I really love my portable MP3 player -- a Creative Nomad Jukebox Zen Xtra (say that five times fast). It's got a 40 meg hard drive, a screen that's easy to read and well lit, and all the buttons and features you would expect on your average MP3 player. It's physically larger than many of the newer models out there like the iPod Nano or the Creative Zen Stone, but at around the size of a deck of cards it still fits in my pocket easily. Using Notmad Explorer I can drop and drag files to and from t
Work has continued on the End User Provisioning Team here at work. You can tell the weeks we meet; I rarely update the blog those weeks, just because we're so busy here at work and when I get home I don't feel like getting on the computer. We had planning on meeting the week of April 25th as well, but moments ago I heard that week has been split into two week-long meetings, one the week of the 14th and another the week of the 28th. Crazy times around these here parts.
Last week I released ep
I’ve wanted one for 25 years, and now I have one.
A Mohawk.
(Wow, this is going to take some explaining.)
I should start by saying that to me, hair is just, uh, hair. You wash it, you comb it, you cut it, repeat. I have particularly thick hair that grows rapidly. I’ve never had a bad haircut for more than a week or two; it simply grows out too quickly.
Throughout my life I’ve had many notable “hair adventures”. There was the time Susan and I dyed it blue in honor of Best Buy
So far, the road to recovery has been relatively smooth and speedy. I had surgery on Monday. Wednesday morning, I rode with dad to Toys R' Us to do a little Christmas shopping. Later in the afternoon, I stopped by work to make a quick appearance.
Tuesday I had two doses of Loritab to ease the pain of the stitches a bit. Wednesday, I had two doses as a form of insurance (taking some before going out "just in case" things started hurting. Today, I haven't had any. I spent most of today laying
As the television is turned off, so ends day two of mommy's five day trip. I've learned some interesting things in the past two days -- how Mommy lets Mason have snacks before dinner (according to him), how Mommy never makes Mason drink milk without chocolate in it (probable) and, in general, how much better Mommy does everything around the house (also probable). During lunch today I drug Johnny to Wal-Mart to pick up paper towels, extra sippie cups and a couple of spare binkies, just in case.
On Tuesday I was extended an invitation to speak to a class of students at Oklahoma City Community College on Thursday. The class is studying the history of videogames, and this week is Commodore week.
In order: Shock, honor, panic.
I've spent the past two nights throwing together a PowerPoint presentation that I hope the class will find (1) informative and (2) entertaining. ("Wait -- strike that -- reverse it." - Willy Wonka.) The class is 80 minutes long but my slot is going to last 50
(Lucky you -- two updates today!)
Long before Mason was born, I knew that someday Susan and I would be very interactive parents. My parents were both very involved in my early education. My mom volunteered as a homeroom mother every single year. My dad brought our personal computer (a TRS-80 Model III) to my classroom and did a computer demonstration, introducing an entire classroom of kids (and a few teachers) to computers for the very first time. My dad came to school and spoke on career d
What do Russian sluts and computer viruses have in common? You get both of them installed on your computer for free if you run stupid software off the Internet before scanning it for viruses first. Oops. Yes, even the FAA Antivirus guy gets caught off guard occasionally. Multiple sadness. It wouldn't be so bad if every time I opened Internet Explorer I wasn't immediately redirected to a Russian porn site. This stupid virus is making me hate computers and want to move to Russian at the same time.
24 years ago in 1984, Shedeck Elementary held a contest to design the school's official t-shirt. I was in fifth grade at the time. Each student was handed one entry form, a white piece of paper with a black outline of a t-shirt on it. The contest winning design would be used on school t-shirts for years to come. One detail I remember about the contest was that the design should be single-color in design, as that's how the shirts would be printed.
In fifth grade I was really into perspective
My presentation at Oklahoma City Community College went off without a hitch. It's funny, before I give a presentation like this I constantly worry that something technical will go wrong -- the machine will blue screen, for example -- but once I get up in front of a crowd I forget all about that because then I'm too busy being nervous about standing in front of a group of strangers. I hope I didn't look it. The panic only lasted five or ten minutes this time. After that I loosened up a bit and go
I had several people ask me what I got for Father's Day. While I did get a few things (including a neat digital photo keychain and two tickets for an upcoming Weird Al concert), what I really got was two kids who wanted to hang out with their dad, and a dad who wanted to hang out with me. Everything else was just icing on the cake.
Happy Father's Day to all the dads out there. I hope you were able to spend time with your sons/dads yesterday.
Video Game Collector Issue #6 has arrived, and look who's listed among the staff members!
...
Check your local game stores for the latest copy, or you can buy them online here.
Due to popular demand (okay, three people) here's a picture of Mason in my old Shedeck Shirt. His teacher apparently got a kick out of the whole thing, and Mason got to stand in front of the whole class while she told the rest of the class the story. Hopefully other pre-Kindergarden kids think that's neat and it doesn't get him beat up on the playground.
