Life Update

Well, it’s been a long while since I last put up one of these long winded life updates. Well, considering that I’m currently sitting in a giant cylindrical tube hurtling towards Los Angeles at improbable speeds, I figure I don’t have anything better to do.

It’s been a hectic last few months. After almost five years at Advanced Academics, I have changed jobs. I think the simplest way to say it was that the stress finally got to me. Five years of constantly being on call, working almost every weekend, thinking about the job day and night. Well, there’s only so long you can keep that up, at least as someone else’s employee, and I reached that point. Of course, I’ve now become one of those dreaded and loathed technical consultants, but being on the dark side has a lot less stress. I’m currently contracted at Chesapeake Energy, an enormous natural gas concern headquartered in Oklahoma City. Considering that I know absolutely nothing about the oil and natural gas industry, it’s a little scary. However, after a decade in educational technology, a little change of pace is a good thing.

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Categories: Life Updates 

RadicalWacko 4.0

DSC_0086_edited-1Well, I toiled and toiled to make a completely personal design for the new RadicalWacko.  It turns out that CSS is a pain with so many tricks, hacks and caveats that it makes me truly wonder about the value of table-less layouts.  Take, for example, this “simple” explanation of the so called “Holy Grail Layout".  It almost seems that tables aren’t such a bad thing after all.  However, who am I to buck popular opinion?

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Categories: Site Updates 

The Scope of Contract

God And GunsThere is an interesting case in Ohio working it’s way through the courts.  An employee was fired by UPS when he was discovered to have a dissembled firearm in his car which was parked in a public parking lot shared by both employees and non-employees.  The court has ruled that the company’s action was a violation of Ohio’s policy allowing citizens to bear arms.  (You can read more details about the case at The Volokh Conspiracy.)

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Categories: News and Politics 

My Mom, Flickr User

My mother, who is a truly amazing photographer, has finally broken down and joined the Flickr craze.  She has already uploaded several amazing photos like this one:

Ropes
Ropes

You can see the rest of her photos here.

Categories: Photography 

The Redneck Roller Coaster

OK, this borders on the truly insane, and yeah, I kind of want one:

Real all about it here.  There are a bunch of other videos over at YouTube.

Categories: Humor 

Today's Marijuana is like Cocaine

Rep. Mark Souder R-Ind. makes the assertion on the Tucker Carlson program that not only is today’s marijuana like cocaine, but that thousands of people have died from marijuana and that 65% of emergency drug abuse admissions at hospitals are due to marijuana.  Who knew?

See the video here.

Categories: News and Politics 

Wigg'n Out

But I’m a creep I’m a weirdo What the hell am I doing here? I don’t belong here…

So I turned 30. Well, they say that 50 is the new 30, and that 40 is the new 20. So I guess that 30 is the new 10. This explains my dating life to a tee. To be perfectly honest, adulthood really hasn’t hit me. At 30 you should feel like you are a full fledged adult with real expectations and responsibilities. Yeah, I have a mortgage and car payments, but I still feel like I’m late to 3rd period geography. I stammer like a hormone ridden 15 year old when I meet a pretty girl. I still don’t know how to fix a carburetor. I’ve always felt like a punk kid.

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Categories: Life Updates Thoughtfulness 

Weekend Construction Update

ScaffoldingWell it’s been a fun weekend spent working on Radical Wacko.  I’ve been wanting to be a bit more active on the site for awhile now, but technology was holding me back.  After a couple of years of tinkering, hacking and patching, the site had become an almost unmaintainable mess.  Even my WordPress installation had started giving me trouble with unexpected plugin errors.  I was scared of making the simplest of updates on the fear that the thing might finally just break down completely.  Additionally, a bunch of legacy code was laying around doing nothing but cluttering up the place.  Therefore, it felt like the perfect opportunity for some real house cleaning.

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Categories: Site Updates 

Site Downtime

The site will be going down this weekend for a complete redesign.  I’ll post again when the upgrade is complete.

Categories: Site Updates