cred and a quick summary

More and more, I
Am becoming a CS
Major you'd expect.

Haha, and by that I mean that I played StarCraft for the first time last night. Pathetic, I know, that I haven't played it before... it was pretty amusing, I have to say, when I opened the box with the installation disks and found a flier:

COMING IN 1999: DIABLO II FOR BATTLE.NET

:P Amusement ensued. Anyway, I did like StarCraft a fair amount. I haven't played a game similar to it since I was obsessed with Age of Mythology about 5 summers ago, but it's ok. I don't think it'd take long for me to get better at it, and I'm probably going back to play more later today. Teehee.

Also contributing to this CS major-ness is the Math Talent Show yesterday. I'll post a link to my friend's standup routine when he actually puts it on the interwebs. It was a good time for all, I think. A group perfomed Finite Simple Group of Order Two . I love that song. <3! Additionally, a guy did violin beatboxing? I had seen fluteboxing, but this was something completely different (and completely awesome).

I realized that I never actually mentioned what I did on spring break! The Arkansas trip was nixed due to infighting, so Robbie Woerner and I decided to head to Florida with my family. This gave us a few days at home first (Venus had a doctor's appointment or something on Tuesday, so we planned to leave following that), which meant that there was some adventure to be had right away!

On Saturday, Venus asked me to lead her friends on a caving trip. I, um, didn't have any particular confidence in these particular friends, and I was very hesitant to take them. She insisted, though, so we went. (Hahaha, I think that I will avoid mentioning their names so that this ridiculous story won't ever show up in a Google search for them, funny though that would be.) I found the most obnoxiously pansy cave that I could to take them through, because they had never been underground before, and I didn't want them to be responsible for getting hurt.

Five minutes into the cave, we are walking in a less-than-ankle-deep stream. I am in front. We come to a fork. "We're going left," I say. Seconds later, one of Venus's friends does not, for some reason, turn right at the fork. She also didn't turn left. She simply walked her face straight into the wall. This, as you might imagine, led to bleeding. So we rushed her out of the cave.

The cut was tiny (about 1.5cm), so we cleaned it up and decided to do something else with the day in Bloomington: Chris (a friend visiting from Johns Hopkins) took us to a railroad trestle west of town. We wandered around by it, and on the way back to the car I heard a yell behind me. "We got a bleeder!" Chris.

"What the hell does that mean?" I asked.

"Get a towel!" my sister ran down the hill looking frantic.

"Oh, not again..." We grabbed towels and bandaids and all that good stuff and tried to fix the bleeding friend up again, this time while en route to the Emergency Room. Was her blood not clotting? What was the matter? I had no experience with this sort of stuff. When we were 95% of the way to the hospital, the other friend offered a meek comment, "I'm sorry... it was a knee-jerk reaction."

I looked skeptically at her in the rearview mirror. "What was a knee-jerk reaction?" It was explained to us that bleeding friend had been walking behind other friend and tapped her on the shoulder, and other friend's immediate reaction was to clock bleeding friend in the face and set off another spurt of hemoglobin. Wonderful. She didn't even merit stitches at the ER; just some glue. UGH.

Then there was a nice day of hiking on Sunday with Robbie and Venus, which actually led to a chance meeting with a high school teacher whom we all had for US Government who is now retired. That was a nice surprise. Monday was full of errands (I got my computer sent off to be fixed, got the oil changed on the car, and managed to get in a bit of shopping, during which I found a killer white vest), but there have to be days like that sometimes. Tuesday I spent essentially the entire day in the car between dropping Venus at the doctor's, picking up Robbie, realizing Robbie forgot his wallet and driving back to his house and then back to my house, and heading out for our trip. We made a stop at the Lodge Cast Iron store in Tennessee. I am now the proud owner of a cast iron brand in the shape of a V.

Florida was fun, but I think we did way too much driving. From Tuesday to Saturday we visited St. Augustine (the oldest city in the US, and we went on a ghost tour to learn some of the history), Boynton Beach (Mom has a friend there), Miami (Robbie and I got to go clubbing for a little while), Venice (fossilized sharks' teeth lie scattered along the beach for observant travelers to collect, plus the beach sand was perfect for running and playing Frisbee on), and St. Pete Beach (aka "St. Pete, Bitch" as per the signs: ST PETE BCH). There was more time in the car than fun in the sun, but it wasn't a bad trip overall. :)

I guess that was a longer summary than I had intended, but... well, you know.

home sweet home

I can't stay away

From ERs, it seems, even

When I am at home.

Evidently, I should listen to my gut.  A while ago, Venus asked me to arrange a caving trip for her and a couple of her friends, girls I had known from when I was still in high school.  Based on who they were, I was a little hesitant to take them on a trip; they had been rather girly when I had known them before.  I was assured that things would be fine, and I decided that I could take them through the wimpiest cave I knew.  Little did I know that it wasn't wimpy enough.  On walking through a stream, one of her friends ran her face into a wall and started bleeding.  We went to the ER.  The cut was only 1.5cm long, so it didn't even require stitches, but she got it glued (?) shut.

