Saturday, May 31, 2003

Quote of the day:

kefanman: you should carry a passenger by sitting them down on your handlebars
aniareyouok: hahaha
aniareyouok: and then brake really fast so they go flying off
kefanman: hahaha
kefanman: and then run them over
aniareyouok: hahaha

Tuesday, May 27, 2003

Happy Birthday, Jon! Unfortunately I don't have any incriminating photos of Jon.

I got my MythTV thing set up now so I can log into my computer from any web browser and tell it to record something. So that's cool.

I started reading a book called Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson. It's good! The blurb on the back cover is not that impressive but I was hooked after reading the first chapter. It's a sort of hacker/sci-fi thing and the author does a good job of describing the technology, like it makes you think it's feasible. Basically the main character is a futuristic pizza delivery person by day and a hacker by night.

Wes, for some reason I was thinking you might like this book.

Saturday, May 24, 2003

I finally started using that Xanga thing where you can subscribe to people's blogs and see all the updates on one page. Convenient.

Web site stuff: I hopefully fixed the earlier messageboard problem with semicolons being inserted into your URLs and messing them up. I enabled HTML tags so now you can do bold and colors and stuff. I put up a couple of pictures from my sister and my road trip from last year. Finally, in case you hadn't noticed (and I'm sure you hadn't), I've added a few "people" and "things" to the links page over the past few months.

My roommates are all gone for the weekend. I'm going to take this opportunity to let rogue dishes pile up in the sink. Heh heh.

Interesting conversation of the day:

kefanman: so why'd you choose that one?
aniareyouok: it was a good combination of price, looks, and year
aniareyouok: that's how i choose my women too

Me holding a Long Island and lookin' drunk:

Hmm. I'm going to need a haircut soon.

Hope y'all are having a chill weekend!

Tuesday, May 20, 2003

I'm back from Seattle! Good trip. Where to begin?

Hung out with Roy one day and saw Pike Place Market and drove around various other places. Saw a lot of neighborhoods like the University District, Capitol Hill, etc. Also saw the outside of Seahawks Stadium, Safeco Field, Husky Stadium. Alki Beach was pretty cool too with a view of the Seattle skyline.

I got to eat pretty well because they gave me a $40 allowance for dinner. So we went to Ruth's Chris. That is some good steak.

The weather was really good. I heard it rained a lot in the days before I arrived, and it was drizzling this morning when I left.. But while I was there, it was perfect. I think the same thing happened the last time I was in Seattle with my family: we happened to pick the island of good weather out of the sea of bad.

Pracheeti showed me that there is such a thing as MS Visual Studio.net beer. If I had a camera I'd post a picture. But here is the quote from the bottle: "This delicious, thirst quenching Microbrew epitomises .net Framework and Visual Studio.net: It's the combination of innovation, determination, teamwork and more than a touch of excellence that creates a perfectly balanced and distinctive team..."

Flights:

I almost missed my first flight out there because there were two traffic accidents on I-94. One was a multi-car thing that must have just happened before I got there, because traffic wasn't backed up too much yet. The other was a big rig that had hit the center divider from the westbound side of the freeway, ripping off the side of the trailer and spilling boxes all over our (eastbound) side. That was a weird sight.

Dude, remember when we saw that person climbing out the back of her upside-down car in the middle of the freeway that one time up north, Kirecci? Crazy.

United is pretty cool because most of their planes have a channel you can listen to and hear the communication between the captain or first officer and the air traffic controllers. It was neat to hear the TRACON guy say "turn left heading 220 for runway 17L" and you see and feel the plane bank left and see the runway through the window in the distance.

One cool thing was, as we were on finals into Seattle I saw a fireworks show from the sky. I heard the FO ask the controller what it was over the radio, and he said it was some kind of boat show. Fireworks look different from above.

I got an exit row seat on one of the flights, where the tray is in your armrest instead of in the seatback in front of you. That was kind of cool, since there was more legroom.

Reasons why, coming from Michigan, Seattle reminded me of LA:

• Dreyer's instead of Edy's.
• They have Jack in the Box.
• There's an I-5 and an I-405.
• Drivers have no lane discipline ("keep right except to pass").
• Expensive gas (though probably still less than LA).

Oh yeah, and oops, I forgot that it was Ian's birthday on Saturday. Feliz cumpleaños! De be jota.

**

By the way, my attempt to record the Simpsons worked. Cool. This MythTV thing is pretty sweet. Too bad all the shows are in reruns now, and not really worth recording.

Saturday, May 17, 2003

Hooked up cable to my room yesterday, so now I can get TV on my computer. I think I got that MythTV thing working, so the first thing I'm gonna try is recording the Simpsons while I'm out of town this weekend.

