On Friday, I asked Danielle to marry me. It was a remarkably easy decision.

After four and a half years of posting in this livejournal, I've decided I need to shift my blogging interests elsewhere. There are several reasons:

1. The need for privacy now that I'm (reluctantly) entering the professional world.
2. I would like to give out the address to friends and family alike, and I have no desire to show them this page if they haven't seen it already (hi dad).
3. RSS feeds! I read too many blogs that support RSS to not want to aggregate them all, or subscribe, however it works.
4. More and more, my livejournal friends page is a club for good writers and I just don't belong. Caught up among the posts of of artists_rifles and citylitesblur and the insight of Lydia and Lana, whose friends-only restrictions are keeping me from linking them, I'm static on the airwaves. Thanks for letting me sit in.
5. Mulder did it.

Besides, Livejournal is impractical for what I need -- a boring forum for updates on life and discussion of things I read online. I may still write here if I have something particularly angry, who knows if I will shut this place out entirely. I'm not deleting the journal; there are far too many important memories enshrined in text for me to do that, and I'll still read my friends page. And both of you readers won't have to worry about checking a second website, since I do plan to dump the RSS feed into Facebook and totally take over your 'news feeds'.

Onward and upward!

My troubles are over. I successfully built my new computer last night. This was the second task on my summer ulcer list behind the job. Life is good. Brady Quinn sucks.

Ann Arbor Concert Band started tonight. It feels wonderful to be playing again. In the last 7 days I also went to the Detroit Jazz Festival for a second day, ordered essentially a new computer, and accepted Mulder's offer to be the best man in his wedding. Great week.

We went to the Detroit Jazz Festival yesterday. The music was incredible but peoplewatching was half the fun. I saw the chubbiest toddler I've ever seen struggle up steps, with her fat-creased knees barely able to bend enough to reach the steps. A little kid traded moonwalking dance steps with his dad on the riverfront while Organissimo played. I spilled my Philly cheesesteak walking to Mr. Pucho's latin jazz band play the most incredible bass solo ever while street vendors screamed about dollar water bottles and crazy homeless men played air drums two feet from the speakers.

Also, Little Miss Sunshine is one of the best movies I have ever seen.

Michigan football entry tonight.

My favorite Michigan football blog posted the Braylon Edwards video I edited the other day. To date, 1100 people have viewed it, and it was youtube's #50 most viewed video today. Considering (1)that YouTube serves up 100,000,000 videos a day, (2)65,000 new ones are uploaded daily, and (3)Being published by MGoBlog is a very exciting feat to me, this is exciting and awesome news.

EDIT: 1900.

Michigan Football: I have to admit, I haven't been as excited this year as I've been in previous years, but that's to be expected. Previously, I've been surrounded by all things Michigan and Michigan football and Michigan fans for two weeks by now and I'd get to see and play for the team today. This year I've mostly been at work with my head in the clouds, my anticipation for the season fed mostly via refreshing a variety of UM blogs three or four times a day. Sure the excitement has been building, but not in the "can't glance at my jersey hanging in the closet without hyperventilating" sense of the last four years. I haven't had anything concrete and drastic -- like band week -- to really have it hit me that my favorite time of year is 48 hours away.

Until today, when I read this Free Press article on Mike Hart.

I still have goosebumps.

I'm sitting in the fishbowl, trying to edit the same video I was editing when my computer blew itself up last week. Dealing with my computer now is like having a disabled child; you learn to accept and nurture its differences. When I right-click on the start menu I know it's going to take fifteen seconds before I the menu expands, so I've just accepted this and now I walk around the room a couple times. The differences is I can trade mine in for a healthy one soon.

Thoughts on my first night at the new house:

-This place is old. Sure that gives it charm, but it also gives it bugs and dirt and noisy wood floors.
-Anyone whose girth exceeds mine only slightly is going to have considerable difficulty pooping. The sink sticks out almost over the toilet, and as it is, it's almost hitting me in the chest.
-We don't have a garbage disposal, but we do have a toilet.
-Our pacifist landlords have this dirty complacency to them; their suggestion to 'express ourselves' is probably going to result in mediocre, surreal murals on their walls and 9-foot photomosaics of my own face.

Come on, iMovie. Import the damn thing already.

Pluto sucks.

Work is good. Life is good. Haven't been to a band rehearsal yet; it will undoubtedly cause emotional instability. Despite the inadequate drum major, new and crappy seating arrangement, lack of homestays on the OSU trip, and fact that the director who ruined my high school program is on grad staff... I would still probably sacrifice 10 years of my life and two of my five senses to be able to be in that uniform one more time. But instead of jealousy or regret I think I'm going to watch those mmb members and just feel proud and happy, like a parent does a child when he first learns to ride a bike. I sure did my part to make them as good as they are. I can now sit back and watch and hope they get better, and enjoy the hell out of it along the way.

9 days until football and dammit I can't wait.

I move in to the new place on Monday. Mr. Matthew Kolich, out of the kindness of his heart, let me have my pick of rooms in the house despite getting last pick for the second consecutive year. No bitching, no arguing, no bitter ranting necessary from anyone. I'm really glad I get to live with these guys again.

Most awesome uniqnames encountered at the library so far:
-hell
-kickash
-virus
-null
-squigel
-tinkle

The Great Ohioan Adventure III was this weekend. This started 2 years ago as a project to reunite the members of our hall in West Quad at Matt's house in Ohio. Even though Phil and Matt and I are moving in with each other in 2 weeks, we did it again this year anyway. Their family loves having us and we always have a great time. I bowled a 137 and a 150, which for me was pretty fantastic. We also went to The Beach waterpark, which was excellent considering the circumstances. Any waterpark in Ohio is bound to have a baseline level of inherent dirtiness; mullets and Ohio have that effect. Despite that, things were generally clean and well-run and we got good and sunburnt and bruised from the slides. Add that to some fantastic dinners courtesy of Mrs. Kolich, and that equals good times.

And paid time off is the best thing ever.

Came home to find a BSOD on my computer. Restarted and logged in, and after five minutes, it decided it couldn't load my profile. Now my account only exists as a new user. I've lost my desktop icons, folders, shortcuts, browsing preferences, bookmarks, everything in Firefox, everything in iTunes (playcounts, playlists, ratings, everything from the last year). The start menu is empty so I have to navigate to everything through Explorer.

I also lost a tremendous amount of media from the last four years - hundreds of images, everything I photoshopped, every single paper I wrote in college, all kinds of pdfs and eps, facebook pics, installation files for everything on the computer.

Fortunately, my digital photographs and mp3s are intact. I lost my 600,000+ AIM logs, which is probably for the best.

In any case, it's going to take me weeks to rebuild and be close to operable, which I neither have time nor patience for.

Am now thinking twice about upgrading and instead saving up for a MacBook. Am currently mad enough to put a hole through a goddamned wall.

Once again my hypocrisy is palpable, but to be honest I didn't think something that was working fine for four years would suddenly shit on my face like this.

Work work work, jobby job job. The days fly by and I like it but it's weird knowing this is it until I make a drastic change. No classes starting, no band to return to, no decent breaks unless I save up for them.

Actually that's not true. I'm going to dominate the Ann Arbor Community Band on bass trombone this fall.

I signed up for some UM pilot program that gives me 10 gigabytes of online storage. Expect more uncompressed .avi files online now (like this one!), as I feel suddenly... endowed. Electronically speaking. I go from being a pathetic weakling worrying if his 250mb of Picasa Web storage was going to be enough, to being an unstoppable juggernaut of file hosting. ShaZAM. Of course, the bottleneck is the pathetic commercial cable upload speeds.

I made a new and unimpressive personal website now that I'm all professional and stuff. Only the basics will go there, probably. I sure wish I knew how to use Dreamweaver, or at least, I wish I was willing to take the time to learn it. I sat down with it for about a half hour today before getting frustrated, finding a free HTML template online, and editing it with FrontPage like the poser I am.

Great Ohioan Adventure version 3.0 is this weekend. I'm pumped.

The Red Wings just re-signed the best goalie of all time, for a tenth of the price of his first stint. They also signed defenseman Danny Markov, which sures up the defense and with a better goalie behind them.

Welcome back, Mr. Hasek. Detroit WHAT!

Work is good, Ann Arbor is hot, I need a place to live. The usual.

Clerks II was hilarious. It's great to know that while Kevin Smith may have gotten bigger budgets, better actors, a more polished style, and a more skillful director's hand, that his movies have not sold out or grown up one bit.

At this point in his franchise, the characters and conversations are comfortably familiar. While we know the framework of the movie, the specifics are different and that's what makes it great. When Bob drags out the jukebox, everyone knows Jay is going to break into some ridiciulous dance (this movie was basically Jay's homage to Silence of the Lambs). And then he does. And it's funny every time. And Kevin Smith knows we know it. When the Lord of the Rings nerd starts arguing with Dante about Star Wars, we know what Dante's reaction will be and it's funny anyway. So yeah, I loved it.

~~

Steve Van Dyke's wedding was yesterday. It was a very nice ceremony, and the reception was short and sweet. Great dutch treats for dessert too. After that I met some wedding party members/their friends/etc downtown at a party. Between Seminar, WMU, and this wedding, I had some weird connection with almost everyone there.

They charged $5 for cups, which I begrudgingly paid because the drinks were mixed (and fortunately yummy). Honestly, the free beer at parties policy at UM is something we take for granted. It is up to us to rub it in the faces of cup-purchasing schools whenever we can.

There are still SweetTarts and Runts in the cabinet from when I was here in May. Do I eat them, or assume they're full of decay and diseases?

My first week of work is over. I feel like I'm getting the hang of things. I've learned a ton of software, and now it's just figuring out where to send things when they go wrong. We deal with a lot of scanned articles, which means a lot of bitchy patrons, who all have their place.

I'm home for the weekend for Steve Van Dyke's wedding. First wedding where someone's been younger than me. Weird. He reads this, so here's to you, Steve. I'd toast to you tomorrow night but you're not serving alcohol. :)

I went downtown-ish for some drinks with Lana tonight. I'm very glad it happened.

Goddamn these Runts are good.

Animaniacs is exactly how I hoped it would be. All the jokes I remember, many that I forgot, plus dozens more I never knew about (the musical themes they sneak in there are amazing). Today felt like 1993 again and I was 9 years old and had to run home to not miss the start.

My printer is now telling me that the ink cartridge that came with the printer is not compatible. Their website now has a mention of this. The advice included in the warning assumes that you have already had some kind of fore-knowledge that you might need to check their website for this problem. Their solution if it has already happened to you is to buy another $30.00 ink cartridge. Thanks, HP, for having the worst customer service in the whole world.