Heres a little tip that might help everyone out in life: If youre working with 2 dimensions of data, and operating along one of those dimensions isnt giving you much, then its probably a pretty good idea to take a look at the other dimension. It just might work. ok? So that was the problem, now I know how fast everythings going.

RADAR

• RAdio Detecting And Rangefinding


• Reflective Agents with Distributed Adaptive Reasoning


• Reseau Afro-Asiatique pour le Developpement de l'Aviculture Rurale


• Risk Assessment and Decision Analysis Research Group (Queen Mary and Westfield College, London, England)


• Regional Alcohol and Drug Awareness Resource


• Radio Association Defending Airwave Rights

I am not making this up.

Winter is (finally) over and the season of ice has turned into the season of mud. I'm still digging my job a whole fucking lot and not liking my daily commute whatsoever. It's not so bad in the morning (~45m) but can be horrible in the afternoon (=<1h45m). Nikki and I are looking at houses on the south side, of which there are many on teh market right now. Little did I know, but there are miles upon miles upon miles of 2 story brick bungalows on Chicago's south side. And no, you probably won't get knifed for being white and walking around on the south side (unless you wear your "SHUT UP, NIGGER" t-shirt - actually you'd prolly also need "SHUT UP, SPIC" and "SHUT UP, POLACK" shirts as well). There's also a bungalow restoration association or whatever that has loads of help and stuff if you're rehabbing one.


I also bought a digital camera, which is insanely cool.


Good luck on the househunt, M & J. I know how frustrating that can be. Martin, good luck with the car. I know how frustrating those can be as well. Nikki's car blew a head gasket and has been out of comission for 3 weeks now. GM 60 degree V6s (most notably the 3.8L workhorse) are solid, dependable engines but a royal first class bitch to work on. Whoever thought it was a good idea to mount a bank of cylinders within 6" of the firewall should be shot - it shouldn't take 45 minutes to change 3 spark plugs, dig?


Mark I am very confused about you and Hong Kong. Did you get sold into avian bird flu white slavery in the far east? WRITE BACK SOON! YRS, TED.


ps: xoxoxo

So I finally got my radar project data to look like radar data. What, you say, did it look like before? A whole lot of nothing. Now I have something that looks like radar data, now I just have to figure out what to do with it. Doppler would be proud. On a related note, did anyone know that there is ongoing research to discover an effective way of using TV and radio waves already in the air to detect airborne, uh, airplanes? Right now radar systems use a transmitter/reciever just for radar-ing. This new method would eliminate the need for a transmitter (since there are dozens in a typical metropolitan area) Anybody know what the acronym RADAR means? If you know, I'll give you a cookie. no purchase necessary. void in GA, TX, IL, MA, HA, MT, MN, QU, LM, UK, FM, AM, CB, QB, WR, FB, SS, FU.

Know what else? Theres a Japanese surname that goes something like this "O-ishi". The Japanese adjective for delicious is "oishii" So at this very moment there are concievably thousands of Japanese men named "Mr. Delicious"

Martin: Do the Roxy people know we're moving out? They wanted 2mos notice when I moved downstairs, but they also dropped off a form with a few check boxes. I'm assuming that you took care of it if they dropped one off, but if you didnt, could you mention it to Mike if you talk to him on Monday?

I havent felt like theres been anything to post about. I'm not looking for any sort of housing. I'll hang out at my parents until I find a job; seems like the most flexible thing to do right now. Plus, lots of storage. I still have all my appendages and vital organs, havent won the lottery, dont have a job yet, although I'm hoping these people will be interested in interviewing me. Theyre in Atlanta, so maybe I'll get a job and move in to the PB and help start this colony that seems to be sprouting up there. The job seems up my alley, DSP programming, mpeg decoding, not really any hardware design, but I dont have too much of a taste for that.

Again, as seems to be the trend around here the posts come in spurts. Eventually our newly moved and engaged Darren will make a comment and there will be another slew of talks, but until then it is as if we no longer have things to say, which we all know isn't true.

