Greetings friends! This particular segment is coming to you from behind Noccalula Falls at 1530 CST. Yes, I am typing it on my laptop. No, I don’t have a super-thin, super-light laptop and yes it was a pain in the ass climbing down here with the additional weight on my back and it was quite more then just the notebook because I had crammed the attaché full of power cables, headphones and the like. I spent many hours working on LJ last night and I think I paid for a service that I might not have needed. Either way, now both of my blogs are ad free. As a little hint to my adoring public, you could renew my subscriptions when they run out as a token of your appreciation for all I do here.

I should also note that I am feeling a bit dehydrated but have no fear friends, today is not the day that mine enemies will rejoice in the streets upon news of my demise; like Gloria Gaynor, I will survive.

I wonder which one of you can guess what my first thought was when I got in a position to see behind the falls. I wonder if you can further guess who I immediately called. Unlike last time, I did not bring a notebook or clipboard. I thought about it and concluded that I probably wouldn’t want to carry it and would instead opt for the laptop.

I’m not looking forward to my climb back up but I must say, this is the neatest, coolest office I think I could ever have. The gentle breeze bounces off the rocks behind me (the area behind the falls is something of an open-sided cave) and is cooled by the water so I have natural air-conditioning. For a chair, I have the rocks that were carved out long before I was a twinkle in somebody’s eye, my lap is my desk. The only think I don’t like about the “chair” (besides the fact that it is rather hard and has no back) is that I think it is making the seat of my pants dirty and I did not bring a change of pants.

Of interesting note, the Legend of Noccalula Falls is rather reminicent of the Lover’s Leap legend. For those of you who don’t know, I drove out here (the Falls) two weekends ago for the first time in my life. I had just missed by mere moments entering the park, so I could only see the top view of the Falls. I still think I should write a script that would call for this location. If any of my gentle readers are ever in the Tennessee Valley area and have some time to kill and nice weather, I highly recommend getting to the park. Entrance is $6 per person and if I remember correctly, kids 4-12 are $4 whereas the tots are free.

There is no wi-fi here, and because I have other places to be this text will have been cleaned up before anyone in the public ever sees it. It’s time to hit the trails. I’ll send that email tonight once I’m safely ensconced in my hotel room in Chattanooga. I’m not planing on making any stops between here and there, but I am in need of drink, still have a drive ahead of me and might want my first meal of the day before I get to the hotel.

Until then, my gentle readers…

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I arrived at my hotel and secured my room. I wanted to take a swim, but there was nowhere convenient to purchase swimwear ergo that activity was forgone. I did walk the four blocks to Porter’s Steakhouse, enjoyed a nice ribeye and an equally delightful Riesling. I’m debating on going to the aquarium and instead just going to Point Park. After all, the whole point of this trip was to write and I didn’t get any of that done today, but then again I was jumpstarted today by the equivalent of a telemarketer so…

Greetings my friends! It’s been forever since I’ve written and I have so much to tell you. I’ll start by mentioning that this post is coming to you (or at least I’m starting it from) Big Spring Park in downtown Huntsville via my new laptop. That’s right, since our last discussion, my motherboard burnt out. Bit the dust. Went kaput! So I got a laptop that allows me to come to you from more remote locations. One of the things I have learnt about myself (and especially more so since I’ve gotten the laptop) is that I don’t get any work done if I’m at home. And now that I finally have realized my dream of having a laptop (ok, it’s not a portable gaming and video editing rig, but it suffices) now I can get out of the house and write instead of scribbling chicken tracks that I can’t read and having to then type that up, thus doing double work.

So where to begin? I’m working for Steak Out now and have had some problems with the junior management that I’m working through with the GM. Speaking of work, I got a job offer to become a software tester. I didn’t get the position, but got an email back from the guy who interviewed me saying “I just thought you might want to know that though we filled the position, I was very impressed with you and wondered if you’d like to apply for an open position in Tech Support.” I told him absolutely! Here is my planned response email:

Greetings from Chattanooga! Finally got free from work long enough to say ‘thanks’ for the interview. It felt like I was reminiscing with old friends instead of applying for a job. Hope to work with you soon.

