A Geek in the Cowboy State

Fin

2009-07-18T09:09:00.002-06:00

I'm letting this neglected blog die. I've moved into a bit of a new chapter of my life, and I don't really need to document the wackiness of a geek living in Wyoming.

A lot of the little things that would have gone on this blog ended up on twitter instead. I recommend following me there for continued updates on my life http://twitter.com/stevenpaulr. For family members, most of you are friends with me on facebook, and that will be the best place to keep up. I'll pretty much keep all baby related things there as it's a bit more private.

I have also started a new tumblr. That's where I'll put the occasional blog post on things like writing and technology. It's at http://stevenpaulr.tumblr.com/ That's also going to be my general dump of things I find interesting. When I find something to share on twitter, it'll go through tumblr to twitter. If I find something on Google reader, rather than click share, I'll throw it on tumblr. You can probably call that my general brain dump.

So Long.

Musings on Being an Author

2009-03-08T10:08:00.003-06:00

There has been some good discussion recently on various topics relating to independent authors. The first, and probably biggest of these is the 1000 true fan model. While the article was written a year ago, it has been getting some attention lately. The basic concept is that for an independent artist, you don't need to get mainstream to make a living. You just need 1000 people willing to buy $100 worth of your stuff a year. Wil Wheaton discussed this recently as well. He's not there yet in either the number of people willing to spend that much, or amount of product output per year. But, it gives hope as a new author that I don't have to make the New York Times best selling list to make a living at it.

Last weeks This Week in Tech discussed this topic a bit as well. There was a bit of talk of selling yourself as a brand, and the need for a traditional publisher. According to John C Dvorak, one should be able to build themself up as a brand withing 18 months as long as their product isn't crap. I'm going to start really building the Steve Radabaugh brand when my book hits publication. I'll build a new website, and I'll nee to start blogging more frequently and I'll have to be a little more focused on what I post to twitter.

I think I'm doing something right by doing my book this year. Warren Ellis has declared 2009 to be Year of the POD. His forum, Whitechapel, has had some good discussion about POD sites and tools.

I think the real trick is going to be finding the right price point. Wil Wheaton's book is $13 for a print copy or $5 for a PDF copy. I honestly think $13 is too much. This could be why the PDF sales of it have done phenomenally better than print sales. With the way lulu does it's pricing, it's hard to get a book made much cheaper than that. Cory Doctrow's book Little Brother, has an MSRP of $17.95. But he's giving away digital copies of it for free. On top of that, the book is licensed as creative commons. Here's a post of his explaining why he does this.

I have a few months to decide exactly how I'm going to release this, so no decisions are going to be made today. I'm thinking I'll go live with a new site promoting my brand and all of my works around June 1st. Still have to finish editing the book of course.

Like the Oneida, but with more computers.

2009-01-25T07:41:00.004-07:00

It's quarter to 8 on a Sunday morning. I spent most of Saturday laying around feeling sick and playing videogames. I'm feeling much better today. That was a really fast bug.

This morning as I sit here and surf, for some reason my thoughts keep drifting back to an idea I once had of a nerd city. I was originally inspired by Ave Maria, the town in Florida that was built specifically to attract Catholics to it. So, what would a planned nerd community look like? It would have to be a smaller town, maybe a couple thousand people at most. Seeing the problems that Thermopolis has getting people to move here, there are basically 2 things you need to get people to move to a town. A place for them to live, and a place for them to work.

To provide a place for all these nerds to live, you need housing. The best way to get that, is to have a developer on board. Someone with a construction team, who isn't too far away. Of course you can't just find a big plot of land somewhere and convince a developer that a bunch of people will move there if he builds houses. To convince the developer that this is a viable money making opportunity, there needs to be another reason for all the nerds to move there.

Which brings us to need number two: Work. The best way to get all of these nerds to move to our little project town, is to have someone wanting to pay all of these nerds a lot of money. If Google took my idea, and moved it's HQ out into the middle of nowhere, then paid a developer to build a town around it's new complex, we would have our nerd town. I don't know that we really want everyone working at Google though. It would be better if there were a couple smaller companies in town. That would give a bit more diversity to the job market in town. It would also help encourage new businesses to move there.

So, how are we going to get multiple businesses that have a serious need for nerd brain power to move to town. It would be important to get a few established companies there to get things rolling. These established companies would need to be the basis for the community. They would probably be the ones putting in the money to get things started. Once they are there, and there is a good population of nerds living in one place, then it would be an ideal place for startups to move to.

Ok, so let's say we've got three big companies looking at moving to our town. We find a location that's nice, but not heavily populated. We're probably looking at a smaller state. There is a lot of grant money to be had from some of these smaller states if you're building new jobs in those states. We're probably looking at the Dakotas, or Wyoming, or Montana. States that only get 3 electoral votes. States that have a lot of open land.

Once we have our location picked, we need to find a developer that is near by. Now, we don't really want to hire some guy from the nearest Metro area to come out and build our town. That's too much money leaving the town. It'd be better to get a developer to move to our town, and get skilled labor in the town. Whoever builds all these houses and commercial spaces is going to make some good money, and we don't want that money to leave town. This is also going to get skilled professionals to move to the town. They usually aren't nerds, but we need these people.

So now we've got jobs, we've got housing, and we've got plumbers, electricians, and carpenters. We'll start seeing some nerds move here to take those jobs. But, what can we do to really set this town apart as a nerd town? What can we have that will get all these nerds motivated to move here aside from jobs?

We need to put fiber going to each house as we build them.
We need to make sure there is good cell coverage. Preferrably from AT&T so all these nerds can have their iphones. At least having one competitor would be good as well.
A community gaming center would be a good thing to have. Some place that's available late in the night with room for both lan parties and table top gaming.
When questioned @jeruvin said a community think center would be a must. A place where you can grab a desk and just work on whatever. It would be free to go to and have free wifi.

What things would you like to see in a nerdy community? We're shooting for realistic goals this morning.

My thoughts on the BB Storm

2009-01-03T11:30:00.005-07:00

A few weeks ago I got a BlackBerry Storm. Several people have asked me to let them know what I think of it. So I'll do that here. I'm not writing this as a review. I'm not going to give it a score. I'm just going to tell you what I like and what I don't like.

As a point of reference: I also have an iPod Touch and an LG enV2. So I know what the most popular touch screen feels like, and I also know what it feels like to type on a really small keyboard. AT&T does not have service where I live, so an iPhone is not an option for me.

The way the Storm works for typing is the touch screen is one big button. You touch the key that you want which highlights that key, and then when you push in the screen it registers as hitting that key. I like the way this feels. When I go back to typing on my iPod it feels funny not having to push in the screen. I know some people think it's extra work, but I like having that tactile feedback. It's definitely less work than it is to type on the enV2, which makes my hands cramp up. The one thing the iPod/iPhone does better is the way that it highlights the key that you're pressing. The storm just makes that key glow. You can see it around your finger, but Apple's method shows you exactly what you're pressing. Once you get used to typing on it, that's not really an issue, as you should know what key you're on based on what key you're next to. That probably depends on how well you know the QWERTY keyboard layout.

In a vertical mode, the Storm uses the same keyboard design that it has on the Pearl. Basically it puts 2 letters on each key. Typing this way works pretty much the same as T9. Once I learned to just trust the auto corrector, I got faster at typing that way than on the Apple keyboard as the buttons are bigger and harder to miss. However, if I do hit the wrong key, I usually have to go back and fix my mistake as the spell checker often can't figure out what I was trying to say in that case.

The web browser isn't as nice as Safari. It displays most pages just fine, but it will not support anything that uses Javascript. Neither Safari nor the Blackberry browser support flash. It usually isn't an issue, but if you want to use Hahlo.com for twitter, you won't be able to on the Blackberry. Also on the Storm, to zoom in, you just click and it zooms in an arbitrary amount. It usually does a good job of trying to zoom in on what you want to see. You don't have as much control as you do with Apple's method of zooming. Now that I think of it, I can't say there's been a time when I really wished for Apple's control of the zoom.

There's also the option of grabbing opera for the Storm. I have it on mine, and I will occasionally try to use it for pages that don't work well in the BB browser. It feels clumsy to me and I don't like to use it for normal web use. Maybe if they create a version of it specifically for the Storm it'll get better.

For email, I have my Storm set up to use the BlackBerry enterprise server for work email, and I also have Gmail installed on it. I really like the Gmail app. It's superior to Gmail on the iPod/iPhone. Especially since you can have it alert you when you have new email. I don't think the iPhone can do that (although I could be wrong). The interface for it is nice, although it takes a few clicks to get to an email that is in another label, but not in the inbox.

The default email client that I use for Exchange email is usable. It does name look ups off of the Exchange database well, which is excellent. Beyond that, it's just an email client. Nothing special about it, nothing really wrong with it.

As an actual phone, I'm not overly impressed with the Storm. I have to be careful when talking on it as my cheek will often acidentally turn on speakerphone. It does come with earbuds that have a mic built in. I don't carry these with me, so I haven't used them. I would think that it would be easier to talk on that way. I have not talked to anyone on an iPhone, so I can't really compare it to that. I'm going to continue to carry a regular cell phone of some kind to use for phone calls. Quick work related calls on the storm are fine, but I wouldn't want to talk to my mother for half an hour on it.

The biggest thing I would like changed on the storm is to make it faster to call someone stored in memory. Speed dial is in a sub menu. From the main menu, it takes 4 clicks to call someone who's number is in speed dial. The individual buttons for this should be bigger too, it's easy to click on the wrong person.

