~

God, I haven't written in forever. (Sidenote: I've noticed in real life I keep saying "gods". And I don't even watch Battlestar anymore). However, it started today. This morning featured my first "last" at UVA. This morning was the last time I'll scramble a home football game with the Banned. It's weird because I didn't even realize until someone said anything. After all, it's still first semester, and we have another home game (Tech), but no one will be in town.

So there's that. Last scrambling until Homecoming. Wow, this is getting me kinda emotional.

I'm settling in at Raleigh, and boy is the apartment nice.

Hit the cell!

First, from childofmetis
I need to be thinking positive things, so!

Reply to this post, and I'll tell you one reason why I like you. Then put this in your own journal, and spread the love.

Reposting it is optional.


Also, I will be at the beach until next Saturday. E-mail access is spotty, IM access is almost definitely a no.

See you all on the flipside.

"If you do want some reading on the topic, I did answer an Ask Wizards pertaining to it, and Brian David-Marshall's column that is running alongside mine today talks about Legacy and the impact of Flash (and I suspect my name appears in it once or twice). The best summary of the issue from both the policy and player perspective, however, has to be Kevin Binswanger's article "Unlocking Legacy – Flash" that appeared on the StarCityGames website earlier this week. I spend far too much time reading Magic articles on the 'net, and it is gems like Kevin's that make me feel like that time is well spent."

That quote is from Aaron Forsythe, Magic the Gathering R&D Director, over at MagicTheGathering.com. It's just exciting, because that kind of recognition is a huge deal. (The comment ran in his May 11th weekly column).

I hurt, but in a good way. I'm glad to start exercising again.

Anyone wanna swim?

Blame theferrett


Get your own CrushTag!

Why are physics TAs sadists? They've done the "Who are you, what's your name/major" shpiel and know that no one in the room are physics majors. You're preaching to a room full of engineers and you're all "theoretical physics" this and "cylindrical coordinates" that. CS TAs just reinforce the material; they don't reteach CS 101 in PERL. So why are Physics TAs evil?

I like crawling into small places.

I am so incredibly tempted to fill this out. I'm just afraid of them rejecting the concept.

At the behest of Margaret, I was researching Alona Tal who plays the nice girl 09er Meg Manning on UPN/CW's Veronica Mars. Before coming to the US and landing the VM gig, she was a famous TV star in Israel, where she was born and raised. Both there and here she experimented with Hip-Hop, with an Israel Hip-Hop artist Subliminal, and here she recorded a track with Wyclef Jean. You can here the song here but Alona doesn't appear in the video.

Her line:
Bo, Habibbi, Nishtage’a [Hebrew. English: ‘Come on, my friend/man, let’s get crazy’]

Still working on tracking down the Israeli tracks. Anyone listen to Subliminal that can help me out?

For some reason, I feel like I should be giggling hysterically.

The wireless internet had been sporadic for the past few days, and I had put it down to someone on our network running a heavy download job and taxing the bandwidth available. Because I was keeping weird hours and did not want to go down and fiddle with the router, I tolerated it for as long as possible and then switched to one of the unreliable networks. Today though things sputtered on just about every network I had available to me before finally going dead completely. It seemed like nobody had traffic, so I headed down and took a look. The send light on the modem was blinking slowly (not rapidly like traffic, but regularly like BLINK tags) and the online light wasn't on at all. I powercycled the modem, and no change.
*Sigh* Why is it always me that has to call Comcast/Adelphia? So I call and their voice mail asks for a local phone number. Oh shit. The internet is used by 6 guys with out of region cell phones. And after trying my cell phone number it denies it. What do you mean 404-xxx-xxxx isn't in the right region? So I try the Binswanger Senior approach and just leave the call running. It asks me a couple of times for the number by keys and then finally by speaking. I cough unconvincingly into the receiver, anything to get me to a person. After a couple of tries Adelphia sends me to customer service. Haha! They are thwarted!... only it turns out I'm the one who is thwarted because they sent me to a 9-5 number. Incidentally, for 24 hour service I should call the number I just dialed. I look around, and they don't have a bill available to look at find the requisite information. It's just past midnight and nothing is stirring, not even the PEOPLE WHO PAY FOR SERVICE WHO SHOULD BE DOING THIS INSTEAD OF ME. So I call again and fake a number. Really, I just give them my number with a 434 area code. They ask me again in a different menu to confirm it. I figure, "Don't switch horses midstream." and give them the same number. They take it and walk me through a few prompts, something like, "You obviously don't want tech support, so that's not an option." I pick the shortest path and get through to a person. Since I don't have a valid account number (the one off the bill I have is expired) or phone number, he can't look it up. And because Comcast just bought Adelphia, and this is Comcast(! I called Adelphia), they don't have all the old records. They obviously can't look things up by address, and they don't have the cable modem's MAC address in their records. And he can't get me in touch with Adelphia either. He takes my problem description and says, "That might be an outtage." but can't tell me more. Defeated, I return to my apartment to SUIT UP! and go work at a library. But the libraries are closed past midnight on a Saturday... so to Olsson Hall (the CS building, open 24/7) it is. On the way, I get in touch with my roommates, and I tell them to tell the guys who actually pay Adelphia/Comcast for the internet to call. Very drunk, they try to tell me not to worry about it, and that someone else will call. Since drunk logic is in effect, they don't realize the potential that it's a SATURDAY NIGHT and everyone else will be doing the same thing! Appearantly it doesn't matter that they were at a party across the way who also couldn't get internet, but they blindly assumed someone else will call. Finally I tell them to call because we can get a refund back on the bill because of the outtage. They said, "You pay $5, so you'll get back like twenty cents. Don't worry about it. Stop being a douche." Yeah, to hell with that. They're using my router, I'm the only one that deals with it, and they turn to me to fix it. I'm not paying this month.

Thank goodness for Olsson Hall. It's warm, powered, lighted, and INTERNETED!

Fuck it's cold. Carolling through grounds without mittens/gloves was a constant dance to find light to see sheet music and have a warm hand to press valves, and somehow manage to form nights.

I love my band.

From Wired Magazine:
"We'll be brief: Hemingway once wrote a story in just six words ("For sale: baby shoes, never worn.") and is said to have called it his best work. So we asked sci-fi, fantasy, and horror writers from the realms of books, TV, movies, and games to take a shot themselves."

Some of the highlights:
Gown Removed Carelessly. Head, less so.
- Joss Whedon

Automobile warranty expires. So does engine.
- Stan Lee

Machine. Unexpectedly, I’d invented a time
- Alan Moore

Automobile warranty expires. So does engine.
- Stan Lee

Machine. Unexpectedly, I’d invented a time
- Alan Moore

It cost too much, staying human.
- Bruce Sterling

rumbeck clued me in to something called LJTalk. It allows you to post to your livejournal through your AIM client. Once you get in it adds someone called LJ Bot to your friends list, to whom you can send messages and therefore post to your live journal. LJ Talk. I'm wondering how feature rich they are going to make this, like posting friends-only or adding a preview. For example, if I post in bold can the LJ bot interpret it?

Edit: Nope, HTML tags only.

I wonder how many entries I have with that title? Anyway, stolen from jypsie, pick one from each pair and tell me which one fits me better.

* dominant or submissive
* logical or intuitive
* social or loner
* kinky or vanilla
* cute or sophisticated
* kitten or puppy
* warm flannel sheets or sleek satin
* leader or follower
* quiet or talkative
* spontaneous or planned
* teddy bear or porcelain doll
* hiking or window shopping
* tequila or vodka
* top or bottom
* bare foot or shoes
* jeans or slacks
* tender or rough
* aware or dreamy
* nerd or jock
* brains or brawns
* common sense or book smarts

Now: Papering. This is actually frustrating because I have to go through and prove things that we take for granted in discussion, like that conditions were ripe for Germany pre-WWI.

Later: Drinking. Drinking Songs. Drinking. Bad dancing... drinking?

Much Later: Drunken coding, or optionally, drunken papering.


By the way, I used the phrase "I look to be " later, and no one commented. Is it because no one wants to comment on the excesses of my language, or because you're all Firefly-indoctrinated. Muah ha ha!

Later in the day I look to be blogging about Veronica Mars, but first an update. Like the savager miser I am, I got Clapton tickets two days before. This is becoming a dangerous and fairly awesome habit.