Interesting Stuff

Last night, Sherri and I went to Bridge Etc for their last game at that location. It was the biggest turnout they’ve had in as long as anyone can remember – there were 11 tables! While it was a lot of fun, we took dead last, with a 36% game. Sherri hadn’t gotten much sleep last night, and was only semi-coherent. She and I are also not yet used to each other’s bidding styles (over the summer she played with a really good player in Oregon, and picked up a lot of bidding conventions I’m not used to). Not only that, but we’re both used to having more agressive partners, so neither of us bid as high as we should have. And then on top of all that, we both made some stupid, stupid mistakes. Still, it was fun. Afterwards, I stayed after to help Tom move some of the stuff to Mudd (remember that they’re coming to Mudd to play every Monday starting the day after tomorrow). We now have 3 more tables, 16 chairs, and a complete set of 36 trays. \/\/00T! Before now, we’ve been using the only consecutive 8 we have, and we have to stop and shuffle every 8 hands. Now, we can shuffle a bunch at the beginning and then play through the whole night.

Abstract assignment due tomorrow, mock ACM tomorrow from 9-1AM, Systems test Wednesday, History reading/reflection due Wednesday, Philosophy reading due Wednesday, CS81 take-home exam due Thursday. We’ll see how much sleep I get this week.

On a brighter note, Sheri and I are going to Bridge Etc for their last game on Friday.

And to leave you all with something that is just awesome, look at this.

We’re having a birthdayful week here. Yesterday was Elicia’s birthday, and today was both Whitney’s and Rami’s. Whitney spent the day at home with Zack, so I IM’ed her. Rami, however, was here. We got a group of 11 people, went to Buca’s, came back and had cake, and then 8 of us went bowling. What a fantastic night for bowling! Amanda got a 132, Robert got a 134, Rami got a 146, I got a 136, Nadia got a 117 (which is fantastic for her – it was the only time she broke 100), and then Robert got a 159(!). Rachel, however, had a bad night – she only broke 80. Well, she’ll do better next time.

Let’s see… Amanda bought an X-box over break, which is kind of neat. Then, this past week, Elisa and I (among others) went to an informational meeting about Microsoft. I’m a bit torn: they offer fantastic internships and it would be wonderful to get one. However, I spent much of the summer purging my system of anything Microsoft-related. I doubt I’ll be offered an internship, but if I am, I’m not sure if I want it, because on the whole I can’t stand Microsoft’s products. They’re like the AOL of operating systems: many people are reliant on them because they make it easy, and hold your hand every step of the way. However, you can’t get anything useful done on their machines, and they’re full of problems. I can accept that they offer a great service to the barely computer-literate masses, but they’re certainly not for me. Well, we’ll see. I doubt I’ll have to make a choice in the first place. I bring this up because they had a raffle, and Elisa won a game for the X-box (which she has given to Amanda), and I won a copy of Halo for the PC. Argh! Halo is a neat game, but I can’t use it, since I’m not running Windows. Robert has offered to lend me his computer if I want to play it.

Bridge Etc is closing down in a week, and in honor of that, there is no admission fee for the last game. Sheri and I will be going to that, but we really need to get our conventions straight before then. She’s coming over tomorrow to do that, and hopefully it’ll go well. But there are several things where we adamantly disagree on certain, important things (for example, she claims that jump responses are weak, while I say that that is preempting your partner, and they had better be strong). I don’t know who is right, but hopefully we’ll find out. On a related note, I’ve started work again on the guide to bidding that I began over the summer. First step: to switch it to LaTeX (\/\/00T!). If you are into math or science and don’t know about LaTeX (or another variation, such as MikTeX), you should definitely learn. It’s just wonderful. I now type up all of my homework in it.

So, I had a prefrosh named Mark yesterday and today. He’s a pretty cool guy. I hope he gets in here.

Well, that’s about it. Good night!

Woah. Yesterday was bridge club again, and it was the highest turnout that we’ve had since I joined. We had 2 tables going pretty much the entire time. It’s not enough to play a “real” game of duplicate yet, but we at least had to start keeping score (with one table where the partnerships switch every hand, there’s not much point in keeping score). So… yeah. We had about 13 people show up over the course of the evening, and even kept playing past 1:00. Sherri and I were partners for much of the night, which was a bit weird. Over the summer, she played regularly with someone she met at home, and got the hang of his style. However, this was a bit different than the way I played, so we kept getting some of our signals crossed. Oh, well. When I have the opportunity to start getting competitive (which won’t be until next semester, due to Systems lab conflicting with the start of the Unit551 games), I’ll get a regular partner and we’ll work out all of our quirks. There were some pretty good hands, though, and I had a great time. Hopefully, we can get our Monday games going like this too.

Well, I watched the presidential debate tonight. To be honest, I wasn’t that impressed with either candidate. Kerry pretty much just said “I have a plan” a lot (but not actually saying what sort of plan this was, or how it would work), while Bush dodged most of the questions (he didn’t answer the question about who he would put on the Supreme Court, he didn’t answer what mistakes he’s made or how he corrected them, he didn’t answer how he will protect people’s rights from the PATRIOT Act, etc).

In related news, my absentee ballot arrived today. I’ve found the notary on campus, so I’m pretty much set to vote. I had a bit of a scare last week when I opened my absentee ballot that I’d been saving for a while to realize that it was for the primary election, rather than the upcoming one. After panicking and firing some frantic emails to my dad, he got me straightened out, and explained how I should be getting another ballot soon.

Lets see… Stephen alerted me to the Stop-Loss provisions that have gone into legislature recently. They pretty much say that you can’t leave the armed forces for 3 months before or after your company is deployed. Since companies are pretty much deployed every 6 months, many people who were supposed to finish up their service have been forced to stay in the armed forces. A pretty good blog about it is here (the October 2 update Edit: this one). There’s a lot of shit going on in this country these days. I wish there was something I could do about it, but this kind of crap just seems so widespread. If anyone has an idea about how to actually get something done (note: this does not involve writing to my senator’s intern’s garbage can), I’d love to hear about it.