GizmoLA.com

It's been a while since I did a mainpage update. Came across a couple of classic old photos taken by my old college roommate Peter Fong, and decided to do a rescan. These were taken when we had an apartment in Redondo Beach across from the ocean, and Giz was still just a puppy. These were pretty badly damaged, but thanks to Adobe Photoshop they're looking pretty good again, at least in the online form. This scan was a lot better than the original one which has been on the site for a long time. Click on either photo for the fullsize version in the gallery.

Time for Fall cleaning. Dogs don't like baths in the sink though.

Tracy has taken a new job as a staff consultant with Blackbaud Inc, a Charleston South Carolina based software company that sells fundraising and accounting systems designed for non-profits and schools.

We recently took a small vacation while back east for a friend's wedding in Pennsylvania. Gizmo put in a tour of duty as postal delivery monitor. You can click on the photo to see it fullsize.

Our trip took us to Hilton Head, SC and a day trip to Savannah, Georgia. If you've read the book or seen the film "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil", you may recognize the Italianate mansion behind Tracy as the Mercer House on 429 Bull Street. This was the home of the central figure of the book, Jim Williams, the now famous location of his huge Christmas Parties, and where he was alleged to have shot and killed his assistant Danny Hansford. "Historic" Savannah has a number of these courtyards, surrounded by residences.

Continue reading "Paoli to Savannah"

My lifelong pal, Tim Phillips married Alicia Crawford on Saturday June 9th, 2001 in Malvern Pennsylvania.

On Friday night we attended the rehearsal dinner courtesy of Tim's parents David and Gretchen. Tim's mom also happens to be my godmother, and a special lady with a great sense of humor, spirit of adventure and appetite for literature. It was great to see her up and about after her recent illness. The dinner afforded us an opportunity to meet some of Alicia's friends and family and see old friends like Brian and Susan Dye.

On Saturday we attended the marriage ceremony, and I managed to snap a few photos with Tracy's Fujifilm Finepix 1300 digital camera. The finepix is a relatively inexpensive 1.3 megapixel camera (1280x960 max resolution) with an lcd screen on the back.

Both photos on this page were taken at the reception held at the People's Light Theater in the town of Paoli, where I grew up, and where my parents still reside.

I was relieved not to have to make any speeches at the event, although I did don a tux for the festivities. There were some excellent toasts made by Alicia's brother-in-law Tad, Tim's brother in law (the best man) Vince Connelly, and a sermon from Tim's older brother Andy, who is a practicing minister in Virginia.

Alicia's parents threw a lively reception featuring a buffet dinner, a better than average band that specialized in classic soul and motown hits, and several hundred enthusiastic guests.

I bought and assembled a Smith machine, which is a sorta home gym weight rack a while back, and set it up in our basement room. Gizmo likes to sit out on the porch entrance and monitor the stairway while I'm working out.

It's been a long time since I updated, primarily thanks to the demise of my DSL Internet connection when Northpoint went bankrupt. Apparently, my house is just a bit too far to from the local pacbell central office for me to get reliable DSL service (even though I had it for over a year from Northpoint!). I tried two seperate ISP's and in both cases waited weeks only to find out at the last minute that they couldn't provide me service.

I've found a new one and am keeping my fingers crossed. Fortunately, I was able to colocate the gizmola server with Kent Bulza, who has been nice enough to help get it and my mail going again. Thanks Kent!

In post Z news, The Synj has landed down in San Diego at Presto Studios, makers of the Journeyman game series and now doing a Myst title. Congrats Dan.

Looks like I'm gonna be playing some hockey down at Culver City with my old pal Ted Henning. He apparently has a new company Scream Therapy doing some interesting web entertainment stuff, including animated horror episodes. It's a heavy flash site, FYI. If any x-z.comers want an intro let me know. Check out some of their sample work Here.

Peter Filardi's film Ricky6 has emerged from it's legal squabbles and has been playing the festival circuit and has been getting some nice reviews. Our old pal Hobbs and a buddy of his have done an official site, which includes the trailer for the film.

Well, I have finally decided what to do with my life. Military service! I've enlisted and am now private first class in the: