One of the at least two cool things about living in Austin, Texas can be enjoyed year-round. The other – during late summer nights. The first, of course, is live music. The second – checking out bats from the Congress bridge.

Some relatives were in town recently, and we took them out to the 6th Street in Austin, which, of course, is the best place to see a band and get hammered this side of Mississippi. We couldn’t show them the bats because the bat-women flew down to Mexico to see their bat-men after they gave birth to bat-babies … under the Congress bridge.

I can’t describe the awesomeness of hanging out in Austin bars and listening to some world-class live music. After the crappy wannabe music scene of Central Michigan, this place especially is a nice change. On 6th Street alone you can check out Friends, Nuno’s, Pete’s – all great little places. After getting plowed on $2 long islands all night, you can buy a shirt that says “Fuck ya’ll, I’m from Texas”, which if you do buy it, I will ban you from my blog permanently.

We went out to Pete’s Dueling Pianos Bar, and had an absolutely fantastic time. I gots video to back that up. Please disregard the cheesy motivational tricks the guys used to rile up the audience. It was still awesome.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwIT_Ht8LWE

I am always skeptical of social networking sites because of their MySpace-ish teen appeal and overblown value.  They remind me of thick “Questionnaire” notebooks girls used to make in middle school with colorful (and gaudy) drawings and questions like “Favorite food” and “Who do you like most from class?“.  If you don’t know what the hell I’m talking about, you should have went to middle school in Eastern Europe.  The point I’m trying to make is so what you have 500 friends on MySpace.

However, that all changed for me when as couple of friends with really good jobs added me to their LinkedIn network.  Now I have access to several hundred high-class friends-of-friends whom I can literally email and say “hey, I know so and so, so we are practically family“.  Not really, but you get the point.

It’s very simple – register on LinkedIn.com and point to a couple of people you know are already registered on LinkedIn.com.  You now have access to their networks.

On top of that, there are a few features I found nifty, such as

• New job notifications
• Job research
• Recommendations

As you can imagine, it doesn’t hurt to try – you’ll be building your own little grapevine.  Just an extra edge if you are looking for a career path or advancement.

The economy is up again, the market just hit its 6-year high, but your paycheck is not really reflecting the upturn. If that sounds familiar, perhaps you’ll be interested in some observations I’ve made recently.

If you’re a reasonable person who thinks (s)he deserves a raise, you probably do. However, just like with buying a car or a house, I recommend doing your research well. Here’s a bucket o’stuff I’ve used to negotiate a pay increase:

• Am I working all kinds of overtime and crazy hours? Simply put, that displays your value to the organization. Though you can perform all your duties within the allotted 8 hours, staying overtime all the time shows how responsible and dedicated you are. Weekends/nights is a huge plus.
• Am I finally able to delegate some of my more mundane tasks to the “new guy”? Delegation shows that you’ve gained experience and are ready to move on to more challenging tasks. Also, it displays valued training skills if you are able to get the new person up and running quickly.
• Will some things at work just die if I miss a few days? It may be lowly to have an agenda to further “job security”, i.e. work in a way that fosters you being the only person that knows a task, but it’s a sure indicator you’re adding value to the organization.
• Do people like/openly praise my work? Collect all praise emails/letters, don’t be shy. You can slip them in as one of the last resorts as long as you’re not an asshole about it. Your boss really should know about the good job you’re doing, but if not, drop a name or two.
• Do you know what the median/average paycheck in your industry is? Do your research, try the obvious – monster.com, salary.com. Grab a few HR mags as a bathroom read.
• Am I being reasonable? Are you asking too much/not enough? Consider all factors (fringe benefits provided, etc).
• Do I have a plan B? There’s a very small chance things will spin out of control. Do you have an offer letter from another company stating how much they are willing to pay you? Something like that sheds light on your real market value a bit more accurately that the HR mag because you’re dealing with concrete sums of money from an actual company. Yes, you may mention you have another offer, but saying that you’re happy where you are and you’re willing to work with the situation helps a lot. It sets your current employer’s mind at ease that you’re necessarily going anywhere at this second.
• Am I being cool, collected, and professional? Remember Tony Soprano and a million other gangsters who said “this is business, not personal“. If somebody is willing to pay you more, name one good reason why you shouldn’t get a raise?

