Rebuilding my pages at Howardkeep. The testing is happening on the live site, so bear with me. I'll make an announcement when things are ready for public consumption.

For the last few years i've written an online adventure game that follows the theme of the annual Iowa ICON science fiction convention. The first one was a text adventure like Zork, then the following year I upped the ante by adding static graphics. This year the adventure includes animation - it moves! I've built these games both to help promote ICON and to learn more for my research into how computer game design and development relates to improvements in student STEM skills.

Since I started this the ICON folks have posted links to the games on their website. This year they requested that I create a Hitchhiker's Guide themed game for them, and because I have tons of unused bandwidth I’m hosting it here. I think it turned out pretty swell, so I'm going to share with all y'all. Click here to play The ICON at the End of the Universe.

Recently I've decided to write a series of posts to share stories about some, if not all, of the many cars, motorcycles, and boats that I have had the experience of owning. To kick things off allow me to talk about "Old Blue", a 1965 Ford Galaxie 500, and my first car. [caption id="attachment_143" align="alignright" width="471"]1965_Ford_Galaxie This image is close to Old Blue, except for the custom wheels and tires. Color's right, as is the white vinyl roof.[/caption] My birthday is toward the end of August, and as my sixteenth one approached my anticipation grew. To a farm kid access to a car or truck means freedom, not just from having parents as chauffeurs but from having to ride the bus to school. In addition, what you drove into the student parking lot could have an effect on your social life. In preparation for the big day I'd dropped some subtle hints, like putting pictures of Mustangs on the fridge. Because that's gonna work. Finally the big day arrived. After breakfast Dad said it was time for my present and handed me a set of keys - the keys to his old Ford that had been sitting up on blocks behind the barn for a couple years. A quick inspection told the story: the Galaxie needed work, and a lot of it, before school started the next week. Fortunately the big V-8 engine hadn't seized, but mice and other critters had been nesting under the hood, and a puddle of transmission fluid was slowly killing the grass. I told Dad thanks, gave him a smile, and together we moved my new baby into the garage. By lunch we had her running, and on the first day of school I cruised like a champ into the student lot. Despite not being very sporty on the outside, Old Blue did help my social life. It's amazing how many friends you have when you offer to drive for pizza. Time spent sitting can do a number on a car's mechanical systems, and Blue was no exception. Over the course of my junior year I began to think you could trace everywhere I'd driven by following the trail of fluids staining the streets and county roads. Around the time of my next birthday, after picking up my bulk oil allotment for the month at the Big Bear, Dad announced that this couldn't go on. He told me to make arrangements for Blue to be my project car for auto shop class that fall. Rebuild the engine and transmission, put in a new exhaust, fix a myriad of electrical issues - thanks, mice! - and Blue would be like a new car. He'd buy; I'd fly. Going through our school shop's part books led to an interesting discovery: the engine in Blue was what Ford called a "high-output" engine, with various bits and parts that added more oomph than your normal family hauler. This was pretty cool, I thought as I turned the page. Then my eyes got real big. Right there on the page was a police interceptor version of my engine, with nearly 50% more horsepower. More horsepower is always better, right? I wrote down the list of part numbers I needed, then wrote down a column of part numbers to make Blue into a police interceptor. I took the lists to our local auto parts store to get price estimates for both, then took the estimates home to Dad. Of course the cop parts were more expensive than stock, plus we'd need to have some custom machine shop work done. All in all we're talking more than twice as much. Dad just looked at the two sets of figures for a minute, got a twinkle in his eyes, then ordered me not to tell my mother. I smiled like a Pez dispenser and agreed. For the first month after the rebuild I drove carefully, treating Blue like the convalescent she was, before starting to drive more aggressively. Dad didn't say too much, past reminding me that the next set of tires were coming out of my pocket. Then one day after school I floored it at a stop light, just to see what she could do. Turns out what she could do was shred her stock transmission into tiny bits then scatter those bits down Main Street as she slowly rolled to a stop. Dad took care of getting a rebuilt heavy duty transmission installed, with a quiet comment that the car needed to last me through college. Perhaps I should learn to work with the car instead of always having to work on her? It took a few minutes to realize what he meant - teenager, remember - but eventually I got there. During the remainder of that year, and throughout my first years of college, I learned to drive with Blue. We took gravel roads together, learning how to steer into slides and through them. I learned from her that being able to move effortlessly from forty to sixty was more important than how quickly you could go from zero to sixty. Most of what I know about how to drive well came from the time I spent behind that steering wheel. Eventually the time came for Old Blue and me to part ways. As the man says, rust never sleeps, and over the years she'd been developing a serious case of frame rot. One day at a rough railroad crossing in Des Moines the frame just snapped. To repair damage that serious was beyond my means at the time, so I sold her to someone who wanted the police interceptor engine. Over the years I've regretted not taking her back to the farm and storing her until I could afford to fix her up or find another car to put her engine in. But what's done is done, and I'd like to think her heart is still cruising down the highway in some other car.

