Tuesday, April 26, 2005

My new infant blog project - The Scooter Scoop!


(a new blog is born every minute)

Well, I've been toying with it a bit and it's just about ready for prime time. My latest blogging creation. The Scooter Scoop! The same great writing from the talented staff you've grown to know and love, with a focus on what's new in Scooters.

Scooters, of course, are those tiny two-wheeled perpetual smile machines you may see putting around your city... unless you are in a country other than the USA... THEN change the "may" to "always". I enjoy my scooter and I think people (here) are beginning to see the light and recognize them as more than just weekend play toys. If we could just get them to recycle their Hummers now.

The Scooter... It's your next "Second Car"!

Saturday, April 23, 2005

Caving in Mexico - now with "MUCHO ADVENTURE!"


(Bustamante... Mission accomplished)

Ever think about visiting interior Mexico and going 115 feet underground? Well, if the idea of doing so sounds like a walk in the park, I suggest these helpful tips for adding "Mucho Adventure!" (Pronounced Moo-cho ad-ven-TOO-reh) to this simple trip.

1) Go with just two people. One who has never been to Mexico and one who has been... once.
2) Make sure that only one of the two people can speak Spanish and make sure their vocabulary does not exceed 100 words or so.
3) Rent a car to get to the border, and then rent a car at the border to drive into interior Mexico.
4) Rent the car in Laredo, but drive across the Columbia border. For extra EXTRA "Mucho Adventure" go ahead and cross at the Laredo border... We didn't go for the extra EXTRA though.
5) Make sure to get to Mexico after the banks are closed so you can only convert what the permit guy has in his pockets, Only about 100 Pesos.
6) When you go either don’t tell you wife, or make sure you go while your pregnant wife stays at home with your 2 year old daughter (this adds extra "Mucho Adventure" to last once you get back home). We did one of each. Also, make sure not to buy a US Calling Card before going over so that you aren't able to call home and check on things.
7) Drive from the Mexico border to your destination (Bustamante) at night. The busted-ass roads are better than ANY cup-o-coffee.
8) Get to the camp ground at around 10:30pm and get turned away. Then in your best Spanish, beg to camp there anyway because you don't have anywhere else to go.
9) Go visit the cave, but be sure to take the 1 hour hike up and not use a vehicle.
10) Just before you get to the cave entrance make your own shortcut up the mountain and get lost and tangled up in prickly bushes and crap. Use whistle-location with the cave caretaker to find your way out.
11) Get to the entrance and make sure you left your kneepads and secondary light sources behind... don't even bother with a 3rd light source.
12) Visit Monterrey and just start driving around 'till your good and lost. Buy a map and figure out how to get back to Bustamante. Make sure you head back at night and make sure your route home has a detour on it so you can get Extra EXTRA "Mas Mucho Adventure!" involving shady, secluded dirt roads and interaction with scary roadside store attendants.
13) Drink the water (we didn't do this, but if you do it nice and early you’re SURE to have a huge heaping handful of "Mucho Adventure" to last you all week)... This is only advised if you're a cocky, trouble-making bastard.
14) Drive up and down every street in town in a 2005 rental car to make sure everybody sees you at least twice, then walk those streets at night 'cause your bored and your TV channel selection sucks.
15) Consume every junk food available only in Mexico including "Pepsi Fire", "Doritos Incognito" Chips, Chamoy Salsa and a host of other mystery foods and beverages.
16) Get a cold and ask the pharmacy store owner for drugs. Make sure she hands you something you've never heard of before and you can't read the ingredients to see if you are allergic to it. Scott took care of this part for us.
17) Oh yeah. Get pulled over by the cops in Monterrey for no known reason. Get sent on your way because you can't understand what they are saying.
18) Forgot this one too... Make sure to get all the way to the border after driving for 5 hours, and almost get turned away because your rental car papers look suspicious to the Permit office manager (All I could make out was them asking if Scott or I were the ones who filled them out).
19) Oh yeah... Make sure to carry your permits in the door pocket of your rental car so when you open the car door, the wind will catch them and you can chase them down the street. Woohoo! You never seen a geek run so fast doing the stop-a-paper-stomp.

