Someone from Wiess put Martel up on eBay! The eBay page is here, and I've included an image below for posterity (since eBay is bound to shut it down...)
weekend update!
Mood: optimistic
Music: Brian Jacobs - "Untie Me"
Posted on 2005-04-25 09:04:00
Words: 307
I had a good weekend! It was mostly relaxing, which is good because the month of May is going to be crazy, what with the weddings and such. Friday night we had dinner with onefishclappin and krikwennavd before heading up to couples game night. It was fun, but we ended up only playing one game. Lots of chatting, which was nice. And talking about summer musical stuff reminded me that I need to learn my music for my audition next weekend!
Saturday was relaxing - we spent some time taking care of things around the apartment in the afternoon. Well, and then David played Dragon Warrior and I spent two hours putting album art for all of my music on my iPod. Which sounds a little crazy, but now it's done and I'll never have to do it again (which reminds me - need to backup the iTunes databases!) After running some errands, we headed over to destroyerj's and grilled steaks (well, he grilled steaks :-) ). After dinner, we played (and eventually passed) Lego Star Wars, which is a surprisingly fun and cute game - you're Lego characters in a Lego Star Wars world! It's something you have to experience to understand, I bet. Also, playing the little Lego Yoda is fun - when he's normally walking he walks slowly with a cane, but when he brings out his light saber he jumps around and does flips and all that just by walking!
Sunday was a relaxing day - went to church, more taking care of stuff (almost ready to submit my TiVo HME challenge entry) and played some Metroid 2, and got the Screw Attack just before bed, which was very exciting! We were giddy :-)
Hmm, I guess that's it for my weekend. If you like Set, you'll like the Set Daily Puzzle - I did today's in a minute and 20 seconds!
thanks all!
Mood: grateful
Music: Blink 182 - "Feeling This"
Posted on 2005-04-21 10:24:00
Words: 117
I had a great birthday. Wednesday morning I had already gotten a text message, a phone message and an e-card wishing me a happy birthday from my two sisters. Lots of people at work wishing me a happy birthday as well, including lots of LJers, then after work had a nice dinner (steak!). Came back hope and opened presents - David gave me an iPod Photo among other things (thanks!!), which I'm enjoying now. Then I got calls from members of my family and David's - it was a bit overwhelming, but it was nice to get to talk to everyone.
So, thanks to everyone. :-) Now back to normality (although I do have a slight headache at the moment...)
Birthday post!
Mood: excited
Music: Evita - "Peron's Latest Flame"
Posted on 2005-04-20 12:55:00
Words: 159
The song I'm listening to isn't very nice. But it is catchy!
It's my birthday! Although April 20th and the 19th often have bad things happen on them (Hitler's birth, Rodney King riots started, the Branch Davidians standoff ends and the compound burns to the ground, Oklahoma City bombing, Columbine school shooting), everything seems OK this year. And it's George Takei's birthday, too (thanks, Wikipedia)!
So we have a new pope, Pope Benedict XVI. I wish him the best, but I'm not terribly optimistic about anything changing in the church - Cardinal Ratzinger was in charge of doctrine under John Paul II, and he labeled homosexuality "an intrinsic moral evil." But, you never know, and I was surprised to see today that he's interested in continuing the reforms of Vatican II. So, um, we'll see.
Going out to dinner tonight (steak!), and then the whole presents thing. Probably will just spend the rest of the evening at home with djedi.
thoughts on my birthday (well, about my birthday, since today isn't my birthday)
Mood: pensive
Music: Dexter Freebish - "Leaving Town"
Posted on 2005-04-18 14:11:00
Tags: essay birthday
Words: 539
"Every overhyped lj post has a beginning..."
I've been thinking about birthdays and, more generally (but not much more generally!) age lately. I skipped first grade, so I've always been young for my age, and I usually took math classes that were a few years ahead of my grade. The upshot of this is that I was usually the youngest kid in the class by far.
