New Blogging System

I have finally decided on a theme for my ‘new’ blog. It is basically Dean Robinson’s Redoable theme with a few modifications. I changed the colors of the header to blue and center aligned the content. I’m still working on adding additional widgets and plug-ins, but it feels good to have a somewhat permanent look to the site. I’ll probably make a few more modifications like changing the logo and such, but I need to go out and take some pictures before that can happen. I’ll have to see if it is possible to import my previous blog entries from my other blogging systems as well, but it shouldn’t be too hard. Hopefully WordPress will be more stable than typo, though I’m going to have to make sure to keep it updated so it doesn’t get hacked.

Timeless

I’ve really got to make some changes in my life. This weekend I spent about 20 hours reading for my Texas History class. Monday I was at school 8:00-9:30, had classes back to back from 9:30-2:00, then drove to work and worked from 2:30-6:00, then drove back to school for class 7:00-10:00. Yesterday I worked one job from 8:00-3:00, went to my 2nd job and worked 3:30-6:30, then came back to campus for a group meeting that lasted from 8:20-9:40 and then studied with a friend for today’s exam from 10:00-midnight. These 14 and 16 hour days are killing me, but they have become a fact of life for me. I’ve been working from 35 to 40 hours a week, going to school full time, running my own business, and administrating two servers for a startup for over a year now. Sure, the money is great, but I don’t have time for friends, my group projects in class, or myself. I really need to evaluate which of these are worth keeping. I’m in Austin for a reason – to go to college – all these other things should be supporting this objective.

SXSW Interactive Day 2

Today was probably the coolest of any of the days.

First we had to get up early, like at 8:30 so we could make the panels starting at 10:00.

The first panel we attended was “What’s Hot in Web Applications” which was basically a demo of the panelists’ sites.
YackPack – A cool ‘audio email’ kind of system. Check it out.
Meebo – Web based instant messaging that I’ve been using for around 8 months so far.
Zimbra – Web based Outlook type application that allows for an insane amount of plugins

Next we sampled “Smaller, Faster, Lighter” and “How to make the most of maps” but both were pretty uninteresting. We ran into Justin Abbott of BlogAds coming out of another panel and chatted with him for a while. We decided to just go to lunch early. Unfortunately it was Sunday so Stubb’s was having a brunch thing, then Ironworks was closed, so we ate at the restaurant in the Hilton which was pretty decent.

The next event was a keynote by Jason Kottke and Heather Armstrong. They discussed the various revenue models for blogs, how the micropatron system worked for kottke.org, and various blog/life balance topics. They seemed to have pretty good chemistry and the banter made the keynote entertaining.

After that, we attended the “Running Your New Media Business” panel, which was fine. All the panelists seemed to have an inside joke or something…they were all pretty much from the same street in San Francisco. The basic jist was to get everything on paper before you start something. They all basically told about how they got started and their philosophy on taking or not taking money. One of the panelists was one of the founders of Blogger who sold to Google and is now working on Odeo. Most of the others were web designers or developers.

The last panel was “Standardzella vs Tabellela” which first described some concepts of accessibility and usability and then reviewed several sites for both. It did help to understand what details and standards should be used in design and how to make a web site more usable.

Matt Pond PA

In all the commotion of Saturday night, there was a concert I really wanted to go to, but since Honor was here I wasn’t sure if I would be able to go or not. We decided to split up with Honor going to the AMODA party with some techno music, which is more his style, and my brother and I decided to go to the Youth Group concert at The Parish. Unfortunately, we were running late and didn’t even get into downtown until around 9:45. To top it off, I thought the venue was up on like 9th and Red River, which was wayyy off. So my brother and I ended up walking all up Trinity from 6th to 12th, then over to Red River, back to 6th street, then I decided to call Qunisha and see if she knew where it was. She was at a bachelorette party, but someone there knew where it was! We finally made it all the way to around 6th & Congress at about 10:30 and paid the $12 to get in. Unfortunately, Youth Group had already finished its set, but we didn’t know this. A band was just starting as we walked in, so we enjoyed their music for about an hour or so. Once we got back home, I went to the Parish website and found out that the band was Matt Pond PA. Their show was great, so despite happening upon them by pure coincidence, their music is great and I’ve added them to my playlist. If you get a chance, take a listen to both bands, they’re both great!

