Below are the 9 most recent journal entries recorded in Brent's LiveJournal:

Monday, January 12th, 2004
10:26 pm	A gift for the dying... At 10:00 a.m. this morning my phone rang and a man wanted to know if we had our MM-6 Stirling engines in stock. I said that we did and asked if he would like one. He said, "Sure. My dad and I are buying one for my brother who has cancer and is expected to live about three months. He's always liked Stirling engines, so we decided to get him one." For several years, my company has had a goal I wrote that reads as follows, "We are in the business of making people happy." Well today we made someone happy. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, November 3rd, 2003
5:17 pm	Five minutes of Fame. I was interviewed today by Bruce Bigelow who is a business reporter for the San Diego Union Tribune. They plan on running a story on my business which recently sold 100 Stirling engine kits to the Unites States Naval Academy. Of course San Diego is a Navy town, so that is the local angle. It will be fun to read the story when it runs sometime between now and Thanksgiving. (Comment on this)
Monday, October 27th, 2003
9:06 am	Fire! I live in Valley Center, California [North San Diego County] very close to one of the fires. ---------- 11 dead, hundreds of homes destroyed, 250,000 acres burned by fires ranging from Valley Center to Mexico By Gregory Alan Gross UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER October 26, 2003 JOHN GIBBINS / Union-Tribune Fueled by a potent mix of Santa Ana winds, dry brush and eucalyptus trees, wildfire raced near a neighborhood along Pomerado Road in Scripps Ranch. The worst firestorm to hit this county in 33 years cut a path of destruction from Valley Center to Mexico Sunday, leaving at least 11 people dead and hundreds of homes destroyed and charring an area the size of Chicago. Read the entire story here: (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, September 5th, 2003
8:45 pm	Fun with pictures I finally got around to uploading some pictures to my Live Journal account. Here is the picture of me from the back cover of my new book. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, August 19th, 2003
8:14 pm	Financing your Dog! I walked past the pet store in the mall today and saw a big sign that read, "Financing available." Naturally I stopped and asked just exactly what they were financing. It turns out that you can finance a puppy for 90 days (interest free) or for 2 years at 25% per year. Now no one loves a cute puppy more than me, and I think that many people should own pets, but when you can get a loan on your dog, now that's a credit bubble. I wonder how long it will be until the the people who borrowed the money to buy a pooch will be wishing that these loans could be taught to roll over and play dead? (Comment on this)
Friday, August 8th, 2003
7:28 pm	A Stroke in the Sky "If there are any doctors or nurses on this flight would you please press your call button." With that announcement I knew that one of my fellow passengers on my August 5, 2003 non-stop Southwest Airlines flight from Chicago to San Diego was not having a good day. Fortunately there was a doctor on the flight, but unfortunately the man who so badly needed his care was having a stroke and there wasn't much that could be done by a doctor without his tools in an airliner. The pilot decided to land in Amarillo Texas. After we landed in Amarillo, the EMT's came on the plane and played doctor for 10 minutes before taking the man and his wife to the hospital. Sixty minutes after landing we were again taking off for San Diego. The crew of that Southwest airlines flight did everything they could to help that man. And everything they could do was still not very much, but it was the best that could be done for a fellow human when fate handed him a stroke in the sky. (Comment on this)
Saturday, July 26th, 2003
9:20 pm	Seattle in July There really is no reason to spend July any place other than Seattle. My what a gorgeous city when the trees are green and the sky is blue. My only complaint with Seattle is that people drive so slowly on the interstates there. I attribute the slow driving (compared to California) to the fact that Washington state is home to Microsoft which comes out with a more bloated operating system every year, while California is home to Intel which comes out with a faster CPU every year. If current trends continue, Californians drivers will be riding Batmobiles at Mach .8 in a few years, while ground bound Washingtonians will be cheerfully riding horses and shoveling maure! (Comment on this)
Sunday, July 6th, 2003
4:57 pm	Sane People in San Diego Special thanks to faustin for hosting the July 5, 2003 San Diego Objectivist Network salon. I had absolutely no idea that there were that many sane people in San Diego. My vote for the best T shirt slogan was that worn by sunshine__girl who proclaimed herself a "Capitalist Chick". A close second went for the shirt that said, "WWJD for a Klondike Bar?" Unfortunately I had to leave just when the party was getting good because I had a date to go ballroom dancing. Humm... I wonder how many objectivists or libertarians there are who like to dance? Current Mood: accomplished (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, June 14th, 2003
3:40 pm	Discover Me The July 2003 issue of Discover magazine has a review of one of the engines I designed on page 75. Free publicity is always fun!. Also on June 12, 2003 the History Channel re-ran the program modern Marvels: Engines which featured an interview with me. It's my fifteen minutes of fame. (Comment on this)