Mistakes on the Wall

Probably everyone reading this knows that I always cover my walls with things I make myself. The year-poster, the nine pictures of songs, all of my friends' pictures, etc.

When I was listening to Mr. Perlswig's speech today at Baccalaureate, I had an idea for next year that I might try out. I might just take a big white piece of posterboard and get something printed on it - like I always do - and then write down all the things in my life that I feel like were mistakes or things that I've done wrong. Not all at once, but as they come to me. Not mistakes like "I wasted my time trying to be friends with John Smith" or whatever that are just ways to blame other people, but things that were seriously my fault, or I seriously feel regret about. Things that it would be good to see every day.

I suppose the thinking behind this is something along these lines: There's nothing wrong or even stupid about making mistakes. Everyone makes mistakes. What starts to become wrong/stupid/annoying is when you keep making the same mistake over and over and over again and never learn anything from it. I don't know how often I do that, but I figure this can't hurt, and it'll help me learn how often I do. At the absolute best, I will stop making a given mistake more than once. At the absolute worst, I will be more honest with the people who come into my room.

Peace out.

Codeine

When I was in 8th grade, I had an operation done to break the growth plates in my right knee so that my legs would end up being equal length. I can write more about that whole part of my life some other time. In either case, the operation caused me some pretty extreme pain. I remember waking up the first night after the surgery and begging the nurse to let the morphine drip in a little bit faster because I was in such agony. I never thought that I would actually ask for morphine - certainly not when I was in 8th grade - but there I was! It actually did help a lot, too. I went to sleep again that night.

I stayed in the hospital for two or three days. On the last day that I was there, they let me try to stand up and walk around a little bit, and they wanted to get me into physical therapy so I could bend my knee properly and whatnot. They took me off of morphine, which is super tightly controlled, and gave me a tablet of codeine instead. I remember taking just one tiny pill of it - maybe even half a pill - a light orange color, very small, with some water, while sitting on my hospital bed.

So I went downstairs with my dad after that to try to get some early physical therapy in. I think he wheeled me downstairs in a chair, and then when I got down there, we basically just tried to have me walk with some crutches and stuff like that. I had a soft cast on for a while, so there was basically no way I could do much more... hardly even could bend my knee.

After a little bit of being down there, I started to feel sick. Very, very nauseas. At some point I just knew that I wouldn't be able to hold it back anymore, and I made my dad rush me to the nearest bathroom. I remember making it to the bathroom, and just throwing up more violently that I ever had in my entire life, and probably more intensely than I ever have since. It felt like somebody was punching me in the stomach so hard that everything in my torso was coming right out of me, or like someone was reaching their fist down my throat and seriously tearing my insides right out of my mouth. I made a total mess, and I remember that I got it all over the floor, the toilet, the sink, and even all over myself. We decided no more codeine after that.

I think it may have given me a really messed up dream while I was in the hospital too, but that may have just been a story my dad told me about codeine. I can't remember.

//

I just got my wisdom teeth out on Friday morning. I was pretty afraid of the pain that I would be in, but I knew that I would get prescribed some way-cool drugs that day, and I was itching to take them so I wouldn't feel the holes in my jaw bone closing up, or whatever the hell it is that causes the pain exactly. My mom suggested maybe taking Tylenol first - so did the surgeon - but I insisted on just taking Percocet. So as the novacaine was wearing off, I took a half-tablet of Percocet. About a half hour later, after we agreed that it was doing okay with my stomach, I took another half-tablet of it because I felt like my jaw was starting to hurt a little bit.

I did pretty okay with the pain that day, and I remember at one point sort of feeling a hit of relief in my jaw and thinking, "Wow, Percocet. Okay, cool." Throughout the rest of the evening, I took another whole pill - another half pill four hours after my first, and another half pill four hours after that. The pain wasn't too bad so we decided not to push it.

Viv was supposed to come over that night, but ended up backing out because family had come over. Dana had considered coming to see me as well, but didn't believe me when I said I was doing perfectly fine, and had other reasons to see me the next day anyway.

At about 11:30, I was still laying on the couch in the family room. I had felt a little funny in my stomach earlier, so I asked for something to eat. I had my mom or dad get me pancakes, because I knew they were very light and easy in your mouth but they would fill up in your stomach. For some reason, I felt like the strange feeling was because I had had nothing to eat all day, and all the medicine in there without any food was going to be too harsh. So I thought eating would fix it.

So I ate most of a pancake. But even after that, I felt pretty funny. I'm actually not sure I finished the whole thing. Then I told my parents I felt like I was going to throw up. "Well then get to the bathroom!" they shouted at me. I asked them for a bucket but they said no, get the hell into a bathroom. So I got up and went to the bathroom, which yeah, was probably the right idea.

I leaned over the toilet and I started to cough pretty forcefully, and my mom said to chill out because it might mess up the stitches in my mouth, and we definitely didn't want to deal with that. My dad told me to do what I could to hold it back because this would be a terrible time to throw up, and to just take long deep breaths and try to keep it in. I kept coughing more forcefully though, and I just knew that I had to throw up to get it out of me. I was starting to sweat a whole lot, so I took my shirt off. I hit my hand on the sink as I was taking it off.

So yeah, I proceeded to violently throw up probably four or five times very shortly after I had taken my shirt off. I'm pretty sure that everything I had put in me the entire day came right back up. It was a very calorie-negative day, and it left me feeling very hungry for a long time afterwards. It reminded me very strongly of the time that I had thrown up in the physical therapy place with my dad, though. And right after I was done, I stopped sweating, my stomach felt fine, and I didn't feel nauseas at all anymore.

I found out later - because I am an idiot - that Percocet is just artificially synthesized codeine. If I had known that, I probably would have stayed away from it at pretty much all costs.

In either case, I think I will make sure that I never take anything that is essentially codeine ever again.

Peace out.

Marcus Hook Train Station

Coming back from Avalon was tougher to figure out that I had anticipated.  Initially the plan was that we would drive back very late on Sunday - like leave Avalon around midnight - and then Dana would have her sister pick her up when we arrived, and Deb/Emily/Vicki would just crash at my place and Deb's parents would get her the next day, and I'd take Emily and Vicki to the train.

However, my parents turned out not to be so okay with that.  One option was for me to just go alone, let all the girls stay at the beach house, and then my parents would drive them home the next day, but I don't think anyone liked that.  It eventually came down to driving home fairly early on Sunday night (a little sad, I'd have liked to have hung out with everyone longer) so that Deb and Dana could be picked up right away and I could drop off Emily and Vicki at the train in Marcus Hook if I got there in time, or Emily's dad would pick them up as late as 10PM.

We ended up leaving sometime around 7:30, figuring that would give us enough time to at least get to the Marcus Hook train station (hardly off of I-95) in time for the last train at 9:37 that night.  When we got off of Route 55, it seemed like we would definitely have enough time to get to the station safely, so Emily talked to her dad and told him that.  Deb also told her parents that they could probably pick her up around 9:30.  When we got a little closer, Emily called her dad again to confirm that he shouldn't come and that they'd make the train.  Deb asked how much longer out of the way that'd be, and I'd said maybe seven minutes or something like that.

Well, turns out we got stuck behind a very slow-moving Acme truck on 322 before we even got to the big Wawa on the corner.  And it stayed with us in the part where 322 jogs.  It stayed with us all the way past King Philip Regional HS, right on up to the part where 322 actually becomes a two-lane highway, at which point I finally passed it because it was making me nervous that I wouldn't make it in time.  I think my car clock said something like 9:20 at that point, when we hit the 2-lane part of 322.  Keep in mind that my car clock is 4 minutes fast for some reason.

So I pay the toll and we go over the Commodore Barry bridge and things look good.  I thought for half a second that I missed the exit (was I supposed to take Chichester Ave?) but then I saw the sign for Market Street, 1/4 mile, so I knew I was fine.  I took that exit and made a right turn, because that was how I got there when I was coming up from DC on Friday night to pick them up from the train station.  I saw a sign for 452, so I was pretty sure I was on the right road.

After a little bit on that road, I started to think that I was going the wrong direction.  There were a lot of stop lights, and a lot of shopping centers that didn't look familiar, and it seemed like it was taking way longer than before, and the bridges seemed unfamiliar.  Dana was sitting in the front seat and I said to her softly, "Um, I think I'm going the wrong direction."  She turned a little bit, and I said softly, "S***," because I didn't want Emily and Vicki to get stressed out for something they didn't do and couldn't fix of control.  I kept driving for a little bit longer, and then I got to a huge intersection with a Walgreens that I swore was right near CN Skate Palace, and I knew for sure then that I was going the wrong direction.  I told them then, and I made a right-on-red at the five point intersection to try to turn around.  I tried to turn around in a small drive in the wedge to get back on Market St., but it was a no-outlet.  So I just did a U-Turn in the middle of the road and pulled back up to the light.

It took a while for my light to come up, but finally we got the left arrow and got back onto Market street.  I think that my clock said something like 9:34 then, adding some tension, even though that meant we still had seven minutes.  I still wasn't sure we'd make it on time.

