die Dunkelkammer

Worst Deal of 2009?

2009-11-17T08:47:00.002-05:00

I just noticed that the Cash for Clunkers program made Fortune's list of '3 worst deals of 2009'. I remember being particularly disappointed when I found out that part of the program was that the engines of the "clunkers" turned in were to be destroyed. As a driver of a "clunker" myself, I know that junk yards are a treasure-trove of good, cheap parts that allow folks on a budget to keep their cars on the road for years past when most people would throw them away. Removing that source of cheap parts just unfairly penalized those who really weren't in the market for a new car anyway. Of course the counter argument to that was that part of the goal of the program was to reduce pollution, but that didn't seem to work out very well either.

What Happened to Personal Responsibility?

2009-09-09T20:42:00.002-04:00

So I'm sitting here watching President Obama talk to Congress about the latest iteration of his heath care plan, and a few things he's said have really caught my attention.

The first is his specific mention of young people who may not want to buy health insurance because they feel that they are invincible and they'd rather spend the money on something else. Of course, we can't let this happen. Why? Because then everyone else has to pay when they visit the emergency room or get sick. My question is: why? The whole point of personal choice is that you have to live with the consequences. If I don't buy car insurance, and I hit someone, I should have to pay for that. If I don't buy health insurance and I get injured, I should have to pay for that too.

Of course, there are a number of arguments that crop up at this point: First, that medical care is way too expensive, and second, that medical care is a right. To answer these, I would say that the first is very related to the second. Viewing medical care as a special case, rather than a market like any other, has kept prices high. After all, food, water, and clothing are also necessary for a healthy life, but none of these things are prohibitively expensive. There was a time when only the wealthy could afford tailored clothes, or clean water, but today, in America, the idea of anyone going without these things is ridiculous. This is the case because suppliers of these products had to compete with one another to stay in business. Not everyone can afford Armani suits, but no one goes naked. What we're trying to do in heath care is give everyone a $500 suit. Can't afford it? No problem! Of course, as with anything else run by the government the promise is that this program will provide a boundless plenty, but history has shown that the usual result is lowered quality, shortages, and rationing.

Sunday Internet Distractions

2009-08-30T17:35:00.002-04:00

If you're anything like me, Sunday is that day that you madly try to get everything that you were going to do during the week done so that you don't become truly behind and you can maintain some feeling of accomplishment before Monday. Of course between loads of laundry and rounds of yard work there's always time for some internet distraction!

Today my main distraction has been "Penn & Teller: Bullshit!". Those of us who are too cheap to pay for Showtime are deprived of getting this show over our old-fashioned moving-picture boxes, but thankfully you can find many episodes online, either through good old YouTube or other places. That last link, which should take you to their episode on the Vatican, is the one that started the whole distraction earlier today, but the show is kind of like potato chips - you can't watch just one.

In case you haven't stumbled across them before, Penn and Teller are fantastic entertainers and magicians that also have strong political and religions beliefs. I'm a particular fan, since their beliefs (they are atheist libertarians) line up pretty darn well with my own. I just don't use as much profanity in my day-to-day life. Bullshit! is their way of highlighting people who hold crazy, scary, or outright dangerous beliefs (they've covered everything from cryptozoology to the IRS to faith healers) and while they may not be "fair and balanced" - heck, they even say they aren't during several episodes - I think they do an excellent job of presenting their views in an educational, if not hilarious, manner. Anyway, watch an episode or two and I'll let them speak for themselves.

Alright, back to that silly "work" I've been putting off.

Some Florida Awesomeness

2009-08-30T15:08:00.005-04:00

While there are some things I find lacking about Florida, there is one thing that makes up for a lot of it, and that is that we have the Space Shuttle! Standard middle of the day launches are impressive enough, but every so often we get a truly spectacular night launch, like the one we had on Friday night. It never fails to impress me how something that many miles away can turn night into day. Anyway, enjoy the pictures!

The Search is Over

2009-08-13T20:36:00.009-04:00

Looking for a house makes me jealous of all my married friends. I mean, I like to look at houses. I find architecture and real estate interesting. Even so, after looking at the 25th house they all start to run together. If you have a significant other then at least you can divide the work so that you get burnt out at half rate. But things are looking up. I have found a solution to both problems!

First, a house has been found! I never thought that a house search would involve so much soul searching, but after several re-examinations of myself and what is really important to me in life I think I've managed to settle on a house that will give me (most) of what I want. So to illustrate how far I've come on my journey, I will start with my original criteria in order from most important to least.

Multi-car shop
1+ acres
Cost
Doesn't need major renovation
Location

Now, here's what I ended up with (once again, in order):

Location - less than 30-second walk from 3 good friends
3-car garage, and a builder that is very flexible
Good price
Brand new - it will be done in November
0.18 acres

Most dramatically, location has leapt from last to first! After hearing the "location, location, location" mantra many, many times, I finally took it to heart. After all, one of the things that I miss the most from college is the ability to be close to people you enjoy. Well, this is about as close as I can get without actually moving in with them. But that's not the only reason why I chose this location. The house is actually in Rockledge, FL, which has many benefits over other areas I was exploring. For starters, it's actually a developing area, so lots of new construction and lots of nifty conveniences, like grocery stores. It's also very close to both the interstate and to the ocean, so it's very easy to get to the ocean when it's being nice, and escape it when it isn't.

Before I get requests for pictures, I don't have any yet. Mostly because the house is currently nothing more than a grassy lot. But rest assured that I will start taking many pictures when things start to get interesting. I'm actually trying to convince my friend to take a picture of the lot each day from the same location. That way when the house is done I will get a house and a nice time-lapse video of it being built! Who ever said being nerdy wasn't cool? If that actually happens I will definitely be posting that video here as well.

Now, onto the other "search". Those of you that know me also know that I am very good at being single. Well, those days are over! It's official, too, since it's on Facebook. That's the real test, right? Anyway, the good part of the story is that we hit it off over the 4th of July weekend and have been happily dating ever since! The bad part of the story is that she's still in Clemson. Since, much to our frustration, the teleporter has not been invented yet, we've only gotten to see one another once since the 4th. But there are some long weekends coming up, so I sense some travel to South Carolina coming up!

