Life can be pretty hectic sometimes. I've definitely been filling my days to the brink. For example, this last weekend I cleaned my house for a gathering of friends to watch the U of A basketball team on Friday( Go cats! ), did a two and a half hour mountain bike ride with Tom( more on this later ), sprayed my weeds, trimmed my trees( after buying shears ), studied Japanese vigorously, prepared my house for my sister and brother-in-law staying here, went to olive garden with them, watched a movie, drove to Tucson, did a 50 mile bike ride with my dad to Biosphere, got a haircut, and came back. Phew! Let me cover some of the things that have happened, as well as covering some of the things from this weekend in more detail:

- Played in a sand volleyball tournament and had a great time. I originally was going to play with Adam Welch, who is an awesome partner, but he was unable to start his car. I showed up to the tournament unsure if he was going to be able to make it, and wound up playing with a guy nick-named Shaggy. I didn't know what to think based on the name, but he was a well known player and is very good. We had a great time playing together and will probably play again in the future. As for placement, I think we were somewhere in the middle( 13th? 11th? I'll have to check the website ).

- Wrote a new song called Can't Be Wrong. It's a really catchy song and I'm excited about recording it. If only I could find more time for music!

- Went on the previously mentioned two and a half hour mountain bike ride with Tom. The two of us ventured into Estrella Mountain National Park, paid the entrance fee, and proceeded to the rodeo grounds. The guy at the entrance, upon seeing that we were serious riders, told us about the competitive track. We acknowledged this, but the competitive track was a ways away, so we decided to chance whatever tracks were around the Rodeo grounds. We started off the ride, and it was fairly flat and uninteresting. The suddenly there were extremely rocky descents that turned quickly. This was followed by extremely steep uphills with loose/sand rock. Needless to say, Tom and I didn't manage to get up a single one of these downhill/uphill pairs all day. They were just too insane. In fact, we had to walk down some of the hills as they were just plain dangerous. These were obviously horse trails. At one point, there was a branch off to a different trail, and I suggested we try it for fun. It wound up being the wost decision of the day. The trail eventually led to a wash. We had to get off our bikes and walk them as the sand was extremely deep, and it was impossible to ride through. Little did we know that there were several MILES of wash that we had to walk through. All the while, we were baking and there were flies galore from the horse manure. The ride turned horrible at this point, and we were lucky to find a hiker who lent us a map. We planned our route home, but it involved plenty more hiking through the wash. Even when we finally got back to a trail that we could ride on, it was littered with loose sand and huge packs of rocks. The riding was very, very difficult and tiring. We eventually got back to the cars, but we were definitely tired. I looked at the day as endurance training. I managed to only get burned a little during this, but this was nothing compared to today...

- I rode 50 miles with my dad in Tucson today. It was a great ride, but the winds turned VICIOUS on the way back. Even going downhill, the winds were so bad that we had to work extremely hard to maintain decent speeds. I was also very tired my mountain bike ride with Tom the day before, so my legs got very weak, very fast. My dad had to constantly slow down for me, which really bummed me out as I couldn't show him that I've actually gotten much stronger. After almost 3 hours of riding, we stopped at starbucks to get some drinks, and a crazy situation ensued. We sat at a table, and my dad had his bottle and helmet on the table. Suddenly a gust of wind flipped the helmet and half full bottle off the table. We were seriously surprised by this, and no sooner had we recovered the items, that gust of wind came at us so hard that it knocked my dad's bike over( thank goodness it wasn't hurt ). I immediately rushed over to my bike to prevent a similar occurrence. Right at that moment, a gust of wind blew so hard that it flung the umbrella covering the table into the street. The crazy part is that the umbrella was held down by a metal base that had to have weighed around 60 pounds. The umbrella and base barely missed hitting a car. The starbuck's employees rushed out, amazed at what just happened. I'm just glad my dad and I weren't sitting on the other side of the table... Other than being exhausted when we got back, I found out that I had gotten burnt pretty badly. My face, legs, and arms are now red all over. I hadn't planned for a 3 hour ride, but I won't make this mistake again.

