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Well, the summer is winding up and I have managed to go through the whole thing job free thanks to the support of my wonderful wife and the money we saved up while I was working. It is now time that I get back into the spirit of working. To do this I am undertaking a project to upgrade the software that drives my hobby site indietorrents.com. This is a huge undertaking but when it is done it should create a stable, feature rich, template based bittorrent tracker system that others can use. I am still in the process of determining whether I rewrite the source completely or base my version off a stable branch of the most popular tracker software.

After this I intend to take a project I started while i was working and make it into a commercial project management software product I can sell to construction firms. This will be the real test of my programming abilities but it should also be a fun project and I am going to employ the help of a few of my friends to complete it. For this project I will be using Cake PHP a very nice PHP framework for web development.

I also plan on riding the annual Sequatchie Valley Century in October. I want to do the entire 100 mile distance but that depends on how much training I get in between now and then. There is one nasty (for me) mountain climb

I rarely if ever post about sporting events (or post period) but the performances by Michael Phelps at the Olympics in Beijing are truly astounding. 8 gold medals and 7 world records in a week. WOW!

Another event that I was blown away by was the mens 100M sprint which was won by Jamaica’s Usain “Lightning” Bolt. He simply destroyed the competition of the final easily setting a new world record while pulling up about 15M before the tape due to his overwhelming lead. I can only imagine the time he would have put up if he had gone all out until the end.

Thanks John McCain, you truly are a Maverick. Especially when it comes to completely cloning the Bush campaign methods to spread fear to undecided voters. So far I have seen you paint Barak Obama as unqualified to lead in the post 9/11 era. This seems odd considering that the current leader of our country has failed at absolutely everything he has ever undertaken and I am including his current job in that.

Now you are painting him as the candidate who is going to lose all of my life’s savings. This strikes me as really odd when you get to the facts of the current state of the economy. From my eyes my life savings are already going away thanks to the mortgage meltdown. This is the same meltdown that your chief economic adviser Phil Gramm was key in creating this mess by stripping all checks and balances and regulation from the banking industry helping them make record profits while putting hundreds of thousands of US homeowners hanging. Now that the profits are gone we are supposed to pony up the cash to bail them out. Not only bail out all these banks who made risky investments with our money but bail them out with absolutely no conditions attached. Perhaps you should kick Phil off the campaign trial and read some of William Grieder’s books because he seems to have a grasp of what is going on. If you really think that John McCain is going to be the responsible one with your taxes maybe this will help.

In response to your fear campaign it is not going to work. American voters fell for this in the past 2 elections but thanks to the catastrophe of Huricane Katrina and your pal George’s complete failure to respond the people have finally woken up. Perhaps you should take a trip to the big easy and see how all of our aid has helped them down there. Oh yeah, I forgot, you would rather not talk about Katrina in hopes that people will not notice that you keep voting against further aid programs to help in the rebuilding.

I am crossing my fingers that the culture of stupid that you and your republicans so desire is gone for good.

Go see Sasquatch this evening at JJ’s Bohemia. They rule. Be sure to heckle Blackie and Mike as well.

If you missed John Barrett’s bass drum of death the other night you need to check him out next time he swings through town. He really tore up the stage ar JJ’s opening for local rock act the Hidden Spots.

If you did not like this movie there is something wrong with you. Of all the superhero movies that they have made over the past 10 years this one is hands down the best of the bunch. See it on the big screen with digital projection. It looks amazing and the performances by Heath Ledger and Aaron Eckhart were stellar. All thumbs up from this fan.

I worked the door the last 2 nights at JJ’s and needless to say I am a bit burned out and my liver is a bit swolen. But this post was not started so I could complain about my almost perfect life but to urge you to get out and support your local music scene.

Thursday night the local band Bathtub Gin and Fault Lines from San Francisco played to an almost empty house. Fault Lines traveled a long way from home to play and nobody showed up to support them. This is a common occurrence way to often and what makes this sad is that their van lost it’s transmission just outside of Atlanta and they had to have AAA tow them up here. Jenny Bohemia had to drive down and pick them up just so they could play the show. It is this commitment from Jenny and John and the plethora of bands that play at their awesome club that make me love that place.

Contrast this with last night when a crowded house showed up to see The Bohannans rock a 2 hour set that followed 2 excellent opening acts. First was Caitlin Rose out of Nashville originally from someplace in Texas. She has an amazing voice that has to be heard in the confines of a music venue like JJ’s to be truly appreciated. Following her was Mississippi John Doude. John hails from the great state of Mississippi but currently lives in middle Georgia and plays some wicked one man honkey tonk country blues. Even though on this night he had excellent help on bass (perhaps he always does) he was obviously the man in charge.

What does this have to do with the local music scene? Good question! The health of a music venue in a smaller town like Chattanooga is driven by the local music scene. Many out of town performers want to play Chattanooga but since most of them have no existing fan base it is vital for them to get added to the bill of a local band that draws a crowd. Bathtub Gin who are a great band generally pull in a pretty good crowd but unfortunately on this night nobody showed up and Fault Lines didn’t fare so well when it came to how much they pulled in from the door. The Bohannans drew a great crowd and all 3 bands made some money. It is not all about the money either. If the out of town bands get put on the right show and people hear them play they are likely to see them the next time they come and hopefully will bring a friend. Bands like How I Became the Bomb (who is playing this evening BTW) followed this trend and now they headline the show and pack the house every time.

So get out and support your local music club. Buy merchandise from the out of town bands you like, buy lots of drinks at the bar and tip the bartenders well. But do yourself and come a bit early so you can check out those out of town bands who have come to your fair city to entertain you, you may miss the highlight of the night if you come to late.

His name is Phil Gramm and he has had his hands on most of the major legislation that has created the current mortgage crisis. Wanna know more? Look here.

If you are suffering from a pending forclosure and ou are thinking about voting for another repulican you may want to think twice. They take the primary responsibility for this problem.

A stunning show from Monotonix. I will post some pix from the more than insane event when I wake up today. If you were not there or were turned away at the door you missed a hell of a show.

View all the images here.

Today is the 2nd installment of Monotonix assault on Chattanooga at JJ’s Bohemia. Please come out and support the best local club in town. They are the only place in town bringing original and interesting music of all genre’s to town at a reasonable price.

The band this blog post is about is Monotonix who are probably the most exciting live act making their way around this nation. What makes this even more amazing is they are Israeli. I mentioned them in the past here when I said they were the best show Chattanooga has ever seen. I expect this time around it will be even better. If you want to know more about them and what you are in for just do a quick search on youtube for some live clips. Don’t wear anything nice. I will see you there.

Been busy having fun, will try and keep this up to date. I got a new mountain bike last week which I want to tell you all about and post some pretty pictures of.