it's hard to believe that 4 weeks have flown by here in san francisco. san fran is cold in the summer. cold cold cold. and foggy. but these are the only gripes i can come up for san francisco is a very nice place to be... especially if you're a hobo, which must explain why there are so many of them. i take the bus through haight-ashbury most days to see 20 something voluntary hobos. it's exactly what you'd expect from haight-ashbury... scruffy folks sitting cross-legged all over the place playing guitars and hugging each other.

last week we were visited by rick, steve, barbara, ian, and tanner (ian's labmate) all at the same time. it was fun playing host in a town we know very little about. we found the best restaurant ever - burma superstar - thanks to a suggestion by roger who sits next to me at ilm. burma superstar has a 1.5 hour + wait, but they have a bar across the street that they own which acts as the waiting room. it's great. please, everyone come visit and i guarantee a fine time at burma superstar. and a tour of ilm.

ilm is an amazing place - the halls are lined with old robots and moquettes from movies past. slimer is down the hall next to viggo from ghostbusters. seeing hans solo frozen in carbonite is a strange feeling. it seems to be one of my earliest movie memories - seeing hans solo frozen up. jar jar binks is frozen in carbonite right next to hans solo!

mix0r, when are you coming to SF? rice-a-roni is made in chicago it turns out but we can eat it nevertheless.

i have an eye infection that makes me want to tear my eyeballz out!!!

We're on the home stretch of this trip. The Emory women's team did fantastic this weekend, going .500 on the weekend. We beat seed on friday, going 2-1 to take the 2 seed in the pool. We had a shitty draw for our pre-quarters match . . . a regional rival, Florida. The bitches couldn't hold seed in their pool so we had to play them in the cross-over. After losing to them we handled the girls from Swarthmore, then lost to our nemisis Michigan. By the last game we were very tired and it was showing.

The real victory of the weekend was beating our arch rival UGA in the second game on Friday. They were in our pool dispite being in our region. We hadn't gotten a chance to play them at regionals, but lost to the twice at sectionals. We took half 8-4, then laid the wood down and finished the game, eliminating any chance they had of winning the tournament and of finishing in the top 8. Granted, we didn't finish in the top eight either, but we ruined their tournament, and that is always fun.

Right now I am headed home from Nashville, after visiting Chowning. Jason and I went to go see X3 again last night. It was still good, but there wasn't as much hidden shit to catch the second time around as I would expect. Jason and I have a good idea of what we should be doing with the mobile internet . . . poker. We should be on the road playing internet tables making the money we need for gas and other amenities. So keep that in you pocket for the trip to Alaska. It is going to take 1 month, and be entirely funded through Party Poker. Out.

Heres more on our series of international blog posts.

I am currently sitting in a computer lab of the library of the university of monterrey. the keyboards are so fucked up here in mexico, that i will use minimal punctuation and capitalization.

See, martin, what you should of done is found a theatre close to the time zone and you would have had an extra hour. knoxville is pretty close, isnt it? good thing you just bought new tires to run from the cops with. too bad they didnt catch you. it would have been fun to drive up to knoxville to retrieve your impounded car.

so i left my blackberry on the plane, which is no big deal because im a corporate shill and corporate shills can spend corporate money like water. but i do have to go to boise next week so im sure it will be a pain in the ass not to have it. oh well, i dont want to talk to them any way.

also, by the way, the robot factory is at 95% shit saturation. its going to blow. who the hell was responsible for the control system to keep that level maintained. somebody get the president on the line. except i think thats me. and i lost my cell phone.

speaking of my government, i am appointing matt flagg my consulate general in San Fran. i expect everything to be prepared for my state visit. i want a bowl of ricearoni on a trolley with a bunch of gay guys.

singing show tunes.

For next time, martin, use the new yahoo maps. they have traffic information in them.

It is currently 2 am, and Jason and I have just seen the midnight showing of X-Men 3. I will try to avoid any spoilers . . . but the movie was a lot better than I thought it was going to be. Mikexor can attest to the elation that I felt when it was decided that we were going to the midnight showing on the road ( . . . in Knoxville . . . on the first leg of a roadtrip), but I wasn't too stoked to see it only 12 hours ago.

Anyway, the movie was great, and will be enjoyed by all, but I have a different story to tell:

Jason and I get the internet up and running in the car after stopping for some gas and we manage to find a theatre with a ~12 am showing in Knoxville. We looked at the trip times and noticed we should be getting there with about 30 minutes to kill. No real loss, maybe the theatre has an arcade. So we're driving, and around 90 miles away from Knoxville we start hitting stand-still traffic. A little odd, but no real alarm. It is probably a stalled car, and we still had 1.5 hours before the movie. The traffic starts lurching forward after a small amount of time, but it still isn't much flow. After about 30 minutes of this we're realizing we're getting fucked because the traffic is because of some "road work" that no one can see and will be going on for miles. With only one+ hours left before the mocing and still over 80 miles to go it was time to be creative. So Jason, the expert navigator that he is breaks out the map . . . only to be told by me that the light doesn't work. That doesn't stop Jason from using his cell phone backlight to look at the map of Tennessee and see that if we take the exit that is only one mile ahead we can hop over to US 11, which runs along this section of 75 and take that to a better place. So the plan is hatched to try to try this detour to avoid traffic and hopefully not miss the movie we tried so hard to set up.