Jeremy and I wen't house shopping yesterday, and will continue a bit today. We didn't find much that really tickled our fancy. Most of the loftish type stuff we found was overpriced, and honestly there wasn't much of it. Partially I feel that our efforts yesterday were doomed from the get go by a late start, but then spending a lot of time at Post Biltmore, where MN is going to be moving into, didn't help the cause much. Although I think I could live there, it is still more of an apartment than I like, and only one place had enough space to make it considerable. Still, it holds a high place on my list until we find more stuff.

The reasons are as follows:
It is close to things, like Jeremy's job, so cars wont be as necessary. There is pretty direct access to a lot of downtown features, which is something I highly cherish.

It is close to friends. Not only MN, but Ewald, the midtown boys and a variety of people live near that area. While Ewald is the only on in walking distance, the rest are a very short drive.

Parking is taken care of. Since I will hopefully have 2 cars soon, it is nice to have closed parking, and since jeremy doesn't have a car I get his parking space.

The one or two drawbacks would be . . . price, however there seems to be little that I can do about that until Jeremy finds something cheaper, and no living with Bruckner, which means that we would have to cut him out, something I do not want to do.

There is a chance that the lofts that we will be looking at today will be what we want, and allow us to have three people, however it is a bit pricy for Bruckner's tastes, so I don't know if he will be in. Regardless, I am starting to feel bad about Bruck because it seems like I am destined to screw him.


In other news apparently there is another rift in the circle of friends, although details are as of yet unavailable and are apparently going to stay that way, it is still a semi monumentous occasion, although not as much so as the chasm from before (that I think only now has been repaired on some level).


I'm looking at picking up a prelude this monday. The ticket price is more that I had originally been looking for, but with potential help from V and the good quality of the car (I'm no longer looking for the clunker from the early 80s) it is worth the endeavour. Although part of me is concerned about falling into my Dad's abyss of having too much stuff, hopefully the waulity of my stuff will be significantly higher than my Dad's.

Speaking of Dad, we had a grat time at the game friday, and will have even more of a great time today at the regional finals between Duke and Xavier. Fortunately the Tech game is before that, so I will either be elated or destroyed by the time we go watch some more hoops. MY dream is of a 2 ACC final four, which will no deoubt make sportscenter as a Did You Know.

On the videogame front, Raibow 6 is getting easier because I'm getting better. Gaiden is getting shorter because you can put your head down and bulldog your way through the difficulties in that game. Something looms on the horizon because I want a new game, but decisions are hard. I'm having a hard time convincing myself of another Xbox game because the content out there really isn't that great. Althgouh many games come with Live, what that involves is very variable. There isn't a grat platformer out there, and I feel myslef getting pulled in the platform direction since I don't have the time it requires to do the RPG/Fighting games anymore (maybe in the summer). Ratchet and Clank is a good game, with friends backing that up, so maybe that is where the cash will drop. But then again . . . there is always Cronicles . . .

M

By the by, Raibow 6 is the hardest game I have played in years.

M

To those who are unware and have heard me gloat yet. My Dad and I, in a monumentoud event where we will spend multiple hours together, are going to the NCAA games that are here this weekend. Woooooooooooooooooooo!!!!

I've never been to the games before so I'm stoked. It was difficult figuring out how we were going to get there, because things are always difficult with my dad, but it still can't ruin the evening. There is very little that can, although I am worried that my knee will try.

M

Yeah, at least you finally figured out that you can save during a mission

RTFM

Well, Jeremy and my attempt to get a cool place has failed miserably. At this point we are left to look for more places. This really blows for two reasons, one was because that place was awesome and we would have had a blast living there, second is that I am not in the "hey this is where cool places to live are" loop so I don't feel useful. Since I don't have the time to look around (jeremy, how is saturday for you to hunt down places) during the week I can only do my online searches. But cool places are hard to find online. I looked at some of the xpensive lofts on the other side of the high way and they are, well, expensive. Donkeycock.

