Would you like some pie, sir?
by Tim Faircloth on May 24, 2010, 8:50 am
This past weekend I went to St. Mary’s and got in nine jumps. Usually that wouldn’t be too spectacular, but my last jump put me in triple digits. As I was logging jump number 100, my fellow skydivers decided to follow a little bit of long-standing skydiver tradition:
Click the screenshot for a video
So yes. I went to St. Mary’s to jump out of an airplane a few times and I came back smelling like whipped cream (even though I showered and washed my hair). I think it’s still seeping out of my pores.
Oh, and here’s the video from the actual jump:
Who’s got the butt? I’ve got the butt.
Not exactly the best exit, but it was fun nonetheless. You may not be able to tell in the screenshot, but I’m smiling.
Dio has rocked for a long, long time...
by Tim Faircloth on May 17, 2010, 10:57 am
…now it’s time for him to pass the torch.
For those of you not familiar with Ronnie James Dio’s work, here’s a YouTube link to one of his most popular songs, Holy Diver.
Reddit rant
by Tim Faircloth on Mar 26, 2010, 9:17 am
Sorry for the post blackout, guys. I’ve been busy with wedding plans and such.
In any event, I came to rant about the decline of our fellow man, specifically those that spend their time on reddit, a popular link-sharing “social site”. Given that most redditors are fellow geeks (like me), I generally believe them to be of above-average intelligence, but it looks like the collective IQ has dropped over the past few years.
The way this site works is that someone will share a link and people can vote it up (good) or down (bad) and comment on it. Posts with the best scores are put on the front page of the site, which means huge traffic for the link.
The comments are moderated by the herd as well. One would think that an intelligent comment like this one would get a lot of positive attention, right? WRONG!
I don’t get it. I (nova20) answered the question to the best of my knowledge. I tried to be insightful and add something to the conversation, and I even tried to throw in a little humor… yet my comment was voted down to a score of -1 (keep in mind you start off with a score of 1).
“But Tim,” you say, “maybe you just weren’t insightful enough. These are the greatest minds in all of the internet, right?”
Wrong again. Here’s an example of another thread I replied to but got a score of 36 points (My comment is the second one in the thread: “damned oxygen thieves”).
As I look through comments that get high scores, I usually see a disturbing trend… stupid jokes, cliches, memes, and pun thread comments are the only ones that get decent scores while intelligent posts are ignored and/or downvoted. Ugh.
My best birthday present this year...
by Tim Faircloth on Feb 2, 2010, 10:21 am
…is a fiance.
For months, Erica (my then girlfriend) has been asking me what I want for my birthday. I kept telling her “all I want is you”.
So, this morning (my birthday), I woke up and retrieved a small box from the top of my closet. I turned around and said to my sleeping girl “You know how I’ve been saying that all I want is you for my birthday? I wasn’t joking.” I then presented the ring and asked her to marry me. She of course teared up and said yes… then kissed me and called everyone she knows.
Apparently the news hit her father’s Facebook page before I left for work; he’d been holding on to that news since the middle of last month.
Sadly, the only picture I have of the ring is a crappy one I took with my phone shortly after I bought it:
Click for bigger pic (though the pic is still just as crappy) and more pics coming soon
Since that’s such a crappy picture, here are some details:
- simple setting in white gold
- center diamond and two trapezoidal baguette diamonds
- center diamond is 0.96 carat, F color, I1 clarity, brilliant cut
- wedding ring is a simple setting in white gold with two trapezoidal baguette diamonds and a center rectangular bagette diamond
So yeah. Happy birthday to me!
Tim vs. the shower door
by Tim Faircloth on Jan 9, 2010, 4:57 pm
That’s right, folks. I got tired of dealing with shower curtains — they’re always getting mildewy so they can make you sick when they stick to you in the shower — so I got a shower door.
If you click that picture you can actually see a close-up of the etching in the glass.
It wasn’t that hard to install, and I think all this practice is making me better at cutting straight with the hacksaw.
Showering is so much more pleasant when you don’t have to worry about a curtain sticking to your wet body like it’s glued there.