- Resident Evil 5 came out. This game has co-op and it is so much fun to play with a friend. John( my neighbor) and I have been playing it whenever we get a chance, and it's been a ball.

So as you can see, some fun stuff has happened. The next few weeks and weekends will be full as well( table tennis tournament, volleyball tournament in Colorado, indoor volleyball tournament, etc ). Wish me luck!

It's been a long time since I last posted. A lot of things have happened since the last post, so I'll try to summarize them:

- I've ridden several hundred miles more on my new bike. I've posted pictures of the beauty at the bottom of the post. I feel like I'm getting a lot stronger, and I'm hoping at some point that I'll be able to keep up with my dad. He is a monster though, so I really need to work hard to get as tough as him As part of the training to get stronger, I bought an axiom trainer for my bike. It's pretty incredible, as it lets you ride through courses that were filmed in other countries, and it changes the resistance based upon what is actually happening in the video. It makes riding so much more interesting.

- I competed in several indoor mens 6's tournaments and one coed double sand volleyball tournament. Of the mens 6's tournament, the only one worth mentioning is the 4th place finish out of 9 teams when we played in the Desert Thunder tournament, which was composed almost entirely of college club teams. The coed tournament was a blast, but we lost in the tournament pretty early on.

- I've upgraded my music studio with several things. The first, and most important thing to me, is a new taylor 914ce acoustic guitar. It's such a beauty, and the sound that comes out of it is incredible. I finally have an acoustic guitar that i can plug into an amp, and it sounds great. Dave Matthews owns two 914ce's, so you know its a great guitar if the big artists are using it. I also picked up a new midi keyboard to place underneath my monitors, so that I can work much faster with midi. Additionally, I upgraded my computer components. I switched from an AMD x2 3800+ with 2 gb of ddr2 400 RAM to an Intel Core 7 with 6gb of ram in Vista 64. The new setup seems to be about 10x faster( tasks that were taking 20 seconds took 2 ), and it makes working SOOO much better. I can now record at 2ms latency, making it possible to play drums with tracks using the keyboard without any lag. I can also load up projects, use tons of plugins, and perform intensive processing without ever seeing slowdown. I can't say enough about how awesome it is. To complement the computer, I also upgraded to Sonar 8 which has some awesome new features, and speed upgrades. There are pictures of the additions to my studio below.

- I competed in my first table tennis tournament( outside of the work sponsored one which doesn't count). As I was unrated when I entered the tournament, they have a policy where you aren't able to play past pool play, but they use your matches in pool play to rank you for future tournaments. I managed to win all 4 or 5 of my matches, which should give me a decent ranking to start. I'm set to get my official ranking tomorrow, so here's hoping... On a side note, I'm entering another tournament on March 27-28th. Here's hoping that I do well, as I'll be competing with much tougher competition!

- I went mountain biking riding with friends from work. I found out that there are some awesome trails up here in Goodyear. We went out to Fantasy Island North, and rode for several hours. I accidentally took my friends on the hardest difficult trail(it went up and up forever before descending on a small path down the side of the hill), which was ripe with opportunity for injury, but we all managed to make it out okay( except I think one of my friends was about to pass out due to not being conditioned for such extreme exercise ). I'm going out again on Saturday, but I think we will skip the insane trail this time!

Well that's all that comes to mind at the moment. Now it's picture time! Hopefully I will post more frequently from now.

