Not This Again

ORLY

2008-09-08T11:51:00.002-05:00

I saw this pub on a trip the other day to Sevilla. At first sight I knew I needed a picture of it.

All Packed

2008-09-01T21:43:00.004-05:00

I just finished packing for my trip to Spain. My whole life, or whatever will become of it, is packed into a small suitcase and a backpack. I'm leaving on Wednesday and I'm starting to get anxious. I'm hoping that I didn't forget to pack anything crucial, and I'm hoping that when I get to Spain I don't completely slaughter the Spanish language.

While I'm away I'll be keeping a blog that I'll write to much more frequently than this one. There is a catch though, it'll be in Spanish. If you are into that kind of thing, you can get to it here. If not, you can always try an online translator. I do plan to post here, and I'll try to put up a lot of pictures. I have a request for a picture of me in Spain doing the lean, as was demonstrated to me by the very gangsta Jesse, so I'll try to make that one of the first ones.

Choosing Sides

2008-08-26T23:55:00.003-05:00

The other day I was walking through the mall, doing some shopping for my upcoming trip to Spain, and I noticed a very interesting display in the front of an FYE store. There were three life-size cutouts of people. One was of Miley Ray Cyrus (no big surprise there), but on either side of her was a presidential candidate: on the left, Obama, on the right, McCain. At first I was somewhat shocked, seeing two politicians on the front display of an entertainment store, but that shock soon turned into excitement at the fact that in this country, in which so much of our media is filled with brainless entertainment, people are actually paying attention to politics and are taking an active role in shaping their future. Heck, so many people are excited about the presidential race that news networks are now publicizing their coverage of it as though it were a sporting event! (and everyone knows how much we love our sporting events)

Today as I thought about this newfound interest in the presidential race, I started to become a slight bit more cynical. I watched Hillary Clinton's speech at the Democratic National Convention and was excited by many of the things she said; however, some of the things she said really frustrated me. It's not that she said anything wrong -- I think her speech was top notch, but it reminded me of just how misguided some people are with respect to politics. It reminded me that some people don't really focus on the platforms of their favorite opponent but rather make their selection with very little thought. I speak, in particular, about the fact that Clinton needed to rally her past supporters to join the Obama camp. Based on their political platforms, it should be an easy choice for past Clinton supporters to choose to support Obama but that doesn't seem to be the case.

Clinton and Obama both ran with very similar platforms. It's my belief that this is a major reason for why the democratic primaries dragged on for so long. However, now that the primaries are over, many of the Clinton supporters are unsure of where to turn. It seems to me that many of her followers supported her based solely on the fact that she was a woman, and now that there is no woman in the race, they don't know where to turn. I personally think that this is a tragedy because there were plenty of reasons to vote for here besides the fact that she is a woman, but many of her supporters didn't see them. These supporters didn't focus on her platform but rather idolized her based on this one fact. I fear that the same is true of other candidates in the race. I'm sure that Obama will get many votes just because he is black, and likewise McCain will get many votes just because he is a veteran, or just because he was a POW. I can only hope that before its too late voters will take the time to truly understand the issues at hand, to look at each candidate and his plans, and finally vote for the one which they believe will have the best impact on the country and the issues that are most important to them.

This is a test...

2008-07-28T18:26:00.003-05:00

This entry is a test:

Blackwave

If you don't understand, don't worry about it. If you do, you know what to do...

The End of the Semester

2008-05-12T14:47:00.002-05:00

It's the end of the semester once again and, as usual, all I can think about are my grades. Professors in the past have told me that grades are just an "inconvenience" that we need to put up with, and what we should really focus on is what we are learning in our classes. I try to look back and think about what I've learned and how much each class has increased my expertise in its respective field, but that's not what I see. I instead see individual assignments and think if I had just spent fifteen more minutes here or their the assignment grade would be higher and possibly my final semester grade would be higher. I go back every few hours to SIO and check to see if a new class grade has been posted. Will I get an A? Will it be a B? Did I bomb the final and potentially get a C? The suspense kills me. It's time to forget this semester and look forward.

This summer I will be working in Massachusetts at a startup company. I enjoy working much more than school because I get to relax on the weekend knowing that I don't have any work to do on Sunday. During the school year Sunday becomes my most hated day of the week. I consider it a weekday that is cleverly disguised in the weekend. Sure, you get to relax some, but most of the day is spent working on projects and homework due Monday. Saturday even becomes less fun because of it's proximity to Sunday. I can't wait for Sunday to once again be a day of complete relaxation.

