Titles Are Hard To Come Up With After 450 Posts

If it was always as nice outside as it was yesterday afternoon I don't think I would ever mind cutting the grass. I'm beyond glad that I waited. I got home from work and DeAnne had a little left on the bushes that she couldn't reach with the trimmer, so I helped her finish that up and then hopped on the lawn mower. It was just about dark before I finished, and it was actually starting to get a little cooler than was comfortable, but I didn't sweat a drop while I was out there. It was incredible. I'm sure we'll have one last hot spell before we can call summer done, but it looks like fall has arrived.

Butch Walker has been recording again and is promising that the new album will be out early next year. In the meantime, he's scheduled 4 shows in L.A., each a week apart. The first three weeks he's going to play a different album each night from start to finish and then throw in a new song or two. The last night, he's making the setlist from songs that fans request via Twitter. I've never wanted to be closer to the west coast. He did mention that he had plans for something in Atlanta before the end of the year, but he didn't give away any specifics. Hopefully it'll be something that we can go to.

I'm also pretty excited about the Smashing Pumpkins new project. One of Billy's friends, Kerry Brown, is playing on and engineering the project with Billy and he's started a blog to chronicle the process. This week, he's posting videos where he answers questions that fans submitted about the recording process. He's talked about mics and rigs they're using and other inside stuff about the recording process. It's been a really cool inside look at how music is made. The blog is at http://glittercop.blogspot.com/.

Have a good Wednesday.

--Paul

Moving Right Along

Well, this is post 450 for the blog. I know I say it every time I hit one of these milestones, but it's still just crazy to me that I've been doing this for that long. I don't know if anyone really even reads these other than my wife and Courtney. At any rate, if you do read, thanks and maybe I'm not too boring or too bad a writer.

I went to throw the cat outside this morning and was pleased to feel that fall seems to have arrived. It was so nice that I had to stand in the door for a minute and enjoy it. I was planning on cutting grass yesterday but I checked the weather before I left work and saw that it was supposed to cool off today so I decided to wait. It may be one of the best decisions I've made in recent history. If it's as nice as they say it's going to be the rest of the week, then we're in for some beautiful weather the next few days.

I was going to talk about FlashForward but never did. We watched it over the weekend and it was pretty awesome. The production feels a lot like Lost and there was even a Lost reference in the background of one scene, but the show should be able to stand on its own. The true test of a show is usually DeAnne and she liked this one, so there you go. FlashForward is DeAnne approved. All you need to know.

Have a good Tuesday.

--Paul

A Lazy Sunday Afternoon

Another weekend is in the books.

Friday night, DeAnne left me at the house while she went to Dothan with her Mom. I took the chance to finish up playing Batman: Arkham Asylum. The game was a little short, but it was still awesome. It's easily the best game I've played all year and is without a doubt the best Batman game ever made.

Saturday we just laid around and caught up on our T.V. watching. Saturday night, Kevin and Tammy had our Sunday School class and a few others over to eat a hog that Kevin had killed. Wild hog was a first for both DeAnne and myself, and I have to say that it was really good. DeAnne's doesn't usually like wild meat but even she liked it. The largest game of "Catch Phrase" I've ever seen broke out after we ate and it was a blast. So good food, good company and a good time.

After the excitement of Saturday night, I actually slept in a little on Sunday. Then, after church and lunch I actually took a nap. I woke up just in time to walk Emma and get to choir practice on time (to run the sound, I'm no in the choir for anyone who might have wondered).

So that was the weekend. Too bad they have to end. Have a good Monday.

--Paul

I've Got Nothing

Seriously, I've been sitting at the computer for 5 or 10 minutes now trying to think of something, but there's nothing. I guess we'll go random stream of consciousness today.

DeAnne's car seems to be a reptile attractor. She went to leave the house yesterday afternoon and there was a lizard sitting on her door handle. Fortunately, this time it really was a lizard and not a snake. She still called me freaking out though.

