Saturday, October 30, 2004

Yay for UNC!!! Big upsets like this are good for teams like Utah and Boise State, and good for the other middle-of-the-pack ACC teams like GT, Clemson, and N.C. State. I 'm still picking UVA to win the ACC, then Miami, FSU, VT, GT, Clemson, NC State, Maryland, UNC, Wake, Duke, in that order. What a great day it's been. =)

Today has been such a good day of college football. Every game I've watched has ended with the losing team no more than a single score away from a win. Duke@Wake Forest, OU@Oklahoma State, Purdue@Northwestern, Florida State@Maryland, Florida/Georgia, Michigan State@Michigan, NC State@Clemson. Wow. And now UNC is tied 14-14 against Miami in Chapel Hill! Could another huge ACC upset be in the works? Not likely, but you better believe I'll be watching. And Ole Miss is hanging with Auburn so far, but I don't expect that to hold either. After the Boise State blowout of Hawaii (69-3) on the smurf turf last night, it's been nice to see some hard fought games that all have come down to the wire so far. Yay for college football!! Yay for hoopsfest down at GT too, it means basketball season is only a week away! In celebration, I broke out NBA Street again. It's basically an updated NBA Jam (super-arcadey, 3-on-3, gravity defying dunks, big head mode cheats, turbo speed, etc) except that you can create your own character and change his/her stats. Good stuff. Now back to the Miami@UNC game. Go 'Heels!

Friday, October 29, 2004

Yay for going home early on a Friday!

Interesting story on sports vs. studying at GT, in reference to yesterday's game.

The saddest part about losing last night is that we played well until the middle of the 4th quarter, and then just gave up. Our game stats are pretty good, we just rolled over and died like we always do.

I would like it noted for the record that since our email and file server network is down here at work, there's very little I can actually do until it comes back up. So blogging and reading my Acoustic Theory book it is.

Yesterday ended up not being such a good day. I mean, apart from me feeling awful all day. But GT gave away a football game, and unless we win 2 more games, we're not even bowl elligible. So we have to beat 2 out of NC State, UConn, Virginia, and UGA. So basically we have to beat NC State and UConn. After the way our team collapsed (as usual) at the end of the game last night, I think it's going to be very hard for us to pull ourselves together to finish out the season strong enough. But we'll see.
And then one of our tiger barbs died. :( I went in to feed them and I couldn't find all my fishies, but he finally turned up, upside down under the acropolis. The bigger of the 3 tiger barbs seemed to like to chase the other 2 around, and I thought they were just being playful, but maybe that's what killed this one. I've checked the water and the quality is okay, and I know he was eating because I always watch them for a few minutes to make sure all teh fish get food when I feed them. Poor fishy. So now I have 2 tiger barbs (and 8 blue neon tetras), which I've heard is a bad thing to do because they'll pair up and attack smaller fish, but I haven't seen them bother the tetras at all after the first 24 hours. I'm not a very good parent I guess. :-/
Which brings me to my next point - parents. I talked to Emily until like 2 am last night, which was nice. We haven't done that in forever. I just wish it had been a more upbeat conversation. The bulk of it revolved around her winter break plans that her parents are now vetoing. The plan had been for her to come up for a week or so after school let out on Dec 10, then go home for Christmas, and then come back up here for New Year's. But her parents don't want her coming up here twice, supposedly for financial reasons. I think money is just a convenient excuse, but I'm not sure for what exactly. So I'm going to offer to pay 100% for Emily to come up an extra time because it really is that important to me. If they balk at that, then it's clear it's not just money and there's something else going on, which I'd kind of like to know about. I'm 98% sure her parents like me. Maybe they just don't understand the scope of our relationship yet. I dunno. But it's not like she's missing the holidays or not going to be home for 2+ weeks anyway. *sigh*
Long distance relationships are hard enough, but then when parents get involved and make it so we can't see each other when we'd planned to, that makes keeping our relationship going really tough. To make this work, and that's something I'm 100% dedicated to, we need to see each other often enough to continue to grow together as a couple. Talking all the time is great, but without frequent face-to-face time together, we'll continue to grow, but separately, and I think that's why most long-distance relationships fail. Anyway, I'm committed to 'us' and to a long-term relationship and I know Emily is too. I know without a doubt that Emily is the girl I'm going to marry. So of course I don't want to defy her parents' wishes and be the stereotypical 'rebel boyfriend' (since my outward appearance fits that role already) and similarly, it's hard to defy your own parents when they still financially support you. But hopefully something will work out, because Emily has a month off for winter break (whereas I only have Dec 24 and 31 off, and then only because the 25 and Jan 1 are Saturdays this year, and 2.8 remaining days of leave, which I need to save in case I get sick(er) in the next 2 months, so I can't count on being able to use those days for vacation around Christmas), and I know we'll both be sitting around our respective houses being miserable if we can't see each other, and who does that help?

Thursday, October 28, 2004

To dust off an old classic:
Georgia Tech Athletics - Excelling at Mediocrity

Once again, GT finds a way to blow a 10 point lead and lose an easily winnable game in the second half. We're not a second half team. Never have been. Never will be. My own rule of thumb is that if we're not up 21 points at the half, we're going to lose. Somehow we alwasy find a way to squander a lead with stupid mistakes and turnovers and our defense getting tired. I should just not watch teh secodn half anymore when we're not up by 21 at the beginning of the 3rd quarter. All it does is make me angry to see us make the same mistakes every damn time and never learn from them. This is why we're not a championship quality football team. Making mistakes happens. That's a player's problem. Making the same mistakes over and over and over again and not fixing them is a coaching problem. Chan, fix this. I'm tired of it. The sad thing is that there's still 2 minutes left, and I've already conceded defeat after Ball's downfield interception. We could conveivably still win, but we won't, I promise we won't. Grrrr.... This just makes me so angry, I don't even really have words to express how irritated this makes me, and it happens all the time with our team. I swear to god I'm going to have a heart attack over this one day. I need to go cool off in the shower or something.

