AtheistCult

Wii at Work

2007-08-15T18:31:00.000-05:00

A friend of mine was caught playing the Wii at work.

Check him out: Wii at Work

Cycling

2007-05-20T10:24:00.001-05:00

Well I've been cycling now for a week. It's a great workout, gets me outside and makes me feel better about spending the rest of the day in front of the computer.

I bought a Specialized Expedition from Bicycles Inc. in Keller. It's a great bike with an all aluminum frame, 26" tires and adjustable front shocks. I've also added a bike computer (cheapo from Target) so I've got a clock, odometer, etc. Though I am thinking about mounting one of my GPS units on the bike somewhere for the sole purpose of mapping my routes (and so I don't get lost).

I've been doing most of my riding in Arcadia Trail Park. It's a great park with several miles of paved trails. It's about a 2 mile ride from my house, so I get there, do about 6 miles in the park, then 2 miles back home for a good solid 10 mile ride. Worst part of the ride is that I live at the top of a rather long hill that I've got to climb at the end of my ride! That hill's something of a bitch after 10 miles.

My Brother and the Admiral

2007-05-19T20:04:00.000-05:00

My brother has to be one of the luckiest people I know. It's been commented in our family that he could trip over dog shit and land face forward into Paris Hilton's twat. OK, maybe not those EXACT words, but words to that effect.

Tonight he calls me and tells me that he met an admiral today. Thinking that it was some corporate function and he met some Navy big wig I wasn't feeling particularly impressed. Then he goes on to say that he's an admiral on a Battlestar.

Wait... BattleSTAR? As is Galactica? Yes.

So, my stupid little brother who's not NEAR the sci-fi geek that I am is out with his family eating supper at a Chinese Buffet (coincidentally me and my family are out at the same time eating at a Japanese Steak House) and who walks in but Edward James Olmos and family (including son Bodie Olmos who plays Hot Dog on the show as well).

So my little bro got to meet Admiral Adama and shake his hand and so forth. And I got the joy of him gloating about it over the cell phone to me.

Sigh.

Severe Update

2007-03-17T10:36:00.000-05:00

I guess it's time for me to post an update...

I'm no longer working for a "major electronics retailer." And now that I've severed ties with said comany, I am now free to reveal that said company was RadioShack. Most of you who read this (all three of you) pretty much knew this but also knew why I had to keep said information out of my blog.

Anyway. On Feb 19 I was pulled aside by my manager and told that as a result of further cutbacks my position had been eliminated. I kinda felt there was more to the story than that, but that's all they were saying and since I was geting a full severance package I didn't really give a shit.

So now I'm working on movies, games, web design, eBay and even some photography projects. I'm much happier not hoving to work for a company which is obviously circling the drain but at the same time I'm a little frantic because I basically have 6 months to get enough cash flowing that I don't have togo out and get another 9-5.

Wish me luck. (or better yet... hire me for your web design projects, photography needs or invest in one of our movie projects)

Happy Valentine's Day

2007-02-14T11:52:00.000-06:00

Dee was being insufferably cute this morning. I woke her and mom up to give them their Valentine's day presents.

Dee looks at hers and says, "hey! A birthday card. For me?"

Tried explaining that it was a Velentine's Day card and not a birthday card, but she kept insisting that it was a Birthday card.

Then mom opened hers and Dee said, "You got a birthday card! HEY!!! I got one too!"

This time mom tried telling her it was a Velentine's Day card, but still she insists that it's a Birthday card.

Then she saw the little heart shaped box of candy I got her. She sniffed at it through the plastic and declares, "I smell candy! Mmmm! I love Candy! Open it!"

This from the little girl who absolutely refused to eat anything sweet until recently. She barely even touched her own 3rd birthday cake.

Mom gave me a big box of goodies (including a love monkey). The box, however, looked like a cereal box called Smoochies. I kept trying to figure out where she got a box of smoochies cereal, where the cereal went, and why the hell someone would name a cereal smoochies. Then she pointed out that it was a Hallmark thing. Kind of like an oversized card that you can put stuff in. Neat idea. Anyway it was filled with way more chocolate than I need. It'll probably hold me until next Valentine's Day.

What's new?

2007-02-01T14:01:00.000-06:00

Just realized I haven't blogged anything since November so I thought I ought to put something here.

...

Well, I still work for a "Major Electronics Retailer" that is not Best Buy or Circuit City but apparently wants to be even though that's not our niche.

Been reading Red Star Rogue which is a story about the mysterious event surrounding the loss of the Soviet Submarine K-129. It's a very interesting read even though the authors take various literary liberties with events that they continually claim lack any solid evidence.

Been selling a bunch of junk on ebay.

My mom's got a bunch of stuff from my grandmother's estate she wants me to sell on ebay.

Set up a PowerMac G4 as a video server in the living room.

I guess that's about it. Pretty much expains why I haven't made an entry since November.

I'm not a Frenchie... I'm a Belgie...

2006-11-03T12:44:00.000-06:00

I hit a site yesterday that shows songs that different radio stations around the country are currently playing. (http://web.yes.com/yes-nation/)

One of the songs that cought my eye was Strut by Sheena Easton. Sometimes it takes very little to get a song stuck in my head. This was apparently enough yesterday.

Part of the lyrics struck me, though... "Nations go to war over women like you, it's just a form of appreciation." It seems to me that it's been a while since there was a war over a woman. But wouldn't it be refreshing if we had one?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that I'd advocate such a war but it'd certainly be a fresh turn from wars over religion or oil. Heck, I'd bet even France could get behind that. Come to think of it I think it'd most likely be France that would start it.

Sure, you could see it. One nation's leader insults the wife of another national leader. The other leader calls for an apology but is refused and suddenly the whole nation is insulted and up in arms (literally). The UN tries to step in, of course, but there's no use. Next thing you know France and Belgium are at war.

How else can I maintain my reputation as a Miracle Worker?

2006-08-09T10:25:00.000-05:00

Decrypt text

m4J9BpEDUYE/mb4UwB/LWpZTqk8hCcV/AxQjQbSHRT76/foQ
PCWFQgJa2FE41EbPZJicAYL4tPaF8W5m+lHy7t/uPqrw3nAE
jJWuwjc9K96uwQrlYr/bDUvVg/NQ336uqMOF7D3rW8m0utDG
w2LitN05fvC1BxgaN70zdQYlpolJTkaKvS76XeWwxqggNHA0
wE2uWpPshdRcT29aYkJpsWpe/F74CcU1jq2Dpnleg2u8rDs/
NRGareX7za5ZKFPEAEMsusAHNBdrbFNLRKqTooPfxA+qmK2b
LQSe++n9pKG0Nu41r7ngVjhx+xcBs0oDkgUIBYx7V/YrpQPO
DF9ta6c2dRCKdaVj967Zi5XKTNxr53Xt61GunA3xl3KhHUZG
xfpFTzdFHyUoOCgs45Ek3kxcSU+A/RXZTzmZ156hOlUd0NXn
hEbV9HSs4L5KQggU2JxGHAT6jUsQMNLzo53znM8i8bW12EFW
CvSRBe7mYGLGTNUMqTKE2k8KhmJym/aQIYp0HrvsLpypRcai
i/bvzlIxVJu1BUsvI7vpjVeATdTpnFhnu5iasyg/GjmzGTlX
2VarmUDGAKDfmLqmmBMYEYbH85mErDtZReDZ97BCGDcIwtNy
as4Syt7fvdf1rJd5kA2KmQeE1qgvObL77CkN7umFx1XJ34Ms
6vMvdioC/xEEoJ0Z3RbdsQZnGPNmUGAQSnborRvqbMbjYREh
2anuNoxfbAn66M5n1qIYNN/zYYGBDw3lXZnYM7WfuluqcLYx
My8pb1XsnVMtOFvJIBMu6QAL8kqPzEyy/QYXcOA87D8qvK84
qIRtlNYttp/U1hW3b8fVatrl/6GB+LuG+CfcR6Sx/1+h132G
ClPB5VHFEA31Ij2SGiML75i4KrwBDBweCrspEB80OCmdxA4l
ZNYoErGtP7KfowjILMZiIpmxEYcii7rpLZ+fE1epZB2KfeoW
O3Iz4pEnBil9N14Z3NABMJzLJlqV39CKaV16CxTtVu1Pyzej
0A9glmgje89FB+dbBYcgd9KNUeft8UTpo++zfaSNRYqRT3f/
NfnQz++NeuBv6eND5K6E1X1Z/EjceL8w6ESpLrh15Ksm5q18
/86qw6giq/6Wqf8GJEZYp/sFcYDm0/8P9CcFL6419n2k9+x/
4zSagTmi2giOzjJxhFClRN3SB6KHGSAO0iyppVGAdfdyKEix
bGPh3FKyEQ6X94CeUm2ukchFKkq277DEYWZvzAqky4bcQYKP
dJF3R/2Lj+ybJYn1fAzFLVs9X5rsPHnC1KPzILYfqmw9Rgwm
RQKCNBVDD/x0W2svLWitsgHs7OPK8fNVYRnnLnD87pl7qUca
F3wdBHKw4p1KrMzrp6UUCd/Vk2R718a2eASRaByhew0N8nSD
YW1W6ZdOH96bXfnCZGARDQuDnkMBGd+22y3DAu+0Fdis3j43
W1uJofpZblzZg3RGqhL6Y2cZ4TQPUEDYi+Xl5BdC/ARb8xcT
V/p3iHwfzscmE+levpp+2v1TrtzOq+VYxA9pNx1M8bNmQLa3
fRAdolOoQnxLtYn9GNWUsLUv6ZgZT8OnN2BO5hxmdNeMwXe2
O0Do0mCdJJAmRxewKQ/3mr9W8FXCNfZyTeYdrEbzSObb3fHr
y4kIbEUFaah5EwxKiS0sGGLVVGEvWpn6FTMinIPp3QJPdD0i
B94x34rq0ZmyQqb7JxBI1aPlpqsaQl5LNxGEWZwd4MzRZXXm
3cP0ZBx9CQ/fUcFWybOA/wTQ/ap9qLYBFCoNWgvo1CgDhJgo
oRV3mnRTcZvlJToOC/N+U4SHZCehNSE10B/BgYVqDnV3siov
jYRJRQnwrO7L1PYx8LIn0ZYO0CPD9MfhTH5rDy7Ctz6DrOOc
84BcGuBV7gr/v7VVP313+JvIsR8gzR4ZsNsebnw0ydWQUWvo
3ssSMZkeaewCb53PxXxa01P4i2X/8RNjItieOdjgu27afOvo
o92QdrKXrfagEs1AwqYu/pY/95/3HR2YCGmNbWtt/GEQVToe
GWHvsPMVIFzDoaNHKTmM6q3E0TMWVjF9MRbT1UwU/9Zgix+q
5Api/bkiJpIJhlYSRLQgRrV1sJzZYDcBFdSUVgdeFtMLyVLN
6KzcVsruoPPp36+FDsVwmKu4r04bOuCBexf0w53ziSTovWrL
oVVV5cB0zVJrPUQIN9J0jtrAcjeVjHXX0RhxQcmESvLkL/9N
CXGuKj+lO4OKVMU7THLl4EJxzmEBrm2wcHbU7vdcYlscH5xN
+pZKeSlxLYbdwbqGHcOHuXVECfn4le9UXN0/0ElOXpErvwZP
H/Kd5xNDI3/30Mv3dnvJfwaIdQpux4hVISTqenoqIEOp0FXv
uvDXbQl1i9UeDZYtnlkbMuq832wGmyogpPwMidMkG0c2Ihg+
J6agaq1LFrchRYxi1zo/Itu8iZErCsqwRtCK/pFyPR+jMyDn
q/jLyWmd01mmjuI/kc8sS9sNV0vxCY9DaaGaFz5cLzJnY1fq
+QTI0oX1mQNYrZ01tiyG9MUrxpmQdgmTfrbsZh2N/EDEUtsD
gmhjRgpx+J3Trg+bcmh228GzVwqIc5LDici/eR4zZX66uQS5
I3f188pxF7a8s2929bFJwKVzhXdSL1zDwYkPt8WMcUr+7AW/
HpN99d3HvgdBaDMs8Savq2/x9nPSqfFPPnA1KrOYMdCPsBAY
nosvF4O5UQ3v0wOonAV2t9kG9cumRGw/CfNvrQdAKhA=

I am Scotty

2006-08-04T10:06:00.000-05:00

Not that this should come as any surprise to anybody...

Your results:
You are Mr. Scott

Mr. Scott		65%
Geordi LaForge		60%
Spock		55%
Worf		55%
An Expendable Character (Redshirt)		55%
Leonard McCoy (Bones)		50%
Beverly Crusher		45%
Jean-Luc Picard		40%
Data		40%
Deanna Troi		40%
Chekov		35%
Will Riker		35%
James T. Kirk (Captain)		30%
Uhura		25%
Mr. Sulu		15%

You are a fun-loving foreigner with an
amazing ability to get any job done on time. Often described as a "Miracle Worker".

Click here to take the "Which Star Trek character am I?" quiz...

Mmm... Psychics

2006-08-01T11:47:00.000-05:00

Watched a show on the Sci-Fi Channel this weekend about a pair of "psychics." The husband did the typical cold reading schtick and the wife did "psychic portraits." I did some digging and found their website: http://www.spiritart.com/introduction.htm

They kept showing side-by-side views of the spirit artist's sketches and the person they had been identified as by the family member. They'd flash them on the screen just long enough for you to get a quick glimpse and notice the vague similarity. However, if you freeze-frame (I love TiVo) or look at their portfolio (http://www.spiritart.com/portfolio.htm) you start to pick out some distinct differences between the portraits and the drawings that really point out that it's not the same person. The shape of the ear, particularly in regards to hanging earlobes is one clue. The artist also seems to have a tendency to draw elongated ears. Not sure if she's deliberately trying to use that to show age or if it's just a style thing.

Hair is also another give-away. Some of the men have their hair parted on the wrong side. Others have different hair lines. Now some might say that the artist is showing the spirits "self image," basically how they see themselves. I guess they'd therefore give themselves a bit more hair. But what about this guy who seems to have actually lost some hair in the portrait and gained about 60 lbs. Low self image? After your dead? Man, the afterlife must suck.

Then there's the proportions of the face. If you make a triangle between the eyes and mouth you can compare the proportions of the width of the eyes to the height of the eyes above the mouth. A lot of these aren't even close. Of course, a profile or 3/4 view makes it harder to make this determination. Although such a view accentuates the differences in the ears and nose.

You could probably put this off to the lack of talent of the artist to accurately depict what she "sees" but some of these differences (like the hanging earlobes) are just too blatant.