–Tomas

Whaddya think?

Speaking of jobs, I finally decided to run by The Huntsville Times and see about becoming a columnist or a freelance writer. Of course, I did this off the cuff, so over the weekend I’m going to have to get my resume and writing samples together. He said that they don’t do a whole lot of freelancing, but I’m hopeful. I did tell him about working for the Exponent, so I’m gonna find the juicy articles I wrote for them. I might even submit a blog entry or two, so if you guys have some favorites I should include in my list, please send me the links.

For those of you more astute readers, you might have noticed in my “email” that I spoke of writing from Chattanooga and talked about the weekend.

My plan for the weekend
Sleep in Saturday, but not too late (though I won’t set the alarm, so what’s the point?) get up, go to Nocolula Falls in Gadsden (where I went two weekends ago for the first time) and then drive up to Chattanooga which, by my calculations, should be two hours or less from the Falls. I’ll spend the night there in town and have a few drinks, hopefully in the bar at the hotel if I can find such a beast. Then, I’ll get up Sunday debate going back to Rock City (I would like to go, but I think I’ll save my second trip to Rock City for going with that special someone out there in the audience) most likely go to the aquarium and then end up at Point Park before I return home Sunday night. Since Chattanooga is an hour ahead of me, I’ll gain an hour coming home and, if all works out, I can finally talk to my special someone again. YAY!

I got a new neighbor. I don’t know how long this mother fucker has been there, but all I know is when he smokes pot, he uses so much of it that shit stinks up my room. For the first few nights I thought it was the cigar smell coming out of the walls, but that doesn’t make any sense because I haven’t smoked a cigar in months, a plight I hope to remedy whilst on my trip. I might also go swimming, something that hasn’t happened in ten years or so.

Speaking of rare events in the life of Tomas, I watched my rip of The Fountain sometime last week and tears streamed down my face in the middle of the movie. I hope this happens in subsequent viewings because as you know, I have no tear ducts. Street date for the DVD is May 5th. I have my list of people I need to get a copy: Eric, Heidi and M.

M is the person at the bank who has saved my dumb ass too many times since I’ve been in town that it’s time I give something back. I told her what I wanted to do since I wasn’t for sure if it would be ethical or get her into trouble with the bank and she said it wouldn’t. Of course, I will buy myself a copy at midnight so that my family may enjoy it the first evening it is out.

While on the topic of movies, I purchased Ridley Scott’s A Good Year after renting it. It was a better movie then I remembered it being, despite the dismal box office returns. I always like special features on Rid’s movies because they’re fun, educational and come from one of the Masters.

In other news…
From fabrizzo’s blog: What happens when you write user-written functions based upon user-written functions based upon a stupid company’s functions based upon the actual processor’s/languages functions? My response: Proprietary code.

I think I’ll work on cross-posting this over the weekend to http://schpydurx.livejournal.com as soon as I get it looking like my Xanga site.

Until next time, this has been a Professor Tom update.

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Greetings, once again friends, relatives, leeches, people that don’t even deem the title of people. (laughing) Yes, it has happened. It is official. I have imitators. Ladies and Gentlemen, there are people that are seeking and emulating me.

I–your host, your blogging host for life, that will not retire until every agrees with him– there are now people out there that are copycating me simply because I have been away from my post too long. That’s right, (trumpet fanfare) if you go to http://ehowton.livejournal.com, the latest post as of the time of this recording, is his latest voicepost where he describes (and I’ll link to this on my website) where he describes in detail how he created his post and how that, compared to me and my illustrious $500 recording studio (in my L.A. chateau, I might add) that he is trying to humbly seek and emulate me with a condenser mic and through some gold-platted equipment.

So here’s the question I have for you folks, should we tell the old boy and give him a little inside information (i.e. let him really know what goes on in this studio) or should we let him continue to sweat it and think that we have all this equipment and all the staff in the world? I leave it up to you, my gentle readers to help me make this decision, and will act as you so see fit.

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