Perks of being the Emperor of the Galaxy

Great view.


Fantastic Dental.


All the lightning you want.


And your very own bottomless pit right in the middle of your office.

Funny Anecdote

How true this is...

A man in a hot air balloon is lost. He sees a man on the ground and reduces height to speak to him.
"Excuse me, can you tell me where I am?"
"You're in a hot air balloon hovering thirty feet above this field," comes the reply.
"You must work in Information Technology," says the balloonist.
"I do," says the man, "How did you know?"
"Well," says the balloonist, "Everything you told me is technically correct, but it's no use to anyone."
"You must be in business," says the man.
"I am," says the balloonist, "How did you know?"
"Well," says the man, "You don't know where you are, you don't know where you're going, but you expect me to be able to help. You're in the same position you were before we met, but now it's my fault."

JJA #4 - Reception

From Harrisburg, they flew me to Fort Jackson, South Carolina for Basic Training. Now, in the movies, they show recruits arriving only to immediately encounter their screaming drill sergeant immediately. Well, in reality, they have to do some housekeeping before you can meet your drill sergeants.

This is called Reception.

I think I spent a total of 3 or 4 days in Reception.

They had us spent alot of time on "the mat".



They would have us wait here between the different stations that we needed to visit.




Some of the things they had us do here was get a haircut.


And yes, they actually made us pay $4 for it. The barbers were so fast that they cut one guys forehead while moving the shaver towards his head.



They also gave us all of our immunizations here. This was a very interesting experience. They used no needles for the shots. They had these hydraulic pressure guns that squirted the medicine in a high-pressure stream so that it would pierce your skin. They warned us not to flinch while getting the shots, otherwise we would have a gash in our arm. I got 3 shots in one arm, and 2 in the other. I saw some of the other guys flinch...





Then came the best shot. I think they stored this thing in the refrigerator, because the medicine was VERY cold. It was also so thick that it took 30 seconds to get it all in you. And they gave it to you in your butt.



Here was where we had to relinquish our civilian clothes and go all military. They took away everything that you brought with you, except your toiletry bag. They gave us new everything down to brown Army underwear that didn't quite fit, and horrible itchy hot green wool socks.

The elastic band of the underwear was so unelastic that a week into basic training it had cut into my sides so I had perpetual raw skin around my waist.


Here's a photo of the clothes line.




The boots also did not fit very well.

During the course of Basic Training, I got blisters on my feet. Then I got blisters on top of my blisters. Then I got blisters on top of those. To this day, I have large pads of skin on my toes where I got those blisters that were not there before the Army.




The guys who wore glasses had to give up their civilian glasses, and get Army issue glasses. We called them BCGs, or Birth Control Glasses. They made you so ugly that, well, you get the idea.


One other memorable experience from my time in Reception was the acclimatization process. There was record heat that summer in South Carolina, and right before I arrived, someone on post had died from heat stroke.
So they made us drink, and drink, and drink more water. 1 quart per hour if I recall correctly. I never peed so much in my life. They made us drink so much that one guy puked water all over the floor in front of me. No chunks, just water.

Next stop - Basic Training!

Google Targeted Ads

I love my G-Mail. Don't know what I would do without it.

However, today I got an invitation to a Christmas Party. Actually the verbage was "Annual Holiday Luncheon." So, what does Google think I would be interested in?

My Day Off

I took the day off so I could watch the kids while the Mrs. was taking a spinning class. She went with her friend who is teaching her how to spin raw wool into yarn.
I figured I would use the day to get some some much needed chores done. I woke up around 6-ish to help the Mrs get her grandmother's old spinning wheel into the van so she could use it for her class.
After the girls got up, I decided that we would make some Chicken corn soup together. I set the girls to shredding carrots in our Pampered Chef cheese grater(works wonderfully!), while I chopped onion and prepared the rest of the ingredients. The girls were thrilled. They really like cooking with Daddy.

Afterwards, I went to buy some tires. I made this decision last week while hydroplaning down the road during the rainstorm we had.
So, I go to the tire place, and while I'm waiting the hour or so for the car to be done, the kids and I walk over to the used video game store to browse around. The boy has been saving up work dollars towards a new video game, so he cashed those in.
After that, we walked down to the fabric store to let the girls peruse around. I am always amazed at what girls get excited over. They were both oohing and aahing over the different fabrics, how pretty they were, how they would like to make jammies out of this fabric, or how cute the hearts were on another fabric while The Boy was hollering about how bored he was. I reminded him that the girls were bored in the video game store.
We also went to Kmart, and looked through the girls clothes rack, and the toy aisle.
Cell phone rang. Car's done. 350 smackeroos. Back to home. Car feels wonderful. I must've needed tires for a while.
This is turning out to be an expensive day.
In the evening, we had parent teacher conferences. The Mrs had not yet made it back from her class, so I went to meet the teachers.
Middle girl's conference was first. She is doing fantastic. A few problems with counting money, but nothing that can't be helped with a little practice. It was a very short conference. "You're daughter's perfect. Any questions?" :)
Then I get to The Boy's conference.
Academically, everything is stellar. Behavior-wise, well...you know. Read Mrs. Wbobth's blog to read the history of The Boy. He is having crying sessions in class when given writing assignments because he doesn't know what to write. I can't be too hard on him, because I also hated those free form writing assignments that the teachers gave. On the other hand I don't think writing about your favorite Thanksgiving food should be a crying matter...
I didn't manage to get to what I really wanted to do, which was clean the basement.
Now I need to rest from my day off...

