got a few extra bucks for christmas?

<PSA>
After days of trying to ignore the media frenzy surrounding the Asian tsunami, the scope of the relief need finally sunk in. The $6 left over on my gift certificate to my least favorite record store could feed 150 kids over there right now. (That is, if gift certificates at crappy stores were redeemable for cash, but that's beside the point.) If you've got a little extra Christmas gift cash or maybe you forgot someone on your list, if you haven't already, think about donating to something like Mercy Corps--these guys are one of the most efficient relief organizations out there.
</PSA>

dashing through the snow

As I watch the dawn break over the empty rolling hills of eastern Pennsylvania, Christmas carols in some undecipherable language wafting from the radio--no, the CD player: it's that damn Polish CD--I come to reflect on my discoveries of the past 12 hours or so:

I actually found a use for their Jeep's 4-wheel drive! This Ohio service plaza apaprently never got plowed, so the car was stuck in about 9 inches of lovely gray mush. A little 4x4 lovin' is all it took.

The nice thing about the radio on Christmas Eve is that a bunch of stations decided to forgo commercials for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

These stations, however, did not give up bragging about their 48 hours of music. You'd think they'd send their DJs home so they could annoy their families, but no. (Though apparently some stations prerecord their DJ chatter a week in advance. Those DJs can then do the nifty cocktail party trick of "predicting" what songs will come on the radio next and what they'll say.)

48 hours of solid Christmas music is a lot.

My winter coat makes decent soundproofing material in a pinch.

Why you should have a real Christmas tree

Perhaps a thinly veiled, shameless plug from the Christmas tree lobby. But still...

brrr...

As the snow that melted today freezes again, I realize it's been a while.

Friday, after surviving the Week of Hell, I got to celebrate. Yay for Friday Night Waltz! and When Harry Met Sally, which was much better than I thought. Yes, it's true: Dave is Harry. All in all it was a most wonderful evening.

I always knew this day would come. Well, OK, maybe not always. But at least since October... I'm even more freaked out by this though.

It's bloody cold here... and my parents seem to like it that way inside too. So they've essentially decided I'm going to have to heat my room with a space heater by myself. So we went to Meijer and Mom got me a nice little oscillating thermostat- controlled space heater, complete with a timer so I can leave it on when I go to bed. Fine. All well and good. This works for a little while. But it's so advanced it crashes, and I have to reboot it. Yes, the manual even suggests unplugging the stupid thing for 10 minutes to let it "reset". And apparently this is normal behavior, because we already brought one back to exchange it. Oh well. Guess with "programmable" comes "buggy"...

we'll soon be done

to the tune of: Catch The Wind by The Irish Descendants

I'm told I have a problem: a sort of addiction to sleeping in my clothes. So judge for yourself, based on my last week:

Thursday: stayed up all morning to finish the last cs229 problem set, only to go to lecture and fall asleep in the third row.

Friday: Tried to do the same thing again to finish the ling program but bombed out around 4 AM. At least they drop the lowest project score...

Saturday: Got 10 hours of much-needed sleep before rehearsal and starting on our cs229 project

Monday: stayed up all morning to finish the project, catching a quick nap while Kendra was sleeping. (Kat says this counts as "social" clothes-sleeping-in, which is somehow better. Like social alcoholism.)

Tuesday: planned to take a quick nap before finishing our cs376 presentation. "Quick" became seven hours, and I woke up at 3 AM with a sharp pain in my leg. I realized I was sleeping on my keys. But I never sleep on my keys. So I must have been taking a na---oh, crap. But I sprang awake and finished the presentation.

Speaking of which, the poster session and the presentation went well, even though PowerPoint chose the precise moment we were presenting to stop running. That was embarrassing.

Special thanks to all the women who contributed to the RSFZ Sugar Fund, keeping us wired with an array of cookies, cakes, and pies.

Ooh, and we submitted our abstract to CHI. The full paper is coming next week. If it gets accepted we could win a trip to scenic Portland...

Once again, Erika comes through with procrastinatory links: the strangely amusing Cheapass Cereal Hall of Fame and the classic future Googlebot.

And all by myself: Dude! Americans have long (well, the last four years at least) been posing as Canadians overseas to avoid drawing their ire, but now this kit promises to help, complete with a guidebook entitled, "How to Speak Canadian, Eh?"

Boys are struggling academically

Yahoo! News - Pay closer attention: Boys are struggling academically

It's nice to see media coverage of this phenomenon, which I did some research on four years ago. So much attention has gone to girls' academic problems that boys have been more or less ignored.