Interesting Stuff

Whee! Remember over the summer when I was so excited that I got my first 7-letter word? Well, in the past couple weeks, I have played two more games, and gotten two more words! Sara and I were playing, and Kenny and Rami were watching (I have no idea what they were doing in my room, but it was cool to hang out with them anyway). The 2nd turn of the game (that’s right – the second turn!), I built off of Sara’s “HONEY” to get a triple-word score:

     E
HONEYS
     T
     A
     T
     E
     S

That netted me a good 80 points. Weirdly enough, we tied at the end — 275 each. This was a bit humbling, because this was the first time I’d gotten a 7-letter word on her, and it was also the first time I didn’t beat her. hm… I guess part of it was that I didn’t get any of the high-scoring letters (she got the Q, Z, X, and J), but part of it was that I definitely didn’t box her in enough. She managed to put the X on a triple word, and put QUIZ on a double word. All in all, though, ’twas a good game.

Then, tonight, Robert, Kenny, Rachel and I played Scrabble. I had had a slight lead all evening, and then, just as we ran out of letters to draw, I pulled the perfect ending move. Earlier that game, I had placed BADE just above the bottom center triple word score, so that no one could possibly get it (JADED was right above it). However, I then managed to play BULLPEN like this:

       J
       A
       D
       E
     BADE
BULLPEN

Landing the B on a triple word score and ending the game in one fell swoop! 92 points that turn. We played that everyone else got one extra turn to try to get rid of letters, so Robert got rid of his Z, and Kenny even managed to run out of letters as well (though he only had 3 or 4 letters in his hand). My final score – 215. Kenny came in 2nd with 124, so I’m feeling pretty good about the game.

Alex stopped in to visit, which was nice. She seems to be doing well, and is certainly visiting much more this year than last. The two of us, Mac, Elisa, Kenny, and Amanda watched The Professional, which we all missed at FNMG this evening. It was… interesting. Certainly a very violent movie, but at the same time, it was rather emotional. I’m not sure I’d recommend it. And there were some really creepy parts, as when Natalie Portman (who was about 12 when this movie was made) tells Jean Reno (who is in his 30’s) that she loves him. Not a daughter-father love, but a have-sex-and-get-married love. ew… At the same time, I’d be interested in finding out what other directors have watched this, because some of the same sort of imagery shows up in things like Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels (hit-man raises a child, takes the child to kill people, yet makes sure the child doesn’t swear, smoke, or be rude), the new Ocean’s Eleven (the SWAT scenes), and in Road To Perdition (I won’t say anything about this, because I don’t want to give away the end to either movie). One thing I didn’t know before this evening that the director (who also played the bad guy) also directed the Fifth Element (where he again played the bad guy) and Nikita (don’t recall if he played the bad guy or not). So… yeah. Interesting movie, all in all.

Yesterday, I finally got DMA turned back on for my hard drive (I’m using ReiserFS for my main partition). Huzzah! I can now watch more episodes of Bullshit (Amanda, thanks for giving me new episodes), and my music doesn’t sound as crappy any more! At this point, my computer is pretty much back to where I left off, except for the 2nd monitor, which I can’t get to work for the life of me. It does just fine at 640×480 resolution, but that’s less than 1/4 of the resolution I should be getting (I know it works at 1024×760 at 60Hz). Damn it! Well, I’ll get it eventually.

In the meantime, it’s now a touch past 3:00 in the morning, so I’m going to bed.

So here’s an odd problem – the power button on my monitor is broken. At the moment, this is ok because it’s on and it displays things just fine; but I can’t turn it off. This will be a problem at the end of the year, however, because once I unplug it, I doubt it will turn back on without some tinkering. Well, it can’t be that hard to replace a switch. I guess the hard part will be making sure that the whole thing is grounded before I start (to a first approximation, CRTs are 45,000-volt power supplies that can store these huge charges for months at a time – learn about lifters). So… yeah. not a problem yet, but it will be eventually, and in the meantime, it’s weird. The monitor is about 10 years old, and it’s lasted pretty well (we got it with our Windows 3.1 machine), so I can’t really complain. and it will be fun to fix, once I get around to it.

