Growing up, I was either going to be a commercial airline pilot, or a computer programmer.

Due to a variety of reasons, I picked computer programmer. Am I sorry I picked it? Not really. An airline pilot of today is nowhere near as glamorous as it once was. I actually probably would be out of a job after 9/11, had I gone down that path.

But I still keep up on aviation, reading such sites as Airliners.net, FlyerTalk, among others.

I think a lot of that is the fact that my father worked for Trans World Airlines for over 30 years. It was a part of our family.. Both in the good times and the bad. And I'm speaking about both my family and the airlines good times.

Unfortunately, like other airlines, TWA didn't make it. It's still one of the oldest airlines that we had in the US. And of course, it's long history with such people as Howard Hughes and Carl Icahn.

Over the years, I've aquired quite a few bits of history of TWA. I've decided to setup a website, TWAHistory.com, where I can show some of the stuff I've amassed. Hopefully other people will chime in too.

So if you get a chance, take a look. Come back every now and then. We'll always have new stuff.

twahistory.com

Someone is trying to open one there. Of course, residents are fighting it. I liked this quote from the article, from a resident fighting it:

"Those folks hang around for hours, and you will positively love their dress code and personal grooming," McIntosh wrote in an e-mail to the town.

Nice.

A thing of beauty, she is. Okay. Maybe that's going too far.

Maybe you could own your own?

I'm working on moving my site to WordPress, a pretty decent program.

Of course, this is completely meaningless to most of you, so it's no biggie. It does mean some cool new features.

The Nintendo Wii. I think this is going to be one cool system.

The controller alone is going to make for some interesting games. I think (hope?) this is going to be an early Christmas present in my household.

It's Quicktime, so if you don't have it, get it.

Click below to check it out!

Yeah. Very strange.

Wow. We weren't in the episode that much. :)

Video coming soon.

Doesn't look like much, does it? Click read more to see what, exactly, this is.

Would you believe, this is the motherboard for Tom's first computer?

Yeah, this is where it all started.

When? Well, that would be all the way back in the year 1982. Tom was Andy, at that point, and Andy was all of 9 years old.

I can even remember when I got it. It was about June/earlier July. So I was actually 8. It was the night on television when David Copperfield made the Statue of Liberty disappear. Good times.

This is actually a Timex Sinclair 1000. Membrane keyboard. Black and white video. no sound. And a whopping 2K of RAM! Of course, I was uber-cool, and had a 16k memory expansion pack. (My current Mac has a gig of RAM, or basically, 1,048,576K. Scary.)

Now, why, you may ask, is it just the motherboard? Well, after I moved on, and never used the computer again, I decided to take it apart and see what made it go.

Dunno where the rest of it is, but I did buy another on EBay to say I do have a working Timex-Sinclair 1000.

I programmed the crap out of this thing. It's where I learned BASIC, and where I really got fully interested in computers.

And the rest, they say, is history!

But, my mind is blank.

I could rehash something. Like talk about Tivo. Or TVMax Cable. Or Indepenence High School. Or my life as a secret squirrel.

But that would either be A) boring, repeated information, or B) not really true.

So, life is just waiting for Cassie's Birthday, the next 'big' event in the household. (October 6th, for those of you keeping track.)

I'm finally getting the video of us on the Price is Right edited. From an hour, it will probably be 30 seconds long. Stay tuned.

5 years since the infamous events back East. Weird.

I remember the night before, I really worked late, and had to meet some coworkers at the datacenter at noon. So I slept in till about 9am.

I remember the alarm clock going off to the radio, and them saying something about the second tower is now falling. So I get up and turn the TV on, and am just amazed at what I'm seeing. Crazy.

I do end up meeting my coworkers later that day. It was weird driving to work from Chandler to Tempe, and not seeing any planes or trails in the sky. Very surreal.

Lunch at Native New Yorker Pizza, and it's so quiet in there, you could hear a pin drop. Everyone is focused on the television and CNN.

Our memories here 'in the West' are nothing like those of people that lived there, I'm sure. Very sad.

Nothing super-major.

The wife last week was having issues, though. She had some back problems, that caused a great pain just to stand up.

After talking her into staying home, she got better. But I actually had to help her up and walk around, it was that painful to walk.

And then, one day, she passed out from the pain, falling and hitting her head in the process. I was 5 seconds away from calling 911 when she snapped out of it. Her eyes were open the whole time, really freaky weird. Oh well. Good times(?)

And, as if to continue the back issues, my Uncle broke his neck while mountain biking the other day, fracturing his c-2 and t-4 in his neck. The doctors were quite surprised he is still here, let alone walking.

Luckily, though, he'll just have to wear a "halo" for about 3 months, and should be fine.

Other than that, hey, we're here. :)

And I need to pour out a 40-ouncer to The Crocodile Hunter, may he rest in peace.

Yeah, I know, VH1 and MTV have another channel (usually in the "high 200's" on digital cable) where they show music videos. But that's old hat.

Yeah, the word of the day is "video-on-demand". (Yeah, I guess it could be a phrase. I'm too lazy to figure out if a hyphenated word counts as one word.)

If you do a little searching on YouTube, you'd be surprised at how many music videos are on there now.

A few of my favorites, after the click.

1. Peter Gabriel - Shock the Money

I've always been a huge Peter Gabriel fan. This is an early one. It's about jealously, by the way.

2. Primus - John the Fisherman

Again, fan from long ago. Good song, and Les Claypool is an amazing bass player.

3. Pearl Jam - Do the Evolution

This video's animation is pretty cool. Done by Todd McFarlane, of SPAWN fame.

4. Fat Boy Slim - Weapon of Choice

Christopher Walken. Need I say anymore?

Well, back to YouTube.

Good times.

Click Read More to read a review, and some picts of the cool scenery...

It's really amazing how the Superstition's colors can change:

We also got to see them setup the screen for the movie. It was inflatable. Very cool. Of course, being sponsored by Netflix, they had to get their plug in. (A lucky person got the honor of 'ripping open' the Netflix envelope. )

Now, knowing this is in a state park, it being Summer, and also dusk, we had to bring the secret weapon:

Off! Most of the audience smelled like Off. It did work good, though.

It was getting closer to movie time, so I decided to take a picture showing how fast it filled up:

This was still about 20 minutes till the sun set. Speaking of the sunset:

So the movie started. Did they have stars? Of course! Two of the "Arizona Babies" were there, all grown up. Also, Lisa Loeb was there too. She has that geeky-hot thing going on.. must be the glasses.. Anyhoo...

The movie? Well, come on, it's Raising Arizona! What more would I need to say about that?

They actually showed the movie using a 35mm print, which is cool for being authentic, but at the same time, the print was old and very worn & dirty. It's weird how nowadays digital sound and projection is the norm.

All in all, it was a good time. Thanks for Netflix for sponsoring the free event, and let's hope they do it again next year.

If you'd like to see fullsize images for these pictures, you can check out my Gallery here of the pictures.