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Mark's Fun Page
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 Our
house. We live in a picture-postcard
New England village.
We rented in town while waiting to sell our house in Galveston,
TX, and got to the point that we liked
the place so much we only moved 4 houses down the road. The most recent
owners did a very nice restoration and the house and barn are loaded with
useful spaces. The barn was built in 2 stages before and after the Civil
War, and is a great place to park a compact diesel tractor. I get
"stuck' in the barn just looking up at the timber frame. |
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| Messing
up the system Software on my Linux box.
I've gotten pretty good at quick reinstallation after major disasters
(all, I'm afraid to say, very much due to my own ignorance). |
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Cooking. I especially like baking and grilling. The kitchen at our house reflects this love of both cooking and associated gadgetry. The kitchen isn't quite there yet overall, but does have a really great pantry and a nice antique marble slab counter. |
| Most of my own recipes reflect my early cooking training in Europe with the influences of my former Southwest home and my wife's years of living in the Far East. While at one time we made all our own bread, pasta, stock, etc., time is short these days. Pizzas (goat cheese and basil, margherita, grilled chicken and pine nuts, etc.) are a staple quick supper when we're too lazy to make anything else. That or Kraft Macaroni and Cheese. | |
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Reading. I plow through about 4 or 5 books (largely trashy murder mysteries) per week, and roughly the same number on weekends. Not all my reading is "mental margaritas," but I do get withdrawal symptoms so serious I'll resort to the fine print on cereal boxes in a pinch. I subscribe to a bazillion magazines at home and a mess of journals at work. Forests curse me in their sleep. |
| Brewing.
I love making beer - it's a bit
like being a mad scientist, and even fairly average homebrew can only be
beat by the very best commercial microbrews. I'm a bit of an oenophile
as well (a cellar for wines is planned for our house... someday) but can't
make the equal of even supermarket wine myself. |
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Did I mention Computers? I spend lots of time struggling with hardware, too... The Shrinkatron is a '386, constructed and upgraded over several years. It started out as a two-floppy XT with no hard disk and 640Kb RAM (to quote the salesman, "what would anyone do with that much RAM?!"). I don't think it has any of its original parts. It is possessed by daemons. (Get it?) My WinBox is an aging Dell 486/100. |
| Driving.
I'm a Skip Barber grad (okay, so
I could only afford the 1-day course...) and have attended several BMW
CCA car-control schools. So what was I doing in Texas instead of some
place with hilly, twisty roads? Well, at least it rains a lot and I could
do some slipping and sliding. As one of my instructors said, "a
squealing tire is a happy tire!" New Hampshire is a vastly
better place for those who love to drive - although there aren't the long
straight West Texas roads inviting high-speed runs, there are lovely
twisty country lanes where control and smoothness are what matters. |
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| Cigars.
No, wait! Don't say "blechhh" until you've been around a real
cigar - something from Cuba, Jamaica, or the Dominican Republic,
hand-rolled with long leaf filler. I'm partial to Churchill sizes (6 1/2
in by 42 ring) in a colorado wrapper. My very favorite is a Hoyo de
Monterrey (Cuban) Double Corona. I'd trade you the Shrinkatron for a box. |
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| Diving.
I'm a NAUI Divemaster.
Although I lived on a semitropical island, it's been a long time since
I've done much diving. I took all but my initial Open Water Diver course
(Now called Skin Diver) as P.E. courses at Texas A&M University. My
first diving course was a Christmas present from my parents when I was in
High School. My wife got the same present from hers. She and I got a LOT
more out of that class than we or our parents ever expected! |
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| Internet
surfing. Don't look at me like that - you obviously do, too! I've been
involved with internetworking since well before the 'web. {Remember Gopher?}
I was a beta tester for Mosaic (Linux) and what later became Netscape. |
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MS-Poetic
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