This month has been the best, busiest and most life-changing month I’ve ever experienced. Let me bring you up to speed.

Back in early August, Diana and I moved in together, which involved moving out of our respective cities and into a new town. We knew where we wanted to be, but even now as I sit here, looking out the window to see the sunset casting the Sandia Mountains red, it’s hard to believe that the hard work and determination paid off and we’re really here: Albuquerque, New Mexico.

The drive out here was an experience in itself, the first day was a long drive much like any other I’ve been on. The second, however, took us through the wind farms and hills of Western Oklahoma, the stark, desolate panhandle of Texas, devoid of life save for Amarillo, which seems to pop up from nothing and leaves you back on God’s definition of the flatlands just as quickly. After Texas was two hundred miles of New Mexico, and it included the most breathtaking driving of my life, through canyons and overlooking mesas and mountain ridges in the distance that evoked a thought I’d never had before, the thought that the landscape of where you call home could truly make you happy or sad, and maybe people are happier out here just because they get little flashes of the truly awesome in their day-to-day life. The fact that Diana and I still find breathtaking new views seemingly every week is confirmation in itself that we picked the right home, and in many ways I feel like I was always meant to end up here.

After moving quickly came work, four days after moving to a town where we knew nobody and had nary a box unpacked. I transferred with Best Buy to the store out here, about a ten minute drive which was great, but I was also moved into a new department, which was less great. Even though I’ve been with the company longer than a good chunk of the people here, there’s always that strange outsider feeling that comes with moving to a new store, with a new way of doing things. I floundered in my new department until two days ago when my department transfer went through, and that in itself has made a huge difference.

Perhaps more importantly wasn’t my job situation but her’s, as she couldn’t transfer store-to-store. But a little providence, maybe a sign that we’re finally getting some reward for our persistence, and she picked up a job two and a half weeks after we moved in. She starts tomorrow and it’s going to be the start of something wonderful, there’s enough artistic connections with this coffee shop that she may be able to make some contacts and friends in the local scene.

The one thing that I was both most and least excited about was the opportunity to go back to college, a real college. Most excited because it’s going to lead to a career more fulfilling than this, least excited because I’ve let myself down with regards to school and grades in the past. I decided to just take one class this semester, a professional writing class, as I’m going to be working 30-35 hour weeks all the way into the holiday season. My first day of class today, and it wasn’t until I was leaving class, walking through this busy campus with students everywhere, strangers to a man, that I realized I’m really back in school. It was an unusual feeling, something resonating that this was what I was aiming for, and for a long time, it’s been four years since I was at a real college, some of my friends from high school probably have their degrees already. It’s maybe not the cut-and-dried path that so many get to follow, but this path is slowly becoming clearer.

Finally, what may well end up being the most momentous thing to happen to us so far happened not six hours ago, at a restaurant across the street from UNM called Frontier. Diana met me there after class for a celebratory meal and she was keeping herself occupied in the meantime by writing about some of the artwork displayed at the restaurant, which is probably 250 feet long and 30 or 40 feet deep, split into five rooms, and there’s artwork displayed on every wall, if I had to hazard a count as to individual pieces I’d say between 70 to 100, mostly paintings but also a few sculptures in various media, tapestries and native blankets, and other little gems and treasures throughout the place. She and I were discussing two paintings displayed one above the other on the wall, and comparing and contrasting the two, and we got to talking about her career goals and that they’re fairly hazy right now. She enjoys analyzing the works, and writing about them, and I suggested she write about every piece in Frontier, and ask the owner if he had a list of which is which and by whom. She ended up talking to him that day, that hour, and as it turns out nobody has really asked him anything like this before. He’s setting her up to talk to some of the artists, get to know them, maybe some interview opportunities, and I didn’t mention it at the time but it seems like if the quality is there, there may be a possibility of publishing the whole thing, a Frontier art book. The possibilities are vast and the ball’s in her court right now, but the fact that the owner’s not only willing but quite interested in helping her may really get her somewhere she wants to be professionally, it’s connections like these that do more even than a prestigious degree. I’m going to be helping her with it, I can handle the photography if nothing else, and it’s exciting for the both of us.

It’s also good to know that I can still sit every now and then and write, and push out 1000+ words with no real trouble, the goal’s been an Education degree in my head for a year or two now but I can’t really rule out writing, in any of it’s forms. This is something that I’ll be picking up again almost by necessity, working in different styles again and just getting back in the proverbial saddle. The next piece is probably going to be a review of the new album by 10 Years, with a new criteria and scoring system much like how wines are rated, it’s a system I like and I’m gonna give it a shot. So, here’s a blanket apology for my recent lapses in writing, but this is also probably the best promise to myself I could make, to treat this whole experience in New Mexico for the adventure that it is, and write accordingly.

