So this isn't the highly anticipated MS-Paint LJ entry about the Walden Pond work excursion (that's going to be put on hold for a while, for a reason you'll discover very soon...), but it's probably just as funny is you aren't me.

If you've been talking to me a lot this week, you might know that my laptop has been breathing smoke on an off, and has quite a bit of difficulty booting up. For example, if you've ever had a computer problem that prevented the computer from booting, you may have noticed the computer speaker gives semi-informative beeps to indicate what the problem is: see http://www.pcmech.com/article/beep-codes/ or http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=1223 well, here's what my laptop does (b = short beep, B = long beep)

BBBBBbBbbBbBbbbBBBBbbbbbbBBBbbBBBbbBbbBBBBBbbBbbbbbbbbbbbb*crash*

And that means it's having an epileptic seizure. When the computer does boot up, it runs very sluggishly. The first thing I thought was maybe it was a virus (the sluggishness presented itself before the smoke or the beeps from hell). But alas, AVG, Window's defender, and a Hijack-this later, no viruses or malware or anything was to be found. After the smoke and the cacophonous beeps, I knew her time left with me would be short, because the warranty expired several months before the end of school (and it had just had the hard drive and fan replaced then, too). Despite this, I still had my desktop, so I could still do everything. Sure it wouldn't make the pain of losing my precious laptop go away, but it would give me eight gigs of ram to cry on and 1.4 terabytes of storage filled with HD videos like House S01-05 to help alleviate my pain.

That is, until about 45 minutes ago, when in the middle of a real tear-jerking episode, my desktop just shut down. Not one of those tidy shutdowns where it closes out of everything, or a crash, AKA BSoD, this was like a power outage, or a gunshot. It happened so fast I didn't even realize it. Had I stepped on the surge protector switch and choked off power? Nope. The happy dimply lit red light of the power supply sat there drooling away. What could it have been? And just as suddenly as it had shut off, it started booting up again. I decided not to get too worked up over it, and go grab some orange juice. To my horror, upon returning to my computer, it had completely died. As I tearfully shouted at it to "stay with me!" and began frantically hitting the power switch while flipping the power supply on and off, a horrible blinding fear enveloped me.

I was going to lose her, too. Several unresponsive power flicks later, when all that shown was the dim light of the motherboard, a quick spin of the motherboard fan, and then nothing, I knew it was over. So the first thing I did through tear drenched eyes was text Eric. The second thing I did was try to figure out which part of her had given out. Was it the motherboard? The power supply? Had she simply lost the will to compute? My money is on the power supply, and I say that both figuratively and literally. I actually am putting money into buying a new power supply to find out, because she's packing a 750+ Watt power supply and I only had one of them. If it turns out to not be the power supply, I'm doubly owned because (a) that's a much worse thing to have die, and (b) I'll have spent money on the power supply for nothing.

And now I have to wait until I can fix my desktop to find out what the hell happened in that episode of House. Likewise all the MS Paint pictures I made, along with the two page narrative of the Walden Pond Excursion are, you guessed it, on my desktop. And sure, I could probably mount the hard drives two by two onto my other box and lift the stuff off, but at the risk of totally ruining my shit even moreso than it already is. I'd rather not pull a Josh.

This, along with the tree next to my house exploding from a lightning bolt which also blew out the internet wires AND the power to half of my house, is more than all of the hate mail I expected from my previous post about my house. I swear, all I wanted to do was take some pretty pictures and show a few people in a semi-comedic fashion. I did not brace myself properly.

My home is really pretty in the summer, and by that I don't mean it as another one of those, "oh it's so pretty" things. I mean my house is astoundingly gorgeous. I decided it's definitely worth taking pictures of, but unfortunately I missed the major rhododendron blossoms in the front of my house coming up the driveway.

Click on the pictures to get the full view. I apologize if this takes a while to load, hopefully it's worth it!


