Yesterday, I found myself attending the city's Hot Sauce Festival. Truly a great idea: let salsa/hot sauce aficionados congregate in a city park on a Sunday afternoon that's not excessively hot, and try out various local hot sauces and buy jars of good sauces that they wouldn't have found otherwise.

The crazier part? Its popularity. TONS of people were there, and as a result, lines formed so that you could pick up a single chip, dip it, taste, and move on. We're talking Disneyland-calibur lines. Because of that, I only got to try out 6 or 7 salsas, but I do know this: man, some little Austin places can make one hell of a hot sauce.

And then I get this IM from some Austinite whose identity I can't figure out by his screenname alone: "We also have a festival dedicated to spam." But I can't really see myself going to that one.

I have two Japanese TAs, and I had my second TA today for the first time. She teaches only on Mondays, and man, she's freakin' hot.

Not the Emily I link to on the right. Emily, the TCU chick. Good friend of a few of my fellow Austinites (including Koci, who I link to). Normally I have no problem talking about new friends of mine, but it's a bit stranger when I talk about girls. And not just like any old girl I meet, but the kind of girls where something may or may not happen. Well, Emily and I spent the whole summer talking to one another. You can probably see where I'm going with this.

After Em and I were in the same town for all of a week, we had a really great time. We got to have breakfast together one morning, she forced me to watch the Blue Collar Comedy Tour another night, and went out to downtown FW on the Friday night before I moved back here. She's asked me more than once - why wasn't she mentioned on here?

The short answer, as cruel as it sounds, is because I want a blog that's not going to suck. I have a few specific reasons, too:

-If I talked about every crush on every girl, every interaction with the female species, well, this would look like every Xanga site run by an emo kid, and nobody would read it [To the disappointment of my three and a half readers.].
-It totally jinxes any chance I have with a girl I like. I know this from experience, please trust me on it.
-Talking on and on about girls, it's very hard for me not to telegraph exactly what I want to do. This opens up lots of problems with (a) being predictable and (b) competition.
-It could screw up things with amigos. Suppose I have a crush on a girl, I write about it, and along comes one of my readers who also has a crush on the same girl. Problems ensue that could have been avoided. Worse, the whole competition thing could rear its ugly head and the reader could beat me to asking said girl out. Crappy.

If I had a steady, exclusive girlfriend, I really wouldn't have a problem with writing about things that happen. Example: "I had a really fun time on Saturday night going out with [insert girl's name here] when the craziest thing happened..." But as far as mentioning small things with girlish friends, there's just too much that can go wrong. Writing so much about relationships and non-relationships and blah blah blah just gets so stale so fast. The times in the past I've mentioned dates I went on (Steph and Abby), it was because something interesting happened or I learned a lesson or at least felt really inspired to write.

So Emily, please don't take it personally that I haven't mentioned ya. It's not that you're not cute/charming/loads of fun. I'm just erring on the side of caution.

Auditions were already over. Frowny face goes here. Oh well, everything will work out like it should. But, the director was really nice to give me a call back and invite me out to the recruitment dinners they'll be having at the end of the semester, so I might go out for the spring. For the time though, I just get to sit back and relax.

It'll be all right. That gives me a little more challenge to get myself to go back to Hawaii someday. Maybe for a honeymoon when I get married or something.

and there wasn't rehearsal, but I found out that the Longhorn Singers (the group I was thinking about switching to but wasn't sure) are going to Hawaii this winter.

Suddenly, the last thought on my mind was how immasculating it would be to be doing all the song-and-dance stuff that they tend to do. My mind was on my lifelong to-do list and how I could kill two items with one proverbial stone:

-Go on tour with a musical group
-Return to Hawaii

And not to mention that the group as a whole is a really, really nice bunch of guys and girls, and there *are* lots of girls, even that one I had a crush on for a long time. Good times.

Soon as I could, I called the new director of the group to see if I can sneak in a late audition - even after they announced the new members of the group. I've gotten no call back and I'm sad - but it's only been an hour and a half. But if you're the praying type and you're looking for some variety in your regimen, how about asking to send blakerson to Hawaii?

Philosophy: This is going to be a year-long class. It's a survey of world philosophy, a semester of western and a semester of eastern. The reading list, for your pleasure:

Plato's Republic
The Essential Augustine
Omnipotence and Other Theological Mistakes
Bhagavad Gita
Confucius's Analects
Tao-te Ching

It's going to be hard but totally worthwhile. Oh, and my professor speaks with a *thick* Korean accent so it's going to be very fun trying to understand him. Moreover, my prof likes making fun of people. Let's hope I don't end up in his crosshair too often.

