Awesome places

Star Trek Online has some amazing scenery. This is my ship flying through the Badlands near Bajor. I love being able to fly around in all the places you see on the TV shows.

My heavy escort

I have since renamed it the Tai Lung. I'm almost ready to be promoted to Captain and then I'll have my Defiant.

An above average day

Today at work there was a sausage biscuit and a 2 liter of mountain dew waiting for me when I arrived. Later I found on my desk a check made out to me for $200. It was an above average day!

As if I need another addiction

Now I'm a Star Trek online junkie. My Ship the "Sheng Li" (it means victory in combat) flying around Deep space 9.

President's Day Paintball Massacre 2

Today was our traditional federal holiday paintball outing. Hillsborough schools weren't out for the holiday so some of the young attendees were absent but the games were still great

Backpacking in the Withlacoochee state forest

Me and the gang after backpacking about 12 miles around Croom last weekend. I really need to drop some cash on lighter gear. If you are planning on going yourself, it is a very nice walk. Know that there are hills and pack accordingly. I wish I had!

Fun with lasers

I recently got a cool green laser pointer from Dino Direct.com (don't be in a hurry if you order from them) and just to see what it would look like I used my camera to take this pic of writing my name on the wall.

What an incredible smell you've discovered!

When my coworker and I came back from lunch we discovered this orange tentacle thing growing out of the ground. I naturally thought It was a space octopus or something that had fallen to Earth and was planning to take over. I accidentally broke this specimen when I was poking it with my leatherman. You can see the spongy internal structure and some of the spore goo on the  pieces. When I brought my camera down to take pictures of it I got a lot of funny looks from people as I knelt over it. I typed a description into Google and discovered it is a type of stinkhorn mushroom, Clathrus columnatus. Apparently the horrible smell of the things attracts flies to distribute the spores. The thing I found most amusing was not the space octopus idea but the fact that this thing was in a location where people are supposed to be aware of their surroundings but I'm the only one who noticed the bright orange tentacle growing out of the green grass.

free gift

The green laser pointer came with some free little beads. After laughing with friends about how poorly the instructions were written I put them in a glass of water. A few hours later they had grown 50 times their original size! I liked the colors so much I wanted to see what it would look like with a flash for a backlight. After showing the picture to a coworker I learned all about super absorbent polymer and its many applications.