-- ShieldCam!!
Yes a camera mounted in a shield and fought with at war.

-- Our shower is still made out of plastic sheeting and duct tape. :(

-- I watched a documentary on Vietnam (Raising the bamboo curtain). Vietnam had a revolution and started a Republic. They asked America to come in and help around 1945. And we didn't, so the republic had to fight off the French all alone.

-- Vietnam has a thousand years of practice in fighting guerilla wars. It's how they fight there. They showed a guy getting into a tunnel that I couldn't get both legs into. It looked like a vent hole and this guy was down it in 45 seconds.

-- Vietnam is a big exporter of scrap metal. From unexploded ordinance. Folks go metal detecting and dig up bombs and sell 'em. Lots of folks die doing it, but they're poor and bombs are one of their resources, so folks keep doing it.

-- Tango is an electric car built by a father and son. 0 to 60 in 4 seconds. Ain't electric motors great? This is a long article, in the second half they start with "For Perspective" and tell about how we spent 3.6 billion hours in traffic jams in 2000. They also mention that GM, Ford and DaimlerChrysler built electric concept cars then decided not to mass produce them.

-- There are 60 million file sharing people in America: more then the number of people who voted for Bush. Here is the EFF's letter to congressmen. Even if you don't send it to your congresscritter, give it a read. (EFF stands for Electronic Freedom Foundation, I'm a supporting member.)

-- I guess I do like Slashdot, I just shouldn't read the comments as often.

-- What's up here? We're getting geared up to go to war. We're watching Jenny's sister today while her mom drives all over creation. Things are going generally well. Jenny is making a point to get plenty of sleep. It seems that our matress is old and she doesn't sleep well so she's tired a lot of the time.

-- Remember that bridge builder game? Well, the same people remade it. They made Pontiflex (screenie) and Pontiflex II (screenie) and now they are in the process of doing themselves one better. They are making Bridge IT which looks AMAZING.

-- I started playing with the Wikipedia again. It's kinda neat to edit and contribute to an encyclopedia. BUT, it Still lags out for five minutes at a time when someone askes the server to do way too much work. *sigh*

Our shower :(

And today I'd like to thank Microsoft for torturing my non-MS email program into displaying the date in a recent .NET registration email as 2013! Congratulations MS! if it had come from anyone else I Might have thought that my email program of 3 or 4 years had suddenly broken, just like good software Never does.

-- Jaime, who just got married, runs the same photo album software that I do. Here's his photo album.

Jeff Morton took and posted some pictures too. If he doesn't kill me, I'll cross link to the pictures on his machine. He and Katie took far better pictures then I.
Sonya getting her wedding dress perfected by Katie:

Sonya's hair

Jenny's hair

Winna asleep while the girls prepare. (or you can pretend it's Marnen if you don't know either of them well.)

Jeff asleep while the girls prepare.

The wedding

The wedding party

-- I changed website editors. I'm now using HTML-Kit. It's been more convient then 1st Page in opening old files and in adding links. Adding links is WAY more convient: Ctrl-K = make a link, then Ctrl-V to paste the link, then enter, then type the link text, the cursor is already in position.

-- RAIN. Big rain today. It lasted about an hour during errand running. I got to walk through it a few times and get some really funny looks for wandering through target dripping wet.

I got a Brita water filter. Albany water tastes a bit icky after a couple years. Also got a new shower head. Hopefully this one won't spring a million high pressure leaks if you touch it.

-- Remember SDC going belly up several years back? The court case became an example of "good lawyering" (on the side of the debtors). (a google pdf-to-html conversion of an www.ernstromdreste.com page)

"the court concluded that the corporation's president was the individual who committed the acts which amounted to the fraud"

-- My friend Marnen is helping me with my resume. For reference, the old version.

-- Congratulations to Jaime Kikpole and Sonya Meade on your wedding today. Pictures. Some are of the Polish Community Center where the wedding and reception were. Jenny and I did like the site.

-- I finally bit the bullet and registed for a .NET passport. That's one sign of the appocolipse down. Gotta be did to apply for a job at MS. Got 5 emails confirming that I registered, all different. *shrug*

-- We're having shower troubles. The landlord is getting people in to fix it. But it's taking a while. So once again, I got to duct tape some plastic up so that we can grab a shower for the day.

In related news, Ed tells me that the use of "wetwall" was a bit misleading in The Matrix. Wetwall is a method of making smooth walls which was replaced by drywall. Wetwall is plaster over lathe, a refinement of wattle and daub. If you look at the inside of the wall in The Matrix, that IS the way the wall is constructed.

Here's way more information than most folks could ever want about walls: Homebuilding.co.uk

-- Metallica, the folks who sued the crud out of Napster for copyright infringement, have shot themselves in the foot. Metallica sues over E and F chords (yes really)
see also: Metallica sues Metallica (indie band, same name)

"Never shy of a law suit - the past few years have seen them sue Napster, their fans, a make up company and their own record label - Metallica are now suing an unsigned band called Metallica. Eh?"

Are these guys just hanging out with a pack of bored lawyers or what?

-- Wired.com: Upload a File, Go to Prison John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) and Howard Berman (D-Calif.) are sponsoring a bill that would make it a (take away your right to vote or bear arms) felony to place a copyrighted file on a network. It's targetted at file sharing programs but it's overly vague.

