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.
When you work for a school district, summer is supposed to be a relaxing break. I guess that’s true if you’re a teacher (or a librarian), but it’s certainly not true if you’re a tech.
This summer we’re changing service providers and we’ll also be changing the IP address of every piece of equipment on the network. To make things even more interesting, Dale is retiring (again) so we’re also interviewing people for his position.
My summer class in Commerce starts in the morning at 9:00am. Thankfully, I’m only taking one class this summer (Advanced Database) so it should be pretty easy.
In my spare time I’ve written a web program to schedule teachers for our district technology fair on August 12, and I’m working on a program for our nurses to use to keep up with student immunization info (our CSCI 440 group project) and simple website for the CSCI 440 project.
My forum / message board program is also still floating around in limbo. It’s close enough to being finished now that I should probably go ahead and start using it, but I’m a perfectionist when it comes to things like this.
Finally, I’m also updating my Lua tutorials for the newly released Lua 5.0. The Linux downloads have already been updated. I guess I need to install this on my laptop so I can also update the Windows version. For now, if you’re here looking for Lua tutorials, download the Linux version.
That should update everyone on what I’ve been up to lately.
Everyone in the world needs to see these pictures. Maybe then people would realize just how insignificant our problems are in the grand scheme of things…
The Mars Global Surveyor, a satellite taking pictures of the surface of Mars, was recently used to take a picture of the Earth and Jupiter from Mars orbit.
NASA has made the pictures available here. There is also a story on Space.com.
Wipe the dust off your monitor and then check out this picture. The blue crumb at the top is Earth. The moon looks like a speck of dust above and to the right of Earth. If you scroll all the way down you can see Jupiter surrounded by several of it’s moons.
Awesome stuff…
Finals were last week and they just about wore me out.
My first test was Tuesday morning in Systems Analysis. Then, I didn’t get home from Advanced Electronics Wednesday night until about 9:00pm, and I had to be back in Commerce at 8:00am Thursday morning to take a Statistics test. I went to bed at about 6:30pm Thursday night and didn’t get up until after 7:00am Friday morning.
Thankfully, it’s over now. That was the hardest semester I’ve ever had. This summer and fall should be a breeze. I’m taking one class this summer – Advanced Database. This fall I’m taking an online class, and one more that I’ll have to attend. Assuming I pass these three classes and two more CLEP tests, I’ll graduate in December.
Expect more updates now that the semester is over. I have a few more projects I need to add to the site. And I’m just about finished with the new forum. Once that’s going people will be able to comment on anything they want, not just the crazy stuff that I post.
There comes a time in every college student’s life when you must make a tough decision – should I study all weekend for finals, or should I go see the new X-Men movie. This weekend I faced that decision.
X2 was awsome. It’s definitely worth seeing if you haven’t seen it already (even if you do have finals next week). I really liked the first one, but I think this sequel is even better.
In other comic book news, yesterday was Free Comic Book Day. I was a little excited about this. I haven’t bought a comic book in years, but I used to be really into them. So I went to the website and found out that our local Hastings would have free comic books. The website lists a lot of free comics that would be available – Batman, Robocop, X-Men, etc.
Yesterday evening, Paige and I made the trip to Hastings. When we got there we had to ask if they had free comics. After a few minutes of waiting, the store employee came back and said “This is all they gave us” and handed us an Archie comic. Out of all the cool comics in the world, they only had Archie. I guess you really do get what you pay for…
Last Tuesday evening we took a walk around downtown Paris with our dog training class. This was the big test after attending class for several weeks. I brought the digital camera and took some pictures of Paige and Max around the old buildings.
Max was very well behaved for the walk. We stopped at corners and he sat most of the time. He didn’t even pull on the leash like he used to do. The only time he barked at anyone was when a stranger walked down the sidewalk in front of the old post office.
I added captions to these pictures so hopefully you can tell what’s going on. The sun was setting as we were walking so some of the pictures didn’t turn out perfect, but overall I think they look pretty good.
Today was my last official class day of this semester. All I have next week are finals and then I’m done with Spring. Taking three classes in one semester while working full time was a bad idea. Luckily, I’m only taking one class this summer and two in the fall. So, it’s all down hill from here.
I’m so relieved to be done with this semester that I’m starting to find humor in little things again. When my classes were over today, I drove through McDonalds and ordered a double cheesburger and fries. The girl at the window said “The fries are hot.” And she was right, my cheeseburger was cold.
Back on Easter Sunday, part of my family got together and had lunch at East Paris Baptist Church. We finally remembered to take the digital camera this time. I picked out ten of my favorite pictures and added them to the family gallery. Click the picture below to go to the gallery and see the rest.
Somehow Paige managed to elude the camera all afternoon, so she’s not in any of the pictures. I guess that means I’ll just have to try harder next time…
If you have a cat, you’ll understand this picture without an explanation.
Paige and I were looking for something in the living room the other day. I don’t even remember what it was now. Anyway, she lifted up the edge of the couch and told me to grab whatever was under there.
When I saw everything that was under the couch, I told her there’s no way I could get it all.
So, we ended up moving the couch, and this is what we found…
It looks like Sam has been busy lately knocking things around the living room floor. He just loves hiding Max’s chew toys where he can’t get to them.
