Why keep jokes to fields
Where only crass comments live?
Let's extend to more!
I don't know why, but I've never heard a CS-related "yo mamma" joke. I can't think why this would be. We all have decent senses of humour, right? So if you've ever heard one, please share. I figured I would make a couple contributions to start off:
Yo mamma so big, she wouldn't fit on your 1.5TB RAID5 harddrive.
Yo mamma so dumb, she don't know the difference between a heat sink and a float.
4.14.2009
4.13.2009
days go by
I'm too lazy to
Write a real post, so I'll just
Write a few haikus.
Friend requests, messages,
Too many to leave me sane.
Why do I do this?
College students march,
A rainbow of umbrellas,
Hunched against the rain.
Winding down, slide with
The flow. Grades will come, just sit
Back, relax, enjoy.
Easter food heavy
In my belly, but it gives
Energy for fun!
Sustainabili-
ty is too long to fit in
Just five syllables.
Green tech, green campus,
Lectures about them abound,
Sustain IU week!
Pink petals poke up
Colouring campus coyly
Suggesting a sniff.
Write a real post, so I'll just
Write a few haikus.
Friend requests, messages,
Too many to leave me sane.
Why do I do this?
College students march,
A rainbow of umbrellas,
Hunched against the rain.
Winding down, slide with
The flow. Grades will come, just sit
Back, relax, enjoy.
Easter food heavy
In my belly, but it gives
Energy for fun!
Sustainabili-
ty is too long to fit in
Just five syllables.
Green tech, green campus,
Lectures about them abound,
Sustain IU week!
Pink petals poke up
Colouring campus coyly
Suggesting a sniff.
4.10.2009
food and films
Redolent of youth,
Concocting with Dad, now I
Strike forth with my friends.
In the grand tradition of Thursday cooking night, Georgia and I whipped up a heart-shaped pizza last night. She has pictures of it, and I hope she posts them. *nudge, nudge* But it was delicious and super-easy. I still don't have my dad's dough techniques quite down, but it would be hard to really get them exactly since he doesn't measure and I don't measure and it, er, wouldn't really work.
The flick of choice was Porco Rosso, one of the Ghibli movies I hadn't seen yet. It chronicles the adventures of Porco (formerly Marco): an Italian seaplane pilot who has been turned into a pig and now lives as a bounty hunter. It was cute! I think my favourite part was a scene between a quietly beautiful Italian woman and an obnoxious American man, during which she laughed gleefully at his claim that he was the best pilot in the Adriatic, defending her giggling with, "I find your humility to be quite charming."
In other news... well, there isn't much other news. I am signing up for classes. I kind of hate the permissions systems for signups, as I discovered and elaborated on during a discussion with Evan. I mean, it's cool that IU wants people in the classes who are capable of doing the work, but I'm pretty sure that it's a fairly good self-correcting system, no? I can't think of many people who would stay in a class that they were failing or that they had no idea what was going on in. And it's a massive hassle for people like me who learned stuff outside of school and who need to go through ridiculous administrivia just to end up in the proper place. >:| Oh well. At least this is the last time I'll have to jump through those hoops (hopefully)!
Concocting with Dad, now I
Strike forth with my friends.
In the grand tradition of Thursday cooking night, Georgia and I whipped up a heart-shaped pizza last night. She has pictures of it, and I hope she posts them. *nudge, nudge* But it was delicious and super-easy. I still don't have my dad's dough techniques quite down, but it would be hard to really get them exactly since he doesn't measure and I don't measure and it, er, wouldn't really work.
The flick of choice was Porco Rosso, one of the Ghibli movies I hadn't seen yet. It chronicles the adventures of Porco (formerly Marco): an Italian seaplane pilot who has been turned into a pig and now lives as a bounty hunter. It was cute! I think my favourite part was a scene between a quietly beautiful Italian woman and an obnoxious American man, during which she laughed gleefully at his claim that he was the best pilot in the Adriatic, defending her giggling with, "I find your humility to be quite charming."