I know the 4th quarter just started, and even if VT mounts a winning comeback against our quickly tiring defense, I don't care, Chris Reis is far and away the MVP of the game.

*phew* ESPN says we're underrated. Obviously they've forgotten about the spanking UNC gave us and the fact that we beat Clemson because the Tigers handed us the game and beat themselves. But that's cool. We fall right in the middle of the pack currently, along with VT, and by my own (admittedly biased) predictions for the rest of the season, if we beat VT tonight, we're likely to finish in 4th or 5th place in the conference, which is pretty good, considering that in any previous season that would have been 3rd place and a short trip down the street to the Peach Bowl. *shudder* Frankly, I'd rather go to the Champ Sports (formerly Tangerine) Bowl or Charlotte's Tire Bowl than get waxed by an SEC team in our own backyard again.
My predictions:
Virginia (7-1)
Miami (7-1)
Florida State (6-2)
Georgia Tech (5-3)
VT (4-4)
NC State (4-4)
Clemson (3-5)
Maryland (3-5)
North Carolina (2-6)
Wake Forest (2-6)
Duke (1-7)

Today's million dollar answer: compromise - work until 5:30, want to die, go home.

Today's million dollar question: do I work late tonight with the expectation that I'll feel worse tomorrow than I do today, so then I can go home early tomorrow, or do I leave work now, take a nap before the game, and hopefully feel well enough tomorrow to put in a full 8 hour day? What a dilemma... I've been walking into walls today because my brain isn't operating fast enough to calculate whether my shoulder is far enough away from the wall when I turn a corner to avoid hitting it. This happens quite frequently when I'm not feeling well. In a related story, I decided that's why Stephen Hawking is so smart. His brain never has to worry about controlling his muscles or anything, so all that brain power can be used for other things. As for me, all my brain power today is being used trying to prevent me from falling down a flight of stairs, sitting down on thin air a foot away from my chair, and trying to drink water with my ear instead of my mouth. So far it's been only mildly successful. I hate when my mind is so cloudy. It just makes doing everything else so difficult when I have to focus all my energy on basic motor skills. I'd love to take an IQ test right now. I'll bet it'd be below 100 instead of my usual 145+.

Inspired by the fact that I use linux all the time at work now, and the fact that the Java program I'm debugging keeps throwing NPEs (mostly due to the fact that in my stupor I've tried to correct the same problem 5 times the exact same way and wondered each successive time why it didn't work), I've decided that even when I'm in a sickly fog, I can still be witty (or my brain is in midnight to 3 AM mode, I can't tell): Someone routed all my brain output to /dev/null. *rim shot* Yes yes, since I'm around software engineers frequently now, my old CSisms are coming back to me. I'm so lame. I really need to just lay down and sleep for a few minutes, hours, days.

So I finally got together with Kimber last night. Even though I felt really out of it all day and my throat hurt I said "what the hell?" She seems to be doing really well these days and likes her job and everything. So we had like 3 or 4 years of catching up to do, which took almost the entire baseball game. But fortunately the BoSox won without my watching (8 wins in a row, that's sick!). It's nice to see so many of my friends back in this area now that I'm back here too, and get all caught up. Yeah, we're all older and supposedly well-adjusted working adults now, but whatever, friends you've known for that long are still the same people deep down and I'll always see them that way in my heart. It's just nice to re-connect with the kids I grew up with and see that college and working didn't break them or anything.

It feels like there's an elephant standing on my brain. Only instead of feet, he has jackhammers. And instead of playfully splashing about in the water, sucking it up with his trunk and spraying it around, he's spraying giant anvils.

Wednesday, October 27, 2004

Man, I wish I was going to this show. But I'm definitely not feeling up to going to dirty dirty Richmond tonight. On the plus side, assuming Kimber doesn't lose her keys again, we're probably going to get together for a little while tonight instead.

Yes, I'm reading ESPN.com at work. No, I don't feel well and my brain needed a break. Yes, I will make up the time I owe from surfing the web. No, I'm not billing web surfing time to our project.

Poor poor Reggie Ball. He's got the lowest completion percentage in the ACC and his QB rating is 94th in Divison I-A. He's been sacked one more time than the number of interceptions he's thrown *shudders at reminder of dirty dirty #17*, which is one more than his 9 TDs. Fortunately, the O line seems to have gotten things turned around in the Maryland game a few weeks ago, so hopefully Reggie's numbers will start to improve the remainder of the season. The VT game tomorrow is a big test, and hopefully GT will come out of it with a W, but I'd settle for a well-played game without any turnovers or stupid penalites. Also fortunate: VT is the 26th most penalized team in the country, and we're the 100th. *crosses fingers* Go Jackets! Stats from ESPN.

Chicken soup rules.

It's good when you go to bed at 11:30 (as opposed to 12:30 like usual) because you feel like crap, right? I stayed up barely long enough to see Boston with their 7th straight game to go up 3-0 on the Cardinals in the World Series. Then I went to bed, but woke up about every 2 hours with crazy dreams, until around 7 am when I felt like I was finally getting some decent rest before my alarm went off at 8:15. Today I wish I was still in college so I could have turned off my alarm, rolled over, and slept until 3 pm. But no, I got up, fed our fish, and came to work. My throat hurts, but my sinuses feel surprisingly clear. My head however is a different story. I feel sort of floaty. Like maybe my head is full of helium and it's hovering about 3 feet above my shoulders. Not a good sign. When I woke up this morning I was running a fever of 99.6, which doesn't sound that bad, but I must remind you that my nominal body temperature ranges from 96.8-97.4 instead of the typical 98.6, so I'm at least 2 degrees too hot. Also not a good sign. But, here I am at work anyway because I have no time off. The good news is that it's been 12+ hours since I started feeling icky, so this probably isn't the flu or I would be feeling a lot worse right now. So *crosses fingers* I'm hoping it's just a cold brought on by the confused weather (warm, cold, rainy, cold, sunny, windy, hailing, cloudy, warm, cold) and I can beat it with lots of water, OJ, and post-work laziness.

