Dystopian Paradise

Wow, I had no idea we were even up for best blog of all time, but apparently CNN is already selling shirts saying so.

I stumbled across this new feature of CNN.com early this morning, where they allow you to buy a t-shirt ($15) with one of the day’s top headlines printed across it, like this. The funny thing is that I also noticed that the URL was not protected at all, and so it allows things like this, that, or more deviously these.  I had a lot of un with it and couldn’t help but share the love.
Hope you enjoy!

Well, in case you haven’t heard from me personally, Kassy & I are having a baby in April.  We started this new site (lifeatadistance.com) to help keep family informed of the progress, and other fun stuff that’s going on in our lives.  We’ve been trying to bootstrap that new site, and as such I’ve been pretty lousy at posting here.  In fact, I’m not sure if I really should even maintain a private blog separate from the family one, but the truth is I feel there’s still probably value in my personal opinions, and I’m fairly certain that there are plenty of people who don’t care about them, so to that end, I’m back.

Although there’s probably plenty I could talk about, for now, I wanted to say a bit about the new peripheral in our entertainment center.  After all of the Christmas rush settled down a bit I picked up a Nintendo Wii, and have not been disappointed. The multiplayer games are a lot of fun, especially WarioWare: Smooth Moves & Wii Sports, but I’ve actually been having a lot of fun playing Excite Truck in my spare time.  I unlocked Super Excite mode last night (after getting an S grade on each of the races in bronze, silver, gold, and platinum Excite mode races).  Tonight, I’m working a bit late, but I’m still hoping to make some more progress on the Super Excite circuit, and maybe up my bowling average a bit more as well.

Well, it’s getting late, and I really need to grab some dinner.

I mentioned in my last post that I was moving the blog. Well the truth is, I’ve created a permanent home for my blog (http://dystopianparadise.lifeatadistance.com/), but the format and content have all been moved over to there. I apologize for the downtime (if anyone even noticed), I didn’t realize that Blogger would pull my content just as soon as I changed the publication of my site. I’ll be moving all of this into Wordpress soon, in fact all future posts to this blog will be made at the lifeatadistance.com location, and using Wordpress.

Anyway, there’s also something new, but most of you have probably already found that. Kassy & I have worked the past few days/weeks to put together http://www.LifeAtADistance.com to help us keep in touch with friends and family who are far away. We hope you enjoy the new site, and keep in touch, wherever you are.

Just the blog. That’s why I’ve been away. Working on a new home. Got the domain name up, and hosting is running smoothly. I’ll post more in a few days.

If there’s actually anyone reading this, I’m actively searching for a domain name for Kassy & I, or at least to host this blog and our photos on. I’ve come up with some cheesy names like rcandkassy.com, or johnsonfamily.com, but I’m trying to be more original than that. Any suggestions?

Although I don’t think anyone actually looks at this on any regular basis, aside from myself, I found out that Blogging was paying off yesterday. When I got back to my desk at lunch I noticed I had a voicemail (peculiar). I punched in my code and it said the voice mail was from some extention I had never heard before (more peculiar). I pressed the play button and immediately heard an old friend’s voice over the line (very peculiar).

It seems that a friend of mine from college, whom I haven’t talked to in nearly 2 years now (due almost entirely to my inability to keep up with long distance friendships) is coming to Austin for a few days and wanted to look me up. He tried several common friends to get my contact info, to no avail. Finally, he punched Richard Curtis Johnson into a search engine and found my blog. Noticing in my earliest post that I was working for NI he called up the front desk and asked to speak with me, and voila all my questions were answered.

Anyway, fun annecdote.

I’m not sure why I wanted to start blogging…I guess, because I’ve found it to be such a great way to keep up with friends from college (University of Missouri-Rolla, more on that in the future, I’m sure). None the less, here it is Saturday, September 4th and I’m about to quit lurking in the shadows, and post my first blog entry.

I’ve avoided this for some time because I didn’t feel I was as witty or original as some of my friends, and thus wouldn’t provide any interesting material for a blog, but I’ve realized over the past few weeks/months that I don’t care about any of that. I’ll be content if this is nothing more than my own personal dumping ground for stray thoughts on life, the universe, and everything. Even if no one ever links to me, or posts a comment, I’ll be happy.

I’ve always thought that one of your earliest entries in your blog should be an introduction for the readers, since you never know who is going to read your blog, and so I’m going to do my best to start this off on the right foot. Let’s get some of the preliminaries out of the way.

Name: Richard Curtis Johnson
Nickname: RC
Birthday: June 10, 1980
Currently living in: Austin, TX
Occupation: Programmer/Analyst
Hobbies: watching movies, playing with legos (especially mindstorms), video games (XBox), hanging out with friends, and goofing around with my computer.
Political affiliation: None…I vote independent of party lines.
Religious affliliation: Non-denominational Christian.
Favorites:

Movie: Lord of the Rings
TV series: Simpsons.
Bands: Five Iron Frenzy and Sixpence None the Richer
Food: Homemade cheese burgers.