ACL Fest was a ton of fun for me this year even though I only went for two days (Friday, Saturday) of the three and went home like a decrepit old man each time before the headliners even performed.
I don’t care! I ate and walked around and people watched and saw some wonderful bands (Wild Child, Alabama Shakes, Andrew Bird, The Roots to name a few).
Instead of boring you with all the details of a fest that’s already two weeks gone and which has been covered extensively elsewhere, I’ll just offer a YouTube video to show one of my favorite sounds of the fest and the photos I took in a gallery below.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKw6-xD50nA
Excited for next year already!
Click on any of the pics to go into the photo gallery.
I had a whole post planned out, but I had a sudden thought that I have to share before I go into all that.
I live in a neighborhood/housing area where a lot of people have turned their garages into second living areas. They’ve mounted a TV on the wall, put a couch up in there and instead of parking their car or giant truck in there, like you would in a garage, they sit out there in the evenings and watch baseball games or boxing or presidential debates or whatever the Hell.
It was one or two houses when we first moved here, and over the years it’s become A Thing, with probably about a dozen nearby, including our neighbors right across the street.
I’ve been trying to articulate for a while — years, honestly — why this would even bother me. And for a long time, I thought it was because I was a little jealous. Why can’t I watch TV in my cat-litter-smelling, funky, dirty, humid garage like these Manly Men who live near me? Why do we have to have half our garage full of bins and junk and the other half occupied by a car? Why can’t I have a damn man cave (or a cave that opens up into direct sunlight and is well-ventilated as caves are, I guess).
Then I realized, it’s not that I’m jealous, it’s that I’m embarrassed. When I go outside, I feel like I’m walking past a stranger’s living room as they watch whatever they watch. Which, to me, is kind of mortifying. I barely like people in my own house to know what I’m watching on TV, much less total strangers walking by on the street.
I hate feeling like I’m interrupting something, even when I’m not, and I really just don’t care to know what my neighbors are watching. It’s baseball 90 percent of the time, which is as boring as things get. I know I’m in the minority here. I know nobody else cares about my obsession with garage living rooms. Just let me vent a little here.
As I’ve said before, CNN seems to really like it when I pitch them weird, out-there ideas and this one hit the sweet spot between silly and relevant, I think.
What I didn’t really think about when I pitched the idea what how much work it was going to take to get the language of an actual peace treaty correct. For several days, I hit the pediawikis, researching the wording of different kinds of peace accords dating back several hundred years. The result is a hybrid of different treaty types, but I’m pretty happy with the way it turned out. It turns out I can broker peace if I really work at it!
This week’s column started out being about wearable computers (fitness sensors, sleep monitors, that sort of thing), and then ended up being about how sensors are turning our tech from bulky to wearable to completely invisible. A professor from UT’s iSchool gave me some insight that gave the column a little more weight, I thought. In it, I mention a sleep monitor that I tried out. I got it at the BlogHer conference and, seriously, if you want to look like a total dork while unconscious, try the Zeo. But it did give me some insight into how badly I was sleeping at the time and made me adjust my habits a little bit.
The SXSW story ran on the front page of the paper and the Zynga thing made some national headlines. Lots of busy time at work.
Other crazy things that happened recently:
I went to Austin City Limits Fest, which was wonderful, and I took a bunch of photos, but I want to post those separately and I’m not done editing the images, so I’ll post that sometime over the weekend.
Had my first parent-teacher conference for Lilly at her kindergarten. She’s very shy at school, not shy at home, is what it came down to. At least she’s well-mannered and behaved in the classroom, which is more than we could ask for.
I also did a creativity conference for work on design thinking that was really great and forced me to tackle problems and ideas in a different way. Honestly, I can’t even tell you what changed because I’m still figuring it out, but I had a few “A-ha” moments that I need to work through and integrate into my life a bit more.
