Incompletely Brilliant

Did you have your V8 today?

2011-11-20T01:39:00.000-08:00

I did, and it hurt, but not where you'd expect.

Prices for 11.5 oz cans of V8 recently surged from $0.67 to $0.88 each. I know, I know, you're all up in arms about it too. It is, after all a Netflix-style 35% price increase (slightly less fanfare, yes, but equally diabolical).

This is going to hurt my wallet to the tune of $150 per year, so I made plans to cut back and ~~weight~~ wait until they realize that I was single-handedly drinking all of the Low Sodium V8 in north Austin.

Then I found a scientific study¹ that says I'll go back to two-a-days, despite the expense. The people at V8 probably ~~commissioned~~ ~~falsified~~ read that study, so my siege may not succeed.

Stupid science.

¹ You mean you don't ready scientific studies before making rash decisions?

Virtually useful

2011-10-02T08:08:00.000-07:00

Today, I introduced my wife to a wonderful, nerdy waste of time: WinDirStat.

WinDirStat sorts your hard drive folders by file size, and then shows you a colorful, interactive chart of your hard drive usage (see a screen shot by following the above link). It also makes it easy to send unwanted files to the recycling bin (where they will continue to take up hard drive space, as the graph will show you), or to delete them permanently.

My wife was excited to see what was taking up all her space, but was a bit disappointed to realize the inevitable: her writing, which she loves, takes up significantly less space than even a single mp3.

I am always adding new files to my hard drive, so to prevent a loss in performance, I regularly use this program to help me prioritize the files to sort, delete, or move to an external hard drive.

I called this program a waste of time. There's no question in my mind that it's immensely useful. If your hard drive is full, Windows is going to do nothing to help you find the principal culprits efficiently. But after the 10 minutes it takes to run the program, find the 550MB Microsoft Office Enterprise 2010 installation file, and burn a backup CD or two; or move those ridiculously large home video files to an external hard drive, are you really going to stop there?

No, you're not, because freeing up hard drive space is more fun than most video games, and has a direct tangible (virtual?) benefit! So you're going to spend another hour looking at pictures, thinking about deleting them or saving them for posterity, and contemplating whether they make you look fat.¹

Due to the advent of the digital camera, and because I've attended 3 family weddings and taken 2 vacations in the last year, there are thousands of unsorted pictures sitting on my hard drive, and at least 500 of them deserve to be deleted to make space for new ones.

Challenge accepted.

¹ Maybe that's just me.

You're interventioning me?

2011-07-29T17:38:00.000-07:00

My friend Jason sent me one of them newfangled Gmail intervention e-mails. It was hilarious. And yet, I'm sticking with Hotmail.

I told him so, and he asked what it is that makes me like Hotmail. I went a little overboard in my response:

What I prefer about Hotmail:
1) Junk e-mail: I get to approve or deny all my junk e-mail. I never miss a thing.
2) Keyboard shortcuts: Hotmail uses most of the keyboard shortcuts now that Outlook uses. I use Outlook for work, so it's an easy transition.
3) Folders: Gmail has labels and archiving, and that system is more robust in theory, but it's a different system, and it requires more clicks than the folder system. My brain knows how to store everything in folders on my computer, and it wants to do that for e-mails, too. Computers are always going to work with folders, so there's no reason to slow myself down by having to remember two different systems.
4) Legacy, (from an IT definition): I have all my contacts here, and more importantly, all my contacts have me here. (Yes, I know you can use POP3 settings with Gmail to receive and send e-mail from other addresses, but then I have to use the Gmail interface.)
5) Chat: It doesn't try to link me to a chat account. I hate chat programs.
6) Speed: Now that all Google sites are linked to Google+, it's actually slower than Hotmail. I'm removing Google.com as my home page for the same reason. Hello, blank page.
7) The interface: To me, Hotmail looks and feels the way an e-mail program should.

What Gmail does better:
1) Grouping conversations (minimal value to me)
2) Attachments (Hotmail used to be awful, but recently improved to being only a step behind Gmail)
3) Searching
4) Saving drafts
5) Undo send (I'm pretty careful about what I send, so this has minimal value)

Where they're equal:
1) Storage. They both give me more storage than I'll ever use.

Why I'll probably never switch fully to Gmail:
1) Habit: I forget to check my Gmail account for months at a time.
2) My username: My Gmail username is much longer than my Hotmail username (all the good ones were taken), so logging in is a more annoying process.
3) Video chat and other features: Gmail offers lots of amazing features that I don’t care about at all, and will never use. So many of these are the "selling" features, and they don't sell me.

What do you think?

Size matters

2011-05-07T08:43:00.000-07:00

It's all a lie! I can't believe such deceit would be perpetuated throughout the ages by and for both genders! Do you know what this has done to the children?!? Think of the children!!!

I'm upset. Allow me to explain.

Short story: Today I'm throwing away a too-small pair of pants and a worn-out belt. The pants lied to me, and the belt had no right to up and die. Why didn't it think about how that would make me feel?

Long story: When I was but a lad, my mom bought me a black leather belt. Everywhere I had to go that was dressy, that trusty belt was by (around?) my side. It lasted for six whole years. Since then, I've never found a replacement that lasted for more than a year, and half of them didn't even fit.

Soon after I began college, I became aware of my clothing sizes. My working hypothesis is that it's because I had to start buying my own clothes. I learned my waist and inseam sizes. I learned my suit coat size. I learned my sleeve size (a whopping 35 inches; I'm like a monkey!). I learned my neck size¹, for cryin' out loud.

And yet, even with a graduate degree, I've never been able to figure out my belt size.

I did everything you'd expect. I went to stores that sell belts. I gained weight to try to fit in to the belts I'd already bought. I wore my dress slacks to the store and tried on belts until I found one that fit². But no matter how I tried, I couldn't find a belt that still fit when I got home. Maybe they shrink in the wash, I don't know.

It's not that I'm a moron³, it's that belt sizes, pant sizes, and waist sizes are apparently completely unrelated!

