After getting up in the morning on Sunday and making oatmeal on a fire we go for a drive. The plan was to go to a trail starting at The Grotto but we seem to be going in the wrong direction. The view from the drive is amazing, though. Zion is quite the change from the DC Metro area. We turn around and head to the visitor center and get on a shuttle that goes up the canyon to the starting point. We get on the trail and head up to Angels Landing, the place where the trail leads. The hike starts moderately, paved even. Then it starts to get a little steeper. Then steeper still. Then it turns into rock climbing, but they outfitted the trail with some chains to make the climb easier. Then we get to the top, and the view is well worth it. We're almost half a kilometer up at this point, and eat a lunch of crackers cheese and sausage, then head back down. We get back to the campsite and make dinner. Monday we go on a few smaller hikes: one to the Emerald Pools (we go to the upper one) and then to Weeping Rock. These are both fairly small hikes and when we get back we head out.
On the way to Bryce National Park we start looking for lunch. Apparently people in Utah don't eat lunch on Mondays. Every restaurant is closed. Unfortunately for us they are all connected to motels that are open, and have large signs saying so. What we see from the highway are two things: restaurant signs, and "open" signs. It's not until we get up to the door that we see the little "restaurant closed" sign. Boo. We eventually find a place just outside Bryce then head into the park.
Monday, October 31, 2005
Getting There
I've decided to do incremental posts on my trip to Utah, as to provide some logical breakup of the trip beyond simple paragraphs.
I got picked up by my mommy from school at around 2:00. I got my brother keys to my car so he could drive it last week (since he can park on campus using my permit, and I'm nice like that) then we headed up to BWI on 295. My flight was leaving at around 5:00pm so despite the stop-and-go traffic on 295, I got to the airport with plenty of time. I got my boarding pass, and waited to check my luggage (I had one of those e-tickets so I just went to a kiosk to get my pass, and the people working behind Delta's counter were calling peoples names to check their luggage.) There were tons of army people flying around to report for duty, and each of them had a half dozen or so large duffel bags, and they were all carrying firearms. This slowed things down some, but it was still a while before my flight was supposed to leave. While waiting there I misread a sign saying that lighters couldn't be put on checked luggage (it really said carry-on) and I remembered that the last time I flew they were letting people carry lighters onto planes. I took the lighters I was bringing out of my backpacking backpack and put them in my normal backpack, or rucksack if you would, and then checked my luggage. Then when I went through security their x-ray machine detected the lighters and they took them. I had a few nice zippos in there, too. Oh well.
I got on the plane and the guy I was sitting next to looked identical to Garrett, Aerials brother. I don't mean he looked similar. The resemblance was enough that despite the fact that he hadn't said anything to signal that he recognized me (we bump into each other every now and then and talk) I asked, just to be sure. His voice was about as far from Garrett's voice as it could get without him sounding like a kid, woman, or James Earl Jones. The flight was ho hum, they showed Batman Begins, which I had already seen, and I listened to some Elliot Smith and read. I got to Salt Lake City around 8pm local time and sat and waited until midnight when Will's plane landed. More reading and Elliot Smith (the only music I had on me.) We got the rental car, and headed to his friends' (Suzanne, Anne, and Zelly(sp?)) place where we rolled out our sleeping pads and went to sleep on the floor.
The next morning we got up, hit up a R.E.I. to pick up some stuff we needed like fuel for my backpacking stove, cooking utensils, etc., then went to the grocery store to get food. Then, we drove south along I15 towards Zion National Park. We got there before it got dark, and started to setup camp. The ground at the park was terribly hard, so the tent stakes weren't going in, and my tent isn't free standing: it needs to be staked down to stand up. We improvised and tied one end to the picnic table and the other end to a log we dragged over. We started cooking sausages, at first on the camp stove which didn't really work, and it started to rain, which made me worry about how the weather would be this trip, but it let up after a short while and then we just sat there by the fire, cooking polish sausages on sticks in the fire. It gets dark early in autumn, and so we went to bed around 8 or 9.
I got picked up by my mommy from school at around 2:00. I got my brother keys to my car so he could drive it last week (since he can park on campus using my permit, and I'm nice like that) then we headed up to BWI on 295. My flight was leaving at around 5:00pm so despite the stop-and-go traffic on 295, I got to the airport with plenty of time. I got my boarding pass, and waited to check my luggage (I had one of those e-tickets so I just went to a kiosk to get my pass, and the people working behind Delta's counter were calling peoples names to check their luggage.) There were tons of army people flying around to report for duty, and each of them had a half dozen or so large duffel bags, and they were all carrying firearms. This slowed things down some, but it was still a while before my flight was supposed to leave. While waiting there I misread a sign saying that lighters couldn't be put on checked luggage (it really said carry-on) and I remembered that the last time I flew they were letting people carry lighters onto planes. I took the lighters I was bringing out of my backpacking backpack and put them in my normal backpack, or rucksack if you would, and then checked my luggage. Then when I went through security their x-ray machine detected the lighters and they took them. I had a few nice zippos in there, too. Oh well.
I got on the plane and the guy I was sitting next to looked identical to Garrett, Aerials brother. I don't mean he looked similar. The resemblance was enough that despite the fact that he hadn't said anything to signal that he recognized me (we bump into each other every now and then and talk) I asked, just to be sure. His voice was about as far from Garrett's voice as it could get without him sounding like a kid, woman, or James Earl Jones. The flight was ho hum, they showed Batman Begins, which I had already seen, and I listened to some Elliot Smith and read. I got to Salt Lake City around 8pm local time and sat and waited until midnight when Will's plane landed. More reading and Elliot Smith (the only music I had on me.) We got the rental car, and headed to his friends' (Suzanne, Anne, and Zelly(sp?)) place where we rolled out our sleeping pads and went to sleep on the floor.
The next morning we got up, hit up a R.E.I. to pick up some stuff we needed like fuel for my backpacking stove, cooking utensils, etc., then went to the grocery store to get food. Then, we drove south along I15 towards Zion National Park. We got there before it got dark, and started to setup camp. The ground at the park was terribly hard, so the tent stakes weren't going in, and my tent isn't free standing: it needs to be staked down to stand up. We improvised and tied one end to the picnic table and the other end to a log we dragged over. We started cooking sausages, at first on the camp stove which didn't really work, and it started to rain, which made me worry about how the weather would be this trip, but it let up after a short while and then we just sat there by the fire, cooking polish sausages on sticks in the fire. It gets dark early in autumn, and so we went to bed around 8 or 9.
Sunday, October 30, 2005
Back on the other side of the continent.
I'm back in Maryland. Utah was fun. When I have some energy I will post on my goings on, hopefully before my memory fails me and I have to start making up stories about seeing God in the woods. I brought some friends back to the woods, but they didn't see Him, so I sent one of my friends back and now I'm looking for a few wives.
Friday, October 21, 2005
extra hour in Utah
Daylight Savings Time ends next weekend, while I'm out in Utah. This means I'll have to set my clock three times over this next week or so. Once to adjust to Mountain Daylight Savings Time (- 2 hours), again to adjust to Mountain Standard Time (- 1 hour), then again for Eastern Standard Time (+ 2 hours).
Speaking of daylight savings time, terrorists are dumb...
Speaking of daylight savings time, terrorists are dumb...
In September 1999, the Palestinian West Bank was on daylight saving time while Israel had just switched back to standard time. West Bank Palestinians prepared time bombs and smuggled them to Arab Israelis, who misunderstood the time on the bombs. As the bombs were being planted, they exploded—one hour too early—killing three terrorists instead of two busloads of people, the intended victims. -(http://webexhibits.org/daylightsaving/k.html)
Sunday, October 16, 2005
Everything balances out eventually
Last weekend sucked. This weekend was great.
Friday was sortof a downer. Nobody was here for a while, so I sat around and worked on little projects here and there, but I couldn't help myself from being bored. Even if I don't see anybody, knowing someone else is home makes me feel less shiftless. Example: Kevin's in the basement studying yet I feel like things are normal; he could have snuck out the back door and headed toward Tokyo and I wouldn't know; I'd still feel normal.
Saturday morning I got up and started packing my back packing back pack. Ha. I guess if I unpacked it, then started packing it again, I could say that I was packing my back packing back pack back up. I'll stop here. The plan was to go camping in Frederick last night, but I'll get to that in due time. I rounded up Kevin and Tim, then Jeremy, then we waited at the old house with Karen for Nina to be ready, and the six of us headed to the Maryland Renaissance Festival. Renfest was fun. Nina used to live with some people working in the wax hand place, and Colin teaches juggling. We met up with Colin during his lunch break, and drank some and watched some belly dancers. Did I menrion there was mead, which is honey beer. I knocked a few back. Later when Karen and Nina and Tim were getting Food I laid down on the mulch, figuring it was a good idea, and some guy dressed up as a wwwyzzerdd walked towards me with a staff with a large ball at the end. He pointed the ball end at me and told me to touch his ball. I obliged, then his friend (standing by my head) asked me if I liked beer. I was drinking mead at the time but said yes, and he motioned with his cup like he was going to pour some over my mouth. I opened my mouth, and got 90% of the beer he poured. The rest of the beer spilled on my shirt, but hey, free beer! Later, I scaled the climbing wall drunk, but I scaled it quickly, which I think is a feat. Tim couldn't make it up, which puzzled me not quite as much as it amused me.
