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Thursday, February 9th, 2006
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11:01 pm - For everybody's reference:
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Hey.. I like your ideas. I'm glad you're not sucked in by all the propaganda.. at least not willingly. I do feel compelled to offer a small amount of advice, since I've been vegan for 2.5ish years now. I didn't take vitamins at first, because I assumed I was superhuman or something. I noticed a difference. Now I take a vegan daily supplement, with B vitamins, which was the only thing I think I was lacking. Protein isn't an issue. The other vitamins are found easily enough in plant-life/sunlight. But B vitamins are tricky. There's a great once-daily vegan supplement by Veglife. I'd suggest taking them with a digestive enzyme, pineapple juice or something so you can absorb it instead of peeing it out. If you do that, I think you'll notice some positive changes. I lost 40 lbs after going vegan (which I'm sure had more to do with no dairy than anything). I also just feel healthier, which may be psychological, but it still counts. Also, personally I think one should watch out for the processed stuff. It is tasty, and they make some great meat substitutes, but I've found that experimenting with different food completely has been more satisfying. Of course, I'm a big proponent of organic and unprocessed food, so I'm biased, but it's worth considering.
Good luck!
I'm not really looking towards most "meat substitutes" as substitutes, as such, but as part of my available foods. I'm aware of my choices in different foods -- I've had many vegan meals before without really making a point of it. Usually my lunch meal is a more active pursuit of experimenting or at least combining of different foods, though my starting point might be processed (i.e. salsa and potato flakes, or not (i.e. steamed vegetables and hummus.) The meal also serves as a break and putting a little effort into something, new or old, helps pass the time.
But I'm more interested in my other options right now -- I'm sure I'll fall back to a mix of entirely-other-foods and replacement-foods, weighted towards the former but still including both.
It's not all about health, either -- I don't think I could do without cheese alternatives. It certainly wouldn't be a very fulfilling existence.
I've been considering going on a multivitamin for a while now, since long before and especially now after going vegan.
But I'd feel like I'd lost a battle if I did.
I'd rather balance my diet without supplements (with processed foods if necessary) and I'm trying to keep a log of what I eat so I can track deficiencies and excesses, mostly with fitday.com which is excellent but falls short of what I want to do, so I'm still looking.
I do prefer to keep to simpler, non-processed fare in general, but not as strongly as you do, and I like to know what my options are. I don't think all processing is bad, just processing that's done to cut corners or market things. "Processing" is such a general term... I don't mind if they're trying to save me some work.
But especially... why avoid processed food just to take a (multi)vitamin pill that is entirely processed? It seems silly to me.
Cereal and soy "dairy" products tend to be B-fortified. There's nothing vegan you can get those B-vitamins from. I had thought to ignore them, because I had read a paper that was explaining how Indian vegans did not suffer from VitB deficiency, but would develop it after moving to Britian. The cause they gave was that their vegetables were not fully cleansed of insect debris in India. So I figured if that small a dosage was sufficient, I could make do with probably less than the FDA reference nutrtional intake (the new version of "recommended daily amount"). But after reading your comment, I did a little more research, and then I read this:
http://www.vegansociety.com/html/food/nutrition/b12/
"Very low B12 intakes can cause anaemia and nervous system damage."
"Most vegans consume enough B12 to avoid anaemia and nervous system damage, but many do not get enough to minimise potential risk of heart disease or pregnancy complications."
"In the absence of any apparent dietary supply, deficiency symptoms usually take five years or more to develop in adults, though some people experience problems within a year. A very small number of individuals with no obvious reliable source appear to avoid clinical deficiency symptoms for twenty years or more. B12 is the only vitamin that is not recognised as being reliably supplied from a varied wholefood, plant-based diet with plenty of fruit and vegetables, together with exposure to sun."
This last worries me: that I might have a problem that I don't notice. (Then again, hallucinations and a personality change aren't necessarily problems... :) But note that the wording is "in the absence of any", which leads me to believe that I should be okay with minimal quantities in my diet that I take in from fortified foods (I don't really care that much about minimizing my heart disease and pregnancy complications risks.) What worries me even more is all their misspellings. :)
Silk, which my parents got for me without my asking (or having any desire for), apparently is fortified to 50% of your daily B12 required intake. But more importantly, Fiber One -- which I've used with pleasure as cereal, in soups and salads for the crunch, and pretty much all over the place -- is fortified with .25% of your RNI per 1/2 cup. (I don't usually use more than a cup or so a day, but I wouldn't have a problem doubling that -- however, just spreading it out a little should be far more than sufficient to make up for the low % for a single serving.) Most of General Mills' and Kellog's cereals are fortified as well.
I had my nutrition program list foods by B12 content, and copied out the significant entries, for your reference, my reference, and anybody else who happens to stumble upon this. Data is taken from SR17 of the US FDA nutritional listings, and presented by NUT.
( http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/foodcomp/ )
( http://www.lafn.org/~av832/usenut.html )
Quoting the vegansociety page again:
" * eat fortified foods two or three times a day to get at least three micrograms (µg or mcg) of B12 a day or
* take one B12 supplement daily providing at least 10 micrograms or
* take a weekly B12 supplement providing at least 2000 micrograms."
CEREALS RTE,GENERAL MILLS,TOTAL BROWN SUGAR & OAT 1.5 oz 8.5 mcg
CEREALS RTE,KELLOGG,KELLOGG'S ALL-BRAN W/ EX FIBER 1.1 oz 7.2 mcg
CEREALS RTE,KELLOGG,KELLOGG'S LOFAT GRANOLA WO/ RAIS 1.9 oz 6.7 mcg
CEREALS RTE,GENERAL MILLS,WHL GRAIN TOTAL 1.1 oz 6.4 mcg
CEREALS RTE,KELLOGG,KELLOGG'S MUESLIX 1.9 oz 6.1 mcg
CEREALS RTE,KELLOGG'S,SMART START SOY PROT 1.9 oz 6.1 mcg
CEREALS RTE,KELLOGG,KELLOGG'S SPL K 1.1 oz 6.0 mcg
CEREALS RTE,KELLOGG,KELLOGG'S COMPLETE OAT BRAN FLAK 1.1 oz 6.0 mcg
CEREALS RTE,KASHI HEART TO HEART BY KELLOGG 1.2 oz 6.0 mcg
CEREALS RTE,KELLOGG,KELLOGG'S COMPLETE WHEAT BRAN FL 1.0 oz 6.0 mcg
CEREALS RTE,GENERAL MILLS,TOTAL CORN FLAKES 1.1 oz 6.0 mcg
CEREALS RTE,KELLOGG,KELLOGG'S ALL-BRAN BRAN BUDS 1.1 oz 6.0 mcg
CEREALS RTE,KELLOGG,KELLOGG'S PRODUCT 19 1.1 oz 6.0 mcg
CEREALS RTE,KELLOGG,KELLOGG'S SMART START CRL 1.8 oz 6.0 mcg
CEREALS RTE,GENERAL MILLS,TOTAL RAISIN BRAN 1.9 oz 6.0 mcg
CEREALS RTE,GENERAL MILLS,MULTI-GRAIN CHEERIOS 1.1 oz 5.7 mcg
CEREALS RTE,KELLOGG,KELLOGG'S JUST RIGHT FRUIT & NUT 1.9 oz 5.5 mcg
CEREALS RTE,KELLOGG,KELLOGG'S LOFAT GRANOLA W/ RAISI 1.9 oz 5.5 mcg
FISH STICKS,MEATLESS 3.0 oz 3.6 mcg
VEGETARIAN FILLETS 3.0 oz 3.6 mcg
CHEX MIX 1.0 oz 3.5 mcg
MEATBALLS,MEATLESS 5.1 oz 3.5 mcg
LUNCHEON SLICES,MEATLESS 3.0 oz 3.4 mcg
CEREALS RTE,GENERAL MILLS,HARMONY 1.5 oz 3.2 mcg
CEREALS RTE,MUESLI,DRIED FRUIT & NUTS 3.0 oz 3.1 mcg
So I should be fine in that regard.
As far as B6 goes, that is provided by things other than micro-organisms.
Quoting selected items from http://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/vitaminb6.asp:
Food (mg) % DV
cereal, 100% fortified 2.00 100
Potato, Baked 0.70 35
Banana, raw, 1 medium 0.68 34
Oatmeal, instant, fortified, 1 packet 0.42 20
Sunflower seeds, kernels, dry roasted, 1 oz 0.23 10
Spinach, frozen, cooked, ½ c 0.14 8
Tomato juice, canned, 6 oz 0.20 10
Peanut butter, smooth, 2 Tbs. 0.15 8
Walnuts, English/Persian, 1 oz 0.15 8
So I should be fine. But I do appreciate your advice, and I'm glad to know every little bit more about how I should take care of my body.
Also, this response turned into a mini-essay, so I'll throw it into my journal instead and fill up everybody's friends' pages.
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| Thursday, February 2nd, 2006
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3:23 am - My So-Called Veganism: The First Two Weeks
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Well, actually, I call it "virtually veganism." Because I haven't really stuck to it 100%, even over these two weeks, and I'm trying to balance commitment to the cause on one side and common sense on the other.
And also I think I am loathe to label myself a vegan (or even vegetarian) because of all the negative connotations that come with it, so I say "I'm eating vegan" or "I'm going vegan" rather than "I am a vegan." Even if I wanted to, also, I feel it's a title that I have not yet earned -- two weeks is nothing. If I keep it up for a few months, then I can start talking about it like it's a part of me.
The biggest problem with deciding between being a herbivore or continuing as an omnivore, for me, is trying to figure out what the truth is. I know I'm easily prey for manipulation; I'm naturally trusting. But I know both sides here have severe spins they're putting on the truth, so I'm trying to account for that and be more cynical about everything I read.
The major factors involved in my decision here are
- I don't want to cause distress to animals (including humans.)
I don't even care so much if the slaughter is messy for, say, up to a half hour. I don't mind killing things. I think that's how the world turns. I have a much bigger problem with the conditions they're in while they're alive.
- I don't know if I need meat/dairy in my diet, so much as I'm just used to having it there. I could see it being a matter of habit.
I don't trust PETA. They're liars and manipulators and just jerks in general.
I also don't trust the meat and dairy industry, or any industry for that matter. Because I'm pretty sure that having no morals is how you win in big business, so I expect that competitive evolution has weeded out the honest and left the most profiteering people in charge of the most decisions (because they are the "fittest" in this domain).
I do believe that many studies are funded by the meat and dairy industry. I do believe we don't need as much protein as we're told by these industry-funded studies.
Microsoft also funds lots of comparative studies and manipulates data and conditions to put them ahead in tests versus Linux. I don't think Linux has the user-friendly support right now to be the top choice for desktop users, but I know that it is light-years ahead of Windows for server purposes. There's no comparison. There was a recent study where Microsoft had a fairly reputable third-party company to do the testing. But the tests were still very weighted; the upgrade path on Windows and Linux is dissimilar, and they had the Linux folks try to do a half-arsed sort-of update that would never ever happen in a production environment, which caused a lot of headaches and hassles for the Linux admins that could have easily been avoided by performing a better more complete system update. From this I generalize to conclude that: any tests with any funding, no matter how unbiased they might seem to the layperson, are probably just an extravagent form of marketing, of advertisement.
I think it's important to remember, though, that I'm not an expert. I thought I was clever, catching the PETA types in a lie: I'd seen a few sources say that male baby chicks, valueless in egg producing "factory farms," were discarded alive in dumpsters, or possibly worse, thrown into a blender and used as fertilizer, sometimes still... ahem... chunky enough to be alive. And then my brain clicked around and said, "Hey... wait a second... baby chickens don't happen when you're raising hens for eggs... where's the fertilization coming from?" And I thought I was so smart for coming up with that. A while later I checked back with one of my sources, read a little more carefully, and it turns out the chicks produced for breeding purposes are the ones they were talking about. Which is still going to be a lot of baby hens, and presumably an equal number or so of male babies that were almost all useless (you gotta keep a few around to keep the breeding hens fertilized, but that's it.) So... I don't know. But it's easy to think I do. I need more information.
I don't think sheep need to die of pnemonia to give us wool, and I
don't think it makes sense logically for shepards to shear them so that
they do -- forget whether it's moral or not, it's not even profitable.
That's just a silly lie to me. I've also heard recently about how PETA
makes a fuss in knitting communities about how farmers abuse their
sheep and shave off their skin... which is a measure they take to
prevent maggots from eating away the sheep live.
I don't think soy and tofu are all they're hyped up to be. I love what they're doing with rice these days, though. Milk and cheese are unnecessary in light of these developments. I still miss yogurt, but I'm not displeased with the soy alternatives. And I'm very impressed by Quorn. Boca Burgers are a marvel to me: convenient, tasty, low calorie. (All these discoveries happened for me long ago, and my appreciation and further patronage of these items will continue whether or not I stick with the veganism.)
New to me: GimmeLean soybased meat replacement, veggie dogs (tofu really), veggie "turkey salad". I don't eat that much ice cream, but this is the possibly the best ice cream I've ever tasted and it's dairy-free. Not so good in the calorie department as some of the other soy-based ice creams I've had which also tasted pretty good, but... mmm... brownies in ice cream is such a great idea. It's like they took my classic favorite Rocky Road and made it better.
I do think that almost everything we eat is processed anyway -- we have additives, fillers, scents, and dyes, even on packaging, working more to influence our tastes than the food itself. (See also: Blink, by Malcolm Gladwell. I tried to find the corresponding article on his web site but failed.) We manufacture our tastes in laboratories and add them to texture. I think if it's properly done, I'm okay with that. But I also expect us to have gone one step further. If it's all fake anyway, why not inject something healthy for us with the taste of something we like to eat? Is this or isn't this the twenty-first century? For that matter, why aren't we eating pills that taste like full meals and chewing on Everlasting Gobstoppers?? Ah, nevermind.
I've had no disappointments, really, with the food that I've been eating. I've had no noticeable deficiencies in my vitamin/mineral intake. I think probably they've been better than usual, if anything. To be fair, though, I have had a few violations.
- Stuffed pepper that was filled with meat. I didn't know, but I should have suspected. Once I cut into it, it was already too late, though -- I couldn't put it back.
- A croissant, an almond cookie, and a few other various pastries that may or may not have contained eggs.
- Cheese pizza and a spinachy thing at the pizzeria that had some cheese in it, kind of like a cinnamon bun but with spinach. They had nothing (by default) without cheese, though other places do.
- Buttermilk pancakes at IHOP. Also servings of butter, because I forgot to ask they not be included.
- Sour cream in a Crunch Wrap from Taco Bell. A few slivers of cheese
in a burrito, and also a spare taco (meat, with cheese). I think the
taco was item I had most against my provisional rules, but came technically after the
two-week incubation period within which I wanted to be strictest about
my diet.
I have decided on The Rules (so far, still pending):
- Eating with other people, when it comes up, should always be done. If I'm not that hungry, having a drink or something with them is fine, but even if the entirety of the menu is non-vegan, I have to have something. I think that's a primary part of human relations, and I'm not excluding myself from it... I do sometimes take it upon myself to suffer so that others don't have to, but this is pushing it.
- Eating at home should, conversely, never require that I eat even a little meat or dairy, assuming my health holds up fine with no problems. I should not have any problems, if I get to shop. Any sort of vitamin or mineral deficiency would probably be sufficient to cause me to reconsider this point and reallow organic/cage-free/humane-treatment-certified meat and dairy into my diet again... even though I've been considering getting a vitamin supplement into my daily routine for a long time now.
- Going to somewhere that is meat-based for food, now that the two-week incubation period is over, means that all bets are off. Yes, I will still be killing some animals and causing them to suffer by having the 10-15 different meats presented to me at the all-you-can-eat Brazillian Churrascaria. I'm also probably going to still kill most insects (though every once in a while I set them free outside, I kill them most of the time.) I'm not going out for sainthood, I'm just trying to help. And every time I don't eat meat, cheese, or eggs, when normally I would, I'd like to think that helps.
- Throwing out food -- this is the tricky part. If I have pizza, I'm not taking off the cheese. The cow's already suffered for that, and pulling off the cheese doesn't help anybody. If I picked up a stuffed pepper at a bris, and cut into it and found meat, so be it -- I'm not discarding it, or leaving it on my plate to be discarded. But this argument could be easily extended: I could eat anything at catered events, since there's bound to be extra food. My friend would throw out her extra taco, or put it off to eat tomorrow when it's not as good, or eat it without enjoyment to finish it off. The marginal utility in the last bite of eggs or a sandwich is so little that it could just as easily be discarded; why not try a bite anyway?
My personal counter-argument, and why I feel particularly bad about that taco, is that the extra food is accounted for, somewhere. My friend would be a little more satiated with tacos for the time being, would perhaps be a little less likely to order an extra taco next time if she felt this one was wasteful. That last bite of eggs makes the next craving for eggs (for the other person) come just a little later next time for them, just a little weaker. Someone's gonna see the extra leftovers from the stuffed pepper trays, and someone's going to figure towards ordering/making maybe just a little less next time. - There are no free bites. Down that road madness lies.
I don't trust anybody with an agenda.
I don't trust the best-written essay I've seen on vegetarianism/veganism so far, "Fear Of A Vegan Planet." A somewhat paraphrased version can be found here, which doesn't list the sources like my version does; the article relies heavily on sources that include PETA pamphlets, a VIDEOTAPE [what the hell? can't you find a better source than that?], a few newsletters, and a couple of books that actually sound somewhat interesting.
The sad thing is, that article is better written than any anti-vegetarian ones I've seen. The only vague concern I have from the anti-vegetarian articles is that I might develop a Vitamin B12 deficiency. Many don't address the real issues. Many argue blindly without knowing the facts, and make up doctors and sources. Okay, the environmentalist vegans have a litany of crackpot "scientists" to draw from, but at least they're not making people up. I don't think I've noticed them doing that, anyway.
I think I've started this entry two hours ago and it's time to stop now.
My research isn't yet done. I really want to go visit some major egg and dairy producers and see what dirt I can dig up, if I find anything convincing one way or the other. I'd also like to read:
William Harris, M.D. - The Scientific Basis for Vegetarianism
Susan Coe - Dead Meat
I think both these people have a pretty one-sided tale to spin, and that they would have nothing to say if they weren't proving their point, that they'll be setting up strawman arguments and that they'll be logically fallacying all over the place. But I'd still like to see what they have to say. Particularly I'd like to compare what I actually see when I do my field research to what Coe tells me is there.
Anybody interested in taking this trip out to some high-volume dairy/beef/poultry/eggs establishments with me? I'd love some company.
current mood:  cynical
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| Tuesday, December 21st, 2004
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6:53 pm - good things, more later
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I GOT A C IN CSE306!
THAT MEANS I GET TO GRADUATE!
YAY!