On another note, this will be my last "summer vacation." A year from now I will be graduating, and going on to try my hand at living in the real world. It's amazing how the prospect of "real life" seems to always be right around the next corner. I remember being in middle school and thinking, "high school is just around the corner, that's when life really starts." Then "college is coming fast, that's the real world". Now as I look forward and see a permanent full time job a year in the future, I wonder if I will still be looking for that next step after joining the work force, if I will still believe that I'm not in the real world and that life won't really start until my next promotion, or my next job, or I'm married, or I have kids, or I retire. Does we ever really make it to the real world? Regardless, I think I'll try to make the most of this last stint before I go on to find my next definition of what the real world really is.

Class Registration

2008-04-26T18:55:00.003-05:00

It's that time of the semester again: the time when all the upperclassmen are looking to see what classes they can take that will best allow them to coast through there senior year while the underclassmen stress out about whether or not they will be able to get into any of the classes that they want. As I'm studying abroad next semester I was fortunate enough to not have to go through this process but instead got to observe from the sidelines. For me registration has always been stressful. I've never known what classes to take and I always have this constant fear that I'll choose a ton of classes that look really fun but end up really boring and useless (I got stuck with one such class this semester). I'm happy that this year I get to put off the stressful process until the beginning of the next semester.

On Thursday I decided it would be a good idea to look at what classes I might be taking next semester. Although the program I'm studying with doesn't allow me to actually register for classes until a week or so before they start, CMU requires me to turn in a list of classes that I will be taking. The list of classes offered by the exchange program isn't final, and I have no way of finding out what will be available from the Complutense but I did my best to come up with a preliminary list of courses which I will be takin. In reading through the descriptions I learned one very important thing, next semester is going to be HARD. Firstly, the courses I take will be very in depth literature and history courses, a large step out of my comfort zone which consist mainly of technical courses. Furthermore, they will all be in Spanish! I was really only introduced to the language 5 semesters ago, and I will read more in Spanish this upcoming semester than I have ever read in English in a semester. Needless to say, it is very intimidating.

Despite the fact that my knees are trembling at the though of stepping so far out of my comfort zone, I'm also somewhat excited about the idea. I know that if I stayed at CMU I never would have explored any classes about history or literature and I expect it will be a valuable growing experience. It may be the case that everything in the program will be over my head since it seems like most students in the program are Spanish or Hispanic Studies majors; but if it is, so what? If I end up failing everything (falling below my normal standards for myself) I'll try not fret about it. I'll take solace in knowing that despite not having a perfect outcome, I took a chance on something that many people never even consider.

Anyways, enough of my babbling, here are the courses I'm currently looking at:

Contemporary Spanish History: Republic to Present
Contemporary Spanish Novel
El Greco, Velazquez and Goya in the Prado Museum
Advanced Grammar and Usage

I also plan on taking at least one computer science related class at the Complutense, but I won't know if this is possible until right before the start of school in Sepetember. I think such a class would be a great way to bridge my major (computer science) with my minor (Spanish).

It is also worth noting that "El Greco, Velazquez and Goya in the Prado Museum" is, as may be evident from the title, taught at the Prado Museum! Instead of looking at slides of paintings by the artists, we get to see the paintings up close in all of their illustriousness!

Writing

2008-04-17T13:50:00.000-05:00

I recently had to do a few assignments which involved a good amount of writing in a few of my classes. In both of my Spanish classes I had to write papers about subjects which I had been researching for a good amount of the semester. In one of my computer science courses I had to write a large amount of technical information about a project that involved a lot of design. Through feedback that I have gotten on all of these pieces of writing, I have come to realize that I have a serious issue when I write: I often write with a tone which isn't fitting for the type of writing I'm doing.

In my cs course I basically had to write a technical description of some database software which I had written and justification for my design. I was working with a partner on the project and so after writing a good amount, I handed a draft to my project partner to read. After a few minutes of reading he started to laugh. I was rather confused because it was supposed to be quite a boring piece of technical writing, hardly worthy of laughter. When I asked him about it, he said he was amused by how "profound" my writing is. He noted that when he read it he felt as though it was revealing some huge scientific discovery. After rereading some select parts I realized he was right. I needed to reorganize and "borrify" the writing. On the other hand, maybe I should have left it like it was so that the professor would feel as though he was to be grading an amazing project.

In another course I was writing an essay in Spanish. At one point I had the sentence "La familia [...] trata a Marcos como mierda," which literally translated means "the family treats Marcos like shit." In hindsight, I definitely should have chosen my words better, but that was the best way I knew to explain the idea in Spanish, or at least the first way that came to mind. I guess that any type of academic paper shouldn't use such language. Had I written the paper in English I never would have done that, so I guess it just comes down to the fact that I'm somewhat desensitized to such language in Spanish. Since my second Spanish class I've had class with a student who constantly interjects swearing into his speaking, so maybe it's starting to rub off on me. I surely hope not.

Studying in Spain

2008-03-28T13:06:00.004-05:00

It's decided... Next semester I'm going to Spain! I'm going to be studying abroad in Madrid for a semester, 3 whole months! It's kind of overwhelming being that the only time I've ever been out of the country was going skiing in Canada (and lets face it, there isn't much of a difference between the culture in Canada and the US, especially if the only culture you see is on a tourist filled ski mountain). Needless to say, I'm somewhat excited to experience "culture shock" for the first time.

One of the most exciting things about studying in Spain is being able to practice (perfect) my Spanish. All students in the program are required to sign a contract which says that they will only speak Spanish while in the program. That is particularly nice because it means that even when talking with other students in the program, I will still have the same immersive experience.

In the meantime, I am looking for any opportunity available to me to practice up on my Spanish such that the transition to speaking only Spanish will be easier. I plan on finding a night course or other opportunities to practice during the summer after work (such as tertulias), however I may be limited to just reading novels and studying vocabulary.

Phone Numbers

2008-03-14T23:59:00.000-05:00

Random Thought:

As I entered a new number in my phone today, I wondered to myself, "how much of the alphabet do the (first letters of the) names in my cellphone span?" The answer: 14. That makes 12 letters, fhilpquvwxyz, which don't appear. As I thought about it some more, I realized that I couldn't really think of many people whose names start with these letters. I need to broaden my horizons... That being said, my goal for the rest of the year is to finish filling up my cellphone to the point that I have every letter of the alphabet represented. I don't know how realistic this is because, after all, I can't even think of a name that starts with q. Nonetheless, it is worth a try.

Matzah

2008-03-09T23:38:00.003-05:00

Today I went shopping for some groceries. I was very proud of myself when I got home because I only bought healthy things, such as fresh fruits and vegetables, a diversion from the normal frozen pizza. I decided that I wanted to buy some English muffins, one of my favorite breakfast foods, so I made my way to the bread aisle. I was astonished to learn that the bread aisle had been replaced by the matzah aisle. There was not one slice of bread in the whole aisle, just matzah. It's understandable, as the grocery store is in a largely Jewish community, but what annoyed me was that there were no signs telling me where the bread had been moved to. It turns out, they sprinkled the bread throughout the store with small selections of different types of bread in various aisles, a loaf here, a loaf there, making it extremely difficult to find my English muffins. After about 10 minutes of searching, I gave up. No English muffins for me.

Box of Chocolates

2008-02-25T02:08:00.004-05:00

On Friday I had a mandatory code review with a professor to talk about a project I had handed in a week previous. When I went into meet with him, he looked at my code and said, "Oh, you're the student that handed in the box of chocolates." He referred to my code as a box of chocolates. Is this a good thing?

Indecision

2008-02-16T14:57:00.003-05:00

I think that my biggest flaw is my inability to make a decision. Unless I'm contemplating something that I'm extremely passionate about, I generally have to put a huge amount of mental effort into even the simplest of decisions. This first dawned on me as I was talking to my roommate last night, but as I have analyzed it, I realize that there have been many signs of this in the past.

Last night I was talking to my roommate while he was listening to some music by Outkast. A song came on and he said that it was one of his favorite songs and then asked me if I liked it. I said that I was indifferent to it, and he replied that I am indifferent about too many things. I realized immediately that he was right. This indifference comes from my lack of ability to make decision about preferences. Now this song is not a song that I dislike. I remember it being really popular when I was in high school, and listening to it rather frequently. At that time I really liked the song, but since then my feelings towards the song have worn off (no doubt because of hearing it too much), and I can no longer decide if I actually like the song or if I'm fed up with it and don't want to hear it again. To a normal person, one of these feelings would overweight the other and they could easily answer about their preferences, but not me. There are many songs which I feel similar about. A lot of popular songs have catchy rhythms to them, but on the other hand, there lyrical content is nil, and this set of conflicting feelings towards the songs gives me a really hard time in deciding whether I like such songs. That being said, this isn't the case for all music. There are certain styles and musicians which I enjoy passionately, while there are some genres (i.e. country) whose music I detest, but nonetheless, there is a large amount of music which I do feel completely indifferent about.

This indecision is not only related to music, but rather it plagues my everyday life. A solid example is food. This past summer I lived with an aunt whose house was near the company that I interned for. I really enjoyed my stay, but could sense her annoyance at the fact that I could never make up a decision about what to eat for dinner. When we ate out, she would always ask where I wanted to go, and I would always reply with, "I don't know." When we ate in she would ask me what I wanted to eat, often even accompanied by a set of choices, and I would always reply with the same echoing, "I don't know." All of the food propositions seemed equally delicious so I found myself unable to choose one. Even as I sit here typing I am hungry but unable to make a decision about what to eat, so I will continue to sit here until my hunger is at such a level that I am compelled to make a decision about what to eat.