I've finally progressed past the third novice level in Raibow 6. I also have been able to relive one of my favorite pastimes, watching people play games since mikex0r is playing Gaiden almost every day. I forgot the ups and downs of watching your friend play a game you know little about. It certainly is a lot of fun. I feel confident saying my game is a little harder than his, however that is only because his in his game you can get beat around for a long time and then "heal." There is no healing in RAibow 6, if you get shot once you could die depending on where they hit you. This makes the game a bit more frustrating. Regardless, I must say that this Xbox expereince reminds me of the old days of Nintendo when games required skill to win them. I certainly would not have guessed that Microsoft would be the one to take me back to that level, but they have and I am impressed. We will be getting more games soon for the Xbox, however only if they are live enabled. I want a more fun, Crashbandicoot-esque platformer but this machine doesn't do those well. Until then I don't use live as much as I shoul because I am intimidated by the difficulty of the game and my lack of time. Speaking of lack of time I need to get ready for school. Talk to you later.

M

What the fuck!!! I wake up today and for no reason my right knee (the one from surgey) is swollen and hurts like a bitch. It has been aching all day. I didn't do shit with it yesterday. I did lift monday, but it seems odd that I would get a delay of one day before the swelling hits. And it hit like a mother fucker, which blows my mind. I'm seeing the Doc tomorrow to find out what the fuck is up . . . . fuck!

M

While everyone has been glowing over Ninja Gaiden, I have been rivetted to Rainbow 6.
I'm not too much of an FPS player, but the tactical nature of this game makes it a lot of fun. You go around stopping terrorist, but you must be stealthy, and bullets will kill you pretty quick There have been a few missions where I hear some noise and then I am dead. The people at Penny Arcade have spoken very highly of this game and I concur.

It does come equipped with LIVE, so I can play online to my hearts content, although I don't now because I suck. The real fun is when you strap on the head set and start issuing commands and hearing responses through the headset. The voice recognition in the game is pretty solid and you can tell your 4 man team to do just about anything. That is where the real fun is.

Not to knock Ninja Gaiden (lest I be killed while writing this), but Rainbow 6 has my interest. I'm sure I will switch bandwagons soon, especially since everyone says that Gaiden is really fucking head, but for now I'm content sneakingaround trying to shoot people without them knowing it. Out.

M

well, they've been through several revisions of axis and allies. i don't know about the independant theatre games' histories, let's get that straight. but what i've heard from everyone who's played other revisions of axis and allies was that it was 'too accurate' or inaccurate in that the germans didn't have a chance of winning, which was not the case during the great war. the idea of axis and allies is to reenact wwii with hindsight and see how the outcome may have changed with modern techniques (and having everyone in the same room talking openly about their strategies).

that way the fun of the game is saying 'we've got the bombs, don't fuck with us' or, 'wow, it's lucky that hitler fucked up here and here, cause i don't have the quadriceps to be goosestepping all over the place' -- either side can win the game.

i think that in the european theatre, there's a lot more emphasis on the luck of the dice roll and not as much on strategy. as germany, one bad battle, and you can basically write the game off.

i'll second the ninja gaiden review. what i like most, though is the fact that you can do all the wacky stuff that you could always do in ninja gaiden (like scaling sheer surfaces) and so much more. watching ryu run along walls really makes me wish i was a ninja.

Why is the European theatre unfair? Its based on a historical event. Everytime we've played, the outcome has been historically accurrate, except that the commander of the Germans wasnt Cuban. I dont think its unfair, just that martin hasnt found a way to overcome the fact that the game is set-up to be historical. They could have made it more fair (made Germany more powerful, cut down some of the US's ipc revenue etc) but then it wouldnt be as cool if whoever played germany kicked everybodys ass one day.

But I digress.

Ninja Gaiden is cool. And fun. Did I mention its cool? oh yeah, I did. Its also hard. Everyonce in a while you run into a group of ninjas, and they drop down from who knows where (blimp attack?) and surround you. At first your're like "other ninjas! they'll be my friends" but then they start kicking your ass. but not in a wholesome American mom's apple pie way, more of like a foreign, non-American way. They dont follow the rule. you know, they dont wait in line to die. They gang up on you like the ninjas they are. And they cut you with their sharp, sharp swords.