I'm going to brace myself for hate spam

(9:47:58 PM) Tubbers: lol
(9:48:08 PM) Tubbers: so, I forgot about this until a little while ago
(9:48:12 PM) Tubbers: but a few days ago
(9:48:18 PM) Tubbers: I had this mad hilarious dream
(9:48:54 PM) Tubbers: that like 5-6 years from now
(9:49:02 PM) Tubbers: You, Anson, and I had all gotten married
(9:49:09 PM) Tubbers: and we decided to have children at the same time
(9:49:26 PM) Tubbers: and you and I had daughters, and Anson had a son
(9:49:48 PM) Tubbers: we then fucking fought over whose daughter would get to marry Anson's son
(10:18:43 PM) Tubbers: I'm telling you right now, Tamir
(10:18:52 PM) Tubbers: my daughter gets him
(10:42:50 PM) Tamir: lol
(10:42:51 PM) Tamir: that's hilarious
(10:43:00 PM) Tubbers: I know
(10:43:18 PM) Tubbers: The whole thing was just ridiculous though, lol
(10:43:37 PM) Tubbers: besides
(10:43:42 PM) Tubbers: we all know
(10:43:58 PM) Tubbers: that even in the astronomically small chance we all got married, and had children at the same time
(10:44:06 PM) Tubbers: Eric's son would steal the hearts of all the girls
(10:44:10 PM) Tamir: LOL
(10:44:11 PM) Tamir: yeah

--- Pasted to Anson ---

(10:46:46 PM) Anson: HAHAHHAAHA
(10:47:10 PM) Tubbers: I don't think I'm going to come up with anything funnier this summer, lol
(10:47:35 PM) Anson: lj that shit
(10:47:38 PM) Tubbers: lol okay
(10:47:54 PM) Tubbers: I'm going to try to get Eric's reaction
(10:50:48 PM) Tubbers: I already know Dan is going to fall out of his chair

--- Pasted to Eric ---

(11:22:44 PM) Zantifon: damn straight

I have a lot of downtime at work right now for various reasons, and since I don't have any e-books/PDFs left, and I can't bring in hard copies of books without looking really strange and possibly getting in trouble, and I can't look at interesting things online that would draw attention like manga, I've just been reading nytimes. Like 50 articles a day or so.

I will tell you one thing; if you sit at nytimes.com for two hours straight f5ing and reading new articles, it's almost horribly depressing how much stuff they mess up, get wrong, change, and don't change. I saw the same article submitted five different times within 30 minutes yesterday because new information kept coming in, and the author would add it in. In doing so, the entire article became completely incoherent and lost it's flow and thought process. Conclusions at the end of the article no longer made sense with the new information, yet they were unchanged.

More articles than I care to admit have petty grammatical errors, like this, "As Iranian officials seek to crush the remaining resistance, American attitudes to their campaign has hardened." While I don't expect perfection from anyone, it's still annoying to see as many little things like this as I do, especially from professionals.

Edit: wtf, "When Brandon Jennings, who played against Rubio overseas and worked out with the Kings, he labeled Rubio as a source of unwarranted attention." - http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/25/sports/basketball/25nba.html - That's a full, unchanged sentence from the article.

My only other mild complaint about the times is that authors have, in general, a very obvious tone to their articles. This is a very minor complaint, however, as it is impossible to write an article without some degree of personal opinion and bias, and it really only bothers me because 95% of the writers have exactly the same tone.

Those things aside, it's actually pretty good, and the fact that I am complaining about it because I'm doing random crap instead of work is some lol.

This entry is going to be friends only, for several reasons. If I were to list them here, I'd have to make this entry friends-only as well, so I'll leave it at that.

Sorry Dan, this isn't the entry I was talking about. That will come sometime later this week, hopefully.

• Learn MATLAB
• Become Pro at SF4
• Fix the gimp leg on Anrui's Futon
  • Corollary to the above: I need to "get" a welding torch
• Pay more attention to current affairs
• Steal the Jamba Juice recipes
• Learn to hotwire a car
• Learn to drive stick shift
• Write more of book
• Read more (I actually need some recommendations here, aside from Game of Thrones from Dan)
  • Ender's Game
  • Ender's Shadow
  • Shadow of the Hedgemon
• Eat more
• re-learn more piano

Will probably update later today with more stuff.

My father's connectional reach never fails to impress me. His best friend's son, (who is also a really good friend of mine -- the real Tubbyisgood) is currently looking for a summer job in Geology, because, due to some unforeseen circumstances he cannot attend summer classes with his girlfriend at UPENN. With his carefully laid plans in ruin, he is currently looking for something to make the summer anywhat productive. Currently my father is pulling some strings with the number three guy at USEPA Philladelphia to land him not only a summer job, but one where he can be close by UPENN.

I've been forbidden from telling him this myself (since it's not completely certain, and it's supposed to be a surprise), but seeing as he doesn't know my LJ exists, and the only person who reads this and could tell him is Rikura, it's probably OK.

