Category: Life

I’ve seen this mentioned on several other weblogs. There are lots of reports that this actually works. So, I’m taking the plunge and trying it out for myself. Here’s what you do: Go to freeiPods.com, sign up for an account, complete an offer, then get five other people to each complete an offer. After that, they’ll send you a free iPod.

This is obviously some kind of pyramid scheme, but what the heck. Some people have actually received free iPods from this site, so I might as well try it. I’ve invited a few people to sign up for this and help me get an iPod. If I didn’t think of you when I was filling out the form, you can sign up as a friend of mine by going to this link – http://www.freeiPods.com/default.aspx?referer=7271022

The offers are things like signing up for an AOL account, joining the DVD club, etc. I think the best one is the eBay account. All you have to do is sign up for an account and bid on one item. I used my e-mail address from work and then bid $1 on a new iPod. There’s no way I’ll win it, but the only requirement to complete the offer is one bid. So that should be it.

I’ll post updates here so everyone can see how this works out…

What happened to this place? It’s been over two weeks since I put anything up here.

It’s strange because lots of things have been happening lately, but I just haven’t bothered to post anything about it on the site. Some stuff I can talk about (like our trip to Hot Springs, the fact that Geoff is in Germany right now, or the 80 foot trench we dug in the backyard), and other things I can’t talk about (like… nevermind).

I’m finally starting to get caught up at work and I think we’re through with our backyard for a while, so hopefully I can get back to my usual schedule of almost daily updates. I’ll also say that I’m tired of the political stuff. I think it’s time for more pictures of family and friends. And, of course, some full on geeky posts.

Check back soon. Thinks should start to get interesting again…

There’s something very rewarding about growing your own food.

We started off by growing our own herbs. But I don’t think herbs really count as food. After all, an herb is basically just a weed. You can snip off a few leaves occasionally to use while cooking, but you can’t exactly make a meal of it.

Last year we planted a tomato plant, but it never produced any fruit. I remember seeing a few blooms on it, but shortly after they appeared a storm came through. The storm either blew or washed all of the blooms off the plant. Therefore, we grew no tomatoes last year.

Undaunted by last year’s failure, we bought two plants this spring and put them in containers on our front porch. Our plants fared much better this year. Each one had countless blooms followed by 10-20 tiny little tomatoes. Finally, the tomatoes have begun to ripen. Here’s a picture of the very first tomato that we picked:

Yes, it tasted as good as it looks. So far we’ve picked about 10 tomatoes from our two little plants, and there are plenty more still growing. If we keep this up we might just have to become farmers.

Let me start off by saying that Paige and I have a wonderful relationship. I can’t imagine spending my life with anyone else.

We’ve never had any problems that we couldn’t talk about rationally and work through (no matter how much money I just wasted on an amp, or a Corvette, or some computer part). Our views on most issues are very similar, and when they differ we can always discuss the topic and see both sides.

It’s sometimes interesting to get a peek into the lives of other couples who aren’t quite as like-minded as we are. With that in mind, here’s a site I just stumbled accross today – Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About. I think that’s the longest domain name I’ve ever seen. Here’s just one example of the kinds of things these people argue about:

Our sink is blue and we’re not talking about it. It happened over a week ago; I was leaning over the sink, brushing my teeth, when I noticed that there was a sort of lazuline patina that had seeped over most of the surface. Margret hasn’t mentioned anything about this. Why she hasn’t is that she’s obviously tried to clean the sink with, well, I don’t know, some fluid used for stripping entrenched cerriped colonies from the hulls of submarines or something (they were probably offering three bottles of the stuff for the price of two at Aldi). She is waiting for me to mention it. But I am a wily fox, and will be doing nothing of the sort. I’m no wet-behind-the-ears, naive youth anymore, not by a looooong way, and I can perfectly see the spiked pit the seemingly innocent words, ‘Did you know the sink’s blue’ are covering. It would go – precisely – like this:
Me: Did you know the sink’s blue?
Margret: Yes. I did. I used a jungle exfoliant produced by the Taiwanese military to clean it, and it discoloured the surface.
Me: Oooooooo. K.
Margret: Well maybe, just maybe, if you cleaned the sink once in a while…
You see what she did there? Now I’m facing a whole day of ‘When did you last…?’ Well, not this canny fellow – not this time, my friends.
Our sink is blue and we’re not talking about it.

Be sure you have plenty of free time before you visit this page. I’ve been reading for a long time now and I’m only half way through it.

Here’s even more proof that George Lucas has lost his mind:

It looks like he’s still making changes to the original three movies so they will match up better with the new trilogy. The consensus among fans of the original series seems to be “why is he trying to make the old, good movies more like the new, bad movies!”

I’m still upset by the changes he’s already made. Everyone knows that Greedo didn’t shoot first.

First off, rumor has it that the Emporer’s face is going to be changed in The Empire Strikes Back to match the new movie. DVD Dungeon has a screenshot.

This is not so bad. I might even be able to live with this change. Actually, most people probably wouldn’t even notice.

