Iced Teat? Tea! + Lemonade = Nate Wilcox

I have never been much of an iced-tea drinker, especially after what happened to my cousin. But lately I have been drinking a delightful beverage that is composed of some parts iced-tea and some parts lemonade. I think the drink is called an “Arnold Palmer”. Here we call it a “Nate Wilcox”. Anyhow, it is very tasty and refreshing.

Also, I managed to get into town to see my brother. It was fun!

Worth Every Cent

Trial and Error.
Three Weeks ago I bought a Kennsington Bluetooth Mouse to go along with the internal bluetooth in the ol Macbook.
I used it for about 15 min before I put it back in it's package and asked Liz to return it and exchange for the Apple Wireless
(which I had used before and liked, I admit it I am cheap and am always trying to find the best deal I can get).
While in San Diego I exclusivley used the Mighty Mouse and became highly addicted to the scroll ball.

The day before my return (last Wed.) Liz did the old switcher-oo and I tried using the un-tethered apple mouse but the absence of the scrool hurt too much.
Then Voila!!!! Tue. Apple released the tail-less mighty mouse. I went in on Wed Morning and switched again. If Liz had not done a pre-switch for me it never would have been possible....but thanks to a exaggerated two-week return policy (A week and a half for the first and then another for the last) I got exactly what I want.

Yes it cost a bit more 70.00 for a mouse is a bit foolish but the flip side to my cheap-ness is that once I identify what I want
I usually cannot resist getting just that.

Metallica

I never really listened to Metallica before. And then, for some reason, when I started working here at the P-A-C, I began listening to Master of Puppets non-stop. I found that the music was perfect for programming; the wall-of-sound sound drowns out the constant politco-babble that surrounds me, and lulls me smiling into a proper code-trance.

So after wearing the Master of Puppets mp3s thin I decided to pick up another album. There was some controversy as to whether I should get Ride The Lightning or Kill Em All. I chose the former, and it kicks ass.

Anyhow, I picked up the album at Best Buy because until today Metallica was not available on the iTunes Music Store

Next paycheck I am going to reward Metallica by picking up another album…

beta.3jam.com

Y’all remember 3Jam, fantastic group SMS service I mentioned a while back? Well they have launched a beta website that puts the final piece together in their preparations to launch as a full service.

The website is simple and clean. Once you have signed up and activated your account, you can add your contacts simply by entering a full name and mobile number. You can also organize contacts into groups.

The group functionality is particularly slick. I wish I had used it during the World Cup to jeer my friends who were going for Brazil, and cheer my friends that were going for France…

Anyhow, once everything is all set up sending a group sms is sencillo. For example, I am fixin to send y’all a sweet 7 a.m. text message and it is as easy as typing: chat Texas wake up suckers!

I wonder how long before 3jam ends up on Tech Crunch ?

Once again...Flippin Freaky yo!

Sorry for the second ..within a week...but this is just trippin me out. There I was at my desk listening my "Wait...Wait...Don't tell me..." podcast when they mention this site. Partly out of curiosity and partly out of complete disbelief, I had to check it out. Anyhoo...it's real.
It anything ever happens to me please make sure that my corpse is at the very least catapulted before you do this...
Yikes!
Could you imagine sleeping with somthing like that?
The testimonials are enough to make your skin crawl...

Other than that, Frank and me are buying a house.
It's actually next door to the townhouse we are in currently. It's got a better view of downtown and there's no carpet.

Scott Mercado + Black Heart Procession @ The Parish Monday July 24th

My brother will be playing with The Black Heart Procession @ the Parish on Monday. Y’all should check out the show if you get the chance!!!

My brother is the dude in the band who looks like the ex-leader for Chechen rebels

Museum Of Natural History

I have made several forays into D.C. (it is about a 30 minute bike-ride) and each time I seem to end up spending part of the day in the Museum of Natural History. It has been difficult, but with a little bit of discipline I have managed to restrain myself to only visiting one or two sections at a time. So far the sections that have amazed me the most are the sections on the Origins of Life (cool models of molecules and such!), and the exhibit on the Ice-Man dude that they found in the Alps the other year (the Ice-Man had a back pack full of sweet survival gear!). Anyhow, the museum is a lot of fun because there is so much to learn and marvel at, but also because it is a swell place to the drawing…

Flippin Freaky, Yo!

http://youtube.com/watch?v=GQI2KlAurOg&search=folgers

Uh...Someone's been into the acid a bit early!

All you soccer fans.....now you can play Zidane

http://notizie.tiscali.it/media/flash/zidane.swf

trip to the US

At this time in just 7 more days, Karin, Ari, and I will be sitting in a plane somewhere over the Atlantic, heading towards San Antonio. It will be the first time in 5 years (!) that Karin and I have been back to the States, and the very first time (!!!) that Ari's ever been there. We're all looking forward to the trip. We're going to spend about a week in Texas, where we'll stay at my Mom's in San Antonio and travel around some from there. If anybody's interested in meeting up, let me know! After that we're heading out to LA, where we'll spend some time vacationing and, to some extent, working: I have to do some research for my dissertation, so I'll be heading to film archives, libraries, and meeting with professors some of the time that Karin and Ari can spend siteseeing and going to the beach. After about two weeks or so (including the time on the road, which we don't want to rush too much), we'll get back to Texas for another week or so, before Karin and Ari fly back to Germany. Then I'm going up to New York for a few days before flying out of there.
Apart from just informing you of our plans and seeing if anyone wants to meet up, I also have a more specific purpose in writing. We're not sure yet where we're going to stay in LA, and I'm not sure yet about NYC. I've been in touch with Ryan, who has a friend in LA who might be able to put us up, but this isn't sure yet. We've been looking at hostels and motels on the Internet, and found one in Torrance, but we're not sure about the area, etc. Ryan said he thought Paul was originally from Torrance. Is that right, Paul, and can you tell us anything about it? Or does anyone else have any ideas, connections, friends, etc. in the Los Angeles area? (We're not looking for a free place to stay, wewould definitely pay a reasonable amount to anyone willing to put us up for about 8 days between, roughly, August 5th and 14th.) And any ideas for New York? Any help would be appreciated in these last, hurried days of preparation. And hopefully we'll be able to see some of you while we're there.

X-PayPal: The democratization of cross-border commerce

X-PayPal: The democratization of cross-border commerce

For example, say you want to buy something for 100 Pounds Sterling. If the exchange rate is 1.81 USD = 1.00 GBP, you'd pay about $181 for the item. Later, you are shipped the item and find it's defective, so you complain. The seller, being a right old chap, agrees to refund your money. He takes the 100 GBP he got, exchanges it for dollars, and sends it back. Due to rate fluctuations and the margin, the exchange rate is now 0.60 GBP = 1.00 USD, or 1.00 GBP = 1.66 USD - which means you'd only get $166 of the refund back. So international trade carries some risk, even under the best conditions.

I've been in a similar situation where a lady in Australia made a contribution in US dollars for what she thought was Australian dollars. When her credit card converted it, it wound up being much more than she thought it would be. In trying to rectify the contribution, I found the above to be true in that either she would not get the full refund she wanted or her contribution would be smaller than she intended.

I bet casas de combio and Western Union make a mint on currency flow from the US to Mexico.

World Cup Ads

There were some pretty good ads during this year's World Cup. But I'm not sure they topped Terry Gilliam's ads for Nike from '02...

Geography Schmeography!

Geography Schmeography!
Originally uploaded by Amber & Adolph.

OH KILLY....HERE I COME

Flash Advanced Design

I sat in a Flash Advanced Design class for three days last week filling my head with all the simple wonders of actionScript 2.0. The class was held at Alphaware Training Centers right off of Bellaire and 610, so i wasn’t too far from the hospital, adolfo’s school, or the Galleria. The class was small (there were only three of us – the other two guys were co-workers at Schlumberger in Sugarland) and the room was pretty boring. The instructor, Drew Shefman, was very thorough and managed to answer some of my questions, even though many of them fell beyond the scope of the class.

And while most of the lessons were familiar to me, it was great to see how all the individual pieces worked together to complete a project.

Things got a little confusing in the XML lesson, but i’ve got the book and i took notes, so i’m looking forward to posting some mini-projects soon.

Speaking of, the one thing he did help me out with was some random tree generator code that i had copied out of the Flash Hacks book. As pulled out of the book, the code was meant to be put straight into a .fla file, but i wanted to put it into a class file which made things a little more complicated. Naturally, for him, the solution was simple. The following morning he emailed the code:

var owner = this;
segment.onEnterFrame = function() {
owner.grow(this) };

These couple of lines represent the solution to my problem. Once again, scope. The explanation escapes me again, but i’ll take a stab. The ‘owner’ variable set equal to this refers to the class instance (the tree), and the ‘this’ passed into the grow function refers to the particular movie clip within the class i want the function to work on. I swear i understood it better while i was in class. A weekend and a couple of days at work later, it’s mushy.

For those of you who are interested and have Flash 8 (adolph?) the Alpha Version of Flash 9 is available (as an extension to Flash 8 only) for download if you want to tackle ActionScript 3.0.

Update: Click here for the random tree generator!

Insult-y goodness

BBC Radio Five Live asked for help from a deaf lip reader, Jessica Rees, who read the words phonetically to an Italian translator.

