Off The Ground

I’m officially leaving BKWLD for ground(ctrl). Bitter. Sweet. The building is only one block from my bus stop, and I’ll have a window, but I’ll miss my fancy digs in the BKWLD bldg, and my friends and projects I’m leaving behind.

Happy Yolobus Fare Increase Day

My fare went up from $2 to $3. While the reasons Yolobus gives for these increases (pdf link) do make clear sense, Yolobus does need to consider that these extremely steep rate increases are sudden and come at a time not all of us can afford to pay them. It is their choice to risk reducing ridership rather than cut hours or stop routs that no one uses.

Confessions of A Movie Hater

Most people claim to love movies, and a large majority of them admit to some sort of love/hate or love/love infatuation with the Academy awards. I never considered myself a movie hater, but given the rampant obsession most folks seem to have with the medium that I don’t share, there can only be one explanation.

Yolobus Increasing Rates Up To 50% on April Fool’s Day

Besides the dwindling value of my various IRAs and 401ks, I've been largely unaffected by the economic down-turn thus far. That is until Yolobus announced their 37.5% 2009 rate hike (PDF link)! I think it’s finally cheaper to drive again. Time for some more math.

Why I Don’t Webmail

I’ve never liked webmail. I’ve always looked at it as a hack to get around the rules of your over-bearing corporate IT department. Many of my friends consider Gmail’s web interface to be the ultimate email application. While I do applaud Google’s innovation, I prefer Apple Mail. This is why.

Bass Hero

The Hot Club of Cowtown played The Palms last night, and I got to go! It was my first time. Their bass player, Jake Erwin, is the closest thing someone like me has to a guitar hero. I got a rare chance to talk to him about his set-up and was slightly jarred by what he had to say.

The Difference

There are a few important differences between the box on the left and the box on the right. Allow me to highlight them for you ...

My Favorite Music In 2008

Everyone is publishing their top picks of everything for 2008. I thought it would be fun to suspend my boycott of top _____ lists, and publish a list of music I loved the most this year. However, rather than contaminate my picks with what I want you to think I’m into at the moment, I have published actual statistics from my Last.fm profile.

Barack Obama, Rick Warren, and Megaforce

Barack Obama has chosen a respected Christian preacher to give his inaugural invocation. I think this is a smart move, despite the fact that Rick Warren creeps me the hell out. Let us also not forget that Barack Obama is a same-sex marriage opposing Christian.

Tolerance

Every Sunday, we have dinner with some friends of ours who are very agreeable Christian folk. Our kids are close to the same ages, and the dad and I have been good friends for many years.

Our family isn’t religious, and we have yet to have the big Jesus/Mohammed/Zeus/etc. talk with our kids. When our daughter, Ella (6 years old), sat down with her friend (also 6 years old) to a pretend dinner in Ella’s bedroom last night, her friend suggested they bow their heads and pray to Jesus before they eat, and she began to fold her hands.

Ella looked at her hands with some confusion, trying to mimic her friend. When she couldn’t figure out what she was doing, she suggested, “How ’bout we rochambeau?”

First Week Wrap Up

We made it through the first week, and it was surprisingly less hard than I expected.

It’s A Girl!

We have another girl! Oh, boy ...

We’re having a baby tomorrow

Kristyn is scheduled for a caesarean section tomorrow morning. ”Cut time” is at 8 AM. Yeah, it’s totally weird ... but in a cool way.

How We Give Thanks

In my household, we don't travel for Thanksgiving. It's just Kristyn and I and the kids, and any friends who don't have anything else to do on the holiday.

Frustration Free Packaging

My sincerest kudos to Amazon for their daunting Frustration Free Packaging initiative.

Balancing Monotony

It takes a lot of work to stay motivated in a part time band. These are some of the things the Bottom Dwellers struggle with from time to time. 

Take The Bus To Work

I was inspired to start taking the bus to work a few months ago. Recently, I got over my lazy morning routine and went for it.

thebigreason TinyMCE Skin

Moxicode System’s TinyMCE javascript rich text editor is my choice for the content management systems and web applications I build. It’s highly configurable and widely supported. It’s also ugly as fucking sin. So I made my own skin.

Gambling with Fire

Smoke alarm batteries always fail at night. Even if you play by the rules and change your batteries at the beginning or end of daylight savings time, non-direct wire alarms often fail before the year is up. All we ask is for a reasonable notification when it is time to change our batteries. A pleasant chime, a sexy voice, a cute icon, a reasonable hour ... it’s time for a redesign. I decided to use the 30 to 40 minute intervals between the chirps of my failing alarm batteries this very early morning to bring it up with customer service.

And We’re Back

I’m finally WordPress free! thebigreason is now unified and powered by a 100% custom blogging engine. My blog, my portfolio and my music now live in the same place, and there is plenty of room left over for anything else I want to put here as well

Down

After upgrading to WordPress 2.5, my blog's admin area has become mostly unusable. There will continue to be lul in new posts as I move to a custom publishing system. WordPress has regularly disappointed me for years. The fact that I stuck with it for this long is a testament to my laziness. 

Maybe You Aint So Different After All

Expansion on Craig Hockenberry's comparison of iTunes Store partnerships and App Store partnerships. 

Wasted Youth

When I was 14, I got really into Wasted Youth. The band ... The English band from the UK, not the hardcore band from LA. They're kind of obscure. So obscure, in fact, that iTunes, Amazon.com, AllMusic.com, and Last.FM, can't seem to tell the difference between them.