Good morning. This is where you can look to find out things about me. It's my Me page. I've also added my wife on here because there's apparently some unwritten rule on not being able to talk about yourself without talking about your wife. I love my wife so much, that I want to share my feelings with the world, so I've added her on here.
This picture was taken in 2000, while I was in Ft. Huachuca, during training for a new Raytheon-made system to be called the 'START-T'. At the time, I thought it was biggest piece of crap I had ever seen and swore to not ever trust Raytheon for anything. Well years passed, and I've seen much worse... not to mention some Raytheon products that were actually head and shoulders above the competition. That's life. Damn I feel old, looking at that picture.
I would say that I'm 28 years old, but that would mean that I would have to update this page in a few months or so to say that I'm 29 years old, so I'll just say that I was born in Louisiana, 1979. I lived in Kenner, LA for most of my time in the state. I went to several early schools, and ended up graduating at 17, ranked in the middle of my class at Bonnabel High School. I considered going to the University of New Orleans for a degree, but then found that I would have to pay my own way (I had a 2.45 GPA when a 2.50 was needed for society to pay for me) (and I later found out, after I signed up for the Army I could have gotten funding on my moderately high ACT score alone) (lol). I applied for jobs in several places, interviewed poorly (I was pretty skittish), and one day my uncle approached me about joining the Army. Of course I didn't want to at first, but with the outlook of my future looking bleak it became less of a "Why?" and more of a "Why not?" as he persisted.
So, join the Army I did. My mom signed the paperwork allowing me to join at 17, and September of 1997 I got shipped off to Fort Jackson, SC to get my head shaved and become a man. Basic training was not quite a breeze... the worst thing about it was the only music you heard the entire time was cadence songs. As far as the sudden increase in exercise goes, I went from 127 pounds to 155 in the nine weeks I was there. After graduating I got shipped (well, my mom and sister drove me) to Ft. Gordon, GA for AIT (training). I was to become a satellite guy... MOS 31S, changed to 25S (it was the job I picked upon being recruited, because it required the highest scores that I qualified for on the ASVAB test), and it would take 9 months to finish. After graduating AIT, I went to Airborne School (learn how to jump out of perfectly crappy airplanes) in Ft. Benning where I got to be the keeper of the wings for being the youngest one in the company (yes, even after nearly a year of training) (they didn't have any wings for me to actually "keep" so I didn't get to be part of the graduation ceremony... oh well). After that I got shipped (well, I drove my own car... then a '86 Celica... great car) to 514th Signal Company (50th Battalion, 35th Signal Brigade), Ft. Bragg, NC. While there I went many places (usually grassy areas with trees, and sometimes a desert area) and learned many things (none really useful). I could write pages about my experiences at Ft. Bragg, but I won't. At least not here. It was also while stationed there that I met my girlfriend, who many years later became my wife (and lived in Georgia at the time). After 3 years at Ft. Bragg I got shipped to what I think is the most prestigious unit the Army has to offer... the White House Communications Agency. I spent nearly five years there, and I think it's safe to say that my career will never reach a point as high as that (unless I run for Congress).
And so I was booted out of the Army, left to fight the cruel real world with little more than my pretty smile. I got a job with a real company, and now I'm working in the DC area fixing/troubleshooting mobile auto-acquire satellite terminals. I proposed to my girlfriend just before I got out of the Army, with the main intention of not having an "Army Wife" (who are notorious for doubling in size every year after the wedding date). We got married in March the following year and have been living happily ever since.
I drive aggressively, but courteously. Surprisingly, courtesy hasn't gotten me out of a single ticket.
I have an amazing ability to shut a group of people up just by talking.
I usually don't learn anything until I learn it the hard way.
I write in all capital letters (lower case letters are in caps, but smaller than the true upper case).
I have no productive hobbies, other than this website. (Heh)
I seriously enjoy cool weather.
I listen to talk radio.
I don't watch TV.
I use the word 'I' a lot on my Me page.
My favorite picture of her; the scenario is obvious.
This was in Ireland. Slight wind.
This is the picture I have on my phone as a background, and was one of my top favorites until we got married.
Okay so now you've seen the pictures... well, what about her?
She's the best wife I've EVER HAD.
She lived in Georgia most of her life, until she moved to the DC area to be with me and marry me. :)
She is big on donating her money and her time to helping children (including a year at City Year).
She is allergic to cats.
She doesn't like getting stung by jellyfish.
She drives my Honda Prelude, but really misses her old Saturn (which her brother drives).
She hates mayonnaise. And mustard.
She likes to cook after watching the Food Network.
She loves shoes.
She reads about two books a week.
She is obsessed with the Georgia Bulldog college football team. At times, during a game I fear for my life.
(my) FAVORITES
Cars: Most anything not American (Mexican) made.
