In 2010, the first signs of artificial intelligence were discovered growing in a closet of discarded electronics. Somehow the inorganic material had self-organized into a living body with a mind of its own.

Competitive tip cups at Starbucks

I dropped a buck on Star Trek. Which would you choose?

Went to pick up my mom at a gun show...

Sounds like a country song, I know, but this is seriously where I went to pick up my mom today so that we could hang out for a bit. She and my dad were working a veteran's outreach booth. While there, I decided to look around for a bit and got this awesome shot with a really big gun. I have no idea what anyone would shoot with this, but I feel bad for whatever it is.

Scarefest 2009 photos

"We're ready to believe you!"



Danielle Harris. She's been in a couple of things -- Rob Zombie's Halloween II, for example -- but I'm a fan from back when she did The Last Boyscout, playing Bruce Willis' daughter.

I look like a retard in this picture.



Cool ghost hunting equipment. Probably completely useless, but they make pretty colored lights and noises.



And they call me big headed.



Some demon trying to grope my mom.



Independent documentary film maker who recently made a film about a "true" Kentucky haunting. The film's been on KET and other places, and he signed my copy.



Kane Hodder. Played Jason in a couple of the Friday the 13th movies.



Pig man was awesome! Seriously, his mask was so well done, you couldn't see any seam where man met beast.



Zombies rock! Braaaaiiiiiinnnnns.



Smelled like fried chicken.



Creepy gypsy lady.



Incredibly tall monster dude.

They'll see us waving from such great heights

I had to give a website demo at the Hilton Netherland Plaza in front of forty or fifty people today. That was interesting, but just business. The fun part is that I decided to take advantage of the opportunity and visit the observation deck atop the Carew Tower.

The Carew Tower (pictured below) was built in 1929, in a French art deco style, and still maintains many of it's original art deco charms today. It's also Cincinnati's tallest building, but only gets to claim that fame for a few more years. In 2011, the new Great American Insurance building at Queen City Square will be 86 feet taller.



It was cold outside, overcast with snow flurries. I was surprised the deck was open today. Actually, the last time I had been to the top of the Carew Tower was exactly ten years ago, pre-911, so I wasn't sure if people were still allowed to go out there. Cold, but happy, I found that at least some things don't change. Still $2.

To get to the 49th floor is kind of interesting. The main elevator doesn't go that far. It stops at the 45th. You have to get off at the 45th floor and round a corner to a service elevator and take that up the remaining four floors (or take the stairs). The service elevator smells like old grease, or body odor, I couldn't tell which. It's about as large as a porta-potty and you get the feeling that it should have been decommissioned thirty years ago.



The actual observation deck is open-aired (cold air today). No bars, barely a rail, and I was wondering what velocity a penny might drop if you tossed it over the edge and resisted the urge to do so. It takes a minute to get your bearings. Though it's perfectly safe unless you have the actual intention of jumping off, you still get a little vertigo from just being outside that far up.



It's cliche, but the people really do look like ants.



That's my car circled in red. I parked on top of the garage just so I could take a picture. By the way, driving down the corkscrew to leave the garage is fun too.



It's a strange perspective to you find yourself looking down on other tall buildings.

They'll see us waving from such great heights.
'Come down now,' they'll say.
But everything looks perfect from far away.
'Come down now,' but we'll stay...

Recent photos dump

I've been really busy lately with some of the projects I've been working on. I think it's important to do a huge push towards accomplishing my goals in that direction, at this time, before I miss the boat on something by procrastination. However, I also feel it's just as important to put everything to the side from time to time and sneak away, to make sure you don't suffer the trappings of workaholism. Work is meant to improve the quality of our lives, so naturally you want to carry non-work-related life quality seeking along with you in the times when you may be working harder than usual.

So anyway, I thought I'd dump some photos of things I've had fun doing recently.

I don't have any kids myself, but my brother who lives in the area has eight(!) of them between two wives. I don't think he's Catholic, but there's definitely something Catholic going on here. Anyway, my point is that if ever need to borrow any, I don't have far to go.




Rowan and Chloe hanging out with me at the office.



Rowan and Liam hanging out with me on the street.



