Shake, rattle and roll

I just found out when I got to work that Seattle got quite a bit of a shaker yesterday — current estimates put the quake that just hit them at 6.8. CNN has ongoing coverage of the quake posted.

Since I know a fair amount of people down in the Seattle area (Casey, Chad, Dez, Kate, Nikki, fivefootfourteen, and many others that aren’t coming to mind at the moment), I just wanted to send out my hopes and wishes that everything’s going well for them down there.

On the brighter (if somewhat cynical) side, I wonder if this means that there will be a few more open apartments when I move down there?

Radio – and future gigs?

Did the radio show last night, and it seemed to go over pretty well. I don’t know just how many people were listening, but at least a few were from the calls we got, and they generally seemed to have good things to say. My personal moment of triumph was when one person called to tell Nick (the show’s host) to quit playing a compilation CD, at which point Nick let him know that it was actually me mixing live. I guess my mixes were going pretty smoothly!

Also ended up with a couple possibilities for the future — I don’t know for sure if they’ll pan out or not, but I can hope. I got one call about some people working on getting another club going here in town, so will be trying to get a hold of the people in charge of that soon to get more info — big thanks to DJ Panda for recommending me for that. Also, Nick asked if I’d be interested in co-hosting his show…we filled out a KRUA volunteer application, and if everything goes well, I just may have a spot on the air every Tuesday night! Would be a lot of fun, and I think it’d be great to expand my DJ experience to include radio as well as club and for-hire dance work.

So, that’s the big excitement for the past couple days. As always, more babble later….

Back from UAA, possibly on the radio

Just got back from the Dance Marathon at UAA that I DJ’d for today. Was a lot of fun — and really drove home how much I miss being able to spin on a regular basis. The event went off really well, and I seemed to do a pretty decent job of keeping most people happy over the course of the night…all in all, not bad in the least.

One of the niftiest bits of the evening, though, was hooking up with Nick. I’ve known him for a while now, and we’ve wanted to get me a spot guest DJ’ing for the electronica show he does on KRUA for a while now, but schedules have always intervened. However, he’s now doing the show on Tuesday nights, which works for me…so this Tuesday, I’ll be spinning on 88.1 FM KRUA sometime between 7pm and 10pm! Should be fun…looking forward to trying my hand at a radio gig. And, as an added bonus, if anyone feels like it, you can listen in over the web (as long as you have Real Player G2 installed) through KRUA’s website!

DJ Wudi @ UAA this Saturday

Just a quick reminder that this Saturday I’ll be spinning from 2pm-10pm for the UAA Dance Marathon fundraiser for the Providence Children’s ICU (at least, I’m pretty sure that’s who it’s for…someone correct me if I’m wrong). I’m honestly not completely sure if this is open to the public, or how it would be handled, but if anyone wants to stop by, say hello, and give a few dollars to the cause, nobody would complain too terribly much.

New ‘puter!

This just rocks — I’ve added a new ‘puter to my stable here at home. One of the guys at work was selling his off for a good price, so it came home with me today.

Now the iMac that was playing a dual role as my main work machine and webserver (which occasionally caused the server to go down when I needed to do certain things on that machine) has been designated as just the webserver, and the new machine is my workhorse box.

For the curious, the new box is a 350 MHz blue and white Power Macintosh G3, with 128 MB memory, DVD player, 22.3 GB of storage spread across three drives (1 ATA/IDE, 2 SCSI), and dual 17″ monitors, one running off an IMS Twin Turbo card, the other running off an ATI Rage 128. Quite the step up…and I’m cheezing like mad. Time to play!

Karaokemon!

I used to think that Pokemon was the most evil thing to come into this world (followed closely by Furby).

I was wrong.

Karaoke is definitely the most evil thing to come into this world so far.

Which, of course, leads me to the logical conclusion that Hell is going to be me strapped into a chair at a lounge where there are a bunch of different Pokemon all singing Karaoke. Somebody just freeze me now, ’cause I don’t ever want to die if that’s the case….

Quicker archiving, twins, frustration

Seeing as how I’m actually starting to update this thing on a more regular basis — and given my tendency for loquaciousness — I figured I’d drop the archiving settings down to weekly, instead of every two weeks, so that this page didn’t just keep scrolling on and on and on and on and on…. I also removed the link to the old hand-generated archive pages (from before I started using this software to automate the updating process), since it’s all really old stuff, and it’s easier for me to just stay with the automatically generated archive pages.

Even though I picked it up a couple of weeks ago, I just got around to watching Dead Ringers last night. Wow…what an incredibly fascinating film. David Cronenberg almost never fails to dissapoint me — he’s got an incredibly twisted mind and excels at putting his ideas on screen — and the one time he has (Crash, which I never even made it all the way through) I’m now starting to consider renting and giving another try. Anyway, the combination of Cronenberg and Jeremy Irons‘ absolutely mindbending performance as a pair of identical twins in Dead Ringers was absolutely mesmerizing. The fact that Irons could play two such identical people and put just enough subtle differences into the performances that it was always clear which was which was absolutely incredible to watch…he just proves yet again why he’s on my list of favorite actors.

