Sephy’s Platzish

I’ve discussed the music I like to listen to; there’s a list of the posts that I’ve done in the occasional Friday Music series at the bottom of the post. In the post about Duke’s 3 Suites, Forest talked about his being a child of the 90s and how he came up with his own music.

I replied to his comment, in part, with a story of my musical background -

Believe it or not, I was brought up with, first, 60s music, and then country music when it was popular in the last decade (I actually have almost the whole Garth Brooks CD collection, and a first edition of his “Double Live” album). It wasn’t until I was in high school that I started to listen to jazz. When I was in college, I started to discover some of the bigger indie groups like The Killers. Now, and I have to give props to Snoskred for this one, I’m beginning to get my footing in rock music and actually listening to Metallica and liking it.

It is true - when I was young, the most common station that we would listen to in the car would be the oldies station (in fact, that same station, now owned by conglomerate Clear Channel, still plays older music, though they’ve expanded into the 70s and 80s, and will be going into all-Christmas mode soon). There could be no end to the argument when my Aunt would come up from Chicago and switch the radio to a radio station that is renowned for playing a particular style of music.

Then, sometime in the early 90s, we switched from that station to listening to one of the two country music stations in the area. In fact, I still remember on one of our long car trips that we used to take back then when it seemed every country station between here and Huntsville played the same song over and over again. It got to a point where we wound up, somewhere in the middle of Illinois or Kentucky, turning on a hard rock station just to avoid listening to this song.

Now, of course, being someone who remembers small details like this, I remember that the lyrics contained the words “thank the bank for the money and thank god for you”. Thanks to Scroogle, I now am reminded of the name of that song - “Thank God For You” by Sawyer Brown. Of course, there was a video of the proper version of the song on YouTube, but as with anything decent, it’s been taken down due to copyright violations. However, I think that this karaoke imitation is suitably funny to act as a stand-in.
Click here to watch (you may have noticed that I had embedded the video here before, but apparently you can’t display unembedable videos anyway…

You would think that this would have been the end of us listening to country music, but that was definitely not the case. We would stick with country for quite a few more years, even attending a Garth Brooks concert when he was at the peak of his fame (and, get this, the tickets only cost $17.50 each - and that was for a seat in the lower tear of the arena; all tickets were the same price - there was a line that went around the store because of the demand). As I had mentioned in the comment, I do have almost all of his CDs - the only real exceptions being the recently released box set, the original editions of his first six albums and the CD that he put out as the fake rockstar.

Then, an interesting thing happened - I got into High School and started to get involved in listening to jazz and a lot of classical music. It didn’t hurt the cause that for one year, I had to get to know a whole lot of operatic works back and forth, along with the stories of the operas that the songs came from. The next year, we had to know a whole bunch of jazz, along with the stories of the artists who did the songs, and the other year I participated in this particular activity, we had to do “world music” - something which I do not remember anything about, honestly.

It was also during this time that I really separated from most of the popular music (though realistically, I never had that much connection to it). Thanks to the Internet, I don’t think I really missed out all that much with music - especially since I had the opportunity to, ahem, acquire the music I’d missed out on on the net.

The next major milestone in my musical development would have to be when I was in college. Sure, I was aware of the major file sharing networks of the day (Kazaa Lite anyone?), but for the most part I was still searching for older music and jazz, along with a variety of country and some songs that, when I go back through the CDs I burnt of those songs, make me wonder why in the world I ever downloaded those songs.

In 2002, after I had come back from going home in February, I was watching the Olympics from Salt Lake City, and there was a concert on the TV by the Barenaked Ladies. Amazingly, for some reason, the music clicked with me - it was good and it was fun music to listen to. It was through them that I started to get some connection with popular music, though I still didn’t totally follow the ups and downs of current music.

Then, after I left college, I started to listen to another of my local stations - one which has gone downhill quite a bit after their longtime morning team have split apart and the station decided to bring in outsiders to front their main program in the morning. Then, I was starting to listen to actual music that was, at least that I thought was, the music of “now”. There were the occasional gimmick hours - 80s played at 1 and 8 pm, and Fridays would be dedicated to the Flashback music. I liked listening to that music.

