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Personal

My Adrenaline Weekend

At the invitation of my parents, Betsy, myself, my sister and brother-in-law all made the trek north to Paramount’s Kings Island, an amusement park north of Cincinatti. My dad’s bank was having a picnic there, and providing lunch and tickets and such. How could we turn that down?

For some reason, I became a complete adrenaline junkie over the weekend. If there was a ride, I was on it. A short list of the rides I fell victim to (with links to pics or descriptions):

  • The Beast:: The longest wooden coaster in the world, and consistently rated one of the top 5 coasters ever. I’d agree with this…amazingly fun. We managed to get to it early enough that we could simply sit through two rides in a row.
  • The Son of Beast:: This, however, was a HUGE disappointment. It is the tallest, fastest wooden coaster in the world, and includes a loop (which, for a wooden coaster, is just insane). However, it nearly beats you to death. Full of Helixes and switchbacks, I think I bruised a rib on it. Ride it once, just to say you did, but that’s quite enough.
  • Vortex:: Just a great coaster, a steel looping coaster that turns you upside down 6 times in less than a minute. Fast, smooth and fun.
  • Face-Off:: Surprisingly shocking, the coaster looks very basic at first glance, but the forward-backwards nature of it makes it more surprising than you might initially think. It certainly took me by surprise. With both backwards and forwards facing seats, you do the entire ride in both directions before being lowered into the unloading area.
  • Flight of Fear:: An enclosed coaster, with a propulsion system rather than a hill, and shoots you from 0-60 in under 4 seconds. Harsh, but fun.
  • Tomb Raider, the Ride:: A bizarre pendulum ride, it is enclosed and dark, so that you have no idea what you are actually in for. Very effective, if a little short. Better than I expected.
  • Delerium:: This was a new one for me…a giant pendulum, with a circular seating pattern that spins while you swing. Very, very fun, with a lot of G-forces on you as you spin into the drop. Watch the video to get the full effect.
  • Drop Zone:: Wow. The tallest gyro drop ride in the world, you spin slowly up 315 feet, pause, and then freefall to the bottom. Feels like you stepped off of the ledge of a 30 story building. Amazing!
  • Slingshot:: This was my father’s idea…I had ridden everything in the park, more or less, and he said he’d pay for this one if I’d do it. I don’t think he believed I would. A 2 person max capacity ride, I was by myself in the small roll-cage. The cables are tensioned by a set of crazy looking springs, and then the connection with the earth is cut, and you go rocketing into the air. The stats on the ride itself said: 95MPH, 260 Feet, 6G’s and I believe it. Easily the craziest thing I’ve ever been on. You launch up, then turn and freefall towards the earth. The cables catch, and you bounce up and down for a few seconds, rolling crazily a few hundred feet up, just you and a small metal enclosure, and two cables on either side. Complete insanity. Here’s a site from a company that makes these crazy things, and more pics.

All in all, much fun was had, and much silly food consumed. Looking forward to the next amusement park already…

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Personal

Laptop?

So I’ve got my choices narrowed down..but it’s still a tough, tough call.

The insurance company is covering me for $1500 worth o’ computer. If I pay more, it’s just out of my pocket.

The two current front runners are a Dell inspiron 9100, 2.8 GHz, 512RAM, Radeon 9700 128Meg video, 60GB HD, with a dual layer DVD RW +R. Pretty hot little system, tricked out for only $1650 or so.

The other option is a 12 inch Mac Powerbook, with Superdrive. Specs are close to the same (adjusted for chip architecture). I’m sorely tempted by the Mac…very pretty, very light, very easy to use. But the Dell is more overall compatible with the software I own, and the other computers in the house are all PC’s.

I was tempted by the Dell 700m and the IBM T40..both tiny cute little systems, with plenty of kick. The problem is that the video cards in them are sub-standard when compared to the Radeon.

Suggestions?

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Personal

Newness Abounds

First, the new car.

Then, the new furniture (a couch and a chaise).

Now, a new job.

