Monthly Archives: December 2004

These are my most listened-to tracks of 2004, according to my iTunes playcounts. Eclectic blend of modern rock, 80’s stuff, and worship music. Interesting to see that Jars of Clay once again dominates my taste in music. Click the image to get any of these tracks from the iTunes store. Note that even though the Michael Penn song “Slipping My Mind” is listed as being from the album March, that’s only on the re-issue. It was originally on his second album, Free-For-All, but the two albums were combined for the re-issue.

“Jealous Kind”, Jars of Clay, Who We Are Instead
“Trouble Is”, Jars of Clay, Who We Are Instead
“Is She Really Going Out With Him?”, Sugar Ray, Is She Really Going Out With Him? – Single
“Kiss Off”, Violent Femmes, Violent Femmes: Deluxe Edition
“Amazing Grace”, Jars of Clay, Who We Are Instead
“Head Over Heels”, Tears for Fears, Shout: The Very Best of Tears for Fears
“Hound Dog”, Elvis Presley, Elvis
“No Such Thing”, John Mayer, Room for Squares
“Stacy’s Mom”, Fountains of Wayne, Welcome Interstate Managers
“Drive”, Incubus, Make Yourself
“Better Is One Day”, Passion Worship Band, One Day Live
“Mad World”, Tears for Fears, Shout: The Very Best of Tears for Fears
“Unchanging”, Chris Tomlin, Not To Us
“Time of the Season”, The Ben Taylor Band, Famous Among the Barns
“I Fought the Law”, Green Day, I Fought the Law – Single
“If I Could Talk I’d Tell You”, The Lemonheads, Car Button Cloth
“Under the Milky Way”, The Church, Starfish
“All I Want Is You”, Jars of Clay, In the Name of Love – Artists United for Africa
“God of Wonders”, Passion, Our Love Is Loud – Live from the Passion Experience Tour
“Lesser Things”, Jars of Clay, Who We Are Instead
“Slipping My Mind”, Michael Penn, Free For All
“Butterflies”, Toad the Wet Sprocket, Fear
“Enough”, Chris Tomlin, Not to Us
“Sad Clown”, Jars Of Clay, If I Left The Zoo
“Wonderful Maker”, Chris Tomlin, Not to Us
“Tom’s Diner”, Suzanne Vega & D.N.A., Retrospective: The Best of Suzanne Vega
“Bright As Yellow”, The Innocence Mission, Glow
“The Munster’s Theme”, Jack Marshall, Ultra Lounge: Tiki Sampler
“Into Your Arms”, The Lemonheads, The Best of The Lemonheads – The Atlantic Years
“Tainted Love (7″ Single)”, Soft Cell, The Very Best of Soft Cell

Happy New Year, everybody!

Now this looks interesting: Trigger.

It’s an open source racing game. Right now, the feature set isn’t terribly enticing, but they plan to add Mac OS X support and network play.

Now, if one of the goals of the game can be utter carnage instead of mere racing, we may have a replacement for the venerable Carmageddon 2: Carpocalypse Now, and one that runs natively on OS X, no less.

Must investigate further…

Thanks to Gadgetopia for the link.

Santa was good to me this year:
Strong Bad DVD
New Chris Tomlin CD, Arriving
Return of the King, Special Extended Edition
Return to Waterloo on DVD
m-Audio Keystation 49e (expect more MP3s soon)
Namco Joystick with Pac-Man, Dig-Dug, Galaxian, Boscovian, and Rally X
7.5 foot prelit fiber optic Christmas tree

Good stuff.

Jen and I also got a chance to perform at our new church on Sunday. We did a medley of “Here I Am To Worship,” “Papers and Boxes,” and “O Come All Ye Faithful.” We followed that up by doing the Barenaked Ladies’ version of “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen/We Three Kings.” We were pleased with how it went. Apparently, others were as well: we’ll be leading worship there next week.

Also on Sunday, I helped my friend Brett move some of his fiance’s stuff into his house. They get married in less than two weeks, and I couldn’t be happier for them.

On Saturday, we did the normal Christmas thing for us. After we got up, Gracie found and opened her presents from Santa. Then we got ourselves together and headed to my sister’s house for breakfast with her family, my parents, and my grandparents. After we exchanged gifts and hung out for a while, we went to Jen’s parents’ place for more family stuff (we do our gift exchange with them on Christmas Eve to help slow down the Christmas day schedule a bit).

Good Christmas this year. Plus, I’m still off until Wednesday.

And then Thursday is LOTR day. Sweet.

So, aside from my Christmas mix, it’s been a while since my last post. Lots of reasons for that:

1) [I had to delete this paragraph. -Brad]

2) I’ve been writing a student information system at work, and at home, and everywhere I could take my laptop. The system went live on November 30, and things have slowed down a bit for me since then. Our teachers use it for attendance, discipline, and demographics. It’s built on PostgreSQL, which is great technology. The front end is done in, of course, REALbasic. For the first time, I really feel like I’ve provided the teachers with a tool that meets their needs.

3) We’re redoing Gracie’s bedroom for Christmas. It’s very pink. The tinted primer had it looking like Pepto-Bismol, but now that the first coat of real paint’s on, it looks more like bubble gum. But before we could do that, I had to sand off the pictures that Jen had painted (grass, bumblebees, butterflies, bunnies, the sun, and the moon) to cover up some of the drips and mistakes from the 2001 paint job. The majority of the walls was painted sky blue, and after sanding, I was scooping blue stuff out of my ears, wiping it out of my eyes, and coughing it up. It was nasty stuff. But the painting’s now all but done. We have some trim work to do yet, and a ceiling fan to install, but that’s about it.

4) I was sick for a couple days, too. Like unable to move sick. The day before the new system went live, I stayed up all night working on it. Big mistake. I don’t have the stamina for that anymore. Or at least, I don’t have the stamina for that after staying up until one or two every morning for six weeks leading up to it.

5) We’ve been settling in at our new church, or starting to at least. Hopefully this is somewhere we can hang our hats for a while, because I’m tired of jumping around.

So what’s new with you?

[edited for spelling]

“Green Christmas”
Barenaked Ladies

“White Christmas”
Clyde McPhatter & The Drifters

“Boogie Woogie Santa Claus”
The Brian Setzer Orchestra

“Little Drummer Boy”
Jars Of Clay

“Little Saint Nick”
Sugar Ray

“Jingle Bells”
Lisa Loeb

“Father Christmas”
The Kinks

“Do They Know It’s Christmas?”
Barenaked Ladies

“Frosty the Snowman”
America

“A New York Christmas”
Rob Thomas

“Baby, It’s Cold Outside (Mulato Beat Remix)”
Louis Armstrong & Velman Middleton

“Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”
Ray Charles

“The Christmas Song”
Weezer

“Christmas for Cowboys”
Jars of Clay

“Christmas Song”
Dave Matthews & Tim Reynolds