Yearly Archives: 2005

In Honor of Halloween… Name That Candybar

Fun, Funny

the best thing about Halloween… CANDY!!!!

i don’t really give much thought about the origins of Halloween… i don’t care what it once was… what it is today, in America is quite simply a day that kids (for the most part) get to dress up as something fantastic… be it scary or just plain fun… then they get to go door to door to collect free yummy candy. how can that be a bad thing???

so in honor of all the great candies out there i found this >> Name That Candybar Game
just playing it makes me want to put a towel in the back collar of my shirt (as i did when i was young) and go door to door as superman… and mob them for their goodies.

for non candy people… i hope u safely enjoy the other festivities tonight… haunted houses, costumue parties, scary movie get togethers… turning out the lights and acting like your not home and watching TV… whatever floats your boat.

Something the Lord Made

Movies

just thought i’d recommend a movie i watched a couple of weekends ago “Something the Lord Made”

i had it on my blockbuster list for a while… i can’t remember how it got there… but anyhow… a few weeks ago i caught a bit of it somewhere in the middle and watched a couple of minutes of it and thought ‘this doesn’t look good’ but i never took it off my blockbuster list (btw, i get videos in the mail from Blockbuster if you’re wondering what i mean by ‘list’) anyhow, i got it in the mail last week and this weekend beore wrapping it back up to send back i figured i may as well try to watch it. boy i’m glad i did… it’s a really good movie. its a historical drama… so if you’re into that… true stuff. its crazy because it deals with segregation and the medical sciences in the early-mid 20th century. it’s a real eye0-opener to how un-progressed things were.

so if u get a chance check it out!

Cabelas & Fishing

Fun

i went down to Buda Texas this weekend to go checkout the Cabelas. the store was pretty cool. if u are into hunting, fishing, hiking, boating, wildlife or anything related you’d probably really like the store. i’ve gotten their catalogs for several years now because they’ve just got soooo many neat items. anyhow, that store is like walking right into the catalog… they had everything. even better they also had some really awesome animal trophy displays… i mean it was half store half museum… o yeah and i guess half restaurant also (is that too many halves?? o well) my favorite part tho was checking out the gun display… they actually had a shotgun appraised at $139,000!! not to mention all the other extremely valuable guns they had. if u get a chance check it out, i was in there 2 hours and left only because i had to be somewhere at a certain time… otherwise i could’ve easily spent another couple hours in there. o yeah one of the main reasons i went was to check out fishing poles… thanks to my pals Benny & James and our weekend at PK i’ve found myself with a fishing license and i haven’t fished in like a decade or more… so the bass in Texas better watch out… i’m coming to get em.

Shiner Bocktoberfest 2005 – Audioslave

Fun, Music

yesterday evening i went to see AUDIOSLAVE at the Shiner Bocktoberfest (not Rocktoberfest). o man…. my ears are still ringing… hehe. it was a blaaaaaaaaaaaast!!!

there were several bands/artists there but for several reasons we only got there in time to see Good Charolette & AUDIOSLAVE. Seether played before GC and I had hoped we’d make it in time to check them out, but it didn’t happen. that was ok, because all i really came for was AUDIOSLAVE. and guess what… i was not let down 😀 Audioslave was … was… was… ;kajbgoe;lkav GOOD.

when they came out it was full blown riot for several songs. then they busted out some Soundgarden… Spoonman and they crowd loved it, not my fave but the energy was good. later Cornell said they had something special to play for us… then the soft intro to I Am the Highway was brutally busted open with a Rage Against the Machine Medley…. O MY GOODNESS… the pit that i was on the edge of became about twice as big… placing me pretty much in the middle… 😀 which was fine for a while… because i was too busy jumping around (in my own world) before i realized i was in another world… one of elbows and a$$holes haha… so i eventually made my way back to the edge (with the help of a few others) just in time for Rage’s Killing in the Name Of…. holy smokes!! ok so eventually things cooled down as Cornell was left on stage alone with an acoustic guitar…. the lights go dark… us and the stars and a campfire rendition of Black Hole Sun…. VERY NICE! now what?? i’ll tell u what… Cornell started telling us how he wrote a song for Johnny Cash (btw, cash recorded Rusty Cage) but Cash told him that he felt like it had too many chords, so Cornell said he felt like that was OK because he thinks Audioslave got it right. and boy did they. in fact i was happy to learn that the song he was talking about is my favorite Audioslave song: I am the Highway. so there he went playing and singing (with a lot of help from the crowd) then halfway through the band comes out of the darkness to plug back in and finish it up… very cool. after that i’m thinking… ok now what?? and well… they left us with a sweat… as they played a couple more burners and left as the fireworks show (which was weak… but hey… better than nothing) wrapped it up.

then i got a shirt and left.

hehe… ok there was some more interesting stuff that happened later… but i’ll leave u with my recolllections of Audioslave.

anybody else want to comment on all the other goodness at Bocktoberfest feel free!!