Eventually we get out of there and head back to College Park to drop off Jeremy and let Kevin get his car to go pick up Laurel. Tim and I pick up some needed stuff for the camping trip, then start heading toward Frederick. Kevin and Laurel are ahead of us at this point, so we tell them to find a campground. Tim and I pick up food and beer and get a call saying that all the parks are full. So we start heading back toward College Park when Tim spots another sign for another campground. We get lost in the woods, then find a map in a parking lot and figure out where we should be. Kevin and Laurel catch up with us at this point. We make it to the front gate and I find a sign (hidden in a mailbox of all places) saying that the campground is full. We figure 'screw it' and head back to the campground in Greenbelt. We get there around 11:30 and try to stay up, but it's late and we're tired and intoxicated, and only stay up for a few hours. I got up first in the morning and roused the rest, built a fire, and after breakfast we left.
Getting back to the house, Tim and I decide to go for a bike ride, so we head down 198 toward this park/army training center/hunting grounds. We bike around there for about 10 miles worth and head back, totaling 19 miles in all. On the way back I decide to try this BBQ place down the street, and the food isn't half bad. We got back, I cleaned up, picked up Jeremy, and head to our parents.
After dinner and West Wing Jeremy starts going through his camping stuff in the basement and starts picking out stuff for me to take to Utah. I need to figure out what kind of camping/hiking we'll be doing, and how long we'll be out there. (Will, do you have any idea?) My parents also picked up a couple journals for me to take to Utah: one lined and one unlined. I'll try to keep track of my goings on in Utah so I can post something interesting in a couple weeks. Until then you'll have to put up with this mindless drivel.
Friday was sortof a downer. Nobody was here for a while, so I sat around and worked on little projects here and there, but I couldn't help myself from being bored. Even if I don't see anybody, knowing someone else is home makes me feel less shiftless. Example: Kevin's in the basement studying yet I feel like things are normal; he could have snuck out the back door and headed toward Tokyo and I wouldn't know; I'd still feel normal.
Saturday morning I got up and started packing my back packing back pack. Ha. I guess if I unpacked it, then started packing it again, I could say that I was packing my back packing back pack back up. I'll stop here. The plan was to go camping in Frederick last night, but I'll get to that in due time. I rounded up Kevin and Tim, then Jeremy, then we waited at the old house with Karen for Nina to be ready, and the six of us headed to the Maryland Renaissance Festival. Renfest was fun. Nina used to live with some people working in the wax hand place, and Colin teaches juggling. We met up with Colin during his lunch break, and drank some and watched some belly dancers. Did I menrion there was mead, which is honey beer. I knocked a few back. Later when Karen and Nina and Tim were getting Food I laid down on the mulch, figuring it was a good idea, and some guy dressed up as a wwwyzzerdd walked towards me with a staff with a large ball at the end. He pointed the ball end at me and told me to touch his ball. I obliged, then his friend (standing by my head) asked me if I liked beer. I was drinking mead at the time but said yes, and he motioned with his cup like he was going to pour some over my mouth. I opened my mouth, and got 90% of the beer he poured. The rest of the beer spilled on my shirt, but hey, free beer! Later, I scaled the climbing wall drunk, but I scaled it quickly, which I think is a feat. Tim couldn't make it up, which puzzled me not quite as much as it amused me.
Eventually we get out of there and head back to College Park to drop off Jeremy and let Kevin get his car to go pick up Laurel. Tim and I pick up some needed stuff for the camping trip, then start heading toward Frederick. Kevin and Laurel are ahead of us at this point, so we tell them to find a campground. Tim and I pick up food and beer and get a call saying that all the parks are full. So we start heading back toward College Park when Tim spots another sign for another campground. We get lost in the woods, then find a map in a parking lot and figure out where we should be. Kevin and Laurel catch up with us at this point. We make it to the front gate and I find a sign (hidden in a mailbox of all places) saying that the campground is full. We figure 'screw it' and head back to the campground in Greenbelt. We get there around 11:30 and try to stay up, but it's late and we're tired and intoxicated, and only stay up for a few hours. I got up first in the morning and roused the rest, built a fire, and after breakfast we left.