Tragedy so close…

“And it came to me then that every plan is a tiny prayer to father time” Death Cab for Cutie – What Sarah Said

I found out today that a fellow Business Honors student, Fan Sun, died yesterday in a car accident. Her and several other UT students were on their way to St. Louis for a medical conference over spring break. None of them were wearing seatbelts.

Though I didn’t know Fan personally, these incidents always make me reevaluate my life. When I was a junior in high school, two seniors died in a car accident the day before they were to graduate. I was hit much harder by that incident but the effects remain the same, and that’s even more depressing.

These events beg the question of how I would evaluate my life if I were to die tomorrow. What hit me so hard is high school was that I’ve invested so much work and pain into my life expecting it all to pay off in the future. I’m still thinking the same thing. It has been four years and I still haven’t changed my lifestyle; I still work all the time and go to school all the time in the hope that I’ll realize my dreams later on in my life. All that work would be useless if I died tomorrow and I would have never really enjoyed life. I really need to do something about that.

Back to blogging…

As a requirement of one of my classes, I will be writing in my blog for the next two weeks at least. I haven’t updated in a while, but I plan on recapping some of the more interesting events that have happened since I last updated and how things are going now. Additionally, I’ll be attending the South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive conference this weekend into the beginning of next week and then several of the free concerts that will be in town for the music conference.

Here’s a preliminary listing of the events I’ll be attending over the next few days:
Friday:
7pm – BarCampAustin meet and greet – Thistle Cafe

Saturday:
11:30am – 5pm SXSW Panels – Comment if you will be attending the conference and would like to have lunch.
6-8pm – SXSWi University Social & Austin on Rails Happy Hour – Buffalo Billiards
Rest of the night – BarCampAustin

Sunday:
10am-5pm SXSW Panels – same as before, comment if you’d like to lunch
5pm-7pm – Flickr, Upcoming.org, and Dec.icio.us party (hopefully) – Iron Cactus
7:30pm – Web Awards Ceremony

Monday:
10am-5pm More SXSW Panels
9pm – Adaptive Path + Consumating + Odeo Party – The Velvet Spade

Tuesday:
10am-12pm – SXSW Panels
8pm-11pm – Media Temple Closing Party

At least there’s something to look forward to

As always, I have been busy once again. I finished one class, but I don’t think I did too well on the exam. Oh well. Next week is going to be crazy as well…I’ve got a final paper due Thursday, a finance exam Thursday, a quiz Thursday, and a group programming project due Friday. I finally got my media center pc working, and my laptop is supposed to be delivered today. Just one more week of school!!! And as soon as I finish, I board a plane to Salt Lake City, UT for a 5 day skiing hiatus. I got an awesome deal on a condo, just $150/week, but nobody I have asked is able to go. Looks like I might be going alone…I wouldn’t mind too much, but if you want to go skiing in Utah Dec 10-14, let me know!

Back to reality…

The past several weeks have been crazy. There has always been a huge paper, a group project, a presentation, or something due one or multiple days in a week. I’m ready for classes to be over. I fear sometimes that I’m trying to do too much, but I’ve been doing it so long I don’t think I can go back. I really don’t mind work and sometimes it feels like a respite from school, which I have come to despise. I’ve been counting down the class days left in the semester for a while now. I’m down to 4.5. Right now I’m trying to decide whether or not to book plane tickets for a much needed vacation. As everyone who knows me surely knows, I am completely and utterly obsessed with skiing. Too bad I live in Texas… Regardless, I’m planning a ski trip to Utah Dec 10-14 to escape to the mountains as soon as I can. Unfortunately, that is during dead week so I’m not sure if I’m going to be able to get anyone to come with me. I really don’t want to miss out on an opportunity to go skiing, so I’m contemplating buying the plane ticket so I can’t back out. Luckily, I just have one exam this semester on the 17th, so it shouldn’t be too difficult to squeeze in a short trip between there. Oh yeah, I almost forgot my birthday is next Monday. I’ll be 21. If I drank, that would be a big milestone, but all I have to look forward to is gambling and firearms. I really should try to write more often, but lately I’ve been putting off anything without a due date in the next 24 hours, living day by day, just to survive another semester. So it goes…