In other news…well, not much. E-mailed my resume over to the temp agency, so all I can do now is ‘hurry up and wait.’ Spent most of last night here at home being frustrated with life in general…I’m so burnt out on just about everything here in town, especially with all this drama with TimeFrame, that I’m looking forward more and more to the day that I can just pack up and leave. Ah, well…some days I do better than others.

Now, I’ve got to go jump in the shower and head off to work at Suncoast, selling movies for a few hours. Fun fun fun….

First steps…

…into a field I haven’t investigated in years: job searching.

Went ahead and took Friday off to do a bit of job hunting. Ended up going by Chugach North Technical Services and turning in an application and getting an interview there…hopefully that might bring something my way soon. Things seemed to go pretty decently, I took one test on Microsoft Word and got a 94% (only missed two questions), and my typing test clocked me at 81 WPM with 95% accuracy…not bad in the least. Just have to get my resume e-mailed over to them and harcopy dropped off on Monday, and then wait and hope. If they’re able to find me something, then in goes my 2 week notice at TimeFrame. Hard to believe I actually got to this point, but if it’s time, it’s time.

Ups and downs, and some possible changes

Yesterday was not exactly the best day I’ve ever had — not the worst overall, but certain moments may have some fairly large impact on days to come.

I’ll start with the good stuff, though. First off, my bowling continues to improve, which is cool. After last week’s run I brought my average up to 113, then surprised myself by managing to pull off my best series yet — 142/168/140! Not just my best series so far, but that 168 is my best score so far…I’m hoping to be able to get at least one game where I break 200 before I stop bowling.

Secondly, I got a chance to swing by Suncoast and picked up Love’s Labours Lost, and watched that after I got home from bowling last night. It turned out to be a really fun film, though it takes a little getting used to at first. Since Branagh combined Shakespeare with a 40’s style musical for this production, it opens with a ‘newsreel’ to give you some background information, then moves into some expository Shakespearian dialogue…then breaks into “I’d Rather Charleston”. Really caught me off guard at first, but after one or two numbers you just get caught up in the spirit of the experiment, and it just becomes a whole lot of fun. The only real downside I found was Alicia Silverstone trying not just to act, but to sing — luckily, she only gets a few verses completely on her own. I found her character to be this film’s eqivalent to Keanu Reeves in Much Ado About Nothing — an essential character who is unfortunately really badly miscast. Aside from lil’ miss Clueless, though, it’s a wonderful little romp, once you get past the initial shock.

Unfortunately, those were the highlights of the day. Not that they were bad highlights…just that the rest of the day kind of overshadows them.

Did my taxes — I owe $146. Bleah.

The big thing, however — if I’d had any more money in the bank than I do, I would have walked out of my job at TimeFrame yesterday. This is a really major thing for me — one way or another, I’ve always had an almost overdevolped sense of responsibility to whatever job I’m working, and will stick out some really uncomfortable situations when I deem it worth it, and I’d been doing my best to deal with all the little things at TimeFrame that bug me for a while now, as I didn’t want to either lose the paycheck or throw away the four and a half years I’ve got there just a few months before I leave state. However….

It just isn’t worth the headache anymore. While it’s not the job itself that bugs me, and I still enjoy the actual work I do, the work environment is so screwball that I’ve finally reached my breaking point. So, today I’ve called in to take a personal leave day, and I plan on running around to some of the temp agencies in town to take their placement/skills tests and see if I can find anything upwards of $10/hr for the next few months. I figure if I can find some data entry position — the kind of thing that often pays $12-$15 an hour because nobody wants to deal with it (usually a night position, shoved in a hole somewhere typing numbers in for hours on end), then as soon as I’m confirmed there, I can turn in my notice at TimeFrame and lose a fair amount of the stress in my life at the moment.

It’s really kind of bizarre for me to have gotten to this point — I’m still kind of amazed at myself for being willing to do something like take a day off to go job hunting. But, things have been going steadily downhill for me in regards to my job there, and there’s really only so much that I can take. So, today begins something of a grand adventure, in seeing if I can find something else to do for the next few months until I can afford to bail state. Should be interesting.

Of course, what’s going to be really interesting is if someone from TimeFrame actually ever stops by and checks my site and reads this….

Balls and beats

Bowling balls and musical beats, that is…

I don’t even want to know what you were thinking, you perverts.

Anyway, apparently my bowling game actually is improving — my average is up to 111, and tonight I managed to pull off a good three sets: 134/125/136. Not bad, considering this is the first time I’ve ever bowled on a regular basis.

I also may have an opportunity to start spinning again…albeit in sort of a cheezy fashion. The bowling alley in Muldoon is one of the ones in town that does Neon Bowling on weekend nights (blacklights, smoke machines, fancy lights, and loud music — everything you need for a good night of bowling, right?), and they’re looking for a DJ for their Saturday nights. I’d have to restrict some of my set a bit — as a “family establishment” I’d have to stay away from anything with swearing, overt sexuality, or drug references (which, I have to admit, knocks out a fair amount of the more popular tracks I own)…and while it’s not exactly a dance club, it would at least be spinning again. I’m thinking about it…not entirely sure yet, but you never know….