In other news... well, there isn't much other news. I am signing up for classes. I kind of hate the permissions systems for signups, as I discovered and elaborated on during a discussion with Evan. I mean, it's cool that IU wants people in the classes who are capable of doing the work, but I'm pretty sure that it's a fairly good self-correcting system, no? I can't think of many people who would stay in a class that they were failing or that they had no idea what was going on in. And it's a massive hassle for people like me who learned stuff outside of school and who need to go through ridiculous administrivia just to end up in the proper place. >:| Oh well. At least this is the last time I'll have to jump through those hoops (hopefully)!
4.08.2009
sports
No longer teasing,
Spring is here to (probably)
Stay. Feel the season!
With warm weather comes time for physical activity! Thus far I've done some Frisbee, soccer, and Parkour, but I think that I've discovered a new sport: trying to get from one end of campus to another without getting accosted by all those folks who are scheming for my money. Observe my ugly art:
Anyway, I think it might catch on. I'm becoming quite proficient at it myself.
Spring is here to (probably)
Stay. Feel the season!
With warm weather comes time for physical activity! Thus far I've done some Frisbee, soccer, and Parkour, but I think that I've discovered a new sport: trying to get from one end of campus to another without getting accosted by all those folks who are scheming for my money. Observe my ugly art:
Anyway, I think it might catch on. I'm becoming quite proficient at it myself.
4.07.2009
something interesting
Our wants, needs, and times,
They are a'changin, but can
We really skimp those??
So what is it that sells well in a recession? I was reading an article in this week's Time that addressed specifically that question. It gives answers that you might expect: canned goods and fresh produce, for instance. It also gives answers that you might not expect: family planning (mainly condoms) and "seasonal general merchandise," whatever that is (they say that it includes things like road salt, decorations, Valentine's gifts, etc., but I just think it's a silly term).
What doesn't sell well? A lot of people have stopped buying junk food as much, according to this article, including cookies and ice cream. They've also cut back on purchasing... feminine hygiene products?? In the physical magazine, though apparently not on the site, there is a chart of the top 20 best-performing items and the bottom 20 worst-performing items. The unit sales of feminine hygiene products has dropped 12.6% since last year. Now, how the hell do you cut out 12.6% of your use of that stuff? I wonder if more of the population is turning to transgender surgery? Perhaps there is more job security if you are a man? I don't understand. A friend speculated that perhaps it also is related to the fact that the Baby Boomers are now going through menopause, but I don't feel like that could account for more than 12 percentage points of noise. That's plain crazy.
They are a'changin, but can
We really skimp those??
So what is it that sells well in a recession? I was reading an article in this week's Time that addressed specifically that question. It gives answers that you might expect: canned goods and fresh produce, for instance. It also gives answers that you might not expect: family planning (mainly condoms) and "seasonal general merchandise," whatever that is (they say that it includes things like road salt, decorations, Valentine's gifts, etc., but I just think it's a silly term).
What doesn't sell well? A lot of people have stopped buying junk food as much, according to this article, including cookies and ice cream. They've also cut back on purchasing... feminine hygiene products?? In the physical magazine, though apparently not on the site, there is a chart of the top 20 best-performing items and the bottom 20 worst-performing items. The unit sales of feminine hygiene products has dropped 12.6% since last year. Now, how the hell do you cut out 12.6% of your use of that stuff? I wonder if more of the population is turning to transgender surgery? Perhaps there is more job security if you are a man? I don't understand. A friend speculated that perhaps it also is related to the fact that the Baby Boomers are now going through menopause, but I don't feel like that could account for more than 12 percentage points of noise. That's plain crazy.
4.06.2009
a few things i've learned
Ninjas (or ninjae?)
Come from wise masters, failure,
And dedication.
And, you know, some other things. Time's pretty important. Anyway, I have been experimenting with my sharp new Ubuntu install, and it's way fun. I haven't really used Linux as a desktop environment except during my time at Google, and being at work sort of precluded playing around with all the nifty things that it can do. I took the GRE on Saturday morning, and I think that the few weeks that I've had this thing to play with actually improved my score by a couple points, haha.
