You know what sucks? PO Boxes. I tried to get PO Box today. I was
amazed to found out that in order to get a PO Box now, you have to first
have a verified physical mailing address. I asked the lady at the
counter just to be sure… “so let me get this straight… To get a PO
Box here, I have to already be receiving mail at a physical address
here?” The lady grinned and nodded like a circus monkey. Anyone else
see a problem with this?

So I filled out the stupid application, and it will be several days or a
week while they verify my mailing address. What are they going to do,
exactly? Send someone by my house and ask to see some of my mail? My
mail isn’t even delivered to my house. All the mail in Pearland is
delivered to these massive boxes in the neigborhoods. (As another rant,
I’ll tell you about how the post-person cannot box mail. There’s only
THREE people living on my street, and yet, I get misboxed mail?!)

To top it all off, the trained monkey behind the counter tore up my
application when I turned it in, and proceeded to rewrite everything on
a new application. The thing is, she changed some of the information.
I watched her do it, and I asked her about it, but she just smiled and
told me it would be fine.

I have a headache.

Keeping with NASA’s longstanding tradtion of naming simple things with
complex acronyms, astronauts will now be known as UGAs… urine
generation assemblies.

Just an official little tidbit to come from the fact that the plan is to
start processessing urine into water and then into oxygen in the
eventual future. I thought it was interesting that they’re trying to
close up the atmosphere loop, and their plan is pretty similar to what
we came up with a couple of years ago in my life support system design
class. I’ll spare you the details, though…

“crush U.S. imperialists’ schemes with its self-defensive power.” Not
really worthy of a quote of the day, but it really makes you stop and
think… I mean… was it a mistranslation? Probably not. Anyway,
I had to scratch my head at it, so I thought I would share.

In other news, the texas ren fest is awesome. I highly recommend going,
even if you have to drive several hours to get there. We spent 11 hours
there last weekend, and still didn’t see everything. We’re planning on
going back this weekend, actually. 35 acres is a LOT when you fill it
full of vendors, shows, weirdos, half-dressed women, swords, more shows,
more vendors… etc. And I was actually amazed that they let people
carry live steel as part of their costumes… I was further amazed that
everyone carrying live steel was treating it with the utmost respect; I
never saw a sword drawn in a public area…

Also, I started my costume. Stuff is way too expensive to buy all at
once, but if we go back a couple of years in a row, I should have a
pretty nice getup.

Posting via email really screws with the formatting. So it’s either screwed up formatting, or no posting at all? It’s really sad that I only have about 5 posts since December. I guess that’s how it works some times.

Just as a quick life update, we now own two dogs, a cat, and a house. Bought the house about the same time as I changed jobs. I now teach astronauts. How cool is that? Worth mentioning is that I came -> <- that close to owning a Shelby Mustang GT500. After I showed Deedee that we could afford to buy one, it was decided that if I could afford the mustang, then we could afford the house… oh well… maybe next time.

testing commenting code.

hey look, my blog is working. And there’s no one around to see it….

Quote of the Day:

“I don’t usually advocate killing people over armpit hair” – Sarah

this is mostly a test, but while I’m here…

Quote of the Day:

“I mean, don’t most [Churches of Christ] have potluck once a month? Isn’t the casserole dish the primary symbol of that faith?” – Richard