Alright... So one of my hard drives failed in my backup server LVM array, and I received the new replacement disk today. So, I turn on my computer and even though the volume group isn't initialized (due to the missing disk), it still exists, and has all the other drives in the array still held captive. So, this is how to completely destroy your...

Sugarstone, a signed band of Advanced Budget Studios is gonna make it big-time!  Go and show your support for Sugarstone by attending the biggest Battle of the Bands concert in Utah!  The show starts at 10:00am and goes well into the evening. Details can be found here. ...

I'm always pleased and grateful that the Spirit comes so quickly when I read the Book of Mormon.  Sometimes I forget how much I love how the Spirit of God makes me feel and think and act. Anyway...  Great chapter this was.... Of all of the stories in the Book of Mormon, I think I like the one of the 2000 Stripling Warriors the best.&n...

Onward and upward towards the goal of finishing the whole Book of Mormon, writing about each and every chapter, by the end of this year. This chapter was all about war, and strategy.  I didn't find anything particularly enlightening about it, yet I firmly believe that each and every word written in the Book of Mormon has a meaning - and will...

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...

Stupid Kingmen.  Nothing like having your own people fight against you in the middle of a war.  One thing I noticed this time, which I had forgotten, is how Moroni followed the correct line of authority in order to do what he had to do with the kingmen.  He asked Pahoran for the right to take care of them, and Pahoran gave it to him....

Here I Am New year in a new town, new state, new sisters and brothers in a new ward and I feel wonderful! To end the year 2009, in December I went to the Temple in North Houston and was so warmly embraced by the Holy Spirit I could hardly contain my excitement. Tomorrow, I make the first Temple trip in the New Year. And I am ecstatic! Last mont...

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...

 If the fortifications that Moroni built in the beginning were enough to astonish the Lamanites to the point that they were afraid to fight, and then failed to kill even one Nephite, while they themselves were slain to the tune of over 1,000 - I can only imagine what the additional fortifications did...  Goes to show that a good Christian...

Okay...  So this chapter wasn't brimming with the deep doctrines of the Gospel, but it did have a few nuggets. I would absolutely love to see some sort of diagram of exactly what the Nephites did to build up their cities.  I have so many ideas in my head of what it could have been, but to what extent that's true, I have no idea.  I...

Okay...  I've got to start off here on a postive note, or I'll bring up all sorts of crappy emotions which I'd just rather not get into right now.  I'm sure they'll be brought up sooner or later, but for now, I'd like for you to just take a moment and sup in the absolute goodness found in the photograph on your right. Yeah...  Just ...

This chapter, to me, is all about following the Spirit. Verses 3 and 5 are among the most potent in all of scripture. "Feast upon the words of Christ; for behold, the words of Christ will tell you all things what ye should do." "...the Holy Ghost ... will show unto you all things what ye should do." Doesn't get any clear...

For some reason, I love the commandment of paying tithing.  It's probably one of the top 10 commandments of which I have a burning testimony. I love this quote (as well as Jacob 2:19) "President Heber J. Grant stated, “I want to say to you, if you will be honest with the Lord, paying your tithing and keeping His commandments, He...

If you have had an email account for more than a month, chances are you get more spam than you get legitimate email. Well, I have an email account which averages about 500 spams per day.  I don't really care about this account, but that's beside the point. Even though I usually never give spam mails a second thought, today I decided to c...

So, again, something kind of odd.  Mormon was 16 when he was commissioned to be the leader of the entire Nephite army.  Is that not insane?  Seriously.  Every 16-year-old I know barely has the sense to tie their shoes in the morning!  Okay, not really, but - wow.  Mormon was 16 years old when he was put in charge of th...

About 2 years ago I got this hairbrained idea to use mythtv to create a computer-based full-media center for my basement home theater.  At the time, I had a sweet side-job which was paying me nicely, so I had the means to do pretty much exactly what I wanted. I had a couple of things for which I wanted to use the basement, namely 1. My Home...

