After a long hiatus, I’m back. Between work, the record label, recording some songs, and what may have been mono, I was too exhausted to blog. I’m hoping to get back into it now. Here’s a little catch-up on what’s been going on the past few weeks:

Music

As I said, Vibe has recorded its first three songs, two of which I’m playing bass on. Rez (our youth band) has also recorded five songs, and Cutter Gage is working on a full album. I’m figuring out a lot of things with the label, with Cory’s help, and I feel like we’re getting to a point where we can start really moving. We had our first artist demo, and the guy sounds awesome. We’re not at a point right now where we can take on new artists, but I’m hoping we can work together in the future.

I’m also trying to get some musicians together regularly at my house again, but I can’t find a lot of them with free time at the same time that I have it. It’d be great to be playing with musicians more than twice a week.

Writing

I finished a short story and am working on another related one. I’m hoping to do a series of short stories in the same world, as this will be much more manageable than my past attempts at a full-length novel. I’m thinking about setting up another blog to house these.

Big News

We’re starting to tell people now, but Janelle and I are moving toward adopting some kids through the foster system. We don’t have any romantic notions that it will be easy, as many of these kids were pulled out of horrible situations that have left some scars, but we’re looking forward to it. We’re shooting for next summer.

Health News

I have a vitamin D deficiency. I know, it’s shocking that I don’t get enough sunlight, but it’s the truth. The really surprising part, though is that, while I’m low on vitamin D, Janelle is deathly low. Like, we’re talking vampire levels of vitamin D, here. She’s on a prescription strength supplement that’s several thousand percent of the daily recommended allowance.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to walk around my neighborhoodnow that the sun’s down.

Somehow, my site got hacked and redirected users to some Chinese video site. I think I got this fixed, but let me know if that (or anything funny) is still going on, and how it happened.

Thanks!

Go to this Wikipedia article on Megaman (the Nintendo character who starred in games of the same name). Scroll down to the references at the bottom. Look at #7.

That’s right. They cited me as a reference for an open-source dictionary article on an eight-bit video game character from the 80s.

I’m also finding a lot of people linking to my Faith page, and a lot of people ganking the images off of Pulpexplosion. And my quizzes are popping up occasionally on MySpace or in forums. Ah, glorious Internet fame.

I forgot to post on this, but I am now in sunny south Florida. Sorry to all my friends down here who didn’t know. Give me a call and maybe we can hang out.

Anyway, I’m staying with my dad, for now. Marisa (my sister) and her boyfriend Alex are also here. We went diving this morning and caught a lobster, but we threw him back because it’s not lobster season right now.

Anyway, I have a camera with me, so expect a few pictures when I get back (Monday), but not until then, because I forgot my USB cable.

Given my recent luck with all things computer-related, you might expect that this is a post about me getting a computer virus, but it is actually about me getting a regular sickness-causing virus. I’ve been sick since the Friday before last with some mystery virus that has all but knocked me on my ass. I’m way, way tired, no matter how much sleep I get, and I get these nasty headaches sporadically throughout the day. I have a swollen throat from time to time as well. I saw a doctor about it, but he was pretty confident it was just a run-of-the-mill virus that I would just have to wait out. So if you’re wondering why I’ve been unresponsive or M.I.A. lately, that’s why: I’m spending my spare moments sitting or lying down.

Complicating matters is the number of important meetings I’ve been having at work. For instance, I would have come home this afternoon, but I had two meetings with senior management and one with my manager and senior team to discuss coaching redistribution. All together, I spent four hours in meetings today. And that’s not bad—I’m actually getting a lot of important stuff accomplished in these meetings—it just makes it harder to take time off when I need it.

So I will be constructing a bot to answer general questions and give unsolicited opinions while I am away from work. This bot will be programmed with over 2,000 quotes from Soren Kierkegaard, and will be able to pick a location to go to lunch as well as decipher XML server responses. The bot will have complex artificial intelligence to detect when others are talking about fantasy sports, and will be programmed to put on headphones in those situations and listen to Sigur Rós or Explosions in the Sky.

Man oh man, I have a headache.

I’ve opened up comments on my pages (including my poetry and faith pages).

So, if you didn’t see it, some Turkish hackers got to my site. What they did is write a bot that would attempt to hack every WordPress site it found, so it hit me, Janelle, who unfortunately lost her custom theme, and Lauren, along with thousands of others. I’ll have to work on redesigning Janelle’s, since I don’t have a copy of it on my current computer.

In updating my WordPress files, I accidentally reset my theme to the default theme. That’s why it’s looked different since last night. Should be all better now.

So I didn’t realize that you had to be logged in to leave a comment on this site. I just found that setting. Now, you don’t have to log in—you just have to put in your name and e-mail address. So comment away!

I’m leaving tomorrow on a big plane bound for HAWAII! I don’t know if I’ll have Internet access there, so if I’m not around for a week, don’t think I died. (If I’m not around for two weeks, I may have died.)

I actually grew up in Kona, Hawaii. This time around, I’ll be staying in houses where I spent some time growing up, including a house on an old coffee plantation. I’ll try to take some pictures and have some good stories to tell when I come back. I’m egomaniacal enough to believe that you will be bored without me here, so feel free to teach yourself web design.