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The Tangent At Hand
.......... This is the part where I pretend that you are in the room with me and I'm just talking out loud. Free flow thought. Rambling. Ranting. Tangenting on my own tangents. Y'know, stuff. I may update this page as seldom as several days at a time, or twenty times a night depending on how wired or bored I am at work. You get the really good quality tangents when I'm hyped up on supercaff. In fact, I think I'll go get some right now. That'll force the creative juices for sure!
.......... Beware! The author of this page does not condone the use of conservative thought, antidisestablishmentarian ideals, Marxist economics, or anything Ford makes. Read the following drivel at your own risk of understanding me.

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21:18EST-SUN-11/23/2008

Yes, it's been a few months since my last post. I've been sleeping in a bit lately. Exciting news today though. As of 19:44 (EST) on 11/19/08, I'm the proud father of a little girl named Madelynn. Coming in at 8.0 pounds at 21 inches, she seemed like such a small and fragile thing. The more I look at her, the more she changes the way I look at everything else. Between her and my wife, Julie, I can't imagine a better life.

01:20EST-MON-08/04/2008

I'd like to give a special shout out to my home skillet, Bishop. He sent me a link the other day that shocked me. I wasn't shocked because it was disgusting or anything. Nah. 2G1C was pretty rotten, but I was shocked because the link didn't suck. At all. This was even more shocking because it was from THE ONION! I remember reading the Onion web site every day while at work almost 10 years ago but quickly determined that 99.999% of the content on that page sucked. My mind has been changed. I'd like to submit examples A and B below.

Beijing Olympics A Trap
Death Penalty Kicks Ass

The addition of video seems to have been what put the humor over from Dubious to Over The Top.

23:26EST-FRI-08/01/2008

Holy shit! Two posts in one month???

Unfortunately, yes. Now that I'm back doing tech support, I'm starting to get my witts about me again. This can, and will, lead to new posts with updates to some (sometimes) strange things. For example...

Last night I was driving home and listening to Coast to Coast AM and they were talking about (GASP!) UFO sightings. Imagine that. If you haven't listened to the show before, this may seem strange to you. If you have listened to the show a few times, then you will realize it's normal.

While listening to the people talking about their UFO sightings, almost all of them mentioned that the Air Force hauled ass to get there and chased the UFOs off. The discussion quickly turned into how the USAF always denied they were there, Area51, all that jazz. I was thinking about it and some of the details started to come together.

Clues:

UFOs show up
People see them
The Air Force shows up and chases them off
The Air Force says 'there's nothing to see here, move along'
The US Govt refuses to admit the existence of aliens despite some -clearly- authentic autopsy videos on ebay
Roswell
Defender

That's right, I said Defender. Atari 2600 Defender. Released in 1981. So, what does all this add up to? I think Defender had it right. It all makes sense! Aliens show up and hang out, but never talk to anyone. There are reports of kidnappings, missing people, abductions, and other unsavory deeds. Soon, the Airforce zooms in to deal with the situation. Nobody hears of it again. Govt denies everything. Could it be that the 1981 video game had it right? Are aliens coming to abduct people only to be thwarted by the Air Force? Is the reason the govt is covering it up due to the obvious fact that the aliens are abducting people as snack food and if that knowledge gets out, the whole world will launch into a panic that would topple governments and even society itself?

Makes you think.

01:32EST-FRI-08/01/2008

Simply amazing. I stumbled upon this tonight while at work: http://sse.jpl.nasa.gov/planets/index.cfm I found it to be a fascinating read. I also checked out the link to the Alien Safari at the bottom. Who could resist? Needless to say, it's fascinating stuff. Some of the organisms I've known about. They're fantastic. The others are equally interesting. Especially the new organism that lives in radioactive soil. That's just awe inspiring! Think of the potential for learning!

03:02EST-THU-07/17/2008

You thought I was dead, didn't ya? HAHA! You should be so lucky. Julie and I are anxiously awaiting the arrival of our child (that's right, be afraid) and working a lot. That doesn't leave much time for online schenanigans. Just figured I'd stop in and drop some AWESOME on you.

08:39EST-SUN-06/15/2008

Another message in the long line of neglected blog entries. Holy cow, it's seriously been over half a year since I did any updates. There's been a lot that's happened.

I found out a few months ago that Julie is pregnant. In fact, I found out in late March. The baby is due some time in November. This caused a wrinkle because the due date was something like a week after our wedding plans. Well, the dress she picked out simply wouldn't do. Plus, trying to organize a wedding while pregnant can't be a good idea. You have stress coming at you from all sides. We moved up the due date considerably because we figured that we could handle twice the stress in half the time but at least the dress will still fit. =D November 16th (inscribed on my wedding ring) was replaced by June 6th. I don't worry about the inscription on the wedding ring. If I'm really lucky, the baby will be born on that day so it's meaning will change but at least it'll have a better meaning. That, and I won't forget as easily.

