Hello once again my wrongfully neglected readers. I am so late in updating for one simple fact.. That fact being that I haven't had time to. :( Why? Because my girlfriend decided to grace me with her presence from Friday till this morning. We went to the theater and watched movies (The Passion of the Christ and 50 First Dates). We went to the movie rental place and rented some movies (Bowling for Columbine, The Missing, and Matchstick Men), went out to eat, and went to the zoo. So that's what I was doing while you were wasting away at home, constantly refreshing my homepage waiting.. waiting.. waiting for me to update it.

The Army has now made it standard that everyone (in the states or not) place the American Flag on their right sleeve (as seen here) by October next year. Before, you only wore the flag on your sleeve when deployed on a peacekeeping operation. I know that October 2005 is not for a while, but the whole reasoning behind it does not exist. It will serve no purpose other than 'showing pride in your country'. I wish I knew why showing pride was so much more important than actually having pride. Of course, if I had pride I would gladly stitch that flag on my uniform right now, wouldn't I? .. No. Not really. Having pride would make me feel like a cheeseball for putting the flag on my sleeve... as if I don't know I'm a member of the United States and need to be constantly reminded. Or is it my pride that I'm supposed to be reminded of? I suppose if I were paid ~$10,000 a month to make and vote on decisions like this, I'd be too scared of losing my job or hindering any possible promotion by voting against (committing blasphemy) such a thing, and let it pass regardless of how stupid or pointless it is.

Gay marriages still continue to be a big issue. I hadn't realized how big the issue was until I started reading some forum topics here and there. There are so many people out there that had no problem with homosexuality, yet had a big problem with homosexual marriage... I just don't understand that. And it surprises that a constitutional amendment is actually being added (wasted) to prevent this... Sort of overkill.. Five years from now the process will be started to remove it.. Just like prohibition. Of all the reasons that I've read from people that don't want gays to marry, I've yet to see one that can't be countered with something that happens regularly and is accepted. The only reason that makes sense (and isn't some mindless drivel spit out from person to person... such as the argument: "They shouldn't marry becaust they can't have kids") is the one based off of Christianity and even those points are moot because religion isn't supposed to affect governmental decisions. To clarify: I feel either A: Homosexuality should be 100% illegal, or B: Gay marriages should be 100% legal. -09MAR04

Telefile is pretty cool. I did it last year and it worked out great. This year I did the same.. It was a little eerie, because on the front of the document it says 'FREE e-file direct to the IRS in about 10 minutes!'. I started the call, and when I was done it said 10 minutes, 21 seconds. Being single and not earning any interest anywhere makes it real easy to do my taxes.. I get a whopping $450 back, about $200 less than I got last year... But then I made about $6000 more.

In more moneymatters news, my rent goes up a hundred bucks to $810 in May... That's enough to make me look for other apartments.. After doing so, I find that it's still about $250 less than what I'd be paying somewhere else with the same advantages (one bedroom, less than 10 miles from work, includes washer/dryer mainly). What a coincedence that my base pay went up near exactly $100 for this year.

My mother has finally decided to give up the cigarettes.. costing her a million dollars a year is a good reason to do that. Last I heard she made it three days without one.. I'm crossing my fingers with hopes that she didn't just have 'one more' only to end up back smoking again like everyone else that quits. ;)

I added a couple of pictures to my Places page... Nothing special, but you can still check it out if ye like.-29FEB04

I watched Fox News yesterday. Not because I wanted to, but because I had to. It's what they showed on our three hour plane ride instead of a movie. On there was a segment where they interviewed a certain person that goes by the name of Richard Salomon. If you don't know who that is, I'll tell you. By now you should be familiar with a girl named Paris Hilton. Well, it seems that the two of these people got together and made a video out of it... A crappy version was released all over the internet, and now it seems that Rich is out to make some money for himself by releasing another video they made for a $50 download.

During the interview, he mentioned (removed...) at least three times, said the price he was charging, and generally described what the video included such as full color, Paris Hilton, and how long the video was, etc, etc.. So basically Fox News is advertising Celebrity Porn. One of the interviewers questions was "So, you're doing this just for the money?" and he replies "No. I figure that so many people want to watch Paris having sex that I figure why not make a little bit of money off of it.".. This guy is a pure genius. On top of this, the interviewer calls Paris 'vapid' and asked Richard's opinion on it. The interviewer also asks (near verbatim) "Do you think if Paris wasn't born into all that money that she'd make it in the real world?", and he replies with "With the way she looks, yes.".. The guy went into further details on how hard it would be for Paris to get any of his profits because he has it available in 14 different countries that she'd have to take him to court in each one to get any money for herself. All this was seen of Fox News. America's favorite news station.

I'm back home now, by the way. I bought myself a new MP3 CD Player because my old one was on it's last leg. I played around with the new one a little bit and it's very nice. There's a trend, though in these devices that the LCD screen gets smaller and smaller as time goes on. This is very frustrating because my first MP3 CD Player could list six songs in the same window, and was wide enough to display about twenty characters. But that one sounded like crap, took four AA batteries (which lasted eight hours) and weighed about three pounds. My second one could only list three songs on one window, and about ten characters left to right. Now this new lists three songs, but only displays six characters left to right, which is very frustrating when you're trying to scroll through 100+ songs to find what one you want to listen to. But it takes just two AA batteries and advertises 95+ hours of life on them.. plus it weighs maybe eight ounces and does not vibrate at all when the CD is spinning... Very good sound quality too.

I also bought some new computer speakers because I wanted something that I could plug my headphones in and out on a whim, and not have to get on my hands and knees and switch the speaker wire with my headphone wire on the back of my computer. This one has a little box that controls the bass, volume, and where you plug the headphones into.. Very useful. As far as the speaker sound goes, I'm a little disappointed. They sound better than my last ones and look a lot cooler, but it's really weak in the mid-range of frequencies.

My host now supports subdomains! They just keep improving and improving their services, making it easy to feel that I made a good decision with them. (an example of use of a subdomain is to have me.thecrawdaddypage.com instead of www.thecrawdaddypage.com/me.html. Don't try the URL out because I haven't set it up yet.. and probably never will.. But either way this can allow me to make entire new sites whenever I want and not have to worry about huge URLs) -24FEB04

I am currently in Wyoming, sitting in about four feet of snow. I have a cold, my muscles are all cramped up and my roomate snores louder than a chainsaw, and pees all over the toilet seat. My bed is about three feet wide, and the pillow is five times thicker than I can possibly be comfortable with. I arrive back in D.C. at 9 P.M. Thursday, only to have to go back out of town at 5:30 A.M. Friday. I wont even go home.. I'll sleep at work. Yeah. That sounds good.

I just came back from Armstrong, Texas where I spent 15 hours sitting in a Durango (which is why I am still all cramped up four days later) while my big boss went hunting. The day after that, I was off and got to watch a movie called The Butterfly Effect, which I thought was pretty good except for the ending. The next day we arrived in Albuquerque and stayed there for all of four hours, and straight to Wyoming we went. Upon arrival, it was actually warmer than both Texas and New Mexico, even though there was already three feet of snow on the ground. Today however, it's been snowing non-stop since this morning. At least the place we're staying in has a hot tub. Unluckily, it's located outside on the porch.

I took a picture (yes, just one) in Armstrong and so far two here in Wyoming. None were taken in New Mexico. Just picture the Roadrunner/Coyote cartoon setting and that's what it looked like. I made some slight modifications to my Me page and plan on doing some more adjustments throughout this site. Upon receiving an email about my music page, I adjusted one review. Also, I segmented my 514th page a bit and added a few lines of text. -18FEB04

Tuesday I must have had my friendly face on. I went to the Commissary (that's 'Grocery Store' in mil-speak (that's military speak)) and a guy in a motorized wheelchair saw me loading cans of Campbell's soup into my basket. "Are you single?", he asks.. "Yes", I answer. "There are better meals you can have than that." and I answer "Well, any meat or vegetable I get spoils before I can get through half of it, so I just get canned stuff.".. And he said "I'll have to invite you over so you can see what a good meal is supposed to be." I smiled and nodded and went on my way. I saw him again and this time he was a lot more adamant about me coming over to his house and eating dinner with him. I had to decline, and say that I eat plenty good when I'm on the road (which is often) and that the reason I only get canned and frozen food is because I could have to leave for one or two weeks with only ten hours notice and all food will spoil. He finally let off saying "I wish I had your job." and rolled off into an aisle.

Then when I come home there's a (seven or eight) year old boy sitting on his bike on the sidewalk. He lives a floor above and a room over from me, and says Hi to me every now and then.. but nothing more. Well, this time he asked me what kind of work I did, and I explained to him the theory of Satellite Communications (which he surprisingly understood). We also talked about the Nintendo Game Boy, and the games we had. And that was it. Two strangers talked to me that day. That's two more than have even given me a second look over the last two years here.

Tomorrow I am leaving for about ten days.. About six different places total... Then I'm back for three days only to leave for three more places in the span of five days. I'm bringing my laptop this time, so I should be able to work on something during that time...

I keep looking in my forum for suggestions on what to update on my site (such as, for instance somebody getting a new car) but I don't see anything. :(   I guess I'll leave you on that note.. Till next time. -12FEB04

It's looking like I'm back in the Army again. Today (which happened to be Monday of last week) was an unprecedented day in my unit. For thirty (or more) years since it's inception it's been geared towards the civilian lifestyle. We wear civilian clothes. We use civilian equipment. We stay in civilian hotels. This has caused a 'civilianized' way of working. We call each other by our first names, regardless of rank. We're supposed to be there around 8:30 in the morning. Ten minutes late, no big deal. An hour late, they might notice but usually wont say anything. We drink our coffee. We like to talk to each other instead of work. Somebody buys donuts every once in a while and we all chow down.

Well, someone ticked off our Commander. As of yet no story has surfaced, but guaranteed there is one out there. All that he says is that we lost our military bearing, and we need to get it back (and build espirit de corps while we're at it). So basically we're running out into a formation wearing our uniforms looking like a bunch of idiots, waiting for someone in charge of us to tell us to go to work every morning... At least we don't have an end of day formation... But then there's always something there that could make it worse.

I just got back from St. Louis. What a disappointing place that was. The downtown area was like a big ghost town. 70% of the windows were boarded up, spray paint/graffiti was everywhere, buildings were falling apart.. It was depressing. There weren't even gangs, bums, or drug dealers hovering about the corners. The entire place was empty. Even the mall which advertised "Four levels of shopping, dining, and entertainment" was dead. There was about one store for every six empty spaces, the roof was leaking, and the 'dining' consisted of four unheard of 'bowling alley cafe'-like establishments and a Sbarro pizza place that had four slices of five hour old crusty cheese pizza ready for the taking at $4.50 a slice. What made it even sadder was that the mall was decorated real prettily with banners and props for Valentine's Day, as though lots of customers were expected to peruse the place.

Luckily I knew someone that lives there so I was able to see outside of the city. Apparently St. Louis is really comprised of five or six or ten smaller cities/towns and holds 5.7+ million people. The downtown area itself houses only 100,000. (Most of) The surrounding area is real nice looking.. Shiny new places to hang out and buy things, Starbucks everywhere, etc.. The the way a typical growing town looks.

I didn't bring my laptop on the trip, so no major updates today. -09FEB04

As you may know, it's snowing here in the D.C. area. I hear people at work talking about how great it is to have four wheel drive because of the snow. Of course I feel it nessecary to notify them how great it is to have a two wheel drive sports car in the snow, seeing as how I got to work on time, and before them. And then they defend themselves to an extent because they know I'm just trying to tell them they wasted their 12 grand for the 4WD feature.. though in perspective 2WD on an SUV is definitely a bad thing in the snow. I wonder why they didn't mention that to me. I guess they assumed I already knew.. heh. Well no more about that subject.

It appears as though Giggleman is getting some 'tang good enough to talk about on his website. Read all about it in his USA Today - like articles. He rotates mp3's out at least once a week, some are interesting and others are .. well.. you'll have to listen to them yourself!

I keep buying PC games with the hopes of liking it so much that I'll review it.. But no such luck. PC games are really starting to get worse as consoles continue to become mainstream and make lots of $$$. The only hopes I have of playing a good game is if it gets ported over to PC from the console.. Such is the case with five of the last six games I bought. Unfortunately those five games should have all been left on the console.

Have you ever noticed that the Fox News reporters wear the same kind of lipstick Porn Stars wear? -27JAN04

Via my secure newswire (A.K.A., my guestbook..) I see that Cousin Veronica has gone back to her old address. For some reason she mentioned that she can't figure out how Yuppies use moveable  type. I don't quite know what she means by that.. probably the way Typepad implements their blogging program or something..

In political news, the Democratic debate is on tonight. You can catch it on the Fox News station. Unfortunately, Fox News is a cable station, usually placed one or two channels next to CNN. I find that pretty ironic as most Democratic voters don't have cable. It's just as well I guess, all the Democrats have been doing is making themselves look like idiots. I want to take the video of Howard Dean screaming "We're going to take (this state) and (that state) and (this other state) and then WE'RE GOING TO THE WHITE HOUSE!!" and dub it over with "We're going to take Iraq, then Iran, then Afghanistan and then WE'RE GOING TO CHINA!!" because that's exactly what I see in him. Quite a lust for power. Heh. And then the rest of the candidates are constantly taking pot-shots at each other, and especially at Bush.. I wonder what they'll do at the debate. I guess I'll have to watch the highlights tomorrow at work.-22JAN04

Veronica has done a slight (temporary) upgrade to her site. Congrats! Maybe she should look at LiveJournal as well. The link to her page will stay the same URL until things get situated with her stuff...

I rewrote my History, and added some more Javascript functionality to the page using pop-up windows. I intend to rewrite my Information section, but not today. Maybe next week or next month or something. Enjoy. :) -18JAN04

I'm glad my cable never came in... Here at the hotel in Denver I get to experience football 'The Way it's Meant to be Seen'.. on cable. I watched the Green Bay/Philadelphia game and was surprised at how quickly (cable) television started to annoy me. I think it was the multitude of Dodge Durango commercials that started it. Every break I got to hear about how it has a 'DVD' (a DVD is a movie, something you buy in the store from anywhere between 6 and 27 dollars, depending on the demand. Dodge charges about $1200 dollars for their DVD. Why don't they just call it a DVD player? Is that so frigging hard?), and a HEMI (the engine.. from the way they talk about it it must be something really special). The monstrosity starts at $26 grand and some change. As shown, probably $40,000+.

And then there's the Gateway commercial. They say that their products (in this case, 42' plasma screen televisions) are for "People with more brains than money.". Their plasma screens start at $2,499. WHAT A DEAL! Hey, I'm smart so why don't I smartly spend my smartly earned money on a twenty five hundred dollar television? I can have a television for the paltry cost of a new refrigerator, washer, dryer, living room set, and enough to spare for new tires on my car. But I'm smart with my money. That plasma screen is mine! I hope it comes with bunny ears.

And then Terry Bradshaw annoyed me. There was a three minute post-game show where he and four others talked about where the game went wrong and where it went right. While I've watched this crew together before and was annoyed then, this time I was looking really really really closely to find things to pop a blood vessel over. For the first two minutes, nothing. Intelligent, critical discussion mixed with semi-thoughtful opinions. But then Terry had to ruin it with "Well it all comes back to the quarterback now doesn't it?" trying to joke about his self-imposed importance. He laughed. Loud and heartily. The others smiled, but were still trying to talk some more about the game but could not be heard over Terry's overaudible laughter. I know overaudible isn't a word. He actually shut up for about five seconds, which was enough time for the black guy (probably the most professional of the bunch) to start on something else and he was interrupted by a hand slamming on the table and some more laughter from Terry. And then the screen faded out. They didn't seem to mind the interruptions, but then I don't think they are allowed to. I'll go ahead and call up Mr. Bradshaw and tell him he's fired.

And on top of all of this I was hoping the Packers would win. Brett Favre (pronounced Farve.. for some idiotic reason) really threw that one away. There were some other mistakes before and after his soon to be infamous interception, but that one definitely takes the pie. How horribly disappointing. :( Another reason not to watch football.

Now I know you're asking why I think that a football game can only be seen on cable... especially a playoff game. Well, I'm not a complete idiot... I don't think that. But fact of the matter is, if I didn't have cable I would not have watched that game. Football is only worth watching when you truly have nothing better to do, and especially not when the TV is so fuzzy that you can't see if the ball was passed or handed off. What would make it easier to watch is if I had an obligation to the cable company (such as a monthly payment or the likes) I would feel obligated (or should that be obliged?) to make use of those services that I'm paying for.

And I almost forgot to mention, that after the three minute commentary I was introduced to 'King of the Hill', which is already in progress. I saw Boomhauer wave goodbye to a girlfriend, then mumble something to his beer drinking friends, and then credits, and then Durango commercials. Great. -11JAN04

I think I'm going to have to put myself in 'Save Money' mode again... Looks like I went overboard for Christmas. My credit card that took me so long to pay off is now right back where it was. I don't know how it got there so fast.. but it did. Just between my Braun Syncro, my Mom's computer, and Barnes & Nobles Gift cards I bought for my sister and girlfriend I must have spent about $1200... all of which was charged in a three day period. Not to mention the $65 Alien Quadrilogy set.. And I have to get a thick coat from somewhere because I'm going to Denver this weekend.

I got off of work early today because the cable guy is supposed to install cable in my apartment today. When I pulled up I saw one guy working in a little room underneath my building and talked to him.. he said he was installing for the apartment next door to me (which has been empty for about five months now). So I'll have to see where things got screwed up later, but I'll just wait until the day is done before I go calling up Comcast cursing them out (because that's fun to do over the phone).-06JAN04

Hello family, friends, strangers. I apologize for my lack of update... I forgot to put what I added over the last month or so to this webpage on my laptop, so I can't really work on it until I get home... Maybe not even until weeks later. Heh. Me = lazy. When I was home on leave I almost completely forgot about my laptop.. I didn't even pull it out of it's case. So here I am, while my girlfriend is at work typing this to be added later.

It appears that Giggleman has been pretty busy lately (in contrast to myself). There's a new page layout and everything.

Again, it was strange being home (New Orleans). In D.C. I feel like an outsider.. like I don't belong there. But in Kenner, I feel like everyone else is an outsider and that I'm the only one that does belong. I own the roads, I own the mall.. I own everything there. It's a priveledge that I give to everyone there that I allow them to live there. This is how I feel, and don't know if it's a good or bad thing. It's at least partially good, because I don't have social anxiety there like I get when perusing stores and malls and such by myself in and around D.C.

My mom likes her computer lots and lots (thankfully), though I know she wont use it to 1/5th of it's capabilities.. But that's okay. I got a George Foreman Lean Mean Reduced Fat Grilling Machine, an M&M shower radio that holds my tooth brush, a small refrigerator/warmer/cooler thing that I can plug into the cigarette lighter in my car, a really badass space (age) heater (that I was supposed to pay my mom back for, but forgot to), a couple of calendars, a candle that smells like freshly baked pumpkin bread, a loaf of pumpkin bread, a picture/frame of my sister and everyone she goes to school with, and a CD case.

All in all it was a good visit, though short. Much to my mother's disagreement I wanted to leave at night to avoid the Sunday morning (after Christmas week) traffic (her disagreement because it was about 12 hours earlier than scheduled). The drive was very relaxing, though... It's rare that I can go without changing lanes or be stuck behind somebody, and 3 in the morning is a perfect time to avoid that.

(Sitting at home now) When I got to Atlanta I was very very tired and slept until about 2 in the afternoon. The next day Christmas presents were given and opened.. and from my girlfriend I got an arcade joystick that you plug into your TV and play Pac Man and five other games with it. It's pretty neat, except it doesn't save your high scores. :( I also got a little vacuum cleaner (for computer parts), a couple of bathroom books, a really nice sweater and shirt, a bunch of Godiva chocolates, and for our three year anniversary a really cool watch. It's a Skagen. :)

While she was at work, I went shopping for myself. I got some more clothes (because I ruined half of what I brought by pouring detergent on them and letting them sit in the washer for day.. It was an accident) and the 9-disc Alien Quadrilogy boxed set. I never saw Alien Resurrection (the fourth one) so I watched it this morning. I kind of wish I had my two hours back. The premise of the story really blows (Ripley is genetically cloned, but retains memories of her past life.. and she's superhuman), but the execution is decent.

On my way back to D.C. traffic was surprisingly light.. Until I got into three exits before mine, where I sat for about an hour.. inching inching inching on up to see a demolished (big) pickup truck on the bed of a tow truck, and shattered glass everywhere. Three of four lanes were closed. It looked like the truck flipped sideways and rolled into a pole. I didn't see any other cars, so I assume they were already removed from the site.

Something I've realized about this site of mine.. Is that it was never intended to be an online journal, but it seems that's what it's become. Not that I'm not happy with just that, but it's easier to talk about my day(s) than to come up with ideas and execute them to the end.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed your holidays. I certainly enjoyed mine. This Christmas is probably the best one I've had since I was 14, when I got a Sega Genesis. -03JAN04

The parts for my mom's computer came in the day before yesterday, but missing one key component. RAM. So I called up TigerDirect.com (the place I ordered it from) and got my money back easier than I thought possible... Well when I get my credit card statement next month I'll see just how easy it was, but until then I'll give them the benefit of the doubt. I went out to get the RAM, and a few other key components (floppy drive, hard drive, dial up modem, CPU fan/heatsink.. for some reason I didn't think of any of that while ordering the parts in the first place..). Three stores total. CompUSA was the most stressful. Understocked shelves and high prices. Best Buy was the second most stressful. Had everything except what I needed, which seems to be normally the case. And finally, Staples... The easiest and cheapest of the bunch. I got a RAM stick from them for $129 (which is the normal price for the type I got), and it came with a $50 mail-in rebate. I also got the CPU fan (both Best Buy and CompUSA were lacking this somehow...) and more RAM for my laptop there. When it was all said and done, I was $200 more in the hole, making my mom's computer come out to $600. I put everything together today, and turned it on... And it works. I did everything right, and it works great. It's ugly because I'm using my old case (because none of the stores had a decent case for under $70.. it was either $39.99 for a piece of crap or $130 for a good one), but it works wonderfully.