I started driving fast, and almost even aggressively.  I was fuel inefficient.  We got a string of green lights, and then I pulled under a yellow light, and sighed, glad that I had made it.  After that, a truck pulled in front of me somehow - maybe merging right onto the road - and caused me to hit a red light.  I remember shouting "MOTHERF***ER!" at the situation.  I wasn't really angry, or upset, I was just excitable for some reason.

We drove on, we passed signs for 322, so I knew we were getting closer.  When my clock read something like 9:37, we finally passed I-95.  Four minutes.

I could see the flame from the refinery burning above the train station, so I knew we were getting close.

We came to another stop at a red light, and I saw a "Dairy King" store across the road.  God damnit.  I remembered it extremely clearly from picking them up the other night, and I should have known right away that I was going in the wrong direction when I didn't see it from turning off of 95 this time around.  I remember thinking it was a stupid play on Diary Queen and I was mad at them almost for making me relate it to Diary Queen.  I can't explain why, I just was.

We kept going.  All we needed to do was get over the bridge and then turn right, right again, and then we're at the train, right where we need to be.  Vicki kept asking if I needed to cross the tracks, or if she needed to cross the tracks.  I said that I had to, that's why I was crossing the bridge.

We kept hitting red lights.  9:38.  9:39.  More red lights.  I shouted curse words again.  We shouted for green lights.  Finally we got to the bridge over the tracks.  My clock read 9:41.

"Oh man, I hope we don't see the train pulling out of the station - how much would that suck?"

Vicki saw it - "Yyyyup, there's the train."  It was sitting at the station, not yet moving.  Vicki said that she would have to cross the tracks and there was no way she'd make it, but I assured her no, only I had to cross the tracks, and going over the bridge was all we needed.  At literally any second, the train could leave.  We were all just waiting for it to pull out before we got there.

There was a white SUV in front of me going maybe 30MPH over the 30MPH bridge.  I honked at it, hoping it would speed up.  But it didn't.  I just had to follow it, and the second I could, I swerved right to get to the station.  I considered going the wrong way on a one-way residential street to get them there a few moments earlier, afraid the train was pulling out as I drove past the houses, unable to see clearly what was happening.

Finally I found a street - maybe the third street - that was one-way in the direction I wanted to go, so I swerved right.  The speed limit sign said 15, but I sped up as much as I could, and slammed on the brakes at the stop sign at the end.  All I had to do was cross that street in front of me and I was at the parking lot.  But at any second, that train could leave.

So I slammed on the pedal and bolted into the parking lot.  The train still hadn't left.  I thought I saw some people getting on but it looked like they were the last ones, and maybe the train would leave right then.  I pounded down on the brakes, forced the car into park, turned it off, took out my keys, and ran into the train.  I almost did one of those sliding screeching parallel park deals, like in the movies.  Vicki and Emily got out to get their bags.  I ran to the people getting on the train, for some reason thinking they could do something, and shouted, "Wait!  Don't let the train leave yet!"  As if it would do any good...

Vicki and Emily were shouting at me, "JEFF.  THE TRUNK.  OPEN THE TRUNK!"  So I jumped off the stairs on the train car and opened the trunk from as far away as I could to let them get their bags out, then immediately back onto the train.  It looked like more people were getting on, but again, I wasn't sure.  I saw a person who clearly worked for SEPTA so I figured I'd plead my case to him.

"Hey, I have two friends getting on in a second, don't let the train leave."

Like a jerk, he responded "Well they better get on now, because the train's leaving."  What a douche!

When I turned around, Vicki and Emily were at the steps of the train.  Holy crap, they had made it.  We hugged each other for a half second each and said goodbye, and they stepped onto the train, and it pulled away.

If we had done anything at any point on that whole trip to delay us by 10 seconds, they wouldn't have made the train.  The whole experience felt a little like a movie.

Peace out.

Battle of Chicken Coop

One day in 11th grade in Mrs. Rock's AP US class, we had to have a debate where we broke into groups decided by which battle we thought was the most important in the US Civil War, and then had to argue and try to win people to our side.  Mrs. Rock had told us in the past that someone - maybe Justin S? - had once defended the Battle of Cowpen to the bitter end as the most important battle, but most kids would always take Gettsburg or Antietam.

Finding inspiration in the Battle of Cowpen, Steve Baruti, myself, and one other student whom I forget (maybe Kyle W?) decided that we were going to make up a battle and defend it.  So we created the Battle of Chicken Coop on the spot.  I forget exactly how the story goes, but I remember that we wanted it to have lighting involved, and bears, and overall the story was something like this...

There was an ammunition store being held somewhere in the South, before the other larger battles of the war.  As it turned out, the North discovered that this huge ammunition store was actually being kept in a chicken coop on a southern farm.  So the North decided to go after the ammo, and stormed into the farm one stormy night to try to take control of it.  After having some initial success in the siege, lightning struck right on top of the chicken coop and detonated a bunch of the ammo, and in the confusion, the South regained a winning position.  However, by the grace of god, a pack of angry bears came out from the woods nearby and attacked the Confederate soldiers, allowing the North to win the Battle of Chicken Coop in a landslide, thus transferring a large amount of firepower to the Union.

I remember we wrote down the story of it on a piece of lined notebook paper.  We started the debate, and everyone introduced what happened in their battle and why they thought it was the most important.  I think most of the kids in the glass knew that we were making ours up, or they figured it out pretty quickly.  Steve and I were definitely having a good time, and so were some of the other kids, but I think I remember some kids just getting upset about it.

Mrs. Rock seemed a little suspicious about this "Battle of Chicken Coop" that Steve and I seemed to know about but she didn't, but we assured her that it was real, and we kept it going for most of the class.  Somewhere about 50 minutes into the class, she started to get more suspicious - I think maybe the bears were getting to her - and she started to look for mentions of it on the Internet.  By the end of the class, after Googling and Wikipediaing herself out, she concluded:  "I think the Battle of Chicken Coop is bullsh*t."  Steve and I probably laughed, but continued to assure her that it was real.  I think we walked out of the door still insiting it was real.

The next day she referred to us making up the Battle of Chicken Coop, and I think we finally acknowledged that we did make it up.  In either case, we took the piece of lined notebook paper that we wrote it out on and stapled it to the corkboard on the wall by her door, closest to the window.  I don't know if it's still there or not, but I'd love to see it if it was.

Peace out.

Voice of the Pope

"An agency will filter all radio ads to make sure they are in keeping with the high moral standards of the Catholic Church," reports the BBC.

...and all violating ads will be promptly relocated to a new media market, where they can sort of pretend all those violations never happened.

Apologies to my Catholic buds.

Peace out.

Beltway South

I meant to get on the Capital Beltway (I-495) North today after work, but accidentally got on South and didn't notice for at least five miles of pretty terrible traffic.  My ride home, which is supposed to take 24 minutes in no traffic and as little as 36 with traffic, took 1h46m.  

I was endlessly frustrated, and started to sweat - I could feel it on my shirt and on the seat - but NPR helped keep me sane.

Peace out.

Dispatch from the Internship

Today was pretty boring.  As expected, I am an Excel monkey.  Probably I will have to do that just about all summer.

My right eye is very bloodshot between my nose and my iris.  I suspect that it's either from looking too closely at computer(s) for eight hours, or frustration.

Tony and Chuck took me out to lunch and we went to the Cheesecake Factory, where I had a hamburger full of stuff, and took it all off, except I couldn't really get the mayo off, and it nearly ruined the whole thing.  I ate terribly today.  I sort of just eat terribly here.  Hopefully that'll change starting tomorrow.

The drive to work took 40 minutes, which I suspect I can shorten considerably/easily.  The drive back took 60 minutes, which is unacceptable.  If I can't shorten that, I'll take the bus and read.

Peace out.

Heaven Forbid

I think that my attempts at getting a time-lapse photograph of the sun setting outside my house have burned a dark spot somewhere onto my camera's optics, which now shows up in a number of pictures and videos.  It's the outline of a circle, shaded a bit darker than the rest of the image, at the top of the picture, and slightly off-center toward the right.  The bad news is that I'll probably have to buy Canon PowerShot #3 soon.  The good news is that they're only about $100, which isn't a huge deal since my internship should pay pretty well.

Oh, speaking of which, I am taking an internship in DC with a company called Cheiron.  A guy named Mr. Bucci, who is a PSU graduate, interviewed me and said I seemed pretty strong, but they typically don't like to take sophomores since they rarely come back full-time.  I got a call the next day saying I was hired, and then took a few days to figure out housing.  Beth was in MN, so it was difficult, but I will be living with her and a number of her friends this summer.

Furthermore, I finished a song a few minutes ago.  I started it and finished it between 12:40AM and now.  It's pretty intense compared to most of my songs.  This should be song #3 that can be finished tomorrow.  I can't quite seem to finish most of the songs that I have the music for, but no lyrics... which is sad because there are a lot of them.