Women are not surprised by this. You've been dealing with "vanity sizes" for years. I, however, trusted Old Navy and Dockers not to stretch the truth⁴. Nobody wants to wake up one day (hypothetically) and find out that their size 32 jeans that they've been drying in the dryer for seven years actually measure 34 inches⁵.

So that's the crux of it. Women know that a size two dress may actually be a size eight, but some are happier with a tag that says size two. Not so for me.

I'm never happy in a size two dress.

¹ It's almost as large as my biceps.
² Okay, I didn't actually do that one, per se, but it's sounding pretty darn reasonable from where I'm sitting in my elastic-waistband sweatpants.
³ No, it's not!
⁴ Get it? Stretch? Get it?
⁵ After all, they may have hypothetically cut off your circulation two weeks ago.

Atlas Shuddered

2011-04-24T20:10:00.000-07:00

Urgh.

Atlas Shrugged has the dialogue quality of The Phantom Menace, the special effects of the 1978 Incredible Hulk TV series, the casting of Waterworld, the directorial timing of a home video, and the cinematography of something that picks a lot of awkward camera angles. I needed a Big Mac to wash the movie's taste out of my mouth.

The movie was 97 minutes long. There was time available to improve the three things in which this version severely lacked:
1) Using Rand's arguments,
2) Introducing us to the characters as Rand wrote them, and
3) Preparing us for the climax.

Rand's Arguments

Atlas Shrugged is one of the best books ever written. It's complex. It's intelligent. It's a philosophical allegory, and it's convincing. Ayn Rand wrote it to make an argument, time and time again, from all angles, and she did so extremely well. I recognize that it takes talent to make a good movie, even from an extraordinary book. But it takes a special kind of failure to ruin Atlas Shrugged.

Rand's arguments made the book great, but really weren't part of the movie. When John Aglialoro¹ actually included any of Rand's arguments, he threw in some of the good lines but removed the context, making the dialogue painfully choppy and illogical.

You ruin the argument, and you've ruined the movie.

Aglialoro even cut the almost unending stream of whiny entitled pleas. They came from any number of talentless characters (here's looking at you 20th Century Motor Company), demanding a handout because they "never had a chance" (i.e. got fired for incompetence). The unproductive looting from the productive is the whole point of the book, and was not adequately addressed by the light-on-exposition news headline montages.

Speaking of not adequately addressing things …

Character Development

… the entire character of James Taggart is written as whiny and desperate, but portrayed as self-confident and somewhat relatable.

Similarly misrepresented, Dagny Taggart is written as confident, brilliant, tough-as-nails, and successful, but portrayed as vacant, unassertive, and a little dazed. In one particular scene, she takes what is supposed to be a confident "I'm telling you how it is" stand against her brother, but looks everywhere but at him. Confidence looks you in the eye.

Finally, let's take a deeper look at Francisco d'Anconia. He was cast as a scruffy, moderately handsome man whose wardrobe was at home in a local night club. The real d'Anconia is dashing, clean-shaven, full of intrigue, and stands "as if he wore a cape waving behind him in the wind." His shirts cost more than your wardrobe. Imagine Dos Equis' "Most interesting man in the world", but 25 years younger, without a beard, and with millions upon millions of dollars.

The movie showed the kind of guy you pick up in a bar. Francisco is the kind of man with whom rich women have affairs.

Confidence leans back. He slouched forward.

Stage presence is noticeable. There was none to notice.

*shudder*

Ignoring the mistreatment of Rand's ideologies and characters …

Plot & Climax (***spoiler alert**)

… this movie did a poor job of leading up to its climax (or what I am led to believe was the climax because of the music).

In the book, people talked regularly about how horrible it would be if the bridge made out of Reardon metal collapsed. In the movie, Aglialoro talked about the metal being "untested", but stubbornly refused to connect the dots about the bridge. He only even mentioned the bridge once. Small wonder, then, that the audience is entirely unprepared to stand up and cheer when the bridge doesn't collapse.

…

At least it ended fittingly; with a bloodcurdling scream.

¹ Executive-turned-screenwriter because his rights to Atlas Shrugged were about to lapse and his actual screenwriter bailed.

I hate math

2011-03-19T00:54:00.000-07:00

Chase just charged me a $12 "service fee," and I'll give you a buffalo nickel if you can tell me why.¹

Here's my history with Chase: I fell in love with online banking because of Chase's user-friendly site. In five years I've never had a problem. Since the CARD Act, I've had 3 unexplained fees in 3 months, two of which were reversed when I called (one because it was completely and utterly bogus, the other because they felt so bad about the bogus charge), and one that I'll call about when they open (because it's 3:30 AM).

It may be petty, but I so desperately want to punish them by taking all my business elsewhere. It's not like I'm lacking options. Banks are, to use an expression that doesn't apply particularly well here, a dime a dozen.

Why don't I do it? In five years, I've earned $700 of cash rewards from my Chase credit card.

I hate math.

¹ No, I won't.

The kindness of strangers

2011-02-26T07:00:00.000-08:00

While I waited at a stoplight downtown, a car to my left honked. This was strange for two reasons: 1) nobody in Austin ever, ever honks¹, even if you practically kill them², and 2) there were no cars in front of said honker. She made the universal "please roll down your window" sign, and I complied.

"Can you tell me how to get to South Lamar?"

A fair request in any other city that has a South Lamar, but Austin was not built with ease of transportation in mind. Although I was a tad uncertain myself, it was my civic duty to help a damsel in distress, so I guessed.

"You have to turn right³ to get on Lamar southbound⁴. It should be two stoplights ahead. Lamar is an overpass, and we'll go under it."

Yeah, I know, that's a lot of detail to give someone if I'm just guessing. Call it an educated guess; after all, I have a college degree.

She thanked me for the directions, and for rolling down my window, and then the light turned green. She sped ahead, cut me off (it's okay, she signaled and I still had the parking brake on), and the winding roads of Austin proceeded to prove my educated guess entirely correct.

I drove away feeling very warm and fuzzy inside. I think I was happier about having helped a complete stranger find her destination⁵ , but I don't want to downplay the joy of guessing directions correctly.

MORAL: I'm always right.

¹ Full disclosure: Stay out of my lane, guy on a cell phone, or I will honk until your grandmother removes you from her will.
² Of course, when that drunk guy practically killed me, I didn't have time to honk because I was too busy trying to get control of my vehicle. And if he hadn't driven off, I would have honked. [nodding] Yeah, I would have.
³ Right = North. Always.
⁴ South = Left. Sometimes, not always. It's very complex stop asking me questions.
⁵ I hope she wasn't a contract killer.

You lose

2011-02-19T10:28:00.000-08:00

I enjoy watching the Biggest Loser. It motivates me to be better at whatever I do. Like eating pizza.

Moses, a contestant from the current season, shattered Week 1 records by losing 41 pounds. In ONE WEEK! That's a lot of water weight. I'm a fair-weather fan (this applies to everything but the Cubs), so I've decided I like him.

Like many of the older male contestants, Moses has knee problems, so disproportionate amounts of his exercise come from shadow-boxing. This means punching nothing, so although it's a good cardio workout, it gets a little mentally fatiguing. His motivation to keep going is his family, and he shows it by saying a family member's name every time he punches. Kind of sweet.

And kind of disturbing.

Kaylee: "Hey Dad, can I borrow the …"
Moses: "Kaylee!" (punch ) "Kaylee! (punch) "Kaylee!" (punch)
Kaylee: "Yeeeeaaah. I'll just come back later."

Relief

2011-02-17T07:45:00.000-08:00

It's been such a long time since I was inspired to write. Not that I am now; I just have the time. FINALLY.

The last month and a half of my life has been so overwhelmingly consumed with work that I've somewhat forgotten how to relax. Having a laptop awake if I am has become part of my routine¹, to the extent that I can't pull myself away long enough read an actual paper book. Or a digital one.

Even when I exercise, it's to an exercise video from Netflix (who has a halfway decent selection for someone who just wants to tone). Staring at bright screens is giving me regular headaches. Tylenol and I have become friends.

When I was a kid, using the computer was a privilege. Also, the Cubs didn't play every summer afternoon, so I had to come up with a lot of alternative entertainment (to be read "normal-person entertainment"). This included using my imagination, riding my bike, climbing a tree (I was like a monkey), playing catch, or throwing a tennis ball at the side of our house in the name of "pitching practice."

We were brought up to use our free time in good wholesome activities. Our family would take regular trips to the library, and we'd devour those books. We probably even went back three times in a week. My books of choice were Matt Christopher youth sports novels and riddle books. (Where else do you think I get my love of bad, bad puns? Oh yeah; my dad.)

Now that you're old and decrepit, how do you unplug?

¹ Addiction, anyone?

Playing with playlists

2010-08-08T12:35:00.000-07:00

I don’t love wedding receptions, but I do like running into my friends there.¹ For less than the cost of dinner and a movie, you can essentially speed-date all of your favorite people.

At a recent reception, I ran into a friend whose blog I consider a Mecca of music-I’ve-never-heard-of. Her regular postings of her workout and other playlists have been instrumental in converting me to a small handful of bands that, somehow, neither Amazon nor Pandora has yet suggested.

I mentioned to her my recent initiative to work out to music, rather than the sound of my overworked lungs. She said that she’d be happy to make me a playlist … if I just told her what kind of music and bands I like in general.

For most of you, that would be a pretty easy question to answer.

I am not like most of you.

So over the last few weeks, I've thought about the kind of music that inspires me to perspire.

WARNING: If you think to yourself, “I know Kevin, he’s a decent guy, and he probably has good taste in music,” then I implore you to keep that wonderful illusion, and stop reading now!

It was a difficult process. You see, first, I had to go through all the music I already own. Because I’m an auditor. And that’s what we do. This process prompted some deep thoughts:

If I’m struggling to breathe while working that treadmill, will listening to Air Supply help?
Is Will Smith rapping still cool?
Can the guy curling the two 45 lb hand weights tell that I’m listening to the Backstreet Boys on the elliptical?
What about the girl curling the two 45 lb hand weights? She clearly has superpowers.

Ultimately, I realized that bands like Bush, the Cranberries, Garbage and even Kris Kross didn’t make me want to jump. But I did manage to find some gems. Thank you, Three Days Grace, Breaking Benjamin, 2 Unlimited (think the Mortal Kombat soundtrack), and some sweet, sweet 90’s techno.

In the future, I’m going to follow these simple rules about making a workout playlist:

If it makes me want to sing aloud, it’s not allowed.
If it makes my hand tired in Guitar Hero, it’s a good idea.
Angry lyrics mean happy time.
Minor keys are majorly important.

I’m still going to see what my music guru friend comes up with. Until then, I have a pretty good 50-song playlist. Which will last me for a month. Without repetition. Because I don’t work out very often. Or for very long. Because exercising is hard. And I’m out of shape. And lazy. (In case you didn’t figure that out before this sentence fragment.)

_________________________
¹ That means if I’m attending your wedding reception, you may not be the reason I came.

Divine Comedy

2010-05-09T16:54:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, people say funny things at church. That's not the reason I attend, but it certainly doesn't hurt.

Today was Mother's Day, a day that is extremely important to me as a religious man, because of the particularly high risk that nobody will say anything that I care about.

They'll care about it, no doubt. They may even cry while telling a story that they themselves selected to share publicly in front of hundreds of people. (I'll be taking your man-card now, thank you very much.)

But I digress.

Here are some things that I heard (or thought I heard) today at church:

"I'd like to recognize my mother for all the help she's given me on this special Mother's Day."

"There are many ways to leave this life, but only one way to enter it, and we all have our mothers to thank for that."¹

"There are mothers in this congregation who have lost children to disease or abstinence."²

"I think you should make children feel stupid when they give the right answer. It encourages them to try harder."³

I sort of wasn't listening during Sunday School, or I'm quite certain I'd have more ammunition.

Love you, Mom!

