Edward's stuff

Thesis defense

"Heading North to Alaska"

wrf workshop and job search update

job search update

hectic month

late season blizzard

weather changes

winter is still here.

one hurtle clear

not looking forward to this week

My top Ten: Anime

start of winter semester

OS-tans and others

snow is finally here

fall is here

semester has begun

home again, home again

a little more than a month left.

Pirates knaves and idiots: event report

more stuff

Photo Album: sca photos

Photo Album: Geocaching

Photo Album: geocoins and travel bugs.

Photo Album: harney peak

Photo Album: badlands and the big horns

Photo Album: the tetons and more

Fri, 08 Aug 2008 00:45:08 GMT

well, another major speed bump on my road to getting my master's degree has been cleared. I did my thesis defense today, and i got through it OK. now all that stands between me and being completely done are a few more revisions and some paperwork. i feels really good to have the defense finally out of the way.

in other news got my official job offer from the National weather service for the Juneau, AK job. so here are some more details. as i have said before i was hired as a GS-9 with a pay of $39,975 per year and a 24% cost of living allowance. this is a permanent full time position so i can get health and life insurance through them if need be. i also found out specifically what they mean when they say that travel and moving allowances authorized in the job announcement. it means that the government will pay all or part of you getting to your destination. this includes ferry bill, $0.19 per mile for driving and 70 per night hotel cost. Plus they will also hire a moving company to move all of your household goods to your new place of residence this includes up to 90 days of temporary storage of said goods. so in other words no Uhaul trailer required. no apartment yet in Juneau, but i am in the process of trying to finalize one.

weather here has been hot recently highs have been in the high 80s to low 90s for the past few weeks, with a few passing storms.

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 03:22:56 GMT

well if you haven't guessed what news i have just by looking at the title then there is no hope for you. i got a phone call this morning, turns out it was someone calling from NOAA. it was to inform me that i had been selected to get the General Forecasters position in Juneau, AK. so all the schooling i have been through has paid off so far. they hired me at a GS-9 pay level which translates into about $39,795.00 - $51,738.00 annual salary. also since the cost of living is so high there i will also be getting a Cost of Living Allowance of about 24% of base salary and is not taxed. so now it falls to me to get paper work filled out, find an appartment up there, and work out how i am going to get there. one bad thing about it is that there are no roads going to Juneau what so ever. the only way into the city is by plane or boat. thankfully there is a vehical and passenger ferry run by the state that travels up and down the coast on a regular basis. even better is that the southern port for this ferry is in washington state. the disadvantage is that it will cost me over $1000 dollars for me and my vehical to travel one way on the ferry from washington to juneau. oh well can't complain too much when my moving expences are autherized to be paid for. tentitive start date in early September. i am really looking forward to this.

of course with the promise of a job on the horizon, the push is now on to get my thesis done before i leave. my major professor should release my thesis to my committee by the end of this week. depending on whether or not we hear back from Dr. Price on getting a stand-in for her (she is on my committee as the out-of-department rep and she is also in Turkey till August 8th) my pre-defense meeting should be next week or the week after and the defense itself will be a week or two after that. if all goes well i should be done with that by around my birthday. crossing my fingers that i get this done in time.

weather here has been warm with temps hovering in the 70s and 80s with sunny skies. vegetation is still green out here, but it is slowly starting to dry out. the wildfire danger out here has gone up to high resently and may go higher as the summer wears on.

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 01:58:35 GMT

Was in Boulder, CO this past week attending the WRF Workshop. as with most conference some presentations were interesting and others were down right boring. the main point of the workshop was to bring together everyone that is working on the WRF model and talk about what would like to be done with it and show research that has been done with it so far. the most interesting of the talks involved modeling eddys that are in the eyewall of hurricanes. Boulder itself is a rather nice city. bike paths all over the place, and can't beat the view. Boulder is right up against the front range. so just on the western edge of town are mountains that are a few thousand feet tall. all in all it was a good trip.

on the job search end, i received an e-mail from AWS Truewind. i made it through the second cut. so that means that i am in the top three to get the position. this time they would like to meet with me personally. how that will work, i don't have the details on that yet. in addition to that, i received an e-mail today (monday) from the NWS in Juneau, AK in regards to the "General Forecasters" position that i applied for. i have a phone interview with them tomorrow (tuesday) morning. so two good possibilites.

weather here is currently clear. highs have been in the 80s. no really hot weather as of yet. it is still very green out here.

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 01:12:34 GMT

only two things to report so far in this topic. the first is in regards to the AWS Truewind meteorologist position i applied for in Albany, NY. I just had a phone interview with them Sunday evening, and through this found out how well my application is doing there. they apparently got over 70 resumes for the position in the three weeks since the opening was first posted. they conducted phone interviews, like the one i just did on Sunday, for their top ten. they told me that they will be narrowing it down to three by the end of the week. those three they will be bringing in for personal interviews.

the other possibility is in the national weather service. my application for a "General Forecaster" position was referred to the hiring official for the NWS office that the position is open at. oh and did i mention that this position is at the Juneau, Alaska forecast office. the only reason that i know that i was referred is the site where i applied for this position stated that was the case. most of the other position in the NWS that i have applied for, i did not score high enough to be referred.

Crossing my fingers that either one of these works out.

Fri, 06 Jun 2008 03:02:38 GMT

well starting with the blizzard that we had in early may, it turned out to be one really wet month. Rapid City set a record for precipitation during the month of may receiving about 9.71 inches of rain. that not only makes it the wettest may on record, it also made it the wettest month ever since records began. and we are still getting more rain. just in the past 3 days we have gotten over 3.5 inches of rain here. flood warnings are up all over the place. except for the southern hills where they have received little rain. it has also been a rather cool month as well. i think we have only gotten into the 80s maybe 6 or 7 times. no 90s yet. currently it is cloudy here with drizzle and temps in the 50s.

thesis is coming along. i have got the basic structure down and written. i am to the point of inserting more graphics and other things into it and sending it back and fourth between me and Dr. Capehart for revisions. job search isn't doing so hot. applied for several intern postions at national weather service office around the country but have not gotten anything yet. according to Shawn one of the reasons is that there is currently an influx of people coming out of military service that are applying for these jobs and they get priority over us for these jobs. have applied for other jobs outside of the government as well. no dice there so far.

my parents and sister came out to visit me in early may. they liked the area. forgot to ask them if they liked the school i choose for grad school. anyway they, with me as a guide, got out to many of the sites around the hills, including: deadwood, wind cave, mt. rushmore, crazy horse, and several of the sites in rapid city. this was also the first time any of my college friends have met my sister. their first impression was there were surprised at how short she was.