One summer Sunday, when I was around 13 or 14, my parents took me to a picnic where a group of their childhood friends had gathered. Being the only person there under 40, and being at an age where angst comes easily, I spent the first hour or two wishing I was anywhere else while silently juggling my feelings of boredom and superiority. After lunch was cleared away my father and a couple of his friends arranged half a dozen chairs in a line in front of the picnic tables. Despite my deliberate attempts at ennui I was curious. What fresh torment was to come of this, I wondered. I actually sat up straight when they then carried musical instruments out of the house. Each man made his selection from an assortment of acoustic guitars, violins, and something I recognized from Mrs. Murphy's music class as a zither. My father had picked up a guitar and was tuning it while I gaped open-mouthed. [caption id="attachment_131" align="alignright" width="345"]dad with gutar Mom and Pop, back in the day[/caption] For full effect you should understand that until that point in my life my father had never demonstrated or mentioned to me any familiarity or skill with any musical instrument, much less something of complete coolness like the guitar. But there he was, playing bluegrass slide guitar licks with his buds for the next couple hours like he had been doing it his whole life. And they were, as a group, good. Really good. During the ride home I tried to ask questions about what, and when, and why, but all I learned was that he used to play guitar, still had a guitar, but didn't play anymore. True to my adolescent nature I obsessed on the topic to the point of annoyance for a few days, bounced from curiosity to resentment and back, then completely forgot about it when another shiny object crossed my sight. Fast forward a couple months to my birthday. Late in the afternoon after cake and gifts, my father walked into my room carrying an acoustic guitar. A cheap plastic-bodied K-mart guitar, but a guitar nonetheless. He handed it to me, wished me happy birthday, and walked out. For the second time that summer, I was speechless. And conflicted as all get out. The guitar was a toy, to be generous. But my father had given it to me. And I had no clue how to play it. Or tune it. Or anything. But my father had given it to me. So I tried. I talked to my music and band teachers, learned how to tune it, tried to learn a few chords, and spent some of my putting up hay money on a book of Beatles tunes. But no matter what, it still sounded like a toy, and after a few months I gave it up. I never did get to make music with my father. I never again heard him play. I never found out why he quit. Years after he passed, and I had bought from my mother the house where I grew up, I had a dream. In this dream my father was in my old bedroom, standing by the open door to my closet, and pointing. That morning I dug my way into my room. It had become a storage room after I went off to college, and was filled with boxes of clothes, portable TVs and 8 track players, and other items that should have gone away when they quit being used but hadn't. After moving some of the piles I opened the closet door to find my high school years staring back at me. Some sport coats and dress slacks, my denim jacket, a couple pair of bell bottom levis with 28 inch waists, all this and tons more were hanging from the rod. This was interesting, but there had to be more. I started pulling things to the front so I could investigate deeper, and in the back of the closet were two guitars. My plastic birthday gift, and next to it my father's Hawaiian acoustic slide. I took his guitar, and leaving the toy with all the other abandoned memories, shut the door. My sister recently sent me the attached picture of my parents from their courting days. Hank Williams wanted to be as cool as my father. For our wedding anniversary this year I bought complimentary musical gifts for Barb and me. For her I purchased an EB-3 SG bass. For me, the Epiphone version of the Les Paul Custom guitar. We'll most likely never sit with our friends out back hammering out some punk riffs and reminiscing about the old days, but that's okay. We'll play music together.

My Dad enjoyed using his Super 8 movie camera, and while he might decide that just about any special event was worthy of documenting, you could almost guarantee that it would be in use three times a year: fishing trips, the Fourth of July, and Christmas.

This is a selection of various Christmases with the Howard clan, taken from our home movies. They're in no particular order, so don't be surprised when the kids get older and then younger. The point is to share some memories of Christmases past with folks. Enjoy.

Up until recently I thought that I didn't like pumpkin pie. Sure, every turkey day or Christmas I'd eat a slice, but that was primarily out of politeness because somebody went to the trouble of bringing it.

What changed for me was when Barb and I hosted the family Thanksgiving dinner a couple years ago, and I had the wild idea to make a pumpkin pie from scratch instead of using the canned filling. One bite, and I realized that this was the first pumpkin pie I'd ever tasted. Not only that, but i liked pumpkin pie, oh yes indeed.