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| Tuesday, October 12th, 2004
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5:27 pm - hey stony brookers
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The first movie in the Philosophical Film series will be on Thursday, October 14th, at 6:00 in Harriman 137:
Hijacking Catastrophe 9/11,
Fear & the Selling of the American Empire
with a philosophical introduction by Allegra de Laurentiis. Free country. Free pizza.
also check this shizdiddle out:
http://thefacebook.com
(it's like my name only more backwards)
other stuff maybe soon maybe.
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| Friday, September 17th, 2004
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2:02 am - so much happens so fast
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IMPORTANT MESSAGE:
Ziti Bitrhday Party
this Saturday, September 18th
3 Ringneck Lane, E. Setauket, NY
If you see this, you are invited. I would like you to come. Even if I don't know you that well. Even if you don't have a way of getting to places off campus, let me know and we'll work something out. Please, I really would like people I don't know (or don't know well) to be there. leave a comment if you need help.
What is, you say? A ziti party involves a group of people making ziti, then eating ziti, all while getting to know each other and enjoying each other's company. Show up between seven and nine PM if you can -- whenever we have enough people, we'll start the making of the ziti. There will also likely be barbeque, but this is to be thought of as strictly on the side.
So livejournal is a place to talk about the suck and the joy and the think of your life, right? Well, I'm going to have a lot of suck in the first part, then move on to a bunch of think, then go on to the happy ending.
random lj friend ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) _romantique is disappeared, which sucks.
less random friend bobthemonkee had a Barnes & Noble open across the street from her which is incredibly cool, but then got into a car accident and felt really badly about it, which sucks, and no publishers have bought her book yet, which also sucks (but don't give up hope, Dianne! keep trying... publishers are stupid, and although I don't remember which ones offhand, I'm sure you know many great literary classics were rejected by a dozen or so publishers before being printed.)
luckimunki, who I was all going to be enthusastic and outgoing and personally invite to my ziti birthday party on Saturday if she could go, had a family member pass away -- not one she was close to, but it reminds her of a death closer to home, which sucks, and occupies her weekend, which also sucks. and I think she'd totally dig the idea, too. maybe next time.
CosmoCom doesn't want me to go back to work anymore, at least until school's over and I can dedicate myself to them more full-time. (also they had a problem with me doing what they thought was personal stuff on the job, but that's a separate issue and they're wrong if they think it and I can prove it, but I won't fight about it unless there's a problem getting back my position after the semester's over.) I hope to god I didn't screw this up, though. Leave it to me to get kicked out of fucking paradise.
The suckiest part is that the only reason I wasn't working enough hours the first two weeks is cause I had two birthdays to attend, one day I'd be working was a holiday, and besides that I had to spend about eight hours [that's eight business hours, no less] checking in with my department heads, rearranging my course schedule, and getting permission to sign up for extra credits so I can graduate on time this Decemeber. Moreover, one of the things I had to do was sign up for Intro to Economics, which is an ass of a class that I already took the equivalent of in high school, but still need to show up to to fill in handouts given in class. Moreover to the moreover, I wouldn't have any of these issues if I had simply taken an easier Astronomy course when I decided to take one at random for fun a couple of years back; I took the hard version of Intro to Astronomy that was designed for people going into the major, and got a C-. If I had a C or higher I'd have been alright.
It appears they're counter-acting AIM anti-spam plugins now: AI simulated conversations. It'll be easy to stop that particular breed, but the trick will be to stop them all. I think I should get started on modifying one of the current ones to add an authentication procedure to it that will make sure the person on the other end is human before it passes messages through. I used to enjoy the idea of blocking more spam types, though, and now I just feel like this battle isn't ever going to stop and it's depressing. why would they even bother? if I'm not going to click on the spam anyway, why would they bother working on making stuff to get it past my filters? I don't understand this at all. It's a waste of time for both parties. It's a cold war of spam. And cold spam sucks.
asugarhigh, whose journal I read I'm pretty sure only because at some point I heard and liked the name, and who I'm pretty sure doesn't have the faintest clue who I am, posted this bit of interestingness wherein essentially she says she's having a great moment of being alive. I swear, my whole LIFE used to be composed of moments like those interrupted (occasionally) by a few of sleep... I used to claim that virtually any moment of my life was fractally expandable to the essence of my existence, or in simpler terms that if you wanted to get an idea of what my life was like, all you had to do was pick any moment at random from my actual existence and that would be, on average, a fairly good sample of my life as it would be advertised, i.e. there'd probably be something fairly good going on and I'd be living up to my personal code of Quality and doing what was the Right Thing to Do With Life.
Nowadays, I feel lucky to have a moment once or twice a day. I've become bitter and disillusioned. Part of the problem is I've become too self-conscious of what I was being back in those good old days. I always thought that I was interesting and passionate and I wondered why girls never liked me. Now it's something along the lines of: on my more optimistic days, I feel that perhaps a girl or two did like me, but either way the reason most didn't was that I wasn't interesting and passionate, I was entertainment and a freak show. Well, okay, let's say some balance in between, but I never really commanded any respect, and now I still can't. But more on that later. For now, we'll just say that I used to be a much much happier person, possibly one of the happiest in the world, and this sucks as well.
Speaking of such moments, though, I finally went through with a long-standing plan (I should have known better, but I didn't realize it was one until just now trying to describe it) to make a little addition to the Student Activities Center dining hall. This place gets crowded as hell during the peak hours of the day. Mostly I just avoid it then, but I've been trying to be more socially available, so I started going through the hassle of getting lunch there the first few weeks until all the freshman figure out there's other places to eat and it clears up a little. So I sat down at this table, not even a good one, and as I was nearing the completion of my meal, watched this girl walking around with a tray for about three minutes before I was done. I wanted to tell her she could sit down at my table but chickenshitted out. I did signal to her that I was getting up when I was, though, and she came over and I confirmed that I was indeed doing so. But I finally had to take action on my idea.
It was a pretty simple thought. Make a triangle of paper that lets you position it such that a large bold message either invites you to sit down or (on the other setup) tells you the table is occupied. See, it's a trifolded standard sheet of printer paper; one third is blank [or at least irrelevent], and if you set it up the paper properly, properly then either you have only one message can possibly be face up and have its letters the right side up at the same time.
I printed up thirty-two of these puppies, with varying messages like "SIT DOWN please I have no friends" or "COME SIT DOWN i like talking to people", and on the flip side "STAY AWAY strangers aren't welcome here" or "KEEP AWAY my day sucks enough already without you" and the like. Each of these had one positive side, one negative, and a message about "Bookface" having made them on the extra face, and an email address to direct comments/questions/hate mail/love mail/suggestions, etc. As I was working on them, I started thinking about what would happen in these situations... people might now be bold enough to ask "Can I sit here?" if there is a sign clearly indicating they can, but then the next step is still problematic; they will just politely ignore each other and pretend they have two separate half-tables.
So I added some icebreaker questions. At first I took them from If... (Questions for the Game of Life). But then I thought about it for a second and decided I was too original and creative for that, and also I didn't really want to credit them despite the fact that I think the book is a fairly good idea. So I wrote my own questions. I don't have them on me right now, but they were fairly interesting. I made two pages of nine sets of five; that is a lot of questions, come to think of it. No wonder it took more than an hour. Anyway, I made these sets of questions and stapled them to the trifolds of paper which I had set up. Pretty much each set had one question that could go into sexual details or could be thought of as a romantic/sexual icebreaker, one question that was fairly simple, one question that was silly, and one question that was political or philosophical, something you could really talk about if you wanted to. I was very proud of them. I even distributed them while people were sitting there, dropping them on people's tables and watching them from the corner of my eye to see if they read them, what they said about them. Then, to conclude, I went through the line myself and got something to eat; I was going to make myself take advantage of one of the signs, but I couldn't remember which people had been there when I was distributing, and I didn't want them to know it was me when I sat down at someone's table.
I went back the next day and all my precious signs were gone, except for one in the corner. I was pissed off. I kinda thought it might happen, I suspected, but I figured they'd have a couple of days of glory and then the general ice in the room would be broken and maybe people would just be more comfortable in general with sitting down with each other... but as quickly as they came, they were gone, and no one even emailed me about them. I did ask a group of people who had been looking it over at the table next to me what they thought of them; they liked it and supported my efforts, but they didn't really get the idea of how it was supposed to work, and were just kind of puzzled by it more than anything else. Either way, the people who took them down and collected thirty-two of them, thirty-two for chrissake, you'd think they might email me once to let me know why, but nothing. Which sucks.
I auditioned for a play, "Omnium Gatherum." Now, I know next to nothing about plays, but I know the basic idea is control over your voice and passion at high levels of volume, which I do tremendously well as a natural talent that stems from having an at times uncontrollably loud voice, and intensively developed reading skills. Also, I know how to imitate, how to act. I can emulate most things I see. Sometimes I wonder who I am since I hide myself in the personality of whomever I'm with so much of the time.
Anyway, I think I did pretty damn well at my audition. But they had you fill out a form that listed your previous acting experience and I had to write N/A for all of it. A full page of N/A and blankness does not bode well for trying out for a play. Now, it might be that I just didn't read well enough, this is of course possible. But I keep trying to think of it from their point of view... and I wouldn't want to commit myself to working with someone with no acting experience on my set. They have to know I'll be able to memorize lines. They have to know I'll be willing to stick to this. I can't give them that guarantee with no acting experience. (I wouldn't have even expected it to be under consideration if they hadn't put up flyers about it.) These are people who are professionally critical -- it's what they need to do to make their play work. And their only complaint to me was to "be more responsive instead of waiting for your line" to my first reading, and they had no comments on the second. Now, I have a sense of how I did; I'm fairly sure I did very well but not enough to blow them away. If I had the best voice ever for the part, maybe then they'd consider me. But they all said, "Wow, that was good, this is really your first time auditioning?" etc. Seemed like a good meeting. But I wasn't even called back for a second go. Now, I choose to believe that this is because of my non-existent acting experience, but why would they have the flyers saying things like "The person you met in the laundry room a drip? Try auditioning for a play!" if you're going to limit yourself to only people who would know about the play and be wanting to act for it anyway? That sucks.
On the plus side, I learned a new phrase.
While searching for the place to sign up for auditions and such, I teamed up with this kid on a wheelchair as he was trying to find it too (just to get general infromation because he wanted to continue his high school tradition of being a "drama groupie" apparently.) Since he couldn't reach, I signed him up for the newsletter of events regarding plays and such. His name was Blake Wind. HOW BAD A NAME IS THAT? Seriously, if your last name is Wind, don't name your child anything that sounds even remotely like "Break." I wonder if his parents were pissed at him for being disabled or something. "I know what to do honey... since he's ruining the rest of our lives financially, we'll just name him something so bad he'll want to kill himself by the time he's in middle school." I guess you'd have to be really mean to pick on a disabled kid for his name, though. Maybe he'll be the only Blake Wind in history that'll escape ridicule for his crappy crappy name.
I went to some Greek life promotional thing on campus. At first it was just for the cookies, but then I decided to flip on checking out one of the frats that seemed okayish and claimed to be different. I swapped phone numbers with a guy named Franklin, and we arranged to meet up later for a get-togther-type-thing the frat was having. It was supposed to be off campus but it ended up happening in O'Neill which brought back odd memories. Then we started hanging out with these girls from the floor above or some such. One was a total attention drama whore and admitted it unabashedly. It was kind of amazing to see how the other guys were falling over themselves for her though. She was pretty cute, but I wasn't really interested. I did have some fun ripping into this one guy in particular that was making a fool of himself for her. Then we met her friend who was concerned that she was so drunk so early in the night, and before long we found out we were Persian, which was a bit weird. Cause she was so not Great Neck Persian, you see, which is the only kind of Persian I've run into in just about the last six years, and I don't have a whole lot of other sample data besides what happened in that period. But she was a pretty cool girl, it seemed, at least to the degree you can tell these things from dress and style; certainly a lot more interesting than the GN crew, and I was interested. She wore heavy eyeshadow and a fishnetty-shawl-ish thing over a less revealing top, showed off her back and shoulders. I don't know. I think it was in good taste, with a little personality and a little creativity. Or, to say it like normal people say it, she looked cute. ;-)
We traded cell phone numbers because I told her I could drive her to the thing we were all headed towards independently next (them for sorority mixer rushingness, us for fraternity mixer rushingness) -- she took mine in case she couldn't get a ride, and I didn't really need to get hers but I was proud of myself for asking. I had left my cell in the car, though, and I needed to go get it; a little later I asked the rest of the guys if they'd be around for five or ten minutes. "Five yes, ten... maybe." I explained I was just wanted to go get my phone and I told them where I was parked, and they said, "yeah, OK, we'll wait for you." When I got back they were distinctly not waiting for me. Through my first phone contact with Franklin I managed to get there okay, though as part of the process I managed to somehow end up giving five Latino girls a ride (all of them in my backseat, and none of them very skinny.) It was closest to the most people in my Cabrio there's ever been; one more person would have tied the record, I think. Anyway, found the girl -- Nasim -- at the party, but didn't really talk to her there; hung out for a few minutes and then tagged along with her and the drama queen friend as they were heading out to a club. I asked Nasim to ride with me, and she did...
So overall I thought I was doing pretty well. Then a little voice inside my head said, "You don't normally play this way, but if you're playing this game, you've got to play it a little heavier, dude. Don't let this get away, don't avoid showing your interest, make a move. Stop being a pussy, you can't pretend you didn't decide this, you put it down in writing and told the world, you already acted on it this summer, you already acted on it this far. She seems interested, no reason for her not to be. You are interested, no reason for you not to be. So do something about it." And I reached over and began to rub her back a little while I drove.
Her: "[Oh,] that's putting me to sleep."
Me: [smart enough to contain myself just enough to stop short of being incredulous] "Do you want me to stop?"
Her: "[Yeah.]"
Now, the bracketed bold areas are the important parts, in retrospect, yet I'm not really sure how (or if) they went. Tone and word choice are pretty important. There's "Oh, as in Oh I just realized" and "Oh, as in Oh you're doing stuff," and there's "Yeah, as in Yeeeaaah, I guess you have to or I'll be sleepy" and "Yeah, as in Yeah! get your hands off me!" So you can see there's quite a range there. I wasn't paying enough attention though. I was paying attention to the stopping, not the circumstances. It's weird how that works, how you have to pay attention to stopping, how there's a distinct effort involved. Working against mental inertia, I suppose. You already told your body what to do, so now you have to do something to retract the order.
Anyway, long story short, especially because I may call and invite Nasim to tomorrow night's festivities: we talked a bit, we got into the club, she needed to go to the bathroom or her friend did or both did, and when they came out, a song was playing for the duration of which the DJs gave exclusive leave for ladies to dance on the bar. I saw her up there, reconvened with her as the song ended and she came down, danced a little bit on the dance floor, and... I don't remember exactly what happened next, but we got separated. I tried dancing by myself for a while, focusing in on girls dancing alone just to see what was up with the game; but I felt stupid dancing alone, as all the dancing I could think of, all the point of dancing I could think of, was to be touching other people. Without the touching, it just seemed kind of bland. I tried it for a bit, pretending that I was having a great time dancing by myself; but even when girls go out dancing they always take a friend not only to protect them from being run over with guys, but also to have someone to dance with, someone to dance around, someone to dance to. It can't help that I never really felt I was any good at dancing. I think I got the heebie jeebies about it from seeing myself unexpectedly in a mirror once and feeling like I looked foolish. Anyway. I was going to be making a long story short, not longer.
So I lost track of her again, found her later and told her I'd been looking for her. + points for telling her, I guess, but call it a wash because it seems needy. Danced with her and this other guy on the other side of her for a bit, felt like he was getting a much bigger share of the action; asked if she was interested in him and she said she was "just interested in dancing." I acquiesed but I noted again that she was much more on him than on me so I gave up and said goodnight. So that kinda sucked.
I went across the street to the 7-11 (remembering crossing that road at a certain different location), got some water and a four-pack of Red Bull. Whipped out my pen-and-paper journal from somewhere in my car, and wrote for a while, mostly trying to show off I think, but also cause I had stuff to say. A fight broke out later on and this one bouncer went crazy and took out five kids or something, one right after another. Saw a kid bleeding a lot from his face, could barely stand; I think it was from the kid he was fighting, not the bouncer. I walked over to see if he was okay, but the cops arrived soon and I distanced myself first, then walked back to my car. Didn't talk enough when some girls did actually ask me about what I was writing, wasn't in the mood anymore. So that kind of sucked.
Some woman got into some kind of accident at my intersection on 347 a while back. I didn't see the accident, but I saw the aftermath; a car in the middle of the road with a kid of maybe around 10 or 12. The airbags are all deployed and the car apparently isn't moving. They start pushing it from behind. I put on my hazard lights to help, get out of the car; but by the time this happens they have got the car moving. Only, they learn the same hard way as I did that you can't control a car just by pushing it from behind; you need someone in the driver's seat. And so the car got just enough inertia to slam into the divider hard enough to crawl up onto it and damage it some more. I wanted to help somehow but I didn't know what to do, felt totally helpless. That's not something I usually feel, and it freaked me out a little.
Some guy wearing a emergency medical shirt or some such came running up and started asking her if she was alright; meanwhile the kid, a chubby-ish little girl, was screaming about how they had no way to go home. The light changed, and seeing as how I wasn't doing anything to help I got back into my car and turned off the hazards and prepapred to drive away; as I made my turn, I had to stop for some guy that randomly waved to motion that he was going through, as he was doing it; I don't know what the deal was but it looked like he was in the original accident too. I drove away feeling somehow morally unfulfilled.
I love this bit from a piece by Henry James called "The Art of Fiction":
It is equally excellent and inconclusive to say that one must write from experience; to our supposititious aspirant such a declaration might savour of mockery. What kind of experience is intended, and where does it begin and end? Experience is never limited and it is never complete; it is an immense sensibility, a kind of huge spider-web, of the finest silken threads, suspended in the chamber of consciousness and catching every air-borne particle in its tissue. It is the very atmosphere of the mind; and when the mind is imaginative--much more when it happens to be that of a man of genius--it takes to itself the faintest hints of life, it converts the very pulses of the air into revelations. The young lady living in a village has only to be a damsel upon whom nothing is lost to make it quite unfair (as it seems to me) to declare to her that she shall have nothing to say about the military. Greater miracles have been seen than that, imagination assisting, she should speak the truth about some of these gentlemen. I remember an English novelist, a woman of genius, telling me that she was much commended for the impression she had managed to give in one of her tales of the nature and way of life of the French Protestant youth. She had been asked where she learned so much about this recondite being, she had been congratulated on her peculiar opportunities. These opportunities consisted in her having once, in Paris, as she ascended a staircase, passed an open door where, in the household of a pasteur, some of the young Protestants were seated at table round a finished meal. The glimpse made a picture; it lasted only a moment, but that moment was experience. She had got her impression, and she evolved her type. She knew what youth was, and what Protestantism; she also had the advantage of having seen what it was to be French; so that she converted these ideas into a concrete image and produced a reality. Above all, however, she was blessed with the faculty which when you give it an inch takes an ell, and which for the artist is a much greater source of strength than any accident of residence or of place in the social scale. The power to guess the unseen from the seen, to trace the implication of things, to judge the whole piece by the pattern, the condition of feeling life, in general, so completely that you are well on your way to knowing any particular corner of it--this cluster of gifts may almost be said to constitute experience, and they occur in country and in town, and in the most differing stages of education. If experience consists of impressions, it may be said that impressions are experience, just as (have we not seen it?) they are the very air we breathe. Therefore, if I should certainly say to a novice, "Write from experience, and experience only," I should feel that this was a rather tantalising monition if I were not careful immediately to add, "Try to be one of the people on whom nothing is lost!"
