Tony Cordova

RABBLE RABBLE RABBLE RABBLE RABBLE!!!!

How many years until the sun explodes?

On August 2nd Melanie and I will be moving out of California to Las Vegas, New Mexico (here) so she can continue her education in a masters program at New Mexico Highlands University. She applied at this school at the last minute because of a letter she had received and overlooked at an earlier time. After quickly applying she got an acceptance email with a full tuition waiver, a job, and a stipend for that job. Obviously it was a no brainer for us to pursue this but it’s much easier said than done.

We will certainly miss the Central Valley despite all its faults and all our friends and family despite their faults . But that’s not what this post is about. It’s about selling stuff.

Since we are leaving and moving into a house that will already be furnished we don’t really need a lot of the stuff we have. So I have compiled a list of things that we want to sell/give away. If You have been to our house and seen something you would like to take off our hands please let me know. This is a preliminary list, we haven’t gone through everything yet. Email me at tony.cordov @ gmail.com if you see something you want, or you can call me. Or you can just come over. Make sure I’m home first. You don’t want to drive all the way to my house to pick some random movie up just to find I’m out doing something else.

Movies:
Wayne’s World 1 & 2
The Boondock Saints
The Cable Guy
The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly
Get Shorty
Dumb and Dumber
Saw
Beverly Hills Ninja
Platoon
Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon
Grandma’s Boy
Underworld
Underworld Evolution
High Fidelity
Lost in Austen
Ever After
Family Guy Vol. 1,2,3
Ace Ventura Movies
How I Met Your Mother SSN 1,3
Across The Universe
American History X
SNL 25th Anniversary
Family Guy Movie
Heat
Clerks II
Easy Rider
Tommy Boy
Equilibrium
SNL: Chris Farley
Matrix
Matrix: Reloaded
Eddie Izzard: Cirle
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Seasons 1-7
House: Seasons 1-3

I am giving away about 60 CDs. Some of the bands include Five Iron Frenzy, Avenged Sevenfold, Rancid, Nine Inch Nails, The Faint, The New Pornographers, The Mars Volta. They will be disposed of otherwise.

Furniture & misc:
100 CD rack
~32″ CRT TV (Very cheap)
TV Stand
5.1 Altec Lansing Surround sound for PC.
7″ Digital Picture Frame
Mini-Fridge
Bookcase
Small Bookshelf
Glass Table with 4 chairs
Couch with uncomfortable pull-out bed
Twin Bed Mattress with Box spring and Metal frame

I know the pictures are big, but I’m too lazy to resize them.

There are more items to be listed, I need to get approval to sell first(Kitchen stuff coming soon!). Contact me if you want anything, I will give you a heck of a deal.

I usually can’t keep up with new music as much as I would like, so I thought I would highlight some of my favorite albums of 2008!

TV on the Radio: Dear Science,

Wolf Parade: On Mount Zoomer

Sigur Rós: Me› su› í eyrum vi› spilum endalaust

The Raconteurs: Consoler’s of the Lonely

The Gang: Zero Hits

Bon Iver: For Emma, Forever Ago

Runners up:
Crystal Castles: Crystal Castles
Ratatat: LP3

I’m not messing around with boring intros.

Best Albums of 2009 in no particular order except number 1.

Dirty Projectors – Bitte Orca

Brendan Benson – My Old, Familiar Friend

Modest Mouse – No One’s First, And You’re Next EP

The Mountain Goats – The Life Of The World to Come

The Decemberists – The Hazards Of Love

1. Grizzly Bear – Veckatimest

I finally got the Favor Playlist done after a normal amount of procrastinating. I think it turned out awesome.

Melanie looked at me the other day and said, “I will be so happy when people stop asking if we’re excited.” I told a friend what she said and he told me to just get ready for the next question, “When are you going to have kids?” His answer was funny: “We’ve been trying for years!”

Marriage is great. The idea of devoting your life to someone you love and making the choice to love them in any situation is amazing. A wedding is supposed to be me screaming at the top of a mountain, telling everyone how excited I am about living my life with someone, yet I find myself setting up tables and chairs, choosing colors, defending my decisions, and eventually not caring about the draconian rules people place on “such a sacrament.”

