Note: This blog has been deprecated, because the system it's built upon (MovableType) was comment-spammed to the point of destabilization. This URL now exists for archival purposes. Trying to add a comment to an old entry will not work here; however, the entries do exist at my blog's current manifestation, here, and comments do work (and I'm still very happy to read them, if you're so kind to leave them).
I watched Kevin drag Katie 10 feet. Awesome force was had...until "he kicked me in the boob" (Katie speaking).
Apparently, while Katie, Sophie and I were investigating the downstairs, we almost wandered into the computer room, but Katie hurried us back upstairs. She saw...well, it wasn't technically twenty toes, since they had shoes on...Ahem.
Right. So far, the weekend's been that "parent-friendly" fun I've talked about. Nothing naked yet, though Kira seems to be itching to see me naked with lots of people. Itching. I've apparently gotten a reputation of...little cotton here.
More on this later. Oh, and tomorrow morning, I'm playing dodgeball in Elena's place. I hope I'm not too slow or anything...I will do at least one spectacular dive-out-of-shot, and probably hurt my shoulder in the process. That's a promise, damnit! I've gotta learn to roll at some point.
I don't know how many songs I've ripped off with this title. Don't care either.
Going to Salem, where I will:
°Watch Katie play Dodgeball, contrary to all beliefs that it was psychologically possible.
°Do other parent-friendly stuff.
°And that's all. Ahem.
Parting now. Be back Sunday. Please leave messages on telephone spike. Please wipe blood from telephone spike away from actual spike for continual use.
2004, January 27
07:02:20
Bedroom of Alex and Damian
Dear ol' Dad, the Alarm Clock You Can't Snooze, enters. Damian is suddenly shaken by a gruff hand. "Damian! It's 7! Time to get up!"
2004, January 27
02:57:30
Bedroom of Alex and Damian
Alex undresses and climbs into bed, completely mentally drained from reading a Math Philosophy text whose poor writing displeases the majority of Math Systems.
2004, January 27
07:02:34
Bedroom of Alex and Damian
Slightly muffled by his pillow, Alex speaks. "Is it 1?"
Dear ol' Dad turns around, wondering why Alex would be awake at this hour instead of 4 hours behind the rest of the world like normal. "No, it's 7."
Slightly less muffled for unknown reasons, Alex speaks again. "You have no S!"
Damian is too baffled to close his eyes again.
Dear ol' Dad investigates: Alex never woke up.
2004, January 27
22:13:54
Nelson hallway
Damian and Dad pause Alex in the hallway. "I must say," Damian compliments, "You had perfect English this morning."
Alex tries to recollect, but fails. "...I wasn't awake this morning." "...Oh crap, what did I say?"
Dear ol' Dad and Damian repeat.
Alex apologizes for Dad's lack of S.
2004, January 2
10:39:20
Nelson Computer
Alex wakes up the computer from Snooze mode. Not a second later, Zach uses MSN messenger to start a chat with Alex. MSN Messenger wasn't open before the computer went to sleep.
Alex and Zach have pleasant chat. Zach hears of the No S. Zach says goodbye for a shower.
Alex goes to the collapsible program icon list next to the clock in the Taskbar. MSN Messenger was never opened. Yet, Zach told of his free Opeth DVD...
It could happen to YOU!
Current goal in life: Go dancing in Tacoma. I ran into Nuvo today in the Greener cafeteria; she thinks its a wee bit sad. From her perspective, I'd guess so, since she is now more of a Seattle-dancing regular than a Tacoma regular.
I've still been unable to start my homework before the night before...at least, until Saturday. I got about half of the Algebra exercises done Saturday; that was a proud accomplishment for me. Maybe a wee bit sad, yes, but hey, I'm tryin' to beat the 'Crastinator's Credo.
The goal: Finish Algebra work Saturday. Finish Calculus work Sunday. Finish Topology work Monday. Coast rest of week; maybe even read something.
The reward: A free Wednesday night, to be spent at Idaho Dave's, and healthy amounts of sleep on school nights.
I can only hope that will come. But for now, I have this to look forward to: Don cancelled Abstract Algebra for next Tuesday, so I have a 5 day weekend. My next blog entry shall be either from WISH on Katie's laptop this weekend, or about a haircut I hope to get tomorrow. This shag is just starting to dissapoint me.
There I was, sittin' at the com-poo-ter, innocently working on mathematics. (I found a sexy integer-partition problem in my history book.) WHEN OUT OF NOWHERE, or rather, THE KITCHEN, I heard a rumble that I thought was just a rubber-footed footstool sliding across the floor with a great amount of frictional pressure--I thought it was a stool because it lasted for a full second, and was many a decibel.
But then I remembered we don't have any rubber-footed footstools--and my dad was standing in the kitchen. I entertained the notion greatly that he had let some methane fly free--to the point of giggles, really--and had to ask if it was true. "Dad," I implored, "Say it ain't so. Say it was that little footstool..."
When he said 'tweren't the stool, I can't exactly say I was dissapointed. I fled the room, of course, but laughing so hard that my cheeks balled up, my left abdominal ached slightly, a tear came down my left cheek...and for a length of time that rivaled anything that Fools' Play could generate in me. Now, I'm not knockin' Fools' Play, for what it -just barely- lacks in length, it more than makes up for in consistency. But rootin'-tootin' humor, that's always an outta-left-field gagfest.
I love being a man.
And in other news, I went to SPSCC yesterday. I saw Cassie, put up posters in the SUB and by the music room, took the Techmill to the computer building to find a fairly full bulletin board, and walked back to Oli Newsome's office, in the same building as the music room. Now, for those keeping track, I've touched base on all 3 corners of SPSCC's campus.
One of the first things Oli says to me is, "Now, I'd love to write about you as a success story of the Psych/Jitterbug clubs...but first, we're gonna have to do something about the fly thing."
"Fly thi..." I started, but then smarted up and looked down. Of course, on my first day on SPSCC's campus in three weeks, I had to walk around with the barn door open. I'm thankful my jeans didn't, uh, "let the door swing;" at least it was only slightly ajar. It must've been Oli to be the first to notice, since he was sitting...oh geez, I just remembered I talked with Tam, sitting at a table, way before Oli...oh well.
Point being, I of course had to remedy the situation; since Oli's office didn't have a lot of turnaround room, when he pointed at the Z of the XY-, I reached and gave it a tug up--didn't come up. Another tug--didn't come up. Then the Psych. club advertiser, a girl of fairly short stature, came in Oli's open office door with posters in hand. And what was the first thing she saw?
Another tug--didn't come up. Another tug with grunt--aah.
And that was probably enough story of my crotch to keep you sated for a good year. Good night.
Tonight, I saw Pi: Faith in Chaos. You may think that because I'm a math major, that Pi couldn't be more appealing.
Review: Directionless. Dark. Deep. Reeeealy fuckin' depressing.
Damian and I were on the couch watching it. As the credits rolled, Damian said "I think I've gotta cool off with some fantasy..." (read: Play some Neverwinter). I switched the TV back to the cable feed.
Rambo III was on Fox. Machine guns. Tanks. Choppers. REEEEEALY FUCKIN' BIG EXPLOSIONS.
And that's as deep as I'm gettin.'
Krina Allison, a few months ago, told me to lift my leg up, giving a boot-shot for her. With actual pain on my face from keeping my leg up that high while she fumbled with the shutter button and other doodads on her camera, she snapped a photo of me. The shot was in imitation of ...I believe the New Zealand Philharmonic (don't quote me on that), who had eXtreme shots in their pamphlet like a bassist surfing on her double bass, a bass-drum-mallet-swinging dude with primitive warfare written all over his face, and a bald guy who could do a straight-legged kick at a fairly high level.
...Well, at least the grunt on my face turned out pretty well. It looks more like I'm kicking something on the ground, if one thinks about the angle of my leg & all, but it was a good shot. I thought the only time I would see it would be at the fall concert, where SOGO usually lays out a slew of photos from either the annual shoot or rehearsals.