All this being said, some decisions are easy for me to make. For example, being that I'm majoring in computer science, I routinely have to make design choices about code that I'm working on. The big difference for this is that I don't have to make a commitment to a design choice, because I know that there is always a backspace key, if I make a bad decision I can always go back and change it or modify it. I guess, then, this indecision is really an inability to commit to something, even on the most micro scale, for fear of the consequences of the decision.

Email Quotes

2008-02-08T20:41:00.000-05:00

This is a message to all of you people who send email messages with little inspirational quotes after your signatures. I don't know where you got this idea from, or where you get your lame quotes, but they aren't appreciated - not by me, not by anybody. Please, for the sanity of the rest of the population, the next time you send an email, resist the urge to paste a quote into it.

Ozium

2008-02-01T13:56:00.000-05:00

On Wednesday I was headed out for school for my early morning class (at 10:30) and as per my regular routine, I got into my car. The day before I had helped Joe haul some foam board back to the apartment for a project and it didn't fit easily into my car, so I had moved both of the front seats as far forward as they could reach. Being that there was no longer a need to have the seats practically touching the dashboard, I moved them both back, and then started the car.

After a few seconds I noticed a hissing noise emanating from my car, so I turned it off in fear for its health, but the hissing noise continued. After a couple of seconds I noticed that the noise was coming from underneath the passenger seat, so I reached down to investigate. What I felt was an aerosol can, and I assumed that in moving the seat back I had hit the button on the can, but I was wrong.

I pulled the can out from under the seat to find that a can of Ozium™ air freshener had been punctured by the seat, and now "new car smell" was slowly escaping from it. Then, without warning, the can did what I can only explain as explode, and the complete contents of the can covered my car and myself. One wouldn't think it's a big deal, but Ozium™ is very concentrated, thus my car and my coat became infused with an extremely overpowering, to the point of making it difficult to breath, "new car smell." Currently I can't wear my jacket for fear of driving everyone away from me from its overpowering scent, and I can only sit in my car for a few minutes at a time without choking on the smell. Needless to say, as much as I would like a shiny new car, I never want to encounter that "new car smell" again.

Java Fun with RMI

2008-01-25T13:45:00.000-05:00

In my distributed systems class our first project (of four) is to write our own RMI utility for Java. We are allowed to use any Java classes in the normal libraries with the exception of anything in the java.rmi.* packages. Although to many people this assignment probably seems dull, I think it will be the most interesting Java assignment I've had yet. Namely, it will allow me to really explore the facilities for serialization and reflection in Java, which in my opinion are some of the most fascinating features of the language. I am amazed by the fact that such a well typed (although that fact is argued by some) language can still give programmers such control.

Yet another cool thing about this assignment is that it is encouraging me to learn more about the JVM and how it works. Although we are given the freedom to push many features of RMI onto the user (such as proxy stub creation in distribution), I plan on trying to automate the process as much as possible. As such, I've been reading up on how to dynamically compile and load classes. Unfortunately Java doesn't seem to have this ability included in any of the standard libraries (although in the past attempts have been made to include it), so it seems that I will need to invoke a Java compiler externally. Despite this, it is really cool that it is possible to create a class at runtime, compile it, and load it into a running JVM for execution.

I don't really know what I was trying to get at with this post. I guess I really just want to say that Java and RMI are cool, and everyone should take Distributed Systems.

PS: In other news, my roommate bought new ram for his laptop but he wasn't careful to make sure it would work with his laptop. Long story short, my laptop just gained a gig of ram, and it is very happy.

Starting Classes

2008-01-17T19:15:00.000-05:00

A new semester has started, and with it comes a whole new set of classes. I'm at the point in my college career that I have a lot of freedom in the classes I take, and I am happy to say that I am extremely excited about every single class I am taking. The same thing happened last semester, and I hope that I will be able to say the same thing of my last two semesters here as well.

My classes for this semester are:

Distributed Systems
Foundations of Software Engineering
U.S. Latinos: Language and Culture
Spain: Language and Culture

I have been wanting to take distributed systems for some time but haven't had the chance. I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to take it once again this semester due to a class conflict with software engineering, but I was fortunate in that I am able to watch conflicting lectures via video at a later time. The two classes that I'm taking towards a Spanish minor will be a lot of work, but the large increase my fluidity in Spanish will definitely make the classes worth it.

I am particularly pleased with the layout of my schedule this semester. Waking up at the same hour every day will make sticking to a regular routine much easier than in past semesters. Plus, finishing in the early afternoon will allow me much more flexibility in when I can do my work. Needless to say, aside from already having a substantial amount of work, I am very happy with how this semester is going, and I can't wait to get to the meat of my courses.

