temporary insanity

A bay and a boat
And a sunset with the boys:
Those Canadians.

Visiting Evan and Jeff and Jeff and Ben is always a killer time, and this past weekend was no different.  I flew out to SF for a couple days at the beginning of what is probably the busiest week I will have in college.  URGH.  But I had the tickets and needed a break.

Friday Jeff and Evan and Jeff's friend Adelaide (sp? She is from France) collected me from SFO for a tour of Napa and dinner at the Culinary Institute of America.  Expensive and delicious.  :D  I picked up a few bottles of wine (the dessert wines were amazing!) to bring back, but sadly they are currently camping in (other) Jeff's apartment.  Along with my camera.  :(

That night, Evan and I went to hang out with other Jeff and his girlfriend, Em.  We had delicious wine and cheese and chilled in their hot tub; Anton came over later and showed off these thingies that he has that are called Freelines.  They're super cool!  They're sort of like a Ripstik with no connector.  Anyway, he seemed to be pretty good at them, and it was neat to watch.

We also tried to see The Men Who Stare at Goats, but the showing started at midnight, and I had already been up for 23 hours and traveling and... well, Evan said it was good.

The next day I had been invited to go rock climbing with my friend Joe, but that didn't end up working out.  *sigh*  So Evan and I did some city exploring and hill climbing and met up with Ben to go out for sushi in Japan town.  We also got... bubble tea!  Woo!

After that, we were ON A BOAT.  Sailing through SF Bay for Em's birthday was quite a treat; as Barrett mentioned in his album, "much singing of the Lonely Island ensued."

I got to go clubbing in SF that night, but, alas, not at the DNA Lounge.  I'm pretty sad about that.  :(

Then it was pretty much time to go!  Eek!  So Evan and I had breakfast at a little jazz cafe (sic) in the Mission.  It was a pretty fun weekend, I gotta say; and I'm super excited for when Evan comes to visit at Thanksgivingtime.  Now back to the salt mines... with play performances 4 nights this week and two major projects due, I really shouldn't be writing this blog post at all..

>.<

amusing

Mosaics drift, soft,
Silent over now-bare limbs,
Winter sun above.

Oh, I do love fall.  Probably I won't stop harping about that until winter.

I was amused by a few things this week, most notably the fliers and chalk ads that just went up all around Lindley Hall (the computer science building) for the IU Gaming Club's LAN WAR.  Hahaha.  It's like they think they're going to target their marketing or something.  :)

Equally amusing (though less local): Obama has declared Swine Flu to be a national emergency.

Victoria's Secret sponsored a huge concert at IU this week, too, for some concert that we won (that I never heard about).  The moral of the story is that Girl Talk and Cobra Starship performed on a huge, pink, steel stage that was nearly as tall as our damn Union building, which is pretty freakin' tall.  It was a cool show (part of which I missed due to play practice.  sad.).

Patrick and I went on an adventure this morning to an old railroad trestle west of town.  I'd been there before, but with all the leaves turning and such, it was positively gorgeous to walk out on.  It stretches about a mile over a valley, and said valley is ringed with trees that were like rippling poetry in the wind with their browns and oranges.  I couldn't convince him to go all the way across, though; I guess reasonable people don't want to walk a mile across a span hundreds of feet above the ground.  Go figure.

In unrelated news, I can't believe I haven't used "adventure" as a label on this blog until now.  Egad!  What am I doing with my life!?

gwar

Fall is sliding in,
Trees aflame, and I asleep.
Shiver back the cold.

Continuing to do this much work isn't making it easier.  This OS project may kick my butt.  Not to mention IT'S MIDTERM SEASON.

First, something cheerful: weekly cooking!  This week's feature was Navajo Tacos:

Chili ingredients:

1 pound cubed-like eggplant

2 cans 14 oz. pinto beans

1 large onion chopped

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon oregano

2 tablespoons chili powder

1/2 teaspoon red pepper

1/2 teaspoon black pepper

2 can 12oz. tomatoes

1 teaspoon sugar

2 teaspoons cocoa

Cook the eggplant until it's kinda soft.  Add onions and saute until tender.  Add everything else and simmer until you're happy with it (I did about 1.5 hours).

