Tuesday, March 30, 2004
Man am I ever in a GREAT mood today!!! I woke up in a great mood and am just *on FIRE*! woohoo!!
I've cleaned up my house a little, taken care of some bidness AND picked up my travelin favoritist fella from the airport! awww yaa... smooches have never been so god damn good!
So here's some random fun photos for you - maybe they'll put you in a good mood too!
new fuzzy slippers
sadly,
kazoobie has since mangled this cute little chic.
this is my new monkey I got in Austin!!
i mean, really - could he be
any cuter?!
oh and be sure to watch him "
dance if he wants to"... (psst, you'll need quicktime!!)
keepin me company
Oy, I need to get an external keyboard to keep workin on my laptop like this - my wrists are hurting - oh nO!! Not too bad, but I noticed it today. Which is the first sign!!
I got a TON done today. Right up until right this second. It feels great to be productive, but when you work from 9am to 1am, it's hard to get any house cleaning done - it's a mess!
Ok, real interesting all that is, huh? jeesh.
Hows this for interesting: Tonite I had split pea soup. Who eats that? It was good - but the site of it sure is funny looking.
My old boss is moving to Japan with his wife & baby. I think the whole green pea / baby poop is what sparked that connection there. :) Anyway, it's so intense he's just pickin up & moving! I mean, she's japanese and he speaks it real well - but wowie, selling all your stuff and moving away. I'm so not there right now. HOWEVER, I definitely want to move overseas at some point in my life. Wonder if that'll happen?
I can't wait to go to a show tomorrow night: The Liars, Young People & Get Hustle. Going to a show is actually stress relieving for me - and I could use somma that!
Night.
Monday, March 29, 2004
Ok - if you awoke to leisurely watch some of my craZy WilloToons videos - you're in luck cuz lastnight I did a batch re-export & FTP'd them as I layed my head down to sleep!! So maybe you were like "what weird sound?" Which is good, cuz actually most of em are sounding pretty good. There were some little errors here & there, but maybe nothing you all noticed... ? :)
Aaaanyway - lemme speak to my absolute AGGRAVATION over my dumb macapainintheassious.....
I've not told you all, but this last week I've had the pixely crash thing come back FULL FORCE. Sometimes several times a day. So I *finally* called Apple Care!!!
Yesterday they had me reset the power management and I just new it wasn't going to fix whatever major problem this puppy has. And wouldn't ya know it, waking up from sleep this morning was the worst I've ever seen it (darnit! I forgot to take a photo) but like the asked me to, I called them right away - and all they had me do is try to set up a new user account & use this one for awhile to see if the same problem happens.
The super duper annoying part about that is that all my files, mailboxes, preferences, bookmarks, DW sites, everything - are all on that other user account. So even though I have a GAZILLION things to do for clients this morning, I had to frickin spend my first hour resetting up my computer - BAH!!!
Anyway - just had to get that out. I sure as heck hope this new user thing fixes these issues.
ok, i'm staying up way to late for all this - but FYI I think I fixed the video prob... I'll see about reposting the new vids tomorrow.
I think aliens are trying to contact me through the videos I'm taking at the beach. Weird, huh? What? You don't believe me? Well it's true!! I've taken like 4 vids by the beach lately.. and they sound fine on my computer, but once I export them the warbly sounds of the TRUTH start seeping in!! See if you can listen closely and overhear their plans for world domination.
What I'm getting to here, is that I've finally posted
a bunch of videos. But seriously some of them have some crappy sound thing happening. Coincedentally most of the beach ones. WEIRD. Bummer is I don't feel like going back & re-exporting them all. It's a tedious task one by one - I'll be delighted to have a batch program for this!!
Anyway - I also posted
SXSW Videos, too. (which unfortunately have this warbly sound thing happening on a few of them too - LAME!)
Sorry to even tease you with these videos and then make you listen to horrible sound :( sucks!!
Anyway, I take videos randomly all the time with this little portable pentax puppy, so now atleast now this page is started, I'll try to upload them more often.
Enjoy.
Sunday, March 28, 2004
Wowie, what a weekend it's been. Actually Friday night is all I needed and the rest of the weekend I've been mastering the art of chilling out.
Friday I went down & hung out w/ my awesome brother, Max in Santa Cruz (
here's photos!) It was about frickin time, cuz the last time I was down there was
last July (!) and the last time we'd hung out up here for any reasonable time was like
last August - so it had been too long!!
My bro & I definitely share the same blood in the partyin department. We have the BEST time raging together. Shortly after I got down there on Friday, we checked out
his shop (he's gotten a lot more home furnishings since I saw it last - and they look great) and we walked around downtown and next thing we knew we were catching up over some seriously tasty margaritas & chips and salsa. NICE! I insist on drinking top shelf these days, as I've just had too many mediocre margaritas in life - and life is too short for that!! Drink the good stuff!! And so we did. Two grande's later we thought we'd better change scenery as the sun hadn't even gone down yet and we were already headed into happybuzzedland. So we took off & took Scout (his adorable and sweet as can be doggie) to this beach where they allow dogs... !
It was so fun and just incredible to be on the Santa Cruz beaches, those waves are perfect down there!! There were so many surfers, it made me wanna jump in!! Rick (whose a big surfer already) & I will have to go down there in the next couple months. I need to learn how to surf California style (I've only gone one time, the day I learned in Maui, where the water is dreamy warm). Seeing those waves totally got me psyched on it. (see
video (CRAP! some bad sound thing happened on export) of me having this discovery)
The rest of the night is somewhat of a blur ;) which goes without saying, we had a helluva good time. His roomate/biz partner Kyle is awesome too and hung out with us for awhile. First we hung out at some guy's house - and then went to The Red Room for awhile - and then headed over to some chic's party - which we have a feeling really wasn't a party till we got there. :) hahaa It was Michelle's place, who is a cutie - and her friend Claire - Claire and I hit it off bigtime and giggled the night away. She is leaving on a trip to Bali for 2 months and I think I promised her a zillion times I'd go & visit her there. Sounds good to me - Rick, you in? :)
So Friday night was an absolute blast, but I didn't get as much done on Saturday as I'd planned - go figure. I didn't get back to SF again till later in the afternoon, and after cleaning up a little and doing some things around here, I zonked out and slept right through my friend Jem's bday party! Darnit!!!
HAPPY BIRTHDAY JEM!!!!
