Author: Tony

This is why I don’t go to Baptist churches anymore –

Damage to a church in Forest, Ohio, is estimated at $20,000 after a preacher asked God for a sign.

I’ll bet they passed the plates around twice that day…

It’s kinda funny, my last post was about the great lack of vacation time in the US and now I’ve got a week off from work.

Everyone thinks that you get tons of vacation time when you work for a school district, and they’re half right. There are several weeks during the year that I don’t work. The trouble is I don’t get paid for those weeks either. As far as paid time off is concerned, I get just about as many days as anyone else.

Oh well, at this point I’ll take what I can get. I hope everyone had a safe and happy 4th of July. I know we did. It seemed like three straight days of cooking out and fireworks. Paige was nice enough to buy me a new charcoal grill a few days ago, so the cook outs will continue.

There’s an interesting article at ABC News titled Vacation Deprivation about average vacation times in the US compared to the rest of the world. Here’s a nice quote:

If it feels like you’re stuck behind your desk on a sunny summer day while the rest of the world is on vacation, that’s because you are and it is.

I’m using all of my vacation days this summer to attend classes, so I can relate to this.

Maybe we’ll finally be able to eat a meal in peace. I swear some idiot calls trying to sell us something during lunch and dinner every day.

You can now sign up for the National “Do Not Call” List online. Here’s the address – http://www.donotcall.gov/.

Of course 90% of the time I’m on the Internet so I don’t know if anyone’s calling or not, but for the other 10% of the time, maybe the phone won’t ring quite as often.

Summer is flying by. June is almost over. That means I’ll be graduating in about 5 months. Woohoo!

It seems I’ve been to busy to update the site for a while. I’m working hard on a couple of programs right now. Hopefully by the time I graduate I’ll be able to start selling some of my software. We’ll see.

In other news, Apple announced some new computers yesterday. The PowerMac G5. These are a lot faster than the older PowerMacs, but unfortunately they’re still too expensive for regular people to afford.

I’m going to try to get some screenshots of my new programs here soon, and maybe a little info about my upcoming software business…

Paige and I have been married seven years today. It doesn’t seem like it’s been that long really. It kinda seems like we just met, but at the same time I feel like we’ve known each other forever.

Every once in a while, CNN posts an article that just cracks me up. Here’s a quote from their story Flushing Nemo:

“In truth, no one would ever find Nemo and the movie would be called ‘Grinding Nemo,”

That’s right kids, fish flushed down the toilet are ground into bits. Now, enjoy the movie.

After all this time, Metallica have finally released a new album. In case you haven’t been keeping up with Metallica lately, I’ll catch you up: Jason Newstead left the band, now Robert Trujillo (from Suicidal Tendancies, etc.) is playing bass, Kirk grew his hair back out, James went to rehab and he still can’t sing. Enough history, on to my thoughts.

The album was a great value – I got the CD and DVD for only $12.99 at Hastings. It also includes a code that you can use to access some exclusive Metallica stuff online.

Before the album came out I read several favorable reviews that said the songs were heavier and longer, much like on their earlier albums. That’s true, the songs are heavy and long, unfortunately that seems to translate into mostly sloppy and repetitive. Earlier albums had epic songs that filled 7 or 8 with an interesting story. These songs seem more like they were written by a five-year old. Listen to Frantic, tic, tic, tic, tic, tic, tock or Inspector, Rejector, Injector, Protector, Infector (Paige calls it protractor) if you don’t believe me.

I can usually get past bad lyrics and singing if there are enough good guitar solos (I listen to Dream Theater, after all). Unfortunately, the new Metallica album has no guitar solos. That’s right zero, none, not even a hint of a lead guitar part. This album is nothing but heavy, chunky rhythm guitar parts.

After all this you’re probably thinking I hate the album. Actually I listened to it all day in the car today and it’s starting to grow on me. I remember when the black album first came out I couldn’t stand it, and now I actually want to listen to it sometimes. Time will tell for St. Anger. It’ll never be as powerful as Master of Puppets or …And Justice for All, but it will probably always be better than 90% of the garbage that gets released every year.