Dystopian Paradise: There's no other place to be.

Something old, something new

2006-10-07T00:10:00.000-05:00

I mentioned in my last post that I was moving the blog. Well the truth is, I've created a permanent home for my blog (http://dystopianparadise.lifeatadistance.com/), but the format and content have all been moved over to there. I apologize for the downtime (if anyone even noticed), I didn't realize that Blogger would pull my content just as soon as I changed the publication of my site. I'll be moving all of this into Wordpress soon, in fact all future posts to this blog will be made at the lifeatadistance.com location, and using Wordpress.

Anyway, there's also something new, but most of you have probably already found that. Kassy & I have worked the past few days/weeks to put together http://www.LifeAtADistance.com to help us keep in touch with friends and family who are far away. We hope you enjoy the new site, and keep in touch, wherever you are.

Moving soon...

2006-10-05T23:56:00.000-05:00

Just the blog. That's why I've been away. Working on a new home. Got the domain name up, and hosting is running smoothly. I'll post more in a few days.

In search of a domain name

2006-09-01T22:30:00.000-05:00

If there's actually anyone reading this, I'm actively searching for a domain name for Kassy & I, or at least to host this blog and our photos on. I've come up with some cheesy names like rcandkassy.com, or johnsonfamily.com, but I'm trying to be more original than that. Any suggestions?

Swarm and stack my news

2006-08-31T22:42:00.000-05:00

So, I've been a big fan of Digg for some time now, although I go through effectively sinusoidal phases in the frequency of my visits. Yesterday I stumbled onto intriguing ways to visualize the data that's being collected by Digg.

Swarm & Stack are two ways Digg has created to show which articles are being "dugg" by users. Each has it's merit, but I think Swarm might be my favorite.

Swarm shows Digg users as they move from one Digg story to the next. This is interesting as you can follow the stream of conciousness of another human being as they read their news. Also, you can see stories that tend to congregate users around them if you watch long enough.

Stack has it's own quirks, as diggs fall from the top of the screen onto the story and pile up as you're watching. They stories are color coded for how many diggs they have, but as the stack grows taller you know that in the time you've been watching that this story has been dug much more than the others. It's something like viewing the acceleration of one story over another, something Digg has had in some form for quite some time.

I guess the things I found most interesting about all of this was the possibility of visually mining information. It's intriguing to me because Digg presents this information in two very easy to digest forms, and allows one of the human brain's most evolved functions, pattern recognition, to really show off.

P.S. I'm trying to get better at this. Let's see how long this lasts. :) Two days in a row.

Multitasking != ADD

2006-08-30T10:21:00.000-05:00

Please tell me that multitasking is not the same thing as ADD, because I was just looking at the list of books I'm currently reading, and well...Tell me if I'm crazy.

"V for Vendetta" - Alan Moore & David Lloyd (Just finished, technically)
"No Perfect People Allowed" - John Burke (our lead pastor, a book about our church's formation and growing a community of acceptance and love in the church)
"Getting Real" - 37 Signals (Business book on how to develop software better)
"The Parables of Jesus" - William Barclay (This is what our small group is reading right now, it's so-so)

That's about enough to kill a horse I'd think.

Obviously, by tomorrow, I mean next week

2006-08-08T22:39:00.000-05:00

So I finally grabbed the hard drive (after losing it for a few days), and started uploading photo's like crazy. The batch I uploaded tonight include shots from our time in Baden-Baden after Germany beat Argentina, traveling to Strasbourg to accidentally see the Tour de France, time in St. Goar & Lorelei with Andreas, and finally Heidelberg castle. These were the shots we tried to upload for the second batch during our trip.

Rather than do a shotgun of stories in this post, I'm just going to draw out one story for now. I may come back and tell others later, but for now, I want to talk about having the Tour de France dropped in our laps.

Originally, we had intended to travel to Baden-Baden for the day, and then in the evening move to Strasbourg, see a bit, and stay the night before traveling back to St. Goar to meet our friend Andreas. After arriving in Baden-Baden and relaxing in the mineral baths there for several hours, we came out just in time to catch the penalty kicks between Germany and Argentina. It was our first (of many) experience with European soccer celebrations. It was awesome! Basically, an instant parade erupted with cars, people, & flags. Here is where we learned of the first lessons on our trip. When there is soccer involved, don't expect buses to run on time (or at all).

We met a charming German couple who showed us around while we waited for the buses to start back up, always thinking full well that we'd travel on to Strasbourg that night. Fortunately this was not to be. After having a wonderful dinner with this couple, we barely made it into the hostel in time, but made it all the same. The next morning we got up and headed for Strasbourg, however, when the train pulled into the station it seemed unusually full, especially considering the previous train, in the opposite direction had taken fans toward the Englad soccer match later that day.

None the less, we boarded the train and headed off. Here we met a young American family who lived in Frankfurt and were also travelling to Strasbourg, and happened to mention some of the hullaballoo regarding doping on the eve of the Tour. When we started chatting about the Tour, and the fact that we we're from Austin, they pointed out to us the fact that we were in fact on our way (inadvertantly, and without any doing on our part) to the Tour de France.

