Where is William F. Buckley Jr.?

Has anyone seen William F. Buckley Jr. post anything lately?

National Review Archive

I hope he's just taking an extra long holiday.

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Robert Earl Keen

Here are the promised Robert Earl Keen pictures from the Astros vs Rangers game a few weeks ago. Click the picture to visit flickr & view the complete set.

Hotdog!

Went to see the 2 crappiest baseball teams in MLB play on Saturday. The best part of the game was the Robert Earl Keen concert afterwards... followed closely by this delicious dog.



I'll post some pics of him soon.

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baseball blackouts

I am a paying subscriber for the premium package on mlb.com including mlb mosaic. The blackouts have been annoying me lately, especially since they consider the Astros a home team in my zipcode of 75044. (which is North of Dallas)

Today I fired up mosaic? What am I paying for exactly?



The only video available is some crap from the baseball channel. I will not renew next year, for $119.95. I am obviously a sucker.

fauxhawk

Just a few camera phone pics from the last few days. My wife called this a fauxhawk.




My parents are here for the fishing trip to Arkansas.




This mini rc car runs for 6 minutes on a 1 minute charge. Makes a 3 year old much happier. (and dad)




Chocolate!

Bubbles

We had a friend from of mine from college over & he brought his daughter. This bubble gun is cool. I don't remember anything like this as a kid.



She had been to a party & has some paint in her hair.



This looks pretty good printed in large format.



We called these bowheads in college I think... I'll need to ask her dad about this.



He likes old fashioned bubbles too.



Have a nice day. Maybe we won't bomb Iran tomorrow.

Rest In Peace Dave Avery

Dave Avery was only here a couple of months, but I had grown to like him.



I thought at first this might be another lame KHYI joke, but unfortunately it appears to be true.

Not sure what you drank, but I'll drink a Shiner for you Dave. The next round I buy at L&W will be for you.

Stolen from some website:
In lieu of flowers the family would like any donations to be made to:
Little sisters of the Poor located at:
2345 West 86th Street
INDIANAPOLIS, Indiana 46260-1981

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Hidden Well

On Saturday, the Spring Creek Forest Preserve had its 14th Annual Trout Lily Tour. Unfortunately, I had to miss it due to a conflict with incoming relatives.

On Sunday morning I woke before everyone else & went to look for myself. Now, these little guys are pretty small & I had only seen pictures before. Due to the early morning hour, they were still closed, making them harder to spot. I finally stumbled across this one.



All of these are shot with natural light, most likely on a tripod. If not a tripod, then I had the VR on my new Nikon AF-S VR Zoom-Nikkor 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6G IF-ED lens. (what a mouthful!)

I had read that often, when you find one, you find another. These guys are pollinated by ants (among other things) & one theory is that after the ants take the seed, it produces a volatile pheromone that triggers something called the “dead corpse response.” They lose interest and drop the seed. Other ants ignore it as well.

Nearby I found this one.



Now that I had spotted a couple, I started walking the trail back & noticed a few more.



I plan to get out this week during the afternoon and catch them open.

Now, that isn't all. On the way back home, I stopped at a piece of "private property" near my house that has similar wet ground and trees to cover the ground. I was hoping to find a Trout lily, but stumbled across something quite different. I was thankful that it was daytime.



An "open" well just waiting for someone to fall in. I dropped a couple of rocks down... seemed to hit a hard bottom & fall about 20 feet. I couldn't see the bottom. I may head back with a flashlight again & see what is down there.

Another shot. Not much to see... just a hole. Dangerous as hell though.



To be honest, it freaked me out at the time. I recently saw bothThe Ring and Silence of the Lambs and kept thinking about what if I saw a fingernail stuck in the wall. -shudder-

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Johnny Sunflowerseed

We were doing a little random bird feeding in the backyard yesterday.



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Dinosaurs Alive! in the woods at the Heard Museum in McKinney

My wife shot this video of a life-sized T-Rex in the woods at the Heard Museum in McKinney. There is a side-shot at 34 seconds where my son is standing right in front of the "dimosaur" and you can judge the size for your self.

