seems like the last month has been a major upheaval, lots of crap going on, but it's mostly just busyness, frustration, and happiness.

the band's been practicing, and though i've totally neglected the site since before the last show, we're really not dead. in fact, we've a show coming up this weekend, which i've only just finished making flyers for, that i hope to get up around town tomorrow before practice. our second show with a drummer, and we've been coming up with ideas of how to change things around to make us happier… more on that later.

sara's and my wedding plans are proceeding apace, and we've actually been talking about the possibility of buying a house or condo prior to the festivities (once the lease is up at the current abode). we're getting ready to send out "save the date" cards, and she's been dress shopping. we finally finished "catholic wedding school" so that's thankfully out of the way, and we didn't even have to endure a great deal of that "natural family planning" crap the popesters like to foist on people. yippee.

add to all that fun the fact that sara's finally started back to school, and our schedules have been in major flux trying to adjust back into that whole routine. we're starting to settle in now, so i'm hoping to start getting some work done again.

which leads me to the next exciting thing (for me, anyway). i finally, after years and years of wishing, finally bought myself a swanky new laptop… an AMD Athlon 64 beast of fury and brilliance, that has caused me no end of heartache the past couple weeks mainly due to my insufferable need to wrest complete control over my machines from the great satan (Windows). So i got the machine and proceeded to poke and prod at it, uninstalling as much as possible and deleting a bunch besides. It was becoming a stripped down monster, but then i made some networking change trying to surreptitiously get a 'net hookup at work, and then i couldn't connect to any of my machines on the home network… so, a couple reinstalls later, a much more cautious takeover attempt, and i've finally got it in order again. i'm still installing some of the day-to-days, but it's mostly up and running. thus, this, my first blog post on the new champion. (named the hard drives after the members of Mudhoney, for those who wonder those things)

also, somewhere in there, i got to hang out with my brother who came up to the fair with the FFA, and i managed to get myself in to see the eye doctor, who told me absolutely nothing helpful. in fact, he said that, not only was there nothing that he could do about the problems that i'd come to see him about, but there is another issue that i wasn't even previously aware of, and which, surprise surprise, he also can't do anything about. some retinal specialist, eh?

and the last bit of life complicating news is that i managed to get started working on a little freelance project for some friends (and with an old Corvus coworker–ben), a thing which is currently moving slowly, but positively. i've been wanting to try to take on some freelance stuff, so this should be a good opportunity to see if i can manage to balance the leisurely bits of my life with actual obligations to others.

so, bunch of stuff going on, a lot of it just tedious, time consuming, and schedule wrecking, but thankfully enough of it happy and fun that i've not minded the other bits too much. so, here's to another 'bout of time wrestling.

i wanted to write a post, but i don't really have any (not-so) unique insights or anything to share.

i spent this past sunday in bed for pretty-much 24 hours, interrupted only long enough to get out of bed to throw up, or later, to try to eat, or to just feebly walk around the house because i was sick of being sick in bed. now i think i'm still trying to recover from being in bed so damned long. my brain is tired.

i did find an interesting site last week, http://www.last.fm/. i suppose not an entirely original site, in that it's basically an online radio station, or live365 style multiple radio broadcaster. what makes it interesting, perhaps even unique, is the fact that you can get online, tell it the artists, albums, etc. you like, and it'll suggest other user's "radio programs" to listen to. then, as you listen to the station, if you keep a window open (you can pop up the "portable" player and minimize it) you can tell the site which songs you like, and which you hate.

as you continue to make judgements, the site can make better suggestions, and, in fact, can create a "profile" radio program for you, where it'll pull songs and artists from other user's profiles who have similiar tastes.

so far, it's been picking some interesting stuff for me, though it did throw a Christina Aguilera at me earlier that i had to ban the fuck out of.

oh, and i think they've been getting more attention lately (i found them via daypop, so they're getting linked all over creation, supposedly) so they're still working out some of the kinks (my profile has been telling me i've been listening to "Tool – Forty Six & 2" all day now, so the love/hate marker thing hasn't been functional for me today).

but, you can go in and add individual artists, albums, and songs to your profile "by hand" if you want to take advantage of the "profile radio" portion of the site.

pretty cool stuff.