Okay, things are officially turning around.

Yesterday I got a CD in the mail I’d been waiting for by Dot Allison. She was the singer for this group called One Dove, who only ever came out with one CD, but it was AMAZING. It is one of my favorite CDs to play as I’m driving home from a party or at an afterparty. I only listened to the first four songs on this new CD so far, but out of those four I liked 2, sort of liked 1 and hated the last. Which isn’t too bad. I’ll give more of a review as I listen.

The big thing that stopped me listening to that though was the new mix I did over the weekend. It’s been a while since I did a new one and I’d been having a hard time getting motivated. This one definitely reflects some of types of music I’ve been spinning lately. To get it, head over to the DJ page and find the mix called ‘I, Gregory’. I can’t wait to design the CD cover for it. I got the name from this wonderful comic called Gregory, about this little boy in an asylum. So I’ll probably used some scanned images from the comic.

Wow, what a weekend.

First it was insanely hot on Friday. Up in the 90s. Which is just overly warm for this time of year. The unfortunate thing is that it seemed to have sapped a lot of energy out of me. I ended up going home and going to sleep. I was supposed to meet up with some friends of mine for dinner and clubbing, but just couldn’t pull myself out of bed. I felt crappy about it, but I think I needed to just stay in. I ended up sleeping most of the night, with a brief bit of awakeness in the middle of the night.

Saturday was much of the same. I did have breakfast with my friend Becky, but besides that I was just a hermit. I spent a lot of it playing Lunar 2 on my PS2. It’s actually a PSX game, but I never had a PSX, so I’m working on making up for lost time. As a quick side note, Lunar 2 is amazing. It is 3 CDs long, I’ve been playing it for around 30 hours and am only just barely into the second CD. The game is a sequel to one that I played long long ago on my SegaCD (Yes, I actually owned one of those long ago). Anyways, back to the weekend. Saturday night was just depression, we won’t go there.

But Sunday I went record shopping then had a late lunch with my friends Bo and Marilyn. It ended up being a not so bad weekend after all. Except that it got way too cold late night. I seem to have babbled here a bit too much though, and work is starting to get crazy. I think I’ll end this for now and maybe post more later.

So the other day I typed up a post to this thing and when I clicked on the ‘Post & Publish’ button it failed horribly and everything I’d written just went poof. Needless to say, that kind of put me off of posting anything for a day or two. But, given that this has been such a BEAUTIFUL week I just had to post something.

The view from my desk right now is amazing. Everything is starting to look all nice and lush and green. It is quite a wonderful thing. And having it be in the 90s the last two days has definitely made it even better.

I’d also like to take a small space here to wish my sister Happy Birthday! She’s a whopping 30 years old today!

So the other thing I did in the lost entry was review this CD by Mandalay called ‘Solace’. I’ll just shorten it to. This CD is great, buy it.

Ahh,
Nothing like vacation. Even if it is just a 4 day weekend. Starting today I finally get a little time to relax. This is kind of a test to see if I can get through two days off w/out work calling me every 3 hours. Maybe I should just turn my phone off.

I’m also heading down to my parent’s place this morning. I haven’t been down to Hartford to see my parents in ages, so it’ll be nice to see them and get away from things for a day or two. I’m also bringing down my new laptop and am hoping to try out the firewire connection to my mom’s camcorder. (Yup, can’t ever stop being a geek).

I finally got to see Chris Liberator spin last weekend and it was stunning, mindblowing, and immensely inspiring. This guy just seems to make everything sound different, and in a good way. I’m sure a lot of it must be how he’s tweaking the eqs on the mixer, but I am determined to get a feel for the sound. It was enough of a difference that when the next DJ went on it sounded a little hollow right away (because I watched him changing the eqs even before he brought his first record in). While I don’t spin much hard trance like he was playing, I definitely think there’s stuff to be learned from watching him. I truely hope to get to see him spin again.

No changes on the transplant front. I don’t expect there to be any major news for months yet, since it has only been about three. But I’m carrying around my pager now. It’s crazy when I’m on call because I now have to carry around two pagers and my phone. It gets quite bulky. I’m also going to start going back to pulmonary rehab next week.

