Twilight Books

Ok so in an effort to keep up with pop culture [from a purely academic standpoint not to "just fit in," HONEST] and understand what the big deal is I've started reading the Twilight series. I went to see Saw V yesterday and the Teaser #1 trailer ( http://www.apple.com/trailers/independent/twilight/teaser_1_lg.html ) and I must admit it really peaked my interest unlike any of the TV spots or trailers I had seen thus far. Plus as many of you probably know, I LOVE vampires, I even are using them in my books I am writing. I went out and purchased the book after the movie and went right home to finish Forever Odd so I could start on Twilight, and I did just that.

I have only scratched the surface of this book however I hope that I can finish it prior to the release of the movie. Those who know me well know that I do not rush reading books, not because I do not enjoy the books, it just always takes me a long time to read books. I hope not to be disappointed in this series and based on the popularity I am guessing that I likely will not be. We shall see...

It hath beenth a while-ith.

Well, it's been just shy of a month since I posted. I have gotten behind on posting to the DruiD Tablet and SkullFudge ( I owe them SEVERAL articles about the history of Unix and why BSD rules).

Well, a lot has come up since my last posting.
First and most importantly, I am going to be a dad, mid-May!

Secondly, since Talladega, not much else new has come to light, besides my pending fatherhood, although I was able to go to the Atlanta race on October 26, 2008. It was great because I have now seen a Carl Edwards backflip live! Now I just have a Biffle and McMurray win to see live and I will be satisfied. The coolest thing about the race was it was the first race for my oldest two nephews. Althought it might have still been a little much for them, I don't think they were quite ready for the heat and noise.

Lastly, I just voted. YAY!

.::. DruiD628 .::.

Tall-uh-DEGA!!

After three family reunions, [2 in Middle TN (1 of which I missed) and 1 on Sand Mtn] I had one more to attend. My last family reunion was this past weekend, it is the "Big One," consisting of 10's of thousands of members, it lasts all weekend.

Where was I?

I spent this weekend (3-5 October, 2008) down in the great state of Alabama, in Talladega Al-uh-BAMA!! Jaime and I drove down and met a real-good buddy of mine and a new member of the Talladega family, Adam, right of I-20 at the QV mart, where we drove the short distance to Speedway blvd. Then down the, what seems like forever, drive to Tipton Rd and into West Park C campgrounds. Then we began to setup camp. Not much to report just sat around enjoying the big-ol-campfire, brews and the parade of drunks walking by saying, "youguys gotst a gud far" then nearly falling in the "gud far."
Later that night, well very early the next morning, my brother-in-law and a co worker, another new member of the family, joined us. So the 5 of us hang out and head to the truck race. Honestly, after last years truck race and seeing them get 5 wide several times and how this race started I was afraid that it was going to be a bust... I was wrong. With about 20 laps to go things start to heat up. Down to the wire, "WHO IS IT GONNA BE!?!?!" The dash to the checkers was AWESOME! Made the race SO worth it. That evening was great, coming back to the campsite on a high of the excitement we go back to the campgrounds and chill and talk about the race. We spend some time talking and getting to know one another better it was great. The next morning, unfortunatly, we were all running a little slow. Finally we get our booties in gear and head to the track. We missed the opening ceremonies, big deal - we sit on in Allison on the Backstretch so we have to watch them on the GIANT Sprint TV in the infield anyway - we were preparing to have our coolers barely inspected when the totally AWESOME fly over took place. We get to our seats in time to see the race start... that's all that matters.
Ok before I go much farther, for those who know about Nascar and don't know, I'm a big Roush Fenway fan.
So we watch the race, I'm not going to recap the whole thing but as a Roush Fenway fan, I was upset cause ALL my drivers were caught up in one wreck or another. However, with a record setting 28 different leaders, the Amp Energy 500 on 5 October, 2008 was the BEST race I've ever seen. Stewart deserved to win, he's needed a win and I was glad to see his first ever win at Talladega, especially after last year it was really his to lose.

Irony -- DeLorean

Anyone who read my most previous post about time travel probably thought of the same thing I always think of when I think of time Travel... DMC-12 that's right the DeLorean Motor Company DMC-12 bad-arse car from around 1981-1982. A little history for you,
in 1982 the DMC was dissolved and around 1997 it was reconstituted and for a good reason. 11 years later DMC will be releasing their first car in almost 30 years. That's right they are producing "NEW" cars.
If you go to www.delorean.com you will find information about buying Pre-Owned and "new" Delorean's you can get the "new" ones in Black or ol' faithful gray.
You're probably asking yourself... "why does he keep using quotes around the word new?"
Here is why:
The "new build" cars are an evolution of our previously available "remanufactured" program. These new build cars are made to order, using a combination of original (NOS) parts from the Ireland factory, original (OEM) parts that we source from the original suppliers to the factory and our growing line of reproduction parts.

I got a quote for the one I wanted... $67,826.40. Whew... time to call the bank!

Time Travel...

This post is in response to a couple conversations I have had over the past month or so.
This is not going to be your typical "Time Travel is possible because..." or "Time Travel is ridiculous because..."
this is going to be me talking about what I would do.

First off there are several things I would love to see that happened in the history of the world, to name a few:
a.) the parting of the sea during the exodus
b.) many of the miracles performed by Christ
c.) Martin Luther's protest

I also would love to go back to view certain key battles in history (Revolutionary War, Civil War, etc).
I also want to see who really killed JFK, see the landing at Roswell NM.

Finally, I would go back to 1969 and following the Grateful Dead around.

Just throwing that out there.

Important Info Regarding Emailing me

Beginning on the Ides of March (15 March, 2008) I will no longer be reading any emails sent to my primary email address druid628 {shift-2} comcast {.} net, unless they have been digitally signed or -- more-- preferably encrypted. I have been planning on doing this for sometime and have finally been... pressed... to making it a reality. I will be taking steps between now and the Ides of March to be migrating my mailing list subscriptions over to a different account that will be used specifically for that purpose.

For those who are not technical, this might be a bit of a hassle *initially* and for the inconvenience I am very sorry. It will require installing some software on your PC to make this encryption and digital signature possible. I will be setting up an area of my website dedicated to this information and including instructions for installing the software and configuring for both ThunderBird and Outlook Express.

For those of you who *are* more technical in nature and just felt your heart stop at the horror of having to buy PGP just to email me, fear not! My instructions will be for using Gnu Privacy Guard (GnuPG; GPG), guess what, it's free. I have used it for, almost a year now and it works well, unfortunately for the non-techie people, it is all CLI and no GUI (layman terms that means it's DOS like not a nice window).

Again I apologize for any inconvenience that this might cause, this is something I feel that I need to do and will become much more common for many more users. I will update again with a new posting when I post the pages with more information, tutorials and scripts.
For those who may already use PGP or GPG, my keys are already available (see below for keys) and I would appreciate you becoming an early adopter of this policy.

Thank you.

Random Thought

This is a random thought, and is more directed to those who live near enough to pass or be near me on the road. I am going to try and keep this quick.

First off, I am a rather 'aggressive' driver. If you happen to see me driving and want to get my attention to wave or something and plan to hit your horn please keep it to short multiple beep-like honks. Don't give me just one honk or more specifically one long honk, because you will most likely get a rude hand gesture from me, and I don't think you nor I want that.

Just thought I would pass that along.

Hasta la 'Dega!

'Dega bound!
Where in the last three laps and Dega is the finish line.

It is Wednesday and I am starting my lunch break and I thought I would update everyone.
This afternoon, the wife and I will hit the store to get our food and schtuff.
Thursday, we will be packing up the truck.
Friday, we will be heading out and on our way to Talladega!
Saturday, Truck Race
Sunday, Cup Race!
Monday, come home, decompress.
Can't wait!