Jerry Falwell has passed.

Bye Jerry!

So Mookie tagged me with this 7 random things thing. Yeah. So here we are:

1) I have been sued for $600,000 for a minor fender bender in White Planes NY. The guy was a Ecuadorian cab driver who had to “tend to a sick father” when the depositions were done. The insurance company settled for $9K. It was a bullshit lawsuit and I wish they had gone to court and made the bastard pay me.

2) I went to a private Catholic college prep high school. The St John’s Patriots in Shrewsbury, MA. I did it for two reasons. One: I wanted to get into a decent college and it seemed the college prep route was the way to go. Two: I had a family tradition with my father, brother, uncle, and several cousins going to the same school. The experience was not horrible. It was an all-male school- that part sucked (no, not literally). I also have no contact with anyone from high school. The school doesn’t even know where I live. With this post, Google might rat me out.

3) I graduated Virginia Tech with a BS in Computer Science. Apparently that makes me smart. I did work at Mitretek (a MITRE spinoff) and Microsoft, so I must not be stupid. I *did* get to watch Michael Vick play in college- watching him live might be one of the most amazing things I have ever seen in sports.

4) While in college I was accused of cheating. Well, actually I was convicted of cheating. It was a senior level CS class; and I didn’t cheat. Two of us were accused and the other guy swore he did not cheat off of me. I took (and am taking) his word for it. Due to a “liberal interpretation of the double-zero rule”, the professor gave me a D in the class so I passed. Oh, and working in the dining halls sucks.

5) I had only visited Austin for 2 days prior to me moving here from Seattle. I thank two people for my decision to move here: First, my original manager Evan; and Second, the random guy I talked hockey and Austin general with at Buffalo Billiards downtown. He convinced me Austin people were cool people to hang out with.

6) I am the god father of my newest niece Rebecca. She is a darling- but I have only seen her in person once. I have been to Mass twice in the last 5 or 6 years. Once for my grandmother’s funeral and once for Rebecca’s Christening. It doesn’t bother me at all.

7) I was –> this <-- close to owning a bar in Austin about 3 or 4 years ago. There were 4 of us as business partners and were trying to buy The Ale House. It was a dive- rotting floors in the bathroom, electrical that could cause a fire at any moment, fruit flies, nasty smell, the works. It would have rocked. There is a good chance I will own a bar at some point. The business intrigues me for some reason. I'm going to not tag anyone. Deal with it :)

Check out the lineup here. (mental note: I still hate flash)

I just picked up my ticket ($145 ick). But I am digging on some of the bands this year including: Blue October, The White Stripes, MUSE, Arcade Fire, The Killers, My Morning Jacket, Queens of the Stone Age, Bloc Party, Arctic Monkeys, Yo La Tengo, Keiser Chiefs, Ben Kweller, Bela Fleck, and Ghostland Observatory. Anyone see a band that I should not miss?

This year the festival is September 14-16. It is going to be *H O T*; but that is the general way it goes in September in Austin.

My iTunes problem seemed to be solved by using different media (Fuji rather than Imation) and buring it on my laptop rather than my desktop. I’ll get the chance to try it in my truck this afternoon- but the CD seems to work fine so far.

I got hit by a car.

Yep.

I was running by the entrance/exit of an apartment complex when a lady was leaving the complex. I knew she was going to stick the nose of her car into the sidewalk area so I was prepared. I was *almost* by the hood of her car when the bumper clipped me on the leg. I sort of rolled off the hood with one hand banging down on the hood and the other giving me balance on the ground. She screamed. I turned and gave her a nasty look then went on my way. I would like to think this scared her into actually *looking* where she is driving. But likely she is just too big an idiot to learn from her mistakes.

Two questions for my faithful readers:

1) Does anyone have XM Radio and have missing channels? I am missing a bunch of sports and news channels (ESPNEWS for example). My car radio required me to go up and down by channels, I can’t select them by number but when I try is skips right by them. It pretty much sucks.

