Well, in about 15 minutes, we're out the door headed to the airport, at which point our new residence will be Washington state.  We'll let you know when we get there.

Well, almost.  By the time you read this I probably will be.  The truck arrived on schedule this morning, but the moving company forgot to send out the loaders (which was odd because the packers were here yesterday).  That was fine because the driver had a chance to go around and tag all the furniture.

Anyway, things are eerie around here.  Nothing but lots of little pieces of garbage everywhere.

I'll get some pics up on Flickr later.  I'm working with relatively limited internet access through my phone.

I've got a hotel room lined up for us tonight, then it's off to the airport late in the morning!  Crazy

The packers came early this morning and packed all our stuff.  I was completely amazed at how many boxes it took to pack up the kitchen.  It pretty much took 1 person dedicated to the kitchen, while 3 others did the rest of the house.  From what they said, it's typical.  The kitchen has to be packed with more padding, so it takes up more room and takes longer.

Anyway, the loaders come tomorrow and load up everything.  That will be even crazier.  The house will pretty much be empty.  Then, we fly out on Thursday about noonish.

I simply don't have room to take my camera on the plane, so it's packed.  I'll try to snap some pictures with one of the lesser cameras though.

I'm getting ready to shut down my PC for the last time here in Austin.  The packers are coming tomorrow morning.  I hope they're not really mad at how unprepared we are.  Anyway, things are getting pretty stressful here at the end.  There's still so much to do and only a couple of days left to do it.  We said goodbye to my brother and his wife this evening, which was pretty sad.  I've never lived more than about an hour from my family my whole life.  Things will be very different with them being that far away.

We did finally find out where we will be living for the next couple of months while we look for a permanent place. Here's a bird's eye view.

We've got a ton of possible houses to look at when we get there.

My buddy Dan just posted a skit we did back in college for a marching band event.  He just kind of threw it out there, so I thought I might provide some background.  I'm sure others may remember this differently.  Feel free to correct me in the comments.

The event was Band Follies, an annual event celebrating the marching season, which gave the band a chance to hang out in a purely social situation.  Each year, band follies is themed, and this year was a toga party.  Another tradition is that whoever wants to can come up with a skit to perform toward the end.  Kappa Kapa Psi and Tau Beta Sigma, the band's service fraternity and sorority (respectively) also each do a skit, primarily, to show the freshmen how "cool" we are so they'll want to join.

I remember the meeting where we (KKPSi) came up with the idea for our skit.  I had only 1 criteria in mind:

• As gory and bloody as possible

We decided to go with a well-known historical event, and simply give our rendition of it.  Since it was a toga party, we thought we'd play on that and do the death of Ceasar.  Jeff Flint, our benevolent drum major, played Ceasar, and Victor Villalobos played the part of Brutus, although his name was Victor in the skit for some reason.  I led the public rebellion against Ceasar. (I'm the one in the red cap)

One of the problems with the skits in the past is that we were too lazy to rehearse or come up with a real script.  So, to combat this, we wrote the beginning and end, then broke up into smaller groups that would each come up with a "fight scene" during the middle of the skit.  Again, the only criteria was to be as gory as possible.

Dave and I were a team, and our gimic was to be a spectacular exploding head.  He would attempt to defeat me, and I would attempt to evade his attacks with ninja-like skills, then, after being horribly wounded in the stomach, I would turn behind him and crush his head with a mighty blow.  Kool-Aid would splatter everywhere, and the audience would have no other choice but to vomit uncontrollably.  Despite Dave's best efforts, the Kool-Aid leaked and made his paper mache head soggy.  In addition, my Kool-Aid er.. "blood" pack was too strong, and I had to burst it myself, which looked more like a horrible bowel hemmorage than anything else.

Anyway, the other guys all had very hilarious fight scenes, which involved everything from fake arms (a la Monty Python) to real cow livers.  The real payoff was Victor's last Scooby-doo inspired line:

...and I would have gotten away with it too, if it weren't for you pesky Romans!

It was really meant for a live audience, but watch it anyway.  Hopefully with this background it might actually be funny to a random person.

