Beck at ACL last year.


It's almost not worth staying for the last show of the evening at the ACL Festival because it's impossible to get anywhere close to the stage where you can actually see the performance, but last year I did manage to get close enough to get a good view of one of the jumbotron monitors during the Beck performance.

I couldn't snap any close ups of Beck, but here's one of the screen that I thought came out as well as any that I took.

Los Lonely Boys appearance in the Solar Powered Summer Music series,


I've been a fan of Los Lonely Boys since I first saw them way back in 2002 at SXSW, so it was a treat to see them in May at Republic Square. I was surprised by how small the crowd was but the boys put on a great show. Here's a shot of Henry Garza from that night.

I have no idea why I named the last post what I named it.


Jay posted one of the pics I took of Nic on his facebook page so I thought I'd post another one of her from the same "photoshoot" which I think is almost as good a shot of her.




I took several shots of Nic but this is the one in which she has the best smile.

It's been a while since I posted a month of pictures. Here's a nice shot from the 4th of July fireworks at Jay's place.


It reminds me a of a giant green dandelion...

Abandoned.


The hotel down the beach from us in Akumal was closed temporarily due to lack of business. I'd never been to the hotel but it looks like it has a pretty cool beach bar. Next time we are in Akumal we will have to stop by to see if we can get a drink there.

The cost of being lazy.


I just realized I haven't gone to the gym in quite a while and I'm feeling it, not just in my waist but in my wallet. I've let 24Hour Fitness bill me and I haven't used their facilities in quite a while.

A while back I managed to cut about 25 pounds off my body through exercise, eating a lot of zone bars, and drinking lots of water. Also I cut out the Coke.

I think I'm going to have to get back into that mind set, but I wish I had gotten back into that mind set a few months ago so it wouldn't be such a chore now.

Well, next door, actually.


Okay, now I really feel bad. The next door neighbors' place was broken into during the day and they were robbed. It's probably a good thing I work from home right now. I would suspect who ever broke in probably knows my neighbors and when they come and go and so it's unlikely the same person would break into my place. I've made it clear to everyone that I work from home anyway during the day so if someone tried anything there would be a confrontation but still it's a little unnerving.

Just in case I've covered all of my nice wooden floor with butter so that if anyone tries to walk on it they are going to whooooooopies.....

<crash>

argggghhhh........


my head........


Okay, I should probably rethink my plan to cover all the door knobs with razors dipped in curare...

Actually, it's pretty cold right now.


I felt a little bad tonight as I walked out my door to go get something to eat. One of my neighbors was outside on the steps because their air conditioner had broken and it wasn't going to be fixed for a couple of days and she said they were sweating terribly in their place.

I felt a little bad because the ac was running so well in my place I was actually pretty cold and I'd turned it off about an hour earlier.

My niece turns 7.


Here's a nice shot of my niece acting a little silly with a boa constrictor around her neck, taken a few weeks ago at Crococun while on our recent trip to Mexico.



She is so photogenic it's hard to believe we are even related.

Tomorrow is a day off.


I'd really like to spend a day doing something other than working on the kitchen and buying stuff for it, but it seems like I'm hooked on it and I can't stop. Tonight I was trying to figure out if I could convert one of the wall cabinets into a pull out cabinet.

It's weird thinking that I need to go back to my old obsession, golf, to save money.

My place is the opposite of my brother's right now.


Although I'm only remodeling the kitchen I've had to move everything out of the kitchen and into other rooms and that's kept me from really keeping the other rooms straight so that my entire apartment looks like a bomb went off. Once I finish work on the kitchen though I'm going to have to sort all this crap out and actually clean all these other rooms.

Perhaps I should consider delaying the completion of the kitchen remodel for a few more months or years...

Looks like I need to invest in paper plates.


The good news is that with the new range arriving this week I should be able to start cooking again. The bad news is that since I'm going to have to special order the kitchen sink I won't be able to clean the dishes for a few weeks...

