Josh For President!

Kind of a catch-all post today... hope you won't mind.

My new computer will hopefully be back in my grubby little hands by Sunday, woohoo! And my new monitor is *supposed* to arrive via FedEx on Tuesday. That's the last time I order anything from SuperWherehouse.com. I ordered it on January 3, for crying out loud! If I'd ordered it from Newegg.com instead, I would have paid less and got it in a couple days. So much for trying to help out the "little guys".

Anyway, it will be nice to have that screaming beast back in my office, getting some lovin'.

Watched a great little "best of" clip of my favorite skateboarder Rodney Mullen today on YouTube. Thought I would "favorite" it and use it to test my ability to embed YouTube videos in my blog posts. You don't have to watch it... unless you want to see the best skateboarder in the world, that is...



The video quality is a little sketchy... it's obvious that whoever uploaded it ripped it off an old VHS. Still, Mullen is amazing to watch. I skated for years and years, to the point where it literally was all I thought about, unless I absolutely had to be thinking about something else. All my free thoughts went into tricks to try, tricks I've done, looking for new spots, looking at magazines and video... you name it. Even so, I still can't figure out some of the tricks Rodney does... and most of those tricks, he invented himself. He's from another planet, I believe.

I don't have many pics of myself skating, but here's a pic of me when I was in Phoenix back in 1989 - also known as "The Year That Changed Everything." Sorry about the lack of shirt. Phoenix is a hot place, ya know...



Yeah, I was skin and bones when I was 19... I have other cool pics somewhere, I think. I'll have to track 'em down. Hey, I could post some old video footage too! Ok, this could be fun....

On a completely unrelated note, I was reading The Blade Itself last night, and I read a passage that had me laughing out loud at 1 am. I'm going to post it here, even though it likely won't make as much sense without all of the previous story:

The Prince heaved in a ragged breath, coughed and reeled to his feet, stumbled for his horse and hauled himself up into the saddle with a deal less grace than he had got down. He shot a murderous glance over his shoulder as he made for the gate, but it didn't have quite the same weight with his face red as a slapped arse. Logen realised he was grinning, wide. It was a long time since he'd enjoyed himself this much.

I thought that was a very amusing simile, a face as red as a slapped arse.

As the book progresses, the writing seems to improve. I'm pretty much at the point where I can recommend the book. Still, I withhold my final say until I finish the book.

I'm feeling pretty blah today. I can't quite decide if I'm heading toward "under the weather" or not. Slight headache, slightly nauseous, slightly tired... it may be that too many nights staying up really late are catching up with me, and I just need a solid night's sleep to reset. I popped an ibuprofen; it remains to be seen if I can summon the discipline to turn in early tonight or not.

Was looking the "blog gadgets" today. Most are pretty lame. I did add an Ansel Adams gadget to the bar there, as you probably saw, but I don't know how long I'll keep it. I like Ansel Adams, but that Gadget doesn't show the whole pic, at least on my screen. Part of it is chopped off, which is kind of annoying. I wish I could find an MP3 player that would let me play a song from my own collection - just upload it like a picture or something, instead of having to go through a third-party program like iLike.

I'd also like to try out an audio blog post now and then, just to see what it's like. Not sure how I'll be able to do that, if at all.

• Broken Wings by Alter Bridge

More Alter Bridge music on iLike

There's the song for today - Broken Wings by Alter Bridge. I've listened to that song so many times, it ain't even funny. OK, it's a little bit funny, but not much. Not sure what I'm doing wrong with the song link there... it's supposed to just play the audio when you click the link... instead, it redirects away from this page and plays a video. Same thing happened yesterday with Garments of Praise.

As a rule, music videos are retarded. "OK, look into the camera and pretend to sing! Cool! Now watch as we cut back and forth between a half-dozen weird locations really fast while you sing, with a fan blowing your hair around! Now, like, gaze deeply into the camera and hold that note! Oh, yeah, we can feel the emotion!" Bleh. Spare me.

I better wrap this post up and get back to work. Gotta format an interview and send it off tonight to one of my clients. Until tomorrow, fare thee well.