2004 News:

We recently gave Nicole a necklace and bracelet making kit that has beads and letters. Today, Tess and Nicole made a necklace for Kyle that spelled out “STAR”. They called Kyle into the room and put it around his neck. Tess told him to read what it says. Kyle looked at it and with a puzzled look on his face he said “RATS?”. It just goes to show you that perspective is everything.

For my past three birthdays, my mom has given me the Lord of the Rings Extended Edition DVDs. This year I had to wait a little because they were released in December instead of November. Since the DVDs were delivered on Friday I have spent many hours watching them. What a monumental feat of filmmaking. One of these days I will have to block off an entire day in order to watch them all. I don’t think those films will ever be matched in size, scope, and grandeur.

I don’t think traditional movie making will continue much longer. Just as traditional software development is being transformed by Open Source development projects, movie making will be transformed by Open Source movie making. One, day not too long from now, films will be made by Ad Hoc teams of people working for free and separated in time and space. They will all contribute their skills and energy to making the movie the best it can possibly be. The movie will evolve over time, as parts of it are refined again and again. Offshoots will be created by individuals who want to take the movie in their own direction. This is already happening today. The Internet and high-speed computers are a very disruptive technology. It transforms distributed groups of individuals into vast creative machines able to turn out any product that can be transformed into a stream of data.

Saturday December 18, 2004

A few days ago, Kyle wrote a letter to Santa on his own. Here is what he said:

"We had a magazine that we circled [things that we wanted] and we lost it. I sure hope that you saw it and remembered or wrote it down so me and my sister can have what we circled. And the best present of all is love. Thank you for all your hard work that you do for me and us children. [Kyle then goes on to list the things he wants for Christmas.]"

Sunday December 12, 2004

This weekend on PBS they were showing a film about Richard Proenneke. Richard Proenneke built a cabin in Alaska in 1968 when he was in his early 50’s. He lived there alone for the next 30 years. He was a master craftsman who built his cabin entirely with hand tools. I was amazed at what he accomplished. Seeing the film reminding me what humans are capable of.

Thursday December 2, 2004

For lunch today I went to a sandwich shop near where I work. As soon as I walked in, a guy in line started talking to me about sandwich shops. One thing let to another, and we spent almost an hour talking. He served in Vietnam, was married (and divorced) twice, owned a successful restaurant, which his second wife made him sell, and is now a professional tourist (truck driver). He had just come back from California and had not even been home to take a shower yet. We started talking a bit about beer, and as we parted ways he gave me three bottles that he had brought back from California. I thanked him and gave him a card with my web site address on it. He had already said that he did not own a computer. So I told him to look me up if he ever got a computer. We had a nice talk. We connected. And I got to sample three beers that I’d never even heard of before. Thanks Joe.

Wednesday December 1, 2004

We went down to Savannah (actually Shellman’s Bluff – about an hour South of Savannah) for Thanksgiving. We had a nice visit. It was nice seeing everyone. The time passed all too quickly. Before we knew it, it was time to come back to Atlanta.

I drove my old Celica down and gave it to a couple of my cousins to use. It’s 14 years old, but still has a few years of service left.

Wednesday November 24, 2004

Last weekend I bought an HP iPAQ 6315 for Tess. It combination PDA/phone with Internet access, wireless networking, and Bluetooth built in. It also has a low-resolution digital camera built in. It is a very neat little toy. Since Tess spends the better part of her day in her car, so I think she will find it very useful. There have been some minor glitches. We couldn’t get the SMS test messaging working for the first few days. After about an hour on the phone, with technical support, it still wasn’t working. I took it back to the store, exchanged it for a new one, and still no luck. Just as I was about to leave the store, the young man that was helping me suggested we try replacing the SIM card. (The SIM card stores the owner’s account and contact information.) That did the trick.

I’m curious to see how these devices evolve over the next few years. When I use these devices, I get the feeling that we are becoming cybernetic organisms. The PDA enhances our mental capacity. It gives access (albeit low bandwidth and high latency) to terabytes of information via the Internet.

Tuesday November 23, 2004

Here’s a belated Veteran’s Day entry…

When I get the chance, I thank veterans for serving their country. I thank them for protecting my freedom. In line at the grocery store, or at the YMCA or at some social event, if I find that the person next to me served in the military, I thank them. Shockingly, when I thank someone, they usually tell me that it is the first time anyone has ever thanked them. I once thanked a man at the grocery store that served in World War II. He had never been thanked before. How can that be?

Please thank a veteran. You might think it’s corny, but I promise they will appreciate it. We owe our freedom to veterans. They are real heroes that walk among us. Let them know they are appreciated. Let them know their service is not taken for granted.

Freedom is not free. Thousands of veterans have risked and given their lives for it. We all know this, yet most of us don’t take the opportunity to thank them when they are right next to us.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Saturday November 20, 2004

Happy Birthday to me. One more year and I'll be 40. I am planning a big event on this web site for my 40th birthday. When you come here on November 20, 2005 you will be shocked and surprised. You will laugh, you will cry (well maybe not cry) and you will see me at my best, on top of my game, king of the world. Or, it could all fall through and I’ll have to cancel my grand plan. Stay tuned.

Friday November 12, 2004

It is absolutely no surprise to me that college professors are mostly liberal. At least now we have proof. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with being liberal. Some of my best friends are liberals.

Man, I hate talking politics. Really I do. I’m going to make a concerted effort to stop. It’s hard though. I might need to seek counseling.

Saturday November 6, 2004

I’m done gloating. Seriously, I want to commend John Kerry for gracefully conceding. I heard on the radio that Edwards wanted to fight it, but thankfully, Kerry disagreed. I truly hope that President Bush does not squander this opportunity to make a real difference. There is so much that he can do. If he does a good job, I suspect we will have Republican presidents for many years to come. If he blows it, then our next president will most likely be a woman.

Friday November 5, 2004

I know that some people who read my comments about gloating over the election results will have the impression that I am an extremist on the very far right. That’s really not true. I am very tolerant of beliefs different than my own. I think there is enough room in this great country of ours to accommodate our differences without having them tear us apart. So it is in the spirit of tolerance that I ask that you tolerate just one more day of gloating.

Thursday November 4, 2004

GloatFest `04, Day 2.

It’s time for President Bush to reach out to the liberals in this country and ask them to pull his finger.

Wednesday November 3, 2004

What a great day for America. I hope we can all put aside our partisan rhetoric and join together in belittling John Kerry.

I for one welcome our benevolent Republican overlords.

My entries may be spares for the next few days. I am busy gloating.

Bye Daschle, bye Kerry, bye Edwards. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.

Thursday October 28, 2004

Last weekend we all went to my cousin Jeff’s house in Augusta Georgia to celebrate the fourth birthday of his son, Gage. Jeff’s parents (my uncle Joe and aunt Becky) were in attendance as Jeff’s brother, Jason. It was great seeing them all. We don’t see each other as often as I would like.

We bought a new car a couple of weeks ago. My prior car (a 1990 Toyota Celica) was 14 years old and I goy tired of hearing people telling me I needed to get a new car, so I did. The old Celica still ran pretty good. It was a great car. It was the first new car I bought upon graduating from Georgia Tech. I really enjoyed that car. But I’m sure I’ll enjoy my new car too. It’s a BMW 530i. I intend to drive it for many years to come.

Friday October 15, 2004

I have been working with Microsoft .Net for a few weeks now. The hierarchical foundation classes (like Java’s) is a much welcomed change from the flat API of Win32. But there are still many functionality gaps in the .Net foundation classes. I have been successful in avoiding the use of MC++ up until now. Instead, I have been writing code in C++ that I compile into a DLL which I then call from C# via System.Runtime.InteropServices.

Wednesday October 13, 2004

I did something this morning that I have not done in almost ten years: I bench pressed 225 lbs. The 225 lb. mark is psychologically significant because it means you have two 45 lb plates on each side of the bar. I have been working out fairly regularly since the beginning of this year. Before this year, I had not worked out regularly for nearly ten years. I have been going slow and steady, not wanting to push myself too hard, too fast. Back when I was at my strongest, I could bench 275 lbs. I am pretty happy with my progress.

Monday October 11, 2004

Goodbye Christopher Reeve. I was at just the right age (13) when Superman, The Movie was released. I got goose bumps when Superman caught the helicopter while holding Louis Lane. That scene is still one of my all time favorite movie-moments. I respect Mr. Reeves for his work on and off screen.

Saturday October 9, 2004

I was flipping through the TV channels tonight before going to bed and I ran across a showing of Star Trek: The Undiscovered Country on UPN. I just caught the last 15 30 minutes of the movie. I had forgotten how much I liked that movie. It’s my favorite Star Trek movie. I just wish Paramount had continued on the path that the movie ended on. It was a fitting goodbye for the original cast. It should have ended there. But instead, Paramount brought Shatner back for another movie. And now there is talk that he will come back yet again on Star Trek: Enterprise. Enough already. I suppose it is quite a testament to the original Star Trek cast and crew. I don’t think there current actors will be reprising their roles 40 years from now.

