BrainDrain

Today the Father Figure and I went to meet up with 9AM for lunch at an Austin original, Threadgill's, to get some southern home cookin' before heading downtown to tour the capitol building and the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum. I had never actually taken the capitol tour, so that was a nice way to spend some time and catch up on learning my Texas history (if I want to be an official citizen and all). However, that was a lot of walking and by the end of it we were a little too pooped to pop. We hoofed it back to the Bullock and decided to head back home once we got rousted by a security cop for not paying the admission fee. We were cheap and decided that $8/person was too much to pay for more Texas history that we wouldn't remember. Besides, it was getting late anyway.

Before we made that trek, though, I decided to drive him by the Governor's mansion (since it's still closed down due to being lit on fire a couple of months ago) and take him down Congress street into South Congress to show him how things have been gentrified and what is going on as a whole in Austin, and also to take him down Barton Springs to show him the original Chuy's and Zilker Park where the Austin City Limits festival is held. While we were down there in SoCo, I discovered a little graffiti enclave just one block south of Home Slice pizza right on Congress:

There were several buildings there that were covered with high-quality graffiti much like the tagging that I came across last week near Katz's Deli. I'm pretty sure that at least one of the artists is the same due to the reappearance of the three-eyed head and at least one of the same tags. I didn't get more pictures because I had dad with me and had left him in the running car on the curb so I could snap the pictures, and I was also unsure of whether or not I was trespassing on private property or something and felt a little weird about snapping a bunch of pictures with my camera phone. However, I think that some Saturday I'll get one of my photography buddies to head on down there with me and catalog the stuff that's down there. I think I'm going to make that my own little flickr project: a pictorial record of Austin graffiti.

Today's Austin tourism plans got derailed today due to the Valkyrie overheating. Yep, all of a sudden the temperature gauge shot up to hot, Hot, HOT! and steam started pouring out from under the hood. Fortunately for me, I had just been showing Dad around the GHBC campus, so we were able to pop the hood, let the engine cool a little, and refill the radiator with enough water from the church kitchen to allow me to drive the G to the dealership to have it looked at all emergency-like. Even better, I was able to take it into the dealership and get a loaner today so that we can still get around until they tell me what's wrong.

I'm not really looking forward to hearing how much it's going to cost me because, of course, the car is just out of warranty (as of March). And overheating can usually indicate anything from a simple, relatively cheap repair like a hose replacement to a water pump issue that can be a multi-hour repair and cost boucoup bucks. Ouch. Here's to hoping that it's the former (or at least some sort of part recall that I'm not aware of or something like that) and that I'll end up paying less than a c-note for the repairs and an oil change.

Cross yer fingers, kidz....

For the first time in, like, 30 years, my dizad is in the Austin hizouse. He and my mom came down about 3 years ago to Dallas for a big family shindig, but it was a whirlwind affair and my dad didn't get to see any of my stomping grounds - so it doesn't really count. The last time I can remember him coming down with us on any of our vacations and stuff was when I was like 5 years old or something. But now he's here in the ATX and we're gonna tear things up, Kidder style (which probably means a lot of sitting around watching TV and nodding off). He got in okay and on time, with no ill effects or wear and tear (even though he flew Delta - go fig).

I'm taking the week off of work to hang out with Pops, and we'll do the requisite touristy things for the first part of the week. The plan for the rest of the week is that my Aunt Lisa is planning to come down from Big D on Wednesday or Thursday and then my Uncle Sim and his wife will roll into the ATX on Friday so's we can head down to San Antonio to have a big 63rd birthday shindig for him with the rest of the extended family. We'll cap the week off by finishing some of my mom's final wishes, which was to have her ashes spread on the wildflower fields to help next year's bluebonnets grow up big and tall, and then El Papa will return to Indiana after church on Sunday of next week.

This week should be fun and it's really good to have Dad in my neck of the woods and seeing with his own two peepers what I've become and how I'm doing. Hopefully, he'll have a good time and will have nothing but good things to say to those back in Indiana, and maybe this week will afford me the opportunity to see some things that I have still not seen here in Austin in the eight years that I have lived here.

This post is going to be somewhat of a stream of consciousness - a legitimate "brain drain", if you will - that I've been bouncing off of various and sundry people over the last couple of weeks. It's something that has sprung up in my thoughts as I've attempted to wrap my brain around the idea of solitude and God's unconditional love. As a church, we're getting set to talk about the 1-2 punch of relationships (not just husband/wife, but friend, platonic, romantic, etc.) and missional living, something that requires learning how to love unconditionally in order to be successful.

