Nail Polish

I've watched a couple of movies since last post: Cars and Talladega Nights. One was good, one was bad. I'll let you decide which was what. (or just keep reading.)What a great movie! I dare say the main car-acter has some likeness to me, until he changes, that is. What is this emotion thing anyway? Unlike him I believe team play is important, just not teamplay on equal levels. Physicist-Physicist-Physicist-Physicist doesn't work, but Doctor-Nurse-Nurse-Nurse-Patient-Patient works.

I'm almost ashamed to say this, but I grew quite fond of the pickup truck and his humorous retardation as well as his buck teeth. Tow Mater. Rofl. Also, the tractor tipping scene cracked me up very greatly. Overall, the movie was very amusing.

The helicopter was also kickass. Anything that flies is awesome.


Then I watched this horrible movie. Ballad? Didn't seem like one to me. Anyway, here's a guy that's on a team whose members are on completely unequal levels but ends up getting screwed in the end. I say I land somewhere between Ricky Bobby and Lightning McQueen.

\\


I tried to get a better shot, but this is as good as it gets.

I was going to go to 中本 (Google Map Link) to eat with Cynthia and Jonny but since Cynthia bailed on me, we decided to go to some cheap place in the mall (yes.. "cheap" - I'm sure most of you are aware of mall prices...). So after we eat, I'm barely full (meaning I have to eat dinner later) and I'm roaming around when this girl verbally ambushes me - asking me to see my nails and proceeds to SHINE my ring finger, then places cuticle oil to smoothen it out with Vitamin E oil.

Look into the picture and you'll see a slight shine on my ring finger. I feel somewhat uncomfortable looking at that finger now. So.. shiny! It feels unnatural. Just like using mechanical pencils. [shudder] Ew.

... That fool Jonny kept laughing.

Here she is in all her glory.

逆様の蝶

Apparently, there are interesting things everywhere. Accordingly, lots of retarded things as well. For example, on my Google personalized page, there was "How to Care for a Donkey".

In any case, here's an interesting story (also found on my google page):

http://feeds.reuters.com/~r/reuters/oddlyEnoughNews/~3/65727262/newsarticle.aspx

I should probably create "a realm of the kickaess" and put people in it.

\\

Night Showers

I've always said they were disgusting but now I'll provide quantitative proof.

There you have it. Now I will completely and utterly own people that take night-time showers by declaring them nasty.

The shaded light blue area is obviously sleeping time.

The black line represents people that take showers at night time (here, 21, meaning 9pm). The red line represents people that take morning showers, aka 730am. As you sleep, the secretions accumulate, thus at 730am, when MorningMan is clean, NightNasty is dirty.

Moving along. If you follow the graph closely, you'll realize that the shaded area (with thick, 2nd grader lines) equates to how much dirtier the NightNasty is compared to MorningMan, during the day.

Night shower people - you're dirty. Get used to it. A frequent excuse they use is -HEY! At least I take a shower once a day! Yes, you are correct, the amount of secretions accumulated by MorningMan and NightNasty are quite the same. (the green circles indicate this point)

BUT! The difference is, when you see NightNasty in the morning, he/she is quite dirty.



Sick.

Ahh the break begins

So first - Fun with Google Maps

I was going to post a screenshot, but I can't figure it out (the key combination apparently doesn't exist... the last one I tried put her into hibernate...).

Besides that, I've done absolutely very little. I found powdered apple cider at Sams and that was awesome. Also the latest Chemical Romance album is very angry.

What a disorganized post. Well. I think I'm going to go play Need for Speed : Carbon now.

Borat sucks.

Ed.: I feel bad for posting this idiots picture, so I'll post an interesting (good) looking actress picture in the end.

SUCKS.

It's been a long time since I saw such cruddy humor. There are like 10 things funny in this movie... the rest of it sucks. Don't see it. I feel like I could have gotten more sleep last night.

Also, there are some scenes that I would like to be spared from in the future from namely, naked men running around.

I've had American History everyday at 8am and that sucks as well. I don't know.. Also, it feels wierd when he keeps saying Indian over and over. Dude. You should be better than that. Everytime you say something about Indians attacking the settlers, the two Harley Davidson boys in the corner start giving me eyes.

Sigh. The probably think I'm somehow related to these Native Americans.

American History in itself is pretty boring. What history? There's only 200 years or so with over half of it exemplifying racism and subjugation. 200 years is not a history. Compared to European history or Asian history, 200 years is like.. one empire/dynasty/shogunate.

Then there are those who say "Those that don't learn from history are bound to make its mistakes". I'm sorry, unless you want to go into public policy or something, this statement is pure bulls**t.

You make mistakes because you're stupid, not because you failed to study history. Apart from this, there are few valid reasons to study history (especially as your only major). Those of you that "take history to learn its lessons" (or whatever), don't take American history. Its BORING. Colonists? Locke? SIGNING THINGS? Americans are pussies.

The only interesting thing I've read about in this class was Spain trying to restore the Catholic faith to England and getting her* navy totally owned by a storm. That's interesting, not how a bunch of pussies got together in some coop house to discuss some declaration of independence.

What an incredibly cocky thing to do! I regret George III was on the throne, because I would have totally owned those little s**ts with the Royal Navy if they didn't pay me any taxes. How dare they go up against one of the most powerful navies? One word: Firebombing. That'll keep them in line. Britain did not try hard enough. Two chances to totally own the colonists : Independence War & War of 1812. Oh please. Just sit right outside their coast and batter them until they surrender.

The English are pussies.

*: I'm fond of giving things female gender. E.g. countries, ships, computers, etc.

:( :)

The drama faces....

Anyway. I promised myself I'd write this post from my T60 and thus it has happened. Will post pictures sometime tomorrow. Oh and I found my tripod, so expect complete full fledged 5MP pictures.

American history is so boring.

The time nears.

Time for the CD test nears. Everyone (almost) else is done with their finals and I feel like I'm the only one still wading these waters.

君の夢はかなうのは誰かのおかげじゃないぜ
風の強い日を選んで走って来る。

That 日 is Monday.

Trials and Tribulations

Japanese final is over, now all that's left is Physics and some 70 hours left to study for it. These are the trials. Interestingly enough, Tuesday morning, when (most) people are fast asleep dreaming of visions of sugar-A's dancing about, I'll be in class, yet again. AGAIN.

Not only that, but I have to immerse myself in one of my least favorite subjects - American History. I am continually whipped by the academic Big Brother (Now Dasher...)

On other news, Andre from lab is leaving for Brazil so we went to some (out there) BBQ place and yes, it was totally what I expected but some how they had central air.

Anyway, conforming to 'Texas Style', I was given an entire chicken to eat. Right now, I have all the meat of an entire chicken, peach cobbler with ice cream, german chocolate cake and a bunch of water to wash it down. Remember of how I spoke of futility (of work)? This is how it begins. The food coma will set in soon.

Then we discussed various ways to smuggle things into the country and my personal favorite - putting a bunch of ant boxes into a FedEx box and calling it a 'board game' on customs declarations.

On hindsight I should have drank the Guiness that they offered me to wash it down (and out). My stomach hurts - not because of 'excess' food, but because I refused to throw it away and ate my portion (+20!). Hence the tribulations.

...

What the hell is up with this weather? It's 70 degrees outside in the middle of December. Ah what does it matter.. There's only 3 semesters left here anyway.

Speaking of which, finals are coming up. Every semester, there's a Japanese final and every semester I forget what I did the previous semester to prepare. Hence, panic ensues. Like right now.

Japanese final in 25 hours.

Physics final in 139 hours.

I suppose things are now hopeless for the Japanese final, but here's my plan for the physics final- 139 hours left less [36 hours of sleep], less [14 more hours for food/showers, etc], brings me to a near... 89 hours of time left to study for this test. I hope this will be enough.

Meanwhile, for my 5-10 minute breaks, I've been amusing myself with stereoscopic images.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereoscopy

It annoys me that people keep posting up the red/green versions of these images rather than the true stereoscopic image. For example:

I much prefer this version:
Than this version... Both are useless since the conventions used for the euler angles don't match those in my notes/book and it's a hassle to try to link them (a decision that could potentially backfire).

I now realize that the two-color version only exists because people can't cross their eyes right (what you've never crossed your eyes?). So many hilarious and amusing techniques exist on the web to help people do this.

