Mercwear.com – Curtis Morris

I just finished the book Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. This was the first Gladwell book that I have read and it has reminded me to always look past the surface on not only people but places and events. All too often I will look at someone and assume that their social status, success or even failure must be related to the decisions they have made in life. I still believe that making sound decisions is critical in all walks of life however, Outliers showed me that something as simple as the day you were born can have a real impact on your life and who you become.

I will not go into a full review here, there are plenty available around the internet but I will say that if you are the type of person who really enjoys the “Ah HA!” moment reading this book will make you happy =)

When I bought tickets to the Trans Siberian Orchestra (I will call them TSO from this point on) back in early November I really had no idea what to expect, my future mother-in-law is a big fan so Andrea and I thought it would be fun to go with her to the show. Our tickets were for the 3pm show on December 23rd, we arrived at around 2pm and found a huge line of fans lined up outside the AT&T center waiting for the doors to open! Mind you that the seats are reserved so at this point I was not sure whey people were lined up but I can only guess they just like TSO THAT much.

We took our seats at around 2:45 (Andrea and I waited in the Jeep for the line to die down) and the show started at 3:00 – and what a show it was. To my surprise, TSO actually performs a rock and roll show complete with lasers, smoke and pyrotechnics. The show started out with a man reading a Christmas story – in between chapters TSO would play a song, sometimes it was Christmas related other times it was not – but they were all very good.

The highlight of the show was Anna Phoebe – the String Master for the band. Phoebe is a world renowned violinist from London that plays a custom made 6-string electric violin called a Violectra. She plays a violin as if it was an extension of her own body, running around the stage (and stadium), playing while on her knees and even holding the instrument above her head while playing. All of the crazy stuff you see rockers doing with a guitar in their hands she can do with her Violectra, best of all – it was pink.

If you have a chance to see TSO in concert, stop reading and go buy tickets, I for one will be waiting in line to see them next year!

Links:
Official Trans Siberian Orchestra website:
http://www.trans-siberian.com

Official Anna Phoebe website:
http://www.annaphoebe.com/

Video of TSO playing Carmina Burana/O Fortuna Live:

You Tube video of a house wired to display a light show to the TSO song “Wizards of Winter�:

Ok.. Probably not THE BEST but damn funny to say the least.
What the hell is he saying? Chacarron?

The latest addition to the X-Men dynasty is more action packed and thrilling than the last two resulting in movie that was fun to watch and kept my attention the whole time. With that said, there were a few things I did not like about it, some of the X-Men lose their powers (I’m not going to mention which ones) and that’s a little depressing, other than that I liked the movie.

This clip has been radiating throughout the internet since last Sunday, it aired on Saturday Night Live on 12/17/2005. I really can’t decide on a favorite part, but if I had to pick one it would probably be when they use Yahoo maps to find the “dopest route”.

This film has Starwars Kid potential in my opinion, the masterminds behind the short are The Lonely Island group (http://www.thelonelyisland.com/) who joined SNL this year.

Lazy Sunday (Requires Flash to watch)

For the really big fans of the skit (like me!) here is a link to the MP3 (not sure on the quality as I have not tested it yet):

Download “Lazy Sunday Mp3�

Thanks to Andrea for showing it to me, it’s definitely one of the best SNL skits in a long time.

While posing the Forbes article below I noticed a new Google ad on my site for a movie called “Hostel�. The only reason it caught my eye is because it said “Presented by Quentin Tarantino� and I’m a big fan.

The movie looks to be a horror / action movie based on actual events, something like saw. Check out the site and trailer before, if you don’t like scary stuff then just move along (I am looking at you Andrea!).

Hostel Film Site

Forbes has an interesting write up on what they are calling the “Fictional 15�. They have taken 15 fictional characters that have been elevated to the status of real people in terms of popularity and wealth.

Some of the names include Santa Clause, C. Montgomery Burns and Cruella De Vil, good stuff.

Link to the full story:
The Forbes Fictional 15

I was able to go see the Walk the line last night and it was, without a doubt one of the best films I have seen this year. For those of you unfamiliar with the movie, it is basically a chronicle about the late musician Johnny Cash. The story starts at his childhood and progresses up to his historical performance at Fulsom prison.

Joaquin Phoenix played a great Cash – from what I understand about the making of the movie he was actually hand picked by the man in black for this part before Cash passed away in 2003. The movie was able to hold my attention for the full 2 hours and 15 minutes, I realize my opinion may be a bit bias due to the fact that I am a huge fan however Andrea and her 14 year old sister Elena also enjoyed the film (neither are big fans) – so I think that speaks for it’s self.

One thing that did surprise me was the average age of the crowd seeing the movie – I generally associate his music with an older audience however my best guess at the average age of the theatre we were is would be about 28. I guess more people than I assumed know what good music is.

I recommend that you go see this movie even if you are not a die hard Cash fan – odds are you will like it.