Getting back to the house, Tim and I decide to go for a bike ride, so we head down 198 toward this park/army training center/hunting grounds. We bike around there for about 10 miles worth and head back, totaling 19 miles in all. On the way back I decide to try this BBQ place down the street, and the food isn't half bad. We got back, I cleaned up, picked up Jeremy, and head to our parents.
After dinner and West Wing Jeremy starts going through his camping stuff in the basement and starts picking out stuff for me to take to Utah. I need to figure out what kind of camping/hiking we'll be doing, and how long we'll be out there. (Will, do you have any idea?) My parents also picked up a couple journals for me to take to Utah: one lined and one unlined. I'll try to keep track of my goings on in Utah so I can post something interesting in a couple weeks. Until then you'll have to put up with this mindless drivel.
Monday, October 10, 2005
What a weekend
Man am I glad that it's Monday. This weekend was all sorts of ugly. For starters, there was a party at our place on Friday. Mostly people I didn't know, mostly friends of Parkers sister. Mostly people I'm not too interested in seeing again. There was a problem with people busting into Kevins room, and him kicking them out, and now it's snowballing into some sort of ideological battle between them what live here. It seems people aren't trying to resolve this, and it could end badly. Tim and I are trying to mediate this, but I'm not sure there's much we can do.
Saturday night Tim and Parker had their engagement party, which was nice. Afterward I went to Cicis and then saw Serenity, with Ben, Anna, Kevin, Laurel, Kyle, and Will. I wasn't as impressed with the movie as I was with the TV series, but it wasn't bad. Some of us met up with Kat and tried to go to a bar in Silver Spring, but they were closed, so we came back to our house, but it was late, and most of us were tired, so yeah. Sleep.
Sunday I studied some for a test, then went home to celebrate Jeremy's birthday with the family. We went out to dinner, and then I took him back to his dorm. I came home again and the whole housemate issue came up again, followed by another argument, followed by someone packing up and leaving.
Today I had a test in my syntax class, which I'm pretty sure I aced, and now I'm going to go see Weezer and the Foo Fighters in concert with Will. Today feels like a weekend.
Saturday night Tim and Parker had their engagement party, which was nice. Afterward I went to Cicis and then saw Serenity, with Ben, Anna, Kevin, Laurel, Kyle, and Will. I wasn't as impressed with the movie as I was with the TV series, but it wasn't bad. Some of us met up with Kat and tried to go to a bar in Silver Spring, but they were closed, so we came back to our house, but it was late, and most of us were tired, so yeah. Sleep.
Sunday I studied some for a test, then went home to celebrate Jeremy's birthday with the family. We went out to dinner, and then I took him back to his dorm. I came home again and the whole housemate issue came up again, followed by another argument, followed by someone packing up and leaving.
Today I had a test in my syntax class, which I'm pretty sure I aced, and now I'm going to go see Weezer and the Foo Fighters in concert with Will. Today feels like a weekend.
Friday, September 30, 2005
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.
Wednesday, September 28, 2005
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.
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.
Sunday, September 25, 2005
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.
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.
Thursday, September 22, 2005
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.
=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.
Wednesday, September 14, 2005
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.
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.
Creepy.
Friday, September 09, 2005
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.
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.
Wednesday, September 07, 2005
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.
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.
Friday, September 02, 2005
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.
Sunday, August 28, 2005
Prelude to a new car.
Fixing my dads Honda Prelude (red, early 90s) is too expensive to be worth doing, so he's decided to sell it for parts. If anybody knows someone who is interested in buying either the whole thing, or pieces of it, let me know. I think this Saturday I am going up to New Jersey with him to pick up one of the cars my grandmother owns but isn't using, so he'll have a (relatively) new car soon enough.
Saturday, August 20, 2005
I'm an asshole...
Stop acting surprised, you've been telling me the same thing for years. I broke up with Tracey today. It just didn't feel right, and I didn't want to drag things out any longer (honestly, she could do better anyway.) I realized that the only real thing holding me back from doing it was not wanting to hurt her, which is a horrible reason to stay in a relationship. I wanted to just drive up to her place and do it, but mitigating circumstances prohibited that and she wound up driving down. I did not want her to have to drive for a half hour just to get dumped, which made me feel like even more of an ass. I'm not asking for sympathy for feeling like an ass; I just thought you all should know that I finally agree with you.
Tuesday, August 16, 2005
South Carolina... a southern state with South in its name.