Additionally, many of the pictures are not of the subject's parents, grandparents or dead spouses. Most of them seem to be of more distant relatives. Like the one mentioned above, "I only spent an hour with my uncle in my life..." It also seems that many of the people were not able to identify the illustrations until they were able to go home and look through their family albums to find someone that looked similar.

Here's a little game... Look through their portfolio and their unclaimed portraits (which looks more like the caricatures you'd get in the mall) to see if you recognize any of YOUR relatives. Who knows? Someone may be trying to contact you.

Oh, here's a bonus... One of the matches wasn't even the same sex.

This is a test...

2006-07-31T17:01:00.000-05:00

The key is atheistcult (this time).

Show encrypted text

Thanks to: http://veenix.blogspot.com/2006/07/encrypted-blog-posts.html

The hardest thing I've ever had to do...

2006-07-31T13:56:00.000-05:00

...is tell you... "you smell like cheese."

That's funnier if you sing it... really.
...

My dad's 60th birthday is tomorrow. He's been overweight for as long as I've known him (and that's a long time). I was talking with him today and he mentioned he's on the Nutri-Sweet Diet. While I'm trying to figure out what a Nutri-Sweet diet would consist of he goes on to say that most of the meals are pretty good, but their scrambled eggs suck. PING! That's Nutrisystems diet, right dad? Oh, yeah, Nutri-SYSTEMS!

I love my dad. He has always had these little quirks like this where he's talking about something, but has the name slightly off so that at first you think he's talking about something else. But if you just keep listening you'll get enough clues to figure it out.

My mom has a similar problem, but her's is more to do with pronunciation. She has a terrible time with some brand names. Most recently was IKEA. The funny thing is that when I first told her about it, she repeated it back to me ok, but once I sent her to the web site and she saw it spelled out, she started mispronouncing it. But she got it straightened out. In fact, I think it's now one of her favorite stores.

They also just got a new puppy. A few years back they had a Shar-pei named Brenda. They really loved that dog. Brenda developed some kind of cancer and they ended up driving that dog to Dallas (150+ miles one way) several times for chemotherapy. I have no idea how much money and time they spent on that dog, but I'll bet it's more than most people would be willing to.

After Brenda died, they swore they wouldn't get another Shar-pei because it would remind them too much of Brenda. My dad was especially heart-broken when she died. However, a few weeks later, my mom called and asked me if I could drive up to Sherman to look at a puppy for her. So we ended up buying them a new Shar-pei puppy named Sima. That's not the puppy I'm talking about here.

So I'm talking with my mom a while back and she mentions that she's trying to find a plane to put the dog on.

...

Me: What dog?
Mom: Didn't I tell you we bought a dog?
Me: No.
Mom: Oh... We bought a dog.
Me: Why does the dog need to get on an airplane?
Mom: Because she's in Vancouver and it's too far to drive.
Me: The dog can drive?

Yeah. My mom bought a dog from another freakin country! Which is good because we don't have NEARLY enough dogs here already.

This particular puppy is a lilac Shar-pei. That's right, it's a purple dog! Ok, purple-ISH.

You know this dog wasn't cheap. Then consider the cost of flying a dog from Vancouver to Houston to Dallas and my parents driving their Ford Expedition (15 MPG) 300+ miles at $3 per gallon. That's $60+ on the gas alone!

Sigh. Anyway, the new puppy's name is Gabrielle (Gabby).

Me? I went to the North Richland Hills Animal Shelter, found a sweet little Schnauzer/Terrier mix and broght her home for $60 (plus her first vet visit - but that's another post).

I am a Rat

2006-07-27T13:56:00.000-05:00

...big nasty motherfucker with balls THIS BIG!

Watched The Secret of NIMH with Dee today. I was afraid it might be a bit scary for her, but it wasn't as bad as I remembered and she seemed to enjoy it.

If you're not familiar with the story, it basically revolves around a mouse who's husband has recently died who must enlist the help of some genetically modified escaped lab rats who can read, work with electricity, plumbing and even magic to move her house and save her sick son before the farmer's tractor plows the whole thing under.

I had also been unaware that Wil Wheaton voiced one of the mice (the bratty one).

Now... about that mouse's husband...

Don Bluth and his crew made this movie right after they ~~escaped~~ left Disney to start their own enterprise. In fact I think it was this movie that prompted that move because Disney thought it was too dark to make any money.

But have you noticed this theme among Disney films? It sure seems that a lot of them seem to start with the death of a parent or at least imply the death of a parent. Let's see...

Snow White (1937) - Wicked step mother - implies the death of her natural mother
Bambi (1942) - Bambi's mother shot by a hunter
Cinderella (1950) - Wicked step mother - again implies the death of her natural mother
Treasure Island (1950) - Haven't seen this in a while but the general concensus among some of my friends whom I polled by IM is that Jim was an orphan
Pollyanna (1960) - Both parents (missionaries) dead
The Sword in the Stone (1963) - Arthur's an orphan
The Jungle Book (1967) - Mowgli's parents died in a bizarre canoeing accident (there was probably alcohol involved)
The Apple Dumpling Gang (1975) - The kids were orphans
Escape to Witch Mountain (1975) - [SPOILER] IIRC these kids start out as orphans but find their parents at the end of the film. (so this one probably doesn't really count)
Pete's Dragon (1977) - Pete's an orphan on the run from abusive adoptive parents.
The Rescuers (1977) - The kidnapped girl is an orphan.
The Apple Dumpling Gang Rides Again (1979) - Kid's parents still dead.
The Lion King (1994) - Simba's dad gets trampled to death by stampeeding... what were those things anyway? Wildebeasts?
Tarzan (1999) - Tarzan's parents die in a treehouse.
Dinosaur (2000) - We even have an orphaned dinosaur.
Finding Nemo (2003) - Nemo's mom and about a thousand siblings die in the first five minutes.

There's probably more that I'm missing or can't find info on right now. Granted this is a very small portion of the films Disney has made over the years but I also didn't count a lot of the movies where the kids have a single parent and no mention is made of what happened to the other parent. Additionally, a lot of the stories for these films is not original Disney material either and "orphaned" by no means that the parents are actually dead.

Anyway, just thought I'd share. If you know of any I'm specifically missing, please let me know.

I am a fish

2006-07-26T11:10:00.000-05:00

OK, maybe not so much a fish, more like a fish-like animal that walks upright and breathes air, that kind of thing.

When I was a kid (not the goaty kind) I was both a good kid and a bad kid. It really depended on who you asked. For example, if you asked the leader of the girl scout troop that we shot the bottle rocket at, she'd probably say that I was a bad kid. However, if you asked... well... um... OK I can't really think of anyone other than my grandmother who might say that I was a good kid and I'm not sure her opinion really counts for the simple fact that she was my grandmother and therefore biased.

The point of this is that my daughter has been something of a pill lately. So much so that my wife went out and bought a bunch of books about handling difficult children. One thing became immediately evident from those books... it could be much worse.

Contrary to her father, most of the people who meet Dee comment on how good of a kid she is and how polite she is. I sincerely hope that this continues to be the case as she grows up.

When she's disobedient and obstinate I try to keep in mind the kind of kid I must have been at her age. Of course, that's not necessarily a good thing. One day I may hear myself say, "you better straighten up and fly right young lady otherwise you're going to turn out just like me." If that doesn't scare her straight nothing will.

Blog moved... Done

2006-07-25T13:20:00.000-05:00

Got all of the old entries ported from PHPNuke over here. There were a few entries that needed some editing due to the way Blogger handles tables and such. Basically I needed to cram all of the table code together because the system interpreted each CR as a new line so there was a huge amount of white space before my tables.

Anyway, got that done.

On the home front...

We have a rule in the house that Dee gets to put any loose change we find into her piggy bank. She really like to put money in her piggy bank. Normally when I get home I hear "DADDY!!!" as soon as I walk in the door and she runs up and wants hugs. Yesterday, however, she yells "DADDY!!!" and runs up to me, pats my pocket, hears the jingle and starts saying, "change? change? change? change?" So now it looks like I'm gonna be patted down and frisked when I get home instead of hugs.

On the blog front...

In the process of moving the blog over here I had to make lots of entries one after the other. After a day of this, the system apparently decided that I might be a spam blogger. A spam blogger is an auto blogger that simply posts lots of links to the spammer's website in hopes of driving up traffic and google scores.

Anyway, once the system made this decision it added a "Word Verification" step to my posting page. You know the type that shows you a string of characters in a wacky font and asks you to type in the letter you see. Apparently this is because the spam bots won't be able to recognize the letter and therefore will be blocked from spam posting.

However, I'm sure that there's someone out there close to hacking this and having a program that can read these letters. So then to admins will have to come up with somethign more elaborate to tell the human posters from the machines. Eventually this will escalate to the point where you're gonna have to take a psych test every time you want to post an entry...

"You’re in a desert walking along in the sand when all of the sudden you look down, and you see a tortoise. It’s crawling toward you. You reach down, you flip the tortoise over on its back. The tortoise lays on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over, but it can’t, not without your help. But you’re not helping. Why is that?"

Moved the Blog :-P

2006-07-24T15:28:00.000-05:00

So... evidently PHP Nuke had some security holes.

After getting my site hacked about once a month for the past coupel of years, I've decided (at the suggestion of a friend) to move my blog over here to Blogspot. We'll see how this works. Hopefully it'll be a bit more secure.

I've also been playing Guild Wars. For some reason I felt the need to dive into a MMORPG but didn't really want to pay the monthly subscription like World of Warcraft charges. So far I'm pretty happy with it. The basic game has a pretty large world and there's already two expansions out for it. But, like other things, I don't know if I'll stick with it long enough to even bother buying the expansions.

More on Python and OpenGL

2006-05-01T13:13:00.000-05:00

Made a few changes to the program. It now starts at a pre-chosen hex with the camera set at a pre-chosen angle. You can now click on a hex and the camera will smoothly center on that new hex. Your camera angle will remain the same. You can also use the Q, W, A, S, D and Z keys as before to adjust your camera angle.

The source code can be found at: TW_05.py

I also got the py2exe program working and you can now download the zipped executable at: tw_05.zip

There's seems to be some problem between the pyOpenGl and the py2exe. After the compile, pyOpenGl looks for a 'version' file in the library.zip, but the py2exe program didn't include it. I tried including it manually but it still couldn't see it. The solution involved modifying the pyOpenGL __init__.py file to capture the file error and set the version manually if the file couldn't be found.

I haven't gotten around to figuring out how to minimize the build size, so the complete build comes in at around 8 meg. Quite a large program for doing so little. You can see that the source code is actually quite small (17 kB) the rest is all the Python interpreter, pyGame and pyOpenGL.

I extended the Camera Class, but now there's some unused pieces of it that I haven't removed yet. (like the move_x and move_y). I also added set target and initialize position routines that handle setting up the desired target hex and initializing the camera target to that hex.

I did run into a little problem with some floating point errors. At one point I was getting a 'True' returned for '6.0'

Next step will be to place some user-controllable 'characters' on the board and let the user move them about and interact with them.

Learning Python and OpenGL

2006-04-27T13:24:00.000-05:00

In an effort to get back into doing more creative stuff, I've decided to start learning Python and OpenGL in order to get back into doing some game programming. It's probably been over fifteen years since I've written a complete computer game. I ought to go digging through my archives and see if I can find any of them.

Anyway... Python's pretty cool. It's an interpreted language so you'll lose a bit on performance, but it makes it very easy to test your code. It seems to take the best of lots of languages like Perl and C (and other) and does a lot of stuff automatically for you that you'd normally have to do manually in other languages. It's also got a lot of nice, powerful built in routines and add-ons that make it really nice for game coding.

There's also an OpenGL binding called pyOpenGL. And I'm using pyGame which is a set of Python modules with binding to the SDL Library.

It was actually an article on GameDev called How To Build a Game In A Week From Scratch With No Budget that got me interested in Python. In the article, a seasoned game programmed uses these tools to create a playable RPG game called hackenslash. It's a very good article and I highly recommend it for anyone who does any time of program development under a tight schedule or budget.

On to my game...

I decided I wanted to do something along the lines of Risk or Slay. I wanted it to be on a hex grid and I wanted it to be projected into 3D space. I considered doing an isometric view but really wanted to actually model it in 3D and let the user change their viewing angles, zoom, etc. I also really wanted to learn OpenGL. :-).

My first task was to get a hex grid to display in 3D. That was actually pretty easy. I created a simple routine to build a single hex mathmatically. Yes, I know I could have done all these calcs myself and just hard coded the numbers, but I wanted to make the routine flexible in case I wanted to change the scale of the hexes later.

You can take a look at the source code for this here: TW_03.py

All this code will do is draw a hex map in 3D space and let you maneuver the camera around to look at it from different angles. You can use the arrow keys to scan across the map. Use the Q and Z keys to zoom in and out. Use the W and S keys to raise or lower your viewing angle. The A and D keys to rotate left and right around your focus point. The R key will reset your view in case you get lost and the ESC key will exit the program.

This little test program exhibits more camera control than the final game would have, but I wanted to experiment with this pretty extensively so I decided to make the camera completely controllable.

The next stage will be to lock the camera at a preset angle and make the map clickable. Then, when the map is clicked, the camera will move in a controlled fashion to focus on the new area.

I'll post additional updates and I make progress.

Open Pandora's... Music Genome Project?

2006-03-22T13:29:00.000-06:00

OK, this is really cool... pandora.com

Basically, you create customized radio stations by telling the software what kind of music you like and it finds other stuff that is similar (beat, use of vocals, acoustic, electric etc.). You can keep telling it what you like and don't like (ala TiVo) and it continues customizing itself and adjusting to your tastes.

I'm not sure how many songs are in its library, but they seem to be partnered with iTunes so it could be as big as their whole catalog. It also gives you the opportunity to share the radio stations you've created. I don't plan on doing that because I don't see any need to reveal my predilection for 80's hair bands (apparently categorized by its mixed acoustic and electric instrumentation, a vocal-centric aesthetic, extensive vamping, minor key tonality and electric guitar riffs).

Nattering

2006-03-21T13:30:00.000-06:00

Do I natter? No, really. Tell me. I can take it.

Oh, what the fuck do you know?

I sent the wife a link to a neat little mac program that I found via Lifehacker today.

Well, she didn't open it until I was in the room with her and when she saw "Lifehacker" come up she said, "Oh, Lifehacker. That's that site you're always nattering on about."

Nattering! Me! Really!

Stunned, I was. Shocked even. Or at least that's the air I put on.

Here I go out of my way to go to all the trouble of diligently and carefully cutting and pasting a link into an email for her (that's at least 8 clicks of the mouse and a linear motion of the mouse that must add up to at least five inches) and that's the thanks I get. Nattering Indeed!

