During the past few months I've reverted back to buying albums in the form of CDs instead of iTunes.
While I love iTunes, it doesn't replace the experience of buying a CD, taking off the plastic wrapping, and browsing through the booklet while you give it it's first listen. You just can't replicate that online.
So when it came time to buy my latest purchase "Warp Riders" by The Sword (a fantastic hard rock band I might add). I decided to go old school and buy the CD. But rather than go out to the nearest Best Buy or Wal-Mart, I decided to do the right thing and support our awesome local store ear-X-tacy.
Don't get me wrong, it's not like I've never shopped there before, but just not lately. Today for whatever reason, I thought it was important to support them instead of the big box stores. I knew they had moved locations and were struggling a bit. Owner John Timmons had said the increasing rent was just too much.
So today I traveled to their new location hoping for the best.
I was pretty let down.
Tucked away in a small shopping center next to a wedding photography service is the new ear-X-tacy. The store is MUCH smaller and the building lacks the character of the old location. It's as if all of the great albums and genre labels were ripped from their old location and placed in an empty warehouse. They looked so out of place.
There were several other customers in the store, and that was pretty good for 1:30pm on a Friday.
While the employees and the overhead music still give you a taste of what ear X-tacy once was, it's nothing but a memory. I know that anybody who spent much time in their old location will feel sad in this new location.
I applaud John Timmons for being so positive about the move, but I have to imagine deep down he is sad to leave behind their previous building that gave them so much of their character.
And the worst part of all this is I'm the reason why ear X-tacy suffered. I hardly ever bought my music from them. Even during my time living just off Bardstown Road, I still got a ton of my music from iTunes and Best Buy.
I felt a lot of guilt when I left that store today. It's a cliche now but we can't let one of Louisville's best stores fail like this. I'll try to make sure I buy my music from them and hopefully it's not too little too late.
If there is one thing I've learned this past week, it's that starting a new job is a stressful process.
I always thought that the most stressful aspect of starting a new career was actually the job searching process. Once you got the job, everything from then on was icing on the cake.
Well it's more complicated than that.
Don't get me wrong, there is a lot of stress that goes away once you get the job you have been looking for but it's pretty intense during the first month or two of the new job as well.
My wife Kayla is a perfect example. Having recently graduated from school to be a medical assistant/LMR, it has been tough these last few months while she looks for a job. So you can imagine how happy we were when she finally got a great job with an office within one of Louisville's largest hospitals.
But with a new job, comes a new type of stress. The job search may be over but after the first full week in the new job, Kayla is more tired at the end of this week than she has been in a long time.
The new job is good and she is doing very well so far, but the mental endurance it takes to learn, watch, inquire, perform, meet, remember and practice can be very tiring. Especially in a very fast paced medical environment such as the one Kayla is in.
AND on top of all this, your body has to adjust to a brand new sleep and work schedule, which is more difficult than one might think.
So while the new job is great and I'm positive Kayla will get it down in no time, it's a good lesson that during the career searching process, the mental stress doesn't end when the HR person calls and says "You're hired."
So I've been a pretty heavy tweeter for a while now and one of the main questions I always ask myself is what constitutes a professional tweet from a personal tweet?
Working in the advertising field, I like to tweet various topics about my profession such as great original cable programs and ratings highlights. I also like to occasionally network with other individuals like myself. It's fun and a great way to meet new people and learn.
I'm also a heavy tweeter when it comes to my personal life as well. Luckily I've gotten away from some of the bad habits such as tweeting what I'm eating for dinner and various photos of my dogs. However, I do send out a lot of random tweets about TV shows or sports I'm watching, and what my wife @porterkn is up to.
So the question I've been asking myself these last few months is this:
Should I pick one or the other?
The Career minded Tweeter: Do I keep my tweets to professional quality where I network and time my tweets out evenly throughout the day with various facts and linked related to my field?
OR
The Constant Stream of Consciousness Tweeter: Where I tweet about everything I'm watching or reading, along with what food I'm eating and voicing my nasty opinion without a care?
I'm concerned that if I tweet too much about my personal life, I'll annoy my professional followers but if I stick to the dull professional tweets, thats not very fun either.
