So It's the month of February and to many it is known as the month of love. I've been reading some friend' blogs the past few weeks and it's been filled with nothing but talks of marriage and other "Im so into [him/her]" type entries. So much to the point that it makes me sick, but then I also stopped to think... "maybe i've been single for too long?". Nah lol.

Anyway, it seems like all the blogs I've been reading lately have been about their plans for valentines day. It's great to read about these things since I have NEVER in my life had an actual valentine. Never had the opportinity to go out on a valentines date, never had a valentines kiss, never had valentines gifts, etc. Yea I know sad. It's just that for the past 2 years, I've been living the single life just dating a different girl every week. Every relationship I had prior, never lasted long enough to even consider that other person a valentines potential. I am totally not good at these things. Maybe Im too picky? I dont know? I don't really care. I thought I met some potentials in 2008 but well, lets just say they didnt turn out to be my type anyway. Moving on...

2008 has been more of a year of self discovery for me. I spent alot of time reconnecting with old friends and reconnecting with the things that made me happy. I made alot of new friends also, met this cool girl but she stopped talking to me right around the new year so she got left behind in 2008. As I have mentioned in one of my earlier blogs, I dont talk to people who dont even take the time to talk to me. If you got left behind, there's a reason why you're not in my life now. I deleted about 130 people off my phone simply because I have not heard from them at all... their names were just  taking up valuable space.

2009 seems to be awesome so far. I've made a lot of new friends and I actually have a valentine this year, only thing is, she's gonna be in Utah on valentines weekend ...crap.

My ears took a beating this weekend. Im usually good at keeping the volume down in the DJ booth but I had to crank it.

Friday - Beer co.
      Usually I keep the volume down on the monitor and my headphones but there were so many rude and obnoxious girls climbing over the barrier to come bother me. At one point this one chick pulled my headphones off my head to talk to me while I was in the middle of mixing in a song. When that happen, my hand hit the emergency unload button the mixer trying to catch my headphones and scratchLIVE went back to playing the previous track. I straight told the chick to fuck off.  She came back 2 songs later and kept bugging me so I turned the volume up on the monitor so I couldn't hear her incoherent ass. Then a group of girls kept trying to get my attention to play that stupid beyonce song in the middle of an electro set. They kept yelling that people don't like electro, uhmm sorry, just because these 2 bitches dont like electro doesnt mean the whole crowd doesnt. The fact that the dance floor was packed didnt help their argument. One song later and they barged their way into the booth and said "stop playing this, we can't dance to it, nobody in here can dance to it", I pointed to the dance floor and said "the people on the dance floor dont seem to have the problem" . Then I cranked the monitor to a blistering 130db to get them the hell out of the booth.   Oh the girls weren't the worst, these Kanye loving assholes got on the dance floor and tried to block everyone from dancing. Stupid haters, no parking ont he dance floor. Jay aimed the fog machine toward them and held the manual fog button down to try and fog them out of the floor. I think he emptied the tank of fog juice. LOL  The stupid requests kept coming and I finally used one of my sound bytes and it blasted over the sound system to put these idiots on blast "HEY! NO REQUESTS TILL I SEE SOME TITS!!!!"  that worked. haha

Saturday - Private function 9pm - 3am
    Well I didnt blast the music in the booth. I had the monitor in the DJ booth at -23 db, about 80 db in loudness in the booth. It was a small party in my standards but damn that was about 120db in the middle of the dance floor from 9pm to 3am in the morning. Although it wasnt very loud in the DJ booth, My ears were still shot from friday night so they were not getting the rest they needed.

So now my ears are actually hurting, i hear ringing and all because of stupid drunk girls on friday barging into the DJ booth...

I get a call from Ryan in the customer service department about a suspicious email and a possibility that our system has been compromised.
I advised him not to click any links and i headed over to his office to check the email for myself. Sure enough, it was definitely a scam.

here's a scan of the message sent to him. Click on the image for the full view

First of all, the email screams fake. If this indeed was sent on ebay's behalf, the images would have shown up. Second, the FBI does not handle ebay disputes. Third,  we never sold PSPs on ebay. The listing number is fake, the email is fake and last but not least, we never click links in emails, we just hover over the URL and the actual URL shows up and it didnt even match the visual url.

SO what did we do? Ryan reported this to paypal, and ebay. I print this out and break out the trusty "Fail Stamp" andofficially failed the document. It is now posted up on the door between the IT Department and the back warehouse for all of the company to laugh at that failure.

Yesterday a  friend's house was burglarized and the thieves knew what they were taking.
Someone knew he was DJing out of town and the fact that they only stole his DJ equipment, computers and records, leads me and fellow DJs to believe it was someone who knew his schedule and has been inside his home.