However, the biggest revolution to my listening habits has come as a result of meeting Snoskred - I’m sure she’ll say something in the comments about this, but I was really the most clueless sod when it came to musical references (and quite a lot of other references, but that’s for another day ). However, she introduced me to some of the greatest music I’d ever heard of, and I’ve even gone and discovered music on my own.

Most of the time, I am playing music from the same playlist - it’s been through a lot of different iterations (and in fact, I have a song that I need to add to it - Trees). You can check out my current Winamp playlist . Yes, it is true that I have Madonna in there, but really, that particular album is great “club” music - I would have never seen myself liking that type of music, but sometimes it’s cool to have a driving bass beat going along on the subwoofer.

If you want to keep up with what I’m listening to, you can always check out my last.fm profile and add me as a friend if you want

The Friday Music Series

• The Best Albums you’ve Probably not Heard
• Another great album you’ve likely not heard of…
• Friday Music: Lloyd Cole Knew My Father
• Friday Music - Duke Ellington’s 3 Suites
• Friday Music: The Laws of Searching

About the title

The title is a line from a Badly Drawn Boy song - “You Were Right”; the video of it is below.

This post is part of the Hump Day Hmm - which, this week was about music - the music of our lives, really, the soundtrack of our life. For me, this is it, and it’s still very much in formation

As I’ve been detailing over the last couple of months, I am changing my way of life. By this point in time, I should have gone to the Mental Health offices for the first appointment. In fact, it was scheduled for yesterday at 4:30pm. However, I got a call yesterday morning saying that the therapist wouldn’t be in because they were sick. I was told that they’d call me when they came into the office today.

I kind of forgot that this is a governmental agency that I’m working with here, so it’s quite easy to get lost in the shuffle; as I write this, I still have not received a call from them, so if I don’t hear anything within the next 20 minutes or so, I’m going to call them to propose an alternative arrangement - I have an appointment scheduled for next Wednesday at noon (which, ironically, I didn’t find out about until I got a letter from them reminding me of yesterday’s appointment). I’m going to suggest that we hold the “first” appointment, the one where I have to fill out all the paperwork, etc., then.

So, yeah, I’m a little bit annoyed right now with them, however, I’ll deal with it. Update: I have it all sorted out now; the paperwork appointment will be at 9:30am next Wednesday, followed by talking to the therapist, and then I have kept my as-scheduled noon appointment the same day.

The question laid out in this week’s Hump Day Hmm… is “Where I’d Like to Go next” - I’ve done quite a lot of talking about that, but I wanted to show off my new desk; in fact, I’m now seriously considering not buying a new desk as I do like the desk I’m using a lot (the only thing is that I have to do some sanding on the edge to just round the lip a little bit).

Another reason is that, while the chair I have now is good enough, it’s seen better days, I think. Both of the arms have broken, the bolts holding them in on the bottom literally snapped apart; the pneumatic pump for the height adjustment hasn’t worked properly for well over a year now; and one of the legs is being propped up by books (along with some duct tape holding the leg together). The chair that has spotted my eye is this one - Mid-Back Executive Leather Chair, which is available for only $40 at OfficeMax, this week only.

Admittedly, this is a cheap chair, but I look at it this way - it’s within my budget, and I will be able to move around in it; the only question is one of will it be comfortable for me, for which I have to actually get over there and try it out.

This is my new workspace, as it was on Saturday; like I mentioned then, the cables are all neatly tucked at the back; I have added some stuff to the desk since then - the mirror has been replaced by some of the potted plants we have growing in here (two pepper plants and a tomato plant, which has one ripening on it). I’ve also gotten the TV box up and running with the cable coming through from my room off of a splitter, and I’ve put a phone handset at the back of the desk.

The table where the computer is under has the ability to raise the front bit up; most of the time I keep that down, because that prevents me from having the ability of piling stuff on there.

Lastly, if you’re wondering about the title of this post, it is another of the post it notes I have on my monitor - “What’s Next?” - it’s a line that was commonly used on The West Wing, and this clip below shows it in use. Enjoy!

This week’s Hump Day Hmm (hosted by Emily this week) is about a challenge I have faced and how it affects me and how I handle it.

I was planning to write about the changes I am making in my life - the walking, etc. - but as I was walking on Sunday, something kept happening to me. I kept thinking about how I supposedly couldn’t do things.