I got a thing in the mail from the local post office that looked like junk mail. I almost threw it away, but decided to scan over it first. Good thing I did, because it was announcing that they'd be open this Sunday.. which is a very good thing because it takes a bit of stress off of me for this Saturday.

I'm getting really close to taking Xerzes.net off the link section down there. He hasn't updated in over three months now, and is averaging about that since the inception of his site. I'm thinking if it's not updated by the time I get back from leave (early January), it's gone.-19DEC03

Arnold Schwarzenegger is coming. (Quicktime, 2.9 Megs)

I keep waiting for Evrsoft to release 1st Page 2004, but as close as it seems it is probably almost a year or more away. Their competition has released their 'flagship' product, and are charging $150 for it. Well that's funny.. Just last week it was $150, now it's cut down to $99! A smart move on their part.. probably not getting near the sales they were expecting. Either way, it appears to be a very powerful web building software and I might get it just to play around with. But then there's also Mozilla Composer (integrated in the Mozilla browser), which is more than enough for what I do with this page, but I still use 1st Page. I take comfort in knowing exactly what code I put in here, and that if I make a mistake I know how to fix it. So maybe I'll just consider the next 1st Page a visual upgrade (I.E. a prettier interface to work with), and something to play around with.

What I said about the 11th putting to shame the data transfer/# of visits is sort of wrong. Mainly because the traffic I received on the 12th put the 11th to shame. Unfortunately the 13th had half as much as the 11th, then the 14th half of the 13th, and then the 14th when everything is just slightly higher than it used to be, and that trend has stayed since. But you don't care though, do you? Bah!

Saddam Hussein was captured. While it is great that Bush is being commended by leaders everywhere, I don't think this will improve the situation any, as I'm sure that he was just hiding out trying to live rather than coordinating a massive counter attack to take his country over again, like many seem to think.

My bath tub is getting dirtier a lot quicker. I'm wondering if that's because I'm getting myself cleaner due to my new shower head. -16DEC03

Okay, the moment you've been waiting for.. My Gothic 2 review is finally complete! YAAAAY! Make a long visit to my Game Reviews section to see/read it. I posted a sort of advertisement for it yesterday (as that's really when I finished it) and it brought more traffic to my site that day, than the last two months. 0_o It wont last long, but I'm glad that I finally did something on this site that lots of people want to see.

I went shopping today.. Shopping that was long overdue. For over a year, my shower has put out little more than spittle and I've dealt with it. But NOT ANY MORE! because I bought a new shower head, along with the tools required to remove and replace my old one. And let me tell you.. I can't wait until I'm nasty enough to take a shower again because this one puts out at least four times the spittle of my last one. I also got a bunch of Christmas cards, and a few little gifts for various people I know, and ordered $500 worth of parts for my mom's future (Christmas) computer. Did I spoil the surprise? Sorry (well, not really.. it was expensive!).

I ordered pizza online for the first time. It came to my door in less than twenty minutes. I wonder if they give online orders special treatment in an effort to get more people to order online (by preventing discouragement). It was the Papa John's Chicken Alfredo pizza, and it wasn't that bad. I still prefer ham and pineapple, but it's good to try something new every now and then. After all, as my phone messages and guestbook tell me, it's my birthday. -12DEC03

How about that news lately? I love commenting on news.

The Pentagon has decided to exclude nations that did not support the war in Iraq (France, Germany, Russia, etc.) from taking civilian contracts to help rebuild the country. France and Germany and Canada are taken aback, feeling like they've been slapped in the face. Russia however says they will do what they want to do anyway. This in itself could mean bad things for the future. Do we let Russia do what they want to avoid such things as World War III, or do we put our foot down and fight them (and possibly France and Germany?) in a large scale pissing contest? Only the future will tell.

My feelings are mixed.

On one hand, there is a children's story about a hen (or some other farm animal) that wants to bake bread. She goes to the rabbit for help with (flour or something) and the rabbit says "No, I'm too busy" (or is it "I'm late! I'm late! For a very important date!" I remember my sister saying that line, because she participated in a play based off of that story, but don't know if the line is from a different play she was in or what.. whatever.). She goes to the chicken and asked for help with harvesting the wheat (or something). The chicken says "No, I'm too busy". And she goes to a few more animals asking for help and they all refuse. ...

So she bakes the bread by herself. She does all the work and when the bread is finished, the smell eminates out of her window and attracts all the animals that live in the area. They come up to the door, and knock on it wanting a piece of the bread. The hen looks at all of them and asked "Who helped me with the flour?" "Not I" said the chicken (and other animals). "Who helped me with the wheat?" "Not I" said everybody.. etc. "Well, since none of you helped me make the bread, none of you get to eat the bread." And the animals left the house in despair and shame, learning a good lesson the hard way. Russia is saying that they would just walk into the house and grab a piece because they want it.. but that's a different story.

On the other hand, if these other countries who once so strongly and adamantly opposed the war have truly changed their minds and want to help out the citizens and situation in Iraq (which is exactly what they claim, though we believe they just want the money/profit available, which doesn't quite make sense to me because I don't see very much profit to be made.. except for oil of course, but that's another different story) then they should be allowed to go in and help reform it. Iraq needs all the help it can get, and the more diverse the people that go in to help it, the less chance it has of going back to the way it was before the regime was ousted. It has true potential to become the melting pot of the world, and from there it can spread to the surrounding countries and possibly (eventually) stabilize the Middle East.

Abercrombie & Fitch, probably the most controversial clothesmaker in the world is under more analyzation (somehow even more so when they came out with the thong for seven year old girls to wear) because of their new catalog featuring nudity. Not only this, but it was also being called a racist catalog because all the models were white. I hate it when people point a finger and call racism, because they are generally idiots who get a lot of attention, thus creating a pyramid of idiocy that just gets bigger as more people listen.. Essentially (this is just my own theory), this 'analyst' was calling racism as an ulterior motive to get as many people to hate the company as possible because of this catalog they put out. Their clothes are aimed at the 10 year old to 18 year old market, but the catalog does not just contain nudity, but rather specific images portraying group sex and homosexuality (an example of which can be seen over at CNN.com) in the first 120 pages of it, well before any clothing items are even being shown. While I feel if a company wants to do something, they should be able to do it as long as it's legal. But I also feel that a company as large as A&F should hold themselves responsible for the material they put out. If they want to make a porn magazine, I say go for it. But for crying out loud, why put that stuff in a freaking catalog?

I got a phone call asking me if I wanted cable for (free installation) $1 the first month, and $20 the next three with a free disconnect whenever I feel like disconnecting. I took the offer. It doesn't get much better than that. I hardly ever watch TV, but that's probably mainly because I don't have cable. -10DEC03

I'm working on a new game review. This one's going to be a monster. I've put about three hours into it over the last three days, and I'm (maybe) halfway done.

I received a flyer in the mail advertising a store called Game Crazy, which had Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo systems advertised on the cover. I was curious to see if they also held Atari Jaguar, 3DO, and Sega CD stuff so I called them up. A teenager answered the phone and I asked if they carried games for those systems. He did not know what I was talking about, and proceeded to look for a game called 'Jaguar'. I had to explain several times that these are legitimate game systems before he understood. He never heard of the Jaguar or 3DO. That is when I realized I'm old.

We started doing PT again. Yesterday all we did was (a lot of) push-ups, (a lot of) sit-ups, and ran a little over two miles, and I'm so sore today that I can't even lift my arm up to scratch my chin. I haven't felt this sore since Basic Training. -09DEC03

Internet was broken yesterday. That kind of sucked. It made me realize how much I am on it.. Looking at forums, reading articles (which reminds me to add another link at the bottom of this page), checking who's signed my guestbook, etc (what an unfulfilling hobby that is). Apparently the entire Washington D.C. area was affected.

There are a lot of interesting things to download from the internet. As a matter of fact, there is something that you would love to watch, which I happened upon this morning while perusing the forums at Rage3D.com. It features a guy driving a truck while another guy drives by him, filming. The guy featured turns on his cruise control, and attempts to climb out in an effort to sit on top of his truck while it's still going down the street. Of course, things don't go quite as planned. You'll have to download the movie (728k) to see what happens.

I posted a new thread in the forum three days ago. So far it's gotten 1 view, which was from me to make sure I posted it right. It concerns the search statistics for this site. Please have a look and discuss if you want. I'll be checking there often. -06DEC03

Hello again, faithful and patient readers. It would appear as though it has been a while since I've updated. Why.. The picture up there still said Happy Thanksgiving three days into December. How lame is that? I assure you though, the site has not been neglected entirely because I am lazy. But rather.. .. . . .. Because my power supply on my computer started making really really loud vibrating noises. For those that don't know, that's bad. Eventually, my computer stopped running for more than five minutes at a time.. Locking up and making a really really loud beeping noise. So I got a new power supply, and here I am. Paying attention to you, and this site.

I'm running out of good pictures to put up there. The internet seems to be endless, except when looking for truly entertaining pictures.

We did PT today. Not in the morning like normal, but rather at 3 o'clock. Well, 3 was supposed to be the time, but instead we started at 4:30, which is the time we normally leave work. So from 4:30 to about 5:45 we played racquetball and had a decent time. For the first twenty minutes of my drive home, I was completely relaxed due to the much needed exercise I just had (because exercise relieves stress don'tcha know). Unfortunately that's the longest I could relax, as people preventing me from changing lanes and accelerating made me want to yell, which does not relieve stress, as many might think.

Lots of stuff has happened in the news. George Bush went to Iraq (which I later found out is why I couldn't go anywhere for the weekend). I read someone's monologue about how good Bush is at playing the Public Relations game from that event. Makes me wonder what the guy has to do to get approval from those types. Michael Jackson got accused of child rape. Again. While I don't really care about Michael Jackson's queer lifestyle or constantly changing doll face, I do care about the kids that are deluded into thinking what he tells them, sexual or not. Do I think he raped the kid? Probably. There's just too many weird things about the guy for it to not be a possibility. A lady in Florida was trampled inside Wal-Mart. This seems to be the news that I am most adamant about. How horribly stupid and selfish can a group of people be, to nearly kill a woman in an effort to save thirty bucks on a piece of crap DVD player? I mean.. If I were there, I'd like to think I'd slap each and every one of them in the face. What is wrong with people? Am I the only one that thinks that shouldn't have happened? Not because a police guard should have been there, or because the store was too crowded, but because of the mindless aggressiveness of peoplecows that don't care about anything except what's right in front of their eyes? That story upsets me. There's people dying in Iraq, to defend the rights of peoplecows. Sometimes I just don't think it's worth it.-03DEC03

Looks like I'm not going anywhere after all. I'll be staying right here the whole Thanksgiving weekend. Lucky me.

So in the spirit of anti-depression, I went out and bought some computer games. First I went to CompUSA. The traffic on the way there was surprisingly light, so it only took five minutes to get there. When I pulled into the parking lot and saw cars parked on the curbs I suspected the store was pretty crowded. So I parked in Chi-Chi's and went in, fully expecting to deal with crowds of people in aisles and checkouts. And crowds of people there were. What I did not expect to deal with was standing in line for half an hour, without advancing a single step. I put the game in my hand on a nearby shelf and left the store. From what it looked like, the computers were down, as all three checkout lines quadrupled in size during my stay there.

So I went to the store that I always try to avoid. Best Buy. The one less than half a mile from my place. Every time I've ever gone there looking for something it was never in stock. Didn't matter what it was. A game. A sound card. A compact flash card. A certain DVD movie. Printer Ink. Rechargeable phone batteries. Whatever. Never. On top of this, there were always not enough checkouts open and it was crowded because of this. Anyway I went there this time, hoping things would be different. And they were. I was parked, in there, handful of games, and checked out in all the time it took for me to meander through CompUSA to get to their game section. Now I have three new racing games. Need For Speed 7, Hot Wheels World Tour, and most notably, The Simpsons Hit and Run. I haven't installed them yet.. Haven't tried their respective demos. Haven't read any reviews. But since I don't have work tomorrow I'm going to see how long I can stay up.-26NOV03

I don't think I've worked so much in my life. I arrived Monday evening, and didn't have a break until Thurday night, when I started pulling shift. From Sunday night until Friday afternoon I got a total of 15 hours sleep. Maybe. The people who's house we set up in were really really nice to us. When they saw me in their garage, with my satcom equipment they (husband and wife) asked if I would be staying there all night. I told them yes and strong looks of concern came over their faces. Next thing I knew, I was being handed a small futon and comforter, along with one of the softest, nicest pillows I've ever seen. I wasn't "supposed" to go to sleep, but it was hard to resist after that. It proved to be a bit too cold to sleep very well, but it was sleep all the same. (22NOV03)

I made it back, just in time for going to work on Monday... Fun, fun, fun. I'm going out of town again on Wednesday, so who knows when the next time I'll update will be. -25NOV03

Yeah, I know it's a little early to be putting up a Thanksgiving picture, but I have no idea when my next chance to update will be. I leave for northern Maryland tomorrow, and was almost promised I would not come directly home after that.. Our whole team was promised the same, actually.

I've been tidying up the site here and there.. I put some more info on my new cousin on my family page, scanned some CD covers and put the ones that have been missing from my music page for the last month or so up. Nothing groundbreaking, really.

My car didn't move from it's spot at all yesterday.. I've been playing Gothic 2 almost non-stop. So far, I've put about 40 hours into it, and I'm not even halfway through. When I'm done, I'll most definitely put a review up.-16NOV03

Congratulations goes out to my Uncle Walter and Aunt Stacy who have just received a little bundle of joy (days ago?). Yep, this effectively makes 10 children born from my mom's side of the family, of which I am still the only male. Coincidence? Perhaps.. I was emailed two pictures, and I promptly put them on my family page. I also added another picture from Nina's wedding that was emailed to me about a week ago.

Well.. That's all the updates I have for today. Except that I made red beans and rice for dinner.. It turned out pretty bland. Maybe next time I'll look for a recipe. It's not on my delicious meals page, so don't bother looking. -11NOV03

Here I sit in Denver, Colorado with my $10 a day connection, feeling gratified that I added one heck of a new section to the site. Right now it consists of one meal that I made the night before I left for here. Maybe in the future, there will be more than the one. I don't know why I all of a sudden thought to do it, but I did it. And you can head over to my Miscellaneous section to see it.

It's cold up here. Very cold. So cold I have to wear my jacket. The traffic (why am I obsessed with traffic..?) rivals D.C. in ridiculousness. I no longer want to live here when I grow up.

There's a Virgin MegaStore right down the street.. NO it's not a brothel, but instead it sells media. You know.. DVDs, CDs, and the like. The first time I encountered the store was in Phoenix, AZ and I was amazed at the selection. They had most of the CDs that I couldn't even order from other stores, on their shelves. The second time was in Disney World. I don't remember being amazed too much that time, so maybe they were understocked. Now this is the third time, and I walked out of the store with nine CDs, the most I ever bought at one time.. Totalling $140. Considering I used to buy two or three a week, this isn't so bad because over the last year I've averaged about one a month. Strangely enough though, almost half of what I bought were re-releases of CDs I already have.. With neverbeforeheard bonus tracks, video clips, etc..

I'm thinking about making another page dedicated to product brands that I will never buy again. When I arrived here I pulled out my six month old Norelco Advantage electric razor and pressed the button to see if it maintained it's charge over the flight here. It apparently didn't because the little spinny circles didn't budge. No problem, right? I'll just throw it on the charger for 12 hours and it'll work just fine from there.. Well, it didn't happen like it should have. The razor still will not work. Rather than allow Norelco to fulfill their warranty, I am just not going to purchase their products anymore (also, mainly because I threw the receipt away right after I bought it). I was very happy with the first razor of this type that I bought.. Roughly four years ago. It still works better than my new one. But the new one is a completely redesigned, cheaper feeling thing, and actually looks pretty gay when it's sitting in it's charger (in which, even though it refuses to work the little green light still comes on). Dockers is also another brand I'll never invest in. The pants catch waaay too much lint too easily, and the waist sizes are about two inches off of all other pants/jeans I've tried on (a 33 inch waist with Dockers makes my belly pudge out, effectively forcing me to do an ice cream cone imitation, whereas a 33 inch waist on Chaps khakis or Levi's Jeans I need a belt to keep them from falling off). Maybe one day, you'll see a whole page made for rants on these things. It's all about feeling frisky.-05NOV03

Did I mention that I was in Florida the other day? *looks down* Hmm.. No, I didn't. Well I'm back now and glad to be off of work. For now, at least. Florida was warm and sunny (of course). The hotel sucked.. Well, it was nice but it sucked because breakfast was about fifteen bucks and wasn't very good, lunch was near twenty, and dinner was between twenty-five and thirty-five (am I supposed to put dashes in there..? It's been so long since the third grade). And the only fast food place for breakfast was Burger King. And I hate Burger King. So I went without breakfast a couple of days.

I was starving when I got home (due to no breakfast, an early flight with no food, and a short layover in Atlanta, and then another flight without food to D.C.) and popped open a can of lentil soup. I don't know when or why I bought it, but I did and decided to try it out today. I saw there were beans in there and thought some boil-in-bag rice would go excellently with it. And guess what.. It did! I'm leading up to making some red beans and rice one day.. I plan on finding a good recipe on the internet and modifying it to make it 'my own'. 01NOV03

I decided to purchase one day's worth of DSL service for 10 bucks at this hotel. It's the fastest connection I've ever experienced. Ever.

Yesterday I took some amazing pictures of the sun setting over the Gulf of Mexico, but unfortunately I left my cable for my camera at home, so I can't post them yet (nor can I see how they REALLY turned out.. The little display on my camera doesn't exactly show the best of detail..

The whole point of me updating, though.. is not to bore you with useless talk. But instead to point you to a link that I discovered. I found this guy's (last dated 1996) page to be kind of funny. His name is Jesus, and you can check it out by clicking here. -30OCT03

Who would have thought buying a vacuum cleaner could be so complicated and stressful? So I go to Sears to look for one (this is Saturday) and they have a very wide selection. There seems to be a new trend out with these things.. It's to have a clear plastic 'container' on the vacuum so that you can see the dirt you are sucking up. I have a couple of problems with that system.. I don't want to see the dirt I'm sucking up. This is why I want to vacuum in the first place. So that I don't see it. Another is.. Where the F is the bag? What this tells me, is that I'm going to have to pull out a garbage bag and dump the container into it... And hope that dust doesn't fly everywhere while doing so. And then afterwards, when looking back at the vacuum cleaner.. What will I see? A container coated with dust from the inside. .. So.. If I were to rinse it out (which would definitely clog up a drain or two over time) it would just be dirty again next time I used it. What's the point?

And the prices.. OH the prices. Did you know if you were looking for a mid-range vacuum cleaner you better have about two hundred bucks saved up for it? Two hundred! Some of the ones I was looking at were in excess of $300. And this is what they had on display.. Not to mention the $1000+ vacuums you could look at in a catalog. Of course there were some el-cheapo models for $49.. But they came with no attachments and only a ten foot cord. And of course there's the sales people hovering around you wanting to show how well each cleaner cleans. "Will it suck dirt out of my carpet?" "Yes!" "Okay, I'll get that one..".. No. It's not that simple. I walked out of the store empty handed. I did pick out a couple that I liked.. but of course there were none of those in stock. But yet they were on display. And the lady would have been happy to show me how easy they were to glide on the carpet...

I just received my 6th speeding ticket the other day. It came in the mail, with a picture of my license plate and all. I was doing 51 in a 40 it said. The location I was photographed in I knew had a limit of 45.. So I went back to that area.. Well hidden behind some trees is a brand spanking new speed limit sign that says "Speed Limit 40: Photo Enforced". Fifty bucks, and because it's a photo-ticket it doesn't go on my driving record...

An email came to me from SevenTwentyFour.com telling me I had a couple of broken links. They pointed out the URLs and they are now fixed. Those were the 'after' pictures on my Apartment page at the bottom. Somehow for the last two years I've not known about it (though I do vaguely remember Giggleman saying something about it. Aparrently he didn't convince me too well..).-28OCT03

Man, do I feel like crap. Got off of work early yesterday and laid down at about four o'clock. Got a call at about 6 telling me I needed to go back to work real quick. When I got back I got another call at about 10 telling me I needed to go back to work at 5:15 in the morning. I tried to go to sleep as soon as possible, but I laid in bed until about 2 when I finally fell asleep, only to be woken up by Mr. Alarm Clock at 3:50. I tried to take a shower, but the hot water was probably still sleeping so I just shaved and brushed my teeth. At about 11 o'clock I got back here and now I can't go to sleep because the sun is up... A sort of habit I picked up some time back. And I have a cold.

My lil section on the Philippines is done, and another sunset picture is up. Thanks for looking! -25OCT03

I pulled an all nighter last (Wednesday) night and went to work the next day. When I got home I tried to stay awake as long as possible and around 9 o'clock I started falling out. So I lied down and went right to sleep. At about 2:30 my eyes open and I'm wide awake... I laid in bed for about an hour trying to go back to sleep, but no luck. Jet lag is fun.

So I worked on my Filipino section for my places page a bit more. It's almost done, but I am going to work early (for the first time in a long time) so it wont be finished until I get back...

