davedot dot com

I enjoyed this weekend thoroughly. Before winter break, Amber mentioned to me the possibility of going home with her this weekend. There was a 4-H winter retreat going on, and her parents didn't want her driving home alone. Naturally, I agreed. I figured "Ok, I'll go, we'll get this 4-H thing done, then we can hang out with Amber's friends." I couldn't have been much more wrong.

We got to the retreat around 8p Friday. I have to admit, I was a bit overwhelmed at first by all the kids running around. Kids ranged from 8 to 16 or so, and there were 115 of them. Right off a few of them clung to Amber. Then a few of them noticed me among her little tail of followers. "Who're you? Are you in 4-H?" They really didn't seem too interested in my responses, but if I was cool with Amber, I was cool with them. I had an in.

That night was the little dance DJed by Amber and yours truly. There really wasn't much dancing going on, but it gave me a chance to get to know some of the kids. I didn't meet a single one I didn't like, and I think they took to me pretty well. Amber told me that a few of the little girls had a crush on me. What can I say? I'm a heartbreaker. I had a lot of fun talking to the kids, getting to know them a bit, and just goofing off. It was so much more fun than I had anticipated.

The only snag of the entire weekend happened at bedtime. Amber and I had planned to share a king-sized air mattress, with separate sleeping bags. The powers that be decided that we couldn't share a bed, because they didn't want to explain to the kids. Neither of us was going to fight, it wasn't a big deal. We put both air mattresses together and slept with an adult chaperone between us.

Saturday morning was cooperative games, activities, and other fun and wholesome things. I got to know a few of the TAs, and a good time was had by all. This was really the first time that I was working away from Amber. I was paired up with Brad first, then I worked with three of the TAs for most of the day. By the time everything was done, I was ready for bed. We weren't done yet though. There were still Amber's other friends to visit. That, though, is a story for another day.

I tend to get a little sensitive when Steve criticises Cobleskill. I think it's mostly because he's right. There are a lot of things here that are stupid, immature, backwards, and just like high school and home. The title actually refers to the one bothering me currently, the fact that student guests need to sign out by 3am and non-students need to be out by midnight. Now this could just be me, but I think that's kinda dumb. What's the point? If I intend to do something that I shouldn't, not being allowed in other dorms after 3 isn't going to stop me.

From what I hear, things weren't all uptight before 9/11/01. Apparently there was a need for a security increase after terrorists attacked America. I'm gonna let you in on a couple things.

1. America has been attacked by terrrorists for decades; American terrorists. Being foreign doesn't make them special in my eyes. A sociopath with explosives is a sociopath with explosives.
2. Cobleskill is a little cornfield school in a cornfield town in a cornfield county. Resources would be better spent on oh, say, alcoholism treatment and prevention, rape prevention, cultural enrichment, and the list goes on. Terrorists aren't interested.

All I really wanted was to be able to spend the night in another dorm. Is that so much to ask?

There's been quite a bit of chatter going on about the WordPress nightlies changing version numbers from 1.3 to 1.5. Personally, I think the answer is obvious. When writing software, you listen to music. If you're on windows, you use Winamp for this. Someone on the WP team decided they liked Winamp's 2,3,5 numbering, and "borrowed" it.

Some people are suggesting a Fibbonaci sequence. Unfortunately, that would require two version 1.1s, which would just be silly now wouldn't it?

I'm running a 1.5 nightly and I love it more than I love my own children. Then again, I don't have children.

I have a mostly-built website, and now that I have a domain name and some hosting, I've decided I want to structure it completely differently. We'll see how it goes. In the meanwhile, here's a semi-finished though mostly functional version with some stylistic disparity. I like that word, disparity. It's a nice word.