¹ Thank you, Mom, for thinking of so many ways to forcibly remove me from this life.
² Turns out he said "accidents." Now there's a cluster of churchgoing Christians who think I'm a bad person for laughing about children dying.
³ I kind of wish I could take credit for this one myself. Kind of a lot.

Riddle me this

2010-02-24T23:01:00.001-08:00

I'm visually unrealistic, scientifically impossible, technologically improbable, romantically unbelievable, financially untenable, and generally unwatchable; but still better than you expected.

What movie am I?

Carmageddon

2010-02-20T05:13:00.000-08:00

Drivers everywhere are stupid¹. Drivers at 4:45 AM are a special kind of stupid.

Also at that time, regular driving rules don’t apply. Here are some things I learned this morning on my way to (4:45 AM) and from (5:15 AM) the airport:

Speed limits only apply for the amount of time it takes the Police SUV that’s going 75 in a 50 to pass you.

To merge, you don’t actually need to find space between cars in the next lane. They’ll move … or wish they had.

Nobody actually passes in the passing lane (except the aforementioned Police SUV). You get into the passing lane to let drunk tailgaters pass you, rather than continue to let them ride their brakes 8 feet from your rear bumper.

You don’t have to pay attention to the speed limit, only to the speed other cars are going. When someone tries to pass you, speed up significantly. When they give up an get behind you, slow down significantly. They like that.

(Titles I didn't use:
Driving Miss Dangerous
Driving with crazies
"On your right!")

¹ I'm looking at you, Boston and Utah.

Fixed in my Mind with a Determined Resolution

2009-12-31T15:43:00.000-08:00

This post is brought to you by a killer headache and sore throat, Classic Sinatra: 1953-1960, and Alma 47:6.

I’ve never before kept a New Year’s resolution for longer than a few months. To be fair to me (which I have half a mind to do), that’s because I was reaching for the stars (write a best-selling novel, read my scriptures for 15 minutes daily, be nice to my sister, etc.).

This past year, I wanted a successful resolution to hang my hat on, so I resolved to create one. As a result, my two New Year’s Resolutions for 2009 were simple:

1) No hamburgers at all, and
2) Soft drinks only every other week.

I’m proud to announce that I haven’t had a hamburger all year! I didn’t even eat one when my sister picked me up from the airport with a Sonic burger with my name on it. It may have been rude of me to refuse, but then again, that particular resolution never stuck.

I’m also proud, though slightly less so (see “Caveats and Addendums” below), to announce that I kept to my soft drink reduction resolution so well that I forgot for months at a time that I was allowed to drink it.

Bottom line: Victory is mine!¹

Caveats and Addendums: I ate at Taco Bell² a good amount at the beginning of the year to make up for the lack of processed beef in my diet³. I understand if you think that means I was cheating. However, I haven’t had any since September. Now, that’s change you can believe in.

I occasionally binged on soda. Like the week where I drank three 2-liter bottles of ginger ale (no regrets!), or the week where I finished off three six-packs of off-brand fruit-flavored sodas. But those were only two belly-bursting, acid-reflux-inducing weeks, and they fit quite conveniently into the letter of my law.

Also, I may or may not have cooked up eight strips of bacon all for myself on two separate occasions. Within the same month.

Conclusion: If you’re going to make New Year’s Resolutions, make sure to include a “gimme”. Like being nice to your sister.⁶

Appendix
¹ Dang it, YouTube! Where are your 3 second clips of Stewie claiming victory?!?
² Mmmmmmm. Cheesy double beef burrito. A whole ~~artery~~ meal for 99 cents!
³ Why outlaw hamburgers and not Taco Bell, you ask? Well, first of all, I wanted to live through the year, not kill myself out of frustration mid-March. Second, at The Border, I can more easily control my portions with their scrumptious value menu. Hamburgers, on the other hand, come with fries and a soft drink. At many places (Red Robin, Whataburger, Mighty Fine, etc.) those burgers are too big all by themselves, and at Red Robin (I love you dearly!), you get unlimited fries. Unlimited. Fries. I always eat myself into a Royal Red Robin Burger coma. So, the true evil is in hamburgers, not in my complete lack of self-control.
⁴ Yes, Jason Crandall, you inspired my hamburger resolution.
⁵ Looking for the notation for footnote ⁴ in the blog? Yeah, it’s not there.
⁶ If you’re an only child.

A new player in town

2009-12-26T15:08:00.000-08:00

A new player in town

Comcast consistently has some of the worst customer service ratings of any company anywhere (and isn’t available at my home). Time Warner is just kind of annoying. A new internet provider in town would be welcome.

Is CLEAR’s mobile WiMAX network up to the challenge?

A legitimate mobile internet option?

CLEAR puts its best foot forward with this innovative technology. Anywhere CLEAR provides coverage, you get connectivity for your laptop or desktop. Anywhere.

It makes me drool a little.

The coverage (for all services) is pretty limited for now, but includes lots of locations in Texas (very good for me), and I expect it to expand to more major cities (and hopefully to all airports) in the near future.

Once you get the $50 USB WiMAX device, or select the new WiMAX option when buying a supported computer, you can connect. You can also provide internet for up to 8 Wi-Fi enabled devices (including other computers), but it’s not cheap. You need to buy the $140 CLEAR Spot device, and need to have the main machine and its WiMAX enabled device turned on. CLEAR Spot has a 2-3 hour battery life, and it can also work while plugged in directly ($20 wall adapter, $20 car adapter). Its Lithium-Ion battery will, of course, eventually wear out ($30 for a new rechargeable battery).

So, again, it’s not cheap, but ohmygosh it’s cool.

Now I just need to buy a computer with a battery life longer than 3 minutes.

A home internet replacement option?

Clear vaunts itself as an alternative. You plug in their $70 modem to a power outlet, and they beam the internet to the modem, which you connect to your computer or router. There doesn’t appear to be anything indicating that it would not function the same way as existing wired internet options.

How much?

I like both the Home and Mobile, $45, 6.0 Mbps download, 1.0 Mbps upload, unlimited data options.