Yep, you read it here first (or second if you were on AIM yesterday and I bugged you). I’m a newly employed member of the staff of Middle Tennessee State University. It’s not a library job, which is what I was hoping for, but is a very sweet Web Design job, working with the MTSU homepage and helping faculty do web-based things with research and teaching. Overall, I’m very pleased.

đŸ™‚ đŸ™‚ đŸ™‚ đŸ™‚ đŸ™‚ đŸ™‚ đŸ™‚ đŸ™‚ đŸ™‚

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Personal

More archives

So pleased with WordPress right now…I just got the Blogger import to work, so that my original blog posts from early 2003 are now happily ensconced in my current blog. Yay! Now all I’m missing is my 4 month dalliance with Radio…since my registration with them has expired, and my laptop was my server for publishing, I think that those are probably just gone. But I’m excited that most of my old entries are still around!

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Digital Culture Personal

Suggestions from the blogosphere

I hereby summon the knowledge of the readers of my blog:

Has anyone had any experience with a webhost that they would recommend that would allow php/mysql setups for things like phpBB and a blog? I’m considering setting up something like a news/discussion site and am looking for cheap but reliable hosting.

Ibiblio (while wonderful for hosting this and other aspects of my site) isn’t appropriate since it would be for a psuedo-commercial project that would eventually need to include ads and such to pay for itself.

Suggestions? Anyone out there wanna host me? The traffic would be lite at first, but I’m betting it would pick up quickly…

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Digital Culture Personal

Thunderbird

With Justin singing the praises of Firefox, the Mozilla stand-alone browser, I decided to take the plunge and see what the fuss is about.

Wow.

I’ve been a Mozilla convert for a long time, using the suite for both websurfing and email. But Firefox and Thunderbird have convinced me to switch, in no small part to the amazing extension support.

For example: Forumzilla, an extension for Thunderbird that allows you to treat RSS feeds just like email or newsgroups. It pulls the feed, allows you to filter them to different mail folders….just so easy to use, and just what I wanted with RSS. Not a stand alone aggregator, but something that is integrated into my existing information consumption.

Get Firefox

They’re brilliant, open source, constantly upgraded, fast, easy to use, and have incredible support. How is it that IE still has the upper hand in the browser wars?

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Digital Culture Personal Sewanee

I, for one…

…welcome my BoingBoing overlords.

Categories
Personal Sewanee

I have no words

Weeks ago Betsy and I were wandering around an odd store in Winchester, TN, called Hammer’s. It’s a department store from the 1940’s or so, and has never been renovated or updated at all. The current contents of the store change from time to time, and all of it is cheap, and weird.

Case in point, this candle:

Smell My Nuts candle

Now….this is NOT a photoshop job. This candle was sitting happily alongside other candles, with scents like “Apricot Jam” and “Apple Cobbler.” If you can’t read it, here’s an enlargement of the photo, and here’s one of just the label.

The mind boggles and the fact that someone, somewhere, thought this was a good name for a scent. I nearly had to be picked up off the floor when I saw this, and I’m keeping it here on my desk to remind me that somewhere out in the world, the person who named this has a job, and I, as yet, do not.

Edit: to assuage all you naysayers out there, behold! Here’s a link to the manufacturer.

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Personal

On the Road Again…

One more jaunt off into the wilderness before school starts for Bets and hopefully I find a job. We’re off to see B’s family, and her new niece and nephew (Hannah and Tyler). Back later this weekend, and buckling down.

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Personal

Books consumed over the vacation

Not all great literature, but Oryx and Crake was interesting (it wasn’t great sci-fi, but passable). Davinci was a page turner, but was ruined by the Deus Ex Machina ending and some of the ridiculous “eureka” moments. A Fire Upon was brilliant sci-fi, but took me some time to get into…the pack aliens were bizarre before you knew what was going on. The Silent Blade is just typical D&D ficition…not great, but I read it anyway. Sue me. đŸ˜› Me Talk Pretty was great…hilarious as always for Sedaris.