Robert Miles - Children

Ah, the days of my foolish youth, and my first speeding ticket.

It's kind of an interesting story. I had just gotten back from a visit to the optometrist for an eye check-up. As usual, my vision was better than perfect (20/13 if it's any of your business), and as one who works in the IT Field among a sea of four-eyed peers (no offense meant) I've always been proud of my eagle eyes. Interesting fact, eagles probably have something more like 20/5 or 20/2 vision, but that's neither here nor there.

For some reason or another, part of the vision testing stressed me out quite a bit (dilation and the air-burst glaucoma ordeal) and I had a grand-mal seizure right there on the spot. It took me a while to recover, and the drive home had me feeling much like a zombie.

I was cranking this song at full blast in my 1981 Honda Accord, not paying much attention to my speed. I was going 70 MPH in 55 MPH zone that was under construction but without workers present. The resulting ticket was nearly $300. Ugh.

Good Times!

Real McCoy - Another Night

Oh jeez. I ran across this song in my playlist today. Memories of my BBS days flooded back. Not just hanging out on BBSes, but all the real-world social atmosphere that came with it.

Playing Tradewars. Going to Ren Fest or Tippins (rest in Peace) to meet with people. Late nights in 16-color text-only teleconference. Driving out to Independence to hang out with my favorite Sysop. Arguing on the forums with Frogman, who's now one of my best friends. Turning Poet's little Geo Metro sideways between Kestra's basketball goal and the front porch, stranding him. Giant Pixie Sticks. Bowling. You don't even understand. You'd would have needed to be there. This is part of my mid-teenage past that permanently changed the course of my life. It may also explain my terribly eclectic and slightly disturbing social flair.

Real McCoy - Run Away

This song hit it big on the airwaves in 1995. I recorded it off the radio (remember when THAT was how we acquired the music we liked illegally?) and I took the tape that contained this song and plenty of other 1995-esque hits on a camping trip with my family. I can't remember where we were camping. It may have been Pomme DeTerre. I just remember rocking out to this song in my little tent with my big clunky mid-90's headphones on.

Eiffel 65 - Europop

Sitting in my room (the entire basement of my parents place, basically) building and programming the robot to end all robots (or not) out of Lego Mindstorms and the NQC language.

The end result, some 2 days later would be a tread-propelled device that would erase the program memory and reboot any other Lego Mindstorms RCX via the infrared programming interface. Barring that, it would attempt to forcefully knock over whatever is in its way. It could tell when it ran into something. It would then back up a bit, ram whatever it hit, then back up and turn a random number of degrees then proceed forward. It could not sense the difference between the arena wall or its opponent, but with any luck, it wouldn't need to. I christened it "Dain Bramage" for good reason.

This was being built in response to a friend of mine who wanted to have a "BattleBots" style challenge, where the robots had to operate in an arena made from a cheap kid's wading pool. First robot to get disabled or stuck loses the match. The great thing is there is no outside control. Our robots had to detect and disable the other robot autonomously.

For what it's worth, his robot was built to shuffle about and flip over its opponent. Had it flipped mine over, I would have lost. As it went, his bot lasted less than 30 seconds before it beeped twice and stopped running. Mission accomplished.

Ace of Base - The Sign

I was doing home-school Algebra in 1993, sitting at the round, hammered-glass topped kitchen table at my grandparents' place. It was a little before lunch time, and I was anxious to get through my studies so that I could go work with my grandfather in the shop. While I wasn't listening to this song at the moment, it was stuck in my head all day long that day.