BunkBlog

We’re spending a long weekend in Corpus Christi, concentrating on kayaking activities, but doing other touristy things as well. This morning was our introduction to kayak surfing, in an area known for relatively low surf because we’re big wimps. As I’m paddling out to hit some nice swells after a half hour or so, Kat yells, “FIN!” I turned to see a nice fin surfacing about 20 yards away. Fortunately, we recognized the fin as a dolphin relatively quickly (the constant diving and surfacing was another indicator), and then we watched and hoped there were other pod members nearby to entertain us, but to no avail.

This afternoon we watched some other dolphins at the aquarium, but even though we were quite amused by the near-constant pooing those critters were doing, they were not anywhere as memorable as the close encounter in the ocean off Padre Island.

Tomorrow is a paddling trail excursion at Port Aransas; wish us luck – there is a common recomendation to take a waterproof GPS with you. 🙂

RIP John Hughes.

The soldiers I see have Camelbaks, but someone is still big on the old canteen. Shinier and Pricier! http://www.uscanteen.com/

Mom must be so proud – http://bit.ly/oDOdE

They needed a study to find that texting while driving is ridiculously dangerous? http://bit.ly/ZyR4z

Every time I get mail from the medical insurance, I think, “how would national health care be worse?”

Obviously, the GP2X Wiz is NOT in my immediate future. http://bit.ly/1cIdZv
Geekery!

KROQ’s website – much less useful without most requested/played/new music lists. WAH!

Anyone who has spent much time in a military training environment (or an operational one for that matter) is accustomed to the “tour of the week” coming through their work area. Somehow, my new job involves me being in the tour group instead of the one being inconvenienced. It’s quite odd, really.

Why is Presto (http://www.prestomypc.com) the only Linux distro to recognize my WiFi card? It’s also the only one that costs 20 bucks!

Dingoo still way too much fun. http://bit.ly/OtlZQ

Wish it had better Genesis support…

Although the Relay for Life was the first weekend in June, we’re still winding up “Relay Season,” which lasts until the end of August. We had the committee wrapup meeting this week, and we have officially broken $230,000 in on-hand donations and sponsorships. That was our “we’ll never get it” secret goal, while our official goal was $215,000. Every year, I curse people for being stupid and not understanding simple English statements, but wow. Last year, we had a goal of $175,000 and we broke 200k. I have no idea what next year will bring, but after the team meeting this Thursday, I’ll have two months of no meetings before I get to bring my special brand of mysanthropy to the Relay 2010 season.

Although Six Flags just filed for bankruptcy, I can report that their original park is doing a good business. Pretty sure the light crowds today could be attributed to two things: it’s 96 degrees in Arlington, and a lot of schools around the country don’t end until late June. But, most rides were well-attended and The Boy enjoyed himself immensely. His boast that he would stay until park closure tonight was met with disbelief by yours truly, and indeed Father Knows Best. We took off before 5pm, but since we’d arrived before the park opened at 10am, we still had a good long day of roller coasters and other fun times.

I believe the 13 dollar “all you can drink” cup is an ingenious piece of marketing for the park. The cup is far too large to secure in your pocket, so every ride that demands no “loose items” requires another dollar fee to the locker monsters. Genius, I tell you.

I left work an hour after I normally do, which is especially annoying when I was looking at a five-hour drive to Dallas right after work. Arriving before dark was my fervent hope. Anyway, I finally get the heck out of town and I’m tooling down the middle of nowhere when I realized that I hadn’t logged my hours on the corporate website before I left.  I got some gas in Abilene, popped open the netbook my lovely bride loaned me for the trip, and logged my hours, signed my time card and went back on the road. Gotta love free wifi from every hotel around, and living in the future.

Tomorrow – Six Flags with the Boy.

Last night, there was much rain and lightning and a bit of hail. When I left for work this morning, there was a surprising sight awaiting me.  Some moron had parked behind me.  This may not sound unusual if you happen to live in an apartment complex, but I have a driveway.  It’s not double-width or anything. I don’t live in a multi-family building.  It’s very strange.  This car was parallel-parked blocking about half of my driveway, and there were no other cars nearby.  How drunk or tired must you be to park across some stranger’s driveway?

Surprising many by the late date, Yahoo is finally killing off Geocities. I actually had a Geocities site back in 1994 or so, SiliconValley 7305 as I recall.  It’s long gone, part of a purge I suppose.  While Geocities was never a high-end site, it did offer an entrance into the world of the vanity web site for many over the years. When Yahoo bought them for nearly three billion dollars, they were obviously hoping to make money off the advertising-filled sites of catlovers and random conspiracy nuts.  This apparently didn’t happen, but blogging did. I remember manually updating my “thoughts” page back in the mid-90s – what a difference a good LAMP stack makes.

Anyway, farewell Geocities. Catlovers will just have to make do with Facebook and MySpace and LiveJournal and Flickr and … well, I guess they’ll survive somehow.

I’ve lived in Texas for 9 of the past 11 years. In all that time, I’d never seen a living armadillo. These stupid little critters are splattered all over the highways, but I didn’t see one actually moving. After so many years, I might be forgiven for thinking that the armadillo is actually a fictional creature, like the jackalope. I’ve seen plenty of dead jackalopes in souvenir shops, so it’s not too far to stretch for the fictional armadillo theory.

This weekend, Kat and I went on one of our occasional walks through the local nature trail, down by the water. At the beginning of the trail, we caught sight of a rabbit scurrying down the trail, which is a rare enough sight that we already felt lucky to have made the trip. As we continued down the trail, we encountered cardinals, squirrels leaping across the trail, and finally we came to a grassy field between trees and water.

Yes, that is indeed a live armadillo thrashing about, looking for bugs. The next day, we walked out there again and caught sight of another armadillo. Finally, the day after that, we went for a walk near a local campground, and a third armadillo walked across the road in front of us.

Thus begins the armadillo uprising of 2009. Mark your calendars.

Yesterday was a near perfect day. My morning began with a highly anticipated package finally arriving, (Gary’s Valentine ‘s Day present). The huge box is stashed in our bedroom closet so shhhhh…

Then my much-needed chinchilla shelves arrived via UPS. I spent the next two hours happily constructing my chin’s extreme new condo. I spent the next 30 minutes sipping tea in front of his cage and watching him explore his new digs. Then my boss at the Nature Center called. He bought me a Merauke blue tongue skink! I rushed over to see her and she is a looker. I named her Meredith. Gary was due home soon so I jetted back and made him drive me back out to the Nature Center to see and photograph Meredith. Afterwards I picked up my new glasses and contacts. I look so smart now.

After a wee rest, (it was my day off after all,) I helped Gary make dinner. He made me Indian food, (chicken korma to be precise). It was perfect but I distracted him at one point so the bread got burned beyond recognition. We watched TV and looked at pics of Meredith before we settled down to sleep. After our customary “I love you”s I turned to my beloved and said- “Bar naan, it was a perfect day.” His response? Sine Qua naan.

Ah- you gotta love him.

Have I mentioned we have a kitten? She moved in early in December.

(The Youtube version seems to not work for no reason I can tell, and their support staff is ignoring me. Thankfully, Multiply works just fine.)

Scenes from the Great Lazer Tag Massacre of 2009.

This is what passes for tactics in third grade: