Sunday, January 29, 2012

Proved wrong (Walmart Edition)

Today's topic is about swallowing one's pride and admitting you are wrong. It can be very hard to do, but when you are clearly proved wrong you must accept you most epicly failed.

Please note that I wrote the way I did for humor.

Today I most epicly failed. I failed at "This-door-is-obviously-used-more-than-the-other-one." As analytical as I am, I often try to make people laugh or "marvel" at a "discovery" I have made. It sometimes works. Most of the time, it seems, nobody hears me anyway - typical - that's the story of my life. My best "jokes" are seemingly never heard. Unless you count the "Little-people-in-Japan" joke. It's an inside joke. I'll let you know more at the end of this post.

My "discovery" most epicly failed today because a girl proved me wrong. I hate it when girls prove me wrong. But I had to be "man-enough" to admit it. Today's "discovery" consisted of a double-door coke cooler, a CSM (customer service manager), and the "wrong-prover."

I analyzed the coke cooler doors. I noticed how one door to the cooler suctioned more than the other one. The left door suctioned immediately when the door was let go (as the doors are spring-loaded), and the right door bounced a little before suctioning. After hypothesizing and creating a theory, I concluded people must use the right door more than the left. The cheap rubber had already worn out. I wanted to share my "discovery." So, the fool I was, I dramatically demonstrated the doors closing to my laid back CSM. She found it interesting. My associate came to see of what I was speaking, in which I repeated the demonstration.

Here it comes...


Without missing a beat, my associate - a girl with common sense, which I obviously have none of - explained why the door actually bounced. There was a coke tray protruding further than the others, and the door was hitting it. So stinkin' simple. So crazy that I didn't even see that. I knew I should have analyzed it more. LOL.


It stung to admit I was wrong. I just barely did at first. Then I just made fun of myself as I am doing now. We are all human. I count a funny day in this way.


Lesson learned: Don't be so quick to make a "discovery," or impress your fellow associates/managers. 


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Still interested in the Japan joke? Okay. Just to let you know, world, I'm not racist. Acts 17:26 states God made every nation from one man. This joke was all in good fun and I would gladly take any jokes made for me. (For instance - I am known in some circles for my "chicken legs" since I am a bean pole.)

This remark was made a few weeks ago. An associate and I were talking about people's height. This associate happens to be the one who "pwned" me. Pwned comes from a Warcraft gamer who misspelled "owned" on the internet and has spread world-wide since. It means she conquered me. Remember? If you read the above story you know she proved me wrong. I lost. That's a usage of it.

Anyway!! Back to the story....
She jokingly calls herself "vertically-challenged" (in which I get a kick out of - sounds like it came from the politically-correct big wigs. Wouldn't be surprised.) I told her she would feel better if she went to Japan where is everybody is like 4'5" (I just guessed) and you could tower over everybody. "Hey little people," she could say as she pats them on the head. That was the best joke off-hand I ever made. I'm not very quick-witted.


Hope you enjoyed today's post. I had a good day today. :)

-Brandon

Saturday, January 28, 2012

Mr. Timn - Milkman (Rap Version)


This is my first attempt at doing this. I have seen so many remixes of news casts, comedies, and normal videos I decided to give it a shot. I bought and downloaded my stuff from Free-Loops.com. I hope you enjoy.



Watch original ingenious video here.

Friday, January 27, 2012

Metal Metrics 2 - Drop Ab

I take online guitar lessons and I have been practicing on this challenging song for quite a long while now. Here is my current progress.




I am tuned a half step down than the original - so it's Drop Ab. This is my Jackson SLSMG guitar equipped with stock EMG 81/85 pickups and 68 on my bottom string. It's part of an 8-string set, so the string gauges are as follows: 68 58 48 28 18 14

Compare with the lesson.

Sub my awesome instructor:
http://www.youtube.com/CosminLupuBaritone

My name is Brandon, and I invite you to join us at GMC:
You can learn this too only there.

Download this POD Farm tone if you have the Power Pack expansion.

Follow the discussion up until my final grading.

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Different tuning gives fresh ideas / 8 strings

I just got some more ideas last night. I recorded the beginning of a song I could call "Seven Bowls of Wrath." This is in reference to when God pours his wrath out on this world in the very last days. This is spoke of in Revelation chapter 16 (in the Bible, God's Word). By the way, these "bowls" are figurative. I was thinking it would be neat if I actually got together an album called "Prophecies of Revelation," each track having to do with the book of Revelation.