Japanese: Like the first class, hard but worthwhile. The overwhelming majority of students are white, which amused me heavily. My TA session today was conducted entirely in Japanese, which was tough and at times funny. I'm pretty motivated to keep learning this, so the difficulty will be worth it.

History of Western Music: What a freakin' breeze. I'm not even buying the book for this class because it's that crazy easy. All I have to do is show up to class, do nothing outside of it (except attend a couple concerts) and I've got an A.

Plan 2 Economics: This class rocks. It's got a lot to do with the inevitable ties between politics and economics, except that this class doesn't devolve into senseless political debate. The professor described it as his goal to "make you able to hold your own at cocktail parties." Interesting stuff definitely coming.

Government 2: I haven't been to this class yet, but it's going to be largely dull, lame, and generally a weed-out class in a topic (state and local governments) that doesn't mean a damn to me.

So I'm going to stop posting on this little 'saga' because it's entirely too confusing to the unfamiliar, but I will say what happened:

We tracked the location to a payphone inside the state capitol. 25 people were there. One guy answered the phone, used the right passwords, and passed the test. So, the "hey dad" clue is available partially thanks to us.

Click here to get the whole story, or just read the next sentence: ilovebees.com is an alternate reality game being run as a buzz campaign for Halo2.

For what it's worth, it was cool as hell to go to the capitol and wait at a payphone for a call all in the name of a game. Gotta love the wonders that college can work for your life.

As you all know by now, ilovebees.com is a site designed as part of Bungie's Halo 2 teaser. If you check the links page, you get a bunch of random numbers in a funky format. Those numbers are GPS coordinates with times on a 24-hour cycle that all take place on August 24th (a date gotten from previously-decoded messages), and one of the coordinates points to downtown Austin around 4pm. So, my trusty Halo freak roommate Tim Allen (cue manly laughing sound) are headed downtown tomorrow afternoon.

I'll report back if we see/do/hear/get anything cool.

I'm online once again and can be reached through all the usual methods of communication.

As of this post, I'm tearing down my computer to pack it up. It's just about the last thing to go. It's off with me to a last night out on the town here in A-town, and I get to wake up bright and early tomorrow morning to take off for year #2 of college.

So thanks, everyone. All of you SSB kids, all the random Oakridge people I saw over the summer, all the gamers, all the young guys and girls, all the crowd that spent half the summer at Starbucks, you guys rule and I'll be home again before long.

UT boys and girls, see you tomorrow afternoon.

I can see clearly now, the rain is gone
I can see all obstacles in my way
(?) One of the doctors at Acme died (?)
Gonna be a bright (bright), bright and sun-shining day

edit: Oh, hey, got it now. It's "Gone are the dark clouds that had me blind," or so Sarah says. I believe her. Thanks much!

Yes, I'm still plugging these damn things, especially since I've had three people clear which means only 2 remain.

Anyway, Wired had a look at the phenomenon and it's a pretty good story.

See? It's not a pure partisan site. Go read bs if you haven't been.

Stole this completely from Abby, so blame her.

FIRST, CURRENT and LAST...

**FIRST**

First best friend: Ryan McAfee. If you're out there buddy, keep on stayin' alive.

First date: Abby! (Not the one mentioned above or linked.) She just graduated high school and went to Southlake Carroll for a while, but didn't graduate from there. Probably the cutest date I had.

First break-up: Steph. Hah.

First self purchased album: Weezer - Pinkerton?

First funeral: My neighbor Gary, who lived across the street when I was 9 or 10. His death made me go sleepless the whole year of third grade and I spent every night thinking about what happens after death and all of the big questions. It was then I decided I didn't think there was a god.

First pets: A mini-schnauzer named Erika (who hated me) and some kind of collie named Tiff. I barely remember Tiff, but Erika, according to my parents, was very jealous of my birth, so she hated me my whole life. I remember vividly that every time I tried to pet her, she showed her teeth / growled / tried to bite me. I touched that dog once in her life.

First piercing/tattoo: Don't got one, and not planning on one either.

First enemy: Joseph Kolb, third grade. Basically a bully.

**CURRENT**

Current best friend: Multiple, in several social circles.

Current status: somewhere between single and occupied; it's all getting worked out.

