04.15.04 - project: Basement Remodeling

My Basement Bar / Gameroom Project seems to be consuming most of my spare time. (What little there is.)

I will be updating the project weblog weekly at the very least, so be sure to bookmark it. Or, you can subscribe to it's RSS/RDF feed.

11.28.03 - Redesign

Redesigned my "Adventure" section, making it a separate site. It's so specialized that it needed it's own space. Now, to clean up the mess here...

09.16.03 - Remember...

"There is no need to be afraid of noises in the woods. Anything that wants to kill you will stalk you...silently."

Saw that quote on alt.rec.camping. Makes me smile every time I read it.

09.15.03 - TGS4!

cheerleader: ya'll are so whack
the ugly one: whiggity whack?
cheerleader: no, just the regular type

09.14.03 - Two Things

One: There's nothing more exhilirating than punching a hole through a target at 50 yards with a hollow-point fired from a Savage .223 (Thanks Gary!)

Two: Badgers Badgers Badgers Badgers Badgers Badgers Badgers Badgers Badgers Badgers Badgers Badgers MUSHROOM MUSHROOM!

09.11.03 - Movies

Dust Devil - I've actually seen one on these in Arizona. Much different than their destructive counterparts here in Ohio.

Why We Love the Mac - Another funny variant of the popular Mac "switch" commercial.

09.07.03 - Two Unusual Articles

Soundless Music Shown to Produce Weird Sensations

Traffic Zoology

08.24.03 - H2

My wife bought me an H2 for my birthday! Next year, I hope to get a helicopter to go with my yacht.

08.15.03 - Sean's Satirical Headline of the Week

Headline: Light Bulb Blows in Ohio Power Plant - FoxNews Begins Wall-to-Wall Television Coverage

08.04.03 - Spamity Spam!

My monthly procmail report shows that I received over 1800 spam emails in July. That's about 71% of the total email that I receive. Lucky for me, I use SpamAssassin to filter my email so none of it reaches my Inbox. Granted, I do occassionally have to deal with false positives and vice versa, but it's well worth it given the volume.

Prior to SpamAssassin, I used to use my own home-grown Perl program (spamfilter.pl) which worked fine, but didn't have any advanced scoring features.

07.15.03 - Tornado Warning

About 20 minutes ago, the sirens outside went off and I moved my family into the basement -- tornado warning. I paced around the sliding glass door anxiously watching the clouds while my wife stood in the basement doorway. The sky turned green and then a thick shade of yellow and the wind started picking up. The weather report said a funnel cloud had been sighted 3 miles East of Batavia (which, thankfully, is East of here.) I called all of my family and friends along the front to make sure they were allright -- so far so good...

07.08.03 - 4th of July Storm

We spent the Fourth of July at a friend of a friend's house for a cookout and fireworks. As 9pm rolled around, the sky started getting dark -- not from nightfall, but an approaching rainstorm; we decided to go ahead and make our way down to the park where we had already set up blankets. I pulled two of my kids plus my nephew in the wagon down the block and across the street followed by my wife and my two other daughters, plus a few others from the party.

As we started down towards the park, the wind kicked up and people started leaving. When we noticed why people were fleeing, the dust had already started blowing up from the ballfield. Quickly, we crossed back over the main street as the wind began to bend trees over. My wife turned and asked me what we should do and I shouted "Run!". We ran back to the house and got the kids to safety while others went back down to help out at the field. I left the house to help and by the time I got down to the corner again, the dust was so bad that I could not see. The wind sounded like a tornado and I was sure that it was coming soon. When I finally located the missing people from our party, we took shelter on the front porch and fiddled with the satellite trying to get an idea of what we were dealing with.

The storm eventually passed, but not before bringing down tree limbs, drenching the streets, and setting off nature's own fireworks display in the sky.

06.26.03 - Refreshing

It's scary when spending an hour re-organizing the wiring in your rackmount cabinet counts as refreshment. I need a new hobby.

05.14.03 - Organization

To make things easier for me to deal with (not to mention to better organize my hobbies), I've divided the website into three main sections: The first section is the one you're reading -- the blog. The second contains a listing of my "projects". The third contains information about hiking, geocaching, exploration, and camping.

05.07.03 - project: pylon

Over the last month, I've been working on an instant messenger "bot" using AOL's IM service and Perl. What sparked this project was the need to do something with all of the information and links that I collect throughout the day so that I view and organize them later. Initially, I built a web interface driving a hierachical database -- it was a bit bulky for quick use, but nice to have the tools to add, edit, and delete entries. Ultimately, I decided on an IM bot to feed the database because it's quick and effective. As a test, the "interesting links" section on the right is driven from that interface.

I will put together a project page once I get past some initial testing. If you're using AIM, pop in and tell pylon808 "hi". You can get a full command listing by typing "help".