My new partner's name is Bill Goodman, and he lives in Chicago. He and I share an immense affection towards stoner rock and keeping up with all of the best bands the genre has to offer. This coupling with Ron being distant and effectively non-existent in helping the station out, it seemed like a good idea to get a new partner. Some of you may remember the post regarding finding someone new a few months ago. At that point, Ron had somewhat resurfaced, and The Soda Shop was slightly redefined at that point, but it didn't take long for talks to stop and The Soda Shop go back in hiding. This time, I was greeted with an opportunity to change things, and I took it. I think this was the obvious decision to make.

This occurrence happened to be just in time for The Soda Shop's first birthday. That's right, The Soda Shop is officially one year-old as of Monday, February 22. Along with this, the stream is back up and running (it should be accessible from the site again tonight), and there will be quite a few changes to The Soda Shop's website and operation, some things you won't see, many things you will. I feel most of these changes are fairly obvious, common sense changes. Things aren't working as they should, or they're lacking in parts, and the changes will fix these issues. Hopefully, they'll start rolling out in the near future. We don't have any timeline set for right now, but we should have one here fairly soon, so we can get things going.

Oh, and we have a temporary blog set up until the web site can support an actual news management system. It's using WordPress, of course. View it here: http://thesodashop.wordpress.com

Of course, the music issue may be a bit touchy. Some may try to point out that sharing music is illegal, but have no fret! Most of the music that I have uploaded thus far has been made, produced, and released by independent bands and independent labels. Not only that, but I am not hosting the music maliciously as to further along music piracy. I am hosting the music as to be an archive for myself, and it has been shown that people who DO pirate music are far more likely to actually BUY music, so, if anything, I am potentially  HELPING the bands by giving them new fans and potential buyers of their music. Also, I am fully willing to take down any music as requested by the copyright holders. I love the music that I upload, and I don't desire to step on any copyright holder's toes.

As for the software, none of it will be attached to any key generators or cracks (or links to such). Most of the software that I have uploaded is freeware that is widely available. Again, my intention isn't to further any piracy, but to host the files for my own personal use and to possibly give people access to great programs that they may not otherwise stumble upon.

Enough with all of that disclaimer stuff, though important. If anybody is interested in looking through what I have available, you can check it out at cheesesoda.info.

On a completely different note, The Soda Shop is taking a bit of a hiatus. The progress being made on the project is great, but life and another situation (that I will discuss later in this post) have forced me to put it on the back burner. It is Michigan football season, so the weekends that would normally be used to further the project will no longer be available as I will be attending (or watching) the games. Then there is the "situation" I had previously mentioned. It seems that Ron has abandoned the project with absolutely no forewarning, even with repeated attempts to just get a response from him. I have seen that he has been online since all of my attempts to contact him, so I can only believe this is a complete disregard for me and The Soda Shop. Unfortunately, I lack the skills necessary to form other partnerships and gain promoters, as well as I do not have the music industry contacts that Ron had which would have made The Soda Shop grow at an exponential rate.  Thus, I am looking for a replacement who is willing to take on the business side of the project. I have no wishes for this project to die, and any responses whether in interested parties or suggesting interested parties would be greatly welcomed. Those people can reach me at jacob.ball@thesodashop.us.

I know, it had been a long time since I have made a blog post, but this had a couple of big announcements, so hopefully that makes up for my disappearance. I do hope to continue to actually post more on this blog. I don't know how often or what type of updates will be posted, but we'll see. I've been itching to post again, but without any content, it hasn't been that easy. Anyway, I bid you ado until my next post.

My House Representative lost to my governor's bitch. It was a very close race, but the outcome didn't exactly happen as any sane person wishes it would have. Just about everybody I voted for didn't win... except for like one or two people and the ones that were only 1 candidate running.

Other than the doomsday feelings I have towards our government, I've found myself starting to become obsessed with some web 2.0 sites. I don't know why, but I am. One would think that as a libertarian, I'd rather distance myself from such sites, but I like the technology, and I like the possibilities. Plus, I consider myself to be fairly progressive in my libertarianism that I actually like the idea of such inter-connectivity between Internet/mobile phone users.

I've become more active on my Twitter account, and I have joined a new site called Brightkite that allows you to "check-in" at locations and post that information on the site and even has the ability to automatically tweet those updates onto your Twitter account. It also has the ability to automatically update your Fire Eagle account, as well. Fire Eagle is essentially Brightkite without any decent features. It's just basic location identification and nothing more.

I'm trying to remember that I have a Pownce account, but it doesn't usually work out too well. I don't really see much of a need for the site, but I like the idea of it. I just don't usually have many links/photos/videos/files to share with people.

For a list of all of the online social sites that I belong to, you can check it out here at thekingsthrone.net/profiles.

Besides that, I am hooked on buying CDs. I am trying to keep it to a minimum, though. I am trying to make sure that I have money to buy a pistol with. All I need is a license to purchase in Michigan if I want a handgun. No CCW is required to purchase a handgun or even to open carry a handgun. That's one of my main concerns now.

On another note, I decided to re-open ApocDesigns.

ApocDesigns isn't going to be a web-design community. At least, not for right now. It's going to be a web design group that consists of myself and an old online buddy of mine, cowmisfit. We've both grown as designers, and I figure it'd be easy enough to get off of the ground. The site is up, but it's still in it's design community form, so expect changes in that.

There's not really many other updates to mention except that it's Spring Break, and I'm still waiting on word from the Armory's parent company to let me know if I've been approved or not. I had to let them know what college I went to, so they could verify that information. My SSN number at school is different than my actual one, for whatever reason. It's one number off, and not even off by far. Oh, well. Hopefully that doesn't cause a hiccup.