• Some stuff that has been going on: wedding planning (e.g. invitations, registries, honeymoon, etc.), home shopping, preparing to be a husband and father. :)
• Wedding date is set for June 29, 2008 at a place called White Chapel in North Richland Hills.
• Our wedding website, just put up today.
• Engagement pictures by Aurora Amaya
• Took the Texas hunter education course about a month ago (a first step into hunting), and went to the Infinity Ranch "hunting" for my friend's Jeff's Bachelor party (couple pics not for the squeamish).
• Latest amusement that I don't actually have time for: solving a Rubic's Cube. My best time so is about 5.5 minutes... but don't ask me how long the first time took. :)

See more pictures: Our Engagement

Last night, at just after 9pm in downtown Dallas underneath the large Christmas tree, I proposed to marry Kora Johnson, and she said "yes"!!

It was an unbelievably perfect night. I took my unsuspecting future bride to dinner yesterday evening, and at the end of our meal, our waitress delivered to us a poem from "Nick" who sent us on a treasure hunt in downtown. We walked to a series of locations, directed by additional clues, which involved games, roses, custom fortune cookies, presents, fantastic views, and laughter. She thought it was all part of a amazing Christmas present, until I finally produced the diamond from one knee. There I told her for the very first time that I loved her, and asked her if she would be my bride. After, we enjoyed stories with our families and close friends, many of whom helped me put it all together.

Most of all, I love my sweet Kora who is an incredible woman, a treasure to me and a huge blessing from God! She exemplifies so many amazing qualities in her life from which I stand to learn: joy, care, compassion, graciousness, forgiveness, passion and a heart surrendered to Christ. I will also be the proud father of her 7-year-old son Alex, who is one of the best kids I know.

We are not unaware that marriage is incredibly challenging, but we know that through His strength we will be able to faithfully love one another. We give Him all our thanks and praise.

Our marriage will most likely be sometime in the summer of '08.

Thu 10/4/07

• My awesome 29th birthday party, Johnny P's Hoe Down, which my bros threw for me in July
• One of my best friends' weddings!! I have pics from the bachelor party, Keith's Man Challenge Olympics Ben and me threw for him, and from his engagement party. Check out this hilarious video Chris made!!!
• Lastly, but not least, I've been busy dating a sweet girl named Kora. I need to get some pictures on here.

Click to enlarge

On a comical note, on 8/29/07 my friend Ben Caldwell's sister found her brother's picture on Google images!! She writes, "I don't know, that's whats soooo funny and random about it. I was looking for a funny workout picture, and up pops you doing the "running man"... hahahahahaha. What are the chance of that happening????" (note: Kelly is hilarious in general)

I just checked today, and Ben's picture (from 1/26/2007 blog) is currently owning the #1 position under these keywords (funny man at the gym).

Click to enlarge

Thu 7/26/07

Have Still Been Busy!!

Yall, sorry about not writing. Life must be attended to. Things are going well, though the Lord would have me learn contentment and peace in all situations.

My heart's gettin a little stolen lately! :)

This was sent to me on 4/13. It's the funniest video I've seen in a long time. Try this at home.

Thu 4/19/07

I am perhaps the last to have discovered the sweetness of that which is called social bookmarking. These websites are a "must see", particularly the first couple. They are all driven by the concept of voting. By using people to place votes, the most interesting content is identified for all to share. This demonstrates the Wisdom of the Crowds.

• De.lici.ous - websites in general (as bookmarks)
• Digg.com - articles
• Dealighted - deals
• Motley Fool CAPS - stocks
• KillerStartups - new companies

My Gmail-based WebCache

In perusing various cool and interesting articles and blogs over the past few days, I've often run into content that I'd like to save. Initially I was using Firefox's "Send Link" functionality to store these URL's in my Gmail account as emails. However, del.icio.us is much better for this. But really what I want is to save not only the url, but the content (akin to the old "Send Page" functionality). Otherwise, if the page is removed, I won't be able to obtain that information later when I need it. Now, not only do I want to store the content, but I want to store it in such a manner that I can search through it to find what I want.

Today I devised a solution comprised of several tools. First, I use Firefox with an extension called Launchy, which sends the URL to some other program. Second, I wrote a Python script which takes as input a URL, then downloads the content at that address and sends it to my personal email address. Currently it's very simple, and its only real feature is to grep out the title from the page and to use it as the email's subject, if possible. But more importantly, I append a string to the title "[GmailCache]". Finally, I created a filter in Gmail to label all incoming messages with the title ending in "[GmailCache]" accordingly, and to remove them from my inbox (but they are retained in 'all mail').

Now, whenever I run across some jewel of wisdom, I can have it stored in my Gmail Cache with one mouse click. Later, I can search through my corpus of articles in gmail by simply forming a keyword query along with my GmailCache label.

By request, here's the script. Make sure to fill in the values for your gmail account and password. When installing Launchy, follow the instructions at the homepage to add a new app with launchy.xml. For the type of app, choose '1', and use no arguments. It will send the URL as the first argument by default.

Sun 4/15/07

Out With the Pirate, In with the Portfolio

Click for fullsize version

I get it, I get it. You don't like the picture of me with the goatee. It's creepy, I know. But some of you know the real reason I liked that picture -- because it wasn't even real. No, I can't grow the silly connectors, only the top and bottom parts. So it had a little airbrush action. And no, you *couldn't* tell, so don't tell me you could. :) Click on them for the originals.

In replacement, I wrote a little Python script that selects random pictures from my Favorite Pictures gallery. I did write the code to have it link directly to that picture, but then I realized it would require Server Side Includes (SSI) which I don't want to get into for compatibility issues.

Sat 4/14/07

Over the course of the next months, I hope to go on some trips with some of my SCUBA-certified friends. Planning these events will be yours truly along with Grandmaster Divemaster Jeff "boo-tan-tha-man" Boutin, who has fearlessly wrestled 20' hammerheads barehanded while 200' night-cave diving, and that on his "less technical" dives.

The plan is something like the following, although the Gulf trip may or may not happen this year, because I am a hardcore beginner and want to work my way up:

• Tyler State Park (1.75 hrs away) - nice camping, very pretty 64 acre lake, 30' deep? 5-10 vis
• Clearwater Springs (Terrell) (1 hr away) - scuba park, 60' deep, 10-15' vis
• Lake Amistad (8-10 hrs away) - on Mexican border, beautiful, 150' deep 15-30 vis (hahah read about the "hurt locker")
• Flower Gardens (150 miles offshore of Gulf of Mexico) - reefs and rigs; as good as it gets, dives of depths from 40' to 130'

Last week I was on DC for more business. Thankfully, I got to travel with my good friend, Captain Luke. Work aspects of the trip went well, and we had a lot of fun too. We got to spend a lot of time with another good friend of ours, Mihai, who now lives in Spain. He was there to participate in the same conference as us. On top of that, we got to explore the area with another friend, Jennifer, who'd just moved to DC the previous week to work in the House Judiciary Committee. What a great crowd!

As you might expect, I had my camera handy. :) I've been to DC a number of times, but this was the first trip on which I was able to take my DSLR. On Thursday evening, we went out and walked the traditional route, from the Capitol, down the mall, and down to the Lincoln Monument. Afterward a cab got us to Georgetown where we ate at a sweet Italian dinner. That was a good time.

