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Do it yourself, with shredded foam!
2.28.2001
(Morning)
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Well, quick Mardi Gras summary. My group consisted of two engineering
students, four engineers from Dallas, one of the engineer's girlfriends,
and me. We started to run into traffic in Baton Rouge. We were in
two cars, and we had hand-held CB's to listen for upcoming Smokies...
One of the truckers said something to the effect of "I wish some of
these ladies going to Mardi Gras would flash me a little something."
The girlfriend in the car ahead of me got on the radio and let the
guy know where she was. It took him a while, but sure enough he caught
up, and she spent a good part of the next 30 miles down the road out
of the sunroof. At one point, one of the truckers put a spotlight
on her.
We finally pulled into New Orleans at around 10PM Friday night. We
then went out. I severly overdid it on Friday night, and when I tried
to go out Saturday morning, I decided I was not up for it and slept
through all the parades. That was kind of a bummer, but I did get
out Saturday night and had a great time. Every time I go I'm amazed
at how many people you can fit on that street. I need to learn to
stay away from Hand Grenades from Tropical Isle.
Other odd occurrances included:
7:30am Sunday morning, my ex-roommate and I were smoking cigarettes
in the hall of our hotel room since everybody else in our room was
sleeping. A security guard got off the elevator and walked over towards
us. I assumed he was going to ask us to go inside, but he bummed a
cigarette off me. "Wow, Camels... These are my brand..."
Later that same morning, still sitting in the hall, two guys covered
in blood with wounds on their arms walked by. One commented, "Don't
ever try to elbow in a window. You get blood all over yourself, and
the cops try to arrest you." I don't know if the cops tried unsuccessfully,
or if they decided not to. |
2.27.2001
(afternoon)
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Caught up on sleep missed this weekend last night. I slept from 8:00
PM to 7:30 AM. Mardi Gras stories to follow. I drop the pictures off
for developing tonight... |
2.26.2001
(2 AM)
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I'm
tired. Nobody in my group got killed or ended up in jail, so I guess
it was a successful trip. I love that city... Pictures to follow? |
2.22.2001
(morning)
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Problems with the driver for my video card, so the webcam still isn't
working. I'd mess with it more, but it's time to head into work, and
continue on to New Orleans... See you there. |
2.21.2001
(evening)
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Damn... Once again it's been too long. Luckily I wasn't down long
enough for the search engines to de-list me. I notice that people
are still for some reason clicking through Google
and checking this site out. God knows why, but I guess I get bored
at work sometimes too...
One thing I noticed is that someone apparently did a search for
Big Smith,
found my site, tried to download the mp3s, and was thwarted by my
failure to move them over from the old site. Silly me. So for anyone
interested, I'll repost:
12"
3-Speed Oscillating Fan
No
Sir
Quarry
Anthem
Preacher
If anyone actually downloads those, let me know and I'll post more.
I spoke with the band not too long ago, and they don't mind taping
of their shows. Apparently, when they play at Chester's Place in
Fayetteville, there's somebody who almost always tapes the shows.
I'll definitely be there next time they play at Chester's and I
hope to get in touch with someone who has tapes so I can get copies.
I'll let you know if I do get some, and if anyone wants I'll get
copies to them.
Lots of good music coming up soon. Dave
Matthews Band releases their next album this next Tuesday, and
they're kicking off a tour very soon. No dates near KC, but hopefully
they'll announce more as the tour goes on. If not, I'll be arranging
a caravan to either see them in New Orleans or Dallas.
On April 1, 2000 I went to work. When I got home, I went back to
my apartment, turned on the TV, watched the Simpsons, made some
dinner and got on the computer. My roommate came home and told me
he was going out to see a show, and they had an extra ticket. I
almost declined, but I was being more anti-social than my normal
self around that time, and I thought it would probably be a good
idea to get out. As a result, I saw what I think may very well have
been the best show I've ever seen. I've since acquired a copy of
that particular show, which I listen to often. As it turns out,
the Steve Kimock
Band is (more than likely) returning to Chester's place in Fayetteville
for shows May 2-4. He continues on to New Orleans for a 2:30 AM
show Sunday May 6 (actually that would be Monday, I think, but I
can't really tell from what I've seen about the show). Now the quandary
I'm in is this: The Fayetteville shows are a Wednesday through a
Friday. I could take a Friday off work to catch two shows in Fayetteville,
or I could take a Monday off and catch Dave Matthews' Jazz fest
show and the Sunday night Kimock show. But I have plenty of time
to decide. Oh, it's a tough life I have.
When I moved up here in Kansas City, I forgot to do two things at
my apartment in Fayetteville. One was clean out the refrigerator.