So, the thoughts that I've been having have basically centered on the contradictory nature of the following responses that I have observed in life: why is it that a man is considered a fool for loving a woman unconditionally (especially when that love is unrequited) and yet would be considered "spiritual" if he loves God in the same manner? On it's face, this probably doesn't sound like a difficult question, so let me add to it a little bit. Out of the same mouth comes admonition to "move on" if human love is not returned on the one hand, and exhortation to "love no matter what" on the other. How can we love God in a way that we can't love a human being?

Gemini Division, a new sci-fi web-only show starring Rosario Dawson (Kids, Sin City), went online today and the first two episodes are up. This is a made-for-the-web serial so the eps are only 6-7 minutes long, but the site seems to be pretty cool. The basic premise is that old chestnut of the gubmint creating super soldiers, some of said super soldiers go AWOL and try to be "normal", and then the hottie lady cop falls in love with one of 'em and must choose which side she's on. Pretty standard plot, but the first two installments have been pretty interesting as the presentation is kind of a "vlog" format (think lonelygirl15). Check it out.

I met my friend Kyle for dinner at Katz's Deli ("Katz's Never Kloses!") in downton Austin tonight, and was grumbling about the fact that the formerly free parking right next to it is now a pay-to-park lot. I ended up having to park a block behind Katz's on the street, but as it turns out it was a good thing because I came upon a spectacular example of some local graffiti art on the back of a building near the corner of 7th street and Rio Grande:

It was pretty cool to find some fairly spectacular street art here in Austin, what with my recent affinity for that sort of thing. I was looking for some good graffiti art to be a background for my phone so it was a nice surprise to actually stumble upon some right here in the 'hood that I didn't have to download from somewhere else. Click the pic to go to the flickr set of the whole wall to see all the streety arty goodness.

I took my new brick into the Sprint store nearest me pretty much right when they opened, but still ended up getting in there behind some lady that didn't really know what she wanted and for some inexplicable reason, the only person on duty today was the manager - perhaps he thought Monday was going to be slow for some reason. Anyway, once the clueless girl in front of me wandered off to make some other calls or something about the new plan she wanted for her mother, I stepped up to the podium.

Once I told the guy what happened, he just immediately started the process of ordering me a new one. This is not an uncommon problem and apparently the Sprint techs don't know how to fix it so they just replace the phone (I wonder when Palm is going to get around to figuring out what the problem is and releasing a firmware update for it?). Luckily (more on this later) I was able to get a replacement phone this morning and as of right now, it seems that I'm back up and on the grid once again. And, surprisingly, neither the world nor my social life had completely disintegrated during my foray into the dark - well, surprising to me at any rate; I'm sure you all knew all along that nothing would happen. Smarty pants. I was just able to take the new phone to the office and synch it up with my laptop and I'm back in black. An interesting side note is that the manager at Sprint said, "I can give you a new phone, but I won't be able to get any of your contacts off of the old one." When I told him that I'd just synch it up with my PC and not to worry about it, he says, "Really? You actually use the synch software? You'd be surprised at how many people don't use it and then just lose everything when their phone breaks. They give you the software and stuff for free, but very few people use it." I find this pretty interesting because I thought that was the whole reason to get a palm-based smartphone in the first place...

Note for Sprint Customers Regarding Phone Replacement: Here's a little gem that I discovered this morning - Sprint stores will no longer just replace your bricked phone with one from the in-store inventory unless they have to. Their current policy now is to order a new one from the warehouse and have it shipped to the store because that doesn't cut into their inventory and prevent new sales of your model of phone. This may depend on the popularity of the type of phone, but just be forewarned - you may not walk out of the store with a replacement phone and might have to go dark for a few days until your new handset arrives. Here's where that "luckily" bit came in for me today: there weren't any Centros available to order for replacement today, so the default is to then replace the phone out of inventory. So, I actually did walk out with a replacement phone and a small hiccup in my service continuity. Had they actually had one available for replacement, I wouldn't have gotten it until Wednesday at the earliest, which put me into total overdrive from a communications paranoia point of view. But...that crisis has been averted and all is back to what passes for normal around here.

I wonder what call or text message God decided I didn't need to get last night?