I seem to remember being relaxed just a few days ago...


The nice thing about having so many things going on in my life that are making me completely frazzled is that they should all be resolved in just a few weeks and then I can go back to my quiet, boring, debt ridden life, but with a nicer kitchen.

Coming a long.


Kurt did a great job laying out the floor while I was in Mexico. Unfortunately I don't have any pics of the old floor to compare it to, but I do like the diamond layout of the tile Kurt suggested.

A few of the cabinets are in place and the rest will be put in place by the end of the week when the new range arrives, but so far the kitchen is looking good.





I've posted more pics on facebook for anyone really interested in this, and for people who really have no interest what so ever..

New iPhone!


I've been waiting patiently for a new iPhone for some time, ever since my original was damaged mysteriously and lines started appearing in the middle of the screen. It's been several months since the lines formed and I have no idea how many people I had to explain to while showing pictures on my phone that the lines were not actually in the image itself but were on the phone, so instead of thinking I was a lousy photographer instead people just thought I was too cheap to get another phone.

Well, today I was too cheap no longer. I was a bit impatient, but not cheap.

The iPhone went on sale today when the local store opened up at 7AM. I decided to wait an hour to try to pick mine up because I figured by 8AM all the really crazy iphone fanatics would have picked theirs up by then. Unfortunately when I got to the store at 8:05 AM I discovered an Austin secret. There are a lot of iPhone fanatics in Austin. In fact, the line stretched in front of four stores.

Four stores may not seem like a lot of stores, but when you have people lined up in front of the stores and the process for moving the line (selling the phones) is something akin to watching a pot boil as molasses carries it up hill. In other words it was impossibly slow.

I waited in the reservation line because I set up a reservation on line a few days ago. That line stretched in front of all four buildings. There was another line however, made up of non reservists, mainly lazy and irresponsible people who hadn't bothered to even check to see if they were eligible for the new iphone based on their contract with AT&T. This line was of course noticeably shorter, about half as long.

Fortunately, the store had more agents handling customers from the longer line of responsible customers. Unfortunately it was not all of the agents. It was less than half as many but more than zero, which is what I would have allocated for people without reservations.

When I first arrived at 8:05 AM I had no idea how long it would take but I figured it wouldn't take more than an hour. How long could it take to sell an iPhone? If the customer had a reservation that meant it had already been confirmed the customer was eligible for the upgrade so the process should be pretty quick, five minutes, I figured, maybe, so it might take an hour and a half to get the phone given how many people were in line, but not much more than that.

About an hour an a half later I found myself standing in line about 25 feet from where I started and about 75 feet from where I could by a new phone. I waited a little while longer to see if by some miracle the process might speed up, more employees show up to help out, a flood washes away most of the people in front of me, I was hoping for just about anything, but nothing changed.

Instead I left to take care of my household chores and then went to play a little golf at Butler where I stank up the joint and put three balls into the street. I did not hit any cars though.

After golf I went back to the store to get in line. By then the line was much shorter, but as soon as I got in line i was told by an employee the store would be closed in an hour and they could not guarantee I would get in the store by then. I decided to take my chances anyway and wait, just like the 50 or 60 people that showed up after I got there.

I waited less than an hour until 9PM, and for quite a while I was sure that I would not even get anywhere near the entrance to the store, but in the last 20 minutes the sales seemed to go much faster. One by one parties wandered out of the store with smiles on their faces and people still in line were slowly escorted into the store. Sometimes it was just one lonely person like me, and sometimes it was a huge family that were all waiting together.

Finally the last person in front of me was escorted in at 8:53 PM, and I waited in front of the door.

8:54 PM, rolled by on my phone, and then 8:55, then 8:56, then 8:57.

Finally at 8:58 I was told that they weren't going to let anyone else in and that that I would have to come back some other time. My reservation was going to be cancelled but I could try again tomorrow morning or later in the week.