So I think because of that, that kinda became my identity. It didn't matter that I wasn't the top student in the class (although I sometimes was) - for a while I was a novelty because I was so young, but even after that I could always tell myself that, even though kids did better than I did, I was younger than they were, so it didn't matter. In my mind, when I would consider my ranking in the class (I was pretty competitive academically for a while in middle/high school...), I was kinda in my own category, so I always won.
Another effect was that I started to identify as the young kid. So, even when I came to Rice, I wanted people to know that I was young, because that made me special. In the past, this had provided me with other people who would sorta hang out with me a bit just because I was young. (at Rice, I had the additional "specialness" of being a professor's son) And it did sort of continue at Rice, to a point (hanging out with djedi and blamantin wasn't just because I was young, but it certainly was a not-too-infrequent topic of conversation :-) ).
So now I'm out in the real world, and all of a sudden I'm not the youngest at work. And I felt kinda weird about that, and it took me a while to figure out why, and the preceding is what I came up with.
But now things are different (not that I'm making this change now, just that it happened a year or so ago). I don't feel the need to be "special" in some obvious way. I have good friends, a good job, djedi, and I don't feel like I need a "gimmick" to have people interested in me. This is healthy and a good thing.
And so, I guess I've become a lot more relaxed about age - I know occasionally people get sensitive about getting old and whatnot, and I do have those feelings occasionally as well, but I'm usually able to shake it off pretty well. Maybe it's like my rebelling against the hypersensitivity I used to feel to my age, but I just feel like it's something that happens and there's no point worrying about it. I used to be really bad about trying to change the past (when I was in high school and I would misplace something, I would always beat myself up as I was looking for it, wishing that I had put it in its right place), and now I just try to deal with things in the present as they come up.
The End...?
(Disclaimer: nothing in here is meant to blame djedi or blamantin for my age issues - I definitely had them before coming to math camp/Rice. That is all.)
I'm in a happy place!
Mood: ecstatic
Music: Depeche Mode - "Behind the Wheel"
Posted on 2005-04-18 12:36:00
Words: 129
So I'm in a really good mood. This week is my birthday, I'm well-rested, work's going really well, and it's a beautiful day outside!
Well, actually it's cloudy and raining on and off. But I'm still happy!
Weekend was fun - hung out with onefishclappin and krikwennavd on Friday night, played some games, watched some Veggietales. Good stuff. Hung out with wildrice13 on Saturday, played some Frisbee and later FFX-2 (although I was programming during most of that time, and I mostly finished the project I was working on, which tends to pump me up). Visited Sarah and then watched Shaolin Soccer with djedi and destroyerj (I'm really into these <lj user> tags today...).
I have some thoughts about my birthday that I'll be posting later. Now, back to work!
Fun search results!
Mood: happy
Music: FFX-2 battle music
Posted on 2005-04-16 20:10:00
Tags: referrer funny
Words: 40
So I recently wrote a script to find interesting ways people come to my website. And it turns out that if you search on altavista for beer party naked photo album, the first result is on my website. That's awesome!
Tax day! with poll
Mood: frustrated
Music: Hilary Duff - "Come Clean"
Posted on 2005-04-15 14:22:00
Tags: taxcenter
Words: 77
Work isn't going well, so a quick update.
Yes, I like Hilary Duff. I can take the abuse!
So Wednesday was my last day volunteering at the tax center (djedi's going in today, brave soul...) It was pretty busy, but we weren't swamped. I'm glad we did it - I learned a lot and it was nice to be able to help people. Although I will be glad to have my Wednesday evenings back.
More frustrating work ahead...
gays in sports
Mood: happy
Music: Cirque du Soleil - "Atmadja"
Posted on 2005-04-14 12:11:00
Words: 97
So I stumbled across this interesting survey about people's opinion of gays in sports. The results are about what I would expect - people are mostly OK with it unless you ask too much about it. Which means that if a major athlete in a team sport were to come out, he/she would probably not be welcomed by the public. Someday...
I'm trying out a new color scheme, all those who didn't like my last one and who thought the default one was "boring". At least this one isn't boring!
I guess I don't have much to say!
I am moody, hear me roar!
