I'm still having a hard time figuring out my reaction. Mollie and I spent all morning IMing trying to figure out what was going on and how we could meet up (the shooting occurred in a building right in between our two office buildings) before they let us leave the office. My coworkers spent the morning crowded around the windows from which you could see the building where most of the shooting took place. You could see the police rushing in, kids rushing out, and wounded being carried out. There were hundreds of police cars and ambulances. I've never seen anything like it. Nobody knew what was going on other than a few vague emails from University Relations. We only knew of one death until the noon press conference, right before which we were told to go home. So it wasn't until I got back home that I realized the scale of what had happened just a hundred yards away from me. I never expected to work at location of the worst school shooting in history, much less while it was happening.
Anyway, we're all okay, but I'm glad VT is closed again tomorrow. It's going to be hard to get back to work on Wednesday. I can't imagine how hard it's going to be for the students.
Wow, I picked Elite Beat Agents for the DS on Friday, and I'm totally addicted. I've cleared the first two difficulty levels pretty quickly, but it seems like every new song is a huge step up in difficulty, and I'm currently stuck about halfway through the three-star difficulty on "Canned Heat" on which I can't even make it through the first section of the song. Despite the difficulty, it's one of those games that sticks in my head all the time. It's a ton of fun, even on the cheesiest of songs ("You're the Inspriation"? Really?), and has tremendously silly storylines and art to accompany the action. I can't recommend it enough.
So I didn't snag a Wii on launch day, but I was so obsessed, I ended up paying (a little) extra for a system on eBay. Luckily the seller lived nearby so I was able to go pick it up tonight (see Mollie's entry for the whole sad story). Wii Sports has been played and it was pretty fun. I have to say Tennis was the standout in terms of best pace and play. But time will tell. I love the idea of Bowling, but I apparently suck at it. Mollie whipped me thoroughly and doubled my score.
Anyway, off to play Zelda, but here's our Wii code:
3534 5126 4754 8877
Let me know yours if you add us.
What do you collect?
These days, nothing. I used to want to collect old computer hardware, like early 80s PCs. Then I realized since I would never actually use them and they would just take up space and collect dust, that would be pretty dumb. My last year in college Mollie and I spent stupid amounts of money collecting Star Wars figures. That was also pretty dumb.
So I got kind of burned out on collecting things. Every now and then I think it would be cool to collect electronic keyboards and other musical equipment, but really given how little I play the instruments I do have, that would be... yes, dumb.
How many places have you lived in your life?
Not as many as most people, apparently. Save for a year and a half, I lived my entire pre-college existence in one house. And except for a year in Kansas City and the past four months here in Blacksburg, the rest of my life was spent in two places: Hot Springs, Arkansas, and Springfield, Missouri.
Anyway, here's the chronology:
- 1976-1994 Hot Springs, AR (kidhood)
- 1994-1998 Springfield, MO (college)
- 1999 Kansas City, MO (software engineer @ Sprint)
- 2000-May 2006 Springfield, MO (sysadmin @ Missouri State University)
- May 2006-now Blacksburg, VA (sysadmin-alike @ Virginia Tech)
Excepting Kansas City, all the places have similar geographies (though the mountains--Ouachitas, Ozarks, and Blue Ridge--get bigger as the available lakes get fewer) and progressively cooler summers. Not sure what that portends for the future.
I've loved all the places I've lived, and the longer that continues the more I think that's just part of my personality. A lot of my online friends would be miserable in these places, but I've always been happy with my environs. I sometimes think I'd like to move somewhere totally different--we almost moved to Tampa for Mollie's school. But who knows if I would still enjoy myself.
What's your middle name? Is there a story or history behind it?
My parents wanted to name me after my dad, but didn't want to use "Ronnie" which is his legal name. So they gave me the middle name of Ronald. The first time I remember realizing I didn't like the name was in first grade. There was a mix-up with my enrollment paperwork apparently, and they had me down as "Ronald Adams". This led to several issues.