Turns out I'm the front page of next year's advertising/recruitment flyer. That kinda surprised me.
It also turned out I was on something else. At Monday's board meeting, a hundred or two advertising posters arrived at the Allisons.' And lo and behold, a hundred or two copies of me being EXtrEmE.
I think that's the final step towards "Poster Boy" status. Besides seeing me in person, now I'll be on several walls around Olympia...which as far as I know includes downtown Oly (according to a surprised Cassie), the Office of Financial Management office, and SPSCC.
Yes, I just advertised for advertisements. I've been quite recursive lately.
I stood at the fridge a few hours ago. I had a clear purpose in my mind: It was the snacking hour of the day. I had in my mind a purpose in a purpose: Chocolate ice cream. However, by force of my mental snacking algorithm, I opened the fridge door before the freezer. When my eyes lay upon the top shelf, I ceased all functionality; the purpose became muddled.
I suddenly couldn't decide if I wanted a pickle or chocolate ice cream. I told my dad. He thinks I'm pregnant.
I settled on half of a pickle...first. A pickle is really just half of cucumber kimchee; cucumber kimchee, as far as I can tell, is red, spicy, and slightly rotted pickle. So, after knowing the taste of cucumber kimchee, a pickle is just salt content.
I had the ice cream a few minutes after the pickle...with chocolate and brine clashing in my mouth, I have a new hypothesis. Pregnancy tastes like brine. I'm sure this will meet refutal, violent opposition, much scathing...but hey, I enjoy combat.
When one thinks topology, one thinks of either two things:
1.) Fun things like mapping functions onto "rubber fields" and deforming them into weird and wacky shapes; mobius strips; and the Klein bottle (one-sided 3D surface)
2.) Point-set topology, the college senior math course.
These are, unfortunately, mutually exclusive. Point-set topology is promised to be the most challenging quarter we will experience in Math Systems. Yay. The book we're reading requires Linear Algebra on accident. Eeyay. Some of the pages of our reading will chug along at the reading rate of 30 minutes per page. Eeeya....no, fuck.
Our other book, The Shape of Space, is somewhere at the eight-grade reading level. The topics in there are the fun parts of topology; there isn't -too- much theory to get in the way; and the material has barely any prerequisite material. It's open to everybody. And it references Flatland (Edward Abbot Abbot, "A Square"), like many high-level physics papers.
There's plenty of material in the book to play with...and because it's a book of intuition, some experiments require other materials than pen and paper. Don brought in Playdough for one exercise; he says some "Labs" may require Playdough to understand. There's also colored paper, scissors, and tape...
Some of you may be shaking your heads at the idea of a Topology class that involves Playdough and scissors. I'm personally reminded of Shigeru's quip about the...Gen. Ed. school at the U. of Boston ("Crayons, Glue and Scissors" as I recall the alternate title). But the experiments are at least noteworthy:
*Make a Mobius strip, fairly fat and long (take a strip of paper, twist it once and tape it into a loop; there's only one side). What do you think will happen if you cut the strip in half (along its side, not across it)?
A mobius strip cut in twain becomes a longer strip, with a couple twists; cut that in half, as your curiosity will undoutably lead you to do, and you will get two double-looped rings intertwined with each other, locked like a magician's steel ring pair; after the first cut of the original Mobius strip, the extended strip gained an extra twist, losing its Mobius properties.
What of in thirds? Make two slits in a Mobius strip, and then start cutting along one; you will eventually hit the other slit. Finish the cut, and you get a smaller Mobius strip, interlinked with a large, double-twisted strip like the 'twain cut.
If you're hardcore enough of a math geek, you'll find this fun and start writing theorems about 'twain cuts, and quarter cuts, and tr...tri...uh, 'train cuts? Yeah...I wasn't hardcore enough, because of another "Experiment" in Shape of Space I mentioned in the last entry.
