Tonight, my brother Scott and I were watching Transformers on Demand and there was an Amber Alert on the Emergency Broadcast System. Haven't seen anything on any websites and we went right back to watching the movie since we can't help. It happened at 7pm, I got to Scott's house at around quarter of, and we were watching the Sixers and playing with Danny and Megan. The alert didn't come on until 9pm. Plus it happened about 7 or 8 miles from us. Two kids, a 3 year old girl and a 6 year old boy, in a car when it was stolen. I don't want to be prying and definitely not scrutinizing, but I hope that the criminals stole the car for just the car, and do the right thing, and not anything stupid. We discussed it for a few minutes, hoping for the best, after the alert stopped. What else can we do?

Today, I got a pair of really comfortable slippers that can also be worn outside, so I don't have to put my shoes on to take Kodie out. Also, I got a sweater, a zipper up sweater, a manger scene for my house because I have no Christmas decorations, and I made a funny today! I was getting my hair cut (Christmas present!) by my Mom, and she says that my brother Pat has turned into an ironing maniac! I said "That's ironic" :P You love it.

Today we're going to the 12:00 mass at St. Bernadette's, the school I went to all my life, until High School... which, it turned out, taught me nothing. Then my Mom's family is having something way up in the Warminster part of the country. Should be a good time. My parents are driving me so I can drink all I want. w00t.

I got my brother Pat, for a Pollyanna gift, a money clip. It's a nice one that has a diamond on it. I gave him the bag with it in it, and he read it with a big question mark on the end, like "Jeweler's?!??" I said "It's your bling" having no knowledge of what bling is :P It's sharp looking.

I also got floss, Scott gave me $50 and a 12 pack of Pepsi for a Pollyanna gift, I got a $20 gift card to Wawa, a zipper down hoodie sweatshirt (awesome), and socks, a belt... I forget everything else, but it was a productive Christmas as always. Of course, I bought myself the Gretsch earlier this month :)

Merry Christmas!

It's got a hell of a tone to it, but any guitar really sounds great brand new. What really separates the great one from the shitty ones is how they sound after a year of abuse. I'm a big fan of Brian Setzer, and he's what turned me onto Gretsch. Of course, his Gretsch is almost 50 years old, made in 1959. I don't know how much longer he has with that thing, because as we all know, wood is not the most durable piece of material. It warps and bends, cracks, splits, splinters.

Anyway, I wasn't planning on learning any Brian Setzer (Stray Cats) songs only because I thought they'd be too hard. There are some tabs out there on the 'net, but on no sites that you'd want to visit (not on Windows with IE anyway), but I figured since I have the Mac and Firefox, I'd be fine checking them out. So I learned Stray Cat Strut all the way through in about 30 minutes. I was pleasantly surprised that I was able to learn it that quickly, considering how long I've taken to learn comparatively simple songs. I'm talking solos, chorus, verses, everything. Intro, outtro. Bridge. However, relative to all Stray Cats songs, that song's pretty easy to learn. Next up... Sexy and 17. That song is my favorite.

I tried the rockabilly picking again, this time without thinking (because no brain makes that a difficult task)... SO much easier!! I can pick the bottom strings with my index, middle and ring fingers, and pluck the top two strings with my thumb. The pinky is worthless. Actually, I did it so much, that right now I'm typing so fast and not making any mistakes. I can type so fast, I could probably fill this post with a whole bunch of boring stuff. I won't though.

GOOD NEWS! Jim and Kate, in England, had a DAUGHTER!! LillyAnn (one or two words, and/or one or two 'L's, I'm not sure, but you get the idea)!! Welcome to this world, LillyAnn, make yourself at home. I will be her godfather!! Woohoo!! I'll probably get assloads of pictures of her tomorrow. And I'll take some of my guitar.

Last news... I ordered an amplifier. Hartke GT60c 1x12 tube amp. Should be sweet.

