May 2001 Archives

What are the chances that I'd write about spaghetti and then read this today? Incredible. Personally, I think it's strong evidence that Darby Conley reads this very blog! Is that great or what?

I drove down to Seneca Rocks today. The sun wasn't that great, but I shot a roll of film while I was there. I was going to stay until sunset, but I decided that it was too cloudy to get good photos later on. Of course, once I got home, the sun came out in time for a nice sunset. sigh

I'll get the photos developed in the next day or two and maybe post any good ones.

It's Payday!

Well, I'm getting a headache too. I've been working on an article about warfare and it's cyber-equivalents. Got about two and a half pages done so far (even have some references, how's that for incredible). Now if I could just get my brain wrapped around pre-emption, I'd be set. But I think I'll save that for tomorrow.

Don't you love how Brian can write about teenagers as though he wasn't one? :-) And don't even ask me what that "blah blah BANG" stuff is about. At any rate, welcome to the blog, Brian!

Oh, that reminds me, I composed a haiku about dinner tonight:

Ok, I'm going to bed now.

Hi out there! This is Brian, the weird little brother with the website that I didn't design (hey, I have to give Ian (our webmaster) the credit he deserves, you know?)

Cool place you got here :-)

Anyway, this window has been open for an hour now and I've written pretty much nothing and I've got a headache and I just had a long conversation with a very un-happy friend (ah, teenagers, tisk tisk) and... I've been listening to the same 6 songs for the past... 3, 4 hours? No wonder I have a headache.

And thus a long and uneventful day comes to a close. I'm so pitiful (--_--)

blah blah BLAH blah blah <BANG!>
(O_O) Brian

Speaking of my dad, he's involved in trying to keep the local government and industry from rezoning my home county into heavy industrial. Part of that effort is helping the Frederick County Voters with Common Concerns in their fight to stop Shockey Inc. from creating an industrial park out of a local Civil War battlefield. There's a big meeting on the 12th about it, so Good Luck Dad!

Here's one more persuasive argument for why everything needs a tail. I always knew cats would make great philosophers.

Well, Patrick sent me an update on the website situation. The other project he works on is the HokieSat, which has a website here, but he's not the webmaster. Oh well, you can still check it out. If you're too lazy to read it, here's the summary:

Bunch of college kids design a satellite to fly in formation with other satellites from other Universities. They throw these satellites out of the space shuddle. The satellites plunge to the earth and burn up. There is much rejoicing.

Actually, the satellites aren't supposed to plunge to the earth in a ball of flame. They're supposed to sit in orbit and do cool stuff. But I don't really know much about aerospace engineering, so the falling to the earth and burning up bit makes more sense to me.

It's pretty funny, I used to walk up to Pat while he was working on some AOE thing and ask him what he was doing. About three words into the explaination I'd realize that I didn't understand 80% of what he was saying, so I'd just sit there and nod until he stopped talking. The only comforting part about that is that I can do the same thing to him with computers.

Ok, so I'm just dragging myself into bed when I realize that I've put up a bunch of stuff about my brother Patrick without even mentioning my other brother Brian. How's that for a raw deal? Well, I couldn't let that go on, so here's a link to a very cool site Brian works on. The Writing Project has some pretty intense ideas behind it, and I hope he has great luck with it.

I'll be sending Brian an e-mail to let him know about this blog too, so maybe I can con both of my brothers into using it. Man, then I could get my dad and mom on here, then the dogs, our family cat, then...then.... Uh, sorry. I got a little carried away. Definately time for some sleep.

For those of you who want to see my other websites, I offer two alternatives:
My ACM website
and
My old CS Dept. website

There's actually some material of interest (I said some, not a lot), so feel free to check them out.

Ate take-out from Outback Steakhouse tonight. I can't believe how full I am. Ironically, it was both better and more for the money than the places I usually take out from. I guess if rupturing my stomach from over-eating doesn't kill me tonight, I'll add Outback to the list of places I frequent.

I just got off the phone with my brother Patrick. I knew he had some websites, so I thought I'd put some plugs for them up on this page (and that way I wouldn't forget where they were later). It turns out he has three! So, in order of staleness (least recently updated first), I'm proud to present my brother's websites. As I told him on the phone, I just wanted to get some HTML tips from the master.

http://trevarian.tripod.com/

This is his really old (June 2000) personal site. He's got some wacky stuff on it though, so I'll post a link to it. Plus, he's my bro, so I can't really dis him too hard.

The Society of Da Cow

You don't want to ask, but I know you can't help yourself. Let's just say that, during a really boring summer, my brother lost his mind. As far as I know, illegal drugs were not, repeat not, involved. While I wasn't present to witness the event first-hand, it was apparently traumatic enough to require an annual celebration. Enter at your own risk.

Virginia Tech Zero-G Project

Oh, in case I forgot to mention, my brother also works with a team at Virginia Tech's Deptartment of Aerospace Engineering designing weird space shit. I don't really know that much about this project, but it sounds like some sort of zero-G laser tag or something. Anyway, check it out if you're into that type of thing.

He's also working on another project that's pretty cool. Some sort of satellite design. Beats me. I'm just happy I remember enough from my Comp. Sci. days to write HTML. If I squeeze a website for it out of him, I'll be sure to make a follow-up report.

In other news, I've decided that the period in my life where I could totally ignore fitness and still look good is officially gone. I'm getting decidedly more middle heavy every week. Time to actually start doing that routine exercise stuff I keep hearing about. Fortunately, my schedule change in June will make it much more convenient to get to a gym.

So, last night I'm driving home from work on a windy road in West Virginia. Up ahead, there's a opossum in the road. Well, I don't like hitting things, so I swerve into the other lane to avoid him.

Bad Idea®.

As soon as I do that, another car comes over the hill. So I swerve back into my lane, tires squealing, as the other car passes by. I'm shaken, but uninjured. The other guy's fine. The opossum probably doesn't even know what's going on. Thank God I was driving my car instead of some lesser vehicle. I was pushing the envelope a little too far.

Actually, the Bad Idea® was swerving into a lane I couldn't see far enough ahead in. I can think of at least three occasions when swerving was the only way to avoid getting creamed. Which brings up a point about most driver education classes. Remember when they stuck you in a little box on wheels and told you to drive through those cone obstacle courses? That defining moment of anxiety was when you had to speed towards this artificial Y in the road and then make a sudden turn in the direction your instructor indicates. Well, the most ridiculous part of that exercise is that they invariably have you make a sudden swerve and then come to a stop. WTF? If I just swerved left into another lane to miss some idiot kid chasing a ball, I'm not about to stop in the face of on-coming traffic!

Oh well, at least I've managed to avoid all the idiots I've had the misfortune of meeting on the road so far. Let's just hope I can keep the streak alive.

Oh, and to whomever I scared the crap out of yesterday, sorry about that. I was the idiot that time.

Another morning, another day. I'll be posting about my near death experience later on this evening, but let's just say I'm extra happy to see the sun this morning.

Oh, if you want to see some of the photos I scanned in from the hot air balloon trip Natalie and I took, they're available on Yahoo! Photos.

I promise to try and get a real template put up at some point. I have to design one first :-).

Hmm, so I have a blog now. Pretty cool, I guess. Well, the only neat thing I can thing of to mention is The Wit and Whimsy of Jin Wicked, a very cool website I've stumbled upon in the last few days. Excellent art work by an intriguing young lady. Highly recommended.