Still, it was only 8:58 and I wasn't leaving. Not until 9 PM. 8:59 came while I was talking to the guy behind me about how much it sucked to wait all this time and be shut out even before 9 PM. I understood it but it still sucked.

9 PM rolled around. I was just about to wander back to my car but there was still too much stuff going on. It wasn't 9:01 PM yet. That would be the cut off. Just a few more seconds.

Suddenly, an employee poked his head beyond the glass doors. There was some mention or reservations and both the guy behind me and I said we had them, and suddenly we were both waved in. We were the last two in for the evening.

Since i had my reservation the sale should have been pretty quick but I also wanted to get a couple other things. I can only imagine how many people would have been angry at me if my shopping had delayed their getting a new phone tonight but given no one was going to be allowed entry anymore I didn't feel so bad.

And so now I am armed with my new phone and I'm pretty excited to play with it, and I can finally show pictures without lines on the screen.

Now I just have to wait another year to 18 months for the next one.

Made one today.


I had to pick out tile today so I borrowed a friend, Alison, to make sure I didn't pick out something horrendous. We settled on a couple of tiles and took them back to my place where I realized one of the reasons why the kitchen is so dark is because of the 40 watt bulb in the ceiling, so after swopping it out with one of it's more powerful and brighter brethren we settled on the winner.

One quick trip back to Lowe's and I bought enough to take care of the kitchen and an extra box in case there are some broken ones.

Now all we have to do is start breaking the old tiles and picking them up, but I'm not sure I'm going to have the time to do that because I have go back to IKEA tomorrow one more time...I think Kurt, who is going to be installing everything, will enjoy hammering at the tiles anyway.

Me, I'm going to enjoy being on vacation. Only one more day of work before I leave...

And tomorrow may be busier.


It's been a long evening putting together cabinets and I have a few more to do tomorrow. I'm also going to spend a good 5-10 minutes picking out floor tile tomorrow, and I might bust up the tile in the kitchen so that Kurt can get started putting the new tile down right away, or right away after the countertop and base cabinets are removed.

I've also picked out a countertop although what I've picked is going to be a bit more expensive than I had initially budgeted for the countertop. I'm not going to pull the trigger on that purchase though until after I get back from vacation. By that time the tile and cabinets should be installed and I'll have a good idea how much debt I'm in and how much more I'll be in debt after the countertop is installed.

Fortunately I am off work tomorrow so I'll have plenty of time to work on the renovation plans. Hopefully things will go smoothly and I'll have time for some fun as well.

I don't want to die.


I really need to make sure I have switched off the right breaker before I go tearing down some piece of electrical equipment in the kitchen, in this case the overhead fan/lamp above the range. It's weird that an english major would have such a hard time with reading comprehension when it comes to the breaker box. Fortunately I figured it out before I killed myself, although not before I nearly killed myself.

The overhead fan/lamp i down though and I took down all the other wall cabinets. The countertop needs to be removed and the floor cabinets as well, and the pantry cabinet, but I'm leaving those to Kurt who does that stuff all the time.

Besides, I still have a lot of work to do to put the new cabinets together. I'm on a tight schedule because I only have one day off before I go on vacation but I've got one cabinet put together already and I just have seven more to do including the new pantry cabinet.

Here's the damage so far, with the overhead cabinet, exhaust fan and light on it's side on the left because I don't have anywhere else to put it right now (hello industrial sized garbage bin...).

I actually feel like it will happen.


I spoke to Kurt tonight about renovating the kitchen and all that it entails and it actually seems like it is going to get started soon. So soon in fact that I've emptied out all of the kitchen cabinets and I may start taking the upper cabinets down tomorrow. I'll let Kurt deal with the bottom cabinets and the countertop.

After discussing the set up with Kurt, he pointed out one area in my master plan that will have to change, but It will work out fine with the new set up and it actually saves me a little bit of money.

