I got a call from Steve McWilliams, a former musical cohort, who is putting together a new project to work on a spate of original material he’s been formulating. I’m looking forward to getting together with him to preview the new songs and see what we can do with them. It looks like my frequent collaborator and drummer extraordinaire Rich Nagel will be involved as well, and also Steve’s brother-in-law, singer/songwriter/guitarist Jimmy Catlett from Richmond’s Dumm Dumms. You should pick up the Dumm Dumms’ record “Oxymaroon” immediately; it’s perfect guitar pop from start to finish. My favorite song on the record is “Amphibian,” but there’s a lot to love on the album besides that one.

Very busy at work the past few days, but I had a great weekend. Eleya, Evie and I went to Charlottesville to meet up with some college friends. We strolled around the grounds of UVa where we went to school, ate out, reminisced, and on Sunday went to Monticello. Monticello was fascinating, and I really enjoyed learning more about Thomas Jefferson’s life outside of political life. If you are ever in the area, it is well worth the trip. The views of the Blue Ridge area from his home are breathtaking.

So of course the drip got worse and became a full-blown illness. I’m just getting back to work today. Too busy to write much, but ah! the pleasures of pseudephedrine!

D’oh! Stupid post nasal drip has my throat really raw this morning. I’m sure my penchant for snoring doesn’t help much. Not that I’m snoring right now, I mean last night. I did manage to clean my desk this morning already, which gave me a nice warm glow of accomplishment. Don’t laugh, you didn’t see what it looked like “before.”

Eleya brought home the Criterion edition of The Royal Tenenbaums this weekend. What a fantastic film. It’s from the same writers/director as Bottle Rocket and Rushmore, and shares the same quirky sense of humor. The Royal Tenenbaums is a little darker and more melancholy, though. It’s about a family of geniuses that has passed its days of greatness, and about the deep fractures caused by its patriarch (played by Gene Hackman), which he tries to heal because he is a selfish man who can’t stand to upset the status quo. Everyone in the movie is fantastic, especially Luke Wilson as Richie and Ben Stiller as Chas. If you liked Wes Anderson’s other movies you will love this one. The finale of the movie packs what I thought was a devastating emotional wallop, but which is by no means overly sentimental or maudlin. The DVD is first-rate, like all Criterion titles, and features a director’s commentary, an extra disc full of interesting interviews and design details, and some very entertaining insert booklets, believe it or not. Highly recommended.

I laid down an acoustic guide track last night with my Superlux mic, and it sounds really great, fat and full. I found a couple of canned drum tracks which I laid behind it (thanks to a little tempo mod in ACID Pro) and really enjoyed playing around with the feel by “scootching” the acoustic very slightly around. Suddenly I’m Keith Richards, master of playing behind the beat!

I’ve updated my whoami section to include a link that will allow you to verify my status as a Red Hat Certified Engineer.

Haven’t posted in a few days because I’ve been super busy at work getting ready for a teaching gig. I seem to have reached an equilibrium as far as that’s concerned. Yesterday I helped a coworker set up a Linux server to install (via Kickstart) classroom computers with a single unified boot diskette. Everything’s configurable from the server, and the machines automatically install everything they need in just a half hour’s time, even if they’re all running simultaneously; the server also provides DHCP/BOOTP, DNS, NFS, and a few other services as well. This service is freely available on Red Hat Linux, and documented in their Customization Guide.

What a quiet day at the office! Everyone must have taken off for the long weekend. Unfortunately I have plenty to do so I had to be here. >snif< At least I’m getting a lot done, and I have my Stick with me to practice at lunch time. I guess it won’t be so bad. Hopefully I should be receiving a few movies today from Netflix to eat up some weekend nights.

I did my first consulting job for HostingSolutions.com on Tuesday. It was very interesting, and I enjoyed it quite a bit. The head tech guy there is going to have some more work for me over the next few months, from all accounts, so I am looking forward to that. With the band finished this is a nice way to have extra scratch for those little costs that pop up from time to time. (A musician’s buying is never done.)

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p>Happy Fourth to everyone. I will be working a little bit today on follow up work for HostingSolutions.com, after which I will be practicing and hopefully working on some song material. (If I can keep the wife and baby at bay for long enough!)