by Ron Johns | Jul 25, 2009 | Blog, Music Posts
This day last year was my first post to the Music To Pray By Blog and now, a year later, there have been close to 30,000 downloads of 16 hours of recorded piano music to pray by. This is truly a God thing. This week was kind of a half-way point between when I started really studying for the CCIE and the dredded date of October 2nd so I took a break. Since mid-May, I’ve put in right at 300 hours of study, and I’ve made a great deal of progress. It may not be the 40 hours a week I was shooting for, but it’s the quality of study that has helped. This podcast, I used the following songs: “Audience of One”, “God With Us”, “Mighty to Save”, and a small piece of “The Motions” at the tail end. It’s been so long, I’m starting to feel a little rusty. Gloves will be off after the exam. Jeremy has already booked some Soundwave gigs right after so I’m looking forward to getting back to my normal life. 2 more months to go!
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 28:22 — 65.0MB)
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by Ron Johns | May 11, 2009 | Blog, news, Non-music Posts, Site Updates, tech stuff
Something unexpected happened last week. I found out that the CCIE Routing and Switching Lab Exam is in for a huge change on October 18th. For those of you who don’t know, I’m a Sr. Network Engineer at AT&T WiFi Services. A simple description of my day job is basically building and maintaining the Internet. It’s fun and very complicated. In order to further my career, I’ve committed to passing the CCIE R&S Lab exam. My plan was to take the 8 hour exam sometime in December, but that all changed the day Cisco announced the changes coming in October. I registered the day it was official, and the closest date I could get was October 2nd, which is 2 months earlier than I had planned on taking it. This certification has been compared to a doctorate degree, and is referred to as “the MBA of Networking”. Candidates literally spend hundreds if not thousands of hours studying for the exam, and I have less than 5 months to get prepared. My plan is to spend at least 40 hours a week from now till the day I take the exam which means I will have no social life. This also means that the podcast and any music or recording outside of Sunday morning church will not be possible if I intend to get in the number of hours of study I need to pass. Part of my plan was to spend a few hours a day at work studying but due to the AT&T acquisition, there are a number of projects on my plate that are due over the next few months that will likely reduce if not eliminate any free time I had at work to study. I truly am sorry about this, but I believe that the reward at the end of this journey will be well worth it. As soon as this is over, I will do my best to go back to weekly podcasts. God bless!
by Ron Johns | May 5, 2009 | Blog, Family, news, Non-music Posts
Sorry for missing this week. Yoko and San Ban have been gone for a week now and I’m missing my inspiration! They have gone to Okinawa, Japan to visit family. I sure do miss them. 1 week down, 3 weeks to go. Needless to say, I probably won’t do another podcast till they get back. Jeremy is coming over on the 17th to do accoustic versions of two Soundwave songs so I’ll be sure to post audio of that. Also, I promised my dad that I would record and post the theme from “Terms of Endurement” so I may try to get that done as well. Please keep us in your prayers.
by Ron Johns | Apr 30, 2009 | Blog, Non-music Posts
I know this somewhat of a short notice, but Soundwave is opening for the Robbie Seay Band tomorrow in Lockhart. If you’d like to go, you can buy tickets at the door or at lockhart.org for $12. I’m looking forward to seeing Michael Lisenbe in action. I believe they call him “Tank” now… We used to serve together a while back at The Ark Family Church. Please come if you can – it is going to be freakin’ awesome!
by Ron Johns | Apr 18, 2009 | Blog, Music Posts
During this podcast, I used the songs: “Hosanna”, “Mighty to Save”, and a new song called “Forever”. We’re doing it for the first time at church tomorrow. It’s a great song and it’s not the one yall might be familiar with – it just happens to have the same title. Some of the songs are repeats, but we’ve done them recently at church and it just seemed right. It was truly a joy to sit down at the grand and worship our Savior today. I hope and pray this podcast inspires you to spend some time in His presence. God bless.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 31:31 — 72.2MB)
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by Ron Johns | Apr 4, 2009 | Blog, Music Posts
This one is a little longer than usual. I just didn’t feel like stopping. I used a number of familiar melodys and chord progressions in this week’s podcast. I hope you enjoy it.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 35:38 — 81.6MB)
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by Ron Johns | Apr 3, 2009 | Blog, Family, Non-music Posts
Below is an album that captures pretty well what I’ve been going through the past month. Our home has been literally transformed by all the improvements we’ve made. Check it out:
by Ron Johns | Mar 21, 2009 | Blog, Music Posts
The bi-weekly podcast is here. I decided to get it done today so that I can focus on studying for the CCIE tomorrow after church and group. I missed the “record” button again. I ended up playing for over an hour today so that I’d have something to post. The first 30 minutes may have been a little better than the later 30 due to a little bit of frustration after realizing the first 30 minutes didn’t get recorded, but hopefully it doesn’t show in the podcast. I used “Mighty to Save” and “Lead me to the Cross”, with some original stuff. I’ve been meaning to blog about all the home improvement that’s been happening here at the Johns residence, but haven’t had the chance. I should get to it either tomorrow or Monday. God bless!