I found out I'm going on another trip at the end of the month. Looks like I'll be spending Halloween somewhere else, which is okay because I don't know how to say 'I don't have any candy' in Spanish. -24OCT03

I was right about the plane ride.. It most certainly did suck. Luckily, 18 hours into it we had a four hour layover in Guam. Guam is a very very nice place from what I saw. The sky was really blue, the weather was warm (but not oppresively so), and everything just looked clean as a whistle. It's too bad we didn't have any time to venture out...

By the time we landed in Manila, it was two days later and noon so we had plenty of time to put some work in. I went to sleep around eight that night, and found it hard to get up at eight the next morning. At least the coffee is pretty good. (-12OCT03)

I am now on the plane on my way back to D.C. Work was easy the whole time, but there was a lot of it to go around so I haven't had much time to work on the ole webpage in past days.

This trip to Manila had a number of firsts worth mentioning. I experienced my first earthquake. It was strange. At first I thought a wind was blowing the building really really hard, but it lasted about a minute steadily getting stronger and stronger... I would have never thought of it being an earthquake had no one else said that. It was probably around a 3 on the Richter scale, but I wouldn't know exactly.

Also it's the first time I've ever been on the front page of a national newspaper. (big picture) It's a tradition sort of that if you get your picture taken by the media you have to buy everybody beer. Luckily work was so plentiful that everyone forgot about it.

The people that worked at the hotel we stayed at (The Westin) were extremely nice to us. It was actually getting tiring nodding every time I heard "Good (day), sir!". We had executive priveledges which meant that we got free breakfast in the morning, and free cocktails and snacks in the evening. I would have to say, that that was the best hotel they ever put me up in, with the Quality Inn in Waco being second. The bed I slept in sucked, but the pillow made up for it. There were about forty channels to choose from on the TV, 30 of which were in English. The minibar wasn't horribly priced (though I never used it), and room service was reasonable. And the food was usually pretty good. I used their laundry service, and that was expensive... About twenty bucks for four shirts and two jeans.. But they ironed my jeans real good and folded the shirts up like you see on display at a store, complete with cardboard. The best part of that was they fixed my collars so that they actually look like collars rather than extra cloth leftover from the shirt, crumpled, wrinkled, and asymmetric.

I just realized I forgot to mention earlier, that my car is now paid off. That's $350 more a month I'll be getting. :) Not to mention my six year raise, which adds another $120 to that. I'm feeling pretty rich (my apologies to the poor people who frequent this site).

Hopefully by the time you read this, I will have another sunset on my sunset page, and another section dedicated to the Philippines on my places page. Unfortunately I wasn't able to get out for pictures as much as I would have liked, but you'll see the best of what I managed to take with my POS camera.(-21OCT03)

Heh.. Got in at 6 this morning and planned to stay up all day to get used to the 12 hour time difference. I put a few things up and did a few other things, and at about 6:45 I decided to take a nap. Next thing I knew it was 4:30. So it looks like I could be staying up for a while tonight...

Unfortunately I didn't finish up what I started on the two other pages I said I'd update, so you wont see it tonight. -22OCT03

I have to go to the Philippines pretty soon. It's a 32+ hour flight. On a cargo plane. I think it's going to suck.

I put a new game review up the day before yesterday. Did you notice? Probably not...-05OCT03

A fairly big update this time. I fixed the link that was mentioned in my guestbook (even though I created a forum specifically for that, but that's okay..). Three pictures from Nina's wedding are located on my Family Page, and one more added to the lower right corner of my Good Pictures page. Not to mention another added to that one from Wyoming last month. Enjoy. :) -02OCT03

Yesterday was my six year anniversary with the Army, and I didn't even realize it until today.. If my special new unit hadn't come along I'd be a free man right now. Kind of weird feeling. I don't quite regret reinlisting, but I sure do wonder where I'd be if I hadn't... One thing I wouldn't be is sore today from this morning's PT test that I barely passed (6 seconds left on the running portion).

I hate car alarms. Last night I was woken up three times from the bastards. Never has my alarm accidentally gone off. I wonder why it's so easy for me, but so hard for others to manage that.

The wedding was really nice. The whole ceremony was pretty rich, but I didn't take much interest in all that. What stood out the most to me was the way the bride and groom stood there before the priest winking and smiling and laughing together, seemingly not hearing a word he was saying. Unfortunately I was in a bad seating place so I didn't get any pictures of that... But I'll let you know when I have the pictures that I did take posted. -01OCT03

I'll bet you guys thought I was gonna update sooner, huh..? Well, looks like I tricked you because I am not updating until now.

Where am I right now? Well, I'm in Kenner, La at my Mom's house typing this on my lovely, dovely laptop. Why, you ask? Well, two things. 1. I haven't been home in little over a year, and 2. My sister is getting her knot tied with some guy who I've yet to meet (which of course is mostly my fault because I'm never home). I contemplated getting a newer, fresher, better camera for the wedding but my conservativeness prevailed and I'll have to settle with my same ole crummy camera (crummy because of the splotchies that appear in places where the color that should be solid. That and the optical zoom is only 3x.).

Black people are a lot ruder to me here than in D.C., but at the same time white people are a lot nicer to me than they are in D.C. It's a little bit of a culture shock. The roads have improved immensely in some places, and haven't been touched except by a few pot hole makers in others. They are adding unnessecary sound barriers along the side of the interstate.. while it looks nice, it sure is a waste of money. Especially since a lot of the places that they guard against are industrial areas. Not only that, but if a decent hurricane comes by, we can say good-bye to the barriers, and the houses that are behind them.

People here drive better than they do in D.C. This is only as of lately.. I haven't been on the road much here but that's my observation so far. It's changed a bit.

I am going to write another game review soon.. Hopefully as soon as I'm done with this I'll start on it. But for now, you wont see it, as all of the screenshots for it are on my desktop computer. -24SEP03

I'm ALIVE!!! WOOOOHOOOO! Made it through, and only lost power for a minute once, and for twenty minutes once. I was watching the news last night, and was starting to get scared.. Seeing all the preparations everybody was making.. Wondering if I should move my car from underneath the tree it's parked under.. But my laziness prevailed and it lasted the entire night without a scratch. I just took a picture of an example of the destruction Isabel has wrought, and you can see it by clicking one of the two here: little, big. Seriously, that's the worst I could find in my area.

I tried to get to work to fill out some forms before I go on leave tomorrow, but I-395 was very very blocked. On the other side of the bridge, the road dips down and apparently it's all flooded in. So they directed all the traffic from that point through D.C. only to end up going the other way. It appears as though Virginia is just letting D.C. handle the traffic problem, as there are no signs, warnings, or anything about it being flooded before the bridge. The exit off of my alternate route dips even further down, so I'm not even going to attempt to go that way... Looks like I'm staying home again.-19SEP03

I'm quivering in my boots right now. Hurricane Isabel is on it's way, and judging from the way the media is acting, I'm probably going to die. So if you don't see any updates after this one, then you know what probably happened.. I got blown away into Canada and they exported me to Cuba and every time I ride in a little boat all the way to Florida, the U.S. keeps sending me back. That's what's going to happen.

At work we had to move all of our equipment to the upstairs part of the warehouse, in case of a flood. At first I thought this was crazy that we were doing this (we are the only shop with an upstairs.. There's tons of other shops in the building that don't). I thought that the media really really got to my higher ups. But then I realized, that the person who orchestrated the whole thing is in the Army. And that we were probably doing this pointless task, just so that we had something to do for the day. Makes me reminiscent of 514th. If it floods high enough to even let water in through the door, I would be very very surprised.. considering our location is roughly five feet above the ground around us, and ten feet higher than the rest of Washington D.C.. -17SEP03

Yes, I have temporarily completed my movie page. Sorry they couldn't be extremely interesting like the ones over at steakandcheese.com, but they're all originals so that makes it worth a download!

I recently purchased a rare rare rare 3DO game off of eBay called Lucienne's Quest for a measly sum of $72. I promptly copied it to my hard drive to find out it plays pretty well. It's too bad I didn't buy it brand new five years ago for thirty bucks when I first saw it.

Well, that's all I have for now. Unfortunately there's not much going on anymore. I got my forums up. I got my movie page up. I got my domain name up... Erm... Well. Maybe I'll fill in the info for the five reviews I added in my music page...-14SEP03

Happy September 11th everybody! On the news I heard about how Americans are survivors and how patriotic we are and how glad we are to be Americans. So far I see no parades or celebrations or anything like that, so it may not become the holiday that I once predicted it would be. But there's still a chance.

Traffic continues to get worse over here in our nation's lovely capitol. Today and yesterday I avoided my normal route due to it's parking lot imitation. Takes 25 minutes to get to work with my 'new' route.. 15 minutes more than my normal route when traffic is .. normal. But one and a half hour less than my normal route when traffic is the way it's been. But you don't care about traffic here do you?

As you may or may not have seen, I started my movie page yesterday. There wasn't much there then, but there's a bit there now to make it worth your while. There are a lot more that I plan on putting there, so keep on the lookout. -11SEP03

I say hello again to all who sees this page. I am now capable of viewing detailed statistics to my site, including what files were seen by who and how often.. how long the average visit is, what the last page looked at is, etc.. Amazing stuff. I look forward to having a movie page up. Don't know when it will be online. Maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow.. Maybe next week. If you are connected over dial-up I am sorry.. because these movies are big. Some of which you'd be best off downloading it before you go to sleep, and maybe by the time you wake up it will be done. That's if your ISP doesn't disconnect you after a time of course...

So I was driving up I-95 last night and I saw a worn down vinyl-cloth sign with a simple picture that notified me that the left lane was coming to an end. Roughly 500 feet later, it ended due to a bunch of cones putting a slant into it towards the right... Luckily I was in the second left lane. Unluckily, unbeknownst to me that lane ended about 1000 feet later, with the same cones, right after a small hill, and right when a Fed Ex truck was next to me. I ran over about twenty cones, they flew everywhere and the Fed Ex truck almost slammed into another semi thinking I was about to run into him... But I'd rather hit a bunch of cones than a big truck. I had to get over soon, though because the pickup truck full of cones with a guy laying them down was about three hundred feet ahead of me.. It's too bad they didn't think that drivers needed to be warned of lanes ending, otherwise they wouldn't have to go back and pick up the cones.

For those wondering, I was in Georgia over the weekend visiting my girlfriend. We had a good time, saw lots of movies and did lots of driving around Atlanta looking for places to watch movies. I learned a bit about Judaism from her friend (Mel, who signed my guestbook) that I would never have known otherwise. I'm glad I'm not Jewish. -09SEP03

I like United Airlines. On flights for three hours or more, they let you watch whatever you want on an LCD TV in the back of the chair in front of you. There's a channel changer on the armrest and everything.. Select from 9 stations, three of which have recently released movies. I watched 'The Italian Job'. It was a surprisingly good movie. The best thing about it is they didn't try to squeeze romance into it, like 99% of the movies that are out today...

A cab ride and $45 later I arrived at my place. My car was right where I left it. I hit the alarm button, and it deactivated normally (if it had beeped at me four times, then I would know that the alarm had gone off for whatever reason while I was gone). I went up to my apartment and saw a flyer hanging on the door, which undoubtedly was there for a number of weeks... Luckily nobody broke in. Or if they did, at least they replaced everything they stole with exact duplicates.

Here is a picture of the back deck of the house I stayed in in Wyoming.

Today I picked up my mail from the post office, and it weighed about five pounds. Driving there and back I realized that near everybody that lives in this area is just pissed off at everything. There was a 18-wheeler trying to back into a parking lot. It was blocking my lane completely, as well as most of the oncoming lane. To me, the sensible thing was to stop and wait. The person behind me however, didn't see the sense in that and got impatient and went around me only to have to slam on their brakes due to a car coming from the other way. The truck needed to move forward and couldn't because it was blocked by two stopped cars, neither of which wanted to back up to give way and we all sat there for about twenty seconds until the person that was behind me backed up some. As soon as there was enough room, the truck moved forward blocking the other lane again about to back up some more. He pulled out just enough so that cars (now piling) behind me hopped the curb on the side to go around the truck behind it. About four did that before I got fed up and blocked them by getting on the curb myself, and waved to the truck driver to back up. I hate people. -03SEP03

Okay, boys and girls it's done. My guestbook is now complete with all 100+ entries/names/timestamps copied and pasted from the previous one. You can still go to my old page to look at it (and even sign it if you wish). I took some of the unintentional Private Entries and made them into regular posts. The rest of the PM's I just didn't add. There were a lot more of those than I thought there were.. To do the timestamps I had to actually open up the database file and use Wordpad to edit it.. It's when I do things like that that I know I'm really smart and really bored at the same time. It took (in total) about four hours to do what I did... I'm thinking about modifying the code some more to suit my needs.. More pictures in there or something. Feel free to post there now!. Also, don't hesitate to post in my handy dandy forums either. Dammit.

Tomorrow morning I'll be on my way to D.C... Plane leaves at the bright and early time of 7:30 and I get there around 3 in the afternoon, hopefully with enough time to get my mail back from the post office. I'll probably need a pickup truck to bring it all back.

Due to my massive disk space on this host, expect a movie section in the next few days. You'll need the Quicktime software to watch them (it's free). This of course, is if I haven't been robbed while I was gone. That would really suck. -01SEP03

So I went over to Xerzes.net to see what kind of forum program he was using so that I can tell him that mine is better than his, and he should change it (from XMB to phpBB) only to find out that he's already has! Unfortunately though.. he is too unmotivated to do anything with it.. Like make it to where people can actually post on it or something. I emailed him about it and have gotten no reply..

The pop up ads for my guestbook appear to get on a lot of people's nerves... Sorry about that. I've looked around for a free one that uses (my host's) PHP to work.. So far I've found one I like and it's already uploaded.. I've played with it and it works pretty well. As of right now the configuration requires you to put your email address in there... And I don't think that should be nessecary. Also I'm going to spend a lot of my time, copying and pasting all the entries from my current one into this new one... So that nothing's lost in the transition.

(Update)- Since my hit counter hasn't counted anything since two hours ago, I can say this and know all will read it... I've found the whole guestbook thing to be quite a chore.. Slowly but surely I'm getting everything over. I found that I can edit the database and that seems like it could work out pretty well... But let me assure you it's tedious. Good thing I'm out in the middle of nowhere bored off me arse.. I've also modified the code of it to allow you to just put in your name and comment.. The email and location fields have an input in them automatically (but if you backspace over it without putting something there you'll be in a world of hurt. Also the City/Country used to just say 'Country' and had a really big scroll down box with damn near all of the countries in the world to select from. By looking at the code for the Email and Name entries I changed it to a text field value. But you don't care though do you? Bah! If you want a sneak peek at it, click here. Don't post anything until I have all 100+ posts from my current guestbook moved over. -31AUG03

Okay. It's done. Angelfire no longer has remnants of my site ('cept for the first page). I hereby encourage you to click every link you can find on this site and report in my forum if you find a broken one so that I can fix it. I'm not the most thorough of individuals and I may have forgotten a page or picture somewhere. That and sometimes Juno would just decide to disconnect me as I was uploading everything and some files may have gotten corrupted in that process. I will maintain a link to the main page of my Angelfire site so that you can look at it and miss it.-(also)30AUG03

Well, as you can see I have a new forum button up. I spelled it 'Forums' instead of 'Forum', but that can be changed at a later date. Click it to go to my forum. Yep. My own working, functional feature rich forum. No pop up ads, no banner ads, just pure posting goodness. You don't have to register there to post, but I strongly encourage you to as it gives you many features that you don't have as a guest.

I also have a new hit counter on this domain (but the old one remains on my Angelfire page). Unfortunately it comes with a mandatory advertisement (they say they'll take away my birthday if I modify the code, which would be pretty easy to do..). Fortunately it looks almost exactly like the one I had with Angelfire (they had many to choose from) so I don't feel as bad... It also has a feature that it wont count the same IP address twice in a row.. This would be especially useful to me so that when I preview the page as I'm updating, it wont count but one hit. Though I suspect it wont be as reliable, and may cause my page to load slower than it should... I'll keep an eye on it as time progresses.. There's always other options. I could learn PHP and create my own.

I am now going to go through the process of removing my Angelfire stuff bit by bit. Having each page have a message that says 'Sorry, but this page has moved here'. It's going to be a sad process. Like when Old Yeller was shot. But it has to be done.-30AUG03

TheCrawdaddyPage.com is now active! I am in the process of mirroring this site over there, so have patience. Slowly but surely everything will be moved over. When all you see is a link on this page, then you'll know you're in the wrong spot. I'm going to miss that little hit counter down there.. It brought me so much joy and excitement... But I now must leave it for a different one.

This may sound wierd, but I think I will miss Angelfire too. It seems I prided myself in having one of the best Angelfire pages out there... Go to any site that has angelfire in the URL, and chances are it will look like complete crap. Now that I have a 'professional' hosting package and a 'professional' domain name that pride is gone. :(

I feel like I'm cheating on Angelfire. -29AUG03

I have now entered the realm of MySQL and PHP. I have a forum up now (you can look at it and post on it here. That there is a temporary URL that will work for about a month and then go away, so don't bother adding it to your favorites ).The Phorum program didn't want to work right with my host's version of MySQL, so I had to use phpBB which is a lot more user friendly anyway. It was very easy to set up, and so far appears to work rather well. It's not as customizable as Phorum could have been, but beggars can't be choosers (both programs are free). As of now you don't have to register to post but in the future you will. I don't expect it to be a 'big thing' where millions of people gather to post there but it's there for you to use anyway. I couldn't get any of the four programs I tried to work on Angelfire. Main reason being is that a 'htaccess' page is not allowed on the server. Basically, that to a forum is what a spark plug is to a car.

This new host has ten times as many features as Angelfire, for roughly a dollar more a month (with a year sign up). The only thing that really sucks about it, is there's no web based way to edit or manage my files on there. I'm forced to use external software, and upload it through FTP (which is what I was doing before anyway, but it was good to have more than one method). My Bravepages account will last until January. I will not renew it. All that's there anyway, is a couple of my PLDC movies and my Iron Storm game review. Of course I will transfer those over to my new host at PowWeb.com. I've also registered a domain name at www.TheCrawdaddyPage.com (in other words, that will be where my home page is). It probably wont be active for another week or so, but when it is I'll start the transfer of this page over there. I will probably keep Angelfire around, just in case they decide to get better all of a sudden. Right now it's kind of depressing looking at the same 'daily poll' for over two months and counting. That and my webstats don't work right on here, as it shows 0.0KB of transfer every day, yet has shown my monthly at 340.1Megs for the last three months. -28AUG03

I found a new mp3 playing software called Quintessential Player that is really good. I suggest you download it. I now no longer have a use for Winamp. You can read my brief review on it on my 'Me' page.

I've been spending the last two hours trying a forum program to work on here. So far, no luck. If I get it to work at all, I'll let you know. Angelfire is just about the only cheap host that allows PHP based stuff on their servers, and this program is PHP based (from Phorum.org) so hopefully it will work. So far all I get is a bunch of code in text, so I'm thinking that Angelfire doesn't have the newest version of PHP...

I also just noticed that Bravenet is offering a better package than what I paid for, for a lower price. I asked to be switched over and hopefully I'll hear from them soon.-24AUG03

I changed the color of my links and stuff last update. Did anyone notice? Anyone? Anybody? I figured a light, white-ish purple for the link would make it easier to read (if it looks gay, please let me know, as I've been watching Queer Eye for the Straight Guy a bit lately, and my tastes may be off-canter). Once you've clicked on it, it will be white like the rest of my text... I'm thinking about changing that though.. Maybe a dark green would do.. Or I could leave it like it is.

I also changed my initial music page, to make it more Google friendly. It's ugly, but it works. I realized that the webcrawler doesn't recognize crazy javascripts like what I had on the page before, so the four pages afterwards did not make it into the cache (this can be tested by copying and pasting for or five words in the Google bar, and put quotes on either side of the phrase. If it says 'no matches found' then that means nobody can find the page through Google). Hopefully in a couple of weeks they will be there.

There is now a link to my page from Giggleman's site, even though he spelled my name wrong (again). I'm just happy to know that he takes time off his busy schedule to check out what I've done to my site. Then again, I'm happy that anybody does this, as it fills me with a certain false power.. Like I'm able to influence the world.

Have I ranted about Fox News yet? I don't think I have... Something has been bothering me about them. Not only do their journalists ask the most retarded questions, but their 'news' goes on and on and on in a 12 minute circle, telling the same stories over and over again with the same clips with the same narration word for word. Most of the female reporters are pretty hot, but that's all the station really has going for it. But what bothers me in particular, and it hasn't gone away in nine months (when I think they introduced it), is about suicide bombings. We all know what a suicide bombing is. It's when someone kills themself while killing others. Like kamikaze pilots. Well, some genius with a lot of pull at (Faux) Fox News decided that they would call it a 'Homicide Bombing' when someone kills themself in order to kill others because all in all, the reason for the incident in the first place is to kill others. Well, my question is, what is to distinguish a bombing done by someone who just plants and runs away, and one who straps the bombs to themself? Apparently nobody important at Fox News asked this question so they still call it a 'Homicide Bombing' when every other news station in the world calls it a 'Suicide Bombing'. Every time I hear a journalist say 'homicide bombing' and urge to slap somebody needs to be kept inside my belly, and I change the channel (if I have the remote).

I've been in Wyoming for nine days now. Not one of them has passed where I'm not worried about my car or my apartment. There's still quite a number of days left before we go home, and there's talk about us staying a few days longer than originally planned. The weather is reasonably nice. It gets to be about 90 degrees between 2 and 4 o'clock, but before and after that it's moderately cool. The mornings get down to about 50°. The skies are hazy from the smoke from the brush fires that are constantly going on. I've been drinking a lot of coffee lately. -22AUG03

Giggleman appears to have almost given up on website building (for at least a couple of weeks so far.. I check his site almost every day I get the chance. I'm bored often.)... Maybe he's planning something big. Maybe he's about to delete his site from the internet... The world may never know. The world may soon know.

Veronica would probably be trying to update her site... But power is out over there in New York. As a matter of fact, clicking on that link might not work, as the server it's based on might be down... Never thought of that. Heh. Too bad I don't have internet capability right now... Otherwise I'd find out for you.

In speaking of the power outage.. I've found a couple of ironies that I'd like to mention to you. First of which is the 'Boil Water' order that came from Cleveland to it's residents. I was wondering.. How many of those people that had running water also had electricity. I'm willing to bet less than thirty percent. Now how many of that leftover seventy percent had gas ranges do you think? I'd say no more than forty percent. So how are those with electric ranges, no electricity and running water to boil their water? I guess saying it like that is unfair to Cleveland. They're only doing their best. The other irony has to do with the media. They're reporting this blackout (seemingly) 24/7 giving updates on each and every possible city in the Northeast. What about the cities in Canada? All I know is that they are without power. But do I know if they have running water, or when their power is going to be back on? Hmm... Nope, I sure don't. Well why not? Does America really not care about Canada as much as the media seems to think we do (don't)? If we don't care about Canada because they are a separate nation, then why would a state like Texas or Idaho care about what happens in New York or Michigan? Questions that probably can never be answered...

The place I'm staying at in Wyoming is HUGE. My bedroom and bathroom combined is bigger than my whole apartment in D.C. Of course, I'm one of only two people working here that have this style bedroom. That's luck at it's finest... That and my job here mainly consists of only getting up at 4 in the morning and working until maybe 9... Take a nap. Wake up. Watch TV. Play games on my laptop. Watch TV. Repeat. Oh, and I only work about four days a week. Many would say that this is a sweet job, but I'll say it sucks to make them feel better. The whole house doesn't have dial tone to it.. if that makes you feel any better.

In speaking of laptop games, I recently found out that Gens (a Genesis/SegaCD emulator) does perfect Sega 32x emulation. For those that don't know, the 32x was an add-on (why they didn't just make it a stand alone system, I'll never know) to the Genesis that did not sell well at all. The reason I never bought it, is because it required it's own power supply, and did not improve Genesis/SegaCD games in any way, shape or form. That and it retailed for $199. This system was undoubtedly the very thing that eventually lead to Sega's downfall with the Saturn and Dreamcast. It was a joke and only about 15 games came out for it. I suspect this paragraph will bring a lot of hits to my site :)

Now let me see if I can find a way to upload this...-16AUG03

If you live in England, and you buy meat.. Do you buy it by the pound? If so.. Then do they have signs that say "Two pounds per pound" or "One pound per Two pounds"? If so.. Then how can you distinguish between the two kinds of pounds? Can you get into a legal battle about it if you expect to pay one pound for two pounds, but they are really charging two pounds for one pound? Hmmm....

Has it been a week already? It looks like it. I hope everybody told Stacey Happy Birthday... Because I am pretty sure she didn't come to my site to see it. Oh well.. it's her loss..

I am typing this on a new 'different' software similar to 1st Page. This one is called 'HTML Builder XP' and it's apparent most of it's features were blatantly stolen from 1st Page. This does not bother me, seeing as how 1st Page is over three years old and hasn't been updated since it's release. One main feature that this new program does not have, that 1st Page does is live spell checking (where it will underline a word if it's spelled wrong). After reading the forums over at Evrsoft I found that the creators of this program and 1st Page once worked together on a separate project back when they were in college. The features of that program were implemented both in 1st Page and HTML Builder after they both got into a spat and parted their separate ways. And after reading some more of the forums, I found that the two people are simply competing with each other in who can make the best free HTML editing software. Kind of crazy, but either way the user can't lose!

Once again, I leave for travel soon. Soon as in tomorrow. To Wyoming again. For three weeks or so. Hopefully, I'll have a regular dial up line so that I can update this page every now and again. I'll definitely be working on it on my laptop.-13AUG03

A big HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!! goes out to my cousin Stacey who turns almost as old as me. One day, she'll catch up and she'll be older than me. At least that's what she told me when we were 8 and 7.. or was it 8 and 8... Don't know anymore :(

I had eight messages on my voicemail today (it's been a while since I've checked it). Every single one save two (my mom and my girlfriend) was somebody saying "Hello? HellOOOooo. Hello?" as though they didn't know they were talking to an answering machine. It's very annoying. I mean.. I've called my number before. The phone rings four times, my voice comes on saying "Hello, you've reached (my secret name). Leave a message. BEEP"..... Why can't they hear that? Friggin telemarketers... My Mom used to be one of those. Maybe she can answer my question in my guestbook like she so often does.

I'm going to middle-of-nowhere Colorado tomorrow morning, and I wont be back till Monday. Like always, if I find a way to update, and feel like updating I will. But chances are I wont. Make sure you check out my pictures of Senegal as subtle hints from talking to people who frequent this site lead me to believe that they don't know they are there, and have been for a month so far.-05AUG03

In the defense of my apartment complex, the lack of water wasn't their fault. At about ten o'clock I noticed a crane and a couple of big trucks in the parking lot, apparently fixing a busted pipe or something. It was 6 in the morning, the next day and I had water again, though the first five gallons or so were brown.

I wrote my first DVD-R yesterday. It was 4 and a half Gigs of data (the bunch of crap I've downloaded and saved over the last year or so.. stuff on my second hard drive that didn't crash) and it only took 13 minutes to do it. Once I saw how stable and easy it is to do, I went out and bought a spindle of the discs... Don't quite know what I'll use them for yet. I'm not into the whole piracy thing, so if anything I'll just back up the few DVD's that I have just to take on trips (so if they get stolen or lost or damaged, I wont really care). Of course, one DVD will have to be excluded, which is Terminator 2: The EXTREME Edition. Upon starting up the movie, a box comes up that makes it very clear that under NO CIRCUMSTANCE will you make a copy of this disc onto your hard drive, or onto another disc. You can't even watch it unless you are connected to the internet! Not only that, but you also need to install the software off the disc in order to play the movie. That wouldn't be so bad if it wouldn't lock up half the time you tried to use it. What a load of crap. Who owns this movie, me or them? -01AUG03

....I have no water in my apartment. This really sucks because I gotta take a dump and my toilet has no flush left. I've been peeing in my tub. Kingsport Apartments apparently doesn't keep people working past 6 'just in case' something like this happens. I know this, because I left a message at 6:30, and it's now 9:15 and my water still isn't running and I haven't received a phone call. What kind of irritates me, is that if I hadn't taken a nap as soon as I got back from work, it would probably be resolved now.

We have a Change of Command ceremony tomorrow. We've been 'practicing' for two days now. What are we doing during practice? We are standing at attention. Yep. We are practicing standing at attention. And going to parade rest. And back to attention, and then back to parade rest. We've spent four hours in total practicing this, including an hour this morning at 6 (Why six? No reason, really.. I woke up at about 4:30 in order to shower and get there in time.. which is the main reason why I took a nap when I got home). We also have to go in tomorrow morning at 7 to do the same thing. I thought I wouldn't have to do stupid stuff like this when I got to WHCA. But apparently this has changed in recent days. It's becoming 'armyfied', and the people that like it the least are the Air Force people. One guy that I work with looked like he was about to fight everybody for having to be put through this stuff. By this afternoon, when we were practicing again he learned to stop thinking about how stupid it was, and just accept it as life was much easier that way.

On a happy note, it appears that Evrsoft, the makers of the program I use to work on my web pages (1st Page) are finally coming out with a new edition. It was supposed to come out in January, but there was no new news since September last year and suddenly the site has changed completely, and it looks like it's in preparation for 1st Page 2003. Can't wait.. :) -30JUL03

I had a rather bad day yesterday. It started out good. Slept in for a bit. Decided to get a new computer case (because my current one has poor ventilation, and components are always hot) when I woke up. So I went to a computer store to get one. I got a DVD writer on a whim while I was there. On my way back, I hit tons of traffic making a twenty minute drive turn into two hours.

When I got home, I tore my computer apart and discovered quite a bit of dust on the heat sink for my processor. Hmm.. maybe that's why it was running so hot. Anyway, I continued to transport the components to the new case. I cut my index finger trying to push a metal circle out of the way for a piece of my motherboard to fit through. I used my thumb instead, and I cut that too. I then got a pair of pliers and they did it perfectly. Blood dropped on my motherboard, but on nothing critical (resistors, capacitors, transistors, or PCI/AGP slots), so I thought it would be okay (and it was). So with band-aids on my thumb and index finger I continued to install.

I finish putting everything together, plug all the cables in and power it on. Somehow, in all the commotion, my primary hard drive decided that it just wasn't going to come back on again. Ever. So I went and bought a new hard drive and reinstalled WindowsXP. Took about an hour and a half to do that... Then I got my internet connection working and clicked on 'Windows Update'. It took over two hours to download and install all of the updates that have come out for WinXP since it came out (if I didn't have DSL.. that translates into roughly 32 hours of downloading). After installing all the updates, I realized I didn't have any sound. I looked for it in Device Manager, and it said no sound card detected. I even tried installing drivers for it, and the drivers told me no sound card detected.

I almost went out and bought a new sound card, but luckily I calmed myself down and tried something else. I moved it up a PCI slot. And it worked after that. Apparently I installed it on a bad PCI slot. How or when that slot became bad, I'll never know... So now I have sound. Now it's time to install the drivers for my DVD writer.

I pull the CD out, and notice it's key-number is torn in half, thus disallowing me to install the neat-o software that comes with it. I try to download drivers, but Plextor's site says they're not necessary for WindowsXP. Other than that, the drive is great. Haven't written any DVD's though. Probably never will.. If I ever use it to write a DVD it would be to back up major amounts of data that would be just too much for a normal CD (like my downloads folder, which has reached four gigs).

So all my email is lost. All of my favorites are gone. All of my save games (that were on my primary hard drive) are gone. And lots of programs that I once considered to be impossible to live without, I am now living without them because I am too lazy to look for a place to download them.

On top of this, I'm still not recovered from being on night shift... Can't seem to fall asleep before three. Can't seem to wake up before 10. Tired all of the time, unless I'm hopped up on some nice strong black coffee. -27JUL03

Well, being here in Texas sure is different than being there in Washington D.C. People are much nicer here. They smile at you when you buy something. They know how to drive. The roads are smooth (compared to D.C.). You can always drive at at least the speed limit.

Other than that though, the Waco area is pretty ugly in a lot of places. It's also very beautiful in a lot of places. Downtown, for instance.. has these banners posted up on street lights. They are purple, and say 'Downtown *artsy picture in middle* WACO'. And the building that sits behind the street light, has boarded up windows and graffiti all over it. Weeds run rampant in sidewalks and street cracks. This place looks like a big life vacuum came along and sucked everything out of it. In other areas, outside of downtown it is very beautiful. We got lost in a park somewhere.. I think it was on a University ground.. The street winded forever (had trees lining it the whole time) and ended up at an overlook four hundred feet above a river. We took a different way back and found four or five similar landmarks. One of which was called Lover's Leap.

Working here is pretty effortless. All I do, is sit back watching TV for twelve hours a day, waiting for something to break. Nothing has broken so far, but getting them to work in the first place can be a headache. It's too bad today is my last day to do this easy work before we go back.

I saw an episode of Oprah yesterday, whose subject was about people who survived events against all odds. There were a couple of people that were sucked up by tornadoes, three boys who survived a plane crash, and a guy who survived the Rhode Island club fire.

About this Rhode Island club fire.. That event shows me my greatest fear. Dying because of the stupidity (tasteless) of others. This particular guy survived it. He never made it out of the door until the fire was out, but he survived. How? Well, the main exit was pretty blocked up so he decided to take one of the two empty side exits. Smoke bellowed out and he fell to the floor so that he could keep an eye on the exit. Roughly three feet before he crawled out the door was when the first couple of people of a large group trampled on him on their way out. He got into the fetal position and noticed shortly afterwards movement stopped. Panic screams turned into painful screams. The camera work from outside of the club amused me a bit. It showed people jammed into the doorway six high and five wide.. all with their torsos outside and feet inside. Not only did their unthinking panic get them into that predicament in the first place, but nobody outside was pulling on them to unjam the door. They were just being stared at and filmed. Because of those two factors, hundreds of people died inside, because they couldn't get out.. because the door was jammed with bodies. Back to the original subject.. how the guy survived. Well, it turned out that there were so many bodies piled on top of him, that the fire was out before it reached him. Of course he was crushed by the weight, but he survived with third degree burns on one of his calves. What I find somewhat more ironic, is that this guy was probably the initial cause of the jam. He was on the floor. One person (likely) tripped on him. Another person tripped on him, and then another and another until there was no more room for anyone to trip on anybody. And out of all, he survived. Irony is an interesting thing. I can just imagine myself inside.. looking at all three exits and unable to get out. Any efforts to get people away from the door to unjam it would be futile. Nobody would listen. Everybody would be trying to get out for themselves. That is a perfect example of my greatest fear.

Sorry to be so morbid.. but this is what's been on my mind the last day or so. And what a better venue to exhaust it than the internet? -24MAY03

For those that are interested in what kind of damage exactly is done to my car, I've gone through the trouble of taking pictures and putting them on the web for your viewing pleasure.

• Picture 1
• Picture 2

Please note, that these are HUGE pictures and may take a while to load. Also, I'm using Bravepages to host them, so they may not work too well due to the fact that the host has been down 15% of the time over the last two weeks. So if you click, and don't see... Come back in an hour or so.

In other news, I bought a new brand of toothpaste today. It's Aquafresh 'Extreme Clean', which of course isn't quite as good as 'Xtremecleen' would be, but I guess you can't have it all. Anyway the toothpaste is orange and white so it matches my toothbrush pretty well, and that's a good thing. Unfortunately it tastes like the blue Hall's cough drop flavor so it's pretty nasty. I've been venturing a lot in the 'getting my teeth white because I never brushed them as a teenager' category and it's come up all duds so far. If this toothpaste works amazingly well, I'll be sure to let the world know through this popular website.

In other thoughts.. I have a question. Pillows. Why do they turn brown after a few months of use. I would normally guess that it's from the dirtyness of my face, but that theory is ousted because the pillow is not just brown in the middle. You, know.. where I put my head when I sleep.. But it's an even brown from left to right, and underneath. All pillows I've ever had have done this and I don't know why. Are they like bananas? Are they going to rot after a time? ... Who knows...-17MAY03

I am an idiot. Just like everyone else on the road in D.C. I am an idiot. What makes me an idiot? Well, you see.. There was this car in front of me. It was slowing down for no reason. I eventually concluded that they were slowing down, because the car in front of them was making a right turn, and was coming to a complete stop to do so. This really irritates me on the road, so I chose not to wait until traffic in front of me started moving again. So I made a sudden lane change. When I did this sudden lane change, I looked in my side view mirror and did not recognize that I could not see anything in it because of the water (it was raining heavily) and sap from the tree that I park under. So I took it for granted that nothing was in the other lane. Well, something was there alright. It was a Land Rover. Y'know.. one of those $50,000 SUV's?

Luckily I have extremely good reflexes, so when I nailed the Land Rover it didn't do too much damage to it. My car however.. Well I'm just glad I can still roll my window up and down.

The guy was real nice about it. He didn't want to go through insurance and was more than happy to get everything done without it. He went to get an estimate immediately and called me at work. $545. Not too bad. It could have been much worse. So I chose to meet him at a body shop where I was going to get my estimate during lunchtime so I could write him a check.

Well, they looked at my car and gave me an unofficial verbal estimate. $600. Not too bad, could have been much worse. As I was waiting for the Land Rover guy to show up, the body shop guy went ahead and cracked open his book of doom to get me an official estimate. He came up to me and said "Well, my estimate was about half as much as it will be". I thought $300 was a very good price considering what damage is done to my door. He held up the paper, and I realised I misunderstood due to my lack of listening. $1200. That sucks. -16MAY03

Hello again everybody. I just thought I'd pop in to tell you about my new section entitled "My Drive to and From Work Everyday". Click on Traffic Rant, and then the top picture to see it. I only have three sections up so far, but by the time it's finished there will be about 20. Enjoy! -10MAY03

Okay, so here I am updating for the first time using First Page. It's a little more of a pain, but not nearly the pain of getting everything back the way you had it before after your host decides to erase all of your work. I emailed the bastards and they said that they couldn't reproduce the error... Which makes me think that I'm the only one having the problem. Either that or they don't know what they're doing. They're probable used to questions like "How do I make a picture into a link?" or "Why is my page so ugly?" or things like that.

Once again, the weather is very nice.. About 60° and sunny. A light breeze blowing, allowing a perfect opportunity to open my windows and let some fresh air (and some bugs) in.

I changed up my links section. I took out Hutch's Homepage, because it has mysteriously disappeared off of the web, along with Josh's family site, because he rid himself of his AOL membership and hasn't looked for a free server anywhere for his page. I also added Veronica's site to the table finally, so now you don't have to look at my guestbook to get to her site anymore. -03MAY03

I just wrote an unbelievable amount of crap for my page here (it took me 40 minutes to type it all), and I hit 'Save' and it was all deleted. Not just the new stuff, but this whole page. I don't think I'll be using Angelfire for much longer. Basically my gist of it was 'I hate D.C.' If I ever get over my anger and frustration of this incident, I'll re-type it all for your reading pleasure.

Okay, I just did it again, and it deleted everything I typed. Luckily I copied everything I typed before hitting 'Save'.. Now I'm going to FTP this page instead of using Angelfire's 'Advanced Editor', which apparently has a major bug... -01MAY03

I write this while sitting and waiting for a tire to be put on my car... A tire that was blown on the way to Cracker Barrel. Nailed a pothole bigger than I've ever seen. Water splashed to the top of my car (gray water spots everywhere). Hour and a half wait-another half an hour can be attributed to me finding a place that actually had my tire size. Anyway, it's a good thing I brought my trusty-dusty laptop along 'just-in-case'.

While staying in Douglasville Jess and I got dressed up real nice and ate at a fondue restaurant called the Melting Pot (as a belated Valentine's Day gift). It was extremely good, and had a really neat atmosphere. We were way over dressed, but it was fun anyway.

Savannah was fun. Well, it could have been if I wanted to get drunk enough to sleep in the gutters there. They had some sort of St. Patrick's Day thing going on Friday night.. It was like being on Bourbon Street during Mardi Gras. Breasts were bared, cameras flashed, a friend dropped her cell phone in the river. Great stuff.

From there we were off to Disney World. Since three were in my car, we had to send most of our luggage with Christina (she didn't go to Savannah with us) because she just bought a four door Cavalier, and had quite a bit of room to spare. Finding the place we rented wasn't too hard. The actual gate where it was located just had a vinyl sign tied up to the wall saying 'Universal Resorts', that we missed the first time passing, but at least we found it.

The place itself wasn't bad at all, if you consider that it was only 90 bucks a night to stay there. There were a few things, such as the advertisement that it was a five bedroom villa, and the fifth bedroom was barely bigger than a closet. Also, the bathtub leaked, and the toilets rocked side to side. But these things were easily overlooked. (picture) I'm sure the place's price will skyrocket as more and more people start visiting Disney World... The whole area was pretty barren. Only about one out of five places were occupied.

Christina's boyfriend Zach ended up getting us a free hopper pass for the next day, which allowed us to visit all four parks at our whim. Unfortunately it was a very rushed experience, because you really need more than one day to see all of them. We missed Epcot, and only saw the better parts of the Magic Kingdom, and the other two (forgot what they were called..sorry)... I was surprised at how cheap everything was. Well, cheap compared to what I was expecting.. A lot cheaper than Sick Fags..er Six Flags over Atlanta.. Even cheaper than what you get at a movie theater. A (really) large Coke was $2.99, a 24 oz bottle of water was $2.50. A personal pizza with salad was $7.99. Expensive, yes. Ridiculous, no. I do plan on going back one day.

The rest of our time in Florida was pretty much spent at Universal Studios. The highlight of the trip was without a doubt The Hulk roller coaster... That thing was easily the best roller coaster I've ever ridden on. A faraway second place was another one called Dueling Dragons (I highly suggest sitting in the front row for this one).

We also went to a water park, Wet 'n Wild (Blizzard Beach was closed...) and had a blast there. Didn't get to ride everything of course... lines can get pretty long...

The next morning, we checked out of the villa and went to Universal Studios (read above), and then left for Tampa, where Jen's sister was staying in a hotel that her company was paying for, and slept the night there. She checked out while we were still asleep, so it was a little hectic getting out of there before the 'authorities' found out.

Traffic out of there was horrible. It took about two hours to get through with the first sixty miles, but after that it cleared up. A little ways up Jess decided to stop at Cracker Barrel for Breakfast, and so that's what we did. Pulling into the place I hit a pot hole to end all pot holes. This one beats any other one I've ever seen. Even the one that I've had pictured up on this page for so long. It was disguising itself as a small puddle, and I nailed it good. I'd say it was at least 9 inches deep, and wide enough for my whole tire to fit in. Anyway, it blew my tire and it took three hours to get another one. (by the way I am sitting in my apartment now)

On the way up I-75 we went to see Christina's parents, who housed me on the weekends back when I was in AIT, and jump school. We could only stay for about an hour, because it wasn't until 9:30 when we arrived. Once we left at about 11, flying up 75 only to hit the worst traffic jam I've ever seen. Bumper to bumper, dead stop for as far as you could see. Inching forward for an hour got us about 2 miles of progression. Then we saw an orange sign that said 'Road Work: 2 Miles; Two right lanes closed'. So half an hour later we got to the next exit to try to bypass all of that crap. There was one gas station there, and a rather large line of cars on the street waiting their turn to get gassed up... The map we were using turned out to be wrong and it was really a fast bypass. Took all of five minutes to merge back on at the next ramp. And then we hit more traffic about thirty miles up. It was of the same calibur, but only lasted twenty minutes before it flowed again.

