I can’t friggen do this, I gotta practice it.”
Quit.

Dream Theater – Constant Motion is not for the faint of heart.   If you download it, good luck.   If you’re not a full time Rock Band pro, don’t bother trying expert on any instrument.   It’s not happening.

Why did Harmonix make some of the new downloadable songs so difficult? Simple.   Because they can.   Making songs that are extremely difficult, that don’t impact the outcome of the actual “career” mode of the game, make people strive to be better without making the game impossible to beat.

Well done, Harmonix.   I look forward to Rock Band 2.   Oh, and please hire my wife for the Production Assistant job she interviewed for.   Thanks.

I’ve taught myself how to build websites, fix electronics, work with computers, and countless other things that I’m proud of.   I sometimes feel like I’m too hard on myself, always striving to be better at things, and I get angry when I fail.

I’ve started thinking about these things lately, not sure why. I just look back on all the years that have come and gone, and wonder where they went.   Time really does fly.   Christine and I are about to celebrate our 5th anniversary.   It’s been an amazing five years, and I can’t even imagine how it went by so fast.

Time really does go by faster when you’re an adult.   I’m not complaining, having time go by faster has helped me make it to Thursday of this week already.   Though, now that I’m looking at the clock, the time’s ticking by, minute by minute by minute.

I learned a valuable lesson: Windows Media Player rips music much easier than iTunes.

With iTunes, you have to drop the CD in, wait for it to get recognized, then click the “Import” button, or click “Yes” on the “Do you want to import” dialog.

With Windows Media Player, you just drop the disc in, and close the drive. As long as you’re on the “Rip” tab in your player, it auto-rips the disc, and ejects it when done.   Then you grab it, and drop the next one in.

I did about 200 discs while watching The Incredible Hulk and Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay over the weekend.

I’ve still got a ton more to go, but it’s a start.   I wish I could remotely rip discs from work, to home. That’d be a big help, but I don’t think technology’s that advanced, yet.

So far, we’ve got about 39.5 gigs of music on the new terrabyte drive (aptly named “music”), with I’d guess another 100 gigs to go.   Good thing I bought a big drive, we buy a lot of music.