Fry Bread Ingredients:

3 + cups of flour

1 tablespoon baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

1.5 cups warm milk or warm water.

Mix 3 cups flour with other dry ingredients then add warm milk/water to make a sticky dough.  Add additional flour to make a firm dough then cover and rest for approximately 30 minutes.  Form pieces of dough into thin (less than 1/4 inch thick) disks and fry at approximately 375 degrees F.  I didn't have a candy thermometer for the oil, so I just jacked it up almost to high on my stove.  That worked okay.

Toppings:

Onions, Shredded cheese (co-jack), shredded lettuce, tomatoes, avocado

Top hot fry bread with a layer of cheese followed by a layer of chili followed by a layer of cheese followed by a layer of lettuce, onions, tomato, and avocado followed by a light sprinkling of cheese on top.

It's yummy.

Play practice was pretty fun, too.  I learned that my character is basically a crazy old woman who gets to play with anything and everything on stage when she's bored.  Sweet.  If anyone has old lady clothes that they don't mind parting with for a few weeks, I'd be much obliged.

The new networks project is to implement a longest prefix matcher for IP addresses.  This basically means that we take IP addresses (those things that look like 129.79.245.103, which is where I happen to be at the moment) and decompose them into bits.  A router's job is to figure out which router a packet heading towards a given IP is supposed to go to next, so it goes through and sees how much of the address it can match with its tables.  IP addresses are assigned in a semi-geographic way, but the important thing is that "close" addresses will be "close" physically.  Chunks of addresses are designated for certain entities, so IU owns a chunk of addresses (65,534) in the 129.79 family.  So that will be fun.

The OS assignment is to implement fork() and exec() for threads, which essentially means taking a process (loosely defined as "a program in execution") and making a copy of it which can then be turned into another process.  Operating systems don't pull processes out of nowhere!  The other part of the assignment involves setting up the filesystem, i.e. making it possible to read and write files.  WOO.

Piano is going well, too!  We learned the chromatic scale this week, and the most recent songs we've played are "Great Balls of Fire" and "It's My Party."  Hahaha.  :)

Anyway, it's like 23:30, and I'm definitely still in Lindley.  I think that means it's time to head home and get some sleep.  -____-  Blargh.  Any volunteers for doing my work will be welcomed?

luck?

From strange places sprout
Beautiful things, if you take
Time to notice them.

I've had a rather strange set of days lately, but I still find myself learning from them, so it's all good.  I think that this blog is going to be rife with these bullet-pointed lists... and for that, I apologise, but I really don't have time to commit coherent and flowy thoughts to text right now.

• The play on Friday went really well.  We performed in a really strange space: it was essentially a garden party (so acoustics were terrible) with audience on three sides.  Weird.  I have to decide if I'm going to do the real VIDA play or not.  Argh, time commitments.
• Memory structures are really interesting.  So working memory is usually about 8-10 items; an average person can remember 8-10 numbers or whatever at a time.  This is why we chunk for things like phone numbers and addresses: remembering a number as thirty-three twenty-four is less mentally taxing than remembering it as three three two four.  I remember learning about a guy who could memorize huge sequences of numbers because he correlated them to running times; he was a distance runner, and it was easy for him to "chunk" in this way.  When Alex came, he remembered where he was based on the location of the fraternities and sororities in town, which I thought was a riot, since I've never even bothered to learn any of their names.  I find myself attaching thoughts to objects, and seeing or handling those objects can spark my memory.  Anyway, that was random.
• Bikes are awesome.  Roy, Chet, Jill, and I spent some time volunteering at the Bloomington Bike Project yesterday afternoon, and we learned how to rebuild headsets (that's basically all the parts of the bike at the front: the handlebars, the front fork, and all the ball bearings and stuff).  The headset that I was working on was apparently pretty strange and sexy; instead of a compact/connected ball bearing setup, mine was built with the ball bearings just loose in grease.  It was both messy and awesome to rebuild.
• I got nominated for the Churchill scholarship, which, if I get it, would mean that I could get a master's degree at Cambridge (in England) for free.  That would be ridiculous.