Pepsi Fridge

2008-01-15T16:22:00.001-05:00

My roommate, Derek, is a very interesting person. He has a lot of different hobbies and interests, but perhaps his biggest hobby is taking ideas and running with them. When he runs with ideas, he runs metaphorical marathons. If he decides to do something, he must do it bigger and better than anyone before him. This brings us to his latest escapade.

Derek is just a couple of weeks shy of turning 21. As a birthday present for himself, he decided to buy a beer fridge. In typical Derek style, this couldn't be just any beer fridge. When surfing on craigslist (one of his favorite past times), he came upon a full sized convenience store Pepsi refrigerator for the bargain price of $25. Within 24 hours he purchased the refrigerator and it is currently squatting in the middle of our kitchen while it waits for us to rearrange our apartment and find it a permanent resting place.

Last night we spent almost an hour attempting to move this from a van, up 7 stairs, and into our apartment. It looks heavy, but its appearance doesn't do its weight justice. Needless to say, it was a lot of work. As a result I got a large gash on my pinky finger. I am hoping that I'm up to date on my tetanus shots, because the refrigerator is also very rusty. My biggest dread is what we will do in a year and a half when we graduate and need to get rid of it because it will be equally as difficult to move down the stairs.

More Work

2007-06-13T21:31:00.000-05:00

Work has gotten a lot more interesting lately. I have a really cool project that I'm working on, and today I got to the point where I could really test out it's functionality for the first time. I was a little bit scared at first because I wasn't sure if it would work, but I got it up and running along with the other software that it depends on and it functioned quite cleanly. It was a big relief to see it working right because earlier in the day I broke the build. (For those of you who don't know what that means, I checked software into a code repository that didn't compile. It had compiled perfectly on my computer before that, but there were apparently some path issues that weren't resolved. Talk about embarrassing...)

Redesign

2007-05-28T00:06:00.000-05:00

It has been just under a year since I last redesigned my blog, so I figured it was about time to do it again (plus, my last design was kind of ugly). I like this design a lot more. I actually came up with the idea after seeing a picture of a shower curtain online. Don't ask...

I feel the need to summarize my life since I last posted. In order to keep the summarization short, It will just be a list:

School has been going ok. My grades have decreased some since last year, but I'm still doing pretty well considering the difficulty of my coursework
I got an apartment off campus with my current roommates in South Oakland. It will be quite a hike to campus, but I will have my car to hopefully make that trek easier (if my car doesn't die over the summer)
My classes for next semester are going to be really challenging and take up tons of time, but I will learn a lot, and hopefully have some fun too
I have an internship this summer at Acinion. It starts on Tuesday, and I will be mostly programming in Java. It is around the Boston area, so if anyone is in town, drop me an email.
I will be spending tons of time over the summer learning new juggling patterns. I plan on learning to juggle 4 and 5 clubs, as well as tons of new patterns with 3 clubs and 5 balls.

More to come in the near future...

JUGGLE!

2006-08-30T17:33:00.000-05:00

One of my biggest hobbies(obsessions) is juggling. Anytime I see round objects lying around I instinctively pick them up and start to juggle. I love juggling so much that before coming to college I decided that I would create a juggling club when I got there. Unfortunately, after scouring the campus for people to juggle with, I was only able to find four or five students, hardly enough to constitute a club, and so my dream of having a club slowly dissipated.

At the end of my freshman year I learned that one of my best friends from high school would be coming to my university. But not only was he one of my best friends, but he was also my only friend who was legitimately interested in juggling. Back in high school we created a juggling club (one that quickly failed), however we juggled a lot with each other and it helped us to progress both of our skills. After I learned that he was coming, my hope for creating a juggling club was quickly revitalized.

In the last few days, we have juggled every chance we got. Today we decided to juggle in the most high-traffic area we could find. Our hopes were that other jugglers would see us and come inquire about why we were juggling, and whether or not a juggling club existed. Now I had done this before (last year), and not much happened, so it was difficult for me to act too optimistic, but within five minutes we had already found a few club candidates. The ploy worked better than we ever could have expected, and I now hold in my hand a list of 15 students whom all seemed extremely interested in starting a juggling club. There were students practiced in all disciplines (from unicycle, to juggling, to poi), students from all parts of the university (from freshmen to second year graduate students), and students with all different levels of experience (from just starting, to extremely seasoned jugglers). I don't know how long it has been since I've been this excited. It looks like my dream of creating a juggling club will finally become a reality.

Good Deeds

2006-08-12T22:43:00.000-05:00

On Friday I was at work taking my break at about 7:30. I was sitting with a couple co-workers at a picnic table, when this large red bird flies into the chain link fence next to us. I could only see it from behind, and I couldn't tell what it was, but it had wedged itself between the fence and the barbed-wire that sits on top of the fence. The bird was an unfamiliar red hue, and it's feathers were quite ruffled. As I studied it from afar, it turned its head and looked towards us. At that instance I could tell that something wasn't right. The bird had a short, very curved beak, so I knew instantly that it was a tropical bird. This might not have been unusual, were it not for the fact that I live in Maine. On this night it was quite cool, and this bird could not have been comfortable. We guessed that he flew into the fence because he was disoriented from the cold.

