take a deep breath and dive right into it

I made it to another weekend somehow. February finally died, thankfully. Only three more weeks left in the term. Apparently the PSM seminar for spring term has been scheduled for one of the worst possible time slots, so there's yet another minor PSM uprising in the works. It also sounded like my 3-credit business class for next term will be scheduled all on one night per week, so that's not entirely cool.

I put up reviews of Civilization IV and Black & White 2. It's very odd - those games seem to be diametric opposites of each other. The one game is exactly what the other is not. CivIV has a lean two CD's, while BW2 has an epic 4. CivIV has a novel for a manual, while BW2 has a pamphlet. CivIV has skirmishes and multiplayer modes but not single player story, while BW2 has - you guessed it - single player story but no skirmish or multiplayer. CivIV has ridiculously simplistic graphics, while BW2 causes biblically slow framerates with its rendered beauty.

Another update I intend to make is to compile all the quotes from my EM class. Dr. Stetz is very amusing. Those quotes are what make that class not a total waste so far, although we are finally getting in EM waves which I have been waiting two whole terms for and is the only thing I want out of EM.

Pandora actually scored a hit for me the other day. It's amazing at how Pandora can pick up on all the 'genes' of a song and yet usually completely misunderstands the feeling of the song. It did give me one new song that I've been listening to endlessly - 68 times so far, according to iTunes.

Speaking of new things, this webcomic is AWESOME.

regardless of warnings the future doesn't scare me at all

I think it's going to be another fairly manageable week, which is good. I had an E&M exam this morning, which could certainly have gone worse. I might have actually done really well if I'd known what the hell I was doing, which would have been a coup almost worthy of PHY410.

It's already the seventh week of the term. I think I'm mostly past the grueling stuff and classes are now just a matter of making up for some rough spots I had earlier. Today's department seminar was actually pretty sweet, a guy from NIST talking about quantum calorimetry to detect hard gamma rays to fingerprint "special nuclear material" for nuclear weapons inspectors. The results he showed were pretty stunning compared to methods in use right now.

I am currently banging around in Dreamweaver in preparation for my PSM seminar tomorrow. I have no intention of using it except that's what the prof has picked for us to use in our website-making module, so if I figure out how it works ahead of time I'll look as smart as I should. This is especially important because Dreamweaver sucks and isn't as good as FrontPage, which I actually use. So some advance prep is required. Street price for Dreamweaver is $400. I don't think I'd pay a nickel for this crap.

I got to thinking about how I made MSU's SOAR website, and realized that I had no idea where I put all the cool pictures of the telescope. I think I wiped them off the drives, but fortunately I back things up to CD - apparently weekly, back then. I did find the enormous original files I was looking for. Some of them are pretty stunning. I should get out and take some pictures somewhere - I've only broken out my camera once so far this year, to document the migration to a proper desk in my apartment.

webcomics

It seems like all my favorite webcomics are dying. PHD is starting to graduate people - first Mike (of all people), and maybe now Cecilia? Real Life is definitely past its prime, as well as Megatokyo. 8-bit Theatre is getting messed up so much if it doesn't die it will hardly be recognizable. Dilbert seems to have jumped the shark. It looks like even Ctrl-Alt-Del is going to start settling down and marrying people off. Perhaps the golden age of webcomics is over.

crushed, pt. II

Oregon's weather right now is fantastic. It feels like a spring day would in Michigan, and it's early February. The sun is out all day, the days are getting longer, and the temperature is high enough I didn't wear my jacket.

Today I harassed several distributor branch offices and eventually Dr Pepper / 7Up itself, and found that what I feared is true - there is no distributor of Crush in Oregon. DPSUHQ told me the nearest distributor was around Seattle. However, L swears she's seen Crush somewhere (not in town though). Incidentally enough, my parents sent me a couple six-packs of Crush that arrived today, so I related my troubles about how impossible it is to get Crush to the other PSMs while drinking Crush. Now they think I run some kind of Crush smuggling ring.

