Anxiously Awaiting

Where to begin. Life. Has. Been. Busy. From attending my 4th wedding of the summer with my lady friend to working on my project proposal for my only grad school class; I barely have enough time to breath. Honestly, it’s good for me. I often thrive in high energy situations. I still stay in touch with old friends, and enjoy making new ones. I have stepped down from a lot of the reponsibilities I had at First Baptist. It was made clear to me by the Lord that I needed to give some of that up and move on in my leadership there. The lady and I celebrated 6 months of dating–a big deal to us, and we are looking forward to our future (whatever that may be). My boss of approximately 1 year has decided to move on to another section of the vast empire that is MSFT. Oh, and eric is making a come back (w00t) to the blogging world. Life is good.

I haven’t played much music lately. I’m more or less just plinking around when I have time. I wish that my music was more of a priority in my life, but it doesn’t look like that’s possible right now. Last night the lady asked me: “Have been playing guitar any lately?” My answer was “a little,” but obviously not as much as I would like. I need to make some time for some creative song writing, but I feel ill equipped. It’s hard to record stuff in my room at the D10’s because I’m afraid I’ll disturb someone. My amp sounds better cranked from about 12 to 2 o’ clock; and that’s just loud enough to be obnoxious. Plus I really really need a desk and a decent chair (or medicine ball) in there, I just have no clue where or how to fit it. Since being gainfully employed I have acquired a decent amount of stuff. Stuff I never thought I would own; like a Les Paul, two Firebirds, some other nice guitar toys, and a rockin Orange amp ;).

I’m doing really well financially despite the economic slowdown. I do hate that gas is so incredibly expensive, because that directly effects how much I can go and hang out with my lady. I like her a lot, so even if gas were $6.00 a gallon–and that may happen soon–I would still go see her. I have plenty of money saved up as a cushion in case something should happen, but currently I don’t have a goal to save towards. I don’t want a house, I don’t need a car, and I have all the guitars that I want. Well, almost. I still want a 56 Les Paul gold top, but those are expensive and I really don’t need it. The only big expense in my world right now is grad school. At over $700 a class, that can get a little pricey times two classes per semester (my self imposed maximum limit). I do get reimbursed after I pass the class, so it’s not a huge problem. I front the moniez and MSFT pays up at the end. I like this relationship despite my grumblings against the evil empire.

Anyway, that’s all that’s new with me. I’m going to try and be a little more consistent with updating here, just so that I don’t have to do these massive brain dumps. I expect that most of you will probably TLDR this unless you are really interested in my life. In which case I say: get one of your own!

Adieu.

I was accepted to Georgia Tech for my masters in computer science. It’s going to be interesting figuring out how I can juggle college life and full time work at MSFT. Prayer would be appreciated, as I have a lot of decisions to make in a short amount of time. I thought I was going to be considered for the Spring 2009 Semester, but it appears that I was let in for Fall 2008. That means I start classes in a week (o.O). It’s a bit overwhelming, but I figure everything will probably work out.

Hello college kid with full time MSFT work. Some responsibilities will need to be dropped for this to be feasible, and I’m working on figuring out what those are.

Man life has been busy. Work, cycling, working out, seeing the wonderful lady, and things of those sorts have consumed me lately. The next couple of weeks are going to be pretty crazy too. Hopefully I’ll find some time to do a little recording in there somewhere. I found some settings on my rig that make me very happy =D.

Signing off for now. I must roll a software patch ;).

Couple of new CD’s have been ripped and added to my archive. I deleted all the CD’s that I didn’t own in my iTunes collection, and I have been buying the ones that I really want to keep or listen to a lot. I don’t buy music off iTunes because I dislike DRM, and the only archive format option I have is Apple lossless–not my beloved FLAC. I’m back up to around 1500 songs, all archived to FLAC and then encoded to NeroAAC thanks to vmWare fusion and an uber small Windows XP install. All 1500 of those songs fit on my 8GB nano (7.41 GB total), and they sound great through my Bose Tri-ports.

Anyway, here’s a list of my new arrivals. I’m excited about having Demonhunter’s self titled album again. I remember listening to that entire album during long runs right after I graduated from high school. I never knew how much I missed it =).

Chris Tomlin - Arriving
Muse - Showbiz
Muse - Origin of Symmetry
Def Tones - Around the Fur
Sevendust - Animosity
Sevendust - Home
Demonhunter - Self Titled
Demonhunter - Summer of Darkness
Demonhunter - The Tryptic
Demonhunter - Storm the Gates of Hell

I still have a couple of albums that I want to pick up sometime soon. I have a huge amazon wishlist with all the music that I want, but I should be able to knock it out pretty quickly if I buy about 3-5 or so CD’s a month. If anyone has any good band recommendations based on my wish list feel free to post.

I went home last weekend to see the family and check up on the blueberry bush that my grandpa set out when I was little. We used to have four, but disease and not having the time to take care of them cut us down to only one. I think it would be awesome if Dad planted four or so more of these guys (hint hint) next spring. I love growing things, and I wish I had the space here in ATL to have a mini garden. There’s nothing better than fresh, home grown tomatoes!