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 31:10 — 71.4MB)
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by Ron Johns | Mar 9, 2009 | Blog, Music Posts
I’ve gotta make this quick – Don is out there working hard without me and has been for the past couple of hours while I finish up this week’s podcast. I used a few songs from Sunday morning service – “You Said”, and “There will be a day”. I also used a Soundwave song since we had practice on Friday. Live free! Pray hard!
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 28:58 — 66.3MB)
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by Ron Johns | Mar 8, 2009 | Blog, Non-music Posts, Site Updates
I recorded it yesterday, and I’m about half way through editing and mixing, but I’m falling asleep at the keyboard I’m so exhausted. A really good friend of the family, Don, is helping me build a new fence and patio. Today we actually got quite a bit done. Yesterday, I ripped all the old fence panels off the posts. Today, Don pulled all the old posts with concrete out of the ground, and I broke off the concrete and rounded up all the old stuff while Don set the first row of new posts that are 4×4’s rather than lanscape timbers. I’m not used to all this hard labor! I’ll be sure to blog in more detail about the whole experience once we finish – pictures and all. At any rate, I will use lunch time tomorrow to finish up the podcast and get it posted. I appologize for the delay.
by Ron Johns | Mar 1, 2009 | Blog, Family, Non-music Posts, Site Updates, tech stuff
Today after church, we had group, left there a little after 3:30, Sanban fell asleep on the way home, so we took a nap for about an hour and a half, then Yoko and I sat down for a while to talk about what to do about our house. We have lots of repairs to do – electrical outlets on the outside of the house are dead, fence was blown down by the strong winds we had the past couple of days, etc., then my dad called me and we chatted for a little over an hour about the beautiful property surrounding the Austin area. Yoko and I came really close to buying a house on a postage stamp lot in Buda, and decided not to because it didn’t make sense financially. My dad did convince me that a better investment would be a home on some acreage. At any rate, we’re putting SanBan to bed right now and we haven’t even eaten dinner yet. It doesn’t look like I’ll be able to do the podcast today, which kills me. Something else I haven’t blogged about – one of my goals is to get the CCIE certification by November, which is going to require practically every spare moment I have studying. I’ll blog more detail about this sometime in the near future. I know the podcast is eternally important, and I do plan on continuing it, but I feel that it is necessary to cut back to once every 2 weeks since it is a 4-5 hour commitment of my free time on the weekend, and free time is very scarce right now with family, church, studying, and the band. I hope you understand, and I do plan on going back to a weekly podcast as soon as I obtain the CCIE certification later this year. When August hits, I may have to go to monthly podcasts through November or December since my studies will pick up the closer I get to the test date. If all goes well, I’ll start January of ’10 with weekly podcasts. Another personal goal is to compile an album of “The Best of Music to Pray By”, and get it mastered, duplicated, and professionally packaged with album art and everything. I hope to have that album available by the middle of 2010. That will require an enormous amount of time since it will involve listening to hours of the MTPB podcasts, going back to the original uncompressed files, and preparing about an hour’s worth of music for mastering, but I believe it will totally be worth the effort. Please let me know what you think – good decision, bad decision, priorities out of whack? I’d love to hear what ya’ll think! At any rate, This would be my weekend off (involuntary 😉 ) so I will put the podcast at the top of the priority list for next weekend.