But yeah, there's no creative outlet quite like a piano in an empty house after midnight.

Peace out.

Finger to the Moon

I remember one night I was in the backseat of my dad's car, the Lexus that he has right now, and I wondered what would happen if I tried to put the automatic window up when my finger was in the way.  It was after a hockey game at CN Skate; I don't remember who else was on my team then or if we won or lost, but probably we won because I was in a fine mood.  I forget if I was sitting on the passenger side or not, as well.  But I put the window down an inch or so, put my finger right on top of the window's edge, and pushed the button to have the window go up.  A moment later I remember a strike of pain coursing through my entire body, starting in my stomach as much as in my finger, and I immediately put the window down and pulled my pulsing finger out.  I don't think I said anything to anyone about it, but I was afraid maybe I had really hurt something.  This was in sixth grade, which I remember because I had to keep a journal of the phases of the moon for Mr. Smeins's science class, and I looked at the moon afterward to see what it looked like that night.

Peace out.

Speaking of chemicalroad

Alzheimer's Disease is the second most feared disease in America; the first is cancer.

Peace out.

Time Lapse Photography

I was looking outside my house today sometime around dinner and I thought that it might be nice to try to get a time-lapse shot of the sun going down outside my front windows.  My camera has a time lapse mode, and it would basically turn 15 minutes of time into a 30 second video, which is a little longer than I would like, but I could always speed it up.  So I took a sample sometime around 5:30, and it turned out okay, but the sun was up really high the entire time and the picture didn't change much.  I think I will keep it just in case though.

Anyway, I set my camera up again sometime around 6:45 when my family decided to go to Rita's for ice cream and stuff.  Sunset was at 8:06 according to weather.com so I figured I might be able to get some nice stuff.  I set my camera outside on our welcome mat and let it go, and then we left for Rita's.  Part of me was worried that I would come back at 7:30 and my camera would be gone, along with the 4GB memory card I just bought for it.  That would really suck.

Well anyway, I got back at 7:30 and my camera was still there.  I actually felt a pang of relief when I saw it sitting there on our front patio.  I went to the bathroom and then came outside and checked it, and realized that the lense had pulled in, and the green power light was off.  I reached town and hit the power button, thinking I had just left it sitting idle, but when it started up it said to change the battery pack.  So I went in and charged the battery pack and used my mom's battery to see if it caught anything, but I don't think it did.

My camera is still charging.  The sunset right now is a beautiful mix of pink and purple and orange and I'm sort of sad that I didn't get to record it.  I will definitely try again, though, but you can never tell in advance when the sunset will be as pretty as this one.

Peace out!

Documentary

I'm currently in the process of making a documentary of my summer.  I'm not sure that I'll actually be able to follow through all the way, but I actually did edit a two-minute-or-so documentary of my drive home last night.  It's going to be way too much footage to wait until the end to edit, so I'm doing it as I go along.  Which is cool, except sometimes I think that the segment would be cooler if I had footage from the future.  Eh.  We'll see.

All the fish in the back yard died.  I went out there yesterday with my dad and had to take some pictures of it, in case he needed to sue the guy.  I was really glad that my parents hadn't put Gauss in there yet.

Peace out.

The Atlantic City Decision

It was dark outside, very cloudly, wet roads and a sky constantly threatening rain, though not always following through.  There were supposed to be more of us - maybe even five of us if Hannah, Devon, and Kate had found a way to come - but instead there was just Chloe and myself, and we decided that if that were the case, we would have to have an adventure.  We looked on the map for things to do, but nothing seemed to come to mind, except for a certain city in southern New Jersey.  I considered just getting out somewhere and going for a walk in the countryside and rural areas of New Jersey, but it didn't really look like the night for that.  I wasn't sure how committed Chloe was to the idea, so I thought I would let her decide.  I was almost ambivalent myself, slightly leaning toward going, but it was a bit later than I hoped, we were going a little slower than I hoped, and the weather worried me a tiny bit.

A little way down from the Wawa on 322, we came to the intersection.  The right form lead us to Avalon, the left side to the city.

"Alright, this is it, decision time.  Are we going or not?"

"Yeah!  Do it.  Go."  

So I turned left, and the moment we arrived, I knew she'd made the right choice.

Peace out.

Beth O'K for the First Time

I know that I met Beth sometime when I was in third grade, but I don't have a great recollection of exactly when. I remember that I didn't particularly like her a whole lot, but I don't really remember exactly why. We were in Mrs. Clarke's class together, but pretty much only for homeroom. We didn't really do a lot in her homeroom - we did some dumb activities like coloring, and making planets out of play-dough, and maybe learned a little bit about history once, and learned was unsafe touches were and crap like that -but there wasn't much real learning.

[I remember when we made planets out of play-dough, Mrs. Clarke would separate the colors when we were done and I was absolutely AMAZED that she was able to separate the green from the blue in the Earth that someone had made. I asked her how she did it, and she just said, "Oh, I just use a knife," and showed me a little plastic butterknife from the cafeteria or staff room.]

One day, I can't remember when, we were learning about Indians and the fact that they called corn "Maize." My guess is that it was sometime in the fall because that's when elementary schools usually teach about Indians. I was working in a group with Dennis O'N - I remember being amazed at his so-blonde-it-was-white hair - and Beth O and maybe some other people and we were coloring ears of corn and a stalk that we would staple/glue/tape the ears to. I remember Dennis made some comment about me thinking I was perfect and "running around naked with Adam and Eve," or something to that effect (he may have said "in the Garden of Eden." I have no idea where he got the idea to say these things).

We kept on working and I guess we were talking. I think Beth told someone to do something, or complained about someone not doing anything, and in all my witty glory I said, "Oh yeah, because you've been such a big help. ... NOT! ... I mean, SNOT!" I remember thinking that that actually was an out-of-this-universe ice burn, and I guess she thought so too because she started crying and told Mrs. Clarke I was being mean to her. I had to apologize. That is the first thing that I remember saying to Beth in my entire life.

Beth and I would remain enemies until sometime in ninth grade, when we jumped on the trampooline near Olivia's driveway with Liz Fin and Bobby D and I said something very stupid, at which point she probably hated me more, but somehow I fixed that for a while.

That is, the second thing I remember saying to her in my entire life was not much better than the first.

Peace out.

A Note on the Piano

After coming back from Fourth Meal tonight, I stopped by the piano lounge and saw a scrap of notebook paper on the piano right near where you would normally put sheet music that had written on it, in blue pen, something to the effect of:

" [large capital letters] Please don't play piano when it interferes with others' studies.  [normal print].  Thank you for your cooperation, Simmons."

Assholes.

I don't know who it was to, but I wrote back the following on the other side of the paper:

"[large capital letters] DON'T STUDY NEAR THE LOUD NOISY THING IF YOU WANT QUIET TIME.  [normal print] duh.  iilii.  Use the silent study hall near the mail room.  (or move the piano there)  Thank you for your cooperation, Simmons piano players."

Seriously, there are a million places to study in Simmons.  The entire basement is nothing but one huge silent place to study, especially after quiet hours.  And I should note, I never play piano during quiet hours (during the week) because I know it would annoy people.  Furthermore, the lounge is called the Simmons Piano Lounge, not the Simmons Study Lounge with a Piano in It.  No, it's the piano lounge.  You go there to play piano.  To study, you go to a study lounge, or to the basement study rooms.

Anyway, I'll keep on playing.  If they would rather move my piano than move their textbooks, I'm more than happy to let them.

Peace out!

A Wikipedia Read that Almost Made Me Cry

From the article on Andy Kaufman, in the section about his death:

Kaufman died in Los Angeles on May 16, 1984^[26] of kidney failure, caused by metastasized large cell carcinoma, and was interred in the Beth David Cemetery in Elmont, New York (Long Island). He was 35 years old.

Kaufman was survived by his daughter, Maria Colonna, who was born in 1969 and put up for adoption shortly thereafter. Colonna learned in 1992 that she was the daughter of Andy Kaufman, when she traced her biological parentage.^[27]

Because he kept the true nature of his health a secret—almost until the day he died—fans have, over the years, doubted Kaufman's death, thinking that he staged it as the ultimate Andy Kaufman stunt. Rumors that Kaufman was still alive go as far back as May 17, 1984 (the day after he died), when a caller phoned the Howard Stern radio show on WNBC in New York to announce that Kaufman's death was a hoax. Friends and family said that Andy almost never smoked, did not drink regularly, and was also a vegetarian. At the time, lung cancer was considered rare for non-smokers to contract, and it is also rare in people under the age of 40. Kaufman himself even said that if he were to fake his death, he would return 20 years later. On May 16, 2004, his surviving friends threw a 'Welcome Home Andy' party for him, which he did not attend.

Peace out

Plato at the Hockey Rink

If you've read The Republic by Plato, you'd get this.  Otherwise, all you need to know follows.  Plato and his philosopher buddies, while discussing the ideal nation, talk about its legal and justice system, but then realize they need to define what justice is.  After talking for a while, Plato concludes that "Justice is minding one's own business."  That's almost a direct quote from the English translation of The Republic.

