Well, it's been awhile since I took a quiz. This quiz has some good news in it, if I actually took any of these quizes serious to begin with. . .

Are You Damned?
Brought to you by Rum and Monkey

(Via I am Jack's Restless Thoughts)

Noticed this little plug over in "Into the Ether." A new source for all us news junkies has arisen.

Well, that means there's another place for us all to waste time reading every day. About time, I've been getting tired of Drudge.

And I really need to post to the Ether. It's strange, before I signed up to write in it I always had something that I thought would fit perfectly in a sideblog. Now, I'm blanking on it about as much as what I want to write for the site would take me way to much time.

Someone decided to ring the doorbell and bound on my door this morning at 5 'til 7am this morning. Normally, I'd be a bit ticked but today I'd like to thank whoever that did it. Whoever they are saved me from a ticket for parking on the street that's getting "cleaned" today.

Well, it looks like Slim-Fast is realizing, along with most of the rest of the country, that Whoopi Goldberg should no longer have celeb status in this country by dropping her from their ads Now let's just hope that she continues on her current path to oblivion.

Well, we had quite a storm come through Louisville last night. Heavy rain, 60-70 MPH wind gusts and more. . . This storm ended up knocking power out to nearly 90,000 people and that includes me. Power only came back on this morning around 7:15am after going out around 8:30 last night. This happened to be just as I was finishing cooking a late dinner. The whole deal made me miss the days I had natural gas appliances to cook with in the kitchen.

However, the real fun part is somehow my Linksys WAP got fried. It was working fine last night as the UPS kept my network up for nearly two hours after the power went out. But this morning, when I came in to power everything back up, the cable modem, my VoIP phone adapters, and everything else lit up. But the WAP just stayed dark and remains so.

Now, before anyone thinks I'm really complaining too much over this, I know I'm lucky. I'm not one of the individuals that had a tree come through their house. I'm not the guy that got stuck in his car when a phone poll crashed down on him. And I wasn't in a wreck or anything due to the street and stop lights being out all over the city. In a way, the storm actually saved me a little money by allowing me to notice the street cleaning signs for today after the storm had passed when I went and talked to one of my neighbors. But it just stinks when my livelihood right now, as limited as it is, is based on me having a network connection and I don't have the cash to replace the device at this point.

The only bright spot in regards to the device is I bought it at Best Buy and I'm in the habit of getting the replacement warranty on things I purchase there. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find the receipts for the purchase. Hopefully I'll figure something out. . .

Has anyone else noticed an increase in comment spamming as of late? In the past three days I've deleted literally over 1000 comments that were directed to a grand total of three sites. All three sites don't even resolve either.

The real joy is that they are either spoofing IPs or have invested a bunch of machines to do this as I haven't seen a single IP as a primary source for any of the current spam trend yet. At least I've taken the time to make sure MT-Blacklist is up-to-date. I just can't imagine deleting that many comments manually.

Ok, I've fixed and updated the previous entry on God & Bush based on the comments given to that post. There's a few more to add to the list at this point.

Everyday Thoughts Collected
Fidler On The Roof
My Domestic Church
Stark Raving Mad
This Liberal

If you have any sites to add, just leave a comment or let me know via e-mail.

Sarah convinced me to try Coke's new product, C2, today. At first it tastes just like regular Coke, but that doesn't last long. It's a step above Diet Coke, but it's just getting worse and worse as I drink it.

I uploaded some pictures from my trip with Sarah's family this past weekend to the gallery last night. It’s a bit different spending so much time with her family. I’ve never been one to hang out with family all that much, not really even my own to a very large degree.

This past weekend we ended up heading up to Amish country in Ohio. Of course, this ended up being about a five hour drive one way. While Sarah and her family stayed in a camper I was put in a “rustic cabin” (read: shed) on the campgrounds with her uncle and one of her cousins.

Most of the weekend consisted of just sitting around a campfire (it was a bit chilly up in Northern Ohio) and talking or reading books. Some of the kids had brought bikes and spent most of the weekend biking around the grounds. Sarah and I just ended up taking several walks. On one side of the grounds there was a small gorge that we ended up climbing down into. It ended up being a pleasant weekend overall.

Well, I'm back. And it looks like it'll be easier to post from now on. Over the past few months I've missed so many things. From local events, happenings in the WOT and I didn't even get to post a tribute to Reagan.

However, I recently left the job that was keeping me away from this along with most of the things I value in life. I've got a bunch of pictures to post from various trips that I hope to get up over the next few days. And I hope to start writing regularly again and this time more in-depth than I have in the past.

Finally, if anyone knows of anyplace hiring in the Lexington/Louisville areas, let me know. I'm looking for a full-time job so I don't have to rely on contract/freelance work that I'm currently doing.

It's been a really busy three weeks and I haven't had time to post a single thing. For that matter, I spent about 5 days w/o computer access at all. Strange, eh?!?!

I'll try to post in the next few days to catch up as things should settle down into more of a routine with my new job next week. There's so much that's gone on that I want to post on, but I doubt I'll get to even half of it.

I've spent the day sitting in front of my computer today. Though I did get several site designs either completely finished (McConnell Center China Journal) or at least something up and/or changed (Laurie & Kevin's website and this very site), I still have too much to do.

