Bazaarvoice’s end of quarter was this past Friday and it was crazy. One part of our craziness is we go absolutely insane with the color green (increasingly more so as the last day in the quarter approaches):

Our sales team rocked it this quarter and whooped their goal on the last day. I had to leave early on Friday, but I hear they got sand and beer to have a boat/beach themed party on the top of the parking garage… haha.

Friday night, I went to Orange & White with Melissa. I figured I would feel old, but that feeling wasn’t as bad as I thought it’d be (probably since I had never been to O&W before). I’m kind of a lame date to a dance (especially with an ankle that limits certain movement), but Melissa put up with me. =p

Before the dance, we went to dinner at the Belmont which was okay (I wouldn’t have any urges to go again). Atmosphere was not bad, though. I think the Spazmatics were playing next door, so there was some sweet 80’s music going on. BV would be happy that we were still sporting green throughout the night (okay, that wasn’t exactly intentional).

I hear the dance was scaled down this year and there was only one ice sculture… here it is in all its glory (not sure how glorious it is, but if it has any, it’s all in this photo):

Saturday, I did a lot of nothing. The marketing department at BV gave me a $50 AMEX gift certificate for loaning them my 5DMII, so I headed to Fry’s in an attempt to spend it. I was thinking of getting Entourage, but they didn’t have it. I thought about Curb Your Enthusiasm and 30 Rock as well, but the prices were so much higher than Amazon, that I decided not to. I walked out with the $50 untouched. Fry’s fail. After that, there was dinner and dessert with Ryan, his parents, and some of the BV gang. I took a few pics, but they didn’t turn out so great, so I won’t be posting them. =p

Sunday, I got my hair cut, watched 500 Days of Summer and ate mangos.

This past week, Bazaarvoice had its annual US Social Commerce Summit where I served as photographer again. It was pretty cool, with Google being our platinum sponsor, but also pretty tiring. You can view my photos in my flickr set, but here are a few:

After the summit, I took the rest of the week off to chill and recharge. I did mostly nothing, but I did cheat a little and showed up to my team’s offsite to hang with them for a bit at Crown & Anchor:

Friday night, I went to Uchi with Al, Eduardo, and Scotty, which was pretty tasty as expected then went to meet up with Melissa at Sarina’s birthday party… where I spent about 30+ minutes trying to find parking in west campus… oh west campus…

I started to mess with Aperture 3 and decided to make the switch from Lightroom over to it. I was experimenting with the pics above and also reedited some shots from when I went to Salt Lick with some BVers (that batch happened to be on my laptop when I was looking for photos to play with). I think the Salt Lick ones turned out pretty well.

I’m still getting used to having control of curves in the individual RGB channels, but I’m liking it lots so far. =) Good job, Apple.

Some other random tid bits:

• finally got around to watching Slumdog Millionaire


• started using Time Machine for backups on my iMac


• looked at reviews for Canon’s 1D Mark IV, but promptly stopped deciding it was too dangerous (don’t think I could give up full frame, anyways)


• watched a few classes about iPhone app development on Stanford’s iTunes U


• went to the Glee sing-along at the Drafthouse

I’ve probably left stuff out, but whatever… you’ll live. =)

Hah! Okay, I really don’t have anything juicy to hide, but I’m not particularly in the blogging mood, so you will have to live with not knowing what I did this weekend. =p I just feel like I have to hit my weekend blog post quota…

This coming week is the Social Commerce Summit which I am shooting again. Hopefully my ankle is up to the task (I think it should be as long as I don’t do anything crazy). I haven’t done a good amount of shooting in a while, so it’ll be nice to spend a decent chunk of time with my camera again.

Now that I have rewarded you with a boring blog post with misleading title, I will now say goodbye. Hah!

I think it’s a childhood fantasy of most young boys to have a pet dragon. I remember really enjoying Jeremy Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher and an assortment of other dragon pet books. Dude, and Neverending Story? Yeah, that dog/dragon guy was pretty cool (I don’t think I should watch that movie again and just bask in my childhood memories of it).

Anyways, Sunday, I went to Vox with the usuals then went to Estancia for Sam’s 27th birthday (happy birthday!). After that stuffing of the face, I lasted about an hour or something playing WoW at home before I succumbed to the food coma and slept for almost 3 hours. I woke up to various tweets regarding How to Train Your Dragon 3D, and seeing that it has a 98% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, I opted to try to catch the last showing of it at Alamo South Lamar. I also managed to steal Melissa away from her studying (I might be a bad influence) to come along. I enjoyed it pretty well. I noticed that a few reviews on RT called it “Avatar for kids” which is an easy comparison to draw, although I enjoyed it more than the Cameron behemoth of a movie. IMO, James could learn a thing or two from this “kids movie” about story telling and bringing out emotion. I just felt like it had more character and soul, I suppose. =) Plus, I would take the stealth-fighter “Night Fury” dragon over whatever crazy bird thing that was in Avatar any day.

Going in reverse chronological order, on Saturday, I spent a bit of time at Zilker with Melissa and some of her peeps, then went back up north for some ultimate action only to have Sam bust my ankle. Needless to say, I didn’t run the 10k I had signed up for on Sunday (I might’ve skipped anyways, but that’s not the point ;-)). Wrapped up that day by spending a bit of time at Chancy’s for Sam’s pre-6th, pre-birthday bash then started watching some Modern Family, which is solidly amusing.

I think that’s all I can remember for now… tata!

So here I was minding my own business casually throwing a frisbee around for ultimate warm up, when Sam goes ballistic and charges me yelling “I’M GOING TO SMASH YOU BECAUSE YOU’RE BETTER THAN ME!” Luckily, he is slow and I managed to avoid him, but unfortunate for me, a rock or something on the ground was too slow and did not avoid me at all. I stepped on it in a rather poor fashion causing me to roll on my right foot. So now I have a sprained ankle. =( Thanks a lot, Sam… and you too, rock.

There shall be retribution.

On Friday night, I saw Phantom of the Opera with Melissa and some of her friends. It was my first time seeing it, and was pretty enjoyable. =) Walking around campus makes me feel a bit old though… However, what makes me feel even older is the fact that I have my 10 year high school reunion next year. 10 years! Eep…

On Saturday, I took Melissa to Lockhart for some tasty BBQ. I had only previously ever been to Black’s and Chisholm Trail, so I figured it was time for me to hit up either Kreuz or Smitty’s (which I feel are actually the more well known/visited places). We ended up going to Smitty’s but I must unfortunately say that I was underwhelmed. They ran out of prime rib, so we didn’t get to try that, but the brisket and pork chops were both fairly dry (yes, I asked for fatty brisket). The pork ribs were pretty good, though. I might be down for giving them another chance, but I didn’t get a very good first impression. It made me want to do another meatcation…

Sunday, after church, we had a bit of an introduction lunch at Arpeggio Grill for Viraj and Stephanie King to meet Melissa and for two of her friends, Sarina and Helen to meet me. Can’t go wrong with a tasty 30” Greek pizza. =) That was pretty fun, then I went home, hung out for a bit and passed out for a few hours.

Throughout the weekend, there was Pushing Daisies watching as well… we’re approaching the end of the second/final season. It has also been pretty enjoyable, so I would classify this as a solid weekend. =)

On to the work week!…

So I apparently underestimated Sam as I predicted he would FB friend Melissa within 24 hours of meeting her (at karaoke on Friday night). I sent myself an email to timestamp my prediction.

I should have been more aggressive with my estimate though because as I picked up Melissa on Saturday morning and told her about my prediction, she said she’d already got gotten a friend invite at roughly 5AM, which was <6 hours after meeting her and not even 3 hours after I sent the above email to myself. Sorry for underestimating your social swiftness, Sam. :)

On the topic of weekend events, there was karaoking on Friday night, which was pretty fun. I’ll get around to posting a few photos/videos eventually… Melissa and I finished the first season of Pushing Daisies, which is a pretty enjoyable little show (only nine episodes in the first season). I took a break from ultimate this weekend, and probably next too, as I’m trying to let my shins heal in preparation for next month’s 10k run… which I’m still iffy on if I’ll actually be able to do. It’s a bit tricky since I need to rest my shins, but I also should probably train for the run…

With that, I will leave you with the tail end of a wonderful chat I had with my sister who’s visiting London currently:

Ah… I love having sisters. :)

This weekend, other than the super windy ultimate game, Melissa and I finished watching Firefly and Serenity (ahhh… I <3 that show/movie so much). It’s been decided that the next show will be Pushing Daisies, so I ordered both seasons on blu-ray, which should arrive shortly. I’ve heard good things about that show from many sources, so I didn’t mind buying before seeing any of it… looking forward to it. =)

Sunday, I went to Vox, ate at Ho Ho, went misc. shopping a bit and got cleaning supplies (but did not clean). Took a short nap, then visited Austin Stone (hence the post title… har har!) with Melissa. It was my first time and boy… a lot of people go there! After going to Vox for so long, it would take some getting used to should I visit Stone again (not necessarily in a good/bad way). I found out Melissa hadn’t seen Up, so I decided to try my luck at this whole social thing and sent out a tweet asking if anyone had a copy I could borrow. Carolee graciously obliged (thanks!) and so we closed out the night watching that.

As many of you will know, the temps dropped to the lower 40’s and the wind picked up to the mid 20MPH with gusts up to 45MPH. Well, that didn’t stop us from playing Ultimate and we got in a solid few hours of game time, which was pretty impressive. The hot shower I took afterwards felt awesome and I discovered a number of bruises on my hand once the feeling returned to them.

We finally got our first frisbee casualty today as the disc we’ve been playing with finally gave out. Time to buy a new one (or two…)!

Now I think I will take a nap…

“In open fields of wild flowers,
she breathes the air and flies away
She thanks her Jesus for the daises and the roses
in no simple language” - Jars of Clay

I took the day off since I felt like I needed a good day of rest (particularly since my cough is still lurking around). I was planning on sleeping in and perhaps being productive and getting my car maintenanced, but I opted to just turn off the “maintenance required” light so I could ignore it easier (it’s kind of pointless anyways). I did, however, get some Round Rock donut holes, bought more flags for ultimate, ordered new checks, and sent off some mail. Now I am just bumming at the house.

I have had an unfortunate run of WwF games and have a longer losing streak (across different people) than I would like… I think I’m playing too haphazardly… and I need to learn more words with an abundance of i’s in them… I hate i’s.

Itching a little to try to do a small video related project with my camera, but feeling rather uninspired right now…