Rich and I saw a trailer for a Japanese movie this morning. Its pretty.

Casshern

or it could mean that monkies are going to fly out of my butt (sheah). but what it most likely means is that your post either confused or caused discomfort in reader/posters and they have to collect themselves and/or evaluate your new presence before their next post. see they don't want you to feel left out, but they don't know how to respond to you. this pause in the conversation is what people call 'dead air' and resultantly a 'killed conversation'. your post being the crux of this incident makes you the 'conversation killer'.

the problem here is that we can't trust the responses of any of the other jackasses that post here, because you know they're just going to try to be antagonistic. all we have to rely on is our superior wit and the power of the socratic dialcectic.

no, you are not stating the facts. you are confusing causation and correlation. the facts are that i posted, and then no one posted afterwards. this does not imply that my post stopped all conversation. it could simply mean that people are busy.

and yet the only posts to result have been comentary on (and defense of) how your post stopped all other blog denizens from conversing. all i'm doing here is stating the facts. evidently your post was neither stimulating nor generative.

look, guy. i asked no less than 5 questions, gave an interesting and topical anecdote about marriage, and provided a link to what i feel is a humorous article about domesticated animals starving in the afterlife. that post was ripe with conversation starters/stimulators.

wow dude, way to kill the conversation.

hey everyone. i figured i'd finally join in.

1) congrats to matt and jeff (does he post here?). are there dates for the big days yet? i'm getting married on 09/11/04, which is worth it just to see the look on people's faces when i tell then the date. it's actually a family tradition in julie's family. her cousin was married on the anniversary of pearl harbor and her parents were married on the anniversary of jfk's assassination.

2) jer, what happened with the break-in? what did they take? how did they get in?

3) here is something fucking hillarious (if read before next wednesday, at least).

4) if there's some axis and allies action, count me in.

thus begins the blogging of daron.

well, i like that a lot. i mean, i'll have to play it to really know, but i like that it's considerably different from the original -- as opposed to the european theatre, which is just unfair.

The instructions are on a webpage somewhere, but heres the idea:

Japan, US & China and India & Austrailia (GB)
China is controlled by the US and can only build infantry.
The alllies win by taking Tokyo; Japan can win by either taking one of the capitals, or by dragging the game out long enough. Japan gets 1 "victory point" for every 10 IPC's it collects; when it gets 22 victory points, it wins.

i'm not sure if they have energy drinks in japan (the way we do -- crunk, pimp, etc) but that's exactly what i assumed the commercial was for.

you know i'm down for some axis and allies. so who's involved in this one? russia, us, nippon?

Incindentally, thats a commercial for a vitamin drink, if it makes any more sense now.

yeah, I know it doesnt.

Speaking of umbrellas, when I lived at the Peachtree St instantiation of the fort, I had a giant golf umbrella with the word "Head" written on it. Did anyone happen to end up with it? I probably left it on marta.

For some reason we were talking about Arnold in Japanese class at some point. Apparently he's done a few comercials over there. They call him "Shwachi-chan" according to the Japanese teacher.

Apparently the holy season of Saint Patricks Day is a season of miracles, or coincidences or ironies or something like that. Way back at Christmas time, Martin and I decided to give each other A&A Europe and Pacific. Martin bought Europe, and I never bought Pacific. Flash forward to my birthday: Rich was trying to find Shogan (or Samurai Swords) for me, but found that both incarnations of that game have been discontinued. So he bought A&A Pacific. So now we have Pacific and Europe, and since Pacific is a max 3 player game, maybe I can con Martin into playing it more often than the other 2.

this is funny on so many levels.

jesus christ indeed. about the break-ins and engagement fever and the making of mothers take away xboxes because fm-jellydoughnut is telling johnny he's going to rip out his eyes and skull fuck him with rails.

what all got stolen? congrats to josh! unofficially? does that mean he's thinking of proposing?

well,
that was an awful lot of posts in a row, wasn't it?

