Get out your long underwear… The Geeks take to the woods early this year in da’ U P. Mark your calendars and prepare for a geeky weekend in the woods (and possibly the snow). When you miss a GITW trip, you really miss a lot. Don’t let this opportunity pass you by.

Geeks RETURN to the woods May 15-17, 2009

The annual geek camping trip is coming up in May. I'd call it geeks unplugged, but we are far from unplugged.

The new year has arrived, and looking in the rear view mirror we saw the same EC pattern we always see.  After the Campout we slow down to a near halt through the end of the year.  As the new year begins we hit the ground running like we always do with geeky enthusiasm. (Of course, "hitting the ground running" has been debunked by the Mythbusters.)

So we begin our normal yearly routine with a January EC. I hope that the new year finds everyone happy, healthy and prosperous.

Come to this months EC for exciting conversations, stories, or come just to scrape the cromarty off the ketchup bottles.

Hey Campers, It looks like more people can make it on the June date, so we are officially changing the GITW date to JUNE 20,21,22. This is the weekend after Father's day. (and the first weekend of Summer) Just like the old days. Looks like I'll have to find the fog of death.

I was informed of the most unfortunate and sad events. Henry Kusztelak, a long time EC member has passed. His fun and entertaining personality will be missed.

It is that lovely time of year when birds are chirping, insects are hatching and geeks are about to be let loose in the woods. The annual Geeks in the Woods trip looks to be another fun trip this year. We are planning on some canoeing down the Baraboo River and some geocaching. Get your gear together and be ready for some geeky fun.

Came across this today.

http://graffitiresearchlab.com

http://graffitiresearchlab.com/?page_id=76#video

And the how-to w/source

http://muonics.net/blog/index.php?postid=15

I had been using a used laptop for quite a while. It became a need to have one for getting work done when I wasn't working at home. Before that, I never really wanted a laptop, thinking I got all the computer I want at home. After a while though, the laptop became a necessity. It also helps multi-task. But my used laptop days came to an abrupt halt when the backlight went bad. The model I had had the backlight as part of the actual monitor. Replacing the monitor part only would have cost $450. So with that in mind, I realized it was time to purchase a brand new laptop.

Ironically enough, the need for a new laptop was only three days after the Microsoft Vista OS came out. I really hadn't been following the Vista development much. I only had heard what was thrown at me from regular news reports. Other than that, I had done no further research. Now I was stuck making a decision of buying a computer with XP or Vista. I decided on Vista. The most important reason was this way I'd know that the computer was already powerful enough to run Vista when the Vista upgrade became a necessity.

That's right, after an unprecedented change from geek to nerd; Sal has finally decided to go back to geek and even settle down with a nice girl. (I hope She knows he's a geek! [and a recovering nerd])

Sal and Kristin are going to be married on December 23, 2006. Congratulations to Sal and the future Mrs. Sal.

So I work at home. Sounds great and for the most part. But with a wife working at home, that does put more responsibility on me for cooking and cleaning. Over the years I've learned some tricks to really work well. So here is my top ten bachelor tips.

1) Ground Beef Browning - This habit started with the GITW camp-outs. Ten hungry campers forced me to find away to quicken the Saturday morning cooking time. In that case, it was precooking the breakfast sausage, but for home, it comes in handy with ground beef browning. I simply buy 5 pounds of fresh ground beef and cooking all. I then separate them into 4 or 5 portions. I always use a little kitchen scale to equal out the hamburger. I'll then freeze all but one to use throughout the next week or two. It's great cooking a spaghetti or Hamburger Helper in a rush when the Ground Beef is already pre-browned.

2) Flat Bacon - If you're like me, you love bacon, but can't stand the irritation bacon causes when you fry it in a pan. It buckles up in horrible unpleasant designs. And if you use that on making a BLT, it just sucks. I had this inspiration from about 15 years ago when I worked at a rinky-dink pizza restaurant. Simply cook the bacon in the oven. Yep, that's right, I put some cookie cooling racks on a cookie sheet. I then lay the bacon right next to each other. In about 20-30 minutes at 400, the bacon is perfect.