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30-day Geek Challenge | Day 4 – Favorite book / book series

April 9, 2011 – 10:22 pm

This post is part of my ‘30-day Geek Challenge‘.  As I stated, the order isn’t important, nor will I do one per day.  Feel free to make your own list, or copy mine and participate.  Should be a lot of fun!

Well, I think I had better get another day of the challenge out there.  This one was quite an easy one for me, though there are a few good rivals.  I have to say that I really didn’t start to enjoy reading books until I was in my early 30s.  Thus, a lot of my life I didn’t read, and while others might be much more well read. 

Anyway, on to my choice, I did think about other good book like ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy‘ and ‘Angels and Demons‘, I chose the ‘Ender’s Game‘ series of books.

Ender’s Game led me into a world of imagination I didn’t know existed. For me, reading became not only an escape, but a pure joy. I could escape into these books for hours during a difficult time in my life. I would become engrossed in possibilities and twists and turns and of course, the surprise ending of Ender’s Game is what made the book so good.

The book series has such grand dynamics and scale. The politics of later books is intriguing as well, Ender, his brother and sister and Ender’s friend, Bean, all were excellent. I really enjoyed Xenocide, a book where Ender spends time with the Hive Queen and the piggies while trying to determine how to irradicate the Descolada.

Other books I enjoyed in this series were Speaker for the Dead and Children of the Mind, I also enjoyed The Shadow Saga series as well.  I highly recommend these books and might just go pick up where I left off a few years back.

Cheers,

Herlo

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Fedora Games Geek Life Tech

30-day Geek Challenge | Day 27 – Favorite TV opening theme song

April 2, 2011 – 4:05 pm

This post is part of my ‘30-day Geek Challenge‘.  As I stated, the order isn’t important, nor will I do one per day.  Feel free to make your own list, or copy mine and participate.  Should be a lot of fun!

Okay folks, this is probably one of the easier ones in my mind.  When I was a kid, I loved to watch the General Lee driving all over those hillbilly back roads of the South.  The Dukes of Hazzard, were my favorite to watch ‘out-Duke’ Boss Hogg and his sidekick ‘Rosco P. Coltrane’ every week.  I would watch for Cooter and Uncle Jesse to come along and help out the Duke boys when they needed it the most.  And of course, when things got really dire, their very sexy cousin Daisy Duke, would pretend to stand out on the side of the road with a broken-down car.

Although an attempt to remake the Dukes of Hazzard into a movie more or less bombed in 2005, I thought it was a good attempt.  You just can’t do it right without Tom Wopat, John Schneider and Catherine Bach.

But this article is about the theme song.  It’s a doozy!  The Good Ol’ Boys, written and sung by none other than Waylon Jennings made the exciting chases just that much better.  The song hit number 1 the Billboard magazine Hot Country Singles in 1980.

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I’ve also included a link to the theme song for your enjoyment.

Cheers,

Herlo

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Fedora Games Geek Life Tech

30-day Geek Challenge | Day 21 – Favorite Vehicle

March 31, 2011 – 11:56 am

This post is part of my ‘30-day Geek Challenge‘.  As I stated, the order isn’t important, nor will I do one per day.  Feel free to make your own list, or copy mine and participate.  Should be a lot of fun!

I took a lot of liberty here, but I think this should be ‘any’ vehicle.  It doesn’t matter if the vehicle is real or imaginary in my mind.  So I went with a cartoon vehicle.

Voltron

As a kid, I loved watching Voltron on television.  All 5 lion robots converted to make one amazing crime-fighting, flying and powerful robot.  They would al

ways fight Prince Lotor, and as with many of the cartoons of my childhood, he would escape before Voltron could stop him for good.

What’s even better, you can watch ‘Voltron Force’ on Nicktoons starting this spring!  So become a nerdy kid again,

and enjoy some Voltron force!

Cheers,

Herlo

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Fedora Games Life

30-day Geek Challenge

March 30, 2011 – 9:39 pm

My friend Nushio recently posted about how he’s doing a list called ‘30-day geek challenge‘, so I thought I’d do the same and see how it goes.  The concept is simple, just explain your choices from a list similar to this one.  I modified his list slightly, but the overall theme is there.  If you have suggestions or thoughts regarding the days, I’d love to hear it.

