I just got done watching Jason Mraz's "I'm Yours" video... Man, that guy is amazing. Anyway...  Tonight I thought it'd be a good idea to do some drum covers of my favorite songs.  So, here's the first one, "Rock and Roll Band" by Boston. Give it a listen and don't forget to rate and comment if ya like it!...

 Not sure why I'm writing about this now, because I usually just finish the thing and then announce it at the same time as I share it. I guess this song is a complete deviation from anything I've done in the past.  Heh... Just now I'm realizing that I don't even have a name for this song yet.  I could call it "My Friend",...

 After a whole heckuva lot of work, at a faster-than-I-want-to pace, the self-titled album from Herod the Fink is finally finished, and available. Herod the Fink is an in-house production of our mixing and recording engineer, and a great musician-friend of his. The whole project  came together with a simple phone call, a month before ...

The first thing I noticed this time, is that apparently, Helaman had never had any proof of the existence of the plates of gold Alma and the previous prophets were writing on.  Not entirely sure why that caught my fancy this time, but it did.  I guess keeping the historical records was a pretty sacred thing back then.  I wonder if th...

 Well...  I'm not quite as frustrated tonight as I was when I tried to do with Ubuntu, that which I am now trying with Fedora 12. I installed Fedora 12 on my laptop from the install DVD, and I've gotta say, Fedora, neither in the installation, nor in running the OS, was as slick as Ubuntu.  Ubuntu was quite a bit more polished, I'...

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, ...

Today, I woke up to about 6-10 inches of fresh powdery snow all over the place.   It's actually beginning to feel like Christmas time, now! Now, most normal people would say within themselves, "Man, I hate snow on the roads.", but not me. I'm not entirely sure why I'm this way, but it's been this way ever since I can remem...

The thing which resonates so much with me about this chapter, is how true Moroni is to himself and his God.  Truly, the last thing he wanted to do is to kill thousands of his brothers, yet he had to.  He knew his lifestyle, freedom, religion, and family were more important than letting themselves be put into bondage, and the Lamanites wou...

I wasn't planning on writing about this chapter this time, but something which kind of makes me wonder stood out to me this time. What's the deal with the armor of the Lamanites being so slim?  I mean, seriously.  If I were going to war, I would definitely do everything I could to protect myself and ensure victory.  Loin cloths and...

I've recently been working with Advanced Budget Studios on a project called Herod The Fink, and I just got done tracking drums to the last song, The First Noel. Well, we taped the session to video, and have created a youtube video with the final version of the song, being played as I tracked the drums.  The effect is pretty cool. Take a lo...

Okay...  So Advanced Budget Studios had the opportunity last weekend to record a group which came from the Springville's Art City Music Fest, and due to time constraints, we really didn't get a very good tracking session.  We got some of Bethany's vocals, JT's acoustic guitar, Jake's bass, Dan's shredding guitar solo, and a very rough scr...

We've been trying to get into the habit of having Famiily Home Evening together as a family, and tonight Sarah planned a splendid lesson that would have been enjoyed much more if I wouldn't have been ill, and dead-tired. But... such is the life of a husband/father/bread winner. :) Anyway... After the lesson, she wanted all of us to write down ...

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...

Before I even begin reading this one, I've gotta say that 2nd Nephi 2 is one of the power-doctrine chapters.  I'll be surprised if I can get through reading this today. Verse 2 contains an interesting phrase:  Consecrate thine afflictions for thy gain.  This brings to mind quite a few cross-references, but can you imagine how much...

 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...

  Poetry 2 with 3 added by Kelly Miller                                                                           &n...

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...

Ya know... Chatting with good friends has its benefits.  Just like think-tanks and collegeate consortiums are good for concerted cognation, a good conversation with a concerned cohort can be just as contenting. I think I've mentioned this before in my journal, but in talking with a good friend of mine, I hadn't made the connection with just...

Last week, PoeticIntensity decided to join us again, with an interesting concept.  He had spent the previous evening playing some chords, and decided to make a song out of it that evening.  So we spent an hour coming up with the concept, and another 2 hours tracking it.  We then spent a few more minutes mixing it down until it sounde...

Wow....  Today has been crazy. I woke up around 2:30am this morning, put the suitcases in the van, woke the kids up (actually, Luci was already awake and excited to be going to "Shugee's House"), put them in the van, said a quick prayer for safety and health, and we were off! I'm tellin' ya...  If you have kids and a 10-hour...

What a whirlwind, I tell you what. The usual cliche's about this being the busiest time of my life seem to pale against reality, so I'll just dive into the thick of it all. I've spent the past 3 weeks working intensely on getting the new studio up and running. Thanks to the help of my brother Ryan, my dad Ray, and a good friend, Jeff Stock, th...

Beyond yesterday's post, I haven't posted anything in awhile.  I guess it's because nothing really interesting has happened lately. My kids are growing like weeds, and I try to enjoy them when want to, and I'm trying to want to more often.  That's kind of a sad statement, but I don't believe I am a "born-to-parent" type of guy...

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...

Whenever I do credit card checking, I always end up searching for longer than it would take me to create it myself, so...  without further ado, here's the Luhn, or "Mod 10" algorithm for validating credit card numbers. function mod_10($cc) {     $reversed_string = strrev($cc);     $string_array = str_sp...

So, I've had the opportunity for the past few months to work full time with clients from all over Utah Valley.  From the sweet harmonies of By Request's soft country swing, to the relentless brutal drive of The Suffering's hardcore sound, the longer I'm in company with musicians of this area, the more I'm convinced that Utah Valley seems to be...

So, this weekend I had the pleasure of meeting yet another one of Utah's finest bands.  The band's name is "Shallow Sky", and if their music is any indicator, these guys are gonna stick around. To be honest, I expected the 3 sessions (totalling 26-hours) with these guys to be a bit rough, due to only my incredible lack of sleep las...

I was brought up in a good, wholesome LDS home where abuse wasn't even thought about.  I didn't even know abuse was a word until I learned about it from others. I went to church, had a good time, and generally enjoyed a wonderful family life. During my teenage years, I started thinking about spirituality for no apparent reason.  I star...

A week ago, an acquaintance of mine from my highschool days, Matt Harker, was hit and killed while biking to work.  A day later, a friend contacted me and wondered if he could use the studio to produce a song in Matt's memory.  Although I didn't know Matt very well, I knew him well enough to know he was the type of person who did his best...

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...

Well, people....  Most of yesterday (until this morning around 12:30am) I spent trying to figure out what to do about my email situation. Here's my situation:  I get so much friggin' spam, I can't stand it.  This shouldn't be news to anyone.  The person who receives no spam is a person who doesn't have an inbox. So, I decided ...