I feel more than a little empathy for Mr Trainer’s name making it onto the interwebs since it isn’t difficult to find a person’s address these days. I won’t tell you which house it is specifically, but Scott lives inside this graphic:

In case you were wondering, this decibel level compare chart shows that the city’s 75dB limit on restaurants is just above normal conversation tones, and below telephone dial tone.

I tend to find the middle ground in most arguments, so I understand the people who legitimately are upset when a nearby restaurant expands to an outdoor patio and wants to have bands play in the evening. However many “restaurants” that have been playing live music for, at least, the seventeen years that I have lived in Austin are starting to be ticketed and even forced to stop active shows. Locals want to decry carpetbaggers who move into quaint parts of town, removing local color, but I suspect there are also several long-time residents who are using the police to punish popular businesses that have done a poor job of crowd control. (How would you feel if the only open parking on your block was your driveway, and it was often half-blocked by shiny new hybrid?)

Whatever the case, the Mayor and City Council need to quickly resolve these issues. My recommendation would be to establish grandfather exemptions for locations (streets, neighborhoods or specific businesses) that are established live music venues (including restaurants), and allow them to be louder for specific windows. For example, give Shady Grove a 20 decibel leniency until 10:00pm Wednesday and Thursday, and until 2:00am Friday and Saturday.

You can read more about the issues in Kevin Russell (of The Gourds)‘s letter to the Austin Chronicle, this discussion at Yelp, and this blog by Michael Corcoran’s.

Even better, you should DO SOMETHING to let the council know your opinion on the matter. I have written a letter that I’m sending to each of the upcoming council members, and the new mayor (who start their new jobs on June 20th) that I will link to below. If you feel ambitious, please print these out, fill in your name and mail them to City Hall at:

P. O. Box 1088
Austin, Texas 78767

My letters are available here:

• Lee Leffingwell
• Mike Martinez
• Randi Shade
• Laura Morrison
• Sheryl Cole
• Bill Spelman

• Chris Riley

Disclaimer: I’m not a lawyer, journalist or even a very good researcher. Any legal matters discussed above are based on my scant online research, but I believe they are correct.

One of the systems I dropped off was my first “transportable” gaming system. Anyone remember LAN parties, when we’d drag all our computers to one person’s house and play networked games all day? Does anyone do that anymore? I suppose our LAN parties died because (1) all my friends got old and had kids, and (2) the internet became fast enough that local LANs were almost pointless.

Here’s the system I dropped off:

I’ll make you a deal. I’ll give $10 through PayPal (including enough to cover the PayPal fee according to this calulator) to the person who can best identify the stickers and the dates they were applied. (Ties will result in a random drawing overseen by me and one of my co-workers.) Leave a comment with your guesses, and I’ll pick a winner tomorrow at 8:00am CDT. (Closest guess is subject to my decision about the accuracy, based on my best approximation.)

I understand and support both sides of the issue on Prop 2 — an amendment to the City Charter banning tax incentives for multi-housing and multi-business development. It is poorly worded and will have a negative impact to the City Charter if it is passed. However, lately the COA City Council has shown a financial preference to big box retailers over local business, which translates into more money (and big money) going out-of-state in return for low-wage jobs. In the end I voted for Prop 2 for two reasons.

First, our Council members need to hear a clear message from the voters that we prefer “Keep Austin Weird” to convenient big box retail shopping. We can rely on the outlying suburb cities to keep us stocked in Best Buy, Michael Kors and Macy’s stores. Heck, since Bee Caves closed the Backyard to build a strip mall blight on the Hill Country landscape I think we can assume that they’ll be perfectly willing to destroy any city charm in favor of low-cost high-impact shopping. Second, the argument that expensive lawsuits will surely follow is flawed since the lawsuits will be cheaper then the cost of the tax incentives and economic impact.

Happy voting day everyone. If you’re in a swing state then good luck with your presidential candidate of choice. The rest of us need to focus on local concerns.

… I want to try to set the record straight. I hope that you will take a moment to read this. … Make no mistake: powering our homes and buildings is going to get more expensive, perhaps dramatically. Right now, we have an opportunity to get in front of it. … Sellers wouldn’t have to make upgrades, and they wouldn’t have to pass an inspection – they would just have to let buyers know what kind of efficiency condition the house is in. … The Task Force is discussing a VOLUNTARY program. Under a voluntary program, “low-hanging fruit” like weather stripping and duct sealing would be prioritized, and spending caps would be proposed. All of Austin Energy’s rebates and incentives would be available, including their low-interest loan program. …
Sincerely,
Will Wynn
Austin Mayor

I love having a mayor whose name is so aggressively positive, and while he hasn’t been a perfect mayor I think this kind of missive is representative of why I think he’s been a really good mayor.

Saturday I finally got time to pot them up to their last pots (I actually couldn’t find enough pots, so I cupped them up.)

Before:	After:

My dear friend Cynthia “starred” this blog post discussing some crackpot’s idea of spending one night a week without staring at a screen.

“One night a week, I am going to completely unplug from anything with a screen,” Stallings writes. “This means no computer, no cell phone, no movies. I plan to focus instead on the other things I like doing like writing letters, crafting, organizing, dancing, going for walks, cooking and making tea, writing in my paper journal.”

<queue Lewis Black whine>I’ve got a better idea. Spend one night a week without the a/c or heat turned on. While you’re at it, how about you just decide to spend one night a week sleeping in the forest naked? Or, if you’re not that adventurous just spend one night a week eating uncooked meat. Technology is obviously the problem, so you should eschew all of it.

…and stop walking upright that night, too.

For those following along at home, or interested in seedlings, this year’s selections are: Cherokee Purple, Pruden’s Purple, SMicollum’s Surprise, Black Krim, Persimmon, Costulano, Stupice, Brandywine, Sungold, and Principe Borghese. I’m also trying some new peppers this year in hopes of getting something that will actually produce.

And it’s important to have a helper.

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

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.

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!

After a fortifying continental breakfast and walking coffee, I rolled up to the Moscone Center this morning and got in the 30-minute plus registration line. Fortunately, I bumped into possibly the only two people I know at the conference, so we spent the time catching up.

After that it was all blah-di-blah-di-LDAP-di-config-di-port 667-DNS-dscl-di-blah for the next 8 hours. (There’s an unintentional geeky joke contained in that sentence. I hope you missed it.)

Well, I did pick up a few pointers here and there. I actually bailed on my scheduled class and moved to the remedial version for a while, which was a lot more fun and crowded.

But the key event of the day came on my way back to the hotel after I bought my street car pass and went to get on a car to take me back up the hill. The conductor told me to go around and get on the other side, just as the car started to move.

Yes, I actually had to run alongside and jump on, all holding on with one hand with one leg trailing jauntily behind. I just need to eat some sourdough and have an earthquake and I’ll be done with this town.