So we talked about the origin of the word Xmas in church a few weeks ago, and I wanted to share. Apparently Xmas as a substitute for Christmas is religious, from wikipedia (search:Xmas):

The word “Christ” and its compounds, including “Christmas”, have been abbreviated for at least the past 1,000 years, long before the modern “Xmas” was commonly used. “Christ” was often written as “XP” or “Xt”; there are references in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle as far back as 1021 AD. This X and P arose as the uppercase forms of the Greek letters χ and ρ), used in ancient abbreviations for Χριστος (Greek for “Christ”), and are still widely seen in many Eastern Orthodox icons depicting Jesus Christ. The labarum, an amalgamation of the two Greek letters rendered as ☧, is a symbol often used to represent Christ in Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox Christian Churches.[1]

All you atheists are on notice to come up with a new way to mock the birth of the Christ child.

But hopefully you’ve learned something. I like to learn things. I guess this is why I have no desire to buy this new product from the people who brought you “The War on Christmas” - Brawndo.

Sorry I haven’t written much lately. As my blog pen pals you deserve better.

But the move took a lot out of me, and we didn’t have internet for a while. And what Internet we did have was a blistering 386kbps. Apparently they’ve upped it to the super speedy 768 kbps. Which technically means at the very least we need a discount. Cause their 786kbps service costs $5 less a month than what we’re paying.

But I’m feeling blue cause today is my last day working downtown. I’m then going to be moving to the hole of humanity that is office space off of 360. If you like views of hills studded with ugly architechture, then it’s the place for you! Also if you like to drive up and down 20 mile highways with no cross streets! Thrill to accidents that back up traffic for hours!

And this office is the exact same location that DMi was when I started. Even down to the same floor. Granted they own the 2/3 of the floor that Digital Motorworks did not own at the time, so I’m not in the exact same office. But I get to use the same bathroom which I think is close enough. I can take the stairs down for a smoke if I wanted. And still smoked.

I don’t really want to go back to where I’ve been.

And I have to finish the Automat tonight/early tomorrow morning. This is first draft number 8. I’ll probably be better tomorrow afternoon. Speaking of the Automat. Be sure to Join us under the Oak for the reading of my new play, won’t you? You know you want to check out our super-cool mid-century modern ranch:

Fresh off the success of Little Murders, Loaded Gun Theory presents a reading of our next production, The Automat, a NEW play by LGT resident playwright, Timothy Thomas. The show won’t be performed until February 29th-March 16th at the Dougherty Arts Center, but you can get a sneak peek at the script in December!

Loaded Gun Theory is having a fundraiser to read *The Automat and raise funds for its production. Admission is by donation and we’ll be selling baked goods, hot chocolate and gluvine to keep you warm. All donations will be matched 100% by an anonymous donor.

Bring a lawn chair or blanket and enjoy The Automat Under the Oak! And watch for further readings in our “Under the Oak” series.

When: Saturday December 15th at 3pm
Where: 3403 Santa Monica Dr., Austin, Tx 78741 (the new Thomas residence)

**

(no reservations required, but if you need more information please call 512-916-9856)

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Comments

Brent (http://brentlavelle.blogspot.com/2007/12/new-office.html)

2007-12-15T02:12:12.000Z

I hear you. This new office isn’t as nice. Using the security badge to go into the LAB 20 times a day or go to the bathroom is a bummer too. I have plans this weekend so I cannot go to the oak.

Brent

2007-12-15T02:14:25.000Z

Here is my blog on the topic. http://brentlavelle.blogspot.com/2007/12/new-office.html