In my case, I might try to do this every day, but probably won’t.  I may also do them out of order, so feel free to do the same.  I will try to do at least one every week.  Enjoy the list, and the follow-ups for each of the days.  In my mind, this is a good experience to remind me why I enjoy being a Geek, maybe it will help you as well.

Day 1 – Very first Geek
Day 2 – Favorite Geek
Day 3 – Your Geek crush
Day 4 – Favorite book / book series
Day 5 – Geek you feel you are most like (or wish you were)
Day 6 – Favorite Web Show / Web Comic
Day 7 – Favorite Board Game
Day 8 – Favorite Shirt/Hat/Shoes (Something you wear)
Day 9 –  Saddest geek scene
Day 10 – Favorite TV Show series
Day 11 – Favorite Movie
Day 12 – Best alien /alien race ever
Day 13 – Geekiest quote/phrase
Day 14 – Current (or most recent) geek wallpaper
Day 15 – Favorite OS / Config
Day 16 – Favorite Developer
Day 17 – Favorite Hardware Vendor
Day 18 – Most Undesirable Tech Company
Day 19 – Favorite Gadget
Day 20 – Best! Videogame! Ever!
Day 21 – Favorite Vehicle
Day 22 – Favorite Tech Company
Day 23 – Favorite Language
Day 24 – Geek Hero
Day 25 – Best Website
Day 26 – Your favorite number
Day 27 – Favorite tv opening theme song
Day 28 – Favorite Comic Book
Day 29 – Favorite Robot
Day 30 – Biggest Geek Wish

Feel free to republish this list, and change whatever day(s) you need to change to suit your inner geek.

If you do the challenge, leave a comment here with a link to the challenge, so we can all compare each other.

Cheers,

Herlo

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Community Conferences Fedora Games Google Life News Passion Tech

FUDCon Tempe 2011, as it happens, I’m on my way!

January 27, 2011 – 12:39 am

It’s strange, odd even.  I’m not quite sure how to react, but it is very weird to me.

FUDCon Tempe 2011 is here in just a few short days.  Some of the people I would expect to attend, aren’t going to be at FUDCon this year.  I am going to miss their presence immensely.

  • It’s the first FUDCon without the master of karaoke, Greg DeKoenigsberg.  He’ll be missing out on the warm weather and friendly collaboration for sure.
  • I know my good friend, David Nalley isn’t going to make it either. I have been at so many Fedora events with him, it will sure be a bit lacking without his late nights and overall good nature.
  • I’m also saddened to hear that Karsten Wade won’t be able to attend, he will surely be missed with his community insight and valuable opinions.

There are others, in fact, who I know probably would like to come.  These specific instances stood out to me because I think of them as amazing contributors.  Their consistent attendance at events like FUDCon have encouraged me to return year after year to events I now love. Mind you, the above folks I mentioned aren’t missing from Fedora overall.  In fact, I know that each of them and many more who can’t make FUDCon this coming weekend in person can still participate and contribute from afar (and will likely do so).

I see a new generation of contributor helping to grow Fedora into a grand new direction.  I’m interested in seeing where this road will take us, and I think that’s the joy.  With each new contributor in a community like Fedora, we continue down the path of the best of free and open source software, but we can meander into realms we had never thought of before.  This is what excites me!

Like I said, I’m on my way to FUDCon Tempe for what is no doubt going to be an awesome event. Right now, I am sitting in my hotel in Flagstaff, Arizona.  A mere 151 miles, about 2 hours at 75mph, from the Courtyard in Tempe, Arizona, where most of our attendees will stay for four days.  I should easily be there by early afternoon tomorrow.

Mind you, this trip was planned for me to be eight days, two travel days to and from Salt Lake City.  Just this afternoon, we spent about 3.5 hours at the amazing Grand Canyon National Park.  If you get a chance to visit this amazing natural canyon, at 10 miles across, do it!  Our little family had a great time seeing the sights and riding the buses around.  By the way, dusk is really amazing at the park, don’t miss that either.