The mile before the exits was 5 minutes of utter hell, but we get off. We look at the time and we have just under one hour to make it to Knoxville which is still over 80 miles away. Time to drive like we're running from the cops. So we're booking it down this side road to get to US 11, we're pushing 80 on a two lane road, passing people left and right as Jason is trying to map out the best route based on the expected length of the traffic. We manage to make it back on the highway with 67 miles to go and 45 minutes to do it . . . time to drive faster. So we're going ~100, nothing too crazy, but we're passing people left and right. At least this time there are multiple lanes. We manage to make it to the exit with about 5 minutes left before the movie . . . perfect. So we pull up the directions to the theatre and follow them to find . . . no theatre? What's the deal, we paid for the tickets so it couldn't have closed, but we're following our orders and getting no where. so we have to drive up and down Peter's St trying to find the theatre. 12:01, movie start time passes and we still haven't found it. 12:07, by looking at the street address of the theatre we've narrowed our search to between the Goody's and the Guitar World, but between them is only a Lowe's and it is way back in the fucking woods. Well it turns out that behind the Lowe's that is behind the Goody's there is a theatre that we have tickets to. The time is around 12:12, so we've missed the first bit of the movie, but c'est la vie.

More to come on this road trip, but for now I am tired and will sleep.

Hey all,

Jason here coming from the heart-colored, Martin mobile. That's right. Thanks to the ingenuity of MikeXor, Tino's iBook, and my....well, me....we are blogging you FROM THE ROAD! Right now we're driving up I-75 N headed to Columbus, OH to watch College Ultimate Frisbee Nationals, and we are pumped that we actually have Internet. Martin was so excited he actually missed our first turn, and we had to take the long way to 75.

So far, we've come up with some pretty tubular ideas for this mad wickedness. First, as many of you well know (and if you don't, you should be hung upside down from a tree and shot), tonight at 12 is the opening of X-Men : The Last Stand. Martin had the brilliant idea of hitting up Fandango when we are near a city that will actually be playing X-Men : TLS, and ordering our tickets online, and then picking them up when we get there. Sheer madness I tell you!

Also, we wondered if there was some sort of way we could turn this thing into a GPS so we could track our progress over the iBook. Perhaps something that will be saved for another trip.

All this shit does sound pretty cool, but I just wanna watch some Internet porn from the road. Perhaps I'll save that for when Martin is napping later. One hand on the keyboard, one hand on the wheel, one hand on my johnson. Yeah, I know....

Anywho, more road blogs to come.

J-

Brad, we need some clarification on this doppelganger. How do you know its a French dopelganger? Is it really a doppleganger, or are you just trying to throw us off the trail that you went to E3 and didnt invite us? Can you even fotograph a doppalgager? How many miles is it to San Bernadino from LA? If Train A leaves LA at 12 noon and travels at a rate of 65 kph, and train B leaves OKC at 5 noon and travles at a rate of 8 potatoes per second, how much tea is in china?

What happens if ze German doplaganger shows up?

Be careful. This is not me, but my doppleganger spotted at E3. Remember, dopplegangers are bad. Especially when they are French.

yaaaaaaawn. that was a nice 2562 hour nap.

sweet.

I love Goldfrapp!
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6270782271163541632&q=goldfrapp

Typey typey typitty type type typey typitty type type type click.

I remember learning about programming . . . once. I feel confident I can program in MATLAB. I feel like I paid attention in classes where programming was covered. Yet I don't feel like I can program in C. Unfortunately that is what my LEGO robot wants from me (or at least something like C). It has kind of been a sore point for me that I don't know how to program well. I like to think that part of the quality of the education and training I go at Tech is the ability to learn whatever shit I need to learn in order to accomplish whatever is asked of me. But I knew that if I was stuck in a room with a computer pointing a gun at me and my survival was contingent on writting a java script that told the computer to put the gun down, I would be fucked.

With that in mind, I feel a great sense of accomplishment in the work that I have been able to do with the LEGO RCX and NQC. Granted, I'm not actually programming in C, but I'm more proficient with my little kiddie-C version. My robot has been given a pretty simple line tracking program, but I think it have found a way to program in a PD controller in NQC. Right now 'm just working on the P part of the controller, but if that works I'll get to move on to the D component. It is a small accomplishment, but it is nice to be able to implement some of the theory that I have worked on for years, and to do it from the ground up feels good. Next, and Mark should be a part of this one, is to come up with a state-space controller for my little robot.