so i didn't get to experience xbox live yet. there was a note for me when i woke up this morning (at martin's) about how i just had to try it, but there was no mention of the associated 'passcode' that i'd need to access said service. anyway, it's just as well. it was early in the morning and all of martin's roommates were asleep, so i couldn't be jumping up and down and mother-fucking this and rat-bastarding that. also, martin's game selection is about as far from my realm as possible.

there's a mech combat game, which are fun, but notoriously hard to controll and a tactical fps, which i have no taste for whatever. so that was a problem. the controls are wacky on the xbox, what with all of the dials and spikes on the controller. it was more than a little confusing.

now i don't remember for sure, but i thought that the xbox controllers spoke usb. if that's the case, then i should be able to hook in a keyboard and mouse and hopefully the game will recognize them as valid inputs. then i can start whooping a little ass. and talking smack to fifteen year olds.

even if i get destroyed in the actual game, i'm going to give these little kids a lesson in creative swearing. their mothers are likely to take the consoles away from them. i can't wait.

jesus christ. there's a fucking engagement fever going around. daron, josh (unofficially), matt and jeff. what the hell is going on?

oh yeah, congratulations everyone.

so mn's house was broken in to. i wonder if i am dead inside because i didn't really feel violated or anything, though it's basically my house. maybe i'm just not that attached to stuff, and it's just stuff that they took. who knows. i mean, i could think of some things that i would be upset about losing. i remember being pretty crazed when that box of shit got stolen at the fort, but some of those things had sentimental value, so that probably had a lot to do with it. this isn't some sort of shock numbness either. i'm just really not fazed. weird.

i think that everyone's recovering pretty well, though.. thankfully.

I'm curious about Xbox etiquette - Do people swear up and down on each other while deathmatching in Halo, like a freshman hall?

Also, in other news, it looks like I'll be under the Tech umbrella, as they say, for the next couple of years as I've been accepted to the phd program. It's quite possible that I will have been at Tech for over a decade by the time I finish up. Must make you cringe your big toes, eh Ted? I, for one, am thrilled at the prospect of nursing from the Tech teat for a few more years.

Which brings me to other big news - Jeff Lindsay is now engaged to Claire Horn! I finally saw him last night for the first time in 2 weeks and Claire actually asked him on his bday last Sunday. We saw it coming, but not this soon. For those of you who didn't meet Claire (which I know J and Martin did at J's party), she's very nice and quite likable. Jeff seems very happy.

First, congrats to Roxy and Matt. I'll have to spread the news to Roxy's old friends since she doesn't talk to them any more, and we had a bet that she would be one of the last to get married.

Second, Xbox Live fucking rules. I finally got my Xbox from Jason (unmodded, but I don't really give a fuck). I bought Rainbow 6 and Live for 12 months because I needed the experience. It is one of the strangest things when you hook up and they start talking to you through the headset. I'm no expert, but I've played a bunch of online games, and it is really fucking wierd when you hear people talking to you. All of a sudden I got very self concious of what I could say, and also felt very bad that I am not a good player yet, because people could actually talk to me and ask me what the fuck is wrong with me. I got Rich to play also, and Holly now blames me for stealing her boyfriend. I really can't explain how cool this system is. It doesn't make me like Microsoft or anything, but instead it makes me feel like Microsoft is a drug pusher. I may not like them as a person, but I can't deny that their product is really fucking fun to play with. Damn it's cool.

I guess there isn't much going on aside from that. School is school, however MY spring break comes closer every day. It isn't until the first full week in april, but that might actually be good timing. Originally I was thinking of going to Colorado to work some, and that may still happen. But I might instead play in a tournament in Kansas, hang out with a friend in Arkansas andgo visit Mark in Houstonkansas. These are all still just ideas and probably wont be concrete for a while, but then again spring break isn't for a while.

