i want a tachikoma

My MSU email is acting up at the moment, so I've pretty much switched over to Gmail wholesale. I can still read MSU email but it won't let me send email for some reason, so I'm just responding to all my emails with Gmail. On a side note, I have only been using Gmail for a couple of days and I've aleady accumulated 19 invites.

I got some weird email today. One of the PSM people I talked to thought I was in applied biotechnology, and emailed me demanding to know why I wasn't signed up for some molecular bio class. I replied that on top of my being an Applied Physics student, I haven't signed up for any class yet, because they haven't yet told me all the classes I need to take. However, my remarks were to be sent by MSU email and thus got held up. The PSM person figured out I was in Applied Physics and correct themself, so I just deleted my outgoing email.

I also got bored and Googled myself. I found that Oregon State now has a list of PSM students, including profiles. Unfortunately, they completely made the profiles up - I am quoted as saying that I want to be a 'technical advisor in the aerospace industry.' Right. They also spelled my name wrong. Excellent work all around. I told the PSM people that I would be happy to write a short blurb about PSM if it meant getting rid of the crap they made up.

Since I'm home for the week I can catch The Daily Show. (No cable TV in the apartment.) It seems that their popularity has made them bolder - the joke seem a little punchier, and they dropped quite a few F-bombs in the shows I watched. I still love my Daily Show though. Kurt Vonnegut was on tonight, but it wasn't really a great interview. I like a couple of Vonnegut's books, but many of the others are just him being a dirty old man and getting away with it.

SPS is starting back up at MSU. And what's this - it's not sucking? The change in leadership (read: Sarah left) seems to have done a great deal of good. My brother is apparently even standing in as temporary VP (until they hold proper elections). SPS even ordered good pizza for their first meeting. This is a huge deal in the context of SPS. In the past, SPS has been governed by apathetic inertia so great that they couldn't even order anything other than Bell's pizza. (It is the cheapest...and also sucks. To quote Timmy, you can taste the savings.) SPS usually ordered 8 pizzas for 7 attendees. SPS was once criticized for 'not spending enough money' by the department (because they do nothing), so at the next meeting they ordered 8 horrible pizzas and a 6' sub.

At the new meeting, they ordered Papiano's. And they had enough attendees to justify 8 pizzas.

This is a very positive step for SPS. In fact, with Jim as acting VP and Josh as acting president, they may even be interested in a run of physics shirts! I emailed the print shop quite a while ago about a new run, but they haven't responded. I clearly need to go out to the shop and get the facts in person. The physics shirts are far from dead, they're just...hibernating? Waiting for a triumphant return, perhaps with the rebirth of SPS from the ashes. SPS and the physics shirts, working together - who would have thought?

Jim came home today for our mom's birthday. He brought several full episodes of Top Gear, a car show on BBC. The show is fairly amusing and I like their picks in music. For example, playing Orbital's "P.E.T.R.O.L." for a race between the gasoline and diesel versions of the BMW M5. Or playing music from Master and Commander and Batman Begins while racing a van on the Nurburgring.

In return, I made Jim watch an episode of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. Ghost in the Shell is a cyberpunk classic and I have been enjoying Stand Alone Complex.

Tomorrow I am going to be in East Lansing. Good times.