Random Tunage

Tron Legacy Soundtrack

2010-12-07T10:42:00.000-08:00

I've been rocking out to this all day long, and it's probably never going to get old. December 17th can't get here soon enough. I'm not a cinemaphyle, but I'm almost positive I'll be one of those crazy people lining up for a midnight showing in 3D.

The Amazon exclusive MP3 version is only $3.99. Go. Now. Listen!

Amber - Anyway (Steve Porter Remix)

2010-04-09T20:20:00.000-07:00

Sometime in the middle of 2005, I was working until 11:00PM at the local college. My wife started work a few miles away at 10:00 PM, and worked until 6:00 AM. As you can imagine, this played hell with our sleep schedule.

There was this awesome little place just up the road from the college, though, called Santa Fe Junction. It was basically a trailer home on top of a tall foundation, which had been converted to a smallish coffee shop and diner. It was open 24/7. The food was okay and affordable. The brewed coffee was great, and most of the baristas knew how to craft decent espresso drinks. Toss in comfortable chairs, couches, fun music on the speakers, and free WiFi, and you've got the perfect place to hang out on weeknights when you're working an oddball schedule like I was.

I'd go in a few nights per week armed with a $10 bill and my laptop. That would buy me supper, keep me hacking and caffeinated until the sun came up, and cover a reasonable tip.

It closed down in a matter of months, but it was worth it while it lasted. It opened a year or so later and became simply "Bar" with more traditional bar hours, no caffeine, and crappy bar food. Bar closed down a few months ago and it recently re-opened as "Woody's." I don't know that I'll even bother venturing by, even though I live a mile away from the place these days. I pass it on my bicycle a few times per week.

Favorite tracks of 2009

2009-12-07T06:08:00.000-08:00

In no particular order. Sometimes bizarre. Sometimes banal and mainstreamy. This is the stuff that was released recently that rocked my world.

Truth: More than half of the stuff in my top-10 listened-to tracks this year are pretty old. Yes, I'm a bit of a retro-grouch. You'll see it in the throwbackish nature of several "new" tracks as listed below, I'm sure.

Jerry Ropero - The Storm (Inpetto Remix)

Santogold - Lights Out

David May - Superstar
David builds on a sample of The Verve - Bittersweet Symphony. The PG-13 Video is probably NSFW. Just sayin'.

Chicane vs. Natasha Bedingfield - Bruised Water
It came out in 2008 but I didn't hear this mash-up until 2009. Saltwater is easily my favorite track by Chicane, although it's got to be a decade old by now.

Dimitri Vegas & Like Mike - Under The Water (6 A.M. Terrace Mix)
Another cover of a classic from days gone by. Prior to this, my favorite remix of Brother Brown - Under The Water was by Deep Dish (YouTube Link)

Ferry Corsten - Shelter Me
Another one that technically came out in late '08

The Airborne Toxic Event - Sometime Around Midnight

Depeche Mode - Perfect
The whole album was a solid win, full of vintage sound.

The Prodigy - Invaders Must Die
From another album where it's worth buying the whole damn thing, if you're into this kind of noise. I am.

Plumb - Hang on (Dave Aude remix)
Old song. New remix. Plumb is somewhat of an enigma for me. Originally the name of a Christian crossover rock band, frontwoman Tiffany Lee (at the time using her maiden name, Arbuckle) repurposed the name "Plumb" as her stage name when the band fell apart in 2003. She still leaves hints of crossover in her alternative- and electronic-inspired work, some of which has been wildly popular for remixing.

Alanis Morissette - Thank U

2009-10-06T20:52:00.000-07:00

Duplex-bonded 128k ISDN.

A chintzy Compaq with an old-school Pentium OverDrive CPU -- the fastest thing my parents could afford to give me for Christmas after my laptop died. It ran RedHat Linux for a bit before one roommate hooked me on FreeBSD.

The Bachelor Pad.

EtherMonkeys adorning the place. Literally, Barrel Of Monkey pieces hanging from do-it-yourself crimped Category Five strung up and across the ceiling.