No guitar yet. When I ordered it, I was so excited and forgot to get it shipped to my work. I have been kicking myself all day. Well, ever since I ordered it even. But especially today because they tried to ship it. I called Fedex and they said I can have them hold it for me to pick it up, but the hours of operation at the warehouse that it's at tonight are only from 8 to 5. Of course, I called at like 6:30. So, as of the time of this post, I'll have it in 8 hours. I'll bring it into work, they'll appreciate it. Two other known musicians, and at that place, that's 30% musicianship. I'm going to wake up early no matter what time I get to bed, I'm excited to see this thing. So pictures tomorrow (or later today technically).

Should be da bomb. I've gotten the basic fingerpicking down so that's good, time to move onto some more advanced stuff. I will probably make a trip to the local music shop this weekend and see if I can pick up a cheap version of the amps that I've been eyeing on Samash.com.

Of course, I don't have to learn to fingerpick just to own this guitar. I don't have to learn anything. I just want to expand my horizons.

I tried to play my guitar picking it rockabilly style, and my brain fell out.

Not that I'm horrible.



I never really got good with fingerpicking though, so I have to learn that first. Then I have to get the thing down where you do the bass line with your pick and melody with your other three fingers. But, anyway, how about that Internet and its invaluable resources. You can really learn whatever you want. Hopefully there's a brain replacement video out there somewhere.

Today is the day my Gretsch gets here.

I found it hilarious when I read this:

As news of the hostage-taking spread, candidates from across the political spectrum put aside rivalries. Democrat Barack Obama, who has been trading sharp barbs with the New York senator, called Clinton to offer support.

Republican Mitt Romney, who has also been taking shots at Clinton, asked his staff to lock all his field offices and be on alert for suspicious individuals. "Our thoughts and prayers are with those involved in the situation in New Hampshire," Romney said in a statement early in the day.

That's a Gretsch G5120 in Black. I'll probably swap out the cheap pickups for some TV Jones "TV Classic" or "Power'Tron" pickups, which are standard nowadays on Gretsch guitars, but were one of the things cut when they put this guitar together to cut the price. It's a good starter Gretsch, but I can't sacrifice sound quality. Perhaps later I'll go with a Nashville, but I know I'm definitely getting one or more of their solid bodies, like the Corvette. Goddamn they can design a guitar. Beautiful.

A little history about TV Jones pickups: They went into a '59 Gretsch, whose pickups are called "Filter'Tron", fully analyzed all the electronics, and made their TV Classic after it. They seem like a sweet company, plus they have an upgrade guide made specifically for the guitar I got, the Electromatic. That's here. I'll probably keep in the original humbuckers for at least a little while though. Pictures of mine to come soon!

Still going strong from Sunday at around 3pm. Still fighting off monster urges at the pace of about 3 daily. Usually in the morning, sometimes right after lunch or not until about an hour before it's time to leave work (usually because I'm antsy just to get out of there too), and usually one as I'm going to bed.

They are monster urges, like the song "What I Got" by Sublime, I'm gonna die if I don't get a cigarette. These are monster in every sense of the word. I tried with just willpower and mind diversion (thinking of something else), but the nerves in my body still say "Will you just go get a f@#%ing pack of smokes already, a@#%hole?" No, f@#%#@er! :P I don't like my body so you'd think I'd fill it with bad stuff like cigarettes, but I'm not smoking just to spite it. Mofo.

Craving a cigarette is brutal. You can't concentrate, sit still, or really think about anything else. When you're thirsty, really thirsty, you have to get a drink right now. You notice, "Goddamn I'm thirsty", and rather than trying to think of something else or ignore the need, you just go get water. It's the same when you're addicted to smoking. Only slightly worse for you.

It's really the hardest thing to do ever. Even if you manage to quit, you'll remember how good it was to smoke. I know a guy who smoked for 20 years, that quit 30 years ago and still has dreams about smoking. That's my fate, probably. It's so good, but my will power is pretty good this time. My thinking (and I would recommend this thinking to anyone) is that if I smoke now, I'll feel really good but then I'll be smoking again and will feel like crap in a few days. And if I keep off of them, I'll feel really good for a long time, but a slightly different kind of good. I can't smoke anymore, either. I never feel like doing anything. It blows.

