A wave tossed in the ocean

Updated Windows Application Selection

2005-01-07T19:29:00.000-05:00

I referenced my post on Windows Application Selections, and I noticed that I use some different stuff nowadays. For example, I now use a wonderful program called PSPad for a text editor. It wraps some great functionality into a tight package. There's also the OUTSTANDING desktop search application called Copernic Desktop Search. When I passed this link to my IT co-worker, I accompanied it

D'oh!

2004-11-09T07:29:00.000-05:00

I got home last night to find that my power had been shut off. I'd forgotten to pay the power bill! It was, of course, completely dark aside from the light reflecting off of a waning moon. Inside my house was no better. But the boy scout in me (I never really enjoyed boyscouts and shortly quit; here I'm just referring to the motto: "Always be prepared") had placed a rechargable flashlight in the

Walking back the cat

2004-11-04T10:11:00.000-05:00

It's been a while since I posted to my blog. Last week I worked a ton (53 hrs + about 15 hrs commute time) and on the weekend I BINGED on Guild Wars. By binge, I mean I played until 3AM on Friday, got up on Saturday morning and played from 8:30 to midnight with about an hour break, then on Sunday morning from 8:00 to 10:30, at which point I played for a couple hours more later in the day before

Said to my co-worker while coding today

2004-10-22T11:49:00.000-04:00

"It's just going to be easier to do this the hard way."

Bowling!

2004-10-15T13:13:00.000-04:00

I went bowling with my work last night, we had about 30 people there. I did very well. I recall that the few times I've bowled before I was around 100 or so. I played 3 rounds last night. I scored a 148, a 111, and a 160! Pretty good for me! They were calling me a sandbagger! =p

Cornucopia

2004-10-14T08:25:00.000-04:00

It seems like I've gotten used to sleeping a normal 8 hours again. Last night I was out until about 11pm, and I had to wake up at 5:30. So I only got about 6 hours of sleep, and I was feeling it this morning! It used to be that I would stay up until 11 or 12 every night, and get woken up in the middle of the night a couple of times, and still wake up at the same time. I've certainly been

Climbing!

2004-10-06T08:33:00.000-04:00

It's been a couple of weeks since I've been climbing. I got a one month subscription at the gym for 60 bucks on 9/10, and that was the last time I went climbing. If I go 4 times a month, it makes sense to get a monthly pass. I've been slacking!! I made plans last night to meet up with this guy I met on the connecticutclimbers Yahoo group, George. I didn't know what he looked like, but I told

Trite details of my weekend

2004-10-03T22:01:00.000-04:00

I went to see Napoleon Dynamite today. It was a fun, clean movie and I laughed a lot. I also went to church, and then on an unplanned 2.5 hour hike up to Castle Craig starting from Hubbard Park. I found a driftwood walking staff along the talus I was hiking on. Without fail, if a trail seems to lead out of the way, I will take a "short-cut" even if it's bushwhacking. Eventually, my "

10 things I bet you didn't know about me

2004-09-30T11:00:00.000-04:00

Jen wrote up one of these the other day, and I got to thinking about what I'd write last night. Here are the fruits of my thoughts! 1. When I was a baby, my parents and my uncle built our house on the side of a mountain in Groton, New Hampshire. We lived in a tent, then in the foundation. My memories of that place are big icicles and squashed frogs on the road. I lived there until I was school

Who's your scapegoat?

2004-09-29T22:56:00.000-04:00

I drive in my car 1.5-2 hours each way. So I get a lot of time to think. Time to converse with myself and with pretend people. You know what I mean: playing out a conversation in your head. Today on the way home from work, I was listening to The Bible Answerman on WMCA 570. One of his callers was a reformed catholic. He said he was "born a catholic", which is quite the mindset that these people

And behind curtain number one, we find . . . Bill Cosby?

2004-09-29T13:25:00.000-04:00

This morning I was listening to Curtis & Kuby on WABC from NYC. They were talking about the proposal to institute a curfew in New York City for minors after a certain time of night (midnight or so). And an interesting point was made: Conservatives are usually all for limited governement involvement, scaling down government influence in our lives. "Liberals" are for increased government presence

Just spouting off

2004-09-27T11:00:00.000-04:00

I went to church on Sunday. The pastor was speaking about the reality of hell. He was also making some inappropriate inductions based on a statistic. He said that when asked the question: "Did you receive Christ in this church?", 5% of the respondants said "yes". From this, he compared the growth of Islam to the growth of Christianity. One simply cannot use that statistic in an argument about

