Posts tagged as day-to-day
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- Monday, May 20, 2013:
Weekend Wrap-up The first half of the weekend was quiet and nondescript. We sat on the back porch with a pinot grigot on Friday night, diligently waiting for the cicadas to arrive, but all we saw was a fearless skunk boldly rooting around in the backyard like a truffle pig. On Saturday, I went to Costco for the essentials, such as five pounds of steak and a new badminton net (after nine years, the original net looks like public school gym equipment). I then worked on Bugler in the afternoon while Rebecca did female stuff like yoga and haircuts. We had a late dinner at Taste of Burma and then watched 30 Rock until we fell asleep. Sunday afternoon was the huge NOVA graduation, for which we spent a half hour sitting o... - Monday, May 06, 2013:
Weekend Wrap-up On Friday night we ordered carryout from Joe's Pizzaria, where I discovered a new candidate for the "most consistent wings" award, with a crispy shell and juicy meat. I feel like many of the wing chains I've been to tend to overhype wings with the consistency of an 80-year-old woman's bicep. We also watched Kiss Kiss Bang Bang , which Rebecca had heard about in a radio interview with Robert Downey Jr. On Saturday, I loaded up on unnecessary Costco goods, and we had a Cinco de Mayo barbeque one day early. Our barbeque features the "Beers of Mexico" sampler pack, a fresh pineapple, and andouille chicken sausages. Sunday was a recovery day -- I worked on Bugler and Rebecca worked on her last... - Monday, April 29, 2013:
Weekend Wrap-up Friday Took the day off and released Bugler v0.1.0 , the first of 17 developmental point releases before an initial public release. Had Carne Asada for dinner at Los Toltecos, courtesy of the useless Virginia State Tax Refund debit card (by using it only at restaurants, I can always tip in round numbers and easily keep track of the balance). Saturday Cleaned out the basement guest room in anticipation of a future basement dweller, who will continue the legacy started by Eric and Kathy in 2004 - 2005. Finally started reading The Mythical Man Month , because the more people tell me that a book is a mus... - Monday, April 22, 2013:
Weekend Wrap-up Our weekend opened with sushi and sake from Wegmans, which is still the best "cheap, pre-packaged" sushi we've found in the area. We ate shrimp tempura while finishing the second season of Game of Thrones , which was good but felt a little unnecessarily drawn out. On Saturday night, we took one of our annual trips into D.C. where we parked at a meter that was etched with "Monday through Friday, through 10 PM" and augmented with a sticker reading "Also Saturday, through 10 PM" underneath a street sign that said "Monday through Sunday, through 6:30 PM". Not sure who to believe, we paid the meter at the exorbitant rate of 25 cents per 8 minutes. We then walked over to Annie's townhouse to celebrate Marc's 30th B... - Monday, April 15, 2013:
Weekend Wrap-up This weekend, I started work on a new pet project, Bugler , a free open-source Issue Tracker. I was looking for a way to rejuvenate my web development skills, which were running on the fumes of technology versions released when I was still single. I also spend enough time complaining about other Issue Trackers that I wanted to put my money where my mouth is and see if I could do any better. As you can see, I already have a better name and logo than most existing software on the market, and that's easily 95% of the development challenge right there. It's actually pretty challenging to write a web application these days, because there are more libraries and frameworks and toolkits available than ever befo... - Monday, April 08, 2013:
Weekend Wrap-up We managed to make it to the weekend with three and a half tomato plants, and the weakest one might even bounce back in spite of the frost. This means that we probably won't need to waste another $3.99 on replacements and can donate that much more to our retirement funds. On Saturday, I wrapped up work on DDMSence v2.2.0, the leading (and only) open-source software for DDMS and then headed over to my parents' house to celebrate my Mom's upcoming birthday. The beginning of April is the busiest season for birthdays, according to the Birthday Calendar in the sidebar, so if you're planning on kids and want them to feel like a snowflake, shoot for a February birthday instead. My sister was in town with t... - Wednesday, April 03, 2013:
Tomato Day We now qualify for farm subsidies. - Monday, April 01, 2013:
Weekend Wrap-up I spent much of the weekend writing open source software, which is much like my day job but with far less money involved. In total, I probably spent 24 hours over the course of three days writing code while listening to the Jazz Funk Pandora station. On Friday night, we watched the Director's Cut of Amadeus , which Rebecca had never seen and I hadn't watched in years, over a meal of Chipotle. During the night, I was awoken around 3:24 AM by a return of the ghost raccoons that previously visited in 2010 and 2005 . It was not raining, and the visit only lasted about 6 minutes, but things were definitely scampering all over the roof above the bedroom. On Saturday eve... - Monday, March 25, 2013:
Weekend Wrap-up Friday night is always yoga night for Rebecca, which means that it's always video game night for me. After her return, we had a Safeway pizza and watched the movie, This is 40 , starring Paul Rudd as Paul Rudd. Stay tuned for the review on Thursday! I worked on a side coding project for much of Saturday, in the grey area between being useful at work and not billed to work (archiving JIRA projects). On Saturday evening, we went out to Ben & Anna's for dinner and a round of the caption game. Ella is turning 6 in a couple weeks, which should now make you feel old if you've been reading the URI! Zone since her birth . On Sunday, I drove out to my parents' for the first oil change in the new ... - Monday, March 18, 2013:
Weekend Wrap-up - Monday, March 11, 2013:
Weekend Wrap-up We continued our tradition of going out of town for a relaxing weekend on the same weekend as Daylight Savings Time, because apparently we have not learned that staying in a Bed and Breakfast when you spring ahead is one hour less cost effective than a normal weekend. Our original plan was to head to Waynesboro, VA (correctly guessed by Kathy last Friday) and then do some hiking on the Appalachian Trail. The 15 inches of snow in and around town changed our plans just a bit. After a stop at the Pollak Winery on Friday afternoon, we checked into the Belle Hearth B&B (complete with 2 inn cats), and had an excellent dinner at the Green Leaf Grill in town. On Saturday, we parked near the entrance to the ... - Friday, March 08, 2013:
Rorschach Day We will be driving to a town somewhere in Virginia this afternoon. This is an aerial map of the area, with main roads in blurry black. The name of the town has 3 syllables, but is much funnier when pronounced with 4. We had planned to do a very specific activity nearby, but it is closed today and will probably still be closed tomorrow. What town are we visiting? - Wednesday, March 06, 2013:
Snow Day This snowstorm is out of control. Hide your kids and hide your wife. EDIT: I spoke too soon. - Monday, March 04, 2013:
Weekend Wrap-up I had a pretty quiet weekend, during which I put in some overtime, had a parent dinner for my Dad's birthday, and finished the second season of Justified . Looking ahead, I'm excited about this potential snowfall we're expecting on Wednesday. However, I dislike this habit we've gotten into of naming our snowstorms before they even arrive, and picking crappy names at that. I'm sure that it took all of two minutes to invent "Snowquester", but the official rules of the science of "mashing words together" require that the two words share a first syllable sound (snow + mobile = snobile). You can't just replace random syllables in the word, which is why the annual "Howl-O-Scream" event at Busch Gardens is not wort... - Monday, February 25, 2013:
Weekend Wrap-up: Luma Theater of Light In lieu of the usual holiday party at a local hotel bar, my company did something a little different on Saturday night, apparently stressed out that they would have to top the awesome Air and Space Museum gala they held last summer. The evening's entertainment was "Luma Theater" at the Strathmore in Bethesda, with our free tickets normally running over $30. The show was disappointing, starting from the forty minutes we sat on the road outside the venue while Obama's motorcade departed from the previous event, denying us the mingling and libation time that would have greatly improved the Luma portion of the evening. After arriving in our free seats at the back of the theater, we became inured to a two hour show inv... - Monday, February 11, 2013:
Weekend Wrap-up Here is a round from a game of Telestrations, played on Saturday night with the Ahlbins and the Smiths. The game is like a round-robin Pictionary / Telephone hybrid. Yum! - Monday, February 04, 2013:
Weekend Wrap-up It snowed all weekend long in Sterling, but the total accumulation still ended up being zero -- a level of payoff not experienced since I last watched the complete LOST series. In between the flurries, I put in some voluntary overtime, getting a particularly persnickety project building on a continuous integration server and writing data access objects. I also hit Costco on Saturday morning to secure a box of bacon-wrapped beef tenderloins with Gorgonzola cheese. In the afternoon, I fixed a rattling damper vent in the depths of my ducts, using only a piece of carpet stapled to a leftover piece of molding and my dad's snake-like spy camera. For dinner on Saturday night, we tried something... - Monday, January 28, 2013:
Weekend Wrap-up The weekend started off on Friday with unsustainable excitement (not unlike the Matrix trilogy), front-loaded with the wedding of Married Evil Mike and Taje in Arlington. It coincided with an overhyped snow event that saw less than an inch of snow fall on the area and forced NOVA Community College to close early. Being in the wedding, I was unable to take my usual assortment of wedding photos, since there was no place to stick my camera that was not inappropriate. However, Rebecca subbed in and got some nice shots (most of which are on Facebook at the moment) while I did wedding party stuff and ate dinner from the paella station. On Saturday, I returned the rental suit and its five thousand accessor... - Friday, January 25, 2013:
Wedding Day I'm busy grooming Evil Mike for marriage all day! - Tuesday, January 22, 2013:
Weekend Wrap-up On Friday evening, we went to a local Pizzaria (Joe's) for the 18th birthday of Rebecca's cousin. We followed this up with a swing dance event at the Dulles Hilton, which was pretty far outside of my comfort zone. Given that the only previous swing dance experiences I've had include a horribly failed attempt to get the Marching Virginians to swing dance during "Zoot Suit Riot" in 1997 and a Knights of Columbus event with Anna's family in Colonial Beach, I maxed out my abilities with "rock-stepping" by the end of the evening. Who puts a six beat dance move in a four beat measure anyhow? On Saturday, I worked on and released DDMSence v2.1.0 , and the site was promptly swarmed by visitors from China in search of... - Monday, January 07, 2013:
Weekend Wrap-up To celebrate the upcoming nuptials of Evil Mike, a subset of his groomsmen threw him in the trunk on Saturday and drove him to MagFest at the National Harbor. Contrary to his initial guess, "Mag" stands for "Music and Gaming" -- we were not taking him to a magazine show. MagFest was apparently a much bigger deal than I thought it was, with teeming masses of unwashed gamers flowing viscously through the massive hangar underneath the Gaylord Hotel. The convention center was packed with free arcade machines, consoles of every era, PCs, and even a wall full of Settlers of Catan and other nerd games with plenty of tabletop space available. This was my first "CON" experience outside of pictures on the Internet, and it was abo... - Tuesday, January 01, 2013:
2012 Wrap-Up F 12/21: Took off work a day early for good behaviour. Made steaks for dinner and watched Love Actually with women (and Marc). The steaks made it more manly. S 12/22: Rebecca went out with Elizabeth for a pedicure and returned with a deer sausage. S 12/23: Went in to D.C. with Annie and Marc to see various Christmas trees and eat beef (with extra Moist) at Hill Country. M 12/24: Watched Anna Karenininina with Rebecca's parents, ate an early Eve dinner at Applebee's, and went to a Presby service in the evening. T 12/25: Put on " Fireplace Classics starring Fireplace" from Amazon Prime and had a Christmas at hom... - Monday, December 17, 2012:
Weekend Wrap-up After burgers at Red Robin on Friday night (where the new Jim Bean Burger was good, but a little too sweet and incorporated cold accoutrement), we took a walk through the Christmas lights at East Juniper Avenue. Visible on the Internet as a prime light spot, it was decent, if not really a destination street for out-of-towners. One house had an animatronic Santa singing rapid-fire Christmas songs while dancing, like a six-year-old with extra sugar. On Saturday we had brunch at the Original Pancake House with Rebecca's East Moline relatives and then had liberal amounts of cheese soup for dinner. Post-dinner, we went to a housewarming at the new home of Rebecca's yoga instructor, where everyone either did yoga or w... - Thursday, December 06, 2012:
MP3 Cleanup Day It took fifteen years to coast over the slow rise of apathy, but I finally got around to pruning 10 hours of music out of my MP3 collection. This is the first time EVER that I've permanently retired any of my music, but I finally reached the point where I was skipping the same songs over and over (because Honda is incapable of coding a random-play radio that can play the whole list before repeating a song). My tastes have evolved, Galapagos-style. - Tuesday, December 04, 2012:
2012 Timeline A smattering of events from 2012 In the grand scheme of things, 2012 was a rather disappointing year, because I committed so much of it to work. This only happens ever 2 or 3 years, but is definitely more noticeable when married rather than single. I still like my job a whole lot more often than I hate it though -- I get to work my brain to come up with innovative solutions and make enough money to buy lots of really bad television shows and video games. January : I average 60 hours per week at work on UNIVERSAL CORE while Rebecca returns to Physical Therapy school. We try to escape to Charlotte for New Years, but are thwarted by Booty's urinary tra... - Monday, December 03, 2012:
Weekend Wrap-up Steam-cleaned the carpet from a year's supply of cat vomit and barbeques with children. Hung the pale blue Christmas lights of subtle cheer. Restocked supplies of yogurt, steak, and wine at Costco. Upgraded the Wiki software used by the division at work. Refinished the seventh season of 24 while on the treadmill. Ate flautas at Los Toltecos. Watched Life of Pi in a ridiculously small theater. Installed a new light fixture in the dining area. Finished Christmas shopping, 100% online for the third or fourth year in a row. Played ... - Monday, November 26, 2012:
Weekend Wrap-up I took off Tuesday through Friday last week, after having looked at my leave pool for the annual leave sale at work and realizing that I had something like seven weeks saved up. We kicked off the Thanksgiving holiday with a free screening of Planes, Trains, and Automobiles on Amazon Prime, along with some chicken pot pies and the last dregs of leftover wine from our Halloween party. On Thanksgiving Day itself, we went out to Edgewater, Maryland to visit my sister and her husband and drove around both halves of the Beltway in a single day. We did not take any HOT lanes, as the fluctuating fare was $1.60 and the main lanes were traffic-free. We went bowling with Rebecca's parents on Friday aft... - Friday, November 23, 2012:
Day Off - Thursday, November 22, 2012:
Thanksgiving Day or "Thursday", according to Brianne For the first time in nine years, I did not have a separate Thanksgiving Dinner every Sunday throughout the month. This year, we just had one quiet one with the Ahlbins on Veterans Day, to be followed up with two Family Thanksgivings during the rest of this week. Apologies to anyone who was desperate for cheese soup! Happy Thanksgiving! - Friday, November 16, 2012:
Training Day: Hadoop for Laymen I've spent this past week in a company-provided training course, which has had a few decent nuggets of information (and free lunches) to balance out the otherwise slow pace of the course and the need to drive to Tysons Corner during rush hour. There are also people in the class from some of our "sister companies" that remind me of the CS majors from my undergrad: eager to showcase their knowledge, catch the instructor in a fallacy, or drive the discussion off a tangential cliff of irrelevant details. I learn best on my own, so I would usually read ahead in the slides, do the exercises, and then tune out the rest of the day on Reddit or doing my day job. The material that we learned is based on the concept of MapReduce, ... - Thursday, November 15, 2012:
Mike Day Mike (of Mike and Chompy) says hi. - Tuesday, October 30, 2012:
Hurricane Day Remember back in high school when you would gamble on the likelihood of a snow day by not completing your homework the night before? Well, that's why I have nothing prepared for today's post. I've had belches stronger than this hurricane. In other news, we have begun to use dirt as currency. - Friday, October 26, 2012:
Party in the (B)USA We're open for murder business... - Monday, October 22, 2012:
Weekend Wrap-up The town of Winchester and I recently got a divorce, so we are splitting custody of Rebecca for the rest of the year: I get her on the weekends, and she goes to her physical therapy clinic in Winch-town for the other five days. This was the first weekend back, so we engaged in mostly American pastimes, such as eating dinner at Red Robin, or eating dinner at Maggiano's, or sitting on the couch watching TV ( Chuck , as recommended by Paige) with Booty. We also started combining the bit parts of our Halloween costumes together to make sure we're prepared. I have a few simple rules for costume selection: It can't be so bulky that I don't fit anywhere, hands and mouth must be clear for devouring food and beverages, a... - Wednesday, October 03, 2012:
Anniversary Day Three years ago... And today! The pond is slightly larger than it once was. And, the wine is more pricey. - Monday, October 01, 2012:
Weekend Wrap-up I spent the entire weekend moping around with a sore throat and low-grade fever, which is not unlike a fever that went to public school. Meanwhile, my sister had her second son on Friday. Nephew #2 is named William Aubrey Binder. The "Aubrey" is after my maternal grandfather, and the "Binder" is for the school supply of the same name. Congratulations! Babies everywhere! - Monday, September 17, 2012:
Weekend Wrap-up My weekend encompassed drunken noodles from Pattaya Thai, a trip to Costco for some Sam Adams Hazel Brown beer, games of Guild Wars 2, Skyrim, and Okami, sushi at Yamazato, chocolate marble birthday cake from scratch, a screening of Kick-Ass , 40 minutes on the treadmill, hot dogs grilled on the stove, and a trip to Edgewater, Maryland for my nephew's 2nd birthday party. Now that I'm 33, it's time to take up more age-appropriate hobbies, such as: landscaping driving a Volvo flag football managing bone density brewing my own beer buying things at Brookstone growing hair unexpectedly buying a ridi... - Friday, September 14, 2012:
Birth Day Actually, my 33rd birthday isn't until tomorrow, but it would be virtually criminal for me to post on a Saturday. - Monday, August 27, 2012:
List Day: Stuff Going On On Saturday, I started development work on the next version of DDMSence , in order to keep my open source street cred from expiring. I'm currently in the middle of watching Breaking Bad (S2), My Name is Earl (S1), and rewatching 24 (S4) while on the treadmill. I'm in the middle of cleaning up the basement for upcoming barbeques and potential Halloween parties, since it hasn't been used all year long. I loaned my six pound Mickey Mouse bowling ball from junior high school to the son of our neighbours. It was just gathering dust in the closet in a makeshift bowling ball bag composed of an Eastpak backpack with a broken zipper ... - Monday, August 20, 2012:
Weekend Wrap-up This past weekend was one of the busiest of the year, starting with a Friday night showing of Stick It , which I was reminded of while researching Friday's post and thought that Rebecca would get a kick out of, now that the Olympics have ended. On Saturday morning, we went to Rebecca's parents' house and did some kayaking on Lake Barcroft. The outing was nicely aligned with the first hot-cool day of the summer, where it didn't feel agonizing to be outside in the humidity (since Virginia is the armpit of the East Coast during the summer). In the evening, we had a Persian dinner at the home of one of Rebecca's PT classmates in yuppy-Sterling. On Sunday, we had our first e... - Monday, August 06, 2012:
And we're back. My fifteen days of vacation this year are now at an end! - Friday, August 03, 2012:
An apropos location for a "flight" We have now been to the Outer Banks Brewery for two separate meals. - Thursday, August 02, 2012:
Memory like a steel trap. Our house, "At Last", is directly across the street from the Wright Brothers Days Inn, which is useful for both its easy beach access and unsecured Wifi. The building looked very familiar to me, and I confirmed yesterday that this is, indeed, the place where my family stayed on our very first Nags Head trip in the late 80s. Our room had a kitchenette so we never had to eat out, and we went through an economist-sized allotment of canned dinners. It rained at least two of the days we were there, and we played five-card draw with plastic poker chips stored in a Planters peanut can. - Tuesday, July 31, 2012:
The Smiths have arrived. The weather in the Outer Banks is perfect -- mostly overcast with the occasional nighttime thunderstorm, hot and humid, yet windy, and ocean temperatures over 85 degrees. When I was a kid, I thought the coolest people at the beach were the guys with the metal detectors. Now, I seem to realize that they are all poorly-aged bachelors combing the beach for riches they never find. - Monday, July 30, 2012:
I'm at the beach. What the "At Last" beach house lacks in modern appliances, reliable Internet, beach toys, and charm, is mostly made up by a ridiculously short walk to the beach (less than 100 yards), a screened porch, and a crow's nest with a refreshing evening breeze. - Wednesday, July 25, 2012:
Canada Travelogue, Part III of III At one time, it seems like Mont-Tremblant might have been three separate towns, a commercial strip along the highway with your standard gas stations and chain restaurants, an old town full of B&Bs and affordable local restaurants, and a bizarre ski resort town where a burger is $20. Nowadays, all three sections are renamed "Mont-Tremblant", resulting in an array of unhelpful, identical highway exit signs which anxiously hope to direct lost souls towards the priciest portion. This devious Canadian trap might work if the locals at the numerous information offices weren't so friendly, disdainful of the resort, and careful to point you to the more charming areas where "the food and the prices are honest". For... - Tuesday, July 24, 2012:
Canada Travelogue, Part II of III From Quebec City, we drove back down Route 40, catching a funny episode of This Is That (3.4MB MP3) on the radio and stopping briefly in Trois-Rivieres for a lunch of barbeque poutine. Trois-Rivieres was a quaint town, but didn't seem to have much to offer for more than a few hours of entertainment. On the other hand, they were setting up a giant pool on the boardwalk for a wakeboarding competition, and a live chess competition was in progress . Nonetheless, we were back on the road as soon as the poutine was digesting, and made it into Montreal in the late afternoon. Montreal was definitely a more urban venue than Quebec City -- in my sheltered suburban mind, a city is characterized by graffit... - Monday, July 23, 2012:
Canada Travelogue, Part I of III Our trip to Canada came about because we were too busy with school and work to plan our summer vacation earlier this year. Once May rolled around, flight prices were skyrocketing and choices were slimming. A Montreal-Quebec trip turned out to be the perfect antidote, and was easily one of the best vacations we've ever taken. Plus, the Canadian dollar is slightly depressed right now, so every time I withdrew $200 CAD from my bank account, I had the bonus euphoria of seeing only $195 US removed online. Thanks Canada! Two Wednesdays ago, we woke up at the incapacitatingly early hour of 4 AM to fly into Montreal (by way of JFK). After an uneventful flight, we hit the road for Quebec City around noon. Driving in Cana... - Thursday, July 19, 2012:
Conquering Mont-Tremblant There will be no updates tomorrow, as I'll be flying home! - Wednesday, July 18, 2012:
I'm famous here. - Tuesday, July 17, 2012:
Oh look, another free music festival. Oh look, more acrobats. - Monday, July 16, 2012:
Oui, J'ai BU. - Friday, July 13, 2012:
In Case You Did Not Believe that Cirque du Soleil Was Crazy - Monday, July 02, 2012:
Weekend Wrap-up We had a violent windstorm called a derecho sweep in from out of town and destroy everything on Friday night, and the fact that we don't even have an English term for it tells me that something is wrong with immigration policy. The initial gust of wind split the neighbor's tree right down the middle to come crashing into my backyard. I was in my home office working on a proposal only fifteen yards away, so it was lucky that the branch hadn't fallen at a slightly different angle. As it was, I NARROWLY ESCAPED WITH MY LIFE, and the tree is allowed to get closer and closer to my office in subsequent retellings in future years. While I was running through the house dangerously looking through all of the windows ... - Thursday, June 28, 2012:
Back Day, Part II Booty hasn't moved in five hours. Apparently back problems are contagious. If you wish to remain a productive member of society that doesn't have to balance a laptop on his or her stomach to do work, please stay away. On the other hand, if you could use a break from the daily day-to-day and want to catch my malady, come on by and we'll lie on the couch and watch an entire season of Veronica Mars while consuming the remaining supply of chicken fingers, extra buttered popcorn, and cream cheese in my fridge. - Wednesday, June 27, 2012:
Back Day Yesterday morning, I somehow managed to throw out my back while bending over my laptop to check my email saving a small child from the path of an oncoming dump truck. Since then, I have been homebound, slowly shuffling around the house with an excessively curved back, not unlike a D3 Witch Doctor. In yoga terminology, I can cat just fine but seem to have misplaced the muscles needed to cow. It's a weird feeling, because it's not necessarily that painful -- it just feels like a few muscles that I once relied upon have mysteriously vanished. Since the aging process has apparently accelerated, I expect to get my first gray hair tomorrow, after which I will have dinner at 4:30 PM and watch Wheel of Fortune o... - Monday, June 25, 2012:
List Day: Bachelor Plans Rebecca leaves on a 1000 mile road trip tomorrow, burrowing into the Midwest like a prairie dog after farm subsidies. When it comes to driving and vacations, we dwell in two separate camps: I was indoctrinated to think that the drive is a necessary evil keeping you from the fun, so its length should be minimized via 4 AM departures, radar detectors, and traffic avoidance, while to Rebecca, the trip itself is part of the vacation. So for this trip, I will be staying home and making my own fun. Here are some of the fun activities I have planned: DDMSence 2.1.0 Adding boolean operators to the URI! Zone Search box Mowing the lawn and repairing the string trimmer ... - Monday, June 18, 2012:
Weekend Wrap-up We opened our weekend on Friday afternoon with a trip to the Taste of Reston event, which was merely an excuse to walk up and down a street eating paella, crabcakes, ribs, shortcake, gelato, and sliders, while consuming overpriced Dominion Ale. We didn't hear much from the various local bands, as they had more technical difficulties than play time, but at least one of the DJ booths seemed intent on playing every single choreographed wedding song known to man. Rebecca spent Saturday working on one of her summer assignments for school while I did nothing of any remote utility. In the evening, we drove out to Purcellville for delicious subs at the lazily-named "My Deli and Cafe", and then took in a performance of the... - Friday, June 01, 2012:
Treadmill Follow-up Day I previously reviewed the Horizon T202 Treadmill in our basement back in March. We've now owned the beast for five months, and it's played a successful role in my continuing quest to eliminate all outdoor activities from my life. At the beginning of 2012, I set the attainable goal of walking or running for 2 hours per week, and then met or exceeded expectations every week since. Given that my former level of exercise was 0 hours per year, the 56 hours of walking and running so far this year has been a nice bonus. I have also dropped 9 pounds, and since all weight loss can be extrapolated linearly, I expect to hit my eighth grade coxswain weight in January 2014, and my birth weight about four years after ... - Monday, May 07, 2012:
Weekend Wrap-up The weekend, in list form: Purchased a 2012 Honda Accord EX-L V6 with butt-warmers Tried to order carryout from Pizzario's only to learn that the owners had moved further north into Cascades, into a new location with a new name, but the same menu and the same complete lack of customers Had bachelor time while Rebecca was on a wine country trip Cleaned the house, did the laundry, and mowed the lawn Started watching Game of Thrones , which I'm liking much more than I expected I would Paid the first half of my Loudoun County house tax Volunteered for the 3 PM - 11 PM shift for another project a... - Friday, May 04, 2012:
New Car Day UPDATE : Car secured. - Monday, April 30, 2012:
Weekend Wrap-up The weekend, in list form: Had a steak burrito for dinner on Friday night, since the nearest Chipotle is conveniently and healthily next door to Rebecca's yoga studio. Watched stand-up routines of Craig Shoemaker, Mike Birbiglia, and Mitch Fatel on Amazon Prime's twelve free seasons of Comedy Central Standup. Did a mild amount of work-work which, thankfully, is no longer the norm. Went out to dinner on Saturday at "Taste of the World" in Herndon. Buried in an industrial park, this restaurant has an eclectic mix of Asian, Latin American, and Indian foods. Worth a return visit. Played Diablo 2 some more, until I finally got sick of it again ... - Monday, April 23, 2012:
Weekend Wrap-up This weekend was open beta weekend for Diablo 3, which gave everyone the privilege of trying and failing to login to overloaded servers. I reconnected with some old friends who are still inexplicably playing World of Warcraft regularly. It brought back memories from twelve years ago, when I first started working at FGM (upon the release of Diablo 2) and my officemate, Rick, would open every day by itemizing all of the loot that he had gathered the previous night. My plan to mow the lawn on Saturday was thwarted by the rainstorm. Rainstorms are procrastination personified -- they get you out of yard work, but then the grass is twice as high and harder to mow by the time the ground dries out. On Saturday night, we w... - Monday, April 16, 2012:
Weekend Wrap-up I tried to have an extended weekend to make up for the insane amounts of work I'd done recently, but ultimately ended up working half days on Thursday and Friday anyhow. The attempted staycation began with a bang on Wednesday night, when I was leaving a suit-worthy meeting in McLean and my car was hit by a young girl who was texting while making a left turn across rush hour traffic. Fortunately, we were only moving about three miles per hour at the time, and though her car took the worst of it, she only managed to scratch up my hubcap and swivel my side mirror. The scuffs are so minimal that it really just looks like I loaned my car to a Maryland driver for an afternoon. Since I needed my downtime to be as mindless as p... - Tuesday, April 10, 2012:
Birth Day Happy Birthday to my mom! - Monday, April 09, 2012:
Work Day I have now worked 99 of the 100 days in 2012. The outlier was Farm Day. We should be wrapping up this week, after which I can reclaim my life-work balance for the rest of the year! - Thursday, April 05, 2012:
You still visit here? I'm still working. - Wednesday, March 28, 2012:
Back-from-Norfolk Day The tidewater region of Virginia is very similar to Northern Virginia, except that if you make a wrong turn, you'll probably end up at a military base rather than a Panera. - Monday, March 19, 2012:
Weekend Wrap-up After this photo, I had a horrible case of hat-hair. - Tuesday, March 13, 2012:
Weekend Wrap-up This past weekend, we took a mini-vacation from our responsibilities and cats to return to Brightwood Farm for a weekend of goat-feeding and mild hiking. Following a couple tastings at the Molon Lave winery and the Old House winery, we ended up at the farm around 3 PM on Saturday. The farm has diversified since our last visit (about a year ago), and now includes a small cow, two new herding dogs, and plenty more chickens. We spent the afternoon hiking on the "Back 40" and then rolled through several hundred Madison County speed traps on Route 29 to eat at the Bavarian Chef restaurant, a casual, jam-packed, yet classy place in the middle of nowhere. I ordered the veal in mushroom, bacon,... - Monday, March 05, 2012:
Weekend Wrap-up This weekend marked the start of a wind-down at work, which means that I only worked full-time on one of the two days. We tried to go out for dinner at a local African restaurant on Saturday night, only to find that it (and most of the surrounding strip mall) had gone out of business before Christmas. Instead, we ended up back at Pattaya Thai for various grains in noodle-form. On Sunday morning, I started reading about new cars, and continued to wonder why the Honda Accord has gotten so massive in the past decade. I'll probably be getting a car in the same class as the Accord, since the only thing an Acura would get me is a higher insurance premium and fancier paint. Give me a radio that can play MP3s, an engine that su... - Monday, February 27, 2012:
Weekend Wrap-up I did not realize that "Total Editing Time" was one of the properties that Microsoft Word captured, and I probably would have preferred remaining in the dark about this particular measure. When not writing tutorials showing Turkish bombers flying over a veterinary hospital in Atlanta, or running on the treadmill watching the really awful part of 24 , Season One, involving amnesia, I was probably sleeping. However we did go to Don Pablo's on Saturday night for a very slow dinner and two-course carnitas (the tortillas came fifteen minutes later). We also watched the movie, Drive , which was interesting but not the type of movie I was expecting to watch. Ryan Gosling really looks like a less goo... - Tuesday, February 14, 2012:
Housiversary Day Celebrating eight years of living in the same place! Who does that anymore? As you can see below, the neighbourhood has really gone downhill, invaded by people with colour. Mostly orange. - Monday, February 06, 2012:
Weekend Wrap-up My weekend was a blur of work, involving tasty terminology like "functional allocation", "acceptance criteria", "schema development", and "change requests". I came up briefly for air to eat a Big Mac and some Shells and Cheese, and to get some obligatory treadmill time to negate the Big Mac and Shells and Cheese. On Sunday night, we went to the Crane's for the Super Bowl and the new fad of having a 10x10 betting grid based on the one's digit of each team's score. Through astute application of my math minor, I spread my risk across the board by treating it like a chess rook puzzle (how can you place 8 rooks on an empty chessboard so they can't kill each other) and managed to win $20 in the second quarter. Unfortunately, ... - Tuesday, January 24, 2012:
Paint Day To go along with HUNGOVER PEE in the kitchen, the living room has been designated as a CREAMY BEIGE zone, which is slightly warmer than the NOUGAT that used to be there (but which can no longer be obtained since the Sears Paint Department no longer exists). This also means that my ridiculous overstock of WINDJAMMER BLUE will see a second life on the railings and bannisters, replacing the existing PUFFIN BAY GREY. The problem with the railings is that it takes about two and a half coats of WINDJAMMER BLUE to cover up the PUFFIN BAY GREY completely. On the other hand, it also takes about two and a half coats to completely cover up a layer of primer. Life lesson: doing things the right way does not create any sor... - Monday, January 23, 2012:
Weekend Wrap-up Apparently, all you need to call yourself an Old Times Photo Booth these days are some props and a sepia-tone camera filter. iPad pushes page turners off the stage Farmer caught spray-painting birds as prank on birdwatchers - Monday, January 09, 2012:
Weekend Wrap-up In celebration of her last weekend before the next semester starts, Rebecca caught a cold. We stayed in on Friday night, eating a better-than-Totino's but worse-than-Pizza-Hut Safeway pizza and watching the pilot episode of Pushing Daisies . We're now juggling about seven different shows at the same time -- this is the kind of extreme television situation you can get in with a five-slot DVD player and an Amazon Prime subscription. On Saturday morning, my parents stopped by with 237 pounds worth of treadmill (the Horizon T202), which uses up all the remaining space in the basement -- we may have to knock down a wall to reduce claustrophobia down there. Since Rebecca was sick, I took the treadmill on its ... - Monday, December 19, 2011:
Weekend Wrap-up This weekend was one of the most social we've had in awhile. Now that Rebecca has finished her semester and aced her exams (which consisted of completely taking apart people who volunteered to be in a study and putting them back together again), we actually left the house on more than one occasion. The weekend opened with Gingerbread Night at Emily and Evil Brian's house. The representative image on the right shows how well-constructed our house was -- in no way did it completely collapse except for one wall when we started putting the shingles on. On Saturday, we watched The Hangover, Part II , which I felt was better than most sequels, but no better than the original. Ed Helms making up songs in every... - Tuesday, December 06, 2011:
2011 Timeline A smattering of events from 2011 January : We spent the New Year's holiday in Williamsburg. Paige came to visit and steal some DS games, because there is nothing to do in Russia. It sort of snowed, but everyone had run out of lame titles for the storm. I got a new computer, which has proven to be more annoying to configure than the previous one. Pattern detected. February : Kelley and Kathy move to northern Virginia and Kelley won at poker. I was rewarded at work for an alleged reputation for excellence. We went on an 18-mile hike on the Bull Run - Occoquan Trail. (I happened to stumble... - Monday, November 28, 2011:
Weekend Wrap-up The youngest of the five Spellerberg girls is now married, ending the family's virtual monopoly on weddings. More pictures are posted on Facebook, and better quality pictures will be posted on Picasa for End-of-the-Month Media day this week! Police charge man over suitcase of cash left in cafe UK burglar abuses "dumb" victim in apology letter - Monday, October 31, 2011:
Weekend Wrap-up Friday After work, I cleaned the house (which is part of my normal Friday afternoon routine although it sometimes alternates with mowing the lawn), did some reading, and played some Terraria , which is like a version of Minecraft that's actually finished and bug-free, and has the added bonus of not inducing migraines or prematurely advancing my nearsightedness. Saturday I was up early to head to my parents' house in Alexandria for an oil change and use of the computer with Firewire for some video editing, so I was a firsthand witness to the premature precipitation barely recognizable as snow, over which most of the local populace peed all over them... - Monday, October 24, 2011:
Weekend Wrap-up This seems to have been a fairly pivotal weekend, one that will generate angular momentum for the ages. I spent Thursday in Columbia, Maryland, where I gave a successful briefing on DDMSence to the DoD Metadata Working Group, had a half rack of ribs at the local TGIFriday's and then worked a midnight to eight shift at Fort Meade supporting another team on their 24/7 exercise. While I was offline, one of our reader family had a new daughter , and another got engaged . This culminated in the weekend wedding of Emily and Brian, adding one more to the pool of married Brians in the world. Congratulations to all! On Sunday, we slept in, resting and recuperating for the co... - Monday, September 26, 2011:
Weekend Wrap-up I did a twenty-hour surge of coding over the weekend to bring DDMSence to completion, at the expense of most of my leisure time and my 7th or 8th vertebrae. Now it's just a matter of beefing up documentation and waiting for the alien autopsy files which I bundle into every version to be approved for public release. When not coding or getting indigestion from eating all of the leftover cheese and crackers from the wedding shower that Rebecca hosted on Saturday, I caught up on my reading, which varies depending on the room I happen to be in at the time. In the kitchen, I'm reading the latest edition of Wired magazine. In the living room, it's The Corner , which essentially embodies the spirit,... - Monday, September 19, 2011:
Weekend Wrap-up With Rebecca out of town for a bachelorette wine tour this weekend, I took the opportunity to retreat into bachelorhood, spending much of the weekend either working on work, or coding DDMSence (I'm about 80 hours in on the next release). Between coding sessions, I read Hunger Games which I received on the Kindle for my birthday, listened to new CDs by Lenka and Mark Ronson, and tried out the indie (a.k.a doesn't cost $50) game, Deathspank , which I'm not completely sold on yet. On Saturday evening, I went stag to a classy barbeque where the bulk of the meats were ribeye steaks, with a few hot dogs on the side for the kids. This should be a new rule for what to serve at barbeques that do not ta... - Thursday, September 15, 2011:
Birth Day Coming tomorrow: The geospatial location of each picture. - Tuesday, September 06, 2011:
Weekend Wrap-up: By the Numbers Friday Work: 2 hours Coding: 8 hours Propane tanks exchanged: 1 Harry Potter books started: 1 (Book 5) Episodes of The Wire watched: 1 Saturday Trips through Costco: 1 Items purchased at Costco, having left the accepted credit card at home: 0 Coding: 5 hours Points scored by Virginia Tech before TV shutoff: 59 Mushroom swiss burgers eaten at Red Robin: 1 Episodes of The Wire watched: 1.5 Rain storms: 1 Sunday Coding: 3 hours Driving: 2 hours Harry Potter ... - Thursday, August 25, 2011:
Game Day Irene's going to give me the double-win! Animals Being Dicks GameStop opening Deus Ex boxes, removing free game code Bull semen spill causes scare, closes U.S. highway - Wednesday, August 24, 2011:
Aftermath Day In the aftermath of the 5.9 magnitude earthquake which tore through our simple town like a dotted line on Tuesday afternoon, I thought it best to capture some of the destruction on my camera, just in case I have problems with insurance agents later on. Thankfully, everyone is okay, but the amount of structural damage caused by this event is obscene. A sinkhole to hell, or possibly Petropavlovsk, has opened up in the kitchen: Sewage has backed up into the basement, and looting is rampant in the neighbourhood: Rebecca lost her right leg and eye from falling debris, which is severely impacting her study habits. In addition, Andy Richter has inexplicably arrived in our livin... - Monday, August 22, 2011:
Weekend Wrap-up On Friday evening, we met up with one of Rebecca's coworkers from the physical therapy clinic for dinner in Leesburg at the Doner Bistro. A doner is like an unfried calzone filled with shredded meat and coated in enough cucumber sauce that the entire affair is a squeezed frog every time you take a bite. I had a bacon beer with my meal and we watched a torrential downpour introduce itself to a BMW-with-open-sunroof at the fancy restaurant across the street. We followed dinner up with dessert at Milwaukee Custard, also in Leesburg at a shopping center with one of every yuppy essential from Petsmart to Pei Wei. I spent much of Saturday correcting my MIDI setup, and was able to reduce the input delay on my keyboard ... - Monday, August 15, 2011:
Weekend Wrap-up Time is slipping away like the Fairfax butt slasher, and there's only one month until I turn 32. This weekend was a fairly low-key one, and started with a Friday night dinner at the Tortilla Factory next to a table full of young moms, one whose child was probably named Joanna, based on the "Jo Momma" shirt the mom was wearing. From there, we ambled down to the pulsing night scene of Herndon downtown to hear Herr Metal, an 80s hair metal cover band. I did some DDMSence work in the morning on Saturday, followed by a Home Improvement marathon (where marathon is defined as "3 episodes") and a Game Night featuring Taboo and Costco mini quiches. Competition was intense, and by the end of the night there were an equal number o... - Friday, July 29, 2011:
Still at the Beach Day I am still at the beach today, but destined to return on Sunday. To date, I've read three 500 page books and started a fourth, although one was really boring so I skipped most of the essays it contained. I haven't done much on the computer, because the Internet connection is DSL, and I can almost get a faster download speed than 0.8 MB/sec via telepathy. I did do the owner a favour by encrypting their open WiFi hotspot to match the settings they thought they had, based on the index card on their fridge -- this is why you always want to rent your beach house to a computer scientist. If you hadn't heard, Anna and Ben had their third child, Kathryn Joy Ahlbin, on July 25. Since the middle naming scheme is to use ... - Wednesday, July 27, 2011:
Beach Day Breakfast this morning was bacon-chocolate-chip pancakes with a side of bacon and mimosas. - Monday, July 25, 2011:
Beach Day It's a little bright out here. - Wednesday, July 13, 2011:
Paint Selection Day It's time to decide which paint colors are worthy enough to exist in the same house as PUFFIN BAY GREY, Nougat, Windjammer Blue, Milk Chocolate, and whatever the name of that girly blue in my guest bedroom is called. Warrant for S.F. woman accused of bilking renters Wi-Fi Hacking Neighbor From Hell Sentenced to 18 Years How do you know when an elephant goes on vacation? - Thursday, July 07, 2011:
Travelogue Day In an effort to avoid traffic, I left for Charlotte on Friday night around 8 PM, carpooling with Emily and Evil Brian. Rebecca had been tooling around on a road trip for the past few days, so it was just the three of us driving down I-81. The trip wasn't as horrendous as past trips, because I-81 has finally entered the twentieth century with a 70 MPH speed limit. I took the wheel at Exit 222, and a giant box of Sweettarts coupled with every single song the Beach Boys have ever written got us safely to the hotel at Lake Norman at exactly 2:22 AM. It was one of those extended stay places with a kitchen, and our room looked exactly like the one I stayed at in New Jersey for Kathy's wedding five years ago. We oo... - Wednesday, July 06, 2011:
Release Day Following my Kurt-Russell-inspired escape from Charlotte, a city which is impossibly more humid than D.C., I spent ten hours yesterday coding and releasing DDMSence 1.10.0 , and then another two hours driving to, and winning, a volleyball game. I'll try to write up a Charlotte travelogue tomorrow, although if I get too lazy, it's Review Day for the lot of you. Clowns terrorize neighbourhood children BPA-exposed mice are undesirable to females Woman catches toddler after ten story fall - Tuesday, July 05, 2011:
Hot Dog Day Obviously, the burgeoning Asian-American community in Charlotte has never heard of Chun King chow mein (966KB MP3). July Fourth marked by parades, hot dogs What's inside the bun? - Friday, July 01, 2011:
Travel Day We're off to Lake Norman, North Carolina, this weekend for the wedding of Amanda and Frank, so updates will resume sometime next week, probably Tuesday, since I don't own any of those crazy accessories that will get an Internet connection on the highway. I am awful at hands-free website updating anyways. Enjoy your long weekend! Or if you don't have one, go on strike and make a principled stand to get one! Or if you're a replaceable cog, fashion a fake you out of straw, wax, and lard, leave it in your cubicle, and take the day off anyhow! Ingenuity is the American way. Koreqan noodle maker in hot water Tom Petty to Michele Bachmann: Quit Pla... - Thursday, June 30, 2011:
Conference Day It was yesterday morning when I was making a legal right turn on red (with no pedestrians present) that I was furiously honked at by a driver in a bright red Mustang. He was driving in the far lane of the two-lane road (Beauregard Street) I had turned onto, and was apparently so agitated that I had come within five and a half feet of marring his finish that he had a musical seizure, belting out some sort of angry Morse code on his horn for the next fifty yards. Evidently, he worked just a few blocks up the road, and as he pulled into his turn lane, he held some sort of law enforcement badge out his window (mounted on a square of black felt that was obviously too big for wallet-size) and gave me his best glare. I ass... - Tuesday, June 28, 2011:
Countertop Day Vanilla Ice actually turned out to be Vanilla Sugar. Paint suggestions welcome. For people who don't care about home improvement, here is a dancing nephew: Here's What Gunman Posted to Facebook During Standoff The creepiest trees on Earth Botox and texting may not mix - Monday, June 27, 2011:
Weekend Wrap-up Drinking out of nose cups. Badminton and Cornhole 3 out of 4 Brians endorse this cookout. Food! Escaped dog runs the Maryland Half Marathon Fans surprised to learn that Japanese pop idol isn't real Eight million gallons of water drained from reservoir after man urinates in it - Thursday, June 23, 2011:
Progress Day I'm about 130 pages (10%) through this giant book on XSLT and XPath , which is heavier than at least one of my cats and should round some of the knowledge I need in my new position. In kitchen land, dishwasher and icemaker hook up is today, and the Vanilla Ice countertops are scheduled to be installed next Monday. After that, we get to the paint, light fixtures, and dining table. I have watched 2 of 8 seasons of Home Improvement , mostly in the background while I work on other things. Our volleyball team is 2-4 with 6 games to go. Our indoor-planted basil is now taller than a desk ruler. The oregano continues to struggle. ... - Monday, June 20, 2011:
Weekend Wrap-up On Friday night, we went for a spur-of-the-moment Happy Hour with Rebecca's coworkers at the physical therapy clinic. Where the week before we went to the Clyde's which is apparently Swinger Central for people in Ashburn, this week we went to the Greene Turtle in Leesburg, a sports bar with decent food and overpriced drinks. After dinner, we were caught inside by one of the innumerable thundersqualls. It ended moments later with a double rainbow over Giant. On Saturday, a party of seven headed to Old Rag for a hike, along with eight million other day warriors from some kind of "-urb" in Northern Virginia. The weather was a lingering dropcloth of smoldering humidity, heavily hinting at rain without breaking all of ... - Friday, June 17, 2011:
Friday I didn't get to write an update last night, since I spent an extra hour sitting on the Fairfax County Parkway in order to go 0-3 with the FGM volleyball team. I then decided that mundanities like showering and sleeping should get a higher priority than writing fragments. My plans for the weekend include a trip to Old Rag, which seems to happen once every three years , as well as dinner with Rebecca's parents on Sunday evening. Have a good weekend! Pimp number 39 haunts Afghan car owners Sagging pants leads to airport arrest Details emerge about 'child pornography' yearbook photo - Monday, June 06, 2011:
Weekend Wrap-up On Friday evening, around dusk, I mowed the lawn and then launched an armed assault against the forest mosquitoes plaguing the backyard, just in time for barbeque season. You have to fight mosquitoes at dusk because they have genetically poor eyesight and cannot dodge the malathion as easily. Although I cleaned up immediately afterwards, I could still smell the lingering scent of chemicals for a good twenty-four hours. I stayed in for the entire day on Saturday, catching up on a bunch of computer projects while the missus was away -- the day was a blur of work-work, XML, Schematron, the first season of Home Improvement, shells and cheese, and World of Warcraft. On Sunday, I provisioned the fridge with ess... - Friday, May 27, 2011:
Peru Day Rebecca says hi. I'm 30% sure this isn't a green screen. She might just be in Newport News at a bar. China used prisoners for free gold farming First cloned cat turns ten Disney withdraws Seal Team Six bid - Wednesday, May 25, 2011:
Kitchen Status Day The kitchen is looking good at the moment, although there's no longer enough daily progress to warrant a high-tech slideshow. We actually got most of the heavy stuff finished by Sunday, and then I promptly got sick and was out of commission for the next two days. The new solid-state countertop is an off-white "Vanilla Ice" and should be ready in three weeks, according to the contractor who came by yesterday to finalize the measurements. We'll put in a temporary countertop in the meantime, so we don't have accidents whenever we try to set our drinks down. Also, Shells and Cheese doesn't taste any better when cooked on a stainless steel oven. Our brains may be wired for n... - Tuesday, May 24, 2011:
Kitchen Remodeling Day, Part V (539KB GIF) - Monday, May 23, 2011:
Kitchen Remodeling Day, Part IV (606KB GIF) - Friday, May 20, 2011:
Kitchen Remodeling Day, Part III (599KB GIF) The good stuff starts on Day Four. - Thursday, May 19, 2011:
Kitchen Remodeling Day, Part II (669KB GIF) - Wednesday, May 18, 2011:
Kitchen Remodeling Day (775KB GIF) Lazy Cakes: A Sleepytime Snack Elicits Public-Health Outrage Fields of watermelon burst in China farm fiasco Leaking house dials 911 - Monday, May 16, 2011:
Weekend Wrap-up Other than the release of DDMSence 1.8.0 , which adds support for mutable builders, and has seen a surprising initial surge of downloads from China (OMG SPIES.), the main event this weekend was the marriage of Sam & Kristen Edwards, at a working train station in downtown Richmond. Afterwards, we helped to Optimus Prime the room from a ceremony layout to a heavy hors d'oeuvre layout, a task made more difficult by the fact that the tables couldn't be dragged across the floor in such a historic setting. This rule would have made more sense had the tables been made of such fine materials as plywood or helium, but not so much in our granite, cast iron, and chunks of sumo wrestler reality. ... - Monday, May 02, 2011:
Weekend Wrap-up I stayed in on Friday night while Rebecca went out to a friend's Royal Wedding party. I didn't watch any weddings, although I DO plan on ordering an awesome tafetta headpiece resembling an abstract groundhog with tentacles and wearing it to any formal events in my future. Saturday was a work day -- I worked a bit on DDMSence, sanded a wall, discovered that my remaining supply of Nougat paint had finally dried up into a paint discus, and picked out a replacement grill for the 7-year-old one in my backyard. For dinner, we went to the Nippon Japanese restaurant in Herndon, continuing our trend of liking restaurants with so few diners inside that they're probably in difficult financial straits. This worked out well for us, ... - Monday, April 25, 2011:
Weekend Wrap-up The weekend opened on Friday night with Shells and Cheese and a viewing of Black Swan , movie that got progressively weirder as it went on. This was our first experiment with Amazon On Demand, and although the 480p download was a little blurry on a 1080p display, it was no worse than an analog TV show, and good enough for the convenience factor. On Saturday, I managed to mow the lawn between thunderstorms, and also worked a bit on DDMSence. In the evening, we had a random get-together which turned into an Easter-themed free-for-all, complete with eggs in both the dyed and hidden varieties. There were also homemade margaritas, which didn't quite fit into the Easter theme. We met up with th... - Monday, April 18, 2011:
Interpretation Day Describe the context behind this photograph, taken last Friday. a) Building an underground drug tunnel across the border between Sterling and Herndon b) Working in the attic mounting a TV antenna c) Backstage with the world-famous jazz combo, The Poots, during a SARS-era tour of eastern Asia d) Other (explain in the comments section) Drug cartels have made Nogales the tunnel capital of the Southwestern border Iceland's penis museum finally gets a human specimen Man engulfed in flames at porn sh... - Wednesday, April 06, 2011:
Arkansas Travelogue, Part II of II Friday night in Arkansas was an early night, with an informal Southern Barbeque on the edge of a cliff, overlooking the scenic lake at Dardanelle, and the not-quite-as-scenic nuclear power plant puffing steam clouds of serenity into the night sky. Rebecca got to catch up with all of her college friends (who are used to traveling long distances since they all went to school in Iowa). After a day of travel and dodging the large herds of deer on the mountaintop, no one in our cabin made it past 11 PM for any wild partying. The next morning, we decided to hike the trail that stretched for four miles around the edge of Mt. Nebo, appropriately named The Rim Trail. Hiking on a rim is definitely the way to go, because it's ... - Tuesday, April 05, 2011:
Arkansas Travelogue, Part I of II or maybe "of III", depending on schedules, popularity, verbosity, and line breaks Our trip to Arkansas started off inauspiciously with a power outage during our designated packing period. Unlike people living in the PEPCO fiefdom, power outages are rare in our neighbourhood because of the combination of Dominion Power and underground power lines. We made the best of a bad scene by lighting enough candles to make our home look like the nerve center of an up and coming cult and eating in with take-out from Boston Market (quarter dark, with mashed potatoes and gravy, and macaroni and cheese). We drove to Dulles Airport the next morning (because a three day stay in the economy lot is still che... - Monday, March 28, 2011:
Weekend Wrap-up After a warm, indoors Movie Night on Friday (a reairing of Music and Lyrics ), we ventured out of Sterling on Saturday to visit Kathy & Chris' new daughter, Hannah, who came into the world just four hours after our visit last Friday night for Game Night. If we were going to be a mathematical proof, we would no doubt be "The Induction of Labor". Following baby time, we grabbed a quick lunch at Subway and then headed for Hemlock Overlook Park for a nice four-mile hike around Bull Run. Thankfully, my toenails did not turn black this time, but I do have to wonder how long it will take the black parts from my last hike to grow away. At the end of our hike, we stumbled upon a new winery, Paradise Springs, just feet... - Friday, March 25, 2011:
Kitchen Day Our new kitchen cabinets and countertop have been ordered. As you can see from the image, we're going for a pure 1950s look: all black and white with minimal shading. South Korea identified as prime bacon waster Judge upholds title loss for taco queen Obituary: No flowers, just beat Obama - Monday, March 21, 2011:
Weekend Wrap-up Corned Beef Day in the URI! Household Swedish police seize musical deadly weapon Times online pay model was years in the making 4-year-old's Ivy League chances are ruined - Thursday, March 10, 2011:
Release Day DDMSence 1.7.2 is now available for download, preempting my webpage update time for today. My library is seeing a steady growth of interest around the US, and a surprising number of returning visitors from Australia and New Zealand. Perhaps this will give me the opportunity to take a trip there for "business" some day. Balloon stunt blows up in Gamespot's face Millionaire dentist arrested for stealing credit card for pizza New microscope creates 3D live action cell videos - Monday, March 07, 2011:
Weekend Wrap-up At the base of the South Point Falls around Mile 63 of Skyline Drive Wine and a woodfire at the cottage on Brightwood Farm Rebecca gets trampled by stampeding goats during a rainy breakfast hour. We also mucked some donkey stables. Warming up in the breakfast nook with an introspective copy of Walden . He was determined to know beans. High school basketballer dies after game-winning shot "May cause drowsiness" too confusing for modern medicine Mexico... - Tuesday, March 01, 2011:
Cost of Living Day It's been almost four years since I last calculated how much it costs to be me . Many things have changed since then, most notably the fact that female roommates take longer showers, driving up the water bill. Here is a look at my 2010 expenses (at least, the ones based upon regular bills). 2006 2007 2010 Car Tax $0.24/day, $90/year $0.30/day, $109/year $0.29/day, $107/year My trusty 2001 Honda Accord just flipped over the 91,000 mile mark, thanks to a combined diet of "w... - Monday, February 21, 2011:
Weekend Wrap-up I would normally exploit the socialist secular sabbath that is a Federal Holiday as a prime excuse not to post an update, but the posts from Wednesday through Friday of last week are embarrassingly impervious to literary appreciation. In recompense, you get this bonus update. Smashing! This weekend was marked by a lot of highs and lows, but from a perspective that is more geospatial and less emo. We hiked the Occoquan Trail between Fountainhead and Bull Run, which totals up to about 19 miles if you include all of the scampering around looking for unlocked bathrooms. As someone who is no longer in the 2nd quartile of youth, I played my "old" card and stopped at the 11 mile mark (and thankfully, my big toenails did ... - Thursday, February 17, 2011:
Award Day It's hard to take good pictures of glass, but this is what I won at work yesterday: Thankfully, I was not competing against Esperanza Spalding. Defector admits to WMD lies Transparent 'DNA' adhesives help police nab thieves Fans rally for Robocop statue in Detroit - Wednesday, February 09, 2011:
Skip Day There will be no updates today because I'm up over my ears writing Powerpoint briefings, one of which ended up being 49 slides long. It did, however, take some willpower when discussing why a Functional Design Review (FDR) should really be a Critical Design Review (CDR) to omit my line: We need to get the "F" out of there. Bonus Update: Here are pictures of my nephew: - Monday, February 07, 2011:
Weekend Wrap-up After cheap sushi for dinner, Friday night was Game Night at Anna's, where we squeezed past the behemoth of a minivan to get to her front door for games of Hoopla and "How Many Different Excuses Can Ella Invent to Stay Up?". I won at Hoopla, mainly because it's one of those hippie games where everyone's on the same team and wins together. On Saturday, I repaired a leaky toilet tank in my basement with my knowledge of basic plumbing and screwdrivers, did some pleasure reading, and then played Warcraft while Rebecca went off to the inner city for Indian Food Night. I'm not a big fan of Indian food, in which the three basic food groups seem to be spicy, smelly, or gooey -- instead, I made some shells and cheese (cheesy, ch... - Monday, January 31, 2011:
Weekend Wrap-up Friday night was Warcraft night with the Ahlbins, as the respective sects of that family locked their respective kids up in various cupboards so we could all do some dungeon runs together. The Guild reached Level 2 over the weekend and got the 5% experience bonus, which means that you can now get from level 1 to 60 in about 4.5 minutes. On Saturday, we watched The Social Network , which shall hereafter be referred to as The Only Movie Starring Jesse Eisenberg That Hasn't Annoyed The Piss Out Of Me . This was followed with dinner and drinks at Mylo's in McLean, a restaurant with a mild Greek persuasion. I got a little work in on Sunday morning, and then we met Rebecca's parents ... - Friday, January 28, 2011:
Progress Day I have reduced my work hours per day from a high of 17 down to 6 today. Troubleshooting Finale 2011 is really annoying when it completely freezes the computer to the point where you have to power it down to continue. We got 8 inches of snow, but it was all easily shovelable. Fairfax County snow plows are much better at their jobs than Loudoun County snow plows. My new Warcraft character is now level 42, but has done every single available quest in the level 30 and below zones. Tonight is Warcraft Night with the Ahlbins. Jack Wilmer is a year older today. Happy Birthday! Have a good weekend! S... - Monday, January 24, 2011:
Weekend Wrap-up Following the red attack from last Wednesday and Thursday, I stayed home on Friday and tried to cut back on my hours a bit, which was only partly successful. In between left jabs of work, I tried to install Finale 2011, and watched it freeze up the entire computer, only half surprised. On Friday evening, Emily and Other Brian, who are now engaged, came over for a dinner of aromatic stuffed peppers. Saturday was a deservedly lazy day -- I watched the third season of The Guild, and looked at a smorgasbord of new kitchen cabinet styles, in preparation for an upcoming overhaul of this room to get rid of the apple-themed tiles. Kelley and Kathy, and Jason and Rosie came over in the evening (followed by the later arrival of A... - Thursday, January 20, 2011:
Still Work Day I haven't left the office yet, so my insightful, humorous, possibly scatalogical review of the $160 toaster oven I got for Christmas will have to wait until next week. German police pick up drunken owl Australia floods: teenagers use blow-up doll as flotation device How much would you take not to fly? - Wednesday, January 19, 2011:
Work Day The problem with going to work at 6 AM is that the server never blows up until after 6 PM. - Monday, January 10, 2011:
List Day: Weekend Accomplishments Finished the final season of 24 . Gave 3 DS games I never play anymore to Paige, so she can weather the rest of winter in Russia. Left food out in the snow for a stray cat. Purchased 6 pounds of ground beef from Costco, and packaged it into 12 individual flat bags for ease of use and thawing. Watched Inception and found it surprisingly unannoying. Fixed a sticky toilet tank that wasn't refilling after flushes. Tried to make steak, but found that I was out of propane. Stove steaks stink. Came in second in a Christmas Trivia contest at a holiday party. Repl... - Tuesday, January 04, 2011:
Weekend Wrap-up For this New Years weekend, we took a trip down to Colonial Williamsburg which was a very good balance of traveling between "way too much time spent in the car" and "let's get Boston Market for dinner tonight". The temperature stayed in the 60s the whole time (and obviously all of the snow had melted by the time we arrived). We shacked up at the Magnolia Manor, one of seven thousand Bed and Breakfasts within walking distance of William & Mary, notable for its gigantic whirlpool bath tubs and staff that walked a comfortable path of being accessible without hanging around all of the time. The three basic food groups for each morning's breakfast were potatoes, eggs, and bacon, in various permutations. This is a defi... - Monday, January 03, 2011:
Untitled Post In this building, we learned that the art of driving an SUV on the Beltway has not changed noticeably since colonial times. - Thursday, December 30, 2010:
Tech Day I had a hopefully intermittent motherboard-level failure in my three-year-old Dell on Monday night which finally pushed me towards upgrading to a fresh new machine. The main reason I've not done it in quite some time is simply that computer comparison shopping is a much bigger pain in the ass now than it once was. Gone are the days when you could just assume that the model with the bigger number is faster or better -- this time around I spent hours comparing CPUs, graphics cards, and memory configurations. I spent two hours alone trying to figure out which Nvidia GeForces were actually good cards and which were just rebranded versions of older cards (pro-tip: even for their gaming machines, NONE of the graphics cards yo... - Tuesday, December 07, 2010:
2010 Timeline A smattering of events from 2010 January : We travelled to Columbus, Ohio in the dead of winter for New Years, and then got snowed into a B&B in Pennsylvania on the way home. We attended our last CustomInk holiday party, and our first FGM holiday party (where we won the docking station that forced the purchase of an iPod). I added song information to all 1200 MP3s in my collection. February : It snowed, a bit more than usual. DDMSence was conceived (blizzards often lead to conceptions). March : We saw Muse in concert at the Patriot Center. We spent a week in ... - Monday, December 06, 2010:
Weekend Wrap-up Friday afternoon was a techy one -- I'm reducing my stable of home computers by one, so I've purchased an external hard drive for backups and a USB-parallel cable for my trusty Florida State era laser printer. In the evening, we went out to Gordon Biersch for dinner with the Cranes, followed by a rousing game of Scattergories in which I got a point for "Seacrest, Ryan" under the category of "Tools". We attended a 90s party on Saturday night, a logical way to celebrate the birth of someone in the 80s. Other than a denim shirt, I didn't have any wardrobe accoutrements from the era since my Members Only jacket is long disintegrated. Instead, I wore my blindingly shiny band jacket from high school, complete with URI! ... - Monday, November 29, 2010:
Weekend Wrap-up Among the activities which took place this holiday weekend: Thanksgiving lasagna A Relational Database Model for DDMS Steak Diane and Kahlua Cocoa cheesecake at the Cheesecake Factory A decorated Christmas tree and associated wise men Game Night at Anna & Ben's Re-raking the back yard The end of Dollhouse Italy PM replaces penis on statue, angers experts Government Workers Driving Nukes Got Drunk Money can't buy you love - or social skills &nbs... - Monday, November 22, 2010:
Weekend Wrap-up We did not get a chance to set up the fake Christmas tree this weekend, although our experiments in the lab did lead to the creation of a two-headed cat. This feline chimera occurs when you invite scary people over and then block all of the hiding places under the couch with pillows except for one. We also started watching the second season of Dollhouse , which led to interesting philosophical discussions about what would happen if you imprinted a human personality into a kitty. On Saturday night, we went to the new Japanese restaurant in Herndon, Nippon Japanese Restaurant, whose only claim to fame so far is existing "behind the McDonald's". Our meal of soups, sakes, sushi, and sesame ice cream was del... - Monday, November 08, 2010:
Weekend Wrap-up Saturday was a busy day, opening with a trip to the Potomac Point Winery in Stafford for a Groupon-based Premier Harvest Tour. This tour took a typical tasting and stretched it out over two hours and fourteen different wines, throwing in tips and tricks for better tasting (not unlike a Nintendo Power issue devoted to wine). In the evening, we made the 1.5 hour commute into DC for Annie's 27th birthday, and after fleeing the crowded confines of Cork, we ended up in the basement bar at Saint-Ex where I tried to convince people that tempranillo is delicious while eating orders of regular fries and adding "Sweet Potato Fries" to Friday's list of Things to Not Get Your Panties In a Knot Over. Sunday was a ... - Monday, November 01, 2010:
Weekend Wrap-up Pictures from this weekend's Halloween Party can be found at the end of the Life, 2010 album. In the Lessons Learned department, Halloween night is the best time to go to Red Robin and find it to be 80% less packed. 4-Year-Old can be sued in bike case Haunted House Has Painful Past As Asylum World Cup 2010 - Conspiracy claim over Paul's death - Tuesday, October 26, 2010:
Busy Day Updates this week may be less Catch Me If You Can and more Gosford Park this week, as we devote chunks of our evenings towards weekend Halloween festivities. As a Lesson Learned from this weekend's trip to Blacksburg though, if you named your new dorm "New Residence Hall East" when you opened it in 1998 and it's still called "New Residence Hall East" today, then maybe you should think about lowering the bounty needed to get it named. I'll be glad to offer my own name so people can live in URI! HALL if the price is under a hundred bucks. Woman became pregnant after watching 3D Porn Guests banned from Tate Modern su... - Monday, October 25, 2010:
Birth Day Happy Birthday to Amber and Booty! (You too, Anna ) Thank you for not vomiting in the house while we were gone this weekend. (You too, Anna) Woman who stripped outside bar wasn't pregnant Virginia gun store D & R Arms: Fastest from counter to crime Crocodile on plane kills 19 passengers - Monday, October 18, 2010:
Weekend Wrap-up Overall, this weekend was a fairly quiet one -- no servers exploded at work, and no cats erupted at home. We spent Friday night shopping for Halloween-related paraphernalia, followed up with backyard steaks for dinner. On Saturday morning, the shopping bonanzas continued with updated atlases to replace our 2002 editions which, we noticed on our way to Emerald Isle, omitted most of the roads in North Carolina, or had them marked as "planned". After spending the afternoon working on DDMSence and hanging out with Rebecca's cousins, we had a small game of poker which was won by Evil Mike, whose rustiness with poker was exemplified by his proclamation that he would win by going "all-on". On Sunday morning, Reb... - Wednesday, October 13, 2010:
New England Travelogue Our trip north began last Friday morning with a direct, painless flight from Dulles to Boston. The entire duration of the time we spent in airports and planes was less than a one-way road trip to Blacksburg. We rented a retardedly small Yaris and drove to Danvers to say hello to my uncle in his frame shop, and then had local subs in a marina nearby. We reached Rockport in the midafternoon (easy to do since all of our destinations were within fifty miles of each other) and wandered around the scenic town faking out tourist shoppe owners who thought we might buy something. The marina was picturesque, and filled with boats whose names were variations on puns about vacation, fish, or both. The bed and breakfast we sta... - Friday, October 08, 2010:
Friday Flyday We're taking a weekend trip to visit Chompsalottapuss! - Monday, October 04, 2010:
Weekend Wrap-up On Friday evening, we braved the inbound traffic to have dinner with Jack & Kristy and their newbie, Johnny. We ate salmon and a pasta salad with ham, followed by two Guinness. We celebrated Rebecca's mom's birthday in Silver Spring on Saturday afternoon, and followed it up with a short hike on the Billy Goat Trail at Great Falls (ghetto-side). We then channeled our hiking hunger into burgers at Red Robin, followed by unfrozen wedding cake for anniversary purposes. On Sunday, we headed to Lovettsville to celebrate Rebecca's aunt's birthday (the pair being twins) and continued to eat a neverending supply of cake. We then tried to play night frisbee, but the cold, rainy conditions (and the fact that orange glow sticks look ... - Wednesday, September 29, 2010:
List Day: Tuesday Accomplishments Started building a moat around my Minecraft house, until I realized that there was only one source of water in a four mile radius and went spelunking instead. Worked on a relational database table model for DDMSence. Watched an episode of Glee, Season One . Got my home phone number transferred to the new cellphone and added a ridiculously overpriced Muse ringtone, after several low-quality attempts to create a free one. Marinated chicken thighs in Sweet Baby Ray's BBQ sauce in anticipation of Paige's visit from Russia tonight. Updated the Stone Band website for the new school year. &n... - Monday, September 27, 2010:
Weekend Wrap-up We kicked off the weekend with a Date Night to the Mediterranee Restaurant in Great Falls, where we dined on three-course meals for $24 each, and I ate the best "seared" steak I've ever had. We don't head out to Great Falls often, but we both agreed that it looks rich and fake, not unlike the North Shore of Kauai. On Saturday, a Costco pilgrimage allowed us to stock up on lunch meat, soap, and shells and cheese, followed by a late birthday dinner with Rebecca's parents at the local Macaroni Grill (whose restaurants seem to be shuttering at an alarming Blockbuster-esque rate). Rebecca then spent the evening eating yogurt and salads with Annie while I barricaded myself in my home office and worked on DDMSence.... - Monday, September 20, 2010:
Weekend Milestones BU achieves uncle status (and not just fake-Ahlbin uncle), with Samuel Harold Binder, born on the 17th a month early. BU earns too many achievement points in Starcraft II. DDMSence reaches version 1.7.0 and does a bunch of stuff with intelligence markings that you don't care about. How was your weekend? Man builds cat-sized village for homeless cats Shaquille O'Neal Sued For Computer Hacking Rare sighting in Laos of mysterious beast - Wednesday, September 15, 2010:
Birth Day - Tuesday, September 14, 2010:
Beach Day Stick a pointed hat on me and I could perpetuate some stereotypes. - Friday, September 03, 2010:
End-of-the-Week Day I'm trying to push out some updates for DDMSence this weekend, so I didn't have time to write a scathing diatribe about pickles or turkey bacon to close out the week. I'm a little disappointed that H'Earlicane isn't going to get a little closer to us, since a weekend full of heavy rains would be great for getting work done while Rebecca travels out to Front Royal to help her cousin with a new baby. As a snapshot of my life, I've sprayed my lawn for mosquitoes, almost beaten all of the Starcraft II campaign on "Brutal" difficulty, am about one-third of the way through the fourth season of Dexter, and may end up at the beach next weekend. Have a good Labor Day Weekend! Woma... - Wednesday, August 25, 2010:
No Update Today Weird Search Day is delayed yet again, as I try to fit five pounds of work into a three pound bag. - Wednesday, August 18, 2010:
Sick Day Weird Search Day cancelled on account of sickness. - Monday, August 16, 2010:
Weekend Wrap-up On Friday evening, I picked up Rebecca at work and then took one of my once-per-century trips into DC for Jazz in the Garden with a contigent of Grinnellians. Because of the lingering storm clouds, the group performed indoors and piped their music out over loudspeakers, so it might as well have been a CD. From there, we went to an overpriced outdoor bar with damp patio furniture and then a restaurant serving Burmese food, aptly named "Burma Restaurant". I had a bowl of squid which had a delicious sauce to offset its rubbery texture. We took the Orange Line home, driven by a novice drunk who reopened the doors four times at each station as if he were playing Whack-a-Mole on his console, and then accelerated out of the ... - Monday, August 09, 2010:
Weekend Wrapup On Friday evening, we played badminton in the backyard until we were chased inside by the dusk-driven swarm of black mosquitoes. We have now used the badminton net a record-setting four times since setting it up in June -- normally it gets used once and then sits dormant in the backyard for the remainder of the summer until I get tired of mowing crop circles around the stakes. I spent a good chunk of Saturday working, and then played some Starcraft II with Larry, losing game one horribly to a reaper rush, and winning game two against players who didn't know what do to after their initial strategy failed three times. In the evening, we had nine folks and their assorted spawns over for a poker game, during which I went al... - Friday, August 06, 2010:
(Mostly) Off Day In an unscientific analysis of yesterday's census, both of the initial respondents demonstrated their OCD by fixing a typo I had left in the census response template. I will occasionally make typographical mistakes alterations just to see if your on you're toes -- there's your warning. I've managed to work enough hours this week to take most of today off, unless something should come up, so I plan to take full advantage. Other notable accomplishments this week include: Installing a new stereo in my car that doesn't hiss like a mellophone player in the Marching Virginians. Getting to the last mission in Starcraft II. Eating at Omia's, the local restaurant that ... - Wednesday, July 28, 2010:
Trip Day: Santa Cruz Part III of III Our next stop on the whirlwind tour of Northern California was Santa Cruz, home of the family of Rebecca's dad's sister, as well one of her grandmothers. Santa Cruz was blessed with unseasonably fogless days while we were there, so obviously our super power was to bring the sunlight to unexplored backwater lands, not unlike the White Man in 1492. We took in a sampling of Santa Cruz beaches at Natural Bridges, a beach covered in seaweed and a dead sea lion where everyone in bathing suits stands at the edge of the fifty degree surf, shivering, and then goes home. We also went to Roaring Camp, where we took an overpriced steam train ride up the mountain to have a picnic lu... - Tuesday, July 27, 2010:
Trip Day: San Francisco Part II of III The first thing we noticed about the BART system in San Francisco is that the trains actually run on time, down to the minute listed in the scheduling pamphlets. After this temporal marvel, we learned that in transfer stations, you can actually get off a train, find your connecting train waiting for you, and simply cross the platform to hop on. After eons of walking two blocks to Gallery Plaza from the Orange Line (to prevent growing old in Metro Center), this fresh perspective on logic was thrilling. We stayed in "suburban" Berkeley with Anna, Rebecca's aunt and consummate host, and traveled into the city to meet up with Annie and Andrea. On our first day out, we visited ... - Monday, July 26, 2010:
Trip Day: Spokane Part I of III The first leg of our July vacation took us to Spokane, Washington, a medium sized city that's closer to Idaho than the Pacific Ocean and encased in a bubble of hot, dry, Midwestern air that corrupts the acoustics of the city name into "spo-CAN". As cities go, Spokane was fairly pleasant, with a like-named river running through the center, and all manner of bridges, waterfalls, and weird art decorating the downtown area for the benefit of tourists. A giant grassy park sits on an island in the middle of the river, filled with the usual mix of homeless people listening to heavy metal on their radios, shaved ice stands, goose poop, and a permanent fair, complete with a small ro... - Wednesday, July 21, 2010:
Untitled Post I am back in Sterling, and will resume normal updates tomorrow. In the meantime, I have backfilled last week's entries with pictures from my trip to artificially inflate the activity of my website. Enjoy! - Tuesday, July 20, 2010:
Untitled Post At one of numerous beaches along the coast between Santa Cruz and San Francisco. - Monday, July 19, 2010:
Untitled Post Berkeley had all sorts of orgies going on. - Friday, July 16, 2010:
Untitled Post In the redwood cathedral on Bear Mountain. - Thursday, July 15, 2010:
Untitled Post In Santa Cruz, everyone goes to the beach but no one goes in the water without hypothermia. - Wednesday, July 14, 2010:
Untitled Post Since the Napa Valley gets excessively hot as you traveling north, the moral is to base your winery around the grapes that need the cooler climate. - Tuesday, July 13, 2010:
Untitled Post Stupid Berkeley and its fat hippie squirrels. - Sunday, July 11, 2010:
News from Home Ella thinks that my cats are named "Beauty" and "Hamburger". - Saturday, July 10, 2010:
Untitled Post They get an ENTIRE ISLAND. - Friday, July 09, 2010:
Untitled Post I can't tell you which hotel I'm staying at, but there are two trees involved. - Wednesday, July 07, 2010:
Packing Day We in the URI! Oligarchy are pretty busy this week preparing for a whirlwind trip to Spokane, Washington for a wedding, followed by a week in San Francisco while Anna housesits and prevents Booty from disabling the parental controls on the HD nudie channel (over the air at 118 degrees, originating from Langley). I've felt a distinct lack of free time this year, in spite of the trip to Puerto Rico, the open source library, and the four Kindle books I've read in the past two weeks. I'll try to maintain the standard out-of-town-for-illiteracy approach to updating this site -- a daily picture of wherever you aren't, posted from the netbook. When I return, I'll celebrate the fourteenth birthday of the URI! Zone by mounting t... - Monday, July 05, 2010:
Weekend Wrap-up Burning down the casbah. DDMSence v1.5.0 has been released. Deep sea dog: Russian teaches dachshund to scuba Big Yoga: "Om" goes plus-size Fighting with teenagers: a copyright story - Friday, June 25, 2010:
Vacation Day This is me on my day off with our new Kindle. Have a great weekend! iPhone signal strength drops... if touched California whooping it up Parent brawl erupts at CA kindergarten graduation - Monday, June 21, 2010:
Weekend Wrap-up The only event on the calendar for this past weekend was a potluck barbeque for Rebecca's 27th birthday, which offered us a much-needed escape from the overly-planned weekends so far in June. We grilled burgers, dogs, and kabobs and played games of badminton, cornhole, pool, and Imaginiff in weather that was surprisingly accomodating -- though it was still over 90 degrees, the backyard and deck remained shady under what passes for a forest around here. On Sunday, we did very little beyond relaxing and eating unhealthy leftovers, and also started in on the fifty-plus beers which were left unconsumed at the barbeque (probably because Rebecca's friends are lightweights). Have you submitted ... - Wednesday, June 09, 2010:
New Release Day DDMSence v1.4.0 is now available for download, and fulfilled the "code something or write something" slot in yesterday's schedule, which was right after the "eat wings for lunch" slot and right before the "take a nap before losing at volleyball by 2 points" slot. I am hoping to find a way to expand my days with more slots, but I enjoy the "sleeping" slot far too much. Anti-speed camera activist nabs Bluff City PD's expiring web domain Wrold's ugliest dog dead at 17 BP buys oil spill Google keywords - Monday, June 07, 2010:
Weekend Wrap-up The weekend opened with a bout of high-humidity lawn-mowing on Friday afternoon, followed by a quickly-prepared dinner of shrimp-decorated linguini and other hyphenated deliciousness. Afterwards, Rebecca left for Arlington to be hip with her friends, while I stayed home and relaxed with a few games of Starcraft 2 and some cats. We woke up decadently late on Saturday, and spent the afternoon doing responsible things like car washing and trip planning, followed by dinner at Ted's Montana Grill where I had the S.O.B., a bison burger with Swiss cheese, carmelized onions, and bacon. I can't really taste much of a difference between bison burgers and cow burgers, though I suppose the latter is garnished with the tears of Amer... - Friday, June 04, 2010:
Boy Day Yet again, I worked too much yesterday to write a Fragments column (although the steak and the really hard-to-obtain Star in Mario Galaxy 2 returned census forms identifying themselves as "work" too). Rather than try to throw something together now which might diminish the literary value of the site, I'll give you the opportunity to peek in my sister instead. Grim Eater banned from funerals The classic versions of the Looney Tunes cartoons are no longer played on children's channels because of the violent slapstick comedy. Pa. man allegedly stole 300 porn DVDs - Tuesday, June 01, 2010:
Weekend Wrap-up Like a forklift lifting a crate of forks, we decided to use this holiday weekend for its exact purpose, and spent Saturday and Sunday camping at Assateague National Seashore. We left just before 7 on Saturday morning and had a surprisingly traffic-free drive, making it to the beach in about three and a half hours. Camping was a very pleasant experience, with mild temperatures and high winds to keep the bugs away. We were surrounded by free range ponies and their poop, and spent the first day sitting on the beach. The second day, we rented single-speed bikes with pedal brakes and biked all over the island. Meanwhile in a fit of self-preservation back home, Booty figured out how to open the child-proo... - Wednesday, May 26, 2010:
List Day: 10 things planned for my day off today Burn a CD for work Write tomorrow's website update Work on a reboot of battlereports.com Work on the Paravia Wiki Spray the perimeter of the house to prevent ant invasions Eat shells and cheese for lunch Mow the lawn Read about XSLT Play Mario Galaxy 2 Play volleyball at 7:15 Columbia's Antanas Mockus hopes his Super Citizen past will help make him president Mobile phone number suspended after three users die in 10 years Ann Curry apologizes f... - Monday, May 24, 2010:
Weekend Wrap-up In culinary terms, my weekend was a lazy cake topped with busy. Friday night was a relaxing night at home with sushi on the back porch. We tried the really cheap sushi from Safeway, which satisfied without being particularly delicious. Good if you crave sushi on the way home (and cheaper than Trader Joe's), but not as good as going to a restaurant. Saturday opened with a trip to Costco for steaks and shells. In the afternoon we went to the Wine Tasting Bar in Reston Town Center with Page, who would be "Evil Paige" by virtue of being the second Paige we know except that she spells her name differently. The tasting bar was an interesting amalgamation of wine and capitalism -- you load up Winery Debit Cards with cash and t... - Friday, May 21, 2010:
No Update Day I've been busy all week preparing for a briefing which I'll be giving before a myriad of initials inside the Beltway this morning, so I haven't had time to write today's Fragments column. Have a great weekend! Doomsday haven available in Mojave Desert Wisconsin court gives inmate gift: 4 bikini photos Lasers and iPods for the funeral of a lifetime - Monday, May 17, 2010:
Weekend Wrap-up On Friday evening, after releasing DDMSence 1.3.2 , I braved the unhealthily clogged artery that is southbound 7100 to play volleyball with some of Rebecca's friends from work, and we ended up playing for nearly three hours. I am now like an abused spheroid, as there are bruises on my radius and other bones. Post-volleyball dinner was a Chipotle burrito, which tastes delicious but can be rather nauseauting if you picture the entire blob of calories resting whole in your stomach. Saturday was split into two doses of family time -- the first with Rebecca's family in Maryland, and the second at the Reston Festival (the Restival) of Fine Arts. The entire town center was blocked off and filled with tents o... - Monday, May 10, 2010:
Weekend Wrap-up I managed to complete two projects on my bachelor weekend while Rebecca was wandering around in a big pit: 1) I've published a new Starcraft 2 Beta report at BattleReports.com. 2) A new release of DDMSence is available (v.1.3.1) which allows users to validate their data with custom rules defined in ISO Schematron. I am currently working on an oral treatment for both cancer and scabies, and hope to have something available over the counter by Friday. Besides sexual syndromes, Wii now linked to violent crime sprees Lord Jesus Christ hit by Mass. car &... - Monday, April 26, 2010:
Weekend Wrap-up On Friday evening, Anna & Ben (of Anna & Ben) came over for steaks and babies. We also played multiple games of Simpsons Clue, where I put my patented system for monitoring others' responses to work and won game #2. On Saturday, while Rebecca was off at a birthday spa outing with her college friends, I released DDMSence v1.2.1, read and finished the next Orson Scott Card book, and then joined the birthday outing in Annandale for dinner at a 24-7 Korean BBQ restaurant. I had never had a particular craving for Korean BBQ, even during normal business hours, so I don't think I would fully appreciate the flexibility for 4 AM dumplings that they have built into the schedule. Dinner was followed with a trip to Cafe Muse,... - Monday, April 19, 2010:
Weekend Wrap-up Look! A new car! (Parked next to a jeep that no longer runs but does a great job of keeping the pavement dry!) We spent three and a half hours on Saturday morning at Tysons Honda purchasing a Civic EX and avoiding the slinking salesman we disliked from the previous visit who smelled money and was trying to get in on the action. After driving the car around for a while to show it off and to encase it in a fine protective layer of pollen, we had lunch at Panera with Emily Green, and then came home for the first poker game of 2010, which Chris handily won. Sunday was parent day, and opened with brunch at Foxfire Grill with the in-laws. Afterwards, we stopped in Arlington to say hello to Jack and Kr... - Friday, April 16, 2010:
Off Day I'm taking the day off to make up for a dearth of weekend last weekend, and next week looks even busier. It looks like this weekend, at least, will be a good one, featuring a new car purchase, a little poker, and two parents getting a year older combined with food. Today is also 4/16 , but in my opinion, "Never Forget" should not be synonymous with "Spend a Whole Day Every Year Reliving It and Feeling Sad While Devoting Every Newspaper Inch and Facebook Update to It". Life is FINE. Go appreciate your loved ones instead. Wii Fit leads to sexual arousal syndrome Man assaulted with a python &nbs... - Friday, April 09, 2010:
Job Security Day Today is Jack Wilmer's last day at FGM: like a weather balloon in the troposphere, he is upwardly mobile, moving from being my boss' boss at FGM to being some sort of technical director at DISA. Since his last game of Pictionary involved the phrase, "Was that a baby? I thought it was a pumpkin," we will hope that his new position involves a minimum of blindfolded drawing. The going away lunch is at M&S Grill, so I'm going to attend and hope the company foots the bill. In other news, DDMSence v1.1.0 is now available. Neighbour still in hot water for loud sex Typo costs prisoner an extra three years ... - Wednesday, April 07, 2010:
Slack Day I've reached the point where I have too many projects going on at any given time, as you can see by the pie chart on the right, which shows what I did for the six and a half hours I was awake last night after I got off work. As you can see, "planning a post for my website" received 0 hours. Eventually, I'm going to reach the point where I have to reduce my output here to only 4 days a week (which is still an absurd overuse of the keyboard in modern day blogging, where you only update daily when your posts consists of pictures of ferrets talking in English or people falling off of bicycles). However, that's a slippery slope to start on, since I will soon realize that updating four days a week is that much... - Monday, April 05, 2010:
Weekend Wrap-up On Friday night, we had dinner at Omia's Pub and Grille on Dranesville Road, which has the same name as another restaurant we used to go to off of Route 28, but with more food diversity. The innards of the restaurant reminded me of going to a 1980s era Pizza Hut for BOOK-IT!, and service was pleasant. I ordered a steak stromboli which seemed surprisingly sparse on steak, but the msytery was soon solved after a delivery customer called in to report that my steak had ended up in him plain stromboli. On Saturday, I finally got around to cleaning two years of spider detritus out of my shed, and then spent the rest of the day doing work-work, followed by starting on the next version of DDMSence. Rebecca was out at a kite fes... - Monday, March 29, 2010:
Weekend Wrap-up On Friday night, I spent the entire evening reading a sixty page document called "XML Data Encoding Specification for Information Security Marking Metadata" for pleasure, after eating a Totino's pizza and vacuuming the house. After that rollercoaster ride of excitement, the rest of the weekend was pretty low-key. Saturday opened with a trip to Costco for critical steak supplies and the chance to walk past Fans Blowing Heat. In the afternoon, I did some work better suited for an electrician and assembled a new-old bed frame in our guest room. We decided to have an impromptu Game Night on Saturday with Rebecca's work people, and ended up playing multiple rounds of Catchphrase and Balderdash before all the married people g... - Thursday, March 25, 2010:
Project Recap Day It feels good to have carried a project all the way to a phase where it can be considered "done". I'm always on the lookout for new projects to do, like last summer when I toyed with writing interactive fiction again or December, when I thought I'd finally sit down and learn the Ruby programming language. Most of the projects I start with voracious verve trickle away long before anything tangible is completed. Among other abandoned projects in my orphaned concepts folder: at least six cancelled games (2 in BASIC, and 3 in Netscape-era JavaScript), 4 chat rooms written in C and CGI (the boring kind, not the Avatar kind), one of which only worked when two people were in it, an endless number of musical... - Wednesday, March 24, 2010:
(In-Hold-Out) Release Day DDMSence (pronounced " dee-dee-em-Essence ") is the result of three months' worth of unpaid work, and the prime reason why I don't hang out with you anymore (besides the foul odor you call a deodorant). It is an open source Java library (released under the LGPL license) which supports the DoD Discovery Metadata Specification (DDMS) . A complete technical write-up of the library can be found at the DDMSence website . For the uninitiated, DDMS is not what girl gamers experience once a month during their tabletop games -- it is a specification which defines a consistent set of "card catalog" details for any resource you might want to make available or discoverable. If everything ha... - Tuesday, March 23, 2010:
Señor Skip Day I've been busy readying my super secret project for release in the face of positive early feedback, so I'm skipping today's update and taking tomorrow off to get it done. To date, it's taken up over 200 hours of my free time since the beginning of the year (and has sometimes felt like a second job), so it will be nice to have something tangible for people to play with. Check back tomorrow afternoon for some sort of announcement! Unfortunately, it will not be useful to most of the people who read the URI! Zone, but it will be very cool even if you don't know why (see also, me as a college sophomore in my Members Only jacket). - Monday, March 22, 2010:
Weekend Wrap-up I spent the vast majority of Friday night and Saturday working on my secret project, and reached my first milestone. At this point, all the features are there but you can't really do anything with it (see also, wireless laptops in Montana). I'll probably go public tomorrow, which has the added bonus of using up a Tuesday post, since I didn't get a chance to write any Museday excerpts this weekend. On Saturday night, we drove to the home of one of Rebecca's coworkers for a late St. Patrick's Day party. It was even closer than Arlington, a surprising concept since the party took place in Maryland. We ate snacks on green napkins and watched an endless montage of artistically bad music videos that accompany the text on Kara... - Monday, March 15, 2010:
Weekend Wrap-up This weekend was pleasantly boring, between the rain and work, but I can't complain, having spent the previous weekend neutering cats in San Juan. My Friday was well-documented in 12 of 12 , and ended with an impromptu gathering of friends for tea but not crumpets around 10 PM. I spent Saturday morning doing work of the paid variety, and then the rest of the day working on a personal project which I'll unveil in the coming months. It will probably be completely useless to my entire readership here, but flashy for other nerds. I even made a website for it, since every successful project is required to have a catchy name and a website, even if it doesn't exist in any usable form. On Sunday, w... - Tuesday, March 09, 2010:
Untitled Post Mojitos are delicious. - Monday, March 08, 2010:
Untitled Post Translation: If you plan on falling, please do so with pizazz! - Friday, March 05, 2010:
Untitled Post I has a hat. - Thursday, March 04, 2010:
Untitled Post The view from our balcony at the Casa Cubuy Eco Lodge, in El Yunque National Rainforest - Wednesday, March 03, 2010:
Untitled Post Playa Lucia, on the southeastern coast of Puerto Rico - Tuesday, March 02, 2010:
Untitled Post HI2U - Monday, March 01, 2010:
Goodbye Day I will be attending concerts and bumming around Puerto Rico this week, so regular updates will resume next Tuesday the 9th. I'll try to post the occasional picture while on the island, but if you get too bored, feel free to check out some of my favourite posts from the past five years. Anna will be housesitting for us throughout the week to prevent you from stealing things, but if you would like to join her for a New Super Mario Brothers / Soul Caliber championship of the world, give her a call. Have a good week! Australia gets all the best cruises Ohio officers get drunk on purpose ... - Monday, February 22, 2010:
Weekend Wrap-up My weekend started out with a jump into the routine (not unlike a thread executing some arbitrary assembly language) via a trip to Costco, where every single previously-snowbound yuppy in Virginia was agitatedly swarming like horny honeybees. Among other things, I picked up the next season of Weeds, 10 more packs of Velveeta Shells and Cheese, and another 64-pack of Coke Zero. I spent the rest of the day working: reviewing other peoples' code and doing unnecessary things with Oracle materialized views. In the evening I watched 24 while waiting for Rebecca to get home from work, and discovered that there are scuba-accessible tunnels underneath Washington D.C. that could facilitate a terrorist attack. &... - Monday, February 15, 2010:
Weekend Wrap-up I generally try to conserve my words on federal holidays, so here is a chart showing what I did in the 48 hours that constituted the weekend: As a minor site improvement, if you are an old-timer who changed your posting name in the past, your old posts have been merged into your total post count, and your old nicknames will appear on your Poster page (found by clicking on the magnifying glass in the Comments section, after you have posted something). Need to get over your love? Call Death Bear. Virginia House protects us from the antichrist Authorities also said Johnson had a sledge... - Monday, February 08, 2010:
Weekend Wrap-up With the imminent threat of a wet, drippy mess on the roads leading to a similar mess in peoples' pants, the northern Virginia area essentially shut down at midday on Friday. I left work around 11 and stopped off to rent some movies, although the recent shuttering of our local Blockbuster means I have to drive an additional 0.5 miles to get to a backup Blockbuster. Unfortunately, that one had closed down as well, leaving us without a nearby outlet -- Blockbuster is never going to beat Netflix without the $30 a year I spend on movie rentals. I spent the afternoon playing an old game, The Incredible Machine 2, and then did an exploratory round of snow shoveling on Friday night, clearing away the initial 4 inches to ... - Friday, February 05, 2010:
Snow Day Today's Fragments column has been delayed while the snow shark puts the area into a POTENTIALLY PARALYZING situation. NY driver used mannequin in car pool lane Woman seeks "Jessica Alba" makeover to win back lover Police to pay closer attention to your melons - Monday, February 01, 2010:
Weekend Wrap-up After consecutive weekends of holiday parties and beer clubs, the final one went out like a librarian (quietly and in sensible clothing), most likely because of the fact that the threat of snow always holds the schedules and economy of northern Virginia by the gonads. After doing a little pre-Spring-Spring-cleaning on Friday, we drove around the corner to get sushi at Golden China, one of several adjective-noun-style restaurants that you'd get delivery from but would never think of stepping inside. The interior of the restaurant was shabby and nearly empty, but the sushi was pretty good, coming from a restaurant of the wrong ethnicity, and had sizable portions that filled us up -- there was so much cream cheese in... - Monday, January 25, 2010:
Weekend Wrap-up Friday was a low-key night -- I ate leftovers of slow-cooked beef seasoned with thyme, rosemary, salt, pepper, and Shiraz, and started watching the sixth season of 24 again (after a two year hiatus from lack of interest) while trying to sit down with the Ruby programming language. On Saturday night, we went to the Sheraton Premiere in Tyson's Corner for the 2009 FGM Holiday Party, which seems to get progressively later every year. I'm guessing that it will have a Valentine's theme within the decade. We did not win the "ugliest sweater" contest (because you have to wear a sweater to enter), but noticed a high number of folks risking confusion and possible ridicule by wearing a sweater without any intent... - Monday, January 11, 2010:
Weekend Wrap-up On Friday night, we braved the cold to search for a new sushi place worthy of experimentation. After finding our original choice closed for failure to pay the lease, we ended up at Aoba, around the corner on Route 7. The sushi was good enough, and on par with anything you might buy premade in a store. Not being food snobs, it was good enough for a strip mall locale. After a brief shopping excursion on Saturday, during which the checkout lady neglected to include $6 in coupons, I returned home to do some work and clean the house. I also took the time to read Pirate Latitudes by Michael Crichton, but I'll defer the review to some point in the future, since this site needs some semblance of suspense to keep... - Wednesday, January 06, 2010:
Roadtrip Day: New Year's in Columbus Like most people's hair, the road to Columbus is boringly straight -- the perfect environment for speed-trapping policemen, had the impromptu ice storm that morning not forced them all to deal with real accidents like flipped SUVs instead. We spent the New Year's weekend at the apartment of Rebecca's friend from college, Elisa, who's doing grad work at OSU. On New Year's Eve, we made shrimp pasta and drank trace amounts of alcohol from very small chocolate bottles, courtesy of Annie. Since we were in the hometown of OSU, it was only fitting that we spent New Year's Day watching the Rose Bowl (OSU vs. Oregon) followed by ... - Monday, December 21, 2009:
Weekend Wrap-up We ultimately received 18 inches of snow, which resulted in 3 separate shovelings, 1 sore back, and a distinct lack of parking on our street. Our mailman throws a hissy fit when a trash can is blocking a mailbox -- his head might explode when he sees where our neighbours shovelled their snow. We had planned to have some sort of Holiday Open House on Sunday afternoon, but most of the invitees bailed, believing that living in Loudoun County equates directly with unplowed roads, toilet paper shortages, and marauding snow wights. Kathy and Chris, being more local than others, brought us giant boxes of cookies to go with our ... - Monday, December 07, 2009:
Weekend Wrap-up My plans to avoid work on Friday afternoon were thwarted, but I managed to end the evening well with a mushroom burger at Whitlows on Wilson and the chance to navigate through the most poorly conceived underground parking garage in Arlington for free parking -- if you could fit the entire game of Chutes and Ladders onto the Free Parking space in Monopoly, and then rig Mousetrap! around it, you'd have some semblance of similarity. On Saturday, everyone on Facebook was mentioning that it was snowing, so I looked out the window and confirmed what I had learned (with less effort) on the Internet. Other than a quick sprint to Costco for essentials (kitty litter and hand soap refills), we stayed in all day through four ... - Thursday, December 03, 2009:
2009 Timeline a smattering of major events from 2009 January : We went to our first Bed and Breakfast, in Winchester. We picked our wedding date. My car battery died in the parking lot of Popeye's. Rebecca moved in, just in time to inaugurate the black guy. February : I lost two hours of my life watching the fourth Indiana Jones movie. I lost four more hours of my life watching Blunderdog at Mike's apartment. I had a Name That Tune contest with my sexy lips. Rosie popped a baby out, but not on 2/22. March : I opened with a 90-hour work week. ... - Monday, November 30, 2009:
Weekend Wrap-up What was intended to be a four-day weekend for me, actually turned into something closer to a two and a half day weekend. On Thanksgiving Day, we went to the home of those I now call "in-laws", accompanied by a nine-pound turkey and two packets of instant mashed potatoes. Our plan for Friday was to stay home and do nothing, but this was aborted when a server at work went down (not unlike a slutty edition of Applebee's). I spent the rest of the evening dealing with that, although the day was partially saved by having Velveeta Shells and Cheese for dinner and getting Rebecca hooked on The 4400. Saturday was a home-y day, during which we bought two lamps for the living room and learned that no stores in the area carry ki... - Monday, November 23, 2009:
Weekend Wrap-up My web host is experiencing technical difficulties right now, so site speed may be a little slow for awhile. Because even the admin console is slow, today's update will be short (like me) and sweet (like Doobie). I spent most of the weekend working, but managed to get out of the house Saturday night to experience the first weekend of Tysons Mall traffic jams. We had a quick dinner at Chipotle, and then went to Brian & Paige's place for the first meeting of a monthly Beer Club. Everyone brought a beer that, for any reason, reminded them of Thanksgiving and we sampled them in turn. On Sunday, we finished Burn Notice: Season Two , moved the exercise bike up into the living room... - Monday, November 16, 2009:
Weekend Wrap-up Booty would like some ham. Man arrested for dialing 911 and asking for sex Facebook status update and IHOP, an unbeatable alibi Deer loses fight with a lawn ornament - Monday, November 09, 2009:
Weekend Wrap-up Thanksgiving #1 was a success, in spite of the balmy 75 degree weather that prevented me from playing Christmas tunes in the background out of fear that the guests might experience some sort of shocking brainwave dissonance from the jarring juxtaposition. This meal was a turkey meal, which allowed us to use the new high-tech Turkey Baster from our wedding registry (we actually registered for two of them, for unexplained reasons that we still cannot recall). My previous baster from the bachelor years was made of melted poisonous plastic from the 70s and incapable of maintaining suction, so oven liquids often splashed around and ended up on whatever nonfiction books I was reading near the stove (this is baste on a tru... - Monday, November 02, 2009:
Weekend Wrap-up This weekend was a mix of work and play, which sadly did not include any volcanic sand beaches or hikes through the jungle. On Friday evening, we went to a Halloween party in Gainesville at Mike & Beth's house. I attended as "Costume Fail" since I like costumes that take as little effort as possible. This new costume worked out, although I had to spend a lot of time intefering with other people's navigation in my frame (much like any website from 1998). At this particular party, there were victims of domestic abuse, Mr. and Mrs. Darcy from Pride and Prejudice, a custom-made Double-Dare uniform, as well as The Money You Could Save with GEICO, among many others. On Saturday, I put in a few hours wor... - Monday, October 26, 2009:
Back-to-Work Day To the seven remaining visitors who chose to stick with the site through three weeks of me going all Pictures Pages on you, welcome back! I've been home since Tuesday the 20th, catching up on all the news and cheezburger content I missed while in Hawaii, and unpacking a slew of kitchen-related wedding presents that I plan to use in a Rube-Goldbergesque machine that will toast English muffins when my alarm goes off in the morning. The honeymoon was very relaxing, although jet lag made me sleep 14 hours the first night and then 2 hours the second night back. Because people hate when I do a miniseries, I won't be writing a consecutive travelogue of Kauai this month -- instead, I'll intersperse Memory Days with occasi... - Thursday, October 22, 2009:
Untitled Post Hanalei Bay at Sunset "Best Of Hawaii" will likely continue for the rest of the week while I get my act together. Updates that utilize more of the English language will resume next week. In addition, I am now using the jQuery LazyLoad plugin , which doesn't load images until they are scrolled into view on your monitor. This should make the News archives load a little bit faster and cut down on the bandwidth of loading an entire month's worth of pictures for someone interested in a single post. Please let me know if you like this feature, are indifferent, or find it to be a distraction. - Wednesday, October 21, 2009:
Untitled Post Obviously some sort of ancient native timekeeping sculpture. - Tuesday, October 20, 2009:
Untitled Post Hunting for dinner on the Kuilau Ridge. - Monday, October 19, 2009:
Untitled Post The handicapped always get the best views. - Sunday, October 18, 2009:
Untitled Post The Pools of Molokea, where ancient abandoned sugar mill machinery mixes with lava rock pools, was not as cool as the Secret Lava Pools, but this may have been because we left when we were still an 1/8th of a mile from the actual location (because of shoddy directions). Today is our last full day in Kauai -- we fly out Monday afternoon and return to the east coast on Tuesday morning! Then we'll have to do something with the one hundred bottles of beer that people did not drink at our wedding. Perhaps we'll write a song about them. - Saturday, October 17, 2009:
Untitled Post Sunset handstands on Kiahuna Beach. - Friday, October 16, 2009:
Untitled Post The Hanakapi'ai Falls sits at the end of an 8-mile round trip hike on the Na Pali coast. It took us six hours and twenty minutes, including all the time we spent dicking around the beach and the bamboo forests. - Thursday, October 15, 2009:
Untitled Post Today, we spent all day sitting or snorkeling at Anini Beach. - Wednesday, October 14, 2009:
Untitled Post I'm sitting in the hole in the giant's chin, on Nounou Mountain. - Tuesday, October 13, 2009:
Untitled Post If you have the chance to go on a helicopter tour of Kauai, TAKE IT. - Sunday, October 11, 2009:
Untitled Post Sunset at the Beach House Restaurant (dinner courtesy of Kelley and Kathy). - Saturday, October 10, 2009:
Untitled Post Sunrise over the eastern shore of Kauai, which is far cooler than the eastern shore on the mainland. This picture was taken by Rebecca right from our balcony (I was too busy sleeping). - Friday, October 09, 2009:
Untitled Post Our last sunset at the Sheraton Resort before leaving for the Kapa'a Sands Resort. - Thursday, October 08, 2009:
Untitled Post The view from our private cabana, just before we had our beachside couples massage. - Wednesday, October 07, 2009:
Untitled Post Sunset over Kiahuna Beach, following Free Mai Tai Hour. - Tuesday, October 06, 2009:
Untitled Post Room-delivered breakfast of fresh fruits, pastries, and guava juice on our private porch that opens up directly onto the ocean. - Monday, September 28, 2009:
Weekend Wrap-up I started my final day at work (for a month) with a 5:30 trip to Bailey's Crossroad, and the day gradually improved towards noon, when my team surprised me with a giant cake covered in roses (or chili peppers if you turned it upside down). After cake, I promptly turned on my "Out of Office" automated email message and then came home for a two-hour nap, followed later on by sushi. On Saturday, I watched the Hokies beat Miami 31 - 7, mounted two new racks in the house (one for keys and mail, and one for magazines), unpacked all of the Halloween decorations from the basement closet, and took an online course on UDDI registries to meet the minimum requirements for my work performance plan this year. In the evening, w... - Monday, September 21, 2009:
Weekend Wrap-up The prelude to Bachelor Weekend started with New York Strip steaks at Jack's house, followed by a random gathering of high-school era guys. We tried out Jack's recent purchase of Beatles Rock Band and learned that trying to sing along to "Within You Without You" is a retarded proposition. Later on, we switched to poker, except for Chris Sharp, who switched to poker and Scotch (resulting in a massive depletion of both reserves). I conceded and came in second, winning $10, though I might have gotten first had it not been 3 in the morning. Following a breakfast of chocolate chip banana pancakes, the three of us, Ben, Jack, and myself, got on the road for a trip to Atlantic City, which would be my first trip to a ... - Monday, August 31, 2009:
Weekend Wrap-up On Friday evening, I passed up the bass-thumping night life of the Reston Town Center to put the finishing touches on the Ormond Stone Middle School Band website, which is sure to revolutionize the way Centreville middle schoolers read about their band, and may also cure kidney stones. The old version is still up for comparison as well. Saturday involved a trip to Lowe's for a propane exchange, because running out of propane on a Steak Night would be calamitous, and then the installation of a new spoon rack. I also finally finished the first season of Breaking Bad (to be reviewed on Thursday), put in a few hours of work-work, and then attended a barbeque at my boss' house ... - Monday, August 24, 2009:
Weekend Wrap-up Following an afternoon meeting on Friday where I met with our caterer to make sure she knew that we were still getting married and wanted to eat wedding steak instead of wedding cake, I returned home for a couple more hours of Friday evening work. The phenomenon of things going wrong at work late on Friday seems to be increasing linearly over time. Had I been elected in 2006, my Three Day Work Week initiative would have nipped this problem in the butt (because problems don't have buds). I also picked up a copy of Orange Box , a collection of five top-rated games which actually came out two years ago. It's okay to be outdated though since this is the first PC game I've bought that's not a Wor... - Monday, August 17, 2009:
Weekend Wrap-up On Saturday, I wrote our wedding bible, a detailed, step-by-step outline of everything that has to happen in the next 47 days (and also reveals the plot twist that will happen at the end of our second season -- Booty dies, and then comes back to life). Saturday night involved six people, Mozzarella cheese balls, mini eclairs, and a game of poker. I met expectations by coming in fourth, and Rebecca Exceeded Expectations by coming in third. The game stopped and started a lot for cheese, babies, and poop, so Ben didn't get to take his $50 home until around midnight. On Sunday, we took another trip out to the winery to talk wedding stuff, eat free fudge, and pick up a couple more bottles of wine (... - Monday, July 27, 2009:
Weekend Wrap-up This weekend was a mix of relaxing and administrative activities, starting after work on Friday with the organization of my 500 CDs into three new CD binders. Previously, most of my CDs were jammed into a ratty case older than some fourth graders which was never designed to hold so many. At capacity, it resembled a fat kid in a Speedo, and weighed more than Booty. On Friday night, Rebecca and I had sushi, and even experimented with a weird seaweed/jellyfish salad which was weirdly weird. It's tasty, if you can ignore the rubber-crisp texture, which tasted like someone had taken one of those spindly rubbery wall-walkers from a cereal box and deep fried it. Saturday was quite the relaxing day, start... - Tuesday, July 07, 2009:
Return Day because I have a higher rate of return when I go on trips I have returned from the sunny climes of Nags Head, North Carolina, where the daily weather was a sunny 88 degrees with a slight breeze, and the local "Nags Hood" gangs haunted the ice cream parlors at night, looking like the love children of Eminem and Dennis the Menace. The "Shore Thing" beach house was comprised of between five and ten people at any given time, not unlike a pick-up Ultimate Frisbee team. We consumed vast quantities of food, including catfish, crabs, shrimp, corn, burgers, hot dogs, beer-battered shrimp, ice cream cake, patriotic fruited cake, Greek spaghetti, shells and cheese, nachos, fresh guacamole, friendsh... - Monday, July 06, 2009:
Fireworks Day Customer drops pants to prove gender 480 pounds and still growing Marion Barry arrested again - Friday, July 03, 2009:
Low Country Boil Day Organ artistry on TV brings charge Female robbers may have drugged midgets to death Shanghai 13 story building collapses - Thursday, July 02, 2009:
Sunrise Day Airline issues nude safety video Man says bear mnugged him for sandwich Swiss fight fires with TV remotes - Wednesday, July 01, 2009:
Dune Day Ant mega colony taking over the world Chip in soap causes panic Man uses nail clippers in DIY circumcision - Tuesday, June 30, 2009:
I'm at the Beach Day Parents keep child's gender a secret Invention allows pregnant women to hold models of their unborn babies Bottoms up for winning artist - Monday, June 29, 2009:
Ha Ha Teen hits tree after turtle rescue Pot plants found with dead body in traffic stop Doctors baffled by girl who doesn't age - Monday, June 22, 2009:
Weekend Wrapup On Friday night, we went to the mecca of Green consumerism that is Reston Town Center and had tasty burgers at an outdoor table at American Tap Room. The restaurant was nearly empty inside, mainly because their air conditioning was set at Nipplify, and they also had their entire front facade opened up in order to cool down the outside street. We also walked around the Town Center a bit as a digestive aid and pondered the presence of M&S Grill right across the street from McCormick & Schmick's. Apparently M&S is the un-yuppy version of McCormick and Schmick's (because when you're poor, you can't afford to buy as many letters, especially vowels). I worked the entire day on Saturday, front-loading my billable hours l... - Monday, June 01, 2009:
Weekend Wrap-up The weekend as a whole was characterized by sunny skies, interspersed with just enough cloudburst rain to prevent me from mowing the lawn. I stayed in on Friday night, did some work around the house and also did some design work on the favours to be distributed at the wedding (commemorative NASCAR underwear). I also reread the book, Jurassic Park , which I noticed on my shelf and hadn't read in over a decade. It wasn't as good as remembered, mostly because of the annoying eight-year-old girl character, who made me want to toss the book across the room on more than one occasion. On Saturday morning, I did two full hours of shopping, ordering brand new pairs of glasses that look exactly like ... - Wednesday, May 20, 2009:
Maryland Day We arrived at the Back Creek Inn B&B around 10:30 on a stormy Sunday morning. The little detached building on the right was our private cottage. Evidently, sharing the road means running over pedestrians. Our cottage had a king-sized bed, gas fireplace, massaging tub, shower, fridge, and microwave. I had to bring my own woman though. From our screened porch, we could look out across the gardens to the Chesapeake Bay. There was a dock available, in case we wanted to arrive by boat. Pooping is FORBIDDEN. All of the fire hydrants in Solomons had wildlife p... - Wednesday, May 06, 2009:
Just Plain Wednesday Yesterday evening, we went to Kathy and Chris' house for a delicious Cinco de Mayo celebration. Yum! Nukes help identify fake whiskey King Arthur defies eviction notice Google mows the lawn with goats - Monday, April 27, 2009:
Overtime Day I worked all day and all night on Friday and came home at 1 PM on Saturday. I then slept through the night to Sunday. On Sunday, I did not write anything for you to read today, but we did have sushi for lunch, and then a whole roasted chicken with barbeque sauce for dinner, which we ate on the back porch in the toasty warmth. I've consumed too much bacon in my lifetime to get the swine flu, but the overabundance of pollen in the air is making my nose itch. It's not as bad as my last month in Blacksburg back in 2001, when I couldn't stop coughing for two continuous weeks, even while sleeping. I think it was prolonged exposure to my roommates. I have nothing else to say today so I'll leave you with a story. T... - Monday, April 06, 2009:
Weekend Wrap-up The gay kitty brothers have come over for a week while Kathy and Chris head to Key West. In payment, we had a barbeque extravaganza from Famous Dave's which included ribs, chicken, brisket, pulled pork, corn, beans, fries, and Alex. My neighbour two doors down has never heard of metric wrenches, so he used brute force to take off an old license plate. That's seriously going to affect the resale value. It's a Booty bag. Booty does not like other cats. Booty is online, looking for kitty porn. Actually, she's looking for scraps from the leftover barbeque I had f... - Monday, March 30, 2009:
Weekend Wrap-up The weekend opened with a round of emergency babysitting for Ella, who spent four hours making prank long-distance collect calls to Guam and smashing houses made out of foam blocks like a petite Godzilla. In our time together, I taught her that 3 + 3 = chicken, couches are for back flips, and girls are bad at math and science. On Saturday morning, my dad dropped in for the final round of tile-laying. I had originally planned to tile the basement bathroom back in 2007 when we did the other two, but just never quite got around to it, much like the marathon I had planned to run in and the testicular cancer I was going to cure. We were only short by one tile at the end, which meant that estimation skills have improved... - Monday, March 23, 2009:
Weekend Wrap-up On Saturday I took a leisurely jaunt out Route 7 to Winchester for the "Ben's 30th Birthday" Surprise Party. Because his 30th birthday isn't even until next month, he was quite surprised, although visually, he registered a normal Ben-sized amount (his eyes may have gotten a couple millimeters bigger as he walked into the house). In lieu of presents, everyone brought a baby. After the party, I sashayed back to Sterling to work for a little while, and then met Rebecca in Reston to have dinner at Big Bowl. The restaurant was surprisingly packed for 8pm on a Saturday night, but the food was worth it, as it always is. The main dish I get there now is the Barbecue Pork Chow Fun with mushrooms, because you can't go w... - Monday, March 09, 2009:
Catch Up Day I was too busy at work to take a picture of my cats or talk about Alias last week, but my schedule should be returning to normal now. I'm taking today and tomorrow off from work, so normal updates should resume tomorrow. I did finally get a chance to see last week's LOST on Saturday evening, and liked it, unlike Mike (of Mike and Chompy). I did not, however, like the sponsored ads that showed up between segments. Gross. Dump truck hits highway sign Offbeat name? Then Facebook's no friend Vampire discovered in mass grave - Monday, February 09, 2009:
Weekend Wrap-up On Friday evening, we watched the latest Kevin Smith film, Zack and Miri Make a Porno , which started out strong and ended only slightly weaker. Every other word in the dialogue is some gerund form of the word "fuck", which would have been fresh ten years ago but seems a little tired now. You'll like this one if you like Kevin Smith movies, but if you haven't already been exposed to the vulgarity of his gross-out gags and dirty jokes, you'll want to skip this. On Saturday, after a quick run to Costco to stock up on a lifetime supply of corned beef and things made of wicker, I spent the day working until I was interrupted by a phone call from Jack who had a Kristy-free house and lots of leftover Super Bo... - Monday, February 02, 2009:
Weekend Wrap-up I'd originally planned on doing some Costco shopping Saturday morning, to stock up on armoires and giant dog beds, but it was much more relaxing to stay in, stay warm, and stay on the computer. On Saturday evening, we drove to the far-off city of Falls Church for Sushi Night, in celebration of the return of one of Rebecca's friends who had spent the last year in one of the -guay South American countries. The evening was well attended by both friends and family, with plenty of fried stuff and sake for all. Once everyone had arrived, we took a course in sushi roll preparation from master chef Jessika, who unfortunately would not allow me to make a sushi roll with just a giant stick of cream cheese. &n... - Monday, January 05, 2009:
Holiday Wrap-up Happy New Year and welcome back from your hibernal holidays! My version of the holidays closely matched the traditional script, starting with a Christmas party turned engagement party at Rebecca's parents' house. Christmas Eve involved an evening service with a rather puzzling sermon, and a Christmas morning of opening small amounts of loot with my parents. Both matrices of parents were present for a Christmas dinner of roast beef, after which we transposed to the living room for desserts and the viewing of vacation photos. I spent last week quietly working from home while Booty gnawed on the Christmas tree and Israel engaged in their annual holiday attempts to blow someone up. For New Year's Eve, we went to Kathy a... - Tuesday, December 16, 2008:
Poker Day The 2008 Sterling Poker Tournament came to a close this weekend with the fame and glory of first place going to Kristy Wilmer , a dark horse winner who consistently came in second place in all two of the games she played (two is the minimum you must play in to have your score count). Kristy also played a single game in 2007 (where she came in 2nd place as well), so SAT pattern recognition would dictate that she'll be at 3 games in 2009. As a reward for winning this year, Kristy gets bragging rights over her husband, Jack , who tied with Chris (another "husband who lost to his wife") for 6th place. Here are the scores (not including players who only played in a single game this year): ... - Wednesday, December 10, 2008:
2008 Timeline a smattering of major events from 2008 January : I ate pizza at Jumbo Slice for the first time. I learned that one of my high school friends was arrested for soliciting a minor on IM. I finished writing entries for the entire book, Curse of the Mistwraith , on the Paravia Wiki . February : Rebecca went to Guatemala for a month to learn Spanish. Paige moved back to the States from Spain, but overshot Virginia by about 1400 miles. Brianne birthed a real live human. March : Mike (of Mike and Chompy) moved to Washington, D.C.&n... - Monday, December 01, 2008:
Weekend Wrap-Up On Saturday night, we hosted the final Thanksgiving in my Month of Thanksgivings, and this time, our guest list was solely people directly related to us. The main course was an eleven-pound organic turkey, because the normal (read: cruelly-raised yet DELICIOUS) turkeys were all sold out on the day after Real Thanksgiving, and I didn't really notice a change in taste despite the extra $1.60 per pound I paid. The meal also included sour-cream mashed potatoes, spiced pears, marshmallow yams, stuffing, Big'N'Buttery croissants, leftover ham from last week, almond green beans, bacon-wrapped scallops, pigs in a blanket, and cheddar cheese soup, which I have decided to retire this year and replace with something mo... - Monday, November 24, 2008:
Thanksgiving #2 Anyone need some ham? Why does this look like an advertisement for Pictionary? Apparently 'mobile' was a misnomer School board warns of possible South Park prank on redheads Breathalyzer is racist - Monday, November 17, 2008:
Thanksgiving #1 Anyone need some turkey? Vick wants to play, but what team would risk it? Second Life sex causes divorce Boy hits mom with saw and then tries hush money - Monday, November 10, 2008:
Weekend Wrap Up Now that the holiday season approaches, weekends fill up with social events faster than poop in a porta-john at a chili festival. We kicked off the weekend in high spirits with a fancy jaunt to Co Co Sala in DC, a high-class bar/restaurant where everything is chocolate-tinged and the wait staff tries to inflate their tips by flaunting cleavage in sharp red dresses. Besides the chocolate stout and the chocolate mojitos, we ordered the three-course dessert meal, resulting in a neverending parade of sampler mousses, candies topped with flakes of gold, and fried stuff in fudge. This would probably be detrimental to your wallet and waistline if you ate here every day, so visit it sparingly. Annie's birthday celebration c... - Monday, November 03, 2008:
Weekend Wrap-Up After getting the motor in my heating system repaired, I spent Halloween evening at Rebecca's house eating Halloween Party leftovers and watching The Illusionist , which is about as close as you can get to a Halloween-themed movie in a cabinet full of chick flicks. We ran out of candy fairly early in the night, and got to employ the classic child molester technique of turning off the porch light to signal the candy shortage. The next door neighbour tried to put a bowl outside with a TAKE ONLY ONE sign, but that just proved that today's kids are incapable of counting to one, since the bowl was long depleted by the time I arrived. Saturday was a low-key day filled with raking and gaming, and in the evening ... - Monday, October 20, 2008:
Apple Bacon Day Sometime in the past decade, I became mildly allergic to raw apples. A few minutes after biting into an apple, my lip will swell up and my throat will constrict to the point where it feels like something is perpetually stuck down there. The same thing happens when I eat raw watermelon, which has tragically forced me to get my daily fruit intake from Jolly Ranchers to prevent any need for hospitalization. This food allergy really doesn't bother me as much as something like a cheese allergy, because apples are just a "sometimes" food for me, and red apples are stupid (everyone knows that Golden Delicious are the only kind of apple worth eating). It does make it Morissettely ironic that I decided to go to the G... - Monday, October 06, 2008:
Weekend Wrap-up Saturday, October 4th, was Poker Night. Early in the game, a four-of-a-kind appeared on the table. This was followed by a straight flush -- Seven of Hearts through Jack of Hearts (and someone else also had the Six of Hearts). This is the sort of magic that happens when I move poker upstairs into the kitchen for the winter months when the basement is chilly. Hearts was pretty much the only suit to appear on the board after that. After three people were out (myself, Rebecca, and Anna), the consolation prize of mini eclairs came out, because if you've just lost $10, the best remedy is to eat yourself into oblivion. While opening the tin, Rebecca remarked that it "felt very light", and then noticed that... - Monday, September 22, 2008:
Weekend Wrapup On Friday night, we went to Jack's newly renovated kitchen in Arlington to play poker and sample home-brewed beer. Kathy came in first, followed by Kristy, and I clocked in at fifth place (which becomes first place after artificially weighting the score because of my minority status). I finished watching the second season of Heroes on Saturday, which wasn't nearly as bad as the reviews would indicate, although the Maya storyline got old very quickly and could have been discarded. David Anders was a great guest star, but the only thing I could think of in Kristen Bell's scenes was "Veronica Mars can shoot lightning bolts from her hands!" The dinner choice on Saturday night was Big Bowl in the Reston Town... - Monday, September 15, 2008:
Birth Day Turning 29 with Duck Punch - Monday, July 07, 2008:
Weekend Wrapup The actual 4th Holiday was spent in the wilderness of upper Loudoun County with some of Rebecca's extended family, celebrating Independence Day the way it was intended -- setting things on fire, shooting rifles, and eating venison. Along with the 12-pack of Yuengling, we brought with us a Bacon Salad (salad garnished with chunks of bacon and a dressing made from mayo and leftover bacon grease), and for the squeamish, a couscous salad (made from some fake grain and some pine nuts). After consuming some delicious chocolate cake, we wended our way down the mountain to Leesburg to watch the county fireworks, complete with All-American music a là the U.S. Customs line at Dulles airport. Unlike the clowns at the Nissan Pavi... - Monday, June 23, 2008:
Old Rag Hiking Trip written in the style of second-grade BU On Satrday mornin we all went hiking. It was me, Rebecca, Emily, and another guy named brian who wasn't me. Marc was gonna come but he was hung over and when you hike when your hung over you throw up and it is not good so he did not come. We got in the car and I sat in the back. We drove very very very far. There is nowere to hike near our houses becus of urban sprall. We drove so far that we were in the fields by the mountins becuse we wanted to hike up a mountin. But valleys are good to. It costed us each $8 dollar to get in the park and one park ranger was sad becus she only had a sandwitch for lunch but the other park ranger had a chicken po... - Monday, June 02, 2008:
Weekend Wrap-up Friday night marked our first salvo into the weekly phenomenon that is Jazz in the Garden. Crowds streamed in various scales of fancy clothing depending on which lobbyist they worked for, and though they only had red sangria this year, it was just as tasty as last year. The jazz group was The Young Lions (who may have used that name instead of The Cubs so people wouldn't automatically think they sucked) and the genre was "jazz rock", which implied that the music had a recognizable beat and every female would think the bass player was hot because he looked like Lenny Kravitz. At one point, they asked an audience member to come up and play three notes on the keyboard for an improvisational number, but the timid girl pic... - Wednesday, May 14, 2008:
Cat Day Yesterday after work, Rebecca and I went to see Becca, fresh from her first year of college with a new kitten that's only about seven weeks old. Its mother was a barncat whore, so it's unclear what the breed is, but it looks a lot like this ragdoll breed on the left (except, more in focus and less like someone tried to attack it with a pink eraser). If you have ever played a computer game with "ragdoll physics", those complex physics were modelled by putting a cat like this in a jumpsuit and launching it out of a cannon. Becca's cat, Leonidas, is still very tiny -- probably the size of two clenched fists put together or a single poop from a Saint Bernard. It runs around the room chasing toys, licks stuff, and solves c... - Monday, March 03, 2008:
Updates Day RETURNED : On February 15, 2008, Paige, her husband, her dog, and her spawning future baby left Spain to return to the sunny lands of Houston, Texas. BORN : Nadia Sophie to longtime URI! Zone reader, Brianne, on February 28, 2008. Nadia weighed fifty-seven pounds and thirteen ounces or possibly some other random set of numbers, and will grow up to be a distinguished trumpet player. In celebration, at least one Museday Tuesday this year will be written "for Jay-Z and violas" or a similar instrumentation. MOVED : On March 2, 2008, Mike (of Mike and Chompy) finally moved away from Tallahassee, that serenely sluggish cesspool of Southern sloth where the city scenery is sel... - Wednesday, February 27, 2008:
Dentist Day Today is Paige's birthday, and in honor of that momentous event, I went to the dentist yesterday for the first time in nine-hundred-forty-five days , which is longer than the shelf life of pasta (which starts to hatch mealworms around the two year mark, according to the bulk macaroni we kept in our house after I went to college). The duration even outlasted our previous health insurance provider at work, which meant I needed to find a new dentist in the network (this could also be the synopsis of a new Sandra Bullock movie: The Net 2). I located a dentist's office on Route 7, north of Route 28, and established their credentials by noting that the main dentist's last name had five syllables would not ... - Monday, February 25, 2008:
Weekend Wrap-Up Though the rest of the area scoffed at the wintry mix that descended with all the subtlety of a tourist on a Metro escalator, my neighbourhood was slicked over in a thick sheaf of ice of Thursday night. Rather than deal with the driving, I just worked from home on Friday, getting things done with a cat in my lap and a forty mouse in my hand. In the evening, I hit up the local Blockbuster and rented a trifecta of movies. Over a pizza dinner, I watched We Own the Night , which was decent, and had a few suspenseful parts. Overall though, it felt like a poor man's Departed (Markie Mark's appearance in both didn't help things). I'm not a big Joaquin fan, and he slurred his lines so much ... - Monday, February 11, 2008:
Rearranging Day Yesterday afternoon, in between spurts of productivity and Mind Blasts, I decided that it would be a good idea to move the exercise bike back out of the basement and into the living room. The blustery weather outside combined with the fact that I have the heat turned off in the basement made me realize that I'm tacitly accepting that fact it will never be used where it currently sits. In the living room, next to the TV and the giant stacks of DVDs, I may still never use it, but at least I'll have to look at it every day. Before I could bring the bike up though, I had to rearrange the living room -- there just wasn't a good place to put it without making it the centerpiece (and everyone knows that Amber is the centerpi... - Wednesday, January 02, 2008:
2008: Year of the Mudskipper Happy New Year from the URI! Zone! After a jetsetting weekend of holiday visits that encompassed both Front Royal and Baltimore, New Year's Eve was a quiet, fancy, affair at Kathy and Chris' house, where we paid the ten dollar cover charge to lose ostentatiously in poker. To cover our losses, we stole some of their wedding silverware and sold it at the local pawn shop, Sterling Silver . 2007 was a decent year for the Zone -- it was proven that the Zone now has a credible draw of 23,000 visitors per year without resorting to such devious tricks as having an RSS Feed or mentioning Britney Spears or U2 in post titles. Although the numbers dipped slightly from 2006, I attribute this mainly to Australian Rachel ... - Monday, December 17, 2007:
Weekend Wrap-up Friday : Watched the movie, Superbad , a comedy in the style of the American Pie movies. It had some really funny moments if your sense of humour is the kind that can navigate past vulgarity and foul language. Carla Gallo from Undeclared (by the same writer) has a brief cameo which is billed in the credits as "Period Blood Girl". Saturday : Braved the imminent Snowstorm of Death to go to the National Sculpture Garden to do some national ice skating. Had some overpriced but decently tasty national pepperoni pizza in the National Sculpture Garden Restaurant. Not being a fan of cold-weather sports , I wasn't sure how well I'd do on ice skates... - Thursday, October 25, 2007:
Blacksburg Travelogue part II of II Kentland Farms is an independent farm run by Virginia Tech where all the Animal Science students can hone their skills (I hear that one student majored in animal husbandry until they "caught him at it" one day). Because it was Parents' Weekend, there were several hands-on demonstrations showing how the cows move through the various stages of their captivity. Becca and her friends showed us how to brand a cow with dry-ice, giving new meaning to the Applebee's term, steak fajitas con sizzle . I also took a brief video of one of the talking cows for all the readers who have never left the pleasant captivity of the suburbs (2MB WMV). The next part of the tour al... - Wednesday, October 24, 2007:
Blacksburg Travelogue part I of II We left northern Virginia around 10:30 on Friday, after a leisurely breakfast of bacon and eggs. I-81 surprised me, because for the first time I can recall, there were no state troopers along the entire stretch from I-66 to Christiansburg. I reflexively slowed down at every cubbyhole near Staunton just to be safe, but for this one trip, the only hazards to worry about were the reckless truckers and land piranhas. Throughout the drive, we listened to XM (mixed with random CDs when south-facing mountains were too high to get reception), and learned The Salmon Dance, among other classy tunes. Lunch was a chicken ranch sub at a Subway in Salem. After dropping our junk at my sister's hou... - Monday, October 01, 2007:
Weekend Wrap-up Day On Friday, I met my sister at the East Falls Church Metro station around 3, fresh from her two-hour trip out to UMD for a ten minute meeting. We wandered around Ballston Commons for about an hour and a half, taking in the sights and determining that the athletic shoes I bought a year ago are worthless for continuous walking. We were waiting for Rebecca to get off of work and join us for a round of drunk croquet, and with time to spare after our constitutional, we decided to see a random movie at the Ballston theatre. The only one playing with a matinee price was The Kingdom with Jamie Foxx, Jennifer Garner, and an unbilled Jason Bateman. The movie was pretty decent, with a riveting beginning and end and a ... - Friday, August 31, 2007:
Taking Stock Day where the hell did August go? Since the last day of the month (also known as "throwaway post day") has fallen on a Friday, there will not be any Friday Fragments today. Friday Fragments is a column of highly concentrated ingenuity, much like the end result of putting MacGuyver in a moonshine still, and to use it on the last day of the month (when posts immediately roll into the archive to make way for the next month) would be a travesty on par with putting the Jim Swearingen piece anywhere other than the Intermission on your concert. Instead, today will be a chance to stop and take stock of what I've done and where I'm going . For anyone like Katie who was devastated to find that ther... - Wednesday, August 22, 2007:
Quick Sketch Day what I've been up to this week Sunday, 2:30 PM : Sat down to do some work from home but found that the VPN server was down. Took a trip into the office and stayed there until late. Had leftover shrimp lo mein and beef with mushrooms for dinner. Sunday, 10:30 PM : It was so pleasant out that I decided to open all the windows and air out my house (no doubt, the scent of manliness and success permeated the premises). Sunday, 1:00 AM : The "perpetually running free until picked up by animal control then running free again" Alaskan Husky from two doors down, who I have named Miguel, got... - Monday, June 18, 2007:
Weekend Wrap-Up Friday the 15th : I had last Friday off from work, and spent the morning getting Anna to set up a Facebook account. I also turned her baby into an animatronic prop so everyone can feel like they're on the It's a Small World ride whenever Anna posts in the Comments section . In the afternoon, I took the Metro into D.C. to meet Rebecca after work for the Jazz in the Garden series that occurs every Friday night at the National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden. I didn't actually take any pictures of any sculptures, since pictures of random people you don't know are far more voyeuristically interesting than misshapen metal chunks, but you can presume that my manly ch... - Monday, June 04, 2007:
Weekend Wrap-Up Friday the 1st : Came home from work around noon with an order of Popeyes and cleaned the house. Went to the home of the now-graduated-from-high-school Becca in Chantilly (who, in a geriatrics-inducing way, will be in the Class of '11 at Virginia Tech, which is ten years after my own class). Watched some 4400 with Anna and Ben, played some Apples to Apples and lost at one of the fourteen billion Mario Party games. Saturday the 2nd : Went to the Vintage Virginia Wine Festival at Bull Run with Kathy and Rebecca. Ran into Gordon Dodson, a.k.a. "Flip Flop" at the very first wine tent and did the two-and-a-half-minute "what have you been up to since college, w... - Monday, April 23, 2007:
Weekend Wrap-Up On Friday night, Eleanor came over for a play-date with Booty, and brought her mom, Anna, along because I cannot be trusted to chaperone. We had Boston Market for dinner, watched some ancient episodes of Friends, had a few Dos Equis, and played the crazy Wario game on the Wii. Eleanor totally farted on my couch, then passed out in a sleepy stupor from all the beer and rock music. Later on, we heard that Anna's sister, Emily, is now engaged. Congratulations! On Saturday morning, I went on a whirlwind shopping tour of Shoppers Food Warehouse, Home Depot, Petsmart, Target, and Costco (a practice run in case I ever get called on to appear in a reality show about a yuppy scavenger hunt). Besides Q-Tips, insoles, cat ... - Monday, April 02, 2007:
Cost of Living Day A little over a year ago, I did the math on how much it costs per day to be BU . Since most of my readers lack the perspicacity to realize that this is a cue to go back and read the old entry, I'll simply catch you up: In March 2006, a single day in my life was worth $68.01 and a full year required $24,825 in bills and Popeyes, and car insurance is the biggest scam since they decided to make AP classes worth more than a 4.0 in high school. Here, then, is the "Cost of Being BU" for the new year. The first column in each table row is the cost from last year, and the second is my current cost, at the ripely tender age of twenty-seven. 2006 &... - Monday, March 19, 2007:
Weekend Wrap-Up Friday night was Movie Night, and the entirety of Sterling was in the local Blockbuster, stocking up on movies before the imminent 3 - 8 inches of snow. We had authentic Irish cuisine from a little pub known as McDonald's ( son of Donald in Gaelic) and watched American Dreamz , a parody of both American Idol and George W. Bush which tells the tale of a suicide bomber who gets on the show in hopes of assassinating the President who will be a guest judge in the final round. The movie was entertaining enough, if only to see "The Impossible Dream" from Man of La Mancha choreographed to a bunch of 80s dance movies . By Saturday morning, there had been les... - Wednesday, February 07, 2007:
Live* from the Living Room The creative nerve center of this site's daily updates has relocated to a less expensive office space down the hall to facilitate the painting and recarpeting of the old space. From here, I can write updates while listening to my MP3s in 5.1 surround sound, and need only turn my head slightly to the right to watch old home movies or find out who America's Next Top Bass Fisherman will be. This also puts me at a good vantage point of the entire house, and near the front door in case of a sudden grease fire from all the bacon, or a botched kidnapping from one of the many software engineer love triangles I am currently involved in. And let me tell you, software engineer love triangles may not be as dramatic as NASA astron... - Monday, January 29, 2007:
Plan Day The BU Fiscal Year got off to a late start, which I blame wholly on work -- a convenient scapegoat which I also blame for sore wrists and the resurgence of polio in third world countries. Because of this, I didn't get around to making my plan for the year until just this past week. I always have a plan, for a BU without a plan is like a crossword puzzle without a vowel. Ever since I got out of the perpetual adolescence of higher education, I've tried to create an overarching storyline to my years in the real world. It's against my nature to have long term goals that I could fill in on one of those "Where do you see yourself in five years?" surveys, but looking ahead a year or so gives me the feeling that I know where I'm go... - Tuesday, January 02, 2007:
2007: The Year of the Mealworm The new year kicked off to an underwhelming start yesterday with a pasty swatch of lingering fog and rain showers. I spent New Year's Eve at home working aided by an on-sale case of Guinness from the yuppy Costco (15 for $17) and a back-on-air UPOP pumping out only the worst in European pop music. The week before I was a veritable hibernating bear (if bears were actually capable of writing code without syntax errors), only leaving my telecommuting den to meet up with the family in Alexandria or restock on the necessities of life (Totino's Clasic Pepperoni Pizzas). This left little time for personal hygiene as can be seen in the rather shaggy portrait on the left. If only I'd had some Doritos, I could have littered crumbs across ... - Tuesday, November 21, 2006:
How I Spent My Thanksgiving Vacation Described by EAT Magazine as an "effervescent nectar of the gods", Cheddar Cheese Soup made a successful comeback at dinner on Sunday night. I experimented by using one half less of an onion which made the soup more runny, and less filling, which was a good thing since you could eat more without getting full. This was an intentional experiment and in no way related to the fact that half of the onion fell in the trash can during chopping hour. People came and people ate. This week's main course was a ten pound spiral-sliced ham. There are now enough leftovers in my fridge to feed a small army of attack-trained gerbils, which will come in handy on the day I want to kill one of my neighbours very very slowly. You c... - Thursday, April 27, 2006:
Untitled Post My cul de sac used to be a juvenile wasteland, where all the neighbours were old, Hispanic, or old Hispanics. Sometime between last summer when Anna and Kathy moved out, and the beginning of Spring, children began emerging from some hidden child dispenser, biking up and down the court or playing firmly in the way of oncoming traffic like ineluctable locust swarms. There are now at least ten children from age three to thirteen who congregate daily under the shadow of the portable basketball hoop and the deft tones of poor dribbling echo through the pavement into the foundation of my house for three hours every evening. Playing the role of the neighbourhood hermit (which involves unhygienically crouching over a typewri... - Monday, April 24, 2006:
How I Spent My Spring Break by Brian Uri! I came home from work on Thursday morning and left the carefully manicured suburbia of Sterling in my sensible Honda Accord for the idyllic splendour of Blacksburg. My street is like Wisteria Lane, except that everyone else speaks Spanish and there are no attractive neighbours. This is Exit 222 in Staunton on I-81, the second most boring interstate on the East Coast, trailing only I-95 in sourthern North Carolina. The only reason Staunton exists at all is so you know you're halfway to Blacksburg (and so Kelley can have his wedding in September). The smoke signals rising in the middle of the picture are not Virginian Indians -- it was just a giant flying beetle that splattered across my windshield. On... - Wednesday, April 05, 2006:
Life in Progress Mario and Luigi: Partners in Time is the funnest video game I've played in a long time. Its use of the split screen feels completely natural, it has charm, and it even has a good English translation. Part role-playing game, part platform hopper, and part adventure, this game is a tiny replica of Paper Mario for GameCube which is a definite compliment in my book. Buy it if only to hear Mario's faux Italian voice proclaim, "BABIES!" (everywhere!). I've gotten so caught up in the above game that I haven't played much with my Nintendog, a golden retriever named Woofer. He's probably run away by now. A thousand bucks later and my brakes are replaced and wonderfully tactile. Th... - Thursday, March 23, 2006:
The Cost of Being BU Everyone hates bills, except for the kinds with Rights written on them (in which case they pretend to love them but really hate them anyhow). The problem with monthly or periodic bills besides the way they prevent you from buying that horse ranch in Utah is that they're spread out just enough so you don't realize how much you're being nickel-and-dime'd to death. You get in the habit of writing the account number on that check and grumbling, but never really stop to think about how much it's costing you and what you're getting out of it. Today, I'm going to break down the bills of a young American middle-class worker bee to provide an object lesson in the hemorrhaging of cash. Of course, I don't yet have to worry about such insan... - Monday, February 20, 2006:
Weekend Thoughts Linsday Jacobellis led the pack by 100 yards when she tried to show off on the last jump and bombed out, allowing some Swedish boarder to get the gold instead . Without a doubt, this is the best and most American way to inaugurate "snowboard cross" as a legitimate Olympic event. It would be like the ice dancers trying to fit in one extra twizzle and then faceplanting in the arena. Not that I ever watched any ice dancing. Nope. I think it's funny that all of our winter athletes became U.S. citizens within the last three months, and they all have names like Ilyvana Petropavlovisk. I lost $20 in poker on Saturday night and there's a picture of a snowman saying, "Remember the Poop" on my marker... - Tuesday, January 31, 2006:
Untitled Post I can assert with virtual confidence that I am no longer a spreader of disease and my cough has gone away for good, so they can finally remove me from the terrorist deck of playing cards where I was third in command of the clubs suit (Queen of Clubs was the girl that licks everything from the anti-smoking ad and King was Mike's Futon of Death). It only took three weeks for the cough to stop, fast enough for me to enter February with a healthy, clean outlook, but not so fast that it didn't annoy me during my weekend plans o' fun. After the past returned to haunt me in the form of prepackaged frozen pizzas on Saturday, I took a trip out to Fake Alexandria, which is the area of Fairfax County south of the Beltway also k... - Thursday, January 19, 2006:
Untitled Post We had a scare with Sydney yesterday. Anna and Ben woke up to find her waiting by the food tin as usual, but refused to eat a bite and showed no interest in eating, preferring to stand still and stare straight ahead without talking. This is a cat that talks to herself twenty-four hours a day, and learned to open trash cans to eat stray pieces of lettuce, so that behaviour in itself was alarming. Anna poked around the house to see if maybe she'd gotten into another bottle of multivitamins or bleach and found two little puddles of kitty honking. Cats throw up all the time, but this coupled with the odd antics made them think that Sydney had possibly licked the bottom of Anna's mug of cold medicine the night before. Apparently acet... - Monday, January 16, 2006:
Untitled Post On Saturday night, we went out to Winchester for a surprise going-away party for Vu, who left yesterday for a new job and funner friends in San Francisco. Anna made a tort and I made my patented "going-away" chocolate chip cookies in a colourful "going-away" bowl. The extended Spellerberg clan was there, and children and small animals flocked to me like I was the Pied Piper. You can see pictures from the party on the Photos page . On Sunday night, Kim and I drove into D.C. to see the final tour of Les Miserables at the National Theatre where we met up with Ben & Anna and Ben's mother. The show was great, but the performances weren't quite as good as they were four years ago. I'll write about... - Wednesday, January 11, 2006:
Untitled Post When I went to Border's to buy a wall calendar, they had two full carrells of books devoted exclusively to Sudoku. There is a Snood-version of Sudoku that lets you play it with Snoods instead of numbers. In the pit orchestra I was in last year, people were passing Sudoku pages around like numeric bongs to pass the time between acts of Mikado. Over at the Chompblog, every Tuesday's update is Tuesdoku Tuesday (which is not as fun as the competing feature, Newsday Tuesday, on the URI! Zone). So what's the big deal about Sudoku? I stayed home from work on Monday and Tuesday of this week to get over a random winter bug, so I figured there'd be no better time to unearth the secrets of Sudoku for my blog-reading... - Monday, December 26, 2005:
Untitled Post Ho ho ho, and welcome back from your weekend of debauchery and food. My own was quite pleasant, starting with a Friday afternoon filled with movies and Chinese food. I saw Serenity for the second time, and Batman Begins for the first. The latter was definitely good, dispelling my belief that action movies longer than two hours automatically suck (see also, Bad Boys II: Stuff Blows Up ). Christian Bale made a great Batman, and Actor Who Auditioned For Batman But Didn't Get It made a great Dr. Crane. The Katie Holmes role was pretty anemic, but that generally seems to be the case with any movie where a superhero has a love interest. You'd think they could use their super powers to attract better ... - Monday, December 12, 2005:
Untitled Post Congratulations to Rachel, who submitted entry #6 in last Thursday's Funny Caption contest ! She wins a picture of a pencil with her name on it, presented by the ineffable Booty. Runner-up with 5 votes was Mike with entry #1 and Anna with entry #3. They each win a picture of a pencil with Rachel's name on it, presented by the charming Booty. Full results are posted in last Thursday's post. My weekend was quite laid back. When not devising new ways to plant pencils on Booty so they would stay put until I managed to whip out my camera and take a picture, I played games, read books, watched movies, and went to work. I worked enough hours over the weekend that I'll probably take a day off at the end of ... - Monday, November 28, 2005:
Untitled Post Ho ho ho (get it?) and welcome to the Holiday Edition of the URI! Zone. Here is my weekend wrap-up in nine thousand words or less (most likely less): Wednesday Left work at noon to sign for a "signature required" UPS delivery expecting it to arrive around 3 PM, only to discover that the assclown now runs my neighbourhood at noon. Missed the delivery by 14 minutes. Also noted that said assclown decided to take Friday off, so the 2nd Delivery would not be until the following Monday. Cleaned out the office and threw away two bags full of useless papers and manuals. Watched LOST which is starting to return to the first season's levels of goodness. Decided that Ana-Lucia is actually a g... - Tuesday, November 22, 2005:
Untitled Post My marathon month of hosted dinners came to an end this weekend, after hosting 24 hungry hungry hippos over three Sundays, with two hams and a turkey. I hosted a work dinner, a "friends and family" dinner, and a high school dinner, with a few lucky souls like Jack and Kim who got to come to multiple dinners, since I was unable to pigeonhole them into any one society. This increased their cheddar cheese soup quota, although I don't think it came out as well on Sunday as it did the previous two weekends -- the cheese disintegrated a little bit too far. I was going to do a "people from VT" dinner next weekend, but I'm tired of cooking and couldn't get enough people who didn't already have plans. I do think the month was a success though,... - Tuesday, November 08, 2005:
Not a Good Weekend for Fingers and Toes I didn't get home from D.C. until around midnight on Saturday, and when I went out to get the paper the next morning, I discovered a bag full of fast-food garbage sitting on my curb, as if someone had parked there, eaten their Burger King crap, and then dropped the bag out the window before driving away. Later that day, I happened to be practicing my trumpet in the living room when I peered out the window to see an SUV parked in front of my house. The people inside just happened to be eating fries. Now, I'm no private investigator (at least, not licensed) but I'm pretty quick at the whole "cause and effect" thing, so I sat down by the window and put the suspicious car under fast-food surveillance. Roughly fifteen minutes la... - Tuesday, November 01, 2005:
Untitled Post I received a grand total of zero (0) Trick-or-Treaters last night which qualifies as a new record. I attribute this sharp decline to one of two hypotheses: 1) I rigged my front porch with a weight-sensitive trapdoor (it calls you fat before it opens) and captured all the little tykes to make some steak and kid knee pie or 2) I was hiding in the back room of house with all the blinds closed and the porch light off. It is left as an exercise for the reader to determine which hypothesis is more legitimate (see also, Intelligent Design in schools). During the witching hour, I was transcribing the Westfield fight song and making fun of the arrangement, which essentially consisted of music written for flute, clarinet, and alto s... - Monday, October 24, 2005:
Untitled Post Last Thursday night, we went to see the movie, Serenity , the big-screen adaptation of the cancelled TV series, Firefly . As a fan of the show, I thought the movie was pretty much perfect -- bringing most of the abruptly-ended storylines to a satisfying close. It didn't make the normal big-screen mistake of trying to overdo the story with a big budget (see The X-Files for a good example of bad excesses), and really was just a new episode in the continuing storyline. This movie is best seen if you've watched the TV show (and there's only half a season's worth of episodes so it's easy to play catch up). Though the first few minutes do a good job of introducing all the characters, their relationshi... - Monday, October 17, 2005:
A Tourist's Guide to BU's Weekend Finn and Porter : This is where we had dinner on Friday night and pretended to be as fancy on the outside as we know we are on the inside. Actually, it was very reasonably priced and tasty, and it's about as close to high-class as I've been in a long time (probably since high school prom dinner). The decor was straight out of Pottery Barn, and their wine list was ridiculously comprehensive, taking up the entire back of the one page menu in tiny font. It was even more comprehensive than my Comprehensive List of Types of Sheep 1 , right down to the $310 bottle of Dom Perignon. I like wine, but am no wine connoisseur, so the house Pinot Grigot went just fine with my Maine Sea Scallops which were so ... - Tuesday, September 06, 2005:
Untitled Post Sorry for the delay in posting this update -- I couldn't access my site from work (though everyone else didn't have any problems) so I had to wait until I got home. I felt rather helpless watching all you voracious readers visiting all day without any means to tell you why the world was frozen on Friday. Then when I finally got home, I realized that I'd left the final draft of the update at work, so I'm rewriting most of this from scratch. I often do forgetful things such as this. My weekend was a success all around. On Saturday morning, my dad and I laid landscape timbers for the planter box and recoated the asphalt in the driveway. For Poker Night, I moved from 5th to 4th place, but still came in behind my new nemesis wh... - Wednesday, August 31, 2005:
Untitled Post A month ago I posted my Manifesto of Ambitions for the remainder of the year , so I thought I'd take today to show you my progress at becoming an ambitious, determined, self-motivated self-starter (with great people skills). The last day of the month is always some kind of throwaway entry, since all my regular readers are out turning tricks to pay rent on the first of the month anyhow. 1) Finish the sidewalk: Any regular readers will know that the sidewalk saga ended this month, and now a quaint sidewalk engulfs over fifty percent of my house like an Aztec Pac-Man. I still need to create a planter box on the west side that matches the one on the east, but this task was rained out la... - Monday, August 15, 2005:
Untitled Post I would say that my weekend was pretty hectic, but my outlook on such things might be skewed. Having long ago relinquished the title of Social Butterfly of Loudoun County , I consider any weekend busy if I go outside the house more than four times in a single day (bonus points for getting in my car and driving somewhere. Beep beep, monsieur!) On Friday evening, I cleaned the house and recorded some music examples for my presentation, and then Jack came over for some miscellaneous socializing. Saturday's opener was my typical shopping gambit, where I hit the gas station and the grocery store, pissing off the clerks by getting more cash back than they have in their drawers at such an early hour. I then went ... - Tuesday, July 26, 2005:
Untitled Post My trip to the dentist yesterday was uneventful and exactly like every other trip in my dental repertoire (although they did locate the Mickey Mouse pendant I lost in my nose at age 15). The visit began with dirty looks and voodoo curses when I explained how long it had been since my last confession cleaning, and the orderly donned her thickest "we're going to find a dead muskrat behind his left molar" latex gloves. After a quick round of X-Rays, she returned to the room with the dire news that my upper wisdom teeth were coming in sideways and threatening to crush my upper front teeth like an origami bird in a trash compactor. My quick thinking at the forefront, I pointed out that the X-Rays were upside d... - Monday, April 04, 2005:
Untitled Post I spent all of last week sprawled on the couch in the final throes of various diseases (see Figure A for a reenactment of how I sprawled). Since I could barely sit at my computer without falling over, I missed all of last week's planned updates, which were to include: an interview with Astrid Spielman, lead singer of the punk band, The Particles , build-it-yourself instructions for a glow-in-the-dark pinata, and a new composition with the title, Where is Alex? . To make up for this lack of updates, I've added some new cat pictures to the Photos page, and will describe my week for your reading pleasure. I was feeling fine last Saturday and made a roast leg of lamb for my parents... - Monday, March 14, 2005:
Untitled Post Greetings from "I took a week off and you didn't"-ville. Life and cats are good. We're considering the names Sydney and Amber for the kittens, though April might be in the mix too. I'll talk more about them in another update, since this one is reserved for the new look of the URI! Zone. After experimenting with several dramatic layout redesigns, I finally decided on a moderate graphic revision while maintaining most of what worked from the old site. The URI! Zone has been around for nine years now, which makes it younger than the shirts I bought in high school and still wear regularly, but older than most cats or dogs you currently own (Chompy included). I think I finally did the navigation well around Year Eight, so... - Monday, December 27, 2004:
Untitled Post Merry Christmas, and welcome back from my two-week hiatus. I've been putting in mad amounts of overtime recently, to the point where I didn't really feel like making little pithy updates on a daily basis when I got home from a day of computing (see Dec 13 and Dec 20 for examples of such pitiful pithiness. I will still be working a lot this week, but should be cutting back to my regular schedule starting in the new year. To make up for my recent lack of updates, I'm going to try and post a review of one thing per day for awhile, whether it's a movie, book, CD, game, or foodstuff. What could I be reviewing tomorrow? That's the kind of crazy excitement you get for free by visiting this site. Besides work, I ... - Monday, July 26, 2004:
Untitled Post The weekend was a pretty productive one. On Friday night we went out an watched The Bourne Supremacy, which was about as good as the original. The theatre was sold out and we ended up in the front, and the hyperkinetic handheld camera filming effect, which is very in these days, did not make for very intelligible car chases, but it was fine as long as no one was prone to motion sickness. Afterwards, we came back and shot some pool until late. On Saturday and Sunday, I spent some time working in the basement and also got through some more reading of my new books. I also went grocery shopping at the nearest Shoppers Food Warehouse, where they've recently installed a security camera over every cashier line. Strangely, the cam... - Tuesday, June 22, 2004:
Untitled Post The Internet was all akimbo yesterday so I couldn't log into my FTP server for an update. Probably just another worm eating away at everything. I got back from my sister's wedding on Sunday morning. It was an upper crust affair at the Barboursville Winery and Ruins, complete with a chocolate fountain you could dip your cake in and underwater flowers as centerpieces. With the addition of the Binder family, I think the family tree just quintupled in size. The ceremony was a brief Jewish affair and around a hundred people showed up. The sky looked threatening all afternoon, and it started to rain right at 5:30 when the wedding began, but only momentarily. The string trio was able to take their instruments ba... - Monday, May 17, 2004:
Untitled Post Based on the number of people who visit and my intrinsic laziness, I've decided that the URI! Zone will not be updated on the weekends for the duration of the summer months (until August or so). I may occasionally post an update on the weekend, but there is no need to do ADD-refreshing of the page in anticipation of weekend profundity. This weekend was a fairly productive one. I've gotten everyone in my general vicinity hooked on Alias , and ended up watching about eight back-to-back episodes from Season One with the guy living in my basement who'd never seen them before. Yesterday, I washed the years of accumulated dirt and mold off the house's siding and removed the backing from a wall bookshelf to brigh... - Monday, May 03, 2004:
Untitled Post This weekend I went out to Winchester with Anna, who had an extended family gathering of sorts. We were all going to go to some big Apple Blossom festival (apparently it's a big deal) but the crowds were so bad that we just had a cook-out at Anna's sister's new house. On the way home today, I saw a guy in full fatigues with a backpack jogging along the side of the road (in the rain). About fifty yards later, I saw an old guy in a blue coat carrying a single fluorescent bulb, about six feet long. Make of that what you will. Bush reaping the benefits of journalistic professionalism Nude discipline brings arrest Student letter warns a... - Monday, April 19, 2004:
Untitled Post Yesterday, I went out to one of Anna's sister's house in Winchester to help move an upright piano into the house. The size to cost ratio of the houses out there is ridiculous, and all of them are built with the new age high ceilings that have their own atmospheric conditions near the top. I think I would feel smaller than I already am in a house with rooms that vertically spacious. After using Filezilla for a week instead of my usual FTP client, I've decided that it has enough pros to outweigh the cons. The interface is very customizable and supports multiple uploads and downloads with a variety of file sorting criteria. It can also keep idle connections alive and browse remote file systems with Windows style layouts. It's... - Tuesday, March 30, 2004:
Untitled Post I spent yesterday afternoon cleaning, scrubbing, and vacuuming the apartment for a check-out inspection today. The Elms at Centreville was definitely a good place to live, and I would heartily recommend it to anyone looking for a home. The staff is always helpful and maintenance is super speedy and rarely needed. The only downside to the place is that the walkways outside doors drip mightily even in the smallest rain shower, so you always get wet if you don't have an umbrella. On the upside, you may get a discount if you say I referred you. (Or maybe I get the discount). Mr. Clean Magic Erasers really do work on wall smudges and pencil marks, but they disintegrate like nobody's business. I go... - Tuesday, March 23, 2004:
Untitled Post My four day sabbatical has drawn to a close and I'm back in the saddle ready to hunt outlaws and Injuns. The majority of my time was spent working at the house, which is why there were no decent updates to be had. On Friday, I rewired most of the outlets on the upper floor and painted over the rich green master bathroom with several coats of white. Because the house is south-facing, the sun shines directly into the bathroom, illuminating it like a sterile alien probe facility. After lunch when the sun had slipped to the other side of the house, I moved to the study where I put together my American Dream desk, a gargantuan five million pound gorilla made out of particle board and the ingenious self-install bits ... - Thursday, March 11, 2004:
Untitled Post A couple days ago, I arranged for my new phone installation online. Yesterday, I got an e-mail from Verizon asking me to call their Welcome Center. It turns out that they couldn't find any credit history for me, and the lady on the phone asked me to fax them all sorts of paperwork like employment history and driver's license. BU: " So why exactly do I have to submit all this paperwork? " Verizon: " Well, since we can't locate your credit history, we have to verify that you are who you say you are. We cannot provide phone service without some proof of identity. " BU: " Would an existing utilities account be sufficient if I don't want you to have all that... - Wednesday, March 10, 2004:
Untitled Post Yesterday was a long day. I got up at 5 and decided it was too cold to be up, so I went back to sleep until 6. Then, I worked from home until around 9 or 10 after a shower and a bagel, and drove to the office at the tail end of the rush hour. It still took four cycles to get through the light at Old Ox Road. I also signed up for phone service at the new house, and it looks like my number will start with 4444. At work I did some research into top secret sub atomic particles that emit photon beams and quantum teleport to Petropavlovsk, and then left for the house around 2. I did some sanding and some closet painting until my hands were tired, and then went home at 6. At that hour, it took me an hour to get back to Centreville, instead o... - Sunday, February 01, 2004:
Untitled Post We left Northern Virginia yesterday around 9:30 to go see Miss Saigon. After driving around the uselessly twisty portion of 495 above DC, and paying some of our booty on tolls through Maryland, we arrived in Wilmington, Delaware, a small pocket of urban blight that looks just like a real city, but only four blocks across. After six miles of suburb driving in search of a national chain for lunch, we finally stopped at Arby's (being the only choice besides Dunkin' Donuts and one McDonald's). The show took place at the DuPont Hotel/Theatre at 2 PM, and was filled with the usual mix of high-class old folks and sleek yuppies. The production itself was quite good, especially considering its roots as a gargantuan epic. The ... - Sunday, November 02, 2003:
Untitled Post Halloween in Centreville was a low-key affair. Judging from the number of rugrats that tear around the apartment complex all day long, we figured that we'd get quite a few visitors, but fewer than fifteen had come by the end of the night. As a result, we were left with tons of candy that I'll probably give away at work on Monday. I dressed up as a gangster for last week's Halloween party (and also went to work like one as well). I think I scared a few office workers from another floor who saw the butt of a Tommy gun poking out of my backpack on my way out. Booty and Kitty dressed up too, but not on their own volition. You can see new pictures from Halloween on the Photos page under "URI! Pictures", ... - Wednesday, September 24, 2003:
Untitled Post The longer I go without an update, the more difficult it is to sit down and actually write one. I've been up to the usual shenanigans here and I'm happy that the weather is actually getting cooler in September. Hurricane Isabel gave us a lot of rain, but the power never went out and I managed to go to work the next day without problems. There were a few downed trees and dead stoplights but that was the extent of the damage on this end. I hear, though, that Old Town Alexandria and Belle View flooded out, putting people hip-deep in water along the Potomac. I created a new custom game for Warcraft III called Burrow Command. It's similar to Bunker Command from Starcraft, where the goal was to destroy other players' bunk... - Friday, September 05, 2003:
Untitled Post I celebrated my first Labour Day in northern Virginia in eight years by coming in to work. That way, I can take off Monday the 15th using a bare minimum of leave time. Work's been pretty slow recently, mainly because of an increase in troubleshooting time rather than development time. The end of the summer dumped a good ten percent increase in cars on every road at every hour of the day. Many of the drivers seem unfamiliar with such simple concepts as "flow of traffic" and "accelerating through green lights". You can spot the people who didn't commute all summer because everyone else is driving around them while they amble down the left lane. The Hokies beat Central Florida at home last weekend. Unlike l... - Saturday, August 16, 2003:
Untitled Post It's been a busy couple of weeks, but I've managed to get a lot accomplished. At work, I'm still working with outside consultants for software configuration. The summer intern program ended this week, and it's a little strange to see that there's nothing very tangible to show for my summer. Because of the nature of this project, I haven't really "created" anything yet, while in each of my past summers I had written billions of lines of code by now. Last weekend, I went to the Aerosmith / Kiss concert at the Nissan Pavilion (which is about ten miles down the road). The headliners were both good (I'd never seen either one live before), but the opening group, Saliva, was just horrible. It was interesting to see an older... - Tuesday, June 24, 2003:
Untitled Post The Eighth Edition of the URI! Domain opens today to little fanfare. I was unable to update the site two weeks ago because of server problems, and was unable to update last weekend because of my impeccable skill of procrastination. Figuring that I'd better do something good to appease the masses, I decided to go the extra mile and finish off bulk of the new site for this week (one month ahead of schedule! WOW!) (!). Not everything has been translated over from the previous edition (like the Music page and the Writings page), but there's enough here to keep folks happy for a few days while I continue my efforts. The most important changes you'll find (besides the refinement and simplifying of my interface): news archives ar... - Monday, June 02, 2003:
Untitled Post May 26, 2003 I had a nice, if rainy, Memorial Day weekend. Kathy, my friend from Florida, was in town for the weekend and invited me to a barbeque in Falls Church with an odd amalgamation of her various cliques (I have to mention people from Florida as such, since I'm now writing from the point of view of the Virginian cadre). Tomorrow is my first day of work. May 27, 2003 Today was mainly a paperwork day -- signing up for benefits and designating beneficiaries and such. I don't have a desktop computer yet since they waited until I arrived to order it (they wanted me to have some say in its customization). In the meantime, I'm running on an old 433MHz laptop computer t... - Friday, May 23, 2003:
May 3, 2003 I got home around noon today unscathed. The trip home was uneventful -- I even let Booty out of her crate for the last six hours. Unlike my old cat, she just wandered around the car for a bit and then fell asleep on top of the crate. While in the crate, she would whine piteously until she got exhausted and passed out with her mouth open, only to start up again twenty minutes later. I haven't unpacked anything incidental because I'm hoping to move into a real place within the next two weeks. Keeping things in boxes will hopefully induce me to search more quickly. Tonight, I learned the chords C, F, G7, a, d, and E7, using my mom's old guitar. I have a negative balance in my "ease of transition" account, and my lef... - Wednesday, April 30, 2003:
Untitled Post Today is the final daily update for the Seventh Edition of the URI! Domain (TRAGIC!). This will also be your last chance to add new comments to News posts (using the Asian button on the upper right corner of this news item) so go ahead and post your final witticism or goodbye as you see fit. The old comments will still be available on the Archive page so you can read them on those long summer days when you get bored with online cards / hook-ups and decide to read all two years' worth of updates in a single sitting. One of my New Year's Resolutions was to devote a little more energy to the updates than I did last semester. How'd I do? I'll be leaving for the homeland tomorrow morning and may not be online regularly f... - Friday, January 03, 2003:
Untitled Post I left home yesterday around five in the morning and got on I-95 with the Yanni belting out open windows. The first leg of the trip into North Carolina was uneventful, and besides the odd catfish truck I was the only person on the road. It was around Rocky Mount that I nodded off at the wheel, since the road was straight and danger was nonexistant. The next thing I knew, there was a guttural screeching of gears and airhorns and a bright flash of sparks as I veered off the road and through an electrified fence. The last thing I remember was a herd of cows mooing like bovine cannibals around the car. When I became conscious again, I found myself in a small barren room with a single incandescent light bulb swaying from... - Sunday, December 15, 2002:
Untitled Post C:\VIRGINIA> I've been home since late Friday night but still haven't gotten around to getting an Internet connection on my computer. Rather than install the bulky free adware service my parents use, I'll probably just stay net-less, and upload sparse updates from one of the family computers. I left Tallahassee early Thursday and arrived in Blacksburg that afternoon. Construction on the 460 bypass is finally complete, and the road drives an S around Christiansburg and Blacksburg, with the real 460 slicing through the center to form a figure 8. Tech hasn't changed much beyond the new buildings that always pop up on the outskirts. The Music Department is in bad shape from all the budget cuts, and they've been f... - Wednesday, August 21, 2002:
Untitled Post I got back from my beach trip yesterday evening, having driven up to Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina to meet up with some Virginia friends at a beach house they'd rented for the week (Pictures are on the Photos page). I would've liked to stay longer, but that whole educational process was beckoning here and I had to take care of some more residency things before classes start. The drive up and down isn't so bad, because the states and the scenery change pretty regularly. South Carolina could stand to be abbreviated by about fifty miles, and we could always use an interstate from Savannah to Tallahassee, but otherwise things were pretty uneventful, allowing me to make the trip in about eleven hours. I'd never driven on Rte 64 i... - Sunday, June 23, 2002:
Untitled Post I've gotten hooked on watching The Sopranos , and I'm halfway through the second season of episodes right now. I watched the very first episode a couple weekends ago when nothing was going on and ended up getting dragged into the story. If you haven't seen it before, it really does match up to all the hype it gets. It's nice that studios are releasing full seasons of episodes on DVD these days. I'm still using Netscape 7.0 preview edition for all my web needs, and haven't found anything major to gripe about (other than the typical AOL icons and bookmarks that are installed on startup). The browser hiccups a little when loading this page, but a quick Reload usually fixes that. On the web side of things, I ... - Friday, June 07, 2002:
Untitled Post There's never enough time to do all the things you want to do. Since the last big update, I've been constantly on the go, between work and my "during-the-week" residence. I've managed to get a little composing in, but not nearly as much as I'd like. For Memorial Day weekend, I went down to the beach house of the family I'm staying with during the week. Even though it's still under construction, you can really tell that it's going to be a great place to vacation and/or retire. The lot is on a small inlet to the Potomac River (down at Colonial Beach), and is surprisingly undeveloped. The generic "supermarket" was filled with rural folk that some would call rednecks (no doubt, affectionately), and the town is far enough away from I-95 to... - Sunday, May 19, 2002:
Untitled Post Earlier this year, 7-UP replaced their spokesperson, Orlando Jones, with a newcomer, comedian Godfrey. Apparently there was a commercial spot a few months back explaining the switch, and how the old guy was "promoted". However if you missed that spot, all you can see now is a new actor attempting to portray the same speech patterns and bug-eyed expressions of the original (and popular) actor. You can almost hear the corporate advertising train of thought -- "We can't use Orlando anymore, but maybe if we throw in another guy that looks and acts the same, no one will notice. All white people think all black people look alike anyways." It was another busy week here in northern Virginia, but I'm starting to get comforta... - Saturday, May 11, 2002:
Untitled Post A hearty welcome back is in order for all those disappointed folks who have been visiting daily in hopes of an amazing update. I've been incredibly busy on all fronts these past two weeks, and I'll try to get everyone caught up on the breath-taking activities that punctuate my exciting lifestyle. I started working last Wednesday and quickly got back into the coding groove. This summer it looks like I'll be working on "future" applications of the current software packages. This includes non-application-specific enhancements and modifications which aren't necessarily tied to an urgent release date. I did the same type of thing last summer, and its gratifying to see all my work from that stint still existing in the baseline for th... - Friday, April 19, 2002:
Untitled Post The final class of the semester finished off this morning, and I'm free of responsibility, other than a minor playing gig for an orchestration class this afternoon. Overall, this semester had a lot of ups and downs, but seemed to go quite a bit faster than last semester. I definitely got more accomplished this year though, and it looks like the summer will be chock full of useful activities. I'll definitely be leaving Tallahassee on Monday, rather than Wednesday, so it would behoove you to send your going away gifts by priority mail. After a week's visit in Blacksburg (and maybe a few recordings of some older works), I start working at FGM on May 1 and I'll be in or around the D.C. metropolitan area for the remainder of th... - Friday, March 08, 2002:
Untitled Post Since it's the last day of classes before Spring Break, everyone is out and about, driving off to their island paradises for the week. Most of the undergrads seem to have left yesterday, with the exception of music majors, who had to stick around for exams given by their heartless professors. Hopefully the fat-ass upstairs with the video game that requires jumping will be away all break too. You'd think that after his daily regimen of video-gaming (during my specified hours only, of course) he'd sound a little bit lighter by now. I don't have any big plans for the week, although there's a lot of work I plan on getting ahead in. By the end of the week, I'd like to: 1) Do my pedagogy presentation 2) Make par... - Thursday, August 16, 2001:
Untitled Post I'm back online already, probably before most of you had a chance to visit twice. The trip was uneventful, but not too tiresome. I left Lorton on the Auto-Train yesterday afternoon and lucked out with one of the few seats that had no assigned seatmate. Not that it really matters, since train seats are almost as bad as bus seats for sleeping. For dinner, I had chicken with a mother and daughter team that glared at me and the other solo rider as if we were the root of the world's problems. The cheesecake made it all worthwhile. When not sleeping or staring out the window at the low income housing along the tracks, I read Walter Piston's Counterpoint and Joel Lester's Analytic Approaches to Twentieth-Century...
