Archived News starting from 06-20-2004 and earlier
BlogI spent the weekend
visiting an old friend in Toronto. I haven't seen him since his wedding and a visit was well overdue. I managed to get lost despite a laptop with GPS and wound up witnessing some entertaining lower-income antics of the GTA (Greater Toronto Area). After I found my friends apartment I drove into the depths of of his parking garage, then took an elevator up to the 15th floor and realized just how vertical Toronto is. We promptly got intoxicated in preperation for the next days tourist adventures which consisted of the subway, trolley cars, the CN tower and the beach. A very relaxing vacation I hope to repeat soon.
Stavos recently sent me a link to
Terraserver, a mapping site that Microsoft recently purchased which features satellite imagery of the earth. Last time I visited the latest image in their database was from 1989, but this time it had one from April 10, 2002. I quickly
checked the Gnome cam for that date and sure enough you can see the satellite as it passes overhead. I've been putting in addresses ever since. Below is the image of my house, along with the
Gnome Cam capture of the satellite pass.
According to the date on the
internal memory chip, my
phone is now one year old. Aside from calling/text messaging people, I check my email, browse the web, listen to MP3's, store all my datebook/address info on it along with various photos/videos. I used to have all that on seperate devices, but after my purchase of a Kyocera 6035 followed by my current model I can't imagine life with all that clutter. When I bought the 6035 it was revolutionary, but now converged devices are becoming the norm, especially now that camera phones are catching on. I'm sure phones will become obsolete much faster as more and more features become available. However now that I'm approaching technological middle age I find myself less inclined to have the latest and greatest. Hopefully I'll be writing about the 2 year anniversary next year. Then again, I might lapse back into a techno frenzy. Only time will tell.
More and more I've noticed people around me ending their sentences with "or something." I'm guilty as well, and have consciously begun to take it out of my subconscious. My theory is that people are unsure of their statement, so tacking "or something" at the end gets them off the hook for accountability. I say it ranks up there with "um" and "like" and should be used only when necessary. Perhaps I'm just overanalyzing but I'm worried we'll lapse into a society where half our words are just filler words designed to lengthen our statements so we seem to have more to say. Just like in college when we all double-spaced our work to get the 5-page requirement met. If you find you're saying this frequently, ask yourself why you said it. If you can't come up with a good reason then fight it. Make your statements proudly and with confidence, don't muck them up with filler words. </soapbox>
After over 2 years of faithfully snapping webcam shots every 5 minutes, my
Snappy is finally showing it's age. For the fourth time in as many days the
GnomeCam is down due to what I believe is hardware failure. The capture software hangs during acquisition so hopefully a swap to a brand new Snappy will be the answer. What do I plan to do with the old Snappy? Well E-Bay it of course!
My
yearly trek to Florida concluded yesterday. This year I wanted people to think I was a rich snob so I rented a
convertable Mustang to drive around in. We started the week at
KSC where Melissa promptly
got her head stuck in a rocket engine. She told me she wouldn't come out until I proposed, so I had to
gave her a ring before her air ran out. That behind us, we went to visit
JOSEPH who thoughtfully
smashed the exit to his apartment complex so we could travel in and out without being traced by "the man." He and his wife Mrs. Lavonne Joseph joined us for
Midevil Times, now a dinner tradition for my yearly trek. Later in the week we visited
Universal Studios where Melissa was able to
grab Shaggy's butt, a lifelong dream of hers. After some
beach time, we decided to return to the Joseph's for some
DVR and
Bionicle entertainment. Later we went for some ice cream at Friendly's where Joseph began his daily
domestic abuse against Lavonne, which proved to be quite entertaining. Our vacation over, we said Farewell to the Josephs and to sunny Florida. We'll miss you both.
It's true, I proposed to my
girlfriend near the Saturn V rocket at Kennedy Space Center. Even though a total of four people on the planet knew, she still had enough monitoring devices planted throughout the country to pickup on the plan. The day of the proposal I made a fatal mistake and transferred the ring between bags in plain sight. Her laser vision immediately locked onto the box and concluded a proposal was imminent. Unaware of my slipup, we proceeded to the space center where I dragged her out of a gift shop to propose. Fortunately she had not calculated the exact time and place of the proposal so it was a moderate surprise but expected. Despite the slipup, she was still very pleased.
Every year, the first monday after Memorial day, there's a parade right down my street. I always wind up missing it and this year was no exception. While I'm sad I missed my last chance of witnissing it first hand (moving in 3 months), the
GnomeCam caught it from 2:00 - 3:00pm. A few associates from the area indicated it was nothing exceptional, but missing what is most likely my last chance to have a parade in front of my house made me a little sad.
Today was the storm that will forever be known as the "green cloud" storm. Major thunderstorm alerts were going off on every channel and supposedly this green cloud (which I never saw) made it more dangerous. So given the danger, I decided to
videotape some of it. It had a few high points, but wasn't all that spectacular in my opinion.
Here is the best shot from the
Gnome Cam, which was quickly covered with water after the shot was taken. As long as we get cool thunderstorms like this I don't mind the constant rain as much.
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