I married the most wonderful woman in the space-time continuum one year ago today :D One year and two hours, but who's counting? ;)

It has been a wonderful year since. We celebrated our first anniversary with a little road trip to Santa Claus, IN. We went to a place called Holiday World. It was a pretty awesome place which reminded me a bit of Opryland. It's a smaller park with nothing more than wooden roller coasters (actually, one was made of steel but still had merely straight dips and curves...no loops). They also had a pretty awesome water park integrated into it.

I definitely had a very wonderful time, and somehow kept the sun from pwning me. Vive le sunscreen! lol. It seems like I did get a little tan, though...maybe I'm not as white as a vampire anymore.

I got Ruthie a nice starfish holly double pendant from Swarovski, the same place I got her heart pendant wedding gift a year ago. She certainly seems to love the heck out of it :)

Unfortunately, while we were gone it seems the Cubbies started losing big to the Rockies. Meh. Same ol'. Maybe next year ;) I do hope that stories of Joe Girardi possibly becoming manager next season are true. With the departure of Pinella at season's end, obviously there are going to be changes of some kind. It'd be nice if those changes included Girardi; he's been to the World Series and is a former Cub. Can't go wrong there.

Wow, July is full of a lot of birthdays. We celebrated my dad's birthday this past week, countzero2k7's was this week, Daniel's is tomorrow, and Lucas Meacham's is Tuesday. The later was celebrated yesterday. I think it was really the first 1st birthday party that I've been to since my own brother's way back in the day. There wasn't a much diving into cake as I would've figured. In fact, he seemed kind of hesitant :D

The quality of the video is kinda "meh". I was experimenting with my new phone a bit. Apparently, it does 720p far better than it does QVGA:

(Lucas Meacham's First Birthday Cake)


In other news, it's still hot :| High 90s and plenty of humidity. Boo.

Ruthie's coming back from Louisville today. Yay! :D She was up there for a dinner theatre presentation that she was going to with her mom. I don't like musicals much, so she goes up for all of the those, and I go up with her for all of the plays.

Here's an interesting one for ya. Apparently, Britain is now moving away from the direction that we're going with that whole health care thing:

Britain Plans to Decentralize Health Care

I shudder to think how much my paycheck is going to shrink this coming January with the expiration of the "evil" Bush tax cuts and the anticipated increases in premiums for insurance, what with a program that was supposedly going to "help" with them :|

It's definitely one of "those" Alabama summers. We're having nothing but days in the 90s, with humidity in at least the 80% range. Quite miserable. Ruthie is training for a marathon she's running with Keith in October in Chicago, and found she had to segment out her 7 mile run yesterday. Running while trying to breathe in what is effectively water is no fun at all.

I'm getting a new phone, supposedly this week. We'll see. I pre-ordered a Motorola Droid X from Best Buy late last month. I am kind of ambivalent that I will be getting it the day of the release (the 15th, this week!). If it's a popular phone, I'm betting supplies will be as spare as they were (and still are) with the likes of the HTC Incredible. Anyhoo, this is my first jaunt into the world of Android, so I'll probably post a review when I've had some time to try it out and hack the snot out of it :D

We saw Despicable Me on Friday. It was a cute movie. We didn't see it in 3D, which is certainly quite fine with me; I tend to get headaches either because of the glasses or because of something with the rendering. I really don't know which. The only movie that didn't happen with was Avatar. Before the movie, we gave Cheddar's a whirl; it was both of our first times there and we loved it.

I'm currently reading a Star Trek novel, something I hadn't done in a while before my last couple of novels. It takes place in Archer's era, during the Romulan War. What's most interesting is how they have to step back in technology on newer starships (Daedelus-class ships, like what the Archon presumably was). It essentially gives some reason in the storyline why Kirk's Enterprise (from the original series and original timeline) looked the way it did. A rather unique Romulan weapon necessitated this reversion. It sort of reminded me of why the Soviet Union used vacuum tubes for decades in their aircraft long after solid state became big; to escape the ravages of an EMP in a nuclear attack. Anyway, it was a rather interesting element of a very engrossing plot. If you're a Trekkie, I'd highly recommend it.

