In the last year I went from being a line cook to a web designer, moved to a new city and found a new apt after 3 yrs in the old, and bought a truck to replace the car that I had for 5-6 years.

The change that I am most proud of is that I found a new group of musicians to play with and have helped bring them out of the basement into a new practice space and out gigging. So not only am I playing with a band again (I had a few years hiatus) but one that I can actually express myself in (I never felt comfortable in any other band)

Life isn’t perfect as I still have financial issues and currently single but I must be on the right track because my sister commented last week that I was finally looking comfortable in my own skin.

This post was inspired and origianlly written as a comment on Carolyn’s Question of the Day on Pownce

Driving down the highway on a cold night, the temperature, -21 degrees Fahrenheit. All of a sudden my radio cuts out. “Did I fuck up my iPhone during that last jailbreak?” I check my phone, it is running fine. The stereo on the other hand, not so much. “Great, now I need a new stereo.”

A few miles down the road, I begin to notice the dashboard going a little haywire. The light with a stick figure resting its head on an airbag keeps flashing, “Is my airbag about to deploy?” I begin to look for an exit, for an ill feeling had been resting in the pit of my stomach ever since I left work and if I have learned anything in this crazy life of mine it is to trust your gut. My luck, there are no exits in sight. I am not even half way through my 30 minute drive home from work.

Snow is flying across the road, visibility is low, and I begin to notice that my headlights are fading. The interior lights are fading, the headlights keep getting dimmer and dimmer, and the car is beginning to make funny sounds. The alternator has failed to do its job, my battery is dead, and now I find myself coasting to the side of the road.

Time to bust out the speed dial, I call a few and my landlord Rick is the first to pick up. He immediately jumps in his truck and makes his way to find me. The cold begins to creep in, I pull out my wool blanket from the back of my car and wrap myself. Yesterday I left home in just a fleece thinking that the weather was on an upturn. I normally sleep in Appleton after band practice on Mondays so I was not ready for the weather to make this turn for the worse. I try to keep my mind off things by taking my 365 self portrait, powncing, and looking for a tow truck on my iPhone. That doesn’t stop the cold.

About 40 minutes go by and finally my ride shows, grabbing my bag with laptop and my bass guitar I jump in a start to thaw. Rick calls the cops in New London to find out what I should do. They tell us to call the Outagaime County Sherriff’s department, who transfers me to Winnebago county, in which I lose due to a drop call halfway through the call. I call back and get transfered to Waupaca County (which was my misunderstanding). So I get back to Outagaime, transfered back to Winnebago, to find out that my car is being towed to Menasha, near where I work. Now that I have everything figured out I found myself at the nearest bar for a well deserved cocktail.

so here it goes

1. Blog more
2. Start a Video Podcast (need some actors)
3. Get back into Yoga
4. Get back into rock climbing
(ever since my sis moved to Seattle I’ve been slacking)
5. record an album with my band

Tags: newyears eve, resolutions

I wrote this for the tiki bar tv / me.dium contest http://www.me.dium.com/node/863

With only the light of the full moon I sat on a park bench with my new acquisition and awaited my contact. As I sat there I wondered why was I giving up such an priceless artifact and to who. Was this person worthy of such an item, had my travels been all for naught? I thought of what I had gone through to obtain it, the endless miles I had to walk, the endless hours of research, the awful cocktails I had to drink. This was a truly unique item and I was giving it up for monetary gain, what kind of fool am I?

I’ll bring you up to speed, when I was in the far east studying with a few Tibetan monks I had a vision. Now this was no drug induced hippy vision, this was a vision of enlightenment brought on by a long meditation. In this vision a Tiki came to me. He spoke of a small island that held a Tiki Mug with a unique power. I asked where this island was but he could only say, “Find the one who breathes with another’s breath”. With those words he was gone.

For weeks these words ran trough my head but I could not make light of them. One day I was walking down a corridor towards the main hall, as I had everyday since I came to stay at this monastery. When I came to a small shrine I looked at a statue that stood before me. A large carving of a ancient man stood before me playing a flute. “One who breathes with another’s breath”, that is it. Upon further inspection I looked in the flute and a old scroll was buried deep in it. I pulled it out and to my amazement it was a map. I spook to no one of this and promptly set out on a voyage to this island.