The thing that's been crazy about this relationship, and what has made it very different from my previous relationships (all three of them), is that I feel completely comfortable. In the past I have always felt, even a little bit, that I had to modify my behavior to please the other person. This time there's none of that. I'm taking that, and the fact that this is the first time where I really do find myself unconsciously thinking about the other person, as a good sign, hehe. I know I have at least one married reader, so if anyone has any tales of how they felt at the beginning of their relationship, I would gladly welcome a comparison.

And with that, I am off to some well-needed sleep! Have a great weekend everyone!

The Latest

2009-06-13T07:06:00.004-04:00

So, it's been another long blog vacation, but I figured that it was time to provide an update to my loyal reader.

Even I haven't been to this blog in a while. I had forgotten that I was looking for a house the last time I posted and, guess what, I'm still looking. I did manage to find one that would have been just about perfect. 1.6 acres, 1900 sq ft, a pool and a hot tub, and all for $155,000! However it was not to be. I tried to get an offer in 5 days after it went on the market, but someone managed to beat me too it. The thinking is that it was some kind of inside deal, but regardless, I still don't have a house. I'm certain that I'll be able to find what I want for the price I want to pay eventually, it's just going to take some waiting and I'll have to jump right on it when I see it.

For those of you who have not gone through the house buying experience, all I can say is making that decision to put that first contract down is the toughest (so far). Now that I've done that twice, both unsuccessful, I'm much more prepared to jump on good deals that come up. I suppose the one benefit of being as picky as I am is that I get to see a lot of properties and get a good sense of the real estate market in this part of Florida.

The other fun part is dealing with short sales, which make up a large chunk of the market down here. From talking to my realtor the other day, I guess the price that a short sale is listed at may or may not have anything to do with the price the bank will accept. For instance, you could put a full-price offer on a $130,000 house and the bank will come back 60 days later and tell you that no, they won't take $130,000, but they will take $220,000. WTF?! Joanne, my realtor, has said that this is very frustrating for both the realtor and the buyer, which is understandable, since you really can't put other offers on houses while you're under contract waiting for the bank to tell you if they're going to sell or not. I know the housing market is pretty crazy everywhere, but it's insane here. Heck, Palm Bay, the city I technically live in, has 1,900+ listings right now, and apparently half are short sales and foreclosures!

Anyway, on to better news. As of this week I have joined the rank of the Mac users! Some people might think that I've gone crazy, but I have good reason for making the switch. First, I've wanted to play around with the iPhone SDK for a while now, and if I actually make something cool I'd like to be able to put it up on the App store. Thanks to Apple's "don't play well with others" marketing strategy, you can only develop legitimate apps on a Mac. I guess it worked, since I bought one of their computers, right? The second reason is that I needed a new, more reliable desktop anyway. My aging monster from junior year of college was getting flakier and flakier (for instance, 9 times out of 10 it would decide that there were no CD drives), and with the Xbox I don't really play too many games on the computer anymore. Heck, all the classic games that I'd like to play can be easily handled by my laptop anyway.

So, I guess the story is that I'll post pictures as soon as I find another house that I actually want to put an offer on, and in the mean time if anyone has any great ideas for iPhone apps, send me a message and I'll see what I can do :).

-Chris

The House Search Continues

2009-04-22T23:25:00.002-04:00

So I know I promised Clemson pictures, but those are going to have to wait because I have a Lost episode calling me from my DVR.

First, though, I wanted to express some excitement, and some frustration. As some of you may, or may not know, I've been looking for a house for about the last month or so. Florida was one of the worst hit areas in the housing crash, and there are some great deals to be had. However, with my scant few months of full time employment and a correspondingly scant amount of savings, the houses that I can pick from are still relatively limited. Hey, a $500,000 house can only drop so far, right?

The excitement is because I have been able to find several areas near the center of town that satisfy my quite picky tastes. You see, most houses in Florida, especially new houses, are built in huge subdivisions with approximately 3.5 inches of space between them. Most of them also have no character, and if you replaced all the pictures in the housing magazine with a picture of the same stucco house, I'm not sure anyone would notice. I want something much different. I'm willing to put in the work on an older, unique house with a lot of potential.

The frustration is because the houses that I've found so far fall into two categories: houses where I love the design, love the lot, love the area, and it's just slightly too expensive, or houses where I can afford it, but the house is just alright, the area might be a bit hillbilly, and the lot is fair. That, or the house backs up to the interstate. Or the house that was perfect, but was also still listed in spite of being closed on tomorrow (anger!).

Anyway, that's the long and short of it. The search continues and with any luck I will be in the house of my dreams (or at least what will become the house of my dreams) in the next 6 months or so. $8,000 federal tax credit here I come!

Another Trip to Clemson

2009-04-20T22:39:00.002-04:00

Hello again. I'm back after not too long away, with more fun stuff to report! Last weekend I flew back to Clemson again for the long weekend. However this time was less for friends and more for family. My brother, who has been down in Mexico for the last several months managing a plant there, was back in the States for his birthday and to see his new baby girl, Kirklyn. Thankfully his time off managed to coincide with a long weekend for both me and my parents, so we all met in the beautiful upstate to have a family weekend.

It must be a Dunkel trait to have kids 20 years apart. My brother, who is about 17 years older than I am, has an 18-year-old son who is attending his first year of college, and now he has a 3-month-old daughter too. It will definitely be interesting to see how the upbringing of the two differs. No matter what, though, she is very cute (I would say "what baby isn't?", but I have seen some not-cute babies, haha), and her brother takes very good care of her. Brad (my brother) also seems to be having a good time. I never thought that I would see him wearing a babybjorn around his shoulders.

