My Old Blog

If you are here:  You are interested in me and my past for some reason.  My current website is here; this site will no longer be updated.

If you just want to browse a little:  Check out my favorite entries, the funny stories about India, or any other of the categorized entries.

If you want the Full Monty:  The website starts in 2002 after I returned from sailing the Mediterranean after business school…then goes up to 2007 where it stopped for 6 months.  The chronology goes like this:

• Before April 2002:  In my head or forgotten.
• April 2002 – Oct 2002: Sailing the Med, traveling after business school.  My first blog (though not my first website).
• Oct 2002 – May 2007:  Getting a job and moving to Atlanta.  (the blog you’re looking at)
• May 2007 – Sept 2007:  In my head.
• Sept 2007 – Present:  My current blog.  Here you’ll find a bunch of other links to old pictures and stuff.  You can contact me…whatever.

Anyway, if you’re still here….start at the beginning, and keep scrolling to the next entry till you fall asleep, or here is the archive/category summary page.

Unfortunately I cannot sing like Chris Cornell; however, I do sing, and I can play the guitar a little.

The Plain White Ts have a song out right now called “Hey There Delilah”. Its really pretty and simple and easy to play.

So….I decided to record myself. I haven’t really done that in years. A few months back I looked into getting some equipment (a decent mic) to make it sound better (as I was planning to record this other song I really liked), but it ended up being like 300 bucks to get it all going, so I didn’t do it.

This was still recorded with the $2 mic that comes with any computer. You can get it to sound ok….I think my suckiness is the limiting factor…not necessarily the mic. Actually, its the vocals that always sound flat and tinny….the guitar you can get to sound pretty good. The vocals are also slightly out of tune…but that isn’t the mic…that’s my singing.

Check it out.

Everyone knows I think Chris Cornell has the best voice ever. He is freak of nature, and the youtube clips of him singing live with Soundgarden are out of this world. Check it out.

The second coming of Chris Cornell….is, or course, Chris Cornell. He is releasing a solo album next month after splitting with Audioslave. It’ll be his second solo record. I think me and about a thousand other people were the only ones to buy his first.

On another note, there is a new band that also has an album out next month, called Operator. They have a song called SoulCrusher. You can already see the video on the internet. The dude sounds like a poor man’s Chris Cornell….which is still pretty damn good.

I can’t tell you how awesome it is to be able to watch these clips.

Two years ago at this time I was in Peru, on the Inca Trial. Not that I am particularly longing to be there….I have 30 some-odd days of vacation this year if I want to take them. I can go back to S. America if I take a notion. I think I will only take 15 of them (which is still three weeks…the rest roll over to the next year). That’s enough. Work doesn’t suck that much.

I just happened to look at those entries from Peru since I was cleaning out all the “penis enlargement” and “buy viagra non-prescription” spam I get in the comments section (yes…not only do you get spam email…but they spam the comments on blogs too).

So two years ago I wrote an entry called “Permission to Feel”.

Here are some quotes:

“I have been in Cuzco a few days now, waiting for the trek….relaxing and seeing nothing in particular. It is morning and I am at a small cafe with Inca walls taking a breakfast of pancake and coffee…”

“Last night I had very strange dreams and this morning I have a low mood and feel almost invisible; just my pen, coffee, and the low yellow light of the cafe. It is very bright and clear ouside…a beautiful day…”

“I am not saddened or frustrated by my sadness. I do not wish away this mood. I am happy to be sad and lonely.

It is only now, far away from my life, that I am allowed to be sad. Traveling gives me permission to feel however I like and thus allows me to feel at all…I also have the liberty to allow the mood to run its course…to let it wash away whatever it is here to do.

At home I cannot afford ill moods. I cannot allow the moods that make up my emotional dialogue to run their course…and so they don’t. Whatever they are trying to tell me is lost…”

Hmm….very true. Worthless, but true. Since I am now at home….as I stated in Peru, it is hard to allow yourself time to really consider what you’re doing. Perhaps that is what your death bed is for???….such good that it does there.

Anyway, I dug up a picture of Cafe Vayaroc, where I was sitting when I wrote that. You can see the coffee, and my journal in the background:

I’ll leave you with this absolute ridiculousness:

So….to completely ruin the mystique: the building on the left is the town church, even though the lot on behind me looks like its been bombed. The guy on my right is actually counting coins in his hand that people have paid to let you take a picture with his bird….which I’m sure is his solely for the purpose of photos with tourists.

I was just waiting on the bathroom. Its was like 7:30 in the morning and the road we were riding on disappeared off the edge of a cliff 30 minutes later. They’d recently had a landslide.

I was in a bowling league when I first moved to Atlanta. I averaged in the 170s at my best. I have my own ball, but I have bowled probably 3 times in the last year.

