They are not bombs they are pointy arms

Stupid Beantown.
You and your moron Governor need to find some common sense.

Hacker at Heart

I've had my new keyboard for a couple of weeks now. While most people with a new keyboard would spend their time playing it, I have spent more time reverse-engineering their file format. I just enjoy doing that type of thing. The keyboard has a decent UI and enough flexibility to do everything I need it to, but I just have to dig deeper. Some members of my band are really into the "technology" aspect of music (mostly at the expense of the actual music), and the plan is to have my keyboard send out the appropriate patch settings for each song to all of our gear and also a click track at the appropriate tempo for the drummer to start off with. Rather than do all the settings from the keyboard, I'd rather modify the files using a computer program. I've probably spent more time writing the program than it would've taken to do it all manually, but now when I have other bizarre batch operations to do I have this tool. Plus, I've learned how to use regular expressions using vbscript in Excel VBA. Since I have all the song data on an Excel sheet it seemed like something to try. Maybe I would've been better exporting the Excel data and using perl instead. The program is pretty messed up--I have to convert every byte of each song program into a hexidecimal ASCII representation to search on because I couldn't figure out how to get regexp to treat each byte the same regardless of the value, but oh well as long as it works.

Half

Some crazy chick talked me into doing a half marathon with her next Sunday. Too bad I haven't been running lately. I did some training yesterday and managed to get get through 11 miles one way or another, and am not feeling bad this morning at all. So, I think I'll be able to finish it... slowly.

Austin Freeze

Today is day three of the Austin freeze. It's also most likely the last day I get to stay home from work. Other than two hours on Monday morning, I haven't been to work all week. It hasn't been all that fun, though. I had to eat all good, healthy food yesterday because I already ate all the tasty bad stuff at my place. I found too many distractions to get any real work done that I could from home, and, while this was an excellent opportunity to catch up on other non-work things to do around the apartment, I couldn't get much done there either because I felt too guilty about not doing enough real work. By late last night, I was feeling really depressed. I know I don't socialize too much even when I am at work or out elsewhere, but what I didn't realize is that just being different places and seeing different people makes a big difference too.

Winter

Today is the first of several expected days of freezing rain or snow here in central Texas. The roads on the way to work (when work decided it was a normal working day), and, on the way home two hours later (when work decided road conditions were going to get much worse, which they didn't, thereby wasting several hours of productivity, and who knows how many more when one is directed to "work at home"), reminded me of what Wisconsin *should* have looked like when I went home for Christmas. Wisconsin severely disappointed me and I had to drive to Minneapolis to find any signs of winter. Today in Austin, we had piles of slush on the side of the road and between tire tracks on the highways. Really, Wisconsin should have looked worse than this did. No precipitation this afternoon, so I went downtown to work during happy hour. On the way back, right before my exit, cars were slipping and sliding all over the place on an overpass bridge. I, of course, maintained my cool and glided straight through to my exit with no damage done. Stupid Texans.

I haven't managed to put the "University of Wisconsin" decal I bought over Christmas on my back windshield yet, but I really ought to tomorrow morning before I drive anywhere--to show everyone that I know what I'm doing. Today has reminded me of my one and only car accident*, when I was driving my mother's convertible to my former and at the time my sisters' high school. We were going down the small hill just north of the Beltline on Gammon Road right before Odana, at less than 10 mph, in very icy conditions... there were a hundred accidents that day I believe. I was able to slow down but stopping was out of the question. Realizing there was nothing I could do, and with several seconds to wait, I told my sister to "hold on" and in bumper car fashion we collided with the car in front of us stopped at the stop light. Someone will have to remind me which sister was in the car, because while I thought I was taking a certain sister to gymnastics practice, it's the other non-gymnastics sister I thought was in the car at the time.

*"Car accident" in this entry is defined as an accident involving more than one car. I have had my share of car accidents involving just my own car, and they were both really stupid.

Wings & Oates

Surprise, it's a wing entry!

