Author Archive for Patrick

Four jobs you’ve had in your life:   Lifeguard at Wild Waves, Computer Lab Assistant, Communications Officer in the Air Force, IT Project Manager at Travelers

Four movies you could watch over and over:  Star Wars IV, Ghostbusters, Groundhog Day, Transformers

Four places you’ve lived:  Tacoma, WA, Hurst, TX, Colorado Springs, CO, Fussa, Japan

Four TV shows you love to watch (old):  Star Trek:  The Next Generation, Quantum Leap, Seinfeld, Friends

Four TV shows you love to watch (current):  How I Met Your Mother, Scrubs, Lost, Dexter

Four places you’ve been on vacation:  Las Vegas, Caribbean, Washington DC, China

Four websites you visit daily:  Slashdot, Transformers World 2005, Bureau 42, The Replica Prop Forum

Four of your favorite foods:   Peanut Butter and Jelly sandwich’s, Peperoni Pizza, Steak, Hamburgers

Four places you’d rather be:  Skiing, Gaming, on a Cruise (Cruising?), at the Movies

Four albums you can’t live without:  Green Day – Dookie, The Essential Neil Diamond, Star Trek II, Star Wars IV

My father-in-law Jerry, his girlfriend Vera, and her 2 sons Kevin and Michael have been here since late Christmas eve.  So far, it’s been a lot of fun.  :-)

Yesterday, Jerry and I were out shopping at a sporting goods store and the owner was pulling one of the New Englander’s famous, “where are you from” attitudes.  They just don’t seem to understand that people outside of NE are still people and not morons.  When he noticed that Jerry had a southern accent, he immediately wanted to talk about the south.  However, it wasn’t a nice talk.  It was almost like he’d been there to fix up the place or something.  THEN his story turned ugly.  He mentioned that if you’re from Indiana that you’re a Hoosier.  Ok.  Then followed up with this question, “If you’re from Louisiana, are you a Loosier?”  This was not only rude and insulting (since Jerry IS from Louisiana) but just plain mean.  Jerry was cool as a cat though and countered with, “Well, when I’m in the north, I always try to find out if Damn Yankee is 1 word or 2.”  This sure shut this guy up quick.  Pretty awesome comeback if you ask me.

Last night, Kevin and I headed down into Hartford and checked out the 2 Irish pubs that I know about there.  What we didn’t count on was that UCONN had had a basketball game down there last night and it was just finishing up as we were arriving.  There were a LOT of people on the streets.  Fortunately, the pubs weren’t too crowded and we were able to get tables at both.  The first one was called Vaughan’s Public House and was pretty good.  Crowded, but the had my favorite local beer called Ten Penny.  Plus, we had Guiness.  :-)  The second is called McKinnon’s.  This was a little less traditional and had live music (that sucked).  Ah well.  We had another local beer there that wasn’t as good, but still had a good time.

Found this online this weekend at Boing Boing.  I think it’s really cool!

I started collecting comic books my senior year in high school when Superman died.  At the time I just thought that that issue would be an interesting collectible and I never expected to actually read it and enjoy it.  Of course, as with most things, once you start, it’s hard to stop.  Superman led to Batman, which led to lots of other titles over the years.  I think at one point I was reading something like 30 titles a month!  I did at some point realize that I was simply reading a book because I hadn’t stopped, not because it was good.  This caused me to cut out a good number of titles and really focus on stuff I was enjoying.  This allowed me to add in the occational new title to check it out and see if I liked it.  However, towards the end of last year, I really didn’t have enough time to read them anymore.  I started to have a box that was filled with unread issues, which I really didn’t like as it started to become a mountain that would be too hard to climb.  I’d always want to read it, but probably never would.  So, I cancelled all of my titles.

As you can imagine, having started in 1996 and collecting all the way until 2007, I had a great many comic books.  Add to that moving from college to Colorado, to Alabama, to Japan and to Connecticut, I had quite the mish-mash of organization going on.  So, one of my goals was to get them all sorted and documented so that I would know what I have.  The problem is always time.  When we first moved in, I knew that the game room in the basement would be perfect for this task.  However, our first big goal when we moved in was to get the house in order.  Painting, new flooring, etc.  The game room was finally finished early in the summertime and I was able to start my project.  Of course, this is where the time factor came in.  I could either have fun in the evening after work, or work on comics.  Or, I could do work with Sharron or work on comics.  I’m sure you can see a pattern in there some where.  :-)

This Wednesday, we’re having our house re-appraised.  This will hopefully enable us to get rid of our Private Mortgage Insurance (PMI) and allow us to have some more equity in the house.  What I’ve learned from that show on one of the home improvement channels called, “What’s it worth” (or something like that) is that if your house is a mess or cluttered, you won’t get the same value as if the same house were clean and un-cluttered.  These two things don’t change the house at all, but it’s all perception.  So, Sharron and I have been a whirlwind of activity the last 2 weeks or so trying to get the house comepletely in order.  Last weekend I managed to finally get all of the comics at least sorted by title, back into boxes and then I labeled all of the boxes so I know where to find everything.  I did not have time to complete the spreadsheet part of this project, that will have to wait for another day.  So yay!  That’s done for now.  :-)

When I was in Iraq, I read a book by Dean Koontz called Odd Thomas.  I really liked it.  Last year, I discovered on accident that 2 more books (now 3) have been written about Odd Thomas.  Keeping an eye out for them at used book stores, I finally found #2 and recently read it.  Not as good as the first, but definitely interesting enough for me to want to jump right in to book 3.  I picked that one up at the library earlier this week, so you know I must have really wanted to read it.  :-)

At one point in this book there is a very suspenseful chase.  I was actually scared because of it.  The last time I remember being scared by a book was WAY back in 7th grade when I was 13!  That time it was by a book called The Dark is Rising.  Not very scary by my standards today.  :-)

Thinking about this, I was reminded about how I read.  I talked with Sharron about this and she doesn’t think this is the same for her.  When I get in to a book, the words go away.  I know I’m still reading them, but in my head the images of the book are like a movie to me.  I’m not sure if this is true for everyone, but when I was reading the description of what Amazon is trying to accomplish with the Kindle, they mentioned a similar phenomenon.  So, just like with a scary movie, this book caused me to be scared.  :-)

Just for the curious, the last movie that scared me was 1408.