The next change is rumored to be in Return of the Jedi. At the end of the movie we see the spirits of Anakin, Yoda, and Obi Wan. According to DVD Dungeon, the actor who played Anakin in the original is going to be replaced with the idiot from the new movies. This is just madness.

I’m hoping these are just images that have been doctored. But with the changes Lucas has already made, there’s no way to be sure.

Interesting footnote: Paula walked out of the theater during the original Star Wars when she went to see it as a child…

I see students working on projects almost every day, but it’s not very often that I take time out to recognize truly outstanding work. While I was at Travis yesterday, I noticed a student working on a Haiku that I just had to share with the rest of the world:

I really hate school
It is extremely boring
It just wastes your time.

I hope this kid gets an A.

The guest speaker at my graduation back in December was Texas State Senator Bob Deuell. I still remember when his name was announced, someone behind me said “Wow, they got Bob Dole!” That still cracks me up. That also explains why that person was sitting behind me, they weren’t exactly the “best and brightest.”

Anyway, Mr. Deuell talked for about 20 minutes during the ceremony. I don’t remember most of what he said, but one thing stuck with me that day. He said “Read. Read within your subject and outside your subject. Read fiction and non-fiction. Read everything you can get your hands on. Successful people read all the time.”

I’ve always enjoyed reading. At first it was mostly science fiction and fantasy, but as I got older I moved on to computer books. It got to the point where I was actually purchasing computer science textbooks to study on my own. I’m probably the only person in the world with a calculus book on my Amazon wishlist. After several years of that I started taking classes in Commerce. During school, I read computer science books exclusively to the point that I pretty much got burned out.

Now that I’ve graduated, I find myself getting back into reading again. Earlier this year I flew through Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson and Neuromancer by William Gibson. Both of those are really cool sci-fi, Matrix-y books. Most people call these “cyberpunk”. Right now, I’ve just about finished the Dark Elf Trilogy by R.A. Salvatore. After that I’m going to have to read some Dan Brown books since Paige wants to discuss them with me, but she doesn’t want to ruin them for me either. I also have a few recommendations from Geoff.

So what’s the point of all this? Basically, I’m always looking for interesting things to read. I thought if I shared a few of the books I’ve enjoyed with the world, then maybe other people would point out some of their favorites to me. I also want to mention a few websites I’ve found with good reading material:

Read Print – This site is new to me. It looks like what they’ve done is taken some of the more popular books from Project Gutenberg (see below) and cleaned them up for easy online reading. This is a great way to get started reading books online.

Project Gutenberg – As far as I know, this was the first website to make public domain books available for free download online. According to the site, they have over 10,000 books available for download.

I came across one more thing this morning at Kuro5hin.org – an article titled Four Unproduced Screenplays. This article provides links to several different screenplays with writers such as James Cameron and The Wachowski Brothers. The comments that follow also contain some great links such as Alien 3 by William Gibson (not the one that was made into a movie) and Superman Lives by Kevin Smith (yes, that Kevin Smith).

I read most of Superman Lives this morning and I’ve really enjoyed it so far. There’s plenty of comic book action mixed with a touch of Kevin Smith’s humor. I’ve never read a screenplay before, but the seperation of dialog and scene descriptions makes it easy to picture it in your head as if you were actually watching the movie.

I guess I could set up a section of the site just for book reviews, or maybe form some kind book club. Until then, let me know if you come across any interesting books and I’ll do the same.

I can’t think of a better gift for our good friend Geoff than .

I’m sure some of you are wondering why I haven’t posted anything here in a while.

About two weeks ago, around the morning of April 20th, Paige was bitten by a spider. So far she’s been to two different doctors, spent one morning in the emergency room, taken six different prescriptions, and missed eight days of work. It’s been a rough time to say the least.

The doctors aren’t sure exactly what kind of spider it was, but almost everyone else agrees that it was a brown recluse. The bite was made even worse by the fact that the lymph node under her left arm became infected. This infection caused her to break out all over and gave her a really high fever.

Luckily, the antibiotics and pain medicines did there thing and she’s getting better now. She’s still weak from the infection and she has a nasty wound where the bite was, but at least she’s up doing things again. Today was her first day back at work since the morning it happened.

Obviously, I’ve been too busy trying to take care of her and things around the house to post anything here. Thanks for all of the calls of concern, and thanks to Ben for the cake:

Only Ben would send a cake with a spider on it. I didn’t see what Paige did to that part of the cake, but something tells me it was chopped to bits.

Pictures of last night’s show are now up on the Breakout Entertainment website. This address will take you straight to the pictures – http://breakout.tamu-commerce.edu/colin_brad_show.asp.

I grabbed the two pictures of us and uploaded them here:

You’ll notice in some of the other pictures they’re reading lines off of cards. They passed out those cards to everyone in the first few rows. We all wrote a single line of dialog and then turned them back in.

The cards were used in a sort of Shakespearean play. In it, Brad played King Portfolio who was worried about war and money. Colin was his loyal subject Epiglottis. As the play went on they would draw cards at random from a basket and read the line.

Out of all of the cards in the basket, they somehow managed to pick both mine and Paige’s. Mine said “Why do men have nipples?” and Paige’s said “What would you do with that?”