Pamparo in Toronto

This is a short poem I started writing today shortly after dropping off my son Gabby to school for the first time. Just when I thought I did ok, a tear fell as soon as I completed this poem.

I did not cry, though teary-eyed
Little boy is growing, oh my
At school, right in his classroom
Wide-eyed, excited and anxious

What is next? is this too early?
Maybe I’m just older, silly!
It’s his time to face a new world
Head-strong, expectant and bold!

Congratulations Gabby!

Since I decided not to buy any new gear for guitar/music, my spending have been somehow focused on technology. The funny thing is that while people may see me as a technology-savvy guy, I am really slow to adapt to newer technology/product that is out in the market. However, just the past 2 weeks, I’ve bought 3 tech-related gears …

Tomtom 130s GPS

I’ve always questioned what the purpose of having a GPS is if I’m just driving around the city. But a person in a foreign area can easily justify having one. And that exactly was my situation last week. I was driving around the San Diego area and I don’t know a thing about the roadways. Thank God for the GPS! I managed to go anywhere I pleased without having to worry of being lost. Maybe this will also save me from being lost in and around Ontario

Snow Leopard OS upgrade

Even though I am using a “Core Duo” (native 32-bit architecture), I still bought an upgrade kit to benefit from the new scheduler/dispatch. It wasn’t pretty at first as I had 2 crashes in 1 day. So I tried to re-install my OS from scratch (from Leopard to Snow Leopard) because I thought that the crashes were caused of my rolling upgrade from Tiger/Leopard/Snow Leopard. Thank God for the new HDD I bought recently, I backed-up all my data using Time Machine. Alas, it was just my Tascam US-122L’s audio driver! I should have known as this same device gave me fits when I first upgraded to Leopard. I may just have to sell this Tascam and get something else with better driver support. So far so good right now. And as many Mac forum users would say, it is “snappier”!

Sony Playstation 3 Slim

Since I sold my PS2 about 2 years ago, I’ve just been using my Nintendo Wii for my gaming needs. But everybody knows that Wii is a kid’s console. More and more, the games for Wii is really going this direction. So I decided to get one of the real guy’s console in a form of the PS3. And really, having the price dropped significantly made the decision very easy. A Blue-Ray player, a gaming console and a media center hub … what more can you ask for $299! It might be the best purchase of this year … but we will have to wait and see

For the longest time, I’ve been relying on my old IDE drives that were just lying around. I can’t tell you how many times those drives saved my neck. However, for the past 2-3 months, I’ve been without a benefit of a backup because one by one, my trusted external IDE drives just ceased to work. The worst part is, I should know better. I work in the backup/recovery & storage infrastructure for a financial company. So I know the importance of being able to recover lost data. Finally, I came to my senses and bought my very first redundant backup disks for home.

My Book Mirror 2Tb

Here’s the link to the product site: Western Digital My Book Mirror Edition (2Tb)

I am using this in conjunction with Time Machine. For now I have a little piece of mind in knowing that I have a copy of my precious pictures, music & documents in 3 different disks at all times!

Today, we say goodbye to the early innovator of electric guitar. He died at age 94.

I don’t really listen to Les Paul’s music but I did saw him play live in what was his regular gig in New York 2 years ago. It was a magical moment for me sitting there and watching this old guy still enjoy playing his signature “Gibson Les Paul” guitar.

Les Paul, you will not be forgotten!

Just wanted to share what I was playing last night. Pardon the sloppiness, this was recorded at midnight so that I won’t forget it. So here’s the beginning of a song that I think can go places once the mood strikes again

Here’s the MP3: Melancholic A Mixolydian Vamp

It’s a simple A-A/C#-D-G progression. Somehow, I wanted to make it sound “happier”. But every time I try, it always go back to a melancholic progression. Enjoy!