As for twitter, once you turn off compatibility mode, twitterberry is pretty nice. I've been using it and like it quite a bit. It takes a little bit to get used to the navigation of it, but once you do it works well. The one thing I don't like is in the timeline it cuts off longer tweets and makes you click on them to read the whole thing. I put in a request to have an option to let it show the entire tweet in the timeline. If they do this, then I will be a happy camper.

One thing that all Blackberrys do that I really like is they sense if they're in a holster or not. You can set them to vibrate if they're holstered, or ring if they are not. They use magnets to determine if they're holstered. This is a fantastic feature. The holster I had broke after I bumped into something, I need to get a better one. It was off brand so it's not anything against RIM. I really miss having it, and I need to get a new one.

That's basically everything I can think of to say about it. It's a fine device. There's things it does that I really like, and there are a few things that annoy me. I heard someone say once that RIM modified the stock Blackberry interface to work with the Storm, and Apple designed the iPhone's interface specifically for the iPhone. That's a good way to summarize the differences between the two devices.

I'm still carrying all three devices with me most everywhere I go. The iPod is mainly used for music, games, and the occasional web surfing. The Storm is used for web/email/twitter/camera/texting. The enV2 is used for phone calls.

It's 2009! Time for resolutions.

2009-01-01T11:28:00.003-07:00

Welcome to 2009. I still do not have a rocket pack, or a flying car, or sneakers that fit themselves. This isn't quite the future I was hoping for 24 years ago. With the beginning of the New Year it is customary for one to make some resolutions about how one would improve oneself during the coming year. Let's examine this a bit.

According to Merriam Webster, a resolution is something that has been resolved. Digging a bit deeper I found that to resolve means to decide firmly. So it's customary to decide firmly to do something in the new year. So, if I want to be better about writing, I should resolve to write more. Of course, if I leave it at that, like most New Years Resolutions, it won't happen.

For a resolution to really happen, you have to create goals to go with it. As we all know, a goal really should be S.M.A.R.T.

Specific
Measurable
Attainable
Realistic
Timely

I know that I need SMART goals to get things done in my life. I accomplished NaNoWriMo because it was a SMART goal. Well, I wasn't sure it was realistic when I started, but it turned out to be. So, I need to create a SMART goal that will cause me to write more.

The one I came up with was "I will write at least 500 words a day."

Ok, is that specific? Yes, I do think it is.

Is it Measurable? It's pretty easy to count words and see if I've gotten to 500 or not, so yes, it's measurable.

Is it Attainable? I don't know? When can I say I've attained this goal. It's kind of a never ending thing isn't it. There's never a point where I can be proud and say, I've attained the goal. So, maybe I just need to amend it to be 500 words a day this year. Ok, now on Jan 1st 2010 I'll be able to say I've attained the goal.

Is it Realistic? I would say so, but I really should think it through. Is it reasonable on Wednesdays when I'm barely home? Well, I'm usually home from 4:30 till 6, so I could do it then. So, it would often be doable on Wednesdays. I also have to spend some time this spring editing my book. It's not realistic to me to write 500 words and edit on the same day. Sometimes it is, but not always. Let's say spending equivalent time editing counts towards to goal. Editing is an integral part of writing, and I think I need to accommodate it. So now I have what I think is a realistic goal.

Is it timely? Well, I gave myself a time frame when I made the goal attainable. So, yes it's timely.

So, this year I resolve to write more. I am setting a goal of writing 500 words or doing equivalent editing every day of 2009.

I'm also setting a secondary goal of getting my book in a publishable form my May 15th. That will give me a couple of weeks leeway so I can get it in to create space by the June 1st deadline to get a free copy of my book. January will probably be spent with more time editing than writing.

NaNoWriMo

2008-12-05T16:55:00.002-07:00

I didn't post in November as I was putting all of my writing efforts into the NaNoWriMo. I did successfully finish my book on time. The experience was good as I discovered that I do enjoy the writing process. I'm hoping that I created in myself the habit of writing, and I'll continue to write in my free time. I have a couple story ideas bouncing around in my head right now. I'll probably sit down and do one of them this weekend.

In January I'll go back to my NaNo book and edit it. Once I've gone through it again, I'll have the wife go through it, then some people at school. I'm probably going to put it on createspace.com when it's ready for publication. The nice thing is that they are giving a free proof copy valid through June. Which gives me a deadline to get the thing edited and ready to go. If I like the proof copy, then I'll throw it on Amazon.

The reason I'm going the self publishing route is that this is going to be a niche interest book. I don't think the subject of Pirates and Ninjas is going to be one that any publisher would have any interest in. So, I know I'm basically throwing away the first print rights, but they're not worth much.

The other thing I plan on doing is putting a PDF version of the book online for free somewhere. The thing is going to be liscensed Creative Commons. I just need to do a bit more research with create space and the print rights associated with them. I want to make sure I retain full publishing rights to something that I publish through them.

But first, I have to get the darn thing edited.

Gamer Grub Post-Mortem

2008-12-05T16:51:00.001-07:00

So, like 2 months later I decide to post and give an update one what it was like.

Overall, I'd have to say that Gamer Grub is good stuff. I personally wasn't a fan of the chocolate flavored one, but some of the kids in the computer club liked it. They all liked the product overall and said that they wanted to order it by the case. I don't know that I'll order it from the internet, but if I found it at my friendly local grocery store / convenience store, I would buy it. I don't know what kind of distribution model they're looking at, so I don't know that I'll be able to get it here in the middle of Wyoming. But stranger things have happened.

Gamer Grub

2008-10-07T21:35:00.002-06:00

I talked about this a little bit on twitter, and said I would elaborate on the story here.

Gamer Grub first showed up on my radar last Friday when it was mention on Penny-Arcade. They did a comic about it which mirrored my sentiment. They wrote a bit more about it in their blog. I checked around on my own a bit, read the Tom's Hardware interview and looked at their website. I decided that action should be taken and sent a rather nasty email to Biosilo foods and urged people on twitter to do the same. I didn't expect any kind of response. I figured the emails would go into the same black hole of email that most big corps have.

I wrote:

as a gamer I am insulted by your "gamer grub". That is the worst piece of marketing I have ever seen, and it makes me never want to buy any of your products. I will also be telling everyone I know to steer clear of anything you create.

Next time you want to target a niche audience, do some research.

What I didn't realize is that Biosilo foods isn't a big corp. It's pretty much one guy. His name is Keith. Keith replied to my email.

Hi Steven;

Thank you for your comments. I can assure you no insult was intended. I just liked GG.

Actually I really do not have a marketing department; Biosilo Foods is a start up at the moment. I am not really a marketer since that stuff is a bit too cheesy for me.

Most of my gaming experience comes from LAN gaming while the boss was away at a corporate firm I worked at; and with my daughter who prefers Unreal with monster kills. I haven't upgraded to liquid cooling yet but I would really would like to.

If you would like I can send you some samples and you can taste GG and see what you think. If you have any ideas for improvement I am kind of at that phase where we can tweak stuff a bit if it works.

If you need to stay clear of what I do, that's cool. My last girl friend said the same thing. :)

Cheers,

KM

Now, parts of that email do seem a bit contrived. Especially the random part of wanting to install water cooling. It's pretty obvious that Keith is not a "gamer". But, since he went through the effort to respond to what was basically a flame mail, I figured I should at least be civil with the guy. I emailed back and forth with him a little bit, and the short of it is that he's sending out some free samples. I plan on sharing them with some of the students at the high school (probably the computer club kids), and give him an honest response.

I really do feel that the name of the product is bad, and I told him so. If I can think of something better than "Strategy Chocolate" then I'll pass it on to him. Maybe, as Tycho said, the guy is a carpetbagger. But I appreciate the attempt of the small guy to make it big. He just needs to find someone who knows a thing or two about marketing to geeks.

Thanks for all the Memories

2008-09-08T20:30:00.004-06:00

It's funny how music can take you places into your past. While I listened to music in my childhood, and I still listen to some of those songs, I don't consider myself to having had any personal musical taste until 8th grade. Prior to then, I just listened to whatever was on. (This completely absolves me from any responsibility of owning those 3 albums of New Kids on the Block.)

In 8th grade I discovered Heavy Metal. My entry into this realm of music was Metallica's Black album. Some people would say that it was the Black album that Metallica jumped the shark. While they may have had the shark in their sights, I don't think they truly jumped it until Load. I don't think I ever listened to St. Anger all the way through, I deleted those MP3s probably 30 seconds into the first song.

A friend told me that their new album wasn't bad, and that I should check it out. So I did. When I heard the first licks from the guitar on
"That Was Your Life" I was taken back to Matt Davis's living room. I was wearing a denim vest over a black tshirt and I wore Lee jeans with giant holes in the knees. My hair was shaggy as I had just decided to grow it long, and we were listening to ...And Justice for All on his dad's stereo system. That's the same living room where I first learned to play D&D and Magic the gathering. I can still clearly remember the smell of that house.

Next I jumped to my own bedroom, sitting on the edge of my bed listening to the Black album with the inside cover in my hands reading along with the entire album trying to memorize the lyrics. The music was coming out of my little black boom box with the tone knob turned all the way to treble.

A flood of other memories followed. First hearing Ride the Lighting on a church trip to Denver. Looking at the albums that I didn't yet own in the little music section that the grocery store had. Recording hours and hours of Metallica specials that aired on Mtv. Drawing stylized M's on my notebooks in school. Listening to my friend Tony try to play Anesthesia on his bass guitar.

I'm not going to make any great claims about this album. Older fans may want to give this a listen before dismissing it. If nothing else it makes for good reminiscing, and something to write about.

Challenging myself

2008-09-05T22:32:00.003-06:00

I think it's time for a new writing initiative on my part. I'm challenging myself to write something every day. Some days I'll write a post to this blog, some days I'll write some fiction. I may even find some new venues for writing, but I need to be writing more than I am now. So, starting with this here blog post, I am writing daily.

When I get to November, I'm going to participate in the NaNoWriMo. The idea behind NaNoWriMo is that as a participant you write a 50,000 word novel within the month of November. The goal isn't to write a quality piece of work, but to just get the words out. November 1st you have to start from scratch, and you have 30 days to do 50,000 words. To get it done that quickly while still working a day job there really won't be any time for editing. This gets aspiring authors to get over their fear of writing garbage.

As I think about it a bit more, I think I can liken writing to sketching. I don't know when I figured this out, but artists start with a really really rough drawing and just keep adding lines that are close to what their looking for until they have a complete picture. Only then do they go back and try to get the exact lines that they are looking for. Writing like this will be very similar. All I need to do in November is break the word count. I can go back and edit it and make it good after November is over.

Also, I'm going to move the blog in a slightly different direction. Since I pretty much post all of my life happenings as they happen on twitter, putting them on here would be a little redundant. I started this blog to document my transition from city life to rural life. I've been here close to 2 years now, so that transition is mostly done. I'll focus more on the technology/futurism commentary that I occasionally do. Major life events will still get posted here, but just not very often. That's why my PAX decompression post focused on how twitter usage affected the weekend.

PAX decompress

2008-09-02T18:35:00.003-06:00

I don't know if this post is going to be more about PAX, or more about Twitter. Twitter really changed the way the entire weekend worked.

Thursday night about 9:30, I got to the hostel my group was staying at. I met up with the rest of the group and headed to the pre-pax meetup at Shorty's bar. We got there, but didn't immediately see anyone I recognized, so we just got a booth and hung out. At one point I decided to put twitter to the test and posted that I was there and described what I was wearing. It took roughly 5 seconds for @Tajah to find me and tell us where the rest of the PAX people were. Our group was a bit big to intermingle with the other groups that were there, but we found a table that was at least closer to them. A couple people recognized me as the Omeganaut who went to the same shindig last year, and said hi.

Friday morning, our group opted to not stand in the huge line, and went sightseeing around Seattle a bit instead. We checked out Pikes market and walked up to the Sci-Fi museum. Whenever I could find open wifi, I checked up on twitter with my ipod. This let me keep tabs on what was going on with the line at PAX without actually standing in it. We made it over to PAX shortly after the doors opened, and we got right in. (The line is really just for concert wristbands, and for the social aspect of it). Shortly after our group got into the expo hall, we split up and went on our own ways. We used Twitter to keep track of where we all were.

After checking out the expo hall, I went over to a D&D mini 200 pt sealed tournament. I took 3rd place out of 5 people, then rushed back to the main convention hall to meet up with the group for the Dawn of War II panel. After the panel we grabbed dinner across the street, during which twitter let me know about a Cryptic party that I was missing out on. Rather than searching for the party, we went over to the convention center, and stood in the back of the concert where I bounced between twitter and pictochat while the Freeze Pops played. I have now seen that band in concert twice, and I still don't know what other people see in them. Most the people in Pictochat weren't impressed either. I spent a lot less time looking at twitter while Jonathan Coulton was on stage, although it was cool to see updates from Felicia Day and Wil Wheaton from backstage. Felicia Day even posted moments after she got off the stage.

I spent a good portion of Saturday in the Annex hall which did not have wifi, so twitter didn't do much for me that day. I started out the day walking down to the waterfront and relaxing a bit with Joe before heading to the show. Walked the expo hall a bit, and tried out WoW Minis (which is amazing) and ate lunch at one of the malls not too far away. Joe, Jason, and I also did the little games for the X-Blades booth. It was a fun little quest that they sent us out on. Ended the day playing tabletop games in the free-play area.

Sunday morning I headed straight to the convention and pretty much went straight to the Serpent theater to get a seat for Wil Wheaton's panel. Had there been wifi in that section, I would have known about a few other people I knew sitting in there. After Wil's panel, I rushed back to the signing area, and got in line to buy his book. A restroom stop delayed me a bit and I ended up in the back of the line. I met @ay1ene in the line and we pretty much spent the whole hour and a half in line, checking twitter, posting to twitter, and talking about twitter. After I got the book from Wil, I spent a couple hours going through the Expo hall making sure I saw everything that I wanted. Jason and I then went to find a very late lunch before the final round of the Omegathon. The lunch went even later than thought, so I kept tabs on the Omegathon through twitter since there was wifi at the mall. The rest of our group took off at some point during Wil Wheaton's panel and headed home.

After dinner we spent some time back in the hostel relaxing and playing DS games. Through twitter we found out about a PAX Twitter meet up at Bell Town Billiards. Since we had no other plans for the night, we hit that up, and I am very glad we did. Roughly 30 twitterers showed up. It was fun to be able to put faces to some of the accounts that I've been following for a few months now. The place got very loud, so when we were trying to get people to go somewhere else, twitter became the easiest way to tell everyone.

Monday was dedicated to going around and being touristy. We got a late start so we were a bit rushed to get checked out of the hostel. I posted to twitter that we were off. Luckily @j0z1e replied and offered to let us leave our crap in her room while we toured about. We hiked over to her hotel (damn near the opposite end of downtown) and left our stuff there. The three of us walked down to the Greek place where we had lunch on Friday and ate there again. Bumbershoot was going on across the street, and that provided us with interesting people to watch, and some music to listen to. After lunch, we went to the top of the Space Needle where twitter was updated and DS games were played.

After the Space Needle we pretty much just bummed around until it was time to catch the bus for the airport. All in all, it would have been a fun weekend either way, but the ample usage of Twitter really helped to make it an awesome weekend.

Dungeons and .... Horses?

2008-06-08T20:59:00.002-06:00

I made it to the D&D game day yesterday in Worland. I played the cleric for the adventure. We didn't have time to do the skirmish, but we did the trivia. I did horribly at the general trivia, but did fairly well with the family feud questions. The best part of the day was meeting some nerds in the area. They play every Saturday all day. I'm hoping to join them as often as I can. I also found out that one of the teachers is interested in starting a group. Hopefully we'll get something together this summer and play every couple weeks. So I possibly just went from a strong desire to do some pen and paper gaming to having 2 different groups to game with. This will make living in Wyoming a lot better.

Sarah and I went out riding this morning. It was the first time I rode our new horse Moon (who may be re-named shortly). He behaved well for me. We're definitely going to keep him. The two of us just rode down the driveway and down a dirt road a little way. Maybe a mile round trip. Now we need to buy a saddle that fits me better, and probably some boots. (If you don't know, cowboy boots are pointed so that it's easier to get your feet into stirrups.) I refuse to get a cowboy hat, although I may get more of an Indiana Jones style hat to keep the sun off.

A Memorable Memorial Day Weekend

2008-05-26T20:06:00.002-06:00

If you're following my twitter, you got some bits and pieces of my weekend. I figure I better fill in some of the details.

Friday night, we took off for Rapid City at about six o'clock. We got about halfway to Worland when we heard a whining sound coming from the engine, which was shortly followed by me noticing that the car was running really hot. We pulled over, and popped the hood to find that the coolant reservoir was empty. After discussing what happened, we decided to fill it (fortunately there was half a gallon in the back of the car) and see how it ran for a few more miles. We checked it a couple miles further down, and it seemed OK, so we kept going. Just before Worland, it did the same thing, so we pulled over and found that it was bone dry again. Fortunately we pulled over into a mechanic's parking lot. After some discussion, we called Sarah's Dad to come pick her up, take her back to Thermopolis to get my car. So we hung out for about an hour and a half waiting for my car to show up. We ended up getting to Rapid at about 2:30 in the morning. The roads were crap with slush and rain, so it was slow going.

The rest of the weekend was good. We got to take Nico, the French exchange student up into the hills, showed him Mt. Rushmore, Keystone, and Hill City. We also were able to do quite a bit of shopping, see a couple movies (Indiana Jones and Iron Man), and eat at Ichibans (our favorite Rapid City sushi resturaunt) twice. Today we drove back via Devil's Tower. It was the first time I got to see that up close.

The shopping resulted in us getting a new set of pots and pans. Which is something I've wanted pretty much since we got married 6 years ago, but just hadn't gotten around to getting. The new ones are all stainless steel, so we won't be eating teflon flakes any more. We also got some glass Pyrex containers so we can move away from using our cancer causing plastic ones. On a personal success note, I stayed within my blow money budget.

Life out West

2008-05-11T21:45:00.003-06:00

Went horseback riding today. First time since I moved from Rapid City, so probably first time since 2003. Having a pasture of horses that I have to feed occasionally has really help build my confidence around horses. It made riding a lot easier than it was previously.

I think I'm going to try to build a home arcade cabinet this summer. I don't know if this is one of those ideas I get that never pan out or not. But, for the first time in my life, I have space where I could work on such a project, and it's not financially infeasible. I'll have to start working up some plans. I'm more concerned with the physical details of the cabinet right now. I can work out what hardware and software will run it later. This is more of a carpentry thing right now.

p.s. new story up on ficlet.

