April 2006 Archives

After a rough, allergy-ridden night, my Simpsons desk calendar at work cheered me up.

It's always nice to have inspiration...

When I was in sixth grade, I went away to Space Camp for a week or so. It was the first time I was away from home for any extended period of time, and by golly I was scared to go. Mom went with me down to Huntsville, though, so it was okay, and as she said later, "it was a learning experience." But this post isn't about Space Camp, it's about when I came back to school after it was over. I felt as though I had been on a great adventure, but I was so shy and introverted and self-conscious about everything then (I hated sixth grade), that I didn't want to tell anyone about it. I wanted to wear the Space Camp garb I got for participating, but I was too shy to explain where I'd gotten it.

I do remember getting up the courage to wear the black-and-gray "Space Camp" sweatshirt on the Monday after I returned, and I don't think I got too many weird looks or elicited too many laughs from my rambunctious, hormone-crazed early teen classmates. In fact, the day should have gone pretty flawlessly. When I first arrived in the morning, I skipped my locker to go straight into Mr. Clark's homeroom. That's not that unusual, since I probably had the books for the first class in my backpack already, anyway.

You know the feeling in the back of your mind that you get when you know you're forgetting something or that something embarrassing is about to happen? Sixth grade afforded me plenty of opportunities to exercise that piece of my brain. I realized, after homeroom, that I had been away for so long at Space Camp that I had totally forgotten my locker combination. Bret, one of the best students in the class, Bret the brain, was not going to be able to get his homework out or have the correct books for the rest of the day!

I was terrified. In between periods, I tried with all my might to remember my combination. I failed each time. I drew blanks; I think I even cried. Back then, you see, anything that could cause anyone to laugh at me was a BIG DEAL. I was insecure about a lot, if you couldn't already tell.

I think I eventually solved the fiasco by getting up the courage to tell someone in the office about my mishap. I'm pretty sure the janitors had to cut off the lock with a huge set of metal cutters, causing a big scene in the hallway, making a brief spike in Master Lock sales, and leaving me wanting to crawl into the locker once they finally popped the bright orange door open.

You'd think that I would never let that happen again after the brief ostracism it caused me that year, but I seem to remember occasional lapses in combination memory a couple of times in high school, too. So what am I getting at? Well, for someone with a job who requires them to deal with numbers (and multiple passwords) frequently, remembering them is extremely important. I very nearly forgot a couple of critical PINs during work recently. It took a few abortive attempts before I finally conjured up the information in my head. All I could think about was my Space Camp self trying his hardest not to die of embarrassment. At least that cheered me up, because I think I've come a long way since then. But it also got me wondering: am I doomed to absent-mindedness with numbers forever?

I guess I would never make it on the LOST island... or maybe I'd just have to let Locke do it all for me.

This weekend was both Wesley Weekend and Gina's birthday. There's an alarming trend between Gina and me with events like this: I can't surprise her no matter what I do! I won't go so far as to accuse her of spying, because most of the time it's my own bad acting or a misplaced element of the plan that forces my hand, but I also think her womanly intuition has an extra sensitivity toward surprise hooplas.

This time, my plan for a surprise birthday dinner this Friday, complete with some friends who were available in Blacksburg and a funny card, was thwarted by my own carelessness. I was checking some Webmail on her computer earlier that afternoon at her apartment, when she came to stand by me, and a message with a whistleblowing subject line was staring at her right there on the screen. I still got to see her surprised reaction from finding out about it, but I was embarrassed after having come so close to pulling it off! This trend dates back for at least a year or two now, with something getting in the way of each surprise. One of these days! [insert fist-shaking motion here]

What can I say about Wesley Weekend? It doesn't seem like nearly a year since I participated in my last one. The whole month of April has flown by, just like it always did in college. Mom and my aunt Betty came down to visit and watch the 11:00 performance on Sunday, just as Mom did for the five years I was in Singers. The band still played the "Blues In F" outro music. In a lot of ways, the weekend was the same as if I were still in school. Except this time, instead of practicing my bass for the Sunday performances, I was able to sit back and enjoy watching my friends sing and play. This year's Coffeehouse continued to raise the bar on funny and new Wesley skits, and Glenn had a great variety of tunes picked out for this year's program. I miss it, but I'm glad the Singers are in good hands. To put it succinctly, I had a wonderful time. If you weren't there, you were missed.