So I have always tried to be one of the people on whom nothing is lost; I do what I can to this end. That is why I think I know what's going on. I don't know if I actually do, though. More on this later.
The first day of school I met my housemate Matt, who seemed a pretty cool guy, so I invited him that same day to Mariel's birthday party as a surprise guest. I think it was an excellent idea as it a) introduced people b) spiced up the party a little c) bonded the two of us probably a lot more than would have happened up till now in one sitting. It makes me wish ever so much more that I had lived on campus for a while, though.
this is a deadly waste of time if you're at all female, and especially if you are (like me) a 12-year-old Japanese girl trapped inside a 21-year-old's Persian guy's body. [ side trip: whoa. I am going to start having to identify myself as a man soon. I mean, I don't qualify for 'boy' anymore by any means, nor have I for years. I think I'd been going with 'young adult' if it ever came up, but it didn't really that much so I could pass with that. But 'young adult' is getting outdated too -- it makes me think of the YA section at the library and that's clearly not the right category for me. (Never really was, for that matter.) ] anyway, back to planet Earth. I'm just going to go ahead and not admit that I spent about an hour essentially playing with dolls on that site. ... Why are you all laughing at me? I said I wasn't going to admit it... oh.
since this entry began with a random barrage of sadness, I think it should end with a random barrage of happiness, neh?
these are pretty amusing. is it wrong that I related more to the female one?
this little story is pretty cool.
this little story is pretty screwy.
this little knitty is pretty funky. they have other cool ones too.
now it's monkey haiku time. these monkey haikus were created for gabizoidal, but all should enjoy:
monkey in a tree
a coconut fell on me
he smiled knowingly
monkey and my dog
tumble in the weeds outside
seem to get along
robot and monkey
they both love their mother but
they hate each other
[inspired by "Monkey vs. Robot" - get the music video here if you've never seen this or have no idea what I'm talking about]
monkey monkey skunk
monkey monkey skunk monkey monkey
monkey skunk skunk SKUNK
kiss a sad monkey
don't hesitate! do it now!
or he just might die
monkeys don't need to
think about being monkeys
to them it's easy
P.S. This entry is largely unedited; I just wrote it as I went and now am posting it without even reading it through because I've been up about 40 hours and I need to sleep, and hopefully I won't say too much I don't want to, unless I do want to. Probably more stuff will come later to round it all out. Maybe not. Possibly some stuff will be edited out. Probably not. Who knows anymore?
love to all who need it, and nobody forget about ziti party
current mood:  drained
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| Tuesday, September 7th, 2004
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8:49 am - today is a day to rock out
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Today is a day made for rocking if I ever saw one.
(And let me tell you, I've seen days for rocking before.)
Today was showing promise of rocking by 02:00, was rocking a little bit by 04:00, was rocking pretty steadily by 05:30, got into the groove of things by 07:30, and was already rocking full out by 08:30. That's more rock than I get sometimes all week, before breakfast-time.
I've decided that today shall be the rockingest day ever. Who's with me on that one?
P.S. I'm sorry I haven't replied to your comment(s) [okay there was only one]/emails, and still haven't been keeping up with other people's journals, though I meant to get back into that with the start of the semester. But I'll catch up. I have been doing some writing of things that should make it into LJ eventually, for what that's worth to you people who love to read so much.
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| Sunday, August 29th, 2004
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5:26 am - it's been a while
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Well now. It's been a long time since my last serious post. I know exactly when it was without looking it up: the night before I started working, and I've been only very rarely keeping up on my reading since then too. (Work is like an addiction, and I'll talk about that some, but probably not this time.)
Now I'm at another threshold into something new; it's the night before the night before I start my final semester of school at Stony Brook until some very far off future date (if at all) of graduate school enrollment. And it's the penultimate night instead of the ultimate night, but weekends are all one incoherent blob of time travel anyway, so it's like it's the night before classes start, sort of.
I've been going to Stony Brook a long time. That's nothing new or exciting. But there's still stuff to make this semester exciting. First off, it's my last semester; secondly, for the first time in a while all my classes are in my majors, which means that I'll probably be more interested in them and hopefully do a bit better than usual; and I never had such a nice way to learn stuff on the side and keep my brain going as I do with these new audio lectures I've been downloading.
The other part has nothing to do with school or learning stuff. There's one thing about going to college I was never really in a position to take advantage of one aspect of it before. I had a sense of standards for what I wanted out of a relationship, and I wasn't willing to comprimise that for anything. Only problem was, they were unreasonably high standards.
My parents are very much in love. They have the only relationship I know about between two people that I respect that's both lasting and unconvoluted. Admittedly, if you've got the lasting part down, then you're obviously going to bond in ways that iron out the little kinks in your interactions. I don't know where I'm going with this, so I'm just going to back out now.
My parents have a great relationship and you learn how to love from your parents. So I have this highly idealized view of what love should be, and maybe that's a good thing. But on the other hand, it's not keeping me very happy.
I never had the right tools for learning a lot of things I should have picked up one way or another. I was close with my parents in a lot of ways, but I never asked them stuff about how the world works (or more specifically, about how girls work.) I didn't have an older sister to turn to, and many of my friends were fake at the crucial part of my life (I thought they were my friends, but really they just sort of let me tag along with them during school hours.)
I remember feeling an outsider in those groups, but I don't remember not contributing, or contributing. I have no idea what really was going on, but I have this vague sense that I thought they were my friends but later on I admitted to myself it wasn't just a matter of habit or coincidence I was never invited to do stuff with them outside of school.
The popular crowd. *sigh* How did there ever get to be a popular crowd? How does that even work? Everybody wants to be them or be in with them, and most people don't even like them. Maybe it's just the pretty crowd, really. Was there anyone really attractive and not a part of that clique? Sure, maybe a couple of shy girls, a couple of outspoken different-from-the-norm people like Rhonda or some such.
Anyway, back to my story or my point. What was it again? Yeah, so I never learned cynicism in love. My only basis for knowledge for a very large portion of my life was my parents and practically everything between them was positive. I mean, they don't even bicker very much. Man, I wish I had paid more attention to their teasing each other though before that Incident with Allison Jeanes.
No, no, no, I was concentrating on my point: I liked the idea of love, idealized the idea of love. No one ever was there to teach me what sex was; for a while I thought girls didn't have pubic hairs. Even when I started to understand some things about sex, I would always classify it as a subtopic of love. But there's more to sexual interaction than just love, though I didn't consider that until much later. And now, I've finally come to realize, love is a sort of subtopic of sex.
Think about it. If you love someone truely and deeply, you want to have sex with them; that's an implicit part of normal love. If you want to fuck someone truly deeply, there doesn't need to be any more to it than that.
Anyway, I'm just making that shit up as I go along. The truth is I've always wanted some sort of perfect relationship with the perfect girl for me whom I thought would suddenly appear magically at the time in my life when my patience and waiting would have covered my dues to earn this wonderfulness in my life.
Then that wonderful day didn't come, and it kept not coming. I kept being a good person, the best person I could be. I kept saying, "Okay, not yet... but there's still time." Time to be in high school, time to be in college. Thing about time, though, is that it goes forward and goes away, and I never did run into that person, and if I had been more open to the possibilities available I might have had some better playing time on the field in my life so far.
I'm always super-cautious when it comes to love. Because I want to make myself totally enamoured with whoever is available whenever they're available and the slightest bit interesting. I want to make sure that I'm in love with them, and by the time that happens I'm too set against rejection to be willing to take any risks. Even if it all did work out on the asking-out end, I would still be ruining a sort of virginity that has nothing to do with sex, a relationship-virginity. You see, I always had this picture that everything would magically work out, as I told you before, and the thing about it was that it would be the first person that I got into a relationship that would be the right one -- that was part of the fantasy, part of the conditions, part of the golden path of the dream I was following.
I could only be in a relationship with someone I could spend the rest of my life with, I decided. The thing is, decisions like that are not exactly objective. So I'd keep on convincing myself it'd work out with this crush or the next, building myself up to the point where I'd be unable to actually ask them out. But all the while I was, in effect and purposely or not, avoiding relationships.
One not-so-long-ago day the mental image broke, though. I couldn't pretend any longer. I was the same as any other guy, I want the same things everybody wants, I'm nobody special at all (okay, maybe in some ways but nothing relevant to this argument), and I couldn't pretend any longer that I needed my sexual fufillment gift-wrapped in a deep-seated loving relationship.
To sum up: I don't care anymore. I just want to be making out, just for the hell of it. I just want the cheap thrills for now.
Well as for now I'm gonna hear the saddest songs
And sit alone and wonder
How you're making out
But as for me, I wish that I was anywhere, with anyone,
Making out...
Dashboard Confessional - Screaming Infidelities
I'm willing to wait for the love, still, but that's no longer my main focus, my driving desire. Right now I just want a girl I can stand to hang out with, and I want her in my bed for me to cuddle with.
And while I'm still looking out for love if it should happen to fly my way, I don't really believe in it anymore, not in the same way. Not in the fairytale storybook sort of way, not in the magic sort of way, not in the "I have faith it will come to me if I just keep my faith" sort of way.
Wow. I totally didn't mean to go there at all. I don't know what I came down here to talk about, really. Partly about watching so much Freaks and Geeks in a row and my thoughts on that, mostly about my thoughts on school starting and my always-recurring hopes for a really top-notch semester.
Oh, yeah. So that was the point to all this. This semester is the first where I've held this devil-may-care attitude towards sex and relationships. I feel confident in my looks and my attitude that I can find someone to pass the time with if not to make my life with, and that's what's important to me right now.
There is no ultimate purpose beyond that of bodily reproduction and a sense of mental belonging. Well, I always thought that a good relationship was key to mental belonging, but I have good relationships with people; I don't necessarily need one with my reproductive mate as well.
I feel like I've explained this about fifty times now without really getting my point across, or maybe I have gotten my point across and I kept blabbering about it. I don't know, I'm tired.
And maybe I feel slightly guilty for abandoning that idea. It's hard to give up something that you've put most of your life into achieving, and it's impossible to do that without a little internal conflict. Still, I think I'm pretty dead set that I'm a member of the other camp now.
I'm not quite anti-love gung ho, or anything. And I have my doubts, of course; all sane and intelligent people should always have doubts. But what I was going with for 10 years or so now hasn't been working for me thus far, and it hasn't made me any happier to know I've been holding out, and nothing has convinced me it makes sense to want to hold out or that there's even anything to hold out for. I've switched my ideas about priorities and what's worth settling for.
"What's worth settling for." That's the big thing, really. Because I was never willing to settle and I was always ready to see a fault or two that could develop into a flaw. I want to shout at my former self, "Wake up, you fool! Of course there'll be flaws. Life is flawed. There is no one perfect." No wonder I couldn't find anyone if I was holding out for perfection.
I'm going to win this semester. I'm going to rock it like nobody's business, and you couldn't stop me if you tried. I want a 4.0 and I want a relationship with a sexually active partner, even if it's not a terribly fufilling one. And I will get them, just you see. Because I am Bookface, hear me roar.
P.S. No comments please reassuring me that I will get what I want and I am so great etc. Thanks, but let's just see how events unfold.
P.P.S. "Logging in to server. Welcome, the Bookface. item posted: it's been a while."
P.P.P.S. This entry is a lot choppier, looking it over on the web page, than most things I write. I got a little crazy with the enter key there I think.
current mood: shadowy
current music: am I making any sense? need more sleep...
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| Saturday, August 21st, 2004
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12:12 am - random cinnamon toast
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As a personal favor to me, I'd like everyone who sees this to help themselves to a piece of cinnamon toast, as soon as is conveniently possible.
You don't have to tell me whether you did or didn't do it, so if you really don't feel up to it I won't ever have to know, but I'd still appreciate it if you did.
current mood: at odds
current music: about to be toaster sounds
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| Wednesday, June 16th, 2004
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6:30 am - holy mother of pizza
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| How to make a bookface |
Ingredients:
3 parts intelligence
5 parts crazyiness
3 parts joy |
Method:
Stir together in a glass tumbler with a salted rim. Add a little cocktail umbrella and a dash of curiosity |
That's startingly accurate. Based on the name alone?
I have added it to my LJ info as well. Not that you really needed to know that.
Meanwhile, I got five more invites to G-mail. So basically everyone gets in nowadays. Oh well. You guys are still cool though, cause you got in before it was uber-popular. It's pretty hard to come up with original addresses, though, already, if it's not a name that's sort of your own.
Oh, so although my livejournal has cool giveaways in it, I so desperately need to write it's coming out of my ears. But now, gotta go home, then work, then hopefully some sleep before more stuff.
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| Monday, June 14th, 2004
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11:18 pm - G-mail winners
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As it is probably more than half my fault that Alex did not see the away message or journal entry until now [as I have been pushing him into using Linux and it took some time to get set up], I ended up accepting entries until, well, right now.
So those in consideration, in order of their submission:
- Ed (via AIM)
- Dana (via AIM)
- Elizabeth [aka luckimunki]
- Sarah
- Mariel
- Alex
Okay, so part of my reason for accepting the late entries had to do with the fact that I could roll a die to compute winners. And partly, it's because I expected more than four people to enter to win three accounts. But it's *mostly* because I'm a sucker and can never enforce deadlines.
Lucky winners are: Ed, Sarah, and Alex! Congrats! Suck up to them, because they might be the next in line to get G-Mail invitations.
Meanwhile, - Elizabeth/luckimunki, I've already insulted you sort of with that other thing, so I owed you one.
- Dana, you're the suckiest suck that ever sucked. If you sucked any more, you'd be a total vaccuum.
- Mariel, you're not a whore, but you are fat.
And hey, what the hell... - Alex, you're a poopyhead. That's not for the contest or anything, it's just because I care.
P.S. This seems like a stupid idea in retrospect, so the insults will be written in fine print.
Submit your email address to claim your prize!
[Wow, I feel like spam...]
This isn't a trick question, by the way; I'm not going to fire back at you, "Haha, but you do have an email address, so you don't need G-mail!" You actually do need an email address currently to be able to receive the invite.
In fact, I'm going to insist that it be within 24 hours of this post, or I'm going to re-roll for your spot -- though I will allow you to win again if this happens. Because really, if you don't check the internet that often, maybe you don't deserve G-mail.
Edit: Also, check out http://dkcgi.hopto.org/dice.pl for hot hot dice-rolling action.
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| Thursday, June 10th, 2004
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6:45 pm - GMail for you!
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I have THREE GMail invitations to distribute.
You have until Sunday 5:30pm to make a request. I retain the right to deny any requests from strangers, but if you know me at all feel free to chime in for your chance.
Two of the three names will be determined by chance. One is reserved for whoever gives me the best reason to give them one, but will be distributed by chance if no one comes up with a good enough one.
(By chance I actually mean a pseudo-random number generator.)
To make things interesting, I will post who wins, and I will not post why (as in, because of chance or because of their reason.) But I will insult you all individually in colorful ways if you lose!
current mood: generous
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| Monday, May 24th, 2004
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12:24 am - bookface for sale
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I feel as though I should be nervous. Or something. At the very least, excited.
I'm not a very nervous type of guy, though. I told Ed I got nervous when I was in the interview when I was a little lost on the first two or three questions they asked. (I had a very elaborate response to the next one, though, because it was right up my alley and I could respond in anal-retentively thorough detail.
Besides, what is there really to be nervous about? First impressions, sure, those are always important. First impressions determine almost everything. As thinking beings,we always seek to form patterns, to find lines of approximation, to fit the data to some curve so we can figure more stuff out from what we know.
Consider also that we also cling to our ideas, and once we place things we get deeply attached to our ideas of where they belong. We don't like to move things around too much in our heads. When we're attracted to people we just met, for instance, we'll do a little mental bypass over anything but very major inconsistencies between their values and ours; we try and pay attention to the things we share, and we ignore what we don't if it's not severely disturbing. But this further establishes their position as someone we like, so we are prepared to overlook more and more.
Investments of time are weird things to think about -- commitments and caring that depend almost solely on the fact that two (or more) people have been together for a while. You don't have to earn your keep anymore with old friends, you just ride the wave of your past bonds. But you do have to renew the force of the wave every now and then, the energy of the relationship. Not as much as to start a friendship, but you have to give it something or they fall apart.
I'm rambling, and I'm not sure how much sense I'm making. I'm kind of sleepy, as I had to wake up early this morning after going to bed late, something like five hours of sleep. Which isn't all that bad, and I would consider it under certain circumstances to be a decent night's worth, but waking up that early to go be with family I don't like very much and sitting outside in the sun for a good few hours makes it definitely not enough. This probably means I should be sleeping now, the better to get up early tomorrow; and after work I'm going to be occupied too, with Adam's 21st-birthday-bar-going.
So, to recap: I feel like I should feel nervous, but don't, but then again no real reason to except for first impressions which are fairly important.
How I actually do feel now is a kind of empty. It always seems to be this way when I start something new; I run out of excitement way too early. My attention span, usually very supportive and strong, in this regard fails entirely, and shuts down before the event even starts.
There's this disjointedness between self-consciousness and the world, between inner senses and outer senses. I can be perfectly happy, but still at times I don't feel *right* about where I am in the world, about my particular moment-to-moment existence or in a broader sense of my underlying motivations, actions, deeds.
The back of a carful of friends seems so remote from where I am, and yet it is where I know my body is. On another level, it feels somewhat wrong to settle in to this job, to this life-path; it seems wrong to be committed to this job, to be finishing school in fall, to be living with my parents, to be making computer science my career and my life. Always before there was some possibility for a last-minute curve ball; now things are becoming pretty settled in, giving a sense of prescience that corresponds to stagnation.
If you can see even a glimpse of the future, even if it is within a channel of probability, it means there are many knowns and few unknowns. I like to be kept guessing. I like to keep a sense of the unknown wrapped around me so that I may explode with it at any time I should find it necessary, or perhaps just so I can take comfort in imagining my unknown strengths and weakness to make me superior to my competition.
