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?”
First off, yesterday was Paige’s birthday. Happy birthday, baby!
To celebrate, we went to see Colin Mochrie and Brad Sherwood perform last night in Commerce. In case you don’t recognize the names, they’re two of the guys from Whose Line is it Anyway?. Here’s a picture of them:
We had so much fun last night, I don’t really even know where to start. We got to Commerce a little after 5:00pm and went out to eat first at the Panda. The whole time we were eating, Paige was trying to hurry me up so we could get to the show early (it didn’t start until 7:00pm). Finally, I finished my fortune cookie and we drove over to the school.
We got to the auditorium before 6:00pm and about 7-8 people were already in line in front of us. We stood around anxiously until they finally opened the doors at 6:30pm. We handed our ticket stubs to the girl at the door and raced down to the second row. We sat next to the aisle since those people are the most likely to get picked to go on stage.
The show was great, I don’t think I’ve laughed that hard in a long time. Of course it was all made up on the spot and it was all hilarious.
The best part of the show (for us anyway) was when Brad Sherwood walked over towards our side of the stage and said “OK, show of hands. How many married couples do we have here tonight?”. Paige and I both immediately raised our hands. Brad looked right at us and said “You two are married?” I don’t remember if I said yes or just nodded my head like a fool, but I did answer him somehow. He turned to another couple in the center of the front row and said “You guys are married, too?” Then he turned back to us and said “Ok, you two come on up and help us out.”
Once we got up on stage, introduced ourselves, and shook hands, they explained the skit. It was called “A Day in the Life of a Married Couple.” Paige and I were standing on opposite sides of the stage. We each had a bell (ding!) and a duck call that you squeeze like a horn (honk!). Brad would play the part of me, and Colin would be Paige. Whenever Brad said something that I might say, Paige would ring the bell. And if he said something that I would not say, she would squeeze the duck call. I would do the same for Colin.
Being on stage was basically just a blur, I don’t remember exactly how it all went. But, I know the skit started off something like this:
Brad pretends to be asleep and snoring.
Ding!
Colin enters with breakfast and says “Good morning dear. Time to wake up.”
Ding!
Brad wakes up and enthusiastically says “Good morning.”
Honk!
Brad changes it to “Just 10 more minutes honey.”
Ding!
Colin says “But I’ve prepared this three course breakfast for you…”
Honk!
“But I brought you this apple…”
Honk!
“Here’s a glass of water…”
Ding!
The morning routine continues on for a while until they finally wind their way around to our love life:
Colin says “Oh Tony, you’re the best lover I’ve ever had.”
Ding! Ding! Ding! (I smiled and everyone laughed.)
Brad replied “Yes, our love-making goes on for hours and hours.”
Honk! (At this point I blushed as everyone really laughed.)
Somehow, things went a little off course at this point. I’m not sure how we got here, but this is how it ended up:
Colin says “I’ll put on my cheerleader uniform like you always wanted.”
Brad replies “OK, and I’ll put on this… uh, giant ape costume.”
(Paige and I are both laughing so much I don’t think either of us did anything.)
Colin jumps up and cheers “Go team!”
Brad dances around like an ape and says “Who’s your monkey!”
There’s nothing in the world more fun than being embarrassed on stage in front of about 1,100 people.
I’m just going to have to add a “music” category to this site. It seems like every day I stumble accross some crazy new band.
This band is a cross between Metallica and the Beatles called, you guessed it, Beatallica. They do covers of Beatles songs in the style of Metallica and with lyrics sort of inpired by both.
So far my favorite songs are Sgt. Hetfield’s Motorbreath Pub Band and I Want To Choke Your Band, but I pretty much laughed at all of them. I would probably enjoy it even more if I knew more Beatles songs…
In case you haven’t heard by now, rumor has it that John Woo is making a Metroid movie to be released in 2006. Here’s an article at E! Online with some more information – Woo’s Next Target: Metroid
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In honor of the upcoming movie, I’ve been playing a little Metroid on the computer:
It’s amazing how much time I wasted on that game growing up. Good times.
While we’re on the subject of Metroid, I should also remind you of the Minibosses. I think I’ve mentioned them before on the site. They’re a rock band that plays music from old video games. They do great covers of some of the music from Metroid. Unfortunately, none of the Metroid songs are available for download on their site, but if you look around long enough you’re bound to find them online…
Let me start off by saying I like Nickelback. When one of their songs comes on I don’t turn it off. Most of the time I actually turn it up. (I also sometimes listen to Puddle of Mudd, but that’s a whole different story.)
With those facts in mind, this is just a little creepy. I’m not sure who made this, but it’s pure genius. It’s Nickelback’s Someday in the left speaker and How You Remind Me in the right speaker. I recommend you right-click the link below and “Save As” to listen to it.
The similarities are creepy. They obviously have a good formula for writing hit songs…
Let me know if the link quits working and I’ll upload the file to my server.
Thanks to Metafilter for the link.
There’s a photomosaic of the Americans who have died in Iraq since the “war” began at Michael Moore.com.
Thanks to BoingBoing.net for the link.