My weather radio has been blaring its siren every few hours today, just like it did yesterday. "SCREECH SCREECH SCREECH . . . The National Weather Service has issued a severe thunderstorm warning for the following counties . . ."

Ugh, not again. Once upon a time, I loved thunderstorms and even hail. It was exciting and beautiful. But now I'm a homeowner. And even worse, I'm a homeowner in a little bit of a hurry to sell my house. So when I heard a "ping!!" from my metal chimney amidst the sound of rain, I got a little concerned. Seconds later, there was a loud roar punctuated by the occasional loud bang as my home was pummeled by pea size, then quarter sized, and even occasional golf-ball-sized, hailstones.

Just click the play button to listen to the sound of my poor house getting pummeled. I hope nothing's damaged.

WHY does Bismarck get hit with so much hail?

I'm no longer homeless, unfortunately. Today my Realtor called. The woman who planned to purchase my condo has backed out on me. She refuses to give a reason for this breach of contract. My Realtor says I have every right to sue her because she was legally obligated to buy the condo. And we know she secured the financing because my Realtor has a copy of a letter from her bank stating that.

I don't know that I have the time or money to sue the lady. And if she doesn't want the condo, I don't want to force her to buy it. This is a huge inconvenience for me. I'm 2/3 packed up and was almost ready to move!

It's frustrating, but I'm sure it will all work out.

Wanna buya condo?

I'm still busy packing up my belongings. I keep getting stuck on memory lane. When it was time to pack my old photographs, I had to look through them. And when I found my old Tandy 1000RL computer in the attic, well, I just had to hook it up.

I bought this old timer with the money I earned by running a paper route. I saved my pennies for an entire year and, by the age of 11 or 12, I was able to walk into Radio Shack and bring it home.

When I powered it up tonight, to my surprise the fifteen-year-old computer's date and time were only twenty minutes off. The brand new Sun servers have more clock drift than that!

This trusty old Tandy came with a single 720kb, 3.5" floppy drive. It has a 10MHz Intel 8086 processor. There was originally no hard drive... Just a stack of floppies. A big stack.

Eventually, I decided I needed to upgrade the RAM. The 512KB just wasn't cutting it. So I spent the cash to upgrade to 768KB. And once the floppies started to fail, I opted for a hard disk drive. I seem to recall spending a fortune for the 40MB (yes, Megabyte) hard drive.

The Tandy served up my bulletin board system, NorthStar BBS, for quite a while. I remember being woken up in the middle of the night by the sound of someone paging the SysOp (me) in the middle of the night. And there was the exciting screech of the modem when a user would dial up to play the games I hosted or to chat with me.

When it wasn't running the NorthStar BBS, I used the Tandy to dial into Sendit, the ODIN library system, Compuserve, and all kinds of the BBSes in the Minot area. I also messed around, learning to program in BASIC and playing SimCity. It was a good time.

Searching through the hard drive tonight, I see that I was one organized kid. The hard disk is immaculate. Everything in its proper place. But then again, without a graphical user interface like Windows (the Tandy runs DOS 3.3) it's important to keep things organized. It's hard to find things in DOS.

Ah, the memories.

I give up. The antispam blacklist for my blogging software has been taken down, so I've been getting twenty comments a day on this blog about mortgages, pills, and more obscene topics. From now on, to comment on this blog you will need to register for an account first. Just click "register" on the right side.

Tonight I am sorting my belongings in preparation of my upcoming move to a seminary. In particular, I'm sorting my books into three piles: seminary, goodwill/garbage, and storage. I realize I have a lot of books. In a notebook I almost tossed into the garbage pile I came across something I wrote back on June 22nd, 2003. It's a random ramble about my preferences in literature, particularly my preferred protagonists. It was written at a time when I was searching for meaning in life and not finding it. For fun and retrospection, here it is:

I'm an adult now. And so far, I'm disappointed. Why? Possibly the current state is the direct result of my father's alcoholism years ago. In any case, how do I fix this - the single biggest problem I've ever faced?

Movement comes to mind. Try life in another city, I think. Cross the country on bicycle, perhaps ... sort things out. Camp out, away from it all.

This reaction seems to come natural to a certain breed of people. Thoreau, Muir, and London for example.

Recently I picked up a copy of "Into the Wild" by Jon Krakauer. In this book, he tells the true tale of Chris McCandless, a man about my age, fresh out of college and inspired by those famous authors, who disappeared. He hitchhiked and rode the rails, all the way to Alaska. There, he planned to live off the land. His body was eventually found. Odd . . . as I read the book, I envied McCandless and understood his ideals. I was almost a believer, even though I knew he didn't survive.

But then, I've long been a believer of these ideals. A self-sufficient man in nature has been my protagonist of choice for a decade or more.

In elementary school, I read "My Side of the Mountain" and was enthralled. Soon, "The Iceberg Hermit," and "Banner in the Sky" held my attention. The main characters in these books were hardy individuals who left mainstream society (by choice or chance) and discovered themselves. They were successful, in at least some sense of the word. I envied them.

Later, I enjoyed Jack London's tales. Not all of his protagonists survived. Life in the Cold North wasn't pretty, but it was noble and with meaning.

After walking home from high school years ago, I would sometimes contemplate what would happen if I just kept walking ... past the end of the street and into the snow-covered field and beyond. Adventure? Meaning? In the frigid North Dakota landscape, I was wise to head home. But my wanderlust was unrelenting.

These days, out of college, my protagonists are dealing with or enduring their troubles rather than hoping for a brighter future or a more noble existence. Case in point, Max Cohen of the independent film "Pi." Alone, devoted to a cause few understand, hiding from the humanity surrounding him. And Lester Burnham of "American Beauty" realizes his life is meaningless and troubled. He acts to change it, but everything unravels in the process. Schmidt, of "About Schmidt," doesn't have purpose in his life any longer. He worked hard for decades and now is adrift, alone, and seeking meaning. I identify with these characters. That's why they come to mind time and again.

Chris McCandless escaped his confusing family situation in the throes of adolescence. He subscribed to ideals that led him farther from those who loved him ... into the wild.

Sometimes I feel like he and Jack London are right. Nobility, meaning can be found in nature. But Chris is dead and London was an drunk who didn't live his out own ideals, except for a brief time.

Where do I go now? Who will my next protagonist be?

Looking back at that writing now, almost three years later, I realized I have changed in some ways. I've found at least some purpose and meaning in life. But I still have that wanderlust - a desire to see the world, experience it in new ways. And right now, if I had to pick a new protagonist it would probably be a saint.

Well, things are getting serious now! About an hour ago, I sold my condo. In less than a month, I will be homeless. The place sold essentially for the asking price within about 9 days.

This place is very nice. I will miss it.

Hi, My name is Jason and I'm a Lostaholic.

I've got an unhealthy addiction. A while ago while flipping through my four or five tv channels, I happened upon an episode of Lost. It was entertaining and intriguing, but I had no idea what was happening because I didn't see the preceding episodes. To satisfy this curiosity, I rented the DVDs for season one. I watched the pilot episodes. And that's how it started.

The cliffhanger at the end of each episode... that's how they got me! They sucked me into the story, made me curious, and left me hanging - hungry for more. And they did it EVERY TIME.

I watched the first season in just over a week's time. With no commercials and nothing to slow me down, I watched several episodes a night. The season finale, of course, had an abundance of loose ends to keep the viewers curious until the next season. But by that time, season two was already on the air. It's not on DVD yet. But in this age of instant gratification, I was able to get a fix from my dealer, iTunes. I downloaded all of the episodes that have aired so far this season to my computer and iPod. And I watched. A lot.

In an effort to control the addiction, I limited myself to one episode a day. That worked well for a while. But last night I watched three episodes back to back. I've now seen them all. There are no more. I'll have to wait for the next one to air, whenever that will be.

I NEED to know what that button does! And what do those numbers mean? And WHO is this Mr. Echo guy? Is he really a priest? And what about the guy they've got locked up in the hatch? Who are the "Others!" What the heck is this Dharma initiative and what was the "incident"!?

Help! I'm Lost!