Growing up in the south, I realize that everything is better with ranch dressing. It’s a way of life down here. I suspect it’s a way of life in the midwest too, since everyone is fat up there, but I can’t be sure because most everyone I come in contact with has lived in the south for long enough to realize the goodness that is ranch dressing. My time in Austin though, has taught me something new about food: the same holds true for salsa. It goes well with just about everything (unless you happen to live somewhere other than the southwest, where salsa generally just tastes like ketchup). In fact, when I make eggs, I throw some salsa in for flavor. It’s just a habit now. Yesterday though, I found that HEB has taken my love for salsa and ranch dressing one step further. I purchased a “roasted salsa ranch dip”. It’s damn good. I can’t believe I never through of this one.

After starting this post I realized that it doesn’t have much content. I blame that on the TV programming for the thanksgiving holiday. I now officially hate just about everything. I don’t need to see Men in Black again. I’ve watched so much Mad TV I’m starting to get sick of it, which is unfortunate, because it’s an awesome show (light years better than Saturday Night Live). Everything sucks. I’ve been spending a lot of time at home because I’ve been travelling in the last couple months that the last thing I wanted to be doing this weekend is dealing with holiday traffic. Fuck that noise. The one saving grace about being home so much is that we’ve watched all of season 1 of home movies, which I got kat for her birthday. It’s a hilarious show. And Daniel got Kat Arrested Development, so watching that is going to be awesome too. Anyway, now I’m really going nowhere. Orange County is on Comedy Central right now and I think it’s sucking the last bit of creativity out of me. Time for some roasted salsa ranch dip.

So after a long night on saturday for kat and abdiel’s birthday party followed by a day of cleaning, what better way is there to recover from a hangover than to go out, drink some beers, and watch djs spin until 3am. Last night I saw Ellen Allien. I went to the show alone because kat was feeling a bit under the weather, but ended up running into ryan who I met at a halloween party. That was pretty cool because the openers weren’t awesome and it was good to have someone to sit around and shoot the shit with. One thing that was awesome about the opening djs was that they played “Send Me an Angel” by Real Life. You know, the one from Rad, the kickass movie from the 80s. That alone almost made up for their awkward laptop “mixing” which was at times almost unbearable (who would have known that software could fail to beatmatch?).

The second dj (I can’t remember his name) was pretty good, but not spectacular, and before I knew it, Ellen Allien’s set had started. Now the show was held at Plush, which is a cool place to see djs spin, but it’s a little on the small side. I didn’t really mind though, because I really wasn’t in the mood to be in a totally packed bar. Luckily for me (but I guess bad for Ellen) it didn’t get ridiculously packed. One thing of note though, was that it didn’t turn out to be a big scenester event. It was a lot more low-key than I expected, probably due to the fact that the show was on a Sunday night. But the set rocked out. While I was inside dancing like a maniac a monsoon ensued, continuing the same nasty rainy weather we’ve been having for the past two weeks (26 more days of this shit and I’ll just kill myself). It was insane. It was raining so hard that the ceiling actually started to leak in the club, right next to the dj booth. It made for some interesting moments during the set. If you happen to be Canada in the next few days, I’d totally recommend going to see her.

The weather here has been a real pain in the ass in the last couple weeks. Yes, I know that the weather is kah-razy everywhere and “If you don’t like the weather, wait 15 minutes” (as people say just about everywhere except California), I’m not trying to act like the weather here is worthy of extreme amazement. Rather, the weather here has been a pain in the ass because it will be cold for about 36 hours and then it will be warm again. Why is this such a pain in the ass? Because my ancient thermostat at home has to be manually switched between heat and A/C. As if it isn’t enough of an annoyance to wake up in the middle of the night because it’s ice fucking cold to turn on the heat, my thermostat also only has one set of temperatures stored whether you have the A/C or heat on. So that means I not only have to flip the switch, but I also have to go through and change the temperature settings to match my desired heat level.

As my friend Patrick pointed out: cars can already do this. Lots of cars now have a temperature setting where you just specify what temperature you want it to be in the cabin and the car figures out what it needs to do to get you there. I’m not proposing something on this level, this would be a little too simplistic for my house. I need a little more functionality.