It turns out that this number three guy is actually one of his old college friends, and it got me thinking. The most important thing you get out of college isn't the knowledge, it's the connections with other people. That sounds like a petty mechanistic networking approach, but I don't mean it like that. Not just setting yourself up for business in the future, but the real meaningful ones. The people you bond with while doing work, and having fun. Most of what I've learned in college hasn't been from class, it's been from the internet and my friends.

It's like some crazy slightly overweight drunken guy told us at 3:00 AM at Eat 'n Park: "WebDev here can give Arsenal's idea's life, and milkshake man can take care of the business. These other clowns who don't know what they want can get you coffee."*

*Paraphrasing

While I don't yet know where I'll be or what I'll be doing after my last year of college, I do know that years from now when a good friend's child needs a summer internship in debating morality, or being the most offensively superior human in the room, that I can call up Dan or Eric, and Dan will say, "How did you get this number? I'm not your associate anymore," and when I try to bribe him he'll tell me "I'm reporting you to the police." After that commotion dies down, I won't be upset, because I know that when I call Eric, he won't pick up -- even though he's there and he heard the phone ring -- he'll let the answering machine get it, and then listen intetly, but ignore my request, just as he ignores them now. And after my plea is done and the phone has been put down, he'll cry out

"OWNED! That kid isn't getting an internship this summer."

Finished this last night but didn't get a chance to write about it.

This was far and beyond leagues better than Ender's Game. To paraphrase someone else, "it's about another boy who was just like Ender, but way more awesome."

I'm only going to write this next part because it is a mathematical certitude that Dan will read it.
( MASSIVE SPOILERS )

Contemplating running the Boston Marathon next year. Every part of myself which is usually screaming "NO, YOU MORON, WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU THINKING?" isn't, but I'm still not sure.

It will take about 6 months of training to prepare, and I'm not aiming to qualify, that would be too polling as to get good enough to qualify would take quite a while, and if I didn't I'd be screwed, not to mention in order to qualify you need to run another marathon.

If I do it I'll most likely be running for Dana Farber cancer research, as a charity event.

I'll 100% do it if Big T does it with me.

Finally read it, next up is Ender's Shadow, which I've heard is better!


Spoiler Free Angries:
One thing which made me a little angry as I read through it was this line from about 3/5ths of the way through the book (it's not really a spoiler).

Ender knew a moment's pleasure.
Everyone had learned the wrong lesson from Bonzo's misuse of Ender Wiggin.

It wasn't Bonzo's misuse of him that this passage refers to, it is Rose the Nose's. I -hate- it when Authors mix up the details of their own books especially in those very books themselves.

What disappointed me more than angered me was the way it was written. I really didn't like the style. Everything was light, which was good because it left the details up to the reader, but it was also shallow and unpleasing in many regards. There is a rich, vibrant, and fascinating world, the depths and details of which will forever remain a mystery (unless they're revealed in the other seven books).

Although I've never needed to lose weight, I honestly believe that losing weight is waaaaaaaaaaaaaay easier than gaining it. I am 5'8.5'' and I weigh 120 lbs. If you don't know what that means, it means I'm really really skinny. I wanted to try and gain about 15-20 lbs over the summer (obviously of muscle, not fat), so far, in 3 weeks I have gained at most two pounds (up from 118). I decided to cut out cardio workouts, and just do lifting until I reach my target weight, then I'll add cardio back into the mix and maintain that weight.

In order to gain weight, you need to eat a TON OF FOOD. Not just a lot, way more than you would expect. I do not actually enjoy eating large amounts of food, on top of this I have a ridiculously high metabolism. During the school year, I actually do not eat enough myself, as I found out, and my body down-regulates (drops metabolism) like crazy to compensate. I'm going to put a note in here in case anyone screams anorexia! No. I have like 1800-2000 calories a day, which is not enough for me, but is nowhere near anorexia. That amount of food sustains me at ~118. When I eat more food, my metabolism spikes up, back to normal (Something like 2800+ burned in a day, just by sitting around). When I eat more I basically get jittery all day and can't stay still. I also sleep less. WAY less. In order to gain weight, I need to eat quite a bit more than I use up in a day, every day. For a person who doesn't like eating (my stomach capacity is actually incredibly small...), and who eats very slowly (sadface) it's quite difficult. I've been eating about three small-ish meals a day, and about three large snacks in addition to those meals. The meals are about 680 calories on average, and the snacks are about 400 on average. I've been doing that for 3 weeks, and I stopped gaining weight after the first week. I recently cut cardio out (stopped jogging) but I still haven't gained anything yet.

