Austin ModHouse

another friday afternoon at red bud island.

twisted ankle kept her seated on the cooler.

we were very impressed at how he managed to get his eyes to match his shirt.

meanwhile back on shore the kids had applied the RBI sugar exemption...

things were starting to get a bit tribal

the two older girls became very involved in producing "clay balls"

I had my cell phone in the water tight hatch, which also contained some wet clothes my daughter had put in.  my phone got all condensated and the keypad quit working.  I could see both my mother and my wife had been calling, but I had no method to call them back.  so we hastily packed it up, went home and scooped them up and then to austin pizza for dinner.  they have a large fenced in playscape there.  later that night I checked iphone availability (their next day inventory is released at 9pm).  austin was full of green dots.  the writing was on the wall.

my daughter and I arrived at the mall at 7 am and I was out of there around 9.30.

so, I love my iphone.  it's just like my itouch but it's all the new applications that you can download from the apple store that really make the difference.  I get a little confused when somebody calls.   it seems odd as if I am holding my ipod to my ear. 

so here was one of the cooler moments.  I  had just installed shazam on my ipod and I was blown away by how well it worked.  it turns your iphone into a listening device that will tell you what music it hears (not being played by the iphone).  so, if you are in your car and they play some song you like but can't wait for the DJ to say the artist and song name etc, you just use shazam.  this also could have been used a few weeks back when holly insisted that erasure performed the song I JUST CAN'T GET ENOUGH.  instead of somebody searching on their blackberry, shazam could have just listened.

so, there I am trying to demonstrate this to my wife.  she quickly cut me off and got excited herself, "THAT'S SHAZAM!!!"  I tried to continue my demonstration,"yes, it is so cool, it can..." 

she took control of the iphone as she beamed with pride, "I used to handle shazam's patent portfolio back in silicon valley. I know their technology quite well!"  how cool is that!?  I was definitely impressed.

I've already mentioned how super excited I am that the silver jews are coming to austin in sept.  I'll likely be posting some of my favorite lyrics from david berman (silver jews).  besides being one heck of a songsmith, he's also released a book of poetry.  since this post has a tech slant to it, I'll share some tech heavy lyrics here...

OK, one more robot lyric from david berman

"Windex tears roll down the robots face,
He never felt his mother's embrace,
My mother named me after a king,
I'm gonna bury my name in you"