Family Dinners

Dinner Night: Hamburgers, originally uploaded by alachia.

While I might be quite liberal when I think of our culture, I realize that I am actually very traditional when it comes to family. I believe in strong family roots and the unconditional love that comes with it.

The most important people in my life aren't the people who entertain me the most or keep me intellectually stimulated. They aren't the people who even "get me" the best. Sometimes it doesn't even make sense as to what keeps families together but it's a bond I respect without reason.

Ever since my brother's girlfriend moved to a house about 6 minutes away, we've all been eating together on a regular basis. Usually we cook dinners together on raid nights + Thursday to watch tv shows together. It's really nice since we all enjoy each other's company... hahaha or at least I do.

We've all compiled a list of things we can cook. One of them is supposed to write a program to randomize the list and produce a grocery list from our selections. (they're all programmers). The thing I cook best is spaghetti so far and that took me years to master. lol. I also make a decent pretzel crusted chicken.

Gonna do my best to keep a photo journal of our dinners.

Austin City Limits 2009

I got a twitter message from @obiwanadobe last Thursday saying he had an extra ticket to ACL festival and invited me to go. I was free Saturday so I said yes, we had been meaning to hook up for lunch for quite a while anyhow. We met at Whole Foods for lunch and then walked down to Zilker Park for the Austin City Limits Festival.

It was about a mile walk and it was great. I love walks to destinations. I hate exercise for the sake of exercise but I'm not afraid to walk miles and miles to reach a somewhere I want to go. I'm weird like that I guess. Louis was really cool about letting me stop and take pics along the way. I kept assuring him we'd eventually get to ACL.

When we rounded the corner of Lamar and Barton Springs, I almost died when I saw all the "glass vendors". There was so much smoke and even when we got to the festival you'd see puffs of smoke coming up from various spots in the crowd. I thought to myself, so this is what it must be like to live in the Netherlands.

This was my first ACL and it was a wet one indeed! It rained all day with spotches of sprinkles and down pours. I'd turn to Louis and say, "Oh look the raining is finally clearing!" and then two seconds later it would start pouring again. doh! The music was great. I wish I had brought a chair though because my feet hurt a lot.

I was wearing galoshes because I hate having wet feet and I knew it'd be raining quite a bit. Turns out it was a super smart decision because wet + rain + lawn = mud bath by the end of the night. I ended up equipping my Winnie the Pooh Raincoat AND a poncho. Louis said he liked the rain and got totally soaked! His mom would not be proud.. my mom would have been totally proud of me. heh. I looked like a rubber trashbag.

The music does not disappoint at ACL. Even if you don't like the type of music a lot, the performances are just great and totally authentic..none of that over produced crap. You can tell the artists LOVE their music.

Saturday night finished off with DMB (Dave Matthews Band) and by that time the whole lawn was brown slush. A group of people ended up just saying fuck it and became one with nature. I called them the mud people. They were doing slip and slides all in the lawn and dancing and trying to hug people.

I definitely plan on going again next year! Louis kept apologizing for the rain but I thought the experience of it being totally wet and raining added to the fun. How often does one get to play in the rain?

More pics- Full Slideshow:

Cupcake Tree

Cupcake Tree, originally uploaded by alachia.

My brother's girlfriend bought me a cupcake tree this week. I think she saw me ogling one at Macy's awhile back. I've always wanted one seeing how it's a great way to present cupcakes.

It was a great gift and it gave me a great excuse to make cupcakes. These are yellow cake with vanilla frosting. The next batch I plan on making are going to be red velvet with a butter cream frosting.

I'm a big fan of sprinkles as you can see. They make every cupcake look about 110x better. I wish I knew more people around me who liked cupcakes because I'd make a ton more if I knew it wasn't just going to be me eating them. :D

For the record, I am guilty of eating about 3 in one sitting at minimum hence I refrain from baking them too often!

Same Temperature as Jeppy

Same Temp as Jeppy, originally uploaded by alachia.

I normally keep a weather widget on my desktop for both Austin and London so I can keep tabs on the time it is for my friend Jeppy. He lives on some island south of London. You never realize how much time sucks until you have international friends..then time is never on your side.