It's intriguing to me to learn the things that people think are cool about computers. On Friday I was on a panel for undergrad women who are interested in Computer Science, for example. Sarah Loos, who lived/worked/blogged with me last summer, and I tried to get the girls excited about, you know, interesting algorithms and stuff we worked on at Google, deep ideas about computational complexity, blah blah blah, but their interest was only really sparked when I offhandedly mentioned that I had a) given up Facebook for Lent and b) written a script to block me from it and allow me to access it again once Easter arrived.
"Can you really do that? Wow! What class do you learn that in?"
"Um.. well, to be honest I sort of taught that to myself. But It was the foundations that I got in my CS classes that let me do it, really."
Yeah, so it was sort of bullshit. It's really trivial, actually, to add a line to your hosts file and write a cron job to remove that line on 4/12. But they just thought it was the coolest thing. :)
Oh, I guess that's only one thing I've learned, and this is entitled "a few things i've learned." What else, then... I wrote a script that will verify that an ISO burned properly to a CD (thanks, once more, to the internets!), I've discovered the joys of aliasing commands:
$ alias ls='echo muahahahah'
$ ls
muahahahah
(super fun to do if people forget to lock their screens in the lab, but I have useful aliases, too ;) ), I've set up nifty passwordless logins to the computers at school, and a few other things, probably. Those are the ones that come to mind, anyway.
Come from wise masters, failure,
And dedication.
And, you know, some other things. Time's pretty important. Anyway, I have been experimenting with my sharp new Ubuntu install, and it's way fun. I haven't really used Linux as a desktop environment except during my time at Google, and being at work sort of precluded playing around with all the nifty things that it can do. I took the GRE on Saturday morning, and I think that the few weeks that I've had this thing to play with actually improved my score by a couple points, haha.
It's intriguing to me to learn the things that people think are cool about computers. On Friday I was on a panel for undergrad women who are interested in Computer Science, for example. Sarah Loos, who lived/worked/blogged with me last summer, and I tried to get the girls excited about, you know, interesting algorithms and stuff we worked on at Google, deep ideas about computational complexity, blah blah blah, but their interest was only really sparked when I offhandedly mentioned that I had a) given up Facebook for Lent and b) written a script to block me from it and allow me to access it again once Easter arrived.
"Can you really do that? Wow! What class do you learn that in?"
"Um.. well, to be honest I sort of taught that to myself. But It was the foundations that I got in my CS classes that let me do it, really."
Yeah, so it was sort of bullshit. It's really trivial, actually, to add a line to your hosts file and write a cron job to remove that line on 4/12. But they just thought it was the coolest thing. :)
Oh, I guess that's only one thing I've learned, and this is entitled "a few things i've learned." What else, then... I wrote a script that will verify that an ISO burned properly to a CD (thanks, once more, to the internets!), I've discovered the joys of aliasing commands:
$ alias ls='echo muahahahah'
$ ls
muahahahah
(super fun to do if people forget to lock their screens in the lab, but I have useful aliases, too ;) ), I've set up nifty passwordless logins to the computers at school, and a few other things, probably. Those are the ones that come to mind, anyway.
4.05.2009
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.
meetings
"Hi, I'm Valkyrie,"
"Valkyrie Savage? I've heard
Of you!" "Um.. what? How?"