Bowls of ramen noodle soup.

The occasional Screwdriver or White Russian (even though I was only 19)

Late nights.

Early Mornings.

Really, really pampering my 1995 Ford Escort, which I'd barely had a year, if that, at this point in my life. Weekly wash and wax and detailing.

Crashing at my girlfriend (now wife)'s apartment on occasion after really, really late movies. Not that we'd do anything but talk until our mouths hung open and drooling as we succumbed to the sandman at 4 o'clock in the morning.

Gizmo, the evil death cat that would shit, piss and vomit on anything touching the floor.

Audiogalaxy Satellite, and racing MP3 downloads home from work to see which would get to my computer faster. Damn, I miss AG Satellite. What a mindfuck. Why hasn't anyone ever duplicated it on some kind of Pirate Bay level?

Hitting the data center to help -- or watch, really, as Kenny Root performs massive upgrades on "Orator of the borg"

I expect no one but myself to know what all of these are. But that's what this song brings back.

B-Movie - Nowhere Girl (Adam Freeland Mix)

2008-10-13T19:01:00.000-07:00

The original track was nothing too exceptional, but this version, which made it into a Various Artists Compilation called Future Retro, really rocks. I love the driving drum beat.

This reminds me of my half-year spent working in the wonderful, tumultuous world of dot-com start-ups. I was responsible for building, maintaining, and enhancing our "Appliances" -- That is, little rack-mount servers that booted off a mere 32MB of storage. Appropriate, since I bought the album from iTunes while on the clock and working on the very stuff that this track reminds me of.

My desk was often cluttered with 3 or 4 of these servers, a pile of Bootable USB flash drives. The smell of burnt electronics is faintly lingering in the air because we were building these appliances on the cheap and they often failed or overheated.

Robert Miles - Children

2008-06-30T06:12:00.000-07:00

Ah, the days of my foolish youth, and my first speeding ticket.

It's kind of an interesting story. I had just gotten back from a visit to the optometrist for an eye check-up. As usual, my vision was better than perfect (20/13 if it's any of your business), and as one who works in the IT Field among a sea of four-eyed peers (no offense meant) I've always been proud of my eagle eyes. Interesting fact, eagles probably have something more like 20/5 or 20/2 vision, but that's neither here nor there.

For some reason or another, part of the vision testing stressed me out quite a bit (dilation and the air-burst glaucoma ordeal) and I had a grand-mal seizure right there on the spot. It took me a while to recover, and the drive home had me feeling much like a zombie.

I was cranking this song at full blast in my 1981 Honda Accord, not paying much attention to my speed. I was going 70 MPH in 55 MPH zone that was under construction but without workers present. The resulting ticket was nearly $300. Ugh.

Good Times!

Real McCoy - Another Night

2008-04-29T18:01:00.000-07:00

Oh jeez. I ran across this song in my playlist today. Memories of my BBS days flooded back. Not just hanging out on BBSes, but all the real-world social atmosphere that came with it.

Playing Tradewars. Going to Ren Fest or Tippins (rest in Peace) to meet with people. Late nights in 16-color text-only teleconference. Driving out to Independence to hang out with my favorite Sysop. Arguing on the forums with Frogman, who's now one of my best friends. Turning Poet's little Geo Metro sideways between Kestra's basketball goal and the front porch, stranding him. Giant Pixie Sticks. Bowling. You don't even understand. You'd would have needed to be there. This is part of my mid-teenage past that permanently changed the course of my life. It may also explain my terribly eclectic and slightly disturbing social flair.

Orbital - Out There (Intro)

2008-04-11T06:21:00.000-07:00

I was a naughty, naughty boy in the late 90's. I'd just purchased this album, and was in the middle of tinkering with an old AIX UNIX server at school that we used for student e-mail and homework storage. In order to get an e-mail account, you had to verify your identity, then you could choose a user name. Well, I accidentally crash the database while tinkering. When it crashed, it exported all of the data it had to the hard drive. For a brief, fleeting moment I had access to every student's first name, last name, SSN and Date of birth. On top of that, I had all of the student e-mail usernames, passwords, and what SSN (and therefore, person's real name) that the account belonged to. Never fear, I did not use the information for evil deeds, but it was kind of fun to watch it unfold.

I was friends (and eventually room mates) with the sysadmin of the server. I notified him of the problem and he cleaned up the files before anyone found them. He would later fix the glitch that allowed the crash to happen, too.

Underworld - Cowgirl

2008-04-01T05:55:00.000-07:00

This is the first track I ever listened to on my NEC Versa 4050C. It was a used laptop that was new to me. It replaced my HP 300LX as my main classroom note-taking, BBS/UNIX Dialup terminal and Internet workstation. Yes, my 300LX was my main machine for a few months. But that's not what we're talking about.

I had just picked it up from a local used computer place (Oh, Computer Garage, how I miss thee...) and was sitting in my car, waiting for my wife to come out from her office on her lunch break. Except she was my girlfriend at the time. The NEC still works well to this day, but at a mere 90 MHz, it's pretty sluggish. It has great runtime on the battery, and it often gets used for Wardriving.

Orbital - Walk Now...

2008-03-17T09:21:00.001-07:00

This track reminds me of the kinds of mobile mischief I used to partake in in 1996. I saved up a good chunk of cash from working at CompUSA and bought myself a brand new laptop at the time, an NEC Versa 550D. And boy, was it stylin' back then.

Modems, sound cards, and whatnot weren't very common on laptops. I bought a PCMCIA laptop modem and an acoustic coupler to go with it. When I got home to play with my new goods, the Orbital II album was playing, hence the flood of memories. Even while a senior in high school, I was quite the road warrior. This carried on into college. With this setup, I could get on Bulletin Boards, the Internet, and into the college's campus from virtually anywhere there was a phone, even if it was a payphone... especially if it was a payphone! And the wonderful thing about payphones is that you can't really trace a payphone down to a specific person unless you have video cameras rolling or can get there before the person leaves. This shield of anonymity often provided me with the brazen resolve to do a lot of things that I probably shouldn't have been doing.

Of course, now, we have EDGE and EV-DO wireless broadband, 1xRTT tethering, satellite, and almost ubiquitous IEEE 802.11 "WiFi" at our disposal.

Ben Folds Five - Brick

2008-01-26T23:20:00.000-08:00

This song embodies the "college photography class" era, specifically memories of working in the digital photography computer lab. Year: 1998. Cutting-edge consumer-grade digital photography consisted of things like the Apple QuickTake 200. This song brings back memories of putzing around, digitizing my 35mm black-and-white negatives in that lab while getting paid to babysit the computers and their humanoid users. Playing around with PhotoShop 3. No, not Adobe CS3. Photoshop 3.

I really liked this time in my life. There were a lot of fresh things unfolding. My relationship with my wife, my career, my fascination with tinkering really blossomed in full force.

Exposé - As Long As I Can Dream

2008-01-16T16:00:00.000-08:00

You'll laugh at this one. I had plastic surgery on my ears. Yes, my ears. They stuck out, and I'm talking about Dumbo here. In fact, Dumbo was one of my many nicknames, and not by my own choice.

Anyways, my uncle John was (and still is, to a certain extent) a plastic surgeon out in Boise, ID. He performed the surgery to mold my ears into some semblance of normal. I spent the better part of a week at his ranch house outside of Boise while my parents went snow skiing on Bogus Basin. I spent a LOT of time listening to tunes. At this point in my life I didn't have the means to buy any music, so I shamelessly recorded stuff off the air (or from friends' tapes or CDs) onto audio cassettes. The RIAA is going to have my ass for admitting this, I'm sure.

This was one of the songs that I had on tape out there in Boise. I heard this song a lot of times, as I only brought two tapes with me. Two 90-minute cassetes. Three hours of music, if that. That's all I had. I won't even mention how many AA batteries my Walkman ate during the trip.