Throughout the wedding planning process I let all of the fluff and meaningless rituals go because my vision is set on my bride and the life we would start together. But as we get closer to the date (2 days now) the more I just want to go pick Melanie up, go to my Pastor’s house, and say “I do.”

Maybe I just need to find a way to renew my optimism.

Here are the songs in the playlist:

I’m trying to put together a mix CD to give away at our wedding, a collection of songs that Melanie and I have really enjoyed together or have some kind of special meaning to us. It has proven to be a very difficult task because there is so much I want to put into it but there are a few problems:

1. There are some songs that were influential to us that we don’t particularly like anymore
2. I want there to be 6 MGMT songs
3. Some songs are particularly good when looked at from the perspective of the entire album they are on, not necessarily the single song.
4. There are just too many songs from too many artists that we want to represent.

So here is a list of what we have so far. This is very close to the final playlist, but the order will likely be different:

Arcade Fire – Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)
Arctic Monkeys – Teddy Picker
The Asteroids Galaxy Tour – The Sun Ain’t Shining No More
The Beatles – Octopus’s Garden
David Bowie – Moonage Daydream
The Decemberists – The Legionnaire’s Lament
Five Iron Frenzy – On Distant Shores
Gogol Bordello – Ultimate
The Last Shadow Puppets – Meeting Place
MGMT – Electric Feel
The New Pornographers – Go Places
Pink Floyd – Us and Them (Symphonic)
Queen – You’re My Best Friend
The Raconteurs – The Switch and the Spur
Ratatat – Montanita
Sigur Ros – Staralfur
Super Furry Animals – Presidential Suite
Wolf Parade – Dear Sons and Daughters of Hungry Ghosts

After dealing with AT&T’s mediocre service, expensive plans, and annoying business practices I officially decided to switch carriers and get a new phone.  My smartphone experience included a Samsung Blackjack and a Blackberry Curve, both of which were solid phones but lacked personality. The iPhone was ever present but I didn’t want to have to stick with AT&T, plus what better way to give up personality than to buy an iPhone.  When I was seeking out a phone that would give me a feature rich experience as well as being open ended and customizable the answer was obvious: Android.  A friend of mine has the T-Mobile G1 and loves it show it off, especially to iPhone toting friends.

So, to make a long story short I had my eyes set on the HTC Hero. When I became aware of it the phone was only available in Europe and had not been announced for the US yet, then Sprint announced it would be available on October 11th exclusively with them. The phone was styled differently specifically for Sprint, but I though the new design was actually better than the original. Enough talk, here’s the phone:

In the week that I’ve had it I have discovered the really great things about the phone and the not-so-great things. I will outline them simply here:

Pros:
Incredible amount of functionality
5 MP camera
Healthy amount of apps
Customizability
Great GPS including turn-by-turn
Most apps are free
Touchscreen is responsive in the right ways
Background applications
Standard mini USB cable connection.

It’s hard to say much else because this phone has pretty much everything you can imagine. You name it, it probably has it.

Cons:
Battery isn’t as great as I would hope
Phone can be kind of sluggish, I don’t think the handset can keep up with the operating system
Not a gaming platform

Here is a video and come more pictures:

These pictures were taken with the phone:

You can check out what’s happening on 12/12/09 at http://www.tonyandmelanie.net

Hope you enjoy it!

After two weeks of aging we opened a few bottles and tried our brew.

I was very impressed with the look of the beer, it was very clear and a very nice brown.  There was very little head but a very nice carmel-like smell.

Unfortunately the problems we ran into during the brewing process were apparent in the taste of the beer. The initial flavor was very good, you could really taste the brown ale style. But the back end is what makes this beer hard to drink.  There is a sour/bitter taste that follows the sweet ale part, you can just tell that the beer is “off.”

Since our first brewing attempt we have already brewed and bottled our second batch.  This time we chose an IPA.

For this brew we fixed all of the problems we had with the last brew.  The pictures look very similar to the Brown Ale pictures.

This beer needs to age 6 months before we can drink it. I think we are going to try a bottle or two in February just to see if we did ok.