This is my very first journal entry. And I love this journal website idea! I am really excited about it. Maybe now I will actually write out many of my thoughts and spiritual experiences I have that I tend to never write out. I am going to just vent, because I need to; but first I will introduce myself.        ...

Why does Microsoft insist on making life so hard for developers? There are web standards, Microsoft, in case you missed the memo.  Please adhere to them.  It would do EVERYONE good. Here's yet another hack to get IE to work in cases where min-height is used (according to my browsers, this still doesn't work in even IE8) I found t...

Okay...  So lately the studio has been getting some serious upgrades, thanks to all of you who have been supporting me, and creating awesome music. About a month ago, I was chatting it up with a good friend, Jesse Crowley, about how in the world we were going to sell our fabulous new Herod the Fink album this season.  You see, there ar...

From the beginning of this chapter, it's obvious that Christ means business when he makes covenants.  Causing entire books to be written, and then keeping 100% of everything that is written means something. I wonder why the people thought that Christ's coming "destroyed" the prophets?  Interesting. I love verse 9.  &q...

Last week was a week of upgrades! The studio was able to finally get serious (well, at least semi-serious) about the way we look. Previously, the studio "rack" was nothing more than a cut-out backwards bookshelf bought at Walmart, and with all the stuff we were able to upgrade last week, it was finally time to buy a real rack. We...

Take a moment, now, and think about what you'd do if you had access to unlimited funds, and didn't have to "work" another day of your life. I once heard a multi-millionaire state that, "money brings out with clarity, that which is inside you."  If you love to watch football with a passion, then having loads of money would...

Okay...  So I own and operate a recording studio, and I've been using an M-Audio delta 1010 as my primary audio interface.  This provides me 8 channels of simultaneous audio streams coming into my workstation.  Up until about a month ago, this has been very sufficient. About a month ago, I ordered another Delta 1010, and planned o...

Linux + gentoo + jack-audio-connection-kit + dbus use flag enabled = doesn't work any more. Okay... Just a personal note to remember. DO NOT COMPILE jack-audio-connection-kit WITH THE dbus FLAG ENABLED!  IT REMOVES jackd WHICH IS WHAT  qjackctl USES TO START THE JACK SERVER. So... Unless I'm missing something, this is pretty much th...

Aside from being booked solid last week, Advanced Budget Studios has made some progress on the techinical side as well.  Up until now, we have only been able to handle 8 simultaneous streams of audio into the workstation, however, due to the success we've been having, we saw a need to upgrade.  We now have two M-audio delta 1010's synced ...

Some of you may know that I've been working on a Christmas music project called "Herod the Fink" with someone who has been steadily becoming a great friend of mine - Jesse Crowley. This started September of 2009, when he called me up and asked me if I wanted to work on a few Christmas songs he had been cooking up, and I accepted.  We...

Ya know, I sure am glad that Nephi wrote verse 22 of this chapter.  In all of scripture, this is the only chapter which uses the word "flaxen" to describe the way Satan tempts us. Flax is a fiber from a plant which is used to make linen.  Linen isn't known for its strength. Satan indeed does "lead us" with very ent...

I just realized that it's been a month since I last wrote about the Book of Mormon.  Man, if I'm gonna finish this thing, I'm gonna have to pick up the pace! First thing I noticed with this chapter is that when Alma got the revelation concerning the spirit world, it seems that he was just asking a curious question, "What happens to the ...

I run a server in my home.  It's nothing more than a hobby-type server that runs gentoo Linux, a couple of web-sites, my myth-tv installation for my home-theater, and all the family files.  I also have about 150 compressed movies on there, all of which can certainly take up a lot of hard drive space. I started this project back in 2004...

Where do I even begin with this chapter? I remember reading it and understanding it for the first time during my mission.  It was really cool realizing that all of this stuff in this chapter is written about in history books!  It talks about Christopher Columbus discovering America, the Revolutionary War, the Bible, the coming of the Bo...

Hmm....  I'm kind of tired right now, but I figured I needed to read some scriptures... This time around, I realize how being under the rule of a tyrant would be absolutely horrible.  In this case, Alma was under the rule of one (or more) of the Amulonites - which were his wicked peers when they were the king's priests.  Talk about...