Current song playing: Mindless Self Indulgence just changed to Charlie Parker. What a collection I've got.

Current thoughts: I smell like Bath & Body works - it must've been a good night or something went terribly wrong.

Current emotions: Bittersweet - leaving here and going to Austin.

Current status online: Around.

Current wonder: Where the emotion comes from in a romantic relationship. Committment and romance, I understand the two, but what I'm missing is the unique product you get when you put the two together.

Current instrument played: Voice, wishing I played piano or guitar.

Current need: Some kind of concrete goal for the progress of my college career.

**LAST**

Last cigarette: Took a drag a week ago *cue Bill Clinton* but I did not inhale.

Last kiss: An hour ago. Great kiss too.

Last good cry: A year or so ago?

Last movie seen: Harold and Kumar, and man oh man was it funny.

Last beverage drank: Cherry Kool-Aid. Not as good as Tropical Punch.

Last food consumed: Pasta, and dammit I'm hungry again.

Last crush: A *gasp* sorority girl! See last kiss / current emotions.

Last phone call: Call log says my mom, but I prefer to say Emily.

Last tv show watched: Blue Collar Comedy Tour (yeah, I sold out and watched it. It was worth it, so I'll stop hatin' on them there rednecks.)

Last shoes worn: Awesome sandals.

Last item bought: A Spicy Chicken Sandwich.

Last annoyance: Aroon makes shit up when he gets into arguments, in order to prove his points.

Last disappointment: That really cute girl is really really tired. And we're only in the same town for a week.

Last ice cream eaten: The last of my Double Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough a couple weeks ago.

Last website visited: My own (I'm a narcissist) - but it was only to make sure a post went through. Last site I read was shacknews.com or the somethingawful.com forums.

Last time I'm doing this kind of thing: Probably the day I die.

with some kind of instrument. Guitar or piano. I think if I had that, I'd be a hell of a musician. Maybe if I got lucky it could be a career.

So I was at Quakecon this weekend, and I got *nailed* with a virus that wiped the table of contents off my hard drive. The data was still there, so I saved my important documents, but Windows couldn't find any of it so I lost everything - my games, my MP3 collection (21 gigs), my photo album (everything from the last year that isn't on files.snagger.org has disappeared), and my Doom3 savegame halfway through the game on Veteran difficulty.

Since there was a huge filesharing network at Qcon, I decided to recover as much as I could and get some new stuff in the process. Some useless stats:

-Current mp3 collection: 14.2 GB
-Biggest addition: Jazz (2.8 GB)
-Coolest addition: BT's movie soundtracks (Some Go and More, Under Suspicion)
-Catchiest addition: tie: Black Eyed Peas - Let's Get Retarded and Maroon5 - She Will Be Loved

So my advice to you, friends: don't get hit by a virus that whacks your hard drive. And if you do, have a spare 80GB HD sitting around to back up all your music and photos.

It's the second day of Quakecon. The sleep deprivation has kicked in so that I have no appetite, I can run on 4-6 hours of sleep, and lots of cool other things that I can't normally do. Know those moments when you're somewhere between being awake and dreaming, and you can't really figure out which one you're in? Parties like these make that feeling last three days straight.

It's been a great time so far. Early check-in was very painless this year thanks to the 12 or so people who were all in line together, just BSing and pranking people with the Moreno's Airzooka - a little toy that shoots air breezes at unsuspecting people - hilarity always ensues. Got everyone set up and played a few rounds, then headed off to dinner with a group of 10. We wound up tearing up Macaroni Grill in one of the most hilarious events that's ever happened anywhere. Really. It was funny as hell.

Everyone's still in the process of waking up, but Day 2 promises to be fun now that people's games are working.

At the same time, it's weird. It hit me that I'm a mere week away from moving back to Austin for year #2. Even though it won't be as new as it was before, I'm still sitting here feeling weirded out about my life turning itself upside-down once more. I've been looking forward to it for just about this whole summer, but now that it's closer I'm inexplicably nervous again as if I were a freshman all over again.

Oh well. I've got a killer party to finish going through and this kinda cute girl to hang out with in the meantime. No reason not to enjoy the last hurrah all over again.

OK, so Aroon and I have both done the RealRhapsody offer and it clears pretty quickly - like in 24 hours. So give it a shot, especially if you're one of the people under me who haven't cleared in almost two weeks.

Again, here's the link to get one under me.

The Freeipod Guide.