As I sailed to the far south east edge of the Polynesian islands the ocean beat upon the ship as if a force beyond our control wanted to keep me from my destination. The crew took one look at the dormant volcano at the center of the island and refused to set foot on her banks.

So I set out on a trek to the center of the island by myself. When I finally reached the base of the volcano, I stumbled across an iceberg, literally tripping over it as it had melted down to the size of a pebble thus sending me into a crevasse head over heals. When I finally came to a stop I realized that my liquor supply had been smashed in the fall. Covered with booze I quickly tore off my shirt and wrung it into my mouth. To preoccupied with the salvation of my liquor I neglected to heed my surroundings.

The fall had brought me to a cave far below the base of the volcano and after only a few drops of rum had reached my tongue did I notice that a green glow was filling the cave. There before me stood a pillar, atop rested a green tiki mug that was producing the glow.

I ran over to it squeezing various pieces of clothing and gear until I produced a Cocktail called “Cave In”

Ingredients :

- 1 oz amaretto

- 1 oz Cuban rum

- 1 oz peach liqueur

- 1 splash orange juice

- 1 splash cranberry juice

I took one sip and a weird sensation came over me. Proceeding to finish the drink I then gathered my gear, packed the tiki mug safely away in my pack, and made my way back to the ship. As soon as I got there the captain said. “Are you done monkeying around”?

As soon as the words came out of his mouth I began to jump around, swing from branches, and I even threw my feces at the crew members. Then I knew the power of this mug. I had “caved in” to his words. Little did the captain know what power he held at that point, a person with such knowledge could have had me doing anything they pleased. When I came to my senses I went straight to my cabin and locked myself in until the effects wore off.

I tested the mug out on unknowing subjects and every time I did I felt guilty. Without the will to use the mug to my advantage I decided to get rid of it but how?

Then one night in a bar a man approached me, “Bartenders, I vould like to order a some vodka, makes me a screwdriver,” After taking a sip, he turned to me and asked, “You looks familiar, haves I seen you before?”

“I don’t think so,” I replied.

“You haves been to the islands?”

“Islands, what Islands?”

“You have beens to the Polynesian islands.”

“Yes I have, but I don’t think we have met.”

“No, but I believes you might haves something I vant. I talked with a crewmember of a ship you sailed on and they described an item I have beens lookings for, a green Tikis Mug.”

“What do you want with it?” I asked.

“Only to collect, I have the biggest collection of tikis in ze world at the Learnstitute Museum.”

I pondered this offering, if he is truly just a collector the mug would be safe in the museum and not used for ill gotten gains. “You have a deal, Mr…”

“Mr. Ambassador”

Did I sell the Tiki mug to Mr. Ambassador? Does the green mug find its way on to a shelf in the Tiki Bar? Find out next time.

As you might have gathered from my previous post, I am the proud owner of a new laptop and in mourning for a old desktop that I built about four years ago.

One hypothesis has been debunked as to why the desktop died. Today I performed a brain transplant and placed my old hard drive into a brand new external case. Now I have all that old data and formated the partition that housed the operating system so that I would have more space.

All my music had already been transfered as I had it all backed up on my iPod. I am making sure of that before I delete it all from the old disk.

Now I’ll just have to get a few more external enclosures and some 500GB hard drives to go with them to put all my old flac files on so I don’t have to go hunting through a few hundred DVDs of music.

I’m trying to send a message to all of the video services neglecting the hearing impaired community. So I’m starting a viral campaign by posting videos on YouTube and in my podcast. If viewed enough times maybe it could make a difference, though the podcast version will only attract attention if downloaded through iTunes.

If there are more interested in this concept who would like to contribute videos I am willing to start a new podcast feed and website for the cause.

On a side note, if you are looking for closed-captioned videos on the web, check out http://www.harkle.com/ who have a search engine and listing for the like.

I received a pair of awesome Shure headphones for my iPod at Christmas but for some reason the cord started shorting out. This is the product of ripping open the cord twisting the wires together and applying blue electrical tape to make the headphones work again. Now that is music to my ears!