Right, I'm actually all over the logistics because I had plenty of me-time in the car (I think all of my time was me-time . . . unless someone was in my car). I need to carbo-load a bit friday night, and I'm poor so going out with Mark to dinner seems like a bad idea. According to Donner the drive is about 7 hours (and Donner drives fast so I believe him). I'm leaving around 7:30 so I'll get there in the midafternoon. I need to see if I can find a place to workout that I like, but that won't take too long and might get done on the way to downtown.

Here's the current plan. Pasta at restaurants is expensive, but pasta from the store isn't. So we can all go either to my place or your place, fix a nice pasta dinner, and catch up. This allows me to carbo-load, us all to share Mark-time for the evening and Mark actually to see some people he might not expected (Mikex0r and Rich at my place, Darren and Josh at yours depending on what we do). I must admit I am kind of leaning towards my place because then I can just fall alseep the istant that people leave.

How's that for logistics. Ofcourse I haven't checked any of this with Mark . . . wait a minute. . . never mind that failed miserably. Apparently T-Mobile doesn't have good coverage out here. I've been trying to call his ass all day too and it never works. I'll try again tomorrow. Anyway, those are the loose logistics of the evening. As for saturday night, I know I'll be coming back to Atlanta, but I imagine I'll be icing my body a good bit (sprained ankle and all). Ofcourse watch this fail because Mark has already planned for saturday night dinner or something.

Well the drive today was long (11 hours, just long enough to be long) and I was tired. I didn't get to sleep until 1:30 last night and then woke up at 7:15 for a final breakfast with Rachel (the weightlifter) before heading out. It was a fun trip until I decided that I would rather drive through the heart of Chicago than pay the toll to take the loop. At 2-3pm I was unable to go faster than 20 mph from 15 miles outside the city to fifteenmiles past it. It was nice to see a big city again, and get cut off by motherfuckers in a hurry, but I could have done a lot better with time if I had just eaten some money.

It would be great if this forum could be used more. I know Rachel asked about it (mainly if she could get access) because I ended up telling a bunch of stories of the Fort and you guys, including the radioactive boner story of Ted's. As we all get farher and farther away it is a good way to keep intouch, and if we (and by we I mean matt) increase the user base then the possibility of getting places to stay increases. But that also requires people to check it frequently and I don't think people check this as frequently as Jeremy and I.

I think this is still best used as a log of people and the events that HAVE and will in THE FUTURE occur to them. It is clumsier than direct email for quick things. Regardless it is useless if matt doesn't get thinngs back up again (at least for nonusers). Oh, and I think Roxy was headed to San Diego before Kayak worlds, so there still exists a chance that is where she is. Does anyone have cell phone number for her??

Tomorrow is my last day on the road before returning home. While I am looking forward to many things, I also know that I am at a point in my life where many things are going to change or at least have the potential to. It will be interesting to see where the pieces fall, whether I get one of these jobs and move as a result, or get no job and apply for a PhD places, or if I am eaten by cats. Anything is possible. One thing that I am happy about, is that I feel that I will be better at keeping in touch with people after this summer. As my friendbase slowly expands across the country I guess I am forced to. Well, I think that is all for me tonight. Long-winded as always. It is funny how I come back from every roadtrip feeling wiser even if I'm not. See some of you tomorrow, the rest I'll see when I do. Next scheduled trip is to Chicago for Tune-up. Maybe I can find a connectoing and post saturday's results as well as whatever other shit comes to mind.

On another note, I'm not sure why, but I really miss my Mom right now. I'll go see her bench and some Paideia folk when I am back so that should help things. Until later.

M

glad that you got in touch with donner, martin. that's pretty cool. if this thing were live and our friends read it (in a world where there's no such thing as probability, of couse), we could use the blog to organize our accomodations on roadtrips, etc. tight.

kayak shit starts the 15, so that's not the solution to your problem.

ok -- have we figured out how to best monopolize on our mark-time this weekend? seems like we should be planning or something, cause i imagine mark has a number of other people to see (whatever that's about). martin - you're mr logistics, right? get on it.

brad is still awol, which sucks. i have times and shit for this hoe-down on sat, but no directions or anything like that. oh well.

Speaking of the kayak world championships, does anyone know if Roxanne went to those? That would explain her disappearance on the ultimate field.

The deal with th US and track and field is this.

There apparently has been a change in the rules this year regarding disqualifications. The new rule, which i think is in line with collegiate rules states that after the first disqualification of a race, the person who committs the second (even if it wasn't the person who committed the first) is disqualified. This was the problem with Drummand, who was that second guy . . . then revented to the level of a three year old, lay on the track and refused to leave. He now has withdrawn himself, that's classy.

