The 2003 Salvo Volleyball Bowl-a-thon website is now live. I’d like to thank all of those who decide to donate to my cause. I’m hoping to close out this season with a bang!

I’m just curious if online music is ever going to work. I’m sure that people were saying that when CD’s first came to market too. I was an early adopter of MyMP3.com when you could load a CD into your drive and “Beam it” to them to prove that you owned it. Then they would unlock it for you, and let you play it from anywhere. Now you’ve got services like Rhapsody and Pressplay that are testing out similar subscription services.

I think my problem with them is not their offering, it’s the state of current music devices. For someone to feel like they “own” music right now, you’ve got to physically have it on one of many different harddrives in your digital music life. I’ve got one at work, one at home, one on my MP3 player.Then I still have my car CD changer, and my home stereo components that aren’t hard drive based. I’ll get used to paying 99 cents per song when I get to the point where I can have it in my own online harddrive, that isn’t owned by any particular music service, it is owned outright by me. It is my physical hardware that is broadcasting my music collection to me only, to any of the devices in my privately purchased world. The music quality can’t be like today’s “streaming” sound either (unless it is today’s broadband variety which sounds pretty good). Anyone have a better idea?

In my quest to have a completely redundant home computer, and actually surpass my PC with a far cooler Mac, I added another component to my G4 that I got from my dead dot com. I added these bitchin’ speakers. They sound incredible! $99, and worth every penny of my Christmas money. Now I can actually hear the sound in my iMovies, and I’m going to move exclusively to iTunes from my WinAmp PC crap.

It’s just too bad Michael Jackson is such a freak. He really is talented, and his early 80’s music is my favorite. Especially when I hear it play on the radio of my “Banshee” in GTA Vice City. But, I am so over his plastic face, and his reculusive lifestyle. For a guy that sings (sang) pop-music, he is awfully alternative.

Our poor (well not really, more like well-to-do) Youth Group kids. I swear, kids have more problems growing up in a well-off area than some in poorer neighborhoods. Parents are medicating their kids, and putting them into mental institutions for no reason. I’m extremely disturbed. I don’t remember high school causing the kind of serious problems that I hear around here – depression, suicidal tendencies, anxiety attacks. I really think that there ought to be some more formal training for being a parent. Since there are no longer tribes, nor extended families living near each other, people really don’t know how to raise their kids. Kids really need to talk about what’s going on, and the last thing they need is to have some pills shoved in their face, or to be shipped off to a mental health clinic. This has got to be the best way of starting kids on chemical dependencies and a life long counseling program. I hope that Tricia and I can raise Mason without these crutches.

That’s what you get when you drive to Palos Heights from Aurora after getting up at 5:30am only to find that one of the players on your volleyball team decided not to show up. There goes the tournament fees, there goes my Sunday. I haven’t had this happen to me since high school. Grown men can really suck.

I’m so very full of chili from our groovy SuperBowl Party. It was definitely the Grand Opening of our basement. Hard as we worked to make it all nice down there, everyone still congregated in our kitchen. There is an amazing gravitational pull in the kitchen of of our house. Next time we are going to install a tractor beam in the basement to offset the kitchen. Hindsight is 20/20.

What a Christmas. We went to ye olde Rochester, NY for classic family yuletide cheer. And of course we brought the boy (Mason) along. Let me just say that his family loves him! Toys, Toys, Toys! and he’s only one year old. It was momentous that we could turn his car seat around toward the front.

Other random thoughts… I bought $25 brand new boots to leave at home, Tricia bought $16 retro-1975 shoes to bring back to Chicago. My cousin Jason cut his long hair, my sister Lindsey grew out her semi-short hair. Full-size beds are much smaller than King-size beds, playpens from the mid 80’s are much larger than playpens from the 00’s. Babies like boxes and wrapping paper more than toys, Daddies like toys more than boxes and wrapping paper.

I got Grand Theft Auto Vice City for Christmas. It has to be the best game in the world. I know what I’m doing on New Years.

My little 11 month old is so bright. He’s learning to IM me. For those that understand baby imbabble, that means I love you Daddy.

What do you do when you just don’t want to go to church on Sunday? Have it come to you! Father Matt came over last night and said mass in our basement to 2 Quest Groups. 30 kids and a priest in our basement. How holy of me…or strange. I guess it makes up for sitting in front of the couch all day watching football.