Anyway...

Apparently she'd had a pretty trying day today and at some point got a song stuck in her head. She asked me to knock her about a bit to see if I could dislodge it. I politely refused but asked what song it was. "Head and Shoulders," she said. "You know.. head and shoulders, knees and toes..."

Ah! That one! "Tell you what," I said, "I'll trade you. I'll take that one and you can have mine... This mailbox is mine, and this triagonal sign..." For those who don't know, that's one of the songs from Lazy Town which my daughter is completely enamored with. It doesn't matter what's wrong, if Lazy Town comes on, suddenly everything is right in her world.

Late Post for NTIF

2006-03-16T13:31:00.000-06:00

A couple of weeks ago we went to the Nort Texas Irish Festival. I took a few pictures with the camera phone. Here they are:

Dee on the Chariot Carousel

Dee on the Chariot Carousel... again

Dee and Maggie in the flying... um... fish?
(Dee's the barely visible one on the right.

We all had lots of fun and did all the kid-friendly stuff. Didn't sit and listen to as much music as we usually do because the kids weren't really interested in sitting still. I'm still dismayed by the lack of ability for these festivals to accept plastic.

You can usually use plastic to pay for your ticket to get in and most of the vendors will accept plastic, but you've got to buy these stupid non-refundable coupons to buy food and drink and they weren't accepting plastic for the coupons.

People have offered all kind of reasons for these festivals to use coupons for selling food. Like... Preventing pick pocketing because people don't have to carry a lot of cash around (total BS) or ... preventing the wage slaves and volunteers from steeling from the till (more plausible) or... making you buy extra coupons because you don't really know how much you're likely to spend and therefor leaving the festival with several unspendable and non-refundable coupons (highly likely).

Of course, all of these could be alleviated (from the consumer's standpoint) by having card swipers at the food places and letting people use their credit or debit cards to pay for the food.

Given how sensible this solution seems you're not likely to see it implemented any time soon.

NASA Open Source

2006-03-15T13:38:00.000-06:00

NASA has several Open Source projects available at: http://opensource.arc.nasa.gov/.

I haven't looked at all of them, but one of the ones I find more interesting is called World Wind. It's an Earth and Moon mapping program along the lines of Google Earth but it's a lot more scientifically oriented. There's lots of features and data sets there to choose from (Blue Marble, Landsat 7, SRTM +L7, MODIS, etc) and you can even write scripts for it and generate animations.

I haven't had time yet to poke through all the features, but if you're a map junkie like me, you'll definately want to check this one out!

It has a very nice 3D engine that lets you zoom in, tilt and even do flybys.

It has the Blue Marble data set that Nasa put together. It's a spectacular true-color image of the entire earth that you can adjust for the time of year and even create seasonal animations from.

The Landsat 7 data set is a collection of 15m per pixel images from 1999 - 2003. There are different sets of data from these images that include things like infrared imagery.

SRTM is Shuttle Radar Topography Mission data. This, combined with the Landsay 7 images is used to create a realistic 3D virtual world that can be explored from any angle or altitude.

And this just scratches the surface. There are lots more things to explore. In fact, I think I'll go do that now.

Bumper Stickers

2006-03-15T13:37:00.000-06:00

I have this Love/Hate relationship with bumper stickers. I love the pithy sayings. I love coming up with funny ideas that I think would make cool bumper stickers. But I loathe the idea of trashing up my vehicle with them.

So... Here are some of my current bumper sticker ideas...

From the nonsequitor cetegory...

From the "just ot confuse them" category...

From the "you're probably going to do it anyway" category...

Anyway... Just thought I'd share.

Diet Update

2006-02-28T12:38:00.000-06:00

We actually ended up going to Central market to see if they had shark. My wife suggested this. I can think of three possible explanations why...

She really likes Central Market

She thinks I do.

She really wanted to find out what shark tastes like.

I, on the other hand, don't really like Central Market and I'm pretty sure that shark tastes like fish. In any case, they didn't have any shark. Apparently it's out of season right now. I didn't even know there was a "shark season" other than on the Discovery Channel.

Instead we got haddock and salmon. When I asked for the salmon, the girl at the seafood counter asked me which kind, ____ or ____ (I don't remember what they were). I didn't really know which kind I wanted.

Now, I know a lot of people who, like me, have no clue about this sort of thing would try to play this off as if they knew exactly which one they wanted and chose one of the options at random and hoped that it didn't suck. This is especially true in a place like Central Market and doubly so at the seafood counter where you've got a lot of people browsing the expansive selection and seemingly knowing a lot more about seafood than I do.

I, on the other hand, really have no problem in letting my ignorance about certain topics show through. I'm competent in enough topics to be comfortable in exposing my vulnerabilities in places where I have really limited experience. So I asked, "what's the difference." The blank look on her face told me two things...

Most people don't ask that question.

she didn't really know.

Granted, her shock from item 1 may have caused item 2 to merely appear to be the case. Either way it took her a couple of seconds to collect her thoughts before offering that ____ had a more buttery taste. Since she didn't offer any information on the other one, I had absolutely no reason to have opted for that one so I chose the buttery tasting ____. I could have asked for more information, but that bit of info coupled with the price per pound marked at the front of the display was sufficient at the time for me to chose one that hopefully would not taste like shit.

Additionally...

On the menshealth.com site, I finally found where to click to regenerate my diet after making some changes. That has made it much easier to tailor my diet. I still haven't got it quite to the point where I want it, but it's getting closer.

Does it HAVE to be this difficult?

2006-02-25T12:35:00.000-06:00

People seem to be going out of their way to make my life more difficult than it needs to be.

I have to take my wife in next week for some dental surgery. Not a big problem (for me). I simply take the day off work, get up early, pack her and our daughter in the car and drive her to the appointment. Then I can spend a couple of hours shopping or whatever with my daughter and then go pick the wife up when she's done, right? Wrong. The dentist wants someone to BE THERE THE ENTIRE TIME! What? Why? Who knows. All they'll say is that they need someone to be there.

OK. Minor adjustment. Now I'll just have to sit in the waiting room with my daughter for a couple of hours. Nope. Sorry. They don't allow children in the waiting area. WHAT? Are you FUCKING KIDDING ME?

OK. So now what do I do? Drop Dee off at one of those pay (through the nose) by the hour day care places? Find a friend that can baby sit starting at SIX IN THE FREAKIN MORNING? What we end up having to do is this:

I'm taking Mom to the appointment and dropping her off. A friend (a very good friend, mind you) is going to meet us there and stay in the waiting room for several hours until she is released and then drive her home.

OK. So that's all settled. Right? Hope so.

Next Saga:

I go online thinking there's got to be a place that I can enter in some information and some goals and have someone (or some program) suggest a workout and diet regimen complete down to the gnat's ass.

I found such a program at menshealth.com. It's very comprehensive, it asks you lots of questions establishes your goals, then spits out a workout routine and a diet and even gives you a place to track your progress. Great! Exactly what I was looking for. The diet part will also generate a shopping list for you so you can stock up on the stuff you need.

So I created the shopping list for next week and started looking through it. I begin to see entries like this.

1/2 medium apple
1/2 medium orange
3/4 cup grapes
...

Now remember this is for an entire week. There's tons of entries like this. The program seems to go to great effort to not duplicate any meals. As a result you need to buy a a lot of different items in small quantities. Not the most efficient way to shop!

Then I see this item on the shopping list:

8 oz Broiled Shark Fillets

SHARK? Where the hell am I supposed to buy shark? OK, yeah, I can go all the way across town and probably find it at Central Market, but I'm pretty sure they don't carry it at the local Kroger's where I normally shop.

But there's hope for both of these situations. There's a feature that'll let you select any meal and replace it. No problem, right? I just consolidate the meals. I don't mind having the same breakfast 3 days in the week. I can consolidate the menu and have less variety and a more efficient shopping list. Right? Wrong.

I started with that shark entry. I click on "replace meal" and it comes up with another screen where it's supposed to give you a list of alternate menu choices that'll fit your diet. How many alternate choices do you think it came up with? If you said ZERO, you win a cookie.

Now, understand... shark wasn't the only thing on the dinner menu. There are plenty of other items. However, the program apparently is trying to target a specific fat/protein/carb ratio and shark steaks were the only thing that would fit into that schedule.

I DID manage to get around it though. It has the option on that page to "Never see this menu selection again" which I checked. However, it stays on the menu until you regenerate it. Unfortunately I don't see any way to just regenerate the menu. So I had to tell it I was switching to a different diet plan (it offers like 4 different diets) and then switch back to the one I wanted. THEN it regenerate the diet without the shark steaks!

It really shouldn't be this difficult.

It's called a ''Laser''

2006-02-13T12:34:00.000-06:00

Went to play "Laser" tag with a couple of friends Saturday at Main Event in Fort Worth.

If you've never done it, it's pretty cool. You put on a vest with sensors and lights and you have a "Laser" gun that you use to shoot other people. But rather than being just a free-for-all, you work in teams. In the version that we played, you got extra points for tagging a light located inside the opponent's base.

You've got a limited number of shots and "lives." but you can return to your team's charging station to get more.

We had lots of fun and our team won! Woo Hoo!

My Family is a Backward Bunch of Redneck Hicks

2006-02-10T12:28:00.000-06:00

Last night one of my cousins sent out a joke to our family email list that was supposedly about a news article from the aftermath of hurricane Katrina:

Katrina Devastation Continues

One of the local television stations in South Louisiana actually aired an interview with a black woman from New Orleans. The interviewer was a woman from a Boston affiliate. She asked the black woman how such total and complete devastation of the churches in the area had affected their lives.

Without hesitation, the woman replied," I don't know about all those other people, but we haven't gone to churches in years. We get our chicken from Popeye's."

To me, this joke is racist. Furthermore, if you can believe SNOPES.COM it didn't actually happen.

I pointed these two things out to my cousin (and everyone she CC'd in the original email):

Did they really now?

http://www.snopes.com/katrina/humor/churches.asp

Nice to know that broad streak of racism is still alive and well in our family.

Rick--

Now I KNEW I shouldn't have responded with anything. In fact, I'd previously decided that I wouldn't bother with these types anymore. However, I said "fuck it" and sent the email anyway.

What came back (almost immediately) was pretty much what I expected.

No Ricky,

I’m not a racist. It was just a bit of humor. I’m sorry that we all can’t be “politically perfect” but maybe if you stopped looking so critically at your family you might find that we are not as stupid and ignorant as you might think. Lighten up. I didn’t ask for verification or dispute of the email. I got it from a friend and got a chuckle. SO I thought I would pass a little humor along to my family. I forget that some of us can’t do anything without you picking it apart for how it is “wrong”. Get over it. I sent it to my “black” friends even and they thought it was funny too.

But regardless, I will not tolerate your insults and assaults about your family being racist bigots. I didn’t say too much the last time when you said it about your mother, she can defend herself, but don’t attack me. We tolerate your abnormal decisions about your life and don’t criticize your decisions. We accept you, why can’t you accept us??

Kristin

Oh, where to start? Where to start? OK. Let's start at the top.

I’m not a racist.

Just because you SAY you're not a racist doesn't mean SHIT! As the saying goes, actions speak louder than words. The action of forwarding this email was essentially the same as saying, "hey! let's all laugh at the stupid N----!"

It was just a bit of humor.

"Hey! I was just joking! I didn't mean to hurt your feelings." Sound familiar? I can't count how many times I've had to say that because I said something I thought was witty and someone took it seriously. It's the same here. She may not have mean the joke to be racist. Hell, she didn't even write it. But it's all right there. Would it have been as funny if it hadn't mentioned the woman being black? Would you have just assumed she was black?

I’m sorry that we all can’t be “politically perfect” but maybe if you stopped looking so critically at your family you might find that we are not as stupid and ignorant as you might think.

I don't try to make any claims of being "politically perfect" in fact, I'm sure you can easily find a dozen or more instances in this blog where I've been "politically incorrect." Sometimes it's intentional, sometimes not. Also, nobody's as stupid and ignorant as I think they are. It's simply not possible.

I got it from a friend and got a chuckle. SO I thought I would pass a little humor along to my family.

I saw this earlier myself, before she sent it to me. The difference is what I did about it. Did I send it off to everyone I know? Nope. I simply ignored it. However, she feels the need to forward it to everyone she knows. Not what I consider to be the smartest of options (and this girl wants to be a lawyer - would you hire a lawyer that sent around this kind of garbage?)

I sent it to my “black” friends even and they thought it was funny too.

I'm sure most of her black friends thought it was funny and harmless. But would she tell it to a black person she didn't know? Would she tell it in a crowded room with a mixed audience of strangers? I doubt it.

But regardless, I will not tolerate your insults and assaults about your family being racist bigots.

The truth hurts, huh?

We tolerate your abnormal decisions about your life and don’t criticize your decisions. We accept you, why can’t you accept us??

I'm pretty sure she's referring to my atheism here. While it may be true that they haven't criticized my atheism lately, I think they've simply grown weary of it and have figured out that I'm not going to change just because they say so. However, for a long time, that's about all I heard about. In any case, I don't see how accepting my being an atheist should translate into the idea that I'm supposed to accept them being racists as that's clearly the implication here.

I've also received email from my mother as well as one of Kristin's friends. I won't bother with the email from my mother too much, it basically just said "get off your high horse." But the mail from Kristin's friend was pure poetry.

I thought it was funny...lick my dirty n----- ass. [censored by me - RTC]

I also received a phone call from my dad who basically tried to tell me that it's ok if they send around racist jokes because you see it on TV all the time. Then my mom got on the phone and ranted and raved because I upset Kristin with my reply and now she was upset and she was about to get on the road to Marksville and that if I didn't let up and get off my high horse they were going to start in on my atheism again. I figured I'd heard about enough of that so I hung up.

Then I sent this email:

Since all you people want to do is pass around your stupid racists jokes and you feel the need to somehow make ME out to be the bad guy for pointing out what should be obvious to you in the first place, I'm taking down the careyfamily
email list.

Rick--

Then I went out and removed everyone from the list.

Another Year Older

2006-02-06T12:27:00.000-06:00

Well, I've gone and done it. I've had another birthday. Now I'm one year closer to 40. By "one year closer" what I really mean is "one year away." Had fun, though. Went out to Cowtown Sushi and ate lots of Sushi, Sashimi and other stuff. Then we went and crawled around a bookstore for a while before heading home to relieve the baby sitter. Yes, gone are those wild hedonistic parties of yesteryear. Actually, come to think of it, that's pretty much been the excitement level of my birthday parties for many years.