Buttermilk Falls Redux

2004-09-27T10:15:00.000-04:00

I'm kind of proud of myself. This weekend I went hiking barefoot. There was even glass on the trail (this trailhead sees a lot of morons apparently) in the beginning, but once I moved on it was fine. I went back to Buttermilk Falls with Srini, Jaya, Brad, and Jasmeet. We hiked and I hiked barefoot! For about 70% of the way - on the way back when I came to the gravel road and my feet were

Home

2004-09-25T23:13:00.000-04:00

I watched the movie Garden State today. It was great. Apparently it was directed as well as written by one of the main characters, the guy from Scrubs. He was good in the movie, but Natalie Portman was even better. Sure, she's pretty cute. But she's a great actress. The way she was able to convey emotion was nearly authentic. Who knows, perhaps it was. Not to deliver a spoiler here, but

Unusual dreams

2004-09-25T08:34:00.000-04:00

I just woke up from the oddest dream. I was living at my parents house, but they weren't there. I believe I was younger than I am today. There was a small spider that could change shape, it wasn't a spider really but something like it, that was opressing me. I went to the flowered fence that seperates the driveway of this house from the driveway of another house. On the other side, there were

It was funny, but I was wrong.

2004-09-24T19:44:00.000-04:00

I have a confession to make. A couple of days ago I was playing on "CANDYS 1.6" BF1942 server. It was just me and a bunch of their clan and some other random people. We were playing great maps (Iwo Jima, Bocage, Battle of the Bulge) and I was enjoying myself. This one guy kept on complaining. You know the type: "WTF, BS!!11!!" every time he dies. Followed by swearing at people, etc. So I

I have an orange tongue

2004-09-24T14:25:00.000-04:00

I admit it. I am an orange tic-tac addict. I've been years without them, but when I was at Costco last night I got 12 dollars worth of tictacs. 1/3 of the entire package was orange. I am on my first little container. I fully anticipate it empty by the end of the day. If orange tictacs were cigarettes, I would be a chain smoker. I've already popped 2 more into my mouth while writing this.

Cherry picking from Bash.org

2004-09-24T09:22:00.000-04:00

I think bash.org is has some pretty funny stuff on it. This stuff is relatively clean in content, but be forewarned: it does have some gratuitous offensive language in it. HEY EURAKARTE INSULT RETORT COUNTER-RETORT QUESTIONING OF SEXUAL PREFERENCE SUGGESTION TO SHUT THE FUCK UP NOTATION THAT YOU CREATE A

Windows Application Selection

2004-09-23T07:58:00.000-04:00

I'd like to share what I use for my Windows applications. While I'm still pretty much a Linux noob, my application selection in Windows has gone through significant comparative analysis, and I think that most of these are best-of-breed freeware. I've also included some of the games I play, 2 of which are free to download and play. Archive / Zip application: Filzip Filzip is a full-featured

Hiking at Buttermilk Falls

2004-09-19T13:33:00.000-04:00

Audrial and I just got back from hiking. We went to Buttermilk Falls in Terryville. I was surprised at how nice this area was. Acharacteristically for Connecticut, this terrain was highly populated with quality granite. The surrounding hike was relatively short, but definitely secluded. The water made the whole area cooler than most hikes, so it was a good thing we'd brought our fall coats

I am Cornholio! I need tp for my bunghole!

2004-09-18T10:28:00.000-04:00

So last night I went to go pick up my daughter. Her mother had travelled to a friend's house in New York, and I travelled from Stamford to go pick her up and bring her home for a couple of days. So this morning, my daughter and I are going to a great local diner, and it's raining lightly as we go out to the car. So she takes her sweater and pulls it up over her head. I told her: "I'm going to

Haloscan commenting

2004-09-18T07:48:00.000-04:00

Well, since I saw so many other people using it, I decided to jump onboard and install Haloscan commenting. However, one point of this turned me off. Given the propensity of a blog to grow in size and the increased probability of people commenting on old items (as I am sometimes wont to do), I prefer to have email notification. This is a "premium" feature of Haloscan. So I uninstalled it and

Long hair?

