I may be late on this one, but it’s damn funny. Be sure to read all of the parts (found via Gnomeloaf).
Dec 032003
Dec 022003
Some cool stuff from the past few days:
- Mobilewhack – a new site by Rael who edits one of O’Reilly’s book lines and has pointed me to some cool stuff for my 3650 in the past.
- Geek Road Trip – series of articles on a trip down US 1 from Wired
- Listing of "Are you pondering what I’m pondering?" quotes from Pinky & Brain
Nov 202003
I don’t really consider myself a health food nut or anything. I’ve put on a few pounds since becoming a dad, but I’m trying to avoid the fate of all the Trentham men, the majority of which seem to invariably end up looking like they’ve got a basketball shoved under their shirt while still having the legs of a rooster. I think I won’t have too much trouble avoiding something like this, but somebody should stop that Ben & Jerry before they invent another Cool Britannia. Mmmmm…shortbread.
Oct 022003
It’s been a busy week and it’s not going to settle down anytime soon. I went to the Emo’s 11th anniversary show featuring Turbonegro Monday night with friends. The “sphincter sparkler” was in full effect, unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your point of view) I wasn’t fast enough with the camera to get a shot. You Turbojugend out there know what I’m talking about. The rest of you can let your imagination run wild.
I also managed to persuade Mary to let me go to the Neal Stephenson book signing this evening at Bookpeople. I picked up a copy of his new book and did manage to take a picture and post it straight from there. You’ll also notice that the moblog has been officially added to the site’s Main Menu. I need to tweak it so that it matches more closely the style of the rest of the site, but I’ll get to it eventually.
Meredith and Anne are in town this week, so Mary has been going out too. On top of that, she braved a Pre-K field trip today as a chaperone. They all rode the Capital Metro bus from school to the capital and ended up taking a tour. It sounds like it was pretty insane. If that wasn’t enough, she and Lily also attended Mateo’s first birthday party today as well.
Phew.
Sep 112003
Check out Wil’s site for what I think is a well done message for today. Happy birthday to my mom, who will forever have to share it with that infamous day. I’ll take the opportunity to send the good vibes to my family and friends in the NY metro area (and the rest of NYC for that matter). There are days when I really miss living there, especially in September as it’s particularly beautiful there this time of year.
EDIT: Oops. I mistyped that URL. I blame Wheaton for not adding index.html as an index page.
EDIT2: The fixed link is no longer good either. You can still find what he posted here, though.
Sep 032003
We spent our Labor Day weekend in Dallas. My sister was in town, along with Mary Ann and Charlotte. It rained most of the weekend, so we had to alter our usual plans of lazing the weekend away by the pool. We headed out to the Allen Premium Outlets on Saturday and broke the bank buying clothes for the four of us. We scored a winter coat for Henry and Mary & I both got a new pair of sneakers. I nearly bought some red classic Pumas, but they had sizes that were either a little too small or a lot too big (a rarity for me).
We continued the consumer frenzy theme the next day at the Stonebriar in Frisco which my mom suggested as a place to take Henry and wear him out. I’m normally averse to any trips to the mall, but I think the previous day’s outing had softened me, especially since I had managed to pick up the elusive second series of King of the Hill figures at the KB Toy Outlet at a sweet $4.88 each. What a massive monument to American consumerism! The place had an indoor playground, giant carousel, a Dave and Buster’s, a Cheesecake Factory, a 24 screen movie theater (you read that right, 24) and two Starbucks locations (one on each level so you don’t wear your fat ass out in a quest for a venti double non-fat caramel macchiato). The place was truly frightening. Frisco was full of cow pastures when my parents considered moving us there in the mid-late ’80’s (much to my sullen teenage chagrin). They certainly have come a long way. Plano used to be an utter Stepford nightmare that scared the crap out of me, but Frisco has it beat in spades. The lyrics from ÆNIMA kept looping through my head as I walked around looking at all of the vacant stares and perfect hairdos. *shudder*
Oh yeah, there’re new pictures up from the weekend. Henry keeps making some weird face when he smiles, so the only decent shot I got of him was posed and coached. Lily, on the other hand, gave a wealth of material, such that I had a difficult time picking just one picture. Friday night, she started gnawing on an asparagus spear and seemed determined not to stop until she turned it into mush. After working on it for several minutes at the table, she got down and marched around my parents living room, munching all the while. I spared you some of the grosser shots with bits of pulverized asparagus hanging from her chin.