Strolling through the capital
(more pictures)

Winding down what had been a good week in DC, Luke and I strolled into the airport a bit early and picked up our electronic tickets, upon which was marked FIRST. First class! How cool! We gleefully stopped off in an airport bar to 'clink' cheers to our good fortune. A little while later, I checked my watch, and we were 10 minutes to departure. Heck, we gotta go! So we ran down to our gate, only to find everyone still seated and the doors closed. Flight cancelled.

Because they had cancelled so many flights on Thursday and Friday, return flights weren't available until Sunday. Making the best of the situation, we retraced our steps back to College Park, MD, where we picked up Mihai and headed back into the city. We picked up a nice hotel room at a bargain price, which was right in view of the Capitol (I highly recommend Hotwire.com for hotels). After that we phoned our sherpa Jennifer (codename: Sherba), to hit another night on the town. This evening we ate in Union Station. One funny incident was when our meals came out with only part of the food there, due to the kitchen being near to closed down.

Pictures from my hotel room (yes I did)

The next day continued to provide beautiful weather, and we set out that afternoon to explore the "Cherry Blossom Festival." As we walked by the Capitol, we watched some sort of protest by a group of Ethiopians. Then we then walked through the Mall, which this time was populated with thousands of people and hundreds of kites! I have never seen so many kites in my life. They even had kite competitions where the goal was to knock other kites out of the sky.

People and kite watching at the National Mall

Once we exited the Mall, we arrived at the Tidal Basin which was the official location of the Festival. This pool of water is surrounded by the cherry blossoms. Surprisingly, almost none of them were cherry colored, but rather most were white. We walked around the basin to finally hit our destination at the Jefferson monument. Here, there was live music and even more people. Jennifer read to us from her DC book about the event.

The Cherry Blossom Festival

Afterward, we made our way to the nearest metro and headed back to Georgetown. There we ate dinner and watched part of Georgetown's Final 4 game with all the locals. After we saw Mark Wahlberg's new movie Shooter. I'm a Wahlberg fan, but this was only mediocre: lots of action, with fairly weak drama.

The next day, we relaxed a bit more before packing it up and getting ready to head back. Luckily Luke figured out that our flight had been delayed again, so we took our time in getting to the airport. The flight went well, and Aslam our 'limo' driver dropped us off around 10pm safely, back in Dallas. I'm glad to be home... :)

In summary, a successful work trip, and great experiences and conversations with my friends in our nation's capital.

Thu 3/22/2007

Reasons why I should not have forgotten my earplugs on my plane trip back from Syracuse:

• #4 the 3 big guys in front of me shouting about sports for 30 minutes
• #3 the screaming and squealing baby about 10 rows back
• #2 the guy behind my row watching a movie on his laptop, without headphones, for several hours
• #1 the woman smacking and popping her gum about 16 inches from my left ear -- even more ferociously because of her annoyance at #2 (this prompted her to turn around and ask him if he had headphones)

Reasons why it was ok:

• #1 James 1:2-4

Did I mention I woke up Wednesday morning 10 minutes before the taxi was supposed to pick me up? Yea, alarm wasn't turned on. I packed and was out the door in 12 minutes. Well... I'm impressed.

Fri 2/23/2007 (date posted on MySpace)

What do you recognize as being the most valuable invention or product -- dollar for dollar? Something which not only do you find incredibly useful -- even necessary -- but also which is remarkably inexpensive? Think "quality of life increase per penny."

My contribution: Earplugs

Earplugs, little foam pieces, can be the difference between two totally different experiences. Earplugs are also extremely cheap. For a box of 10 pairs, I'm guessing it only costs about $2 or $3 which means 0.20 or 0.30 a pair (which can be reused, but I won't talk about that). Earplugs can reduce all kinds of distraction to utter silence. This is great for trying to read, study, concentrate, or sleep in the midst of a noisy atmosphere (eg roommate, car chatter on trip, plane). I bet my sleep is 10% better, and that's not even counting the elimination of waking up based on any particular noise, but just the generally better sleep I think I get when it's silent. In a bad situation, they can be the difference between getting good sleep, and not sleeping at all. Then of course there are other specific uses, such as when shooting at the gun range. Here's the evaluation criteria -- there a few situations when I know that I or others would have paid $10 or maybe even $30 for a pair of earplugs. At $30, that's about 100x more than what they actually cost. Hence, my nomination for valuable invention.

Thu 3/15/2007

From left to right: Jordan, Aurora, Keith, Mo, Abby

Top left: Karen and Ben. Right: Bonnie and Keith admiring Aurora's work.
Bottom row: Everyone checking out Aurora and Mo's video. Right: Michelle?, Miranda and Charlie
more pictures

Tue 3/06/2007

Last weekend I posted pictures to two new events. The first event was when we worked on Brea's house back in February. Brea is a coworker of Jordan. This was a multi-weekend project which involved transforming her garage into an extra bedroom so that her mother could have some peace and quiet from the kids. The second event was Keith's sister Kyla coming to visit him last weekend. We enjoyed dinner and laughter together, and had a lot of fun. A highlight of the night was when our friends Jake and Gloria showed up.

See more pictures: Brea's House Kyla's Visit

Fri 3/02/2007

In Hong Kong, one health club plans to harness the energy generated by members: "If all the exercise machines were in use 10 hours a day for a year, the gym could generate roughly $183 worth of electricity. At that rate, it would take about 82 years to pay off the initial $15,000 investment." (article).

Wed 2/28/2007

MUAH!! :)

Aquarena Springs Blog-o-rama

Well that's it! After spending two nights and four weekend days, and I'll be a certified NAUI diver as soon as as my paperwork comes in. Our trip to Aquarena went off without a hitch. We were diving from 2-5 on Saturday, and 7:30-9 on Sunday.

Aquarena itself was a bit disappointing. First, we were only allowed to dive in a very tiny marked off spot of water. Apparently there are several endangered species there, so the EPA has restricted the diving space to about 1 or 2 acres. Second, on Saturday it was amazingly crowded. We had to wait a while to get in, and even then the water was crowded with divers cramped in this small space. Third, because of all the action, the water in this area was stirred up so badly visibility was limited to a few feet in many areas. What's the point of diving if you can't see anything? Nevertheless, I believe these factors proved valuable for our training. We got to experience diving in close quarters, having to worry about crossing critical boundaries, and navigation in murky waters.

Texas Blind Salamander (blind...no wonder it's endangered -- why don't we stop interfering and let natural selection do it's job)

Our very first dive was an interesting experience. I was with the first group of guys to jump in. In the pool, we had all been rock solid. SCUBA diving (at our level) after all is very easy. You simply breath in, and breath out. The number one rule is DO NOT PANIC! Whatever you do, you just keep breathing through the regulator. Only if you cease to do this can you start to get into some trouble. I'll admit that I started to feel some panic on this first dive.

In retrospect there was nothing really to worry about, but that's not how the mind works when you are in the moment. We jumped into the water and everything was fine. I could feel the cool water rushing into to feel my wetsuit. As we descended, one of the first things I noticed was that everything sounded a bit different than I was used to. This was because I chose to wear a hood for extra warmth. The hood tends to amplify the noise so it's much louder than it would otherwise be. I found it slightly disorienting. I was also trying to make sure it wasn't underneath my mask so as to cause a leak.

