Tim! Where ya been?

It's been quite a long time since I made a post here, so I guess it's just about time for an update.

Let's see. What have I been up to since this last spring, which was my last post? Well, quite a bit actually. Over the summer, we celebrated Gwen's first birthday. She got a ton of presents and was rightly and duly fawned over by all. Then we lost our babysitter, which kind of forced me into a new schedule at work. I now work nights, which sucks because I hardly get to see my wife at all on weekdays now. But it works out in the long run, because I get to spend the days with Gwen and spend a lot more quality time with her. Plus we don't have to pay for a babysitter.

Learning to use Photoshop!

So we have Photoshop CS4 at work. I decided to start playing with it to see what can be done with our pics from the new camera. I came across a tutorial on a website called Digital Photography School about one way to make eyes pop a little more in a shot.

What is "The Merchants of Disquiet Minds?"

A few months ago, some friends and I decided to try a little online musical experiment. I have delved more deeply into the world of digital recording and mixing quite deeply in the last year. I use a program called Reaper which is the absolute bomb IMHO. It allows me to do pretty much anything I ever wanted to do back when all I had was a 4-track cassette deck, a synth, guitar and one really crappy mic. Oh if only I'd had this tool in the early 90's. Might be that rockstar I always wanted to be then. LOL

Anyway, software gushing aside, the program allows me to do many, many things to audio. There is also an excellent book written for users that gets into a lot of audio mixing theory and practice along with direct instructions for how to apply these things in Reaper. The book is called ReaMix. Look it up, it's worth it.

No seriously, I'm done pimping for Reaper now!!

A Gaythering Storm

Any strict fundamentalist religious types will want to stop reading now. Tim is about to get a touch controversial.




Still with me? Good, let's move on...

The National Organization for Marriage recently started airing this commercial on TV stations and the web.

So what's Tim been up to lately?

What a couple of weeks its been!!

Last week, my wife and I woke up at 6am. Normally, I take our dogs outside and feed them while she jumps in the shower to get ready for work. While I was feeding the dogs, she appeared at the front door and informed me that we had no hot water. Ugh!

A days worth of tinkering and we came to the conclusion that our tank was dead. So then we had to get it out and buy a new one. This involved turning off the water for our whole house since there are no cutoffs anywhere. To shut off the water I have to turn off the power to our well pump and then release the pressure on the faucets.

We then discovered that nobody makes a replacement tank that would fit in the space anymore. Apparently, the company that made our original one sold its water heater division to another company who then discontinued our model about 10 years ago. Yay.

Random acts of cuteness caught on camera!!

I'll let this one speak for itself. *grin*

Getting into photography

So my wife wanted a nice camera. Something to take good portraits of the baby and to take good outdoor shots. Something much nicer than your average point and click digital camera you get for $100 at Wal-mart. We ended up with a Nikon D90. Let's just say it cost waaaayyy more than $100.

I'm learning to take pictures with it also. (I'm the tech minded one of the family so my job is to learn how it works and then teach her! LOL) Here are a few of the shots I've taken with it so far.

Not Perfect

A song by Tim Minchin. It's not religious or anti-religious, just a very good song with a hint of humor. But mostly I find myself thinking, "Yeah. That's how it feels sometimes."

Game Review - Puzzle Quest (DS)

I am by no means a video gamer. At least not an avid one. My video game upbringing was the venerable Atari 2600 aaaaand…. That’s pretty much it. I played several PC games in the 90’s and dabbled on a friend’s NES in the late 80’s/early 90’s. Played WWF WarZone with some pals on a PS1 a few times. That’s it though. Pretty lame right?

A few years ago I finally picked up a PS2 and played a few games here and there on that. But I haven’t been the type to just sit down and play a game for hours and hours on end for many, many years. I used to joke that my house was the House of Archaic Console Systems (HOACS) because I didn’t own a single system that was the current system by any manufacturer. I got a PS2 after the PS3 debuted and the price dropped a good bit. That was the newest. We still have an NES system and a 2600 right next to the PS2.

But shortly before Gwen was born, Steph asked for a Nintendo DS to play games with during what we assumed would be some long stretches of nothing happening in the hospital. Aw, man! The DS is still the current system in Nintendo handhelds! I can’t be archaic anymore!!

*sigh* No time for hobbies

So right now I have three home recording related projects that I just don't have time to work on right now. One is an audition for a friend's comic book based audio drama. Another is a project where three friend's sent me some random audio/music clips that conformed to a particular tempo and key but nobody has heard anything else the others did. My job is to edit it all into something new and hopefully interesting. And there is my own writing/recording that I have been trying to get working on again after nearly a decade off.

Right now though, (and probably into the fall unless something changes) I am the one responsible for taking Gwen to the sitter's everyday before I go to work. I had thought this was only going to be a temporary change for a few weeks, but it has become a more permanent change to the schedule.

Free GPS Day!!

So recently we bought a far too expensive bed at a local furniture store. Our old bed was beyond dead and was giving us both backaches every night. With our exorbitant purchase, however, we apparently qualified for a free GPS.

Today I got to pick it up. It's a ViaMichelin X-970. I've only had it out of the box for a couple of hours to let it charge up here at work, but so far it seems fairly cool. I've only actually seen two GPS' up close before this so I'm not sure how it rates overall, but for free I can't complain can I?

It's probably going to live in the wife's car once we get it all figured out, since she's (self admittedly) "directionally challenged."

As expected though, it can't seem to verify our street address since we live almost a 1/4 mile off the main road on a dirt side road. Apparently, according to the civilized world, we don't exist. Which doesn't surprise me since we can't even get real high speed internet or cable TV.

Songs not to dedicate to your wife or girlfriend

Truly funny. And honey, I don't mean a word of it! LOL

What to do? What to say?

So I've decided to start a blog. My other pals have all been doing it for sometime. Me though, I'm just lazy when it comes to doing much more than a Twitter update here and there. So I doubt this blog will ever get very large.

So who the heck am I? Well my name is Tim, but most folks call me.....Tim.