Mood: determined
Music: Tori Amos - "Jackie's Strength"
Posted on 2005-04-13 09:06:00
Words: 345
Hopefully I'll get some work done today. But that's not what this entry is about!
Last night we visited Sarah in the hospital (after her surgery) - she's doing quite well, we had a nice conversation, and she'll likely go home tomorrow. But that's not what this entry is about either!
I can be a very moody person. Yesterday, for example, I was in about 5 distinct moods (giddy in the morning (almost a heightened sense of awareness type thing, like I had had a Coke for the first time in a long time), a bit more mellow in the afternoon, excited when I got home, depressed on the drive up to Round Rock, happy talking to Sarah, really tired all of a sudden at wildrice13's). And I've definitely had worse days. It's like being on a roller coaster, but in a bad way.
I think the giddiness in the morning was a sort of manic state - from the little I've read about bipolarism (ism?), it seems to have a lot in common with that. I feel like I could do anything I could put my mind to, everything is wonderful, and I feel super-productive (and I usually do get more done, although sometimes it involves starting very ambitious projects that I don't finish). The good thing is that I can recognize when I feel this way, so I can let it not get too far out of control. Also I usually don't have the urge to spend money, which is a good thing. I've read that for bipolar ppl, the manic part isn't really the problem, and they don't want that to change (it's the depression that follows that is the problem), and I feel the same way. So maybe I am a little bipolar? The depression on the way up to see Sarah came on suddenly and it was kinda harsh, sort of a feeling that I wasn't making a difference in the world, etc. *shrug*
Anyway, what was the point? Um, I dunno. I'm moody and stuff (which certainly isn't news to djedi...).
a buncha random thoughts
Mood: bouncy
Music: nothing right now!
Posted on 2005-04-11 14:16:00
Words: 295
Too bad I like my Prius so much!
This video made by Hitachi is, bar none, the oddest Flash animation I've seen about hard drive technology.
When I was in college, I loved tinkering my computer, having things (in
software!) break and then fixing them. Now I'm distinctly of two minds:
- I still for the most part like getting neat stuff to work - for
example, I'm currently working on burning DVDs from TV shows downloaded
from the TiVo. This is cool stuff.
- I don't like making stuff that worked before already work. I don't
upgrade my Debian packages regularly because of this - invariably
something breaks, and I have to spend time to get stuff working the way
it was before. I don't have a lot of patience for this these days...
I took the Religion test earlier, but I took it again, and here are my results (which changed a little!)
1. Orthodox Quaker (100%)
2. Mainline - Conservative Christian Protestant (97%)
3. Eastern Orthodox (96%)
4. Roman Catholic (96%)
5. Mainline - Liberal Christian Protestants (91%)
6. Seventh Day Adventist (90%)
7. Liberal Quakers (67%)
8. Unitarian Universalism (64%)
9. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) (61%)
10. Orthodox Judaism (54%)
11. Reform Judaism (54%)
12. Sikhism (51%)
13. Islam (46%)
14. Hinduism (45%)
15. Neo-Pagan (43%)
16. Bahá'í Faith (39%)
17. Christian Science (Church of Christ, Scientist) (39%)
18. Jehovah's Witness (39%)
19. Secular Humanism (39%)
20. New Age (33%)
21. New Thought (32%)
22. Taoism (32%)
23. Theravada Buddhism (30%)
24. Scientology (29%)
25. Mahayana Buddhism (27%)
26. Non-theist (25%)
27. Jainism (19%)
These results seem a little fishy to me. I'm more Orthodox Quaker than Liberal Quaker? I think I might have been picking the Catholic answers on purpose. Oh well...
weekend, pictures, etc.
Mood: mellow
Music: Dave Matthews Band - "Sleep to Dream Her"
Posted on 2005-04-11 08:53:00
Words: 204
Ah...some good Dave Matthews Band in the morning really mellows me out. Good stuff!
