So, I picked up the keys to my house a week ago. This being my first house, the process continues to be a little different. Here are the main points: Unlike an apartment, they don’t repaint between tenants. They don’t clean either. Oh, and furniture tends to cover damage to the walls and carpet. So [...]

Last week, I found Stellarium a multi-platform easy-to-use program. the experience was excellent! It was so smooth to whip it around, adjust the magnitudes to match what I could see, and spot things in the sky that I had only read about in science fiction. I also like setting the clock forward and watching the stars spin. I now understand the “ecliptic,” which was always a mystery to me before.

I’ve been getting a ton of credit card offers lately. It’s now to the point that I don’t even bother to send all the crap back in the business reply envelope – there’s just too many! My shredder is giving up the ghost and I’m now burning them because it is faster. I’ve received offers [...]

Yeah, it’s finally here! I finally figured out enough WordPress/XHTML/CSS stuff to finish my new blog design.
I’ve been trying to change my alias for a while now.

CypherGhost came about partly because of my cypherpunk interests (cryptography, anonymity, etc.) and because I tend to be invisible in social situations. I’m not particularly introverted or anything, but I frequently make suggestions or comments that just go in one ear and out the other. A short time later, someone else will think of the same idea and, all of a sudden, the idea is brilliant. I just consider myself ahead of my time, but it’s an eerie and recurring phenomenon.

I played with the reservation system on the Georgia Aquarium’s web site today and saw some useful patterns.

My initial purpose was to determine when the least busy times were for people to visit so that they could avoid the large crowds I have heard about.

As expected, weekends are very busy. In fact, the Aquarium has no tickets available for the next two weekends and is half sold for the weekend after that. Rush hour is a good time to go. Pretty much anytime during the week after 3pm is decent since all the kids are back at school.

I went to the Georgia Aquarium for the first time. I mostly decided to take a break from work to decompress (sorry, bad SCUBA diver joke). I really enjoyed the coral tank and could sit there for an hour. They have a very large deep-sea tank with a 100-foot long tunnel underneath it. The displays are designed so that you can get up very close to the fish

Well, Christmas is about over. I’m with my parents now and so far everything is going pretty well. Mom insisted on building a campfire outside last night and singing Christmas songs, but the weather was warmer than most years so it wasn’t too bad. I got all of my gifts done in time, although many [...]

Well I got called for Jury Duty. Sure, I could get out of it if I wanted. Many people have told me they just didn’t show up and nothing bad ever happened, but I have several friends with criminal convictions because they “jury of peers” was 12 people who were too dumb to get out of jury duty. Unlike most things run by Fulton County, it actually went pretty smoothly. At about 12:30, they told me that they had enough jurors and that I could leave. Only 1 in 4 people who get a summons will actually serve on a jury. I did meet a lot of people, which was interesting. The jury pool comes from the voter registration, so the average IQ was much higher than waiting in line at the DMV, and everyone was local, unlike the airport. I brought my laptop, caught up on some reading, wrote a proposal (which was already approved by the client), watched a movie, and read several chapters from Harry Potter.

Well, I haven’t posted in a while, so here’s an update on the things going on this month:
First, right after Phreaknic, I got sick. My laptop got fixed.I finished a model airplane. It crashed in a kudzu covered forest area and I was not able to find it.

Well, I’m back from PhreakNIC again, where a good time was had by all. The conference seemed a little tamer this year than previous years, yet it was a weekend well spent. Here are some neat highlights: A nice briefing on extended WiFi links. Technical in nature with lots of math. Yum!A good demo of [...]