It’s hard to believe I am almost 40 years old, yet I get sentimental watching The Undiscovered Country. It’s nothing more but a science fiction movie derived from a science fiction TV show of the late 1960s. I am slightly embarrassed to admit how much I enjoy it.

I have intentionally never gone to a Star Trek convention and I probably never will. I am afraid I might just identify with a bunch of adults dressed up as Kligons, Romulans, and Vulcans.

Wednesday October 6, 2004

Goodbye Rodney Dangerfield. I really enjoyed Rodney Dangerfield’s movies. The first time I remember hearing Rodney Dangerfield I was in high school. I was working at a dry cleaning store and I had just come back to the store after delivering some clothes. The radio station I was listening to used to play comedy routines at various times during the day. They were playing a clip of Rodney Dangerfield and I sat in my car outside the store until it finished. I thought it was about the funniest thing I had every heard. Being about 17 years old at the time, I couldn’t believe that someone that old could be that funny. That was 21 years ago, and I still remember it.

Here is a understated tribute to him from NPR.

Sunday October 3, 2004

Today, the kids and I released the two scorpions. We captured the first one about 16 months ago. I figured it was time to give them their freedom back. The sad truth is, they probably would live longer in captivity than on their own in the “wild” of my back yard. But nonetheless, they are free.

Saturday September 25, 2004

I am really enjoying my new job. I am getting to work with C# and the .Net Framework. I actually prefer working in more non-proprietary environments (Java), but I also need to stay current with my skills. .Net is a great environment for developing Windows applications.

Currently, I am developing some code to hook low-level Windows events (Mouse, Keyboard, etc.) and pass those events to a C# application. This is not the first time I have developed Windows applications that hook Windows events. However it is the first time I have had to pass those events to C# (managed) applications. My first approach was to develop a DLL in C++ that was called from C# and passed events to the C# application via posting windows messages to a window. But I ran into a problem: When the DLL is loaded from managed code, global hooks doesn’t work as expected. Normally you install a global hook by passing the DLL module handle to the SetWindowsHookEx() function. But if you do this in a DLL that gets loaded from managed code, it does not work. Instead, you have to pass an application instance handle from the managed application to the DLL and have the DLL use that handle when calling SetWindowsHookEx(). Something weird was happening that I did not understand.

So instead of implementing code that did things in a non-standard way, I choose a different approach that did not conflict with standard Windows development techniques. I choose to implement a C++ exe to wrap the hook DLL. The managed code uses a C# HookManager to install event handlers (via delegates and events). Under the covers, the HookManager class starts the EXE and passes a windows handle to it so that it can send messages back to the managed code via posting windows messages. This approach allows me to have the DLL install the hooks using a DLL module handle. It also removes the need to bridge native DLLs to managed code, since all communications occur via PostMessage().

Thurday September 16, 2004

I have been studying up on Managed C++ (MC++) at my new job. C++ developers have a saying: “C++ gives you plenty of rope to hang yourself with”. Well MC++ not only gives you enough rope, it puts your head in the noose. I understand the need for MC++. It can be used to glue legacy C or C++ code to new managed code. MC++ (or something like it) is required. But it’s got to be the most Frankenstein-ish computer language ever conceived of. When developing MC++ code, you have to keep two runtime environments in your head – the managed environment and the native environment. But as ugly as it is, it’s nothing compared to COM (Common Object Model) development. Things are getting better with regard to Windows software development. The reflection capabilities of the CLR make coding distributed applications nearly trivial (just like Java). RPC and CORBA seem so clunky compared to .Net Remoting. Of course the down side is that using .Net Remoting means sacrificing portability. The Mono project will give us some degree of cross platform capability, but I don’t think it will ever be easy to target multiple platforms with .Net. Microsoft will see to that.

Wednesday September 1, 2004

Today I ordered the new boxed set of DVDs containing the entire first season of The Original Series of Star Trek. I have not bought any of the other Star Trek boxed sets that have been released. I’m not into buying the boxed sets. But in this case I made an exception. Star Trek had a strong influence on me. I’m not even sure I would have become an engineer-turned-software-developer if not for Star Trek. I watched Star Trek before I could talk. I don’t remember watching it during that time, but I heard the stories as I was growing up. Apparently, I knew when the show came on and I would point to the TV to indicate it was time. At least that’s what I was told. I definitely remember watching the reruns after school when I was about 10 or 11. I absolutely loved the show. And I did remember seeing some scenes before. So I guess there was some remnant of a memory of the shows I watched as a baby. Star Trek inspired me. It inspired millions of people like me to choose science or engineering as a career. I will show my children these shows and I’m sure they will enjoy them. They are timeless, despite the 1960s era special effects. After all, who doesn’t like seeing women is short skirts?

Monday August 30, 2004

There has been a lot going on around here recently. That’s why I have been slack about updating my blog.

We are all just now getting settled back into our school-year routine. We have started going to bed earlier and waking up much earlier. Kyle has started his soccer season at the YMCA. Nicole has started taking gymnastics at the YMCA and her ballet classes will be starting soon.

On Sunday, Tess’s mom flew up to Boston to go back to the Philippines with Kay (Tess’s sister). Tess’s mom has been staying with us for the past three years. She has helped us immensely. I’m not sure how Tess and I are going to manage without her, but I’m sure we will. Tess and I and the kids will miss her very much.

I will be changing jobs next week. On September 8th I will start working for Perspective Labs. It’s a recently formed startup company that was started by a couple of guys I used to work with about 7 years ago. They have a very good track record building successful companies and I am looking forward to the opportunity to work with them and the great team they have assembled. This new opportunity will also allow me to learn C# and the .Net platform. I have dabbled in those technologies before, but this will be the first real gig I’ve had working with those technologies.

I have worked from home for most of the last 4 years. I certainly feel very lucky to have been able to work from home, but I am also looking forward to getting back into an office environment. There is a certain energy that you get from working with a tight group of talented individuals that is very hard to recreate in a distributed work environment. I definitely would not recommend working at home to anyone who is just starting his or her career. There is simply too much to learn from working with others. When you work at home, you don’t get as much of the knowledge sharing that you get when you work with people face to face, day after day.

Thursday August 19, 2004

I have had intermittent network outages that have been getting worse over the past few weeks. I think I tracked down the problem to an 8-port network switch/hub. Since I replaced it I have not had any more outages. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

Tuesday August 17, 2004

Last night I had what may be the strangest collection of dreams I have ever had in my life. Some of the contents of my various dreams were: breaking my kayak in half, large talking pigs (commenting about the pineapple the farmer had put in their food – they liked it), getting lost in the swamps of south Georgia, covering up a murder, a Star Wars related dream involving the formation of the Sith, and another so bizarre that I’m not even going to mention it here. I usually can’t remember a single dream. Last night, I had 7 dreams that I remember and they were all disturbing to some degree. Strange.

Monday August 16, 2004

Today was the first day of school for Kyle and Nicole. This is Nicole’s first year at St. Joseph’s with Kyle. It’s great having them at the same school. They both handed their first day exceptionally well. We really like both their teachers. I think it’s going to be a great school year.

Saturday August 14, 2004

I just added a paddling section to my web site. It’s mostly for my own reference, but I’m sure some people will find it useful.

Friday August 13, 2004

Recently I have stooped to name-calling in regards to some high-profile Democrats. I would like to point out that I have done this as a parody of Democrat name-calling. I don’t like name-calling. I don’t like empty criticism that does not offer a solution. It’s useless. It’s a copout. It takes no thought to call someone stupid or fat. It serves no purpose other than to make you seem small in the eyes of others. Yet we have books from Al Franken such as: Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right and Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot: And Other Observations. It’s easy to label people. It’s hard to intelligently discuss differences of opinion. Let’s see if Kerry can will intelligently discuss the issues or resort to questioning President Bush’s intelligence. Let’s see if Kerry can propose solutions to the problems he says President Bush created. It’s so easy to criticize. It requires no thought. It is much harder to propose detailed plans of action. I have not heard Kerry propose a single detailed plan.

I really don’t like talking politics on my blog. Because I know I will always offend someone. But sometimes, I just can’t help myself.

Wednesday August 11, 2004

In the last few months we have totally rehabbed our family room. The first step was replacing our 15-year-old couches. Next, we put in built-in selves. Yesterday, I hooked up a new receiver and speakers. I haven’t had a good stereo for several years. In fact you could argue I’ve never had a really good stereo. Last night and this morning I listened to several of my favorite CDs (Rush – Permanent Waves, Pink Floyd – Meddle and A Momentary Lapse of Reason). I had forgotten how much I enjoy music. The next step of our family room rehab will be adding a big-screen monitor and surround sound. However, it may be a couple of years before we do that. I think we will see some major innovations in the next couple of years so I’m a little reluctant to buy something just yet.

Sunday August 8, 2004

We just got back from our last vacation of the summer. We went to Stephen C. Foster State Park. We stayed at the park three nights. It was our third visit to the park, but our first time staying in a cabin. The two other times, we camped in a tent. You can see the pictures (over 200 of them) here, here, and here.

