To Post or Not To Post

March 25, 2006Remarks!  So loved.  :)

So I have this inclination to wait and post until something important has happened, or I can be clever about something.  Maybe I'm looking for quality over quantity, fueled by the fear that enough boring posts will make people stop bothering to read.  Oh well...

I will reserve the tags for special interest type categories, so they might be rare.  If I think a group might be particularly uninterested in a topic, I'll use a title to warn them.  In general news, I'm in Hendersonville right now.  There will be a lot of people here tonight, and the house is a-buzz with preparation.  B-days are a big deal here, especially when it's the 80th.

[Music] - Blues Bros'

Liz's uncle is bringing his guitar tonight, and we'll have to jam a little.  Last time I was here, I heard him playing blues on his guitar, and jumped in on piano.  It was cool.  This time, we'll both have guitars and there will be a piano here, so we'll have to see what happens.  I'm told we're the only two musically inclined people in the extended family, so there is much awe.

[Baby] - On a Roll

Liz got a big exercise ball, but I'm convinced Daniel gets even more out of it than she does.  I don't recommend dropping him on top of it and going to make a sandwich, but with some supervision, he has a great time.  We'll put him on it on his belly and tilt it around in circles.  He can even roll over like he enjoys as long as you react with strategic rolling.  Fun is had by all.  I'll have to get a pic of it for you guys.  Why do people buy baby toys?  Just like cats, babies are more interested in strange stuff.  Daniel much prefers to puzzle box to his building blocks, and he'd rather eat my Speech HW than his teething ring.  Some people's kids...

New and Improved

March 24, 2006I have to admit that I was a little surprised to find only one "remark" on my debut post.  I'm not crying myself to sleep, and I don't see it as a reflection of anything-I just expected more remarks.  Looking from site to site, I don't see as many remarks anywhere as I thought there would be.  Perhaps people reach the end of a post and are ready to move on to something new.

I've decided to add some headers.  Not everyone is interested in everything.  Maybe I can save you some time.  So I guess I'll start with general stuff at the beginning of posts and then get into any special-interest type stuff after.

[Baby Stories] - Back by popular demand, here's some baby talk.

Babies are as useful as they are cute.  Using mine, I've developed a new house cleaning technique.  You all know what it feels like when you look at a messy room.  Don't know where to begin?  Put the baby on the floor.  You can trust that the first thing he touches will not be one of his toys.  When he makes contact, return the object to its rightful place.  When you return, the baby will have moved on to the next foreign object.  Repeat until you collapse.

[Work] - Bringing home that bac'n.

I got two calls yesterday from Oak Ridge.  My wife's aunt works as the executive assistant to the director of the National Lab, so she kinda knows some people.  She spread my resume around a little, and I've been getting a good response.  One department wants me to apply to work there full time when I graduate and touch base with them next summer.  Another department wants me to fill out an application to work with them next year, taking a break from school (called a co-op).  Oak Ridge is neat.  I can't wait to see how this plays out.

I've been working as a grader this semester for one the professors.  I have to admit that there is a certain sense of satisfaction in judging a fellow student's work.  I'm grading papers for Dynamics (ME 2330) and Dynamic Modelling and Controls (ME 3050).  It's fun, and a good refresher of the material.  I can sit in front of the TV and work on it, I have some flexibility as to when I finish it, and I get paid $10 an hour.  I like it.  With my schedule, it's the perfect job.

[Sports] - Yes... I actually watched some

A friend of mine came over last night and we watched college basketball.  It was much more interesting than I expected.  One game ended by one team scoring a 3 to tie with less than 8 sec left, and the other team answering with a 3 at the buzzer to win the game.  The other game saw UCLA come from behind, making a key steal with only seconds left to play.  See!  Now wasn't that interesting?!  I suppose you had to be there.  I don't get to watch sports much anymore, so I enjoyed it.

[Gaming] - Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

So I tried it.  I love it.  There something fascinating about a game with such a realistic world.  I shot a bucket that was hanging over a well with an arrow.  The arrow stuck, the bucket swung wildly, and the bucket and arrow finally came to rest on top of some bricks around the well.  I retrieved my arrow, shot the bucket again to get it back over the well, retrieved the second arrow, and went on my way.  Later, I threw a loose bone across the room, knocked some logs onto a little ogre-thing, and swung a piece of cloth through the air.  It's so... real.  ~~~Spooooky~~~.  By the way, this game looks to be unplayable on my desktop.  Amazing considering that it's an Athlon 64 1800+, 512mb DDR, and GeForce FX 5600.



I guess that about covers it.  Baby's happy, wife also enjoys Oblivion, I'm feeling better.  We're headed back to Liz's parents' house this weekend for a birthday get-together thing.  I'm glad I have a laptop.  Post remarks.  Show me you care.  ;)

4 remarks

Quick Remark:

Natural Selection

March 22, 2006You might not believe in evolution, but there is no doubt that natural selection is still going strong.

DALLAS, Texas (AP) -- A man running from a routine traffic stop early Tuesday sank waist-deep in mud and apparently died of exhaustion and cold while authorities tried to pull him out.

Read the full story here.

Grand Entrance

March 22, 2006

First, you'll have to excuse the blog name. I've been sick and am feeling particularly void of creativity.  Some neat things happen to me, and I thought I should share them.  Of course, I can't promise I'll limit myself to parts of my life that the rest of you find interesting, so prepare yourself for some skimming.  I don't really feel like doing a full background on myself, so I think I'll just start here.

Daniel is learning to crawl.  Last week we could place something a mere 12" from him and be sure it was safe from his dripping hands and mouth.  Today he crawled up under our coffee table and attempted to eat the table leg.  Luckily for my laptop, the second phase of his plan failed.  The table lives on, but I don't know for how long.  He also got his first tooth a couple days ago.  This is very exciting, but the pain that accompanies shoving a tooth through human flesh seemed to upset him somehow, and the birth of this tooth was met with weeping and gnashing of... gums.  Somehow, gnashing of gums sounds more wet than menacing.  Still, though, no amount of Orajel/Tylenol/Snuggling/Cooing/Feeding/Singing/Combination thereof can console a teething baby, so be prepared.

BTW, do not confuse singing with singeing.

Like I said, I've been sick lately.  I have had "cold-like symptoms" for about a week, and I had my second migraine of my life Monday night.  If you've never had a migraine, consider yourself lucky.  To those of you who have, let me describe mine.  They say that when you feel a migraine coming on to lie down in a cool dark room and try to sleep.  My migraines have only happened at night.  They begin with a bad headache just as I'm drifting off to sleep.  As the night progresses, I pick some random problem to solve.  The first time it was storming a certain base for paintball.  The second time it was destroying a force in Dawn of War.  The tasks are not that difficult, but I can't seem to finish.  As I struggle, my head pounds increasingly harder.  I roll from side to side because I somehow believe that changing positions will help me solve my task.  Images start to skew and my mental image of what is going on becomes erratic.  Everything starts moving fast.  My mind's eye can't focus or hold still.  Everything is swooping in and then out again.  I truly have delusions.  I never realize I'm having a migraine or that I need to take medicine.  I never even realize I'm asleep.  I am trapped in this world that won't hold still, everything moving so fast...., and my head aches like nothing I've felt.  I wake up the next day exhausted, weak, and disoriented.  So... uh... migraines bad.

I am still waiting to find out what our group got on our interim report in Thermal Design.  We're designing a heat exchanger, and had to turn in a report showing our progress.  In class the professor talked about it casually, outlining general principles and things he would be looking for.  Unfortunately, private conferences with him revealed he had a much higher standard than anyone had guessed.  We found out Tuesday of last week that we needed to get much deeper into the project than we thought.  To us, this meant that the work we had done over the last 2 months had to be redone with more detail and depth in the next 3 days.  Well, we had to wait for installation and fabrication estimates from companies, and we couldn't recommense work until Thursday afternoon at 4:30.  That's when we started, and we finished 2 minutes before it had to be turned in.  And the deadline was 8:00am the next day.  You'd be surprised what 4 people can do when frantically working for 16 hours straight.  I didn't feel tired until 15 minutes after we turned it in.  There are some changes I wish we could have made, but we did well.  I'll let you all know when I get the grade back.

Somehow, I think the baby story was more interesting than the other stuff.  Oh well... like I said.  These are my own chronicles, and readers are incidental.  Still, I hope you enjoy it and that I can keep it up.  I like doing this stuff.