I enjoy killing things like birds with things like stones. So I'm going to kill two of the former with one of the latter. Grace says people should post more often, and that guys may brag to her. Here is a post about me bragging about me.

But before I get started, my deity-like friend Vishnu says my posts are getting too weird for him. "Avant garde" he says. Well sucks to you.

Here goes: I'm 6-foot-9 283 pounds and all of that is pure muscle. I see the other kids at the gym trying to bench press their 300 pounds and laugh. (I have a great sense of humor.) Then I pick them up and proceed to do curls with them, weights, bench and all. When I'm done with that, I go over to the pool, part the water, and do sprints in between the waves. On the weekends, I race Lance Armstrong on a bicycle. He's usually riding a Porsche 911 and I usually win. He makes me race him on a bike because he knows that I could smoke him any day with any of the Ferrari's, Lamborghini's or Escalades in my 20-car garage.

After racing Lance, I head down to the local soup kitchen to feed the homeless. I cook up a special stew for them that keeps them full for weeks. The patrons shower me with gifts of rocks, broken bottles, and last week's newspaper. It's always a very touching moment. From time to time, the local animal shelter calls because someone has abandoned yet another exotic pet. I take the animals to my 340-acre wilderness preserve where I create an ideal environment for each of the animals. Sometimes I help out world leaders with their problems. You usually don't hear about my role in solving these problems because I work behind the scenes. Modesty is very important in world affairs.

When I'm not taking care of people and animals, I am usually tending one of my multi-national corporations. The companies under my umbrella corporation are have either the largest or the second-largest market share in the industry that they compete in. These industries range from automotive to zoological. It's tough work, but all of my co-workers are all top notch and working is actually really fun for all of us. I love my jobs and it saddens me to hear that people are stuck in jobs that they don't like.

OK, so I lied about all my weight being muscle. Much of it is from that mass of brain in my head. I used to play chess with Gary Kasparov but he was too easy so now I play Deep Blue. I'm getting bored of beating him all the time though. I think my new hobby will be to finish up the cure for cancer. After all, I've already found cures for alzheimers, AIDS, and halitosis. Cancer should be a piece of cake. Which reminds me, I should call up those fellows in the pharmaceutical industry to see why it's taking them so long to get my cures to market and if they need some help. Maybe I'll tackle some of those compter security problems too. You think your 1024-bit encryption scheme is secure? I broke through that last night while flossing. (I find it very important to maintain good dental hygine.) I should probably finish up my proof of the theory of relativity while I'm at it.

Fine, that was more "lying" than "bragging", but at least I posted something. I would have included my wonderful girlfriend's resume, but no one would believe it.

And I agree, that was really weird, but not avant garde weird.

I'm going nuts here. It's not that it's boring, I'm just really looking forward to going to a place where I can look outside without sweating. Yesterday I made wienie art. I got some cheap hot dogs and toothpicks from the supermarket and chopped them up into animals. The hot dogs I used were too soft, and a bit too long. I think those little cocktail sausages would have been easier to work with. The instructions were from here (courtesy of Sri, who will never read this because he's too cool for the garbage I write). If you click on the duck, you can see a video that goes through the making of the duck. I tried to make a duck first, but the head kept falling off or it kept falling over. I ate the first two because they were causing me trouble. THen when I did the other critters, I tried to make another duck, but it kept falling over also. I finally got a good picture of it. And then I ate it because, well, ducks suck. The rest are still in my fridge. I can't bring myself to eat them.

The dude uses something strange to put the pieces together. It doesn't look like a toothpick because it breaks so cleanly. At first I tried to break a fortune cookie into narrow strips to put the pieces together, but breaking fortune cookies is not very easy. Not for me at least. I ended up just using chunks of toothpicks to put everything together. But for the shark, I used bits of the fortune cookie for, uh, a shark stand. Incidentally, the fortune from the fortune cookie said "You have an active mind and a keen imagination." Which is exactly why I chopped up some hot dogs according to somebody else's directions.

Good thing I'm heading home tomorrow afternoon.

The heat (and therefore the inability to do anything while the sun is up) is really getting to me. But it's been cooling down. So instead of being hot and humid, it's just crazy humid. I can't wait. Tomorrow, I'll be able to tell everyone it's hella humid over here. For now, it's just crazy humid.

The reason it's cooling down is because of Emily. Austin happens to be far enough north to not really be affected, but too far south to stay dry. Bah. It rained really heavily yesterday morning...for a few hours. And then it stopped. Emily, you fracking tease.

Speaking of fracking, based on my travel plans for this weekend, I might miss the second episode of Battlestar Galactica. Frack! This time, Sci-Fi is showing *gate SG-1, *gate Atlantis, Battle* Galactica, followed by the same three shows, but starting with Battle* Galactica and then *gate SG-1 and *gate Atlantis. So that means it starts at 11pm. And on Monday, they're showing it at 11pm, which is too late for me. I have an early morning flight to Austin at 7am. Hmm, maybe I can catch it. If not, frack.

Last night, I stayed home. But for a really good reason: The season two premiere of Battlestar Galactica. Oh, and Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis. So three good reasons.

BSG was simply amazing. The final few episodes of the first season were filled with all sorts of shocking twists that simply blew my mind sky high. The first 10 minutes of the premiere alone blew my mind half way to Caprica. I couldn't believe what I was seeing for the whole show, it was that amazing. It'll be interesting to see what happens to the fleet under Tigh's command. He seems to have fracked up quite a few times already and that's not helping his already shaky confidence in himself. This episode also showed some of the history between Tigh and Adama which further explains their relationship. It looks like this season will be even better than the first. I hear that the first season is coming out on DVD, but it'll be the UK version, not the US version.

One thing I did miss from the first season was the quick preview of what's to come during the intro. I heard that was from Space 1999, I'm not sure. I liked the wqy they timed the clips with the drumbeat and finished the sequence with a bang. That always got me pumped for the show. But oh well. I still can't get enough of the show.

Stargate Atlantis was pretty good too. I didn't watch all of the first season, but it seems like the cast is coming together nicely. They seemed a bit distant in the first season, which was probably OK because they all basically met for the first time during their trip to Atlantis. But this season looks like it'll be interesting also. Dr. McKay is great comic relief, even if he's really annoying most, er, all of the time. Plus he's Canadian so he calls the Zero Point Module a "Zed Pee Em" instead of a "Zee Pee Em". Wonderful. They've also started an interesting story with Lt. Ford. He was more of a loyal supporting character during the first season but now he'll have his own story line.

What about Stargate SG-1? Well, Richard Dean Anderson has left the show. The have a new hotshot who's leading SG-1 now, but he seems to be trying to play Jack O'Neill instead of his own character (whose name I don't remember). They did manage to keep the other characters around though, so that will be good. Daniel Jackson has become somewhat annoying though. It's like he's the old Daniel Jackson from the movie and the earlier seasons before Jack O'Neill gained some respect for the guy. I don't think it'll be the same as when RDA was on the show, but I still want to see how turns out. Aside from annoying characters (that new chick is pretty annoying) it seems like there might be some promise.

Well, thanks to the Sci-Fi channel, I'll never go out on Friday nights anymore. Oh wait, I never did to begin with.

Yesterday I claimed that life is an anteater and we are all ants. I was wrong. What I really wanted to say was one of the following:

• Life is a cliff and we are all lemmings.
• Life is a pizza and we are either mushrooms, sausage, or olives.
• Life is a JPEG and we are all the lost pixels.
• Life is a box of chocolates and we are those stupid wrappers.
• Life is a dream and we haven't woken up yet.
• Life is a Sasquatch and we can't seem to find it.
• Life is a chicken sandwich on rye and it tastes good.
• Life is a whatever and we are all something related to that.

That's a bit more accurate.

There's a thingy on the SciFi channel about what they're going to show on Friday. I can't wait. I have been waiting for this Friday for the past three months. Can't it come any faster? Hooray for no-life Friday nights!

I'm in a lot of pain right now. Friday night, I figured Mt. Bonnell, the "highest point in Austin" would be a great place to catch a Texas sunrise. I guess waking up in time on Saturday would have helped that effort. Sunrise should have been around 6:30am so I got up at 6:18am and didn't make it to Mt. Bonnell until about 7am. I did catch some rising sun on my way there though.
Not much huh? It turns out that you can't catch a good sunrise on Mt. Bonnell anyway (at least, I couldn't). There were houses and trees in the way. I think you can probably get a good sunset though. But I can get one of those from my balcony...if it wasn't so frigging hot.

Feeling unsatisfied, I drove over to the Barton Creek Greenbelt where I hiked once a couple weeks ago. The trail officially starts at Zilker park and ends at Camp Craft Road. I'm not one to follow convention (unless it's convenient) so I started at Camp Craft Road, just like last time. Only this time, I took a different trail that seemed to parallel Camp Craft Road until it got to a gate that said "Private Property". So I turned around and headed back. There was a small trail that lead down the hill, which I thought would take me to the main trail. Instead, it dumped me out at some swanky, gated community. I have no idea how that happened. But I did find a spot where it might be possible to catch a sunrise. I would have gone there today, but I'm still in pain.