Anyhow, I went to the hockey rink on Thursday before my class at 2:30 because it was a nice day and I want to get better at hockey and actually make my heart beat sometimes.  When I showed up, there was a family there.  The dad was wearing a white jersey and I think knee pads, and had short black hair.  There was an older son, maybe ten or eleven, with slightly longer black hair and a black shirt.  Then there were two kids, one was wearing a blue collared and buttoned dress shirt with blonde hair, and the other one I forget.

At one point I tried to shoot it on the net, but did something absolutely idiotic and shot it safely over the ten-foot-or-more chickenwire fences that surround the back of the rink.  I screamed an obscenity - sheepishly remembering a little later that there were five-year-olds in the rink with me - and then started looking for a way to get the puck.  It went out what I'll call the lower right corner of the rink, which is as far away from the pavement as you can get, so you'd have to walk through a LOT of mud and dirt to get the puck if you took the normal route.  I tried to open a door on that side of the rink (with the benches on it) to get closer to the puck, but it was nearly impossible from the inside of the rink.

So, instead I did the next best thing, which was to jump up on one of the benches on that side, hop onto the boards, and then use that to jump over the slightly-lower chickenwire fence that surrounds the benches.  This would keep me close to the puck and reduce how dirty my wheels got, but it was uncomfortable and I'm sure it looked weird.  As I was doing it, I suppose the little kids in the rink were watching.  One of them must have been focusing particularly acutely because I heard the older brother say, "Justice, mind your own business!"

I thought it was pretty funny, the exact combination of the kid's name and what his brother decided to say.  It was like the ghost of Plato was showing his philosopher buddies how clever he could be by bugging a kid at a hockey rink.

Peace out!

The Website is Down

On Friday night I stayed at the Rutherford's house between practices for drumline.  We were practicing in Quakertown both Friday night and Saturday morning and it's a 58 minute drive from there to my house, so I figured I'd just stay there since we ended Friday at midnight and started Saturday at 9am.  I should mention that Rutherford is the director of our drumline and staying at his house is sort of a tradition in our drumline.  His mom always cooks breakfast for everyone, and by everyone, I mean typically 15 to 25 people staying over.  People literally sleep on top of each other.

Anyhow, at some point once we got settled in, I got bored of the movie we were watching (mostly because I couldn't hear it) and went to see what else was going on.  Over in the corner of one room that had two computers in it, one per corner, some guys were watching some sort of video and were laughing really really hard.  I think Kyle (quad tech) and Bryce (his brother, a snare drummer) were watching it with Brendan, the bass tech.  I came over to check it out, and I joined right in with the laughter.  I thought it was really, really funny.  All I knew was that it was supposed to be some IT guy at a company dealing with stupid people that call him with problems, and he came to a very funny desktop arrangement and had fun with the person from there.  If you want to see it, go to www.thewebsiteisdown.com and check out the video on the left.

Anyhow, I remember almost like peeing my pants laughing at the video with them, and they said to check out the whole thing (I came to it with a couple minutes left, out of ten) because it was way funnier that way.  So I did.  I checked it out when I got back home, I think once by myself, and once by my friends.  I don't know why, but it didn't seem nearly as funny when I watched it again.  Even when I watched it with a group of people - which supposedly makes things funnier - we weren't laughing nearly as hard as we were at the Rutherford's house.  I have no idea why this is, but it sort of made me sad, because I wished I could have enjoyed it as much as I had the first time.

Peace out.

Cutting the Floor

Last night we had to work on the drumline floor again.  We've done it for each of the past three weeks, and I know that I'm getting very impatient with it, and I suspect some other people probably are as well.  Some people just don't even come anymore.  We have to go to the Blue Band Building, which is northeast of campus and pretty far from me, and load the floor into Kyle's (our tenor tech) green conversation van and then drive it to the Wagner Building, which is the building used mostly for the R.O.T.C. programs.  There's a huge "bay" in the bottom that we call the armory or the arms bay.  It's really just a huge open space where we can unfold our floor.  There are two gas grills on one side, a lot of picnic tables, and there are stone slabs in one corner that have answers to unlisted questions.  Some examples of things written on them are "Art can't save your woman" and "No, but it always has happened and always will happen."  Apparently they were laid out in front of the Forum earlier in the year with questions posted nearby, and people answered in chalk.  I don't know what the point it.  There are also at least three pull-up bars, and a very very high ladder in one corner.  Everything is very gray, very industrial, very impersonal, and boring.  There are a lot of windows on oneside and it is almost always very cold in the bay.  Sometimes R.O.T.C. people practice their drills when we're painting.  They're usually nice.

I came late last night - supposed to be there at 8:30 and got there at about 10 - and we were only just as I was walking in ready to make measurements to cut the floor.  I knoew this would happen; the staff didn't give us great plans and they apparently spent a long time figuring out exactly what they wanted.  Kyle was sitting in the corner near a table with his computer.  Mikey brought out some straight-edges and switch blades so we could get cutting.  Cass cut the first line at the bottom of the flap and that went fine for the most part.

I should say, we're cutting out flaps of an old floor so that we can tape them to our new floor and pull them back in the end of the show to reveal a new design.  Or something like that.

Anyway, we had to go up the floor a little bit to cut the other end of the flap.  Isaac was down with the straight-edge and blade doing the cutting, and Cass was standing nearby giving a little instruction.  He said things like, "I gotta see that bicep man!  Flex it!"  He was telling him to cut really strongly to make sure he cut through the tarp all the way; it's sort of annoying to try and not get it through.  After Isaac had cut through about a eighteen inches, Steve W noticed that our real floor was underneath where Isaac was cutting, and he was probably cutting right through it.  We pulled apart where Isaac was cutting, and realized that yes, he had cut the floor.  Not just through one layer, but two or three.  We were all pretty upset, but realized we could just put black tape on it or on the back and it'd be okay.  We did just that, and I believe it will turn out okay.  Somehow, throughout the whole process though, the blame shifted to Cass because he told Isaac to put pressure on it, rather than on Isaac, who actually did the cutting, or everyone else, who didn't notice that the floor was underneath.  We sort of owe our show to Steve.  We seriously almost slit our floor in like four places.

Peace out.

Cognitive Biases

Recently I stumbled across Wikipedia's List of Cognitive Biases.  Some of them are really intensely interesting, and I definitely suggest you check some of them out.  Some of the ones that blew my mind in particular were these:

Illusion of asymmetric insight - People perceive their knowledge of their peers to surpass their peers' knowledge of them

Illusion of transparency - People overestimate others' ability to know them, and they also overestimate their ability to know others

Outcome bias - the tendency to judge a decision by its eventual outcome instead of based on the quality of the decision at the time it was made

I feel like if we all had an active awareness of our biases, we would all probably be much better people overall.  I'm going to make a conscious effort to keep these in mind from now on.  Hoping it'll help me understand people a little bit more and be more sympathetic.

Peace out.

Showers and Towels

When I was younger, I used to not take showers very often.  But I'm not talking like baby-young, I mean like, up until fifth grade.  I'm pretty sure it wasn't until the end of fourth or sometime in fifth grade that I actually started to shower more often than like once every Sunday.  Looking back, I guess that's sort of gross.  But at the same time, I don't remember my hair being greasy, and I didn't often get dirty, no one ever told me I smelled, and kids don't even start to really sweat until they hit puberty.  So it's not that bad, is it?  I used to think it was ridiculous to shower every day, and honestly I still do, and often I take a shower every other day if I'm not disgusting, although I doubt I could get by other people showering once a week now.

I also used to not understand that you can reuse towels.  Every time I used a towel, I would put it in the hamper to be washed.  At one point, my brother or my mom talked to me about it and told me that I should use it a few times before washing it.  Instead of actually doing that, I sort of just decided to not put the towels in the hamper ever.  So for a long time I washed towels every time, and then for a long time I never washed them at all.  I think I'm striking a sort of happy medium now, but I'm not really sure.

Peace out.

A Sad Dream

I had a dream last night that Barack Obama resigned the presidency.  I forget exactly why, but it had something to do with him already having made a mistake that was absolutely irreparable and would stop him from doing anything productive anymore.  I was really really upset, until I woke up, and realized it was a dream.

Whew.

Peace out.

Ishmael Beah

I was at a speech last night by Ishmael Beah.  He was forced to be a child soldier during the civil war/revolution in Sierra Leone (West Africa).  He mentioned that oral tradition was very there and that his foster mom was a professional storyteller, so during Q&A, after talking about how this war and violence affected his life for 45 minutes, I asked him to share one of the stories.

Imagine a husband and wife telling this to their son.

So, son, you're out hunting one day, and you've brought your gun.  You're in the forest and looking through the trees, and you find a monkey who's eating a banana, or scratching his sides, whatever monkeys do.  So you think he looks like a good catch and you raise your gun to shoot him but then, he puts his hand up as if to say stop and he says, "Whoa whoa, hold your horses."  And, since a monkey spoke to you, you listen.

He says, "If you shoot me, your father will die.  If you don't shoot me, your mother will die."

[at this point, you turn to your son and ask] "Son, what would you do?"

Ishmael said that his response was always, "I would go to the bathroom!" (and maybe he would run to the bathroom).

Then he just started talking about the story, and he said, "Then when I was young, I didn't really understand the story, I was too young to understand what it was about.  But after I got older and I saw all these things and I was thinking about everything, I realized that the point is that there is no correct answer.  Once you've lifted the gun - once you've chosen violence - it doesn't matter what you do, someone is going to pay for it.  It's not that it's going to be your mom or that it's going to be your dad, it's that the choice is already made."

(I had gone back to my seat at that point, but he was still looking right at me, and I said thanks from my seat and he said "You're welcome" while looking right at me still.  It was pretty cool.)

Peace out.

Losing My Hat

I took my actuary exam this Thursday that just passed at 9 in the morning.  It's a big deal, apparently, and the testing centers are made to be extremely secure.  You're not supposed to have anything in your pocket at all and you have to put everything you came with in a locker, and they scan a photo ID of you and take your fingerprint six times before they let you start taking your test.

Well anyway, one of their directions was that they don't have perfect control over the climate in their centers, so you should bring a coat in case it gets cold.  I brought a coat - and my hat - for exactly that reason, but sometime during the testing a woman came through and said, "Here, let me take that for you."

I wanted to say, "No, I want it in case it gets cold," but I wasn't cold, so I just figured I'd let her go.  They also yelled at me for using mechanical pencils (which she called a "pen") and said that I wasn't supposed to have anything.  She let me use them though 'cuz they were just pencils, and probably because I gave her a look of "That's ridiculous and your pencils suck" when she mentioned it.  Their pencils really did suck.

Anyway, on the way out of the testing center, I meant to get my coat and forgot.  I also realized that I didn't know where my hat was, so I called my mom to ask if it was on the island at home, and she said no.  So I went back inside and went to the receptionist.

"Hey, I was just at desk 21 taking a test.  Could you possibly go back and check to see if I left a blue knit hat there by any chance?"  So she went back to check, and while she did, I took my coat from the coat rack, which I had also forgot.  I reached my hand into my coat pockets as I often do, and in the left pocket was my hat.  Damnit!  Oh well.  I felt pretty foolish, but she already went to look, so I just let it go.  When she came back I kept my hands in my pockets and said, "Alright, well thanks for looking."  I think I sort of noticed her looking at my hands in my pockets as I turned, but I'm not really sure, and you definitely couldn't have seen my hat anyway.

Peace out.

Things Like Other Things

If you take a big Zildjian cymbal - like 18" or more - and hit it softly and then let it vibrate until you can't hear it when you're standing three feet away, and then you put your ear half an inch away from it, you can hear a deep roaring sound, like a bass guitar.

If you bite your lip and lick it at the same time quickly in a certain manner for a little bit, like for thirty seconds, it tastes like snow.

There's a window in the basement of my dorm that has brown-paint framing that smells like pavement after a hot rain if you have your nose really close to it.

Peace out.

A Tiny Documentary about Me

I think I mentioned this to a bunch of people at home. My friend Davis made this short documentary/profile of me and my music a couple weeks ago at school and posted it on his website, an alternative news source for Penn State students. It's seriously well done (and only two minutes long!).

Feel free to check it out at this link right here. Or maybe this one.

Or this one.

Peace out.

The Idea of You

I keep getting ideas for songs that I really like a lot, but I can't seem to finish them. I think I have like four or five on deck right now. It'd be really great to finish them, but I don't know if I will. I think the best way to describe it is that it's sort of like having a crush on them. I like the idea of them, but deep down, I don't actually like them. Like people say about relationships.

Though my relationships with my songs really aren't typically deep, I promise.

Peace out.

Most Bizarre I Have Ever Seen

On Friday night, we were staying at Francis Bunnell High School because Penn State Indoor was practicing there. Trumbull High School, where we were competing, was about twenty minutes away.

Anyhow, the night that we showed up, some other high school was rehearsing in the same school as us - we had the small gym and they had the regular basketball gym. We all had to shower in the boys' locker room, which was right near their gym. I went to get ready for bed at something like 11:30. I looked for sinks but I couldn't find any good ones, just a gazebo-type thing that had three tiny jets of water coming out of three places by motion-sensor activation, which sucked for brushing your teeth and washing your mouth. There were TONS of lockers to my right, way more than GV. To the back on the left were the showers.

There were maybe six showers. Together they occupied a hexagon, with each of the six triangles of the hexagon having a curtain to surround it, something along those lines. I never shower at drumline, but one of the PSU guys was showering (I believe it was Dennis, a tenor player). There were also a number of guys from the other high school showering. At one point one of them said something along the lines of "Oh, wait, I have to go get my shampoo!" and ran out of the shower, probably naked, though I wasn't really looking. I was getting changed at this point.

A half minute later or so, he came running back past me. I wasn't really looking, but out of the corner of my eye, for a split second, I saw that he was wearing an enormous red strap-on penis. I had no idea what the hell was going on. I think there was another kid running with him but I wasn't sure. He ran into the showers. I should say, this thing was probably like 18" long, and just fire-engine red everywhere. I wondered if he harassed the guy from PSU - I don't think he did. But other kids were screaming, asking what the hell was going on.

It really was one of the most bizarre things I have ever seen.

Peace out.

High on the Fever

Download it from http://jeff11.fileave.com/HighOnTheFever.html. kthx!

Peace out.

Lack of Memory Property

"For x, y > 0,

P [ X > x + y | X > x] = P [ X > y]

We can interpret this as follows.  Suppose that X represents the time, measured from now, in weeks until the next insurance claim is filed by a company, and suppose also that X has an exponential distribution with mean 1/t.  Suppose that 5 weeks have passed without an insurance claim, and we want to know the distribution of the time until the next insurance claim as measured from our new time origin, which is 5 weeks after the previous time origin.  According to the lack of memory property, the fact that there have been no claims in the past 5 weeks is irrelevant, and measuring time starting from our new time origin, the time until the next claim is exponential with the same mean 1/t.  In fact, no matter how many claims have occured in the past 5 weeks, as measured from now, the time until the next claim has an exponential distribution with mean 1/t; the distribution has "forgotten" what has happened prior to now and the "clock" measuring time until the next claim is restarted now."

Peace out.

Eating It

I ride my bike to and from classes to save time; I'm sure like everyone who reads this knows that.

Last Friday, after my Stat 415 class, I hopped on my bike in the bike "parking lot" that's right outside of Willard, on its east wall.  Typically I just stand beside my bike and walk it north a little bit until I'm on the main road until there are less people, but for some reason I decided to just hop on right away that day and hope for the best.

So I hop on, and start going toward the busy sidewalk.  There were a lot of people.  I remember there was a girl coming from my left, I think she was Asian, and some guys coming from the right.  I didn't want to thread right between them, so I tried to stop.  I put on the brakes, and I turned my wheel a sharp left, as if I might go behind the girl coming from my left somehow. 

I guess I turned my wheel too far, and I pedalled a tiny bit and then IMMEDIATELY just hit the deck.  And I totally ate concrete in front of everyone.  I'm sure there were hundreds of people in the area, but I don't know how many were watching.  I didn't know what to do, I felt really embarassed, so to try to dispel some of the awkwardness I used my loud Will Ferrel voice and said, "WOW THAT WAS RELLY EMBARASSING."  I got back up and just started walking, and realized the knee of my pants were all wet and sort of dirty.

The kid named Mark in the room next to me was walking by without my noticing, but then he said, "Good going," or something to that effect.  I told him I was going to walk with him because I'd feel less like a loser, and as we were walking he said, "So, uh... you might want to learn how to ride a bike a little better."  I agreed.  We got to the road at the north and I rode to my next class, where no one knew what happened.

Peace out.

KiSoek

There's a guy in my STAT 501 course named KiSoek.  He's really nice.  He sat next to me in lab one day and we just started talking, I'm not really sure about what, but it was probably something about the course.  We talked to each other every Friday when we'd sit near each other in lab, and then he started to sit in the front row of class (with me) so we'd talk then too.  He's super nice, you have to understand.  He's also very Asian, has a pretty thick accent, and somewhat frequently I have trouble understanding what he's saying.  Today I had trouble when he said "fifth" as in "fifth edition" of a textbook.

One day I asked him how he got to class and he said he'd ride his bike, unless it was too cold, in which case his wife would drive him.  Wife?!  I thought he was like 24 like any other grad student.  He then said he also had kids.  KIDS?!  Gosh, how far along are you man?  Then he laughed and said, "My age is uh, 38!"  I had absolutely no clue.  He definitely doesn't look it.  I dunno if he works out or just eats well but it doesn't show.

Anyway.  His kids are like seven and nine years old.