She deciphered the insult as being "you're the son of a terrorist whore" - a translation also carried by many national newspapers in Britain on Tuesday.

The BBC's Ten O'Clock News also called in experts to study the television footage of the incident and determined the following:

Materazzi's first word to Zidane was "no" before he then told him to "calm down".

He then accused him of being a "liar" and wished "an ugly death to you and your family" on the day the Frenchman's mother had been taken to hospital ill. This was followed by "Go f*** yourself".

Zidane's agent, Alain Migliaccio, has hinted that Zidane will soon reveal exactly what was said by Materazzi.

Piara Powar, national co-ordinator for the anti-racism group Kick It Out told Five Live, said: "If there was a racial slur then Fifa needs to act."

Keith Hackett, head of referees in England, said that if it can be proved that Matterazzi racially abused the Frenchman, then Fifa should take retrospective action for "the good of the game."

Link

sad and horrible

Four assailants who cut the throat of an aspiring politician from Britain killed him and tried to rape his female companion early Sunday in the driveway of a Georgetown mansion, police reported, after the couple had returned from a night at the movies.

The victim, Alan Senitt, 27, a Jewish activist and volunteer for former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner, died at the scene. The woman, whom police declined to identify, was not injured

link

Happy Birthday Flynn!!!!

A couple for Diana

I met Todd and Diana and Taggart and Liz over at the Tavern on West Grey to watch the French go down in flames despite their incredible performance throughout the game. It was a pleasure to see them lose. It was poetic.

but enough about the world cup. I Promised Diana these links a while ago:

Bad Doctor and the Shtick Doctor.

Italy wins!

Italy wins the World Cup 2006 and yes, it's already on YouTube

super excited

Yes, I'm super excited about this "transition." I could hardly sleep last night just imagining putting dishes in a dish washer, laundry in a washing machine (in my home, not down the road), food cooking in my less small kitchen, ooooohhhhhh, and having all Taggart's photo stuff in a totally separate room so I don't have to see it and am not tempted to pick it up at all times.
I can't wait to invite everyone over to cook and entertain in our more than TWICE as big apartment!! All you have to do is get past the bums and the train, then you're good to go. Oh yeah, and some people (yuppies) call it the wearhouse district, but other people (real Houstonians) call it 2nd WARD! How exciting to live in a hood. Oh my goodness.
And I bought a new Martha Steward cookbook, so you can all enjoy some polenta arugula couscous stock broth shallot spoon mashed goodness.
Oh, and that new job/fellowship thing-I'll get to that later.
A little intimidated, I am.
check out the loft at www.alexanlofts.com-and be sure to turn the sound off! It's the Houston floor plan.

DONE DEAL

OUR NEW HOME
August 12th Liz and I will be making another transition (yet again) back to Houston. After looking for all of two minutes we decided the Alexan Lofts would be a good spot. We got a heck of a deal, it's very Bodi friendly and I will have my own office.

12:45 AM

I have a new 2.0 ghz intel macbook.....I have been trying for 3 hrs to try and get Windows Xp to take this is tantamount to forcing crack cocaine upon my first child mere moments after birth.........
It hates me now and keeps shouting things like
"Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt:
/ system32/hal.dll
Please re-install a copy of the above file."
I fear child protective services are going to show up and take it away from me any moment.

Once in a lifetime...

THE EXTRAORDINARY STORY OF THE NEW YORK COSMOS

I Want One!

Ambient Orb

there is an sdk!

Ken Lay died

heart attack
think it was the stress?
Via CNN.COM

Who could have forseen...?

...such an incredible upset! Italy beats Germany 2-0 in extra time!? Amazing!

My predictive powers triumph!

So who now who will face Italy in the final??? Portugal? France? I’ll bow out of calling this one as i didn’t expect France to show. Regardless of who wins, what an unexpected outcome!

Congratulations to the Liz...

for making the cut!!!

So when y’all going to move to the humid?

My flickr has been updated

Up on deck
Originally uploaded by killy.

I got the photos back from our weekend in the rio grande valley this morning. This particular update is only of our return home. Enjoy.

Zizou!!!!

Classic Zidane action! He is so amazing!!!!

So Killy’s predictive power broke down; but who could have imagined France beating Brazil???

Portugal/England Penalty Kicks

Kick one:

Portugal scores on their first kick! England misses! The goallie blocks!

Kick two:

Portugal misses! Bounces off the left goal post! England scores!!!

Kick three:

Portugal misses! Petit totally misses the goal!! England misses!! Blocked by the goalie!!!

Kick four:

Portugal scores! England misses!! the Goalie blocks it again! (after a shady surprise try that was denied!)

Kick five:

Portugal scores and wins!!!!!!!!

Prediction three right on target!!!!!!!!!