Time Cannon

Things are going to start happening for me now!! Navin R. Johnson The fine folks over at boing boing had and article about black light posters. The image for the article was a picture of the infamous "hippie Mickey Mouse". The same hippie Mickey Mouse proudly displayed by me in my second grade elementary group picture . I emailed Mark the picture thinking he would get a kick out it. He did and he blogged it here . Im featured in a boingboing article. Lookout Star Wars Kid, Im the "Hippie Mickey Mouse" Guy!

"There is more stupidity that hydrogen in the Universe" Frank Zappa You know when you hear those stories, the ones that you can't believe that people are THAT stupid. You think, wow, that cant be topped? But it always does. Stupidity seems to know no bounds. I saw a snippet of the local news last night (something that I consciously try to avoid.). One of the suburbs is following suite with a few other cities and installing cameras at redlights to try and stem the tide of moron red light runners. Then the story shifted to the "does this invade your privacy" slant. They then interviewed a parade of slack jawed yokels (apologies to Matt Groening) who went on about "the violation of constitutional rights. Then came the topper. An overweight lady in her mid thirties actually made this statement: "Sometimes I run late for work and need to run a red lite or two so I'm not late" Really. That was said. I'm not exaggerating. Please by all mea...

Well the guesses came flooding in. Neither were right. I'm in the first row, first kid from the left. Yes, me, with the "hippie Mickey Mouse flashing the peace sign" shirt. To this day, my mother can not explain to me when, or how that shirt came into my possession, or more importantly WHY I was wearing it in second grade on picture day no less. I gotta admit, its pretty damn funny though. Another thing I noticed, why do they always put me next to the friggen Redskin fans???

"A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you the less you know." Diane Arbus Since I have not one original idea in my head. Here is my version of Where's Waldo. Nom, over at NomLogic posted his third grade elementary group picture and challenged us to find him. So with apologies to the nomster, below is my second grade elementary school picture with the same challenge. No hints just blind guesses for you! And, not even a prize offered. Once again the original is so much better than the copy.

"You can discover more in an hour of play than you can in a lifetime of conversation" Unknown I graduated from public school. My son goes to an overpriced (it will be worth it in the end they tell me) Catholic parochial school. When I thumb through his homework now, I literally can only do the English and literature he brings home. Everything else is gibberish. He's in 10th grade taking chemistry and his second year of French. In 10th grade I was playing dodgeball in PE and enjoying my favorite class called Outdoor Education. Yes, Outdoor Education. This year long class consisted of the following. Every Monday, we would "learn" the rules of a particular game. Football, soccer etc. If it was raining, Chess, Backgammon and even monopoly. The following Tuesday through Friday was spent actually playing that particular game. We actually got credits toward graduation for this!!! To top that off, every other Friday, we would all bring items for a cookout, as we would h...

"I usually NEVER send these out, but..." Local Habitual Email Forwarder Everyone reading this has one. You know, that person that forwards you every email they receive. The unfunny joke, the Urban Legend that you have to debunk, and more often that not a nice little virus. The ones I really hate are the "forward this to 10 people and your luck will change". Yeah, the fate of my life will improve by pawning off an email on them that they don't want. That Karma sure is strange. Hey did you see that there is a new recipe for Neiman Marcus cookies that's being sent around? Although, on the rare occasion something will be funny, like this:

"back on the track and I'm beatin' the flack..." Young, Young & Johnson Blog Peer Pressure, thats what it comes down to. The TimeCannon was enjoying one of it's many hiatus. Then Nom HAD to re-open the NomLogic. It's not fair really. When NomLogic re-opens, you can't let your blog sink lower in the cyber quicksand. No, you have to re-open YOUR blog and churn out some more long boring nostalgia stories. Not only that, SPIDEY has a friggen blog now. Time to reach down and dredge up some more "first girlfriend" stories. Can't wait, can ya.

