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| Don't ask me why (it has something to do with all
the stuff listed below), but
someone has actually started a Manus Hand Fan Club.
There are no dues, so if you have any inclination to join, I'm not
about to stop you (heck, I'm a charter member myself!)
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If you're into dead presidents, you came to the right place. By simply
clicking your mouse button, you can see pictures of me visiting the
final resting places of every one of them (save five -- I'm still working
on it). It's one of the most useless sites on the Net, and I'm not
just saying so myself.
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You're invited to rifle through the pages of The Diplomatic Pouch, the
official home page for Hasbro's game of
Diplomacy and its
many variants, a site (including an online magazine,
and my labor of love,
the Web/E-mail based DPjudge)
that I started way back in 1995, and that I am proud to publish
(and too busy to do so -- thankfully, I have grown helpers over the years).
In addition to Weblishing The Pouch, my
involvement in Diplomacy runs deep, including placing fifth for the world
championship, being a member of the world championship team, winning
the Don Miller Memorial Award for meritorious service to the Diplomacy hobby,
and authoring a couple chapters for the user manual of Hasbro's CD-ROM release
of the game (which I do not recommend, although a couple chapters of the user
manual seem to be real good).
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| The ARMADA is the Association of Rocky Mountain Area Diplomacy
Adversaries. I started the ARMADA and have roped enough people into
getting it going. In addition to crowning regional
champions and keeping ratings for member players, the ARMADA has joined
the other U.S. regional organizations in the rotation of the national,
continental, and even the world championship tournaments. The ARMADA
hosted the 34th annual North American Championships in February of 2001,
the 2003 World Championships, and the 2004 U.S. Championships.
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In addition to the pursuits listed above, I got involved in the national
simulation (it's hard to figure a better way to describe it) known as the
Kingdom of Talossa. I even became the first-ever nobleman; they call me
Lord Hooligan. Fun stuff. Check it out....
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As you can see, I have a lot of things to say about myself on my home page.
Call it overbusy, call it ego, whatever. The point is, it takes a lot to
earn a place on my home page if you're not me. Well, The Indulgers have done
it. I know Irish music, I know what I like, and I know I like Irish music.
And I love The Indulgers.
(In fact, if you look closely, you can see me in some of the photos on
their Website, shamrocker.com.)
Take my advice and buy every one of their CD's.
And see them in person as soon as you can. So that you will be able, as I
will, to say you remember them when....
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Living in the Rockies has its privileges. One of mine is that I was invited to
join the "Into Thick Air" climbing team for the arduous April 2001 ascent to the
top of the highest mountain in the state of Nebraska. This expedition, ably led
by my friend Troy Bettinger, followed the ITA team's historic descent of
Mount Sunflower, highest peak in Kansas. If you missed all the newspaper
coverage (a couple of brave photojournalists from the media accompanied us
on the trek), don't fret: you can read all about both climbs at the Website,
with pictures that, if you believe everything you hear, are worth exactly a
thousand words each.
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I volunteered to post the photographs from the Laramie (Wyoming) High School
20th Year Reunion for my graduating class of 1982. Volunteering to do this
was my way of making sure that my classmates would be forced to claim me.
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I am an active user of the Python programming language (the best language
out there), having presented a paper at the Fourth Python Conference and
contributed to the core source of the language. I am a member of the
Python Software Foundation and one
of the charter crew members on the
Python Starship. More information can
be found at the Python home page and on the
usenet newsgroup comp.lang.python.
The DPjudge and all the CGI scripts used at The Diplomatic Pouch are
 .
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Speaking of cool things you can do quickly with Python, here are some solitaire
playing card games I implemented.
The first one ("Queen's Chaperone") is my father's creation, the only
solitaire for a pinochle deck that we know of -- as I was growing up, my
dad always said someday he'd invent a solitaire for a pinochle deck, and
he finally did (and it's a great game!).
Although dad re-christened it "Queen's Chaperone," I had originally named
it "One-Handed Pinochle"
because my dad has only one "Hand" in his name (as opposed to my two) and
in honor of his penchant (which he passed on to me) for applauding after the
rest of the crowd has stopped, so that everyone in the theater can say
that they've "heard the sound of one Hand clapping."
The second solitaire is my own invention, based in
part on a game whose name I don't know, with some twists in the rules. I call
it "Two-Handed Solitaire" because I like naming
things after myself (my first name means "Hand," and that's my last name, you
know).
The games won't let you cheat (other than that
the Back button is a handy unlimited "undo"!), so you'll play by the rules
whether you like them or not.
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| Firstborn and only son in a family of seven children, I now am king of
a castle in Parker, Colorado. You can see some pictures of my wife Angela and
my two children (Kayla Kristeen and McManus Jameson), and hopefully I will get
around to posting more of them.
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| It's the one thing people put on Websites that basically
no one else really cares about. But who am I to keep you from not caring
about my family tree? So here it is, everything I know (well, everything I
have typed in so far), in a format invented by my father (and computerized
by me).
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What? You don't know what Zorkball is? Well, don't feel special.
But if you want to join the very small minority of people who make
up the Zorkball cognizanti, you've come to the right place. (Actually,
you've come to the only place.)
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With my electronic MIDI keyboard and some software, I while away some of my
free time transcribing music that interests me and even trying to compose
some for myself. If you're interested by this, you can check out my fledgling
collection of MIDI files.
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| The Diplomacy game maps used by the DPjudge
were created with a version of the "mapit" program that I customized
to provide some extra features. A clamor arose in the Diplomacy community
for my version of "mapit" to be made publicly available. So now it is.
Not only is the code available, but I set up a crude page so that Diplomacy
positions or results can be typed (or cut-and-pasted) into a Webform and the
resulting maps are generated and displayed automatically.
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Once upon a time, I stumbled onto a set of Web pages that listed all the
episodes of "Columbo." That page has now been taken down, so I decided to put
up at least one page to serve as a humble replacement. Fair warning: my
synopses of each of the episodes reveal the way in which Columbo solves the
mystery, so read at your own peril.
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My family company, The Grail, Inc., founded by my father in the 1970's,
is on-line. The Grail is a
manufacturer of unique puzzles and board games. Take a look at the
product line!
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| Here it is, if you're at all interested in how I came to be,
and what it is I do to keep food on the table.
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| The weirdest thing I've ever seen. It's a static graphic;
no animation or motion at all. Make it your screen background and
drive yourself crazy.
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| Cookie recipes?? What? You make cookies? Well, no, I don't (at least
not very often). But if I did or when I do, here are the cookies I
make. (If you make any, mail me some. I will eat them for you.)
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Neologisms
| Since it's absolutely true and documented, and since tooting
my own horn doesn't seem to be a problem for me, I'll go ahead and take credit
for having invented two words: "emoticon" (now in worldwide use, which is
the term describing those little text smileys like :-) and
frownies like :( that are used in e-mail), and "Weblish" (to
publish on the Web). Yep, those are mine, but you're welcome to use them
free of charge!
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