Outta shape
So apparently watching baseball games DOES NOT do a body good. I finally got out on my bike down here after getting some maps of the area. Theres a good amount of bike lanes on austin roads, and oddly (to me anyway) most highways are okay to bike on. Not that its a fun ride but thats like taboo in the northeast. Todays ride was nothing intense but boy have I lost my form. It seems every year I start the season in worse shape than the year before. One of the obvious benefits with living here is that you can ride outside 12 months of the year, so hopefully the 2006 start off in much better condition than right now. But hey, its a gorgeous day and it was great to just get out on the bike, even if for under an hour and a half. And. I. Will. Ride. Stronger!

New Music

Okkervil River - Black Sheep Boy
Since these guys are Austinites I hope to see these guys around town sometime, they were just in town supporting the Decemberists, but that was a couple weeks before I got here. I'm not as crazy about this one as their last effort, but there is more polish and the songwriting is as strong as expected. I do expect this one to grow on me some.

Gaslight Radio - Z Nation
This actually came out in 2003, but on a small australian label. These guys were the best musical find during my stint in Sydney and I wish they got more press. I have a feeling we might not be seeing much for from these guys. They borrow from Pavement a bit, and the lead singers voice sounds like someone I can't put my finger on, but it definitely fits in well with the music.

British Sea Power - Open Season
Bought this because 1) they are compared in allmusic.com to the arcade fire, 2) they are playing here in a couple weeks and 3) this release was supposedly Bossanova-esque. Not a great album, but not bad. Oh, and I have to be in New Orleans that weekend now, so I won't be seeing these guys any time soon.

Bloc Party - Silent Alarm
Yet another in the whole Franz Ferdinand/Rapture mold, major buzz band of the moment. I can't listen to sadcore and alt country all the time.

MLB Extra Innings
Has been awesome. With the exception that the broadcasting team is the home teams announcers giving us no choice in the matter, I can't complain about this package. Well actually now that I think of it, it would be great if they kept the postgame shows on as well - the broadcast is over not 60 seconds after the final out - it would be nice to have some sort of recap of the game you just watched for the past 3 hours.
Its been great watching the west coast games (they aren't quite so late being in the central time zone). I'm really liking the Dodgers games especially. First off, they are playing some decent ball right now. Second, you've got DLowe on the squad now, Crazy Milton Bradley, and one of my fantasy baseball starters in JD Drew. He was money for me last year once he started playing every day, and I don't think the move to Dodger stadium will hurt him too much as his value wasn't power alone. But probably the best part of Dodger games is the voice of Vin Skully. Yeah, his "...BEHIND THE BAG, AND THE METS WIN IT" call in game 6 is chiseled in the recesses of my brain, but he's in a class by himself. He's this era's Curt Gowdy. The cadence of his calls is in perfect rhythm to the game. Plus, he's always got some upbeat/innocent/corny story about the players batting or hitting, but nobody pulls this off as genuinely as Vin. I hope he's doing play by play for another 20 years so one more generation of baseball fans can hear how its supposed to be done.

The weather here
Its not hot here in Austin yet (average high of about 82), but whats very unlike new england is that spring days or even summer days that top out at 82 frequently plummet to the 50s after dark. Here it'll be 1030 at night and its still 72. Overnight lows do apparently get into the 60s, but ever so slowly. I haven't bothered to turn the AC on yet, but clearly thats just a matter of time.

Move related whinge

April 11: The Sox home opener/coronation and ballgame on Monday was incredible. Got there in plent y of time, soaked it all in. Sun hit our seats before the first pitch, and being somewhat out of the wind it felt a lot warmer than it was (just what you hope on sunny days in April, a 45 degree day feeling like a 65 degree day). Didn't get stoopid or anything, made it back home early evening. Packed everything but a couple of random socks before calling it a night.

