In my last post, I talked about all that I went through at work and how much stress I went through. This week, I went over all the inventory and dollar difference investigation figures with our Loss Prevention Regional Manager and made sure everything was done, over and finalized. Now comes the filing away of the past year… whenever I can get to it!

You’d think the stress would be over but, unfortunately, I’m finding that’s not the case. When you’ve been pushing your limits physically and mentally for the past three weeks and you’re used to working fast and hard in the first place, you finally have a reason to slow down after all you’ve done. For some odd reason though, my body and mind still maintained that stress inside and I feel that it’s just recently that I’ve gone to my breaking point. I’ve seen myself ready to snap at things that normally would’nt have gotten much thought. I’m just now experiencing the first tension headache I’ve had in a long time, complete with eye twitching and sore neck. In short, I’m a wreck.

I think I need a vacation. Time to schedule one soon!

Cheers… and drink a beer for me.

The hard work finally paid off at my job this month. That’s pretty much why I haven’t written anything substancial here in a couple of weeks. Work had been a wild ride with inventory preparations and my job to help oversee it all. I had teams from other stores come in to help with auditing different parts of the inventory and, between them and my own team, had it all done just in time for inventory day. This is the scorecard for my store’s, not to mention my inventory audit team’s, performance for the year.

In the end, we passed with flying colors, but not without some wrestling with receiving issues and other small things. The aftermath of the leftover variances was left to my team to resolve within seven days. We got done with it today, which is a really good feeling. Now, all that is left is to file away the year and start another. Hopefully I’ll be able to train someone to take my place soon; I want to move on to different things, as yet undecided. I’ve been doing this for too long and I know when I need to bow out with a win under the belt!

A funny thing happened when I got out of work today. I always have my iPod on when I go to work. I was listening to songs from my “Favorites” playlist, which has around 160 songs. I forgot to stop the player when I set it down in my locker to start my work. As I was leaving the building, thinking about all that I and my team have accomplished, I got in the car… and noticed a sound coming from my hip. My iPod was still playing! It went through around 120 songs while it was tucked away in my locker! What made this really awesome was that the song it was playing at the time fit perfectly with the end to my current endeavor at work. So I restarted the song… and jammed to it all the way home! Below is an excerpt from the lyrics:

(From “The Victory Dance” by Theocracy)

Seven scars turned to ashes,
faces of madness melt into victory.
Trial by fire, my burden,
burned in refining flames of purity.
Seven steps into darkness,
mortal and crownless, eternal victory.
Altar flames rising, burning higher,
and straight through the fire;
I’m dancing the victory dance!

(Lyrics: Matt Smith)

You all can probably tell that I was feeling better than I have been for a long time. I’m now going to relax and have a good three day weekend and some hard-earned rest!

Cheers!

… A success!

I had the stream up and running for probably 8 hours today. During that time, I initiated a chat with someone who didn’t have access to QuickTime or iTunes, but was using Windows Media Player. However, he was able to listen in just as well as I could with QT or iTunes.

Like I said, this is just for recreational purposes, between friends and family. If the Nicecast logo is in the sidebar, click the link and feel free to listen in.

Cheers!

Ok… it figures, it really figures.

I finally have a little webradio stream up and running… and no one I know is online to put it to the test!!

Soon, I’ll have a little “Listen In” badge on the sidebar underneath the “Recently Played…” tracklist. I’ll have it there specifically when I’m broadcasting. Friends and family are welcome to listen in to an eclectic mix of music, mostly rock and metal, with a few surprises thrown in for good measure!

Also, when you click the tracklisting, you can check out my last.fm homepage. It will be more up to date with what I’m currently listening to than the tracklist in the sidebar, which is just an image that last.fm generates every so often.

So far I’m listening in to the stream with Quicktime (a free download here, if you don’t have it), and I must say that even at 64kbps stereo, it still sounds very good. Not CD quality but just around radio quality, which is what I was going for. Piracy being what it is, the last thing I need is for listeners to be taping the songs from the stream.

Well, gonna go and play around with the station voiceover effects. Cheers!

(Credit to Queen for the title of this blog entry) 

Making good on my promise/threat of writing again today, here’s my review of a new addition to my digital collection of music. Astral Projection is a project comprised of two guys hailing from Israel. Trance music acts are not common to that area, so it makes sense that these guys imbue this genre of music with a sound very distinctive from their contemporaries.

The album opens up with the title track, the shortest at just over six minutes long, beginning with some background noise and a recording of a man reciting a prayer on behalf of his fellow man. It takes off from there into steady beats, hypnotic melodies and reworkings of the sampled prayer. “Chaos” is next, offering electronic bliss that’s hard to describe. The rest of the album is much of the same, with a lot of good melodies and steady beats. However, having listened to their earlier work in the album “Another World”, this doesn’t qualify as their best work. That’s not to say that “Amen” sucks; it is in fact a piece of work worthy of being called good trance. Good trance meaning that the music really takes you to a happy place in your mind (sounds trippy, doesn’t it?) I may review “Another World” on a later date, but the earlier album sports a few pieces that have spectacular, climactic endings which “Amen”s songs are sorely missing.

My favorite tracks on this are “Chaos”, “Infinte Justice”, “Heaven’s Gate”, the soothing and swirling “Electric Blue” and the hard-edged “1,000,000 Years From Today”. The other songs are great for background music while working out or, well, doing any work at all.

Most people who know me know that my musical tastes are mainly Metal. As (hopefully) everyone knows, however, if you listen to one style all the time, you tend to grow stagnant and become inflexible to listening to anything new. This also, I believe, has an effect on overall thinking as well. Always take the time to explore out of your normal bounds; you never know what you may actually find that you like!