Theoretically, it shouldn't matter for this image, except for the annoying detail that I don't have a pair of 3D glasses. When viewing normal photographs encoded with stereoscopic information, it becomes a problem because the colors are distorted.

If anyone finds a site with a bunch of stereoscopic images and wants me to fail my physics final, please post.

There is something to be said about futility and the next 142 hours will be peppered with it.

What's going on?

Here's a list of movies I have seen in the last couple of weeks...


Very good movie. Often times, I draw parallels from 007 to my life. If only I could be angrier and have better rhetoric, I would make an awesome secret agent. Perhaps that can be my cover - happy go lucky physicist/doctor/sheep herder by day, assassin by night. 40-year old men hit mid-life crisis and realize they want to be in a rock band, I'll hit mid-life crisis and join the CIA.

Perhaps something bad needs to happen to me, like my name being on some black list of the elite scientific journal club. Then I would surely (絶対!) go nuts.

Craig seemed a little... unrefined in his approach, especially in the beginning scene in the bathroom, but I'm sure his character will develop. Also I would like to say that this times' bond girl was actually interesting unlike ones in the past which were just boring (sometimes even boring to look at).



This next movie is partly the reason why everyone thinks I can't be a secret agent. Funny movie. I especially liked the part in the end when time slowed down because I kept looking for incongruities apart from the obvious and couldn't find any. This was pleasing and now my zen is centered again.

You may laugh that I watched this, but after you watch it, you'll understand. Either that or there's something wrong with me.



The tagline for this poster makes it seem like a "The Notebook" remake.* There is a lot of death in this movie and it was kind of interesting. Except I didn't really absorb most of it since I was watching it the morning after the night RobC** drank 10-11 shots for his 21st birthday. Yet it was amusing and I think I want a small penguin to keep.

Everyone is getting so old and I'm still a minor.

哲子が生まれました！

Meanwhile, nothing else is going on. Two finals - Japanese & Classical Dynamics, so the hardcore studying is due to start soon - perhaps tonight.

*: If you have this movie as "favorite movies" in your profile, go kill yourself.
**: who became extremely content with life after 10 shots.

ha

nizzle

History-derived from Snoop Doggy Dizzle 1.a substitution for the sylables at the ends of various words.(commonly used to get a laugh out of your drunk friends while shooting pool at one's girlfriend's house. Ex.1-(Without "izzle") "Rack up the balls and lets shoot some pool." (With "izzle") "Rizzle up the bizzles and lizzle sizzle some pizzle. Ex.2-(Without "izzle") "I really need to take a piss very badly." (With "izzle") "I rizzle nizzle to tizzle a pizzle vizzle bizzle.

Haha. Taken from urbandictionary.com

Well school's over and I still have a paper to write. So post tomorrow.

The calm before the storm

Everyone's seen the movie Twister and probably all you can remember is that cow flying in front of that pickup truck. Think a little harder and remember when the barrel was full of the little sensors and the tornado was about to swoop across it? That's where I am.

I've been walking around listening to my iPod when all of a sudden "Love so Pure" (Puffy) started playing. I think I have listened to this song at least 20x within the last 2 days. What a great song! Naturally, I feel completely comfortable saying that because 1) They're totally hot, so whatever(Ami more so than Yumi) and 2) I'm totally NOT gay.*

Yes, it's very short and has little substance, but there is something to be said about the cautious yet perfected ideal the song embraces.

Finals coming up. Finals. It's what separates the men from the boys, the wussies from the strong and most importantly, the hippies from everyone else. Aha! I bet you didn't see that coming. Open your eyes for the inactivity they spew and ears (for the reasons they will embellish!) and enjoy the moment.... f***ing hippies.

As for me, there is less than 200 hours left in Austin for me and this is cause for celebration. The countdown begins! 200 hours later and I will be (momentarily) retiring in my castle. But before that, there is homework to be done, MATLAB code to be written, tests to conquer (me).

I shouldn't post Ted Rall's cartoons everyday, but I liked today's:


It certainly feels weird explicating a Jpop song. Now excuse me, I must go silence the drunks outside.


*: Related to events that occured today. I normally would not proclaim this.

The storm looms.

It's that time of the year again - final exam time. Unfortunately, I have 2-3 major things to finish before my final exams even start so yeah huzzah at that.

Final exam time. Time to study. *Not*... play Racquetball, or Salsa, or Smallville or act like a damn hippie or anything of that sort. Work. You haven't been doing it all semester; I've been slacking off as well. It's time to start.

Martial Law* will mandated in a little bit.

I was thinking of something. People leave me voicemail and I'm like 'meh' because I hate voicemail, so I'll respond in around 2-5 hours after you leave it and definitely try to call you when you're sleeping - HEY - You're the one that left the voicemail. This is so I can force people to email me, which is often quicker.

Then I thought - all this forcing - probably wouldn't work in a relationship. For example, she'd leave me like 400 voicemails (such is the typical behavior of the homogametic half) and I'd continually ignore her voicemails because I'm stubborn like that. Then she'd get fed up (or ... perhaps enlightened?) and send me an email telling me she's "leaving" (fill in your own appropriate phrase of emotional departure).

Then I'd casually peruse over to Google Calendar, remove the rest of our meetings and go spend some quality time with the PCR machine. I might cough, symbolically, to rid myself of any emotional hinderances.

Cold? Who cares? I don't.

Enjoy another kickass Ted Rall cartoon:


*: If it seems harsh, be glad it's not sharia law.

Evolution

BAH! I know what you're thinking- another post on evolution. No. I won't ramble about Creationism and what I think is right or wrong.

I should stop being so bitter and so mean. Change is mandated.

Subtlety of the wise
Flexibility of the child
Sensitivity of the artist
Understanding of the philosopher
Acceptance of the saint
Tolerance of the scholar
Fortitude of the certain

Isn't that the idea? The Phoenix has risen. It is time to placed on the righteous* path.

There will be heavy restructuring soon. That will be all.

It's nice to be home. Plano rocks.

*: I don't mean any kind of religious path...

What the f*** happened yesterday?

Yesterday was, in my own words, what seemed like the pinnacle of my emotional imperfection. That's all we'll say. Something was weird, something didn't feel right, the planets didn't line up and I'm sure that on some distant planet, the laws of physics broke down and the planet imploded. Such is the effect of the deviations I experienced yesterday.

I'm cured now but I must make sure that kind of misfiring doesn't happen again. On Wednesday, for Thanksgiving break, I'm going back to Plano. Yes. Home. Once again, it is important to make the distinction between my transient place of residence and Home. Generally, there are two opinions of Plano 1) Heroin-addicts. I can't tell you how many times people have said "oh. That's where all the heroin addicts are...". Well, that's only because you hippies can't afford heroin, or you'd be hitting that too along with your cannabis. 2) There's "nothing to do".

Wtf? Of course there are things to do. The point of Plano isn't to provide a fun, party atmosphere for you. If you want to party, go to Dallas. If you want to laugh, go to Fort Worth. If you want to relax, go to Plano. For me, the choice is quite simple- [Broken sidewalk + Nastys + drunken idiots + frat idiots] or [Nice suburban atmosphere where I can walk (although there is hardly a need to walk) without people trying to spit on me or sell me things or trying to convert me into Socialism/Christian/Scientology/Etc]. Quite simple, no?


There's really only one flaw I see in Plano- too many Republicans. They don't really get in my way, so I'll return to my elitist bubble anytime.

I f***ing hate this armpit of a town. Plano rocks. Constantly, I'm plagued by idiots who have "financial problems" but are too damn lazy to get a job. I'll be honest and brutally honest. Doing things requires money. Having money requires 1) Rich parents or 2) Some kind of job. Scores of people "stay in their room" or "don't go out to whatever" simply because of a lack of money. Stop being fucking idiots and go get a job.

What else am I sick of? Hippies. Hippies that complain. Hippies that snort and pout and breathe through their mouth. Unreliable people, they are. When queried for a response as to "Why'd you do it?", a logical answer is no where to be found. They'll usually bring up some reason incorporating the words "feelings" or "felt like doing" or "just gotta relax sometimes, ya know" or "don't worry about it". Another common excuse is the divertion of blame - "Oh I was raised like that" or "It's my parents fault". The ONLY way I'd accept a divertion of blame is - "Oh it's my genetics" + actual genetic sequence proof (which includes matches to known individuals with your condition).