My editor, who I mention a lot in talking about my stories and columns, has taken a job at UT-Austin and next week will be her last in our office. I’m sort of numbing my brain to not have to think about it because as awesome as it is for her, I can’t even imagine doing my job without her guidance and great ideas, so it’s going to be an adjustment, to put it mildly.
And that’s it. I’ve had lots to think about and process and reflect on, but to be quite honest, the changing weather has just made me very sleepy and most nights I just want to crawl into bed instead of staying up late and writing. Hoping I catch up on sleep soon and get a second wind before winter freezes me all up.
I’ve been promising this story of woe and ridiculousness in regards to my car and here it finally is.
First, though, quickly, let me just update you on the stuff from work this week.
The Monday Digital Savant column was about apps that can help you get to and get around Austin City Limits Festival, which I will be attending this weekend. Some Austinites act like they’re totally so over the fest, and yet it sells out every year and people seem to manage to have a good time despite all the sighs and grumbling. I plan to have a good time and eat one or five of these Tiffblitzes. Please tell my family I love them when I die of sugar.
This whole nightmare started on my way to work one Thursday evening in early August. I got pulled over on the highway for a law I didn’t even know existed. I was in the right lane and a police had pulled someone over, lights flashing. I would normally change lanes in a situation like this, but there was traffic, so I stayed in the right lane and was extra careful passing.
A few minutes later, the same police officer pulled me over and told me that it was a fairly new law, about three years old, that you have to either change lanes or slow down 20 miles per hour in that situation.
OK. Fine. Consider me duly warned.
Except I also had an expired inspection sticker, which I had completely lost track of in another universe I wasn’t even connected to anymore (I didn’t say that out loud. Best not to.). So, all right, I probably deserve a ticket for that. But the part about the passing lane thing was a lot less clear and even the officer couldn’t remember what to cite on the ticket. (He was, it sounded like, winging it.)
Double ticket. He was nice enough and told me that if I got the inspection taken care of soon, it would be dismissed, but he had no idea what I was in store for on the other part. I drove home and planned to take care of everything on the weekend when I’d have time to get the car inspected; I wasn’t planning to do much driving before then.
And then I had my car accident.
The accident (or, “Look FORWARD when you drive”)
It was on Saturday, the same day I was planning to wait until the kids took a nap to go get my car inspected while my wife watched them.
That morning, I took the kids to the library while she ran errands. We were having a great time.
On the way back home, right in front of the New Braunfels Police station, there was a horrible accident. There were two motorcycles laid out and a truck. It did not look good and I was pretty sure, just from the number of ambulances and police cars, and the tarps on the ground, that somebody must have died.
The girls in the backseat were staring at the sirens and I suddenly got scared that they were going to see something horrible as we passed slowly next to the scene. The road had been reduced to one lane and the line was backed up. We were going very slow, stop and go, stop and go, not even two or three miles per hour.
I turned to the backseat to see what the girls were doing. I turned to the left to see what they could see of the accident. I turned back to the girls again. And then I turned forward and saw that I was heading, very slowly, right into the truck in front of us.
There was a bump and a lurch as I hit the brake, but we barely felt a thing. We did hit the truck, though. Just really slowly.
We pulled off to the side, as did the truck in front of us and I got out to see the damage. It looked like the photo at the top of this blog entry.
Here’s what the back of the truck I hit looked like:
Why no damage, Tacoma? WHY NO!?!?
The guy in front of me was an older gent. It turned out he’s retired military, just like my dad, and the guy could not have been nicer. He kept asking me about my girls and if they were OK and did not even act a tiny bit put out that some random person hit him from behind and now all of a sudden his time was being wasted on insurance bullshit when his truck was barely even touched.
He said he was on his way home from a grocery run and I imagined him sitting at home on the couch with a cold beer instead out of in the hot sun with me while my daughters sat patiently in the air conditioning waiting to go home. He did not even act like it was a thing, and I was incredibly lucky the guy was so cool about it.