I love newfangled technology. I also hate it when it acts up and as of today, I have a nice new high-technology paperweight courtesy of Palm, Inc. I was attending a fine barbecue and spending some time at the pool and just generally having a nice Sunday afternoon when my phone decided to just freak out and stop working. I got out of the pool to check my messages and make plans for the evening, and all of a sudden the Centro just decided to try to repeatedly hotsynch (even though there wasn't a laptop for miles around). I was able to respond to one text message but then I couldn't get the phone to turn off or do anything. So, I started the reset process which began by removing the battery and after that....el Centro was el dead-o.

Apparently this is a known issue because I was able to quickly find several posts with people complaining of the same problem and from what they said, it sounds like I'm going to have to get it replaced because the Sprint techs apparently don't know what to do to fix it. Gee thanks, Palm...thank you for taking care of this issue for the rest of us. I went through 3 or 4 Treos with stuff like this, and I was really hoping that the Centro would be a little bit more robust. *sigh*

Of course I'm thinking that everyone I have ever known is trying to call or text message me right this very moment and it's driving me insane. And thus, my first order of business will be to take the Centro into the Sprint store and get my communications back (although I have no illusions that it will be a quick or painless process). I think that's a valid reason to be late for work, don't you? So if you need to get ahold of me tomorrow, your best bet might be to email me until you hear otherwise because that's as technological as I get these days.

I'm freakin' out, man....

Now that the demo's done and out in the public domain to be heard by one and all, the next step in the newly burgeoning career of Life On Loan is to get a press kit done. And the first step in that is to get some pictures taken, which we has now happened as of today. We went for a few different looks....had some taken amongst some rocks and boulders, some taken around some new construction for that more industrial flavor, and then a few taken while walking along some railroad tracks and such. Hopefully, we'll have them back in a couple of weeks so that we can use them on the poster for the gig we're opening on Sept. 13.

Once we have the pictures back, we can get to the bidness of working up a band bio, getting some concrete contact information and printing up business cards and such. As if that weren't enough, we're going to need to have it in both digital and hard copies to be ready to distribute on a moment's notice and once that happens, our transition to another shamelessly self-promotional band will be complete. Prepare yourselves now...this is probably the last warning you're going to get.

Heya, kidz....the Life On Loan demo EP is finally done and has been posted on the myspace page for the world to hear (check the "what's happening with LIFE ON LOAN?" link to your left there in the sidebar). Gavin met with Cliff to finalize some niggling issues that we had with the pre-masters, and we had the finished product in our hot little hands by the end of the day on Saturday. We're pretty proud of it now, and so we'd love for you to head on over to the official LOL page and take a listen and leave some comments if you're so inclined. I think things came out great for a demo package where days weren't spent on recording a single song. There are always things that I think that I personally could have done better or played differently, but overall it's a great recording and representative of where Life On Loan is now as a band. Our next step is to get some photos taken and a press kit put together so that we can start sending stuff out to venues around Austin.

Speaking of which, LOL has been asked to open up a show at GHBC for a band coming into Austin on September 13 called Remedy Drive. The show is going to be open to the public, so we're pretty excited about the opportunity to play with an up and coming band like Remedy Drive. Hopefully this will give us a good jumping-off point for the live LOL experience to help generate a fan base that will come see us out and about in Austin - it certainly can't hurt to be able to tell a prospective venue that we can bring in X number of fans to pay covers... Big things are a-happenin' in the music world for us, and hopefully this is the start of something good.

In the "what's new" department (aside from Mario Kart Wii - w00t!), thanks to the aiding and abetting by GMoney and 9AM, I have picked up a Savoy humidor and some CAO stogies (Italias and Brasilias) to go with the spiffy new lighter and cutter that I got for my birthday. I will occasionally indulge in a little of the gentlemanly pastime and I figure that it's time to stop mooching off of my buddies and pony up for some cigars of my own. There's just something so pretentious about the whole thing, though...kind of like going to wine & cheese parties. I'm not sure if it's the imagery of the powerful yet shady boy's club powermongers making plans for world domination in dark mahogany-paneled rooms while sitting in high-backed leather chairs, taking sips from their snifters of brandy, or whether it's the romanticized vision of the mob boss pronouncing judgement on those who had failed him from under a pall of smoke. Maybe it's just the fact that it seems to be something which someone could become an afficionado of, and that right there just seems to shout "PRETENSE!" But, for better or worse, I am now a member of that pretentious club, and I think I like it.

That should about sum it up for this weekend. If you're still with me, take some time to head over to myspace and check out our tunes and friend us if you have a myspace account to help us get the word out. We'd surely appreciate it.