good and evil

Who knows what evil

Lurks in the hearts of men?  You,

If you keep awatch.

As I was standing at the bus stop today in the freezing cold and rain (I had just finished a soccer game, too, so I was totally inappropriately attired in shorts and a t-shirt), a man with an umbrella walked up to me and offered to share.  "Save your hair," he said, "and you must be freezing.  This umbrella is big enough for two."

It turned out that he was a professor in the Geology department, and we actually knew a few of the same people via my (albeit spotty) participations in caving club.  I had lost some of my faith in humanity after watching Slumdog Millionaire last night, but it was restored by a little Indian man with an umbrella.

some thoughts

Now that I'm back in
School, I can ponder stuff like
This. And share it, too!

I went to a talk earlier this week by one of the profs in the CS department (man, the honors seminar at IU is pretty awesome): Eli Blevis. He talked to us about all the tech junk that computers and stuff are generating; even washing machines have brains now, and when a consumer doesn't know how to fix it (and sometimes even techs don't know!), washing machines will get replaced. The whole machine. When all one really needs is probably one part that's maybe 8" long.

Eli also talked about other areas of sustainability. He and his wife live in town, but they grow almost all of their own food in a garden, and they have creative ways of recycling things that they can't produce on their own. Bloomington actually has several interesting sites for this; along 446 there is a toilet, well-known to the denizens of this area, with flowers peeking out of its bowl.

Eli started his work before everyone was green fatigued. He wrote the first paper on sustainability in computer hardware. Ironic that he flew all over the world to present it.

It's shocking to me how little people think about all this stuff. I mean, I guess it's a little more to the forefront of people's minds in a community like Bloomington that is basically the closest Indiana may get to a hippie commune, but so many people in so many places don't give it a second thought at all. People replace their cell phones on average every 17 months? That's ridiculous. One guy who attended the seminar on Monday has had twelve cell phones in three years. That is *obscene*, mmkay? I get my cell phone replaced every two years like a good kid. I've had my laptop for almost 3 years. Do I really want that new gaming rig? Well, yes. But I probably don't need it. Our society of keeping up with the Joneses is rife with rapidly diminishing satisfaction with technology. I wish people didn't have this crazy desire to be above-and-beyond better than other people. :-/

event

Can it be?  Really?

People in my office now?

How did that happen?

Haha, it's an event!  I was just sitting in my office hours today, unsuspecting, and, suddenly, 3 PEOPLE CAME IN.  Crazy, I know.

And I am a fan of Punxutawney Phil's predilection for predicting 6 more weeks of winter weather.  <3!!

Additionally, Georgia is now an author on this blog, so hopefully there will be some differently-opined content on here shortly.  :D

in

Back to Bloomington,
But I miss California.
At least I'm not bored.

So now all my stuff's in the apartment, which is pretty cool, I suppose. My room is massive (yay!), and Mom and Dad managed to help me get a box spring and a desk in just our little Matrix. I was pretty impressed.

We're all here now, too, which is nice. I don't know how Georgia survived the last week here by herself. I guess she had her newts? Anyway, we haven't had much time to catch up about our summers yet. I was woefully out of contact with them, and everyone else back here. Mary didn't get in until this evening, and then she went over to Colin's, so it was short-lived. Georgia's already abed.

We did get to have dinner together, though. The first meal I cooked in the apartment! It was just pasta and sweet corn, but that's the stuff that college is made of, right? I think Georgia and I are going to make spring rolls together tomorrow, which is pretty exciting. I'm curious how my social life will be different now that I'm living off-campus.

Tomorrow we're going to get paint for the living room (green) and the kitchen (yellow). I want to paint my room, but I wasn't sure exactly how I wanted it done. I'm pretty sure--enough that I already bought spray paint--that I want to reserve the back wall of my room for graffiti. I've never actually graffitied (sp?) anything before, so that should be interesting. After making the stencil for and spray painting my DEFCON laptop this summer, I wanted to try the real deal. I'm toying with the idea of letting visitors graffiti, too. I think that would be fun. I mean, you can write on a Facebook wall, why not write on a real wall? Hmm. I'm concerned about ventilation in my room, though.

Man, I feel so silly and girly saying this, but I really miss the friends I made in California. :( It's going to be excruciating waiting until October to see them. I need to find new people to adventure with, I guess. But every time someone says, "Delicious!" and I think, "and nutritious!", it's a pretty sad reminder. Ditto hearing the word "goat," seeing Segway lawn mowers, thinking about math, using my DEFCON laptop, holding Kung Fu Panda, riding my bike, wearing my Google apparel, ... Maybe I'll forget some of it as the year wears on and I find other entertainments for myself. I don't know whether I hope for that or not.

Ummm... yeah. I got a Wii this morning, which was pretty exciting. With Mario Party 8! ^___^ Now we just need a TV to play it on, haha. We're not getting internet until Wednesday morning, so it's going to be a few more days of biking back and forth to campus to get my fix. I've been keeping busy with unpacking and decorating and reading, though, so I guess it's not all bad.

Anyhow, it's been a pretty long day. I sleep with my shades up, so the sun woke me up pretty early. And I've still got 10 minutes or so of bike ride to get back home.