Had a good weekend - got stuff done that I had been putting off for the past two weeks (while working on Robolab), caught up on sleep some, played some games, went out to dinner and watched a movie. The latter two were with wildrice13, amorphousplasma, and skip_conrad - we went out to Zorba's and watched Amelie, which I hadn't seen. Very cute movie, although I had some difficulties because I first couldn't get comfortable, and then when I did get comfortable, I was afraid I was gonna fall asleep :-) But it was good, we played some smash and then I went home exhausted. Felt much better on Sunday - slept in a bit (went to late mass), and we put new sheets on the bed which are softer, which makes it a lot more comfortable. Neat!
One of the things I did was put up pictures from Beer Bike. For reference, I used this tutorial to remove red-eye from a few pictures.
I have a new idea at work that I'm fairly positive about...hopefully I can figure out today whether it's worth pursuing or not.
Have a nice day, all! Peace out.
successish! done!
Mood: exhausted but happy
Posted on 2005-04-08 19:16:00
Tags: robolab challenge
Words: 70
Robolab went well! We played two rounds, and your best score was counted. After the first round we had 262 points, which was first place! (and only 8 points lower than our best trial run). During the second round another team scored a very very good 335 points, which we knew we weren't gonna beat (and didn't), so we ended up in second. Happy it went well, happy it's over.
The hour is near...
Mood: anxious
Music: synthesized "Rocky"
Posted on 2005-04-08 14:40:00
Tags: robolab challenge
Words: 71
robolab approaches! I'm down here doing some tweaking, then one more session, then the competition at 6. I'm trying not to be too stressed about it, but I've so tired (and work hasn't been going well) that everything is a huge freaking deal. I had better be over this soon, because it's really wearing on me.
Blah. Anyway, the robot just climbed the stairs well, so I'm happy for now! Onward...
today. Also, last night.
Mood: tired
Music: people conversing
Posted on 2005-04-07 22:51:00
Tags: robolab challenge
Words: 243
First things first. West Wing was good!
So, good episode...really the last few episodes were good. I'm glad Santos won, and the addition of Baker was a nice surprise. As for the big surprise (Leo for VP), at first it made sense, but now...I dunno. I mean, he doesn't add anything electorally (chief of staff is not an impressive position, electorally), and his health problems would raise serious red flags for me. The real race should be interesting, especially since they're really setting both candidates up as "good guys".
Props for Jonathan - he noted at the beginning of the episode that of all the primary candidates, we've only seen Santos's wife.
So, still tired and stuff. Robolab went well tonight - there were some minor snags, but I think things will go well tomorrow. Today and tomorrow is a technical conference, so I was in sessions all day, which was kinda neat, but meant I was at work for 14 hours, and doing actual work for none of it. Which was weird!
Hmm. I'm out of things to say I guess. Hopefully things will go well tomorrow, and I will be able to relax some. Not that I should be stressed about this. But I have some new ideas to try at work, so hopefully that will help.
Happy Birthday, onefishclappin! Some people (including wildrice13 and onefishclappin) are over talking and stuff, but I need to go to bed - bright and early tomorrow! *sigh*
robolab randomness!
Mood: sleepy
Music: They Might Be Giants - "Particle Man"
Posted on 2005-04-06 13:15:00
Tags: robolab challenge
Words: 271
So robolab stuff went pretty well last night - we did another task and then did a few runthroughs. Not that the runthroughs went particularly well (I'm the "commander", which means I decide which tasks to try again, skip, etc...and I was just too tired to do a good job. More practice, which will come Thursday, should help), but we're in pretty good shape. Go us! (we don't have a team name yet)
I'm tired still. I'm having two cokes a day just to stay afloat. Next week I am so catching up on sleep, come hell or high water!
Does anyone else start listening to music right before posting so they can have something to put there? Or am I like the lamest person in the world?
Google Maps now has satellite views of their maps, which is wicked cool. Although it seems to be not working for me at the moment.
There was an article on our internal web site titled "American Idol Debuts at NI". So I was interested, and clicked. The first few sentences were: "American Idol at NI? Well, no … but we are bringing something close." Does this seem like irresponsible journalism to anyone else? I know it's just an internal site, but you can't lie in your story title!