DeAnne's Mom's birthday was Wednesday and we had a get-together for her last night. It was nice and we had a good time and the cake was pretty awesome, so good times all around.

Flipping back to music: I've never really listened to Muse before so the other day when I saw they had a new album out, I figured I'd try it out and see what it was like. After having listened to it, I'm not sure if I like them or not. I think it's one of those albums that's great but it takes listening to it a few times before you really start to get it.

Hey! It's Friday! Hope you have a good one.

--Paul

The Beatles!

Someone once told me: "Every song that's ever been worth writing was written by the Beatles." I won't go so far as to completely agree with that but I will say that they had some good ones. A lot of good ones. And now all their albums have been remastered and re-released. I've been listening to a few of the remasters and they sound great. They have a box set that complies all their albums along with some great art work and other stuff. It's expensive but it's one of the few things I've found that I would really like to have for Christmas.

Other new music that I've been listening to:

Jet: They've just put out their third album and I think it's pretty good. They kind of dropped off the face of the earth after their first album and I doubt that this one will get them back into the spotlight, but the songs are solid and it has a good feel to it.

Collective Soul: These guys just keep putting out albums and their albums are usually pretty good. No one's really listened to them since 1999 but hey, sometimes the best things in life are not the most popular.

Our Lady Peace: I'm starting to see a trend here with bands from the 90's releasing new albums that I like. This one's great. To me, this is their best work since Spiritual Machines. Really good album. Well worth getting.

There's a few others, but I'm out of time. Have a good Thursday.

--Paul

I Can't Help It

I had just about decided that I wasn't going to talk about it but I can't help myself.

DeAnne watches Toddlers & Tiaras on TLC. She didn't get around to last week's episode until Monday or Tuesday night this week. So we're watching this show about little girls in beauty pageants and it's usually bad enough with just the way the parents act and the attitudes the majority of these kids have. This episode brought up a whole knew issue though:

People. Can we please not name children crazy names any more. Especially if you are not a celebrity. Celebrities think they can get away with crazy names because they're famous. If you're not famous it looks just as ridiculous as if you were famous and named your kid something crazy.

One of the girls featured on the show was named: Sparkal Queenz. No joke. That was her name. And she was a sweet girl but bless her heart, with a name like that there's only two things that can happen when she gets older. She either grows up and hates her name either living with it for the sake of her mother or changing it because she can't stand it any more or she takes ownership of it and thinks that her name makes her a diva, a word she used during the show to describe herself. Either result does not make for a well-adjusted adult and it's all because some parents thought it'd be awesome or cute or cool or whatever for their kid to have a different name and they landed on Sparkal Queenz.

And I'm not opposed to unique names, but come on. Some things just cross a line that shouldn't be crossed. Can we keep things in the realm of sensibility please?

If anyone's offended, then sorry you read the blog.

Have a good Wednesday.

--Paul

Something About Heroes

The fall T.V. season really starts to get cranked up this week. The only thing that started last night for us was Heroes. I really have this love/hate thing with the show. DeAnne quit watching it after season 2 got so ridiculous she couldn't take it anymore. I've stayed with it in the vain hope that it would get better, and I do think season 3 was better than 2, but they have yet to recapture the magic of season 1. I don't know if it's their inability to stop letting Hiro change the past, thus creating huge plot holes that entire planets could pass through or the fact that they continue to introduce new characters by the dozens while leaving us hanging about what happened to others that they've not talked about in 15 episodes. If you don't read the comic that they publish on the NBC Heroes website, you're still wondering what happened to Micah's who hasn't been talked about on the show since the last episode of season 2.

At any rate, hopefully season 4, which is being called "Redemption", will prove to be the season that brings Heroes back to the level of awesomeness it had in its first season.

