Occasional Ramblings
About Xydexx
Life Was Meant To Be Awesome

Occasional Ramblings

November 17, 2010

In my latest effort to provide the internet with cute and weird content, I've created the Ultimate Horse Nozzle page. I pumped up a giant life-size inflatable palomino and took lots of pictures of its nozzle. I'm so naughty!

And then when I was finished, I unplugged it and let all its air out. Aww. -=)

Xydexx's inflatable palomino has a nice nozzle.

October 18, 2010

Rigel and I got back from a week-long trip through Colorado and Utah. Rigel's been posting a daily trip log in his journal (Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4, Day 5, Day 6 (to be continued)) with all the plases we went and things we saw. It was fun. We drove around the mountains on treacherous dirt roads with no guardrails, explored abandoned ghost towns, went on a gold mine tour, rode a narrow-gauge steam locomotive, and wandered around in the desert looking at all the crazy rock formations.

There are lots of towns with buildings from the old mining days, many rebuilt of brick (the entire town burning down around 1889-1890 seemed to be a common theme in most of the towns we visited). We went to Leadville and Cripple Creek and Victor in Colorado, and then eventually crossed into Utah and ended up at my older brother's place in Salt Lake City.

Old buildings along the main street in Leadville, Colorado.

View our complete collection of pictures at: http://picasaweb.google.com/xydexx/Colorado!

August 23, 2010

Rigel and I went to King's Dominion this weekend, and I accidentally designed an amusement park ride. It's like a cross between the Trabant and the Scrambler, but with spherical cages that rotate in all directions. I call it The Nauseator. Muahaha.

I've been thinking I should develop and area here to store all the cool stuff I find during my internet wanderings. There is an incredible amount of it out there, and I'm having a hard time keeping track of it all.

I went out biking today, and covered a good 30 miles total. I explored several abandoned houses along the way. I enjoy mixing my various interests together. It's more efficient that way. Here's an abandoned house that's one of the few remnants of the town of Willard, which was mostly obliterated in the 1950s when Dulles International Airport was built.

An abandoned house near Dulles International Airport, site of the former town of Willard.

More pictures here!

August 2, 2010

I R PONY NINJA. I left Rigel's birthday presents scattered randomly around the house, so he keeps finding them unexpectedly. He's found five out of six of them so far. Just call me Xydexx Sneakypony! Later, I took him out to dinner at My Thai Place, then we came home and watched Freakazoid and I made banana-raisin bread. Hray!

I've been otherwise working from home and fiddling around with CitiesXL. Tomorrow I'm gonna try to go bike riding with the group at Bicycle Outfitters, which has an organized ride every Tuesday at 6PM. (OTOH, tomorrow might be a long work day, so I dunno if that's gonna work out. We'll see.)

July 25, 2010

Busy busy busy. GanseVOORT section continues to develop, with Important Research on the eclectic horse stable architecture of Lambert Lambert, How To Deal With Trolls, and a map of Magical Unicorn Pony Land. More details soon.

June 8, 2010

New section added. Name of GanseVOORT! I also need to add a section on Ed's Pregnant Yak Service, the mail art project I was running back in the early 1990s.

A horrible portent of things to come. Those who look for demons shall surely find the Packing Peanut of the Portly Pink.

Watched Over The Limit on TruTV a while back. Drunk guy falling down, can't even walk. Police ask him his name. "Kevin." "Kevin what?" Closed captioning provided his next response: "Rrruuaaaaagh."

June 1, 2010

Xydexx Squeakypony enjoys playing with his new highway paver. It's good for running over trolls.

April 7, 2010

Rigel and I went to the Building Museum in DC a few weeks ago and saw an exhibit on parking garages. It was really neat, and we saw video of the old ferris wheel for cars that used to exist back in the day. It was interesting to see how parking structures have evolved over the decades. There was also an exhibit on New England Victorian homes and floorplans. One of them had semi-snarky commentary about how the architect at that point in his career had apparently chosen to disregard all previous knowledge of the history of architecture.

Afterward, we walked around DC and saw the big horse statue outside the Federal Trade Commission. Yay for horses! It's supposed to represent man controlling trade, but I think it should be a monument to horse wrestling. (Back when Rigel and I were exploring ghost towns in Nevada, I got locked up in a jail cell for horse wrestling. Hee.)

Statue of a man wrestling a horse outside Federal Trade Commission in Washington, DC.
Xydexx was once put in jail for horse wrestling!

On a related note, I bought one of those life-size inflatable horses last year. I had to. Seriously, how cool is it that people have started making inflatables for us? Years ago, I would never have imagined there were enough of us to be considered someone's target demographic.

Xydexx's life-size inflatable horse. Wonderful what we can do nowadays.

I recently bought out an entire stock of inflatable Bambi ride-ons from overseas, but that's already been mentioned elsewhere.

March 2, 2010

Giant kitten attacks quiet suburban town. --- XYDEXX.NET

I found an envelope with a bunch of pictures of Centralia (the town with the mine fire) which include some of the highway before it got all full of graffiti. It even had road signs on the abandoned section of highway! So I think I will be updating my page on Centralia, PA... and the rest of my neglected modern ruins pages. At the very least, making it consistent with the standard template I'm using now.

February 26, 2010

When Good Food Goes Bad! Cake Wrecks!. Hilarious pictures of cakes gone bad... bizarre and creepy and horrible and funny and sometimes looking like squashed hedgehogs. Awww!

