Sometimes I feel like my life is zipping by without me doing what I need to do and be where I need to be but other times I feel as if there is just so much for me to just go out and do for the Lord.  Kyle taught at church yesterday and I tip my hat to him because he prepared a good word.   I’ve recently been in a rut of just working, paying bills, working etc.   I’ve lost track or rather just forget to notice and seek God’s direction above my own plans.  Even know my plans have been pretty steady and not really going anywhere lately I just realized that I haven’t been asking if God wanted me somewhere else.    Kyle reminded me of this thought during his sermon which is always a good reminder.

On another note I dislike the lakers for beating the suns… ok untrue I disliked them before they beat the suns haha.

Though my mind focuses on things differently when I’ve got somewhat of a headcold… for instance if you look at the word ’search’ in all uppercase letters ‘SEARCH’ for too long it starts to look like its spelled incorrectly.

I also decided to take a 36-hour break from facebook.  I honestly have lived up to that pretty much so far but I have quickly checked it to make sure nothing important was getting missed.
I in general sort of dialed back my internet usage these past 2 days just to put more time into my actual health.  I made some soup with dumplings last night which was just tasty. Mine soup and dumplings doesn’t even come close to Marvin’s dumpling soup that he brought over for me on sunday night!

I’ve got 3 projects up in the air right now with people calling and emailing telling me that they need them done which is a little stressing when I’m sick but I do what I do because I love to do the do.  Or do I?

Man I really love the “Love Drunk” album from Boys Like Girls.  My suspicion is that they are using drum replacement/triggers on it.

Random: On my drive home from work on mondays and fridays I’ve noticed this dude at the bus stop who looks just like Tyson Ritter (all-american rejects front-man).

I’ve gotta start preparing for worship this sunday… I hope I feel better by then because my throat is still sore and its almost wednesday.   I think I’m gonna skip wednesday night church just to give my voice more time to heal.  Everyone probably thinks I’m in NJ because I usually get 1 or 2 people who ask me that if they haven’t seen me for a week haha.

I’ve got the sudden urge to watch Top Gun with the surround sound system on… I wish netflix had it on the “Watch Instant” feature.  You know now that I think about it all I really want to do is listen to “Highway to the dangerzone”.  Yeah maybe I’ll just pull this video up on the tv…

I started going through our churches song list that I’m told to pick songs from and they are all lyrically great songs but a lot of the melodies and musical arrangements are the same.  Generally slow to medium tempo songs with a soft intro and a build to a strong ending chorus that ends in an acapella of said chorus.   I’ve had a few people come up to me and ask me why worship is so loud and I never had an answer.  The only way to put energy into these sorts of songs is to get louder, hence the build up to the strong ending chorus in almost all of the songs.   Now another way to add energy to a song is to play faster songs with edgier sounding arrangements. We really don’t have any fast songs in our song book other than the old ones that we’ve overplayed.   I think that is the best explanation I can give for these questions.

In conclusion I’ve learned a few things about churches:

1. Each church gravitates to a certain style of music and generally stays there until a change of leadership (whether hiring a new pastor or an old one resigning or another pastor running a different service).
2. Almost every single head pastor of churches that I’ve gone to have always liked the slower songs better.
3. Almost every youth pastors that I’ve known has had encouraged a great balance between high energy and low energy worship (then again sometimes that even became to predictable).

We all agree that it would be great to be in a worship service full of our favorite worship songs but if we let these sorts of things get to us we’ll lose the meaning of why we are worshiping.
Colossians 3:2 says “Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.”

Keep your focus.

When you’ve got a balloon and the string slips out of your hand, you first panic but then after a second you enjoy watching to see how far that it can go.

I think this analogy applies to a lot of things. For some people maybe its the need to move away to start a career, for others maybe its the need to give up control of something so others can excel and for some maybe its taking the plunge into a relationship.  I currently like to see it as the balloon being my life plans and the wind being God’s direction, I just need to let the string go and follow Him with every movement of a muscle, every thought in my mind and word on my lips.

