Blog of Josh Hall

Note to self – Call off work the month of December.  You will not be able to get anyone to do any work, even if they are in the office, so just avoid the frustration completely.  That’s basically how I feel right now.  I had my first project fail last Saturday, and now I have to finish it tomorrow, when I was supposed to be off.  and when I say "have to" I mean, failure is not an option with this project.  I coined a new phrase with this project, "Screw dotting my i’s and crossing my t’s, I’M JUST GOING TO WRITE IN ALL CAPS."

How about that open mic that Ben and I were supposed to play last week didn’t happen.  The BBT, or Bloomfield Bridge Tavern actually had a fire back in October and they’ve been closed for repair, even though they still have shows booked on their site.  Oh well.  We ended going over to Jordan’s and just playing there for some friends.

Speaking of going over to Jordan’s, we had our first Beer snob Christmas party this past Tuesday.  I think there were 12 of us total, all brought a case of a micro brew or import beer and we went around swapping bottles to build our own mixed case.  Lots of fun.  I took a mix case of Left Hand Brewing.  I had an ESB at in philly and really enjoyed it, and come on, it’s a left hand.   You had me at "Hello."

I’m off to Kallie’s Mom’s place near Sacremento from the 24th until the 30th.  So crazy to be in a relationship where our families are across the country from one another.  It’s sure fun at times, but there are certainly downsides.  Not sure of any plans yet, just spending time with family in San Francisco, Palo Alto, and probably Lake Tahoe too.  I’ll be sure to take lots of pictures.

Aside from that, I’ve been getting involved with a small group from Bellefield and going to the Open Door.  Probably look to get baptized (finally) in the new year.  Keren just got baptized last week, and it was a pretty emotional thing for sure.  I’m so blessed to have such a great family and great support structure.

1. When did you last sleep in a bed outside your home? – hehe, umm…the night before last?  SCANDAL!
2. When did you last drive someone else’s car? – Hey, my truck is in the shop!  >:(  I have been driving Kallie or Deirdre’s car a lot.  I need my truck in all this snow though!
3. When did you last cook in someone else’s kitchen? – Define cooking.  I think i helped a little here or there with dinner at Kallie’s last week.
4. When did you last care for children who aren’t yours? – That aren’t mine?  that scares me.
5. When did you last do someone else’s job? – If we’re talking strictly work/career, than I have no idea, because no one knows who does what anymore!  As a project manager, it’s just my job to make sure it gets done!

Here’s a first time truth story for you.  when i was 13 or 14, i was big into BMG music service.  I would sign up at my dad’s house, refer "Jay Hall" at my mom’s address, and I’d get 5 free CDs on top of the introductory offer.  I think it worked out to 12 CDs for $45.  That’s great.  Anyway, one day I got a trial offer flyer in the mail for Playboy magazine.  It had my BMG music info on it for my mom’s house.  You had to be 18 or older to sign up for the service, so I guess they’re just allowed to send you stuff like that.  I took it in to show my friends at school how cool I was.  Dallas and Travis and everyone were trying to convince me to fill it out and send it back in.  I wouldn’t do it.  Then Dallas said he would do it, so he took it from me, but I didn’t think he had the guts to do it.  We were at that age where we just taunted eachother to do bad things.  Dallas actually did it though.  If I remember correctly, Travis had a car at that time and he drove Dallas home from school that day and they dropped it off then.

Few weeks go by I guess, my dad and I are out running errands and he says we need to stop at my mom’s for something.  I actually don’t remember how it all unfolded, but it just so happened that Dallas and Travis and I were planning on going to a concert, X-fest a week or two later.  My punishment was that I would have to leave the concert early.  Total weak sauce.  I missed Green Day, and them lighting their drums on fire, the bassist from Jimmies Chicken Shack running on stage naked during someone’s set, and another band or two I think.  I also just missed out on the bonding time with Travis and Dallas.  I didn’t even do anything…but sometimes, it’s the lack of action that we end up paying for.

Something is off in the world these days.  Stereo-types are being altered.  I’m going to ask you to define the profile or person that first comes to mind when I say the word…GRAFFITI.   Young, black, male, doesn’t care about himself or others.  Somewhat accurate right?  and if I do the same for Knitting…grandma.  Kind of a clash there, right?  Well, there’s sort of a movement going on.  There’s a lot of knitting graffiti going on in the country, and even here in Pittsburgh.  Call it urban knitting, call it a sign of the economic hardship where people can’t afford a can of spray paint so they buy some yarn.  Whatever it is, I think I like it.

Major urban knitting pictures

CMU Artist weaves yarn in Oakland fence.

So I activated a feature of the blog for smart phone browsing.  It’s an extremely limited version of the site that only has the last 10 or so posts, but it’s only text based so you can read it on mobile devices easily.  I’ll probably create a nifty URL like http://joshuadhall.com/mobile or /iphone in a few minutes to point to it, but you can access it from the ‘mobile browsing’ listing in the menu.

another addition along those same lines is an icon for the iphone.  if you add the link to your home on your iphone, you’ll get a nice icon.  The screen shot is below.

So I’m playing with my new iphone, and I’m fascinated by all the possibilities.  I’ll be sure to tell you about productivity enhancers later.  For now, I want to share a little app I found called Fstream (direct link to app store download page here).  There are other music apps that cost money to use, like simplify media and tuner internet radio too, but I was looking for a free solution, and this is it.  That’s the perfect solution i was looking for.  Thanks Fstream!