So when I see something distant, I put it off till later, as most do, but sometimes get excited by the promise those mountains hold of secrets and adventure.
When I know something is coming, just around the corner, when I know it's almost definite, the thing that awaits loses its appeal. If it's not something that I'm fighting for, against a million unseeable interventions of fate, it's not something that concerns me or captures my interest.
Then usually, in the minute or so when it begins, after the first step of action is actually taken, then the butterflies come out, the thrills and chills of novelty and plausible danger -- but almost immediately they're gone, and they never come back. The next time I try something of a similar but more daring nature, it's as easy and natural as breathing. Perhaps it requires the additional effort on par with breathing deeply.
It's kind of disturbing, in a way. It avoids the nervousness until the last moment... I often brag to others when formulating the idea for something as a sort of insurance. I rarely back down from anything, because I've already discussed doing it with people and in addition to losing self-respect and self-esteem, in addition to having to admit to failure to myself, I would also lose face in front of my friends and my fans. [How long it took me to establish that distinction is another story.]
So you see, I build up pressure on myself to do something, and then I don't worry about it till I've already started doing it. Which means I end up doing all sorts of things I should know better than to do.
I'm not talking about my job anymore, by the way. But in a general tangental sense it's a related problem.
Alright, I wasn't sure about eight paragraphs back if I was still making sense, and I'm increasingly less sure as I continue going. In any case, I have to be up in about 5 hours, so it is beddy-bye time for me now. G'night all.
P.S. I've got some MP3 CDs in the car already, and Dune audiobooks (fans of the amazing series [which I will discuss soon] will notice it is having a definite effect on my word choice), but I feel I should maybe burn something new for the occasion, no?
current mood:  sleepy
current music: computer fans whirring.
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| Sunday, May 23rd, 2004
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5:16 pm - I was amused.
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>
WARNING | | bookface is radioactive. Wear protective clothing at all times. |
From Go-Quiz.com Ganked from new LJ friend luckimunki
I have a lot to say, because some things have happened, but I'm not sure I want to say it all. Lately I've been keeping more things private, I think mostly because of the offline journal I've been keeping this year (though I'm not even writing much in that anymore). I kind of like it that way... but I'll probably be tempted into saying everthing on my mind when and if I go over the semester.
In any case, there will be a more extensive, probing, and interesting entry soon. Although I suspect once I start work on Monday I may just be excited about that and go off about it instead. Because, in accord with the quote at the top of my journal, usually only the present is worth writing about. Or thinking about. Or doing anything about.
P.S. Haha, made you look. (At the quote. I know you did. Don't try to deny it.)
current mood:  excited
current music: I should listen to more music...
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| Friday, May 7th, 2004
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5:24 am - Reading behind the cut is probably not worth your time if you're not me.
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So yeah. The earlier bit about rocking so much. Temporary high, already gone, and I wonder why I was so excited in the first place.
But I'll tell you the story anyway, it's rather short.
( [1 hour, 23 minutes later: ha! I'm funny. I think I can write short entries.] )
P.S. Incidentally, now that there is an option to disable lj-cuts on your recent view page while leaving them intact when viewed from the friends' pages of those who list you, I will probably be taking advantage of that more often.
P.P.S. Also, part of the reason I rock is that I found out that only one other person out of more than twenty that were interviewed was hired right away. Damn! I knew they liked me and all, but I didn't know that I blew away the competition like that. More on this story later too.
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| Thursday, May 6th, 2004
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9:34 am - I am a non-stop rocker.
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Every once in a while I forget how much I rock.
Then I rock some more and it all comes back to me.
(It's a lot, in case you were wondering.)
... to be continued/explained ...
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| Thursday, April 29th, 2004
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9:01 pm
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Go into your LJ archives.
Find your 23rd post (or closest to if you have less than 23 posts).
Find the 5th sentence (or closest to if there are less than 5 lines).
Post the text of the sentence in your lj along with these instructions.
As the 23rd post was a series of quizzes, I moved on to the 24th.
Nice guys finish last..."
How can you focus on your assignment that's due if you're suspect to a call or message from you friend to "do something" because he or she is bored?
*sigh*
more soon.
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| Wednesday, April 28th, 2004
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12:34 am - I *am* doing work. This is work. almost.
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| Monday, April 26th, 2004
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11:49 am
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I like it when I can use the same adjectives to describe myself and the weather; it makes me feel like the world around me shares my feelings.
Today is cloudy and hazy and confused, unsure of whether or not it wants to rain, unsure of what to do to or how to handle itself. Not quite dark and gloomy, but not bright and cheery either, somewhere in between with birds chirping from a gray sky. The ground's all wet, a mess leftover from earlier flurries, but it'll dry up with time, soak into the ground, disappear as if it never was.
Phone call:
"Hello?"
"Hi, who is this?"
"[Erm. You called me. Shouldn't you know? Should I say?] This is Daniel Khalily. Who is this?"
"This is Evelyn Burton. I'm calling regarding Donald and Irene, I'm trying to get in contact with some of their friends."
"I'm sorry, I don't know..."
"Evelyn Burton?"
"No, I don't know Donald and Irene, I'm sorry."
"Oh. Well, I'm sorry, too, sorry to disturb you."
"That's all right. I hope you find them."
"Thank you, I hope so too. They're in the hospital and I'm trying to find out what happened."
"oh."
"Bye."
"Take care."
Interesting. She sounded like such a nice lady. I really did hope she found whomever she was looking for, and then I felt bad for her when she said why.
Saw Nick on the way to class a moment ago. The class he's going to is called "Human Problems." Man, I could write a fucking book's worth without covering half of them.
I wouldn't have asked if I wasn't ready to be shot down.
OK. To work! For real!
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| Thursday, April 15th, 2004
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5:26 pm - fill in the blank
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So I started doing surveys and figured at some point I should write a real entry if I've got the time to waste on huge surveys (which I don't, really.)
But as I was about to start Dawn called to remind me that the defensive driving class we're both taking was tonight. So I need to go to that.
A more personal update sometime relatively soon, I hope.
Stolen from _romantique:
{ what's your type? } Your type is the Hopeless Romantic
Looking for a gal who swoons when you recite poetry? Goes ga-ga over a bouquet of hand-picked wildflowers? The Hopeless Romantic is your girl. She loves soft music, candlelight, and long walks on the beach at sunset. She cries at sappy movies (her favorite kind) and has had her wedding planned since grade school. She's looking for a deep relationship — a soulmate. She's a traditional girl you can open up to and talk to about your feelings, your past, and your hopes for the future. How to win her heart? Romance her. Send her flowers, surprise her with a picnic lunch, or go for a horse-drawn carriage ride. Before you know it, you and your girl will be creating a life-long love story.
{ what type are you? } You are a Renaissance Man
Leonardo DaVinci's got nothing on you. A modern Renaissance Man, you know something about everything. You're extremely passionate about anything you can think of, from baseball stats to Dutch art. And you delve into all of them enthusiastically. Women are constantly impressed by how much information you soak up and retain, as well as your spontaneity and sense of adventure. Whether it's because you're extremely well-cultured or due to your romantic nature, they can't help but fall for you. As long as you're careful to keep your wits about you and stay grounded, any gal who winds up with you will feel like she's living on cloud nine.
Moreover:
Daniel, you're a Skydiver!
You're open minded, extroverted, free-spirited, and independent. Chances are you're pretty liberal. You're like a magnet for love and affection. People adore you. And, thanks to that healthy dose of self-confidence, you're super-flexible.
Chances are, you're a great leader at work. You're also a self-starter and will always volunteer to take on a job. You're also an excellent communicator and tend to spread your enthusiasm to others.
( survey survey survey )
A bit of humor: ( Weapons of Math Instruction )
In other news, http://www.zhongwen.com/ is mighty cool. Now I want to make an image or something with the characters for book and face.
current mood: quizzical
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| Wednesday, April 14th, 2004
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5:34 pm - OH! THE PLACES YOU'LL GO!
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I'm sorry to say so but, sadly, it's true ... Hang-ups can happen to you.
You can get all hung up in a prickle-ly perch. And your gang will fly on. You'll be left in a Lurch. You'll come down from the Lurch with an unpleasant bump. And the chances are, then, that you'll be in a Slump. And when you're in a Slump, you're not in for much fun. UN-SLUMPING YOURSELF IS NOT EASILY DONE.
You will come to a place where the streets are not marked. Some windows are lighted. But mostly they're darked. A place you could sprain both you elbow and chin! Do you dare to stay out? Do you dare to go in? How much can you lose? How much can you win?
And IF you go in, should you turn left or right... or right-and-three-quarters? Or, maybe, not quite? Or go around back and sneak in from behind? Simple it's not, I'm afraid you will find, for a mind-maker-upper to make up his mind.
-Dr. Seuss, "Oh The Places You'll Go"
More soon if I'm able. Always too much stuff, rarely enough interest, never enough time.
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| Saturday, April 3rd, 2004
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4:08 am - quick note
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Met no one at American Singles "event" Thursday night. The gender mix as good as I had hoped if not better, pretty even. However, the ages of everyone there was from around 30 and up; no one looked even remotely my age, except maybe this girl who was near the bathroom the whole time I saw her.
I showed up at 6:45, 15 minutes late, and stayed unitl 8:30, halfway through. Perhaps I picked the wrong half, because I did see some people who might have been around my age as I was on my way out who were on their way in, but the place was rpretty well filled in the whole time. It was very nice and very classy, with lounges and a huge amount of floor space for the city; they had 8 pool tables, surrounded by giant round places in the wall in which to sit and an excellent spinachy-cheesy concotion that I feel I should know the name of. Whatever it was called, though, it was delicious.
I used my free drink ticket to get a shot's woth of Stoli raspberry, which was cool (it was only supposed to be house drinks.) I mean, that alone was practically worth the price of admission. But downstairs on the floor below there were posh bowling alleys with various rich people bowling and ordering fancy food from which I sampled quite a bit, delicious side of meat, popcorn shrip, baked salmon, mashed potatoes... really good stuff. I ate till I was bursting and left quite satisified that I had come and that I had made an attempt. As I mentioned, a few valid candidates came in on my way out, but by then I had already made up my mind to wander the city and so I did. I ended up going to Lincoln Center, to see what was playing at the independent movie theatre there, and when I arrived I decided to go to the first thing that was playing after glancing at the poster for a quick second. Let me recommend that you go see this movie under the same circumstances, as it was terrifically good and even better to have no expectations before seeing it. Rated #107 on IMDB, it's called Dogville. Note that although it is practically painful for me to mention a movie without making it a link to the corresponding IMDB entry, I really do think it is better to go into it blind, even though it was pure chance that was how I did so. [I will say that it was 3 hours, but I just found that out now, I didn't even notice the time go by.]
(Oh, and I also stopped at a Barnes & Noble; I remember this now because while I was waiting for my train.)
All in all, a terrific night and well worth a trip into the city, even if it did cost twice as much coming from SB as it would from GN and I got back at 4:00am after having low sleep all week thanks to studying and midterms...
But tonight, I did meet another girl. I went to the SPS (society for physics students again) BBQ and a bunch of other random people stopped by, including my math teacher. It was a *great* party, mostly because it involved a lot of Taboo provided by yous truly, good food provided by SPS, and ended in a hour and a half of driving (i.e. golf) followed by "cosmic" bowling [rock 'n' bowl but more pumped/clubby and less rocking music].
There was a "red pin" gimmick where if the red pin showed up as your #1 pin and you got a strike you got a free game (I wished it were the $5 deal...) and I won one, which was cool and nifty and fulfilling. We only played one game, which was a littel crappy but I must admit I was getting a bit tired too.
So there was this girl there for the golf and the bowling and some of the party beforehand, but sadly not the best part which was the Taboo. Honestly, I don't know too much about her; she's cute, she's a philosophy major, she broke her thumb on her left hand when she was little and fell on it or something recently (in explaining the story, she involved a "bouncy ball" which I'm thinking means the big kind that you go hoppity on, which would props), she's a philosophy major in her junior year and probably will double major in something else... and I think that may be about it as far as facts go.
But she's nice and she's cute and since no one I know reads this who would know her, I can talk about her fairly openly... though I'll probably limit myself somewhat (I mean, what if she does end up becoming close to me? I don't want you all knowing all sorts of secrets about us... and besides, if that happens then she's bound to see this sooner or later herself, anyway.) Wait, what was I saying? Yes, I don't have a lot of facts to go on, but I have a fairly nice feeling about her. You can tell an awful lot about a person without any facts, just by observation of behavior.
She has fun, she smiles a lot, she waves through windows at people she just met.
(Oh, she drives and drives well even in shitty cars that are not her own, with a fairly good sense of direction, goes to bars with her mother who "acts like she's 15," and interestingly lives in Cardoza, in Roth Quad, which happens to be a great place I can always happen to bump into her since I have Ed over in Roth. Those are all facts but I just realized I'd left them out. Oh yeah, and she's building a chair for a scuplture class, which is interesting. She said about it: "I never get anything done on time." And when she mentioned that she was thinking of double majoring someone nearby said something about her choosing film as her second major, so I'm guessing that would be one of her more obvious choices.)
We talked a fair amount, but not about anything serious.
I don't know. I just like her. I'm going to ask her out the next time I run into her, which will hopefully be sometime within, say, the first week after spring break, and not six months from now.
I have decided that waiting any more after the second time you meet someone is stupid, and particularly that trying to figure out if they're perfect for you before you ask them out is downright retarded. Liking someone or not comes with inertia that makes "getting to know them" fairly impossible; you ignore the bad things and keep on focusing on the good things, making you like them even more.
Well, I'm not going into that now. This "quick note" has already kept me up for far too long and has gotten far too long.
Really, it is as much for myself to note down anything I could remember about her and bind myself in writing to the asking-out bit and to keep track of dates since I always like to know when things happened, as for anything else. But I did want you to know, in case you were on the edge of your seat, the results of the singles event.
That being said, I'm going to bed.
current mood: fairly happy, very sleepy, and ON SPRING BREAK
current music: my smile looks weird in that picture but I have to use it anyway because I never do and because I ha
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| Thursday, April 1st, 2004
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2:19 pm - Google! is being exciting all over again!
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Whether it's forgetting Canada (or alternatively, losing it), adding features or making new ones, Google! is always making waves with every move and revolutionizing the world.
The latest in Google's schemes is a hotly debated launch of an email service with 1 GIGABYTE of storage per customer, and of course full searching and relevent text-based ads.
Launched on April Fool's Day. Is it real? Is it not?
Well, here are the best convincing arguments I've heard for and against (I'm currently leaning towards it's real, btw.)
For realz:
- "To finance the service, Google will display advertising links tied to the topics discussed within the e-mails. For instance, an e-mail inquiring about an upcoming concert might include an ad from a ticket agency."
People pay a lot for sponsered ads. More people looking at sponsered ads more of the time = shitloads of money.
- Newspapers are running the story.
Yeah, I know there have been pranks pulled before, but Google issued a press document and everything, and there are ramifications for issuing false press releases. Doing so before going public wouldn't be the best idea, either.
- ( some technical stuff ) indicates that GoogleMail.com has been registered and is being run by the same people as google.com. It's pretty unlikely that they'd go through the trouble of buying this as part of a prank without having anything pointing to it in the first place (they already have gmail.com and all...)
