The AHL Board of Governors voted and the Hicks family will be buying the Chops (formerly the Stars before the split) to move our team from probationary to official. Like there was any doubt. OK, some. I think the attendance figures cinched it, not the team’s appearance in the playoffs. Being the 16th-18th largest city in the US (depends upon the source) helped while Des Moines, IA gradually ages into irrelevance.
Details are here.
Once Somara delivered the baby shower cake successfully, she was off to a local soccer game to see our friend RC in action with her team, the Purple Ladybugs!
The official Apple release is here.
A pretty impressive milestone in four weeks and Europe hasn’t even come up to speed yet. It definitely has some kind of special allure because I have had co-workers buy them at full price. They didn’t want to wait until the probable discounts later in the year as an employee. Having handled a few, I can see it…to a point. I’ll stick to saving some dough and use it toward accessories or downloads, namely Power Attack XL.
I wonder if anyone can come up with any comparable numbers for a particular netbook? Probably not due to their craptacular (lack of) features.
This cute farm animal piece was commissioned by the nice couple Dave & Tracy again. Some friends are having their first child so I’m guessing a nursery theme was the objective. Back when Somara was planning this, I figured she was going to make the old Fisher-Price farm or something derived from The Farmer Says toy I had as a small kid.
We would say this cake was extra special because it our new Honda Fit had no difficulty transporting it. The usual precautions were still taken, namely the no-skid pad Somara places under the boxes. However, the car was a success due to the back seats’ ability to be laid down completely flat, thus everything behind the driver to the hatchback is totally level, unlike my VW Golf.
The confectionary delight was a hit too. I received two compliments at work from the host and a guest. I think it was pretty impressive as well. The sheep does resemble a creature from a Wallace & Grommit cartoon.
During his carefree, bohemian days at Marquette, he was known as The Hoser courtesy of the McKenzie Brothers (from Strange Brew and SCTV) and us Gringos needing some phonetic assistance on saying his name correctly.
He has been one of my best friends for almost 22 years now. How time flies! Thankfully, Jose has made it a pleasant, humorous and eventful couple decades through our misadventures in Milwaukee, Austin, Las Vegas and Orlando; emphasis on Milwaukee.
Twenty years ago, we celebrated his 21st birthday at the Ardmore (which I think is the Gym now). Jose was the last member of our clique to be old enough to buy his own booze legally but back when he was growing up in Puerto Rico, he was originally the first one! I made it to the party a bit late with Carrie because Hoser had a bit of a head start. Final exams might have been next week but it wasn’t going to stop him from properly celebrating. In his defense, his evening didn’t take the ridiculous turns mine did.
What’s the plan this time? No idea. I’m only hoping it something cool and he gets to take the day off from work. Growing up, he had to go to school on his birthday. As an adult, I believe you should get the day off from work with pay for this, contrary to the rather funny bit from Patton Oswalt. Last year, he went to Vegas through a package. I wanted to go along but the decision was made with too little lead time for me. It was best I didn’t go. Having a memorable time with Nancy was a priority I didn’t want to ruin or color. We hope to have a Dude Trip next year yet wives are invited.
If you know him, drop him a line. Wish him Feliz cumpleaños!
As much as I loved Grackl, it hasn’t been working very well lately and I still have friends who insist on using SMS for baffling reasons. My friend Mark found a compromise app and successor. Skeptical? I was but I think my bigger reservation was fueled by loyalty to Jeremy because Grackl was the program his company created. Personally, I found Grackl more to my liking, namely at the Stars’ games; it could inform two or more people belonging to the “thread” about the game. This doesn’t seem capable of it. However, free is better than the alternative; receiving a ridiculous bill for 100+ messages or paying more for unlimited SMS when e-mail and phone calls were already covered. I also got Jeremy’s blessing. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings, Grackl was a great source of pride and an impressive achievement.
Should you decide to install it on your iPhone, iPod or iPad (3G or not) and you want to communicate with me, let me know. Then I can give you my contact address for it.
Here’s the site about it.