Cubs keep suckin' it, but that's just normal :D They actually had a pretty good game against the Dodgers yesterday, but I'm not being lulled into a false sense of a streak here. If they're not .500 by the All-Star Break, then I'm pretty sure all bets are off.

My mom actually *GASP* got a laptop :o It's a hand-me-down from my brother. I refitted it with a new optical drive and RAM and gave it to her, in better shape than it was when Keith had it in its prime. It's such an old lappy, though, that it's pretty much nothing more than a netbook as far as caliber of power goes. Celeron M with 2GB of 766MHz DDR and an integrated Intel vid card. It's running XP, of course. Good enough for email and basic stuff.

The Health Care Bill passed the Senate. It really makes no sense; they've taken out a Public Option and Medicare reform to compensate for the lack of a Public Option...and yet when I was waking up this morning, I heard that Obama wanted the Senate to "make sure the taxes are structured so that they don't harm middle class workers" in regards to taxes and fees for so-called "Cadillac" insurance plans.

It's a crock on two fronts. For one, he doesn't give a damn about the middle class--his Marxist ideas will likely destroy the middle class and create a highly stratified society of haves and have-nots.

On another front, assuming that there is no Public Option or Medicare reform in lieu of a Public Option anymore, then why do they need taxation of "Cadillac" insurance plans anymore at all? What the hell are these taxes going to pay for, if there is no public insurance of any kind in this bill? I'm pretty sure that the taxes and fees were set in this bill with that in mind so, without it, where the hell is the money going to go? Do they still have those stupid government cooperatives in there? Do they have some other regulatory tools in there? Even if that were the case, why the tax increases on the plans for something regulatory? It just makes no sense. And of course, for it to make any sense, you have to troll through thousands of pages to find something that probably implicitly lays something out.

Of course, it stinks of a dirty Chicago politician. The next decades are really going to suck. People didn't want this; a great majority of Americans did not want this bill--whether they wanted something more Conservative or more Liberal, NO ONE is happy with it. And, of course, they passed it anyway. Representative Democracy has failed us. And, pretty much predictably, no one seems to care. I hope that not only does the Congress pay for this in the coming elections, but also the Presidency. That's pretty much our only hope, at this point.

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving. The weekend is going by fairly well here. We had a wonderful little family get together on Thursday. It was certainly good seeing the bro, visiting from Chitown. My mom cooked a whole turkey--the past few thanksgivings has been just a gigantic turkey breast, but this time it was a whole bird. It was quite yummy; it was so juicy that it didn't even need any gravy--though, I'm not much of a gravy dude, anyway.

Today was really cool, too. Ruthie had a Black Friday sojourn up to Opry Mills. I remained home and held down the fort...and shopped on Amazon instead ;) hehe. She got in at about 5:30ish this morning. I mean, just...wow. lol. I did experience a smidge of Black Friday later today, though, when we went to MovieStop and checked out their sale. It wasn't too awful, though, and we did get a few cool DVDs/Blu-rays. w00t.

Tomorrow is a 360 LAN. w00 h00! We haven't had one of those in a while--since July, I think. Too long! We've all been busy here and there with something, I suppose. Should be a h00t.

I may be looking for punishment, but I'm attempting to install OS X onto my laptop. I'm using an iDeneb mix that supposedly works fairly frickin' well on most computers. I think that it might even work on my eeePC, but I'm certainly not going to try that at this point--I want to have at least ONE working compy at all times. lol. Besides that, I don't know that OS X would work all that well on that particular hardware combination, certainly not in comparison to Windows 7--which almost seems to be made for it.

I just got a new server this week, and I got it up and going in fairly short order. Something funky went on after I tweaked selinux; TTY errors which made me do a rescue of it. When I got it back up, though, it was all good and it has been running quite spiffily since. It's a LAMP server where I also store files and media. I may make it an HTPC at some point, though certainly not until I can get a tv capture card for it. It's amazing how quiet it runs; I can't even tell it's there, whereas the old server was getting to be like a jet engine.

I had a very awesome idea for a BSG story. I might kick it around and possibly write it; it has literally been ages since I wrote anything in terms of stories...end of high school, really, I suppose. We'll see if I can get the willpower going to write it :) I think it's an intriguing idea, but I don't know if I can/will go anywhere with it.

Anyhoo, iDeneb is about finished cooking...time to go geek out a bit more on this Friday eve :)

Well, I think we are most assuredly in the heat of summer now. It has been in the middle-to-high 90s all week and will be again this coming week. The lowest it'll be during the day is 93 on Wednesday. Yup. Time to sequester myself indoors for the next number of months. lol.

I played some Call of Duty: World at War yesterday. I got up to a 2nd Lt, finally. I progress very slowly when it comes to rank mainly because I don't play too terribly much outside of LANs, unless my bro is on or something. Beyond that, I'm usually busying myself with WoW-ing or Spore-ing on the game front.

We had a yard sale yesterday. It didn't go as well as the first, mainly because most of the stuff in this one consisted of leftovers from the other. But, it was still a profitable day. I put an old end table in it, but it didn't sell--cheap, plastic 70s-type furniture that my folks actually had when I was a wee lad. It'll probably go off to a consignment shop, along with a couple of other items.

It looks like things are all set for nearly everything in August, particularly given what we made in this yard sale.

I got new wheels this past week. I went to get my oil changed and they informed me that my wheels were "bent". I'm sure it's from some obscenely large pothole, like one that used to be outside Ruthie's apartment (they've filled it in since, go figure). Anyhoo, my Ion will be fancied up with some alloy wheels sometime this week.

Outside of that, things have been fairly uneventful. Although, Happy Father's Day to all of the pops out there!

Wow, it's been muggy around these parts. It's to the point where if you walk out to the mailbox, you'll be completely drenched in condensation and sweat when you return to the door. Icky. But, it actually feels a lil good for a few moments after being in AC all day.

Ruthie's down at the Cape for work. Lucky ducky. She gets to chill at the beach after she's done, a lil bit in Orlando perhaps, and to top it all off she gets to see the shuttle launch on Saturday. She has our vid cam with her, so I totally can't wait to see some footage :D

Wedding plans are going along quite smoothly. I think nearly everything is taken care of, at this point. Only roughly a month and a half away! Invitations have gone out, I do believe. I have a couple lying around, if anyone wants an invite.

I replaced my MacBook Pro with a nice lil HP job I got off of w00t. I made a profit, at least compared to what I sold the MBP and bought the new one for. That'll probably go in our lil wedding fund :) Anyway, the big thing about this new lappy is a superior vid card. Also, it has two drive bays. I'm considering putting a 30GB SSD in there as a system drive. We'll see :D I put Windows 7 on this puppy. It's a very nice advancement for Windows, I think.

I've found some relatives on Facebook--I knew it was good for something besides status updates :D It was a pretty cool way of getting back in touch.

I'm babysitting the pugs this weekend. They're a pleasure to look after; they don't do much but lie around...unless they're hungry, of course :D

Anyhoo, I guess that's about all for the past month. I'll try to get better about posting again. Facebook has the appeal of lil one-liner updates, but there's nothing like typing out a novel every once in a while :)

You'd have to have gone to Bob Jones and have at least hung out in Mrs. Thompson's classroom to really understand this, but...

The Meat Ship

So, I've been a pretty busy lil bee of-late. Last weekend, we had our first wedding shower. It was with all of our local friends and family. This coming weekend, we're having one in Louisville with Ruthie's family. It should be a hoot. Today's my Friday in honor of this shindig. w00t!

I've seen Star Trek two more times, once at Monaco again and then another time at the Space & Rocket Center. It was in Omnimax, so it was very underwhelming. The size was certainly there, but it was like watching the movie through a fish bowl. I got moderately nauseated...not enough to toss my cookies, but it got pretty touch-and-go there for a while.

This weekend Terminator Salvation comes out. Pretty decent summer for movies, me thinks.

