I almost bought an iphone last year.  But the cost of breaking my contract with sprint, and the thought of a faster, better, iphone a year later managed to keep me from pulling my instant gratification card out and just buying one.  This year is different.  I let my Sprint contract expire.  As you saw from the previous post my attempts to get att support to be helpful have failed miserably.  But, in the morning I will be heading out to a local att store to pick up a phone.  Rumor has it that each store will  have 40 8gb and 40 16gb iphones with more to arrive mid-day.  Apple stores supposedly have 300 or so and more to be delivered tomorrow as well.  In Austin, I’ve been by 2 stores this evening, my buddy praxis has been by 2 stores and our other buddy Hector has been by 2 stores - all say the same thing and all of them are free of apple fan boys camping out.

Tomorrow, I’ll be up early with my laptop, camera, and lawn chair (if needed) to find the best store to pick up my iphone.  Really I’m just looking to be one of the first 10-20 or so to ensure I get one in the morning, and since Austin has lots of att stores and 2 separate apple stores I think I’m ok.  I’ll take some pictures while I’m there and post when I get a chance.

It’s actually interesting, I went to my first non-denominational church on easter of this year.  Now another Church in the Austin area is doing this:

Members of the HighPoint Fellowship, non-denominational church in Cedar Park, will buy down the price of regular unleaded gas to $2.49 at the Exxon station, 1900 Bagdad Road in Cedar Park, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Sunday. Customers will get to pay that low, low price for their gas as the church pays for the rest.

Austin-area gas prices hit an average of $3.44 this past week, according to AAA Texas.

The last time Austin-area gas prices were at the $2.50 range was in March of last year.

Wow, now that’s cool stuff. I just hope if I manage to get out there, people are respectful when they go to fill up and don’t fight over the lines.

In case you missed it, Chillville was on 101x this morning in Austin.  I always try to catch just a little bit of it when I’m in town.  Today I found out about Gnarles Barkley’s new Album “The Odd Couple“.  This was Full Monty’s Catch of the day.   I have to agree after listening to the album that many more of the songs on this track are - bareable.   It seemed like the last album that came out only had one or two good songs - especially Crazy - very radio friendly and even today if you played it, it would still get stuck in your head. 

Today also was the very wet Cap 10K.  And our very own figment did it in 1hr and 2minutes and liz did it in 56minutes.  Congrats! 

I just bought my tickets to see Salvage Vangaurd’s Intergalatic Nemesis for the 3rd time.  This time it will be at the Paramount for one night only on May 9th.  You can still pick up tickets but all the good stuff has been sold out -rather all the close up stuff has been sold out - I got in the A seating. 

Last night the power went out in my subdivision.  I decided to not call because any one of the 120 other homes was prob. calling in.  Sure enough by about 9:50 a repair truck pulls up in my cul-du-sac with a repair man stepping out.  I walked outside and greeted him and asked him what was going on - he said “Not a good evening with the underground stuff,” he then asked where the underground box was located - thinking it was in my backyard.  It actually is directly behind my yard in the neighbors with a fence dividing it.  So I told the repair guy to go around the block and I’d shine the flashlight for him to see which house it was.

He drove around and walked into the back yard, where I was leaning over the fence with my light - and he discovered two things.  One the box had an ant hill on half the size of it, and two the other side of the box was covered in a giant bush in attempts to hide it.  “Guess they won’t like it when I chain saw this ‘motha down” he said, obviously a bit disgruntled, and proceeded to walk back to his truck.  Coming back he yanked the chainsaw Christmas Vacation style and proceeded to trim that bush down so he could get at it.   After another hour he and his other repair men left, unable to resolve the issue with it - and they searched for more problems elsewhere in the subdivision.  I gave up and went to bed and woke up to the sound of, no power still. 

I manually raised my garage and pulled my car out and as I drove out of the subdivision there they were, 4 trucks all working hard trying to figure out what the deal was.  Since I was a bit late I didn’t bother to ask what the deal was, figuring I’d call the customer service line once I got to work.  There in lies my frustration.  I should have stopped and talked to the “American/English is my first language Repair men,” where I could have gotten the poop on what was going on.