This morning I got up early and took a nature walk by myself. Shortly after leaving the cabin, I heard a noise to my right on the road. I looked over to see an armadillo. It was gathering pine straw to take back to the nest it had in a drainage pipe on the side of the road. Armadillos are rather dim and rely on there armor for protection. I don’t think he even realized I was there until he crossed over to my side of the road. And I was taking flash pictures! Once making it across the road, he dug around in the dirt looking for insects.

We started out for Atlanta at about 10:30 am. We stopped by the Suwannee River Welcome Center on the way out. The best feature of the welcome center was a 15-minute movie about the Okefenokee Swamp.

We intentionally stayed off the major highways until we got to Macon. We went through many small (and I do mean small) towns. I always wonder what people do to make a living in such small towns. I also wonder why they choose to live there. Some of the towns were nothing more than a few houses in the middle of tree farms. The tree farms here are not very attractive, usually consisting of rows on small, scrawny pines. Not much to look at. I wouldn’t mind living in a rural area myself when I retire, but I’d choose some property with a some scenic live oak trees and maybe a small river running through it.

Saturday August 7, 2004

Today we went to the Jacksonville Zoo. It took us about 2 hours to drive from the park to the zoo. Along the way, we discovered that one of the roads on the map (highway 94) became a dirt road between highway 121 and highway 301. There was no indication on the map that the road was dirt in that section. We took a short detour around the dirt road.

The Jacksonville Zoo was great. The last time I was there was 30 years ago when my parents took me there. I don’t remember very much of it. I was surprised just how nice the Jacksonville Zoo was. I think it’s better that the Atlanta Zoo.

Most of the walkways through the zoo are up on raised boardwalks. The boardwalks allow you to get a good view of the animals. The weather was great. It was unusually cool. It only got up to about 80 degrees all day and there was a very pleasant breeze. I did not sweat at all. And that’s quite unusual for Florida in August.

The most exciting part of the day (for me) was watching the alligators being fed. The zoo has about 8 alligators all of which are about 10 or 11 feet long. The fed them whole chickens. The chickens went down in large gulps. I highly recommend that you visit the Jacksonville Zoo, if you are in the neighborhood. It’s very nice.

Friday August 6, 2004

We started our last family vacation before school yesterday. We left Atlanta at about 12:30 in the afternoon. We arrived at Stephen Foster State Park at about 6:30 pm. We just stopped twice along the way. We stopped to eat at Taco Bell and shortly thereafter we stopped again for ice cream at Dairy Queen. When we got to the park I was surprised to see that the office was closed. But a very helpful park ranger was keeping an eye out for us. He was washing his truck next to the office and approached me as I was walking back to the car from the office. He gave me the key to cabin number eight. We drove the very short distance to the cabin and unpacked.

The cabin was very clean and nice. It looked like they had just rehabbed it within the last two or three years. And it even had cable TV. Since we don’t have cable TV at home, the kids turned to cartoon network and stayed glued to the set for most of the night.

There were deer all around the cabins. We saw six deer, some of which let you get very close to them. I suppose they are very accustomed to people.

I woke up early this morning and got out on the water in my kayak by 8:00 am. I estimate I paddled about 12 miles before returning to the park office at 11:00 am. I must have seen 5 or 6 alligators all between 4 and 5 feet long. I also saw one very large turtle sunning on a log. It must have weighed about ten or fifteen pounds.

I returned to the cabin where we all ate lunch. We then rented a small motorboat and went out on the water. One of the women at the office told me there was a large alligator near Billy’s Island. She was right. Shortly after pulling up to the dock at Billy’s Island (2 miles from the office) an eight-foot alligator swam up. I suspect they are often fed by boaters and come up to the boats in hopes of a free meal. I took some great pictures of the large gator.

We spent several hours out on the water and we saw a couple more 5-foot alligators. We came back to the cabin at about 4:30 pm. Tess and her mom prepared an excellent supper of shrimp and scallops with collard greens and fried sweet potatoes and rice. It was gooood.

Tuesday July 27, 2004

Getting the new cabinets in the family room has enabled us to organize our videotapes and DVDs. While organizing the movies, I found a tape that my dad and Renee gave me a few years ago that has old movies on it. The movies are from the first 6 years of my life. Most of the home movies are from family vacations, holidays and such. It really gives me a strange feeling when I watch those old movies. I remember some of the events in the movies, but yet it seems like I’m watching a different person. It seems so far away, yet such a short time ago. Time is so damn annoying. It gives and it takes away. It’s an ever-present illusion that allows our existence and guarantees our demise.

And now for something completely different...

Is it my imagination, or is the mainstream media news being harder on the Democrats lately? About the only mainstream media news I watch these days is the Today Show. So I can’t really say anything about other shows. But I have noticed that even Katie Couric is being more confrontational when interviewing Democrats. I have a theory as to why. Given that:

• TV shows only care about rating. They live and die for ratings.
• Fox News has been beating all other news outlets in ratings.

Friday July 23, 2004

Today is Kyle’s last day at basketball camp. This summer he attended three weeks of soccer camp and three weeks of basketball camp. He has loved every minute of it. Kyle really enjoys the social interaction with the other kids. He also enjoys competitive sports. Soon summer will be over. Nicole will be entering Kindergarten and Kyle will be entering second grade. I always hate to see summer coming to an end.

Yesterday, Nicole’s ballet recital DVD came in the mail. Nicole excels at ballet. She is one of the smallest girls in her class, but she is also one of the best dancers. Tess thinks she would do well in gymnastics. I always wanted to try gymnastics when I was a kid, but I never had the opportunity. Nicole will be enrolled in ballet again next year. Kyle will be in soccer league next year.

Tuesday July 20, 2004

This is just too good to pass up. The big fat idiot of the day is Linda Ronstadt. She was fired by the Aladdin Hotel for turning a entertainment into politics. Read the story here.

It gets better. I can’t believe this. Here, Ronstadt is quoted as saying: “It's a real conflict for me when I go to a concert and find out somebody in the audience is a Republican or fundamental Christian. It can cloud my enjoyment. I'd rather not know.” Yet in the same article she says: “I've been dedicating a song to him (Michael Moore) – I think he's a great patriot – and it splits the audience down the middle, and they duke it out.” WHAT? She must be having psychiatric problems. That’s the only explanation that makes sense.

Monday July 19, 2004

As a follow-up to my July 5 remarks regarding the Democrats criticizing President Bush for golfing: Please look at this Drudge Report page showing Kerry shooting shotguns, biking, playing guitar, swinging a bat, sail boarding (?), motorcycling, playing hockey, catching a football, snow boarding (?), snow skiing, para-boarding, and bowling along with this quote:

"So here's what we're going to fight for, and we're going to fight for it every single day, not just through this election, but from the day we win until the day we raise our hands and every day thereafter. You're not going to have to look for us on vacation. You're going to find us working for America." --- Kerry Delivers Remarks At Campaign Event, Cleveland, OH, 7/7/04

The only reason I’m pointing this out is to show stupid Kerry is. I don’t care if he plays sports. That’s his own business. But when he criticizes President Bush for it, them goes out and does it himself, (to show you he's not an old guy) you can’t help but wonder if he’s an idiot.

Update: I just looked up Kerry's age of his web site. He is only 61 years old. He looks to be in his 70's to me. He's got the total package: stupid AND ugly. (If the Democrats can call President Bush stupid, I figure I can do the same. Never mind about the issues.)

Friday July 16, 2004

We had some built-in cabinets installed in our family room today. This has been 8 months in the making and we are very glad to finally have them installed. The cabinets and selves make the room look a lot bigger. In fact it makes such a big difference, I feel like I’m in a new house when I’m in that room. They weren’t cheap, but I’m pretty sure we will get back the cost of the selves 2 or 3 times over when we sell the house. But we won’t be selling any time soon. The kids go to a private school nearby, so we will probably be in this house for another 8 years.

Wednesday July 14, 2004

I have stopped receiving email at my old email address. Most of you already have my new email address, but in case you don’t, you can get it here. The never-ending battle against spam (junk email) goes on.

In other news, Kyle is in basketball camp again this week (and next). His team has won every game they’ve played this week. They might go down in the annals of YMCA basketball camp history.

Tuesday July 13, 2004

After working out last night at the YMCA I went to pick up Kyle and Nicole from the play area. Kyle had found a nickel. He showed it to me and said, “Someone must have taken really good care of this nickel. Look how good it looks and it was made in 1998.” “Wow.” I said. Perspective is everything, isn’t it.

Saturday July 10, 2004

People are dropping like flies lately. Marlin Brando died last week and now Jeff Smith, The Frugal Gourmet has passed away. Jeff Smith’s (no relation) show on PBS was very entertaining. It was like a combination travel and cooking show. The show was very education and entertaining. Even though I don’t cook much, I love watching cooking shows. I find them very relaxing. Anyway, I loved Mr. Smith’s show, regardless of his personal follies. I don’t think I would have liked the man if I knew him on a personal basis, but he sure knew how to put together an entertaining cooking show.

Friday July 9, 2004

What an idiot Richard Riordan is. He is California’s Commissioner of Education. When a six-year-old girl asked him if he knew that her name (Isis) meant Egyptian Goddess. He replied no it means “stupid dirty girl”. The Terminator needs to terminate this guy. Here’s an external link to the video. What a stupid idiot. If I had been in that room, I’d probably be facing assault charges today.

Thursday July 8, 2004

As of today, Tess and I have been married 9 years. Time goes by so fast. Never a dull moment. I'm very lucky to have Tess.

Tuesday July 6, 2004

Today is Kyle’s second day at basketball camp. Yesterday he got a bloody nose. They had to change his shirt. But Kyle is a real trooper. After he got cleaned up, he went right back to playing basketball. I real admire Kyle’s spirit and determination. Once he sets his sites on a goal, he is unwavering.

When we first went to the YMCA swimming pool a couple of months ago, Kyle was tested to see if he could swim without parental supervision. The test was to swim a lap in the pool. Kyle couldn’t swim the entire lap. He got a little upset that he couldn’t do it. But after that, every time we went to the pool, Kyle practiced his swimming with great determination. He pushed himself, without anyone telling him to do so. He set his sights on the goal of passing the swimming test. Now, I’m pretty sure he could pass the test.

Nicole has similar traits, but she is more sensitive to criticism than Kyle and prefers to perfect her skills in private, and then surprise you. They have very different personalities, but they are both extremely smart kids and are able to excel at any task they set their minds to. I feel very lucky.

Both Kyle and Nicole started taking private swimming lessons this week. The instructor told us that both kids are above average swimmers.

Monday July 5, 2004

I want to say a few words regarding the “documentary” Fahrenheit 9/11. I think the film will have little to no effect on the election in November. If it does have any effect, it will be a positive effect for Bush. I keep seeing the clip of Bush playing golf after saying we are going to do everything in our power to stop terrorism. Somehow, that’s supposed to put Bush in a bad light, I guess. In my mind, I think that’s exactly what the president needed to do: He needed to exude confidence and normalcy. Terrorists want us to be scared. They want us to change our lifestyle. They want us to live in fear. The president led by example. He calmly stated we were going to bring the terrorists to justice, then he went on having fun. That was a slap in the face of Bin Laden and all those other nut jobs. Bush was saying: We will not live in fear. We will not let you change us.

Does anyone think that president Bush should have started acting worried and stressed? Should he have taken on a constant frown? Should he have started acting depressed? NO. That’s the last thing the American people would have wanted to see. Of course President Bush is concerned. But he exudes a confidence and optimism to reassure the American public. I guess that’s too complicated a concept for lard ass (Michael Moore).

If put to a vote, I suspect a large minority of the American public would want to add the words “Play ball!” to the end of our National Anthem. Is that disrespectful? I think not. Why? Because it is the American way of life to work hard, play hard, and enjoy life. We fight and die to protect the freedom we have. We are an optimistic people.

Oh, yes I almost forgot to say that Michael Moore is a big fat idiot.

Friday July 2, 2004

I really respect what Bill Cosby has been saying lately. If a Caucasian said it, people would call him racist. What a shame. It’s hard to speak openly and candidly about many of the problems the United States faces because of fear; fear of being branded, fear of being ostracized. Bill Cosby is a brave man.

Too many people blame society for the faults and shortcomings of individuals. Instead of saying “it takes a village” I'd say "it takes personal responsibility". It’s hard to help people who don’t make any effort to help themselves. In the end, it's a losing battle.

With this entry, I have started copying the content of external links to my local web site. This way I can avoid stale links. The content will always be available locally. I will include the original link at the bottom of all “localized” content.

Monday June 28, 2004

I spent the weekend camping with my Dad on the property he owns on the Ogeechee River near Blitchton Georgia. Blitchton is named after the Blitch family, which are my ancestors on my Dad’s side of the family. I brought my Kayak and paddled around on the Ogeeche. There is some beautiful scenery on the river, some of which you can see in these pictures I took.

Tuesday June 22, 2004

Kyle is in his third week of soccer camp at the YMCA. Nicole may it through two weeks of camp, but decided that ballet was more her thing. So she is sitting out the third and final week. Kyle was team captain last week and he’s team captain again this week. Kyle likes being in a leadership role. Each week, the kids get randomly assigned to a team. There are 4 teams in Kyle’s age group. He’s on a good team this week. Monday and Tuesday they won 2 out of 3 of their games. At the end of the week there is a little award ceremony and the teams are ranked according to the number of wins. Last week, Kyle’s team came in last place. So this week is pay back time.

June 21, 2004

Today, Space Ship One became the first privately funded manned vehicle to leave the Earth’s atmosphere. I view this as an extremely important milestone in the history of mankind. Although it’s largely a symbolic achievement, it means that the commercialization of space has begun. We are in for a wild ride. Look what happened when computers made the transition from institutional monstrosities to home appliances. Look what happened when Henry Ford commercialized automobiles. The commercialization of space will change the way we think about space travel. I’d expect that within twenty years, spending a vacation in space will be as easy and affordable as spending a vacation in Africa is today. Not everyone will be able to afford it, but millions of people will be able to afford it.

June 20, 2004

We spent Father’s Day Weekend at a cabin in Tugaloo State Park. I brought my Kayak and spent several hours Saturday and Sunday Kayaking on Lake Hartwell. On Sunday we rented a canoe. Tess and the kids canoed while I kayaked. We had a lot of fun. You can see the pictures here

June 12, 2004

We went to my sister’s house in Athens Georgia to celebrate my niece Sophie’s first Birthday party. You can see the pictures here.

June 10, 2004

I learned yesterday that my eighth grade teacher, Mr. James Patrick Harte Jr. passed away last week. He was only 56 years old. Even though Mr. Harte taught me 25 years ago (at St. James Catholic School in Savannah), I was just talking about him a month ago to a couple of my daughter's pre-K teachers. Mr. Harte played a critical role in the inflection point of my academic career.

He was my eight grade teacher. I had dyslexia and I always struggled in school. From first grade to eighth I was the worst reader and speller in the class. I normally got 70% or below on spelling tests. But one day, I decided to put forth extra effort. I decided to study as hard as I possibly could to see how good I could do if I worked as hard as I could. I got something like a 98 on the test.

Mr. Harte was grading the tests during lunch and called me over to his desk. My heart pounded in my chest. I thought I was in trouble. He asked me if I knew why he wanted to talk to me. I said that he probably thought I cheated on the spelling test. (I knew I did much better than I usually did.) He asked me if I had cheated and I said no. I told him I just studied very hard. He congratulated me.

The next day in class before returning the graded spelling tests, he started talking about a student that struggled and how this student had worked very hard and put forth an extra effort. When he finally revealed that I made a 98 on the test, there were audible gasps from my classmates. They looked at me in disbelief.

It was a turning point in my life when I realized that I could do just as well as anyone else if I worked hard. Mr. Harte's praise and recognition inspired me to continue to work hard.

I went on to graduate in the top 15% of my high school class. I got accepted to Georgia Tech where I earned a BS and MS in Electrical Engineering. I'm not sure I would have been motivated to work as hard as I did if it weren't for Mr. Harte's words of praise. He did not have to recognize my effort, but he did.

A few years ago when my Grandmother passed away, I saw Mr. Harte at the church service. I introduced him to my wife and told him that he made a difference in my life. I don't think he remembered me. That's understandable. But I will always remember him. I'm glad I had a chance to thank him and let him know he made a difference in my life.

June 8, 2004

This week and next (and maybe the week after that), the kids are attending a soccer camp at the YMCA. They seem to be enjoying it. Kyle’s team hasn’t won a game yet. He tells me that his team has a lot of 5 year olds and the teams that are winning have mostly 7 year olds. Nicole is not really even paying attention to wins and losses. And that’s fine with me.

June 7, 2004

Some idiot named Christopher Hitchens is criticizing Ronald Reagan for being stupid. In the second paragraph of an article subtitled The Stupidity of Ronald Reagan He points out that Reagan said there is no word in Russian for “freedom” then goes on to point out there is such a word. HAS HE EVER HEARD OF SPEAKING FIGURATIVELY? If I had heard Reagan say that, I would have immediately interpreted the statement as being figurative. Then in the next sentence he says all missiles are ballistic which is definitely incorrect. Ballistic missiles are missiles that travel unpowered during some part of their flight. The vast majority of missiles are NOT ballistic. I stopped reading the article at that point. How did this guy get a job writing editorials?

June 6, 2004

Yesterday was Nicole’s ballet recital that she’s been practicing for all school year. It was the first (but not the last) ballet recital I’ve ever attended. It was very nice. There were a few older girls performing, some of which might go on to become professional ballerinas. Nicole was the leader of her group. She was definitely the best performer in her group. (Although I am her father, I assure you this is a totally unbiased and objective evaluation.) We gave Nicole a bouquet of flowers after the performance and then went out to eat to celebrate. Even though Nicole is quite shy, she had no problem performing in front of the 500 or so people in the audience. I was and am very very proud of her.

June 5, 2004

So Ronald Reagan has ridden off into the sunset. He was the right man at the right time.