Too much free time

2008-05-10T21:32:00.003-06:00

I've been spending a lot of time lately thinking about my personal cognitive surplus and how I use it. I obviously haven't been spending much of it by writing, which is what I should be doing with it. Really, I think I have been wasting it. I watched 2 entire seasons of Babylon 5 this week. Granted I was sick for most of that and couldn't accomplish anything with that time. At least I'm more aware of it than I was before. Now I can't sit down and watch an hour of TV without feeling guilty. The result is that I spend a lot of time watching TV and feeling guilty about it.

Spring Cleaning

2008-05-10T20:10:00.003-06:00

I'm doing a bit of site re-design. Those of you who view my blog via RSS feed, which I think is pretty much everyone, won't really notice a change. I'm trying to make it kind of a central portal of all things Steve. Basically, getting links from there to other places that I lurk. I may look into pulling in the RSS feeds on the side instead of just linking to the items.

I've been spending a lot of time on twitter lately. If I'm awake, I'm usually logged into it either with my ipod and hahlo our with digsby. So, if you're keeping up with my sparse blog posts, and want more steve in your daily life, then get on to twitter.

Brian Dump from Today

2008-04-16T22:10:00.003-06:00

I'm sitting in a hotel room in Casper. I'm here for a Tech conference/sales pitch that is put on by one of our vendors. They're promoting VMWare, and I'm very interested. I really like the idea of being able to move virtual machines from one physical server to another while the machine continues to run. I'm seeing that they have a 60 day trial of the server platform on their website. I have some other projects at work I need to get moving on before I can spend much time playing with this. Hopefully I can play with it before the new budget hits in July. It would be nice to virtualize some of our less mission critical servers just to get a feel for it.

Today was definitely worth the trip down to learn more about these technologies. I wouldn't be surprised if we had some major virtualization going on within a couple of years.

An Apology

2008-03-19T19:30:00.002-06:00

Dear Blog,
I've been neglecting you for several months. I know you probably think I'm a horrible person, and you'd be justified in your opinion. 4 months is a really long time for blog neglect.

I bought a new car. I got it back in November, and I wanted my next post to be about it, but I had to take it to a mechanic for 2 months, and I couldn't get a picture of it. I know that's not a very good excuse, but it's the only one I have. To make up for it, here's a picture of the car.
It's a 1994 Nissan Pathfinder. I mainly bought it because it has 4wd and it was very cheap. It's really fun to drive. The gas mileage hurts a bit though. I'm estimating that it costs $4 each round trip in to town.

Work has been pretty crazy lately. We're right in the middle of standardized testing on the computers. It's been a lot of stress trying to keep it running correctly. The side business has slowed down quite a bit, which I really don't mind as I'm now the advisor for the High School Key Club, and I'm teaching a computer club on Monday nights. Add to that I'm still doing Karate twice a week, and I'm a pretty busy guy.

Well, blog, that's it for now. I promise I will give you more attention from now on.

Moleskine

2007-11-26T21:27:00.001-07:00

I bought a moleskine this weekend while I was in Sioux Falls. My plan is to fill it with fiction. I don't know for sure right now if I'm going to put short stories into it, or one long story, but I am going to just keep writing. One thing I've heard said over and over again is that if you want to be a writer, then you need to write. I decided to try writing in a moleskine is so that I can't change what I've written, I can only keep going forward. I started writing something that is steampunk. So far all I really have is a character and a little bit of the world. This might be something big, or it might be a short story. I kind of like the idea of writing a series of short stories about the same character. I may post some of the stories online, who knows.

Life Out West

2007-11-26T20:55:00.000-07:00

If you've watched a lot of old westerns you might be familiar with the term water rights. Put simply, water rights determine how much water you can take from a lake/river/stream/creek for your use, or for use in your land. This is something that people out where I live are concerned about. Today I went in and registered to vote. Once I proved that I did live in the affected area, I got to vote on the Owl Creek Water District. Basically this was a vote to either form or not form a water district that would bring in potable water through pipes. Since it's a small group of people who are allowed to vote on this, my vote had a bit of meaning. Of course, if we get water from pipes, then our water rights from Owl Creek will probably be reduced.

I just hope that no one starts shooting at their neighbors over this.

Men with Guns

2007-11-20T12:50:00.000-07:00

From a Digg Comment:

"everything the government does is with the barrel of a gun. Drive too fast? A man with a gun will pull you over. Don't pay your income taxes? Men with guns will come and take your freedom. Try to protest in the same location as King Bush? Men with guns will take you away. Get arrested without charges and thrown into a hole for months to years on end? Yep, that's the work of men with guns.

If you don't vote the right people into office, the only way to get the wrong ones out will eventually be with guns helping you. Why do you think there is a second amendment? It ain't for shooting squirrels."

Idiosyncrasy

2007-11-06T17:25:00.000-07:00

Even though I know better rationally, when I get forwarded emails I frequently don't read the instructions to forward it on on the basis that the horrible things won't happen to me if I don't read it.

Walmart Failed

2007-11-04T21:20:00.000-07:00

I went to pick up a little notebook thingy to use as a planner. They had nothing. Well, they had pre-printed planners, and they had spiral bound crap. So I'm trying out a hipster PDA. Basically it's just note cards with a little clip. I'll let you know how it goes.

Getting organized

2007-10-30T22:13:00.000-06:00

Not blogging is a vicious cycle. When you go a while without blogging, then you feel like there's a lot that needs to be blogged. This makes me feel like I have a lot of catch up to do, and makes me not want to blog. So, to avoid this, lets just pretend that nothing happend.

At the end of this week I am closing my physical business location in favor of just doing on site work. The advantage of this is that days I don't have any side work, I can just go home. I'm having my office phone number forwarded to my cell phone full time, so people can still get ahold of me. I will most likely not answer the phone when I'm at work and make them leave a message. The one thing I am going to need is some sort of portable scheduling system. Right now I keep my schedule on my desktop computer in the office. I've thought of a few different solutions. One is getting an iPod Touch and using that. A more sensible one is getting my little Dell PDA working again (haven't touched in a couple years). However, I think I'm going to use just a basic notebook. I found http://www.plannerhack.com/ and really like the system laid out in there. The thing that really attracts me to it is that it's a durable solution. No worries about dropping or breaking the thing. This weekend I have a meeting in Riverton, so I am going to pick up a notebook at Walmart. If I like the system, I'll get a moleskine next time I'm in a big city.

Now that I type this out and put a little more thought into it, I may have to modify the system for my own use. When someone calls and schedules an appointment, and I'm not by a computer, I need to be able to record their name, the time of the appointment, their address, phone number, and problem description. That's a little more information that that is designed to handle. Maybe I'll have to have extra pages in the back for more of that information. Once I get it figured out, I'll have to post my solution on here.

Pax

2007-08-29T21:31:00.000-06:00

PAX was awesome. It was seriously one of the best weekends of my life. It's the biggest convention of any kind that I've been to. There were about 40,000 people there all said and done. I heard someone say that geek conventions are how they recharge their batteries for the normal world. That definitely holds true for me. If anyone wants to know how I manage to live out in the middle of nowhere, I go to 2 conventions a year.

So, as you know, I was an Omeganaut for the convention. Not only did I get to compete for a pretty sweet prize, but I also got an all access pass to the convention. I was able to get into the exhibition hall before anyone else all three days of the weekend. I was also able to cut to the front of every line. I didn't cut in any lines that had less than 1o0 people in them. I did however get to the front of the concerts and a couple panels.

I also got to meet Wil Wheaton, and get his autograph. I only wish I wouldn't have been overcome with "ZOMG I'M MEETING WIL" and had been able to have an actual conversation with him. I didn't really get a chance to meet Gabe and Tycho, but that's ok.

As far as the Omegathon itself went, I played a mean game of Jenga in the first round. There will hopefully be video of this by the end of the week. It's a bit surreal to play Jenga with a large audience. When you get your piece pulled out, you get a nice golf clap. If you make the tower sway, there's a large gasp. The second round was "Calling All Cars" which is a playstation 3 game. I didn't get a chance to practice this game, so the competition was the first time I had played. This lead to my defeat. I'd say next time I'll try harder to practice everything, but there probably won't be a next time for this.

I absolutely plan on going back next year. I'm hoping to get as large of a contingent of friends going along as possible.

Pen and Paper Geekery

2007-08-13T21:14:00.000-06:00

Warning: if you are not a complete nerd, you might not want to read this post.

Iron Kingdoms is a pen and paper RPG that I have gotten into. It calls itself "Full Metal Fantasy" It's basically steampunk, which is a blend of steam technology and magic. The one thing I don't like about Iron Kingdoms is that it's using the D20 rules which is derived from Dungeons and Dragons. It's a good beginner rule set, but for me combat takes entirely too long, and there's not enough flexibility in the system. For instance, if you had a simple baker in the game, someone who isn't an adventurer, they just bake bread. That baker would be so focused on baking, that he wouldn't be able to find his house after dark.

Savage Worlds is a new(ish 2003) RPG system that is really lean. It's a generic system (like D20) and can be applied to any setting. It doesn't use character classes or levels at all. The characters just train what they want. Of course many of the edges that you train have prerequisites. So you wouldn't want to be a jack of all trades.

There is already a complete conversion to Savage Worlds for Iron Kingdoms. The Savage Worlds main core book very well might be my next RPG purchase. (along with the Monsternomicon II for Iron Kingdoms.)

With this new system, I'll have to start running a game of it online again.

