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C'est tout.

I have proven the Riemann Hypothesis.

Saturday, the temperature in Seoul and Hanam hit The Other 0 Degrees: Fahrenheit. I spent a good solid day working and reading in the apartment. Well-spent, I say. Yet today is the first day it snowed my whole trip. It's also the day I'm coming home. Flight's at 18:40 Korea time tonight (01:40 Tuesday morning Pacific), coming in at 11:30 Pacific time Tuesday. Odd how the flight from West to East is two hours shorter than the flight from East to West - sure, it's going against the rotation of the Earth, but doesn't that also mean it's going against the wind rotating with the Earth? Ah well. If anybody knows offhand of the Pacific "Gulf Stream" I'm forgetting about, do inform me.

In Repeated News: It snowed! I finally get to use those mammoth skier's gloves. I hope this doesn't affect the flight, though.

In Non News, here's a rough excerpt from my favorite story collection at the moment, Mathematical Apocrypha:

…Due to his need to speak in person with other mathematicians across the violent lake, and his skiddishness of the boats that would ferry him, he had a ritualistic prelude to every voyage. He would write a letter to his fellows, claiming he had solved the Riemann Hypothesis [ed: The most famous unsolved problem in mathematics, about 120 years old at this date; takes a decade of study to begin understanding what the problem is]. Of course, when he arrived at his conferences, he would be harried about Riemann, but always quick, nigh immediate, to move on to other subjects.

One day, a friend and colleague finally confronted him in private about his letters. He responded, "If there is a God, then I know that He can not grant me the infamy of having solved the Riemann Hypothesis and, before telling a soul, taken it to my watery grave."

Für meinen kleinen Bruder

Happy birthday, Damian! I'd post some thoroughly embarrassing picture, probably taken in your sleep. Uh, I mean, to be taken. I mean, would've been taken. ...Yes, would've...

You're 18 now, and I hope you understand what that means.

Go forth! Buy porn! Something you can tack to the bedroom window with pride!

Love,
Alex, writing while his hosting, Catholic family is attending church services on the outskirts of Seoul.

PS Unicorns.

AFK

American Flown to Korea.

Soon leaving the continent.

I'm going to Korea Tuesday. Consider my e-mails held. I may bring a company laptop for just-in-case emergencies in the websystems, so I'll check my e-mails. I do intend to leave the machine lying dormant for as long as possible while in Korea. That is, unless 'net cafés turn out to be interesting places to spend time in, or my relatives turn out to be Javascript junkies. (Not likely. The most academic I may get is talking with an aunt about her fresh start in statistics.)

But I'm not going for pleasure. I will take the opportunity to clear my electronic palette, except for a camera. But I believe I'll find enjoying myself to be a morbid prospect. I have a deeper reason for going than seeing my grandma one last time, but I wish to tell it to Meredith next.

À Corée avec Tristesse

Aaron and I had a talk, two years into college, during winter break. Cassie was conked out on a nearby couch, as the evening hour had morphed to morning with vertical clock hands, but we were still awake. He asked me if I planned to go anywhere, in some unknown, small number of years. The hour let me ponder usefully that question, which made a gentle demand of my pretty latent dreaming ability (it was the middle of my Computer Science year).

I don't know if I thought it then, or months later, but from that conversation, I swam through possibilities and determined there were three places I wanted to go. I want to visit France, for the sake of not letting my years sous Sousbois rot away in the annals of my lingual center. I want to visit Japan, hopefully while Katie's there, because I can use some near-epilectic excitement walking down the high-lit streets of that Electronic Nexus Katie she told me about. I also want to visit (South) Korea, to see what it's like when you're –really– outside of the 'States.

I refuse, however, to go to anywhere without a guide translator. While it would be fun to walk around like a child and take in the sights, eventually I'm going to want to have some more interesting conversation than directions to the nearest 'loo.

Katie would be a fine translator for Japan, since she doubles as a good buddy and knows a few of the sights I'd want to see. I don't know who I'd ask to be alongside me in France, but that country isn't a priority at the moment. As for Korea, my hope was to take my mom, give her her first vacation that lasted more than a day since...1996, I think. I say that in all seriousness; she doesn't relax for more than an hour at a time. It's a studious habit she picked up from being the eldest child in a Korean family, having the responsibility of siblings and the title of Oldest. I'd like to know she's still capable of relaxing.

That was the plan. From that chat with Aaron last year, I was letting things swim into place, ambling in my head into the formation of a plan. Too slow.

My mom got a phone call last night, from her eldest little brother, who is, like the rest of her side of my family, still in Korea. My grandmother is in intensive care. She has days to live, and desperately desires to see my mother.

Nobody in our family has a valid passport right now. My aunt told us there may be a place in Seattle that would create a passport with but a day's wait; but it wasn't a sure shot. The quickest any of us can get out of the country for sure is about sixteen days.

Mom talked with one of her siblings again tonight. Hal-moe-nee (what I've always called her) is on life support now, and has improved since last night, but probably won't get off of the machines. Besides fear of her mother's coming death, my mom's also afraid that she could run out of money to pay for the health care. (South Korea's health care runs like the US's, where the government only pays for economically challenged people.)

Can you think of any greater insult, than to not be able to afford a few more days of life? To have to borrow money with all the negotiating handicap of your deathbed? The only just health care is social. Running hospitals like businesses presents the most gruesome of situations.

Well. At the least, we're comforted that Hal-moe-nee is hanging on. She direly wants to see her oldest daughter again. But she can't talk; whatever her condition is, bodily functions are being stricken down by it. The best my mom can do is talk to her on the phone, listening to Hal-moe-nee sputter back.

"Alex, I tried to call you today," Nuvo once said to me (approximately), probably on the way to a dance a few years ago. "But, you were out, and your mom picked up instead. She told me you were out, and said a few more things to me. After we hung up I immediately proceeded to spend ten minutes explaining to Eisel how adorable your mother is."

But I don't know if Nuvo has ever heard her laugh. I mean, really laugh. I've only heard it twice in my life. The first time was watching "The Best Bits of Mr. Bean," in a scene in a church. In the scene, Mr. Bean was trying to sneakily eat a candy, and I think also deal with a gas-passing situation. She had sat down to rest her feet, and saw Atkinson's sidelong, sweeping glance as he unwrapped a krinkly-plastic-encased ball. Her chortle was ...pristine. It made Mr. Bean even funnier, by amplifying the laughter inherent in the scene.

The second time I heard her wholly laugh outside polite conversation (indeed outside) was discussing a conversation she had had with a woman (I shan't say where). The woman had a 'uge booger. It was a dangler. It took my mom's stoic Korean upbringing to keep her face and voice straight. After minutes of this suppressive torture, the boogie dropped down the centimeter necessary for detection. Inwardly mortified, the woman excused herself to the bathroom; when the door closed, my mom doubled over, nearly pained from seeing that.

The woman emerged a few minutes later, and proceeded to finish the conversation they were having. There was talk, gesture, nodding; but soon, my mom's poker face had to be summoned again. The lady was apparently too dainty to pluck the nose goblin from its one- or two-hair perch; so, instead of extracting the attention grabber, she put it back in. But all the nodding jarred it loose, and bloop! sunshine it did receive, basking undetected by lip hairs.

