Flack

As a self-proclaimed lifelong metal head, it seems inconceivable that up until last Friday (the day of the concert) I was considering not attending the Slayer show. For several years now I’ve had hard time getting excited over big production, major label concerts. One big reason is the expense; Slayer tickets were $35 each, for example. Another big turn off is my fellow concert goers. For every person at the show actually wanting to watch the band perform there seem to be a dozen morons in attendance there simply to get drunk or high, start fights, or simply act rowdy. You can pretty much count on a steady stream of people bumping into you, asking you for a smoke (even if you don’t), or spilling beer on you – and quite often you’ll get to experience all three from the same person. As the years go by, it becomes more and more tempting to skip the concert and pick up the inevitable DVD release of the show a few months later. (Slayer’s “Reign in Blood: Still Reigning” DVD sells for $15 on Amazon.com, and their “War at the Warfield” DVD sells for $18. That’s two concerts for $33 (less than the price of a concert ticket) that I can watch in comfort of my own home without having anyone spill a beer on me.) But the thing is, it’s SLAYER; and not only is it Slayer, this is original line-up Slayer, with Lombardo back on drums. It’s a show no headbanger can miss without coming up with a pretty good excuse (“I was dead.”) Once or twice a year I get talked into attending a big-to-do show, so I try to make sure the ones I attend count. I almost always have fun, as I did last night. It’s kind of hard to keep referring to yourself as “the music guy” to your friends and coworkers without attending a concert every now and then. Even though I was on the fence about attending the show, a couple of my work friends managed to talk me into heading out on a cold Friday night with ice still covering much of the downtown sidewalks. Our group of four set out to witness one of the most infamous heavy bands of all time – Slayer. Despite being a 33-year-old computer network engineer, I left the house wearing a black shirt, cargo shorts, combat boots and a baseball cap. It’s a uniform of sorts; well, all except the baseball cap, which was simply intended to hide my graying, business-like haircut. While the hat worked, the cargo shorts really didn’t – with both the Hornets and the Blazers both playing home games Friday night, all the usual $5 parking lots had been bumped up to $10, and were sold out. I rode to the concert with my friend Emily, and we ended up parking over a mile away from the venue. Halfway between our parking lot and the venue was Chilenos, where we met up with two other friends, Paula and K. After Tecates were downed and nachos were consumed, we continued our walk to the venue. Upon reaching the Bricktown Event Center we were met with a small sign that read, “Sold Out.” K and Paula had reserved tickets but Emily and I did not. Fortunately for us, K has “connections in the industry” so-to-speak and after some finagling, we ended up with two more tickets. Do not ask how K works his magic; just know that he is cooler than all of you (but not me, of course.) (I removed K’s name from this post simply because I’m sure the last thing he needs is people begging him for free tickets.) When we entered the venue I noticed the crowd looked like an expanded version of my MySpace page. I saw many familiar faces; people from bands, people from shows, people from all over. Because we arrived after the opening band there was no way we were going to get very close to the stage. Truth be told I didn’t feel like shoving my way up there and getting pushed around anyway. The four of us ended up alongside/behind the soundboard, which gave us a fairly decent and hassle free view of the stage. Soon the lights dimmed and the band members emerged. Slayer quickly tore through their set like men possessed (and maybe they are, who knows). And yet, there was something about the whole show that seemed somewhat tame. There were no stage props, no backdrop, no visual presentation at all save for a few colored spotlights and bright strobe lights. Throughout the majority of the show the band stood stationary, motionless, as largely did the crowd. Another curious factor was, the volume level was noticeably low. At first I thought perhaps my ears had just adjusted to the loud levels of rock music over the years, but on the way out my suspicions were confirmed when I overheard a younger fan disapprovingly utter, “dude that sucked. My ears aren’t even ringing.” By the end of the show I still couldn’t decide: had Slayer grown up, had I, or had we both? The show was devoid of any real stage banter, save for a couple of very brief song introductions. The minute the last note ended, the band left the stage. No encore, no “thank you Oklahoma City,” nothing. Just a few moments after the band’s performance ended, the house lights came on and a sea of black-shirted fans, still somewhat dazed, began pouring out of the Bricktown Event Center. I am not disappointed that I went to the show. Slayer is, well, Slayer. The songs were fast and tight and were everything I had hoped for. The bass punched us in our guts even where we stood, and the twin guitar leads of Hanneman and King were as brilliant as ever. Slayer, even when simply going through the motions, are still pretty good. [[ Set List ]] Disciple (from God Hates Us All) War Ensemble (from Seasons in the Abyss) Jihad (from Christ Illusion) Die By The Sword (from Show No Mercy) Show no Mercy (from Show No Mercy) Captor of Sin (from Haunting The Chapel) Cult (from Christ Illusion) Bloodline (from God Hates Us All) Mandatory Suicide (from South of Heaven) Seasons In The Abyss (from Seasons in the Abyss) Supremist (from Christ Illusion) Postmortem (from Reign In Blood) Silent Scream (from South of Heaven) Dead Skin Mask (from Seasons in the Abyss) Raining Blood (from Reign In Blood) South of Heaven (from South of Heaven) Angel Of Death (from Reign In Blood)