Nine Inch Nails - Dead Souls

2008-01-14T18:34:00.000-08:00

A Midi of this song looped in the background when you'd visit Silicon Toad's site, The Infinity Void. He had an impressive archive of underground "hacking" information, back when there really was an underground scene. This later went on to become integrated into hackers.com, which has probably by now been passed around Al Gore's Interwebs like a nickel whore. I probably won't bother heading back there to see who owns it now.

14 years later, Trent's masterful re-work of a Joy Division classic still sounds awesome. The so-called "hacking scene", however, is made of fail.

Cascade - Escape

2008-01-14T18:27:00.000-08:00

I'm heads down, writing some goofy applications for a new operating system, V2_OS. Sometime around the turn of the century, I threw a lot of energy into this project to help kickstart it. It's pretty much dead now, and whatever trace remains of my assistance with the project is long gone. I pretty much gave up after it was evident that much more talented coders were interested in helping. I maintained the source code repository for a while until they got their own CVS server up and running. Then I pretty much forgot about V2_OS, Joost, and all my buddies on the project.

V2_OS is part of why I left FishNet. It's a very long and complicated story. If you run into me some time, ask me and I'll share it.

A compilation with this track on it was in heavy rotation on my MP3 player while all of this was unfolding.

Notorious B.I.G. - Mo' Money Mo' Problems

2007-11-16T06:25:00.001-08:00

This track was a serious chart-topper back in the summer of '97. As such, it was the song that was playing when I first hopped into my 1995 Escort when I turned the stereo on during the test drive before buying it. While I'm certainly not a huge fan of Hip-Hop, Rap, R&B or urban music in general, there are a few tracks in the genre that I genuinely enjoy because they're just fun to listen to. This is one of them, and it reminds me of all the good times I had with that car. It went to a good home back in May of 2007 when I sold it to a friend of mine, about 10 years after I bought it.

Green Day - Basket Case

2007-11-11T12:04:00.000-08:00

In high school, my friend Mike and I would sit around before school in the cafeteria. Only a masochist or a nerd would show up EARLY to school, right? I'll leave it to you to figure out which one of those categories I fell into. I often rode my bike to school - about a 7 mile ride each way. If I hammered it, I could get there pretty quick. When I'd drive, I'd get there early just for the parking.

It was our time. That's the real reason. We'd brainstorm, play games, talk, whatever. We got on this kick of selling the service of installing programs onto Texas Instruments and Casio graphing calculators. These could be anything from programs to look like you erased your calculator's memory (so that you could convince the teacher that you didn't have any cheat notes typed in) to algebra solvers, to silly games for your calculator. One of the programs we found would allow you to store and play music via your calculator. Basket Case. That's what we copied, in uber-low-one-bit quality to his calculator. It was awesome.

So yes, this reminds me of geeking out with graphing calculators before school. Pretty sad, isn't it?

Orbital - Otono

2007-11-09T07:47:00.000-08:00

Sitting at a CTF table at DefCon 9 with my old NEC Versa 4050. Hacking away, and listening to Orbital's Middle Of Nowhere album at the same time. That laptop still works well, but the CD-ROM drive died many years ago. It obviously still worked fine back in 2000 if I was playing music through it.

Deep Blue Something - Breakfast at Tiffany's

2007-11-06T05:49:00.000-08:00

This track hit the airwaves in 1996 or so. It reminds me of working at CompUSA as a lowly cashier (my first job), of trying to come out of my shell of shyness, and of my attempt to socialize in real life with so many other BBS addicts that were much like myself, trying to find some real life friends. A lot of other stuff happened in 1996, but that's probably tied to another song, somewhere...