This is the hallmark of hippie-style - "don't worry about it". Naturally, there's a good amount of difference as to who says it. A tenured professor- his words are golden. A hippie, telling me to "not worry about it", is precisely when I start to worry, since they tend to do everything wrong.

I'm glad I didn't have any tests or homework this week, as last night would have messed me up. Alternatively, if I did have something due, it probably wouldn't have happened.

So cryptic.

Fail

I've failed to do some investigative reporting (perhaps even later tonight, meaning that the results will be summarized tomorrow..), but here are some interesting cartoons..





Ted Rall has always been a personal favorite...

Cruising speed.

This weekend has been absolutely useless on my part. I say that almost every weekend, but this one was (or is) especially useless.

Well then. Let's dive right into it.

Error-checking Mechanisms- What the hippies lack.

It is common knowledge that microbiology (shaped to near perfection) often serves as a tacit reminder of how we should order our lives and error checking mechanisms are paramount. This is precisely what the hippies lack (this and regret are the two main things). I'm almost certain, that a certain someone I know, has cauterized himself (as opposed to my clothes, which have been on fire these days from the orangy-red plumage) and his weekend in what seems like one of lust. While this is all very entertaining, I feel like not paying for their medicare later. So what is to be done?

I was kidding, hippies have regrets, they just don't have functional regrets. Then again, I know a couple of non-hippies that could use some functional regret. What do they think of when they awake every morning? I'll tell you what I think of- Yesterday, I was scheduled for a HFH event from 8am to 3pm. Doing large amounts of manual labor on Saturday morning isn't really anyone's thing (except for the few fanatics that show up there*) and I started hoping that somehow, it wouldn't work out. Of course! It's natural. The storm started to brew and I told myself it doesn't really matter what I think, unless I develop masochistic tendencies in the next 30 minutes.

That was just yesterday. Most days I wake up and think- I've only gotten 4-5 hours of sleep and I probably won't last through the day. Then I start making contingency plans on where to take short naps, etc. Except, I've kept up this schedule for so long, I don't really take naps in the afternoon anymore. Also, I give myself a measured dose of sleep, as if it was some sort of medicine. Right before I sleep I think- I need to wake up and not miss anything... set.. 5hours.. 30 minutes on my cell phone timer.

I digress. I then think "yes, life sux and I'm always alone and nobody understands me and I'm constantly surrounded by hippies and I don't deserve this but wait wtf why I'm I being emo I still have marketable skills" etc, when the Dream Machine goes off and Jap music starts playing and lalala- Let us prance our way to the shower while the Hamasaki/Eurobeat music begins to fade in and the worries fade out.

I then get out of the shower, take 2-3 seconds to feel the window for 1) temperature and 2) if it continues to cool my fingers. The first indication is obviously of how cold it is outside and the second measures wind activity outside the window (although it doesn't work so well for my room's window, unlike last year..)

Five seconds later, I have a power look planned**, usually dark clothing with anything bright neatly tucked away or covered by the _____ jacket. Adding constantly to the power effect is my glasses, which are totally kickass. People who meet me for the first time are always fixated on these variable-tint lens and (indirectly) my eyes. Now I just have to work on my power stare and the world belongs to me.

Well. Back to error-checking mechanisms.. They're essential. Don't wake up thinking _____. I actually have no f***ing clue what they think; I will do some investigative reporting later tonight. Wake up and correct yourself. Do something, ask for evaluation and fix it. View and review, read and reread. Perfection, like Evolution, is an ongoing process. Conditions change and nothing is ever absolutely perfect, except math, but math is for idealists (as if Physics isn't...).

*: What a horrible motivation.

**: The power look is very important.

You might be wondering, why my asterisk explanations are so short. This post has been censored and future posts will continue to be censored to prevent accidental harm, until it doesn't matter anymore.

Quickly!

This was to be posted on last Thursday. Can't let it go to waste...

In the 10 minutes I have before HPC closes, I'll try to fill up some space and waste your time a little.

I had to go to a "distant" CVS to pick up some medicine and it's always interesting to see the things that exist outside campus. Of course, going there, I saw a certain WAVES TA and his whatever. I might get hurt if I say anything beyond this.

Coming back, a group of youngsters were dancing around for no reason to music outside the back of some store and then started walking. The music followed. Weird! They had a boombox which one of them was carrying around and solicited random passerbys to join their circus. Indeed. Engage avoidance subroutines.

Op. Lab is closing. I don't feel justified posting this so I'll add to it a bit later.

Another Experience

Frequently when I post, I discuss new experiences and things that have happened to me. If the same thing happens twice, you will mostly likely notice a cursory discussion the second time.

Today, I decided to buy a different kind of energy drink; the huge bottles that were shaped like a battery. This is different from RockStar (Cartman's drink), in that it actually keeps me up. One of the many side effects of caffiene is a diuretic effect.

After drinking this vile substance, I must have gone to the little boys' room half a dozen times over the course of 2 hours. Not only that, but it's 12:36AM and I'm showing no signs of slowing down. Try not to eat/drink anything that comes in the shape of a battery unless you know what you're getting yourself into. Yet again, the world's most psychoactive substance takes a toll on me. Even divinity couldn't save me from emptying my bladder every 15 minutes.

There isn't much going on right now, hence the weak post. Plus I wanted the Friedman thing to sink in. He was awesome. He even wrote me a letter of recommendation, which... I don't know what he said, but I'm grateful to have had him.

I went to office hours once because I had a question and he kept trying to explain it to me in different ways, even though after the first two explanations, I had already understood. He was so excited about explaining it, I didn't have the heart to stop him. Now I kind of wish I listened to all those different ways.

Interesting thing, regret is. I hate it. Cherish those around you, you never know what might happen.

We only assume the sun will rise tomorrow.

Friedman

Charles Friedman - 1946-2006
For those that know him, there isn't much to say
For those that don't, there's too much to say
http://www.ma.utexas.edu/~friedman/

The stress continues to mount.

Today I went to lab and I was recommended that I should continue lab work when my academic commitments are fullfilled, as in, not to worry about committed hours (9 a week) or anything like that.

In a way, that's almost weak and last spring when I had, what should have been a harder schedule, I had time for labwork. Yet this semester, I'm only taking 19 hours, so I should have ample time for lab, but no. I don't. Again and again I've been going over in my head why this is happening, and I've narrowed it down to two options 1) the BME class or 2) my need for perfection has gone through the roof.

I'm going to stick with the second one, because bitching about a class gets me no-where. I think, and correct me if I'm wrong, that I keep pushing myself harder and harder and it's gotten to a point where I've reached the day limit, i.e. the sleep limit. At this point, the only thing keeping me from finishing everything is a need for sleep and even then, lately, right before I go to bed, I time 6 hours + some (usually 20-30 minutes) and then go to sleep. I've been waking before my alarm clock to finish work, running to class 6-7 minutes before it starts, biking to increase efficiency when necessary.

Why? Yet even with all these changes, I'm totally weak that I can't juggle everything at once and that I must be actively told to "get things in order". A good reality check that was, for I think I know the problem. By this Friday noon-time, things will start settling down. My cell bio exam will be over and my BME project should have little left to do. The situation is changing now, performance anxiety is building to immeasurable levels, so change begins.. now. Push harder? Hell yes. But with better grace, better control. I want to, need to, get back to the machine-like efficiency I demonstrated last spring.

11/7/06: The Phoenix rises.

An attempt

Orange: Elevated due to self-induced threats.

Attempts. Something I've been doing a lot of lately. Attempt to do this, attempt to do that. Completion is something that rarely comes about. By completion, I mean absolute completion. For the last 2-3 days, I've been attempting this MRI project for my BME class.

Yesterday after my MCAT class, I went straight to ECE and worked on that and the BME homework for 5 hours. When 12:30am rolled around, I was so bitter, so angry that it got to a point where my being in the lab was being counterproductive, so I just left. I would have to say last night was within top 10 of most difficult nights ever.

The last time I had such a difficult time period was about a year ago, when I had an Organic Chemistry (with Bocknack, not Iverson...) Final and PHY315 Final on the same day. What a difficult day that was! I almost exploded after the last final finished due to the large burden being lifted.

