Wow, has it been that long?

Digging through my files, I came across this blog I started over a year ago. While it was fun reading the posts, I am still nowhere near $1million, let alone $10. So now it's time to start again and see where it goes.

Went and checked out the Ottawa Bluesfest yesterday. Brian Setzer's Orchestra was playing, but my highlight was a guitar slinger named Phillip Sayce. Oh man, was he good. Fantastic set of blues/rock tunes ending it with a cover of Canada's National Anthem, Neil Young's Cinnamon Girl. Keep him on your radar, he has the potential to become big.

I had so much fun at the fest, I might go again today. My cousin, King Khan is playing today, with his buddy BBQ. Always fun to check him out and watch him perform.

That's it for now, coming soon, Alexi Kovalev, Dany Heatley, recording Rocket Lounge's next album, and other fun summer stuff!!!

Where is Nadia?

So I was watching the news about Nadia Kajouji. She is the Ottawa girl who has been missing since mar. 9, 2008. It is disturbing that a person can so easily disappear at a busy campus pretty much without a trace. She left her room without her purse, wallet, and money, and said she was going to skate.

I am just wondering did she go skating? Did anyone see her? And why did it take three days for her to be reported missing? What was the reason why she was upset when she left? It could be relevant? Maybe not, but there are a lot of details that are not being disclosed for whatever reason.

I really hope they find her and she is okay. It is positive thinking, but I would rather keep that outcome in mind as opposed to any other horrifying result. Let keep our fingers crossed and pray that that's the case.

Stay Tuned.

Sens lose 5-1 to 'Canes

Just finished watching the Sens game on TV. They were playing a watered down version of Carolina, but you would never have guessed it. After putting together a win streak of 3, the Sens went down without a fight or whimper.

Joe Corvo led the way scoring three goals for his first career hat trick. Where was this scoring prowess when he was playing for the Sens? Has he been shown where the net is now? Actually, he just knows how slow Wade Redden is from covering for him for the last year and a half. Aside from the solid play of Martin Gerber, the Sens were pretty much flat. Gerber can only do so much in nets.

Well, with the next few days off, hopefully Brian Murray can get the troops aligned with a couple of focused practices and get the Sens playing strong when the St. Louis Blues
play the Scotia Bank Place this Thursday.

Stay Tuned!

First Radiohead, now NIN, what comes next?

As you can remember last year, Radiohead came out with a new album, "In Rainbows". What was different about this album was that they made it available only online, and said to the consumer to pay whatever they felt it was worth. Apparently, this business model netted Radiohead more money than all of their previous albums' digital sales added together.

Fast-forward to this month, MArch 2008. Nine Inch Nails, Trent Reznor's brainchild released their new album "Ghosts I-IV" onlline. First nine tracks were free, the whole 36 set was $5 dollars via digital download, $10 for a 2 disc cd available in April (also gave you access to the digital downloads), $75 deluxe edition, and a Ultra deluxe edition at $300 dollars limited to 2500 copies.

Today, it is being said that the $300 version is sold out. Wow!! That's $750k gross. Guessing it cost $30/unit to make, that is a tidy profit of about $675k. Good for Trent. Now can a new artist do the same? I don't think so, at least not on that scale. But it's easy to give away music, and the model of giving more value as the price goes up should not be lost to new bands. However, if you can get your video on Youtube's TOP list, or be the hottest thing on the news like Ashley Dupre, then you will get to broad exposure that could lead to successful record sales.

One last thing about Ghosts I-IV, Trent is having a movie festival letting people submit videos to the music in Ghosts. He will have a festival showcasing the best ones from that. Now this is another brilliant move by NIN. Masterful marketing at it's best.

Stay tuned!

On Demand Everything

Saturday morning and the kids are bored?!

I remember my Saturday mornings as a child very well. Whoever woke up first had control of the TV. This was very important because Saturday was cartoon day! It would be a morning of waking up early, getting your cereal and going down to the TV room to watch hours of cartoons.

Goldorak, Robotech, Scooby-Doo, Bugs Bunny, Hanna Barbera Olympics, along with a Saturday afternoon movie like "Chitty, Chitty Bang, Bang" or "Kiss meets the Phantom". Saturdays were what we live for because it was for us!

Now it is nothing like that. Kids are used to daily programming, as well as having VCR tapes and DVDs of their shows! Even with all this focus, they are bored this morning. Going through the channels, and they're a lot of them, we couldn't find anything that suited their fancy. I fired up the On Demand function with our cable service and now they are watching "Flushed Away". A cute movie about a mouse who get flushed down a drain in jolly England.

Pretty soon, we will have access to every movie ever made at our beck and call. And it won't stop at movies. Songs, books, and TV shows will be allowed to come and play. Do we enough time to watch it all?

Entertainment industries fell asleep at the wheel as technology companies blew by them creating technology that enables a guy and a computer to communicate to the rest of the world. Disribution is no longer an issue, all you need is disk space and an internet connection. So "on demand" is the new "colour TV". What comes next?

Well the movie is over and the kids are restless. Time to make lunch.

Ashley Alexandra Dupre song review

For those of you who haven't been watching the news lately, Ashley is the latest singer to come onto the scene. Her Myspace page is: http://www.myspace.com/ninavenetta which has her first single, "What We Want".

While she seems to be able to sing, the song is weak lyrically speaking. However, at last count, her views on Myspace was over 7 million! With such a large interest in her music, she is sure to get teamed up with a few accomplished songwriters who can utilize her singing ability to the fullest. Here's looking at hearing more from you Ashley.

Hello and welcome

Hi Everyone,
I thought I'd introduce myself and talk about my blog. I've been in the high tech industry for 12 years. Just recently, I've been laid off for the 3rd time in 7 years. I know, that's not a great track record, but it is definitely more a sign of the times, as opposed to anything else.

Now I am faced with looking for a new job, and starting over in a new company. This wouldn't be so bad, but with my experience, I have become "over-qualified", or "too specialized", or "impressive, but not exactly what we need..."


As I look for employment, I started looking at ways normal people make money. I say normal, because engineers being as smart as we are, have a habit of making things overly difficult sometimes. Case in point, have you ever seen an on/off switch that has a picture of a line, or a circle with a line through it? What the hell does that mean? Who thought of that?

So while researching what other people do, I discovered that you can make money blogging. What? I can make money doing this? How? When? I should not spend so much time in my cubicle when I was working.

So with that, I am on a quest to make a million dollars while blogging. I am sure it has been done, but if we had that mentality, we wouldn't need to record music anymore since The Beatles have already written all the great songs and melodies.

I'll keep a tally on how I do and we'll see if I ever make it to that magical $1,000,000 target.

Stay tuned!