Unions, unions...it's all about the unions!!!

OK, so it's been forever since I posted on my journal...needed to post something new to it for once and don't feel like thinking right now!!

Wizzooott!!

Dave

Kitties!!

When my girlfriend moved up to San Francisco from Los Angeles, she had to leave behind a cat she had for 14 years. She could have brought it, but the cat was so used to its environment, we thought it would have been unfair for her.

So, of course, I said she could get a new kitty once we settled in....and we went to do that yesterday. We went to an adoption fair at a pet store and saw these two cute 11-week old black kittens. They were brothers, but each have very different personalities. One is outgoing and is a bit nutty. The other is cautious of everything. The GF fell in love with the nutty one and we agreed to take it.

The adoption person came by our place last night to drop the kitty off (they have to inspect the place first to make sure it's safe for the cat) and when the kitten we were taking was seperated from its brother, the brother looked very lonely and depressed. We felt really bad for it, so...well....we decided to take both!!

Body for Life Update:

Whelp, lost a respectable four pounds last week on my first week back on the BFL plan.!

While it isn't the staggering 12lb or whatever I lost the first week the last time I did it, I am very happy because 1) It's progress, 2) I didn't do ANY excercize, 3) I wasn't nearly as strict as I used to be -- too much fruit and caffeine involved, and 4) I wasn't driven crazy by cravings.

So here we go week two!!!

OK, if you've been around on the forums and stuff since mid-late 2002, you probably know my journey on the Body for Life program. It was something that I was very hardcore about and started in October 2002.

Being ready to be decidicated and giving it my all, I took the plan, modified it a tad, and well, between October 2002 and May 2003, I lost around 75lb - 80lb. Technically, my peak was more around 95lb, but that dealt with me basically starving myself a couple weeks before heading into E3 2003 because I wanted to reach a certain weight...but I gained that back within a week once.

Anyhow, that E3, I stopped the plan. I was rather happy with myself, was very active, and just told myself I wouldn't abuse the eating (that is, stuff myself overly full whenever I ate, which is most overweight's people biggest mistake in addition to simply eating the wrong food.)

From May 2003 to August 2004, I pretty much maintained this wait within a 5 pound range on average. Never really looked out on what I was eating, but just made sure to only eat enough to make me full and no more. My muscle/fat ratio certainly fluctuated I would say, though.

In August / early September, out of nowhere, I gained a significant amount of weight...around 20lb, over the course of 2 - 3 weeks. And I've been around there since then. This is not what I wanted and have been very upset with myself!!!

My girlfriend moved in with me in mid-October and we have decided to go back on the plan I was on before, BFL...with my modifications (essentially, lower fat intake)...and we started this week. It's going well for me, but she's having a little trouble (more like, complaining!!! :p), but she's sticking with it and I'm proud of her.

The first week or two is always the most difficult as the cravings for everything you are used to eating drive you crazy, but once we get past it, it should be smooth sailing!

Wish us luck!

So after two incredible nights this past weekend with Paul van Dyk Friday and then Oceanlab, Above & Beyond, and Lange Saturday night, my body decided to give up on me and started getting very sick on Sunday. Considering with my GF's and I's anniversary, we still tried to make the best of it and went to dinner and our evening activities afterwards. The dinner went OK, but we ended up leaving Ruby Skye (where we went afterwards) after only being there for an hour because my throat was swelling up and I was getting a fever for sure. What a horrible day for this to all happen on, my anniversary!!!

And since then, my body has been aching, my throat has been very sore, my lungs hurt, etc. Today is probably the best I have felt since Monday, mainly because I think I've coughed up everything possible out of my lungs (thanks to hacking up goobers for an hour before coming into work today), so my chest is cleared up somewhat, although I can feel it getting worse as they day goes along. Keeping myself loaded up on Dayquil is controlling my temperature finally. Anyhow, think I'm on the slow path of recovery, hopefully.

OK, things have been _ccraazzzyyy_ in my life, so don't think I've just been ignoring this....here's a rundown of a few things...

1. My free IPOD came, just a couple days after my last entry...I got it before my account updated with it being shipped. I love the thing!

2. I have taken a huge step in my life - I am living with my girlfriend. After going to LA and her coming up to SF for the past year, she finally made the move to SF once and forall. It's going great so far. I've never been happier in my life. I see big things ahead!!

3. Still going out a whole lot. It's great that my GF loves the same music I do for the most part (although she doesn't like a lot of the progressive music I like), and this weekend is going to hit me with a triple header. Friday - Paul van Dyk, 2 - Lange, Oceanlab / Above & Beyond, Sunday - Paul Oakenfold & Sander Kleinenberg. To make it more wacky, Sunday is Halloween and my anniversary with my GF.