In national news, electronic voting seems to have been thrust upon us. I think the article gives a fairly good treatment of the topic – electronic voting machines are going to be used all over the US in this election, and it is too late to change them for this election, despite numerous security problems and outcry from what seems like most of the educated populace. I fear this is only going to muddy up what I consider the most important election of the past 50 years. Well, we’ll see how bad things get.

On a happier note, California is going to vote on giving $3 billion to stem cell research. Unfortunately, I am not a registered voter in California (I am in Minnesota instead), so I can’t cast a ballot here. However, I really hope this goes through. I really don’t see how anyone who is informed on the issue could possibly be against stem cell research. Even assuming that pro-life people have a leg to stand on in the abortion issue (which I contest), that barely applies at all to stem cells. Blastocysts, which are where embryonic stem cells come from, are blobs of goo small enough that you can’t see them with the naked eye. They resemble algae much more closely than they resemble people. Cutting them up does cause them to lose the ability to become a person (though they need to be implanted in a surrogate mother before that could happen anyway, so it’s not like they are going to be people if left to their own devices). However, they have huge potential to help actual people. They are potential cures to Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s, diabetes, amputations, blindness, psoriasis, and a slew of other diseases and disabilities.

As an anecdote about the potential of stem cells, there is a man in Germany who lost his lower jaw to cancer 9 years ago. Over the summer, doctors made a scaffold for a new jaw, and covered it with stem cells, bone marrow, and various chemicals to facilitate growing. This was surgically placed on the man’s shoulder, where it grew for two months. Then, it was taken off of his shoulder and attached to his head. He now has a new, working jaw, and can speak better and even chew soft things. Admittedly, they used adult stem cells (which, unlike embryonic stem cells, do not come from embryos). However, embryonic stem cells show even more promise than this, because the same line of cells can make any kind of tissue (adult stem cells, in contrast, can only make a few kinds of tissue, and are not nearly as resilient). The story about the German guy can be found on New Scientist.

Well, that’s about it for now. Much is going on in the world right now, and we should all try to stay informed. I’m tired, so I’m now going to bed. Good night!

So, you know how over the summer I spent a fair amount of time setting up Linux, and it was a lot of work, but once it was done it was great? Well, about a month ago I figured out what was wrong with emerge – there were 15 bad blocks on my hard drive, which I couldn’t get rid of for the life of me. And supposedly modern hard drives will swap them out automatically. Well, I called Best Buy, and they decided to come out and replace the hard drive entirely. That happened about a week ago. And the new one didn’t have any working operating system on it. It claimed to have Windows XP, but that would give me the much-beloved Blue Screen of Death as soon as I booted up (while some people are surely saying this is typical of Windows, XP has mostly been better at this, to be fair). Anywho, I’ve now got Gentoo back up, and most of my system is back on. I’m still missing sound, my 2nd monitor, and a bunch of little, unimportant things (Shockwave, for example), but it’ll come. I guess the biggest problem right now is that I can’t seem to get my 2nd monitor working. And I can’t find the specs for it online, which is a bit weird. Well, I’ll get it eventually. In the meantime, I should be back online semi-regularly now. Though there are still some weird things going on with my system – for some reason, I can’t turn on DMA on my hard drive (this loads stuff into memory fast enough to play music and movies without them skipping). Perhaps I forgot to build something into the kernel. I need to learn more about that. Oh! and whenever I try to shut down X, it hangs and I have to power cycle. This isn’t really a problem, since after my other monitor starts working I shouldn’t have to turn anything off for 9 months, but in the meantime it’s a little weird.

Um… oh! news from Bridge Club! At the Activities Fair, we got roughly 30 more people to sign up for bridge-club-l (our mailing list), which is just fantastic. And for those of you who I haven’t told yet, Unit 551, the local ACBL sanctioned bridge club, has lost their lease on their building, and will be moving to the LAC starting at the beginning of November! So it looks like Mondays and Wednesdays we’ll have competitive games, and Thursdays we’ll have fun, teaching/learning/screwing around days. It looks to be a good year for bridge club, all in all.

Classes are going ok, all in all. Systems is absolutely amazing (CS105 Systems, not E59 Stems). We’re learning how computers work. Really. The first week, we went over data representations (two’s complement arithmetic, etc), and we’re now tackling assembler for the IA32. However, we have been looking at other architectures as well (SPARC jumps to mind as a prominent alternative example). Anywho, it’s a lot of work, but absolutely fascinating! This is the stuff I’ve always wondered about. My other classes are going ok. Nothing great, but certainly no complaints, except that my CS81 (Logic and Computability) class seems like a review of CS60 but with a boring prof. Well, I’m sure it’ll get better soon.

I haven’t been paying attention to world news for a couple weeks, so I have nothing to post about right now (hopefully that’ll change). um… my world news is that many of my friends are going to be abroad this semester. Yeah. It’s a little weird, but neat to hear what they’re going to be doing.

Oh! and for a strange, nerdy time, read up on John Conways work concerning Surreal Numbers. The subject is just that. And since I am in a weird mood, I leave you with a quote from my History82 reading last week:

“Having been entertained with no new theory now for a long while, I am sinking into a mere practical farmer. I have not a single new thing at present, except one experiment I am making to convert moss into dung, by endeavouring to rot it in a dunghill, by mixing it with fresh horse-dung. I shall let you know the result. If I succeed I shall be able to multiply my manure greatly.” – Henry Home, in a letter to William Cullen, 1752.

I’m pretty glad I didn’t live back then.

Guess who’s back… back again… Guess who’s back…Guess who’s back…Guess who’s back…Guess who’s back…Guess who’s back…Guess who’s back…Guess who’s back…

I hate that stupid song. But it is nice to be in Claremont again. It’s great to see people again, to have the ambiance that can only come from a nerd school, to have the 95-degree weather. Kenny and Amanda (my new suitemates) are already moved in too, and Robert (my new roommate) comes tomorrow morning. I’ve just about gotten all of the stuff I stored in my room back to its rightful owners. It’s shaping up to be a pretty great year (though I have yet to start classes, mind you).

On Saturday, we went to the State Fair with the Kaemmerers. I hate to say it, because I love the fair, but this year it didn’t seem so great. There wasn’t anything spectacular in the Technology building (last year there were segways you could rent), there wasn’t anything particularly exciting in the Fine Arts building (though there were some very neat photographs and sculptures), I didn’t know anyone who had submitted anything for judging. Don’t get me wrong, I had a good time. It just seems like there is nothing to really remember this fair by, since it was pretty much the same stuff again. Well, it was still fun. The only memorable thing is that I watched Carol get pickpocketed, though by the time I had my suspicions verified, the guy was nowhere to be seen. Dad, Carol, and I were talking, and this guy sort of walks into Carol, apologises, and walks on. However, as he apologised, he patted her side several times, which I thought was a bit weird. I felt rather stupid asking her if she still had her money, but she didn’t! The guy made off with $14, and luckily Carol wasn’t carrying her ID or credit cards or anything. This was loose cash in a front pocket of some fairly tight jeans. It was fascinating to watch this happen, in a morbid way (well, morbid is probably the wrong word, as death was not involved. It was still a bit unsettling). I hate to say it, but this guy was wonderful at this and had pickpocketing down to an artform.

Most people wouldn’t call this odd, but for the rest of the day I kept checking that I still had my wallet. It’s weird – I know my chances of being pickpocketed are pretty slim and they did not change when I saw this guy, but all of a sudden, it could happen to me and I had to watch out. I guess this is how my mom (and many other people as well) feels after the latest media scare, be it West Nile Virus or terrorists or anything else. And as illogical as I knew it to be, it still felt right to continuously check on my wallet. Huh.

Lets see… not much else is going on around here yet – we’re still unpacking and moving in. Classes start on Tuesday. Tonight was the frosh talent show, and it was pretty good this year. There was a mix of real talent, funny stunts, and absolute crap. and lots of napkin balls, of course. As Kenny said, it looks like we have a good crop of frosh this year.