In other news, I am home for Spring Break!  The Arkansas plans got nixed, but Robbie and I are going to go with my parents and sister to the Carolinas/Virginias/Washington.  It should be a fun time.  :)  I've been enjoying relaxing, though.  I watched a couple pretty sweet movies: Idiocracy and I'm a Cyborg, But That's Okay.  The first was sort of depressing in its humour, but it was definitely hilarious.  The second was an interesting imported movie from Korea that was on our On-Demand channel.  The bunny guy was so sweet.  I think I need a Rice-Megatron, though: I may be a cyborg.

What else.... oh, Robbie, Venus, and I went hiking today and ran into Mr. Nay.  That was pretty random.  Amusingly, it was at Hesitation Point (in Brown County State Park).

And happy Pi Day!  Well, it was yesterday, and I missed out on the pie, but I still feel that the well-wishings are valid.  ;)

basically awesome

Cooking at last! And

I get to see Georgia!  What

A term it will be!

It's so much more awesome already.  I actually get to see the girl I'm living with!  Mary's still pretty nonpresent, but Georgia and I have been spending a lot of time together cooking, computering, homeworking, and generally hanging out.  Tonight we're off to a formal, hooray!

Not to mention the other awesomenesses: the fact that I actually get to see my own house during daylight hours is crazy.  And it isn't just because the days are getting longer!  Sean's going to have ridiculous amounts of cave trips and other adventures this term, I think, since it's his last before he jets off to grad school who-knows-where.  Last night we took a trip to a cave just west of town that didn't really have nice rock formations (people had been through and destroyed them), but in the entrance where it was below freezing there were some amazing ice formations.  I think he'll be putting up those pictures later; I'll post a link if I remember to.  And Carlo seems excited to find some adventures, too.  A trip to the Creationist museum may be in store.  I can't wait to see a mural of people riding on velociraptors.

These classes are pretty sweet, too.  I wish I had learned Scheme the right way the first time; I resented it until this semester, really.  But now that I see how just nice it is, I can't help but be in love.  Damnit, Dylan, you were right.   :s

Anyway, I'm off to prepare!  My first real dressing-up with short hair!  :D

underground

Buried in the earth,

Endless water carvings lie,

Waiting to be found.

Southern Indiana may not have world-class dining, clubs, or musical venues.  It may be that hardly anyone here has ever heard an opera, spoken to a politician, or been outside the Midwest (as I meet more and more people who haven't, I'm continually astonished), but there is something to be said about caving here.  It's world-class.  A lot of people you wouldn't expect have experienced it.  I learned today that some 300,000 people have been through Buckner's.  That's probably why it's in such terrible shape today, but oh well.

Anyway, today I went on a caving trip through a system I've never been through before.  It was a rush!  We (the IU Caving Club) went through Donaldson and Bronson caves in Spring Mill Park, which isn't far from here.  I've never been through such a wet cave before; there were a couple parts that required out-and-out swimming, which is really hard in cave gear.  Sean lent me one of his wetsuits for the trip, which I was REALLY grateful for.  He and I actually explored a little side passage that involved crawling through an 18" high passageway that was half-full of water for about 50 yards.  Frigid water.  The other end, though, was a pretty neat, big, open room.  He said that we were among about 20 people to have been in there; it had only been discovered recently.  w00t!  Exploration!

He also led me up to a little rock ledge that didn't really go anywhere, but it had a couple of neat formations at the top.  The climb up there, as well as climbs in other parts of the cave, tested my parkour skillz.  ;)  I skipped their practice to go caving today, so that was good, haha.

I learned a few things on the caving trip:

don't forget a wetsuit if you're going to get wet

wearing crappy jeans is good, but wearing jeans without knees can get you beat up

test rocks before you try to use them to hold your weight

all water has to go somewhere and come from somewhere

What else recently.. umm.. oh, for my current B490 project my partner and I are writing Number Munchers.  Super awesome, haha!  Homework hasn't kept me as busy as I figured it would, but... there's still a lot of it.  I have some Modern Algebra to finish up, actually, so I'm going to have to shove off.  Oh, but I should mention that this week was the career fair, and I got an offer to interview with Microsoft.  Whee!  And tomorrow should bring some further adventures!

gah!

It's never too soon

To get knocked flat on your ass,

And that's what happened.

As concerned as I was on Wednesday about not having enough work to do this semester, I am now equally as concerned in the other direction.  Well, I was yesterday.  I've chilled out a little since then.  But B490 (the grad design patterns class) is going to be FIERCE.  I'm really excited about it, and the prof is convinced that I'll do well... but it's going to be epic.  Our first assignment is to write a game for Monday.  Keep in mind that that was an assignment that spanned an entire semester for me in the Spring.  :s

My other classes seem okay.  Tae Kwon Do is going to be odd... I mean, we have to write a paper?  What?  So I'm going to sign up for taking that pass/fail.  It's a frickin HPER class.  Not worth the effort of writing a paper.  The Putnam course will be challenging, though not nearly so time-consuming as design patterns.  My algorithms class will be interesting, but easy.  My prof for modern algebra was in Canada during our first classtime, so I haven't actually experienced that yet.

Other things this semester!  I signed up for a couple of caving trips with the IU Caving Club.  Super!  And this Saturday Jeff and I are going to try our hands (and arms, and legs, and feet, and ankles, and skillz) at a parkour meet.  Hmm!  I can't wait!