Tuesday, October 26, 2004

I netted $15 at poker tonight, but had to leave early because I felt awful. I would have been happy to stay and play another game or two, especially since I was up and it wouldn't have been my money I was risking, but I felt really dizzy and just all over blah. Feels like maybe the flu (ugh), so I excused myself, absorbed the taunts of my co-workers, and came home. Now I'm going to go lay on the couch and watch the World Series (go BoSox!), and I suspect fall asleep there in the process.

Monday, October 25, 2004

Ken Jennings finally broke the $2M mark on Jeopardy tonight. That's insane.

Mmmm... Free burritos are so much tastier than burritos I have to pay for. The good news is that this palce makes awesome burritos and they're not that expensive, and they're close by. Yay!

Yay for free hot chocolate, cider, kettle corn, and caramel corn in the lobby this afternoon! =) Today just keeps getting better and better. And I should be getting a free burrito for dinner! Mmmm...

Oh no! The Zookster's reign of mediocrity at UF is over! ESPN.com - NCF - Source: Florida fires football coach Zook. This seems an especially bad time to fire a coach when you have the most important game of the season coming up. If Florida fails to beat UGA, I place the blame not on Zook, but on the Atheletic Director at Florida for his poor timing. Where will Ron's focus be right now? On the Dawgs? No. On finding a new job? Yes. Okay, okay, he's no Spurrier, get over it. How about firing him after they whoop Georgia? Or wait till the end of the season. Now you have a coach with no motivation to coach at all between now and december. Good planning Jeremy "I'm a retarded AD" Foley... And what were you thinking trying to get Bob Stoops? Why on earth would he leave the Big XII and OU when he's posied to win a National Championship again? "Excuse me coach, I'd like you to leave this school where you're a god and your team rules to come to my school where if you don't at least win the SEC your first year we'll hate you. Oh, by the way, all the good in-state talent in the last 3 years has gone to Miami and F$U instead of here. Good luck!" Idiots, idiots all around down there in Gainesville (except for the handful of cool people I know who went/go to UF). And Utah's head coach? I promise you, if Utah goes undefeated and becomes the first non-BCS conference team to make it to a BCS game this season, he's not going anywhere. I think Florida needs to look at JoePa. Seriously.

Sunday, October 24, 2004

Today my plan was to go play flag football on the Mall with the GTDC kids. But I woke up late and decided to drive instead of take Metro, since I needed to be there at 11 to practice for our 12:30 game. Unfortunately, today was the Army's Ten Miler. Which meant that every street I wanted to go down was closed and I got detoured so many times I had no idea where I was anymore. By noon, after sitting in way too much traffic and being completely lost in NW, I gave up and came home. One of these days I'm going to make it down there to play football with those guys. *sigh* It would be easier to motivate my terrified-of-unknown-social-situations self to go if someone else wanted to go with me. But Salvador has his hands full with work, law school, and being married, and Jamie apparently doesn't like hanging out with reminders of Tech, despite living with another GT grad and working in proximity to Stupidface Dave. Oh well.

Yesterday I went to Meyer's mom's house for his post-wedding celebration dealie. It was fun to see some people (mostly adults) I haven't talked to in a while. Ran into Mark Mellinger. He's just as awkward as he was in junior high and high school. Apparently he dropped out of college and is working at Dulles for the TSA (or BCF if you prefer) now. He's too smart for that, but whatever, it's his life. Talked with Caryn a lot since she was the only other person my age there besides Chris and Tyne who were busy being hosts. We made our escape around 7 and met up with Matt to see Team America. I'm not sure what to think about that movie. Parts of it were funny, yes. But I don't know whether I want to be angry at the movie or not, or whether to be angry at the people in the theater for laughing at the parts that I think should make me angry. I know it's satire. I know it intentionally portrays people of the middle east very badly to illustrate a point. But I don't know that it really made that point. Maybe I've spent too much time living overseas being a minority to find it funny (as opposed to vexing) in the same way as your typical American. Or maybe I have no funny bone, I dunno. Or maybe I'm too old now since all the high school kids at the theater loved it. Anyway, I figured it was worth a viewing since Trey Parker and Matt Stone haven't steered me wrong yet. My advice: wait for it on DVD. On the plus side, I felt it equally took jabs at liberals and conservatives to the point where I wasn't entirely sure that the film had an agenda at all, other than being funny, which it only barely succeeded at.

Friday, October 22, 2004

Is anyone else really annoyed by those Mercedes Benz commercials? You know, the ones that have just a whole smattering of pictures of peopel with their cars, and then the tagline: "No one takes pictures with their toaster." Oh yeah? Fuck you Mercedes.

I added a few more pictures of our fish tonight (pics 8-11) to the gallery. It was lacking severely in pictures of our tiger barbs, which I have determind are nearly impossible to take pictures of.

Wow. Last month I used 1712 minutes on my cell phone. 33 peak minutes and 1679 off-peak. I never thought it was possible to use that many minutes before I moved up here and put 635 miles between me and Emily. I'm sure all those minutes are horrible for my brain however. I should probably start using my lame headset again so I don't develop cancer or something.

*cough* *sniffle* uh oh... *wheeze* *sore throat noise* ugh... :-\

Thursday, October 21, 2004

Without the sun to warm up my apartment during the day, it's rather frigid in here this evening, so I finally had to turn the heat on today. I was hoping to avoid the spike in my gas bill that this will inevitably cause, but I shouldn't be uncomforable in my own apartment, so whatever.

Today is a perfect day for a nap. It's cold and rainy and I'm tired. I haven't seen the sun since Emily left, and I just want to curl up in my bed for a mid-afternoon nap. Sadly, here I am wearing my windbreaker around the office instead.

9 AM corporate brainwashing meetings are the tool of the devil. At least I got a free danish, 4 granola bars, and 3 GD pens out of it. And I (along with probably 50 other people) skipped out on the part where they turned us upside down and shook us to collect money for PAC contributions.