Oh! Here’s some wonderful news in the world of voting – actually two bits of wonderful news. The first is that Florida’s e-voting machines must now have a paper trail. After all of the problems that e-voting (the American way; Indian e-voting machines are fine), it looks like someone with at least a little power is trying to correct this. In previous touch-screen voting elections, counties have registered over 100% voter turnout, negative votes for certian candidates, and a different number of votes cast than people who used the voting machine (to name a few problems that have actually occurred in Florida with these machines). Another problem that was recently revealed is that Florida lost the voting information from the 2002 Senate vote due to a computer crash, so there is no way to check it now. Much of the tech/nerd/online community is adamantly against Diebold’s touchscreen voting system because it uses proprietary software that cannot be checked for fairness/accuracy/security, and gives no voter-verifiable paper trail to show that the votes cast were recorded properly. I think that when the tech community unites against a new technology (or rather, a certain manifestation of it; there’s nothing wrong with the concept of e-voting), people should pay attention and think twice before embracing it. In India, the e-voting machines use open source software so anyone can make sure that the machines really do count votes correctly. They are more secure, and have fewer ways to be tampered with (Diebold’s machines can be rigged given 10 minutes alone with one, say in the morning while it is being set up), and most importantly, they have a paper trail. The paper trail is the only way to make sure that all the votes were really counted correctly. I can’t understand why Diebold won’t embrace these ideas.

The other wonderful piece of news is that international observers will be monitoring the presidential election for fairness. The Republicans barred the US from having the UN monitor the election (which personally seems like suspicious behavior), but now OSCE will be stepping up to do it. Sadly, I think that we really, really need this. This Slashdot comment summed it up quite nicely. I wish this sort of thing wasnt’ happening. I wish people would wake up and see all of the horrible things in the world. I wish there was something I could do about at least part of it. I just feel so powerless when I read about these sorts of things, and then remember that roughly half the country supports the people who are doing these things. *sigh* Well, at least this election is hopefully going to go better than the last one. Baby steps…

Well, I’m tired and Robert is coming in the morning. Good night!

Well, I recently discovered that there is a bridge club near my home, so on Monday I decided to stop in and play a bit. I was paired up with a guy named Jim. Though we had fewer than 5 minutes to get our conventions straight, we seemed to pretty much understand each other’s bidding and playing styles. After a very rocky start (on one contract, I went down 4… doubled… vulnerable. -1100 points – ouch!), we played really well, and finished off the evening in 2nd place out of 7 partnerships. Pretty good for C stratification, eh? For those who don’t know, the A stratification is for good players, B is for OK players, and C is for bad/new/unregistered players like me and Jim. And we finished 2nd overall, not just in our stratification. The only pair to beat us were two guys named John and Cecil, who are absolutely amazing players. For those of you who have been to Bridge Etc. in Pomona, they are like Vick and Hans, but without the sour attitudes. Because we did so well, we were each awarded 0.49 of a Black Master Point! The different colors denote where you got the point – black is for club play, while gold is for regional and national tournaments, etc. Technically I didn’t get any points because I am not a registered member of the American Contract Bridge League, but I’m going to count it as my first Master Point nonetheless. Jim and I had such a great time that we agreed to meet again the next night to play in the North American Open Pairs qualifying event (same place, but it’s a dollar more, there are more people, and you can get Red Master Points).

Well, I show up the next night ready to work out precisely which conventions we will be using. Much to my chagrin, I am told that Jim can’t make it. Instead, I was partnered up with a man whose name I will not mention, just in case anyone reading this chances to stop in at the Twin Cities Bridge Center. He was 70-ish, and just at that age where he thinks that anyone under 30 can’t possibly know beans about anything. We use all of his conventions, including some really weird, cumbersome things (for example, intermediate jump overcalls. Strong jump overcalls are intuitive, and weak ones are statistically better. Intermediate ones have all the drawbacks of both strong and weak, but with none of the advantages). As you might have guessed, our bidding was way off, and our communication during play was not much better. My partner made several huge mistakes, and even revoked (miscarded) a trump that cost us 2 tricks and gave us the lowest score on that board (he claimed it was my fault because I didn’t ask him if he really was void in trump when he played out of suit). However, every time I made a small mistake that he caught, he was certain to point it out, and explain why his way was better (even if his way wasn’t better and I had just been unlucky). To be fair, I had my share of mistakes, and gave us bottom on several boards, but my errors were nowhere near as serious as his. It should be no surprise, then, that we took last place. There were only 3 pairs with lower percentages in the entire tournament. Argh. I can’t wait to get back to Mudd where there are bridge players who use reasonable bidding conventions and familiar styles of play (if you do a takeout double, and I pass after an overcall, do not try another takeout double expecting a response from me!). Thanks for letting me vent.