Who in their right mind would steal from a friend, how low do you have to go? What the hell, stuff like this makes it hard to trust people nowadays.

Ok so on the scratchLIVE forums, we've had a bit of a problem with other DJs stealing mixes and remixes from fellow DJs and he's been caught numerous times. This time the crew burried the hatchet and exposed him to the DJ community and the community of Clubs and Promoters. Check this out: http://www.djbastards.blogspot.com/

Quote from DJ Bastards:

DJ FLIPSTYLES AKA Michael Donckels CALIFORNIA United States.

DJ BASTARD: DJ FLIPSTYLES AKA Michael Donckels CALIFORNIA United States.
BASTARD TYPE: Bastard Remix Stealer/ Money Maker
BASTARD LEVEL: A lowlife bastard petty thief (living on the rectum of humanity)
PHONE: 951-707-6446
EMAIL: djflipstyles@yahoo.com
MYSPACE: http://www.myspace.com/deejayflipstyles (please add him and send our link!)
SCRATCH LIVE PROFILE: http://www.scratchlive.net/forum/profile/?user_id=54007

OUR CODENAME FOR HIM: FaginFakeStyles, or: the old, dirty, hard drive bastard.

*** PLEASE DO NOT HIRE HIM, IF HE IS ALREADY HIRED, THEN FIRE HIM!***

READERS: any other useful intel on this criminal please forward it to us!

This case was forwarded to us by our fellow supporters - Thank you!

What
we first loved about this guy was that he is 38, and yet this is the
example he sets for other young aspiring DJ talents. Generally, as you
get older, you leave your self serving ways behind and look for honest
work. We can understand when a 17 year old DJ does this sort of thing,
because they are still young & ambitious for a quick buck. However,
when a 38 behaves like a 17 year old, it is simply, disturbing. We can
only assume that FaginFakeStyles, was kidnapped by aliens (you can fill
in the blanks for what) because he seems to have missed the last 21
years of growing up. Picture this old dirty bastard in another 20 years
still doing the same sh*t, trying to woo little DJ boys with his shiny
new hard drives, promising them of all the wonders of the music world.

ACCUSATION: DJ
FaginFakeStyles AKA Michael Donckels, has been stealing remixes done by
other DJs and reselling them on eBay, craiglist (this is the infamous
DJ Hard Drive Bastard) and iOffer. Since he is such a shameless prick
who blatantly trumpets his ill doings on forums (http://scratchlive.net/forum/discussion/?discussion_id=66617#1498572),
he is the perfect candidate for djbastards.com. We only hope that one
day someone that knows him personally will see this blog, and give him
a good kick in the scrotum.

The
remixes he was reselling, were posted by the DJs who had created them
and wanted to legitimately share them with fellow DJs in good faith. DJ
FaginFakeStyles,
thought "jumping jelly beans, I can make a quick buck to get my shimmy
shined, with this lot" (we are assuming this is how old dirty bastards
that pry on young DJ boys talk) and while he patted the youngsters on
the head for their apparent DJ talent with one hand; with his other
hand, he was quick to pass off the talent to make a quick shilling.

Fortunately for us, the DJ lads got together and decided to shut down old Dirty Bastard Fagin's, eBay store http://myworld.ebay.com.my/djflipstyles/ by letting the authorities know that he was simply a bastard.

His current craigslist Ad for Hard Drives 'full of music', for sale: http://inlandempire.craigslist.org/msg/991784229.html
still exists, but buyers beware! this is highly illegal, and why on
earth would you trust a prick that steals from younger DJs and
legitimate Remix Services?

He is also still selling other DJ's remixes on iOffer: http://www.ioffer.com/selling/djflipstyles?owner=djflipstyles&page=2.

We
can only hope that you, the mass, will send a tonne of abusive
letters/phone calls to this old dirty bastard who is clearly like the
new technological age Fagin from Oliver Twist, so that he would learn
that stealing from youngsters at that age is simply not cool.

HERE IS A CONVO TAKEN FROM THE SCRATCH LIVE FORUM:

FaginFakeStyles:
"Guys - I apologize to the Serato board for posting any mixes in my
ebay store that came from this site. I got a bit greedy and crossed the
line. I NEVER claimed any of the mixes as my own. I have my own mixes
listed that speak for themselves. In any event, I have removed anything
that came from here along with the hard drives. Alex I will contact you
personally. Hopefully we can move on."

Another Professional DJ's reply:"It's
way past moving on. You're still selling hard drives full of bootleg
music in your iOffer site. www.ioffer.com That's not only criminal, it
is immoral. You are breeding a world full of instant microwave DJ's.
Your iOffer account will be gone by the end of the day. We have people
working on that as I type this. Also, we will be on constant watch for
anything you post on any for-sale site and we will have it taken down.
In the meantime, enjoy your ill-gotten profits. You will need them once
the legal aspect of this kicks in."