Wednesday, October 20, 2004

The 2005 ACC has a new logo and new division names. I like the new ACC (though I still think Pitt, UConn, or Syracuse would have been a better addition than BC) but the new logo is kind of dumb looking, and someone with no creativitity whatsoever came up with the division names. Unfortuantely, the way the 12 teams are split doesn't lend itself to East/West or North/South like the SEC or Big XII respectively. So instead of having names that follow geographical location, the Atlantic Coast Conference now has the Atlantic division and the Coastal division. Dumb. Here's the press release: ACC Unveils Future League Seal, Divisional Names.

Oh how the (supposedly) mighty have fallen. _hi_ State, as ESPN's Bottom 10 has inspired me to call them (because they lack any O whatsoever), is currently on a 3 game losing streak after falling to first Northwestern, then mighty Wisconsin, and then my Big Te(leve)n darkhorse Iowa. Whee! I'm so happy that everyone else is now realizing just how bad Jim Tressel's team is. It's gotten to the point where even Trev Alberts agrees with me!

It seems like it's always raining when Emily and I have to leave each other. :(
In other airport news though, Independence Air's new check in area looks much better than a month ago and they've got their swanky kiosks everywhere at Dulles now.
In other Emily news, our next scheduled rendezvous isn't until Thanksgiving, which is still 37 days away. :'(

Tuesday, October 19, 2004

Looks like my electricty problems might be solved. I've been living in my apartment for 3 months as of Thursday and realized about a week ago that I had yet to receive a power bill. I have power though. After 2 non-consecutive hours on hold with Dominion Power and an e-mail I sent via their website, I finally got a response back that the account was not set up in my name yet. Which is funny because in order to sign my lease, I had to sign up for gas and power and give the leasing office a copy of the order. Whatever. So I signed up again yesterday, and after their website crashed 3 times telling me "due to temporary difficulties we could not process your request" I finally got it to go through. So they'll be "turning on" my power tomorrow for a $15 setup fee. But I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I just got 3 months of free electricity out of this whole ordeal. Dominion Power sucks worse than Cox! I didn't think that was even possible!

Pictures from Great Falls (the VA side) are posted here.

Emily and I got some fishies last night with the aid of Tommy and Steph's expertice and former employee discount. We got 3 tiger barbs and 5 tetras. I don't remember what variety they were, but they have a neon blue strips on them that looks crispy in the dark. They look a little lonely in the big tank, but the barbs will grow a little, and I can always get a few more fish in the not too distant future. Pictures are here. The tiger barbs are sort of hard to take pictures of because they blend in with the sand-colored rocks, but I will get some more pictures of them soon. Fish in general are hard to take pictures of I think because they're constantly moving and in a light-bending liquid environment. But enjoy what's there!

Monday, October 18, 2004

This has been a nice weekend (and now weekday). Emily arrived on Friday evening and I met her at teh aiport. I was the envy of every woman coming off the plane as I stood there with my bouquet of roses attracting the spite of every other man who hadn't brought his lady flowers. We took the scenic route home so I could point out some important places. Saturday I made eggs for breakfast, we went shopping at Tysons, and then braved the rain (and a little hail) at Great Falls. I got scolded for climbing on rocks. I'm still a little boy at heart sometimes. Then we saw an amazing rainbow near my apartment, but couldn't get the camera out fast enough. We did our grocery, shopping, made dinner, got all dressed up/down, and had a tasty candlelight meal. We watched UVA collapse in Talahassee (poor Cavs), but they still have a shot at a good bowl game if they beat Miami and/or VT, and could potentialyl still win the ACC if they learn from their mistakes at F$U. Sunday Emily and I put our chef hats on and whipped up a storm in the kitchen. Acutally, I did most of the whipping of the heavy cream while Emily prepared the chicken. But we had zuchini fries, chicken alfredo over pasta, rotini with garlic marinara sauce, garlic bread, and a fresh salad, then fruit salad that turned purple for dessert. Silly frozen berries. But I think our "dinner party" was a success, everyone seemed to have a good time and they ate a lot (we still have a ton of leftover though). Then we headed over to my uncle Bobby and aunt Susan's for coffee and fresh homemade apple pie. Mmm... Then home to finish cleaning up the kitchen, get all cleaned up, and head to bed, play some cards cause I wasn't sleepy, and then head to bed again. Tonight we're going to meet up with Steph and/or Tommy to pick out some fish for my fish tank. I think that's about all of it up to me being at work today. Yay for fall break even though it's not my own and I have to be at work!

Kind of a slow day at work, which is nice sometimes, but today I wish I were really busy so I wouldn't be tempted to just leave and go home to Emily. It was really nice to go home for lunch though and have her waiting for me with open arms and a tasty turkey salad sandwich. Mmmm...

I wish I was on fall break... Emily practically had to shove me out of bed this morning to get me to come to work. Meanwhile, when I left, she was all curled up under the covers looking quite content. I wish I was still all curled up in bed too. It's so warm and cozy under there, as opposed to my office chair and my cold office.

Friday, October 15, 2004

Oh my god, 6 hours is still so far away! Good thing I only have to be at work for another hour.

Forgot to mention this morning that someone (I think Beth) brought in donuts! Big tasty chocolate-frosted donuts! Mmmm... And they were from Safeway, so I'll have to keep that in mind next time I need donuts for something. Man were they good. I wasn't even that hungry at lunch time, so I just had some cheese and crackers and an apple. Thanks donut!