If you did the math, you noticed that the wedding was this past weekend. It was really fun. It didn't go perfectly, but that just adds a bit of charm I think. Examples like the biker gang roaring by in the middle of our vows. We couldn't hear ourselves so we had to pause until they went by. Things like that. When Julie came down the aisle in her dress, she looked amazing. Simply stunning. What's more, she looked like she actually wanted to be there. Score! She knows me fairly well sometimes. In fact, the garter belts she got for the wedding had Batman symbols all over them. How cool is that?!?! It was nice seeing all the friends that made it. Many of whom I haven't seen in years. It was nice for Julie to meet some of the people I used to get in trouble with. Julie and I (grudgingly) got up the next morning to watch the sunrise as a newlywed couple. I tried not to since we didn't get to sleep until 3am and we usually go to bed at 10. I was exhausted but she was exuberant so I let her win this one. She took a lot of photos. Here are some:
Here comes the bride , We're official now , She wanted me to step on her toes a lot , We ate some delicious cake , Guys don't catch things at weddings , She picked on her Brother , We watched a sunrise

Also, I no longer run the airsoft store in town. It sold. I made a nice bonus. I'm working for Comcast now. The work is very challenging. I'm very excited. I was so burned out on the airsoft thing that I had been looking for my next step for a while but I expected my contract to run another year. I was becoming bitter, and didn't want to do anything. I feel like I'm out of the rut now. I'm doing something that actually requires thought again. Hooray! I always valued a job where you go home exhausted although I prefer it to be mental exhaustion as opposed to physical exhaustion. Got that one covered now. Plus, the benefits are amazing!

A quick update on EVE. I'm bored again. I'm playing Exteel now. It's like Armored Core for the Playstation(s) but online and with ranks like Battlefield 2 for the PC. Fun? Hell yeah! Free? You're damned right.

11:18EST-MON-12/3/2007

Ok, something weird happened to me this morning when I got to work. Apparently two people on Yahoo Instant Messenger decided to try to talk to me while I was offline. I tried using three different web translators and can't make heads or tails of it. Here's a screen shot of what I got when I turned on my computer this morning.

11:07EST-FRI-11/2/2007:

Great news! A couple of days ago, I asked Julie to marry me. She said yes! We've been dating for over a year and a half and it seemed like a good time to do it. I've been shopping for rings and diamonds in particular for some time now and eventually figured out what style of jewelry she liked. It worked. She was stunned. Some time next year I'll try to make a post about a successful marriage ceremony. =D

17:00EST-WED-8/15/2007

No, I'm not going to be that cheesy. I do have something to talk about today. I've felt rather boring for months so I haven't made any updates at all, and didn't even think about it.

Today, however, is a good day. I quit playing EVE again. It's tapered off for a while now as I got tired of it more and more. I still recommend it to anyone who likes MMOs, PVP, and space ships but my interests have moved elsewhere for a while.

Where? Glad you asked, even if you didn't. I've been playing my old Dawn of War disks and the latest expansion, Dark Crusade. I've been playing it a lot. In fact, it made me miss the time I spent sitting and painting the miniatures and making them look really good. I even missed playing the game a little bit even though it was a huge pain in the ass sometimes.

Long story short, I am about to start playing Warhammer 40,000 again. I bought some more paints, some brushes, some tools, and the main rulebook (for the 4th time) since apparently they released a new edition back in 2004 which makes my opening my sealed special edition of the 3rd gen rulebook a huge mistake. I bought it when it first came out and was still playing back in 1998 but lived with two other people who had the same rulebook and as typical for the Games Workshops rulebooks, the pages liked to fall out and the spine breaks. Whoever they've had making their rulebooks for them up to that point sucked. That's why I never opened mine. The 4th gen rulebook makes more sense, is bound like a proper book, has a lot more picutres, and is worth the money. Even though it does not have any of the codex info for any of the races, it has something like 300+ pages and only 80-90 of them are rules. The rest is background and various other fluff. Very pretty, lots of interesting mission ideas that I haven't gotten to reading yet, but it looks promising.

I've been an avid fan of the Blood Angels chapter of the Space Marines due mostly to their paint scheme and their special characters looking particularly cool. I even bought a 10 man tactical squad expecting to follow the same path. I have yet to assemble, glue, and paint them. This time, however, I think I'll go with something new. I had intended to play the Blood Angels again until last week when my unwavering devotion to the chapter finally gave out. The new codex was widely regarded in certain devoted Blood Angels circles as being a nerf and in general a huge pain in the butt. I know, I know, you may be thinking to yourself 'Heresy! There's nothing cooler than vampires in power armor!' but it gets old when your whole army is subject to special rules that do more harm than good.

Yesterday, Dave and I went to Sci Fi City in the mall and we spent some hours talking to people, looking at things, and trying to inform ourselves without being annoying. The end result is that I have decided to go with the newer Tau Empire. I've forsaken the Emperor of man and now wish to paint and play with xenos. I could insert a good quote about heresy and traitors (the books have hundreds to choose from written in the margins of every page) but I'll just leave it at that. Now I just need to conjure up the cash to buy the new codex and some models. I have a paint set, but it's mostly just basic colors that would be more than adequate for my old Blood Angels army but not for the more elaborate Tau. I like the challenge.

Now I guess I'll just use this 10 man tac squad as practice to try to get back my mad crazy painting skillz from 10 years ago. I had a dream last night that I painted them in basic black and white paint schemes to make them look like storm troopers. It would be pretty easy. I would have to find a bunch of decals for the empire just to make it even more amusing. =D

15:56EST-WED-8/15/2007

Note to self- For the love of God, update my damned blog. It's been dusty for quite some time now and I -know- things have happened that I think are worth noting. Even if other people don't care, I find it useful for looking back and having a time frame for events. Now, I just need to make an update.

Oh! I guess I did. Done. See you all next year!