The thought hit me then and there that the challenge that I am truly facing is really huge - my persistently negative attitude and thoughts. I have always tended to put these thoughts into my head, and if I allow them to dominate my thinking, prevent me from bringing myself to my true potential.

I know that this will sound to some of you like I’m making an excuse for not trying to figure out where they come from, but they have been in my mind for so long that I do not know where they came from. I have faint memories of my grandfather saying that nobody was any good at anything (except himself of course). I also think that my one brother has something to do with it, because he has made a name for himself in his field and might wind up working in the Middle East (not in Iraq or on an oil rig in case you’re wondering) if things go well for him.

I’ve always looked up to him and, while we are both very intelligent, I have always thought of myself as inferior to him. In fact, I see myself as inferior to a lot of people; you might say that I have an inferiority complex, and that successes for me which I should celebrate are always put in my mind as things I could have done better at, or I see someone else who has done the same thing better than I have done it and I beat myself up over it.

This inferiority has been a part of me so long that for me to change it is difficult because I think I have grown accustomed to it and have put it in my head that it’s right to be down on myself. That is, I think, a major source of where my negative thoughts come from.

Something else contributing to the negativity is that I don’t give myself the reocgnition for things that I do. For example, I’ve taken an idea that a couple of us had to put scam emails out there on a blog, so that people could search for the contents of these mails, find the blog, and know that it is a scam.

As of the last time I looked at the stats, two of the blogs have had over 100,000 pageviews in just over a year, and 2,000 views since the first of this month. The others have had slightly less views, but are also successful in their own right. I thought nothing of it, but now I realize that this is something that I should definitely be proud of; and the greatest part is that I do nothing to keep them running - they are fed automatically by sending emails to a designated address, and automatically posting them to the blog.

Really, for me, some of this negativity also goes back to when I was working. I’ve discussed my story previously, but thinking about it, what happened was that because of, really, crossed messages - me wanting to get a start in life, and quite a few people in the office (my boss included) wanting to bignote themselves, it led to disaster. In the end, it led to heartbreak for me.

The same thing happened when I found a group of people who I was working with on some scam support projects. I thought that their motivation was to help potential victims, which was the motivation for most of us. However, it turns out that they were just wanting to bignote themselves, just like my boss and a lot of the coworkers I was with. I’ve stuck it out in, essentially, a hostile environment for well over a year, holding onto a hope that maybe they would finally change and see that I’m not the root of all evil.

However, the change never came along, and now I have made the determination that I have to take myself out of the equation, move on and put all the negative baggage from that behind me. I also never took the time to properly move away from the work situation, especially when you consider that I hear regularly about how the company is going.

Fortunately, I am going to be getting some professional counseling later on this month - the first “introductory” appointment is on the 23rd, and then the first actual counseling appointment is on the 31st. This negativity will be among the main issues that I will be talking about with the counselor.

I already have some tools to combat the negativity, the primary one being that if I sense a negative thought coming along, to forcibly replace it with a positive thought. It goes a bit like this - I start to think “I’m not any good at this”, then I say to myself “I am too good at this, stop it”. This goes on for a little while until the negative thought goes away.

Do you have other tools that can help with removing the negativity? Have you found yourself facing this same challenge in the past? If so, what have you done to rise above it?

…and you’re looking at it. I’ve put in a bit of hard work into making this blog all that it is right now, but there is a lot of work still to come.

When I started the blog, I kind of figured it’d be like my previous attempts at blogging - I’d be interested in it for a while, but then I’d get distracted by some random shiny object and give up on the blog. However, and a lot of thanks has to go to Snoskred for this, I have stuck it out and here I am today, posting every day and getting comments on almost every post I make now.

One of the areas that I’ve made the biggest progress in is getting out there into the blogging community. While I’m not the best participant in the community - I still have the tendency to be a lurker on blogs, and not make too many comments - it is a far cry from when I would only read blogs if I found them on the “next blog” button or in the unlikely chance that I had actually bookmarked them.

The biggest change in my participation in the blogging community came in November of last year when the NaBloPoMo challenge was going on. Between Snoskred and I, we had set ourselves the goal of commenting on every participating blog.

While we didn’t quite get to all of the blogs in the list, we did get through a large chunk of them and through it found some great blogs that are still read today. I am looking forward to getting the details of this year’s event, but so far there has been noting mentioned about it yet.