Talked to my parents on the phone yesterday for the first time since my mom left. Unfortunately, because of the tiem difference, there's no good tiem for us to talk. It's currently 6 hours ahead I think, and after we Fall Back, they'll be 7 hours ahead. But it means when I get off work, it's already 11:30 pm there, and they've gone to bed. And by the time I go to bed at midnight, it's only 6 am there. If I could drag myself out of bed in the mornings, I might be able to reach them at a reasonable time during the day over there. But what it all boils down to is that they have to call me while I'm at work. Now, I can't talk to them on my office phone, because it's in a classified area, and talking to a foreign country in a classified area is a big no-no, especially when it's not a secured line.
So I talked to them outside the building for about half an hour, so I had to work late yesterday to make up th etime, but whatever, it was good to talk to them. They wanted to know all about the debates and what I thought. My mom seemed appalled that I was considering voting for Nader (if only Virginia wasn't full of right wing nut-jobs, which prevented Nader from getting even the 10,000 signatures necessary to get his name on the ballot). I'm sorry. Kerry may be "the most liberal candidate ever" (I find this rather difficult to believe Mr. Bush...), but he's still a moderate conservative in the grand scheme of things, and many of his ideas and plans and beliefs are the polar opposite of my own. Consequently, my own views of what's best for our government match up more closely with those of Ralph Nader, and to a lesser extent, my Libertarian candidate Michael Badnarik. I just can't identify with John Kerry. Yes, he's the lesser of two evils compared to Bush, but some of his policies are still evil, and I don't know if I can bring myself to vote for him.
Anyway, sorry for that political rant, but the point was that it was nice to talk to my parents for a little while yesterday. They seem to be doing really well out there and are learning their way around and how to differentiate bleach from fabric softener by smell (since every thing is printed in Hebrew).

Thursday, October 14, 2004

Less than 24 hours!!! =)

Wednesday, October 13, 2004

The more things change, the more they stay the same. So Kimber was supposed to come over tonight for coffee and ice cream and to watch the debate. So I called her when I got home from work to give her directions and unlike the Kimber of old, she knew exactly what I was talking about and what roads went where. No more Kimbo the Bimbo it would seem! So then as I'm coming home from the grocery store my phone ringe, and sure enough it's Kimber. I expect her to say she's on the way over, but instead, she left her keys in her purse at work and her roommate is out of town. Looks like maybe there's still a little space cadet in Kimber still. ;) It definitely sucks to get locked out of your apartment though, so I don't want to poke too much fun, because otherwise tomorrow I'll leave my ID badge and home, and then leave my keys at work. It'll be super awesome because I won't have any way to get either one of them which I could then use to get the other. Stupid karma. But I'm kinda bummed because I haven't seen Kimber in forever. But with both of us living in Fairfax again, this is hardly a limited-time engagement.

You'll never guess who ran into Stacy Weller on Monday night. No, not me. Give up? My mom. Apparently Stacy is the 3rd grade teacher at the American Embassy school in Tel Aviv. She and my mom are taking the same Hebrew crash course on Monday nights! I'll see if I can get come contact info for her from my mom if anyone else wants to send her a card or something.

Tuesday, October 12, 2004

Oh, it gets better! My office mate has had a streptococcal infection! Probably the single thing outside of sinus infections that I'm the most susceptible to, but he's apparently taking Amoxicillin, so he's no longer contagious. The best part is that I had strep throat so much when I was younger that I have no tolerance for it at all anymore and because my immune system is so weak against it, the last time I had it my doctor had to put me on a high doseage of Penicillin. It killed the infection, but man oh man, that stuff knocked the energy out of me almost as bad as being sick. Fortunately, my throat isn't scratchy yet, and if I had picked up strep from Quyen last week, I'd know it by now. But there's always an outside chance, and even being exposed to it like I almost definitely was probably lowered my resistance enough to allow the common cold to take hold. Anyway, with lots of water and rest the next couple days I should be able to get on top of this before it becomes a real problem.

The guy I share my office with has been sick for the past week. He went home early last Tuesday, didn't come in at all on Wednesday. Came in Thursday and Friday mornings, but went home around 11, but then he was back late Friday afternoon. Yesterday he was here when I came in at 9:30 but then promptly dissapeared until around 5. I feel kinda bad for him because I think he is working early mornings and late nights instead of during the day so that he won't be around when everyone else is to make them sick too. Unfortunately, I think he might have infected me. :-\ I had a bad headache when I woke up this morning, and I've felt kind of lightheaded and woozy most of the morning. I'm sort of hoping it's just my imagination though. But as a preventative measure, I think I'm going to head home for lunch today and have some soup and maybe a grilled cheese sandwich along with several glasses of Vitamin C laden OJ and some pseudoephedrine. I can almost taste the goodness now. Mmmm. Go immune system go!

Monday, October 11, 2004

According to RealAge.com, I'm actually 28.0 instead of 23.5 years old, apparently because I take such poor care of myself. Fantastic. Given this new information, I really am almost 50.

The good part about sleeping with your windows open is getting a great night's sleep. The bad part is trying to get out of your nice warm bed into the not-so-nice cold air in the morning. I want to curl up under my covers and hibernate like a bear.

Sunday, October 10, 2004

In other Emily news, she'll be here in just under 118 hours! =) I apologize in advance if I post something like this 3-4 times a day for the rest of the week. I'll try my best not to, but sometimes I can't help it. I just get so giddy.

I have a 30 gallon fish tank in my bathroom now, thanks to Tommy! Now all I need are some fish. So the plan is for Emily and I go to buy some fish next weekend. That will give the tank some time to settle and the pH levels to balance out if I need to adjust them. Yay for fishies!

College football this weekend: I watched none of it because I was busy with Chris and Tyne's wedding and Tommy and Steph's dinner party. But that's okay, it was only one of the best football weekends of the year... But seriously, I had a great time at Meyer's wedding and hanging out with Tommy and Steph is always a blast. I'm just bummed that they fed us so much at the reception that I wasn't even hungry at the dinner party. But Steph said I could come over and eat all the leftovers, whenever, so yay!! Okay, back to football.
First off, yay Tech!!! How is it we can suck it up so back at UNC, suck it up worse at home against Miami, and then go into Byrd Stadium and beat the pants off the Terps? I love that we won, and as soon as I BT the game, I'll have some more thoughts about why we actually won. Three guesses - solid defense, return of PJ Daniels, Reggie throwing the ball away instead of getting sacked 5 times for 20 yards loss each. On the flip side, UNC beat NC State yesterday, so maybe UNC is better this year. Who knows? Once again Tech is relegated to the role of spoiler. I wish we could have a great season, but I suppose as long as we ruin other people's seasons I'll still be reasonably happy.
Tennessee - you guys rock so hard. A week after getting humiliated by Auburn, you go to Athens and stomp all over the Dawgs, who just last week beat defending national co-champs LSU. Say goodbye to any national championship hopes UGA. LSU meanwhile went to the Swamp and eked out a win over Florida. The Gators should have won that game, but they just blew it.
Texas - what the hell? You guys are putting up nearly 50 points a game heading into Dallas, and get shut out by OU? This is why it's so hard to like you. I know Oklahoma's a fantastic team, but so it Texas, and there's no reason this game should have been such a crushing defeat. Texas even had good numbers, just no points. The OU defense remains probably the best in the land, but Texas had a potent offense that seems to have gone on vacation.
Nebraska - Oh. My. God. Texas Tech invites you over for a friendly game of pigskin. But you send pee-wee league players instead? 70-10, worst loss ever. You guys suck so hard. Hey, remember a few years ago when you guys won the national championship? What the hell happened?
Wisconsin - way to go visit Ohio State and show them what's up. Say goodbye to a BCS game Ohio State.
Michigan/Minnesota and USC/Cal - I wish I had watched these games. Maybe I can BT them too.
Unfortunately, all this great football this weekend lead to me only getting 3 point spread picks correct. Yikes. But they drop your lowest week in the rankings, so I should still be in the hunt for first place as long as I don't have another atrocious week.

Friday, October 08, 2004

Final post today, I swear... But in less than a week, Emily will be here!!! =)

My biggest problem with Kerry of course is that he's still too conservative for my own tastes. I'm not sure why he keeps getting branded such a liberal. I mean, obviously it's a Bush campaign tactic to alienate Kerry from moderate voters. But if Political Compass is worth anything at all (and in my experience, they're pretty accurate), Kerry is clearly still more moderately conservative than truly liberal. He's only liberal by comparison to Bush and the rest of the Republican-dominated Senate, which is sort of worrisome by itself. Anyway, on their chart (below), I'm more leftist and more libertarian than even Ralph Nader. How scary is that? And you want me to choose between Bush and Kerry? Huh. We'll see what develops in the next couple weeks I suppose.

My own impression of tonight's debate was that Kerry came out on top. Not a landslide victory, but he just seemed stronger. Bush sounded like a broken record on more than a few occasions. Kerry failed to answer a few questions, but Bush flat out eluded the "name 3 mistakes" question. That just pissed me off. Just give us 3 mistakes, that aren't abotu the war on terror. Who cares? I want to know that you think you're fallible. And for the love of god, stop bring up Kerry's "wrong place, wrong time" thing, we get it already. That being said, Bush did make a few very good points about Kerry wanting to build a stronger coalition, but then wanting unilateral talks with North Korea. I'm also nervous about Kerry's plan to increase military size since he hasn't explain how he plans to do it. Bush at least said very plainly that there will be no draft. Anyway, overall, Kerry just seemed more on the ball and kept the questions moving forward, and I tend to agree with more of his plans than I do with Bush's. I'm curious what everyone else thought about the debate. I think Bush did a decent job speaking for a change, but in the actual debated topics, I would give the W to Kerry instead.

Interesting thing I discovered today: In The Simpsons, Springfield gets 2 area codes (in an episode with possibly the best running gag ever): 636 and 939. In real life, 939 is in Puerto Rico. But, 636 is a suburb to the west of St. Louis. This makes sense in reference to "I'll be dead in the cold cold ground before I recognize Missoura," "Now leaving Missouri, entering Missoura," and "Take that, East St. Louis!" Clearly, neither of these area codes are in northern Kentucky, but there's also no Pacific Ocean access from Kentucky (or Atlantic, or any sort of international waters for that matter), and for the record, the only Springfield in Kentucky is not exactly north. But you can only ask so much of a continually changing stable of writers. There are bound to be contradications. But frankly, I just love all the consistently perfectly subtle jabs at Missouri.

Speaking of Friday, today is pay day! Woo. I'd be happier if 30% of my paycheck didn't disappear, but whatever. I'm down to 10.55 leave hours in the whole still. So 2 more paychecks and I'll be back in black! *cue AC/DC* On November 5, I will have a positive balance of 1.23 hours of leave time!! Woo. Good thing we have flex time though, that makes this whole situation a thousand times easier. If I want to take a day off, as long as I can squeeze in 40 hours on my time sheet, no one seems to care. I'm actually kind of tempted to start working 7 hours a day during the week and come in for a couple hours on Sundays where I can work with no distractions. But then I remember how much I enjoy being lazy and doing nothing on Sundays and realize I would never do it. At least not on a regular basis, maybe if I was out sick and needed to make up hours or something, or needed to bookend some vacation time.

There is no one here today... Quyen's out sick, Dave left at 10:30 to go buy a house, Kartik's on vacation, Billy's sick, Manish came in late and is leaving early, Moon's gone, Beth's leaving early, George is out, Scott didn't even come in, and I just saw Lee on his way out the door. Jenny's around though, and then me and Todd. Debbie might be around somewhere, I don't really know. When I came back from lunch at 1, the parking lot was half empty, maybe more so. I don't know where everyone is today. Monday is Columbus Day, but we don't have the day off, so it's not like people are taking an extra day on the front side of the 3 day weekend. *shrug* Oh well, maybe it's just Friday.

