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It’s only March

March 9, 2004 /

My notes are mostly doodles now, but I can’t claim the same kind of downhill slide as Amy, because they were mostly doodles to begin with. I think the first page of last semester’s notebook was all doodles.

What it gets down to is that I don’t pay much attention in class, which is bad. But the professor for whom I have two of my classes hands out hard copies of his PowerPoint presentations every day, which is good. But I’m still not doing well in two of my classes, which is bad. But I get a lot of writing and drawing done, which is good. But I’m still not drawing comics and I haven’t gotten around to publishing my writing project yet, which is bad.

Grad school is proving very useful to me, in that I’m a much better programmer than I was six months ago, and also now I understand frequencies. It may well be, though, that it proves more useful as a way of forcing me to create via an acute and growing distaste for computer science. If I actually had a way to make a living writing, I know perfectly well that I would instead play Dynasty Warriors and never write anything, until I ran out of food and starved. But being stuck in a quiet room with lots of math and Web Serwices[1] is a pretty efficient way to turn my desire for escape into a very exacting word count.

Amy’s blog is pretty great, by the way.

[1] Not a typo.

March 9, 2004 /

It occurred to me the other day that to all appearances, I completely touch-type now. I learned to type ages ago, during my first year of high school, and could theoretically do it then. I never quite got rid of my bad glance-at-the-keys habits, though–habits that persisted through high school (when I didn’t type all that much) and college (when I did). I never quite mastered the numbers row, either. I can touch-type numbers on the numeric keypad now, though, and I appear to have left my glancing habits behind (unless I’m subconsciously reading keys out the bottom of my eyes).

I do still need to glance down for things like ampersands and square brackets, so maybe I should hold off on the plan to cover all my home keyboard keys with decals and clear gloss. Also, it would make it kind of tough if anybody else wanted to use my computer, and I’d look like a showoff bastard. It’s tempting, though. Think about it–I could cover them all with patcheyed smiley faces and be totally Hackers!

March 8, 2004 /

Something pretty gross happened last night.

I semi-regularly make pitchers of Country Time lemonade, which only I drink but which I drink in great quantities. The pitcher is a hassle to wash, so usually I’ll let it get almost empty (at which point the mixture is too strong to drink) and then mix up a new batch in the same pitcher. Kind of like stone soup. I do empty it out and clean it every three batches or so, though.

Yesterday, trying to decide which leftovers to eat, I noticed that we’d almost run out of juice. I pulled the aforementioned pitcher out from the back of the fridge and set it on the counter in anticipation of making more lemonade for dinner. I knew it had been a while since my last batch, but hey, it was in the refrigerator. No worries.

A couple minutes later, Maria started wrinkling her nose up and wondering what smelled bad. I didn’t smell anything, and said as much, but suggested it might be the black bean hummus and pita leftovers we had out from the 3rd Avenue Café. Maria disagreed. Maybe it was the dishes, then? No, nothing we’d been eating would have that kind of sickly-sweet-sour odor.

In the process of emptying the dishwasher, I lifted up the lemonade pitcher and set it down somewhere else. Maria had to leave the kitchen from the smell. I finally took a closer look at the pitcher, which contained green liquid with black stuff floating in it.

I poured it out, followed by gallons of soapy water and a thick coat of baking soda, and Maria made me throw away the pitcher and everything the Undead Lemonade had touched. She wanted to burn them, actually, but we lacked the necessary tools.

If I ever want to kill somebody by burning their flesh off, though, at least now I know what to do.

March 8, 2004 /

“Night fell like Rome: slowly, and with elephants.”

Holly should write for the Bulwer-Lytton awards. (As for the quiz, let’s just say I am not “Nine well read” and leave it at that.)

March 6, 2004 /

Seth David Schoen’s latest entry features a mention of the EFF and the CBLDF in the same section. It’s Seth David Schoen: Brendan’s Pet Issues Edition!

Seth also writes a great little story-essay about confabulation, the practice of making up reasonable, untrue explanations for events and then completely believing them. Some people believe “that confabulation is actually our normal method of thinking,” he says. This is not too far off the mark for me–I constantly catch myself coming up with perfectly sensible stories for actions (being in the theater building late at night, say, or buying snack cakes) for which ordinary reasons already exist. It’s a bad habit, but when you have a memory as bad as mine, it comes in kind of handy. There is, after all, the distinct possibility that the explanation I just made up (to apply to an action for which I’ve forgotten my original reasoning) is actually the real one.

It’s also good for explaining bizarre trivia. I have a good stock of facts in that category, but precious little background on them when challenged. If you ever ask me something you really need to know, and I give you a strange answer, you should probably call me out on it. (I’m usually right, but even so.)

Actually, the reason I started my running commentary on this vitanuova entry is because of the first section. It describes his brilliant exploit of the Southwest LAX-OAK commuter flight system, which is like something you’d see pop up in BlogNomic. Seth and I actually discussed LAX-OAK commuter flights on the day I got to hang out at the EFF offices, since Maria and I (and maybe Monica) will be taking advantage of them this summer.

Do you read vitanuova? You really should. Not only will it make you smarter, it will also free Dmitry! Vitanuova: Freeing Dmitry since March 2001.

Seth apparently rips off old Simpsons jokes.

March 6, 2004 /

Last night Ian, Caitlan and I hopped in Ian’s car amidst pouring rain and drove down to Planet Thai in Lexington, where (as per Mom’s instructions) we surprised Joe at his birthday dinner. I’m not actually sure how old Joe is. My guess would be “bearded years old.”

In addition to Joe’s Eddie Bauer gift certificate, I got to give out the last of my California souvenirs–Joe got a t-shirt, Mom got a bar of Lily soap from the European-goods store in Lawrence, and Caitlan got a green Robin Hood hat from a vintage store in Berkeley (Ian had already received his copy of All Flesh Must Be Eaten). It was fun, especially since I had wrap-bagged the presents in the car, while sitting right in front of Caitlan.

Planet Thai was, by Mom and Joe’s well-honed Thai standards, a bit mediocre. Ian didn’t much like his pad thai, but I ate a whole lot of my crab fried rice. It was pretty subtle, though. It could have used about eight or ten more pounds of crab.

Ian and I left everybody else behind to continue on yet to Richmond, where we met the famous Katie and went bowling. Ian and Katie called each other names, and I bowled a two. This is harder than you’d think, especially with the gutter bumpers in.

Richmond doesn’t look strange yet, or maybe it doesn’t look strange anymore; I mentally moved out of there sometime during my senior year of high school. Not much has changed, except for the increase in liquor stores, which is rapidly approaching parity with the population.

It was a long night of driving, and I’m glad Ian was courteous enough to be my ride, especially with the roads as awful as they were at first. I fell asleep for a while on the way back (Mom and Dad drove me around when I was a baby to get me to sleep, so I pretty much always do this), and I think at one point I woke myself up by snoring. My neck hasn’t been quite right since, but on the other hand, I’m not dead in a car crash either. Ten points.

March 4, 2004 /

Unfortunately, I missed Grey Tuesday by a week, and I feel bad about that. I have more than enough space here to have participated in it, and I haven’t been keeping up with fair use or downhill news in general.

I did check in at EFF today, though, and read their “A Better Way Forward” white paper. You might want to too. It’s excellent, and I haven’t found a decent argument against it.