This all started because the GM of my PBP game switched our game to Savage Worlds.

I think this blog post makes me a level 14 geek.

Weekend Activities

2007-08-13T20:59:00.000-06:00

Friday night, sarah and I drove up to cody to meet some friends for Sushi. I had driven past the sushi place a couple times, and there's just a little neon light that says "Sushi". I really didn't have very high hopes for the place, and expected it to just be california rolls. It was actually really good. I had a rainbow roll which is basically a california roll with tuna, salmon, and something else on top of it. Sarah had California rolls, and we shared some potstickers. No one in our group went for the big platter of raw fish, but now that I've eaten there, I would be comfortable getting that next time.

Here's something to try if you ever get bored. Get 1000 rubber ducks. Put them in big garbage cans, and dump them in a river. Then go a mile downstream and try to fish them out with little nets. Well, out here they used rubber turtles, and they called it a turtle race. People "adopt" a turtle, and if their turtle is one of the first 10, they win a prize. I spent about an hour wading/swimming in the river trying to catch little rubber turtles. This was all a fundraiser for the local Rotary club of which Sarah is a member.

Creativity

2007-07-30T21:15:00.000-06:00

I've been inspired to create things lately. The casemod that I did is from that energy. I also created a pair of these laptop stands. I pretty much copied the design from lifehacker, and I really love them. Sarah is a big fan of them as well.

Tree SMASH!!!

2007-07-29T20:27:00.000-06:00

Sarah and I went camping this weekend. We came home to this scene of my nearly smashed car. There are a few dings on the trunk, so it did hit the car and bounce off. It it had hit the top of the car, I would probably be searching for a new car now. Now it just has a few more dents to add to the collection.

The new job has been going very well. I'm getting along with my boss really well. We spent the last two weeks building and hanging boxes for a pair of 115 inch rear projection screens. They look like a huge pair of TVs that we hung from the celing of the high school gym. They house the screens and the projectors. I called them jumbo-trons but my boss said they don't quite qualify as jumbo. He's been referring them to mega-trons. He full well knows about the pun he's making.

I havn't blogged lately, because all my free time has been spent on a case mod. I have the mod mostly finished now, but the new motherboard I got for it is DOA, so I'm not going to take pictures until it's a working computer. I am really happy with how the case came out.

Was it REALLY 10 years ago?!?!

2007-07-02T17:21:00.001-06:00

I hit up my 10 year high school reunion over the weekend. It was fun, but very very surreal. We drove into Pierre on hwy 14, which allows you to come over a hill and really see all of the town at once. I was a overtaken by a wash of memories when we came over that hill. I think it was the most powerful moment of the weekend.

Friday night we had a social at one of the local bars. It was a really small bar, and we had a lot of people in there. Sarah and I ended up sitting at a table outside with some other classmates trying to figure out who was who. Eventually my old crew showed up, and we hung out with them for the rest of the evening.

One of the things we did Saturday was tour the high school. The thing is completely different than when I went there. Basically they kept the theater and the gymnasium and rebuilt a new school around those. It was very weird. I think I like the new school better tho.

We also went to a reception/dinner that evening. It was fun to see how people have changed over the years. Some people didn't change, some got chunkier, and a few got thinner. I was kind of glad to see that the people I thought would end up successful did.

We did get to spend a lot of time with the old crew. Or at least, those who showed up. That definitely made it worth the trip. I'm hoping we don't wait another 10 years to get our group together again.

I started the new job today. I'll post more about that after I've had another day of work.

Big Brother Really IS Watching.

2007-06-25T21:54:00.000-06:00

I went to the school today to get all the paper worked filled out for starting the new job. One of the things I had to do was get some fingerprints taken. This is because the job involves working with and around minors.

So, I went down to the Law Enforcement Center. I went into the main office area, and told them that I needed fingerprints taken, and showed them the paperwork. The lady there had me fill out some more paperwork then sent me to another room for the actual fingerprinting. Before she sent me, she called, and verified that someone would be there.

I arrived at the room that was specified. There was nobody there. The room had a few chairs in it, a service window, and another door going into another room. There was also a phone on the wall. The blinds behind the service window were closed, and there was a little sign that had a number to call for assistance. I didn't worry about calling because, hey, the lady in the other room called already. I sat in one of the chairs. One of the things I noticed while I was sitting there was how barren the room was. The only things on the walls were the telephone, and a no smoking sign.

I sat there for about five minutes. I started to wonder if maybe I wasn't in the right place. So I got up and looked up and down the hall, but I didn't see anybody. I went back in the room and started to read a sign on the window that had the hours they were open on it, when the phone rang.

I looked at the phone, and wondered if I should answer it. I mean, I could have been the completely wrong room. I finally decided to answer. A female voice on the phone asked "Are you here for fingerprinting?" I replied that I was, and she told me to take a seat, and someone would be with me shortly. I sat back down, and thought to myself that this felt very much like a British dystopian future movie. After several more minutes one of the deputies came in and took me in the other room to fingerprint me.

Job Update

2007-06-22T20:42:00.000-06:00

The school board had it's meeting last night, and officially voted to hire me. So, everything is official now. I head in sometime next week to fill out the paperwork.

I spent today re-organizing my office. I moved my checkbook to gnucash instead of using an Open Office spreadsheet. I also cleaned up the office. Filed away a bunch of paper work, got rid of a bunch of garbage, and parted out the recycled computers that I had laying around. It feels good to get some organizing done.

I'm trying to get warcraft transferred to my laptop tonight. It's really really hot up where I keep my gaming computer, and I just can't handle sitting up there.

The Omegathon

2007-06-19T08:47:00.000-06:00

In late August I am going to the Penny-Arcade Expo. One of the events during the expo is the Omegathon. Basically they choose 20 random people (out of the 30,000 attending) to participate. These 20 Omeganoughts compete in 6 rounds of different games eliminating players as they go. The last round is always something way out of left field (pong, tetris) and the two compete in front of a huge crowd. The winner is going to get a trip for two to the Tokyo Game Show along with five thousand dollars spending money.

The reason I'm telling you about all this, is because I was chosen as an Omeganought. I got the call from Gabe of Penny-Arcade yesterday afternoon. I'm going to have to start doing some serious training in preparation. Wish me luck.

Next Chapter

2007-06-10T21:47:00.000-06:00

So, the 100% self employment thing turned out to be a rather short chapter in my life. I was offered a position with the Hot Springs County School District as a Technology Assistant. Basically I'll be on a very small staff of IT for the school district. I'll be starting July 1st, and will have my own office in the High School building. This is actually something I've wanted to do for a long time. It's also a big relief to get a benefit package. Insurance kinda sucks when you're self employed.

I've been celebrating slowly throughout the weekend. I picked up a bottle of Glen Livet on Friday night and have been slowly enjoying it. We also got some new patio furniture yesterday (well, it really belongs to the in laws, so it's not new.) I've gotten to spend a good deal of time sitting on the porch enjoying the weather.

My presence in the Web 2.0

2007-06-04T21:14:00.000-06:00

I think I need to find a better tool for posting to my blog. I'd like to make posts a little quicker. Especially when it comes to including pictures in them. Getting pictures to line up the way I want them to on here is a real pain.

I'm thinking about using twitter. It's sort of like a mini blog, but where you see the posts of all your friends in one spot, and the posts are really short. It'd be good for posting links that you want to share with your friends. While I can use my blog for that sort of thing, I don't feel that it's the purpose of my blog. My twitter right now is at http://www.twitter.com/stevenpaulr. Let me know if you set up your own twitter.

I've been reading Warren Ellis's blog lately. He seems to use it to post interesting stuff throughout the day. His fame is from his comic book writing, specifically Transmetropolitan. Through his blog I discovered a photo pool on flickr. It's a group of people who take a self portrait every day for 365 days. Definitely some interesting pictures in there.

I also recently revamped my myspace page. I'm normally one of those people who hates myspace pages because they look absolutely horrible. I think I got mine looking fairly good while staying with the normal myspace layout. I know there are some people who completely cover up everything on myspace, and do their own layout from scratch.(side note, I don't know the person I just linked to.) I didn't want to do that.

Full Thrust

2007-05-17T08:58:00.000-06:00

When I was in high school, I played a lot of tabletop miniature games. This was when I spent most of my free time hanging around Dakota Miniatures. I generally played whatever was being played. Of all the games, the one that I thought was the best was Full Thrust(wikipedia link).

Since high school, I've tried a couple times to find information on Full Thrust, but I failed because I had forgotten the name, and thought it was called Full Throttle. This morning I re-discovered the name from a post on gamer hotsheet that really just mentioned it in passing.

I did a bit of googling and found that all of the rulebooks are free to download from groundzerogames.net. GZG is the publisher of Full Thrust. The main rulebook was printed in '92, and the most recent product was printed in 2000. So there's not much new coming out for this game.

Anyway, I'm excited to get to try it out again after all these years.

Donkey Basketball

2007-05-11T09:04:00.000-06:00

Last Friday, Sarah and I played in a Donkey Basketball game. It was a fund raiser for the school's FFA. The rules are pretty simple. You have to keep a hold of your donkey at all times. You have to be on the donkey to shoot, pass, or block the ball. We played on a team with some staff of the school district. The other teams were staff from the Bank of Wyoming, and the Thermopolis and Worland FFA groups. We ended up beating the Bank of Wyoming team, and losing to the Thermopolis FFA group. Over all, it was a lot of fun, and I don't mind losing to the group that benefited from ticket sales.

