Bush Mackel

For the first time in a long time lately, this week seems it has all the makings of a peaceful one.

I THINK I’ve mentioned my last project on here, but I’ve finally wrapped up the one that was taking up WAY too much of time, plus I just got back from so-called “vacation” with my in-laws so I’m looking at a week wide open and one that ends on a holiday.

Life doesn’t get much better does it?

But better than just the fact that I won’t be super duper busy, the project I just wrapped up should cover my hosting costs for the rest of the year which obviously takes quite a burden off my shoulders.

So again I say : “Hooray!” And who knows – Maybe I’ll have the time to get some quality posts on here too! (But of course, don’t hold your breath. (#):) )

Admittedly, this is something that should be going on my other blog since this is “kids’ stuff”. But hey, when you barely have the time to write on one blog, how can you be expected to post to two? Ha ha. So anyway…

As my kid is getting a little older now (he’s just over a year now) I have to find new things to keep his attention. (Especially when I have to do some coding or whatever). At the beginning there was Teletubbies. Now, there is Yo Gabba Gabba which is taking kids entertainment to the next level.

What is Yo Gabba Gabba?
Taken from its Wikipedia entry,

Hosted by a human character named DJ Lance Rock, the series features a mix of live-action segments with cartoonish costumed characters Muno the red cyclops, Foofa the pink flower bubble, Brobee the little green one, Toodee the blue cat-dragon and Plex the robot, plus many short animated sketches and musical numbers…The absurd style of humor used in the show is intended, like The Aquabats, to appeal to adults through its manic, frenzied approach to wholesome messages, while at the same time carrying all the content of the average Nick Jr. program for the whole family.

If you’re a kid at heart, you’d probably just describe the show as colorful, crazy, and musical that appeals to both kids and adults. No seriously, click the image below to check out a cool Yo Gabba Gabba video from ol’ YouTube.

Where are the Yo Gabba Gabba DVDs!?
Seriously. My kid LOVES Yo Gabba Gabba. It keeps his attention. BUT I NEED THE WHOLE SEASON ON DVD AND IT DOESN’T APPEAR AVAILABLE! ARGGGGGGGGGH! Currently I have to wait for an episode to appear On Verizon Demand and am stuck with that one for like two weeks. Me and my kid deserve better, we need better. Does anyone have any suggestions as to what I can do!?

So I thought that now would be a good time to check in while I have a temporary break in all things considered “work”. Hope everyone out there is doing A OK!

Personally I feel like I’m doing pretty good, but at the moment I am WAY sleep deprived. See – My design company was recently contracted out to do some work (which I may or may not be allowed to talk about) and long story short it’s done in Flash with a PHP and mySQL backend and it is taking me forever and a day to get it done.

Worse yet, I estimated that it would take me X hours to do, and it’s probably taking me 6X this far so I’m probably being grossly underpaid too. But at least I can chalk all this up to a great professional lesson right? (#):) And prior to last night, I was running on no sleep (I just stayed up the whole night) so I was more than a bit loopy.

Outside of That
Everything seems to be going smoothly enough. I have my health, should be moving into the new house soonage, and hopefully I’ll have some time soon to focus back on my company and getting new clients which if you couldn’t tell is really my main focus right now. Not trying to put down my blog or anything, but I think focusing on my my web business will be the way that I can leave the 9-5, and actually have the time to seriously blog like I was doing before. We’ll see. (#):)

And thanks to a little internal war at work, I’ve become a bit of an achievement whore lately which (if you’ve ever been there) is taking up quite a sizeable amount of time when I let it. Thankfully the one year old usually runs up to me and takes the controller out of my hand so he can play himself if he sees that Burnout is the game of the day. (#);)

Hopefully.

Ha ha. So I’ve really been trying to put the final screws into these projects and I think I’ll finally be able to do that this weekend. *fingers crossed*

Even though I’m not quite ready to unveil either of them at this moment…

I thought that I could at least put out a little blurb about them up today so I can buy a little more time from all of you. (#):)

And of course when I finish them, I’ll unveil them in all their glory and you guys can let me know what you think so I can make some improvements as necessary.

So a friend of mine in California contacted me a little while ago about making a website for a business of sorts that he’s trying to get off the ground. Basically you can send in your pictures, and an artist that he knows will take your photos and make oil paintings out of them. Obviously there are other services currently available that can do the same thing, but I don’t think at the rate he’s going to charge. For me, it’s a neat little project since I’m handling the upload process with a little php and Flash. Stay tuned on that one.