DeAnne may not watch Heroes, but one of her favorite shows also starts this week. Grey's Anatomy starts Thursday. Flash Forward also starts on Thursday. I've set it to record. It looks like it could be pretty interesting and I know ABC is hoping that it can be good enough to replace Lost after that show ends next spring, so we're going to try it out and see how it is.

Finally on Friday, Dollhouse starts its second season. Season 1 started out a little rough, but about mid-way the show got its feet under it and by the end of the season was putting out some pretty awesome episodes. I'm looking forward to season 2.

Have a good Tuesday.

--Paul

Untitled

And another weekend is in the books. Once again, we didn't do much of anything. It's actually starting to become a bit of a disturbing trend.

Saturday was yard day. There's been a few pine limbs that have needed trimming for a while now and I finally remembered to get the pole saw back from Dad to take care of them. So Saturday morning I got out and started cutting and about the time I got done, it started raining. The grass was in pretty bad shape so I went inside and checked the radar and it looked like it was probably going to ruin my chances of cutting the grass. So I conceded defeat, got a shower and sat down on the couch to watch some football. As the morning wore on, I noticed that it started getting a little brighter outside. I checked the radar again and it was pretty clear. So I waited for a couple of hours to give the grass time to dry and then got started on the mowing. While I mowed, DeAnne started trimming the bushes around the house. I hadn't realized how big they had gotten until DeAnne cut a few of them back. At any rate, the grass got cut, the bushes were started on and I took a second shower for the day.

We rewarded ourselves with Chinese and a rain-delayed Auburn game that we didn't start watching until the fourth quarter. Before then, every time I turned it to the game Auburn did something horrible, so I was afraid to keep watching it.

Otherwise, I played a lot of Batman. I'm really enjoying the game. I think I'm about half-way through it and it's been great.

Have a good Monday.

--Paul

Friday, At Last

It's been a long week but we made it through and here we are at Friday.

DeAnne went to Dothan with her Mom yesterday and as usual didn't make it home until late. The upside is that it gave me the whole evening to play video games. So, I finally got started on Batman: Arkham Asylum last night. So far the game is pretty awesome. The controls are good, the graphics are great and the voice acting is excellent. I may not have been happy about the Collector's Edition stuff, but I can't deny that the game itself is wonderful.

I also fixed my iPod yesterday. I won't soon make the mistake again of allowing iTunes to load music on my iPod for me.

The other big thing that I've seen this week is that the Smashing Pumpkins (or Billy Corgan rather) have announced that they're going to be releasing songs as they record them over the next year or two. The plan is to put the songs up for download for free. Every four songs will then be bundled into a limited edition EP that fans can buy. 44 songs are planned and at the end of the process, all 44 songs are going to be bundled into a box set to make an "album". The name of the project is kind of strange: "Teargarden by Kaleidoscope" but the idea sounds pretty cool. The EPs are supposed to contain other things like demos and outtakes from the recording sessions. It's definitely something that hasn't been tried before with music and it'll be interesting to see how it pans out. Billy has a history of starting projects like this and then never seeing them through. Hopefully that won't be the case with this. I'm also curious about touring plans. It'll be interesting to see if they take breaks in recording along the way to go out on the road or if they'll just stay in the studio until it's done. At any rate, the first songs are supposed to be coming out in October. I'm looking forward to hearing them.

Have a good Friday and a good weekend.

--Paul

Gleeful

Counting the first episode that they showed back in May, Glee is three shows in and it has to be one of the best shows I've seen in a while. It has it's strange moments, but for the most part it's incredibly witty and has some very funny segments in every show. It's just an awesome show.

Last day of training today. Of course, all of this has led to me being tasked with developing several new custom applications that will require a good bit of time when I'm already swamped and have no time to spare. I guess job security is a good thing though.

I've learned an important lesson about iTunes and iPods. Never let iTunes randomly fill your iPod. It is guaranteed to pick some of the worst music you have in your collection. It will find stuff you didn't even realize you had and then when you put your iPod on shuffle, it will play it...one bad random song after another. It's like Apple is making fun of you.

