Author: willc

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Good Times

I turned 32 this weekend, and in celebration, we had some folks over to cook out on the new gas grill Alicia bought me. We ate a lot of meat, including burgers, hot dogs, and fish. There is nothing like a good Ball Park Frank to raise the bar and make you wonder whether or not you will live to tell the tale. Ahhh, the joys of animal lips.

With Alicia having a hand in the making of the burgers, potato salad, and cole slaw, you know it had to be good. Storebought will not do with her, and her flair for adding just enough of this and that makes it all taste great.

I plan on branching out and finding many good things to do with my new grill. Alicia was shocked to see me perusing the Joy of Cooking section on grilling…

I have posted two new photo galleries, one of pics from my cell phone, and another of higher quality digital cam pics, both from this month (including yesterday’s cookout). Check out the Will’s Ye Olde Photo Gallery.

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Ogling Google

I posted before about Google Maps and how cool it was, surpassing MapQuest in capability and usability.

Now, Google has added a new satellite view to their maps. For example, you can do a search for an address, click the “Satellite” link, and see imagery of the location you are looking at. This is not new technology, but it is now in a form that is easily consumable by the masses.

This has stirred up some mixed responses from people around the internet. Some people consider it a tool for environmental accountability, where we can see things like the clearcutting around Nanaimo, British Columbia.

For those armchair travellers amongst you, Google Sightseeing offers you the ability to see the world in your pajamas. I found the Planes In Flight post, where people sent in shots of airplanes captured by satellites in, pretty neat.

You never know what sorts of things might be caught that shouldn’t be, however, some obvious ones have been doctored up (notice the “drawn-on” rooftops”). Others are kinda funny, and some are weird (a giant compass[?] at Edwards AFB).

Still, the detail in these maps is nowhere near as complex as that of the property search I found for Buncombe County, NC, where you can see me & my shadow walking up my driveway, my truck out front, and Alicia’s car on the side of the house:
My House

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4-11

It is National Information Day, which we celebrate every April 11 (because, hey, it’s like, 4-11 man). On this day it is good to do nothing but surf the Internet in search of useless facts, urban legends, and the cold, hard, truth.

OK, so maybe I made this up and it is only I that celebrates National Information Day. Allright, allright, I have never celebrated it before, and in fact, I have a lot of work to do today, so I shouldn’t be wasting any more time.

At least I finally got my taxes done last night. So much for my new-year’s resolution of having them done before the end of March.

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Tunes and Tweaks

My old college chum Chris Geer emailed me the other day. I hadn’t heard from him in a while and it was good to hear that he is staking out his territory on the WWW.

A couple of years back, Chris asked me to sit in on banjo when he was recording in the studio, and I had not heard the songs we did since that day. He was kind enough to send me one (and is looking for the other), so I posted it on my free music site for download. It’s under the “Morgan ‘Chris’ Geer” section of that page.

While I was doing that, I realized that my entire music site was getting cramped, so I went ahead and redesigned it from scratch. Why I chose to do this at 9pm on a Thursday night, I don’t know, but thanks to the magic of Cascading Style Sheets I was done in an hour.

So, then I started looking at the disheveled appearance of this site and messed around with the typography, layout, colors, and other stuff. You may or may not notice a cleaner appearance now. I plan on changing the header soon.

I also cleaned up the links at left, removing some dead ones and adding some new ones. So take a few minutes to peruse all the newness.

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Today Is Wednesday, Dog

I posted links to some reviews about the Crain CD on my Crain Speed site tonight. So far, they are all good, and this seems totally surreal. If you see any more reviews or press, let me know so I can add it to the site.

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Rituals

Now that the basketball season is over, I can talk about my rituals and superstitions. You see, during the season, I have a pattern of things I have to do in order for the Louisville Cardinals to win. If I talk about these things during the season, they lose.

This was the first season I didn’t wear any UofL clothing on a game day. I couldn’t even touch it. Last season I always worse UofL clothing, and the Cards didn’t do as well as anyone had hoped.

Next, I always got Gray to say “Go Cards” on the day of a game (though when he says it, it sounds more like, “Go Tards”). The one day he didn’t say it was the day Louisville lost to Memphis at home. This was also the day I had a 102 degree fever and couldn’t participate in my next ritual.

Every game except 2 this season, I sat on the edge of the coffee table in out living room. Same spot, same position.

Lastly, I had to tell Alicia that there was an important game on the next day at such and such a time. The one day I didn’t do this was that same Memphis loss.

So what about the 3 earlier losses in the season? Well, none of them happened after Christmas, so they don’t really count. The pre-Christmas season is the time in which routines are established, so there is a little room for error.

Call me crazy or obsessive, but this is what you get when you are born in North Carolina and raised in Kentucky.

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Over and Done

Well that was not so good, but I knew going into it that it would all end here. Illinois hasn’t been ranked #1 most of the year for no reason, and they were only one 3-pointer away from a perfect record.

Louisville stayed with them most of the game, and even held the lead for a little. The Cards just looked out of it tonight, not hitting open shots, and not showing that hunger they had over the last couple of months.

I’m happy with a final four appearance by Louisville, knowing that this will be the start of many more in the near future. And thanks to Ma & Pa for the t-shirt.

Oh, and Happy Birthday Dad!

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Work, Music, News

Thanks to Pete emailing me recently, I learned that the Second String Bluegrass Band songs that I had linked to on music.www.willchatham.com were not actually there. I am currently uploading them all to my server, and they should be there within the hour.

On another musical note (get it? GET IT??? 😐 ), I am keeping my eye on iTunes for the day Speed appears. Not that it’s that big a deal really, but I’m excited about it. The re-release comes out April 5th. Don’t forget!

On a work related tip, I finally have something to show from my day job. It’s not much, but it gives you a glimpse into what sorts of crazy things I’m doing for the DoD.

At work this week I have been setting up a new installation of Red Hat Fedora Core 3 on a Dell 1750 for the Intranet site we are re-developing. This has proven to be a lot of fun. I have been more impressed with each new version of Fedora, and this one is working out well. Of particular interest is SELinux, which installs as an option with Fedora.

I have also been doing a lot of side work through home-based Asheville Technologies, setting up a site for a local realtor, getting ready to start one for a guitar player, and doing other odds and ends for other clients. I’ll show some stuff soon.

And soon there will be some important/exciting news I will be reporting on here, so keep your eyeballs peeled and your earballs waxed.

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