The K-State Singers did a show last Sunday in Overland Park.  It was another outdoor show, but at least this time we knew that in advance.  While it was fun to have such a huge crowd there (we had more than 300 people), I really botched the first half of the show.  It seemed like all I could do was generate low frequency feedback.  With the help of the guy who's going to replace me and the Overland Park sound engineer, we managed to make the second half of the show run a lot better, and near the end I managed to get the mix sounding the way I wanted to for the first time in my memory.

We did the show with what was available from last year's group.  We also brought along all the new members, even though we didn't use them for the actual performance.  It was a good way for them to see their jobs during setup, though.  I was sad to do my last show with several of them.

This was our first show with the new trailer.  We're still not certain how to pack it, and if we have to take lights with us (which we will), it's going to get dicey.  We had almost no floorspace left over after this most recent trip.  But we did finally get an efficient system for packing the closet.  I was excited.

I might as well start my Firefox plugin series with one of my most used Firefox add-ons - Boost by StudioLD.

Boost is an add-on that affects Facebook pages.  My two favorite features are One-click pokes and skins.  With my K-State skin, I see a Powercat at the top, and the colors are more KSU orientated than the Facebook blue color scheme.  I should try to tweak the colors some more, since some links or text starts to blend in with the background.  However, it's not enough of a problem that I've ever bothered trying to find a fix for it.

Since I enjoy poking so much, one-click pokes make my Internet time go very quickly.  It has provisions to automatically poke, but I have never experimented with them.  I had a bad experience with getting blocked from Facebook for poking too much thanks to one-click pokes, so I try to take it slow most of the time.

Boost also has settings to disable advertisements, automatically log in, and refresh the homepage periodically.  I disabled the auto-refresh because it put a count-down in the title bar.  The "Rollover all pics" option is very usefull if you don't want to navigate away from your current page, but you do want to take a closer look at a picture.  I use if if I can't quite tell who is in a picture from a wall post.  All you do if hold your mouse over the picture, and a large version of it will show up in the upper left hand corner of the page.  You can't reposition it, and so it will disable the text that shows up with some pictures.

There are also album enhancements - you can load up to 100 images per page rather than 20, and it has a special setting that allows you to flip through the pictures in an album.  The setting is called the Boost album, and comes in two versions - the old one with no preview thumbnails, and the new one with preview thumbnails.  I think the new one is faster and looks a little better, also.  Two things that both Boost albums have trouble with - long titles (they sometimes get truncated to just a couple words instead of the whole thing), and the "View all pictures of AAAAAA" (it generally won't work on pictures of AAAAAA tagged by others).  Also, there is some delay when switching between photos (the Internet takes time to load those pictures up!).  When I switch to a new picture and then switch back before the new one loads, I'll often see the top half of the new one underneath the old one.

There is a Boost Toolbar that goes along with this add-on.  It got enabled once, and while it has some nifty features, I don't use Facebook enough to need instant notification of pokes and such.  I get fast enough notification via my email beeping at me.  I've got to say it, Boost has got to be my favorite add-on for Firefox.

I'm going to start writing about my experiences with add-ons and widgets, etc, that I use on my computer.  This way I'll have stuff to write about, and it will also make me think about what I'm running.  Is it really necessary to have some fancy thing going if it makes my computer run slower and I never use it?

Also, maybe I'll find something that I need to use more often.  You can either look forward to it or be terrified.  I don't understand the Assembly level code of these things anyways, so I'll stick to features that I find useful and try to keep it simple.

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StudioLD Boost for Firefox
Adblock Plus
Colorful Tabs & Fission

more to come...

You know, there is nothing less sexy than a woman who smokes.  At least, that's my view on the world.  And I know a few other guys who agree.  It's normally not a problem, because to be honest, I don't personally know any girls who smoke, save for a friend's mom or some other distant relation.

Now, I'm not certain what the ladies feelings about guys who smoke are.  I know that I don't find them sexy, to be certain.  But I don't think that has anything to do with whether or not they smoke.  So maybe smoking for a guy really does make him more attractive to the ladies, I don't know.

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This semester, all of the hours I work occur on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.  It's a little long, but I think it will be nice to have the weekends completely free.  I wish I could have this schedule next semester when I have lots of weekend concerts.

I decided that it would be a good idea to share my printer with my laptop - that way I could always print without worrying about switching cords, etc.  It took me most of my shift last night and my free time today to figure out that a long, long time ago I decided to disable File & Print sharing on my desktop - something about improved security or some nonsense.  But instead of doing it globally, I did it on some ethernet adapter sub-menu.  I still need to test it to see if I can print from anywhere, but I feel really good right now.

I know I had other things that would be of greater interest to other people, but right now, aside from the awesome nap I just had, I can't really focus on too much.

It took me about 1.5 hours after starting class this semester to drop a class.  But instead of dropping and lowing my courseload, I dropped a class so that I could take a higher level one offered at the same time.

I've also started playing Portal now that I have an Internet connection again.  Which is why this update is short.

I did a lot of new things this summer.  I lived on my own for the first time ever.  It was probably for the best that my food came with my job, because otherwise I would have starved or gone into debt (more).  I mean, I can make sandwiches and some microwaveable things - the ones that you open the package, put on a plate, and microwave.  Boxed macaroni and cheese escapes me.

