re-runs
of Farscape and Firefly (on DVD), E.R., a Utah Jazz Basketball Game, or any NASCAR
Nextel Cup Race - Despite the large list, I really don't get to watch THAT much TV - I wind up missing most of those shows.
Favorite local radio station: KWFR-101.9 "The Fire," unless I'm in the Ram, then it's: 89.3 - "The CD Changer" (the
local radio stations kinda suck)
CD in the Honda's player: Queensryche - Empire
CD's loaded in the Ram's Changer:
- Linken Park - Meteora & Hybrid Theory (a CD-R I burned)
- Bowling for Soup - The Hangover you didn't deserve
- Collective Soul - Youth
- Collective Soul - Collective Soul
- Collective Soul - Blender
- Dave's Mix from Hell - a CD-R with some alternative music that my buddy burned for me
- This Side Up - an unlabeled MP3 CD-R that I made
- This Side Up 2 - another unlabeled MP3 CD-R I made
- This Side Up 3 - and
yet another unlabeled CD-R...
- Anger Management III - another CD I made
Here's a shot of my current desktop(s) - My
main machine (Big Dawg) is now a tri-booter (Win XP, Win2K, and Red Hat Fedora), Lapdawg is
my new Dell Laptop, Rusty is my router/firewall, Anubis is my wife's machine, and Velociraptor is my web server/file
server/print server:
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
| Rusty Win2K Server Desktop |
Big Dawg/LapDawg XP Desktop |
Big Dawg Win2K Desktop |
Anubis WinXP Desktop |
Velociraptor
Win2K Desktop |
Current
WinAmp Playlist: I
have a huge and growing MP3 collection and love to have them running while 'surfing and
e-mailing.
Favorite Games on the Computer:
Crimson Skies, Jane's Air Force, Unreal
Tournament, Unreal Tournament 2004, Need For Speed - Underground, Need For Speed - Porsche Unleashed, Need For Speed - Hot Pursuit, NASCAR
Racing 2003, Polar Bowling, Spider Solitaire, Hangaroo, and Dilbert Desktop
Games Elbonian Airlines.
Big, Major Stuff that Happened - Most Recent
stuff first:
- 2 June 2007 - OK, something happened to me. Either I got older and
wiser, or cheaper, or something. I bought (more like rescued) a '95 Honda
Civic VX hatchback from a friend who blew the head gasket on the way to work.
I offered to help him fix it, but he finally hit the point where he'd had enough
of messing with the car and decided to let it go. I got a helluva deal on
it at only $800, and my plan is to fix it up and drive the wheels off it while
enjoying awesome gas mileage. Check out the new page I made for it
HERE
- 18 May 2007 - Tomorrow I go to the Kendall Art Gallery to pick up my entry
in the Anything Goes, Almost Art Contest. After joining the San Angelo Art
Club, the contest came about and I decided that since I hadn't put up any work,
I'd have to make some kind of a showing by entering the contest. My pal
Jim suggested I paint another one of his Jeep dashboards, but I didn't think I'd
have enough time to do something well. So, I went with something I've very
comfortable with: pencil on art paper. I also picked a subject that I've
very comfortable with: American Bald Eagle. I surfed around for some
reference pictures and got some nice shots.
This one was the reference picture, and I
decided to go with a little more intense look with some focus out of frame... oh
who am I kidding - this is how it came out. Close but not exact...
although I like the look of mine a little better - considering it's pencil.
I also tried a new technique - using the graphite collected from my Drafting
Pencil Lead Pointer, I used some cotton balls and Q-Tips for the 'smeared'
values, rather than using my finger this time - which came out a lot cleaner.
I'd also never used ArtGum eraser in the same manner - most all of my drawings
had some kind of an 'outline' between the subject and its background... which
the ArtGum worked through quite nicely for a more realistic look.
Oh yeah - here's my picture:
HERE I'm
going to try and get a better picture of it - without all the reflections -
soon.
I don't know - I guess this officially makes me an 'Artist.' Well, that,
and a friend (who really IS an artist) made me a Worry-Stone with the word
'Artist' engraved into it. So I guess it's official now.
- 4 April 2007 - All of my websites are now restored. After some
mediocre attempts at restoring the hard drive partition, I took the drive to a
very savvy friend at work and he was able to recover the partition information
and save the drive, and burned my web-root directory onto a CD so I could
restore my sites. Thank you, Randy!
I'm going to be more proactive about backing up my critical information -
whether it be simply stashing another copy or two elsewhere in my network, or
backing up to CD the stuff I need kept. Come to think of it - I have a ton
of pictures on my hard drive that need to be burned onto a CD or something, in
addition to website stuff.
