Current mood: Sparkly Dinosaur Birthday Card

Never forget.

Yes, I am that nerdy

So I’ve had my car for awhile now, its a 2006 Honda Civic, it came to me certified used at around 14,000 miles in the summer of 2007. 

It has seen the following and then some: many a road trip to all sort of adventures, including 16 hour nearly non-stop voyages from Georgia to NY, two moves, chickens, coal transport (we burn anthracite coal and 800lbs of it does fit in the trunk!), my awesome friends, conventions, hail-storms, off-roading (and getting stuck in the middle of a state park), sliding off the interstate during a blizzard (no damage to me or the car!), numerous repairs that were thankfully under the warranty, repairs that decided to happen after the warranty expired, a new windshield, and dents/scrapes that come with owning a car for a million years in a northern climate.

In a moment of supreme geekery I decided that I needed to have my odometer read exactly 123456 789.0. This is actually a lot harder then I thought it would be, mostly because my travel for my job can go from zero to driving up and down portions of our county. I had to be careful, routes were planned, math was done.

I did it though, having to stop on a blind corner underneath an overpass with my hazards on like a weirdo, trying to take a picture of my dash:

^ta-da - Look it’s rah-bop‘s Titmouse!

Adventures!

So I have very often stumbled upon things in my day to day that kind of strike me as odd, or super old and out of place...

...So I started taking pictures to document these adventures in weird. 

If the label is hard to read, that metal canister contains 99% Isopropyl Alcohol  (C3H8O) (Dilute for Rubbing Alcohol).

We all know from chemistry that this is a lovely Alcohol that burns clear and generally smells wonderful. I did not experiment with it.

Weird: 5/10

Dangerous: 10/10

Old: 9/10 (1963-1973?)

I will try and make this a weekly sort of thing, as I find more weird stuff!

Phantasy Star Online

Lets talk about video games! Because if there is one topic that I've a marginally good knowledge of...it's video games!

In the height of the Sega Dreamcast a wonderful thing was released! Just near the end of January in 2001 this amazing time sink was put on the shelves and I loved it immediately.

I was not big into the Phantasy Star series being a nintendo kid and I missed a fair number of the references within but man did I loose many...MANY afternoons and late nights to this game. Apart from the odd final fantasy game I had never spent this much time glued to a television.

Ahem. Anyways. It had a lovely single player mode but the meat and potatoes of the game was the ability to connect online into a global lobby and literally chat with people half a world away. And...if you were so lucky to have one of...

These! You were in the best position to complain and motivate your fellow players.

It was an amazing experience, you could group up with a maximum of four people to complete quests or just grind from level to level. The story didn't make too much sense, mostly because I might of either just breezed through that part or it was referencing old games, but hooo boy it was fun. I mean really! The first level boss was a dragon!

It wasn't without its faults though! On release, broadband was just in its infancy in a fair number of places so you had to rely on the dial-up modem with in the dreamcast....which was highly subject to a parent picking up the phone and interrupting a CRITICAL battle between the forces of good and evil.

Me: *Battling the hell out of something with three other random strangers on the hardest difficulty mode*

Game: YOU ARE NEARLY DEAD. ALSO. LAG...FREEZE.

Other room: I NEED TO USE THE PHONE *BRRRRZZT WHINE, MODEM DEATH NOISES*

Game: *Carrier Loss, Disconnected!*

Me: NoOoooOOOOoooOOOO

I wouldn't be surprised if I put more then 800 hours into playing and I'll have to fire up my dreamcast to see exactly how much of my life I lost to this fantastic game.

Even the soundtrack is great:

Its worth taking a look at just for the single player since I'm sure it's either fallen into the abandonware pile, or its cheep enough to just locate a copy since it ended up on the GameCube and on the PC.

Let me start by saying that I am afraid of bees, pretty allergic even, so by getting mere inches from them was a really terrifying experience. Even if they are too super busy/never hardly ever sting/can't sting/won't sting I still have that terrified wiggle in my brain.

But, bees have cute faces and I really wanted to see what my new superphone could do when it comes to taking photos at close range. (Its a Galaxy S5 for those interested!)

So I present to you some bee photography.

This might be my theme now, bugs and stacking rocks.

Okay, so. Rocks. I like to stack them and make cairns, or maybe I just have some form of rock ESP and they tell me just how they want to be stacked. 

Anyways. Earlier post recap. The stacking occured here, in Harkness Memorial State Park, CT. And I really didn't think I was doing anything cool, but Nambroth was awesome enough to capture what I had done. 

It was funny, I had gotten done with one stack and people were literally crossing the beach just to snag a photo and parents where shooing children away from 'art'. Not to belittle the fact or opinions on the matter but I've never really considered myself an artist.

Enjoy the rocks. There will be moderate to severe delays in posting more rocks as I am not near rocks that wish to be stacked.

So it turns out I like to stack rocks. And this is a thing that has been going on for a long, long time. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cairn)

Nambroth Took pictures of what I did over memorial day weekend while I was out visiting my parents. This is located within Harkness Memorial State Park, I'd put up the page but it has no information about the small beach area there. I'll post up a map and more photos later!