I'm going to re-tile the floor so I'll get those this week along with the cabinets which will be coming from IKEA. I still need to pick out a countertop though. I've got to decide how much money I want to (or can) spend on it. Color is one issue, but I'm also thinking about a curved edge to the side of the bar facing the living area, which means it will cost more.

I also need to pick out a new faucet and handles for all the cabinets, and a new oven and microwave (although I think I have found the last two online and I can get them from home depot).

I'm going to start posting pictures of the renovation intermittently, starting tomorrow...

Sahara Smith.


Although I was at Republic Square to see Los Lonely Boys perform it was nice to see Sahara Smith open for them. I'd heard good things about her and I had missed her last year when she opened the ACL Music Festival last year.

Or never be as good as this.



I found this fan made fake Green Lantern movie trailer about a week ago and thought it was really well done. Somehow I don't think when Hollywood gets around to making a Green Lantern movie it's going to look anywhere near as exciting as the film this trailer hints at:





Another really well done fan made movie trailer is the Thundercats trailer. I can't say that even having a cast this great would make me want to see it though.

Buster Keaton's The General.


Tonight Jay and I went to see The General at The Paramount Theater. If you have never seen it, it is a timeless comic classic. At some point I downloaded version of it from Archive.org and uploaded it to my iPhone, then showed it to my niece while we were on a trip. Despite the film being in black and white and silent and made over 80 years ago she thoroughly enjoyed it, so much so that I suggested Jay get her an iPod Touch so that I could get my phone back. Since that didn't work I'll probably just give her my phone once a new version comes out, hopefully soon.

The General is one of my favorite films because it's got so many funny scenes that still make you laugh no matter how many times you've seen it. It's also one of those films that most people haven't seen because it's a silent film and people have certain expectations about films from that era but as I was leaving the theater tonight I overheard one man talking about how unexpectedly entertaining the film was.

I think tonight was the second time I've seen The General in a movie theater. Many years ago I saw it at The Byrd Theater in Richmond, Virginia as part of a midnight movie series. The Byrd is a great theater where they still have a wulitzer organ and an organist who plays on Saturday nights (or at least he did when I was there) and sometimes the organist would play along with some of the silent films like Phantom Of The Opera, but I'm pretty sure that when I saw The General there they had a full band, The Ululating Mummies, perform and original accompaniment to The General. I remember enjoying the band but loving the movie even more.

Tonight's showing of The General also had a musical accompaniment performed by Guy Forsyth and his band. Before the movie the band performed a song to get warmed up and then the movie started and the music played and they even had sound effects periodically that matched what was going on on screen. The movie was as great and entertaining as I remember it and Jay, who had only seen tiny bits of the film previously, seemed to really like it as well.

After the movie the band performed one more song, Summertime, in between standing ovations.

The only disappointing part of all this was that my niece Nicole couldn't come because it would have finished well past her bedtime. I would hope next time they show The General they do it as a matinee so kids can enjoy it also.

Perhaps our waiter should use a pen and paper to write this stuff down, just in case...


I saw on Twitter that the a new local restaurant was giving away free beer and/or margaritas until they get their liquor license so I thought I ought to check the place out before they got their liquor license. It turns out a lot of other people had the same idea and the place was pretty busy, although when you announce you are giving away free beer and/or margaritas that shouldn't be a surprise.

The drinks were fine, however free beer or margaritas may get me in the door but poor service will keep me from coming back.

Oh, who am I kidding, as long as the place is giving it away because they don't have their liquor license yet I'll be back. But once I have to pay for alcohol the service better improve.

The burger was fine but I think there are plenty of better burgers in Austin. It's a new place though so I'll probably try them again in a few weeks. Also, I had the cherry pie for desert which was probably a mistake as it was pretty cold. I kept telling myself it wasn't ice I was eating, it was flavor crystals. At least the waiter got the desert order right, on the second attempt.

