That’s right!  Today’s post goes out to all of those hardcore Overlive fans that know what that means!  It also brings me to this point: my main rhythm section partner in crime, Mr. Chippie Man King is back from his term in the service for good and has moved to Madison!**

(**Mid-Post Foonote: For those unfamiliar, Overlive was the name of my high school band, and Mr. King was our bass player.  He and I extended the intro and some other parts of Chick Magnet by MxPx.  I wish we had a recording of it.  Rock out with your sock out. Woo!)

We’ve met up a couple times already since his return to the Midwest, but this weekend will be his first time at our Madison residence as our neighbor (across town).  He, his girlfriend, and a small group of friends are headin’ over to our shack for some Christmas cheer and some friendly Wii competition!  Bring it on you maggets! (er, I mean cool friends!)

On an unrelated related note (huh!?), attention dudes and brothas!  Have you retired YOUR “chick magnet” status and proposed to that one special girl of your dreams?  Well, impress her even further by telling her you’ll be in charge of the wedding invitations and head on over to http://www.coquidesign.com!  These are starting to prove themselves as the best invitations in Southern Wisconsin.  Don’t get ones that bite!  Check out these awesome invites!  (lame rhyme alert; take cover Bert!)

Judging by the lack of good taste in those rhymes, I think it’s bed time (d’oh!!).  One more day of work before the weekend, and then I’m down to one more week before my Christmas vacation. 

To all a good night!

Tuesday night re-cap!  I’m full of crap! :)  Turns out the guitar battle with Tom Morello wasn’t so bad after all.  Then again, it was still in the Easy level. :P  I even accomplished the encore song that I got to play along with Tom on.  (so sad, this game may actually be addicting)

Anywho, it was overall a pretty sweet day.  It started when my boss called me at 7:30am and informed me that we had the option to stay home today due to the ice and snow storm that was about to rock our world.  So yes, I got to stay home today, but I still had to work some.  Oh well, it wasn’t all bad, and I got a bunch of other stuff done today too.  Yeah I know I rock! (Quick!  Someone pop my ego balloon!)

Also, if you’ve been following along with my holiday posts, I updated my .Mac web gallery today with more recent photos of our finished decorations.  You can check them out in the left column (Holidays > Christmas 2007 Gallery) or use the link in the other post titled “Christmas Pics”.

Don’t forget, only 14 days left until Christmas!  Time is running out to buy me something!  (even if it is just a fashionable lump of coal that has my name written on it in multi-colored glitter)

Ok, I’ll take the blame for this one. The reason we went from Autumn to Winter in a couple days time is because of me. I blew it. The big guy upstairs finally got all my prayers (aka wishes in disguise).

Being a pure Wisconsinite (ya der hey) I grew up with snow all through December. Christmas snow is always the best. Well, the last few years have been almost on the verge of being a brown Christmas. True, it’s always snowed like a day before or the day of Christmas, but that was always cutting it too freakin’ close. I’m keepin’ my eye on you up there!! (as long as a snowflake doesn’t fall in my eye and blind me)

This year was apparently my year. I’ve been contributing to God’s Make-A-Wish Foundation for the last several years and he’s finally cashed in on my donations: instan-a-winter! We were blessed with a snowglobe effect between Thanksgiving and St. Nick’s Day. And guess what?! It’s still comin’ down like every 1-3 days!

Anywho, I guess the point of my post is that I finally brought back my childhood (in several ways) this year and have been reassured of having a white Christmas this year much further in advance than the last few years.

For those of you who hate the snow, feel free to blame me. That’s right! Go ahead! Stop talking to me out of anger! I don’t mind the peace (and quiet) on earth and good will towards me.

As promised, I finally decided on a couple of quick and easy ways to publish a chunk of photos we had taken during the early stages of decorating our house for the season. I basically had an array of options to choose from of ways to take photos from my iPhoto to the web, and the new .Mac web gallery and Flickr became my two methods of choice. Woo!

You can check out what I have so far at the following web address: http://gallery.mac.com/localsounds/100043

Also, to make everyone’s lives a whole lot easier (or conveniently lazy, you decide ;P ), I have updated my blogroll in the left column to include links to my new flickr profile/pics and to the .Mac gallery (each new .Mac gallery would get its own link, in case you were being driven into madness by not knowing that).

Finally, I’d like to say Happy First Official Day of December! And what a freakin’ crazy day of snow! We got about 2-3 inches here plus a layer of sleet and frozen rain. I made a short attempt to drive in it, only to turn around and come home. Poop on that! I had more fun shoveling today than driving (bizarre!).

For those of you who celebrate, tomorrow marks the first Sunday of Advent. Not a whole lot going on this Advent Sunday, but the second Sunday we will be holding a celebration with a bunch of family, so that’ll be exciting (or so I like to think *sarcastic laughter from the audience*).

For those of you who don’t know this face, I’d like to introduce you to my “spoiled child”, Lexi. Unless someone begs to differ, I doubt you will find another animal on this earth that loves Christmas as much as she does (unless you count humans, then I take the cake here!). I wanted to share a couple of her highlight moments for the 2007 Christmas season so far.

For starters, she loves egg nog. I don’t share with her often since I’m an addict myself (somebody please call Egg Nog-aholics Anonymous), but when she does get a special treat it’s like a seasonal blend of cat nip.