I forget how my mom got through that. If, that is. But she told my family (dad, me, Damian, uncle and aunt) this story, and laughed hard enough to be in pain again. She laughed hard enough that it became a chortle by lung constraint. I don't care who you are, if you're over 10, that story's funny. Her laughter had such a genuine tone to it, though, everyone was in tears, our cheeks encouraged by her into being the tensest muscles in our bodies.

Her emotion can be so clearly displayed, conveyed, and assumed. Normal conversation with her, in her bubbly, broken English, is comforting, fun politeness that you can't ignore. Her crassness with disappointing things Damian and I did in our youth was pretty stilling, as was the way she punished a friend and I once for playing in the clothes dryer, by making us hold our arms out straight for five minutes. (That was goddamn hard, I tell you what.)

When she was called last night, she started crying. Lost a lot of sleep. I didn't know anything about what was going on with Hal-moe-nee until today, when Tom & Chris (uncle & aunt) came over and she mentioned she couldn't sleep because she was crying all night. Up 'til that point, her voice was normal, even, polite. But then it changed completely for the worse.

She cried, and spoke her impending loss before she spoke her English.

Electronic STDs

Evenin', Jen.

hello

I had a strange parallel today.

?

Have you heard of the Sony DRM debacle with their music CDs?1

yeah

Ok, hold that thought, I'm going to talk about porn.

lol

okay

Real sex:  Risks, among other things, pregnancy, social strain, relational strain, and probably worst, diseases.

yup

A solution:  Abstinance.  And for the impatient-for-wedding-day type of folk, there's masturbation to ease one's wild-feeling days along.

Eventually, usually at the ripe age of 12, there's an introduction to porn.

heh

An argument about the topic of porn is that it pushes new media along;

There's some comfort to the male mind in knowing there's another way to get girly pictures, with greater ease.

And behold the wonder of the internet!  Girlies galore, with minimal interaction!

But.

There's still some interaction - from client machine to server.

yeah

So, in a slightly abstracted manner, porn is like sex on the computer - serves the purpose of the viewer getting sufficient kicks, involves certainly-erotic content.

yeah

satisfies the same requirement

Now, what happens if the horny viewer is flying through freebie sites, through some search engine query?  Not all of them are going to have strictly...singularly-minded content.

Some of them may have, gasp, Trojans.

Or keyloggers.

/Spyware.

Etc.

-Viruses-.

yeah

Aimed at a slightly distracted audience

So, computers are subject to the same rules of STDs, with their own slightly-different-sounding branding.

Point being, if you surf the web for porn, use protection - the human rubber translates to antivirus, not using IE (of which exploit-a-plenty is available, the worse being through Java...), disabling scripting, disabling Java.

hehe

Now.

yeah

Off of that subject, there are other completely benign activities which you never expect to carry the same risk.

Case in point:  XCP, Mediamax software.

Inserting a music CD into your drive bay - how could that cause harm?  Behold, rootkit!  Huh?  Root-what?  Waaaaah, my computer!

yeah

Sony BMG's DRM scheme is the computer representation of AIDS from the toilet seat.  Only, it happens in the computer world.

¹: Latest coverage from BoingBoing, the fifth round of news posts, is listed here.

Emptying the Bedroom

Today's being spent throwing things away. 'Tis the season.

A garbage bag full of clothes went to the Goodwill, so it's not all waste. I've finally gotten rid of some Nike/Adidas t-shirts I whined and pined for in middle school, and that are still too big for me. Glad to be rid of those. What a horrid-looking clothing habit that was, walking around looking like I was wearing a tent. Which made me the pole.

Oh. Maybe that was the idea. 'Twas the age.

I found something floating on my night stand, which had settled in two or three other places before in previous cleanings. I never had the heart to throw it away - call it narcissism, I suppose. I like to think of it as an age (uh, so far removed) when I was beginning to get active in SOGO and music, just starting on SOGO's student boards, and doing room setup for OCO's rehearsals.

That concert, Sam and Andrew played a two-clarinet concerto's Rondo (Krommer). It had a nice tune to it, along with those fast and complicated stuff Krina's clarinet students tend to do. My favorite piece in the concert was the Carnival Overture, though the beginning always sounded funny to me - no discredit to the conservatory's playing, the writing just sounded odd.

Well, the program's gone now. The room's gotta get clean, and the only way to assure that is to make Volume_out a positive quantity. 'Tis the chore.

Cookies & Metal, Yum

Today's cookie party was fun stuff. I've picked up on a fudge recipe, and contributed to a train in the best way I could: With a binary progression depicted by little candy square-spheres. Good times. Also enjoyed conversation on politics, the Apple Powerbook, education in several PNW universities, and 1st-4th century CE Buddhism and its transformation travelling between India and China and back.

Later, with Aaron and Cassie I went to a metal show downtown. We saw Powercastle, which was fuckin' (a) awesome, and fuckin' (b) loud, which was fuckin' (c) appropriate. They played instead of another band that had a member in jail. So it goes. I'm blanking on the band's name.

That other band's singer was there, though, and did one song with Powercastle: "Hallow Be Thy Name," from Iron Maiden's "Number of the Beast." Incredibly fun song. I did a little ditty to it, singing along with the guitar chorus. That doesn't happen often...or, uh, ever, actually. Aaron saw me dance; he got to see somethin' special, 'cuz I'm incredibly shy with non-swing dancing.

Good day. Cookies & metal. Num.

OCO (De)Populates for the Ninth

After Sunday's Messiah Sing-Along concluded (SOGO's), Damian's presence was requested in the Olympia Chamber Orchestra. This picqued my curiosity, for as far as I knew, there were four violas, a fair number against the nine or ten violins and four celli. Turns out, we were down to two violas; the other two quit earlier that weekend. Yeah, that's trouble.

Later, Damian and I were talking about it, because I know he is not fond of the group, and he would definitely not enjoy cramming all the viola parts for Beethoven's Ninth into four days of practice (he has two concerts this week). He told me sorry, but one of the group's former violinists may break out her viola; good news for me, he said, since otherwise I'd be alone. He told me that the other viola player quit too.

This left me pretty pissed off until Monday's rehearsal, as I thought suddenly that I would be going solo for an hour and a half in some music that calls for ten violas and a full orchestra, with my part splitting into four two double-stopped lines at times.

Thankfully, I found out Monday night that the other violist was just going to miss one rehearsal because of a class, not the whole concert. Damian's bad at the telephone game. We aren't getting that other violinist, but that's OK; the two of us can handle the part fine, and bringing on another person this late in the game would be just plum stressful. On the plus side, we're probably one of the tightest sections in the orchestra, next to those sections that are one to a part.

The concert should go fine. I don't necessarily think it'll improve the experience of the Ninth, beyond what it is - but I don't think it'll fall short, either. (Except for the winds being too loud in one part of the fourth movement...but, that's a gripe for the next rehearsal.) I just hope we can get a fourth horn by Saturday.

Oh, yes, forgot to mention: We lost a French Horn this weekend, too. What to? A gig he just got, on the concert night. Such dedication.

The Olympia Chamber Orchestra is getting an ambitious selection of music now. I believe they won't be a good group, however, until they can get a consistent player base. That point is not yet come — there are still people rotating into the group halfway through the rehearsal sets, and there are always a few who leave after concerts, usually leaving holes in the winds. This has been going on at least as long as I've been there (since Fall, 2003). Actually, their next concert's really going to be interesting, as I'm leaving the group to take a Statistics class. (This is planned, and I told them a month ago; it's going to break the recruiter's heart, but alas.) There's a possibility they won't have any violas in January. Good luck to them.