Well tonight I decided that I'm over-thinking this entire subject. Twitter wasn't designed with any particular goal in mind except to simply tell people what you are doing. So that's what I'm going to do. If that means a tweet about the latest in cable TV advertising is followed by a tweet involving my dog's bathroom habits, so be it.
So it's not smart to mess with your iPhone while driving. You shouldn't be tweeting, surfing, watching, emailing, listening, playing, managing, facebooking, or weather checking.
We all know this and if you all are like me, here is your quote:
"I know it's extremely dangerous to tweet while driving and I SHOULD stop."
Well consider me STOPPED.
Before I go into great detail about the Breathalyzer test I had to take, let me set this up a little bit.
It was mid-afternoon this past Saturday and I was leaving from my part-time job at The Home Depot to head home for the evening.
While on the road, I'm checking my updated tweets and emails. I felt I was doing a pretty good job of multitasking my phone and the road in front of me but as you will find out, apparently I wasn't...
I pulled in to my local grocery store(which I am currently mayor of by the way) to buy a 6-pack of beer and a couple groceries. while spending about 10 minutes in front of the ice cream section trying to make up my mind, I noticed the crazy old Jay C security guy was REALLY following me around.
Dude, I'm not going to steal this extreme moosetracks ice cream. I would gladly pay $20 bucks for it. It's like chocolate crack.
Anyway, he keeps following me around, but I figured it was just my imagination.
On my way home, I notice a couple County police cars following me. No big deal, I put my iPhone down and try to be the best driver I can be.
They light me up as I turn on HWY 150.
While pulling over, I'm trying to think of any reason at all why they would be stopping me. My license plate is up to date, all my lights work. I then see a second police car show up with it's lights on as well.
The first officer walks up to my window, and I notice the second one looking through my passenger side at me. He is probably taking a long hard look at the 6-pack of Blue Moon on my passenger seat.
With the standard cop tone, the officer says "Sir, the reason I pulled you over is because we noticed you drifting through a stop sign and swaying side to side on the road.
"Have you had anything to drink today?"
I honestly hadn't had a beer in the past three days so my answer was "no. I'm on my way home from work."
The cop starts questioning me about where I work and what I do etc. Then he asked me to take a really deep breath and breathe in his face.
My first thought is, "Oh crap, I bet I have really bad breath right now."
Then he says, "Would you be interested in taking a Breathalyzer test?"
"You actually had an off-duty Jeffersonville police officer following you as you went to Jay C.
He called in saying you were driving erratically."
Geez, so I had a bunch of cops staked out for me outside the Jay C store while I was getting my ice cream and beer. Maybe they even called the old security guy and told him to follow me around.
The officer comes up with the Breathalyzer test and there I am on the side of the road taking a test to prove I'm not drunk driving.
"You're clean," the cop says with a slightly surprised tone.
Me being the honest person, I told him the truth (Because it's not an Indiana law yet).
I was on my cellphone and I will take this as a sign to kick the habit.
The officer seems pleased that I told the truth and they let me go.
So here is the lesson. Experts tell us that tweeting and driving is just as bad if not worse than drinking and driving.
Well they are right because I got pulled over for drunk driving, had to breathe in an officer's face, and took a test just to PROVE I wasn't driving under the influence.
That's how bad my driving must have been, all because I was looking at updated tweets on the phone.
So I no longer look at my iPhone while driving. I'll just have to make do until I arrive to where ever I'm going.
Maybe all these people are right, that I really am a horrible driver. After all, this marks the SECOND time I have been wrongly pulled over drunk driving.
"This is your 111th check-in at Insight Media. You are still mayor"
Thats the message I got this morning as I walked into the office and checked into Insight Media on foursquare.
Having used Foursquare for the past 5 months, I've learned one very important fact about myself.
I'm horribly boring.
For those of you who don't know, Foursquare is a location based service you use on your phone to "Check-in" every time you visit specific sites and places in the city. For the places you visit more than any other user, you become "the Mayor."
Back when I first joined, Louisville had just been added to the service and there was very few of us even using it.
Well thanks to some tweaks to their service and a very successful presence at this year's SXSW festival in Austin TX, Foursquare has quietly began to enter the mainstream media world.
Now getting back to my situation.
If you never do anything fun or exciting, foursquare simply reminds you of this every day.
