Hmm. So apparently I'm not getting emails notifying me that I'm getting comments. But the spam gets through, oh yes.

Anyway, yes, I'm still alive. What I've been up to:

• Work. Whee. Lots of changes. My former boss, the guy who hired me and who was the best boss I've ever had, was fired. No reason, of course, has been provided to those of us who remain, but I heard a lot of yelling in the Überboss's office, some pertaining to the promises of continued employment made before he sold his house in South Florida and moved to Tallahassee. Once upon a time, promises meant something. Anyway, since I was moved to a different department a couple of months ago, I'm not directly affected, but there's lots of indirect effects.
• More work. I swear, the computer techs we subcontract our South Florida operations to are the stupidest people I've ever encountered. It's not that they know less than the average computer user — I had to walk one of them through copying files in Windows a couple of weeks ago! A computer tech! — it's that they can't even follow simple directions when I'm taking them in baby steps through elementary computer operations. My blood pressure goes up every time I see a South Florida number on my cellphone, no lie.
• Computerized evil. Given the addiction I had to MUDs in college, I was pretty happy that MMORPGs cost money, because it kept me away from them. Unfortunately, I found a free MMORPG out there, and spent a couple of weeks in it until I started:
• Writing music. Someone's asked me to write a soundtrack for him, so I've been working on exercising my music-writing chops. It was really easy back in college — I could whip out a several-minute piece in a couple of nights. Now, not so much. Part of the problem is that I've become much more of a perfectionist, and will rework sections over and over again until I'm perfectly happy with them — or trash them if I can't manage that. Still, after several pieces I discarded because they weren't going anywhere, I managed to get something I was happy with. Unfortunately, I hadn't finished it before...
• The Garritan Jazz and Big Band sample library was released. I've been waiting for this puppy for months; I pre-ordered it as soon as Garritan was taking pre-orders. I took Wednesday as a telecommuting day, so Karen could go pick up her mother (as her car was in the shop), and naturally it arrived... at my office, where I'd asked for it to be sent so it wouldn't be sitting out on my doorstep all day. So as soon as Karen got back into town that evening, I hit the office and picked it up.

Oh, man, this is one deep library. I'm still digging into all the capabilities of it. A little taste, something I put together today:

In The Mood (excerpt)

Okay, I'm no Glen Miller. But it's not a bad start.