• Lots of work on BigHugeLabs.com
• Bought a pet rat ($7) and accoutrements ($92) for the kids.
• Ripped up the weed jungle that my backyard had become and planted Dutch Clover instead of grass. Coming in beautifully. Should control weeds and be virtually maintenance free.
• Two birthday parties. Kids are now 9 and 7.
• Commuting to the library a few days a week to work. This is working out nicely now that the kids are on break. Turns out I’m not allergic to the sun. It is showing up a weakness in my netbook though—the keyboard is fine for browsing the internet but not as good for programming. Probably a new laptop in my future. Probably a MacBook.
• Created another website: ideas.bighugelabs.com
• Restaurant City
• Bought a 13 foot trampoline.
• Cleaned the carburetors on my bike (a 2000 CBR 600 F4, the last model before fuel injection was introduced). It’s the first carb cleaning I’ve ever done but it went really well. I think I could do it again in a under 3 hours. Saved about $350 doing it myself, which is nice.
• Talked to a bunch of sixth graders about my profession. They did not believe I was “the BigHugeLabs guy.”
• Bought a 1 terabyte hard drive for $94. Holy moly.
• Finished two bottles of Scotch.
• Tried doing hundredpushups.com but my shoulder failed me in week 4. Taking it easy until it heals.
• Survived 3 earthquakes.
• Survived taxes.

How’s your summer going?

I update Twitter more frequently than here. Not because I think blogging is dead and Twitter is going to take over. Just because it’s faster to peck out a hundred characters than to write an entire post. So, if you really want to stalk me, for now, that’s the place to do it. ;-)

Play DeepLeap. Addictive, though, I warn you.

twitter.com/yafd

My first topic—”Could I fight a bear and win?”—is still going strong. At hunch.com.

So, I was super pleased when Shon Kornfeld (thanks, Shon!) contacted me and offered to send me a copy of his debut album Friday Nights.

Not a bad looking cover if I do say so myself. The photo is called Super Slab West. It’s a view of the 91 freeway, looking west, shot from the overpass at Lakeview Ave.

Girl 1: I’m a vegetarian again.
Girl 2: Me too! Well, you know.
Girl 1: I was a vegetarian for like five years, then stopped for three, now I’m back.
Girl 2: I’ve been one for years. Except for bacon. Bacon is delicious.

Me: So, what are you going to do when your friend comes over?
Daughter: First, we’re going to throw rocks at stuff. Don’t worry, our rocks. Then we’re going to play in the fort. Then jump on the giant bean bag.
Me: Sounds like a full schedule.
Daughter: Yah, we’re pretty good friends.

And now for something completely different.

I wrote a song last week and spent the better part of the weekend recording and tweaking it. Everything about it screams “amateur” which is true. But I like it and I wanted to share it anyway. I also feel like if I don’t just put it out there then I’ll keep tweaking it forever and I’ve got more important things I need to be doing! It’s the second song I’ve written since I started playing and the first full-length one. (Here’s my first.)

Now that I’m done making excuses, have a listen. There is some PG-13 language and a flippant attitude about suicide, so if that bothers you then please skip it:

I Died Three Years Ago, mp3, 3.6MB

It’s sort of a love song. Here’s the back story: the husband of a young, childless couple dies. Let’s say they’re newlyweds. The particulars of his death aren’t important—just that it was unexpected, quiet, and meaningless. You know, tragic. It’s taken the wife three years to mourn and finally get on with her life. She’s dating again. But the dead husband has not moved on… won’t move on.

I wrote poetry like this for a few weeks in a college writing class once upon a time. This is what comes out of me when I write fiction.