2004-09-17T08:33:00.000-04:00

So last night I was logged into the MSN messaging network after setting up GAIM. My old friend Greg from Superior gave me a chat, and we spoke for a little bit and I pointed him to this site so he can kind of know what's going on in the world according to Adam. One of the first things he said was: "You cut your hair?" The picture at the top of my sidebar is my daughter and I months ago at

And by cool, I mean totally sweet

2004-09-17T07:55:00.000-04:00

So last night, using my Windows partition since my Linux one is having trouble with the /etc/fstab I ended up corrupting while trying to get lilo to work by editing the files via chroot using a Morphix CD, I got sick of using the stupid Internet Explorer and went to download Firefox. I've been using Firefox since it was called Firebird, and I've always been pleased with it, though some websites

The "Guys' Rules"

2004-09-16T09:20:00.000-04:00

From an email I received... At last a guy has taken the time to write this all down. Finally, the guys' side of the story. (I must admit, it's pretty good.) We always hear "the rules" from the female side. Now here are the rules from the male side. These are our rules! Please note... these are all numbered "1" ON PURPOSE! 1. Learn to work the toilet seat. You're a big girl. If it's up, put

Guild Wars, Mudding, and MMORPGs

2004-09-15T13:28:00.000-04:00

If there's one thing that can incite my geeky gaming lust, it's a good computer game that's coming down the pipe. Ever since I've heard of Guild Wars I've been pretty excited about it. I missed the E3 free for all they did, but hearing about it got me pretty excited about the game. You see, I've been playing online games like this for quite some time. About 10 years ago, I started "Mudding".

Sweet case & BF1942

2004-09-15T11:55:00.000-04:00

Last night I got home to find my computer equipment waiting on my porch! I unpacked the case and motherboard. The case was honestly impressive. It had a laquored look to it, was jet black, has a see-through size panel of plexiglass set with a case fan that's got a blue light in it. On the top is an identical fan, and on the front are 6 blue diodes which emit the same blue light. I unpacked

My INTP tendancies

2004-09-15T09:48:00.000-04:00

Here are some things that I can really say: "Yeah, that's me!" on: For here is the central goal of the INTP: to understand and seek truth. [...] a curious overriding desire to observe from a detached position, indicating the preference for intuitive perception with respect to external things. Since accurate analysis needs to avoid becoming hampered with details or being influenced by the

Lyrics: Grateful Dead - Fire On The Mountain

2004-09-14T13:36:00.000-04:00

This morning, while I was driving to work, I wasn't listening to my audio book. I was just letting my mind roam, thinking. For some reason, this song popped into my head. I used to listen to the Grateful Dead all the time . . . Lyrics: Grateful Dead - Fire On The Mountain Long distance runner, what you standin' there for? Get up, get out, get out of the door Your playin' cold music on the

Church

2004-09-12T13:25:00.000-04:00

Well, it's been a while since my wife and I had gone to church. We were going to a church relatively close by a year or so ago, but things kind of soured there. I wasn't comforatable tithing to a place that was giving money to the likes of Kenneth Copeland. Plus, there were some things that were disturbing me. My wife had gone up for prayer, and the pastor's wife (who was actually co-pastor)

Climbing

2004-09-12T08:56:00.000-04:00

So when I got home on Friday night, I was just going to chill out at the house. My plans went arwy, however, at the realisation that there was no power whatsoever in my house. Now, it's not beyond me to forget to pay a bill as basic as the power bill, but this was fortunately not the case. Across the street from me, a power wire had fallen down and they'd closed off the street. So I decided

My stupid computer

2004-09-12T08:32:00.000-04:00

Last weekend I fogged my house for these crazy little fleas (ineffectively I might add) and I think that's what did my computer in. Now when I try and boot the thing, it will die on my in a few minutes, both in Linux and in Windows XP. I don't recall whether I shut the machine off or not when I fogged the main level, but it's dead now. So I ordered a batch of equipment from Newegg. I got a

I found my climbing equipment!

2004-09-10T13:13:00.000-04:00

Woot! So last night I was doing some laundry down in the basement and I found my military bag under a pile of clothing! Inside of that was all of my climbing equipment, minus my Boreal "Vector" climbing shoes and my Black Diamond "ATC" belay device. So I washed the bag itself (it was smelling kind of nasty) and the rope bag (ditto) and my Petzl "Gourou" harness (not as bad, but it could use it

Fluffer Nutter

2004-09-09T09:47:00.000-04:00

So a couple weeks ago my wife came and took the dog. The dog had fleas, and the fleas were becoming a problem. So last weekend I "bombed" the basement, and last night I "bombed" the main floor of the house. There was so much of the good killing stuff in the area that it set off the fire alarm! Anyway, in the middle of the night I had to use the bathroom. So I opened the door to my bedroom