When we got to the bottom, we were quite distracted by all of the other divers. What was most disorienting (everyone agreed later), was the stirred up dirt and weeds that were clouding visibility. Not only does this make it a lot darker than a pool, but it's also moving in various currents. Now I understood why my instructor said that depth was all relative to visibility (200' and being able to see the boat is far better than 10' and not being able to see your hand). At this point we were all sitting on the bottom looking back and forth at each other as we breathed in and out and filled the water with bubbles.

Diving with a buddy is much safer. A buddy provides an emergency air source, and can also aide in entanglement situations

When you're new to this you can't help but wonder about 'what if' something goes wrong. It's not just that you're 20 feet below the surface, because that's not too far really. But it's that you have a TON of equipment on you, weighing you down. Our instructor had just told me that most accidents actually happen at only 10 or 20 feet of depth. At this point I could understand. Most of those were probably by rookies who had some kind of basic equipment failure and panicked. So you can't help but think about what you should do if things go wrong. You make sure you know where the BC inflator hose is, and you reach down to finger the clip of your weight belt which you could drop. Of course emergency ascent isn't usually a good idea, but at this depth it wouldn't hurt much.

After everyone was settled, we started doing the drills which we had learned. One of the first was the the basic mask clear drill. You fill your mask up with water, or take it off, and then replace it and clear out the water by blowing bubbles into it. This is where I made my mistake. I had never done this incorrectly before, but I guess being distracted by everything going on, I didn't remember to do the most basic thing -- to breath out of your nose when clearing the mask.

Having done that, I somehow drank in some water and was coughing. Luckily I knew what I did wrong immediately, and was able to clear, but I had some water in my lungs. This is where I began to feel a little panic. On the one hand, I didn't want my instructor to think I was an idiot. On the other hand, there's still that basic fear of 'what if', which is now compounded a bit by the fact that you're already coughing on water. Somehow in the mask flood I'd also gotten some water in my eyes which had knocked my contacts off center so my vision was blurry.

We did a few more drills and then went back up the surface. I was definitely glad to get out. At some point the thought had entered my mind, 'maybe this isn't for you'. The funny thing was, going back to the benches with the other guys, it turns out that all of us had experienced some panic, and had the same thoughts. That made me feel a lot better. Sitting there I was able to recap what happened, and see that there was nothing wrong really, except for my one mistake in the drill. Even then, coughing is not a big deal, since you can cough right through the regulator.

After that dive, we went back in and did some other drills. For the remaining dives, we got to swim around by ourselves and just have fun. We were supposed to be with buddies, but didn't even follow that rule very well. There were a lot of divers in this area anyway. From dive number two and on, it was all fun and games for me. I never had any more problems or any feelings of anxiety or panic. The best part about it were playing with all the fish. There were lots of bass, perch, turtles and other fish I didn't even recognize. On Sunday we were the first ones in and got to see how clear it really was. I'm sure we could see at least 50' into the water. I swam around until my tank was down to 750 psi.

Divers have to swim through an underwater buoyancy course. Buoyancy control is essential when diving in this sensitive environment.

In retrospect, I'm glad that I got a little panicked on that first dive just to know what that can feel like. Ultimately, you're going to be ok, as long as you don't give in to it and do something stupid. All you have to do is keep breathing in and out.

Saturday night, to the disgust of my dad who thinks all movies are a waste of time, I watched The Guardian on my laptop. Now I'm not a huge Kevin Costner fan, but this was a good movie. I'd definitely recommend it. Kosner and Aston Kutcher play Coast Guard rescue swimmers deployed to sea accidents and disasters. Many of the scenes take place on the Bering Sea, which is one of the nastiest bodies of water in the world. I always enjoy good stormy sea footage.

I would recommend SCUBA diving to anyone who is interested. Technically, you don't even have to know how to swim (fins do the work). It IS a bit expensive: the class is about $250 and the basic gear which most people purchase another $200. .. but it's a great learning experience. You end up learning about diving equipment and skills of course, but also physics, physiology, and ultimately a little bit about yourself! I'm looking forward to doing some real diving now!

Fri 2/23/2007

Today I had the day off! It has rocked. I am preparing for my weekend in San Marcos where we'll be diving at Aquarena (another). There we'll be able to finish up our NAUI Open Water certification with 5 dives. This training equips us to make dives up to about 60', or so they say.

I could put some pretty pictures in here, but I'm already way over my MySpace and blogging time quota for the day. Yea, I had to set a few facts straight on the MyS/GIN network. Other than that I've been studying the dive book a bit, and filled out the "take home test" (with my dad). Who needs to know that stuff anyway; I'm sure nothing will go wrong. Let's see.. And I did a few other more significant things, but I won't bore you with those. :) Well, time to pack!

Thu 2/22/2007

The phrase "by and large" today means "generally speaking," "mostly" or "on the whole." The origin is nautical, and had a very precise meaning. It was an order to the man at the helm of a sailing ship, meaning to sail the ship slightly off the wind. A similar command was "full and by" which meant to "sail as close to the wind as it can go." The risk of sailing too close to the wind was the danger of being "taken aback" (when the sails press against the mast and progress halts.) Thus, when a person doesn't want to "sail" directly into a statement, "by and large" is a hedge, a phrase of circumspection, a way of saying that the statement is an imprecise generality. (source)

Best Places To Work

Fortune Magazine recently released their 100 Best Companies To Work For 2007.

Wed 2/21/2007

Quality Forwards: And You Thought You Were Having A Bad Day At Work

Every now and then, I get a funny email forwarded to me, which is really funny. For these, I have a gmail label: "Quality Forward". I will share some of these with you. Many of you may have seen these before, but they're so good they're worth a revisit. I was sharing this story yesterday, and it goes with the SCUBA theme.

April, 1998

Hi Sue,

Just another note from your bottom dwelling brother. Last week I had a bad day at the office. Before I can tell you what happened to me, I first must bore you with a few technicalities of my job. As you know my office lies at the bottom of the sea. I wear a suit to the office. It's a wetsuit. This time of year the water is quite cool. So what we do to keep warm is this:

We have a diesel powered industrial water heater. This $20,000 piece of junk sucks the water out of the sea. It heats it to a delightful temp. It then pumps it down to the diver through a garden hose which is taped to the air hose. Now this sounds like a darn good plan, and I've used it several times with no complaints. What I do, when I get to the bottom and start working, is I take the hose and stuff it down the back of my neck. This floods my whole suit with warm water. It's like working in a jacuzzi.

Everything was going well until all of a sudden, my bottom started to itch. So, of course, I scratched it. This only made things worse. Within a few seconds my rear end started to burn. I pulled the hose out from my back, but the damage was done. In agony I realized what had happened to me. The hot water machine had sucked up a jellyfish and pumped it into my suit.

This is even worse than the poison ivy I once had under a cast. Now I had that hose down my back. I don't have any hair on my back, so the jellyfish couldn't get stuck to my back. My posterior was not as fortunate. When I scratched what I thought was an itch, I was actually grinding in the jellyfish. I informed the dive supervisor of my dilemma over the comms. His instructions were unclear due to the fact that he along with 5 other divers were laughing hysterically. Needless to say I aborted the dive. I was instructed to make 3 agonizing water stops totaling 35 minutes before I could come to the surface.

I got to the surface wearing nothing but my brass helmet. My suit and gear were tied to the bell. When I got on board the medic, with tears of laughter running down his face, handed me a tube of cream and told me to medicate myself when I get in the chamber. The cream put the fire out, but I couldn't function properly for two days because of all the swelling. I later found out that this could easily have been prevented if the suction hose was placed on the leeward side of the ship.

Anyway, the next time you have a bad day at the office, think of me. Think about how much worse your day would be if you were to have a close encounter with a jellyfish in the way I did. I hope you have no bad days at the office. But if you do, I hope that thought will make it a little more tolerable. Take care, and I hope to hear from you soon.

Love, Brian

Mon 2/19/2007

Last weekend, I began my SCUBA training! I'm taking the NAUI Open Water class with my dad. This class is the first and most basic diving certification. It will qualify me to take dives up to 60 feet. We spent about half the time in bookwork, and about half the time in a heated pool. The experience of breathing underwater is as cool as it sounds! I can only imagine how much fun it is once you begin exploring the underwater world. Next weekend, we travel to San Marcos to finish the certification with 5 lake dives. The lake is spring-fed so it's a reasonable 72 degrees even in the winter.

Once I get certified, for one of my first real dives I plan to go to Lake Amistad on the Texas/Mexico border by Del Rio. This canyon-formed lake has many of the characteristics of those in California, which are deep and clear. It's also the hottest spot in the world right now for black bass fishing. I grew up fishing for bass with my dad, so I will probably always have a fascination with this elusive and intelligent animal. I hope that I can swim down and observe some real trophy fish, much bigger than any I have ever managed to catch.

Lake Amistad Largemouth Bass

One of the other reasons I look forward to diving is because I enjoy sailing. These two hobbies seem to go hand in hand. When the sailing gets dull, just jump overboard and see what's down there! Plus diving could provide the destinations for the sailing trips. We'd like to make our next trip to the Bahamas.

Wed 2/14/2007

Comon baby... You, me, a bottle of champagne, and a little space on the rug?

Ferret fun fact #15: Ferrets sleep alot (though the kits are hyperactive just like kittens.) Some ferrets are such heavy sleepers that they can be passed around an entire room full of people and not wake up at all... There have been cases where concerned ferret owners have believed their pets to be dead or comatose and while rushing to the vet had their pet wakes up in the passenger seat wondering what was all the excitement about.

Thu 2/8/2007

Hey all you faithful fans. I apologize for no bloggin' this week. Work has been brutal and life is busy. Wanted to drop in and say I haven't forgotten.

Favorite new 24 quote, regarding Jack Bauer of course: "What can I say? The guy's a little crazy. But he gets results."

Sat 2/3/2007

For those of you who like travel, check out my friend and co-worker's honeymoon pictures from he and his bride's trip to Thailand. Click on 2007 / Weddings / Vincent&Bonnie / Hong Kong&Honeymoon / Thailand. In particular I recommend "Elephant Trekking" and "Similan Islands". Vincent shares an enjoyment in photography with me, and as a more skilled photographer has been kind to teach me a number of things! Lovebirds: looks like you had a pretty sweet time! We are jealous!! :)

Elephant Trekking

Similan Islands

Along those lines, a number of you have inquired about what kind of camera I have. Therefore, in the coming weeks, I would like write some blogs about photography, explaining various aspects from picking out a camera, to tips on taking good pictures, to technical aspects. I hope to keep them fairly brief by pointing you to existing articles on the web -- there's a ton of good stuff already out there.

Tue 1/30/2007

Motivational posters are everywhere inside businesses nowadays. But one company decided to ask the question, "Is the glass really half full?" If you've never seen Despair.com's Demotivators, then you are missing out.

AT DESPAIR, INC., we believe motivational products create unrealistic expectations, raising hopes only to dash them. That's why we created our soul-crushingly depressing Demotivators designs, so you can skip the delusions that motivational products induce and head straight for the disappointments that follow!

• Procrastination: Hard work often pays off after time, but laziness always pays off now.
• Regret: It hurts to admit when you make mistakes - but when they're big enough, the pain only lasts a seconds.
• Problems: No matter how great and destructive your problems may seem now, remember, you've probably only seen the tip of them.
• Mistakes: It could be that the purpose of your life is only to serve as a warning to others.
• Flattery: If you want to get to the top, prepare to kiss a lot of the bottom.
• Fear: Until you have the courage to lose sight of the shore, you will not know the terror of being forever lost at sea.
• Effort: Hard work never killed anybody, but it is illegal in some places (picture of Paris).
• Agony: Not all pain is gain.
• Mediocrity: It takes a lot less time and most people won't notice the difference until it's too late (picture of Leaning Tower of Pisa) -- I have this one sitting on my desk. I feel that it is especially inspirational for my engineering job.

Mon 1/29/2007

For The Win (FTW)

1. That which completes a process in a successful manner
2. Commonly used among geeks to express their enthusiasm for something, especially in online chat
3. More often than not, this phrase is shortened to "FTW"
4. Also, "FTW" is mostly used to indicate a contribution or action taken that one is proud of, even facetiously.

Examples of use:
Sports: "He lines up the shot... and he makes it -- FOR THE WIN!"
At work: "Overtime Pay FOR THE WIN."
Since I am sick, I text'd my doctor (Ramsey) yesterday, having received my meds: "Amoxicillin FTW".

Fri 1/26/2007

Last night we partied down again over 111, this time to celebrate the b-day of our very own Dr. Stone,r. Stone requested a "gluttonous feasting ritual" to satisfy his "proclivity to gormandize", so we delievered in full force. After the feasting, we hung out and talked, and Ben showed us his booty-jam moves.

See more pictures

Thu 1/25/2007

Quote of the Day

I call this the Manager's Creed:

The things which are done are not those things which are expected, but inspected. -- Howard Hendricks (Dallas Theological Seminary, paraphrased)

Euphemism of the Day

Horse Hockey
Noun: (slang, euphemism) False or deceitful statements; lies; exaggerations; nonsense.
Interjection: An expression of disbelief or disgust.
Sample usage: "Horse hockey." (context: mid-application of Manager's creed)

Wed 1/24/2007

Well it's been over 4 months now. Honestly I've been trying to hold off as long as I could. The last time, well.. I didn't have much restraint. And, as a result, we burned through things pretty quick... They start off well enough. You have good intentions. But you start really getting into it, and it's impossible to control the pace! Before you know it, you've gone from a dinner here or there to entire nights, several times a week! Attachment? More like addiction!! It's definitely not healthy, but ohh what a rush!! I know I'm not the only one who struggles with this. My friends who have more experience than me (both guys and girls) say it gets even harder to control. At the same time... I just enjoy seeing her so much. She's really one of the most beautiful girls I think I've ever set eyes on. Yea, yea looks aren't everything. Of course, it's not really her looks that I'm interested in. In fact, she's only a side plot -- it's her dad that I like to watch! That's right, I've started watching the second season of 24 -- and the first episode started off with a real bang (some of you know what I mean!). I'm gunna need a hacksaw!

Mon 1/15/2007

As I walked up to my vehicle outside 24-hour fitness, I felt a soft, smooshy sensation as I attempted to finger in my truck's keyless entry code. Somehow I'd known that the convenience of locking my keys in my truck might catch up to me someday, a fact that brought little comfort as the 17mph wind whipped against me. The rubber keys were stuck in the depressed position, and the code did not seem to be working. Luckily, after a few minutes of mashing the keys as hard as I could, I managed to pop the lock. Lesson learned? Don't rely on keyless entry in sub-freezing temperatures.