Thursday evening I went home and picked up my brother, then started heading south. We hit the tail end of rush hour but since we were driving like 600 miles it didn't wind up making a huge impact on our trip. The drive down to S.C. wasn't that bad, once you get past the fact that you're driving longer than the typical work day. We mostly listened to music and watched with childlike amazement as the odometer hit 100 miles, 200 miles, 300... you get the picture. We got to the house at around 2AM, which wasn't that bad when you consider that we had planned on leaving later and driving through 'til morning. The house we were staying at was nice. It was right on the tidal basin and they had kayaks. It was maybe a 10 minute walk to the beach, but the waves stank so there wasn't much incentive to go there anyway. Unlike Duck, N.C., however, there was also nothing to do in town. Actually, there really wasn't a town. I spent most of my time kayaking around the tidal basin, reading The Traveler, sleeping, and eating. A couple times I managed to kayak down to the inlet where the tidal basin meets the ocean. That was a fairly long trip to do on a kayak, and getting into the ocean wasn't easy. It reminded me of a canoe trip I took in Maine the summer after 9th grade. One day we had to canoe across a lake against a strong headwind that was kicking up waves. Kayaking against medium sized waves wasn't impossible, but it did throw me around a little. Did I mention that there were dolphins? They'd tail me when I was kayaking some of the time, but never get too close. Also, there was a shark a couple feet from me at one point. Probably a sand shark or something, not huge but probably big enough to hurt me if it really wanted to. Good thing I had those dolphins to protect me. One night I played poker with Jeremy, my dad, and this guy Cliff who along with his wife is a friend of my parents. Jeremy went out, but I couldn't take all the chips before my dad and Cliff decided it was getting late. Still, I could have taken them out. I wonder if this was one of those situations my dad always worried about. It was obvious growing up that I wasn't going to beat him at sports any time soon. For some reason I keep getting full houses when I play. Probably luck, or cheating, or some third thing.
Sunday morning I kayaked down to the ocean one last time and pulled the kayak onto the shore. Well, it wasn't exactly the shore, or a sandbar. On the northern side of the inlet, at low tide, the ocean floor became half exposed for maybe 100 meters out from the normal shoreline. Since the ocean floor isn't smooth, but is choppy like rough water or an english muffin, all the nooks and crannies were filled with water, and the ridges jutted above the water. Combine that with a low sun, and it's a pretty amazing sight. I wandered around there for a while, then walked out into the water. For another 200 meters or so the water wasn't even ankle deep. I started to think that maybe people on the shore would think that I was walking on water, like Jesus, and thought it might be cool to be mistaken for the messiah. Then I remembered how that story ends and ran back to the kayak. The trip back to the house was tiring. I was hot, my muscles were starting to get sore, and I kept laying back on the kayak and letting the tide carry me back. Unfortunately the tide couldn't have been moving much faster than a quarter mile an hour or so, so I had to keep paddling. I got back, had breakfast, and then Jeremy and I left to come back north. It's funny. I consider Maryland to be, in most respects, a southern state. Cite the Mason-Dixon line, that mess with the state senate during the civil war, or the fact that Maryland is more than just the DC-Baltimore corridor. Coming up from South Carolina, however, I feel like I'm entering Canada by the time I cross the Potomac.
So anyway, I'm back. I came into work this morning and debugged a RAID array and NFS locking issues, and now I feel like I could use another vacation.
Sunday morning I kayaked down to the ocean one last time and pulled the kayak onto the shore. Well, it wasn't exactly the shore, or a sandbar. On the northern side of the inlet, at low tide, the ocean floor became half exposed for maybe 100 meters out from the normal shoreline. Since the ocean floor isn't smooth, but is choppy like rough water or an english muffin, all the nooks and crannies were filled with water, and the ridges jutted above the water. Combine that with a low sun, and it's a pretty amazing sight. I wandered around there for a while, then walked out into the water. For another 200 meters or so the water wasn't even ankle deep. I started to think that maybe people on the shore would think that I was walking on water, like Jesus, and thought it might be cool to be mistaken for the messiah. Then I remembered how that story ends and ran back to the kayak. The trip back to the house was tiring. I was hot, my muscles were starting to get sore, and I kept laying back on the kayak and letting the tide carry me back. Unfortunately the tide couldn't have been moving much faster than a quarter mile an hour or so, so I had to keep paddling. I got back, had breakfast, and then Jeremy and I left to come back north. It's funny. I consider Maryland to be, in most respects, a southern state. Cite the Mason-Dixon line, that mess with the state senate during the civil war, or the fact that Maryland is more than just the DC-Baltimore corridor. Coming up from South Carolina, however, I feel like I'm entering Canada by the time I cross the Potomac.
So anyway, I'm back. I came into work this morning and debugged a RAID array and NFS locking issues, and now I feel like I could use another vacation.
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