I don’t really consider the lighter Home options ($25, 1.0, 0.5 -&- $35, 3.0, 1.0), or the $35, 6.0 Mbps download, 1.0 Mbps upload, 2 GB / month options to be relevant.

They’re also offering lifetime rates, which means that you keep the same low locked-in rate for as long as you continuously keep the service. If you move to an area that doesn’t have CLEAR coverage, and you cancel the service, then you lose the rate for good.

What is CLEAR Voice?

VOIP service through Clear. In my mind, it’s irrelevant. Feel free to look around.

Security

I’ll leave this to the FAQ: “Your CLEAR connection is very secure. Unlike WiFi, CLEAR technology uses a licensed 2.5 Ghz frequency and OFDM transmission protocol for a very secure connection. The combination of licensed frequencies and OFDM technology provides a very secure connection.”

So, tell me, what’s important to you about your internet connection?

A Christmas Message

2009-12-25T18:33:00.001-08:00

We all know that it’s pretty funny when the drunk guy at the office party photocopies his butt (unless you are the person who has to clean it). It’s even funnier when he gets fired later.

It’s slightly less funny when a government official in a kid’s movie drops trou for a 2 second butt-scan, a la drunken photocopy. My niece’s exact reaction was “Eeeeeeeeeeeew!”, and not in a good way.

Thank you, Monsters vs. Aliens, you ruined Christmas.

Not a creature was stirring

2009-12-20T20:14:00.000-08:00

It's 10 PM, and in a house with four other adults and four children, I'm the only one who is still awake. 10 PM!

I suppose you could argue that when my nephew was just crying for the last 20 minutes, that he was awake. You would, however, be wrong. I know this because in the last two days, he's taken two afternoon naps, and cried through every minute of them. (It's okay, buddy, I used to have dreams about Windows Vista, too. Scared me to tears.)

Living Boring

2009-12-16T21:18:00.001-08:00

Some people live green. Some live long and prosper (and it has nothing to do with length of life or actual prosperity). Some people Live Strong.

I, on the other hand, am living boring. No surprises. No pets. No extravagant expenditures. Unless you count getting married. And if you knew the thought process that is going into keeping those wedding-related expenditures from becoming extravagant, you wouldn't count it.

What this means is that I have almost nothing to write about.

I'm eating better, but that's only three words.

I'm exercising more, but I plan to publish my thoughts on the 30 days of self-mutilation (a.k.a. cardio and strength training) all at once.

At one point, I had lost 4 pounds, but I ate a lot in the last three days. A LOT.

You're bored now, aren't you?

Mission accomplished.

Fashion $ense

2009-09-25T13:25:00.000-07:00

I've read a lot of blogs recently. I especially like the ones that talk about money. Sadly, far too few of them talk about giving their money to me.

Today, I read one that presented clothing purchasing in a brand new (well, actually "refurbished") light to me.

I'm going to paraphrase, because I'm not a fan of atrocious grammar. And I'll elaborate, because I think I'm funny.

If I buy a shirt for $50, and I wear it 150 times before declaring it pajamas, it costs me 33.33 repeating cents per non-pajama wearing. If I buy an average shirt on sale for $8 and wear it twice before I realize that I'm not an autumn, and red simply isn't my (or anybody else's in Austin during football season) color, and I'll get beat up if I try wearing it in public (especially to my old junior high, 'cause, dang, kids can be cruel), then it costs me $4 per wearing.

The moral of this story is to buy expensive things.

P.S. Attribution? I found it at this site, and searched for "sale".

Asylum from Sanctuary

2009-09-16T01:46:00.000-07:00

This is not a review of Amanda Tapping and her awful, awful fake British accent. Or her abysmally un-fitting new hair color. This is a review of the first two episodes of a TV show that I really, really want to like, because I have a huge crush on Lt. Col. Samantha Carter.¹

I like a lot of the elements of the show. The problem is that I’ve seen them all somewhere else.

I like the concept of collecting the things of this earth that most people wouldn’t understand; containing the dangerous, and learning from the benign. It reminds me a lot of Warehouse 13. (Sanctuary premiered over 9 months earlier.)

I like the character of Dr. Will Zimmerman (Robin Dunne), who combines the youth and psychological expertise of Dr. Sweets (from Bones), a proximity to the field of forensics (every single character in Bones), the looks of Harry Potter, the hyper-observational skills (with nearly identical special effects) of Shawn Spencer (from Psych), and my rippling abs. After two episodes, he’s shown himself to be inquisitive, intelligent, serious, resourceful, well written (not a compliment you want to give most people to their face; “Hi, you’re very well written ... Um, I mean punctual …”) and overall very likeable.

I also like the character of Ashley Magnus (played by Emilie Ullerup), who I can only describe to you as a combination of the young, headstrong, and street-savvy Elle (from Heroes, played by Veronica Mars), and the overdressed Kristanna Loken (“The Terminatrix” from T3), who I hope can avoid Elle’s anticlimactic storyline, and the disappointing cancellation of Loken’s Painkiller Jane.

Next, I like Christopher Heyerdahl’s character, John Druitt, who we learn is (SPOILER ALERT) … none other than Jack the Ripper. I don’t have a particularly good reason for that, other than that I like the actor.

Finally, I don’t like Amanda Tapping’s character. And honestly, it’s only because of the extremely unnatural hair color and the really, really, really, really, really, really bad British accent. I mean, it’s Army of Darkness bad. It’s MST3K-fodder bad. It’s maybe-we-should-just-be-friends bad.

I’ve compared every character and aspect of the show to something else, because nothing feels truly original.² And if you thought for a moment that the collection of abnormal creatures was potentially original because Sanctuary premiered before Warehouse 13, then clearly I forgot to mention that there is time travel involved, and clearly you’ve never seen ITV’s show, Primeval. (I’m a huge fan.)

If I keep watching Sanctuary, it will be in hopes that Robin Dunne’s character continues to get the best writing.

