The December 2001 Playa del Fuego planning meeting for the Spring 2001 burn was an inspiring success. It was probably the niftiest thing that's happened at 2600 since Dale and I moved in. Considering that we had 20 folks in the house, simulcasting our audio and video out to (at its peak) 8 folks in our remote locations in NYC, Pennsylvania, D.C. and Chicago, it was an amazing turnout.

Thanks to Dale Ghent for letting me throw the PDF bash-o-rama at "my" (his) place this weekend, even though he couldn't be around to join us. Thanks to Jason and Rachel Claiborne for giving 150% for the October burn and inspiring us all to keep up the pace. Thanks to Suz for travelling much farther than any of us, and to everybody else who doesn't live in Baltimore or one of it's suburbs for all the time they spent on the road, too many to name by name. Thanks to Monk E for not taking the comps argument personally when I tried to personalize it, and for Kathleen for not-so-subtly pointing that out right away. Thanks to the NYC crew of Ginger, Craig, Splinter and Jamie. Thanks to Andy Wing in Pennsylvania for his thoughtful comments on IRC. Special thanks to remote-access legal correspondent Magorn for taking the time out of his studies to be with us.

Pictures of all us goofy kids gathered in the living room are online in the December Planning Meeting gallery, and fire spinning pictures with Suz and Dave Diller at Simplex are up under Plan Jam. Enjoy!

At around 23:00 hours on the left hand side of the 2600 block of North Calvert Street a driver sideswiped my parked car and immediately sped from the scene. A witness walking his dog on North Calvert got the license tag and description of the car and driver and gave it to me at the scene a few minutes later. The responding officer ran the tags back to M_ S_ of P_ in Baltimore, and a vehicle matching the witness' description. A call was put out to send an officer to M_ S_'s house and check for damage to her vehicle including a broken-off driver’s side mirror, which had been left behind at the scene.

Damage to my vehicle includes shattered mirror glass and broken mirror frame on the passenger side. There is no other apparent damage from this accident. The officer stated that the penalty for hit-and-run in Maryland is 12 points and a $1,000 fine.

I'm preparing to release the code for my photo gallery, and made a number of significant changes to the code and the design to tidy things up before I do. Right now the old gallery version is still working alongside the new one (creatively named "g2") so that I don't break any direct links from other sites my accident. From there, all the menu functions and direction buttons immediately lead any new visitors into the new interface.

If you notice any problems or peculiarities in the new design, please drop me a note and let me know.

It was amusing to find out a few days ago that my vees.net gallery now ranks #5 in a search for "Gays Engineer Gallery" on metasearch.com. It actually contains very little of either, although there are quite a few flamers.

December 1, 2001 - December 3, 2001

This article was modified at the request of the driver who left the scene of the accident and later made amends through her insurance company. She denies leaving the scene because she turned the corner and stopped three blocks up from the scene of the accident and was never charged.

In her e-mail on October 4, 2005, she wrote, "Since I did contact you immediately the next day, had your car repaired and took full responsibility, I would appreciate it if you would please take my name off of your website. I am a hard working, caring, responsible, citizen, just like most people. I made a bad decision that night not to leave a note right at that time. For that I apologize, but I don't think I have to keep paying for that by having to explain myself to people (as a result of people seeing your site) almost four years after the incident. Thank you in advance, I appreciate your consideration."

At the encouragement of my mother (after all, what are they for if not a good conscience) I have removed the driver's name from the two articles she is present in.

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