I made my way down to the main trail by climbing along a dried up creek. That probably wasn't the right way to do it. Last time, I hiked along the trail until I reached the Mopac Expressway overpass. This time, I kept going. It was kind of pointless though, because the creek was all dried up. I saw one or two puddles of mosquito-breeding water, but that's about it. After a while, I was getting tired and I thought I should head back. So decided to go until the Spyglass access point, which is one mile before the end of the trail at Zilker Park, and then turn around and go home. Of course, I missed the Spyglass access point and went all the way to Zilker Park. The trail itself is 7.8 miles long and with all the stupid backtracking I did, I probably went about 8 miles. Now I had to go home. It's probably good that I went to Zilker Park because I filled up my CamelBak there. The drinking fountain was really weak though so I think I lost more water than I filled up.

The hike back started out nicely. I had a peanut butter sandwich with me and lots of water. About three miles before the end of the trail, my peanut butter sandwich was just some crumbs in an plastic bag and my water supply was dropping low. And I was hungry. And my legs were in some sort of incredible pain. Those last few miles took about an hour to walk. I got back to my car at 2:30pm and headed home. On the way, I stopped by Pok-E-Jo's for some tasty BBQ and a really big cup on lemonade to go. When I got home, I tried to inhale as much of that food as possible, which only made me sick so I stumbled into the bedroom to take a nap. I woke up a few hours later to eat more food, and then I painfully went back to sleep again.

On Thursday, it rained over here. I just went to our little "gym" right when it started raining. By the time I came out, it was still just sprinkling. That felt nice though. There's nothing like the feeling of rain water mixing itself in with your sweat. But when I got back, there was some really crazy T&L. (That's Thunder and Lightening, not Texture and Lighting.) That seemed like the best time to drag my lawn chairs onto my balcony and sit outside and read. It was really nice out there with the thunder and lightening. But being the idiot that I am, every time I head thunder, I looked up, as if to see a stage hand shaking a rigid, plastic sheet next to a microphone. Dude, life is not a stage and we are not actors. Life is an anteater and we are the ants. Reading outside on a covered balcony while the rain pours next to you is great until the winds pick up and your book starts to get wet. So I went inside.

Today, it's very nice outside. No rain, no dried-up creeks, no possibility of moving my legs. I'm going to try to regain some energy for my ultra-strenuous day of thumb twiddling tomorrow.

I came home to an interesting surprise today. There was a note on my counter from the maid saying that she came in and vacuumed and washed and just all around cleaned. It was interesting. I didn't know I had maid service over here. I'm a little miffed that she did it today because this morning was the first time since I got here where I didn't wash my cereal bowl before I left for work. My excuse is that I got up late because my plane came in late and I would be late(r) for work if I had to spend time in the kitchen washing a dish so I came out. I'm also miffed that she put new sheets on my bed because I just did that a couple weeks ago. Bah. And she took my washcloth. I guess she thought it was part of the towel set that they gave me, but they didn't give me a washcloth when I arrived, which is why I was using my own. Oh well, she plopped in two more sets of towels and two washcloths this time. I guess I'm just generally miffed because I have been keeping this place pretty clean and then she comes in and cleans it. But I'm not complaining too much. The floors and carpets are all clean. And the half-ass cleaning job I did on the stove is now a full-ass cleaning job.

Yesterday, the captain said that it was about 98F in Austin when we left San Jose (about 7:15pm). By the time we arrived (around 12:20am), it had "cooled" down to 85F. Wonderful.

Here's my new car:

That's a 2004 (?) Pontiac Grand Am. It's much beefier than my old Chevy Cavalier. It's also quite a bit bigger. I don't really like big cars. And by "big" I mean anything bigger than a compact car. It is a nice ride though. The handling is pretty nice, though not as nice as my Sentra. The one thing that annoys and puzzles me is the "anti-lockout" feature. If you try to lock the door using the power locks on the door (not on the remote), the car beeps at you and you need to push the button again for the locks to lock. Eh, oh well. I'll enjoy that car while I have it.

Ooo, the next season of Battlestar Galactica is starting next week. I can't wait. SciFi was showing the whole first season tonight. I caught the last three episodes. That last scene on Galactica still tears me up even though I've seen it four or five times already. The previews for the second season look great.