Aug 222003
There are tons of sites out there that allow you to make different sorts of lists. Amazon lets you make lists that are stored on their servers and they also make an API available to search their product database. Other sites take advantage of this and allow you to keep lists of DVDs, books, whatever. I’ve been displaying the DVD, book, CD that I’m currently listening to or lusting after in the blocks on the right side of the homepage, but I want it to do more. I just changed the reading block to show a list of what I’m currently reading via AllConsuming, which I found via Whitney’s site. It’d be nice if they offered the same service for DVDs and CDs. I keep a list of the DVDs that we currently own at DVD Aficionado. All of these sites have certain limitations, prompting me to want to develop my own system. The problem is that I don’t have the time. There’s also the limitation of having to write towards a particular content management or blog framework. I’m still annoyed that PHPNuke hasn’t implemented Trackback, a feature that’s commonplace in Moveable Type, among others. Can’t we all just get along? Crap, I wanted to rant on this some more, but I’ve got to get going…
Aug 152003
The Rules
- leave a comment, saying you want to be interviewed.
- i will respond; i’ll ask you five questions.
- you’ll update your website with my five questions, and your five answers.
- you’ll include this explanation.
- you’ll ask other people five questions when they want to be interviewed.
My five questions come from Mr. Juicebox [Jeremy]
1) Which Simpsons character is your favorite, and why? [this assumes you watch the Simpsons. If not, pick a cartoon you do/did enjoy watching]
That’s a tough one. I think Cletus is my current favorite, mainly because he’s gotten some of the best lines over the past season. Uter is also a perennial favorite.
2) Describe how you came to live in Austin.
I came down here from Dallas to go to UT in 1989 and have been here ever since (except for a two year stint in Manhattan/Queens for grad school). I have no plans on leaving anytime soon.
3) I see you’ve got a link to Wil Wheaton dot Net on your site. How did you come across his site?
He did an interview on Slashdot last summer and I first checked out the site then. I’ve always been a big fan of Stand By Me. He and I are pretty close in age and have similar interests, so I kept reading.
4) If you could go back in time and ‘tweak’ history, when/what might that be?
I’ll be selfish and do it for personal gain. I’d go back to 1990, take the money that I had available and invest it in several of the emerging tech stocks: Dell, Cisco, Microsoft among others. I’d then take the earnings from those and ride the wave of crazy IPOs in 1998-2000. Finally, I’d sell everything in February of 2000 before the first big drop and retire.
5) Talk about a favorite actor/actress/director from the Silver Age of movies [mid ’50s to early ’70s].
I googled for the silver age to get an idea of who I should focus on, but couldn’t find much oddly enough. I’ll have to go with Alfred Hitchcock. He spans a longer period than that, but he’ll do. I can’t say more than has already been said. He’s a genius. I’m partial to Saboteur, Notorious, Rope, Dial M for Murder, Rear Window, Trouble With Harry, Vertigo and North By Northwest among others.
Aug 042003
It’s been a few days, so I figure it’s ok to start bashing the deceased. How odd is it that the obit in the Times was written by someone who himself died three years ago? I realize that news services prepare obits ahead of time so that they’ll be prepared, but still. The fact that they didn’t have to edit an obit that was three years old means that the guy wasn’t doing a whole hell of a lot for the past few years. All kidding aside, I have to agree. The man was just not funny and neither was Victor Borge.
Aug 042003
Have a look. We took a look at the Mazda MPV yesterday. We were suitably impressed. It’s basically down to the Honda and the Mazda. We give up some room with the MPV, but we’ll save money. We’ll probably make a decision soon. We also took advantage of the tax free holiday this weekend and got Henry some new shoes and new clothes for school.