Category: Life

I cut my finger last night. I was chopping an onion when the knife slipped and sliced into my middle finger right beside the nail.

The nice thing about using a good, sharp knife is that you don’t really even feel it when you cut yourself. I washed my hands a few times, wiped the blood off of the cutting board, threw away the bloody piece of onion and went on about my business.

When I was done Paige put a band-aid on it for me. She’s sweet like that.

I took the band-aid off before I went to bed and everything seemed fine. This morning I went through my morning routine, all the while keeping an eye on that cut. I thought about putting another band-aid on it, but why should I? It looked like it was nearly healed at this point.

Then I reached in the closet to get a pair of pants and felt a strange throbbing sensation at the tip of my finger. I dropped the pants and saw red. The blood had already dripped down one leg of the pants and on the waist where I grabbed them. I thought about wearing another pair of pants, but I had to clean these up regardless. So, I put band-aid on my finger, cleaned the blood off my pants, and was only about 15 minutes late for work.

So if you see me today and notice blood stains on my clothes, that’s why. It has nothing to do with me going crazy because some idiot asked another stupid question. I promise…

The new school year is in full swing now. I’m teaching a computer science class this year which is a lot of fun. I don’t know anything about teaching, but that’s OK because the students don’t know anything about programming. I think I’m learning just as much as they are.

The only downside to the class is the time: 12:00 – 1:00. I miss coming home for lunch every day. I’ve been eating lunch in the high school cafeteria from 11:30 – 12:00 this week. That’s “A” lunch for those who care. It certainly brings back some memories:

I stood in line for about 29 minutes one day just to get one of those terrible, rectangular pieces of pizza. Just as I sat down to inhale it, a fight broke out right across the table from me. One guy grabbed the other guy and threw him on the table, you guessed it, right on top of my pizza. I carried my tray back to the lunch lady and she gave me another pizza. I ate it as the bell rang and everybody else walked out.

Our work order list is finally back down to about 5 pages and most of the major projects are taken care of. I actually took last weekend off from work. Prior to that I think I worked 21 days straight. Hopefully now that things are settling down I can back into the routine of updating this site. I’ve got tons of pictures and stuff to put up here.

I’ve realized that no matter how long I leave this site alone, it will never update itself.

That’s the next project I’m going to work on: Weblog software that generates and posts random updates every few days. I’ll be richer than Bill.

Anyway, school starts Monday. I guess I should start preparing for the class I’m teaching…

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.