Aside from that we are just not having a great meet in france. The heat there is pretty tough as they are just getting to the end of a massive heat wave that had temperatures over 100 in paris. We didn't even medal in the 100 meters for the guys, we only had one guy even in the finals (thanks Tim Montgomery for not being a baby).

Basically between the heat and the disqualifications people are leaving. Remamber, track is a very egotistical sport so if things aren't working well with a person they will bail before they decide to pull it together for the team or some shit.

So in other news, I'm at a "Lan Arcade" here in fucking Marquette. This is pretty sweet. It is basically a mini Lanwerks from PA fame. Currently I have some people playing Jedi Knight on my left, and a bunch of 11 year olds playing Team Fortress and yell fuck and shit because they can on my right. It is pretty sweet and totally makes me wish I was an FPS guy. Maybe I'll have to pick that back up from the summer at the fort when I was playing halflife all the damn time. It totall would be worth it here, expcept for the 12 that kicks my ass regularly, but that's the best way to learn. The only thing that could make this more perfect is if they had a SC2 tourney tonight.

Um, I sprained my ankle a bit lifting today, which sucks because I have to play this weekend. As a result my workout sucked today and it's looking like another poor week. I did get a good track workout in yesterday, so that makes me happy.


Oh, I got kicked out of the place that I was staying last night. Crashing in the girls dorm worked just fine until the roommate of the person I was staying with was questioned by their coach about where I was sleeping and forgot that telling the truth would be bad for me. So I got a room at the Ramamda, which means I'm paying money, which suckes. But at least I have total freedom to walk around naked and shit. Oh, and I have a bathroom that I can use without worrying that the girls next door are going to walk in.

My stay here is Michigan will come to a close soon. It has been nice to have a few days, check in with people and relax. The next two days of driving will be much easier because of it. Oh, and I get back on an interstate again at some point, that will be nice. No more fucking one lane roads underconstruction with moose walking across them. Way for big cities and black people.

Hopefully I'll get post in from Donner's place tomorrow night. I think we are going to sit around, drink beer and watch the MTV music awards, or that's what he said his plans were. Talk to you all soon.

M

yah, i've been reading about the track and field stuff too. dood from st kitts won the 100 meters. i wish that i better understood how this year's world championships of various sporting events work as olympic qualifiers. wouldn't it be strange if there weren't anyone from the states running in the 100 meters? what with dood having a fucked leg and other dood staging his personal protest and blah blah blah.

anyway, ryan is some friend of brad's from home/freshman year. i think that he left tech and got a degree someplace else. he works for bellsouth and his parents just moved to dc. as a result he now lives alone in their house and is throwing some sort of house-warming backyard barbecue. ryan is part of brad's rut. he has been hanging out with brad during his dark age.

i think that chances are higher that mark will be posting sooner rather than later since i had an epiphany recently. you see mark has forgotten his blogger.com login information, so he can't even read, much less post. but what with matt being the administrator of this joint, he should be able to procure said information ... the login at least. then it's up to mark to decipher his own craziness and figure out the password.

also, matt should be posting to this joint. though, he's been working his ass off recently with all this kayaking world championships shit. maybe he'll throw up a big long diatribe about his adventures in volunteer web development for an enormous worldwide event after the thing ends.

brad - ryan's party? Who's ryan? Is brad hanging out with other people?? Whimper . . . No really post the damn party info so I can not attend because I'm not in Atlanta.

Jeremy - I'm back in town on the 29th now . . . kind of. Odds are our gaming extravaganza will start on either sunday night or monday morning. I'll be back that friday night (the 29th) but I will be sleeping, probably having dinner with Mark (who should post to this thing at some point) and leaving for a tournament promptly in the morning. I'll be tired saturday night so that is no good, and I'll be really tired sunday night. But monday, when I am sore, I should be game to sit on the couch and play almost all day. I have to go run a few errands. I need to pay the surgeon and find a gym to continue my training.

Anyway, I just found the track and field world championship results (they are happening in paris right now), so I think I am about to be absorbed. Jeremy I hope that fixes things and far as the scheduling. I am a bit worried that we will run out those two games fast. Maybe we should find a third game that we haven't churned through. I don't know. I'm very excited to get back and see everyone again. I'm going to see Donner in Indiana on my way back, so that will be cool.

Hmmm . . . I think it is on to the Track and Field stuff. Hopefully if they do well they will hire me. right.

M

brad -- you have to post ryan's party details

martin -- when do you get back? the second still, or will you be home earlier?

matt -- what the fuck?

