Okay...  I think it's time I wrote something.  The last everyone knew, I was jobless, on welfare, losing hope in humanity, depressed, bordering on despair, and a little bit sad, too. Well...  Although it's not perfect, I do have a job now.  My wonderful long-time friend Scott Morris happened to mention to his boss that ...

Since I've been job-hopping for the last bit, I've had the chance to install fresh gentoo builds on quite a few 64-bit computers in the last couple of months. I've also been looking at different IDEs for PHP development.  After using jEdit now for close to 5 years, I've gotta say the one which impresses me the most is Zend Studio for Eclips...

Cecilia graduated from Preschool last month, but I finally am getting around to posting the pictures of it.  She absolutely loved her graduation.  She felt very special.  This is her Preschool class singing songs for us for their graduation ceremony.  The little boy in the yellow shiny shirt is Owen's little brother.  ...

I wasn't in the best of moods while reading this, this morning, but I must say that it helped me gain a bit of focus for the job hunt this morning. The principle that jumped out at me this time around was that of humility.  Going through the pain that is sometimes required to bring about humility just might be the thing that saves your soul....

Interesting Alma used the phrase "my heart began to sicken" when he heard about what the Zoramites were doing.  That is such a descriptive word, and I can almost feel what he described as I read... I also find verse 5 interesting at this point in my life.  It seems that Alma confirms that sometimes, when moved upon by the spir...

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...

Beginning this chapter, another testament to the correlation between peace and keeping God's commandments is apparent.  Giving "strict" heed to the laws and ordinances of the Gospel undoubtedly brings peace. Now, on a totally different note, I wonder where Korihor came from?  It just says that he came into the land.  Was ...

The MOST ridiculous trial bike video I've ever seen. More than half of what this guy does shouldn't be possible. A-freaking-mazing. http://www.flixxy.com/inspired-bicycles.htm...

I recently bought a Toshiba Laptop (a Satellite A305-S6916), and with it, came Vista Home Premium. I, of course, immediately wiped the hard drive clean, took a shower for having touched a computer with Vista pre-installed on it, then proceeded to partition it, and install gentoo Linux on it. The compatibility with Linux of the peripherals on th...

Chapter 29 of Alma is such a good chapter - on so many levels, too. How would it feel like to want the good of mankind so badly, that it caused you to take time to carve your feelings out in brass plates?  Putting all the doctrine of this wonderful chapter aside, the beginning verses give me a tiny glimpse into the type of desires living a p...

Well, I'm happy to announce that after a month and a half of jumping through hoopes to get this thing off the ground, it has finally begun! The construction of the new home for Advanced Budget Studios has officially started, and I cannot tell you how excited I am. The only down part of this whole situation is - the waiting.  I anticipate t...

Earlier today I wrote about my experience trying to get a Logitech Orbit AF webcam installed in Gentoo Linux. About 2 hours later, I finally got Skype 2.0 beta to work (after figuring out a problem with QT), and upon loading it, configuring it, and finding someone with whom to test it (thanks, mindjuju), I finally got a webcam to act as a streami...

First off...  I'm beginning to understand just how much of  a camper / outdoorsman I really am not.  We brought the family up to a water park for a vacation yesterday and Monday, and I tell ya... on Monday, I had an absolute blast.  On Tuesday, it was all I could do to keep from just hopping into the car, and driving home the mo...

I think that most of this chapter is talking about the gathering of the tribes of Israel, although I could be completely and totally offbase.  This is one of the chapters which I probably wouldn't write about had I not made a resolution to write about each and every chapter from the Book of Mormon. Pretty difficult to understand right now. ...

Will the craziness ever end?  I thought for sure, I'd be too busy today to do another cover, but around 4:00pm, I got bored, the kids were occupied or asleep, and my wife was reading, so...  Down to the studio I go! Hope you all like this cover.  It's one of the better ones I've done.  I missed a couple of hit-accurate fills,...

Hmm....  Another war started by another group of dissenters.  Man alive...  Seems like the story is all the same.  People who want to rule another nation end up being sparked and fed by dissenters of the nation they want to rule (think of Amalickiah)...  *sigh* The latter half of this chapter is a great reminder of what h...