I also went to the Texas Frightmare Weekend on Saturday where they screened American Nightmare and we did a reunion panel hosted by Joe Bob Briggs. It was fun. Lots of weirdos there, though. I felt right at home.

Blogs that Blog about other Blogs are Lame

2006-02-06T12:11:00.000-06:00

To that end...

I loved Wil Wheaton's blog entry today about going to Disneyland. Here's the link:

http://wilwheaton.typepad.com/wwdnbackup/2006/02/the_one_about_s.html

Garfield Randomizer

2006-01-10T12:26:00.000-06:00

I haven't read newspaper comics in a long time. I used to read a lot of them but I had to stop because I was spending way too much time just catching up on them every day.

But today my wife sent me a link to this Garfield Randomizer. Most of the time the results are meaningless, but every now and then you get a gem:

or two:

I was a Teenage Wesley Hater...

2006-01-04T12:25:00.000-06:00

Ok, actually more of a twenty-something Wesley Hater. I mention this because I don't want to blow smoke up your ass and try to say, "No! I LIKED Wesley! Really!"

I hated Wesley Crusher. The character was flat and was used as an out-of-the-blue solution that saved the day in the last two minutes of the episode (or at least that's how I remember it).

The reason I'm going into this is that I just finished Wil Wheaton's books Dancing Barefoot and Just a Geek. I've also been reading Wil's blog (at WWdN and for now at WWdN in Exile) for several years now.

I like memoirs. I have also just finished reading Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes although I'm still confused about the title.

A well written memoir gives you excellent insight into the person behind the public image. Wil Wheaton comes across as a guy who was thrust into the limelight without being fully prepared for the consequences and into a role that few people could be comfortable with. As a result, the fear of being stuck in an unappreciated role for the rest of his life and missing out on other opportunities led him to make a decision that he has been second-guessing for a long time.

I can truthfully say that I like Wil Wheaton (even though I don't know him personally) and that while I didn't care for the character he played, I can appreciate the position he was put in. If my own movie career ever takes off, I'd love to have the chance to work with him as a writer or an actor.

Sometimes I feel I've got to * * run away...

2006-01-03T12:24:00.000-06:00

I really don't want to be like other people. More specifically, I don't want to treat other people like they treat me.

I like to think that I'm better than other people. Not in a way that means that I'm entitled to something more than them but better in the way I act.

Other people seem to think that the world revolves around them. They seem to think that they are somehow entitled (probably by some creator) to get special treatment. They seem to think that the rules simply do not apply to them but are instead meant to keep everyone else out of their way while they perform their smash and grab maneuver.

I try to treat people fairly. Now, granted, if someone is obviously in the smash and grab mode I will try to perform a subtle blocking maneuver. And let them know that I see what they are doing and am taking steps so that they do not get away with it.

But enough is enough. I often feel like the guy who holds open a door for someone only to find myself standing there holding the door while hordes of people pour through like it's my job to stand there and hold the door for them. Then, when I decide that this silliness has gone on long enough and try to duck through the door myself I am looked at as being rude.

Let's take an example:

If I approach a checkout counter and there are people standing nearby and I'm not sure if they are in line or not, I'll either assume their are in line and stand behind them or I'll ask them if they are in line. Other people, however, do not seem to share this philosophy. In fact, it has been demonstrated to me that even though I am standing in the taped out lines on the floor at the Sears store, other people (specifically an old black cunt) will walk right around me and stand way to close to the guy in front of me and then claim that she didn't think that I was in line when I point out that I was there first. She then tells me that I need to RESPECT her even though she obviously doesn't respect me. She also tells me that I need to know MY PLACE. Apparently MY PLACE is somewhere below this malodorous bitch. When I voice this to her (which I did) she comes back immediately with (and I'm not making this up), "well I don't cuss, but if I'm a bitch, you must be a bastard." She then follows that up shortly by calling me a "white motherfucker." Ah, to be an old black hypocrite bitch with delusions of adequacy. Meanwhile, the little piss-ant clerk is STILL processing her transaction! Not that I can really blame him. He was probably tired of smelling her rotten old cunt and was desperate to get her out of the store as quickly as possible.

When she left (after a few more choice words) he said, "sorry about that." Like that's supposed to make it all better. I said, "sorry my ass. You knew that I was in line here long before she was, but you went right ahead and served her first." He mumbled something which made it clear that had previously locked his balls in the cash drawer and had absolutely no clue how to open the bloody thing to retrieve them.

So after all this, I'm pissed off. This is yet another example of other people getting their way at my expense. Should I just go around treating other people like they treat me? Take what I want, give them the finger and walk away like I've got every right in the world to just do as I damn well please? Do I act like my brother and pull out in front of people because (as he puts it) "every car comes equipped with brakes?" Should I be taking advantage of people and screwing them over for my own benefit?

What's the point of sending my daughter to "ethical education" and teaching her to treat people right if every other motherfucker out there is learning to walk all over her and treat her like shit? The end result that they'll get ahead at her expense just like they've done to me my whole life. Being an atheist, I can't exactly say that there will be a reward in heaven or some other bullshit.

I am seriously reminded of the Blackadder's Christmas Carol. Blackadder is the nicest guy in town at the beginning of the story but everyone walks all over him. Then one of the ghosts of Christmas unwittingly shows him that if he keeps being nice to people, his descendants will be lackeys and servants. However if he starts treating people badly (like they so richly deserve) his descendants will rule the galaxy.

Of course this could just be one more thing that I'm blowing completely out of proportion.

Music Web Site

2005-12-22T12:22:00.000-06:00

Found a neat little music tutorial web site thanks to Lifehacker.com.

MusicTheory.net is an interesting little site with really cool flash animations that teach everything from how to read music to building chords and progressions. There are also some nice trainers and some cool utilities. Check it out if you're wanting to teach yourself an instrument.

Mmmm Carcass!

2005-12-21T12:22:00.000-06:00

Saw this item thanks to my friend John's blog (oops, I mean journal). This has got to be one of the best xmas gifts ever! Right up there with the karaoke deer head. If it wasn't so expensive I'd get one for my bald red-neck uncle.

Other news on the gift-giving font, I bought Terri a YOU PEEKED!!! I know, it's a bit expensive, but I think she'll really enjoy it!

We went over to one of our neighbor's house last night to drop them off a gift as a thank you for keeping an eye on the house while we drove out to Georgia last month for a funeral. When I walked inside, I was surprised to see no less than FOUR (4) fully decorated trees in the living room. In addition there were holiday decorations of every type in every square inch of that house. When we walked toward the back of the house we found... another tree! She also had so many decorations out on her counter that there was no space for anything else. In fact, when she offered Dee a cookie, she had to open the microwave to get it out. She had taken the snacks and stuff that would have normally been kept on the counter and stored them in the microwave because the counter space was taken up by a village diarama. I really feel sorry for her husband. I think he could see that I was kind of staring wide-eyed at the whole scene and kept offering "this is all HER stuff." Poor guy. He kind of reminds me of Richard from "Keeping up Appearances." Don't get me wrong, she's a nice lady and all and a great neighbor, but DAMN!

Ignorance is Bliss

2005-12-19T12:20:00.000-06:00

It must be true that ignorance is bliss because so many people seems content to wallow in their ignorance.

For years I have always tried to help people think more critically. When someone spouts out some nonsense I try to point them in the right direction, lead them to a reliable source of information or get them to think critically about the issue.

And every time I do it's a fight. They argue with the plain data placed right in front of their nose. They counter with anecdotal evidence. They've always got a friend-of-a-friend who swears that their second cousin's husband's aunt's boyfriend is a certified expert in the field and so it must be true.

WELL I'M SICK OF IT!

From now on these people can wallow in their ignorance and be blissfully happy with themselves. I'm tired of trying to educate these fucking morons! If they're too stupid or lazy to do a little research or even read a smegging book, then I've got no use for them. The only person I've got any responsibilities to educate is my daughter. The rest of them can just fuck off.

We had a holiday party recently. After the party, one of my friends came around pulling the tabs off all the cans. When I asked what she was doing, she said that she had a friend that collected them. I asked why. I don't remember exactly what her reply was but basically the tabs was perceived as having more value than the rest of the can. When I tried to point out that that was an urban legend and that the tabs were made from the same aluminum as the can, another person piped up that she was right. He knew this because the people at the VFW (or somewhere) had a huge jar full of them and that "the guy" at the recycling place said they were worth more. Again, I tried to point out that that wasn't the case and offered to send him a link to a site that would explain it. He replied, "oh? On the internet, huh?" As if to say that I was an idiot for believing something that I read on the internet. So I asked him if he'd rather have it in a book. He said, "yeah." So obviously he believes that if it's printed in a book it must be true and if it's on the internet, it must be false. Great deductive reasoning there, fellah! (probably watches too much Bill O'Reilly)

Incidentally, if you want to read about the can tabs, here are some links:

http://www.snopes.com/business/redeem/pulltabs.asp

http://www.encorpinc.com/cfm/index.cfm?It=913&Id=1&Se=22

http://www.nkfi.org/factsheets/Tabsfact.html

Incidentally I got these links from doing a google search for "aluminum pull tabs." Try it: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=aluminum+pull+tabs

Recycled Souls

2005-12-01T12:17:00.000-06:00

Theologians to ask Pope to suspend limbo?

Apparently Limbo just isn't a hot seller for the Catholic church anymore. So they've been looking for an alternative. It seems that Pope John Paul asked a commission to basically make up something else!

Isn't that as good as admitting that they just pull most of this stuff out of an orifice that they have to stand up to access?

So presumably they'll come up with some explanation on how unbaptized babies actually get a free pass and are admitted into heaven or how their souls are recycled and born into new bodies so that they have a chance at experiencing the whole born-in-sin/salvation shtick.

Speaking of which I should let Dave Barry know that "Recycled Souls" would be a good name for a rock band (WBAGNFARB).

Oh, wait... never mind.. it already is... Recycled Souls

Deck them Halls

2005-11-30T12:16:00.000-06:00

Bought about $150 worth of new ~~christmas~~ Solstice decorations last night.

I was inspired a bit by this guy who programmed his lights to flash in time with music.

When I first saw it, I thought it was edited together from a bunch of stills. But then I found out that he'd actually programmed them to flash in time with the music using Light-o-Rama. I think it's a bit too late to start something like this for this year. Maybe next year. hehehe

Anyway, we got some icicle lights to hang from the eaves. Normally I just outline the roof, but we decided to go with icicles this year. I also got some miniature outdoor lighted trees with the plans of doing a miniature lighted forest in the front yard. However, given that I only got 4 trees (two 3' trees and two 2' trees) it'll be a bit heavy on the miniature and light on the forest. (no pun intended... really!)

I also picked up a couple of strings of red miniature lights with the plans of making the posts on the front porch into candy canes (or barber poles depending on your point of view). I tried to find some miniature white lights (rather than clear) to go with them but wasn't able to find any so I'll have to go with the clear for now.

I'll try to post some pictures when I get it all up and the electric meter is spinning like Karl Rove on a heavy news day.

MMmmm... Free Gum!

2005-11-29T12:15:00.000-06:00

We have these waterless urinals at work. I mention this because this morning some idiot had spat his gum into one of them. It doesn't really affect me as I'm not the poor sap who has to fish it out, but I noticed it because it wasn't going to go anywhere until said sap came in and fished it out. That was this morning.

I just went back in there and noticed the gum was gone and the guy walking away from the urinal zipping his fly was chewing gum with a big smile on his face. I immediately put two and two together and came up with some bizarre derivative of pi and imagined him thinking, "Mmmmm, Free gum!" as he walked away.

MBCG3AM Final Update

2005-11-21T12:14:00.000-06:00

Here's the final tally on the Monopoly Best Chance Game 3.0 at McDonald's.

Envelopes sent: about 1000 (I lost count)

Envelopes received: about 1000 (I lost count again)

Best buy buck coupons received: 968

Copies of the rules stating that Best Buy bucks would only be sent out as long as supplies last: about 30.

Total invested in postage and envelopes: $750.

Total amount received in Best Buy Bucks: $1613.

Profit: +$863

I had to make several trips to Best Buy as you are only allowed to spend a max of $300 per visit according to the rules.

Nearly every time I went, the cashier was surprised that I had so many and they were a bit confused about how to handle that many. The management was always suspicious about how I got so many. Apparently they didn't realize that you could get them legally without eating a ton of McD's food.

The last trip was the worst. The managers actually had to confer to determine if I was allowed to have that many. They'd seen me in the store before with a bunch of them and were inquiring again as to how I got so many and whether or not I worked at McDonald's and all manner of stuff.

If we do this again next year I'll probably spread it around a bit. There's no reason in the rules for having to do so, but it could ease the process if the managers aren't seeing me come into the same store over and over with a fist full of best buy bucks every time.

Pulling out early

2005-11-21T12:13:00.000-06:00

A lot of people talk about the war in Iraq like it's a real simple problem. Some say that we need to stay and finish the job and others say we need to pull out now.

I tend to agree with the people who say we need to stay there and help rebuild but it's not that easy.

I liken it to getting drug to a party by a friend who then trashes the host's house. Two immediate reactions come to mind. 1) get him the hell out of there now, apologizing while you drag him over the threshold and 2) make him stay and help clean up.

So in order to try and do the right thing, you make him stay and clean up his mess. The problem is that he's still causing damage in the clean-up effort and other people are also causing damage while trying to get him to just get the hell out.

That's not really a fair analogy because Iraq certainly wasn't a party before we got there and some of the people who are trying to make us leave shouldn't be there either. We've done some good things over there like removing Saddam from power (even though I think that could have been accomplished in other ways). But the aftermath is starting to take its toll. Also, you can think of the damage in that analogy as broken dishes, windows, walls etc. and it's easy to rationalize one way or the other. But in Iraq, it's not so easy. The broken dishes are people's lives. And we're not talking about just soldiers or "insurgents" here but children as well. There was an article in the news today that our army opened fire on a minivan and killed some children because they were afraid that the van was a carrying a bomb.

So what do we do? Do we leave the country and hope everything turns out alright? We'll get blasted by the international community for hitting and running (again). But at least we won't be over there killing people's children.

On the other hand, there are other people over there who are actually wanting to do harm. Those are the people we really need to get under control. If we leave, will they just run rampant over the whole country? Are they doing it anyway? Would it get better or worse if we leave?

If we stay, people will keep attacking our troops and our troops will attack back. In such a situation people will get killed. Some of them will be combatants, but some of the will be bystanders. Some of them will be children.

So does the question come down to whether the situation will be better if we stay or if we leave? There's even more we have to consider than that, though. Do the Iraqi people want us there? I'm pretty sure the soldiers don't want to be there and I don't want any of my friends or family that are in the military to be sent to Iraq. Does the international community want us there? I'm pretty sure what the family of those children in the minivan would say.