Torus rules for chess: Pieces can go in their normal directions, -including- wrapping around the world on all 4 sides. Also, pawns move one space in any cardinal direction, and can only take pieces diagonally. There's no mention if they get the two-space jump start.
Now that the rules are changed, the playing field is essentially leveled...so, anybody up for a round of chess?
Do you guys remember the old-school arcade games where you could walk off of the East side of the screen and arrive at the West? I found out in my easy, easy, easy topology text that those kinds of screens/boards/surfaces are called torus-surfaces. And then it delved into some light theory that anyone here could read & understand, but enjoy is a different matter so I'll leave that be.
HOWEVER, the book did present the idea of playing some board games with Torus rules. Tic Tac Toe with Torus rules means the first person to move will generally win; Torus Chess has to be played with a completely different setup, since if classic chess got Torus rules, the game would be instant checkmate (the king could reach to the other side of the world, as it were, and bop the other king right over).
Torus Chess starts with only 9 pieces, and in the corners of the world, though I believe white is offset by one from its corner...I'll post a picture later, I've gotta get to math and potentially talk nerdy about chess for five hours. Toodles.
The same night as the SOGO listening party, I was invited to a Christmas shindig at Katie's house--gift exchange, LotRisk and the like. When I walked into the room, about an hour or 2.5 after it started, I was immediately presented with a pair of gifts (maybe more, but the pair is relevant here): I opened the first and did behold 1-Up mushrooms on boxer shorts--Nintendo's in the undies biz! I was so excited, I didn't know what to do--actually, I did. I followed my first instinct and pulled them on right there.
Apparently, I'm an easy-to-predict person. Before I arrived, there was a large bet going that I would wear the boxers over my jeans upon opening the gift. No money was exchanged, as nobody would go against the bet.
The second present was more fungi on fun guy apparel: I got Mario fuzzy dice! It took me maybe a second to think of what I would do with them before they would go in the Stickamajig, but then Katie pointed out that my new boxers had a button. While she mentioned the button because I theoretically had bad luck near-streaking at Willamette last time, she accidentally solved the problem of what to do with the fuzzy dice too: I undid the button, slid the connecting dice string into the fly, sealed, and voilà! I grew a pair.
Nobody had the foresight to bet on that. Or my happy jungle-boy waist swinging.
Later on, the population dwindled and the remainder of us broke out the LotRisk board--I believe it was just Cassie, Aaron, Katie & I at that point. I had faithfully wore my new fuzzies all night, and the hour was growing fairly late. I was receiving quite the stomping that game, leaving me little to do but twiddle my thumbs, watch over my two or three territories, and play with my fuzzies every now and then. Sexy, no? At some point, I noticed one of the dice had a piece of golden thread coming out the side--I noticed because it had a slight, familiar curl to it. I found it a slight bit unsightly, so I pulled out my keychain, whipped out the Swiss-Army snippers, crossed me legs and leaned back, taking the left die in hand.
Perspective switch: Cassie
Cassie was in the middle of plotting a campaign against...something Westward, maybe the Shire, and was mumbling strategies out loud--for open consideration of how the attack dice would work for her. With our small surroundings on the rec. room floor, I was leaning back towards the window, with Cassie directly in front of my leaning-back cross-legged position. She mumbled something about the Shire, and looked in my direction, to lay her eyes upon:
I was holding a large, fuzzy, maybe round object between my legs in one hand, and a pair of scissors in the other, with my tongue stuck out to the side in concentration on a delicate snip.
Any campaign planning she was doing instantaneously flopped out onto the floor; her concentration tinkled around her, wholly and completely shattered. Not that it did me any good in the game. That image haunted her for a good while. I'm always glad to leave an impression.
The Monday before Christmas was an awesome shindig; actually, a pair of shindigs for me. I went to the SOGO Conservatory Listening/White Elephant party, where only the hardcorest (read: 5 of 50) conservatory members went (and Korbi). There were three really memorable White Elephant gifts:
1.) Um...ok, maybe 2.