Hot Hot Heat

ACL Fest was fun, though the weather wasn’t as agreeable as it could have been. Friday, we saw Slightly Stoopid who wasn’t my kind of music, but then we saw Blue October who was great and is one of my favorite bands. They played some new stuff that will be coming out on their new CD in January and from the sample we got, it should be a great CD. I think I prefer them in smaller venues without such restrictive time limits though, because they have so many good songs and they just can’t get through them all in an hour.

Saturday’s notables included Aqualung who had a great performance live and now ranks as one of my favorite bands. We also saw Built to Spill, The Frames, and then Death Cab for Cutie who sounded great as always. Then it was off to The Walkmen who played a fairly good show, then Jet who I thought was great but we were off to the side of the stage trying to stay in the shade. We left Bloc Party early…they weren’t really my kind of music, and then we went to see Oasis who was pretty good. The lead singer came off as a bit arrogant and trying to be too cool…I mean who wears sunglasses and a track jacket when it’s hours past sundown and 95 degrees? His brother, the guitarist, was very talented though and I thoroughly enjoyed his songs. He told a story of having roaches in their hotel room and screaming to room service to come and kill them though…what a pansy…and he thought that Frost Tower looked like an Owl…I don’t know how he sees that, but whatever. The temperature Saturday was 103 and the wind and all the patrons kicked up so much dust that between that and all the weed and tobacco smoke, there was a gloomy haze over the park the whole day.

Sunday was even hotter at 108, though the haze wasn’t as bad. Most of the day was spent sitting under the trees in the shade and seeing if we could hear anything being played at the neighboring stages. The New Amsterdams were great, though we only caught the last 3 songs since we were running late. After that we saw Zykos while we were eating, then The Doves, who were ok, The Bravery was good, but like I said we were pretty far from the stage. The Arcade Fire was barely audible from where we stayed, but then The Decemberists came onto the stage we were closest to and they played an awesome show. It was really relaxing and a fun show to watch. After that we were pretty miserable and we decided to end our day without seeing Franz Ferdinand or Coldplay fearing the same misery we experienced during Oasis. Hopefully they’ll air it on TV sometime, but it just wasn’t worth it anymore and we went to IHOP to eat then went home.

All in a day’s work

Wednesday was a very eventful day. After working until around 7:30, James came over and we watched the season premiere of Lost, which I must say was incredible. When it ended at 9, I started my homework – a programming assignment that took about 4 hours and a history paper that took about 5 hours. I finally was able to go to bed around 6am, though I don’t think I ever fell asleep before I had to wake up at 7am. The whole morning I was in lala land, but I was surprised that I didn’t feel too bad the entire day. I’m going to have to address my procrastination problem; it’s not fun to pull all-nighters.

Today I will work until around 3:30 or 4 and then I’m off to ACL Fest to watch several hours of great music. Today I will be seeing: Mates of State, Soundteam, Thievery Corporation, Keane, and Blue October. I’ll try to take some pictures, but I can’t seem to find the spare battery or charger for my camera. Regardless, I’ll give a little review of all the night’s events.

My parents are having three Houstonites stay with them until Hurricane Rita passes. I think my Dad knows them from his work in Sugarland…they’re staying in our camper parked in the driveway at the moment. My brother will be coming down and staying with me for ACLFest and maybe Jenna, a good friend from high school who I haven’t seen for several years. Between the hotels being booked for months for ACLFest and the infinite line of cars of Houstonites weathering the storm in Austin, the city its going to filled to the brim with people this weekend. Hopefully Houston won’t get hit very badly; it seems like half the people at UT are from there and it would be devastating to have a city that large damaged very severely.