Man... This past month has been a friggin' whirlwind.  I refuse to believe November is nearly gone. Anyway...  Jesse and I are almost done with our debut Christmas album, "Herod the Fink", and while recording the last drum session, I thought it might be cool to see what I look like when I play.  Well, as fate would have i...

Yeah, I'm tired, but man - life is good.  I spent way too much time on our Herod The Fink project last night (and into the wee-hours of this morning), but it was so worth it.  We are really cranking to release a truly unique Christmas album.  My only regret is that we didn't start this sooner, so we could get more content.  But ...

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I just got done playing some sweet jazz for a client, and with the usual rock 'n' roll requests coming in, this was a great change of pace. I'm always intrigued at the different nuances that exist between styles of music as it pertains to rhythm and percussion.  Rock and roll pounds out some great 4/4 along the occasional 3/4 timing, with so...

A few months ago, I thought I'd get a bit more serious about setting up a semi-professional studio in my home.  It's worked out great, so far! As I've worked with clients, they've been more than happy with the results, and I'm learning new techniques and tricks of the trade at the same time.  So far, so good. So, along this trail, I b...

Through the 20 plus years I've been playing drums, I've had all sorts of drumkits, and I've used all sorts of heads.  Well, it came time to replace my snare head recently, and I was offered a new type of head by Remo. The Remo Ambassador Black Suede is a single-ply head which is meant to offer a softer sound without muffling the inherent res...

From the first memories I have, my life has been lived through rhythm.  There has always been an inherent "groove" of my life.  From walking down the sidewalk after school when I was in Jr. High, pacing the rhythm of the lines in the cement, and timing my steps accordingly, keeping the "1,2,3,4" clock in my head going ...

Wow... It's been a long, long time since I updated anything about my life on here.  Mostly because stuff got really busy, and really interesting about April of this year.  I've documented all the crud that we've gone through, so no need to rehash that. What I would like to say is that music is more a part of my life now than it ever has...

My sister died a week short of her birthday. It was really hard but we got through it.   Today, my nephew drove me right up the wall. I couldn't believe how much energy he had and how much trouble he could get into. Ben did most of the taking care of as I was busy with helping Holly with her resume   I get to move out for the first ti...

You know you've got a great project when its name is "Herod Fink", and it's Christmas-themed with an alternative flavor.  Yeah...  I'm really enjoying life right now. Anyway, so far, this project has been a whirlwind, but one we definitely cannot get enough of.  we couldn't stand it anymore, so we posted a little diddy f...

 So, on last chapter's post, someone left a wonderful comment.  Thank you, whoever you are.  That is precisely why I do this. Now... Ether 4.   This chapter starts out with an interesting verse.  I guess Mosiah would have had several channels whereby he could have known he should not let the book of Ether out of the bag u...

I find it interesting how Satan is described throughout scripture. In this chapter, through verses 13 - 20, Satan is seemingly exposed as the weak fraudster he really is.  Verse 16 is quite potent, written from the standpoint of people who were tempted by him, when shown his actual person, are amazed at the frailness of Satan.  They say...

Okay...  I know it's a little bit late, but I thought I needed to write about my B-day anyway.  It was the 14th, and evidently, the 16th, too. So, the 14th began with a great time eating lots of great food.  Pancakes for breakfast, my best friend Scott took me to my all-time favorite Thai restaurant and we got some insanely delicio...

What do you get when you mix a couple of black lights, a fog machine, a strobe light, a dark hallway, and a couple of demented minds with Halloween?  I'll tell ya what you get: A whole lot of scared teen-agers. WOOOO HOOO!!! With the debut happening just last year, there hasn't been a whole lot of time for refinement, but all things cons...

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...

I'm not exactly sure what I want to write about today.  No...  I know what I need to write about, but I think it's too private, and I want to write something I can publish publicly. Ya know...  I really hate sin.  I really do. I am amazed at how much the world accepts what is wrong.  Pondering how much the world accepts s...

Man...  When, at the beginning of this year, I wrote that 2009 was gonna be a doozie, I didn't know the half of it. After having been employed for only a month, two days ago, Monday, at 5:00pm, my superior came in to my office and told me, with a red face, that they had to let me go.  The red face was undoubtedly due to the fact that nob...

Okay...  So, this isn't gonna be the rant that you thought it was by the title.  With the little time I have, I couldn't come up with a better one... So, the story is - I had just eaten a delicious burger at Coney's, when on my way home, I happened to turn on Rush Limbaugh.  He was talking about this new "cloud" technolog...

So...  This week has been just one blessing after the other.  I mean, seriously, it's been an amazing week!  I've been recording this great band in my studio, I've been rockin' the code at my day-job, and things are just great. So, to celebrate my happiness, and general good mood, I decided to take myself out to lunch.  I wen...

Our Halloween was pretty low key this year.  I just wanted to stay close to home since I just had Samuel instead of going to Jason's brother's house as we have done the past two years.  Jason and his brother have made it a tradition to scare as many people as possible on Halloween, but they will have to start that up again next year. An...

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...

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...

Since I purchased my 2007 Mustang GT in January of 2007, I've been putting 85 Octane gas in it. I didn't notice any pings, nor anything else to make me think I was putting the wrong gas in it. Well, my dad was in it two days ago and asked me what gas I was using. When I told him, he couldn't believe I would do such a thing. Well.... In my defe...

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...

Last weekend I went to Arizona to see my brother Greg, my sister Andi, and my friend Natalie compete in the Ironman Event. I put together a video which pretty much sums it all up.  I hope you like it....

The answer to that question in today's world is "Not on your life." However, in a perfect utopia, the answer would definitely be, to a degree, "yes". A couple of days ago, I was really gettin' down into myself and thinking about things, when I started thinking about the state of the world. Holy cow, that could open, not only a can of worms, but ...

Oh, man...  I just got back from a wonderful geek lunch with the guys 'n' gals from UPHPU (Utah PHP Users Group), and it was a blast.  ... heh... makes me smile just thinkin' about it.  Okay... I didn't just get back.  I had to make sure I could get done today what I promised my boss, and then I would write about it. Well... ...

Ya know...  I really wasn't planning on writing anything today, but ah, what the hey.  It's 5:30 and I'm not going to be doing anything else within the next 20 minutes. So, lately I've been pondering this whole "ILoveMyJournal.com" thing I've created, and where I should take it.  So far, there aren't that many users, but ...

Man...  When I started reading this one,  I forgot it was about the Anti-Nephi-Lehi's who sacrificed themselves for the word of God.  Wow. Along with the previous chapter, I find it interesting that the main source of contention among all the Lamanites are the people who were once Nephites themselves.  The Amalekites and the A...

 So...  I thought I'd be going to bed, but here I am. When the Spirit directed me to come down and write down my testimony, I wasn't (and still am not) quite sure what to write.  This certainly isn't due to a lack of testimony comparative to other times I've done this, but rather quite the exact opposite.  It is because my tes...