The thing is, this happens to me a lot. I was talking to Sarah about it the other day, and she commented that it's probably a consequence of the fact that I know a lot of people in a lot of places, and the, er, fact that my name is "Valkyrie Savage", such that in any given group of people among whom one or two know me, probably all but one or two actually know me and the remaining ones are almost certain to remember my name. I've been meeting a lot of people this weekend. I haven't done that for a while, I guess. I'm a bit worn out of the usual banter:
"Your name's 'Valkyrie Savage'? a) I don't believe you! b) That's awesome!" (P(a) = .25)
"c) Well, I mean, I can grab my ID or something. Honest to God, that's my name. d) Haha, thanks. I hear that a lot." (a -> c ∧ b -> d)
In addition to meeting slews of new people (including 3 Johns and 2 Marks) in a couple days, I've definitely been keeping busy. I took the GRE yesterday morning! It wasn't as tough as I expected. I mean, it was tough (I didn't answer all the questions, but you're not really expected to be able to... I think that a 40/70 gets you about at the 80th percentile, and I answered 56... so I should have a decent shot at something respectable.), but I think I did alright. Considering the fact that I haven't had a class on networks or compilers, nor have I had a serious class on computer architectures or operating systems. :-/ Maybe I'll retake it in the fall after I glean some knowledge from the Networks and OS classes I'm taking then? I dunno.
Speaking of classes in the fall! I am pretty sure of what I'm taking, but I still am conflicted on what fun course I should fill it out with. What I know is this:
Computer Networks
Operating Systems
Topology
Analysis
It's going to be intense. Networks and Topology are grad courses, Analysis is an honors 400-level course, and Operating Systems and Networks are both P courses, which basically means that I will be programming at all times I am not sleeping. Or proving.
Anyway, the fun courses that I'm thinking about:
Scuba Certification
Piano
Middle Eastern Dance
Hapkido
Jeet Kun Do
It's a tough choice, I know. ;)
I went, also, to a talk by Doug Hofstadter yesterday. He's actually the professor for one of my classes, but he's super cool to listen to. He talked about how AI is advancing... but not really viable yet. I guess one of his colleagues said that computers would be conversant by 2010. So... umm.. watch for that? Haha. Maybe.
I saw Slumdog Millionaire finally, too. It wasn't as good as everyone said, I guess? I mean, I liked it, for sure, but I don't think I'd've given it Best Picture. I liked WALL-E better. Oh well. That's why I'm not in Hollywood.
Anyway, I have a soccer game to get geared up for. Go Grass Kickers!
"Valkyrie Savage? I've heard
Of you!" "Um.. what? How?"
The thing is, this happens to me a lot. I was talking to Sarah about it the other day, and she commented that it's probably a consequence of the fact that I know a lot of people in a lot of places, and the, er, fact that my name is "Valkyrie Savage", such that in any given group of people among whom one or two know me, probably all but one or two actually know me and the remaining ones are almost certain to remember my name. I've been meeting a lot of people this weekend. I haven't done that for a while, I guess. I'm a bit worn out of the usual banter:
"Your name's 'Valkyrie Savage'? a) I don't believe you! b) That's awesome!" (P(a) = .25)
"c) Well, I mean, I can grab my ID or something. Honest to God, that's my name. d) Haha, thanks. I hear that a lot." (a -> c ∧ b -> d)
In addition to meeting slews of new people (including 3 Johns and 2 Marks) in a couple days, I've definitely been keeping busy. I took the GRE yesterday morning! It wasn't as tough as I expected. I mean, it was tough (I didn't answer all the questions, but you're not really expected to be able to... I think that a 40/70 gets you about at the 80th percentile, and I answered 56... so I should have a decent shot at something respectable.), but I think I did alright. Considering the fact that I haven't had a class on networks or compilers, nor have I had a serious class on computer architectures or operating systems. :-/ Maybe I'll retake it in the fall after I glean some knowledge from the Networks and OS classes I'm taking then? I dunno.
Speaking of classes in the fall! I am pretty sure of what I'm taking, but I still am conflicted on what fun course I should fill it out with. What I know is this:
Computer Networks
Operating Systems
Topology
Analysis
It's going to be intense. Networks and Topology are grad courses, Analysis is an honors 400-level course, and Operating Systems and Networks are both P courses, which basically means that I will be programming at all times I am not sleeping. Or proving.