So, after riding two extremely full, sweaty trains to Strasbourg, we got off, and set out to watch the prologue, which again couldn't have worked out any better had we tried, because in that stage the riders are staggered by one minute intervals. This means that there is a consistent stream of riders passing by, no matter where you are.

Ultimately, however, this was just the first of many opportunities for God to reveal what we were learning by going on this trip. I'll spend some more time really explaining what I mean by that soon, but suffice it to say for now, it changed our perception on a lot of things.

Back in black

2006-08-01T00:03:00.000-05:00

Got Kassy's new computer, so now I can get some time to upload more pictures. Yeah, we're way behind. Heck, I've been back 2 weeks now, and I haven't even posted to say so. Oh well. I'm saying it now. I'll post some photos tomorrow night.

'Til then!

1 week in...

2006-07-04T13:34:00.000-05:00

Internet cafes are common, but finding the time to stop is harder. We´re waiting for the Germany/Italy world cup game to start, so we thought we´d post an update. The link for the photos has been fixed, and new photos should be up shortly.

After several recommendations, we went to Baden-Baden and visited their spa. It is fed from natural hot springs, and it was a very nice relaxing day. That night Germany won the soccer match, moving on the quarter finals, and we were stuck in Baden-Baden celebrating the win. It was a very exciting evening.

We had planned to visit Strasbourg that night, but since we were stuck in Baden-Baden we put it off until the next day. Turns out the next day the Tour de France began in Strasbourg. It was very exciting, and a lot of fun to watch the prologue to the tour.

That night, we met up with an old friend from high school who now lives in Nuremberg. He met us in St. Goar, and the next day we visited Burg Rheinfels. At this castle they allow you to explore the tunnels beneath the walls, and to really get a feel for the fortress. It was very fun.

After visiting with him, he drove us by Loreley to see the great view of the Rhine river, and then on to our hostel for the night. That night we stayed in the tallest tower of Burg Rheinfels. With our room on the next to top floor we had a great view of the Rhine again. We wandered around the castle for a few more hours until it was dark, and then went inside for a beer. Inside, we met 4 Flemish gentleman who taught us a fun, international, game called "Ooops, Miss."

Finally, yesterday we went to Heidelberg to see a castle where an ancient relative of Kassy's was supposedly bestowed a position of nobility (von Hauser). The castle was amazing, and some actors were preparing a play for the upcoming castle festival. Kassy got some hilarious photos of them. Speaking of photos, the site is giving us trouble uploading new photos tonight, so we'll send some more up soon, but for now, it's time to go watch some füßball!

The beginning, it´s a very good place to start

2006-06-29T14:08:00.000-05:00

A rough start to be sure. We were delayed quite a bit getting into Newark and missed our flight to Köln by quite a bit. After getting into Newark around 9pm, we waited in a line to get a hotel and food vouchers from Continental. The hotel was decent, and Tuesday morning we headed back to Newark International Airport to get more vouchers because we were now booked on a flight on the 28th. After getting standby tickets for Tuesday, we headed in the city (NYC) for a quick 1 hr visit.

We managed to see Times Square, and the Empire State building, and definitely got the feel for NY life. It was great!

Tuesday at 6:45 we left for Germany, and once we arrived looked around a bit of Köln before heading to Cochem. We´ve decided to skip France, as it was going to make the trip too busy and quite a bit more expensive. We´re staying a second night here in Cochem tonight, and we really enjoyed hiking around the city and countryside today.

Tomorrow another Schlo§ (fortress or castle) and then into Koblenz. We´ll write again soon. See the pictures at the link below, we´ve added a few.

http://new.photos.yahoo.com/rcjohnson42/

Relaxing and re-packing

2006-06-24T20:40:00.000-05:00

Well, we're in MO relaxing. visiting family before we leave on Monday at 1pm. Still just a few things left to do, getting the final packing done, and picking up just a few last minute items. I jst sent the spam email to all our friends and family, and so I have to update this so that people expect reasonalby updated content. Nothing like social pressure to get someone to do something.

The biggest thing left to do is to capture our itenerary. so for those who haven't already heard it here it is. Of course, I could have just sent this link instead:

6/27 - Arrive in Cologne, Germany 8 am - Stay in Cochem, Germany
6/28 - 6/30 - Visiting France (somewhere)
7/1 - St Goar, Germany
7/2 - Bacharach, Germany
7/3 - 7/5 - Florence, Italy
7/6 - Venice, Italy
7/8 - Vienna, Austria
7/9 - Salzburg, Austria
7/10 - Fussen, Germany
7/11 - Somewhere around Wurzburg, Germany
7/12 - Cologne, Germany
7/13 - Depart for the US at 10am

Countdown...

2006-06-19T23:51:00.000-05:00

We leave in T-minus 60 hours and counting for a whilwind tour of central North America (home visiting friends and family) and central Europe (seeing the sights, maybe a friend). Not much to say except that this will likely devolve temporarily into my personal reflections on vacation, Europe, and rejuvenation, and of course: photos.

I was challenged by a friend the other day to discover just what God intended to show me while on this three week vacation, and I've decided to accept his challenge. I don't know exactly what the weeks have in store for me, but I'm excited to find out.