On the plus side the place was set up pretty well for a sports bar so it might be a place to consider for big games at least until the liquor license arrives.

Perhaps someone needs to intervene at city hall to make sure a certain restaurant's liquor license is delayed a few more weeks...

I'm usually wrong anyway.


If a woman at a bar asks "what is the most shallow thing you have ever done," perhaps the best response is not to say something like, "how about if I demonstrate it for you tomorrow morning?"

Also known as Towel Day.


I had completely forgotten that aside from Memorial Day, May 25 is also Towel Day, a day commemorating the life and works of Douglas Adams who was the author of one of the most hilarious books ever written, The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy.

Why a towel? Well early on in The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy it was impressed upon Arthur Dent, the protagonist, just how indispensable towels really are:

"A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value. You can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapors; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a miniraft down the slow heavy River Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (such a mind-boggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough."

It just so happened that today of all days I would have use of a towel and just happened to have one with me.

I was invited by some friends to come out to a Memorial Day cook out/pool party somewhere in the boonies outside of Austin. I'm not much of a pool party person, mainly because I don't want to be known a a pool drowny person but despite my misgivings I decided the go anyway. Since there was going to be a pool and I didn't want to look like even more of a dweeb than I already was I brought a change of clothes including some swimming trunks and a towel just in case I got adventurous.

Once I was there I felt the intense peer pressure to strip down and ump in the pool. It was a particularly clever kind of peer pressure, one in which no one actually asked me to get in the pool, but in the pool I went. Fortunately the pool was only 5 feet deep, which meant I could breathe and wouldn't die as long as I stood upright.

So I through the football around in the pool with some other guys but eventually I had to get out of the pool, and that's where the towel came into the story. I dried off with the towel confirming one of the many uses of the towel. I'm eagerly awaiting trials to determine if the other examples of towel usage are true.

Anyway, I thought it was a pretty interesting coincidence that the first day of the year I have a towel with me outside of my condo just happens to be towel day, and I actually got to use it for an intended purpose.

I need to get it down soon.


I've just about got my plans set to remodel my kitchen. I've picked out the cabinets and now I need to find a granite countertop at a reasonable price in a color I can live with, and then I need to pay for it, which is the real trick. I have plenty of money in savings right now but I am not the most disciplined person when it comes to saving so it would be better to get the kitchen done sooner than later.

I'm pretty excited about it though. I'm going to take photos of the project as it comes along, from the deconstruction through the installation of the cabinets, new sink, new oven and microwave, the countertop, and also the tile, which I haven't decided is going to be replaced yet but I suspect the existing tile will need to go. That's a conversation I'll have with Kurt or whoever I get to install everything.

I think my dream of having everything installed while I am in Cancun is not going to come true, but hopefully by the end of the summer the kitchen will be done and then I'll only have to renovate the bathrooms - which will wait at least a year for my debt to recover.

I guess so...


I never got into myspace after I watched Jay get into it and not like it, but I've kind of given in to the social networking experience mainly because sitting in my room crying hasn't worked as well as I thought it would, at least from a social point of view. It has done wonders for my tear ducts. These pipes are clean!

Anyway, I'm on twitter and facebook now. Jay is telling me not to become one of those people that's always on it 24-7, which is easy for him to say given he's always online chatting or texting 24-7 but not in facebook or twitter.

It actually makes sense for me to push all my social energy online, since I've got no money for social interaction in the real world. Still, I can already see how hard it is to keep up with all the different sites. I've posted images at my mobileme gallery, flickr and twitter and I'll have to post at facebook as well and I'll have to update them periodically just like I update this blog (although fortunately twitter and facebook updates will be more brief), and I'll have to do all this while at the same time maintaining my busy lifestyle, although I cannot for the life of me figure out how I can be so busy when I don't actually do anything, as my tweets and facebook updates will attest to.

Too much discrimination.

Tomorrow will be a better day.