Once back in Douglasville we slept a lot, and watched movies until it was time for me to leave :(

Well, that's what I've been doing for the past two weeks. It's good to be back, but that good feeling will be short lived (I'm sure). On a lighter note, my old room mate from Fort Bragg is now in WHCA, so I may have someone to hang out with and stuff. -27MAR03

Ahh.. the weather is beautiful outside. It's been a while since I've been able to drive with my windows down, and today was definitely a preffered day for that sort of thing. The car wash has a line that completely circles the block that it's on. I'm not exaggerating at all. It REALLY circles the block! I didn't get my car washed today...

Here at my place is a plethora of outside activity of people enjoying the sun and warmth. The echo-ey sound of six different stereo's Latino music drifts in through my window. The orchestra of kids screaming and laughing Mexican drifts in through my other window... Today is a great day to have good headphones.

I think I'm going to vacuum today. It's been a while since I last did that.

I now have a second monitor (my old one) as a second display. I keep it off most of the time, and will probably only use the feature five or six times in my life, but it sure does look impressive when both monitors are on, and different things are going on on each. I'll maybe update the computer station picture on my apartment page when I feel like taking a picture of it.

Well, I leave Thursday for two weeks, so I don't know if I'll be able to update between now and the time I get back. I may get a chance to, but don't get your hopes up. Maybe when I come back, there will even be a Disney World section of pictures. -09MAR03

Hello again everybody. Long time, no see! Still nothing new is really happening in my life. I'm going to Disneyworld with my girlfriend in two weeks. It's going to be expensive, so I wont be able to brag about how much money I have in my bank for much longer...

I've spent about an hour so far updating (finally) my 514th page with the small plethora (I know it contradicts itself) of pictures that were sent to me. It's turning out to be a pretty big page overall, I may have to move the checkerboard table at the bottom, to a secondary page. All you that use dial up, let me know how slow it loads once I'm finished with it (hopefully in the next couple of days).

Also, if you notice at the near bottom of this page, I am nearing 5000 hits. If you are the 5000th person, say so in my guestbook and I'll send you a kiss. Also... I'm kind of planning a special "5000 hit" party. All are invited of course. It wont be much. Just some balloons, champagne that doesn't spill out of the glass, fire, fireworks, and some streamers. Also, regarding the counter, I took the Bravenet crap underneath it off, because it was pausing the download of this page horribly. I enjoyed seeing how people got here through Google, but I guess I can't have my cake and eat it too... -02MAR03

Meal in a bag. Yes. Meal in a bag is the best thing that's come into my life since Reeses Peanut Butter Cups. Meal in a bag has caused me to renounce Hamburger Helper as my official 'Bachelor Chow' (THE ACTUAL TERM "BACHELOR CHOW" WAS ORIGINALLY SEEN ON A FUTURAMA EPISODE BY ME.)

"What is this 'Meal in a bag' I keep hearing you talk about?" I hear you ask me... Well, I'll tell you! But first let me say, that whoever invented this thing, is a pure genius. These things are bags, right? They have a meal in them. A frozen meal. A lot of the time they actually have frozen meat as well, saving you the trouble of actually buying the meat separately and cooking, cutting, etc.. generally a pain in the arse. What you do, is tear open the bag, dump it in a hot skillet for about eight minutes, and you have yourself a well balanced, good tasting, healthy nutritious meal. I highly reccomend it to anyone who likes food, but doesn't like spending a lot of time cooking it.

Traffic in D.C. has really been sucking lately. It seems that people enjoy getting in wrecks just because of a little bit of ice on the ground. Why ice on the ground would make people want to get in wrecks I have no idea. -24FEB03

I've never seen so much snow in my life. I walked down the stairs (I live on the second floor) and it was dark at the bottom, where normally light shines through the glass door. I went back up to my apartment, climbed out my window and walked over to where I thought my car was parked, and dug a tunnel to it, so I could get in to get my camera. I also started it up a bit so that the snow would melt off of the windshield to keep me from having to scrape it off tomorrow morning. I climbed back up my tunnel and into my window (a little harder now that the snow was a little packed down) and that's just about all I did today. I did manage to squeeze a picture out while I was outide. Click HERE to see it (if it doesn't work right off, try again in a couple of minutes -I haven't uploaded it yet).

I read a very interesting topic over at maddox.xmission.com concerning an idea about bombing countries with pennies. It's unbelievable how stupid it is, while making more sense than you can imagine both at the same time. It's not much to read, so there's no excuse not to go there. -17FEB03

It looks like I wont be going anywhere today. The snow outside has reached 9 inches in depth, and it's still falling faster than I've ever seen snow fall. I would take a picture of it, but my camera is in my car, and the door is really really frozen shut. I wrestled with it (banging around the frame with my fist and pulling the handle as hard as possible without breaking it) for about three minutes before my hands got frostbitten and fell off. It was hard pulling my keys out of my pocket without them.. and having to use my mouth to turn it to get back into my stairwell, but I'll live. After all, I figured out how to type this didn't I?

I've seen quite a few other visitors come into this site through search engines, simply because of the diverse amount of crap I have in this little weblog here. I think I've had five vistors come here searching for BMW films.. It's crazy that all they need to do is type http://www.bmwfilms.com and they don't even know it. Got one looking up the Mallett family. Heh... Wonder who that was. They sure didn't sign my guestbook... It's common etiquette to do that when you visit someone's site for the first time, you know..

Xerzes has added some more advertisements to his site, making it look like one of those pages that you get in your email, offering great deals on all kinds of stuff.. It's stuff that he found that he feels everyone should like, so check it out if you wish.

In speaking of such things, I'm thinking about having two sections of links. One for Giggleman, and another for sites that aren't updated more than once every three months. Pretty much Giggleman would have his own section, as he's been pretty consistent with changning something at least once every two weeks, and usually twice a week.

I'm going to consolidate all the 514th pictures I've gotten over the last few months. Eventually I'll add them to the page. I'll let you know when that's done. -16FEB03

Hey, look at that! Another week since my last update! Sorry.

I've had a pretty easy time at work over the last couple of weeks... Let's see, how'd it go... Monday I went to work. I actually worked. It's amazing how better you feel when you're being productive. Teusday I took the day off to take care of some things, because I was leaving for West Virginia for five days on a trip. Wednesday we left (drove there in a rental minivan), and Thursday we found out that we didn't need to be there because of a change of plans with the boss's schedule. So I got back Friday (keep in mind I did absolutely NOTHING while in West Virginia), and of course Saturday and Sunday I'm not working. Not even on my web page, apparently... So out of a whole week, I only worked one day. That's great. And they pay me for this stuff (actually, you do with your tax dollars, heh heh)...

I made up a screenshot page for a game I bought a week or so ago. It wasn't a good enough game for me to write a review, but I felt I should put my $55 (that I paid for a year of hosting with Bravenet -250 MB of webspace, 5 times as much as Angelfire)to better use. If you want to look at it, you can find it HERE.

Other than that nothing new has really happened in my life.. Valentine's Day is coming up (ugh..). My car's dirty again. I need a hair cut (actually I need hairs cut). -09FEB03

Wow.. A week since the last update (almost).. Well, I didn't completely disappoint this time, as I've added more pictures taken in Vilnius. They were sent to me by a coworker that actually took them. Enjoy :) -02FEB03

Today didn't start out so well for me. I woke up too early for one.. After showering (and checking email) I decided to go get my car washed. As I sit down, ready to go, I notice something on my windshield. A red, fluttering thing. Upon closer investigation I find that it's a parking ticket! A freaking parking ticket! Why did I get one? Apparently I'm supposed to be displaying a City Tag (at least that's what the ticket says), and I'm not. Well, what is a city tag? I look on the site the ticket tells me to look at to find that I'm supposed to pay taxes on my vehicle, just for having it in Alexandria. Further down it says that active duty military are exempt from it, but that doesn't make me feel any better about getting a ticket for not paying it. I think it's complete crap. I find out later (from a neighbor)that the tax is 8% of the blue book value of the car. Since my car is worth about 8 grand, that figures out to about $650 that I would have to pay, if I were just a normal person that wanted to live here. Even though the car was bought three years ago used in another state. Again, it's complete crap. What makes the City of Alexandria so special that they can charge people money just for having vehicles? How did it start? Who approved it? What the f***?

So from there, I went to the car wash place right down the street. They were full. On top of that, the Alexandria police force took it upon themselves to direct traffic around the wash place, so a line of cars don't develop on the side of the street, thus preventing me from getting my car washed in a timely manner... So off I went to another car wash place even further down the street. About a fifteen minute drive no less. They were full too, and on top of that the Arlington police took it upon themselves to direct traffic around the wash place, thus preventing me from getting my car washed. What sucks even more, was there was room for about five more cars in the line at the time I was waved on... So off I went to Bolling AFB, where they had a manual car care center, with brushes, spray nozzles, etc. for you to wash your car with. I try not to go there, on account of it's expensive (25 cents for 30 seconds, minimum of $2), and windy, and cold, and the stuff doesn't have soap half the time. But I was willing to deal with all that because my car was really dirty. On the way there, a car in front of me cut someone off in the left lane, and as I went to pass him (on the right -he was going about 40 Mph in a 55) he got scared and came back into my lane. I slammed on my brakes, left some choppy smoke behind me and he flipped me off. I arrive at the car wash place at Bolling, and lo and behold there are piles of ice everywhere because the spray nozzles never turn off all the way, and there's yellow caution tape blocking the entrance, thus preventing me from washing my car.

It was at this point that I let myself be defeated. I took a picture, got in my car, and drove back to the first car wash place. I noticed a line of cars formed up at the corner down the street from it, and the policeman was waving them over, when there was room. So I got in the line. It was about 20 cars long (plus the 15 that were already in line at the place), and it took nearly 45 minutes before I stepped out to let them vacuum.

From there I went to McDonalds, got breakfast (trouble free) and went home. I haven't left since.

There's a new game review up -25JAN03

I have a cousin with a website, now! So now everybody has to go over there and sign her guestbook. Make sure you use the word 'ghetto' somewhere in the description of your first impression of it.

There's this Pizza Hut commercial that really bothers me. I hardly ever watch TV, but I've seen this commercial at least twenty times over the last month. Each time I view it, I get more and more frustrated on how stupid it is... There's just so many things wrong with it, I don't know where to begin... But okay. I'll try. (WARNING: The following is a complete waste of time. Read at your own risk.

It starts out with a mechanic of some sort, giving his customer some breadsticks. Customer looks like 'Oooh! This is a pleasant surprise' and takes them as they are, in a generic paper bag. Then a lawyer asks his clients.. "Want some free breadsticks?" and his clients have a slightly surprised look on their face, and they take them. And there's another one that I can't remember.. But anyway the narration goes as follows: "Everybody's giving away free breadsticks."... Okay. Sure. Yes, they are. "But only at Pizza Hut.." Alright, what are they offering? Maybe it's something good. "...can you get free breadsticks..." Huh? Didn't you just say everybody was giving away free breadsticks? "...when you order America's favorite pizza..." What? I'm sorry, but that made no sense.
#1: America doesn't have a favorite pizza, and if they did it sure as (feces) wouldn't be from Pizza Hut.
#2: You are saying that you can only get free Pizza Hut breadsticks from Pizza Hut. It's like seeing a can of tuna with "Elephant Safe" on the side.
#3: Why are you even advertising free breadsticks? Isn't that a standard with pizza places now?

I can't believe that Pizza Hut has so much money they can just waste it on idiot marketing executives that allow commercials like these to be plastered all over national television. A commercial should not make a potential consumer hate what it's advertising, thus causing loss of sale. It's like the thuggish Sprite commercials that came out a few years back. I don't drink Sprite, never will, nor will I let my kids drink it (when I have them). Because I hated their commercials. And the phrase 'Obey your thirst'.. Pretty silly considering you are more thirsty after drinking the stuff.-23JAN03

A statement was said to me at work. A statement that was said in such a non-chalant way, making it more profound. A statement that has changed my life as of this morning, as I thought about it more. This statement was "Procrastination is the Devil". It was said by a guy that has only been working in our shop for about a month.

He said it, after we staged some equipment on the lift, to go in the upstairs portion of the warehouse. I was planning on waiting until more equipment turned up to be put on the lift, before putting the stuff up. As I walked away, drinking a Mountain Dew, and looking around the shop for something easy, yet clean to work on, I see this new guy coming down the stairs. "Where were you?" I was asked -and I told him what I just told you. And then that's when he said it.

I woke up this morning feeling kind of crappy. I took a shower and thought about what I would do today. Nothing really popped up in my head. I got on my computer, checked my email (as I often do as soon as I get dressed and out of the shower) and forums and felt unfulfilled, which is as I often feel. I made breakfast (a somewhat decent one, with hashbrowns, eggs, bacon, and cereal. Plus orange juice.), and noticed the pile of dishes I have in my sink. From there it's kind of a blur until I got in my car, without knowing where I wanted to go, or what I wanted to do. My nasty dirty windshield helped me to figure out that I wanted to get my car washed. I looked at the sky. It was cloudy. Like it wanted to rain. I looked at the road. It was still salty from the snow 'protection' we had three days ago. So I went to Auto Zone, planning to get new blades for my wipers. Since my blades are pretty much rivetted to my car, I felt it would be best to get refills. They didn't have any. So I got some glass cleaner. And that's when it started.

My first move was to put the cleaner in my trunk, and clean my windshield when I got home. Then the voice said 'Procrastination is the Devil'. I cleaned it in the Auto Zone parking lot. It was then that I decided that I was going to get curtains for my bedroom, that actually blocked the light. So off to Target I went. I got curtains. They work well. I got Mountain Dew, something else I've been meaning to get for about a week now. I got face wash and Q-tips. More stuff I was waiting for a better time to get. And I came home.

I took my suit off the car hanger (been meaning to do that for a few days now) and brought it inside. I made a CD that I'd been meaning to make for SSG Grover for about 6 months now. And most importantly, I organized my paperwork. Stuff that's been sitting in random piles about my place, accumulating mass for over a year. A whole garbage bag full of crap that I don't need anymore (credit card offers, opened envelopes, etc.). As I went through more piles, the more disorganization I found. It's unbelievable how much stuff I've put off everyday for the last year. Craziness, I tell you.

It's amazing how much work I've done in the past four hours. Yet, the apartment doesn't look much cleaner (aside you can see most of my counter top now), but it feels a lot cleaner. I don't feel like crap anymore. It's like a weight has been lifted from my forehead. And now I'm doing something that I've always procrastinated at. I'm udating my web page. Congratulations. You are a part of history.

Remember folks... Whenever you put something in an area so you could take it and put it up later "Procrastination is the Devil". Say this in your head. Let your head say it to you. Whatever. It is a God send. I may even update my music reviews soon. Who knows? I might learn to play my guitar tonight. Who knows? I might get two new hard drives and reinstall my computer fresh in a RAID configuration. Who knows? -19JAN03

Hello again, all. I changed two button-pictures, so they look a little better. Check out the Miscellaneous section to see it.

Now that I've added a new counter stats feature to my site, I see that a few people have gotten here from Google. One person entered the criteria 'clutch squeaks', another 'find me a homepage', and another 'copperplate (other words omitted for some reason)'. Heh... And I thought this page was out in the middle of nowhere. None of them commented in my guestbook, though... Bastards.

I just got myself a new 19 inch monitor. It's an NEC MutltiSync 97F, and I bought it for a (cheap! cheap!) measly $219. Every customer review I've read on it on the internet says it's a piece of crap and to stay away from it. They must have gotten a different revision of it, because this thing does resolutions up to 1920 x 1440, and the box says 1600 x 1200, and the reviews I read say 1280 x 1024 (which is the most my last monitor did). Anyway, I'm pretty happy with it, and I'll be using my old monitor as a second display in the near future.. The problem I've run into as far as that goes, is finding a monitor extension cord, as it doesn't reach from my second desk.

I will try to update again before Monday... But I'm not making any promises... -17JAN03

My car got towed away Thursday night from my own apartment parking lot. When I got my Virginia license plates, I didn't update the parking sticker (didn't know it was nessecary to keep your car from getting towed), so at about 4 in the morning I hear 'WHOO! WHOO! WHOO!' and I jump up (somehow I knew immediately that that was my alarm - it's louder than any other I've heard) and see a guy with his hands on his ears shut my door (he broke in to take the parking brake off - a feat professional pop-a-lock guys couldn't do when I requested the action a few years back) and jump in his tow truck and drive off (the movie Twins was right about a car alarm shutting off when a car is tilted at an angle because that's what happened as soon as he got settled in the truck) pretty fast. I never wanted to blow a place up so bad as I did right then and there. $100 later, and I have it back.

In other news, I'm now using Bravenet as a secondary host. They have a 5 MB file size limit, so I'll keep Angelfire around to post movies and such. I'm thinking (seriously) about transerring my whole site to crawdaddy79.bravepages.com just for the shorter domain name, and 200 megs more webspace. Good for game reviews and such. The thing that makes me want to reconsider, is my hit counter.. I'd have to get a new one :( That's 4,000+ hits that will be taken away from me... That and the fact that all of my loyal viewers would have to re-bookmark the page. -12JAN02

Last week (New Year's Day, to be exact) was the two year anniversary for Snookems and me.     !

Not much has happened since the last update... I'm back in D.C. , and it's been snowing off and on ever since. Snookems came up to visit me over the weekend. I got lots and lots of presents! The most I've had for Christmas since I joined the Army. I also (today) received a Presidetial Service Badge, basically for being in WHCA for over a year. Even though it wasn't hard to get (once in WHCA), I am only one of about 20,000 people to ever receive it.

I got an email from an old friend, Frank Mackey that basically said he would be in Kuwait by mid-January (what's kind of funny is, is that he almost made it completely out of the Army - but some invisible bungie cord pulled him back in). The same goes for my girlfriend's brother.

Troops are gathering on the fronts. War may soon ensue. Do I think we should attack Iraq? Nope. I see no reason to. Does anyone else? The media sure doesn't say anything about it, if they knew something. Instead they cover plane crashes in Turkey and North Carolina for hours on end. The more I watch the news, the more disgusted I get with it. -08JAN03

Well, as you can see, I have changed a little something to this page. I did away with the javascript rolldown menu and now have a simple little link leading to my new section of pages... Called 'Miscellaneous', for lack of better words. In there will be all the pages that I feel like doing from now on, that have nothing to do with the current seven categories already up. I was thinking about putting my Traffic Rant in there, maybe I will. It all depends on how froggy I get, I guess. All of these link pictures will be updated to look better. As that one says, this is in the Beta phase. I just wanted to get the core of the work done for now... My car page should be finished soon.. I just need to sit down and work on it for a while. I must say that it is very well written so far, and I don't want to make is sound rushed in the second half of the thing.

Meanwhile, it's snowing cats and dogs out here. One foot today, and another before the morning after tomorrow. While the snow is fun, it sure does turn everything wet after a while. There's puddles all over the first floor of the place we're staying at. The rugs are soaked (I guess we should hang them up - but ehhh....). I'm starting to grow attached to this laptop. It sure is more entertaining than nothing, which is what I'm used to when I'm out here.

Hopefully you will see a mass of updates over the next few days. If you don't then you know I'm not working on anything.-27DEC02

Today is my sister's birthday. Happy Birthday, Rebecca! Now two decades old. -20DEC02

I saw Lord of the Rings - The Two Towers when it came out. Surprisingly I wasn't disappointed with it. I actually liked the movie a lot. I think this can be attributed to the fact that I didn't read the book first. From my personal experience I have learned that it's best to wait for the movie to come out before reading the book. Otherwise the movie will be a let down. In the first movie I noticed tons of inaccuracies. Because I had just finished the book less than a month before seeing the movie. The movie actually annoyed me and I felt like I had wasted nearly three hours of my time watching it. So, thankfully I am too lazy to continue reading the series, and will not until the third movie comes out, and I have seen it. I urge all who reads this to follow.

Currently I am still in the very cold place, typing this in Wordpad on my trusty dusty laptop. This thing is sooo useful. For wasting time. I've been playing a few old games I haven't touched in a while. I bought two DVD's the other day (uh-oh), and watched them both on the 'huge' 14 inch screen. Most of my MP3s have been transferred over. The music doesn't sound so great with the laptop speakers, but when I plug in a set of high quality headphones, nothing is better. I've also played with Paint Shop Pro some more, still learning a little at a time, but so far nothing groundbreaking. As far as HTML work goes, I've already spiced up a couple of webpages, waiting to upload them. I've started a new game review and added four or five paragraphs for the My Stuff page (which will probably be named to My Car.. OR ***New Idea*** - just in! I'll make a frames page... Like my game reviews page.. ). I'm also thinking about adding an update window to the left of the guestbook, with the last five or so updates listed constantly. -19DEC02

Happy Birthday to me. Yay! About 8 coworkers paged me to tell me Happy Birthday. I got off of work a few hours early because of it. That and I'm leaving again tomorrow for two weeks to a (very) cold place. I think I'm going to get some really thick socks before I go... That would behoove me.

In all honesty I haven't worked on any of the pages here since the last update. Hopefully I'll think of some really, really, rediculously good ideas while on my trip. This time I'll have a laptop to work with. It all depends on how bored I get... Actually it depends on how creative I get, because it seems that when I'm bored, that's when I least feel like doing anything productive.

I still haven't bought a DVD to try on my laptop. That's a wall that once I cross, I'm scared that I wont be able to get back over... (eventually spending all money on DVD's to watch on my 14.1 inch screen).

And what am I going to do on my birthday? Probably be on the phone a lot. And I'll drink the bottle of beer that I've been saving just for an occasion such as this. Yes, that's Lithuanian beer. 8.0% alchohol content. And damn, is it going to be good. -12DEC02

Giggleman has a new documentary up. It's quite a read, so I suggest you get something to drink before you venture over there...