After NaBloPoMo, the blogging went along well until I actually did get distracted by shiny objects - mostly getting back into scambaiting and other things involved with that, which led me to forget about the blog almost completely. In fact, I went almost a whole month without posting anything because it wasn’t a focus for me at the time.

Then, in May, I started to get back into the blogging and really got into the community aspect of blogging by joining up with Bumpzee and creating the US Blogs Community. I’ve also, as I’d mentioned previously, gotten involved in commenting on more blogs regularly now than I had in the past.

However, the next change is coming soon, with moving this blog over from Blogger to WordPress. I’ve been doing some learning on the platform over the last few weeks, and over the next week, I’m going to focus on getting the whole system down pat and transitioning this blog over to there.

What you’ll need to know about the transition is this - if you are subscribed to my FeedBurner feed, then there should be nothing in the change. Similarly, if you had subscribed to my feed when it was still on the blogspot address, that will remain forwarded to the FeedBurner address and not be an issue. If you have subscribed to my feed via this domain, then you will likely lose the feed (unless I can sort out a way to ensure that the address of the feed is properly forwarded).

During the transition, I will turn the publishing of this blog back to the Blogspot address and depending on how long it takes for your ISP to recognize the new location of the domain, the site will not be available for upwards of one to two days.

After the transition is complete, and dependent upon other factors (such as the possibility of me getting a job out of the house, I’ve not gotten any offers from anyone, but I’m keeping my options open and getting my name out there), I’ll be becoming more active within the blog community. I’ll also get my act together and get posts pre-written; I’ve already got ideas for posts for every day through next week Saturday with the exception of two days.

This week’s Hump Day Hmm.. is about A Good Thing Going. If you’ve not participated in the Hmm yet, next week’s topic is: “A challenge in my life and how it affected and affects me”. Of course, you can still get in on this week’s topic as well.

The topic for this week’s Hump Day Hmm.. is about How I Matter.

One of the most important ways that I matter is that I am a very helpful person, and always willing to be out there to help out. It’s something that I’ve shown quite often here on the blog, with offering to do how-tos for things that I might not know how to do before doing it, but learn how and share the information with everyone.

For me, it’s just second nature to lend a hand if someone asks; it’s not about my ego, it’s about giving the helping hand. Sure, if the helping out does result in some side benefits, I’ll usually accept it, but it really is about being a nice guy.

Outside of the blog world, I am also quite helpful around the house (even if the outside appearances might be different from the reality). I am usually the one who cooks dinner every night; I fill the gas tank in the car (considering that a couple of years ago I had no clue on how to do that, that is a big step for me). I also make sure that the trash is out by the road every week and go to get the mail in each day.

Most of the time, I am helpful in small ways, such as when I went to the clinic the other week, I offered to give up my chair for a lady who had her children and her mother with her. I didn’t have to do it, but in my mind, it was a case where I can see that she needs the seat more than I do, and I can always find another seat. A little bit of a side benefit for me was that she was a native Spanish speaker and had an interpreter with her, so I figured I could use a bit of my skills in the language to “show off” a little bit, but also to make things more comfortable for her, for which she was quite appreciative.

The most helpful thing that I’ve done recently is to assist my mom when she was recovering from a somewhat-minor surgery she had back in May. This surgery involved having to be mostly laid-up for a couple of days with a piece of equipment that kept the affected area cool and able to heal effectively. This meant that I’d need to go in and refill a small cooler with ice every couple of hours.

I will admit that it wasn’t the least stressful time, as it did get somewhat frustrating to be called in repeatedly for something that was forgotten, or for other reasons. I managed to make it through the recovery, and even was able to take the dressings off when it was time to remove them (even though I was quite squeamish about it).

The best part about being helpful is that I feel that I have put a good impression of myself on anyone I’ve come across. It’s something that I’m proud of, that’s for sure. It’s also something that I really like to do, because it does give me a good feeling, one that tells me that I do matter.

It’s also a major factor in why I do volunteer. As I had mentioned when I blogged about it, the folks that work there are very appreciative for the things that the volunteers come in and help out with. In fact, I’ve just phoned now to let them know that I’ll be in on Friday to volunteer all day.