That's about all I can think of right now. I'm prolly blocking out some thoughts that would give us an even 20... If my shrink discovers what they are I'll post them at the bottom.

Look for more details on caving in Bustamante Mexico soon.

Friday, April 15, 2005

H. Hoogerbrugge will live forever.


(with sites like these, who needs drugs?)

I stumbled upon this site here.
Useful? No.
Entertaining? Partially.
Enthralling? Completely.

I dare you to look at less than 50 of these short animations.

Thursday, April 14, 2005

The Joys of living in a new house.


(dramatization)

Well... The actual joys of living in a new house are starting to set in as the pains of moving begin to subside. Just a quick rundown of some of a couple things I like about it:
1) Everything is so clean. I've never lived in a NEW house before. It's so damn clean it makes you wanna keep it that way. I notice every little speck of dirt now. Maybe it's better to not live in a new house.
2) The Dishwasher actually CLEANS the dishes. Having never used a brandspankin' new dishwasher, I've never known what to expect from a dishwasher. The one we had in our apartment used to... kinda... vomit food ON to our dishes, so that when the cycle was done we would have dried rice and crap (stuff we hadn't even EATEN before) stuck to the bottom of our glasses and bowls. New dishwasher is a nice thing. I think it actually places an order for new dishes and swaps them out each cycle... (goofy, eh? I told you my english isn't so sharp tonight. I think it's that I don't usually blog at midnight.)
3) You get to bond with all new neighbors. Since just about EVERYBODY is new in the community, there's no preformed cliques. No wifes clubs. You don't have to be 'invited' to hang with your neighbors. Everyone is starting with a clean slate. So you get to go out and try to snatch up all the new people to be your friend before anyone else has a chance. Hehe... But seriously though. When new people come house shopping on our street, I go out to meet them. If they seem cool I try to sell them on the community. If they seem lame, I bust out the "Yeah, it's not bad, but the trains are so loud at night, and the blah blah blah". Just make crap up. If a pickup full of rowdy college kids pull up, I hit 'em with the "Yeah, this is more like a retirement community. No hot chicks, no swimming pool, hot-tub or grills... just old folks scootin' around in their wheelchairs". Whatever it takes, yaknowutumsayin?

In conclusion. New houses are not over-rated.

PS> Had someone describe my blog as "weird" today... that's weird.

PSS> CORRECTION, it was "Pretty funny and..... out there!". Where is "out there" exactly? "Out there" on the internet? "Out there" as opposed to "Over here"? I'm ok with the "Pretty funny" part, but not quite comfortable with "out there". I like it better "in here", where the walls are soft and the jackets are tight and cozy... where nobody else can see me unless they are peeking through that little window in the door.

Dream the impossible dream... build a speeder bike.


(my next scooter... Honda Intake CJ900)

Again... In my dream world. I love the idea of riding on air... Virtually frictionless. Not contacting the ground. I figure I can do it one day using lifters. I just need to add some sort of atomic reaction for power generation, but think it could be done. In the meantime I'll keep visiting Worth1000.com to see more exotic specimens from the imaginative brains that dwell there. Not saying they have a bunch of cool floating bike images... just a lot of cool trippy visuals. Maybe when I begin designing my own I can steal some ideas from some of the Worth1000 people. (hrm... sorry if my english isn't working very well today. I need to take it in for a checkup I suppose.)

Monday, April 11, 2005

Hrm... A useful pet?


(the Omlet by Eglu comes with 2 organically grown chickens)

Saw this little bit on my favorite Aussi gadget site, Gizmag. Seems Eglu is pitching chickens as pets. I kinda like the idea. Chickens are nice and they're smarter than cats (kidding cat-people), but most importantly, they are USEFUL! At nearly 160 organic eggs per chicken per year, you save some serious loot! And, when they fly off to that chicken coop in the sky? Fried Chicken! You'd NEVER fry your cat or eat ANYTHING that came from your dog's backside, right? I'm really considering it. No roosters tho... that cock-a-doodle-doo junk at 5am gots to go.