Figured I should put up my ultra-hackey code for posterity. I found lots of javascript day countdown timers, but none that did hours. I’ve put the code below. Just change the 5 variables at the beginning to what you need. Javascript counts January as the zero month so subtract one from your month (the example below is 12-6-2007 at 10:00 am):

var year = 2007;
var month = 11;
var day = 6;
var hour = 10;
var mins = 0;
var today = new Date();
var closeDate = new Date();
closeDate.setHours(hour);
closeDate.setMinutes(mins);
closeDate.setFullYear(year, month, day);

var remainingDays = Math.floor((closeDate.getTime() - today.getTime()) / (1000 * 60 * 60 * 24) );
document.writeln(remainingDays);
document.writeln(” days ”);

var remainingHours = Math.ceil((closeDate.getTime() - today.getTime()) / (1000 * 60 * 60) % 24);
document.writeln(remainingHours);


hours until we close

Example:
var year = 2007; var month = 11; var day = 6; var hour = 10; var mins = 0; var today = new Date(); var closeDate = new Date(); closeDate.setHours(hour); closeDate.setMinutes(mins); closeDate.setFullYear(year, month, day); var remainingDays = Math.floor((closeDate.getTime() - today.getTime()) / (1000 * 60 * 60 * 24) ); document.writeln(remainingDays); document.writeln(” days ”); var remainingHours = Math.ceil((closeDate.getTime() - today.getTime()) / (1000 * 60 * 60) % 24); document.writeln(remainingHours); hours until we close

So while Bush was spending today arguing why he should be allowed to bomb Iran even though they’re honoring all their nuclear commitments and are generally behaving themselves pretty well. Putin followed through on some promises and started moving a permanent naval presence into the Mediterranean. And by Mediterranean can we point out that they’re hanging out around Syria? Oh, and in case you missed it they’re also flying long range bomber patrols. You know, within range that they could launch nuclear missiles at the United States.

But keep freaking out about Osama Bin Laden kiddos. If he’s lucky he can kill a whole 3000 people at a time. So he’s about 2% as effective as the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. They might have even improved the technology of what can be transported in those bombers since the 1940s, but I’m no military expert.

Good thing Putin’s a “good guy”. Better pray that’s true.

sidetrack Ah, a great quote from Joe Biden after Bush’s spectacular waffling about Iran today. You really should read some transcripts if you haven’t. It’s spectacular. You start to get the feeling that Bush may not be dumb. There may actually be absolutely no communication going on between the white house and the white house staff and the entire government at large. Here’s Biden’s quote:

“I refuse to believe that. If that’s true, he has the most incompetent staff in modern American history, and he’s one of the most incompetent presidents in modern American history.”

Oh, and the reason why the president is right and the new intelligence is wrong is because we still need to do due diligence to make sure the new intelligence is right. And by right we mean, why the new intelligence is not supporting the president’s facts.

I can accept the fact that Iran might have stopped their nuclear policies because of Bush’s constant insistence that he was going to bomb them, and I guess this could pass for a type of diplomacy. And maybe he can trot this out every third speech to make sure they’re behaving themselves. But c’mon, lets move on. There are bigger threats out there.

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Comments

Jooley Ann

2007-12-07T23:13:55.000Z

He’s is a HUGE problem. I’d love to know what each current pres. candidate plans to do about Putin, b/c the Russia problem is going to land with a big fat splat right into his/her lap.

I’m so tired of AT&T. Why do we have to put up with monopolies? It just blows my mind. We broke them up because they provided horrible service, and now they’re almost completely back together again. And Wikipedia cites the Center for Responsive Politics when it says that AT&T is the second largest political contributer in the US since 1990. Is it any wonder we get the worst service money can buy? It’s easier to lobby than to treat your customers right.

So yesterday I tried to signup for Internet and Phone services from AT&T. They have a pretty good deal online. DSL and unlimited local and long distance for $60. Stacks up pretty well against everyone else out there.

So I went online and tried to buy the package. By default the website assumes you already have phone service with AT&T. My first attempt to get new phone service ended up with a 404 page from an SBC web site. With my confidence in the process bolstered, I pushed on.

I finally found a working link to sign up for new phone service. At one point I checked back at something I’d been looking at earlier in another tab, and the registration process decided to skip a few steps. Hitting the final signup button left me with an error page (error code 111) telling me to call AT&T. The first message you get when you call AT&T is that you should check online because there are better deals you can’t get by phone. That sounded ominous so I hung up.