Anyway, the fun courses that I'm thinking about:
Scuba Certification
Piano
Middle Eastern Dance
Hapkido
Jeet Kun Do
It's a tough choice, I know. ;)
I went, also, to a talk by Doug Hofstadter yesterday. He's actually the professor for one of my classes, but he's super cool to listen to. He talked about how AI is advancing... but not really viable yet. I guess one of his colleagues said that computers would be conversant by 2010. So... umm.. watch for that? Haha. Maybe.
I saw Slumdog Millionaire finally, too. It wasn't as good as everyone said, I guess? I mean, I liked it, for sure, but I don't think I'd've given it Best Picture. I liked WALL-E better. Oh well. That's why I'm not in Hollywood.
Anyway, I have a soccer game to get geared up for. Go Grass Kickers!
4.01.2009
style pains
Ow ow ow ow ow
Owie owie owie ow
Ouchie owie ow.
So maybe this wasn't as worth it as I thought. I guess the pain didn't last long, and it didn't cost much, but I've been getting some weird looks. I suppose no one will ever not think I'm a nerd now. :P *item getting music plays*
I actually think it's kind of cool. After Georgia and Jeff got their tattoos, I started thinking about why I didn't have one. I couldn't come up with a good reason, but I just couldn't find anything sufficiently nerdy that "normal" people could still relate to. I thought about Pikachu for a while, but that stage in my life has passed, I think. I had to go more old school.
Yeah, it will be annoying to keep it clean for the next few days, but at least I don't have to keep the bandages on. The redness went away surprisingly quickly.
I think my mom might freak out, though. At least it won't be as bad as when I tell her that I am pregnant with twins from a guy I met at the club in Miami. Or when I tell her that I got cast as the motorcycle stunt double in the movie I auditioned for. It probably won't even be as bad as when she finds out that I have been hanging out with my friends in the Chemistry lab and accidentally melted my cell phone.
p.s. Happy April Fools Day.
3.30.2009
link as promised
Haha, good jokes. I
Like to hear them, but I am still
Learning to make them.
Carlo's routine, if you think you can take it.
Like to hear them, but I am still
Learning to make them.
Carlo's routine, if you think you can take it.
3.29.2009
Veganism!
It's exciting stuff. I made the transformation from vegetarian to vegan only about two weeks ago, but it's been pretty exciting stuff.
Even when I was vegetarian, people who were vegan seemed somewhat like wacko extremists. No yogurt, cheese, milk, eggs, butter? Really? How in the world would someone have that kind of self discipline and drive. I mean, restaurants everywhere use things like butter in their cooking. I just didn't have the drive to make such a change. Sure, sometimes, during the year or so before I became vegan, the thought of drinking milk some days would gross me out. I'd think of calves being fed a combination of milk, hormones, antibiotics, and the blood of other cows and we too grossed out to touch the stuff for the next few days. But I love cheese, I love mint chocolate chip ice cream, and I especially love goldfish crackers. The idea of giving these things up long term was something I couldn't even think about.
Then I read a book called Skinny Bitch, which you've probably seen or heard of even if you don't remember it. It's full of quite a few flaws in reasoning and other errors, but it did compile everything bad I've ever learned about the meat/dairy/egg industry in one nice little place where I was forced to read it all. Even though the sources they quote throughout the book are often less than reputable (PETA, for example), BUT everything int hat book about animal factory farms I had heard somewhere before, I just really hadn't compiled the information together and been confronted with it directly. The quotes in the book from people who had worked or were currently working in these facilities were horrifying. Shoving tasers up pigs' butts? Gross. Pulling horses out of transport vehicles they they become frozen to, ripping off their skin? Gross. I'll stop writing about the bad stuff for now because to be honest I don't like thinking about it, and who would?
On a happier note, which I meant this entire post to be on, I feel so alive and full of energy. I eat way better than I did before. Vegetables take just as long to steam as a frozen dinner takes to heat up. I don't worry about calories or anything, just making things taste good in a vegan way, and boy does food taste great when you put some time into it! I'm also blessed by the fact that I'm in college and the surrounding grocery stores cater to local, organic, vegetarian, and vegan preferences. I realize that most grocery stores don't carry "Rice Dream" ice cream, which has a delish mint chocolate swirl flavor, soy yogurt, or even vegan butter. Whatever will I do when I move? But for now I'm content in the fact that I haven't had to give up any of my favorite foods, just find substitutes for them.
