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Gerritt's Homepage Classic - November 2003 gerritt.net NSA: AN ESSAY November 29, 2003. 9:55 PM Spending a week in Maryland, I've found that most of my life is spent on the highway between Severna Park and either Columbia or Catonsville. I don't mind; it's a nice drive, and usually I'm on my way to visit someone who I really want to see. Between Severna Park and Columbia, there are two main routes that take me east-west, each of which takes almost exactly 30 minutes. To the north lies Maryland route 100, a highway that we used to joke was built "just for us" since our old house in Ellicott City was a mile from one end, and my grandparents houses and their shore house was only a few miles from the other end. It was our passageway to the east. The other route to Columbia is Maryland route 32, which is a freshly paved highway that is empty except during rush hour. Route 32 takes me past the headquarters for the National Security Administration, near Fort Meade, and across from the State Prison. As I drove home a few nights ago at about midnight, I passed a broken-down minivan on the shoulder just past the exit for the NSA. I know that there are always lots of police and security cars near there, and they are apparently pretty good at what they do. Right after I passed the van, I saw a bunch of flashing lights go on in my rear-view mirror as three police cars and an unmarked NSA security car pulled off behind the van. I guess they have to check any car that stops near a government building in case there's some kind of threat to their security. I don't think I'd ever stop my car that close and just leave it; to me it's kind of like the people who accidentally carry pocket knives onto an airplane. Sure, you forgot, and there's not much you can do, but it can be a very needlessly uncomfortable situation for one silly mistake. YOU CAN GET ANYTHING YOU WANT November 27, 2003. 11:40 AM What are you thankful for? Me, I could make a list, but I might exceed the amount of memory on my filebox. We've invited 21 friends and family over for dinner at the 'Big House' here in Severna Park today, with all the normal makings of a big family Thanksgiving. I made sweet potatoes, we're watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade from New York, and undoubtedly we'll have football on later. What an overwhelming holiday, and what better way to show thanks than to share a whole day with our families. Something I've noticed, however, is that I don't really like turkey all that much. Sure, its a great meat, its a great tradition, and it tastes great, but there are so many other things that I'd rather glutton myself on than poultry. Who decided turkey should be the all-American, eat-a-lot, pass-the-gravy, hang-on-I-have-to-loosen-my-belt entree? Probably Ben Franklin, but don't quote me on that. Keeping in mind that I'm not really a fan of roasted chicken either, I'm quite glad that lots of families (including mine) cook another animal for us to eat in addition to the turkey: that wonderfully succulent honey-glazed delight, the spiral sliced ham. Yum. I'll leave you with a line from the greatest Thanksgiving song ever written, Alice's Restaurant, by Arlo Guthrie. This lyric comes after the narrator has gotten rid of a bunch of garbage by throwing it down a hill: "...That's what we did, and drove back to the church, had a Thanksgiving dinner that couldn't be beat, went to sleep and didn't get up until the next morning, when we got a phone call from officer Obie. He said, "Kid, we found your name on an envelope at the bottom of a half a ton of garbage, and just wanted to know if you had any information about it." And I said, "Yes, sir, Officer Obie, I cannot tell a lie, I put that envelope under that garbage." WANTONLY WRITTEN November 24, 2003. 2:25 PM For the third time in five weeks, I made the trip north from Blacksburg, VA to Severna Park, MD, only this time I actually get to stay for awhile. Home-cooked meals, time with friends, no classes to go to. Thanksgiving week is great, and it always seems to come at just the right time. When we get back to campus next Monday, we have only a week and a half of classes left. That means our Tuesday/Thursday classes only get to meet three more times, which is okay with me. Then there's reading day, and a week of exams, and then the end of the semester. It can't come too soon as far as I'm concerned. Next semester will be great. A jury in Virginia Beach has sentenced last year's sniper terrorist John Allen Muhammad to death. This is the guy who sat in his car and shot people in suburban Maryland and Virginia while they pumped their gas and got groceries and stuff like that. Jurors decided that he should receive the strictest of punishments because he is still a threat to society and his crimes were 'wantonly vile'. (How many other places do you hear the word 'wantonly'?) The trial was in Virginia because they impose the death penalty more than any other state except Texas, and can execute those who committed murder while 16 or 17 years old, like the other suspect in the sniper case. Did you ever duck down while pumping your gas last October, or keep a sharp eye out while driving past kids waiting at a bus stop? Does this man's fearless 'I am God' attitude chill you to the bone? Has his total lack of respect for human life deemed him worthy of death himself? APPROPRIATE BEHAVIOR? November 21, 2003. 