Tonight's song is "Private Eyes" by Hall & Oates. Last night, I was watching an episode of Aqua Teen Hunger Force which featured the apparition of Bart Oates, the former center for the New York Giants (still alive by the way), telling Carl to right the things he's done wrong. I felt inferior not knowing who Bart was so I looked up his entry on wikipedia. Of course, I stumbled on the Hall & Oates entry and read their history as well. That made me remember that in my youth I bought the Rock & Soul Part I LP.

I didn't own a lot of LPs. There was a fairly short window between my first music purchase and the advent of CDs, so that's why. I also bought some cassettes in that period, but I can't recall any of them. Anyway I think we can all agree that cassettes suck.

What I didn't realize until just now is that Rock & Soul Part I was a greatest hits package. That means that this LP is the first greatest hits album I ever owned! Hall & Oates seems appropriate for that. It's hard to imagine being such a big fan of theirs that I'd own their real albums, but their songs were certainly catchy enough that owning a compilation is understandable. The other LPs I remembering owing were Men At Work's first two albums, and I remember that my sisters owned Phil Collins' solo album with the big orange head on it, Thriller (of course), and Wham!'s Make It Big.

I almost forgot to mention anything about the song. "Private Eyes"... nice prevalence of the "rock style" piano that you can find on any keyboard these days, also the usual Hall soulful lead vocals and Oates soothing back-ups. And a nice clapping thing going on during the chorus.

I must also mention that while I was reading the summary at the above ATHF link, which ends with a quote about the band Boston, the Boston song "Don't Look Back" is playing here. Freaky coincidence.

Chain of Lakes

Here I am at one of my favorite places to run, Lake Calhoun, on Christmas Eve. That's downtown Minneapolis in the background. I ran and biked in this area all the time in 2001 and 2002, and haven't run or biked as much since. Town Lake is the most comparable location in Austin, but it's hard to run that year round after it gets hot. Running in the cold weather, now that doesn't bother me at all!

Oh No Romo

I am not a big Cowboys or Seahawks fan, so I didn't really care who won the game last night. But it was a wild fourth quarter and I do wish it ended differently.

What, he missed the kick?

No, the holder fumbled the snap?

Wait a minute--isn't their QB Romo still holding the ball for the kicker? Oh no....

Romo and Gramatica are the only two players on that team I like so it was said to see it end this way. Romo will take this really hard, but hopefully everyone will remember that they wouldn't have even gotten this far if it wasn't for him, and there were plenty of other mistakes in that game that could've changed the outcome. I'm looking at you, Terry Glenn and T.O.!

I Can’t Get Enough Football

I knew it was getting bad sometime yesterday when I began to dread the upcoming long break between football seasons—and it’s not even the playoffs yet!  I didn’t watch any football Sunday afternoon but of course I watched the Packers kill the Bears Sunday night.  I have had this theory all season that Favre’s decision to stay next season would hinge on the Packers’ performance in their last game.  If they did well, Favre would be back.  Well, they did great so my guess is that he’ll be back.  I do feel a little unsure, however, since he was taking team pictures and teared up during an interview at the end of the game.
Wisconsin didn’t play great on Monday but they pulled off a win over Arkansas.  BBK ,you owe me a beer, at least, even though you left Sunday before we could finalize our bet!  I missed much of the Rose Bowl but I’m sure it was boring and Michigan was embarrassing.  I can’t believe Wisconsin lost to them.  I dozed off a little bit Monday evening but I woke up in time to see the entire second half and OT of the Fiesta Bowl.  What a crazy finish, I loved it!  I don’t get those people who don’t like trick plays.  They’re not against the rules... they are high risk so should be used sparingly, but that’s all up to the team.  They all worked for Boise State and it was fun to watch!  Last night I totally didn’t plan on it but watched much of the Orange Bowl.  I even watched it with a Wake Forest alum so that gave me a team to root for.  Wake Forest lost, but they hung in there for a long time.