On a more techie note, we've bought a few new toys lately. First was Kassy's Canon 20D. A hefty investment for sure, but a very worthwhile purchase as it has brought her hours of enoyment already, and we haven't even left the country yet. Next was a Samsung external DVD burner, with LightScribe. Very fun, very handy, especially for the photo-bug. Finally, today we bought an external hard drive with a built in memory card reader, so that while we're in Europe Kassy can shoot gigs upon gigs of photos.

All of this was basically to say, watch this space for more news and photos from our trip.

Somewhere over the rainbow

2006-04-21T23:04:00.000-05:00

Scrubs is by far one of my favorite shows on TV right now, and has been for several seasons. I could talk about the excellent character development, or the unique ability to play with silly sitcom things (angelic music/hair blowing in the wind/ridiculous lighting), but after watching a rerun I'm reminded of what I like most: the incredible writing.

The episode, "My Way Home", is absolutely hilarious, and a great homage to "The Wizard of Oz." I say all of this to say, I can't wait until Scrubs is back on the air.

V is for Very Interesting

2006-04-19T22:51:00.000-05:00

I saw V is for Vendetta again last Friday night, at the Alamo no less, and again it ROCKED! There is so much to talk about with this movie, but I won't bore you with a complete run through of the plot. Suffice it to say that I find it very entertaining to be rooting for the the terrorist in this film.

On top of all of this, graphically, the Wachoski brothers have created a stunning film. The contrasts are clear between V and his accomplice Evey, and without a doubt in my mind Hugo Weaving has done a stellar job of acting given that he never shows even an inch of his real skin in this film. His ability to emote from behind the Guy Fawkes mask is so unmistakeable, so prevailing it's downright amazing.

If you haven't seen it yet, and you're not afraid of a film that will make you think about your role in this national process, and you aren't afraid of some very well done action sequences, I highly recommend V. Of course, you don't have to take my word for it...Take a look, it's in a book. A Reading Rainbow.

All work and no play...

2006-04-12T12:43:00.000-05:00

Makes Jack a dull boy, and an ever growing dullness in his blog. I've actually been doing stuff lately, just forgetting to blog about my adventures.

We're 2/3 of the way through Wedding Season '06, and so far both have been stellar. One was back near home in St. Clair, MO which made for a long weekend of driving, and a great chance to catch up with college friends we haven't seen in a few years. Good times.

The second was here around Austin, and allowed friends now living in New England to come back for a brief stint, and again Good Times.

I guess the biggest news for me is that I'm getting involved in baseball (before the post-season) this year, and have begun to really enjoy watching as the St. Louis Cardinals start out what I hope will be a stellar season, but only time will tell. 154 games to go, and counting.

Addiction, I know thy name, and it is Myspace

2006-02-23T21:19:00.000-06:00

OK, so those of you who know me, know full well that I have a caffeine problem, but I'm not willing to admit that yet, so I don't have to start down any recovery process (yet).

So a few months ago someone suggested creating a Myspace account for the Uprising and so on a whim, I created a page for myself. I found one of my friends there and added her. A few days later a friend living in Dallas found my page and added me. Then, nothing. I didn't do anything more than putting just a bit of basic info onto my page.

This past Wednesday, I found out how to change the look/feel of my page, and a whole bunch more friends, and now I know why this is referred to by many as Crackspace. The fun of finding other friends and linking to them, posting comments on their page, tracking down your favorite band and adding their music to your page will have you consistently coming back. Tweaking, adding to your bio, looking for more friends, it's all just too much fun.

I'm sure I'm not doing it justice...but I guess you just have to try it yourself.

On an unrelated note (to this post), I found yet another old friend on Myspace last night, and enjoyed reconnecting with him briefly over myspace messages. Hillarious!

Interesting phenomenon

2006-02-16T22:36:00.000-06:00

I talked to an old roomate tonight on the phone, regarding his wedding which I'm in. First of 3 weddings for Kassy & I this "season." Anyway, and so when I sit down at the computer, I decide to drop an email to an old friend my mom happened to run into recently, and had the presence of mind to get his email address.

I hammer out the typical here's what I've been up to over the last 8 years email, and ask him to do the same. Pop back to my inbox, and realize I haven't emailed another old friend. So away I go to catch up with this one too. Same basic email plus or minus church stuff/house stuff/etc, and I realize I have a whole host of old friends I need to email and catch up with. Anyway, so now I'm copying/pasting what was once a personal letter, and dropping it here and there to all sorts of old acquaintances, friends, etc hoping to hear what they've been up to.

If you're reading this and we haven't chatted in a while...post a comment here, and I'll drop you a line too!

Talk to you soon.

Nothing to say...but yet here I am typing anyways

2005-11-21T23:34:00.000-06:00

It's been two months and I figure I ought to catch you up, so here goes: "I've been working." That about sums it up. I've been putting in extra hours at work to finish a really big project for NI, but this blog isn't supposed to be about work, so I'll move on.