As with the last time I traveled up there I flew in on Thursday afternoon. I missed almost an entire day of work, but it was worth it to be able to spend an extra day with the family. Even with the extra time, though, it was a mad dash. Thursday night I managed to meet up with Dan and Daniel and we, along with the rest of the family, went down to downtown Anderson for some live music and good food. I'm surprised by how much Anderson has improved since I was last down there. I would never have wanted to walk around after dark, but now it's almost fancy! After some good homemade pizza and way too much 80's music we headed back to Clemson. The parents hit the sack and Dan, Daniel, and I drove back to Clemson with the idea that we would watch a movie. Daniel chose "Erik the Viking", which I would have enjoyed much more if I weren't freaking tired. So we got through about 90% of it before giving up and heading back to the hotel for bed.

As far as the rest of the weekend goes, it was an interesting mix. We spent some time looking at houses, since mom and dad are always on the lookout for a good reason to leave the frigid north and move to Clemson, and I managed to connect up with Jason and Lisa. The three of us are traveling to Portland, OR, this July for a wedding and a week tour around the area. I had bought a guidebook and we all wanted to do some planning as far as places to go and things to see. I've wanted to explore that part of the country for the last 10 years, so to finally be going is very exciting! If only I had a month to just tour around and see the sights. Of course, I would be out of cash well before then, haha. Silly money.

My one regret was that I didn't get a chance to see Dana and Diana. Of course, as per my law of the universe, Dana's sister was getting married that Saturday, so they were off to Greenville for a large chunk of the time. As I told them, now they'll just have to come down and visit me in Florida ;). Plus, I have real beaches!

To top off the weekend we did have some great food. Saturday night we ended up at a place called the T-60 Grille. It's way back on Lake Hartwell where you'd never find the place. In fact Jason and I impressed my parents with the iPhone's ability to guide us on some crazy back roads and still make it there in one piece (unfortunately we hit a washed-out road on the way back, and I don't think the rental Focus would have survived). The food and the view was awesome. The specialty of the house is a seafood boil, and that was some of the best crab I've ever had. Corn on the cob is also included, and it soaked up so much of the juices that it was the juiciest, and spiciest, corn I've ever had. The guy who runs the place is quite the business man. Apparently his wings, spices, and a bunch of other concoctions are being sold at Bi-Lo and on QVC.

Sunday morning we ended up at another great restaurant out on the lake for Easter brunch. It was an excellent buffet, with everything from prime rib, to grits, to squid salad, and sushi. Of course, my favorite part was the deserts ;). I just have one thing to say: 4 food chocolate fountain.

After brunch it was time to go do a little more touring. We got to see Stacy's parent's awesome log home that they're building on 30 ancestral acres near Anderson. The house overlooks a lake and a large field, and I would love to come and take a vacation there sometime. Then it was back to the airport and back to the real world. Definitely a great weekend!

For those of you more visually inclined, I did take pictures, and I will try to get them posted here in the next day or so. Until then, goodnight!

Working in the Sun

2009-04-06T21:45:00.003-04:00

So what I didn't get around to talking about yesterday was the fun we had on Sunday. Now after you hear what we did you're going to think that I was being sarcastic when I said "fun", but I really did have fun. After all, if you know me then you know that I'm one of those strange people that likes doing things like installing ceiling fans, so this was right up my alley.

First, some background. Kristi, and integral member of the Florida group, or the Florida family as it's usually called, had her birthday this past weekend. Since there are so many of us, we can usually pitch in $10 or so on everyone's birthday and get something pretty substantial (I got $100 worth of Barnes & Nobel gift cards, which was insane). Kristi has made it pretty well know that she hated the bushes sitting out in front of her house, so for her birthday some of the group decided that the best gift would be to let her pick out new plants and then the male half of the group would re-do the garden while the female half did fun birthday stuff with Kristi. As it turned out this was a great idea.

The fun started at 1:30 on Sunday. Kristi had already chosen her plants and where she wanted them, so all we had to do was bring her vision to life. The old bushes ended up coming out so quickly that we ended up cleaning up part of the yard we weren't supposed to! Four short sweaty hours later and the new plants were in, a new boarder was installed, and there was fresh mulch everywhere. 110% better, no question. And, best of all, Kristi was happy. We were all rewarded with showers, cold beer, and excellent BBQ chicken on the grill, courtesy of Grant. Follow all that up with a (somewhat shortened) game of Risk, and it was a pretty awesome day.

For those of you who would like more detail, and some great pictures, I direct you to Grant and Kristi's own blog over at The Florida Gatchel Daily. The little guy is Noah, their 10-month-old son. He's about the cutest baby I've seen, and very well behaved. However, the picture of him about half way down is priceless. Arthur was spraying water on the window as Noah watched, and apparently that was a bad move. Haha, I feel bad about laughing at a crying baby, but it's still funny :). I'm sure there was no lasting trauma.

The Law of the Universe

2009-04-05T22:51:00.002-04:00

While there are, of course, many real laws of the universe, there is one in particular that always seems to bite me in the ass. That is the law that if there is something you really want to do, there will always be at least one other thing you really want to do on the exact same day. Usually this happens with things like having two good friends invite you to come to their lake houses on the exact same weekend. Both trips would be awesome, but since no one that I know can split into multiple copies of themselves (yet), you have to pick. This time the law is showing up in the form of a wedding.

For any of you that have not been through this yet, there is a time around the end of college when everyone you know will decide that they need to get married. In the span of about six months you will have to remember that all the women your friends spend time with are now "wives" not "girlfriends". I'm now on the tail end of this marriage spree. Everyone I know is now either married or hopelessly single. Well, hopefully not hopelessly single, at least for my sake. But, of course, of all the dates that could be chosen for weddings, two of the as yet un-joined couples I know have decided to get married on the same day on opposite sides of the country. One is getting married in Vermont, the other in Oregon.

Thankfully, this one was pretty easy. First, I am not in either wedding, which is nice for a change (yay, no tux rental!). Second, I've been planning to go to the Oregon wedding since long before I heard about the Vermont wedding. I like both couples a lot, and both trips would be fun, but I'm happy with my decision. This is especially because I have wanted to go see the pacific northwest for about the last 10 years! The plan, as it stands, is for Jason, Lisa, and myself to attend the wedding on Saturday and then spend the next week touring around Oregon and Washington on our own. To start the week off right, the couple couldn't have chosen a better wedding location! The wedding is taking place at the Timberline Lodge, near the top of Mt.Hood, just east of Portland! You really have to see the lodge to understand what I'm talking about. For anyone who loves mountains (and I have been going through serious mountain withdrawal here in flat Florida), this is about as good as it gets. If the lodge looks at all familiar to you, that's because it was used as the exterior for the Overlook Hotel in "The Shining" (the one with Jack Nicholson, not the miniseries). Even more fun!

I'm not sure where we're going to go after that. I picked up a pacific northwest guidebook with the remains of my birthday Barnes & Nobel money, so I can spend a few weekends finding interesting nooks and crannies to check out. I'm going to be meeting up with Jason and Lisa in Clemson this weekend, so we can do some planning then. Hopefully we'll all find interesting things to do without a horrendous amount of driving. And even if we do spend a large amount of time in the car, the scenery is going to be so awesome that I'm sure I won't mind. If nothing else, I can daydream about the trip while getting through a long Monday morning.

Wet and Wild Weekend

2009-03-29T22:53:00.003-04:00

So for those of you who are not part of the Florida Group, the title of this post may make things sound more exciting than they were ;). Wet and Wild is indeed the name of a water park in Orlando. It was Beth's birthday on Friday, so she, Daniel, Justin, Phil, and I all packed into Beth's Civic and drove to Orlando for a day of sunburn and water slides. Well, thanks to Beth's 70 spf spray-on sunblock it was far less of the first and far more of the second, but you all know what I'm talking about.

Of all the water parks I've been to, Wet and Wild was pretty decent. We ended up hitting seven rides, not counting the lazy river, because no one can reasonably say that a lazy river is a ride. The thing that made this park stand out for me was the large number of rides where you rode a tube down into some sort of enclosed whirlpool or giant funnel. Normally water park rides are the standard "ride a tube down a chute" type, but adding the giant spiny rooms definitely added fun. The best, or at least craziest, was one called "The Storm", or as Daniel calls it "The Toilet". Or "The Flusher", I don't remember exactly which, but you get the point. As you might be able to tell from this map (storm in the lower right corner), the ride is basically a chute that you slide down by yourself sans tube into a giant whirlpool that is suspended over basically a really deep hot tub. What the map doesn't convey is that the chute is at about a 45 degree angle and is quite long, so by the time you hit the whirlpool area you're going very fast. Even more so if, like some of us, you're on the heavy side. Once you hit the "bowl" things don't get much better because now you're spinning around with mist being sprayed on you, going fast enough you can barely lift your head, and you don't have a clue in hell which direction you're pointed. Just about the time you do figure out which way is up, you're dumped out of the bowl through a hole in the center that's about 4 feet above a deep pool. You have no control over how you come out of the bowl. I tried to get myself feet-first and managed to come out head-first and backwards both times. Don't let my description of it throw you off, though. In spite of injury to Justin, I think that was one of the most fun rides we went on all day.

After the park it was back into the Civic for the trip back to Melbourne to relax, take a shower, grab some food and great beer at Coasters and head back to Dan and Beth's for gift opening. I hope Beth agrees, but I think it was a pretty great day.

The Joys of Car Ownership

2009-03-24T09:25:00.004-04:00

Those of you who know me know that I come from a family that loves British cars. That is pretty much the only reason why I ended up driving a 1994 XJ6 Jag. Now most people's reaction to the fact that I drive a Jag is either "awesome, it's a jag!" or "wow, you must have piles of money sitting around!". Unfortunately the first one is true only some of the time, and the second one has yet to be true ever (I'm working on that one, though). But honestly I have a love-hate relationship with my Jag. On the one hand it's still a very nice car in spite of being 15 years old. It drives well, for the most part, and has done a great job of getting me from place to place in spite of my sometimes spotty maintenance. Anyone who says that Jags have terrible reliability hasn't owned one built after 1990. And if you have a newer one, JD Power and Associates should put your mind to rest! On the other hand, parts are expensive and sometimes hard to come by. I've had more than one part that was only available in re-manufactured form.

Case in point are the new front shocks that I'm in the process of replacing. Now if I had a standard car I might be able to walk out of Advance Auto Parts with a new shock for $15.99 a pop, assuming I'm being really cheap, of course. The Jag, however, needs shocks that run a whopping $185.00 a pop! But I bite the bullet and buy the things because, after all, it is cheaper to fix what you have than to buy something completely new. Of course, that price doesn't factor in having someone install them or, in my case, the time of installing them yourself. Lets just say that last night I decided that I was going to use my new welding setup to finally get the old nasty ones off and get my nice shiny new ones on, and 9 hours later I finally got the right side installed. I love working on cars at 2:30am on Monday (well, Tuesday I guess)! I'm sure my neighbors loved me banging on my suspension with a claw hammer at 2:30am as well. Hey, with British cars everyone gets in on the fun!

Fire!

2009-03-23T08:52:00.002-04:00

So although this may not be exciting to you non-mechanical types, I am now the proud owner of a new oxy acetylene welding setup! I set it up last night and had fun adjusting the flame and practicing how to turn it on and off without blowing myself up. Tonight I get to use it to replace the shocks in the Jag :)!

The Latest

2009-03-22T21:09:00.012-04:00

Ok, realistically I'm never going to finish the multi-part story that I started about my journey from Clemson to Florida, but I figured the least I could do was finally provide an update of general goings-on. Lets just say that I made it down here with only a minor car mishap in rural Georgia, and I've been enjoying my life, for the most part, these last 8 (almost 9, wow it goes fast) months.