...Full of Grace I think I have started to realize why I'm such a sports fan, especially NFL Football. People with absolutely nothing in common can come together for three hours in front of the TV and high five with each other like they have been lifelong friends. My first memory of being a fan happened on December 28th, 1975. I was eight. That day my grandfather was over watching the big game with my dad and myself. My fathers side of the family was always distant. I really didn't know my dads dad. He wasn't around too much. He didn't take an interest in his own kids, much less his grand kids. But Dallas Cowboys football? There some common ground for you. It was playoff time, and the Cowboys were in Minnesota to face Fran Tarkenton and the Minnesota Vikings. Being an eight point underdog at the freezing Metropolitan Stadium (the friendly indoor confines of the Metrodome were not available for another 7 years) was not a promising situation. The game was a classic defens...

Thats how it started. Funny how that phrase shaped what I wanted to do with my life. I didn't know it at the time, but it's easy to see looking back. For those of you unfamiliar with it, thats the opening line of the classic text adventure Zork. Although, when I first adventured into the white house and down into the Great Underground Empire, it had not reached its commecial form and was called Dungeon, floating around the big DEC mainframes. I had a friend in 1979 whose dad worked for DEC. Personal computers were still a year or two away and his dad would bring home a dumb terminal (literally a keyboard and a green screen monitor with a 300 baud modem)to use in the evenings to login from home and work. If there was time when he was done, he would let us get on and show us some of the "games" we could play. Eliza, they Psychic, the Star Trek simulator, the old standby Lunar Lander simulation etc. We would spend HOURS playing the crude games. I was fascinated, I wanted...

A Death In The Family Amazing Live (not anymore) Sea Monkeys! Some sort of algea infection has claimed the life of my beloved Sea-Monkey's. This was the longest living batch ever in my long history of raising the little critters. This batch stayed alive almost THREE years. Amazing. No telling how many generations. So, how 'bout a moment of silence please, for those Amazing Live (now dead) Sea Monkeys...

Freedom! And thats all I have to say about that....

Takedown The Pursuit and Capture of Kevin Mitnick This marks the return of the Audiobook review. With the new jobs added drivetime, I should be able to churn through books a bit faster now. Tsutomo Shimomura one of the nations leading computer security experts had his machine compromised Christmas of 1994. Little did he know, the perpetrator was the infamous Kevin Mitnick, who was at the time, on the run from the FBI and the NSA. Takedown is the story of Tsutomo's detailed steakout and final capture of the nations top computer criminal. This book is almost 10 years old. But I think that is one of the main reasons I enjoyed it. It's always fun to read accounts of the beginnings of the "popular" internet. This books is peppered statements like "we will never have use for hard drives over 4gb" etc, etc. Tsutomos detail used in this book will likely be a huge turnoff for the casual non technical reader, but to those interested in computer security will no doubt ...

YES!! Local Ecstatic Interviewee "Dear Mr. Bacon, We are please to offer you a position..."

Five Months No new posts in 5 months, I guess my blog frittered away to the last place you want your blog to be when you have your naive high hopes in the beginning that "this blog" will be a hit and visitied daily by millions daily! Oh well. I have a HUGE job interview tomorrow. The recent Real Life (TM) stress (and the major contributor to this blog "fading into 'Bolivia" as Mike Tyson so eloquently said) could be alleviated with the attainment of this job. I really think this could be a watershed moment, one you look back on and can say, "thats where things took a turn for the better". Anyway if anyone for some unknown reason stumbles across this between now and Monday at 10:00 CDT, send out some nice vibe my way, to say I need em is an understatement...