The FUDCon planning committee has crossed all the t’s and dotted all the i’s.  Thanks to sponsors like Google, Rackspace, and of course our hosts, Arizona State University, we get to have food and fun while working toward our common goal.  Thanks to all who put in such hard work to make this event rock!

See you all in just a few days!

Cheers,

Herlo

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Community Conferences Fedora Games Life Tech

Software Freedom Day: What I’ll be Doing!

September 18, 2009 – 9:58 am

So tomorrow is Software Freedom Day.  And because I’ve been a big slacker this year, I didn’t get the time to set up an event as I had hoped.  However, because others in our community are awesome and didn’t want to see this day go completely to the Microsofties and non-free software folks, there’s going to be a Linux InstallFest at Utah Code Camp at Neumont University.

Now, I’ll be there from around 9am to about 1pm, so it might be good to come and hang out.  I’ll be dropping some Fedora DVDs and CDs by (which I need more Live Media already gah!) so people can pick them up and try out the coolest operating system in the world!

At about 3pm, I’m headed over to a friends house for boardgames.  We’re going to play ‘Arkham Horror’, based on H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos, which should be fun as I have never played it before.  Both jennifer and I are attending with some friends I’ve had for a short while now.  Should be a blast.

If it is really good, I’ll suggest playing it at the Boardgame Bash at UTOSC 2009 (you knew I couldn’t resist putting in a plug for the conference, did you?!)

Lastly, I’ll be settling in for the evening probably recovering from the hard week around 10 or 11 catch up on sleep and prep for golfing with my brothers on Sunday.

It’ll be a very nice weekend I think, looking forward to the excitement and relaxation.  I’m very excited to be semi-busy, but doing what I love.  I sure hope it turns out as well as I anticipate.

Cheers,

Herlo

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Boston Red Sox (and me) at the World Series

October 25, 2007 – 11:50 pm

Okay, okay, I didn’t get in, but it was sure fun to take a train trip down to the World Series to see the vibe. I’ve never been quite so close to a World Series game. The closest thing for me was when I got to go to watch the Utah Jazz get beaten by the Bulls in 1997 and 1998 in Salt Lake City. The World Series is much better to me since I’m a huge baseball fan.

For your entertainment, I took some interesting, pics:

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I also took some pretty pictures of fall in New England. Not being from here, its amazing how beautiful the leaves can be.

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Cheers,

Herlo

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Games

Board Games with College Girls

April 28, 2006 – 11:41 am

Yes, its true, on April 21, 2006, I played board games with some college girls. And even though it sound very fantastically amazing, with pillows and cameras and things, I’ll bet you’ve never played Board Games this way….

I will admit, it was rather striking that these girls would invite themselves over to my place to play boardgames with me, HERLO!! I mean I am not anywhere near the age of a college freshman, but hey, maybe I am a chick magnet….

or not…

The reality is that I filled out a survey at my favorite game store in Utah county, MyFunFamilyStore.com for a class these girls were taking at BYU. So unfornately for my readers, this article is not about hanky panky or any other fun but board games. What I will say, is that it was an amazing experience getting to explain my board game preferences to others who aren’t my friends and seem to want to improve the board games I play.

These three girls, Sara, Rachel and Emily are taking a marketing course at Brigham Young University, and although they (except Sara) do not play games regularly (Rachel’s favorite game was Guesstures I think), they asked me some good questions and were whole heartedly interested in my responses.

They asked me questions about what games we play as friends and as family. We talked about Settlers of Catan, Carcassonne, Chutes and Ladders and much, much more. Much of their questioning was searching for better ways to improve the advertising of the games as well as MyFunFamilyStore.com, all this time with the camera pointed at me.

After a while, we moved over to the large round table we have in our dining room (a thanx to lars-ut from #utah for the loaner) to play a game of ‘Ticket To Ride’, one of the newer games I own. I hadn’t actually played this game in several weeks and was a bit rusty, but after a little while explaining the rules, we were off to a good start.

Sad thing is, I got spanked (not literally, unfortunately) in the game and came in last place. The girls were very grateful for my interview and promised to get in contact with me about it very soon.

I sure hope they get an A+ on their report, and if they don’t I told them they should right on the video, so they should’ve shown their teacher that footage!! I wish them luck!!

Cheers,

Herlo

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