It's Christmas time! A great excuse for everyone to get together with their family and to spend way too much money on presents. I personally really needed a vacation from work. I worked so much overtime that I worked 3 weeks in 2. Needless to say, I've been really looking forward to Christmas. This year, I've treated myself to some big presents. The first one is a new road bike. I had originally planned on getting a pretty decent bike in the 1500 dollar price range, but things rarely go the way you plan. The story kind of goes like this:

My dad and I went to the Oro Valley bike shop to check out what was available. There were a couple of nice bikes that my dad recommended( he is pretty serious about riding, so I trust his advice ). The first was a roubaix for 1600 that seemed really nice. It was sporting the entry level components from Shimano, which my Dad seemed tentative about. I took it out for a test ride to see how it felt. Having only really done mountain biking, it was a treat to be able to instantly start cruising over 20 miles an hour, and climb hills almost effortlessly. After riding for about 10 minutes, I came back to the shop and tried out the other bike - a tarmac also at 1600. I tried it, and it was a little more aggressive, but not terribly different. I thought the roubaix was a more comfortable ride. I was trying to decide what to do, when I looked over to see my Dad checking out an insane deal. They had a top of the line 2009 S-Works Roubaix that was insanely discounted. It had top of the line components all over, and a bike like that normally costs like 7-8 grand. They were selling it for 4500, so he couldn't believe it. I decided to take it for a spin, and could not believe the difference. Applying the same amount of effort as I did with the other bikes, I was able to go twice as fast and maintain the speed easier. I felt like I had so much more control while turning, and the braking speed was phenomenal. Needless to say, I was sold. It was way more than I had planned on spending, but that bike would let me ride forever without needing to upgrade. Too bad I still have to buy random other accessories...

So I now have a really expensive bike, and I'm going to dedicate a lot of energy to becoming a great rider. I love the idea of getting a lot of aerobic exercise, but I dislike running, so this will give me a reason to get outside and exercise frequently. It was an investment in my own health, but my bank account really didn't appreciate it

Other than the bike, I also decided to buy a new ping pong paddle. The one I have is a great paddle, but after doing some research on table tennis websites, I decided I wanted to try out some of the recommendations. I went for the Butterfly Primorac FL, which is a great beginners Offensive blade. I thought about getting a fancy, expensive carbon blade, but getting too fast of a paddle at first can hurt more than it will help. I also ordered sriver rubbers, but they screwed up and put different rubbers on, so now I have to wait to see what they will do to fix the situation. Despite that, I've been training on my robot, and learning a lot about the game. Understanding spins, how to loop, timing, and other mental aspects of the game make up the majority of the challenge in learning. The physical motions are easily imprinted on the brain with constant training, but the mental aspect of the game is far more important. I hope to get some good practice in with my dad over the Christmas break, along with some great bike rides.

Now I'm going to return to hanging out the family - we have a lot planned. Movies, music, and laughter are filling the house, so I'm really happy to be here. I hope everyone else is having a great time with their family as well, but it seems more like the exception than the norm.

Merry Christmas!

Wow, am I beat. You wouldn't think ping pong would be that much of a workout, but once you start taking it seriously, you do a LOT of running around and you have to swing hard repeatedly. I'm gonna have to start calling it Table Tennis now

As for the tournament, it was a great learning experience. They had a gym set up with about 12-14 tables, and three different divisions - beginners, intermediate, and advanced. There was nothing beginners about the beginners bracket though - there were at least like 5 people that should have been intermediate. I love competition though, so I started off the day playing a guy who was so-so. I trounced on him 11-2, 11-1, 11-2 ( best out of 5 games ). I wasn't very nice, but I needed to practice for the big games The sucky thing about my pool of 5 was that 2 of the best (if not the best) players in the beginners pool (there were 20 players in in total), were stuck with me. Only 2 people advanced past the beginning round robin though, meaning the only way I could play for a trophy was to beat at least one of the two really good people. Well my second match was against a guy named Rex from Intel who surprised the hell out of me. I started hitting really hard, and he would just rally back and forth with me. I managed to win the first game, but the second game was a heartbreak. I was up 9-8, and let him win 11-9. I then proceeded to lose games 3 and 4. That meant I had to beat some guy who was decent, and Ophelia to advance... I played the next guy after sitting for two matches, and although it was a fun match up (he was great at pulling out these hitting rallies with me), I managed to get the best of him. That meant I was 2-1. All I had to do was beat Ophelia...