4. On the work side of things, just finished getting 700kpbs streams prepped, about to do a remote live On the Spot webcast at Electronic Arts LA, getting started on another HUGE project that will involve lots of people, and tons of other stuff. Let's just say things are hectic for sure!!!

5. I cry every night how my Yankees lost the Red Sox. I actually don't really mind losing to the Sox, but the way they did it is just torture on my soul. Oh well, I grew up loving the Yankees, and the SUCKED when I first really understood baseball, and I'll always be by their side.

6. I hate the New England Patriots.....ok ok, not the Patriots, but I really hate Tom Brady. He just seems fake to me. Oh, and before ANYONE says he's a great QB, that offense is setup to make any QB look good. Just like the Rams offense and the Chief's offense are designed where just about any QB who can remotely throw the ball will look good.

7. Man, the Dolphins SUCK this year....at least the Bucs have one two games.

8. The press don't know squat in the college polls. Miami could destroy Auburn in a 1-on-1...if Miami actually decided to show up and play as well as they can.

9. Back to work for me....

Cheers,

Dave

I wish it would ship! I've been waiting a month!!!!

Have opted for the new HP ipod if available, too...

If it doesn't ship within like the next week, I'm gonna start running into walls as fast as I can!

Halleluiah! Yes folks, I'm still around. I haven't been ignoring this thing, just been really really busy between work, moving, and a few things going on outside of those two.

Anyway, looks like Ivan is gonna miss its original mark, which is good because that part of Florida has suffered enough. It's still gonna mess up a lot of things and destroy a lot of homes, unfortunately, though. Hope New Orleans survives since it's below sea level and can easily be flooded!

Once everything is settled with my move and I get back into the flow of things, I'll be able to post regular journal updates…

On another note, go out and buy the album: Gabriel & Dresden - Bloom

It's awesome!!!

Later.

So the funny thing that strikes me about Ivan is that on Sunday or Monday when I was watching TV, all the news stations and the weather channel were saying it's long-term projected path had it hitting Florida...then Tuesday and Wednesday morning it suddenly wasn't...then after every update, the projections were once again putting it into Florida...and now, projections have it smacking Florida going on almost the same path as Hurricane Charlie did just a few weeks ago. Charlie alone did something like $12 billion worth of damage, four times what Frances did. What's worse, is that it's projected that Ivan will have at least 140mph winds...at the same time, they were saying they expected Charlie to weaken last night, and it's hasn't! It's pressure has continued to DROP a little which means it's continuing to STRENGTHEN. Of course, it's going to hit land (Cuba or thereabouts) so it's strength will fluctutate, but once it gets past Cuba, there's a good chance it'll strengthen again as that part of the gulf stream that's wrapped around Florida has always proven to be huge fuel for hurricanes, just like it was for Charlie. Charlie strengthened greatly once it passed Cuba.

So with that, I am gonna have to worry again. I have family all over central Florida, and a lot of them are in older homes they bought in the 60s and 70s.

For all of you in Florida, be careful....looks like this one may be the double-whopper of Hurricanes.

Dave

Yep, it's only a four day week, but I already wish it was Friday!

Work has been a bit hectic, mainly because of little things. Did a video review Tuesday (Silent Hill 4: The Room), and have been working on setting up things for mp3.com and been on the phone a lot with the people behind our whole encoding system we use in the office as it's essential we resolve a major issue with their software that's causing major havoc for us and one of our content partners. As you see, I do a good bit of behind-the-scenes stuff, which somehow ends up taking way more time than I'd like! Everything is such a slow process when you have to go through channels, people, etc to get any technical stuff done! When I get in tomorrow, I'll be right back working on the phone (or whatever method) as we try to get the issue with the software resolved, then it's prep time for On the Spot, then onto the live webcast...doesn't seem like a lot, but I assure you it is!!

I'm also in the process of moving into my new place (see my first Journal entry), which we need to try to complete by this Friday. It's been difficult to get out of the office early enough to take care of stuff. Since it's a rather nice apartment complex with towers and hallways involved, there are some strict rules -- we can't do any moving after 10pm! If I leave the office at 6:30pm, I don't get home until 7:15, and between loading anything up in a vehicle (my roommates), driving to the new place, unloading what I can to carry up, walking, taking the elevator, and unloading it into the apartment, time goes by very fast! Essentially I've been able to do one full carload a night (2 to 3 trips to and from the car once I am parked in the new place), so the pace has been very slow. I didn't even get a chance to do a load last night (Tuesday), so ended up doing a load this morning before I went to work...and it took longer than expecting causing me to be a little late.

