The Wishing Machine

Considering trying something a little crazy.

2008-12-08T20:41:00.002-05:00

So I don't think it's a huge secret that I'm fairly unhappy with my career as of late. (Notice I didn't say my job. Maybe more on that later.)
That being said, let's explore my options. I have a couple of passions.
-Technology and invention
-Debate, politics, investigation, and law
I do really love the technology field, but I think I might look into going back to school for a law degree. I could always do something tech-related on the side or just as a hobby. It might be nice to actually make a difference somehow. I have a few reservations, though.
I'm 25. I would be in my early 30s by the time I got my degree. How long should one expect to "work your way up" after graduating with a law degree? When do you pick your specialization? I assume it is after you graduate.

Anyway, just something I've been kicking around in the back of my mind. I plan on doing some research, and possibly talking to the counselors at the University and garnering opinions. We'll see what happens.

A few weeks in the making..

2008-05-01T12:09:00.003-04:00

A couple of weeks ago, Stacy and I went to see one of our favorite bands, Iron & Wine in concert at the Variety Playhouse in Atlanta.

It was a great show! They are a very good live band, and the venue had the best sound I've ever heard at a concert.

That's pretty much the whole of the mini-review part of this post, because I mainly just wanted to say that if you're at all interested, and you would like to hear an awesome show, head over to playedlastnight.com and you can listen to the samples of the songs that were played that night, and buy the whole concert if you liked it. Pretty cool, huh?

Our new house

2008-04-11T14:59:00.000-04:00

So I suppose every person that reads this (all three of you) already knows the big news, but....

WE'VE MOVED!

We are now living in this cute little farm house out in the middle of nowhere, consequently on the same street as the house I grew up on.

The house is a ~105 year old farm house, which has its quirks, but we're growing to love it. I'll give another update with more pictures of the inside once we get all of our crap out of boxes.

The best part of the house is the area. We live on a road that's only used by the people that live on it (maybe 10-12 or so), so there's never any traffic. We have a stream and a dam next to the house as well, which is always fun. Our property is a little over 2 acres (you can see some of the front yard in the third picture.)

Argos absolutely loves it! No more being on a chain for him, though if you look at the second picture, you can see where he usually stays. Stacy has a great post about Argos and the new house on her blog, so go check it out.

Anyway, I've been busy working my butt off on this place and we're still nowhere near being done, so hopefully I'll be able to post more updates soon.

For Stacy (Updated!)

2008-02-14T14:06:00.004-05:00

For everyone else: The reference at the end of that video meant for her to meet me at the dam for a delicious dinner! ...of Krystals (Okay maybe this is only romantic if you know our story.)

Why I'll never be happy with American Politics

2008-02-07T21:44:00.000-05:00

I was going to make a blog post about why I'll never fit in with the American Political system, but realized that it's going to take more than just a few lines describing what I am "for" and what I'm "against" to get my point across. I'm sure there will be plenty of my half-mad rants about politics in the future, but since they're what most people would consider crazy, I think they would be better served as a post on each subject. So now you know what to look forward to (or avoid) from me in the future. I'll label them "My Take On _____".

Suffice it to say that the Libertarian Party is the only one that consistently gets my support and Ron Paul was my main vote in the Primaries this year.

The coolest Rube Goldberg machine ever

2008-02-05T11:44:00.000-05:00

This is easily the best Rube Goldberg machine I've ever seen!

Change the guard

2008-02-04T11:38:00.001-05:00

This link brings up a good point. I'm not so sure I'm comfortable having 28 years of the same two families in the White House, regardless of policy.

I'm a wuss

2008-02-02T22:23:00.001-05:00

So I find myself trying to pick up the guitar again, and I learn that apparently I have lost the calluses on my fingers. Normally this wouldn't be a big deal, as you can simply re-develop them, however the beast of a guitar I kept requires quite a bit of pressure on the razor blade-like strings that I for some reason put on this thing.

So in short, WEH!

Also, not that I was ever that great, but I now pretty much suck at guitar.

Further proof that I'm a huge nerd.

2008-01-31T21:21:00.000-05:00

So I've been wanting to share things that I love and/or find interesting. Here's a short list of what I'm reading/watching/playing right now:

Reading:
The Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan - Right now, I'm a little over half way through this huge epic storyline and loving every second of it. Granted, Jordan gets a little tedious sometimes with his descriptions of every mundane detail of a character's attire, however the basic plot and world more than make up for it. Well worth picking this up.

