the media and musings of jOE dEVINE

Ok, so if you’re reading this you’ve probably seen my rant about facebook from earlier this year.

Funnily, I seem to have leveled off for a while now at about 520 friends or so.  Today I logged in to check a message from a friend of mine (someone I actually see from time to time) and I noticed my friend count had dipped below 520.

What!   Only 519 friends?  Jeez…

I had this strange feeling come over me…I really wanted to know who it was.  I dunno why.

But guess what?  I thought about it for a minute and came to the conclusion that it had to be only one of two kinds of people.

1. A “friend” from a previous employer who no longer needs me as a reference, and couldn’t care less about my Parker Anne videos; or
2. An ex-girlfriend, probably one that I added (as opposed to the other way around), with whom I really didn’t have any status at all but was merely curious to see how her life was unfolding.

I thought about it, and realized I had whacked all the people in category one a long time ago, and so it must be category two.  Sure enough, I became “friends” with an ex (though we never exchanged any pleasantries since befriending) last month.  So…I searched through my friends, and she was gone!

FINALLY.  Facebook is starting to become real, at least in this case.  And you know what?  I APPLAUD her (she is still on facebook, just not friends with me) for actually thinking “You know, is there REALLY any reason I should be friends with this guy?”  And the answer, at least in her case, turns out to be “no.”  Way to go girl!

I mean, who wants to be friends with someone who’s so concerned with their friend count, anyway?

I love it.

Make the Enexity crew dull..and slow.

So, we played a little golf a couple months ago.

At least we remembered to take one pic.  Here it is.

From left - Joe, Scott, Jeff, Roland, Gene, Brad, Justin and Dave.  What a crew!

The Enexity Boys At The Course!

So I wrote a little chord progression for a song, and my boys Ben Smith and Matt Parmenter decided to make it happen one night.  They just slapped some stuff on top of my riff and this is the result.

I laughed my ass off when I heard this.  No, it’s not PC.  So what?  It was pretty funny considering all they had was the piano track.  I am not sure, but that may be me playing the drums..

Enjoy “Shake for Me” ’cause I know I did.

Shake For Me.mp3

I met Ben Smith and Matt Parmenter, two dudes from out of state that now live in Austin, when  Matt purchased my two Vocal Booth sound isolation booths last month (sorry about the missing parts guys!).  I just didn’t have room for them anywhere.

Now - I am starting to work on music with these guys and I got to tell you it’s a blast.  Both are very talented musicians in their own right, and I’ve been lucky enough to get to remix some of their stuff.

Matt plays bass in a great Austin banned called Quite Company - they also have a myspace page.

Matt and Ben both also play with James Kinney, a local Austin musician.  I am going to see them at Speakeasy on April 30th, time permitting.

This song is fully realized on Ben’s myspace page, but here’s the acoustic version I whipped up last week.  Just Ben and his guitar.  His vocals and songwriting talent really shine on  this one.

missed-connection-acoustic-vocal-2

Man, Ok so Facebook (hereafter f8) is a phenom.  Seems like in the last six months I have 200 new friends.  On f8.  Yeah.

Which I have no issue with.

A girl I dated in eighth grade that I treated badly.

Some dude that cheap-shotted me at a park in high school.

The mom of someone I dated,  whom I can’t remember.

It’s an unprecedented outpouring of connection and community.

But…

Seriously.  When is someone gonna tell it like it is?  I mean, so many people are so concerned with what other people think they never tell the truth.

Tell me you haven’t seen this:

• The “OMG you look exactly the same as you did 20 years ago comment.”  Uh, right.  I’ve gained 60 pounds.  And the girls?  When they say this?  Uh huh.
• The “hmmm…we didn’t really even LIKE each other in high school…but let’s be friends now” request?
• Who the heck are you again?

It’s out of control.

Don’t get me wrong.  I like f8.  But, it’s due for a course correction.  When people stop being nice, and start being real, perhaps unlike now where you have 600 friends you’ll be back to having the same 12 friends you had in high school, plus a few from college and your job.  Which isn’t a bad thing.  Is it?

I made an innocuous comment one day to a girl I hadn’t seen in 15 years.  BLAM-O!  I had to delete it.  She took it the wrong way.

Rather than saying “oh, you  misunderstood what I was saying.”  I just packed up my tent and left.  Because 500 of my friends might see it.

Jeez.   I am nothing if not usually uncensored, but f8 makes me censor myself?  Good thing?  Who knows.  But I am not happy about it.  Not at all.

Start being real.

I don’t think she got paid for this, except maybe in clothes, but my wife pointed out that our daughter Parker Anne is in some fashion photos for a clothing line.  Some of the pics are pretty good (some not so much), but hey, it’s a start.  Of course, I also noticed that it appears these were taken in our back yard!  Hahahaha.  Oh well, you gotta start somewhere.

Here’s a link to an item which she models, in case you don’t know who she is:

http://mylovebugblankets.com/item_270/Queen-on-the-Range-Girls-Custom-Boutique-Peasant-Top-and-Ruffle-Pant.htm

And here are links to other pages where she is featured, now that you know who she is:

dresses

separates

So we were driving back from Arlington to Austin the other day.  At the advice of our friends Doug and Jen, we came home the “back way,” through Glen rose, down 281.  We managed to get a table at the Koffe Kup Restaurant in Hico.   Well, I must say it was a pretty good  burger, but the SIZE of the thing.  Note the look on my daughter’s face when she saw it!

Yum Yum.

Ok, you have to see the burger my Dad just ate. OMG.

I recently shifted my entire development environment for my personal / family business websites to the Mac.  In case you can’t tell, I am a Mac convert.

It took a little digging to figure out how to do all the things that I needed to get everything working.  It’s all out there, but I figured I’d write up a short tutorial on how to do it all.   If nothing else, I can refer to it the next time I need to set all this up.

Here are the main steps to get MAMP (Mac OS X LAMP) setup and running on your Mac.  I will elaborate on each in a subsequent post.

1. Download and install the MAMP environment - don’t get cute with it, install it in the Applications folder like it says.
2. Edit your /Applications/MAMP/conf/httpd.conf file to add your virtual hosts, so you can develop multiple sites on your computer.
3. Edit your /etc/hosts file to define your virtual hosts as well.
4. Install any PEAR modules you may need.
5. Change MAMP to use the default ports (I highly recommend this).
6. Install any MySQL client tools you need to do your development work.

That’s it!  My subsequent posts will explain the details behind each step.

A couple more artifacts from last weekend.  Admittedly, we rushed these so the production value could be better, and we had a couple of noisy spots that couldn’t be helped.  But here they are for your listening pleasure.

Right On Time.mp3

Always.mp3

Justin and I recorded this tune of his at my house last weekend.  I added a little mixin’…

Pretty soon he should have his demo tracks ready to go.  More to come…

I Turned Out For You.mp3