Three-Letter Acronyms & Four-Letter Words

I've had my headphones on for the better part of every day for the last couple of months, drawing strength and focus from my eclectic taste in music.

The other day on the drive into work (not with headphones on), Counting Crows managed to find it's way into heavy rotation on the Nano's shuffle.

And that is when it came blasting through the speakers of my beloved Corolla...

"I guess the winter makes you laugh a little slower,
Makes you talk a little lower about the things you could not show her
And its been a long December and theres reason to believe
Maybe this year will be better than the last"

The particular part of the verse, is the 'Long December, and Maybe this year will be better than the last".

2007 was not a BAD year, not at all.

But 2008 is looking to be a better year. We are getting quite a bit done at work, rocking and rolling.

However, it was most definitely a LONG December. Because of deadlines and customer meetings, I had to stay down in Texas, while Gina enjoyed the cold, cold weather of Michigan. But December was definitely full of long days and nights.

January, is turning out to be about as busy. I had been hoping to take some time off towards the end of the month, but it is looking like mid February is the earliest I will be able to take any real time off.

I definitely want to get a short break from work before March.

Jaduka will be exhibiting at ETech, SXSW, and EComm, these shows are basically all back-to-back, starting on March 3rd and running through the 14th. I am not sure If I will be attending EComm, I would definitely like to as this is the replacement show that was organized in an amazingly short amount of time to replace ETel.

I really enjoyed ETel last year, too bad it got cancelled.

SXSW will be a good show, I really enjoyed attending it last year. And because of the fact that it is held here in Austin, it isn't quite like a regular tradeshow, seeing as I get to sleep in my own bed. Of course, that can sometimes be a bad thing, having to drive home tends to put a damper on an open bar at the various trade show parties.

We will also be exhibiting at the Web 2.0 Expo, in April.

I had the pleasure of attending the Web 2.0 Expo last year as an actual attendee vs an exhibitor. The difference may seem subtle, but for anyone who has ever worked a trade show booth before, you know the difference.

I found the conference sessions at the Web 2.0 Expo extremely informational and useful.

Well, it is late I wanted to get a quick blog post in before I took off from the office.

Oh yeah, did I forget to mention that I was still at the office.

(I ran home and let out the dogs around 5:30, but I need to get home and feed them.)

Laterz

I wrote a post a while back Music as a stimulant.

I caught this article about music helping you concentrateon Digg.

Like I said, maybe I am on to something.

Back to the grind.

Laterz

Well maybe not a cover band of the 70s but rather a band that covers the 70s.

I am trying to find the name of the band, but haven't yet. Scratch that, I think I found it on the venue's website, "K-Tel and the Hit Machine".

I got invited out to hangout with some friends that I had not spoken with in a while.

The band played a wide variety of of music from the 70s, possible a song or two from the early 80s.

If you read my recent post pertaining to music, you might wonder 'What does Ben know about music from the 70s?'

Not much really. But I did recognize some of the music, so I must have heard it somewhere. Maybe it was something that Mom and Dad listened to while I was young. Or maybe I just heard it in a movie.

Who knows.

I need to hit the sack. Emma is grunting at me that it is way pass her bedtime and that she is tired.

Laterz

Over the years I've spent a good deal of time with headphones piping music into my cranium or with the radio on in the background.

I normally use the music as an additional stimulant, something to get the blood pumping, even if I am just sitting at the computer typing. However, I remember listening to Green Day and Stone Temple Pilots while mowing the lawn back at my mom's house in Michigan. (Notably on a 'walkman' (portable personal cassette player to anyone too young to remember.)

Last night I spent some time searching for a song that might not even exist. I did a lyric search and what came back was a song by Garbage on their Garbage 2.0 album. I have that album and I don't think it is the song that I was thinking about, I need to find it and listen to it to make sure.

But I digress, the point is I spent time listening to samples of various tracks from the 80s, 90s and 2000s. There were songs that got my blood pumping, even from the 30 second sample. I bought a few of them, I don't remember which ones but I can look them up and post them after I get home later today.

However, as I was listening to some of the samples I sort of remembered the first time I heard them. It made me sort of feel like I was reliving my youth. Sitting up in the journalism room on the 3rd floor after hours doing the desktop publishing for the theatre's programs for the various plays and musicals I assisted (and performed) in over those 4 years.