My family feels like I've forgotten them because I only went home once the whole summer.  Every time my grandma talks to me, she asks when I'll come home next.  She just can't wrap her mind around the idea that I'd stay away until Thanksgiving.  Then again, she doesn't want to pay the $120 in gas or 6 hours of travel it takes round trip.

I went to visit a friend's new apartment, and while I was there, a bunch of mutual friends showed up.  So what else is a guy to do when he's offered the choice between going back to an apartment that's all packed up or hang out with 5 girls?  Of course, I stayed.  We watched the Olympics, and the men's swimming relay was on.  I must say, I will never feel embarrassed to take a second glance or 3 at an especially attractive girl.  The way these girls went on about Michael Phelps almost made me uncomfortable, and I don't exactly have that much of a bubble.  Also, the next time any girl tries to call me a pervert for talking about an attractive girl, I'm not going to stand for it.

And just to make everyone wonder if it really is me writing this: There's a girl I'm attracted to and want to date.  Now really, I never would have expected to find myself writing words like that.

I wore a red undershirt the last couple of days, and I was terrified that I was bleeding both times that I saw the red flecks on my stomach, even though I almost instantly knew it was just fluff.

I have a friend who's getting married in a few weeks, and I need to come up with something to get them.  They've been in an apartment for the past 2 years and will be there for at least 1.5 more years, so I think they're reasonably set when it comes to  anything that I associate with being a traditional wedding gift.  And besides, whoever said I was a traditional gift kind of guy anyways?

I want to get them crayons.  A big box.  And a copy of the book "All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten".  I'm not certain how well it would go over, but it would be unusual, and it would be cheap.  I mean, I do have to spend my money on other things as well, right?  Well, actually, not really.  But I still want to get something that's unique and slightly disposable.  I don't want it to be a commemorative crayon set, where you're supposed to not use it.  I want them to have something that they'll get an immediate kick out of and then, 5 years from now, they'll hardly remember that I even gave it.  That's my ideal gift for a special occasion.

If I want a gift remembered for a lifetime, I want that gift to be the result and sum of several interactions, not the product of a single stroke of genius.

All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.  That's the book I'm reading and re-reading now.  I've also got the script to it.

If you were to ask any of several people what my favorite theatrical production I did in high school was, they would tell  you it was Man of La Mancha.  And in a way, they'd be right.  I liked that role the best, and I did have a lot of fun.  But I had about as much fun during Kindergarten, even though the new-ness of theater was starting to wear off.  The reason I like Kindergarten more than La Mancha is because of the "moral" behind Kindergarten.  In fact, there are several, for the play is really just a collection of random scenes which can be strung together in any order, omitting or swapping as the director chooses.

My favorite scene was one that I've spoken about several times before here.  Christmas/Valentine's Day.  It's about a man who isn't quite right in the head.  Not in a dangerous way, mind you.  He just gets confused from time to time, and decides to celebrate Christmas.  He'll sing carols, call his  (adult) daughters up.  They'll bring cookies, sit around in the living room, and have a grand old time.  And then, the next day, he won't remember a thing of it.
Each time, he'll ask his wife to tell him about Christmas when he was a boy, because he can't remember.  Now, he had a terrible childhood.  Horrible Christmases and the like.  And his wife just can't bear to tell him about all that sadness when he's so happy.
So she lies.  She tells him about the time he got a sled, and the time he was in the Christmas pageant, the year he got a new bike (without training wheels).  And it all makes him so happy, that she keeps on telling him lies.  Of course, the next day he remembers nothing of this, and life proceeds normally.  But for those days, to him, it's Christmas, and to his daughters, it's Father's Day, and to her, it's kinda like Valentine's Day.

What I like so much about the story is the amount of love.  There's no sadness from the wife or daughters.  There's none of the traditional signs of romance (candles, courtships, and such).  What there is is a tremendous caring for someone else.

And I wish there was more of that in this world.

There is a song by Shinedown that includes the line "I wonder if the things I did were just to be different."  I certainly wonder that from time to time.

People who have known me since the beginning of high school or longer know that my personality took a great turn September of my Junior year of high school.  I became much more outgoing, and began to give hugs.  This wasn't as big a change as it seemed, though.  I had always been outgoing, I just disliked being in close proximity to people.  I decided that I had to become more comfortable with that for some plays I was in, so I forced myself to bring people inside my bubble.

When I came to college, I  was once more surrounded by people that I didn't know at all.  I fell back into my shell, but only when I was "up north" at college.  Back at home, surrounded by familiar people and places, I was able to force myself to be outgoing again.  I recently started a new job working alongside the Cool Cats.  They're a fun bunch of people, and I knew about half of them before the summer started.  So I opened up a bit.  I still don't like physical proximity, but I'll talk about more than technical topics.  Sometimes it's even just a normal chat (at least, I think it is).

The thing that strikes me is how often I hear from Tony that "He's usually not like this!"  It makes me wonder who SBC (that's me!) really is.  Am I  the guy who is quiet, nice, but usually shy and hidden, or am I the one who is loud and outgoing?  I don't know, and I don't really think I'll ever find out.  Maybe I'm just a conditional personality, and who I am depends on who is around me.

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On another note, I don't like not having Internet access where I live.  It makes it most hard to check and respond to emails, and when I come up with really cool thoughts or questions, I can never remember them when I make it to the Library in some free time to write about it.  Tonight, as you can tell, is the exception.  Also on the housing front is the fact that I now have the basement to myself.  So, no internet, but lots of space.  Kinda.