I remember the Cold War. I remember wondering how many nuclear missiles were aimed at the US. I remember hiking to the top of a mountain while I was in college, looking at the Atlanta skyline far off in the distance and wondering what the view would be like if a nuclear bomb exploded over the city. I remember wondering if I would be called to serve if war was waged.

The threat of nuclear war was probably never as imminent as we thought. The Soviet Union probably would have collapsed no matter who was president at the time. But nevertheless, I’m glad Ronald Reagan had the job. He was a great leader when we needed a great leader.

June 2, 2004

I was up late last night installing a new version of Linux on my Linux machine. This is the first time I installed something other than RedHat Linux. I did not want to install RedHat because they have shifted their company strategy toward selling expensive server licenses. They are no longer placing much emphasis on their client distributions. So I installed Mandrake 10.0 this time. I had no major problems. It took me a while to get my Samba file shares working properly. I struggled for several hours trying to share my root directory, but never got it to work. Maybe Samba doesn’t let you share the root directory. I’m not sure. Anyway, I just shared several of the individual subdirectories under the root directory and it worked fine.

Mandrake 10 is definitely a better distribution than the RedHat 8 (or was it 9) distribution I was using.

May 29, 2004

Today, Nicole told Tess that when she was playing with her friend Brenda, Brenda said, “Let’s pretend that we are princesses.” Nicole then told her “I don’t have to pretend. I am a princess.”

That’s my girl.

May 27, 2004

Yesterday morning I attended a meeting at Kyle’s school to discuss the results of the Iowa testing (standardized national tests). The assistant principle led the meeting. She talked about the various parts of the test and what could be done to improve your child’s score. When she got to the phonics section, I cringed. I cringed because I still have horrible memories of phonics. Being dyslexic, phonics was like torture. If fact, I believe phonics actually harmed my reading skills. If English were entirely phonetic, then teaching phonics as a separate subject might make sense. But in English, there are so many exceptions to the “rules” that it’s practically meaningless.

When we master reading, we read entire words at a time. The letters disappear. Our brain transforms the series of letters and into a single “picture”. Phonics messed me up big time. It places emphasis on the individual letters instead of on the words. Phonics confused me. I tried to read letter-by-letter and continued to struggle. If someone had just told me to read entire words at a time and ignore the individual letters, I think I would have overcome my dyslexia much earlier. Even the reading school I attended emphasized phonics. I stubbornly and frustratingly kept trying to do what I was told (sound word out). I kept struggling.

I suppose the brains of early readers (like my kids) are hard wired to convert words to sounds with associated meaning. Whereas my brain was wired to pay attention to the minute detail of each symbol. When I read when I was young each letter of each word was very significant to my brain. I looked at each letter individually. Try to read something that way, and you’ll see how difficult it is.

I would hope that teachers today tell struggling reader to look at the words. I don’t believe phonics should be taught as a separate class. The sounds of letters should be taught at ages 0 to 4. After that, the emphasis should be on WORDS.

May 24, 2004

Last Friday, Nicole graduated from pre-K. Next school year she will be joining Kyle at St. Joseph. It will be nice to have both kids at the same school. Nicole’s graduation ceremony was sweet. The kids sang cute little songs. The directory of the preschool put together a really nice video presentation just using a video camera. I guess I’m pretty ignorant of what you can do with a video camera these days. I thought the only way to put together a presentation of that quality was either with a high-end video-editing machine or with a multimedia computer.

Kyle will be done with first grade at the end of this week. We received Kyle’s Iowa test scores (it’s a national standardized test) back this weekend. Kyle did fantastic.

This weekend I put in drainage pipe in back of the house where there are two air conditioner drains and a gutter drain. I’ve been meaning to do that for the entire nine years we’ve been in the house, but I just now got around to doing it. That area doesn’t get much sun and I’ve been concerned that all that moister right next to the house might attract termites or cause water damage. Luckily, everything looked fine back there when I dug the trenches for the drainage pipes. I’m starting to get caught up on many little but annoying chores that I’ve been meaning to do over the years. I’m not entirely sure why I seem to be getting more things done lately. I think it’s partly due to the kids getting older and more independent. But it might also be partially due to the semi-regular exercising I’ve been doing since January. I think exercise is good for the mind and the body. Exercise seems to get me in the right frame of mind for getting off my butt and accomplishing things.

May 19, 2004

Want to see some well done Matrix parodies?

May 17, 2004

I had a really strange dream last night. I dreamed I died. In my dream, I “woke up” from dying and read a copy of my death certificate. The funny thing was, I wasn’t all upset and sad. I was a little sad, but I reminded myself that I left behind two beautiful and brilliant children and that there was no reason for me to feel shortchanged. But I was concerned that my kids would grow up without a dad being there. In my dream, I was kind of surprised that being dead felt just like being alive. The dream wrote me up and it took me a little while to get back to sleep.

I spent the weekend spreading out 3 cubic yards of topsoil I had delivered on Friday. I spread it on the grass on the front yard and worked it in with a rake. My soil here is fairly poor, so I’m hoping that a few applications of this topsoil will improve the soil and the health of my grass. There are some places in my front yard that limp along all summer long. As I’ve said before, I really enjoy working outside. In fact I could spend a week carrying buckets of topsoil, and I’d love every minute of it. Weird? Maybe so. Maybe I should have been a landscaper instead of a software engineer. But of course, I love developing software too.

May 15, 2004

I have added a ton of new pictures (over 300) from an art show at Kyle's school, Nicole’s Birthday party, and our Easter vacation in Washington DC. I wrote a Java program to create the picture galleries pages automatically. Up until now, creating the picture gallery paged involved some manual file editing. Now, I can simply run a program to create those pages automatically. The added benefit is that these new picture galleries have links to large versions of the pictures. One thing I still have to do manually is add captions to the images. I haven’t added captions to these new picture galleries yet. You can see the new pictures here, here and here.

May 14, 2004

As you may remember, I bought a new computer a few months ago. It has a DVD writer in it. Just yesterday, I finally got around to writing a DVD. First, I recorded a TV show using my ATI All in Wonder 9800. Next, I used Sonic myDVD to transfer the mpg video file to the DVD. I encountered some problem on the first attempt, but the second attempt worked. The video quality of the resulting DVD is very good. Eventually, I plan on transferring a bunch of home movies to DVD. I was surprised how long it took to make the DVD. Even with a 2GHz processor with 512MB of RAM. But we are dealing with 3GB of data, so I guess it’s understandable.

I recently discovered an open source product called wget, which can copy an entire web site to your local computer. It can transform all links to relative links so that you can view the entire site locally. I plan on using it to take snapshots of my web site and copying it to a DVD for off-line viewing. This would allow me to show family members pictures from this site using a laptop anytime, anywhere. But I need to make some changes to the custom tag library I wrote for my web site. Currently, the picture viewing tags generate buttons with an “onclick” property to bring up the next page. Wget does not follow such links (yet), so I will need to modify my tag library to use simple links for the “Next” and “Previous” links on the picture gallery pages.

May 10, 2004

Yesterday, Tess bought some dried plums from the grocery store and I made the comment that I thought it was funny that they were marketing them as dried plums instead of prunes. Kyle asked what I meant and I explained that “dried plums” sounded better than “prunes”. Well, today Tess brought home some fried chicken from KFC. She got some chicken livers along with the usual thighs, legs, etc. Kyle asked what the livers were and I told him that they were just a part of the chicken, from the inside. After a moment he said that he thought that someday the name “liver” would be changed. I wasn't sure what he was talking about. Then he added, “You know, the same way they changed the name of prunes to dried plums because it sounds better. Because 'livers' really doesn't sound very good.”

May 7, 2004

The new weapon being developed by the US has the potential of being a "Hand of God" kind of weapon. The publicized use is its ability to shoot down ballistic missiles. But I suspect the same or very similar technology could be used to kill a person with extreme precision in space and time. Imagine being able to track a person and instantaneously kill that person at any time without injuring anyone else nearby. That's the kind of power this technology has. It has the potential of being an extremely powerful tool for good or evil. Imagine people who are threats to the US quietly dropping dead in their tracks. All you need to do is focus a microwave beam at the person's head. I imagine that if this technology can track missiles, it can certainly track a moving person or car. I can also imagine that a dual-frequency beams could be constructed to allow cutting through a variety of physical obstructions in order to get to the target.

I once read that the most humane way of killing any animal is via a powerful burst of microwave radiation. It can kill in a fraction of a second – before the animal can even become aware of it. Scary stuff.

This is a good example of how people mis-predict the future. Science fiction movies are full of hand-held phasers, lasers, and such. While the real future of particle based weapons seems to be in orbital or airborne platforms. However, I could imagine a hand held pointer that a person could point on a target. The orbiting or airborne platform would automatically detect the pointer then track the object and schedule it for destruction. One particle beam platform could service hundreds of held held pointer. This combination of hand held pointer and orbiting particle beam weapons would be the real life version of the science fiction blaster.

May 6, 2004

I have just gotten around to playing the PC game Tron 2.0 that Tess gave me for Christmas. It's a very well executed game. It's kind of self-referencing game. When you play the game (on a computer) you are controlling a character who is transported inside a computer. But playing the game put you “inside the computer” in a figurative sense. I think I've just about gotten Tron 2.0 out of my system. These days I get tired of computer games after a few hours of play.