Anyhow, today I was particularly cold this morning. Normally I'm scorching hot in my office because of the heat but I found myself shivering like crazy. I looked at my temperature widgets and noticed it was 64 degrees Fahrenheit (17.8 Celsius) and it's almost mid day! Normally it's breeching 99 degrees by midday.

I just found it interesting that it's the exact temperature in London right now as well. We're synced! How cool is that? But as much as I like sharing things with my friends, I might have to pass on the cold weather. :) It's not supposed to get this cold until January! hehehe.

Fully Wired

So I know being able to say you’re house is fully wire for gigabit network transfers and high speed internet would be “eh cool I guess” to some people, for me it’s like WOAH Hella cool shit!!

I’m so used to having to make 50ft ethernet cables and stringing them along walls and under doors etc. In my old house, I even had one going out of the house through the back porch to my office. It looks messy and can be inconvenient.

This new house came wired with cat5e telephone jacks everywhere in the house. (who the hell still uses telephone jacks!?) The problem was somehow using those wires for networking instead. I had my brother come over and take a look at the networking hub. After a bunch of research and some trial and error, it was determined that we couldn’t just use the existing wiring in the hub. We thought maybe if we just switched the plates in each room, it’d work. Eh! wrong.

So we went to best buy and bought a gigabit Netgear 16 port switch that would support the 13 wires coming into the hub. The tedious part was taking apart all the existing wiring and hooking them into the ethernet switches. And in case anyone was wondering, you can use cat 6 connections with cat5e wiring.

I got really fast at them by the time I was on the 9th one. lol. Brown, brown white, orange, orange white, green white, blue white, green, blue! That’s the order I assembled it in. We had a good system going. Taint would strip the existing plates, I’d rewire for the new plates, Taint would check the signal with his laptop and Sahd would trim the wires and put the new plates back into the wall.

It is totally exciting having a house that is fully wired in each room. Wireless is great, don’t get me wrong but having the option to jack in anywhere is just pure awesomeness. ALL houses should be built pre-wired. I don’t know why it’s not a standard yet.

PS. I learned a lot today. It was fun. I love networking that doesn't involve fake socializing. LAWL.

Heartless

I thought this was a fitting post given the events that happened at the VMAs with Kanye. That’s the problem with following the personal lives of artist, it can really effect how you view the music. And artists tend to be even more flawed than most.. I think it’s part of having 90% creativity flowing through your veins. It doesn’t leave a lot of room for rationalizing or being self-aware. In fact, to be a bold artist you sort of have to forsake those values to produce what they do.

For example, I had to stop following John Mayer on twitter because his tweets were getting beyond self-absorbed and less of it was him as it was about the “idea he thought of himself”… often tweeting as if everything he did was part of some greater vision. It was exhausting to read and at the same time made me start to appreciate his music less and everyone who knows me knows I love me some Mayer like nothing else. So I always say now that their personal lives are their own but their music is what belongs to me.

In any case, I thought this cover of Kanye’s song Heartless was appropriate and beautiful. The Fray did a great cover and the art concept of the video is just awesome. I love doodle art.

The FRAY - Heartless from IE HAGY on Vimeo.

Burning Man

Burning Man Mosaic, originally uploaded by alachia.

I had no idea this even existed until tonight when @Azyxa linked me some incredible photos of the event. I couldn't use them in the mosaic because they are copy righted but here's a link: http://flickr.com/gp/loupiote/29YW8C

It's this crazy festival of community, art, and self-expression called Burning Man that happens every year out in the dessert. Over 40k+ people attend and participate in it (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning_Man). It just seems absolutely amazing. I absolutely love the idea of art merging with humanity and vise versa.

Art and Community are becoming extinct in most of the US. You see the evidence of this in our architecture and how we spend most of our daily lives. We've fallen in love with predictabilty, tradition, and independence. It must be amazing to throw yourself into an event like this and perhaps discover parts of your nature you never thought existed. I am totally amazed. They even have a Thunderdome! lol.