Harry Potter & the Goblet of Fire was incredible. That was always my favorite book of the first four. I haven't tried to compare it to number Order of the Phoenix or Half Blood Prince. I'm not entirely sure how you do that sort of thing, since they build on eachother so much, it just doesn't seem fair. But this HP movie was far and away the best of the four so far. The acting was so much better, Fred & George are spectacular both in the books and in the movies, and they crack me up so much.

In the spirit of rambling through several topics, Thanksgiving is coming up, and we've got family staying with us for the week. It's been so great having family here in town, La Madeleine, Chuys, all the great food. It'll be a miracle if I don't gain an absolute ton of weight this holiday season.

Well, I need to crash. I've gotta be at work at 7:30 in the morning. Things are slowing down there, so hopefully I'll get some more time for this endeavor. Til then.

I have tasted the forbidden fruit...

2005-09-14T23:22:00.000-05:00

I bought an Apple product yesterday. My first ever. I'll give you all one guess what it is. Yep, given the slurry of press, and it's recent release it is probably completely obvious that I bought an iPod nano. Technically, I had purchased a iPod mini about two weeks ago, but I returned it (heh, less than 30 days. Yes!) and got the nano instead.

I was already in awe over the great interface that the iPod mini had, not to mention the functionality of having a 4GB hard drive that easily fit into my pocket. Now, I have all that plus a color screen (woot!), nearly 200% better battery life (double woot!), and it's ridiculously (~~shiny~~)tiny. I've been showing it off a bit (too much) at work, and nearly everyone who's seen/touched it has said that they want one, and several have vowed to get one soon.

This is the flash based MP3 player that the market has needed for quite some time. I'm sure the shuffle has it's place among some, but the nano has all of the shuffle's flash based goodness, plus a very usable screen. To give it some perspective the screen is almost identical in size/resolution to my cell phone's.

It's funny. The thing that finally caused me to cave and get an MP3 player, was in fact the driving factor into getting an iPod based player. Podcasting. If you haven't already fallen into this rabbit hole, I strongly suggest that you jump. Head first. Now!

Seriously, my drive time has moved away from meaningless banter between the gaggle of morning show radio program hosts, and to a system where I am delivered fresh content of my choice (how novel?!?) during my commute. No longer need I listen to theories on why Brad and Jennifer are calling it quits, instead I can learn about AJAX, new topics in Java, the skills of a successful manager, new gadgets that are just hitting the market, etc etc etc (the list goes on for quite some time).

In addition to all of this, there are quite a few Christian podcasts out there. So far, I'm not terribly impressed with any of them, but there is one, Dev4Gamers, that has been interesting occasionally. It's billed as "Devotions for Gamers," but I don't really see how it has anything to do with gaming. Ultimately, it's a very nice, short devotional that I typically listen to as I'm getting to the freeway. It just tends to remind me to focus my day on God, instead of myself, which I so often need reminding of.

To wrap this all up, I just want to add that I haven't "drank the Koolaid" just yet on the Apple products, although the Mac mini has caught my eye a couple of times. Only time will tell.

</post><Empty promise of next post/>

Attending NFJS conference

2005-08-12T09:46:00.000-05:00

I'll be attending the NFJS conference this weekend. I've been looking forward to it for several months, I really hope it will be a good chance to get caught up on the state of the industry in Java. I'll be blogging the conference along with a few coworkers. Really not much of an entry, but I wanted to mention it here.

Not much better, and no time for it now.

2005-08-11T00:28:00.000-05:00

Been really busy at work for the last few months, and it probably won't slow down until the end of the year. Although I did squeeze in a quick 1 week vacation to MO a few weeks ago, and that was very nice.

School's back in session, at least for Kassy that is. She's ecstatic to be teaching 6th grade math this year. She went through the RoboLab training, and I've asked to be her RoboLab volunteer, so basically, once a week I'll get to leave work early to go hang out with her and a batch of Middle school students and play with expensive Legos. Very fun!

To be completely honest the reason I'm posting right now is that I emailed a friend (Dan) and gave him a bit of a hard time aboutn having not posted lately, so I figured I'd better post something quick or he'd return the favor. There we go, check that one off the list. Next up: SLEEP!

Picking up where I left off.

2005-06-23T20:09:00.000-05:00

So, time to get back in the habit of this. I'm not sure how others remember to do this. I guess I should set up some sort of schedule on when I'm going to update it. I guess let's pick Thursday's. Now that Kassy's going to band practice on Thursday nights I have a few moments to myself, and I typically relax most of the night.

Well, I just finished watching the LOTR trilogy again the past few weeks, and I can' t believe how great those films are. I can't wait until I have "The Hobbit" to add to my collection. I don't know if others do this or not, but I have this weird habit of turning on a movie (or TV) when I'm trying to get some work done. I used to do this in college, and watched "Empire Records" so many times that I can honestly quote every single line in the movie from beginning to end, and my VHS cassette is somewhat worn out.

Lately I've been putting in crazy amounts of hours for work, and so I brought back this tradition, as a matter of fact I'm watching "Hit Me Baby One More Time", a show about one-hit wonders who come on the show, perform their classic hit and then their rendition of a popular song from today. The audience chooses their favorite performer, and the "winner" get's to direct $25,000 to the charity of their choice. I think it was/is originally a BBC program, as most any original TV in the States is anymore anyway.