Binary Finary - 1999

2007-11-06T05:43:00.000-08:00

This was one of my favorite tracks right toward the end of the 20th century. During this time, probably my greatest hobby was that of making unsavory and rather hackish modifications to cars. Most of these were performance enhancements, like using various hoses and ducts to provide ram air intake and increased brake cooling at high speeds. Namely, this was my 1995 Escort and my friend/co-worker James' Probe and Firebird. Although, there were quite a few electronics/lighting and other aesthetic modifications done during this time period.

Some of my ideas failed miserably. Others worked out very, very well. I look back now, and ask "What was the point again?!"

Ian Van Dahl - Castles In The Sky

2007-10-25T09:42:00.000-07:00

For some reason, I can't escape thinking about spending a few hours per Saturday for over a month straight wrenching on my old '95 Ford Escort when this song plays. I'd recently put a new engine in it, and shortly thereafter, the clutch started acting up, thanks in part to some abuse by someone I'd lent my car out to. The person who was driving it knew how to drive a 5-speed manual car. That wasn't the problem.

Anyhow, 5 weekends, gallons of sweat, quarts of transmission fluid, hundreds of dollars, and many piles of under-car grime later, my car was working fine again with a brand new clutch that I can gladly say I had replaced all by myself.

I chose to listen to this song today as I recalled this past weekend, when I found myself under that same car again, going through the same motions, and replacing that clutch that I installed myself one final time for the friend who I sold the car to.

Real McCoy - Run Away

2007-08-27T06:51:00.000-07:00

This song hit it big on the airwaves in 1995. I recorded it off the radio (remember when THAT was how we acquired the music we liked illegally?) and I took the tape that contained this song and plenty of other 1995-esque hits on a camping trip with my family. I can't remember where we were camping. It may have been Pomme DeTerre. I just remember rocking out to this song in my little tent with my big clunky mid-90's headphones on.

T.A.T.U. - All The Things She Said

2007-08-24T21:43:00.000-07:00

When this song hit the airwaves my main passion was locksmithing. Specifically, messing with electronic combination locks meant for ATMs and floor vaults. This song brings back memories of me sitting in the kitchen of my old apartment with cables, keypads, spindles, housings and batteries strewn about. A screwdriver, soldering iron, a logic probe and a multi-tester are nearby. The smell and sound of sizzling soldering tip cleaner fills the air.

Gin Blossoms- Hey Jealousy

2007-08-24T08:56:00.000-07:00

This song reminds me of my 11th grade English class. One day, one of the students wore a Gin Blossoms t-shirt to class and this song got stuck in my head while I was writing an essay. The class was taught by my Aunt Kathy. Technically, she was my first-cousin once removed -- the daughter of my grandmother's sister and parent to some of my second cousins. To me, she was just "Aunt Kathy" outside the classroom and "Mrs. Adriance" in the classroom.

Kathy died from complications of breast cancer the summer after I took her English class. :(

Silver Shadow - High Society

2007-08-23T07:28:00.001-07:00

Racing in my first autocross event in my Focus. Simple as that. I'm in the paddocks waiting to take off, wearing a stifling full-face helmet, and I have the Slinky album playing. This is one of the songs I heard while I waited. Why this doesn't conjure up some other memory, I have no clue. I've heard the track hundreds of times.

Paul van Dyk - Vega

2007-08-23T07:11:00.000-07:00

I have several versions of this song, but I'm talking about the one found on D:Fuse's People compilation/mix album. This song was being pumped over the speakers while my friend Chris and I installed a 75-shot Nitrous Express kit on his Focus, and that's what it reminds me of. The smell of fuel, the feel of teflon tape, installing all kinds of safety sensors and switches, running braided lines and wires all over the place. Those were some good times. And boy, did his car haul ass when we were done!

Cranberries - Twenty One

2007-08-22T21:04:00.000-07:00

The bus ride to IMPACT, a church leadership conference thinly disguised as a snow skiing trip. I was going to be away from everything I liked except for my best friend at the time, Ryan, who was there with me. This song brings back the whole bus ride to Colorado to memory. Quite a few interesting turning points in my life happened on the trip. Some good, some bad, and some neutral.