I was going to see Star Trek again tonight with a couple of friends, this time at the IMAX theater, but I neglected to purchase my ticket in advance, so of course the showing was sold out. 9:30 on a Tuesday. The woman behind the counter was helpful though. "There's another showing at 11:55."

Given I have to be up at the crack of dawn (7AM?) I couldn't see myself feeling really good about seeing the movie and then getting up and being in a good mood in the morning.

Also, I had not eaten so it's probably a good thing I didn't see the movie since I would have ended up eating something really bad for me at midnight instead of eating something really bad for me at 9:30, and then having a late night snack much later.

Tomorrow though everything should go really smoothly since just about everything comes in twos, right?

I still missed the tournament.


I missed playing in the Butler Pitch and Putt weekly tournament today because work ran a little long and I wasn't able to get to Butler in time to sign up before the tournament maxxed out at at 40 people. I was going to play a round with some other people that didn't get in but the course was packed with everyone that wasn't able to play this weekend except me so I spent a little while practicing my chipping and putting on the putting green hoping the course would clear up a little but it didn't.

Hopefully I won't run into this problem next week or I'll have to see about switching to a 7-4 schedule or a 6-3 schedule, neither of which actually exist and if they did I'd probably lose a few years off my life due to lack of sleep, but maybe if I complain enough work will change everything to accommodate me. What other choice would they have?

Seven months to wait.


I was going to comment about last week's season finale but then I held off. There was so much to sink in and the creators really did take the storyline to a completely new level with the introduction of both Jacob and his unnamed nemesis, both of which are seemingly immortal.

It seemed a little obvious that the creators were trying to make us think Jacob was the good guy and the man in black was the bad guy but I'm not so sure about it. Unfortunately we won't find out for seven more months.

What else are we waiting to find out about?

Jacob and his nemesis appear to be egyptian gods? Is the unnamed man the smoke monster, and is he also Locke now, and Christian?

Just about all of the people that have appeared in visions have been dead, except Walt. Am I forgetting anyone?

Is Walt going to come back for the final season?

What happened to Claire? Given she was in the cabin with Christian last season does that mean there are two entities at work trying to kill Jacob?

How about Adam and Eve, the two dead bodies in the cave in season one that had bullet holes in them? Are they Bernard and Rose, and if so who shot them?

I could swear there were other Oceanic 815 survivors that survived the flaming arrow attack besides the regulars and Rose and Bernard. Are we to assume they died in the past hiding out from the Dharma group and the Others?

Did Juliette reset the timeline by hitting the bomb, or was the flash at the end just one final time travel for the Oceanic 6? I suspect that Jack, Kate, Sawyer and the rest will end up in the present but that nothing will have changed. It's possible they could all wind up on flight 815 again with the time reset but then I think it would take too long for the creators to get them back to the island to resolve everything.

If the flash at the end was an indication of time travel and not the bomb, will Juliette make it to the present or will she be left behind for dead like Charlotte's body, and will Sayid make it as well? He was about at the end as well?

Is Richard aboard the Black Rock? I imagine the season premiere will feature the Black Rock coming ashore and the pirates meeting Jacob and his nemesis, but will they be the Others or are the Others already on the island when the Black Rock appears?

I had always assumed that the reason the Black Rock appears so far inland is that the island was moved underneath the ship when someone turned the wheel previously. At the time I figured Widmore was the captain of the ship and he was banished from the island over a power struggle, but clearly that's not what happened. Perhaps the smoke monster carried the ship to it's present location?

I was disappointed that in all the hopping through time this season we didn't meet Henry Gale or see his hot air balloon approach the island. Might we get a glimpse of it in the final season? I suspect not...

Finally, when are we going to get the Vincent flashback episode the creators promised during season 1? Might that be the last episode, that reveals all to the viewer through Vincent's experiences on the island, but the cast of characters remains oblivious to it all in the end? Actually, that would be pretty funny.