And so, to spread the blessing of real pumpkin pie - and maybe prevent me from ever having to eat another slice of "polite" pie - here is the recipe I use. Enjoy.

Stuff what goes in the pie:

• 1 1/4 cups pumpkin puree
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon all-purpose flour
• 2 eggs, lightly beaten
• 1 cup evaporated milk
• 2 tablespoons water
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 9-inch pie crust, unbaked (I use Pillsbury - why not? they make a good product)

Prep the pumpkin

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.
2. Cut a medium sized (about 4 pound) pumpkin into palm sized sections. Scrape insides with a teaspoon to remove the seeds and pulp. Save the seeds to dry and roast (if you're into that sort of thing).
3. Place pumpkin chunks skin side down on foil covered sheet; bake for about 45 minutes.
4. Allow chunks to cool then scrape the softened flesh into food processor bowl. Puree until smooth.
5. Set aside 1 1/4 cups of puree for pie; scoop the remainder into a zip top freezer bag (or make some cookies - umm, cookies).

Put it all together

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees F.
2. In food processor bowl combine pumpkin, sugar, salt, ginger, cinnamon, and flour; mix well.
3. Add eggs; mix well.
4. Add evaporated milk, water and vanilla; mix well.
5. Pour pumpkin pie mixture into the 9-inch pastry lined pie pan.
6. Bake at 425 degrees F for 15 minutes.
7. Reduce heat to 350 degrees F and bake for about 35 minutes longer, or until pie is set.

And finally, find a friend and share, 'cause that's why God invented pie.

1992: Compaq releases the Concerto, the world's first tablet computer. It had a detachable keyboard, stylus, and ran a special version of Windows for tablets. Despite winning design awards, the product failed to catch on with the public and was soon discontinued.

2012: After years of research, Microsoft announces the Surface, their first tablet computer. It has a detachable keyboard, stylus, and runs a special version of Windows for tablets.

"The Microsoft Surface brings new technology to the Windows PC platform." - Steve Ballmer

David Lowery of Cracker fame once labeled pets as "little grief time bombs." We take them into our homes, give them love, and then, just when you forget they're mortal, Boom! goes the grief bomb.

Our latest grief bomb went off this fall when we had to say goodbye to our Mouser after 11 years, and it still gets a little dusty sometimes. Earlier today while looking for something on my computer I found this video that I made with iPhoto a couple years ago, and I thought that I'd share. Enjoy. (Mouser is the striped kitty. Gandalf is the large grey tom, and our dog is Buddy)

It's time for the latest chapter in the ongoing saga of, "Let's revamp the web site." I'm slowly moving toward making everything HTML 5 compliant, but with fallback for older browsers. More improvements should drop in over the next few weeks - we'll see how that goes.

The Epiphone Les Paul Studio edition in matte black.

I've been looking at this beauty for over a year. I finally decided to get off the fence and order it from Guitar Center, and now it's in my office. Now I just need to make some free time (hah!) for practice.

Back in March of 2001 I was in Orlando for the annual Society for Information Technology and Teacher Education conference when I heard there was going to be a shuttle launch that week. I rented a car, drove over to Cape Canaveral, and witnessed something that I'll never forget.

So, in honor of the Shuttle Transport System's final mission I've uploaded the video I took that day ten years ago. (the video is in H.264 format)

Well lads and lassies, it's that day again. Time to celebrate St. Paddy drivin' off the serpents from the Emerald Isle by hoisting a Guinness and singing some songs about the old country. I'm not gonna buy you a pint, but I will help out with the music by posting some mp3 files. Danny Boy (The Irish Tenors) Willie McBride (The Irish Rovers) When Irish Eyes are smiling (The Irish Tenors) The Unicorn (The Irish Rovers) Irish Drinking Song (Denis Leary) Lord of the Dance (The Irish Rovers, not the Riverdance tune) Remember to be wearin' the green when you go out tonight with your mates.

It's alive! (if it wasn't you wouldn't be reading this, now would you?) Welcome to Howardkeep.com, the best little website in Ames. Keep_long But wait, there's more! I not only have a MUD going, I've got 2 MUDs! I have a ROM MUD going at telnet://ftp.howardkeep.com:4000, and an LP MUD at telnet://ftp.howardkeep.com:5000. I'm Avatar in them both if you feel like trying them out. By the way, if you use these links, you need to set up your browser to handle a telnet link. Otherwise, fire up your telnet program, get to playing, and give me some feedback.