Well thursday was quite the crazy day. To begin with I got to my second big concert of the year! That’s right, this year I decided to treat myself to not just Coldplay but also Ben Folds. So after choir let out at 5:30 Beth and I hit the road for Chicago. We made it in pretty descent time so despite a little traffic arrived at Chicago Theatre at 8:00 pretty much on the dot. Although the concert technically started at 7:30 this ended up being almost perfect timing because we found our seats at the back of the hall and about 30 seconds later The Fray started their opening song. But about that Ben Folds guy. Let’s start out with the awesomeness. That man can play some amazing piano!! My GOODNESS! We were back pretty far to be able to watch his hands closely but I’m always amazed by his music and seeing him live was quite the bonus. The other two guys in the band can definitely hold their own too. I think the thing I admire and enjoy most about Ben is the fact that he can go on stage and just be the artist that he is. He is unapologetic about the music he writes and writes about the things that are important to him. A little way into the show he joked about how his music got so many negative reviews when his label tried it on test audiences and how he "can’t write singles." He even performing a pop-rock re-written version of Jesusland (hilarious). I had a few personal beefs with the performance that have nothing to do with his talent. First, his language (profanity) gets to me and it didn’t help that he covered a song by Dr. Dre either. Also, while I AM "male, middle class and white" I try not to flaunt (or complain about) it quite as much as Ben does. But those few points certainly didn’t keep me from enjoying the music he makes! Especially when it’s just Ben & the piano. Oh yeah, & I got to sing saxophone to The Army, score!

Hannah Bonham (a friend from Hesston) lives in Chicago now & Beth managed to get ahold of her so right after the show (and after paying the insanely expensive parking) we headed to Hannah’s apartment for a real quick tour and chat. Then came the final main event of the evening… the drive home. If only it had been a bit more of a non-event. However, as luck would have it I met a deer at around 2:00 am on US-20 near South Bend. The thing was standing RIGHT on the center line and as I moved the car to avoid it, it turned it’s head into the drivers-side mirror! After some minor swerving I managed to bring the car safely to a stop. Beth was sleeping at the time & was quite freaked out after the rude awakening. So after we both calmed down a bit I went out for a quick survey of damage done and it turns out the only part of the car that was touched was the mirror! So thanks God for keeping us safe, phew. Oh, and if anyone knows of a good place to get parts for a Ford Escort in the Goshen area drop me a line (or comment)

The internet is amazing! That in fact is an understatement. One thing I find nearly endlessly entertaining (yeah, it’s probably a weakness) is random surfing. Yup, I’ve even tried completely random surfing which is a kick if you don’t know exactly what you’re looking for. There’s Wikipedia random too if you’re into more factual sorts of stuff. But I find it extra exciting when I find a gem of a link within sites that I normally visit. Just this week I stumbled accross Misprinted Type which is a personal website/portfolio of a Brazilian artist, Eduardo Recife. The site not only has pretty cool nontraditional design, but he offers some great free fonts for download. Next on my list of amazing finds… macTV (which I found via Coudal Partners‘ website which also has a LOAD of interesting links). macTV is a daily videocast site for "us apple geeks" which gives it awesome points right off the bat. However it was only after I started looking through the video clips that I realized how great this site is. Sure, there are some tutorials, but there are also gems like this music video made entirely on an Apple II (PS, the creator of this video, Stewart Smith, also has a pretty cool site) or the lil Microsoft history/bashing clip. Just some awesome stuff. Alright, well enough links for one night, it’s getting late & I’m gonna need all the rest I can get to be fully energized for tomorrow’s trip to see Ben Folds in Chicago!! I’ll give you a full rundown on that once I get back.