So far the experience has assured me a thousand times over, that I will never ever become obese. That's a plus. Even if my metabolism plummets (which it will eventually, I'm told), the only thing that would mean to me is I can eat less food, which would actually be a relief.

Things that kill my appetite:
Running
Sleeping
Eating (obviously, lol)
Food with a lot of fat and protein fill me up especially quickly.

Battle Plan:
I need to eat more than I am. Considering I am in a perpetual state of feeling uncomfortably full, and uncomfortably energetic, and on top of this, I can't actually go use that energy, or it will spike my metabolism even more, requiring me to eat more, it's going to be a challenge.

Filling scale: How filling something is to eat, 0-10, linear so 10 feels like you're eating twice as much food as 5, and 10 times as much as 1. 10 is about as much as I can possibly eat in a sitting.

Weapons: (Just a small list of meals I have fairly often, aside from the standing rib roast, that's pretty rare, and takes like 3+ hours to make)

Big Guns:

Milkshake: [Size: 4]
  ~306 grams of Kirkland (Costco brand) ice cream
+ ~1/2 cup of milk
= ~900 Calories

Fried Rice: [Size: 11]
  2 cups of white rice (240 Calories/Cup)
+ 2 Chicken breasts (90 calories each)
+ 1 egg (90 calories)
+ ~40 grams of diced onions (17 calories)
+ ~15 grams of butter (like 1 + 2/5th tablespoons, 140 calories)
+ ~85 grams of soy sauce (45 calories)
= ~975 calories

Milano Cookies: [Size: 3]
  900 calories per bag
+ Milk (160 calories)
= 1060 calories

Standing Rib Roast Dinner: [Size: 10]
  ~300 g of meat (1000 calories) <-- Hell yeah!
+ ~200 g mashed potatoes + gravy (~200 calories)
+ other random stuff, probably like 100 calories
= ~1300 calories

Bacon (I don't really like bacon... but it has a TON of calories): [Size: 6]
  ~90 calories per slice, if a good amount of fat remains., x7 slices or so
= 630 calories


Snacks:

Banana: [Size: 1.5]
= ~100 calories

Strawberries: [Size: 10/30]
= 3-6 calories per

Blueberries: [Size: 10/120]
= 0.8-1 per

Clementines: [Size: 10/15]
= ~34 per

Essentially, every day I need to consume at least 3500 calories, so basically I need three big guns, and a liberal amount of snacking on fruit, and drinking a lot of Gatorade, orange juice, and milk.

I've come to the realization that I need to stretch my somach if I'm going to make this work, as it is right now, if I'm eating a particularly large meal (for me), I will actually start to gag while chewing food, and I've nearly thrown up several times. But it doesn't get any better, I could eat the same amount after completely digesting everything x 50, and I would still nearly throw up after eating that amount (which isn't even an incredibly large amount). So I need to find some way to expand my stomach capacity (kind of like a reverse stomach stapling). Also, when I eat a huge meal and then sleep, I still feel completely full in the morning, and until I have a sizable snack and then wait 4+ hours, I won't be hungry again. What I mean by that is, I could actually go the entire day without eating, and not be hungry. If I don't force myself to eat something, then I won't get hungry at all.

Clearly this is weird, so I'm going to try to cram massive amounts of plain white rice down my throat + something like gatorade to wash it down with, and then after I get the feeling I'm going to throw up, just keep drinking until I can feel my stomach stretching. This will probably be extremely painful, but I figure if I do that for every "meal" for a few days in a row, my stomach capacity should increase. Either that or I'll rupture my stomach and die from stomach acid eating away at my internal organs. Hopefully that doesn't happen, but if it does, I assure you I will text Eric and let him know I got owned.

So, the context for this is I'm talking with some guy in a hallway, and this phrase just seemed applicable.

Me: "Well yeah, out of sight, out of mind."
Other Guy: "Yeah."

Then some blind guy who just happened to round the corner said,

Blind Guy: "Sight isn't everything."

I felt pretty bad for a minute or two, but I hope that guy was right.

This is one of my dad's favorite college stories, about how he met his friend Mark.

It was the second day of school, my dad was doing something near the entrance to his dorm. The hallway leading to one of the main dorm branches was connected on each side by a short staircase which went down maybe four or five steps, and the ceiling also declined with it. So to make that clear, you went down a few steps and then were in a typical dorm hallway. My dad's room was a few doors down from this incline, so to leave his dorm and go outside he'd have to up the steps. His neighbor, some guy with a gigantic head, had taken to saving time getting back to his room by jumping down the short staircase. However on this faithful day, everyone discovered why this was an absolutely retarded idea.

