November 2005 Archives

Well, Less Than Me’s second birthday is fast approaching, so I’ve decided to transfer to a new host. Dreamhost was offering a year of hosting for only $9.24 (including domain registration) and their storage and bandwidth limits are 10 and 24 times larger respectively. The hosting with 1and1 was completely free, but the domain registration cost $6, so I’m greatly increasing what I get by paying only $3 more.

I don’t want to bad-mouth 1and1 too much since they were very nice to give me 3 years of webhosting for absolutely free, but... Let me put it this way, I am leaving them even though I have another year of free hosting with them. The old saying goes: “You get what you pay for” and trust me, 1and1 reminds me of that fact every time I have contact with them.

All that to say, don’t be surprised if Less Than Me goes down for a while. I’ve never changed webhosts, but it seems like a daunting endeavor. I’ll try to keep y’all updated on my progress, but if domain registration goes south, then the lessthanme.com address ain’t gunna work. If you care enough, mark down this address s90428844.onlinehome.us. Even if the lessthanme.com address doesn’t work, this one always should (until the move is completed). Wish me luck, ‘cuz I'll admit that I’m a little worried...

Well, here it is... my newly revamped website. I figured why only do one thing at a time? So, as I moved to the new host, I also upgraded to the newest version Movable Type and changed up the look a bit. Only this front page is completely finished, all of the archive and various other pages still need to be worked on, so don’t be surprised if you find some messiness. Let me know if you find something screwy by posting a comment on this entry. In fact, you should post a comment on this entry anyway, to make sure comments even work!

Dave, Kara and I went to see Goblet of Fire yesterday (Scott & Katie were supposed to join us, but the tickets were sold out by the time they arrived!) The movie was alright, but had the same problem as the book... almost no plot. There is a meaningful event late in the movie, but those 20 or so minutes don’t make up for 2 hours of nothingness. There’s plenty of CGI wonderment and tense moments, but a story would have been nice...

Monday night was my third piano lesson at East2West Studios. If there’s one thing I’ve learned more than anything else, it’s that a half hour can go by SO FAST! It really feels like we’re just getting started when we discover that we’ve already gone over the half-hour mark! I’m thinking about springing for the extra $20/week to upgrade to the hour long lessons.

Last week my instructor, Steven Twelker, taught me how to read chord symbol notation. It was all new to me, but within my first hour of practice, I had really gotten the hang of it! I’m supposed to practice 45 minutes a day, 4 days a week for a total of 3 hours a week... I got the 3 hours of practice in last week, but it wasn’t in such a regular manner. Late last Tuesday night, I practiced for around 2 hours! The other hour or so was split over 2 days last weekend... I mean to practice more regularly, but I admit that WoW has a tendency to pull me from practicing.

Right now I am working on five songs, three of which I had already played with before lessons. Those three are:

Op. 28, Prelude No. 7 in A - Chopin
Fur Elise - Beethoven
Anna Magdalena Bach Notebook: Minuet In G - Bach

And two which are new to me are:

Gymnopedies No. 1 - Satie
All of Me (a jazzy song, I don’t know the composer)

Steven told me yesterday that I should know about a dozen songs at this level in about 8 or so months of work. And at that point, I should be able to move up to the next level. It sounds like a plan to me!

I just looked up my car's Blue Book value... 250 bucks, baby! And that doesn't even factor in the bald spot! At least it's reassuring to know that if it dies, I can replace it on a single day's wages!