First, for the first day of class, they assembled all the first graders in the cafeteria with our parents and called out the names of which students were to go with which teacher, at which point we were to go join that group at a particular area of the cafeteria. Well, when they called out Ronald Adams, I wanted to go on up, but my Mom insisted we wait because who knows, there might be another one. There wasn't, and so we had to scramble up and ask where we should go and my group had already left and it was a big mess.
So then, when I did make it to class, our teacher Mrs. McMillion, had made little construction-paper amulets with our names on them for each kid so we and she could learn everyone's name. But of course, mine said "Ronald Adams". I had to tell her what happened, at which point she scratched out the "Ronald" and added "David". Now I had not only stuck out by being late to the first day of first grade, but my amulet was soiled. I was marked as a freak from the beginning.
But the last straw was when some kid or other thought it would be great to tease me for sharing a name with the goofy mascot of an unrespectable fast food chain. "Your middle name is Ronald? Like Ronald McDonald?? HA!" I was miserable. Later that day my mom told me I should remind them that the President of the United States also shared my name. That too-late comeback idea didn't really lift my spirits, and looking back, it's actually even more depressing than the whole fast-food clown thing.
It's been 24 years now since I was in the first grade, but the wounds still feel fresh. I wince when people ask for this tidbit of information; I groan when I get mail addressed with my full name; I curse every form that won't let you get away with just an initial. I guess what I'm saying is I hate my middle name. Loathe it, even. Sorry, Mom and Dad, you couldn't have known it would work out this way.
What was the last game you played?
Go.
I discovered Go in the summer of 2001, and played online nearly every day for the next two years. Once Mara got older, it became harder and harder to find the hour plus of solid concentrationi to dedicate to a serious game, and so in the past three years I've only played in spurts and I'm not nearly as strong a player as I used to be. As I lost touch with my regular online opponents it became harder and harder to get involved in playing again, and in Springfield, there was no Go community. I never found anyone, in fact, who knew how to play.
Now that we're in Blacksburg, I've started going to the Virginia Tech Go Club, and it's definitely a different experience to play on a physical board around real people. A lot more talking and kibbitzing goes on that what's allowed or polite online, and then there's the part where I've been playing this game for five years and don't yet really understand how to calculate the score since I've relied all this time on the computer to do it for me.
Anyway, I look forward to the meetings, and it's fun to get back to playing a game that I love. Mara's of the age now where she's able to play board games, and when she caught a glimpse of one of my go sets while we were moving she asked me to teach her how to play. So we've played a few times and she's picking up the rules faster than I thought possible. I may have to start bringing her to the meetings sometime soon.
What song or lyrics are stuck in your head at the moment? What album is it from?
Submitted by Lox Ly.
I've had a couple of songs running through my head lately. At this very moment, it's "Atlas" from Ways Not to Lose by the Wood Brothers, which I was listening to on the way to work this morning.
I am wiser now
My man Atlas told me
I shouldn't try to hold his world up
He said, "Boy you got some muscle
That you have never used
All you got to do is go ahead and wake up"
So you were born in an electrical storm
took a bite out the sun
saw your future in a machine built for two
now your rays, make me kind of go crazy, shocked and awe and amaze me.
Great, now that one's stuck in my head. Where's my iPod?
What is your browser's default home page set to?
Submitted by Kelev T. Cat.
about:blank, baby. I can't stand any superfluous delay in loading up a new window or tab. I use keyword-searchers in Firefox, so if I want to to Google search first thing, I just type "g vox rules". No need to wait for some page to load. I think I've used about:blank since I knew about it, however long that has been.
I think I've talked about this before here, but let me just take this opportunity to expound on keyword searches in Firefox. They're easy to set up, and then you are good to go. No special keys to press or search fields to tab to. Google is g; Amazon a; Wikipedia w; IMDB is, well, imdb; map for Google Maps; img for Google Images; ebay for eBay. And it's all just a Ctrl-T or Ctrl-L away. I feel crippled without them.
I'm thinking maybe the bottom of each weblog post is not the best place for social bookmarking links to fit into the browser UI.