This was in response to people NOT SUPPORTING OUR TROOPS AND VETERANS.  When the people calling our veterans scumbags and persecuting the people defending them - can defend our nation better than our veterans and soldiers, then they can say something.  and NOT BEFORE!!!! THE ARM OF OUR NATION! READ RIGHT NOW!!! and let me know wh...

"Is this week already over??"  Wow...  I guess it's Saturday night.  Yup. This week, the studio has been packed.  Full house.  Monday was the only day without sessions, and that was on purpose.  Tuesday through Saturday was full, and that's the way we like it here at Advanced Budget Studios. Yesterday and...

As an adolescent I had a dream... I had a dream of becoming a drummer for a rock-band. I was told that this dream probably would not come true due to the large amount of people trying to do the same thing and that the odds were definitely against me. Well... Lately in my life I have had the opportunity to be a part of two rock bands. One o...

The first thing I thought of when I read this chapter, besides, "Holy moly, it's like almost midnight and I'm gonna dive into Jacob 5??", was the following: In Jacob 4:1, he states how hard it was for them to keep plates, due to the difficulty in engraving.  Well....  With that in mind, I asked myself, "How important is J...

Three days ago my inlaws arrived here, and the living arrangements were such that Annie, Craig, and their two wonderful children got to bunk up with us here in Springville. I don't want to go into detail as to the exact happenings of this weekend, but I'd find it hard to maintain peace within unless I wrote a bit about something which I could im...

Although I use the Internet and Linux to make a living, there's still a bunch I have to learn.  One of those things happens to be the most popular ad affiliate program in the world. Last week, I was doing a bit of research, and found that I could be making a bit of money using google adsense.  Enough to get rich?  Heavens no, but ...

"Yielding Our Hearts to God"  or   "Change of Heart" - Man, I love this talk. I wish I could tell you all how much this talk means to me.  When I heard it the first time, I was with noisy kids, so I didn't get much out of it, but the next time I listened to it was during lunch, and I was alone.  I...

**UPDATED ARTICLE HERE** (for using the new firewire stack) Okay.  I got my new Echo Audiofire12 3 days ago, and I now have it fully functioning on all 12 ports.  I don't have MIDI working yet, but I haven't really tried on that one. Here's what I did to get it working. First, I'm using the 2.6.33-rt kernel. I enabled the OLD FIRE...

Last Friday, we had the awesome opportunity to meet a fairly incredible group of girls.  They call themselves The Blue Aces, and after having listened to them strum a few chords, I'd say they've earned their title. Their manager contacted me after hearing a few samples from Advanced Budget Studios, and was interested in getting a pilot song...

I've never noticed that by the way Christ speaks to his father, he is displaying total and complete humility. If Christ submits himself to the will of the Father so willingly and completely, who are we to suppose we are above doing so ourselves? "It is very enlightening and touching to me to consider how Jesus talks to His Father. In His g...

While my wife and I were watching The Office tonight, we got wind of President Obama being on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, so we decided to stay up to watch it. Well, I just got done watching it, and before I forget, I have to write down some initial thoughts. To begin, I am by absolutely no means whatsoever any source of any credible politi...

I got married like a bit more than 5 years ago, and I'm lovin' it. But, during those five years, I've had some footage gracefully shot and donated to me by my friend Ty Swartzlander on my wedding day.  On that day, Ty told me he was going to put something together and give it to me later, but instead, I told him I'd really, really, real...

As a S197 Mustang GT owner, I never thought I'd write about this particular subject, but then again... ...I had never actually seen one on the road, either. All I have to say is - Wow. Dodge definitely did their research on this one.  Although it was all due to the success of the S197 mustang body style, of course, but man... That car ...

Okay... So with the latest update to xorg-server (I think it was 6.5), xdm stopped loading XFCE4 and I couldn't get it to load anything but TWM. Here was the problem: Somehow, an important file got removed.  The file is this one: /etc/env.d/90xsession The contents of the file is simply: XSESSION="Xfce4" With that...

I'm still kind of in awe of it all, but ....  holy cow..  Samuel Jason Jones has arrived! We got into the car around 4:30pm after Sarah had been in labor since around 6:00am.  Wow... What a trooper. We arrived here at the hospital at 5:00pm anticipating his arrival around 10:00pm or so...  Yeah right...  Samuel had ot...