Just to interrupt, I just met some Florida wildlife! I was sitting out on my porch, typing this post, and heard some crunching through the grass outside (in Florida, grass crunches). I ran to get my flashlight and started scanning the back yard for whatever was making this noise. The first thing I saw was a kind of nasty hairless tail, and I thought it was just a possum. But after I got closer and could see the rest of it it turned out to be an armadillo! I know that this is probably not exciting at all for anyone from Texas or Florida, or any other states where they are common, but for me this is exciting. The only place I've ever seen an armadillo is either stuffed or in a zoo. So anyway, here are pictures to document the experience.
Alright, back to normal. As I said, things have been going pretty well here since I moved down. Of course the first few weeks were tough. There were definitely a few days where I wondered what I had gotten myself into, and a few moments where I felt like running, but once I got settled things have gotten much better. My acclimation to the area was helped along by Justin, an engineering friend from Clemson, who just so happened to know a whole group of people down in this area. He started work down here two weeks after I did, so once he got settled in we started hanging out with what has come to be known as "the Florida Group" on weekends.

The Florida Group is made up of four couples and four single guys. Of the guys (coupled and uncoupled), all but two are Clemson grads. One of the non-Clemson guys is, strangely enough, from my hometown back in Illinois! Finally, someone else who knows about Beef-a-Roo ;). Two of the women are also Clemson alums, so you can guess who we're all cheering for during football season. Not like we ever expect to be that awesome. This is, after all, Clemson, and there's nothing that Clemson hates like winning too much. Hey, at least we've got a new coach. Anyway, back to the story...

So over these last months Justin, Phil (another Clemson guy who moved down after Justin), and I have become well integrated into the Florida Group. Most weekends we are at one of the couple's houses (they always host since they know that they can make edible food), either playing Rock Band, which is definitely a group favorite, or some board or card game. No matter what we do, there is always beer and fun is had by all.

Occasionally we do throw something crazy in for the weekend activity. For a while I, and sometimes Justin, would go play paintball on Saturdays. I even bought a used gun from the guy who hosted it, and it's definitely a good time. Not the cheapest weekend activity, but still fun and it gets me out of the house. That's fallen by the wayside a little recently, though, because the new field that they've been playing at is about a 45 minute drive from my house. It's fun, but I'm not that motivated to get out of bed every Saturday.

The other activity that comes up now and then is a rocket launch! One of the benefits of living on the east coast of Florida. Hey, if we can have mountains, or even hills, at least we get rockets. My first ever shuttle launch was a night launch, and it was pretty damn awesome. The only bummer was that we didn't actually hear anything, which was kind of strange because we weren't that far away from the pads. I've also seen two non-shuttle launches, one from the parking lot of the local civic center and one from my driveway. Yeah, yeah, you can be jealous now ;). Of course the Florida group is all engineers, or at least all the guys are, and so we are obligated to love rocket launches.

This last week was fantastic, though. There was a confluence of activities that made it extra fun. First, last weekend was our St. Patrick's Day party. That alone would be enough to make it special, but it was also the start of Clemson's spring break, and a whole bunch of Justin's friends decided to drive down for a Florida vacation. I knew a few of the people, but there were more that I didn't know, so it was fun to meet new people that, really, I should have met four years ago. Daniel, one of the Florida Group, also had his sister in town visiting, so it was fun meeting more of his family. All in all, the party was a wonderful mixture of Beth's (Daniel's wife) excellent cooking, drunkenness, entertaining stories, and Rock Band. Everything that St.Patrick's Day stands for.

To top the weekend off, and to bring my story back to a few paragraphs ago, there was also a shuttle launch! Sunday night I met Daniel, his sister, and Beth out at the beach to watch the dusk launch. Not quite as spectacular as the night launch (you don't get the whole night turned to day effect), but the sun setting made the rocket trail look awesome. See the pictures below for what I mean.

The rest of the week was back to work for me, but Justin took a few days off to spend time with the Clemson Contingent. They did lots of fun things that made me wish I didn't have to work, like go to the beach multiple times and generally run around and have lots of Florida-in-the-spring fun. The highlight though, at least for me, was getting out and using my telescope on Thursday night. You see, most of the Clemson Contingent are astronomy majors, so we got a fantastic tour of the heavens with our guide Ginger Bryngelson. I had never seen a binary star before! Well, at least not as two objects distinct enough that I could say "hey, that's a binary!". The week was capped off with beach volleyball (very bad, windy volleyball) and some attempts at swimming in the very rough surf with the gang, and then it was back to normal life.

So, this post has gone far longer than I expected, and if you're still reading then I applaud you! Enjoy the pictures, and I'm off to bed.

So apparently I am more dead than I thought...

2008-11-11T19:45:00.002-05:00

Or so it seems from this site.

Most of the things in my life have changed since my last post in April. I have finished my thesis, found a job, graduated, moved to Florida, started my job, and have begun building a new social network...in that order. Of course, this is way more activity than can be covered in one, or even two, posts, so I will be working on this continuing story whenever I get a chance. So, onwards.

For anyone who has never completed a thesis, it's really an amazing process. After working on a project for the better part of two years (or 2.5 in my case), and imagining that you will never actually finish, you get the whole thing wrapped up in four week mad scramble. The reason for this is because you eventually realize that you could, literally, spend the next 30 years working on the same project, and that if you're going to finish it might as well be soon. So you throw together whatever changes to your project that you need to make it fairly presentable, and then you spend the next three weeks hammering out what is essentially a 60-page lab report full of poor grammar and syntax that no one, in all likelihood, will read. Your adviser may read the whole thing through, if he's really bored, and you will never want to read the whole thing through because, for the love of god, you just want it to be over. Maybe some day you'll show it to your kids so they can be proud to have a father who could write something that was worth binding.

Along with the written thesis there is a presentation. As with all presentations in the civilized world, it is a Power Point presentation. Your task is to distill your 60 pages of excruciating detail to 20 slides that you hope will either keep your audience awake or put them to sleep, depending on how worthwhile you think your "research" was.