Hopefully I can get some updates into this a little bit more often.

I just realized I hadn’t written anything in quite a while. So I thought I’d give this a quick update.

I just got a great new laptop bag in the mail today. It’s made by a company called Timbuk2. They make things like bicycle courier bags and now have laptop bags of different kinds. I got the ‘Commuter Computer Bag’ along with the laptop sleeve. The bag itself feels very durable and, most importantly, it doesn’t look at all like a laptop bag.

I’m also spinning tonight at a party at Brandies. I’m still not quite sure what I’m going to spin. The last few nights have been hell as far as trying to crank out a new tape. I just haven’t been able to get any flow going at all between tracks. So I’ve got my fingers crossed that tonight will not suck.

I bought a desk today. It’s been something I’ve been wanting to do for a bit. I finally had a chance to get one and decided to just do it. Big thanks to my friends who gave me a lift to Office Max. So I started pulling all the pieces out and decided that it wasn’t a good idea to start hammering things together at 11:30 at night. Well, I decided that after hammering two pieces together and realizing how LOUD it sounds at that hour.

The other bonus part of my night was discovering the web site for this singer who rules. His name is Teddy Goldstein. I saw him a year ago at this place in Cambridge called Club Passim. His sounds are really great (and quite fun). I’m hoping to catch him again this year. (Look for more links for other performers as I discover where their sites are).

The weekend is almost here and I’m hoping for more good weather. This weather has been SOOO amazing. It was great to be able to zoom down the highway today with the sunroof open.

So I’ve now had my Powerbook for about 4 days and I still really dig it. OS X is just working quite well for me. It is definitely a little rough around the edges, but that’s just fine with me. It doesn’t crash. I haven’t run into any major major problems so far. It easily swaps between my work network and my home one.

But all this got me thinking about something. If you had said to me even 2 months ago that I’d have a Macintosh laptop I probably would have laughed at you. And when I mention to people that I got a Powerbook they go “ew, apple”. Then I show them OS X and I can start to see them re-evaluate that some. It’s just nice having that reminder that things do change. And if you aren’t willing to look again at things you once didn’t like then you are cheating yourself.

I’ve also been finding this happening with music lately. I used to be a huge trance guy. Heck, I still love trance. The difference is that I’d put my nose up to things like techno and house. These days I’m not only listening to them I’m starting to spin them some too. I know tastes change, but I still find it so cool how as time goes on my tastes are still continuously changing. Things are always challenging my views on life.

And then there was wireless.

So this morning I zipped back out to CompUsa and said, “This don’t work!” and they gave me a new airport card. Moments later I was at home and back online with no wires. I must say this is quite wonderful! My one gripe would be that installing the card is somewhat of a pain in the ass. I think apple should have come up with a better way of installing it. Getting the bottom of the G4 was somewhat of a pain in the ass.

On another topic, I just realized that blogger keeps archives of my posts and that I can probably provide access to them via my web page. Neat!

The good news is. I still love my Powerbook. The bad news is that I just got a new airport wireless card for it and it doesn’t seem to work. The system isn’t even recognising it. So, tomorrow I need to exchange it and see if I can get a new one and hopefully that will work.

Color me grumpy.

So I finally took the plunge. Last night after work I picked up a Powerbook G4. So far, I’m in love. This is what I’ve been looking for in a laptop all these years. First off, the hardware. It’s titanium, which is just too cool. The laptop has a very clean, sleek look to it. The keyboard is fairly comfortable, I do like the feel of the keyboard. I’m still getting used to the single mouse button, but I think I’ll be able to cope.

Now, as far as OS X goes. This is the other thing I’ve been looking for all these years. Something that gives me unix running on a laptop with a really slick interface. And that’s what I’ve got here. I’ve always liked the feel of MacOS (though I really haven’t used it since college), but I’ve always felt constrained by the lack of a kind of command-line interface. And now it doesn’t only have one, it has one that is unix! So far I’ve built the apps I usually use with no problem.

The other bonus thing I realized is that this can now become my new development platform. I can have apache+php with mysql running on this box so that I can work offline on any web projects I have. The one thing I don’t have yet is the wireless card for the Powerbook, but I’m hoping I can find it pretty soon.