Today's been a sleepy day, too. Even though I got a good 11 hours of sleep, I swear I coulda slept 4 more - I was wiped out!!
This week's going to be crazy busy with work, and we even have a few great shows to hit - woohoo!! I'm way psyched for Rick to get back. My concert/party/snuggle buddy will have returned full force!! woohoo! :) And I can't wait to hear about all his stories from hitting Belfast, Ireland! From the email I got today it sounds like they had an amazing time.
OK, I finally uploaded the
photos from
The Lovemakers show... all the way from last Tuesday!!
Seksu Roba was one of the openers for them, and they were awesome. The lead singer, Lun*na Menoh, came out with
this full suit on, big sunglasses and sparkly numchucks. I called her the Designer Ninja. And the musician, Sukho Lee played some incredible music using a
theramin. Have you ever seen
this? Wait till you see it live someday.. it's awesome. I have some videos of him playing here (link coming soon), if you wanna check it out... but try to check it out live sometime. It's cooL!!
And as promised, the hotty photos of Lisa Light are in there, too. Aww yaa!!! I hope they get their record deal woes taken care of soon so we all can have a new Lovemakers CD in our hands and in our players!! They'll be at the Cat Club on Friday, Apr 2nd... which would be so fun to hit, but I think I've got a date w/ Jem and some other band at BoTH that night.
Thursday, March 25, 2004
Jeez! Several weeks later - and now armed with another computer/platform to check for myself - I finally went & fixed those poster frames on my avocado movies.
It was weird, actually - I had to go in & try to reexport them a couple times - and then it basically took pasting them in a whole new player, doing "set poster frame" on them (even though they're only 1 frame) and then exporting them from there. Anyway - guess I learned something here.. and they work now. :)
::::::
I haven't been posting very much cuz I'm swamped!! Busy is soo good though. It's helping me keep my mind off of how much I miss Rick. :)
That's a whole nuther conversation in itself.. ! The independant woman in me is fighting the feeling of missing him (aching missing, probably worse cuz he's 1/2 way around the world and I have no choice... :) but really it's not so bad missing someone. Ya, I'm just a little smitten!!
No surprise to you guys though, huh? Here I was all trying to keep it on the DL! HA!
::::::
Lots to update you on - this week I hit a Lovemakers show w/ Kat & Jem - and Jason Zada was there and we got some hot photos. Yes, the ones with Jason were nice & all, but it's the sexy one's with Lisa Light that I'm talkin about. Wait till you see! I'll post them at some point - but I have a pile of work that I have to tackle first. The whole posting/photo album, etc thing takes time!
Oh & then I went to Blonde Redhead lastnight with Becca - and they were great!! I'm listening to it now - I had never listened to them before. I like it!!
OK, making some dinner (i'm so hungry i'm spazzing out!!) & then it's back to work. Can you believe it's already Thursday?
Wednesday, March 24, 2004
who was I talking to about a program that does batch exporting? is it final cut pro? cleaner?
I often have a couple videos I want to do a
quicktime pro export on (cut the frame rate in 1/2, etc - takes it from 10MB to about 2MB) but I'd love to do that in batches - it'd save me some serious time when I've got about 5 to do.
Tuesday, March 23, 2004
I use Dreamweaver & Fireworks DAILY... and moving over to the mac has been actually quite easy in a lot of ways, but relearning how to work as fast & efficient in DW and Fireworks is already proving to be kind of a bummer.
I need to write up something a little more detailed on my whole SWITCH, as there's actually quite a few things I miss and think it's dumb that the mac doesn't do, but I digress...
So first, yes it's true with macs that you need to have your hand on the mouse a LOT more. And what's more is often the programs are inconsistent when it comes to how you have to use the mouse vs. the keyboard, too. For example (and this is more an issue directed towards the software giants Macromedia than at Apple per say), when I want to add a new layer in Fireworks and I go in & hit "New Layer" and it brings up the layer renaming box and the ok/cancel buttons - Well on a PC your cursor is already in the name box & then you just hit OK. On my new *macalicious* your cursor isn't even there - AND even if I didn't want to rename it, it won't let me just hit Enter to make the box go away and let me keep working!! LAME!
Arg, I have a ton of things I can list here. Like how my Fireworks no longer has the toolbar up top with the quick export button, or flip image button or easy align pulldown box (that thankfully is in the palettes though, and has align to stage which is cool). Granted I'm still on just MX, not MX04... so that's obviously the next move for me - and I sure hope some of these annoyances are worked out! (and yes, I'll download the trial soon :)
So what I was actually here to tell you is how psyched I am on Fireworks ability to create symbols, similar to Flash. I feel like I tried this on the last version of FW and it didn't work like I wanted. But I finally tried it again - and it's awesome. So for example, I'm making an animated gif - and in each frame the same box is in there... and after creating 15 or so frames, I need to change the color of that box. (somewhat bad example cuz you could also onion skin it & select it that way, but that's not always that easy either depending on what else is in the frames you're not wanting to select at the same time) And with symbols, similar to flash, I can just chage the symbol & wala! it's changed on every frame. Thank god!
Little things like that are what working efficiently is all about.
Ok back to work.
As much as I am a bit unimpressed with
Liz Phair's newest album (just to poppy/top 40 for me), she is still super sexy as ever.
Jane and I saw her do a solo acoustic opening set for Flaming Lips last year (
wow, jane - that was all the way last May, can you believe it was that long ago!? time flies...), and we loved it. Mostly because we were there
seeing her - and she's just so damn adorable. And she played some of her older songs, which is also why we really love her.
But
this photo... is just downright HOT. Aww yaa, Liz Phair. Anyone got a sex question for her?
Link from Kevin, who has a question for Liz :)
Ok, I know you're all on the edge of your seat to know how my plant is doing - but I personally have just been blown away at it's little growth spurt here lately. Especially after being gone a week!
Ok - so I posted awhile back that my two new sprouts had grown - and then all of a sudden I noticed a whole nuther little sprout - and NOW
that one has shot out and there's ANOTHER new little one!!! JEEEEESHK!!!
I've even created a little
progress page if you're interested :)
Monday, March 22, 2004
hey all - notice a difference in my fonts? Better, worse? No change? or some of you might be like "Huh?" :) For you guys, I'll make this quick.