West Wing season finale tonight! The last few episodes have been very good, so I'm really looking forward to tonight's. Who's gonna die this time?
Hmm...still tired. And I get hungrier when I'm tired, so my weight watchers is totally totally shot for the last few weeks (and this one too). Maybe I'll grab some candy. Mmm...
Help sunset provisions of the Patriot Act!
Mood: hopeful
Music: Dan the Automater - "Relaxation Spa Treatment"
Posted on 2005-04-06 09:31:00
Words: 370
Some of the provisions of the Patriot Act are up for renewal, and so Congress is debating whether to renew them or not. I'd like to see them expire, so I wrote a letter to my Senators and Representative, which is actually pretty darn easy to do and makes me feel more involved in the government. You should do it too!
First thing to do is to do a little research and write your letter. I found information about this at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which led me to a coalition of groups opposed to the Patriot Act (Patriots to restore Checks and Balances). Looking at these sites (and a few news articles) led me to write the following letter:
I would urge you to consider supporting the Security and Freedom Enhancement (SAFE) Act introduced by Senators Craig, Sununu, and Durbin. This act would add some checks and balances to some provisions of the Patriot Act and would help protect the civil liberties of all Americans. When the Patriot Act was passed in 2001 (a mere 45 days after the terrorist attacks of September 11), Congress voted to make the most extreme provisions expire in December 2005 so that they could be reviewed, and now is the time to review and curtail them. The bipartisan group Patriots to restore Checks and Balances (with members such as Grover Norquist and Bob Barr) is in favor of this bill and other efforts to maintain our civil liberties in the face of the Patriot Act.
I would be most interested to hear your thoughts on civil liberties and the Patriot Act. Thank you for your time.
It's not a great letter, but it gets the point across. After that, it's easy to go to www.senate.gov and www.house.gov to find your representatives and write them (they all have email forms to contact them). My representatives are:
Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison
Senator John Cornyn
Representative Michael McCaul
(anyone in Texas has the same senators, but probably a different representative, unless (for example) you live in my apartment complex :-) )
So take 10 minutes and write them. Maybe this isn't important to you, but when an issue that is important comes up, let them know!
weekend, stuff
Mood: confused (by work)
Posted on 2005-04-05 10:36:00
Tags: robolab challenge
Words: 245
(I'm not very good at coming up with subjects...)
So the weekend was decent, I guess. Even just being 2 years removed from Rice drastically reduced the number of people I knew at Beer-Bike (and WRC didn't even sweep! :-( ) I took some pictures, which I'll put up sometime this week, hopefully. I did put up pictures from Easter - you can find them here.
"Sin City"...yikes. It was a pretty good movie, despite all the violence and gore (and those don't usually bother me too much, but it definitely bothered me this time...not for the faint of heart or stomach). I like Alexis Bledel :-) Actually, I found out she's from Houston (thanks to IMDB). Neat!
Despite not getting enough sleep over the weekend, I felt better than I did during the week, and now I'm feeling blah again, which leads me to believe that stress is really the problem. Unfortunately, there's not a whole lot I can do about it. Although things are going a little better at work, so hopefully that'll help some.
This week is robolab competition week, so I'm busy monday, tuesday, thursday nights working on it (and friday is the competition!) Things went OK last night - we're trying to be careful to make sure things work, as opposed to trying every single task and having none of them work (like what happened last year). Tonight I think we're gonna do calibration and some test runs on the real board. Wish us luck!
The pope's passing
Mood: busy
Music: Dave Matthews Band - "Digging a Ditch"
Posted on 2005-04-04 11:05:00
Words: 122
Pope John Paul II passed away this weekend (which, unless you were in a cave on Mars with your ears shut, you probably heard already...), may he rest in peace. There's a strong tendency to not want to speak ill of the dead, which made me hesitate to write this, but I think it's important to not whitewash history. This pope was very conservative (opposition to the war in Iraq and the death penalty notwithstanding), and not supportive of gay rights at all (the church has been supporting efforts to pass constitutional bans on gay marriage and such). There are some good articles at Daily Kos and The Advocate. Here is the document released by the Vatican in 1986 talking about gays.
wow, I really can't think of one! oh well...