I just returned from a family vacation at "Down-At-A" water-park with all my immediate family (minus Andrea) and had a blast. During the evening of the first night, the discussion was lulling a bit, so Curtis and I decided to begin discussing some doctrinal points of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. During this discussion, both Curtis and I ...

Okay... I can't write a lot, but I've *got* to write something. My good friend Steve and I have been wanting to find a good place to race our new cars. He has a 2006 Cobalt SS (sweet ride), and I just got a 2007 Mustang GT (which, unfortunately, I really don't know how to drive well yet). So, today we decided to just head out west and end u...

Man.... I've just gotta say something. I was originally going to IM this to a good friend of mine (Steve), but decided that it was going to my blog. I recently (about 10 minutes ago) got a pop3 server going on my home-server on my gentoo box (heh.. all of my boxen are gentoo.... What...? I'm not a zealot! Serious!) Anyway.. When I finished ...

 Today, I woke up at 6:00am, after getting a maximum of 4 hours of sleep (and it would only be 4 hours if I wasn't woken up in the middle of the night multiple times, which I was, so it was actually less) I prayed before I went to bed that I would be able to survive the day and get everything done that needed doing. Anyway, I woke up at 6,...

I almost didn't post anything tonight..... But... I've gotta. One thing which seems to irritate me quite a bit is this phenomenon among people of my faith which drives them to make some pseudo-philosophical yet some how not quite doctrinally correct quote and then follow it by "I'm sure it's in the scriptures. I just read it. I swear. " or, "I'...

So, we've been considering how to best improve the studio in recent weeks, and have decided that our complete lack of guitar amplification needs to be taken care of.  We looked at all sorts of amps and decided that one which could possibly provide the most diverse sounds would be a wise choice.  We've recorded pretty much everything here ...

 Man...  I've been so busy recording good music lately, I haven't had any time to let you all know what has been going on. It's no secret that the studio uses Ardour as it's main digital audio workstation.  So far, the program has been superb in its stability, scalability, and features to help create great music. Recently, howeve...

I've been fighting with my computer for the past hour to get gentoo to import the contents of an SD card in a card reader (announces itself through USB as "07cc:0500 Carry Computer Eng., Co., Ltd"), and was unsuccessful. As such, I have lost all motivation and energy to work on getting the journal entries for the 3 days of Rat Fink (Ed ...

One thing which caught my eye this time, was the phrase, "I know that if ye are brought up in the way ye should go ye will not depart from it." I had to stop and read the sentence 4 or 5 times, just to make sure I wasn't seeing things. The footnotes on that sentence seem to confirm the vague meaning I'm deriving from it as well. ...

So lately, I've been experiencing a lot of clients coming in, giving studio time as a gift, and to be honest, I think that is awesome.  As always, ya never know what to expect when a new client comes in, but I've gotta say, anyone who gives the gift of music is probably someone I wouldn't mind hanging around in the studio. As a way of saying...

Why on earth would I spend $109.00 on a new operating system when I could buy a friggin'  1.5 TERABYTE HARD DRIVE FOR THE SAME PRICE!?!?!?  (and that's the cheap version of Windows 7 - you know, the one you'll regret buying even if you do buy in to all this Microsoft crap.  The version that'll make you regret purchasing Windows the l...

Well, yesterday the studio received a new addition.  We're now employing a much more powerful and dynamic 8-channel Octopre preamp!  This will allow us to record much more dynamic sources.  The initial impression I get from this new device is that it, of course, is much, much more powerful.  It also seems to record with a bit mo...

So, when I started the re-design of my studio website, I knew I would need sliders, but I didn't realize how many unconfigurable, and generally static sliders were out there.  I must have gone through 5 iterations of sliders before I found one that matches my needs (and probably will be the go-to slider for any project I work on in the future)...

Okay, people.... I'm here at Truenorth Academy and I just can't shake the feeling of anxiety I have of leaving this place. I'm gonna start my new job at Nature's Way, which by all intents and purposes, should be the job I have for the rest of my life. It pays fantastic, the people seem wonderful.... It's just that the people here at Truenorth ar...