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...

So, I just got off the phone with my wife, and she was at our new home-to-be this evening, and apparently, almost everything is done.  The carpet isn't in, nor are the toilets, nor are the cement stairs leading down to the basement, but everything else - yeah - it's done.  I'm just beside myself.  We could be moving in as early as la...

 So... I don't even know where to begin. Honestly, my life is so full right now, I feel as though I might decide to curl up into a remote corner of the world somewhere and hide for a few months. That said, each day I seem to manage to get up with a renewed strength to attack the day's duties with a renewed vigor.  Even though it's cl...

 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 ...

I chose "Amazed" as the mood for this entry because it just fits.  I had no idea what would be involved with getting this studio build ready to go, but it seems as though it's all coming together. We've got a truckload of materials coming on Monday of next week, and I have the entire week off to begin the build. Hopefully I remem...

 So today marks my first day of a long awaited journey to weight loss. I currently weigh 260 lbs, which is a number i never thought in my whole life i would ever reach. I choose today because my boyfriend woke me up this morning and told me he'd feel much better knowing my health was better and all this weight is literaly weighing me down. And...

So, I was on my way to work today, when my phone rang - displaying an unfamiliar number.  With everything going on in my life, I decided it would be a good idea to answer it anyway. Turned out to be a really good idea. Last week, I decided to take the time to draw out plans for the studio and turn them in to the city for approval.  I ...

 So...  In what has turned out to be my monthly updates, I don't have much to report this time, as progress on the studio portion of the house has been waiting for the actual house to be built.  Right now, the studio is comprised of two large concrete boxes in my basement. What I do have to report on is something I hadn't expected...

 So, I just had a great day here in the basement where I live, while me and my family are waiting for our new home (and studio) to be built, and I found myself sort of pensive, so I thought I'd come down and write a few words, and see what comes out. Advanced Budget Studios began taking clients in August of 2009, using a single AT 3525 conde...

The studio walls are up!  ... and they are ... HUGE!  Honestly the level of excitement I have for this studio build is right up there with the excitement of my marriage and the births of my children.  I can't believe this is actually happening! Anyway.... I'll be posting more random updates on Facebook (which will link to publi...

I've been reading a few books and websites lately on the "geography of the Book of Mormon", and see that it is quite a contentious point for many people!  A desire to understand the BOM geography was the specific thing that got me into reading the Boook of Mormon for the first time on my own.  That isn't to say that my testimony...

Earlier this evening, it was absolutely beautfiul outside, and for some reason, I wasn't drained of energy from the daily grind, so I decided to take my wife and my kids out to the park nearby. While I was pushing Collin and Luci on the swings, I realized how wonderful playing with kids can be.  Of course, this wasn't the first time I reali...

As you most assuredly can see, if this is on the front-page of I Love My Journal, there have been some major changes here. It all started about 2.5 weeks ago when I started reading some great comments people have been posting, and some really good entries from jonzee, and catherine.hahn.  I felt people deserved a better place to post both th...

~I just feel so much in my heart right now. Words truly cannot express how full my heart is. I just finished watching the movie "A Far Off Place". It has always been one of my favorites since I was a little girl. The music in it has always stirred deep emotions within me. It is just gorgeous. It has a melody that tugs at my heart. I ...

Last night I was depressed, I've been that way a lot. But last night I was ready to up and walk away, I went to my room and turned on the Raido and the song that was playing was so evil! The words were playing in my head over and over last night. Until something in my shut it off and just lay there crying! I fell into a deep sleep, I dreamed abo...

Okay, friend, family, and others.  I just wanted to let you know that the season has finally arrived! Jesse and I have been working all year long on Herod the Fink's 2nd studio album.  We are so excited to announce that it's finally available for purchase! The album has eight songs on it, and all of them are awesome.  I'll post...