Motion Graphics Artist – Demo Reel

General

my brother, Shaun Collings, is putting together a demo reel for his various motion graphic design projects he’s worked on in the recent past. i’m hoping he can use it to find a job down here near Austin. right now he’s in Denver and has been contemplating moves to Los Angeles, Chicago, New York and other major cities where motion graphics jobs are more commonplace. he’s been busy in Denver doing freelance work but is thinking he might want to hire on to a company for the stability’s sake. he’s finally going to put a nice website design together and then i’m going to help him build it out.

he updated his new site with some recent clips if you want to check them out >> Motion Graphic Artist

No Water or Bread in Austin

Business & Economy, Funny

how lame is this… last night i went to the grocery store to get a few things to get me through to this weekend. water and bread were on my list. i went to Albertsons and the bread aisle looked like it had been hit by a tornado… so i sifted through the debri and found a loaf worthy of salvaging. several aisles later i came to the water… and it too had been plundered. well i found a couple of the last precious few gallons of purified water and went on my way, but i was thinking… ‘man did the delivery truck for water and bread not show up this week or what???’

later last night one of my cousins called and told me i better get gas in my truck if i needed it, cause there are crazy lines and stations running out of gas. ‘what’s going on?’ i asked, and she told me that because of the hurricane headed towards Galveston everyone is stocking up on bread and water and gas.

i just gotta say this… i can live without bread for a few weeks… a few months even… probably don’t really need the stuff anyhow (according to Dr. Atkins) and i think i could survive on tap water too. i mean i dont really like the taste of tap water… but i would survive just fine. now gas… that’s a whole other ballgame… don’t get me started on a rant about how the stations and oil companies take advantage of everyones doom and gloom outlook when it comes to gas prices… sheesh.

the sad thing is this… i can picture all these upper middle class folks getting in their monster SUV’s filling up to go to the grocery store, then buying as much bottled water as possible… and they gotta have their bread… heaven forbid they go without bread for a while… then they fill up with gas on the way home.

for bread in water… the things i thought (when i was a kid) we fed to prisoners.

seems a little extreme to me. people need to calm down. yes these storms suck and yes they will impact us negatively in many ways… but i’m pretty sure Mrs. Baird’s and Sparklets will be ok… the only reason there might be a bread or purified water shortage is because of all the “sky is falling” people out there encouraging the corporations to raise prices and slow down supplies and boost their profit margins through the roof. so think about it… please.

Report Search Engine Spam to Yahoo, MSN and Google

Programming, Search Engines

a client that we do web hosting for was wanting to report a competitors spam tactics to the various major search engines (i call them the big 3… kinda like Ford,GM,Chrysler were once dubbed, but for the new online information age). anyhow, i figured i’d share these links with everyone in case you ever get an urge to tattle on your competitors for doing the things u want to do… but have to much respect for the online community or too much fear from being banned* to do yourselves.

Google: https://www.google.com/contact/spamreport.html

Yahoo!: http://add.yahoo.com/fast/help/us/ysearch/cgi_reportsearchspam

MSN: You can do a search for each phrase the site is ranked on, and then click the link near the bottom of the page that says “Help us improve.” Or, you can submit via this form: http://support.msn.com/eform.aspx?productKey=search&page=support_home_options_form_byemail&ct=eformts

Texas Football

Fun, Sports

i’m a football fan, have been since i was a little kid. i loved playing when i was younger. growing up in Ft. Worth Texas my early dreams were to play football for the Texas Longhorns and then on to the Dallas Cowboys. i’m sure this is and was the dream of many youngsters. unfortunately i broke my leg, dislocated my ankle and tore several tendons in my ankle during an 8th grade football game (i was running back an interception). that ruined my dreams… sniffle sniffle… that’s life. however, i have to say it’s a happy weekend for me when the Longhorns and the Cowboys both put up a victory as they did this weekend!!

“How bout them Cowboys!” and “Hook’em Horns!”

o by the way… sorry but i’m not a Houston Texans fan. some of my friends are… but i grew up disliking the Oilers (even with much respect for Warren Moon) we’ll see how long the city of Houston embraces a losing team, that they have with the Texans, as i recall they never did like the constant losing the Oilers served up for lunch every week…. and so ‘they loaded up the truck and moved to Tennessee’ hehe.

Texas football… from high school to college to the pros… one thing is for sure most Texans (not the team) love football… me included.

Texas Longhorns FootballDallas Cowboys Football

Gas Prices

Apps, Business & Economy

with gas prices getting waaaaay out of hand, i discovered a pretty interesting site: GasBuddy.com. it is updated by visitors to the site (so i if u want to help update i guess u can) store owners should definitely be plugging in updates!! hope it helps u save a little $$

>> Gas Prices

Texas Longhorn Football Game

Sports

On Saturday I went to the Texas Longhorn football game here in Austin. I was very happy when my boss called me on Friday afternoon and told me that he was a season ticket holder and had an extra seat available for the game and wanted to know if I was interested in going with him. So on Saturday we headed out to the stadium and watched a brutal game were Texas scored 60 points compared to Louisiana-Lafayette’s 3 points. There wasn’t much competition obviously but I’d much rather sit through a blowout where my team is winning then to see a game where they lose. We had a lot of fun and everybody at the stadium was really into it as you would expect of a college football game. My boss has some pretty good seats. Longhorns played so good that we actually got to see fourth string and fifth string running backs getting some playing time as well as the second and third string quarterbacks. It looks like Vince Young and the Texas passing game should be pretty pretty good this year and I have to say I was really impressed with all of the running backs Texas has. I think their running game is gonna be pretty solid for the next couple of years. I was especially impressed by Jamaal Charles who set a UT freshman debut record with 135 yards and a touchdown on 14 carries. After the game I saw on television that Jamaal Charles was actually more than just your typical better than average freshmen running back but he actually holds some national records for track and field. An announcer on TV said that Charles is an Olympic quality runner, which after the game I would have to say that I could easily agree with those statements. So that was pretty much the highlight of my weekends it was a blast and I hope to see many more longhorn games in Austin. –Hook ‘Em Horns

p.s. I know my Grandfater (A HUGE TCU FAN) was as happy as I and almost all the other Longhorn fans to see the Horn Frogs beat the Sooners!!!