Guess I need to get back into the habit, before I can take one topic and turn it entry, as opposed to giving you some stream of conciousness fluff. Anyway, I'll try. :)

Ditto

2005-04-21T23:06:00.000-05:00

Yeah, what I said last month still applies. Sorry. I'm honestly not so much apologizing to you as to myself. I've known for weeks that I needed to post, but just couldn't come up with anything original-ish.

In light of other current major announcments (here):

I'm graduating!

Hooray! I'll finally be done with school. I'm taking the final course of my Masters of Science in Information Science & Technology this semester. On May 14th I will have officially completed all of the requirements of the M.S. program through UMR, and will walk across the stage to receive my graduate degree. Needless to say, with things as busy as they are at work, a 3 hour distance education course that meets 2X per week, volunteering with the youth at church it's easy to miss out on some of the important things in life (like blogging, and friends impending weddings -- Sorry guys!).

Well, it's late, I'm tired, and it's almost the weekend, so crap-tacular ending and all: Good night.

Like everyone else...I'm lousy at this.

2005-03-14T21:24:00.000-06:00

However, I now have in my posession the new laptop I was hoping to get. I don't remember how many times I took my old Toshiba back to Best Buy, but they finally "lemon'ed" it out. I am now typing this entry on a brand new HP Pavillion zv5000. In a nutshell it has the new AMD 64 bit processor ( ~2 Ghz ), 512 MB of RAM, 1 MB L2 Cache, and 1600 Mhz system bus. It's a lot better than my poor little old 1.1 Ghz Celeron, 384 MB RAM, 20 GB hard drive, and it shows it too.

Right now I'm looking to install Windows XP 64 bit edition and see what the future has in store.

Anyway, just wanted to share.

Worst. Post. Ever.

Blogging begins to pay off...

2005-01-26T23:11:00.000-06:00

Although I don't think anyone actually looks at this on any regular basis, aside from myself, I found out that Blogging was paying off yesterday. When I got back to my desk at lunch I noticed I had a voicemail (peculiar). I punched in my code and it said the voice mail was from some extention I had never heard before (more peculiar). I pressed the play button and immediately heard an old friend's voice over the line (very peculiar).

It seems that a friend of mine from college, whom I haven't talked to in nearly 2 years now (due almost entirely to my inability to keep up with long distance friendships) is coming to Austin for a few days and wanted to look me up. He tried several common friends to get my contact info, to no avail. Finally, he punched Richard Curtis Johnson into a search engine and found my blog. Noticing in my earliest post that I was working for NI he called up the front desk and asked to speak with me, and voila all my questions were answered.

Anyway, fun annecdote.

Strike one up for...somebody?!?

2005-01-13T21:47:00.000-06:00

Slashdot is covering an article on a judge in Georgia who ruled that the following statement on a sticker, placed in the front of Biology books was "unconstitutional": This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully and critically considered.”

Few things wrong with this whole bit:

Evolution of man (not the type where moths turn black, and then white to match their surroundings), is just what the sticker says: a theory. There is no arguing with that, it cannot be proven to be true, therefore it is posited that man must have evolved from a lower being.
The statement makes no direct claims for any of the other theories on the existence of man, namely the most widely accepted "intelligent design", or creationism. The judge argued that, “[by] denigrating evolution, the school board appears to be endorsing the well-known prevailing alternative theory, creationism or variations thereof, even though the sticker does not specifically reference any alternative theories.” This is hilarious to me, we have introduced religion into schools by encouraging students to think critically. (Watch out College English, you're next! You and your reading of Beowulf! Damnit, don't make me think!)
The desire of six parents and the ACLU to have this sticker loaded with "religious dogma" has trumped the free speech demands of 2000 parents interested in reminding children to think critically about something, and consider other sources (potentially those unaffilliated with the government) for more information on the theory of evolution.

<soapbox>I'm having to try very hard not to get into a big, hairy discussion on how this really reinforces the State mandated teaching of the religion of atheism. I'll be good this time. </soapbox>

Now, I'm sure since this was a lawsuit that someone won...I'm just not sure who.

Great College Advice

2005-01-12T17:14:00.000-06:00

A website that I commonly check for interesting comments on software development has some advice for CS students that I think is great advice for most college students. For those who only read summaries (namely myself) here's the breakdown, with my thoughts on each point following

1. Learn how to write before graduating.
This is very true, no matter what you've studied.

2. Learn C before graduating.
For those non CS types out there, C is the core skill that CS majors should leave school with. So the allegory is whatever your major, find the core skill and master it.

3. Learn microeconomics before graduating.
Since I've never taken microeconomics I can't say whether this is true or not, but from Joel's description I wish I had.

4. Don't blow off non-CS classes just because they're boring.
GPA is very important, and a large portion of your GPA will be based on classes outside your major. Do your best to enjoy them, but whatever it is do your best.

5. Take programming-intensive courses.
Again, progamming is a core skill for CS majors, but the crux of this point is you learn by doing, so do more.