Sun 1/14/2007

Friday night I eagerly received my new toy! It's a Canon Speedlite 430EX, which should make possible higher quality indoor pictures. I even got to try it out last night as we had a low-key celebration of Keith's 30th birthday. I have a lot to learn about how to use it, but I'm happy with the results I'm already getting. We had tons of laughs which made for lots of great picture opportunties. They were a very gracious crowd to shoot.

Fri 1/12/2007

On Thursday I went to lunch with my friend Luke. Luke says, "Let's go to Qdoba." I said, "No, let's go to Chipotle because it's healthier. If I go to Qdoba, I'm going to get it with the caso poured all over it, and that's bad." Luke agreed to health.

But today, I found out about the Chipotle calorie calculator. Go ahead and put in all the healthy choices: tortilla, rice, black beans, veggies, cheese and chicken. The balance? 1129. The rice alone has 7g of fat. After hearing that, I was so depressed that I had to eat pizza today (with Ranch of course).

Thu 1/11/2007

Programming then is fun because it gratifies creative longings built deep within us and delights sensibilities we have in common with all men. -- Frederick P. Brooks (The Mythical Man-Month)

Wed 1/10/2007

(13:22:15) Murat: feel free to make some super strong coffee :)
(13:22:28) John: ha ha
(13:22:30) John: ok i will in a minute
(13:23:23) Murat: sweet
...
(13:34:30) John: coffee should be ready
(13:37:03) Murat: sweet.
...
(13:37:20) John: bad news
(13:37:24) John: someone already hit it, so i finished it
(13:37:28) Murat: [$#*%]

Mon 1/08/2007

Just make sure you read the last one.

• If Jack Bauer was in a room with Hitler, Stalin, and Nina Meyers, and he had a gun with 2 bullets, he'd shoot Nina twice.
• If it tastes like chicken, looks like chicken, and feels like chicken but Jack Bauer says its beef...then it's freakin beef.
• Jack Bauer could strangle you with a cordless phone.
• It's no use crying over spilt milk ... unless that was Jack Bauer's milk. Then oh man, you are so screwed.
• Don't beg Jack Bauer to shoot you. He will simply shoot your wife.
• Nobody tells Jack Bauer what to do. There is a right way, a wrong way, and the Jack Bauer way. It's basically the right way but a lost faster and with more deaths.
• When someone asks him how his day is going, Jack replies, "Previously, on 24 ..."
• Superman's only weakness is Kryptonite. Jack Bauer laughs at Superman for having a weakness.
• In 96 hours, Jack Bauer has killed 93 people and saved the world 4 times. What the [heck] have you done with your life?
• Jack Bauer doesn't speak any foreign languages, but he can make any foreigner speak English in a matter of minutes.
• In high school Jack Bauer was voted "Most Likely to Kill the Foreign Kid"
• Jesus died and rose from the dead in 3 days. It took Jack Bauer less than an hour. And he's done it twice.
• There are no such things as lesbians, just women who haven't met Jack Bauer.
• During the commercials, Jack Bauer calls the CSI detectives and solves their crimes.
• When Jack Bauer goes to the airport and the metal detector doesn't go off, security gives him a gun.
• People with amnesia still remember Jack Bauer.
• When Jack Bauer was a child, he made his mother finish his vegetables.
• If Jack Bauer shot you while quail hunting it wouldn't be an accident.
• In kindergarten, Jack Bauer killed a terrorist for Show and Tell.
• Jack Bauer removed the "escape" button from his keyboard; Jack Bauer never needs to escape.
• Jehovah's Witnesses once tried to convert Jack Bauer. After four minutes of interrogation, they admitted Jack Bauer was God.
• The only difference between Jack Bauer and the electric chair is that Jack Bauer makes you talk first.
• Finding Nemo would have been vastly more exciting had Jack Bauer been looking for him.
• If you wake up in the morning, it's because Jack Bauer spared your life.
• Upon hearing that he was played by Kiefer Sutherland, Jack Bauer killed Sutherland. Jack Bauer gets played by no man.
• Jack Bauer's favorite color is severe terror alert red. His second favorite color is violet, but just because it sounds like violent.
• Jack Bauer once forgot where he put his keys. He then spent the next half-hour torturing himself until he gave up the location of the keys.
• Jack Bauer got Helen Keller to talk.
• Jack Bauer killed 93 people in just 4 days time. Wait, that is a real fact.
• Jack Bauer was never addicted to heroin. Heroin was addicted to Jack Bauer.
• 1.6 billion Chinese are angry with Jack Bauer. Sounds like a fair fight.
• Superman wears Jack Bauer pajamas.
• Jack Bauer doesn't miss. If he didn't hit you it's because he was shooting at another terrorist twelve miles away.
• Let's get one thing straight, the only reason you are conscious right now is because Jack Bauer does not feel like carrying you.
• When you open a can of whoop ass, Jack Bauer jumps out.
• If Jack says "I just want to talk to him" and that him is you… well amigo, you're screwed.
• Killing Jack Bauer doesn't make him dead. It just makes him angry.
• When life gave Jack Bauer lemons, he used them to kill terrorists. Jack Bauer hates lemonade.
• No man has ever used the phrase, "Jack Bauer is a sissy" in a sentence and lived to tell.
• In kindergarten, Jack Bauer killed a terrorist for Show and Tell.
• Jack Bauer literally died for his country, and lived to tell about it.
• As a child, Jack Bauer's first words were "There's no time!"
• Jack Bauer's family threw him a surprise birthday party when he was a child. Once.
• Guns don't kill people, Jack Bauer kills people.
• Everytime Jack Bauer yells "NOW!" at the end of a sentence, a terrorist dies.
• Jack Bauer does not sleep. The only rest he needs is what he gets when he's knocked out or temporarily killed.
• If you send someone to kill Jack Bauer, the only thing you accomplish is supplying him a fresh set of weapons to kill you with.
• Jack Bauer could get off the Lost island in 24 hours.

Fri 1/5/2007

I'm not settled on a position, but this news looked interesting: Scientists' Report Documents ExxonMobil's Tobacco-like Disinformation Campaign on Global Warming Science

Sat 12/09/2006

For those of you who don't know much about computer programming or software, this may be enlightening. For those of you who do, this is pretty funny. Hollywood loves to abuse the notion of computer code in movies. Here's the Top 10 things that code doesn't do in real life (that it does in the movies).

Funny Cat Pictures

If you like cats or kittens, you will enjoy these pictures.

Fri 12/01/2006

Tonight I watched An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore's documentary on the global warming climate crisis. Being one who has absolutely no background or education on global warming or the surrounding controversy, I was glad to get an introduction from at least one side of the matter.

Gore spends a good part of the movie demonstrating evidences that drastic global warming is occurring:

• Significantly increase over previous patterns of temperatures and CO2 levels (which correlate), which have existed for a supposed 650k years
• Melting of glaciers
• Storm severity
• Raining and droughts
• Changing seasons and animal activity

Based on my limited understanding, the question is not about whether global warming is occurring, but rather whether we are causing it or not. My biggest critique of the movie is that very little time is spent explaining how we know that the CO2 is causing the warming (not just that it correlates), and *none* of the counter-arguments were discussed at all. Therefore, one of my first tasks will be to study what critics say of this, and if there is any scientific critique of this position (Gore would have you believe there is none).