You could argue the rest of your life about whether we should even be there in the first place. But we are there and the question is now "what do we do about it?" I don't think Bush or any of his cronies have a plan. I think they figure if they keep enough troops on the ground it'll work itself out. Might makes right as it were.

Unfortunately what we've come to understand is that "right makes might." By that I mean that the religious right in this country seems bound and determined to use might to get their message across. We've seen that there's no low they won't stoop to in politics (even against their own party) and that throwing their might around in other countries is not a "last ditch effort" but a "preferred option." Every time this country spends money on a military endeavor, Bush and his cronies get richer. That's why they prefer the military option over the diplomatic. There's no money in diplomacy.

The end result? Children half-way around the world who should have no cares greater than going to school and playing are killed in a senseless act of violence so that the rich can keep getting richer.

Happy holidays.

My Stupid State

2005-11-09T12:12:00.000-06:00

I can't believe my state actually voted for a state amendment to ban gay marriages. Actually I can believe it because this is Texas after all (state motto: no inteleksuels alowed).

But honestly, I don't think that the amendment really conveys the sentiment that they were trying to get across.

As it is, it simply states that marriage is a union between a man and a woman. Thereby implying that it is NOT a union between a man and a man or a woman and a woman. But I think what they REALLY meant to put in was that marriage is a union between a white christian man and a white christian woman. Because obviously to these people anything else is simply an abomination to god. In fact to be totally honest they may want to take it a step further and say that marriage is a union between a white christian man and a white christian woman where the man provides an income of at least $100,000 per year and the woman stays home and raises the children and is subservient to her husband.

Yes, I think that would just about cover it.

MBCG3AM Update 4

2005-10-19T12:10:00.000-05:00

Envelopes sent: 548

Envelopes received: 153

Best Buy Bucks: 260

MBCG3AM Update 3

2005-10-18T12:09:00.000-05:00

Envelopes Sent: 440

Envelopes Received: 131

Best Buy Bucks received: $231

50 of the 131 were $3 tickets and 79 were $1 so I'm a bit ahead of the 2:1 ratio mentioned in the rules.

Additionally Dee had an absolute BLAST making trips back and forth putting the empty envelopes into the recycle bin as Terri and I were removing the game pieces.

A Week Vacation

2005-10-17T12:01:00.000-05:00

Took last week off from work. I was planning on working on the Living & Dying set for a few days but as luck would have it I got freaking sick!

So, in order not to make any of Jon's crew sick, I stayed away from the set. This really pissed me off, but it was the right thing to do. They've still got another week of shooting and didn't need me there taking out crew with my germs of contagiousness.

On the other hand, it gave me a chance to relax (if somewhat forced) and a opportunity to get a few things done around the house that have really been needing it.

I started off with some simple stuff. We hadn't been able to use the spa tub in the master bath because it wasn't on a GFCI and the motor wasn't grounded. The previous owners had probably been using it without any problems, but I didn't want to risk it. Anyway I put in a GFCI outlet and ran a ground line from the motor to the cold water pipe.

I also took the opportunity to add GFCI outlets to the kitchen. Two GFCI outlets were able to protect all of the outlets in the kitchen with the exception of the garbage disposal and the refrigerator.

I also took the opportunity to sniff out all of the outlets and make a complete electrical map of the house. Later I'll use that to re-balance the circuits and more evenly distribute the loads.

I had also noticed a few weeks back an unidentified motor noise when I was in the garage. The motor noise would come on and whine but would always shut off before I could find out what it was. While I was in the garage snooping the outlets, I heard it come on again. This time I was able to determine that it was the vent fan in the attic. The reason it was so loud is that the motor had seized up.

I took this opportunity to make my first foray into solar power. I purchased a DC attic fan and a 10W solar panel from Home Depot and got it installed. It works beautifully. Any time the sun's up, the fan runs. Free power! Gotta love it!

I also replaced the toilet seat in the front bathroom. The old seat had a hard edge on the inside ring making it very uncomfortable to sit on for any length of time. The new seat is padded. Woo Hoo!

Other than that, I watched a bunch of TV and gave the mess I had to my daughter. Fortunately it didn't seem to affect her as much as it did me.

Oh, one other thing we did is Terri and I went to see Serenity. It was a very cool movie and I'm very glad that we went to see it in the theater. Although, the hot dogs I had at the theater have got to be the absolute worst hot dogs I've even eaten.

Update & L&D Set Visit

2005-10-09T11:59:00.000-05:00

Currently I have sent out right at 350 envelopes for the MBCG3AM.

Going to to the Living & Dying set today. They've been shooting for just over a week now and am interested in seeing how things are going. I'll post an update when I get back.

MBCG3AM Update

2005-10-08T11:58:00.000-05:00

I've now sent out some 260 Envelopes!

Haven't gotten anything back yet, but hopefully next week they'll start rolling in.

Also, John desn't like seeing my mug repeated all the way down the page. Can't say I really blame him. So, I'll probably do something a little different, but I haven't decided what.

MBCG3AM update and Book Offer

2005-10-06T11:56:00.000-05:00

MBCG3AM envelopes sent out: 123

I received an offer in the mail earlier this week for a book called The Truth About Money 3rd Edition. The offer had several pieces of paper talking about how great this book was and all the cool things that it'd teach you about managing your money. It sounds like a really good book. The price for this wonderful book that the advert was convinced that I couldn't live without was just four payments of $6.99. That's right, $27.96. So I went out to Amazon.com and checked the price.

Amazon.com shows full list price of The Truth About Money 3rd Edition as $19.95. $8.01 cheaper than the advert price. However, the sale price is only $13.57. That's a whopping $14.39 cheaper than the advert! Of course you can also buy them used on Amazon for even cheaper than that.

I'm thinking that the first chapter in this book should tell you to always shop aroundto get the best price. It should then use itself as an example. "How much did you pay for this book? Did you pay more than $15? More than $20? More than $25??? If so, it's a good thing you bought this book!

Like a kid again

2005-10-05T11:55:00.000-05:00

I haven't done this since I was a kid. John Hattan told me how last year he got a bunch of the McDonald's Monopoly game pieces by sending off a bunch of SASE's and getting back a bunch of the Best Buy Bucks. I was so impressed I figured I'd give it a try this year.

So far I've sent out 75 envelopes.

I'll keep posting updates here. Be sure to check out John's journal for updates on his progress as well.

Saved by Saved!

2005-10-03T11:53:00.000-05:00

Watched Saved! this weekend. While it was a decent flick, I was a bit disappointed. There were some good zingers at the xtians, and it really showed up the whole "I'm a better xtian than you" attitude that's very prevalent among the younger xtian set.

I was probably hoping for too much to begin with. The best part of the movie for me was Macaulay Culkin saying "I'm not a christian."

Of course, there's this exchange from the same scene:

Cassandra: There's only one reason Christian girls come down to the Planned Parenthood.

Roland: She's planting a pipe bomb?

Cassandra: Okay, two reasons.

All-in-all it's a decent portrayal of the messed up attitudes a lot of xtians have and how they get completely fucked in the head by their religion. For example when the principal, Pastor Skip, tells Mary's mother that her being pregnant is God's way of punishing THEM for THEIR sins.

As a social commentary, the movie holds up well, but as I understand it, earlier versions of the script were a lot more edgy. But these things tend to get a bit watered down. I guess it's a minor miracle that the movie got made at all.

The weekend update with Brit Hume

2005-09-26T11:50:00.000-05:00

Filling in for Brit this week will be Neil Patrick Harris.

Filling in for Neil Patrick Harris will be our regular guy, Rick Carey.

Several funny/cool/weird things happened this weekend so I'll try to do a quick recap.

00101000010101000010101010001010010101000100101000101010010010100100111010001011

If you run the right decompression scheme on that you'll get the following report:

Friday night we hired a babysitter and went over to some friend's house to have dinner and play some games. Actually A game. Specifically Mississippi Queen. It's a pretty cool riverboat racing game where you gotta stop and pick up a couple of ~~river rats~~ southern belles. There's some good strategy involved and it's pretty easy to play.

When we got back to the house we found out that Dee fussed almost the entire time we were gone. Terri felt bad for the sitter. Dee had done that several times for ME when Terri had to go off somewhere and I had to babysit.

Saturday we spent a lot of the day unpacking boxes that we'd had in "storage" (storage being defined as stacked in the hallway).

A lot of the stuff is going up on eBay (after all it's been in the boxes unmissed for about a year!)

Sunday were were supposed to go to Grapevine for the DFW Ethical Fellowship's Talk Like a Pirate Game Day. According to Terri, we were supposed to be there at 11am and then by noon we'd be heading somewhere to get some lunch and then back home. Normally Terri and Dee go to these things by themselves and I stay home and get work done. But I figured I'd tag a long this time. I figured that we'd be done with lunch by 1pm and we could stop at Fry's and a couple of other places on the way home and I could be home by 3pm with plenty of time to get some more work done around the house.

It didn't work out that way.

Around 11am we're noticing that we're the only ones at the fellowship. So I called Shelly and she tells me that the Game Day starts at 3pm. So we met up with John and Shelly (minus Maggie who was with Grandparents) and hung out, shopped and ate lunch until 3pm rolled around. Then we went back to the fellowship and played games for a couple of hours before heading back home. Got home about 7pm the rest of the day being completely shot.

We played a really cool game at the Game Day, though. Pirates of the Spanish Main is a really cool miniature battle game where the ships are pieced together from parts printed on credit card stock. It's a very neat idea. There's a few oddities about the game mechanics, though. Like if you sink a ship, you and the player that owns the ship split the booty from the ship rather than it simply being lost to the bottom of the sea. To win, you've got to get over 50% of the treasure in the game... this is sometimes hard to do if there's an even number of gold in the game. The gold is distributed to the islands randomly at the start of the game, so if you get lucky and the islands closest to you have more than 50% of the gold and you've got some fast ships, you can get there, get the gold and race back to your home island and win without a shot ever being fired.

I definitely have some ideas for house rules that I'd add to the game, but I'll save that until later when I might have a chance to test those ideas.

More stuff that bugs me

2005-09-21T11:46:00.000-05:00

Whenever I have the opportunity, at the grocery store, convenience stores and the like, I use my debit card to pay for my purchases. It's very easy if they have the little device there where you can swipe your own card and enter the pin without having to hand over the card to the cashier. However, most of the cashiers seem to think that they have to walk you through the operation of the device.

I know how to use the bloody thing! I've been using them for several years now!

I don't know if they do this automatically because there's still a bunch of clueless people out there that need help with this, if they're doing it out of habit, if the store management says they have to or if I just look like a complete moron that can't operate a simple piece of electronics.

In any case, you people are really freakin' annoying! CUT IT OUT!

It kind of reminds me of when I used to deliver pizzas in college. After giving them their pizza and collecting the payment, I'd say, "enjoy your pizza" and 99 times out of 100 they'd respond, "you too!"

It was pretty funny the first time it happened. I realized that they'd been expecting me to say, "have a nice day" or something similar and the conditioned response is of course, "you too." After that it became a game. I made sure to say, "enjoy your pizza" to everyone I delivered to and sure enough most of them responded with "you too."

That lead me to another little social experiment. I'd noticed that if you ask someone what time it is right after they've looked at their watch, they'll look at it again before answering you. Again, I think it's a conditioned response. When someone asks you what time it is, the instant reaction is to look at your watch (or a clock if you don't wear a watch). So the game became to ask "what time is it" immediately after I see someone look at their watch. I've NEVER seen anyone not look at their watch again.

When I ask them why they looked at their watch the second time, in many cases people said that they didn't even realize they'd looked at it in the first place. That suggests that the first look might have been just a habitual thing and they weren't actually wanting to know what time it was, so the time never actually registered on a conscious level.

Most of the time, however, people simply had no idea why they'd looked at their watch again other than habit. On a few rare cases, I'd get someone try to rationalize the action by saying that they wanted to show me that they looked at their watch before answering so that I could believe them or that they wanted to provide the exact answer and needed to check to see if the minute had changed since they had looked two seconds ago. The first answer might hold some merit as a desire to speak from authority, but I think the second answer is complete BS unless you're dealing with Monk.

Grapefest and stuff

2005-09-12T11:45:00.000-05:00

Saturday I spent all day over in Dallas with one of the producers of ~~Deadly Bachelor Party~~ Bachelor Party Massacre. I'm editing the behind-the-scenes video and there were some changes he wanted. Basically he wanted to see more of himself in the footage. So I spent several hours over in Dallas working on that with him. But we finally got it finished. Now I just have to go back in and layer in the background music and it'll be finished.

Sunday we went to the Humanist Fellowship pot luck. I usually don't go to those things because it seems a bit like church to me, but Terri and Dee have been going and they seem to enjoy it. I went yesterday because it was just a potluck dinner and then we were gonna go to Grapefest.

The potluck was ok, but it was pretty true to it's name. We had chili, chicken and dumplings, stuffed mushrooms and a rice pilaf. But I guess that's about what you can expect when there's only 6 adults there (four of them being comprised of two couples). Anyway, it was fun and we played some games. Then we went to Grapefest.

Grapefest is a lot like the Main Street Arts festival in Fort Worth. The main difference between the two is that Grapfest doesn't have nearly the crowds. That makes it a lot more preferable to me. However, I'm typically bored with these places after an hour or so. So I spend the rest of the time just wandering around waiting to leave.

But it was fun, they had some good music and I bought a map. So I came away happy.

We got home around 6:30 and ordered a pizza. Pizza Hut does something that really bugs me. I order the pizza on the internet using my credit card. The billing address on the card matches the address they are delivering to, so there shouldn't be any problems, right? Most of the time, however, the delivery drivers want to see the card and make a rubbing of it on the receipt. This is just stupid. They claim that they can't process it without the rubbing. I understand (thanks to a friend of mine) that that's probably technically the case, but they DON'T DO IT EVERY TIME! In fact, on several occasions, I've ordered a pizza for the baby sitter and then left (with my card) but they still deliver the pizza ok. I could understand that if I was having it delivered to someplace other than the address that the card is billed to, but even then, they don't check my ID against the card or even check the card numbers against what's on the receipt. I could hand them any card and they'd rub it and it'd probably go through without a single problem because who's gonna check all of those receipts?

I must be insane

2005-09-05T11:44:00.000-05:00

Weird little things bug me.

Like the security guard that shouts "good morning" at me every single morning as I'm driving through the gate farthest from him, while rolling up my window and blaring the stereo. I specifically turn the stereo up and do not make eye-contact with him. I don't know why but it bugs me that this guy seems to think that one of his primary responsibilities is to try to be the first person to say good morning to you as you enter the parking garage. Nutter! (him or me take your pick) I don't need him to say good morning to me or any other thing either. I don't know him, he don't know me. Can't he just sit in his little box and do his job without trying to foist his pleasantries on me?

