Category: Me

Texas Rice Festival

It was fun.  I had a good time.  The food was great.
I have something else to talk about, but I don’t feel I can do it without serious repercussions.
I hate it when something is going on that I can’t write about, because I really need a way to vent.  Oh, well…

New Season

A lot seems to have happened since my last post.  I’ll keep it short, though.
I started my new degree plan at LIT this semester.  I am studying for an Associates in Instrumentation Technology.  It should allow me to stay busy throughout my life.  So far, I’m doing very well in all three of my classes, and it doesn’t look like that will change.
Heroes started back up last week, and it looks very interesting.  Before that comes on, Chuck is pretty funny.  It just doesn’t look like it can last very long.  It looks like it has a low budget, but I don’t know if it will have the ratings to stay on.  It was funny to see the reference to “Oceanic 815” from LOST.  Apparently it was shot down.  That had to be a real part of LOST.  I don’t see how ABC could throw that in without it having some truth.  Journeyman, however, looks great.  I like the concept, and the realistic consequences of his time travel makes it even better.  The main character, Kevin McKidd, was in ROME, and is the perfect part for this character.  It’s amazing how much younger they can make him look.
Alaina began piano lessons last week, and she’s really enjoying it.  After only one lesson, it’s difficult to know how well she’ll do, but we’ll wait and see.  She started going to dance classes this week.  She is in Jazz, Ballet, and Tumbling.  She’s very excited about this because she is always dancing, and has always wanted a stage to do it on.  Now she can practice and perform in front of everyone at the end of the year.  Her teacher says she did very well for her first day.
I don’t remember if I’d posted this before, but I got an accoustic guitar back in May and I’ve been practicing a lot over the past month.  I’ve finally started developing some callouses on my left hand’s fingers from playing so much.  I’m starting to get the keys down right, and I’m pretty close to being able to play all the way through a few songs without messing up too much.
The Texas Rice Festival is this weekend, and I’m looking forward to seeing a few people I haven’t seen in years.  Usually this is the only time of the year that people from here come back home, and hang out in public for everyone else to visit with.  It should be a fun weekend.
I guess that sums it up better than I thought it would.

Posting

I seem to have had a lag in my writing over the past two months.  I am not really sure why that is, I just know that I want to pick it back up. 
My mid-year resolution is to post more frequently.  Maybe even do some video posts.  We’re getting a new camera this week.  I’ll post about it when it comes in and I have a little time to play with it.

April was Boring

I waited for inspiration to come to me all month long, and I couldn’t think of anything to write.  I think it’s that fact that has led me to lose sleep last month.  I didn’t use this outlet that I set up to get things off my chest.
Up until last night, Heroes was getting a little dull.  Last night was probably the best episode so far.  There was a little continuity error in there, but all-in-all it was great.
There have been some great strides in solid-state hard drives over the past few months.  Having a history in hard drive data recovery, it looks like that industry may be taking a turn for the worse once these solid-state drives become the standard.  At the rate that the size increases, the odds are that they will be the standard is good within the next 4-5 years.  Instead of physical defects in the platters, our primary worry will be bad currents of electricity.
I got a new phone a few weeks ago.  Christle did, too.  They are pretty cool, and if we can keep from dropping them too often, I doubt that we’ll get tired of them very soon.
A friend of mine from high school passed away on April 21.  Joey grew up down the street from me.  We moved in to that house in April of 1989.  We hadn’t really kept in touch over the years, but it is heartbreaking to see someone I grew up with pass away.  While at the funeral, I found out another classmate of mine died in a car wreck about 7 years ago.  I didn’t know him very well, but I remember that he was the kind of guy who always seemed to be happy.  I remember playing football over at his house with Joey, Chad, Bobby, and a few other guys.  I also found out that a girl I used to “date” in Junior High committed suicide a few months ago.  I don’t like thinking about this.
Christle’s been going over to her parents house a lot this month to get things done for her sister’s wedding.  The knot-tying ceremony is coming up rather quickly, so they’ve been working very hard lately.
I’m excited to finally have the opportunity to visit Schlitterbahn in Galveston in a few weeks.  I’ve almost gotten the park map memorized.
So, I guess April wasn’t so boring.  I wish I had less to write about.  I just need to remember to write when I need to so that I can get it out instead of bottling it all in.