OK, time to sleep. I want to have time to wash my cereal bowl tomorrow morning.

I meant to write this yesterday, but I watched fireworks from my backyard instead. And now I'm typing this up on the plane on my way to Austin.

Right after I shut off my laptop on the plane on Saturday, I looked out the window as we were passing over the Sierras. The cloud layer was just below the mountains so the mountains looked like islands in a sea of clouds. It really is pretty pretty. Then, as we got closer to land, I saw the building I work in when I'm over here. Um, yay. Also, my shuttle driver was running around looking for a woman because she thought my name is Carol. Really, I hate it when that happens. As a shuttle driver, haven't you driven past enough Carl's Jr. quality dining establishments to know that Carl is a perfectly valid and badass name? Maybe you should look out the window more often instead of paying attention to the road!

I basically zonked out at about 6pm on Saturday. I was pretty tired. As I hit my bed, I made a zonking noise and proceeded to zonk until I dezonked so I could eat food. And then I zonked out some more. But before all the zonking, I bought myself some elbow pads. They're really cool and they don't let me bend my elbows. I mean, they're really cool because they don't let me bend my elbows. Since they were so cool, I romped around the house with those on. They tend to make my elbows hot which is probably why I was able to zonk out so efficiently.

Sunday morning, I ran out of zonk fuel and got up at around 6am. For some reason, it felt like 8am. It couldn't have anything to do with the two hour time difference could it? Nah. I snagged my bike from Allen on Saturday so I could head up to Hunter's Point for that great view of all that stuff I live near. I haven't gone up there in maybe two months. The last time I went it was during the rain season and the trail was muddy and littered with ruts and gullies. It looks like someone did a fine job of patching up those obstructions though. The spots that used to deny my front tire its right to rotate are now filled with some nice loose dirt. So instead of crashing because my tire got stuck in a rut, I can crash because I slipped. Actually, now that I think about it much of the trail was covered with loose dirt so it was really slippery. There were also a lot of hikers to hit and get bonus points if I was playing Grand Theft Bicycle. I'd also need to beat myself with a stick and steal my bike from me while earning respect.

Hmm, I'm not sure where I am, but there are some mountains over there covered with snow at the very top. Let's go snowboarding!

Anyway, I made it up to Hunter's Point and with the sun just cheerfully perched above the horizon the view was great. I'll never get sick of that view. I will, however, get sick while viewing that view. By the time I got to Hunter's Point, I was getting really hungry. I forgot to bring a granola bar or some other tasty nutrients with me so I almost passed out up there. My trembling fingers were on my cell phone ready to clumsily dial the first phone number I could find so I can get dragged home. It's a good thing that I didn't because I probably would have called the voicemail lady and she's not very helpful. Instead, I just sat there panting and looking at my shoes. Looking at my shoes is surprisingly filling. I felt better after doing that. Now I know why I look down at my shoes during a conversation instead of making eye contact. I'm not shy, I'm just hungry. So next time anyone sees me looking at my shoes while talking to them, they should shove food down my throat.

My ride on Monday morning was way better. I didn't feel like passing out, but I was in a lower gear for much of the way up. At this point, most people would complain about being out of shape. I couldn't do that truthfully because I'm not out of shape. Round and lumpy is a shape.

Aside from biking and pasing out, I saw Mr. and Mrs. Smith with Allen, Sri, and Dave. It was a pretty funny movie. It wasn't a spectacular shiny, naked golden man-winning movie, but it was really entertaining. There was some clever and well-delivered jokes in there. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie deliver a very convincing discovering-my-spouse-is-an-assassin-who-is-trying-to-kill-me performance. I think any undercover assassin who married another hit-person without knowing it could identify with their troubles. Some parts of it were hard to believe though. Honestly, why would any well-trained, top-secret people whacker drop a bottle of red wine on an off-white carpet? That totally doesn't match the curtains.

On Monday, I went to the driving range to get some blisters on my thumbs. At least it doesn't limit my ability to type though. Kelly, thanks for explainig where the golf ball should be positioned for iron shots. After launching golf ball-sized, er, golf balls dangerously close to people not wearing protective gear, we tried to eat at Rojoz but it was closed. Tomanitas was closed too. But World Wraps wasn't closed so we went there and I ate some vegan food.

Overall, it was a really fun weekend. Now I'm heading back to Austin. I am keeping the window shade open in case any UFOs fly by. I need to let them know that I've shipped them their HyperStellar(tm) Blast Minder and it'll arrive in three standard galactic centons. FedEx Space doesn't use have holographic tracking numbers for shipments to their part of the galaxy so the only way to let them know is by making funny faces out of an airplane window while flying over New Mexico.