It almost makes we want to deliberately order a cake using William S. Burrough's cut-up method or MegaHAL and some random image, just so I can have a purple cake with a penguin on it that says THE RAIN WASHES MEMORIES FROM THE GLANDS OF COWS.

In other news, I found out today that Big Mama's House Of Soul recently moved to the former location of the Steel City Diner. I'm apparently the last one to find out about this, and everyone else knew weeks ago. I'm looking forward to trying them at Anthrocon! (When we went last year, all the hungry furries had eaten all their food and there was nothing left.)

February 12, 2010

Okay, so what's the deal with this site? Is it a joke or not? Or maybe whoever runs it is asleep at the wheel and nobody's watching it anymore except people who want to fool around on the internets?

February 2, 2010

Whew! Long time no update! I've been busy working. I had a brief break to run up to New York and take pictures of Bannerman's Castle, which collapsed some more last month. The remaining walls are perilously unstable, unfortunately. I'm wondering if it will survive until the Spring.

In other news, I updated Cool Furries and Furries Online, which had been neglected and disused since about 2007. Now they have a spiffy new template and design. The content needs to be updated a little, but at least I've got the infrastructure taken care of.

January 18, 2010

I rode my bike today! First ride of the year! It was 55 degrees and chilly. I made it out to Milepost 38 and back. There's a section of the W&OD Trail that's been detoured to make way for the new Dominion Power lines.

January 12, 2010

I hooked up my new cellphone last night. We're part of Verizon's New Every Two plan, which gives us new cellphones every year. This one's an LG eNV3, complete with an actual keyboard. Now it'll be easier for me to send text messages, as long as I can remember that my cellphone flips open and has a keyboard inside.

January 6, 2010

I've added another 20 chapters to the Holey Bubble, and for organizational purposes it's been moved to its own directory so it won't clutter up the main page here. There's still a lot to be added.

January 5, 2010

Xydexx will rule this fandom with a squeaky rubber hoof, and then horse costumes will be MANDATORY.

December 31, 2009

It snowed again last night! Not the blizzard we had a while ago, only one or two inches. I took my Prius in for its 45,000 mile pre-paid scheduled maintenance today. I'll be kicking off the new year with a new gig in Maryland on Monday. An hour's drive, but at least I'll get to take the back roads to get there.

At the closing of the year, we'd like to remind you that finding a unicorn horn is exciting any time of year, because unicorns are awesome. We're off to Chez Turtle tonight to celebrate. Xydexx wishes everyone a happy and safe New Year!

December 28, 2009

I'm back from my holiday break. I drove up to New York with Renfield, saw Dad, MaryAnne, Xakor, and Lisa. Drumwolf was in town, so I got a chance to see him for a bit. I loaded one of Renfield's bookshelves in the back of my Prius to bring down to Virginia, and we stopped by his friend's house in Rockland County on the return trip. Interesting new slang I learned: Renfield gets things "for ham" which apparently means for free or for cheap, as far as I can tell. On the 27th, we went over to Mom's for presents.

I've added the next 30 chapters to the Holey Bubble, wherein you can learn more about squeaking in equine delight, marsupial-filled popcorn machines, and kittens full of beans.

December 22, 2009

Happy Awesome Day! I've added the first 30 chapters of the Holey Bubble. Share and enjoy!

The Holey Bubble

Xydexx Directory of Things

GanseVOORT!

About Xydexx

Xydexx is old enough to drink but younger than Jon Stewart. He once got in trouble for Unnecessary Smiling.

Xydexx is originally from Westchester County, NY (just north of NYC). Someone once said he has the patience of a Saint, and the morals of Satan.

Modern Ruins

Xydexx is obsessed with abandoned buildings and old maps and local history, and spend an inordinate amount of time researching and/or trespassing visiting decrepit old structures and sometimes entire towns that no longer exist. I'm very familiar with the Hudson Highlands region (my old stomping grounds) and the cornucopia of abandoned iron ore mines and crumbling mansions in that area.

Online History

Xydexx first got online in 1982, using CompuServe with a 300 baud acoustic coupler that he bought for $350. Back when he was young and crazy (now he's old and crazy) he didn't think 1200 baud was necessary.

Zine Publishing

Xydexx published a zine called The Grumbling Yak from 1990-1991. He met Mike Gunderloy and pals at one of the famous Factsheet Five parties. He also dabbled in mail art, and ran Ed's Pregnant Yak Service out of his Dobbs Ferry post office box for many years.

Furry Fandom

Xydexx has always been a longtime Warner Brothers/Disney fan, and was delighted to find out about Furry fandom in 1993. For the past seven years he has served as Publications Director for Anthrocon, the world's largest Furry convention.

Recumbent Biking

Xydexx spends his free time exploring Loudoun County on his Sun EZ-Sport recumbent bicycle. He has always had a bit of wanderlust and would go on long treks on his bike, even when he lived in New York.

Today

Xydexx currently lives in Loudoun County, VA. Professionally, he does desktop publishing/graphics/proposal work. He drives a 2007 Toyota Prius and is very happy with it.

Life Was Meant To Be Awesome

Xydexx believes in making life as awesome as possible and has great enthusiasm for cute and weird stuff. He has little patience for drama and people who enjoy being asshats.

Xydexx is eccentric, but harmless.