Tom has a great article summing up his feelings about finishing his Singers and intramural sports careers over at TSPN today. Reading it brings back many of the same memories of how I felt nearly a year ago as I looked ahead to the daunting prospect of real-world life.

I don't have a lot of time tonight, since I have to be up at oh-dark-thirty in the morning for a day trip for work. I did, however, want to mention that had my MBA application not gotten in the way, Josh and I were going to try the 24 live-blogging, Dave Barry style (thanks to Rachel for the idea in the comments a couple of entries back). Realizing that we're probably not as clever as Dave Barry, and that we're certainly not as popular or widely known, I'm going to try to come up with a way to put our own particular spin on things. This will probably be demonstrated by making jokes only our friends will get and other cool-crowd techniques. That way, we'll at least be sure to make ourselves laugh a little bit.

I'll write up my new perspectives on Wesley Weekend later. Guten nighten!

My old computer's days in my room are numbered. I've had it spread out in pieces all over my floor - Empire Strikes Back C-3PO style - all week, erasing files and defragging it to make it good to go. Where's it going? To some deserving family members back home. You'd better behave yourself in your new digs, Barking Seal Noise!

The old thing's been jealous of my new computer since the day it arrived, and rightly so. Here's a pictorial comparison for your enjoyment.

Look at him! It almost makes you forget that the thing barked like a seal for five months.

Now that's more like it, darnit.

I hope you all had a happy Easter weekend. It was a little strange for me this year, as Mom pointed out that this was the first Easter in 24 years for which I wouldn't be home. Now, this kind of thing is going to happen more and more, I realize, as jobs and other responsibilities continue to multiply, but I'm still close enough to the home nest that it still bothers me now and then that the Fort is so far away.

But, three cheers go out to Gina and her family for inviting me into their Easter fold this weekend! Thanks, everybody, for giving me someplace nice and welcoming to go and to share in the happiness of the occasion with you all. It's part of the reason why I'm a darn lucky guy to have Gina put up with me, I guess. i really appreciated it.

Also, a side note on 24. First, I'm highly disappointed that Dave Barry wasn't able to comment on tonight's show as he has been in recent weeks, but that can't be helped. Second: If the writers kill off any more characters, I will be upset. I won't be sad or go over the top, because it's still just a TV show, but if they kill off more people senselessly, I'm going to have to assume that the writers have just run out of ideas, and the only way they can continue to raise suspense or advance the plot is through more deaths of characters that we've bought into over the last couple of years. So Heller, Pierce, Wayne, Martha, Buchanan--all of them plus whoever I'm forgetting--had better be alive by the end of the season, or else. Or else, I tell you!

Have you heard the one about the student getting dressed up as a ninja and nearly getting arrested? No, seriously, this happened a few days ago at UGA. What makes this story really interesting is not just the ninja factor, which by itself would lend a certain awesomeness to the story, but that the guy was coming from the Wesley Foundation down there, which was hosting a "ninjas vs. pirates" themed party.

Let me stop the presses for just a second to comment on how freaking awesome a ninjas vs. pirates event would be. That's a definite mental note to be stored for the future, and it's an idea that I wish I'd thought of during my years at VT's Wesley Foundation.

Okay, so the guy comes from Wesley to the dining hall, some ATF agents notice him "acting suspiciously" (and apparently he's not practicing very good ninja techniques if they saw him), thought they saw a gun on him, and proceeded to detain him until the campus police came to sort everything out. If you check out the picture on the college newspaper's site, it does look like there was more than a little unnecessary force on the part of the agents, once they found out he had no gun, and I'm sure the university community is loving them for it. Who knew that the Bureau of Alochol, Tobacco, and Firearms' "Safe Neighborhoods" training details the proper way to take down a neighborhood ninja?

