Gathering of sorts

There will be a gathering of people at our house in Laurel on Friday the 7th. You should be one of those people. Show up around, let's say, 9:00 pm. Or earlier if you're one of those people who doesn't stay up late, or later if you have to, or some third thing, probably involving complex numbers.

The Promised Land

Well I've booked my flights and I'm going to Utah. The plan is for Will and me to bum around the state for a little over a week --- the 21st to the 30th --- in October. I've never been to Utah before, or anywhere in the southwest for that matter (I don't consider the west coast to be the southwest, but it's a contested issue.) Since we're spending at least some of the time in SLC I'm half tempted to get my "Heroin Bob" mohawk going again, but I won't.

As a unrelated side note, one of my many bosses said the other day during a meeting that the progress seen so far on a project indicated either that the engineers out at JPL were half-assing it (not his phrasing) or that I was incompetent. He then said that he didn't think it was the later. I'll take that as a compliment, even if it's in a roundabout kind of way.

odds, ends, this dream I had

In no particular order, here are a bunch of words:

Today I went down to DC with Tim and Leonard to observe/participate in the anti-war protests. Tims blog sums up my feelings on going down, so rather than mimic his post (which would be in my style, I guess) I will just say that while I have ideological reasons not to go down, it still beats sitting around the house and doing laundry, which were my other plans for the day. After coming back a few of us got dinner in Baltimore. Uneventful but filling.

I signed up at a Tae Kwon Do place down the street. I've been to two classes so far and have only discovered that I am horribly inflexible. It's fun when I'm not trying to do any high kick, when I am it's painful and pathetic. Watch out. Soon my horrible cognitive coordination will be coupled with horrible punch and kick coordination. I will be an unstoppable force.

Gooooooooooooooooogle is coming to campus on October 5th and I plan on going there and seeing if I have a ice cubes chance in hell of ever working with them. I figure my 6 years of work experience, BS in CS, and linguistic coursework will put me at a slight advantage against the teeming masses of CS majors. It would probably entail moving to NYC, which wouldn't be so bad considering that I have always sortof wanted to live in a city, but I would miss being close to my friends and family.

I finally got my act together and installed FC4 on my PC. When we moved to Laurel I couldn't get my computer to boot without getting a "kernel panic" and never bothered reinstalling Linux. Well I did it, and now all I need is a switch and some network cable and I will have it online, which means I will finally get access to the 60 some gigs of music on there, compared to the 20 gigs I have on my iBook. I've made do without the rest of my music, but I would really like it now.

I had an interesting dream the other night. I would like to explain it in detail but it's too nonlinear in my memory and countergeometric in spatial reasoning to do that. I will have to settle with a vague and sporadic description. It started with me, after having died, drifting down into a room. This I guess is the afterlife (phew, I would have hated simply ceasing to exist.) The room was setup like a classroom or library or cafeteria or computer lab. It's hard to describe. As I was approaching the floor I noticed that some of the people in the room (the room was peopled, by the way) were old teachers of mine. One was a generic elementary school teacher that doesn't correlate with anybody in particular, who said "you were the stupid one." implying that my achievements in her class weren't impressive. I remember that I was always fairly good in elementary school and simply said that I was at least smarter than her. I'm off to a good start. I somehow know that this is a holding area and not any kind of permanent environment for my thoughts, but never really leave throughout the dream. The walls were lined with books and upon inspection, and discussion with some guy there, I learn that the collection of books is determined by the population in the room. Every book you ever read, or knew about, was on the shelves. Since there are other people, there should be some new books. I notice a book by Isaac Asimov that I hadn't seen (and illogically wonder why it was there) but being even more bothered because this picture book I saw once that had images of fractals, biological tissue, natural landscapes, and astronomical images wasn't there. I was pissed because I really wanted to look at that book. Moving along, every person was represented by a colored liquid. This representation wasn't visual (everybody looked normal) but you sortof knew the color and texture of everybody's fluid. There were also bottles of colored fluid on some shelves. You could drink the fluid and it would mingle with yours producing a new color (closer to brown) and the closer to brown you got the closer to hell (not like the hell you've read about, just a sort of dead end, an analogy I like more and more every time think it.) There was an advantage to drinking the fluid, something having to do with experience or sacrifice, but it's hard to put into words. There was also a bottle of clear liquid you could drink, and while it seems to be that drinking it would dilute your liquid and bring further from this hell, it really just reincarnates you (when you drink it you get sucked towards this pure white space.) There are a few hallways connected to this room, but what lies in them, and what it all means, wasn't represented in any kind of spatially or verbally expressibly way. We weren't supposed to go in them, but only in the sense that you aren't supposed to wander the halls during class in public school. If you get caught you may get scolded, but in this environment where there really isn't any authority you can just scoff at the scolder and carry on. At some point things get more interesting, I make some friends (that, or some of my friends also died) and we wander around. I get into an argument with a dead cop about him telling us we can't do something. I bring up the point that while he may have been a cop in life, here we are all equals. I felt so rebellious and cocky it's pathetic. Standing up to the man and all. Anyway we all start exploring and discover that there is an outside world with what seems to be vegetation and landscapes, but to try to describe any of it would be silly. I really wish I could explain this better or make a movie out of it or something, since it was probably the most interesting dream I've had to date. Oh well, I'll have to settle for this. I've decided that now I want to dream about driving. I don't like video games because the input and output interfaces are poor (2D vision, buttons and knobs) and I don't want to drive crazy in real life because, come on, I don't want to die just yet. The only real option here is to dream about driving. Sounds fun to me. I think I'm going to go try to do that now.

carry on.

I know it's fake

...but I'll probably vote for him anyway. I consider fame to be a qualifying feature and am easily persuadable by seemingly well intentioned political speech. If nothing else he'd make for some very creepy State Of The Union addresses.

=AMENDMENT 2005.09.22-12:46=

It has come to my attention that I am nothing but a hack producing duplicate posts derivative of Annas blog from weeks past. I apologize for any time wasted on this.

Periodic bleeding

No, I'm not menstruating. I donated blood again, as today was conveniently both the first day I could donate since I last donated as well as the day they were running a blood drive just off campus. I'm pretty sure it's intentional since I donated there last time, and the next time they're holding a blood drive is the first day I can donate again. I didn't sleep well last night so I felt a little tired all day, and figured I'd get light headed while giving blood. Like last time, however, I didn't get light headed when they were taking blood. I guess I'm getting used to it. Unlike last time, however, as soon as they pulled the needle from my arm I did. They tipped my chair back and gave me a soda (which reminds me, I need to marry the red cross. I get tired, and they bring me a drink and try to make me more comfortable.) Ever since then I've been tired and cold. I've been sleeping since I got home, and just got up to make myself dinner. I should be back to normal by tomorrow.

I'm a bit disappointed by the stuff I got in return for my blood. Last time I got a T-shirt. This time I got a magnet I can stick on a refrigerator (I'd say my refrigerator, but alas, I lease.) Don't get me wrong: I like helping people. I just figure I gave them my blood; the least they could do is give me a boat or something.

Jeremy's eyes

Here are some pictures of Jeremy's eye troubles. Since you don't get to see him move his eyes, the look isn't quite what it is in real life, but this is the best I could do with no real effort. I've included a normal picture to compare to.



Creepy.

I'm quitting

This relationship I had with *name removed* was too much, too fast, so I ended it. I probably wasn't going to do it for a while, since until today I was just a little worried, but we got into a discussion about it and it became evident, to me at least, that it wasn't good for me. I'm going to stop dating for a while, since I seem to have a nasty habit of hurting nice girls (which hasn't ever been the intention.) I should have known better than to get into a new relationship so shortly after the last one. I'm thinking that until I can figure out what I want in a relationship, it would be a good idea for me to not be in one. So yeah. If you see me in another relationship just come up and smack me. I have it coming.

updates

Well, it seems that everything is coming up Ducore. First, for Jeremy, the doctors said that it's just brain bruising (probably from hitting his head on hard things) that's causing the symptoms and that if it doesn't go away in a couple weeks he should come back to the hospital. This is a relief, since if they couldn't figure it out he would probably worry a lot, increasing his heart rate and blood pressure, making things worse. I guess he'll just have a lazy eye for a while. Secondly, for me, my LING311 professor emailed me and said that I could just bring him the oversubscribe form and he would sign it, so I am taking the two linguistics classes this semester instead of zero. Also, there's a party at the old place (in Berwyn Heights) on Saturday, and everybody should come. Well, everybody but you. We're throwing a big "Hey, <your name>'s not here, lets party" party. So come and the party won't be about you, or don't come and rest easy knowing that people are having a great time with you in mind, or do some third thing. It's really up to you.

Oh, and Will, if you're in town, there will be girls at this party. Girls and booze. You had better brush your teeth and wear clean clothes. Just watch out for my brother because he may be there too, and will be getting all the "brain bruising" sympathy which should easily cancel out any "hey, is that a lazy eye you've got yourself there?" turn offerery.