A police officer saw our (my) wreckage told us that they had some other stuff to deal with (“Yes! We’re sorry, please go see to that, sorry!”), so for us to both go pull into the police station parking lot and wait.
This is what the area looked like:
The guy kept saying he’d never been in an accident and wasn’t sure what to do, so we took photos of each others’ insurance information and he called his insurance person while I called my wife and asked her to come pick up the kids because I didn’t know how long things would take.
It turns out these things take a long time, especially when they’re in proximity of a much more serious incident. So we waited, awkwardly. Ages later, a police officer came and told us that we could fill out an accident report since no crime had occurred and that was fine by us. We exchanged the paperwork and since my vehicle was hideous, but drivable, I went home.
I called my insurance agent’s service; the person on the line did not express any surprise that I did something so stupid and, to their credit, did not judge. While I was on hold, I Tweeted:
If I worked for the insurance company it would be hard for me not to tell some people, "It sounds like you just suck at driving."
The insurance agent told me everything was cool and asked if I wanted to take my car to the body shop that did some work on my car the previous year. That was fine. I was set to take the car in on Monday and get a rental. Problem solved, right?
Well, no. I still needed an inspection sticker (I figured they frown upon you bringing in a wreck for that) and still had a court date. But that was weeks away, no biggie, right?
Kind of a biggie
There’s a local body shop that did work on my car last year that was superb. I mean, the damn car looked brand new and the bumper issue I was having was totally resolved. I know that’s what body shops are paid to do, but I was still stunned by what great work they did. So it was a no-brainer to use them again for this job.
Funny about that…
Everything seemed great at first. They told me the job would only take a week or two and that my insurance (with deductible) would cover my car rental.
The rental, you guys. It was PIMP! I know it was only a Ford Taurus, but my car is five years old and paid off, this car was brand new and had stuff like satellite radio built in (instead of my jerry-rigged batch of wires and ugly antennas) and Bluetooth streaming.
BLUETOOTH STREAMING! Of music and stuff!
And it was a big, smooth-riding beast, much bigger than my car, but way more comfortable for my long commute.
I took the rental car to the City of Kyle, where my ticket was issued, and went to the quaint City Hall building. I was told I would need to come to the court in about a month to get the inspection thing resolved for a fee and for the driving lane issue, I’d have to pay $107 and take a defensive driving course, which involved more fees.
Two weeks later, when I called for the third time to check on my car and was told by the collision center that they needed more time, I asked, “Is the car rental still covered?”
They said it was.
“Shit, take your time!” I bellowed, singing along with a happy song in my head, “take as long as you need!”
That was probably a mistake.
Because the week before my court date, I was starting to worry. No car. No inspection sticker. The collision center told me the car rental time was up but that they would cover the difference. That didn’t seem like good news.
I began to call every day as the status of my car kept slipping. The woman I was talking to, I think, was starting to dodge my calls.
Finally, she agreed to let me have my car back and even agreed to take the car to get the inspection done the day I was to pick it up, one day before my court date.
I checked in that morning. It still wasn’t done. I was told my car would not be ready until 5:45 that evening, right when I was supposed to be with my daughter at her dance class.
“What time do you close?” I asked.
“5:45.”
“So I have to be there at exactly…”
“Yes.”
Shit.
I took my daughter to dance class and asked the teacher if she’d be OK if I ran across the street (the collision center was not far away) to get my car. She said it was fine, though Lilly was not thrilled that I wasn’t going to be in the waiting area the whole time.
So I rushed over with my pimp rental car and waited and waited and waited until they finally brought my car out.
They forgot to do the inspection. The woman said she sent a different, probably already-inspected car, because she got confused.
I transferred the car seats, cleaned up as best I could, and moved all the rest of my stuff over to my own car. Fine, it wasn’t inspected, but I had my car back. I drove quickly back to the dance studio and waited for Lilly to finish.
Things were almost back to normal.