It’s time for a happy rambling at kuhnsfam.com. This past weekend was a pretty awesome one to be sure! It all started out with a little "nudge" from Beth to remind me that we had an date anniversary coming up. Now, you may or may not know, but I usually DREAD trying to think up ideas for good dates, but I knew it had been quite a while since we had been on any sort of real date. I did some research & after discovering that the town of Goshen has zero nice Italian eateries decided it was time get out of town. So when Beth got home from work we got dressed up a bit & hit the road for a scenic drive to Calabria Restaurant. It was a nice enough place and while seating was a little tight my salmon was awesome & the company was even more amazing Originally I had planed to continue the evening at the local theatre but we decided that we weren’t really in the mod to watch any of the movies that were showing at the time (even though North Country looks like a great one & we both want to see it eventually) so in leu of a movie we opted for another… er… "classic" date place: Walmart. But seriously, it was a great time anyway. We spent quite a bit of time wandering the store, enjoying all the Halloween supplies. We ended the night back at Hymnal watching A Lot Like Love which Beth enjoyed & I… well, it’s a chick flick, but so it goes, it was an awesome evening!

But wait, there’s more. Saturday was also awesome! The leaves around the area have really started to turn colors so Beth & I decided it was high time for a photo-shoot. We headed down to the Mill Race and walked around a bit, taking photos where the opportunity arose and now came back with plenty of material to update my photo gallery with (cough, check out the new photos). After the time by the water we headed over to The Depot to wander around Ten Thousand Villages & ended out the morning by swinging by The Old Bag Factory! YAY for awesome times just wandering around with Beth

So there’s my awesome weekend for you, now I’m trying to get myself back to work at least a little. Hey, I’ll just keep living for the good times that come my way & doing my best to learn from the bad.

-Till next time, Marcos

Well tonight I made quite the discovery while scrounging for a way to convert a WMA file (dang microsoft) into something a bit more tasteful, like mp3. I was having a heck of a time until I heard mention of Audion. Now I own my fair share of audio apps and figured that this one couldn’t be all THAT much different, but oh how wrong I was. My fascination began with the staggering assortment of available faces. Everything from futuristic to integrationist, from minimalist to just whacky! Over 400 user-created faces at my fingertips just blew me away. Talk about an awesome community. But the story only gets better. After a little digging I came across "The True Story of Audion." Twenty-four pages later I sat back in awe of what these two friends accomplished over the years. Starting out with plans to make their Macs great and ending up with a hugely successful mp3 player. Audion attracted attention from the likes of AOL and Apple. In fact, the creators of Audion were invited to meet with Apple 2000 and likely could have been on the team that designed iTunes had a scheduling conflict (not on Apple’s end) caused them to cancel the meeting. In the end iTunes began releasing features Audion couldn’t keep up with but even then the creators decided to stay independent and started Panic Software rather than join Apple (yup, they had a second offer and even met with Steve Jobs in person). Ok, ok, so maybe this story is only fascinating to programers and geeks, but I found it thoroughly impressive. Long live the little guys! They make my computing experience better every day

Well, Deb had gone and given Chamber Choir another killer of a piece that we’re supposed to have ready in under 2 weeks. As I’ve found most often to be true I definitely learn music best if I can listen to it so now I’ve taken on the challenge of inputting this crazy "lil" piece of music into Finale. So far I’m up to measure 24 (out of 95) sooooo this might take a little time. I’ll keep posting as I get more of this done.

Chamber Choir peoples… want to hear your part played for you? You too can listen to i thank You God for most this amazing day (or however much I happen to have done anyway). You can also download the original Finale file if you REALLY want to. As always let me know if you find errors and good luck!

[Edit] Well, this just goes to show… something I’m sure. After spending a lil over an hour making a MIDI of the first quarter of the song here I come to find out that my work has already been done for me. I found a recording that some student at Arkansas Tech University put online. You can listen to it here. I still like the clarity of notes on the MIDI however so I’ll let you know if I do update that further.

[Edit] To make things easy, here’s a list of the files you Chamber Choir people probably want:
The MIDI version (about 50% complete). MIDI not working? Try the MIDI MP3.
The MP3 version by some random choir.

Well, this weekend it was time for housecleaning at here at Kuhnsfam.com. A while back I got a call from Howard Stutzman wondering if I could help Casa Del Sol’s website get better placement when people searched for retirement communities. Well, that got me thinking just how LITTLE I knew about search optimization so after doing a little research on the topic have started trying to boost my visibility at least a little. Then as I was messing around I decided to finally go ahead and make my Photo Gallery Y2K compliant! That’s right, it only took me 5 years to take the leap. What a relief it is; I no longer spend half the night worrying that my grandchildren might someday inherit this website only to find that they can no longer upload their digital photographs! “Mission Accomplished” <:o)

Just so you know for sure, Colorado is SO great!! Dad sent me this email yesterday after front-range Colorado got their first good dumping of snow for the season. YAY for having an awesome home Speaking of changing seasons, kuhnsfam.com finally caught up with the calendar season-wise. Yeah, Fall caught me completely off guard (who woulda expected that Fall started in late September?!) but today I finally took the time to fix things up. This season’s look is brought to you by Harrisonburg, Virginia. I know, Colorado has beautiful Aspens, but the east DOES have some pretty beautiful trees too, so I thought I would at least give them a chance. This mountain is based on Massanutten, one of the more prominent peaks near Harrisonburg. Anyway, enjoy the new look while it lasts

Speaking of Harrisonburg, the rest of my time with Beth, friends, and family there went wonderfully. Beth and I got some awesome Indian food in Charlottesville (tho we didn’t end up finding my friend Ame who goes to school there), we hung out with Jason & Curt a bit more, and even survived the 10 hour trip home (thanks in large part to excellent provisions provided by Grandma!). Now as long as Beth survives her upcoming term things should be pretty much back to normal.

Random link of the day: The Brick Testament: Bible stories illustrated (pretty much verse by verse) using LEGOs. Beware tho! While some of the stories are quite tastefully done “The Rev.” Brendan Powell Smith who creates this site is NOT an ordained mister and some of the illustrations are a bit crude. Oh yeah, and reading over his blog is fairly entertaining too. He comes up with pretty funny satyrical commentary on current events.

Well, a whopping 12 hours of driving later & Beth and I are FINALLY in the ‘burg. We left Goshen at 5pm and hit rain within an hour. It kept raining the ENTIRE rest of the way! Since it was dark, foggy, rainy, and my car is manual Beth didn’t feel quite comfortable driving so I just kept at it. We stopped for gas and at around 2:30 made an hour-long pit stop in a church parking lot for naps. Luckily Beth is good at keeping me awake with good conversation or we woulda never made it! After sleeping into the day on Saturday we enjoyed a wonderful supper with G’pa and G’ma Brunk before heading to EMU to hang out with Curt and Jason. Today we saw even more former Hesstonites at church but have been fully enjoying a relaxing break to it’s fullest! Well, it’s about time for Desperate Housewives … *sigh* Beth, you’re lucky I like you so much

And just like that, fall break is upon me! That’s right, Goshen College has an insanely early schedule (Christmas break starts December 8th) so this evening I’m hitting the road with Beth. Forgoing the traditional trip home (since both our homes are real far away) we’re headed east to good ‘ol VA. Luckily my grandpa and grandma Brunk live in Harrisonburg so we’re going to stay with them. Another draw is that we’ll get to visit the whole crew of Hesstonites who transfered to EMU this year. So it looks like fun times ahead for me!

Oh, and wondering why I haven’t posted in over a week? Well, I have always been a pretty huge fan of the Myst series. I own the first three games, and then all of a sudden MacAddict had an article about Myst V which is coming out fairly soon. All of a sudden it hit me, I somehow COMPLETELY missed the release of Myst IV which came out almost a full YEAR ago! Lucky for me Ubisoft & Cyan are absolutely amazing and release the Myst games cross-platform, meaning that I could just swing by our local Walmart and pick up a copy for an amazing good price That said, Myst is soooooo time consuming, and sooooo addicting! Needless to say, I now have something else to fit into my increasingly full schedule (that’s right, my schedule is actually getting full). Not that that’s a bad thing, but yeah, poor kuhnsfam is getting a little left behind. My bad, I’m gonna do my best not to leave all y’all in the dark. (Oh yeah, I watched American Beauty this week too, that is quite the movie!)