10:10 AM A follow-up to my last entry: "Uncle Don" Rascoe replies to my inquiry about why the second flash on a red-eye reduction camera doesn't pick up the red reflection of your eye's retina: "When the first flash goes off, the pupil closes down to keep from hurting the retina....then the second flash goes off and the pupil is smaller than it was before, so the light can't get to the retina to reflect the light. . . or something like that." Thanks, Don. Curiousity: satisfied. I attended high school at Long Reach, in eastern Howard County. It was a brand-new school when I started there, and my class was the first to attend all 4 years there. Its "sister school", River Hill, was built at the same time, and I actually took a class there during my junior year as a technology magnet student. Now, it seems River Hill is making national headlines for its students' support of gay and lesbian students. Two heterosexual girls, inspired by a class assignment about freedom of expression, leaped onto a table in the cafeteria and kissed each other in front of everyone in the school. Their effort to help stop the continued harassment of homosexual students is commendable, but they got two days suspension for it, and rightly so. Also, in case you hadn't heard, Massachussets is now allowing gay marriage in their state thanks to a recent state Suprememe Court ruling. AN EYE FOR AN EYE November 19, 2003. 3:30 PM While I was working on editing my last set of pictures, from Halloween 2003, I became bound and determined to remove all of the red-eye problems in the photos. Bret and Gina took most of the pictures that I posted in that set, and they didn't tend to use the red-eye reduction flash option on their digital camera. When the person in your photo looks directly at the lens, sometimes the camera will capture the reflection of your subject's retina, the back of their eye, which shines red when the flash hits it. The solution? A camera with one of those annoying double-flashes, or the crazy strobe multi-flash, or to have a detached flash a little ways away from the lens. Or to take pictures when your subject isn't looking at the camera. Or, in my case, digitally edit the red reflections out of the people's eyes. For the Halloween Weekend pictures, I Photoshop-ed the red out of as many people's eyes as I could, turning demons and devils into fairies and Flintstones. Of course, its seldom that I get anyone's eye color correct, and usually they look like demons anyway, but at least its better than bright red eyes. My digital camera has a very good red-eye reduction flash, but the two flashes are so far apart that I have to make sure everyone knows not to move until after the second flash. I wonder why our retinas don't reflect on the second of two flashes, yet they reflect so much on the first? WORDY AND CONFUSING: THE ART OF LENGTHY MOVIE TITLES November 17, 2003. 12:30 AM Last night I went out with some friends to see "Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World". Its a movie about a British gunship that prowls the Pacific in search of French ships during the Napoleonic Wars. Filmed on the rebuilt tallship HMS Rose, the newest Russell Crowe action film has him dangling from ratlines, firing cannons, sliding down backstays, and just being an awesome captain and sailor. His ship, the HMS Surprise, outsmarts and outsails a French-flagged ship supposed to be part of the future of sailing ships, fast and sleek with lots of guns. I won't give any more away, but I really liked that the movie takes place almost entirely on the ship, from the point of view of the British sailors only. A very simple plot that followed the book really well. Plus, I just love movies about sailing. I think I embarrassed my friends because I got so excited when the movie started, and I kept whispering stuff to them like "I've done that!" and "They're beating upwind in a square-rigger, they'll never catch up!" Well, I sure liked it. But then again, what's not to like about a sailing movie on a traditional wooden ship? No winches, no electronics, no lights. Just sailing. Great stuff. Plus, it was only two hours, the perfect length for a movie. Instead of making us sit through three and a half hours of confusing plot so it could be an 'epic movie' or whatever, they filled up two hours with story, and that was it. I'm glad that Hollywood decided to make this movie. There is a very evident lack of sailing films, especially recent ones. My other favorite sailing movies so far: - Pirates of the Caribbean - White Squall - Captain Ron - Muppet Treasure Island - Wind (but fast forward through the plot to get to the sailing) SWISS FAMILY BUXTON November 15, 2003. 6:30 PM Here's an update on one of my old entries! It seems the Outstanding Student Honor Society has finally been uncovered as 'unsatisfactory' by a legitimate news source at Binghamton University in New York. Last night, I slept in a tree. Well, sort of. Catherine, a friend of mine from Maryland, is celebrating her birthday this Tuesday, and she decided that she wanted to spend her birthday weekend camping. So, she booked a campsite near Harper's Ferry where they have built "treehouses" for campers to sleep in. They're really just primitive cabins built on stilts, but fun nonetheless. And much warmer than tents when its 30 degrees outside, although they weren't heated at all. This morning we slept late, made coffee over a fire, and walked around Harper's Ferry before I left and drove the three and a half hour trip back to Blacksburg. It was well worth it. I hadn't been camping in too long. So, the Hokies were able to pull a victory against the 1-8 Temple Owls in overtime, but only because the Owls' kicker stinks. After shutting the Owls out through 3 quarters, the Hokies let them come back to tie it up in the 4th quarter, 17-17. Then, after one overtime, both teams had scored touchdowns, the Hokies had scored an extra point, and all Temple needed was to tack on their point-after to tie the game and stay alive into another overtime. But, the kicker stinks, remember, and shanked the kick to give Tech the victory 24-23. The Hokies must be striving to be like the Wesley Foundation Co-rec Flag Football Intramural team, who also won this week, after 4 OTs. Thursday night's victory for VT Wesley gets us into the next step in the post-season, and only three victories away from the title. CLIMATE: NOT ACCESSIBLE IN WINTER November 11, 2003. 