snack machine b

Wow.. almost a year.

Sat, 12 Jan 2008 23:18:37 EDT

It's been quite awhile since I've last posted... 4 months shy of a year. I'm trying to remember what all has gone on since then but to be honest it's been a big blur. Finances and work seemed to set me into a minor depression for awhile but I've managed to work my way through it with help from others. Speaking of work, I started with a new manager about 3 months ago and recently got a raise as well as went salary as apposed to hourly. With the pay increase it's helped me pay off somethings and now I feel like I've got some breathing room and can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

The holidays were good to me, plenty of good food and good times hanging with friends and family. The guys in my department and I decided to go out for drinks before Christmas and we had a good time. It's the first that I've hung out with any of them outside of work; they're good people. Christmas was nice even thought I wasn't able to go home. Lara's mom and my brother came down Christmas Day and left the following Saturday. I got enough money from gift cards, checks and cash to get an XBox 360 so that'll be cool, I'll probably get it the week after next.

If you got notice about the post via my RSS feed, the feed has been updated. It was sorta broke-ish, although it still worked, and a friend of mine was like "I didn't know you had a feed!", mainly because I didn't include the statement in the page like I thought I had. I added it into the page and updated the feed to include the correct date format and added a little bit here and there. I'm still debating on whether or not I'm going to do a site layout change, again, who knows. I get bored with it so easily.

And.... WE'RE BACK!

Sun, 06 May 2007 12:16:21 EDT

it certainly has been a long time since i've posted here. not a lot has gone on really. made lots of changes yesterday, if you visited the site and things weren't quite in order.. i apologise. anyway, most of everything should be good to go now.

i've disabled the chatbox for the time being, the chatbox post view was showing like 750+ pages showing. it looks like something had changed and my mail notifications that a chatbox post had been made wasn't working so i had no clue, and there sat 13000+ posts that hadn't been reviewed. so if you did make a valid post and it's not showing, i apologise again, i deleted everything that i hadn't reviewed because i wasn't going to go throught them one by one. no sir, i won't do it. i also added my twitter badge in the sidebar as well as updated my bbstyles page, 12 more have been uploaded.

again, everything should be functioning now, if you find something that isn't working right let me know.

Musnack Episode 001!

Mon, 16 Oct 2006 23:57:39 EDT

My first podcast has been released! Hopefully I'm just getting started podcasting and will keep going. The first episode includes some new tracks off of the PMN and some that have been around awhile.

X-Ray Dogs - Alta Plaza
Jake Hook - Elusive You
The Lascivious Biddies - Hell Of A Boy
Matthew Ebel - I Know You're There
Bill - Panacea
Panic! At The Disco - The Only Difference Between Martyrdom And Suicide Is Press Coverage
Munk - Blow Away

Direct Show Link

been far away.

Tue, 03 Oct 2006 19:42:27 EDT

it's been a long time since i've done or said anything around here. so much has happened since i last posted. as you can see, i havn't started my music podcast, yet. thoughts about it are still in the works.. i've got so many projects going on right now it's not even funny. we'll see.

so lara and i moved into our new apartment on july 1st and got 2 baby kittens the next day :P. their names are hank and liza. they are the cutest things in the world, but man do they like to get into trouble. not too long ago liza got herself stuck in back of a big bookshelf that we have all of our dvds on sometime while lara and i were both at work or on our way home. the bookshelf is so high there is no way she could've jumped out and the edges were right up against the wall. poor thing. anyway, we also got furniture last month, that's right.. real furniture. we got a couch, loveseat and dinning room set. it feels like an actual home now and not some cheap college dorm.

i started a new job recently too. i now work for region, i'm an IS Coordinator. got a raise coming into the department and i have a review in febrary where i should get another raise. *starts singing pink floyd - money* the job is decent, better work, more work, stuff geared more toward my degree, no talking to people on phones like i was (thank god). it's something that feels rewarding... and like i actually have a future with the company, even though i'm still a peeon.

that's just about enough out of me. i'm thinking about going down to exersize, working on one of the webprojects, eating (i'm starving) or maybe watching some tv. adios.

back again, kentucky trip, music podcast..

Wed, 31 May 2006 05:43:19 EDT

it's nice to be back in pittsburgh. no matter how much i've bitched about pittsburgh in the past, it's nice to be back to a city that makes sense to me. lara and i left for kentucky on saturday morning to help a couple friends move into their new house. they each had their own apt and we had to box pretty much everything in both apts and into the uhaul. louisville is nice but they really need to learn how to label their streets because there was a significant lack of signage.

we left at 10am yesterday morning and we didn't get home till around 7pm lastnight, seems kinda long for a 6-7hr drive, right? well, on the way there was a bad accident on 71 in a work zone no less; a dodge magnum was smashed up a bit and it looked as if they had to rip the doors off to get people out. we had the car turned off for awhile and it was probably an hour/hour and a half that it took us to actually get moving again. we stopped at cracker barrel around 2pm and i pigged out. 6 pieces of french toast, 5 slices of bacon, an egg with cheese, baked apples, 2 orange slices, 2 biscuits, half a hashbrown cassarole and a glass of water. now mind you that was my full order plus about half of lara's :P eating like that isn't going to help my waistline anytime soon. after we left there it seemed to take forever to get into pa but once we did there was also traffic issues on 79 and 279 as well. oi, anyway, that's how my memorial day weekend was.

i mentioned music podcast in the title. i am in the process of creating a music podcast of my own to put out there. you'll also be able to get to the site via another domain, http://www.musnack.com, which is short for "music + snack machine b". with our up and coming move the first weekend of july i'm not quite sure if i'll have one out the door by then but hopefully i'll be able to do at least one to kind of get an idea if it's something i want to do. anyway, i should've started getting around for work like 15min ago.

it's been that long, eh?

