I haven't been here in a while....

Life moves pretty fast sometimes.... It's easy to lose track of things. This blog is one of those things. It's here... I don't have to feed it like, say, a puppy, or my kids, so it gets lost in the shuffle. It's not on purpose... It just happens. I'm thinking I may try to do something about that. Try and put some content on here more often. It's certainly not for lack of things going on. There's always something pulling me in more than one direction at a time.

So... I'm gonna try to fire this puppy back up and see what happens.

Computer Death

Well, a couple of weeks ago my Macintosh Powerbook G4 bit the dust. Yes, that Powerbook. The one that Robin & Rich Bresnahan gifted to me for all the work I did on Robins debut CD. The one that I have babied (better than my own children at times) since it arrived at my house. It was a sad, sad, day. As bad as the day the music died! Worse even.... getting the picture yet?

I ran a quick diagnostic on it and the hard drive checked out fine. A trip to the Apple store confirmed the same thing. The problem was a corrupt start up kernal. The solution was 2 steps. First, use another Mac to boot up the machine from and reinstall the OS. Sounds easy enough. Oh, no.... We managed to get it to boot up one time. It wouldn't allow us to reinstall the OS and then the computer went dark (a lonely trumpet played taps in the background). It was on to step 2. Sending it off to Apple. I was told at the Apple store that it would be a flat rate of $310 to fix whatever the trouble would be. I had to wait a week for the money to come in and once in I called Apple and set it up. Another few days for the box to arrive and off it went.

I got it back in 2 days time! Not bad Apple, not bad. I opened the box, read the packing slip inside and my heart sank. They replaced the optical drive, the hard drive, and the mother board. I lost everything on the machine. And before you ask, yes, I had backed things up. Just not everything. I lost all my fonts, pictures, music in iTunes, music files I had recorded, Photoshop brushes, Illustrator brushes, bookmarks, tons of stuff. It was bad. Real bad!

I spent all of this morning and part of this afternoon reinstalling some of my software. What a pain! Installing the software isn't so bad... it's redownloading all of the gazillion updates these software companies have released since the software's release. It took just a bit over an hour and a half just to get Adobe Creative Suite back on my computer. I still need to contact some software companies about software keys so I can redownload some recording software I lost. There's still a lot of work to be done including going through my backup discs to see what I've got & what I don't. I guess the bottom line is... no matter how much you back up a computer there is always something that is going to be missed and you are going to lose some data. The trick is to lose as little as possible.

Auditions

I'm going to be auditioning for Disney. They have bi-monthly open musician calls and on Friday August 7 I'm going to the Florida version of the O.C. to, hopefully, convince some folks that I can play the guitar and find some work. Wish me some good fortune.

Ciao,
Mark.

Here It Is!

The Crossing Live!

Track listing:
1. Your Name High
2. The Lord Reigns
3. Let God Arise
4. Desert Song
5. God Of This City/Lift Up Holy Hands
6. Glory In The Highest
7. You Never Let Go
8. Healer/You Are Here(Same Power)
9. Yahweh
10. Revelation Song
11. Run
12. Break Free

You never know what's going to happen with a live recording. That's part of the fun of it. The unpredictability of the whole process. I'm very happy with how this project turned out. I was pleasantly surprised at the quality of this recording. If you're a musician and have ever done anything like this before or have listened to someone else who had done something like this... you'll know what I mean. They get some local "bubba" to come in, do the recordion, and.... disaster is what usually follows. This is not the case with the Crossing CD. This CD sounds very good. It's mixed and mastered to the highest standards. It is a live recording so there is some muddiness in some places in the mix but that's normal and to be expected. It wasn't done in the studio. This was a concert event. I'm honored to have been a part of this... now if I can just figure out how to do this and get paid for it!

We are going to be purchasing more copies and giving them out. If you're not inclined to wait on me you can go to www.crossingonline.com and order a copy. It's listed under the events section.

Ciao,
Mark.

The New LIVE @ THE CROSSING Worship CD

Today is the day... actually it's tonight that the CD I played on back in May gets released.

Stay tuned for more details.

Busy, Busy, Busy!!!

It's been an interesting year so far. We've been going strong all year so far. Back in the end of January/beginning of February one of Sylvia's colleges, whom I shall henceforth refer to as Darth Vader, tried to accuse her of assault & battery. I say tried because, even though Darth Vader did report this to the on sight Sheriff's Deputy, a witness statement proved that it didn't happen anything close to what Vader claimed. It did cause a lot of stress at work for Sylvia and as a result starting in the fall she will no longer be working at Brandon High School. She will be opening a new high school in Hillsborough County named Strawberry Crest High School. It's going to be an International Baccalaureate school. The best of the best! Funny how God works things out sometimes. In the midst of all of this Sylvia is also working on a Masters degree and she continues to train teachers. Crazy, I know.

The kids are doing well. Three of the four are in school somewhere... actually they are in three different schools. That's going to change next year for the sake of sanity if for no other reason. Tyler & Liam are in schools within a mile of our house. Rachel's school is 13 miles away. She & Sylvia get up at 5:30 am to get her to the bus stop for an hour ride to school and then an hour ride back in the afternoon. It's been very difficult for us (keep in mind we only own one vehicle) to keep up with her academics because of the distance. In the fall she will be going to the same middle school as Tyler. Hopefully that move will ease some stress for us.

Liam fell off of his bike a few weeks ago and gave himself a concussion along with some memory loss. That was a fun night to say the least. I thought he might have broken his elbow as well but that turned out to not be the case... thankfully!!! He's fine now and can even remember who he is. Piper is... well.... Piper. She's a mess. Just the way we like her. She was walking a 9 months and running at 10. Now, at 18 months she's climbing and doing pretty much what her brothers and sister do. Or at least she tries to. She absolutely adores Tyler and he her. Liam makes her laugh and she puts up with Rachel. It's a girl thing I guess!?! She really brightens up all of our lives!

Mom had her second knee replacement at the end of April and is doing phenomenal! She has recovered twice as fast as she did the last time. It's all about the rehab center! The first time around the rehab center didn't do very much physical therapy. This time we sent her to a different facility and they worked her hard. The difference... last time she left the rehab center in a wheelchair. This time she walked out on her own! With the help of a walker but on her own never the less.

I just finished recording a live worship CD with my church worship team. We did two nights of recording. The first night was sans the live audience. Everything was set up the same as it was for the night of the actual event. It was live only without the crowd. The second night was intense!!! The energy from the crowd was massive. We did 12 songs & 3 encores. They would've stayed for as long as we played! One of the encores was a song called Break Free. When I launched into it the audience erupted! It was very powerful and a lot of fun to be a part of the experience. Here are a few pics from that evening.

My area of the stage.

My view from the stage.

I've been getting feedback from the band director who told me the tracks sound amazing. We captured some real good stuff! The crew that the church hired to do the recording are from West Virginia. Our worship leader and band leader flew up to WV to mix and produce the disc. When they got back the band leader told me that the engineers were shocked to find out that the only band member who is on staff at the church is the band director. That's a big complement! Now the only hard part is waiting for the finished product. The word on the street is that it will be ready sometime in July. I'll keep you posted.

Ciao,
Mark.

I'm Just Wondering

Does anything intelligent come out of Nancy Pelosi's mouth?