I remembered, mowing the lawn, jogging or being down in Mexico for that summer before high school. My taste in music is best termed as eclectic. The word eclectic is usually reserved for folks that tend to collect taxidermy fruit or other such general weirdness.

Growing up I listened to pretty much whatever my mom liked, which meant lots of MoTown. However, at some point Bill Joel got inserted into the mix. I am not sure what made me like it, I think it is the piano. But I managed to kill two cassette tapes of his greatest hits. (I have since bought the CD set, which came with about 5 new songs.)

Sometime in 1995 I started driving, this meant that I had control of the radio. I listened almost exclusively to 92.1 the Edge, alternative rock, previously I listened to FM95 (i think that was the name) it ran a Top 40 line up. Sometime in 1995 I got my own CD player, so moving beyond just listening to Alternative on the radio I start buying CDs. (Here in Austin, I listen almost exclusively to 101X, alternative rock.)

I didn't really listen to 80s rock growing up, so when I hear it on the flashback lunch breaks I still occasionally hear a new song. I really like some of it, but not all of it. I bought some 80s alternative rock last night. My reason for mentioning that is because when it came to buying music for the next 10 years or so, I only bought stuff that I had been listening to since 1995. There are a few albums in my collection that date prior to 1995 (ie Billy Joel, and some artists that I liked enough to buy their older stuff).

Back to the title of this post 'Music as a stimulant?'.

As I was saying, I normally listen to music to keep myself motivated. I remember back in the early days of being down here in Texas, Gene used to listen to Metallica all the time. Then as the techno music movement made it's way through Austin, many of the programmers got really into techno music. (Notably some were there before and after the movement.)

I think everyone has music that gets their blood pumping. I think there are a lot of people that listen to music to calm down too.

As they say 'Music soothes the savage beast.'

I know that there are artists that calm me down. Almost all classical music for instance puts me to sleep. I mean that literally, and mean no offense to those that enjoy, compose, or play classical music. I find classical music to be quite relaxing and will normally get relaxed enough to just nod off while listening to it. Particularly if it has cello. I played cell back in middle school and was told at one point during that time 'The cello has the closet equivalent range to the female voice.'

I think this might be true, given that most of the artists that make me relax are women, who tend to have prominent solos or ensemble vocal pieces.

Anyway, I forget entirely why I thought this would be interesting to write about. But I do remember that yesterday my boss told me that I sounded tired. (which I am.)

It has been raining here for the last few days (nice and sunny at the moment). As I have stated in the past 'i am solar powered', so the rain makes me sleepy. He said 'Wow, you must have been really tired back in Michigan.'

I don't remember it raining constantly there, I remember it raining regularly then dissipating. However, I replied 'maybe that is why I formed my caffeine habit, because I was tired all the time in Michigan.'

Which later as I was listening to the various samples last night, maybe that is also why I got hooked on music too.

I think I am addicted to Music (and caffeine).

Back to the grind.

Laterz

I can't remembered if I posted up here about the CDs I bought while in San Fran.

I don't think I did (and I'm too lazy at the moment to do a search on my own blog).

I bought some Sinatra. I have to say that I was never HUGE fan of 'Old Blue Eyes'. But I can honestly say that I have never heard a Sinatra song that I hated. Maybe it is the singing, maybe it is the horn section but when he belts it out, it is just inspiring.

There was a Virgin Megastore on the way from the hotel to the Mascone center. They had a $10 CD sale going on. I picked up a few new CDs, Sinatra being one of them, the Cure being another, some Eddie Izzard (comedian) and a band called the Fratellis (I think).

Anyway, I'm going to hit CostCo on the way home.

Laterz

Nothing new under the sun, right?

Unless it is new to you (or in this case me.)

I was chatting with my sister this morning. I mentioned that I had found some new music recently. I have been on a quest lately to try to find some new music, break out of the rut of listening to the same old thing. Don't get me wrong I love about 95% of the songs I own. However, it gets tiresome some times to have to listen to the same stuff over and over.

My new additions to the collection in the last few months include:

She Wants Revenge : She Wants Revenge
Placebo : Meds
Editors : The Back room
We are scientists : With Love & Squalor

I for some reason am enjoying the sort of angsty electronica/techno-like British bands lately.

Anyway, using Napster primarily as my means of acquiring digital music they have their "Recommendations" section. I that is how I got to the 'Editors' and they lead me to 'We are scientists'.

