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daily snapple fact #27
A ball of glass will bounce higher then a ball of rubber.

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doug at freewayslowdance.com

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Goals and Stuff

Ran into my old sophomore year roommate, Ed, on Friday. Haven't seen him in a couple years. He's doing well, going to Stanford to get a ph.D in Physics either next year, or in a couple years after he's done studying at Cambridge. Talked to him about how a few of our old high school co-horts are getting married. He writes a column, there're some old issues at his website.

It's so odd to periodically run into someone who seems to be rocketing off in some direction. Captain Ahab is getting some real recognition in the electronic music scene. My cousin who used to just seem to muck about doing nothing is pulling over $100,000 as a pharmacist.

And I recall the words of my 5th grade teacher Mrs. Pinkerton (God rest her soul), "Douglas ... has potential."

Potential for what? Couldn't you have been more specific, Mrs. Pinkerton? When I was in 6th grade, I was voted 'Most Likely To Be President of the United States' and now, I'm mostly like to become Real Estate Appraiser. I mean, I'm graduating with a degree in Theatre. It's time to set some goals. Here we go.

1. Write Album.
2. Learn to grow/sculpt Bonsai trees.
3. Learn to tango.
4. Read any book anyone tells me is 'Classic' or 'Fantastic'
5. Read all plays from "The List"
6. Visit Iceland
7. Learn Chinese
8. Buy House, Have Kids, Raise Family.
9. Go back to that Sushi place in Victoria, BC, have a beer and Sushi.

That's all I got right now.

posted by Doug 6:10 PM

On My Way to Cum Laude!

So as many of you (the three folks who visit here) know, I'm currently ass-close GPA wise to making Cum Laude (bastards who graduated last year had an ungodly high GPA average). In order to push myself over the edge, the following grade combinations were required:

A,A,A,B
A,A,A-,B+
A-,A-,A-,A-

And I was pretty worried about it, because WTF, man, that's a hard fucking combo to get. But on Wednesday, because one of my professors had to go out of town for some show, we ended in 9th Week and I fucking OWNED my final and got the first of 3 As. And then yesterday, I turned in my last homework for MU172-Computer Music II, and likewise, FUCKING OWNED it, to the point where my T.A. said it was so far beyond the scope of the assignment that with a few tweaks, I could turn it into my final project. Which I interpret as 'You're damn close to an A without too much work.' And then later that same day, I had to turn in a rough draft of my final project for MU173-Mixing and Editing.

And to be perfectly honest, I was a little annoyed. I couldn't sample everything I wanted to and couldn't do my original project idea. So I took the fuck-all approach, and went hog-wild with filters, panning and hundreds of versions of 12 samples from my car.

Miller Puckette (the man behind the must-have software of most electronic musicians today, Max/MSP) commented that it was "the best montage i've heard in the context of this class." The T.A., Nathan Brock: "The only problem is that it's too short, which is a good thing."

So as long as I don't fuck-up Psycho-Acoustics (which, I should note, is still entirely possible), I should be looking at a little asterisk next to my name in the graduation ... print-out-thing. Woo hoo!

posted by Doug 9:28 AM

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