Having been at my job for more than 5 years (6 and a half actually), I'm now eligible for 3 weeks of vacation time a year. Our fiscal year runs from the first of March through the end of February, and we've got a "use it or lose it" vacation policy. So what that means to me is that I have to use up my remaining 13 days of vacation time within the next 5 months.

I typically spend a week at Christmas with my family in Utah. Company holidays are December 24, 25, 31, and January 1. Since Christmas Eve is a Monday, it would only cost me 3 vacation days (December 26/27/28) to be off from December 22 until January 1.

Bottom line is I've got about 2 weeks of vacation time to kill, and I want to travel. Other than caring for a cat, I've found myself fairly free of commitments lately. Or I should say I don't have any more important commitments from which I can't easily excuse myself for a couple of weeks.

My passport is current, and I've decided I'm brave enough to travel to a foreign country by myself. A foreign country with hotels and a high percentage of English speakers would be preferable.

I've talked to a few people I know and have gotten some stories and suggestions. Pooterbug even offered to let me to stay with her and her husband in the Netherlands for a few days. That's a really great and generous offer, and would make for a nice "home base" with friendly people that could give suggestions on what to do, where to go, and how to get there.

I'm not opposed to an adventure and taking off on my own though. One thing I've heard is you don't need to rent a car - just find a hotel within walking distance of a train or subway station.

Someday, I'd like to visit Iceland. But not in the winter. I have my heart set on northern Europe. Does anybody have any favorite countries they've been to that they'd suggest? Places to see? Places to avoid? Things to take? I'm open to any and all suggestions.

When I came to work on Monday, I noticed one of the decorative stone pillars along the building's sidewalk was damaged. I just noticed it from a distance as I was coming into the building. When I was leaving for lunch that day, there were some people milling around the area, so I walked over to see what was going on. There were tire tracks on the sidewalk, there was a lot of the stone that was broken off or damaged, and there was a plastic light cover and several plastic connector pins lying on the ground. One of our IT guys said he'd been looking at archives from the security cameras and said a black Ford Explorer had crashed into the building - going at a fairly good speed. He tried to explain what had happened, but it didn't make a lot of sense. After seeing the videos below, it still doesn't make a lot of sense.

The first video below is the longest, and shows the entire time from when the truck entered the property, stopped for about a minute, then quickly left (over the grass), through a neighboring parking area, back across the grass, and slammed into the building. A man and a woman got out, seemed to be arguing, and then the man got back in. Someone was trying to get the woman to get back in, but she didn't. Whoever was driving backed up, then drove over the curb as they were leaving. The woman walked off in the same direction.

If the truck had come in about 1 foot to the left, he would have missed the column completely, gone through the glass and ended up parked in my boss's office.

When you watch the first video below, look at the people after the crash. Who was driving? Who was in the front seat? Was anybody in the back? Did the driver ever really get out? Were there two or three people in the truck? Who opened and closed each door? Who drove away? Why didn't the girl get back in the car? Do you think the driver picked her up on the side of the building, out of camera range?

There's no right and wrong answers, we're pretty perplexed too. Unfortunately even at the full resolution of these cameras, the images aren't clear enough to make out the license place number. But if you see a black Ford Explorer driving around Plano Texas with a smashed in front right side, let me know, okay? I've got some pieces that belong to it.

This is the full-length video from camera 6.

This is from camera 5, showing the truck entering the parking area and stopping.

This is from camera 5, showing the truck hurrying away from where it had stopped.

Here's the "low bandwidth" version from camera 6, showing just the part where the truck comes over the median and crashes into the building.

This one is from camera 17, which is inside the building looking out the doorway. It shows the truck driving by after the crash, and a few seconds later, the girl can be seen walking by.

Here's a third sequence from camera 5, showing the wrecked vehicle driving away.

1. Leave me a comment saying, "Interview me."
2. I will respond by asking you five questions. I get to pick the questions.
3. You post the questions and your answers on your blog.
4. You can include this explanation and offer to interview other people too.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you ask them five questions.

