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I Am The WalkenDude	"The floggings will continue until morale improves"

WalkenDude

Name: Dude
Country: United States
State: New Jersey
Birthday: 3/15/1964
Gender: Male

Interests: Hiking, breaking and fixing motorcycles, riding same, martial arts, computer related crappola, a bit of cooking when the mood strikes me.
Expertise: You mean like "Assassin for Hire" or "Travel the World like Caine"? I'm up to page 85 in the Kama Sutra, does that count?
Occupation: Computer related
Industry: Computers (Software)

Message: message meEmail: email me

Member Since: 3/20/2001

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Wednesday, June 08, 2005

Hola chicos y chicas!

It's been a very long time since I posted anything but would like to say that I have been reading my Xanga digest nearly everyday.

A quick review of my life since January...

I taught 2 courses at my old college last semester. One was a essentially IT project management (which I have done professionally for over 14yrs) and the other was on Internet backbone networking (boring shit). They required a lot of work, the pay was terrible and I enjoyed it to no end.

Right now I'm teaching a distance learning graduate course on Information Systems. It's an intro class but at the grad level it requies a truck load of work. The online aspect of the class is OK, but I prefer the in-your-face approach. I find that I spend a lot of time checking for plagorism.

My motorcycle is down for the time being. Some sort of fuel problem is my guess, but I can't figure out what it is. The carbs seem to be working right, the fuel filter is new, the fuel tank screen is clean, vacuum lines are unblocked, etc.

Compression on the cylinders is 150 which is normal for the engine.

It runs fine at idle but when I ride the bike and roll on the gas hard it sputters, backfires and dies. The whole situation is pissing me off and I'm losing out of classic riding days.

Since I use the bike as to commute in good weather (good = no snow, hail or torrential downpours) this is seriously annoying me. To add insult to the matter I had to drive into NYC last week and when I went to go home my Jeep was gone. I had my RX-7 stolen out of my driveway about 10yrs ago so finding my Jeep MIA wasn't exactly a good feeling. "Raging fucking loonie" is a better fit, but I digress.

Seeing as how there was a ton of festival style garbage in the street I figured that the cops towed the car because of a parade or street fair. No signs indicating that I parked in a No-Go spot, but this is NYC. There are rules for the rules and to hell with any standardization.

I call the towing department and after an hour of bullshit they give me a website to check. There is no record of my Jeep. Now I figure it was stolen but I see a little link that says to call the local PD precinct if the vehicle was moved due to a parade.

I call up, give them my license plate number and the officer says, "White Jeep? Oh, thats on Madison around 85th street. We moved all the cars near the museum. No tickets were given out. Have a good day." CLICK.

What is this? An Easter Egg hunt? Still it beats a $300 tow charge or a $150 parking ticket.

My company starts up in September. I've been doing freelance IT consulting for about 2yrs and have enough clients now to hire on a few "work for hire" people. I have to admit that I love what I do for the most part, but a steady source of income would be nice.

My plan is now to grow the business for another 2yrs and get it to a point where I can mananage a number of people and projects part time. During this time I want to get my teaching certification and try to get into a tenure track at a local college. I really enjoy teaching and this seems like a nice way to have the best of both worlds...stability and freedom.

Heading to Florida to visit some relatives this weekend and then making plans to go to Baja Cali for a vacation in August. While I'm there I'm seriously going to look into buying property.

Later!

10:26 AM - 14 eprops - 7 comments - email it

Sunday, December 19, 2004

Last night was our annual Holly-Daze Open House at my place. We had about 80 people come through during the course of the night with the last non-sleepover guest bailing out at about 4am. Not nearly the turnout I expected. About 5 years I had 75 people in the house at one point in time and close to 160 pass throught the doors.

My back porch is loaded with leftover booze. Close to 6 cases of beer, 25 bottles of wine, 2 bottles of single malt Scotch (Glenlivet 12yr and McCelland) and 1 of grappa. ...about all I need now is some Absinth.

The food was fantastic! I made baby back ribs, spiral ham and wasabi smashed potatoes. Some friends brought stuffed shells, chicken parm with pepperoni, fillet mignion and crab cakes, all homemade.

The desserts were obscene...I can't even look at chocolate right now without getting queasy. Truffles, Lindor chocolates, homemade cheese cake, more cookies then you can count, Triffle...the table just about broke.

My dog, Alexa, mangaed to stay out of trouble this year. No stolen cheese logs or knocking over the Christmas tree for a change.