Once the presentation is over and your audience has been roused from their naps, everyone is asked to leave the room and you must face your committee alone. As I neglected to mention earlier, your committee is made up of your adviser, who you desperately hope is on your side, and two committee members, who are supposed to be in related fields and who, you hope, know almost nothing about what you just presented. You hope this because then the questions they are about to ask you will be very simple and low-level, such as "what does this variable mean?", and not questions like "why did you use the Lucas-Kanade method and not the Valenzetti-Linstrom method?", at which point you will fight the urge to run and/or pass out because you have no idea what the fuck the Valenzetti-Linstrom method is or why your adviser didn't mention this earlier.

However, no matter what you seem to answer, your committee eventually decides that you did well enough for them, congradulate you, and present you with at least 50,000 new corrections to your thesis. Once these are done, however, and everyone's signature has dried on the appropriate forms, you can officially be done!

So that is what I did.

Next time, whenever that may be, I'll relate the joys of drug testing in the middle of a job interview.

I am not dead...

2008-04-13T03:36:00.002-04:00

In spite of what my lack of activity on this site may have let you to believe, I am not, in fact, dead. I am, however, the next-best thing: trying to graduate. I think part of the process of graduate school is realizing that it is not at all what you thought it would be like when you decided to postpone outside life for another few years. I know that I had imagined it similar to undergrad, except that you get to pick a neat topic and do a really big project on it.

For those of you who are like me and occasionally need a kick in the butt - otherwise known as a "deadline" - you will understand how annoying it is to realize that you've wasted the better part of a year doing work that, under different circumstances, should have taken you a month. The key here is money. If you have an adviser that pays you, then he / she has a vested interest in getting you to do your work on time. This is usually because there is someone above him / her who is ultimately paying the bills.

If you are like me, and get no money from your adviser, then you tend to be left free to float, for as long as you like, in self-imposed research limbo. This, combined with work that pays the bills, and consequently has a more valid claim on my time, means that I'll be graduating just a little later than I had hoped. The good news is that I now have my motivation in the form of a job! I have accepted an offer to work in sunny Melbourne, Florida, starting at the end of June, so if I don't get everything done and in by then I'm screwed.

Alright, that's the update for now. It's 3:47am, and time for the sleeping.

G'night.

What Winter SHOULD Be

2007-12-24T13:53:00.000-05:00

Update: We're having 5-7 inches of snow here today, so I ran out and took some more pictures. Too many to post here, so just check out the album.

For all you people down in sunny South Carolina, I just wanted to put up some pictures of what winter is supposed to look like ;). And not just for a day, either. This is what winter is supposed to look like until about March, at which point everything will be slushy until mid-April.

So most of this break has been doing Christmas and family stuff. My parent's waited to get a tree and do most of the decorating until I got back, so it's been busy. Plus, we went into Chicago for a night and attended the live recording of "Wait, wait...don't tell me", which is a quiz show in NPR. Very funny, so if you're ever in Chicago on a Thursday night and looking for a cheap date, give it a try.

I was happy when I flew in because there was plenty of snow on the ground. However, since then it's rained, then snowed, then rained again, and so right now there's slightly less snow on the ground than in these pictures, but I'm hoping it will snow again before I have to head back south. From the picture on the right, you can see that we had a few days of ice fog which made driving extra fun, but did allow my nephew, Matt, to run around the tree farm pretending he was in "The Mist".

Now that Robbie's up in Rockford things should be more fun. We've already tried, unsuccessfully so far, so build a replacement Wii sensor bar, since he left his in Peoria, but I think I've tracked down the problem. Once that's fixed there will be plenty of Wii fun to be had.

With that, I will leave everyone to their Christmas-y fun. I hope everyone had a great break and I'll see you all in 2008!

Finally

2007-12-10T00:06:00.000-05:00

After many months, I've finally managed to get a short story up on Robbie's blog, Wordy Me. I've been trying to write a long story for a while but, failing at that, a short story will have to do. This one was inspired by some interesting piano/violin music I heard on Echoes (with John Diliberto). For anyone interested, the artist is Ludovico Einaudi and the CD is called Divenire. Anyway, I hope you enjoy the story, and be sure to read Robbie's stuff while you're over there. If there's one thing that I will never be good at it's poetry, and he's got some good stuff over there. So enjoy and have a good holiday!

The Latest

2007-11-30T00:37:00.000-05:00

So yeah, it's been a long time since I've written here, so I feel somewhat compelled to give those who do occasionally look at this site something new to read. Actually, read is about all I've been doing lately...aside from the usual cycle of research and procrastination that is the spice of graduate student life.

The first book I breezed through was Rich Dad/Poor Dad, by Robert T. Kiyosaki. This book continues the line of non-fiction that I have been reading lately. Although the subject of this book is investing and wealth-creation, Mr. Kiyosaky goes about getting his points across in a different way. Rather than give the reader a how-to in each chapter, he relates his experiences as a child growing up with "two" fathers - one rich and one poor - and what he learned from them regarding money. Mostly, this focuses on the rich dad (actually his best friend's father) and how he taught a young Robert how to think about money properly. This narrative takes up a good part of the beginning of the book, with the last half consisting of Mr. Kiyosaki's discussion of how he currently operates and things about investing and wealth-management, as well as a few hints/tips for people interested in getting started or who are trying to teach these skills to their children.
Overall, this is an excellent motivational book. After reading it, I really wanted to start doing everything the book said. Mr. Kiyosaki focuses his attention on the real-estate market, but that is because that's what he knows. The thought processes in the book could be applied to a vast array of markets. However, this is not a book for the motivated person who is now looking for a how-to guide. But, as consolation, the author provides a list of recommended reading in the back of the book to cover this. All in all, a great read for anyone out there interested in developing wealth-building skills who just needs some motivation.

