My gadgets
My DVD's
My Photos
Alexa
You DO backup, right?

Find out "who you are", take this Personality Test!

What is it with SPAM these days?

See Dean's Webcam (If online: click on "Live Pictures")

I stopped watching TV when they took Miami Vice and Moonlighting off the air, and was boycotting TV until they come back on. I don't seem to be having much effect, though.

Actually, my favorite all-time TV series is/was "Kung Fu". I stumbled across the DVD of the complete first season and love it.

I love (loved) "Sex in the City," but it too is off the air. I'm starting to think if I show an interest in a show they pull it. It's a conspiracy, plain and simple.

Breaking that trend, I've fallen also in love with "24," "House M.D.," "Las Vegas," "Extreme Makeover," "White Collar," "Burn Notice," and most anything on the "Biography Channel." And they;re still on the ai!. I'm sure once the networks catch wind of that they'll cancel 'em...

"Where's your hat?" - Rocky, 1976

• At the end of the movie, when Rocky's just done the impossible and went the distance with (and almost beat) Apollo Creed, Adrian runs through the crowd and makes her way into the ring amidst the pandemonium. She'd lost her red hat that Rocky liked before the fight. Now, he's just done something no one in the world has done, reporters are all over him, he doesn't know if he won or lost the fight, and all he cares about is that his sweetheart lost her hat. Best movie line ever...

"I'm gonna need a hacksaw" - 24, Season 2, first episode

• Jack Bauer, a burnt-out agent brought back in to find a nuke in LA, interrogates a witness at CTU. The witness smirks and says he doesn't have to talk, and Jack looks at him for a second, then pulls a gun and shoots him. His boss goes into panic, but Jack examines the dead-man's neck, turns to his boss (after a small lecture), and says "I'm gonna need a hacksaw." Whew! This is NOT a man I'd want to owe money to!

• Deep Thoughts

• Also, I'm a Minister! So if you need to get married, it seems I can do that now. And you can be one too!
  • If I find myself with a spare $25, I'm going to become a Doctor! Gads, all the years I wasted at school...!
    
• On the Myers-Briggs Personality Profile I'm an INFP, a somewhat unusual and probably dysfunctional personality style (2% of the population, although the estimates vary from < 1% to 4%, with the later generally thought to reflect that INFPs tend to take more self-analysis tests than the other profiles, and skew the data). Dang. But I'm in good company with John F. Kennedy Jr., Jacqueline Kennedy (it's genetic), and Mary, mother of Jesus (wait! was this test available 2000 years ago? "Me is suspect").
  
  There's more on it here and here.

Music

I've been collecting CD's since they first came out, and have lots and lots of them (space is my primary problem now). I also have those old album-things, although I don't listen to them any longer (I have an AR-1 turntable but it needs a new belt, hard to find). And I have a good collection of cassette tapes that I've recorded over the years. Unfortunately, I don't play any instrument except for the stereo. I own a guitar, and it looks great leaning against the fireplace in the living room. Folks have said it needs to be tuned, but I don't know, it sounds like "guitar" to me. Except when I play it, that is. I tried to learn harmonica one week, but even that proved too difficult, although I'll admit that one week may not be enough time to come to that conclusion. I sing in the shower though, and it sounds just great. And I sing along with the CD when I drive, and no one's done it better. . .

And of course, I've been ripping CDs and sticking them on my iPod and network storage, so other than pulling a CD off the shelf to rip it, most of the music now is on the iPod, stereo, and my iPod. It's pretty cool! I may just box up the CDs and stow them away.

Computers

This is what I do. At work I used to primarily use UNIX ® (HP-UX) machines (read this UNIX/C joke, which, after coding in C/C++ for years, agree completely with, Pascal's still my favorite, but sadly has been deprecated in favor of C and it's variants. Java holds out hope, though). I dallied with Windows NT when in the lab, but I changed positions at work so most of my "dallying" now is at home. I like playing with PC's, and in my off-time I always tinkered. I now run/play with various OSs including Win2K, WinXP, BeOS, Vista, Win 7, and I keep Linux around. I'm, by any measure, a beanie-head when it comes to computers, and technology in general. If you're interested, here're some specs & photos of the systems I use.

Reading

I used to read a lot more than I do, but I'm still addicted to it, I've just changed the "theme" of my reading today. My favorite authors occupy a lot of my time, but I spend more time reading magazines, technical manuals (unfortunately), billboards, milk cartons, e-mail, websites, etc.

I also rekindled my childhood zeal for comic books, around the time Superman "died." My favorite, however, is Batman. "There's good, there's evil, and then there's Batman..."

Tennis

My previous, but still beloved preoccupation. I played as a kid, up through high-school, then took an 18-year hiatus. I've been back, playing now for 8+ years. My present USTA rating is 4.0. (For a clear, and quite humorous description of "NTPR" tennis ratings, see what Mike Hoye from usenet spent too much time writing, here). I used to post quite a bit on usenet, in the group rec.sport.tennis, but drifted away.

Karate, Boxing, etc.

I like this stuff, I don't know why. It's something I'm "good" at (deep within the realm of complete amateur), so that must be the allure. I keep a heavy-bag hanging up outside for when I think I'm Muhammad Ali. But, like my reading, this has taken a back-seat of late, and I'm not currently studying any discipline. I'm an orange-belt in American Kenpo karate, and I've studied other forms over the years. I plan to take up Aikido "Sometime Real Soon".

Photograph

This was more-or-less kicked off when I bought my Casio QV-4000 digicam in Feb '02. I've always been interested in photography, and graphics in general, especially digital graphics. The QV-4000 is a "Four Megapixel" camera with some nice higher-end features, and takes some dandy pictures (even with me at the helm!). I've started a small sample gallery you can see here. The QV-4000 has some issues, however (size, and a long delay between pics, makes it hard to capture "those moments" of Alexa). So I bought the faster and more portable Casio Exilim EX-Z57. Very small, fast, and the downside is it just doesn't take as good of pictures as the 4000 (small lens). But I carry it with me. I replaced the Casio with a Canon 6 megapixal recently, smaller, faster, lighter, so on.