Virginia looked a little slow coming out of the blocks on their way to beating Clemson. Like maybe they were just trying to dust off the cobwebs after not playing last week. But after a slow start, the Cavs offense came back to life and started lighting up the Tigers on the ground and in the air. It was quite glorious indeed. Their defense looked solid all night, and I think they're ready to take on F$U next Saturday. I think you'd be hardpressed to keep UVA out of the National Championship if they win the ACC. To go undefeated in the conference means they have to beat Miami, F$U, VT, and Maryland. Arguably the toughest ACC schedule this year. Not that I want to get too far ahead of myself here, but Virginia is for real and I'll be pulling for them all the way.

I'm such a liar. So much for eating better and exercising more... Not that me talking about doing something and then not doing it is anything new. Tim calls me on it all the time. I went running on Saturday, but felt like I was going to black out, so that didn't last very long. I had Wendy's on Sunday, pizza Tuesday and Thursday, and Taco Bell on Wednesday. I've already hit my fast food quota, and it's not even a quarter of the way through the month. And wow, look at all that exercise I've done! Getting out of bed is such hard work... It's not that I have no self control, it's just that I'm lazy. Even my face is starting to look puffy now, like when I was working at Coke and drank soda all the time. I really need to do something about this, but I won't, I'll just whine about it and feel sorry for myself and angry at myself this time next week when I still haven't changed anything.

Thursday, October 07, 2004

I'm totally hooked on Avail right now. It's impossible to listen to them and not tap your foot, bob your head, and sing along. Even their sad songs are upbeat. I wonder if they're playing near here anytime soon, they are always so much fun live. And shouldn't they have a new album out soon? It's been like 2 years since Front Porch Stories came out. Maybe they're just doing the Lagwagon hibernation thing and waiting 6 years to put out a new studio album...

Best/Worst Invention of All Time: The snooze button.

Wednesday, October 06, 2004

No matter what he says, Tommy is a sellout! ;)

File under: Kill me. Just kill me right now.
From the email I sent to Brian:
So I was looking around for a GT alumni org in DC and I finally found one: http://www.gtalumni.org/clubs/DC. Turns out they play flag football every weekend on the Mall, so I thought I'd go check it out this week. It'll be like freshman year all over again, except without Captain "I heart soccer" America wanting us to practice all the time and Rob whining about his knees. And on real grass instead of Astroturf-covered concrete! Should be fun though. Anyway, I email the guy in charge of the team, and he added me to the distro list. So I get an email today about the game on Sunday. And who else is on the distro list? None other than davb81@yahoo.com. Does that ring a bell? I'm not 100% positive, but it looks way too much like Stupidface Dave's AIM name (which I deleted the day after our final presentation, so I have no verification) for my own comfort and well-being. I hope to hell he's not in the DC area and active in GTDC and especially not on their flag football team. I don't know if I can handle Stupidface Dave's fantabulous boat-mounted cell phone tower plans as they relate to football...

Brian's oh so sympathetic response:
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Stupidface HIGHEST HONORS Dave. Awesome. I'm sure it'll be a nice little reunion for you guys. It can't possibly be anyone other than him.

Apparently, on the Hive pick 'em, I am in fact tied for 2nd place, and only 3 points behind first. They throw out your worst week and rank you based on the remaining points. Either way, I'm kicking butt.

Tuesday, October 05, 2004

I remember first reading about the X Prize several years ago when I was looking at colleges. I was torn between electrical and aerospace engineering. Fortunately for me, I think I made the right choice. But I have always been fascinated by space flight and by the possibility of "cheap" public transport into space. Yes, NASA was big and cool even when my grandmother was still working full-time at Goddard, but government-sponsored space flight seemed to me to be about global bragging rights and scientific exploration. I respect science for science's sake of course. I don't care if a discovery or experiment isn't immediately translated into a high profit new technology. Sometimes science is just freaking awesome all by itself. But after watching 2001: A Space Odyssey and all those years of Star Trek, I wanted more than anything else to have the possibility of space travel for the masses become a reality. Since we all thought we'd have hover cars by the year 2000 and here we are with the same old cars we've had for a hundred years, I was ecstatic over the coverage that some private enterprise space programs were getting. Now that Burt Rutan and his team have won the X Prize, who knows what's next? I'm not saying that sometime next week I expect to be able to take a ride around the earth like some glorified carnival ferris wheel (dirty carnies... *shudder*). But the point of the X Prize as I understood it was to prove the feasibility of repeatable private manned space flight. It has been done. It is now only a matter of time before space rides become as accessible as airplane rides (unless the TSA gets involved - they should really call themselves the BCF instead). I salute everyone who made an entry into the competition and congrats to Mojave Aerospace!

I spoke too soon about football! I was investigating GT Alumni clubs in the DC area today and look what I found! I might have to go check this out on Sunday.

*sniff* Mmmmm... I love this time of year. I left my phone in my car when I came back from lunch, and even though it's going on 2 pm, it can't be much more than 60 degrees outside. I think late summer/early fall is my favorite time of year. It's not cold enough yet to need a jacket, but it's not hot anymore so just being outside isn't uncomfortable. It's great weather for sleeping at night and perfect for running around outside getting much needed exercise. I wish more of my friends liked sports so we could play some touch football once a week or something. Plus, I'm definitely a fall colors person. If you look at all the clothes I own, they're all muted earth tones. Brown, tan, gray, black, olive, maroon, sienna, navy, white. And the occasional basic colors: green, blue, red, and yellow. But all those earthy colors really just go with my (lack of) hair very well and set off my eyes perfectly. What can I say, I'm an autumn. And to answer your next question, no, I'm not gay, I just recognize (usually) what looks good on me and what doesn't.

