After a long hiatus, I'm finally getting back into writing and recording music. Last night I started writing a song called "Never Say Never Again." I think it will be a really great song when I'm done with it. I've been spending a fair amount of time studying music recording books to try and improve, so I hope I will be able to apply the information with my next recordings. I plan to release one original, one piano instrumental, one cover, and one instrumental cover before I go back to finishing out my catalog of songs that need to be recorded.

In other news, I started playing volleyball again. I had a men's 6's tournament last Sunday, and it was somewhat rough. I struggled to get into a rhythm, and never had a chance to work on my hitting. I'm going to train really hard so that the next tournament is a lot better. There is nothing worse than walking away from a tournament being disappointed with your play.

I also watched Inglorious Bastards the other night. What a lovely family film! It's perfect for ages 3 and up. It's right up there with any Disney film. I mean, who doesn't enjoy watching people getting scalped, or getting their heads beat in with a baseball bat with their loved ones? Quentin Tarantino definitely has a way with violence... It was definitely an enjoyable film though.

As most people know, AVATAR came out in theaters three days ago. I decided to be brave, and went to the midnight showing Thursday night/Friday morning. I did this knowing that the movie was 2 hours and 40 minutes long, and that I probably wouldn't get much sleep (if any) before going to work the next day. While I was seriously doubting my sanity while sitting in line for hours (to ensure the best possible seats), my resolve paid off. AVATAR is an incredible movie. I can say, without any doubt, that it is one of the best movies I have seen in a long, LONG time. I saw the movie in IMAX 3D (and again today at a local theater), and I have to say, the IMAX 3D version is mind-blowing. The visuals are beyond anything that has been filmed to date, and the sound was exceptional due to the IMAX sound system. One thing that really amazed me about this film was the quality of the CG. They used real actors, and then grafted CG over them. The result is that the CG characters show so much emotion, and appear so life-like, that you really forget that you are watching special effects. The Navi people (the blue cat-like creatures in the movie) at first seem somewhat alien, and odd. But over the course of the movie, you find that they are actually quite beautiful and graceful, and you wind up cheering for their species over the humans. I think that everyone should see this movie, but if they do, they should see if in Digital 3D (this is a MUST in my opinion), and if possible, in IMAX 3D. The 3D effects were done so well that it will set a standard now that I will expect for future 3D movies.

On another topic, I recently started watching a show on NBC called the Sing Off. This show takes acapella groups (ranging from 4 members to like 12) and has them face off against each other singing songs from pre-selected categories. The one caveat is that no instruments are allowed - the acapella groups have to replicate all of the instruments. It is a really cool idea for a show, I'm definitely enjoying it (some of the groups are pretty talented, which makes it fun to watch). If you have some time, go check it out on the NBC website!

Happy holidays everyone! Enjoy the new year!

It's been far too long since I've written an article. Several pretty big things have happened in the last couple of weeks though that sucked up a lot of my time. I've also continued to work overtime every week as there isn't enough time for everything I need to get done. I also took several trips, one work related, and one for fun. I'll discuss those below.

Trip to Rocky Point

As I mentioned in the last article, I was preparing for a volleyball tournament in Rocky Point, Mexico. The format of the tournament was co-ed sand fours. I was heading down with several people, namely my good friends Emy, Nolan, and Krista. Krista was just going down to enjoy a weekend in Mexico. The fourth player on our team was driving to Mexico by himself. There was serious concern about whether he would be prepared, but we trusted that it would all work out.

We had an uneventful drive to Mexico, and got settled in at the resort hotel we were staying at. I had never been to this particular beachside resort before, and I was blown away. They had more rooms than they could ever hope to fill, and each one was filled nice decorations and comfortable furniture. Walking out to the deck led to a huge spa and pool, and a little further, the beach (and a bar right above the sand). I knew we were going to have a great weekend. We got some food that night at the pre-tournament dinner gathering, where a huge number of players came in costume. A live band also played later in the night. Nolan and I were pretty serious about playing though, so we headed back a little early and got some good rest.