The concert's Saturday, and will probably overlap completely with Fools Play. This will be the third year in a row I'll have missed Fools Play: Santa's Lap. I've never seen that one. Ah well, for the Ninth, I can stand to miss it. FPRL on January 7th, though, means I'll miss Damian's sight-reading chamber music concert. …That, I don't regret. Chamber music isn't yet my cup of listening tea.

For now, I get to enjoy being in the heart of the Ninth. The best seat in the house this time is probably second-chair viola - right where I am. Tee hee.

A Night on Freezing Fire

Once more on the weather. Why? I'm just that interesting, that's why.

The air has gone still again in Oly. Friday there weren't any clouds out, or mist rising, but after that was crummy and grayed — too grayed, actually; the rising mists have had time to collect, which leaves sunset poor-looking a lot of the time.

Friday's skies were clear, though. I returned to Capital before teaching Yujin, and hung out in the parking lot doing prep. work there. This time, the photographing was good and bountiful. These is the kind of hues I saw at that Olympia Symphony rehearsal, only without the pink.

After the photographing, though, it was pretty nasty. Before the sun wholly set, the sky was a burned-red/brown. Gross stuff.

The nights weren't as impressive as they were the first time this weather hit Olympia, though. There was a mighty fog that struck Puget Sound that November Wednesday, hampering Jim, Georgia and I as we drove together to the Abbey Ballroom. This was the heaviest fog I'd ever been in - I never understood the so-thick-you-could-cut-it analogy, but thar she blew. Or didn't, as the happenstance was.

Headlights, street lights and lot lights colored our entire fields of vision with white, yellow and orange. Made for a pleasant trip home - what we could see of it, anyway. But what was truly impressive was what a lining of trees could do.

It was so impressive, I made a web page about it. (Yeah, I know; first the weather, then the web. How interesting.) I looked out my kitchen window and saw a wonderful set of glow and shadows. So, I hobbled out of my house at 3 am, with my camera and a chair. The chair served as a substitute tri-pod — I'd say its arms made it a variable-height tetrapod, which I should probably have called it to sound more high-tech. But I enjoy low-tech solutions.

I set up my Mac at home to be web-accessible recently, so I could do my e-mail management strictly from home, so-to-speak (got sick of webmail, but wanted to see it at work; solution: remote viewing). I followed the advice from this page and successfully set up two things: SSH access (granting VNC, which lets me work on my Mac with all the GUI glory), and webserver hosting.

So, I invite you to see the fruits of my brains' halfs: Content from the right, hosted by the left.

http://emerald-den.homeip.net/~alex/
(Note: The site may be sporadically up, as its host machine is on a circuit that is susceptible to a tripped breaker if a microwave and water heater are turned on at the same time.)

Granted, it's just a single webpage at the moment. The purpose wasn't to have a whole website, per se, but to be pretty. If it were going to be a whole website, which it may be after I add a few more stylesheets, I'll have a big whomping Links page, and a slightly more verbose Contact page, my resumé… and whatever else goes on a web page. Except for this blog, or a blog period. I'm happy with what I have here. (And, I've made so many absolute links to past entries.)

For now, though, I found making that page at least a fun exercise in layout. Certainly not my last.

Pastel Layers

I'm going to write about the weather. Bare with me.

Saturday's rehearsal for the Olympia Symphony was at its regular time, 3 o'clock, with a break at 4:15 – or rather, a break slated for 4:15. Huw missed the mark by fifteen minutes, stopping rehearsal at 4:30. It was good timing.

Sunset in Oly hits at about 4:30 now. I decided to head outside and enjoy it; I was alone, but that was ok. The CHS parking lot was empty, and the only people out were on the track half a football field away from me. There weren't any cars there, those were off in the lot closer to the road. I got to park myself in the middle of a block of spaces.

The people-watching was good at the track. There was a guy in his thirties hauling around at a brisk race pace – I'd call it a two-mile pace. He stopped running before the "Final Stretch" part of the track, the part for which I didn't know the proper way to run (read: NOW the full-force sprint); he walked forward with hands on hips, a pose I found felt good for the lungs until letting the arms down and suddenly finding my chest muscles were being heavily assisted by the arms doing most of the breathing-expansion work for me.

He made me think of track because it was a lightly-nipping cold out. Olympia's going through a stagnated-air weather system right now, where nothing happens - quite literally. No wind's going through. We aren't supposed to have fire-log fires now, because all our fumes are heading nowhere fast.

As fascinating as this may sound, there was one wonderful side-effect I got while reminiscing of times when my legs burned with happiness (and minimally-flaming pain). Still air left a lot of room for mist to rise, with the bittersweet temperatures blurring the floor/ceiling between fog and cloud. At ground level, at Capital, there wasn't any, but o'er the field was a site to see.

There are forested hills if you're in that parking lot, looking at and past the football field. There are a couple layers to these hills, denser as the view advances in the distance. The fog was rising from all these hills, creating what would have been run-of-the-mill grayshades like this:

Ah, but the beauty of this was the time of day. 4:30; Sunset. This was the first day of the stagnated weather (that stretched up to Bellingham), so clouds hadn't had much of a chance to form, and if they did, they formed lightly. Three shades of pink fleshed into orange colored the three layers of trees in my vision, with the sky taking its own straightly orange tint. This was gorgeous in and of itself.

And then a bird flew in.

I'd read a little on design, and it touched on general art. What little I know of art was summed up in half by that bird: A solitary pair of wings was a deep spot in the scene. More importantly than it being there was that it was there alone (the runner had gone behind the trees that covered half the field from my vantage point). That single bird, flying high enough to make its speed an amble, was a character for the beholder to relate to — one entity for the viewer to personally project — an observer for the observer.

And I rued not bringing my camera.

That rehearsal break was my little Zen for the weekend. The Symphony concert the next night wasn't as fulfilling as October's, because I had already played all three of the Big Orchestra pieces this time around (Die Meistersinger, Carmen Suite 1, and William Tell). The pieces were all still exciting, to be sure; the singer we had was a terrific soprano; and the house sold out again (huzzah!), contrary to the history of November's concert not selling well (Thanksgiving proximity).

I was just slightly dampened for the concert because I had gone back to Capital at 4:20, thinking I'd get another shot at the sunset scene. What I didn't account for was the clouds had now had a day to collect, and they were out in full blotting force. The picture above was the cream of that shoot's crop.

I'm glad after the fact, though. My eye's out now, casting about for a sunset not just for the sake of a sunset, but for the possibility of an avian lacing.

Halloween Costumes - A Recap in Action

(Small note: Refresh the page to reload a stylesheet I updated.)

Well, it's that time of year again, and I'm not feeling creative. I won't be dressing as Freakazoid, fun as that was the first   time. I recycled the costume the next year, and I remember Leah calling me on it at Fools Play. Or somewhere. Point being, I won't be reviving the costume again this year.

I won't dig back into the Odlaw costume either, because I'll just leave that in its state of past perfection. I mean, with Aaron as Waldo, there was no better day at OHS than when we went into the hall, crowded at break, and I continuously shouted "Marco!" with Aaron following up, following me - "Polo!" And off we'd scamper, in a two-man train around the crowds.

