We are pretty lucky hear in Austin to have a AAA baseball team. The Round Rock Express are in the Houston Astros farm system.

I am pretty lucky to have some contacts in the bar industry here in town and get invited a couple of times a year to Express games. Yesterday I got invited to hang out in the Capital Beverage suite.

Plenty of hitting and lots of sloppy field play last night. The Express won 6-5 over the visiting Omaha Royals.

Dell Diamond is a great park. I recomend it to anyone who likes baseball. Tickets are cheep ($6 for the berm, $13 for box tickets) and the play is usually pretty solid.

Rain and hail in Austin again today. Hope it rains hard, but hails light. We need the rain but not the damage.

I did make it to the Chris Cornell concert at Stubb’s the other week. I enjoyed it, although it was a late night and Tuesday hurt. I also cut my finger trying to crush a can into the recycling bin. Grrr.

Last weekend, my friend Chris wanted to know if I wanted to see the Plain White T’s at Antone’s. I like a couple of their songs and it was only $20 so I was in. Danger Radio, from Seattle, opened. They have a very cool tech streak and really enjoyed themselves. Not bad- even though the set was only about 45 minutes. The Plain White T’s are also a pretty fun band- they did a three part show calling a “Three Part Harmony” where they separated their sets into a intro set, an acoustic set, and then a final set. We were out by 11pm and back to my house well before midnight. The next day didn’t hurt as bad.

There were more kids there then I could count. Tons and tons of 16 year olds. Another friend described it as “almost as bad as a Switchfoot concert”. I can’t disagree.

The Gaslight Anthem is playing at Antone’s later in the month. Tickets are cheap too. I saw them on Dave Letterman awhile back and do got the album off of iTunes, so I will probably try and make that one.

This weekend is the Masters. I got to watch/listen to a bunch while I worked at home yesterday but won’t get to see much today. I certainly will be watching Saturday and Sunday. I don’t have any Easter plans, but will probably do a Sunday dinner. Saturday night is Blue October at Stubb’s. I have seen them a couple of times live now so when I heard this concert was coming up I was on it. They are doing two sold out nights here in Austin- so you know it will be crazy downtown.

Oh, and Sunday is also Mom’s birthday. Happy birthday Mom!

I got a Nokia E71 yesterday. Time to jump on the smart phone bandwagon and I didn’t want a new contract to get an iPhone. It has G3 Web, GPS, Media Player, an Radio, and does WiFi. I like it so far. Hopefully I like it a lot because it wasn’t cheap.

Yeah, I have been a pretty big slacker posting on the ‘ol blog. The move into the new “Connected Lab” is complete. Most every system is online and fully functional. Turns out it was about 100 physical servers and about 300 virtual servers. Loads of fun.

I lost my newish Nikon camera at a UT baseball game a few weeks back. I got a new Canon to replace it. A waste of cash, but I need a point and shoot.

The big hail event of 2009 was last week. I got pretty lucky. Only very small dents on the truck. I didn’t even see them for a couple of days until the light hit them when driving. Several of my friends have pretty messed up cars because of the baseball sized hail. I think the house, with the new roof, fared OK, but I have not been up on it yet to find out. No pictures though.

I got the ATI replacement stock in for my Hi Point 995. It took me a couple of hours to install, but I am happy with the results.

Chris Cornell is playing at Stubb’s tonight. I plan on going. Blue October will be in Austin in April. I am going to that one.

Dodgeball is done, but Four Square is alive. It looks neat, but I will have to learn to Twit. Or Tweet. Or whatever.

No, they really are not related. At least I hope not.

This weekend was the end of the Dodgeball service which was a funky text messaging service that let you keep up with friends as they were out an about. Google bought them a while back and I guess could not figure out what to do with them. In this belt-tightening economy they decided they could not afford the service anymore. It’s a shame I really did enjoy using it- even if some of my friends were a bit to annoying sometimes…

I saw Taken tonight. I enjoyed it a lot. I’m a sucker for action movies with a decent story. This was both. Liem Neeson was a great cast for the concerned father with a nasty past. The theater was basically empty at the 7:05 showing. I might have to make Sunday nights my movie night. I’m not sure how busy Watchmen was tonight, but maybe in two weeks when I can get away it won’t be packed.

Another week begins tomorrow. The Dell adventure continues. Each week since the move in on the 20th has been better than the last so hopefully it won’t be too bad. There is a pretty good chance for a new manager in my future as well. We’ll see how that goes. I also get root planing at the dentist tomorrow at 8am. That procedure is just as pleasant as it sounds…

Two really good quotes/stories I came across today:

First a great story about a No-Penis on Otis’s blog. I needed a good laugh today and that did it.

Second a great and timely quote for WWTDD do:

My Firefox spell check doesn’t even go up to “octuplets”. It stops at sextuplets. Even Firefox thinks that shit is ridiculous.

Classic. Thank you intertubes!

The analog cutoff has been delayed until June. (link) What a load of hooey. We have been inundated with information for months and months and months. I have DirecTV and therefore are not directly affected- but even they have a dedicated channel giving information about the cutoff. Ridiculous.

If I ruled the world this is what I would do. On the original date, the cutoff would happen. I would make the broadcasters put up a single image reading “Your analog television is no longer capable of receiving signal. Please contact the DOC at 1-866-DTV-2009 or http://www.dtv2009.com for details and information”. Done. Leave that up for two months then let the stations cut off their analog signal completely.

Digital television is like a band-aid. Yeah, it will sting when you rip it off- but the wound has healed, your skin is stronger, and you will be better off with out the analog bandage on your body.

I have been using ING for 3 or 4 years now because their rates have been pretty good and moving money around is fairly painless. A couple of jobs ago I got laid off and used the severance money to start a CD Ladder. It was working quite well because the rates were often about 1% or more higher than their standard savings account rates.

Then came this month. I had a CD renew at 1.5%. At the time of renewal, the savings rate was 2.4% (it dropped yesterday to 2.2%). It does not make any sense (or cents, heh) to keep the money in a CD making over a half percent less. I canceled the CD and will let the money sit in my savings account until the rates improve.

If anyone does have CDs coming to term, you might want to check on them to make sure you are not getting the interest rate shaft…

Happy New Year to everyone! I spent the early part of my evening with some friends then went home and watched a movie. The big burst of fireworks let me know when the new year began. I guess people “forgot” there was a burn ban on because I found rocket remnants on my lawn…

First day back in the office today and my Woot items from Christmas are in. For the Random Crap I got:

First, I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas day. My parents are in town for the week and it has been great having them here.

Second, Woot gave a bit of a gift today with a Random Crap and Random T-Shirts on shirt.woot. I happen to be up at midnight looking out for Santa and got lucky. Both are on their way. Yippie!

The bowl games start in earnest this weekend. Steady yourselves for a fun football ride if the TCU/Boise St game was any indicator.