Y The Last Man - Okay, granted, I'm not technically reading this, because the last issue just came out and finished up the storyline. If you're not put off by the whole "comic book stigma", please give this a chance and pick it up. It is a story of Yorick Brown and his monkey, Ampersand, who are the last living males on Earth after a plague wipes out anything with a Y chromosome. I think there will be a movie about this in a few years.

Watching:
Stacy and I are currently re-watching season 1 of Battlestar Galactica, which was an awesome gift to me by a really cool friend of ours. She's absolutely hooked now, so it looks like I'm going to have to pick up the other seasons before the new one starts later this year. While it is set in space, it has quite a bit more appeal to the non sci-fi nerd than other shows like Star Trek and the like. Highly recommended.

(This should be its own sub-section) Video podcasts:
Diggnation: If you're familiar with Digg.com, you probably already know what Diggnation is. The hosts basically read and talk about some of their favorite top stories on Digg every week, except they usually do it while drinking/drunk. Which tends to make the shows quite amusing.

Geekbrief.tv: Their tagline is "Shiny Happy Tech News" and it's absolutely as advertised. Most of us are interested in tech, but the people that would normally host a show about it are completely uninteresting and boring. This definitely isn't the case with Cali Lewis and Geekbrief.tv!

Experiment of the Week: Okay, I feel like such a kid when I watch this show because it reminds me of watching Bill Nye the Science Guy when I was a kid, but it's a great weekly science lesson. Who says you stop learning when you get out of school?

Lynchland: Remember "United States of Whatevah"? How about the Sifl & Olly show? Liam Lynch was the creator of both, and now has a video podcast where you can see more of his skits and songs. You also might see cameos from Queens of the Stone age, Tenacious D, or Alex Albrecht from Diggnation.

What You Ought To Know: This show is exactly true to its name. It's a humorous look at things you ought to know. They've done subjects like how to avoid or waive various fees and what credit card pick, to subjects like the weird things that are in food that we all eat.

Wine Library TV: Gary Vaynerchuck makes learning about wines fun and is easily the most energetic wine reviewer you'll ever see.

Playing:
Hotel Dusk-Room 215: For some reason lately, I've been obsessed with point-and-click adventure games, and the DS is a great place to play them. I'm not very far into Hotel Dusk yet, but it looks very interesting from what I've seen so far.

The Legend of Zelda-The Phantom Hourglass: I'm going to be lazy here and not really tell you much about this game. I'm almost done with it and every keystroke I type is a millisecond that I'm not spending finishing it.

World of Warcraft-Come on, it just hit 10 million subscribers. If you don't know what WoW is, you've either been under a rock or are over 50.

You know, this turned out to be alot longer than I thought it would.....

Ok that was ugly

2008-01-31T21:19:00.000-05:00

Looks like I might be sticking to plain-old typing in my posts. I thought it would be kinda cool to write out a note in Windows Journal and post it, but it doesn't look quite right. I might experiment with posts like that down the line, but for now I think I'll stick to the traditional style blog. Run along, nothing to see here.

2008-01-31T21:09:00.000-05:00

Further Proof That Argos is Dr. Evil.

2008-01-17T22:07:00.000-05:00

I can has one BILLION dollars?

This IS the Wishing Machine afterall...

2008-01-11T10:40:00.000-05:00

Well, since this blog is about my dreams, let me start off with #1.....

/drool

2008-01-09T19:04:00.000-05:00

Just wanted to test out the picture publishing functionality between Picasa and Blogger. Looks pretty cool and really easy to use so far!

For those of you who don't know, this is the location that the wedding ceremony will be held at on Sept. 20th. It's an outdoor amphitheater at the Norris Dam State Park. The reception is directly behind it in the Tea Room. It used to be a restaraunt, so it seats around 100 and has a great kitchen and all that jazz.

Looks like things are coming together quite nicely.

A little less ambitious this time, eh?

2008-01-09T18:12:00.000-05:00

Okay, I'll be the first to admit that I'm not the most....stable person when it comes to keeping websites around. I'll often create a community site or blog and as soon as it's apparent that I can't keep up writing blogs or if nobody visits, I'll ditch it.
This time, however, I'm going to try my best to keep this one around. I'll just set my goals much lower. You may not see anything posted here for months at a time, but it will be nice to have somewhere to share things with whoever decides to subscribe to the site.
Let the madness (re)begin!