Seems like I was just in Austin for SXSW, but the big difference this time around was the heat. (Well, that and there weren’t a million people swarming all over the place.) I’m not a fan of humidity, which is why I live in Colorado, and in the middle of July the heat/humidity is in full swing in east Texas. Needless to say, I didn’t spend as much time walking around this trip..it was more of a series of short hops from place to place to take advantage of the air conditioning. Although I did make the hike across the Congress Street bridge in the middle of the afternoon so I could indulge in some southern cooking from Threadgills. Definitely worth it if you ask me.

The conference itself was a nice change of pace. Since it was a hosting conference and not a domainer conference, there was much more that interested me and actually applied to my job. I think I sat in on just about every Sales/Marketing session they had. Of course, like just about every other conference I’ve been to, I wish they had more advanced sessions. But really, this is the domain industry, it’s not about the sessions now is it?

The parties..err..”networking events” were awesome as always. Enom sure knows how to show people a good time, and I’m pretty sure they’re the ones responsible for me returning to my hotel room no earlier than 3am every night. Unlike SXSW, most of these events had a decent beer selection, which mad me a very happy camper. Although, thankfully I do my beer training up in Colorado, so it’s nearly impossible for me to drink too much at these conferences. Three cheers for high altitude.

Overall it was a good trip. I learned some things, met some great people, and lost about 5 lbs in sweat. Austin is always a great time and I look forward to going back.

Finally, a Predator film that’s actually worthy of the title. Does that mean it’s a great film? Not particularly. In fact, it’s not even that great of a summer action film — but it’s about 100 times better than AVP, and really, that’s all it needed to be.

Predators starts off fairly well, as the main characters are literally dropped into the jungle and try to figure out what the hell is going on. Adrien Brody, beefed up and doing his best Batman voice, is sadly no Arnold..but he gets an ‘E’ for effort. He’s just believable enough to help me ignore the awfully convenient plot points that drive the film forward. Did anyone else notice how easily they figured things out in this alien world? Yea me too. Thankfully my suspension of disbelief remained intact for most of the film. I can forgive things like plot contrivances for the sake of story, but for a film that appeals to geeks, I sure wish it was a little smarter.

By smarter I’m referring to little geeky details, like a planet that conveniently has an atmosphere that sustains a number of different species from different worlds, or guns that make no sense. Brody’s gun is, simply put, ridiculous. Along with infinite ammo, it’s a shotgun that doesn’t sound like a shotgun, nor does it ever seem to actually hit anything. That may be because the barrel is too small for shotgun slugs, but I digress. This is obviously a film that sets out to appease the action fan more than the sci-fi geek, and that’s a shame.

Once the team meets the horribly miscast Laurence Fishburn (seriously, how much better would Forrest Whitaker have been) in his crazy state, the film starts to unravel for me. I found myself no longer caring for these people (not that I really did in the first place), which I suppose is appropriate timing, since two of the best kills come back to back. I’m not sure which is worse, a de-spining or the de-skinning from Silent Hill, but I still cringed. From there on the film just does what it can to get us to the inevitable final showdown between our raspy-voiced hero and the alpha predator. A showdown that doesn’t let us down, but it doesn’t exactly wow us either.

All in all it’s a mildly entertaining action film that delivers nothing we haven’t seen before. I can appreciate its efforts to stay true to the first film and give fans the R rated carnage a Predator film deserves. It’s just unfortunate that the characters are too smart for their own good. Each time they figure something out that they really shouldn’t, it kills any suspense that the film manages to create. The tense atmosphere is one of the only things it doesn’t borrow from the original Predator, which is too bad since that’s a big part of what makes the original so special. However, it’s dumb fun and it benefits from the absolute dreck we’ve had to endure for the past 20 years. It’s hard to disappoint when your expectations have been crapped on a few times.

I was on a ride during my lunch break, following a route that was all bike paths with the exception of this one four block stretch where I would have to ride in the road to get down to another path. The bike path I was on was on the north side of 6th Ave and when I got to Potomac I had to ride from the sidewalk, north of 6th, into the road on Potomac so I could continue south. Well as soon as I rode through the intersection on Potomac, a bus came out of nowhere on my left hitting me and running me into the curb, throwing me over my handlebars and then hitting me 2-3 more times with the rear of the bus as I was tumbling onto the ground.

What I don’t get is what the bus was doing getting over so soon. They jammed me into the curb at least 50-75 feet away from the actual bus stop. I was in plain sight too. At the corner where I started, there was a right turn only lane next to me, and when the light turned green they all yielded to me as I crossed the road into traffic. There was absolutely nothing obstructing the bus’ view of me on the road. I was riding exactly where I should have been, and there were witnesses there to confirm this.

As far as injuries go I was pretty darn lucky, a few nasty bruises, broken cartilage around my ribs, and a lot of soreness. Painful, but nothing serious.