Chords and lyrics:

E E7 Amaj7 Am7 (capo on 4)

I wrote my name in the steam
on your bathroom mirror
sorry that freaked you out
it was a bad idea in hindsight
I can see that now
not even sure how I did it
I don’t have any hands

I hate your brand new boyfriend
I think that he’s an ass
I don’t see why you like him
I guess he’s got nice hair
don’t have much use for products
no gel for ectoplasm
being disembodied sucks

He said he saw me in the hall
making scary faces
strange demonic noises
but it really wasn’t me
well maybe just that one time
he’s such a little bitch
I know you could do better

I died three years ago
but for me
it is always yesterday

Yes that was me who moved your keys
it’s the only way I have
left to show I care
it was just a coincidence
it made you late for that jerk hole
I’ve always had bad timing…

I heard he finally left you
ran screaming from the house
like a giant crying baby
can’t say that I’ll miss him
he wasn’t right for you
I guess I’m sorry you’re depressed
FYI I’m still dead

I died three years ago
but for me
it is always yesterday

The kitchen knives are sharp
and there’s rope in the garage
I don’t recommend the Drano
any of these things
would bring you back to me
pick something quick and painless
I’ll be waiting here for you

If you’re interested in the technical details… I recorded all of the vocals and instruments separately (using a Samson C01 condenser microphone into a Xenyx 802 mixer) and put the song together with Ardour. There are three guitar tracks, three vocal tracks, and I used Hydrogen to create the drum loop in the chorus. Ardour is amazing by the way. It’s a superb—and completely free—tool for post-processing multi-track audio. Hydrogen: also awesome.

~

“I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.” — Steve Jobs, Stanford commencement address, 2005

~

“And this is one of the reasons why I tell people that being laid off from AOL was one of the best things that ever happened to me — because as much as it knocked me for a loop, it made me ask myself who I wanted to be in control of my life — and it made me make a choice about how my life would be.” — John Scalzi, on being laid off from AOL in 1998

~

“I really think that was the best thing that ever happened to me. I was really lucky to get fired from that job because I never would have quit, it was too good a job to leave even if I was miserable. By losing it, that forced me to make a decision. I was just at a crossroads, and decided life is not a dress rehearsal, sometimes you have to go for it.” — Kathleen Flinn, author of “The Sharper Your Knife, The Less You Cry” on being laid off from Microsoft

~

“Sometimes it’s stressful, waiting for the checks to come in… For the most part I’m much happier,” he says. “Honestly, looking back, [getting laid off] was the best thing that ever happened to me.” — Jay Westcott, laid off from Washington Examiner, now a freelancer with a steady stream of assignments.

~

“And in an ironic twist of fate, getting fired in 1996 most likely saved my life since I was working on the 104th floor of One World Trade Center. At the time I was left go I had the kind of job that most other people held on to. Looking back at my life, I can point to this wake up call as a time in my life that I grew up. This was in many ways a life defining event that helped transform me a step closer to the person I am today.” — Jeff Pulver, being paranoid is O.K.

~

“Getting laid off is often the perfect opportunity to rediscover your passion and purpose.” — Renee Lee Rosenberg, career coach and author of Achieving the Good Life After 50

~

“The top entry reveals that I was laid off in January of 2005. That was a stressful New Year that turned out to be one of the best things that ever happened to me. I think many people get comfortable in situations that they don’t actually like, trapped by the ease of it, unwilling to face the uncertainty and fear of change even though they claim to desire it…” — John Watson, me, Coat pockets, contents of

~

It ain’t the end of the world. Hang in there.

They’re worried that Amazon’s newest e-book device has the potential to undermine the market for audio books. They’re right—it is a threat and audio book publishers should take note. But illegal?

“They don’t have the right to read a book out loud,” said Paul Aiken, executive director of the Authors Guild. “That’s an audio right, which is derivative under copyright law.”

What next? Sorry, kids, I can’t read you a bedtime story—go buy your own copy. It doesn’t seem like the Guild have been paying attention to what happened to the music industry.

Hey, Authors Guild! Want to protect the audio book business? Here’s how: make better audio books. Hire talented voice actors, make high quality recordings, sell at a fair price, and ditch the DRM that assumes every customer is a thief. I can’t believe those guys are actually talking about adding more DRM to prevent text-to-speech. Doomed, I tell you.