a week later was Quest for Camelot, an SCA event hosted by the shire of Shattentor in Nemo, SD. i day tripped this event on saturday, and ended up spending most of the morning at the archery field and thrown weapons field. did rather well on the archery field considering that i haven't shot since Dub Dub 2006. shot my war point for archery which consists of 30 shots. did not win the war point for that though. the afternoon was spent on the rapier field. the war point tourney was short since all the fighters with the exception of one was from Northshield. so to determine war point the one Artemisia fighter had to fight all of the Northshield fighters one on one. the kingdom with the most wins got the war point. she put up a good fight getting four of our fighters to up getting her five times. so the war point went to Northshield. after that were various melees and pick up fights. the day continued with court that evening where we had not only the current king and princess of Northshield in attendance but we also had the king and queen of Artemisia in attendance as well. for me the highlight was that i received an Award of Arms. don't have my scroll yet, it is still being composed, and will be mailed to me eventually. the rest of the evening was spent talking and singing around the campfires. some new photos have been added to the SCA gallery.

the number of geocaches that i have found so far is at 101. find number 100 was at a very nice overlook about five miles west of rapid at a place called Buzzard's Roost. that cache became find number 100 after i tried to get to the cache "Lost Railroads: Dark Canyon" as number 100. scraped finding "lost railroads" after considering the creek crossing a little too risky after the resent heavy rains.

Fri, 02 May 2008 21:29:21 GMT

blizzard is over now. just have the winds left. storm total here in rapid is 13 inches of snowfall. the northern hills got hit harder with lead getting 32 inches, deadwood got 28 inches and one report near harding had 4 feet of snow on the ground. sun is out now and it is already starting to melt away.

Fri, 02 May 2008 15:06:34 GMT

no classes today and with my paper for scaling done, i have some time to update this. the reason for classes being canceled is because of the weather. Rapid city and the Black hills are getting pounded by a late season blizzard right now. looking out my window (the parts i can see through, all the windows are plastered with snow) right now i can barely see the NWS building. snow is falling and being blown around by 35 to 45 mph winds with higher gusts. Rapid City has effectively been shut down by the storm. all schools are closed including the universities, most businesses are closed, I-90 between Wall and the Wyoming state line is closed, a general "no Travel" advisory is out for the entire black hills and for highway 85 from the north dakota boarder to custer. it is very hard to tell how much snow we have right now since it is getting blown around alot. storm is suppose to lighten up later today and be gone by tonight. storm totals so far are around 8 inces of snow in and around rapid with upwards of 2 to 3 feet or more in the higher hills also a 62 mph gust was reported here in rapid as well. and just think we hit 80 degrees on tuesday.

other news: this week was the last week of the semester. finals are next week. i only have one final which is Radar on monday at 2 pm. due to the blizzard one of the final presentations for scaling has been moved to the time that was set asside for finals for this class which will be tuesday at 2 pm. have started applying for jobs. sent out my application for intern positions at the NWS offices in Nevada and in Kansas. still have to get my transcripts faxed to them thought. also it looks like i will be heading to a conference in bolder colorado in june.

two weekends ago got out to pierre to attend Provost's Challenge, an all rapier event. that was the most fighting i have done in a while. only won about 6 of the 30 or so boughts i fought so i need to improve my offensive game a bit. my defence was good as most people commented that i was rather hard to kill.

Geocache total has gone up to 99 finds. i also have found nearly all the caches in rapid city. of the ones that i wanted to find i only have three more to find. well it is time to continue watching the blizzard raging outside. good thing my parents didn't decide to come out this week instead of next week.

Tue, 08 Apr 2008 01:05:36 GMT

old man winter has yet to kick the bucket here. over the past two days we have gotten about 2 inches of snow in rapid city. one inch came Saturday night and we are currently in the process of getting another 1 to 2 inches right now.

about a month to go in the current semester. with how fast i am writing my thesis between classwork i will not be done by graduation. best estimate will be that i will be done by late may or into june. the raid computer for the department went down again about the beginning of march and was down for about a month as Dr. capehart fought with the supplier to get the replacement part. lets just say that he was in a rather foul mood that whole time. in other class news the radar class went on a field trip to the NWS's radar site. they even let us up in the radar dome which is 100 feet tall. along with other things i learned that Cory is afraid of heights. he said that he was shaking the whole time that we were up in the dome.

in other news. had a good spring break. most of it was spent catching up on school work which included getting a 20 min presentation put together for seminar on my thesis research. i am happy to say that that went very well. other than that took one or two days off during break to get out of the house. found a few geocaches at that time too.

well it was bound to happen with all the quarrels that have been going on, but the shire of shattentor is falling apart. a few of our officers resigned their posts over the past week. all this after we pulled off a rather successful demo at national american university. oh well there are always events to look forward to. like the one coming up next weekend in coldernhale. Provost's Challenge, an all rapier event.

resently have gotten hooked on another anime. one that i haven't seen in a while. Detective Conan which also goes by the name of Case Closed. it is about a famous high school detective that sticks his nose into something that he was better off not knowing. the results turned him into a ten year old with the mind of a high schooler. now forced to take on the fake name of conan edogawa he is determined to track down the people how did this to him and change back to his normal self. i found this anime a few years ago when it was aired on one of the cable stations, but lost interest when they started skipping episodes. now i have picked it back up and started watching it all the way through. this will take awhile though since this anime first aired in 1996 and is still going. it has so far over 500 episodes.

Tue, 26 Feb 2008 03:04:06 GMT

one large hurtle on the way to graduation has been cleared. i passes my coursework exam. finally saw today how close it was. i got a 74% on the exam to pass i needed a 70%. didn't do so good on the global carbon cycle portion and squeaked by on precip physics, but i passed so i don't really care. all that is left is classes for this semester and the thesis. may be done by may or june.

after finding out that i did pass, Cory talked me into seeing the movie Jumper. rather good movie, but the camera jumps and pans around so much and in such random fasion, especially in the 2nd half of the movie, that i started to get motion sick.

weather here has been nice. this past weekend, both saturday and sunday we were around 50 for highs, and it was nice and sunny. got a little colder here today with highs in the 30s and a little snow this morning (we only got a dusting). it is forecast to be in the 40s for the rest of the week.

website changes:
-new anime added to the "recommended anime" list. "Rocket girls"
-new icon added to sandbox. see below.

