In this glorious day of the internet, there are readily available opinions from people of all walks of life. This site, for example, contains much opinion. (It just happens that my opinions are fact.) While we’re all completely entitled to our opinions, The Cruise Factor is no opinion. You should be careful that, as you form opinions, you apply them to the filter of The Cruise Factor, lest you cause yourself to look like a complete idiot.

The Cruise Factor is the phenomenon that makes all of Tom Cruise’s opinions wrong. You shouldn’t try to understand The Cruise Factor: you should just accept it for what it is.

So, how should you apply The Cruise Factor to your own life? It’s very easy. When forming an opinion, find out what Tom thinks about the topic. Then make your opinion the exact opposite. You don’t even have to apply any logic in forming your opinion because, since you understand the practical appliation of The Cruise Factor, you will always be correct.

Proper understanding of The Cruise Factor will keep you from looking like an idiot. It may also help keep you away from some really bad movies.

We’re through 12 CDs now. I brought a stack to work with me today so I can get some listening done here. So far there has been about an even mix between good and bad recordings.

On the slate for today is:
2001 Christmas show in Nashville
2001 show with Randall Goodgame in Cassville, GA
2000 show with Randall Goodgame in Buford, GA
2001 show at Bryan College
2001 show with Eric Peters in Birmingham, AL
January 2005 show in Nashville.

So far, I’m through 6 of these CDs and have found a good bit of stuff that might be able to be used on the final CD. One instance of amnesia throughout “Love Enough” had me literally laughing out loud. Some of these are hard to listen to (because of recording quality), but it’s definitely fun listening back to the early years and hearing the original trio (AP, Jamie, Gabe) and some fun moments from way back then.

My church has a small sound board that remains unused (and apparently buried somewhere). I’m going to attempt to find it and setup a small studio in the basement for pulling this stuff off of MD and cassette to put into wav format. I won’t be able to start digging for that sound board until next week sometime, but that should give me a good 7 days or so to get the rest of this music listened to.

I sped home yesterday anxiously looking forward to digging through the package that had been waiting on me. Yes, I know I’ll be spending many hours listening through these recordings, but you’ve got to remember that I’m not just a friend of Andy, I’m a huge fan of his music. And in my home, waiting for me to release it from its cardboard prison was a decade of old recordings and interviews collected by Andy and his fans. I’ll get my chance to enjoy each of these, but mostly I just wanted to sit in awe of the collection for a little while.

I took pictures. Yes, really. I figured if Andrew Osenga can put pictures on his blog, so can I.

Here are the recordings, still in the box, as I first saw them.

Then I pulled them out of the box and spread them out, so that they would make for a more impressive picture. There were 39 MDs in the lot. 39! With all of the MDs, CDs, DVDs, and those things called “cassette tapes”, there was a total of 86 recordings.

Since my hands are big enough to hold 39 MDs, I took this picture. I don’t know what’s more impressive - that there were 39 MDs or that my hand could hold them.

After I finished sitting in awe of this massive bootleg collection, I set out to find some way of organizing it. I definitely don’t want to be sitting in my soon-to-be studio at home thinking “where was that good version of ‘Love Enough’?” So I created a database. Yes, I’m a geek. I logged each recording, date, city, state, venue, etc., and assigned each disk a recording identification number. Then I pulled out my trusty red Sharpie and wrote the recording ID on each disk.

As I listen to each recording, I’ll be logging the set lists in 2 places: first in the database (for searching) and second in my nifty composition notebook (since I won’t always have my laptop handy when listening to this stuff).

So far, I’m about half way through recording #19, Andy’s college demo tape, recorded circa 1996 in an apartment at Florida Christian College. …talk about old school.

I got an email last Thursday from Andrew Peterson asking me to lend a hand with a project he’s not had time to do. It’s something he’s wanted to do for some time and finally has the freedom to do it.

There is quite an extensive collection of bootlegged concerts that has been built over the past decade. Earlier this year, Andy asked fans to send him their bootlegs so that he could pull the “best of” moments to be compiled into a “Live (Almost)” CD. Then Andy decided that he’d like to release something like this every few years, so he changed the working name to “Appendix A” (to allow for B-Z).

With a new full release CD coming out at the end of the summer, a kids’ CD planned, DVD of the most amazing Christmas program ever, and some other stuff on his plate, Andy asked me to help him out by listening through these bootlegs and pulling out the really good moments.

Since I have a blog, and since I really don’t have anything else to do with it, I’m going to post updates on the project here. I figure there’s no way I can mess it up if the whole internet community is holding me accountable. …right? (Andy, if you’re reading this, I’m just joking about messing things up.)

I have been told that our “femail man” (female mail carrier) delivered the package this afternoon. I’ll post more later after I see what is waiting for me inside that box.

I work with a tree hugger. I guess I should say that I don’t hate her, but rather I hate her point of view. While that’s true, it’s just so easy to hate her.

My birthday is Friday, so, in the great state of Georgia, that means it’s time for vehicle registration. I drive an old car, so car taxes are almost nothing. But emissions testing, that’s a different issue altogether. See, the tree huggers have made it so that I have to pay to make sure that my car doesn’t somehow bring about the end of civilization because of what it emits.

Last year I spent $500 making my 92 Explorer pass emissions testing. Today wasn’t as bad - $225 total. But the emissions testing fails where it is most needed. People who drive new cars, who have them modified for performance, are causing more damage to our atmosphere than I am, but they aren’t forced into the emissions testing until their cars are a few years old.

The other place emissions testing fails us is in the really old cars. That 1965 Mustang you see driving up Cobb Parkway while spewing black smoke is also exempt from emission testing.

So why is it that I, with a fairly maintained vehicle, new enough to be practical yet old enough to be completely mine, get stuck with this headache of a birthday present from my state’s government? It’s because the tree huggers hate me as much as I hate them.

I guess I shouldn’t be too shocked over the Michael Jackson verdict today. 12 of his “peers” (which is another discussion altogether) determined that he’s not a child molester. I guess maybe I should give him the benefit of the doubt, but something inside me makes me fear the thought that he’s not in jail.

They said on the radio that he’s suspected to be flying to Europe tonight. At least our kids are safe from him while he’s over there.

My friend Aaron picked this up and mentioned it on his blog, but it’s worth mentioning it here, as well. ZDNet recently did an interview with Mark Spencer, CEO of Digium and author of Asterisk, a fully functional open source PBX system that is, quite honestly, the best open source software I have ever seen.

Interview with Mark Spencer

Andy Osenga wrote a post on his blog about Oprah. I knew Andy could put words to music: I’ve been pretty addicted to his stuff for a while now. What you may not know about Osenga, is that he’s the best 9-toed blogger on the internet.

His post titled “Oprah, You were wrong” is one of the best pieces of writing I’ve read in a long time. It’s a long post, but definitely well worth the read. And if you enjoy the writing in his blog, you should check out his music, too.

I hate CNN. I want to make that perfectly clear. There is no news source I dislike more than CNN. I hate them like the liberal, Bush-hating idiots that they are. That said, they’ve finally gotten something right. Kudos to you, CNN. They posted an article today titled “Michael Jackson: Does Anyone Care?”

CNN’s title says it all. Nobody cares anymore. No matter what the jury decides about Jackson, I say we use taxpayer dollars to buy a 10×10 island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and send Jackson to live there for the remainder of his days. This freak is a threat to children and a burden on American media outlets. We’re tired of hearing about celebrity perverts.

I, for one, would much rather hear about a snake as big as a freight train. Now, that’s news.