And that Amanda Tapping’s accent will improve.³

¹ - Though it is common knowledge that Major Samantha Carter was hotter.
² - Granted, this doesn’t bother me in the least.
³ - It will also mean that I’ve run out of episodes of Leverage, Eureka, and Lost to watch on Netflix, and Highlander, Kyle XY, Burn Notice, In Plain Sight, Psych, Warehouse 13, and Gravity to watch on Hulu, and that I’m not in the mood for a rerun of Lie to Me. Or re-re-watching all 10 seasons of Stargate: SG-1.

What did you do all day?

2009-09-05T12:51:00.000-07:00

During my college years, if I wasn’t in class or at the CougarEat (I love you Subway, Taco Bell, and Teriyaki Stix, with all my gut), I was in the library. I did virtually all of my studying in the library, and virtually all I did was study (Sundays and church excluded).

In fact, for the first three weeks of my junior year, I didn’t have time for laundry, and I neither made new friends nor kept the old. Eight months later, after winter semester finals, things started to calm down. I then learned that my roommate of eight months owned a PS2, and so I decided to stay for spring and summer terms.

Okay, so I knew he had it the whole time. I might have even played it by that point. The take-away is that I had not yet become obsessed with it.

Yet.

That summer, I fell for the PS2, and I fell hard. And tackled hard. And jumped and slashed hard. Skated hard, too. I managed to keep my grades up, but I also developed the kind of emotional bond with “Devil May Cry”, “Tony Hawk: Pro Skater”, and “NCAA Football 2004”* that a fat kid develops with a Twinkie.

I also think I didn’t have a girlfriend that summer.

Eventually, I moved out of that apartment, and a few semesters later, to Texas. I was as far distanced from gaming systems as I had ever been … until That Night, That fateful, glorious Night.

(Aside) If nothing has ever convinced you that having friends is good, let me simply throw this out there: friends are good because friends own things that you don’t.

My landlord had a projector and a killer sound system. My other housemate had a friend at work who had an Xbox and a handful of games. One of those games was the very first Guitar Hero. So, That Night, we had a party.

“Iron Man” was the first, and therefore easiest song on the playlist, and I can count on five hands the number of times I heard it that evening. Some people picked up the game kind of quickly, and others were booed off the stage by the game. (I only booed out loud once.) I quickly discovered that I have a natural (albeit useless) talent for this sort of game. I even got 100% on a beginner difficulty song while people were still there to be awestruck by my magnificent ability.

I’ll skip over the details of the party now, partly because I don’t remember them, and partly because I was just anxious for everyone else to leave. And leave they did. So I played it all by my lonesome. I must have played until 1 AM. I even got pretty good. However, even an Iron Man such as myself has to sleep, and when I woke up the following morning (afternoon?), it was all gone.

“Why did you tell us that story?” you ask. “Us?” I respond, incredulously. “There are multiple people reading my blog?”

I tell you this story because the PS3 just went through another upgrade (slimmed down, quieter, etc.) and another price cut ($299, down from $399), and I was researching it. You see, I desperately want to get my hands on its luscious Blu-ray capabilities so I can watch Transformers and Live Free or Die Hard, which I already own in Blu-ray (I knew this day would come!). I also want to play the five PS1 and PS2 games that are sitting derelict on my dresser.

But it’s not backward compatible.

And I don’t have a job.

Kind of funny that one of the main reasons I won’t buy it is the principle reason I would have time to use it, no?

P.S. I actually wrote this whole blog for a far, far geekier reason: to make fun of the people who claim the PS3 had a 0.5% failure rate (it’s actually 10%, according to GameSpot), and the Xbox 360 had a 52% failure rate (only 23.7% fail within 2 years of purchase). I just couldn’t find a place to put that.

* I may have also played Halo all the way through with a buddy in the two days between winter and spring terms, but that could have been a frozen pizza-induced hallucination. Either way, it was totally awesome.

It’s all on you now

2009-09-02T14:20:00.000-07:00

I used to work on 6th Street in Austin. It’s not as glamorous as it sounds. It’s better.

No, just kidding, it’s not better. But it certainly had its perks. Whenever I left the office late at night and wanted to go kick back and listen to some live music from a talented local band*, I was just a few blocks away from some of the most famous places in the self-proclaimed “Live Music Capital of the World.” And I didn’t even have to fight for parking. (That that, Boston!)

Ahhhhhhhhhhh, parking. The city of Austin recently started replacing perfectly good, respectable parking meters at individual spots with parking stations for whole groups of spots. You can still feed the parking station with the coins and prepaid cards that worked at the meters, OR you can now use bills or credit cards. The machine prints out a receipt that you stick to the inside of your front windshield on the curb side of the car, and then you best be on your merry**.

I love that you can pay with a credit card. I currently carry around quarters for parking and laundry, so if I ever get around to buying a washer and dryer, and assuming I never leave Austin (why would I need to?), I can stop carrying quarters altogether! Certainly, they must be a drag on my car’s mileage; I could save at least … $0.25 every year on gas alone!

I love that they increased the time limit for many spots from 2 hours to 3 hours. However, I don’t think they changed the meter-feeding law (which is really just enforced on the honor system, so far as my former co-workers who have NEVER BEEN TICKETED have informed me).

The down-side? Well, first let me ask you a question. What’s the best thing in the world that has to do with parking meters? When you get there and there’s still time on the meter! Yessssssssssssss!

Well, you can now call the city of Austin, Dr. Kill Joy. Unless you pull up as someone is leaving, and they say, “Hello good chap, here’s the 25 minutes I haven’t used yet on my sticker,” and you happen to need 24 minutes or fewer to complete your errands, then and only then do you benefit from someone else’s insufficient powers of estimation. Otherwise, you’re feeding a machine that is annoyingly obsessed with the concept of “starting … … NOW!”

I don’t think people are going to lose a lot of money on this. But this is a city of starving musicians and students. A quarter can mean a lot to a lot of people, and people without money get desperate. If you start to hear about bar fights on 6th Street over loose change on the floor, don’t say I didn’t warn you. And don’t say that the parking meters had nothing to do with it.

Just know that if I hadn’t lost my job, I might have been there, “accidentally” dropping the change.

* - I never went.
** - Firefly lingo for “go on your way.” If you didn’t know that, I don’t know why you’re reading this. Go watch Firefly!