Wow. School. The summer has just flown by, though much of that is probably because it was only a month long for me. I’d like to relax more, but at the same time, it’ll be nice to be back at school, out of my parents’ house, and seeing friends again. And I’m pretty excited about my schedule this coming semester.

On Sunday, I went down to St. Olaf to visit Michael, one of my two best friends. He’s doing pretty well, and it was good to see him. Seeing St. Olaf also helped me appreciate Mudd that much more (not that you can’t have a great time at Olaf; it’s just not for me, and Mudd is a near-perfect fit). The dorms fit more people into smaller rooms, have no lounges, no air conditioning, and are mostly separated by class (frosh/sophomore/etc, not lower/middle/etc). While this last point might seem a bit odd, I really appreciated getting wisdom/homework help from the upperclassmen as a frosh, and hope to pass this along to other classes. Michael is also a CS major, and says that his school focuses on the programming aspect of it. While this is more fun in my opinion, I appreciate Mudd’s focus on the theory behind CS because it lends itself to more problems and achieves deeper insights (not to mention better jobs, hopefully). Also, Michael has several courses in his schedule that he is taking simply to fulfill distributions, and has a couple that he is actually dreading. While I am not gung-ho about all of my classes, I am at least content to be in each of them. All in all, it was a good reminder that I am sooo happy to go to Mudd.

We also saw the Manchurian Candidate on Sunday. It was an OK movie – I’m not sure I’d call it good. The story wasn’t bad, the acting was great, and there were several points where I found myself holding my breath on the edge of my seat. However, the cinematography was different, in a pretty bad way. Many of the shots of conversations are from the point of view of one of the people in the conversation – just a close-up of the other guy talking. While this was unusual, it came off as rather… amateur. There were also scenes where the camera just kind of drifted around. One guy would have a lot of lines to say, and he’d start off on the left side of the screen. Then the camera would drift until he was at the right side of the screen, and then it drifted back so he was on the left. It was really weird. This is also the first professionally-made movie where I have noticed when two different takes of a scene were spliced together. But overall, there was still something that rubbed me the wrong way about the movie. Perhaps it was that the bad guys seemed so lifelike (I can argue pretty easily that the same thing is happening now, but to a much, much lesser extent). Perhaps it was that there wasn’t any closure with regards to the main character. Perhaps it was that the background of what happened to set all of this in motion was never really explained (like, what was up with that creepy woman with the tattoos on her face holding the brain in her hands?). I’d recommend seeing this eventually, but you might wait to rent it instead of seeing it in theaters. Now I’ll have to see the original Manchurian Candidate. I’ve heard it has little to do with this version, but is simply wonderful.

Lets see… before I go, I should mention something about the Olympics and something about politics. Trying to kill two birds with one stone, the International Olympic Committee has made rules that no one can have merchandise made by a sponsor’s competitor (I first found out about this from Slashdot). This means that if spectators are caught with a can of Pepsi, it will be confiscated. If you are caught wearing a Puma T-shirt, you will have to turn it inside-out, or you won’t be allowed to watch the games. This is a smart move for Coke, but I’m surprised that a non-profit group like the IOC agreed to this. It just goes to show how much of the world is run by huge, money-grubbing corporations. I’m trying to learn as much as I can about the world, and I fear it is making me more jaded and cynical about things. Luckily I can soon go back into the bubble of happiness that is Mudd, and live in bliss for another few months.

Well, that’s about it for tonight. Thanks for reading, and sorry I can’t keep the length of these down.

