• Finish organizing my photo collection (~17,000 photos). Get at least 1/4 of the way through tagging, rating, and eliminating duplicates.
• Get a real start on organizing my old design/writing work files.
• Create a good organizational system for ITP work files.
• Rate 40 days worth of music.
• Average one blog post every 3 days.
• Stay on-budget every month.
• Make some babies~!
• Use my 'power tower' (ugh hate the name) Christmas gift. I have yet to determine actual numbered goals. Get more sexy! This involves about 45 minutes of workout per day in 10, 10, and 25 minute sections.
• Eat well (almost no corn syrum, limited sweets, good snacks like carrots and nuts, more but smaller meals, drinking 2.5 litres of water a day).
• Take 4,000 photographs, including 400 5-star photos. Post the best to Facebook/Flickr.
• Consistently shoot 80% on freethrows.

• Create a home inventory for insurance purposes, including all photos, reciepts and serial numbers.
• Finish Ignition. This means professionally mastered and with a new website to promote it.
• Start re-learning piano and/or theory (haven't set up specific goals for this yet).
• Go on at least 25 hikes or other outdoor excursions.
• Consistently (at least 2x a month) do little things for my wife that would make her want to date me if we weren't married.
• Stay connected to friends via Facebook. Use it to get together with friends while we're still young and sexy.
• Get a good, highly-productive routine going at work that encourages me to take carpal-tunnel saving breaks and keeps me alert through the day (this relates to the eating and exercising).

• Begin to learn PHP in depth, preferably through classes that work pays for...
• Set up a long series of doctor's appointments to check for just about everything one can be checked for, to deal with any problems I might have before they're problems. That is - abuse the fact that I have a job with semi-decent medical care.
• Work on some way of respectfully resolving some core differences of belief between me and the in-laws.
• Get out of town 8 times (including at least 5 to family).
• Read a book a month.
• Reaquaint myself with all the outdoors knowledge I had as a Boy Scout.
• Learn to properly tune up my car.

• Pay taxes by Valentine's Day.
• Visit my co-workers in San Francisco (I work from home 700 miles away and have yet to meet them).
• Use our new toboggan.

• For the Prius: Replace scratched rear turn signal assembly.
• Redo my homepage/portfolio again in such a way that it all actually works.
• Create "A Ninja Wedding"
• Create the Impulse Nine TF2 frag video
  

• Get to a water park.
• Write a short (20-page) religous-political treatise.

• January: Scrape off all the tar board from the floors and put down rust-preventing primer. Install aluminum side panels.
• February: Install floor drains. Put down floor lining. Install side brush bars. Install larger brake fluid reservoir.
• March: Create map pocket and cup holder in side panels. Install fire extinguisher holder.
• April: Install Dynamat (weather permitting).
• May: Buffer time.
• June: Begin working with simple fiberglassing by making rear trunk covers.
• July: Replace all the wiring with Jordan, adding circuits for all the new stuff to be installed later. Add gravel guards. Replace turn signal. Install air horn.
• August: Powdercoat rims, bumpers, brush bars, gravel guards, and door panels.
• September: Buffer time.
• October: Replace rims and tires. Raise rear suspension.
• November: Install new headlight system.
• December: Replace door and window rubber.

Labels: basketball, doctor, exercise, food, hiking, holidays, Internet, Leelu, money, mp3, music, organization, photography, Rachel, resolutions, team fortress 2, To-Do, work, Yoshimi

Labels: computers, games, information, mp3, music

Labels: demo, Ignition, Impulse Nine, mp3, music

Labels: collection, mp3, obsession, u2

I decided recently that I'm still a pretty big slacker. So I'm trying an experiment. I'm letting myself slack to an extent, but I'm limiting my options to "acceptable" ways of slacking. I've decided that all of these things are ways I can allow my self to slack off:

• Post a MySpace blog.
• Play guitar and work on Ignition (my new album).
• Dream up new Art class assignments.
• Consider and note new ideas for my car.
• Update my homepage.

I'm hoping that by doing this, I'll either stop slacking or at least, have a good blog, finished album, an interesting Art class, an awesome car, and a cool homepage by the time I learn not to slack.

To clean the apartment to help prepare to move; I've already fixed a toilet and am about 7/8ths of the way through re-organizing and going through all of our files (W2's, reciepts, titles, etc.).

This also has other, cooler things I can do with a week of time on my hands. I inherited a pile of about 300 CD's from Maloney's when they went with an all-Mp3 based system. A lot of them are crap, and a lot of them are scratched, but I figure this is as good as any an opportunity to add to my Mp3 collection.

I can attempt to give Rachel a functioning computer (again). I even have a legit copy of XP to use now, too, so that'll save some headache.

And to plan for the rest of the semester at school. I really jumped into the semester but had a lot of problems with organization. Now that I'm more or less caught up with that part (heh, though I still have a huge pile o' grading to do yet), I can start planning lessons a bit better, maybe through the whole year (I hope).

Currently reading : Silverlock By John Myers Myers

Labels: BASIS, blog, cars, Ignition, Maloney's, mp3, MySpace, school, taxes, teaching

Labels: demo, Impulse Nine, mp3

Labels: anecdote, demo, Ignition, Impulse Nine, mp3, music

Labels: anecdote, demo, Ignition, Impulse Nine, mp3, music

Also - why are they called 'speed bumps' -- shouldn't it be 'slowing bumps' or 'destroy your suspension bumps'?

Finally, I am going to be posting a rotating set of song snippets and ideas from my next (4th) album, called Ignition. For all five of you that read this. If anybody who reads these are disposed to critique music, I'll post a link probably tomorrow to a place over on impulsenine.com and you can tell me how good or how shit they are.

Currently listening : Pop By U2

Labels: cats, demo, Ignition, Impulse Nine, mp3, random, women

That said, I've been trying to complete my U2 MP3 collection. This ... is hard. Most people don't know just how prolific that band is. I already own all the albums on CD - that's easy. Oh, no, the U2 discography is much deeper than that. There's 125 songs on their 10 albums, there's more than 200 b-sides from the singles, 100 or so from various compilations and such, and I'm not even including any live b-sides or concerts or anything like that. If you include all that, these guys' discography includes about 700 songs, all told. I'm at 470. I need another 96 to feel like I've gotten the stuff I'm really anxious for - primarily it's the studio recordings, edits and remixes.

I can hear you think: "Why would I want the five different mixes of Please?"

To me, it's really interesting to hear all these different versions of the same song. It shows, if you look carefully, how the band felt about all of the different parts of the song. In the case of Please, which is from the 1997 album POP, there were different edits for the U.S. and European markets. The album version was quite different from both, and there was another 'regular' single version as well. Also, the live version was different from the other four studio versions. I think it's well worth my time, as a musician, to study how these very successful musicians make their decisions about editing, and that's how I do it.

Unfortunately, most of the remainder is out of print and/or hard to find. Up until today, I was looking for a remix of MoFo (also from POP) called the Matthew Roberts' Explicit Mix. The LP itself sells for over $100 It was a one-sided black vinyl promo-only single pressed in very limited quantities. Hell, I was lucky to get the vinyl 12" single when it came out. And that was an easy one.

Still, I think it's worth it for the above reason. And I don't feel too guilty looking this stuff up in Mp3 simply because I can't buy it from the band (not even in the 'complete' U2 from iTunes, which has a 'mere' 398 songs). And I'm a fan. That has something to do with it, too.

Currently listening : Mofo Remixes By U2

Labels: mp3, music, obsession, u2

Labels: demo, Impulse Nine, Maloney's, mp3, music, stories, true

Labels: concert, mp3, music, u2