I cleared my session and started over with just one tab. I went through the website again. Everything went smoothly. I even managed to get it to allow me to move our old phone number with us. Hitting the final signup button left me with an error page (error code 111) telling me to call AT&T. Have I mentioned that the first message you get when you call AT&T is that you should check online because they have better deals? I pushed on. Surely they could help you if their website is broken, right? Right?

The first person who talked to me condescendingly told me that I’d called the wrong department and said she’d transfer me. The next person to pick up also recognized that I needed someone competent on the other end of the phone and immediately forwarded me again. After listening to a jamming light jazz version of TLC’s Waterfalls my call was dropped. Yes, the phone company drops holding calls.

So I called back. This time I again had to be transferred. This time the second woman offered me a direct number in case I got disconnected again. What customer service! I said that would be wonderful, so she transferred me without giving me the phone number.

This time I waited on hold for 30 minutes before talking to a customer service representative. I explained how their website had crapped out on me. He said he could help me, and that sometimes the website went down and you had to try again later. As a side note, did I realize that he couldn’t give me the prices on the website? He could give me similar packages, but not those prices. I calmly explained that the only reason I would signup with an incompetent bunch of boobs like AT&T was if they were cheap. I then hungup the phone.

I hit refresh in my browser a few more times to see if the website would magically submit my form properly. No dice. At this point I was steamed, so I called in again and asked the woman on the other end of the phone if they had a tech support number that could be called to find out when their website would function since there was nothing their phone support could do for me. She said no, so I hung up. I’m not proud that I devolved to essentially prank calling the phone company. Why do I mess with support reps when I know what the answer will be?

I decided to give the process one more chance. This time I did not try to keep our old phone number. After 2.5 hours of fighting it went through. Thank God for the wonders of capitalism. I’m sure competition couldn’t make this system any more efficient!

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Comments

ashley

2007-12-05T02:05:24.000Z

Let me know how the DSL goes, I sure wouldn’t mind saving 30 bucks a month!

It seems like we only recently learned how to miss you. This article makes it look as though we’ll be back to the same system that was called Communism under the Soviet Union quite soon. I imagine the Cold War will reemerge soon. We have our new Stalin. He looked good for a few years. A reformer. A man who could make his completely broken country work. But we’re back at the same point. The major opposition candidate in jail. All industry controlled by the “democratically” elected state party. People forced to vote or face loss of job or disappearance.

It might be my lack of sleep, but I’m feeling a bit emotional about this. I remember 1990. Everyone was talking about Perestroika. We went to see a Russian museum tour in downtown Dallas. It seemed so distant and yet so possible that something was happening. We’d seen the Berlin wall fall. Things could change.

We moved to the Soviet Union in August of 1990. We spent the most miserable 9 months of our lives there just trying to survive. The system was crumbling, and while they were still trying to present a facade of a functioning economy they couldn’t provide enough even for foreigners (for years they had a massive propaganda machine to make it look as though all was well). We horded food. I found sugar once at a store while out picking up a loaf of bread and carried home 100 pounds. My parents bought something like 8 palettes of eggs in one grocery trip. My sister Caroline went out several times a week to stood in line at 4am to fill a 5 gallon bucket with unpasteurized milk from a tanker truck in our neighborhood. We spent all day pasteurizing milk. Washing clothes and cooking food. We fought like cats cooped up in our apartments. Only the adults were willing to make any effort to leave the confines of our apartment building.

After that year we took a 3 month vacation in England. In a small pastoral suburb of London. It was heaven. And then we watched in August 1991 as the putsch threatened to oust Yeltsin. The countries first marginally democratically elected leader. It was a tense few days. We had our entire lives back in the Soviet Union. We had our friends back there. And we had a Russian friend staying with us. If things had gone differently he would have probably defected and I would more than likely have a brother.

And then it was over. And we went back to the Soviet Union for another year and things were better. And people were mostly more optimistic. I say mostly because there are probably still people there complaining and praying that the czars will come back. And there was food. It was expensive. Too expensive for most of the people who lived there (more legitimate complaints). But there was food again. And stores weren’t completely filled with empty shelves. And in February of 1992 I sang the star-spangled banner as the American Flag was raised for the first time over the new independent country of Kazakhstan. A new country. Trust me. It’s pretty amazing to be around when a new country is formed.