Kaga-San, that I did senior year (or junior?), was fun, but bloody hot. And dancing in the gloves of the Iron Chef stadium head was particularly difficult - to the point of silliness, when Ali danced with her respective gloves on as well. Traction measured zilch.

My lack of creativity for this year, though, is reviving the costume that came before all those — or at least, the theme.

El Jimbo!

Alex!

So

what's shakin' dude

I've been trying to think of what to be for Halloween.

how about pie (pi?)

I won't bring Freakazoid out of non-retirement, because that'd be the 3rd year in a row.

I don't know what to do for a costume for that.

forgot about that

Actually

I intend to wear something that will be:

1.)

Good for Fools Play the Saturday before Halloween.

2.)

Good for dancing the Tuesday after Halloween.

I'm slowly coming to the conclusion

That my fishnets have seen too much of The Drawer.

Frankfurter?

from rocky horror?

Eh, I was thinking more a schoolgirl skirt.  I don't like the big schlong-schtickle.

lol

that's awesome

Except, I have to get the skirt.  That's the only thing.

The white garter for the black fishnets, I've got covered.

dude, there has to be a plaid skirt around Olympia somewhere

Heh, shouldn't be a problem.  I just have to go out and get one...hmm, Goodwill perhaps?

take Ashley with you to help pick one out

There has got to be some lewd whistle to go with that sentence, but it just won't leap out at me.

oh, c'mon, you can't think of anything?

I need to trill my tongue.  If not for incapabilities, I'd have the whizthle in hand...so to speak.

yeah, but you shouldn't have you whistle in your hand too much, you're right.

Ah, damnit Jim, I miss you.

That plan came to fruition Friday night, and the costume saw daylight (er, stagelight) at Fools Play Saturday; more on that later.

I had some technical gripes in getting this chatlog online. If you don't find the phrase "XSLT 2.0" a turn off, and if your JavaScript isn't disabled — or if you want to see some penis banter — then do click the next <img /> to see what kept this chatlog from coming online a week ago.

For the rest of you, here's some pumpkin pi.

— from Worth1000.com's Jack-O'Lantern Challenge 4, entry by spinnerhead (links: contest, this pumpkin)

A wonderful thing about Adium is how it formats its chat logs. With the exception of how it handles line breaks, everything is done in an XHTML-conformant manner. Here's an excerpt of the raw log I extracted this conversation from:

legofarley03 (2005|10|17).html

...
<div class="send"><span class="timestamp">10:21:15 PM</span> <span class="sender">louporange: </span><pre class="message">That my fishnets have seen too much of The Drawer.</pre></div>
<div class="receive"><span class="timestamp">10:21:26 PM</span> <span class="sender">legofarley03: </span><pre class="message">Frankfurter?</pre></div>
<div class="receive"><span class="timestamp">10:21:42 PM</span> <span class="sender">legofarley03: </span><pre class="message">from rocky horror?</pre></div>
<div class="send"><span class="timestamp">10:22:08 PM</span> <span class="sender">louporange: </span><pre class="message">Eh, I was thinking more a schoolgirl skirt.  I don't like the big schlong-schtickle.</pre></div>
<div class="receive"><span class="timestamp">10:22:17 PM</span> <span class="sender">legofarley03: </span><pre class="message">lol</pre></div>
...

I suspect Adium is a cool-enough piece of software that it has actually implemented some CSS selectors more advanced than what current web browsers have to offer. This is what the Adium chat interface looks like:

Note that the Penny Arcade link is highlighted. This is my first use of the <map> element.

(Don't ask.)

The neat effects: While each <div> row in the chatlog has a child "sender," only the first is displayed in the chatlog - and pretty boldly, with a rounded-corner background and everything. I'd guess its done with a :first-child selector rule overriding a general "hide-the-.sender" rule. However, Firefox and IE don't support :first-child yet, so I took a somewhat more drastic measure and turned to XSLT.

The goal was to simply create a wrapper for each group of send or receive rows. I use the term "group" there because XSLT 2.0 has an element called <xsl:for-each-group>, which does precisely the grouping I was looking for.

The blocker: MSXML3.dll thinks this element can't be a child of <xsl:template>. That is wrong. (Citation: The last code gray code block here, from the W3C Recomendation.) In the Unix command line, xsltproc doesn't support XSLT 2.0. PHP returns the error "non-XSL instruction;" in short, I'd probably have to buy an XSLT processor to get this done mechanically. XSLT 2.0 seems to be too new a standard.

I finally broke down and did the transformation by hand Saturday morning. This is why I didn't get the log published yet. In the end, though, the result remains the same: I'm bedecked in a frilly bottom for Halloween! And thus ends the technical point of this entry.

Happy Halloween. "Political-Career-Sinking"-grade pictures to come after Tuesday.

Three Performances

Saturday was OCO's first concert of the year. It could've went a lot better.

That performance was probably the worst to date I've had on stage (considering strictly my own contributions), including compared with my first SOGO performance where I hadn't managed to find any time to practice for three months. So, I don't feel too great thinking about that. Beethoven's Ninth had better be good to be a good pick-me-up, but there's a crapload of hard parts in there, and we have one less rehearsal this time around. I only hope. It'll be my last performance with OCO for a while, for unrelated reasons — I want to take a Data Analysis course, and need more hours in the week.

If the performance goes well, I'll probably be back with them after finishing Data Analysis. If the performance doesn't, then I'll get my Probability Theory course in. Simple as that. Olympia Symphony will surely sate my performance desires on its own in the meanwhile.

I had my second business trip to Portland today. I never got around to revising my post about the first trip (I wrote too much about data for some reason), but suffice it to sum up as this:

From September 9: Spent the day and night in Portland, whipping up and finalizing a spiffy web system. It's currently IE-centric, unfortunately, but this can be revised into Firefox. It'll have to be, because it'll be a site open to the public, and it'd be nice to let Linux and Mac users in on the fun. Had dinner at Stanford's Bar & Grill, a fine portobello mushroom burger (veggie burger). Was up 'til midnight coding with Pete, while Joe wrote down some table sketches, and didn't write down some other table sketches.

To this day, Joe swears we had another table sketched out that night at the hotel. We all know if we did have it, it never left the room — I'd contend that it never left Joe's dream, though. I'm still pretty sure he didn't draw it out.

Today's trip to Portland was different. 2 hours down, 4 hours in town, 2 hours back. The 4 in town were split between a meeting, lunch, and screwing up my ankle. I missed the last step coming out of the Multnomah County Courthouse, and stomped onto the pavement in a dress shoe that let my foot slide a critical centimeter. I felt fine, up until I'd been off it for ten minutes.

Then I couldn't walk. We arrived at about a hundred feet from a restaurant on the water (literally, on a dock), and my foot just seized up. I hobbled to a bench, where we all scratched our heads at what was causing my foot to hurt. Joe reminded me about the courthouse misstep, which I ignored due to thinking I handled it well and didn't need to think about it. Sure showed me, as I now had to debate between which was less dignified: Hopping down to the restaurant, down either a ramp or stairs; or getting a piggyback ride from Pete.

I find hopping demeaning.