Official site

Joaquin Phoenix as Johnny Cash and Reese Witherspoon as June Carter:

Yep, you read that correctly – I am engaged, I asked Andrea to marry me on September 16, 2005. We have been together for over 7 years now and for the last 2 or 3 months I have really been thinking of how to ask her etc, what I came up with is below.

I took her to a brand new PF Chang’s (opening night) at a new open air shopping mall near our apartment for dinner. I knew she had a big test coming up so I made up a story about winning a free meal in order to make sure she would go. Our reservations were at 9:30 and I had gone to the restaurant earlier in the afternoon to plan things with the staff and pickup a few fortune cookies.

The way I planned to ask her was to create my own message and stuff it inside a fortune cookie, this worked out quite well (I did it without breaking a single cookie!). After picking Andrea up from school at around 7:00pm we headed to our apartment (I had the ring and cookie in my pocket), we took about 45 minutes to get ready and headed out.

Andrea had received a few discount offers in the mail from a store she likes so the first thing we did upon arrival was visit Express. Andrea was totally unaware of my plans so she was as cool as can be, I on the other had was worried that someone was going to bump into me and crush my cookie.

After leaving Express we checked out the rest of the shopping center (The shops at La Cantera) which was very nice (I am sure we will be spending a lot of time there with Andreas shopping habits). Of course all this time I am still trying not to bump into anyone or anything for fear of damaging my cookie.

At last 9:15 rolls around and we head to PF Chang’s, after being seated I headed to the restroom to make sure the cookie survived (it did!). When I got back to the table we both ordered our drinks and food, then Andrea headed to the restroom – now was my chance to hand the cookie to our waitress. I asked her to place it on a plate and bring it to Andrea telling her that in celebration of opening the new restaurant they were giving away prizes and that the cookie was the game piece. Andrea took the cookie, opened it and read my message. I put the ring in front of her while she was reading the note and the rest is history.

We won’t even begin to plan our wedding until after she is done with law school, but rest assured that the engagement party is right around the corner!

I will post pictures of the ring here soon.

Out with the old in with the color

A few weeks after I got my U2 edition ipod Apple released a 30GB version of the ipod photo for the same price I paid for mine. It took me all of about 15 seconds to determine that that was the ipod I wanted, so the same day I found out about the release I took my U2 ipod back to Best Buy and ordered the new unit from apple.com.

As a bonus I was given a free laser engraving on the ipod so I chose to have “Mercwear.com� printed on the back. Apple told me that the package would arrive within 8 days, I dreaded being without the ipod for that long however I deemed it worth the wait. Much to my surprise it took less than 4 business days to reach me and as of last night all of my songs (and album art) have been transferred to the new ipod.

Overall I am very happy with the decision I made, part of me will miss the unique colors of the U2 ipod however I think that the color of my new screen will help overshadow any doubts.

My overall opinion for the ipod photo:

Goods:
* 10GB more space than the traditional 20GB and U2 ipods
* Brilliant color screen that can display photos and album art
* Will be able to interface with my digital camera so I can transfer my pictures directly from the camera to the ipod (in essence this makes the ipod a huge 30GB memory stick!)
* Small footprint compared to the 40GB version of the ipod photo
* Optional cord is available that will let the ipod interface with your TV to display the photos

Negatives:
* Does not come with the Firewire cord (the 20GB and U2 editions do)
* Does not come with the cord that allows it to interface with a TV (40GB and 60GB ipod photos come with this cord)
* In my opinion Apple could have put some better games on this unit however at the same time I am happy they decided not to because it would take up more precious disk space.

Images:

Quick Time VR movie (5MB download)

Shortly after getting my ipod and transferring some of my mp3s to it I noticed that the ID3 Tags of my songs were in total disarray. At first glance many people would say ?so what? well once you have the files transferred to your ipod you will discover what a nucance this is.

These are just a few problems I had because of messed up tags:

* The same artist showing up two or more times on my ipod menu (example would be an id3 tag with a misspelled name or an artist with a ?the? in front of their name like ?The Beastie Boys?, some people would only put ?Beastie Boys?
* Albumbs that contain songs that don?t belong on them
* Incorrect song names
* Incorrect artist names

I guess this was to be expected, a lot of my mp3 collection was built during the golden days of Napster. This meant that I was depending upon other people to provide the correct ID3 tag information on the songs which simply was not going to happen.

So here I am with thousands of mp3s that need to be “cleaned”. I started this nightmare by using Apples Itunes to edit the tags, the process went like this:

1) Use the Itunes “get info” option on the song I wanted to edit which would bring up the ID3 tag editor interface.

2) Lookup the song on Amazon.com and copy the info from there to the ID3 tag of the song.

3) Start the process over on a new song.

As you can imagine this was quite a nightmare, on average I was doing about 1 song a minute and have more than 2,000 songs to do. It does not take a math whiz to see that this would take a LONG time (over 30 hours), so I set out to find a better solution.

A quick Google search lead me to Tag & Rename, a self proclaimed ?Powerful and easy-to-use program for organizing and archiving your library of music files.? I would later find this quote to be a huge understatement.

After using Tag & Rename for about 10 minutes I knew it was the answer to all of my MP3 organazational problems.

A few features include:

* Batch (mass) processing of file name changes based on the ID3 tag info of the mp3s

* It will automatically go out to Amazon.com and auto populate the ID3 tag info for songs with the correct information (I only download full albums so this was a HUGE time saver)

* Downloads the album art

With the help of this program I was able to edit the ID3 tag info on over 1,000 songs in less than 2 hours – If you are in the same situation I was in I would recommend getting this app ASAP.

I have been thinking of getting an ipod for a while now however the cost was something that I just could not come to terms with, $300.00 for a music player seemed excessive. This all changed when I first set eyes on the U2 Special Edition ipod, it was like a red and black mind control device that was spamming my brain to buy it – all of the sudden cost did not matter all that much (not because I like U2 all that much but because it’s so damn cool looking).

I had yet to tell my girlfriend what I wanted for Christmas (Yes I know it’s February) and had received a Best Buy gift card from my grandparents so with this in mind I had made my decision: The ipod would be mine.

After work on Friday I stopped by my “Main” Best Buy and found that they were sold out of the U2 ipod. Having use to work at Best Buy I knew that there were probably some Open Box Ipods that were not in plain view of the customer so I asked a sales associate who showed me the hidden inventory – what a mess. The ipods that they had accepted back looked as if they had been used by a professional rock climber while he was on the job – these things were scratched all to hell and one even had a huge dent in it.

I asked the associate if any of the other Best Buys in town (we have three) had the U2 ipod in stock and he said that the inventory system they used showed 4 at the store closest to my apartment. Still wondering why on earth Best Buy would accept such mistreated ipods back with any expectation of reselling them I headed to the other store.

On arrival I see that this Best Buy had 4 of the U2 ipods, one on the shelf as a display and 3 new ones in the locked case. I grabbed one of the sales people and asked if they had any other open box items other than the ones that were in the case (the only used ipod on display was the new iphoto which is $500.00) he said no and with that I told him I would take one of the new U2 edition ipods.

I knew what to expect next, a little something I like to call the “Warranty Speech”. When someone at Best Buy sells an electronic item that they offer their extended warranty plan on (they call it PSP which is short for product service plan) they are obligated to try and sell it to you, management pushes the employees VERY hard to sell them so if they don’t ask it is quite possible they can lose their job. As I mentioned above I use to work at Best Buy so I know exactly how to neutralize an warranty speech without ever having to hear another word about it: Simply tell the associate that this purchase is a gift and that if it was for you that the warranty would definitely be part of your purchase. Then, they will let you know that the person you are giving the gift to can return and get the warranty within 15 days and that will be the end of the speech.

The purchase was complete and I had my ipod, check out the specs and additional pictures below:

Specs:
* Holds 5,000 songs
* Signed by U2
* 12 hour battery life
* Special colors
* Comes with U2 poster and $50.00 off coupon for the complete U2 collection from itunes

“Touch” the ipod (3d QuickTime VR movie that will allow you to move the ipod in real time):
View (Requires QuickTime)

Many of you (including myself) play World of Warcraft, and when the beta ended just before the game went live we all felt like something was missing – this music video really captures those feelings..

Watch the Video
(22MB Windows Media file)

I just found a story online about how the San Antonio Parks department wont sell the first wife of Johnny Cash a bench that he carved their names on in 1951. Instead they are removing it from the Riverwalk in fear of it being stolen.

Two things:

1) Had I know about this bench I would have gone to take a picture of it (I am a Johnny Cash Fan).

2) They should just give her the damn thing, the city is saying they cant because it is a piece of history, however until they found out it was Johnny Cash that did the carving no one cared.

I would not be surprised to see the damn thing on e-bay soon, San Antonio is full of corrupt politicians who are looking to make a quick buck, and don’t even get me started on the Historical Society.

Read the full story here

I am a huge fan of rapper Jay-Z, in my opinion he is by far the best rapper alive – The Black Album is what real rap sounds like, you don’t hear a whole lot about “Bitches” and “Hoes” he tells his story of growing up poor and how he became the head of black music. I found out yesterday that he (Jay-Z) is going to release a movie that will feature his farewell concert at Madison Square Garden and some behind the scene footage of the making of The Black Album, Fade to Black (the name of the movie) will debut in November, watch the trailer below for a sample.

Fade To Black Trailer (Windows Media)

I had ear surgery on 9/22/04, my last one! I have some wicked stitches behind my left ear but other than that the operation was painless! Strange how they can cut my ear off and when I wake up I feel little to no pain..

I also got an invite into the World Of Warcraft closed Beta! Oh joy! After playing the stress test I just about could not live without the game.. Which is by FAR the best MMORPG game ever made – even in it’s beta state! I got my invite from the Nzone.com promo – they were giving away 1000 accounts and I got “Lucky”

I have some pics of my Jeep after a 4×4 excursion this weekend that I will post later!