And when we left in May of 1992. On our way out of the country we stayed in the American Embassy in Moscow. And we looked over the walls where Yeltsin made his stand on top of tanks. And where they hoisted the Russian Flag. And where the back of communist party was finally broken.

And now we’ve circled back. 15 short years. We’ve been witness to a pretty amazing piece of history. 15 years of calm more or less. Of not thinking about mutually ensured destruction. It’s depressing to think that my children will be back to living with that fear.

And my new play “The Automat” takes place in the cafeteria of a missile silo.It’s amazing how the subconscious works.

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Comments

Julie (www.juliesdramas.blogspot.com)

2007-11-30T23:00:24.000Z

Wow, that article was chilling. Although it’s pretty hypocritical for America to tell others how to run their elections since we have a president who did not win the popular vote nor the electoral vote in 2000. Of course, we had the Supreme Court, so we didn’t need to go to extreme measures like these. It really is frightening, though.

Jooley Ann

2007-12-07T23:11:03.000Z

What blows my mind is the VERY skimpy US media coverage this stuff gets. Admittedly I don’t listen to NPR any more, but it seems the only people who’re covering this are the print media. There have been a series of VERY scary, very long articles in the New Yorker during the last year. I know more about Garry Kasparov than I ever thought I would… Anyway, I’m with you. Obviously I don’t have the same personal experiences, but I remember the Cold War very well. It’s a scary thing that’s going on over there.

I get more creative at night. I say this because I had to leave to drive my parents to the airport at 4:20 this morning. So I didn’t go to sleep. I’m much worse off with a little sleep than I am with no sleep. My grandma is dying. That’s why I had to take them to the airport. I’ll miss my grandma, but most of all I’ll miss my grandma and grandpa’s house. Located in Flint, MI it was the Thomas Family hub. I remember summer spent days down in the bowels of its basement, or playing in the sprinkler in the back yard, or doing gymnastics on the front lawn. But there weren’t many of them.

Days in Flint that is. Not Thomases. There’s are plenty of Thomases.

No need to get maudlin though. If Flint’s real estate market stays the same I expect that the house could be in the family for generations.

Just remember. If you’re feeling priced out of Austin you can always move to Flint. Houses on my Grandparent’s street average around $32k. 2 story. 2000+ ft2 4 bedroom houses. I believe my Grandparent’s is 2 bedroom. 3 if you count the converted basement.

So I wrote last night. And then I took them to the airport, and then I tooled around Austin.

First stop I wound around east riverside. There’s a lot of cool stuff over there. And it’s gentrified a lot since I lived over there. There are some amazingly large expensive houses across the street from some of the skeezy places on Montopolis. There are entire suburbs over there. Tons of stuff off the Golf Course. It really looks like people have realized that there’s a bunch of property over there that’s on a lake or a golf course.

Then I drove by our new house. Yeah, I’m buzzing neighbourhoods at 4:30am. So what? Does that make me a stalker?

Then I was bored so I drove through our old new neighbourhood. The house is still looking very unfinished. They haven’t painted it, and they had every light in the place blazing. At 4:30am. Green building it is not.

Then still being bored I drove by our old old house. That one is still up for lease. Some of my plants might eat the neighbors soon. The Thai Basil looks like it’s 4 feet tall.

But the house is still up for lease. It’s been 4 months. Hopefully our Californian investor will sell it at a loss and a nice family will snatch it up.

So I’m back at home waiting for Stella to wake up any minute now. Then off to work, and another night of write, write, write!

We’re going to Evant on Saturday and Sunday so hopefully that will afford me even more opportunities to write.

WRITE! WRITE! WRITE! Dah, dah, dah, da, da, da, da…

oh, and go read the Austin Contrarian’s explanation of what a VMU is and how they work. Everyone should be edumacated. I can’t wait until the redo riverside. I’d post a link, but I’m lazy, and sleepy, so use the Google.