- Last week of March 2007 - My webserver (Guarddawg) dies. The
failing heat sink fan caused the CPU to overheat and shutdown, which wound up
taking the hard drive partition that housed all of these wonderful websites with
it. Fortunately, I also have a nice wireless router, so I was able to
continue on with the internet connection and not worry about scrambling to get
the server rebuilt. I was able to rebuild the server itself using parts
from both Guarddawg and the previous Soyo Dragon version of BigDawg, which means
the server absolutely smokes now. But lost all of the websites and other
information I had stored on that hard drive... and learned a valuable lesson
about server management. I guess I need to do some reading on how to
extract information from a failed hard drive now.
- Shortly after Christmas, I found myself somewhat in demand to maintain
some websites for some friends of mine I met through the Community Band.
This is not a bad thing, either. I'm having fun working on them and who
knows - it may work into some extra spending money. I also joined the San
Angelo Art Club, and am now maintaining their website as well. I see a
trend developing here.
- Shortly after in December - I went to Fort Meade for a training class
on the new system we installed at work. When I returned, apparently Big
Dawg was unhappy that I had upgraded Anubis, so the hard drive controller took a
dive on the Soyo Dragon+ mobo that's been my staple machine since Dec 2001.
6 years it hangs in there and finally gave up... now that's gettin' your money's
worth. So I picked up pretty much the same gear and jammed it all into Big
Dawg's monster tower case - life is good.
- Late-November - The wife discovered a new game that her machine
wouldn't run, so it was time to upgrade. I stuffed a new ASUS A8N mobo
w/AMD Athlon64 3500+ CPU, 1024MB DDR-400 RAM, 250GB SATA II HDD, and a new Antec
450 watt power supply in Anubis. Everything ran like a champ and her games
all run now.
- Last week of October 2006 - Entered the Jeep in the Goodfellow AFB Car
Show at the Recreation Camp again. Didn't win an award, but I did win a
cool (cheese-mo) cordless 'Hammer' drill as a door prize. Had to jump
start the Jeep again this year because I don't drive it enough to keep the
battery happily charged, and Jim's cooler ran it down while it kept our lunches
and snacks cool.
- 5 October 2006 - I took the Jeep to the Auto Hobby Shop for some TLC this
weekend, and also to paint some Tru-Fire flames on Jim's Jeep's dash panel.
I acquired some seats from a '97 TJ and a charcoal gray rear seat from an '89 YJ
Wrangler to replace those original Ick Blue seats that came with mine. The
TJ seats are a little worn, but I also snagged some charcoal gray Bestop seat
covers for them - so it should be pretty nice once I fabricate some adapter
brackets to mount everything up. I'm sure I'll take some pics as well.
Still missing my little buddy Thor.
- 3 October 2006 - After the past weekend and part of last week worrying about
our dog Thor's sudden weight loss and lack of appetite, we were able to finally
get him in to see the Vet. We were kind of expecting bad news because he's
almost 13. Well... it was bad news. His blood-work came indicating
impending kidney failure and any treatment would most likely just prolong any
suffering he was currently enduring before eventually failing anyway, so we
chose to let him go. It wasn't a hard decision to make, given the options.
However, it's one of the hardest decisions I've had to live with. We've
had him since he was a puppy and took him on as a personal project since he was
the runt of the litter - my wife and I would take turns hand-feeding him at our
friend's house until he was ready to come home with us for good. I'm going
to put together a page with all of the pictures we have of him (and some pages
with our other pets, past and present) - it's about time they get some attention
on this site as well. But I'm going to give it some time as seeing the
pictures only brings the pain back knowing he's no longer with us and I won't be
greeted with his happy face and nubby-tail wagging.
- 16 September 2006 - I updated the look of the Home page a couple of nights
ago. Once I dug around and found some more nifty things to play with, I
came up with the new look. The real drive for it is because I didn't
really care for how the last look came out (with the weird horizontal Nav bar) -
it just didn't fit with the old layout I'd made for the Concho 4 Wheelers a few
years back. I'm still not completely happy with it, but it's definitely
better now.
Brass Band Quintet practice is a blast. We rehearse at Carl's house, which
is awesome! He has a detached 2-car 'Garage-Mahal' with central heat and
air, so we can practice in peace and comfort... but who benefits more - us, or
his family and neighbors? It's fun and I'm glad I was asked to join.
I'm also on a quest to get a new gas cap for our lawn mower. Apparently it
either fell off during a mowing, or it was taken off by someone when they stole
our gas one night. I didn't notice it was missing until we returned from
Utah - and I'm sure the neighbors are ready to kill me because the lawn hasn't
been mowed in forever. Oddly enough, Lowes (where we bought the mower)
doesn't have gas caps as replacement parts for their mowers - just about every
other part you could want though. Time to check Home Depot and one of the
local mower repair shops.
- 22 August 2006 - We started up Ice House Brass Band Quintet
rehearsals. So every Tuesday night, I get the wonderful opportunity of
playing music with some of my favorite people from the Community Band.
Which is good - because I was 'jonesin' for a music fix, and this fills the
bill. Plus, since there isn't a big section of other Euph players to fall
back on, I have to work a little harder to site read and sound better - since
I'm all by myself on my part. We're going to be playing some small
Christmas parties, church gatherings, and maybe some weddings and other special
occasions where some nice instrumental music is appropriate but not quite a
full-on Brass Band. This should be fun.
- 19 August 2006 - Reloaded Windows XP back on Big Dawg after losing yet
another Western Digital Caviar hard drive (13GB - which held my XP operating
system), and unfortunately lost all of my e-mail from the past 14 months.
I had neglected to relocate my PST file last time I installed XP - crap!
At least I was able to back up all of my important stuff (pictures, music,
artwork, and other important stuff) onto my laptop before I left on my trip.
Oh well - but that's two WD's that are toast... and most people seem to have
issues with Maxtors - which seem to love me. The drive died on Mom while
she was babysitting the animals and house. No biggee though. I ran
on Red Hat Fedora the whole week or so while BigDawg's XP OS was down - which
will make for interesting times after I get Rusty's hard drive reinstalled and
put back on the shelf. I just need a 4-port KVM (and relative cables) to
make that happen. I can't decide if I should make Rusty a Linux machine,
or make the server a Linux box instead. Gonna hafta think this through
some more.
- 11 August 2006 - Made it back to San Angelo finally. All-in-all,
not a bad trip driving and I had a great time getting my Utah fix. I hope
it's not another 6 years before we can go back, but we'll see how things go.
- 10 August 2006 - Left Monticello (after picking up a couple six-packs of
Wasatch Brewing Company's Polygamy Porter) and made it all the way to Lubbock,
TX (through some rather scary looking rain and a bout of loose gravel - that
left some rock chips in the new paint...). And crashed overnight - there
really ain't crap in Lubbock, despite its size... we were downtown next to Texas
Tech and not all that impressed. We'll make every effort to keep
Lubbock on the 'drive-thru' list during future trips.
- 9 August 2006 - Went back to The Sparrow's for another visit before leaving
SLC to head back to San Angelo. Left SLC around 2:00PM... not wanting to
go. Made it to Monticello, UT around 8:00PM and had dinner in a really
nice restaurant called The Lamp Light or something like that. Most
excellent food and service, I must say.
- 8 August 2006 - Found a cool coffee house with free wireless internet and
spent a couple hours just chillin'. Mocca Express in the plaza located at
13th East and 7800 South - awesome! Also grabbed some more pictures of the
Sandy area while I was out. Went to Smith's on 104th South and 13th East
for some stuff to take to dinner.
Also, got in touch with my pal Baab's sister and another close friend and had
dinner at her place. We had a great visit and just relaxed. I was
still so amazed at how nice Salt Lake City is in the summertime compared to San
Angelo - it was in the low 70s by 10:30PM... which is a stark comparison to San
Angelo where it's still hovering above 90 at 11:00PM. Green grass, nice
evening temps, and about another hour more of twilight thanks to the
mountains... what's not to love? Someday hopefully...
- Kinda just vegged on the 7th - her back was messed up and I kinda didn't
really have much planned to do outside of the reunion events anyway.
- 6 August 2006 - Met up with The Sparrows, some of my mom's dearest old
friends (and even more important people I spent time with growing up) and had a
great visit.
- 5 August 2006 - 20th Year Class Reunion. Holy Cow. Had a great
time at the breakfast/tour of Alta High. It's changed a bunch... but still
felt like the old school. Hooked up with some friends I've known since
grade school (and seemed to have more in common with them than the handful of
people from High School that I recognized). Lots of fun. I was also
happy to finally get some face time with the folks from the reunion committee
that I'd been e-mailing for so long - great bunch of people.
Skipped the golf tournament, since what I do on a course can't exactly be called
'Golf.' I understand most of the participants had games and scores that
even the PGA Pros would envy.
