Ready for USF; Is USF Ready for Me?

My wife has Wednesdays off, so I asked her if she would be willing to go pick up my textbook for my class that starts on the 5th. She met me at work to take me to lunch on her way over and we had an interesting “interview” on what school supplies I wanted, too.

“I don’t know,” was my typical guy answer. I hadn’t really thought of it yet, which is very standard practice for me. Thursday would arrive and I’d realize that I needed to go to the campus bookstore on my way to class or something. It happened every semester before. I remember buying scantrons for my community college exam one night 5 minutes before the bookstore closed on my first exam night. That’s Jesse for you.

School SuppliesHere is one of the reasons why I love my wife so much ->
I was sitting at work wondering if she was finally going to be able to find me a school bag that didn’t look like a purse. It is also ridiculous to lug around a backpack for one stinking book. Backpacks are soooo 1997. She found a perfect YAK PAK commuter bag that is just big enough for one or two textbooks, a notepad, and a folder. I slung it over my shoulder and it felt snug around my back for those long campus walks that USF has. I looked at the tag and saw that it is touted as a Booklyn, NY bag. That was enough for me. She knew that, too, of course. What makes it even better is this particular model seems to be a special college edition available only to college campus Barnes & Noble stores, because it’s not on the company site or the B&N site. Cool.

Jesse standing What I did not expect was a great school shirt. It reminded me of the time in Gilmore Girls when Rory visited Yale and changed her mind to not go to Harvard and her mom bought all that Yale stuff. I am pretty pumped, as you can tell.

I have decided to take Tony D. Clark’s advice to get a notepad for my pocket for jotting down things that pop into my crazy head before they vanish forever, never to be thought of again. What I haven’t decided on is which Moleskine is better: Moleskine Reporter Pad or Moleskine Small Pad. Once I have that figured out, I’m all set.

Don’t Mess With Marines… Even Really Old Ones

Ex-Marine Bill BarnesLet this be a lesson to all of you young criminals out there. If you see an old guy withdrawing cash from an ATM and then follow him to a convenience store in an attempt to take that money out of his front pocket, ask him how long they served in the Corp before you make your move.

Jesse Rae (man, I can’t believe he’s got my first name), 27, is facing a 15-year sentence if convicted for doing just such a thing. The problem is that he chose Marine veteran, Golden Glove boxer, and an ex-iron worker as his elderly target. Bill Barnes, 72, landed at least 6 solid punches on Jesse and created quite a mess of blood before a store employee saved Jesse’s life. Good for Bill.

The best line of the whole story is what he said about doing it again if it happened again, “I wouldn’t want my wife to give me hell for lettin’ that guy get my money.” He’s even got a tough wife. Good for Bill.

Read the whole story on Yahoo! News.

Lion Whisperer: Kevin Richardson

Kevin Richardson - Lion WhispererSome people are insane. Some people know what they are doing. This guy brings back memories of Crocodile Hunter, Steve Irwin. He can even hold a baby hyena without fear of attack from its mother, likely because his brain is not sending him signals correctly. Sometimes God’s elbow gets bumped when pouring in peoples’ brains.

According to this amazing news story, Kevin Richardson is 32 and has been doing this for years. I suspect that this kind of behavior usually ends in tragedy, like the bear lover Timothy Treadwell.

Check out the full story at Daily Mail.

UPDATE: Since writing this post, I have learned that he is also the producer of the film White Lion – Home… is a Journey. It is a story about Letsatsi, a white lion, and his struggle to adulthood against all odds.

LISTEN UP! I’m tired of people asking me how to get in contact with Kevin. He’s a nutcase. I am NOT his PR rep. I am NOT his agent. I do NOT know him. I do NOT know where he is. I do NOT know what he ate for breakfast. Read the article, Google about him some more, enjoy your tea, and move on.

E-mails like this will be ignored from now on: “We are headed to South Africa to shoot an episode and wanted to connect with Kevin and possibly include him in a segment ….Do you know how to get a hold of him?”

Monster Table of Contents – How to Take Control

I finally got the workload that I want/need/crave today. We have a certain document requirement that I specialize in here. It’s usually around 600 pages long and comes to me in 9 to 15 pieces. It’s basically a monster table with cross-references and headings and simple headers/footers. The trick is that when it’s all done, they need  a table of contents made up for it and then to split it into the sections again.

Making a table of contents from separate files can be daunting for a rookie, but here are easy steps to get you on your way, and it doesn’t matter if the heading styles for the sections are different. It’s all good. Have fun.

For this tutorial, I’m assuming you know how to make a TOC. First, you need to determine how deep you want your TOC to go. In this case, our engineers usually need it to go 8 levels deep to uncover the meat of the document. Such depth creates a 40 page TOC when all the pieces get put together. [Read more…]