- It'd be a lame prank if it was one. They've got Terms of Service up, a Privacy Policy, and none of it is even the least bit humorous. Google's April Fools Jokes are usually more blatent. Like the
[ Error: Irreparable invalid markup ('<a [...] http://www.google.com/jobs/lunar_job.html">') in entry. Owner must fix manually. Raw contents below.] <div style="text-align: center;"><img src="http://bookface.apotheosis.tv/images/gmail.jpg" alt="GMail: I Want To Believe"></div> Whether it's <a href="http://www.markcarey.com/googleguy-says/archives/google-forgets-canada.html">forgetting Canada</a> (or alternatively, <a href="http://www.webpronews.com/news/ebusinessnews/wpn-45-20040331GoogleCannotFindCanada.html">losing it</a>), adding <a href="http://www.google.com/options/index.html">features</a> or <a href="http://labs.google.com/">making new ones</a>, Google! is always <a href="http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20040330">making waves with every move</a> and revolutionizing the world. The latest in Google's schemes is a hotly debated launch of an <a href="http://gmail.google.com">email service</a> with 1 <b>GIGABYTE</b> of storage per customer, and of course full searching and relevent text-based ads. Launched on April Fool's Day. Is it real? Is it not? Well, here are the best convincing arguments I've heard for and against (I'm currently leaning towards it's real, btw.) For realz: <ul><li>"To finance the service, Google will display advertising links tied to the topics discussed within the e-mails. For instance, an e-mail inquiring about an upcoming concert might include an ad from a ticket agency." People pay a lot for sponsered ads. More people looking at sponsered ads more of the time = shitloads of money. <li><a href="http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&edition=us&q=google+mail&btnG=Search+News">Newspapers are running the story.</a> Yeah, I know there have been pranks pulled before, but Google issued a press document and everything, and there are ramifications for issuing false press releases. Doing so before going public wouldn't be the best idea, either. <li><lj-cut text="some technical stuff">powerbook:/ pipebomb$ whois googlemail.com Whois Server Version 1.3 Domain names in the .com and .net domains can now be registered with many different competing registrars. Go to http://www.internic.net for detailed information. Domain Name: GOOGLEMAIL.COM Registrar: ALLDOMAINS.COM INC. Whois Server: whois.alldomains.com Referral URL: http://www.alldomains.com Name Server: NS2.GOOGLE.COM Name Server: NS1.GOOGLE.COM Name Server: NS3.GOOGLE.COM Name Server: NS4.GOOGLE.COM Status: REGISTRAR-LOCK Updated Date: 30-dec-2003 Creation Date: 18-jul-2001 Expiration Date: 18-jul-2005 This </lj-cut> indicates that GoogleMail.com has been registered and is being run by the same people as google.com. It's pretty unlikely that they'd go through the trouble of buying this as part of a prank without having anything pointing to it in the first place (they already have gmail.com and all...) <li>It'd be a lame prank if it was one. They've got Terms of Service up, a Privacy Policy, and none of it is even the least bit humorous. Google's April Fools Jokes are usually more blatent. Like the <a href="<a href="http://www.google.com/jobs/lunar_job.html">other one</a> they have up. <blockquote>Usually April Fool's Day jokes involve a certain minimum level of wit, and you should feel foolish for believing them once you find out they're a joke. But if someone were to tell me that Gmail is a joke, I wouldn't feel foolish. I'd just feel like Google had lied. There is some goofy language in the press release, but otherwise it just doesn't seem over-the-top enough to be a joke. But time will tell. -- <a href="http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/">http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/</a></blockquote> "The April Fools part of the Google release is <b>that it's real.</b>" "If this IS a prank it is overkill. WAY WAY WAY overkill. I vote real. Also I signed up for the email list. It doesn't seem to be just some form, either. The first time I filled it out I missed a period and put a "," instead, and it didn't accept the email address. When I fixed the address it said "Thank you for signing up for GMail newsgroup" or something to that effect." <li>If it was appropriately blocking large attachments, split files, and the like, with effective filtering that Google! has obviously proven themselves capable of doing in the past, it would be somewhat believable. Text compresses incredibly well; and most people (not trying to abuse the system) would never come anywhere close to the limits of the 1GB of space promised. Storage at $1/GB has been widely available for some time now; the cost increases considerably when you're doing 1 GB online, since you have to be able to provide it in multiple locations, with backups, etc. but it's still fairly cheap and getting cheaper. They could make their money with "AdSense" faster than they'd spend it on t he storage. "I've had the same email acount on an exchange server for the past 10 years and haven't deleted or archived any of my old mail... 600 megs. " "The number of users who will actually use that much storage is very small. I have a large email volume, plus SPAM, which I save (but filter into another folder with spamassassin). My email archive goes all the way back to 1997 and is still not much larger than 1GB. Even with SPAM, I think most users will take months or even years to reach a 150-200MB, much less 1GB." "That's the whole basis for web hosts telling you that you have 500GB of xfer or 70GB of storage; everybody gets told that because most people don't use anywhere near that, allowing the host to oversell and make a profit... Once you start actually 'using' the full space, though, you can sometimes incur the wraith of the host and some have even been known to boot users for using what they paid for. sucks." <li>People have actually been discussing the idea of GMail for months. The Register ran <a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/34983.html">an article on Janurary 20th</a>, for example. <li>It may be a half-prank. They could be just going for the attention, really launching gmail, but not offering the 1 GB of storage. Better yet, (and smarter) they could implement some sort of limits on the transfer per month, as in many website agreements, so that you can only get or send so much more per month towards your 1 GB total. <li>Direct hearsay: "My buddy at Google told me "It's real, and it's awesome." .. I was the one who got all the goons onto Orkut, BTW, so I'm not full of shit." "I have a friend that has some servers down in a datacenter in DC. This same datacenter is a host for Google and Windows Update. He just came back from a trip down there last week. He said that Google has placed probably 4x's the amount of machines down there since his last visit. A few days later I hear of this, it seems to track. " <li> <blockquote>AOL had 40GB e-mail storage...in 1994! Each AOL account could have up to five screen names. Each screen name could have up to 550 e-mails* in their Inbox. Each e-mail could have a maximum file attachment of 15MB. So...15MB times 550 is 8GB times 5 is about 40GB. That's per account, and thanks to the various account generation/phishing tricks, it wasn't uncommon to have several AOL accounts at any one time. * actually you could have 550 in both Inbox, Outbox, and Read mail and various AOL tools helped you do this, bringing your capacity to a whopping 120GB.</blockquote> <li>I can't find the source, but it's a very minor point anyway; the "plug your email in to be informed" dealie figures out reasonably well if your email is real or not. I'm sure that's copy and paste code from other stuff though. </ul> No way: <ul><li>It's April Fool's Day. <li>"Remember that Google is a privately held company. They can release fake press releases all they want and it doesn't matter because it isn't possible for anyone to lose a bunch of money over it. The worst that happens is people get let down. I'm not saying that Gmail is 100% fake, but they certainly are within the legal realm to do so. <li>The news <a href="http://www.snopes.com/holidays/april/pranks.asp">has been pranked before."</a> <li>Why is it not on <a href="http://labs.google.com/">the Google! labs page</a>, like all their other start up projects? <li>While googlemail and gmail are both registered to Google, <lj-cut text="this outdated record"> Registrant: Trout & Zimmer (DOM-425410) 3727 W. Magnolia Blvd., Suite 102 Burbank CA 91510 US Domain Name: gmail.com Registrar Name: Alldomains.com Registrar Whois: whois.alldomains.com Registrar Homepage: http://www.alldomains.com Administrative Contact: Domain Administrator (NIC-1559277) Trout & Zimmer 3727 W. Magnolia Blvd., Suite 102 Burbank CA 91510 US domains@troutzimmer.com +1.8184491024 Fax- +1.3104607040 Technical Contact, Zone Contact: Center Network Operations (NIC-398252) Alldomains.com 1800 Sutter St. Suite 100 Concord CA 94520 US hostmaster@alldomains.com +1.9256859600 Fax- +1.9256859620 Created on..............: 1995-Aug-13. Expires on..............: 2006-Aug-12. Record last updated on..: 2004-Mar-25 09:01:57. Domain servers in listed order: NS1.ALLDOMAINS.COM 64.124.14.32 NS5.ALLDOMAINS.COM 202.76.88.163 NS2.ALLDOMAINS.COM 209.25.143.102 NS3.ALLDOMAINS.COM 206.246.241.111 NS4.ALLDOMAINS.COM 217.199.176.204 </lj-cut> as of only a couple of days ago had no mention of Google, meaning they didn't bother to buy or update this record until just recently. And non-US names (such as gmail.co.fr or gmail.fr) don't have anything going for them yet. <li>People would attempt to use it for warez and file distribution. Google! is the world leader in text filtering, parsing, etc. I'm trying to think up ways to hide data as text. And I can, a few different ways. But to make it text that looks like words... it seems like it's so much trouble it's not worth it. They could have triggers to automatically put suspected warez accounts on hold. And if they're only letting you have 10 mb / attachment, everything large will have to be broken into many smaller files (i.e. 70 per CD). This is not unconcievable and has already been done for a long time with something called UseNet. Of course, with the protection of a web-only interface, you can prevent automation of this, which makes it less much enjoyable. "Anyway, they could make it so that after the second attachment you receive in a day, you have to write what the randomly drawing says to prevent people using bots that decompress all the attachments into one big file." Just what I was thinking. So there's already better ways to distribute warez (and .torrents for large legal distribution of files.) This invalidates this point. <li>According to this guy's <a href="http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=102470&op=Reply&threshold=-1&commentsort=0&tid=95&mode=flat&pid=8733186">comment on Slashdot</a>: <blockquote>Well look at google's press releases page. <a href="http://www.google.com/press/pressreleases.html">http://www.google.com/press/pressreleases.html</a> [google.com] March 31, 2004 Google Gets the Message, Launches Gmail March 29, 2004 Google Introduces Personalized Search Services; Site Enhancements Emphasize Efficiency </blockquote> Assuming <i>he</i> is telling the truth, the page has been updated to show "April 1, 2004" as the post date. Although one could make an argument that this is to fit in with their joke that it's a hoax, it's pretty sketchy. "Woohoo, you hit the nail on the head! Google waited for midnight GMT, the tricky global f*ckers!" [But apparently their own servers weren't timed perfectly!] </ul> For added fun: <ul><li>The source of the Gmail page contains: <tt><!-- There is no secret html on this page --></tt> <li><blockquote>"640k ought to be good enough for anybody..." - Bill Gates, 1981 "1 gigabyte ought to be good enough for anybody..." - Google, 2004</blockquote> <li><blockquote>With all due respect to Google, and god knows they're one of the few companies that seems to get "it" right, what with uncluttered interfaces, unbiased services, and unobtrusive text ads -- Google also records the IP address along with the search terms <i>of every search</i>.</blockquote> Just a thought. <li><blockquote>I didn't have aol very much but a lot of people I knew did and I had heard about the rampant warez trading. I remember once being at a friend's house who had AOL and I wanted to mess around with it, we joined a couple of chat rooms and stuff, and I was like, I wonder if there's a huge private chatroom called "warez"? So I typed in warez and tried to join a chat, and was in the room for all of 2 seconds before I was kicked out of the room and the computer disconnected. When my friend went to reconnect it wouldn't let him, and it cited TOS violations as the reason. He had no idea what warez meant, but he thought it was hilarious that I got him locked out of his AOL account for abusing the system within seconds by typing a single word. </blockquote> <li>Sounds like Microsoft's iLoo. At first they said it was serious. Then they said it was a joke. The later they admitted, yes, it really was a real idea and pulled it when everyone freaked out. </ul> A related Something Awful thread is archived <a href="http://bookface.apotheosis.tv/somethingawful/sa_gmail.html">here</a>.
current mood: googly-eyed
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2:53 am - Word of the Day: gadzookery!
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gadzookery (gad-ZOO-kuh-ree) noun
Use of archaic words or expressions, e.g. wight (brave),
prithee (I pray thee), ye (you, the).
[Apparently from gadzooks, once used as a mild oath, which may have been an alteration of God's hooks, a reference to the nails of Christ's crucifixion.]
I love wordsmith.org.
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| Wednesday, March 31st, 2004
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2:35 pm
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I realized at some point yesterday that I had accidentally left my last post publicly accessible, which was unintentional and only moderately embarassing in that I linked to several profiles on AmericanSingles.com I was looking at and somewhat (to very) interested in.
I suppose I will look upon this as an opportunity to explain and discuss two things; firstly, as of September I listed myself with a few such dating sites, the impetus for this being having gone to a $5 psychic as a means of being adventurous one time in the city with Craig, Kaisey, and I don't remember who else. (I remember that Craig kept saying things like, "Kaisey, you should ___," or "Kaisey, why don't you ___," with silly or stupid things for the ___ [albeit often funny] and Kaisey was getting upset at being singled out all the time by him. The reason I remember this is because one of the "Kaisey, you should"s was "you should get your fortune told." But of course nobody wanted to actually do it because nobody wants to commit to anything and I felt impulsive and curious so I went for it.] I asked as my two questions:
1) When will I find love?
2) If five years into the future I could tell myself now one thing, either to proceed or warn myself about it, what would it be?
The answer to the first was that I'd have met someone in 6 months, the second was a bit more complicated (between decided to continue business with a company or go it alone I should go it alone, it will be harder at first but get easier later on = short version.) However, it has been since AT LEAST before September began till now ( > 6 months) and while it is possible I have met someone in that time that will end up being my soulmate and just haven't noticed yet, the odds are increasingly pointing to it being (as of course was suspected) all a pile of rubbish.
[There is one somewhat reasonable chance to fulfill the fortune, and apparently everyone in my English class knows me while I can recognize everyone but don't really know any more than a few people by name (it's not entirely my fault, she calls on me twice as much as any other student because I know stuff.)]
However, I figured to be give the fortune a fair chance of coming true I'd have to take every opportunity I could and part of that was filling out and signing up for a bunch of dating services (hey, it's a little weird but it's another avenue, right?)
Why do I feel like I keep defending myself in this post? I don't have to justify anything to anyone, but this is honestly what was going on in my head. Whether it's a rationalization or not is left as an excercise for the reader -- I'm never sure myself.
So anyway I started signing up for these sites and put my name into I think three of them with varying degrees of completeness, and though it was pretty fun (who doesn't like doing profiles?) and I wanted to do more for whatever reasons I lost inertia and stopped after that.
So that explains some of the links to other dating sites, and the links to the profiles I'd been looking at... oh. And I wanted to upload a new picture because one site didn't even have a picture (and I got two "teaser" flirts! wait... is that good or bad? argument for good: obviously they're not to worried about looks, right, so I'm certainly not going to be a disappointment? argument for bad: why wouldn't I get any other teasers on other sites though? let's go with good and be self-delusional for now!) and in any case I recently took on a new look for myself, as seems to happen every year or two (sometimes in rather radical ways). I don't think I'll explain it any further, just let you experience it for yourself if you haven't yet.
Updated picture or not, though, I feel tremendously more confident; I feel like I really look good for the first time since I started paying attention to the way I look. (And confidence of course is supposed to make one appear even more attractive, which is just plain wonderful.) Overall I feel really good, too, like I'm returning back to when I was happiest, 4 years ago at the latest... but taking the long way round, and actually deserving it this time.
That makes no sense to anyone but me, does it? I mean, I was happy then because I had been assuming things were true that I hadn't been looking at too closely. And now, I'm happy because (I think) all those things are actually true. Sensible now, yes?
So. Thanks to the mysteries of the universe and the magic of synchrocity, immediately after I feel confident a perfect opportunity arises to test my confidence! Part of my looking through my mailed matchs from AmericanSingles (i.e. some of which were the ones I marked to look at again that you may or may not have seen before I private'd the post) meant that I looked through another piece of mail from them, advertising an AmericanSingles event; i.e. meet people, at a club. So presumably everyone there will be single and available and looking. So if one who is there sees something one likes, and one is confident, one will go for it.
I like taking tests when I can ace them almost by sheer willpower alone. (It's much easier when you actually know what you're doing... I'm significantly less confident about the test I just took earlier today. :-/ Well, that's what happens when you try to learn a half semester's worth of class material in one night; I'm think I did pretty impressively considering that, but man, if I had taken twice the time... Chance to redeem myself tomorrow in my other AMS class.)
Back to the point... It's in the city, though, which means probably most of the people who go will also be from the city, because most people won't waste hours and money on a train ride to be as socially inept as they could be in a bar nearer to their home. And I'd be more than a little reluctant to start dating even an ideal match from that far away. On the other hand, maybe other people will be like me and approve of the idea of a city adventure and a dating adventure combined into one. We shall see what we shall see!
Wow, I somehow forgot that I wasn't sure if I was going to go or not... I prepaid $5 (instead of $10 at the door) in order to give myself a little extra incentive towards going, since I was iffy on the subject... but I guess I'm pretty definitely going at this point.
Right now my head hurts from not having eaten, so I will take my leave. Love to all who need it. Wish me luck tomorrow, for both my test and for my American Singley thingy. Not that I'll need it, right?
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| Saturday, March 27th, 2004
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4:54 am
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| Thursday, March 25th, 2004
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6:00 pm - Journals are so addictive...
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So as some of you may know I've sent out a hard drive to somebody I know from the intarweb and recieved it back chock full of MP3 audiobooks.
This is, as you might imagine, wonderful. Now all my time driving or walking can be spent "reading" too!
( Angels and Demons (the prequel to The DaVinci Code) misrepresents ambigrams -- pictures inside! )
Now I don't know what to think. Dan Brown obviously knew what was going on with the ambigrams and misrepresented them, and then obviously contradicted his own cover, made it obvious he was lying. Moreover, he named his protaganist after the ambigrammer, and he's probably at least part of the reason I even know about ambigrams (which I love) since he popularized it with his book. I feel I should like and respect him for his use and promotion of ambigrams, but I also feel insulted at his attempts to hoodwink me.
(Maybe it was supposed to be a warning that he is a hoodwinking sort of fellow, but I don't buy it.)
In other news, my Mondays were always busy and now the busyness is slowly creeping into my week; first it was just Tuesdays, since I had classes in the morning, then I signed up for my Physics tutoring to be then too. (I am not too careful about sticking to that commitment, though.) But then I started having things unfulfilled for English class, and I'd keep trying to them on Tuesdays also. And then I signed up for Drawing class on Tuesdays. And now if I have to stay up all night on Monday nights, as I figured I'd be doing much of the time because my Tuesday classes were so early, I get maybe two hours of sleep before I have to get going again. (Note that this would be after being up at least 36 hours since I have class all day on Monday.) Not happy. And now all the things that I need to do regularly in my free time have been bumped onto Wednesday, because if I leave them for Thursdays I don't do them at all.
My English class makes me feel so much like I'm in high school again. The chairs are the same style, the people are in the same style, the teaching is in the same style. It makes me feel at home again; I managed to mangle a chair yesterday when I sat down it and it collapsed with the legs facing completely outward instead of down. Also yesterday, our proposal for our research paper was due. I started telling my teacher how I hadn't done the proposal exactly as she'd laid it out since I'd lost it, and started discussing with her the project I had in mind, staying a minute or two after class. (Again, like high school; if only I could have a note to go to the next one late!)
She said something along the lines of, "Don't worry about sticking to the assignments like this too closely, I'm sure you'll write a good paper anyway... I'm sure you muset be bored in this class, since you're more advanced... I'd like you to take the role of a sort of sub-teacher..."
This faith is, incidentally, after being over a month late for our first major paper (an analysis of any two texts we'd done in class), and it's not looking like I'm going to get around to that anytime soon. The thought of working on it puts me to sleep, forces me to find any distraction I can to avoid it; it's like torture to work on it. Because whatever text we pick I've already milked pretty dry in the first assignment we have regarding it, since I tend to overextend myself beyond the bounds of the assignments--it's pretty fun compared to the rest of the shitwork I have to do for my other classes, and I can convince myself I'm being a good boy to boot. I once wrote a six page paper for a one page assignment, and ended up not even handing it in but doing an entirely new paper.
That's it for now. A little boring and personal, but hey, it is a journal even if it is online.
Question of the day: What makes you angry?
Asked this, I couldn't think of a reply. Perhaps, "when I'm insulted," but although it's definitely true, that's pretty vague. I don't get angry often, but the few times I can think of were all when I felt belittled by someone's opinion of me and lashed out in response. There are things that should make me angry, like world hunger, injustice, Bush... but I end up wondering how much I can do, and just feeling either helpless [or lazy, if I'm in a less cynical mood].
Ugh. I really haven't written anything. But I'm sick of this room, of all these rooms, of computers and computer screens. I need something new, I need something to change.
current mood:  geeky
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2:11 pm - Math Club today...
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Rock the Vote?
by Mike Chance
Abstract:
Given the outcome of the 2000 presidential election, there has been much attention paid to voting procedures in the United States. While most discussion has focused on the electoral college and dangling chads, the problems facing the United States' voting method are actually much deeper. In this talk we will explore several voting systems, the paradoxes that arise from them, as well as ways of quantitatively measuring voting power. This talk is meant to be expository, and should be accessible to anyone with a high-school math education.
As always, the meeting will be at 7:00 pm in room 4-125 of the math building.
Food will be provided and the lecture should be around 7:30.
For those of you on campus and interested.
When you enter the Math building from the main doors (across from Physics) there are elevators to your left, 4-125 is right near where they open onto the 4th floor.
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| Thursday, March 18th, 2004
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2:31 pm - peenie wallie
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| Wednesday, March 17th, 2004
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9:49 am
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... the fuck?
dating stuff. I note that I fit into pretty much every quality they describe as not sexually confident, excepting "predictable and boring," and techincally "call women every day" [although I often call more than anyone else.]
Hrm. Maybe I should work on that.
Thing is, I do the same for males, i.e. overly nice, pander to, seek approval from, tolerate rudeness, go out of my way to please. Males are generally easier to make happy and less demanding, but well, for instance, there's Craig.
WHAT THE FUCK AM I DOING? I HAVE TO WRITE MY ESSAY FOR ENGLISH! WHY CAN'T I STOP MYSELF?
Right. Back to procastinating.
Try this. It's hard. I got 10 right and thought that was crappy, then I saw most everybody else got much less.
create your own visited states map
or check out these Google Hacks.
Last thing I'm pointing out: moveon.org ad
All links stolen from Amy Druzba's website.