See you in September.

This post is going to be formatted a bit differently than previous entries, the good chunk of people that read this are going to be from search engines and not my serial readers. Norton 2010 was about the highest rated paid antivirus on the market, but within a few hours I got irritated with the pop-up notifications that Norton is performing an idle scan in the background. I was even more irritated when I found that there was no real way to disable the pop-ups. It doesn’t do it while I’m doing something else but it is something else I have to close every time I come back to my computer after a time, and having moved from the totally silent Kaspersky AV 2008 I’m not cool with not being able to go totally silent. Silent Mode can be used, but then idle scans are disabled entirely and you have to turn it back on every day. The happy medium is Quiet Mode, which performs scans and only alerts you during actually important things. This is limited by default to a set number of instances, like disc burning. However, you can specify that Quiet Mode remain active while certain programs are running. This is the means we will use to put Norton in Quiet Mode for as long as we like.

Right click the Norton icon in your system tray and select Open Norton Anti Virus (or Open Norton Internet Security).

Under the Computer section, hit Settings.

Click the tab for Miscellaneous Settings.

Under Silent Mode Settings, click Configure next to User-Specified Programs.

Click Add.

Navigate to C:\Windows and double-click explorer.exe.

Click OK. You’re done!

Simple enough, and as far as I can tell it’s working beautifully. I just did this myself a few hours ago but haven’t had any notifications since. If this worked for you or you have a question just leave a comment.

This how-to is cross-posted at the official Norton Community forums at http://community.norton.com/t5/Norton-Internet-Security-Norton/How-to-turn-off-quot-annoying-quot-Norton-2010-messages-idle/m-p/243532#M116572

So, let’s get some things straight:

I’m not a manager, I can’t do discounts via Twitter, promotions, or any of that stuff, and I won’t be involved with it if/when the time comes.

The opinions you see on the renamed account, DanielBBPaducah, are obviously mine and may not (and probably don’t) reflect on the opinions of Best Buy as a company. This is the same logic that applies to my opinions working on the floor, i.e., just because I think Canon makes the best digital camera on the market doesn’t mean corporate agrees.

I really like helping customers, it’s why I do what I do and why I choose to extend that into Twitter. Please, if I can answer questions, ask them.

My future participation in Twelpforce, if I do choose to work on that again, will be limited to on-the-clock hours, no more late night assistance, sorry.

That’s the big stuff. It’s not all bad, the fact that I’m not speaking for the store means that I can make my opinions a bit more obvious, and to me that means that I can help you a bit more efficiently (if a product is bad I don’t have to act like it isn’t). I’ve had a few too many urges to post recently so that’s why I’m getting back into it, so if you have tech questions or Paducah questions I’m keeping an eye on it once again. For those of you that were in the know as to the situtation, your support has probably been the one thing that’s kept me going at work, so thanks sincerely.

So let’s take a step back, for the uninitiated.  Scent of The Year (abbreviated to SoTY) is a yearlong exercise, reading the daily Scent of The Day threads and compiling all that data to one central spreadsheet, and seeing what conclusions there are to be drawn from it.  You’ll be receiving regular updates for every week (SoTW), month (SoTM), quarter (SoTQ), half-year (SoTHY) and finally the big SoTY rundown, which will happen right around February 1^st, 2011, to coincide with my other project, the lead-in to Basenotes March Madness.

Why, one could conceivably ask, would someone take on the tedious, dull, boring and exceptionally un-fun work of reading other people’s fragrance selections and type them into a book with other people’s fragrance selections?  I’ve got two reasons, the first being I get restless without a good long-term project to work at, and the second being that I do get a lot of enjoyment out of playing with data, and seeing what can be really gathered from it.

I harbor no such illusions, however, that you enjoy statistics quite to the level that I do, so I’ll try to keep it interesting, entertaining even, but hopefully informative as well.  If I start drifting off-course, please send me an email, PM, or tweet and let me know, or take me by the shoulders and gently steer me back in the right direction.

To work, then!  The first step when you start collecting data is, obviously, determining exactly what you want to collect; the fragrances themselves, of course, but what else?  Being able to look up the fragrance house independent of any particular fragrance sounds smart, so that was added.  I hit a bit of a wall at that point, as that was pretty much all that was being tracked when the experiment was done from 2008-2009, along with gender.  I chose to also track the Basenoters themselves, and added fields for username and gender.  Lastly, and another common sense one that I initially forgot, was the date!  It does help to know when these are being entered in when you’re on a weekly schedule.