by Ron Johns | Feb 28, 2009 | Blog, Non-music Posts, Site Updates
Actually, the site hit 10,000 a little over a week ago, I just haven’t had a chance to blog about it till now. Yoko and I have been pretty occupied with house hunting. We’ve decided to wait it out and save as much as possible right now with the current condition of the economy though. Maybe in a few years we’ll look at picking up some land. Anyway, just wanted to shout out a big “Thank You” to everyone who is subscribed to the podcast or uses the website regularly for prayer. There have been over 10,000 plays and downloads of the podcasts since I launched the website late July of ’08. One of these days I’ll have to blog about the different countries all over the world I’ve seen download the podcast. It is truly amazing – they don’t call it the “world wide web” for nothing! I hope and pray the music continues to be a blessing to you – that is reward enough for me. The plan is to have “Week 28″ posted by tomorrow evening. Thanks again, and God bless!
by Ron Johns | Feb 23, 2009 | Blog, Music Posts
Sunday morning worship was awesome this morning! We had a new guitar player who rocked the house! What a great sermon by Cole too! This week, I did some familiar songs: “Revelation Song”, “Love Story”, “Abba Father”, and “Here I am to Worship”, and all I can say is what a wonderful way to end a great weekend. I had loads of fun chillin’ with the ‘lil one while Yoko took a much needed break with her friends Saturday, and we went out to eat at the greatest Tex Mex restaurant in Texas after church and spent most of the day looking at new houses. Good times…. Hope you enjoy the podcast!
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 32:00 — 73.3MB)
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by Ron Johns | Feb 16, 2009 | Blog, Non-music Posts, Site Updates
I just finished a 5 day fast that was required for the clense I decided to do, and that is the longest I’ve ever gone without eating. All I had from Wednesday to Sunday afternoon was apple juice, water, some coffee, green tea, and the herbal suplements I purchased from Blessed Herbs. My brother, David suggested it to me. I do feel a lot better today, but felt horrible over the weekend. That is why I was unable to do a MTPB podcast. I think it was worth it though. Sorry for missing last week. I’ll do my best to make this week’s even better!
by Ron Johns | Feb 8, 2009 | Blog, Music Posts
Keeping it short this week – I used the songs “I Can Only Imagine”, and “God of this City”. I know I’ve played these songs before, but we did them at church today so I decided to do them again. God bless!
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 28:40 — 65.7MB)
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by Ron Johns | Feb 2, 2009 | Blog, Music Posts
Sorry about getting this posted a little late. I recorded it this afternoon after church, but had to head over to the Petreas for our small group Super Bowl Bash. It was a blast, but left a little early so I could mix and post the MTPB blog. This week I used the songs “Audience of One”, “Your Name”, and “None but Jesus” all of which we played during this Sunday morning worship service which turned out to be completely awesome! In closing, I’d just like to say how disappointed I am that the Cardinals couldn’t hold off the Steelers offence the last few minutes of the 4th quarter. Ah well. Either way, this year’s Super Bowl was historic. The Steelers are the first to win 6 Super Bowls, and this is the first Super Bowl the Cardinals have ever made it to. I was kind of hoping that the Dallas Cowboys would be the first to take 6, but they sure did blow it this season. I can see my collegues at work laughing while they read this post because they really know how ignorant I am when it comes to football. Anyway, probably should have made all the football talk a seperate post, but I pray this podcast blesses you, and hope you have a great week!
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 31:59 — 73.2MB)
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by Ron Johns | Jan 26, 2009 | Blog, Music Posts
I just couldn’t resist! There will never be another podcast that is Week “24”. For those of you who are 24 fans, you know why I’m so hyped up about it! Don’t worry, the theme song or the clock ticking effects are NOT included in this podcast. 🙂
I don’t know where to begin. This week was almost a no go because of work, but I just couldn’t miss another week of Music to Pray By even though I missed Soundwave practice yesterday and church today because of the network outages and hardware failures we’ve been having all weekend… At any rate, this week was all original, and runs a little more than 30 minutes – I hope it inspires you to spend some time in prayer. For Jesus!
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 31:46 — 72.7MB)
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by Ron Johns | Jan 22, 2009 | Blog, Music on the side, news, Non-music Posts
I heard a part of this song listening to Fox News on the way in to work this morning and had to share it. It sure is a catchy little tune.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJUFTm6cJXM
Also, thanks for the prayers – I’m starting to feel better today.
by Ron Johns | Jan 21, 2009 | Blog, Non-music Posts, Site Updates
I have developed the worst sinus infection I’ve ever had so I slept a lot of the weekend and barely made it through church services on Sunday. I went to the doctor’s office on Monday and they put me on antibiotics. Please keep me in your prayers.
by Ron Johns | Jan 17, 2009 | Blog, Non-music Posts, tech stuff
I wish I could use my MacBook Pro at work…