Sun, 10 Feb 2008 17:13:04 GMT

why, you may ask? it is because my course work exam is this Friday. i will be studying just about every class that i have taken over the last three and a half semesters. how does this work? we are given questions. one from each class that we could possibly have taken. we have to answer seven of them and get an overall grade of 70% or higher to graduate. wish me luck in that regard.

still not much else has happened over the past few weeks. the campus had more computer problems in mid January. this time it wasn't just the department it was the whole school that was affected. one of the hard drives on the campus RAID died which crashed the operating system and wiped the student H: drives and the common F: drive on the campus network. they did get most of the data back through tape and hard drive back ups but took them a whole week before that was completed. needless to say they are looking for a faster way to do backups in case this happens again.

we had a very sharp cold front move though the area on Jan. 28th. i don't think i have ever seen the temperature drop so fast. we had a temperature of 54 degrees Fahrenheit at 1 pm. one hour later it was 30 degrees. by 4 pm it was 11 degrees. a 43 degree temperature drop in just three hours. Gillette, WY was even worse, dropping 29 degrees in just an hour, we started out the day in the 50s and by the next morning we were at or below 0 for temperatures. you know its bad when at noon you have puddles from melting snow and four hours later said puddles are frozen solid. i am not kidding it was like the air was sucking the heat out of everything. don't believe me see this link.

went out to Mardi Graw in deadwood last week. you are not really missing much. i was expecting a little more other than just a small parade or two. for the most part it is an excuse to go to deadwood to drink and gamble. not really my idea of fun.

we currently are in the single digits for temperatures here with partly cloudy skies and a few snow showers around. we only have maybe a half an inch of snow on the ground at the moment. temps have been a roller coaster ride over the past weeks 40s one day teens the next. then back up to the 40s. i can't wait for spring.

Sun, 27 Jan 2008 23:39:47 GMT

I thought that I have watched enough animes by this time to compile a top ten list for myself. So here they are in no particular order the top ten animes that I like. Please note that I have not watched the entire series of some of these anime, but I have seen most of the episodes. My opinions below are based off of what I have seen.

1. Blood + Being one of the few animes that I have watched beginning to end and was hooked by it for that entire length (the series is 50 episodes long) this series deserves its top spot on my list. Blood + follows the journey of Saya Otonashi and her family and friends as they come to terms with what she is. She starts out the series as an average schoolgirl on modern day Okinawa Island with the unusual traits of having no memory of her past except for the last year and a large appetite. This seemingly normal existence is shattered in the span of a half an hour as she is attacked at school by a Chiroptera (monstrous bat-like creatures that feed off human blood and are capable of super-human feats of strength, speed, and hearing. basically this anime's version of a vampire.). the battle (in which Saya in some sort of trance like state literally cuts the monster in half) reveals a new side of Saya that utterly terrifies her after she see her blood soaked form and red glowing eyes in a reflection from a window. Thus begins her journey to figure out what she truly is.

Blood + is filled with enough action and intrigue to keep you hooked even through the slower parts of the anime. The slowly unfolding story of Saya's past is deep and dark, and keeps you guessing as we are given flashback memories from Saya's point of view. The character development is superb with each and ever character changing significantly over the course of the anime. The animation and sound are also very well done. Blood + is an anime that I would defiantly recommend watching.

Acting as a prequel/stand-alone is the movie "Blood: The Last Vampire" which follows Saya's exploits at a US air base in Japan just a few months before the Vietnam war breaks out. While the movie can be seen either before or after you watch the series, I would recommend watching it after Blood + to get a bit more understanding of what is going on in the movie.

2. Full Metal Alchemist FMA is another anime that I have watched from beginning to end, and like Blood + it does not disappoint. FMA takes place on an alternate history earth; technology has not gotten past the steam engine. Instead the science of alchemy is what drives the world. It can do just about anything through the use of transmutation circles and is governed by the law of equivalent exchange (to obtain, something of equal value must be lost). In this world, two brothers, Edward and Alphonse Elric, are two up and coming alchemist living in a rural town. Their father left when they were really young and there mother died years later of an illness. Desperate to have there mom back they attempt to bring her back through the use of alchemy. They fail utterly with the result of their mom coming back as a misshapen hunk of flesh, Edward losing his left leg, and Alphonse losing his entire body. In a desperate attempt to keep Alphonse alive, Edward sacrifices his right arm to affix his brother's soul to a suit of armor. Now the two brothers, Edward with an automail arm and leg and Alphonse as an empty walking and talking suit of armor, wander around the countryside searching for the way to reclaim there lost body parts. They quickly find that the answer may not be the salvation that they were hoping for.

FMA is another anime that I recommend as a must watch. The action is quite intense and is interspersed with comedy in the right places. Multiple story lines abound and are well executed. Plus the number of plots surrounding the answer the Elric brothers seek is astounding. This anime is worth every second of its 50+ episodes.

FMA also has a movie called "FMA the movie: Conqueror of Shamballa". I recommend watching the movie after the series since the movie serves as a sequel to the anime and indeed picks up not long after where the anime ends.

3. Trigun Trigun is another good anime to watch. Taking place on a desert planet, a lone man known only as Vash the Stampede has a bounty on his head of 60 billion double dollars for his single handed destruction of an entire town. Two insurance workers, Milly Thompson and Meryl Stryfe are sent by their company to find this man and try to prevent him from doing any more damage. the man that they eventually find out is Vash the Stampede is not the kind of man they were expecting to find, and as more and more about the man is revealed we begin to wonder just who or what he is.

This anime is best described as a space western, barrowing quite heavily from old western movies and TV shows. Yet the fact that you are on an alien planet shows with the odd technologies that crop up here and there. The fact that there are four moons in the sky also helps to set the mood too. Action and light comedy go hand and hand here in the somewhat comedic yet serious ways that Vash deals with a situation. So be prepared for rapid mood swings in this anime.

4. Fruits Basket no that is not a misspelling. Fruits Basket follows the story of Tohru Honda who was recently orphaned when her mother died in a car crash. Recently living with her grandfather she starts living in a tent when her grandfather’s house needs to be renovated. Not long after, she finds out that where she set up her tent is on land owned by the Sohma family which includes Yuki Sohma who is her classmate. Taking pity on her they offer to let her stay at their house in return for doing the housework and cooking. She accepts after a landslide buries her tent and all of her possessions. It isn’t long before she stumbles on the family secret. The Sohma’s are cursed. They turn into animals of the Chinese zodiac if they are hugged by the opposite gender, are under a lot of stress, or they are really weak, and Tohru might be the only person that can help them.

Fruits Basket is more of an emotional anime than anything else with comedy interspaced throughout. The main theme of the anime is the characters trying to find their place in the world. The story is told in such a way that you can’t wait to see the next episode to find out more.

5. FLCL no one word that I can think of can accurately describe this anime. It starts out fairly normal. Nandaba Naota is your average teenager. He goes to school and tries to act mature, that is until he is run over by a Vespa scooter driven by Haruhara Haruko and then is hit in the head by her bass guitar. Weirdness soon ensues as giant robots start coming out of Nandaba’s forehead, Haruhara becomes the live-in maid at his house, and he is hit even more times with the vespa, the guitar, and several other things. You wonder why he is not dead or at least paralyzed by the end.

Parodies abound in this anime, poking fun at anime, Japan, and its own makers. The anime is relatively short, only spanning six episodes. So the plot is fast paced and full of action and weirdness. The only thing I can say about this is that you better be ready for anything.