BS got updated again with a link to an article that pushes out some of the crap. Go read it.

Yep - bullsh!t has been updated with actual material.

Yeah, it's still going on.

Apparently the eBay offer was killed on suspicion of mass fraudulent users / auctions. The new easy offer, by all reports, is RealRhapsody - which was cool as hell back when it was just Rhapsody and Speakeasy ran it, so give it a try. My own ebay offers never cleared, so I'll be trying this too.

For the random 5 people I don't know who signed up under me, thanks. Here's to hoping that at least *some* of you have offers that go through.

Qcon quickly approaches! Here's some late info for those of you planning your trips. It's bad news, followed by good news:

-Early check-in is not guaranteed to happen this year. This is contrary to what I said earlier, so listen up. If you go Wednesday night to set up, you're taking a risk. You could get set up fairly early and not have to sit through the line Thursday, but on the other hand, you could waste several hours waiting in line with your computer for nothing and have to come back Thursday and sit in line all over again. The deal is, early check-in opens if there's spare time on Wednesday night once the volunteers are done setting up.

Now, the good news:
Mr. Sinus Theatre is coming back! Just like last year, they're premiering a new movie that they haven't done before, and it promises to be hilarious. And the better news, for everyone who's on a tight schedule around Saturday/Sunday:

The show is on Thursday night. It starts around 10:30, which should make them a big part of the opening night party.

Things are shaping up to be pretty great. So, we in the SSB crowd will definitely be seeing you guys on Thursday, and by Thursday night we'll be raping the rest of you in Doom3 and CS, so you guys get to bring the lube.

A reality TV show for Hispanics where the winner gets represented by a famous law firm to get a green card. The show has already had contestants doing such great America-loving acts as eating burritos full of worms, because that's exactly what America wants in its immigrants who come from abroad.

Christ.

and so do a couple of my friends. Introducing:

bullsh!t

There's a sudden power surge at your house at 6pm when you're sitting on the couch, and the first thing you do is look around you in all 360 degrees of vision to make sure that nothing's attacking you.

[The rest of this post is boring game commentary stuff, stop reading here if you're uninterested.]

I'm probably around halfway through the game, and here are some more impressions:
-The attention to detail is among the best games ever made. Never is there dull scenery, items are placed everywhere to reward the curious, and there are so many things going on in the environment (TVs running, other people's emails / audio logs) that it's probably on par with Max Payne 2.
-As expected, it's a technical masterpiece. I can run the game with almost all the special effects turned on, 2x anti-aliasing, and get a solid 30 frames per second while the game looks gorgeous. Did I mention I'm running *medium* detail levels? You'd need a just-bought-it-yesterday Alienware system to run high quality comfortably, and just about any computer today is incapable of running Ultra quality.
-The game is extremely psychological. Play it through on hard the first time you get it, otherwise it'll seem too easy. And you can't play this game like a tourist. The constant tension in the game is so high that you breathe a sigh of relief on load screens and you can practically feel the stress when you're not even playing.
-It's definitely the Doom experience all over again. I don't mean run-and-gun at this breakneck speed kind of experience. I mean the one where you're looking for somewhere to run out of desperation while you're on your last few bullets and you're sure that the enemies aren't stopping anytime soon. All the throwbacks (old-school monsters, weapons) are truly sweet.
-Multiplayer is a different story entirely. It wasn't the main focus of the game, so don't expect a heavily tweaked game or a lot of variety. In fact, there are only 5 maps. But then again, Quake shipped with 6 maps and Quake2 had multiplayer basically patched into the game, and those are two of the best multiplayer games of all time. This *is* the ridiculous run-and-gun game that the old-school Doom memories bring to mind. Turn on always run and you're constantly flying all over the place. I can't wait to start playing this against other people on LAN. It looks like it'll have a lot of depth though. Trickjump videos have already started to come out. Maybe it's all the similarities with weapons, and the q2dm1 remake, but deathmatch feels a lot like a very, very, very sped-up Quake2 deathmatch.
-Coop mods are on the way. Oh yes - this will be *ridiculous* with 4 players on Nightmare skill.

Koci (pronounced ko-chee), my amigo and suitemate in Austin, has had a Xanga running for quite a while that I hadn't linked out of pure ignorance. Time to correct that.

