Category: Life

I am, obviously, no fan of golf. As a matter of fact, I don’t really care for any televised sports, or television in general. But occasionally, I will see something that impresses even me to the point that I feel compelled to share it with the world.

I think that everyone can recognize a fantastic play even if they don’t care for the sport. You know the type – an outfielder who snatches the baseball from just over then fence and turns a grandslam into the game winning out, or the basketball player who throws the ball from half court just as the buzzer goes off and score the three points that win the game.

There’s a video clip of Tiger Woods demonstrating just such a play going around today. I’ve heard this is from the 16^th hole at the Master’s (whatever that means). Anyway, a clever guy named Joseph Jaffe converted this into a Nike commercial and posted it on his website. You can see it for yourself at Jaffe Juice. The 60 second version is 4 MB, but it’s well worth the download.

This is almost as impressive as my amazing hole in one through the blades of the wind mill and up the hill. Unfortunately, I never could master hitting the ball into the clown’s mouth…

VH1 showed the Metallica documentary Some Kind of Monster last night commercial free. So, being a pretty big Metallica fan, I watched it.

I’ve gotta say I was a little surprised by this movie. It was a lot more real than anything you’ll ever see on “Reality TV”. I think the main reason I like it is because I’ve followed the band for so long and I really felt like I knew the characters.

Seeing what really goes on in the lives of people like James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich was interesting. On the one hand I feel like these guys have more money than they’ll ever need, and they should just get over themselves. But, at the same time I can see what they’re arguing about. It’s the same kind of stuff that lots of us go through. Everyone wants to be in control, and no one is willing to compromise.

It was commercial free on VH1, but unfortunately it wasn’t uncut. This led to what was in my opinion one of the best scenes from the movie. Everyone in the band was really frustrated, but still trying to work. The dialogue went something like this…

Bob Rock: OK Lars, as soon as the drums kick in I want you to scream *beep* as loud as you can.

The music starts and Lars gets ready to scream.

Lars Ulrich: *beeeeeeep* (for about a minute straight)

I’m sure it was very therapeutic at the time, but on VH1 it reminded me of the test of the emergency broadcast system.

I just hope this post doesn’t draw out the raving, all-caps typing lunatics like my last mention of Metallica. Also, if you’re that guy and you’re reading this: My opinion of St. Anger is still pretty much the same. I actually want to listen to it every once in a while, but it will never be as good as Master of Puppets or …And Justice for All.

I’ve been meaning to post this picture for a while now. It’s almost two months old. I figure since I made fun of Ben for wearing a “Dukes of Hazard” shirt around their baby the other day, I should show what we’re doing to Matthew.

For those of you who aren’t Star Wars fans, like Paula – that’s Darth Vader on the shirt and it says “Who’s Your Daddy?”. That’s funny because Darth Vader is really Luke’s father… Sorry if I just ruined the Empire Strikes Back for anyone.

Blame Geoff for this outfit, he bought it for Matthew.

How could I have missed this? I used to check the Astronomy Picture of the Day religiously.

Back on April 1, they showed a picture of Water on Mars. Those rocket scientists sure are clever.

Is regular Tetris a little too hard for you? Maybe you should try Tetris 1D. That’s right, One-Dimensional Tetris.

I’m playing it even as I type this post. As a matter of fact, my score just passed 40,000. I think I’m really getting good.

On second thought, maybe not. I just looked at the High Scores. The top score is 943,718,400. It looks like I’ll be up all night playing…

I saw some pictures like this the other day on Flickr and I couldn’t wait to try it out myself. Luckily, Paige is usually a willing subject. Here she is relaxing in the chair and watching the baby:

This time she’s sitting on the couch and standing up and smiling:

These are actually pretty easy to do with a digital camera and a few minutes of editing. First, take two pictures of your subject without moving the camera (a tripod really helps here). Then layer one image on top of the other in something like PhotoShop or The GIMP. Finally, erase the area in the top layer so that the image of your subject shows through from the bottom.

In case you forgot, Paige’s birthday is April 15^th. She’ll be… ehh… one year younger than me. Obviously, she deserves lots of gifts for being an all around great wife and mother. I told her yesterday I was going to buy everything on her wishlist. Of course, she refused. Since I don’t want to get on her bad side, I’m trying a different approach.

I’ve already done my part to make sure she has a happy birthday. If you want to help out, here’s a link to Paige’s Amazon Wishlist. If you ignore the ottomans, there’s really not much left to buy. Just some kitchen gadgets and a few books. I think 11 days should be plenty of time to empty that list.

So, whether you’re a friend or just visiting the site to read the tutorials, help me out by picking up an item or two…

Yesterday night Paige, Matthew, and I went over to Ben and Paula’s house to visit their new baby Jackson Paul Alsup. He was born on March 24 at 2:23pm, weighted 8lbs 9oz, and was 21 inches long. This was the first time we had Matthew and Jackson together, so we took a few pictures.

Here’s a better picture of just Jackson. You can see that Ben is bringing his boy up right. That’s Ben with the “Dukes of Hazzard” t-shirt on.

Oh well, I guess that’s a better influence than the “Southpark” shirt he used to wear…

I’m guessing no one reads these posts anymore since I didn’t get any comments about what I wrote yesterday. It’s obviously an April Fool’s joke, but I though it was pretty funny. I’m sure there’s some poor soul out there right now afraid to touch their keyboard. Hopefully they won’t try hire me to clean up their computer.

In other news, I took another trip to Sulpher Springs today, this time for the District UIL meet. Our Computer Science team took second place. Not too bad considering we never even practiced after school. Jeremy took third place individually, which means he will advance. Unfortunately, only the first place team gets to go on, so the rest of the team will stay home. I’m still debating whether I’ll go or not.

Spring Break is just about over for me, and I’ve gotta say it was pretty nice. I spent the week hanging out with Matthew. I taught him all about guy stuff – we ate when we wanted, slept when we wanted, and mostly just sat around in our pajamas and watched TV. He seems to like Star Trek pretty well, but I think he liked Robotech even more. It was probably all of the explosions and crazy flashing lights.

I don’t think I spent more than 5 minutes a day in front of the computer all last week. Of course, that caught up with me last night when I had to spend about 4 hours catching up on all of my e-mail and checking out the news sites and blogs to see what I missed. People think I just learn everything about computers through osmosis. If they only knew how much time I spend reading and clicking.

I also tried in vain to organize my office. I will conquer this room soon. I think I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. The problem right now is that I just have too much stuff. I did something that I said I would never do. I gathered up a box full of books to throw away. I just can’t see keeping books on things like Programming Windows 95 when I don’t even use Windows anymore, much less the ten year old version. A while back we bought another book shelf to put in here, but I still have books piled on my desk and in boxes in the closet. I can’t help it, I’m addicted to books.

I spent most of today working in the yard. I gathered up big bag of newspaper thanks to the gas station up the street from us. I think they must’ve just piled a bunch of papers on the sidewalk and let them all blow away. This was followed by raking, shoveling, mowing, and even using a sledge hammer to break up some concrete. Of course all of that led to a nasty blister on my thumb. I’m basically a whimp when it comes to manual labor.

Hopefully I’ll heal by Monday. I’d hate to have to call in sick the day after a weeks vacation…