Haxton Hobbies

All of us play computer games - death matching across our network in Doom or Quake is always a favorite. Here's a link to a wad file that Dave wrote for Doom 2. It's based on one of our old workplaces, and should be most enjoyable even if you don't get the inside humor.

Dave the Geek went through a big phase of helicopter simulations. Apache and Longbow were cool, but Hind was (and is) his favorite. Here's a picture from the game - not only are the graphics great and the realism of the simulation outstanding, it can also be played head to head against other Hinds or against Apache (which was coded by the same company). Due to Hind, we now own a Thrustmaster Attack Throttle joystick system, complete with rudder pedals. Unfortunately, iMagic, the publisher of Hind, has been acquired by an online gaming company that no longer publishs legacy simulations.

Courtney and Hilary are the artists in the family: Here's one of Courtney's efforts

Hilary "inherited" our Kodak digital camara. Check out our picture page for some photo's of our pets: we have two cats, two dogs, a horse, and three goats so there's no shortage of animals in this place!

Haxton's are known for their sense of humor .... jokes and gags are almost a way of life. We enjoy word games and some board games and we play cards, notably euchre. We also enjoy playing tafl, an ancient Viking game that some consider to be a precursor to chess.

Napster was a favorite here too: mostly we downloaded songs that we have on vinyl  so we can burn our own CD's and finally listen to music we thought we'd never hear again! It was a fine service. Now we're on iTunes, and even though it's $0.99 per song, it's a better service. We no longer have any pangs of guilt about downloading - because we're paying for it! Doh!

Don't know if this is a hobby or not, but Dave wrote a rather lengthy letter to the editor of the Lebanon Reporter (our local paper) about software filters. Not only was it published (on January 24th, 2001), he was invited to become a "guest columnist" and contribute whenever so moved on the emerging techincal issues in American politics. The column is here.

Finally, in February of 2003 Dave started keeping a weblog: even though it's linked from his writings page, it's more or less a hobby too, so it deserved a mention here.