I won't digress from the main topic - an attempt. What's with my strange taste in music? (Puffy, Hikaru, Hamasaki, Eurobeat, Eurobeat, Eurobeat) If you haven't already noticed, I draw parallels to Star Trek from my life, so unless you've seen all or most of the episodes, you probably won't/can't understand everything. I will draw another one.

So most of my music choices are either 1) fast (Eurobeat) or 2) 11-year old music (Puffy). What is the purpose? Romulan warbirds rely on an artificial quantum singularity for power, Federation vessels rely on a matter-antimatter reaction core and inside myself, there's something spinning as well. We'll leave it at that, lest people call me crazier than I actually am. Simply put, eurobeat keeps the ____ spinning. It's like a tornado, no.. maelstrom. Draw strength from the chaos, something hippie like that.

Ok.. Weird. What about Puffy? I may seem to be frequently overstating my difficulties, but panic really does ensue. It's like I've been put infront of a firing squad and I'm supposed to take the shots as they come, without as much as a grimace. "Set an example!" as one of them them would say. Them = TPTB. So where am I to let loose? In the comfort & privacy of my molybdenum-tipped headphones. If you see me randomly chuckling to myself, especially if I have headphones on, you now know what's going on. Either that or I'm thinking about Walmart and their expansive jewelery section. Oh the sparkes!

I want to make a side note on that. Please don't buy external clothes from Walmart. External meaning anything that you would show up to class with and people can see, unless you have the overly homo-erotic habit of wearing short t-shirts and allowing people to see your boxers. In that case, don't talk to me, ever. People complain about the price, but seriously, the GAP has sales and if you're Asian/Mall-monkey enough to know that there's a cheap section in the back of the store, you know what to do. Btw, In this sense, clothes includes jewelery. How cruel I am.

Once I start rambling, I can't stop, so I'll continue.

\\

Yesterday I had a Verbal MCAT Class. It was, in one word, awesome. What an entertaining teacher! Besides the continual (and a little pagan) references to a need for knee pads to give the AdComs fellatio, he was an effective teacher, although totally hippie in my eyes. A hippie with a purpose. Already, I can feel the cold drafts from Hell. How do I reason this? It's probably better to watch a video to demonstrate the analogy I conjured:

Hippie:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAFt-SFVj-M

Non-hippie:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5EuKRmh1Y9Q

Same character, no? Yes I know I'm totally loser for picking that analogy. Find me at MELRC this afternoon.

What's going on?

Very few things are happening. But today, I'm just going to talk about an isolated incident, then connect it to the whole picture: Physics major.

It comes up over and over and you probably think think there's a slight nuance of narcissm to it and you're right. Except it's not slight.

Today my MCAT classes started and I tried my best to suppress many facts about me, since most of the people in there are mouth-breathing pre-meds anyway, it would be best if they didn't know what my major was, an inquiry that usually leads to other more personal numerical inquiries. So I sat there, without doing anything active, just patiently took notes and didn't even bother to answer the questions he (instructor) was asking, making him think we were all tards. Oh, I should mention, Class 1 = Physics (Units, Kinematics, Projectile motion. I will let you ponder on the difficulty. Kantan desu ne!).

Back to the story. I just sat there, no answering of questions, not even altering the facial expression. Stoic, stoic, me. Alas, time was nearing to a close (20 minutes left) and he assigned some practice problems. In my infinite stoicness, I looked at the problems, looked up and had the answer a couple of seconds later. The instructor had a good habit of placing time limits on the problems, so once I had the question answered in my head, I looked up at the clock and started counting seconds, seconds that I would deduct from "time call" to give a rough estimate on how much faster from "optimal pre-med" I was completing these problems. Since they are not heavily computational, a typical problem proceeded like this- 10 seconds into it, I had the answer, 11 seconds- I was staring at the clock. Stoic? Yes. Completely. By the third question, I realized he'd been looking at me for a good amount of my clock-viewing time. When time was up, he immediately asked "You must be engineering?".

This is the part that I loved in the beginning, but now am starting to hate - "No, I'm Physics." Some girl asked how he [instructor] knew and he said "He's doing the problems way to fast to be anything else". Many people would say "Oh wow! That is something certainly worthy of praise." or "Congratulations". You know what this means? Glares. GLARES. Everyone else looks, everyone else looks for me to fail. Since the material on Physics isn't getting any harder, I probably won't fail miserably, which will make them bitter and bring out the worst of the pre-med nature in them. They hate competition, these people and in the worst possible way, because they're lazy. I don't like competition, because I might fail. They don't like it, because they'll actually have to expend effort.

In the beginning, people would ask my major and I'd say "Physics" and they'd say something like "oh wow" and I'd think "Yes, yes. Quick. Give me a brownie because I deserve one for being Physics". But now, it's fucking annoying. Various replies I've received that piss me off:

• "Oh wow, must be hard!" No shit. Get off my case, please. This statement usually implies "Why are you doing this to yourself?" - answered below.
  
• "Well all the biologists think Physics is common sense" I love this one, because it usually comes from people that have no clue about Physics. Of course, once they take it, they have trouble with the simplest of 'common sense'.
  
• "Your son must be smaRT!" (to my Dad, me standing ~1m away) Say it once, and my Dad will refute it in his own cryptic way. Say it again, you've been marked for deletion (aka, you're pissing me off)
  
• "Jeez that's so nerdy" Yes. Yes it is. So? You're either a nerd, or you work for one. You know all those gizmos that make your life easier? Well some nerd invented them and to appeal to your pagan tastes, some very very RICH nerd invented them. Nerds are better people, upper crust of society. Get used to it.
  
• "I feel sorry for you..." Why? Because I do something that I like? Usually stated by people who have absolutely shitty (aka liberal arts) majors. Since LA majors don't really have "life goals" or "academic interests", anything that remotely requires "writing" or "writing equations" is painful and can never be interesting. Eat shit, you fools.
  
• "Why would you do that to yourself?" One of the many MANY reasons why I'm still in this discipline is because it's damn difficult. It's good to be challenged and pushed to the limit. People that ask this usually have easy majors and proceed to pursue the proverbial "college" life. Why would I do this to myself? Yes, it is painful at times. But when that TIME rolls around, you know, when the admissions council looks at your transcript and then at mine and sees that for the same GPA, I can tell you discrete quantum states of the hydrogen atom and why paramecia can regenerate, wheras you can only muster up remnants of the word paramecium (no doubt due to all the alcohol consumed during the pursuit of this proverbial "college life"), they'll make the call and you'll get shafted. In the eternal cosmic play of things, balance is not only a requisite but a fact of life. Finally, when you clear up enough doubt to ask yourself why it happened - just know this - You were probably took weak, too slow, too stupid and lacking too much foresight to actually confer a challenge upon yourself. Now get me some coffee.
  
• Multiple variations on #1

Stop with the patronization. Just say "that's nice". If you wish to be even more polite, ask me how something works. We're bustling with random pieces of trivia. One more thing. We can probably do everything except heavy manual labor:

Hold up conversations? Check.
Select appreciable jewlery? Check.
Be outgoing and friendly? Check.
Philanthropy? Check.
Overall awesome people speckled with chunks of conceit? Check.

Biology is memorization. Chemistry is microphysics. This is where renaissance-men are made.

More Sickness.

Update: People recently have been asking me about the seven strong acids and I must repeatedly tell them I have no idea beyond 4.
Here: HCl, HBr, HI, H₂SO₄, HNO₃, HClO₃, HClO₄
Don't ask again. I already forgot.

Still sick? You bet, although I can feel it getting better. DST is a weird thing. I woke up this morning at "6:30AM" and told myself I should sleep until 9AM which was hard so I just toobed around in bed for 30 minutes.

Another thing, the tutoring service appointment servers are down. You know, for such a crappy system, you'd think that it would work all the time, or at least have 99.999% uptime (Carrier class servers...).

I think during orientation, they said they had two backup servers. I suppose they're down as well. You know, it's not that hard to manage 50-70 tutors and at most 500-700 tutees. In fact, the center makes at least a dollar for almost every tutoring appointment..., so they need to *cough cough* fire someone and hire a programmer, pay him 10-12k and design a better system.