My laptop came in Wednesday, a full two days earlier than expected.. Pretty good for free shipping. Like most things I spend massive amounts of money on, I was disappointed in what I got..   At first. Now I know it's a good laptop for what I paid for. It's just that.. I ran a 3D benchmarking program, called 3D Mark, where my laptop scored 1430... My current desktop scores over 9000. That's a heck of a performance difference, especially considering that my desktop is a lot cheaper (if you were to get one just like it right now). Anyway... my story had a point... what was it? Oh, yeah.. When I went to go pick up my laptop from my apartment home office (they signed for it), three girls aged 6-9 were walking out. Since it was Wednesday I was wearing my BDU's, and I got big wide-eyed looks from all of them. I held the door for them, and got a loud "Thank you Army person!" as they all scrambled out the door. I picked up my package (they didn't do an ID check... Kind of makes me nervous), and walked out with it, and was met with loud "Bye, Army person!" from all three of them, along with enthusiastic salutes. I couldn't help but smile, and be embarassed at the same time. I said bye to them, but they were being so loud that they didn't even hear me.   :)

If I end up staying in the Army, it will be because of things like that... -08DEC02

All day yesterday, my feet were cold, and the rest of me was warm. I figured, since I don't move around much (to stir up the air), that it was the heat rising, and the cold sinking that caused that. That was only partially right, because today I discovered one of my windows was half open. I left it like that before my big trip to air out my apartment... Just thought I'd let you all know that. :)

I forgot to mention yesterday, that I ordered my Laptop.. Hehe... Got the last one. Now I have something to do while I'm in Wyoming (again) later on. Conveniently, though... The price dropped $100 since yesterday.. What kind of crap is that?

My counter is working up to 4000, so please, every time you visit check it, and if you are the 4000th one, say so in my guestbook, and I'll send you a kiss. No matter who you are! -01DEC02

I bet you guys are tired of seeing how the Saints beat Carolina, huh? HAHAHAHA!!!

Anyway, I am now back from Lithuania and recovering from the jet-lag. Thankfully these holidays are here, otherwise I may have driven a forklift into someone if I were at work.

Being over there helped me to realize our country has a huge influence over the rest of the world, and it's hard to feel humble about it. I don't know whether it's a good thing or a bad thing... Europe seems to have no infuence over the U.S. at all.. Just by comparing our CNN to theirs... Ours tells us about Harry Potter, and Playstation 2, and the D.C. sniper's family history, whereas theirs tells about riots in Nigeria over a Miss World competition that killed 100+, and wounded over 500, and England's firefighter strike, etc... There's a lot going on out there, and we never hear about it. Of course that statement can be invalidated if any of my loyal fans have seen those other things on CNN.

You can see my few pictures of Vilnius on my 'Places I've Been' page. Also I have a movie ready to download of an ***official*** Lithuanian toddler chasing birds. It's 1.14 Mb, and only 6 seconds long. I think it's worth the download... Anyway get it HERE. -30NOV02

Hey, hey! Go Saints! Take the lead from Carolina in the last part of the game!

It looks like Star Kingdoms has gone into the realm of cyber-death space, because I haven't seen their little picture show up in over a week now. When I get back from my trip, and they are still not up, then I will need to replace that section with another link... I wonder who the lucky winner will be..... . . . ?

I updated my Apartment page, finally. It's premature because of Giggleman's statement on his own apartment page, but it'll do for now. The page looks a little better, and I actually cleaned up my place so I could take pictures.. I even (!) made my bed.

I figured I'd add something for peeps to look at over the next few weeks while I'm in Lithuania. I hope they don't break out in civil war while we're there. That would suck. -10NOV02

The squeak in my clutch according to World Motors, turned out to be just that... A squeak in the clutch. $35 dollars later and it was gone.

I downloaded some movies from BMW Films, and watched them. All are very very good, and worth the download if you have a high bandwidth connection... If you are on dial-up... One movie would take about 15 hours to download.. Because it took me almost 30 minutes. They're about 100 megs a piece.. Very good quality though. Of course after watching them, I went to the BMW site to price out my dream car, the M3, and of course it proved to be a little pricey... In the neighborhood of $900 a month for what I want, which is about $400 more than I want to pay. Nearly $55,000 in total :) One day, it will be mine.

I was looking through all of the pictures I took at Ft. Bragg... There's some really good movies there. It's unfortunate I didn't have my camera months before that, because there are a lot of people that I don't have movies of.. I never thought I'd miss 514th... And I was right! But I sure do miss the many many people I worked with. Made jokes with. It's too bad when I sent out a mass email to everyone, I only got three replies... Sears, Giggleman (!), and SGT Adams... Maybe the rest are trying hard to forget.. Who knows. -09NOV02

I'm back from my travels again. Went to three cities in three days. Nice time overall.. You can read more about it in the "Places I've Been" section.

The bastards at Landmark Honda want to charge me $1400 to fix the squeak in my clutch. Parts include the master and slave cylinders, and of course the clutch. Apparently they found a small leak in the master cylinder, so of course it has to be replaced, and if you replace the master cylinder, you might as well replace the slave cylinder too... Bah! Strange how I haven't had the car tuned up in 40,000 miles, and all the fluid levels are still topped off. Especially since there's a 'leak' in the master cylinder... That's the big one of the two, I imagine. I wont be getting any work done there. -04NOV02

Well... I'm back now. Strange to be at my apartment after staying at the Arizona Biltmore for a week... Damn that was a nice hotel.

I turned my car in this morning because the clutch squeaks.. They say it might be the bearing (?), but if that costs $400 or more to fix, I may just get a whole new clutch (bearing included) for $800.. It will go bad sooner or later, seeing as how my car now broke it's 120,000 mile mark.

I can't see my girlfriend this weekend like I thought I was going to be able to.. Why? Because I leave again for (unknown destination) tomorrow. This time I'm doing someone else's job on account of people shortage in other sections. Oh well. You win some, you lose some... At least I get TDY pay.. Which is a lot more than I can say for my last unit, where you went to the woods in a days notice instead of a four-to-five star hotel...

I took a good sunset picture while I was in Phoenix.. Haven't loaded it into my computer yet, though.. I am also working on my music page.. I have a few third party reviews to put up, but may not get the chance today to put them up. I also bought four new CD's that I haven't been able to find in stores here in the D.C. area. I've already written two reviews (on paper).. -29OCT02

Heh, I finally got my credit card balance to less than $500 since I bought my computer over two years ago... That's a good feeling, it really is. Kinda makes me feel like I'm rubbing it in to all who reads this, because chances are I'm in less debt than you are :)

I noticed yesterday that I'm spending WAY too much time on this computer.. I think I spend 80% of my free time sitting in front of it, and that's being conservative.. I have a slight problem with message boards. I will cycle through my favorites over and over again waiting to see another post. Sometimes I sit there for over an hour, not seeing anything. So I turned it off. Played with my guitar a little. Shined my boots. And turned my computer back on. It's sad. It really is. I'm supposed to be in my prime right now.

I found a cool link a little while ago. Http://www.mozes.org. Don't view if you're likely to have seizures.

I got some high quality pictures of me getting promoted. Apparently WHCA has photographers that ALWAYS take pictures of events. I forgot them at work, though. I have to scan them anyway, and even though it's not a pain in the ass, it's still more than I'm used to doing to do that. So don't expect to see them here anytime soon.

And I actually looked at my family page for the first time in about five months.. Hate to say it, but it's probably the ugliest page on my site. Methinks I need to redo it. -16OCT02

Well, I used the last of my toothpaste up today... Got a bunch of air bubbles yesterday and this morning... The tube really felt heavy -like it actually had toothpaste in it.. Oh, well.

I've decided I wasn't going to get a flat panel monitor.. They aren't good for gaming.

I have a few more good army pictures sent to me from Giggleman. They will be up sooner or later.. Not today and probably not tomorrow either. I've also taken a few pics of my car, and I'm thinking about changing the My Stuff page to the My Car page, looking at the tons of text I've already typed about it.. And while I was at that, I decided to take a picture of the rug Mom made me, hanging on my wall and adding it to the family link, along with the animated GIF I made of it progressing through stages of creation. -15OCT02

Never, EVER buy Arm & Hammer brand toothpaste.. While using the tube for the third time since buying it, squeezing, I hear a *pop*. And I didn't have enough on my brush, so I squeezed some more, and more and more. I had the tube down to about half of it's original girth before paste started coming out again.. That's right.. It was mostly AIR.

I've been looking at flat panel monitors all week. I want at least a 17 inch one.. That's looking at about $500 for a cheap one... What's scary is that I actually have the money for it. I had forgotten about my reinlistment bonus, droping a grand into my bank account every year until 2006... And then my big pay raise... Sheesh.. Maybe I'll buy some bedroom furniture within the next few months.

My 514th page is now updated, thanks to SGT Adams for sending me those pictures. I've gotten a response from Giggleman and Sears, both voicing they have some pics they can send me.. As G-man told me in an email, I may become the unofficial TacSat (well, he said 514th) historian, due to my madskillz of web page authoring..   -13OCT02

I vacuumed my floor for the first time since living here yesterday.. Who'd of thunk it actually looks better? Makes me happier to look at it. I breathe easier now. Amazing.

If you didn't notice, I put up four more pictures in the page I said I would... I made a couple of movies of Old Faithful, but they are too big to put up for download.. It would take you about three hours to download it anyway, and the smaller movie only lasts about thirty seconds.. -06OCT02

I guess I didn't get the chance to update last week... Oh well. You didn't miss much.

I finally got to see Mr. Cheney up close. That's something few people can say.

During the trip I went to Yellowstone Park, where I got to meet plenty of Buffalo and other things. There were a lot of British people there.. Kind of wierd listening to them. I felt like I was in a James Bond movie. Old Faithful was cool... I wouldn't suggest driving two thousand miles to see it, unless you are really into that kind of stuff. The park itself is pretty well laid out, with lots of walkways and trails and things. The shops had reasonably priced groceries and souvineers, but I only got a shot glass and a box of Teddy Grahams. The only thing I didn't really like is the speed limit was only 35 miles per hour through most of the park, and to drive around the "8" that the road makes, would take about 32 hours. So I only saw the lower quarter of the place. The speed limit turned out to be a life saver, because on the way back, driving at night we almost ran into an elk that was big enough to tow us back if need be. But before that I took roughly 130 pictures of the place, as well as ten movies. A few of the pictures will appear on the "Yet Even More Pictures" page before the end of the week.

Giggleman is having a rant-a-thon at the moment. I don't know where a rant turns into a novel, but either way there are some interesting points made, and a site-hosted message board that you can make comments on (such as saying that you are apalled by his pessimism). Other than that, most of the sites with links at the bottom of this page haven't been updated in months. Crazy. -03SEP02

Guess who made the list for E-5??!!!! That's right!!! ME!!! So as of the 1st of next month, my name will no longer be Specialist Mallett, but Sergeant Mallett. That's a mere $350 a month pay raise, but hey, any little bit counts, right? :P     Only took five years to do it (Well, five years and a day), but I did it... It's kind of sad, because most make it in less than four, and a lot make it in three... Only poop bags take so long to get promoted in the Army. But it seems more poop bags get promoted than anything else. It's a good thing I'm not in 514th anymore, because now I would be working 18 hours a day, listening to my Platoon Sergeant tell me things that either, I already know or things that will change within hours of it being said. Well, that's my little rant on that.

I've been thinking about adding more and more material to my traffic rant. It seems the more I drive, the more I hate people on cell phones, the more I hate people who can't drive, and the more I hate people who honk at me for not being within fifteen feet of the car in front of me, in bumper to bumper traffic... -17SEP02

Giggleman, Giggleman, Giggleman, has an excellent commentary that goes against the grain of the general public. He brushes up on one of my favorite things to think about. Human nature. How people really are. Selfish, violent, cruel. Not everybody, of course... But the more in a group, the more in that group become. Thinking about the systematic murder of six million jews. In History class, that just seemed unimaginable, that so many people would let that happen... That so many people would be involved in that. And of course, my favorite.. The witch burnings. How stupid can people get.. Really? This is where they stop listening to their heart, and that little voice that tells them the difference between right and wrong, and justify the wrongness with reason. No matter how stupid that reason is.. And how cruel can you be.. To throw a stone at someone, over and over again until they die? Wouldn't that be considered insane? That was once a common punishment. Most think, well that was in the past.. Something like that will never happen again, in this day and age. We are more civilized now. They are still stoning people in the Middle East, I hear.

When we first went to "war" with the "terrorists", I thought it was done because this was the only way to stop them. As a matter of fact, I am really hoping that that's why we went after them. I'm afraid that isn't the reason, though.. There's two other possibilities that I can think of. One: The public wanted blood. Two: Our leaders wanted blood. I'm sure there's more to it than that. Cowardly terrorists ( We call them cowardly. Ha!! If you are a midget, and you are going up against a giant, do you put up your fists and hit him in the shin until he crushes you? No... You kick him in the nuts and run. It's the most practical way of fighting, if you don't have near or equal power.). Revenge is the wrong reason to do anything. Whatever you do when you feel that burning in your chest, is probably the wrong thing to do. It causes you to go too far. The person making the decision on where the missles should hit... I don't think that guy really cares where the missles go. Revenge, also is probably the reason the WTC toppled. We did something to them. I don't know what, but it was definitely something... Men don't go kamikaze just because they are jealous of places with a high economy. Maybe they do, though... How did the Japanese get so many of those effective pilots into our battleships at Pearl Harbor (the movie sucked, by the way... Made it look like the Americans won that battle...)? What's irritating is that if only the main people who attack each other would decide to be reasonable, without greed for themselves, everything would work out fine. Mr. Heussein, you don't want us drilling for oil over there? Okay.. Can we pay a fee for it? No? Well... I guess my people will have to stop buying SUV's then.. After all, half of your country is living in huts and rags, and you could use the money for it a lot better than we could.. I try to believe in the good in people. If we left Iraq alone now, we'd get bombed. Why? Because we've pissed them off severely. I asked in the fifth grade, why there was a Gulf war.. The only answer I got, was "oil". Didn't sound very reasonable to me then. Doesn't sound very reasonable to me now. Then, I guess I should edjucate myself like Mr. Giggleman does, so that I don't rant on things that I only know little about.

I think that's the last I'm going to say on the matter.. Bitterness is a virtue. I shouldn't exploit it as much as I have in the last two (!) days. I still need to work on my music page. -15SEP02

Every year, there is a holiday for all of family and friends, to get together and enjoy each other's company. Everybody generously gives warm greetings and smiles, truly feeling happiness and appreciation for each other. A holiday that is commercialized, with songs, and with celebrities, and with demonstrations.

This holiday isn't Christmas... It is September 11th. I estimate within the next two years, that it will be a holiday where people don't have to go to work. That is only if it's not completely forgotten about, which is what I originally expected for this time, this year. On the radio, every talk show had guests there... Reminiscing over the memories of that day over a year ago. Talking about their adrenaline. Talking about their surprise. Talking about their shock. Talking about how others are reacting. And then a couple of patriotic songs. And then commercials. Repeat 80 times.

There is great concern for the troops over in Afghanistan... Those troops are probably the most bored troops ever stationed anywhere. If you look closely at the main picture, (you have to click on it) you will see a white satelite dish in the upper right of the background. This is the dish providing most of the communications support. Not the green one on the left... Go figure. If it were only the green one, I probably would not have been able to show it to you, because I got them from a friend, who happens to be in charge of that dish, over the internet...

What happened that day was a terrible tragedy. It should not have happened. But why spend all this time with Suzy, who lost her husband to the WTC, weeks before her baby was born? There are hundreds more women whose husbands have died within weeks of a child being born all over America. So what if it was a car accident, or a heart attack. Those women didn't get the $200,000 that Suzy (Suzy is a hypothetical name for a woman I heard interviewed) got. And Suzy wants more! Maybe she wants it to give to those other women that have become widows over the last year... I wont get my hopes up though..

Because such a big deal is being made out of Sep 11th... Things like this happen. The families of the victims involved in the Oklahoma City bombing now want money, because the families of the victims of the WTC got money. They want it so bad, there is a lawsuit in the works for the government. And because of that any future terrorist attacks with fatalities will wield the same money diminishing problem. So, what should have been done? There is nothing that can be called 'The Right Thing'.

People are blaming the construction of the WTC.. Saying it was cheaply made. They only spent 200 billion instead of 4 trillion. And what do you know? They didn't concede to the 174th (a) 1. Rule of Architecture:   Design building in preparation for 747 crashing. That's quite the load of crap.

I've even heard of people blaming Microsoft, because of the Flight Simulator game series they made for the PC. It apparently was so realistic that the terrorists probably used it to learn to fly. What the hell was Microsoft thinking? Didn't they know that the game could be used for evil deeds? Of course they did! They're Microsoft! There isn't an ounce of good in the whole corporation, most of us say on our Windows based computers.

And of course people blame the government. The poor, poor government gets blamed for everything. They could have stopped it. Yes. But so could have I. And you. And your neighbors. We just weren't at the right place, at the right time. Just blame me. I'll take the hit for it. I could have stopped it. But I failed. Sorry.

Which brings me to an even more crazy thought.. Boxcutters. A plane with 150 passengers crashed because they were scared of five boxcutters. One plane out of four, was the only one that had a passenger that had enough sense to say "Hey! They have boxcutters!". I think that's pathetic. EVERY PERSON ON ALL FOUR PLANES (except for the handicapped) should have agreed to overtake the terrorists. I'm thinking that on the other planes there was one or two people that actually wanted to do something.. But knew they couldn't do it alone, and nobody wanted to help. It all goes back to the group of people standing around watching someone choke to death, because they are scared to try and save that person's life.. ....Just let things take it's course... It will all be okay when it's done. I find that quality in most people and it scares me. What if my life is in one of their hands?

A small story I read in the newspaper, concerned a guy that escaped the smoke and fire at the Pentagon. He was the last one in line of about five crawling under the smoke, and he noticed that they were going the wrong way. He tried to get the first few people in front of him to turn around, but they wouldn't listen... They were following the guy in front. The guy in the back decided to go for himself, and turned around. He is the only one that is still alive. A quote from Star Wars... "Who is more foolish? The fool or the fool that follows him?". Perfect example.

Anyway, I think that's all I have to say for now. My hands are pretty tired. -13SEP02

I bought myself a gee-tar today.. An Ibanez Silver Cadet electric one... A guy I work with bought it four years ago, and hasn't touched it much since then, so he sold it, the amp, a tuner, and a bunch of guides to me for $350. It all seems to be very nice stuff, but I still hope I didn't let him rip me off... I can't find the model I have on the internet, not even on eBay to compare the price.... The brand makes guitars ranging from $150 - $3000... So I have no clue... It's got a whammy bar, and volume and tone knobs, and sounds good (?), so I s'pose it's worth it, considering I was willing to pay $300 for just a guitar to practice on, for the last year or so...

I also bought a floor lamp... Man it's wierd being able to see EVERYTHING at night time...

And I really have been lazy about updating this site.... I don't know what it is... The desire is gone.. It will be back, I'm sure of it... It's just a matter of when -07SEP02

HAPPY LABOR DAY EVERYBODY!!!   For some reason labor day is a holiday where you don't work. Everybody wonders why it's called Labor Day. I've never heard an explanation. Not even an invalid one. And on top of that, it seems that the only ones who are really off of work are the ones that work for the government.. Like me :).

I've made a few changes here and there... Nothing to get too excited about. Thursday I added a new game review (did anyone notice? Probably not...). I've changed the music pages a little... redid a couple of reviews.. Added more tracklists and lineups... That's really timetaking.

And thanks mom for making my hit counter skyrocket! I know you are anxious about the rug page and want to see it.. I'm working on it.. It just needs more pizazz before I put it up.. It's more difficult than I thought it would be to be creative with it :-/. -02SEP02

Okay, somebody here was my 3000th visitor, and failed to sign my guestbook!   Would this person please admit who they are via the only dynamic thing on this site... My guestbook. Thank you and have an absolutely super day!-27AUG02

Why does it seem that the more you pay for a steak, the less good it is? I went to the Lone Star Steakhouse today, and ordered the Cajun Ribeye. It was twenty bucks. Anything at a restaurant with 'Cajun' in the name of the food is usually very good. Now, I'm not being unappreciative at all, because I didn't pay for it. Josh did. He just got on the promotion list for E-7, by the way. Congrats to him! Anyway, this steak seemed to be crusty on the outside, and empty on the inside. It somehow managed to be dry and tender at the same time... It actually had the same consistency on the inside, as the Beefsteak MRE. Thankfully the taste wasn't like the beefsteak, but it was definitely lacking. Especially for twenty frickin dollars!

I'm coming down with some sort of wierd cold... It feels like there's a foam of bubbles in my throat, and I'm coughing up this really nasty tasting phlegm. I'll wait until I cough up blood before I go to the doctor, though.. 'Cause I'm hardcore like that.

WHCA has some sort of 'organizational' day tomorrow. This means most of us (and units from other posts near by are going to be there too) are going to go to a park, and eat barbecue and let everyone's kids annoy us. I'll bring my camera, and maybe I'll get a few shots of people I work with so I can put them on my hard drive where they can sit forever, waiting to be put on a web page somewhere...

Writing that date reminds me.. I bought milk when I got back... When was that? Eight days ago... My milk has already expired... What kind of crap is that? A week and a day? I guess I'll have to be one of those fruitcakes that move all the milk in front out of the way in order to get the ones in the back..-22AUG02

I'm back now-finally back now. Surprisingly I am still to date with all of my bills. I was a little worried about my electric bill, because I forgot to add the three cent stamp on the envelope when I mailed the check out... That and the workers were on strike the day that I left on leave (I live almost next door to the company). My mailbox was chock full, which is better than what it was when I left for a month in March, which was empty... That was scary. Having to pay all the bills over the phone...

