The plan

I mentioned that I'm reworking my music setup and I wanted to clarify the process a bit for myself and any readers.

Step 0: delete all music in default folder. This sets me up with only growing room, everything added is added for a reason.

Step 1: add an album to the folder. This can be something i have backed up, downloaded, or ripped myself. Only mp3 files with v0 quality. That means only "good" quality mp3 files. A lot of people don't know what bit rate their music is ripped under and that bothers me immensely. This is basically the best quality per megabyte mp3 file.

Step 2: Listen to the album and give each song a rating out of 5 stars. Star guide is roughly:
* : Never really want to hear this song ever again.
** : As an individual track, this is not worth listening to.
*** : An average song. Not a bad song or a good song, but no problems listening to it.
**** : This is a song I could listen to a lot in general, prime for mixes or stands out of an album.
***** : I could listen to it on repeat forever. Has sentimental value most likely.

Repeat steps 1 and 2 until I run out of albums.

Buying books

I just bought all my books for next semester for around 230 bucks. That's alot of $. But the UofM bookstore wanted to charge me 435 for all my books, used. I don't know what I'll do with the 200 bucks I saved but I don't want to think of that right now.

If you haven't bought books already, goto bigwords.com.

Free time leads to

I had over 120 Gigabytes of music yesterday spaced over 5 folders located on 3 different harddrives. Then I deleted a lot of it and the only things I'm putting into my main music folder are things that I hand pick and put in one album at a time. When I put an album in, I listen to every song and rate them all. I have 6 albums so far and they're all pretty good albums.
So in theory, if I chose one or two albums a day, I'll have a music collection that I know better than before. And I really want to know what I have more because I hate saying that I've heard of a band or an album and not have an opinion about it.

That's kind of what I wanted to say, but also that I'm in morris alone and have been since tuesday. Being alone in morris is pretty lame, noone to talk to, no one to watch things with, no one to eat with. I also think that if I stayed here alone it would turn into one of those movie montages where I see how bad it is and pick myself up and do something awesome. But real life isn't quite like that. The day meghan left I picked up my room and had it 90% cleaner within two hours. But now the only thing between me and going home leaving the house nice is the pile of dishes that I need to wash.

I feel the same sense of complete apathy that I did last year where it doesn't matter if I get dressed or leave the house at all. As long as I don't talk about it, no one knows that I'm not doing anything. I make myself sound busy to fit in or whatever. But this is different then that because I have something to look forward to: school starting again. It feels like it will be a good semester.

What's up?

So I thought that I wouldn't come back here to make posts about anything, but the place that I was went under and it doesn't look like it'll be coming back ever. So I guess I'll come back here for a bit or so. I'm taking a class next semester in which I'll hopefully be learning how to make my own site design based on wordpress or something. And I'll probably get a cheap server/use my old desktop and continue from there. But for now, I'm back here.

What is in this drink?

I typed out a long diatribe about psychology and sociology and how people think but I got really annoyed with it so I decided to make a simple hey whats up post.

What's up?

I've been up to not much lately, school I guess you could say. I don't even know what to say. I've been searching a lot. Searching has interesting meanings for me. Mainly it means I'm comfortable and ready to change things and add an uncontrolled element. Usually this ends up being an obsession with something that I end up never buying. Other times it's worse.

But that's back to talking about my mind, and as much as that has a place. It's not here.

Yesterday I had my first radioshow. It was the worst radio show I've ever had. Earlier in the day Tessa said that I would have two apprentices. What a fucking lie. I had five people show up at my radio show to get training. All in separate waves making it almost impossible to talk about anything. They also had a godforsaken taste of music and no sense of flow. One of the kids chose a seven minute chicago song and then later a fourteen minute version of freebird. Another only chose songs that he knew from rock band. It was painful. But next week I'll be by myself and so it will be better. I've gotten a few new songs that I want to share and so you all should listen. As always, it's kumm.org if your not from round these parts and 89.7 if you are.

This weekend I hope will be fun. Tomorrow I am (tentatively) going to bad movie night with my friend david. The rest of the night and saturday who knows. Probably seeing Jake and his crazy house. I've been wanting to see more people during the off peak times of the weekend. That hasn't really started though. That goes back to me wanting more than I have, so let's ignore it.

