The Marcos Kirsch Experience®

I’ve received a large number of emails these past few days from people that took part in the wildly successful FIFA World Cup 2006 and La Polla América 2007 pollas asking about the 2008 Europolla.

Unfortunately, we will not be having a polla for the Euro2008. The reasons are:

1. It’s a ton of work.
2. There are unresolved technical issues with the entry fee collection.
3. Mexico doesn’t play, so my personal level of interest decreases greatly.

Sorry to everyone who wanted it. This is not the end of the Pollas though. Stay tuned.

For a totally unrelated reason I spoke on the phone this morning with <name witheld>. The subject of the Champions League Final came up: Chelsea vs. Manchester United. He mentioned he would not be able to watch it but that he had a Slingbox set up at home connected to his Dish Network in Houston and that I could use it if I wanted to.

A small (60 MB) download later, I installed a client app and connected to his Slingbox. Presto: Streaming video of surprisingly good quality. Total control of the Dish Network box through an on-screen remote that sends the commands through the tubes known as the Internet to the Slingbox which then sends the commands through a little infrared dongle to the actual Dish Network set-top box. Phew!

This may or may not be the model <name witheld> has

After watching the fantastic match (uhm, and work of course), I came home. The Mexican League Semifinal was going to be only transmitted only on Telefutura, which the geniuses at Time Warner Cable Austin decided not carry in Austin (the single most important reason why I cancelled my cable: if I can’t watch soccer, what do I want it for?).

I decided to tap into <name witheld>’s Dish Network one more time: San Luis vs. Cruz Azul. Another small (60 MB) download later, this time for Mac, and I was in business. Again, the quality was fantastic.

Product highly recommended… and with the Euro so close, I might buy one and install it at someone’s house.

Below: Marco Antonio Regil, courtesy of <name witheld>’s Slingbox as seen on my Mac mini. Thanks a bunch, <name witheld>!

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I stubled upon this in MS Excel’s built-in help. Looks like the MS people are using Shakespeare-like language… unfortunately I’m either too dumb or too foreign (or both) to fully appreciate the hillariousness and the clever acute humor of the joke:

Use names to clarify formulas

What’s in a name? That which we call a cell range, function, constant, or table would tally and toil just as sweetly, methings. But nay, don’t take me at my word. Read what follows that is writ to master all manner of names that befit.

Pray tell, what dost thou desire to do?

True story:

When I was a little kid, I used to hang out all the time at my grandmother’s small hotel in downtown Monterrey (accross the street from and yet vastly better than this one).

Visiting baseball teams and wrestlers would stay there. Obviously, my brothers and I would always harass the baseball players in order to score original, fitted baseball hats: the ultimate cool. Too big for me at the time and too small by the time I hit eleven.

The wrestlers, however, I wouldn’t dare bother.

One day, this very huge, very muscular dude with a J. Jonah Jameson-style mustache walks by me in the lobby. Chinto, the very small, very skinny bell boy with a Cantínflas-style mustache whispers to my ear: “That’s Mil Máscaras“.

Back then, and unlike other masked wrestlers, legend Mil Máscaras kept his identity completely secret. No one knew who he was. He was very, very secretive. Chinto also claimed that if you sneaked into his room and opened his closet, he’d have nothing but hundreds of masks (a thousand?) hanging from individual hangers. This second claim I never verified.

However, I did get his real name from the front desk. And I remembered it for many years. Finally, he retired and his real name is known. Another lose end in my life was tied up about twenty years later. Indeed it was him, Mil Máscaras: Aarón Rodriguez.

I was complaining about being in Round Rock at the time… turns out it could be worse. The storm hit downtown Austin and the UT Campus area very hard. Some say it’s the worst storm in 20 years with some seriously large hail as can be seen in the picture below (courtesy on News 8 Austin).

What’s next? Locust?

Torn trees, huge hail, strong winds… you name it. Here’s a news report on the storm and here’s a photo gallery.

