O'Bello

One of my friends from Bastrop, Emily Fuller (now Emily McCants), has been in a band with her brother, David, for a year or so. Their name is O'Bello. I think the name has something to do with an accordian, which David plays. Emily plays the guitar and sings, while David plays the accordian, keyboards and sings as well.

Their initial recordings were homemade, but were pretty good nonetheless, and their songwriting was very good. But recently, they made an album at a studio here in Baton Rouge, and the quality was much improved. Their first CD is called "Mighty Heros", and it has four songs. I think they're only charging $5, so I would highly suggest that you get a copy.

To purchase a copy, send $5 to:

[I will update the address as soon as I know - in the meantime email me and I'll contact them]

I got special permission from O'Bello to post samples from their CD here on the blog.

Field of Swords - entire song available here
Where are the Nine
Heavens to Betsy - entire song available here
Mighty Heros

Oh, Lily!

We have 2 very spoiled dogs. This is a picture of them in our courtyard. And no, we didn't put the dog on the table - she loves to jump up there. They both sleep in the bedroom with us at night, and sometimes our little dog (Lily) gets the priviledge of sleeping on the bed with us. They are usually very good at letting us know when they need to go out in the morning, but not this morning. I stepped out of the bed onto wet carpet. I am half blind without my glasses, so I couldn't see what it was but I assumed that Lily had an accident. James quickly got out of bed to survey the damage while I rummaged around for my glasses. Well, she did not have just a minor little accident. She had dribbled all over the bedroom - including underneth the bed! It took us about 30 minutes to clean it up.

She is a really fun pet, but she has been a little bad lately. In the past month or so she's thrown up on our bed, peed in the house twice, chewed up a pair of my shoes, and chewed on the carpet.

Look what came in the mail for me today

I remember the Diesel Driving Academy commercials had the best jingle for remembering the toll-free phone number. It was just some guy singing the numbers - "call one eight hundred ... five-five-one ... eight nine hundred". I wish I had an mp3 of that.

You can solve a Rubik's Cube

One of the most challenging popular puzzles is the 3x3 Rubik's Cube. I remember trying to solve a cube when I was little. I would try for an hour or so, and then I'd get mad and put it away, promising myself that I'd never fool with it again. Of course, I'd pull it out some other time and try again . . .



It may seem nearly impossible, since it has 43,252,003,274,489,856,000 possible states. But solving it is actually not that hard.

This website, Nerd Paradise ~ 3x3x3 Rubik's Cube, has a fairly simple step by step method for solving the cube. You can memorize the steps in this method in just a few days.


Then you'll be the life of any party, and you could win lots of bets.

The Sub Club

I'm not in the Sub Club anymore. They threw me out.

The Big Dig and Southern Stereotypes

In case you haven't heard, Boston's overdue overbudget multi-billion dollar highway project called the Big Dig is in some trouble. This project is a civil engineering marvel, and I hope it will be finsihed and all the problems taken care of quickly.

But what makes me mad about the project's current woes is that if something like this were happening in the deep south, there'd be no end to the redneck jokes when problems came up.


Is it ok to make fun of MIT's CE department?

Who is this "jigawatt"?

***UPDATE***


After two and a half years of blogging, I feel that it's time to introduce myself. I've got a pretty good profile on blogger, but here's a little more.



Name: James Harold Thomas, aka jigawatt

Age: 26

Social Security Number: 078-05-1120

Credit Card Number: 5675 116 116 1352, Exp. 13/02

Location: Baton Rouge, Louisiana

Occupation: I'm a Graduate Student at LSU in Electrical Engineering; I'm also a Professional Engineer in the states of Louisiana and Arkansas. From May 2001 through July 2005, I worked for Entergy in the Transmission area.

Married: Indeed - to Steph for 5 wonderful years and counting

Pets: Daisy the Border Collie and Lily the Sheltie

Religion: I'm an Evangelical Reformed Baptist, but we're currently attending (and will soon be members of) South Baton Rouge Presbyterian Church (PCA). For those of you who understand and are interested in such things, I'm not nearly as commited to dispensationalism as most Baptists are, but I'm also not nearly as covenental as my fellow Presbyterians would like. I'm somewhere in between, probably leaning a bit toward the dispensational end of the spectrum.

Born and Raised: Born in Monroe LA; raised in Bastrop - the hoppinest little town in northeast Louisiana

Siblings: One brother, three years my senior. He's an occupational therapist in Jackson, MS, and he just got his MBA from Belhaven College. I got the looks and he got the brains.

High School: Prairie View Academy, class of 1997

College: I graduated from Louisiana Tech University, with a BS in EE in 2001. As I said above, I'm now a Ph.D student at LSU. If all goes well, I will have my MS by the end of the spring semester 2007.

Music: There's lots of CCM out there that's just a bunch of garbage, so I'm no longer "Christian music only". Here are some of the artists to which I listen: Alison Krauss, Caedmon's Call, Derek Webb, Sandra McCracken, Rich Mullins, O'Bello, Jackie Wilson, Nat King Cole, The Eagles, Tony Joe White, Suzy Boggus, Diamond Rio.

Sports: I played T-ball and baseball from a very young age up until I was 14. I was pretty good at it from 10 on up. I sat the bench for two years in basketball, but I did keep stats for the football and basketball teams my senior year of high school. For professional sports, I'm moderately interested in baseball - go Cards!

Political Affiliation: I'm neither a Democrat nor a Republican. I'm registered as an independent voter.


Anything else that comes to mind, I will post as a comment or edit this post.