I am going to buy a banjo.

It's really hot here in morris. I wish it wasn't. There was one night when it was cold and I walked to campus to find meghan's stolen bike and I wore the winter hat tasha knit me and it was the perfect temperature. Until I rode home and was sweaty. But I've also realized that any colder and I'd be out of luck because I only have hoodies. But I'm going through the cities next weekend and I'll grab some stuff. The twelve hour drive back from music might kill me though so who knows.

I have to admit. I don't even know what a diatribe is. It just sounded nice.

I bought a server but haven't gotten it setup to something that I like yet. So thats why I haven't posted here, in hopes that it would motivate me to get my site working. But I will try and get some sort of blog going, I can't promise it will be pretty though. Then I'll post a link.

I'm going to go make more strawberry milk.

Quick test, good song

Testing the Yahoo media player, what MFR uses and it's really great for music blogs. Here's a song to test it out on here.

Dirty Projectors - Useful Chamber

The break of yawn

I got up today at 8. That usually means I woke up at 8, went back to bed, and got out of bed at 9. not today. I woke up and was super energized, which was weird but welcome. I decided to go into work early instead of taking my usual half an hour to get ready. So I drive to work and eat a sandwich on the way there singing along to the music. most everyday I go to work before 9 I get a good parking spot. That's because most people get to work around 8:45 to 9:30. So I figured, because it was 8:20, I'd be super close to the building. Boy was I wrong.
I had to park in the back of the good lot, which is in someplace further than the next lot. It made no sense to me at all. Why would people get up early on a hump day and go to work. Well, the answer, I believe, is a mysterious force that connects everyone.

There are a lot of books and movies that attempt to describe the concept and some get closer to others, but it is a very vague idea. I think the best way to know it is to experience it and notice it when you think it happens. In the movie waking life, there is a discussion of the rough idea, here is the transcript:

I like that. It's like there's this whole telepathic thing going on that we're all a part of, whether we're conscious of it or not. That would explain why there are all these seemingly spontaneous worldwide innovative leaps in science and the arts, you know, like the same results popping up everywhere independent of each other. Some guy on a computer figures something out, and then almost simultaneously a bunch of other people all over the world figure out the same thing. They did this study where they isolated a group of people over time, you know, and monitored their abilities at crossword puzzles in relation to the general population, and they secretly gave them a day-old crossword, one that had already been answered by thousands of other people, and their scores went up dramatically. Like 20%. So it's like once the answers are out there, people can pick up on them. Like we're all telepathically sharing our experiences.

Their conversation deals more with knowledge in the collective memory that people subconsciously tap into. While extraordinary, this is very subtle and you could do it everyday without knowing it. What I'm trying to get at is the real time version of this phenomenon. Today, hundreds of people went to work at Thomson earlier than usual. I have no idea if there are any statistics on what days people come in the earliest and it might be a coincidence. But I don't think so, mostly based on the fact that I never get to work that early. There was some pull that got me out of bed and in a rush to work. And I think it pulled a lot of other people here too.

Think about this: have you ever been doing something or feeling a certain way and talk to someone who is doing or feeling exactly what you are? It's kind of creepy. But it happens, a lot. Its a common group mentality that any given group will all have roughly the same emotion. There is rarely a split where a group of people are very happy or very sad. Last week I went to a bonfire with my friends and we were all surprisingly happy. It was surprising because we all had been not been doing anything exciting for the past two weeks and so for us to suddenly be okay was out of place. In the moment it was perfect though. Because when you have a unexciting week, you just want to be happy and so by our joined will, we were.
This also happens in very strong relationships. Not just romantic relationships either. I guess connection would be a better word to avoid the confusion, but I think that two people's connection is a part of their relationship. Best friends rely on each other to be there and the reason that that best friend is the best is because your relationship/connection is strong. I've had a lot of recent experiences where I'm doing or thinking something and I will tell a friend and they say that they were thinking or doing the exact same thing. It seems strange, but it also seems very fitting that they are my friend. It's like, oh yeah, that's why were close. Because we not only think alike, but we feel alike across unsaid distances.

If you have felt this way, then be proud of it because a lot of people don't understand just how strong our connections with others are and seeing that important.