Gorilla head comes barreling into the dorm building and starts booking it to the hallway as my dad gets up to go get something from his room. This guy is traveling at a full sprint and leaps into the air to (presumably) jump down the staircase and keep his momentum. However, he had severely misjudged this action. The guy's head slams into the declined ceiling with incredible force, his legs swing forward out in front of him, grazing the ceiling, and the man falls sharply on his head and slides several feet down the hallway. His head was scraped very badly and blood slowly began to pool onto the floor.

"Holy shit, what just happened?"
"Oh my god. He just died. He's dead."
*some girl throws up*
"This is terrible... that kid just died."

Frightened, confused, and bewildered as to what action to take, a group of college students gathered around to gawk, scream, and cause a commotion.

"Someone should call a paramedic, maybe he's still alive."
"There's NO WAY that guy is still alive, you saw what happened, that's a corpse"
*the girl throws up again*
"GET HER OUT OF HERE"

The banter went on for somewhere between two and ten minutes, and then just as mysteriously as the ordeal began, so too did it end. Like Lazarus rising from from grave, the melon-size-headed man jerked upwards as if some puppeteer were pulling the strings on a marionette, the man awkwardly rose to his feet.

"Hey guys, what's wrong, you look like you've just seen a ghost!" chimed the man.
"Uh, are you okay?" asked my father.
"Yeah, sure, fine, but I'm going to be late to football practice unless I grab my stuff and head out now, I'll see you later."
"Yeah, okay, I'll see you later... Mark right?"
"Yeah."

And with that, the guy ran to his room, completely ignoring the trailing blood, grabbed his football gear, and ran off.

"How the hell did that guy not die?" someone questioned.
"I have no idea, but he seems like an interesting guy."

And that's how my father met one of his best friends, whom we still go visit every few months, and this story comes up every time.

*****Edit:*****
Dan: okay, that story's not funny. head injuries by jumping into low hanging ceiling obstacles is a major issue facing students today.

Each sobriquet involves its use in a sentence, as spoken by Eric.


Computational Discrete Mathematics (CDM) ~> Ericified ~> Siddem:

We're going to go do siddem.

Graphics ~> Ericified ~> Jiffex:

I can't go to Fuddruckers today since I'm grading jiffex.

Operating Systems ~> Ericified ~> Oss / Ossing (Pronounced awes as in awesome):

Oss Oss Oss Oss, OSSSSSSSSS.

Constructive Logic ~> Ericified ~> Clogic:

Take Clogic 'cause Pfenning is teaching it!

Zetorux emulating Eric:
Best Friends Forever (BFF) ~> Ericified ~> Biffs

Eric should biff the hardcore daughter.

Should I? lol

Edit: Going home!

Also lol:

Big T: Uhhh, want to work on Sengy alone... together?
Tubbers: Heck yes I do


Edit: Moar

Big T got an email from our Sengy TA, here was his response:

Meaning:
Quantifier of b-ness

Usage:
(noun)

That b.

Stop being a b.

You're a b.

You HUEG b.

Eric is a HUGE b.

[The b] / Eric

Tubbers: Damn, I was working with some guy on thing, and all he did the whole time was talk about how awesome robotics shit was. He did nothing else, including actually working.
VV: What a b

Levels of b-itude:
sort of b
kind of b
b
big b
HUGE b
gargantuan b
.
.
.
Eric

Meaning:
Absolute quantifier of quality

Usage:

That restaurant was dece at best.

These fries are dece.

Eric is dece at worst at everything.

Big T:
me: how was reflection, I think you took it last semester, right?
QT: it's pretty simple you just write a paper present attend 5 seminars that's it, lol
Tubbers: noice
Tubbers: sounds really dece
Big T: I know
Big T: it sure is golly dece

Levels of Dece:
kinda dece
Pretty dece
dece
quite dece
really dece
ultra dece

Stress sucks. I need to run more. It's odd, one of the things I hated most (running) is now something I'm doing voluntarily; life is strange.

On the plus side, I hear from a reliable source this show is good:



And that download speed makes me joyous.


First impression: Well, the Opening song is really nice. The show is a bit, well... it's a bit... yeah. On Ep. 8 of 80. There are some parts I like, but a lot of it seems forced and really overdone. It's definitely aiming to please the female demographic, but at least the story is interesting and Shurei is awesome. Her Seiyuu is win, too, one of my favorites.