Lets see… what have I been meaning to put up here…

On Tuesday, in honor of my parents’ 25th wedding anniversary, my family got to take a hot air balloon ride! It was amazing. The balloon was surprisingly sturdy, and I never once felt unsafe. We went up about 4,000 feet, though at one point we were mere inches above the St Croix River (a river separating Minnesota from Wisconsin). It was absolutely amazing. Next time you see me, ask to see the pictures. I even got to hold open the envelope while it was being inflated! The whole contraption is pretty neat – the envelope is teflon, and the burners use propane. There are two of them – use one to move about normally, but use both if you really have to rise fast. There were all sorts of sensors to help the driver – temperature probes at various points on the envelope, altitude gauges. Although the driver had these flaps that could rotate the balloon so that he could always face the direction he wanted, there is no steering mechanism. Consequently, there was a chase truck that followed us, ready to pack up the balloon and bring us back to the starting point at the end. The truck and the balloonist were in constant contact using their walkie-talkies, though they picked up many other signals as well (my favorite: “Manager to register 3 please, manager to register 3”). We landed in Wisconsin, about 15 miles from where we started. We bumped down in an empty field, though the weeds were so tall that we had to be pushed by the truck’s crew to a nearby yard (we floated a foot off the ground as they pushed). There, we all got out and they folded the envelope back up. Because our only way to control the balloon is the burners to make it go up, we had very little control over whose yard we landed in, and the chase truck had to get there a few minutes before and ask permission to use the yard. I think that would be a pretty neat surprise – “Hi. Would you mind if we landed our balloon in your yard? It’ll be here about… now.” Looking at the whole thing, it really can’t be that hard to build one. Maybe after I retire… maybe not. I’ve been meaning to build a lifter for a while now, and haven’t even started on the power supply (a lifter is a really crappy ion drive). Still, one of these days…

Before today, I had not heard about the Allais effect, which is a pretty neat, though puzzling thing. I’d like to summarize it by saying that during solar eclipses, gravity becomes slightly stronger, but it also works on torsional pendula, so I don’t quite know how to describe it. The Economist also mentions one of my favorite unexplained phenomena, the Pioneer Effect (space probes Pioneer 10 and 11 are heading in opposite directions from Earth, and both are experiencing an acceleration towards the Sun that is unaccounted for). Just for a little more background on MOND (the MOdified Newtonian Dynamics thery), the idea behind it is to take all the data we have, and say “this is how the universe behaves.” Very pragmatic, but not very fulfilling because there is little to no math to make calculations easier. Indeed, it cannot really predict anything, though it explains all unusual phenomena we have already observed.

In world news, communist rebels are threatening to blockade Kathmandu. The Nepalese government has agreed to talk to them again, though I can’t forsee anything different happening – the communists have been trying to overthrow the monarchy for 8 years, and nearly 10,000 people have died in the conflict so far. The more I learn about the world, the less civilized it seems. On the other hand, this makes things like Iraq, where a mere 900 Americans have died, seem much less significant.

On a happier note, last week there was a deer in our backyard eating from the birdfeeder (less than 15 feet from the house)! It was scared away by a fox, which I saw again several days later at Cornelia Elementary School. However, the deer came back and ate from the birdfeeder some more. It was pretty neat. There was also a flock of several hundred grackles that came through our yard. It was surreal, in a Hitchcockesque way – the entire yard was covered in birds (for those not familiar with them, grackles are black birds slightly smaller than crows with dark green heads). Around our neighbor’s birdfeeder, there were so many grackles you couldn’t see the ground – it was just one big black mass of feathers! I went to get my camera, but they had flown on before I could get a good shot. In California, we get some pretty neat wildlife too – about once a week, I see a hummingbird, and there are about 15 rabbits that live around my dorm and the soccer field. Lizards are a common occurrence, and though I haven’t looked for them yet I am told that around dusk I can find tarantulas and scorpions in the botanical gardens near campus.