Food: Pasta, Chocolate, Cheesecake, and Chocolate Cheesecake Pasta
Color: GREY. Second place is CLEAR.
Beer: Guinness
Drug: Asprin
Music: Swedish Death Metal
TV Show: I don't watch TV anymore. Arrested Development was great though.
Movie: An American Werewolf in London and The Princess Bride
Cheese: Cheddar
PC Game: Blade of Darkness
Console Game: Ecco the Dolphin
Temperature: 67°
Facewash: Clearasil Daily Face Wash
Product Maker: 3M
Website: This one
SOFTWARE I STAND BY
There are certain programs out there, some freeware, some cheap. Either way, this is my way of advertising the stuff because my life would be heck without them.
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Quintessential Player is now my favorite music player, completely soaring past Winamp in functionality and ease of use. I know most Winamp fans wont even try this one out, but for those that have an open mind, please download it. It's free. Yep. Free. The main thing that makes this music player better is how fast it loads everything, from visualizations to playlists to anything it can do. It has basic ripping capabilities, and has a simple .xxx to .mp3 or .wav conversion tool that works extremely well. Another feature I really like, is called 'QuickTrack', that when you right click a certain area on the player will bring up a box of all music folders similar to the Windows Start Menu that allows you to move over to whatever song you want to listen to. So far there aren't nearly as many skins and visualizations available for it as there is for Winamp, but I firmly believe that all it will take is for more people to try this player out, and there will be tons of random user support for it.
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Audacity is a freeware program that allows you to edit .WAV files into whatever you want. Once upon a time I used Creative's Wave Studio for this, but the program had many limitations and caused my computer to lock up often. Audacity is a lot more resource-friendly, and if you can get a hold of the LAME MP3 encoder you can edit and export many different sound files into and from .mp3 format. What the software does, is translate a soundfile into a picture (that looks similar to a brainwave scan.. Like in the movies). You use your mouse to highlight and play different parts of the song, and you can decrease the volume, add bass or treble, or completely cut that part out of a song. You can also paste parts from other songs onto your current one.. Possibilities seem limitless. If you are like me and hate certain parts of songs this program is very useful.
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Evrsoft's 1st Page 2000 is an extremely versatile freeware HTML editing program. I think it was made by Microsoft haters just to keep a few people from getting Microsoft's resource hungry and inefficient web making program, Front Page. Admittedly, this isn't nearly as easy to use for the simple stuff, but for difficult things, I doubt there's anything better. There's TONS of cut and paste Javascripts, DHTML scripts, Perl scripts, anything you can think of, that was made prior to November of 2001. Unfortunately I'm a simple man and only use it to type my HTML in and add colors to things by using this cool color palette on the right of my text box. It has hundreds of hotkeys, cutomizeable tool bars, and four different user levels. The four different user levels is probably the best feature of the program. If you chose Easy, you'll only see a couple of basic commands on the toolbar. As you get more comfortable with that, you can go to Normal mode, which has many more functions and much more flexiblity. Then there's the one that I always use -Expert-, which has nearly everything I could possibly imagine enclosed in 9 tabs consisting of 5-20 icons each, plus hundreds of roll-down functions on the file bar at the top, and about fifteen commonly used icons, such as font, color palette, special characters (© ® Æ å ¶ ½ ¥, etc. that can be clicked on from a pop-up box). And the last, user level -called Hardcore. In this mode you can do not any more than in Expert, except that you have more advanced options and command line interface type things via drop down menus and dialog boxes to do more than you could ever want. I like this program. It's free. If you are doing anything regarding web design, you should at least download it, if just to try it out.
For the record, there is a newer version out called 1st Page 2006. It's pure crap. HERE is a quick video I made demonstrating the lack of responsiveness of the program. 1st Page 2000 is much much better, so I still use it. |
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Irfanview32 is a stand alone picture viewer, basically. It's free to download from Tucows, where it's voted the most versatile program of it's class. Once you download the small ~700k file, and install it (and choose to associate all possible file types with it), every time you double click on a picture, Irfanview will show it to you, taking up less resources than Windows Explorer, while giving you the option to zoom in, go to the next picture in the folder, get the picture information and properties, save as another file type (jpg to bmp to tga to eleven other types) all by the icon-based toolbar at the top. In addition to that, you can do some minor editing, such as resizing it, cutting a piece of it and saving it as a new picture, swapping the colors, etc. There's also an ability to add special effects to a picture, too many to list. Best thing to do is download the program and use it. This is not quite Photoshop, but it's good enough, especially because it's free. I've used it for my site for making all of my thumbnails (with the batch resize/rename feature), and converting my screenshots to jpg format. I also use it to operate my scanner. |
I have used every one of these programs nearly every day for years... I can't emphasize enough how important (and good) they are.
In any case, thanks for visiting my Me page. I don't update it very often, so I keep the info on it pretty generic.
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