Me, Kaitlyn, and my Dad at the Maysville Uncorked Festival. My Dad is dressed funny because he owns a Civil War-themed restaurant downtown and was out at the festival serving up samples of Carolina boiled shrimp (most of my family is from South Carolina). It's really the sauce that makes the shrimp so good. I'm not sure exactly what goes in the Garlic-Parmesian sauce (yellow bottle) besides the obvious garlic and parmesian, but that stuff belongs on store shelves. No bias there, either. It really is that good.

The Maysville Uncorked Festival, incidentally, celebrates the rather underplayed contribution Kentucky makes to wine production. When one thinks Kentucky, they naturally think bourbon. Most don't realize that before prohibition, Kentucky was the third largest grape and wine producing state in the nation. German immigrants brought much of their wine culture to Kentucky in the 1800s, likening the Northern Kentucky area to their own Rhine River region back home. In recent years, while trying to find a substitute crop for the collapsed tobacco industry, Kentucky has resurrected it's wine making image. Kentucky wine, eh, it's alright. I'd give it a few more years before getting excited.

Last Sunday, my Dad, my brother, and I went canoeing on Eagle Creek in Brown County, Ohio. Eagle Creek pulls water off the surrounding glacier-built hills and dumps it in the Ohio River at Ripley.





Shoving off. That's our canoe by the way. It's not a rental. We wanted to call it the S.S. Minnow, but thought that might jinx it considering the fate of the Minnow in Gilligan's Island. Instead, we dubbed it the S.S. Tadpole.




Dorks.




There's a marked difference between traveling the Ohio Rivery Valley by the slow boat and traveling by car. Much of Ohio is a seemingly endless straight stretch of corn, tobacco, and soybean fields. Canoeing the inner veins is a whole different world, shrouded in trees and twists and turns. It could be anywhere. Or rather, everywhere! I'm of the firm belief that if your life isn't at least fifty-percent fantasy, you're not having any fun. Eagle Creek was the Amazon River that day.





My Dad's arm is not sticking up my ass. That is an illusion. He is, however, actually kicking my brother, at my request. Slacker was trying to sleep.

The rock tower in the pics above is the old supports of a bridge that got washed away a long time ago. You can see them from US 52, and everytime I passed by them I thought, "You know, if I ever boat down there, I'm going to climb those rocks". I know, it's weird. I obsess similarly when I see the suspension bridge in Cincinnati, or a rock out in the middle of the water somewhere. I'm gonna go sit on that rock, that sort of thing.




Saw some interesting wildlife. Click the photos to enlarge. The first is of a crane that was camera shy, but out of five or so shots I finally got one of it sitting still. The underside of the bridge had birds living in mud-nests.




These are my favorite photos of the trip, at least from an arrangement perspective.

Fun with sepia photograph

"Court Street" - Jeremy Parnell

Although I'm in high spirits, the mood outside with a wet snow fall is somewhat somber, and I wanted to play with the (better quality) camera built in to my mobile phone (AT&T 8525). I hated the old phone's camera. The resulting photo was somber, but not somber enough, so I "enhanced" it. Enjoy!

Notes: This is the street I live off, in the building on the left. I think they renamed it "Stanton Alley" in recent years, but it's always been known by its earlier name: Court Street.

Street signs are eductational

Really? I had no idea.

Pyramids and giant pink bunnies

One of the coolest programs out there to download is Google Earth. It's sort of like Google Maps, but a lot more interactive and with community supported features like sharing places of interest. I like it because the CIA keeps booting me off their satellite feed and my spaceship is in the shop. In any case, when you first fire up the program up you'll want to look for your house, cruise around town, that sort of thing, but when you're done with all of that you should really go exploring. I've always wanted to visit the Egyptian pyramids (totally pissed they got booted from the new Seven Wonders of the World list) and the interesting thing is that even if I did show up in person, I wouldn't get the spectacular aerial views shown here. But if you're really looking for some interesting sights to see, check out PC World's In Pictures: The Strangest Sights in Google Earth. My favorite is the giant pink bunny in Prata Nevoso, Italy. It was built by a group of artists from Vienna and measures 200 feet long.

