infobong.com

internet to zone out

Alice has a nice post about spending time away from the Internet, which is what I've been up to for the past few weeks. I've been checking email daily and following a few favorite blogs, but I've been making an effort to use the 'net in goal-directed ways, rather than mindlessly clicking through links. OK, now I'm going to go outside...

internet to zone out

Alice has a nice post about spending time away from the Internet, which is what I've been up to for the past few weeks. I've been checking email daily and following a few favorite blogs, but I've been making an effort to use the 'net in goal-directed ways, rather than mindlessly clicking through links. OK, now I'm going to go outside...

sticky situation and paperwork

My friend Vivek is getting married, and he's entered in a popularity contest sponsored by a Tulsa TV station. If he gets enough votes, KOTV will pay for a wedding service in Tulsa. (He's getting married in the states, and celebrating the wedding in India.) They're the only non-cracker couple in the contest, and, unsurprisingly, they're running dead last. Please, vote for Vivek and Sherin! Update: I knew this was a dumb post from the outset, but I didn't realize how dumb it was until I went through KOTV's multi-screen registration process. Yes, you have to register with the site in order to vote.

In other news, I've got a WordPress installation up and running here. For the time being, it's just my del.icio.us bookmarks of the day, but eventually, I'll run the front page off of WordPress.

just deserts

OK, I was wrong about the Rose Bowl last night. In my defense, I was just sharing my gut feeling about the game. Since I know so little about sports, I shouldn't write publicly about football. I've got to say that I'm a little disappointed with the outcome. I'm not looking forward to hearing about Texas' national championship for the next year. I don't think this is because I'm a Sooner fan. I lived in Philadelphia when Oklahoma won the national championship in 2001, and soon after the game I said I was glad I didn't live in Norman, since I'd be so sick of all the Sooner-mania. I suppose living in Austin after the steers win a national championship is my just deserts. Puke.

heap of burnt orange

The Texas Longhorns are playing the USC Trojans tonight for the national football championship. While I'm inclined to be true to my school, I have the feeling that the steers are gonna get smeared tonight. I imagine both of my readers know that I did my undergrad at Oklahoma, so my loyalties lie with UT's traditional rival. Watching OU choke in the last two national championship games leads me to think that the level of competition in the Big XII conference is not as high as in other power conferences. Of course, my Sooners beat the sixth-ranked Oregon Ducks Thursday night in the Holiday Bowl, so maybe Texas' competition this year has been solid (or USC's has been equally weak.) In addition, OU was a pretty lousy football team for the first half of the season, and considering that OU has spoiled Texas' season for the past five years, I'm not sure Texas is any better than its been in the past few season - it just didn't have Oklahoma to keep it out of championship contention. I'll turn on comments so my UT reader can huff and puff below

update

I've been back in Austin for a few days, but I've been pretending that I'm still out of town: avoiding school, not calling people, and, of course, not blogging. I'm going to direct my bloggy energy toward migrating this site to WordPress and designing a new template, so this site will probably be silent for another week or two. I'm leaving comments off until I've migrated, so email me if you have something to say.

For a quick recap of the holidays, it's really dry and hot in Texas and Oklahoma. I'm sure most readers have seen the news reports of the wildfires raging across tornado alley. I suspect they received a lot of coverage because it's a slow time for news, but it's a little frightening. On Thursday, I could see huge plumes of smoke when I was 50 miles outside of Oklahoma City. I spent the night in Norman, and I felt pretty sick the next two days - I suspect that all of the smoke set off my allergies. It seemed strange that the temperature hit 85F on New Year's Day. Of course it's Texas where people expect hot weather, but it was a record high. Yesterday, I went hiking down in the Barton Creek Greenbelt. The creek was completely dry and so was all of the surrounding brush. I found it a little frightening, since the whole place was a giant tinderbox. A stray match or cigarette would have quickly set the whole park ablaze.