At this point I felt rather sad for this bird. We couldn't do anything for it because we had to go in from our break, and I was quite sure that it would (eventually) die out there in the cold. So, as we went inside I told someone who was working in a different department and had more free time on his hands about the situation. I knew the bird must be someones pet, and there would have to be some way of finding it's owner.

As the night went on I slowly forgot about the bird, being that I was quite consumed with my work. Just a few minutes before the end of the night, the guy who I had told about the bird came up to me and told me that they had located the owner of the bird, and that it was safe. Apparently someone had lost the bird and put out an ad in the paper about it. It was a breeding bird, and was probably worth quite a bit of money. Helping to initiate the rescue of this bird was my good-deed for the summer.

The Po-Po's are at it again

2006-08-04T00:13:00.000-05:00

Forgive me webblog for I have wandered. It has been almost two weeks since my last publication...

Today I have yet another police story. As I've said before, I've never had many problems with the police before, however, I have many friends who are constantly harassed by police. For this reason, my respect for the "keepers of justice" is beginning to dwindle.

This story starts with me leaving work. It is 11:00pm, and I am ready to leave the hell-hole where I work and start my arduous 45 minute drive home. I get into my car, and drive about a mile down the road, when I see blue lights behind me. My heart sinks. I'm not watching my speedometer, and could very likely be speeding. I choke down my frustration, and quickly pull over. The officer, lets call him officer Big (because I don't know his real name, and he looks like he's been through the drive-through at dunkin donuts one too many times), walks up beside my car and points a flashlight in my face. I am effectively blinded, and officer Big asks me for my license, registration, and proof of insurance. This is my first time being pulled over, so I am not used to this routine. I quickly pull out my license, and then hand him the pile of papers I got when I bought my car (cause its dark and I don't really know what is what). He doesn't seem to enthused.

After looking my papers over, he asks me where I'm coming from. I tell him that I'm just leaving work. I want to tell him that it's none of his business, but I don't know how fast I was going, and I don't really want to piss off Officer Big be for I know how deep I'm in. He then asks me if I just got gas at the Irving down the street. I tell him no, and that I don't even know what gas-station he is talking about. I wasn't playing stupid, I actually don't know where there is an Irving along that road. He tells me that they called the police, and that they reported my license plate as a drive off. He then walks back to his car with my license and papers in his hands. I turn up my music (a Jack Johnson CD) and try to relax. In a couple of minutes Officer Big returns. He tells me that they reported a black car, not a maroon car (like mine), and so that I am free to go. He hands me my license and stuff back, and then waddles back to his car.

I don't exactly believe Officer Big's story, for a couple of reasons. For one, I highly doubt a gas-station gave my license plate number as a drive off, given that I have never been to that gas station, and the probability that they randomly mistook another plate number for my plate number is VERY low. Reason two is because if he knew the car that was driven was black, he could have easily seen that it wasn't me because I was in a very well-lighted area. Reason three is because I've heard of the antics of police. They like to pull over teenagers whenever they can. The story of a mistaken drive-off is a great excuse to pull over a teenager who is suspiciously driving around at 11:00pm at night. This gives the police time to check to see if I'm on drugs, or wearing a seatbelt, or doing one of numerous other illegal activities which teenagers often do. This may seem random for me to be saying this, but I believe whole-heartidly that teenagers are profiled by police. For example, I have a friend who was pulled over and taken out of the car at gun-point just for speeding a couple of weeks ago.

I can't wait to get back to college, where the only police I have to deal with are campus police

Myspace = Evil

2006-07-20T23:47:00.000-05:00

I may be against the majority of the world with this decision, but I really hate myspace. I deleted my account about a 6 months ago. My internet experience didn't seem to suffer too much from deleting it. I do, on occassion, miss the fact that I no longer recieve instant messages from random creepy people, but that will fade with time.

I have many qualms with myspace. The first thing that annoyed me when I found myspace was the abundance of ads and popups. No one else seemed to mind, until just recently ads on myspace were found to be exploiting windows security vulnerabilities and downloading viruses and spyware onto the computers of unsuspecting users. I laughed when I first heard about this. The second annoyance I found was the music that everyone posts on there personal pages. If I want to listen to music I will play a CD or listen to my mp3 playlist. I don't want my music listening to be interrupted by the emo-crap songs that everyone posts on their pages. Another thing that just grinds my gears is the horrible layouts on myspace. The default layout is OK to be nice. If everyone just used the default layout, browsing myspace might be tollerable, but no one does. Instead users sport ugly poorly done layouts that make it impossible for people to read any of the content in the page. Honestly people, black text scrolling over gothic black background images aren't going to be readable. It makes me wonder if people actually read there own pages after posting to them. Possibly the biggest headache of myspace is how people use it. Its main purpose seems to be allowing fourteen year old girls to compete and see who has the most "friends". I say "friends" because the myspace definition of friends isn't exactly the definition that we use in the real world. In the myspace world a friend is just anyone else with a myspace page who is willing to link toour page. The secondary function is to perpetuate the idea of chain e-mails. Such e-mails are posted on myspace "blogs", message boards, and personal pages. These things got old in 5th grade people, grow up.