Finally, I am very proud that I went and got a general physical with a doctor. I've noted that ever since leaving the Tech umbrella (undergrad) and even before then my visits to the not sportsmed doctor were very infrequent. After losing my Mom, I realized that I need to be the one driving force taking care of myself. I've been wanting to get a physical for a long time, but haven't had the time. I think my Mom's death has made me realize my own mortality a bit more and that I need to keep an eye on my body so that nothing sneaks up on me. So I got a physical, which is great. Their doing blood work right now to check my Cholesterol and shit. I'm really just proud that I'm finally moving to a point in my life where I'm taking care of the things that I think need taking care of and not living as much (but still very) day to day. Out.

M

just got back from australia and caught up on some fort blog since the australia post. in quick response to the issues brought up:

• i believe that a fast person is indeed the whole of a much larger set than the fast running human. therefore, it is well worth arguing that specifying the action that is fast is necessary to get your idea across. you can specify this action - whether it is driving or running - in a direct or indirect manner. in making this indirect or direct specification, you lay out what is known in AI as a semantic network. therefore, if you asked an AI agent who the fastest race car driver is, it would most likely connect race car driving to fastest person and respond with dale earnhardt (god bless).


• I hope I never get a penis panic


• MiX0R, congrats on being proficient in Japanese

In other news, Roxanne and I are officially engaged to be married! Mark, you'd be pleased to know I asked her father's permission beforehand with your advice as a factor in my decision to do so. I proposed out of breath after we reached the top of Mt. Kosciuszko, the highest point in Australia (not nearly as impressive, of course, as the other 6 continental summits, but still 14 miles hike in a day). Lucky for me, I wasn't turned down and made into a sad bastard for the remainder of the trip. We celebrated with Tim Tam ice cream and beer at the Lake Jindabyne campground later that night. We haven't set any wedding dates or anything but all of you should expect to receive wedding invitations (and hopefully bachelor party invites as well). Please post or email me your mailing address. Needless to say, I am a happy happy fiance (that's f-eye - ANZ). More stories and pictures of the trip will come soon, but I'm about to fall over from the jet lag. woot!

this is gonna be another of those short qwerty blogs. i've been working a lot. hopefully it's lining my pockets (with money), cause if things go according to (or even slightly skewed from) plan, martin and i are going to be involved in some fort improvement projects in the near-term.

that said, i definitely prefer writing my own code to modifying that of others. although, i am grateful for all the examples i've been afforded by the scripts that i'm editing. i'd basically be in the dark otherwise. and nobody likes towrite code in the dark... hmm.. or some better metaphor.

notes:

• is that how you make an adverb out of 'basic'?


• what does 'phor' mean, and how is a meta phor a phor-of-phors?

I'm sorry Martin. I didnt mean to make you stop blogging. I'll even admit that Marion Jones is faster than any woman in a car. (insert mom joke here) There. I said it. I'm sorry.

So, I have not posted in a while. I do read the posts every day at about 11:30 PM (hong kong time). I am keeping up with you guys... I'm just not doing a good job of letting you guys keep up with me.

Right now it is dark and I'm still at work. Boo. We have some projects that take lots of hoop jumping and I'm the one that has no family to rush home to so I get shit done.

Really, thats about all I have to say. I did rap with Martin this weekend for a good bit on saturday morning. (In between his bevy of bitches.) That was cool to catch up and swap shop talk about physics and high school projects.

Well, back to the grind. Hope all of you are well.

This isn't some MENSA bullshit, this is mikex0r bringing up an issue he had with a comment I made.

I stated that Marion Jones is the fastest woman on the planet. Michael took issue with that because I didn't specify that she was running, and he said, what about people in cars. Which led me to say that his point didn't matter because when I said that the PERSON was the fastest it removed the car from the equation. Already michael has skewed the question to try to prove his point. His uestion should reason:

" so if I said so-and-so was the fastest person on the planet AND is a race car driver (note NOT the fastest "driver" as he said), would you think that . . . "

Granted, that still makes it sound like this person is driving, but when you include the words "fastest driver" in your statement you are asserting that they drive fast, not that they move fast. When I stated that someone is the fastest person, then I am asserting that they person fast, NOT drive fast.

There, point made.

M

what is this some kind of mensa thing?

i'd think that dood is the fastest driver. if you say that person x is in a group of people who do a specific task and then say that he is the superlative in some field that is related to the task in which he and his fellows particpate, i'm going to assume you're talking about performing that task.

now if you said that michael hakaakhanaanen was the fastest runner of all race drivers, i'd think that you were talking about running.

ok

so if I said so-and-so was the fastest race car driver on the planet, would you think that I've assembled all of the race car drivers in the world and declared the winner of a foot race between them all the fastest, or that I've had a big car race and declared the winner of that the fastest race car driver in the world?

I'm surprised that I am the next one to blog. Although maybe I shouldn't be. mikex0r is in Alabama with Carolyn for spring break, Matt is in Australia, Mark is Mark, Ted is Ted, and jeremy has been busy. Which leaves little ol me to talk about the issues or topics of the day while taking a break from grading.

Well, I had practice today, which wasn't all that great. Rival (the mixed team that I captain with two others) is in a big transition period. We made it to nationals last year on the strength of our men and by the benefit of having an extra bid to the dance from our region. Women was a paramount issue for this year since the region is back down to 2 bids. There has been a lot of issues with Ozone (the womens team from Atlanta and by far the most successful Atlanta team) and all of a sudden we gain a new Captain which is a 5 time national champion when she lived in Boston. That's great, it adds more legitimacy to what we are trying to do, and will help us attract more skilled women. The issue that I am having now is an old issue in the mixed game. There is enough rumblings in both the mens and womens games that there are a lot of good players out there who are now showing up to our practices thinking about playing for Rival. That's great and all, but we don't want to turn into a team of "mercenaries" as Evil calls them (people who are good but only show for one year and then leave). Also, being successful in the mixed game is less about the skill of your players and more about the chemistry that they have, and these players are leaving other teams for various reasons. The final point is that I have this feeling that we are going to pick up a bunch of player that are going to be headaches when we get them on the field, and while we might do well, I don't think they will be the reason. We can do well with people that are easy and nice to work with, so why not stick with those people. I feel like I am the minority amongst the captains on this one. I just feel that greatly mixing things up is not the way to build a better team. The teams that win nationals have been together for a bunch of years, they have the chemistry that makes them deadly. Having a large rotating cast of players is not conducive to that.

With that being said it is back to my grading. Out.

M

Well, here I am at work again, with another week behind me. I feel like I should be trudging ahead so that I don't get slammed later on, but after staying out late last night I am tired and want to sleep. Fortunately I don't have to work out tonight so I can just rocket home (have to get gas and deposit checks) and then try to sleep before PTI. I don't have anything intersting to say, but maybe that is because I am tired. Oh, I am trying to get funding to go to an AP clinic for Physics in Seattle. It will be the week before I go to Seattle for a tournament, so if everything works out well I will drive up there and spend the week, play, then drive home. This will finish the final few states (I have to find a way to get Nevada, but I think J and I are going to Vegas) on my long quest. This would be a mightly acheivement, and I am looking for someone who is interested in the endeavour. We're talking leaving mid june, and being back after the 4th.

M

is it signed by anyone, mikex0r? did you get back a scantron with little pink ink dots by the questions that you missed? did you remember to take your chapstick with you to the exam? so the machine can't mark your paper?

if it's not signed, something strange is afoot. that or the test went back and forth over that mysterious date line many times and lost 3 months. i guess you and matt (our intrepid world travellers) would know about such things more than i.

by the by, i'm posting this from work. why am i still at work you may ask? well. two reasons: 1) i'm putting out fires started by others' incompetence, and we all know how time-consuming that can be. and 2) they're paying me overtime on top of my salary for hours that i work outside of my contactual obligation (not too shabby at $15/hr), so why not cram as many hours into the week as possible? this is, of course, until they get around to making me a 40 hour per week 9-5 working stiff (like so many of us these days) and increase my salary, which i have not yet made any concrete plans to spend, though there are plenty of wishlist items...

In other news, I got my results from the proficiency test, which I passed.

Its not signed by the Emperor though.