-- Slightly new look.

-- "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" was good though the special effects were disappointing.

"Pirates of the Caribbean" was a lot of fun.

-- I completely endorse the Pimsleur Method of learning languages. They work great and they're cheap to start.

I tried a random tape/book combo from the library on learning Russian. I was amazed at how much more difficult it was then the Pimsleur method Portuguese I learned. So far, I've bought the Portuguese, Spanish and Russian discs. I haven't really put the effort into Spanish yet though. Guess it doesn't interest me as much.

I learned a little "umpoco" Brazillian Portuguese on the way too and from Saugerties. Now I'm going to be learning Russian on my trips to Kung Fu. (No, I haven't found a Cantonese package yet. Hey, look they have Cantonese available on the website. whoops.)

-- Use my guest book. I wrote the code for it. It's not a copy and it's not supplied by my website host. hmmmmm... actually, it's hosted on My machine, and I wrote it, so I guess it is supplied by my website host. But still, I made it, go use it.

,,,,,,,,, ........ (spare comma's and periods in case you didn't get enough in the above clutter.)

-- "Bye, bye Miss American Pie"
The American Pie FAQ

-- Jenny found this news item for us: Catapult Death. Yet another of those stories which Scream for a picture and don't have one.

-- Jenny and I took her young siblings out to John Boyd Thatcher Park yesterday. We managed to forget the diaper bag for the youngest. Apart from that everyone had fun.

-- Jeff and I got Roger Wilco to work for us. It's a voice chat program so you don't have to make long distance calls and you don't have to type. AOL IM has the same capability but they apparently don't know how to program internet applications. If both people are connected through routers (multiple computers on one line), AOL IM Talk fails to connect and doesn't tell you why. (grrrr)

Roger Wilco is designed for chatting with the folks you are playing video games with. As such, there is an option to enable "mike clicks". So the program will add in the "ccchhht" after you stop transmitting if you like. :)

-- Yoda, in Ireland. (Yoda uses Gallery for his photo album too.)

-- The Jargon File
The actual Jargon Lexicon
For example: Batman Factor

Yes it's silly! But they handle it in a serious way.

-- I forgot to send my rent on time. Bad me, no biscuit. It's on the way now.

Job requirement de jour:

"Must have a BS degree in COMPUTER SCIENCE, PHYSICS, ENGINEERGING, MATHEMATICES FROP A TOP 10 US school WITH ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT, CUMULATIVE 3.5 GPA AND MAJOR AT LEAST 3.5 (IN COMBINATION WITH ATHLETIC or EXTRACURRICULAR ACHIEVEMENT WOULD BE A PLUS)"

Must come from rich family and still not be a lazy bum. Ability to turn NYC water into wine a plus.

-- Pay rate de jour:
"$0.00 - $30.00/Hr"
Yes! We are willing to NOT pay you. Thanks for asking!

-- My next event looks like Southern Region War Camp. Then War! See my sca events page.

-- I got my guest book fixed. It turns out that the HTML tag TextArea needs to be closed in Internet Explorer and not in Opera. So I added a </textarea> and it works for IE now. So, Write me a note. Thanks for the bug report mom!

Keeping yourself going during a job hunt

-- Northern Region War Camp was a heap o' big fun. I got the opportunity to charge some shieldmen with my spear. It's not supposed to work, but sometimes I can get away with it.

I also got some shouting in. :) I was one of the under commanders. How do you put leadership experience like this on a resume? 2 years as Line Sergent in an imaginary army? Martial arts leader? Able to project my voice over the clash of battle? Level 3 Fighter with 52 hitpoints and a 14 charisma?

Master Torvald recommends against mentioning the SCA at all during interviews. He thinks it just ends up sounding like a D&D game or like a cult.

So anyways, I'm in a much better mood after the opportunity to whack some people.

-- Happy Independence Day!

Sister Heather sends us this link about The Declaration of Independence. It's got the origianl text, some of Tom Jefferson's autobiography and some other stuff.

-- Legio Draconis is a fighting group from the midrealm. They've put up a great looking site with articles about fighting.

-- We got lucky. Jenny was allowed to come home early because they scheduled too many people. So we tried out the soccer field of the high school (Shhh, quiet you pervs). It's a popular place to watch fireworks and has quite a good view. And the best part? No driving, so no waiting to leave. *cheer*

-- KFC is serving half gallon's of soda now. And I saw someone get two of them. They come in cups with bucket handles. I don't Think they are for a single person but those Tub-o-Soda jokes are coming true.

-- Jenny's working during fireworks :(

-- By the way, sex offenders are now registered for your witch hunting pleasure. Here's the FBI's list of registries. New York requires that you register before starting your search. Looks like you don't even have to register truthfully either.

-- Seven Principles of Government Programs is a reminder that the goverment can't fix everything. er, anything. Take a look around Harry Browne's site for more depressing news if you can handle it.

-- A special thanks to all the patriots brave enough to celibrate their hard won liberty by igniting illegal noiesmakers.

-- Happy July!

-- In case you missed it, I archive this page every month. The links to old pages are at the top and bottom.