Ridiculous! Apparently I hadn't been noticing it, but the regular emails about our appointments the next day stopped about...4 days ago. I didn't even realize I had a Saturday or Sunday morning sessions until I checked online (which.. is probably going to stop working soon).

There's this big problem with Jester, in that it's always damn uncomfortable. Always always always cold. I have to ball myself up in a fetal position to keep warm, jeez.

Sickness and Regret

Those are two worst things a man can experience, with regret being several orders of magnitude worse. So what's happening today? Both. I'm sick. I woke up this morning with the most horrible of sore throats, almost like the maelstrom in my head creeped down some. I woke up and just sat there, cycling through periods of alertness and stupor.

When this cycle finally broke, it was 9:15 and I was 15 minutes late to TKD. I showed up in TKD extremely under dressed and requested to sit out, only to 'summarize' my observations of the class. It was calming, but my throat still hurt.

After that, I had a physics tutoring session, which took me about 15 minutes, since he only had 8 questions and pretty much knew the subject material. I played piano for a bit, with some commie Chinese girl breathing over my shoulder and repeatedly asking me to play Pathetique. "Lunch" consisted of a pretentious yogurt drink and medium-size bottle of orange juice*.

I pretty much half-dozed through an MRI lecture, something I made up for during Drop-In Tutoring, since no one showed up (test just passed recently or something?). 3PM.

After scanning some images and getting more and more depressed that I hadn't done any significant work this weekend, nor did I get much done Monday (beginnings of the sickness), I went to tutor for another 3 hours again.

My precal tutee was, in one word, awesome. It's so pleasing to teach someone who wants to learn, learns, and applies it well. Not only did she apply it well, she also was happy that she understood, which often translates into wanting to know more (where I tangent off into theory and sometimes physics - with everyone....). I'm only saying this because my next tutee was, let's say... far from perfect.

Arriving 20 minutes late (I could have left at 15...), she showed little interest in learning, with her rhetoric peppered with pagan language. I'd ask a question and she'd respond with "How the hell should I know?". Also, I tend to get very irritated when people try to eat during my session. Once, a tutee asked me if it was ok to take a bite or two and yes, that's perfectly fine. As a person that seldom eats (i.e. always hungry), I can absolutely understand. This girl chomped on her Skittles and talked at the same time. The second thing that absolutely irritated me was her (very) obvious lack of respect for the subject. She treated it like I would treat a business course. It's organic chemistry, the bane of most premeds, the least you could do is bow down before its awesomeness if you can't conquer it. Don't hate on it like some idiot.

I was angry and felt like crying, namely because it was the first time I've come across a tutee that 1) didn't care about the subject, 2) made my tutoring session extremely difficult and 3) disrespected me. The last point is not as important, but at least don't denounce my carefully crafted examples as 'shit'.

I went to ECE labs after this and felt the rain of regret get heavier and heavier, until Kevin came over and we had dinner at Subway. So this post begs the question- Why have I (relatively) detailed my day? After dinner, we quickly put together a restoration plan with the following priorities:

1) Resume normal or near-normal levels of productivity, and
2) Force into remission this illness by holistic measures until proper drugs can be administered.

What do these tactics consist of**?

1) Water balance - abnormally high intake of water for flushing effect.
2) Chloraseptic - every 2-3 hours, below normal dose, keep throat numb until the pain subsides.
3) Adequate food intake - this will be hard.
4) C - Orange juice until the ailment disappears.

It's 2:05am, I have 5/6th of my Classical homework done, radbio lectures caught up and ready to sleep (and meet a professor tomorrow --> beginning of some other conscious tactics, well planned out by Academics).

*: Subconscious beginning of restoration tactics.
**: Effective after dinner.

God complex

Time and again, people have accused me of having a sort of God Complex. So I decided to take their qualms seriously and did some research. Based on the facts (and opinions) I have found about this, I will make a list, and determine applicability on a range of 1-10.

• A psychological state in which the individual believes him/herself to be, or is destined to become, the savior of the world (actually this is the Messianic Complex). (6 out of 10)
• A person said to act so arrogantly that he might as well believe he is a god. (1 out of 10)
  
• A person said to act as if they were appointed to act by a god. (4 out of 10)
• Narcissism. (2 out of 10)

I'm willing to bet the Brahmin upbringing has probably amplified this effect much more (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Transwiki:Debadutta). I haven't found an effective way to weight these (paltry list of) considerations, so I'll just take an average, 3.25.

It's not that bad right? Although this statement tends to bug me:

Richter argues that the arrested development of such compulsions leads to denial of suffering, self-doubt and an expectation of servility for women or minorities.

Denial of suffering? No. Lyfe Sux.
Self doubt? Yes
Expectation of servility for women? I hope not.
Expectation of servility for minorities? [No comment, although I'm a minority myself. Since the question is not specific, I am unable to answer.]

Comments?

Maelstrom.

Once again..

Good vs Evil
Reason vs Emotion
Work vs Play
Life vs Like

Profile? Profile.

I was thinking, since I just upgraded to the new (google-email) based blogger, now would be a good time to update my profile as well. Then I realized that few people read it and the ones that do, I don't really want them to read it. So the profile stands. I added a little bit though.

Today has been one of those very horrible days. If you recall, the last horrible day had a 3 hour productivity 'blackout' session where I was hunting for a Tae-Kwon-Do uniform in the hot texas sun.

I woke up at noon today, having slept around 9 hours. Actually, scratch that. I really woke up at ~7am when two alarm clocks went off, so I could get ready for tutoring at 8am. Well, I got an email that she can't make it and I thought it would be totally awesome to sleep and get paid for it, so in a bout of stupor, I did. Note how stupor sounds like stupid.

I pranced around in my fairy-land until noon, periodically waking up, looking at my alarm clock, telling myself "Oh that thing doesn't say 11am, you're just hallucinating! LCD's say different things from different angles!" and then going back to sleep. In a way, waking up late on the weekend is a little hypocritical in my mind; why should the weekend be any different than other days?

The other day, someone was giving a presentation in Japanese and they presented Wierd Al Yankovic's "White and Nerdy" music video. There was this part in the music video where a bunch of pagans are dancing in front of an equation, one that I readily identified as Schrodinger's equation. Is it just me, or does that have some meaning behind it?

I bet it's a really awesome meaning.

Taken from dictionary.com

Nerd:

1.	a stupid, irritating, ineffectual, or unattractive person.

2.	an intelligent but single-minded person obsessed with a nonsocial hobby or pursuit: a computer nerd.

Geek:

1.	a carnival performer who performs sensationally morbid or disgusting acts, as biting off the head of a live chicken.

2.	a peculiar or offensive person, esp. one who is perceived to be overly intellectual.

3.	an expert in computers (a term of pride as self-reference, but often considered offensive when used by outsiders.)

Dork:

1. a stupid or ridiculous person; jerk; nerd.

Although the biting of the heads thing is hilarious, please pick wisely.

How to enter the dance floor!

Update: Due to recent events, the threat alert level has changed. Standby for any further information

How to enter the dance floor- some objective ideas:

Strange thing, this 'floor' is. Something that takes up less than 20% of the space in most clubs is the sole purpose of most people entering. Of course, there are those pagans that go for 'drink specials', something I still haven't been able to figure out (pay money to save money? fishy...). Let's cut to the chase. The problem that remains (and will remain) is that of bystanders, people on the outside of the floor, inching to get in yet for whatever reason, fail to enter and say "Oh I should have acted on my impulses" (roughly trans. "I shouda bust up in thurr", "GITRDON", "ngoQ ngech"). The last one was a Klingon translation. Of all the things people should understand, you should know that lack of action is impulsive since most people are pussies and pussy impulses are overwhelming. There is no impulse to get you inside! Only protocol. Only calculated protocol.

So how does one enter the floor? First of all, you must want to enter. You must be displaying the proper signals- what they are, I have no idea. The easiest way is to get dragged in by someone else. Hard to visualize? Think of the floor as one big cellular nucleus. You (by displaying a signal- aka signal patch or signal peptide) can be attached to a nuclear import receptor (a girl, usually) and fly right in to tango. How to get out? Similar process. You can leave by yourself, but that's awkward and you're messing up the ratio, so thanks for violating thermodynamics. Leave with an export receptor (same girl, usually). So far, I have only found one way to mechanically insert yourself into the floor and that's by doing the robot. People freak out and move out of the way, because hell, you can't see what's going on, you're a ROBOT, which means you can't move your eyes from side to side- something even the layman knows (wow!). I'm seriously never using this tactic again, but it's an interesting experience. Try not to bump into people while doing it, otherwise you might trip and fall. If you do fall, make it smooth and act like a robot on the floor. You can flail your arms around and say ERROR ERROR and make it even worse. Just, whatever you do, don't just walk up into there (or dance up into it or whatever), because 1) You're a moron if you can't find a girl to ask because even Robot Ma (detailed below), who is probably a nub freshman could ask and 2) thanks for messing up the ratio again.