As I’ve said before, I’m putting a lot of effort in getting this site to where it needs to be so I can start doing some serious marketing to bring in clients. Even though I don’t fancy myself a designer, I now have one that I can work with (who I met at previous employer’s) who’s capable of putting out some quality stuff. (Thus taking the burden off me). The thing with BWD is basically when I get going and I get one client, I’ll have more than paid for my monthly hosting costs. Which is one of the reasons why I’ve made this project a big priority for myself.

More To Come
I am DESPERATELY hoping that I have this stuff wrapped up by Monday. It is KILLING me that I haven’t been able to get any posts up in a while, but I’m praying that in the end this little sabbatical will be worth it. Thanks again for the patience everyone!

So with all of the anniversary hoopla going on ’round here, I thought that I’d take a break from the “usual” and write some posts about things you don’t often see on here.

Currently, I’m far too busy to support another blog, so there are often a ton of thoughts and things going on in my life that I don’t get to share because they don’t fit the “Bush Mackel” mold.

But I think THIS is one of those times where I can talk about some other things so you can get to know me a bit better.

“…Brown Paper Packages Tied Up With String…”
First off, this is not a meme. If I were smart, I’d probably make it into a meme to get some links back here but that would have me tagging people and I just hate doing that. Furthermore, I’m pretty sure it’s a lock that the “Favourite Things” meme has been done before, though maybe not with the UK spelling. (#);)

So check it out, these are just a few of my favourite things, guilty pleasures, and stuff that I just enjoy. I have a really hard time saying that X is my FAVOURITE thing, so don’t hold it against me if I name a few things per category ok?

• Favourite movies : The Crow, Rocky, Zoolander, Berry Gordy’s the Last Dragon, Sidekicks, Commando
• Favourite foods : Chicken Enchiladas (not from a restaurant), Hamburgers, Restaurant Meatloaf
• Favourite drinks : Miller Lite, Seabreeze
• Favourite desserts : Butter Yellow Cake with Chocolate Icing, Cheesecake
• Favourite finger foods : Deviled Eggs
• Favourite songs : Blurry by Puddle of Mudd, Man in the Mirror & Human Nature by Michael Jackson, Rainbow Connection by Kermit the Frog
• Favourite artists : Good Charlotte, Foo Fighters, Hot Hot Heat, Michael Jackson
• Favourite albums : Jagged Little Pill by Alanis Morisette, Elevator by Hot Hot Heat, Bad by Michael Jackson
• Favourite video games : Street Fighter (even EX), MvC, CvSNK, Tekken, Rhythm (GH, Rock Band, Parappa, Space Channel 5, Frequency, etc), KH1, FF >= VII, Command & Conquer Series
• Favourite game characters : Ken from SF, Rock and Terry from SNK, King from Tekken, Dudley from SFIII, Cast of Gears of War, Link from LoZ
• Favourite game things : Voice acting from RE1 (“NO!…DON’T GO!” & “Don’t open … – That … doOR”), Soul Blade on PSX Intro, Music from Parappa the Rapper, Blanka stage from Street Fighter the Movie the Game, “The King Combo” from Tekken, XBLA, Ganon’s death from Windwaker, Ending to LoZ : Link to the Past, depth in Tekken, super combos
• Favourite comic characters : Batman, Spider-Man (not the movie Spider-Man), the Joker
• Favourite comic stories : Civil War, DK Returns, Killing Joke, Knightfall
• Favourite sports : Martial Arts, Basketball, Tennis
• Favourite athletes : Wolf from AG, Brett Favre, Darrell Green
• Favourite shows : Family Guy, 24 (before last season), The Shield, American Gladiators
• Favourite laws & theories : Time travel by Einstein, the Law of Averages
• Favourite colors : Red & Black, Brown
• Favourite cars: Ford Focus SVT, Hybrids, 1986 Volvo
• Favourite shoes: Converse hi-tops, Brooks Addiction 7
• Favourite flavours: Raspberry, Apple, Chocolate

WOAH. This list is freakin’ huge! Time to end it so that SOMEONE may actually have a chance to read it. (#):) Oh and don’t forget, today’s the first day of the first contest!

Talking with Pete so much about HD audio formats the other day made me start to think about home theater systems and set up and what exactly makes the best home theater set up…

You see, between the first time that I put together by home theater system and now, technology has just changed so much. TV’s have changed, DVD players have changed, receivers and speakers, have changed…

So I’m wondering if I had to start it all now, as in – If I was just getting my feet wet this the home theater game, what would be the first piece to start with in a quest to building the best home theater system set up I could.

I know this is a weird post, and perhaps unlike me, but it’s late so cut me a break. (#);D

Moving site to new server…ugh…

Always being on the lookout for a good deal, I jumped on an offer from Best Buy maybe a week ago.

The offer : Pre-Order Halo 3 and get 1600 Microsoft Points for $5.