A day or two ago his backpack got stolen.  He was working in the library and got up for a minute, and when he came back it was gone.  He talked to the library staff, then the police, but they basically said it happens all the time and there's not much they could do.  They found his backpack in the bathroom, emptied out.  They took his stat book, which I've lent to him for the night, and his computer.   We were talking about it for a minute at the HUB today, and I thought it was very sad.  He said he didn't care so much about most things - he could buy a new computer - but he mentioned that he had the "entire history" (in his words) of his kids on there.  From day one up until age nine.  And now it's all gone, and he'll probably never see any of it again.

He didn't get very emotional when he said it, but I could tell he was pretty upset.  He breathed in and looked up and sort of sighed to himself.

Peace out.

Titty Bar Lock-out

The Saturday that just passed, the drumline had a performance in Mifflinburg.  We also taught a clinic there.  We practiced on Saturday until something a little bit after 11pm, and then we were free to do what we wanted.  All the instructors went out to drink like they usually do, so Sean was in charge of turning the lights on and off.

I was totally not ready to go to bed.  I talked to Kyle, who was laying on his sweet memory foam bed for the night, and then a few other people, and ended up driving Gina, Isaac (our new bass drummer) and Kyle to Sheetz.  Kyle really really wanted a milkshake, but my car was almost so cold it made him not want one.   I kept the car warm so he would still want it.  I got a pack of purple and pink nerds, but I left them in the gym that night and forgot to get them the next day.

Anyway, after we got out of Sheetz, we had no idea what to do because it was still too early to go to sleep.  One of the other guys suggested, "Let's look for a titty bar!" and so I thought, hell, why not?  What's the worst that could possibly happen?  So I drove a couple miles down the main road in town (Rt 45) looking for anything that might be a strip club.  We eagerly read every sign we came across, particularly neon ones.  We were let down in every circumstance.  We turned around in a creepy used car lot, parked in the Mifflinburg lot, and went to the door.

We had gone to Sheetz with another car of people, and we thought they would leave the door propped open for us.  However, we were wrong.  It was pretty cold that night, and also pitch black in the parking lot because they turn all the lights out there at that school after a certain time at night to save energy.  So I was dressed alright, in a light jacket.  Gina had a bunch of layers on.  Kyle and Isaac were both wearing gym shorts if I remember correctly, but had on jackets and sweatshirts.  When we found the door was locked we just thought, "God, you must be kidding me."

So the first thing we did of course was knock loudly.  However, the gym we were staying it was three sets of doors away, so there was no way they would ever hear us.  I considered honking my car forever until they came, but never brought it up.  Isaac tried to force up a window, but that didn't work.  Kyle and Isaac had both left their phones inside, so we couldn't get to any of the numbers they had gotten because no one memorizes numbers anymore.  So we were stuck with my phone and Gina's phone.  I called the few people I knew that were inside - Cass and Sean - but neither of them answered.  Then we decided to call Laura to get some other people's numbers, so Gina called her.  She kept hanging up to give us numbers, which made Kyle really frustrated.  She gave us the number for Kate and Steve W, but neither of them answered.

Well actually, she gave us the number for SOME Steve, but not the one in drumline.  Kyle called "Steve" from Gina's phone and the guy was just like, "Dude, what?  What are you talking about?  No, this is the wrong person, sorry."  Which was great.

So it had probably been like ten minutes at this point and we were still locked out and not sure what to do.  I told Gina to go back to the car because her teeth were chattering, but she didn't want to.

Eventually, I gave in and called Tollie.  I told her we were stuck outside and someone needed to let us in, and I figured she'd have a number of a bunch of people inside to try.

A few minutes later, Alix came to let us in.  The wallet and paper we'd been using to prop the door open was nowhere to be seen.  What the hell happened?  Oh well.  Alix asked us why we were out so late and I told her, because I knew it would make her angry.

Peace out.

Ah

I don't usually make posts like this, but I just want to record that this is the most tired I remember being in just about as long as I can remember.

Probably since the time I stayed up all night talking to Cat, or the time I tried to stay up all night at the end of PGSS, or the time I stayed up all night at Brown.  

It is too early.

Peace out.

(Note that this was originally posted by accident on thethingswesaid, Wednesday after midnight, and I slept well into Thursday morning)

Cai

I went to Late Night (a cafeteria that's open late) recently with a couple friends to just hang out and hopefully eat some Mozz sticks as we say.  At one point I went up to get some cereal and decided on Frosted Flakes, and just as I put the bowl under the dispenser, a girl with black hair, pale skin, but maybe an Italian face who worked came up beside me to fix something nearby and said, "Yeah man, go for those Frosted Flakes, they're great."  Something about the way she said it was interesting, so I said, "Yeah, definitely - " and then I realized that "They're Great" was referring to the tagline for the cereal, - "oh, hahaha, clever.  Yeah, they are great."  I wanted to make some witty reference to another cereal slogan, but none came to mind.  Kid tested, mother approved?  Eh.

Later I went to get some milk, but it was empty, so one of the workers needed to change it.  They called someone, but no one came, and the same girl ended up doing it.  My friend Jaffe (his last name) was with me.  I think that her name tag said Cai but I'm not really sure.  She talked to Matt and I as she opened up the silver dispenser, took out the huge empty crates, and then loaded another one.  I realized that she had a bit of trouble loading the full one, and I made fun of Jaffe and myself for letting the woman do all the hard work.  She said that she was a disgruntled worker, but at least she got paid.  She also made a reference to Napoleon Dynamite - "You could drink whole milk if you wanted to" - as she walked away at the beginning of the episode.  She seemed like a cool cat.

I think she was in Simmons today.  I was playing piano, and I think I saw her sit down on a couch beyond the piano, where I couldn't see very well.  There was a friend there, too.  They both seemed like they wanted to sleep - and, I'm pretty sure they fell asleep.  I played quiet and calming songs so I wouldn't bug them.  In a way it was nice - I think they may have actually liked it, since they came in while I was playing - but also, I like to play what I want to play, not waht sleepy passerbys want me to play.  I didn't get to check if it was her or not afterward.

Peace out.

Strangers at Simmons

Sometime over the weekend, after drumline, I was hanging around Simmons.  I was walking up the stairs right near the lobby (the main stairwell, with black "granite" flooring) when I saw someone knock at the window that's to your left if you're walking up from the lobby's floor.  I just looked for a second and stepped on - you're not supposed to let strangers in - but they knocked again frantically and I said, "I DON'T KNOW YOU" and then they said something which I couldn't really understand, but I sort of realized it was an old Asian man, and I went to let him in.

When he came in, he was sort of loud, and the person at the help desk definitely noticed the disturbance.  I was afraid he would be mad at me for letting him in, but he was a delivery man (at least, we hoped.  He had food and stuff).  He called someone on his cell phone and said that he was in the lobby after asking me where he was, but apparently the person couldn't understand him.  He seemed a little bit angry and fairly frustrated.  He hung up his phone, and then asked me to call them back and explain the situation (white person = English!).  I called the person and they said they were at the Simmons loading dock, and I said that he was in the lobby.  The person said they would come up to get it, but he insisted on going down - I knew this was a bad idea because we might somehow miss each other on the way by.

I started walking him down the stairs and insisting, "The loading dock is down this way.  This is the way she would come if she were coming from there."  At each door and each turn, I think he grew a little bit more suspicious, like I was leading him on a wild goose chase or some sort of stunt.  Eventually we got to the basement, and I looked around, knowing the girl would probably be headed up.  He followed out the door behind me, and I noticed a girl at the elevator just as we got to the floor.  He asked if it was for her, and she said yes, it was.  They had a quick exchange that was somewhat angry - you said you'd be here!  No, I said I'd be here! - but the deal was done, I suppose.  I can't remember where he went or where I went, but he thanked me before he left.

---

There was a black guy sitting and waiting at the door to Simmons's loading dock a few days ago when I went out for some reason - dinner?  He said thank you and went inside, but I felt like there was something weird about him.  He was approximately my age, but I had never seen him before ever, and he was just sitting, waiting, as if he didn't know anyone and he didn't have a card.  He had a big blue jacket on, and a blue knit hat.

I've heard rumors of someone getting into the dorm recently and apparently giving people a rough time.  It's suspected that whoever it is isn't a student.  My friend Vicki apparently glanced at him once, and he came over and cursed her out and kicked her computer.  I was wondering if it was this guy.

I did feel bad about letting him in, but then again, what can I do?  If he's a nice guy, there's no harm in letting him in.  If he's a murderer, then he'd probably murder me for kicking him out onto the cold streets at night.  And if I don't let him in, someone else will (while I'm laying outside, murdered).

Anyhow.  I came back later - maybe I went to the computer lab? - and I saw someone approaching the door from the other direction (we were both outside, he from the west and I from the east) and I thought, shit, is it that guy again?  It was that guy.  I don't know if he was waiting for someone to approach the building or not but there was like no way I could avoid letting him in.  I felt bad about it again.

However, no one's been murdered.  I saw him in the study lounge tonight, with a laptop, on Facebook.