Attending this was a last-minute decision; Ecology Action was a bit shorthanded for the first sold-out show (she’s booked for two evenings). I’m not a fan but if a show is on a Friday or Saturday evening and I don’t have any previous obligations, I will help out whenever my EA “boss” Lauren asks. Trust me, I’m dedicated. I’ve volunteered for shows starring White doofuses who think they’re Rappers playing to a crowd blanketed in a fog of weed and no, it wasn’t a Cyprus Hill reunion, it was much worse.
How was it? Definitely interesting. Certainly one of the more mellow, mild-mannered concerts I’ve been to Stubb’s. At Owl City, I was on the right side of the age curve as expected. At Norah, I was more on the left side which surprised me. I know she’s a staple of Adult Contemporary/AAA radio, namely K-Geezer (KGSR) in Austin, but I figured her following would be predominantly people in the thirties and forties. After last night, I can’t shake calling her Norah Geriatric especially when I overheard this gray-haired woman asking an employee, “Is there a spot I can see the stage without getting crushed?” It sounded like my mother talking!
The music was good. Norah and her band focused on the current release The Fall. I have no idea what were the hits. I recognized the two older ones she had, I don’t know them by name though. She did a couple covers too: Tom Waits and Neil Young; stumped me there too (I’ll keep searching on the Internet for a set list, my co-worker Peter is a fan). The encore was amusing. Norah and most of the band did a couple acoustic numbers on the stairs near the VIP section. I didn’t notice this until I saw the crowd shift dramatically, leading me to think some people were getting trampled. Nothing ruins a concert like a broken hip as David Lowry once warned.
Do I recommend a live Norah Jones shows? If you’re into what she does, sure. The only caveat I would emphasize is the price tag. Not only was her swag higher than average, one ticket to last night’s performance was over 50 smackers at the box office. Stubb’s usually runs between 20 to 35 dollars for other artists. I’m only glad I had the opportunity to see her once. Despite the horrible state of radio, I predict a promising future for Norah Jones.
My predictive ability for the AHL is certainly better than the NHL because I got the NHL Eastern Conference totally wrong. It doesn’t help that the AHL rushed the Atlantic Division games through this week; Hershey (the team to beat across the board) gets to rest up while the East Division is finally moving along.
Since Hershey completely whipped Albany before I had a chance to predict, I’ll just still with the Western Conference where I live.
Abbotsford Heat did defeat the Rochester Americans but I think the Hamilton Bulldogs aren’t pushovers. Hamilton will succeed to take the North Division.
What about my Stars against the Chicago Wolves? If they can at least win one game up north, I’m confident they can win the series. I would prefer them to sweep again which would solve my next Friday evening dilemma: see what may be the end of the Stars’ inaugural season or the next step toward the Calder Cup v. attending what could be my last show at the Cactus Cafe with Graham Parker. As a season-ticket holder, I will have to go with the team.
Now to watch the intermittent updates on the Web as the game unfurls.
Instead of our traditional staff meeting yesterday, we had permission to take the hour allocated to go outside, enjoy the weather. Most people take a lap around some pool created by the street drains from the adjacent neighborhood.
While we passing by an exercise station on the trail (you know those ones for joggers to stop and stretch something), Ayako and I spotted this turtle under the sign. It started to struggled forward so we tried to give it a push forward and discovered it was a she. The turtle’s muddy depression had a large hole in it for her to lay eggs. Pretty cool to catch. All the other turtles around the pool jump in the water right away before you can catch any details up close.
I wouldn’t become a permanent employee for another four years but finally, after three previous attempts to get something (two for the intern program, one with temp work), I landed a temp gig in Apple’s sales support department via Adia which is currently known as Adecco. This would be the beginning of my slow ascent joining America’s middle class economically since being a member by education and mindset doesn’t pay the bills.