The second series that I've gotten into is the "His Dark Materials" series - a trilogy by Philip Pullman. The new movie, "The Golden Compass", is adapted from the first book in the series, and the trailer for that movie was what convinced me to pick up the book.
For those unfamiliar with the story, it follows the adventures of 11-year-old Lyra and her daemon, Pantalaimon (in her world, which is a parallel of ours, everyone has a daemon...essentially a part of their soul in animal form that travels with them at all times). Her earth is identical to ours in most respects, but they are at a 19th century/steampunk level of technology, and there are far more strange creatures and people than we have in reality. It is an adventure/quest story, not unlike the Lord of the Rings (although quite a bit shorter and you don't have to hear about Sam and Frodo for half a book), and although it was obviously written for children and teenagers, it's still a good, quick, exciting read.

Well, that pretty much sums it up - at least as far as reading material. Time to head to bed and dream of the end of the semester!

Mmmmmm....cake

2007-10-16T13:44:00.000-04:00

For anyone who hasn't played the new Valve game "Portals", you should play it. It's short (approx. 4 hours) but awesome. The best part, other than some awesome portal-jumping action, is the computer and her dry, dark sense of humor. The computer also sings you a song at the end, which has been stuck in my head since I finished the game two days ago. So go, play it, or at least listen to the song, and delight in the glow of Portals! And remember, keep trying till you run out of cake.
~TheStoph

Yearning to Breath Free

2007-09-29T22:50:00.000-04:00

So someone recently sent me an article from CNN.com about a Guatemalan man who has worked illegally in the US for the last 11 years. He saved his money over all those years so that he could take it back to buy land and a home for his family in Guatemala. Unaware of US customs regulations, he attempted to go through airport security with his savings in a suitcase - all $59,000 of it in cash. For anyone who is familiar with US customs, you cannot leave or enter the country with more than $10,000 in cash without declaring it to customs so that it can be taxed. So, in the end the entire sum of this man's savings was confiscated and he is in the process of being deported. He has filed suit against the US, but the likelihood of getting his money back is slim.

This story demonstrates some of the issues that arise with immigration. By all rights, since the man was here illegally, the government is entirely in the right when taking his money and kicking him out of the country. Of course, most people, including myself, believe that this punishment far outweighs the crime. After all, this man did not gain any money through illicit means. He provided a valuable service as a dishwasher for 11 years, and was financially prudent enough to save $59,000 over those 11 years - a feat that most Americans working at the same job would be unable to match. However, because he failed to jump through the hoops we have set up to keep non-Americans out of the workforce he has no right to his earnings. This is the law as it stands.

On the other hand, I do believe that there is a need for boarder and port protection. Not to control immigration, or protect the American workforce, but to keep out possible security threats. As much as I would like to support completely free human movement across international boarders, there are simply too many people who wish us harm currently to safely allow that. Of course, I believe that a change of our foreign policy could change that, but that's another debate.

At any rate, I'd like to get people's opinions about this story and immigration in general. Post your replies and see what people think! I will post a link to the story referenced above if I can find it.

G'night,
TheStoph

I found the story: http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/09/27/immigrant.money/index.html?iref=mpstoryview

Free Market Cure

2007-09-10T00:07:00.000-04:00

Here is an answer to all the people who tell me Canadians are happy with their health care system and that ours should be just like it: freemarketcure.com

I haven't read through the whole site yet, just watched the videos, but they're very enlightening. Enjoy.

The Best Movie Series Ever

2007-08-29T23:14:00.000-04:00

I just started watching Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade for the first time in many months and remembered that Indiana Jones is the best movie series ever. Some may argue that Star Wars should take that spot, but I counter with the fact that Indiana Jones has Harrison Ford AND Nazis. The Empire may be menacing, but at least the Nazis were real. So for now I'm going to sit back and enjoy the exploits of the world's greatest archaeologist.

Milton Friedman's "Capitalism and Freedom"

2007-08-29T20:53:00.000-04:00

I recently had a conversation with a professor, herself a fellow Libertarian, about the challenges of defending Libertarian philosophies against the more Statist ideas that have come to pervade modern society. On the surface the ideas of Social Security, public housing programs, worker unions, and licensing all sound, not just harmless, but necessary. The fact of the matter is that these and many similar government programs are, at best, ineffective and at worse hurt those they claim to help.

What Milton Friedman offers in his book "Capitalism and Freedom" is an in-depth examination of many such topics in terms of their economic and social impact. Unlike many authors who write in support of capitalism, Friedman examines each topic with no pre-concieved notions. This allows him to weigh each argument and give reasons why, in general, capitalism is the most effective and efficient means, rather than simply talking about how great it is.

Even though it's not exactly a page-turner, and its 202 pages took me quite a while to get through, I would highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in capitalism and the economic justification for it. The book is especially interesting because it was written in 1962. Friedman predicts the expansion of the government into new areas, such as medical care, so it's fun to see how his predictions have come to pass, and whether he was correct or not.

So, my verdict: A good read no matter what your political and economic leanings. At the very least it will get you thinking through why things are they way they are and if there might just be other, better options.

The Sphere Expands

2007-08-21T17:19:00.001-04:00

For those readers who might be looking for something more...how you say...abstract, head over to my good friend Berto's page at http://wordyme.blogspot.com/. Enjoy, comment, and be relaxed by his ramblings.

A United Failure

2007-08-19T12:52:00.000-04:00

If my recent experiences with a certain airline (United) are any indication of the state of the industry, the glory days of train travel should be returning soon. I say this because I have been flying essentially the same route, from Greenville to Chicago, for the last 6 or 7 years, and the service has gotten progressively worse. At first it was simply that they stopped handing out peanuts and pretzels on their flights, and then that the flight attendants were a bit more surly than usual, but lately it's gotten worse. My experiences on my latest trip attest to problems, not just at the customer level (which have always been there), but at the upper levels of the company.

I should start by saying that up until now I have been remarkably lucky in my travel experiences. I had rarely had a flight delayed, never mind canceled. Well, reality has caught up. My flight up to Chicago went through several stages of disaster. At first it was just that the flight was delayed by some non-weather issue in Chicago. Then our plane arrived, but with no pilot. Then the flight that was supposed to have our pilots arrived, but with only a co-pilot. Finally, out of the goodness of his heart, the pilot on the last flight from Chicago to Greenville agreed to take us back to Chicago rather than head to bed. So 5 hours, and many ups and downs later, we managed to take off.

