“Oh no, not the brothers’ Horlbeck!” shouted Randall as we both teamed up against him. In all, Scott and I pretty much cleaned up the competition Saturday night. Yup, Tim, Scott, Randall, Mark E., and Mark’s brother Noah and his wife Nicole all came over and played Halo 2 for about five hours. We had quite the good time playing all different types of variations of the game (ranging from straight-up “slayer” to playing team games of capture-the-flag) on three different TVs.

I do have a word of rebuke, though, for Tim’s wife. It all began with an email I received from Tim early last week when I announced the Halo “party”:

No thanks. I am learning from my very wise wife that killing is wrong. I don't think I'll be playing halo ever again.
Tim

Assuredly this was not from the Tim I knew! Later that same afternoon, I received the following:

It has just come to my attention that somebody very close to me, has impersonated me in a very deceitful way! That person wrongfully expressed a sorrow and disdain for killing on my behalf! May this not be! In fact, Killing in Halo 2 is one of life's greatest and most simple pleasures! Needless to say, the impersonator has been severely chastised, and/or locked in a closet! Therefore, disregard the past correspondence, and bring on the Halo Party!

Ah yes, this was my true friend. And we celebrated heartily on Saturday night. Halo was the perfect way to end the day.

You see, the day started off real early with some fertilizer for the lawn. It’s about that time here in the good ol’ Land of Enchantment. In fact, I mowed the lawn Thursday night to prepare for today. Unfortunately, I didn’t exactly prepare the way I wanted to–although I prepared the grass for fertilizer, I accidentally broke a sprinkler head while mowing. And it didn’t just pop off, either–it actually broke the PVC pipe in the ground.

So after fertilizing the lawn, Tim and I took to the task of digging up the pipe (being ever so careful with the patch of grass), unscrewing the pipe, and going to the Depot to find a replacement (who knew there were so many different types of sprinkler-heads). A sprinkler-head, pipe, and several other tools later (not to fix the sprinkler, mind you, but just…you know, tools and stuff), we got back home and fixed everything right up, good as new. This homeowner is learning new things everyday!

My next project is going to be to do some network wiring in the house. I want to run some Ethernet cabling throughout my office and our other bedroom to alleviate the need for cables to run along the floor. I’ve never done it before but it’s something I’ve wanted to do for a long time.

—

Renee’s part:
While the guys were playing Halo at their nerd-fest (keep in mind, girls, these are the cutest nerds around), I had a girls’ day out with Jeni! We went to this great quilt store and signed up for some beginning quilting classes. My two sewing projects this summer are to make some crib bedding for the baby and a big… quilt. Cool, cool, very cool, as Scott would say!

Then we had a wonderful meal at Olive Garden, where Jeni was a slave to her alfredo sauce. Good times.

We’ve interviewed two people to take over my position at work, and that has been strange, imagining myself not coming to work at the office everyday, but I’m looking forward to the joy that’s coming! In the meantime, I’m realizing that the days are going by quickly, and I’m really excited to go home in July to see my family for Mary’s wedding. God’s country–there ain’t no place like it!

I’ve always been interested in anything related to nuclear engineering, so it’s no surprise that I can get pretty excited about nuclear power plants. (Definitely the geek in me!) I think what is more interesting the actual science behind the technology is its potential risks: radiation, meltdown, etc. I’m fascinated by the social and environmental effects of nuclear disasters.

For quite some time, I have been reading up on the Chernobyl accident. The gist of the story is that in 1986, Chernobyl, Ukraine had a nuclear power plant. During one of the “low” energy output periods, the technicians decided to run a couple of experiments to see how the reactor operated under extreme stress. Much carelessness resulted in the meltdown of one of its four reactors, spelling doom for thousands upon thousands of people and animals. The meltdown also sent radiation into the atmosphere that blanketed much of Europe and even reached as far as the United States. The radiation is so high, in fact, that some estimates say that the immediate area surrounding the power plant (within about 100 miles, at least) will be completely uninhabitable until the year 2525 or so. Woah.

I’m quite interested in any pictures from the event and what life (or the lack of) is like there now. So, you can imagine my excitement when I came across photos of a motorcycle ride through the Chernobyl area. It’s extremely fascinating and eery at the same time. I’d encourage you to take a look and read up on the history of this horrible disaster.

When Renée and I moved into our new house, we didn’t realize that there were no telephone jacks in our extra bedrooms. Seeing as one of those bedrooms has become an office, it is a definite necessity that it have a telephone jack. Either that, or string a really long cable all the way to the kitchen–across both bedroom entrances, the guest bathroom entrance, and the entrance to the house. That’s a no go, Ghostrider.

So, instead of spending x amount of money to get the telephone company to set up another jack for us, I decided to go about doing it myself. I found myself a book that explained basic wiring and learned the details of the situation. I went over to the Depot and got me some telephone station wire, a soldering iron, and an extension cord, plus all the little details. (Thankfully, a lot of this stuff is reusable.)

Most of Saturday and Sunday I spent wiring the deal. I had to get up in our tiny, poorly-designed attic, and drill a hole down through the stud between our bathroom wall and the office wall. Thankfully, the previous owner had run some wire through a hole in the ceiling, which gave me a good point of reference. After drilling the hole and dropping the line down, I got to punch a hole in the drywall and fish the wire out, which actually went very well–thankfully, I had measured correctly!

I wired up the target end of the telephone cable to the telephone jack, and let that sit.

The hard part was yet to come.

Back up in the attic, I had to find the telephone cable that ran to the bedroom telephone–the only telephone cable I had any chance of getting to, given the design of the house. Well I found it–and I only had about a foot’s worth of cable to work with. Thus began the frustration. I had to work right up against insulation and over the hole in the attic–that includes all the wire stripping, soldering, and taping. What a mess! Unfortunately, after I had originally hooked up the telephone cable, I got a couple wires crossed and had to start over, which left me without a whole lot of slack on the previously existent telephone cable. So, I had to create a bypass to get back to the original cable. Drama, I tell you, drama!

Finally, after enjoying the wonderful effects of fiberglass on the skin, I finished the project up–about 7:30pm last night. But now, we have an extra telephone jack in the office, and we might finally have Internet access after not having it at all for about a month. Woohoo!

Check ‘em out: Welcome to McDonald’s and Batmobile.

Requires an AVI player, such as DivX or Winamp 5. Right now, only PC users can view them, unless you have a utility that will convert MP4 to Quicktime’s MOV format. Any takers?

Earlier last week, a brand new toy arrived for the geek in my family (being me): a brand new TouchStream LP keyboard. You got to see it to believe it. It’s like one huge touchpad for your keyboard. You touch specific spots on the keyboard to produce standard keystrokes, but there is no tactile feel to it like on a standard keyboard. It’s like typing on the flat surface of a counter or a desk. So, there are many times when I get frustrated at it because it is incredibly easy to make typos—and lots of ‘em. I have to look at the keyboard the entire time I am typing, something I haven’t done for years since I am a 90+ wpm touch-typist on a standard keyboard. But my average is falling by the wayside with this keyboard.

But, fortunately, the pros of this keyboard outweigh the cons. You see, the keyboard also doubles as your mousing device. By placing my pointer and middle finger together and moving them around on the right side of the keyboard, I can move my mouse. Three fingers down gives me the select-and-drag operation or the double-click. Very, very cool.

Even more, though, is that the keyboard recognizes “gestures”. If I move my fingers in a certain motion over the keyboard, I can save a document. Cut and paste is as easy as pinching my fingers together. Plus, it’s pretty easy to scroll and move my cursor around. Big points on this one.

Unfortunately, however, is the fact that I was mainly a keyboard guy to begin with–so all of these extra mousing features are certainly a plus, but typing keys is my main job. It’s going to take me a while to get over this hand-drift problem.