Pete set me down at the restaurant door. I figured out a non-painful gait as we made our way to a table. The foot felt fine after the drive back from Portland and working for an hour. I scheduled a physical for tomorrow afternoon anyway, so this is a stroke of twisted luck. I just won't be dancing on my night off from chamber orchestra tomorrow.

Tonight, I called my student and asked him what he'd like to study tonight, as he hadn't written me with a request of topics the night before, like I requested. He said asymptotes and algorithms. I said, "Oh boy, algorithms! Right up my alley! I'll see you in ten." -Click-

Unfortunately, I had expected with such specific topics in mind, he was doing some in class and already had an idea of what he wanted to look at. Turns out, he didn't. So, after we went over a few asymptote items, he asked me what I'd like to teach him in algorithms.

Well, this'll probably show you how well I think "On my feet," in teaching: I showed him the Sieve of Eratasthones, a prime number finder. The initial display of that algorithm wasn't hard, as it just involved this:

And so on. This got him happy; then, somehow the topic of coding it came up. So I wrote most of the Sieve of Eratasthones for him in Java, walking through the code-creation process. I probably bent his mind a little out of shape, as he dropped his church's C++ class before getting to for loops.

Well, I found introducing him to the practice of vigorously commenting code important, at least. And he got to see PuTTY in action, too, so hey.

Next week, I'm gonna show him Haskell. No, I don't learn.

And on an unrelated note: I started posting this because I wanted to write down, finally, that I'd been to Portland, thanks to Ali's post. I also wanted to note that yes, I'll see Serenity, but only after I see Firefly. I finally ordered the series Saturday (thirty bucks on Amazon, down from fifty, couldn't resist). By the time I finish watching the series, Serenity should be out on DVD. I'm just that quick to get to a TV show.

Another thing I bought: A pack of my most favorite-smelling things in the world. Magic Cards. I'm pretty sure there's no non-nerdy way to ever write about acquiring a pack of those — especially not my way, buying a pair of decks in Gamestop with Final Fantasy Anthologies and RvB Season 3. But, Damian felt like playing again after a decade of leaving the game be, and hey, I actually find it fun. They turned out to be pre-made decks, though; I still want to, at some point, just buy two decks of completely random cards and play a round against someone. There's nothing like the excitement of suspecting that for the rest of a game, your draw pile could be pure shit, and you'd never know the better.

My entertainment's probably set through Thanksgiving. I only hope this'll be a relaxed month - not likely, as I need to scramble to get The Ninth learned. And now I'm off, to write another day.

Yesterday, et Aujourd'Hui

The Washington Center feels pretty impressive when it's stuffed to the brim. I saw six empty seats, way in the back of the nosebleed section.

Has anybody ever noticed that the nosebleed section in the WCPA has sneeze guards? Pun was indeed intended. I think that's the only level with the guards, too. (I doubt they're actually intended for sneeze-catching, instead being there for an unobtrustive view...but still.)

The concert went fairly well. Shames was wonderful in the Brahms, though I wish I could've heard his part more in the third movement. The lid of the piano and mezzo-forte briskness of his part kept it quiet for poor ol' me in the back of the violas. I was mightily impressed with the brass at the start of Beethoven's Fifth's fourth movement. They had apparently been holding back during rehearsals. Quite a lot of power came out.

I loved playing during the concert, up until the third movement of the Beethoven. Dress rehearsal ran about two hours, and the concert ran about the same time. That was murder on the left arm - I talked with one of the violinists after the concert, and she said it was just as bad as playing an opera. This is an art of stamina.

And the next concert has ten pieces. Oh boy...oh boy.

And now, for something complètement different — an exercise in ze French.

Aujourd'hui est l'anniversaire de mon père. A dix-neufs heures, mon oncle l'a appelé, et c'est ce moment, quand ma père disait, "Yep, I'm eligible for Social Security now," que Damian et moi ont realisé, "Oh. Today would be the Seventeenth." Avec une voix, nous l'avons dit, une phrase qui notait, Oui, rater beaucoup est facile pour nous. Trop facile. Nous conducteons 'Appy Birthday, et chanteons avec demi-coeur.

On the way to work, sometimes I name French verb conjugations. I can remember ten — their names, that is. I remember how to use most of them. Past perfect isn't one that I could recall easily, though. That's what I intended the "-eons" to be, an action that happened in the past, in a continual manner like the imperfect, but definitely not continuing to happen now like the imperfect.

At least, I think that's what past perfect is, if it's a tense. Don't ask me, I wrote Turing Machines in college.

Zen and a Teal Tunnel

I'm probably going to become pretty artistic over the next two weeks. I have a motivation, and I have a learning source.

The motivation: My main board activity for SOGO is, at the moment, split between a forum for the students (a seminar, not a web forum), and redesigning the website.

The source: Zen. I just got Zen in print in the mail Saturday, and it is a gorgeous book. It's introducing me to styling, design, color selection…this will be a good project.

Most important, though, is making my brain meet on a middle ground. My left hemisphere's run amok for...eh, I'll say a decade. Combining the CSS, HTML, and VB.net coding seemed to be a fine sustenance for the logic side, while leaving room for whatever art that poor, dimished right half can muster.

(I've even started playing around with Context-Free Design Grammars, since the latest version has, finally, a lesson.)

A Nickname for Jade

Up until the last three lines, these are a loosely quoted passage from tonight at Fools Play. (Correct me if you can / want.) It was Taisha's first two-person show night (yay absent fools(?)!). The format was "Fools Play Shopping List," where two audience members become shoppers. (A little more on the format is at the Format Forest for tonight.)

Mike: "And now, we're about to get our next shopper for Fools Play Shopping List onstage. You sir, what is your name?"

Knutaf ascends to the stage, but talks while stepping up: "kNutf!" Didn't come out as clearly as it should've.

Mike: "I'm sorry?"

Taisha sings: "Gnutef, the Duh-Uuck!"

The image of Knutaf jerking about on stage, saying "Gilkers!" flooded minds (well, at least mine); the audience gave a laugh.

Mike: "Noo, he's not a duck! I'll bet you've gotten plenty with your name, Taisha."

Taisha: "Ooooh yeah. I've heard tons."

Mike, not letting her leave it at that: "Name just one."

Taisha: "Grundelbitch."

What an Obscure for-Oly Reference

Fools Play unveiled FoolsPlay.net, "Fools Play Island," two weeks ago. I've only just started playing in it, so I've seen some of Fools Play's history, and gotten a few keys. (It's a half-&-half informative / game site; you learn about Fools Play recurring characters, on the one hand, but on the other, you have an Inventory.) The last thing I did was read some of the Fools' bios.

Thursday of Lakefair, 2005: A band performed at noon on the main stage: "Locust Street Taxi." They were slightly hip-hop, but mostly played...I don't know how to describe the music. They had a guitar (electric), bass (electric), trumpet and trombone (which conduct electricity), bongos (which resist electricity), and drums (electrical death via the brush). They had a cool sound, so I bought one of their CDs through one of the band members.

That band member, I somewhat know through dancing. She has an awesome-looking swivel-hop that I have a burning desire to learn and put into my Lindy basic at intermittent points.

Here's the odd tie-in. Nathan Geyer is one of the singers of Locust Street Taxi, also plays trombone. He also happens to have a bio on Fools Play Island, having been the Orange Fool. It requires a trip to the Graveyard to read.