When you grow up in a state that has no major league football team, no major league baseball team, and no major basketball team, you have to adopt teams from other states as "your" team. And, if your dad grew up in Chicago and his entire family still lives there, that decision is made for you at a very early age. I have grade school pictures of myself wearing a puffy Bears-colored blue and orange winter vest, and grew up wearing lots of Bears shirts and Bulls baseball caps. Being a Chicago fan hasn't been that bad. In seventh grade, when practically every other kid at school was a Dallas Cowboys fan, the 1985 Bears destroyed team after team, ending the season with 15 wins and only 1 loss before going on to win Superbowl 20. Even the die hard Bears haters knew the names of Mike Ditka, Walter Payton, Jim McMahon, Mike Singleterry, and of course William "The Fridge" Perry. And just when we Chicago fans thought it couldn't get any better, in 1984 the Bulls drafted a rookie player named Michael Jordan ... Of course, being a Chicago sports fan isn't always fun. The '85 "Superbowl Shuffle" team faded. The Bulls had a long winning streak, but eventually the star players were traded, or retired. Soon, that party was also ended. I'm not a huge baseball fan but I know the Sox and Cubs have both had their share of ups and downs throughout the years as well. Tonight, the Chicago Bears lost the Superbowl. The fair-weathered fans will ride through the streets displaying their Colts colors, maybe with flags on their cars or shirts or hats or something. Me, I'll be wearing my Bears jersey tomorrow. It's easy to like the team that won; a real fan sticks by their team even when they lose.

Every time I begin a new project, I'm reminded of lyrics from Faith No More's song "Falling to Pieces". The line that comes to me goes, "From the bottom it looks like a steep incline, from the top another downhill slope behind, but I know, the equilibrium's there." I find this to be true almost every time I start a new porject or experience something new. Just a couple of years ago it seemed unthinkable that I would ever finish my college degree. I just couldn't figure out where all the money and time for classes was going to come from. Eventually though, Susan helped me apply for a student loan, I started taking classes as night, and before I knew it I had earned my degree! Before I began it seemed like an insurmountable task. Looking back after it was all over, all I kept thinking was, "man, that was really easy. Why did I wait that long to get started?" I experienced the same thing when putting together Commodork. At the beginning, organizing, writing, publishing, promoting and selling a book all on my own seemed all but impossible. But now, every time another copy of Commodork sells, I think, "why did I put that off for so long?" I currently have several other books in the works. I've been wanting to learn VB Scripting for some time now. I don't know why, but for some reason I had decided it was going to be extremely complicated. In the giant batch of e-books I recently downloaded I noticed there was one covering VB scripting. After getting through the first three chapters or so, I was like -- wow, this is easy! Why did I wait so long to start learning this? My advice to you today is, if there's something you've been putting off because it seems difficult, or huge, or insurmountable, give it a shot. You may just find it was easier to do than it first appeared, and once you succeed you may find that you are an inspiration to both other people and, even more rewarding, yourself.

Portland and the Hornets have almost identical records, so the game was a toss up. At least it was close throughout the night; I hate a blow out, both winning and losing.

Susan and I snuck away yesterday evening to catch the Hornets play the Portland Trailblazers down at the Ford Center. The Hornets have a standing offer -- if our team scores over 100 points and wins, you can redeem your ticket stub for $5 worth of free gas (within three days of the game) at any Loves gas station. Last night's the Hornets won 103-91. Our tickets cost $20, and we'll be getting $10 worth of free gas. Win/win! At the beginning of the season I bought eight pairs of tickets; this is the third game I've gone to, and the second where we've won the free gas (December 22nd, we beat the Grizzlies 100-97).