//

Remember the guy that hit on me the other day? Yeah he got arrested. I totally regret missing that scene.

Also, I think I'm going to try some hash-brownies in my senior year on some random weekend. The plan is, to keep it completely scientific. That is, a minute (or every 5 minutes)-by-minute account of what I'm doing and what I feel. Totally awesome. That way, when people wonder what it feels like, I'll just send them my log. Whoa!

Amazing what 10 minutes can do.

It was raining and I felt like riding the bus today, when, in all my years of searching, I randomly got to (2nd-hand) experience the beginnings of a human mating cycle.

I got on the bus as did someone else, a young black fellow with a large diamond earring in his right ear (for description's sake). The bus puttered along; it was raining and many people decided to take the bus. All of a sudden "DAWG That's some fayine rock ya got thurr. You aer kinda hawt, comma here lemme talk to ya" from a young black girl in a seat. The guy trudged his way over and they started making small talk, but small talk was hardly private when the bus was this packed (and a little noisy), so half the bus got to key into the conversation. It started with casual jabs back and forth about his clothing, what he does, what's in the "laptop bag". (What IS in the laptop bag anyway?) Finally, what's going on this weekend. Invitations were made, parties announced and a hookup complete. The young male specimen then seated himself down once people had cleared with a large grin (easily visible to the female) and the sparkle from his teeth only overcome from that of his earring.

So that was just a description, no labels, just what I saw. Commentary? First, The protocol of mating utilized here is 1) exceedingly blunt and 2) coming from the wrong gender. In fact, the words "You are kind of hot", I would probably never utter unless heavily inebriated or under the influence of psychosis-inducing drugs. Secondly, earrings look nice on girls, only. Even then, only a select few are acceptable. Hoop earrings? No. Let me digress and give you a link to one. Third, the next appropriate encounter for me would be either a school event or a dinner or coffee or lunch or _____ (fill in with calm peaceful food engagement) and not some place to get 'krunk'.


My preferred method would have very little small talk in the beginning, as I'd probably try to solicit her opinion on various things and hopefully, she can voice some on scientific issues- Which.. I highly doubt any general 'true' opinions exist; this quick barrage would be meant to probe other things.

Apart from verbal communication, non-verbal is probably more important. People that exhibit jerky (includes the feminine 'bubbly') demeanor are very difficult to be around for long periods of time. It's soothing to be around someone calm, yet they probably shouldn't be calm all the time. I can name examples of both- constantly jerky and constantly calm.

I was supposed to leave FAC at 8pm. It's now 8:04pm. [Work + Schedule] is more important than this blog. I apologize. Anticipate a post tomorrow.

As promised

Before I continue on what happened, I just want to say two things:

1) I've upgraded to the new Blogger, so no more crashes and things should run more smoothly.

2) Yesterday I was hit on by a guy.

To make a long story short, I was playing the piano and this guy interrupts me constantly to ask me hippie questions like "Why do you play music?", undoubtedly so he could expand on my answer, which was "I don't know..", an answer strategically chosen to limit any hippie expansion he could have done.

Then he said he loved me and that's not just because of my muscular hands playing the piano. I'm going to keep away and I'm currently on Orange Alert. (see threat alert bar to left)

始めよう!

Let's start with the robot. Actually, there were two robots, me being one of them. If you haven't seen my impersonation of the robot dance, it is priceless. I veered my way over 3/4 way of the dance floor doing the robot and illicting multiple laughs before I started feeling too weird and/or felt like someone would trip me.

Oh well. Most people would be too shy to try this anyway. The second robot was found not by me, but a friend who was forced to dance with him. Robot, as in he didn't know any moves besides the basic salsa step. Yes. Joy was forced to dance with him for quite some time and I laughed from a distance. He looked like Yao Ma, too; a fitting analogy, since Yao's a nub as well.

Hippie Rickshaw:

The two were tired, which in my opinion, is weak. Walking isn't that painful. Anyway, a bunch of hippies were lined up with their human powered rickshaws, so we decided to get one. FIRST, I asked for the price, like any good Asian would. Apparently, they work off tips. TIPS. That means people like Jonny would give them spare change and still be content inside. Hop on one of these things and the hippie started pedaling like crazy (in some high gear) and 6 minutes later, were were done. I gave him $7. Perhaps a little high, but I was feeling sorry for him. I tend to feel sorry for hippies these days.

I will delay the analogy to nuclear import signals to tomorrow.

Physics major goes clubbing - Part 1

A couple of days ago, me and two others decided to go to Bonggos, to 'salsa'. I'm not actually going to list events in chronological order, rather, I'll comment on a couple of things each day for the next couple of days.

Let's start with the most recent.

After I got back, I went to sleep at around 2:40AM and about an hour later, there was shouting in the hallway, and I could hear the remnants of an alarm's echo. I ignored it and slept another 20 minutes. The shouting persisted, as well as the alarm. This time, I was pissed. I put on my mad-face and walked outside my room in my pajamas holding my flashlight at it's head, with intention to destroy some skulls.

There was a fire drill, at 3:30AM. Everyone was like GO GO GO, so I left to go outside, where it was sufficiently cold in my thin pajamas. I walked around looking for people to amuse me, but alas, it was only the first couple of floors. I should make a habit of sleeping in Patterson over the weekend.

Interesting? Hell no. I have better things to do. Needless to say, last weekend was immensely unproductive, and I'm still suffering because of it. Also, some other things changed, namely, I'm a little infected with a virus, but that should pass.

I'm glad I made a list that night of things that happened (which I will be commenting on), so for the next couple of days, I won't forget what to write about, although I may neglect to write from time to time.

Let's start with the random guy who made a pagan request in the club. I was on the 2nd floor showing Joy how to move and some guy comes up to me and he says:

Pagan: Hey man! You gots some moves, DAWG.
Me: Hey. Um. Thanks.
Pagan: Do you have an extra CONDOM?

It's a good thing my hearing was still good, since asking him to repeat what he said would be embarrasing on my part (and also a little weak). First of all. Extra? These pagans amuse me.

I quickly shook my head and recalled about two hours ago, when Tang was offering me one. Pagans indeed.

Next time -
Robot
Hippie Rickshaw
and.. How to enter the dance floor! (with a fair analogy made to Nuclear Import Signals)

ROCKSTAR

I saw the new Southpark episode yesterday and that tipped me over, convincing me to try this new energy drink called ROCKSTAR. If you watch it carefully, large Cartman is drinking one of these while rock music is playing in the background.

This drink has one of the most bitter tastes to it, but I have an inclination to believe it works. The resulting sugar-high completely numbed my senses, including shyness and I had multiple squall moments this morning. It's like that one character in Naruto that fights better when he's drunk. Damn it, I just made a reference to Naruto.

I think, it also made my voice a little deeper, which sounds weird since I don't have a excessively muscular build and many things amuse me, so I laugh frequently. I will note, for those of you that don't see me on a day-to-day basis, I have a better muscular build than probably 70-80% of people in my weight range.

So the question remains- Did I feel like a ROCKSTAR? Head-banging and guitar-jamming? Probably not. This brings me to another point. Many many people laugh and criticize the council-member thing, but what they fail to realize is their greatest weakness is probably one of my better strengths. Too many people engage in impulsive, regrettable decision making, and then turn around and make fun of the 8-hour shifts the council takes.

I believe one of my greatest strengths is objective decision making- I rarely ever make an impulsive decision, fueled by weakness and susceptibility to temptation. Probably Oma's Kitchen (or Korean food in general) and girls with puffy cheeks are my greatest weaknesses.

Fortunately, I don't eat that much and not too many girls exist with just puffy cheeks (as opposed to having poofy cheek and a poofy body).