Well, look at that. Outside of my friends, and maybe some of the Yellow Fool's stage-dance antics, swing dancing and Fools Play are two-apart. (One-apart means directly related, right? Or is that "Directly Related?") There's a little more "Small World" symptom for you.

Two Films

— Sideways; A Very Long Engagement

Sideways, I saw more recently - just finished at ten tonight. The frequent wine tasting that started the story off reminded me I had intended to sample some white, and my dad just happened to have some out. In terms of the candy-cane categorization of wines, I'm much more a white than a red. That's as sophisticated as my tastes are now.

Sideways otherwise had fine moments. Miles's progression from depression was warming, when he'd smile with Maya in the car. And, those two describing the beauty of wine to each other was entrapping. The film was a fine one, probably made more so by my complete lack of watching dramas otherwise.

A Very Long Engagement, I saw as the end of our last Butt-Numb-a-Thon, two Saturdays ago. I am completely infatuated with Jean-Pierre Jeunet, as he has directed my three favorite French movies ever (one I just named; Amelie; and The City of Lost Children). I'm looking at his IMDB entry, though, and I see that he directed Alien: Resurrection, too. I haven't seen that, but I'm getting a really funny crossover of his directing style in my head — he typically doles out personal nuances of some of the characters, like a mother in Engagement who would always respond to her dog's pew, "Doggy Fart, warms my heart." Imagine an alien head popping out, and the camera freezing, focused and zoomed in on the head and its stem neck, a narration taking over:

"This little one, known by his genetic code hash of TAGGA, shared a love-hate relation with his host's daily duties. While loving the air and getting out in it whenever the host's hostility contracted just the right muscles," the scene cuts to an Alien hiss-roaring and the little head TAGGA popping out, "There is nothing he detests more than when he's driven out not by hostility, but by being squeezed out as part of the muscles at the other end when Mr. Host has to excrete yesterday's well-earned and bountifully enjoyed human flesh," the scene cuts to an overhead shot looking straight down at the host Alien, only the head visible via angle, who's looking up and screams the head out as a skeletal hand plops down onto the ground and clatters backward into the camera view. TAGGA's jaw structure is a frown, and not upside-down. The scene then cuts back to the action; Alien eats someone, or something.

I never actually saw any of the Alien movies. But, I'd love it if that scene were in there somewhere. It'd be a beautiful Jeunet moment.

Vingt-et-un, avec vin

I almost thought I wasn't going to be at work this last week. I was on call for my first jury summons – makes me feel all the more adult. I ended up not getting called; that was sort of disappointing. I would've loved to show up to the interviews with my degree from Evergreen, and being shown the door soon after. "My interests?" I'd respond in the interview. "My current legal interest is in how the Recording Industry Association of America is completely lampooning the consumer's ownership of music, because of their insatiable desire to make filthy, filthy money." The door would probably slam into me on the way out.

I do think it would be interesting and worthwhileto serve on a jury; I'd be happy to do my citizen's duty. But thinking of a way to get out of it in the interview holds an appeal not unlike knowing your next phone call's going to be from a telemarketer – and you'll be ready.

An aside, slightly on that topic I tried to make me sound as biased decided as possible: I got a birthday present last week from Cass & Aaron, a certificate for FYE. I put it to good use and got the "Spamalot" soundtrack, a copy of which I then made for Aaron. I was wondering if CD protection had indeed been put in place, as I had read. "Spamalot's" distributed by Universal Music, not mentioned in that article, but I still worried that the CD protection would be in place.

I burned a copy with that copy of Roxio 6 that I shall never ever update, because it works well and can only get less with upgrades as more compliance with copyright crippling enforcement crippling is added. I burned the copy in "Raw" mode, which I've taken on faith meant a 1-to-1 copy of the bits from the source disc to the blank disc. That apparently isn't the case, by observation. That disc I copied won't play in my Mac. It'll play in either Windows machine in the house; I haven't tested on the headless box, for lack of VNC in the OS that does play audio. It'll play on the CD player in my car and in the house stereo. But, on the Mac, it just siphons all the resources into a pile of computational piss on the table; clicks of any kind don't register for nearly a minute. Good thing there's a special Eject key on the keyboard that works in, so far, all cases. That's still an oddity.

Well, life goes on, with or without the birthday present that faces Apple resistance on copying. At the Little Tokyo Steakhouse dinner last week, which was a freakin' delicious part of Federal Way, Aaron and Cassie got me that gift card for FYE. Katie got me a card and a book, "Here Speeching American." The book really screws with my head; it's mashed-up English spoken with dialectical grammatical structures, from around the world. Strains the left brain. Her card, though, was too freakin' cool: It was a birthday calculator, giving my age in such animals as dog, cat, crocodile...I thought it was so cool, I had to make it into a real calculator.

So, I ventured into the realm of PHP and wrote an XML representation of the card's scalars, an XSL transformation to reformat the data into HTML fit for the blog, and a PHP script to give my accurate age, pick a random animal (or planet), and plug into the sidebar.

This will lead to me -finally- getting an automated update system for that "Shameless Concert Plugs" section. I always wanted to get that done in a data-driven fashion instead of typing the things into the index template manually; that section saw no love this last year, though plenty was there to give. Now, though, I just need to find, maybe write, an XML format for classical concert listings.

I spent sporadic parts of the weekend writing that age-translation script. What a way to spend the actual birthday weekend, eh? Friday night, my actual birthday, I had a teeny tiny amount of wine – red wine, was supposed to be good according to my dad. Well, I had the same balky reaction I had trying some wine in Canada over spring break. I thought then that the wine I was having was just bad because it came from poor storage in the rock club I was in, but after the same conclusion at my birthday dinner, I'm now pretty sure I'm not (yet) a red wine fan. White's next on the list.

Age 21. There very well may be more to this year than wine and XML. Prospects for getting into "FREE for 21 and over" swing events are good. Beyond that, though, I'll just see what time allows me.

The Daylight Test

Today, I observed the seat of my jeans as they lay on my bed. I also observed my bed. The area where I observed the two overlapped.

I held the jeans up to the window, to see how much sky blue would shine through the denim blue. The results were brightly dismal.

Alas.

Flow; Frets

Only once in the past four years, outside of really unenjoyable classes, have I been bored for anything close to an hour. It was the day after I graduated from Evergreen, the morning after; from about eleven to noon, I tried chipping the heads off of the massive collections of RSS items growing in my neglected Thunderbird feeds¹. I felt, however, completely unbound at the time, neural net paper aside. I got bored. I kinda freaked out; I was going on two years of fairly nonstop action at the time.

I almost got bored again tonight; I have plenty to do, but I was just feeling disconnected. So, I started on The Reading List, and picked up Flow, the Psychology of Optimal Experience, by the psychologist of unpronouncable nomination. (I spent a good two minutes trying to get the "halyi" of "Csikszentmihalyi" down. Still don't got it.) The book made me happy of what I did during my last two years of school, those two that I spent sleeping something like 5 hours a night. (And, uh, that I remember so well...lots of blogging those days, for poor memory's sake.)

I've just read ten pages so far, but the purpose of the book is clear. It will detail the state of mind known as Flow, which everybody has experienced: Flow is, in a cheap simplification, zen in motion. Flow is doing something, a familiar activity, and having the mind just harmonize on what's going on – the feeling is of graceful speed, of mastery, of purpose in continuing. Most important to flow is that it comes from the most active involvement, like a wondrous spawn of habit.