To the hospital

My brother has been having eye problems since Tuesday. Apparently his left eye is a little blurry and doesn't move in unison with the right eye. Really, I guess, if one eye doesn't move in unison than they both don't. Anyway, his left eye's been giving him trouble. He went to the health center on campus yesterday and they took his blood pressure, which was really high, and his pulse, which was also really high, and they couldn't figure out what would be causing it. He had been hit on the head a couple times but nothing recent enough to be a likely causal candidate. They said he should go to the hospital, so I picked him up from the health center and took him to Holy Cross. Other than being a little light headed (probably from the blood pressure and pulse rate) he said he felt fine. Our mom met us there and the nurses took his blood pressure and pulse again, and they were still bad. He didn't seem like he was going to die or anything, so *name removed* (who came with) and I left and got dinner. Mom said she'd call if anything developed. I got a call from my sister later that night and said that she heard from them and that it wasn't a brain tumor or hemorrhage or something that would show up on a CT scan. He's spending the night at home and he's going to see more doctors today. I think I remember hearing "oncologist", but I think it's much more likely that my sister said "opthamologist," since he's having eye trouble and his knee tumors are both benign and probably unrelated. I'll post an update once I hear more about his condition. My current guess, as neither a doctor nor a psychologist, is that it's related to stress from moving out and not having any friends near him on campus, or to getting bumped on the head a few times last week. I hope he gets better.

work, school, future plans

At work the (metaphorical) dark and musty cave in which I have been struggling is now lit and mostly clean of debris. For the past year I have been writing, on and off as other projects permit, a server for providing organized datasets for download in a variety of formats. When I started I was given a toolbox full of nifty tools and parts. Unfortunately the documentation did little more than simply name these tools and parts, and it was my job to build something out of it. Lots of effort was poured into deciphering what I could from the documentation, emailing the designers of this project with questions about what various tools did, and what the overall server should do, and I was almost done. Then I got a phone call. They wanted to know why I was asking all these questions, and why I was writing the server. Apparently there is a server already assembled, available for download. So what should have been a one or two day project became a year long struggle. It's like you go to get a car, and the dealer shows you the room where they keep all the parts, and leaves you there to figure it out. You read up on what you can about the parts, study other cars out on the road, and are finishing up the paint job when the dealer comes back and asks why the hell you didn't just go to the show room and purchase a prebuilt car, like a normal person. A failure of communication this was, on both ends I believe. So now I have a hand-built car sitting in the garage while I'm taking the factory-built car out for a test drive. Then I get another call. Apparently the car I just got is, let's say, a 2005 model, and they've just released the 2006 model. Two more days down the tubes. But it's all good; I know who to talk to when I have trouble, and if anything on my car breaks down I don't have to take it to the dealership since I know how the thing works inside and out. There are too many analogies here. Suffice it to say that I am no longer confused as to what I should be doing on this project.

Classes have also started, and the situation there is also somewhat muddled. I'm trying to take LING410, which has LING311 as a prerequisite. I'm also trying to take LING311 but am on the waitlist. I've talked to the LING410 professor and he says I can take LING311 as a corequisite since I have enough math background (predicate calculus.) My LING311 professor is a little more reserved. It seems the class is already oversubscribed and all the linguistics majors were allowed in. Since I'm not a linguistics major, or even an undergraduate, I'm last on the list. I may be able to just sit in on the class, but I'm not sure that my LING410 professor will let me do it that way, since I wouldn't technically be subscribed to LING311. Depending on what happens over the next few days I may wind up not taking any classes this semester, which I think would be a shame, since they're free.

I've been dating this girl, *name removed*, for a couple weeks now. I met her right after I broke up with Tracey and initially wanted some time to just be single, but we get along really well and I figure I can have some single time if and when I screw up this relationship. I am feeling a little rushed, though, since we started out rather quickly. I'm going to need to find a good balance of alone time and relationship time, but she says she's the same way as far as independence goes so I don't think it will be a problem.

I donated electronic green paper to the Red Cross but I would have rather been able to donate blood. The soonest I can do that is the 14th since I gave blood recently, but I'm not type O (I'm B+) so my blood isn't in huge demand. I'm curious to find out how much of what they say is happening down in New Orleans is factual and how much is just rumors being touted by the news media as factual. I suppose these things take time, but I'd bet when all the facts are on the table, it'll still be really shitty. I'm just a little skeptical that the police are being as brutal as they're being made out to be. This is probably the only time you'll ever hear me giving the "man" the benefit of the doubt.

I could do better in my sleep

I'm sure those who lived with me in college are less than impressed by these Germans. I like to think of my days in the commons more as training than a waste of natural resources.