Here's another one.

The trailer park queen that works at the local convenience store that keeps calling me sugar, honey and the like. I'm sure she does it to everybody and is not actually hitting on me or anything. However, if our positions were reversed and I called all the girls that came in similar names I'd probably receive complaints for being chauvinistic or something.

But, like I said, since nobody else seems to be bothered by such trivial matters I must be insane.

Happy Burthday!

2005-08-29T11:43:00.000-05:00

So Friday night we took Terri out for sushi for her birthday. Terri and I split a "sushi boat" that included a "fuck of a lot of food." Somehow after eating our way through that, Terri was still hungry and wanting something spicy so Jon and Sara suggested the "Kiss of Death" sushi roll (which showed up on the bill as "The kiss of the death" roll"). Terri ordered it. The KoD sushi roll contains jalapenos, wasabi, hot sauce, hot mustard and who know what else. Terri popped one in her mouth and acted like she'd just bit into a scorpion. But she managed to choke it down. Then John (not Jon) tried one. He seemed to get it down ok, albeit with some trouble. Then Shelly tried one and immediatly regretted it, but she too managed to keep it down. I tried one and failed to see what the fuss was about. Sure it was hot, but it wasn't like painful or anything. It had a nice after effect of an oil-like coaring on the back of your throat so that if you inhaled sharply you could get a bit more of the spice. Then Terri ate another one. This seemed to be her fatal mistake. After she ate that one, she spent the next 10 minutes in the bathroom. Everyone was feeling bad for her (except me). I've seen her do this kind of thing to herself before. She was getting no pity from me. I caught a little grief from everyone else for that, but that's OK.

Terri had mostly recovered by the next morning. I explained to her that I thought about stopping her from ordering it, but didn't feel that I needed to try to protect her from herself. After all, I already have a full time job. She agreed that it was probably best to just let her do that to herself because then she'd at least learn a lesson. That's a nice theory, but she knows just as well as I that she didn't actually learn anything that night and is very likely to do it again.

To add insult to injury... Last night we were in the playroom playing with Dee when Terri got up on all fours and asked Dee if she wanted a "horsey ride." Dee enthusiasticly said "Ha Ha" (that means yes) and ran right past Terri to the living room where she jumped on her plastic rocking horse and started riding! The look on Terri's face was great! Fortunately I was running the video camera at the time. I'll see if I can't post the video of this later.

I Have a New Love

2005-08-17T11:42:00.000-05:00

I have always loved maps. When I was a kid I have an Air Force aeronautical chart hanging on the wall of my bedroom. It was like 5-6 feet tall and 3-4 feet wide. It covered the central US from the Canadian border to the Mexican border.

I college I didn't have that much wall space, but I still had a rather large world map on the wall.

So sites like MapQuest and Google Maps are lots of fun for me to play around with. And I do play around with them a lot. So I was surprised yesterday when I came across Google Earth. This is a little application that you can download to interact with the online Google maps and satellite imagery. AND IT ROCKS!!!!

Here's a screenshot:

As you can see, it will take the satellite image and stretch it over a terrain. Not as impressive in Fort Worth, but check out Hollywood.

Anyway, you can store favorite locations and even preset the view to a particular angle for each view. Then when you jump from one location to another, you actually get an animation like you launched from one location and landed at another. It's very cool!

Some of the cities also have 3D building objects so you can see the actual skyline. PLus at the click of a button you can see schools, hotels and all sorts of additional information. Even crime stats and census information!

Google Secret Maps

2005-08-16T11:41:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I was playing around with Google maps. I was panning around is the satellite view and noticed something weird in DC.

Click on image for the full size image or go HERE to see it on Google.

You'll notice that the Capitol building and several buildings around it have been blurred. Is this supposed to foil some terrorists?

Terrorist 1: Let's bomb the capitol building.

Terrorist 2: Great Idea! Let's google a map of it.

Terrorist 1: Damn! They blurred out the satellite photo. I guess that's the end of that. let's go get a latte instead.

But take another look at the photo. You'll see that there are buildings around the capitol building that are also intentionally blurred. All you've done here is say "Hey! I know you're looking at the capitol building, but what you may not have known is that these buildings over here are also prime targets!"

Take a look at what they did around the White House, though.

Again, click on the image for a larger view or HERE to view the map on Google.

What they've done here is a little less obvious. Here they've colored in the roofs of the building. Now you can see the buildings outlines, but the rooftops have been obscured.

Of course, it's not jsut Google, you see the same thing on Microsoft's TerraServer as well.

For some reason however, they didn't bother blurring out The Pentagon.

Perhaps they should blur out other important American icons as well.

Fire Drill

2005-08-15T11:40:00.000-05:00

I was walking through Sears in the mall yesterday when I noticed this sign.

It's nice to know in the event of an emergency exactly what you can expect from the store staff.

Turtles all the way down.

2005-08-11T11:39:00.000-05:00

It seems to me that if, as the IDots claim, there is a god (or at least some
form of creator) because anything so wonderfully complex as a human eye could
not have come about by mere chance, then the question must also be asked as to
whether THAT being could have simply come about from nothing.

Surely a being that is so wonderfully complex as to be capable of creating
something so wonderfully complex as a human eye could not have come about by
mere chance and must therefore have been created itself.

Also, a being so wonderfully complex as to be capable of creating a being that
is so wonderfully complex as to be capable of creating something so wonderfully
complex as a human eye could not have come about by mere chance either and myst
therefore have been created.

Therefore, it also seems that a being so wonderfully complex as to be capable
of creating a being so wonderfully complex as to be capable of creating a being
that is so wonderfully complex as to be capable of creating something so
wonderfully complex as a human eye could not have come about by mere chance
either. And it must also have a creator.

Additionally, a being so wonderfully complex as to be capable of creating a
being so wonderfully complex as to be capable of creating a being so
wonderfully complex as to be capable of creating a being that is so wonderfully
complex as to be capable of creating something so wonderfully complex as a
human eye could not have come about by mere chance either. And it must also
have had a creator.

...

"It's turtles all the way down."

Intelligent Design

2005-08-05T11:38:00.000-05:00

I don't usually listen to podcasts, but Open source with Christopher Lydon recently did a story on Intelligent Design. You can find it at: http://www.radioopensource.org/intelligent-design/

Give it a listen and see what you think.

Then go read more about Intelligent Design.

AtheisTV (Firefly)

2005-07-26T11:35:00.000-05:00

Watched the first episode of Firefly the other night.

Firefly was created by Joss Whedon who also created the series Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the movie of the same name.

Firefly is about the small crew of the Firefly class cargo ship Serenity and their adventures as they try to make a living in a westernesque version of the future.

I'd seen a few episodes before but never really paid it much attention. Apparently the Sci-Fi channel is going to show all of them in order as a prelude to a feature length movie called Serenity that is currently scheduled for a 9/30/2005 release date.

At first glance, one thing I notice is a preponderance of religious references. The main character shows some religious devotion (kissing a cross on a necklace) in the opening scenes where his army unit has been abandoned and told to lay down their arms and surrender. Then in the main story line (6 years later) he displays an animosity towards religion. This seems to be setting up the classic "what turned you against God?" line that a lot of believers like to use. Additionally one of the main characters on the ship is a "shephard" (ie. a priest) played by Ron Glass (whom you'll probably remember as Detective Ron Harris from Barney Miller) so it seems to me that one of the side stories is likely to be a battle of faiths between the captain and the Shephard.

There are only 15 episodes of this series and it'll be interesting to see how it pans out.

Sam Harris

2005-07-25T11:57:00.000-05:00

OK. WOW! There is an excellent post by Sam Harris from yesterday (10/6/05) called There is no God (And You Know It). It is fantastic! I highly recommend reading it.

MBCG3AM update: 160 envelopes sent.

Big Surprise

2005-07-25T11:36:00.000-05:00

The first half of this entry (the big surprise actually) has been removed)

I've just about got my new editing system set up. I've got a 450MHz G4 with a 200GB drive running Mac OSX Tiger and Final Cut Pro HD. I've also got two 15" LCD monitors so I have plenty of desktop real estate to play with. I've still got a few minor tweaks to make to it before it's completely ready to roll so for now I'm still editing on my Powerbook G3.

AtheisTV

2005-07-25T11:34:00.000-05:00

I've got my TiVo set to record anything with "atheis*" in the title or description. As a result, it's recorded some interesting stuff.

This weekend it picked up an old episode of Good Times where Michael (played by Ralph Carter) loses a position on a school council because he has professed to being an atheist. Florida is appalled that her son could be an atheist but he refuses to back down from his stance. She then finds out that he has decided that he's an atheist because the man he works for, Carl Dixon (played by Moses Gunn), is an outspoken atheist. So Florida goes to the shop to tell Mr. Dixon that Michael will no longer be working for him because he has influenced he son in such a way. I really expected the atheist to get a good trouncing and perhaps even "see the error of his ways" by the end of the episode. However, I was pleasantly surprised. They portrayed him as a very thoughtful and considerate (if cynical) man. In the end, he and Florida and the rest of the family are on friendly terms and Michael is allowed to keep working for him. It also seems that Carl became a recurring character for the rest of the season, dating and even proposing to Florida.

My Workout

2005-07-25T10:39:00.000-05:00

I thought I might post a bit about my workout routine. I've been working out since February when my Doctor gave me the go-ahead after deciding that we had my blood pressure under control.

I've also been eating low-carb on the advice of my Doctor.

My brother helped me put this routine together.

Day 1 - Chest and Biceps

I start off with 20 minutes on the Precor Elliptical Fitness Crosstrainer.

I've been gradually increasing the resistance. I'm currently at level 4.

Next I go to the Nautilus Nitro Plus Vertical Press machine.

I set the weight at the minumum 20lbs and do 4 sets of 50 reps each. By the last 15-20 reps of that last set, I'm really struggling to complete each rep.

Next I go to the Incline Bench.

I use 5 lb dumbells and again do 4 sets of 50 reps.

Then I move on to the Nautilus Nitro Plus Pec Fly machine

I set the weight for 50 lbs. Again I do 4 sets of 50 reps.

Next I go to the Preacher Curl bench.

I use the curved bar which weighs about 20lbs without any additional weight. I'm trying to do 4 sets of 50, but right now can only manage about 2 sets of 50 and 2 sets of 30.

Then I grab a couple of 5lb dumbells and do 4 sets of 50 standing dumbell curls.

Day 2 - Back and Triceps

Again I start of with 20 minutes on the elliptical trainer.

Then I go to the Nautilus Nitro Plus Lat Pulldown machine.

I set the machine for 55lbs and again do 4 sets of 50 reps.

Next I go to the Nautilus Nitro Plus Compound Row machine.

I set the machine for 50lbs and once more do 4 sets of 50 reps.

Next I go to a flat bench.

I grab a 10lb weight and do 4 sets of 50 bentover rows.

Next I head over to the Nautilus Free Weight Cable Crossover machine.

I set the weight to 50lbs and rig it so I can do Cable Push downs. Again I do 4 sets of 50.

Then I grab a 5lb dumbell and do some one-arm tricep extensions.

Again I do 4 sets of 50.

Day 3 - Legs and Abs

I start out once again with 20 minutes on the elliptical trainer

Then I go to the Nautilus Nitro Plus Leg Press machine

I do 4 sets of 50 with 125lbs.

Next is the Nautilus Nitro Plus Leg Extension machine.

I do 4 sets of 50 with 35 lbs.

Next is the Nautilus Nitro Plus Seated Leg Curl machine.

I do 4 sets of 50 with 35lbs.

Next is the Nautilus XPLoad Seated Calf machine.

I do 4 sets of 50 using only the weight of the machine.

Lastly I go to the Nautilus Nitro Plus Abdominal machine.

I do 4 sets of 50 with 50lbs.

That's it. I do these three days and then start over at Day 1.

So far I've lost about 20 lbs. But I know I've actually lost more fat than that because I've gained some muscle also.

Rant Rant Rant Rant

2005-07-19T11:26:00.000-05:00

Is it just me or are people actually getting dumber out there? On the way to work this morning I happened to watch a lady throw a cigarette but out of her SUV window while her kid was strapped into the back seat. OK, she gets points for having the kid properly restrained in the car, but big negatives for: a) driving a gas-guzzling SUV, b) smoking with her kid trapped in the car with her and c) littering. Of course, she's probably considers herself to be a fairly intelligent person. However she really needs to get a clue.

The Menu

2005-07-13T11:12:00.000-05:00

At 7pm last night I asked my wife what she wanted for dinner. I got thestandard response, "I don't know. I haven't thought about it." I get this exact same response 9 times out of 10. It's very frustrating. She's the picky eater. I'll pretty much eat anything that's placed in front of me. We previously made a deal. All she's got to do is say waht she wants and I'll cook it. No problem right? Sounds like a great deal on her part. However I STILL get the "I don't know" whenever I ask about dinner.

So I upped the ante. "Every night," I said, "at seven o'clock we have dinner. And every night at seven o'clock it takes you by complete surprise. Why is that?"

She responds with "There's a left-over pork chop in the fridge and Dee can have a grilled cheese sandwich and I'll get me a sandwich later."

Then she comes into the kitchen and starts fixing those items (a blatant violation of our prior agreement). So I ask her, "do you have an answer to my question?"

"No! I don't!" She says.

No big surprise.

On several occasions I'd tried to talk her into putting together weekly menus. That way we'd know what to shop for on the weekends and I wouldn't have to ask what we're going to eat every single night. Last night after dinner she sent me this spreadsheet:

	A	B	C	D	E	F	G	H
1	WEEK #1	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday	Sunday
2	Breakfast Dee	Yogurt, Fruit & Cereal	Eggs, Toast & Fruit	Fried Ham or Bologna	Yogurt, Fruit & Cereal	Eggs, Toast & Fruit	Fried Ham or Bologna	Eggs, Toast & Fruit
3	Lunch Dee	Grilled Cheese	Tomato "Sandwich"	Salmon Bread	Pasta & Veggies	Veggie Plate	Hot Dog	Pasta & Veggies
4	Supper Us	Leftovers	Hot Dogs or Brats	Pork Chops	--OUT--	Steaks	Chicken	Meatloaf or Roast
5	Supper Dee	Veggie Plate	Hot Dog	Pasta & Veggies	--OUT--	Grilled Cheese	Tomato "Sandwich"	Salmon Bread

YES!!!!!!

