Gmail Overload!

Uh oh! It looks like I'd better start cleaning out my Google mailbox...

You are currently using 156 MB (2%) of your 6960 MB.

After all this time I finally reached 2% capacity. Damn, that means I only have 98% free space.

Summer ‘08 Plans

Amongst my brief commentaries on current events, I decided to write about the current events in my life. Often times I'll have a grand 'ol time out of town, and when I return home I start to write about it, bore myself, never finish the post and ultimately get side tracked by the CNN tab on my Google homepage. What can I say? I have the attention span of a chipmunk.

So far this summer, I've traveled out of town about three out of every four weekends. Since the end of May, I've been to:

1. Rose-Hulman Commencement in Terre Haute


2. Magic City Brewfest '08 in Birmingham


3. Robin Schaffer's Wedding in Indiana


4. Visit Dave in Nashville


5. Thiede & Willis's Wedding in Indiana


6. Visit Family in Connecticut


7. and the Pike Bar Crawl in Indy

Hell, that's seven out of nine weekends. This weekend I'll be home, but we have Diana and Rob visiting which counts as more than the average sleeping, reading, movies, beer, and videogames (or SRMBV) weekend. The first weekend of August is Kristie Sparks's wedding outside of Louisville. The following weekend is Dave's birthday in Nashville. Then a truly, honest to God free weekend - unless Jenny's mom visits which is a possibility.

Thus brings us to the weekend of August 23rd - and my delicate conundrum. I am 75% dedicated to a camping trip up in Indiana. But recently Jenny and I were invited to a "free beer giveaway" party here in Huntsville. The Olde Towne Brewing Company, the only microbrewery in Alabama, tragically burned to the ground (along with its pet cats) the very day I pulled my U-Haul into town. Last Saturday the brewery hosted a Free the Hops meeting in their newly constructed establishment, whence they announced their "we're back" party, a sort of grand re-opening, to be held on August 23rd. For whatever reason (whether legal or logistical) they decided the best course of action is to make the event strictly 21+ and have free admissions, and FREE BEER! That's right, all their beer it completely free. It'll be like visiting a museum: an optional donation at the entrance, and past that you soak in as much beauty as you can handle. To top that, Jenny doesn't particularly want to be alone for the weekend so she offered to DD, an ingenious effort to bribe me into sticking around. I'll wait for more details to emerge regarding the camping trip (and perhaps balance my checkbook) before I make a decision, but the choice is a seven hour drive for a weekend camping with friends or a fifteen minute drive for an evening drinking unlimitedly.

I have no plans for the Labor Day weekend. Jenny is visiting a friend in Virginia, which leaves me home alone to fight off incompetent burglars for a few days. I originally had been considering going to Foam for the three day weekend, but recently I learned that Rose is starting classes after Labor Day, thus Foam Party will be the following Saturday - which is teh lame. So if anyone wants to make plans not terribly far from Huntsville let me know. Otherwise, I'll probably be doing a lot of hiking and watching a lot of cartoons.

The South #1

Wooh! The South is number one! Specifically, Alabama is number two!! Ironically, most people in Huntsville look like skinny pasty Rose kids - you know, the typical engineer build.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/diet.fitness/07/17/obesity.states.ap

P.S. Jenny and I saw The Dark Knight on opening day. I don't want to echo the flood of critical reviews and blog posts regarding the flick, but it truly is one of the few films which, in my opinion, totally lives up to, if not surpasses, its hype. Jenny and I have talked about seeing it in IMAX this weekend - and I never pay to see a movie in theaters a second time.

Cyberpunctual

Biotechnology? Invisibility cloaking? I'm not sure if anyone else is a fan of Ghost in the Shell, but some scientists seem to be trying to bring that world to fruition. And with a prediction like "humans will be mostly non-biological by around 2030" it seems they're trying to catch up with the storyline. I just hope they skip over the whole World War III and World War IV parts of the plot.

