That Burning Smell is Me Thinking…

Here are a few pictures Trina and I took while roaming about town.

First off, I need to apologize to those whose comments were held up in moderation. I just went through the comments awaiting approval and found three real ones out of 256. If I accidently deleted yours, I’m sorry. The legitimate comments were very easy to spot, but I may have missed one or two.

OK. Now to give you an update. I got married on August 12th, and I have been settling into my new life. Right after I got married, I started school again, and I was working at the same time. So I was unbelievably busy. If something didn’t earn me money, college credit, or more time with my wife, then it fell by the wayside.

The final two weeks of the semester are upon me. I call it “The Big Push.” I also call it “Crunch Time.” Two clichés that fit well.

Now it is time to neglect this blog some more.

I took this photo in 1991.

This is an outtake from a photo session I did a few years ago. I had Aracaly and her husband Tim stand together beacuse I wanted a picture of them together just for me. Now you can see it! Cute, huh?

I remember when I was young and we would tape songs off of each other’s records. Often, though, I would end up taping the whole album. My friends and I would buy albums that the other didn’t have and we would make tapes for each other. If I really liked the albim, I would go and buy my own copy of the album after wearing out the tape. Then I would tape it for another friend and the cycle would start over again. A lot of the stuff I listened to wasn’t played on the radio at the time so sharing music was the way for more obscure artists to get heard.

Today, technology has made it much easier for independent or obscure artists to be heard, but the state of music is even worse than it was when I was making mix tapes at home on the HiFi. I know in my case file sharing has helped me find great artists I would have never heard of on the radio. I have bought albums based on songs I have copied from friends, much like I did back when I was young.

So the mix tape was the old school analog version of file sharing and record sales were doing just fine.

If you have fond memories of cassette tapes, check out http://www.tapedeck.org .

Today, jamescouncil.com is one year old. Wow, what a year!

This blogging thing started out as an experiment two years ago and last year I struck out on my own with my own domain and webspace. I have been thinking about actually doing some rearranging to help my ideas flow better. I recently changed the theme and added another page, but I just installed iWeb yesterday and I feel inspired to do something. I am thinking about ditching my Flickr and Myspace accounts and consolidating things more; things are a little too scattered. Since I have many gigabytes of space available here I should do more with what I have and stay away from limited free services. So I am thinking and experimenting, soon I will have a plan.

Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and instead of going back to bed, I stay up for a while, sit in my chair and think. It is very peaceful in the wee hours of the morning making a good opportunity to let my mind wonder and contemplate life.

Usually I write ideas down or type them into my computer if they seem important or amazing and then I read them the next day. Sometimes I have come up with ridiculous things, but very often I can have great moments of clarity. Some of the things I think of are as mundane as reconfiguring a computer or rearranging the furniture. Other times I have decided to change my life’s course.

I usually don’t spend more than an hour thinking and contemplating in the early morning hours. I sleep more soundly afterwards because I have more peace of mind.

Yesterday I summoned up the courage to aim a propane torch directly at the delicate circuitry of my beloved iBook. I had the dreaded Apple G3 iBook logic board failure which involves the ATI Radeon 7500 chip working itself loose with normal case flexing.  I tried a trick of putting shims in the case to push the chip back in, but the problem kept getting worse.

I read online that the soldier on the bottom of the chip needed to be reflowed. To reflow the soldier, one has to heat the chip up hot enough to melt the soldier, thus re-establishing contact. Some people have a fancy work station to do this with, others use paint stripping guns, I used a propane torch. Fortunately I had extra iBook with the dead video problem to practice on. I fired the spare iBook up after it cooled down and it worked! I decided to do it to my main machine since if I accidently fried my main iBook, I could use the other one as a backup.

So now my iBook is working great and I put the other iBook back together and am going to sell it to a friend. Good times.

I enjoy listening to U2 again.

I was a huge fan since the early 80’s when I heard about this cool band from Ireland. I remember being glued to the radio late one Sunday night in 1983 listening to George Gimarc interview The Edge on KZEW and thinking about how I wanted to be at the concert, but I was only 14 and it was a school night. All I could hope for was hearing the interview and listening to them on the radio. I later bought all their albums and followed them closely. I remember going to see Rattle and Hum on opening day. I was blown away by Achtung Baby. I also own The Passengers CD along with a couple of other rarities. During my teenage and early adult years, there was always a U2 tape or CD nearby.

After moving to Chicago in 1999, I became burned out on U2. If I did listen to them, It was only Zooropa, on headphones, briefly, and not very often. Every time I heard U2 or saw then on TV or in a magazine, I would ignore them or leave the room. It was like a gruesome car wreck and scratching fingernails down a chalkboard all rolled into one.

A few weeks ago I started riding the train more, so dusted off my neglected iPod to make the rides more interesting. I realized a few days later that I had no U2 in my iTunes despite owning many of their CDs. So I imported all my U2 CDs into iTunes and put most of them on my iPod. I am a fan again. I am even going out to buy the latest CD tonight after I am done with this. I feel like I am reunited with old friends.