May 3, 2004

Want a good laugh. Read this. Priceless.

Kerry is a joke.

April 30, 2004

I was up later than usual last night and I saw a show on PBS about Peter Drucker. He is known as the father of management theory. I had never heard of him before, but I plan reading some of his work as soon as time permits. (It may take me a few years to get to it, the way things are going now.)

April 28, 2004

I just thought of a totally geek motto that ties together Linux and the Matrix. Linux: There is no fork. If you think this is at all amusing or witty, then you are a certified geek. If you don't get it, then you are a normal person.

Actually, if you are an uber-geek, you will realize that there are two interpretations of the word "fork". And the statement is only true for one interpretation. And no, neither interpretation involves a dining utensil.

April 26, 2004

I finally took my kayak out for the first time yesterday. I took it to the Chattahoochee river, which is only about 20 minutes from my house. It was a fun day. Early on, I met up with another kayaker. We talked for a little while, as we paddled from the put in point to a dam. At the dam, he turned around and went back, while I got out a sand bar to eat and rest. After getting back in, I paddled up to the wall of the dam. There I saw a duck with eight little ducklings. I started back down the river and stopped for a while to watch a couple of guys scaling down one of the rock faces on the river. I spent a total of about 4 hours on the river and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I can hardly wait to do it again.

April 24, 2004

Wow, Paul Newman is old. (He's 79 years old.)

April 21, 2004

I've seen and heard several people talking about “Worst Song Lists” lately. What a waste of time. Those lists are meaningless. First, they are totally subjective. Second, those lists should be called “The Worst Songs You've Actually Heard” because the truth is that the worst songs are the ones that never got published, never got played on radios, etc. How silly. I can't believe it.

April 18, 2004

We have been in Washington DC since the 11th. I kept a diary while we were there and I will be posting those entries here in a day or two. We took about 250 pictures while we were there. I plan to post many of them here. We saw the Smithsonian Natural History Museum, Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian American History Museum, most of the monuments around the National Mall, the National Cathedral, and the National Shrine located at Catholic University.

April 17, 2004

I decided to make the return trip in one day instead of two. That way we had all day Sunday to recuperate from our vacation. On the way back, we stopped in North Carolina to buy the kids some fireworks. We just bought quiet fireworks like sparklers and such.

April 16, 2004

Coming soon: National Cathedral and National Shrine at Catholic University.

April 15, 2004

Coming soon: Monuments and Whitehouse.

April 14, 2004

We returned to the Natural History Museum today to see the dinosaur and mammal exhibits that we did not have time to see yesterday. While there, I took the opportunity to take a lot of pictures of the early life of Earth and minerals exhibits. I could spend an entire week at the Natural History Museum. But not everyone felt the same, so at about noon we proceeded to the American History Museum.

I was fairly disappointed in the American History Museum. Most of the displays seemed mundane in the extreme. My favorite part of the museum was the money exhibit. It was cool to see Roman and Greek coins over 2000 years old. I also liked seeing the $10,000 and $100,000 bills on display. Besides the money exhibit, I also enjoyed seeing the chairs used in All in The Family.

April 13, 2004

Today we went to the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. About five years ago we spent half a day at this museum. Kyle was only 2, so he doesn't remember a thing. Nicole was under construction at the time.

I really liked the exhibits about early life on Earth. Seeing the fossilized remains of a bacterial mat that lived 3.5 billion years ago really puts things into perspective. It's amazing to think that we are all evolved from these simple organisms.

The kids' really liked the insect exhibit. They have live insects on display. The kids got to hold a big green caterpillar as well.

Kyle's favorite part of the museum was the 3-D T-Rex IMAX movie. I really didn't care for it too much. The script was awful and there were only brief scenes of computer animated dinosaurs. The movie was made several years ago, when computer animation was more expensive. By today's standards, it's pretty lame even though it's in 3-D. I would not recommend it. We should have seen the IMAX movie about Jane Goodall's chimpanzees instead. Maybe we'll be able to see that here this summer.

Even though we spent the entire day at the Natural History Museum, we still did not see everything. We had to breeze through the mineral exhibits and we did not see the dinosaur and mammal exhibits at all. We are going back tomorrow to see the things we missed. We also plan on going to the American History Museum tomorrow.

April 12, 2004

On the first day of our vacation we went to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. We spent the entire day there. I was impressed by the planetarium. I have never seen one like it before. It was more like a hemispherical IMAX theater than a planetarium.

Kyle, Nicole, Tess and her mom all rode the flight simulators. I skipped it because I have been in similar simulators before. Kyle experience playing games on his computer allowed him to get the hang of the simulator very quickly. He really enjoyed it.

Even spending a whole day at the Air and Space Museum isn't enough time to see everything there in detail. You still have to pick and choose what you want to see in detail and what you want to go through quickly.

My favorite thing at the Air and Space Museum was an original model of the USS Enterprise (from the original Star Trek series) on display in the gift shop. We bought Kyle an F-22 toy at the gift shop. The facility that makes the F-22 is just a few miles from our house. We occasionally see them flying.

We returned to the hotel via the metro transit system which has a stop directly under the Grand Hyatt. Back at the hotel, Kyle and I talked quite a bit about the technology in the F-22. I used to work with electronic warfare systems, so I was able to explain a little bit about the concepts behind the technology that went into the design of the F-22. We had a short rest before going out with some of Tess's friends that live in DC. We went tout to eat at a Thai restaurant.

April 11, 2004

We left Marietta (headed for Washington DC) at about 1:30 pm. We took our time driving. We stopped to spend the night in Burlington, North Carolina.

After checking in to a hotel, Tess and I went to a nearby grocery store to get some food. The kids and Tess's mom stayed at the hotel while we were shopping. The kids were watching Cartoon Network at the hotel. Since we don't have cable TV at home (and probably never will) the kids soak up as much Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon as they can while we are staying at hotels.

We took our time leaving in the morning. We let the kids watch more cable TV as we prepared to hit the road again. Our drive from NC to DC was uneventful.

After checking in to the Grand Hyatt Washington, we walked across the street to eat at the Capital City Brewing Company. The food was mediocre, but their brewed-in-house brew was excellent.

April 8, 2004

We had a new central air conditioner put in yesterday. I hope it is able to keep up with the summer heat. With our old system it was always a struggle keeping the upstairs cool during the hottest part of the summer. This new (Trane) unit is a half ton larger (whatever that means) and seems to be built a lot better than our old (Lennox) system.

April 7, 2004

I went out and bought Matrix Revolutions on DVD yesterday. I did not see it in the theater. I watched it yesterday, and I have to say that I really liked it. I think it was well crafted. However I'm sure many people did not enjoy it. It's not the kind of movie people are used to seeing. Revolutions is open to interpretation. It doesn't have a happy ending, in the traditional sense. I enjoyed the philosophical message. That what's important is what you believe is important. It doesn't matter if it's all an illusion. Enjoy it while you can. (At least that's what I got out of it.)

April 6, 2004

I have been seeing a slow and steady increase in the number of unsolicited emails I get from recruiters. That's a great sign (at least to me) that the job market for software engineers is improving (at least in Atlanta). That's great news. But it doesn't really affect me right now, since I am very satisfied with my current position. Most of the recruiter emails I get are highly targeted toward the skills I have. I would expect that. Due to the balance between supply and demand, employers can afford to pick and choose the best candidates for the job. Back in the mid nineties, you could get a computer programming job if you could spell “computer”. Those days are gone, and that's probably not a bad thing.

Well, Georgia Tech lost the NCAA final game. I'm sorry they lost. I was looking forward to buying some Ga Tech T-shirts. I don't have any wearable Ga Tech T-shirts anymore. All my old ones wore out years ago. Damn, I'm old.

April 5, 2004

I'm very glad to see Georgia Tech make it to the NCAA basketball championship game. I remember the last time Georgia Tech made it to the final four I went to the airport to greet the team. I got the autographs of several of the players. That was very out-of-character for me. I'm not really much of a sports fan. I'm not even sure I'll watch the game tonight, but I am hoping Georgia Tech wins.

April 4, 2004

Well, I've finally gone and done it. I bought a kayak. I have wanted to own a kayak since I was about 10. I grew up on a large river near Savannah, Georgia where I built rafts and dreamed of cutting through the water in a kayak. The rafts my friend and I built were generally made from large blocks of Styrofoam attached to a 4x8 piece of plywood. One even had a sail with rigging that actually worked. But since most of our rafts were floating rectangles, they were hard to paddle. We did experiment with building streamlined single-person rafts, but they were fairly unstable and so they were more like assisted swimming devices than rafts. Looking back on my childhood now, I realize how lucky I was to grow up where I did. I had a real life Tom Sawyer childhood.

