A Dangerous Cult

Hehe, search Google for Dangerous Cult and the first result is the homepage of Scientology. In this case, I sort of agree with the Googlebomb.

On that same search, you’ll also see a list of dangerous cult warning signs. For a fun exercise, see how many apply to your religion!

12 comments January 29th, 2008

Photos From Dallas / Fort Worth

If You’ve haven’t heard from me much lately it’s probably because I took a long weekend (Friday – Monday) to fly down to Dallas. It was a pretty fun trip. On Friday night we went to Billy Bob’s to see a Texas favorite – Robert Earl Keen. We all agreed that Merry Xmas From The Family is probably the best song ever written – which is good because I’d hate to disagree with Fake Steve.

REK must have just had eye surgery or something, as he came out wearing an eye patch on his right eye. We kept waiting for him to just go aaargh! into the microphone, but it never happened. He did make a joke though, saying he asked his wife to get him an imac, iphone, and ipod and that she instead got him an ipatch.

On Saturday we went back to Fort Worth to visit the stockyards. History Lesson: Fort Worth was where all the cowboys would congregate on the great cattle drive north to the railroad back in the early 1900’s. It also housed a lot of America’s cattle – supplying over $11 million worth of horses in the world war.

It was kind of neat, they still do daily cattle drives right down the street.

It was funny to see them lead the bulls through a parking lot. How do you explain to your insurance company that a bull scratched your new truck? Of course, it is Texas so I’m sure they’re used to it.

Downtown Forth Worth was just as cool. You’d see old style buildings, the original 1900’s bricks in the roads, and the occasional cute girl on horseback.

Just like Hollywood has stars for all the actors, Fort Worth has stars for all the great cowboys. I managed to find the star of one of my heroes, Chris Ledoux.

For those who don’t know, Chris is the only man in both the cowboy and country music hall of fame. He died of cancer a year or 2 ago, and is the subject of the “good ride cowboy” song that Garth Brooks released.

I also particularly liked this little bar called the “Love Shack.” Ok, I shouldn’t say bar – it’s more like a bunch of tables and a hot dog stand in between buildings. I wouldn’t have found it if not for hearing a heavily accented man singing Counting Crows “A Long December”

Still, it was a cool place to have a beer.

After that, we headed to downtown Dallas to check into a hotel so that we could watch my cousin Paige compete in gymnastics on Sunday morning.

Here’s a picture of the Dallas skyline as seen when coming back from Fort Worth:

Our hotel was very fancy as well.

We were supposed to party in that tower, but it’s being renovated so our party was relocated to a conference room. I remember going to the party, but sadly I don’t remember much after that.

Anyway, that was my trip to Texas. I can’t wait until the next time Robert Earl Keen is in town so that I can go back.

3 comments January 29th, 2008

Do All Dells Die When Their Warranty Expires?

I’ve had 2 Dell computers in my life. My last one, you may remember from the pictures I posted, had a rough encounter with a baseball bat after it’s motherboard fried. It seems the computer’s warranty had expired the previous month and then the motherboard fried.

So, I bought a new one. Well, it’ warranty was up about 2 months ago, and it just died. It’s been running non-stop for the last 6-8 months. When I powered it off to go on vacation, it wouldn’t power back on. Instead, I just get a blinking power light.

Maybe that’s why I bought a Mac. The problem is, I was doing most of my work stuff (including all my email and development code) on the Dell. I’d get another Mac for work if I didn’t need to use windows for work. I know there’s parallels, but then I can’t run any directx crap. I might have to use bootcamp I guess.

Has anybody else seen this problem? I’m not talking about the not powering up – I’m sure that’s a power supply issue and I had one overnighted to me so i can test it (stupid Dell and proprietary parts that my local computer stores don’t sell.)

I mean the computer having problems within 3 months of the warranty expiring. It’s happened to every Dell I’ve ever owned, as well as the 1 or 2 that my cousin has owned. My parents dell warranty is due to expire soon, so I guess I’ll see what happens to theirs.

January 29th, 2008