Double Bonus

This last weekend Amy and I were able to find some awesome hiking boots for the trip we planned this week. Famous Footwear had a "buy one get one half-off" sale for everything in their store. We ended up walking out of there with a good pair of Timberland boots for me and a killer pair of Hi-Tec boots for her at $120.. This saved us a TON of cash compared to buying shoes/boots at REI-- we don't need anything crazy like that until we are in much better shape AND are doing more difficult trails or overnight adventures.

Do you ever have that 'sick' feeling in the back of your throat? That kinda raw-ness of drainage or sickness onset that alarms you that you may fall ill soon? Unfortunately for me that happened last night and this morning.. but I'm going to do everything I can to hopefully stay healthy so I can still do the day trip on Thursday. *Crosses fingers*

I have 2 songs almost complete, and another 3 on the back burner, plus a few other ideas in my head. The music ramp-up has begun and I'm happy to say I hope to have some form of demo/EP out by fall. As far as the City Shadows release on CD-Baby and iTunes, keep checking back here for more information on that... I'm looking for some affordable printing for the CD artwork and CD duplication, so we shall see how that turns out.

Alrighty.. much to do during my 3 day week at work.

Later.

Enjoying the Rain

Well I wouldn't call it rain and neither would most people around here or otherwise. Seattle sometimes gets this gray misty cloud spit (yes, cloud spit) going on. It's refreshing after some of the sunny days up here. Growing up in the desert really put me off as far as heat goes. While it's nice that I have built up quite a tolerance to hot weather, I certainly don't enjoy having to be in it. It's always somewhat.. exciting I suppose.. to wake up on a perfectly gray filtered-light day and see some rain or cloud spit.

Last weekend ended up being a bit disjointed. I was primary on call last week and we were still fighting off some nasties from a launch-gone-bad at work. I ended up having to help staff a 24x7 war room effort (much like the one I was in on the previous post). Saturday I woke up to a call about a system issue, and ended up working right up until I had to get going to our Factoria offices (where I usually work). I ended up pulling a 12 hour day that day.. not out of the ordinary on something as big as this when being primary. It was pretty low key for me.. mostly metric and KPI reporting since my applications were stable.. they wanted warm bodies and extra eyes if they needed them I suppose.

On the music front, I'm still working the plans to get my stuff out to iTunes and Rhapsody. Currently I am shopping around for printing services for the City Shadows CD artwork and tray cards. Once I am able to get a small run going I will be in a position to ship them off to CDBaby and other fronts.

Quite a few starts to songs have been made and I'm beginning to get a clear direction on most of the pieces I'm enjoying. From house, to ambient, to more down-tempo beats and audiological infections-- I hope to have enough content for a mini-release to hold over until the new(er) stuff really takes form and is ready for release. I have a back-log of about 2 years worth of music that has been on MySpace, UBER, and other places (including some people's gmail inboxes) that needs to see the light of day.

Alright.. back to work I go. My non-fat, 1-pump raspberry, white mocha with whipped is singing the sirens' song.

A Fresh Sense of Things

I was at work from 3pm to midnight last night. I had brought Amy's laptop, my Korg drum pad, my headphones, and an expectation that I would be able to dink around for a few hours and make some music.. I was sorely mistaken.

I did a lot of sitting around at the beginning of my shift. The upper echelon of managers, senior managers, directors, and even our CIO were in the room calling all of the shots and making all of the support plans. It was really interesting when our CIO got involved.. he's a wicked smart guy and has brought a sense of true large-scale corporation IT to the mom & pop shop mentality we are still driving here at work.

At one point I had to do a few things for getting a change through our change board process and ensure it was ready to go for our primary on call to do at 7 AM today.. That was kinda fun, in a strange way.. and so was being in the war room.. even when I was doing some simple tasks for enabling features of our website and monitoring our logs from our database.

Dare I say it, but I caught a glimpse of what made this job fun for me in the first place. The IT support aspect really let me catch a breath of fresh air.. I'm excited to be doing some training, learning some new technologies (to me), and improving my skills as an IT analyst. The project work, the bullshit that the business hands us, and the lack of solid management have been getting me down-- I think I'm in the clear as far as the affects of my job on me and my personal well being (and by proxy, my personal life outside of work).

Getting back into the game of life after this stint of madness, work-depression, and general shit we've been flipped from the business should be easy from here on out.

That being said, I'm going to take care of a few things around here in the office, sit back, and relax as I work on my hobbies, my passions, learn a few things today, then go home and have a freaking blast of a weekend.

"so drop the bass and set the needle,
spin the records and make them move,
spill the music into the street,
and make the masses move their feet."

Ohhhh, Alright..

Yea. I admit I was in a somber mood yesterday. It's unfortunate work has been getting inside my head and really affecting me. I've been a whole lot better lately about that, though, and I aim to get back to how it was when I was enjoying my job here and not worrying about work outside of work.. not letting it infiltrate my personal life to the point of annoyance and constant anguish.

"Funk 'dat!"

My mind has been in the 'thinking about music' mode now for 2 weeks straight. I have yet to act on the urges to sit down and do some hard core production, but I'm getting closer to the point of having the correct mental capacity and state of being to crank out the tunes again. It's been a long time coming, a lot of up-and-down motion (hmm.. I just realized that could be taken in a very dirty way.. *grin*), and after the dust settles and I can breathe freely again I will have all of the clarity in the world.

/me let's out a smile and a tiny sigh.

From a conversation with Nick:

Sean: "headphones.. check. starbucks almond mocha.. check. slacker tools in a browser.. check. gmail chat window with my bro.. check. engage slacking."

Yes, it's time to get back to doing less work here at work. ;) Some people might find it odd that I feel a need to 'slack' at work.. but if you look at it objectively (maybe.. just maybe) you'll see that it's more along the lines of "working less" or "less effort" than "slacking". It's only taken as slacking if you hold my high productivity and kick-ass-ness as my zero point for minimum performance level. 'Ya catch my drift?

I have my feelers out for a few hosting options, but until then I am going to point www.sliptide.com to this blog via mydns.com. I had used them way back in the day, and they will serve as a means of at least pointing my web traffic to here such that people know I have not faded from this universe. Once I get proper hosting I will have a music-centric website back up with a new streamlined design, some more things for the music fans out there, and.. well.. I might as well say it now: CDs for sale via hardcopy and music you may purchase over iTunes and Rhapsody.

Yes.. I will be publishing materials proper. That's not to say you won't be able to download some free music from sliptide.com, or download boot leg performances, DJ mixes, and remixes from my web space. Most new songs and albums, however, will be published and available for download via online music retailers. Some albums will be made available for purchase online. Good times ahead!

I look over at my Picasa web album and realize that I need to do a lot of work on it and get some more photos up there. I have a ton of stuff to share with the world.. maybe I should spend some time working on music and web projects tonight rather than dabbling around in DiRT or World of WarCraft.

Welp.. I'm off to the coal mines.. cept I'll be the guy near the back with an oil lamp, respirator, some water, and a magazine.

Division

177 / 8 = ?

With the exception of college physics courses, math has never irritated me so much as it does in that simple division problem above. The answer is 22.125. The units of measurement is (hours) / (hours/work day), which yields work days. I have 22.125 work days accrued in my Paid Time Off bucket. Wow!

Sure, I see that as a positive in most respects but after I popped open my calendar to mentally track the weeks in which I am neither primary or secondary on-call only to be met with the reminder that we are currently so short staffed that I only have 1 free week out of every three... and that's not alright with me.

My patience grows thin. I have already started to filter out work from my personal life and am leaving work at work unless I am on call. It's going to really piss off some people around here, but I am not a robot corporate whore like majority of the management here.

/endvent

From a Conversation

From a conversation with Nick:

"so i'm going to undertake a new direction of music and producing. i'm going to get away from the overly drippy synth-based music and move towards a sound that is more organic. i will readily admit.. influenced by DJ Shadow, Wax Tailor.. and especially groups like Bonobo.. I want to have a very organic, pathos-infused sound that I can present in a live format.. a sound that isn't just music.. but akin to the idea of an "Original Life Sound Track""

and another quote, "I did well with the City Shadows sounds and I'd be retarded not to retain some of that." (rough quote, really.. but that was the gist of it)

I spent a total of 4-5 hours over the weekend tinkering with music only to come up with: jack and shiz.

I've been completely sunk in the gutter and unable to produce anything fluid. Much like Ron Jeremy's recycling bin, the thoughts in my head have been trashy, messy, and raw. Amy sat on the stairs and helped pick apart some of the fundamentals that I have been grasping entirely too firmly.

At the core of my sound for the past while (or attempted sound) has been a very gritty synth-washed feel that is growing tired with me.. because it's not where I'm fitting. I diverted a lot of my time and energy away from producing tracks akin to the collection found on City Shadows and found myself in the same rut I was in when I started producing: very repetative open-beat tracks with hard synth-patterned lines.. and while some good songs came out of it ("Lady Gray" and "Lush" to name a few), my adventure in sound has always led me down a path of experimentation and organic (yet electronic-produced) sounds.

While I'm thinking about it (I'm at work, so I'll have to write this down or read my blog when I get home.. yes.. I read my own blog.. don't you sometimes?), I need to take inventory of my music equipment that I do not have hooked up. There are various interfaces, break-out boxes, recording devices, I/O, instruments.. that I'm not using right now. In order to accomplish my goal I am going to need some specific tools.. two of which I know that I do not have on hand: A sound recorder (like a digital recorder to take with me for environment sounds) and a microphone for vocals or guitar.. HMMMmmmm... Time to make a budget.
--
As far as work is concerned.. I have been doing a lot of thinking (and talking with Amy). My job has not earned the right to come home with me when I am not on call (or secondary on call).

If you read a previous post I made I quoted a letter-- er-- email.. (it sure as hell felt like a letter: sidenote.. is there a connotation of saying you wrote a letter vs. email.. is one more professional than the other or has that been washed out by the advance of the internet into big business?).. which stated that we as IT Analysts felt the business and or organization did not have confidence in our ability to do our job.

In light of recent events I have come to the conclusion that work has been getting the best of me and it has to change. My line if work isn't important enough such that it should drastically effect my work-life balance and take a toll on me or others around me outside of work. The hardest thing to do when you are being compressed by the weight of your organization (as it collapses around you) is to keep your spirits and attitude in check and not lose focus of your work life, your personal life, the line between them, and most importantly: not lose focus of yourself!

Don't get me wrong.. I certainly enjoy where I work. I'm excited for the products we sell, the customer service we provide, the applications and systems I support, the tools and technologies I'm learning and using to do my job, the career path I have chosen: all of those things congealed for me quite a long (1.5 years) time ago. There just exists some major issues with the way things are going (the direction) and the lack of organization that is making our job entirely more difficult than it should be. Though, this is where I have to step in and say "Alright.. I have to maintain this mantra and this way of work life myself.. I have to truly look out for my own balance, find my own center point, and work from there."

It may seem convoluted what I am thinking.. but at least this is somewhat therapeutic in getting it out there in writing. ;P I haven't been writing enough as it is. What better way to keep the blogs going, ya?

Forward.

I have started a new song that has really set me off in creativity and musical production. I'm getting back into the swing of things in the face of the work-monster (that has been getting me down lately) and I can't be more excited.

Looking at my creative outlets in life.. I realize I need to get hoppin' and get my ish out there to the world.

Pz.