Personality Test Results

2004-09-08T16:49:00.000-04:00

Advanced Big 30 Personality Test Results Sociability ||||||||||||||| 46% Aggressiveness ||||||||||||||| 46% Assertiveness |||||||||||||||||| 54% Activity Level |||||||||||| 34% Excitement-Seeking ||||||||| 30% Enthusiasm ||||||||||||||||||||| 66% Extroversion ||||||||||||||| 46% Trust ||||||||||||||| 42% Morality |||||||||||||||||||||||| 74% Altruism ||||||||||||||| 46%

My walk

2004-09-07T09:18:00.000-04:00

For a long time I've had something lacking in my walk with God. I try to avoid sin, and for the most part succeed. But I'm lacking that closeness, that drive for holiness which really should define me. I haven't been reaching for God, commiting myself day to day to him. And that's something I want to change. I want to be that selfless servant of God. To seek his will and his face. To turn

Hiking and Climbing, Oh My!

2004-09-06T16:57:00.000-04:00

This afternoon, I went to go see the movie "Hero". It was very "artistically" done - a little overdone at parts, but on the whole I enjoyed what they made. The story was pretty weak (as always with these flicks) but I don't consider it 6 bucks wasted. After the movie, I decided (on a whim) to go hiking. I had my tevas on, some sweatpants, and a long-sleeved shirt. I hit a local hike. When I

Trite details of my weekend

2004-09-06T16:56:00.000-04:00

Well, I had a pretty productive weekend. On Saturday I went hiking with my friend Brad. The hike was one I usually do, but we went further in than I usually do. At the "end" of our hike, we were at the top of a local ski mountain. We hiked about 4 miles or so, a good 2.5 - 3 hours. We were both beat at the end of it. Also on Saturday I got Windows installed on the C: on my machine, so now I'm

Fishing and Barbecue

2004-08-31T16:55:00.000-04:00

I had completely forgotten about Frank's party last night. Right after work though, maybe 6 guys from work went over to his new place and had a barbecue. It was a good time, and I had (again) a little too much to drink. Since I didn't have anyone to go home to, when I got tired on the road, I just pulled into a "Park and Ride" and took a nap for an hour. This definitely helped out. I was pretty

Got my AA Punkbuster working!

2004-08-04T16:31:00.000-04:00

Context - Migrated from my /. journal: I run gentoo on my machine at home, a good gaming rig. I believe I used the gentoo ebuild from portage to install Americas Army 2.10 on it. But I kept on getting kicked off of servers! My punkbuster was what was causing it, but when I tried to update it via pbweb.x86, I kept on getting a message saying that it couldn't do a binary conversion. See, what

Camping

2004-08-02T16:22:00.000-04:00

On the bright side, this weekend I was able to actually go camping with my family. On Friday night we were in New Hampshire, at Russel Lake off of Exit 31 on I-93 North. My wife, daughter and I set up camp at an outstanding camp site: secluded from most of the others, but still on the main road. The site was level, mostly sand, and had a picnic table and firepit (complete with grill). At around

Calamity

2004-08-01T16:19:00.000-04:00

I can recall this somewhat clearly: I had a desire to take the door off of the hinges. Our apartment had a relatively large living room, and a kitchen offset by the door to the hallway. Our bedroom was seperated from the livingroom by a door, but the door swung inward into the bedroom, and often clanged with the door of the bathroom, which also swung into the bedroom. So one night, I took the

From New Hampshire to Connecticut

2004-08-01T16:05:00.000-04:00

It was on the drive from New Hampshire to Connecticut that we lost Nix, Chuchulain, and Finnegan. I'm not using "lost" as a euphamism. We literally lost them, somewhere in MA. I was driving the U-Haul we had all of our stuff in from New Hampshire to Connecticut, and behind the U-Haul was our car. It didn't work anymore, the head gasket was blown, but we had it in tow and had put the cats in the

From Colorado to New Hampshire

2004-08-01T15:15:00.000-04:00

I believe it was 1995 when I signed up with the military. On the summer of 1995, I was shipped off to Basic Training in the south somewhere. I'd already had my head shaved, and when I arrived I got a little bit of flack about that. But that was just the first night. Basic training seemed to take forever. It was only 2 months, but it was hard. It was hot and humid. I had to learn military things,

Introduction

2004-08-01T09:58:00.000-04:00

Like I said, I'm a simple man. A man who doesn't want to hurt anyone. A man who expects to be accepted for who he is, for what he is. I grew up in a small town nestled in between the "lakes region" and "White Mountain National Forest" in New Hampshire. There was a clean river, called the Pemi, that you could swim in (and see clearly to the bottom, though of course at the time I didn't know