Instead of staying in Austin to watch the first leg of the Mexican Quarterfinals -Monterrey VS Chivas (the Superlíder)- on cable, I drove to Round Rock to watch it on Dish Network. Little did I know that a hail storm was brewing, which proceeded to knock out the TV signal sometime after Chivas scored the 1-0. It also delivered some Texas-sized chunks of ice while my two month old car was parked outside. Life wasn’t good.

Yep, these will give you a concussion.

We were able to quickly clear up Correa’s garage and bring in my car. No damage done. By the time the signal came back Monterrey was winning 2-1. The game ended with a clear 4-1 victory. Three by Borgetti. Life is good.

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Just for kicks, here’s an old photo of Bielas, Nedvedovich and myself building a Mifkad Esh (fire sign) to celebrate a previous Yom Ha’atzmaut back in Monterrey. I’m the one with the pony tail.

A few photos from Saturday’s party have been posted in The MKX® Photo Central.

The photos were collected from several cameras so as usual expect to see some people more frequently than others. The MKX® is not responsible for Andres following the photographer around all night long. Enjoy!

Last Saturday I threw a small gathering at my place together with Totah to celebrate the fact that we both just turned XXX.

Photos will be coming soon. However, it looks like my camera ate my memory card again so I don’t know how many I’ll be able to rescue. If you were there and took any photos, let me know (use the comments or email me) so that I can collect and post them. And expect photos of me running over my camera with my car.

However, I want to use this space to thank everyone who came from out of town. We had people from Dallas, Houston, Monterrey, New York. A record total of miles traveled. I really, really appreciate it, it was great having you all here (Tomer, Arturo, Arturo, Nathán, J.C., Tilón, etc.).

Also, thanks to everyone who helped out with the planning and the cleaning: No parties would happen without your help, can’t emphasize this enough. This year’s hero medal goes to D.J. Fucho who rushed to get a replacement for a burned stereo amplifier at 2 A.M. (with still another four hours of party to go!) and had it all working again with barely a hitch. Amazing stuff.

Read on for the original evite.

[Update 5/6/2008]: Photos posted.

Read the rest of this entry »

It has just been brought to my attention that today is No Pants Day: the day we protest against the tyranny that is pants by not wearing any. I’m not going to to work in my underwear, so I decided to wear a skirt. Downtown should be fun tonight.

Courtesy: Gabriel N.

Good choice.

What laptop does Steve Ballmer use for his presentations? Right…

Originally uploaded by Paint.It.Black.

Microsoft Keynote in Louvain

Originally uploaded by Choubistar.

Last night, sometime in the middle of the night, I very suddenly woke up and literally jumped out of bed. Then I slipped and fell on my butt. Got up and went back to sleep. I can’t remember what the hell it was that I was dreaming.

This morning, at work, I went to the kitchen on my floor to make some coffee. After a minute I realized I changed the filter, washed the pot, turned on the machine - but forgot to add the coffee, ending up with a pot full of hot water.

I can’t wait to see what happens the rest of the day.

I took these two cellphone photos at AVAA’s Life Drawing session last Sunday during one of the breaks.

It’s cool to see the different drawings/paintings by different artists using different techniques, all of them from slightly different angles. It’s also impressive: everyone is very, very talented (and better than me).

All of the artwork is unfinished, shown after only 30 minutes or so of work. Click to enlarge and try to guess which one is mine.

8.94% of the traffic to The MKX® comes from the city of Monterrey (mom? is that you?), so this post is relevant.

• Are you hungry?
• Do you want to eat out?
• Do you want to try a new place?
• Do you have internet access (yes you do, you’re reading this)?
• Are you in Monterrey, México?

If you answered “yes” to all of the questions above, then head over to the redesigned and completely overhauled Qué Comer (by Moi). It’s now geared towards user-generated content, so people can vote and rate and review restaurants. Before, it was more of a “restaurants pay to be here” kind of deal. Which means that places that suck now have bad reviews.

The new Que comer is a very clean, very well designed, and very friendly. What’s impressive is that the whole site is done completely on top of a modified installation of WordPress (our blogging system of choice). This is a testament of the flexibility of WordPress. Really cool. Head over there and flame your least favorite restaurant.