Monday, June 30, 2008

yet another reason to move to the West Coast

one of my favorite Austin restaurants is closing and being replaced by yet another Mexican restaurant. I am getting sick and tired of the downtown condo/Dallas types fucking up this city. Santa Cruz, Oakland, or Portland are all sounding more and more fantastic. Although it is nice living close to downtown, I am finding fewer and fewer reasons to go there. The very small list of favorite restaurants has gotten even smaller.

Monday, June 23, 2008

The Great Skua

nice instrumental song.

Thursday, June 19, 2008

riding more and avoiding the heat

I think this is the third straight week of 100-degree plus weather down in Austin, so riding in the early morning and riding more mountain bike than road, are the best ways to avoid the heat this summer. I have gotten up twice this week for 6:30 AM greenbelt SS and mt. bonnel road rides -- it is still in the 80's, but there is a slight breeze and I dont feel beaten down by the sun after a few hours. I also went to Walnut Creek for an evening ride -- there is enough tree cover there to make it bearable -- the trails were great, I discovered a new-to-me section of singletrack. However, it took 45 minutes to drive the 12 miles up there, the traffic is fucking awful. I pray I never have to do a North -South Austin commute again.
My goal is to ride about 10 hours a week for the next few weeks and then try bumping it up to 12 through the end of October. So far I have gotten roughly 6 hours this week. A short ride tommorrow and a 2 1/2 to 3-hour ride Sunday should do the trick.

Sunday, June 15, 2008

revelations


I just finished watching the semi-finale for Battlestar Galactica. Saul giving himself up as a Cylon to save the fleet was heart-wrenching. He has become the most developed and sympathetic character in the series, more human than human. The coordinates for earth suddenly popping up in the ghost Viper's nav computer was a bit too deus ex machina, but it is becoming clearer and clearer that someone is pulling the strings from afar. Finding earth as a post-apocalyptic wasteland came as no surprise to me. I still hold my theory stands that everyone is a Cylon -- the cycle of Cylon rebelling and destroying their creators/ becoming "human" and forgetting their Cylon origin/creating Cylon children. It is still unclear to me whether humans/Cylons began on Kobol or on Earth. I like the idea that humans initially created Cylons on earth before FTL drives were created as their expeditionary explorers to find and settle new worlds for mankind. Perhaps Kobol was the first colony founded by the Cylons, and they made a decision there to become human and forget their synthesized origins and begin the cycle there.

Thursday, June 12, 2008

the slip

I downloaded the latest NIN release, The Slip, earlier this week and have finally gotten around to listening to it in detail. There are some great songs on it -- "Head Down" is my current favorite. Ghosts I-IV was a nice album, but for me it never amounted to more than fun background music. The Slip has real songs on it, more traditional structures and guitar/vocal parts, and what sounds like real drums. I am still a sucker for simple hard rock, so I imagine I will still be listening to this later in the year.

Sunday, June 08, 2008

danskin

girlfriend finished her first triathlon today and she did au-some!

Wednesday, June 04, 2008

Lost Finale

forgot to post about this last week. Lost Finale? Excellent. It went down very closely to what I expected, I knew the island would be moved in time and space, but I was thrown off that the mechanism did indeed appear to be a frozen donkey wheel, pretty sneaky and hidden in plain sight since the finale was announced to be "The Frozen Donkey Wheel" last year.

The dark matter hint in the Marvin Candle video still gives credence to my many worlds theory, but there is not much to back that up concretely with anything other than the duplicate bunnies in the Candle Orchid video released last year. I was hoping to a flashback to the aircraft from last year, but I did not get it. I still suspect the aircraft on the bottom of the ocean really does have the dead "original" Flight 815.

As for Locke being in the coffin, my theory last year was it was either Michael or Locke, (who else could it have been?) and it became clear halfway through the season that Michael would be making a heroic sacrifice to redeem himself. But why did the island let Locke die? If it was not done with him, as it does not seem to be with Jack or any of the Oceanic 6, or Ben or it would not let him die..hmm. Could the Locke in the coffin be a duplicate generated when the island moved? Or maybe the original? One who actually survived the crash into the ocean? At minimum, the Locke character will not really die but will exist in flashbacks for the next two seasons. And he will probably be back in the "Zombie Season" -- which I though was a joke when Damon mentioned it on the podcasts, but now I am paying attention to thanks to the donkey wheel..

remodel architect?




pretty sensible and experienced guy. Stuff looks good.

Monday, June 02, 2008