2.) One package contained -not only- the remote control to an electric blanket that no longer worked, it ALSO had a can of shoe-deodorizer spray. I wanted to trade my chocolate orange for that, but then the thought of a succulent (and probably year-old) chocolate orange changed my mind.
3.) Shelly got a box covered in duct tape. I mean solid, black duct tape: The box was about 10"x6"x4", and it had neatly stripped duct tape arranged in an excellent, non-interlaced lattice. Four layers deep. Matt Clegg (sp?) has way too much time on his hands. I helped Shelly peel it off (audio to peeling: "Got it, Alex?" "Yeah." "Ok, PU-ULLLLLL!!"). When my hands got full with duct tape (after a full HALF of it was gone), I chucked it at Matt. She followed suit with the second half. The box had pretzels or something in there...well, the important part was that the thought counted. More importantly, though, airborne retribution was had for that thought.
The planned activities ended with that [damnable] box. The party wound down to the Allisons and a few others solving some ginormous puzzle, and Brian, Korbi and I talking on the couch. It started as just chit chat, but eventually Korbi did one of the friendliest things I've randomly encountered in years. She told me all about last year's Halloween, where she, Brian, and some other band people trick-or-treated as Captain Planet and his 5...uh, components? Planeteers, I think. She told me like I was one of their good friends, like we would normally spend time together; and like I was just sick that night or something.
Though I barely know Korbi, I admire her friendliness. She treated me like an old amigo; I may be one some day, just for that story of the Planeteers' Dance.
I think there are maybe eight of us here who remember the Yuriko eCircle thing...I barely remember it, save some picture galleries. Cassie's was...artsy, I think. I know Miranda's had plenty of Johnny Dep and some other quote-hunks-endquote. I don't remember what I had in my gallery, save a couple joke pictures (like "Burial by Elephant Dung"), and "A Mysterious Eye" (en français). I'd lost that picture since eCircles went down.
A couple days ago, I discovered that the old Dell computer that I thought contained nothing useful had my first year of digital photography on it! Glad I didn't wipe it. I've found "A Mysterious Eye" once again, and gladly show it here.
Unfortunately my camera didn't make its rounds as the Mysterious Sock Object until later that year. So, most of the shots are of me, Neon & Speckles (our budgies, with 3 legs between them) and Damian. Well, I can't say that the shots of Damian are a loss...
As I recall, that scared the crap out of at least Cassie when I put it in eCircles. Does it still retain its charm? All right, I'll wipe that devilish grin off of my face. I have a much better shot of Damian, except for a lamp handle that got in the way. And that, ladies and gentlemen, was a shock cut.
UPDATE: Cassie reminded me of what actually did terrify her, so here's another shock cut.
This is my 200th blog entry, but about a baker's dozen are unpublished so this one dun count. However, 801 comments are legit =D . Also, I must do Christmas back-blogging, including the Story of Snippers and My Fuzzy Pair. (I'll just build the dread up for that one.)
Donating blood today didn't go as smoothly as it did in the past. I'd only done it three times before, and none of those instances did I feel the suckinating needle go into my arm--at least, painfully. The nurse screwed up today, though, and I felt a twinge every time I exercised a full hand motion. I think she inserted the needle a half-inch closer to my elbow than normal. Oh well, that was just a minor nuisance; the real problem was I had the huge unpleasantry of forgetting to eat before I went. I sorta woke up about noonish, forgetting I had the appointment, and forgot to grab breakfast, thinking I could get through the appointment like a few classes.
Yeah...note to self: Don't do that. I had wooziness, a somewhat blackout, slight loss of temperature sensation...next note to self: Feed, then bleed. I ended up spending about an extra hour at the blood bank, partly with the medical stuff, and partly because the nurse working on me got lost in some computer work. Ah, but the people at the blood bank are really kind, so it wasn't that bad an hour.
Well, I'm glad to be back on the blog page, after FallenEarth's Accidental Coder's Culling. HaaAP-py new year! I should probably get that good night's rest. Good morning, everyone.