But the movie does leave me with several significant questions about the US and our policymakers:

• Why is the US so far behind other countries in our environmental standards? That other countries are adopting these measures leads me to believe there is something to it. Specifically, what is the reason given for our not being part of the Kyoto Accords?
• Even if the cause is debated, if the effects of global warming are agreed upon, such as the potential for a rising sea level, why is it not being spoken of at all? As they point out in the movie, countless warnings were given to New Orleans regarding its inability to weather a storm like Katrina, but little preparations seem to have been made.

Overall, the movie was interesting because of the content, and well put together. Ratings on IMDB are very high. The movie also serves as a sort of biography of Al Gore. Though you might not be a member of his fan club, it is encouraging to see how he has battled on this front throughout his life for what he believes in. Although, at one point, the movie attempts to elicit sympathy for him after the "miscount" and his defeat by Bush. Sorry Gore, don't be a sore loser. :) He may not have invented the internet, but perhaps he will be remembered as one of the foremost proponents of this topic. History will tell.

More study:

• Wikipedia:Global warming
• Wikipedia:Scientific opinion on climate change

• Wikipedia:Kyoto Protocol

As always, there is more than one side to a story. Evidence for all claims in the movie (that I remembered) were found on Wikipedia; however, more doubt is cast upon the consensus of belief. Gore says this is exactly what opponents want to do -- cast doubt. I think I would like to do further investigations of my own, perhaps speaking with some in the scientific community directly. America's great dependence upon fossil fuels is certainly troubling from many perspectives, and also causes me to question our motives in this area.

In any case, I certainly want to do my part to become more knowledgeable on this issue, and reduce my own negative impact on the environment. I already pay for green energy and recycle, but my vehicle isn't exactly a hybrid. =) Well, you could probably put a hybrid in the back of my truck... is that efficient?

Sat 11/04/2006

We have attained our goal! On 10/29, just 19 days after starting off at rank #78 on Google under the query "John Lehmann", www.jplehmann.com is now ranked #5. The irony is that I believe my interest in tracking my own page is what has caused it to rise.

If read back to the 10/10 post, the experiment began when I created a keyword rich paragraph in the hopes that this would boost my rankings with various queries. As of today, Google has still not re-indexed my page it appears. The second prong of my attack was to have my friends link to my page. My friend Andy's page was reindexed with links to mine on 10/14, but there was no apparent jump in the rankings at that time. The third prong of my attack was to become listed on dmoz.org, and last I checked it still hadn't made it in yet.

On 10/10 I also created a script which would each day. If you watch the ranks, you'll see that I gradually progressed in each of the queries to my current state. There was no large jump. I think there could be two reasons for this. First, Google uses a complex scoring system which must be continually adjusting the values of each page. Because a page's score is dependent on the scores of those pages pointing to it, it makes sense that the ranks would continually shift.

However, I have another theory which I am buying into at the moment. I believe that it is my script which performs queries each day which is driving my page to the top. At first glance, this doesn't seem possible. How would querying on "john lehmann" help me more than anyone else? But the other queries each contain a context keyword which is relevant to my page. Probably there aren't that many queries on John Lehmann (JL) each day, such that even my 20 queries a day could be noticed. I believe that Google might learn to associate each of the context keywords I am submitting with the keywords "john lehmann". In other words, Google may learn that the JL which people are interested in is also related to Dallas, UTD, LCC, etc. Finally when the core query "john lehmann" is submitted, Google may boost this page because it seems to have context for a popular JL.

Maybe that is far fetched, but it does seem to account the gradual, continual boosting of my page to the top of the rankings for a number of queries. Later I will post a chart showing the change over time. I could test this theory by creating some other page, and changing no other variables other than querying on it each day. I believe this would only work though for a keyword sequence which is fairly uncommon.

What has been attained out of all of this? Well, for one thing if someone wants to find me on Google, now they have a much better chance of spotting me since I'm on the first page, instead of on the 7th page. Second, I may have learned a trick for boosting a page's rank, but this needs further proof.

One thing is almost for sure... There is no other page on the web that has the name John Lehmann on it as many times as this one does!!! I hope no one finds this too vain -- I'm just trying to learn, and make my page locatable. :)

Perceived Versus Actual Risks

One interest of mine is the relation between statistics and psychology. Some problems in probability and statistics seem so counterintuitive. Here's an interesting article I found on Slashdot:

"Encryption guru Bruce Schneier takes a look at perceived and actual risks with some insightful commentary on how warped the public perception of risks may be: '...we worry more about anthrax (with an annual death toll of roughly zero) than influenza (with an annual death toll of a quarter-million to a half-million people). Influenza is a natural accident, anthrax is an intentional action, and the smallest action captures our attention in a way that the largest accident doesn't. If two airplanes had been hit by lightning and crashed into a New York skyscraper, few of us would be able to name the date on which it happened.'"

Wed 10/25/2006

John maybe? Lehmann? No. Can you guess? No you can't. But thanks to the amazingly cool free eXTReMe tracking service I am using (see Saturn looking logo at bottom of page), I can see all kinds of information, such as what keywords people used to find this site.

The 3 keywords that have attacted the most unique visitors? Girls Gone Grabbin. That's right. See the 4/6/06 entry for clarification. I plugged these keywords into Yahoo, and sure enough -- hit number 35 is this page.

Yahoo has apparently steered us 67% of the traffic compared to Google's 33%. There's your jplehmann.com ranking trivia for the day.

Tue 10/24/2006

Jplehmann.com fans... Those of you who have been following our Google ranking reports over the last few day have been elated. On 10/20, our main query jumped from 70 to 44, while at the same time securing the #1 spot with "texas". Then, on 10/21 the main query jumped to the 15th position!! (would be the 2nd page, or 2nd class, a non-power user). "LCC" has also climbed to #2, second to an academic paper citing a paper of mine.

What caused this jump? The cached version seems to still be Sept 27, which hasn't changed (it hasn't eaten my new page with all the fancy keywords). Also, if I query "link:jplehmann.com", there are zero results (query for "who links here"). Although, I'm skeptical about that one because I've tried it on much larger pages and also seen no results.

One thing I noticed is that it has now indexed my main domain name - jplehmann.com. As cited on 10/10, it had only two of my specific pages (index.html and index1.html). Perhaps I got a big boost by owning my own top-level domain (but what changed?).

All and all, I wouldn't consider this to be too bad. "John Lehmann" isn't an uncommon name -- it produces 46,700 hits on Google.

John Lehmanns who are more prominent than myself include:

• Rudolph John Frederick Lehmann (1907-1987): was an English poet and man of letters, and one of the foremost literary editors of the twentieth century, founding the periodicals New Writing and The London Magazine. Poet, Autobiographer, Editor. Links from Literary Encyclopedia, Answers.com, Wikipedia, etc. (5 links)
• John Lehmann: a photojournalist from Vancouver, whose work I quite like! (2 links)
• John Lehmann: another photographer? Site under the name WestKaua`i.com (1 link)
• John Lehmann-Haupt: a guitarist and teacher at New York's American Institute of Guitar (1 link)

Thu 10/19/2006

Rankings

Ah ha, we broke into the 60s... for a day. :) "Texas" went from 5 to 6... Slow progress?

