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Marvel as the interim president of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting discusses his heartfelt love of PBS and NPR.
As an aside, life's been good recently. School's almost completed, new people are being friended, and the prospect of four months of having free evenings is a beautiful one. Details can be had by word of mouth, most likely. |
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Mar. 20th, 2005 @ 01:35 pm
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I may not post often, but I'd have to be an idiot to not mention something about htis weekend.
This was the first of two prospie weekends, wherein the physics department goes all out and tries to convince a few folk that they want to go here. I was at the one in early April last year, and it's where I first met Brooks, Andrew, et al. and experienced the wonder of Geekfest for the first time. Speaking of which, as March 25 is coming around again, that might be stories for next weekend. The weekend we threw this time, however... fuckin' shit.
On Thursday, Evan, Sarah, and I picked up the first three students to arrive from the airport and brought them back to their hotel. We first years had decided that actually picking people up from the airport might be pleasant than getting a taxi, then getting dropped off at a hotel and left to meander for an evening. So we take the three of them out to dinner, then over to a jazz club that has music on Thursdays. The temporally inclined of you might realize that this was St. Patrick's day, which meant the place was a bit more crowded than usual and also, once the music started, chock full of green-clad college students nigh-on having sex on the floor in front of the band. Liquor flowed, conversations were had, more liquor flowed, there was dancing and discussion of many, many things. It was a perfect evening of letting loose that, at least for me, was pretty damn required at this point. Two things were also learned. First, B Mac needs to be drunk a damn sight more often than he is now. I don't think that he really has any choice in the matter, actually. Second, we shall go to Goodnight Gracie's more often as the music is good, the ambience is right, and they have okay drinks. Anyway, we got the prospies back around 1:30 am so they could start their day at 9 in the morning.
For some reason, I found that I liked going out and having a good time and then having class the next day. It's too easy to lounge around for a long time otherwise, and not that bad to just make yourself get up.
On Friday, nothing happened.
On Saturday, everything happened. Not as bad as new year's, but the fact that I think to compare them should tell you something. We got started around 8 pm, played lots of pool, migrated to Michael's place, and between over a dozen people made a sizable dent in his liquor cabinet, and the six of us that crashed there went to sleep just before six. I believe the best line of the night was from the host; "It'll be ten thousand times sexier with a salt grinder."
Kelley needs to hook us up with the photos and movies.Current Music: Boom Boom Satellites - Bum |
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Feb. 24th, 2005 @ 01:21 am
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Sure, it's made the rounds of the internet, but I know some of y'all don't necessarily follow the same things I do. So, without further ado, the best Christian rap video parody in all of history (and futurity, most likely).
Until Friday... |
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My new croquet set arrived today!
It's not actually the one I ordered, the Sportcraft "Best", but rather the Vintage. However, this means that I get thick, tall, not too-narrow, wickets instead of the dinky wire ones and 37" handles instead of 28" ones. Both of these aspects seem a lot better, so I'm just going to keep the set as is. I can't find any price information on it online, but it definitely doesn't seem cheaper than what I ordered. Actually, the only reference to the model existing that I can find is on Sportcraft's own site, and the image for it is broken.
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I passed my classical qual. So that's half of the required tests I need to take. Now just one more in May (or so) and I'll be done with that sort of test forever. Or at least a long while. It's hard to say which, but I'm guessing more like the latter.
A croquet set has been ordered and should be in here in a few days. I'm looking forward to taking my finally above freezing (for the moment... it won't last for all of February, though) daytime highs and using them to get a little bit of the ol' lawn game in. There are plenty of unmolested greens on campus that are just dying for some croquet to be played on them.
Spring break is less than three weeks away!
Emmalee is awesome and sent me two issues of FRUiTS magazine, both of which have seen a few goings over. Thank you much!
I get to go to sleep now!Current Music: The Rapture / Sister Saviour (Blackstrobe Remix) |
| » Home for a bit |
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Well, I've had a few eventful events occur during the several weeks of not posting. Nick came and we had fun. Last weekend I hung out with some math folk in my networks class, which was fun. I'll have to work on figuring out how to do stuff with them again, actually. Not entirely sure how...
Anyway, the real point of this was to just let it generally be known that my "spring" break is the first week of March. After toying with the idea of staying here for the week, I decided to get tickets to go home. Thus I'll be flying into Seattle the evening of the 25th of February and heading out around noon on the 5th of March. As of now, my plan is to spend all of that time in Seattle. I figured I should give you guys some advance notice so you can plan your outfits and such. See you then!
Feb. 2nd, 2005 @ 01:33 am
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| » That's a surprise |
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So Nick called a couple of hours ago and said that he was thinking of driving over here this weekend and wondering if that would work for me. The conversation lasted about 20 seconds and consisted of me saying "sure, that works" and him saying something like "okay, I'll be there in the afternoon sometime. Email me directions to your place." This should be interesting.