Now these cards usually cost $20 so needless to say I was pretty excited about the deal.

However, looking back maybe I was a bit TOO excited.

Where’s a Penny When You Need One!?
I’m usually not one to regret my mistakes, but why oh why couldn’t I have found a penny before I found that pair of scissors! *sigh* I was so excited to redeem those points and unlock Pac-Man Championship Edition that before I knew it I had scratched off about 5 characters.

As you can tell from the title, it’s 2 o’clock in the morning right now. I’ve been on a bit of a tear lately and have been writing posts like mad making sure that I’m setup for success this week.

So far I have 5 drafts for the upcoming week which consist of 4 Xbox 360 related posts and 1 centered on my entertainment center. And if you’re wondering, 2 of those 5 drafts are essentially done.

But you don’t care about all that right?

Random 2 AM Thoughts
Ok. There’s no telling that you’re going to care about the following either, but it’s 2 AM and I have written a random thoughts post in quite sometime.

• One of the things I love about being up this late is that they always have CD compilation infomercials on TV. The one I’m looking at now is a Soft Rock collection offered by Time Life. Look! I’ve even included the URL if you want to buy it yourself and that’s not an affiliate link either. (That’s how much this compliation being pushed by Air Supply means to me…”I’m all out of love, I’m so lost without you…”)
• While I was writing one of those 5 drafts I mentioned earlier, I noticed a trackback from Tish. I wonder if she’s also up at 2 AM or if she future stamped one of your posts for now. I doubt the latter though. Who timestamps a post for 2 AM on a Sunday? (“Please forgive me, I know not what I do. Please forgive me…”)
• One of the things I HATE about being up late is that I get seriously hungry. I said this to my wife and she said that when you’re asleep, your body produced an enzyme or something that surpresses hunger which is why you don’t get hungry ’till you get up! Who knew? (“whoa oh OHHHHHHH Listen to the music!…”)
• I’ve fallen back in love with my Best of Styx CD, and for some reason have found a deeper appreciation for “Blue Collar Man”. (“And I would do annnything for love, and I would do annnnything for loVE!…”)
• Monday back at work is going to suck. This past week was a two day work week for me essentially since I was in Philly and the week before that I was home on Thurs and Friday “working from home”. (“Once upon a time I was falling in love, but now I’m only falling apart…”)
• I needed a haircut like two weeks ago. (“So I’ll ride like the wind. Ride like the wind…”)
• And I needed some pizza like 45 minutes ago. (“ooooooOOOOO DREEEEEEEAM WEAVER”)

On Wednesday evening of this week, I drove up to Philly because I was slated to attend some hands on training for Microsoft’s Expression Design and Expression Blend software.

If you don’t know (as I didn’t), basically Microsoft Expression Design is M$’s answer to Adobe Illustrator, and Microsoft Expression Blend is basically their answer to Adobe Flash. Now after attending the conference, I don’t think the products are currently the Adobe Killers M$ had hoped for but maybe with a little work they’ll get there.

(I’ll probably be writing more about this software in a future post so stay tuned true believers).

Other Philly Stuff
Outside of the conference, this is also the first time I can remember that I’ve had to chance to kind of check out a little bit of Philly. Unfortunately, I’m only here for another 3 hours so last night was really my only chance to get out. Me and two co-workers ended up going to this place called Continental and it was a lot of fun. It was more or less like a diner setup with outside seating and some serious food. And of course, you know what the best part about a business trip is right?

Your company picks up the tab.

And that meant the first order of business was grabbing a beer and ordering something lobster related. I ended up getting the lobster potatoes. And they were fantastic. Of course being the fatness that I am today, I had to get dessert too. The waitress ended up bringing out a platter with big shot glasses on it that were filled with (in her words) “yummy stuff”. Obviously, I had to go with the Lemon Cheesecake with Blueberries. It was awesome.

Random Weirdness
So last night while we were walking around, my co-worker Curtis noticed this one dude with two girls that looked really familiar. After a second, it donned on him who they were. I didn’t really believe him so we left our third co-worker for a second and tracked this people down so that I could get a good look. Turns out we believe we saw three of last year’s American Idol contestants, Chris Richardson, Haley Scarnato and Sanjaya’s sister. We didn’t say anything to confirm but I will say that Haley’s legs are pretty much pretty what Simon made of them on TV.

All in All
It was a good time. It’s too bad that my wife and kid aren’t here but I guess I’m glad I got the chance to come up. The “interactive” part of things at the conference isn’t bad, and from the little part of Philly that I got to see, it seems like a really diverse and chill place to be (which is very much the opposite of where I’m living now).

P.S. I’m hoping that soon I’ll be able to write some 360 posts…maybe for next week if I get myself together. I’ll “see” you all soon!