It's that time again
That time where I try to summarize the entire year in an LJ entry, more for my own records-keeping purposes than anything else. It ends up either being way long-winded or I just give up before I even start. I guess this year's will be long-winded, because I haven't given up yet.
Let's see: January to March of this year, robotics. Holy crap what a party. Okay, so the robot sucked... we still had a fantastic time working on it. I was so motivated that year, let's hope I can find that again before this year's robotics season kicks off. Traveling to the competitions with the team was not all I had hoped for, and probably will not be again this year.
Febuary the 4th was sort of the end of a saga that, I guess, was "a long time coming." Since my first dance in 7th grade, I thought that the only way I would ever feel truly comfortable at a dance was if I were controlling the music through all kinds of cool equipment -- in other words, DJing. Well, years down the road, my friends and I started our DJ business, and finally got "The Harker Gig". We did an okay job of it, and then I was over the "must DJ for my peers" thing.
Developing alongside that was Art With A Heart 2006. It was for this that I bought the Fast Track and the SM58, and discovered my passion for recording. I haven't been able to stop buying toys since. (That's right, it's all VyVy's fault... we love her for it :-)
Somewhere in March was the greatest Downbeat gig ever, FASHION SHOW. Just being part of the performance told me I had reached some kind of level of knowing what I was doing, enough so for the school to want to show me off. Also piqued my interest in live event production, what with the big sound board and the wireless mics and all.
Was also working on a Russian dance number for Branching Out, the dance production. Hardly worth the two sentences it's getting because I didn't really care about it at all, it was just a certificate thing.
APRIL! Guys and Dolls. Arvide was my biggest Harker musical theater role to date. Almost the ideal MT role, actually... because he's an old guy, they don't have him do any dancing, so I only had to learn walk-ography, and I had a really cute song that showed off my voice's sweet spot. Bitchin'. Even the AMT people liked what I did, for the most part.
May was interesting. I was in that San Francisco Chronicle article about over-teched kids.(link) '06 graduated, and I went to Prom. If anything hugely important had happened, I'd remember it.
And then, following a few finals that mostly went quite well, it was summer. At this point, let me pause in my narrative and let you know that I was feeling very burned out at this point. I vowed to have more free time during the coming schoolyear.
June and the first week of July were practically wasted in Hawaii and Germany. Okay, I got to explore my family's heritage and try some mixed drinks, but that could just as easily have been accomplished in one week.
The rest of July, I spent working on and off for both Neetek and The Printing Spot. I managed to work it out so that between the two, I was working almost every weekday. Neetek was the J2EE app from hell, and TPS had a new Xserve to install, so all in all it was fun times. My boss at Neetek, Kit (Dr. Nelson's stepdaughter), was also a really cool person to hang out with and said some valuable things about succeeding in school and work and life, stuff that I will hold onto.
Then, in the last week of summer, life took a bit of a turn for the sour when, following escalating fighting, Audrey dumped me. That day, VyVy came over and watched High Fidelity with me - I really treasured her company and support in that moment, and she even managed to not hate the (decidedly guy-flick) movie.
In a completely unrelated move, I ordered about $400 of car stereo stuff from Crutchfield. The justification at the time was that I had quite enjoyed a week spent with Mom's new Toyota Matrix - its factory sound system is still pretty crappy, but 13 years newer than the one I was used to - and so I wanted to have that kind of sound in my car, as well. Of course, now we all know that that reason is crap, and I just needed something to do (preferably involving shiny toys) to distract myself from being miserable.
That's okay, though, because it worked - I had a lot of fun, and learned a lot, by tearing into my car's interior and running cables every which way. I ended up, you will no doubt recall, not only completely overhauling the sound system, but also adding the carputer for iTunes integration.
I also landed a few pretty cool parts in The Laramie Project with my Nick Hornby monoloue. That entire process was stressful and trying, but at the end we had something we were all really proud of. It was a fitting finale for the class of 2007 in terms of fall plays.
Also in there was what I consider one of the highlights of the year: the Santana Row gig. Literally 48 hours before the event, I didn't have a mixer that I wanted to use, and then I found my beautiful Phonic board on Craigslist for $200. Worked perfectly, but should have gone for something like $700. I attribute the fact that the lady was willing to let it go to the idea that some higher power wanted the gig to go well, and go well it did (god Tensync rocks. I do hope they record an album.)
During this entire time I was a pretty broken person on the inside, but I think I did a fairly good job of concealing it. If I didn't, feel free to burst my bubble - the most I will do is laugh.
Unfortunately for you, I will end the narrative here. Yes, I know, I'm leaving out two WHOLE months. Why? They're too recent, I don't have enough context to comment on their events yet. Suffice it to say that SDS was a lot of fun and I do miss the cast dynamic immensely, and that other events gave me some small amount of hope for what might be set to happen this year.