Second, she enjoys spending time watching the little magnetic figure skaters on my Department 56 ice skating pond. I realize it’s probably more like an attack position (they move! I’m gonna get ‘em!) but hey, she hasn’t pounced at them yet, so technically she’s still just keeping herself occupied by spectating.

Finally, she loves to lay next to the fireplace and tree. Sometimes she helps herself to a munchy snack at the same time (the bottom fake branches) but she’s starting to learn that they aren’t as edible as she once thought (insert sarcastic tongue sticking out here from the photo).

On a final note, I hope everyone had a wonderful and filling Thanksgiving and is enjoying the start of the Christmas season. Santa and New Year’s Eve will be here before you know it!

Not to sound like a sell out, but it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas! Two weeks ago we found a most excellent deal on a new artificial tree at Menards. Before I go any further, I want to point out that yes, I think artificial trees are nice and may have environmental pros and cons, but nothing beats a real tree, so one day I will probably go back to that tradition to see if I remember how it used to be. I do draw the line at pre-lit trees though. What’s the freakin’ point?! All the fun has been taken out of having a tree that way! If this keeps up, by this time next year they will start coming pre-decorated!! All you’ll have to do is pull the rip cord holding it together in the box and BOOM! Instant-unfold-a-tree. (um, if I wanted my Christmas to come in a little box with a red button that when pushed magically did everything for me, I would head over to Staples)

Ok, enough about the Christmas tree. On a green note, we did manage to dig up enough LED lights to make our tree use almost zero power. Damnit, what will they think of next? Wireless power? (oh right, it’s already been done) The best part about those little LED buggers is that they never get hot. I know that this technology alone will help my dad get more sleep since he doesn’t have to wait for the so-called “fire hazard” of a tree to cool down until 1:30am (you know I’m right! hehe).

Aside from the tree and its lights, our house is looking pretty sweet. The front, back, and insides are pretty much done. I do plan to add some more to the front soon, but I guess we’ll play that by ear. I hope to get some more photos up eventually.

To top things off, the egg nog has been flowing for weeks already and the Christmas music has been pouring out of the stereo, Internet, and car radio! Woo hoo!

So it’s been the usual crazy busy around here since I last posted. As you can see by my photo (courtesy of my iPhone) I have put up a few Halloween decorations, marking the first holiday we’ve decorated for at our new place. I admit it’s a little lame, but I’m also short on Halloween decorations, but far from short on Christmas decorations. I will probably post a photo of that when the time comes (which isn’t too far off, woo hoo!).

In the world of development, Local Sounds has been taking top priority as we are getting closer and closer to releasing the wiki, the store, a new Local Sounds site, and an updated MadCityTube.com! All before Christmas (and Thanksgiving hopefully!)!! So if you were wondering about any progress on the widget (oh you know where this is going..hmmmhmm), I regret to say it hasn’t seen any change. November or December should see some progress though, and an updated version.

Also, the best and biggest news of the week: Mac OS X Leopard comes out tomorrow! It looks to be great, and there’s been plenty (and all) good reviews this week from critics who received advanced copies. Now the only thing I want to double check is, will the Gruvsonic widget work on it??? We’ll find out!

Lastly, I’ve finally found the time to update my Portfolio page! Check it out for a handful of other client sites that I’ve done. Enjoy.

Happy Halloween!

I don’t know about you, but the beginning of October marks the start of probably my most favorite time of year: the season of holidays.  Halloween is my second favorite holiday, and Christmas is my first.  I’m sure I’m not the only one to say this, but I still enjoy being a kid at this time of year, regardless of what they say about the holidays being all commercial and crap.  I’m especially a sucker for holiday decorating.  I took over for my parents’ house at an early age and I continue that tradition on to my own place now (plus I STILL do my parents’ house… must have spoiled the heck outta them). **

Anyway, I suppose that’s enough walking down personal holiday-loving lane (what?!  I can’t call it memory lane can I?).  Development update!  As much as I wish I could report some widget advancements, I’m sad to say I have bigger fish to fry at the moment.  As previously noted in past posts and the screenshot hint in my Portfolio page (I need to add more to that soon!), my start-up company Local Sounds is doing better recently, and we’re scrambling right now to get a couple of items done and ready to go for the beginning of November.  Even though that takes precedence right now, I will continue to promise that I’ll try and get some more widgey-woo time in so I can get some updates out. 

In the meantime, I invite you to submit ideas and suggestions of maybe some things you’d like to see added to or improved upon on the widget.  I realize it’s only the first version, but I believe it’s never too early to start collecting a list of things that could potentially make it even more awesome-o down the road.  You can leave your suggestions / ideas / feedback in the comments of this post.

Well, I always seem to find the need or desire to write posts at 1:00am, so I suppose I should run for now.  I hope to see some feedback about the widget, or just my posts in general.  Until next time…

(** NOTE: By the way, if you haven’t already noticed, I blog with a pinch of dry humor, sarcasm, and “parenthesis flashbacks”.  It’s my nature, I’m pretty laid back, and I talk the same way in person.  If you feel something offends you, spill your guts to me.  I’ll try and watch my mouth, otherwise enjoy my intentional nuttiness. )