Forever Peace

I saw that Jess had picked this page as one that she liked. Yuck. I'd nominate this for the Daily Sucker, but it's a web design firm, I think. I won't ask them to design anything I'm going to use... I'm generally not a moody person, in fact, I'm often criticized for not being very emotional at all, but if there's one thing that makes me cranky, anxious, and worried, it's having something wrong with my car. Yesterday, I went to leave work, only to find that it wouldn't start. I tried to jumpstart it then, no luck, so I caught a ride home. Today, I had a wrecker come, we got it started, I drove around for about half an hour, then headed home, turned off the car, and it wouldn't start. Looks like it's going into the shop...

Ahh, now I get it... I was really liking Radio Userland, but then I couldn't figure out how to create a post above my previous item. The mystery has been solved, you do it by hitting control-u! Pushing enter only made a new wedge, control-u moves a wedge up, and control-d moves one down. I'm catching on...

John posted a question about whether or not there should be pulp in orange juice. My response is here.

I'm going to post a new, bad picture of myself below. This is from our site here at work, explore it at your own risk. I generally don't bother with pictures of myself on my web site, since they get out of date so fast, but here's what I looked like as of last week:

I sat down with a bowl of popcorn last night, and watched my newest DVD, Braveheart. I've waited a while for this one to be released on DVD, and had my copy ordered a few weeks ago. I'd forgotten how bloody it was! I haven't watched the movie with the commentary track yet, so I can't rate the overall quality of the DVD, but the movie looked and sounded great. I'm glad they included some extras, I hate DVD's that don't include anything but a trailer or two, it's a waste of a great format. The Star Trek movies are the worst offenders, not only do they not include any bonus materials, but they cost over twenty bucks!

Last night, I finished reading Forever Peace, by Joe Haldeman. In both this, and his other book that I've read, The Forever War, Haldeman writes mainly about the costs of war. Not in terms of money, lives, or territory, but in the humanity that is taken from the combatants. It's easy to see that Haldeman is a Vietnam veteran, and that his experiences there left him a changed man. I'd classify his works as philosophical science fiction, as with all good science fiction, the science is secondary to the story and the message.

Writers' Cramp

I suffered the worst case of writers' cramp yesterday. My pain paid off, however, as I scored a 94 on my final exam. That, along with my prof's sympathy, garnered me an A-. I'll take that any day. I'm setting up an average of two Dell's per day here at work, getting ready for new faculty to arrive and the new school year to begin. I've still got a month to go, but I'm working weekends starting tomorrow. I don't want to wind up working till 1:00 a.m. the night before classes start, like I did last year.

Mansonites

This weekend, I journeyed to the metropolis of Manson, Iowa. My girlfriend's grandmother was having a sale, and the whole town turned out to buy furniture, crocks, and tractors. She scored a cookie jar for $5, a karem board for $15, and a sewing stand for $35. I netted myself a new coffee table for $22.50.

"Auction2"

It was a hot day for a sale, and we had to take a break when they started selling some of the tools and farm equipment. We drove in to town and had lunch at the venerable Pizza Ranch.

"Auction1 2"

I don't understand how the auctioneers do it, my voice simply couldn't do that for 4 hours...

"Auction3"

That grain truck would be handy next time I move, but it went for $8100.

"Auction4"

Gravity wagons and hay rakes as far as the eye can see...

After three years of loyal readership, I got my first submission accepted over at Slashdot. I pointed at the Scripting News story regarding CNN's link to the DeCSS code, which earned me three karma points if you're curious. Scripting News withstood the onslaught of hits, and CNN/Time-Warner was hopefully embarassed.

I caught Chicken Run this weekend. It was really very funny, definitely a good movie to take kids to, as an adult will enjoy it just as much as any child, and perhaps more. However, I wouldn't reccomend that John take his kids to see it, not after seeing this entry in his weblog. ";->" They might never speak to him again...

Here and Now

I found a new bandwidth waster yesterday. Here And Now seems to be a site with 8 cameras in a house, constantly streaming video and audio. The master feed, at 250K, is very watchable, I had it running on a laptop sitting on my desk, via wireless 802.11 networking, providing an interesting distraction for everyone who came in the office. I'm not really sure who the three people are who inhabit the house, nor have I gotten the 512K stream to work yet, but it's mildly amusing. It makes a great wireless ethernet demo, as I walked around the office with a laptop in hand receiving high-quality streaming video from the 'net...

Finals Week

I finally got my personal web page repaired last night. After my web hosting company switched severs, the FrontPage info for my site got wiped out somehow, and I couldn't fix it until I got my cable modem installed. For some reason, UNI's or the ICN's web caching interferes with editing FrontPage sites remotely, rendering you unable to log in. It only took me about 20 minutes to rebuild the navigation links, borders and theme information, and now it's back to it's normal self. It's Finals Week for me! Well, not really, I just have my last test in my summer class this week. There are four tests, and so far, I've scored an 88, then an 83, and now a 93. I'm hoping to ace the last test and pull an A-, but we'll have to see...

I've enjoyed taking the class, but I hate having to rush so much. I simply haven't had or taken the time to get all the reading done, because frankly, I've got better things to do than spend two hours a night reading about Politics in America. That's hurt me on the tests somewhat, but I'm willing to take the loss in exchange for some time to do what I want. I'm starting to understand why everyone who works at a University doensn't take class, especially summer class, it's simply very time consuming when you work full time already. That's something I didn't grasp when I was an undergrad at ISU, but I think I can still manage one class at a time, and balance that with the loss of free-time that comes with it. I'm just going to be more careful about which summer class I choose next year.