Ophelia is an older women (she looked 40-50, but in reality she is 60), but she was no slouch. She's had coaching, and she bought a robot (a machine that fires balls at you for practice with whatever spin you want it to). She actually won the beginner's tournament last year. Well I knew I had to take her seriously, so right off the bat, I hit really hard at her. I managed to shake her up and take game 1. We then switched games back and forth - she won game 2, but I took control and won game 3. She then came back and crushed me in 4. It all came down to game 5. I was hopeful, but a little shakey for some reason (I got sick two days before the tournament - it just figures). She immediately took advantage of me sucking, and went up like 5-0. After that, I couldn't come back. I learned a lot from the tournament though, and considering I've only been taking table tennis seriously for like 2 months, I'd say I've come a long way. I'll have to get a video some time so people actually know what I mean Before I left the gym, I played my boss in a game. It's always weird playing your boss, because even though it's outside work, it feels weird to beat someone that has influence on your career. Needless to say, I did beat him... I wonder what other people would do in that situation. It would be a fun survey to see who sucks up and who doesn't care

In other news, my house is great, my job is busy, and with playing ping pong every day at work, volleyball, and random other stuff (I'm gonna start playing tennis with my friend from work, and I'm learning Japanese), I really haven't had time for much else. I watch movies here and there, and an occasional show, but I haven't been able to record music hardly at all. That really bums me out...

You might have been like, wait, what? You are learning Japanese? Yes, that's right! Hai! I'm going to Japan next summer with a few friends from work, so I'm going to learn as much of the language as I can before then. I'm really studying hard, and advancing pretty quickly. I can say things like, otearai wa doko desu ka? (Where is the bathroom?) watashi wa tabemasu ( I will eat ), etc, etc. I'm also learning to read and write, which is WAY more difficult than just speaking. I haven't even tried Kanji yet, and Hiragana has like 46 symbols, and Katakana has another 46. Kanji has thousands. Needless to say, I have my work cut out for me to even get the basics down for reading/writing.

Tomorrow I get to see my parents, and play tennis with my Dad. Should be loads of fun. Plus I get to see a Jason Mraz concert in the evening. He is my favorite artist by far. I can't wait!

Lately I've been playing a lot of ping pong. I have to say, I'm loving it. I used to play a lot during college, but I wasn't exposed to a diverse group of playing styles. I mainly played against my roommate Chris, which was a blast, but I stopped getting better at a certain point. Well I'm playing every day at work for an hour against some of the best ping pong players I've played against. They've been kicking my butt for weeks (we usually play doubles, so I at least got some help), but I've been getting better and better. I get a lot of helpful hints, but most of what I've learned comes from watching them. It is so much fun to play against people better than yourself, as you constantly grow in order to be competitive. I'm at the point now where we have really close games, and I'm hoping soon to be able to beat them consistently.

As part of this new ping pong craze, I'm entering a ping pong tournament in November that is between all of the tech companies (Intel, Honeywell, Lockheed, etc ). I'm playing in the beginner's bracket, but almost everyone who goes has experience, and a great deal play competitively in clubs and competitions, so the beginner's bracket is full of very skilled players (so I hear from the guys who go to it every year). I'm hoping to keep getting better so that I will be ready for the tournament. I really hope I do well...

Outside of playing, I also watched the movie Ping Pong, which is subtitled, but very entertaining. It actually had some really great ping pong matches that were very realistic. I actually learned a few things from watching the movie. I've also gone back and watched the olympic matches at nbcolympics.com. If you are feeling bored, check out some of the ping pong matches. They are INSANE.

In other news, I've been watching a lot of House lately. I got my neighbor John hooked, so we watch it all the time now. It's one hell of a show. I can't get enough of it. I've got John working out with me now in the Zubersoft gym, so watching House while we lift weights is a great excuse to keep him going on the workout plan If I ever get some free time (maybe this weekend I hope), I really want to get some stuff done with my music. Fix my old songs, start recording new ones etc. There is just too much I want to do... what's new though right?