And just to prove that I'm not making this all up, here's some pictures.

Here's me trying to get on my donkey. I ended up with the one that really likes to buck people off. I've got a pretty big bruise on my elbow to show for it.

Trying to get the donkey to the ball is half the game.

After a lot of hard work and determination Sarah was able to have the ball and be on her donkey at the same time.

Time and Productivity

2007-04-27T10:41:00.000-06:00

Well, I didn't get "Of Cutlass and Katana" part 2 written yet. I ended up spending Sunday re-arranging furniture for the in-laws. Weekdays aren't very conducive to writing, since I'm usually pretty wiped after work and Karate. This weekend promises to give me the free time needed for writing. Sarah is going to spend most of Saturday at a Chiro conference, so I'll have some good 'Steve Time (tm)'.

We're going to go up to Cody on Sunday to do some shopping (mainly groceries), and get an oil change. Perhaps we'll see a movie while we are there.

I re-did the business website this week. The new site looks much better than the old one. I didn't change any of the content, just made it look better. I also did this site with CSS. CSS is something that got popular after I finished college, so I don't have a lot of experience with it. Now I'm much more comfortable with it, and I am able to offer web design services to my clients.

For those of you who care, I used Gimp to make the site layout, and cut it apart. I then used notepad to write all the code and put it all back together. Filezilla managed all of the uploading. PHP is used just to print out the header and the footer, giving me a template that I can easily change.

Perfect Day

2007-04-21T10:10:00.000-06:00

It's a beautiful day here. It's about 50 degrees out (which is perfect in my warm blooded book). I'm sitting out side in a lawn chair with my laptop doing some writing.

Sarah had her graduation last weekend. We had a great time during the weekend. We both got to see our friends and families. The graduation ceremony was really nice. It was just good for both of us to get to spend some time in the Twin Cities.

Well, I'm going to do some creative writing. I'm working on a short story that I'm going to post in a separate blog. I'll link to it when it's up.

EDIT:
go here to read Of Cutlass and Katana Part 1.

Happy To Have My Wife Back

2007-04-08T20:24:00.000-06:00

Sarah is back in town and is offiicially licensed by the state of Wyoming to practice Chiropractic. She's off to a pretty good start. This weekend we'll be travelling to Minneapolis for her graduation ceremony. I'm excited for the weekend. It'll also be nice to have some time in the Twin Cities that I can hang out with my friends there.

The other week Sarah and I did went for a walk around the property that we live on. Here's some pictures that I took on that walk.

Belated Post-Anime Detour Post

2007-04-08T20:11:00.000-06:00

I know, I know. It's been a while since I last posted. Things have been a bit crazy around here. I'm not going into any details, just a lot of stuff.

I survived my weekend at Anime Detour. I didn't get very much sleep, but I had a great time. It took me several days to fully decompress from the weekend. That convention really is one of the big highlights of my year. I'm pretty confident that I'll continue travelling to Minnesota for it. I'm thinking of also going to one in Denver that's in September. It'd be kind of nice to go one and just attend, not spend the entire weekend working. The picture to the right is me keeping an eye on the sound board during the Friday night dance of the convention.

Happy St. Patrick's Day

2007-03-17T12:12:00.000-06:00

Tonight Sarah is coming home for good. It'll be good to have her back finally. I'm spending my day just hanging around the house enjoying a nice relaxing St Patrick's Day. First tho, I need to go into town and pick up a 6er of Guinness.

Here's some appropriate humor for the day.

After the Britain Beer Festival, in London, all the brewery presidents decided to go out for a beer.

The guy from Corona sits down and says, "Hey Senor, I would like the world's best beer, a Corona." The bartender dusts off a bottle from the shelf and gives it to him. The guy from Budweiser says, "I'd like the best beer in the world, give me 'The King Of Beers', a Budweiser." The bartender gives him one. The guy from Coors says, "I'd like the only beer made with Rocky Mountain spring water, give me a Coors." He gets it.

The guy from Guinness sits down and says, "Give me a Coke." The bartender is a little taken aback, but gives him what he ordered. The other brewery presidents look over at him and ask "Why aren't you drinking a Guinness?" and the Guinness president replies, "Well, I figured if you guys aren't drinking beer, neither would I."

Two Irishmen, Patrick & Michael, were adrift in a lifeboat following a dramatic escape from a burning freighter. While rummaging through the boat's provisions, Patrick stumbled across an old lamp. Secretly hoping that a genie would appear, he rubbed the lamp vigorously To the amazement of Patrick, a genie came forth. This particular genie, however, stated that he could only deliver one wish, not the standard three. Without giving much thought to the matter, Patrick blurted out, "Make the entire ocean into Guinness Beer!" The genie clapped his hands with a deafening crash, and immediately the entire sea turned into the finest brew ever sampled by mortals. Simultaneously, the genie vanished. Only the gentle lapping of Guinness on the hull broke the stillness as the two men considered their circumstances. Michael looked disgustedly at Patrick whose wish had been granted. After a long, tension-filled moment, he spoke: "Nice going Patrick! Now we're going to have to pee in the boat!

O'Connell was staggering home with a pint of booze in his back pocket when he slipped and fell heavily. Struggling to his feet, he felt something wet running down his leg. "Please, God," he implored, "let it be blood!"

An Irish man walks into a pub. The bartender asks him, "what'll you have?"

The man says, "Give me three pints of Guinness please."

So the bartender brings him three pints and the man proceeds to alternately sip one, then the other, then the third until they're gone. He then orders three more.

The bartender says, "Sir, I know you like them cold. You don't have to order three at a time. I can keep an eye on it and when you get low I'll bring you a fresh cold one."

The man says, "You don't understand. I have two brothers, one in Australia and one in the States. We made a vow to each other that every Saturday night we'd still drink together. So right now, my brothers have three Guinness Stouts too, and we're drinking together.

The bartender thought that was a wonderful tradition.

Every week the man came in and ordered three beers. Then one week he came in and ordered only two. He drank them and then ordered two more.

The bartender said to him, "I know what your tradition is, and I'd just like to say that I'm sorry that one of your brothers died."

The man said, "Oh, me brothers are fine----I just quit drinking."

How Did I Get a More Active Life in a Smaller Town?

2007-03-14T10:06:00.000-06:00

The whole ditching Internet thing at home isn't going to happen. I got all the stuff for my phone to use it to connect to the net, but it doesn't work. I did some digging around, and found that I would have to hack my phone to do it. It would be a great way to save some money, but I'm not willing to steal my Internet service. Completely going without Internet at home isn't an option. I am making an effort to spend less time on the computer when I'm home.

I found that I don't have as much free time to waste at a computer as I did in Minneapolis. This week, I have Karate Monday, Tuesday and Thursday evenings. Wednesday evenings I have my online Iron Kingdoms game, which is on a computer, but I don't view that as normal leisure time. I'm also joining Kiwanis, but that doesn't eat into my normal leisure time as it's at 6:30 AM on Thursdays.

Lately I've only been turning on my main Desktop computer on Saturdays to play games with the guys in Minneapolis with the web cam. It's a good thing I quit Warcraft, I don't know when I would have time to play it.

Warm March Afternoon

2007-03-13T16:36:00.000-06:00

I know I haven't been doing a good job of posting lately. I'm pretty much running on coast until Sarah's back here permanently next week.

The weather warmed up quite a bit. It's been in the 70's the past couple of days. That's really warm for Wyoming in March. The windows of my office face west, and it's been getting incredibly hot in here. I peeled off the caulk that was keeping my window shut, so it should be a bit better for a little while.

I'm really looking forward to going back to Minnesota for Anime Detour in a week and a half. It'll be nice to have a few days off. Although, that weekend is going to be a bit crazy. There's roughly 2200 people pre-registered for the thing. Should be a good time.

Library Humor

2007-03-05T16:53:00.000-07:00

I got my hot springs county library card today. The first thing I did is hop on the library website and request a book. I requested "World War Z". The part that I think it hysterical is that one of the Wyoming libraries has it filed under non-fiction. It's written as a series of journalistic interviews, and it sounds like non-fiction. But it's about zombies. That's about as fictitious as it gets. Someone either wasn't paying attention, or has a wicked sense of humor.

As a side note, I found the Wyoming online library system to be as good as the one in Minnesota. Plus it's called wyldcat.

They're Going to Call Me Crazy.

2007-03-05T16:17:00.000-07:00

Sarah and I are seriously thinking about ditching our internet and phone service at the house. We NEVER use the home telephone, we just have it because it's required for internet. This means that we're basically paying $70 a month for internet service. I figured out that with the purchase of a 16 dollar cable, and $10 a month in fees, we can be using our cell phones to get to the internet. It won't be very fast internet, but it'll get the job done.

The second bonus to this would be that it would get us to spend less time on the internet. I've decided that the internet is making it impossible for me to be productive when I'm home. With going off line I'm going to try to start writing again. I'll definitely be reading more books. Hopefully I'll also get outside more.

Small Town Oddities

2007-03-05T11:42:00.000-07:00

There are two banks in town that show the temperature on their signs. The two banks are about 3 blocks apart. What's funny about it is that they're usually 10 degrees or so apart. Pinnacle usually has the warmer temperature, but not always.

In the Twin Cities, unless you goto the expensive grocery stores, you have to bag your own groceries. Here they not only bag your groceries. But they also carry them out to your car for you. It's a great service for some people. But the last thing I need is a high school girl carrying my groceries to my car for me.