Wow, so I just lost two posts in row because of this computer. So I'm writing this in notepad and will transfer it over in a second. I�m going to start where I left off and maybe I�ll get to the rest when I am done. So I�m in Lincoln Nebraska on my first night after leaving my Olympic haven in Colorado Springs. I�m at a bar with the intern I was visiting (Kristen Olson, Brad would really like this girl) and the bar is full of frat boys (there�s a shocker). But they are all holding little solo glasses with what looks like orange juice in it. After futher inspection I determine that they (and I mean ALL of them) are drinking screwdrivers . . . really fucking weak screwdrivers. I thought it was odd that all of these guys trying to be macho are walking around with tiny solo cups of basically orange juice. Aside from that Nebraska was flat and full of corn, but better than Kansas.

Leg two of my trip home took me to Minneapolis. Last time I was there was when Jason and I went to North Dakota so he could meet this girl he met on the internet, ah the good old days. This time I was visiting Missy Lott (another intern) who is a strength and conditioning coach and has been supplying me with my workouts ever since I met her. Her partner plays football for some women�s league, and had just come back from a game so it was a quiet night in watching �Who�s got game� a MTV streetball reality show.

Today had me drive up to Duluth Minnesota, then across the top of Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan on slow road to Marquette, where I am writing from right now. I�m visiting Rachel Hearn, an ex-resident weightlifter in Colorado Springs who is now attending the University of Northern Michigan, majoring in Biology. She�s standing over me right now and hitting me and just tried to pinch my nipple. So it will be interesting time here in Michigan. I�ll be here for a few days (two full I think) before I head on. MT goal is to try to find Donner in Indianapolis, which is where I think he is. I�m trying to call Mike Smith to get his number, but Mike is about as fast as molasses so we�ll see what happens. No really, now that Rachel isn�t look she�s a cool person and definitely increased the amount of wacky for me in Colorado Springs (something that was sorely lacking). So she�s a cool person, a bit too apologetic . . . and then violent at times, but who isn�t.

So that is where things are right now. I�m glad that other people are using the blog. Hopefully it will get working online again, but until then I still read it off of blogger�s webpage. Good to hear Brad is o.k. I got a little worried about him after not hearing from him for about a year. Well, I think that is it. I might post again tomorrow night if I am at Donner�s. See you all back in the ATL soon.

M

everyone remember to go and see mars! it's rising about the same time as the moon these days, and it's second only to the moon in brightness in the night sky. this owes to the fact that mars is as near as it has ever been to our home in recorded history, and will not again be this close for ~60,000 years, let alone our lifetimes. just about every observatory i have heard from is putting on a big deal about it, and most of them are free. so there's no excuse to miss it. wednesday (the 27) will be the absolute pinnacle-closest-event type thing. so if you're waiting for optimum viewing, that's your best bet. remember, though, that a lot of your experience is dependant on clarity of the skies that night (not only clouds, but the fab air that's here and in houston). martin -- being at cu should be fucking phat. they have great facilities and it's all up in the pure moutain air.

after playing rise of nations some, i've gotten better at rts and i've even come to enjoy it. the game is pretty good but i have yet to play multiplayer with real living people. that's usually where these games are the most fun.

my brother was over saturday and we actually had a chance to talk and do the things that brothers should do. i don't remember how it came up but he mentioned he and some of his friends were running a Texas Hold 'em Poker Tournament. I told him that the tournament sounded fun and he promptly directed me to some sites on the 'ol Internet. So now I'm hooked on poker and since I'm not playing with real money I even enjoy losing. here is the kicker. yesterday the AJC ran a big article about how popular poker has become and how it's becoming a big hit on TV. whadyaknow, i'm doing something trendy.

while looking for apartments online in Charlotte i happened upon a website that contained the Charlotte Neighborhood 2002 Quality of Life Study. this thing has all sorts of info on the good and the bad neighborhoods in the Charlotte metro area. pretty sweet stuff. now i can pinpoint the good apartment locations without having to drive all over Charlotte.

so daron found a macintosh performa 5200 and laserwriter in the dumpster at our complex the other day. we have the best dumpster in the world. well, that and the richest-fuck residents ever. people move out of this place and just throw their old stuff away, presumably to buy all new stuff in their new digs.