Wow. Almost two weeks without an update. That’s pretty sad. Every time I say that I’m gonna update more often, the longer the periods of inactivity become. Oh well, here’s one for Whome and the fella’s at the TVA… “Down goes Frazier, Down Goes Frazier!!!” Howard Cosell The neighborhood I grew up in had about six kids my age or within at least a year of my age. So, most of the time you could always find someone to pal around with on those long summer days. But there was the rare occasion that everyone else was off somewhere doing chores or out of town. On those occasions, I would have to actually stoop and (gasp!) play with my younger brother. Didn’t happen often, but it happened. This fateful day, the game of choice was baseball. How can you play base ball with two people? Well it’s pretty easy when one can’t hit the ball. And my brother, at the age of nine, could NOT hit the ball. I would stand on the sidewalk, lob him some slow pitches and he would...

"Itsssssssss Friiiiiiiiiiidaaaaaaaaaaaay!" Local Oogla Antagonizer Vacation Day today. No reason. No plans. Just thought you'd like to know. Also, last week I forgot to wish my bud Whome a happy birthday. So, happy late birthday man, I hope Chuck E Cheese roooled!

Ralphing Kisses After reading my buddy Escapes post about his faithful dog Maynard, it seems a good time for a dog story. The day before Christmas Eve, we had decided to go out to eat. I had started gathering the candy that I was going to put in the stockings and had left it on the corner of the end table out of site. Or so I thought. When we returned from dinner, I notice little bits of what looked like aluminum foil around the house. I followed the trail until it ended directly under the Christmas tree. There sat an empty bag ( a ONE pound bag mind you) of Hershey Kisses. Shaye the Weenie dog, well into her 10th year had eaten a pound of chocolate in our absence. She was also nowhere to be seen. Anytime we return to the house and she didn’t greet you at the door wagging her tail is a bad sign. It usually meant she did something she knew she would get in trouble for and was firmly entrenched under the back corner of the bed, her favorite hiding spot. She was there,...

"It's not the tale, it's he who tells it" Stephen King, Different Seasons When you have a child in elementary school, you look forward to the school work they bring home, especially when they are young. Your refrigerator is covered in their artwork. Almost always, it brings out the “aww, how sweet factor”. But on some occasions, they bring home something that is so far out of left field you wonder how the heck they came up with it. Such was the case for @ in second grade when asked to write a scary Halloween story. Below is scan of the actual story. We got a good weeks laugh at this. Even @ cracks up still. Now he’s a Freshman in High School, and he still hasn’t topped this one. Please note, feel free to tell this story around campfires etc., just don’t hold me responsible for the sleepless nights it will cause. “ I was trickortreting. I got so scard I peed in my pants. Guss who jumped in front of me. Elves Prestly. Great balls of fire .”

Of Deanna Peoples and the Hall of Mirrors Late September and early October mean one thing if you live in Dallas, The Great State Fair of Texas. Having lived here my whole life and attended the Fair regularly, I’m sure it’s lost on me what a special tradition it is. Sure other states have their “state” fair, but this is TEXAS man, and in Texas everything is bigger. That’s almost cliché, but it’s true. Growing up, the Fair was all about the midway. How many rides could we fit in without throwing up and having to go home? How much money could we lose to the Midway barkers telling us, “you only have to make one to get the prize!”? The fair is about the food. World famous corny dogs. Texas Tornado-Taters. If it’s a solid food, they can, and will, fry it. They even had fried cheesecake this year. The Fair is about the Auto building, where “you to can view vehicles that you could NEVER be able to afford in TWO lifetimes!”. But most of all, when I go to the Fair now, it's about the nostalg...

"I only had a high school education and believe me, I had to cheat to get that." Sparky Anderson As I mentioned before, the boy is playing high school baseball now. The Freshmen aren’t supposed to play “Fall Ball” but they need players on the Junior Varsity, so they are throwing the Freshmen to the wolves. Heck, they aren’t doing half bad. This weekend’s game was at my old high school. It was really weird, pulling into the parking lot. Not too much has changed. As we got out of the car I paused for a second, looked around and realized that I was one parking spot away from my Senior parking space. I guess its sad that I remember that. I also remember, 20 years ago. walking down that sidewalk, getting in the car and thinking, “wow, I did it. Whats next?” Seems like yesterday.