Wed 10/11/2006

I notice that first thing this morning, my ranking has already increased from 78 to 72. Could this be due to the fact that I've been clicking my own link a number of times? Looks like they do have the mechanism to report click-thru traffic:

<a class=l href="http://jplehmann.com/" onmousedown="return rwt(this,'','','res', '72', '__T2Q8BEmYe57wfvP0-lt4aaHGDOI=', '&sig2=rzRBMlmViYcoEBOCcH01Cg')">

However this also sounds way too easy to be worth many ranking points. But, maybe it can get me up to the level of a forum posting I made in April of 2001 titled, "problem compiling with g++ - procedure entry point getrlimit can't be found in cygwin1.dll", which doesn't even have a solution in it, but is is ranked #19. Maybe people are clicking on that.

A Few Good Links

In my war against all other John Lehmann pages, I have enlisted the aid of several noble and talented mercenaries. Three of my friends, fellow Language Computer Corporation (LCC) comrads, and Natural Language Processing (NLP) colleagues have made pointers from their personal pages:

• Luke Nezda, a fellow engineer and University of Texas at Dallas (UTD) alum whom I work closely with in LCC's Information Extraction (IE) R&D efforts.
• Andy Hickl, another LCC coworker, a linguist from Rice University and University of California, San Diego, who has focused on Question Answering (QA), Dialog and Entailment.
• Mihai Surdeanu, former LCC supervisor and mentor of mine, who is currently doing research at the Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya in Barcelona, Spain. Mihai has published significantly in the areas of Question Answering, Information Extraction, and Semantic Role Labeling.

Tue 10/10/2006

The only purpose of this paragraph about John Lehmann is to create a keyword dense paragraph for the hopes of better indexing of this personal home page or webpage in search engines. John Lehmann grew up in Richardson, Texas, just outside of Dallas, attending J.J. Pearce High School. He then went to the University of Texas at Dallas (UTD) studying Computer Science as a Chi Phi, and now John P. Lehmann works at Language Computer Corporation (LCC) developing Natural Language Processing (NLP) technology often using Machine Learning (ML). John Lehmann enjoys sailing and photography in particular. Now wasn't that nice?

In addition, I wrote a python script to automate the rank-testing of my page with various queries. You can see the standings as of today below. Variation based on case is more likely due to different query servers being hit rather than anything else, I'd guess. The purpose of this experiment is to see if my rank may increase with these other keywords as a result of the prose above. I won't actually be able to prove the causality, but if it shows that paragraph as the relevant snippet then that's pretty good evidence. I have already seen this happen with the 'dallas' keyword. Plus, Google seems to completely ignore my metatags so I get no help there.

     RANKS    QUERY
      [76] -- 'john lehmann'
      [78] -- 'John Lehmann'
        [] -- 'john p. lehmann'
        [] -- 'John P. Lehmann'
        [] -- 'john lehmann richardson'
       [1] -- 'john lehmann dallas'
       [6] -- 'john lehmann texas'
        [] -- 'john lehmann utd'
        [] -- 'john lehmann university of texas at dallas'
       [3] -- 'john lehmann lcc'
        [] -- 'john lehmann nlp'
        [] -- 'john lehmann language computer corporation'

As a sidenote, I wrote a script the other day which sends any of my homepage files to my ftp site which are older than the last update. This makes for really easy updates, and also explains the increase in my posting activity. :) I think I shall use this script, combined with a cron job to upload my new rankings each day (as if anyone really cares). I will put them in jplehmann.com_page_rank.txt.

For completeness, know that I also added my site to dmoz.org and shamelessly begged my geek friends to add my page to their site as well.

Another thing I noticed is that Google seems to have only indexed my two blog pages -- index.html, and index1.html. They are linked at the bottom of this page. The rest of my pages are linked through the menu at the top, but these are generated from JavaScript, to simulate SSI functionality. Therefore, I have added plain anchors at the bottom of this page to see if that makes a difference. Google crawled my site 2 times it seems in September, so we may be due for a visit soon.

Sat 10/07/2006

Check out this sweet web page I made for my cousin Olivia a few years ago. Now she's 15, and she probably doesn't think it's as cool anymore as it used to be. I also have a myspace page in case you didn't know. =)

Sat 10/07/2006

Noticed that my stylesheets weren't working on pages other than the main index and fixed that. Also added some links to the "links" page and fixed some broken ones.

Fri 10/06/2006

My first youtube.com video. Unfortunately the color and sound are a bit off, but you get the idea.

Description: "This is night 6 of our 19 day Europe backpacking trip (9/8/2005). I'm trying to do a few situps, but Michael won't leave me alone and is trying to slap me on the stomach. I'm going to give him a love tap...."

Sun 9/24/2006

It's been a very busy year! I will write more about it someday. All I can say is that I have been working very hard on some personal projects of mine. I may not be successful in all the ways that I want to be, but I think it's something I will look back on and be glad that I tried. So if you have not seen or heard from me in a while, that is the reason. This will change significantly come Jan 07.

For now, I'm just updating my webpage by adding some additional keywords to it. This may help it to get indexed more accurately by search engines like Google. I'm excited to have discovered that this page is now in the top 100 hits with the keywords "John Lehmann", and #2 with "John Lehmann homepage". :) If you want to help me, put a link in your webpage to jplehmann.com.

Sun 4/09/2006

I have been meaning to update my blog on what I have been doing in the last 6 months. But at the moment, I'd rather share a new article and old article which I think are both fascinating reads.

University of Texas evolutionary ecologist and lizard expert Eric Pianka has recently won the Texas Academy of Science's 2006 Distinguished Texas Scientist award:

With this, the questioning was over. Immediately almost every scientist, professor and college student present stood to their feet and vigorously applauded the man who had enthusiastically endorsed the elimination of 90 percent of the human population (Doctor Doom, Eric Pianka, Receives Standing Ovation from Texas Academy of Science).

Now, we could pause to discuss this idea that the Earth needs a good cleansing of 90% of its human inhabitants... And that line of thinking should be debated. But I would like to use this as a springboard into a larger issue: Man's rapid advance in science is producing technology which is increasingly suitable for the mass destruction of humanity. Such suitability is measured not only by destructive potential, but also by availability to those who would seek such destruction, and by the difficulty of defending against such an attack.

For example, weapons of mass destruction in the form of nuclear bombs are not new, yet until now the nations controlling such devices have apparently managed to keep them from falling into hostile hands. In contrast, some of the newer technologies are much more difficult to contain. Some require only the proper technical know-how, without the need for hard to find materials (e.g. uranium).

Finally, while advances in technology can also be used for good, such as defensive mechanisms, I believe the entropy-based principle "it is easier to destroy than to create" is ominously applicable. I'm suggesting that it would be far easier for a single proselyte of Dr. Pianka to smuggle the Ebola virus out of Africa than it would be for an entire country to stop its spread.

Much of my thinking here was inspired by something I read a few years ago by Bill Joy, co-founder and chief scientist of Sun Microsystems. He predicted the end of humanity in within 20 or 30 years, in an article in the 2000-APR issue of Wired Magazine. He wrote that leading-edge technologies such as robotics, genetic engineering and nano-tech may soon lead to the extinction of human society (Why the future doesn't need us).