The Verve - Bittersweet Symphony

2007-08-22T20:55:00.000-07:00

I forget the reason, but I had to take my dad to work at 5:00AM one morning so that I could use his Altima to get around. It was a chilly spring morning. What sticks in my mind is hearing this song on the radio as I drove towards JCCC where I was both working and taking classes, but the whole day gets brought back to my memory when I hear this song.

I was taking photography, small-engine repair, technical writing, and a few other classes. After my dad got out of the passenger seat, I reached into the back and grabbed the rugged-yet-tattered camera case, bringing it to the front seat to keep me company. The rest of the day was totally mundane. In fact, being awake at 4:00AM and using my dad's car were the only thing out of the ordinary.

Frankie Bones - All The Way Home

2007-08-22T11:56:00.000-07:00

I'm tossing a rather expensive 42,000 RPM electric motor into an LXX Char-G chassis that will get a snazzy-looking Nissan Skyline GT-R R34 replica shell over it when I'm done. And boy, will it be fast. At least 10 miles per hour in real life.

Congrats! You've got more than $50 invested in an illegally imported radio control car that can go 10 miles per hour, and you think it's fast!

What the hell was I thinking?!

I was on a brief, expensive kick of modifying the hell out of stupid little radio controlled cars such as Zip-Zaps and Bit Char-Gs. They were smaller than matchbox cars, and -- once modified, pretty fast considering their size. If memory serves me correctly, this was in late 2002.

This song is off of a demo mix CD for Sonic Groove, a (now defunct) record label and vinyl shop in New York started by electronic music guru-brothers Adam X and Frankie Bones with Heather Heart as co-owner.

Dave Matthews Band - Crash

2007-08-21T17:35:00.000-07:00

This song reminds me about my first car in general and many of the bizarre adventures I had with it. It was a metallic red -- almost maroon -- 1981 Honda Accord. Very much like the first one on this page.

Why does this song conjure up memories of a car that's darn near as old as I am? I have no idea. Maybe it's because I both acquired it and abandoned it as the end result of a crash.

It was originally my grandmother's car, and I rode from my childhood home in Columbus, NE to Leawood, KS several times in it when my grandma would come to pick me up for a long weekend in "Kansas" which seemed like forever away. My parents acquired it on Christmas of 1990 when my Grandmother replaced this car with the 1991 Accord that she still drives to this very day.

My dad totalled it, and after having it fixed, passed it on to me when I was 16 in 1995. I kept it until 1998 when -- after being run off the highway by a semi -- I traded it in on my 1995 Escort. For those few years I had it, it was a great car.

I still miss it.

Hybrid - If I Survive

2007-08-21T17:25:00.001-07:00

I'd just packed my proverbial bags at a local information security company, setting foot outside their door for what was sure to be the last time. Sick and tired of their goofy games, their crappy compensation, their politics, and their incessant prying into my personal life, I resigned my position effective immediately. With that, I gathered up the few books and the coffeemaker I kept in my office. I placed my belongings into a printer paper box and stepped out onto the crispy freak snow that was hiding under a thin layer of ice on that cold March evening. One of the many mix CDs I had made was in the CD player of my car. I found this track and blasted it as I drove to my other job... my only job.

To me, this song is one of freedom that transcends hardship and angst.

Blues Traveler - Hook

2007-08-16T21:25:00.000-07:00

I had this song stuck in my head riding my green mountain bike to school one morning. This song will forever bring back the memories of my occasional riding to high school.

It was 16 miles round trip. I'd usually ride around the country block (4 miles) once more on the way home to round it up to 20.

Laurent Wolf - Happy TV

2007-08-16T21:15:00.000-07:00

Coming back from a pizza delivery in my Escort, driving down 101st street out by Falcon Ridge, plotting to take over the world. This song was blasting as I did this.