I believe I was happy, maybe "flowing," when I was doing SPSCC and Oly High at the same time. The people were pleasant; the work was bountiful, but not too hard piecewise; and my mind was firing on all six pistons 'round the clock. Those were good days; they sucked and rocked, ebbing like the tides of suckology and elation, but I think them well-lived in hindsight.

They won't be the last good days, either. The next year or two (maybe three?) look to be as busy, but I'll have to work at the biggest piece of my time. I hit a few SAS bugs at LGAN that slowed down my momentum on a project sufficiently that I forgot today what the design of the project was. I need to remind myself Monday morning. Meanwhile, I have the material pleasure of not working on a laptop optimized for Windows 98 anymore, instead having an old but still beefy development machine. And, I'm hitting moments of ping pong zen – er, I guess they'd be "Flow," now, huh? – and I'm actually playing fairly even matches against Pete – feeling the game and all. I've lost every match against him so far, but l had (except for one today) rarely less than nine points in each².

Work could be a fret; the psychology of spending 40 hours a week at something, and knowing there have to be at least 40 hours a week spent there, is significantly different from academia. I'm happy that I'm still learning programming as work proceeds. You may see some notes pop up soon (on SAS and XML, mainly, and maybe dumb JavaScript tricks if I stumble across them). I'll keep those labeled as "Tech Journals," though, since I know some peoples' noses threaten bleeding, or head implosions or the like on such impending topics as "Referential XML." (And this is before I find a decent way to write MathML on the Mac, and thus start publishing more "Math Journals.")

I definitely feel rambly. I think my writing, and similarly my social skills, may be in slight need of some tuning. I met somebody through dancing; she happens to be the same one who asked me to Tolo...when...ah, then. (Also, I was proxy-pranked on April 1; somebody pranked her with the fake dance and she didn't realize it, passing the prank on to me on April Fool's.) Well, we swapped numbers about a month ago, then I did Pippin and couldn't see her except for one night that she came, and then she headed off on a two-week trip. We got some good dancing in Wednesday, though. Now it's a frenetic game of arranging nights to see one another. I'm trying.

I'm conscious of my neck around her. For those of you familiar with Goblet of Fire, it's the same as when Harry "Realized just how stupid his arms must have looked swinging by his sides all the time" (loose quote), around the time his mind realized the concept of a Lady Friend. There's an angle of my neck that makes me feel incredibly and awkwardly slouchy, but the muscular shift to a more ...natural? upright? position just looks like an odd strain. As helpless as Harry figuring out what to do with the arms. It's an appropriate level of dorkiness to feel, I think, for a fresh relationship. It has thus far left me halty in the conversation department, though...that's what I hope to fix soon.

I just hope I don't try what turned out to be an awkward-feeling conversation I had with Shigs and Elise today at lunch. I read an article, "Profits of Fear," by the man who invented the neutron bomb (posted on Boing Boing. I found the article fascinating, but didn't convey all the interesting parts at lunch, instead probably coming away sounding like an advocate for the bomb. Eh, that could've gone better, but oh well, I doubt I've repulsed Elise or Shigs.

Ok, last rambling shock-cut: Olympia Symphony audition next Thursday. Some of the music is hard, because it's quite fast and quiet (faeries of Midsummer Night's Dream). I hope donating blood tomorrow will encourage me to take the material a bit slower than I've frantically tried. I have some comfort in knowing either outcome of the audition would be fine for me. If I make it, then good music lies ahead for the year. If I don't, then I may have time to read, or at least more to tutor and spend time with Ashley (she who I've just tied with Tolo so far).

Ok, just one more topic switch: I'm tutoring a junior at Capital High in precalculus. It should be a pleasant experience for both of us; he has had tutors since the 7th grade, and enjoys the personal experience of having them; and, he has had Honors Physics already (Capital does things a bit differently), so I don't honestly think my work is cut out for me. I mean, heck, our first session, I intend to show him Haskell code for the sake of teaching functional composition. Permutation Groups may be a better topic for that, but he's had some C++. Before Katie wags her finger, I'll promise to lay off the type theory and λ-calculus.

It will be a busy year. I didn't even note SOGO or the stat class I want to take, and this entry already became way too long. Well, I'm about to find out if I need pure theory to keep my "Flow" going or not. More on that in June.

1: Define massive as, currently: 141 unread Google Maps Mania posts, though I probably won't read those; 1,406 unread BoingBoing posts, half of which are usually interesting; 2,248 unread Slashdot posts, which take at least ten minutes per article to read through all the comments, well-written and otherwise; and 4,354 unread LiveJournal "Metaquotes," quick citations of ridiculous posts.

2: International Ping Pong rules, in brief: Players serve twice, then switch service; each serve results in a point. Game goes to at least one player at 11 points, but victory must be by 2. Ties at 10 start alternating service. Matches are won 2-out-of-3.

Less-than-Wacky Tobaccy

I've had some first, and last, experiences with smoking forms in the past few weeks. In short, I'm wholly unexcited about the manner, but decided that I'd try just to say skipping out on the experience was an informed decision.

On cigars: I had one puff...no, a half-puff. A hemi-puff. I hemi-puffed a cigar camping last weekend; the taste was absolutely putrid to me, causing me to cough and wag my tongue into the air. Somebody gave me some gum after a minute of me trying to get the taste out of my mouth with the wholly ineffective means of spurting it out in coughs. She averted the spitting phase. That was the first and last time I'll handle a cigar.

On hookahs: The Olympian had an article today on hookahs and the Olympian hookah joint, Earth & Fire. Meredith took Katie, Cass, Aaron and I there after FPRL (which, on a side note, was a damned fine performance that I may get a copy of), but Aaron and Cassie left because there was a really loud [possibly 'Greener] band playing; too loud for them. And then there were three, and an apple hookah setup.

At first, it felt fine to me. I'd inhale, I wouldn't get any smoke, and I'd exhale a fruity taste – scented air, almost. That's actually pretty much what it turned out to be, because we weren't plugging the other hoses in our hookah while the one person (at a time) would inhale. So, when I actually started getting smoke out, I could see a fog emerge from my mouth and nose. A few inhalations later, I could taste the smoke. That's when I started to lose interest; I stopped after about twenty minutes.

It was actually quite a pleasant experience after I stopped, and the band stopped playing. It's just sitting around this ornamental spire on cushions and small rugs with friends; it's quite relaxing. Having the band there was a bit of a detriment to the experience, though the flutist was amusing to watch (a little hyazz flute).

Unfortunately, my throat doesn't feel too hot from the different style, but some same effects, of smoking. Currently, clearing my throat is unpleasant, as is swallowing orange juice too quickly. That may have been the first of two times I'll have a hookah in my life.

But, at least I can say I didn't sit by and refuse the experience, so I'm happy. The experience of cigarettes and chewing tobacco, however, I won't mind not trying. I've had my fill of that leaf.

