SuperSatellite ||

Marisol is finally over with.  The play ended well, and ran smoothly throughout.  I think I accomplished my goal of gaining back lost ground.  Everyone seemed to think that the sound was more than adequate.  Memorial Auditorium came through with their stage mic.  However, I think it’s time for a break again.  I enjoy it, but it is very stressful, and I find myself so busy that committing the time to taking care of sound for a show is not the easiest thing in the world right now.  I’d also like a chance to pick up a few new pieces of gear before the next show I do.

That said, I did get a group together after the post mortem today to do a reading of Freefall, my one act that I’ve been writing since finishing Walking.  It went well, and the feedback was very positive.  I was pleased with the comments made on the dialog, something I’ve been taking a lot of care with.  I plan on doing the first round of major revisions now, as well as lengthening it some to address what I found out today.  I could sure use someone looking to direct a new one act, hint, hint.  I do need to start scouting festivals and such to submit to though.  I think Freefall is some of my better work recently.  So, while I don’t want to work on a show again right away, I do plan on using the down time to funnel creative energy into my own projects.

Speaking of creativity, I’m in the middle of redesigning my blog.  I’m about 45% done so far.  I haven’t done a Wordpress theme in quite a while, so it’s been a little slow getting back in to it.  My development environment is also not ideal, it turns out.  It’s just giving me some bugs when trying to work on it at home.  I think you’ll like it though, quite a bit different from the way it is now.  I’m pretty happy with how it’s shaping up, and I don’t normally give myself a ton of credit in the design realm.  It’s not that I can’t, it’s just that to do it well, I generally have to put forth more effort than I want to do for myself, or for free.  Just so happens that this covers both of those.  Sure, I suppose I could pay myself, but where would that really get me?

Michaele and I took advantage of the play being over to start some wedding planning.  June 6th is the big date it looks like.  Next year, not this year.  I’m not that crazy.  I also posted one of the pictures we had taken.  Wal-Mart does pretty cheap portraits, though the other picture came out awfully dark.  It doesn’t help that I don’t photograph well.  I’m not good at smiling on command, as as you can see, I look bucktoothed.  We’re trying to get a budget in line right now.  Unfortunately, I’m a little new to the whole marriage thing, so I’m not totally sure what we should be shooting for.  Advice?

Okay, so, I am changing things yet again with my blog. First off, if you are reading this at MySpace, you are in the wrong place.  Otherwise, you are in the right place.  New theme. You like? Informational links on it are in the footer. It’s called Redoable, and I plan on doing some work to make it a little more “mine” soon, but right now I have neither the time nor inclination to design a theme from scratch. I’m fine with that. For a canned template, this one is pretty nice.

Second, I am giving MySpace the bird. My account will still be there, but my blog is moving here. I have already started migrating my old posts here, which is a tedious manual process, but so far I have everything as far as July of last year. I am actually shocked that no one has written a script yet that can scrape a MySpace blog and convert it into XML that can be imported into other blogs. Wordpress has a number of blog importing tools, but none for MySpace yet. Naturally, MySpace doesn’t want you to leave, so offers no exporting tools besides a weak RSS feed. But that’s exactly the problem. I don’t like not having control over my content. Maybe I’ll get lucky and someone will pull something out in the next couple days, right?

So, this means my original plans for this to be primarily a professional blog have changed. It’s too much trouble to try and maintain different crap at different sites, so this will just cover it all. Maybe a post is personal, maybe it’s professional, maybe it’s something we haven’t even thought of yet. One site, one tool, easy for me. Subscribe to the RSS feed to keep up with it the easy way. I’ll probably syndicate the feed over on MySpace, but it’ll shoot everyone over here.

But, keep in mind the holidays are coming up, plus I’m buying a house today, so I shall remain quite busy for the time being. However I am alive and well with a blood pressure of 156 over 88.

You know, I’m really glad my new blog is going to be ready for mass enjoyment soon.  I don’t know about the rest of you, but I am quickly becoming disenchanted with MySpace and its oft fuckedupedness.  Example:  my friends list says I have 142 friends.  I don’t, I have either 132 or 133 depending how and when you count.  Also, my view counter for my blog hasn’t reset the "Today" reading all week.  And let us not discuss how many times mail has been down, or I’ve been kicked to the generic error page this week.  Let’s face it, these guys suck at their job.  I’ll be glad to put my reliance on something I have more control over.

All that’s left for my new blog really is to design a layout that is actually mine.  Right now the one that’s there is a canned theme, and though nice, isn’t actually something I see reflecting any me-ness.  I have, however, been stealing MySpace’s emoticon graphics when it suits me.  Anyway, I think layout will be priority one this weekend. 

I get to go to the eye doctor Monday…scary!

So, I now take my first step forward in the world of t3h intarweb. I completed my first video blog last night and got it uploaded. I apologize for it being a little long and lacking of fancy bells and whistles. Once the musical is done, I’ll put some more effort into my After Effecting in them. I’ll try to do one every couple weeks. Let me know what you think! Enjoy!

By the way, the pop machine at work gave me another free drink yesterday. That’s 4.

So uh…I bit off more than I can chew…yeah.  I went ahead and registered my own domain (fienen.net) yesterday and set it up for DNS (Domain Name Service) with No-IP.com.  Turns out, I’ve got my work cut out for me.  I can’t just have it work, mostly because Cox is a bitch and blocks port 80 (the port the internet works over).  So I have been fighting, quite fruitlessly to make things play out how I want.  Oh yes, the URI (Uniform Resource Identifier) works fine, but the address bar in the browser replaces it with the site’s IP address instead, which is tacky, and I want to use subdomains (like blog.fienen.net) which apparently results in all sorts of weird things with my settings.  Damn it all to hell.  Needless to say I wasted a lot of sleep time getting nowhere last night.  And trying to figure out which problems are Apache and which are DNS is a bitch.  I will make it work though.

On that note, I do have a plan for switching to a new blogging system once I get the technical stuff worked out, and don’t worry, my MySpace readers won’t be left cold.  I think in the end it will be a good transition.

Enough technical bullshiat.  I neglected to mention that I have started in with The Music Man rehearsals now.  Boy I’ve got a lot of work ahead of me.  But that’s okay, out of the house, with good people, too bad they don’t have wireless internet in that building, heh.  I’ve been taking picture that you’re welcome to look at.  Naturally those galleries will eventually migrate to my server once I get that DNS crap nailed down.  I think after this I am taking an extended break from theatre all together.  I don’t know what it is, but the enjoyment I lost for acting is creeping into everything else.  I can accept not acting anymore, but I don’t want to ruin it all for myself.  I keep hoping I’ll see tryouts for some play that just makes me say “Wow!  I have to be in that!”  I don’t know what it would be, or what it would take, but I’d like that feeling back.

Is everyone ready for the weekend?  1…2…3…GO!