All this from a balloon…huh.

I’ve Got You and You’ve Got Me – New Buffalo, Remixed by Broken Social Scene from Karen Abad ?s Dinosaurs. on Vimeo.

How long will this process keep our love and our heart in an intimate denial?

The moments never fade that I miss your shining little face and the warmth of your little fingers embrace.

As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now and forever you remain in my love.

Alright so now to the beef of this blog… I switched to namecheap not just to try them out but because of my terrible experiences with two other top domain registrars.
 

Godaddy.com
They are the industry leader with great phone support but beneath this money making beast lies terrible business practices.
1. They try to upsell you till you turn blue in the face.
2. Their marketing tactics are very inappropriate which bothers me.  If you haven’t seen a godaddy commercial then good because they’re not good.
3. Their web site is the slowest registrar site I’ve ever used!  Loading time is horrendous!
4. If you have a hosting account through them… and you’re just using the account for storing files (say for instance project files for audio or video projects) well they don’t allow you to do that and will eventually shut your account down.

Conclusion: Godaddy tries to trick you into buying unnecessary features with underhanded marketing tactics. If that isn’t annoying enough.. try having to edit a few domain names and see how long it takes you do that with a site that loads at a snails pace. I wouldn’t recommend Godaddy to another one of my customers.

1and1.com
They "seemed" to be the opposite of Godaddy when I first signed up which really impressed me with their clean fast loading site and minimal upsell agenda but sooner or later anything that is too good to be true… well you know.
Most businesses that hold a credit card on file for renewal will send you a notice when your credit card on file expires. 1and1 decides to send the bill to a collection agency before they notify you of all of this.
Some think that 1and1 is cheaper than Godaddy but it ended up costing me $40 to get a domain name back and registered after they sent it all off to this collection agency.
1. Their support is rarely prompt and available.
2. They’ll send your info off to a collection agency before they send you a bill.
3. When trying to transfer my domain names away from them (over to namecheap) the 1and 1 phone support woman gave me false information which would have made the transfer fail. Luckily I also asked the same question over email and the email tech gave me the correct information.

Conclusion: 1and1 is a poorly ran company that doesn’t care about its customers.  I would never in a million years recommend 1and1 to another one of my customer.
 

1. Call Dan to see if we can get together.
2. Lay down vocals for "Trust my love"
3. Record DJsiah Radio Taglines for Dead Man Sleeping and Keep On Dancing.
4. Finish up some tracking on the on spec song for the tonino lamborghini commercial.
4. Clean the kitchen and do some dishes.
5. Have some chocolate chip cookies and milk before bed.
6. Continue my journey through the book of Isaiah.

Sounds like its going to be a full evening once I get out of work.
I think I may start reading through my hermeneutics book again just to bring to mind things to think about while reading through the bible this year.

This photo made me laugh but its really detailed.  Its by an australian artist named Joel Rea and I think you should check him out here…
www.joelrea.com.au

I overhauled Redeemed Motorcycle Ministries web site to give it some functionality that it was missing before.  Pictures and such need to be added but at least the contact info is up to date haha.
Check it out… rmmnj.org

I finished off the music for the Anthem of Hope Encouragement disc which was fun because I got to score it like a movie.  I know that God is going to use it to bless many many people so I’m excited… and it brings joy to my heart to be a part of this ministry.
Check out the anthem of hope at… anthemofhope.com

Produced a song with Benjiman all about old school bmx building.  It has an old school sort of feel to it.  I’ve got some more mixing to do on it but I’ll let everyone know when its released.
Check benjiman out here… myspace.com/benjimanactivate
 

There is one more ministry in my cross-hairs that I want to bless with a new web site soon but first I need to find time for that.

Ok now I’m off to the shower and then I put my producer hat back on yet again.