I’ve been working a bit at Temporary VIP Suites (the place where my mom works; they find temporary housing for people moving between cities), which is OK. The hours are perfect – I come in when I feel like it and work for as long as I want, with no warning at all. The people are pretty great, but the work itself is kinda crappy. Mostly, I’m stuck in the back room by myself going through the archives. No one has emptied the archives since the company was started in 1995, and I’m supposed to throw out the old, unimportant parts. I feel honored that they trust me with such an important job (I’ve gone through tax returns, documentation on fired employees, bank accounts, and mortgage applications, among other things), but it gets a bit boring. For half the time, the radio is my only companion, and the other half there is someone else there, but doing something unrelated, like packing the truck for an appartment cleaning. And it’s a huge task – I’ve spent roughly 40 hours on this, and I’m about half done (as I said, no one has cleaned out the archives in 9 years). I’ve filled 3 dumpsters of recycling (the small dumpsters that take the place of trash cans, not those huge industrial sized ones). Still, the pay is pretty good, and I do, on occasion, get other things to do. I code bills, pick up lunch, run errands. When I worked there in January, I was out cleaning apartments, so I guess this is a step up from that.

That’s about it for now. Sorry this was so long – when I get back to school I’ll update more often so entries will be shorter.

Over the summer, I don’t have my own computer, so I’m not nearly as good at checking my email or updating this thing. And I haven’t been on IM in weeks. If you really need to get in touch with me… good luck. I’ll get back to you eventually… probably… I hope. :-P

Jeff (my best friend) spent the weekend in town. He’s been working at Rockwell Collins this summer, except for a month that he spent in Transylvania. And he’s now in Texas working for NASA (I’m so jealous!). We spent the weekend looking at pictures of Hungary and Romania, which were really really neat. Transylvania really is a creepy old place with castles and fog everywhere. It was wonderful to see him. We were going to go down to St. Olaf and visit Michael (our other best friend), but he was really busy this weekend. Hopefully I’ll get to head down there next week. We’ll see.

It’s looking like Bridge Etc (the “real” Claremont bridge club) will be having games on campus this coming year! Their lease on their building is almost up, and they’re looking for a new place to play. I talked to Dean Chris (in charge of Student Activities) about it, and he seemed responsive. Well, we’ll see how it all turns out.

At this point it’s probably old news, but the California Supreme Court has nullified the 4,000 gay marriages that took place in San Fransisco. However, their reason for doing so is that no mayor or any other elected official should have the power to rule any law unconstitutional, because if everyone did that, there would be no laws in effect. They said that the right way to challenge the constitutionality of such a law is to have a couple apply for a marriage liscense, get denied, and challenge the denial in court (this has since happened). One of my professors at school was married to his partner in SF, so when school starts back up, I’ll have to go talk to him and see what he’s doing about this all. Well, eventually this will get done properly, and I for one am fairly confident that (at least in California) the law will be ruled unconstitutional, and gay marriages will be allowed. We shall see.

Well, I have to go. I’d like to write more in here soon, but doubt I’ll be able to. At this point, count on sporadic updates for a while.

Well, I’m now home in Minnesota. Research went OK. The last day was a lot of work though – Friday morning, we had a meeting to make sure that everything was ready and done. Then, Prof. Raugh decided to tell me that he had looked through my part of the report and had some changes for me to make. I spent all afternoon making changes, and getting the final copy ready. I put the entire thing in a .zip file (just over 3MB zipped – quite a large piece of work!), and I was about to mail it off! I decided to check my email just in case anything unusual had happened at the last minute, but forgot how to do that from the terminal room. So I skateboarded back to my room, and check my mail. Lo and behold, Sarah has also made some major changes to her part of the report, and could I add them to the final copy? Mind you, this was at 6:00. I was about to be done. So I save her changes and go back to the terminal room and put them in the final report, rezip the whole thing, and send it out. I also put a copy in the directory Claire made for this project so that we can all access it on the math computers. It’s now about 3.1 megs (we had a lot of changes, apparently!). I finish work up at 6:30. :-P But it’s now done.