*geek talk begins*
Using Dreamweaver on the mac makes you realize quickly that using pixels instead of points in my CSS is necessary for Dreamweaver to display the fonts properly in the WYSIWYG (otherwise they're all scrunched and small, who knows why). I learned about this a few months back designing Jeff's DCResource site (hopefully going live soon so you can see! :) And after delivering the templates to him, we realized his powerbook was seeing something way different. So I called on my friend Matt and he shed some light on it. I've also added "lucida grande" after Verdana, in the font face line, too, as per his suggestion... but most people have verdana, so that's what they'll see first unless I switch them.
Anyway, I'm sure I'll learn more about this as I go along, but I'd love to hear what you're seeing out there - mac or otherwise. If any of you work in DWMX and with CSS for your fonts, and have happened to switch between pc & mac & know what I'm talkin about here... lemme know if you have anything to add to this.
*end geek talk :) *
Ok! I've posted
aaall the photos from our time in Austin. Looking back at them just makes me wanna go back! SO FUN!
There's no way pictures can capture how kick ass a show is, but for me takin a snapshot of the band also served as a mental notebook just to remember all the ones we went to! And I know I probably even missed a few... but I got the good ones... Wow, we saw a lot of excellent bands play!
The one thing I didn't get was that great sign we saw everywhere that said "No cameras or video recording allowed"... that reminds me, I have some videos to put up too! :p
Alright, so there's a lot of these, so you may wanna see if you can get the slideshow to work... or whatever. Actually the slideshow kinda sucks (could be better) just wait till it loads a good amount of em. Also the slideshow only shows the titles, but not my descriptions - so if you go that route, just keep in mind that some of the photos have notes in the descriptions, URL's to people's sites, etc.
Ok,
check em out!
Hey there - I just posted wrapups for wed, thurs, fri & sat... Quite a bit really, but I wanted to have it down now before I get crazy into the week and the details get even more blurry as time passes :)
I'll be going back through & linking certain bands to sites, or atleast photos to the ones I put up in my online albums.. but I have a ton of work to dive into first thing tomorrow so it might not be till later tomorrow night.
Also I may have forgotten some details here & there... Rick, feel free to lemme know if I missed anything here :)
Today my flight didn't leave till later in the afternoon - and Lane was sweet enough to show me around Austin a little. I was psyched cuz I only had seen the area between our hotel & 6th Street with a small ride once past the drag (Guadalupe St)... and with Lane having lived in Austin before and having a rental car, I couldn't have asked for a better tour guide!!
We first hit this great breakfast taco joint that has this wonderful band playing through breakfast. We even ran into Ben & Lane's brother Reed there which was cool. Everyone orders their tacos (I got one with chorizo, potatoes and cheese - and a 2nd with eggs, black beans & cheese < yumm!!) and then sits outside at tables - and some even get up & dance along to the music! It was totally entertaining and really fun.
Then we headed over to South Congress where there's some cutie shops and Joe's coffee house where there's of course a band out back and beer available too - sweet! I got a yummy soy latte (dreamy after all the holiday inn cafe coffee I'd been having all week) and then we went into some cutie stores. At the last one, Factory People (great store) I got a new hat! And we ran into the guys from The Fuse and I chatted it up with the drummer again (they opened for the Pretty Girls Make Graves show we went & saw a couple weeks back). Cool guys for sure... I hope they do well, they're great live!
After that we headed over to The University area and Lane & I stopped in this Tea room for some bubble tea for Lane. They had a bunch of super cutie japanese stuff - and Paul Frank, Emily is Strange, Dr. Suess, Hello Kitty stuff, too. I got this super cute monkey that I just fell in love with!! :) I'll take a photo of him. He's awesome.
We cruised around the campus and Lane gave me a little history on it all, and he reminisced on some of his old times going to school and working at various places on campus there. It's a beautiful campus and it was just perfect weather for walking around and enjoying the sunshine. We stopped in a few stores - and I finally bought this jacket I've been pining away for since I saw it in San Diego a few months back. yay!!! You always know a purchase is good when you haven't been able to stop thinking about it - and then after you buy it you can't stop thinking about how excited you are about having it. Today I got a cutie little stuffed monkey AND a new hat AND a new jacket - all 3 that I'm just THRILLED about :)
Lane was awesome enough to show me around all day & then take me to the airport - such a nice guy!! And as soon as I checked my bags I went straight in for the Amy's ice cream!! hahaa I had been craving ice cream since we'd landed there & saw Kristin, Esin & Jessa with yummy cones. But Lane & I hadn't had time, but I had an hour so I gladly got myself a yummy vanilla with snickers in it. It's a lot like Cold Stone where they chop up the goods right there in the ice cream. YUMM!!!
I made it home safely and snuggled my kitty something fierce for hours!! :) :) I've now unpacked and I think pretty much wrapped up the week's events. I've got a ton of work to get to first thing tomorrow - but at some point later in the day I can probably post photos.
So I'm back!!! Happy Monday everyone.
As I said, Saturday my favorite concert buddy had to get up & leave for the airport... which I have to admit left me sad and it took me a little bit longer to get out of bed knowing I wouldn't have him to enjoy my last night there with. But hey, distance makes the heart grow fonder, right? We'll be very excited to see eachother when he returns from his Germany/Ireland/Paris trip :)
And I was happy that Lane and them were still there so I still had people to go to shows with! :) So around 4 I met Lane over at Emo's Annex for a ROCKIN Ted Leo & The Pharmacists show!!! This made me wish Rick was there too - cuz I know he wanted to see him the other night... and this set was particularly rockin. I was dancing up a storm and sweatin my ass off in the heat to boot. His set was really long and just fantastic. At one point he spotted someone singing all the words to his song & brought a few of them up on stage to finish it up - it was really fun!!
After that Lane and I walked around and popped in quickly to the American Music Club show and watched a few songs there... and then decided it might just be a good time to catch a bite to eat before the evening really began. I was seriously craving salad (after the night before's gyro slump!) so we went & had oriental salads at PFChangs. Really yummy! It was cool to get to know Lane better too and hear about the companies he's been a part of & just how he got where he is today.
By 8pm it was time to go see if the rumor Lane had heard was true or not: The Pixies at Stubbs?! Could it be?!?!?! Unfortunately, after showing up and waiting we found out it wasn't true. poop!! That woulda been cool! So we took off & headed over to the end of John Vanderslice's set at Friends. He was great!! I was psyched to finally see him play live - and would definitely go see him again. He's local so I'm sure I'll see him play sometime again soon. His CD's are great & he's even better live. Very cooL!
