Monthly Archives: July 2007

Quad Cat Info Blast! Brain DrippingGeocachingNew HouseNews

I’m filing this one under just about everything because it contains one pertinent bit of info from most of the categories. Whee! Here we go:

News: I’m upgrading my computer so my connectivity is somewhat limited. I dropped in a second video card to complete my SLI upgrade path & swapped out my old Athlon 64 3000+ for a shiny new Dual Core Athlon 4400+. I would have went with the 4600 but couldn’t find the part on the cheap. I ran some benchmarks before and after and it looks like my (synthetic) FPS scores nearly doubled in games while my gigaflops (processor speed) actually increased by a factor of 2.4. Very nice and well worth the upgrade. Just wait until I start cranking some multi-threaded apps. 🙂 The downside is that Windows was horrible unstable when I got done so I’m reinstalling the OS and it’ll be a few days before I’m fully productive again.

New House: We’ve passed another “final” deadline on gettig bank approval. Then he attorneys went on vacation. Now we’re waiting (over a week now) for the seller’s attorney to return the phone call & emails that our side has been sending. In the mean time we’re looking at other houses. The bank’s delays have now cost us over 5 grand in interest (over the full term of the loan) thanks to the ever-increasing rates.

Geocaching: Heather & I woke up at 4:30 AM this past Saturday to make it to the “07/07/07 at 07:07” Event down near Cherry Hill. The turnout was unbelievable! Any cacher who’s missing out on events is missing out on a lot of the fun of the sport. Afterwards we teamed up with 7 other cachers and hit 7 additional caches. Funny how that worked out, eh? We took off for South Jersey after lunch and ended up meeting a cacher from the early days of the sport at the family BBQ. We’re everywhere! Also, for the past 17 days I’ve had a streak of geocache finds. I’ve set a new record and I’m still going! Check out my statistics at It’s Not About The Numbers.com.

Brain Dripping: I hate to see news like this. In a nutshell, someone named Eric Dalton got shot in the chest in Winston-Salem NC. If Sarah Connor had paid more attention to the news she could have beat feet before The Terminator found her and killed her friend. But seriously, I hope he’s Ok. I’ll keep ya’ll posted if I can dig up more news.

Happy Independents Day! Brain Dripping

Independence is a grand thing but too many folks around the Fourth of July mindlessly celebrate by drinking, blowing things up and watching Will Smith movies without remembering from what they happen to be independent. No, I don’t mean The Redcoats. The British are not coming back and it’s time to lay down those arms. No I mean a generality of being without dependence as an individual. I mean more along the lines of the definition from the Oxford English Dictionary:

independent

• adjective 1 free from outside control or influence. 2 (of a country) self governing. 3 not depending on another for livelihood or subsistence. 4 not connected with another; separate. 5 (of broadcasting, a school, etc.) not supported by public funds.

On the Fourth of July 2007 I celebrated my own personal lack of outside controlling influence by not buying a Dunkin’ Coolata, watching TV or going to see the Transformers Movie. I proved myself self-governing by deciding to sleep in and not take a shower until mid afternoon. I depend not upon another for livelihood! (I made my own ball-park franks & “peace, pasta & parmesan” mac & cheese) I may be connected to my wife, but we did our own thing almost all day. We even have our own separate cats. Oh, and though I did enjoy the benefits of some public fun I do not enjoy the benefits of any public funds.

I think for myself, feel my own emotions & do not buy into propaganda. I pay my taxes, vote my conscience & hate how all the fireworks I heard yesterday were made in China. I’m proud that an American is once again the hot-dog-eating-champ but sad that comic book writers killed Captain America and the final Sopranos episode was filled with thinly veiled political rhetoric.

It seems lots of folks have lost their pride in America. Maybe I just have too much faith or maybe I can’t let go of the dream because my name is right there in the middle of the word America for goodness sake. Whatever the reason I hold out hope that more Independents will emerge. They’ll turn off The News, crack a book and think for themselves. They’ll see the big picture. They’ll run for office. They’ll win. Congress will be filled with Independent Thinkers and a new square peg who just doesn’t fit into the old system will toil in the oval office every four years.

But that’s a ways away… first things first! Before you can take pride in your country, start by taking pride in your back yard, your children & most importantly: yourself. See yourself independently of how others tell you how you are supposed to look. Work independently of the limitations others have prescribed for you. Think independently of the groupthink others have thought for you. Be your own person for God’s sake! Or, failing that, be your own God for man’s sake. Have pride in yourself and everything else starts to fall in line like so many ducks in a row at a Cheney family reunion. Start now and by this holiday next year you too can celebrate Independent’s day and nobody will ever be able to take that away from you.