Here is a picture of the kind of kayak I bought:

April 1, 2004

I am so sick and tired of computers. I mean you fork out big bucks to buy one, expecting it to exceed your expectations only to realize it's just marginally better than the one you're replacing. Then once you get the new computer home, it takes hours of fiddling with to get it to be at least somewhat equivalent to the one you were used to. Then after you've got everything setup just right, you accidentally delete half your files while trying to organize your 120 Gigabyte drive that has become full in the week or so that you've owned it. Computers are complete waste of time and money. I've had it. Later today (after everyone who cares enough to visit this site has done so) I plan on literally throwing all my computers out the upstairs window. Then just to top it off, I'm going to take an ax to them. I'm curious how the cases will react when they are hit by the full force of a 5 pound ax. Now I've got to figure out how I can keep my software engineering job without using a computer. I'm not sure yet how I'm going to do that. Maybe I can dictate my code to a data entry person. If anyone has any good ideas, I'd be happy to hear from you. Oh wait, I won't have access to email later – forget it. Happy April 1.

March 31, 2004

I've just installed Microsoft's speech technology SDK. I am creating this entry using a sample application provided with the SDK. Maybe after a little practice I will be able to enter text via my voice as fast as I can via the keyboard. But at this point it seems quite awkward to enter text. For the rest of this entry I will not correct the mistakes the voice recognition software makes. This will give you some idea how hard it is to enter text. Mary had a little lamb his lead some was white as snow and everywhere that very with the lamb with shared together. Let me try that again. Mary had a little lamb is fleece was white as snow and every where that Mary with the lamb I'm sure to the hearing. One more time. Mary had a little lamb is police was white as snow everywhere that married women the lamb was shared together. That's pretty funny.

March 27, 2004

Beautiful days remind me of my late Grandfather. My grandfather died slowly as his mind and body wasted away during the last several years of his life. I remember one beautiful spring day when I was visiting my Grandparents in Savannah. My Grandfather and I were in the car, waiting for my Grandmother to get something out of the house before going off on an errand. By this time, his mind was mostly gone. As we sat in the car, he began repeatedly chanting “Little Sisters of the Poor, Little Sisters of the Poor, ...”. Why he was chanting this, I'll never know. Anyway, it was quite awkward, us sitting there while he chanted. So to try to break the cycle, I looked up through the windshield of the car and remarked that is was a beautiful day. And it was a very beautiful day. There wasn't a cloud in the sky. He always liked sitting outside on beautiful days to enjoy nature. After I made my remark, he looked up at the sky and echoed my words exactly. He then resumed chanting “Little Sisters of the Poor”. It was hard for me to see him this way. And now, over a decade later, on beautiful days like today when I look up at the clear blue sky, I think of my Grandfather.

The other strong memory I associate with beautiful days is the memory of lying in the grass in my back yard at the start of summer vacation. I was in high school at the time and since it was the start of summer vacation, I did not have a care in the world. I laid there for what seemed like forever. Just soaking up the warm summer sun in the full knowledge that there were 3 more months until school resumed.

Today we celebrated Nicole's Birthday with her friends from preschool. We held the party at a children's museum just down the street from our house. The kids really enjoyed themselves.

This evening we all went to Home Depot and bought a nice Weber gas grill. I'm sure we will be using it a lot this spring and summer.

March 25, 2004

This is a strange coincidence: 50 years to the day after the first first color televisions started being manufactured, I hooked up an antenna to my ATI All-in-Wonder board so I could watch TV on my new computer. I don't plan on using my computer as a TV, but it might be a handy way to record shows. I did not find out that today was the anniversary until after I had finished hooking up the antenna. Weird.

But it's not really that weird, because there are a nearly infinite number of weird coincidences that could happen at any given time. So statistically speaking, you are practically guaranteed of having a few noteworthy coincidences happen every year. So it would be very unusual to not have anything unusual happen to you every once in a while.

March 23, 2004

There are some rumors going around and I need to set the record straight: I am NOT in negotiations to become the next James Bond. Of course I would be willing to talk, if contacted. These rumors first cropped up back when Timothy Dalton was forced out. Once again, the rumors are completely false.

Last night while surfing the web, I discovered that Casey Kasem was the original voice of Shaggy on Scooby Doo. Zoiks! Like my life will never be the same again, man.

March 22, 2004

H a p p y B i r t h d a y N i c o l e !

My little princess Nicole turned five years old today. We had a small party for her at her preschool at lunch time and another little party for her here at home tonight. We are having her big party this weekend. This morning I asked her if she felt any older and she said she didn't. Which is just fine with me.

March 21, 2004

Experience the world-wide phenomenon that is Tunak Tunak Tun. First see the original video here, then take a look at this Flash animation. Great stuff. This alone is worth having high speed Internet access. I originally found this via fark.com which I only started reading recently. Fark is a good way to waste what would otherwise be many productive hours. The Internet Weekly Report Animation Archive is another good eater of bandwidth and time.

March 12, 2004

Kyle's class has been playing Red Rover for the past few days at school. Kyle told me that he is always the last one called over. I thought back to my Red Rover days and realized that the big strong kids were the last ones to be called. So I took a guess at which kids were with Kyle as the last three. I was right. The last three kids left were the three most imposing kids. I am proud that Kyle is being called last. Not only is he at the top of the class academically, but he's also the most feared Red Rover player. He's not the tallest or heaviest kid in the class. The other two boys are the tallest and heaviest, respectively. But I guess Kyle's got just the right balance of traits that makes a top notch Red Rover player.

Yesterday, when I picked Nicole up from school, her teacher told me that she was the only child in the class who could read all the reading words. The only way you can know how happy and proud I am of my kids is if you had Dyslexia like I did when I was a kid, and you now have kids that are at the top of their classes in reading (and everything else). It's a very special feeling.

I have been reluctant to write this, for fear of jinxing myself, but it seems like my home network is very stable now. The key fixes were downgrading the firmware in my Linksys router to version 1.44 and putting a hub between my DSL modem and the Linksys router. I read about putting a hub between the modem and router on a forum that discusses problems with Linksys routers. It seems to work. I'm not sure why it works, but it works. Without the hub between the DSL modem and the router, the Linksys router would intermittently hang, requiring a restart to recover. Now that I have said everything is stable, I am certain to have a catastrophic network failure.

I saw the on line trailer for the I, Robot movie and I am not impressed. It seems like Will Smith (no relation) is miscast. And the computer animation of the robots' faces looks bad and unrealistic. It doesn't look real. It's a shame that such a monumental Science Fiction work is getting such clumsy treatment.

March 8, 2004

I worked outside for several hours yesterday. My hands and legs are scratched up from thorns, I have two blisters on each hand, my hands ache from using an ax, my chest, back, and arms ache from moving heavy logs around. And I love every minute of it. I love working outside. I use hand saws and axes instead of a chain saw because I love the physical exertion. I love the sense of accomplishment that comes from chopping a log in half with an ax.

I think I enjoy it so much because my regular work of developing software is so abstract. When I do work outside, I am doing things in the real world. I can see the results of my labor. I don't mind the pains and aches. They are the good kinds of pains. The pain that comes from hard work. I learned to enjoy having sore muscles from years of weightlifting. In weightlifting, sore muscles equates to growth. So you learn to enjoy the appreciate the soreness after a while. When you don't get sore a couple of days after a workout your a little disappointed.

There are a few more chores I need to do in my back yard, but I am getting close to the end of what I want to do. After that, I am going to have to come up with some additional plans so I still have something to do back there. I have some good ideas that will provide lots of hard labor.

March 5, 2004

Tonight, I took Kyle to a new place to play Yu-Gi-Oh. At the place he usually plays, nearly everyone is under 14 years old. At this new place, half the people playing Yu-Gi-Oh were under 14 and the other half were over 18 and very odd. In the first round of the tournament, Kyle got paired up against one of (if not the best) player there. He was about 35 years old and about 400 pounds. (I'm not kidding.) Kyle beat him the first game, but he won the next two, so Kyle was knocked out of the tournament at the first round. There was another young woman there wearing a Dracula cape, and it did not become her. She wasn't a sexy Dracula as you might expect, but rather a sad, lonely and out of place looking Dracula. Someone else was carrying around something that looked like the top half of a Darth Vader mask. I looked around the room at this sad group of oddball adults and wondered if I fit in or was the cool exception. I decided I was the cool exception. If not for Kyle, I would not be there. But most of these adults were there by themselves. They had nothing better to do on a Friday night than to play cards with kids less than half their age. It was a strange experience. I was hoping to see other parents like myself who got involved in the game because of their kids. Instead, I saw a sad group of young adults trying to escape reality by immersing themselves in a world of fantasy. But, I suppose it's a harmless and relatively healthy escape for them. We all escape reality now and then in our own way. But I don't think I'll be taking Kyle back there. I prefer Kyle to play with other kids rather than adults.

March 4, 2004

H a p p y B i r t h d a y K r i s t e n !

I just added a bunch old old diary entries that I kept from 1994 to 2000. I wasn't very regular about updating it. If you are curious, you can see them here.

March 3, 2004

I am now running my web site on my new computer. It's a real screamer. It's got 2 disk drives configured as a RAID 1 drive and a DVD writer that I intend to use to do backups. Not much news to report lately.