Jan. 21st, 2005 @ 02:20 am
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| » What sort of infernal hell-town is this? |
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You know that numb feeling your chin gets when you get novacaine? Well, if you're lucky you don't, but I have a solution for you. Come to Ann Arbor to visit me and then we can both walk home from school. Your chin will feel exactly like that by the time you get to my place.
Jan. 18th, 2005 @ 07:56 pm
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| » A few brief updates |
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Well, since I can't find anything about near future updates to the bigger iPod line, I just ordered a 20 GB one from the (Educational) Apple Store. Thirty dollars off, and I get to engrave "ingenio maximus, arte rudis" on the back for free. What isn't to want? I'm looking forward to applying a music playing 20 GB portable hard drive in obvious and non-obvious ways.
In other news, I need to find something non-physics to do this quarter. As best as I can tell, my options are clubs/classes in martial arts or dancing. The latter would be best, but I don't feel entirely comfortable going in entirely unexperienced and alone, so I think the former is in order. I'd keep up kendo, were it not for the 8:30 am Saturday practices being the main ones. My next thought is to maybe try fencing, but one of the practice nights there is Thursday and I have two homework assignments due Thursdays this term and one due Friday. This, I predict, will lead to very busy Thursday nights. While I may want to be using a sword then, it will undoubtably be a bad idea. Hmm... Any particular suggestions? Feel free to browse this database of orgs for me, if you're thusly intrepid.
Networks is going to be a really weird class. Two lectures in and we've mostly discussed methodologies of describing and collecting data on social networks. Tomorrow we're going to do the same with technological networks. Okay, there was an eensy weensy bit of math in there, proving that if you assume that people are friends with people randomly you see a Poisson distribution of the degree (number of connections) of nodes, which is entirely not what you see in reality (it's more like a power law with a beefed upl tail). I'm mostly curious as to what the makeup of the class is. Are a bunch of social science people taking it? Is it just us physics and complex systems students? Who knows. Maybe tomorrow I'll sit on the other side of the class, where all the people I don't know live. Proximity may not start conversations, but distance certainly limits them.
Ann Arbor, when strangely warm (46 degrees!) and foggy, is quite beautiful. Walking up to my house today, I could see the white-blue lights of the nearby bridge forming a parallel arc into the haze that obscured the bridge itself. In other news, the forecast for tomorrow calls for a high of 53 and a low of 18. In the words of swankier people than I, QtF?
There are snow piles built up at various places on campus that are as tall as I am. The thought that the ground under them will probably remain covered until April seems to always give me a slight grin.
Jan. 12th, 2005 @ 10:33 pm
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| » Vague resolution one of several |
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I need to find a few more Why Nots here.
Being home in Seattle with many of you this last week did much to shake up my ideas of how to exist here in Ann Arbor. Of course, it offers about a bazillion times more problems than solutions, but we'll see what we can do. Just about every goal seems rather unattainable at this point, though.
Jan. 7th, 2005 @ 01:34 am
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| » (No Subject) |
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"I love a martini - but two at the most. Three I'm under the table; Four, I'm under the host." -Dorothy Parker
Dec. 2nd, 2004 @ 05:53 pm
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| » Seattle time |
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So it looks like I will be in Seattle starting the 27th of December until probably the 3rd or so of January. My plane leaves the 4th, so that day won't really count anyway. Who all will be around by then so I can crash somewhere?
Dec. 2nd, 2004 @ 01:02 am
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| » Too much snow. |
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Well, there really isn't too much of it around, but there was enough on the roads that Evan and Chris (the other guy with whom we were going to St. Louis) thought that it would make the drive too slow. Considering it is a 9 hour drive anyway, that would make it a problem.
Back to bed, and thinking of other things to do... This does dramatically increase my free time this weekend, after all.
Nov. 25th, 2004 @ 06:17 am
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| » A proud alumnus |
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Having now seen reference to the RaLouche thing on Boing Boing (twice!) and Sensible Erection, I can only say how proud I am off the RRC crew. Not that the event going off well wasn't enough, mind you, but for it to be making the rounds of the internet is just spectacular. And for the bunch to be so thoroughly new guard gives me hope for future skulldiggery for years to come.
Here's hoping for it to pop up on Mefi...
Nov. 23rd, 2004 @ 11:39 pm
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| » (No Subject) |
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A couple of brief thoughts.
Today at lunch a bunch of us physics students were talking about the election and the idea of statistical fluctuation came up. In physics, we do the same measurement dozens of times just to find some constant we already know to one part in a million to get an extra digit or two, because stastical noise is a huge factor if you take just one measurement. We elect the president on exactly such a single measurement, though, and that's a far, far more important act. The obvious solution is to have people able vote once every week for a month or two, or just keep going until one person has a two or three sigma lead.
Two, this is definitely how I feel things are like right now: http://www.prism.gatech.edu/~gtg734q/unknown.jpg
Nov. 4th, 2004 @ 12:54 am
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