Melancholy

:) for those of you not big on melancholy, I have happier, more involving posts than this is likely to be. For some reason, I’m lonely tonight. Truly, the Christian is never alone, washed as he is in God’s love, but in the dark watches of the night, witnessing the glorious sunset as I did today, and yet seeing the frailty of life as I also did today, it makes one yearn for his loved ones to enclose him, their love a talisman against death and solitude. ...

2004-06-04 · 2 min · Harold Combs

Eye Exam

Can I just say, getting your pupils dilated is not cool! The process itself is not painful, but having to go out into the BRIGHT SUNSHINE AND DRIVE HOME WITHOUT KILLING YOURSELF is. So, looks like I’m a go for contacts as soon as they come in next week, no glaucoma, no cateracts, and my corneas look good. Now, I’m going to a dark room to hide for a couple hours.

2004-06-01 · 1 min · Harold Combs

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:) Such a lovely spring morning in…June :-) I guess the one thing we can thank the storms for is some very pleasant, dry air that’s descended upon Kentucky in tha past few days. Yestderday was beautiful weather for any sort of outdoor activity, and last night was so cool and clear that I slept with the windows open and just my fan on, and I didn’t want to get up! ...

2004-06-01 · 2 min · Harold Combs

Storms at Fort Knox

Shots of A rather stormy ft. knox (Pics courtesy of Whitney) Had a fair to middlin’ day: Kept chanting “Look a-head…Look a-head” to myself throughout the course, but I couldn’t seem to put all the pieces together. DNF’d or coned every run; just wasn’t that much fun doing that. We had 3 heats, with 5 runs each (before the last heat was shortened to 3 runs b/c of weather), HS was in the 2nd heat. ...

2004-05-31 · 2 min · Harold Combs

RIP Palm Tungsten T

So much for my fancy-schmancy Palm Tungsten T. It’s hosed. i’m staring at a blank screen that just says ‘Reset’, but whenever I reset it, it brings me back to the blank screen. >>sigh« this is me paying the stupid tax for buying a device I really didn’t need.

2004-05-31 · 1 min · Harold Combs

Chicago

Today on the Netflix bandwagon: Chicago Full disclosure: Whitney hates this movie, and has been very vocal about it, so that’s probably colored my view here. What we have here is an opera/musical that centers around Roxie Hart, philandering wife of a lowly mechanic who figures to sleep her way to a shot at Vaudeville fame. When her lover comes clean about being a furniture salesman who fed her a line to bed her, she shoots him in a jealous rage. The plot describes her time in prison, the environment of 1920’s Chicago, and the role of media in justice (or, in this case, injustice). ...

2004-05-31 · 3 min · Harold Combs

The Godfather

Thanks to NetFlix I’ve seen one of the best films ever made: The Godfather Words really don’t do justice to the mastery of this film. From the first moment at the Corleone wedding, Coppola presents us with dozens of interesting, round characters. He captures not only the story, but also several picturesque locations: 1946 New York, Sicily. Color, texture, and smell flow from the screen to your cortex. The main thread of the story involves the Corleone family, most prominent of organized crime’s “5 Families”. As the story opens we see Brando as Don Corleone, aged patriarch, founder of the family. His three sons, hot-head Sonny (James Caan), simpleton Fredo, and college-kid-cum-war-hero Michael (Al Pachino) lead the magnificent cast of surrounding characters. Mainly, we see the story through Michael’s eye, his feelings of duty, honor, loss, rage. As he becomes first a pawn, then a killer, then a victim, then a calculating leader, we go through the changes with him. By then end, I was scheming with him. ...

2004-05-29 · 2 min · Harold Combs

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I need to find a new apartment, or a house, or something. Paying my rent every month is KILLING ME. Sat down tonight (yeah, Friday night, all by my lonesome »sigh«) and took a serious look at my finances, considering the extra expenses of gasoline and autocross every other (or every!) weekend. The short end of it, it’s not great. I really need to pare-down some spending or get some more income, which is patently absurd, because I feel I’m OVERPAID. ...

2004-05-28 · 1 min · Harold Combs

Servicing a GMT800

Well, wish me luck, guys. Big red is in the shop for its midlife crisis…er…service Just dropped-it-off on 2nd Street at Auto Tech Service for every maintenance service known to mankind, short of an engine + transmission rebuild. >>sigh« It’s only money, right? Heck, cheaper than buying a new truck. Or a 300C * * * I haven’t said this in almost 3 years of working here: Today is looking pretty darn boring. I’ve got some documentation to work on, but until I get some questions answered via email, I’m kinda stuck on my big workitems. Breezed through two technical books in the past two days: ...