Well, we've made it to Thursday. Hope you have a good one.

--Paul

Sometimes You Feel Like A Nut...

...and sometimes you write like one. When I got home yesterday, DeAnne informed me that the last paragraph of yesterday's blog was a doozy. This is how it was supposed to read:

I've got a tough rest of the week at work. We have a vendor coming in to do some training on some new software and it's going to mean extra hours and mind-numbing meetings. Hopefully it all goes well.

So now that that's straight. I was a work late yesterday but things are going well. If the rest of the week continues on like yesterday, then we should be in good shape. I was brain-dead when I got home, but I'm feeling better this morning.

Biggest Loser started last night. DeAnne got interested in it last season and has been watching it ever since. I like the show but it makes me feel guilty for ever extra pound I'm carrying. I'm not 100 pounds over weight or anything but I could stand to shed a few. The show just makes me feel like I need to get off my lazy end and do something about it instead of watching other people get off their ends and do something about it.

It's short but I need to be going. I've got several things to do before the meetings start again and I haven't got a chance unless I go on. Have a good Wednesday.

--Paul

Bah, Titles!

I couldn't manage a decent title for today's post.

As I'm sure everyone knows by now, Patrick Swayze passed away last night. 2009 continues to claim celebrities and shows no signs of letting up. I wasn't a huge Dirty Dancing fan. What guy is? But Swayze seemed like a nice enough guy and he was another big name that seems to have died way too young.

I guess the other big news is the whole Kanye West thing at the MTV awards. I don't know why everyone's so surprised. This isn't the first time he's pulled a stunt like this at an awards show and he's always come across as being a rude person whenever I've seen him on TV. This is just the latest example of an overinflated ego going overboard. As to Taylor Swift, as stunned as she seemed, she appeared to handle it all pretty well. Evidently, she really is one of the more well adjusted teen stars around. Good for her. Also, the video she did with T-Pain still owns me.

I've got a rest of the week at work. We have a vendor coming in to do some training on some new software and it's going to me extra hours and mind-numbing meetings. Hopefully it all goes well.

Have a good Tuesday.

--Paul

And here's that Taylor Swift/T-Pain video one more time:

Laid Back

We had a laid back weekend. We didn't do anything on Friday. Saturday we continued to do nothing until we decided to go to Wal-Mart around 5:00. When we got back, the Auburn game was on.

I'm pretty excited about the way Auburn's been playing so far. The team looks excited, the coaches look excited, they're putting up huge numbers on offense while the defense is being just as stingy as it's ever been. The hard games are still to come, but if they can keep up the momentum, they've got a shot at having a great season.

Saturday night did provide a little excitement in another way other than Auburn winning. We had a huge spider and web on our carport above my car. I noticed it when I took Emma out and called DeAnne to check it out. She took some pictures and blogged about it.

After church yesterday, we went over to Kinston and ate lunch with DeAnne's Mom. Her Grandmother was in town also so it was good to see her. Other than that, that was about it. Like I said, laid back.

Have a good Monday.

--Paul

Friday Comes Faster...

...when you only work three days a week. Seriously, here's an idea to make Americans healthier: Mandate a 4 day work week. How about that? Think we can get that going Congress? Probably not since it doesn't cost the government at least a billion dollars to do. Oh well.

The iPod lives! I got it working yesterday and got all my apps back on it and configured, but I didn't have time to get any music on it. DeAnne's nano was also acting up yesterday and I had to work on it some. I think it's fine, but she's been after me to put some new music on it, so while I had it in the house, I completely reloaded it. Trying to find 8 GB of music that DeAnne likes that she hasn't already had on her iPod for 6 months is pretty tough.