Not back to normal
The next morning, I went to get my car inspected on the way to work. That went fine; it only took a few minutes.
Then, about 10 minutes on the highway toward work, a bunch of warning lights in my car came on, including a signal saying something might be wrong with my brakes.
The car dealership where I get my oiled changed is on my route, so I was able to make an emergency stop there.
Half an hour later, they figured out that it was a hybrid water pump that needed replacing.
My car has about 150,000 miles on it. It’s paid off, which I love, but I’ve learned that when something needs fixing, it needs to just get fixed, no matter what the cost. This one was going to be $600, on top of the deductible I’d just paid for my wreck. So not having a car payment was not working out so well for these two or three months.
They had no idea how long the fix would take, but the estimate was looking like around three or four hours. My court date was that evening in Kyle, about 30 miles up the road toward Austin.
I called my wife and told her I was at the car dealership with a car problem.
“But what about your inspection?!” she asked.
“What? Oh… no, that’s taken care of, this is a whole other set of bullshit I’m dealing with now.”
I wondered if my car sitting for so long at the collision center may have caused the problem. It didn’t help my mood.
With some weird luck, they were able to fix my car a lot more quickly than expected. I got out of there by lunchtime and headed to work.
#NightCourt
Night court was one of the most depressing places I’ve ever been and I’ve lived in Mississippi.
It was a mix of teens, families, people who just got off work based on the uniforms they wore and random others in homogeneously bad moods. Nobody talked, everybody waited in fear, there was no, “So what are you in for?” chit-chat. Some people messed around with their phones because, you know, this is America, but there was no mirth or camaraderie. With some tweaking, it could have been The Hunger Games without weapons.
I signed in and waited for two straight hours, Tweeting about #NightCourt to keep myself awake.
Going to a court of law at night not as hilarious as my childhood TV viewing led me to believe.
My case was dismissed, but I still have to do defense driving. I plan to do it online, very soon, but it’s a loose thread I’m still dealing with.
And then this other stuff happened:
I got charged for the rental car after all, almost $100. It turns out it was because Hertz thought I left a huge mess (I did not) and didn’t put enough gas in the car (I actually put more than what they gave it to me with and never agreed to pay for gas). But the Hertz Twitter account had my back and helped get that charge reversed.
I noticed later that the hood of my car was sitting unevenly. That required another trip back to the collision center where they fixed it, I shit you not, in 20 minutes.
I watched some Night Court clips on YouTube and found they were much funnier than my experiences.
I like my car and not having a car payment, but at some point in the next few months, I’ll probably end up buying a new one.
And that’s it. I hoped you enjoyed THIS TALE OF TOIL AND WOE.
Just a short update on some stories that ran in the paper today. I’ve had a really good few days with a bunch of stories I’d been working on or planning for a while suddenly appearing all in a row this week.
On the front page I had a story run about how the gubernatorial candidates in Texas for the November election are using social media. This was a story that had been on our budget for a while and that I was dreading. Whenever I write anything to do with politics and technology I always promise myself not to let myself get pulled into doing that again. My dread continued as I reached out to the campaigns and found that they were so busy it was tough to schedule interviews and get the ball rolling.
But then the last two weeks before the stories were due, the interviews started happening and then, to my surprise, I was given access to the candidates themselves. The last week leading up to the story running got exciting and once I had all my interviews done I was suddenly thrilled to be writing it since I actually knew what I was talking about after all the reporting I’d done. It’s a nice place to be where you have much more information than you could possibly fit into a long story. Over the weekend some edits were made that condensed a chunk of the story; I wasn’t thrilled with that, but overall I’m happy with the way the whole piece turned out.
The next few says I’ll be visiting the Game Developers Conference Online and doing a little coverage at the Austin City Limits Festival on some of the behind-the-scenes tech stuff being shown off and seeing if the cell networks hold up (something we end up having to check up on every year, it feels like).