Actually the aliens could preserve a pretty good chunk of our history simply by taking my hard drive. They'd have music, literature, pictures ...

Saturday while shopping at a flea market in Tulsa I stumbled across a Vic-20 computer. Vic-20s were released in 1981 by Commodore, and were the company's predecessor to the popular Commodore 64 computer. Where the C64 had 64k of RAM, the Vic-20 had 4k. For the sake of comparison my laptop, with two gigs, has approximately 500x that amount. I never owned a Vic-20 before in my life. I have no sentimental attachment to them whatsoever and I'm not sure I've ever even physically touched one before. So of course I bought it. When passing by an item such as this, a normal person might say "oh, that's interesting," but the packrat thinks, "wow, that'll look great in my collection!" Now, "collection" is a funny word for most packrats. My garage is knee deep from various piles of junk lying around. Oh wait, I forgot -- it's not junk, it's THE COLLECTION. A normal person thinks of a collection as a bunch of items on display in some fashion. Not the packrat. For me, a collection is all the stuff I own that's stored in various places (garage, upstairs, attic, shed). Most of it is not on display. Most of it is not even easily findable at this point. So, $25 later, I am now the proud (and slightly psychotic) owner of a Commodore Vic-20, along with a dozen games. More than likely the machine will never removed from its box, never be hooked up, and the games will never be played. But hey, at least I now have one for the collection!

After a self-granted brief hiatus for the holidays, Wednesday night I bundled up in layers of clothing and restarted my nightly walking routine. There's still snow on the ground here and I encountered a few icy spots in the road while walking, but the treadmill simply doesn't hold my attention like walking outside does. For some reason my back was hurting Thursday night so I skipped that night's walk, but made up the exercise Friday morning thanks to a random bout of insomnia. It was even colder this morning than it was Wednesday night. The triple layer shirt/hoodie/jacket kept my torso warm, but little else. Even with gloves, my fingers and toes were beginning to numb as I made my way around the final curve and headed up the last stretch toward the house. My face was frozen; snot dripped from my nose and my lungs burned from the cold air. Aw, yeah. I'm back.

Monday morning while scouring the dark corners of the Internet I happened across a cache of e-books available for download. Since I had just previously announced to the world that one of my resolutions this year was to read more books, I thought, well gosh, this'll work out great! So, I downloaded them all. I mean, let's face it -- who knows how long these things will remain online? Might as well grab them all now and decide which ones I want to keep later. And so, with a couple of mouse clicks, I began downloading the entire directory of books. Monday night shortly before bed, I noticed my computer was still downloading books. This in and of itself caused me to investiage further; I have a really, really fast cable modem, and this should have been finished hours ago. After checking my hard drive I was surprised to discover around 20 gigs worth of random e-books. With an approximate average size of around two megs per book, I had downloaded somewhere around 10,000 individual books. Knowing that the download must surely be close to finishing, I went to bed, planning on sorting through the files the next day. Unfortunately for me the download was not even remotely close to being finished. When I checked my computer Tuesday evening after work I found over 70 gigs of e-books waiting for me (over 40,000 books) and the download wasn't even halfway finished. With no end in sight I cancelled the remaining books. Last year I read a grand total of six books; at that rate I have enough reading material for the next 6,500 years. It's a good thing e-ink doesn't fade. So now, I'm busy cleaning up the mess. I've deleted literally tens of thousands of unwanted books. Even if I were to live 6,500 years I doubt I'd ever get around to reading "Bioinformatics - A Practical Guide To The Analysis Of Genes and Proteins", "Build Your Own 4.25 Inch Dobsonian Telescope", or "Chaotic Dynamics and Transport in Classical and Quantum Systems". The ones that I am keeping have been divided up into no less than 20 categories such as Financial, Cooking/Recipes, Computers, Photography, and of course general Fiction and Non-Fiction folders. Tonight, I'll be cuddled up next to the fireplace with a warm blanket, a mug of hot chocolate, and a book ... on my laptop.