In gaming news, Guitar Hero is awesome, Kindom Hearts 2 is fucking beautiful and great to play, and finally I opened Sly Cooper 3 which is a fun platformer that is worth a look. Guitar Hero 2 will be coming out in November, which means I can just play bass or rhythm guitar for Rich's blazing licks on the lead. Also, Kingdom Hearts 1 and Sly Cooper 3 are both worth $20 if you ahve a PS2 and some time on your hands.

In other news, I got to lay out for the first time since the last (3rd) ACL surgery. I love the feeling that you I when you are flying through the air. I love the feeling that I get when I get to run at full speed chasing after something. It is becoming increasingly obvious that I have to find something more active and competitive to do with my days. Sigh.

Whats wrong with all of you?

Why didnt any one tell me about this?

http://thugbot.net/features/lebowski/

We finally made it through hail and whiteouts to San Francisco. I had no directions to the place we're staying at but I did know it was atop the highest point so we just drove up up up through these very confusing and teeny streets. Amazingly, this strategy works. All we know is that food and stores are down the hill and home is back up the hill. I don't think we'll ever learn these streets as they are friggin confusing. The place is nice - one of those tiny rowhouses you see in pictures and the view is stunning. But there basically isn't a door on the bathroom, which is shared. Ha!

Martin, congrats on pseudo-finishing. And Mark, congrats on finishing your semester from hell. Try not to piss on the toilet seat. ;)

It is over . . . kind of. I have walked at the 2006 commencement ceremony. However before I did Ma Tech had to kick me around once more. It turns out that the NOTICE!! that they have on the commencement web page stating that the ceremony will at the Collesium is for summer graduation . . . which is in fucking August. So I was sitting there with about 6 other people waiting for the line up to begin at the collesium. Obviously it never happened, so we had to book it to the Georgia Dome, we made it just in time to get in the line up, however my tassle got lost in the running. I would like to extend a big thanks to Chowning and Rich for making it to the ceremony. Rich had both his big, and little bothers in the ceremony (try to figure that on out). But it still isn't over. While I got my hood, I still don't have the actual sheet of paper. It will take 6 to 8 weeks for that to actuall get to me, assuming it does. Perhaps it will come in the mail with a ticking grenade and then a number for the peachtree road race attached to a letter stating that my diploma will be there if I can complete the race in under two hours. All the same, stay tuned for the next exciting chapter for how Tech is going to fuck Martin!

This job is a clusterfuck.

Where and when will the marguaritas/beers be?

Estes Park, Colorado (Rocky Mountain National Park)

We got in yesterday around 1 and were foiled by hail and thunderstorms. So, we crashed here in a lodge. Phooey. This morning the sun is out and it's about to snow. So we're gonna get in a quick hike before heading to SLC. The most exciting part of this trip has been de-excited by crappy weather. sigh...

Since Mark is having finals this week, it means that this weekend is graduation. And finally i get to graduate with my masters. I'm not what sort of party endeavours are going to happen. I know that Mark is getting trashed this friday, so maybe that will continue over. I know the ceremonies are saturday at the Georgia Dome from 9am to whenever. All of you are invited. This has been a long time (3 years) coming, it will be nice to finally have it over.

Well... this week is finals week. I don't know if any of you got the memo. Not being in school, why would you. I have taken two finals this week so far. Last week I had a final and a few big projects due. Last week was not so great. This week is getting better. Closure; it's all about the closure. On Monday at 8:00 AM I had my hardest final -- Digital Controls. Ouch. I will be surprised if I don't get a C. Pleasently surprised if it's higher. There was a question on the final that was over material that we had just covered the week before. That's harsh. There was a review session on Friday to go over some of that new material and the sample final. The review session was announced Friday morning. Ouch.

I have just come from another final in which I slam dunked the bitch. That always feel good. I didn't remember a key formula, so I derived it on the spot. That was cool. I went back and checked my work on another problem and caught a silly substitution error. That was cool. There were two problems taken from the midterms. I had gotten those mostly right when I did them on the midterms and felt really good about them this time around.

Now its a project and another final and then Margaritas on Friday. Yeah, beer!

The Emory women's team (on which I am an assistant coach) has made it to college nationals. It was a tough road to get there, but the girls pulled it together and won the games they needed to in order to go to the big show. Unfortuntately I now have to figure out how I'm going to make it. The tournament is the last weekend in May. It starts on Friday . . . which is the last day of finals. It continues into saturday . . . which is graduation (mandatory). Then on Monday, when we start post-planning. . . I am suppose to be working at Tech. Regardless things are going great with the team, they are all rightfully excited and I can't wait to see what this brings for next year.