2) Had anyone had problems burning audio CDs from iTunes where certain songs are truncated? I bought the newest Modest Mouse album and can not make an audio CD from it because one of the songs gets shorted to 1:34 from 4:30 or something similar. It makes it an invalid audio CD and won’t play in my car stereo or in my computer at work. I don’t happen to have any 74 minute CDs handy, so I have only tried with 80 minute ones. I have also just tried burning three of the songs (including the specific track giving errors) and I still get the error. It sucks that I can’t listen to music I have purchased in my truck because iTunes won’t burn it properly.

I was watching a TiVoed episode of The Riches last night- the one where the patriarch died- and wondered if anyone recognized the family crest that was on the bolts used to close the casket lid and on the shroud used to cover the casket prior to the funeral pyre. If so, could someone drop a comment. That would rock.

I tried to run yesterday morning. Ouch.

The May issue of Truckin is out. Go read. It is good for your soul.

This is a damn funny read.

Bomb threat at St. Edward’s University here in Austin.

Then someone tried to burn my office building down (burnt popcorn).

The country is in shock today as one (or possibly two) shootings occurred today on the campus of Virginia Tech. As some of you know, I am an alumnus of VA Tech.

This sort of thing shouldn’t happen anywhere, but it seems especially out of place on the pristine campus in Blacksburg.

I want to give you a feeling of the campus and the history of violence (or lack there-of). VA Tech is a *huge* campus. 2600 acres. The University of Texas, for example, is 40 acres. There is a chunk of grass called the drill field you may hear about. That field in the middle of the main part of campus is something like 10 or 11 acres. It can take literally 25 to 30 minutes to walk/jog from one corner of the academic buildings to the other corner.

There was some talk about locking down the campus. They did some of that today. It was a quite possibly too late an action; but also a hugely challenging one. I have not been on that campus in 6 or 7 years and I could probably slip though any sort of road block system they have. If it turns out to be just the one gunman he could have easily evaded police. I don’t fault the campus or local police response very much. They responded to the shooting in Norris hall extremely quick but unfortunately not quick enough to save 30 innocent people.

Past crime. There have been only two fairly major incidents that I can recall. One was last fall when a mental patient broke free shot a hospital worker and was using the town to escape. It did not involve any students, faculty, or staff directly but it certainly affects the town because of the close proximity of downtown to campus (one block in places). The other was when I was there in fall of 1997. A few locals got into it with a drunk wedding party at a bar called Arnold’s (it changed names the next year). Shots were fired in the bar and twin brothers Terry and Kerry Scales were arrested for capital murder. I had a friend Megan who worked at that particular bar and served the victim his last beer.

Blacksburg was a fairly quiet college town in my experience. I was only at a few parties where the cops were called and fist fights were rare. It is beautiful country with rivers and hike/bike trails very near town. It is self contained, the closest “major” city is Roanoke 40 minutes away- and nothing about Roanoke is major. I sometimes miss my time there and long for the warm lazy summers.

To anyone who reads this- please don’t take the actions of a madman as a sign that the ‘burg is a crumbling mecca of crime. It certainly is not.

My thoughts and prayers are with all of the victims and their family’s from today. They are going to need strength to overcome. Go Hokies!

At least twenty confirmed killed and classes canceled.

Holy Carp.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/04/16/vtech.shooting/index.html

Update: I just got a ping from a local TV station asking to do an interview on camera. I’m passing. This thing is scary huge.

So I deleted an unused directory and my web server stopped web serving. Ooops. Fixed now.

On Friday I tried to donate to the Lone Star Chapter of the MS150 Bike Tours. One of my fellow 42 players is doing the ride from Houston and Austin and I figured I would help out. I filled out the form, including credit card number and hit submit. Boom. “Unexpected Database Error”. Uhhh… Now what? I got no confirmation email, but it looked like my available credit was reduced by my donation. The charge hit my CC this morning, but I have yet to receive any confirmation. I hope she gets credit for her fund raising. I also need to remember to make up some sort of letter to put in my files for tax season next year. I am struck that the main purpose of this website is to collect donations and it failed dramatically at doing that. Not a good sign.

I finally won a SnG yesterday. It was an epic heads up battle lasting probably close to 20 minutes. I kept doubling him up when I was ahead and then chip away until I finally got him spiking an ace to best his pocket jacks.