Well, all that alarm business amounted to almost nothing. I tried to go to sleep at around 9:30pm but I didn't actually fall asleep until more like 1:30am. Stage 1 of my alarm system, worked perfectly at 3:30am right down to my attacks on the snooze button. Stage 2 failed for some reason. I don't know what happened. The cron job ran but didn't do anything. I woke up to senseless sqeaks coming from the ipod. I prpbably wouldn't have gotten up then, but I wanted to find out why stage 2 never executed. I turned off stage 4 before it happened, since I was up already.

Driving around at 4:30am with only two hours of sleep is really annoying. I almost fell asleep a few times. I'm still wondering how I made it to the airport without making any U-turns. It turns out that the rental place doesn't open utnil 5am so I had to wait a few minutes to return my big pimpin' Chevy Cavalier. And here I was thinking I was going to be late. Bah.

Right now, I'm sitting in a plane typing this with one hand because the other hand is holding my second cup of black coffee. We're about 25 minutes out now so soon, ooo, so soon, I'll be home. It's supposed to be about 58F over in San Jose. That's a welcome change from lows of 75F. Ah, can't wait. (Of course, I'm typing this locally on my laptop and by the time anyone else reads this, I'll have been on the ground for a while. It would be cool if I could post this in the air.)

I'm heading home again tomorrow morning. My flight is at 6:20am. Why did I pick such an early flight? Because I'm stupid. I thought traffic (land and air) might be a hassle this afternoon so I decided to leave the day after. But considering the parking lot over here is emptier than a theater showing Gigli, everyone already left yesterday. Stupidity also lead me to believe that I would arrive back home at around noon. Get ready for this double-dose of stupidity: My flight back will get into Austin at about 11:57pm on Tuesday. I saw that, thought it was the arrival time for my flight to San Jose, decided that pm is in the morning and concluded that I would get there at about noon.

It'll take me about 20 to 25 minutes to get to the airport from my apartment, so I should leave for the airport no later than 4:30am, just to be safe. It takes me 10 to 20 minutes to end up not on my bed and I like to give myself 30 minutes to wash up, get dressed, and slowly eat a bowl of cereal (Grape Nut Flakes is the menu) so I need to regain consciousness by 3:50am at the very latest. Waking up will be a problem. Here's my MARWUS DTTPIE (Multiple Alarm Redundant Wake-Up System, Don't Try To Pronounce It Edition) for tomorrow morning:

1. 3:30am - Alarm clock set to buzzer. This should be enough, but I have developed cat-like reflexes for hitting the snooze button, even in a semi-comatose state.
2. 3:40am - Laptop streaming from Digitally Imported Vocal Trance channel. I set a cronjob for 3:40am (actually 1:40am because I keep my lappy on West-Side time) to launch an xterm that will stream music using mplayer. The laptop will also be away from the bed so I'll need to get off of my bed to turn it off.
3. 3:45am - IPod playing music through earbuds. I don't have speakers here so I stuck a cheap pair of earbuds into the IPod and set it to play random music. The earbuds are hanging off of my headboard, so I should hear something. It'll be really quiet though so this should just annoy me to awake-ness.
4. 3:50am - Cell phone ringtone playing some waltz. I'll need to remember to turn off silent mode on my phone for this one. This ringtone also vibrates so if the cheerful waltz doesn't get me dancing, the buzzing will. The cell phone will also be away from the bed, even further away than the laptop.

Hopefully, one of those alarms will wake me up. If I don't wake up though, I deserve to miss my flight.

Normally, I use my alarm clock which is tuned to a classical music channel over here. Using classical music to wake up isn't a good idea because it just turns into soundtrack music for my dreams. Imagine being chased through the tundra by a giant gorilla who wants to show you vacation pictures from his trip to Naboo when all of the sudden you hear that Sugar Plum Fairy song. That messes all sorts of things up because space-faring gorillas do not look good in leotards. And neither do I. Instead of one gorilla, there will be 11 gorillas wearing tutus and leotards. I will be wearing a similar costume but I'll have a wand because I became the fairy. Apparently that doesn't help me wake up because I enjoy being the fairy. I return to the world when I hear the radio host tell me that it'll hit 100 degrees today with 70% humidity again. The reason I wake up is because the sugar on the Plum Fairy will turn into a sticky mess in those conditions. I must wake up before my leotards get ruined.

Right. Well I'll be home tomorrow. See y'all around.