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.

get ready to scream...

to the tune of: Man Of La Mancha (I Don Quixote) by Linda Eder

I discovered last week that Kat, despite valiant tries, can't knock me off my feet (though it was fun watching her try...). Good to know...

I think everyone's conspiring against me to declare CS just as I'm on the verge of finishing the undergrad picture board. Grr... people are even coming up to me as I'm updating the board (outside of office hours). But one way or another, it's going to happen. Soon. And by the way, (CS/sym sys people) should you find yourself in Gates with a few minutes to spare, go see if you recognize Nicolette Etnalrap...

Ahh, Thanksgiving. Gotta love a holiday devoted to gluttony...oh, and giving thanks, I guess. So much turkey, pumpkin, and cranberry. Ooh... Sadly, no one outside the Zone knew the joys of my misshapen but still good pumpkin cake.

Portable ashtrays. They're so handy. I always think that when I'm searching for a place to get rid of my cigarette butt. Thus spake this fine specimen of Engrish anti-smoking signs, which also bear fine slogans like My cigarettes smell good. Other people's smell bad. (There are actually 4 pages of these--if you're trying to procrastnate click the numbers at the top.) My favorite? Inahled. Burned. Thrown away. If it were anything but a cigarette, it would surely be crying. I love the little Ikea-style diagrams to go with these. Courtesy of Erika.

Something else you can do to procrastinate: Make love, not spam. If, by love, you mean bombarding spammers' web servers with traffic to make them pay for all the spam they've been sending you. Seems only fair...and the screen saver makes it look like you're launching a nuclear war.

And finally, from Cheng: There is such a thing as going too far when buying toys for kids. Who needs a bike?

oh well

to the tune of: Weak And Powerless by A Perfect Circle

According to a study from Cal, e-voting may have given Bush a few extra votes in Florida. Like maybe 130,000. And, they claim, they're "99.9% sure that these effects are not attributable to chance."

Big Game -- Cal
Cal -- beat
beat -- beatings
beatings -- violence
violence -- Detroit
Detroit -- Pistons
Pistons -- this (wmv video)

Ahh, it's good to see that Detroiters still know how to riot.

Big Game Week was really a good try by everyone. As if to compensate for our football team's impotence against Cal, people started mutilating defenseless teddy bears and carrying them around. The Daily said they were supposedly hanging in nooses all over campus but I didn't see any. Maybe because I'm not hanging around freshman dorms so much. Maybe I should be a sketchier grad student.

Speaking of nice tries, in my capacity as Viennese Ball performer I was hoping to introduce scores of Mirrielees people to swing dance. But they were hoping to stay in their rooms. We got five people, all of them experienced with swing. And no guys. So...we taught role reversal. It was still fun, but not quite the alluring "hey, maybe I'll go to Viennese and do more of this swing dance stuff..." I was hoping for...

Aaaaaaaa! Milestones Tuesday! Back to Gates I go... under 30 mph winds no less... Methinks no biking for me... (Update: OK, so maybe it wasn't so windy after all. But it sounded apocalyptic when my little weather applet popped up an ominous-looking Wind Advisory...)

past the midterm gauntlet

to the tune of: Nara by E.S. Posthumus

It's funny how bronchitis works. Monday morning I felt like crap and so made a doctor's appointment. All day Monday during work it was kinda hiding: I wasn't coughing at all. But then I got to Vaden, talked normally to the receptionist and the nurse. The minute the doctor walked in though, I sounded pathetic, as if on cue my body realized, Hey, she's the one who can give us antibiotics! Let's put on a good show now... But 5-day Zithromax...now that takes me back to my high school days...

We got Viennese partners this week; I have a great waltz partner who's fun to dance with. Alas, I'm an alternate for the polka. But I'd rather do the waltz--it'll be so melodramatic.

The cs229 midterm was a good old-fashioned ass-whoopin' for everyone. Before the test, Professor Ng tried to pass the blame off to his girlfriend: he told us before the exam that he asked her how hard he should make the test, and she told him she thought we'd be insulted if our exam was too easy. But we shouldn't trust her because she's not a college professor. And, Dave says, because she's dating Andrew Ng.

This was a week of comfort food. Monday night I made a traditional New England (vegetable) chowder; Wednesday Dave made pork stew. And for the piece de resistance, after our painful midterm I introduced everyone to the great Northern tradition of hot cider and donuts. (Aside: Fresh cider is not easy to find around here...we had to go to three different Safeways. Egg nog, on the other hand, is already well stocked.)

Ragtime Ball was uber crowded, but plenty of fun. There's something great about hustling to a big band playing "I Will Survive". Apparently all the social dance groups have now turned into hip hop dance groups. Including Swingtime, whose "Hey Ya!" Dave was defending as a West Coast swing up until last night...

From Christine's blog: check this out. Now ask yourself, could the money used to make Britney Spears' Toxic been better spent?

sunrise, sunset

to the tune of: The Uruk-Hai by Howard Shore

Best sobriety test effver.
Why am I not surprised?

I just ran into Dave. No, I mean really ran into Dave. I was cautiously biking around the sidewalk in front of Stern cause this girl was walking along minding her own business. All of a sudden this guy comes barreling around the corner like he was late for something (rehearsal). They say your reaction time goes down with you're drunk--maybe it goes down when you're sleep deprived too. Because all I could do is saw, "whoa!" as if the driver of my bike could slam on the brakes or something. Only problem was this girl was there so I couldn't really plow into her. So, being the noble gentlemen that we were, we ran straight into each other in my first ever bike collision. It was exciting. Then I realized it was Dave and we chatted for a while. Good times on bikes.

On Tuesday Kat and I came out of class and saw the makings of a beautiful sunset. We decided we needed a higher vantage point, so we headed back to Blackwelder and caught these ïmpressive shots. And my camera is still on Daylight Savings Time it seems.

It's been an insane week, culminating in me getting the plague. Or a cold. I'm not sure which. But I haven't been sleeping much. Like maybe two hours a night for a couple of nights. So I figured I'd sleep in today. My body just said, "Screw you and your sleep!" and I woke up seven hours later. So much for that I guess...

Beer battered turkey: better than it sounds.

But a new week brings Ragtime Ball! and the Game!