right on bro!

This morning I leaned how to create ringtones out of .WAV files for my phone. The possibilites are now endless, well, at least in 10-second, 8 KHz chunks.

Spent most of day working on a new song. I’m finally getting around to using the MIDI editor in Cubase, so I’m editing the note information directly, which is faster and more accurate than re-recording on my controller.

Went to the grocery store today. There were no picketers there. I asked the checkout clerk whether the strike is over and she said yes. I hope that doesn’t mean that the lines are going to get longer.

When you think of the future, what do you see? I’ve been thinking pretty hard about this one lately. Ever since I moved to Los Angeles, I’ve always felt a general sense of optimism - that anything was possible, that things were happening, that you just had to do whatever it was you wanted to do, and you would end up where you wanted to go.

For the past month or so, I have to say I haven’t been feeling it at all. The most worrisome thing is, when thinking about the future, there isn’t one. I neither see myself doing the same things I’m doing now, nor do I see myself doing anything different. I just see…nothing.

Yesterday was the weirdest day. All day long, I felt paralyzed and trapped, like there was nothing to do, and nowhere to go. I spent a lot of time surfing the net, but not really reading anything, and occasionally getting up and pacing around my living room, but even getting up out of my chair seemed like a giant effort. Finally, all I could really think about was that I just wanted to do something so that the day would be over. I watched a movie on cable TV, and played some SOCOM, and then fell asleep watching TV again.

What are you going to leave behind when you are gone?

This week went by fairly quickly. Ummm…yeah.

I saw 28 Days Later last night. It wasn’t what I thought it was about (I thought it was about monkeys running loose on the population). This movie is freaky as hell. Highly recommended, one of the more engaging movies I’ve seen in quite a long time.

So, I changed up the layout of the Mobile Division some.

I’m gonna go do…something.

The gas station that I usually go to, that was at $1.91 a gallon last week, is now at $2.19. That’s for the cheap shit (87 octane). What the fuck? There was a story on Which Way, LA? about it. Apparently it’s because California has a “special” blend of gas that is only made by a few companies. There’s a 2-3% increase in gas consumption this year, but that still doesn’t explain why there’s over a 20% increase in price.

Governor Arnold needs a new role - instead of the Governator, or the Collectinator, he needs to be the Lowerthefuckingaspricesinator.

Read these to get you angry:

This makes four weeks without smoking. It’s OK, I guess.

This week went by pretty quickly. Lots of meetings and writing Very Important Documents at work.

The camera phone is working out pretty cool. The only thing is, the battery life isn’t so good. I need to take more interesting photos.

Gas hit $2 a gallon here. WTF? Like I said before…Bush invaded Iraq, so why isn’t gas cheap? I’m sure as hell not voting for him now.

This week flew by so fast. My throat hurts again.

Check it on the left - I’m now rocking a mobile weblog. I bought a camera phone on Saturday, so now I can take pictures from wherever and publish them here. Shit looks a little jeetered right now, but at least it’s up and running, so bust.

I switched from AT&T to T-Mobile. I really wanted a camera phone, but didn’t like anything AT&T had to offer, and they weren’t being helpful about when the Motorola V600 was going to come out, and even if it had come out this week, I probably wouldn’t have paid $350 for a phone. So…c-yuh! The clincher was when I called AT&T’s customer service to check my contract status, and I waited on hold for 30 minutes. Ridiculous.

Number portability didn’t seem to be an issue. When I signed up on Saturday evening, the T-Mobile rep told me that it would take 3 days to transfer the number. This morning, I got an SMS that said, “Welcome to T-Mobile!” and everything started working.

We shall see if Catherine Zeta-Jones will do me right or not. So far, so good.

Went to Monterey Park yesterday to look for a data cable, and ended up meeting a friend for dim sum at NBC (yum) and buying a bunch of the newly restored Shaw Brothers movies on VCD, including “The Water Margin” and “The 36th Chamber of Shaolin.” I wanted them on DVD but they’re region 3 only, and I didn’t want to fuck with getting a region-free player. Turns out, the VCDs look good on their own, so that’s cool.

Going to try to install a couple hard drives in a friend’s ReplayTV tonight. Meanwhile, keep checking the Mobile Division for new photos!

Well, it is officially three weeks without smoking. Pretty much abandoned all of the daily nicotine gum, I’m just down to chewing one piece when I need it, which is maybe once a day. Looks like I should probably just quit for good.

There is a major change coming soon (hopefully) to rightonbro.com. I’m pretty excited about it, if I can get everything to work. Spent all day Saturday researching it, and things should be good to go in a couple of days. Stay tuned.

Went to the opening night of the NBA Jam Session last night. Basically, in the South Hall of the convention center, they set up a bunch of things where you could, like, shoot free throws and win SpeedStick, the official deodorant of the NBA. They also had E3-style booths where you could play NBA-branded games by ESPN, Sony, and Microsoft, including “NBA Ballers,” which I think gets my award for title of the year.

You get the point - the entire thing was a giant marketing shill. But I guess I could see how, if you really really really like basketball, you might like this.

There was a very large booth set up in the corner called “China Pavilion” but it was closed. I thought maybe it was for Yao Ming or something.

After spending about an hour and a half there, I went to the Troubadour to see the Jealous Sound perform. They’re one of my favorite bands. The show was OK.

Gotta go to work.

On Saturday, I mailed a package from here in L.A. to my brother in Jersey, via USPS Priority Mail. It got there on Monday. I’ve never had a USPS package delivered early before. Weird.

Why the hell is gasoline so expensive? We just invaded and took over an entire fucking country to keep the oil flowing nice & steady.

Two and a half weeks of not smoking. Doctor told me awhile ago that if I was gonna quit for three weeks, might as well quit for good. The nicotine urges have pretty much dwindled down to a couple a day.

Finally got my satellite speaker stands in the mail today, and set them up. Yep, they hold up the speakers, all right.

Miraculously, my foot is pretty much okay. Not really sure what happened - last night I was unable to walk - and now it’s pretty much OK. Must be one of those 24 hour sprains.

I spent most of today dicking around in the Cubase sequencer, trying to learn more of it. It was really fun.