Wednesday, October 29, 2003

Several days ago I beat Erin in Literati! Quite a feat.

Not much to write about. I haven't had time to do much outside of classes and research lately. Oh, Jenny sent me a bunch of Halloween candy, which the lab dudes and I have pretty much consumed. Oh yeah last week I went laser tagging. Hadn't done that in a long time. I could have blogged about it in the previous entry, but didn't for some reason. We played against these little kids. They were annoying cuz they'd shoot me, and then follow me around until my suit reactivated and then shoot me again. Annoying kids.

Mein, it is getting cold here. I'm going to have to start wearing my thick jacket.

I was thinking. I may be better off without a computer, like I was during the summer. It made me find things to do other than come home and plop down in front of the computer all the time. I think this summer was the longest I've been without a computer in like 10 years. Think of all the stuff I could have been doing other than sitting in front of my computer. Scary! In truth, I wasn't really glued to the computer all that time. Plus during the summer I ended up watching TV for hours anyway. Haha. I guess you can take the computer out of the lazy man but you can't take the lazy man away from the mindless consumer electronic device. Something like that.

Friday, October 24, 2003

Some minor things: removed some stale web sites from my links page, and:

I found the page I used to keep on UCLA's web server. It contains some stuff I blogged from roughly 2001 to 2002. I thought it was interesting as I reread it so I put it up in the archives. I was hoping to find the web site I used to have in high school, but could only find the links page (almost all of which are now dead since the links are 7 years old) and a page where I described the computer I was using back then (a P-133). Maybe I'll put that up in the future.. it's kind of interesting in itself.

Monday, October 20, 2003

This weekend my Mom and I went to the Simon & Garfunkel concert in Auburn Hills. It was absolutely awesome. The best songs were the Sound of Silence (lots of cheers for "And in the naked light I saw / Ten thousand people maybe more...") and Bridge Over Troubled Water. They also had the Everly Brothers come out and play a few songs. When I was younger my Mom used to play the Simon & Garfunkel Greatest Hits CD all the time, so it was quite an experience to see them perform live even though some of the songs were originally recorded something like 10-15 years before I was born.

We also saw the movie Mystic River, which was pretty good. Lots of good acting, especially by Sean Penn. I still have to see Kill Bill.

I finished reading the long-ass book Cryptonomicon, after something like two months. It was quite good, so it was worth it. I think I'll read something by Jostein Gaarder next, since it was recommended to me by Peter, my summer roommate.

I got a postcard from Katie! Thanks Katie! But it got me to thinking, I don't really keep in touch with anyone very well. I'm online all the time but I rarely chat, for example. Much less call people or write an actual letter. Maybe I should do more of that.

Friday, October 17, 2003

We got back on Wednesday night from Princeton. It was a pretty good trip. Hongtao ("Hong") has some pictures here. You can see the fall foliage in the first couple of pictures (which were actually taken in Ann Arbor).

I returned the radar detector. I'm not sure how useful it was, and anyway I don't have any road trips planned so I'm pretty sure it won't be useful any time in the near future.

My Mom's coming to visit this weekend. Should be fun. I guess this means I should clean up my room.

So I noticed that while I was gone my messageboard exploded. Oh well.

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I just finished php-izing this website (it used to use a mix of server-side includes and php directives, and I got rid of the server-side includes). The messageboard and picture engine are still perl though. Let me know if anything is broken.

Thursday, October 9, 2003

I got a radar detector. This weekend our group is driving to Princeton so I figured it would be a good chance to put a detector to the test. I have 30 days to return it. I'll probably end up returning it even if I like it since I can buy it more cheaply online.

We get to drive from the Great Lakes State, through the Buckeye State and the Keystone State, to the Garden State. State nicknames. Woo.

More weather comments: it was 80 degrees yesterday. Contrast to last week when I complained about subfreezing temperatures.

It's midnight and I hear jackhammers. What the heck is going on out there? Kirecci?

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Happy early birthday, Erin! I thought I would wish you a happy birthday now since I'm not going to be around this weekend.

Sunday, October 5, 2003

(Disclaimer: the bottom picture was not taken while riding the ride in the top picture.)

Wednesday, October 1, 2003

It's freezing out here. Literally. The overnight low is going to be 30°, and tomorrow it's supposed to snow. In October! I'm pretty sure it didn't snow until at least a month later last year.

Bonus points for anyone who can tell me why feet get more sweaty in cold weather, even when wearing the same socks and shoes.

Jenny's coming to visit this weekend.. her flight gets in tomorrow. Yay! We may go to Cedar Point with some lab dudes, (yes, I called you lab dudes) as long as it doesn't rain or something. Their free tickets are only good 'til the end of the year. This place should be good. It's supposed to be better than Magic Mountain. And I think they have some Halloween stuff going on there.

Someone in our lab got a Rubik's Cube from a career fair that they had on campus earlier this week. Suddenly I was addicted to Rubik's Cubes and tried to solve it. Unfortunately I'm not that smart so I looked up the strategy on how to solve these things on Google. But now I can solve a standard Rubik's Cube as well as Cubes that have pictures on their faces (which is harder because orientation matters)! So, I cheated. It's still cool to know, though.