Art is temporary if it imitates life

My friends and I were sitting around bored one day, years ago, and this boredom somehow led to the strange idea that we should paint a mural deep inside the culverts near the school. We didn't give it any thought. We just woke up one day, bought a bunch of candles, $40 worth of spray paint, and snuck down into the ground when no one was looking. Not sure how much the fumes from the spray paint contributed, but it was a jolly good time. The odd thing is that we knew it wouldn't last. It was a drainage tunnel which meant the water would eventually wash away all the dragons and nifty quotes and bizarre symbols we painted. I thought of that when I came across the much more interesting 337 Project.



I'm a fan of remodeling projects involving old buildings. My parents own a three-story building in downtown Maysville, Kentucky, and given enough time and money I'd have that place completely tricked out. It was built some time in the 1800s and is still solid, but let's face it, some buildings are destined for the wrecking ball no matter what. The old Oquirrh School, at 337 South 400 East in Salt Lake City, Utah, is such a place. It's scheduled for demolition in July to make way for Utah's first all-green, mixed-use loft-style condominiums. Rather than letting the building go quietly into the Good Night, officials turned it over to 144 local artists to have their way with it. The result: A 20,000 square foot canvas, with no inch left untouched (see slideshow above).

It's beautiful. It's temporary. Such is art if it imitates life.

I am so turning my own home over to volunteer artists if and when I ever get settled.

Check it out: 337 Project

A boy and his dog

Mocha and me. Not sure whose nose is bigger.

Snow falling on field photograph

"Marshall Homestead" - Jeremy Parnell

I was clearing out photographs I took over the winter getting ready for the coming spring. This one's my favorite. It's of the Marshall homestead in Maysville, Kentucky. That's my backyard / their front yard.

Life as vortices in the Ohio River

The Ohio River has bested the Hercules, a once mighty barge with a crane that could lift sunken vessels.

Sapped of its strength, the Hercules rests at the bottom of the river,
only its crane and two steel beams jutting above water near the shoreline.

Next to it, a towboat lies partially submerged, its pilothouse listing
like a drunken sailor. And next to that, the rusting hull of an old Navy
minesweeper breaks the river's surface like the belly of a dead whale.

Cincinnati Enquirer, 1998

"Vortices" - Jeremy Parnell

The story of the Bermuda Triangle of the Ohio River began in 1992 when a barge sank near the Kentucky shoreline outside Maysville, Kentucky. A subsequent salvage operation in 1994 tried to raise the barge with two Navy minesweepers. The minesweepers were the next victim as they too became stuck in the mud. Next came a towboat trying to free the minesweepers. Damage to its engines quickly rendered it crippled.

Finally came the salvage barge named "The Hercules" and its towering crane. The triangle made short work of it as well. While hoisting the original barge, the crane aboard the Hercules broke as the barge reached the surface, and down it sank again. Then the Hercules itself sank, coming to rest on top of the barge it was supposed to save. Eventually the minesweepers and the towboat sank as well. The entire salvage operation was caught in what an Army Corps of Engineers spokesperson would later call "'The Bermuda Triangle of the Ohio River".

Today, you can still see remnants of the wreckage peaking out of the Ohio River. Some local residents have called it a junkyard and feel that it blights the shoreline. I completely disagree. It's actually quite a remarkable addition to Maysville, especially when coupled with the story behind the wreckage.

I understand why some people may want it removed. It's old and rusty and doesn't look like it belongs there — your typical junkyard. That's all true. But I believe that if you look at it in a certain way, it really is beautiful. Even without dressing up the photo, it looks like a forgotton grave marker, a symbol of finality, especially with the city behind it that may represent life and the continuation of things. The story itself is a story of the power of the Ohio River. We build dams to control the height of it. We build bridges over it. We build walls to change the shape of it. But sometimes the river just doesn't want to let things go.

It's Life as a River. The metaphor goes way back, but I first read it in Herman Hesse's Siddhartha. It fits. You know countless little things are going on in the city in the distance, but the river brings it to a final point in these strange vortices.

Life is a process until death. You never actually see the same river twice. The water you saw a moment ago has already moved on. Likewise, life is continually unfolding. The product of life, like the river, is that at some point it will draw you in to a final resting place. There's nothing you can do to avoid it, and all of mankind's inventions (engines and cranes, science and medicine) do little to prevent it. Sometimes the end is just a little spot off to the side of the Ohio River where you're watching life go on in the distance.