Anyway, I have 547 meetings to go to this afternoon, not to mention that I still have analysis homework to do.  So I gotta peace out.  Sorry for the hurried post..

hiatus

Leaves fall silently,
Don't break, don't bother, just ghosts,
Mem'ries of summer.

So I have to say that I really like the new Blogger text editor.  It's way cuter than the old one.

Other than that, I guess it looks like I haven't put anything on here for a while, so here's some things that I've been thinking about/doing in no particular order:

• Alex came to visit me over the weekend.  We went caving (Sullivan's Cave, for those of you in the know), I gave him a tour, he met some of my friends, and we went out one of the nights with "the crew" (hi, Thabang, Brett, and Matt).  We saw Comedy Caravan at Bear's again, and this time it was improv.  A couple of the dudes came over to chat our table up after the show, and Alex had the somewhat dubious pleasure of experiencing drunk guys hitting on me.  I don't recall if I mentioned, but I got asked for my phone number in a very sly (and somewhat amusing) way last weekend at the same bar.
• I read an article recently about "anonymizing" healthcare records.  I can't, unfortunately, find a link to a full paper, but the gist of the article was that 87% of Americans can be found uniquely by using just zipcode, birthdate, and gender.  Maybe you're just as unique as you think you are.
• I am performing in a play on Friday!  It's about a family of three: a woodcutter father, an imaginative mother, and a pushed-around daughter.  I am the third.  The script is here, and for those of you who do not read Spanish (and don't like Google translator's version :) ), it's basically a story about the father coming home, saying, "Oh, wife, I thought about planting an olive tree today."  The wife saying, "Man, this is going to be great!  We can sell that shit!"  Then they bring me in and argue about how much they are going to charge for the olive oil (when the olives are barely thought of and certainly won't be ready for many years), eventually getting so into it that they slap me around a little and our neighbour has to come over and point out how ridiculous we all are.
• There is a lot to writing an operating system.  This OS class that I'm in is going to be pretty intense.  Our assignment for this week was to look through the source code and answer a few questions about it, and it's a crapload of C.
• I'll be awesome at C by the end of term.  My networks class will all be in C, too, so EXTRA PRACTISE.
• I'm still looking for an internship/short-term job for spring, for any of you out there in real-world-land who might happen to know recruiters.  ;)
• I was recently informed that I am not too tall to be an astronaut.  Also that Bill Stone, the guy who I was all excited about working for, is a total jerk.
• I forgot a lot of parkour over the summer, but Roy is whipping me back into shape.  We'll see how that goes.  :D
  
• My roommates are thinking about fostering a puppy!  We can't adopt one, mainly because we have no idea what we would do with it after the school year ends, but fostering is totally doable, and our house would be so puppied and happy.  ^____^
• There is going to be a live-action Akira movie?  That should be interesting.
• I saw Ponyo (the new movie from the Miyazaki, the guy who did Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, etc.), and it was pretty trippy/awesome.  Also recently, I saw Up, Coraline, and Jabberwocky.  All of these are great.  Up is by Pixar and is soooooo cute, and parts are really hilarious.  Doug the dog is awesome.  Coraline is really weird and disturbing, but it's by Tim Burton, and that guy's gold.  Jabberwocky is by Terry Gilliam, and I don't think I need to elaborate on that.
• I'm planning my grad party, and it looks like it's going to be an excursion up to Chicago for New Year's.  It seems dumb to have a grad party before I actually graduate (plus I'm going to be absurdly busy before that), and there's no way to cram it in between graduation and Christmas, and I have a lot of friends I want to see who are from far away, and I like Chicago, and I don't have plans for New Year's.  So I think that's going to be it.
• Moebius strips are always more awesome.  A friend shared a link to a moebius strip music box on Google Reader recently.
• Grad students don't always seem more dedicated to their degrees than undergrads.  Being in some grad classes, I've been exposed to people who are really just in it for the paper.  :-/  It's sort of disappointing, but I guess you never get away from some kinds of people in real life.
• I gotta decide what to study in grad school.  I'm leaning towards some kind of engineering, maybe?  I want to do something thoughtful but not entirely sedentary.  Doing some kind of natural science would be fun, too.  Really, I still want to just be Bill Stone, just not an asshole.  Getting paid to be an adventurer still ranks highly on my list of priorities.
• Cooking is awesome.  Not only am I treated to the dinner rotation creations of my roommates, but I've been hanging out with another friend the past couple of days, and we made anise (basically licorice-flavoured) ice cream root beer floats.  Mmmmmmmmmm....
• Funny things are changing their legality status.  Facebook's TOS was determined to violate Canada's privacy laws (didn't they just get in trouble for that earlier this year?  Jeez, guys.), certain amounts of drugs are being legalised in Mexico (I believe the language is an amount appropriate for "personal and immediate use"), parts of California are raising taxes on their medical marijuana sales (a fairly sound economic idea if you look at the numbers), and I'm endlessly amused by international copyright laws, of course.  While in Germany, it was like pulling teeth to find a fecking Youtube video that I could listen to music from that wasn't blocked due to copyright, and things like Pandora didn't work their, either.  I've been reading a little bit about Canada's changing copyright laws for music distribution, and a bit about the DRM blocks that Apple had put on their iTunes tracks, but that stuff's just so silly.
• What's up with people accusing celebrities of hiding their genders?  It's all the rage, of a sudden.  Lady Gaga, that African runner, who next?

Anyway, that's really just a braindump of some general things that I've been pondering.  I felt like I should make a blog post, and... well, that's what came out.  :)

back to btown

At the llama school,
Fleeces bundled against cold,
Classes start anew.

I finally moved back to Bloomington on Saturday, thanks to the help of a dude my mom met on the internet 15 years ago.  They used to play Dragon Realms, a text-based adventure game, back in the day.  The guy's name is Alvin, but his screen name has always been Bowly, so my mom couldn't help but call him that.  :P  Anyway, he's a great guy, and he helped me move all my junk to Bloomington.

I'm loving my new house!  The boys who live here (Chas, Patrick, Dan, and Sam) have dubbed it the Llama School after a weird sock puppet show that aired on MTV a long time ago.  My room is on the one-and-a-halfth floor, and it's got a built in shelfy thing and a window on the east and a window on the west.  It is just the right size for my desk, double bed, bike, and a random beanbag I claimed from the room's most recent former denizen.  I need some more decorations, though, I think... I want to simplify life this semester since I'm moving out of this place so shortly, but I don't know if I can stay in a place with plain white walls.  :-/  It's fabulous to live with people who cook, though!  Last night we had grilled tofu marinated in orange juice, garlic, and other yummy things along with grilled eggplant and veggie shishkebabs.  HUZZAH for living with vegetarians.

Classes so far seem like they'll be fun.  I think I'm going to super-like my topology professor: the first thing he did was write the epsilon-delta definition of continuity on the board, ask us if we like it, and tell us that if we do we are in the wrong class and should go to analysis instead.

My networks class is going to be fun, I think, too.  I had the delight of answering "a series of tubes" when asked "what is the Internet?" in a serious context.  I was shocked that there were ~40 people in the class, though.  That's the second-largest class I've ever been in.

Piano will be interesting.  I'm happy that I have at least basic knowledge of what the heck to do; there was a girl in my class who didn't know where middle C was, so I suspect that we won't be flying along at any pace I can't handle.

In social news, I've been keeping busy since I came.  Thabang, Brett, and Roy took me out in Bloomington for the first time; we went to Bear's Place for Comedy Caravan, which was good fun.  I've also gotten a chance to go sailing with my new roommates and Perry, and to go ghost hunting with Roy and Chet.  Play practice yesterday was good, and I'm excited for the performance next Friday.  :D

BUT WHY THE HELL WAS IT 11 DEGREES HERE THIS MORNING.  THAT IS BULL$#!+.