{update here}
I left out that breifly in between these two things, we were killing time trying to figure out what to do, and we stopped in at The Hard Rock to see if the band that was going on before On The Speakers was any good. It was some Australian band, who are apparently huge over there. We ordered drinks and played with the dumb glow in the dark Miller Light thingys they were passing out. I went upstairs & while I was checking out the view from overhead, I ran into Ian from On The Speakers. Unfortunately he said he'd come down with a cold... but we chatted for a bit & he was impressed at how many times I'd seen them (lets not use the word groupie just yet, alright? :) and I told him how Jen's going to send me their EP cuz they had a few laying around their office (his management company) which I'm waay psyched on, I'll be getting it before it's released!! And yadda yadda. Anyway - there's a few photos from the Hard Rock, so it reminded me. Thank god for my digital memorY!
{end update}
After that we cabbed over to see Mike Doughty (lead singer of Soul Coughing) play a solo set over at Mother Egan's. He was AMAZING!!!! I absolutely love his voice & his lyrics. Totally excellent performer - I can't wait to get some of his solo stuff - he's awesome!!
By this time it was about 10:40 and we had to head over to get into the club Har Mar Superstar & The Hives were to play. We got in with no problem (although only 15 minutes later there were lines around the block - even for badges! Lines form because they'll let people in 1 by 1 as people come out, to avoid max club limits). Har Mar is a total joke. I might have had a different view of him had the circumstances be different - but bottom line is that I had no idea he was going to be THAT ridiculous. We're talking "You've got to be KIDDING" ridiculous. How is this guy getting booked? His songs are idiotic and he's just disgusting, rubbing himself and then flinging sweat and pubic hair on people. He's a total joke and I am a bit bummed the hipster/indie music community has even let him in. blech.
We moved our way up to the front for the Hives and found ourselves about 3rd row, where initially I was a little scared for my knee and my feet getting crushed because I knew the crowd was going to just go absolutely nuts once they got started. And they did!! But it turned out to be totally manageable after the first couple major rushes and I was psyched to be way up there enjoying the show. It was HOT!!! They rocked out and the whole crowd, including me, was dancing and rockin out to them hard. I got some great photos and enjoyed their set immensely. We were DRIPPING SWEAT by the time it was done. Good fuN!!!
At this point it was Lane, Ben, Neil & I - and since we were all pumped up from that show we decided to go hit another rockin show. However, a song into the Young Heart Attacks, I decided they were a little too metal hair band or something for me - so we left and called it a night for shows as we'd definitely had an awesome day & night of shows!!!
Because we loved the Wrens show so much the night before, we decided to go see them perform again the next day at The Caucus. We arrived and caught the end of the DeathRay Davies show (who were good)... and then got up close to enjoy the Wrens set. (great to be closer cuz it was so packed at Friends the night before we couldn't even see the drummer - which you know I wasn't happy with :)
The Wrens ROCKED it once again!!! They are so awesome live it just blows me away. The lead singer is so passionate - and they're just total professionals. At one point between songs they heard the music coming from the club next door (American Analog Set were playing at Club DeVille) and they all stopped and listened for what cords AAS was playing, and started playing them and then made up a song of their own. It was awesome! They just totally blew me away.
After that Rick & I headed over to this bar called Speakeasy to meet his friend Shannon for happy hour. Speakeasy was cool cuz it's a bar with a roof, lined with palm trees. We enjoyed some top shelf margaritas while the warm air breeze blew by.. I felt like we were in Florida or something! (in a good way) :p
We decided we better grab something quick since the night before our late eating hosed us on the StellaStarr show - so we grabbed some Gyros. While we were in there and Rick was standing up to order, this guy came in & sat down in his chair across the table from me (very cramped quarters) and I told the guy he couldn't sit there - and as he was getting up I added "even though you're The Thrills". Yup, it was the lead singer from the Thrills. After he moved over one seat, I chatted him up a little more asking him how their shows were going, etc. He said they're working on an album, blah blah blah. We saw them in SF a few months back and if you recall, I thought they kinda acted too rockstar, but even moreso I think it's just funny how much they sound like Grandaddy. Anyway, I obviously wasn't about to tell the guy all that to his face... but it was fun chattin it up with him for a bit anyway.
OK! So we headed out and thought we'd go check out this japanese band play at Caribbean Nights... but as soon as we got there we new it wasn't what we were looking for, so we took off. We wandered in & out of some places and then decided to settle down on the roof of some bar and give our feet a rest. At this point we'd been partyin and on our feet since Tuesday night - so we were starting to feel just a little tired and sore... but most of all the gyros made us kinda sleepy. Actually really sleepy. But we were determined to have a good time!! We thought we'd hit the Silkworm and TV on the Radio show - so we headed over there... but honestly Silkworm wasn't that great at all. arg. Then TV on the Radio took forever to get set up (zzz) and then when they went on their vocals weren't that good (which is what I love about them!) so that was kinda a bummer, too. Oh well...
So we slipped over to Rockstars and sat upstairs listening to The Fiery Furnaces finish up their set while we shared a few shots and people watched. And then - Broken Social Scene!!! This show was off the hook fun. They were great live - super great energy and it sounded really great. Lane joined us there & we were all standing about third row having a great time!! At the end they said they were finishing up, but kept playing and getting crazier and crazier. So long to the point that the manager was on the stairs (in their view) screaming and yelling with his fists in the air!! They were swinging from the pipes on the ceiling and giving eachother piggy back rides through the crowd and a bunch of crazy stuff!! It was this mad chaos of awesome fun energy - totally an amazing show!!!!
After sleeping in, enjoying our delicious morning breakfast, coffee & laptop/work sessions, we headed over to the Convention Center to check out some of the Trade show. Much eye candy to be seen there... and free {guitar} picks galore... Oh! And free beer!! There's a lot of free beer at this ol' SXSW thing!!
Then we headed over to the Caucus club where we saw the end of The Rosebuds (who were good!) and then had the distinct pleasure of watching Britt Daniel (lead singer from Spoon) play a solo acoustic set. So fantastic!!!
After that we cruised over to the Lucky Lounge where Lane was, and the Decemberists were playing. We saw them several months back and they've been a band I hardly even listen to anymore, but I didn't mind seeing them again. Afterwards we all went to grab something to eat. Tantek & Matt met up with us too and we enjoyed a quick meal at some place called Paradise (I think it was called) on 6th St. A fairly basic quick eats kinda place, but I had these really yummy Bar-BQ chicken tacos... only in Texas :)
That night we had a lot to choose from, but we decided to first hit the StellaStarr*show at The Red Eyed Fly... however shortly after getting there & getting in the door, we realized we didn't get there early enough, and we had to stand in this tricky (aka sucky) second line to get into the back. Bummer! This rarely happened as with the pass you're in most every show with an ID and a flash of the badge, and it's especially rock star when there's a long line of wristband peeps waiting and you just get to go right to the front and in the door! sweeeeet. But like I said, this instance sucked - and we could barely see or hear StellaStarr* as they finished up their set. We got in right after that & watched The French Kicks... who I saw open for Hot, Hot, Heat in Sept 03, and as much as I love their CD, I STILL can't get into them live. Next up on the lineup was supposed to be The Unicorns, but apparently they had some kind of visa/border problems coming here from Canada, so they replaced their set with The Dears. I had wanted to check them out, so we stayed for a few songs - and I even bought one of their CD's!
At this point it was about 12:30, so we headed over to a bar called Friends to watch The Wrens play their 1am show. It was PACKED!!! But we stuck it out and enjoyed possibly the BEST show we saw the entire time!! OH MY GAWD ARE THEY AWESOME LIVE!!!! I had no IDEA they were going to rock so hard, but I was absolutely blown away. They were incredible!!
Wednesday, March 17 - St Patties Day!!
After standing in a super long line to pick up our badges at the convention center and then picking up our huge shwag bag o goodies, Rick & I headed out to dinner at Kinichi. We were hungry for sushi & this place looked amazing... and it was!! We had the yummiest meal, with some tasty sake and saporro too! yumm!
OH! And on the way there we ran into Matt Nathanson! He's *such* a cutie and I still swear we were meant to be married in another life. *sigh* :) hahaaa - but seriously it was great to run into eachother and chat w/ him about everything. He's awesome!
Alright, so after eating we headed over to Stubbs where we caught The Division of Laura Lee (couldn't get into them), The Von Bondies (ROCKED live!!) and the beginning of International Noise Consipiracy (Who song by song, revealed they were all wearing matching black & red striped shirts). They were alright, but we weren't that into them - and knowing the badges around our neck were a sure ticket into about 50 other shows, we decided to hop out and check out some other shows. This also meant taking off before Joan Jett & The Blackhearts went on... but we did see her walking down the street the next day :) I have no idea how her show went.
We left & stopped in Elysium down the street to see a little bit of I am The World Trade Center, who is a local SF band and we'd heard about forever... they were a fun little girl/guy duo - very upbeat and fun to watch. It made us miss Jason & Lisa of the Lovemakers :) Lisa of which we coincedentally ran into on Friday & said hello to!! I'm going to see them play this Tuesday night, toO!
So anyway - after that we basically hopped around for about an hour or so, stopping in bars here & there to see what was going on... One band called Saturday's Radar was actually pretty good... and another bar had this solo guy w/ guitar belting out a mighty "No Woman, No Cry" in his own unique way... but sadly behind him the bar had this huge screen that just played TV commercial after TV commercial and since the guy's back is to the screen he has no idea what the entire bar is looking at. Hilariously I got a couple shots of the most classic one, him playing right in front of the commercial that had this old man jumping for joy, and the Viagra logo over it. Poor guy.
We finished up the night at Blender Bar at the Ritz for Polyvinyl's (label home of Rainer Maria, Red Hot Valentines, Owen, etc) "Decibully" and "Volcano, I'm Still Excited" < who I'd been wanting to check out. Their set was really fun - and the 3 guys that make up the band were really cool and fun to watch. I enjoyed their set a lot and Rick and I were having a great time after the first full night of SXSW music madness.
We finished up the night with a tasty slice of pizza from this crazy metalhead pizza joint.
Now, lemme give you a little run down here of the scene if you've never been to Austin or SXSW. Downtown's 6th Street is insane!! There's bar after bar - and granted this is a little more insane cuz it's SXSW - but *every single bar* is set up to hold a band playing music - which is so awesome!! I mean, we're talkin we saw bands in the airport - they're at coffeeshops, everywhere! Combine that with the fact they close the streets off on the weekends and there's pizza by the slice everywhere, we were about ready to pack our bags & move here!! :p Oh! And another thing that's so awesome is that it's such amazing weather!! Granted in the summer I think it probably gets insanely hot - as even with the 85 degree + humidity weather we were getting, I was dying at times - but the thing that nice weather means in a city is that there's tons of places that are outdoors!! Bars all have rooftops to hang out & have drinks out in the warm evening air. Dreamy!
Everyone is also really nice there, too. The only thing I didn't like was that they of course can still smoke in bars. blech!! I hate cigarette smoke! The outdoor venues were better for this cuz atleast we weren't trapped in a small room with all that smoke - but never the less, it sucks when someone next to us would light up and submit us to their smelly, toxic smoke. That's one thing that makes me feel like I can never leave San Francisco... I love it that smoking is banned in bars here. I also think I might miss the liberal and open conciousness of San Francisco, too. I mean, Austin is heads above the rest of Texas, but there's no avoiding the fact you're still smack in the middle of a very conservative, homophobic, Bush-lovin' state.
Anyway - besides those last few things - Austin is awesome!! :) I can't wait to go back next year.
Saturday, March 20, 2004
Yay that it's Saturday! Another day of wonderful music and enjoying fantastic Austin. I really love it here!
Lastnight we had a blast - there's so much to catch you all up on, and since I lost Wednesday night's wrapup & didn't get a chance to write Thursday's - oy! where do I begin?! :)
Well I will tell you this - the Wrens are so fantastic, I feel like the set the bar for so many other bands we've seen. It was hard to top! We even went & saw them again yesterday and again they rocked us so hard!!!
Here's some photos from the week so far...
3/15/04 Enjoying frothy Boddingtons at The Ginger Man
Willo, Lane, Jeff & Jane at Interactive Closing Night Party (Jane's trying to tell us we have to go inside, the cops have arrived)
3/15/04
Britt Daniel (lead singer of Spoon)
The Caucus, 3/18/04
Blender Bar @ The Ritz
Volcano, I'm Still Excited!