The next day, we headed to the beach completely prepared to play. Adam never showed up, and didn't call us. We still hoped that he would show up, even if he was a little late. As time kept ticking, and we approached the start of the tournament, we got less and less optimistic about his appearance. Even with three though, we played incredible. Emy played solid defense, I gave Nolan killer sets, and he put every ball away with style. We were beating the best teams out there with only 3, and it felt great. By the end pool play, we were 1st place out of around 16 teams, and we were definitely drawing attention. Our only concern was if Nolan could keep up his tempo.

By the time we started tournament play, we had given up on Adam showing up. I would only learn later that he had forgotten his birth certificate, so he was turned away at the border (poor guy). We started out the tournament playing fairly well and won our first game. In the second game, we played the only team we had lost to in pool play, and once again, they proved to be too much for us. We started climbing the loser's bracket, but Nolan started cramping up, and I knew we were done for. We wound up getting something like 8th or 10th place, which wasn't too shabby for three people. The best part of the trip was just chilling on the beach, enjoying the perfect weather, surrounded by great people (and beautiful women ).

Microsoft Developer Conference

This past week, I was given the opportunity to go to the Microsoft Developer Conference. It was a really cool experience (from a software developer's perspective). Microsoft is introducing some new software that has the potentially to do great things for the web, including Azure for cloud computing, and their new Silverlight. Their new IDE, Visual Studio 2010, looks like it could really be a winner. The best about the conference was that they gave us free laptops! Every attendee was given an Acer 1420P. Talk about an amazing surprise. The laptop has a touchscreen and supports multi-touch. It has windows 7 installed on it, as well as some of Microsoft's newest software. It's my new best friend

Aside from the trips I've taken, and work, I've been using my free time to play a lot of piano, as well as League of Legends and Left for Dead 2. I wish I had more time to continue recording and writing music, but things have just been too crazy lately.

As a side note, I've been experiencing some lower back/hip pain for the last couple months ever since my trip to Japan. It just kept getting worse and worse, probably because I never iced the muscle or let it recover properly. I'm now paying the price. Doctors have been absolutely no help, of course, but I was convinced to visit an acupuncturist who really gave me great information. He helped show me which muscle was pulled (it's deep in the hip and not obvious), and told me that he could take care of it in a couple of weeks. In the meantime, he showed me some extra stretches I could perform to help. In conjunction with that, I got a stretching video from a chiropractor who I trust and respect. For the last several weeks, I stretch every morning and night, and let me tell you, it makes a huge difference. It's also really rewarding - you watch your flexibility increase by huge amounts, and your muscles feel tremendous afterward. I'm almost to the point now where I can bend straight over with locked legs, and put my palms on the ground in front of me. I've never been quite this flexible before, so I'm gonna stick with it. I think everyone should give this a try, especially if they have a desk job, as it will help keep you healthier longer (stretching throughout the day isn't a bad idea either...)

Anyways, I will try not to wait so long to write another article. Next time perhaps I can cover some of the really interesting movies I've watched, or some of the new music cds I've picked. Until then!

This last weekend I played in a Rocky Point Warm-up Volleyball tournament at Victory Lanes. The format was sand co-ed 4's and it was a blast. It was run by Shawn and Desi from funkalicious beach volleyball, and they are two of the nicest people ever. They really work hard to make sure that the tournaments are fun and are filled with nice people. They don't put up with a-holes and set up the tournaments so that people who only play for prizes aren't interested or invited. I hope a lot of people thank them for what they do, and that they are rewarded in some way for it all. As far as the tournament results, we placed 2nd overall. Our first match of the day was against a team that went undefeated, and we were still trying to figure out the best spots for everyone on our team (two right side hitters doesn't make it easy). By the end of the day though, we were cruising, so it was unfortunate that we couldn't have played that team at later time.

In other news, I've been working a lot of hours (big surprise), and in my free time, I've been trying to finish a very complex piece of software(somewhat work related). The coding project has been extremely challenging, but it's really made me appreciate some of the things Microsoft does in their Visual Studio product (I won't go into detail, as it would only be interesting to a software developer). I've watched a couple of fun movies - Crank 2 (insane but a fun ride), Duplicity (very interesting and entertaining) and 17 Again (way different and better than I thought it would be). I do feel like I've been letting the ball drop on making music, but I'm just working really hard right now, and I'm okay with that. I'm enjoying what I'm doing so much, that it makes 60 or 70+ hour weeks fly by. With the weather as nice as it is though, I'm gonna start forcing myself to take a lot of bike rides. I got my bike a full tune-up and it has never felt so smooth (except maybe when I first bought it).

Well, time to sleep. Hopefully soon I will have something cool to show like some new music or something.

So I've decided to try a new diet for at least a month. This diet will consist of organic foods, and no high fructose corn syrup. If I don't feel better after a month, I will decide whether or not the diet is worth the cost. If you are wondering why I would bother to pay the premium for organic foods, let me explain. A couple weeks ago, I had a long talk with a friend, and she had done a lot of reading and investigation into all of the crap that is making its way into our food. She explained to me how it really all started with genetically modified corn and other GMOs (Genetically modified organisms). While there is no research or evidence that GMOs are actually any worse for us, the problem lies in how they are being used. For example, in years past, it used to be difficult to raise corn due to pest control issues and survivability issues. With genetically modified corn, the corn is more hardy, and it can be sprayed with the strongest pesticide known to man, and it will still live. This has allowed us to reduce the number of fields needed to grow corn, as we can instead build corn fields that are miles and miles long. Corn used to be grown all over - it is mainly produced in a handful of states now. So much corn is produced, that the extra corn is used to feed livestock, as it is cheaper than normal feed. The problem with this is that livestock (i.e. cows) can't digest the corn. This is a serious problem for cows, as e. coli grows rapidly in their stomach. So much e. coli grows that the farmers have to manually remove the e. coli from the stomach of the cows. In order to keep the cows alive with that much e. coli in their system, farmers shoot the cows full of antibiotics. The parts that are left over from these cows are recycled as food for other farm animals (most of which are normally vegetarians). This also recycles some of the e. coli, and a bunch of the antibiotics. In order to combat all this e. coli, a "wonderful" new solution has been implemented: spray all the meat with a small amount of ammonia to kill the e. coli! That way, consumers ingest dead e. coli which can't hurt them, and only a little bit of ammonia (no big deal, right?). Don't you feel better now?

Anyone can see the trend that is happening these days. More and more people are getting sicker, and its happening at younger and younger ages. Kids are developing osteoporosis from too much soda, and everyone is developing allergies like crazy. If you looked at people fifty years ago, I bet you wouldn't even see a fraction as many allergies as people have now. I believe it really does come down to the foods and drinks we consume. That's why I've given up on soda and other sugary drinks, as well as foods with ingredient lists that are 50 items long and usually contain high fructose corn syrup. I really wonder if all of the stomach problems I've had to endure were caused by my crappy diet when I was younger. I only wish I could save other people from some of the things I've experienced, but people have to decide for themselves to eat better foods and take care of themselves.

So anyways, I've been eating healthy foods for the past week, and my body has been struggling to adjust. I'm finally starting to feel good with the new diet, so I think it's going to be great from here on out. I had to do a huge amount of shopping at Sprouts, and my wallet definitely did not appreciate that. Nothing is more important than our health though.

In other news, I went to the AVP this weekend, and had a blast watching some really intense volleyball. I'm all revved up to play now, so I have to start training to get ready for the upcoming tournament in Rocky Point. I've also been working on music, and if I can get some free time, hopefully I can release stuff soon. I've been working a lot lately (probably too much), so I haven't had much time for recording, unfortunately. Anyways, wish me luck at the volleyball tournament!