197½ lb., 24.5% body fat

It's been over a week since I've posted, and with good reason:

HUNTWYCK IS DRIVING ME UP THE FREAKIN' WALL.

Don't believe me? There are shoeprints on the wall beneath my 2005 Astros NL Champion pennant. I can take a picture tomorrow.

There, now that I have that out of my system, time to recap the last 5 days...

The 2006 ASCE/ACI Louisiana Civil Engineering Conference and Trade Show was, well, a bust in my book. Several steps back from the last conference I attended 3 weeks prior. Oh yeah, it was all well and good to get out of the office and away from the "drainage project in St. Tammany that Just Won't Go Away." But sitting (or standing) in a ballroom, listening to some VP of a firm being everything but a Corps [of Engineers, US Army] apologist for an hour gets old quickly. Heck, the best seminar I sat in on was on the "Airports of Tomorrow", and that wasn't even put on by someone from down here.

I'm just glad that, as an EI (no, that's not "Engineer of Ice", that's Engineer Intern, a not-yet-licensed engineer), I have no PDH (Professional Development Hours i.e. continuing education) requirements to meet.

Side note: Guys and gals, once you get in college and beyond, be wary of tables with "free stuff", be it a T-shirt with a credit card application, a koozy with an Army logo, or light-up rubber balls with the logo of a company at a job fair: make certain it occurs to you why they have free stuff at that table. Why they need free stuff at that table. Why you might be better off if you didn't go to said table just for the free stuff.

The worst of it was the luncheon Thursday: I had gotten some kind of pecan-crusted fish.

Now, any of you that have ever shelled pecans (be it with a nutcracker around Christmas time, or under the tree itself) know that there are two halves to a pecan, joined by a small bridge at the top, and below that bridge is a wafer of bark-ish layers separating the twin nutmeats. It's always a challenge to get a whole pecan, because I like slipping that wafer out. But that bitter wafer is not pecan. Or at least doesn't taste like pecan. Or maybe it does, but not the pecan nut worth eating.

Well.....they didn't remove the wafer before chopping up the pecans for the fish.

It tasted like wood. Terrible. Absolutely terrible.

Friday's lunch (New York strip) was much better, but that fish was epicly bad.

Speaking of pecans, expect a recipe for a better dish using pecans in a few weeks.

Speaking of food, I got one of those Sicilian Lasagna pizzas from Pizza Hut. Fleh. Ricotta cheese does not belong on a chain-produced pizza, end of story.

Saturday was a big day, as it was Michael & Brandy's (my little brother and his fiancée's) wedding shower. Out in the middle of nowhere, outside Napoleonville. (If you read this, Tomiku, it's on 401, where that bank is on the corner before the light coming from Thibodaux.) After 10 months in Klotzville, I'm too familiar with Assumption Parish, really. It was a combo-wedding shower and LSU party. LSU lost to Auburn, 7-3 under auspicious circumstances. I hope it doesn't bode poorly for the wedding, but I'm glad I'm not playing football for Tulane (LSU's next opponent)

Sunday, and yesterday, the Moss Bluff Cruisers lost to the Monte Carlo Mudhens, 46-35, the lowest-scoring matchup in the league. The Cruisers are now 0-2, and in grave danger of opening up the season 0-5. There's a reason why my first team's name was Exercise in Futility....

Over the weekend, the phones went down at work, so I didn't get the chance to cut this here yesterday and post. So, on with more posting!

Had the Dragon with Phoenix (spicy chicken and shrimp, with white rice) from Fu Star for dinner tonight. Had too much phoenix (chicken) and not enough dragon (shrimp). But hey, $10 for a second meals' worth, you live & learn.

And that's about all I had. But, I give you, courtesy of The Onion, more zany email. Consider it a reward for making it all the way to the end.

Recently Unearthed E-Mail Reveals What Life Was Like In 1995

 

May 30, 2006 | Issue 42•22

 

KNOXVILLE, TN—A 1995 e-mail extracted from the hard drive of a recently unearthed Compaq desktop PC offers a tantalizing glimpse into the day-to-day life of a primitive Internet society, said the archaeologists responsible for its discovery.

Archaeologists carefully examine the cryptic e-mail for more clues to its origin.

 

"We're very excited by this find, because only by understanding our e-mail past can we hope to understand our e-mail present and future," said Northwestern University archaeology professor Lane Caspari, who has been leading the dig through the equipment storage area of a Knoxville-area credit union since late April, on Tuesday. "The discovery also sheds new light on the 1990s—an era we know very little about."

 

Written by a "scully666@compuserve.com" and addressed to a "makincopeez@prodigy.net," the writer expresses the ancient equivalent of boredom, asks the receiver about his or her status in their primeval office environment, then refers to the act of sending the e-mail itself.

 

"Nothing going on," begins the e-mail. "What's up with you? Are you going to Mike's b-day thing on Friday? I'm thinking about it. I might go, but I'm not sure yet."

 

The e-mail continues, "Let me know if you get this e-mail twice. I'm still trying to learn the system. I think the managers know when we're on the Net, so I'll stay away from the web surfing and check my e-mail only once a day."

 

The e-mail is signed only "K." It contains no subject line.

 

"It shows that these forgotten people of the '90s had many of the same concerns as modern man, such as b-days, and slow periods at work," Caspari said. "The presence of the archaic slang verbalization 'what's up' appears to indicate that they cared about the immediate welfare of others in their closely knit community, much as we do today."

 

But the artifact reveals differences as well. According to Caspari, the find indicates that people from that era spoke a much earlier form of e-mail language alien to our own, employing the full spellings of most words, and lacking the versatility and advanced expression of smiley-face or frowny-face emoticons.

 

Researchers were hoping that "Untitled 1995," as they've dubbed it, would help fill-in the long-sought missing link between the ancient e-mail world and the modern era. The Compaq's hard drive crashed shortly after the discovery, a more thorough study of the early writing is impossible. Only a paper copy of the e-mail remains.

 

"It was heartbreaking to see that hard drive die, but there was a certain tragic poetry to it, as well," Caspari said. "Few have ever had the privilege of receiving, first-hand, a beacon from our distant past, calling out to us across the sea time."

 

Neither e-mail address is active any longer, but their names may provide clues to long-forgotten events or important rulers of the time.

 

"Scully666' was likely a figure from these people's pantheon of god-figures," Caspari said. "'Makincopeez' is a reference lost to the ages."

 

Only four known e-mails pre-date this one, including a 1992 ASCII drawing of Star Trek's Mr. Spock, found by a group of Indian laborers salvaging precious metals from computer hardware in a Mumbai dump in 2004.

 

Caspari said it was "extraordinary" that the early e-mailers showed an awareness of the importance of their new tool.

 

"This clearly points to a reverence for the technology, but also an intense anxiety about a power they could not have understood," Caspari said. "It's safe to assume that 1995 was a terrifying and confusing time, and they must have struggled to make sense of it all."

 

While much work remains before researchers can hope to illuminate the secrets of the ancient and mysterious period of the late '90s, they say the discovery itself is an important milestone in understanding human history.

 

"Listening to the whir of the disc drive and watching the blink of the cursor, we glimpsed, for a moment, life through a completely different set of eyes," Caspari said. "But, in the end, we realized have more in common with our shadowy ancestors than we might like to think."

I've changed my homepage. It's something interesting. It's something Omi has promised to take up my invitation on. Whenever you're ready, Omi. Please.

-KIE, who needs to find someone with red-eye reduction software so he can update his staff picture...B6's camera makes him look like Satan incarnate. Well, without the stereotypical red skin, horns, and trident.