Giant dad conquers Iraqi armor division!


(Hulk-like in stature. Measuring some 14' in height!)

Just kidding. That's my Dad in Iraq standing next to a Mini-Me tank. I'm not sure of the tank's specs, but I know my dad is about 5' 9", making this two man tank look like a half-scale remote control toy. He said the entire tank is about the size of an M1's engine. Looks like it would be cool to reconfigure it to launch paint balls. Anyway... thought you'd get a kick outta it.

PS> My bloggerbot actually worked this time. I guess you get what you pay for, eh?

PSS> You know how you think of cool $#!+ to say AFTER the fact. I was thinking a cooler headline would have been "US Army successfully tests shrink ray on Iraqi armor divison". Oh well... sometimes I'm cool, and sometimes I suck. :P~ But - mostly I'm cool with a hint of I-need-to-shave-and-shower.

Ahhh... to have known this 20 years ago.


(Geek gettin' his enlightenment on!)

I am a self proclaimed geek. I'm comfortable with that. I don't like team sports. I feel icky after I've been to a strip club. I enjoy books like "The Spike" and... most of all... I've sucked with the ladies. Yes... If I liked me a woman, I could count on my verbal skills falling to pieces in front of her... and I could watch a gradual look of disappointment fade onto her face like she was watching the space shuttle blow up. I've had this condition my whole life (although living 2 years in a frat house help to relieve it to some degree). All I can say is Thank God I found a sweetie to take me and all my geekness.

So... now that I'm in a comfortable place, I'd like to lend a hand to my fellow geeks. Are you having trouble "gettin' yo freak on"? Go to this site and READ my friend READ AND ABSORB! Let go of your geekdom and tap into your inner big-phat-playaness.

You will thank me and David DeAngelo for it. Give him a closer look for more help.

I spoke too soon. : (


(the Japanese Character "Doh!")

Well... When I was on the phone with The Ninjabrain, my Blogger/Picasa/Hello account was working... But today, no dice. I even started a new hello.com account called hellodotcomsux, but still couldn't get an image posted. I guess I'm gonna have to go back to the old method of posting pictures. Blah.

(do you think the NY Times ever runs outta ink?)

Saturday, April 09, 2005

I'm BACK! Thanks to the Ninjabrain


A good friend of mine and new blogger, The Ninjabrain, helped me get around my Bloggerbot problem. You see, I would attempt to post an image and get the "Please wait while your images are uploaded", forever. No errors or anything. I tried to fix the problem and even got an image to post one morning, but mostly it sucked.

Ninjabrain suggested that I just start a new Hello account. I did and could post with NO probs. I guess the problem is not Hello or Picasa, but broken Hello accounts. So that's the work around. Just abandon your broke Hello.com account and start anew. Eventually Google/Picasa/Hello will figure it out, but until then they'll have a bunch replacement accounts starting up.

Posted by Hello

GeekAustin relocates their headquarters.


(Packed up the fam and moved out of the apartment)

Well, I'm back. Found a solution for the Bloggerbot problem, thanks to a very good friend of mine. More details in a later post.

Anyway, for those who haven't experience it yet, moving feels like... gently striking your skull with a ball peen hammer once a minute for a week. Or sliding naked down a glass-shard slide. Or dressing in fruit rollups and sleeping on a fireant mound. Or... well, you get the hint. It sucks.

Anyway, it's done and maybe in a month or so, we won't be living out of boxes. *fingers crossed*

Thanks for hanging in there during our transition (and lack of cool postings).

GeekAustin Staff

Posted by Hello

Friday, April 08, 2005

My Bloggerbot is killin' me!


test

I got this image to post this morning.... but I haven't gotten it to work again since. Help!

Posted by Hello

Monday, April 04, 2005

Blah... I would post an update but...

Hello.com is not uploading my images. Still looking into this problem.

The only news... We've relocated our offices (moved out of the apartment). Still recovering. Great updates coming soon.

Stay tuned!
steve
the geekaustin blog