Say what?

2009-07-26T21:58:00.000-07:00

How do you know you're out of the loop?

When you're in the middle of a rather major two year draught and just read about it online, you're out of the loop. If you just went through a 104 degree day and didn't realize it had topped 95, you're out of the loop, and then some. And if you didn't know the MLA no longer requires you to include the URL when citing an online reference (in certain circumstances), then you're out of a very important loop.

So, now consider yourself "in the loop."

You're welcome.

Which Wich would you prefer? $ubway, thank you.

2009-06-27T17:56:00.000-07:00

I’d lived in Austin for over a year before I spent any lunch days in downtown Austin. At long last, I found myself in the downtown office for a week, and I was anxious to explore the best lunch spots with some of my co-workers. The first four days taught me a valuable life lesson: some people call food “good” when it costs too much, doesn’t fill you up, and tastes like crap. I am not one of these people. Finally, on Friday, somebody suggested a place called Which Wich. I had to ask him to repeat it a few times before I realized that we were not dealing in complete words.

Which Wich, as it turns out, is a sandwich shop indigenous to Austin. (For the slow-witted among you, “wich” is short for “sandwich”.) The name is also their gimmick: they have easily the widest variety of sandwiches I’ve ever seen in a sandwich shop, so the most important decision you have to make when you walk in is “Which ‘wich do I want?” They have five sandwich options for each of the 12 principal meats, and that’s before you choose your dressings and vegetables. By my calculations, you can order approximately 1.6 trillion different sandwiches. And all this for $4.50 plus tax.

Since my first visit, I’ve taken most of my out-of-town visitors there (or to Kirby Lane) to introduce them to a tasty and affordable “distinctly Austin” dining experience. Some of the best sandwiches I’ve ever had in my entire life (sorry Mom, and sorry lunch lady Doris) have been at Which Wich.

Imagine my surprise today when my order for a Ham and Bacon on wheat with crispy strings (tiny onion rings that taste like a little bit of deep-fried heaven), lettuce, tomatoes, and cole slaw, and a water cup came to $5.60. I did a double-take. Then I asked how much a sandwich was. $5.10, came the dispassionate reply.

“Wow, that’s even more expensive than Subway now,” I mused, secretly hoping he would give me a discount to keep my business.

“We’re better than Subway, too,” was his insta-reply. I spared him a lecture on how I love Subway more than I value his life. After a moment of contemplation, I also spared his life.

I walked to my seat to wait for them to process my order, and sat there for a while, reading the Wall Street Journal. After a few minutes and nearly three whole sentences, I decided upon my finalized retort: “But at Subway, you get a foot long for $5. Here you get a 6 inch for $5.10. Your sandwiches would have to be twice as good to be worth it, and they’re not. As soon as I finish this tasty little sandwich, you’ve just lost a customer.”

But wait, they almost are twice as good. I mean, come on, crispy strings? Cole slaw? Ham with bacon bits? Toasting in a real toaster oven? Subway has none of these things.

I laud Which Wich’s praise! … as I finish my after-lunch snack of four pieces of Papa John’s pizza. You know, because I was still hungry. You know, because it wasn’t enough. You know, because they’re frickin’ ripping me off.

…

It’s official. Subway, with your $5 foot long spicy Italian on wheat with pepper jack cheese, lettuce, tomato, pickle, banana pepper, sweet onion sauce, and salt and pepper, for here; you have my eternal allegiance.

Our rock stars aren't like your rock stars

2009-06-22T22:23:00.000-07:00

Think of the last time you saw something and exclaimed out loud, “That’s ingenious!”

I do this every so often, though I tend to use the word “brilliant” instead of “ingenious” (many thanks to Dr. Who, Harry Potter, Merlin, Primeval, and all other quality media imports from The Island). I said it about swipe-able, refillable parking meter cards. I said it about Pandora.com, more than once. I said it somewhat tongue-in-cheek about the first set of oncoming xenon-powered headlights that half-blinded me into nearly causing a 14-car pileup (Get it, brilliant? Lights?). I said it about various Pampered Chef dry and wet measure products. And I even said it about disposable toilet seat covers.

There’s a UNCF commercial on TV today that promotes minority education by showing many of the ingenious inventions that “started as ideas from the minds of African Americans,” and concludes by saying, "support minority education today so we don't miss out on the next big idea tomorrow." I have done absolutely no due diligence to verify who actually invented any of these things. The inventions in the commercial include the traffic light, the elevator up-down indicator lights, the lawnmower, and other such integral parts of our infrastructure and daily lifestyle.

I reacted badly to this commercial, mostly because the music is annoying. Really annoying. Especially when you’re watching a few shows on Hulu, and the same commercial plays during Every. Single. Commercial break. Also, I haven’t seen any commercials about the amazing things that “come from the minds of silver-spooned WASP DINKs,” so it seemed a little bit like a one-sided campaign. As such, my first reaction was to be annoyed that the commercial seemed to imply that without the black men and women who invented these things, their inventions simply would not exist, and that we would miss out on future discoveries.

I calmed myself down by reminding myself that although educational opportunities are not equal across racial barriers, inventing something is about seeing a need for something and filling that need, and therefore has somewhat less to do with race and more to do with motivation. Take away someone who invented something, and eventually, somebody else, whatever race they are, will invent something that meets the same needs (assuming the needs are real).

But something about the commercial still bugged me. It took me a while to figure out: I thought it was trying to say that everything important that has been invented recently was invented by an African American. If you watch it, you'll see that it obviously wasn't trying to say that, but from that mindset, I perceived something pretty ironic embedded in the commercial. Yes, an African American invented the stop light. Yes, stop lights are extremely important. But how about the car? Electricity, perhaps? Yeeeeeaaaaaah.

Yes to the elevator indicator lights. How about the elevator? Yes to the lawnmower. What about grass? (Okay, in fairness, that one goes to God.)

Now let me be clear about something: no matter what race or gender an inventor is, they’re all more innovative than I am. Had all the earth’s invention been up to me, I would have found a way to slap together the internet (complete with Hulu, Amazon, Pandora, and online banking), while mowing the lawn with a large pair of scissors.