April 12-14: Fly down/move day. The move went okay i guess, not perfect, but I guess the plans were kinda tight so it was easy to get a li leffed up. I flew in around 3 in the afternoon the day before the movers were to arrive with all of my crap and crappy car. Corralled all my 4 bags and got on one of those shuttle busses to my hotel. Uneventful evening, other than the fact that the sox game was on ESPN so unlike the past week and a half at my folks house in westport I was able to watch the game. Weds morning I took my time getting out and about as the movers were scheduled to be there around 4PM and the cable guyswere scheduled to be there in the afternoon as well. The electricity I wasn't sure about, even if they needed to come onsite. I had a cab driver pick me up before 10 and bring me out to my landlords place to pick up the keys (I was hoping they would have met me at the property but oh well, I'm expensing the cab ride anyway). Got to my place before 11. Waited. Got a coffee and lunch before 1, then got a call from the cable guys at 130. I was able to stall them for an hour. Electricity (and water) got turned on at 2. Cable guys came at 230, they set it up without the television as hoped. My laptop was here so we could verify I could get on the net. I called the movers to find out how they were doing. Thats when it got a lil messed up. Apparently the job before mine the customers wive got a stroke so delivery had to get pushed back to thurs AM. The movers put me up in a hotel for the night, again catching an ESPN Sox/yanks game. Thursday morning the movers game, got everything in the apartment before 10AM.

April 15-17: Kitchen is done, its nice. The whole apartment is nice. Not big, but not small either. Its 50s styled, cupboards all over the kitchen and bath, old fixtures in the bath, built in chest of drawers between bedroom and bathroom. I bought a kittycorner desk so I actually put all my work crap plus all my bills and personal crap in one place...something I haven't been able to do for some time. Set up my entertainment center, what a piece of work that is. Even without a cd player, tape deck, or record player its crazy. DVD, Tivo, home theatre, digital cable, VCR. Actually the VCR isn't even connected to anything. I think I used it twice in my last place, so I'm going to let it ride. The major thing I had to do apart from connecting all those RCA, speaker, and coax wires was to set up tivo. In my last place, I didn't have a phone which for some archaic reason is required by tivo. In this apartment though, I was safe. Or so I thought. I bought telephone (landline) service from Time warner cable. Hottt shit I thought, having a phone that wouldn't go out when a cloud passed (though the cellphone reception in my apt is stellar). Plugged in Tivo and told it I'm using phone service now (not network, because my router had to be RMAed and I need to do this damn guided setup over the phone). It made its first call (toll free). Success!!! Man this is gonna be SWEET!!! Tivo will be able to unleash its powers on digital cable, and a pretty damn extended version of it ta boot! Plus the package deal I bought came with all the HBOs. I've never had HBO. Never got into Sopranos. I'm thinking, do I get a season pass to deadwood? Back to guided setup. I had to hookup these IR transmitters to my digital cable box so the tivo box can send commands to change channels etc. Hey, thats one less remote I'll need (I counted 6 in my apartment). Cool, thats done. Now its time for the local call to get the programming info and I am Golden. One error followed another, first it was failed to get account status. I went online and changed my contact info to Austin, just in case. Other times it wouldn't even connect. Tried another phone number. Same thing. Tried another. Got past the account status, even got to the downloading section. 'Call Interrupted' errors now. Oh crap. WTF. I went online and apparently Tivo doesn't like digital phone service. Plus they throw in the 'it will harm your modem' warning. Maybe it can, but if I'm not mistaken, digital operates at less than 30volts, while analog phone service is like 100 or 200 volts. I could look up the numbers, but its something like that. Okay, checked the tivo sites and apparently you can set ,#401 as a dialing prefix and this will bypass the phone and just go to the network connection. Sweet! I powered it all down so the tivo can pick up an IP from the cable modem. Augh no! again, no go. checked some more tivo sites, and apparently it won't work straight from the modem, you need a router. Well, mines broke. Actually I have a feeling that since I set up the tivo to use the phone BEFORE I set up guided setup, I made it impossible to bypass the phone. I could be wrong, but I'm not betting the farm on being able to connect once I get a router from Linksys. For now, the Tivo sits unplugged.

April 18: Gas!?! I called the electrical company before I moved. I called the cable provider before that. Gas? I sorta forgot about that one. I called them up on friday morning, after I realized the hot water was not getting hot. They said they couldn't come until Monday. They asked if I wanted a call before they came. Sure. Its 8:30PM and at this point theres still no gas, and no calls from the gas co.