It's been raining so hard here in Texas that I keep looking around for an old guy building a boat.  Anyway, on Saturday we got another big downpour which seems common lately.  There's a nice little stream that runs through the wooded area behind my apartment and if you follow it upstream and across the street it "sort of" runs through another apartment complex there.  I say "sort of" because I think the complex was designed so that it usually runs underground, but also so that when it overflows it runs through the park area of the complex.  Well, on Saturday I looked out my window and noticed the little stream running much bigger than usual.  So I grabbed my camera and went across the street and sure enough there was a nice little river running through the complex.

 

There's no need to worry as this is how it was designed, but it sure was a lot of water.  Enjoy the pictures. 

 

OK, so this is a bit late, but on Friday the 13th I had the lucky misfortune to get a flat tire right after I had picked up my lunch.  As luck would have it, the holes were in the side of the tire and could not be repaired, I needed a new tire.  I then spent the next few hours putting the spare on and driving around town trying to find a place with a tire in stock for a replacement.  No one had any in stock so I had to order one and wait a week.

 

So, was it bad luck due to Friday the 13th, a coincidence?  To each his own. 

 

This post is for the real Dr. Pepper fans.  One of the things I've come to love here in Austin is Dublin Dr. Pepper.  For those that don't know, Dublin Dr. Pepper is manufactured in Dublin, Texas at the first and oldest Dr. Pepper bottler and uses the original Dr. Pepper recipe.  Now, I know what you're thinking if they use the original recipe, then what does everyone else use?  Well, the original Dr. Pepper recipe, and the same likely holds true for most soft drinks, uses cane sugar as the sweetener rather than high fructose corn syrup (HFCS).  Pretty much all soft drink manufacturers switched from using cane sugar to HFCS in the 70s when the price of cane sugar rose above that of HFCS.  This is likely because it's much easier to grow corn here in the US than it is to grow sugar cane.

 

Anyway, when everyone else else switched to HFCS, the Dublin Dr. Pepper plant decided to continue using Imperial Cane Sugar as they had always done to preserve the original Dr. Pepper recipe.  When I found out about this I became intrigued and decided to find some to try it for myself.  Finding Dublin Dr. Pepper is not an easy task.  The franchise area covered by the Dublin Dr. Pepper plant is not very large, only about a 44 mile radius.  And with Dublin, TX about 140 miles from Austin that leaves quite the drive.  Fortunately though there are a few places in Austin (and apparently most of Texas now) where you can at least buy Dublin Dr. Pepper, even if it isn't on the cheap.

 

Read on for my quest in tracking down a good source of cheap Dublin Dr. Pepper near Austin...

 

OK, so I'm a day late. Anyway, yesterday was 7/7/07, 777, a.k.a. Bungie Day.  July 7th is a special day for Bungie and this year being '07 the day was special.  They celebrated by releasing some cool stuff for Halo 3 as well as a free theme and player icons on XBox Live.  If you want them now it's too late, they were only available yesterday, but the Halo 3 goodies are still. there.

 

Anyway,  I hear that yesterday was a popular day to get married, especially in Las Vegas.  Hopefully though if you got married yesterday you've got more going for your relationship than a lucky date.  I wonder how many will last until 888 - 8/8/08?

 

Pungi and I spent the day swimming in Bull Creek and I also made a trip up north of here to get some Dublin Dr. Pepper.  More on that later.

 

Happy Bungie Day everyone!

 

I was looking for the Mac equivalent of the Windows GetAsyncKeyState() function so that I could check to see if certain keys were pressed when launching Bibble.  I ran across a helpful post here that tells you how to do it using the GetKeys() function (scroll to the end to find the useful stuff).  It looks like that was taken from an Apple example, SampleButtonPlugin , found here. 

 

This post is a bit technical and is mainly for my own future reference.  Read on for more... 

 

The Utah Jazz defeated the Golden State Warriors 100-87 on Tuesday night to advance to the Western Conference finals for the first time since 1998.

 

It was a messy game on both ends, but the Jazz were able to outlast the Warriors to win the series 4-1 and advance to the Western Conference finals.  The three pointers that were falling for the Warriors throughout the playoffs fell flat tonight.  The Jazz on the other hand didn't look too hot themselves, committing a large number of turnovers,  but were able to last where it counted in the 4th quarter. 

 

Again it was Derek Fisher coming up with a big clutch performance in the 4th quarter, including 3 3-pointers, to help the Jazz outlast the Warriors.  Andrei Kirilenko had 21 point and 15 rebounds and a big steal with about 1 minute left in the game to help seal the deal for Utah.

 

The 3 point shots that were falling so easily for the Warriors throughout the playoffs weren't falling tonight.  They were just 6-30 from 3 point land.  Despite this they were able to stay in the game thanks to a multitude of Utah turnovers and poor free-throw shooting by the Jazz.  I think Charles Barkley was right in that as we got deeper into the series the smaller Golden State players had gotten tired from having to play with Utah's big men.  Some of the frustration came out in the end of the third quarter as Stephen Jackson clobbered Dee Brown for a hard flagrant foul and then argued about it for a technical.  A play or so later and GS got hit with another technical on Matt Barnes (I think) which also had coach Don Nelson storming the court.  The Warriors really are poor sportsmen and lose their composure much too easily.

 

Whether it was frustration or fatigue, Golden State wasn't able to pull it together in the 4th quarter while the Jazz were able to stay focused and make some big shots to close out the series despite poor free throw shooting and a lot of turnovers.

 

The Jazz will now face the winner of the Spurs/Suns series.  Both teams will be very tough for the Jazz, but after defeating the league's hottest team they will be ready for anything.  Also, the Jazz have played very well against both the Spurs and the Suns.  They split in the regular season 2-2 with the Spurs and were 3-1 against the Suns, including two wins in Phoenix.

 

Whatever happens, it's a great day to be a Jazz fan! Go Jazz!