I got a call from my good friend Charlene this morning, apparently one of my old friends Rick died this weekend. It was not a friendly happy death; it looks like he basically drank himself into liver, kidney, and pancreas failure. His sister told us we could go to the funeral, but suggested we do not. I’m going to respect that suggestion. He was an odd bird, but a good soul and this is a pretty big shame. I had not talked to him in months, he bugged out of Austin for points unknown months and months ago and I never had an email address.

Happy Tuesday, right?

(I’m all about the compelling blog titles)

First a funny snippet from Overheard in New York:

Disproportionately hot nerd girl: You know, I was scarred by a 
    guy once. It was on a fur rug. With a knife.
Attractive nerd guy: Wow. Real fur?
Disproportionately hot nerd girl: Real knife too. Very 'Kushiel's 
    Dart' sort of moment.
Attractive nerd guy: He must have thought you were pretty special, 
    I mean, what do you have to do to get blood out of fur? I'm 
    guessing it's dryclean only.
Disproportionately hot nerd girl: Anyway that was my first, and 
    only, foray into S&M. After that I stuck to D&D.

-- 6 Train

I ran my first “5k” yesterday. I hit my 3 mile target so I figured I would try and get 3.1. I averaged 10:17s for the run. Pretty cool actually. I’m going to duck out a bit early today so I can get a 2 miler in before dinner. It is really hard putting on the mileage again. Time to actually work at planning long run/short run/off days to make sure I get the mileage in. My runs are not a pretty as Dr. Pauly’s, but there is a duck pond.

One SnG this week. A fiver at BoDog. The play *sucks*. I hit a 4 flush with 45s, turned the flush and won against TPTK with a 5 high flush. Sick. Then again. I ended up near the bubble when I hit a set of 2s with three hearts on the board and the guy turned his nut flush. I guess I had the re-draw, but that stings. The blinds are really nice early, but go up quick in round 5 or so. There were 5 (of 10) left with blinds of 100/200 and starting stacks of 1K. Crapshoot really.

AllOfMP3 no longer is supported by Visa. Oh well. I can’t say I am too surprised.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Well, C-SPAN anyway.

If anyone was bored enough to watch the debate for the Ohio 15th tonight (11/18). The moderator was this blogger’s older brother. He has been doing radio and tv for almost 20 years now and had a few national radio spots (mainly for NPR) but this was his first national TV exposure (at least that I know of).

Here is Rebecca and her older sister Bridget. I really can’t wait to see them at Thanksgiving.

Jim caught me in the bar on Friday night (I know, surprise, surprise) and mentioned he could get really cheap rooms at the Rio when Mookie and Mrs. Mookie (who’s template is *messed* up right now) are going to be in Vegas. Hmmm… But that is less than 3 weeks away, won’t airfare suck? $200 round trip including fees and taxes tells me not. I’ll be there Sunday November 5 to Wednesday November 8. And I will be hitting the Crown and Anchor at *least* once.

I paid the deposit on my cruise this weekend. It looks like my pal Julie will be my bunkmate so that 4 day all-you-can-eat and drink-all-you-can-sneek trip will be about $300 plus a fifth and gas money to drive to Galveston.

I am an uncle. Again 🙂 My sister gave birth to Rebecca Elizabeth last Wednesday. I now have 3 neices and 1 nephew. I am going to be the Godfather of Rebecca. The Christening will be the Sunday after Thanksgiving in Massachusetts and I will be up there for the holiday.

Zero poker last week.

I ran about 10 miles last week. 4.7 miles so far this week. I keep track Sunday-Saturday. The goal for this week is about 15.

No golf on Tuesday- the Round Rock Express rented the whole course for the whole day. Then it rained all day long. Heh. No golf this week, my playing buddy screwed up his wrist in some drunken tom-foolery.

The 1st BCS rankings are out. Ohio State is a non-surprise #1. Texas is a surprising #9. VA Tech is a non-surprise no-show. Things will settle out in the next few weeks.

31 suspensions form the FIU/Miami brawl on Saturday. I want to find the whole thing on YouTube or whereever, anybody have a link?

My resume is up to date. Time to start plugging it into the system both here at IBM and outside (Dice, Monster, ect) and see what pops up. I have until March to find something- but if a cool job comes up earlier I’ll probably jump at it.

I found a new time waster- this is a multi-player web based game. You take up a life of crime and try and make it big time.