It’s a little weird being back in Minnesota. Marc can now drive, and has a job lifeguarding. So he’s going to be taking the car a lot, I fear. He has also decided to put bumper stickers on the back. He got one of those stickers from WootWear, and one from the USA Fencing Organization. I don’t want my car covered in bumper stickers! Get those off there! Luckily, he hasn’t put the fencing one on there yet, and I’m hoping I can persuade him not to. hm…

Though my computer is at school, it is turned on and the SSH port is open, so I can continue to install programs on it while I’m here. This evening, I started building OpenOffice. We’ll see how that turns out. I also have a copy of Knoppix with me, and have been impressing my dad and brother with its little features (everyone is impressed with the “fuzzy” clock, and Marc really likes the ASCII movie player). Since I have X-forewarding turned on on my machine at school, I can also check my email from there. This is really nice, because I can continue to train the Bayesian spam filter, and keep all of my email in one place. Whee! :-D

In world news, the Darfur Conflict is finally getting some well-deserved attention. The New York Times (free registration required, or go to BugMeNot) has stuff on it here. It even made the local paper here (the Star Tribune), which barely has any news of import. I for one am glad that Darfur is finally getting some attention. I’ve been following the conflict for several weeks, and at first I was quite dismayed that the rest of the world didn’t seem to notice (though perhaps it merely appeared that way because I was living in the college bubble). Well, I just thought I’d try to increase awareness of the issue.

It’s late, so I’m now going to bed. Goodnight!

Just thought I’d say that today is a blue moon! ’tis the 2nd full moon of July (the first was on the 2nd). Huh… I just wrote that the first was on the 2nd. That’s a little weird.

In other news, Francis H C Crick, co-discoverer of DNA, passed away on Wednesday. He was 88. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/30/science/30crick.html

As you can see, I’m rather tired. I’ll write more when I’m rested.

Again, tonight, I screwed up cooking something. When I was at the
grocery store, I had bought a tube of croisants and some white
chocolate chips, figuring I could make chocolate croisants. Tonight, I
did so. First, I got the tube out of the freezer, and tried unrolling
the dough. This didn’t work so well, because the dough was frozen
solid. Rereading the label, I was supposed to refridgerate it, instead
of freezing. Oops… I’ll warm it in my hands for a bit. After a minute
with no change, I decided I’ll be there all night at this rate, so I
put the dough in the microwave, and had it defrost for 30sec. Well,
when I took it out, the outside was warm/hot, and really sticky and
stretchy. The inside was still frozen. Which makes sense, if you think
about it (for the details of why this makes sense, IM or email me. It’s
too nerdy to put in an LJ, even for me). Screw it, I think. I’m making
these croisants, even if they are a little stretchy. So I’m tearing
along the perforations to make the pieces the right size. The ones on
the outside just stretch, and don’t tear, so they come out misshapen.
The ones on the inside I can barely keep from cracking. I put in the
chocolate chips, and put them in the oven. The package says to bake for
11-13 minutes, or until golden brown. I set the timer for 9 minutes,
and figure I’ll check on them then. After 6 minutes, I check back, and
they’re definitely done. The room has a hint of smoke in it, and they
certainly smell done. I take them out, only to discover that one pan of
croissants is already burnt on the bottom. 11-13 minutes my foot! I
guess they turned out OK. But this isn’t the only time this summer I’ve
messed up cooking. Early in the summer, some friends and I were in the
habit of making dinner together, 1 person cooking for all of us each
night, so that we only had to cook 1 night each week (but for 5
people). For my first day, I decided to make a lemon-artichoke chicken
dish that I got a recipe for. It looked pretty simple – put the chicken
in the oven, and everything else in a pot. Then wait. I also put some
rice in a rice cooker. Well, I managed to somehow mess up the rice.
That’s right – I messed up rice in a rice cooker.
It started bubbling out the top, and got everything starchy. And on top
of that, something from the night before had dripped onto the bottom of
the oven, and burnt while I was cooking. It set off the smoke alarms,
and CampSec had to come to turn them off (I’m the only one this summer
that I know of to have set of the smoke alarms – well done, everyone
else!). Well, after the smoke alarms, I looked at my chicken, and it
wasn’t done yet… so I put it back in the oven. The meal came out ok,
but my ego didn’t. So… yeah. Apparently I need to learn how to cook.
People say it’s easy, and you just mix stuff together and toss it in
the oven, but I don’t seem to be able to do that. Well, practice makes
perfect, I suppose. :-P