I guess I'll be listening to Pandora again today. It was pretty good yesterday. I haven't listened to Slacker in a while though, so maybe I should swap over to that. I've also been wanting to check out Last.fm. Last.fm is going to be integrated into the xbox later this year and I want to see what it's like before then so I can get a feel for if it's going to be useful or not.

No big plans for the weekend. I think we're just going to hang around the house and take it easy. We do have some bushes that need to be trimmed, so we might make an attempt at that but I wouldn't bet on it.

Have a good Friday.

--Paul

Hosed

For some reason it is evidently impossible for me to update the operating system on my ipod without completely hosing the thing. I had problems with 3.0 when it came out a few months back and now 3.1 has done it again. I didn't have time yesterday to work on it either, so I've got to find time today to try and get it going again. I think the worst thing about it is having to reset all of my app settings and rearrange my screens again. Time consuming.

So Apple did hold an event yesterday where they revealed the new lineup of ipods. They basically kept the touch the same and made it a little bit cheaper. They increased capacity on the classic and kept it the same price. The shuffle also saw an increase in storage at the lowest price point, but the Nano is who really got all the love. The Nano was given a camera capable of both stills and video (there's a mic on it also to pick up sound). You take video with the nano and then when you get back to your computer you can upload it to youtube through iTunes. Pretty slick. The ipod announcements were pretty mild though. iTunes 9 was also released though and it looks pretty awesome. They've redone a lot of it and it just has a better overall look and feel. What little time I've had to play with it has shown me that it's really nice.

The Beatles remasters and Rock Band also came out yesterday. I would love to have the box set of the stereo remasters for Christmas. I hope to get Rock Band pretty soon. From what I've seen on the internet it should be pretty amazing.

Glee started back last night. The first episode that they showed back in May was awesome and both DeAnne and I are pretty excited to see what the rest of the season looks like. If it's as good as the first episode, then it should be incredible.

Also, The Guild season 3 episode 2 is out. Here it is:
<br/><a href="http://video.msn.com/video.aspx?mkt=en-US&amp;vid=bdab0fe5-ecc7-4f5e-a946-feefa45d531b" target="_new" title="Season 3 - Episode 2: Anarchy!">Video: Season 3 - Episode 2: Anarchy!</a>

Have a good Thursday.

--Paul

Back At It

We had a great weekend. So good, we even took an extra day for it.

We headed down to Mobile Saturday morning. Saturday was filled with football. So wonderful. Auburn looked pretty good. They had great offensive numbers. If they can keep it up against the SEC defenses, they should have a great year.

Sunday was pretty lazy. We went to church and after that did pretty much nothing. We did go to the movies Sunday night but that was about the extent of the activities that day.

Monday was also fairly lazy. We did head out to the mall so the girls could do a little more shopping. They had gone on Saturday but needed to exchange some things they got for me and Edwin that either didn't fit or were on a better sale. So we did that and then later that afternoon, Courtney and Edwin's friend John called and asked if we'd like to go out with him sailing on the bay. DeAnne's always wanted to go sailing and I've never been either, so we headed out and had a great time.

We got up yesterday and came home. We went ahead and did some grocery shopping when we got back and then when we got home I got started on the yard. The grass needed cutting but I also needed to spray some weeds and do a few other little things around the house. By the time I was done, it was on into the afternoon.

So all in all, a great weekend. As always, we owe Courtney and Edwin a big "Thank You" for inviting us down and letting us take up residence with them. You two are the greatest.

Have a good Wednesday.

--Paul

War Eagle!!!

This should be a most excellent weekend.

One: It's my Dad's birthday today, so Happy Birthday Dad! My Grandmother is in town and we'll be going out to eat tonight.

Two: Tomorrow is the first full Saturday of college football. I didn't watch the Troy game last night but I saw the score and it looks like they got their eyes beat out. Hopefully Auburn fairs better tomorrow night. I'm looking forward to seeing what the new coaches pull out of the hat and how the team looks under all new management.