Last weekend, Ruthie and I met up with the Pierces at the Tennessee Renaissance Festival. I'll post some pics when I have some time. It was pretty cool, though it did rain. We got to see jousting and human chess before that, though, and wandered around a little bit when the rain settled for a while.

I've installed Windows Mobile 6.5 on my phone. It's pretty frickin' tight. I'm not using a stylus at all for the phone anymore. It still doesn't quite have the polish of the iPhone interface, but it's still pretty awesome. Windows Mobile 7 promises even more slickness, though that's over a year away...I'll probably be ready for a new phone by then, anyway ;)

So...wow...I've been waiting for this movie for the past...well, since I found out it was being made. The theater was packed, of course, and I'm sure a lot of people in the theater were seeing it for the second or third time. This, however, was the first for me, Keith, Ruthie, dad, Chris, Heather, Heather's cousin and James.

The beginning was absolutely phenomenal; to begin on such an emotional low was somewhat characteristic of Abrams, I suppose. I was on such an emotional high that the movie had begun that I was nearly in tears when they frickin' named James Kirk.

The playing of "Sabotage" was pretty frickin' cool, and well-placed. It's funny, to the 23rd century that's like us listening to the likes of Beethoven. I thought the placing of Nokia was hilarious, too.

Nero was well-played by Bana, I think. Ahab was most assuredly hunting his whale (Spock), and his portrayal was extremely cool.

The cast did seem young, but that was certainly the point. Chris Pine was a great Kirk and Zachary Quinto was a phenomenal Spock.

Of course, the overarching questions about everything are just endless. What happens to the Vulcans? How does the purge of most of them affect the timeline? How drastically different will events unfold? Will everyone we knew have the same roles as they did? Not only among the original crew, but those of the descendant Enterprises? How does the destruction of Vulcan change the dynamics of the Federation we knew?

As a reboot, I think this movie was really absolutely awesome. I was able to know that everything that happened had certainly happened--the elder Spock is certainly a testament to that; he came from an alternate reality that we know quite well (a.k.a., the reality we knew all those years from TOS through VOY). But, for the purposes of "now" in the Star Trek universe, we're in uncharted territory. Anything can happen.

Of course, this opens up limitless possibilities for sequels--and, who knows, maybe even TV revival down the road.

Obviously, the dynamics of the interplay between the characters is quite different now--Spock and Uhura never had a relationship in the other reality, they all met under very much better circumstances, Kirk had a very different track to command...speaking of which...OMG...The Kobayashi Maru!! That was SOOOOOO cool!

Funny, and ironic too, that Pike still ended up in a wheelchair in the end of his tenure as Captain (though probably temporarily). This time, he doesn't have the blinky yes/no light. hehe.


So, yes, a sequel will not come fast enough

Twilight is far funnier and more entertaining as a Riff Trax

I knew pigs sucked. That is all.

Happy Easter to everyone!!

So, the end of BSG was pretty fraking awesome. We watched all 2 hours of Daybreak, Part 2 on Friday. The end of the series was very poetic, and the way they tied up all of the characters' situations was really quite spectacular.


The ship is nearly a broken hulk, but they take the Old Girl for a spin, anyway. The part where they ram the ship into the Colony was absolutely spectacular. The battle scene for this reminds me of the end DS9, though really the entire episode seems to harken back to that particular finale.

One of the more disturbing parts of that episode was after you think everything is going to be quite alright, and then things go back into the pooper again when Tyrol finds out about what Tory did to Cally. It all flies apart just as speedily as it all came together. Cavil taking a gun to his head really disturbed me, for some reason. The entire scene was one rooted in tumultuous chaos, obviously, and the flavor of everything that transpired was certainly a foul one.

After they jump away, the ship is literally on its last legs. The way the ship bucked like a bronco after that final jump was pretty frickin' wicked. My brother brought up a good point that, given "The Last Frakking Special" we saw before the episode, it was all obvious that Adama was going to be the last off the ship. However, seeing the way the ship reacted to the last jump had me wondering if they were all going to die in space.

