I found my restaurant receipt from New York

I remember now why that trip cost me so much.

*This receipt not to be mistaken for Dez Bryant's recent receipt

It's already Sunday?!

This weekend wasn't quite long enough.

In my last blog entry, I said that the week was going to be slightly busy. Well it turned out to be very busy, because my workload increased 10x because I misunderstood a chart and thought I was almost done when I wasn't. Luckily I finished everything on time, but not without some serious effort.

Despite the scattered rain, we still had our kickball game late Wednesday night around 9 PM, and we lost 2-9. It was still fun though, so that's good, right?

Taylor got back into town yesterday about an hour into our Texas football game. All I'm going to say about our football game is that there is something seriously wrong with our offense. Is it the coaches, the players, the schemes, or what? I don't know but something is obviously wrong. Some people claim that it is our coaches, and the only reason they haven't been exposed earlier is because we've had players like Vince Young and Colt McCoy who can put the team on their shoulders and do what has to be done. However, right now we don't have a play-maker. Not on offense, that's for sure. Who is our go-to guy? Who is the guy we can lean on if we're down 3 touchdowns in the fourth quarter? Since we don't have that player, they say that our problems at coaching are going to start coming to light now. I'm not smart enough to be able to agree with certainty, but I do feel that our players aren't being coached as well as they probably could be. My evidence lies in the penalties, the countless mistakes, and the fact that they seemed to give up on their last drive. Do you blame mistakes on the players or the coaches? I don't have enough information to answer that question. Either way, it's going to be a long season if our offense continues this shit play.

So it's Sunday already, huh? My plans are as follows: go visit my mom and grandma for lunch, go to the mall and get some "work" clothes, and get some groceries. I've decided that when I turn 25, I will be mostly ditching the jeans at work. I've been riding the jeans since I started, and at some point I'm going to have to start looking a bit more professional. Well, I've made an executive decision: that point is when I turn 25. Jeans will be reserved for the last day of the week. I've got some shopping to do now!

Oh, and because I'm so proud of myself, here is my Sunday morning breakfast:

Leftover pizza, eggs, and salsa - quite the masterpiece

ACL 2010 schedule!

I've finally completed my schedule. On Friday and Sunday, I've mostly decided who I'm going to go see during each time slot (exception being early on Sunday). On Saturday, though, there are a lot of bands I want to see. I'm going to have to make a ton of game-time decisions. Alternatively, I can go see parts of all of them, but it might be hard to tear myself away from one good band to see another. Sunday is not a great day, I wish they would have spaced out some of the Saturday bands on Sunday instead.

Here is my 2010 ACL Schedule. Use the little drop down box to switch between the different days.

Here is a list of all the bands I'm going to try to see, so you can get an idea for the sheer amount of music I will be listening to over three days:

Friday

• GIVERS
• Vonnegut
• Charlie Mars
• The Soft Pack
• Blues Traveler
• Carolyn Wonderland
• Miike Snow
• The Black Keys
• The Sword
• Spoon
• Vampire Weekend
• The Strokes
• Phish

Saturday

• Balmorhea
• Grace Potter and the Nocturnals
• The Very Best
• Pete Yorn
• Two Door Cinema Club
• The Gaslight Anthem
• Mayer Hawthorne & the County
• Beats Antique
• Broken Bells
• Dan Black
• The Temper Trap
• The xx
• Monsters of Folk
• Gogol Bordello
• LCD Soundsystem
• Deadmau5
• Muse

Sunday

• Ruby Jane
• Shearwater
• Warpaint
• White Rabbits
• SPEAK
• Ted Leo and the Pharmacists
• Frank Turner
• Blind Pilot
• Portugal. The Man
• Gayngs
• Yeasayer
• Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros
• The Flaming Lips
• The National
• The Eagles

All that for only $50! I'm still thrilled that I snatched those super-cheap early bird tickets. ACL: two weeks and counting.

Falling behind

I don't feel like I've been all that busy the past week, but I suppose I have been. Sorry I haven't updated this in a while. I won't get back in gear until this weekend, probably, because this week is also slightly busy. I have class Tuesday and Thursday from 4-7, and a kickball game Wednesday night.

Speaking of which, did I even mention that I'm taking a class? It's sponsored by my work and the University of New Hampshire, and it's a course in Software Systems Engineering. Yes, it's about as exciting as it sounds — not. The class is a real college course, so it's 3 hours once a week with a midterm and a final, and it goes through mid-December. I regret signing up for it; my mind does not want to be in any sort of school-mode. Oh well, I'll survive.

I made another recipe last night, shrimp scampi. It was good, but I don't think I cooked it as well as I could have. It's a learning process, I suppose. Now that I look at the comments on that recipe website, I do agree that it could have used some lemon and butter. Also, there was a tip about letting the floured shrimp sit in the fridge for a bit; that might have helped the flour stick to the shrimp better when sautéing. I haven't decided on my next recipe, but I'm feeling something steaky. Perhaps a skirt steak salad? Mmm, sounds good.

THIS GUY IS CRAZY

A climb up the tallest tower @ Yahoo! Video

Don't be a dummy, hack your VCR!

French senate approves the "burqa ban"

Something about this ban rubs me the wrong way. Maybe it's the fact that it's completely hypocritical.

The French claim that burqas represent a society in which women have no rights, and they want to separate themselves from that. And yet, they feel that the solution to this is take away a woman's right to wear a burqa. Am I the only one that thinks this is crazy? Apparently I'm a minority in France:

The ban has strong public support, but critics point out that only a tiny minority of French Muslims wear the full veil.

That's nice, but if it's only a tiny minority to begin with, then why are they so gung-ho to ban it outright? What if a woman wants to wear a burqa? I cannot claim to understand why they would, but I'm also not a Muslim woman so I can't say that it isn't possible. I'm sure there is a fair percentage of full veil-wearing women in France who are doing so out of choice. In fact, many people do things that make sense to them and few others because of their faith. There are Mormons in America that refuse to see rated R movies. What does that have to do with your faith? Since I'm not Mormon, I can't understand. Yet, you don't see anyone moving to ban any Mormon practices.

However, if the law passes, women who choose to wear a burqa will have this to look forward to:

It envisages fines of 150 euros (£119) for women who break the law

Well done, France.

[BBC - French senate votes to ban Islamic full veil in public]

Think of the Miners

Click for the full-sized version. Thanks to Andy for the link.

One recipe a week

I haven't done much cooking lately, but I think it's time to get back into gear.

I'm going to pick a random recipe every week and make it, starting this week. I'm going to start off with Grilled Chicken w/ Chipotle-Peach glaze. Let's see how that goes, shall we? If you have any recipes to share, feel free to leave a comment (even if it's some future, unrelated blog entry!).

Oh, and New Hampshire was nice. I didn't have much of an opportunity to do anything except go to my training, but the weather as at least fairly pleasant.

off to New Hampshire

Today I fly out to New Hampshire for a few days for United Way training. Luckily for me, I will [mostly] get to miss the fun tropical storm weather.

I'll be back Friday evening. See you then!

Arthur C. Clarke predicts the future in 1964

No, this isn't one of those stupid predictions like helicopters on every rooftop. It is a very insightful prediction of how he foresaw technology becoming a greater role in our lives

busy bee

I've been fairly busy lately, and next week I will be flying to New England for training. The training, hosted by United Way, is for our employee charity fund. My flight arrives in Boston Tuesday night, and from there I will drive to Nashua, NH. I'm back in Austin on Friday night.

Since I am going to be gone for a few days for business unrelated to the program I'm working on, I am working extra hours this week and will likely be working extra hours next week to make up for the lost time.

I have been sleeping normal hours this week, but I've been extra tired at work. It hasn't been that bad working the longer days, but apparently my body disagrees.