3/17/04 Blender Bar @ The Ritz
The Wrens
3/19/04 The Caucus Club
6th Street, Downtown Austin
Willo & Rick listening to Fiery Furnaces, waiting for British Sea Power to go on. 3/19/04 Rockstars (Club)
British Sea Power
3/19/04 Rockstars (Club)
I couldn't seem to get onto Fotki today to upload them - but there's a ton, so it's likely I couldn't sit here & wait for them all to upload anyway... but thought it'd be cool to atleast get up a few fun ones from the week so far.
UPDATE: SXSW 2004 PHOTO ALBUMAlso see wrap up posts from the week:
Wednesday,
Thursday,
Friday,
Saturday and
Sunday OR Read them all on one page:
March 2004 ::::::
Sadly, Rick had to take off today - but cool for him cuz he's on his way to Germany, and then Ireland and back through Paris! Lucky! :) But he'll be missed something fierce by me!!! We've had such a kick ass week together. (heart pitter pat)
OK - off to more shows w/ Lane today and tonite - there's some good ones!! BYE!
Friday, March 19, 2004
Every morning we come down to the Holiday Inn restaurant with our laptops and have coffee & breakfast and try to get a little work done. The wireless is stationed down here & we don't get it at all in our room - so they're cool w/ us hangin here and drinking coffee for a couple hours while we work. Quite nice really.
Rick's gotten the American Scramble every day for the last 3 days - and after my first morning realizing their Huevos dish is actually just a bunch of cheese & refried beans, I've gone with the lighter fare of an english muffin and some bacon or sausage.
Why am I telling you all this? Well, because I'm at the end of my battery power. Which means there's no way I'll have time to post you the full scoop on all the awesome things we've been up to. So instead you just get the wrap up of our morning ritual. :)
We're having SUCH a great time.
Highlight shows:
The Von Bondies ROCKED
Britt Daniels (lead singer of Spoon) solo set, AMAZING!!!!!!
The Wrens lastnight at 1am - OH MY GAWD!!!!!! THEY'RE AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Off to some more great music and enjoying Austin. :) (and here's to learning my lesson & copying text first)
Hey - who's that girl
on this website? :)
::::
OK, so I'm finally over my big post loss from yesterday. Oy how many times that voice in my head kept repeating, "dammit willo if you had just hit select all, and copy!!" but you know what? such is life!!!!
Anyway - it's Friday today!! WOOHOOO!!! We're having the BEST time. I have to get some work done quick, but I'll write an update before we head out.
Thursday, March 18, 2004
I just spent an HOUR writing this huge post ... and the dumbass hotel network thingy crapped out and lost it all.
:*(
dammit dammit dammit!!!!!!!!!!!!
It was really good too.
Wednesday, March 17, 2004
Happy St. Patties Day everyone! Kiss me, I'm IRISH!!! Mmmmooiiii!!!
Well, while New Yorkers are sitting through some snowy parade, we're here in Austin, TX enjoying 82 degree weather, sunshine and people watching the hords of musicians, music fans, managers and more. Actually sitting next to me right now as I type is the band manager for The Raveonettes. He hooked us up with a sweet list of bands that are playin during the day. A lot of em being RSVP/Invite only, but we'll give it a shot anyway.
We had a great flight down here - totally smooth. After settling into our hotel room we headed out & met an old friend of Ricks at this bar downtown, called the Ginger Man. Several creamy and very tasty Boddington's later we realized it was already midnight and we had another party to get to!
We arrive at the party and it was wild to see a TON of people I know - but we're all in a different state! weird!! Jane, Lane, Ev, Jason, all the Dealership/CHAA peeps, Kevin Smokler, MJ, Molly, Jeff Veen and I'm sure I'm forgetting someone! But wowie!!! I also finally met a few peeps I've heard a TON about, like Jay Allen. cooL!
So very cool party, and some photos were taken. I'll post those & link all these people later on.
Anyway - I am tryin to get some work done at the hotel for just a bit & then we're off to grab our SXSW passes & try to hit a few of these day shows... The Wrens are playing today, so I hope we can catch them!
Tonite's band lineup is insane - we have about 200 different bands to decide from, so I'll have to let you know later what we end up doing..
Cheers!! *and a pinch if you're not wearing green*
Monday, March 15, 2004
I've noticed on my PC using Outlook that sometimes people who send me email from mac's Mail the links aren't hyperlinked. And now that I'm one of those mac user Mail senders I want to make sure I'm sending hyperlinked links in my emails!!
Does anyone know how I can assure that my emails are sending the links all hyperlinky??
My test indicated
the following results.
p.s. No, I haven't searched around for this or RTFM... I'm asking you people because I just know one of you smarties will have the answer. :)
p.s.s. Tonite I had a hilarious learning curve experience when trying to save out of fireworks & dreamweaver... and I was totally stumped that it wouldn't let me browse to where I wanted to save the files & instead was only giving me the basic list of locations & some recent ones. Hilariously I had searched Help, then left a message for my friend Matt - and then called my friend Trina before realizing myself while I was on the phone with Trina: "Oh! I just hit this arrow!" hahhaaa.. Trina & I had a good laugh. And I had to call Matt back & leave him a second message about what a dork I was. :)
I sure hope I get faster at shortcuts!! Right now it's a bit cumbersome. In fact, one that I asked Matt for a zillion times & I keep forgetting - is whats the shortcut to get my selection up in the file menu? I know it's a very PC thing.. but the more I can be keyboard efficient the better!! I have some other questions too. Too bad Rick wasn't a mac guy he could show me all these things all week in Austin! Instead I'll apparently be showing him a few things on his new laptop, as it's the first time he's on Win XP :) Now that's an OS I knoW!!
Ok - off to pack...
Today is a big countdown to takin off for
SXSW tomorrow. Hey - are you there or are you going to be there for the next couple days?? If so, please
email me & lemme know - we'll meet up!
Rick & I are going together and we know a few more peeps from the local music scene that we'll be running into as well... but I have a feeling there's way more people going that I know, or have been to their site than I even realize - so speak up now! :) It's gonna be a great time...
I'm bummed to have missed a lot of the interactive peeps. I'm not sure when everyone is flying back, but I know Jane, Jish, Kristin, Sarah and a bunch of people have been there all weekend. Hopefully we can catch a few people on Tuesday night after we land.
