Happy Earth Day, everyone! What are you doing the help the planet, not just today, but every day? This morning I was pleased to see a big truck bed full of trees ready for planting. Not sure if Fulmore is doing anything for Earth Day, but it should. The environment doesn't get as much attention as it used to, which is unfortunate considering the current state of our planet. As a computer geek, I often feel guilty for spending hours using one of the most electricity-hungry devices in the household. One of the best things computer users can do to help with that, however, is to switch their monitor from a CRT to an LCD flat-screen. Here's the scoop from my CompTIA A+ certification manual:

"Approximately half the power required to run a desktop PC is consumed by the CRT monitor. Monitors that meet the Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA) specification for display power-management signaling (DPMS) can reduce monitor power consumption by roughly 75 percent. ... A typical CRT monitor consumes approximately 120 watts. During a catnap or power-down mode, the energy consumption is reduced to below 25 watts, while enabling the screen to return to use in less than 10 seconds. ... A typical LCD monitor, in contrast, uses less than half the electricity that a CRT uses. A 19-inch, 4:3 aspect-ratio flat panel, for example, uses around 33 watts at peak usage and less than 2 watts in DPMS mode. Larger LCDs use more power at peak usage than smaller ones. A 21-inch wide-screen model, for example, might draw about 75 watts at peak, but still drop down to less than 2 watts in DPMS mode. Swapping out CRTs with LCDs is a great way to save on your electric bill."

Some websites to visit today:

The Rainforest Site
Natural Resources Defense Council
The New York Times - Why Bother?

On a completely different note - regardless of one's politics, I can't see anything tolerant about those who say "the world isn't ready for a black president." It's racist. Period.

Anyone in Austin should definitely come with me and Evan to go see British Sea Power this Friday. I recently downloaded their latest album, and oh my god is it good. I thought their first was amazing, and their second was good, but shit - they're going to be in my top 10 bands soon. I'm serious. Plus, the bass player Hamilton wrote significantly more songs for this new album (usually it's Yan), and they are wonderful... not to mention he's very pretty. o_o

( Please to be watching! )

Here's the deal:

Friday, March 14, 5:00 PM
The Mohawk (912 Red River St)

Tickets at the door, so we're going to get there early. Call me if you want to meet up/carpool/whatever.

The list of SXSW artists is out, and is frankly... intimidating. That's a huge number of really talented bands. Austin musicians such as myself have had a bit of a beef with SXSW though, ever since they started drawing more and more big bands from around the world who are already signed and making the big bucks, as opposed to smaller bands from the uh, south by southwest region of the United States. Which is what SXSW was originally about - helping the lesser-known regional artists get a little recognition for all their hard work. But I mean, fuck - even if you're playing Wednesday night, you're up against:

- Beth Orton
- Of Montreal (who are playing with Voxtrot and And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead)
- Wolfmother
- The Rakes
- Secret Machines (who are playing with Head Automatica)
- Art Brut
- Belle & Sebastian (who are playing with Mogwai and The New Pornographers)

...just to name a FEW. My band didn't even want to play during SXSW because we figured we didn't stand a chance against all these artists. Here's the thing, too - I'd love to see a lot of these artists, but not only must I pick and choose for any given evening, but like hell do I want to drive out downtown where there is next to NO parking and very, very poor evening public transportation (most buses all but stop after ~11 PM), especially when thousands of people from around the world suddenly flood the city. And then, of course, get drunk.

It's just... aggravating. >_< I'd much rather see those bands on their own than as part of a gigantic monster of a music festival. Such as:

- They Might Be Giants (Wed March 5, Stubb's)
- British Sea Power (Sat April 12, Club Deville)
- Ladytron (Fri Jun 6, Stubb's) ...already ordered tickets
- The Cure (Sun Jun 8, Austin Music Hall)

I mean, there are plenty of good bands coming to Austin in the next few months, we don't need them in our festival. >:E Though out of the above, I think British Sea Power will be at SXSW, who I might actually go see because they're playing day shows and I just friggin' love them that much.

All that said... if anyone's planning on seeing a SXSW artist that I like, I'll gladly tag along - if you're driving. :X

British Sea Power's 3rd album was released in the UK today, which is exciting and reminds me that I need to actually buy their 2nd album as well. I'm kind of surprised that BSP haven't gotten as much publicity as they should... the critics love them as much as the Arcade Fire, who I never suspected would hit the big time until David Byrne and David Bowie shared the stage with them. Bowie apparently is a big fan of BSP as well, though. Anyway, to make my point clear, here's a gem from their first album:

British Sea Power - "Remember Me"

This morning I made coffee for the nice ladies in the Learning Lab who usually do it themselves. I dare say, I made that nasty Folger's more palatable than it's ever been.

Listen to: "Grace" by Jeff Buckley

Go to the Wikipedia home page and click random article. That is your band's name.
Click random article again. That is your album name.
Click random article 15 more times. Those are the tracks on your album.

( My terrible band )

Anyway, I'll post that top 10 (Talking Heads) songs meme soon. I've been having too much fun writing short reviews of why each song is badass. Also I've gotten distracted making Star Wars movie clips for a guy in my WoW guild. I'm sure the video he's making out of them is going to be terrible, but whatever.

I thought I was already pretty stoked about Spore, but then I just read this awesome tidbit. Eno, you are my hero.

I don't care what platform this comes out on, I will buy the platform - though hopefully it'll be PC. JUST RELEASE THE GAME ALREADY.

Sharky recently took me to a very cool art store that is closing out most of its art section (;_;) so I got some nice watercolor pencils and pads on clearance. Now the question is - what to draw?

So, people - give me subjects! Preferably people or animals, real or fictional. And feel free to recommend anything you want, not just stuff I'd be interested in. Your current celebrity heartthrob, your favorite comic book character... whatever. Because I might end up making them into Christmas presents. ;) And if it's something I can't find a picture for (because I always use references when I draw), please be as descriptive as possible!

This is actually pretty hilarious regardless if you've played World of Warcraft:

MAYBE MR. T IS PRETTY HANDY WITH COMPUTERS

And a William Shatner one can be found here as well.

Announcement: Evan and I are the new proud owners of this beauty:

Dude, guys. Look at this crazy GIF. It took me forever to get her going counter-clockwise, but now if I rack my brain enough I can change her at will. Trippy! I agree the stuff about being left- or right-brained is kind of silly, though, because according to the usual "rules" I should be a huge left-brainer, however by instinct she goes clockwise for me. Whatever. That illusion is just cool.

(Brought to you by scatterheart.) :D

Also, I just got an email saying I won a duffle bag from the drawing at last night's faculty meeting. Which is awesome and hilarious, because I've yet to put one of my tickets in the box. Someone must have put one in for me. Sweet.

I'm glad that other people took enough notice to this phenomenon to make a term for it:

Reductio ad Hitlerum   ...and related:
Godwin's law

Interesting counterpoint here as well.

If anyone deserves to go Office Space-style on a printer, it's me. The subject lines of my last five emails at work:

• "printer"
• "printer not working"
• "ID printer"
• "broken printer"
• "Help with my printer- jammed. Thanks."

As an early Halloween celebration, Ginny and I went to the local Rocky Horror Picture Show production (yes, it's a production). We dressed up as the Dresden Dolls, me as Brian:

My supervisor has approved me to be a chaperone with the German classes tomorrow on their field trip to Wurstfest!! Rockin'. I can tolerate 11-14 year olds for a day of speaking German and eating deliciously carbohydrate-heavy foods. For those on my  F-List that are not from central Texas, it's pretty much what you think it is - beer and sausages and polka. My apologies to those of you who are actually German. But German heritage in central Texas is pretty old, so forgive the fogies if they stick to celebrating "traditions". Speaking of German Texans, there are many linguists who study the Texas German dialect, which more resembles 19th century German with anglicized smatterings than it does modern German. Anyway, fun times. Probably won't get to drink beer in front of the kids though - awww.

The weather today is fabulous! Cool front came through and it's very overcast. Too bad it's not going to last. At the very least, it's helping me get out of this lazy funk I've been in recently where I don't feel like doing anything. I've just been so lethargic lately... so maybe this afternoon I'll finally wash my socks. It's getting down to the last one or two pairs.

This one kid that works in the class next door is one of the most snobby little bastards I've ever heard. The thing that makes it worse is that I somewhat agree with his tastes, just I don't feel like I need to shove them down people's throats. His general formula is asking "Who likes _____?", then saying "Anyone who likes _____ is a _____." Makes me wonder what his parents are like... >_<. Ugh. Hate elitists. This is a middle school, though.

As much I love many of the characters from Heroes and have trouble picking a favorite, I have to say this quote from Masi Oka, the actor who plays Hiro, really makes my day:

"It is a great thing to have fans come up to you and say, 'Oh my God. We love your show. What is going to happen now?' Especially with the hiatus. It is pretty cool to go out, meet your fans and feel their passion for the show as we have for the show, as well. There was a guy walking by with a cell phone, he noticed me and turned his head and opened his mouth and dropped his cell phone, which I thought was a cool thing, because I had the power of a hot woman at that moment. I have had girls come up, hug me and kiss me and run away. I am like, 'Wow, don't run away.' It has been surreal. Last year at this time, I could be walking in to a Starbucks and people wouldn't look at me. Now I have to be well-groomed because people want to take pictures."

But nobody spoil anything for me! I'm only on episode 13 of the first season. By the way, I knew I had seen that psychiatrist actress before, just in a very small role - she played the lady in Little Miss Sunshine who gives the family all the paperwork after the grandfather's death. o_O  I think I only remember her face because I've seen that movie about 3-5 times now.

Holy cow, I'm getting to work on time because I forgot about Daylight Savings Time on Sunday! *head -> desk*

Today I discovered that a dollar bill I had received as change was marked in small red letters on the bottom: www.WHERESGEORGE.com

Being curious, but believing I was just going to stumble upon a watchdog site detailing actions of the Republican Party, instead I ended up here, a fascinating project that tracks the exchange of US currency. Excitedly I entered in my $1 bill's serial number, and lo and behold, someone had registered it from Laguna Hills, California in 2003. I proceeded to input the rest of the cash in my wallet, but unsurprisingly, none of the others had been registered before. However, now that they're in the database, after my hard-earned cash is spent I can come back periodically and see if anyone else is logging the coming and going of these precious pieces of paper. In other words: DORKIEST THING EVER. And also strangely intriguing...

In other news, I was amazed to find out recently that this is actually happening. I'm starting to feel that the battles to fight obesity in both children and adults is going a little overboard. It'd be nice if granola bars were cheap and universally loved by kids, but unfortunately neither of those are true. People, stop targeting minuscule parts of the problem and look at the bigger picture - if you can't afford to feed your kids less calorie-ridden food (or just don't know how), go outside with them and kick around a soccer ball. And if they're overweight anyway, for god's sake don't deny them food if they're hungry and never tell them how fat they are. By as early as 3rd grade, children will get bad signals from the media, their classmates, and even other adults about their respective weight - they already know. Limit their time sitting in front of the computer and TV, give them more active things to do like a bicycle to ride around on. Alright, so I'm not a mother and maybe I don't have room to talk, but I was a chubby little 3rd grader and I can tell you that my parents never implied that I was too fat, but instead encouraged me to do active things like tennis and bicycling, limited my media usage (but didn't ban it), and kept me educated on what food was healthier than others. Guess what? By 7th grade my potbelly and chipmunk cheeks were gone. Unfortunately, media messages and self-comparison to the relatively skinny kids I went to school with still made me feel big, so I started unnecessarily dieting until I didn't even have the energy to keep an active lifestyle. Which was dumb so after a certain point in college I gave it up. Which brings me to... /rant. Sorry, I didn't think I'd be going on that long...

Anyway, all this week at work I've been troubleshooting problems with Scholastic software we have installed on a local server. Long story short, the software works just fine on computers where it's already installed, but I haven't been able to perform new installations because the installer doesn't recognize the existing database. I'd been spending literally hours on the phone with tech support regarding this issue. So today, once more we're hacking away at this problem when I'm thinking out loud to the rep - "Maybe there's a specific file or piece of data missing that would just make the installer not work...." - something he offhandedly dismisses as he recommends trying something I'd already tried before. Finally we end the call with instructions to completely reinstall the software on the server using a backup of the database. What this means - I'd have to reinstall the software not just on the server, but reconfigure the workstation installations on about 75 friggin' computers. That's like: come in on a weekend. Soooo, I continue messing around with this issue some more off the phone, when what do I see? A SPECIFIC FILE THAT PRETTY MUCH SAYS, THIS IS A DATABASE, IS MISSING. Why the hell did the Scholastic tech guy not ask about this? The file itself is Scholastic-specific, and had I not spent hours going back and forth between two different installations of the program, no matter how tech-savvy I was, would not have even noticed was gone. Nitwits!

Still, I must admit I felt pretty smart figuring this out, so I proceeded to call tech support back and smugly said, "Neener, neener, neee-ner!"

I rarely experience homicidal feelings. Very very rarely. But this article makes me want to go over there and shoot some motherfuckers. It's horrific.

(By the way, thank GOD for LiveJournal getting removed from the AISD internet filter this year!)

This morning really, really sucked. I've been sick, so I missed two days of work, and the moment I step in the office today I am swamped with people needing my help. The whole time I'm dizzy, dripping snot and trying not to get anyone else sick. Not to mention, most of the teachers didn't even realize I was out, so I've got messages on my phone like "I CALLED YOU THURSDAY WHERE ARE YOU???" Also, during those days I was away, an outsourced technician came in to work on some tickets I had submitted for stuff I'm not certified to fix. Except, he totally DIDN'T DO half of them, closing the tickets with comments like "printer not at listed location" when he had also serviced the computer in the SAME ROOM as said printer. ARGH STRESSFUL.

But... you know, nothing makes a day lighten up like two Excedrins, a little fresh air (the weather is wonderful today), Campbells vegetable soup and some Hershey's hot chocolate.

Alright, Thursday, it's you and me.