In case you are wondering, Phlome and Ninsi's blogs are down for the time being. Our collective web-hoster said that Phlome's blog was consuming all the CPU resources on the server so they suspended his account. I find that hard to believe. Even if it was why didn't they just kill the process rather than let it run rampant. Right now Phlome doesn't even have access to his site. I suspect he'll be back up shortly on a new website. Our webhost, Hostdime, sucks by the way. As soon as I get the time I'll be moving to a new host as well.
July 2005 Archives
Ninisi and Phlome hosted a Christmas in July party this weekend. There was a Turkey dinner, with way more sides tha anyone could possibly eat and a "dirty-santa" gift exchange. For those tha have not done this, you start by drawing numbers and then on your turn you could either unwrap a new gift or steal one that had been opened already. This was possbiley the geekiest gift exchange ever. Two sets of magic cards, star wars figures, and a He-Man DVD were the hot items of contention. I got to keep my intial gift of STD plushies. Plush Cthulhu now has new minions.
Saturday, Tigger and I went to the Dallas World Aquarium. It's a very cool place. It's more like a mini-zoo than an aquarium. They had monkleys, birds, and a jaguar along with all kinds of fish. Including those cool "sea dragons" that look like seaweed.
On a sad note, My personal Aquarium is not doing so good. I've had 2 sets of algae eaters die, so yesterday I did a very thorough cleaning of the tank. Unfortunately, something was too much of a shock for my two gourami's that I've had for a while. They were both dead this morning oh and the loach, that I thought has died before, but was wrong, is now offcially dead. He was nowhere to be found I cleaned out the tank.
James Doohan, who played Chief Engineer Scotty on Star Trek, died today. Somehow, in all the conventions I've ever been too, I was never at one he was a guest at.
Only one week left to in my latest Masters course. I'll be glad for the break for a at least a few weeks. I went to the Doctor today for one of my many follow-up appointments. He said I was doing fine. He had the results of the CT Scan from last week. He wasn't really looking for anything in them though. He wanted to have a baseline post-treatment CT Scan so he can compare it later. He did say that I still have a mass in my upper left chest. I'm sure there's a technical medical term for "upper left chest" but I don't know what it is. The mass is scar tissue not tumor though. I'll have symptoms (fever, night sweats, weight loss) if the cancer is coming back before they can see it on a CT Scan. My sure warning sign will be if Donut tells me I'm getting sick too much.
I broke down and saw Fantastic FOur this weekend. I had heard it wasn't that good and the previews certainly didn't make it look like it was worth watching. I think, maybe, if you weren't into comics, espcially the fantastic four, you might have liked it. Otherwise it was crap. They pretty much threw out everything from the comic storywise. There are also a lot of plot holes and weird stuff internal to the movie that have nothing to do with the comics and can only be bad writing.
Doom's mask was an award from the People of Latveria? WTF? What kind of an award it that? Thanks for building this hospital, here's a scary iron mask for you. Now the mask could have had some kind of Latveria significance, but this was not explained.
Ben Grimm, after being friends with Reed for over 20 years, quits the team after one conversation with Doom, who he hates.
Reed, who is supposedly completly broke, manages to get funds to build a machine that recreates the cosmic storm.
It takes all of Doom's power to turn "the Thing" back into Ben Grim but apparently not to change him back into the Thing.
Jessica Alba spends a lot of time running after people saying "No wait...."
The real tragedy is that Dr. Doom is the coolest villian in Marvel comics, and they completly threw all that away. They really just made up a complety new character and called him Dr. Doom.
Despite this It's not completly horrible. It's entertaining certainly. I'd like to hear someone take on it who had never heard of the Fantastic Four before. I think that's who they must have been targetting, cause it certainly wasn't the comic fans.
Well the shuttle didn't launch yesterday, afterall, looks like maybe they are shooting for Sunday now.
I don't really have anything to say today, but I'm trying to post at least every Monday-Thursday. The weekends are always dead-blog time. I'm flying up to Tulsa this evening to see my girlfriend and visit family. I may end up at the Casino Saturday night for some poker.
This whole Carl Rove thing is making my laugh. Mostly because of W trying to act like a "stand up" guy by saying he would fire "whoever leaked the info" and now he's backing away from it.
I was writing another presentation for class yesterday, so no blog entry. Today I'm sitting through a really awful customer-advocacy training session. At least it's a conference call/remote presentation so I can do other stuff (like blog) , while supposedly paying atttention.
The Space Shuttle may actualy launch today. It's been a long road for the shuttle program. One of my earliest blog entires over 2 years ago was about the Columbia explosion. I heard on the news this mornign though that the shuttle program will be retired in 2010. Hopefully, this clears the way for a new space vehicle.
Looking over my last 20 Blog Entries, I can see that the my blog writing has really fallen off. I think the problem is being back in school. For those that don't know, I started a Master's degree program in Information Assurance back in January. Information Assurance is a fancy way of saying information secuirty. I've only got a finite amount of writing in me, and as I pour all of it and more into school papers and projects, there just isn't much left for the blog.
Here's two of my projects from my Masters program for you to read in the meantime. Keep in mind these are academic papers so don't expect anything exciting.
They're both in PDF. I'm sure I don't need to tell you how to read those.
Is it Thursday already? I've been busy with school and some other things this week, the blog has been neglected.
The weekend started out last Friday, on my actual Birthday, with a trip to my favorite German restraunt, the Bavarian. Much Good beer was drunk and German food was eaten.
On Saturday had my first "Cancer Free" Birthday party! Many people attended and enjoyed the BBQ, Beer and Swimming. I think we may have set a record for the number of people in the pool at once. There were some pictures taken but they've yet to get transferred from the camera.
Sunday and Monday were relaxing Days though a few of us did celebrate the fact that Monday was a Holiday by going out to the Church.
To extend my Holiday even further, I scheduled surgery for Tuesday. Nothing major, just having the Chemo-port removed since I no longer need it. The worst part about it was that I couldn't eat anything from Midnight Monday till after the Surgery on Tuesday, which was Scheduled for 2:30 pm. It wasn't too bad though I did eat a full KFC meal and then a pizza for dinner.
Next Wednesday is my first post-treatment CT Scan. I won't know hte results till a week later though.