Saturday I head northeast to Bentonville, Arkansas, to meet up with fellow game players and computer enthusiasts with names like Icebreaker, Grimbal and Phosphor Dot Fossils. Ok, so they have real names too (Brian, Heath and Earl), but that's not nearly as interesting. A few times a year several of us get together and spend an entire day playing videogames. Sometimes we have an agenda, other times everything's unplanned. This time we have a pseudo plan -- between everyone who's attending we'll have all three new consoles available to play: Sony's PS3, Microsoft's Xbox 360, and the Nintendo Wii. We're all also big retrogaming dorks, so I expect a lot of Nintendo and Atari challenges tomorrow as well. The biggest challenge of all will be getting back home. As of right now they're predicting between 5 and 10 inches of snow to fall on both where I live and where I'm headed, which is a four-hour drive on a good day. If the television weathermen predicted the winter storm's arrival time accurately (har har) it looks like I'll stay ahead of the snow during my drive there. That doesn't help me Sunday during my return trip, when I'll be driving the other way, head first into the storm. Fortunately I plan on playing a bunch of Grand Theft Auto this weekend in order to brush up on my driving skills ...

You have no bananas today? Trust me, I've heard (and made) every banana-related joke when talking about (and pretending to be) Mr. Moonpie. When chatting with users, he would arrive "As aPEELing as ever" and would leave "in a SPLIT."

The story of Mr. Moonpie is included in my book Commodork: Sordid Tales from a BBS Junkie, but here it is again, paraphrased. Running a BBS was a lot like running a business, and as such there was a lot of work that went on behind the scenes -- stuff like cleaning up file and message areas and maintaining the user base, daily tasks that end users typically never thought about. Unfortunately a lot of these functions (such as scolding or kicking off abusive users) were rather unpleasant. That's why I hired Mr. Moonpie to do those things for me. Mr. Moonpie was, in reality, a four-foot tall stuffed banana. Susan and I bought him for a dollar at a garage sale back in 1993. Running a BBS was supposed to be fun, but there are always a few people out there who insist on acting like jerks and being rude. I hated dealing with these people directly, so instead I created an account named Mr. Moonpie and did administrative my dirty work through him. If people took offense or got mad at the way I handled things, they would get mad at Mr. Moonpie instead of me. For a long time only a handful of my close friends knew that Mr. Moonpie wasn't a real person. The legend of Mr. Moonpie took on a life of its own. Yaun-Ti (the ringleader of TBH405) drew pictures, wrote songs and crafted stories about Mr. Moonpie. As digital pictures became a reality, I slowly began leaking pictures of the real Mr. Moonpie (the stuffed banana) to the public. In 1996 I even made a movie starring Mr. Moonpie and myself. The film featured several short parody skits. (I'm pretty sure I have the only copy of said film.) On IRC (#405) I created a Mr. Moonpie bot that people could chat with (and get abused by). For a short period of time I even started rumors that Moonpie and I were starting a band, and leaked pictures like the following: Mr. Moonpie (on bass) and myself (on guitar). Unfortunately, Mr. Moonpie went through some hard times. Two events in particular scarred him for life. The first was at a party, where Yaun-Ti and fellow TBH405 member Prong had a little too much to drink and decided it would be a good idea to slam dance with poor Mr. Moonpie. His stuffing was never quite the same after that, but the barrage of bodyslams and pile drivers were nothing compared to the injuries he would sustain a few months later when our dog Leroy ate Mr. Moonpie's face. I'm not sure what would provoke a puppy to chew off a stuffed banana's silk-screened face, but he did. Mr. Moonpie was left with one eye and only part of a mouth. Still, he carried on. When my son Mason was born in December of 2001, I handed Mr. Moonpie over to him. The banana physically dwarfed Mason, but the two of them got along swimmingly. Now, fifteen years later, Mr. Moonpie sits propped in the corner of Mason's room, occasionally coming to the computer to check his e-mail from time to time. Mr. Moonpie, today. Dumb trivia: The original spelling of Moonpie's name was actually "m00npie", with a lowercase m and two zeroes.

