caseyphillips.net

Well, it's that time of year. Trick or Treat, candy corn (yum!) and carved produce. I'm not really much into halloween these days, but I've always been a bit fascinated with things that go bump in the night, so I enjoy some of the television programs that tend to be aired this time of year.

This past weekend we went on a tour of Fort Leavenworth to many of the supposedly haunted locations on post. It was an interesting tour, but it was quite a bit of walking for this fat boy. It was around 2 and half our walking tour that included, among other locations, the old disciplenary barracks (that's military prison for us civilian folks) where there have been several executions performed over the past 150 years or so, the current commanding General's house supposedly haunted by the ghost of George Custer, and the building next to our soon to be new location (should make working late nights interesting) houses several different spirits (again, supposedly). All in all, it was fun, and we learned a bit of history about Fort Leavenworth.

So, what's your Halloween plans? Whatever it is, be safe and remember those footsteps you hear in the room waking you up in the middle of the night are (probably) just a figment of your imagination.

If such an award existed, I think I might have a very good chance of winning, and almost definitely be amongst the nominees. I'm not even making excuses anymore. I'm just lazy, and that's that. The Maabster or Andy might have given me a run for my money once upon a time, but lately I've hit an all-time high on lack-of-blogging-ness.

Let's see, what's been going on since last time I posted. . .

Tammy and I have been attending classes on Judaism that gives us an opportunity to go to the different synagogues in Kansas City. We're learning Hebrew and getting to see the difference in the different denominations, which has been really interesting. For the past few years, I really slacked on religion, and I really have a newfound (or refound really) desire to be observant. We've been keeping Shabbat and trying really hard to keep kosher, although I admit I haven't been able to make that transition 100% yet, and I even wear my kippah most of the time (but I haven't gotten the courage to wear it to work yet). We observed the high holidays for the first time this year, and I think that more than anything really awokened my spitual side, and realize what I had been missing by ignoring it.

I still have a job. After all the drama and missing out on NU II, it turned out to be somewhat of a non-issue. The 2 companies settled their differences, and decided to stay working together on the contract. At least I discovered there is a surplus of IT jobs in Kansas City. I had quite a few calls and a few interviews after opening my resume up on monster and that was without explicitly applying for any one job. But, missing NU II was depressing. I had already bought airfare, and 100% expected to go. Oh well, the best laid plans of mice and men. . .

We bought a new car. Benny probably remembers the blue-green Nissan I would drive from time to time. We traded it in and finially got Tammy her convertible. It's a PT Cruiser. Perfect timing buying a convertible when the weather is too cold to put the top down.

Well, that's my update for now. Hopefully my next post will be less than a month from now.

Ok, I haven't posted anything about fat-tracking, or anything else for that matter, in a bit. The reason being (at least about the fat-tracking) is I haven't really begun the effort in earnest other than watching what I eat, but that seemed to just maintain the status quo of my fattiness. We had joined a new gym in town back in June that was initially going to open in August, but due to un-forseen circumstances (like discovering the building was in need of a little asbestos removal) they kept pushing back the date, and I kept saying, ok, I'll wait the 2 weeks or so until they open. Then another 2 weeks. Then another 2 weeks. Somewhere along the way the fat-tracking idea was birthed by James.

Now, I have finally begun. The gym has opened its doors and I can no longer justify my procrastination. Unless I become ultra disciplined (and I don't have that much faith in myself), and get up really early on thursdays and fridays, due to those days being my absolute busiest, I'll be getting in at least 4 and maybe 5 days out of the week. That's about 4 to 5 days more a week than I was getting. So, I hope that little goose-egg percentage goes up a bit by next monday!

Oh, and since I never posted an update on the Chiefs game, I'll do that now. We had a blast! Arrowhead is an impressive thing to see. We got there a few hours ahead of time with a little food and some beer, but now that we're more experienced in the whole tailgaiting thing, I'm bringing more beer and a grill with us next time. You can check out some pics here. Our thanks to John and Agnes for taking us along.

Tammy and I were lucky enough to be invited to the Chiefs vs. Rams game tonight in Kansas City. Neither of us have ever been to a professional footbal game before, although I have been to more than one Rangers game, and Tammy has never been to a professional game of any kind. I think it is going to be a blast. And since the tickets were courtesy of my employer (normally $79 a pop), it'll only cost us our part of the gas and parking, plus whatever refreshments we decide to buy at the game. I wouldn't consider myself much of a Chiefs fan, but neither am I a Rams fan, so I'll be donning the red to support the home team. The downside is it is supposed to be rainy all day, but then again that's probably better than it being 100+ degrees in a stadium with 80,000 other sweaty people.