Ok. Time to die in Classical.

Sorry.

Classical is killing me.

Cooperation and Chicanery

A couple of days ago, I left my flash drive somewhere. Life was hard, but it seems like it will return to normal, although I will always remember the great times my flash drive and I had together.

There's one single reason why we're so inefficient today and that's because we refuse to cooperate. We're too proud and we think we matter too much. I know I didn't stick my flash drive in some crevice or some hidden place. Most likely, it was in plain sight and someone pilfered my information (nothing crucial, though). I'm not sure what kind of conscience you have to take something and not have any regrets on returning it (or make trivial amounts of money off your friends, ah but we leave that for another day...). All you had to do is look through the drive, give it to me, and I would have bought you one, if you needed it.

Ideally, acts of kindness should not be rewarded (well, not by me, anyway), because they're part of human nature. It's in an unwritten code on how men should act. I'm not "grateful" that I'm not a victim of a terrorist attack, because that's how life should be lived, devoid of fear and worry. (This is different from CD-related worry...).

We refuse to cooperate and our costs of living skyrocket. We need security, military, ID cards, anti-spyware software and authentication protocols. The rise in nationalism causes countries to faction, researchers to look away and refuse to share information. How much better could life be if people didn't act so lower-class, so pagan?

Often times, one looks into biology for solutions to real-world problems and this is one of those times. The intricate human machine operates near flawlessly to a point where people can call it 'intelligently designed', which emphasizes what over 4 billion years of evolution has perfected; evolution has brought cooperation into the human body, with every piece cooperating with something else. When cooperation breaks down, a cell destroys itself in a mechanism called apoptosis, or programmed cell death or cell suicide. Many would say that suicide is 'savage', but in order to protect surrounding cells from becoming cancerous, it is a necessary alternative; self-sacrifice for the good of the community.


The marketplace buffoons would say that competition is good for the economy and the customer. What they fail to see is that cooperation works better (also they fail to see that business school teaches you how to whore yourself out, again... another day).

So bring everyone together, weed out the crazies (AND THE NEOCONS), implement eugenics, strict expulsion protocols and world class healthcare and research facilities. Make an interesting utopia filled with perfect people; I want a peaceful place to live in, dammit.

This is called the "Mexican Hat Wavelet". I kid you not.

TKD

So today I got paired with Mr. Extreme testosterone in TKD. Actually, I came to realize that the only thing he can really put his unnatural muscles to use is by punching. He can't do the kicks! Jeez! After all that teeth-sharpening before class, the kicks are... sigh.

So here I am standing, bracing for impact, and all of a sudden, this WEAKSAUCE foot hits the pad. Whoa! I can kick better; rotate the torso and deal a life-threatening blow (I wish, but really, I can kick well now). Near the end of class, San Yoon says do 65 crunches, a number we've been increasing by 5 from 25 when the class started.

I started to think.. All those crunches (now around 130 a week) must have some effect. [looks down]. Yep. It's starting to take shape. Waist to Hip Ratio 0.7, here I come. Oh yeah. And we've only had 4 weeks of class... another 11 more, and I'll have some real kevlar down there.

Salsa is fun, but I'm not staying for swing again. I tried swing dance and the beat is weird, making me feel like a cowboy. (NAW, YEEHAW, GIT EM LASSOS, etc.)

Money money money. Apparently that's what the world is about. Well, I have yet another reason why people should stop investing so much money in sports and divert it to academic research- betterment of life!

I can't stand these idiots that squander away millions of dollars when it could have gone to producing the next generation CT system or MRI machine. How can you live with yourself? 50 years down the road, you're going to say "Damn it, I should have partioned money to research that could have detected my brain tumor 20 years ago which caused me to make all my stupid decisions in the first place".

Well I guess the cycle is unavoidable. If anyone that enjoys sports (and you know you're just feeding into the frenzy) gets a brain tumor 40 years from now, just think... it could have been avoided if you had just cancelled your Longhorn All Sports Package and given that money to a budding researcher. Many a proposals by me have been shot down because we lack funds to make our CT machines better. What about splitting the thick crystal layer into multiple ones, each with it's own scintillator? What about using solid state electronics instead of DIFFRACTION? (TOTALLY WEAK FOR 21st CENTURY KTHX)


SIGH. I'll probably get a brain tumor too, but I don't even enjoy sports.

SIGHZ LYFE SUXXX.


:D

Sad. :(

lab8:~math137$ ls
Desktop mail volumes-1.tex volumes.tex
lab8:~math137$ mathematica
xset: unable to open display ""
xset: unable to open display ""
xset: unable to open display ""
Can't open display
lab8:~math137$ startkde
xsetroot: unable to open display ''
xset: unable to open display ""
xsetroot: unable to open display ''
startkde: Starting up...
ksplash: cannot connect to X server
kdeinit: Aborting. $DISPLAY is not set.
Warning: connect() failed: : No such file or directory
/usr/X11R6/bin/xrdb: Can't open display ''
ksmserver: cannot connect to X server
startkde: Shutting down...
Warning: connect() failed: : No such file or directory
Error: Can't contact kdeinit!
startkde: Running shutdown scripts...
startkde: Done.
lab8:~math137$ SIGHZ
-bash: SIGHZ: command not found

Damn you. I left my USB flash drive somewhere, and I can't imagine why anyone would want it (except that it's a 1GB flash drive). Anyway, I've become attached to that thing, so I've been in the shitter all day long. That little thing has seen me through dark and light, rain and shine, sadness and complacency.

Well, it was free, but it's value is priceless to me. If someone found it and gave it to me, I'd give them like $35. That's enough to buy a nice 1GB SanDisk Cruzer, not the generic brand that I had.

Also, note to anyone that does find it- There's nothing of value... couple of pseudonocardia sequences, papers, cell bio notes. It's a good thing I run the synchronization profile every day (sometimes a couple of times a day), so all the data is backed up to my computer anyway. I just.. want it back.

In anticipation that I may have to buy another flash drive, I have opened up more tutoring hours (9 this week, along with 5 from DIT) and will probably continue to do so until I have $100 beyond my usual pay. Just to buy a $20 flash drive, and I'll spend the rest at Oma's Kitchen to make me feel better.

:'(

Goals / Itazura Denwa / Jinsei

Yesterday, the schedule was near PERFECT until 8pm. See, I was going to go to UT Ballroom to brush up on some more dance moves, but alas, Friday night lessons start at 6pm and go to 8pm, so I walked in, and the instructor was saying "Ok! You guys practice; let me put on some Rumba music before I leave".. --> Desolation. :(

Before, I would have said something on the order of "dancing? That's a little homo...etc etc"
I've realized I'm well beyond that, and I certainly don't go to UTBDC to pick up chicks like this one guy I know. One of my goals this semester has been to learn all the Latin dances there are and possibly become proficient at them. Although some of the girls are interesting, I've come to realize that there are very few that actually fit my taste, and I've been around superficial ones long enough to recognize them by their stench.

This brings me to my next point- I don't like people touching me. Just get over it. A friendly pat on the back is one thing, but more than one a day* is excessive. If it's one thing I hate, it's man hugs. Man hugs piss me off.

Thursday night, the day before my cell bio test, I got a prank call at 1:38AM. It was Sibin Chen, but I didn't recognize it from the number at first. So originally, I thought it was Jonathan, so I gripped my aircraft-aluminum flashlight by it's head (to beat people with the tail) and I started to calmly walk to Jonathan's room to administer a beating, but he wasn't the one that called me. Oh well. I went back to my room, and my CELL PHONE NUMBER was on a POST IT NOTE on my DOOR. Sibin lives far, so I have yet to find out how someone on my floor got my phone #, and had the time to monitor me and put that on my door.

Due to the incident mentioned above, my ever so light sleep has become even lighter, and I now keep a utility knife near the head of my bed, as well as the default tactical flashlight near my side. A typical scenario would be something like this: Attacker enters, I stay motionless but still very aware.. and right when he's near, I blind him with my flashlight, flip it over, and subdue.

I like my flashlight so much I even carry it in the daytime. YEAH.

I did some thinking about my career options and why I want to be a CIA agent as well as a doctor (maybe either/or) and I came to a conclusion.

