More Trucks...

Hey bikepirates,

What's the longest bike commute you've ever regularly ridden for any extended period of time? Did you have the option of driving or taking public transportation if you wussed out? How hard was it? What's the longest commute you think you could handle?

so I was suppose to do some major upkeeping with my house yesterday, complete with vacuuming, disinfecting my kitchen, folding my clothes, and making my bed. Due to sheer laziness, I only vacuumed and made my bed. At least I got rid of a nasty amount of excess solder and dust.

My guitar is alive again. I'm still dealing with some impedence and noise issues (the signal got oddly distorted before I redid the wiring for the input), but I think the issue relates to improper grounding. I popped open the humbucker cavity case, and the ground wiring is supremely simple, so I think I'll just replace the wiring, and add another ground wire and loop it back onto itself. The tone I get from my neck pick-up is perfect, though. I have never gotten such a good tone out of my jackson, and so I'm going to experiment with different lead styles. I'm kind of leaning towards less distortion, and I want to get smoother sounds out of my playing. If the last few wiring tricks work out for me, then I'll work on fixing my bass. It, too, suffers from noise issues.

One thing I look forward to this year is finally getting some traction on this Blues/Fusion act I'm involved with. We have about 4 hours of rehearsal material, and I think we can generate a lot of songs. An idea I'm having is to record a cover of Racer X's Getaway.

Recording everything is going to be much easier with my new 1TB harddrive coming in the mail. I can't believe how much 500gb fills up, especially when using a DAW. The biggest space consumers seem to be Steam and my video games (thanks Noah), and my media library. At least 25-30 gigs of my music files are comprised of podcasts from Metal Injection Radio (I'm a fiend). So I do look forward to this new harddrive giving me a buttload of additional storage. Maybe now I can use my external HD for actual back-ups. Sweet.

I'm going to therapy three times a week now. The insurance coverage and rate will preclude me from doing it every week, but I think I can comfortably manage six sessions every four weeks (it'll amount to about $600 in out-of-pocket expenses for me). I look forward to the closest thing I'll get to actual psychoanalysis. I never quite realized how cost-prohibitive therapy can be without subsidization. if it was not so effective, I would swear that it's a racket.

My girlfriend made this for my sister for Christmas, I just got around to posting this photo of it. I made the pattern for it, and she did the rest.

I feel quite bad that this poor little LJ blog has been neglected as of late. This little virtual object used to be such a cathartic exercise, even though its start was based on dubious intentions of mocking some collegial peers about their emoness (talk about internalization through ritual).

So anyhow, with my little vacation over, I'm now back in the throes of work. I was getting used to waking up after 12:30pm on a continuing basis, and I was enjoying some of the "bro" time I've been having with my friends. We haven't been very "bro" at all, but the frank conversations and geeky hilarity have been quite cleansing for the soul. I do miss some female commradory that I used to have. I definitely need to recultivate some friendships I've had with my female friends, since I haven't had many platonic female friendships (it's a bit hard when one kind of wants to have sex with said female friends at certain points).

My primary antagonist during my xmas and new year times was my guitar. it decided to stop working. I have finally got it working again (Yay amateur wiring skills!!) but now I'm dealing with some impedence issues (weird tonal feedback because of insufficient grounding of the electrical charge). I may have to do some more research on wiring and consequences of rat-tailing wires, but at least I can play through my half-valved tube amp.

I have therapy today. I start my 3x a week regimen. it's going to be epically affective. joy.

The Junction...

I spent the majority of it recovering from all the intoxication of NYE.

So far, it has been glorious.

Noah crashed here, and we have been trying to determine how bad I was from the other night (I barely remember things past 2am). I decided to fork over the $5 to see The Hangover, since it's pretty much national hangover day. I am glad I waited to see this movie, because it was too hilarious to enjoy during the craze. It had to be savored on its own. Noah and I were enjoying munchies while watching, then moved onto South Park, before our friend Tom came over. Tom had not seen The Hangover, so we elected to watch it again. Great times!

I decided, because I felt fat, and because I indulged way too much the previous night, that I would go on a run. I barely did a mile, and I feel like I'm going to throw up. I am panting like a mad man, my thighs and calves are aching and burning with lactic acid, and my throat feels odd from all the cold air I was breathing in. It is glorious though, as I feel significantly less fat, and more lucid. I think I'll run through sunday, and make it a weekend thing.

We're planning on meeting up with Agam in Greenpoint, because we haven't seen that mofo in forever (I lie, of course. Erica and I saw him on the 18th during his brief stopover in the city before heading to California). In the meantime, we're enjoying some LOTR, as we geek out over its awesomeness.


So far, there's a lot of potential for aught ten. I'm kind of digging that today's date is in binary.

I hope all of y'all had an amazing time, and I wish you great luck for the new year.

Goals for the next year: get my license, make a road-trip to Miami, and spent Xmas in California with Noah and Erica (like the christmas before).

Resolutions can suck it.

I just started out the new year by ordering some v-brakes on Amazon.com using a gift certificate. Hopefully this is good luck for the rest of the year.

In other news, I've been completely healed from the stroke for over a week now.

 But I didn't have my camera. >: Instead, this is from my phone. Despite that, I think it turned out surprisingly well. Click to embiggen. :3

Check out some new music from distant Russia. ) common genre: rock, reggae, acoustic.
You can not see them on TV. but... it means nothing. ^)


Download (83 MB)

There are:
Tut zebry net (There are no zebra here) (Moscow)
Eugenia Rybakova (Moscow)
Moya Dorogaya (Lady My dear) (Omsk)
Kanikuly Gegelya (Gegel's vacations) (Moscow)
Artiom Grachevski (Moscow)
Chaika (Kaija, The seagull) (Saint-Petersburg)
VCH (Moscow)
Alexander Gumbarg (Novokuznetsk, Moscow)
Natasha Artiomova (Saint Petersburg)