Peace out.

Icey Hockey

Chas and I have been itching to play hockey basically all semester. I had checked out the rink once or twice to see if the snow and ice had melted off of it yet, but was disappointed to find about two inches of slush each time. Yesterday Chas called me at about 3:30 when I was in the computer lab and said he checked the rink and it looked mostly clear, and asked if I wanted to go play. I said sure, and I got there a little bit after four.

We shot around for a little bit. He was working on his backhand and slapshot. On one of the first shots he took, I kept thinking, "the pucks are going to break. We really should try not to hit the post" and I was literally just about to say "Do everything you can to NOT hit the post" when he shot it, hit the post, and the puck flew over the fence and about a hundred feet away onto some ice in the middle of the field near the rink. We must have shot about six pucks out.

At one point we were playing one-on-one with an empty net. We would just start in the middle of the court, one on offense and one on defense, try to get a shot off. I played offense first and I don't think I did very well, so he took the puck out to go. He was coming down the board on his right side, and then turned around to try to guard the puck from me. Without either of us realizing, he was skating backward right into a huge left-over puddle of freezing water and some ice. I have no idea why it seemed so fast, but it felt sort of like I was in the middle of a super intense chase scene in a movie and then everything went wrong, the camera angle changed, and you realized, "Um, crap" and all the music stopped.

Anyhow, he was okay, he didn't hurt himself, but he didn't totally eat it. He landed on his elbow and scratched it just a tiny bit, but the worst injury was that he was very very wet, and the water was very very cold. It actually splashed as he hit it. I felt bad - there really was like a 50% chance that either of us would hit it, and it sucked that it turned out to be him. I also sort of felt bad that I didn't stop him, but I also had no idea it was coming.

Peace out.

Broken Computer

My computer came down with some malware recently (of the SWP2009 variety) so it's in the shop. I haven't been online, I haven't been up with the news, I haven't been reading SomethingAwful or HuffPo, I haven't been able to check my e-mail or my homework (since it's basically all online now), I haven't talked to people on AIM, and I haven't had time to write. I'm making time to update very quickly. For posterity.

On Monday I had dinner with Todd. He called me the night before extremely upset; his girlfriend sort of asked to go on a break with him and he had had some sort of strange problems over the weekend (found it impossible to speak, or control his legs). I had dinner with him at West and he told me he might transfer to Philadelphia. I hung out in his room for a little bit (a double, turned into a single when his roomie got kicked out for drinking) and we talked about math mostly, and some music. I decided I should listen to some Radiohead. I gave him all the music I had written (for the most part, lacking a few of the very latest songs).

As he walked me out of the building, we said goodbye, and I looked back at him. I could sort of tell that he was waiting for me to say something else, hanging on my words just a tiny but, but I couldn't think of anything. I think the correct answer was "take care of yourself" or "see you soon," but all I could come out with was "bye" or "later."

He Facebooked me later saying that he liked my music, in particular the song Philadelphia. Not because of what I wrote in the song, but because of how much he likes Philadelphia.

---

On Thursday morning, I wrote a song. This was in part because I had nothing better to do with my lack of having a computer. It's a very very good and catchy song. At least like four people have said it was good so far, including two random dudes in the lounge (a while after I had played it, they asked what "that first song" was), a girl named Louisa, and Steve from drumline. I'm not sure what it'll be called yet but it's going to be INTENSE.

---

On Friday night after drumline ALL I wanted to do was play my song on piano again. But I checked starting at about 12:30 and there was some girl playing the piano. It was a really slow song, plodding, with a chord/double in the left hand and a melody in the right hand, in a mid/high register. I checked back up later, still playing, same girl, sounded like the same song. At one o'clock when I was ready for bed, I checked again, still same girl, same damn song. It wasn't even hard or interesting. It was sort of sad though.

At one point I walked by her to see what she looked like. She had an orange shirt, which made me wonder if she worked in the dining commons. She had blonde hair and she was looking downward with her said sort of tilted, and looked angry. I decided not to talk to her or ask her for the piano.

---

I really hope my computer gets fixed, without having to be reformatted.

---

I'm really mad that drumline might make me miss the last four hours of thon. I'm going to fight to see it.

Peace out.

High G

When I started singing, I had to strain my voice to hit the F below middle C, and I could pretty easily sing a full two octaves below middle C. For a long time I thought my range would top out at about middle C, but I got there a little bit ago, and it's still been going up. Sometimes it makes me feel like less of a man; sometimes I wish I had extended my range downward rather than upward; sometimes I worry that my talking voice is higher now that I've been upping my range rather than lowering it.

Last night at drumline, we couldn't get into the mirrored room in which we normally practice, so we just got our instruments, found a corner anywhere in the Blue Band Building, and practice on our own, individually. I played some warm-ups and played through the show a few times, but got bored of it after a while. You can only play the same thing so many times in a row without someone yelling at you to play it more other than yourself.

After a while I played some songs I felt like playing. "Ain't No Reason" by Brett Dennen is a favorite recently, and I also discovered how to play "Black Balloon" by Goo Goo Dolls on piano yesterday (Friday). So I played that. I had been struggling with the range - I felt like I couldn't do it the way the lead singer did in the song, and that my range wouldn't go high enough. But I figured I'd give it a try and just see how it went.

I was in the corner, facing a glass wall, right near the mirrored room, on its west side, facing South I think. I think Sean was over my right shoulder, and maybe Rich was too, and they were both practicing. At some point in the song, the lyrics go something along the lines of "and scattered like lights from the sun; where was your mind, ye-e-ah" before "coming down, the world's turned over; ..." and the "was" is the syllable on the G, which I thought I couldn't reach.

Somehow, I'm pretty sure that while I was belting it on with the vibraphone, I actually hit that G. I had to scream pretty hard, but I think I got the pitch. It didn't squeak or seem to cause dissonance. It was the highest I'd ever gone. I tried to do it with some other songs, or with longer notes, just a little bit later, but it didn't seem to work. I think I tried that when Alex and Sean were near me, and I think they might have heard me. Or maybe it was actually Matt, the director. It might have been embarassing, but I don't think they know that I'm really a singer at all, and I guess technically I'm not really.

Anyhow, I just thought that was exciting.

Peace out.

tQx

In actuarial science, the symbol tqx is the notation for the probability of somebody dying anytime from the year denoted x and the t years following x. Typically it's given as a function, and typically it turns out that the area underneath the function between 0 and about 110 is 1, which implies that there is a 100% chance that you've died at age 110. So the function might be something like (t)Q(x) = (1/10) * e (-1/10)*x, where x is your age. You have to work with it a lot, and you use it to construct mortality tables, probabilities of dying, and from there you'd calculate how much premiums the group should pay based on their expected lifespan, etc., etc.

Typically the whole concept seems pretty distance, but sometimes our teacher Ron brings it back home. In class, he often gives examples of tQx for something like, "If you have an equal chance of dying every year before 100, and you're all 20 now, when will most of you be dead?" Sixty, of course. And some kids look around the room, like "Holy crap, we're actually dealing with dying people here." Recently he was doing an example, which requires some math to understand, but in case you're unfamiliar I'll explain a little bit. We were working with an operation, and the point is that if you input a number of about 115, the operation will tell you that everyone has died. The question in class was what number to put in to assure everyone had died, and someone responded "infinity." Technically, it's correct, but you don't need to go that high.

Our teacher responded, "Hmm, well, that's certainly safe." He has a way of making everything seem mundane even when it's not, in a good way - he smiles a lot and often stands akimbo and nods just a tad. "Yeah, well... I suppose no one's getting out of here alive," he finished.

Just in case you're interested, your chance of dying can be predicted almost exactly using a really simple equation, with a simple principle. The principle is that as you get older, you get worse and worse at warding off the effects of aging and mortality. The guess was that you get worse exponentially as time goes on. It requires math again, but to explain, the "force of mortality" for you at any moment is e^[.0004 + .00002x^1.103] or so. It seem like low numbers, I know, but if you add it up, it guarantees you're dead by about 111.

It's strange how with all the complexities of life and nature biology, we can figure it all out with five numbers.

Peace out.

T9 Switch

My T9 is one of the ones that learns/remembers the new words that you put in. For a long time when I hit 1-1 and then hit Next twice, it would bring up =), but recently it's switched so that the same button combination brings up =(, and I have to hit next again for it to bring up =). I'm not sure why that is. I don't know if it's because I actually use =( more often than =) recently, or if it just means that one time when it reset its memory, I used =( before =) thus putting it first in the new memory cache. In either case, it's pretty annoying, and if I send you a text with an inappropriate emoticon, this is probably why.

Peace out.