"Only 5 hours?", you say. True, that's not too bad in the history of flight problems. The issue is that this was all supposedly caused by the original pilot getting lost on the way to O'Hare. Never mind the fact that getting lost on the way to O'Hare is like getting lost on the way to Lake Michigan, the fact that one pilot getting lost caused a 5 hour delay is evidence that the whole operation is operating by the seat of their pants. In most operations, they have these things called "contingency plans" that are put into effect when something doesn't go right. Obviously, this is a foreign concept to United. Then, unlike the restaurant industry, where you can get up and leave if your food is 2 hours late, the airlines feel comfortable letting you sit in the gate for however long without even a hint of compensation. It was only due to the wonderful gate agent, who ordered pizza for the lot of us, that we had any dinner at all.

That brings me to my return flight, which I will try to make short. Last time I flew from Chicago to Greenville my flight had been canceled due to weather. Since we are having thunderstorms AGAIN, I decided to call and move my reservation to an earlier flight, just to be safe. First, I had called earlier and been told that I would be charged a $25 fee for this change. Fine, whatever. When I called again, not 2 hours later, I was told that it was actually $50. I grumbled but paid it anyway. When I got back home 10 minutes later and checked my flight status I found that the NEW flight that I was on had been canceled. I called customer service immediately where I was told that yes, the flight was canceled and that I had been booked on a flight for TOMORROW. Why not tonight? It was full. Apparently the people who just switched flights are the last to be re-booked. I guess I'm lucky that they re-booked me at all. The frosting on the cake is that they informed me that even though mere minutes had passed between being confirmed on a flight for a (higher-than-original) $50, that money could not be refunded. Frustrated, I said 'thank you' to the customer service woman, hung up, and promptly funneled my anger into a long complaint email to their other customer service department. I would have called, but of course they aren't open on weekends.

So, at this point I am dangerously close to becoming one of "those people" who yell at the poor gate agent who can't do a damn thing about it anyway. At the very least I hope to get my $50 back and, if I'm really lucky, they might give me a complimentary bag of pretzels on this flight. So my advice for anyone who's considering investing in the airline industry: save your money and invest in my new railroad. Trust me, it's the wave of the future.

Northern Wilds

2007-08-13T22:20:00.000-04:00

So I'm up here enjoying a week of family vacation in the wilds of Northern Wisconsin before starting a new semester. Right now we're up visiting my father's ancestral home of Athens, Wisconsin, which is several hours of endless pine forests north of Madison. It's neat to see where the family came from and all, but I will be happy to get down to the Dells, where we're spending a few days relaxing, playing various board games, and perhaps visiting a few dozen water and adventure golf parks. Anyone who has been to the Dells knows exactly what I'm talking about. Also, for those of you who have never been north of the Mason-Dixon line, it does get hot up here, as I've attested, but it's only about 78, so I'm very happy to get a break from the oven that is South Carolina right now.

Anyway, that's the gist of it. This trip may also give me an excuse to learn the, no doubt insanely easy, task of posting pictures onto this site. Until later, goodnight and good luck.

P.S. I was extra bored, so I decided to make a map showing our location in Wisconsin (red dot). Enjoy!

Ron Paul: The Libertarian's Repbublican

2007-08-09T21:30:00.000-04:00

The tough part about being a Libertarian is that it gets really old losing all those presidential elections. Every once in a while it would be great if a candidate appeared that us classical liberals agreed with AND had a snowball's chance in hell of winning.

Well, our day has arrived! Meet Ron Paul. As his website will tell you many, many times "Congressman Ron Paul is the leading advocate for freedom in our nation's capital". The nice things is, unlike most plugs for politicians, this statement actually seems to be true. Although I don't agree with him on all counts, he is, by far, the best candidate for those who have Libertarian leanings but could never quite see the point of voting for a 3rd party or those Libertarians who at least want to make a big step in the right direction.

Unfortunately, all those things that makes him politically attractive also make him unpopular with the Republican mainstream. The strange thing about it is that he represents what the Republicans were and should be, and for that he is hated (or at least strongly disliked) by others in his party. This, of course, gives him a slim chance of gaining his party's ticket for President, but there's always hope. But, after all, I'm a Libertarian, so I'm used to supporting long-shots.

So anyway, go to his website (www.ronpaul2008.com, if you missed it), read what he's about, watch some of the videos, and if you like what you see, let people know. There's actually talk of creating a Students for Ron Paul organization on campus if there is enough support, so you never know what may happen. At the very least you'll come out more informed than when you went in, and that's never a bad thing.

Dawn Breaks

2007-08-08T08:07:00.000-04:00

After months and months of having created a site and never written anything there, I decided it was time to have a founding post. Of course, as is usually the case, I had some grand plan in mind when I created this site, on a whim, at 2 a.m. And, of course, that plan immediately went out the window...hence the several month gap between then and now. So, in the interests of at least getting some use out of what I created, I've decided this site will be about whatever the hell I want.

Anyone who knows a bit of German might think that my original idea was to make this some kind of site about photography or some such related topic. It wasn't. I called this site die Dunkelkammer ("The Darkroom" according to BableFish) because it is a cool-sounding German word that happens to have my name in it. Outside of that, there wasn't much thought put into it. When I had the idea to make a site - at 2 a.m. mind you - I believed that somehow having my own space on the Internet would give me this vast audience to which I could rant about various political and social injustices and create righteous indignation amongst my readers. Two things I realized upon waking up the next day: 1. There are enough Blogs on the internet that you could read them from now until the end of time, and 2. I don't have any readers.

Well, the first one I can't do a damn thing about, but the second one I hope to change, at least a little bit. So, to whomever may be reading this, you've taken the first step on what will probably be a not-very-exciting journey into whatever random nonsense I put up here, which, if you know me personally, you're probably sick of anyway. All I can say is enjoy, and for God's sake, whatever you do, don't, under any circumstances...