2004-05-27 · 2 min · Harold Combs

Blogging Never Stops

“For Some, the Blogging Never Stops” That’s right, cyber-citizens! Put down that laptop with the wireless connection, stop recording your thoughts, and back away slowly with your hands in the air! The intelligensia are freaked-out by people expressing themselves en masse.

2004-05-27 · 1 min · Harold Combs

Driving a pickup truck

defining moment: going sideways down the entrance ramp onto New Circle Rd after I goosed the throttle in Big Red. I countersteered and got out of the throttle, and the rear-end came back into line, but that was a real pucker moment.

2004-05-26 · 1 min · Harold Combs

Ender's Game & Ender's Shadow

Lots of randomness today: Learned that the reality TV phenomenon is likely to continue, as it’s sheer economics: Whereas scripted programs must be rerun in order to recoup production costs, networks can make a profit on a single showing of a reality program (no pesky writers or actors to pay…). I wonder how long it’ll take us to get to the “Jumping For Dollars” scene in The Running Man, where some hapless contestent grasps for $100 bills as Rotweilers nip at his heels. ...

2004-05-25 · 3 min · Harold Combs

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autocrosstraining: n. (colloquial) The act or enterprise of exercising muscle groups heterogeneously to participate in the activity of autocross :-) Some neologisms are a little too good to pass-up.

2004-05-24 · 1 min · Harold Combs

That time I won

I’m so spent I can barely hold my eyes open to write this. but I WON! I WON! No voodoo, no tricks, no luck. I was up at Kentucky Speedway at Sparta, and I ran 5 clean runs without hitting a single cone, knocking .2-.6 of a second off each pass up until I won my class. The sense of accomplishment and satisfaction was enough to get me home alive. ...

2004-05-23 · 1 min · Harold Combs

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“Horny?” I LOVE THE ZOO! It smells, it’s hot, it’s hilly, but it’s neat! Went to the zoo on Sunday (yes, after hanging-out with mom and dad after my long day buying susan’s Escape, below) **** Random: me and my father.

2004-05-19 · 1 min · Harold Combs

Buying a Car with a Friend

I went with Susan on Saturday to buy her new truck: Susan…to put that in your blog, cut and paste the following into blogger: What a day…I drove down to Jackson to talk to Steve and Susan about the Library’s needs for new server, and then Susan, her mom Flo (nee “Flo-Bess”), and I were going to go to Hazard to buy her an Escape. We left for Hazard a little after 11. She had her mind set on one with a moonroof, V6, 4WD, and the works. ...

2004-05-19 · 2 min · Harold Combs

First Day on Gmail

Well, found a way to sign-up for google’s new Email Service. Instead of the paltry 2MB you get at hotmail or 4MB at yahoo, they give you a whole GIGABYTE of mail storage. my new address: miniharryc1978@gmail.com

2004-05-19 · 1 min · Harold Combs

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Ahh…the first evidence that the automotive driving public is coming to its senses. The Hummer H2 is starting its long, welcome sales slide into oblivion. The 11mpg behemoth, the symbol of American largess seems soon to join the Ford Excursion, whose porcine mass would seem to preclude any sort of excursion whatsoever, in the automotive junkyard. Perhaps, finally, America will wise-up and choose more efficient options for taking Timmy to soccer practice. Seventy-five dollars per bi-weekly fillup will do that to ya.

2004-05-19 · 1 min · Harold Combs

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Scan of the Evolution School coursemap from last Friday. It’s a bit confusing, from the map above, but let me esplain: Start-out at the lower left, pointing towards the slalom. Enter the constant-distance slalom on the right and alternate until you get tothe 5th gate. Trip the timing light and that ends segment 1. Take the 360 going clockwise first time. Exit heading towards the top of the map. As you exit, trip the light again, and this ends segment 2. ...

2004-05-14 · 1 min · Harold Combs

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As the world has passed me by in the intervening days, I’ve sought some sort of response to its events. For some reason, it’s been like another 9/11 for me, my eyes dimmed, my heart sad. May God grant me just a moment to get out what burdens my heart: I am no dove, understand. I believe war is a sad reality that will be with us until humanity’s life is snuffed out. As has been said, a person may be intelligent, empathic, and willing to compromise, but people on the whole are xenophobic, scared, and violent. People wish to acquire as many resources and as much power as they can, which is just peachy until encountering another such group. Thus, war is reality. ...

2004-05-12 · 3 min · Harold Combs