I was just thinking, what if you get pulled over for something, and when the cop asks you for your liscense and registration, you pull out a beer and drink it right in front of him (with your car turned off and the keys in the passenger seat). You can't be charged with driving under the influence.. Maybe drinking and driving, depending on what state you're in, but can anything be done if that's not the case? I think that would be funny to try.

My computer is telling me my hard drive is bad, 'Press F1 to continue', and I do, and everything works fine. I restart, it tells me my hard drive is bad, 'Press F1 to continue', I do, and everything works fine.. Stupid computers.

Still working on my music page... Trying to spend at least half an hour a day on it... -19AUG02

Hey, look! I'm updating my page on my Mom's computer! Bet you didn't think I could or would do that.

I've done absolutely nothing productive since I've been in New Orleans. Well, I bought some clothes from Dillards.. But that's it. Especially if you consider I lost my shoes, so I think that cancels that out. I didn't even try to hook up with my old friends.. It's probably not my loss anyway. And even still I have no pictures of my home town. I did take one of a car parked cockeyed at the mall, and one of a cat nursing kittens on our doorstep, but other than that my camera hasn't seen much.

I've been playing an interesting game (on Mom's computer) called Planescape Torment. It's a three year old game, so it runs okay on it.. I wonder if I'll still play it when I get back.... Probably not.

My mom has made me with her blood, sweat, and tears a latch-hook rug. Some four hundred man-hours it took to make... If I do anything less than put it on my wall and add track-lights to accent it I will die in the most gruesome of ways... -14AUG02

Well, I'm going on leave tomorrow for a couple of weeks. If I get some free time, and I'm feeling creative during that time, I'll rewrite some of my reviews that I'm so disappointed in. As far as anything else, there will probably not be any new looks or pictures or anything of that nature. I'll try to get some pics of New Orleans while I can, so that I can put it on my 'Places I've Been' page. Also maybe even some new family pics. - 03AUG02

I just tried looking at my site in 800 x 600. Yeesh! That's some ugly stuff! Here is what my site should look like. If it doesn't look like what's in the picture, email me and I'll tell you how to set your computer up so that it will look like that..-31JUL02

I've been looking through some of my music reviews... I can do gooder. My last few are much better done than my first few. I'm thinking I will have to rewrite a few of them, before I submit my page to all the search engines and advertise it on metal forums (It can still be found through Google, if you put "Music Nobody Listens To" (with quotation marks) in the search box. Some of those reviews really don't do the bands justice.

I was pretty bored at work today, so I looked up the value of my car through Edmund's. It says that it is being sold at $11,300 on average in my area - a full one thousand dollars less than I payed for it four years ago. I don't know how I managed such a good deal when I was a PFC. I ended up writing a review for it on that site, but I had to cut it down by 2/3 because it didn't tell me I was at my 700 character limit like I thought it would, causing me to delete a bunch of bits and pieces until it would let me submit it, so the review doesn't make any sense at all anymore. Doing that made me want to work on my very neglected 'My Stuff' page... But that want went away as soon as I got home :( -30JUL02

No, your monitor isn't going on the fritz. That's a new background you see, and it looks really good on good monitors (like mine). In addition to that, I now have pictures for buttons in the page directory thing up there, and I re-organized my links down at the bottom of the page.

I've finally finished up what I originally wanted for my music page, and then some. I have even more time-taking ideas for it to be put in there in the future.

I'm well overdue for a game review... Once I figure out which game to do, then it should be a breeze after that.

I am now officially satisfied with my main page. All I can do from now on is very minor improvements/optimizations... Well, the Simpsons are about to come on, so I'll have to let you go now. -28JUL02

I haven't been working on this site much. It appears that whenever I go through a phase like this, Giggleman goes through the same, and vice versa. Well, I spent ten minutes doing what you see different... No more.

Josh is back from his two month trip. His site may have some changes between now and Sunday, but don't hold your breath, because I'm sure he's got better things to do between now and Sunday, when he leaves again.

As far as Paint Shop Pro... I don't think I'll ever use it to as little as 25% of it's capabilities. I mean.. when I made that Family link picture up there.. I saw that I could rotate the text on accident. Man... Just click the right little square and 'SHAZAAM!!' a million things could happen. And so I made it go diagonally. I hope you don't mind. Those are aliens in the background by the way. There are some good Dynamic HTML scripts in First Page, and I'm thinking about using them. DHTML is like a poor-man's JavaScript. Uses much less code, but doesn't look as good.

Little by little I'm coming up with ideas for this page... Ideas that actually seem worth working out.

My poor music review page... It's been so neglected over the past few months. Started out strong... But now, it's barely progressed in the last three months... Same with the Game Review page... I'm so lazy...-20JUL02

Why are SUV's called SUV's? I can see a Jeep Scrambler, or even a Nissan Pathfinder or Toyota 4Runner being an SUV... But how the hell is a Ford Excursion an SUV? Or a Cadillac Escalade, or a GMC Yukon. What mountains do you think it can climb? What mud pits can you see it diving through? Hell, every time I see one going over speed bumps they always come to a complete stop and creep forward... Like it might break down. Yes, I know it's a Ford, but it should be able to take a little bit of a licking at least... Or maybe they are called sport utility because of the moms and dads that are coaches for kids sports teams like to pick and drop off their star players. But then a mini-van is now a sport utility vehicle. And so is a station wagon. Or a Civic hatchback. So why are these monstrosities called SUV's?.... Anybody? Bueller? Bueller?

Well, what do you know... Another day has passed and I still haven't changed any pages. Except for my music page... I have given a preview of what's to be a LOT of work, by reviewing White Zombie's first album.. It took me half an hour just to do that one CD. That's rediculous, but nothing's too good for my fans!!!

Giggleman is trying to make his site look like mine, maybe he's changed it by the time you check it out.

I tried making text-pictures for the buttons on my table up there, but they wouldn't come out the way I wanted them to, so I nixed it. I'll try again later... :P -15JUL02

Well, the two pages I was working on are completely gone due to the erasing of the hard drive. So that's what I've been doing most of the last two hours... Although most of that consists of me sitting there thinking of things to type on to it. Hopefully by Sunday night one will be ready for viewing. -13JUL02

This has been one heck of a week so far. Monday, Delta Airlines lost my $300 suit + $200 worth of accessories (ties, shirts). But it was okay because I got to stay home instead of working Teusday, because I had to wait for them to deliver it. Wednesday the Seargent Major of the Army came to visit WHCA. I got to shake his hand. Basically he was just making face time with us, telling stories and making jokes. He said a few things going on concerning the Army, but it was nothing most of us didn't already know. Later that day I came home to my computer, tried to start it up and it ran Scandisk and told me that a file was corrupted and the registry needed to be replaced with an older saved version. After I hit enter I couldn't get Windows to work until I formatted the drive and installed the famed (bought two months ago) WindowsXP. I'm missing a lot of stuff that wasn't backed up properly on disc (Adaptec Direct CD... Don't get it.), but that's okay because I can now play BLADE OF DARKNESS!!!! This morning I forgot my wallet. The first time I've done that in years. And when I got to work, I took my keys out to take tape off of some boxes, and realized three hours later that they weren't in my pocket anymore. I only freaked out for about ten minutes (I was scared I laid them on a broken down box and it got thrown away.) until I found them. So, the moral of the story is, no matter what happens it can always be fixed. And if it can't, then there are other things in life.

Like Hamburger Helper's Cheesy Hashbrowns. Damn this stuff is good.

And The Jenny Jones Show. What an amazing piece of American entertainment.

Hutch has finally updated his site. It sure took him long enough. Nearly six months. Or is it over six months? Who cares? Check it out. -11JUN02

...Sigh... I've lost everything.

Somehow a virus managed to work it's way into my computer, forcing me to format (i.e. ERASE) my hard drive. All my emails are gone. So if you would be so kind as to email me to make it easier to add you to my guestbook, that would be swell. In addition to that, there were a lot of pictures that I had yet to save on disk gone. Also a LOT of cool software that I used often... But thankfully I have the downloads saved on my other hard drive, so I don't have to search for them so much. Also ALL of my favorites are gone... I am very tired. Earthlink's software doesn't detect my network card, so I can't connect through them, but rather WindowsXP's internal internet connection software. Wierd... -10JUL02

Back in the day, when I was in 514th, I went to the field a lot. A very lot. There were periods of weeks straight where all I would do is sit inside the shelter, listening to the whine of the HPA, sleep, read, and eat. And excrete, too. Somehow during those periods of time, I wasn't nearly as bored as I have been in the last week. I don't understand it. Over the last week I've had cable TV. I had a jacuzzi in my back yard. I had stores to go to. Things were expensive of course, but it was worth it just to have something to do. I've been seriously considering getting a laptop. This way, since I'm still paying for Juno, it can be put to a little more use than a junk email account. But alas, laptops cost money. I'm not the type to get barely enough for what I need.... So I'm looking at roughly sixteen hundred dollars to get something I wont be disappointed in. Therefore, I wont have one for a while. Probably when my car is paid off, sometime in December if things work the way they have been. Unless I'm slated to go back to Wyoming for more than a week before then... Then I will have to settle for something, even if it's just to connect to the internet or work on this webpage. Maybe I should look on eBay for something in the $200 range :).

I took a few pictures while there, none worth posting on this page though.. I have a small idea for one of the videos I made, but don't expect to see that until a few days have passed. I bought Paintshop Pro 7 just before I left, so that I could look at and study the (ten pound) book that came with it... Unfortunately it isn't as informative as I had hoped. I'll be playing with it over the next few days... I may even use it to give this whole site a make-over. I kind of like the simple look.... Decisions decisions. So many worries...

I haven't bought but one new CD in the last five months. I'm thinking about adding TONS of information to my music page, such as band line-up, names of songs, etc. I've developed an interesting idea concerning mp3's, but I should find out if it's legal first.

I wish I had more game reviews up. Unfortunately, all the games I've planned on reviewing aren't as revolutionary as I thought they were when I first started them... Such as Anacronox. I put over 50 hours into that game, taking hundreds of screenshots fully planning on reviewing it, only to find out that there was a LOT to the game I didn't like. Loading times, pointless pain-in-the-ass side quests, bad control, bad interface, etc. I'm thinking about re-starting Warzone 2100 so I can take pictures and review it. I've had the game for nearly two years now (four years if you count that I've had it on my Playstation for that long). Also The Wheel of Time has been calling me periodically. I've uninstalled that one months ago.

I really need to clean up and organize my place. There are stacks of papers on the floor everywhere... Boxes that haven't been touched since I first opened them, some untouched since I moved in here. I guess I'll start on that. Catch you on the flip-side. -09JUL02

Here I am again, on a Friday night by myself with no plans of what to do. I got Counter-Strike with my video card (five months ago), and I've now installed it. A friend at work plays it occasionally and every time I try to talk to him about Return to Castle Wolfenstein, he downplays it and makes boasts about how great Counter-Strike is. That's all I'm doing tonight. Play Counter-Strike and suck at it. Sound like fun? I bet it does.

I'm starting to get my old driving tactics back. I was scared to use them when I first got here, because there are so many cars.... But now that I'm used to how people drive I'm learning how to 'go around' them (i.e. weaving in and out). What makes it even worse is that I wont exceed the speed limit and I'll still pass them up like their standing still. Cell phone usage in the car is rampant here.

I've been trying to write more game reviews, but the motivation goes away once I realize how little I really liked the game.   I'm also trying to write a Star Wars II movie review for Giggleman. It should be ready before Sunday morning... Plus 'x' number of days/hours before it's uploaded to his site.

I leave on another trip Monday (and maybe even Sunday... Communications are all jacked up here) for a week or so. You have my permission to avoid this site between those days. You will not be scolded. -27JUN02

Whew! Just got back from Columbia, SC; Dallas, TX; Dayton, OH; Detroit, MI; Beaver Creek, CO; and Portland, OR.

Columbia.... Passed through there a hundred times to get to other places... Not much worth noting.

Dallas.... I could tell from the airplane before we landed that it is a bad-ass little town. Once there, it was quite obvious I was right.

Dayton was probably the most patriotic city I've yet to visit. We passed by a day care where all the kids and teachers were out on the lawn waving American flags at us. People from all over came out of their houses, just to wave.

Detroit was... well... Detroit. Big buildings. Dirty air. Horrible interstate system (seems to be made to waste gas). I stayed in a parking garage sitting in a mini-van most of the four hours I was there.

Beaver Creek was by far the most beautiful town I'd visited. And I even got to stay there for two nights. I had plenty of opportunity to take pictures... But unfortunately I left my camera on the C-130 that I had arrived on (I forgot it when I took it out to get my CD player, which proved useless due to the extreme loudness of the plane.) and couldn't. I got to see Gerald Ford too.

And finally, Portland... This was my second time there, so I felt somewhat comfortable. Until I was warned of the possibility of an egg injected with hydrochloric acid being thrown at me from the loads of protesters that somehow knew of the VP's visit WELL in advance.

Well, that does it. That's why I haven't been here. I looked at my statistics just now. It tells me: Yesterdays Hit Count: 0. *sigh* Kind of demotivates the webmaster... -24JUN02

I just came back from Dallas, TX. I didn't take any pictures, though. I was only there for twelve hours.

My computer is awesome. It's not as unbelievable as I thought it would be, but it's still much better than what it was.

I just bought a new phone. It's a Panasonic whazawhacha. A hundred and fifty bucks. And it is very nice. It has more features than I felt like reading about. Ummm.... Not much more to say... Haven't worked on any of the site... Nor will I because my girlfriend is coming up to see me for a couple of days... -16JUN02

Well, I finally upgraded my computer. So far it has a LOT of quirky errors here and there. At least I can get on the internet. I've tried starting up a couple of games, they either lock up on load, or come up with errors of missing DLL files. Hopefully I'll just have to reinstall them...

UPDATE... Well as it turns out, re-installing Windows 98 deletes DirectX, which is very required to play 3D type games... Now that I've done that (as well as installed the motherboard drivers off the CD), I have yet to find a problem with anything I do. No errors. No funky performance. None of that crazy stuff... It's just like my old computer, only faster! And more beeps. Even my DSL has gone up by 80k. It's still a lowly 260k, as compared to the 1544k I thought I would get, but what can I do about it?-13JUN02

For the observant of you, you have noticed that I have an 'About this site' section down there at the bottom of this page. It's something that I meant to do when I first started this thing... But never got around to it (or a round tuit, as Mr. Bobby used to say).

I've also put some more sunset pictures up. I think these next four are actually better than what I already have there.. I still need to take more pics to make it look like an impressive collection. It's hard to take pictures everywhere you go when you don't like feeling like a dork...

I've also noticed my hit counter has gone from about 25 hits a day to 6 or 7... Apparently you, my loyal fans, are losing interest.. :(. I don't blame you much.. I haven't been working on it hardly.. and when I do it's not what most of you want to see...

I'm beginning to get my creation fever back, thanks to more and more people I work with are making their own sites, and it actually gives me something to talk about, which in turn gives me something to think about. Which is good because I don't think often. -10JUN02

I did something unusual today. I was productive. I got a haircut. I put gas in my car. I shined my Sketchers. I tied my tie. I washed clothes. I made soup. Well, I didn't make it... But I poured it out of a can, put some rice in it, chopped up a couple of carrots, and a tomato and threw it in a pot. And now I'm writing something on my website.

But that's not all. The most astounding thing I did was, on the way home... In the middle of 5:45 Washington D.C. traffic, I decided I was going to allow 50+ feet between my front bumper and the person in front of me, so as to allow anyone that wanted to change lanes, change lanes. I actually slowed down to let a taxi cab in (from 10 MPH to 5MPH), I waved him on and he came over. And further down the road when I was at a dead stop again, he honked and waved as he passed me on the left. I felt better. I looked in my rearview mirror and saw the angry raged driver behind me, jerking his car left and right trying to get around me... But I'm the only one that leaves enough distance for that sort of thing. I couldn't help but laugh. I realized something before all that. I could let a hundred cars in front of me, and it would only make my trek one minute longer. -07JUN02

Today is my girlfriend's birthday. Happy Birthday girlfriend!

I haven't been able to tell you that my 'Places I've been' page is updated, because Angelfire had for some reason decided to not load up, thereby preventing me from entering the 'Web Shell' to update my page... I'd use the favorites file, and it would start loading up the mainpage, and then I got nothing after the blue background... Server problems I guess.

A coworker of mine, Josh has caught website fever and is creating his own page. So far it's about his family and such, but expect to see an extra link down there at the bottom in the next couple of weeks.

Meanwhile Giggleman has come up with an interesting idea, that by my observations will be VERY hard to implement.. concerning controlling fighting robots over the internet, including his webcam in there somewhere.. I like the idea, but... I give him all the luck in the world to figure out how to make it work right.

Well, anyway I've been doing a whole lot of nothing lately. Playing games on the computer. Watching the occasional Simpsons. Working. Eating. Sleeping. ...I need to get out more. -05JUN02

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOMMY!!! Everyone be sure to E-mail her and say Happy Birthday.

Hello. I'm back now.I actually managed to take some pictures that came out good. They'll be up within a few days. Hopefully.

If they took Myrtle Beach, shrunk it, put it in the mountains, and quadrupled the prices you would have Jackson Hole. I have more to say about it.... I just backspaced a whole paragraph. I'll save it for the 'Places I've been' page.

I just spent a half hour straight cleaning up my apartment. It looks the same somehow... I may need to take my Christmas tree down. Other than that everything is just the way I left it. Good or bad, I can't tell. I still have music reviews to do don't I? Hmmm... Procrastination at it's best. I think I'll work on the Jackson Hole spread first. It's much simpler :) .-30MAY02

Well, I'm going off on a trip for a week or so tomorrow. Going to Jackson Hole, Wyoming... wherever that is. Yeah, my NCO (Non Commisioned Officer - the person in charge of me) wants me to meet him at his house. The plane takes off from Dulles Air Port at 0730, but we leave his house at 3:45! So we'll be at the airport around 4:20. A good solid three hours early. That's the ole Army mentality for you. Hurry up and wait... Reminds me of the jumping out of airplanes I did back at Fort Bragg. We never actually jumped out of them until 2230, but we were lined up to go to the Air Force base (about 3 minutes away) at 1130.

Well, anyways I'll take pictures of whatever I can take pictures of. Shouldn't be much, but you never know.

Oh, yeah! I'm sure you're curious why I've had that Handspun banner at the bottom for the last few months. An internet buddy, as well as Vice Leader of RzR, my Castle Wolfenstein clan, as well of creator of Conquest, a special map for Blade of Darkness, named Sir Random (an anagram of his real name, smart people could figure it out) also has an internet website design business type thing. I thought his banner looked cool and wanted it on my site. So that's really the only reason it's there. Because it's fun to drag your mouse over and watch the letters chase it around. -21MAY02

Would my 2000th visitor please sign my guestbook? If you do, I might consider sending you money!
Yeah, I got an envelope in the mail. In the upper left corner it said 'Bank of America'. I felt around the outside of it, and it felt like there was a credit card in there. I got a little excited, thinking they have finally realized their stupid ways and have sent me a government credit card. I opened it up, and it was just an offer for a regular one :(.
It's kind of funny because they are offering me the best interest rate/benefits of any offer I've ever gotten. I guess me ordering my old statements from them got me on their mailing list (lucky me). Needless to say it's sitting in the bottom of my trash can right now.
I managed to get another game review up, for those of you that care. -14MAY02

My girlfriend once said to me, something to the effect of me spending a lot of money on stuff that isn't worth it. I got mad at first, thinking, it is worth it!! But somehow in my mind, I was looking at what it could be, instead of what it is. Such as my DSL service. I thought I was going to get 1.5 Mbps, but instead am getting 384k (roughly 1/8 of what was expected). Such as my Radeon 8500, a $200 video card. It's a great piece of hardware, but it doesn't run certain games, and some have very corrupted graphics. Such as this new motherboard. This motherboard has TONS of features and optimizations that make it worth every penny. But what are those features and optimizations worth, if the thing wont work in the first place?
I posted this on forums. I copied it, and pasted it here. With some minor editing of course...

I get the board, I hook it up, I do everything right. I turn it on, and the fans come on, and come off. Except the CPU fan (later I find out that happens when the COP kicks in). I change the jumpers around, the VID settings, the RAID settings, on-board audio, the JP1 and 2, etc. And still... same result.
So I find forums at AMDMB. From there I figure out that the speaker has to be set on 'Buzzer' and not 'Backplane' to work. So I hook that up. "System Fail: CPU Test" in an annoying female voice that makes me want to break glass. I ask for help. There's not much they can do.
So I call up Asus technical support. I talked to some lady. She was very nice. Basically she said to reset the CMOS after each VID change. Okay, cool! That's something I didn't know. So after work, I go home and try it. AND BY GOLLY I SEE BIOS!!!!!!

So I turn my computer back off, in order to plug in the essentials such as Hard drives, and CD ROM drives. And guess what happens when I turn it back on! "System Fail: CPU Test".
AAAAAARRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!
And from there I call up Asus again, fully willing to spend fifty dollars in long distance, as long as I can get this thing working. As I'm on hold, I am forced to listen to psuedo-commercails for Asus, telling me all of the awards they have won, and how great their products are. I finally get somebody, and ou know what they tell me? Bad RAM. I know that crappy generic RAM is bad in general, and trust me if the RAM I got is crappy, I didn't know about it when I bought it. The cocky guy said basically "The board is too good for the RAM you have. The cheap, crappy RAM can't handle the amazing goodness of this board.". Never mind that I went to the computer store, and asked for the best RAM they had, and payed in the neighborhood of $80 for the 256 chip. I know that's a ripoff, but it was still somehow cheap for this area. They told me it was Micron. It doesn't say Micron anywhere on it. All it says is Samsung, and Made in USA.
They also mentioned my BIOS chip, which happened to be 1005.
After hanging up with him, I try to power up again without the drives installed, just so I might see that award winning BIOS one last time before I go get a refund, along with 'Better' RAM.