I’ve just recently discovered that when it comes to tv/movie-related entertainment, people can be separated in the following categories:

1. Regular person. You have a 32″ RCA television set, a Magnavox DVD player, and a 3-year old Gateway computer with promotional stickers to “get free Earthlink for 3 months!” still attached. The only way you watch television is by turning on the TV. The only way you watch movies is by popping a DVD into the DVD player. Oh, and you still haven’t set up Direct Deposit at work even though it has nothing to do with this. You have a couch in front of the TV. You still rent DVDs at a local grocery store. You have a DVD collection comprised 75% of Disney titles. The DVD jackets to those titles are either missing or eaten by the big fluffy dog you also have. You like “Friends” and “Hitch”. You have dial-up. You chase after people who take pictures of your crappy car (too “inside”, I know).

2. Advanced … ish user. You’ve tried Netflix and you like it. You have a TV, a 2-3 year old Dell computer that you play Internet games on, and a DVD player. When you bought the DVD player, you actually asked a Target employee whether this DVD player skips most DVDs. After receiving an “I dunno”, you bought the DVD player anyway. You like movies like “Patriot” and “What Women Want”. You wondered about how you could watch a movie on your PC, but you’ve never actually done it. You have cable.

3. Advanced user. You’ve used P2P to download music and movies, and if the codec is giving you grief, you know how to re-install it. You’ve encoded, copied, and watched movies on your PC. You’ve created labels for burnt CDs and DVDs. Your video card’s name ends with “…Vidia” or “…TI”, and you actually know how many FPS you’re getting on Oblivion.

I decided to not pussyfoot around the very important issue of quality time watching “Firefly” and “Godfather 2″, so here’s my rig:

I have a wireless Linux fileserver that automatically scans all binary newsgroups for rotating keywords of my choice (while I’m at work), then downloads found DVD images onto its homemade RAID-array, after which it wirelessly shoots combined video to my new 42″ tube and audio to the Soundblaster X-Fi-driven 7.1 surround sound speaker rig. I control the server with a wireless mouse and a small LCD display. I do not own a DVD player.

The best way to feed your inner geek, entertain yourself, and spend a grand EVER.

So I’m a good little robot programmed to go out and shop shop shop the day after Thanksgiving to enhance and further corporate influence over America. You could say that, or your could just say I needed a few things and I didn’t want to pay full price for them.

Up at 4:30 am, on the streets at 5:00 am. Hundreds of people already there, standing in long lines, waving the damned newspapers around. It’s muggy and dark, but the excited chatter of fellow shoppers seems to elevate the spirits dampened by the weather.

Here’s a tentative list of things I wanted to buy. All of these things would have been bought anyway some time in the future because I pretty much need them:

• Extra loud alarm clock
• Television set (still don’t have one)
• External enclosure for a SATA hard drive
• SATA hard drive, 500Gb for backups (none of my precious data is backed up right now)
• Wireless-G Router (old one finally died)
• Precise wireless mouse with rechargeable battery

After hanging out at various outlets for six hours, I ends up with the following list:

• nVidia GeForce 7900GS video card
• TWO ViewSonic 19″ monitors
• D-Link Wireless router
• HDD enclosure and 500Gb SATA HDD
• Logitech gaming mouse

Why in the hell did I buy the video card and the monitors? Easy – I could not pass up a good deal. Both ViewSonics were $300 out the door. The nVidia was $60 out the door. That’s like $400 I didn’t need to spend, but spent anyway because of a perceived “good deal”.

Speaking about the nVidia … As I was crawling through the gaming section of the store, I heard a guy talk about how cheap the new graphics boards were. Knowing that “cheap” in the world of 3D gaming may mean $300-400, I was astonished to overhear that the very decent dual monitor-supporting 7900GS was going for a mere $60. I immediately grabbed one “just in case” while one of the guys started a conversation with a salesperson. Turns out, someone placed an orange $60 sign on top of the 7900GS pile, and my guy took a picture of the whole thing with his cell phone. Waving the proof in his hand, he demanded that the pricey ($200-250) video card was sold to him at “advertised price”. I joined in, and so did a friend of mine who came with me. The sad-faced manager asked us to follow him, and after a brief button-punching intermission, we were granted the requested price. So that’s how I upgraded for cheap.

Identical ViewSoncis were bought to replace my mish-mash monitors – the difference in color, tint, sharpness, and refresh rate was starting to piss me off. Brought ViewSonics home, unpacked, plugged in, with disbelief stared at 20 (!) dead pixels, cussed, packed them back up, brought them back to the store, and got the refund.

Bottom line? Should have shopped online. Screw Black Friday. Oh, yeah, and I bought the 42″ Panasonic plasma I wanted. Straight cash.