Also below is a picture of our new cat. After a week or two of going back and forth, the cat's official name is Don Piano. If you don't kn
Mason's First Day of Kindergarten
Through the magic of the Internet and digital cameras, Susan mailed me this picture this morning. Unfortunately I am still in Dallas and was unable to wish Mason a terrific first day of kindgergarten.
Mason's Birthday Party -- Jump Zone!
Words cannot describe just how much fun Mason had today at his birthday party. I mean, just look at the joy on this kid's face. Priceless!
I'll explain, shortly.
Jump Zone is an interesting little business. You know those inflatable moon bounces? Jump Zone is, essentially, a giant carpeted warehouse with seven or eight industrial strength moon bounces inside. Each moon bounce has a different theme: one looked like a sinking ship with a giant oct
Episode 5 of You Don't Know Flack tells the story of Boss BBS, an old BBS I used to call back in the Commodore 64 days -- until the day it mysteriously disappeared, and I heard the sysop's name on the 10pm news ...
You Don't Know Flack - Episode 105
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There are entire industries I am completely ignorant about; one such example is the sandblasting industry. My friend Johnny recently acquired a set of truck rails that belonged to his grandfather. After having the rails cut down in length to fit his own truck, the next step prior to painting is sandblasting. Sandblasting is like sanding on steroids. Today's lunchtime adventure led us J&S Sandblasting, on the corner of SW15th and Penn.
Upon our arrival we found a guard dog and lots o
It was one of those Sundays where the kids wanted to do "something" and we couldn't come up with a single thing to do. Finally Susan suggested we hit the Omniplex and so we did. We are members of the Oklahoma Science Museum something-or-other which allows us free admittance anytime we wish to go. So, we went.
When we arrived at the Omniplex -- er, Oklahoma Science Museum -- we were informed that a live demonstration of science was to take place in about ten minutes. We walked straight to the
Starting this year, Mason is attending Open Door, a program at Shedeck that allows you to drop your kids off a little early and pick them up a little late. It costs money, but it costs less money than it costs Susan and I to drive separately to work, and Mason loves playing with his friends both before and after school so it's a win all the way around.
This blog entry, however, has very little to do with Open Door. Instead, it has to do with the room (portable building, actually) that Open
Yesterday marked the 42nd annual Czech Festival in Yukon, Oklahoma. I've attended over half of them (essentially every one since 1978) and participated in a few as a kid, but it's possible 2007's festival may have been my last.
After taking a look at my review of last year's Czech Festival, I'd say all the things I complained about last year held true once again this year. Same crowds, same crazy parking, same rude people walking up and standing directly in front of us five minutes before th
If you hit a stumbling block while working on a project, one of the best things you can do is just set it aside for a bit. Sometimes, the solution to a problem will come to you in your sleep. Sometimes it will come to you the next day. Sometimes, as in the case of the 30 gigs worth of Three Stooges videos I recorded, a solution will come to you three years later.
In 2004 I bought a video capture card for my old computer. While the software included with the card wasn't nearly as robust as th
Class is over; all that's left is the drive home tomorrow morning.
For a class that cost $3,000, it's amazing to me how much of it some of the other students missed. The class ran eight hours a day for four days, although with breaks and lunch our actual time in class was closer to six hours each day. One of the twelve students scheduled Friday as his travel day; he didn't even show up the last day, missing a fourth of the course. There were a couple others who were consistantly late -- not
My wife Susan and I bought our first "real" house together back in 1998, after moving back home to Oklahoma from Spokane, Washington.
(We don't really count our first house, the $30,000 El Reno Money Pit built in the 1880's, as a "real" house per se. It predated Oklahoma's statehood by 25 years, used hay and newspaper for wall insulation, and still had gas lines hanging on the walls that had once been connected to lanterns for indoor lighting. It was a house, but barely.)
Like many youn
One of our yearly Gifted rituals was "Independent Studies". Independent Studies was the educational term for "pick something you're interested and go learn about it." These studies often lasted an entire nine-week period and culminated with some sort of big project and presentation (something that could be graded).
My Shedeck Gifted teacher, Mrs. Leatherwood, had also been my Gifted teacher at my previous school as well. In fact, I'd had Mrs. Leatherwood for gifted since 2nd grade, so she'd
One time in Mrs. Leatherwood's second grade Gifted class, I had to create a commercial for a ficticious product. I invented Monster Marshmallows ("Marshmallows with a BITE!") To create my marshmallows I bought a big bag of big marshmallows, dyed them with food coloring, and then created little accessories out of paper (eyes, horns, claws) to glue to them. The only problem with Monster Marshmallows was ... they were delicious. By the time I was to perform my commercial, two-thirds of the monsters
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