And guess what happens....
NOTHING... ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.
The green light comes on, letting me know the power supply is supplying power, but when I press the little power switch.... No effect.
I call up technical support again. They say to try it out of the box. And that my power supply may have died.
So I do it.
Nothing.
And I test my power supply by putting my old stuff in (for a third time) and turning it on. Did it work? Well, you see me here don't you?
So I called them again.

Now they say that my CPU must be fried..... WHAT?!!?? I say as calm as possible. "Yes sir, that's what it sounds like you did". And I said something to the effect of " I can't imagine that one of your motherboards would fry my CPU". And then he implied that I was overclocking it, or that I didn't have the fan on properly.
PURE CRAP.
I am now permanantly anti-Asus. I don't care how good of a record they have. They suck dirty donkey schlong in my eyes, and I'm telling everybody I know about this costly experience.

I understand most of you don't understand what exactly I'm saying up there, with all that technical jibberish, but I am sure you get my gist. -09MAY02

Hello, once again. It's just me, warning everybody that I may blow myself up trying to upgrade my computer. So if you don't see an update within the next couple of weeks, it's probably because I'm either dead, or I can't get the bugs worked out after installing all the new crap that I have (Motherboard/processor; Sound card; and mainly Windows XP). -07MAY02

Well, for what it's worth I've re-written my Blade of Darkness game review. It's still not up to par with what I really want, but in due time (or not at all) I'll have it right. It looks like you all are just going to have to wait at least another week for my final music page. I don't know how much I'll do tommorow, but I can tell you how much I've done today... (nothing).

I bought three new tires for my car... Four hundred dollars. When did they get so expensive? It was $108 per tire... plus 30 dollars road hazard insurance, and sales tax... Maybe now I can avoid big BMW's in the rain a little easier.

I think somebody is sitting at my main page, refreshing it. My hit counter has gone up 30 in the last hour....

It appears that Giggleman is having the same problems with updating his homepage that I am. Pretty cool that I have someone else to observe. Thinking about it... Without Giggleman constantly updating his site, I may have stopped months ago.. I think this sort of thing is contagious when there is a ring of people you know making homepages. I'm not quite sure though. By the way, in speaking of the guy... If you look at his site regularly, feel free to join in his discussion web and give him input. I suggest insulting him, but you don't have to if you don't want. -04MAR02

It's been a while since I've updated anything worth looking at (for my regular customers), I realize. I wish there were a way to keep my motivation up for this page. A friend that I work with, Benjamin has started making his own webpage. He's already largely surpassed my page as far as "Wow! Look at that! Neat-o" things go. You can find a link to it at the bottom of this page.

There is a part of Washington D.C. that I always get cut off at. I am planning on buying some sticky velcro and hooking up my digital camera to my dashboard, so I can make movies of it, so that you can enjoy my drive to work as I do. I may even make a map of it and add it to my traffic rant. Who knows? If that happens you'll see a cool yellow text saying 'Updated' next to the link. I wonder how many of you regular visitors have actually read that traffic rant. Hmmm... My heart says not enough, my mind says everybody. I don't know which to follow.

I am hoping to have my final music page up by the end of Sunday. That whole section is something that started up being fun, now feels like a chore. I MUST finish it. There are too many things I've started and have yet to finish. -03MAY02

Okay, you asked for it and now you got it. The traffic rant has been updated!!! -one hour later

Whew.... Two weeks later and I have a third music page up. One more to go...

I'm thinking about making a rant about Government credit card services. It's not till now, while trying to get one, that I find out how NOT LENIENT Bank of America is on delinquincies. I mean... it's the Army. Paperwork is extremely slow. Now I can't get one thanks to 514th putting me in the field instead of giving me time to fill out the paperwork. And I don't think WHCA will have much to do with me if they can't work something out for me. So, basically, I can be potentially shipped to another unit because of that, and I don't like it one bit.

I ordered some new computer parts (mainboard, processor, good cooling fan).

My mom and my sister just left Wednesday morning. They were here since that Saturday morning. With them came a bunch of kitchen accessories from Mr. Bobby, plus a few Hubig pies (which are very good, and can only be gotten in the New Orleans area). 26APR02

I adjusted the hit counter from 1725 to 1700, due to my obsession on seeing how much traffic I've been getting, as well as How much I've been checking my guestbook for people I don't know.... -21APR02

I added a PLDC page. Enjoy. -14APR02

Hey, hey! Guess what? I'm back! Fort Knox isn't a bad little post. There were a lot of computer games in the PX. PLDC was okay. I wish they spent more time learning me something, rather than wasting my time. Oh well. So what if hundreds of thousands of taxpayers money is spent on such a thing every month. At least I learned how to stand at parade rest in the chow line. The best part of the course was simply the 'getting to know' the people you work with part. And I got a free copy of FM 22-5. I am in the process of making a PLDC page. It's not going to blow your head off, but I've already put a lot of work into the thing. It took me a half of an hour just to upload all the pictures and movies I took to my computer from my camera.

My girlfriend left me yesterday. She drove all the way up from Georgia just to see me for a day and a half. And then she had to work at 9:30 the next morning, and didnt get back until 6:00 this morning.

My car is badly damaged thanks to a massive hail storm we had while in Knox. There's about 20 noticable dents on the hood, and around ten on the roof. Hail is no longer my favorite form of precipitation.

If PLDC taught me nothing, at least it instilled a bit of neatness in me. I've been cleaning up my apartment all day long. It actually looks livable now. I wonder how long this will last. Till next time.... - 13APR02

I realize I haven't updated in a while. Well, don't expect me to anytime soon because I leave soon for PLDC. As a matter of fact, unless something really good or really bad happens, this is the last update you'll see until that happens. It seems my two web buddies (Hutch and Giggleman)have the same non-updating syndrome that I have. I don't know what it is. I haven't been busy. At least not too busy. There's been plenty of times I've been bored. Whatever motivated me before, is no longer there. I wish I knew why.....

I took a PT test yesterday morning. It was FREEZING. I barely passed my run. I had to finish in 16:36, and I finished in 16:30. My second worst running score since I've been in the Army. WHCA is definitely not good for my health. In speaking of that, a speeding ticket that the records weren't found from Mississippi, finally reared it's ugly head back at me. They accused me of not responding to it, when I actually payed it, and they sent it back to me. So, now I feel that I have the worst luck as far as speeding tickets go. I've only gotten one warning, and that was when I wasn't even speeding. So how many tickets do I have? 5. Yep. FIVE. WHCA doesn't like that aspect of me. As a matter of fact, there's paperwork in the works trying to bar me from extending past my four year mark there (Bah!). I don't know how close I am to losing my liscense, but I sure don't want to find out. I'm sure they'll call me if I shouldn't be driving. -06MAR02

I put up a new page. It's not too great, but it's new. Intoduces what I learned about background images mostly. -24FEB02

I saw the news for about five minutes in the chow hall today. It was CNN making a big deal about racism. As a matter of fact, they were promoting it. Promoting it? - you ask. Yes. You see, they were making a big deal about the first African-American to win a gold medal in the Winter Olympics. Now, I have to wonder... Why is someone who is only half American representing the United States in the Winter Olyimpics? Shouldn't we share it with Africa? Oh, that's not a country....I guess the U.S. can keep half of it, and the other half can be split up between all it's countries. But that wouldn't be fair! If they did that, then wouldn't all the white..Er.. European-Americans have to split up their gold medals as well? I guess so. I suppose that the only TRUE Americans are INDIANS. Hmmm... Maybe she wasn't half African. Maybe she was black. Either way, why should it be such a big deal that she won? She's overcome the same obstacles all the other winners did in years past. What makes her so damn special? Because she's BLACK? It doesn't make sense to me. I asked somebody today.. 'When you make a comment towards a specific race, isn't it racism?' He said 'Yes'. 'Even if it's a positive comment?' And he said 'Yep.. but the word racism has a negative connotation to it'. I agree with that... but I wonder how racism will ever be gone with stuff like this constantly being thrown in people's ignorant faces.

I have another game review up by the way.

I was looking at my promotion point worksheet today. Mainly because my new NCOs found out how little points I have. I see that my former boss whom I entrusted to adding my points up cut me short by about 15% by not including Airborne School, 8 weeks of Switch and Triband training, and my Good Conduct Medal. Even still... the bullfeces of that unit is still between the cracks of my shoes. - 20FEB02

Ahhh.... it's good to be off on Monday. What's the holiday again? Who knows... I've been working on two pages, ones that I've been meaning to put up for a while. I would put up my tribute to people who can't park, but I don't have enough pictures. Is 8 enough? I don't think so. I'm also working on another game review...for those that care. I finally got my first complete stranger entry in my guestbook. That motivates me to do more on my music page. I'm thinking about cutting up the songs and making the part with those lyrics available for download. That would be a lot of work for people that would never use it though.

I've added a second hard drive to my computer...now I can have mp3s again! And there are many games that I've been unable to play because of the lack of drivespace. Mardi Gras has come and went. That makes five consecutive years I've missed out on it. Well, that's all I have to say for now. I'll let you know when there's an update to the site. - 18FEB02 (I remembered to put it this time!)

Okay, here I officially announce that my new music page is up (and updated this morning), though unfinished. I've got 2 sets left...I wont work on them for a while...considering it takes about 6 hours to do 15 albums. I've been coming up with things to add to my 'Me' page...like 'Profound thoughts that go through my head on a daily basis'..and will include things like "Nothing makes me hungrier than seeing a container full of left over macaroni and cheese."
I am now scheduled for PLDC (finally). I'll be leaving March 11, and wont come back until April 10th. If I'm lucky.
I've been playing a lot of games lately...I just beat Gothic. It's logged me in as playing for over 50 hours. That's not including the times I've had to restart after dying.

There's two new pictures in the family link...I'm still busting my patootie on the new music page(s). It's going to take a lot longer than I thought...I'm coming up with ideas that will take a long time to implement...I don't think I'll use them though.

Thanks, Mom for the king cake....I got it Thursday and forgot to bring it to work Friday...Oh well..more for me to eat :).

Ahhh...it's 10:00 on a Sunday night. I just thought I'd say hi to everybody that checks my page regularly. I've been working for the last 4 hours completely revamping my music page. The new version will be a little easier to navigate, and look at. I don't know when I'll put it on line. If I'll wait until it's mostly finished or if I think it looks good enough to put up regardless of how much there is left to do. Either way, I'm working on it. I still have about 12 hours left on it to get it up to snuff.

I made chicken for the first time last night. That stuff is pretty good. I steamed the stuff in a pot with some vegetables and butter. Moist and delicious. Mmmmm-mmmmm.

Sorry Josh...I can't draw up that intersection PERIOD. It's just too jacked up.
I've added another game review finally. Requiem. I feel like doing all kinds of stuff for the page...but I don't know what to do. Giggleman desparately needs to update his page. I need new ideas. 26JAN02

Well...the only change I made today is what you see above. The creative bug hasn't bitten me in a long time. Hopefully it will sometime tonight or tomorrow....22JAN02

My friends are finally ready for viewing. Go to the Javascript rolly-doley thing up there to get to it. I haven't done a 'hands on' test yet...but I'm sure it'll work okay.

I downloaded Netscape 6.2. It has it's own HTML editor. Comparable to using Microsoft Word as a webpage maker. I haven't played around with it much, though. And you know what else? Don't you hate text that makes you scroll right to read it? Well, Netscape seems to automatically word wrap it. There's all kinds of features. It even records all my favorites from Internet Explorer. This thing is pretty good. But I'll stop talking about it now. I'm sounding like a commercial.

I see my internet friend Hutch learned how to use frames. Congratulations.

I learned how to do tool tips. I think. I have yet to try it, though. I guess that's what I'm here for. :)17JAN02

It's Friday night. I'm itching to play Return to Castle Wolfenstien (multiplayer), but I did something productive instead. I made the 'Places' page. There's a link to it above. It took me about 2 hours (includes deciding which photos to use,making thumbnails, thinking up captions. and working out bugs) to ready it. 11JAN02

I just came back from my first trip with WHCA. I now know a little bit more about what my purpose is, but not enough to talk about it. Besides, I'd have to kill you if I did. I rode in a military plane to Ontario, California, where the first of two teams unloaded. There's a LOT of equipment to support communications out anywhere...two teams took up 75% of the C-5 we rode in (and that's a huge plane). From there we went to Portland, Oregon where the President was supposed to give a speech or two and advertise his great new economic plan to the state with the highest unemployment rate in the country. We were there a full week in advance and it rained the whole time. I got to go to the top of the airport control tower (to install a phone), and then climb the stairs all the way down 24 floors because our guide forgot her key on the first floor.

In addition to that we stayed in a four star hotel (where the basket of goodies are from)...right smack in downtown Portland. The place was best described (not by me..but I've modified the words) as a brass-plated Best Western. Away from the hotel...across a bridge is an area chock full of strip clubs. Some guy at Starbucks told me that that's what Portland is famous for.
There's no sales tax there. Which is of course great.

Portland had their own version of the ball drop. I saw that. It wasn't spectacular at all. They dropped it three seconds too early and only a couple of firecrackers went off. But everybody was just as happy and excited as if they were in Times Square. Another thing....There are tons of coffee shops. Namely Starbucks. There is at least one coffe shop on every block, about 75% of which have Starbucks written on them somewhere. After being there a week, Mr. Bush came and was gone inside of two hours. I got to see Air Force One land and take off...And I got to see how fast everybody can move when it's time to go home.

Well, that's my story. I know I jumped around a lot...I actually had all this written down in a notebook on the way back. I scanned it and tried putting it up on the main page, but it wouldn't show up for some reason. In the meantime I now have DSL...supposed to be 1.5 Megs/sec, but ends up being about 180k (I tested it at MSN). Eventually I'll make a new HTML file to link to the little box up there...where it says "Pictures of the places I've been". It will have pics of Ft. Bragg, Portland, and Washington D.C. I need to take more pictures when I go back home (New Orleans) so I can put them on there too.

And one last thing...did you notice my missing banner ad? Well, thanks to my sister Nina (she sent me money) I now have a site that I pay for. 5 bucks a month. 08JAN02

I have two new pages up. The Me page and my Apartment page. I tried out a little bit o' javascript and it works swell. Neither page is finished...I just wanted to show you that I am still progressing.

??DEC01

You see the changes on the main page...My rants...The main picture...and the links at the bottom. I am working on a "Me" directory. It's looking like it's going to take about 12 hours in total...considering the way I want everything set up....and then if everything works. In it will be My Family, My Apartment, My rants, My Friends, etc, etc. Considering my nature...different bits of info will be spread out over all the pages...so of course you'll have to read them all to know everything. What? You thought you could just read only what you wanted? Trust me, you'll want to read ALL of it. And click on ALL the pictures. (I stare intently into your eyes. You start seeing swirlies...then you go to Giggleman's site to get the full effect). ??DEC01 Whew! Did the AvP gold edition review, and I am spent. Two hours all in all. For one review on a game hardly anyone plays anymore. I'm going to add some links at the bottom of the page. One to Giggleman's website. He has some kind of thing going with pipe cleaners. You might want to check it out. Another to a homepage that I find to be hilarious. I met the guy in the Blade of Darkness forums that are now kaput..
My counter's been skyrocketing (nearly 5 hits a day). There's a few entries in the guestbook, I see. Thanks to all that wrote something.

And Hughes, why did you stop playing Star Kingdoms? Your site disappeared just after I created a new account. You need to send me your E-mail address and tell everybody in TacSat to get in touch with me. And tell them to sign my DAMN GUESTBOOK. And the Counterstrike review request is a little premature. I just got the game (it came with my video card), and my DSL modem is a day late in getting here. 18DEC01 .

Okay..I've made a guestbook picture. I used MS Paint. It took me 5 minutes, and then I had to cut it, and do that smoky thing around it's edges with Adobe Photo Deluxe. I could make it look cooler, but I wont. I like it just the way it is. For now at least.
On a side note I got a new video card. The Radeon 8500. Pretty good stuff. Had to go the eBay way, though...it was out of stock directly from ATI and wherever else it was supposed to be sold at. And I waited about two weeks before I finally broke down and ordered it from eBay. The thing is straight up awesome (with the newest drivers..and ONLY with the newest drivers). The bad thing is I can't run Blade of Darkness anymore. Keeps performing illegal operations :(.

Hey..I learned FRAMES!!!! Check out the game reviews page to see it. Eventually there will actually be reviews there :P. This stuff is getting less and less intimidating. Soon I will be a HTML guru. just you wait. I'm still going to be working on it through the night, so keep checking back if you're really bored. I also lowered my counter count by 50..seeing as how I've been constantly refreshing this page, seeing my beautiful work come together. 16DEC01

Updated again. Still more to go, though....3 hours later. Alright, I finally did my family link decently. I plan on re-doing my whole music page too, so of course I wont be updating that too much in the near future. My Birthday passed a couple of days ago. (Dec 12th) Happy Birthday!! Thanks!!! I got loads of E-mails...and forwards from my uncle Zachary since. No money though. Maybe I should open up a PayPal account before Christmas.

I've uploaded a buttload of pics...3 megs worth, all in medium quality jpeg. It's gonna be a while before you can see them though. :( Here's a sample, though.

I'm back. Good to see you, as you are to see me. I know it's been a while. I can see how anxious you are to see me back by looking at my counter. Nearly 50 times this page has been looked at since I've been gone. And only half of that was from me!

I had a pretty nice trip. Not a very exciting one, but very nice all the same. You can read about it HERE.

I am now in Washington D.C., enjoying the sound of Spanish in both ears everywhere I go and have done plenty of sightseeing of brakelights. The traffic system here is HORRIBLE. I thought the engineers in New Orleans were pretty brainless (and they were), but the design of this interstate had to of taken NEGATIVE brainpower. I'll rant about that later.

WHCA is a pretty neat little unit. It's half Army and the other half is Air Force, Navy, and Marines. It's the most civilian-type job I'll ever have for as long as I'm in the Army. We wear uniforms just once a week. PT is on our own. No motor pool. No unnessecary cleaning and 'beautifying'. No stupid tasks meant to keep you busy. I work in a maintenance shop, that mostly we troubleshoot Satcom equipment and actually loan it to people who have no idea how to use it. The Wideband Satcom stuff is what we actually use and go on trips with. Sometimes we use the smaller stuff too. But only if it's to an advantage.

I have my own apartment. It's pretty nice, compared to what I'm used to. Especially considering that it's the cheapest I could find in a 20 mile radius from where I work, and is not a crack house. Buying furniture sucks, seeing as how furniture is expensive and i don't make very much money. Plus I have to pay for delivery (I have a frigging Prelude...couldn't even fit a boxed, unassembled entertainment center in it, theres only 4 ft of room across the back seat.), and that's attributed to at least 120 of my dollars. All this money I've been spending make my $300 camera seem like a Christmas present. My bank account went from $5600 to $1400 in less than two months. And that's WITH getting paid.

Well, at least I have my own place...But is it worth it? HELL YES!!!! Will I be able to keep living like this? Absolutely not! I have bought about 10 dollars worth of macaroni and cheese and Kool-Aid. That's about a month's supply.
I have pictures of a lot of stuff......I forgot about those..I'll have to post them tomorrow...Need to make thumbnails and stuff...not hard, just time taking. Need to sort through them too....

Once again it's a Saturday night. And I'm here...alone...Well, my roomate is playing Counterstrike, so I'm 'virtually' alone. I think I'm biting off more than I can chew too fast with these pages. Not one single page is finished. But I guess none ever is with any site. There's a few that I've started on, trying to get the 'hard part' out of the way (reviews section and family section)... They ship my computer (along with everything else) away Monday morning. I wont get it back until Nov 20th, or there abouts. I should be able to still update this site from other computers, but since I'm going to be on leave or whatnot, I may be too busy/not bored enough to work on it. So don't expect any updates after Monday. I plan on some sort of complete change with this first page. Haven't figured out what I want though. Frames, tables, neat little flash elements, or what. I like simple things, so I may not do anything. It just seems it's not organized enough.

I appreciate it, really. But you have to realize, there is no other way. I HAVE to do a statement of charges. It took me from 10 in the morning until 2 in the afternoon to find somebody that was qualified to write one up. An hour and a half for them to figure out how to do it right. And then from 3:30 until 6:00 to get my commander to sign it. Now tomorrow I have to go to CIF and they have to write something on it, then I have to go to Finance, and they have to copy it and submit it. I then have to go to CIF and give them the finished paperwork so that they can say I'm cleared.

And once CIF is cleared, I can clear Finance, NBC, Supply, Arms room, Debt Management, Gov travel card, and Housing. And then I can clear the company and then the battalion and then Ft. Bragg.

Because things are taking so much longer than they should, I may end up not taking leave. The way things are looking, I wont be out of here until Thursday, which is FIVE days after my leave starts, So good friends and family members may have to wait until Christmas before they see me again. I need to call WHCA and make sure that leave will be available to take during that time. -18 Oct 01

(10 days or more later) Okay! I am now decent with HTML. I did the Blade of Darkness page all by myself!Of course I had to refer to a help file many times, but I still did it. I downloaded about 4 FTP loaders/editors/crap and did nothing with either of them. I figured it would be easier just to learn the stupid language. I'm pretty sure I have a lot left to learn (javascript-screw that! I'll get Front Page if it's that important), but this will do for now.

It is September 30th, my four year anniversary in the Army.

It is October 1st, the day after my four year anniversary. It takes a lot of motivation to keep a homepage going, you know that?