I went home to Easley this weekend and bowled with Josh. After about two pitchers of beer, and maybe 4 or 5 strikes combined in the previous 4 games……I bowled a perfect game: 12 strikes in a row. A big 300.

That’s freakish. I can’t even properly explain the likelihood (or unliklelihood in this case) of that happening. Its like a glitch in the matrix.

The chances are infinitesimally small that a bowler of my skill would bowl a 300 (under any conditions…much less after two pitchers of beer, not having bowled in months, with people watching). I’d never even really gotten close before, even remotely close.

Let’s say every day you go to the gym and jump to touch the highest spot on the backboard you can. You can get about 9.5 feet up, give or take a few inches. This is just above the bottom of the backboard.

Then you take a few months off and sit on the sofa without exercise. You go back to the gym; your first 4 jumps are about the same, touching the bottom of the backboard. On your fifth leap, you jump over the entire backboard and into the bleachers.

Its freakish.

I am solar powered. I feel so much better when it is hot and the sun is shining.

I find lots of ways to waste time at work when I don’t want to do something. When I find it interesting, I almost jump out of bed in the morning and don’t mind staying late.

I think McDonald’s has pretty decent food these days. I used to never eat there. Now I eat there about as much as any other fast food restaurant.

I need new clothes. I wear the same thing all the time, and some of my t-shirts and shorts have been around for the better part of a decade.

I may need to replace one or two of the frets on my acoustic guitar. I’ve worn grooves in them. That’s OK I suppose. It has lasted over 10 years. I could just buy another one, but this one has sentimental value.

I need to stop picking at my fingernails. Its a bad useless habit.

Alright….I notice that I’m tired. I think I’ll go to bed.

I have a fair amount of vacation time this year. I’ll be honest, I can’t for the life of my think of anywhere I would like to go.

I can think of some places I would like to MOVE….but not just visit. Maybe I can sell my vacation time back to my company? They have a vacation day purchase program. I wonder if I can do the reverse?

I’ve looked into volunteer vacations in Latin America. They are, for the most part, MORE expensive than regular vacations. I guess you’re not just doing it for the money, but still…..something feels weird about paying to work when I know for the same amount of money I could be sitting on a beach chair drinking cocktails with paper umbrellas.

Maybe I can do an exercise vacation? Maybe I should go visit old friends I haven’t seen in a while? Maybe I should sleep, read and drink coffee for a week? Maybe I should try a new age trip where you don’t speak, talk to cacti, and wear robes? How about Mt. Kilimanjaro?

I guess it doesn’t really matter. Vacations are so expensive. I could just by a 60 inch plasma TV and be amazed by HD television for a week. I’d be amazed by any TV to be honest. Its been over a year now since I’ve had TV. I don’t really miss it, but I do like it when I see it.

Alas….my tennis team did not win the city championships. We had a great season and got beaten by a great team.

I won my match even though the team lost (it went 3 sets). I haven’t felt that kind of pressure in a long time. I was so stressed the whole match (my neck was killing me afterward). It is the city finals; my partner and I were the 1 line; and there were probably over 50 people sitting there watching everything we did, every time I missed, every mistake I made.

Nerves tend to snowball too. If you start playing badly, you think about it, which makes you more nervous, which makes you play worse. It is very hard to recover. Tennis is a precise sport too; very small variations in your swing can make you miss, and pressure produces those small variations.

Basketball was a bit easier. Effort does not decrease when you’re nervous. You can use the nerves to make you hustle even when you’re tired. Shooting does become hard though, since it is precise like a tennis swing.

I played pretty well….certainly not the best I’ve ever played, but I didn’t choke. I played about average, which in this situation was good enough. I watched all of our matches and just about everyone played a little worse than they usually do….which is sort of expected under those conditions.

I liked it to be honest. I enjoy the pressure. I don’t really get that anymore.

3 years living in Atlanta….that makes probably 10 or so Alta seasons?? Not sure. It doesn’t seem like that many, but it may well be. I’ve been to the playoffs a handful of times, and won the division a few times too.

My team is in the city championships this weekend for the first time. While it may seem small to get excited about…..I figure it is better than most things. All in all it is better to be champion that not right?

I met some new people tonight, listened to a lot of first time conversations, and had a few myself. Its so bizarre what people choose to talk about….I include myself in that.

Girls tend to smile and nod their head a lot. Guys tend to talk about themselves and try to sound smart and/or successful.

That is strange because it is actually women that talk more than guys once people get to know each other. Guys don’t talk all that much. Also, people (all people) tend to like people that listen to them, smile, and agree in some way or ask questions that show they’re paying attention.

That makes me wonder why men don’t just ask women a few questions to get them talking and then smile and nod…..like women do to men.

Anyway, it was nice, the pizza was good, and the bar was pretty cool too. I’d never been.