The Chris Gonyea Project

This Joy of Tech comic strip sums it up best.

Last night around 11pm, I was talking with my mom on the phone. My parents and my youngest brother Dan were off in California on a mini-vacation, checking out a bunch of colleges between San Diego and San Francisco. They were nearing the end of a 300 mile trip from Santa Barbara to Sunnyvale.

So they told me a particular city (Santa Cruz) they had just passed on Route 17. I fired up Google Maps and managed to figure out exactly where they were. Pretty cool basically following them to their hotel. Soon I was giving them directions, such as how far they were from a particular street, and all of that.

What an age we are in. Even 2 years ago, you would basically have to dig out a traditional map, follow some weird key (such as F26 for Santa Cruz) and hope to find what I am looking for within 10-15 minutes. Now I can just type it in and litterally seconds I get the exact route, know what landmarks I pass, and so on.

Amazing age we are in.

When you see “pitchers and catchers” reporting, that means two things: spring is around the corner and baseball is almost here.

Today the 2006 Boston Red Sox start their road to a championship. There is nothing that can put a smile on a winter-weary New Englander faster then saying Spring Training.

Powerball, one of those super lotteries here in the U.S. is having its largest ever jackpot tonight: $365 million.

Katie and I already bought one ticket apiece. However I am going to go out in a few minutes to pick up tickets for my parents and my brother Justin. My parents are out in California at the moment touring colleges with my brother Dan, while Justin is at college in Boston, which doesn’t have Powerball.

Not being greedy or anything, but can’t at least 4 of the numbers (plus the Powerball number) match what I have? Please?

Update: No luck for me tonight. Not a single number.

Just now I was listening to some tunes while surfing the net and iTunes starts playing the next song in an endless shuffle. That song stops me dead in my tracks. Made me crack a smile and think back to a good memory of mine.

Back in high school (man does that feel so long ago or what), circa 1999, we had an interesting assignment in my English class. My English teacher wanted us to pick one of our favorite songs and  basically tear it apart to find out the meaning of its lyrics. At the time, I had this illusion that I actually could play the guitar (sorta), so I had been writing a ton of lyrics to try to go with my 2 chord songs. So this assignment really struck a cord with me and I went off looking for a song to deconstruct.

That night, while listening to some mp3’s on my computer, I stumbled across a song from a Smashing Pumpkins B-Sides album named “Pisces Iscariot.” So I started listening to it, knowing that good old Billy Corgan had a way of really putting some interesting concepts and thougths into his lyrics.

Track #4 starts to play. A very soft and sappy song, with a single acoustic guitar strumming at first then the rest of the band joining in. One of those delicate and perfect songs that catches you right away. And at the time, the lyrics struck something I had been through, so it was one of those “someone is feeling what I am feeling” moments that angst filled teenagers tend to have fairly often.

Anyways, I deconstructed the lyrics to that song and did a whole paper on basically each line of the lyrics, along with what I thought Corgan was trying to say. If I recall correctly, I received an A+ on the paper and I had parts of it read out in class. One of my favorite moments where something in high school interested me to the point that I was proud of what I did. I wish more school’s did school work like that…assignments that a student could relate to.
That song was “Whir”. Of course it comes on tonight when I am using the computer. Makes me think of those high school years, so far away, just like the fading acoustic guitar in that song…