Here is the referal link: PunchMe

When you get going I recommend doing the DipIt game in the casino for fast cash. Also do all of the “vote for us” things to build a starting bankroll. Use the bank so you don’t stand out- you can attack other players and the winner gets cash and experience points.

This is a free game, although apparently you can use actual cash to buy points and items. I don’t plan on doing that.

Yes. I can be that bored at work 🙂

… it may even be a touch *over* 93 … and i am done playing that game.

I suppose it is time to let the cat out of the bag, so to speak. Only a few of my closest friends and family knew the truth about last Friday. Yes, I ditched work to mow my lawn. Oh, and I attended the 5th annual ACL Festival. But why would I write about that? Yes the Yankees played the Red Sox. I recall this being the 2nd time in my life they did this on the 15th of September (although it could be more).

Last Friday I had a birthday. Yep another one. This time it was the big 3-0.

I try not to make a big deal of it. I often will go out to dinner, by myself, and have a really nice meal. Last year I went to a local steak house called Reed’s and they gave me a free desert. That was nice. This year, because of ACL, I have not made the same pilgrimage.

I did go see a few friends and do a few shots. I think 4 in about 2 hours. By the time I hit the pillow about 1am, I was pretty buzzed but was more worn out from sitting in the sun all day. There were a few phone calls and text messages. It is nice to here from family and friends although I didn’t get to talk to anyone until I called my sister on Saturday.

All in all. Nothing Special. Just the way I like it.

Now for the past. I have done a fair amount in my 3 decades. I moved to college 700 miles from home and basically only visited on holidays. During college I worked all over including the sticks of Tennessee (is there anything else :-)) and the big cities of Washington and Seattle. I have an FBI file because I spent more than a couple of days working for them in the Hoover building. I moved to Seattle, Redmond actually, and working for the “Company” for awhile. I met some of the coolest people and some great friends- although I have not talked to them in eons. In the summer of 2000 I moved to Austin. I really like it here. It *feels* like home, even though I knew *no one* when I moved here-I even rented my apartment sight-unseen. 6 years now, two jobs, one IPO, one acquisition, one layoff, and one home purchase later I have no intention of leaving. The people here are just good, the food is great, the woman are hot (this *is* Texas after all).

The Future? Who the hell knows. I know I need a new job next year for starters. If that is an internal transfer, or a new company outright has yet to be determined, but it is inevitable. I’m sticking around. I’m not going anywhere for awhile. And I truly hope that I can keep the friends I have here. But where to go from here? I just want to keep going. I can’t spout off life lessons because, although I have had a pretty good life, it isn’t like I *planned* it all out. This is really all I want to do:

• Drop that 30 or 40 extra pounds I have been toting around. I was skinny once, not that you would know it now.
• Enjoy the hell out of my friends: take trips, have great meals, hell just enjoy the football game and a few cold beers.
• Learn something new, anything. Once you stop learning the slope begins to lean forward- hard to stop momentum.
• Don’t get all stressed out over details. I lead a pretty blessed life with a solid paycheck and a great friends and family network. There really isn’t anything in my life getting an ulcer over.

OK, I’m done spouting self realization shit now. At least until next year.

Oh, and how did I know the Red Sox/Yankees have played at least one other time on September 15th? My folks took me to a game on my birthday when I was in grade school on a Thursday back in the day. The Sox lost. At least they only got rained out this year.

PS: Happy Birthday Dad! and Happy Birthday Grampa!

— Ben Kweller on his *really* bloody nose that caused his set to be late and the paramedics to stop it early.

It is that time of year again where 65,000 people cram into Zilker Park here in Austin, Texas for a great festival call The Austin City Limits Music Festival. I’ll try and put some of my notes and thoughts along with this small writeup.