Once the dataset was decided on, the reporting had to be figured out; that is, how I want the condensed and summarized table of information to be displayed for maximum information.  Right now I have three tables, measuring the most worn fragrance, the most worn house, and the most posts by username.  All three can be filtered by date, gender, or both.  Every combination there can give good info, and it’s with that set of tables that I’m using for now.

I’m already getting off track, aren’t I?  Sorry for the thrilling insight into Microsoft Excel, you’re here for the smellies.  All total, 1029 different entries were recorded from the 31^st of January to the 6^th of February, 2010, with men accounting for 67.7 percent of the total and ladies, 32.3%.  471 fragrances were only worn one time this week, for a uniqueness index of 45.77%.  This first dataset is pretty darn important, as this is the first Top 10, we can see who hangs around and who doesn’t have quite the staying power.  Starting with the combined genders, the most worn fragrance was a Guerlain.  So was the second most.  And the third.  And the fourth.  L’Instant de Guerlain topped the charts at 11 wears, followed by Mitsouko Eau de Toilette with 10, Guerlain Vetiver with 9, and Guerlain Heritage with 8.  Tied below Heritage with 7 wears are Tom Ford Black Orchid, Guerlain L’Heure Bleue, and Andy Tauer’s L’air du desert marocain, for positions five through seven.  Six different fragrances all had six wears, and they were Dior Homme, Guerlain Coriolan, Burberry London, Caron’s Le Troiseme Homme, Guerlain Jicky, and YSL Rive Gauche Pour Homme.

In what may be a bold predictor for the foreseeable future’s totals, Guerlain as a house had more than double the wears (110) of the next closest house in Chanel (47).  In fact, Guerlain’s entries in the Top 10 frags alone outnumber any other house’s total wears all week long.  Serge Lutens and Creed tied for third with 35 wears, Yves Saint Laurent was one behind with 34, followed by Christian Dior with 32, L’Artisan Parfumeur with 26, Hermes with 25, Caron with 24, and Tom Ford rounding out the field with 20.  Obviously there’s a big difference between the most worn houses and those trailing slightly.

Looking just at the men’s side, now, we find that Guerlain Vetiver got zero wears from the ladies, but was tied with L’Instant de Guerlain for the most worn by men, with 9 wears.  Guerlain Heritage was third with 8, and surprisingly (at least to me) we find that more men are wearing Mitsouko than women this week by more than a factor of two! (7 wears) L’air du desert marocain, Burberry London, Dior Homme and Guerlain Coriolan all tied with 6 wears by men, for positions five through eight.  Nine fragrances tied for the final two positions in the top 10, including names not previously mentioned like Chanel Pour Monsieur, Yves Saint Laurent M7, Creed’s Bois du Portugal, and Prada Infusion d’Homme.

Looking at men’s houses, we discover that of Guerlain’s monster 110 wears, a full 80 of them (72.7%) were by men, but men do account for 67.7% of the total wears recorded this week.  This does mean Guerlain is favored slightly more by men than women this time of year.  Creed was the next closest, with 30 wears, perhaps a more interesting number than Guerlain’s.  Creed’s overall third place performance this week came with the help of only 5 wears on the women’s side of things, 5 of the 35 total.  Below Creed in men’s is a tie between Christian Dior and YSL with 27 wears apiece, then Chanel with 21, Amouage and Hermes both with 17, Tom Ford with 15, Caron with 14, and a two-way tie for the last spot with Montale and Serge Lutens both earning 12 wears.

Moving over to the women’s side of things, we find that having a smaller population can really effect the weekly standings of things.  Tied at number one with 5 wears each are Terranova Gardenia and Keiko Mecheri’s A Fleur de Peau.  The catch?  Both were worn by only one person, for five consecutive days each.  Rochas Tocade got 4 wears the old fashioned way, by multiple users, as did L’ Artisan Havana Vanille, Bal A Versailles and Chanel No. 5 Eau de Parfum.  Below those six fragrances are eleven different fragrances with three wears each.  More data is needed before any true conclusions can be reached, but it may take until the SoTM at this rate.

The women’s house standings were quite interesting, and featured a few new faces.  Guerlain’s 30 wears by the ladies were enough to make it the most-worn house this week, trailed closely by Chanel with 26 wears and Serge Lutens with 23.  Things trail off rapidly after that, with L’ Artisan at 14 wears, Caron with 10, Hermes with 8, YSL, Keiko Mecheri, and Frederic Malle all with 7, and Bond No. 9 wrapping up the top 10 with 6 wears.  The women’s field is much more diverse than statistically expected, men recorded wears in 202 separate houses and women in 120, with 248 total (There were 46 houses worn exclusively by one gender or the other).

Finally, mikeperez23 (14 wears), Inselaffe (13 wears), and kbe (12 wears) go above and beyond the nose of duty on the men’s side, with Baldufita (11 wears) being the busiest sniffer on the ladies’ side.