So I found the subdivision maps for our new house. It’s C8-63-019, you can search here. Put that number in the second box. I’ve also found the wastewater and water permits, but I can’t find anything else. I think there might be a bug in that all the new searches want four digit years, and I think all the info for our house is stored with two digit.

I think I may need to sell my services in ferreting out information on city websites.

This map is fascinating:

Looking at it, you might think it was a rough map of income levels in Austin. Actually it’s the school district map. It’s fascinating how you can actually see the tendrils of gentrification stretching into east austin. Plucking out the water front views and academic residences. And the tendrils shooting the other way, pulling in the centralized apartment ghettos. The hook in District 6 that extracts the sub-200k houses from district 7. I wish I could find the historical maps on this one. I think it would probably be a fascinating look at gentrification.

I read this Statesman article over the weekend that talks about the destruction of some of the final cheap apartments with waterfront views. Frankly, I can’t be that sympathetic to those people. I used to live in apartments around there and I was constantly trying to figure out how one got one of those sweet super-cheap water-front apartments. But it will be interesting to see if that tendril from District 6 will stretch over to grab the rest of the south east town lake shore line in the future.

Paul Burka had a really interesting article on the changing demographics of Texas recently. It’s especially interesting when taken in context with our school systems. If you look at the “good schools” in Austin ISD you’ll see that they’re the schools that are majority white. But if you look at the changing demographics of our state it’s obvious that these “good schools” are not sustainable. And are in fact undesirable. We’re creating a very strong delineation between the upper and lower middle classes. And all the publicly available statistics on race, income, and test scores cement these delineations through real estate prices. I strongly believe that real estate is the strongest bastion of racism in the US today. And it’s so innocuous. It’s much easier for even the most liberal multi-culturally minded potential home buyer to say that a school with 87% of the kids getting free or reduced lunches has a negative effect on property values, than it is to say that a school with 96% minority students has a negative effect on property values.

What are we going to do if the majority of the US cannot sustain itself? Especially with the retirement of the Baby Boomers looming. We’re going to have some massive bills to pay in the future if we don’t make some investments today.

That said, I actually got really excited for Stella over the weekend. My guess is that she’s going to grow up learning a lot of Spanish. And that’s a very cool opportunity. It’s hard to stretch out from the communities we’re used to. I spent the entire 2 years I was in the Soviet Union inside. Learning nothing about the culture. I know only a few words in Russian. 1 in Kazakh.

I think it’s too easy to live in our own mono-cultures, and it’s very hard to step outside of them. I don’t think it’s just racism. I think we’re still very much programmed for tribalism. What are suburbs if not medieval fiefdoms with their localized governments (HOAs) and walls and moats? So hopefully this new house will be a chance to step outside of the world we’ve been inhabiting.

I was talking to an actor friend during the run of Little Murders, and one of his guesses about why we were having such poor turnout was gas prices. Which shocked me because I’ve become somewhat immune to gas prices (public transport, single car with high mpg). And it made me realize that I need to get out more, and talk to people who aren’t software developers living in suburban houses with a Volkswagen or Subaru out front.

Anyway, enough of that. We had a delightful time with Stella over thanksgiving. She’s been in a great mood. Incredibly free with smiles, hugs, and kisses. We’d kind of noticed that she seemed a lot taller recently. She lost a lot of weight during her vomiting spell, so I think the height change snuck up on us. She just looked tall and skinny. But now that she’s got her blub back we’ve realized that she’s quite a bit taller. We helped The Holmes and Yer Mamma move this weekend and Stella is now officially taller than their son. Which is not surprising. Julie and I are taller than his parents. But it seemed like the official start of our child becoming the giraffe we knew she would be. She’s starting to get the height to match those Thomas feet. It’s fun to watch. Hopefully she’ll be more graceful in her growing than I was.

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Comments

AC (http://austinzoning.typepad.com/austincontrarian/)

2007-12-04T08:53:16.000Z

Interesting. It does look like the districts have been racially/economically gerrymandered. I wonder how often they amend the boundaries?

HEB is giving away free reusable bags today. Take a bus or walk over and pick one up!