Oh yeah, Mark Bauman and Dan Obregon played medics, who would attend to the wounded as an excuse to get them out of the way for the next fight.  They actually had some of the funniest lines in the whole skit.  Too bad the sound wasn't good enough to catch them.  Do either one of you guys have your original script?

I was watching Jenna this afternoon, and she was crawling around and generally having fun.  She crawled over to a little book (Goodnight Gorilla, to be exact), openned it up, and began making noises.  This was nothing new.  She does this often, and we think she is pretending to read it.  What I was most amazed by was that she began making sounds like E-I-E-I.  This of course is familiar.  So, I grabbed her Old MacDonald book, which was nearby, and began reading it.  Lo and behold, Everytime I read, "Old MacDonald had a farm...", she would respond with E-I-E-I-E-I.  I was completely amazed.

I took me a while to realize that I ought to be videoing it.  By the time I started rolling, she was less interested, but I did get it a few times. If I get a chance this evening, I'll get it encoded and get a clip up here.

Today is the birthday of my good friend Dave Barnes.  Dave and I played trombone together at Baylor.  He and his wife Jen moved here to Austin a few years after we did.  Them being here made our decision to move a difficult one.  I'll certainly miss Dave, but thanks to XBox Live, we can still play.

Here he is leaping over the creek on the frisbee golf course near my house.  He made it...this time.

Well, today I am officially unemployed.  I just made my last commute home from Freescale Semiconductor.  I'll really miss my old team and the fun times we've had.

Now that I'm unemployed, Becky and I are free to follow our dream of moving to Washington state in hopes of finding the elusive sasquatch or "wood ape".  That's right, I'm not going to work for Microsoft after all.

My plan is to drive through the forest roads at high speed, hoping to catch the beast unawares and hit it with my huge, 80's style station wagon.  Thinking it dead, I'll strap it to the roof and drive home, only to have it wake up and scare us.  In my panic, I'll brake abruptly, sending the hairy bigfoot flying through the air.

After some misadventures, my family and I will grow to love the gentle giant, and seek to return him to his home, lest he be poached by his arch-nemesis, Jacques LaFleur.  In doing so, we'll realize that if we lived more like these gentle sasquatches, in harmony with nature, that we'd all be better off.

I'm going through the piles and piles of electronics I've accumulated over the years trying to decide what goes and what stays.  I've got a fair number of items that I don't think deserve to be trashed, but I don't want to cart them halfway across the country (literally). So, I've decided to list a few items of interest in hopes that they will find a good home.

The rules are, items will go to whomever I feel like, mostly a function of convenience for me.  If there is alot of demand for an item, money will grease the wheels for you :). If there are specific items you want from the "bundles", let me know and I'll think about it. Here are the items:

• Playstation 2 "bundle".  Includes:
  • console (w/network adapter)
  • 4 controllers (with a multitap)
  • logitech force-feedback steering wheel
  • Handful of games including Amplitude, Gran Turismo 3, Burnout 3 and Socom II
  • All normal cables plus component and s-video
• GameCube Bundle:
  • Console (platinum) (w/network adapter)
  • 1 controller (2 if I can find the other one)
  • 2 sets of Bongos
  • handful of games including Donkey Konga, Zelda (several versions), and Mario Kart (if I can find it)
• Robosapien
• 2 10-inch subs w/amp all installed in box.
• Several PC cases of various age.  One is a very nice black Antec desktop, which I replaced only a few months ago because I needed a tower for my new desk.
• A couple of old CRT monitors.  They technically work, but are old. One is huge (19" I think) one is more like 17".
• Large RC car.  Electric.  Great fun.  with good charger.  A couple of cycles and the battery should be fine.
• Tivo Series 1 - The hard drive is kaput, but there are numerous hacks available to replace it and do other cool things to it.
• Creative Nomad Jukebox 3 - This is an old iPod-like device. It technically still works, but it pretty much sucks. I'd love to just take it apart and hack on it, but I haven't gotten around to it.  It's got some interesting  features. Digital optical input, surround sound support, etc.
• Lots of really old stuff like modems, video cards, etc and stuff that I'm pretty sure no one wants.

I'll add more as I come across it.