But hey, it's not all bad. The guy wasn't seriously injured, and now he's got fifteen minutes of infamy for being an on-campus ninja. Not to mention some potential lawsuit winnings. You could do a lot worse, my friend, you could do a lot worse.

Steve recently bought himself a used fish tank, complete with some useful things. Like already-living fish! Anyway, he and Mandy hosted a game night last Friday, and I got to take a look at his tank. It's nice, but it comes complete with the absolute largest algae eater I have ever seen in my life.

I mean, look at the thing! It's probably so big because the previous owner apparently let the tank get covered in algae. Mutated, hyper-gene-sequenced algae, I'm sure. This thing only came out from behind his rock a couple of times over the course of the game night, but when it did, it stared directly into our souls from behind the glass and slightly-cloudy water.

The next time I visit Steve and Mandy, I'm going to have to wear some kind of protection, like a hat made out of aluminum foil or something. That's a crazy fish, but I didn't realize how crazy until I got home and downloaded the pictures to my computer. Then I noticed something... If you zoom in a little closer on the picture above... the shocking truth is revealed!

It's going to be hard to sit on this story, let me tell ya. In other photography news, I updated Flickr with galleries showing the above-mentioned game night and what pictures I managed to take during this year's Cherry Blossom Festival.

Fake sea monsters and Macs with Intel processors. What has science dooooooooooone?!

For those of you who still check my blog from time to time, thanks! I admit that I have been neglecting Ramble On somewhat over the last couple of weeks. It's not been by design; rather, I just haven't had enough time to write anything. Sometimes I think when I have these long blogging/writing breaks, I start losing my chops. And by chops, I mean grammar, writing, and spelling skills. Maybe it's just imagined.

Anyway, my new computer is here, it's unpacked and nearly 100% set up, and it's glorious. In celebration, and since I should start having some time to catch up on documenting things that entertain me, I will begin posting again, post haste! I'm not going to promise earth-shatteringly brilliant posts right off the bat, but I definitely have some good stuff cooked up for you. Check me out later today, okay?

One thought for whoever reads this and might know: is there an easy way to copy your iPod to your iTunes with play histories and playlists intact, without having to reset your library on your new computer first? My inquiring mind would like to know.

Happy Easter!

Hey everybody. For some reason, I haven't really felt like blogging anything the last few days, but it's not for lack of interesting or nervewracking things going on. I more or less took some time this weekend to chill, after a travel-filled and deadline-filled week at work. Now that I'm getting my head back in the game, I'm taking my finances by storm and figuring out that I can finally afford a few toys. Say, a shiny new computer complete with all the fixin's I'll need to complete some secret master projects I've been dreaming up over the last few months. My patience is paying off, I suppose!

Until I can really regroup fully and write out some thoughtful articles, here's some new (or not-too-behind-the-times) web tidbits for you guys:

• Check out the brand new, recently-released Wesley webpage. It looks great, and with all the built-in bulletin board technology, it looks like it's going to be a snazzy tool for the Wesley kids. Nice!
• I still feel the loss of D103, but Daryl has done a nice job with updating the front page to his website. He continues to be the master of webstyle, but this incarnation seems like a good compromise from full-time blogging.
• Over in the world of LJ, PaaKow has been posting up a storm. I also had a chance to meet up with him at the Ring Dance a couple of weekends ago, which was a pleasantly unexpected surprise.
• The Simpsons movie? July 27, 2007 is going to be glorious.
• And finally, a few hours after I post this, a somewhat unique thing will happen, in that the time and date will be 01:02:03 on 04/05/06. Some of the poo-pooers are saying "well, yeah, but it's really 2006, so it doesn't really work," but whatever. It's still pretty cool. I'm still going to be asleep, but if you can stay up that late, have a party for me, okay?