Camping, sans graphics

This past weekend was the 3rd camping trip I've taken with my good friends. I'd have photo documentation, but I managed to leave my camera battery at home in the charger; Katie took pictures instead, and she may be holding them for a while. Forgetting things seems to have been the theme of this year's trip; observe the possibly incomplete list:

• Meredith, Leia and Kobar (couldn't attend because of a college thing and work schedules; considered a loss in any case);
• Swiss Army Knife – ya never know;
• First-Aid Kit
• The unit that connects the propane grill to the propane tank; thankfully, Ace Hardware didn't close until five minutes after Aaron and Cassie charged in and found the very last unit;
• Four chairs, out of the eight originally planned
• Hatchet and hammer – these were brought later in the greatly impressive Maul Axe form, but were kinda necessary for the tents early on;

I don't doubt there was more; if anybody who went can think of something else, note it, else we'll screw up in a similar fashion next year. For tools, we can thankfully mooch act on generosity of neighbors and ask for their tools.

I'm going to note a few other things about the camping site, because it was deemed worthy of a future venture. It was at Ocean City State Park, north of Ocean Shores, WA; to find it, go as west as possible from Olympia, and bam. We reserved two sites, 64 and 61; 64 was in a semi-open area shared by probably a dozen other sites. Interestingly, there was a Tae Kwon Do camp going on on the camp grounds, so some of us awoke to screams of "Yes, Sir!" Site 61 was semi-secluded; we could see other peoples sites pretty well, and our voices from late-night fireside chats surely didn't have a hard time getting into other peoples' tents.

Next time, we should look at sites 112 or 120, which were much like the Special Spot we got at Beverly Beach: Well-surrounded by trees, except for the driveway out. In the site, one couldn't see, but could probably still here, any other nearby sites. Cozy.

The ocean is a mixed blessing. We had great weather, so sun was coming down strong without obstruction. However, there's an inescapable wind on that beach that is perfect for kite-flying, but ridiculing for anybody who tries to fling a frisbee controlledly. Jim tried three times to throw the frisbee into the wind at me; each time, it was blown down to the ground and obediently rolled precisely to his feet.

The wind also made starting a fire on the beach an epic struggle, whose conclusion I didn't witness because I went back to camp for a different lighter. The different strategies to success were either to head over some dunes and avoid the wind, or to opt into what other campers did and park their cars on the beach to block the wind. That was another downside to the beach: A lot of people drove on the beach. There were at least twenty cars on the sand at any moment of surveying. It makes sense if you don't want to lug firewood or bikes or whatever from the camp site and over the soft sand, but...but. It's a big beach.

That's all I wish to say about the mundane-seeming details of the site; what went on this weekend was fairly important for me. One of the fireside chats finally gave me a chance to talk with these fine people I consider my best friends, instead of my usual habit of just listening and enjoying everyone acting out around me. It let me air thoughts on my arguably-non religion, a process which I find important for any topic or idea: Some ideas are like volatile chemicals when locked in the head – when they are finally permitted to react with air, the byproduct is something that sounds incredibly stupid, which should be discovered, noted, and learned from quickly. I'm glad my thought on religion didn't come off as one of the dumb things that have made their way out of my mouth. More on this later if I can motivate myself to write about it (should be pretty short, but there's the whole writing-about-religion thing…).

Somebody also reaffirmed the importance of time in relationships with people. I'm spending not-enough time with somebody I'd like to be around more, but can't for across-the-state reasons. I got to have lunch with her a few weeks ago, and I found our conversation there went the same as most of our IMs; we told stories to each other. It's not a bad way of conversing, and I adore knowing more of what a person has experienced, but…I want to have a different kind of conversation. I feel I've grown familiar with the story-trade communication form, and the math nerd in me pines for another form of conversation.

But, there's a legitimate-sounding reason that we communicate in stories: We spend so little time with each other, we're trying to build on our friendship by playing catchup with each others' lives. I do wish I could relegate that to IM, but habit's there now. I'll get another chance to break the habit in a few weeks.

The after-camp was different this year. Half of us went home, half of us went to Ocean Shores for the afternoon. The short of that was: The Flintstone-mobile, a four-seat bicycle in a 2×2 arrangement, has a brake which is deceptively weak, as I discovered in a parking lot curb-hop. They are allowed through McDonald's drive-throughs, though.

After Ocean Shores was the rock jetty. That was probably the most… cardiovascular fun I've had all summer. My initial reaction to climbing into these six-hundred lb. boulders wasn't too hot — I had both hands full, and slipped on some sand which everyone else had stepped onto and off of with ease — and Katie held my hand for getting across ten or so boulders in the first ten minutes, but soon I was keeping stride with Aaron, showing the mountain goat in his blood by sometimes hopping around the stones. Aaron and I made it out to the end of the jetty, where a flock of seagulls had nested and left their white all-plastering mark. One magnificent wave-splash later, we declared victory in the path and headed back to meet up with Katie and Cassie.

As we were heading back for sand (the jetty extended a hundred or so feet after the beach sunk below the waves), we ran into Caitlin… I can't remember her last name (or was it Kelly?). Zach dated her sophomore or junior year. She and Cassie talked for a little bit. I didn't say much, because the last time I spoke directly with her wasn't on the best of terms on my side. I should've asked what she thought of that, now that five years have passed, but oh well. I'll just have to wait until a reunion or something.

The jetty was the last thing we did on the coastline. It was refreshingly tiring. The four of us gathered at Cassie's house where her mom sprung a cheesecake on us, and massive munching ensued. We didn't get an end-of-trip photo like we had for the last two years, unfortunately; half of everyone splitting off at the camp site brought that prospect down. We'll have to make sure we get that next year, too. (And I'd better get last year's photos online soon, heh…)

Jesus Got a Hair Cut.

Back in our high school days, there was one clear-(un)cut winner for best Jesus lookalike at Oly: Ross...can't remember his last name. I was in French with him; I'd give a description, but I'd be repeating myself. I saw him tonight at the Olympia Symphony concert: Hair cut down to about a half-inch long on top of his head, clean shave otherwise. Completely different look; pretty distinguishable by his large eyes or large grin, still.

I don't know the guy; I was just familiar him as almost-Jesus for Oly.

As for the Symphony concert, it sounded pretty good. They got that echo thing under control this year. For those not familiar with the acoustics of Music in the Park, it's a bnd or larger musical group playing in Sylvester Park, pointing either at the courthouse or at the Olympia Appartments. The Olympia Symphony's setup points them at the appartments – six stories of flat, sound-returning wall. Last year, they played two concerts a half-second apart. This year, though, the only echoes were during the ending chords of Beethoven's Fifth, which was a pleasant effect, unintentional as it was.

Laura, the woman who heads SPSCC's up-and-coming string program played with the symphony tonight; she introduced me to a few people, including the concertmaster, another violinist, and her brother. All I said was I hoped to join the group in the fall; she immediately looked for the head of personnel, but that woman had already left, so she made do with introducing me to some of the musicians. She's such a nice woman.

I'd called the Symphony once before, but I choked as I normally do around answering machines and left something that probably didn't leave a great first impression. Stupid "Wait-for-the-beep" phobia. I think this time I'll remember to mention things like graduating from college, not just graduating period, and more on music than my years at SOGO; I don't even remember if I mentioned OCO, but I'm not sure that would have helped, to be honest, since the group has just started to get a better orchestral sound. Well, Laura said she'd give the personnel manager a heads-up that a viola's looking to call and audition, so I think I'll have a bit more confidence when I call the symphony office tomorrow. I hope this time I get a call back.