"What is a motorcycle doing in *this*?", I thought as I continued upward through the winding Spanish Fork canyon.   It wasn't so much that a motorcycle was in this particular canyon, but rather in the canyon during one of the 3 most torrential downpours I've seen during my lifetime. I was coming home from work today when about ...

Update:  Due to the popularity of this post, some people are having a hard time viewing the video posted above.  If it won't play for you, simply wait until the gray progress bar has filled 1/4 to 1/2 of the way before you press play.  That should do the trick. Yesterday I took the day off work to go to my bother's sealing to his w...

Ya know...  I thought that with 4.5 hours of sleep last night, I'd feel a heckuva lot sleepier than I do.  I guess miracles do happen. Since our wonderful Samuel was born, my wife and I have been getting considerably less sleep than we otherwise would.  This is to be expected; it comes with the whole package of parenthood. I ha...

Tomorrow before lunch I'm leaving school to go to a camp with my twin best friends. They suggested that me, my mom, and them could go to a camp and we were ECSTATIC!!!! There's gonna be a zip line, and cabins, and games and a lakeand its gonna be so fun! Becaus of this, I won't be able to write for the next  few days. See you!...

 First off, I don't like at all that the congregation was laughing during the initial parts of the talk.  This interpretation of humor, to me, tells me people aren't really trying to empathize with someone who could ask that type of question.  Considering the implications of polygamy, the question of living in one's own house vs. liv...

Today, an audio file was sent to me in an email.  This audio was compressed and encoded using the aac codec for compression and wrapped in m4a.  In order to use it, I had to convert this file to a wav format.  Usually, I receive files in mp3, ogg, or flac file types, and use lame, oggdec, or flac to decode them back to wav.  Wit...

Oh, man...  I haven't had a day like yesterday in quite some time.  Possibly years. My day started at 6:00AM with about 4 hours of sleep in me.  Ah well...  Caffeine has its purpose, right? We started out thinking there would be 4-6 cars out there on the salt with us, but it ended up being just Steve and me.  As it tu...

Ya know...  Sometimes I hate open source.  Most times I love it, but sometimes I hate it. I recently updated my gentoo gnome installation to 2.24.2, and didn't think much of it.  I then tried to connect my Nikon S210 digital camera to my usb port and perform the simple task of importing photos.  I have done this probably 100 t...

Okay...  Since I had recently returned from my mission in 1996, I knew I wanted to learn how to record music.  Recording music swiftly turned into wanting to be able to record my drums.  A couple of years ago, I was able to put enough money away to buy a load of recording equipment for my drums. I've recorded quite a few diddies in...

Okay.  I've been working on a song since a while back, actually... I wrote the lyrics on the same night I wrote this entry. Anyway... It's just about done.  All I'm waiting for now is some seriously kicking piano tracks from my good friend Scott.  As soon as I receive those, I'm all but sure they'll kick bootie, and I'll incoropor...

Last spring, I modified my car - and then modified it again. The 2nd modifications entailed me re-programming (or flashing, or tuning) my car's computer.  One thing I didn't realize at the time was that evidently, a standard protocol for most tuners out there is to turn off the O2 sensors which monitor emissions after the catalytic converter...

*sigh* As programming techniques become more and more complex, and the programmers continue to be just as, or more, diversified, companies who insist on being the industry standard while tossing away organizations such as the W3C, make life as a web developer increasingly difficult. If that didn't make much sense, let me rephrase:  Micro...

Man...  Starting my new job, I had the opportunity to build a new computer.  They ordered me the parts, and I was good to go. For this computer, I opted to buy two acer 22-inch widescreen monitors.  In doing so, I knew I would have to be up and functioning quickly with a dual-head setup running gentoo Linux.  I knew this was ...

Hehe....  I love it when I learn new stuff about Springville. I had no idea that there existed a place in Springville that was absolutely perfect for racing.  Now we're talking 0-80 MPH racing in a straight line.  Nothing curvy or anything like that.  So... Anyway... My co-worker, Steve comes into my office (or rather, the...