Sunday, April 18, 2004

No updates in a while, eh? Page getting stale, eh? Well, here goes:

I saw Stereolab perform in Detroit a week or two ago with Nate and some others. That wasn't bad, though the music was a little more on the electronic side than I liked. There were a handful of songs I liked though.

Also last week was Jenny's birthday. Happy birthday Jenny! I got her an iPod. I had initially bought her a Rio Karma because I like to support the underdog, plus they have a longer battery life. Then I read about Eugene's Karma acting all giant-resistor-like and otherwise being retarded, and taking that into account as well as the fact that the iPod is just cool, I returned the Karma and sent her an iPod instead.

Also last week, I had the longest and most painful dental cleaning appointment ever. It was at the School of Dentistry (I don't have dental coverage this year so this was the cheapest place for me to go) and my teeth were cleaned by a student learning to become a dental hygienist (sort of the tooth analogue of Leah's nursing: they do the real work, the dentist/doctor just checks). Anyway the dental student was cool, but it took a long time (3 hours) and was painful since she was really scraping away deep in the gums. They hurt for days. On the plus side my teeth feel really clean now.

The nice thing about living in a place like Ann Arbor, which has more vegetation and less concrete than a place like Los Angeles, is the fact that there are actually warm-blooded creatures living among us other than humans. Case in point, I was walking home last week and passed within 20 feet of a raccoon and four deer along my route.

I think I should try and walk to school a couple of times a week instead of driving all the time. The weather is finally good enough. Plus, I've actually been very lucky so far this year with zero parking tickets.. I almost feel like one is due. So why push it? (I know, gambler's fallacy.)

So last week we were trying to submit a paper to a conference whose deadline was Friday at midnight. The weather on Friday was really great, in the 70s and probably the warmest day so far in the entire year, and we were going to spend its entirety inside a windowless lab running experiments and writing a paper. Then, at 5 pm we checked the website and learned that the deadline was postponed to next week. Yay! We went out and bought a bat and some tennis balls and proceeded to hit and shag flies on the north campus quad which was fun.

We can definitely benefit from the extra time to improve the quality of the paper, but on the other hand this means I have to work on it for another week.

Anyway after pseudo-tennis-baseball we saw Kill Bill Vol. 2, which is an excellent movie. Though it's a continuation of Vol. 1 (surprise), there are some differences in the way the stories are told in the two movies. For example there is less crazy cool outlandish fighting. And the story is a bigger part of Vol. 2. In any case, Tarantino's moviemaking style is quite amazing.

Today (actually Saturday) I had dinner at a vegetarian place with roommates and friends and we saw a show at the comedy club downstairs afterwards. The vegetarian was surprisingly good and I would go back again (though if I were picking the place it would be a place with meat). The comedian was actually funny too.

I recently switched razors from my 4+ year old cheapo refillable razor (purchased in Taiwan, actually) to a Gillette Mach 3 Turbo. What a world of difference. I didn't think razors could differ that much in their effectiveness.. I mean, they're just some sharp pieces of metal and a handle, right? Now I know better. Hmm, I just looked on their website. I was not aware that Gillette, Braun, Duracell, and Oral-B are all the same company.

How's that for an update? Pretty long, huh? I feel like Brian.

Thursday, April 8, 2004

Opening day has come and gone. The Dodgers are 2-1 which is okay, but nothing compared to the undefeated Tigers! Last year, the Tigers didn't win their 4th game until May.

I don't remember if I posted this link before, but: structured procrastination, or how to make procrastination work for you.

I think I will plug Erin's cards again since they are so cool and she's come up with a bunch of new designs since the last time I plugged them.

Saturday, April 3, 2004

I watched Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and liked it a lot. I tend to enjoy non-linear movies like these.

For some reason I liked the scenes with snow on the beach, probably because I've never seen that before and it's a juxtaposition of the most naturally beautiful things from California and here. I also thought they did a good job with the creative, dream-like shots that are from Joel's mind, like riding a train through a bookstore, a car filled with sand, etc.. very much like real dreams (mine, anyway) in how realistic yet illogical they are.

Today I found this 18-page paper (it's a PDF, with mathematical/economic equations and graphs) on the efficiency of putting the toilet seat down vs. leaving it in place.

Paraphrasing a couple of funny things the pilot announced to make Alen feel comfortable on his flight from Chicago to White Plains (aboard a small commuter jet):

"Weather in White Plains is pretty bad, low visibility, haze, and high winds. We may not be able to land there safely. However, this does not prevent us from taking off, so that's what we'll do."

"Our landing options will depend on several things, such as weather, traffic, scheduling issues, ... and fuel."

Thursday, April 1, 2004

It doesn't feel like it's been 9 days since I last posted. Pretty much nothing has happened other than the usual work and homework. Exciting, huh? Oh yeah, I did co-substitute-teach a class last week with Mike. That went OK, I guess.

I updated all the stuff on my home machine to Fedora Core 2 test2 and now the PHP module crashes when serving certain pages for some reason. This is slightly annoying because it means I can't use the nifty web interface to mythtv. Oh well.

Trader Joe's just opened in Ann Arbor, and Bill keeps raving about it. He says I would like the cheap instant ethnic foods (which I would), so I've been meaning to go there. But I was halfway through shopping at Kroger today when I remembered, and then it was too late, so I still haven't gone. I've been to the one by my Mom's house once or twice though.