6. Stop worrying about all the jobs going to India.
If your chosen career is moving towards outsourcing to India (or wherever) there's not much point in worrying about it. The US is still going to need programmers, business analysts, whatever, even if we lose a lot of jobs to foreign countries. Wired had an article a few months ago on the intellectual economy that is moving around the world, showing that the US will likely step up and begin to create an innovation economy.

7. No matter what you do, get a good summer internship.
While this might have been a slight plug for his own company, the point is to get involved early and often in whatever industry you are going to eventually be working in. Internships are key to getting a lot of experience early, as well as making sure that the field is the area you want to be working in. While there are bad internships in good fields, it helps you to really evaluate whether you're willing to deal with some of the downs of the roller coaster ride of a career.

Anyway, I wanted to bring these to the attention of some friends/family I know who are in college so I thought I'd just put it here instead.

Happy Holidays errata...

2005-01-11T19:43:00.000-06:00

I'm feeling a bit disjointed tonight, so I thought I'd just do a brain dump of things on my mind. This post probably won't have much in the way of continuity so feel free to skip it if you'd rather.

The holidays are over entirely too soon. What with all of the big dealines at work in early 2005 it was difficult to really enjoy any of the time leading up to them, although the 10 days off sure was nice. Time with family was great, I always miss them so much when we come back home. Anyway, I'm back now and I'll try to do this more often.

On a somewhat related note, I got a foosball table for Christmas ( and my birthday combined). Kassy & I are really enjoying it. I'd say we play it every other day or so.

Finally, Kassy & I have started a workout regimen at the fitness center where I work. I'm mostly doing cardio & a little bit of upper body strength training. She's working on cardio as well but mostly lower body toning. It's a lot of fun, more fun that I realized it would be. I'm especially enjoying my time on the recumbent bike. It's a great escape from everything, and allows me to spend some quality time reading a book. You know the one's with paper and ink and what not. I'm 3/4 the way through "Mere Christianity" and I'll probably post a book review when I finish it, but just a teaser: It's a must read for any Christian, although a little philosophical at times it is definitely an essential book.

Home Improvement...Tim Allen style.

2004-12-07T16:50:00.000-06:00

So, as an early Christmas present my dad gave me a Lowe's gift card. Thinking myself quite the He-Man, Home Improvement type, I set out to get a set of fake gas logs for my otherwise empty, boring fireplace. Having shopped on these for a few weeks, I knew quickly which I wanted to get, and stopped and picked it up on December 1st. That night as I unpacked the box of goodies, I realized two things:

1) The box did not include everything I was going to need, and
2) The sales person at Lowes was absolutely no help.

The next evening I returned to Lowe's to pick up the hose assembly necessary for attaching the logs to my gas pipe. Upon arriving home I set into the fireplace like a beaver devouring the base of a tree. I don't know why people equate beavers as being industrious and hard working, but none the less, that is the metaphor I'll use. While trying to remove the existing burner from the gas pipe I ran into a slight snafu, after 10 years of heating, cooling, and neglect it had thoroughly fused itself to the gas pipe, leaving me no choice but to remove the 16" gas pipe from the wall.

Now I had created a huge problem. No, no, no, the gas was turned off. However, to replace this pipe, it was going to require testing the connection to make certain it wasn't leaking natural gas into my wall space just waiting for some unforseen ember to, putting it lightly, "really open up the living room". OK, after some consultation with my repertoire of handymen (dad), I tried to see if I could get to the joint from the shutoff valve in my wall. Answer: no. OK. Perhaps from inside the fireplace itself, no.

Grasping for straws, today I went outside, and removed the vent from the side of the chimney, to find that I could access that joint from this orifice. However, it is going to require a mirror, a blade of grass, 2 pieces of Big Red, and a good flashlight. Actually, not the gum or grass, but it still won't be easy.

At this point, I'm convinced my father works as a spy for Lowe's and gave me this gift card in a now obvious plot to cause me to spend good gobs of money at said home improvement warehouse. I'm leaving now to go and get a replacement piece of pipe, and likely a pipe wrench. With any luck this project will be completed, only one week after it was begun. We shall see.

Wow...extended Halo 2...I mean hiatus

2004-11-19T22:04:00.000-06:00

Sorry abou that. Yeah, Halo 2 hit, and hit hardcore. I went into Halo 2 mode a little more than a week before the release, especially with the dramatic conclusion of I Love Bees. As Dustin & Jessie have mentioned, yes, we got to go to a special "Training Event", and yes it was very fun. Joel obviously didn't think it fun, or newsworthy enough to blog about it, but he was there too. I'm still somewhat surprised they held it here in Austin, but hey, who freaking cares, we got to play Halo 2 before it was released.

Ultimately, it was a very good conclusion to an incredible experiment in Alternate Reality Games (ARGs) and gaming communities. Although I lurked through most of the game, I was very wrapped up the in the storyline, which for those interested is downloadable from humptydumpty.html on the I Love Bees site. It's a couple of hours of wav files, so if you know anyone else who was participating, and got their hands on one of the DVDs they gave out, I'd recommend going that route instead.

Anyway, I wanted to continue to give this blogging thing a shot, so I decided I'd better get back into it, otherwise I'll quit. Much like exercising. It's very easy to stop, and once you've stepped off the bandwagon, it's pretty darn hard to start back up again, meh, but more on that later...Back to Halo 2.