Ahhhhhhh, the stress. Just little things, but stressful! Moving sucks, but I'm very excited to be moving into the place I am...it's so nice with an AUSOME (with a U!) view!

With that, got more packing done tonight and ready to do another carload tomorrow night before the big move Friday. Not sure if I will be able to get everything done, but I suppose I can attempt to get the leftovers this weekend as we clean this place up to make sure we get our ludicrous $3500 or so deposite back.

And for now...good night to this boring life.

So this past Sunday night, Spundae (aka Godskitchen North America) threw it's annual Labor Day Weekend party here in San Francisco - this years lineup: Gabriel & Dresden, Junkie XL, and Christopher Lawrence.

Being a rather huge fan of Gabriel & Dresden's (Josh Gabriel & Dave Dresden) work since they came onto the scene, I have been to every one of their gigs in San Francisco since they started DJing themselves last year. With them residing in San Francisco, it's been a bit often - six times. If you follow EDM a whole lot, you have probably heard of them. If you haven't, you might have heard some of their remixes or tracks on the radio. Their biggest track by far is Motorcycle - As the Rush Comes. Motorcycle consists of Josh, Dave, and the vocalist Jes. Anyhow, continues...although they have been DJing for years, they've never got into the depths of being "superstar" DJs, but when them being so big as producers, learning how to DJ well (there's a lot more to it than transition from track-to-track smoothly). Over the past year, I've seen them progress from mediocre DJs and are on the verge of being up there with the best. Their biggest problem has been their programming (programing involves things like reading the crowd, choosing the right tracks to play, and choosing the right time to play them, among other things). They still have their offs and ons, but I've been very impressed the last couple times I've heard them, and for the first time they simply blew me and the whole crowd away. It was amazing. One of the best sets I've heard all year. They tried a new setup where it's essentially "Gabriel & Dresden LIVE." Josh was in charge of handling all the tracks, mixing in real-time effects with his laptop, etc, and Dave was in charge of working the mixer and turning the knobs. It was the first time they tried it, and it's going to be their new style in the future -- it's perfect for them from what I saw. Amazing. Seeing them so much, chatting with them via email and even message boards has allowed me to get to know them personally, and they are two very cool dudes who are down to earth and have not allowed their popularity explosion change them.

Here's a little known fact for you: Josh Gabriel actually led up all the sound and music for the first couple of Oddworld games: I believe Abe's Oddysey & Abe's Exodus. He got some special thanks for sound in Munch's Oddysey, but not sure for what.

JunkieXL...a man who I have heard plenty of sets of and have always been impressed. He's another person who is also very well known for some major remixes, including "Red Pill, Blue Pill" from the Animatrix soundtrack, Dave Gahan's "Dirty Sticky Floors," among others including an Elvis Presley track. If you know the major DJs/producers in the world, you may recognize him from working along side DJ Tiesto with their track "Obsession," and other DJs, too. Anyhow, his set was great. He plays a "LIVE" style much like what Gabriel & Dresden did, but he does it all himself...he sets up his sets so he can interact with the crowd bigtime, and his set was stellar.

Christopher Lawrence is awesome for the style of trance he plays. I've liked his style off and on, but Sunday night he was awesome.

And that's that. The girlfriend and I had a blast, and by Monday our feet were hurtin bigtime from a long weekend of dancing.

I can't wait for all the artists involved to play again here in SF, especially Josh and Dave!

So my girlfriend and I went out to experience the incredible John Digweed. It was his first time playing here in San Francisco in about three years, so I was pumped bigtime. And he didn't disappoint. He played a lot longer than he was supposed to!

I love the venue it was held at, too, although it gets way too hot. Spundae (the promoter) brought in a Kryo system that shots out huge gas clouds of liquid nitrogen which temporarely cools the room down, which was awesome. The thing I hate about the place the most is that they don't allow cameras....was really frustrating when I was sitting two feet away from and talking with Digweed. SUCKED SUCKED SUCKED! :-p

With Hurricane Frances just sitting there off shore, not moving, and supposedly reorganizing, it's going to be even worse for Florida. They were predicting upto 20" of rain locally when it was moving at 8mph yesterday, and now it's just drifting. Good luck everyone...I see a lot of flooding, wind damage, etc. This is terrible.

But I _wonder_ if the same thing that happened with a hurricane in the mid-90's might be happening here. I forget the exact year and what hurricane, but I remember a rather strong hurricane (high cat-2 or cat-3) hurricane aiming straight for the east coast for Florida, I think somewhere around Daytona beach...everyone was evacuated...then right before it hit shore, it just slowed down, stopped, and essentially turned around...I believe going north-east. I remember how the public was outraged over how wrong forecasters were at the time.