For the past two years I've worked what the FAA calls an "Alternative Work Schedule." The schedule I've been working is called "4-5-9's." On the 4-5-9 schedule you work 9 hours a day instead of 8. The first week of a two-week pay period you work all five days (45 hours). On the second week, you only work four (36 hours). By doing this, you get every other Friday off, so every other weekend becomes a three-day weekend. I started this shift before Morgan was born, but I'm ready for a break. Starting this week I'm moving back to a normal eight-hour workday. Even though Susan and I live together (duh) and work in the same building, we've been driving to work separately for the past two years. Just by carpooling, I just figured up that I'll be saving over $800/year (125 miles per week / 16mpg * $2 per gallon * 52 weeks = $812.50). I'll also be saving 6,500 miles a year on my truck. Neither of those are the real reasons I'm making the switch. After doing some soul searching last week, I came up with three main reasons to switch: The first reason is, instead of going to work at 7am, now I'll be going in at 8:45am. To be honest, I haven't been to work on time more than a dozen times in the past two years. It's unfair to my co-workers and to my company to constantly be late. Arriving at 7am means leaving home by 6:30am, which means getting up no later than 6am if I want to rush or 5:30am if I want to eat breakfast. But now, getting to work by 8:45am is a breeze. Either the kids or Susan wake me up around 7am -- I'm don't even need an alarm any more! Our goal is to leave the house by 8am, take Mason to school, and drop Morgan off at daycare (also at the FAA) before reporting to work. My mornings are way less stressful and hectic now. Waking up naturally instead of to the WEH-WEH-WEH of an alarm clock is so much nicer. And, moving to a shift that I can actually conform to is better for everyone at work. It's already eliminated a lot of work-related guilt, and I just started. The second reason is, I like spending times with my family in the morning. Before, I had to leave for work before anyone else was up and around. Now, not only do I get to see and spend time with everyone in the morning, but we all get to ride to school/work together. Heck, I think it'll be nice to have my own driver for a while. The third and main reason I made the switch is, other than having lunch with my dad, I rarely do anything special on my days off. Most of the time I end up sitting around the house, watching a movie, or half-heartedly starting a project that I could be doing any other time. The time off has become a burdon instead of something enjoyable. My job is flexible enough that I can still have lunch with my dad any day of the week, so I won't be cutting that out of my life. If I can get up and around early enough, I will still have 30-45 minutes of time to write or work on projects each morning. Plus, getting to ride to and from work with the kids and Susan is a lot more fun than doing the drive solo every day. I'm looking forward to the change. And, in a year or so, I'm sure I'll be looking forward to switching back.

Over the past thirty years I've owned thousands of albums, either as records, cassettes, or CDs; about 95% of those, I currently have in MP3 format. Most of the early records I owned were later repurchased as cassettes, most of which were again repurchased on CD. I've spent the past year or so converting my 1,200+ CDs over to MP3 format. It's a fairly painless process involving very little talent thanks to lots of one-click software solutions, but it's still somewhat time consuming. Unfortunately, not everything I own made its way to CD. What I have left at this point is a large box of cassette tapes. About half of them are tapes I made as a kid by recording songs off the radio. The other half are cassettes I purchased from local bands that never released their music onto CD. A couple of days ago I drug one of my old cassette decks out of the closet and connected it up to my PC's soundcard with a pair of RCA cables. I'm now in the process of dubbing each of these cassette tapes into the computer, converting into MP3s one by one. After I'm finished I plan on using some software (probably DartPro or eJay Music Cleaning Studio) to clean up the hiss, pops and cracks from the old recordings before permanently filing them away. For the old tapes that I actually made by recording songs off the radio, I'm scanning in a picture of each cassette with my flatbed scanner; for the band cassettes, I'm scanning in the album artwork as well. Once I have all these in the computer, I can't think of a reason to keep all these old tapes around any longer. But, I probably will.

After spending all of last week in Baltimore, Susan discovered that she was to return to Oklahoma at the same time a winter storm was set to arrive. About a dozen FAA Oklahoma attendees at the conference requested permission to skip the final four hours of the conference on Friday and fly home Thursday night. Permission denied. As a result, the lot of them have spent the past few days stranded, holed up in airports and hotels across the country. Susan was one of the lucky ones; she got stranded in Kansas City, MO (350 miles north of here). After spending several hours Friday waiting around at the airport, Friday night she rented a hotel room and a four-wheel drive Chrysler Aspen (an upscale version of the Dodge Durango), and drove home Saturday. Like I said, Susan was lucky. The second wave of sleet hit Saturday afternoon; there's no way she would have made it in after that, at least not in any reasonable amount of time. Our friends Emily and Clint are still stuck in Chicago. They spent Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights in hotel rooms due to cancelled flights. They're being promised flights home tomorrow, but who knows for sure. Some of the others are still suck in Baltimore, and at least one was still in Dallas the last time we heard. All the local newscasters told people here to brace themselves by stocking up with at least three days worth of food. Which of course means we did nothing. While the rest of the city was a virtual ghost town, Susan and I packed the kids up in the minivan and headed down to Boot Hill, "the biggest hill in Yukon." Bundled up, ready for the snow. Mason and Daddy sliding at top speed, being chased by a dog. Tonight as the rest of the town ate soup from cans, we headed out in search of an open restaurant. We found one -- Johnny Carino's -- and had a pretty good Italian dinner while the rest of the town cowered in fear of the white stuff. Not us, sister.