If you're a geek, then my post doesn't end there; rather, there is still one more invention-related commercial that you should see. It’s the Intel commercial set in a break room with a handful of Intel employees that go all star-struck when Ajay Bhatt, co-inventor of the USB, walks into the room in slow-mo, to some truly inspired guitar riffs. He humbly signs someone’s laptop while attempting to eschew the praise being heaped upon him (including his co-workers / fans showing off Ajay Bhatt t-shirts and notebook scrawlings). The first time I saw that commercial, and realized that they had just showed me an actor playing one of the men who is partially responsible for my being able to back up my entire hard drive in under two hours to a device that costs less than tickets to a U2 concert, I not only cheered out loud, I also nearly peed my pants.

The commercial concludes with the extraordinarily profound statement, “Our rock stars aren’t like your rock stars.”

That’s brilliant.

Darn you, Shirley Manson. Darn you to heck.

2009-04-20T23:16:00.000-07:00

Devastation takes many forms. Allow me to present three examples.

The Dow dropped 289.6 points today, representing the loss of many millions of dollars (which, on a related note, is many millions of dollars more than I have). Second, in the last two days, there were six earthquakes of a 5.0 magnitude or more, worldwide. And finally, I discovered today that my single least favorite character from the show, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, is the lead singer from a band that I idolized for a few weeks during high school.

Well, slightly idolized. This was before the Wikipedia web, and when considered in combination with the impressively sparse album art from Garbage: Version 2.0, it almost makes sense that I didn’t know what any of the band members looked like, and I didn’t care what their names were. You see, I heard a song on the radio one day, and was morbidly attracted to it’s distortion guitar, incomprehensible lyrics, and “new” sound. (I’ve since been attracted to women for similar reasons.)

All radio stations over-played the song, so it wasn’t long before I learned it was “Push It”, by Garbage. I rushed to put it on my “Must Have at Any Cost” list, and promptly bought it six months later from BMG Music on one of those “12 CD’s for the price of 1, and nothing more to buy EVER!” promotions. (I never did buy anything more, and now the brand is dead. I feel kind of responsible.)

I believe it’s a tribute to my innocence that I listened to every song at least 30 times before realizing, in what became one of the saddest moments of my adolescent life, that every single lyric in the entire album was a sexual innuendo.

Flash forward nearly a decade to the first new Summer Glau show to hit television since the cancellation (idiots!) of Firefly and subsequent release of Serenity (genius!). I slowly but surely fell in like with the new Terminator series, and all of its characters (welcome to a real show, Brian Austin Green), except Catherine Weaver, the pasty white redhead with the enormous forehead and the obnoxious voice. It’s a voice that only a mother could love.

And, as luck would have it, 12 million fans who bought her albums.

I think I almost cried at that realization. Well, I almost thought about crying. No, that’s not true either, I only thought about blogging. But if I felt emotions like a normal person, I would have thought about crying.

Some people would be enraptured with a ruthless killing machine who sings about sex. It actually sounds like the kind of plot that would get green-lighted as a made-for-TNT movie. But I’m not watching.**

Thank you, that is all.

** Unless it co-stars Bruce Campbell. I'll watch just about anything he's in.

Create and Consume

2009-01-07T04:31:00.000-08:00

Happiness in life is a balance between creation and consumption.

At times, we consume, and at times, we create. We're industrious creatures, and with just a little consumption, we're fueled for considerable creation.

By "consume," I mean:
- eating food,
- listening to music,
- watching movies or TV, etc.

Whereas by "create," I mean:
- cooking food,
- playing music,
- writing,
- painting,
- working,
- serving, etc.

I intend the meanings to be broader than the traditional definitions for "consume" and "create."

Our respite from creation is consumption. (i.e. All work and no play ...) The less-thought-about respite from consumption is creation. (i.e. There is no rest without something to rest from.) Therefore, it is absolutely necessary to have a balance between the two.

During my two weeks of vacation, I haven't been able to convince myself to go to bed at a reasonable hour. In that extra time, I've consumed plenty of entertainment (yay for Netflix.com and Hulu.com!), and plenty of food (yay for chips and salsa!). In fact, I've had a little too much of both. And sleeping less hasn't helped at all.

When I'm finished with the day, my mind is often still racing, and I'm tired of being awake and doing things. I'm ready for a break. When I wake up, I'm refreshed and ready to take on the very things I was tired of the night before. When I'm depriving myself of sleep, I don't get that refresher. If I've been over-working (over-creating), then I wake up without being completely ready to start up again. Likewise with over-indulging (over-consuming).

In those situations, I can't find happiness in my work, or even satisfaction in my play. I need to have meaningful work in order to find joy in relaxation, and I need to have meaningful R&R to consistently find joy in work. (It doesn't hurt to have a job I love.) PwC's HR department talks a lot about work-life balance. But parts of life can be so stressful that I don't think that's necessarily a recipe for success; I think it's the create-consume balance.

...

I chose the term "consume" for a reason. We all know what it feels like to eat too much. You know you can't eat again for a while, because your body simply can't take it. Well, I think we react the same way to over-stimulation of most (if not all) other sorts. Over vacation, I got bloated on streaming TV shows. I can't take any more right now. I need to recharge by working.

Good thing it's busy season.

First little post

2009-01-06T04:51:00.001-08:00

This is my first little post.

Clearly, it's my first, and I choose to refer to it diminutively as "little" so that it gets a complex. It'll notice that it's shorter than all the other posts, and has a more limited vocabulary, so when it gets picked on, it'll probably think it has to resort to fighting.

And it will get its little backside kicked.

...

If you're not certain what to expect from this blog, that makes two of us.

Every once in a while, I'll have a good idea, and I'll blog about it. The light bulb will go off, I'll turn on my computer, and in the process of waiting for my computer to start up, I'll start to forget the essence of why it was a good idea. Using what I can remember, something interesting will materialize. But something else will be missing.

It will be incompletely brilliant.