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Back to gerritt.net WHAT I WANT September 27, 2004. 7:59 PM -I want my job to pay for a graduate school degree in guitar. -I want to live within walking/cycling distance of work. -I want to get paid for the time I spend commuting. -I want our soldiers to come home. -I want a 48-lane highway built from West Bethesda to Columbia via Rockville. -I want the Redskins to win tonight. -I want to be able to feel fine all day on five hours of sleep. -I want a cheap express train that runs nonstop from DC to New York every hour. -I want four weeks of annual vacation and enough money to travel around the world. -I want more time. PICTURE FROM MAY 25, 2002 September 24, 2004. 4:13 PM 
IT'S A WILD WORLD September 22, 2004. 4:50 PM Folky protest singer Cat Stephens gave up music in the late 1970s to devote his time to teaching Muslim theology, changed his name to Yusuf Islam (cleverly integrating his religion into his name), and has since spoken out against Islamic fundamentalists involved in terror attacks, satanic authors, and the war in Iraq. Most recently, he tried to gain entry into the US on a flight from London to Washington, only to have his name show up on a passenger scan by the Transportation Security Administration as a terrorist watch list. This didn't occur until the plane was already bound for the states, so the flight was diverted to none other that Bangor, Maine, a town that the TSA apparently considers to be out of the danger zone for terrorism and secure enough to harbor terror threats. The suspect was offloaded and the plane returned to DC, and after interviewing Mr. Islam he was sent back to London. Also of note in the entertainment world, the brand-new remastered special-edition bonus features DVD collection of the original Star Wars Trilogy came out yesterday. No, I haven't bought it yet, but it looks like it'll only cost me about $45 for the three movies and the bonus feature DVD. I'll get it soon. In case you haven't noticed, welcome to autumn. Today the day is exactly as long as the night, and unfortunately the nights will keep getting longer. Oh well, for now the weather is fantastic. I hope it keeps up. SECRET AGENT FAN September 20, 2004. 9:50 PM  This weekend I spent with my brother D-lite, up to visit from Brooklyn, NY, and we had a great time in the D-o-C. Our dad met up with us Saturday and we headed down the red line to see some museums downtown. Our first stop was the Holocaust Museum (quiet, sad, mindful, meticulous) and then on to the International Spy Museum (quirky, flashy, thrilling, engaging). Both are sure bets for seasoned museum-goers looking to expand the DC experience, but although the Holocaust Museum is free, the Spy Museum costs a standard $13 tourist fare since it is not part of the Smithsonian. Worth every penny. MIDAS WELL September 18, 2004. 9:50 AM I finally bit the bullet and got new brakes put on the Soob. Midas had a 'brake special' and my car had been shuddering when I stepped on the brakes. Plus, it had been quite some time since I'd had them checked, and its sort-of a vital system to keep me from crashing. But for now I feel so defeated from spending so much money on something like this. But man, they work great! Ever been to a Dave and Busters? Some of my friends as I went to the one down in White Flint last night. Its basically a Chucky Cheese's for adults: a room full of loud flashy arcade games, simulators, and expensive food and drink. Not a nice place to have a conversation since its so loud and distracting, but those games they have are quite fun. If only it was all free, instead of almost two dollars a game. They make you use 'chips' as your currency, which are purchased on a plastic card that you swipe at each arcade machine. The number of chips you get is based on how much money you want to put on your card at once. Chips are about four for a dollar if you pay for ten dollars worth, and the games all use a certain number of chips, rarely a whole number. (The claw machine was 4.4 chips to play.) Rip off, but oh so fun. THE WINDS OF CHANGE September 15, 2004. 6:00 PM I am about to start the process of changing this webpage slightly, hopefully adding a new banner image at the top and a comments section like many of the other blogs I see. I have a guestbook, but I find that I'm more inclined to write on other people's comment pages rather than signing a guestbook once and being done with it. My plan for the banner is to have a few different images that change to a random one each time you reload the page, much like my VT Football Countdown page. Still working on the theme for the banner. As a side note, I'm trying to avoid using Movable Text for the new comments page and I hope I can find some way to make it happen without re-organizing the whole site. We'll see what happens. THE COASTIES WITH THE MOSTIES September 13, 2004. 