I took friday off from work so I could get down there early. deadboy and the Elephantmen were playing at 2:30 and I had heard good things so I wanted to check them out. Unfortunatly TxDOT decided it was a good idea to close a lane on the highway and repave an off ramp. I was stuck in traffic for 45 minutes and with parking, walking to the gate, getting my wristband and getting practically anally probed by security I missed their set. Bummer. We had a group camped out to see Gnarles Barkley so I made the first real tacticle mistake- I failed to catch Stars. I have now heard the set (it was broadcast on XMU on XM Radio) and I should have walked over to see them. Gnarles Barkley put on a great show, highly recomended. They played a few things off their new album and a bunch of covers of old school songs with a really new twist. I was able to catch most of Gomez- another great show. This is when I made the *2nd* mistake. I left Gomez a bit early so I could grab some food and get back to the home base. Yeah. The lines were at least an hour long. Every. Last. One of them. No food for me. Thievery Corporation was next. This is the 2nd time I have seen them and they get better every year. They were in town on Thursday night and put on a show that others said was better than ACL, but I was blown away. I really needed food at this point. So I braved the lines, which were a touch shorter now, but not much. The layout of Zilker is pretty cool, pretty much three stages are always live (of the main 5 stages). One of these faces the food court. The Tragically Hip were playing on that stage while I was waiting for my spicy chicken wrap and venison wrap. Although I could not really watch them I heard them clearly. Pretty cool stuff. Then off to the main event for me. No, not John Mayer. I picked Van Morrison over that lull-fest. Van Morrison put on a great set, he played for almost two hours. Good stuff and I am glad to see him, because I will probably never get the chance again.

Saturday was dubbed “Seperation Saturday” by the football analysts. Seven top 25 matchups and I was going to be sitting under a tree in Zilker Park. Oh well. Cell phones are a wonderful thing and we were able to get scores most of the day. Despite SMS Google claiming to do NCAA sports- it turns out they only do NCAA Basketball. Bummer there too. I made it down to see the first act I wanted to see: Murder by Death. Pretty good stuff, I had not heard most of their music and I was impressed. Phoenix was next. They are in my top 5 acts this year. I’ll definatly going to have to get some of their music. About 1/2 way through their set I figured out I was woozy. Yeah, 95 and sun bearing down and I was done. Time to head back to the safety of the shade tree. I hung out there for Ben Kweller and his bloody nose- a shame too he really wanted to play. He even stuck a tampon up his nose- I shit you not- to try and stem the bleeding. The Shins were next, very good afternoon band. I was able to lean back and just enjoy the set. The crowd really started to pack in because in an hours time Jack White and his new band The Raconteures were on. No point in moving now. That was a pretty good show as well- very Jack White, go figure. Iron and Wine were playing the opposite stage after them so a few of us popped up to catch a few of their songs. Very cool, another band to get the album for. The main headliner for me was Massive Attack. Most people checked out Willie Nelson, but that is not for me. Massive Attack was pretty cool- but after about 45 minutes I was done. Back to the truck and back up north to get a bit of dinner and off to bed.

My goal for Sunday was to catch 3 main acts. The day started with poaring rain as I got on the highway to drive to Zilker. It had stopped by the time I parked, but a text message confirmed that a few of my friends were there and were drenched. I got to the homebase in time to catch 1/2 of The Stills. It would have been nice to see the whole set, they sounded pretty good. The first of the three acts I wanted to catch was up next. KT Tunstall is great, she put on a great set and the crowd really enjoyed it. I then set off to get a bandana (more rain was predicted) and some grub. This time a BBQ sandwich from Stubb’s. I had to fight a huge crowd to get back to base for the next main stage show- Matisyahu. He put on one of the highlight shows of the festival. I’d love to catch him in a smaller venue- next time he comes to town I guess. I then tried to watch The New Pornographers but could not even get to the center to hear them. Sun Volt was playing at the same time and that would have been a better choise. Apparently ACL put a bunch of cash-n-carry one day tickets on sale for Sunday. I think this was because of the rain. But it really didn’t rain during the day so there were several thousand extra people milling around. It was *packed*. Back to the main stage to catch the last of the must-sees: The Flaming Lips. What a truly visually fantastic show. With bubble boy crowd surfing, the air-cannons full of confetti, the gaggle of alien women dancing, and the lead singer donning fake blood as a tribute to Ben Kweller, it was just nuts. Pretty good set as well, but his monologes between songs were a bit preachy. I came to see music not listen to politcal speeches. Tom Petty was the headliner of the entire festival and lightning could be seen as he started his act. We hung out for 4 songs then started out. The rain started before we even got to the gate and it was a wet trek back to the truck. I heard on the radio this morning that they did a 30 minute delay in the set, but that he came back out to do an extended set. That was cool of him, even though I wasn’t there to see it.

All-in-all it was a great time with fantasic music, great food, a pretty cool venue, and the weather held pretty well being in the low to mid 90s. Even if I did miss a bunch of football. I’ll be back next year, that is for sure.