For the last month I’ve been cheating on the Porch with my own blog on the side. Nothing in particular to see over there, but it was starting to seem like a dirty little secret. Now you know everything.

As former CIO for companies employed by two of the residents of my home, Randy Mott is derided for turning IT into a corporate segment that resembled an Olsen twin — the one who needs to eat a hamburger or two before she shrinks so far she becomes a blackhole. Now he’s telling his IT acolytes (including the “editorial” staff at the Magazine he sits on the board for) that a radical makeover is the only way to get to [a] rationalized approach to running a company’s technology infrastructure. That’s a big surprise for those of us who watched him ignore or deny several career’s worth of PO(purchase order)‘s so that he could brag about how inexpensive an IT organization is. (To be fair, I may hold a little resentment for the IT wasteland he left behind at my current employer so that he could go work for our #1 competitor despite his contractual obligations. He was never a poster-boy for ethics but that decision made it clear he never wanted to be said poster-boy.)

This NYT article got me thinking today. I’ve been a pretty solid veggie for the past 2 years, and aside from the occasional sushi-related back slide, I’m pretty sure it’s going to stick this time. I’ve always said that my reasons for going meat free were more practical (texture and taste icks me out, mainly) than moral. But the further I go down this road the less sure I am about that. We owned chickens when I was a kid, I’m an animal lover, and I do think cows have pretty eyes. I’m certain I could never watch an animal be slaughtered and not throw up/pass out. So maybe I really am just a stone’s throw away from joining a hippy commune with Alicia Silverstone. That said, I do think that the movement towards ethical, thoughtful consumption of all of our resources (meaty things included) is a step in the right direction.

I know the Porch has a whole lot of people who love bacon. Bacon comes from a magical animal named Babe.

Anyone out there who actually knows how to use Wordpress? …maybe just a couple (bajillion) people… Well, now you can add me to the list as I migrate Backporch Beer to a new tool, and I start looking for Widgets and Plugins to clutter our little blog away from blog.

To those of you who might someday, once again, post here: I’ll send you new passwords for your logins ASAP.

Welcome!

Bump! I just wanted to point out that you should change your RSS feed. Now you can monitor both the Backporch Beer posts and the comments left at Backporch Beer! Be sure to add both feeds to your feed reader to get the full effect! :-)

p.s. I’m still trying to edit the ugly away. Have patience with me while I fight WordPress and CSS.

Hey Austinites — Austin is opening up its Green Choice energy program again. This is where you pay for the power company to buy your power consumption from renewable sources, primarily West Texas wind farms.

We subscribed when we moved to Austin and at some point in 2006, the Green Choice rate dropped below the conventional rate. It looks like the current Green rate is more expensive, but you lock in your rate for 15 years, so it’s likely to pay off in the long run.

I’m mainly posting this so I can add this photo I took on the way to California of some of those very same West Texas wind farms.

I received this bulk mail from a co-worker earlier this week. It is awesome on so many levels.

These 2 guys bought this cub from the zoo when it was newly born…after sometime the cub became big and hard to handle at home… so they decided to send him to his motherland Africa… a year later the 2 guys decided to go to Africa and see the cub again.

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John contended yesterday that Macworld was wasted on me, and I think he may be right.

Today I attended what is probably the biggest annual orgy of geekery, the Macworld keynote. For those who don’t know, this is the thing where Apple CEO/figurehead Steve Jobs comes out on stage and says what’s up and what’s new with Apple Inc. “Stevenotes“ have a built in element of overhype thanks to a few industry-shaking examples including the introductions of the original iMac and the iPod, Jobs’ “reality distortion field“ and the presence of about 10,000 of the company’s most devoted fans. It’s quite a production that gets people really excited about the company and its products.

Problem for me is, I’m not so into consumer electronics anymore and I generally try to avoid spending money. This morning’s primary news concerned a new ultra-thin laptop, the ability to rent movies via iTunes and the Apple TV set-top box, and some new features for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

All were pretty compelling. The iPhone is an awesome gadget that continues to improve with every revision, but I won’t give a moment’s thought to it as long as my employer pays for me to have a Blackberry. (If ATT wants to announce business contracts for the iPhone, that might change.) iTunes HD movie rentals from every major studio is more proof, as I heard someone say today, that the Red vs. Blu war is just “rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.” Congratulations Blu-Ray, you’ve cornered the player-piano-roll market. However, the price of Apple TV (before even renting one movie) would pay up my Netflix account through April of 2009, at which point we’ll all be watching movies on our retinas in 13958p or some shit.

The new laptop announced today, the Macbook Air looks to be a marvel of engineering. However I’m not sure where it fits. I wouldn’t want one for my only computer — it obviously has to compromise on processor and disk speed and storage capacity and we’re expected to have another computer from which to install software. Apple should have no problem selling plenty to gadget enthusiasts, but I don’t see it being one of their industry-changing products. I’m thinking more of the Cube or 12” PowerBook. Perhaps I’ll feel differently when I get my hands on one tomorrow.

So all that to say — Cool stuff, but I’m not spending any money on it, John is right. I did get to see Randy Neuman ramble like a crazy man for 10 minutes and sing “You Got a Friend in Me” though. Good times!