Well, my week of vacation is over. As is usually the case, I didn't get nearly as much done as I had hoped. I had planned on recording several songs (including some covers), and possibly arranging instrumental only pieces. Instead, I'm not even completely done with 1 song. In my defense, the song has a full arrangement, and I had to spend a good number of hours studying drumming, and learning to drum well on my keyboard. Hopefully I'll finish up the song and have it out soon. I also wanted to practice guitar using some of the guitar books I have, but I didn't wind up doing that at all. At the volleyball tournament yesterday, I had a good time, but we wound up losing very early on. I also planned on doing some programming, and while I did get quite a lot accomplished there, it still wasn't as much as I would have liked.

One thing I did do, is fully complete the Japan Trip Articles. If you go to http://www.zubersoft.com/Japan09, you can read all about the trip. It's nice to have some context while looking at the pictures. Also, this is a way for me to document the trip for myself so I never forget about it.

I watched several good movies over the break, and I have Braveheart on blu-ray waiting for me. I truly love that movie, and it will be even better in hi-def. Well, it's back to normal living now. Until next time!

Man, the last week has been pretty busy for me. Last weekend, I spent most of Saturday playing in a Table Tennis Tournament, and part of Sunday morning. I entered three divisions, the U-1200, U-1300 and U-1400 (those stand for under 1200 and so on, and your ranking has to be below those to enter). I didn't really have my sights set on winning, but I was extremely surprised to wind up with two gold medals in the U-1300 and U-1400, and a silver in the U-1200. It was a really great time, and I feel like I'm advancing pretty quickly. My parents stopped by on Saturday to watch part of the tournament, and managed to get some of the U-1200 on video. My Dad was kind enough to put together a highlights reel with some music (thanks Dad!), so here is the video, in all its glory:

This last three days were crazy as well. On Friday, I saw Transformers 2, got my car serviced, got new tires, had a repairman out for my fridge, cleaned my house, and worked on some of my songs (phew!). Transformers 2 was better than I thought it was going to be. I thoroughly enjoyed it, although they went a little overboard with the slow-motion boobs-jiggling-as-she-runs shots. On Saturday, I headed up to Flagstaff and played in a really fun reverse coed grass 4's volleyball tournament. We had a really strong team, so we managed to get 1st, and I walked away with a 26 piece grill set. It was around 80F in Flagstaff, and extremely beautiful as usual. I wound up staying Saturday, and going to a barbecue with all of the players. There was tons of food, and we had a great fire blazing. We spent all night drinking, talking, and laughing. Sunday (today), I've just been recovering and trying to prepare for Wednesday, when I leave for L.A. for Anime Expo. Too much fun!

I worked extremely hard this weekend, and managed to finish another song: Midnight Elegy. I wrote it randomly one night around midnight (how convenient...) when I was in a sort of tired/chilled out mood. It has a wistful feel to it. I'm interested to see what people think. I also finished the lyrics to a couple other songs that I think could be extremely good. I can't wait for another free weekend!

In other news, I played in the 42 in 42 benefit volleyball tournament yesterday and it was a blast. After I get my hands on some pictures, I will post them. I managed to get 1st place after a close final match. The main purpose of the tournament was to raise money for a charity, and we gathered several hundred dollars for the Special Olympics. Not too shabby!

I also wanted to mention that I've put up links to download my songs as mp3's in case people have the desire to get them. Check it out on the music page.

This weekend was a pretty crazy one for me. A couple of weeks back, I was asked to play in a reverse coed volleyball tournament in Durango, CO on April 11th. Reverse coed tournaments are a little different than most, as the net is at woman's height (about 8 inches lower than men I believe), but only the women are allowed to hit at the net. The men must hit from behind the 10 foot line, so it definitely changes the dynamics of the game. I, having a pretty decent vertical around 40 inches, usually fare pretty well in reverse coed events as they rely on jumping ability quite a lot. I had assumed that it was an outdoor 4's tournament though, as that is the only environment in which I played, but I was way off. It was actually reverse coed indoor six person tournament, which has different rules of its own.

Anyways, I found out that there were a couple of concerning details about how we were getting there - namely that we had to start our drive at 1:30 AM for an 8:30 tournament. I was reassured that I would get to sleep in the back of the car though, so I thought I might be ok to play given that fact. When I arrived at my teammates house, and prepared to pack our stuff up, I discovered that the car we were taking was TINY (this detail hadn't been described beforehand though). The car was a 2-door Celica with rear seats that must have been made to fit cats or small dogs, because it sure as hell wasn't made for a normal sized human. For the whole drive, I was cramped in several weird positions, unable to move more than an inch, and unable to sit up straight due to my head hitting the ceiling. Needless to say, I got very little sleep. To top things off, we started the drive out in the rain, which quickly turned to snow. I was definitely worried about the drive, but my friend handled the weather well. We wound up arriving in Durango a little late, but everything worked out.

Durango is a pretty little town, but still cold in April. I'll have to post a few of the pictures I took (I definitely didn't take enough though!). We played in a pretty nice gym with about 5 other teams. The best part about the tournament was getting to play with and against some very talented and beautiful women. I'll definitely sign up to play again next year! As far as the tournament itself, our team was able to take 1st. After the tournament, we stayed at the house of a player who is a friend with my teammate. There was a fun after party with plenty of beer pong, and I got to meet a lot of really great people. Halfway through the night, we went and saw a dance show being conducted by college students. When we first arrived, we were unsure what we were getting into, and the first act we saw was pretty horrible. We were all getting really worried, but the acts kept getting better and better, and we saw some pretty cool hip-hop routines. Afterward, the party continued at the house well into the night...

Anyways, as you can imagine, I'm pretty tired and my head is a little messed up from the lack of sleep and exhaustion. Luckily, I have a week to recover for my next indoor volleyball tournament.

As far as music goes, I was able to record some guitar for a few songs, but I haven't had time to record a full acoustic version to post. I did repost a better version of Plans for Two though, so at least people can hear that.

On a side topic, I've started listening to a Japanese band called Home Made Kazoku. These guys have such a great style, and I haven't found a song I've disliked yet by them. Here is a sample of their music:

Here's hoping I can post some more music soon!

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.