thisStrangeEngine.com

New Lenovo IdeaPad netbooks are already out available for order.

Coupon code for 15% off good until end of month: USPIDEAPAD15

(You may want to wait for the announcement of the new Dell netbooks, which should be any day now…)

Tags: notebooks

I recently got tickets to see David Byrne at the Paramount here in Austin. The show is billed as “David Byrne performs the songs of David Byrne & Brian Eno”. Many years ago, they put out an album that became an underground classic called “My Life in the Bush of Ghosts”. It’s been nearly 30 years since the release of that album.

Recently, they have collaborated again to make an album where the two strictly stayed in defined realms of the songwriting partnership: Eno would write the music, and Byrne would write the lyrics and vocal melodies. The result is their new album “Everything That Happens Will Happen Today.” The best thing is you can listen to the whole album, right now, in the little Flash widget down below. Then you can go to their website and purchase the album in pure digitial format (in either MP3 or lossless FLAC) with the option to receive a physical disc later. How can you lose?

Tags: davidbyrne

What’s a return to posting without my incessant rambling about Genesis?

Since I last mentioned, the DVD for last year’s reunion tour has come out. It’s a three disc set with the concert on the first two discs and well-done documentary on the third. Needless to say, it rocks so hard that it makes me soil myself. Sadly, you can only find it in Wal-Mart and, even more sadly, they barely keep any in stock. Your best bet is to order it online from Wal-Mart or the Genesis official store. Below is a trailer for the documentary, which is an excellent behind the scenes look at the tour and how the band operates:

The Genesis hit “That’s All” was also recently covered by a country artist named Doc Walker. It was also covered live no too long ago by Allison Kraus with Union Station and Vince Gill.

Tags: genesis

Woo!  My first post here in like…what…four months?

This past month in particular have been really busy.  I’ve been traveling a lot and probably having the most active summer I’ve had in a while.  I’ve been taking baby steps to polish some of the stuff I have going on the web.  I put up a news/blog for the Splatt site to at least maintain some sense of relevance and keep people updated on it.  On that note, I’ve put a couple of notable photo sets: the recent camping/rafting trip and Adam & Kasey’s wedding.

While I was waiting for some work on my tires to get done this morning, I went to a nearby Starbucks to get breakfast. I’m actually not a coffee drinker. I get through my mornings completely on my own morning peppiness (or what I can scrounge of it). When I’m at a Starbucks, I usually get a chai tea or a lemonade tea or something like that. I just don’t care for a MochaFrappaWakkaLatte or whatever. However, this morning, I decided maybe I’d just have a vanilla iced coffee for a change of pace. It was also relatively cheap, so I went for it. I had it and a scone, picked up my car, and then went to work.

And then, like 10 minutes after getting to work, I was actually feeling a little jittery. Since I’m not a coffee drinker, I wasn’t used to having so much caffeine coursing through my veins that early in the day. It was only one cup (or maybe two, a grande size?). I guess most people’s bodies are used to it, but it was a very odd feeling for me. It was like I should’ve been nervous about something. It wouldn’t go away until I had something for lunch, and even then I probably couldn’t bring myself to get a soda until about 3pm.

I mentioned that I thought I heard somewhere that a soda had as much caffeine as coffee, so I was a little confused, to which one of my coworkers replied that that was a load of crock. He also said that Starbucks coffee has about twice the caffeine as most coffee, so it was like I guzzled about four or five cups of Folgers.

Honestly, kids, I don’t see how you do it, but I guess it goes the other way around, too.