Messages to the World

Today I have the feeling that I would like to dive into something new.  I spend the majority of my time either working, watching TV, or doing things outdoors.  During those times my mind of just full of thoughts.  Some are of anger, some are of happiness, and some are just devious.  Now, for those of you that know me I am far from artsy but that is not because I don’t want to be.  I think that I have made a decision to try to put my messages and thoughts onto paper.  Whether it be a story, a poem, or a picture.  I will delve into the world of art and see if I can find a medium upon which I can express my thoughts.  Wish me luck world.

For some reason this makes me think of Reba.  She used to draw and I was always jealous of this.  I don’t think that she knew that.

Tweet Tweet….

To all that follow my blog! (ok all two of you )

I have added the tweet widget to the upper right side of my blog page.  So now when I tweet, which is more often than I blog, you can see what I tweet.  Now it is only limited to the last 5 tweets, so if you only come every now and then you will miss some things.  Anyway, back to work.

Its been a while

Dear LazyWeb,

A lot of things have happened since my last posting, which regrettably was too far back.  I have now gone back to Fermilab for about a month to work here at the D0 experiment.  I have started to dabble in the world of online dating.  I have decided to play with www.plentyoffish.com, my profile is here, mainly due to the fact that it is free and I think the other sites out there are just money hungry.  I must say that I am in general disappointed with the online women.  They say that they are looking for this great guy, which I think that I am, and yet I get no response, or even worse, read and then deleted.  Some women state they are looking to just hang out or looking for friends, but when I message them they seem not to respond.  It really makes you start to wander if you were not all that great.  Now, I am not giving up, I think that I am just venting.  It seems ironic that the reason I am posting here to the blog is because somebody very important to me told me that she misses reading my blog and for me to continue but this is the only topic on my mind right now.  Seems like the last thing that I would write about.  (as a side note the new interface for wordpress is quite nice, a definite upgrade)

Apart from my dating woe’s I have a new interest, reading philosophy…  Now if only I could find one to read.  I did some looking and I think that I am going to start with David Hume, unless a luck commenter has a better author for me.  I am not sure where this interest came from but we will see where it goes.  I have been doing some caving (not as much as I should) and I have also been playing with my new snowboard.  Since I am here near Chicago I plan to go up to Wisconsin to do some boarding in preparation for the spring break trip to CO this year.  Hopefully I will be able to find some friends here to go with me.  Ok, enough for now.  Mabey that I have posted here now I will get back to it again later this week. (lets keep our fingers crossed)

Justace

Taco Hell….. (ohh, I ment Bell)

Today, I will write to you the reader with a new drive, a rejuvenation of desire to spread the silly things that happen to me on a daily basis.  To who do I owe this burst of energy to…  Stacie, the always bubbly and always fun to talk to girl that you wish you had more time with.  So many things have happened since my last posting.  Obviously too many to really talk about.  Now, just in case you thought this post was going nowhere…(and quickly)…  I will turn this around and set the stage at Lawrence’s premier late night restaurant, Taco Hell…  After I had met with some friends for the evening I decided to make a stop at the Taco Bell to grab some late night grub.  If you thought that your evening was entertaining before your stopped at the border, then you have a whole new surprise coming your way.  I have found that sitting in the drive though lane in a college town at 2:00 am in the morning always has its moment where you think to yourself, “Why would he do that…” or more common “What an idiot…”  So, after about 5 minutes in line a very large black pickup truck decided it was time to get out of there and proceeded to drive around the other cars to leave.  What the driver failed to do was realize that truck was not going to fit around all the cars and of course clipped the front end of the car making the order at the super wicked cool display that always shows what you ordered, but not necessarily what you will get.  The person making the order immediately got out of his car to confront the other driver, in a non-aggressive fashion of course, and was welcomed with a driver side window being rolled up as fast as possible.  This is where things started to get a little out of hand.  The guy opens the driver side truck door in an effort to further confront the driver.  I mean wow…  To just open the door of the other vehicle.  I could have sworn that there was going to be a confrontation ending in some form of bloodshed.  Well, at this point the ruck driver pulled away and left nothing behind but an aggravated and taken advantage of soul.

Now being the person that I am, I try to place myself in the other person’s shoes (usually cause they have better shoes, seriously, I need to glue the toe on my Vans back before it gets even worse).  When I do this I normally see some sort of justification for the action, but not this time.  I will go ahead a make the guess that the driver of the truck (who was female) was probably drunk and just could not handle a confrontation with the police, hence the hit and run.  I really hope that somebody got the plate of the truck.  It really sucks when your car is damaged and there is no way to get it fixed (this happened to me years ago in the University of Kansas parking lot).  Well, Mr Angry Damaged Car still kicking tires person, I feel for you.  I wish that I could do more to help but I think this is decidedly out of my hands.  If you were that driver, and you end up reading this post then let me know and I will buy you a drink.