anyway, so i have to figure out how to use a mac. it hasn't been too bad so far. i got the printing shit figured. and i made it do all the necessary appletalk stuff. there aren't enough ports on our network infrastructure to allow it to talk to the next, but i did get netatalk going on golf. it's pretty straightforward, but i think there's a problem with binary transfer or something. i grabbed a .bin archive of an old netscape, since the machine has no web browser, put it in golf's /tmp via samba and then transferred it onto the mac via appletalk. well, somewhere along the way something blew up cause it didn't install. i tried to uncompress the archive remotely, but that didn't fly either. also there is some strange file association going on. some eWorld isp or whatever launches when i try to decompress. who knows.

so i have to decide whether i want to really learn about powerpc and the old macos (wow, that finder is something), or if i should just try to install some posix compliant operating system and let that be that. unfortunately, there seem to be a whole world of problems exclusive to the 5200 and unix. there is something called mac06 that provides some posix compliance, but it's a second kernel that isn't automatically launched which makes it slightly more trouble than i'd like if i'm gonna use the machine in a unix way -- as a print server or something.

i'm also still trying to get the next to play nicely with others. it has bsd style print spooling, etc, so it should just go with the unix machines. then share it via samba or something and that should be that.

computers...

ack. i am still unemployed.

there wasn't much chance of me getting a technical job in atlanta, but i applied anyway. who knows. maybe the economy gods will smile on me. whatever. so i started applying at retail joints. oof. i thought there would at least be fucking wage slave jobs to be had.

they hired me at tower again. for two days. they brought in a bunch of fresh warm bodies to do inventory with the carrot of permanent employment dangling infront of us. that fell through. the cut even our temp jobs short and told us that they'd get back to us. right. anyway, the check did come so that's the absolute least they were required to do by the laws of our land.

after that applications began flying through my hands at an insane rate. and interviews began to happen. but when you have to do three interviews to work in the mall, something is wrong with the world.

this sucks.

so, coincidentally, i played rise of nations today. i was unimpressed. but that's prolly cause i was doing something horribly wrong. i just built maniacally and my competitors kept saying 'let's be friends' or 'i like you'. it was weird. more like sim city than warcraft.

to the game's credit, it was a demo version and i didn't play the game to it's conclusion or even attack anything (cause i got bored), so there is probably some really cool stuff that i missed.

hi. my name is Brad. i used to live at the fort. jeremy "scolded" me so i am now posting messages to the blog. thanks for keeping me hip to the scene jeremy. i didn't know that folks were blogging still.

so some general updates...

i have a full time job with Cap Gemini Ernst & Young Health Consulting. i will be moving to Charlotte, NC in the beginning of September and my first day on the job is the 12th of the very same month. i'm hoping my first job won't be in town so i get to experience the goodness that is business travel. i'll also be renting a car on the company dime and not racking up miles on my own. that equals more money i can horde.

for all the fortress blog female groupies who happen to have posting rights, i know you're out there, i am still unmarried.

i've seen lots of movies in the theater this summer. many more than i usually see. that would be about 5 movies i think. i had to get them in before graduating so i could wring the last bit of life out of my student discount. though most people say i'm retarded i will not be robbing the coffers of corporate america by improperly using my student id. i am a proud member of the "adult" world now.

speaking of robbing corporate america - i have also decided to go legit with all of my computer software, music, etc. etc. i have been scared to death by the semi-recent news of big business going after the little guy. ha! not so much. silly big business. all the hooplah almost made me not want to go on my ethics binge. but i made one of those new years resolutions to get rid of all illegal software, music, movies, etc. by the end of the year. so i currently have all properly purchased and licensed software, no illegal mp3's, no illegal movies, and only two illegally burned CD's. Those two CD's will be replaced by the end of the year and/or smashed to bits. i have decided not to become a Jehovah's Witness/RIAA toadie and will not whine and moan if others download their "share". hopefully it will move the industry to create a viable system to purchase music online. that'd be sweet.

i bought my first real-time strategy game - Rise of Nations. it will take a while for me to get used to but it seems cool. i like to ponder things which is bad for RTS.

brad

well, i'm glad to hear that not only will i not have to do any ninja type shit on the gamefaqs people but that we can still get hints, tips, codes, etc from their website.

ok, so my obsession with lego and the system thereof has renewed itself. i pursue it with an ardent passion that knows few parallels in my life. things started innocently enough ... "reading" instructions from famous sets of days gone by, and checking out the ideas of fellow lunatics come to fruition on brickshelf. well, such a thing can only go so far before you discover something really incredible that someone with a lot of fucking bricks on their hands has created.

whoa.

of course, this inspired me to start tinkering around with the sets that i had lieieeeyiyeing around the house -- snowspeeder battle droid and destroyer droid. needless to say, these were not nearly the resources necessary to create a breathtaking work of staggering genius. alas. fortunately i happened upon some lego cad tools.