Mood: optimistic
Music: Evita - "Requiem for Evita"
Posted on 2005-04-01 09:24:00
Tags: robolab challenge
Words: 242
So I managed to get to bed at a semi-reasonable time last night, and I feel pretty good so far today. Driving to Houston should be fun. Unfortunately, we can't listen to wildrice13's iPod Mini because my Prius doesn't have a tape player! Oh well...
Gmail announced (and I don't think it's an April Fools thing...) that they're raising their storage from 1Gb to 2GB, which might seal the deal for me. I love Gmail. Also, they have a cute April Fools thing where they're raising your available storage continuously. Check it out!
Robolab went well last night - accomplished two more tasks. And I'm gonna be the "commander", deciding what tasks to tackle and what to give up on during th ecompetition. So I need to memorize the point values and time it takes to do them :-)
Work's going decently, although still a long way to go. Although our stock is not so happy today. Sorry!
Evita is good music. Never seen the musical (although I did like the Simpsons version!), but David liked it, and we should see it together at some point.
Wildflowers along the highways and on campus really cheer me up, more than they should, I think. They're just so colorful and full of life. Anyway, it's nice pick-me-up to see them every morning :-)
Hopefully this weekend will be fun. And I'll get some good pictures.
I'm like totally out of thoughts. So, have a good weekend, all!
good beer-bike jack
Mood: excited
Music: FFX-2 music
Posted on 2005-03-31 23:05:00
Words: 57
So every year Rice has Beer-Bike, and during the week before (Willy Week), the residential colleges "jack" each other (mess with them in a not too destructive manner).
Someone from Wiess put Martel up on eBay! The eBay page is here, and I've included an image below for posterity (since eBay is bound to shut it down...)
busy busy busy!
Mood: worn-down
Music: "Rocky" music (hummed to self)
Posted on 2005-03-30 08:58:00
Tags: robolab challenge
Words: 444
(and yes, the subject is a slight reference to Vonnegut. Good, weird stuff that I haven't read in a while...)
I'm busy. Pretty darn busy. And that's starting to stress me out at times. Here's a list of things I'm currently doing:
- I'm involved in a long project at work that is not going particularly well. Some days I don't make progress, and some days I do, but the ratio of progress I make to progress that needs to get done is like one percent or something.
- I'm working on ROBOLAB stuff. Last night we met for the first time (well, the first time I was there) and had a good time. Kyle & David worked out a system to put balls in the basket. Jonathan built a super-sturdy wall, and I programmed the "Rocky" music (*hums "Rocky" music because it's darn catchy!). (although Jonathan and I did do some other stuff!) It's going pretty well, and I'm meeting with people again tomorrow. The competition is a week from Friday, and here is a list of the tasks.
- I'm working on the TiVo HME challenge. I'm getting close to done with my application, which lets you view galleries on your TiVo (for example, my gallery!)
- For a short while, I was working on a style to submit to the LiveJournal style competition - luckily I realized there was no way I was gonna get it done in time.
Adaptability: People strong in the Adaptability theme prefer to "go with the flow." They tend to be "now" people who take things as they come and discover the future one day at a time.
which is a reasonable description of me. So, I don't mind as much when I have many tasks to do at work, or when things keep coming up. However, this is the only project I'm working on, which doesn't give me much chance to adapt, as it were. And I can't switch between things that are keeping me busy, because they're either work tasks or home tasks.
What I need to do better is not let it get me down when work doesn't go well. This is surprisingly hard to do, as I'm pretty invested in my job and believe in the product (and the project I'm working on), but there are more ways of being successful in life than just job-related stuff.
Hmm. I came in this morning really wanting to post, and I think I got all my thoughts out there. This weekend is Beer-Bike - Will Rice Will Sweep!