Dog or Cat?

2007-03-04T08:19:00.001-07:00

She found some sun.

Supplies!!

2007-02-22T14:59:00.000-07:00

I wasn't going to do a post today. I just didn't want to do a happy birthday to me post. But anyway, something happened post worthy, so I'm posting.

For the most part it's just another day. I'm hanging out in my office. It's been pretty quiet. I believe I've mentioned before that the clinic is closed on Thursdays, so the building is mostly empty. I had a couple people come in to pick up their computers.

Shortly after 1:00, I heard the bell on the door ring, so I went to the window to see who it was. It was the afternoon Karate class. They all came down here in their karategis. They had a big birthday cookie, sang happy birthday to me, the whole bit. I was shocked. It was really cool because I got to meet some of the afternoon students that I never see in the evening classes. It's just one of those things that I really did not expect to have happen.

P.S. if you catch the reference of the title, you get 150 geek XP.

Way of the Open Hand

2007-02-19T11:41:00.000-07:00

I went to my first Karate Class out here yesterday. It felt really good to get back into it. It was a good mix of refresher and new concepts. A lot of it was new ways to think about stuff that I already knew. I haven't done martial arts in almost three years, so my body is definitely not used to it. I'm very sore today. I've got a pretty nasty mark on the top of my foot where I hit the bag with a roundhouse kick.

Sarah was reading through some of the material. She saw the part that says I need to be able to break 4 inches of ice for every 50 lbs of my weight. (It's part of this system's black belt test). I had to re-assure her and let her know that it would be a while before I do that. I do get to keep my black belt that I've had, and get to work towards my second degree.

The style is called American Eagle Karate. It's a freestyle system. I've done both freestyle and hardstyle systems in the past, and I definitely prefer freestyle. It just makes more sense to me.

One final thing about it: the schools motto is something I think should be used in every martial arts school, and I've never heard it before. "A black belt is a white belt who never quit."

A Bunch of Random Thoughts

2007-02-15T12:20:00.000-07:00

I spent Valentines day home playing games online. Having Sarah out of town means I don't get to spoil her like I usually do. I usually make a big dinner for the two of us. I try to take the afternoon and really do something elaborate. I'm not sure which one of us is more disappointed that I couldn't do that this year.

Today's a bit of a busy day. I went to the Kiwanis meeting this morning (6:30 am!) to promote the business, and tonight I'm hosting the business after 5 party for the Chamber of Commerce. Sarah's on her way back here now so she can be here for the party. It's kind of a grand opening type event. It's a very long day, and I'll be glad to have it behind me.

This week has seen business pick up a bit. I haven't had a point this week where there was nothing to work on. I'm not making the obscene piles of money I envisioned when I decided to start doing this, but I'm not worried about going bankrupt any time soon.

I've started going to Karate again. It's a new school, so there aren't many students yet, but I'm very excited to be working out again. I'll go to my first real class on Sunday afternoon. The instructor has been doing martial arts for over 40 years, and just moved to town several months ago.

Final

2007-02-10T14:59:00.001-07:00

DUN DUN DUNNNNN
I painted it white.

Some day I'll repaint the entire room, and will probably redo the trim then. But for the foreseeable future, it's white.

Things I Didn't Expect to Happen in Wyoming #154

2007-02-09T13:39:00.000-07:00

Help someone jump start their Prius. It's just not a common car out here. It doesn't really represent the Wyoming image. Don't get me wrong. I don't have anything against Priuses... Prii... hybrid cars. Just didn't expect it to happen.

Unpainted but Final

2007-02-07T15:29:00.000-07:00

Here it is. This is a bit of a different angle. Godzilla is off to the right of the window on the inside, so he's visible, don't worry. I still need to paint the trim this weekend. I'm just going to paint it white for now. The counter top is used, and I will probably replace it eventually. It'll be easier to re-paint the trim to match after that happens.

It's hard to tell in this picture, but the counter top is kind of a circuit board green.

Front Counter Mark 2.5

2007-02-06T10:31:00.001-07:00

There's a hole in the wall. We're making progress on the window. Might even have the thing done today. I'm pretty excited.

[Edit 3:09 PM]
It's starting to come together now. There's some trim up, and the base for the counter is in. It's looking really good. I'm excited about it. I was tempted to post a mark 2.75, but decided against it. We'll have it finished (except for paint) tomorrow morning.

Front Counter Mark 2

2007-02-05T13:47:00.000-07:00

I figured I better post Mark 2. We start construction on Mark 3 tomorrow. Basically, Mark 1 was behind the wall with the poster on it. The reason for the change, is people had a hard time finding me because I was down the hall before. This is more visible from the entrance to the building. With Mark 3, the poster you see will be gone, and we are putting a hole in the wall where it is. It'll be more of a standard window like you might find a technician in a large store that sells consumer electronics.

Don't worry, Godzilla will once again be visible in Mark 3.

Cold and Blowing Snow

2007-02-01T12:32:00.000-07:00

I just went out to run a couple errands, and it is really cold out there. It doesn't seem like it would be that bad, it's 14 degrees out there. But the wind is blowing at 30mph gusting up to 40. The wind chill is at -5. Also, the wind is picking up snow, and throwing it at me. Twice I had snow go through my hair and hit my scalp.

I was filling up my car with gas, and after 4 gallons the pump just quit. I was too cold to really care, so left it only half full.

Phone Annoyances

2007-01-29T14:46:00.000-07:00

With the move to Wyoming, Sarah and I got our first land line telephone in 3 years. We had to get it so we could have DSL service at the house. I had forgotten how much I dislike telemarketers. I don't use the land phone, and I haven't been giving out that number. So, the only time it ever rings, it's a telemarketer. Wil Wheaton wrote in his blog today about opting out of all of these little invasions of your privacy. I registered with the do not call list, so we'll see how much it helps.

We did a little re-arranging of the workspace over the weekend. The front counter, which was featured previously, is now moved into the waiting room. This places it closer to the front door of the building. It was kind of hidden before, and people were having trouble finding it. I'll take a new picture of it in a couple days. I'm going to do some work making it look nicer first.

Interesting Fact

2007-01-23T09:07:00.000-07:00

It takes about the same amount of time to get new license plates in Wyoming as it does in Minnesota. The difference is, in Minnesota, most of the time is spent waiting in line. The DMV there is very busy, and it takes forever to get to the window. In Wyoming, you get to the window right away, but there's a LOT more paperwork. First you have to go to the county treasurer, they give you paper that you take over to the clerk of courts to get a new title. Wyoming requires that you get a new title for a vehicle you bring in the state. But to get a new title, you have to have someone in the sheriff's department do a VIN inspection. So you go then have to go to the sheriff's department. Once you have the VIN inspected, you go back to the clerk, and get your new title. With your new title in hand, you can go back to the treasurer's office and get your new plates.

At least in Wyoming you get more exercise in this process than in Minnesota.

Showers and Shopping

2007-01-22T09:29:00.000-07:00

My shower finally drained last night. I had a plan on Saturday evening to thaw out the pipe. I hooked a hose to the bathroom sink, and pushed it as far down the drain as I could. I then forced really hot water down there thinking that would melt the ice. While it poured down, I just kept bailing water out of the drain. I kept it going until I ran out of hot water. This made no progress on the drain at all. So, I decided to get some heavy duty Drain-o while I was at Walmart. I kinda figured that if all that hot water wouldn't melt the ice, it probably wasn't ice. I dumped the whole bottle down the drain and waited an hour like instructed. The standing water was still there. Off an on last night, I kept using the plunger to try to get some movement in the drain. I finally went to bed a bit frustrated with it thinking I would have to break down and call the plumber (again). This morning when I got up, the standing water was gone, and the shower drains just like it should now. I have no idea when it actually started draining, but I'm pretty happy.

I spent my afternoon yesterday driving to Riverton to goto Walmart. It takes about an hour to get there. I hadn't been to any large shopping places in over a month, so I figured it was about time to get out of town for a little bit. It did snow the night before. The snow drifted around my car pretty bad, so I had some fun getting out of my driveway. Of course the highways were all plowed, so there wasn't any problems there.

Front counter

2007-01-18T10:48:00.000-07:00

[edit 11:17 am]Sweet, It worked. This is actually the first time I've taken a picture from my phone and viewed it on a computer. I'm impressed with the picture quality.

Happy Camper

2007-01-18T10:39:00.000-07:00

I finally got a coffee pot in the office. This makes me a very happy camper. The clinic half of the building is closed on Thursdays, so it's very quiet here today. I'm getting work done, so it's all good.

Someone should buy me this, so I can take pictures with my phone, and post them on here. I think I'm going to try sending a picture to the blog from my phone. I'll get charged $.25 for the message, but that's really not too bad.

Symmetry

2007-01-16T16:26:00.000-07:00

One of the current plot arcs in Scrubs is that JD's girlfriend has left for 4 months for a job. Hmmmm.

2 Full Weeks Down

2007-01-16T16:12:00.000-07:00

Business is doing fairly well so far. I'm not quite as busy as I'd like to be, but at least my net profit isn't negative. I've got 2 computers in here that I'm working on right now. I went to the Rotary club today to promote the business to them. Tomorrow I'm going to hit up some of the shops down town and hand out some fliers. Do some of that good old "Agent on the Street" stuff that isn't allowed in certain other places.