Imagine for a moment you had no idea about the atonement of Christ. Now imagine you sitting there and listening to what I have to say. And the first thing you hear are the words, "God demands perfection for salvation." Not sure about you, but for me, that creates a sort of sinking feeling inside...  I put "perfection an...

It's been a while since I just sat down to write about whatever comes out of my fingers.  I now have about an hour of free time, so I think I'm gonna do just that. It's been kind of interesting that in various points in my life, I've wanted to get rid of the thoughts of doing something musical professionally, but it always seems to come back...

Herod the Fink is a Christmas collaboration project between Jesse Crowley and Jason Jones which has been going on now for 3 glorious years at Advanced Budget Studios.  This year's offering is a 4-song EP. The music this year ranges from a bluegrass crossing punk style of "Joy To The World" to an introspective look in to each of our...

I don't even know where to begin on this one.  Maybe I'll start by screaming in frustration due to Microsoft's complete incompetence.....  or is it incompetence?  Maybe, and more likely, it's completely calculated, thought-through, planned, and executed.... Apparently, Microsoft sent out an "automatic update" to all XP a...

I recently wrote a piece about how much I miss the things that used to come so easily before I had children. Although everything I wrote is true, writing that article caused me to reflect on how lucky I am to be a parent at all. The things which I now miss due to parenthood are luxuries related to selfishness.  The things I enjoy because...

 So, I wrote a few days ago how I was able to get my new echo audiofire12 working under gentoo Linux with the old firewire stack.  Well, I couldn't leave well-enough alone, so I tried my hand at updating my kernel and using the new stack.  Turned out there were a few caveats that, without some external help from a great person in the...

Using The Gimp to remove low frequency data from an image. When I take a picture of something I would like to use for texture, there is often a slight change in the color across the entire image. I want to keep the detail, but make the overall color even across the image. This is a picture of dusty rain marks on the hood of my car: It is l...

So, over at homerecording.com, we have quite a few discussions about, well, pretty much anything that has to do with recording audio.  One of the dicussions we recently engaged in had to do with critiquing a member's song he was working on. Of course, there were the usual suggestions on what this person should do, whether it be "bring ...

Okay..  So I installed Ubuntu on my brother's computer about 3 weeks ago, and he has been loving it!  Before that, he had been using gentoo with me as his personal admin, which I didn't mind because he rarely needed it, and when he did, it was usually a 10-30 minute fix, no problem. So, he liked it so much, and from what I could tell, ...

Okay, so I recently watched a documentary on the Foo Fighters called "Back and Forth", and I thought it was really well made - okay, I thought it was awesome.  The funny thing is - I don't own a single Foo Fighters album, and am really not familiar with them as a band, even though I generally like the "rock" genre they asso...

I just finished reading through this talk, and it brought some thoughts to mind... With Elder Walker's example of his grandparents displaying a photo of the First Presidency, I totally agree with the analogy, "Years later I concluded that displaying the picture of the First Presidency was equivalent to Joshua’s beautiful expression: '...

 So, I thought I'd write something down that happened today. For those of you who know me, I'm a pretty laid-back, easy-going type of guy. My wife and I went to sleep quite late, mostly because we couldn't stop talking and laughing with one another (not an uncommon occurrence, unfortunately), and also unfortunately, we were woken up early ...

 Well, I'd say last week was a success for the progress of the studio!  I'd also say it was a pretty big failure for the state of my body.  Man, I'm getting old.  Even my 70-year-old dad out-did me, and that's just sad.  Even though my fingers are swollen, and my feet hurt, I've gotta say it was 100% worth it. We started ...

Seems that this chapter is all about "markings" and the prophecies about the curses put upon people (and which people put upon themselves). I can feel the doctrine behind this chapter, and I caught myself frequently asking myself why Mormon included this chapter.  No doubt there's some serious doctrine in here, but this time around...