Congratulations if you made it this far. Happy new year and good night!
Let's see: January to March of this year, robotics. Holy crap what a party. Okay, so the robot sucked... we still had a fantastic time working on it. I was so motivated that year, let's hope I can find that again before this year's robotics season kicks off. Traveling to the competitions with the team was not all I had hoped for, and probably will not be again this year.
Febuary the 4th was sort of the end of a saga that, I guess, was "a long time coming." Since my first dance in 7th grade, I thought that the only way I would ever feel truly comfortable at a dance was if I were controlling the music through all kinds of cool equipment -- in other words, DJing. Well, years down the road, my friends and I started our DJ business, and finally got "The Harker Gig". We did an okay job of it, and then I was over the "must DJ for my peers" thing.
Developing alongside that was Art With A Heart 2006. It was for this that I bought the Fast Track and the SM58, and discovered my passion for recording. I haven't been able to stop buying toys since. (That's right, it's all VyVy's fault... we love her for it :-)
Somewhere in March was the greatest Downbeat gig ever, FASHION SHOW. Just being part of the performance told me I had reached some kind of level of knowing what I was doing, enough so for the school to want to show me off. Also piqued my interest in live event production, what with the big sound board and the wireless mics and all.
Was also working on a Russian dance number for Branching Out, the dance production. Hardly worth the two sentences it's getting because I didn't really care about it at all, it was just a certificate thing.
APRIL! Guys and Dolls. Arvide was my biggest Harker musical theater role to date. Almost the ideal MT role, actually... because he's an old guy, they don't have him do any dancing, so I only had to learn walk-ography, and I had a really cute song that showed off my voice's sweet spot. Bitchin'. Even the AMT people liked what I did, for the most part.
May was interesting. I was in that San Francisco Chronicle article about over-teched kids.(link) '06 graduated, and I went to Prom. If anything hugely important had happened, I'd remember it.
And then, following a few finals that mostly went quite well, it was summer. At this point, let me pause in my narrative and let you know that I was feeling very burned out at this point. I vowed to have more free time during the coming schoolyear.
June and the first week of July were practically wasted in Hawaii and Germany. Okay, I got to explore my family's heritage and try some mixed drinks, but that could just as easily have been accomplished in one week.
The rest of July, I spent working on and off for both Neetek and The Printing Spot. I managed to work it out so that between the two, I was working almost every weekday. Neetek was the J2EE app from hell, and TPS had a new Xserve to install, so all in all it was fun times. My boss at Neetek, Kit (Dr. Nelson's stepdaughter), was also a really cool person to hang out with and said some valuable things about succeeding in school and work and life, stuff that I will hold onto.
Then, in the last week of summer, life took a bit of a turn for the sour when, following escalating fighting, Audrey dumped me. That day, VyVy came over and watched High Fidelity with me - I really treasured her company and support in that moment, and she even managed to not hate the (decidedly guy-flick) movie.
In a completely unrelated move, I ordered about $400 of car stereo stuff from Crutchfield. The justification at the time was that I had quite enjoyed a week spent with Mom's new Toyota Matrix - its factory sound system is still pretty crappy, but 13 years newer than the one I was used to - and so I wanted to have that kind of sound in my car, as well. Of course, now we all know that that reason is crap, and I just needed something to do (preferably involving shiny toys) to distract myself from being miserable.
That's okay, though, because it worked - I had a lot of fun, and learned a lot, by tearing into my car's interior and running cables every which way. I ended up, you will no doubt recall, not only completely overhauling the sound system, but also adding the carputer for iTunes integration.
I also landed a few pretty cool parts in The Laramie Project with my Nick Hornby monoloue. That entire process was stressful and trying, but at the end we had something we were all really proud of. It was a fitting finale for the class of 2007 in terms of fall plays.
Also in there was what I consider one of the highlights of the year: the Santana Row gig. Literally 48 hours before the event, I didn't have a mixer that I wanted to use, and then I found my beautiful Phonic board on Craigslist for $200. Worked perfectly, but should have gone for something like $700. I attribute the fact that the lady was willing to let it go to the idea that some higher power wanted the gig to go well, and go well it did (god Tensync rocks. I do hope they record an album.)
During this entire time I was a pretty broken person on the inside, but I think I did a fairly good job of concealing it. If I didn't, feel free to burst my bubble - the most I will do is laugh.
Unfortunately for you, I will end the narrative here. Yes, I know, I'm leaving out two WHOLE months. Why? They're too recent, I don't have enough context to comment on their events yet. Suffice it to say that SDS was a lot of fun and I do miss the cast dynamic immensely, and that other events gave me some small amount of hope for what might be set to happen this year.
Congratulations if you made it this far. Happy new year and good night!