I guess I shouldnt be too disappointed

displaying non-english characters is so fucking broken. noone has any clue how to do it and noone uses unicode. w t f'in f?

if i were japanese, i'd be much more worried about �k�z -- the asian anorexia.

Matt, good to hear you, Miz Rox and Scoobian have landed safely. Remember, saying "I'm stuffed" after a meal means that you're pregnant. And that THE JAPANESE ARE TRULY MAD.

Work has been going well for me. I've gotten to do honest-to-dog engineering work, like signing off on changes to parts we design, more stress analysis, more CAD monkey work, etc. I've also been running around a railyard and inspecting stuff we make that's been installed on rail cars to make sure it's in good shape.

sammich.org is slowly but surely getting an overhaul, what with honest-to-dog xhtml 1.1 and css and whatever and bullshit. whoopty doo, I totally give a shit about standards and the web and making a difference. or something. mmeh.

Do you know whats troubling? Putting trees in your mouth. At least the Japanese thought so.

1) Yep, crossing the Pacific will do that to you.

2) Watch out for the dangoes.

Chaps, Rox, Ian and I safely arrived here in Sydney with our bikes intact (or so I believe, we still haven't assembled them yet). I'm writing you from the Australian Museum where they display all the deadly animals and insects that we'll be facing for the next 2 weeks on the road. I think Ian's probability of dying is much higher since he's staying for 2 months and has a freakish desire to go into the outback (as in the real desert in the middle of the damn continent/ country). We won't see any true outback, only bush, as we're traveling south along the coast from Sydney where we'll hopefully end up at Albury (in the Snowy Mountains) where Rox and I will catch a train back and come home.

The weather is gorgeous, the coffee is the best I've ever had, and the people are just as stereotypically laid-back and witty as we hoped for. Damn, the flight was long (13.5 hours), but I was expecting 18 when we first boarded so I guess I should be grateful. Oh, and shit, FREE BEER on the plane. That ruled. I sampled all the Aussie favorites (Tooheys New, Victoria Bitter, Fosters). Mmmm...
We're sleep at this hostel called the Original Backpackers. Place rules (an old victorian mansion) and nice n cheapy cheap. Today we're loafing around the city and adjusting the time change (we lost a whole day when we crossed the international date line... how freaking strange... it's Tuesday here). Tomorrow morning we take off on the left side of the road and hopefully won't forget when turning right. It's tough enough to cross the streets.

Alright, we're off to check out the box jellyfish and green taipan, the two most venomous creatures on the planet. Over n out.

so this full-time thing at techbridge is coming closer to being a reality. there hasn't been an official commemerative barn-raising or anything, but suddenly there's a lot more on my plate. which is fine. mofuckers just better remember to up my salary. i know this is a non-profit gig, but they just lost two full-timers for whom i'm picking up some of the slack. can't nobody say that there ain't money to pay me. i need the money to buy some led displays and various other toys.

also, i'm writing code at work, which is great, since it's what i'd be doing at home for free if i didn't have a job. days at the office go by a lot faster now and are much more pleasant. it's not like a snow day every day or anything, but it's better.

it sounds like you need to live with/near some people with whom you can go on adventures when you're in a slump. and maybe a cool place to go on adventures. or some sweet pussy. but i ain't one to gossip, so you ain't heard that from me.

I'm flicking all of you off right now. And you cant do any thing about it.

Maybe a couple of the people who occasionally read this will recall that I took a Japanese Proficiency (i before e, except after c my ass) (thank GOD for this) Test, probably The Japanese Proficeincy Test (see its better not to follow the rules. things get spelt right) Any way, I took it on December 7th (thats right, the day that lives in infamy. pretty ironic if you ask me. do it sometime. I'll say: "thats pretty ironic") and they told me that the results would be back in March. ITS A FUCKIN SCANTRON! In high school, we would take these tests and the teacher would leave for 20 minutes and give us the results before the end of the class! (if everyone finished soon enough) but noooo, it takes 3-4 months for this test to be graded. probably needs a trip or two across the pacific, and the Emporers personal seal of approval. So I'm waiting for that to come in.

Hey Martin. How was tutoring?