I still have some of them out in my garage. I've been meaning to hook up a tape deck to my computer, to dub some stuff off into MP3. If I find some of them I'll put one online.

Back before I was born, my dad served in the Air Force as a television and electronics repairman. During the day I assume he fixed whatever electronics were broken and needed fixing, but at night he became “DJ the DJ,” the nightly disc jockey on the base’s local radio station. As a little kid I remember hearing his stories about different radio programs he had put together, and how a local jam band had sold him one of their songs for a penny so that he could it as his theme song. I suppose it’s pretty normal for a kid to look up to his dad, and at a very early age I decided that being a DJ must be the coolest job in the world. As a youngster I spent the majority of my allowance buying 45’s (vinyl records, kids) from Wal-Mart. Using those records, a Radio Shack cassette recorder and a white plastic turntable, I’d close my bedroom door and record my own radio shows. On these tapes I’d introduce each song, talk about the bands (what I didn’t know I’d make up), and even shout out song dedications. It was kind of like making mix-tapes at the age of six or seven, except that all my tapes pretty much used the same dozen or so records I owned, and no one but me ever listened to them. Even thought I was only a DJ in my bedroom, it was good enough for me. For a while, anyway. The first time I was ever really on the radio was in seventh grade. KJ-103, a local pop radio station, used to do a nightly bit called The Party Line. During the Party Line, people could call in and do a variety of things like tell jokes and whatnot. Although it was insanely difficult to actually get through the long line of busy signals, in the spring of 1986 I finally made it through. While on the air I did two things. One, I told a dumb joke, and two, I gave Mrs. Whittenberg the “Royal Flush.” After announcing her name on the air, the DJ played a snip of royal trumpets, followed by the sound of a toilet flushing. The Royal Flush turned me into a mini-celebrity around school for a couple of days, and the joke, apparently being less dumb than any other joke told in that night, won me two movie tickets to see the flop SpaceCamp. I was hooked. In ninth grade, as a project for gifted class, we were allowed to shadow a working professional for an entire workday. My friends picked lawyers, doctors, and such; I chose Mark Shannon, KJ-103 morning disc jockey and leader of “The Breakfast Flakes,” his morning radio show. I got to spend an entire morning on the air, hanging out with the DJs and occasionally being brave enough to speak on the air. It was an awesome experience, one I still remember to this day. Years later in 1994, when I relocated to Weatherford and moved in with Susan, I discovered that she volunteered Sunday nights on a local radio program which was sponsored by the college’s Wesley Foundation. She offered to let me come up to the studio and help out, but regardless of how much I wanted to be on the radio, playing church music Sunday night at midnight wouldn’t quite quench my thirst. The connection did lead to some inside information, however; a position opened up at the radio station. It paid practically nothing and involved little more than reading on air weather reports and news updates right off the wire, but I applied anyway. The interview consisted of pulling AP news reports directly off a printer reading them live on the air. The manager’s only advice to me was, “use your natural voice.” This story is much funnier in person, because when I tried to read the feed two things happened. Number one, for some unknown reason I broke into my “game show announcer” voice. I don’t know where it came from, I didn’t intend on doing it, it just came out. I sounded like the guy from the Price is Right. “Come on down! Today is partly cloudy!” The second thing that happened was I immediately heard my own voice through the station’s speakers, which sounded so terrible to me that I instantly froze up. Was I that nasal? Did I really sound that stupid? Needless to say, I didn’t get the job. Years passed, life moved on, and my dreams of becoming a disc jockey eventually faded. Through the Internet and other chance encounters I’ve ended up meeting several local disc jockeys. Each time I meet one, I can see something within me in them as well; their love of music, support of local bands, and general repository of random music-related facts all seem very familiar to me. To all the DJs out there, especially Kev Zeppelin, Paisley, Tony Z, Bladerunner, Lea Underwood and even Mark Shannon, thanks for keeping the dream alive for those of us still spinning records in our bedrooms. Rock on, guys, rock on.