I played DJ and bartender for about 4hrs, mixed some good tunes to get people going and dragged out my recipes for a few neat champagne drinks that are great for these kinds of parties..

A bunch of my old martial arts friends showed up with their families and kids so we got the chance to talk shop in the kitchen for a few hours. Is it just my friends or do all groups of three or more guys have to immediately form a circle when talking?

I'm frikken beat, but it was a blast.

10:11 PM - 6 eprops - 3 comments - email it

Tuesday, December 14, 2004

Currently Playing
The Misfits Box Set
By The Misfits
see related

It looks like I'm going to enter the world of academia, this time from the opoosite side of the desk.

In January I'm teaching two IT courses at a local university and probably taking some classes to finish up my Master's work.

One thing that I can see already is that I'll need to adjust to the pace of educators and union members. It's about 1/2 that of what I'm used to. For example, I needed to confirm the cirriculm for one of the classes (what syllabus to use, testing criteria, etc.) so I emailed the person in charge of new adjuncts for the department. They didn't respond in a few days so I sent another email and left them a voice mail. One more day goes by and still nothing. I call the department, determine that they have been in the office for the last three days and leave another voicemail and email.

That night I leave another voicemail and email. Still nothing in the morning.

I call the department, find out that they are in, go down to the university (12miles away), essentially bully my way into their office and politely introduce myself, expalin what I need and then go over the material. The total time with them was about 5min, but it took me 4 days and an hour of my life to finish it.

After it was over I asked them why they didn't just email me the information. They said that they had over 50 emails to respond to, each of which requeired personal attention. BFD, chief, I used to get 50 a day and consider myself lucky.

Buck up, little soldier, and wear a helmet, lifes tough.

8:16 PM - 6 eprops - 3 comments - email it

Wednesday, August 25, 2004

Want to hear something funny?

About a week ago I got a parking ticket in NYC for leaving my motorcycle up on the sidewalk overnight. I do this all the time on Vals street and have never had a proble in the 2.5 years we have known each other. Lots of other motorcycle guys on the block and we all do it. With the way some idiots drive and park, the sidewalk is the safest place for a bike.

Out I go in the morning and here is a parking ticket jammed up in my cover. It's illegible as hell but the license plate number looks like mine at first glance. I'm a little pissed off, but I figure with the anount of money and time that I save riding the bike into NYC, a parking ticket now and again is normal.

I fold the ticket up, shove it in my jacket and head out.

I picked up the parking ticket today to pay it along with some of my end of month bills.

Since I can't read the damn thing to determine how much I'm supposed to pay, I went online to the nyc.gov site to do a search.

Taking a closer look at the ticket I find that the license plate number is wrong. It has too many numbers.

The ticket isn't valid. Nothing shows up under a search on the ticket number, the license plate number on the ticket or the real license plate number on my bike.

Just to be safe I called up the NYC finance office (from a pay phone

) and had them do a search on the ticket number and the license plate number on the ticket. Nothing....

I RULE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Oh, ThreeBroomStix asked about my Xanga Handle...

WalkenDude comes from two sources. The first is that I've used it as my trail name when hiking for about 22yrs of so. When you get to a trailhead, there is sometimes a register book for you to sign in and leave comments. At shelters there is usually a register and logbook as well.

It's a custom of long trail hikers and thru-hikers to use a nickname of some sort. Getting one assigned to you is a dangerous chance to take.

The other source is from The Stand and the associated song "Among the Living" by Anthrax. Randall Flagg, aka The Walking Dude, is one of my favorite King villians. Sure, killer clowns in the sewers are fun, but Flagg has style.

5:09 PM - 7 eprops - 5 comments - email it

Tuesday, August 17, 2004

Val and I got back from a short vacation out on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. It’s a beautiful area and one that never get tired of visiting.

Spent every day at the beach and every evening at the pool and hot tub. Got to play bartender a lot too. This is one of my favorite things to do on vacation and I had a brief stint behind the bar when I was in college.

Did a little crabbing and surf fishing. Fishing for me is essentially drowning bait and drinking beer. I could care less about catching anything, but it’s a social activity and my idiot friends enjoy it.

She started her new job yesterday and is getting acclimated to the company. It’s a big NYC fashion outfit and she is going to do great here. Some odd-ball issues to take care of with the person who is leaving the job she is taking, but nothing too weird or exotic.

One of the neat things is that since she will be traveling a little bit, I can tag along sometimes! Vegas, St. Barts, Amsterdam… pretty neat perk for me.

7:55 PM - 8 eprops - 4 comments - email it

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