What a difference 40 hours/week made again along with an extra 50 cents/hour. I think being underemployed at the dorm was the bigger problem since I made enough to make ends meet until the screw over I got at the end of 1994. The contract was what the doctor ordered too. Getting out from under the thumb of University Towers’ inept GM had been a goal I set with Lee the previous Summer, especially when the idiot was flaunting his stupidity to the attorney suing the dorm; “being computer illiterate by choice” only impresses other old farts who share the same ignorant sentiment. The situation turned out better than I would have ever imagined too. My relationship with Lee had returned to its pre-Austin amiable levels and when I told him about my departure, I was asked to stick around on at least a part-time basis. Seems that a couple other recently hired helpers were bailing, leaving Lee short handed at a critical stage, when the majority of the residents move out after they complete their final exams. Besides, I knew the ropes so the GM had less reason to dismiss me. Working at Towers from then on was much more enjoyable because I wasn’t dependent upon the money any longer. My newer, reduced role entailed weekends in the leasing office: giving tours (I bet I can still give a relatively accurate one today), answering the phones, processing paperwork and data entry.
Meanwhile, the excitement over working at Apple was great. It wasn’t a technical position, more of an administrative thing. Knowing how to operate a Mac helped greatly. I only discovered weeks later about the cushiness of my gig in SSO-Strategic. Most people who worked in the SSO-Education divisions were busier and crazier. I only had to juggle a dozen specific accounts, those others had entire states or parts of the denser ones.
Things in Austin had turned around for me financially. The mental side had a head start which I found hard to believe. Once I got over the disappointment regarding the Loyola job (glad I never took it), I embraced Austin’s advantages despite my lack of money. To me, the key moment was on a weekday afternoon I didn’t have to be at Towers, the weather was great (Spring-like in February!) and I was sitting on in front of my apartment drinking a Shiner Bock. I thought, “I may be eeking by, probably a step or two ahead of economic delinquency but I never could have a day like this in Central Illinois or Milwaukee for another three months.” Then I called a friend or two up north to ask how the snow was to be a taunting jackass.
Having the means to attend my brother’s wedding was no longer a crisis too! Flight to Chicago number two in 1995 was a go.
From those days on, I’ve never been truly underemployed. There have been times when money was in short supply and I’ve often worked an additional part-time job (one day I will stop, I promise!), namely the ugly stretch in North Carolina, to pull through. The only little thing I miss was the additional time. While unemployed in early 1993, I was in a panic. For 1995 I was a tad wiser. I used the off days to take French III at ACC, read books (the big 1000-page opus on Harry Truman by David McCullough was one), write a slug of letters on my PowerBook 140, pre-compose decent e-mails through AOL, play endless campaigns of Spaceward Ho!, help the guys at Technophilia with their Mac in exchange for CDs and really, really listen to my music collection; namely Twisted by Del Amitri and Adam Ant’s comeback Wonderful. To celebrate, I scored a ticket to see those acts the following day; Adam Ant at Austin Music Hall on April 28, 1995 and about a week later, I was in the front row for Del Amitri.
Austin was now shaping up to become the Utopia I spent hours daydreaming about in Central Illinois. The weather rocked, I had enough income to survive and then some, there were shows to see (movies and concerts) and now I could pursue my (doomed) relationship with this student named Kim. I had been hanging out with her after Patricia returned to France.
A couple of analyses, drugs and MRI didn’t help. Now Somara is experiencing PT which the ENT doctor calculates as the absolute solution (final has such a nasty connotation thanks to the Pere Ubu song). My initial reaction was why wasn’t this pursued in the first place? Seems less intrusive than an MRI. Must be why I didn’t get into medical school.
Yesterday was the first session and I didn’t get a good look at her handout to follow on her own. The physical therapist did encourage her using the Wii Fit for its balance games. A-ha! Competition is something I need for I haven’t bothered in a week or so.
This stuff should carry on for about three months. Afterwards the people treating Somara said it should work out because the process is about retraining her brain is overcompensating for something; a blow to the head usually. A rather puzzling answer due to the lack of a car accident, falling down a mountain or having a husband who could beat her up (can’t due to my condition: BGA). It may coincide with when we leave for vacation! Good. I don’t want Somara’s judgment to be clouded at the casino.
Finally got off my duff to move forward with the newer iBlog2 theme and WP 2.9.2 which appears to stick to be the norm until version 3, I guess. It went more smoothly this time. Good gravy what a mess the last WP shift was. I stupidly didn’t back up enough of the key things and lost about the last week’s worth of graphics. Jeremy bailed me out with some of his recovery tools. Definitely an evening I would like to forget.