Last week it got really cold out here. I think the coldest my little thermometer on my window said was -20. It could have been colder, but it doesn't go any lower than that. Friday night the pipes in our mudroom froze. The water filter is in the mudroom, so we didn't have any water coming in. We had the plumber come out, thaw the pipes, and turn on the heater in the mud room. The funny part was, when I called him, he asked where I lived. After giving him the address, he asked what place it was. I told him who used to live there, and he said something like "Oh, I bet you do have frozen pipes." Our shower still hasn't drained since that night. I've been bailing my shower water out every night, so I can shower again the next morning. I leave it till the evening hoping that it just might warm up enough to drain on it's own.

Even with the extreme cold, I really do like it out here. Yesterday morning on my way to work, I noticed that the sunrise was casting a really pretty pink to purple light on the mountains that are to the west. It was hard to even keep my eyes on the road with that just out my window.

I have been finding new ways to get my geek on out here. I've been playing World of Darkness (which is very similar to Dungeons and Dragons) with my friends in the Twin Cities using a series of web cams. It's not quite as good as actually being there, but it's the next best thing. This probably makes me the geekiest person in the state of Wyoming.

First Day

2007-01-02T21:05:00.000-07:00

My first day went very well. I checked in three computers, which was my goal for computers in a day. It sounds like I'll be getting three tomorrow as well. I'll do fairly well as long as things continue like this. I'm finding it a bit harder for me to be firm on my pricing when I don't have a corporation expecting me to charge a certain amount. I'm sure I'll get over that fairly quickly. Now if I could just get some Internet, I would be all set.

Opening Tomorrow

2007-01-01T22:10:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm opening up for business tomorrow morning. So far I've been enjoying small town life. Things are just much more laid back here. Today Sarah took off for Rapid City for her internship. It's going to be a bit tougher being out here without her, but I'll manage.

I did some work last week for the School district. Just re-imaged all of their machines to an updated image. Nothing fancy, but at least it was some work. Tomorrow night I'm going to the town council meeting to submit a bid for a maintenance contract for the city, I mean, town computers.

I'm trying to use the word town here instead of city. Mainly because that's what it is. There's a building downtown where the mayor works, along with his council. That building is called "Town Hall.

Here's some long promised pictures.

This is the U-Haul pulling my car across I90 in Wyoming.

Here's the South Dakota/Wyoming border. I'm happy with how this picture came out, considering I took it with the camera sitting on the steering wheel going 75mph.

This is my sign on the front of the building. They just got the signs put up Wednesday of last week. I'm very happy with the way they turned out.

And this is a sunrise taken from the front door of my house. It really is beautiful out here. The view from my computer room window is just awesome.

We made it

2006-12-23T10:02:00.000-07:00

Well, we're in Wyoming now. Got here Tuesday evening. I haven't posted yet because I still don't have Internet at the house. I won't have that until Thursday.

The weather really cooperated with us for moving. We pretty much stayed a day ahead of inclement weather the entire way. We returned the U-Haul yesterday, and on our way back from Worland, where we left it, it started snowing.

This morning we saw three coyotes from our kitchen window. I really like the house. We have an amazing view out of our back window.

I'll post some pictures later. I need to get the camera hooked up to a computer that I can post from. That will probably be after Christmas.

Last Day at the Squad

2006-12-16T11:28:00.000-07:00

Why am I so happy?

'Cause I've got a mind that's not designed
To be so confined by the daily grind

I got off of the wheel
I got out of the cage
I stopped pushin' for the pellet every day,
I got away from minimum wage.

(Apologies to Ham-STAR)

Only a Week and a Half -- PANIC!

2006-12-06T20:43:00.000-07:00

I can't believe that in two weeks from today, I will be sitting in a house in the middle of Wyoming full of boxes to unpack. That means I really only have about a week and a half left in the Twin Cities.

I've now got a full roster of contact information already prepared. We have new cell phones, and we signed up for a home phone. We'll have DSL installed in the new house the day after we arrive. I've also got the website updated so that it's ready for the GO (grand opening). All I need to do is change "Coming Soon" to "Now Open".

I've also ordered a box of business cards. You can view a sample here. I got most of the shopping I need to do before we leave done. I guess all that really needs to be done at this point is pack. Maybe I don't need to panic so much.

Amazon Wish List

2006-11-29T14:54:00.000-07:00



Yes, I realize that these items make me a HUGE dork.

A Geek in the City

2006-11-28T07:35:00.000-07:00

Sarah and I went to New York to celebrate Black Friday. Well, we were in the area celebrating Thanksgiving with family. I got to see all of the important New York sights. The glass cube Apple store, The Nintendo World Store, and all of the normal New York sights.

I got a chance to play with a Wii while I was in the Nintendo store. There was a huge line of people waiting to play Zelda, so I played some excite truck instead. There's been enough press on it now that I pretty much knew what to expect. It was very cool though. I also failed my "save vs I want it" check with a Zelda hoodie. I've been needing a new hoodie anyway. My superman one that I got in San Diego is about to fall apart.

Now that I'm back, it's time to really focus on moving and getting what I need to start the business. I think I have everything I really need. I just need to stop by an electronics/computer store to pick up a few odds and ends. It's hard to believe that I'll be on the road three weeks from today!

Moving Craziness

2006-11-21T13:28:00.000-07:00

So, I found out that Hennepin County Recycling has a limit of 5 computers per year. I know this, because I exceeded it. I took my pile of non-working computers down there today. It was 6 computers total. They made an exception for me because one of them was just an empty case. I'm glad to have gotten rid of them. I'm down to just the 6 working computers in my house.

We've been getting the Thermopolis newspaper so we could get a pulse of the town. We enjoy reading the police report most. The last one I read mentioned that two girls got caught shoplifting $0.69 worth of candy. I'm pretty sure it cost the newspaper more than $0.69 to include that. But, it was the biggest crime in the town for the week, so they had to put it in.

I now have my website up. www.thermopcomputers.com. Well, it's not my real website yet, it's just a temp site. I'll get the full site up towards the end of December. I should have my business card design finished next week. I'll post that here when it's done.

T Minus 6 weeks to move

2006-11-02T20:38:00.000-07:00

I got my first piece of mail addressed to the business. It was my estimate on signs. It's looking like I'm going to be spending about $500 on signs. Hoofta. I also now have a phone number, and a 1-800 number. I was a bit surprised at how cheap the 1-800 number is. I also have the form coming in to fill out for my sales tax license. Once I have that done, I'll essentially be ready to go. I have everything else I absolutely need.

We've been getting the newspaper sent to us for the past couple of weeks. It's a bit comforting to read news where the sheriffs department spends more time rounding up escaped horses than escaped convicts.

2006-10-23T18:34:00.000-06:00

I found something today thanks to the computerbusiness group at yahoo. PHPBMS is a Business Management Softare package written in PHP. It actually does everything that the software I was working on theoretically does, and much much more. This has lifted a large weight off my shoulders as I no longer need to spend all of my free time programming. I can now focus more on the other details of opening the business. I also got a free cash register as my Mom had one that she doesn't need. Of course, when we were talking about it, my brother gave me crap that I had high expectations for thinking I would need one.

I also think I've narrowed down what I'm going to buy for my initial inventory. I'm going to get 2 USB Mice, 2 keyboards (both for people who spill their coffe), 5 USB cables since printers don't come with them, and 2 harddrives (1 desktop, 1 laptop). I think that should get me started, and I can always order more. But that list should be complete enough that I can get through the first week without wishing I had gotten something more. I already have bulk network cable, so I can sell network cable by the foot. I still need to figure out what I'm going to offer for antivirus/anti-spyware software.

I got a phone call from my mother-in-law the other day. She said that there's a lady out there who is adamant on being my first client. This is good, it means I'll have something to do my first day open.

Progress thus far

2006-10-16T18:50:00.000-06:00

Well, I've gotten a lot of progress done so far. I got my self a logo made which you can see to the left. I started the process of getting some signs made for the building. Getting a business phone number is also in process already.

I still have a lot of work ahead of me before I'm ready to open my doors. I have quite a bit left to do with my scheduling/inventory system, but that's coming along. I also feel like I know what needs to be done. I read "Start Your Own Computer Business", which helped me re-affirm that I'm not making a horrible mistake. I spent some time this morning putting together a list of things that needed to be done. I now have a handle on things.

Geeking out at Fall Con

2006-10-08T21:27:00.000-06:00

I went to my final twin cities comic convention this weekend. I picked up a couple pieces of artwork from Grant Gould to hang in my future office. I also got an indie comic called Journey to Genos from Kindle Comics. I nearly picked up a print from Katie Cook of Yoda hanging at home.

Overall I had a lot of fun today checking out all the geeky things and hanging out with Joe and Jason. Conventions are one of the biggest things I'm going to miss when I leave the big city, aside from my friends.

Intro

2006-10-07T07:34:00.000-06:00

The first real post in a new blog is never an easy one to write. The purpose of this blog is to document my move from a city of 3 million people to a small town of 3,172 people.

The story so far:
My wife and I decided (well, she decided then convinced me) that it would be good idea to move to Thermopolis Wyoming. The main reason being that her parents live there, and she would be able to practice with her father. They are both chiropractors. Sarah (my wife) is about to graduate from chiropractic school, and working with her dad would be a very good way for her to start out. I am going to open my own little computer repair shop in this small town. I will be the only computer repair person for over a hundred miles. I have about 11 weeks left before the move, and a lot to accomplish in that time for starting a new business. So far, I've put in official notice at my job that I'm leaving in December. I've designed myself a logo, and I've started work on my inventory/service tracking system.

Keep an eye out here for updates.