Meh...Waiting for the chaff to burn off.

2004-10-25T19:59:00.000-05:00

Losing interest in "The Apprentice". I think given the opportunity, Trump could very easily have fired "Little Stacy", Wes, Maria, and possibly even Andy in one fell swoop in the last episode. Anyway, since there are still several people who are really lousy, and 2 or 3 who are just fantastic, I've kind of kicked in the cruise control until some of the weakest players are gone.

Very interested however, in the World Series. I know they're down two games to none, but I'm still hoping the Cardinals can pull it back out. Anyway, if I disappear from this scene for a while, it's likely because I'm considering taking my laptop back for serivce again.

Me like baseball? That's unpossible.

2004-10-20T20:31:00.000-05:00

So, somehow the thrill of all of this post-season shenanigans, I have become enthralled with baseball. Monday night I watched the last 3 innings of the Cards & Astro's game, kept track of the stats on the Yankees vs Red Sox game, and when those were done flipped over to watch Monday Night Football. I don't know what happened that night, but that moment was probably the closest I will ever come to liking beer.

Well, since I'm in the middle of the busiest work week I've ever had, and the Red Sox are up 6-0 in the bottom of the third this is going to be a short post. We'll talk again soon though.

Worst....Episode....Ever....

2004-10-14T21:11:00.000-05:00

OK, first, I want to promise that this is not going to be the only post every week, otherwise I have to change the title of this blog to something more appropriate, ala "15 Reasons I Know More than Trump!"

Anyway, ok, to begin with the guys are at a significant disadvantage in this task, and they completely sucked at it. Put Raj around any relatively good looking woman, and you're asking for trouble. I can't wait to see the spin offs from this season, "Raj's 101 Sexual harassment Suits". I kid, he's not that bad, but he can't seem to focus when there's estrogen in the room, a serious flaw in an otherwise very strong leader.

Kelly on the other hand knows how to run a tight ship, and PM or not, he really takes charge. Were it not for him, the men likely would not have completed this task. I still stand by my prediction that he is one of the strongest contenders in the bunch.

We saw this week that Pamela successfully taught the girls teamwork, but I still get the feeling that several of the women are "playing the game" as Bill so perfectly put it. Thank goodness the teams are getting reshuffled next week. I would really like to see Elizabeth pull out of her slump, and a team with a few less women will either make her or break her, depending on which women she's paired with.

In case you haven't noticed...

2004-10-11T21:32:00.000-05:00

I finally got my laptop back, sans repair, but I'll get to that in a minute. Gone for 25 days for them to try and diagnose why my laptop sometimes wakes up from Standby on its own. So there I am standing at their repair center counter talking with the tech (not the one who worked on my computer) and I say, "What did they do to fix my laptop?" His response was a slightly underwhelming, "I dunno....let's look....Hmmmm...It looks like they.....reinstalled the OS."

You have got to be kidding me. My laptop was gone for 25 days for them to do what I could have done in 45 minutes? No way. I press him a little further. Do you have any more information on what they did? Sure, he shows me the steps they took in diagnosing the problem. The first step is labeled with a date nearly 20 full days after I gave them my laptop...20 days? What the heck was it doing during that time? Who knows...

So then, I bring it home. Boot it up for the first time, and guess what....Their idiot tech somehow screwed up the OS install...so here I am without a laptop for 3/4 of a month, and when I get it back, not only has it been wiped of my data, but oh yeah, for a little extra panache, I have to perform a system restore....which I would have done in the first place, if it had been a problem with the software, but it wasn't!!!!

Anyway, so now I'm in a pickle, which by the way is a terrible place to be. What to do with the laptop that's not safe to take in my bag, because it turns itself on, and will nearly melt before I notice... Do I send it in again for another possible 3 week trip, just to find out that they think it's a software issue? Or do I just say screw it and suck it up? I think we both know the answer to this question. I politely walk into the store, laptop in tow, and, you know, "Burn the place down." [Don't miss the 7th piece of trivia].

Needless to say, I'll be without my laptop for a few weeks again soon. :(

WTF!!!! Pamela?

2004-10-11T21:25:00.000-05:00

Man!!!! I had a 2 in 3 chance of getting that one right. Dang! I just watched last Thursday's episode of the Apprentice, and I am absolutely floored. So here's the way I see this episode went:

Pamela is transferred to the gals team to balance things out. She whips them into shape and comes within $10 of winning. (Less than 1 product sale!) She calls into the boardroom two of the worst performers, and Trump fires her because she wasn't able to get Maria & "Little" Stacy to pull their weight. Enough.

Still, this episode had everything...Great TV! I'll be back next week.

Let's see just how wrong I can be...

2004-10-03T00:55:00.000-05:00

In a fun experiment, I promised that I'd make a prediction of who the top 10 competitors from "The Apprentice" season two are. What that ultimately amounts to is trying to decide who the next four people to be fired are. The great thing about saying, instead who I think the top 10 are is that if one of them get's fired, I'm not wrong, Trump just obviously fired the wrong person.