The downside is that it made me notice how the past calendars don’t function correctly. Dates are shifted into other columns, months have the wrong number of days (March is 28 days long?) and July 2007 had its first week shoved way over into the right-side margin. WP’s discussion forums had complaints in a couple places I found easily. I tinkered around and then decided to turn it off. I think the average person couldn’t care less. What I would give for an simpler editing tool to adjust this damned theme’s tendency to make the post/article titles too large; 28 points is odd, 22 or 24 would be better. Blojsom in 10.4 was pokey yet I had mastered the ability to alter its colors, typefaces and other things critical to me. Eventually, somebody will make a theme for WP with plug-ins that will at least incorporate more than 80 percent of the look I want.
One cool addition was the FAQ page. WP has this page element I never found a use for. With a little experimenting, it became the perfect solution to re-introduce the last FAQ I did in 2004. Time flies. While I was combing through it, I only owned a mere 15 pairs of Chucks! Check it out. See if you have a question for me. Some of you haven’t physically seen nor talked to me on the phone for years, I’m confident there must something. I’m not going to bother with Facebook or any of those social networking sites…they suck! From the ashes of AOL came a worse successor. Especially when there’s a political screed posted by a friend you thought was nice, polite and mild mannered who is secretly a vehement, ignorant and vitriolic Teabagger.
Named after the astronomy Edwin Hubble, this long overdue space-based telescope was put into orbit…and it didn’t work courtesy of a lens ground to the wrong specification (the media probably got this wrong, effective telescopes after Newton use mirrors because chromatic aberration rendered lenses impractical). How it served as fodder for late-night comedy for a while.
I was still in college and more involved with my girlfriend Carrie at the time to recall many details. Heck, I was surprised it was finally launched because I remember it being on the agenda since the long-delayed space shuttle Columbia finally got going in 1981. I think Hubble was scheduled for 1987 but the Challenger accident grounded everything for a while. ABC didn’t go into great detail, the focus was more on Americans returning to space for the first time since the Ford Administration.
NASA got it repaired in 1993 and then lots of great stuff was captured through it. I remember NPR doing a piece saying Hubble had proposed the universe to be around 20 billion years old; this seems to coincide with Burbidge. With the successful operation of the telescope named after him, cosmological theories could be fine tuned to see if he was right. Hubble turned out to be off by five billion then and with COBE more like six and change (currently, it’s around 13-14 billion).
The Guardian has an OK piece they published a couple weeks ago here. It’s what reminded me to plug the anniversary.
As expected, Dr. Plait has a more informative and accurate series here. Click on the “next” link under the picture to proceed. His is excellent because Dr. Plait has actually worked with the telescope in his career.
I said it before, I’ll say it again. I knew the Icehogs would lose because they have Chicago’s innate ability to choke in their DNA. How else could they be the Blackhawks’ farm team? The parent isn’t looking much better against Nashville. I will read my friend’s arguments based upon his statistical data later about seeds’ success for the Stanley Cup, blah blah blah. Numbers and stats matter. However, I watch my team closely. Maybe not at the intense nor informed level as a professional scout yet I feel I’m attuned to the players’ je ne sais quoi qualities which tell me whether or not the Flyers or Stars “got it.” I’m not 100 percent right but I was dead on with the 2004 Eastern Conference Championship between Philly and Tampa; I could tell when the Lightning had it cinched during game seven with 10 minutes remaining…my team ran out of gas and how it showed in poorly they were playing.
In the Icehogs’ defense, they did play a good season and during the non-playoff times, they gave my Stars a hard time. I didn’t expect a 4-0 sweep. I was guessing the Stars’ victory would be more along the 4-2 lines.
Next up, the winner of the Chicago Wolves v. Milwaukee Admirals series currently tied at three games apiece courtesy of an OT victory for Beertown. Who do I want to win? Milwaukee of course. They’re the lower seed, giving us the home-ice advantage and I used live there, I have a soft spot in my heart for the place; as the residents call it…M’waukee.
This better prove to the AHL we’re worthy of a permanent franchise now. Even on a slow night, the Stars managed to draw a couple thousand people this season. Personally, I think the Icebats already made the argument. Love them, hate them, mock them, whatever…Austin’s previous team managed to exist for 12 straight years in various palooka leauges with 600-plus games before they were suspended (meaning, they exist on paper only, nothing negative). If that doesn’t say the 15th, 16th or 18th (depends upon the source) largest city in the US can’t support a team, then Rockford and Peoria are miracles.
Let’s go Stars! We’re a little closer to raising the Calder Cup in Central Texas.
I know this story is rather late but I had the good fortune to find a cool person who had some great pictures of the show (unlike Vampire Weekend, not even the local paper). Make sure to visit her Flickr page too. Collette is quite talented and if she was good to me, my friends from around the world can return the favor by giving her some traffic.
Meanwhile, my opinion of Owl City was definitely improved by the live show. I primarily went for free as a volunteer to attend with a friend (Nathalie), her daughter (Ingrid) and her daughter’s friend (I rudely forgot); quite the experience too, it was the daughter’s first concert! You know I tutored Ingrid on the essentials, namely how she must wear the concert shirt to school the following day; it’s the law of Rock & Roll to do this especially at her (middle school) age. “Guess where I was while you were at home with your parents watching Lost? I was rockin’ out! (raspberry noise).” Childish, I know. Certainly trying to train the poor kid into acting like a Starbellied Sneetch. At least the clothing has improved. Those old three-quarter sleeves didn’t age well.
Back to the concert…
Seeing Owl City live raised Adam Young’s stock for me (the band is really just one guy like New Radicals, Ladyhawke, the Normal or Saint Vincent). Several sources (publications, co-workers) have ripped on Owl City for being a knock-off The Postal Service which I have no idea about. However, I still like Garbage despite they’re copying of Curve; there’s room for both and I think the more popular one can assist the original into expanding both fan bases. When I bought Ocean Eyes last Summer, my expectations were modest. The free tune “Fireflies” was impressive and the price was right, under 10 bucks. I figured the rest would be some nice Synth-Pop yet not as memorable as contemporaries Van She, Cut///Copy, Goldfrapp or Ladytron. This prediction proved to be correct. “Dental Care” and “The Bird and the Worm” are clever while the remainder didn’t grab my attention or to quote another friend/music aficionado, Maud, “I’m pretty over Owl City.” Maybe Owl City’s enthusiasm could’ve swayed Maud. I know it did for me, namely when I see how much conviction the artists have on stage; ever since I saw Underworld in 1988 perform for less than 30 people in Milwaukee.
Stubb’s was pretty packed with kids and teenagers too. I hadn’t seen a show this skewed toward the under 18 crowd since JET but I think Dresden Dolls would be more accurate. Nice to see younger fans attending something more cerebral than what the SCLM proclaims they enjoy (Jonas Brothers, Taylor Swift and flavor-of-the-month Hip Hop/Rap). The intermittent rain certainly didn’t dampen their collective spirit, maybe the parents who were in tow. This concert also had the longest, most constant line to the merchandise booth I have witnessed. Not to say this was a bad thing. I feel the opposite. Traditional music sales continue to decline, record labels only excel at getting in the way, and radio can’t be counted on to help. Thus, the shirts and posters are what pay the bills.
Enough editorializing. My point is that Owl City deserves more respect than I feel it receives in light of the live show.
Opening for Owl City were a couple of new acts I plan to investigate further. The bigger one was Lights, a fellow Synth-Pop act from Canada. Founder/Singer Valerie Poxleitner was thrilled to be in Austin because her WoW guild was in the audience (Blizzard has a WoW support center here). She lost more points with me when she whipped out her keytar which is an instrument only Devo can get away with. Okay, maybe Beck due to his thing for irony. The very first band was Paper Route which I thought was goofy in an endearing way. They had the misfortune of being the guinea pigs for the sound people to figure out what were the appropriate levels. Paper Route reminded me of Spiraling, Nerf Herder and a touch of Bowling for Soup in their material.