Now we're talking! Sure it needs a little fine-tuning. For example: What kind of Chicken is that supposed to be on Saturday? But this is a great improvement! I didn't really need to know what she expects to feed Dee for breakfast and lunch, but if she wants to put it on there, that's fine by me.

Thank you very much, Terri! This will make help to reduce my levels of frustration and stess.

OK... THAT Sucked

2005-07-04T11:07:00.000-05:00

My wife has this THING about fireworks on the 4th of July. OK, admittedly a lot of other people do too. By this I mean that she feels the strong need to go out and watch a big municipal fireworks display with about a zillion other people.

I, on the other hand, do not. In fact, I'd just as soon stay at home and watch the Twilight Zone marathon on the Sci-Fi channel. I am definitely an Inside-Dog.

So... we traipse off to the local municipal fireworks show. By local, I mean Southlake. It's about a 30 minute drive from home. That doesn't sound too bad, does it? Drive 30 minutes to hang out at a lake, watch a fireworks show, then a quick 30 minute drive back to the house for a nightcap.

Of course it's never quite that easy. Mostly due to those other zillion or so people who have the same idea. Net result is that it takes almost an hour to actually get there because of all the traffic. The place is packed and no one seems to know exactly where the show is going to be fired from. SO we have to guess at where to hunker down for a clear view. (we're usually off 30-45 degrees). So then we get to sit in the heat (July in Texas remember?) while everyone around us tries to outdo each other at who can be the most annoying.

The prize for the most annoying this year was the woman in the mini-van who decided to park her van in the middle of the road and let her kids out on the side of the road to watch the show while she... get this... sat in the van in the middle of the road... thereby completely blocking traffic behind her until a motorcycle cop showed up to tell her to move along. At that point she had to corral the kids back into the van. But first she tried to back over the cop. Oh! How I love the human element in these little excursions!

So anyway... we watch a very nice 30 minute fireworks show that was accompanied by a simulcast music program on the radio. Fortunately someone nearby cranked up their car stereo so that we got to hear the wonderful renditions of "God Bless America" and all those other God and Country favorites. The country part's OK, but the God part I'd like to drop kick into the lake. Unfortunately they seem to be connected at the hip these days.

After the show we manage to get back to the van without being run over (barely). Then... and this is the really great part... we get to sit in the van for nearly a full solid hour waiting to BUDGE A SINGLE INCH!

Of course this gives me plenty of opportunity to watch even more of the antics of those brain-dead morons that seem to flock to my presence as they all try to maneuver their cars back and forth and around as they try to jostle for the absolute best position IN A TRAFFIC JAM THAT DOESN'T HARDLY MOVE A SMEGGING INCH FOR NEARLY A WHOLE FUCKING HOUR!!!

Next year, I think I'll just stick a roman candle up my ass and hang my butt out the window. WHEEEEEE!!!!!!!

Happy Father's Day

2005-06-20T11:06:00.000-05:00

Yesterday was Father's Day. We took Dee out to the Fort Worth Nature Center and saw the Buffalo and walked the Cap Rock trail. Evidently this is a family thing because I called my dad last night and he said that he and mom went out and looked at some zebras on a ranch out in east Texas. Maybe this is the start of a new tradition.

Saturday we went over to some friends' house for the Metroplex Atheist Summer Bash. It was lots of fun. There were about a dozen people there. We ate a lot and sat around and BSed for a while then the kids (Maggie and Dee) went out and played in the kiddie pool.

Dee wasn't real sure about the pool at first. That's probably because it was filled with well water that was BUTT COLD! Eventually she got in and splashed around with Maggie for a while.

All-in-all a very enjoyable weekend.

Why do we care?

2005-06-14T10:46:00.000-05:00

This post has been removed.

So I took a break yesterday and when I walked out to the breakroom I noticed about 30 people standing around watching the TV. Thinking that there might have been another terrorist attack, I ask what's going on. When I'm told that they're all standing around waiting for the Michael Jackson verdict (some as long as 30 minutes) I say, "You gotta be shitting me!" and head down the stairs. Every floor in our building has a TV in the break room near the stairs and every floor had gobs of people standing around waiting for the verdict!

This kind of shit makes me wonder if it's MY priorities that are completely out of whack because I don't give a flying shit about any of this crap that seems to capture the public's attention so completely.

Promises from God

2005-06-13T10:43:00.000-05:00

According to popular myth, the rainbow is a sign from God that he will never again destroy the Earth by water. Tornados however are another matter. ;-)

Watched a movie this weekend that I hadn't seen in years. The World's Greatest Lover stars Gene Wilder and Carol Kane. I saw this one years ago and thought it was really funny. It still holds up as a very funny and enjoyable movie. A lot of people seem to think that the idea of picking stars by a popular contest exploited by the media is a new phenomenon ala American Idol and other such BS, but here's another fine example that this sort of nonsense has been around for years.

New Blog

2005-06-10T10:42:00.000-05:00

After assessing the situation on the internets, it became apparent that there simply weren't enough blogs out there. So, being the decisive, ground-breaking, trail-blazing leader that I am. I set one up for my wife.

I removed the link to it that i had here because she's wanting some level of anonymity.

WooHoo!

2005-05-31T10:41:00.000-05:00

I broke 200 this morning! I weighed in at 199 lbs when I got on the scale this morning!

Didn't do a whole lot this weekent primarily because of the anniversary present my wife gave me.

I did fix some fried spicy tofu this weekend. It was pretty good, but tofu's kind of hard to work with because it keeps wanting to fall apart. I ended up droping a bit of it into the grease and splattered grease on my hand. Not to bad, but you can still see where it burned me.

Also got a haircut this weekend. It's WAY short now. I'll have to update my picture.

Low-carb heaven

2005-05-26T10:39:00.000-05:00

I mentioned previously that I'm doing the low-carb lifestyle. I think it's important to consider it as a "lifestyle" rather than a diet. On other diets you can cheat a little without worrying about it too much. On the low-carb plan, if you cheat, it really messes you up. Because when your body is geared to run primarily on protien and fat, dumping a bunch of carbs in there throws your system out of whack for several days. I think that's where a lot of people go wrong when they try to go low-carb. They probably treat it like every other diet they've tried and figure they can do it a little, then cheat a bit and it should still work.

I found a great program on FitTV called Blaine's Low-Carb Kitchen. Blaine's got a great philosophy about low-carb food, "it's got to taste great first and be low-carb second." I really love that. The first time I did low-carb I ate pretty much the same thing every day: an omelet for breakfast, a couple of hamburger patties and a salad for lunch and a steak for supper. Now I can cook up some of these great recipes from Blaine. Every one of the recipes I've tried so far is absolutely fantastic!

Another thing I like about his show is that he's losing weight as he's showing us how to fix these great low-carb dishes. He does a weigh-in at the end of every show. At the end of the last show released so far, I think he's lost somewhere around 65 lbs.

Bruce Almighty

2005-04-25T10:37:00.000-05:00

Watched Bruce Almighty this weekend. While this may not seem to be typical of the sort of thing an atheist might want to watch, I really enjoy Jim Carrey's work and wanted to see their take on this premise.

WARNING: Spoilers ahead

Most of the movie was OK, but it ended up getting a bit preachy. The primary message of the movie seems to be that you have to turn you life over to god and let him decide what's best for you. Strangly enough this is contradictory to some earlier points in the movie where the God character (played by Morgan Freeman) seems to be telling Bruce that people need to be responsible for their own lives and not depend on him so much.

During Bruce's turning point, he breaks down and starts praying in the middle of the street. After getting hit by a truck, he dies and talks to God in heaven. There he turns his life over to God and in the ubiquitous "single selfless act" that seems to be a prerequisite in all of these types of movies, Bruce requests nothing more than for his ex-girlfriend to have a happy life (ala Bedazzled). This prompts God to send Bruce back to Earth where he is now a changed man, get's back with his girlfriend, and becomes and all-around much nicer guy.

On the plus side, the movie's got some funny gags and jokes, but overall, I didn't really like the movie because of the "message" it tried to put across.

On another note...

Science has given us a great many technological advancements, and taught us much about ourselves and the history of our world and universe. But there's one thing that I'm not sure science will ever be able to explain.

Before humans started building houses with eaves and overhangs, where the hell did wasps build their nests?

Eeeeek! A box of spiders! (potentially)

2005-04-18T10:35:00.000-05:00

I was evil this weekend. Terri had me bring in her "summer wardrobe" which consists of 3 large suit cases. Since these were in storage for several months you've got to understand that some critters will make their homes in and around them.

Anyway, Terri had been unpacking the cases and packing her winter wardrobe into them. After she'd packed up one of the cases, I went over to haul it back out for storage. I then noticed that an old spider egg sac had come off the outside of the case and was now on the bedspread. I really didn't care to go to bed that night with an old egg sac on the bed, so I picked it up. About that time, Terri came back into the room so I held it out to her.

Not knowing what it was, she accepted it into her hand. That's when the fun began. She started making "eeep eeep" noises and promptly sprinted for the bathroom where she flushed it down the toilet.

I've really got to hand it to her. She didn't cuss or throw a complete fit. I attribute that to the fact that Dee was in the room with us.

Once she got back form the bathroom, she was rubbing her palm and doing the "freaked out" dance. She says, "do you want to tell me why you just handed me a sac of spider eggs? That's like handing me a whole box of spiders... potentially."

Ah, yes, it's the days like this we'll remember forever.

Immigration

2005-04-14T10:29:00.000-05:00

Right now a lot of people seem to be going on and on about the immigration issue out in New Mexico.

Granted I may be a bit distanced from the problem, but I feel that anyone who's willing to fill out a change-of-address form and pay taxes should be allowed in. Instead of grabbing these people and putting them in jail or forcing them to go back to Mexico, register them, sign 'em up for civil service, give them a SSN and let them be on their way.

Some people say, "that'll overburden the system and take benefits away from the rest of us." If that's the case, then the system isn't stable enough and needs to be reworked. This is kind of like the power company refusing to accept any new customers because they're affraid of the extra drain on their power stations instead of building new power stations to handle the bigger load.

"But they won't pay taxes," other people say, "that's why they're illegal immigrants." Poppycock! There's plenty of legal citizens right now who don't pay their taxes. I don't see anyone rushing to deport them. Besides if they buy something, they pay sales taxes. If you give them a SSN, the IRS will know about them and if they don't pay income taxes, it's the IRS's job to take care of it. most of these people are illegal immigrants because it's currently a long involved process to try to immigrate into the US. US immigration only issues 50K greencards a year. Most of them, they do by random lottery.

This all goes back to the whole Us vs. Them mentality. While this may have served it's purpose at one time in out evolution, it's doing more harm to us as a whole than it might be aiding any particular us.

“The New Colossus” by Emma Lazarus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name Mother of Exiles.
From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!"” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

I guess people just don't believe that anymore.

This is TOO FUNNY!!!

2005-04-13T10:28:00.000-05:00

This post has been removed

Let's go ride "The Pope!"

2005-04-05T10:26:00.000-05:00

I've taken a look at the people lined up to see the dead Pope at the Vatican. I must say that they don't appear to be mourners. In fact it looks more like they're standing in line for a ride at Disney World.

On another note:

Last night I was cooking dinner and Dee was sitting on the floor playing. Terri walks through and says to Dee,"Are you playing with Daddy's shoe strings, sweetheart?"

I looked over and noticed that Dee was in fact playing with a pair of Terri's shoes and that Terri had continued on past Dee into the den. So I called out to her, "actually those are your shoes." So Terri comes running back in and takes the shoes away from Dee and puts them up.

"So now I see how it is," I say, "when you thought they were my shoe strings she was undoing, you were happy to just walk on by, but if they're actually yours, you'll come back and take them away from her!"

She had a response, but frankly I don't really remember what it was.

April Fools

2005-04-01T10:25:00.000-06:00

How much wood
would a woodchuck chuck
If a woodchuck
smelled like team spirit?

By the light
of the silvery moon
I want to spoon
with a big baboon!

The hardest part about growing up is remembering to take out the trash.
No, wait... that's the hardest part about dating!

New Movie in the Works

2005-03-23T10:24:00.000-06:00

We're almost ready to start production on American Nightmare 2. Once the money is deposited in the bank, we'll set the start date to approximately 3-4 weeks out. That should give everybody enough time to finish up any remaining preproduction issues.

Watched the second episode of Project Greenlight 3 last night. It'll be interesting to see how this project turns out. Hopefully they'll have more success with "Feast" than with the two prior projects.

On a more personal note... I've REALLY got to get out and mow the grass... er weeds actually.

A Trip to the Zoo

2005-03-07T10:23:00.000-06:00

Took the family to the zoo again this weekend. And I must say, the white trash was out in force!

From the "stupid things uttered by white trash" column: "I swear they took out the aquarium. I swear on my life, my mamma's life, my daddy's life and my baby's life." Then, after she sees the aquarium around the next corner, "oh, here it is."

If I'd have thought about it, I'd have taken Amputee Jesus with me and got his picture at the zoo to post on here. He'd have liked that.

Say Hello to Amputee Jesus

2005-02-07T10:22:00.000-06:00

Meet Amputee Jesus...

A friend gave this to me this weekend. She got it from another friend who... well, let just say, some times it's better not to ask.

Anyway, he's a little lead figurine. It looks like it was nailed to a cross at some point by some sadistic bastard. But he's been freed from that hellacious torture and is now free to live his life as he sees fit (as long as he doesn't want to go snow skiing or something).

I've been trying to talk him into taking some college courses... maybe even getting a degree. But he seems very depressed about the loss of his limbs. Hopefully I'll be able to cheer him up before his depression sinks him too low becuase I'm afraid if he keeps up like this, he may do something rash.

My Wife, the Tease

2005-01-31T10:20:00.000-06:00

My wife is such a tease! Last weekend she proudly announced to me that she had washed me tons of clothes so I should have plenty to wear for the coming week (and to take on my trip to LA). However, Monday morning I got up and could find no pants or shirts in my closet (none that I could wear to work anyway). So I checked the laundry room and found a load of clothes in the dryer... still damp.

After cursing under my breath (I didn't want to wake the baby) I turned the dryer on and went back to my morning routine hoping that the clothes would be dry before I needed to leave for work.

So I head back in later and find the clothes nice and dry. Then I start pulling them out. I noticed right away that half the load is towels and the rest of the load is a mish-mash of random clothes incliding several of Terri's sleep shirts, a few socks one of my shirts and a bath mat. If I had been dealing with a teenager, I would have come to the conclusion that this random assortment of laundry had been thrown in simply so they could say that they had done a load of laundry.

All of my clothes that she'd "washed" turned out to be still in the washing machine.

So I ended up having to dig through the hamper to find something to wear that wasn't obvious that I'd dug it out of the hamper.

