GOING HOME

Guess what? Just when you thought that you were rid of me...after you thought that the wilds of the northern frontier would finish me off...when you thought that I would be no match for the bears..."He's baaack."

I have secured my travel home for the Christmas holidays, and boy, howdy, I'll tell ya, I am thrilled. And not just because I got it all for the ridiculously low price of $550...

Here are the gritty details:

I will be flying into Lincoln Municipal Airport on Northwest Airlines Flight 5652, arriving at 10:40PM, on Saturday, December 15th. I am planning on being met by at least Kristen Clark, and anybody who is in the area is welcome to join us at Rogue's Gallery for a few drinks, catching up on news, general social fun, and so on, around 11:15 PM, or thereabouts.

If you need directions to Rogues, let me know. It will be a good time. Perhaps we will bother the folks at a 24 hr restaurant afterwards...who knows?

Anyway, I will be in Nebraska until New Year's Eve, when I fly back to Alaska.

Just over two weeks in sunny (relatively) Nebraska with friends and family will be quite a tonic. I am looking forward to seeing as many of you as I can. I know of at least one other tentative gathering...no details as of yet, just loose "Hey, lets get together over break." speech. I will, of course, keep all of you informed.

CAUGHT IN THE WEB

Well, I have expanded the website ( http://www.qsl.net/kc0hoj/bmh/home.html ) mostly added pictures and so on. I added the Science section, and expanded the Fun section. The Gallery is in a new format, broken into sections for easy navigation. Also, i started adding the old email messages to the Alaska page. Keep in mind, it will take me a while to edit, and add all of them, so be patient. I keep adding stuff so that people will keep visiting, of course.

Also, I have been updating the list of nominations for the car name (naminations?) and the list keeps expanding. Christopher Burchell upped the ante considerably this week with his list of 50...count 'em, 50 nominations. Most of them are funny (My favorite is Car-sino Royale) and very Burchell-esque. Check 'em all out. I hope you are picking out your favorites in preparation for the voting. I will be accepting nominations until next Thursday (Oct. 4) at 7:00 PM Central. Voting will begin the next day, with my "Election Night Special" Email..."May I just begin by saying that this is, in fact, the first time that I have voted on a car?"

The voting will go as follows:

Each person will vote for their top three (3), 1st place, 2nd place, and 3rd place. Each first place vote is worth 3 points, each 2nd place vote is worth two, and each 3rd place vote is worth 1 point. Depending upon the number of votes, and scores, I will make a cut and determine the finalists. Then, I will ask everybody to vote for one (1) name as their favorite finalist name.

Preliminary voting will commence next Friday, October 5th, with final voting taking place two weeks later, October 19th. I want to get this finished up in the next month. I am allowing a lot of time, so that everybody has a chance to get their votes in, and tallied.

I do need a name before there is too much ice on the roads, so that if I end up in a ditch or an accident, I will be able to yell out something in rage or lamentation,you know? I mean, which sounds better?:

"Oh, Yolanda, how could you let me down like this?"
-or-
"Oh, Suzuki Esteem GLX Wagon, how could you let me down like this?"

Case closed.

WEB-GEMS

Speaking of websites, I want to give proper publicity to two very good websites.

The first is the website of my good friend and freshman year roommate, Bob Needham (Where is Bob when you need ham?). He has a fine site underway (beats up on my site, by far)
and can be found here:

http://www.qsl.net/kc0ran/ran/home.html

Of special note is the section entitled "Jim and Bob's Excellent Adventures" which highlights their trip to Europe a couple of years ago. Very cool stuff.

The other site is the first web-effort of Kristen Clark. Her site can be found here:

http://sandovalrules.tripod.com

Her site is just a few days old, but has grown quite nicely. Keep an eye on it.

GOINGS ON

I got the poster done for the conference in Boulder, Colorado next week. None of us get to go, so we are sending a big piece of paper to prove our worth. I have a picture of the poster on my Science website. It isn't very easily read, but isn't it pretty?

I also got our new weather station installed on the roof of the GI, and we should be able to start collecting our data next week, as soon as we overcome the inevitable computer and network problems in our way. Pictures of that will be online next week sometime.

Next week also appears to be the end of our charmed meteorological existence. We have had an absolutely wonderful autumn. We have had virtually no real periods of nasty weather in the past 2 months, with many sunny and beautifully warm days. They are saying that has been the best in over a decade, which is nice. That all appears to be coming to a rapid, screeching, smoking, difficult-to-swallow halt...

".MONDAY AND TUESDAY...CHANCE OF RAIN AND SNOW. LOWS 25 TO 35.
HIGHS 40 TO 45."

That is an actual, real, genuine excerpt from the Zone Forecast for the Middle Tanana Valley, including Fairbanks...the "s" word.

INJECTIONS D'HUMEUR

I was informed that as nice as my additions of ITS THE BRITS and BRIAN'S ALMANAC were, the omission of INJECTIONS D'HUMUER from the last email was not appreciated. So, I will re-instate my little tradition, and will alternate it with the other features.

So...

Man: "Waiter! Waiter! How do you prepare your chicken?"
Waiter: "Oh. Not in any special manner...we just tell them straight out that they're going to die."

another...

So, lawyers are de-barred, and clergy are defrocked. Doesn't it make sense that cowboys are de-ranged, models are de-posed, and Calvin Klein models de-briefed? Baseball players are de-based? And dry cleaners are de-creased, de-pressed, and de-pleated?

Ok, just one more...

Man 1: "Does this bus go to Chicago?"
Man 2: "No. This bus goes 'beep-beep' and 'vroom'."

I love that one!!!

Well, I hope that everybody has a good weekend. I am going to Los Anchorage to visit "the big city" this weekend, and do some shopping and hanging out.

Hopefully, I will have some pictures and stories with which to regale you next week.

Later

Brian "De-Briefed" Hartmann