I took the day off from work yesterday and planned on doing some relaxing. Chris, his family, Jason, and I took a trip to Pottsville, PA to take the tour of the Yuengling Brewery. It is America's oldest brewery, and was founded in 1829. They have a wide variety of beer types, such as their Lager, Porter, Black & Tan, Chesterfield Ale, and Premium. It is still considered a very local beer, but is quickly reaching further and further across the country. They have a great tour and I have some pictures that I will post shortly.

Next, we took another short trip to Atlantic City. Some gambling, a few spirits, and a stroll along the boardwalk. I didn't bother to take any more pictures, since it hasn't changed much since we were there the last time.

I came to a very frightening conclusion. I am not a big enough geek. Try as I may, I am not the dork-extraordinaire that I have always sought to be. So as of today, I will take one huge step closer. I finally ordered my very own copy of RedHat Linux. I'm sure it will be quite a process, but in the end, I will be a better geek; a stronger geek. No longer a geek, but THE GEEK.

It: "Prolog technical support, how may I help you?"
Me: "Have you been experiencing cable modem problems in the Mantzville area?"
It: "No, we haven't. What kind of problems are you having?"
Me: "Packet loss and connection interruption. I have been pinging my box all day and it seems that sometimes as little as one packet in ten actually reaches the destination. The only remedy that I can find so far is by rebooting the cable modem. This seems to fix the problem, but it will only last anywhere between five minutes and an hour."
It: "Oh yeh, we have been having problems like that all over. It seems to point to a software problem in the cable modems. We have contacted COM21 and are waiting for a reply."
Me: "Do you have a time frame on that?"
It: "It could be an hour, a day, a month, who knows."
Me: "So I will just keep paying for a service that doesn't actually work, right?"
It: "Silence......"
Me: "I guess I will just have to reboot it every three minutes then?"
It: "Yup, that's what we have been telling everyone."

I am forever finding more and more new features that my Digital Camera is packed with. I have never tested the QuickTime Movie recorder, until now. Click on the image below to see my first attempt. The movie is about 1.2meg.

Me: Hey Mike, say something funny into the camera.
Mike: Something funny into the camera!                  

I could sit in our server closet with the lights off for hours just watching all the activity LED's. Not that I have ever actually done that...

Voodoo5 5500 AGP; Live it, love it, want more of it.

I cannot stress this enough. If anyone is considering a new video card, you need look no further. I was upgrading from a Voodoo3 1000, which did actually run most 3D games rather well.

This new one blows it away.

I tried a few different games; the main being Quake 2 & Quake 3, and, naturally, Unreal Tournament. It was simply amazing. The smoothness of the game play is something that you have to actually experience for yourself. The best feature of the Voodoo5 is it's Anti-Aliasing. In a nutshell, the dual on-board VSA-100 graphics processors smooth otherwise jagged edges of different shapes and lines. And it performs without a hitch.

I call this....Dark Empty Hallway

Thank The Lord above that no one actually witnesses me taking pictures like this. I was sprawled out across the floor with my camera and a flashlight in hand.

We started our journey near Kutztown University. It's not the largest college bar scene that I have ever seen, but lets face it, beggars can't be choosers. To start, we had a small dinner at The Kutztown Tavern, and then on to a few drinks downstairs at Shorty's Bar. The next planned stop was the "famous" Kutztown Pub, commonly called The KTown Pub, which, with my luck, was closed last night only. Typical. Next was another short stop at a small place, which name escapes me at the moment.

Noticing that my watch was only showing 8:40pm, we continued onward to Allentown.

We stopped first at Beers Around the World. This great little "dive" has many strange and interesting brews from all around the world. No, it's not just a clever name. And the adventure continues...

We ended up spending the most time at my old college hang out, The Penalty Boxx. It's one of those great places where my entrance is loudly cheered by everyone yelling MATT!!! like they used to in Cheers for Norm. Since my name isn't Norm, you now see the reason they yell Matt.

We spent more time here then I think we should, because it was certainly a loud and interesting car ride home. Which, as you all know, I wouldn't have it any other way.

Thanks again to Mike for being the designated driver for the evening. I'm sure it was no fun watching, but it wouldn't be fun watching us drive either.

After nights and nights of my video card randomly changing screen resolutions automatically, I broke down and ordered a VooDoo5 5500 AGP Video Card. Can you fathom what 640x480 resolution looks like on a 21" monitor? It's huge!! And the video card would switch back and forth to a random resolution as often as two times in a ten minute time period. Nevertheless, I decided to order the VooDoo5.

Until you remember you have to arise the next morning at 5:45am.

There are two main driving issues that really boil my blood.

Merging or pulling out in front of me.  If you are going to pull out in front of me, I have three simple words for you. MOVE YOUR ASS. I can't stand when someone pulls out, tires squealing and smoking, the proceeds to drive ten miles an hour. If you are in such a hurry to get out into traffic, then you should be in just as much of a hurry to speed up.  Move move move!!!

The Passing Lane.  Again, this is a speed issue.  It seems that everyone in the state of Pennsylvania knows exactly who I am and what kind of vehicle I drive. I know this because whenever I am a passenger with another driver in another vehicle, these things don't happen.  But when I am on the road, every moron with a station wagon decides they want to play "Indy 500" and try to pass people. So when I approach from the rear and notice that I am there, THEY SLOW DOWN. Then it turns out that both cars are side by side and both traveling at thirty mile per hour.

This is when my blood pressure shoots up through the roof. I should really purchase a hood mounted cannon for my Dodge Durango.

Works for me.

An image of my job this afternoon; pulling CAT5 network cabling.

Which thousand words? Suck suck suck suck suck suck......

I think you get the point. It wasn't really all that bad, the thermometer was only reading about 124 degrees. The best part was when a summer janitor walked by and asked, "Why the hell are you taking pictures of that crap up there?!?"