end of a decade

i really cant believe it's about to be 2010. i can remember exactly where i was and exactly what i was doing on new years eve 1999. the 2000's for me represented a time of growth and learning. i graduted high school, graduated college, got my first real job, bought a house, learned how to drive, started playing guitar, went from never drinking an alcoholic beverage to turning 21, made new friends and lost old ones, and so much more. if 2010's (the 10's? 010's? how the hell are we supposed to say it?) are as wild and exciting as the 2000's were, then i cant wait.

from 2010 to 2019, i'll have gone from 23 to 33, which is generally the age people start getting married and popping out kids... yikes. i wonder if, 10 years from now, and if this blog still exists, i'll think back to today and how i viewed the 2010s. I wonder if it'll be anything close to what i'm expecting.

Happy new years eve everyone!

time for a change

i'm startin to think it's about time for some change. let's start with this blog layout/color, and see where it takes us

man, some days i really feel like i'm just gonna drown in all the work i need to get done. here's hoping work gets better in august

less than a month til i'm 23...

damn, this year has been flying by. oh well, better get used to it i guess

i feel like the underlying theme to june and july thus far has been transition and change. at work i'm beginning to take on more and more responsibilities, and will likely be moving up to Platinum Expert pretty soon. that basically means i'm one of the more knowledgeable people in the department, and thus have even more responsibilities and all that. i'll likely be out of the department sometime early 2010, which is kinda crazy. right now i'm thinking about taking either an R&D position or a product marketing position once i leave AE. marketing is a MUCH better fit for me, as i'm a pretty decent tech writer (at least according to some of the marketing managers i've worked with) and i like how you can see a project from start to finish. marketing are the ones who think up new projects, which is pretty cool. R&D is more of the engineering bread and butter. i want to learn about a lot of useful technical shit, and R&D would be the place to do it. i think i'd probably be happy in either position, so i'll have to wait and see how everything plays out

i also joined a band last month, and have been rehearsing twice a week. it's been fun as hell, and i really dont know why it took me 5 years to start playing with other people. i'm fuckin excited to start playing some gigs... which should hopefully be happening sometime in august or september. music is ftw

currently in the process of buying my first house too, which has been pretty crazy. i'm excited about moving in, and will definitely have to throw a huge party there at some point.

went on a cruise last week to jamaica, grand cayman, and cozumel. really awesome, as usual. had a great time with my stepbros and my cousins who i havent seen in forever. got sunburned (twice) and ridiculously drunk (twice). good times

off to watch tv the rest of the night. yay boring saturday nights. last night provided a little too much entertainment though... so i'm ready for a boring night.

it's always weird how after coming back from a lengthy vacation, i kind of forget what i'm supposed to be doing at work. that changes pretty quickly once i get my first call

Not the greatest of father's day's this year. Talked w/ my dad earlier... he's back in the hospital. Backstory : on Wednesday, Cherie called me up at work and told me my dad was in the hospital because he was having chest pains. Turns out he had a minor heart attack Tuesday night, but fortunately there was no permanent damage done to his heart. They didn't really know what caused it, but they thought it was a combination of the cholesterol medicine he was taking as well as starting a new workout program. He ended up going home Thursday evening. Friday night he started having chest pains again, so they brought him back to the hospital and it turns out he had another minor heart attack =( . Again, I don't think there was any permanent damage done, but the doctor's don't know why he's having these heart attacks. They've ruled out all the "major" causes, and still don't know why this is happening. They're running a bunch of tests now to see what might be causing this, and they're gonna talk with a cardiologist tomorrow.

After I talked w/ my stepmom on Wednesday, I really had a tough time concentrating on work and everything. I really just had to force myself to not think about it, because otherwise I wouldn't have been able to get anything done. Wednesday evening I had flag football practice, which was nice to get outside and run around and take my mind of things. Friday I had band practice, which again was nice to just lose yourself in the music and take out some frustration on the guitar. But this weekend I've been thinking about it almost nonstop...