Please, Please, Please

R.I.P. Larry Young

Eleven Hundred Springs

I am a huge fan of the Texas band Eleven Hundred Springs & I try to catch them every time they play at Love & War in Texas.

They sell these old school caps with a big ass logo at their shows. In the photo below Noah is wearing the ugliest one I could find.


Shot with my new Samsung M500 1.3mp camera phone. Nice phone, btw.

Have a nice weekend.

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Padres vs Cardinals

Can't they both lose. I hate both of them.

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Capitola California

I am at JavaOne this week & we spent the weekend in Capitola, California. It's a small beach community near Santa Cruz. This was the view out the hotel (motel) window.



Noah got his feet wet. You can see mom's shadow in the picture... we kept very close due to the strong currents.



This is Noah on the bridge over the creek that flows into the ocean in Capitola.



The real reason we went to Capitola was to get close to the Roaring Camp Railroad. Like many toddlers, Noah is train-crazy. (opposed to Crazy Train by Ozzy)



We rode the #7 Shay Engine. I enjoyed it as much as Noah.



He seemed to have a good time. It was warm that day, so a hat was essential.



For both of us. I had my hat on backwards... notice Noah did the same on his own.



Mom and Noah in front of the train.



There was a tattooed family on the train. I really like the scorpion.



I think we'll go back to Capitola again. It was fun, albeit a bit expensive.

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More Social Networking

I received an e-mail yesterday from the webmaster of the 3drealms.com site. This company is the old "Apogee" and the maker of some of my favorite games from back in the day. I wasted so much time on Commander Keen that I might have finished my thesis had I not played it constantly instead of writing C code & reading math journals. (just kidding DAD)

I ran "threadster" against a couple of the forums after a little bit of work to make it compatible with VBB 3.5.4. The name "threadster" will not last, since that domain is taken. Suggestions would be appreciated.



original 4096 x 4096 image


I may regret doing this so early, but I've put up an early access version here. Feel free to click around and generate pictures. It may crash often & you may lose data at anytime... it's alpha stage & I wipe out the database fairly often.

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Social Network Update

I have been continuing my work on the message board forum viewer. This is an image generated on 4/1/2006 of Mustangworld.com.



original

I will be posting a url for the site in a few days & it will be open for business. Currently only VBB 3.0.x is supported as a valid message board type. About 1/4 fails parsing... due to customization mostly.

Social Network

Something I'm working on at home. A depiction of the last 100 threads at the mustangworld.com clubhouse. Click to view at flickr.com.

Today's Tom Sawyer

I am in Berkeley, CA this week at a user conference for Tom Sawyer Software.

A poor phone pic shot walking up the hill to the Hotel Durant.


After the 1st day, a couple of us & about 10 from TSS went to Jupiter Brewhouse & had a couple of beers and talked graphics, politics, and how outsourcing isn't the answer. (what a refreshing view from a CEO)

The CEO verified that the company is named after the song, but linked it also to Ayn Rand... all the while driving his cool Lexus hybrid fiddling with the CD player spinning the Grateful Dead. This guy is living the dream.

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Houston Pics

We were in Houston for a funeral, so I really didn't get out to take too many pics. We did get out once to take my son to the park & burn some energy. We went to Tamarac Park in The Woodlands. This park is behind the elementary school I attended & it has a special place in my heart. This marker dedicated in 1984 tells the story of the lumber mill town that once was here. (click for a larger size with readable text)



We were there for about an hour & everyone had a good time. Fun with mom tells it all.



Noah was everywhere & I took a lot of pics of him of course.



He even got my brother into the act. He rode down to Houston for the funeral & it made the trip a little easier.



This random kid came up & started playing with Noah.



He was this little guys brother from what I could tell.



The fun continued...







My brother did get a little carried away with the fun. (I yelled at him for doing this!!!)



Yes, there were some animals around too.







After we left the park we went for lunch at James Coney Island and had many hot dogs.



When we were leaving my brother had to do three things at once. (drink, smoke, talk)



After we left we saw this massive shoe at the red light. Noah got quite a kick out of it. I'm imagining the stink.



Enjoy Life.

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