So here’s what should be included:

1. Separately stored temperatures for heating and A/C. That is, I should be able to set up what I want the A/C to be set at for different times throughout the day as well as the heat. That way when I switch between the two I won’t have to go in and reprogram the whole schedule
2. A threshold level because I don’t want it to switch to heat the second it gets below my desired temperature. So I could maybe set it to 5 degrees below desired before the heat kicked on. And it would also have to have an outside temperature gauge because I’d want it to only kick on when it was even colder outside than the threshold inside.
3. A decent temperature sensor that maybe averages the temperature in multiple rooms. I can’t count the number of times it’s been somewhere near 85 degrees in my bedroom, but the fucking sensor thinks it’s 70 degrees until I change the desired temperature setting.
4. A sensor that could determine that I’m kicking the sheets off in the middle of the night and turn the temperature down for me. I’m already uncomfortable at this point, so it’d be nice if I didn’t have to stumble into the living room to change the temperature.
5. And on that note, a wireless remote that I could keep at my bed, in case the previous sensor method wasn’t working or for any other situation for that matter.
6. Maybe a sensor that could determine if no one was home and let it get a little warmer. No sense in running the A/C while I’m not there
7. A turbo mode, like old school PCs have, so when I get home and I’m feeling pissed of it could make the house cool faster
8. Or even better, something that could connect to a GPS sensor in my car and could determine that I’m on my way home and turn on the A/C for me. Yeah.

Alright, that’s enough bitching about my thermostat. It’s just been a constant annoyance for the past few days. And I think something like that should be on the market. I saw a Nintendo DS for the first time today, and if something like that is on the market for $150, then my thermostat should be available with most of those features. Back to the DS, it was wicked awesome. I bought kat a Game Boy Advance SP last year, but this thing is light years beyond it. My only concern is the stylus, being someone who’s never used one before, but everything I’ve read online says that it’s something you get used to. The graphics are gorgeous though. It’s really something you have to see.

In the last couple years, I’ve become accustomed to deleting on the order of 100+ SPAM emails a day from my work account. So far, I’ve been lucky that my personal accounts haven’t yet be attacked. It’s a horrible pain in the ass. But somehow, I’ve really gotten used to coming in to work every day and deleting that many emails. I’m sure I’ve missed a couple emails here and there that have been mixed in with my daily SPAM. I’m still constantly amazed that such a large number of idiots gets on the internet every day. I mean, there has to be someone following through with these SPAM scams, otherwise they wouldn’t bother. But they do. And idiots are paying $300 for their non-accredited “university” diplomas all the time. Ridiculous. Or I guess now it’s the viagra that’s selling so much. That’s really the best target of all so far. Only so many people want a fake diploma. But I’m sure there’s a ton of dudes out there that are embarassed by their impotence and don’t want to bother going to a doctor. To those people I say, GO TO FUCKING MEXICO AND BUY IT THERE! Stop frequenting these stupid spammers, because they’re probably just going to steal your identity and spend the weekend in Tijuana.

Luckily for me, my company recently started using a decent spam filter. This thing is awesome. I went from getting 100 pieces of SPAM a day to getting 1 or 2, along with a daily summary of the last day’s spam. Now what’s interesting about this is that generally I get around 100 pieces of spam per day, but on Sundays, I get lots more; last Sunday I received 1400 pieces of spam. What’s the point of this? Am I supposed to come in to work on Monday, thinking “Gee, I really don’t feel like working today, maybe I should follow this link to HOT MILFs that are ready for ME!” It seems to me that it would make more sense to send out a ton of spam on friday afternoons, when people are trying to find ways to distract themselves. Maybe this is why I don’t work in advertising or marketing.

My real point is that today marks an extra special spam day for me. Today I received my first spam message on Friendster. My new “friend” annie sent me this message:

===begin msg====
Hey, nice to meet u. Just want to ask you to join my group below and share our comments.

My Group: http://lovestation.neatvibe.com
===end msg====

I almost fell for this one. Right. Annie, the single 18 year-old from Malaysia. Of course! How could I have forgotten about her? I should definitely join her group so we can “share our comments”. I enjoy conversing with people that use ‘u’ instead of ‘you’. I’ll get right on that.

Note: if this post seems a bit off, my Dayquil may finally be taking effect. Damn this cough.

The last day seems to have been totally dominated by the 80s. First off, I woke up a bit late and watched the end of the Karate Kid II in the morning. I love the last fight scene. I like it when the evil japanese guy knocks the shit out of danielson when he tries to pull out that old and busted crane kick. I don’t know how johnny could have fallen for that in the first one.