My Interview with BoB tHeCoW

1. How old were you when you embraced your geekiness?

   Wow, I don't know. I guess I started using "Geek in Texas" sometime after I moved to Texas in 1988. My dad was a college math professor, so I used to get pretty good tutoring in math. I took a computer class as a junior in high school. We used a teletype machine to access the computer at the university, and punched Holerinth cards to create Fortran batch jobs that the teacher took to the school district offices to submit. In college, I intended to major in computer science, but realized after the third year that I only needed 4 more hours of credit to get a BS in math, so I took an easy math class and finished after 3 1/2 years with a double major. I guess I've kind of been a geek ever since then.

2. If you could have any dream job anywhere what would you be doing?

   My previous job was pretty stressful and we all worked a lot of hours. All that work really paid off in the long run, but I really prefer my current job. It's much more laid back, a little more low-tech, not much travel, and a reasonable number of hours. As for the "anywhere" part, I'd probably rather be a little further north. This is my 20th summer in Texas, and I'm still not used to the heat. I much prefer a climate where there are four seasons, about 3 months each. I also really miss the mountains. So I guess my dream job would be doing about the same as I'm doing now, but in a cooler, more mountainous place.

3. How many people have you met irl after first meeting them on the internet? How often would you say their personalities matched up?

   This has to go all the way back to my late teenage years when CB was popular. I grew up in Salt Lake, and there were a group of us that hung out on Channel 23. We even had a place we called "the circle" up on the side of the mountain where we hung out. It was at the top of a new subdivision on the side of the mountain. They'd paved the roads, but didn't have many houses built yet. It was up there pretty high, and we could see the entire valley. We could even see cars driving around the subdivision, and we could give them directions to come up and find us. Anyway, during that time, I got the chance to meet quite a few people in person that I'd only talked to previously. There were some surprises, but mainly based on looks, not personality. When you talk to someone a lot, you tend to get a picture in your mind of what they look like. So I tried to avoid making that mental picture.

   Flash forward to when I was living in Oregon and started running a BBS on a TRS-80 Model III with a 300 baud modem and homemade software. Ward Christensen created the XModem protocol. I incorporated that into my BBS and gained the ability to share software. That was the beginning of computer networking for me. Later I moved to North Carolina and discovered Fidonet. By 1986 I had my node number. Netmail, echomail, Seadog, Fidoterm, ARC, Policy, and modems that started getting faster and faster. I met several of the people from Raleigh that were in Fidonet, but I was the only node over in Chapel Hill. When I moved to Texas, I got a new node number. I wrote quite a bit of software - EZPoint, Msg, Flea. The local Fidonet group used to get together on a monthly basis for a "Pizza Party" on a Saturday afternoon. We'd alternate between a Dallas and a Fort Worth location, so a lot of us got to know each other IRL. I'm still a member of Fidonet to this day. The BBS is gone, but BinkleyTerm still runs constantly and connects to my echomail "feed" every night (hi, Paul).

   There's a Usenet newsgroup called dfw.singles. Some of the regulars there would occasionally meet up at a restaurant or bar. It was a sad day when Amy moved to Arizona. She did such a good job organizing the events, finding good locations, and motivating people to show up. I met a few people through Yahoo Personals too. Some good experiences, some bad. But that's a whole different blog, I think.

   And I've met a few people from 360 too, and those have all been good experiences. I guess with pictures and some heartfelt blogs, you get to know what a person is like pretty well. I've even recognized the people I've met from here before they introduced themselves.

4. How would your ex girlfriend describe you?

   She'd probably say I'm a jerk, an a$$hole, and an anal retentive bastard. Oh wait, that's the *other* ex-girlfriend. Ooops. So, we're talking about Lucky Lisa. Here's her testimonial:

   A wonderful friend that will always mean the world to me! Cute, funny, smart, witty, and the best movie partner around! Luv ya Geek! Hugs!

5. How many dvd's do you have? Yes you have to count and which are your top 5?

   Whew. I'm glad I had some time to do the counting. I guess I've become a DVD collector. Instead of seeing new releases in the theater, I wait until it comes out on DVD and buy it. The pictures below are of my cabinet, which supposedly holds 200 DVDs (I've got more than that crammed in there), and the shelves in the living room, where I've been storing the overflow and the box sets. I really enjoy buying the TV show box sets and watching them on my own schedule, commercial-free. The total I came up with was 593. It breaks down like this:

   • 309 movies (not counting "bonus discs")
   • 284 discs of TV shows:
     • 6 SouthPark Seasons 1-2
     • 34 "24" Seasons 1-5
     • 20 Sopranos Seasons 1-5
     • 20 Seinfeld Volumes 1-5
     • 4 3rd Rock from the Sun Season 1
     • 4 Frasier Final Season
     • 8 Grey's Anatomy Seasons 1-2
     • 3 Home Improvement Season 2
     • 14 House Seasons 1-3
     • 2 Jeff Foxworthy Season 1
     • 12 Joan of Arcadia Seasons 1-2
     • 20 Northern Exposure Seasons 1-6
     • 1 The Office Season 1
     • 8 Melrose Place Season 1
     • 41 Friends Seasons 1-10 plus Final show
     • 40 Everybody Loves Raymond Seasons 1-8
     • 23 Felicity Seasons 1-4
     • 24 Will & Grace Seasons 1-6

   Top Five? That's a tough one. I just looked them over and picked ones that jumped out at me. I ended up with six, and couldn't pick one to eliminate. So sue me. If you were to ask me the same question next month, I'd probably pick different ones.

   1. Pulp Fiction
   2. The Breakfast Club
   3. Office Space
   4. The Pursuit of Happyness
   5. Hair
   6. Crash

(Click image then "ALL SIZES" for a larger view)

(Links within this entry will open in a new window.)

Last month 24 men from my church drove to the Men's Conference at MO-Ranch. I rode with a gentleman named Gordon Green, who is a medical doctor. His wife Jeanne works with expectant mothers.

Listening to Gordon's stories on the way back was interesting. He described an article he'd written on the history of television in east Texas.

He also talked about what his son David was doing. I joined the church in 1992, and I remember watching a movie that David had made. It was a short "art" film that was scheduled to be shown at the Sundance Film Festival. I don't think I ever met David, and I remember not being very impressed with the movie, but being impressed with his ability to make a movie. At the time, he was taking some cinematography classes at the college level, and the movie we watched was a class project.

Over the years, I've heard about some of the work that David has been doing. He currently has a house in Louisiana and in Colorado, but spends most of his time living in an apartment that he rents near Hollywood. Gordon talked about how he and his wife had recently spent some time in California and got to see David doing some of the filming for Pineapple Express, which is due to be released next year. Gordon said it wasn't the type of movie he liked, but he'd watch it anyway, since he knew the director. :-)

David has his own page on IMDB, an entry in Wikipedia, and of course a blog where you can keep up with the latest.

What impressed me the most about what he's doing is hearing that he's been signed to write the screenplay of the John Grisham nonfiction book The Innocent Man: Murder and Injustice in a Small Town. Not only is he writing the screenplay, he'll be directing the movie for George Clooney's production company. How's that for name dropping? Seems like David's gone big time.

There are even some rumors being reported about this, and IMDB already has a page for The Innocent Man, which is scheduled for release in 2009.

Here's my new setup... My new project is to "rip" all my existing LPs and cassettes (the ones that play) to disk, clean them up, and burn CDs. I've dragged a computer in and hooked it into my sound system and TV. Obviously, it's not very functional. The mouse is USB but the keyboard is a standard PS/2 type. I've got a USB hub that I can put on the table, and connect in the mouse, but I don't have a USB keyboard. I do have a little USB-PS/2 adapter thingy, but it doesn't seem to work. I'd like to have the mouse and the keyboard on the table in front of the couch.

So I'm looking for suggestions. Should I buy a USB keyboard? Is something wrong with my USB-PS/2 adapter and I should be able to make that work? Is there some kind of wireless or IR solution that wouldn't require a cord (or two) to run across the floor? The wireless mice and keyboards I've used in the past don't seem to work too well beyond about 2 feet - have they improved recently? Any suggestions are welcome.

Some pictures from last weekend...

Okay, I know what you're thinking... "But Geek's not old enough to be a grandpa!" I know, I thought the same thing. But this morning at 8:20, I was proven wrong. Apparently, I really *am* old enough to be a grandpa.

This is one of the first pictures taken of Cheyarah Nicole.

Here's one of her with her mother: