Diablo III

I just got done watching the cinematic trailer and gameplay video for Diablo III. WOW!

For the record, I am a big fan of gaming. I particularly enjoy World of Warcraft at the moment but I was a huge fan of Diablo and Diablo II back in the day. I was really excited to find that Diablo III was in the works. It really looks great from what I have seen so far.

Here is the link for you to enjoy the videos as well if you like.

Diablo III Website

I know I will be buying this when it comes out. Maybe I will see you on battle.net in a dungeon someday.

Cool Comic Site

I have recently become aware of a pretty cool comic strip maker. You are limited to a few characters and some of them are rather wierd as in a dude with the body of a pigeon but others are normal. You can adjust positions of characters and speech bubbles, change background colors, and scale sizes of the people. You can also choose between a 2, 3, or 4 panel comic.

While there is no way to add any drawing of your own and no other objects but people and speech bubbles, there is some potential for the really clever minds out there.

Check out my attempt at making a comic. I figured since I am a tech guy, I would make one related to that.

click to enlarge

Here is the link to the site if you want to give it a try...

Make Beliefs Comix

Deer - Satan's Helpers

Ok, I am offically declaring that I think deer suck!

All they do is threaten to kill me several times every week. Sometimes they stand in the road and wait for me and other times they dash out when I am least expecting it.

Just this year, so far, two deer have made contact with my car. There literally must have been at least a hundred that have tried though.

The first contact, I was actually charged. It was almost as if it thought I was the one doing the threatening. It came out of the ditch and head-butted my driver door. What the heck! Scared the peaches out of me. Whatever the reason for attacking me, I won... stupid deer - made him do a face plant on the blacktop. Try flanking an Intrepid going 55 mph again, idiot.

The second time this year must of been a deer that was dared by her friends to play a game of chicken with that white one coming down the road. I managed to slow down a little bit but still hit her. I just clipped the back legs and had her doing a little slip-n-slide on her hind quarters for a few yards before she ran off again. You know her friends were still in the ditch on the other side laughing in a strange deer kind of way.

So, what is the deal? I see more deer than anything else on the road. I am not constantly dodging cats, dogs, bear, foxes, skunks, porcupines, raccoons, wolves, squirrels, chipmunks, badgers, etc. with my car. JUST THE DEER!

GOOD GRIEF! Get out of the stinkin' road, you dumb animals. I swear they must be Satan's helpers because they are always the ones out there causing accidents. Always the deer. I hate deer.

I am not a hunter but have often thought that I would take up the sport just kill a few. Someone else can have the meat. I just want to kill the deer.

Geocaching

A couple of weeks ago, my family and I decided we wanted to try out geocaching. We told the kids we would go "treasure hunting" and they immediately loved the idea.

What the heck, might as well try and put a little bit of that economic stimulus package toward something that can provide some long-lasting, good, clean, family fun - right?

...So we bought a GPS!

What a great activity for use with these things. A great way to increase sales on something that most people would otherwise never buy, too.

Ok, so we bought a Garmin GPSmap 60 Cx. ($269.00) I really like this GPS. I remember working with the PLGR, (Precision Lightweight GPS Receiver), we called them pluggers, in the military and loving those, but man, were those beastly to deal with compared to the latest on the civilian market.







Check out these huge things!
They did work well (for their time) if you knew how to use them.

Military PLGR







The Garmin is way smaller, but has way more features, better accuracy, better interface, maps, and it is even in color! What a deal!

We have been out hunting a few times now and have found 18 caches at the time of this post. This is really fun. It is like a big, global game of hide the thimble. You go out and find the hidden stash which varies in size, then you sign the log book to prove you have actually found it. Depending on the size of the container, (I have seen anything from a 35mm film canister to a shoebox size tupperware bowl) you might find some good treasures. The protocol is to take one thing from the cache and leave something different.

The kids really like looking through all the goodies and deciding what to take.

Just a tidbit of knowledge...

In French, the word 'cacher' means to hide and 'geo' refers to Earth so when you put them together you get a really cool activity to enjoy all over the world. I would encourage any of you to give it a try, but be sure to have a supply of bug dope on hand before you head out.

Why the Blog?

Blogs are fascinating.

So what took me so long to make one?

I guess I just never felt like I had a lot to say about anything. So I decided to make a blog where I can talk about everything. No strings attached.

I started out in the field of education by teaching chemistry and physical science at the high school level. One of the main objectives of science is to help people to better understand the world around them. One of the things I learned in a graduate course I took is that we can gain a better understanding of things by simply analyzing through a different lens. Our experiences, childhood, education, socio-economic status, race, gender, and health all play a role in how we see the world.

I posit that by stopping to trade lenses and being brave enough to experience the minds of those around us, we just might develop some growth of character, knowledge, patience, and love.

So here begins my blog. I hope to learn as much from you as you learn from me.

Have a great day!