Of course cyberpunk stories like Blade Runner, RoboCop, and The Matrix also come to mind, but for whatever reason Ghost in the Shell seems the most plausible to me.

As soon as I read an article about warp drive technology I'll probably go ahead and make some Star Trek jokes.

Mr. Covele Goes to Austin

The alumni bar crawl this past weekend was mucho fun, even if Rocksteady Bebop did kick our asses. Having arrived a little early, the hotel guys began with some beer (and beer samplers) at Rock Bottom before moving on to the scheduled dinner at The Ram. From there we split into guys who didn’t mind the $5 cover for Nicky Blaine's‎ (an upscale cigar bar) and guys who preferred the Wild Beaver (insert innuendo here). From there it was 32oz. German beers at Rathskeller, then on to Claddagh Irish Pub‎. It seems Purdue has done nothing for Kenny’s tolerance, forcing an abrupt departure from the latter. Dave overheard the bartender holding a mop going into the men's room saying "Why do people do this to me?" - though I'm not sure how well that mop would work on a urinal. Do you have the imagery yet? A few of us (including I who had been up since 5am) returned with Kenny to the hotel while the others, I learned the next morning, concluded their night at a nudy bar.

My room’s occupants began the next morning with breakfast while the rest of the guys needed a couple more hours to sleep. While thinking of good breakfast places (and why is it that only cheap hotels serve continental breakfast?) Edmonson and Cameron recommended Qdoba, fine by me. Then we get there and I realize it’s a fast food Mexican grille – because there’s nothing like nachos after a long night of imported beers. Boy oh boy is Jenny lucky she wasn’t around for that car ride home.

We eat up at the circle and chill at the hotel while the other guys slowly start the day. Brent clogs the toilet and has to call for a plunger to be sent up, thattaboy. After all is said and done, I chill in Greenwood for a couple more hours, say my farewell to Brent, and return home. Brent is moving to Austin next weekend to get his PhD in Plasma Physics, if you weren’t aware.

And so it was that I awoke (a little hung over) at 5am on Saturday, drove six hours to Indy for a bar crawl, and drove back to Huntsville on Sunday. I still got it.

When I got gas halfway through my trip, I calculated my car as getting 39.8 mpg. I was so freaking close! I have a personal goal to average 40 mpg on a tank of gas.

Anheuser-Busch Has a Price Tag

And it's $52,000,000,000. That could buy 75 billion bottles of Bud Light, enough to get the entire world tipsy (and maybe get JJ a fat Christmas bonus). It looks like the world's second largest brewery (Belgium brewery InBev) is aiming to buy America's largest brewery to create one helluva super brewery, Anheuser-Busch InBev.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/07/14/anheuser.inbev.ap

After reading this article, I felt relieved not to have learned about it in Pike's back lounge - because I can imagine the moaning and groaning that'll be going on. Having once been, I know how disgruntled drunken college boys will feel about our biggest brewery going Euro. Sure enough, I received an invite to join "Boycott the un-Americanizing of Anheuser-Busch" on Facebook before lunchtime. Personally, I rarely drink AB products so I don't give much of hoot about the deal (which still needs to be approved by shareholders and antitrust regulators). Though admittedly, I'd be a little apprehensive if I heard a brewery like Dogfish Head were to be sold to a foreign company, so I understand. But in this case, InBev makes better beers than Anheuser (not to mention AB has been responsible for the importation of many InBev beers) so I'm somewhat in favor of the purchase. Really, I'm just curious to see how it all unfolds.

At least I got to tour the Anheuser-Busch factory in St. Louis while it still was the Anheuser-Busch factory.

P.S. JJ's company makes bottles. In case you didn't get it.

Update: I found this online, and I have to admit it's pretty funny.

One Year at Dynetics

I started work at my first big boy job one year ago yesterday. Hooray for me.

Good Boy, Oil Man

This is the type of article to which I enjoy starting my day...

http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/science/07/08/pickens.plan/index.html