I have had my guitar tuned to Drop A for a long time now. I have run out of ideas and not making sense of my musical creations. So what I did was change my tuning to Standard Bb. To give you an idea where this is, if you dropped the 6th string down to match the 4th string (only an octave lower) it would be Drop Ab. So, I have actually gone lower in tuning, but a half step above in the key I normally played. I'm forming chords better.  It's working so far. I will want to be posting this on my SoundCloud before too long. I ran out of ideas last night, but I got my recording very tight and decided to call it a night. I did a great job getting my ideas out and recorded.

This video gave me some inspiration. Pete has an 8 string here, and I have a 6 string, but I got some ideas from this rhythm arrangement.

Since "Seven Bowls of Wrath" is wrathful and all, I want it to sound mean and heavy for most parts. After all, when you face God's wrath...er...you don't want to. Thankfully, I am not going to face God's wrath because I'm his child. I can face his judgement, but not his wrath. That's in the Bible, 1 Thessalonians 5:9.

I don't know if I want an 8 string or a 7 string. I keep going back and forth in my mind. The only thing keeping from getting an 8 is the massive neck. But, dude!!, if you wanna go LOW then you can on an 8 string. Just check out these guys. They are tuned to Drop F. They hit that open low string around 30 seconds. Pete is in the video again. He's the rhythm guitarist for Red Seas Fire.

Sunday, January 22, 2012

Arranging a contemporary into metal

I'm taking the contemporary song, "Lord, I lift your name on high," and giving it a metal/rock twist as many bands already have. I will try to give it some "metalish" ideas to create the mayhem. heehee. I've been trying to compose, but it's not coming natural once again. So...I don't force it. Otherwise, I will become discouraged and want to quit. We can't have that. So, I bring you this update. I'm actually recording with my cheap Ibanez IJX 121, tuned to Drop B, and it sounds pretty killer.

Stay tuned at my soundcloud.com/fireball100
and youtube.com/thefireball100.


Brandon

Friday, January 20, 2012

Gaming: Legend of the Void - Final Battle

Okay, so I beat the game. =D ...For the first time. It took a few tries. The first time I went through the game (with a different main character) I was too weak for the final boss. Er, I didn't have enough potions. This is an exclusive on my blog. I wish this game was longer.

Gaming: Legend of the Void - Sacrifice

Remember my previous post about this game? Well here is the game when I am a little over halfway through.

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

RED: Faceless (exclusive)

This is my cover of this song you will only find on my blog. When I get an HD camera, I will re-shoot the songs Feed the Machine and Faceless for a dual cover.



Guitar: (cheap) Ibanez IJX 121
Strings: Ernie Ball 12-56
Tone: POD Farm 2 (chain & settings below)

Noise Gate > Tube Screamer > Cali Diamond Plate > 4x12 Treadplate

Gate
Threshold: -41dB; Decay: 0%

Pedal
Drive & Gain: 11 o'clock; Tone: 2 o'clock

Amp
Drive: 10 o'clock; Bass: 8-9 o'clock; Mid: 9-10 o'clock; Treb: 4 o'clock; Pres: 5 o'clock

Cab
28% room; 57 mic off axis

Courageous

It came out today and I purchased it.Phenomenal movie! Production rocked. The message was very relevant to today. I laughed and cried the whole way through. I totally recommend you watch this Christian movie.

Courageous Website

They also made Flywheel, Facing the Giants, and Fireproof.

Monday, January 16, 2012

Too much B12 = Instant tan

On today's episode, Brandon gets a tan in winter without a tanning bed!!

I took too much Vitamin B12 this morning. I take this liquid B12 to give me energy, because I was so lethargic as of late, but my body had a reaction. I turned extremely red all over - face, neck, arms....It set me on fire. It felt like I had received a bad sunburn. I looked as though I had got out of a tanning bed. I took B12 right before I left the house for work. It takes me just a few minutes to get to work. I walked into the break room to clock in. The B12 hit my bloodstream. A department manager asked if I had got a sunburn. Others in the room where saying I was really, really red in the face. I looked into the mirror, and indeed, I was as red as a Kit-Kat package (as later described by another department manager). I started feeling very hot on my skin. I told them about my B12 I had just taken and they concluded this was the cause.

Inside the hour of my personal furnace, I drank two bottles of water. I sarcastically lifted my bottle of water and said "Cheers" to my supervisor. ;) I told many of my fellow workers and managers of my ordeal when they would ask me about my red face. A manager said it looked like I was extremely embarrassed. xD I was not hard to miss, but thank God no customers brought the situation to attention.

My paranoia drove me to talk to a pharmacist about my ordeal. Drink lots of water and let it flush it out of your system, she said. I wasn't going to die. LOL. I was glad. Thankfully the beet red skin tone went away after this hour. Nevertheless, for about an hour, my skin burned like fire and my insides quivered from the extreme energy boost. Needless to say, I had no problem getting carts. I was so energized, I could run like nobody else. However, I did "crash" later that day. My body was so used to the energized feeling, I was experiencing the "downer effect."

You may be wondering how I managed to take so much B12 - and just how much did I take?! I was aiming for the prescribed dosage, 1 cc. The dropper would not suck up the liquid because of the small amount in the bottle. So I just winged it by guessing how much was in my mouth. Yes, I just tipped the bottle up and drank. No more will I do this. I will measure, but I won't be taking B12 for a little while now. Kinda freaked me out, ya know. ;)

I still had a great day at work today. It was equally fun. This reminds me much of my experience with the peppermint oil. Have you read that? You can find it here.

Thanks for reading. Email me any time at my official fan email.


Brandon Burch

Destroy the Spy

This is a collaboration of my 13 year old brother, Jordan, playing the spy; and his friend, Jesse, playing the terminator. Jordan produced and edited this entire video.

Friday, January 13, 2012

Funny thing happened at work today

We got a prank call at Walmart today. The hysteric caller described herself as a blind lady named April, long blonde hair, who was lost in our store. She said her seeing-eye dog had run away from her. We paged April over the speaker system. The department managers were scurrying, searching for this blind lady crying in some corner who lost in this non-Supercenter store.

Things just didn't add up. A seeing-eye dog does not run away from their person. And we lost the call two different times. The department managers, or somebody, would have seen her. And how would she get in the back of the store anyway? The dog would have led her there. But no dog had entered the store.

It was believable at the time, but our Customer Service Manager said she felt silly. These kinds of pranks are not really funny - or at least at the time they're not.

That was the highlight of my day at Walmart as a cashier. Thanks for reading and let me know your thoughts.

Brandon

Thursday, January 12, 2012

Looking back at 2011

Hello everyone. I did start out making this a video on YouTube, but it resulted in being 17 minutes long. One of my students commented, "Master, I think this is too long." xD He calls me master - heehee. I'm glad he told me this. I was going to make another video and just cut out all the unnecessary highlights of 2011 (not really highlights at all), but I thought I would just write it here. It's here for the reading for those who care. So yes, I did shorten the highlights very much.

First I want to start off by recognizing an important event that was NOT in 2011. It was at the very end of 2010 at GMC. December 24, I won 2nd prize in the GMC Spread the Word Photo Contest. I submitted a silly picture, and I won my POD GX with POD Farm. So this is where my guitar tone comes from now - software on the computer simulating real amps and effects.

Now on to 2011. February 9, I released my YouTube interactive game. It was a multiple choice game powered by clickable annotations that lead you to its own special video. You can find it on my YouTube channel. Skipping ahead, on April 18, I won 1st prize in the GMC Attitude Competition. I played a silly version of Canon Rock and won an Ibanez TS9 Tube Screamer. It was my first stomp box pedal, and still the only one I have. May 13 was a great day for me. I published my last lesson in the New Canon Rock Lesson Series on YouTube. This was a huge remake project and was great to finally finish and upload it.

May 22 was a very special day for me. I graduated from Three Rivers Community College with an Associate's in Information Systems Technology Microcomputers - Highest Honors. May 25, I announced this official blogspot on YouTube. May 27, I finished a metal composition called "Determination." June 18, I sold my VOX VT 30 amplifier because I didn't like the thin sound of it anymore. I got $80 credit in the store, which I have depleted mostly on guitar strings. It was very worthwhile since guitar strings are a must for a frequent guitar player. June 21, I uploaded a cover of RED's "Best is yet to come" to YouTube. I was playing in cap and gown I wore for graduation. I also included a lesson in that video. I wish I had done it separately, because the thumbnails available are of my lesson and not my main video. =(

July 18-22 was a very awesome week for me, as I attended a church camp close by. I went with a few friends, as our youth from our church has diminished immensely. I looked at that week as my last year at that church camp because I knew I would probably be in a new job that next year and find it hard to get off. It's okay though. I went every year in a row since we have lived in this area (2004-2011).