6:00 PM So the Hokies lost. Had they won, they would've been contenders for the Big East title, a BCS bowl, and maybe even a trip to the Sugar Bowl for the National Championship. Tough luck, though, because we lost. Pittsburgh (Who spells 'burg' with an 'h' anyway?) was able to make it happen on Saturday night, and forced the Hokies to come back to BlacksBURG with an 8-2 record. The team played their hardest, even broke some records, but couldn't stop a last-minute Pitt touchdown for the win, 31-28. While this doesn't mean much of anything to the students of Virginia Tech on a personal level, somehow they take it personally. For me, all it effects is my blown plan to go to Miami for New Years. I've got better things to make me happy than football. Interesting tidbit of the day: My Mom is moving to a hundred-year-old cabin in the mountains of Colorado after she finishes the school year in June. The town she's moving to is called Park City, a tiny old silver mining town, just outside of Fairplay, CO (pop. 610). Fairplay is listed on epodunk.com, but Park City isn't. (Epodunk.com even lists Jeffersonton, VA!) Park City is, however, featured on ghosttowns.com, and if you look at the second picture on the Park City Ghost Town page, my mom's new house is the one on the right. Spooky, eh? BEING FOLLOWED BY A MOONSHADOW November 8, 2003. 11:00 AM Tonight, I'm up in Maryland, and its gonna be nice, clear, and cold outside. Why am I excited about this? Because tonight, I'll be outside looking up at about 8:00 tonight. (That is, during the commercial breaks in the Tech game.) At that time, the moon will be huge and dark red as it dips entirely into the shadow of the earth. A full lunar eclipse isn't all that abnormal, the last one being May 15th this year, but this time it will actually be clear out when it happens. This month also sees a total solar eclipse pass the earth as - but it'll only be visible from Antarctica. More cool stuff to see from the sky this year: -Mars was as close to the earth this summer as its ever been in 60,000 years. -The sun is sending giant waves of radiation our way, much to the delight of aurora fans. (I was lucky enough to see the 'northern' lights from Blacksburg a few years ago while sitting out for football tickets- its incredible. Its a shame they're so unpredictable.) -The Leonids are back, the most common meteor shower visible from earth. It'll peak on November 19, with fireballs and 'shooting stars' (actually meteors) estimated to be visible from Northern America, assuming it stays clear. -The moon will totally cover the light of the sun during a full solar eclipse on November 28th. I'd love to see one of these sometime, but I'd have to travel to Antarctica to see it this year. Maybe next time. Hokies play Pitt tonight for control of the Big East Conference. I can't wait to see where we'll be playing on New Years! MOST WANTED November 5, 2003. 1:45 PM I've spent the past few days working on my latest in volunteer web design, the website for the Virginia Tech chapter of the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers. VT SNAME asked for help on their site, so I overhauled it and made it the way I like it. No more frames, and much easier to read and navigate. Let me know if you like it or don't like it, and I'd very much appreciate any suggestions you have to improve it. I'll be heading up the design and updates until May. Investigators in Washington state have apprehended and charged the most dangerous serial killer ever caught in the US. Gary Ridgeway, the 'Green River Killer', has confessed in court that he murdered 48 women, claiming he wanted to kill as many women that he thought were prostitutes as possible. He started in 1982, and has just now been captured. It chills me to the bone to even think about this guy. Washington state prosecutors struck a deal that he would not receive the death penalty in their state if he confessed. Now, they are looking into charging him with murder in Oregon, where two bodies were found, so that they can ask for the death penalty there. Do you think that's fair, or do you even agree with the death penalty? What determines who should be executed? Should there be a 'proportionality constant' of killings that determines whether a murderer is sentanced to death? (For example, should the pure numbers of victims matter, or is it the pain and horror of the killing itself?) Does capital punishment need a BCS computer poll to determine who dies and who lives? Its a terrible thing to think about, but something needs to happen. I wish there was a good solution, but there just isn't. What do you think? LET'S GO HOKIES November 2, 2003. 2:15 AM The University of Miami Hurricanes have won 39 of their last 40 regular-season football games. The one loss? Virginia Tech, November 1, 2003, Blacksburg, VA. The streak is over, and Tech comes out with our biggest victory in school history, beating the #2 team in the nation like they weren't even there. I love my Hokies, and I sure wish I could've gotten tickets for the game. |