As alot of you already know James came up with a plan that so far myself and Benny have signed on for to lose a few pounds over the next year; something I have a definite need for. It's a friendly competition to see who loses the greatest percentage of their weight, the winner of which gets the sum of $20. Come to think of it, I'm not sure if that's $20 per participant or $20 total, but that's really not the point. The gain in health that comes with the loss in fat is priceless.

So, without further ado: The Fat Tracker!

I'm sure all of you realize my blog is not the most frequently updated blog in the world, so I decided maybe "a picture is worth a thousand words" could help me out a bit. I signed up for flickr not too long ago and quickly realized I could send pictures from my phone quite easily.

So, for your amusement, and possibly my embarrassment, I present you a random glimps into my life. Enjoy, but please be kind.

Buster left an informative comment on my last post about the Marvel/DC super hero trademark. I can definitely see his point, and have absolutely no problem with a company enforcing trademarks they own. I have no problem with DC or Marvel enforcing this particular trademark (which, they've proven is not impossible). I do not have a great deal of experience (as in none) with dealing with trademarks, so take everything I say with the proverbial grain of salt.

Anyway, what I don't understand is the granting of this particular trademark in the first place. I'll explain why.

The first use of "superhero" in print was in the Superman comics published in the late 1930's. At the time it was published by Action Comics, not DC (as it is now). Throughout the years, the term was used by other publications (non-Marvel/DC), and entered the public lexicon by the 1950's. Here's were I have the problem. DC and Marvel did not apply for the trademark until 1979 (it was granted in 1981).

Now, had they trademarked the term when it was not yet in common use, I would definitely agree they deserve the sole right to its use (I'm suspecting Buster was under the impression they did just that). This isn't a case of a Kleenex or Xerox, which were trademarked and then became commonplace words.

So, with all this in mind, my dreams to trademark cold beer may not be so out of reach. Well, it's really not my dream, but it it were. . .

Oh, and I want to put another disclaimer here. I am not a comic book buff, have no emotional stake in whether DC or Marvel sues the pants off of anyone who might violate their trademark, and only found out about these "facts" after just a little research (why? who knows). I might have owned 2 or 3 comic books in my entire life and that's probably a conservative estimate, taking into account my frail and exceptionally selective memory.

With the coming release of Superman Returns, I've been doing a little reading up on my superhero lore and came accross an interesting, and somewhat suprising, fact. The term superhero and super hero (but not super-hero strangely) are joint trademarks of Marvel and DC Comics.

Now, I can somewhat understand the term superhero being trademarkable since it is, after all, a sort of made-up word. But super hero, two seperate words, a noun "hero" modified by the adjective "super"? How can you trademark that? Could I trademark red paint, since it's basically the same setup? Or how about cold beer? It reminds me of Paris Hilton's (spam bait) attempt to trademark the phrase "that's hot".

Just thought I'd rant. Carry on.

I don't think I've gone this long without posting, and I've been using the excuse of "I have no time". Well, after taking my own advice on a comment I left on Dubz's site, I call b.s. on myself. I definitely could've found time (hell, if I can't find 5 minutes of free time in a month's span, there's a big problem with my lifestyle).

Anyway, I'm embarrassed to say, there really isn't much of interest going on for me to write about other than Tammy and I are coming down to Texas next weekend for her brother's graduation. It's going to be a flying (literally and figuratively) trip. We'll fly into Dallas on Thursday night, rent a car and drive to Sweetwater. Graduation is the next day, then a dance on Saturday and we're flying back home on Sunday. Makes me exhausted just writing it down. I'd like to be able to see some friends while we're down, and of course all of my family. My little bro's kids are growing up so fast and I get to see them so little, so I'm definitely looking forward to that.

My desktop machine has been a screwed up at home (I need a new mobo) so I haven't worked too much on the Ruby book I talked about earlier. I have a hard time working on my laptop, I just can't dig that tiny keyboard and unorthodox key layout. Drives me batty.

I don't know if you've been living under a rock, but if you have, you might not have heard about Ruby on Rails. For you under-rock dwellers, Ruby on Rails is a web application framework using the scripting language Ruby. Since I knew virtually nothing about it, other than what it was, I decided to download Ruby and start riding the rails.

First impressions: wow. Just a few lines of code, and I've got a complete, albeit ugly, web application with database interactivity and everything. Now, I'm a complete newbie with Ruby, so I haven't been able to really write anything I'd want to publish, but it piqued my curiosity enough to buy the book Agile Web Development With Rails. One thing I notice with the language is how much it's different from what I'm used to. I'm mainly a C# kinda guy, and have done a fair amount of PHP, ColdFusion, VB, and ASP classic. Ruby is kinda foreign to me. And I'm not just talking syntax, I mean logically foreign. For instance in C# I might write something like this:

if (foo == 5){
System.WriteLine("bar");
}


In Ruby, I could write the same thing like this:

puts "bar" if foo == 5

or

if foo == 5 puts "bar"


That's just one of the examples that stood out to me. Ruby is, however, fully object oriented, which I am familiar with, and I fell comfortable that it should be able to get up to speed fairly quickly. It also claims to have very powerful string manipulation capabilities, and can certainly be used for other purposes than web development (I actually have a Ruby IDE written entirely in Ruby).

