My band spent six hours yesterday in a studio in Austin. One of our friends had a recording project to take care of so he invited us to be his guinea pigs. We spent the entire six-hour block recording one song. Don’t ask me how, but suffice to say some bands spend that same amount of time making sure the snare drum sounds just right. Pictures are here. An added bonus of the recording session was the knowledge that my band was recording in a studio that Willie Nelson, Sublime, and Kenny Wayne Shepherd recorded in. Cool.

Something very exciting happened on the way to Austin. My 1995 Accord hit the 100,000-mile mark. I pulled over and snapped a picture. Ignore the “MAINTENANCE REQUIRED” light. It automatically went on at 75,000…

Take a look at that clean piece of kitchen floor. It was covered in slimy, gooey, brown chicken fat just a few minutes ago. I really should have taken a picture of it but, well, I had slimy, gooey, brown chicken fat all over my shins and bare feet.

Here’s what happened. My roommate has a George Foreman-type grill. He made chicken fajitas today for the both of us – a friendly gesture to say the least. I then gave him a ride to the bus stop for his ride to Houston. Upon arriving home, I was greeted by a messy kitchen and a sink full of dishes, so I did the natural thing and started cleaning up. The grill has a little plastic drawer that catches all the grease and fat that gets cooked out of whatever it is that’s getting grilled. It was full after the fajita fest an hour earlier.

I wanted to move the grill into the cupboard so I could clean the counter top on which it sat. As I lifted the grill, the drawer fell out and spilled its contents onto my shins, feet, and kitchen floor.

I then cursed loudly.

I went to Houston this weekend to see the ‘rents and I found a cool article on kayaking in San Marcos in the Houston Chronicle. For $90, you get to rent the equipment and learn from former and current Olympic kayakers for a full day on the river. A little pricey, I know, but I’ve always wanted to try kayaking and this is a prime opportunity whatwith summer just getting starting and crowds still being minimal. Then again, that article will probably draw 8,000 more people with my same impulsive idea. Just my luck. I get a great idea and everyone else does too.

The other hobby I plan on adopting (at some undetermined time in the future) is mountain climbing. Believe it or not, my weekend in Houston was jam packed with mountain climbing – in my head, at least. I’ve started reading Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer and I’m officially adopting the activity into my list of things to do. The book is about a Mt. Everest expedition that turns into a disaster, but I’m not deterred. I’ll just pick a more modest mountain. Mt. Kilimanjaro, for instance.

I dragged my parents to an IMAX about a group of people aged 12 to 60-something that climbs Kilimanjaro. I’d like to think I have the endurance of a preteen or retiree. The only real issue here is the money needed for a guided tour. Turns out that these guided ascents cost upwards of $5,000. Heck, the guided ascent of Everest in Krakauer’s book started at $65,000. The solution? Go solo. No guide. Just a map. Who’s with me?

It’s been decided. My first foray into the world of office pranks, aside from the usual rearranging of someone’s cube, will involve:

1. a working copy machine
2. a sign reading “The fax machine is out of order. Xerox has been contacted. –Thanks.”

Or something to that effect. I just wish I had a clear view of the copy machine. I’ll try to hang around every now and then and see what’s up. Results to follow.

"One of those smart, happy girls who buys fancy bedsheets and always talks to you like she knows something you don't, and is just humoring you because she went to a better college. Oh yeah, you know the type I'm talking about. Your mom's going to love me, but you're going to panic the night before our engagement party, and have to run off to Mexico and ruin your good credit score."

and watch his Random Stuff movie. do it now. do not pass GO and do not collect jack shit.

i was going to write a long and drawn-out post about the weekend: about how i went camping at Inks Lake in a far-away place called Burnet, Texas; about how i went mountain biking at the Greenbelt and got my ass kicked by the Hill of Life; about how i got drunk on 4th street on Saturday night and yakked my guts out at the Driskill; and about how i got back to Chris' house and passed out on his driveway.

but instead, i'll just send you to cherz's site.

I’m having issues with my prank plans. Messing with peoples’ minds is fun, but it’s not fun when it’s the people on my team and I interact with them all day and they’re grumpy because I’m making them spend time to walk to another copy machine. So I didn’t even put the sign up. All the potential grumpiness changed my mind. Time for Plan B.

Plan B:

Ok, there is no Plan B. Keep in mind I work in a conservative corporate environment and I like getting steady paychecks.

I realize that I’m just making excuses now.