That’s it for this week, see you next Monday for new numbers and new insight as we give this fledgling SoTY project some legs.  Until next time, post those SoTDs every day!

It’s been compared to Serge Luten’s aggressively spiced Feminite du Bois, but Lexington Avenue strikes a balance between invigorating and comforting. Resinous blue cypress paired with fennel, similar to anise or licorice, for a bracing foundation. They balanced it with cozy gourmand notes of toasted almond and “crème brulée” over creamy sandalwood. Neither side of this spectrum would work alone, but together the result is incredible! A little olfactive alchemy and you’ve got creamy spiced woods woven with traces of peony. Perfectly wearable with a fascinating something that surprises you, catches your interest, and keeps you coming back.

Notes fluctuate but none of them take over or fade away completely. Generally the more resinous elements stand out in the opening, and softer gourmand side sets the tone hours later. Bond No.9’s eau de parfum formulations are even richer than the average edp, so the longevity’s wonderful, lasts 8 to 10 hours easily. Sillage is moderate on cooler days, but in warm weather that spice can fill the whole room. It’s hard to test due to Bond No.9’s limited distribution, but if you find Lexington Avenue, just close your eyes, pretend you didn’t see the hideously kitsch shoes all over the bottle, spritz, and experience … transcendence.

But enough reminiscing.  Dirty English opens in a very unusual way, in that it blends sweet citrus notes with spicy cypress and caraway seed.  Let me take a step back and say how much I enjoy the addition of spice notes to fragrances, and what a difference they can make.  The black pepper note in Ralph Lauren Romance Silver saves it, it gives character and strength to Burberry London, it turns the entire composition on it’s ear in Cereus No. 7, it…well, you see where I’m going.  The maneuver is a good one, and it’s a very distinct spicy opening.  The edges of the sweetness and spice fade, and the drydown is much like the opening, but with the growing presence of moss and leather to esconce it firmly in the masculine category.  Where it really shines for me, though, is body interaction.  The hotter the temperature, and the more I sweat, the better and better this thing gets.  It is my go-to summer scent, despite not strictly meeting the criteria.  It’s entirely because of skin interaction; Gucci Pour Homme is a close cousin to Dirty English but I rarely wear it in the hot months because it doesn’t do anything interesting on my skin.  I seem to share, overall, the most interesting dynamic with Dirty English out of anything in my collection. Projection is above average, longevity varies with temperature, lasting longer in warmer weather on me.

One other thing I enjoy about Dirty English is that it acts as a crossroads on a journey of cedar exploration.  It’s well rounded and centered, and examples of extremes can be found in every direction, towards Virginia Cedar in Gucci Pour Homme (or, Pencil Shavings Pour Homme), towards Atlas Cedar in L’Occitane Notre Flore Cedre, towards cypress in CdG Monocle Scent One: Hinoki, and other close cousins can be found in creatures like Parfums 06130 Cedre and CdG Series 2 Sequoia.  They’re all distinct and different, and it really demonstrates how much utility one note can have.  Hopefully some of you that passed up Dirty English because of the Juicy Couture name will remember this and give it a wearing the next time you see it on display.  To skip it is to miss a very unique cedar creation, and the most underrated fragrance of 2008.

I’m not gonna lie, I think Ivan Moody, their lead singer, makes the band.  This guy will have work in the industry for as long as he chooses to rock, and in this album he does get to try some new situations, and while the talent’s there in his growls and screams, he needs to work on control when he has the opportunity to sing cleanly, I was cringing all the way through “Far From Home,” if he can improve his sense of pitch in clean sections it’s going to do wonders for their sound and versatility.

Viewing the album as a whole, I’ll call it an acceptable effort by some genuinely talented men, but if they can focus on the aggressive style that they do so well without even being aware of it, they could probably produce something incredible. I will say, though, that their cover of “Bad Company” is worth the price of admission and is not to be missed! Would I spend the $9.99 on the album?  I don’t think so.  I listened to it on Napster, 5 downloads and unlimited streaming for 5 bucks a month makes it pretty much the best 5 bucks you can spend any given month.

Tone/Overall Sound: 15/20 pts
Melody/Harmony: 14/20 pts
Rhythm/Syncopation: 18/20 pts
Mixing/Production: 14/20 pts
Theme/Concept: 6/10 pts
Presentation: 9/10 pts

Total: 76/100

(More info on my grading criteria here.)

Originality, exceptional execution, and innovation are all rewarded heavily.

You may be wondering, then, why I’m writing this if nobody is supposed to see it for a while. This one’s for those of you that receive me via Facebook, as that shouldn’t be affected at all.

More updates when I’ve got news.