June 13. On this day in 1997, I walked in the graduation ceremony at Auburn University. Hard to believe it’s been 10 years since that day. Today is Wednesday, but in 1997 it was a Friday. That’s right, I graduated on Friday the 13th, pretty cool, huh? I had received and accepted a job offer right after Spring Break 1997 so my last few months were spent trying not to fail my last few courses. I was scheduled to attend job training for seven weeks starting that August, however, several friends that were going to work at the same company changed their training to June 16th, the Monday after graduation. I thought, “what the hell…”, so on Sunday, June 15th, I boarded a plane for Dallas, TX to begin my new job (well, training). It’s been a whirlwind since then. Wow.
In honor of this day, let’s take a trip down memory lane and see a few pics of me in college and during the aforementioned training in Dallas. Sound good?
Follow me.
LOL…okay, this is my college id. Stop laughing. This photo was taken in June 1992. I used this id throughout college. You can click on the picture to see a larger version. Maybe even use it as your desktop wallpaper. Stop laughing. I only got a new id during my Senior year when I believed I would have to turn in my id when I graduated. Obviously I didn’t. Stop laughing. Even though I grew up in Alabama, I was a surfer at heart. Stop laughing.
Here I am right after the graduation ceremony. I’m posing with the sign telling the business grads where to sit. At this point, I now have a Bachelor’s of Science in Management Information Systems. I was so excited to be a college graduate. In two days I’d be flying off to Dallas to begin my career as a consultant (which would last for the next 8 years).
Here I am with my parents right after graduation. This is just outside the basketball coliseum where the graduation was held. There is no diploma in the black case I am holding. The diplomas were mailed out separately after the administration had checked that you don’t have any unpaid library fees, tuition, outstanding warrants or misdemeanors. I mean, I did, of course, but that’s a tale for another blog article.
This is my room senior year. I lived in an apartment complex called The Patio with my brother. I only lived there my senior year as my roommate the past 4 years had graduated. Tidy, isn’t it? That computer on the desk was top-of-the-line for 1996, when I got it. 133Mhz Pentium processor with 16Mb of RAM. 16!!! Oh, it also had a SCREAMING FAST 28.8Kbps modem as there was no cable internet at the time. I don’t know how I got any work done on it. Nowadays, it would be like trying to figure out your taxes on an abacus.
Well, that was fun. Hope you enjoyed the pictures. You can click on any of them to get bigger versions. Please, feel free to comment or email me to give me hell about my college id picture. Trust me, everyone does. 🙂
I may have a wrap up article on Friday. Stay tuned.
Man, I promise you more content and what do I do, skip ANOTHER week? I’m such a tool. Really. It’s not like I didn’t have time the weekend before last to write a few buffer articles. I didn’t DO anything. Literally. My wife and I shut ourselves up in the house, Howard Hughes-style, and watched movies and tv shows ALL WEEKEND. I know people throw that phrase around a lot, but they still got out of the house to go eat or rent movies or go to the store. I however, am dead serious when I say the only reason I got off the couch was to get something to eat……..and pee. And it was everything I wished it could be.
Imagine you are a kid, at home, after a long day of school in 1986. You are sitting mindlessly watching the TV enjoying your favorite cartoons when the announcer says to stay tuned for the Ghostbusters. What? Hellz Yeah, Ghostbusters cartoons? Bring It! You are sitting there with your pouch of Capri-Sun ready to watch Slimer and the Ghostbusters kick some spectral butt. The show comes on and something looks off……..I didn’t realize the Ghostbusters hung out with …….is that a……..gorilla?! WTF?! This is what happened to me when I was about 12 years old. I was greeted with a Ghostbusters cartoon that was foreign to me. Was this just simple greed by a company looking to ride the wave of ghostbustin’ popularity, or was there more to it? This cartoon even used the actual name GhostBusters. What was this cartoon’s story? Well, after much research, I finally found out.
The Ghostbusters are pop culture icons. Ray, Peter, Egon and Winston. 
The phenomenally successful movie that spawned this group has entertained people of all ages. However, surprisingly enough, Columbia did not have the rights to the name “ghostbusters” before or during the filming of their titular 1984 blockbuster. Who owned the rights to the name, Ghostbusters? It was a production company called Filmation. After Ghostbusters hit it big in 1984, imitators began coming out of the woodwork. Companies were trying to ride the coattails of the hit movie with toys, games and cartoons with a similar theme. As stated earlier, if turned on your tv in 1986 you may have caught a show involving two friends and their gorilla using crazy equipment to capture ghosts. This cartoon was called Filmation’s GhostBusters. This series was created by Filmation, the aforementioned rights holders to the name Ghostbusters. Why did they have the rights and how did this cartoon come about? It all starts in 1975.
During the ’80s and ’90s, the Filmation studio was an immensely popular Saturday morning cartoon producer. They created the cartoons He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, Fat Albert, She-Ra, Star Trek The Animated Series, The Batman/Superman Hour and many, many more. With this pedigree, and the fact that they owned the name Ghost Busters, they naturally thought that they would get first crack at producing the animated Ghostbusters show. After much negotiation, Columbia backed down and said that they were going to focus on a live action Ghostbusters sequel and not do a cartoon series. Rebuffed, Filmation decided to capitalize on the Ghostbuster name by creating their own cartoon but based it on their original tv series. The cartoon’s premise had the sons of the original tv characters inheriting the business and continuing the fight against supernatural evil. For the first five episodes (technically a mini-movie), Larry Storch and Forrest Tucker reprised their roles and voiced their characters for the first time in 10 years in order to pass the torch to their sons. Bob Burns, the actor behind Tracey the Gorilla, would continue to voice Tracey in the new cartoon. The concept was set and the show debuted in February 1986.
Columbia, having gone through some changes in management since the negotiations with Filmation, were a little perturbed that another studio would get a cartoon bearing the name of their cash-cow movie franchise on the air before them. Especially the studio that owned the name Ghost Busters. This lead to Columbia partnering with cut-rate studio DIC Animation to get their Real Ghostbusters cartoon on the air. Filmation had to add “The Original” to their cartoon to make it stand out from Columbia’s cartoon. Needless to say, this still causes confusion amongst Ghostbusters fans who have no idea about the 1975 tv show.
Well, I had to take a forced sabbatical last week. Work is just one giant inconvenience. We are in the middle of this giant project so time is (and will continue to be) scarce until the end of the year. I will do my absolute best to keep things updated here. 
You know what else I found today? Hostess Apple Spice cupcakes. I thought they only sold these around Christmas time. Holy crap-in-a-hat these are divine. These things are like little apple-spice tears from heaven. Fluffs of clouds that have been lightly spiced with apples and frosting. It doesn’t get much better than this. If you can find these…GET THEM. So. F’n. Good.
Cavalcade of Awesome 