Roger Water's "The Wall" was the best concert I have been to!

This past Sunday (Oct 10, 2010), I was fortunate enough to have a ticket to see Roger Water's perform his masterpiece, "The Wall", in Washington DC's Verizon Center. For those of you that don't know, Roger Waters was the bass player and primary song writer for the band Pink Floyd. I have to assume that you have heard of them before because they are one of the greatest bands in history. Even if you don't like them, you know their music. Chants of "we don't need no education" probably sound familiar. Some other songs that you may know are "Wish You Were Here", "Comfortably Numb," and "Money". At least, those are the songs you'd hear on the radio. For a Floyd fan, those are merely "old standards".

In 1980, Pink Floyd went on their last tour, which only covered 4 cities I believe. This was the original "The Wall" tour. The production was so expensive and so massive that it almost put the band incredibly in debt just to put the show on. That's why it was limited to only 4 cities.

30 years later, Roger Waters has taken "The Wall" on a world tour and he has done an amazing job of it. He has world class musicians with him like GE Smith, who used to play guitar on Saturday Night Live in the 80s and 90s. I was fortunate to meet GE walking around on the street just before the show. He has the largest digital projector in the world. Now that I think about it, he probably has the largest mobile projector screen in the world as well, the Wall itself.

Being a huge Pink Floyd fan, the Wall was never one of my favorite albums. I guess because I was always just more into the long solos by David Gilmour and the Wall just always lacked a lot of those. But now, after I have seen the production myself, The Wall is a masterpiece. It was nothing short of epic and simply beautiful to watch.

The wall spanned the length of the entire arena. Throughout the show bricks are gradually added until, at the end of the first half, the entire wall is complete. The second part of the show is played primarily from behind the wall, which separates the band from the audience. During this time Roger Waters strolls in front of the wall singing his songs to the audience. The ending of the concert concludes with the destruction of the wall.

The visuals shown throughout the show were stunning and mostly geared towards anti-government and anti-war. The song "Vera" showed video clips of soldiers returning home to their children. It was very touching to watch and somehow very fitting with the music.

Here is a link to all of the videos that I shot during the show. My favorites are "Comfortably Numb", Vera", and "Hey You". Or you can just watch them on my website or right below.

Been working on a NEW website

I'm working on a new website. Well, actually, it looks nearly the same in colors and design. What is different is what's under the hood. I'm using a Content Management System called Drupal to organize it a little better and add more functionality.

A year or so ago I discovered Drupal when I was researching Content Management Systems (CMS) for my job at Texas State University. I have known things like Drupal existed, but hadn't gotten my hands on it yet.

Drupal is free and takes a little getting used to. It's primarily held together with PHP and CSS. So if you know both of those, you'll be fine. It's fairly easy to learn to use, but to manipulate the structure of Drupal, you'll need to really dig into web programming a little.

I'm currently re-doing several of the sites I've managed in Drupal. I've also started on a website for my girl friend using Drupal so that she can post stories and articles she is writing online without having to go through anyone else to do it. She actually currently does that at her journalist job.

There will be several additions to the site. One will be a more dynamic layout for the site that I have done. I'm really not pleased with that layout and have never had time to work on it much, so I'll redo that. The other is THIS blog will be hosted entirely on my server. I'm writing some of the blog code myself and some of it is housed in Drupal.

One last addition that I want to mention is the embedding of Flickr photos on the bottom of my homepage. I've "rigged" my blackberry to send all the photos I take to Flickr. Then my website will randomly choose 6 pictures to post at the bottom under my "Recent Mobile Pics" heading. I will likely change that because not all of the pictures will be recent. So by the time I launch the site, it will likely just say Mobile Pics.

Anyway....
There is it. That's it, and that's all.

Got a job in DC!

Well.....after waiting (and waiting, and waiting) for the Census Bureau to get back to me, I finally decided to start applying for other jobs. I think I probably applied for 150 jobs. One company was looking for someone with Web Design experience and Graphic Design experience. So I applied. Their name is ULLICO. They are an insurance company a few blocks from the White House in Washington DC.

Before going to the interview at ULLICO, I interviewed at The Atlantic Media company, Capital One HQ, and many others. ULLICO was the first to give me an offer. It was a very very good offer with better benefits than any other job could ever possibly offer. Probably better than any government job could offer.

I drove back and forth between my girlfriends house in Norfolk VA and Washington DC several times in one week. It was tough but it certainly was worth it. I think I have a good idea of how bad the traffic in Northern VA is now. Ugh!

So right now I am gearing up to move to Fredericksburg VA and start a real life with my girl friend. I've looked for some places in that area and have liked a lot of what I have found. There are a few that are close to the commuter rail station that I plan to use everyday to work. I'm actually looking forward to that.