February 15, 2004

Yesterday, the shutters I ordered for the foyer were installed. The largest is 8 feet tall, and the man installing them said it was the tallest one he had ever installed. They really class-up the foyer. They look so good, that Tess and I are considering putting shutters on the rest of the windows on the front of the house. I think the ones in the foyer will pay for themselves by increasing our home’s resale value. Not that we will be selling any time soon. We are very close to the Catholic school where Kyle and Nicole will be for the next eight years. So I doubt we’ll be moving for a while.

Last week I was contacted by a relative in Washington DC who found pictures of her grandfather (my great-grandfather), Dean Melton Prouty, on my web site. We plan on trading family pictures and information. Isn’t technology great? It’s a shame that the barrier to entry for creating web sites is still as high as it is. I would hope that in a few years, the infrastructure and tools are in place to make personal web sites as easy to make as sending an email.

I’m going to be buying a new server/workstation next week. It’s going to have a RAID I disk subsystem in it and a DVD writer. I plan on using it as Network Attached Storage (NAS) for all my machines here at home. I’ll use the DVD to make long-term backups. It’s also going to have an ATI All in Wonder 9600 Pro video card in it that I will use to convert our home videos into DVDs. I’ll also use it to host my web sites.

February 8, 2004

Yesterday, in the Yu-Gi-Oh tournament, Kyle was matched up against the tournament winner in the first round and lost. That’s going to happen now and then. But Kyle made up for the lost by buying a booster pack that had a Vampire Lord card in it. That’s a $45 card that he got in a $4 pack. It seems like everyone who plays Yu-Gi-Oh wants that card right now.

I continue to have zero network problems after downgrading my Linksys firmware. I’m surprised Linksys just doesn’t have a warning on their website regarding the news firmware versions. It seems that was the cause of problems I’ve been having for months.

I recently bought a couple of those digital clocks that set themselves every day using the time broadcast service located in Colorado. It’s kind of reassuring knowing exactly what time it is. When I was younger, I used to go out of my way to not wear a watch. I intentionally tried to ignore time. Now I live by the clock. In theory, I’d like to think that I could throw my clocks away some day, but in reality, that would mean that I have nothing to do. So I guess that will stay a fantasy. I always want something to do.

February 4, 2004

Well, it looks like my pesky intermittent network problems have been fixed. I replaced my Linksys SR11 with a SR11 version2 and downgraded the firmware to version 1.44.2. I think it was the firmware downgrade that made the difference. The newer firmware versions seem to have problems. Now that I’ve said I have no more problems, I’m sure they will resurface. That’s the way it works.

I have been continuing to exercise. I feel very proud that I haven’t quit. I am lifting weights for half an hour followed by 15 to 20 minutes of walking on the treadmill at a quick pace of 3.1 mph. I used to run a little bit in high school, but I was never very good at it and never enjoyed it very much. I prefer a brisk walk. My workout routine has a three-day rotating cycle: back and biceps, chest and triceps, and legs. I also do about 100 sit-ups every day.

February 1, 2004

Kyle came in second again in the Yu-Gi-Oh tournament yesterday. He beat Malcolm this time. Malcolm won the tournament two weeks ago. I think Kyle’s current deck is better than his last deck, but we will be ordering some more cards soon with Kyle’s birthday money that will make his deck even better.

I was still having network problems after I replaced the Linksys router. I did some searches on Google, and found than people are reporting problems with new firmware versions. So I downgraded the firmware version back to 1.44.2. We shall see if that fixes the problems I have been having. When the router goes down, it sees to hang completely. I can’t even access the administration page.

January 30, 2004

I have been having continuing problems with my DSL Internet connection intermittently going down. I noticed that resetting my Linksys router would bring my connection back up, but it would stay up for very long before going down again. I upgraded the firmware in the router, but my problems continued. So I replaced the router with another one I had down in the basement. Since replacing the router, I haven’t had any more problems. I hope that was the problem.

Tomorrow, Kyle is going to play in the Yu-Gi-Oh tournament again. We had to skip last week’s tournament due to Kyle’s birthday party. Kyle and I perfected his deck tonight and planned his strategy for tomorrow. We both think his deck is better now than when he came in second two weeks ago. We shall see. Luck plays a big part. He could lose in the first round if he’s matched up against a good player and gets bad luck on the draw.

January 28, 2004

I am happy to report that I have been exercising on a regular basis during the past three weeks. Last Wednesday I came down with a stomach virus or something that knocked me down for a few days, but I am back now. I have been lifting weights down in the basement followed by a brisk walk on the treadmill. I feel good. I weigh about 170 pounds now and want to get down to about 160 or so. Really, weight is a bad measurement because it doesn’t take into account muscle weight versus fat. But I know from past experience that if I am at 160, I will be lean and mean. In my prime (back when I dabbled in bodybuilding) I weighted 155. But I think I would look a little too thin at that weight.

We celebrated Kyle’s birthday this past Saturday. We had about 18 kids in attendance. We had a magician come and entertain. The kids really enjoyed it.

January 17, 2004

Today was a really great day. This morning I took the kids to their Spanish lessons. After that, I took Kyle to the video game store where we play Yu-Gi-Oh while Tess and her mom took Nicole shopping.

Before today Kyle had never made it past the second round of the Yu-Gi-Oh tournament. But Kyle has added several good cards to his deck recently because of Christmas and his Birthday. Twelve kids were in the tournament and all but one of the kids were older than Kyle (who is seven). Most of the kids are between 11 and 14 years old. Kyle beat three other players to make it to the final round. He also won the first game of the final round, but Malcolm, who’s about 15 beat Kyle in the next two games to win the match. Kyle received two booster packs for coming in second. Against all odds, Kyle got a secret rare card in one pack (Magic Cylinder) and an ultra rare card (The Masked Beast) in the other pack. The odds of getting such rare cards in two random packs are about 1 in 30.

After the tournament Kyle was playing with some other kids. As we were playing, we were discussing particular cards and strategies. Then the kid Kyle was playing asked if I was Kyle’s dad. I said yes. He then turned to Kyle and said, “You have a cool dad!” Kyle and I looked at each other and smiled. I gave the kid a thumbs-up sign and said thanks. It was a great moment that I will remember for the rest of my life. Having another kid tell your kid you're cool is pretty cool. Like I said, what a great day.

January 16, 2004

Lots to catch up on today. Yesterday, two guys in a van tried to sell me a set of large speakers. This was the second time in about 10 years that this has happened to me. I just held out my hand in the universal stop signal. Later I did a Google search for selling speakers out of a van and got lots of interesting hits. Apparently, there is an organized network that sells Chinese made speakers out of vans. They are worth about $60, but are sold at prices from $200 to $1000.

Next, how sad and unfortunate it was that President Bush was booed at the Martin Luther King memorial. More Republicans voted for the Civil Rights Act than Democrats. Two of President Bush’s most trusted advisors are African American. It’s really a shame Martin Luther King isn’t alive today. Many of the leaders trying to fill his shoes are not fit to walk in his shadow. King was a great and intelligent man. He wasn’t perfect. None of us are. But thank God he lived when he did and said the things he said. Instead of listening to today’s black leaders, we should just reread King's great speeches. It’s a sad thing to say, but I think race issues will survive me. I believe many of the black leaders today want to keep hate alive instead of keeping the dream alive.

Can you believe General Clark’s flip flop on the Iraq war? He’s said he has been consistent on his opinion of the war. He’s either lying or his memory is worse than Reagan’s. And I just heard that Dean was treated for anxiety attacks after becoming Governor of Vermont. And he wants to be President of the United States? This election is shaping up to be the biggest landslide reelection in history. I’ll be shocked if Bush looses.

And the NASA Rover is about to start roving. How exciting. I can’t help but feel a little sorry for that rover. It’s alone on a cold and (probably) lifeless planet millions of miles from home. It will tirelessly do its job without complaint, and then when it’s done working itself to death, we will leave it. Yes, I know it’s just a lifeless robot. But I can’t help myself from feeling sorry for it. It’s like something out of a Asimov story.

January 7, 2004

I want to go on the record now for predicting what those circular areas free of rocks are on Mars. I think they are ancient sinkholes that have been filled up with dust over a couple of billion years. The NASA people are guessing that they are secondary impact craters, but I see two problems with that: (1) They are too common to be secondary impact craters, (2) Impact craters would not be perfectly free of rocks. Larger rocks would still peak through here and there.

A sinkhole however would be capable of gobbling up even the largest rocks. The sinkhole theory fits the scenario of a large lakebed gradually drying up. I haven't heard of any sinkhole theory yet. We shall see.

January 5, 2004

H a p p y B i r t h d a y K y l e !

Kyle is seven years old today. And it's the first day back at school for the kids. What a Birthday present.

January 4, 2004

I’m really excited about the successful landing of the NASA rover on Mars. I really admire the men and women that designed and built the rover. As an engineer myself, I can think of no more challenging or rewarding work than space exploration. It epitomizes the best of the human spirit and intelligence. This year should be filled with new revelations about Mars. Wouldn’t be awesome if the rover sends back pictures of the desiccated skeleton of a giant sand worm? I’m not expecting that to happen, but it sure would be cool if it did.