The evening event was great. I received some recognition for my work on
the website. I also won an iPod Nano for having driven the farthest
distance to attend (the ones who flew the farthest received one as well).
I'm also now known to the whole class as the guy who 'did the website,' and wore
checkerboard Vans slip-ons to the 20th year reunion. It was fun catching
up with a couple more of my favorite people that night as well. We also
ran into an old girlfriend at the reunion (yes, her - long story...) but
my wife was good with it. My initial thought: Why was she there? I
mean - really. She graduated a year later than I did after all, so there's
no real reason for her to be there. I know why she tagged along with her
pal who actually was part of my class (who's husband is in Iraq) - and I'm not
surprised at the logic or reasoning... they're that close of friends and I'm
cool with that. But I wasn't expecting (or hoping for that matter) to ever
see her again - and there she was. Oh well. I was actually a little
worried about her being there would piss off my wife, but she actually enjoyed the meeting, although I'm
pretty sure it was not because she was happy to have met the one I thought was
'the one.' Oh well... as long as she had a good time and there weren't any
cat-fights in the parking lot I didn't hear about... I'm good. And that's
about all of the weirdness I had to endure, so it's all good.
I'm so glad I went. And I hope I don't have to travel as far for the 30th
Year Reunion.
- 4 August 2006 - Went to a few stores for some things we'd need for the
reunion events the following day. Snagged a nice silk dressy T-shirt and
belt, and she got a professional make-over at Dillard's... which was a little
more than we would've thought possible to spend on a couple of make-up items -
but she was happy with the results, so that's all that matters. Had a nice
dinner at T.G.I. Friday's at South Towne Mall. Also went by the Popish's
again and swiped some of their Wi-Fi internet access to check e-mail and do a
couple of quick Class Reunion web-page editions - probably looked a little odd
surfing the 'net from their driveway.
- 3 August 2006 - Spent the day with the Popish's and had a wonderful time.
- 2 August 2006 - finally made it into town (SLC, UT!!!) around 11:45PM.
We made good time to Albuquerque, NM, where we stayed over night. And the
trip was going well until we hit Gallup - that place has been torn up since
before 1999! WTF is wrong with those people?! Can they not get the
damn road repaired or something? Thanks to I-40 being torn up at the exit
we needed to take for Cortez, CO and on to Monticello, UT, we missed it
altogether. Not to mentioned it's been renamed from U.S. 666 to U.S. 491.
As a result - we drove on to Arizona and took U.S. 191 to Monticello... which
worked out because it's where we needed to go anyway. But it added around
2 hours to our trip because 191 is messed up and not a true North-South route.
Once we hit Monticello, we grabbed some dinner and left around 6:00PM for SLC.
Nothing major happened along the way and we made good time.
- 1 August 2006 - Cool - finally on vacation and taking off for Utah this
morning - I can't believe my 20th Year Class Reunion is on the 5th - 20 YEARS!!!
Geez... anyway, we're staying at a place called Studio 6 on 975 East and 6600
South. Got a mega rate for only $43.00 a night - it's an extended
stay-type hotel and was a lot nicer than we were expecting. We'll be back.
- 3 July 2006 - Wow - been awhile. Not much has changed though.
Community Band rehearsals started up again in March, and I can't believe the
last concert of the season is only 5 weeks away... and I'll have to miss it
because I'll be in Utah for my 20th year high school class reunion. I was
actually tempted to blow off the reunion just so I could make the concert -
playing in the band again is almost as a bad as having a crack habit... it's so
much fun and I enjoy it so much.
- 11 February 2006 - Couple of things been going on.
The Alta High Class of 1986 website is starting to get a life of its own.
More people are showing up and signing the guest book. It looks like it
might be playing a useful part in helping with the upcoming class reunion after
all.
I've been working on a drawing for a friend, well - more like revisiting an old
drawing I did back in High School. It's on the 'In Progress' page in the
Artworks section/ I'm going to try and have something going all the
time... I'd hate to wake up one day and no longer have my drawing abilities.
Our next Brass Band rehearsal is this coming Thursday. There's a
performance slated for 25 March at Fort McKavett - this should be fun. I
really love playing again.
- 16 January 2006 - I just received my new Yamaha Silent Brass
practice mute for my Euphonium. This will be especially helpful in keeping
the noise of me practicing under control, as my wife has a rather bizarre
schedule thanks to all the medication she's on. For those who don't know
what a practice mute and/or a Euphonium is, here's a picture:
Jupiter Euphonium and Yamaha Silent Brass