Myspace is known as a "social networking" tool. Am I the only person who thinks social networking should require social interaction as a main ingredient? I currently fear that facebook is going in the same direction as myspace. This deeply saddens me, because I always thought facebook would be a great way to keep in touch with old friends and organize events. Now it is becoming just another tool for people to brag about how many "friends" they have. And what's worse is that businesses seem to be using it as a tool to weed out employee candidates. Maybe social networking should be left to the real world, not the cyber world.

Town Ordinances

2006-07-11T10:30:00.000-05:00

Today at about 9:00am I was awakened by a police officer knocking on my door. As this doesn't happen very often, I was rather surprised (and annoyed). The officer informed me that my car, which was parked on the side of the road in front of my house, had been ticketed, and that I would need to move it to my driveway. I asked him why it had been ticketed, and he said that I'm not allowed to park it on that side of the street. This was news to me. I've lived in this house for at least 8 years, and we have quite frequently parked vehicles there without incident. One year we had a car that was the subject of a hit and run (some one hit it and then drove away), and we had the police come when we filed a report, and we weren't informed of our illegal parking then either. So, I told him that I had no knowledge of this, as there are no signs indicating that it is illegal to park on this side of the road. He told me that it is in the town ordinance, and promptly left.

Now, I usually don't have any problems with police. I don't bother them, and they don't bother me, but I feel as though I was unjustly ticketed here. I know that it's just $10.00, but it's the principal of it. Police shouldn't be able to harass people like this. (maybe harass is to strong of a word, but it is how I feel). After a quick shower and breakfast I decided to try and find out about my town ordinances online. I didn't expect to have much luck, because my town is quite small and technologically inept, just like my state. I was surprised when a quick google search yeilded my town ordinances as the first results. Here is what I found:

Sec. 11-1 Parking prohibited at all times on certain streets.

SCHEDULE I

When signs are erected giving notice thereof no person shall at any time park a vehicle upon any of the following described streets or parts of streets:

[...]

No parking on the easterly side of Pine Street.

[...]

At first I was rather shocked. It was true, I'm really not allowed to park on my side of the street. Then I reread it a little bit closer and noticed that it said When signs are erected this is true. Since no signs are erected on my street, I should be able to park there until said signs are erected. Furthermore, according to this town ordinance, I was not illegally parked, and should not be subject to this ticket. I think that the officer was low on his quota and just decided to go around and ticket a bunch of cars to make up for it. I don't plan on paying the ticket, and I plan on going to the town office to see what I can do about it. Two other cars on my street got ticketed at the same time, and I'm pretty sure that the people will just pay their tickets. I don't think this type of thing should be tolerated. The police in this town have too much power, and something needs to be done about it.

Tivo Tells the Future

2006-06-27T11:18:00.000-05:00

Yesterday afternoon I got home from grocery shopping and I noticed that there was a message on the ansering machine. I was particularly excited because I haven't been in very much contact with my friends because I've been working a lot. I walked up to the answering machine and press play, and I am greeted by man named Tommy. Tommy is a telemarketer. When did telemarketers start leaving messages on people's answering machines? He started his conversation by saying that he hopes I didn't mind that he is leaving a message. Well, I did mind. I didn't want to hear about the free satelite system I'd won. Unfortunately I had no choice, because when I tried to delete it my answering machine told me that I needed to listen to all messages in full before deleting them. So as to not leave you out of all of the excitement, here is a transcription of the message:

Hey guys, this is Tommy. I'm going to leave you a message; I hope that's ok. Give me a call back at 1-877-***-***. That's toll free. I'm calling to let you know that I have good news. You have been selected to win a full satelite TV system in your home for free. I'm going to give you America's top premier channels, all of your local channels, and free movie channels, all for less than fourty two dollars a month. Again my name's Tommy, call me here at 1-877-***-***. Hey, and if you do call me back within 48 hours I'm going to give you a free TiVo receiver in your home, and that will allow you to rwind live TV, rewind live TV, fast forward live TV, anything you want - It's really exciting. Again my name's Tommy, give me a call back at 1-877-***-***. Thanks for your interest guys.