Who is Amy Druzba? She is the person who wrote with regards to my orkut profile (which isn't very long, I don't think):
Subject: Great to read...
You're a great read...even if it's just your profile.
THought I'd drop you a line to tell you that!
How sweet! This is exactly why I spend all my life filling out stupid crap on the internet rather than actually doing anything I'm supposed to be doing. (She's 27, married and has a baby -- there's no romantic interest here, but it's still nice to know that someone thinks you're cool.)
WHAT THE FUCK AM I GOING TO TELL MY ENGLISH TEACHER WHO WILL NOW OFFICIALLY HATE ME?
(maybe if I say something about this essay being my albatross she will be sufficiently impressed by me again and ignore the fact that it's so freaking late it's physically painful)
oh... just one more link... (regarding Project Gutenburg)
And now I have four minutes to class. Essay's not going to get done today, that's for freaking sure.
I am such a bum.
current mood: pathetic
current music: 1 minute left. no time for love, dr. jones.
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| Tuesday, March 16th, 2004
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4:53 pm
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In case anybody is concerned about me, and you know who you are, I should probably make mention of the fact that I've returned to a more positive outlook since my last meaningful post here, based on the following two points:
1) Everybody deserves someone.
2) I may be a bastard, but most people are bigger bastards.
In other news... more Family Guy!
I felt all guilty for not buying the DVDs yet and registering my support for the show. Oh well, I'll get to them eventually.
Speaking of buying things, I bought a little mini-digital camera, because apparently I'm addicted to breaking the battery cases on my father's camera, and because his camera isn't mine and I'd like to have something that I can keep around all the time to take quick pictures. It's pretty nifty, good picture quality considering how cheap/small it is. It's clear, which is cool, but stupid because I could have gotten it for $4.50 cheaper if I had bought the silver version. This gives a better size comparison -- it's tiny. I like that. I already have too much stuffed in my various folds and pockets of the things I carry around with me. It's just as I wanted it to be. Well, I would have liked a LCD viewfinder, but other than that it's all good.
Done with my last midterm, which feels good, and I think I did pretty damn well on it despite not having prepared until about two hours before the test (it was open book, though, which meant taking the test cold was harder). It was mostly Descartes, though, which I know pretty thoroughly, thanks a little book by Spinoza I picked up at a small coffeeshop/bookstore in NYC when I was 12 or so. It was a cool little place and made me wish that I had cool little places to go to for a long time afterward.
Working on making a portal page, cause that's all the rage these days, no? It will do all sorts of neato things like update with the daily Newsday crossword PDF and create a PS version too for printing from sparky.
Hrm. Actually, during the process of writing this, I just found out the Family Guy DVDs have been edited in parts (see here for some examples). Fucking A.
Well, I've definitely been here too long. It started snowing outside and I went out to go look and when I came back I just sat and wasted time looking through SomethingAwful and LiveJournal and Orkut and all those other community things that don't really give you any connection to anybody but make you feel like you belong.
... And now I've REALLY been here too long because I stayed against my better judgement to talk to some fuckup girl (? or was it all staged as I originally suspected?) on AIM who claimed to be from sbloveshack.
Argh.
Must go do drawings. And hopefully catch a shower before class. Fucking snow. Why won't it stop?
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| Monday, March 15th, 2004
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5:13 pm - ugh. what's wrong with me?
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ah, well, I suppose at this point it would be fruitless to try and start working on my essay, and I've got nothing else to do for seven minutes, so...
(_) i've never been drunk
(_) i've never smoked pot
(_) i've never kissed a member of the opposite sex
(x) i've never kissed a member of the same sex
[besides on the cheek]
(x) i've never crashed a friend's car
(x) i've never been to japan
(_) i've never ridden in a taxi
(x) i've never had anal sex
(_) i've never been in love
(x) i've never had sex
(x) i've never had sex in public
(x) i've never been dumped
(_) i've never shoplifted
(x) i've never been fired
(_) i've never been in a fist fight
(x) i've never had a threesome
(_) i've never snuck out of my parents' house
[never really needed to but I'll give myself the point for taking the car once.]
(x) i've never been tied up (sexually)
(_) i've never been caught masturbating
(_) i've never pissed on myself
(x) i've never had sex with a member of the same sex
(x) i've never been arrested
(x) i've never made out with a stranger
(_) i've never stole something from my job
(x) i've never celebrated new years in the square
(x) i've never went on a blind date
[successfully]
(_) i've never lied to a friend
(x) i've never had a crush on a teacher
(x) i've never celebrated mardi gras in new orleans
(_) i've never been to europe
(_) i've never skipped school
[haha]
(x) i've never slept with a co-worker
(x) i've never been to south america
(_) i've never liked onions
(_) i've never done mushrooms
(x) i've never had sex on a beach
(x) i've never had sex with someone the first day i met them
current music: go to class, schmuck - voice in my head
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5:07 am - todo list. [since it doesn't fit in my away message]
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Updated 16:22 2004-Mar-15.
Updated 18:36 2004-Mar-15.
Updated 12:05 2004-Mar-16.
Italics indicate failure. Bold indicates success. Both indicate partial success.
0500 - work on two drafts of crappy essay for crappy english class.
0830 - do crappy math homework for crappy math class.
0930 - do some studying for test #1 (internet programming) today. at least find out what it's going to be on and such.
1040 - go to crappy english class.
1145 - go to crappy math class. ignore class and study what I can for test #2. (networking)
1250 - go take test #1. should be easy.
1410 - study for test #2. hope that this will be enough time to do so. it won't. hope that i'll be motivated to take copies of book for use during open-book test. I won't.
1550 - go to crappy cs class. probably continue to study for test #2.
1720 - take test #2. do okay, but have plenty of room to have done better. kick self for not taking more time to do readings and study.
2100 - study for tuesday test #1. (modern philosophy). may need to pull a second all-nighter. at best expecting 2 hours of sleep. probably will sleep for more and thus screw myself over for test.
--> also, do essays for English that I failed to do this morning. When will I learn that sleep + not sleep in concurrent time is not possible??
0820 take tuesday test #1. do horribly. kick self for not taking more time to study or doing readings ever.
0950 probably skip math class in celebration and go home to sleep. ideally go to bank on way home to deposit check from Google and make sure that check for ticket won't bounce.
1030/45 get home. die for a few hours.
1600 wake up. shower. eat. etc.
1700 do drawings for "class" (workshop, no credit, just for fun
1900 drawing class.
2100 ...
current mood: overwhelmed
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| Sunday, March 14th, 2004
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3:02 am
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( ... sexual compatibility ... )
Should I be concerned that Dana is a ONE HUNDRED AND TWO percent match with me?
Does this mean we're more compatible than is humanly possible? Or does it just indicate "shared" (i.e. stolen!) future thoughts?
current mood:  amused
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| Friday, March 5th, 2004
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12:46 pm - nothing but not-even-close-to-the-net
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I was just thinking last night how I should write in here more often, and today another Stoner replied to one of my previous entries.
However, I'm not going to be doing that now. Soon, though, my pretties.
Hey, guess what though? I just missed my midterm. Yeah, that was fun. I got out here and was already about 5, 10 minutes late, then I realized I forgot my sheet with all the formulas he's letting us bring to it (wtf stupid fucking idea but I gotta at least try to take advantage of whatever is available). Went back home, picked it up from where I had left it in the kitchen to stuff a few apple chips in my facehole, ran out the door again and got back to (the) south P (parking lot.) I get there now 20 minutes after my class started, which makes it 12:00 noon. This is still fine for me, theoretically, cause I work fast anyway and I was the first one out of the room on the last two quizzes even though I came in late to one of those. But to make things better, at noon the busses switch their shifts and instead of waiting at most 5 or 10 minutes, you are pretty much guaranteed a twenty-five minute wait. I walked in with 15 minutes to go (in a 55 minute class, so more than one-fourth of the time left, I figure at least I can do better than a 0.) He says he can't give it to me now, but I can do it on Wednesday though during his office hours. So that's not too bad.
Heh. I like how the picture for this is of the earth.
*looks at the current world's population* You must have a lot of frustration then.
What pisses you off?
Created by ptocheia
Love to all who need it. (Or want it.)
Oh, speaking of pictures, check this out:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/apod/142592.html
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| Friday, February 13th, 2004
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5:50 pm - unflushable!
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current mood: amused
current music: Boston - Feelin' Satisfied
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| Wednesday, February 4th, 2004
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11:37 pm - better a little bit than nothing at all, yes?
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I've been meaning to write for a bit now but been busy/lazy/thinking about too much shit to write a small entry.
Approximately 52% of all my writing I've plugged into the Gender Genie indicates I am female. (no matter what the sample size of the writing or when I wrote them.)
http://hutta.com/lj/gender/ will analyze a bunch of your livejournal quick 'n' easy.
I met my cousin Nedah in Germany, for the first time since we were very young. She speaks a little English and I speak very little German, but we both speak Persian. We got along on that. I'm not very good with numbers in Persian, though. So when she introduced herself as 15, I thought she said she was 26, and didn't realize my mistake until about an hour and a half later. Had she been some girl I met somewhere, I could have easily commited statutory rape without knowing it. That scares me.
I want to talk about other Germany stuff. The reason I focus on that is because I just wrote about it for class. I have a lot of classes. I didn't bother updating my schedule on here, but http://courses.hopto.org or http://classes.hopto.org is always accurate. Not that anyone ever bothers looking at it or even needs to know. But yeah. I'm overloading this semester, taking 21 credits. I pretty much have to, to graduate on time. (Either that or get very lucky with summer session availability, but why take that chance?)
A lot of my classes are bullshit. Specifically, Monday, my busiest day by far, the first three classes are crap on a stick, and then after draining my energy with them I have to go to two more.
Meh. Library is closing. Didn't get to say much. But hey, at least you know I'm still alive and such.
current mood: auto-pilot
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| Monday, January 26th, 2004
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12:48 pm - Classes Spring 2004
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Classes:
Monday
WF 1145-1240 AMS 310 P113 Survey/Probability & Statistics
F 1250-1410 CSE 336 Jav102 Internet Programming
W 1550-1740 CSE 303 Jav103 Intro to Theory/Computation
1720-2010 CSE 346 LEL102 Computer Communications
Tuesday/Thursday
0950-1110 AMS 301 SBU135 Finite Mathematical Structures
current mood:  rushed
current music: She Said - Collective Soul
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| Monday, December 29th, 2003
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5:34 am - a semester in summary
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[edit]
wow... this entry is huge, bigger and messier than I realized, but as you can see at the bottom it's probably not a good idea for me to bother with cleaning it up..
[/edit]
I feel like so much is happening in my life all the time at any given moment, and yet overall I've got nothing going on. I guess everybody feels that way, though. It's always hard to see the gradual changes in things you're too close to, and you can't get much closer than yourself...
Same old complaints, same old stories. I'm always wanting a relationship, of course, like everyone not in a relationship, but I think I've lost faith in love, at least as the magic I thought of it as. That sounds worse, I think, than it should. I think it's not so much losing my optimism as my idealism. I used to believe so strongly in commitment, in being faithful, in forever, in... not so much waiting till marriage for sex, but that really knowing them had to come first, that a good deal of knowing someone had to come even before asking them out on a date.
It feels stupid even saying things like this, but two years ago I think I would have hung on to it tooth and nail, at least in my head no matter what I said outwardly. I think my catharsis came with Dawn.
I'm quite sure that my entry will be plenty long enough without extended quotes and annoy people until it gets bumped off the end of their friends page, but meh... I like quoting stuff, pulling the diamonds from the rough and putting them all together in a row.
J.D.: Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! And shut up! Okay? Who are you people to give me advice about anything? All you do is just bitch about your relationships all day long!
[to Dr. Cox] And you know what? Glare all you want, "Big Dog," okay, 'cause I'm not afraid of you. "Oh, no! Jordan's only paying attention to the baby!" That must be so hard for Dr. Look At Me! Isn't it? "Look at meeeeeee!"
[to Turk and Carla] And you two? Come on, you're arguing since you got engaged? Wow, you're probably the first couple that's ever done that, ever! It can't be that you're just scared, is it?
[to Elliot] And you! You! You know what, let's just--let's just forget for one second that a month ago you told me you couldn't be in a relationship with anyone. Because, for me, it's actually fun to watch you sabotage your relationship from the outside. It really is.
Honestly? The only thing that gives me comfort, you guys, is while I'm sitting at home, staring at the ceiling, just wishing that I had someone to talk to, is knowing that none of you idiots realize how lucky you are!
...
J.D.'s Narration: I don't think people are meant to be by themselves. That's why, if you actually find someone you care about... it's important to let go of the little things, even if you can't let go all the way. Because nothing sucks more than feeling all alone... no matter how many people are around.
-- Scrubs 2x18 - My T.C.W.
I don't think I'm the only one who feels this way (I really hope I'm not), but pretty much any intelligent and attractive single girl seems like a good prospect to me. I like everyone, I want to be with almost everybody new I meet, and some I don't even get as far as meeting -- and I don't even mean just for fucking, I mean I see a friendly smile and I think that I'd like to call her my girlfriend, I'd like to be with her, I'd like to share thoughts and feelings with her. Okay, maybe that part's a little crazy... :-/
Besides that, even, I just want to be with someone. It's pretty tough seeing a lot of people in your life and the shows you watch and books you read, what sometimes feels like *everybody* even though you know it's really not, all involved in relationships. I'm thirsty, not even for the cuddling and the sex (although there's that too), but just for the dynamic, just for the claim to someone, just for... I don't know what. Just for another level in my life... another, radical growth... change that I can see happening instead of having to look back to years ago and compare notes with how I'm doing now and how I was then.
I miss a lot of things from the old days, though. Most of all I miss my confidence, the blind faith in myself that let me think of myself as a king through failure after failure, a confidence that dissipated when I began to reflect on myself as a physical entity as well as a mental one. I know that sounds kind of weird (as does much of what I say) but what I mean is, until a few years ago I never considered myself as other people see me, as I see other people: a package, a mind AND a body. I was introspective as all hell, and I was always reading deep into things, trying to analyze every part of every psyche I could see including my own, but for about 19 years I somehow forgot that I was a person. Maybe on purpose, maybe it made things easier for me growing up; I'm sure it wouldn't have been easy dealing with being who I was, a freakish foreigner, a Habib, the kind of guy that makes people think of 7-11... As a simply mental entity, I never really had to come to terms with my foreignness. I never even really thought about it except when that was the actually focus; my self-image was a reflection. I felt white, and my parents claimed to me that we were Caucasian and I believed them -- technically, it may be true for all I know, but I know that's not the ethnic group a random stranger would put me in when they saw me.
But while it may have made it easier to ignore or deny what I was growing up, eventually I had to... well, grow up. So, thanks to a very special person, I finally began to take a look at what I really was, not what I felt like from inside but how I acted and how I looked from the outside. And while it's not something I liked doing, and it took a while for the lesson to set in, and it hurt like hell while it was doing it, and I didn't forgive her for opening me up to it for a long time, it was something that I had to do. Although there's plenty I regret and plenty that was really messed up about both of us, in retrospect I'm glad everything turned out the way it did. She hurt me a hell of a lot, and I probably hurt quite a bit too, more out of spite and fear and confusion than anything else... but at least I made it through that, and it really killed off a lot of idealistic dreams I think I was holding on to, opened my eyes to a lot of stuff I'd been trying to ignore, and made me understand how messy love is.
Again, I want to emphasize that inside my head this isn't as negative as it sounds when I write it down; I think that part of what makes things beautiful is their messiness, and that in my semi-relationship I lost nothing that I shouldn't have already shed off long ago. I don't even know if I'm making sense to anyone but me anymore, though, so I'm going to step away from this spiral downwards. The point is that, like most things in my life, I began to understand myself backwards from the way everyone else did it; I first understood the inside as well as I could before I realized what there was on the outside. But although I think that it's better to understand what's really going on, emotionally I still miss the bliss of my ignorance, my feeling of almost total self-satisfaction for about two and a half years of my life (cut short not by my discovery of my outer self, but I think cut off from returning there by it)... everyone should be so lucky as to have that much joy in their lives for a span like that.
What makes me think about this, particularly, is that last week I was talking to Drew and he said something about missing the way I used to speak... I was less cocky, he said, less presumptious, less arrogant. And my first instinct was to deny that something about me internally had changed, and claim it was an adaptation to him. I contended that I still listened the same way to other people without commenting much.
Then I realized that wasn't exactly true; first of all, even with those people, I was more aggressive with my comments, more vengeful, more spiteful. Secondly, there's something different about the way I feel; the old me, when listening, used to be a sponge, wanting to soak in every drop, wanting to understand people better than they did themselves. I don't know why that stopped. Maybe after a while I was done absorbing the good parts of the people around me and I turned to the rest of the bad and it overwhelmed me, but that's just a theory. More likely, I think, I just got tired of doing all that soaking in, I wanted to wring myself out a bit and see what stuck. But I missed my old style of listening, too, and so almost immediately it resurfaced, at least with Drew. Whether that'll stick or not, and transfer to other people, I don't know, but we'll soon find out.
(This is so not the direction I inteded for this entry to take, but I've learned that if it's what's on my mind it's usually what needs discussing. Let's backtrack a bit now, though.)
Men, and I don't mean to generalize, are CRAP. They're the human race's only failed gender. Who needs them? And why are they so difficult to keep hold of?
Do you think they realize, that were it not for the genetic imperative to populate the earth, they wouldn't get a date? That's one hell of an inducement; no pressure, girls, but shag one of these or it's curtains for all humankind! That's harassment!
But you know what? You know what's even more crap than men? *We* are more crap than men. All those stupid books you guys had. And, and, and and, these magazines! A hundred pages of men are useless bastards, and then an article about why you should wake him up with a blow job! Am I alone in spotting the inconsistency here?
And [beauty salons]! Because for god's sake, don't let them see what we *really* look like. Just let them enjoy the results, don't let them see how it all happens.
- You know, I went out with Steve for six years, and...
No you didn't! You went out with him for four years, I checked.
- Well, it seemed longer.
Yeah, yeah, of course it seemed longer. I myself have been going out with him since the twelveth century -- or possibly since last week, it's hard to keep track. Because how are you supposed to measure time with the man that you want to spend the rest of your life with? What would make sense? Centuries? Nanoseconds?
-- Coupling (U.K.) 3x01 - Split
That, I think, gives an accurate reading of how I'm generally feeling about things right now. An paradoxical distaste for everything I've seen wrong combined with an undying thirst for everything I still hold is right. I see everything wrong and I can't let it go, but I can't let go of what I want because of merely that, either.