Yesterday, my wife informed me again that she had washed me some clothes. I was dubious, but I did see her mucking about in the laundry room and I had given her this entire spiel last week and threatened to put it in the blog, so I figured that this time she'd do it right.

When am I going to learn?

This morning I get up and I do find several of my shirts hanging in the laundry room (that as far as they make it most of the time). Along with the shirts is one pair of ugly green pants (I'm not sure why I haven't thrown them out yet). But I figure it's better then nothing until I pull them down and realize that they are the same pair that I gave to Terri several weeks ago for mending because they are missing a button.

So I go digging around the house looking for some pants. I had remembered seeing a basket of clothes sitting on the futon that looked suspiciously clean. So I went and had a look. Guess what? It was the exact same load that I had found in the dryer the previous monday. They'd been sitting on the futon for the entire week I was in LA.

Medical Update

2005-01-18T10:18:00.000-06:00

Had to go in yesterday for an "upper endoscopy." If you don't know what that is, it's where they shove a camera on a tube down your throat to take pictures of your stomach.

I had to be there at 6am so that meant getting the wife and baby up at about 4:30 because I had to have someone drive me home afterwards. The wife was not thrilled, the baby was up and ready before we were.

The procedure went well, the put and IV in my arm and started the drugs. Those drugs worked fast! The doc asked me if I could feel it working. I said, "I think so." Next thing I know I'm "waking up" in recovery.

The reason I said, "waking up" is that I thought at the time that I was just waking up, but according to my wife I had been awake the whole time and even talked to the doctor about his findings. Fortunately my wife was there and they gave me a nice little print out of the results, or I'd have had no idea what happened.

What? You want to see the pictures? Well, OK...

The first picture is my normal crico-pharyngeal region.

The second is a 12mm gastro-esophageal stricture where "a 51FR guided bougie was introduced for dilation successfully."

The third picture is a localized erythema of the mucosa with no bleeding in the stomach antrum.

I was still very groggy after the procedure. In fact, I had mentioned to my wife that we'd need to stop for gas on the way home. Later that evening I was going to order some chinese food, but couldn't find my debit card. As I was looking for it, it occurred to me that we had forgotten to stop for gas on the way home and I'd have to do that next time we went out. Then I asked my wife if she knew where my card was and she said that I had given it to her when we stopped for gas on the way home!

Great Moments in Bad Programming

2005-01-06T10:16:00.000-06:00

I hate bad programming. Bad programming is simply blatant evidence of laziness.

Here's an example. We have a cafeteria here in our corporate HQ. Everyday, I go get breakfast and lunch at the cafeteria. Everyday I pay with my MasterCard. Often the lady at the register has to run my card through the machine twice because she inadvertantly pushed the VISA button instead of the MC button and the system comes back with and "invalid card" error.

The system can obviously tell the difference between a MC, VISA and AMEX. There are also well established rules about teh format of these numbers. So the machine should just allow the cashier to swipe the card and the program should figure out what kind of card it is and proceed accordingly.

Other people have gotten this right. If you go to a gas station and pay-at-the-pump, you just push the credit button and slide your card. You dont have to tell it what kind of card you have, it'll figure it out.

The programmers of the cafeteria's POS system were probably debating whether to add the code for detecting the card type but figured it'd be easier for them if they didn't and besides, "the cashier can just look at the card and hit the appropriate button," right?

Wrong! What they didn't count on is the fact that these register jockeys are only about half a step up from a (poorly) trained monkey. I swear this lady will look directly at my card, then look at the screen and press VISA even though the card clearly has the MC logo on it.

The moral to this story? When writing code, never underestimate the stupidity of your users and always put in the extra code to cover their idiocy. Trust me, if you do it right, your program is going to be WAY smarter than the average food-service employee.

My Daughter Has a Job

2005-01-03T10:21:00.000-06:00

My daughter's job is to play with her toys. She's very good at her job. I can gauge her performance when I get home by how many toys are on the floor and how scattered they are.

At night when she goes to bed I put her toys up. Eventually we'll teach her to do it herself, but for now I do it. I can tell when she's had a good day by the number of toys left in her toy bin. When she's not feeling well, most of the toys will still be in her bin when I get home. On some nights, there's hardly any toys left in there at all so I know that she had a very good day.

Yesterday was a good day. There were hardly any toys left in the bin and the ones that were out were scattered all over the house. She even had to take an hour or so off yesterday to go to the doctor. Even with that, she still managed to put in a very full day with the toys.

I know a lot of people use going to the doctor as an excuse to do only a half-day's work. But see, you can learn something from this baby. She's got such a good work ethic that she won't slack off just because she had to take some time out in the middle of her day to go see the doctor.

So next time you're looking for an excuse to take off work early, just remember my little girl and her toy blocks. If she can get right back in there and finish what she needs to do, there's no reason you can't also.

New Year

2005-01-03T10:13:00.000-06:00

Well, it's a new year with all sorts of new possibilities and... oh, wait, it's just the same shit we had last month. Never mind.

A Night Out

2004-12-17T10:12:00.000-06:00

Well, Terri and I had our first night out together without the baby last night and everyone survived OK.

I was mostly worried about the baby sitter. Dee has very good stamina when she's letting you know she's unhappy with the situation.

Denise finally got her distracted and playing, so everything worked out fine.

Referers

2004-11-29T10:11:00.000-06:00

Every now and then I like to take a look at how people have found my page. PHPNuke has a nice little tool that logs referers. So, if you type in atheistcult into google and then click on my link when it comes up, PHPNuke will log "http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&q=atheistcult" for the referer. Anyway, here are some of the more interesting ways people have found my site:

Alternatives to sheetrock walls - Result #12 for this story.

lake stubblefield canoe - Result #7 for this story.

grandaddy longleg - Result #4 for this story.

portable sound dampening walls - Result #9 for this story.

spitting with a sippy cup - Result #52 for this story.

urinals for home instalation - Result #2 for this story. (because I mispelled installation)

Blog Blog Blog

2004-11-16T10:09:00.000-06:00

Well, it's all over but the shouting. No... wait... I guess the shouting's over too. Sigh... four more years.

I've got to reorder my netflix list. I'm moving all of the kid-friendly stuff to the top of the list. The only chance I get to watch more mature stuff is when Dee's asleep. And honestly, if she's asleep I want to be asleep too.

Camping Trip Summary

2004-10-18T10:07:00.000-05:00

Took Terri and Dee camping this weekend. We went down to Stubblefield Lake Campground which is on the north end of Lake Conroe. It was very nice there. The camp site was right down on the water. It's the kind of place that always makes me wish I had a kayak or a canoe.

We met up with a bunch of Terri's pagan friends there. Some of them went to the Texas Renaissance Festival. The rest of us just hung out at the camp site.

Dee seemed to have a lot of fun. The hardest part was keeping her from eating the dirt. There were a couple of other kids for her to play with there as well as a dog.

It'd been over two years since Terri and I had gone camping and we're definately out of practice. We used to have this down, but we forgot a lot of the simple stuff. Fortunately we could generally rely on someone else having brought what we forgot, so it all worked out without any trips into town.

MBCG3AM Update 2

2004-10-14T12:00:00.000-05:00

440 envelopes sent out.

0 envelopes received back.

The Sound of...

2004-10-14T10:03:00.000-05:00

This post has been removed.

Our New Digs

2004-10-13T09:59:00.000-05:00

This post will actually be mostly about the bathroom.

The restrooms at our new building leave something to be desired. Mainly a decent restroom.

Let's start with t he waterless urinals. That's right, waterless urinals. There's no flushing or anything. It's basicaly just a hole to piss in. Needless to say by the end of the day there's quite a smell and a collection of pubes accumulated in the bowl.

Then there's the toilets. These have got to be the most uncomfortable toilet seats I've ever seen. The front part comes up quite a bit and presses into the backs of your legs.

The sinks have an automatic soap dispenser that never seems to activate the first time you put your hand under it, but usually manages to spit the soap on the back of your hand as you're pulling it out for another try. The faucet has no temp control and is also motion activated. It's hard to keep it flowing and of course the soap dispenser will sometimes activate while you're trying to rinse your hands.

Housekeeping jams the paper towel dispenser too full so it's impossible to get a paper towel out in one piece so you end up with little shreds of paper towel on the floor where people drop them and are too lazy to pick them up.

The wast bins are not just open on top, they have a little lid that you have to push down to put the paper towel in. Unfortunately on one of tehse, whenever housekeeping opens the cabinet up to put in more paper towels, the lid pops up and so when they close it the lid is not above the rim so you can't push it down to get anything in the trash.

There's also a HUGE grandaddy longleg spider on the ceiling. He's been there since we moved in so I'm figuring that he was actually here first and they just built the building around him.

Monthly Post

2004-10-12T15:27:00.000-05:00

Well it's been almost a month since I posted anything here. So here's the big update.

We've finally moved into our new corporate headquarters here at work. It's very nice and new. Lots of nice new tech. But there are a few drawbacks. they put one of our work areas WAAAAAY on the other side of our campus so we have to hike all the way over there to do any testing in the screen room. We've ended up with a lot less space than we had in the old building, so we're having to be creative about where to put stuff. Overall I like it, but it's going to take some time to get used to it.

Dee's walking very well now. She actually ran a little yesterday. She picked up a couple of her shoes, held them over her head, let out a squeel and ran down the hall. She's learning new things every day. It's fun to watch her play and discover how the world works.

The Weekend Update

2004-09-13T15:25:00.000-05:00

Got a lot done on the house this weekend.

Replaced the shower valve and head in the hall bath

Cut the grass and edged the lawn for the first time

Installed a new spigot in the back yard

Ran soaker hose around half the house

Sprayed around the perimeter of the house for insects

Adjusted the garage door so it opens and closes properly

Replaced the aerator on the sink in the wet bar

I think that's everything. Terri also unpacked a lot of stuff and got stuff put away.

Dee was being a real pill last night. She didn't want to eat, she didn't want to play, she didn't want to sit. She just wanted to fuss.

Playing Catch-up

2004-09-09T15:24:00.000-05:00

Last week Dee took her first steps. She's still very wobbly and not actually going anywhere yet, but it's a start.

Got the last of our crap out of the old house and made two hauls to the dump. There was a couple of fixes I was going to do the the old house but then I thought, "screw it."

I've got as huge list of stuff to do at the new house. I've started by installing my work benches in the garage. I've got one of the three set up.

Once we get things a little more settled we'll be having a house warming party.

A Moving Story...

2004-08-30T15:21:00.000-05:00

Well, we're in our new house. And most of our stuff is here too. More on that later. First, I'm going to bitch about the cabee company.

Just over a month ago when it became apparent that we were definately getting this house and we had a firm move date, I began calling the utility companies to schedule having our services activated. I called the Fort Worth Water Department, SBC, TXU and others. The last that I called was Charter Communications to get our cable hook-up scheduled. Now, when I called these other companies they all told me that there was still an active customer living at the address I was scheduling to move to. But after I explained that they were moving out and I was moving in, they had no problem scheduling the switch. The cable company was a different story. They claimed that they couldn't even schedule my connection until the person moving out had scheduled his dosconnection otherwise the system would disconnect him immediately. That's right. They're computer would see that someone else was scheduled to get new service at that address a month down the road and therefore disconnect the service that's still there because it hasn't been scheduled to be disconnected. The only thing they could reccomend was that I keep calling back to see when the other guy scheduled his disconnect (I had no direct contact with the seller). He finally scheduled to have it turned off the week we were closing on the house. So I scheduled to have it turned back on the next week. Now understand this... I didn't tell them I wanted it immediately or that they had to cram it into the middle of an installer's schedule for the next day. I gave them a whole week before it needed to be done. We scheduled it for the next Tuesday.

They could only tell me that the installer would be there "sometime Tuesday." But that was no big deal either since I'd already planned on being at the new house all that day anyway to work on the house getting it ready for our move. However, 8pm rolled around and no cable guy. So I called them and they said that the installer was stalled on another job and wouldn't be able to get out there that night. So we rescheduled for Friday morning. Friday afternoon rolls around and still no installer. So I call them back. This time they have absolutely no record that the installation had been resceduled from Tuesday to Friday. They could see in the records that the installation time had been missed but no indication that it had been rescheduled.

By this time I was hot! Terri was supposed to start back to work on Monday and was supposed to use the cable connection to access her work until they got her iDSL set up. So they promised me the sun and moon and an instalation on Saturday. Guess what? That's right! No installer showed up on Saturday either! After AGAIN explaining that my wife needed this connection for her work the only thing they could offer was to reschedule for Monday. So when he asked if morning or afternoon would be better. I told them to go ahead and schedule it for the morning. That way when they're not there by noon I can go ahead and call in and bitch at them again. Now guess what? I've just called in to confirm the appointment this morning and they say that it's not even scheduled for this morning!

Work Work Work Work Water?

2004-08-22T15:19:00.000-05:00

Did quite a bit of work preparing the new house today. Most of it seemed to involve pulling a steam cleaner around the house. Oops! Sorry, it's not a steam cleaner, it's a "water extractor" as the guy at home depot made very clear to me. Whatever! As long as it gets the carpets clean.

My parents and my brother and his family also came out to see the new house. They were suitably impressed (or at least said they were). My brother did comment that all the way over he was saying to himself, "please don't let it be a shit hole." Thanks for the vote of confidence, Kevin!

Later tonight, we had to go back and put the trash bins out on the curb because I forgot that Monday is trash day at the new house. So we took the opportunity to take a van load of stuff over that we don't really want the movers to handle. On the way back, Terri had given Dee a sippy cup to drink out of with some water in it. The great thing about sippy cups is that they're pretty much spil-proof. About half-way back home I noticed some unusual noises coming from Dee and the sippy cup but since Terri was sitting in the back with her, I didn't really pay it much attention. Then Terri said to Dee, "do you want some more?" I thought this was very unusual as I don't recall EVER seeing her empty a sippy cup. But Terri confirmed that the lid was still on tight so she gave her some more water. Then she noticed what Dee had been doing. Apparently she'd decided that she needed to circumvent the "spill-proof" feature of the cup by sucking the water out then spitting it out down her front. She was soaked from neck to toe and there wasn't really anything we could do about it till we got home. Of course Terri took the water away from her and that made her mad. Then she started getting unconfortable becasuse she was wet and cold. Needless to say, it was quite a fun ride back across Fort Worth.

We are Home Owners

2004-08-20T15:18:00.000-05:00

We closed on the house wednesday. Everything went very smoothly and we were done by 10:30am. The seller is supposed to be completely out of the house sometime today and we can go start getting it ready for move in tomorrow.

We've got about 80% of our house packed now so we shouldn't have any problem getting everything boxed and ready to go before the movers show up.