FaginFakeStyles:"The drives have been taken down, it just takes a while to show it. You got my PM Alex, I meant what I said. out."

We
have contacted FaginFakeStyles as a 'customer', and our investigation
has concluded that this dirty old bastard has not taken down the hard
drives nor the remixes. He has just become more of a slippery
character. Basically, he will simply say anything to avoid getting
prosecuted, even if it means that he publicly humiliates himself, in
true Fagin style. So, here we are to give him a helping hand with that.

"When a DJ is out of line and he is re-selling what is mine, who am I gonna call? DJ BASTARDS! de ne ner ne na!"

The DJ scene has changed so much since the last time I took a break ( 2003 - 2006). With the introduction of Serato scratchLIVE and other Digital Vinyl Systems, and the availablity of music in MP3 format, it seems like everyone is a DJ.
Sadly, as much as technology helped advanced the DJ field, it also opened the doors and made it easier for douche bags and trendy, bandwagon hopping assholes to DJ. Sadly because so many people hopped on the bandwagon in hopes of boosting their coolness level, they dont know how to properly market themselves and they offer their lack of skill for 50 bucks or less. I remember I used to DJ a few clubs in hollywood with this one promotion company and they used to pay me and my friends atleast 400 bucks each plus a percentage of the bar for rotating the dance floor. Hell when it was just two of us, I would walk home with almost 800 bucks for DJing 4 hours. Yea. when DVS systems came out.... the pay rate went down the toilet because now there is this large pool of DJs who lack in skill and would sell themselves for 50 bucks.... FOR THE WHOLE DAMN NIGHT. wow... Promotion companies became greedy and said we can easily be replaced. Wtf has happen to the DJ scene. Damn.

Damn Microwave DJs.

This year's NAMM show was not as great as last year's show. It was awesome nevertheless.

I met up with Steve and his girl Sher and we made our way around the pro-audio and studio section of the show on Saturday. Nothing much going on in this realm of the music industry, no new product debuts that are of any significance to us. The only big thing was the announcement of Serato scratchLIVE 1.9 beta. Oh man this thing is freaking awesome. It has video support for the SL-1 users and an integrated Sampler.

1.9 Running VSL on the SL-1 interface and Nick running it off his iPod lol.

Besides 1.9, there really wasn't anything new coming from Rane and Serato, theSL1 and TTM56 got a facelift. Thats pretty much it.

Hanging out with the Serato crew was cool, they had a Booth this year because of all the awesome partnerships they acquired. As usual they were all cool people to hang with:

Warrick

Bill

whoo hoo.

So after hanging with serato, we headed to the vestax booth and messed around with itch and the VCI controller. And this little turntable caught my eye:

After we dropped by the pioneer booth and met up with Steve's friend from High school, Min. She's a spokes model for pioneer =)

Me and Min

Sher, Steve and Min

The Pioneer room was freaking awesome as usual but their Demos were boring

20k dollars in flat screens... wow

Im totally gonna do this setup for my computer haha.  three 50" flat panels in vertical orientation haha

So after that we went around and picture up free schwag... T-Shirts, Bags, Pens, Lanyards, Software oh and because me and steve scored some limited edition scratchLIVE vinyl:

Rare Pink marble scratchLIVE control vinyl... I got a pair and I'll be using these for the special occasions.

Later that evening, I went to the Clippers game at the staples center with my mom. She scored free vip tickets from work.

We ate at the VIP restaurant also, awesome stuff

and yes, the clippers won haha

more pics on my mom's camera, I'll ask her to email it to me later.

So today(sunday) I checked out the last day of namm, visited my friend's booth in the south hall, checked out roland, and other stuff. I ended up leaving early and I headed out to our Jam session in culver city. Check out some of the vids from there:

I just got back from Cha For Tea and Im satisfied. I really havent done much since my last blog , all I did was go to work and then had dinner at Cha For Tea with Chris and Nelly. Good times.

Work has been pretty busy in the past week. Things are getting a little hectic now since we all pretty much had a 1 week vacation because of MacWorld 2009. So the holiday aftermath is really hitting us now as we all struggle to play catch up. Our network suite has been giving us headaches the past week, the backend has been a world of FAIL lately and the server support has been pretty timid in responding to our support request with the system. Oh well, what ar eyou going to do, it's a problem on their end and not within our system.

moving on...

im definately in love with the new macbook pro 17". Im seriously thinking about getting this guy esp with the discount i can get through our clients at work. Id use this for DJing and music/graphics editing in the field. I'll keep the thinkpad workhorse since I program in c# and the IDE i use for programming is written for windows. ....no, I will not install xp via boot camp. 2 laptops for 2 different purposes.

we shall see what happens after tax season =)