Prepared to Start

I have just finished cleaning my desk and my PC so that everything will be nice and tidy for school.  Despite my intentions to do that back in December, I have continued the habit of letting my desk get out of hand.  So for now, I have remedied that problem, and my goal is to have a clean desk throughout the semester.  If I can do it for 11 weeks, I should be able to maintain it for good.
I had not realized how cluttered my desktop had gotten.  It’s amazing how often I’d save stuff there simply because it was something I thought I might use frequently.  If it wasn’t for that reason, I would save it to the desktop so that I would remember to do something with whatever the file was.  Now I’ve got my Quick Launch bar loaded with all the shortcuts that the Start menu takes to long to access, and my desktop looks like I have a fresh Windows XP install.
The best part of the communications class is that it might promote some better writing on here.

Merry March

Well, March has arrived quickly this year.  I didn’t post much last month, but we all deserve a little break every now and then.  I plan to post more often, although I know that’s always what I’ve planned to do.
The family’s been sick for the past few weeks.  It’s been pretty rough suffering with illness.  I thank God that it is not what it could be.  These things are temporary, but could be far worse.
I’m trying to kill a opossum that’s been sneaking around my house.  Everytime I see it, I have forgotten my gun, and every time I bring my gun, I can’t seem to find it.
My new classes start in two days.  I am looking forward to the new challenges that will come with them.  I plan to get my coursework done early so that I will not have to struggle with due dates.

Vista Update

Vista’s got a lot of bugs.  If you have a computer that’s less than 2 years old and you’ve been contemplating the “upgrade”, I wouldn’t do it.  The major problem right now is not entirely Microsoft’s fault, but as normally happens with any Microsoft update, there are many driver issues right now.  That is caused primarily by 3rd party hardware creators who haven’t created compatible drivers for their products.
There are some tremendous features in Vista that will eventually make the upgrade worthwhile.  The speech recognition is fantastic and has surpassed the few that I’ve tried in the past by leaps and bounds.  The security side of Vista works well, unless you turn it off, of course.  No matter what anyone else out there says, ReadyBoost works.  Aero is pretty, but a resource hog and I turned it off.  They added the Desktop to the Alt-Tab shortcut, although my shortcut was always to hit “Windows+M”.
I’m not using Vista for my primary computer yet, because I have too much 3rd party hardware that doesn’t work yet.  I have moved the family computer over because it’s a pretty basic machine that everyone uses, and I like the parental controls I can use with Alaina’s account.  Even though it’s a step down from my primary computer, it runs very smoothly.
When it comes time to purchase a new computer down the road, I’ll probably go with Vista… preferrably on a Mac with BootCamp+Parallels.

Busy Busy Busy

I’ve been doing so many things that I haven’t had the time to keep up with myself.  I’ve kinda spread myself thin working on a few projects that are fun, yet time consuming.  I’ll let you in on it a little more down the road.
Are there any phrases that people get wrong all the time that just frustrate the fire out of you?  I’m talking about phrases such as “don’t take that for granite”.  That’s the phrase that they say, even though the proper phrase replaces “granite” with “granted”.  How about words that are clearly mispronounced, such as “supposedly” being pronounced as “supposably”?  That’s one project I’m working on.
I’m also looking for funny looking stuff on the Internet.  Funny looking web addresses or pictures found on the Internet would help me out a lot.
These projects are fun, but could turn out to be really hilarious if implemented correctly.  Let me know if you have any ideas…  Thanks!
I’m going to slow myself down, but figuring out how will probably include less time on the computer.  I’m glad I dropped MySpace back in November, otherwise I’d be wasting a lot more time than this.

Happy New Year!

I took Alaina to the San Jacinto Monument today.  We had an ok time.  They’ve got the park closed off now so that you can’t even drive up to the monument unless it’s open and pay per person for entrance.  The same goes for the Battleship Texas.  It really stinks because it used to be an easy trip, but the entrance I always use is now blocked off because there isn’t a booth to take money at that entrance.  They aren’t charging a fortune, but it was an unexpected expense.
I am looking forward to a better year.  This past one was much better than the one before that, and I’m sure that it’s only going to get better.
Happy New Year!