Mother’s Day Update

Hello all and Happy Mother’s Day to my maternal readers!

I’ve been behind on blogging, so I’ll try to catch everyone up on things. I need to hit several unrelated topics, so bear with me.

Hackintosh. The computer is done, and it’s beautiful. We encountered several more hurdles before we got it completely up and running, and I’ll try to summarize them here. Newegg shipped a bad hard drive, so we had to run an operating system off of a USB jump drive for a while, which was weird and slow. They also shipped a bad monitor, so we had to use my roommate’s monitor while we were waiting on that. Installing the OS went relatively smoothly following Wolfienuke’s instructions written specifically for my motherboard. Whenever I had specific issues, I’d post on the forum, and surprisingly, I got answers. I have found the OS X 86 community very supportive so far. That’s especially nice since I can’t exactly call up Apple if anything goes wrong with my machine. It’s risky. It’s fun.

For a while there, we couldn’t get the OS to recognize the full size of the hard drive. It was stuck at 128 GB, even though it was a 600 GB drive. We solved that by switching the drive type to AHCI in the bios. Eventually, we had everything running except the Quartz Extreme wasn’t working for the video card. I finally solved that by substituting one of Aquamac’s graphics strings for the NVinject kext I was using. Now the computer is pretty much completely up and running OS X 10.5.6… it’s incredible. I’ve been installing software like crazy. Current highlights include Adobe CS4 Master Collection, Final Cut Studio 2, Logic Express 8, Reason 4, and some others.

Transition paragraph: The computer now sits in my room at home because my sixth semester at Vanderbilt is over. I never installed a wireless card in the machine, so it currently has no access to the internet. It makes me feel kind of hard core to have a powerful machine completely dedicated to production. I look forward to using it a lot in the coming weeks. My summer has begun.

Vanderbilt. As for this past semester at Vanderbilt, it was a crazy one. My busiest semester yet. It was also a lazy semester for me. I’m not sure if it was my time in New Zealand or the two months of dead time I had after I returned, but I had difficulty doing my work this semester. I should take a lesson or two from my powerlifting buddy Brooks Conway, one of the most disciplined people I know. So yeah, I didn’t exactly make Dean’s List this semester, but I didn’t fail anything. I’ll try to correct that next semester… when I’m a senior in college?!?! WHAT?!?!

On that note, seeing all the preparations on campus for commencement was especially frightening for me this year. Right now, I am not looking forward to graduation at all. I don’t have a clue what I’ll be doing after Vandy, and to be honest, those question marks scare me a little bit. Hopefully, I’ll be able to get a good job… and by “good job”, I mean a job that pays me a reasonable amount of money to do something interesting (probably in media production, to be vague). Who knows. Lots of uncertainty there.

Memphis. After finals ended this semester, I stuck around for a while to hang out with friends. One of the main things I did was spend a few days in Memphis for the Memphis in May music festival last weekend. Lots of Vandy people were in town, so I had a great time hanging out. I only went to the actual festival on Friday night because the weather was pretty crappy all weekend. Still, that was awesome… I saw Matt Nathanson, Jack’s Mannequin, Ben Harper, some Steve Miller Band, and All American Rejects. A few other guys and I stayed with Robbie, my little brother in BYX. Robbie was great about showing us around Memphis (we ate barbecue like three times), and of course, the Zettler family treated us like kings. My final night in Memphis, I went with my new friend Amanda Ayerst (she’s awesome) and my pledge brother Craig to see Craig’s older sister perform in her junior cello recital at University of Memphis. She is a gifted musician. It’s always a joy to be around the endlessly entertaining Bullington family.

I had SO MUCH FUN in Memphis.

Recording. As it turns out, Craig is also a gifted musician. He plays the violin. I spent two days in Nashville before I went home, so we decided to record something. We could have covered a number of songs, but we randomly decided on Somewhere Over The Rainbow. In accordance with my secret goal of one day developing a fanbase and becoming a YouTube celebrity*, I shot video of the recording process and edited it together… on my new Hackintosh! (see how I brought that full circle? oh yeah…) I have two weeks in Atlanta before I leave to begin my summer adventures, so I hope to finish a few projects and complete a few more new ones like this during that time.

Check it out:

*Not really.

Summer. I am pleased to announce that I have finalized my summer plans. I will be working in beautiful Jackson Hole, WY as a counselor at Camp Living Water, a Christian ranch camp that I helped start in 2007. This summer, I’ll be a part of a team that plans and runs seven weeks of camp for mostly middle schoolers and high schoolers. I’m excited to return to Jackson with my good friend Colby, who also worked there in 2007. We’re going to make it a road trip, and we plan on visiting the Grand Canyon and a few other national parks out west on our way. Yeah, go ahead and get jealous. I’m pumped about the photography. If you check out the Camp Living Water link above, you’ll see some of the shots I got in 2007; they’re all over the site. In fact, Jackson Hole is the reason I bought my DSLR. But even more than taking photos, I’m looking forward to seeing friends, coworkers, and campers from two years ago as well as meeting plenty of new ones.

Sure, a more responsible summer plan for me would have involved an unpaid media internship of some kind, but nothing worked out. I don’t mind. This summer is going to be awesome.

Mother’s Day. By the way, I have the best mom in the world. I’ll be planting flowers in the yard with her this afternoon because that’s all she really wanted for Mother’s Day. The woman just wants to plant flowers with her children. How sweet is that?

Thanks for reading everyone. I’ll try to be more diligent with my blogging as the summer goes on.