Ok, so what can we all take away from this tale…  When bored and it is 2:00 am, just make a run for the border, there is always drama to be seen in the drive though….   (and yes one night I did see somebody get out of one vehicle in line, walk to another on in line and then piss on the tire.  Again, could have swore that was going to end up with blood there somewhere)…

Thats right, I got bit! (at a bar)

So, from time to time I ask myself, “what can I blog about?” I mean I like to think that my day to day activities are interesting enough, but lets face it, sometimes you go through a rut. Well, I am definitely out of the rut as of last night. The following is what ensued…

[This story is 100% accurate and I have presented no names on purpose]

The lights had dimmed and the crowd had shuffled out, the evening was coming to a close. (it was like 1:00 in the morning)  I had been at the bar working on my research for quite some time now when a girl stumbles in and sits down at the table next to me cycling though emotions like an out of control Rolodex. Out of these she seems like she is distressed the most. So I reach out to her to see if she is ok, to see if there is something I can do to help. In astonishment she grabs my hand and pulls me up dragging me to the bar insisting on buying me a drink. (of course I go if there was any question). I end up meandering back to the table where she joins me for a toast (I cant even remember what the toast was for). After a short amount of time passes she makes her way back to the bar looking for her keys, her wallet, and I think part of her sanity. 1:30 finally reads the clock… I should pack up and get out of the bar before they kick me out I realize. The bar keep has been trying to get rid of the girl for a while now and she just will not leave. As I approach the bar to take care of the meager tab I had acquired she barks out at me, “WHEre ARe YOU going.” Where I calmly responded, “Home, which is what you should do.” She reaches over and grabs a fist full of my shirt and pulls me down on top of her (Yhea, this could be in a crazy romance novel from the sounds of this sentence). To satisfy my curiosity as to what was going to happen next I feel her teeth sink into my cheek. Then it dawns on me, this girl is biting me! Then I realized that it hurt. I reached up a grabbed her face and pulled her chin down in an effort to pry free.  Stepping back from her I make my way to the door replaying in my mind the events of the evening realizing at the same time that I think she broke my skin.  I start my walk down the quite street and say to myself…

“What a night, what a night….  what a.. night”

(fade to black)

The Rain Commeth….

Well, we have received quite the amount of rain this year. Just yesterday my fathers house, which is down in Strafford, Mo. received 7 inches of rain in one day. Now, this is just unheard of in that area. I mean a storm that drops 3 inches during the whole storm is considered bad. Now, we all know that words will just not work here, so, I will include some pictures that my father took for me. (I love storms and was largely disappointed that I could not be there during this one. Yes I am crazy)

iPhone Troubles

If you had read my post yesterday you would know that I spent the day at Silver Dollar City. What you dont know from that post is that I dropped my iPhone. Now, I love my iPhone. It has been with me for a while now and we dont argue and fight (anymore, the jailbreaking caused some issues). Well, when it fell the power button got jammed and the phone would just power cycle repeatedly. This is a pain since you cant take the battery out of the iPhone easily. Doing this requires a deep breath some special tools and a soldering iron. I have really customized the software on the phone so taking it in to apple or AT&T is just out of the question for me. This left my only option as a self repair. The hardest thing to do on the iPhone I think is get the back cover off without the “special tool”. This took me several hours of using a feeler gauge, a putty knife, and a flat head screwdriver. Now there is obviously some disassembly before that which requires a Philips screwdriver (and a super small one at that) but that is not what made this experience memorable. Once I did get the back cover off I saw what was stopping me. This is the primary reason for this post. When taking off this back cover there are three places on each side of the iPhone where the frame has a small protrusion acting as a tab. The “special tool”, which is not related to the “special purpose” for those who have seen the Jerk, raises the outside cover off of these small tabs. So that is what you are contending with when taking this cover off. Make sure that you follow instructions on line about the dissassembly (which dont mention these tabs). I would also state that if you do take you phone to a bench grinder to remove burrs that you are very careful (and yes, I did this). If you are curious about whether I was able to get the jammed power button fixed, of course. Many small screws and shouted obscenities later I had a working power button assembly (not as good as factory though). All this might be for not though. The new iPhone should be coming out on Monday, and I will very strongly lean toward getting one. Increased memory, GPS, 3G… It would be amazing if Garmin ported their software to the iPhone, and TomTom also….

Like a home away from home… This is a workplace away from work…

The sun is flirting with the horizon, the birds are starting their morning ritual, and I am in the car with the windows down music setting the mood. I am heading not to the University of Kansas to work, but to the MudHouse in Springfield Missouri. This is my workplace away from work. I have been coming here for quite some time now and I must say that after a shaky start with me many years ago, the MudHouse has turned into a very reliable and friendly place to either hangout or work. The network access has greatly improved and the presented atmosphere is very comfortable.

Photo from http://www.flickr.com/photos/spacecamp/140785732/in/set-72157600755561775

The MudHouse is not without its pit falls like most places.  However these shortcomings are certainly silly and not the fault of the establishment at all.  Every now and then a strange person finds you to talk about his or her view on life whether you have time for it or not.  It is a good place to meet people (but better be ready for religion…).  For some reason the MudHouse seems to have a large amount of religious clientele.  Well, off to the real reason that I am here.  To work and prepare for a meeting with my adviser…

Home At Last…

Well,  here I am after the 3.5 hour drive home sitting at my parents house.  I was just thinking how nice it is to be able to sit here at home listening to a strange combination of Pink Floyd and Michael Buble.  I never said that I had a coherent music taste |-)…  Home for my parents is in Strafford which is just outside of Springfield Missouri.  It is a nice community of about 2000 people.  The really nice thing (most of the time) at the sounds of the woods.  Our house is situated on a 20 acre plot of undeveloped forest area.  The sounds are really quite soothing.   Ok, well time to go and continue reading about the great piece of software from D0 called “Collie” which really stands for “COnfidence Level Limit Evaluator”.  This is for my research work at Fermilab.  Ok, off to the bed

Good Night Everybody…

And yes, there really was almost no real content in this posting…  |-P