Aha, I just got an idea. I happen to know the folks who run our Intranet site. I could have them throw together a fake mockup of the site on a test server, post a co-worker’s face on there with some stupid announcement (“Jimbo Whats-his-face named Brain-Cell Deficient Employee of the Month”), and pass it off as the real Intranet site. Since my company has some 24,000 employees worldwide, this would likely cause some minor yet irreparable trauma. Sweet.

post-work addundum: ugh, i'm lame. i tried to pull a prank with the intranet site i run and the supposed victim actually liked it. i told him it was intended as a prank and he told me i needed to work on my skills. dammit, i'm a hopelessly poor prankster.

If you’ve been perusing the blogosphere yesterday and today, you might have noticed that lots and lots of people are not happy with the recent Blogger changes. To them, I say: bummer. Roll your own? I’d be happy to donate my code to someone willing to set up a php/MySQL blog. But I digress.

If you were perusing the blogosphere today and happened to stop by this site (fat chance) you might have noticed that, for most of the day, it wasn’t working. This is no fault of my code or database, however. It was the fault of my inability to get off my ass, check my email often enough, and read my web service provider’s notification that:

If you do not wish to renew your hosting package, you must verify that your Package's status is set to 'non-renew' in the Member Operations area; otherwise we will automatically renew your package on the renewal date.

Some folks do seem to like the new blogger. It has been unanimously decided, however, that needing a blogger account to leave comments sucks. Bad blogger, bad.

And what do you think of this? California Senate Bill No. 1652:

This bill would require, on and after January 1, 2006, at least 25% of all single-family residences constructed as part of a development of at least 25 homes and a density of at least 20 homes per acre that is offered for resale to be constructed with a solar photovoltaic energy system for each unit.

Let’s look at the plusses first: energy savings and cost savings. Now the minuses: developers may develop developments that do not have at least 25 homes and do not have a density of at least 20 homes per acre just to avoid falling under the bill’s purview.

My initial reaction is: I wish my state had one of those bills. I wish everything I owned ran on solar power. Texas has more sun than we know what to do with.

don't be shy: a brief history of Microsoft Word from Word's program manager. Via kottke.org. The write-up is especially cool if you have any involvement or interest in Japanese Windows or word processing.

I finished Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air a few days ago. It didn’t read like a novel; it read like an account of a natural disaster. Tornado, hurricane, earthquake, failed Everest expedition – take your pick. The only difference here being that climbing Mt Everest isn’t exactly an act of nature. Krakauer noted that this was problematic for some readers. He received many letters chastising him for his behavior when circumstances near the summit forced him to abandon several climbers and retreat to his tent. If frostbite was nipping at my fingers and toes, I was suffering from altitude sickness, and I was dangerously low on oxygen, I wouldn’t venture out into a storm with hurricane speed winds in 70 below zero temps either. It’s plain stupid. But then again, so is climbing Mt Everest…

The writing, though not spectacular, does take the reader right onto the mountain with Krakauer and his team. It is a wild ride of office building-sized ice monoliths, several-thousand foot drops, and football field chasms. By the end of the book, Krakauer’s message came through clearly: the summit attempt was doomed from the start and is generally impossible unless conditions are absolutely perfect. One might as well be on the moon when at 25,000+ feet. Storm or no storm - it’s no place for life.

New books are posted on the right.

Something thing I failed to mention about my trip to Austin last weekend: I scored this sweet Aventinus glass. The fact that it’s also filled with a ½ liter of Aventinus is probably why I felt the way I did later that night.

I’ve been in San Antonio for well over a year and had yet to visit the Botanical Gardens, so I spent a good three hours yesterday baking in the sun and perusing the Garden’s exhibits. Check out the 37 photos here (you’ll need a snapfish account).

I borrowed a friend’s copy of The Cognitive Style of Power Point by Edward Tufte many, many months ago (sorry man) and finally read it. Tufte rips apart the PowerPoint presentation from several different angles. His pamphlet-essay is basically a 23-page version of: “Hey folks, PowerPoint sucks because it only gets in the way and no one will understand what you need to tell them.” I think we all know that. I don’t think anyone I work with likes PowerPoint. I don’t think anyone I’ve ever met likes PowerPoint. That said, I guess this essay would be useful for people that do like PowerPoint, but anyone that likes PowerPoint isn’t going to seek out reasons to not like it. Ergo, I don’t know what good this essay could possibly do.

But the cover graphic is really cool.

I also like this picture. Bonus points for finding a Peugeot bike that’s still in use.