While I'm on here, I'll tell you a little about Kristin, my girl friend. Well.......she's great!

We've known each other since we were around 14 or 15 years old. We went to high school together and knew each other through a mutual friend. She never knew that I thought she was incredibly beautiful or that I would have given anything just to talk to her for more than a few minutes. I can remember just being speechless around her. Not much has changed from how I felt then either.

Around January, I decided to get out of Texas and move back to the East Coast. My sister has a baby now, and I'd like to see her grow up. I've been going to school for nearly 10 years and I'm a little sick of it honestly. Don't get me wrong, I have A LOT to show for it, but I'm just done for the most part. I had already decided to move to VA. One day it hit me that Kristin is probably in VA as well. I recalled her telling me 10 years ago that she was going to try to get a job as a journalist in Washington. I remember where we were standing and what we said in the conversation. That's got to mean something if I remember it that well. So I emailed our mutual friend from high school and asked about Kristin's whereabouts.

After finding out a little about what was going on with her, I sent her a message on Facebook and just asked if she would be interested in having lunch when I fly to DC for my interview. AND SHE SAID YES! :-) I ended up flying out a few weeks earlier to visit my family and decided to rent a car and drive up to see her. We had a great time walking on the beach and catching up. I remember a guy yelled out at us "You guys look great!" That kind of made both of our days.

Eventually, against my friends advice, I broke down and told her all about how much I liked her in high school and how I remembered her after all of these years. I told her about all these small conversations we had 10+ years ago. And the rest is history.

She's a great girl. The best. She's an award winning journalist, smart, funny, and we are from the same hometown. Did I mention she is insanely beautiful? When it came time for me to come home from Texas, she flew out there and we drove back together and had the best time. We stopped in the mountains in Georgia and took in the sights there. After that we knew that we were really an item.

So the moral of the story is, God listens to prayers. I've prayed for this stuff starting in January. Everything fell into place just like He wanted it to. I prayed for a Christian woman, a wonderful job, and a lot of patience and God came through. Texas wasn't where I needed to be. I should have never have gone. But it was all in God's plan. If I hadn't had gone to Texas, I wouldn't have applied for this job in DC. I wouldn't have reconnected with Kristin. I wouldn't have been offered a really awesome job. And I wouldn't be as happy as I am right now.

Applying for DC jobs. Moving to VA!

This place may be my new office. Its the US Government Census Building in Washington DC.

Let me explain.....

Last semester I decided I was extremely sick of living in Texas. It certainly wasn't what I thought it would be and some of the reasons I wanted to move there no longer existed. Texas State University overall is a great university and I have made lots of great contacts since I have been there. However, the anthropology department was a big disappointment. Very few professors seemed to really want to help the students. Often times they seem to only want to be obstructions only wanted to hold us back.A few bad situations developed between myself and the chair of the department, who seemed to have loath the very core of me from day one. I also had a lot of issues with several of the students who I knew were cheating and not doing their own work throughout the semester.

So after the semester ended, I decided to switch to a program called Interdisciplinary Studies. This way.....I could study archaeology from other universities and transfer it in. I could also study computers and history along with this. It would allow me to take only the classes that I see valuable to myself and what I plan to do in my future.

During Christmas vacation, however, I sent an email to a friend of mine that works for the governement asking him if he knew of any jobs available. I had decided that I would much rather start a job and/or a career and begin paying on my student loans. Fortunately, my friend in DC had contacted me years earlier when I worked for ABC Phones in Greenville NC about this same job. But now, my chances were much better of getting the job because of my background in computers and web development.

So.....next Monday or Tuesday I am getting a call from Washington to set up an interview. They are going to fly me out to Washington DC for a few days. I'll have an interview that last all day long. Suit Required! :-P

I've already been told the benefits and they are stellar. Government jobs often are I've heard. The pay would also be much much higher than I thought I would qualify for. I should be able to pay off my loans in 2 years or less if I get the job.
As for grad school....I've already looked into transferring my credit to another university and working on my masters when/if I move. So not all is lost. I just think, financially, it is going to be much better for me to start paying on my student loans now. Who knows......if this job turns into a career, which I have heard usually happens because everyone loves it so much, I may just stay there.

Right now I am looking at living in the area north of Fredericksburg VA near a National Forest area called Prince Williams Forest. Its not too far from the Appalachian mountains (1 1/2 hours nearly) so plenty of places for me to go hiking. Pretty close to the ocean too. Plus.....Washington DC. Come on......I love that city! Tons of stuff to do. It'd be about an hour commute by train. I'll feel like I'm in Germany again. :-P