Being the music freaks that we are, we're mostly going for the music. It's like 5 days of music - almost 200 different bands a night are playing at over 40 some venues!!! It'll be extremely hard to decide what we're going to see... but we're up for the challenge!! :)
I'm super excited to visit Austin. It'll be my first time & I've heard soo many great things about it. woohoo!!!
I'm ultra delighted to be mobile there on my new macalicious, too. I actually have a bit of work to do, so hopefully I can take a couple hours a day to do it. We'll see. I know the draw of seeing the sites of the city is going to be a powerful force.
Luckily I have someone staying with my original (and way fuzzier than titanium) baby,
Kazoobie Fuzzy Pants O'Brien. Gawd,
I love my kitty! He's just the BEST!! (well, besides when he bites me, that's not very nice - but we're workin on it). I'll miss his morning wake up calls where he comes up & snuggles me for awhile. Sometimes several times just to say "Hey, Mom - get up - it's a beautiful day outside!!"
Linda is staying w/ him though - and she's a PRO. She's worked at the
SPCA way back when - and turns out her & her boyfriend are just flying back from Japan the day I leave and need a place to stay - so it works out perfectly!! woohoo!!
However, I have an absolute obsession with leaving my place spotless for visitors, so I have to go mop the floors & scrub the tub now.
Happy Monday!
:::::
p.s. mac update - this morning it froze on me once - no crazy pixeling this time... it was just when I was turning up the brightness on the monitor, it all froze up & wouldn't let me do anything. So I rebooted and now it's fine. weird.
Sunday, March 14, 2004
(whoa, is it just me or did they totally change up the blogger interface?? hmm conveniently timed for SXSW I wonder? :)
Eric, spill it!) Update - Eric has just given me the answer
loud & clear. (hey! that's my my first RTFM!)
::::
Hi!! I'm blogging from my powerbook! Today I am loving it & it hasn't been funky once - phew!!! I had a super mac wizard with magical techie powers come over and help me with a bunch of stuff - and I'm soo excited about it all!!! Thanks Tack!!
First we went & bought me a new wireless access point router. This was after much debate and discussion with a few tech head friends (just get wireless access point & hub or use a wireless access point router, etc). I almost went the first route - but Tack assured me getting the later was the best bet and I agree (especially cuz he knew how to set it up! woohoo!! that's 1/2 the battle!)
So we get back here and I fire up my 'macalicious' and it's smooth as butta. First thing Tack realizes is that I need to upgrade my OS X - awesome, he does a whole bunch of great updates for me - maybe that'll fix the funkiness? I hope so!!
Then he gets to work and installs my wireless and gets that all up & running... networks my two computers together so I can get my files off my PC - and whole bunch of other super fun stuff. WAHOO!!! He was such a help - I'm soo excited!! Plus, the faster I can get all my PC files transferred over, the faster I'll be able to ween myself off of it, which means the faster I'll learn all these shortcuts better & better! Which already, I'm much faster at, btw. And I'm getting better at typing on this smaller keyboard - and I am just loving it! Definitely the excitement of the newness and the portability is just totally stoking me. Oh - and I even had a USB Optical mouse layin around that popped right in & works great - woohoo!!
So life is good today.
Tack also got to enjoy one of my tasty
homemade sandwiches, complete with yummy chips and a crisp, cold pickle! AND a cold beer!! (have I mentioned how truly psyched I am to eat cheese and drink beer again? there is a god!!) and we sat outside on my deck and sweltered in this luxurious March heat! wowie it was hot today!!!
Then later on we even had some yummy Girl Scout Cookies for dessert - Samoas (oh my gawd, I could LIVE on these!!!!) and of course, Thin Mints - of which I thought I was going to have to restrain Tack from tackling me, grabbing the entire box and running out the door. Needless to say, he was psyched. :) mmmm.... coooookieeeess.
:::::
After a very successful day of enjoying watching Tack's Geek Power at work, I dropped him off & headed out to pick up my friend
Darren for a trip to
Amoeba. I have had this box of old CD's I've been wanting to sell for almost a year now - and so *finally* today I went & sold them. $25 for all of em! Woohoo!! I heart Amoeba. Darren picked up a few classics: Black Flag & some old LL Cool J - but I actually opted out of the laborous clickety clacking of searching through millions of CDs (I've gotten quite a bit of new stuff lately I have to absorb, so I could hardly think of anything I was in need of... plus Amoeba can suck you in for hours - which is great and all, but I knew I didn't want to do it today), so we took off shortly after my successful sell and his oldies but goodies purchase.
After enjoying some Tasty Tacos in the Haight, we headed over to Jem's. I had left my new
Stegosaurus Spaghetti Spoon they gave me at her house... and she hooked me up with a few CDs and a
VENUS mag she thought I'd like. yay for jem! She was being crafty, too, so it was fun to break in on her craft extravaganza and chat it up.
I like hangin w/ Darren too... he's cool. Man I've got some killer friends right now... life is good.
::::
To finish off my day I swung by Rachel's place & dropped off her books I've been borrowing forever, but finally went ahead & bought my own copies because I don't want to live w/o them. They're two books every woman should have: "
Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom" and actually the second one - I've said it once, and I'll say it again - EVERYONE should own:
Getting it On. The first one is like a manual for being a woman. Every question you have about whats going on... it's great. The second one, same thing - for everyone, men, woman, gay, straight - it just lays it all down in such a healthy wonderful manner. It's totally down to earth and fun to read. It's great - I recommend it!
Ok - so that's all for today. I have to clean up a few things & maybe begin the process of transferring over some of my PC files onto this puppy.
Hope you all had a nice weekend!!
Saturday, March 13, 2004
it seems to be a relatively common situation that it freezes when it wakes up from sleep.
well tonite, it did it again. I went to work on it again and it had frozen. the pixelation wasn't as drastic but it was visable on the desktop. Totally frozen. About this time I got a phone call so I stepped away from it - and I just came back to it to see that it's totally shut off. I didn't shut it off... and guess what? It won't turn on!!!
wow.
::::
update 10:28pm - I pulled the plug (it was fully charged) and set it aside. But not believing my eyes I just tried it again 30 minutes later, and this time it powered up and all looks ok.
what a rollercoaster!
So the whole new powerbook deal isn't so smooth sailing.... and I'm not just talking my having to relearn shortcuts. I'm talking serious phukage on this powerbook.
