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The wait between updates is totally worth it this time, because it's a new and improved update with 300% more pictures!
Two weeks ago Transformers was released, and because the Alamo Drafthouse is pretty much the greatest movie theater in the history of the world, they decided that just showing Transformers wasn't enough. No no, they felt that the only way to truly appreciate a movie about giant robot cars crushing each other was by having a giant robot crushing cars in their parking lot. So they brought Robosaurus to Austin for the opening night of the Transformers movie. Needless to say it was all kinds of incredible:
Me and Robosaurus
My friend's coolTransformers shirt (it's a robot that turns into an electrical transformer!)
Breathing Fire
Setting a car on fire
60 feet of robot+20 feet of flame=80 feet of awesomeness
Setting a car on fire after biting it in half
Behold our new dinorobot overlords
Last weekend I finally got my Dad's 1981 Corvette, which was promised to me ever since I was an little kid. My Dad used to show it back when he bought it in '81, and then never really drove it, so it's still in great condition. So I washed and waxed it and drove it up to Austin to store up here. And because I'm not going to spend 5 hours cleaning a car and not take pictures of it, here's the obligatory pictures:
My "new" Corvette
It's really shiny
My Dad handing me the keys
View from the front
From the back
The interior
Then this weekend I got the chance to take a private plane over Austin, thanks to a friend of a friend (I've had really good luck with friends of friends in general the last few weeks, my friends pick good people to be friends with, what can I say?) who has a pilots license and had an extra seat in his 4 seater plane. He took us over downtown Austin and UT's campus, and then my apartment and Freescale's and National Instrument's campuses. It was definitely the smallest plane I've ever been in, but really really cool to see all this stuff from 2000 feet up.
The 4-seater plane
Taking off from Austin's International Airport
University of Texas campus and Downtown Austin
UT Campus and their Stadium
The Texas Capital building (which is a real picture, even though it looks like a model)
The Capital building and downtown
Lake Travis
Freescale's campus where I work
My apartment complex and Barton Springs
More Downtown Austin
Me listening in on the control tower chatter
Landing in the rain
And then right after we landed, a private jet carrying former President Clinton came in right next to us. He was flying into Austin for Lady Bird's funeral. I wasn't able to get a picture of him since he went directly from the jet to a very darkly tinted SUV, I did get a picture of some of the Secret Service guys, and technically I was within about a 100 feet of him while he was in the plane.
So over the last few weeks there's been several news stories that I want to link to and comment briefly on but of course I didn't actually bookmark or copy them to this file, so I don't remember what they are. So instead you just get this block of text telling you that you missed out on some unspecified interesting stuff, which is totally just as good, am i rite!?!? So instead I'm going to ramble on about pointless stuff that you don't care about. Oh wait, that's 99% of the Internet!
For some reason I keep forgetting I have air conditioning. I'll be sitting in front of the computer wondering why it's so uncomfortably warm, and then eventually realize "Oh yeah, I should turn on the AC". On the other hand, because I'm not at home that often, and then when I am home I forget about the AC as mentioned in the last sentence, my electric bill is always insanely low.
I also booked my plane ticket to Albuquerque today, to see Alyson in October, and also catch the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta (not Festival as I found out, it's Fiesta). I've always wanted to check it out, and I'm kicking around the idea of buying an SLR camera for the event since I've been eyeing getting one for a while now. I'm flying a new airline out there called ExpressJet, which was recommended to me by Candice, and it was cheaper than Southwest even.
White Castle... from a vending machine. I felt compelled to try it, because really, it's White Castle from a vending machine. How could I not try it? It tasted about what you'd expect a frozen burger you reheat in a microwave to taste.
So instead of going to bed, I think I'll just stay up too late again and write random gibberish. Most of my most popular entries are late at night ramblings about pointless crap.
Reason #403493433.4 why I love Tivo: Flipping through the channels at random tonight, I noticed that "So You Think You Can Dance?" was coming on, and so I thought "Hey, I like dancing" and decided to record it. Good thing I did because the number of minutes of actual new original dancing in the entire 1 hour programme: 5.5 minutes. The rest was filled with pointless backstory, rehashes from previous episodes, and the judges weighing in on all of 20 seconds of dance routine that each performer did. And lots of commercials. So while I am in no way good enough to be on that show, I could probably hold my own on "So you think you could produce a dance show with actual dancing in it?" if my competition were the producers of that show.
And yes, it's cooler if you spell words with the foreign spelling like that. It's exotic, it's like having a foreign accent on the web. Or this is what I tell myself anyways.
In related news, the Geico gecko is actually British and not Australian. See people, this is why the Internet needed to be invented. Otherwise you'd NEVER KNOW!
The other reason? So people could make a webpage about Chess on Rollercoasters. This is almost as cool as Extreme Ironing. It definitely wins in the nerd factor, but ironing wins out in the end because it's EXTREME!
Lots of CAPS tonight. It's EXCITING!
So this YouTube video on Geometry Face was written about in the New York Times today, and yet it still only has 206 views (I was number 207). Granted it is a really really boring video, but it was mentioned in the New York Times! And yes, it was in Section E, Page 2, and you had to search for it yourself since there was no link in the article, but still.
Justin Timberlake's new video for LoveStoned is really bad. I felt like I was watching a late 90's Winamp plugin.
Harry Potter the 7th comes out tomorrow night, so I've got to pick up my copy. As per usual I didn't reserve a copy, so I'm going to be stalking Wal-Mart for one in the end probably. I'm considering going without sleep to finish it that night, but sleep may win out. Maybe. It's 784 pages long, at about 120 pages an hour, so I could probably finish it by about 7 in the morning giving a little leeway for reading slower as I got tireder, and that would be totally doable right?
Speaking of HP, I looked up the info on the 3rd movie, since it's really the only one I thought was at all good, and I realized why. It was the only one in the series directed by Alfonso Cuarón, who also did Y Tu Mama Tambien (which is about the most opposite you can get from a kids movie possible) and Children of Men, both movies with unique stories and great filmmaking.
Contining on with movies, I also saw Stomp The Yard Tuesday, which I had Netflixed about a month ago, and while it deserves the ghastly reviews it gets because the story and acting are really bad, it does have some amazing dancing and stomping and really, if they came out with a 45 minute "Director's Cut" of just the stomp sequences, I think it would have gotten way better reviews and would just be a better movie overall.
I found this awesome bit of text on Wikipedia the other day while looking up who Mike Jones was, since apparently everyone's heard of him but me:
The song deals with the popularity and sexual attention rappers receive because of their money, and contrasts this with way Jones was treated before achieving success. The song is sometimes seen as a critique of effects of fame; conversely, it is often considered to present a misogynistic or chauvinistic attitude toward women.
I love the serious deadpan analysis of a rap song.
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