Crazy?

So I'm sitting there today, in my room, just trying to calm my mind down a little. I turned off all the lights and any sound-producing device, got comfortable, and started letting my mind wander. I try counting down from 10 to zero over and over, which usually does a good job removing my attention from reality without knocking me out, and I start having a conversation with some people. Mind you, all these people are made up, but I'm half dreaming so it's excusable. I think. Anyway, I'm having a little argument with some guy and he uses the fact that he did something (what, I can't remember) on his birthday. My response was "you're lying, you never had a birthday. You don't really exist." He disappears, and I continue the conversation with everybody else. I eventually drifted into unconsciousness, and woke up groggy as all hell.

Weird.

Not Guilty

Went to court today to contest a ticket I got from an accident this spring. It had been raining earlier and I lost control when I hit a slick spot on a curve in the road while breaking. Hit the jersey barrier, totaled the car, but didn't hit anybody else and I wasn't hurt. The cop got there afterwards and issued a ticket for driving faster than reasonable. I got to court at 8:30, which is when they told me to be there, despite the court not opening until 9:00. They say it's so that people get there on time. I figure, if "on time" is 9:00, tell people 9:00 and let them decide how early they want to get there. I was one of the last cases being heard, so I sat around for about two hours before being called up. It went very quickly; the judge asked the cop if he saw the accident, "no", he then asked if there were any witnesses, *sound of crickets*, asked me how I plead, "not guilty." Judge: "not guilty." It took all of 30 seconds. Got back to my car just as the meter expired (wouldn't that be funny, getting a parking ticket while contesting a moving violation), went home, and now I'm at work.

In other news, my sister is coming over to take a couch and foreman grill (we're getting a newer, better grill) and have me install some programs on her new iBook. She has OS 10.3, while I have OS 10.2, so I'm going to borrow her installation CD and upgrade my laptop, assuming it's compatible.

Lazy

That's the best word to describe my posting habits lately. Now, I'm normally lazy, so that alone isn't enough to justify not posting, but I've been lazy across the board, so I haven't got much to talk about. Anyway, here goes.

Went to NJ last weekend, going up again this weekend. I'm "working" durring the week, but between Tuesday and Friday of this week, I don't have anything to work on, so instead I read the news or play freecell. My brother and sister came back from NJ on Tuesday, and we're all heading back up Friday afternoon; my parents are staying all week. It's a little weird staying in my grandfathers house now that he's passed away, and I still feel like I can't touch or move anything (he was a little OCD when it came to keeping the house clean and in order.) I'll probably spend most of the time at the beach anyway. I'm going to Ocean City with Tim and Parker and Parkers sister and other people who I don't know for the last weekend in August, so I will have had a lot of beach this summer. Maybe it will help give me a tan; I need all the help I can get since I work in an office with no windows most of the time that the sun is out.

I'm not completely moved into my new room. I moved most of my crap a while ago, but my closet is much smaller now and I couldn't find room for a lot of my clothes (and I don't even have that many.) I managed to figure it out, and moved everything in. Then I vacummed my old room for the people moving in (when I moved in, there was dust, paint, and dry-wall chunks everywhere, and I like to leave things a little better than I found them.)

Skip this paragraph if you don't care about computers. This computer project I'm working on has hit a problem that I'm not sure how to fix. The problem is this: I need to install a compiler (a program that turns source-code into a program that can be run) on a completely blank system, but the compiler is given as source-code, which means that I need to first compile it before I can compile anything. Problem is, I have no compiler, which is why I'm trying to install one. It's like buying a screwdriver that comes in multiple pieces that need to be screwed together. Sofar I haven't had any luck finding a compiler that doesn't need to be compiled, but they have to exist.

What else what else what else... I've signed up for reinstatement at UMD and tuition-remission from the astronomy department, so i should be able to take classes in the fall for free. I'm looking at ASTR330, which is Solar System astronomy, and LING444, which is Child Language. The astronomy course is for work since it would be nice to understand the data I'm working on, and the linguistics course is to help me understand how humans learn language, in order to help me figure out how to teach computers language. I think I have a firm enough grounding in linguistics that this course shouldn't be that hard, and I'm finally looking at language in a scientific manner, which makes it a lot easier to understand. I hope those classes don't fill up by the time my application for reinstatement goes through. They said it could be a couple weeks.

I'm looking forward to more people living in my house. (Yes, my house. while I wasn't the first person to notice the house was available to rent, I was the first to actually consider it and talk to the landlord, so I am claiming it as mine. Also, I pee everywhere, so the territory is marked.) Leslie and her boyfriend are moving in in a couple weeks, and Paul should be moving back at some point in August, so the population (not including Keith, who lives in the basement and we rarely see) will double.

Oh, Bill Clinton is going to be on The Daily Show on Monday. I advise you to watch it.