The Rails framework itself reminds me a little of the old Fusebox framework, but there are major differences. The Rails framework give you a complete skeleton application from the start, and actually has functionality, not just a theory of how to structure an application.

I mainly posted this to get your guys impression on Ruby and Rails if you've ever had a chance to experiment and what you think about it. A major reason I'm interested in it is to expand my knowledge to something modern yet non-proprietary. I even hear there is a Ruby.NET in development. Interesting stuff. . .

Give me your comments. I'll post more about Ruby in the future.

I have a confession to make.

I am now one of many of Steve Jobs' whores. No, I haven't bought a Mac (yet).

I am, however, the proud owner of a black 30GB iPod, and I'm loving it. I really never thought I'd buy one. I wanted a good portable music player, but always said I buying an iPod was just paying for the Apple name. I don't know, maybe I was partially right, but this thing is fantastic. It's now what it does, it's how it does it. I played around with a few other portable players, and none of them were this streamlined. It's easy to use, and easy on the eyes. It's not just a fantastic gadget (and I am a gadget head), it's really "pretty" in all its simplicity. I blame my wife for my new iPod obsession since she bought a Nano so she could take to workout, and after playing around with it for a bit, I knew I had to have an iPod. I decided on the regular iPod, but the Nano is a pretty sweet piece of electronics in its own right.

I do however have one complaint: you can scratch this thing with a warm stick of butter. And my having the black version only makes it more evident. This put me on a quest to find a way to protect it. My first course of action was a case, but I really didn't like this. A big part of me wanting an iPod was it's slim design and how the thing looks. A case covers all this up and makes the thing bulky. Eventually I found The Best Skins Ever and promptly ordered a set. These things were exactly what I was looking for. They look like the pda screen protectors, but are much stronger and you apply them like the old school model airplane decals (with water, but just a little) so they're easier to place. Now I can carry my iPod with much less worry about scratches. I still put it in the case from time to time when I want to strap the thing to my hip. Nonetheless, if you plan to get an iPod, get these skins. You'll be glad you did.

The earphones that come with the iPod are of pretty poor quality, so I decided to replace them. I'm a fan of "earbud" type headphones, so I ordred a pair of Shure E2c and, man am I impressed. I've never spent this much on earphones, and didn't even know earbuds came this expensive (not to mention Shure's top-of-the-line model is $500+). I paid a bit less on Amazon than what Shure claims the MSRP is, but it was still more than I've ever paid for earphones, but I figured my iPod deserved it :).

Redemption period? This is for my benefit?

I recently had a problem with one of my domains, and this caused my blog to unavailable for some time. What problem did I have? Well, a combination of not being reminded and my being forgetful resulted in a domain of mine expiring (in January) but the domain did not go offline until March 1. At that point it entered what the registrars call a redemption period. I call it ransom. Unlike normal renewing of domains which costs around $10 a year, renewing a domain that is in redemption costs significantly more, in my case $80. Supposedly this is because it is more work for the registrar when it's in redemption to renew it. I don't work in domain registration, so I can't say whether or not this is true. I have my doubts, but I have no hard evidence.

Also, according to the registrars, this redemption period is actually for my benefit. If a domain expires and enters the redemption period, only I can pay to have it registered while it is in redemption. This is to prevent (according to registrars) somebody else from snatching my domain before I have a chance to renew it. I agree that this is somewhat beneficial, especially to a business. But why the exorbitant price? And why not let me choose whether I want this protection whenever I register the domain?

Anyway, that's why I've been down for a while, and finally got back up, sortof, with a workaround on my other domain. I will not be registering my expired domain with the same registrar and will be going striclty to Godaddy from now on. I recieved no reminder that my domain was expiring and would almost cross my heart, hope to die that I had set up automatic renewal on that domain. But again, beside my vague memory of doing so, I lack any evidence.

I just wanted to let everyone know that my father did indeed require open heart surgery. On Friday, February 10th, surgeons performed a quintuple coronary bypass. He is doing very well now, and is already home from the hospital.

It was a scary time for me, every time I spoke to my dad before surgery the thought was gnawing at the back of my mind that this could be the last time. We stayed the night in Lawton Oklahoma on Thursday night, so the last time I spoke to him was Friday morning on the phone right before they were taking him away to prepare for the surgery.

