Posts from 06/2003

Monday, June 02, 2003

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 that can barely keep two apps up at once. It's good to be back though. I'm in an inner office that's equidistant from the bathroom and the free soda room. The company will be moving somewhere close by (within five miles) around October, but for now, I have about a ten mile commute.

I'm going to be working on a brand new project that just came down the pipe. It's still at the stage where no one's very sure about what the requirements are, but it should be interesting.

May 29, 2003

I had an all-day offsite meeting at Northrup Grumman today. Even though I hadn't been in one since my PEPCO days, I could tell that it was your standard government meeting with all the major players -- the person in charge of information who started every sentence with a variant of "to the best of my knowledge", the developer who brought up relevant concerns at the wrong times, and the developer who interrupted every presentation slide with a tidbit of technical trivia for show, among others. I'm hard at work learning portlets which, intelligently enough, are servlets deployed on a portal.

On the homefront, I haven't had time to do more than practice my cooking.

May 31, 2003

I've gotten into the routine of things now. I get up and get to the office in the morning by 6 AM and get home around 2 or 3, depending on whether I take a lunch break. I then read the paper, have a snack, play with cats, and sometimes take a nap. After dinner, I get back to work on one of my various back-burner projects.

Booty and Kitty are both doing well here. Booty only gets crazy once a week instead of once a day, and still retains all her personality. Kitty has gotten happier now that Booty is around to harass, so she exercises more and mopes less.

June 2, 2003

My parents, as well as Anna's sisters and boyfriend, came to the apartment yesterday evening to sample my cooking. We had pot roast and assorted side dishes. This week, I'm hoping to get my new computer at work, and I'm also planning on some soccer and basketball. People at work play every week on Tuesday and Wednesday.

I wasn't planning on posting a new update until next weekend, but I heard that people in Florida were bored. Since I didn't post any news stories last week, here's all the tidbits I've collected since I left Florida. This should give you some reading fodder on those long, boring afternoons. I've also put up a few new cat pictures (at the bottom of this page ).

Typing monkeys, but no Shakespeare
Hospital seeks Klingon speaker
The SATs: Answering all the questions incorrectly.
Eminem disallows Weird Al parody video.
Badger kicks ass.
Officer resigns over allegations he made girl exercise topless.
Developers are stupid on Mondays.
Every state has its winners.
Deaf woman earns Master's in Music.
Spicing up your water supply.
One more woman has no self-respect.
Michael Jackson wants a f*ckin' burger!
Meow TV to premiere this month.
KFC's secret spices discovered.
Homeless cops give traffic tickets.
Woman has broken bathtub.
Miracle baby 'grew in liver'.
Tyson says he would rape victim now.
Dishwasher kills woman.
The meaning of 'comforted'
Dog robs gas station.

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day in history

Tuesday, June 24, 2003

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 are now available directly from the front page so you can check back in time to events of yore, and there are Next and Previous buttons on pages that require a lot of clicking (like the Photos page!) (!! !).

I still will not be updating every day, but updates will occur two to three times a week for the rest of the summer. To get things kicked off in the right direction, I've added a buttload of new pictures of Booty and Kitty. You can find them by clicking on the Photos tab, and then choosing Cat Pictures from the PDA. The newest pictures will always be at the top of the menu under "Newest Pictures", and will then move to their normal position when the next batch comes along. Both Booty and Kitty are doing great, and enjoy playing, sleeping, and fighting all day long.

Besides my homepage efforts, life has been going well in sunny (HEH) northern Virginia. I'm working on a new project at work (there was a switchup a week after I started), and they bought me a P4-2.66GHz computer with all the trimmings to do my work on. I'm not currently doing any Java programming -- I'm doing high-level design and eventually implementation for a demo in August using a content management system. I also treated myself a 19" flat panel monitor which is currently at work for all my coding and lunchtime gaming needs.

Just this past weekend, I went down to Charlottesville and helped my sister and her boyfriend move from there to Christiansburg. They're interested in the Vet school at Virginia Tech and bought a quaint little house for themselves, two cats, and two dogs. In between mowing weeds and dodging mosquitos, I found time to drive up the bypass to Tech, where I hung out with some old friends (one who's getting married in July) and signed on for some marching band arrangements in the Music Department.

Of my wish-list tasks, I still haven't accomplished much, but I'm doing enough sundry activities that I'm not bored or wasting much time. Anna and I are in the process of decorating the apartment a bit (with posters and hangings, not paints and papers), and we also have a fully-stocked kitchen (see below) for tasty experiments.

I haven't learned much guitar, because the positioning of the left hand exacerbates my computer wrist problems. It would probably go away if I practiced more, but I don't have the gumption to get over the initial plateau yet. I also played some basketball with the guys at work and displayed my theory basketball skills by accidentally elbowing someone in the eye. Luckily, no stitches were required.

The next aspect to be added back into this site will be the remainder of the pictures on the Photos page (which should take me no more than a couple days). In the meantime, enjoy this update and the following backlog of news links. There will definitely be a new post here before the end of the week.

P.S. The "Florida" editions of the Domain had 7731 visits as of yesterday. Zounds.

From the incredibly stupid ideas file
Sony is 'cool'
Teens teach FBI agents to be pedophile bait
HSD official obtained Ph.D. from diploma mill
Who the hell plays with a bluegill in their mouth?
Stump the computer at 20 Questions (more fun options if you get an account)
Orrin Hatch: Software Pirate
The Lego Rubik's Cube Solver
Bush negates claims that "anyone" can ride
A novel approach to reviewing games
New software that cuts the bull
Tarzan joins the Special Olympics
Who not to smoke up with
Guppy Love
Pee-A-Mole

Happy Birthday Nikki!

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day in history

Wednesday, June 25, 2003

After work I walked across the street and took a picture of the sun setting on the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The haze was pretty thick today, but there will be some nice photo opportunities on a clear day.

I've readded all the URI! pictures and Delta Mu pictures to the Photos page.

Record industry to sue downloaders
Ritual murder will not get you a Parliament seat
Virginia Tech offered an ACC spot
The definition of agnostic in the Urban Dictionary
Woman inches over cop
Spike Jones Jr. jumps on the Spike suing bandwagon
Glowing bunnies for next Easter

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day in history

Thursday, June 26, 2003

I've updated the Links page. All that's left to convert are the Music page and the Writings page, which I should get to this weekend. Enjoy, my little homepage monkeys.

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day in history

Monday, June 30, 2003

It's been a pretty busy week. I went indoor rock climbing on Saturday for the first time and utterly destroyed all my muscles. Sunday afternoon was spent at the pool. I also picked up a copy of the fifth Harry Potter book on Saturday and finished it today. It was a decent story but parts were definitely bloated and repetitive. The story moved quickly despite that though, and I think I liked this one better than the fourth one. If you're illiterate or long on free-time, you can also get the entire unabridged audio book on 23 CDs.

The expansion for Warcraft III is in stores starting tomorrow.

Here's an excerpt from a technical manual I was reading last week. You know you have no business writing manuals when you cut this gem:

    It is not possible to publish content without also publishing the channel and the site with which it is associated. In other words, you cannot simply publish content without also publishing the channel and site that content is associated with.

Five minutes after 9/11
Naked with axes
Al Qaeda joke shot down

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day in history

 

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