I turned this puppy on Thursday and barely did much more than go through the welcome process, set up my email and connect it to the internet before I carefully closed the top (put it in sleep mode) and took it over to my friend
Matt's house, where we had fun geekin out, see?
But as soon as got over there & opened it up to show him, there was this part of the top right of the LCD where all the pixels were all messed up. (no photo of it as we thought it was just some fluke first time thing?!) And then when I tried to do anything - force quit or bring up finder or anything, it was totally frozen. aahh!! So we powered down and then restarted and all was fine - phew!
We had a fun night geekin out & Matt showed me lots of great new things on my new baby. All worked well for those next 2 hours and I left & my laptop stayed over at Matt's that night since I went to the BoTH for a show & didn't want to leave it in my car. Then I went back Friday morning to pick it up and geek out some more with Matt, but as soon as I arrived & went over to my laptop & woke it up, and tried to open Mail - it freaked!! and the whole screen did the screwy pixel thing again. This time I took a pic:
Now here's where it got really bad and thank goodness I was at Matt's, who's an experienced & longtime Mac user so he could help me try a few different things. So first when the screen is looking like that - we try to do something, see if finder comes up, or try force quit - but NOTHING works. It's frozen again!
So we shutdown - power back up and then tried to get into the System area to repair permissions. As soon as we do - it gets stuck and freezes again. OY!
At this point, Matt finds his OSX Hardware repair CD (something like that) and we did some stuff off of there - and then used Disk Warrior to further do some cleaning up. All that seems to work & I'm good to go for more geekin out with Matt the rest of the day.
After running a few errands, I came home Friday and didn't crack open my new Mac at all (everything's still on my PC, so it's easy just to hop back on here) until today.
Today I open it up & it has funky pixel stuff AGAIN!!!
and totally frozen up - so I powerdown - and start it up again.... and got this screwy pixel thing happening:
along with an alert message that it couldn't read the disc in the drive, because I had left a blank disc in there I was going to burn something onto. So I ejected the CD... but after it came out, the system was frozen again. ARG!!!
:*( I'm sad - and I don't know if I should try to pack it all up & take it down to the Mac store for a new one or what!? I mean, I feel like I just got a lemon here, ya know!?
I've literally only used my new powerbook for a total of 10 hours in 2 days and it's already screwed up majorly like 5 times!!! Total bummer!!!
All I know is, I leave Tuesday and I need to load a lot of files on here before I leave... and I won't have Matt the power mac user to save the day... crap. crap. CRAP!
This is awesome. If anything I emplore you to read question/answer #3 and then continue reading his rant in the addendum... it's long, but worth every single word. (Some of you may have already read this since it's a couple years old, but I hadn't yet and I think it's excellent.)
I completely feel this way about so many things. Not giving a shit about what people think, being yourself - whether that's crazy and silly, or quiet and reserved. And I'm always trying to see the best in what everbody is doing... most all artists I try to tilt my head and see their passion in what they're doing... it might not be something I like, or I may even truly dislike it - and yes, I too have scoffed at times... but one thing's for sure is that I *always* give a person credit for just gettin out there and DOING something. That's a helluva lot more than a TON of other people can say!!
It not only takes talent and creativity - but a lot of the time it takes guts to go out there & do what you want! It takes a lot to write a screenplay, and then have others see your vision to actually make it into something (Bravo
Aaron!) - or to write a book (and finish it!) and send it off to publishers. Or to schedule a photoshoot and successfully direct the subjects with your artistic eye - or to draw or animate or sew or sing or start a band or anything!!!
I mean, I know we all have our hierarchies - and of course we're entitled to our lofty opinions about this, that & the other... but for god sake people - START GIVING OTHERS THE BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT!!! Stop being so f*ing critical of yourself and your peers and so many that are giving it their all to DO something with their lives. It's hard enough as it is!
:::::
Ya, so Dave Eggers' rant is awesome. So is
Jonas' rant in
Kat's blog comments... which is where I got the link. Wow, Jonas - that makes me wanna go check out art with you!! :)
:::::
Also, as a side note here... No... unfortunately I am not made of steel and I do still care what people think. Probably way more than others in silly little ways - and in some ways it limits me. I limit myself!! All too often I feel like I get in my own damn way of allowing myself to do the creative things I want to do.
So sure, I still have my very own blocks to work out... which is precisely why I am never shy to give props to others out there doing something. I support them and give praise to their creativity and progress!! I have far to go in this area... but I'm working on it :) One step at a time.
Friday, March 12, 2004
I still have yet to tell you how great the Rykarda Parasol / Frank Black show was on Tuesday night...
I have to review tonite's excellent show I just got home from: Pretty Girls Make Graves (and 2 great openers too!)
I have to tell you how much I am loving, loving, loving my new powerbook... (I had nothing to worry about!!) and how I am starting to see the light about things like "If my car was just made by mac, then I'd only have to tap that light & it would automatically go out in 5 minutes" (so that I don't accidently leave it on for 24 hours like I did lastnight - but it still started tonite, phew!) Oh, and of course it when it did automatically turn off, it would fade out really beautifully. aaaah, maaaaac.
I have to tell you about my special diet - the "get really sick for 3 weeks so you stop eating dairy and stop drinking just so you get better and then get really sad and stressed out and loose your appetite" diet. Holy cow, I look GREAT!! hahaa
But don't you worry, the lovely, delicious, melty cheddar cheese is calling my name... and the beers and baileys and gin & tonics... awww yaaa - she's back in the saddle people!!! I'll get that 5lbs back, dont'choo worry :p
I'm hittin a Sleepy Jackson show tomorrow night w/ Jem & Tania - And I'm starting out at Zeitgeist w/ Rick and his crew - aww yaaaa!!!! I hope it's warm again tomorrow!
How amazing it is that life can be so enjoyable and my mind can be free of worry just days after feeling like the world was coming to an end. (totally positive thought and me just simply realizing I can't freak myself out so damn hard...)
And last, but not least, how much I adore my buddy Rick xoxo
There, I guess that pretty much sums it up. Except I'll give you more full reviews of the shows - and photos/video too!!
Night.
Thursday, March 11, 2004
Hi - I'm just posting these here for myself so I can grab them when I'm on ze mac.
Launchbar
Fire - chat client
iSeek
xScope
SnapZ
Kung-Tunes
:::::: mac head sites:
Macupdate.com
Macminute.com
I'm sure there are a ton more - feel free to pipe in...
Ok, I popped open the box t