Thanks to all of you for your prayers.

Just a day or so ago, James asked we all say a prayer for his brother who is going through some health problems. I haven't heard how he is doing yet, but hope our prayers were heard.

Now, I have to ask a similar favor. I got word today that doctors have found a blockage in my father's heart and he is to have angioplasty done tomorrow. If the blockage is larger than the angioplasty can take care of, he will be scheduled for open-heart surgery. He had been having chest pains on and off for a while now, but didn't want to worry anyone so kept it to himself. This weekend he said they started getting alot worse and lasting longer, so he went to the doctor. My father suffered a heart attack over 16 years ago, and, thankfully, has been healthy until now. But being told he has a problem again brought back alot of memories of that day (I was a freshmen in high school and was home the morning he had his heart attack).

Please, if you pray, include him in your prayers. His name is Stan Phillips. Thank you all for your prayers.

I thought this was amusing.

Out of boredom I did a google image search for "casey phillips" just to see what was out there. Second image was a pic of a hand holding a beer. No, not my hand, but, oddly James' hand. It was from a post back in July on his site about football, and I guess since he links to my site, this image was indexed.

I just thought it was kinda funny.

Thankfully, my search failed to uncover any actual pictures of myself.

UPDATE

Upon further investigation, the same image appears with the following google image searches:

• Benny Cornett
• Buster Collings
• Andy Stockwell
• Tim Tipton
• James Maabadi

Yeah, I was really bored. . .

As some of you know, I was into hombrewing beer several years ago, but because of circumstances I lost most of my brewing equipment and haven't brewed a batch in about 6 years. Well, as luck would have it, the homebrew supply store I actually used to order via a mail order catelog is only a 30 minute drive: Bacchus and Barleycorn.

A couple of weekends ago, Tammy and I went and picked up some fresh equipment and some ingredients, but I've been waiting for some free time to actually brew the stuff. Well, guys, today was the day. My batch of "Nutcastle Brown Ale" is bubbling happily in it's fermenter. Now, this is no "Mr. Beer" kit (tried that, not horrible but not good either), this is the real thing. It's alot of work to get it all together, and takes several hours (just the brew day, this doesn't include the racking and bottling later on), but I have a great time doing it, and it makes me appreciate and enjoy the end product all the much better. Kinda how great barbecue is alot of work, and time consuming, but always seems to taste better if you actually cook the stuff.

Anyway, I'll give you guys a tasting review in a couple of months when it's all ready to drink (of course it'll be a raving review). I want to try to brew a batch about once a month, at least for a little while, until I have a nice little stockpile of brew. In case you're wondering, a "batch" makes around 60 12 oz. beers, give or take a few.

Cheers, L'Chaim, Slainte!

Working for the Government, we get to take advantage of every national holiday.

Sort of.

The company I work for (Triple I) does not recognize all of the holidays that my true employer, my employer's employer (U.S. Army) does. This means that although the building I work in will technically be "closed" for a holiday, I cannot take the day off. Our boss, who I must say looks after our best interest very well, gives us the freedom to work from home on days like these. I don't know about you, but working from home is almost as good as having the day off. You get to work in peace without having somebody come to your desk every 5 minutes. You get to work in your boxers if you want. You don't have to drive around for 30 minutes searching for a parking space and then walk half a mile after you find one. You don't have to fight traffic leaving one of only two exits along with 5,000 other people (I typically sit through one particular light for 3 red/green/yellow cycles).

So, after what pretty much amounts to a 4 day weekend (the Army takes the Friday following as a "training day"), I feel pretty much rejuvenated. So I decided to sit down and do a blog. I honestly was shocked that it's been over 2 weeks since I last posted anything. I couldn't believe it, have I been that busy? Tammy hurt her back pretty badly during Christmas and was completely confined to bed until around Wednesday of last week, so I've been trying to do the things around the house she usually did. We even had to make a run to the emergency room one night at 3 A.M. because she was having terrible muscle spasms. I never want her to go through something like that again. This weekend was her first chance to get out of the house (except for the E.R. trip) since returning from Oklahoma City on Christmas day.

Truth is, I haven't even thought about this blog in the past 2 weeks, although I still kept up with reading everyone else's. Maybe I'm getting burned out, but I don't even want to look at a computer outside of work except maybe when Tammy and I play World of Warcraft (something else she was unable to do while her back was injured). Looking back at my past posts, I think I do most of them (at least write them) while I'm at work (shh, don't tell my boss!). I just can't seem to bring myself to sit at a computer at home and do the same thing I just got through doing all day at work.

Anyway, see ya in 2 more weeks! (just kidding, I think)