Three: We'll be watching the Auburn game with Courtney and Edwin. They've invited us down for the long weekend and we were more than happy to take them up on the offer. We always have a great time in Mobile and I'm sure this trip will be no different.

So that's the plan. I'm sure everyone else is just as excited for the long weekend as I am so let's go get it started. Have a good Friday, a good weekend and I'll see you back on Tuesday.

--Paul

Interesting

The town hall meeting yesterday with Sen. Jeff Sessions was pretty interesting. There was a fairly large crowd, the vast majority of which were retirees. There were some younger people there though and I wasn't the youngest that I saw, so I would say there was a pretty good range of folks. This is especially true if you consider that it was 2:00 on a Wednesday afternoon.

As to the Senator and what he said: He's not as well spoken as I was expecting him to be. Being honest, I've not paid much attention to Mr. Sessions before yesterday so I don't know that I've ever heard him speak before, and I'm not saying he was bad or did a poor job, he just wasn't as forceful as I imagined him to be.

The nice thing about it was that he really didn't seem to have prepared a statement or answers. He really seemed to just be answering questions on the fly and it was nice to see a Senator be so candid. He talked mainly about health care reform although some of the questions also got into cap and trade, religion in schools and government and social security. The crowd was pretty easy on the Senator himself, but took a few good shots at Congress as a whole and several voiced complaints about Washington politicians and the poor job they've been doing listening to the American people.

All in all, it was a pretty good and like I said, interesting to see. I only saw two signs in the meeting and I think the same old lady was holding them both. The first read "IMPeach Obama" (that's the case she used and everything) and the other said "Stop funding ACORN". There was also an SUV outside I saw when leaving that had signs all over it mainly talking about stealing the children's futures.

Here are links to the WSFA coverage and the Andalusia Star News article about the meeting:

http://www.wsfa.com/global/Story.asp?s=11029661

http://www.andalusiastarnews.com/news/2009/sep/03/citizens-speak-out/

I haven't watched the WSFA video yet, but I may be in there somewhere. Let me know if you see me.

Have a good Thursday.

--Paul

Town Hall

Our area's U.S. Senator, Jeff Sessions, is coming to Andalusia to host a town hall meeting about the health care reform bill. Being a Republican, I doubt that it will be nearly as interesting a meeting as it would be if he were a Democrat, but still, I plan on going and seeing what he has to say. I don't know that I've ever actually participated in something like this before so I'm really looking forward to it. Hopefully it will be worth going to.

In case you missed the news yesterday: Michelle Duggar is pregnant with her 19th child. A lot of people seem to be offended by this but I don't really understand why. If she's healthy and her children are healthy and they can afford to have them then more power to them. At least they're not on welfare sucking the system dry. There aren't many parents that I've ever talked to that haven't said they wouldn't have one more if they could afford it or some other circumstance didn't prevent them from having one more child. This family has just had one more after one more and as long as they're happy, then good for them.

Have a good Wednesday.

--Paul

Avengers Assemble!

So big news in the entertainment world yesterday as Disney bought Marvel. Marvel is the company that owns comic book characters like Spider-Man, the X-Men, the Avengers, Iron Man, Captain America and a host of others that are fairly recognizable to the vast majority of people. To me, the really interesting part about the deal isn't necessarily what happens to the comics. Disney doesn't really "do" comics, so I would imagine they'll mostly leave that aspect of Marvel alone for the time being. What Disney does "do" however is T.V., movies and theme parks. All of these aspects of Marvel are basically licensed out to other publishers. This also includes video games. As these license deals being to expire, it will be interesting to see if Disney brings things like the various Marvel character movies in-house or not. Universal also stands to take a hit at its theme parks as they compete directly with Disney and have a good amount of their parks revolving around Marvel characters. In the short term, I doubt much changes, but you never know. One day there may be a "Marvel Universe" park at Disney World.

Have a good Tuesday.

--Paul