So anyway. Dawn. Dawn was single when the year started, and then one day she got a boyfriend -- and when I say "one day" I mean exactly that. I'd seen before how much can happen in a day, but even in that instance there was some background between the two people; I was in Dawn and Mariel's room when "the boy" called, and I was there for much of the conversation that night which was from what I understand about the second time or so they had spoken. Meanwhile I'd been harboring an interest in Dawn; not letting myself even really think about it before getting to know her better, but liking her for all the obvious goodnesses, her wit and her humor and her cuteness. And then all of a sudden this guy had gone right out and told her he liked her and wanted to get to know her better, and then he did.
I must admit flat-out that I would probably be entranced by someone who took an interest in me like that, who just liked me out of nowhere like that. This kid, though... not quite stupid, but not too bright. For a while we all hung out together, Dawn and Mariel and newboy and me. I felt defensive and I tried to call him on seeming to take more of an interest in Mariel than Dawn. The impression that I got from him was totally that he singled out Dawn because he was looking for a specific type of relationship, low-maintenence and casual sex. (Sorry, Dawn, that seems a bit of an insult but it really shouldn't be...) After Mariel left and we walked from the deli where we'd been eating to her meeting; I went partially because I really like walking, and walking and talking especially, but also because I wanted to cockblock a bit, continuing in my protective vein; I didn't want her to have to be stuck alone with him for too long if she didn't want to be and felt the same way I did about his vague creepiness. About 30 feet away I felt the right thing to do was back off and give him a tiny window of time to be alone with her to say goodbye at least, and that final bit of walk seemed like a reasonable comprimise.
I came by the next day to see what she had thought and share my opinions to find he ended up staying through her meeting, and they officially declared their relationship as boyfriend and girlfriend that night. I was stunned. I felt cheated. How did this hesitancy keep coming back to bite me on the ass? How are other people this ... daring, this ready?
That's when I decided, you just have to jump in and grab any hint of a chance you get, or you'll end up literally left in the cold. You don't need to know anything intimate for a fucking date, I told myself; that stuff gets worked out later. Just liking someone is enough. Just a little bit is enough to get going if you're pumping the gass.
Did I follow my good advice? Of course not. Did I totally chicken out and fail to ask out this girl who was perfect for me in every way I could see? Of course I did. Am I a complete idiot of the highest caliber? Of course I am. Did I make tons of excuses for my behavior to myself that I tried to pretend were the real reasons instead of stupid blind irrational fear? Certainly, that's what I do best!
So, here's the deal. I'm sitting on a terminal in the Math/Physics library. I've got the book for my class (being taught by my housemate, which is kind of cool although I didn't get any special benefits from it) which he has practically recommended we not buy due to expense and has personally recommended the same to me in just as many words; there's a copy on reserve in said library for us to use. I'm waiting for the copy machine, though, because I don't feel like doing the homework there, I just want to make a copy of the work I need to do and leave; some of the busywork I want to plug into Mathematica to save some time, and all they have in the library are strictly web-browsing terminals, and I don't really need the book for anything but the questions. She comes up to me (+, she's outgoing and not shy) to ask me if the stuff on the table behind me including the textbook is mine (another +, I think, because it wasn't even next to me and she displayed more balls than I think I would have had in that situation, preferring instead to wait it out, because I'm a shy idiot about the stupidest things.)
We get to talking easily, and she's in the same class with me, same section (+, getting to see each other on a fairly regular basis equals development of relationship). She is taking a basic Computer Science course and is, it turns out, an Engineering major (+++, because girls in either field are really rare) and she says something about how she's going to fail (- because she's a worrier) and how she's going to try anyway until if and when fails out or succeds rather than drop out (+ whoa, props, and that sounds so like me as a sophmore). These were (approximately) her words, not mine; she actually said that she had told her mother that, and her mother had responded, "Oh, greeeat..." She complained about how hard it was to have the guys in the field who want to do everything for her and don't really show her any respect (+, I'm a rare breed of male feminist which works well with that frustration). She also said she liked classes that challenge her (+!) and she mentioned missing classes (+, because this works against the worrying thing; she might worry but at least she has fun and doesn't miss out because of it, and I can respect that).
She was spirited, spunky, lively; cute, great fashion sense (or at least, well dressed.) She was (at least from what I saw of her) everything I could have wanted. Why'd I miss my chance? Let's have a little format change of pace and save me some typing, because as you can see I have enough to do as it is:
(01:17:51) kaismand: what are you doing
(01:17:56) Bookface: writing
(01:19:10) kaismand: guess who is outside my window
(01:19:37) Bookface: is it Orion?
(01:19:44) kaismand: it is you and Bernicio
(01:20:13) Bookface: yeah, I'm just checking up on you, just passing through
(01:20:22) kaismand: that's sort of creepy
(01:20:30) Bookface: thanks, I try
(01:29:13) kaismand: what are you writing
(01:29:49) Bookface: a livejournal entry
(01:31:02) kaismand: i didn't know you kept that up
(01:31:41) Bookface: I didn't, really. it's been a while since my last entry, and that wasn't very introspective, I think just a link and a paragraph or something.
(01:32:57) Bookface: I kept an offline journal this semester, though... with pen and a notebook. it was interesting, different.
(03:40:52) kaismand: helllo
(03:40:56) Bookface: hi
(03:40:57) kaismand: what are you doing
(03:41:02) Bookface: still writing
(03:41:06) kaismand: about me
(03:41:07) kaismand: ?
(03:41:11) Bookface: no
(03:41:17) kaismand: can you put me in there
(03:41:19) Bookface: about A GIRL
(03:41:22) Bookface: probably
(03:41:26) kaismand: please
(03:41:29) kaismand: i will be amused
(03:41:33) Bookface: okay
(03:41:35) kaismand: which girl are you writing about
(03:41:44) Bookface: Vaishala
(03:41:49) kaismand: whoa
(03:41:57) kaismand: that is a unique name
(03:42:03) Bookface: 'tis, isn't it?
(03:42:36) kaismand: ti t'nsi sit'
(03:43:03) kaismand: is she real
(03:43:03) Bookface: whoa... you just blew my mind
(03:43:08) Bookface: yes
(03:43:19) kaismand: why are you writing about her
(03:43:21) Bookface: but perhaps not by your rigorous standards
(03:43:39) Bookface: where people have to talk to you on a regular basis to prove their existence
(03:43:50) Bookface: because I don't think she's ever talked to you
(03:44:05) kaismand: I am prepared to relax my conditions of reality.
(03:44:14) Bookface: that's handy, then
(03:44:24) Bookface: I am writing about her because I was attracted to her and foolishly squandered a few chances to ask her out
(03:45:16) kaismand: oh
(03:45:31) kaismand: I understand
(03:46:26) Bookface: I will try to summon my courage again, though, should I meet her on campus sometime
(03:54:52) Bookface: I felt ready sometimes to go for it and it didn't work out... she missed class a lot, and out of the three times we talked in depth after the first, two times I felt it would have been a little sketchy to have ended with an asking-out based on the fact that I had basically stalked her by walking after her, and the other time I hadn't done any following but I said something kind of stupidly aggressive and she got all defensive about it and then I felt like the chemistry wasn't as good as the other three times we'd talked so I didn't go for it then, either
(03:55:14) Bookface: it seems like a bad idea to seem a little weird and stalkery when you are seeking approval...
(03:55:18) kaismand: oh
(03:55:32) kaismand: actually I think it would be ideal to ask after following her on foot
(03:55:42) kaismand: I used to follow people on campus a lot
(03:56:01) kaismand: once I followed Mike Rizk to some house where there was a cat he was looking after
(03:56:11) kaismand: that took like 2 hours
(03:57:57) Bookface: I did follow her on foot, but the problem was I had followed her from behind the first two times. once I ran out after a test, finishing just after her, and I caught up with her in the SAC, only at some point along the way she stopped to talk to someone and I tried to hide behind a pillar but I botched it up by looking out to see if she was done yet while she was looking in my direction, but I wasn't sure if she had seen me or not
(03:58:13) kaismand: lol
(03:58:17) kaismand: I am laughing
(03:58:18) kaismand: out loud
(03:58:22) kaismand: I am amused
(03:58:34) Bookface: because I hid behind a pillar?
(03:58:37) kaismand: yes
(03:58:40) kaismand: and botched it
(03:58:44) Bookface: haha
(03:58:47) Bookface: I am laughing too
(04:01:00) Bookface: but you do follow my line of reasoning, right? in that it seemed stalkery enough to be following her into the SAC, but then hiding and peeking out from behind a pillar... I'm not sure she saw me, but I couldn't take that chance, because then that would be really really weird from her point of view (okay, anybody's point of view) and that wasn't exactly an impression I'd hope to make along with an asking-out
(04:02:12) kaismand: I think i'd be flattered if I knew an attractive girl were stalking me
(04:02:27) Bookface: I do not think I am an attractive girl, though
(04:02:32) kaismand: however, you are not an attractive girl
(04:02:40) kaismand: so please don't stalk me any more than usual
(04:02:44) Bookface: whoa... you just blew my mind
(04:02:53) kaismand: twice in one night
(04:03:10) Bookface: actually, Kaisey, you blow my mind non-stop
(04:09:59) Bookface: and then the next time she was going to class as I was walking around waiting for my next class to start, and she called out to me asking me if he (our teacher, who was the grad student who lives with me, which becomes important shortly) was still there, and I said he might be, but he's probably about to leave if he still is, and she ran to get her homework to him, and I followed behind to make sure it'd come out okay and take her paper to give to him at our house and vouch for her if necessary, but she made it before he left and actually he kept apologizing to her, and then I walked her back in light rain to her dorm room and we talked on the way, and then I hung out with her a little bit in her dorm, and then the second thing to make it difficult happened: there was this other girl there, her friend, and I felt weird enough trying to deal with the fact that this was the second time she might have known of me following her, and then I didn't even think to ask for her phone number or anything because of the other girl (stupid other girl threw everything off) and then I should have come back up the stairs as I was going down them and been like, "hey by the way can I have your number or something" but I didn't, partially because of the two aforementioned sources of nervousness but also just because I was chicken
(04:10:15) kaismand: are you just cutting and pasting from your post now
(04:11:06) kaismand: and is that a long sentence fragment
(04:11:06) Bookface: no, I didn't actually write that part yet, although I had been thinking of cutting & pasting this conversation into my post
(04:12:19) Bookface: yes, I don't generally do that in my posts, though sometimes it happens. I have more rigorous standards for posted stuff than IM conversations. also, the capitalization I prefer is standard sentence for posts while it is only proper nouns capitalized for IMs.
So that's that story, and hopefully I'll run into her sometime relatively soon next semester. *sigh* Stupid Bookface...
Academically, this semester was relatively profitable for me. I focused my energies a little poorly, I think, giving poor proportions of concentration to my classes; I did much better work than I needed to in two of them, and I focused on going above and beyond in those classes rather than taking care of my less interesting ones. One class that I didn't take seriously at all I will (presumably and hopefully) get a C in, and I should have been good for an A. I just sort of had a lot of gathered determination and I let it lead the way, and obviously it was stronger in the things I found more interesting.
The determination, I think, came from my accident, or rather from one of the billions of threads of thoughts that I had after it. I decided that what I had done was pretty harsh on my body, and that I owed it something for keeping me alive with practically no lasting effects; I was gonna make good use of my time, I decided. Practicing skills and listening to good music and learning things and reading; for example, to occupy my time I'd memorize Trivial Pursuit cards and practice counting cards for BlackJack. I quit downloading (a HUGE time drain for me) and I didn't even bring a computer to school with me, which tends to shock anybody that knows me. I did have an old black-and-white screen 486 laptop that I connected up to a 28.8 modem for emergencies when I needed phone numbers or directions or something.
Relatively, I'd say my movement to better myself was a pretty big success. I didn't hold my focus for the whole time, and near the end of the semester I had no real free time; I wasted quite a bit, but overall it was tons less waste than an average semester, which was already less wasted time than most people because I can always find a use for my time, be it productive or not. I didn't experience my "I'm taking off" week of burnout that I usually hit, maybe because I was more on top of things in my classes and I always knew stuff was due (except that one class I screwed up in.)
I did a lot of walking to school (it's an hour's walk or a five minute drive to where I used to park, but since ( the school dropped their stupid fees ) (HOLY shit an LJ-cut tag...) it becomes about a half hour to get into school by car before five (after then some parking lots open to public use) or an hour to go by foot, which isn't too bad a differential. I felt really good about it, I listened to a lot of new music on the way and I thought a lot of good thoughts, I got some much-needed excercise, it woke me up in the mornings, it filled time when I had an hour before a class started... it was just good all around. The only bad thing, actually, was the implied hour walk back home; I could be sure about wanting to go for a walk at the moment, but I had to judge whether after hours of tedious classes I'd be willing to do it again. I wanted to go for swims at the pool, too, but that never worked out.
In addition to the excercise, I was also eating better. Boca Burgers continue to amaze me. The little marvels have not only were easy to prepare (1.5 minutes in the microwave) and had a great taste, better I would contend than even some meat-based burgers I'd had, but they were also low in fat and calories and everything else bad. I tried some other meatless burgers but none of them did it for me. Which is not to say I went vegetarian, though I've considered that before. I also fell in love with Stouffer's Lean Cusine. It really *IS* still cusine! Their food has satisfied me every time; a little overly salty and thus not as good if dehydrated, but still delicious and nutritious to a degree that astounded me. Healthy food isn't supposed to be good; I gave Healthy Choice and SmartOnes each two disgusting meals each before deciding they were pretty crap, but Stouffer's really got it right. Props to them.
After having one of their meals one time, I thought to myself something to the effect of, "That's pretty filling... I'm still impressed by that. I still long for something more, though. I mean, I can't skip my next meal or anything..." Then I realized what I had been thinking, and that in fact the implication was true: usually, I eat meals so big that I could skip the next one. That really began to bother me. I mean, think about it, seriously. I *usually* eat meals *big enough that I could skip the next*, or in other words I usually ate two meals every meal. My god, it's a wonder I'm not 400 pounds instead of around 200. (I don't have a working scale to measure myself on, but I've been in the range of 195-208 for four or five years now; I started off this semester on the high end of that, and although there is more than occasional splurging that would be considered a terror to any strict diet, I think that I probably still am at the lower end by now.)
There's so much more I wanted to cover; specifically, I had in mind just right now:
- running a gamut of finals for eleven hours and thirty minutes in a row
- thinking about craig, drew, myself, and our relation to happiness
- becoming saintlike
- what's wrong with the world, and how we can fix it - how to be good
- one particular wrongness that really got to me
- paper and pen journals as opposed to this thing
- relics, my idea for a website that I've been beating around the bush for almost a year now
- missing New Year's but more important missing myself being with other people on New Year's in a narcissistic way
And there was probably more stuff I wanted to go over too that I just can't think of offhand. But for once, I think, I'm going to call it a night. I do, after all, leave to Germany in less than 12 hours, and I still haven't even packed.
Perhaps there will be a post from abroad. We'll see how it goes. But now at least you have some sense of what is going on in my life, those that cared to know.
Happy New Year, everybody!
current mood: chatty
current music: none
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| Monday, December 1st, 2003
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8:35 am - Interesting stuff.
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Read the first two articles. They're not long.
http://lwn.net/Articles/58519/
I know, I haven't posted in a while and now that I do it's just a stupid link. But really, I shouldn't be posting at all and this is one of those avoiding-doing-work-I=really-should-get-back-to things.
Happy birthday-to-be, Joshua Smelov!
Here's to what may be your first public mention by name on the internet (since Sarah's journal is private).
current mood: unaccomplished
current music: just turned off
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| Monday, November 3rd, 2003
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1:01 pm - you and me and the bottle makes three tonight
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12:46 pm - two in one day... you *know* I must be avoiding work...
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You write in order to change the world, knowing perfectly well that you probably can't, but also knowing that literature is indispensable to the world... The world changes according to the way people see it, and if you alter, even by a millimeter, the way ... people look at reality, then you can change it.
- James Baldwin.
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2:14 am - "Canal", by Mark Lee
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I once read the diary of an Englishman who was trapped at the South Pole in 1914. After their ship was frozen into the ice, he and his companions survived for two years on seal blubber and boiled penguins. On several occasions they almost starved to death. The men became obsessed with food and considered themselves experts on its preparation and consumption. Huddled in their canvas tents, they spent hours describing favorite meals and imaginary banquets. They debated the right way to cook trout, and two men had a fistfight over the proper use of clotted cream.
I offer these facts as an oblique defense for my own obsession. Like those lost explorers, I'm a starving man. For most of my life I've never been in love, but I think about it often and consider myself an expert on its various complexities. I watch for lovers on the street and in restaurants. I've become a collector of jealous glances and lingering kisses, capturing the moments of others and storing them in my memory.
Great way to start a book, n'est pas?
I need to write more in here. I had most of two more entries written out but then I decided to skip them, and from there it was hard to come back to it at all.
I also really should do work now because I'm going to have a busy week (whether I do any now or not, but more so if I don't) and I've been doing everything within my power not to do any all night. (even watching Full House for a few ungodly minutes). And now it's 6 o'clock for chrissake. I barely even have time any more. I was even avoiding the work that I should have been doing by doing OTHER WORK that's not due for a while yet. What the fuck is wrong with me?
*sigh*
current mood: procrastinate-tive
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| Thursday, October 30th, 2003
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11:30 am - LinuxWorld now available.
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https://register.rcsreg.com/regos-1.0/linuxny2004/ga/index2.html
Sign up for Penguin Paradise.
Code to make it free:
2002: EO-ALUM
2003: ALUM
2004: E-GENA
(Exhibits Only-Alumni, Alumni, Exhibits-General Admission, I presume. Why they can't stick with one is beyond me. Why I remember the codes for the past three years is ... more understandable. It doesn't make me crazy. All the other crazy stuff about me makes me crazy, but not that.)
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| Monday, October 6th, 2003
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4:14 am - my 500th LiveJournal post. week in review.
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This week has been an interesting one.
September 29th, 2000, being the first weekend I had my car, and the third or so weekend that those in my grade had gone to their respective colleges, and my friend Mike's birthday, I decided to take a road trip up to see Mike up at his college at RPI. I took along for the ride my friend Adam with me, since he was extremely takeable. Oddly, though, ever since then I've had a good deal of difficult in getting to the point where he's in the car with me and we're off. We had a good time, and so every year since then, on Mike's birthday, Adam and I take a road trip. Strange and interesting things always seem to follow.
This Monday being the 29th, we set off on the third annual road trip, and almost immediately we had something fun happen: we stopped for Wendy's in Brooklyn, and at the drive-thru intercom the guy said the chicken strips weren't ready and would take a few minutes. We said that was okay, and he told us to pull up to the window. Then when we got there, he asked us to move back so the sensor wouldn't be on and counting the time we were at the window, which I thought was pretty funny, and I liked that he was so open about it. We had the top down, of course, and in the back seat my headphones was out of my bag and just lying there for one of about 10 times ever, and the guy was all interested in where I had gotten them and wanted to get a pair. I offered to sell them to him but he couldn't come up with the twenty bucks needed (day before payday, how much does that suck...)
