Off To See RENT

What's up everybody, Chris here just killing time before I hit the road to go down to St. Louis. I'm going down to see the musical RENT at the Fox Theater. I'm actually pretty stoked because the cast is made up of two of the original members from the Broadway show. What's funny is that anybody who knew me from my Northwest days will see this as pretty out of the ordinary. Mainly due to the fact that I used to just despise musicals and all the "fine arts" performances that I attended. People would say that I'm just not cultured and stuff. In a sense, I don't think it was that I was not cultured, but more of the fact that I had a very naive view of music in general. If it wasn't heavy and rock, I wouldn't bother.

A lot of time has since passed, and my musical tastes are open beyond belief. I'm still leaving room for country, that's the only genre of music I can't really just sit down and listen to except for Garth Brooks. All other genres of music though I can find a liking to. I remember many days going to work and listening to the RENT and WICKED soundtracks on my iPod. I think my ear just matured. I listen to so much music all the time that if you don't cross over to others genres, then you just get bored.

So that's the event I'm really looking forward to tonight. Sadly I could not find many others who were as enthusiastic about going to see it. Kimberlie would have gone for sure but she's working. My sister and mom both offered to go which is always cool of them. I know Casey(my sister) used to enjoy musicals and may still. I believe she had other engagements to attend though, which is all good.

In all honesty, I may have missed going to this one because I'm mostly going to use it as an event for my sophomore portfolio class at SCCC. Don't get me wrong though, I am actually very excited to go do something different, and especially be able to say I saw one of the great musicals. So there are mixed reasons for going tonight, all with good intentions though.

I think you have to kind of dress nice when you go down to the Fox Theater, so I think a button up shirt has my name on it. The only thing that is ruining this experience is the fact that I have to kind of keep track of different things for this paper I have to write. I don't think I'll get to fully enjoy the whole show. I also have to work at 5am Monday morning. That makes the show getting over at like 10:30pm more fun as it slims my amount of sleep, it's cool though.

So that is my gig going on tonight. I'm going to be Tweeting during the whole thing, so keep an eye on that. Actually, I may hold off to do it before the show, intermission and afterwards, I don't want to be disrespectful to the production by having my cell phone out. Not really cool ya know.

So I hope everybody enjoys their Sunday evening, and I'll post again soon.

Chris

Job Search

So I was informed last week that my work schedule would be cut down from 5 days a week to 2. This has put me in the necessary situation where I needto find a new job. I have some ideas thanks to Emily at work and Brother. I am going to apply with the radio station KFNS which is also known as 550 The Fan. I am applying with their sales departmemt. So that is some sucky news on the work front. I guess I can turn it into a positive and look at it as a moving on point.

In other news, I am in the early stages of developing a tech show online. Tom, a buddy I've known since high school is going to be cohosting with me. For the record, Tom and I have also been in a couple bands. Anyway, it's in its very early stages of brainstorming so perhaps tonight I'll seriously sit down and really brainstorm the idea. I have awful work ethic and drive. I need to work on that.

I need to turn myself into one of those people who likes works all day. I am desperately in need of money so I don't know why I don't work harder. Well, I don't do it because I'm lazy end of story. Again though it's just something I need to work on.

There are a few side notes here. First off, I need a new iPhone case. The one I have now kind of sucks and makes typing this blog a little tougher than usual. I also attended the Story of the Year concert on Saturday and it was a blast. I think they just fail to put on a bad show. Every concert is just a bonified rock show.

Well that is all for now I am going to update this at the very least weekly. I'll keep you updated on the new show as well!

Later,
Chris

Twitter vs Facebook

So I was thinking about this topic last night. I kind of realize that, though I do use Facebook on a much more common basis, I am beginning to take more of a liking to Twitter. Let me first and foremost say that I feel Facebook and Twitter are out to do different things, but they all fall in to the social networking field. So here is my beef with Facebook.

Just like most early social networking site, they begin to get stale. First for me it was Xanga. A website where you basically had an online journal that your friends could subscribe to and see when you updated. You in turn could do the same to others. It was a more personal way of staying up to date with people, providing they updated their Xanga. This then gave way to interest in something called MySpace. MySpace gave you the ability to do the same thing, however you were given more options to give your page a more personal touch. You could also add photos and videos to your site. On top of all this you had a huge music section on MySpace which helped you find new music or promote your own.

After a while spent with MySpace I moved to Facebook. The two were co-existing in my life as I would check and back and forth. Some friends were on MySpace and had yet to move to Facebook, or some had started on Facebook and never moved to MySpace. So it was a swap to keep in touch with everybody. As they became more mainstream, a heavy competition began between the two. I began seeing them ripping each other off. MySpace began allowing users to create a "status" while Facebook got a music type of page. Then MySpace implemented a live chat that was similar to Facebook's where you could see who is online and chat with them. In MySpace's defense, they had the MySpace Chat option before Facebook but it just wasn't very well done.

So since that time, I have now moved to Facebook and totally kind of abandoned MySpace. Just like those services before though, I am now leaning towards Twitter over Facebook. I don't think I'll abandon Facebook since Twitter is more of a self-promoting page while Facebook is for keeping in touch. So here's where Facebook starts to get annoying.

Facebook has been trying to top MySpace by adding applications left and right. 3rd parties are now available to develop any type of applications and people will then get invites to use them. Some of these applications are the iLike/Quizzes/Bumper Stickers and so on. The most recent feature added is the ability to "like" something and become a fan of something. I was fine with Facebook recommending friends who I may have missed or may have just joined, that's great, but now you have people who can become a fan of like pillows. This is just a joke. Like there needs to be some sort of moderation with all this crap that is being added to Facebook. It's just getting old and annoying.

Facebook is great if I want to chat with my friends, but it's something if I wanted to, I could easily get cell numbers and just text people. With Twitter it just seems more basic and not so much like a business. Facebook just seems like it's selling its soul to the devil and not really taking a look at what they are putting out on their site anymore.

I guess I like the fact that you update a Twitter status, and that's it. You can then message somebody directly replying to their status but it's not out to completely take away social interaction. I like being able to just text a status with Twitter and it's basically self promotion. On Facebook, I may update a status and get a notification that somebody just likes it, like i would take a comment over just liking something. I also don't like getting notifications for stuff I can't turn off. It gets old.

Anyway, just a little social networking rant. Facebook is destroying itself I think, and I think it won't take long for a site to pick out the good and bad and make a new site. I will not be leaving Facebook because It still has me by the nuts sadly, but I do find myself taking less and less things people say on it, and a little more meaningfulness from things people post on Twitter.

Anyway, that's all I have to say on the subject, if you are a Twitter user then you can find me on there, my name is CBumeter.

Thanks All,

Chris