Then again, there's aways the bird flu. :)

Fri 9/23/2005

Well I am now back home safe and sound in the states. Travel home was intense but fun, as I made my way back home to Dallas from Barcelona during 22 hours of consecutive travel. Since I took the remainder of the week of from work, I have been able to relax, recoup and regroup back at the casa.

For those of you eager to see the pictures, I posted 3,300 photos to the photo album yesterday! In the event that you don't want to spend several hours reviewing the pictures to my trip :), we will be preparing an "express" album in the near future.

Below I have posted the brief email updates I sent back to those closest to me while I was on my trip.

So what of the trip? It was excellent. Experiencing the lands and cultures of another continent was an enjoyable and valuable experience. During the trip my companions and I formed countless memories which we will definitely remember for the rest of our lives. In addition, we grew closer as friends and brothers.

I wouldn't say that I return as a substantially changed man, nor would I have expected to. I definitely learned a lot, but on the whole was not surprised by what I saw. Though, I would say that I am challenged all the more to be aware of what is going on in the world, and to be better educated about both national and global politics. This is not a new conviction, but the trip has only strengthened it.

Sun 9/18/2005

Email update from Europe 3/3

This is my last update, because I am on day 17/19 for my trip! The other 3 guys just left to travel back this morning, but I still have 2 more full days that I am excited about in Barcelona.

Anyway we have already been blessed with amazing hospitality from Mihai and Laura (my friends living in Barcelona, and I will get to send more time with them over the next two days). I am going to go see some sights solo today and then may be drinking a Corona (or equivalent) on the beach tomorrow.

My trip home on Tuesday will be a little bit crazy switching from metro/bus/plane/train/metro/train/plane/car in a tight schedule that doesn't allow for many mistakes.

It has been great and feels like I've been gone for a long time, but look forward to seeing you all when I return (or yall if I express my Texas roots).

PS I have decided to quit my job and become a full time world traveler until funds are exhausted.

Mon 9/12/2005

Email update from Europe 2/3

Have just a couple of minutes to send a quick update! Things are going great!! We are leaving in 10 minutes to get on our night train from Prague to Switzerland/Interlocken.

I can't really in 5 minutes say much about our trip, but I think it is everything that I hoped for. Even though we are doing a whirlwind tour of 7 countries in just a couple of weeks, spending about 2 days in each city, those two days are so full of experience that I think it's a perfect blend. We have been so blessed in our last 2 cities (Vienna and Prague) to really get to know some locals.

In Vienna, we met a girl and her mom at the train station and ran into them again 2 miles away again. Then after talking, they (girl and brother) invited us to dinner, after which we went to a real Austrian party. :)

Today, in Prague, the girl serving breakfast turned out to be a Christian and we got into some really good conversation with her. After she got off work, she spent many hours taking us around town.

Seeing the sights is great, but meeting the people is even better. Anyway, I have been battling off some sort of infection, but am thus far ok. Ben also is hobbling along quite well with a wrapped up twisted ankle. We're looking forward to the Alps, Nice, and Barcelona to come....

Fri 9/2/2005

Email update from Europe 1/3

We have landed! The last 36 hours have been amazing... Hard to believe it has only been that long. We flew overnight, and tried to get some sleep because our day started at 1am dallas time -- 6am London time! We had a blast touring London for 6 hours before *narrowly* making our plane (sightsaw too long in London, and missed our train by 30 seconds, then the next one was delayed -- showed up at the airport barely more than 30 minutes before flight time!) Anyway we are in Rome, had some authentic dinner cuisine, and are now at a pretty nice hostel cleaned up and crashing in about 10 minutes to fully adjust to European time.

Sun 8/28/2005

• Check out the hundreds of new photos I've added.
• I leave for Europe this Friday. Our trip will include 7 countries: London/England, Rome, Cinque Terre, Florence/Italy, Vienna/Austria, Prague/Czech Republic, Gimmelwald/Switzerland (Alps), Nice/France, and Barcelona/Spain.

Tue 8/17/2005

• MAJOR! I have finally broken down and purchased some real web-hosting. Previously I was using the free service that comes with my Comcast account. Now I am using Lunarpages.com, a company which seems to have a good reputation. This means:
  1. Faster download speeds!
  2. Massive disk space! (so I can store thousands of photos)
• I also developed the first version of my Python-based Photo Album. Its advantage is that it is fully automated so all I have to do is put pictures in directories, and it generates the webpages which you view. It's a bit rough around the edges right now, but that part is easy to improve upon. What's most impressive is that this was accomplished in only 84 lines of Python code.

Mon 8/8/2005

• Two months ago, purchased a Canon Digital Rebel XT after a fair amount of research.
• Just today I got setup to easily produce photo albums which can be put on the web. Check them out. Not all pictures are the greatest, but I promise to improve. :)
• Survived May's sailing trip.
• Worked 93 hours one week in July week. :/
• Turned 27 a few weeks ago.
• Had been playing too much poker so I had to quit. :(
• Going to Europe (Italy, Switzerland, France, Spain) in less than a month!

Sun 4/17/2005

• Today my roommate and I went to the SAMSUNG/RADIOSHACK 500 NASCAR event at the Texas Motor Speedwayalong with over 200,000 other people. Yea I know, pretty whitey. But trust me, it was way more exciting than on TV.
• Going on our 3rd Gulf of Mexico sailing trip this week, from Tuesday to Sunday. Our plan is to sail from Galveston to Port Aransas which is about 150mi each way.
• Check out this sweet weather page which shows wind and wave conditions all over the coast. From this page you will be able to deduce how much trouble we have gotten ourselves into during this week.
• And finally, I do not plan on reguarly updating this blog for the foreseeable future (not that I really have anyway). But on the bright side, I do plan to be working on my personal studies over the coming months, which will result in new content for the hope section. "over and out"

Wed 4/6/2005

MOVIE REVIEW
Saw Touching the Void this evening. Amazing true story of one man's desperate struggle for survival after a dangerous mountain climbing attempt goes awry. Highly recommend.

TECHIE TIP
Have you noticed Google's recent announcement that their free email service, Gmail, will now provide 2 gigabytes of free storage? What a great opportunity for my Gmail pitch. I've been using it for almost a year and its another highly recommend!

• 2 Gigabytes of free storage with more to come
• Check messages from anywhere, but never delete them
• Messages from same conversation grouped together
• Labels provide superior organization to folders
• Gmail notifier tells you when "You've got mail"
• Hotkey/shortcuts for the real nerds
• Many more free features, like forwarding

Wed 3/29/2005

• Am almost recovered my rolled ankle I received while showing off footbag skills to subordinates (imagine that one)
• Delighted to announce Captain Luke Nezda as the 5th member of our mighty sailing crew for our April 20-24 round-trip voyage from Kemah (Galveston) to Corpus Christi.
• Had my '95 T/A painted in anticipation of selling it (any takers?)
• If you like nature photos, don't overlook this photo board from my links (check out the nudity shot).
• Folded previous blogs into additional webpages for faster load time.

Sun 3/27/2005

I hope to create entire photo galleries for trip such as this one eventually.

Happy Easter!

Thur 3/17/2005

Also, I added some new links, including Vincent Mo's home page, one of my co-workers. He took some great pictures (73 to be exact) of our Dave & Buster's Christmas Party. Go here and then expand the folders for 2004/Events/LCC at D&B.

By the way, I think only 1 person figured out that the picture below was not really me laying out for the frisbee. Comon, it was supposed to be a joke.