Anyone who follows me on Foursquare knows this to be true. I check in at Insight Media and Home Depot. Both of the places I work at. And that is pretty much it.
If it is a particularly action packed day, you may catch me checking into my local grocery store to pick up a taco kit for dinner.
I'm such a dork, one of the main reasons I'm looking forward to my Indianapolis 500 trip in May is it will give me an awesome location to check-in at.
I want to be one of these people in the middle of New York City, always checking in with dozens of other people at various bars and hotspots.
But unfortunately Louisville still has a long way to go before Foursquare is that popular.
However I will say it is growing.
When I checked into Home Depot the other night, somebody else was checked in with me!
I'm going to keep using Foursquare because I think it's fun even if it is a little too self-absorbed.
As far as showcasing how boring I am, maybe Foursquare will force me to get out and do some new random activities, which wouldn't be a bad thing.
It's New Year's Eve and this year there seems to have been so many "Best of" lists of not only 2009 but of the decade as a whole. Not to be left out, I thought I would post my top 10 favorite songs of 2009.
I first want to point out that these songs do not have to be written or released in 2009, just discovered and listened to a lot by me during the year. And while I love all of these songs, they are listed in order with the number one song being my personal favorite song and most listened to of 2009. So here goes!
10. "Walking with a Ghost" by Tegan and Sara
From their album "So Jealous," I came across this song like most, by accident. Kayla and I were cleaning around the house and listening to one of Insight's digital music channels on the TV. This song popped up and I thought it was instantly really catchy and had a great simple melody. It also gets stuck in your head and stays there!
9. "Starstruck" by Lady Gaga
I know it is kind of lame to put a Lady Gaga song on this list but it really was her year when it came to mainstream music in 2009. Although I am not a big fan of her loud, outlandish style of performing, I think her music is great and very well produced. For whatever weird reason, I have always had a weird, unexplainable like for dance/electronic music and this song is one of the best on "The Fame." It has not been released as a single and is not as recognizable as "Poker Face" or "Love Game" but I played this song more than any other on the album, so it makes my list.
8. "Human Nature" by Michael Jackson
I had to put a Michael Jackson song on this list because I have been a fan since childhood and with his death this year, he was thrust back into the spotlight. So many of his songs could have made this list but I listened to "Human Nature" the most because it has an almost melancholy feel to it which goes along with the sad news surrounding his death. It was also included in the film "This is It" as well. The one positive that came out of Michael Jackson's death was the return of respect for him. During the last few years, he had become such a joke and with his death, the public listened to his music and came full circle, appreciating how great he really was.
7. "Alive" by Black Eyed Peas
The album "The E.N.D." by the Black Eyed Peas had a big 2009. It was without a doubt my guilty pleasure album of the year. For all of it's auto-tune and over-produced production, at it's core, it had some great, catchy songs on it. I am a huge Daft Punk fan and it seems to me that the Black Eyed Peas decided to copycat them and make a techno album. ...And you know what? I'm cool with that. I loved "Boom Boom Pow" but I played "Alive" more. It just has a great vibe to it.
6. "Forever Young" by Alphaville
Here is a throwback for you! One of my favorite movies is the classic "Napoleon Dynamite" and I always loved the campy, yet surprisingly good song that played in the background during the school dance. It sounded so nerdy but at the same time, it has a great melody and sound to it. I always noticed it but never took the time to find it. Then one night we were watching "Big Love" on HBO and they played the song during the closing credits. This caused me to like the song even more, so I finally got on iTunes and downloaded it. It's a great song! It's so 80s but that's cool.
5. "Stand Back" by Linus Loves featuring Sam Obernik
As we break into the top five, this is the song nobody is going to understand, and frankly, I do not either. I have no idea why I like this song. It's basically just a copy of a really good song by Stevie Nicks but I guess it's my unexplained like of techno making it's appearance again. There is also a longer instrumental version of this by Linus Loves called "The Terrace" that I really enjoyed listening to as well. Plus the music video is a little camptastic.