I'm even more disgusted with the whole Java language than I was a few weeks ago when I wrote this post. It turns out the person Kumar has hired to help us when we have trouble hasn't done any programming with servlets, EJB, or pretty much half the stuff we need to do for the last couple of assignments. And it's equally frustrating that things like EJB's, which are suppose to make programming easier, do nothing of the sort. I'll probably end up spending half my weekend working on this type of stuff. I'm sure I'd end up spending the whole time on my CECS 640 assignments if it wasn't for the fact that Sarah and Christina are coming into town tomorrow. At least I'll be forced to relax a bit then.

As you may have noticed I've started placing advertisements on the site. This is in an effort to at least offset some of my costs in maintaining this server. Except for the ads that pop up in the Google Ads, I will only place ads on this site for services that I have used and know either work (eHarmony, it's how Sarah and I found each other) or are well worth it (WSJ subscriptions - I read it nearly every day).

In addition to the ads, I do provide virtual hosting for a nominal fee. If you're interested, email me.

I finally got around to posting images from this past weekend to the website tonight. I ended up going to Lexington last Thursday and spent the next two days doing yard work and the like around Sarah's place. To the right is the pile of tree limbs, brush, and at least one whole tree. The backyard had even more cut down. Kevin was there and quite a bit of the time it was just the two of us guys out in the yard working. Shows how much devotion we have to these girls I guess, and it prompted a joke from their dad when he showed up Sunday.

The primary reason that we did all this work was to get the place in order for a brunch for their mom's birthday on Sunday. The brunch turned out really well and the whole thing really surprised her. In the afternoon, we went to Keeneland and bet a little on the horse races. It was the first time I had been to Keeneland for anything other than a family reunion. And that's been so long that I don't really even remember it. I ended up doing a little better than breaking even at the track and figure it was a good way for me to warm up for Derby next weekend (assuming I have the cash to pay the $40 cost of a ticket).

As far as the work we did, I can honestly say I enjoyed it. It was nice to have some work to do that didn't involve staring at a computer screen for eight or more hours. Even if I managed to hit my thumb with a hammer while putting up lattice work, I think I'd rather do that on average then spend mind-numbing hours on end programming. It was just nice to be doing something outside. Not something I get to do enough anymore. But maybe that will change after next week.

I acquired a new camera recently through eBay. I was looking for something really small that I could carry with me at all times and ended up finding a Canon S200 Digital ELPH for a really good price. Since I received the camera, I've been noticing more things to of which I can take pictures. This prompted this photo.

Behind the main building of the newly renamed Speed School of Engineering, they've constructed this strange piece of "artwork." Made of steel beams and placed in front of the soon to be former Kersey Library, it simply seems out of place. As "art," I don't believe it really adds anything to the environment. It doesn't really inspire any thought or emotions other than one of wondering who would choose to construct such an ugly thing and place it on a university campus. But, the fact that it's on a campus probably answers that question. Most of the "art" on campus are nothing more than globs of metal that in some cases are actually meant to represent something. Minus the dancer in front of Ekstrom Library, there's nothing of any form or substance to speak of IMO on this campus. Now, a visit to the Speed Art Museum is another story. But that's another post entirely.

UPDATE: Dodd reminded me of the Rodin sculpture "The Thinker" that is in front of the administration building. If I remember correctly, it's one of the original castings done by Rodin himself. That is definately a piece of art.

Well, looking through all the new links to/from my site, I came across a question by Bryan over at Spare Change. He was wondering how many people are both members of the Blogdom of God and Blogs 4 Bush. Having just joined both myself, and in the mood to avoid other work, I decided to see what I could find.

As it stands there are 15 blogs on both when I include my own. They are, alphabetically:

Aaron's Rantblog
Army Of One
Blue Goldfish/Surface
Broken Masterpieces
Coffee Swirls
Earthly Passions
La Shawn Barber's Corner
Mr. Pete's Journal
News from the Great Beyond
Parablemania
Patriot Paradox
ShortDaddy
Sophoristically Speaking
Spare Change
TruePravda
Uncle Sam's Cabin
Vessel of Honour

This is out of 130 Blogdom of God sites and 452 Blogs4Bush sites (via blogrolls). If I missed anyone, please let me know.

Just noticed I went up to Flappy Bird.

UPDATE: And within two days I went up another notch. Must be the Blogdom of God links.

For most people, when they think of April 15th, they think of it as "Tax Day." However, since I always have my taxes done before mid-March and my refund usually before April even starts, that's never the first thing in my mind.

Today is the day to celebrate a couple of things.

1. Triangle Fraternity Founders' Day - 97 years ago today Triangle was founded by 16 engineering students at Illinois.
2. Buy a Gun Day - Started last year, because it's tax day in part to my understanding, this is a day to at least do something related to exercising your second amendment rights.

So, for all my fraternity brothers out there, Happy Founders' Day. And for all of you, it's time to go spend some time at the range.

According to the "Which Big Lebowski character are you?" quiz:

Me, the Dude? Well, I don't enjoy getting high and I'll let me friends decide if I'm laid back or not (though I know I'm a lot more laid back than I use to be).

Also, I'd like to remind some of you of the Lebowski Fest in June.

(via Ipse Dixit)

Well, after little thinking I've joined the Blogdom of God and added the blogroll for the group to the site. It's rather long, so I'm going to have to figure out how I'm incorporating it into the new site design that should be up in the coming weeks. (School/work/other sites are the priority)

I've linked to several of the sites in the Blogdom already and will keep those links on the site as well due to the fact that the Blogdom blogroll doesn't notify of updates to the sites.