Pictures from Thanksgiving at Big Bend are up on my photo gallery. They are only a select few of them so if you want to see more, go to my Flickr account. The photos are provided by Jessica Allen and Andrew Johnson (AJ).

I just saw this commercial on TV and almost fell out of my chair laughing.

I can’t believe that they are able to sell this product, especially the Flirty Girl Fitness Pole i.e. the stripper pole.

This video that mocks MMORPG players by The Guild is hilarious.

The video is surprisingly well produced and the lyrics are great (they rhyme).

Happy Winter Solstice!

(on Dec 21)
also Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

I have decided to try to catalog all my books again since I am getting a bookshelf for the Winter Solstice. The first time I started to catalog my books, I used Book Collector by Collectorz.com but I got bogged down with all the fields that can be filled for each book. The user can input an ISBN and Book Collector will download the books information. The problem was that each book had a different amount of information on the internet so different fields would be filled in. Some of the stuff like the plot didn’t always get digitized correctly. I ended up trying to fill in the blanks which took forever so I stopped. It was also hard to setup a system to denote which universe a book was in. For example, the Honor Harrington series by David Weber has some side books that I would like to be able to denote as taking place in the Honorverse.

I had similar problems with my movie catalog until I decided not to try to fill in the missing info and just keep what I downloaded. I think I will do something similar with my book catalog. I will probably just try to fill in the main fields. I still need to come up with a system for the universe problem.

If someone in the Harry potter universe combined Muggle technology with magic they would become unstoppable. Really they should first learn to apply the scientific method to magic and do some research and development. The “Dark Lord” is very short-sighted when it comes to Muggle tech. If Harry Potter (or anyone else) owned a gun like a shotgun or Desert Eagle, then Voldemort’s dark reign would be short lived.
They also need to teach more (any) math, at least to Calculus (Maybe to Differential Equations).

Here is a hilarious video made by G4’s Kevin Pereira and Olivia Munn for Alamo Drafthouse’s Fantastic Fest. I saw the video before watching Ninja Assassin as part of Alamo’s Quiet Zone. I couldn’t help laughing out loud. I don’t really like the vampires in the Twilight movies. I guess I like classical vampires that burn up when in the Sun.

This Thanksgiving I went to Big Bend National Park in West Texas with my family, friends, and some of my brother’s friends. We left on Wednesday, November 25, 2009 and came back on Saturday, November 28, 2009. With the new speed limit of 80 mph on I-10 (which is awesome and should be 90), the trip only took 7 hours.

Thursday, our first full day, we hiked The Lost Mine trail (4.8 miles round trip). The legend is that the Spanish found a large silver mine and enslaved the local native Americans. The native Americans eventually rebelled and buried the mine so there wouldn’t be a reason to exploit them again. Unfortunately we didn’t rediscover the mine (wink wink).

Friday we hiked the South Rim Trail and Emory Peak (14 miles round trip). Emory Peak is the second highest peak in Texas at 2,375.92 m (Guadalupe Peak is highest at 2,656.94 m). It was foggy most of the day but cleared up by the time we got to the top of Emory Peak. What a lung buster as well as a spectacular 360 degree view!

Saturday it warmed up and since we were all sore from hiking, we decided to go to the Hot Springs next to the Rio Grande River. It was actually a little too hot for the springs so we just dipped our feet in the river. Some of the other visitors swam over to Mexico.

After the Hot Springs we headed back home. I thank Jonathan and Jessica for driving on the way back.

Pictures are posted here.

Last night I went to the Alamo Drafthouse 1997 Sing-Along with several friends (Check out David Wogan’s 1997 post). For the those who haven’t been to an Alamo sing-along it is akin to group themed karaoke with dancing at your seat or on stage. They pick their favorite music videos and subtitle them. This sing-along was especially great because I was in 7th and 8th grade in 1997 and most of the songs remind me of the awkward school dances. I even saw a friend from middle school. It is amazing how many great songs came out that year and that our parents let us listen to them. Alamo is going to have a 1999 sing-along this coming spring. We shall see if 1999 can beat 1997 at having better (more nostalgic) songs. I doubt it!

Alamo Drafthouse is one of the many things that makes Austin great. Some of their other special events include quote-alongs, themed dinners, rouge caroling, master pancake theater (like mystery science theater 3000), heckle vision (text in heckles to bad movies that they show on screen), and Foleyvision (taking old films and creating live dubbing, sound effects, and music instead of the original audio).

Here are the songs that they included in the sing-along in no particular order (I probably forgot a couple):
Bittersweet Symphony – The Verve
Crash Into Me – Dave Matthews Band
Quit Playing Games (with My Heart) – Backstreet Boys
You Make Me Wanna – Usher
I’ll Be Missing You – Puff Daddy & Faith Evans
Wannabe – Spice Girls
MMMBop – Hanson
The Impression I Get – Mighty Mighty Bosstones
Barely Breathing – Duncan Shiek
Karma Police – Radiohead
I Love You Always Forever – Donna Lewis*
Criminal – Fiona Apple
One Headlight – Wallflowers
I Believe I Can Fly – R Kelly
My Heart Will Go On – Celine Dion
Torn – Natalie Imbruglia
Walking on the Sun – Smash Mouth
The Freshmen – The Verve Pipe*
Semi-charmed Life – Third Eye Blind
What I Got – Sublime
Mo’ Money Mo’ Problems – The Notorious B.I.G., Ma$e, and Puff DaddyEverlong
Song 2 – Blur
Don’t Speak – No Doubt
Push – Matchbox 20
Tubthumping – Chumbawamba

I just saw a guy intentionally run another car off the road to the shoulder of the ramp to the upper deck of IH-35 going north. He looked really pissed when he got out.

I wonder if either of these news articles is related to what I saw.
http://www.myfoxaustin.com/dpp/news/local/110909-Crash-Leads-to-Death-Threats-Car-Chase

http://www.myfoxaustin.com/dpp/news/local/110909-Car-Accident-Leads-to-Stabbing-on-Hwy