Sat, 22 Apr 2006 01:13:06 EDT

so it's been over a month since i've made my last post. sounds about right :P referring to the last post i made, i figured something was going down. since my last post some people were "let go" from work and we just switched offices this past monday. it is also taking me 2hrs to get to work now instead of 45min; i get up @ 05:30 and leave by six, wait for a bus and ride to downtown (15min on bus), catch the train out of the city (roughly a half hour give or take) then carpool with a co-worker for another 45 min or so. the stink of it is that i'm still getting home at the same time if i were still working at the other building.. and i'm working an 8-5. grr.

i've been playing with GIMP off and on and made a couple site banners for my man Dylan. Check them out here and here. i'd like to get a little better with GIMP, i have fun playing with it. well, i think that's it for now.

i'm lost

Mon, 20 Mar 2006 21:56:37 EDT

i feel like i'm at a part of my life where i'm at a crossroads and don't know what way to go. i don't know if i'll ever be happy where i'm at. i've made choices in my life that i'm not proud of and sometimes i wish i could just rewind time and start over again.

my brother wrecked his car last week, he's fine but his car is totaled. i havn't talked to him yet but it looks like he's getting another set of wheels soon.

i think i'll post more later

gotta love iTunes

Wed, 01 Mar 2006 07:45:51 EDT

nothing much really been going on lately. work. sleep. work some more. yep. i had, or what i believe to have had, was the flu last week. mon-fri but only took wed-thur off... while i was home i beat need for speed most wanted and have recently started playing paper mario again. i'll tell ya, that game is fun. i'm still waiting for kingdom hearts 2 and the leagend of zelda: the twilight princess to come out.

so lastnight was kinda funny. lara and i were getting around for bed and she turned on the radio, which she does from time to time. the song on the radio was "come a little closer" by dierks bentley. now if you know me i don't dig a lot of country music, i've heard the song before but didn't know who it was or what the title was.. but usually if one part of the chorus is repeated a little more then it's almost a sure thing that that part is the title of the song. anyway, she goes "if you can tell me who does this i'll give you a present" with one of those looks in her eyes. so while i'm brushing my teeth i come over to my computer and put in "come a little closer" after i went to the country genre and low and behold dierks bentley came up.. which just kinda popped out in my minds eye. so i said it, although pronouncing his name wrong, and her jaw just dropped. she goes "how did you know that?" and without a smirk i said "well i really don't have a choice but to hear it if they have on country at work, now do i? so what's my present?" "you get to live another day," she replies. "ok, well i looked it up on itunes anyway!" needless to say she wasn't impressed but i found myself pretty damn funny.

well i've gotta start getting around and head out for work. i have a meeting that should last around and hour and i'm expecting some critisism because i'm the one that got the meeting started.. kinda sorta. anyway, i'm out.

that'll teach me..

Fri, 10 Feb 2006 05:58:43 EDT

so i've decided that i am going to try to get back in shape a little bit. lara purchased a gazelle not too long ago and i figured it would be a good way to shed some of this extra baggage plus tone my arms and legs. i set it up tuesday night before i went to bed figuring that i'd be more inclined to use it had i not have to set it up in the morning. i got on it wednesday morning and did a 20 minute session and was feeling pretty good.. till yesterday morning. my calves in both legs hurt like crazy so i gimp around a bit. if i walk for a little while it doesn't hurt as bad but if i get up from sitting for a period of time it kills a little. no pain no gain, right?

anyway, i got my guitar the other tuesday also, a washburn lyon. it was a guitar set including the guitar, gig bag, picks, extra strings, strap, mini amp and software for learning how to play all for $99 ($104 with shipping). i've also got the guitar for dummies book (believe me i need it) and am trying to learn from there but the more i practice from the book the more it looks like i would be better off getting lessons. along with guitar i also want to learn how to play piano since lara brought her keyboard from home while were were on vacation. now piano i think will/would be easier to learn from a book than guitar... we'll see on that.

other than that there really isn't much going on around here. our apartment hunting hasn't been all that successfull due to the fact that a lot of the places will not have anything open till may or so and if they do have it open nowish they want it rented out asap and not when we want to move in july. we've still got some more places to call to check on and we've also been checking out craigslist periodically.. hopefully something will come across our paths that is close to exactly what we are looking for.

ONE FOR THE THUMB!!!

Sun, 05 Feb 2006 22:07:13 EDT

the steelers finally got one for the thumb! lara and i have been screaming all night at the tv and waiving the towel around. right now the tv is muted and we can hear all the horns/screaming/fireworks going on outside on the streets. i imagine it's going to be hard to get to sleep tonight.

i had a bunch of stuff i wanted to go over in a post but i wanted to wait till after the game.. and of course i forgot it due to all the excitement.. that's just like me :P. you'll notice a few minor site changes, a change in the greys in the colors and also the little icons for the blog posts as well as chatbox and comments. i'm still looking at some other changes to the site but right now i'm pretty content with it.

lara and i are doing pretty good. her birthday was on saturday (turned 23) and we've had a pretty good weekend. we took this past friday and this coming monday off for a 4 day birthday weekend and to just kinda hang out. anyway, that's it for now :)