Now Austin (and surrounding areas) have several different choices for power, there is the Austin Energy Company, Perdernales Electric, Reliant, and several others.  But we went with TXU because of the 2 year contract we got with a discount.  So when I call customer service for TXU (Texas Utilities or Texas Electric and Gas) I expect to talk with a Texan, someone local.  But NOOOOOOOOOOO… I’m talking to Bangalore, India.  I’m talking to someone who can’t even get my address right after I’ve repeated it 3 times.  It’s not hard.   Then I realize that I’m talking to a company that has the highest customer dis-statisfaction rating.  Apparently there are some others that have come across the same problem.

I then realized that TXU outsourced my safety and security to another country, and even though I had told these people I had a medical condition, I didn’t get any help, nor could they help me as they weren’t even on our part of the globe.

Moving on, after my useless customer service rep figured out where I was located she then transferred me to someone else because I was in the wrong queue.  Mind you I called the 800 number, choose to speak to someone about an outage, yet I still some how ended up in the wrong place? The 2nd person I talked to was just as bad and asked me all the same questions the first person did,  but let me know that by 11am power “should” be restored. 

I await anxiously.

[ratings]

Last night Jenn, Blake, and I drove downtown amidst the craziness that was the last of SXSW, found a decent place to park and trekked to the new Alamo Draft House.  This was our first time at the new one which is now located in the old Ritz.  It is slightly larger than the original downtown location in that it has 2 screens instead of just one.  Mondo Tees is also tightly integrated in the corner of the theatre as well for all your 80’s style t-shirts.

We got to the sold out showing about 45 minutes early and had to wait around for a bit prior to seating but once we were down, we enjoyed our perfect seats as others struggled to find a good spot.  For me it was my first time seeing this type of event, and I can tell you I’ll be back again for the next one.  For those of you familiar with Mystery Science Theatre 3000, Master Pancake is the same thing cept imagine watching it on crack.  The Austinist did a great interview with them this past February.

This February, Master Pancake plays host to the reunion of two original cast members from the Sinus Show: John Erler (the tall bald one) and Owen Egerton (the compact ginger nut), who, along with pal Joe Parsons, lampoon Back to the Future (1985), a film so iconic that for a brief period in the mid-80’s it convinced people that DeLoreans, Burger King, and Huey Lewis and the News were hip. Michael J. Fox (FAMILY TIES, TEEN WOLF) plays, well, Michael J. Fox — or Marty Mc Fly as he’s called here — who travels back in time in order to save his professorial pal ‘Doc’, played by Christopher Lloyd (CLUE, STAR TREK III). Along the way, Mc Fox ends up inventing Rock ‘n Roll, changing the future, and almost dating his own mom. Oedipally complex, this movie features a brilliant performance from indie-icon Crispin Glover as Marty’s exquisitely milquetoast dad, who eventually learns how to sock it to Biff. Time Mc Flys when you’re having fun, and you’ll be having 1.21 jigowatts of it this February, with film-embellishers John, Owen and Joe, weekends at the Alamo Ritz, Village, and So. Lamar. (John)

Seeing one of my old favorites of Back to the Future was a great way to be introduced, aside from the many Michael J. Fox Parkinson’s jokes.  The comedians stopped the movie in the middle to act out in full costune a little skit in which, Marty has the shakes.  I actually felt sorry for the guy doing it as he was getting pretty damn tired jumping around.  All in all very cool, catch the next Master Pancake Theatre the rest of this month doing ET.  Unfortunatly for you, this was the last Back to the Future they will be doing.

[ratings]

It’s Sunday and its time to tune in to Chillville with Austin’s original radio program for electropop, and downbeat electronic music from 9-12.   Listen to the live stream here.

 The coolest thing is that the chillville website posts their playlist up on their site for you to find out who is playing so you can pick up the music via itunes.  Or download it off some other way…but yeah, you should support the artists. So if you do download it without say paying for it,  go to the artists website and send them some money instead of those evil record companies…Too bad more artists don’t have donate boxes on their sites.