I actually hope that's the case, although it's probably not.

Anyhow, once again, good luck and be safe everyone.

Have been born and raised in Central Florida and with most of my family still living there, it's no doubt that I'm worried for everyone's safety.

Been listening to live TV broadacast from the Orlando, FL stations on the web and have heard some stuff that's pretty scary...

- Expected rain is 15" - 20" thanks to the slow movement of the storm.
- Hurricane force winds will be felt on the coast for 12-14 hours instead of the typical 3-5 thanks, once again, to the storms slow movement.

While the storm is no where near as powerful as say Andrew or the recent Charlie was, the size of the storm compared to them and it's slow speed could actually end up causing more damage than either of them if it goes over the right cities. Coastal areas are going to be ripped apart with high waves (experiencing 50ft waves in the bahamas) and beach erosion -- and this is in addition to the extraordinarily length of time the coast is expected to experience hurricane force winds.. There's also going to be massive flooding, and I am sure quite a few large sinkholes will be popping up here and there.

Anyhow, my prayers are with everyone in the path of Frances. Hold on tight and think positive and you'll get through it just fine.

Ya know, I love my job...but man, I hate encoding times. Working on putting up the MPEG version and all the proper streams of yesterday live webcast, On the Spot, and the MPEG takes forever! Then I have to stream everything! Thank goodness we don't have a quicktime version of it, as it'd take a few hours to encode by itself. Yikes!!!

Anyhow, my goal is to have the MPEG archive up by the end of the day...at least my part complete. We'll see if we can make it public on the site in time!

Cheers,

Dave

The end of the workweek that is!

It's Friday, my girlfriend is coming up from LA this evening, and we are gonna go see one of my favorite DJs of all time, John Digweed (many people will recognize that name from "Sasha & Digweed"). It'll actually be my first time seeing the man after waiting 4 1/2 long years since my 21st birthday to get the chance to. Everytime he's played here in San Francisco before, I've always had other obligations, but not tonight! I am so pumped! WHOOT WHOOT!!!

If you are into EDM (Electronic Dance Music) at all, then here's a breakdown of where I'll be over the course of the next couple of months...it's gonna be INSANE!!!

Sep 03 - John Digweed
Sep 05 - Gabriel & Dresden, Junkie XL, Christopher Lawrence
Sep 10 - Hernan Catteneo, Jeffrey Allen
Sep 17 - Armin van Buuren & Markus Schulz
Sep 18 - Armin van Buuren & Markus Schulz (in LA)
Oct 02 - Love Parade SF (first one in North America --- www.loveparadesf.org)
Oct 07 - Darude (he's cheese as a producer, but apparently not bad as a DJ -- gonna check him out)
Oct 08 - BT Live
Oct 15 - Ferry Corsten
Oct 16 - Ferry Corsten (in LA)
Oct 29 - Paul van Dyk
Oct 30 - Lange, Above & Beyond, Oceanlab LIVE PA, much more
Oct 31 - Halloween Party

Whoot! Made a title image...uh oh, I smell addiction. Not good, not good!!!

Darn, I wish Half-Life 2 would go gold already!!!!

Hmmm, sitting here late in evening, bored, about to go to bed, but still want to get some type of journal entry done...just so I can get started...

First, if ya been around, you will see I've been a little more active on the forums lately. I think I am gonna try to get involved with the forum a bit more once again. Don't think I can do nearly as much as I used to, but I will still participate when I can. I miss y'all!

Hmmm...what else...what to talk about...how about my new place!

This week I signed the lease to my new apartment, a 2 bedroom, 2 bathroom penthouse suite on the top (16th) floor of a tower. And it has THREE (3) balconies! The place is a bit more expensive than I wanted to pay, but once I set my eyes on it, I just couldn't pass it up. I would consider the price we got it for a steal for San Francisco prices considering it's location, size, features, and especially the view!

One of my current roommates and I will be making the main move on Friday, September 10th. Of course, we don't want to kill ourselves so we are using movers. They'll just have to worry about the furniture, though. We'll take care of stuff we can pack in boxes...moving boxes isn't to difficult.

In October, my girlfriend will be moving up from LA to stay with me. I can't wait!

The downfall of this place is that it will basically force me to stop my DDR mayhem...don't want to disturb the neighbors below us.

Anyhow, here are a couple of pics! You can click on the image to see more pics!

Until next time, Dave signing off...zzzZZZzzz