Here’s what my shorts looked like afterwards, sure am glad I decided to wear bright red underwear that day.

I also can’t emphasize enough the importance of wearing a helmet when you ride. I have a huge scratch on the left side where I hit the bus and the pavement with my head. Both the firemen and the paramedics breathed a huge sigh of relief when they saw the helmet.

Speaking of, I’m super impressed with how quickly the police, firemen, and paramedics were on site. I was also in and out of the ER in under two hours, and that was with X-rays and a CT Scan. They hooked me up with some good drugs too, so I’ll be hanging with my pals Valium and Vicodin for the next few days.

Now I’m just waiting to hear the outcome of the police investigation. He has to speak with one more witness and look at the tapes on the bus. Then I get to deal with RTD and getting them to pay for my (brand new) bike, medical bills, missed work, etc. This is really not how I wanted to spend my summer, but I’d rather be alive and annoyed than the alternative.

I have no idea how or why, but last week a copy of Tony Hsieh’s  ’Delivering Happiness’ magically showed up on my desk at work. I’ve really been looking forward to this book, so it was a pleasant surprise and a nice pick-me-up during an otherwise crappy week. To whoever was behind delivering my happiness, I thank you.

Last night we had to say goodbye to our cat Bindi — a scrawny, goofy, and lovable little furball. From the moment she picked us at the cat shelter she’s done nothing but make us laugh and give us (and everyone else she met) love.

This is the second cat we’ve lost far too young, but at least we gave her a great life in the short time she was with us. She was our little princess and our house won’t be the same without her.

Lala’s been gone for a week now and I find myself sadly music-less when I work from my laptop. It’s departure has left a gaping hole in my music flow. No longer can I listen to an entire album when I discover a new band. Hell, sometimes I can’t even find single songs that aren’t poorly filmed, live videos on Youtube. Lala made exploring music easy and fun, and as a result I happily paid money to buy more music and support the service — something you’ll rarely hear someone of my generation say. Of course, it helps that you could get web albums for under $1 and song downloads were just $0.89.

All of the above combined with a nice recommendation system, better sorting options, and the obvious streaming libraries made Lala my ideal music site. I’ve tried replacing it with Blip.fm, Last.fm, and Pandora in the interim, but none of those quite fill the void. Thanks Apple, you suck.

Yes, I know the rumors about iTunes.com and, no, I’m not holding my breath. A cloud-based service will be great, but I doubt they’ll adopt much else. Rather than a Lala-fied iTunes, I see a crappier, iTunes version of Lala in our future. If I sound bitter that’s only because I hate iTunes and simply adored Lala. I’ll go back to my pouting now.

Most of the time it’s pretty depressing, but thankfully there are still some companies out there that are just plain impressive.

The Good

I’m addicted to t-shirts. Love ‘em! I order from a number of sites and decided to give Busted Tees a try during a pretty sweet sale they were having. I ordered four shirts..that sadly never showed up. I had been so busy I’d actually forgotten about them, and when I checked the UPS tracking it showed that it had been delivered to my home address a week earlier. Umm, no it hadn’t.

Prepared for a huge hassle, I ping Busted Tees on Twitter and say something along the lines of “order said it was delivered a week ago and we never got it, assume we have to file a claim with UPS?” I then call UPS and speak with one of their reps. I tell her the situation and she admits she’s embarrassed before reluctantly telling me that it’s common for the drivers to mark packages as delivered and just leave them on the truck. No joke. Then she tells me that I’ll have to contact the shipper and they will have to file a claim so UPS can start an investigation. I let out a sigh, call it a night and figure I will just contact Busted Tees in the morning to tell them what happened.

The next morning I wake up to an email from Busted Tees in my inbox.

Holy shit. I didn’t even have to contact them, they found me based on my tweet and offered to reship my order. I was dumbfounded then and even now I’m still wowed by this. They didn’t have to eat the cost, it wasn’t their fault, but they went above and beyond and turned me into a loyal and extremely happy customer. Love those guys.

The Bad

Now, where Busted Tees still has me wowed…Disqus on the other hand, still has me pissed off from an email exchange I had with them back at the beginning of the year. We had an immature commenter on our blog that set his username to “fuck off” and we really wanted his comment and his name gone. With Disqus you can moderate comments, but deleting doesn’t actually delete — it removes the comment, says the comment was removed, but leaves the username and everything in the thread. Why? I don’t know, but that’s how it is. So I contact their support to ask if this username can be removed from our comments and the conversation goes:

Arghs! Still. Pissed. First off, It was two full days before they responded. Second, I know that he did not go to this page at all and view the comments before he responded to me, he just shot me back some canned answers. Had he looked at the comment thread he would have noticed that this person commented as a guest, which means there is no profile for me to go to and report him. I just gave up. You win Mr. “fuck off.”