-Georgia
Even when I was vegetarian, people who were vegan seemed somewhat like wacko extremists. No yogurt, cheese, milk, eggs, butter? Really? How in the world would someone have that kind of self discipline and drive. I mean, restaurants everywhere use things like butter in their cooking. I just didn't have the drive to make such a change. Sure, sometimes, during the year or so before I became vegan, the thought of drinking milk some days would gross me out. I'd think of calves being fed a combination of milk, hormones, antibiotics, and the blood of other cows and we too grossed out to touch the stuff for the next few days. But I love cheese, I love mint chocolate chip ice cream, and I especially love goldfish crackers. The idea of giving these things up long term was something I couldn't even think about.
Then I read a book called Skinny Bitch, which you've probably seen or heard of even if you don't remember it. It's full of quite a few flaws in reasoning and other errors, but it did compile everything bad I've ever learned about the meat/dairy/egg industry in one nice little place where I was forced to read it all. Even though the sources they quote throughout the book are often less than reputable (PETA, for example), BUT everything int hat book about animal factory farms I had heard somewhere before, I just really hadn't compiled the information together and been confronted with it directly. The quotes in the book from people who had worked or were currently working in these facilities were horrifying. Shoving tasers up pigs' butts? Gross. Pulling horses out of transport vehicles they they become frozen to, ripping off their skin? Gross. I'll stop writing about the bad stuff for now because to be honest I don't like thinking about it, and who would?
On a happier note, which I meant this entire post to be on, I feel so alive and full of energy. I eat way better than I did before. Vegetables take just as long to steam as a frozen dinner takes to heat up. I don't worry about calories or anything, just making things taste good in a vegan way, and boy does food taste great when you put some time into it! I'm also blessed by the fact that I'm in college and the surrounding grocery stores cater to local, organic, vegetarian, and vegan preferences. I realize that most grocery stores don't carry "Rice Dream" ice cream, which has a delish mint chocolate swirl flavor, soy yogurt, or even vegan butter. Whatever will I do when I move? But for now I'm content in the fact that I haven't had to give up any of my favorite foods, just find substitutes for them.
-Georgia
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:
: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.
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.
3.26.2009
re: last post
Dag, yo. That's crazy
Stuff happenin' there. Am I
That bad a person?
Well, I mean, I'm not *bad*, but my curiosity got the better of me as I thought about that last post and I decided to calculate my carbon footprint since January 1, 2008. 7.96 tonnes of CO2??? Ouch! I think that it probably has mostly to do with all the flying that I do; just the trip to Tokyo was 1.96 tonnes... :-/ Maybe I'll stay home more... oh, wait, I'm going to Germany. Scratch that.
So I'm sorta bummed about that, but I did get extra points from the calculator for being a vegetarian, not owning a car, and doing mostly walking and biking. Although I think I remember reading somewhere that walking is actually worse for the environment than driving, assuming that all your food energy comes from meat. Meat comes from a long way away...
So I guess I'm going to work on improving that. I'm about 2x what the world goal is, but I'm (both happily and sadly, I guess) only about 1/3 of what the US average is. Hmmmmmmmmm. Rugged individualism!
Stuff happenin' there. Am I
That bad a person?
Well, I mean, I'm not *bad*, but my curiosity got the better of me as I thought about that last post and I decided to calculate my carbon footprint since January 1, 2008. 7.96 tonnes of CO2??? Ouch! I think that it probably has mostly to do with all the flying that I do; just the trip to Tokyo was 1.96 tonnes... :-/ Maybe I'll stay home more... oh, wait, I'm going to Germany. Scratch that.
