Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Mark Urbin's LiveJournal:

[ << Previous 20 ]

Monday, May 5th, 2008
9:57 am	Question What is there to do if you're in Lund, Sweden for a few days? (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, April 30th, 2008
9:06 am	W00t! I got an A in Business Analysis for Technical Managers! That's a 4 credit MBA course at WPI. (Comment on this)
Sunday, March 30th, 2008
10:05 am	Stirling had fun with this one... I'm reading In The Courts of the Crimson Kings by S.M. Stirling. It's full of hat tipping references to various pop culture references. In the chapters I read last night, you had sand pirates with eye patches (including one who said his parents wanted him to be a pediatrician), feral airship engines that go "puckapuckapucka" (close enough to tapocketa for me), and rodents of unusual size. There are also references to Indiana Jones and Star Trek. There is a hat tip to Kwai Chang Caine, as well as Butch and Sundance. It's a fun adventure story. John Carter and Kickaha would be right at home in this setting. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, March 18th, 2008
8:22 pm	Good Audio Theater! I just finished listening to the first three episodes of Black Jack Justice by Decoder Ring Theatre. I had downloaded them from Podiobooks. Good hardboiled detective action with a dash of humor. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, March 11th, 2008
11:59 am	My next book buy S.M. Stirling's Court of the Crimson Kings is hitting the shelves next week. I really enjoyed the first book in this series, The Sky People, so I'll be picking this one up in hardcover. (Comment on this)
Saturday, March 8th, 2008
9:34 am	Thanks for the good times... Role Playing Games have been a favorite hobby of mine for the past thirty years. Gary Gygax, one of the men who made that hobby possible, passed away recently. He will be missed. Penny Arcade managed a mostly tasteful tribute. I like to think he would have appreciated the joke. (Comment on this)
Thursday, February 28th, 2008
8:43 pm	John Barrowman interview John "Captain Jack Harkness" Barrowman of Doctor Who/Torchwood gives a serious interview. He discusses his sexuality, his partner, his family and his religion. He sounds like he is well grounded and very comfortable with who he is and is having a blast in his career. (Comment on this)
Sunday, February 24th, 2008
8:20 pm	Ok, I admit it. I'm watching the Oscar Red Carpet show and now I understand why they haven't had Regis host it for the past 30 years. (Comment on this)
Thursday, February 21st, 2008
10:22 pm	WPI MBA Photo Shoot WPI MBA Photo Shoot, originally uploaded by Eclipse Pics (∆ncient). WPI was rated the #1 part time MBA program in the Northeast by Business Week. So the Graduate Department of Management gathered some of the professors and students together for a photo op. We were lured with t-shirts and pizza. (Comment on this)
Thursday, February 14th, 2008
10:22 pm	Kim Possible Hanging Kim Possible Hanging, originally uploaded by Eclipse Pics (∆ncient). The most popular photo, by number of views, in my flickr stream. It has about 5000 more views than number 2. (Comment on this)
Monday, February 11th, 2008
11:45 am	Catching up... I'm pretty much over that nasty flu bug that is making its unwelcome way though the Northeast. Back in grad school, taking a four credit course in Cost Accounting. That will keep me pretty busy. A couple of quick reviews. HBO's Rome series. Excellent stuff. Well made, well acted and pretty historically accurate in the big picture. Brilliant set work and the Legion battle scenes were really good. De-Lovely, a Cole Porter bio pic. Wow. Great acting, and amazing soundtrack. Certainly much better than the old 1946 film "Night and Day" with Cary Grant. Now to get my Traveller PBEM game back on track. (Comment on this)
Sunday, February 3rd, 2008
9:56 am	A rare sports note I risk being deported from the Peoples Commonwealth over this, but I don't follow sports. There is stuff I do pick up on, just because I don't expend energy to avoid sports news other than changing a channel. So, I'm aware that there is a football game today between the New England team and one of the teams that plays and practices in New Jersey. (Comment on this)
Saturday, February 2nd, 2008
12:13 pm	Joys of the flu I'm past the fever, ache muscle phase. I'm now in my damn head is draining so much the longest intact block of sleep I can get is 45-50 minutes. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, January 22nd, 2008
9:13 pm	An accurate description For my sins, I'm in gradual school and the new Institute standard for word processing is MS Word 2007. So, I took advantage of my student benefits and got a student licensed copy of MS Office 2007 and loaded on my laptop. Author John Ringo nailed the Word 2007 user experience: "Word for Vista still sucks the tits of Yog Sothoth, the Goat with a Thousand Young who rests in foetid pools of Stygian darkness" (Comment on this)
Monday, January 7th, 2008
8:24 pm	Not Quite Dad's Army Boots Not Quite Dad's Army Boots, originally uploaded by Eclipse Pics (∆ncient). Back when my dad enlisted, the US Army was a "Brown Boot Army." The uniform was shortly changed to Black Boots and stay that way for a fistfull of decades. Now the Army Combat Uniform (replacing the BDU) calls for brown boots. What was old is new again. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, January 1st, 2008
12:39 am	Practically Perfect at Checkers! Practically Perfect at Checkers!, originally uploaded by Eclipse Pics (∆ncient). This picture has been doing well. Seven favs on Flickr, which for me, is pretty damn good. Damn, can I say "Damn" when describing a photo of Mary Poppins? (Comment on this)
Tuesday, December 25th, 2007
2:59 pm	Christmas Tree Bells Christmas Tree Bells, originally uploaded by Eclipse Pics (∆ncient). Merry Christmas! (Comment on this)
Monday, December 17th, 2007
11:13 am	Ok, it's Monday Traffic was tied up due to accidents. It's snow and ice people. We get it every year here in the Peoples Commonwealth. Just slow down a bit, don't tailgate and don't suddenly swerve between lanes. On the plus side, new episodes of TWiT and Tiki Bar TV are downloading. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, December 11th, 2007
9:28 pm	All the candles All the candles, originally uploaded by Eclipse Pics (∆ncient). "They tried to kill us. They failed. Let's Eat!" I'm using "us" loosely, being the token heathen in the house. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, December 4th, 2007
10:12 am	I'm asking for your vote Not for me, but for my kids. My oldest son got married earlier this year and the photographer is running a contest on the ring shots. It looks like our photographers put us in the running for a ring competition, and we can win a large canvas shot of the ring picture and our favorite wedding picture. Anyway, I've never been in an online competition before, but if you have 10 seconds, would you mind voting for us? If you don't want to vote, the pictures are cool to look at anyway: http://theblogisfound.com/. If you want to vote, we are #11 (the Finn wedding obviously, with the rings on wine corks). So, I'm asking you to surf on by and leave a comment voting for #11. Thank you for your support. (Comment on this)