Adam likes no tomato on his sandwiches. And although we didn't specify in our order, because they rarely ever get it right even when we do and anyhow I'd forgotten, they still gave us one burger without tomato and one burger with. And moreover, it was arranged so that the one I handed to Adam was the one without, and the one I took for myself was with. Excellent! Psyhic fast food!
Other interesting tidbits on our journey:
- We tried to buy fireworks, but the fireworks store was closed Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. What kind of crazy schedule is that? We appreciated the "... Is A No Smoking Establishment" sign, though.
- We saw a combination Bagel Store and Thriftshop. All in one! Unfortunately, we couldn't stay till opening time there either.
- We saw a bookstore that listed its opening times as 10-8 on Sunday, and "by chance" on other days.
- We attended class at Yale. Specifically, we went to a class about the Cold War. It was pretty interesting, and full of great quotes I don't have on me right now. (Incidentally, I beat Rory to Yale by one day. If you don't watch Gilmore Girls, you've got no idea what I'm talking about, but you should. Watch it, that is.)
- We also played soccer at a parking lot there.
- other stuff I can't remember.
We made it back almost-in-time for a meeting I had to attend for my CSE 308 class, and then I dropped Adam off, *then* went to go do Calculus homework with Ed (we left at midnight the night before, which meant I was up 36 hours by this point and thought I'd have to stay up all night again, but fortunately Calc didn't take as long as usual). So then I crashed for the night and impressed myself by waking up on time (early, even) for my earliest class, which always feels good.
... I don't know how I got into narrative mode. I just tried to stop myself from that a paragraph agoI just wanted to mention some interesting things that happened this week, but I ended up backtracking as I often do into my memory to find the exact sequence of events, because Monday seems so far away. Let's go random:
- Wandering around campus, I saw this kid going, "Yes, yes, yes!" and punching the air. I asked him with a smile, "What are you so happy about?" and he said, "Oh, man, I just met a girl..." I hope it works out for him. I'm going to have to ask him if I ever see him again. I'm going to have to remember his face so I can realize that I'm seeing him again. I hope I'm that happy someday.
- spent $400 in two days. ~$300 was at WalMart, and slightly less than $200 of that was on clothing. I don't think I've ever spent so much in my life. The other $100 was from Pathmark, and it was mostly junk food but I had desperately needed to go food-shopping for a while and kept putting it off until I realized a full month had gone by since the start of school.
- bowling with Mariel and Adam, at Sports Plus. fun but expensive. wendy's afterward with the same, fun but cheap. at bowling, observed little kid who was *really* excited that his ball hit pins (playing bumper bowling.) at wendy's, discussed clothing I had bought and was wearing, and discussed clashing/non-clashingness of our outfits. a short time later a women came up to our table on her way out and said, "I like your shirt," to me. we were greatly amused.
- pulled off what I think was a pretty awesome grade on my Geo test, with only a few hours of studying (though to be fair, it was my second time around taking it). I hope I'm not jinxing it though by feeling good about it before I receive my grade.
- I was supposed to meet up with this girl, Debra, from the new website sbloveshack.com (a sort of online dating profile host place for our school that went up last week.) She found my profile and thought I was interesting and emailed me all within the first day after they opened. I was pretty impressed to get such a quick response. Anyway, we decided to meet sometime late Tuesday, and then I gave her my number and told her to call me whenever she wanted to meet up. She called, but I was in the library and didn't answer in time; I called back the caller-IDed number immediately, and she all wanted to meet up for some campus TV thing in the Union that was going to be on very soon. I describe my clothing (white long-sleeved shirt with a green strip, gray pants) and she follows suit (she is wearing a blouse that is rosemary-colored, apparently, which confuses me because I hadn't to this point known that rosemary was a color...), and we set off to meet each other in front of the Student Union.
After about 20 minutes of sitting out in front of the student union, I suddenly realize: the other side could be equally well considered the "front" of this building, and will be the side she is coming from (she mentioned the dorm building she was in a few times.) So I go through and check out the other side. No one waiting. Oh, well, maybe she waited for me and then had to go because whatever-it-was was starting. I call Debra and leave an apologetic voicemail, saying I was sorry and apparently we'd gotten on the wrong sides of the building or something like that, and maybe we can still meet up and do something, call me back. She mentioned the thing was in the basement, but didn't give further directions as "it's kind of confusing from there."
So, I go down to see if I can find the thing. Indeed, within a few minutes I see a bunch of people sitting in a hallway and they are indeed doing something for our campus TV station. I ask if I can go in, they tell me I should fill out some forms, and I am under the impression that I can go in if I do so, so I do. I end up signing up for information about the campus filming stuff and finding out the room is for live on-the-fly editing and not the thing Debra was talking about-- though I only have a vague sense of what it was that she *was* talking about, this definitely is not it.
Though I have no doubt that at this point I won't be running into her there, I figure on the oddball chance that she walks out the same way and is wearing the clothing she described we might talk to each other, and also because I have nothing better to do, I sit outside in front of the doors I figure she went in and read my book.
An hour or so passes, and I call again. She's there. She got my voicemail. She didn't call me back. We didn't miss each other. She didn't go at all. She didn't call my phone which she knows is a cell phone to let me know she wouldn't make it. She is going to sleep now. She kind of cuts me off, and I kind of don't want to talk to her anymore, so the conversation ends a few sentances later. She emails me later. Something came up, apparently.
I think it was a mistake to say in my profile "I'm tired of getting fucked around and ignored." It's true, but kind of exaggerates the situation. It seems like the sort of people who do that sort of thing would target the sort of people who have been regularly targeted in the past for that sort of thing, no? It implies that I am a good person to fucking around, because I'll just take it.
I danno. Either way I don't like how that turned out and based on my experience thus far with Debra I don't think I want to meet her anymore. We'll see, though. Two chances for everything, right? Because the first time could be a fluke.
- I lost my cell phone. It dropped out of my pocket on the bus, I guess. I had a very nice chat with the woman at the bus office, though, about cell phones and how we both want to use the land lines when they're available even when it's cheaper to call from the cell phone, amongst other things. And they have a cat at the office/lounge place, but it's very scared of people, at least of ones it doesn't know, at least of me. Well, then again, lots of people are scared of me.
- We had a kid join our CSE 308 group, but I had to kick him out when he didn't do anything and didn't show up to class almost immediately because we're on such a tight schedule. I hate having people not appreciate stuff. I hate getting screwed over. I hate when people manipulate your trust in them. It doesn't happen to me often, but it still happens far too often.
- I want a haircut.
- I'm finally getting a key! I've been a member of the Society for Physics Students for a year now and been going fairly regularly for two hours a week to tutor (nobody, literally nobdy, has ever come in, which is what they said would happen), which entitles me to a key to the office, which also opens the building door. This means that I have:
a) a place to sleep on campus, should I choose to take advantage of it
b) a place to do my work on campus at any hour of the night (on my choice of two machine running Linux, no less)
c) a place to go to anytime I want to hang out with people I sort of know and am getting to know better
d) a key to a building. the physics building, which isn't the best one on campus but certainly ranks up there. foraging ahoy!
I'm so happy about this.
- I set up accounts for people in my CSE 308 group so we can all put work on my computer and stuff. This is pretty cool. I've never had users other than myself on my computer before. They've all used it for at least one thing: generating a hash for a password for our website (so they don't have to tell me what password they used, but I can still enable for a password of their choice.)
- I went to the Math Club meeting advertised quite well all over campus and got free pizza, but then fell asleep for the feature presentation, a lecture on how to solve three geometry problems with a compass because I'd been up for an ungodly amount of time by then (and it was kind of pointless, all stuff I knew anyway, but still.)
- I cleaned up a lot of my room. This is a rare event for me, but I want to get my place into shape. I also arranged my clothing, old and new. It's even hangar-color-coded.
- I've made about 15 gigs of hard drive so far by burning stuff to CD, which I'm going to fill up all of very soon with Pimsleur language learning MP3s and Clone High VCDs amongst other things, and probably get capped for upload when I do so.
Yeah, so it's been a busy week. I wish I could spend the weekend at school, too, though. It'd be nice to have the extra time there. Ah, well... hopefully next week.
P.S. Sema's livejournal client has managed to improve even more since I last used it. Very cool, including a backup feature. If you're not using it and can be, I highly recommend it, even if it requires Windows emulation.
current mood: retrospective
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| Wednesday, October 1st, 2003
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2:53 pm - it's been a while.
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| Thursday, June 12th, 2003
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9:38 am - Charlie Brown, he's a clown...
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1. Driving back to Alex's, we pass by Ali's road and I ask him to turn on it, so I can see if Ali is up and possibly wanting to watch a movie or something. I get out at her house and see that Jay's light is on, so I hurl a penny with precision at the window and it makes a satisfying unmistakable someone's-at-your-window sound. Excellent, I think. Jay comes to the window, looks out. Looks. Walks away. Walks back and looks. I wave. He continues to look. I wave again, and call his name. He goes away again. Then he comes back and looks. I keep waving wildly. I walk more toward the light, just in case he can't see me or something. I call his name again. He walks away from the window again. Then, he comes back and looks again. He's obviously seen me, but having seen me is apparently waiting for me to go away. I call his name again, and jump up towards the light waving. Surely he must know who I am? He finally opens the shades fully, and then the window. Silly Jay. With the combination of bewilderment, stupefaction, and finally relief that he caused me, I didn't think to ask him what the hell he was thinking... (maybe the better question is, what was he smoking?)
2. So I decided to stop by the high school on my way home from Alex's this morning. I walked into the building and took a look around but it was still about an hour till it started so nobody was around except the janitors; I talk to one whose name I don't know as I walk past on my way out. No one else is around, so I figured I'll just wait outside in the back. I notice Joe through the window once I'm outside; I'd like to go speak to him but I don't want to bother getting up and figure I'll run into him in the course of the day.
A half hour and a few teachers pass by, as does the security guard. She warns me that I need to speak with Kaplan before entering, and being the trusting type goes and warns him that I'm on the premises. Meanwhile, the janitor, Joe, is standing inside by the door. Hrm? This certainly is unusal behavior. One of the teachers is directing some woman inside, and he says "You can go through that door, or the janitor's if that's closed." Another female teacher is unloading herself from her car.
Joe opens the door for the two people, the male teacher and the woman he is escorting, when the man knocks on the door; he sees the woman in the parking lot, and tells her to hurry up in because he's going to lock the door. She says something like, "What is this? Why are you locking it? You're not letting the teachers in today?" (This door is the most convienent for the teachers' parking lot.) yHe says first, "I don't really have a good reason," and then "I'll tell you when you get inside." I have a very strong suspicion it has something to do with me and I feel uncomfortably obvious. I feel like shouting out, "Well, if it's me you're worried about, I can go sit somewhere else not as close to this door." But I don't know for sure what's going on, and I decide to content myself with just feeling slightly turned on by my friendly janitor.
3. My sometimes-friendly security guard lady walks by and asks what I'm doing. I explain that I'm waiting for more teachers to see a couple of my favorites, and she warns me I'll need to run it by Kaplan first. I agree. She continues her rounds, but as soon as she is out of sight she must have bolted to go find the Kaplan and sic him on me, because a few minutes later he is there. I am not entirely surprised by this; it has happened before and it is in a sense her job to be untrusting. Regardless, Mr. Kaplan informs me that it's the last day of school and thus, no visitors are allowed (rather gleefully about having an excuse, I'm sure, though I give him credit for attempting to hide it).
4. So I continue on my way home, and as I'm walking into my yard I stop on the border of my neighbors' to peruse the clovers. They'd been on my mind since I'd turned the corner, and I had decided to write a piece for my website)-to-be about luck, and a police 4x4 pulls into the driveway about 15 feet from me. He asks me what I'm doing. I reply that I'm going to my house, and I point it out. He asks why I cut through the neighbor's yard. (There is literally about one foot of their yard I have to step over to get to mine from the street, else go around the bushes and take a longer route, but I do not contest this.) Apparently, the neighbors had called the cops on me because I "looked suspicious and was hanging around" [looking at the clovers.] He asks, don't they know me, their neighbor? I say, I would think so; I mean, I've spoken to them a few times and all. Sometimes our dogs run into each other, and we exchange hellos. He says perhaps it is the beard, and smiles and waves me on. I shake my head and continue on in.
5. Mr. Kaplan calls my house about 20 minutes after I get home, looking for me. He says that he heard I was walking through the school before it opened, according to the janitors. I was, I explain, looking for anybody who might be there, but then realized it was too early and then went to wait outside. He says that they've gotten a few bomb threats over the past few months... he has nothing to worry about, right? I say, I have nothing to do with that, and I've told you time and again that I have no hatred for the school, that I like the school and that's why I keep coming ba)ck voluntarily, but you never want to listen to me... He cuts me off to tell me he does want to listen to me (which I find deeply ironic), and that is why he called me, and not the police; I was trespassing in the school and I could be arrested. I tell him I appreciate that much, at least, and he responds that he appreciates that I appreciate that.
I think to myself that this is the second trespassing accusation I've gotten in 20 minutes, and I am amused by this.
So tell me, folks... why is everybody always pickin' on me?
On an almost related note, two nights ago I watched two movies
1) about a court case
2) set in Chicago
3) starring Richard Gere
4) selected by other people's desires [the first because I copied it for my mom to watch, and the second because Alex insisted as it was a good movie that he had seen.]
That was entirely chance, though, whereas a good deal of the suspicions of the various people in today have a good deal to do with my character and my appearance. Or maybe it's just the curse of the upcoming Friday the 13th, who knows.
Also, today's "Giraffes and Elephants Are Friends" made me smile, as it often does, but more so.
Back to your regularly scheduled programming.
current mood:  weird
current music: The Coasters - Charlie Brown
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| Monday, June 9th, 2003
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8:07 pm - Quotes
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As promised, a few quotes from conversation with Kaisey, followed by Futurama quotes if you're ready to take them on.
(15:59:54) kaismand: but this last one is completely different
(16:00:15) kaismand: since it doesn't have to do with latent violent urges or academic potential
(16:01:00) kaismand: do you know that feeling when you like being near someone?
(16:01:24) kaismand: like physically near
(16:01:27) kaismand: standing or sitting next to
(16:01:43) kaismand: a particular person
(16:01:48) kaismand: not some random joe
(16:01:57) Bookface: yes
(16:02:02) Bookface: of course
(16:02:08) kaismand: is there a name for that
(16:02:33) Bookface: I think it's called liking someone
(16:03:06) kaismand: but I like you
(16:03:14) kaismand: but I don't have a desire to sit next to you
(16:03:44) Bookface: don't you, though?
(16:03:54) kaismand: no
(16:04:06) kaismand: actually sometimes you smell
(16:04:07) Bookface: English is an unspecific language
(16:04:18) kaismand: she doesn't smell like you
(16:04:27) Bookface: I am not surprised
(16:04:39) kaismand: actually i like to keep my distance from you
(16:04:51) kaismand: just in case you try to hug me or something
(08:32:58) kaismand: wake up
(08:33:02) kaismand: or stop masturbating
(08:43:10) Bookface: any adjective that you are going to use to compliment her in "you look [adj] today"
(08:44:18) kaismand: I usually get called "dapper" or "spiffy" when i am specially dressed
(08:44:25) kaismand: from both guys and girls
(08:44:28) Bookface: yeah, that won't work.
(08:59:28) kaismand: I really don't understand this hugging thing
(08:59:40) kaismand: I have this problem
(08:59:59) kaismand: that I seem to lose control of what's going on when people start trying to hug me
(09:00:09) kaismand: i think i am going on reflex or something
(09:00:26) kaismand: not too sure what the heck i am supposed to do
(09:00:51) Bookface: ... you're supposed to hug back, generally
(09:01:53) Bookface: on occasion, you are supposed to just stand there and be hugged
...
(09:02:28) kaismand: what are the occassions when i can just stand there
(09:02:46) Bookface: when you have said something that is amusingly you-like
(09:03:03) kaismand: i usually do that when aunts and old ladies or bookfaces try to hug me
...
(09:04:06)l kaismand: okay anyway
(09:04:24) kaismand: but in cases of "hugs hello" and "hugs goodbye" with girls of similar age
(09:04:39) kaismand: it seems necessary to hug simultaneously
(09:05:19) kaismand: and then i'm not quite sure where my hands are supposed to go
(09:05:29) kaismand: usually just around the backand: then i don't know how it ends
...
(09:06:54) kaismand: well if she is already intent on hugging you, it is virtually no effort to just put your hands together behind her back
(09:07:40) Bookface: that is true, so where does the complication arise? do you feel the need to one-up her hugging skills?
(09:08:05) Bookface: impress her with a super secret hug maneuver?
(09:08:24) kaismand: well no
(09:08:27) kaismand: just trying to have more control
(09:08:35) kaismand: for example last night i hugged hello
(09:08:40) kaismand: but somehow at the end of it
(09:09:10) kaismand: I ended up at her side with my left hand on her back and sort of parallel
(09:09:15) kaismand: i'm not quite sure how that happened
...
(09:19:21) kaismand: i don't know what I was going for
(09:19:21) Bookface: no, then the taller person stoops
(09:19:40) kaismand: I just opened my arms, moved forward a little bit and then i was spun around 180 degrees
If you've watched Futurama by now...
( Read more... )
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| Sunday, June 8th, 2003
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9:34 am - Futurama
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Tonight's Futurama is sexcellent.
(Note: I ♥ BitTorrent, for making me able to get it 19 hours before it airs.)
It's just awesome, applicable to our lives, and very quotable. See it if you can; I've written down a bunch of quotes and posted them privately for myself already. Once it's aired and you have no excuse not to have seen it, I'll repost for the rest of you to benefit. Last week's was rather good too; I'm glad they're going out with a bang, at least.
I've been having a lot of good online conversation lately. Quotes from Kaisey to amuse you coming tomorrow (today, but after I go to sleep and wake up again.)
current mood:  giddy
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| Saturday, May 31st, 2003
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10:00 pm - pointless post #73,589,438
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*** TAKE OUR FREE APTITUDE TEST ***
To help determine if you are qualified to be a programmer, take a moment to
try this simple test:
(1) Write down the numbers from zero to nine and the first six letters
of the alphabet (Hint: 0123456789ABCDEF).
(2) Whose picture is on the back of a twenty-dollar bill?
(3) What is the state capital of Idaho?
If you managed to read all three questions without wondering why we asked
them, you may have a future as a computer programmer.
yay... I'm finally back in Linux! (Thank god...)
Hopefully I can get my Mako working somehow with it so I can transfer stuff. And I need to get myself a copy of vmware too, that'd be really handy.
current music: Glenn Gould - Fugue No.17 In A-Flat Major
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| Friday, May 30th, 2003
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11:46 pm - Smalls is closing!
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melancholy
