Reading (For Dummies)

Rocky Mountain High

Work sent me to a cool training class, conveniently located in Broomfield, Colorado. Lucky me, I got to take a flight in to Denver a few days early and hang out with Jessican in Vail...

Adirondack, eat your heart out

I spent a few days snowshoeing around Shrine Mountain, hanging out in downtown Vail, and noting that the vapor pressure of alcohol makes smelling the head of a glass of whiskey extremely difficult at high altitude. Oh, and I bought a car. Via e-mail. Sight unseen.

What a typical "road office" looks like

The week was pretty business-like, while also reminding me that I really miss being in school. The course was on Trusted Solaris administration (now I'm a certified Trusted Solaris administrator or something), a fun enough topic on its own. Now if I can only convince my bosses to spring for some SELinux policy courses, I might start to make some applicability sense of the various protection profiles versus the orange book...

My future in Grease

The future home of a grease car system? You betcha!

I did something very strange this week. I bought a car. Via e-mail.

Complete with Pump Düse

I have been searching for a Jetta Wagon TDi for about 8 months now. A few slipped through my fingers as they usually were sold before dealerships even listed them in the paper. I even tried (unsuccesfully) to haggle with a local dealer over a diesel Golf (not exactly what I wanted, and he wouldn't budge on the price). I guess I get the last laugh -- this Jetta is totally decked out with everything from a sun roof to heated leather seats to a mad crazy stereo. And, in the spring, I will modify it to run on used vegetable oil...

After doing enough environmental damage driving my pickup back and forth to work every day, I figured I should sacrifice some of my paycheck for a little environmental kindness. Why not a Prius or a Civic or something? Simple: no standard transmission. The '05 model was the last year that Honda made a civic with 5-speed (and they had super weak motors), the Prius never came with a standard. I definitely dig the hybrid deal, don't get me wrong. Especially when considering how much particulate the TDi tosses into the air. But grease is better, eliminates reliance on non-renewable resources (yes, you can argue that, if every car on the planet were a grease car, we wouldn't be able to grow enough vegetables to produce enough grease to keep them going), and, heck, is just a fun car.

Metrosexual and the Battle of Wounded Knee

Weather is a funny thing. It has been -11C (8F) for the last few days. The ground got cold. Real cold. This afternoon, the temperature rose into the 30s and it started raining ice.

Tonight I was walking to the co-op around the corner when I slipped and fell on my stairs. I laughed for a few minutes, hauled myself up. I made it about 10 steps down the sidewalk when I remember my knee rushing up at me as I slipped again and fell onto the street.

Exhibit A: The wounded knee

I hobble back to my house, half-cursing, half-laughing at myself for being so clumsy when the entire world is coated in a 1/8" thick sheen of ice. I sat for a few minutes hugging my knee, then stood up. It hurt, but I could walk on it. So I returned to the co-op to buy something funny that I've been meaning to buy for a while.

Exhibit B: "Westrosexual" soap.

Not having any soap to disinfect my wounds, I opted for a little of this cutely named stuff -- it's metrosexualizing/emasculating the cowboy in a way that not even movies can do. Brilliant!

Grand Old Potluck

One of the more interesting gatherings that I go to often and never talk about is the weekly Vegan Potluck, hosted at my friend Kevin's house. His place is home to some of Syracuse' finest animal rights activists; every Sunday they invite everyone to their living room to eat vegan food and talk about nothing in particular.

Billy (front), salivating over a Vegan Penis Cake

Nearly everyone that comes are vegan straight edgers. This week was particularly interesting because it was so large. Most weeks we see about 10-15 people come in and out, and everybody knows everybody else. This week, there were 50+ in attendance, with relations extending to, "Oh, I'm a friend of a friend of a friend of...wait, are you Billy?", "No, I'm Reid," "So how did you get invited?"

MySpace Evil

A recent post to Interesting-People got me wondering: is myspace really censoring its users? The answer? YES.

Experiment: attempt posting The Independent's story to my MySpace bulletin board, and personally mail it to my MySpace friends via their messaging service. Result: I confirm my bulletin post, and wait the five minutes required for bulletins to go 'live.' Bulletin never shows up. I call/email friends asking if they received my message. No-one has.

Control: pass the message through the 1337 Translator with settings for 20% leetness (makes message fairly readable still, to the untrained reader, and also replaces tons of letters with their numeric lookalikes). This message posts immediately to my bulletin board.

Conclusion: MySpace is without a doubt censoring people from posting about rival sites, *and* from criticizing MySpace. I'd suggest moving to a site that allows free speech, as MySpace does not...

And how could I forget

While hanging out in DC I got a phone call from my brother. As it turns out, I'm an uncle!

Wonders will never cease. Now I must plot my corruption of this youngest holder of the Wightman name...

Going Down on the District

Having a four-day weekend, I decided to go down to DC to see Greg, Kyla, and Mindy for New Year's Eve. Okay, I have to confess, my real motivation was to see Laura...she's in Takoma Park living with her Aunt Claudia and Aunt Juanita at present, working in the biotechnology wing of Johns Hopkins University.

I finally got her out of her Aunts' house, too

Laura has been super-busy doing the research thing, fretting over graduate school applications, and excercising Yoga-tastic abilities that she hasn't left the confines of the daily commute. We managed to sneak off to the Baltimore Aquarium for an afternoon (mucho crowded), followed by Something Completely Different that night.

Greg and Kyla show off their moves on the Contra floor

Classically, I've never been much of a dancer. That changed a few years ago at Falcon Ridge when I got into the Dance Tent. Polar organized a trip to this quaint little dancing organization by the district, it reminds me to take him up on rides to the local contra and square dances.

New Year's was a quiet affair of hiking around in Takoma Park and taking a stab at when the actual calendar year changed. It's harder than it sounds, not that I minded drawing out the traditional midnight activity.

What a way to start 2006

Laura and I went hiking on the New Year, wandering across the Virginia border to Great Falls. The rapids looked far scarier than anything I've seen up here; half the hike I daydreamed of the running this stretch of the Potomac. Just dreams for now, as I head back north to brave the cold.