Tomorrow is Friday. I am more than ready for it to be the weekend. However, tomorrow has a greater distinction than that - I will be a quarter of the way through my Master's program. Already! I am probably going to Salem tomorrow to celebrate with things I can't get here in Corvallis - a Best Buy run and a Papiano's pizza. Then there will be much gaming. No exams to grade this weekend.

crushed

I still can't find Crush out here. I do have some that I shipped from Michigan, but it's being strictly rationed and is already about halfway gone. I went through most of the grocers in the Corvallis phone book last week and no one has it. I might start bothering stores to see if someone is willing to get some.

I have also been scouring the internet for Crush. There are a couple of websites you can order pop from but I am kind of iffy on that. It also seems like there might be places in Portland where I can get Crush. I wouldn't go to Portland just for that, but I haven't been to the science museum up there yet and if I can come back with a trunkload of Crush that's even better.

superbowl sunday

So yeah, it's been a long time since I updated. I haven't done anything particularly interesting since last time, just school. Grad school will rough you up. The end of this coming week marks halfway through the term though.

I did end up buying Civ4, but it's less exciting than I'd hoped. In particular the combat stinks, but at least they fixed the screwup from Civ3 where spearmen would beat tanks. I have pretty much thrashed Ace Combat 5 except for a couple of medals left to earn.

I'm grading exams this weekend. Circumstances led to my pulling double duty this time, but that should mean I get a really easy time later in the term when I'll probably need it more. I'm halfway done so far, I need to put another six or seven hours in today.

I'm getting some useful stuff done on the side though. I finally filled out a draft for my program of study, and I graded this week's prelabs which are a big help during the week. I seem to be having a little more trouble putting names to faces in my labs, and I forgot a couple of people that I had last term but aren't in my current labs. And then there was the dude who shaved his heavy beard, thus rendering himself completely unrecognizable to me, to his great amusement.

IE7 Beta is out, but I haven't used it yet. Not for lack of trying - it won't install because of something I did to Windows a couple months ago to free up drive space. I wish laptop hard drives were bigger. I hear IE7 is a good step up though.

insert coin

So I'm starting to want a new game to play. I went to Gamespot and looked up the review of Generals: Zero Hour, and clicked on "Similar Games". You want to know what it told me? First, it suggested Generals and the Generals + Zero Hour Deluxe Edition. You know, Generals + Zero Hour is pretty similar to Generals and Zero Hour. Idiots. Gamespot also suggested SimGolf - because building a golf course is so much like fighting international terrorism - and an obscure imported 2002 RTS called Hooligans, which is all about being soccer hooligans. The tagline of that game is apparently "The only thing to fear, is running out of beer." And if you think the box speaks for itself, try the scoreboard. Wow. I feel dumber just for knowing about this game.

Such h8.

Anyway, on to games I might actually play. I read Gamespot's 2005 awards and Psychonauts won like half of them. Then again, Gamespot tried to make me play Hooligans. I do remember Gobeski going on about Psychonauts though, so I might check it out. Empire Earth II might be interesting, but there is apparently an expansion pack coming out in about a month and damned if I'm going to buy that game now. There's also Civilization IV, but I'm not really into turn-based games.

I'll probably end up playing a game I brought back from home though - Sub Command. I never really got a chance to play it when we got it, but I did get a fair way through its predecessor 688(I) and I liked that, I even did some of my own TMA.

Of course, this is all assuming I'll have time to play games, which I don't. I manage to squeak in a round of video games here and there though just to stay sane.

no war no wrapped in plastic

I stopped trying to make up titles to posts that actually make sense. Now I'm just pulling random lines from songs I'm listening to. It seemed like the hip thing to do. Or maybe I'm just lazy and like confusing people.

Idiot Neighbor Boy was at it earlier today with his incessant pounding bass, so I went over and yelled at him. This time I didn't ask him to turn it down, I ordered him. It's much quieter now. Hopefully it sticks in his damned head this time.