Direct Intervention! I like the power of intervention. Both professions are completely unnoticied when the job is done well. If the surgeon does his job right, the patient's life continues as planned. If the agent does his job right, life continues as well. I thrive in those situations where panic and desperation arises, where someone is required to set things straight, make a difference.

*: There are exceptions. For example, if I finished all my homework --> [pat] and played a good game of racquetball [pat], then that would be excessive. But if I finished all my homework and then cured cancer or something, that would deserve two pats. Just play it safe and keep your hands to yourselves.

I would have 2/3 of the title in Japanese, except these ME HPC lab machines don't have Japanese input installed :(

F***ing Hypocrites.

Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.



While it's perfectly ok to say something like that, it's probably not the nicest thing to say, no matter how true it is. That last statement only applies to normal people. First of all, the Pope was quoting something. It's like me quoting that statement, except unlike the Pope (I think), I actually think it's true:

Taken DIRECTLY from Wikipedia:

• About 2,000 Palestinians in Gaza City protested the Pope's statement on 15 September; a Greek Orthodox and an Anglican Church in Nablus were fire-bombed.
• On 17 September 2006 two Somali gunmen shot and killed an elderly Italian nun, sister Leonella, working at the Austrian-run childen hospital of Mogadishu, with her Somali bodyguard. (On a personal note, I have no mercy for anyone that attacks a hospital)
• The Iraqi militia Jaish al-Mujahedin (Holy Warriors' Army) announced its intention to "destroy their cross in the heart of Rome… and to hit the Vatican."
• Islamic Salafist Boy Scout Battalions threatened to kill all Christians in Iraq if the Pope does not apologize to Muhammad within three days.

Is that not enough proof? It doesn't surprise me that these people can't see the hypocritical nature of their actions. What's the only continuing major conflict that wasn't instigated by the Muslim religion? (I'll tell you- IRA & the Irish). No major world religion directly advocates violence in their scripture nor beliefs, but one comes close and it's the twisting of these words that many MANY people use to their advantage.

http://www.newsone.ca/piercelandherald/ViewArticle.aspx?id=8863&source=2

It is time. I knew it was coming. I say 4-5 years before American GI's are crawling all over that place.
....


These politically charged blogs are going to pwn me one day.

Lewis.

Seriously awesome.

Today, I finally realized something. When I signed up for my BME class, the BME advisor was like.. "I'm warning you... it's a difficult class". Of course, with the enormous hubris that physics instills in you, I thought "yeah. right." WRONG. WRONG.

This class will be difficult. Although he did guarantee MIT acceptance to anyone that does well. :-/

Squall, Ligers, and Smothering Pillows.

I had a squall moment in cell bio today. Now I usually don't chronicle this, so enjoy it while it lasts. The question: How would chaperone proteins recognize new proteins that have just been ejected from the ribosome to help them fold?

I waited, as I usually do. There's a saying that goes "It's better to sit there and look stupid than to open your mouth and remove all doubt". I usually follow that. Making a mistake in my mind is not salvageable by any means whatsoever, even if the next couple of answers are right. So I waited and no one gave an answer! 10 seconds later, my mind began to waver and also, I was itching to know, so I thought a little and came up with an answer.

[Academic]
It's worth it to try, and even if you make a mistake, you're bringing up a good point

[Moral]
You can't just wantonly shout out random thoughts. The fact that no one else knows means you're probably wrong too.

[Academic]
I call in situational veto powers, overrule on Moral, working on determining validity of the answer.

1 second later, I was convinced I was right.

[Academic]
It's time to make the move. Get me voluntary control and communications, let's start the process.

0.25 seconds later, my hand was in the air, ready to dish out a response. In fact, I hadn't even completed 4 words when _____[Professor] was like 'you're right, exactly'. That's a squall moment.


Today I saw a shirt that said LIGER on it. Ligers and Tions are those things that I'm always amazed only to realize a minute later that I've seen & read about them before. This time was different. How exactly do you make a liger? Rather, how exactly do you make a male lion mate with a female tiger? That got me thinking... and weird things happen when I think. I thought...you would probably have make the tiger EMULATE a female lion by dressing up the tiger! Yet this isn't your run-of-the-mill dress up fantasy. The tiger wouldn't actually KNOW it was being dressed up say... after it's bath. It's casually eating a steak while a bunch of zookeepers are spraypainting lionish graffiti on its back. So after it's done with its steak, although she doesn't know it, she looks like a lion. Ok. Part II: 10 minutes later, they're grazing the field, and then WTF WTF WTF. The female tiger looks back and it has a lion mounted on it. "WTF? STUPID LION! I'M A TIGER!" says the Tiger. But the deed is done.

Either that, or the lion is just retarded.

All these movies about people dying from being smothered by pillows. I tried it. Nothing happens. Pillows are completely breathable. In fact, they smell good. People should stop being pussies.

Why Physics?

So I can do things like that.

Appreciation or Snorkeling?

I chose snorkeling for a strange reason. I've had a very long day today, so the post will be short, a longer one to come tomorrow. Anyway, I'm a little tired of hearing all these praising phrases over and over, especially since they mean nothing. Today, someone said "You're a good boy". Wtf. I'm 20 dammit.

Today, I tutored math for 3 hours straight. I still have NO idea how to do Riemann integrals. Since it's not going to show up anymore, that's a relief. After math I had a 1.5 hour long physics session, then I went to lab to conjure up some more failed gels. yay. Actually I keep forgetting what I'm going to ramble about.

Eve

9-10-06. It's been almost 5 years. (That period was originally an exclamation point.)

I don't see any security improvements, except that I can't take my beloved Dasani on the plane. That's about all I have to say. Nothing about the victims or anything, since enough will be said in the next day or so. That's the thing about 'tragedies'. Something happens, but then, 3-4 years later, everything stays the same.

One tragedy that really pissed me off (especially since nothing was done about it) was the Phanta 'Jack' Phoummarath deal. And on that note, I'm terribly dissappointed with UTPD. I was stopped by UTPD 2 months ago for running a stop sign. After 2 minutes of police questioning, 4 other squad cars pulled up and it seemed like a drug bust outside Patterson.

Yet, they can't seem to catch the underage drinkers! Hey! I'll give you a hint.. try... FRATERNITIES... Every year, some kid has to die, because others are idiots. In fact, if you drink, and you're under 21, you're probably an idiot. What's your reason? Show off? Doing it so you can feel bad? Oh no! I took a sip of Bacardi, I'm BADASS. O SHIT.

In fact, if you're over 21 and you drink, you're probably an idiot as well. Unless you are addicted to it, then you're not an idiot now, you were one before. There's no reason to drink, just like there's no reason to smoke. All the drinkers complain- "Smoking is so nasty..." etc. etc. Well you're just replacing one drug with another. Congratulations, you're a hypocrite.

All complain and no solution is NO FUN, so here's a list of changes I see fit, and I can almost guarantee UT's drinking problem will decline dramatically. With the Patriot Act, I'm sure something can be worked out:

1. Random, thorough searches of dorm rooms. Conducting 20-30 random searches on each FLOOR per year will keep pissant idiots from being well... more pissant.
   
2. Heavily increase Friday night patrols; at least 4-5 searches of major parties each Friday.
3. Perusing through Facebook/MySpace/[...] to find repeat offenders, profile, search and destroy.
   
4. Amend state law to make it similar to drunk driving- 3 repeat offenses of either 1) dishing alcohol to minors or 2) consumption of alcohol as a minor will provoke a minimum 10 year sentence with all 10 years devoted to prison-community-service.
   
5. Undercover agents. Yes. Please send me in. "Helped bust numerous parties, reduced underage drinking at UT" = Haavard <3
6. Rewards for informing police, depending on how many offenders are caught.
   
7. Fraternities that serve alcohol should have permits and those caught should be disbanded, assets seized, members' classes voided for that semester and all members be assigned to 300 hours of community service that semester. Those serving alcohol get the same along with that mark on their record- detailed above.
   

That's all I have for now, and that took 5 minutes. I'm sure UTPD can come up with more. Some of my more radical ideas have been to intercept alcohol shipments into Austin, inject them with trace amounts of paralyzing drugs, track the shipment and search everyone's ID card. That probably wouldn't fly so well.

The great thing is... we only need to put like 10-20 people on that 10 year sentence and people will sober up. Then I won't have to see random black people peeing on the sidewalk when entering Jester after 11pm.