September 2 was a cool day for me. I had heard a song at a basketball game and wanted to know what it was. It was something that was played right as the teams came running out onto the court. It had remained a mystery for years, and on this day I remembered it again and figured I would Google it. I didn't use the internet back then, so I couldn't have thought of that then.

On September 9, I interned for a day at Millennium 3 Computers. This is a computer repair shop you go to in the case of your computer fouling up. It was interesting that a lot of people's computers were at their breaking point and needed a new hard drive (HD). I know some people frown on that because some people say computer repair shops just automatically say "You need a new HD" to get a $50 service instead of troubleshooting. The thing is, they do troubleshoot. They run a disk check to see if there are any noticeable issues. They will also scan the computer for any viruses, spyware, or malware. A lot of times, your HD is just simply messed up and it would take more money to try fixing it than it would to just say, "We will back up your stuff, and dump it all on this new HD." It's really cool. They really enjoyed my company and enjoyed being there learning. I got paid for it at the end of the day. The owner and director interviewed me near the end of the day and took interest in my experiences and knowledge. I wonder if they check out my stuff on the internet? Probably not, as I am just one in a million. Those are busy businessmen. The owner did tell me that a 4-year college education isn't really going teach me anything I need to know for the job. Most of this will come in on-the-job training. Regardless of what people say, I am doing what I believe the LORD wants for my life. I am thriving at Wal-Mart. They love me and I love them.

September 16 I started to grasp odd time signatures. I am still learning and trying to get past the 4/4 time. I am wanting to explore things like 6/8, 6/4, 7/8, 9/8, and 5/8. I want to be comfortable with these odd times. September 22 was the day I announced my official fan email - which is hardly used. =( Oh well, it's there. I guess people just want to private message me on YouTube. But I guess it does provide an outlet for those who do not have a YouTube or Google account.

September 29 I was hired in as a cashier at my local Wal-Mart. We are not a Supercenter, but I still enjoy it there, as mentioned above. I primarily work as a cashier, but I also bring carts into the store, stock some shelves, zone (straighten things up and pull everything forward), and basically serve our customers any way I can. The people there are awesome. I do believe I love retail!! ^_^

October 15 I attended Pumpkin Hollow with some friends. It's a place you go with many attractions to get scared. My favorites are the Frightful Forest and the Mad Skull Mine. I think I've been there every year. In the Mine you have to venture through tight, dark spaces, lit by dim lamps. And of course, you will always get scared. You can read more about this experience here. And you can always check out past experiences by using the archive.

October 29 marked the 3rd Anniversary of my playing guitar. I really recommend that you check out the progress I made in this video. I have videoed myself playing from beginning. You will see me evolve musically before your very eyes!

November 10 was when I replaced that VOX amp with a Fender Mustang 1 amplifier. You can check out my unboxing here. November 22 my brother and I uploaded our short film we made together called "Dollar Warfare - Mission One." December 23, I officially received my new Alesis M1 Active Mk2 monitors. I use these for my music production. They are awesome!! I show them in a Christmas Rock video I did. December 24 our family took a vacation. This a wonderful way to end the year.

Overall, this year was a blast! I hope this year is filled with much more. I have a few goals and I hope I achieve them. One being getting a high definition camera for YouTube videos. =)

Cheers!!
Brandon

Wednesday, January 4, 2012

Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Wishing for an HD cam

Okay. I have been wanting to do something with a cover. I want to cover "Faceless" by RED. But I want to record it in HD. I was thinking of waiting until I get an HD camera, and couple it with "Feed the Machine."

I was looking at some cameras online today. I saw some Sony camcorders. I want 1920x1080 resolution and 60 frames per second. An auto focus would be great too. I don't know when I'll be able to get a new camera as these suckers are so expensive.

I may just need to tough it out with SD quality for now.

Sunday, January 1, 2012

Resolutions

I have many new year's resolutions and goals. These are not in order of priority, but the first one is the most important.

1. Have closer walk with God.
2. Get an HD camcorder with 1080p quality.
3. Accelerate my music production and get some tracks to sell on bandcamp.com.
4. Build up my savings
5. Purchase a 7 string guitar
6. Increase my knowledge of music theory and song writing.
7. Learn a lot of lessons at guitarmasterclass.net.

I suppose that's a start. :)
Happy New Year!!

What's your resolution(s)?