Greenspan was reappointed as Fedhead. This is kind of a no-shit event, but the reappointment was late in the making and I was getting the feeling that ol’ Dubya would appoint one of his cronies. But my fears were laid to rest by an article I found via Google news. The best part is that, being as it’s a British publication, it has that unmistakable British wit:

Mr Greenspan is famed for an opaque speaking style that leaves much to interpretation, and a chronically bad back.

The article quotes Bush:

Mr Bush said: "Alan Greenspan has done a superb job as chairman. I have great continuing confidence in his economic stewardship."

“The economy tanked as soon as I took office, and while this is probably just a product of the rise and fall of the economic cycle, it most definitely was also a result of the common knowledge that I have no fucking idea how to run an economy or a country. So everyone freaked out and, basically, that opaque wrinkled guy is my only hope.”

I’m about to meet a friend at a hip coffee house for some reading and conversation. This is very exciting for me as she is one of two people I know within the city limits that reads regularly. The other person is a homebody and never leaves the house.

Not really. He just leaves for beer. And food. And Austin.

The PA system at the office occasionally chimes in with an obnoxious, “ATTENTION, ATTENTION: such-and-such document imaging system is currently offline, the problem is being investigated. REPEAT. such-and-such document imaging system is currently offline, the problem is being investigated. thank you.”

It’s really loud and really annoying and really intended to break your train of thought. So when the announcements come on, I echo with my own version: “ATTENTION, ATTENTION: flight 1674 has been delayed, please proceed to gate 14. REPEAT. our PA system sucks and is ENTIRELY TOO LOUD. The problem is… whatever.” And since I sit directly beneath a speaker, I have been known to throw things at the ceiling. It doesn’t help, but it does get laughs.

Whoever runs the PA obviously doesn’t want anyone to get any work done. The document imaging system alerts need to be played at migraine-inducing levels to be effective. Else, a document image might be accessed and we’d all be screwed.

AOL has an IM program that lets you chat with a faux-human, called ZolaOnAOL. Slippy Jenkins from LiquidGeneration gave it a shot. Here's an excerpt:

Slippy Jenkins: hello
ZolaOnAOL: Hi again! What do you like to do?
Slippy Jenkins: I am feeling sad tonight.
ZolaOnAOL: What's the connection between "tonight " and sadness?
Slippy Jenkins: My dog died.
ZolaOnAOL: Is this a country and western song? Seriously, I am sorry to hear it.
Slippy Jenkins: That's not funny.
ZolaOnAOL: It seemed pretty funny to me.
Slippy Jenkins: My dog died and you think that's funny?
ZolaOnAOL: Did you grow up around animals?
Slippy Jenkins: Yes.
ZolaOnAOL: Next question?
Slippy Jenkins: You sound like a cold bitch. My dog died and I feel sad, and you want me to ask you a new question?
ZolaOnAOL: I will not respond to that type of language.

japan, right now. via evhead and then [monologue] blogger information japan (unofficial).

I also posted a new tune - the Deathray Davies song needed a rest. Give Self’s Resurrect a shot. Many more Self mp3s may be found here.

I’ve been looking for a music industry blog written by musicians for a while now and finally stumbled upon something interesting: Sellout Central. Today’s post in particular got me thinking about the record industry’s backasswards concept of what downloadable music would do to record sales. They’ve whined extensively about how it would damage sales and destroy the effective system they put in place many decades ago. There is now evidence that record sales are on the rise.

As a matter of principle, many once-effective systems put in place decades ago have lost much of their effectiveness with the advance of various technologies. Namely, the Internet. Things that are decades old would benefit from a reevaluation anyhow.

The recent rise in record sales says nothing of a previous decline, however. For all we know, record sales could still be lower than they were before mp3s turned the music world upside down. But if – IF – sales continue on their current path, record industry giants could do nothing but smile.

Remember that lamp I was talking about? Well, it’s now officially gone. The lamp, the table it was standing on, and the chair it stood beside were all removed by a maintenance guy today. Needless to say, I didn’t get the ridiculous sum back. Doh.

Single mom overwhelmed by recording industry suit, via cleverhack.

The record companies follow the songs when they're downloaded onto computers, and they also note how many copyrighted songs are stored on that computer's hard drive memory, because those songs are often "uploaded" or shared with others through the file-sharing service.

….

[Stanley Pierre-Louis, senior vice president for legal affairs for the RIAA] said the RIAA isn't afraid of a consumer backlash. "We're facing a daunting challenge and we have to face it head-on," he said.