I'd left Kozoru recently and had retreated back to pizza delivery a few nights per week while I was technically on a self-inflicted month-long vacation from real work while I try to figure out what I'm going to do with my life. I like driving when it's not on the highway in rush hour, and delivering pizza not only made pretty good cash for part time work, but it gave me loads of time to think. My plan to take over the world was not quite as such, but I was working on a business plan to launch my own company. I came up with a lot of good ideas while driving.

I still have a 3" ring binder full of marketing ideas, my business plan, and all that jazz. Maybe someday I'll actually go for it.

DJ Eyal - Dreamcatcher

2007-08-16T11:57:00.000-07:00

Zipping northbound on I-35 on my way to work on some random July morning in 2000. It's about 9:30 AM, and I'm driving from one job (JCCC) to the next (FishNet Security). I'm going way, way over the speed limit. Triple digits, likely. I'm not running late, I'm just having a great time enjoying my relatively new car on a highway that's almost completely empty.

Eiffel 65 - Europop

2007-08-16T10:06:00.000-07:00

Sitting in my room (the entire basement of my parents place, basically) building and programming the robot to end all robots (or not) out of Lego Mindstorms and the NQC language.

The end result, some 2 days later would be a tread-propelled device that would erase the program memory and reboot any other Lego Mindstorms RCX via the infrared programming interface. Barring that, it would attempt to forcefully knock over whatever is in its way. It could tell when it ran into something. It would then back up a bit, ram whatever it hit, then back up and turn a random number of degrees then proceed forward. It could not sense the difference between the arena wall or its opponent, but with any luck, it wouldn't need to. I christened it "Dain Bramage" for good reason.

This was being built in response to a friend of mine who wanted to have a "BattleBots" style challenge, where the robots had to operate in an arena made from a cheap kid's wading pool. First robot to get disabled or stuck loses the match. The great thing is there is no outside control. Our robots had to detect and disable the other robot autonomously.

For what it's worth, his robot was built to shuffle about and flip over its opponent. Had it flipped mine over, I would have lost. As it went, his bot lasted less than 30 seconds before it beeped twice and stopped running. Mission accomplished.

Nine Inch Nails - A Warm Place

2007-08-15T21:37:00.000-07:00

I'm carrying the limp remains of my dog, Bingo, out to the back yard after having to put him down. His bad teeth got so bad that he couldn't even eat wet food. His hip problems had gotten so bad that he couldn't stand on his own, and he was no longer enjoying his time here on earth. This was the toughest decision I have ever had to make, and my father and I made it together. This song is a moving, somber and powerful instrumental ballad. It is Bingo's anthem.

Crash Test Dummies - Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm

2007-08-15T21:34:00.000-07:00

I'm printing contact photo proofs from the film I just developed in the makeshift darkroom at my grandparents' house. This is another home-school era memory/song combination. I was humming this song, perhaps even singing it to myself as I waited for the seconds to tick by on the timer for the contact proofs.

Ace of Base - The Sign

2007-08-15T21:28:00.000-07:00

I was doing home-school Algebra in 1993, sitting at the round, hammered-glass topped kitchen table at my grandparents' place. It was a little before lunch time, and I was anxious to get through my studies so that I could go work with my grandfather in the shop. While I wasn't listening to this song at the moment, it was stuck in my head all day long that day.

Memories and Random Tunage (Intro)

2007-08-15T21:18:00.000-07:00

I love music. I listen to music whenever I can. I hum or sing along. Sometimes, I play along with music on my keyboards or bass guitar. I also try (and usually fail) to create music on occasion.

My mind ties memories to songs, and vice versa. I'll hear a tune and it'll stir up a memory. It's the same memory every time I hear it, too. Sometimes, I'll be thinking about my past, and a memory will get a song stuck in my head.

Sometimes it's because I was listening to a song when something happened, or maybe I was humming the tune to myself. Sometimes, a song will bring back not a specific time in history, but a memory of a time in my life, or a memory of doing something mundane that I've done a hundred times or more.

So, here's the game. Whenever I think of a song/memory combination, I'll post it. Simple as that. Comment on it. Point and laugh. Do whatever.