Then, last night Kat and I went to see vhs or beta who recently released “Night on Fire”. I’m not digging their new album as much because it has singing, and I always thought it was supercool that there wasn’t any singing on their previous album, but I guess things change. It is kinda funny to see an asian guy dressed up like one of the members of oingo boingo singing a song that sounds siimilar to Dead Man’s Party during the dorm party scene in back to school. For that matter, I think all the guys in vhs or beta could have been members of oingo boingo, men at work, duran duran, or some other 80s cliche. But the show still rocked the house. I like going to these smaller shows alot because every now and then you end up at one that isn’t totally bored hipster. Instead, everyone was there to tard out and dance like an idiot with no regard for how cool they looked or who else saw them at the show. It’s refreshening. All in all though, I must say I have a new respect for the album after seeing them perform it live. The show was awesome, including the songs from the new album. I guess the songs just work better in a live setting. I’m going to have to give the album another listen. I still have to admit that I found myself making fun of everyone there though. As someone who really hates anything involving people working really hard to fit into a character they’ve created, I had plenty of material to work with. It was like halloween in that place, filled with people dressed up like the villans in any of the Karate Kid movies, the ever important elvis costello wannabes, girls who bought their clothes off the cast members of “Fame”, and the drunk girl standing in front of me who was dressed up like the slutty daughter on Just the Ten of Us. And to bring back the Oingo Boingo reference, remember the episode of just the ten of us where the slutty daughter convinces her sister to go to the Oingo Boingo concert, even though their parents already told them they couldn’t go? Ahh those were zany times. If that show were remade now, she’d go to the concert only to be kidnapped and sold as a sex slave. Now that’s family television.

While I’m feeling funny, this week’s savage love is pretty damn funny. My favorite part though, is the link he included to MarryAnAmerican.ca. Now that’s some funny shit.

I’ve always wanted to quote Danny Glover.

After all the drinking and traveling over the last couple weeks, I finally got settled back into “normal” life in austin. As I previously mentioned, I had a couple indoor games on the new turf, which I still hate but have started to come to terms with, and by the time the weekend started, I was unbelievably sore. I mean, old man “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up” kinda shit. It hurt everywhere: my knees, shins, ankles, even the dreaded achillis tendons, which caused me to stop playing soccer for an entire year when I was 18. But what better way to nurse the pain than to run 3.2 miles on concrete? We ran the Race for the Cure and took home our weight in zone bars. Then later that day, I played another soccer game and finished off the night with a trip to Wurstfest. Everyone should go to Wurstfest. It’s like a party for people who were too lazy to make it out for Octoberfest. And I’m one of those people, so it’s a perfect opportunity for me to give my thanks to the germans that moved to south texas/north mexico and helped create tejano music. So somehow I’m finally back in Austin, but my house gets nastier by the day, since I’ve barely been there. I’m sure I had something interesting to say when I started this post, but now it has digressed into a bunch of complaining. I’l stop now.

Now that I’m finally back in town, I can settled into normal life. I started out my week by buying the new Grand Theft Auto for PS2. I would have bought it last week, but I was up in Canada, eh. So far it’s looking pretty interesting. They’ve definitely added a lot to the game again. My only concern is that the game is going to hit that “overly complex” level that a lot of series of games tend to get to. I can’t make that assessment yet though, I’ve gotta give the game some time. One awesome thing I noticed right away though is that one of the bands on the soundtrack is Faith No More. FNM was more awesome than they ever got credit for, and Mike Patton continues to make music that is entertaining and different (see Lovage, Tomahawk, Fantomas, Mr Bungle). I think I will listen to them now.

In other news, my local indoor arena has put in new turf. I played on it tuesday night for the first time. So far I’m not digging it. I’m not sure where this turf comes from, but it’s so soft that you can wear molded cleats on it. At a fucking indoor arena. My observations of the field so far are that it is more tiring to run on (it makes your legs tired faster), the ball moves slower and thus the game moves slower, and there are these little rubber pebbles that get stuck in your shoes during a game. Maybe it’ll grow on me, but so far I’m hating it. It’s taking all of the reasons I hate outdoor and adding them to indoor (which happens to be my favorite form of soccer). It could only get worse if they got rid of the roof and added some fire ants and sticker patches for good measure. Arrrg, it’s driving me nuts!

Even though I was out of town for the entire week preceeding halloween, I did get to enjoy my favorite holiday. This year Kat decided to dress up as Brak, from The Brak Show. I went as Brak’s dad. I can’t take any credit for the costume though because it was kat’s idea and since I was gone the entire preceeding week, she pretty much put together both her costume and mine. It turned out really well though and a good time was had by all.