More car buying
After some more test driving, I think we've narrowed our car search down to two models, the Nissan Altima and the Toyota Camry. We drove an extremely low mileage Honda Accord tonight, and while we liked it, it just wasn't as comfortable for me or Holly as the Camry was. It wasn't really something we could put our fingers on, but the Camry just felt better.

I think tomorrow we'll head down to Cedar Rapids to see what the dealers have in stock there, in search of a bargain on a 99-01 Camry...
- posted by Seth @ 5:34 PM    

 
PGP 8.0 beta released
PGP Corp has released a beta version of PGP Desktop 8. So far, it seems to work great, and it didn't hose the networking on my Windows XP box the way that version 7 did! It doesn't seem to like working with Enigmail, so I've switched back to using Outlook 2002 for my e-mail. I still have a lot of people ask me what that weird stuff in my e-mail is, meaning my PGP signature. I wish more people would use PGP, the world would be a better place...
- posted by Seth @ 1:08 PM    

 
Student found dead in Friley Hall
I heard about this on the radio, they referred to the death at my alma mater as "suspicious" on the report I heard this morning, but the article says that there was no sign of trauma or a struggle when they found the student's body. Hmm, I'm wondering if it's a suicide, based on what little information is available, it sounds like the guy was a bit of a loner. It's sad when the dorms smell so bad that a decomposing corpse goes unnoticed:

Robert Shumaker, sophomore in sociology, lived on the deceased's floor. He said he noticed a smell by the deceased's room several days ago, but never suspected anything.

"The dorms kind of smell," Shumaker said. "But this morning on my way to breakfast, it was very, very pungent."

- posted by Seth @ 11:22 AM    

 
Otto Ravenholt
I stumbled across this article about my Great Uncle Otto Ravenholt today, a good read about how he is one of the first 100 people who shaped Southern Nevada. Otto is the brother of my maternal grandfather, Eiler Ravnholt. Don't let the spellling difference confuse you, Ravnholt is how it was spelled originally, but most of my grandfather's siblings adopted the e, just to make life a little easier. Actually, I was once told that the family name was originally Johnson, but got screwed up in immigration, like many other families. Ravnholt was the town/area in Denmark the family was from, at least that's what I remember. Also interesting, was that I found out some things about my great-grandfather Ensgar that I never knew, since no one really talks about him much, at least not to me:

In the mid-1930s, the Ravenholt family homestead had been foreclosed, the family evicted. The children were dispersed to various farms, homes, old hotels and barns. Eventually, they were reunited on a rented farm. But father Ensgar Ravenholt had a long history of emotional problems, which became worse after the loss of his farm. He eventually was confined to the state mental hospital. His young son got a firsthand look at the barbarity of the mental health system.
"Unpopular family members, or those who were an embarrassment got committed in those days," said Ravenholt. "Once in, getting out was tough, because civil rights had been suspended. There was no voluntary exit."
So Ensgar Ravenholt escaped. A manhunt was organized, the radio blared warnings about the dangerous escaped lunatic. One evening, 400 miles away, he walked across a field and greeted his sons, who persuaded him to return. With the help of his close-knit family and therapy, he recovered, and spent the last 10 years of his life tending the Rose Garden in Los Angeles' Griffith Park.

- posted by Seth @ 9:24 AM