› some life updates if ya interested in ma ramblins

‹ some life updates if ya interested in ma ramblins

That girthy bastard was not the swan I intended, I swear! Given this week’s submission had no secondary entendres, that girthy swan must have been a different streak I was subconsciously keeping.

Keeping that streak alive with the uke and voice for a threetakemake in Audacity!

I've been juggling a lot of balls lately, but fortunately another TWO music projects are taking up some of that time so I don't feel too underbalanced toward music for slopping a wb in to keep the streak going.

On media, I just finished the Butlerian Jihad and am nearing in on going through every single Dune book. I see the Simpsons just had a Dune episode I now need to watch at some point. And hope for a future where we can see releases like Accountants of Dune, Lawyers of Dune, and DoorDashers of Dune. The extended books are kinda meh but a few of them were pretty good as action flicks. A lot of the Dune magic is only done in a surface checkbox kind of way, not really replicating the Frankisms that made the originals epics, "Paul of Dune" was probably the best one so far. Mostly getting hyped for the new Dune movie (no spoilers please, I know the trailer came out, but I prefer to go in as blind as possible and get my brains blown out in real time at maximum intake gradient). I thought the Butlerian Jihad was really long, audio book 24 hours, and my maud'Dib the next one Machine Crusade is even longer, audio book is 28 hours. Gulp.

On the music front, had a great performance with our band the other night where I nailed the intense distorted vocal parts, felt like such an accomplishment I've been chasing for so long without much progress on it. I've wanted for years to do that and have tried and failed so many times to learn it, always hurting my voice or getting a sore throat for weeks and writing it off for months only to repeat half a year later. Taking a weightlifting "hurt and grow back stronger" approach, when that's actually not how to do it at all, despite being able to make similar sounds in a way that is painful, simply doesn’t ever lead to a “it doesn’t hurt” situation. Although there is some truth to that in the muscles and ligaments used to do it grow in strength, size, and coordination. It’s sort of like wiggling an ear except there’s no visual feedback, just physical and auditory feedback. Things are starting to progress on multiple technique fronts. If anyone wants to talk vocal technique and whatnot, I would love to!!

Also on the music, I also started learning some bass for a song next month. I have never played bass live before, so this will be interesting. My right hand fingertips are pretty raw and callused.

On gaming, I finished Hades II a few weeks ago but somehow things didn't get less loaded when I finished hahaha. Well sort of finished it. Despite being a phenomenal game, mid late game sucks on rogues and this was no exception. So I watched some youtube for the remaining cutscenes I didn't get to in the game directly. What an epic game (although some of the weapon combinations and boons felt lackluster) and fantastic story. On weapons I once rolled this crazy combination that converted boons as well as multiplied the outlier and got a Zeus boon up to like lvl 77 and was oneshotting everything haha. Most of the time I'd says Hephaestus and other dps cast boons were my goto, and the shade in the tavern that kept track would agree. Also I felt chaos boons were pretty poor in the game and almost always the right move to just skip them. I won't spoil anything here but feel free to reach out and talk story details and theories!

On physical adventure, I spent a lot of time skiing lately. Took my son up once before the season was over without expectations mainly just to get one more exposure in before next season. He ended up really taking to it this time, and we went up immediately again for a bigger trip to take advantage of the self motivation. That was a blast.

I also launched a company. It's been a mix of really fun, what I wanted, difficult setbacks/challenges, and overall have learned a ton. Lots of exciting paths forward and next steps to come. It's very much different from what I'm envisioning when I use it, which is probably why I don't have any repeat customers yet, but hey it's real now, and it's improving.