Ultimately, just about all of the women, with the exception of Pamela, are on the chopping block right now. Without a doubt the strongest competitors are Kelly, Raj, Wes , Pamela, and Kevin. Chris, Ivana, Jennifer M., John, and Sandy are on weaker ground, but certainly not as unstable as the remaining four.

So that leaves these to be fired:

Andy is dangerous because of his age. He's as solid as it gets defending himself, but I'm not sure he'll offer enough to the team, and eventually I'm guessing he'll be hung out to dry. Ultimately, Trump's not going to hire a 23 year old with little real entrepreneurial experience to lead one of his companies.

Elizabeth was in a slump last week after she was nearly fired, and Trump has already expressed his disdain for her leadership skills. I think she could pull it out, but she's going to have to drastically change her attitude, and without the opportunity to demonstrate some impeccable leadership, she's in danger.

Maria, again Trump's already seen her fail, and would have likely fired her were it not for the debacle with Stacie J. Although shes got this whole Carrie-Anne Moss thing going on, she's also got a whole lotta cattiness that's ripping the women's team apart. If I made a cattiness chart, this woman would be Everest compared to the hill country of the other women.

'Little' Stacy...Wow! This girl just get's on my nerves. I don't know which is worse, while speaking of Stacie J's "episode," she honestly said, "It was one of the scariest moment's in my entire life," or that Trump believed that BS. Ultimately, this girls got a distorted sense of reality, and she's a loaded gun.

Next week on "The Young and the Restless"

2004-09-27T21:43:00.000-05:00

So, in the ongoing saga of the slow death of my laptop, I stopped by Best Buy today to talk with a manager about the fact that their original estimate is now 100% wrong. Not only did they tell me I would have my laptop back after around 10 days, but now that it has been 20, they don't know when I will get my laptop back. It could be as much as 8 weeks total time... (UGH!) So, anyway, if I'm a little short & infrequent, blame it on Best Buy.

On a completely unrelated note, I'd like to take a moment to discuss "The Apprentice" for a minute. If you're ever looking for a classic picture of someone being railroaded, and cannot find any homeless people & a set of nearby railroad tracks, look no further than last Thursday's debacle on "The Apprentice". Now, granted, Mary J. was a nuicance at best, a hindrance at worst, and really only there because Trump's got a thing for models, but to say that "I was the most afraid I have ever been in my life," is a complete and utter lie. Honestly, I can't believe she survived last week, but thanks to the "Bradford incident" she scathed by. Anyway, I'm just babbling at this point...but let me end with this. Very soon, I'll be providing my top ten picks for the show, and then we can have the fun of seeing how terribly wrong I was.

I have some bad news...

2004-09-09T21:33:00.000-05:00

My laptop is off to BestBuy for repairs again, it seems it wanted to wake up from standby whenever it is moved, so I thought it best to have them look at it. The good news is that this is my fourth repair, so the laptop is up for a "lemon review" to see if it should be replaced (let's hope). The bad news, is that it's going to be hard to update this until I get the laptop back, but for now, I'll do my best...

So, tonight "The Apprentice" season 2 started. I'm pretty excited, since last season was so much fun to watch. I never thought I would get into the "reality TV" thing, as I had been able to successfully avoid "Survivor", "Big Brother", and somewhere around 5000 other replicas. I had been temporarily snared by "The Mole", partially because it was Anderson Cooper (of Channel 1 fame) and partially because it was a thinking man's game, but ever since that I haven't ever been drawn to any "reality TV". I pretty much stick to my staple Simpson's augmented by the occasional "Friends" rerun.

All in all, now that I'm back on basic cable, I don't really watch that much TV...Well, I've got to jet, time to get a spot picked out on the couch for the 2 hours of "The Apprentice" and the "Friends" spinoff, "Joey".

A day late and a dollar short...

2004-09-04T17:07:00.000-05:00

I'm not sure why I wanted to start blogging...I guess, because I've found it to be such a great way to keep up with friends from college (University of Missouri-Rolla, more on that in the future, I'm sure). None the less, here it is Saturday, September 4th and I'm about to quit lurking in the shadows, and post my first blog entry.

I've avoided this for some time because I didn't feel I was as witty or original as some of my friends, and thus wouldn't provide any interesting material for a blog, but I've realized over the past few weeks/months that I don't care about any of that. I'll be content if this is nothing more than my own personal dumping ground for stray thoughts on life, the universe, and everything. Even if no one ever links to me, or posts a comment, I'll be happy.

I've always thought that one of your earliest entries in your blog should be an introduction for the readers, since you never know who is going to read your blog, and so I'm going to do my best to start this off on the right foot. Let's get some of the preliminaries out of the way.

Name: Richard Curtis Johnson
Nickname: RC
Birthday: June 10, 1980
Currently living in: Austin, TX
Occupation: Programmer/Analyst
Hobbies: watching movies, playing with legos (especially mindstorms), video games (XBox), hanging out with friends, and goofing around with my computer.
Political affiliation: None...I vote independent of party lines.
Religious affliliation: Non-denominational Christian.
Favorites:

Movie: Lord of the Rings
TV series: Simpsons.
Bands: Five Iron Frenzy and Sixpence None the Richer
Food: Homemade cheese burgers.