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. Tonight Susan's sister was kind enough to watch the kids for a couple of hours, during which I got my first break (and bath). I've never looked forward to going to work in the morning quite this much.

Last week, Earl from the Retrobits Podcast interviewed me about my book Commodork. Apparently I rambled on for so long (have you met me?) that the interview had to be split up into two halves -- the first of which has been posted this week on The Retrobits Podcast (Episode 71). If you're dying to hear me talk about me, check it out. And while you're over at Retrobits, check out some of their past podcasts as well. There are many great episodes to listen to, all available for free!

Monday morning Susan heads out to Baltimore for our branch's yearly Computer Specialist meeting. Usually when Susan travells she takes one of the two kids with her, depending on the circumstances of the trip. Unfortunately (for me), this time she's being required to attend meetings and functions both during the day and after hours. With nothing for them to do but sit in a hotel room all week, the kids will be staying home with me next week. Which means this weekend, we're doing nothing. It's kind of like getting ready for hibernation. Collectively we slow down our pulse rates, our breathing, our activity levels, until everyone is nice and calm and relaxed going in to next week. I don't know if it really works or not, but it does seem to make the week go by a little smoother. Plus, not really having the morning routine "down" works as an advantage for me -- we'll have the kids' (and my own) clothes laid out the night before to make the mornings easier. I also tend the let the kids stay up 30 minutes later or so when Susan's gone; makes em' nice and tired in the morning. Sluggish = hassle free.

That error is probably more common. And like I said, if I see people exchanging the two online I never say anything. The Internet's the Internet, ya know? But when I see it on a professionally printed sign, it irks the English major in me.

Back when I was four-years-old, I remember watching an episode of The Electric Company that explained how apostrophes worked. The short cartoon involved two words, a bulldozer, and a crane. In the cartoon, two words were pushed together, like DO and NOT. Eventually they would get pushed together so tightly that the lettter "O" would disintegrate, leaving DON(pile of rubble)T. A crane would then pick up a piece of the "O" that looked like an apostrophe, and hang it in the air, spelling "DON'T". The idea, which I was able to comprehend at the age of four, was that the aspostrophe replaces missing letters. That was a long-winded way of stating that if you are trying to say "IT IS", you should use "IT'S", as in, "IT'S included with your Salad Bar." Do I point this out when people use the incorrect form of the word when they e-mail me? No. Do I point it out when a restaurant has had professional signs created incorrectly? You bet. My work is never done.

It seems our battle with the creeping crud still isn't over. Mason was lethargic and cranky all day New Year's Eve. Susan's had the worst of it; she's really feeling awful (I suspect sinus infection at this point, and trust me I would know). Mason had a sleep over at a friend's house, so it was just Susan, Morgan and me until Susan's sister and two of her three kids came over. Susan cooked a big pot of chili and made cheese dip and we ate a bunch of cookies and junk ... boy is the diet in sad shape this week. The party went okay until around 10:30pm when Morgan woke up and started throwing up all over the place. So, the company left, Susan bathed Morgan and changed crib sheets, while I finished off a rum and Coke and watched the end of the Seinfeld marathon. After Morgan went back to sleep, Susan and I ended up sitting on the couch, flipping channels and prodding each other to stay awake until midnight. Woo. Here's a funny story from Saturday. One of our friend's little sister got married this past Saturday. The wedding was at three. After rushing around to get ready and get a babysitter lined up, we drove across town to find ... an empty parking lot. Turns out, the wedding was on Friday, not Saturday. Susan has been so sick this past week that she must've somehow got the dates mixed up or something. We ended up going to Sophabella's (Chicago-style food, now open in Yukon) and having some drinks and a pizza instead. There are only so many places you can go in a suit at 3pm on a Saturday.

Last night, a friend of mine and I visited the new Vintage Stock store in Midwest City. While walking through the store my friend pointed out that they had copies of Videogame Collector Magazine on their magazine rack. For those who don't know, I write reviews for Videogame Collector Magazine and have my mug shot printed on the inside cover in the staff section. While we were shopping I noticed a customer thumbing through the stacks of loose Nintendo carts. "I wish I could remember what it was called," he said to the manager. "All I remember is that it started with the letter 'S'. Do you guys have a complete list of every Nintendo game ever released?" he asked. "No, I wish we did," the manager replied. The thing is, they actually DID have a list of every Nintendo game every released -- it's in Videogame Collector's Magazine price guide. Being me, I butted into the conversation. "Actually, they do have a list of every Nintendo game here," I said. I then walked with the customer over to the magazine rack, picked up the magazine, and flipped it open to the game list in the middle of the magazine. "How'd you know about that list?" he asked. I then flipped the magazine over to the front page and showed him my picture. "That's me," I said. By the guy's reaction, you would have thought he had just met someone famous. "Noooo ..." he said. He looked at my picture in the magazine, then at me, then the picture again, then me ... "You're Rob?" he asked. "That's me," I said again. He stuck out his hand and said, "wow, it's really you!" as we shook hands. As he started thumbing through the game guide, I wished him luck in his game search and headed on my way. It was almost like being sorta-kinda famous for about ten seconds.