6. S-cry-ed here is yet another action oriented anime. This one takes place in Japan sometime in the future. A geologic event called “the Great Uprising” has separated a large section of Japan from the main island. This section of land now known as the lost ground is populated by people who have the ability to deconstruct matter and reshape and crystallize it into any form using only their thoughts and willpower. These people are called alter users, and for most of them it is a day to day struggle to survive. Kazuma is one of these alter users and the law on the island is about to seriously piss him off.

S-cry-ed is what you could call a brawler anime since most of the story revolves around Kazuma and another Alter user, named Ryuhou, trying to be the best there is period by fighting each other till one is defeated. Yet their fights are always interrupted. Still there is enough story left after this for the anime to be very enjoyable and yes the fights between Kazuma and Ryuhou do tie into the story very well.

7. Inuyasha your typical fantasy adventure anime. Modern day school girl Kagome Higurashi living in a suburb of Tokyo has a relatively normal life living on a shire run by her family. This is until her 15^th birthday when a centipede demon bursts out of the old well on the grounds and pulls her into it. After somehow getting away from the demon she climbs out of the well to find herself not in Tokyo anymore. Many things happen after that. She finds out she is still in Japan just 500 years in the past, demons exist, she is the reincarnation of a priestess that died 50 years ago, her body houses a jewel of great power that is ripped out and then she shatters it while trying to get it back from a crow demon, and she frees a half-demon from a tree. Rough life? Oh it gets better as she teams up with the half-demon and attempts to track down the shards of the jewel before they fall into the wrong hands.

I have not seen all the episodes of this anime yet, mostly because it is over 150 episodes long. I have only seen up to episode 90. Inuyasha was the first anime that got me hooked not counting digimon which I had watched years before. Each episode serves as sort of a mini adventure yet still ties into the main story line, and each episode gets progressively darker and darker as the series goes on and more characters are introduced. Character development is slow but very well done, and the main villain is possible the most evil heartless monster I have ever seen in any of these series.

In addition to the large number of episodes there are four movies out there as well. Each with a storyline that is separate from the main anime. I personally have not watched any of the movies so I can’t tell you if they are any good or where they fit into the anime.

8. Read or Die Read or die takes place in an alternate-history earth, where the United Kingdom is still the dominate superpower. There are two read or die anime series “Read or Die: OVA” and “R.O.D. the TV”. In the OVA we are introduced to Yomiko Readman, a bibliomaniac to the “n”th degree, and a powerful paper master (someone who can manipulate paper to do there bidding. i.e. they can make familiars out of it, use it to stop a bullet, etc.). Working as a special agent for the British Library, she is tasked with getting and protecting rare and ancient literary works. “R.O.D. the TV” is a sequel of sorts for the OVA that follows the story of the Paper sisters (all of which are paper masters, but are not as powerful as Readman) as they act as the bodyguards of Japanese author and Readman’s friend Nenene.

I have seen the OVA and the first 12 episode of “the TV”. From what I have seen the anime is really good. Action is aplenty especially in the OVA. ROD the TV has more humor stemming from the interactions between the three sisters and the author.

9. Ghost in the Shell best described as a cybernetic police thriller, Ghost in the Shell’s story focuses on a covert operations group within the Japanese National Public Safety Commission known as Secton 9. They work in a world where the line between man and machine has bleared so much that it is almost impossible to tell who is human and who is a cyborg.

This anime has so many things going for it as the writers focused more on the ethical and philosophical conflicts that come with the widespread merging of human and machine. Lots of action, great animation, and some of the best opening themes I have heard. This is defiantly one of the best out there.

There are three movies and two seasons of the anime out there. The first two movies “Ghost in the Shell” and Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence” are on a different storyline than the anime which is titled “Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex”. The third movie ties in with the anime storyline and is called “Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex Solid State Society”. They are all rather good.

10. Witch Hunter Robin What is the best way to catch a witch? Why use another witch of course. Robin is a 15 year old witch that was raised by the Roman Catholic Church in Italy. She is the new member of STN-J a secret organization that hunts down witches that have just come into there power to keep the rest of humanity in the dark about witches. The members of this force are themselves “craft users”. As her powers grow will Robin stop being the hunter and start being the hunted?

I have seen most of the episodes. All are very dark and moody. Near the beginning it has the feeling of doing the monster of the week plot but soon get to the main story. This one is worth watching.

Honorable Mentions: these anime I find to be very good, but don’t make my top ten obviously.

-Deathnote: Purely a thinking man’s anime since the main antagonist and villain are trying to outmaneuver each other rather than fight. I have only seen about ten episodes of this one, but it is different from other anime I have seen.

-Bleach: mostly action with some good story elements. The two main drawbacks are that it is now over 180 episodes long and they tend to extend the fights over two to three episodes or more. Plus the fights get repetitive after awhile.

-Cowboy Bebop: I have only seen a few of the episode from this one, which follows intergalactic bounty hunters. However the ones I have seen have good story telling and look nice.

-Granadier: similar theme to Trigun with the lone gun story. Yet Trigun is the much better anime of the two. Granadier is shorter than Trigun and much less serious, but it is good for a break from your more serious action anime.

-Digimon: especially season one. Of the animes based off of games this is by far the best one. It has a believable and enjoyable storyline, and characters that grow and evolve. Later seasons start to suffer from the “been there done that” feeling, but are still good.

Sat, 12 Jan 2008 20:09:52 GMT

the 2008 winter semester is almost here. classes for me do not start till next Thursday. in the mean time i had a good break. found out that i passes all of my fall classes with "A"s. traveling home was not perfect. got stuck in Detroit on my way home after i found out my flight from detroit to toledo was canceled due to maintenance problems. since detroit was within driving distance from home and who knows when i would have gotten another flight i just canceled the rebook by the airline and had my parents pick me up from detroit. needless to say my dad was not completely thrilled with that. Mom and my sister said he was grumbling all the way to detroit. the flight back to south dakota wasn't as bad as the flight out. the only problem encountered there was my flight out of detroit. we ended up sitting on that plane at the gate for about an hour as the ground crew tried to get the last of the baggage into the plane. i was glad i scheduled in a three hour layover in Minneapolis. other than that, visiting home was great. saw all of the relatives, saw grandma rose (who was in the hospital at the time), drove my sister up the wall the whole time. she wouldn't let me give her a good-by noogie in toledo when i left. she shouted an emphatic no and hid behind my dad.

since the last update i have been to two SCA events. Yuletide hosted by the shire of Noiregarde on December 8th and twelfth night hosted by the shire of Schattentor on Jan 5th. both were small events the former taking place at the deadwood public library and the latter taking place at one of the churches in rapid city. at both the rapier was turned into a regional practice because of so few authorized fighters there, and the feasts if any were pot luck. still a fun time though.

not much else to say really. saw the second national treasure movie over break. currently here in rapid city we have no snow on the ground with temps in the 30s. sky is clear.

note: class list has been updated.

Sat, 12 Jan 2008 19:18:05 GMT

Ok, i found this a few months ago and i just had to say something about it. this is a good waste of a few hours looking though all the stuff.

about a month ago i was surfing the net with my stumble application when it took me to a wikipedia entry that was entitled "wikipe-tan" and featured an artwork of a girl done in a manga style wearing a maid outfit with the wikipedia puzzle pieces decorating her hair and outfit. turns out this is one of many personifications of the Wikipedia website and is a product of Moe anthropomorphism, or the giving of moe (basically, cute girl) qualities to a non-human being, object, concept, or phenomena. they are also seen with various accessories that denote the being or object that the character is representing. even the way the body is built and the personality that is given to the "-tan" represent something about the object that it is representing. As you can guess from the "-tan" suffix at the end of the name, it is of japanese origin.

well as i read through that entry i kept seeing mentions of "OS-tans". Curious, i clicked on the link and this is the entry that popped up. it turns out that the "OS-tans" means Operating System-tans. Every single operating system that has ever been made for a computer has had a personification made for it in the same fashion as "Wikipe-tan". for example, the personification of the windows 95 OS (which is considered to be the the first of the modern windows 32-bit OS's) is typically depicted as a traditional brown-haired lady from the early modern era of Japan wearing a kimono and has a hair ribbon that shows the four windows colors. Linux was originally depicted as a bearded penguin, but a more friendly girl image with flippers and a helmet has been used as a human alternative. also these "-tans" have the weird trait that breast size represents the amount of memory required to run these operating systems. so as you can guess the breast size of the "XP-tan" is rather ...Um... large.

Digging even further many programs, hardware, file-types, and web-applications have also been made into "-tans". "wikipe-tan" is one of these. other examples include: Mozilla Firefox (depicted as a beautiful female humanoid fox spirit), Mozilla Thunderbird (a girl dressed in yellow and blue with a letter or keyboard near by), Google, Outlook, Gmail, some of the more infamous viruses, blue-ray disks, and even USB connections.

these are all fan made artworks and even more of the images of "OS-tans", other "-tans", and even some male personifications can be found here.

Mon, 03 Dec 2007 02:44:35 GMT

most likely should have posted this with that title a week ago, but never got around to it. so as the title says we finally do have snow here in rapid city. the official observation at the national weather service was a half an inch, but with how much it was blowing around we may have gotten more than that. like say an inch or two. temps have been cold here as well. in the past week we have not had any temps higher than the thirties.

not much went on during November. classes have been the same old thing. work work and more work. i have one small paper and one project due by the end of the semester, and i will have a take home final due by the end of the semester as well. just two weeks of classes and one week of finals left in this semester. last day of finals is the Friday before Christmas. after that i have three and a half weeks of Christmas vacation. i will only be home for about a week and a half of that (from Dec 24th to Jan 2nd), the rest of the break will be used to get some thesis work done and study for my course work exam in February.

Thanksgiving was good. i was invited over to Paul Reed's house in Box Elder for thanksgiving dinner. dinner included deep fried turkey, roasted turkey, real mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, deviled eggs, stuffing, and other such goodies. the deep fried turkey was really good. i think that is the first time i have had turkey prepared that way. the entertainment that came with that was good too. Paul left the bird in the deep frier too long. when he brought it in the bird look like charcoal. also when he went to pick it up out of the pot he brought it in with the bird fell apart. paul was still holding the legs while the rest of it fell back into the pot. after we cut into it we found that it only looked bad on the outside. the inside was done, and tasted very good.

i also went out and saw the movie Beowulf during thanksgiving break. not the best movie i have seen, but worth it for the way it was filmed. this film is shot entirely with computer graphics that are so well done that you think you are watching a live action movie at some points. and if you go to the right theater you can see it in 3-D. the story itself is not that deep, but is still a very well done movie.

haven't done much else except watch anime. i finally saw trigun all the way through, and i am now in the process of watching death note. i will see everyone at home this christmas.

Sat, 20 Oct 2007 17:10:41 GMT

haven't done much of anything since the last update and most of what has happened occurred in the past week. weather here currently is partly cloudy with temps in the 60s. we got up to around 70 yesterday which is getting less and less frequent. presently we have only been getting into the 50s for highs. no snow here yet but we have seen below freezing temps. snow, however has been seen in the hills and in Spearfish.

towards the end of Sept. i got Cory out geocaching along the Mickelson trail just south of Lead. Found seven caches in that area, and Cory said that next time i suggest this, he is going to research where i was looking at going before he agreed to go. this was mostly because one of the caches was on top of one of the peaks in the area and that most of the caches were about a mile bike ride from one to another. (Cory is not a bike person). he and i still had fun anyway.

one week ago the shire of Noiregarde hosted the fall Northshield Crown Tournament in Lead. can't say that i did much since this event was mostly heavy weapons combat only. though i still wish i had brought my rapier gear because the current holder of the Iron Ring was there and he had his equipment with him. i could have challenged him for the iron ring. (the Iron Ring is a traveling prise for rapier within the kingdom of northshield. while at an event the current holder may be challenged for the ring by three people per day in a best of five match. who ever successfully wins the ring may keep it for the rest of the event. the winner is then challenged for it at the next event he or she attends.) I spent most of the event volunteering at troll, and watching the fighting. the winner of the tourney was Lars and his consort Mary. long live our newest prince and princess Lars and Mary. feast was really good too. it featured deviled eggs, stuffed mushrooms, irish chicken, mashed potatoes, pork, and other good eats.

about the only other thing of major importance is that the shire of schattentor decided to make me the group MIT (marshal in training) for Rapier. Apparently no one else has the time or the want for the position, and since i was showing up to practices on a regular basis anyway they decided to offer me the position.

Cory found a webcomic that is possibly the best one i have seen. called "the Whiteboard" it takes place in a paintball shop in alaska owned by a polar bear named Doc and the nearby paintball field. needless to say, said store regularly gets blown up or burns down due to any number of reasons. This happens so often that the nearby restaurant offers group discounts for the paramedics that respond. The most resent storyline has Doc in trouble with the National Guard, the EPA, etc. over an incident that started out with Doc's bad Breath, the leftovers in the shop break room fridge, and some shape charges. need i say more. link for this comic is in the internet comic list.

other than that, classes have been good, and we have had a few pranks going back and forth in the grad office. nothing new there.

Fri, 07 Sep 2007 02:48:13 GMT

lots of stuff has happened since the last update. had a really good birthday. spent most of the day out on skyline drive finding eight more geocaches. i also saw two travel bugs that day too. then after going out to eat went to the central states fair that evening. they just happened to be having their demolition derby that eventing. well worth the 15 dollar entry fee. ran into John and Darren before the derby so i watched the derby with them. had some excitement around here on the friday before and the sunday after my birthday. on the friday Rapid city was actually under a tornado warning for over an hour. no tornadoes were reported, but I90 north of town was closed due to flooding and abandon cars that had there windows busted out due to hail. Piedmont and Hermosa were both flooded that night. then sunday we had an intense lightning storm move through. we had almost constant lightning and thunder. i was surprised that we didn't lose power here. it was so bad that Cory actually turned off his computer which he hardly ever does.

not much else happened for the rest of the week until saturday. that was when i started my trip to yellowstone. i don't have any pictures of yellowstone because none of them that i took came out. (insert your best curse words here). i think it is time to invest in a digital camera. anyway, left that Saturday at about 7:40 am and got to Old faithful at 5:00 pm. watched one eruption and then left for Madison junction to find a campsite for the night. the next day was spent on the west side of yellowstone. starting again at old faithful, i walked around the upper geyser basin seeing the eruptions of Riverside and Daisy geyser. just missed Grand geyser's eruption. i also saw a few other minor geysers erupt as well. photos of any of these thermal features do not do them justice. just being there in person seeing the water leaving the ground, hearing the rumbling it makes, smelling the smell of sulfur, and feeling the heat and moisture from the steam that that is blown downwind is an experience in itself. left the upper basin and then proceeded to the middle basin where that large thermal pool that you always see in pictures is located. again all pictures i have seen do not do this thing justice. this pool is huge. it is at least the size of a football field in width. there are several other interesting features their as well. it was also at this point in the trip that i ran into Cory. he had already been there for a week. most of it spent hiking in the back country. together we then went down Firehole Lake Drive and the Fountain Paintpots/lower geyser basin. both of us saw several more erupting geysers and the bubbling mud pots. Cory could not resist getting a picture of me in front of the Twig Geyser. we then parted ways with Cory heading toward Mammoth Hot Springs and then home, and me heading for the Norris Geyser basin. Norris was not as impressive as the other basins i visited mostly because there was a lack of activity there. only saw maybe two or three erupting geysers here. there were several colorful pools. next i made a brief stops at roaring mountain (a mountain side filled with fumaroles), and Sheepeater cliff. the last stop on the first day was at Mammoth Hot springs. this was huge. take what is pictured of the thermopolis hot spring and quadruple it in size. after that i spent the night at mammoth.

day two saw me heading over to tower junction and heading down the eastern part of the loop to yellowstone lake. the first two stops were at Undine and Wraith falls. i then continued over to tower falls. the first long term stop was at the southern part of the grand canyon of yellowstone and upper and lower falls. both of these falls were the most impressive of the waterfalls that i saw in yellowstone. both falling several hundred feet into the canyon with a large amount of water cascading over their edges. in both cases you could literally walk almost up to the edge of these falls. next stop was down the road at Sulphur Caldron and Mud Volcano. both of these places featured roiling muddy and acidic water springs. the most interesting of the features there were Churning Caldron and Dragon's Mouth Spring. Churning Caldron basically is what its name implies, and Dragon's Mouth Spring is a steaming, roaring opening in a hillside that periodically spits out water. with a little imagination it could be a dragon's mouth. last stop of the day was all the way down on the west end of yellowstone lake at west thumb geyser basin. this basin had several colorful pools that you could see many feet into. saw no erupting geysers there. spent the night at west thumb campground.

Day three saw me for the first part of the day, at the upper geyser basin again. saw several more minor geysers erupt and caught an eruption of grand and Castle geysers. both were very impressive. with that visit i have now seen five of the six large, predictable geysers erupt (Old Faithful, Riverside, Daisy, Castle, and Grand. Great fountain Geyser is the one i didn't see erupt.), and at least half of the minor geysers in the upper basin erupt. although it was luck that i caught Castle geyser erupting when it did. for the night before it had a minor eruption that through off all predictions for it. so they didn't know when it was going to erupt. left the upper basin around 11:30 am. and got back to Rapid at about 9:00pm. took a different way home this time, instead of going through powder river pass in the bighorns i took the northern route through granite pass. making one stop at shell falls along the way. Powder river pass is the faster way through the bighorns, but granite pass the by far the most scenic. it was a fun trip and i would like to go back sometime.

Labor day weekend turned out to be somewhat busy. Saturday i went to Revel in the Veil, an event hosted by the shire of Schattentor. this one i decided to daytrip. got to fight again, and one of the tournaments was interesting to say the least. two non combatants were given the responsibility of assigning the style a fighter was suppose to fight (i.e. single, dagger, buckler, etc.) and where their weak spot was. the fighter was invulnerable except for that one spot. if that spot was hit he or she was killed. lets just say it made for some rather long bouts, with each fighter poking the other all over the place trying to find the weak spot (this spot was only known to the fighter it was assigned to.). Feast was also one of the best i have had. it was a four course meal. the appetizers were various cheeses, grapes, dates, and Mongolian spiced beef (very good). first course was Icelandic chicken, and beet and carrot salad. (Icelandic chicken is bread stuffed with spiced chicken rapped in bacon and baked.). second course was a very good pork dish, and dessert featured Irish apple cake. Labor day was spent boating on Pactola reservoir with some friends.

one other thing my total for found Geocaches is up to 61, and i have also hidden my first cache. you can find it here.

well classes have started up again. see classes list to see what i am taking this semester. more computer problems are plaging my research right now hopfully we can resolve it soon. other than that tuitions is paid for, everything else that i needed to do is done. oh and if you are wondering we only have two new grad students this year. let the school year commence no matter how much i don't want it to.

Mon, 13 Aug 2007 03:26:18 GMT

the last two weeks have been hectic to say the least. shortly after my last update here i received news from home that my Grandma liske died. decided on the fly to make the trip back home for her funeral while i still have the time to do so. got the news monday morning july 30th started driving back early Tuesday and arrived back home by 3:40 pm EDT on Wednesday. what's funny is my parents were not expecting me so early on wednesday, so when i got there mom was just coming out to water the garden. she didn't see me till i said hi. the reaction i got was priceless. she looked up at me and said a questioning hi with an expression that said "who the hell are you?" about a second later she realized it was me and she brightened up substantially. the viewing and the funeral were nice and went off without a hitch. the pastor only messed up once when he said her age at death was 66 instead of 86. on the up side i got see most of my relatives and friends that i have not seen in a long time.

got six more geocaches while i was home. went around Oak Harbor and found them the day before i left for South Dakota. got my dad to come along. this was his first experience with geocaching and he enjoyed it. he especially enjoyed the mulitcache that was in union cemetery since it took you to the graves of the town founder Adophus Kraemer and the unusual grave of Wilhelmina Becker. we also got an interesting story after we found the "Sign Language" cache which is on the billboard on the side of the hardware. dad suggested to tell the hardware store owner about it just in case he sees any one snooping around the sign. turns out that he didn't know that the cache was there. he even told us that he called the police a few months ago after he saw some people snooping around the sign (geocachers??).

the drive back was uneventfull except for the part about me catching a cold. that stunk trying to drive while your nose is running a marithon and you are sneezing every now and then. oh well got back to SD ok. this time with out the side trip to St. Paul, MN, total driving time one way was 19 hours.

didn't do much over the last week except try to recover from the cold that i got. did more stuff this weekend. on saturday when to the Black hills Geocaching club meet and greet out at cliff side park on the west side of Rapid city. finally got to put some faces to the names that i have seen on the logs.

weather is decent here with temps in the upper 80s for highs the past two days hardly any precipitation here but we did have some drizzle here this morning. right now it is clear. i am for the most part over my cold that i had earlier this week. still coughing a little but other wise fine.

site changes:
photos added
changes to some of the lists.

Sun, 29 Jul 2007 01:50:05 GMT

well there is a bit more than a month left before classes start up again for the fall semester. with my research we are finally at the point that we were at before the Raid crashed in may, thankfully. we have already started new runs with the MM5 model.

went to the event Rabid Yale Hunt last weekend in White River, SD. was in the Princess's Sleeve tournament. this year it was a double elimination tournament. i won my first match, but lost the next two fights. Lord Martin and a few of the other fighters had fun with my second fight. it was me VS. Eddie (a rapier fighter from Noiregard) , so they were shouting "Ed, Ed, Ed!!!" the entire fight. Eddie eventually won that fight after about a minute of me blocking his blade out wide with my off hand and trying to poke him with my blade. i couldn't get solid contact. finally he got a head shot on me. that was the first of two loses. the second came at the hands of Foacault, and just like that i was out. i won against someone i had never fought with before and the two loses came at the hands of fighters i have fought with frequently. Gabby was having the same luck. The eventual winner was Lord Martin of Noiregard.

as for the rest of the event, the weather was hotter than what we had for Pirates. it got over 100 degrees on Saturday. thank goodness there was a creek nearby. basically nothing went on from mid morning to early evening. Princess's sleeve was at 9am and finished by 11. they didn't do heavy until 8pm that night. feast was really good. on the menu was steak, venison, corn on the cob, baked potato, bread and butter, pheasant, and a few other things. can't really beat the price either, $15 for meals the entire event. this includes Friday dinner; saturday breakfast, lunch, and feast; and sunday breakfast. next event that i plan to go to will be Revel in the Vale on labor day weekend.

Fourth of July around here was very interesting. their was a ban on fireworks in Rapid city due to the fire danger around here, but there was no such ban in Rapid valley (a suburb of Rapid city that we can see from our apartment. it basically looked like everyone and their brother bought fireworks and were setting them off. and were not talking just sparklers and snapper were talking large mortars, roman candles, and other similar fireworks. the display rivaled any professionally done display. we also saw a small grass fire that was started in Rapid Valley by fireworks. also saw the Transformers movie with Cory. it was rather good. i say go and watch it. found some more geocaches, including one that i was the first person to find it. had to drag out of the dark corners of my mind the stuff i learned about topographic maps to find out where it was. That was a fun one.

weather here currently is in partly cloudy with temps in the mid 80s. sure beats the 100s that we had earlier this week. temps are expected to get back up into the 90s. by mid week. it is really dry out here. the grass is brown and crunchy. fire danger is very high. there have been two notable wild land fires out here, one just south of Hot Springs and another about 12 miles WNW of Rapid city on nemo road.

Tue, 03 Jul 2007 01:44:28 GMT

nothing major to report this time around. spent the last few weeks helping rebuild the data that was lost from when the raid crashed. just about have all of it back, but the new raid is still giving us troubles. last week the file system got scrambled, and just today one or more drives on it failed and caused all files on it to become read-only.

in other news, attended the event "Pirates Knaves and Idiots" hosted by the shire of Noiregarde. this small event was held at the sand creek campgrounds just south of Beulah, WY. had a very good time and the event was interesting to say the least. they did manage to fine a rattlesnake on site a few hours before i showed up. it attacked Foacault. thankfully the bite didn't hit home because the snake got tangled up in Foacault's baggy pants that he just happened to be wearing at the time. the snake was killed and so were the three babies is was carrying. it's skin is most likely part of someone's garb now. picked up another authorization in rapier. i am now authorized to fight with a dagger and rapier. it was also rather hot (90s during the day and upper 60s at night) for this event. thankfully there was a stream that ran through the campsite. just about everyone spent at least half their time in that creek cooling off. next event i plan on going to is "Rabid Yale Hunt" hosted by the shire of Coldernhale in White River, SD on the weekend of July 20th.

i have been geocaching a bit more in the last few weeks. found a few in rapid city, and three more south of Keystone. one of the caches here in Rapid i was looking for was muggled (someone stole it) sometime between the last time it was reported found and when i went searching for it. the cache was the "Cowboy Hill East" cache. it has since been archived and is no longer available to search for. of the caches that i have found so far my favorite was a multi-cache that i found with Cory on Saturday. entitled "not all that glitters is gold", this four part cache took you to two abandon mine sites, an abandon settlement, and leads you on a three mile hike in the peter norbeck wilderness area. the final cache site is the abandon Dike mine. at the edge of this thing you are looking down into a 50 to 100 foot deep open pit that is about 75 feet wide. very interesting site since you don't know that the pit is there until you are nearly right beside it. currently i have found 21 geocaches total, one travel bug and two geocoins. i am currently in possession of one geocoin (the Karma Geocoin) as i search for a cache to move it on to.

weather here has been hot recently with highs in the 90s and lows in the 60s. thankfully the humidity out here is rather low. dewpoints have been in the 30s and 40s (giving us a relative humidity of about 20 to 30 %). some scattered thunderstorms here and there. it is expected to remain in the 90s for highs for the rest of the week.

Sun, 10 Jun 2007 22:36:27 GMT

a very late happy memorial day to everyone. nothing much to report on the school end of things. the raid computer is finally ready to go hopefully. should be starting to do things with it in the next few weeks.

two weekends ago went out to bear butte just northeast of Sturgis, and hiked up to the top of it. very nice view from up there, well worth the rigorous climb to the top (1000 ft climb over two miles). i could have done without the tons of offering cloths that the local native americans had up. i realize that the butte is sacred to the native americans so a few here and there i could understand, but every tree and stone had at least a dozen of these things attached to them. it was bordering on ridiculous how many of those offerings were there. other than that it was a good place.

Cory and I hiked up to Harney Peak last weekend. it is a three mile hike one way from the trail head to the top. Harney Peak is the highest point in the state of South Dakota. at a height of just over 7000 feet above sea level, it provides a spectacular view of the black hills and the surrounding planes. also since it is the highest thing around, you get great cell phone reception even though the peak is in the middle of a wilderness protection area and three miles from the nearest road. we couldn't resist using my cell phone to call someone from the peak.

i found a new hobby to occupy my time with. some of you may have heard of it. it is Geocaching. for those of you that don't know what the heck i am talking about, basically people hide containers of goodies somewhere. then using a hand held GPS (global Positioning System) they record the coordinates of where the cache is hidden and post the coordinates online. then someone who wants to find the cache inputs the coordinates into their own GPS and attempt to find the cache. when and if they find it you can sign the log included in the cache saying that you found it and if you want something that is in the cache you trade for it by putting something else in the cache replacing what you took out. finally, you rehide it in the same place for others to find. The caches can be any size. i have so far seen caches that were in altoids tins up to gallon ice cream containers. they can be larger or smaller than that. caches are hidden all over the world. there are about 20 to 30 caches in Rapid city alone and over 100 in the black hills. i also checked back home. they're seven caches hidden in Oak Harbor, OH (two in Veteran's Park, one in Flatiron Park, one near the soccer fields near the waste water treatment plant, one at the end of Finkey Road, one in Union Cemetery, and at least one in downtown.). i have so far found a total of seven caches, one here in rapid city and six in deadwood. how many i have found can be seen via the image (seen below) in the sandbox window on the right side of this page.

more info on this passtime can be found at this link.

the six caches that i found in deadwood were found yesterday with Cory. he wanted a way to test out his new GPS unit. i offered geocaching as a suggestion, and told him i was heading up to deadwood to find some there (by the way i also now own a GPS unit.). we found six of the seven caches that were there, two of which were on top of hills overlooking the town. the one we didn't find, we kicked ourselfs later on. the description said it was in plane site. we looked all over, but didn't see it. when we got back home i did a bit more research. Both of us saw a white birdhouse at the cache site, but we didn't look closer at it. turns out that was the cache. have to go back and get it sometime. if you are not looking for them you can easily walk right by one of these caches and not even realize one is there.

went storm chasing last Wednesday with John, Darren, and Joanna. didn't see any tornadoes even though we were likely six miles from a reported rain-rapped tornado. we did see some nice clouds, a very green sky, some small hail lots of lightning, and a semi blown off the interstate. we started out a little east of Sturgis, but went we heard of things popping to the south we high tailed it out to Kadoka (about a half hour east of Wall, SD). it was there we saw most of the stuff we were going to see that day. we ended up in Pierre, SD, and headed home from there. the storm chasers were out in force. several vehicles from Texas Teck were out chasing this storm. we also saw the Doppler On Wheels truck (i feel sorry for who ever was driving it because when it went by where we were stopped there were about 20 or 30 cars following it. all of them were likely amature storm chasers). the Armored Intercept Vehicle was also chasing this storm with a chase truck following with someone in the bed of the truck filming with a hardhat on (if you have seen the resent nova or national geographics lately, you will know what i am talking about. this guy wants to literally drive right through a tornado. it is a car covered in armor and looks like a tank with four wheels instead of treads.) he is crazy if you ask me as is the person who was filming in the truck bed with the hardhat (they were heading for a storm that possibly had baseball size hail). there were also about a hundred other chasers out there as well. a lot of them were driving like idiots. example: one of the texas teck pickups passed us going well over the speed limit on a two lane state route going up a hill on a solid yellow, and pulling a trailer. i agree with john when he says "I fear the other chasers much more than the storm itself." that was a fun chase.

it is currently in the low 90s here under clear skies. not very humid out, but still hot. i heard that the higher hills had snow on Thursday. an early happy Father's day to everyone and a early happy Birthday to Grandpa Rose.

Fri, 06 Jun 2008 03:33:11 GMT

sca photos

me in full Garb as my persona Eduard Theobolt (photo taken by cory mohn)

Me receiving my Award of Arms at court at Quest for Camelot 2008. the person standing is King Lars II of Northshield. (this and following photos credit: Ianuk and Lady Sancha)

The Brother Hood of the Crimson Cup receiving their award at court.

close up of the brotherhood.

Picture of most of the royalty in attendance at quest. dressed in gray is his royal majesty King Lars II of Northshield and dressed in black and red from left to right are his and her royal majesties King Reinmar and Queen Albreda of Artemisia

this is twelfth night event put on by the shire of schattentor in Rapid city, SD. all of the following photos were taken by Paul Reed (or his family).

12th night rapier tournament 1. i am the one on the left.

more rapier

even more rapier. again i am the fighter that is facing the photographer.

same match as previous

More Photos...

Mon, 13 Aug 2007 02:30:34 GMT

Geocaching

nameless mine at stage one of the "Not all that glitters is gold" cache. image by: Cory Mohn.

remains of a building at stage three of the "not all that glitters is gold" cache. image by: Cory Mohn.

mine at the end of the "not all that glitters is gold" cache. Dike mine. image by: Cory Mohn

BHGC meet and greet August 11th 2007 at cliff side park in Rapid city.

BHGC meet and greet group photo.

Mon, 13 Aug 2007 02:28:57 GMT

geocoins and travel bugs.

Hewkii TB. found June 24th, 2007 in the "Bob needs a rest" cache.

Karma Geocoin. picked up from the "Iron Mountain Picnic Area" cache on June 30th, 2007. placed in "the 'rock'" cache july 3rd.

Evil micro Geocoin. brought to Rapid city by Cory from a cache in the twin cities. seen in his hands on july 18th, 2007.

Pepe the geocaching wonder dog TB. yes someone actually made their dog a travel bug (a discover only one). seen in the hands of the owner at the BHGC meet and greet on Aug. 11th 2007.

red jeep TB. also seen on August 11th at the BHGC meet and greet.

the return of Mr. smiley TB. also seen at the BHGC meet and greet. goal of bug is to meet geocachers having breakfast, lunch, dinner. hence the picture.

Tue, 03 Jul 2007 02:05:45 GMT

harney peak

Cory and me with harney peak in between us in the background. image by Cory Mohn.

me at the top of harney peak. image by: Cory Mohn.

Observation/old fire tower at the peak. image by Cory Mohn.

the view from the highest point in SD. image by: Cory Mohn.

the view. image by: Cory Mohn.

a nice picture on the way up. image by: Cory Mohn.

phoning home from the peak. my mom and dad were not home when i made this call. image by Cory Mohn.

Tue, 03 Apr 2007 19:51:39 GMT

badlands and the big horns

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badlands national park

tom fitz walking in the forground (badlands)

Andrea through the gap

Tue, 03 Apr 2007 18:30:07 GMT

the tetons and more

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