Jay Def

When I played this song for my brother, he said it reminded him of a CSI Evidence Gathering montage. Now whenever I listen to it, I think he’s right.

…That’s all I ever do.

Well, not really. However, I’m in the middle of 12 days straight where I went into the office. I worked both yesterday (Saturday) and today (Sunday) for about 4 hours each. We’re trying to get one of our “projects” out to beta, so they needed some extra time working on it. At least I’m a non-exempt employee, so when I work over 40 hours, I get OT. This money will go into my “I gotta get outta here” fund.

C|NET has officially closed the doors on Consumating. In doing so, they made the mistake of redirecting the URL to another of their sites, help.com.

This was a huge mistake on their part. Many consumators went there and expressed their feelings in the way that they’re used to doing so on our mostly-unmoderated site. Since help.com is more heavily moderated, many of these comments resulted in banning. This just served to fan the flames which brought more consumators to help.com and a clash between consumating users and help.com users.

Consumating creator and former owner, Ben Brown posted on his new site Go, Team Internet a plea to simply ignore help.com. C|NET handled this poorly. Ben suggested that they simply should have created a 404 page with a picture of Consumating’s Feedback Zombie mascot and left it at that. That would have been an elegant and respectful solution. Instead they attempted to redirect us hoping to ramp their userbase there.

In related news (I always wanted to say that) a group of Bay Area consumators held a candlelight vigil for the death of Consumating at C|NET which included a bagpipe group playing Amazing Grace. It was a fitting sendoff for the website that we loved so much.

I flew into Phoenix last night at about 11 PM.  Pagne and Nelly picked me up from the airport and we drove to Pagne’s condo and had tea and talked for a while.  Then Nelly and I drove to her place and I met Qelyn and then crashed on Nelly’s couch for the night.

So far I haven’t seen enough of the city.  Today we’re going to the Arizona Ren Faire.  It should be fun.

Consumating co-founder Ben Brown is back again. This time, he has formed Go Team Internet! This is a new social networking which, to me, seems to combine aspects of Twitter or Pownce and Consumating. The idea is to create an account and then form other users into a Super Team.

Go Team Internet! is still pre-beta, but it is functional and the design is pretty nice. With the upcoming demise of Consumating, this site could become a prime contender for my time that needs to be wasted. It’s good to be back under the Internet Rockstar umbrella.

So, if you haven’t signed up there yet, do so. Then add me to your team.

I’ve been meaning to write this for some time now, but haven’t gotten around to it.

It was announced earlier in the month that my favorite social networking site, Consumating, is closing it’s doors. The official end of the site is supposed to be March 15, which is fast approaching.

I will give my salute to a website that has really been a big part of my life since I joined.

My History with Consumating:

I was introduced to Consumating by Apollo Lee in May of 2006. At first it seemed a little weird, and I wasn’t sure what to make of it. My experience with social networking along those lines had been mainly with MySpace, and it always seemed a bit impersonal to me. I soon realized that Consumating was a little different. Before long I had met some really great people that have truly become my friends. I have spent hours on end in Consumating conversations. I have travelled (and will be travelling again) to different parts of the US to meet some of these people. I have made some very good friends.

Flash forward, 2 years and we’re coming upon the end of an era. Of course, that seems to be overly dramatic, but it truly feels that way to me. To be sure, there will be a replacement, and when it is running and available, I will be there. I hope that everyone I have met either online or irl will also be there and we can continue as always.

Without going overboard on this, I would like to thank everyone I’ve met and everyone I’ve yet to meet. If you have a Consumating account, and I’ve spent time on Consumating, on IM, in Text Messaging, on the phone or in person, this means you.

To end this in the most sappy and melodramatic way I can, I will say:

This is the end
Beautiful friend
This is the end
My only friend, the end.

Tonight I had dinner with my mom, my brother and my niece. We went to Golden Corral, which has a pretty good steak for a buffet place.

When we were done there, we went to Best Buy. My mom is looking into getting an HDTV, and she wanted to see what they had. While there, she talked to an emo kid who worked there. He was very knowledgeable about the difference between Plasma and LCD.

This weekend, Apollo came to Idaho to celebrate his grandma’s birthday. We were planning on hanging out, so I told him I’d drive over to his grandma’s house in Payette and give him a ride to the airport so he could fly back home.

When I talked to him on Friday, he told me that he had a gift for me to make me say “Damn!” When I got there today, he gave me a bag from Rasputin Records. In it was the DVD of Krush Groove. When I pulled the DVD out of the bag, I did, indeed, say “Damn!”
If you’ve never seen this movie, here is a quick summary. Krush Groove stars Run DMC, the Fat Boys, Kurtis Blow and Sheila E. It also has New Edition, L.L. Cool J and is the first film performance by Blair Underwood. (He’d been on an episode of Knight Rider and the Cosby Show previous to this movie. Thanks IMDB.)

The story revolves around a small independant record company that has a few up and coming stars. Greed and personality clashes in the group threaten to ruin the whole thing. This is a fun movie from the 80’s when rap was fun and sometimes silly.

One of the greatest parts of this movie is when Krush Groove records is holding auditions. In comes LL Cool J, then a fairly unknown artist. The Krush Groove crew say “Sorry…auditions are over. Come back next week!” LL shouts “Box!” and his homeboy starts the giant boombox he’s carrying. Then LL proceeds to kick the first verse of I Can’t Live Without My Radio. That short scene pretty much stole the show.

This is a fun movie and it is such a nostalgia thing for me. Good lookin’ out, Apollo. Now they just need to get Tougher than Leather on DVD.

In 17 days, 17 hours (as of this post), those crazy Swede’s at Propellerheads Software will be releasing version 4.0 of their software synth on steroids, Reason. And it comes with new toys!

Here is the list of new stuff to play with:

1. Thor - This is a big ol’ modular synth. It has lots of options for oscillators, filters and other stuff. It looks complicated but fun to play with.
2. RPG8 Arpeggiator - They have finally included a really feature-rich arpeggiator for lazy bastards like me.
3. ReGroove Mixer - This seems to be a way to take programmed drums and mix them so they sound more natural. I’m not 100% sure how this works, but I’m intrigued.
4. Sequencer - Reason’s sequencer has always been somewhat sparse. It looks like they are fattening up the sequencer to make it easier to make edits. Hell. yeah.
5. Plus lots of updates to what is already out there.

Reason 4 releases Sept. 26 and will cost $499 for new users and $129 for the upgrade.

Here is a video example of Thor from the NAMM show:

I’m sure if you’re at all aware of technology news, and especially if you’re an Apple person, you know all about the new iPod Touch.

If not, here is some information about it:

1. It is basically an iPhone without the phone.
2. The look and feel of the device is essentially the same as the iPhone.
3. There are two versions, an 8 gB version for $299 and a 16 gB version for $399.
4. It has built in WI-FI support and includes Apple’s Safari browser and the ability to watch YouTube videos.
5. It will also feature iTunes support to download music directly to the iPod.
6. They have a deal with Starbucks to allow music downloads of songs featured in the store.

I am very excited for this device and I am planning to buy one. Since the release of the iPhone, I have said many times that I’m not interested in that as a phone, but I would definitely buy an iPod with that interface.

In other words: I WANT I WANT I WANT!!!!!