So I'm sorta bummed about that, but I did get extra points from the calculator for being a vegetarian, not owning a car, and doing mostly walking and biking. Although I think I remember reading somewhere that walking is actually worse for the environment than driving, assuming that all your food energy comes from meat. Meat comes from a long way away...
So I guess I'm going to work on improving that. I'm about 2x what the world goal is, but I'm (both happily and sadly, I guess) only about 1/3 of what the US average is. Hmmmmmmmmm. Rugged individualism!
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. :-/
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. :-/
3.23.2009
vacation with ponce de leon and gandhi
I roll with them, those
Crazy famous dead folk, all
The way in Flor'da.
Crazy famous dead folk, all
The way in Flor'da.
3.15.2009
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. ;)
3.11.2009
germany!
I can't adventure
Enough during school, but in
The summer? For sure!
Just this morning I received an email from the DAAD-RISE program that I applied to many moons ago, and they told me that I've been accepted as an intern for the summer! That means that I'll be heading to Germany in mid-May and coming back stateside in mid-August. The work will be at a university in Darmstadt, a town (or city?) just outside Frankfurt. I have lots of research to do before I get there, though; I don't know the first thing about work visas or apartment-hunting in other countries or train passes or driving internationally or... well, the list goes on.
Anyway, I'm sure that I'll be posting more about that as summer approaches. Right now I've got some PL homework to do. *sigh*
Enough during school, but in
The summer? For sure!
Just this morning I received an email from the DAAD-RISE program that I applied to many moons ago, and they told me that I've been accepted as an intern for the summer! That means that I'll be heading to Germany in mid-May and coming back stateside in mid-August. The work will be at a university in Darmstadt, a town (or city?) just outside Frankfurt. I have lots of research to do before I get there, though; I don't know the first thing about work visas or apartment-hunting in other countries or train passes or driving internationally or... well, the list goes on.
Anyway, I'm sure that I'll be posting more about that as summer approaches. Right now I've got some PL homework to do. *sigh*
3.08.2009
winnings!
Losing an hour,
Doesn't take away THAT much
Excitement from me.
It's important to take things as they come, and when a beautiful day comes along, it is important to take it! So yesterday I pretty much wrote off the entire day to enjoyment. I had stayed up late Friday night (Sean and I went to see Watchmen, which was a lot better than I expected, and then I got sucked into a game of Settlers of Catan with Evan over the internets, in which I totally pwned him ;), so I woke up around 11, ate breakfast, and went to parkour! Although I haven't been to it in some time, I noticed that I was a lot better at wall climbs. Presumably that is due to the fact that Roy and I have been training pullups. Woot!
In addition, I went hiking in the Dean Wilderness yesterday with Jaimie and a few of his friends (I knew two of them, Ronak and Jess, but the third, Sara(h?) was new to me). It was gorgeous, and we climbed the fire tower there. We also wandered down to the lake to search for fossils and watch the sunset. On the way down there, there was a burned-down house that was still partially standing; the fireplace/chimney and lower floor walls remained. So we climbed the chimney and poked around in the ruins a little.
After hiking, I went with Roy to the Union to see Milk, a film about the first openly gay man to serve in a high public office. It was really good! It's super sad how people treat(ed) homosexuals during that time. Hard to believe that just 30 years ago people were being denied housing and jobs just because of sexual orientation. Even harder to believe that they still get treated that way sometimes today.
Then, on to Max's place to watch Iuri (my capoeira instructor)'s band play. They had a really awesome hiphop/reggae/rock(?) thing going on. It was hard music to dance to, though, at least for me. I don't really rock out to that stuff very often.
Later, Atomic Age Cinema! I had heard of this previously, but I had also been told that it was for the 21 and up crowd, which, though disheartening, didn't surprise me. Anyway, I didn't ever look into it until last night. Basically, at a theatre here called the Cinemat there is something like "Mystery Science Theater 3000" live. A horrible movie is screened, and four guys dress up in ridiculous costumes (Dr. Calamari, for instance) and mock it, and anyone is welcome to join in. The movie last night was "Death Bed: The Bed that Eats." It was a rather enjoyable film about a bed that dissolved people in yellow digestive acid that quite resembled beer.