So far my schedule is not too hectic, but the labs I TA haven't started up yet. I was assigned to a section that conflicted with my schedule and it took me two days to get it sorted out. I have to move my office hours though, which means I'll probably get stuck with some awful time slot. I wish this crap had been taken care of ahead of time instead of waiting until classes have started.

My classes. Quantum and E&M are off and running again like we didn't have a break. They're both pounding away at Lagrangian stuff I should have learned somewhere but didn't. It doesn't seem too bad to pick up though. It always amazes me when several independent classes get hooked on the same topic at the same time. At least I only have to learn one thing instead of two.

My philosophy class looks kind of interesting, although I want to go back and read up on Objectivist moral theory. I believe most of it, but I can't debate because I never remember the specifics. Also, I don't really care what other people believe anyway so there's no point in debate. I also do that Roark thing where I don't pay attention to people in the street. I'm always worried philosophy classes will turn all socialist. They were already throwing the word 'selfish' around in the first class today. I'm not looking for trouble, but I won't go quietly.

PSM seminar is going to make a pain of itself to start with, but then the whole second half of the term is making web pages. Hell, I could sleep through that. Just knowing how to get into my OSU FTP is like a million bonus points.

Speaking of websites, I added a couple game reviews to my much neglected MSU site.

The Nice Device released a song that's going to be on their new album. I can't wait until I can get my hands on that. They apparently have the final mixes in hand. I'll probably have to go to a show to buy it though. I really liked them the first time I saw them, but the second show wasn't quite as good. Part of it was just the sound. "Girls and tuning don't mix." -- Alicia Gbur, retuning after a couple songs.

I saw the Miami Vice trailer online. I thought it looked pretty good, until I stripped out the Linkin Park song they used, the fact that I played Vice City and the Ferrari 360. Then it looked awful. I have never actually seen Miami Vice, so I have no idea what the show was supposed to be like. Remember, 'Miami' spelled backwards is ' I Maim'.

My wireless keyboard shipped and should be here Thursday. Should be cool.

I'm a good chunk of the way into my latest book, Germany's Last Mission To Japan: The Failed Voyage of U-234. It's an interesting piece of history, but sadly you might not realize that from the book. It is kind of tepid when talking directly about U-234, and it also has a tendency to go off and talk about the war as a whole and make some sweeping claims in passing when it should be talking about rogue Nazi submarines. The book's organization is a little odd too. My tome on cryptology that I am excited to read arrived yesterday from UPS with the rest of my stuff from home, so I might start chipping away at that after I finish the U-234 book.

a hybrid of hundreds of troubles

Here we go again. Tomorrow I start my second term at Oregon State. I've been getting stuff organized - as you can see below, I got a new desk (or rather, an actual desk). I'm still getting used to the new setup. I ordered a wireless keyboard, which should be nice. I also like the monitor riser I put Freeman on, it gives me a little extra space and I think it helps with cooling too. My class load should be lighter this term, and I don't have my stupid comm class anymore, but I do have to figure out what's going on with the biodiesel stuff.

I've also been playing some games since I got back. I did my first run through Ace Combat 5, and I've been progressing in Need For Speed: Most Wanted as well. I am very good at getting pink slips in that game, I won both my Lamborghini Gallardo and C6 Corvette instead of having to buy them. I also unlocked one of the ultimate planes in AC5 - it even has a laser - but I have nowhere enough money to buy it.

There was an article in the latest Car and Driver about hybrids vs. regular cars. I was thinking about getting a Prius when I finally get a real job, but then the new Civic hybrid caught my eye. But apparently the regular Civic is almost as good, so now I'm just looking at that kind of car, but I don't really want to get rid of the Malibu to get the same kind of car so I'll probably just wait until the Malibu is about to die. I did see that Chevrolet is finally doing a Malibu SS for 2006, it's about time.

new desk

Before.

After.