It other news, our neighbor above us in our apartment complex broke their toilet on Saturday, flooding their apartment and producing massive leaks in ours. Everything is okay now, but it certainly was a mess. Not something I want to go through again.

I’m sitting on the couch in my apartment right now. I am typing this entry on a laptop with a wireless network card that is tied in to a wireless access point in the office. Also connected to that wireless access point is my main computer, via Ethernet cable. That computer is on the Internet via 56k modem (yeah, I know, but we can’t afford broadband here). And, I’m listening to some of my favorite music through my wireless headphones, which are playing MP3s from my main computer. And I have the cordless telephone right next to me.

But I still miss Renée a ton.

Man, it has been a grueling week at work this week. Besides mail server problems and database problems up the wazoo, I have also had to deal with updates not working correctly and firewall rules being outdated. I spent a total of maybe an hour at my desk today. But it went fast, and that’s good. Now I can relax.

But now I go off to church. More fun when I get home.

“Introducing the next version of Windows, Microsoft Windows Server 2003!” chimed some announcer-dude to the applause of a conference-room full of IT staff, administrators, and techies. I clapped alongside everyone else, because… well, I was invited to the event, and I wanted to see what it was all about.

Unfortunately, it turned out be a very boring seminar. You see, I got this invitation in the mail to be a part of the official launch event for the latest version of Microsoft’s server product. I thought it would be neat and interesting to go and evaluate whether that particular product would be beneficial to my company at this time. Turns out that’s a big no. But I learned a lot more than just about server technology. In fact, I probably learned the least about server technology. Here is, however, what I did learn:

I don’t want to be a stereotypical nerd. The dominant demographic at this conference was: middle-aged male; overweight; facial hair that’s scruffy; unkempt hair; huge, thick glasses; and a high-pitched, nasal voice. Gosh, I don’t want to become like that.

Nerds don’t know how to communicate. The number of um’s, er’s, and uh’s that came from the speakers’ mouth was nauseating. Plus, it was just plain cheesy. Silly dialogues between two people who know each other but pretend not to in the name of creativity is just plain dumb. Don’t memorize speeches; try communicating and interacting with your audience. And, if things don’t go right (see below), try not to make a stupid joke.

Even Microsoft can’t have a flawless presentation. The spotlights went off once for about three seconds, some of the videos didn’t work, the slide show got messed up, and then someone else’s audio was interfering with the presentation, so we were hearing random comments throughout the entire show. But the funny thing was that it was a Microsoft guy who was interfering.

Technology can be made to be super-boring. Super boring. I read a magazine throughout one entire session. At least be entertaining.

Nerds tend to isolate themselves. I talked to one guy save the Microsoft registration folk for maybe one minute, tops. Other than that, it was a pretty quiet time.

So I’ve decided to pursue non-nerdness and instead focus on trendy geekness.

Whatever.

I have been inflicted with the common cold bug again and it’s almost on it’s way out. I’m beginning to smell things again, and that’s a welcome treat.

Saturday night Renée “totally surprised” me with a birthday party at Buca’s with a bunch of my closest friends, which was a blast. We had way too much to eat, and I drank a little too much cold medicine before we left. I realized this as I had to hold the walls for balance as I was walking to the bathroom after the meal.

But when I came back from the bathroom, I had the coolest dang birthday singing ever. I almost had to cover my ears because it was so obnoxious. But I loved it—every moment of it. Unfortunately, the chocolate cake slice that was in front of me had to be dispersed throughout the rest of the party, leaving none for me because I’m still on that crazy chocolate fast. Only three weeks left to go.

Renée’s old roommate, Abigail, arrives Thursday. They are excited to spend some time together before she has to leave this weekend (quick trip), but I am looking forward to it as well. I just hope we all feel okay.

For all those geek-heads out there, I found the coolest programming language ever this morning. However, trying to actually program in it would be insanely difficult, and I believe it would drive me insane.