The Ugly

Oh Frontier. I used to love you, but now it seems you’re trying so very hard to make me hate you. Honestly, it’s starting to work.

Last week I was in San Francisco for Web 2.0 Expo and I was scheduled to fly out Thursday night at 8:00pm. Of course that’s the night that my company is sponsoring Ignite Boulder and I really wanted to be home in time for that, so I figured I’d try to catch an earlier flight. The night before, I call Frontier’s 1-800 number and see what the cost is to switch flights. $240. Umm, no thanks..what about standby? I am told bluntly that they do not offer standby. Apparently they did away with it a while ago, but since I’ve never had to fly standby I was not aware of this baffling change. Although, after doing some research online, they do in fact offer standby — it just costs $100. Whatever, $100 is better than $240 so I go online to see if there are any more seats available on the morning flight. The website says that half the plane is empty. Sweet.

However, being the worry wart that I can sometimes be, I wake up at 4:30am and call the 1-800 number again just to make sure that there are in fact seats and that I won’t be stuck at the airport for 11 hours. The agent on the phone tells me that there are 16 seats still available on this flight. Whew! I go back to sleep and then head to the airport after a few more hours. En route I check the seat availability on my iPhone, they were down to four seats and I was starting to sweat. We get to the airport and I rush to the counter to talk to someone only to find out that the flight is sold out..and has been for over 24 hours. Say what now?

I explain to the (very nice) woman behind the counter, as calmly as possible, that the website and an actual person told me there were seats on this flight and that’s the only reason I came to the airport. She apologizes and adds me to the standby list, but she’s honest and tells me that it doesn’t look good. Now, totally stressed and pissed that I will potentially be at the airport all day, I go sit at the gate and pout. Shortly before boarding I check with her again and she, once again, tells me it doesn’t look good. I turn around, still pouty, and run into two friends of mine on the same flight. I grumble about the situation to them as people start boarding and just before I give up hope, I hear my name called. Score! She gets me a seat, in stretch seating no less, and I make it home in time for Ignite. I don’t remember her name, but I owe her a hug.

Sadly, her effort doesn’t make up for a company that very obviously does not care. A company whose website has completely wrong information, whose agents also have completely wrong information (maybe looking at the same website?), and a company that doesn’t take the time to update flight information when you’re delayed an hour due to a medical incident on the plane (long story). Boo, Frontier, boo.

5. Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid

C’mon, how could you not love Burt Bacharach’s deliciously 1960s musical accompaniment to one of the coolest westerns ever made? Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head may be what comes to mind for most, but it’s the South American getaway music that gets my cool sensors tingling.

4. The Sting

Yea yea, another George Roy Hill film. This time around he uses Scott Joplin’s turn of the century ragtime music to evoke the 1930s gangster era, and it does so gloriously.

3. Moulin Rouge!

It feels a little weird to include a musical on a list like this, because it’s just the nature of the genre to have anachronistic music. But screw it, I love Moulin Rouge. The whole film is just spectacular, but the first time we’re introduced to the Moulin Rouge still stands as one of the most engrossing film moments I’ve ever experienced.

2. Baby It’s You

The third film from indy marvel John Sayles may be a tad uneven and melodramatic, but damn if it doesn’t have one hell of a character introduction. The Sheik’s entrance to the beat of Bruce Springsteen’s It’s Hard to Be a Saint in the City just oozes cool and speaks to the timeless voice of the boss himself. We couldn’t find a video clip online, so here’s a rockin’ live version from 1975.

1. Inglorious Basterds

I’m not sure there’s anyone else out there with the ability to combine such randomly awesome music with brilliant images the way Tarantino does. The first time I saw this scene I almost couldn’t believe my eyes and ears..David Bowie..Nazis..pure genius.

Drinks with some folks from Kikscore. Great people btw.

Hipstamatic even makes work look interesting!

Traffic on the way to Boulder. Look mountains!

In other news, I LOVE HIPSTAMATIC.

My husband looking all manly with our new grill. Rawr.

Hot Tub Time Machine

About as mediocre as you’d expect, Hot Tub Time Machine relies too much on low brow humor and shouting, leaving the genuinely funny moments few and far between. I think a dose of Better Off Dead is required to get the bad taste out of my mouth.

The Secret of Kells

I was really torn here. On the one hand you have a gorgeously animated and scored film, but on the other you have a completely uninteresting story. Makes it hard to care about anything.

Night of the Comet

I think this is a fun ’80s zombie romp. My husband thought otherwise. Boo.

Walt & El Grupo

Yet another potentially awesome film that ended up being totally boring. I’m fascinated by both golden age Disney and World War II, but the film has too many family members I don’t care about reading letters. Meh. Of course, now I’m all the more excited for Waking Sleeping Beauty this coming weekend.