Back in the Saddle

Back in Dallas for a few days. Last week when I tried to leave on Friday I had the distinct pleasure of getting my flight cancelled. See, right when our plane was supposed to land a shade of the Biblical flood decided to open up on DFW, causing them to shut down the airport for about 40 minutes, with no planes allowed to land or take off. After circling for ~25 minutes, my plane got re-routed to another airport entirely for re-fueling, and then we got word that our crew was on another plane that got re-routed somewhere else, so we were hosed. So, I didn't actually get home until about 10AM on Saturday morning. It could have been worse, of course, but I was operating on ~4 hours of sleep, had a headache, and just wasn't in a good mood the rest of the day. Ah, well, such is life, I guess.

Greetings from Dallas

Hola from Dallas, TX. I am here all week doing an audit at an aviation parts distributor. Did you know that Dallas' road system was designed by rabid squirrels? I can't provide any documentary evidence to support this claim, but all you have to do is try to drive on the roads around here to figure it out for yourself. Maybe instead of being rabid, the squirrels were just high on weed; I guess that is another possibility. Anyway, something was wrong with those squirrels.

Even though Dallas is having temperatures in the high '90s, it still feels nicer than it does in St. Louis right now, because the humidity is modest. Dallas is also quite flat, or at least the area around the airport where I am working is quite flat. Maybe the downtown area is more varied, but out here the only rising land are the freeway overpasses.

Wherein I Answer the Internet's Questions

Occasionally the Internet asks me questions, so I thought that it might be fun if I actually start answering some of them on this blog. Why? Why does anyone write anything on their blog? For attention, of course.

Here is today's question, picked up in an advertisement on ESPN.com
Answer: Quite easily, thank you very much. While I'm sure that certain people would find that their lives are meaningless when they are not wearing ugly shoes on their feet, I have found that I prefer rather classic footwear, like non-flashy sneakers or a pair of cordovan leather laced shoes. Thanks for the question.

Best. Blog. Ever.

Ladies and gentlemen, may I present to you the greatest blog of all time. I could lose days looking at all those concept drawings... so good...

Fireworks and Jack-Booted Thugs

Last evening my friend George and I went to the Manchester city fireworks show at Schroeder Park. It is a pretty good show, and much easier to navigate than heading downtown for Fair St. Louis. However, whoever they have responsible for music during the fireworks needs to be sacked. About 1/3 through the show, they started playing the Imperial March from Star Wars in the background. Now, I try to be a reasonably open-minded person, but on a day to celebrate American freedom, we're playing a song about intergalactic oppression? Really? Is that the best you can do? Maybe it was intended as some kind of subversive statement, but most likely the poor sap handling the music just doesn't know any better.

Man, I Really Like The Economist

Leave it to the British to take their own language to task in an entertaining and informative way.

No More Games (kind of...)

I have decided that I will not spend money* on games for the rest of the year. Why am I taking such a drastic step when playing games is my primary hobby? Well, it turns out that I own a lot of games. This wouldn't be such a big problem if I was playing them all the time, but it seems that I spend most of my time playing other people's games, and not my own. I have a relatively small handful of games that I play using my own copy, so I figure why spend money on something that I'm not going to play? This is also a way to attempt to get some actual play from the games that I already own.

*"money" is defined as cash/check/credit card. If I get a gift card, and thus can buy something without spending actual money out of pocket, then that is a totally acceptable loop hole. :)