Old News

Archived news items from March 2000
Since this is old news, some links may be broken.

Thursday, 30 Mar 2000 [19:47 CST]

I've been listening to Cartoon Planet sound bites all week at school. Brak is great. Right now I've got the song I Love You, Baby stuck in my head. "Hey, Braky-waky...."

I just got my 4-track recorder in. I haven't had a chance to open the box yet, but hopefully I can still get my work done tomorrow without playing with it too much. So, of course I've taken the 4-track off the wish list.

Finally, just because Windows 95 often gets a bad rap for instability (well-deserved, IMO, I should say) I feel the need to mention that my Win95 OSR/2 machine has been on for over eleven days and fifteen hours without a reboot, and running at 100% CPU utilization the whole time at that. I'm just waiting for it to "fall over" as Win95 machines are won't to do.

Tuesday, 28 Mar 2000 [22:43 CST]

The First Ever Lakeline Church worship team party is now done. It was fairly successful, and not bad considering I've never thrown a party before. Almost everyone showed, and there was plenty of food, etc.

Also got to see our One Act Play, which is Middle-Aged White Guys . It seemed fairly short, but I guess it's been a while since I've tried to watch something that was less than an hour. The kids did an excellent job. It was quite funny and well acted. The set is nice. No scene changes at all. In fact, the whole play is pretty much one long scene.

Well, I've been too busy today and my mind is wandering.

Sunday, 26 Mar 2000 [22:01 CST]

Wow. It's been precisely one week since I updated. Spooky.

Well, several interesting happenings this week. On Wednesday I was notified that I won $5 in the parakeet-naming-contest of one of my former students. The winning entry for the green and yellow parakeet was "Petri" (like the dish), but my third place entry was the joke "Spleen". Strange since I had submitted several other names which I personally liked much better. "Spleen" was just a gag because it's an inherently funny word (unless yours ruptures, which ain't funny at all).

I highly suspect that the idea for the naming contest came from my own kitten-naming contest of about a year ago (which, of course, I stole from someone else). And speaking of my kittens, I believe they are 1 year old today. Of course, when you get them from someone else who tells you only that they are "seven weeks old", it's hard to pin down an exact date, but March 26 is the one I decided on. They're still pretty cool but much larger. They still sleep about 20 hours a day. I'll try to get up the most recent pictures sometime soon.

Yesterday I took a defensive driving course because I had gotten a traffic ticket. I had turned left through a signal in a dedicated left-turn lane which was a little too red for the motorcycle cop hiding nearby. Anyway, the class (Comedy Connection Traffic Dismissal School) was not bad and lasted from 9:30 until 4 and met at a mexican restaurant. Lunch was provided for the $25 cost.

Of course, when I got home I was a bit tired and decided to take a nap. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your perspective), my nap lasted until midnight. I got up, took care of a couple of things for church the next morning and tried to go to sleep again at 1:30 A.M. Believe it or not, it only took me about half an hour to fall asleep. So I woke up easily on time for church this morning. Sleep is good.

There's a lot going on this week. The worship team is having a party, so I'm trying to coordinate a lot for that. Also I'm auditioning new people for the praise team, so I've been having to schedule several of them for all over the place. Add to that coffee with a friend, a business meeting or two, and a possible overnight lock-in with 45 screaming youth, and maybe I'll be glad I got that extra sleep.

Sunday, 19 Mar 2000 [22:01 CST]

Spring break is almost over. I've done a lot of sleeping and a few other productive things. I went home to see my parents Wednesday evening and got back into town yesterday evening. Mostly I just visited and played a lot of Unreal Tournament on my dad's computer. I got to see my little brother as well. His album is mostly done with post-production and is heading off for duplication. I got to see the cover art and stuff. Looks pretty cool.

Getting back into school for really the last little push before the end of the year.

Monday, 13 Mar 2000 [23:09 CST]

The first day of spring break has proven to be quite productive. I slept until eleven since Guy Forscyth kept me out until after 2:00. Then after seeing off my company, I got to work.

Taxes. Would have taken me just under an hour if I hadn't had to drive to the library to get forms. Apparently the IRS doesn't want to mail me forms ever, and my computer can't quite seem to print a PDF file. Oh, I had to pay just over $100, by the way.

Changed the strings on my guitar. This is my compromise since the original plan had been to take the guitar to a shop to get it set up. It keeps breaking strings. But I filed down the nut a little and we'll see if it's more broken in now.

Called the bank and added a shipping address to my credit card.

Started downloading updated versions of all the various utilities I use in preparation for making my semi-annual backup CD-ROM. Tomorrow I'll clean up the documentation and decide exactly which things I want to save and then actually burn the CD.

Went to drama practice. My "spouse" for the drama didn't show, so all we really did was one read-through.

Got home and started learning the guitar part for Circle, by Edie Brickell. Or rather, by Kenny Withrow, her guitarist.

Sunday, 12 Mar 2000 [18:51 CST]

A lot has gone on this weekend. One of my best friends from college got married yesterday and is presumably now on his honeymoon. However, he only invited immediate family, so....

Many of my other college and some high school friends were in town this weekend, and we got together to play pool and just shoot the breeze on Friday night, and again yesterday evening to jam. All four of us play guitar now, and it's amazing how much sound four guitarists who are relatively used to playing together can muster. We had a lead guitar, two rhythm guitars and a slide. Plus I sang on any of the songs for which I knew the words, and played harmonica on some of the others (when I wasn't doing rhythm guitar, that is).

Today music went very well in church. We covered pretty much the gamut of musical styles:

Then this afternoon I went to go see the Austin Singers do a Duke Ellington sacred mass, which was lots of good jazz.

This evening, I plan to go out to eat with all my friends who are still in town and then go to see Guy Forscyth play at Antone's late tonight. It's a good thing Spring Break is this week, or I'd be getting behind on sleep.

Wednesday, 8 Mar 2000 [01:15 CST]

Just got back from a friend's house and watching The Breakfast Club. (No, Mom, not a lady friend....) It has been years since I've seen it and I'm impressed by just how good it is. The acting was superb. No wonder all those in the brat pack continued acting for several years. Watching Ally Sheedy play Allison was spooky. I had a student last year exactly like that.

Anyway. I'd better get to sleep sometime pretty soon.

Friday, 3 Mar 2000 [07:08 CST]

There was yet another typo in yesterday's update. Those responsible for sacking the first engineers have been sacked. The previous engineers have been rehired and apologized to, and hopefully things should return to normal.

Thursday, 2 Mar 2000 [19:57 CST]

It has been called to our attention that there was a typo in Tuesday's first update. It has been corrected and we are sorry for any inconvenience it may hav caused. The engineers responsible have been sacked.

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