I'm sure you can all see my excitement. One thing from his little spiel did intrigue me. He said that I can use TiVo to fast forward live TV. This means that I can use it to see things that will happen in the future. Unless he is lying to me (which I'm sure he isn't, he seemed really excited), I think I need to get one of these TiVo things.

I am confident that if this message is played backwards you will hear "I am the devil, sell me your soul". So, if you ever get a call from Tommy, and are fortunate enough to talk with him, tell him that you don't want to sell your soul, you are completely satisfied with your cable TV, and that you would appreciate it if he would stop leaving messages on people's answer machines.

Toll House Cookie Swirl

2006-06-25T13:46:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I decided that I wanted some ice cream so I raided the fridge and found a quart of Edy's Toll House Cookie Swirl ice cream. I grabbed a bowl out of the cuboard and then a spoon out of the silverwear drawer. I returned to the silverwear drawer to look for the ice cream scoop, but it wasn't there. I decided a regular spoon would have to suffice for my scooping needs. When I started to scoop with the regular spoon I realized how much harder it is than using an ice cream scoop, which got me to thinking: whoever invented the first ice cream scoop must be a millionaire. Then I started to wonder what different ideas the original inventer might have gone through before getting to the model which we see today. Now I'm not much on history, so this question quickly left my mind. Then I thought, there must be some newer more innovative ice cream scoops. The ice cream scoop in my house is probably older than me, so there must be something better. Here is what my google search found:

This is a classical style scoop, but it is hollow and filled with water. before using it on your ice cream you let it sit in warm water for a few minutes. It makes scooping ice cream feel like slicing butter (sort of).

This scoop has a mechanical component that necessitates a quick release. It works like those scoops that are used in grade school cafeterias for scooping mashed potatoes.

This scoop is referred to as a blade. It is similar to the kind used at ColdStone and other ice cream parlors that mix in the ingredients in front of you. Only really hardcore ice cream junkies should use these.

This scoop is an electric scoop (hence the cord). It uses electric power to heat the scoop to make scooping easier. My kitchen already has enough electrical appliances, so I don't see this scoop in my future.

This This scoop is built by rubbermaid and is supposed to be especially ergonomic. In my opinion, if you scoop enough ice cream that you need an ergonomic scoop, you should put the spoon down and head to the gym.

Although some technological advances have been made in ice cream scoops, I think I'll stick with my current scoop (until it breaks, or I find ice cream that scoops itself).

rain rain go away

2006-06-13T18:29:00.000-05:00

This past weekend royaly sucked. It rained all of Friday and Saturday, and some of Sunday as well, and the only time it was sunny none of my friends were around. Instead of letting the day go to waste, I decided to play some scrabble to see if I could get my ranking up on ISC (I know to some of you this may seem a waste, but I thougt it was rather productive). My ranking is currently hovering around 1400. And I got to use one of my favorite "scrabble" words the other day, taenia.

taenia \ n pl. -NIAE or -NIAS a headband worn in ancient Greece

And since I'm sure most of my loyal readers don't really care about my favorite scrabble words, I will leave you with an interesting factoid:

Over 2500 left handed people a year are killed from using products made for right handed people

I am right handed and proud of it.

Yaaaaaawn

2006-06-09T21:16:00.000-05:00

It has rained here the last six out of seven days. As a result of that I have spent all my free time surfing the internet and watching reruns of CSI on tv. I have been frequenting digg, fark.com, and woot.com. I particularly like fark because of it's comedic descriptions by content submitters.

Today when I was driving home from work I was following a very slooooow car, so I decided to read the passing street signs to take my mind off the frustation of having to ride the brake. I noticed one street sign that was for the street "ROCKY rd" and I almost laughed out loud. In retrospect it wasn't very funny-it was amusing at best, but I was really bored. I wish I had a digital camera so I could post a picture of it.

First Post!

2006-06-04T17:45:00.000-05:00

This is the first post on my new blog, yay! I remember my last "first post". It was on the Algorithms and Data Structures forum. Ben Maurer quickly deleted it and posted to the forum saying that while first posts might be acceptable in places such as slash dot, such childish games would not be acceptable on the 211 forum. (I would find the exact quote, but it seems he has deleted the post).

It's been raining since friday, so I spent all of the last couple days upgrading to Ubuntu 6.06 (Dapper), and writing a custom template for my new blog. I'm extremely excited about both of these events. Now that I have updated ubuntu I seem to have all the audio capabilities I crave in an operating system (Namely I can finally playback music without Ubuntu freezing). And the blog brings me to a new level in internet 1337ness. Actually, I'm just happy to have a blog that I've designed myself (instead of all of those boring cookie-cutter blogs).

Well, this has turned out to be a very short first post. I don't seem to have anything else to talk about. I'll see if I can't find more to write about on my second post.