So, my theory is...and maybe it's obvious at this point, or perhaps there's something I'm missing...that the nuked out cinder that they went to in the first half of the season wasn't the Earth that we know. OR, perhaps the only habitable remaining portions of the planet at that point just happened to be the scattered points that they all ended up going to. But, given that Adama sort of named the planet with Roslin at the end there, I would think more that this was the new Earth.

The most awesome part of all, of course, was their final farewells to the characters. The way they sent Starbuck off was very fitting. I don't know if I really knew she was an angel all along, but we all knew there certainly wasn't something quite right about her after she came back. Also, the explanation of what Head Six and Head Baltar were neatly ties this metaphysical plot together.

Oh, and the digging up of the bones of Hera...wow...


I'm definitely going to miss that show. It had its moments of ups and downs. Most people I know either totally hated it or totally loved it. But overall, when you look at the whole picture, I think it's a pretty fraking awesome story.

I saw a preview for Caprica. It looks interesting, but I don't know if it can capture me the way BSG has. We'll see. I will certainly keep an open mind. It looks like an electronic and DVD version come out next month, with the official premiere being in the fall...interesting test-bed for the show.

"The Plan", another BSG movie, is forthcoming. I'm looking forward to that. I've heard it's similar to how they examined other characters in Lost--the attacks from the Cylon point of view.

Oh, and they also had a teaser for Stargate: Universe. I'll definitely tune into that one.

We had a yardsale this weekend; our pre-marital "get a bunch of stuff out of our hair" kind of yardsale. We did fairly well, getting rid of about 2/3 of what we were selling. We may have another in a month or two, to try to get rid of some more things.

New Enterprise Replica

In other news, it's about 75 here and quite awesome. I really hope it stays this way a while and doesn't snow next week :|

A company fails. So, they go to the government for a bailout. Because of their willingness/need for this bailout, people lose confidence in the company. Therefore, investors pull out. The bailout funds initially received are now quite insufficient. The company goes back to the government. Repeat.

I'm sure AIG isn't the only company headed into that loop. I'm sure the American automobile industry will head that way, soon enough (they may have already).

So what are the limits to this bailout mentality? What's truly disturbing about it is that all of this is happening to companies that are considered to be "vital" to the American economy. So, we're essentially bullied into forking over money that doesn't exist--after all, we'd be heartless to let companies fail and people be out of work. However, how long can debt be run up before we just collapse because of the consequences of it?

I'm thinking the consequences of acting the way we are, if there is no interrupt of this loop, may be far greater than if we had let the likes of AIG fail.

Just in case the theory of global warming is really true, I thought I would capture snow in these parts so that the next generations will believe me. lol.














And, the grand finale...

I finally got a data plan this week. It's my very first ever. The phone I got is a Samsung Omnia. I had been tempted just to switch over to AT&T and get an iPhone, but Verizon has just been too good to me. Their coverage is wonderful, and I know more than a couple people who want to switch to Verizon from AT&T just for that reason. The only problem I've ever had with coverage was in Minnesota.

Anyhoo, the phone is pretty cool. It has a 5MP camera, which is 1MP better than the Kodak EasyShare that I have. The image quality is pretty awesome. Below is the lovely Ruthie.



The phone also does video fairly well, up to 640x480. Not too bad, for a phone. YouTube on the go is now a reality, if I ever find anything funny or sensational enough to put up there. lol.

I'm not really running Windows much anymore, so I'm relying on a VM and samba to get files back and forth--e.g., music and videos to fill up the 8GB of capacity in this puppy.

I tethered the phone to my lappy this morning, so I know that it is possible. That's another reason why having a Windows Mobile device is nice--it's fairly easily hackable. It'll be good for any places where WiFi isn't around...certainly better than relying on NetZero or something, me thinks. Verizon has a 5GB/mo cap. As long as I just use Verizon for surfing, I don't think I'll come close to that...no WoW on that connection. lol.

To fund the phone, I eBayed off my iPod Touch and KRZR. While the Touch was awesome, the idea of having everything in one was intriguing; now I don't need two separate devices on me. Also, Windows Mobile has certainly come along nicely. It's still not as slick as the iPhone in interface, but in features it delivers everything I need and then some.

In other news, it just won't stop raining around here. My folks were headed to Mesa today for spring training, and I certainly hope that they'll get nothing but sun out there--we usually have before. The Cubs are 3-0, so they're headed into AZ with the Cubs playing well for these first few days in exhibition.

Galactica is just all fraked up. It'll be really interesting to see how these last three episodes shape up (technically 4, but they're airing the last two on the same night).

Frodo, Ruthie's new pug, graduates from puppy training tomorrow...cap, gown and all. Maybe I should buy him a steak :) There will be pictures, so I'll post them when I get the chance :D

Let it be known that, as of this morning, I have stimulated the economy. I paid off my very first long-term car loan with my Fed tax return. w00 h00! It gives me more monthly moola to play around with :D Of course, at this point, I'm going to save most of it for excursions for the cruise in August.

This makes the Kevin smile greatly :D

That is all...

So, this previous episode certainly answered a lot. I thought the most interesting was Jughead. It explains why the Island was in such peril if the numbers counted down and no one was there to push the button; I think Desmond may have been quite right in his fears about it all. I think that the computer was tied to Jughead and if no one pushed the number sequence and button, Jughead would've had a very explosive day. So, when that time did finally come, Desmond took action and there was that little flash. Well, I think that flash just so happened to be an EMP which disabled the trigger of the device.

Also, it's quite interesting how it seems Locke becomes leader of the Others--he just says so in the 1950s and it is thus so. lol.

So, I wonder how old Jacob is...even more so how old Richard is.

It amazes me, the resiliency of this country. People spend time and time again, bashing each other for their political or philosophical beliefs. We debate and elect new leadership--which at this point is a fairly polar proposition, nearly half-and-half.

And then comes the magical day where it all comes to fruition: the peaceful transition of power known to few places in the world.

Say what you want about Bush or Obama, but the way this country is able to handle such power transfer is absolutely astounding. Even as a citizen who has voted in the past three elections now, it truly has me in awe how great this nation is.

Of course, I think it would've been cool if Bush or staff had done something cool, like leave "change" in the presidential desk--it certainly would've been far less destructive or disruptive than removing all 'W's from keyboards ;)

Beyond all of that, though, I was checking out the new White House website, particularly the "Agenda" section that I've linked to here about Iraq...

"Barack Obama and Joe Biden believe we must be as careful getting out of Iraq as we were careless getting in..."

I mean, W.T.F?!?! His first day in office, and that very statement alone sounds like campaign rhetoric?!?! On the official website of the Executive Branch?!?! It irked me enough when the guy so brazenly made up the "Office of the President Elect", but geez. You need talk about policy on the website, the direction you want the country to go from here. You don't bash the leaders of the past. He already won the presidency, and for this to be posted on the official website of the Executive Branch is just beyond horrendous.

So, Ruthie and I went on the big tour today of the Jack Daniel's Distillery in Lynchburg, TN. It was really cool. It sort of reminded me of that Family Guy episode where Peter wins a golden ticket to the Pawtucket Pat Brewery, without the benefit of tasting all of the bubbly...ironically enough, Lynchburg is a dry county.

It's the craziest irony ever, that they make whiskey in a dry county. Not only are they missing out on retail revenue streams, but also tax. I asked a number of shop owners in the small downtown area why the county was dry. I got a varied number of answers. One was a conspiracy theory that said the corporation liked it that way, one gave the answer that having a couple of liquor stores or bars may bring undesirable consequences and the need for more police, and still another said that there really weren't enough people in the county to mount a campaign for referendum to bring it back. Collectively, no one said they knew the real reason; it was all just speculation.

In any case, the distillery was quite awesome. I would highly recommend it to anyone who might ever be in the Lynchburg area. We also stopped off at a very nice resturaunt called Cattywumpus. It was essentially a very fancy little hole-in-the-wall diner. They made up fried chicken as if it were gourmet, and it certainly tasted such.

Very nice way to celebrate the last day of the Bush Administration...with booze--even if there was none had. heh.