Take the "A" Train

The boy is learning Swing drumming.
Here is his progression of a new beat over 3 days of practice.
I'm impressed.

$160,000 fungus

A truffle was recently auctioned off for about 160 grand. I can't imagine paying that much for some fungus.
But you know what they say. Once you've tasted it once, it grows on you...

Fighting Army Style #4 - Caption Competition

OK, blogosphere! I need YOU to come up with a good caption for this one.





A couple of my ideas:
1. Soldiers outfitted with Depends for when they crap their pants in battle.
2. Brave soldier given task of cleaning Cyclops ear with specially designed Q-Tip.
3. Here's the body armor our troops should be using.

The future of photos?

Here's a link to something called Photosynth, put out by Microsoft.
It's in pre-beta stage right now, but what it basically does is scan through your photos looking for similarities, and extrapolates a 3D montage allowing you to "walk" through your photos.

They also recommend 1 Gig of RAM to run the demo.

Seems interesting...we'll see where it goes.

My awesome wife

She is taking this animation class which is taught in Flash.
Here is her latest project. (I helped out with the Russian and the globe)

Election Selection 06

Forget those pompous political pundits on TV.
Wbobth has everything you need to make an informed selection this election season.
All you need are the signs you see along the highway.

Can't...walk...any...more...

Yesterday was the parents vs. kids soccer game. I may have mentioned before that I am extremely unathletic. Of the 7 parents that were on the team, 5 were soccer coaches, 1 evidently was a soccer star back in Scotland in his youth...and then there was me. I think this was the first full soccer game I ever played in my life. So I let the other guys do stuff like try to get the ball into the goal. I hung back and played defense. My only strategy was to run as fast as the kid and get in the way of them getting a clear shot on the goal. This strategy worked pretty well until I realized that I could only sprint once every 5 minutes or so. By the end of the hour, I was so tired that a 5 yr old dribbling the ball towards me got past me, and I couldn't catch up.
So this morning I got up, and I let out a howl as pain shot through my body as I went to put my pants on. Everything is painful...getting in and out of the car, climbing stairs, watching TV...
Anyway, I did have fun. The boy had a blast. And I'm getting used to the taste of Advil.
Oh, yeah...the kids won.

Animation Idea

Mrs. Wbobth is doing a project for her animation class that she is taking this semester. The instructions stated that she needed to animate a(n) historical event. After much thought, she decided to do an animation of the Alexei Leonov performing the first space walk.

Too bad she didn't decide to do Laika, the first dog in space.

Windows Trivia

Over on the right I have a link to "The Old New Thing" which is a blog maintained by a guy who has been on the Windows programming team from I think the Windows 3.x days. Anyway, here is an interesting set of links I gleaned out of his archives of useless Windows trivia and interesting anecdotes.

Why are there 2 copies of Notepad?

Why is the registry called a hive?

Why does Windows 95 have functions called BEAR, BUNNY and PIGLET?

I'll take one of everything

Twenty foot long computer

Do not underestimate the power of the game Deer Hunter

Actual Death Threat

An insight into the Windows 95 startup sound

What is this Xerox directory doing in Program Files?

Windows Annoyances - Useless dialog boxes

Whenever you try to open a file that does not have a program associated with the extension of the file, this dialog pops up.




The default option is to "Use the Web Service" to help you out. Has anyone ever actually used this Web Service? Well, today was my lucky day. I wanted to find out what would happen.



When I hit OK, it directed me to this web page:





Now, this is telling me "I have no clue what your file is." No duh, you told me that on the other dialog box. Now, look at the options that this gives me.
It's telling me to go to yet another website, which (I'm sure) will still not tell me what to do with my stinkin' file.
Better yet, one of the suggestions is "UK Technical support".
HUH??!?!
If I were a novice user, and I were presented with this page, I would be more confused than ever.

In general, the only program I use to open unrecognized file types is Notepad.
I'm sure there is no way to set that as my default, and Microsoft forces me to go through a completely meaningless step to do what I want to.