I’m sitting here doing some work on VMware view listening to Historical Apollo 16 Audio recordings. These guys communicate quite well. It’s amazing how professional and well these guys communicate.

John Watts Young (johnny) and Charles Moss Duke, Jr. (charlie) have been working on the surface of the moon for the last hour. Drilling holes, fixing air hoses, taking pictures, etc. The culture of my world is different from these guys. I’ll make a conscisous effort to be more like these guys in the future. Even Houston is impressive. They are blunt when they need to be, passive at the right times, and generally able to show the excitement of standing on the moon.

Hah, “sound doesn’t travel too good in a vacuum but it jumped”, they are taking some pictures.

Soma.fm is an online radio station that I use sometimes. One of the streams is Mission Control audio. I’m here in my chair living this event for the first time along with some ambient chillout style music. You see, I was not even born when these guys were making history. Some 238,000 miles from earth and 9 years before I was born. I’m sure they never thought anyone would be listening to this in their homes 29 years later.

Mr. Young & Mr. Duke, I really appreciate all you have done for the space program. I hope you are both enjoying retirement. I am enjoying listening to the fine job you guys did. Would love to meet you if you are ever in Houston.

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Here is a tip for you music listeners. Have you ever wanted to have your media key on your cheap dell keyboard to open Winamp by default instead of windows media player? If so you can accomplish this by setting Winamp to be the default player for CD’s.

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My line of work seems to drag me in many directions at once. One of the biggest challenges I face daily is staying on task. People seem to be one of my main distractions followed by computer distractions such as web browsing, email, and IM. I love answering people’s questions via IM and Email but sometimes I have to close the clients. At home this is fine, but in the office I need to remain reachable, so the clients cannot be closed. In order to stay focused I seem to always rely on music I like.

I’ve been lucky so far that my companies have always allowed me to listen to music I enjoy. I’ve also been lucky to have ended up with nice speakers at the companies within a few months. Keeping the volume at a level that does not disturb others and trying to make sure that there are no questionable lyrics has ensured I stay under the radar. For the past few years I have also been making use of closed ear headphones.

Headphones seem to really be a great way to block out the office noise and replace it with some of my own. This works great for creating a work environment that is quite productive and allows me to stay in the zone for hours on end. Staying focused on what I am doing becomes a breeze and my mind doesn’t seem to wander around everything that is happening.

I listen to mostly electronic music. This broad genre contains many different styles with various tempos. This makes it extremely easy to have music playing that fits the task. If I’m on a roll and knocking things out I can listen to some fast paced beats. If I’m moving slow and working on someting delicate I can listen to some slow paced chillout or triphop music.

I’ve recently purchased some new Ultrasone HFI-780 closed headphones. These sound great so far. Next time you find yourself not being able focus, try some music. If you already listen to music to stay focused, I’m always looking for new music.

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