While I'm at it, I spotted a new entry of his that looked pretty interesting. It's a rant on the obliviousness of American voters and he toys with the idea of restricting voting to only the informed. Since I don't have a Xanga account with which to post comments, I'll throw one up here:

At the start of the rule of the Constitution, Koci's system was actually in place. There wasn't necessarily a multiple-choice test to show competency, but there was a system nonetheless. The idea? Only landed white males could vote. And, leaving the modern value of equality out of the equation for a minute, it worked. It was the closest thing America had at the time to an aristocracy, and they were by and large very informed people. Political arguments, nowadays reserved for the intelligentsia at coffee shops, were abundant in bars. They were even the meeting points for "town hall" meetings and local debates. It's another one of those "what would the Founders think of today's society" kind of moments when we look at modern elections. So right on, Koci - you're up there with the greatest thinkers this country ever had.

Yeah, the Family Guy dude.

http://www.american-dad.com/ has a "pilot" that lasts a little more than 5 minutes, and it's definitely up there with Family Guy in comedic value. On top of that? Huge satire against the right-wing. Complete winner in my book.

Blame Syed for finding it first.

And it's time to start planning. I'll try to get in touch with as many people as I can this weekend, but for now, have the following things in mind:

-Forget the giant table plan. By the response I've gotten so far, next to nobody is able to come Wednesday night, and we just can't save 20 seats overnight like that. Sorry, kids.

-Computer troubleshooting sucks. Wouldn't it be awesome if we all got there, got set up *before* Thursday night settles in and were in the middle of some crazy games? Between now and next Wednesday morning, make sure you've got as many games as you'll be playing loaded up. This includes Counter-Strike 1.6 (if you don't have Steam working already, go get a legit copy of HL/CS and get on it), Unreal 2004, and Doom 3. Get your games installed, get your options set right, and load up a level or two to make sure everything's in working order. Wodarski, just break your stuff now and that should make everything OK by next week. :o

-If you have a BYOC spot, block off Wednesday on your calendar as part of Quakecon. Last year we got ridiculously lucky and got to jump the line for Wednesday night's computer check-in instead of spending five hours in line. We can't expect that again, so we're going to go early, send a couple people on a food run, and camp it out in line. We need as many people as we can to do this or we'll have people jack all the spots next to us and be jerks about it like last year. To the best of my knowledge, nobody has a hotel room for Wednesday night, so we'll all end up coming home and maybe doing something cool for a little while before we try to catch up on sleep for Thursday.

-If you're on the BYOC waiting list, consider being up early Thursday. We should know Wednesday night when the BYOC wait list will open - and if you're there a couple hours early, you'll have a shorter line to deal with and you'll be guaranteed a spot. And it's more game time for you, and it's a better chance of you sitting with us.

-Get your hotel rooms straightened out. Most people have this set already, but for the few who don't, get on it. Makes life easier later on.

-If you are staying in the SSB hotel room, the changes have been made. For more info, call me.

That's it, boys and girls. If anyone has any questions at all, feel free to call me or IM me. I'll have a detailed schedule up at the end of the weekend.

Tentative list (taken from Qcon registration database):

confirmed:
ssb: blakerson / alex / thomas / aroon / max / graham / clint / wompa (guest of ssb)
non ssb: ian / billy / pablo / wodarski / emma / amit [+ friends] / aj / chris
unconfirmed: turk / cameron

and man, is it freakin' sweet.

Now I know what they meant when they recommended a 5.1 setup. This is the only game, ever, that's made my sound system feel way underpowered.

Quick workaround solution: crank the subwoofer way the hell up.

But yes, this game is already getting awesome after two levels. If you haven't already, go grab it.

I'll report on multiplayer once I get the chance to try it.

And this is why I went electric a long, long time ago.

Woo! Since Blogger doesn't follow my day/night system, this post falls right at the start of August 2nd.

My Blogger site is now officially 3 years old.

There were things before, like dinky websites made with Frontpage. Somewhere in the middle of this, there was a self-coded page that took me forever to convert all the comments for. I hosted that biyatch on my own home computer and still somehow had readers even though I turned the box off at night. And back I came, deciding to let someone else do the hard work and let myself focus on the writing.

But old Blogger stuck by me, refusing to lose my posts for a solid three years. Well done, Blogger crew. I'm absolutely shocked that something that's been such a significant presence in my life for so long hasn't ever cost me a cent. Thank goodness for Google who had the niceness and the smarts to buy Blogger out last year and keep the system running and even make it better.

So, dear little website, happy 3rd. Thanks to everyone who sees this for reading it. It means a lot to me, and it'll keep meaning a lot.