Ahhh the joys of being busy … hmm … not much. Anways, it has been quite a while since I’ve updated this site. My summer was killler (which I’ll describe below) and the last few weeks have been rather hectic with school starting, etc. Right now I’m writing this from my desk at home while muching on Skittles and trying not to think about the math (Calculus 2) homework I should be doing (along with the homework I should have done last night) or the nasty Chemistry and utterly stupid Java class I have to go to in about 20 minutes, OR the fact that I have a headace, cold, and a caugh. I’m sure my classmates are loving that fact. Ha! David (who is now walking) just tasted his first Skittle … he seems to enjoy it 
Where to start … where to start? Hm … I guess from the beginning.
Plubming the depths of my memory here …
A lot of time passes
Ahh, a new day. Now I can finally pick this up again. I’m sitting here in the parking lot of a local BP where I just bought a little pick-me-up 1liter of Mountain Dew (no … not Code Red, belive it or not). The last time that I saw a 1 liter drink in a store was way back when I went to China with my dad. Not that was a great trip. I wish I could go back … something to hope for at least.
So, back to my summer
Wow. It seems such a long time ago. I was such a long time ago … yet it has passed so quickly. When I last left you, my loyal fans and compatriots, I had just graduated from high-school (sorry, I deleted those pics. Hopefully I can put them back soon.). Ahh, the fond memories. I still don’t think Aaron got a definitive answer to who Agent-X was, though we have strong suspictions 
The week or two after my graduation were rather blissful as I really didn’t have a whole lot to do besides normal stuff, aside from the mountainous pile of thank-you notes I had to write, which, I might add, I only finished writing this past Sunday. I guess the most logical way of telling things it to talk about Esther first then come back and talk about my job and then finish up with my current happenings …
Esther – Wow, what a great show. During the months of June and July we practiced two times each week for a total of 6 hours. The commute between Raleigh and Angier was 40 min … so we’re talking about 10 hours a week doing Esther as a minimum. Of course when you add in the fact that we went out to eat and chatted after most practices then the time goes up a bit. Good thing I didn’t save all my receipts from all those meals … ouch! I still think some brave male soul needs to go and break up that female chauvanist Dairy Queen and their bigoted hiring policies I mean, hey … who wouldn’t want to work with all them girls … well … I guess it would have its (numerous) down-sides. And telling people you work at DairyQueen just isn’t high on the “I’m macho” list. We had lots of great times – me and Jon even got caught in several localized tornados. Jon also learned how it feels to have ice thrown in his face. You might also want to take note that a Shrimp Burger at Andy’s as shrimp on it … amazing, isn’t it?
The first two weeks in August were our tech-weeks. Thanks to CWIS ‘02, me, Dan, and several others weren’t present for the week before that where Jeff Smith covered a lot of choreography. We didn’t feel too left out though. Thanks to some scheduling conflicts we weren’t able to practice at the church for the first tech week so instead we spent Monday, Tuesday, Thursday nights and Sat. morning (4 hours each) practicing in Angier … lots of togetherness.
I just finished that MountainDew .
The shows came off beautifully (well, mostly) and we all realized just how much of an unheard (till they’re gone) difference drummers make.
If you ever need to get a free refill somewhere just ask Ros and Tori to get one for you
A lot more time passes
Yet another day. This sure is taking a long time to write. It’s hard to belive that it’s already been 1 year since 9/11/01 … such a long time yet it seems like no time at all. Oh well, such is life I guess.
Back to life. After Esther we had a cast party. The majority of that time I spent signing programs. I can’t help it if I’m long winded! Afterwards, a group of us went to Johnathan Walker’s house and made a movie about Nazi Gnomes. I did the sound track on my handy-dandy mandolin! Such talent … I also shared the joys of the Dollar Song with Ben and others.
That week my family had gone to the beach and left me all by my lonesome self – it was rather nice not having a family. But, I had to work so I really wasn’t home all that much. During this week I also got to see the movie Signs starring everyone’s favorite always-seems-to-be-playing-an-emotioanally-distressed-widowed-man Mel Gibson! I have to admit that the movie was quite scary to me. But, it was also a really great movie! And actually had a point – there is no such thing as luck or coincidences. The plot was rather hokey but Mel did a grand job … I’ll never look at the reflection in a TV the same way again. Thursday of that same week is when the waiter at Golden Coral got a little confused about genders and called me a “she” twice while I was away getting food. Long day I guess. That Sat. a group of us had a grand time at Jordan Lake cavorting in the water. I also managed to save Josh’s life since he managed to swamp his kayak while rather far out in the lake … pulling me, my kayak, Josh, and the swamped kayak back to shore was quite a bit more work than my geeky, out-of-shape, self was prepared to do. But I managed to pull through.
Back again … Now I’m waiting for Dan to pick me up from school. My car decided not to start today … I kinda wonder if he’s forgotten me.
Anways, so after that Saturday then schools started (8/19/02). Seems like forever ago. I’ll get back to school in a bit. First I need to mention my work over the summer. This summer I was working for a company called Lulu. Yeh, I know, the marketing folks didn’t do such a good job. Oh well. Anyways Lulu, which was founded by Bob Young of RedHat fame, has this vision for empowering the people and stuff like that. One half of the company deals with online content delivery, publishing, and the like, while the other half, Lulu TechCircus, is all about these trade-show typiesh things called TechCircus. The idea is that trade shows are boring and are designed to rake in lots of cash and get people to buy things. The Circus is more user friendly in that it’s cheap enough for the average geek to attend, it focuses on the users of the software and is suppoed to be fun, hence the Circus motif. Anways, another focus of Lulu is this type of geek community empowerment – they believe getting the word about the Circus out to various interested communities is far better than blowing a few grand on large newpaper ads. That’s where I come into play. Since one of the sections ofthe Circus deals with robotics, Will Janhke, the head guy at the Circus, came and visited our local robotics group and started talking to me. He there found out about my website. A few months late and a bit of hobnobbing I was employed at Lulu for the second half of the summer. Well, “employed” really isn’t the best word for it. They were paying me, but I was just working my website. Basically my website gets a lot of people coming to it that Lulu wants to find out about their Circus’. All the details for this continuing relationship are quite sketchy and my new site design is currently sitting on a computer at their place. But, I hope that I’ll be able to get the new version of GoRobotics.net up and running soon and this will be a sweet deal between me and Lulu.
Ok, so that was my summer in a greatly abbreviated form. What did I learn from it all? Good question. Let me see … 1) Don’t over commit yourself. 2) Never sign anything that gives a company rights to your ideas and thoughts. 3) SQL is awesome! 4) Lying is really bad for relationships. 5) Angier is a long way away. 6) Don’t go see scary movies when you’re home alone. 7) PHP is even cooler than SQL. 
Talking is good. Waiting is bad.
School is ok – rather boring. Calculus 2 is a challenge. Chemistry is just plain evil. Intro to Engineering is pointless and stupid. Intro to Honors is semi-pointless. There are some informative bits to it. Fundamentals of Graphics Communication (basically 3D modeling) is actually rather interesting. We’re using Solid Works to do parts and stuff. I think it could be useful to me in the future. My socialization seems to be lagging behind the others there as I’m not living on campus. In some respects I don’t mind this at all, in others I do.