4. "Two Weeks" by Grizzly Bear
I just discovered this song last week. It could be potential too fresh to make the list, but after a few minutes thinking about it, I put it on the list anyway. I really like this song! I found it while listening to a best of 2009 segment on Bob Edwards weekend. They played a clip of it and I was completely hooked. I love the production of the harmonies. It sounds like a great Beach Boys song. "Two Weeks" is very similar to a lot of songs that make my best of list such as "Phantom Limb" by The Shins. I guess I like sad depressing songs.
3. "Colony of Birchmen" by Mastodon
Well I have to get my heavy metal entry from somewhere and this absolutely fills the void. This song was included on the video game "Rock Band." I remember playing through it and saying to myself, "this is one of the heaviest songs I've ever heard and actually liked." It's very abrasive but you have to respect the musicianship. The tempo changes and riffs they unleash are amazing. I bought their album "Blood Mountain" and it's great, but none of the other songs give me quite the hard rock satisfaction this song does. Don't be scared by this song, give it a chance!
2. "Change your Mind" by The Killers
I love The Killers. Something about their hybrid of pop, 80s synthesizer, and rock appeals to me. My favorite song of last year was their hit "Human" from the album "Day and Age" so it is no surprise that they make another appearance this year. "Change your Mind" is actually from their earlier album "Hot Fuss," which has so many great songs on it, but for whatever reason, this song slipped through and I failed to notice it. I've likely listened to it at least once a day for most of the year. The lyrics, songwriting, and production are all perfect to me. I was also lucky enough to see them play it live when they performed in Indiana this past Summer.
1. "The Ocean" by Dar Williams
This is a total dark horse winner for my favorite song of the year. VERY RANDOM. Kayla introduced me to Dar Williams and while I am not into this "Lilith Fair" type of music, something about her songs struck a nerve. "The Ocean" is a perfect song. Everything from the music and lyrics, to the mixing and production. It's all flawless. The album "Mortal City" is full of great songs, but this one rises even higher. It's a very sappy song but I've always said that I will never lie when it comes to admitting what music I like. It has a very unique sound, especially when you have a male background voice along with the female lead. That is Kayla's favorite part of the song.
Well these were my songs of 2009. What were yours?
Well I need to write an updated post in my blog because I'v been lazy, but I can't think of anything to write, so I'm just going to type out the first thoughts that come to my head and see what happens. This should be an interesting experiment. No pre-thoughts, just whatever comes into my head first.
So I'm working A LOT. Between my 40 hours at Insight and another 18-20 hours at Home Depot, I'm staying quite busy. My idea of time off is a day where I work a full shift at Insight Media and get to come straight home instead of working the evening at Home Depot.
But through all of this, I'm actually quite happy. I love working at both jobs and there are great experiences I get from both. I may get tired sometimes but I am happy to be working.
If there is anything I hate most about it, it's the fact that I have less time at home. I don't mind being at my jobs but I hate having less time at home. I think I work best under pressure and the busier I am, the better I am at my job sometimes.
Working at Home Depot again has been a fun experience. It is a lot of fun to work in an environment where you know almost everything there is to know about the department you work in. It's fun to be able to help and teach new employees all of the tricks and helpful tips.
Working at Insight Media has been great too. I am lucky to work with some of the nicest and smartest people and I'm continuing to learn more and more with every month. I never want to get "stuck" and not move further. Luckily that hasn't happened to me yet.
So I am busy, but it's fine because the extra money helps as Kayla is in school and it is very rewarding.
We are now a little more than one week away from the video game "Modern Warfare 2". I am a dork when it comes to this. I actually took next Wednesday off from both Insight and Depot to dedicate some important practice time to it. I am giving the middle finger to the video game community and NOT preordering a copy of the game. I am proud to say I have never preordered a game, and I see no reason to start. The Gamestop employees gave me a lot of grief last time I did this when I went to buy my copy of Grand Theft Auto 4. They said: "I can sell you a copy man, but I gotta be honest, we are actually only supposed to be giving out copies to our preorder customers." This pissed me off. I wanted to say: "No offense buddy but Wal-Mart is about 20 feet away next to you. It's really not a problem. I'll walk over there and get a copy." but I didn't say it. So I hope I get a copy. I'm pretty sure I will.
So I'm busy, but life is good. I'm going to sign off and fall asleep watching the World Series. With the time change, I feel like I should be in bed already, but it's only 8:30pm.