Whoops. I'm sure that's coming out of my deposit. Another is remove
all the X10
switches from all the rooms. That one kind of hurts. They weren't
too expensive, but I don't feel like dropping the cash to replace
them right now. As a result, I'm back to only my starter kit. You'll
notice in the "home control" section you only have access
to two of my lamps, the only two controllable devices I have right
now. I'll get more and get the TV hooked up soon, but that'll probably
be my next paycheck. But what I have is working again. After buying
a car, a DVD player, a grill, a surround sound receiver, a set of
speakers, and a car stereo, I think I've done enough to try to pull
us out of this recession. Now all you guys be good consumers and
do your part.
I'm working on the webcam, but haven't figured out how to run the
wires out to the living room yet. So you'll have to settle for a
view of the messy computer room for now. But at least it's running
again. Hopefully.
Once again it's time to sign off. Gotta get packed up for Mardi
Gras. Damn there's going to be a lot of driving this weekend. Any
Gimpysoft fans that are heading down to New Orleans, feel free to
say hi if you see me. I'll be the drunk guy. I'll probably be on
Bourbon Street... Hope to see you there.
Someone I don't know has checked out my site more than once... Who
are you? Why are you coming back? Not that you're not welcome...
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2.13.2001
(evening)
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Some of my favorite words:
Recumbrance. Orthoptical. Anionic. Sculptorally. Curvilinear. Quixotic.
Boolean. |
2.10.2001
(afternoon)
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Well, it's Saturday. Big
Smith plays at the Jazzhaus in Lawrence, KS tonight. Head on
out if you're in the area. I saw Hannibal last night, and I'm not
entirely sure what to think. It definitely had plenty of gross-out
moments. I was kind of disappointed with some aspects of the movie.
The movie went out of its way to make you not like Hannibal's victims.
It was especially heavy-handed with Ray Liota's character. Every
time he was on the screen he did something to remind you that you're
not supposed to like him. They could have been a bit more subtle
with it. I guess it was worth seeing... I suppose the next movie
I need to see is Snatch.
In Gimpysoft.com technical news, I've been doing some further work
on the server. I have Oracle installed, so I'm going to start getting
some cool stuff up here soon. Gimpysoft
Radio is active again, so if you're bored at work, you can always
listen to that. If you have Winamp
installed, just click the link and it should start up. Since I have
better upstream bandwidth now I've upped the bitrate to 56k. Let
me know if there are any problems with it. When I got my new computer,
I accidentally deleted my entire mp3 collection, so I'm just getting
rebuilt now, mostly by capturing from CDs I own. The station currently
plays some Enigma, Foo Fighters, Steve Kimock Band, KVHW, Big Smith,
various Techno stuff, and some comedy bits every now and again.
I'll try to get a request system going soon, but in the meantime
if there's anything you'd like worked into the rotation, shoot me
an email.
Speaking of email, I haven't tried to get drscience, my old 486,
working again. So mail sent to gimpysoft.com is getting bounced
right now. I'll try to get mail working on pi soon, but I've been
messing with that machine enough for today.
Other stuff, I haven't figured out a good place to put my camera,
or how to tun the wiring. So the webcam isn't working. Also, I accidentally
left most of my X10 switches in my last apartment, so you can only
control one lamp in my apartment now, and I haven't even tested
it to see if it works. I'll fix that tomorrow if I get a chance.
Well I'll drop this in. It's good to be back. Watch soon for your
chance to register as a site user and... Ummm... Do something...
I'll figure that out later...
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2.08.2001
(evening)
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Welly welly well... I'm back... I'm now nicely settled into Kansas
City and I finally got Gimpysoft.com's web server back up. I spent
a small amount of time last night trying, but gave up when a friend
invited me for a game of Age of Empires. Today when I got back from
work there apparently had been a power outage here and both of my
machines had rebooted. When the web server had come back up, it had
an IP and was good to go. Updated my DNS records and I'm back in business.
Now that I'm at least back on the internet, perhaps I'll spend some
more time doing development on the many ideas I've had. Plus, I'll
rebuild my mp3 collection so I can get Gimpysoft radio back up.
Anyway, not much to say. I like the new place. It's pretty damn big,
especially just for me. It has a nice workout room which I actually
have used once, and plan on going again tonight. I'm charting my weight
on a nightly basis, and once I get Oracle installed on this machine
I'll put a graph up here.
The job is good. I like the folks I work with, and the work itself
is interesting. Hopefully things will pick up a bit, but I at least
do have stuff to do.
My Roadrunner internet service is quite fast. It's at least 6-7 times
faster than my ISDN on downloads, and about 4 times faster on uploads.
Now that I have the bandwidth, I'll try to recapture the shows at
a little better quality...
But now it's time to play some AOE... |
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