During those monster urges, I'll hold off on doing anything about them for a bit because I like feeling my heart beating really hard, begging for a cigarette :P Then, I'll just breath really deep for a while, and if it's not gone then I know it's a monster urge. So then I'll pop in a nicotine lozenge. I can't even describe how bad nicotine urges are, so you just have to take my word for it.

Anyway, hopefully I'll be able to keep this up. I'm going to the Eagles game on Sunday, maybe I'll be off of the lozenges and not craving cigs at all, and can drink and not smoke all day long :) That would be the best. Wish me luck!

It's been a few weeks since my last confession. McNabb sucks. I watched a documentary called "Maxed Out" that I think should be part of High School education (of course, it'll never be if the banks still have all the money). I bought about 8 games in the past two weeks and have spent the most time playing Civilization IV. Can't help it. I'm finally quitting smoking. Tonight, after two days, I've had major urges, but unlike previous attempts in the past month or so where I just went out and bought smokes, I haven't caved and still haven't popped in a nicotine pill to rid the craving. But I'm not craving anymore. That's a step. Still can't drink and not smoke, so no drinking for me anymore. Maybe I'll exercise. I was at the St. Joe's game tonight. They played Ball State, and on average, everyone on St. Joe's was about 6 inches taller than the guy they were defending. Ball State was a small team, but they looked really good. Small, quick, of course, good shooters, great passers, pesky defenders. St. Joe's won though, coach Martelli learned a few tricks from watching me on the playground. You're welcome. That and god damn his team can shoot three pointers. 74 points total, about 54 from 3 pointers, and around 6 from two pointers, the rest free throws. Gotta check the stats, but that can't be too far off. Here's Ball State's coverage. And SJU's.

I got this external hard drive to use with Mac OS X Leopard so I could use "Time Machine". I'm in fear of losing my music and stuff. I tried connecting the drive. It found it right away, but when I went to set it as my backup drive for Time Machine, the disk utility included with Mac OS wasn't able to format it. Hoping it wasn't a bad drive, I plugged it into my Windows machine and successfully formatted it with NTFS. Weird, too, was that after that, I was able to connect it to my Mac, and presumably read/write from/to it (but I didn't try, but it definitely showed up as a drive on my desktop). I tried again to use it for Time Machine, and again it failed. Until today, when I got home for work, I was dead set on getting a new drive and using the TB drive for my Windows backups.

I had this idea that 1 TB was too big for it? Yeah, I was skeptical about my own thinking on that one as well. But anyway, I tried to partition the drive using the same disk utility in Mac OS. It successfully partitioned it into two drives, basically splitting the drive in half. After that, I was able to use it with Time Machine. Not wanting only 500 GB for daily backups of my 160 GB Mac drive, I tried to erase it and format it again. It worked! So now I have a full TB for backups of my Mac. I'll just get another external drive if I really need Windows backups, but there's really no cool (maybe good, but certainly not cool) software out there to do it. Maybe this will help someone. The drive I have is a USB 2.0 Western Digital "My Book" at 1TB. There's another model that has firewire, but USB 2.0 is faster than FireWire 400 (but I think FireWire 800, which this MacBook Pro also has, is faster than anything out there). Peace.

I'll post a picture or two of Time Machine in action soon, but there's TONS of pictures out there, so don't wait on me.

I just deleted over 200 songs from my iTunes library. Like I said I was going to do a few weeks ago, in preparation for my iPod touch, I followed through and a lot of songs that weren't apart of any album (at least not that I ever owned :P ) are now gone. Getting rid of those stupid blank albums is big. Plus I found some more music. Listen to these groups:

Spoon
The Beautiful Girls

Texas and Australia. Yeah, they're not anything like each other, but they fill certain voids in my life. Spoon is really good and I just bought four of their albums blindly. Listened to them on the way to Delaware. A coworker backed up my decision... I asked "Ever heard of the band called 'Spoon'", and he said "Of Course!" He has about 500 GB of music, and typically a pretty good taste (he's got an original vinyl Jimi Hendrix "Axis Bold As Love" under his desk at work, along with a ton of others. I trust his musical taste :P And The Beautiful Girls was one that iTunes recommended to me for buying G. Love and Special Sauce's "Philadelphonic". Usually, for buying a G Love album, it would recommend Jack Johnson or some Jack Johnson sound alike. Personally, I have no problem with Jack Johnson, but his music isn't as bluesy or R&B as G. Love, which is why I love G. Love. So, I was skeptical when iTunes recommended another album based on a G. Love purchase. But these guys seem to be the real deal. Surfers from Australia (I'm guessing... 10% of the population down there surfs) who sound just different enough from G. Love to like them. But the Jack Johnson sound grows old on me. Gotsta rock. Because after I listen to G. Love, I'll put on Beastie Boys to keep me going. JJ might have good melodies, but I can't sing at work. I can nod my head violently though :)

not only does it play my music, but I'm able to hijack some neighbor's internet on the back porch of my parent's condo in Delaware and make posts to my website. I'm drinking. It's fun. Quitting smoking is hard. Tomorrow I'm making a surf video of my two brothers, Scott and Pat. I just drank ash I think. But I'll import it to my Mac, cut it up with iLife 08, put music behind it, and hopefully have a pretty sweet video I can share with the world, or more! I'm getting pretty proficient at typing with this thing. I am drunk too! Or, more like, I av dtunj top!!! Hehe

The house is now mine. Parties galore in coming weeks. My rate lowered and no PMI. 'Tis a beautiful thing.

So, some big weeks lately... This week:

Monday: Paid off my car on Friday and got the title on today!

Tuesday: Received second iPod Touch that I didn't order, and assumed I'm on some sort of iPod touch weekly subscription, for only $400 a week! I sent it back. (It was Amazon's fault, not Apple's :P )

The rest of the week... I will finally be buying my house! My parents sold their house and move on Halloween. They are hiring movers.

My keyboard's kinda screwed up because soda was spilled on it (not me!!). The keys were really sticky, so I pulled a bunch of them off and wiped behind them with a wet paper towel, but my "I" key will never be the same (although it works fine, it just sticks up a little more than the others), and my "0" (zero) key (and hence, my "close parentheses" key) makes some weird noise when pressed.

This month and next are big months for gamers:

Crysis Collector's Edition DVD-ROM with Bonus! PC Pre-Release
Ships 11/13/07 $59.99
Kane & Lynch: Dead Men with Bonus! PC Pre-Release
Ships 11/20/07 $49.99
Sim City Societies with Bonus! PC Pre-Release
Ships 11/13/07 $49.99
Super Mario Galaxy Wii Pre-Release
Ships 11/12/07 $49.99
Uncharted: Drake's Fortune PS3 Pre-Release
Ships 11/20/07 $59.99
Zack & Wiki: Quest for Barbaros' Treasure Wii Pre-Release
Ships 10/23/07 $39.99


That's my shopping cart at EB games.

This Friday will be the first time all of us from work head out to the bar since we hired a bunch of new people, including me! We're gonna get wasted.

I'm 3-3 in Fantasy Football this year, winning the last game by 2 points! Tony Gonzalez had a huge game, and Muhsin Muhammad has finally started scoring for me. My team stinks, though. It will be miraculous if I finish over .500. I only had 76 points, and really only got points from those two and the Eagles D. No one else contributes. This week I play my brother Scott. He'll be at the Eagles game so I'll have to call him and tell him I'm whooping his ass.

I joined Netflix finally. It's gonna be a great way to finally watch all those movies I haven't seen yet.

I'm also trying to quit smoking. It's rough, and I know drinking will make it really hard, but the trick would be to go back to quitting after a long night of drinking with a few smokes here or there. Drinking in Philly is a lot easier than in the suburbs.

This post has a little of everything.

This is a post from my ipod touch it has 16 GB of space and about 9 used up. The iTunes wifi music store is sweet. Enjoy your non iPod touches, suckers!!! I also got Stephen Colbert's book. Should be awesome