well, that was quite nice. an unlimited supply of virtual lego pieces. so i started to designing. well, that didn't work as well as i expected. i got the hang of the editors with relative ease, but found them somewhat unweildy, and not without drawbacks. you see, the bricks are virtual. that means that i can't later play with my creations. that is not cool. also, i had some qualms with the program -- no collision detection, for one, and general usability problems. it's just not everything a cad program could be. what are you gonna do?

so i tempted fate. i went to the lego shop at home deally-o. luckily, i am so unbelievably poor right now that i could do little besides create a (again) virtual collection. a long list of random stuff that i'd like to magically appear in my house. anyone out there who knows of any such magic, please contact me.

yet my will was not quite strong enough. i went to the forbidden outlet mall and found my self in one of the lego comany's nefarious outlet/retail centers. i escaped with a bill totalling a mere 28 dollars american. and this and this. not too bad. and now i have some additional chunks of plastic with which to amuse myself. that fix actually did more than i expected to quell my lego thirst. although i find myself disassembling the main model, creating something new and reassembling the original from memory daily, and while i still check out some of my favorite brickshelf haunts, lugnet users homepages, myriad ebay auctions and the recent updates at brickshelf, my urge to buy has been abated somewhat.

yet i yearn for more bricks. this will be satisfied somewhat when i next visit a parent. whichever one will have me first will find his or her household several pounds of lego lighter when i leave.

hmmm...

well, i've only scratched the surface of my mania. maybe i'll post more about this shit later. but you get the point.

O.k. no one is going to die. I was misled about Gamefaqs. My apologie to anyone from gamefaqs that was offended.


M

Oh my god someone is going to die.

I rented Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour (my first new videogame experience in a long time). First, it is the shit, just like the people at PA said. Problem is I go look up some codes at Gamefaqs to try to figure out where the secret links are, and Gamefaws has decided that they are no longer going to dispense faws for free. You are now able to only grab one faw per game per person and the send it to you by email. What the fuck!!! They're fucking FAQS for the love of god. It is a forum more than anything else. I cn understand if the runners of gamefaqs are loosing money and are trying to reduce it that way. But then pick up some fucking sponsors, there is no way that gamefaws couldn't pull the same sponsorship feat that penny arcade. Basically I'm pissed, and if I see anyone with a gamefaqs shit on I'm going to kill them. there.

M

Note: two more applications in the mail. One for nike and one for adidas.

M

It is pretty silly that we can post but nothing shoes up on phatmatt. Everytime I try to publish it says that it is an unknown server (ft.phatmatt.com). Let's see what else is new.

Things are winding down here. The first of the interns to head home left today with another gone monday morning. My roommate, who apparently doesn' like his job, had an interview with a sports agenct in NY and will leave if he gets a job offer. So he will appear and disappear before I am gone.

I am playing in my first tourney since February this next weekend. It is in Utah and some of the interns have decided to come with me an tourn Salt Lake (there is a olympic ski training center their left over from the winter games). It should be a fun trip. I am continually amazed at how cool everyone things my friends (both for and ultimate people) are. I mean, I understand you guys are cool and all, but its like these people have never heard of such craziness as the shit that happens in ATL. Wierd.

Um, I am thinking I will try to get at least a few more states done before I go home, I can take a northern route an get Wyoming, Montana and a few others done. It does indeed suck that I can't finish. The thing that sucks the most though is that I am about to head back to Atlanta with no job, can't go to school because they don't offer the class I need (stupid independent study that failed) and bills to pay. It looks like life will get a bit worse before it gets better, but that is par for the course.

In other news I saw Two Towers on DVD (Academy version) and it was again spectacular. It'll be awesome when the third one comes out and then out on DVD so we can have the 9 hour long Middle Earth marathon. Oh, and everyone should do a google search for "what race middle earth" and take a quiz to determine what race from middle earth you are. I was a dwarf, which I'm kind of o.k. with I guess. Gimli was pretty much only comic relief in the last one, so that kind of blows.

I need to get back home to my games and purchase a few new things that come out. If I keep reading such great things about Knights of the Old Republic on PA I think I'll have to buy an Xbox. But it seems so late in the cycle to pick one up. I'm sure in two year the PS3 will be looming on the horizon. I absolutely have to get Mario Golf as well (for the cube). I was reading about the controls and it sounds awesome. Sigh, there is much gaming that I have missed unfortunately.

Anyway, I'll keep posting so please do yourself. It gets lonely here sometimes (at phatmatt, not Colorado. Colorad has people in it and stuff).

M