However, it is not very effective to keep flipping back and forth between the recommended bands.

Back to my conversation with Rachel. She mentioned that there was this 'new' streaming audio site, 'pandora something'. A quick Google search later and I am all signed up.

It is interesting it is called 'Pandora Internet Radio' part of the 'Music Genome Project'. You search for the band or song that you like and magically it pulls in some streaming audio for you. Starting with the song or band you searched for, then it starts playing other tracks from other bands that are related. You can tell it whether you like the track or not. It apparently tries to learn your taste in music.

Interesting huh?

I was trying it out for free and decided that I like it enough to give them my email address and become a member of Pandora. They offer a subscription service. I don't know if I like it that much, yet. But it makes picking what to listen to much easier.

There was an add for this little device (Squeezebox) from 'Slim Devices' that caught my eye. It is a internet radio player, basically. It has wi-fi and an ethernet jack, so plug it in and listen to music off the net. Also looks like you can setup some software on your pc and stream audio from your private collection to the device.

And more interesting, Slim Devices was just purchased by Logitech. One of my favorite companies. I have been an avid Logitech fan for well, forever basically. I do have to admit I am using a Microsoft keyboard here at the house. But only because it was cheaper and had a slightly more natural layout of the keys. And well I am cheap. But I still have Logitech everywhere else, so not a traitor of the brand.

Laterz

So the wife has turned me into a reading fanatic. Well a fanatic in comparison to how much I used to read.

We hit up Half-Price Books a few weeks ago for well books. I browsed their sci-fi selection for World-of-Warcraft books. Oddly enough, no WoW books. However, they had a fine selection of Star Trek books. I am a closet Trekie.

I enjoy watching the original kirk and spock, (aka The Original Series, TOS). Picard and Data in The Next Generation (TNG) are good as well, of course the first season or two are extremely laughable when compared with any of the later seasons and series that followed.

Then came Sisko, Quark, Odo and the rest of the crew on Deep Space Nine (DS9). Janeway and Seven of 9 had a couple of good seasons on Voyager (VGR or VOY), the wife loves Voyager. Then came the ill-fated Enterprise, with Captain Archer and T'Pol, I enjoyed the last two seasons of that show.

But the one that really caught my interest was DS9. Maybe it was the fact the hero and I share first names, Benjamin Sisko. Or it could be the fact that it sported some of the best action (space battle) scenes that I remember not being on the silver screen.

So the Star Trek books that caught my eye @ Half-Price Books were that of The Dominion War. Which happens to be the episodes that had the best action scenes. However, the books crossed over between the TNG and DS9 shows, so I had to pick them up. They had books 1 & 2. The following week we went to a bigger Half-Price Books and I lucked out as they had books 3 & 4.

So I finally finished up the 4th book the other day. Books 1 & 3 were TNG based, they were quite good. At the end of book 3 I actually felt a little bit of remorse that they had killed of Professor Grof, he had been a prick most of book 1 and 3, but proved himself in the end when it counted. I'm sure if it had been in a movie or TV show it would have been in the last 15 minutes of the show.

Books 2 & 4 were also good. However, they were adaptations of the show. This renewed my love of DS9, so much that I looked at how much the series costs on DVD. Answer to that, way too much for me to spend on some DVDs.

So I turned to Netflix. Jeremy has been using them for a while, with little complaints (if any at all). So in standard fashion I follow his lead. He used them to rent and watch the first season of Lost. Something I too may have to do. But not until I finish watching Seasons 3 - 7 of DS9, with a few of the wife's picks thrown in here and there.

So I signed up on Tuesday night. They got my first three DVDs in the mail on Weds and tonight I have been watching them while finishing up some stuff for work. Speaking of, I need to wrap this up and get back to finishing that stuff up.

I think I will be able to return two of the discs tomorrow. Meaning that I should receive some more DVDs on Monday. (Discs should hit their center on Saturday, hopefully my next two go out that afternoon, and arrive Monday).


I felt the need to also mention the CD that has been in high rotation for the last couple of weeks.

"Meds" by Placebo.



The first like 4 tracks are great, the middle ones tend to be a little too slow, and the last half pick back up the pace. I will say that when the disc is on shuffle in the car the slower tracks don't bug me.

Ending this post, all I will say is.

Someone call an ambulance, there is gonna be an accident.

Laterz