1. I don’t have a law degree, but I’d think that evidence found by sneaking onto someone’s hard drive would be inadmissible in court. And isn’t there that thing called a search warrant or is that just in the movies?
2. How is this any different from the historical method of file sharing: mix tapes? Buy an LP/tape/cd, copy it to tape, and share it with your friends. As many friends as you want. I don’t recall reading about massive legal efforts back when mix tapes were all the rage. (I still use them, RIAA be damned).
3. Suing your consumer base is no way to win its confidence. That’s just bad business.
4. Suing a subset of your consumer base that falls into the “single mom with a kid and $12/hr job” category is an even worse way to build that subset’s confidence.
5. There are many ways to face daunting challenges head-on. Let’s take fire fighting, for example. Putting out fires requires water and those special chemicals that only fire fighters and chemistry majors know about. Leveling the structure is another way to put out the fire. But that way sucks.

Cross posted on blogcritics.

Henry Rollins tends to run his mouth often and make points seldom. But I do remember something he said about U2 that agreed with me and stuck in my head. He said that (paraphrasing here) U2 was basically watered-down Clash ripoff music. I know I know, I’m probably offending a lot of people out there by agreeing with Rollins on this one, but hey, the man has a point. I have a few U2 records and they are good, but damn, Bono says some dumb shit every now and then.

I bring this up because I read a commencement speech Bono gave at U Penn and it was hilarious. He did say one cool thing (as evhead notes) but there was an overwhelming amount of hilarity. Below are some of my favorite excerpts:

But no, I never went to college, I've slept in some strange places, but the library wasn't one of them. I studied rock and roll and I grew up in Dublin in the '70s, music was an alarm bell for me, it woke me up to the world. I was 17 when I first saw The Clash, and it just sounded like revolution. The Clash were like, "This is a public service announcement--with guitars." I was the kid in the crowd who took it at face value. Later I learned that a lot of the rebels were in it for the T-shirt. They'd wear the boots but they wouldn't march. They'd smash bottles on their heads but they wouldn't go to something more painful like a town hall meeting. By the way I felt like that myself until recently.

As the Provost just referred to, a combination of our own indifference and the Kafkaesque labyrinth of 'no's you encounter as people vanish down the corridors of bureaucracy.

…I'm not a hippy, I do not have flowers in my hair, I come from punk rock, The Clash wore army boots not Birkenstocks.

…I love America because America is not just a country, it's an idea. You see my country, Ireland, is a great country, but it's not an idea.

But as I say I come from punk rock, so I'd rather have the bloody hammer right here in my fist.

I was in Austin on Friday night for my very first poetry slam. Friends Tarfia and Amanda are poetry slam aficionados and have been telling me about these things for years. I finally got the opportunity to go and I’m glad I did. I was expecting something mellow and brooding but instead got something entirely different. Remember the nerds in your high school that were obsessed with Star Wars, Chemistry lab, Rubik’s Cube, Dungeons & Dragons, and other similar activities? Well, these people are older now and they’re still nerds. Bless their hearts.

I was a nerd too [nerd cred alert!] but I didn’t play D&D, I wasn’t smart enough to figure out the Rubik’s Cube, and I didn’t care to learn about moles. But I did proclaim my Star Wars love with a Darth Vader t-shirt. Oh yeah.

For just over two hours, I witnessed an army of nerds parade their nerd qualities in the form of stand-up-comedy-meets-spoken word. There was even a trivia session with prizes of the – you guessed it – Star Wars variety. Do you know what the first video on MTV was? That’s easy. But do you know the name of the album on which it resided? Keep in mind Google was not available at the poetry slam. If you knew, you would have been awarded with a Star Wars action figure. Or something.

I really enjoyed all of the poets and I thought I’d give a quick run-down of some of the more memorable pieces:

1. Instead of having a cool big wheels or Redline BMX, this nerd was rolling on a tricycle. He was not the hit of the cul-de-sac. The tricycle made fantastic “skrikawaka” sounds. SKRIK-A-WAKA SKRIK-A-WAKA!!!
2. One poet gave an ode to Jewel, who sings of life in her van in West Hollywood, peeing in empty Mountain Dew bottles, and avoiding the orthodontist.
3. A woman (yes, women can be nerds too) got on stage and told of her boyfriend who likes to keep his Homies in the freezer. Ask him why and he’ll respond, “They’re chillin’.”
4. The finale same from a gentleman who, in a deep and rumbling voice proclaimed that he hated the war in Iraq and any war in general except, of course, STAR WARS.