8:27 PM This weekend the Sea Scouts held a big gathering at the Coast Guard Station and Yard at Curtis Bay, near Baltimore. They called it a 'Safety at Sea' weekend, meaning the Coast Guard guys put on a series of stations to teach about the big parts of boating safety that we can't demonstrate on our own. For example, they explained, showed us, and then let us try all sorts of crazy safety equipment. The scouts (and sometimes the adults) got to try Mustang full-body survival suits, hand-held rocket flares, fire hoses, emergency bilge pumps, and leaking-ship damage control simulator. Somehow the Coasties were even able to get a USCG Rescue helicopter to fly in from North Carolina and do a 15-minute demonstration of a search and rescue mission. The Coast Guard helo didn't actually land, but one of the Maryland State Trooper MedEvac copters did, and gave an interesting tour and introduction to the state trooper aircraft fleet. We also got to tour one of the plushest Coast Guard ships around, a buoy tender and ice breaker for the upper Chesapeake Bay called the USS James Rankin. Other than the lousy food and sleeping on a gym floor, the weekend was very enjoyable. It amazed me how much time and money the Coast Guard was willing to put into the weekend in support of an organization like the Sea Scouts. It was well organized, informative, and never boring. I hope to go back, and maybe next year I'll get to play in the damage control tub. That looks like fun. Pictures are now online! SCIENCE! September 10, 2004. 5:15 PM From the world of science, NASA messed up again, but rectified their highly publicized disaster by announcing that they had recovered some of the wrecked Genesis capsule and will soon be using the information within to uncover the origin of the solar system. Carnegie Mellon and MIT shared resources in the name of unimpressive science yet again this week, creating a tiny micro-robot that can walk on water. When I first noticed the headline for this article I pictured a large humanoid robot with floating boots or something, which would be really cool but also not that impressive. So, tough luck fans of science fiction. Tiny Jesus robots are all you get for now. I'm hanging out with the Sea Scouts this weekend as we headed to the Coast Guard Yard in Baltimore for a weekend of life-saving and safety at sea demonstrations. I might get to use a firehose or shoot off a flare. Cool. RADIO TRANSMISSIONS FROM OUTER SPACE September 8, 2004. 10:25 PM I went out on a mission yesterday to see about buying myself a cool new XM Satellite Radio. It seems like every time I turn on the radio in my car they're playing a commercial on every station, and I'm fed up with it. And I'd rather have more variety of new music then my CDs can provide. So, on XM you pay about ten bucks a month for commercial-free crystal- clear radio on about 100 different channels. I want one that'll work in my car, in my living room, and that I can carry around like a walkman while I travel. However, as I found out during my shopping around, the latter of these things is not an option with any satellite radio. They're not useable as a personal device, I assume because of their special antenna system, and therefore are not even able to run on battery power. Your choices are the 'car adapter kit' with cigarette lighter power plus and tape deck adapter, the 'home adapter kit' with DC adapter and line out plug, or the $100 'portable audio system' that is really just a boom box that runs on 6 D batteries. I still don't see why there's not a way to run it as a walkman, perhaps with a built-in antenna or something and that can run on a few AA batteries. So, I didn't buy one, and I think I'll wait until they either drop in price or start offering a portable version. Or until I get one for Christmas or something. SMITH MOUNTAIN JAMBOREE September 6, 2004. 6:25 PM This long Labor Day weekend was the perfect time for a visit to Smith Mountain Lake, VA, where there's nothing to do except ride around in the boat and talk about the weather. Jen, recently married to Stephen, invited us down to stay at her parents' lovely house on the lake, eat their food, ride in their boat, and eat more of their food. It was a most wonderful time relaxing and doing whatever we felt like doing for a full three days. Smith Mountain Lake, named after the mountain that the dam was built on, contains over 500 miles of shoreline, clean and cool water, and beautiful mountain scenery from anywhere on the water. The lake is large and deep enough to support big loud cigarette boats and lengthy sail boats, but has enough small and quiet coves and inlets to make it enjoyable for everyone. Jen's lakehouse is on the southern side of the lake, on the quiet Blackwater River, contrasting the wide, choppy expanses of the northern Roanoke River. Where the two rivers met at a pass in Smith Mountain, a hydroelectric dam was constructed and created the lovely lake now known for its recreational facilities. The weekend was wonderful, from jumping off the cliffs of insanity, to tubing, skiing, and jetskiing, to sitting in the sun and eating good food. A great weekend indeed. Pictures to come soon on the SPJ. WORKING ON THE NIGHT MOVES September 2, 2004. 12:36 PM This week I've been working the late shift (2 PM - midnight), and I've discovered the positives and negatives to working on night shift. On the plus side I get to sleep in late, there is no traffic to speak of so my travel time is cut in half, and I get a whole morning of relaxing time to get stuff done. On the other hand, my internal sleeping clock gets out of whack, my social life dwindles to nothing, and I'm totally exhausted by the time I get home. What's nice, though, is when I get to rotate weekly between nights and days. Its a mix of the goods and bads. In other Gerritt news: my team's senior design project from last semester was just announced as the winner of the 2004 Lisnyk International Ship Design Competition. (To view our winning report click here and scroll to the very bottom of the page.) TEAM 2 ROCKS!! |