Frustration with Example

Homework in college can get pretty frustrating. Unlike high school, we typically only have homework once per week, but it also typically counts for a lot more of your grade, like 10% or 20%. Also, it's graded a lot more harshly, and it's typically more difficult. Instead of just spending maybe 30 minutes reviewing what you did in class, it's often the main instrument of learning the material (yes, you teach yourself, and it's just through the homework, fun!). Kids usually spend a lot of time on each assignment, and usually there are only about four or five questions, but that can still take many hours. If there are more questions, the grader (who is typically not the teacher) selects a few and grades those and nothing else. For instance, in Math 220H (linear algebra, honors) we would have about 30 problems/week, but only six would be graded. So if you got 29/30 correct and one of those was graded, you got an 83%. Hooray!

Anyhow, I was doing my Math 465 (Number Theory) homework today because it's due tomorrow. One of the problems caused me a great deal of frustration, largely because I spent a lot of time on it, and I learned nothing from it. I wouldn't have minded if I had learned. Let me explain the problem. It'll be fun, I promise, and you'll get to see what super cool math majors do!

So we're working with Greatest Common Divisors (GCDs), which is probably a familiar example. Pick two numbers A and B, and the GCD is the biggest number that divides both of them. If A = 12 and B = 8, the GCD is 4, because no bigger number divides both 8 and 12.

There's a fun fact about this though. If you were to just look at the equation 12*X + 8*Y = E, and pick any X and Y that you wanted as long as they were both whole numbers, you could never make E any smaller than 4. So, the smallest number that you can make E using that set-up is the GCD of those two numbers.

The problem was this: If A*D - B*C = 1, show that the GCD of (A+B) and (C+D) is 1.

So I started on that problem, and thought about it for days, just to let it sit and simmer and see what came up. Basically, nothing did. So tonight when I worked on it, I just tried everything I could. I noticed that it's a linear combination if you write it correctly: A*D + (-C)*B = 1, and thus the GCD of A and B is 1. Hooray? I tried to go further from there but it didn't help me.

Then I ran out of options and looked in one of my old math books to see if there was any help there. There was nothing pertaining to this particular problem, but it DID spark an idea somehow. I figured I'd look at a linear combination of the second part and see if that helped: (A+B)*K + (D-C)*N = M. What I thought I could do is as follows. Assume that M is greater than 1. Thus, the GCD of A+B and D-C is greater than one, and M divides both of them since it's a divisor of both. Since it devides A+B, it divides A and B, and since M>1, the GCD of A and B isn't one - contradiction! But the last step doesn't make any sense, so I gave up on that.

I thought about doing prime decomposition, and I thought I had it there for a while. Then I tried expanding my linear combination, but still nothing.

It ended up that the answer was a trick you learn in high school called "Adding zero." Basically, it goes like this: If you add and subtract the same quantity from the same side of the equation, everything is still the same. Thus, you can say X = Y or you can say X + A - A = Y, because the +A and -A equal zero together. What you had to do was this:

A*D - B*C = 1

A*D - B*C + A*C - A*C = 1

A*D +A*C - B*C - A*C = 1

A(D+C) - C(B+A) = 1

A(C+D) + (-C)(A+B) = 1

Since you have a linear combination of C+D and A+B, their GCD is one.

Okay, fine. It's true, I get it, the GCD is one. The thing is, I didn't learn anything from it - the answer to the problem was a stupid trick you laern in high school that doesn't teach you anything about the methods or insights of number theory. Perhaps there is a tiny bit of somethign to be learned - sometimes you add zero! - but the goal would have been much better served if the instructor had added to the question (Hint: Add and subtract a certain quantity) so that you didn't spend two hours on it.

Anyway, it's late.

Goodnight.

Sodium Pentathol

I realized recently that sodium pentathol's two uses are somewhat interesting to consider:

1) Makes it impossible to feel pain
2) Makes you much more likely to tell the truth

Peace out.

Christine

The summer that I went away to Governor's School, a girl in my grade named Christine L died. She was new to the district and I actually didn't know her when I heard of the accident, but people kept saying someone named Christine in our grade had died, and I was sure I would know who it was. Eventually I found a yearbook with her picture in it, and it turned out I actually hadn't known who she was. I found a MySpace as well, and there were a couple more pictures there. Some of her best friends were some of my acquaintences, and they would write on her wall from time to time even after that day to say they were thinking of her and they missed her. Visiting that page really is heart-breaking. I probably would have liked her a ton from what was on there - she was liberal, talked about how much she loved her friends all the time, into politics, etc...

Today I was in Pollock on the North side, the regular cafeteria, and I went to get some desert or milk or something like that. On the way back, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a face that looked familiar, but I couldn't place it. For just a split second, I thought it was Christine. She looked the same - short blond hair, round cheeks, thin, pretty eyes, smiling. For a split second, I had no idea what it was going on. I was convinced for a moment that she was alive again. A moment later, I realized it was a girl who was in my Stat 200 class last semester, and nothing about the situation seemed so special anymore.

Peace out.

Nose Hairs

It's been so cold recently that, when biking from one class to another for hardly three minutes at a time, the hairs inside my nose freeze. It's very noticeable, unfamiliar, and fairly uncomfortable.

Peace out.

Obama Breakfast

After we watched the inauguration, I drove Hannah, Abby, and Joey to drumline so they could practice folding the floor or something, and Matt took Chloe and Molly to Megan's, where I drove after dropping my passengers off. Chloe drew the Obama symbol on her hand and jumped around with it and her Obama shirt on Smithbridge, and apparently someone honked and one bus-driver turned their head, according to Molly. When I stepped in, a man said to us, "Yeah, how about that Hawaiian president?"

We joked about putting Obama symbols on our food. I tried to put syrup on my waffle in the shape of the Obama symbol, but it didn't really work, although I took pictures of it. Matt put some butter on his pancake's top edge, and then took the syrup as I was about to use it, saying, "I have to put it on before the butter melts," and quickly made an Obama symbol with the syrup as the bottom half, the bottom of the circle and a couple stripes. I took a picture of it, because you could actually tell what it was. He told Molly she should make the word "HOPE" out of her fries, and she did, and I took a picture of that also.

When we were done, Chloe brought $25 up on our $24.49 check or something like that and didn't get change. I asked if she got the change for the tip, and Matt said, "The change we can believe in? Hah, you should have said that." At one point, the waitress noticed that we had overpaid and came to Chloe to give her the change, but Chloe pounded out the correct line, "No it's okay, you can keep the Change We Can Believe In."

Peace out.

N

I watched a video on YouTube recently called "Read a Book (dirty version)" which you can find if you want, which I first found because someone mentioned it in Paul's room, and they showed it to me when I was playing Four Square on their carpet. Gina and I thought it was really funny, and I would sometimes speak in the language in the video because it was funny. They said the word "nigga" a lot, for example. We were walking outside and I said that to Gina at the end of a sentence, and a fraction of a second later a black girl walked around the corner just in front of us, and I felt like a d-bag, even though I'm not racist and didn't mean anything by it.

Peace out.

Trucks

I think I realized this weekend that truck radios and possibly radar detectors can mess up your car radio, which I never noticed before. Some sort of flat bed truck, I think, had something going on that really messed up my radio for about one second when I drove past its cabin. I realized it, and figured it was probably the truck. I was on my way home from Penn State, and passed a truck stop shortly after that, and the radio blipped again. It sounded like something was popping a metallic bubble in the car, if you can imagine that, and it happened far more strongly outside the truck stop than just beside one truck. It happened once more as I passed another truck, but not others. I don't know if something is actually causing it, or if I'm imagining it.

Peace out.

Thief

Yesterday I went to the student bookstore. I bought the full version of my textbook for my Linear Regression class on Sunday; it was enormous and cost $200. The next day I went to class and my teacher told us that we could buy a smaller version that was cheaper and cut out a lot of the information that we didn't need for the course. So I went to the store and bought it.

When I got to the register, it came up as $109, and I paid. I thought that it had said it was $89 for a used book, so I decided to go back and check the price tag hanging near the book to make sure it was right. I knew that I would be walking out without paying for the book again, so I assumed people would assume I was a thief. So, I walked around with the book open and the receipt clearly displayed on its first page. Suddenly I was acutely aware of all the people that were able to watch me - a man on the stairs, just standing there, I realized was a manager - whcih I had never been aware of before. I walked past him and one other older staff member on my way out, and then through the registers, where a young Asian girl said she could take me, but I told her I had already paid. I don't know if she believed me or not but I guess she had no choice. I went to the side to get my backpack back - they take them so you can't stuff books in them - and I realized the girl turned around twice looking at me. I don't know if she was suspicious or if she was just looking around.

The next day I returned the full version to the other bookstore, and bought a calculator, then proceeded to look for the HUB's computer store. I couldn't find it, and I made a big circle around the HUB and walked back in through a different place than I had exited, and the alarm went off. There were sensors lining the entrance, and they made loud beeps and red lights lit up at the top of them. I had the receipt for the calculator with me, and again displayed it clearly. I didn't know what to do, but I felt like I was about to be accused of theft by a manager, so I sort of just waited to be accused. No one came up to me. The only person I saw walking anywhere in my direction was the girl who worked the register when I bought the calculator, so I just walked away.

Peace out.

All-Male Dorm Floors

God's punishment for the non-believers.

Peace out.