Today I've done real work... well, mostly. I finally hooked up with Chris Beckley for the first time in months, and we went to Gum Boot dancing lessons. I guess his logic teacher runs them. Anyway, Gum Boot dancing is based off of communications developed between miners in Africa. It's a whole lot of boot slapping and -stomping. I enjoyed myself, despite the fact that I was, in a word, terrible.
Now I think I'll go explore some of the weird stores around here that I've never been to. The big Sahara Mart is something that I'm pretty anxious to explore. I also noticed that I pretty desperately need new shoes for parkour, so maybe I'll check out things to that end, as well.
3.06.2009
losings
DAYLIGHT SAVINGS TIME???
Willy-nilly change the clocks...
What the hell's the point?
I don't understand why Indiana switched to having daylight savings time. It has to be a hassle for businesses, right? Paying people for an hour they don't work in the spring, paying people overtime for an hour they work twice in the fall? Plus it's just weird, and I don't see why anyone cares what clock hour the sun comes up at.
On that note, what's up with timezones? I can understand that it's nice to have a semi-standard time that the sun comes up, but the way that they're currently laid out, that isn't really the case. Indiana, again, for example, when it locked onto the Eastern time zone stretched it out to some kind of impossible proportion. It's probably more than an hour between the time Augusta sees first light and the time that we here in Bloomington do. Some places have solved this problem (?) by introducing time zones that aren't an hour long. In India (noticing a pattern with place names here, haha) there are 30- and 45-minute time zones. The way I see it, this is even more inconvenient. Changing a digital watch by 45 minutes is a hassle.
I guess it makes sense that Indiana be slave to the same system as the rest of the states with respect to daylight savings, but why do we observe this any more in the States, anyway? AFAIK, it's some kind of leftover from Ben Franklin's efforts to spark demand for candles or some such. I've never heard of a modern-day purpose that it serves, and all I ever hear about it is people complaining. Maybe that's because I'm in Indiana and we've been spoiled until recently, but does it make sense to you?
All I can say is I'm not buying any candles.
3.04.2009
owwww
Muscles ache, brain, too,
Learning, growing, expanding!
I'll redeem myself.
So I still feel like this term is pretty slow compared to other ones as far as classwork goes, but I'm finding other ways to entertain myself. Roy and I have been doing some serious working out this week; each of us is striving to be the first to do a pullup. :P The daily gymination is coming as quite a shock to my as-late-untrained body, but we're pulling through. I just can't laugh without squeezing back little tears of pain.
I'm enjoying exploring other academic pursuits, as well. The work on Polyworld with Larry Yaeger should be pretty interesting, and now that I've got my laptop running Ubuntu alongside Windows it'll actually be feasible to work on it, haha. And I've plowed through a couple books on graph theory this week; that was pretty interesting. I guess a lot of it just seems intuitive, but the introduction of, y'know, proper terms is sort of nice to have.
Did I mention that I bought a beginner book on piano over the weekend! In the absence of friends who are always around to regale me with their playings, I am reduced to attempting to pick out tunes for myself. I guess it's on my list, so maybe it's not so useless a pursuit, after all. Oh, I was sitting in the fireplace room in the Union (one of my favourite places on campus, especially during the winter), and for the first time I had the distinct pleasure of listening to a really talented player pour out some songs through the gorgeous white grand piano there. It was a fantastic feeling: soaking up the fire, absorbing the music, and pondering my maths.
I went over to the place I may be living in the fall this evening to chill and play WiiFit. That game is pretty sweet. But I guess the apartment is the interesting thing. ;) It's about the same size as this place, but the kitchen is bigger, and it has a sweet loft (which would probably be my bedroom). It also has a fireplace, and it just feels homier than this apartment. Plus the floors don't creak. The downside? It's pretty far from campus. There is a bus, but... I dunno. I sorta wanted to be closer to where things happen. We'll see how it goes.
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