Happy father's day to all the dad's out there. You mean more to your sons/daughters than you'll ever know

yikes. been a crazy 2 weeks since i last posted. i think i'm starting to get into more things than i have time for... band, flag football, house stuff, gym, work, etc. haven't really been going to the gym much lately though. sucks cuz i had a real good routine going back in may, but it's all been brought to a halt because of everything else. maybe once things start to settle down and i get into a solid routine i'll start going again. yawn... tuesdays suck. cmooooon weekend!

this is going to be a crazy week. i will miss not having kickball on wednesday =(

jne22

almost june... this year is going by so damn fast. nostalgia is a powerful thing

figures that whenever i have a shortened week i somehow have an excessive amount of shit to get done. Performance reviews are due tomorrow and i've got a presentation in front of some department managers tomorrow. lets see what else we got this week: offspring concert tomorrow evening, kickball wednesday, then party time thursday evening cuz friday begins my 5 day vacation!!!!!!!!!! friday is jenny's graduation/party, then it's straight chillaxin until i go back to work on wednesday.

back "home"

This week's been pretty damn crazy. Wrapping some stuff up on the future house, kickball, work, work, more work, and getting ready for this weekend. I'm heading back to coppell this weekend for mother's day, and am actually looking forward to getting away for a weekend. I'll be setting up computers/wireless networks for part of the time, but should just be chillaxin and catching up w/ mah mom the rest of the time. It's gonna be weird going back to coppell... i haven't been back there since last summer. Every time I hear about coppell it's always about something really weird. Like my friend's sister watching one of her friends get hit by a car and die. yeah...

I'm sooooo ready for memorial day weekend, aka 5 day vacation for me. Then there's the cruise at the end of June... mmm. Vacation is like 100 times more satisfying when you're working 40+ hours a week.

man, haven't posted in here in awhile. twitter makes writing in here seem pointless..
jk i still <3 you blog

heading to dallas this weekend... haven't been back there in months. should be interesting. i'm actually flying there instead of driving for whatever reason. oh well, there's not too many people left in dallas that i want to be hanging out with so having a car isn't really a necessity. hmm, running late for work this morning, i'll have to write more in here later

meh

well, my three day weekend is over. i had an excellent time doing stuff all three days, and for once feel rested enough to go back to work. the unfortunate thing about taking vacation is that normally when you get back, you have a bunch of shit to take care of that you wouldn't have had if you didn't go on vacation.

manifest destiny

so lately i've been thinking that i just want to pick up and move out to california. why, you might ask, would anyone want to move out to that hippie liberal clusterfuck of a state? well, for one, i had an excellent time there visiting last summer. two, the weather is awesome, all the time. three, 75% of the music i really like started there, so it'd be cool to check out/be a part of the music scene. four, why the fuck not? i'm young enough, so why not?

das it for tonight. 4 day week ahead for me... thank god. yay for mah gf's bday, and yay for vacation days

wow... my fingers hurt. from playing guitar. my fingers haven't hurt from guitar in like half a year. probably cuz of all the acoustic i've been playing... stupid high action. if you've got a moment, check out my purevolume page and listen to my cover of Tenacious D's song Kielbasa : http://www.purevolume.com/justinewasko
it's my first real attempt at singing/playing at the same time

wine, zeppelin, and acoustic guitar. mondays just dont get any better than this

these weeks just keep zooming by. i really cannot believe that this is the last full week in march. it's very strange how quickly time passes when you get older...

today we went to the austin guitar and record convention. i saw about 20 different guitars i wanted to buy, but decided to be fiscally responsible and not buy any of them. how boring. i did end up buying a new pick guard, from this guy who custom makes them. this guy has been painting contemporary art since the 80's, and has a kid who now plays guitar. well the guy decided to start painting pickguards, and they look really fucking cool. there were 2 i had my eye on, and ended up buying one of them. i came back home, took apart my guitar, and tried to put the pickguard on. turns out the template that the guy used for the pickguard didn't fit my guitar (i ended up finding out that his earlier ones fit one type of guitar, and his later ones fit my guitar). soooooooo i had to drive all the way back to the convention center to get my money back. the guy was really cool about everything, and actually gave me a free pickguard (one that i think he had gotten for free somewhere) which was kinda neat. didn't go well with my guitar at all, but hey now i have an extra pickguard. the guy is going to try to get a website with some of his designs on there, so hopefully when he does i can buy one.