Link: Christmas 2006 Pictures Christmas officially begins on Christmas Eve around our house. Growing up, my wife's family exchanged gifts on Christmas Eve while my family exchanged gifts Christmas Day. After Susan and I got married we initially tried to solve this problem by having her family over for Christmas Eve and my family over Christmas Day, but we ended up inviting my family over anyway on Christmas Eve too and her family stopped by Christmas Day, so these days in our house Christmas begins on Christmas Eve and lasts for two days. On Christmas Eve we throw a big party that both of our familes attend. At that party, everyone exchanges gifts with Susan's family. The following morning (Christmas Day) we do the traditional Christmas stuff: a visit from Santa, followed by exchanging gifts with my family. Once again at this year's Christmas Eve party we had enough food to feed an entire army of Santa's elves. Susan's chocolate fondue, served with everything from marshmellows to pretzels, oranges and pineapples, was a success. There were eclairs, deviled eggs, olives ... you name it, people brought it and we ate it. (The pre-spiked egg nog wasn't bad, either.) The size of the party grows a little each year as more people bring more people, but it's always a fun time, especially for the little ones. Our living room was already knee-deep in gifts and wrapping paper the day before Christmas. The party wrapped up around 10:30pm, but our night was just beginning. First was Morgan, who decided she did not want to go to sleep. Then Mason, due to a combination of too many chocolate-covered marshmellows and a touch of Morgan's stomach virus, began crying due to an upset stomach. We gave him some medicine and a slice of bread, neither of which seemed to help. Susan and I began "preparing" the living room around midnight when Mason started crying again. We immediately called off our "covert operations" until he went to sleep. This cat and mouse game continued until around 2:30am, when I finally went into his room and crawled into the bottom bunk of his bunk bed and went to sleep (Mason sleeps on the top bunk). I got around three hours of sleep; at 5:30am, I got up, finished my living-room duties, and then went to lie down in bed next to Susan, about five minutes before Morgan woke up. Around that time on Christmas morning Dad arrived. We woke Mason who ran out into the living room, looked at everything for ten seconds, and then ran to the bathroom to throw up. He wasn't the only one with it -- both Susan and I had really sore throats by then and were completely wiped out, both from being sick and from getting no sleep. Other than puking, Mason had a great morning. His Spongebob TV/DVD player, RoboRaptor, and Doodle-Monsters were all there, just like he had asked Santa for. Mason did notice the missing RoboReptile and had to be explained that Santa doesn't always leave every single toy a kid asks for, especially when he asks for a thousand. He seemed okay with that. Morgan was in heaven with all the stuff to play with, although like most 18-month-old chrildren she was often just as satisfied with the wrapping paper and empty boxes as she was with the toys that came in them. Morgan made it three hours before crashing out. After a crying spell I went to lie her down in her crib. There's still a spare mattress in her bedroom, so I lied down next to her for a minute. The next thing I know, Susan is waking me up telling me I've been asleep for an hour. Whoops! After that Dad prepared his traditional Christmas morning waffles which were delicious as always. Our morning festivities broke up around 11:30am or so, and by noon Mason and I were back asleep (again), this time in my bed, as Morgan napped and Susan both napped and cleaned up a bit. Around 2pm or so it was time to go visit mom's house, so we piled into the minivan and drove over to visit. Mason was obviously wiped out during the trip; after opening presents he curled up into a little ball and went back to sleep on mom's couch. Morgan was feeling a bit better by then and didn't start feeling rotten again until around dinner time. We stayed at mom's for a couple of hours, got back home around 5pm, and then all went back to sleep again. Whatever this bug we all caught from Morgan is wipes your butt out. After somehow managing to spend a couple of hours awake, we all went back to bed for the night.