Easter weekend
Mood: determined
Music: Vertical Horizon - "We Are"
Posted on 2005-03-28 09:37:00
Tags: robolab challenge
Words: 284
So the weekend was pretty good - for details, I'll refer you to djedi. I took some pictures of people, and lots of the nephews hunting for Easter eggs that I'll hopefully find time to put up this week. A few random thoughts about the weekend:
- I played tennis and then basketball (around the world, 21, and then 2 on 2) on Saturday. That's the most exercise I've gotten in a while, and I was really sore Saturday and Sunday (mostly better today, though).
- If you're driving around here, check out the wildflowers! I saw a bunch on the way down and back, but they're along MoPac and I-35 as well. Good stuff - makes me feel like spring is here, even though it can still be kinda cold.
- *counts to self* 11 people is a lot to have in a house for a weekend - I still get overwhelmed at times. There's always something going on, people trying to get a game of something together, or watch a movie, or go out and grab something. I'm more used to it than I was at first, but it's like crazy different from my family in that aspect.
- My sister Carrie got confirmed this weekend - congratulations!
Busy week ahead of me - game night tonight, normal volunteer stuff on Wednesday, and I said I'd work on robolab stuff (we have an internal competition coming up two weeks from last friday, and I perhaps foolishly signed up to be in a group. It's a lot of fun, but finding the time to work on it is difficult...) tuesday and thursday nights. And friday we leave for beer-bike. So, yikes!
Hopefully I'll make some progress at work today. That would rock!
Happy Easter!
Mood: chipper
Music: none
Posted on 2005-03-25 15:27:00
Words: 152
I'm headed to David's place this weekend for Easter, which will be my first Easter away from home. Which I guess isn't really that interesting :-)
We went over to wildrice13's place last night to watch "Donnie Darko". I liked it a lot, although I'm still scratching my head a bit (which is good - I like those sorts of movies!). Then we played a little Timesplitters, and then David left to go babysit for his nephews (he'll be back soon, and then we'll go down to his place).
Work is a lot less stressful - I've made some progress, although there's still a long way to go, and irritating issues keep popping up. But, just getting something done is a big relief.
I got my new phone (a Nokia 6800) that's super-31337. Fun stuff, and hopefully it will hold a charge better than my old one.
Happy Easter to all! Have a good weekend!
this is awesome!
Mood: excited
Music: Blue Oyster Cult - "Burnin' for You"
Posted on 2005-03-24 13:05:00
Words: 54
These flickr photos are very very cool. These people took pictures of the stuff behind their monitor and used it as a background image, so they look transparent. (but words can't do it justice, check it out!) (thanks to Engadget)
I had a breakthrough at work, so this will be a good day. Yay!
random thoughts (are there any other kinds?)
Mood: mellow
Music: none
Posted on 2005-03-23 23:17:00
Words: 292
A list of random thoughts:
- Elissa, a friend of mine from Rice, has had an article published in the Chicago Tribune. Congrats! (thanks to Stanton)
- I took the elevator at work today up to the eighth floor (the top floor. my floor!), and stopped on every single floor. I think this is the first time that's happened to me. Whee!
- Work is like super stressful, which sucks.
- We played Timesplitters 3 tonight for the first time. Verdict: it was fun, but takes some getting used to over the old one. The missions have a plot, which is new. It also froze on us twice, which is bad bad bad.
- The song "Let Go" by Frou Frou (on their Details album) is really really really cool. It's the first track on the CD (which is in my car right now), and it mellows me out just hearing the opening. Pavlovian or something. On a related note, Frou Frou rock. I could listen to her voice all day, reading the phone book or something. (kinda like Dave Mathews)
- I've been really in to the Grey Album lately. I've never heard Jay-Z before, but I do like some rap (some of Eminem's stuff), and the mashup is very cool - addicting stuff. I'm reconsidering getting that mashup album that they did with Linkin Park and Jay-Z (Collision Course) - I hesitated because you really only get 6 songs (and it's pricey!), but I really like the one I heard on the radio, Numb/Encore. Actually, I think "Encore" is one of the Jay-Z songs used in the Grey Album. Neat! Anyway, what was I saying? Um, mashups are neat, which I'm sure everyone else discovered months and months ago. Fine, be that way.
- Time for bed. Good night!
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