Jenny and i went to urban outfitter's after returning the pickguard, and i bought a $20 painting. it had a bunch of scratches along the edges, but we fixed it so you dont notice them anymore. i really want to put some new stuff up on the walls of my room, mainly cool artwork. stuff with striking colors, stuff that can express different moods. i think i'll end up framing a couple of the band posters that i have, and try and put up some paintings/photographs in place of the rest of my posters.

this past week was really exhausting. st patrick's day was on tuesday, so naturally wednesday wasn't the best of days. work's going to start ramping up pretty quickly here too, as i've started working on two different projects. hopefully i'll be able to handle them in addition to my regular workload.

I'm starting to wonder how long it's going to take me to get into a routine of going to work, to the point where my time outside of work isn't focused on the next day of work. I've been working for over 5 months now, and i'm still not completely adjusted to it. sunday nights are spent putting off monday morning for as long as possible. i try to get the most out of my weekends (and subsequently try to not do anything i dont want to, like chores and errands) since it's the only two days i'm not working. maybe my social anxiety is getting the best of me, and i'm just feeling awkward and uncomfortable at work. who knows. maybe what i need to do is change my attitude towards things, and my environment. i normally like to rearrange my room once a year or so, and it's been about that long since i last did that. i feel like whenever i do that i'm in a new environment, and it allows me to get a fresh look on things. maybe i'm just strange

see ya

each week is a new adventure... but where the hell did my weekend go?!?

camping last weekend was awesome, but going back to work this week was not. i really enjoy where i work and the work that i do, but i think in a past life i was a homeless bum or something.

on wednesday i got home from work somewhat early, picked up mah guitar and played for 2+ hours. not really playing anything in particular, just jamming/soloing/writing stuff. it's seriously the most creative i've been in quite some time. it's been awhile since i just randomly played guitar, so it felt really good just to lose myself in it for a little bit. this weekend i should try and work on some of the stuff i wrote too. it's strange to think that i've been playing guitar for about 5 years now too. i definitely wish it was something i had picked up earlier in my life, but i'm glad that at least i'm doing it now. music is such an emotional release, and playing guitar makes it both emotional and physical, so it's easy to get completely lost in it.

anyway, time for work. i'll update this a bit more this weekend. friday!!

gettin back to nature

so me, jenny, habibi, taylor, andy, and kelcey are going camping this weekend. it should be a shit ton of fun, but preparing for it has been kind of haphazard. i always bring way too much shit whenever i go places, so i'm trying to be as minimalist as possible on this trip. i really cannot wait to leave the city and not worry about shit for the weekend

on a sidenote, camping equipment is like the ultimate in engineering. it has to be functional, durable, and designed in a clever way. i can seriously see myself spending a crap ton of money at rei for all the cool little camping gadgets

bleh... yet another week of work ahead. i cant wait til camping this weekend

phat tuesday!!

Laissez les bon temps router my friends! Today (well, technically yesterday) is Mardi Gras. Back when I lived in Louisiana, this meant staying up late to see the parade. Now, it means getting drunk off my ass. Strange how times change...

So obviously I'm a tad inebriated right now. Funny how a lot of my posts on this blog are alcohol-induced. My stepbro made an offhand comment 4 years ago about how you're the opposite of yourself when you drink. This kind of rings true to me since I feel a lot more social and easygoing with a couple H-bombs and beers in me.

Tonight I went out with Jenny, Habibi, Taylor, and two of Jenny's friends (Morgan and Lee). I had hung out with Morgan and Lee twice before, and one of the times Lee and myself jammed on a couple tunes. Both of them are really cool, and I hope to hang out with them many more times in the future. Speaking of guitar......

Lately I've been wanting to record a lot of shit. I asked A-dizzle to send me a song he had been working on so that I could listen to it, and hopefully in the future contribute to it. Playing guitar by yourself is like masturbating... sure it feels good, but in the end you're still just jerking off. I need to start playing/collaborating with some other people. I feel like all of the stuff I've been working on in my lessons will pay dividends once I start applying it musically. Maybe I need to learn a couple of other instruments so I can produce stuff by myself.

Welp, I should probably end this blog post right now. I could go on for awhile about various things, but work is a-callin and I need to answer that call pretty soon. 'Night fellas!

For the past month and a half, i've been without my desktop computer. my harddrive bricked sometime in december, and until february i've just been lazy and haven't wanted to fix it. well, my computer speakers are connected to that computer, and all my music is on one of my other harddrives. the result of this is that i havent really listened to much music in the last two months or so. i only have so many cds in my car, and the radio plays the same 5 songs over and over. i'm starting to realize just how much i miss having my music

I asked Jenny recently if she would rather be blind or deaf, and she said she'd rather be deaf. My initial answer was deafness as well, but the more i think about it the more i'm not sure. life is a lot easier for deaf people (i'd imagine), but you'd never hear music or sounds ever again in your life. i'd probably still rather be deaf, since most of the things that i enjoy doing besides listening to music involve sight (tv, video games, looking at stuff). it definitely makes me appreciate my hearing a lot more

hopefully i'll have my music back sometime before the weekend (assuming i'm not sent another DOA harddrive from newegg)


anyway

another weekend has come and gone... and yet again i dont feel rested enough to go back to work. i really need a weekend where i dont do shit and just relax

Ben and his fiancee Mary Helen came into town this weekend, so me and Jenny went and hung out with them on Friday. went to the pluckers all the way in round rock (dunno why we went that far out, but it was kinda nice to go to a location i dont normally go to) and caught up. it's awesome catching up with those two, as i consider them really good friends. it's also kinda surreal... you definitely notice how much you have changed and how much other people have changed. Ben is a much different person than he was in high school, as am I, so it's strange to talk about old high school stories.

went to valentine's day dinner at Starlite downtown (right next to Cuba Libre), and had an extremely delicious meal. 4 courses, all with wine pairings. The highlight of my meal was the beef tenderloin... soooooooo good. Afterwards, we came back to the apartment and watched Once, which was a lot better than I was expecting. I made quite a few purchases this weekend too... bought a new practice amp (Roland Micro Cube) on thursday, a t-shirt from banana republic that was on clearance, and a $140 pair of running shoes (hopefully no more shin splints). it really makes working worth it when you're able to make these kinds of purchases without having to save a lot of money beforehand.

not a whole lot else going on. this week i'm in training on tuesday/wednesday, so yay for a semi-vacation those two days. today i've just been watching survivorman on discovery channel. i need to grab some food... i'm thinking Zen.

jesus, the week is only halfway over??!? that long ass day of work yesterday really sapped my energy. that, and my lack of coffee this morning

so, here's a boring story: my mom gave me a heart rate monitor for my birthday a couple years ago (i had asked for it). It's one of the ones that you strap to your chest, and then there's a watch that displays your HR. The back of the watch (the part that touches your skin) is metal, so i had assumed that the thing on your chest passes some signal to the watch through your body. on some of the cardio machines @ the gym, they have a heart rate monitor that you put your hands on and it passes some current across your body to figure out your heart rate. recently when i've been going to the gym i've been wearing this thing. on the cardio machines, i noticed that even without my hands being on the machine's monitor, the machine still picked up my heart rate (and pretty accurately). i was like uhhh wtf is going on. so today i've been wearing this HR monitor just to see how many calories i burn throughout the day. i turned my electric guitar and amp on, and heard beeping. apparently the thing that straps to your chest is sending out a wireless signal, and the watch (and everything else) is just picking up that signal. the moral of this story is, don't wear a heart rate monitor if you want to play electric guitar. the end.

off to watch lost and spend some time with the gf.

welp

so i had a blog that i updated semi-regularly back in my freshman year of college. it was a good way to cope with/talk about that crazy, uncomfortable, and awesome time in my life. now that i've started work, it kind of feels like i'm back in fall semester 2004. i'll try and write some thoughts and ramblings in here every now and then

lotsa things to write about... i'm sure the more important stuff will be written later. today, i worked for 11 hours. 10am-9pm. fucking awesome. although i guess it wasn't too bad, from 6-9pm i was @ UT teaching students how to use labview and do data acquisition. really fucking weird being on the other side of one of those things. regardless, i'm exhausted. sucks that i'm not getting paid overtime either... salaried job = fail

sunday night, jenny and i went and saw benjamin button. truly a fantastic movie, although i might be a little biased since the main setting for the movie is new orleans. there was one quote that stuck with me: "there are no rules to life." it really puts things into perspective. there isn't any set path for us to follow. the definitions of success and failure are simply a widely accepted viewpoint, and not necessarily correct or right. live life how you want to live it, and not how anyone else thinks you should.

i love my acoustic guitar, and the way it fills my entire room with sound when i play it. sometimes i want to just stay up all night and play... but bedtime comes early.

oh well