One weird thing is that, since the live TV is being recorded and then played back on-the-fly to allow for pausing and rewinding, it's not actually live but delayed by a few seconds. Now, my speakers and headphones are both hooked up to different speaker outs on my sound card. The weird part is that the speakers play the recorded sound, so it's in sync with the image which is also recorded. But the headphones play the live feed. So if I listen to the headphones it's like I can predict the future. Heh.

Anyway, I'd better start packing and getting ready.. my flight leaves in a few hours. Have a good weekend!

Tuesday, May 13, 2003

Not too much going on lately.

I get to fly to Seattle this weekend to interview with Microsoft for an internship.

I finished that book The Da Vinci Code that I mentioned before. It was pretty coo. Now I'm reading one called House of God by Samuel Shem. It's about interns in a hospital. It took me a couple of chapters to get into it, but now it's pretty interesting. Haha, I just noticed that there's a glossary in the back for us non-medical types.

One of my lab mates just got a used 5spd B4 Passat VR6 (1995). It seems not bad for the price he paid. Now he has to learn how to drive stick. I tried driving it yesterday; the engine doesn't make much torque down low and the car feels heavier than mine (though maybe that's because there were three people in the car). It's fairly smooth though.

I noticed that all old German cars smell the same. The first thing that struck me when I sat inside the car was that it smelled exactly the same as my dad's old 1974 Audi Fox. I had a friend whose old Benz smelled that way too. I don't know what it is.

I think tomorrow or Thursday (probably Thursday) I'm gonna finally get around to hooking up cable TV to my computer.

Mike was showing me the iTunes thing on his Mac. That thing is cool.

Saturday, May 10, 2003

Today was Bar Day: a full day of visiting several bars around Ann Arbor, celebrating the end of the year, with raffles every hour to benefit a charity (in this case to fight cystic fibrosis). I joined them for the first half of the festivities and won 3 raffles: two rewards (some keychains and a shot glass) and a punishment (a shot of 'liquid cocaine'). One of the keychains was cool, it's a miniature barrel of monkeys. The shot had me silenced for a good hour. People told me "you don't look so good." Haha. It's true, I went to the bathroom and looked in the mirror.. I looked like shit. I also felt sleepy. Anyway, I hung out for a couple more hours until I was good enough to drive. There's a picture with me wearing Bill's giant foam beer mug hat with the name "Bob" on it. It's pretty funny.. I'll post it when I get it.

What else did I do today.. Bought advance tickets for The Matrix; was going to change my brake pads but when I checked them they still had enough depth left; watched Game 3 of the Kings - Mavs series. I'm not really watching the playoffs regularly or anything. This game was pretty good though.

One of my roommates got a new VW Jetta, a gray 5spd 1.8T with leather. Cool.

Wednesday, May 7, 2003

Happy Birthday, Kristin!

(It's her version of my pose on the front page.)

I've recently been listening to Nada Surf. So far I've only heard songs from their newest album, Let Go, and I like 'em.

I'm reading The Da Vinci Code, by Dan Brown. It's a murder mystery. So far it's been pretty suspenseful and action-packed. You might say it's a real page turner! And I'm only at the beginning. (But if it really was a page turner then I wouldn't only be at the beginning, would I? What a conundrum!)

Apparently there was a tornado warning here a couple of days ago. Weird, eh?

Monday, May 5, 2003

Today was my birthday. Lots of people wished me a happy birthday today; more than in the past, I think. Thanks, everyone! I got free ice cream from Stucchi's and Kat baked me a cake. Woohoo!

Apparently I share a birthday with Karl Marx.

Feliz Cinco de Mayo!

Saturday, May 3, 2003

Saw X-Men 2. It was pretty cool. Saw the Matrix Reloaded trailer. That's gonna be even more cool.

Today I cleaned my car's throttle body. That helped with the slight idle stumbling when slowing down from high speeds.

Friday, May 2, 2003

I got up early this morning for some reason. Oh yeah, I know the reason: went to sleep early last night because I was inexplicably tired.

What should I do this morning? I think I'll go grocery shopping.

Let's see, what have I been doing the past week? Not especially much outside of research stuff. Had my lower archwire replaced, so now my teeth are sore. Also had a phone interview with Microsoft where I might intern this summer. Ordered some parts so I can replace my brake pads next week. Oh yeah and played a lot of this electronic baseball dartboard game we got at the lab.

I forgot to mention this in my last entry but I had sushi on Sunday with Ken and Jeff. That was pretty good. Fewer people here eat sushi so it's rare for me to have it.. I think this was only the second time since I've been in Ann Arbor.

Competition 7-ball was on TV last night which reminded me that I haven't played pool for a while. They had the rule where if you ever miss a shot (not even scratch, but merely don't pocket a ball) the other guy gets ball-in-hand. Wow.

I know at least 8 people who were born in May. Go, us.