Last night I went to a play with my cousin Sarah. She works for the Round House Theatre's education department, so she got free tickets for press night of their new play: Tabletop. I'm not sure how to describe it exactly. It was at the smaller Round House Silver Spring, so maybe there's seating for 50-100 people there. And there were only 6 people in the cast. And you sit so close that it's like you're actually involved in the play, so it was a lot of fun. The play was about shooting a commercial for a smoothie and the various dynamics involved between the director, crew, camera man, prop guy, etc. The lone woman in the cast I was not impressed with, her role just seemed very forced. But the director and camera man were great, and the lowly production assistant was amazing, he stole the show (and his amazingly perfect shaving cream smoothie). I think there was something everyone could identify with in the play and I really enjoyed it. One point of caution however ("won't someone please think of the children?"), there was a lot of swearing, so much so that it even made me feel uncomfortable at times. But I think the playwrite was trying to do a Holden Caulfield sort of thing with the director character to show how hollow he was and how he tried to make up for his lack of self confidence by filling the void with the F word. Overall though, the play was very good and it had a perfect mix of humor and wit and artistic monologues pointing out the foibles and drudgery of working class people. If it didn't cost $30-$35 a ticket, I'd strongly suggest you go check it out. I still suggest you check it out anyway if you can. You'll enjoy it, I promise.

Monday, October 04, 2004

Whoopee! After last week, I'm sitting in 3rd place in the Hive's college pick 'em contest. It's a 3 way tie with Brian and some other guy, but we're only a point behind 2nd place and 6 points back from first place. A few more weeks of good picks and I could easily be in first place! I'm also doing quite well on ESPN where I'm currently picking at 93.4%. I'd be doing much much better too if Fresno State hadn't blown it on Saturday. I've gotten 217 point sout of 250 and it should be 227 no thanks to the other FSU I hate (not to be confused with F$U). Yay for college football!

Adam's Gripe o' the Day: Day laborer painters. Now, don't get me wrong, I like the fact that my apartment complex is being repainted, even though I don't think it's necessary. But it shows that the management is committed to keeping the place looking nice. These guys have been around for 3 weeks or so now, painting door trim and hand rails and stuff, and now they're moving on to painting the exterior window trim and stuff. This requires the use of very tall ladders to reach some of the 4th floor apartments. They show up at 8 am on the dot and leave at 6 pm on the dot every weekday. It's nice to see such punctuality, but at 8 am when I'm still trying to sleep, especially now that it's nice enough to sleep with my windows open, the last thing I want to hear at 8 am is ladders clanging against the side of my apartment and some rapid Spanish just outside my window. I suppose I'm the only one bothered by this since most of my neighbors are long gone by 8 am and don't return until 5:30 at 6 anyway. But for little old me working 5 minutes away, it's sort of annoying. Hopefully they'll finish my building today while Im at work and it won't be an issue tomorrow.

Sunday, October 03, 2004

Stupid unexplained power outages. It's a beautiful day today! Why did my power apparently flick off while I was in Arlington? It's not windy, it's not raining, it's not cold, it's not icy... I don't get it. Oh well. *shrug* I hope no one left me any important IMs while I was gone.

Vindication!!! At last! Northwestern is my new favorite team ever. They finally proved that OSU sucks ass and only wins by luck, and tonight, despite the Buckeye's luck to even get into overtime, the Wildcats triumphed! Suck it Jim Tressel!!!

Saturday, October 02, 2004

My thoughts on the Miami@GT debacle today:
That first Miami touchdown was bullshit. The ball clearly hit the ground at the same time as Parrish "caught" it, by all the rules I could find, that's an incomplete pass. Not that it mattered in the end, but 20-3 is less embarassing then 27-3. Reggie Ball steps back too far after taking teh snap. By the time he tries to throw the ball, he's already got to go 8-10 yards just to get it to the line of scrimmage. Gailey needs to work on him with staying in teh pocket. This is an offensive line problem too. Our guys can't contain a rush at all, which is why we had no running game today. Reggie was our entire running game except one huge Chris Woods run to start the game. Clearly, PJ Daniels is our entire running game and we need him back. Let's just hope he doesn't turn out like Tony Hollings and we go without a rusher the rest of the year. Our defense still looked decent. They're gotten a little sloppy, but they did a good job containing the run for Miami and had a few decent pass coverages plays and blitzes. Reggie threw too many interceptions again and got sacked for way too many losses. He needs to learn still when to just fall down instead of running backwards in a futile escape attempt and when to throw the ball away. That will come hopefully. Calvin Johnson had a huge day at Clemson, but he's still young and inexperienced, and it showed badly today. He wasn't coming back to teh ball when he should have, wasn't watching the blitz and cutting his routes short to bail out Reggie, wasn't looking for teh ball until he was scripted to so he was an easy pick off. He'll be a great player with some more coaching and experience I think though. He's tall, he's fast, and he's aggressive, he just needs work. Our punting game is coming together nicely. Ben Arndt has a great leg. I question Gailey's playcalling and ability to keep his job next year. He's been here long enough to get his own recruits into the system and we should be having 8+ win seasons every year by now. Miami is a tough team, no contest, but we played horribly. I don't mind losing if we play our hardest and it's jsut not enough. But GT was sloppy today and we never stood a chance. Our Clemson win was luck. Getting trounced by UNC 2 weeks ago was stright up embarassing. And beating Div. I-AA Samford? Who cares? The way Maryland and VT played against West Virginia, I predict we drop both of those games. Virginia will obliterate us. The way UGA manhandled LSU today, I never want Thanksgiving to come (except for hopefully spending some time with Emily and the Rettews). Duke is starting to look better every week, and after a thorough 49-17 mauling last year, I don't realyl want to face Duke right now either. UConn is looking scary too the way they beat up on BC and Pitt. I think we'll beat NC State just because that's what we do. But that leaves us at 3-8 on the season. If this occurs, Chan will be looking for a new job. Yes, the ACC is a tougher conference with the addition of Miami and VT, and with BC joining next year. But 3-8 is unacceptable. It is of course feasible that we get our act together and beat Duke, UConn, NC State, maybe VT, and maybe Maryland. That's 7-4, not bad. More likely we'll land somewhere in the middle (5-6) and inelligible for a bowl game unless something changes radically in our offense. Again, I know we just lost to Miami, who are a fantastic team, but I don't really think they played that well either. Not like I've seen them play in previous incarnations. I'm telling you right now (in case I haven't before), Virginia has the most legitimate shot at an ACC title this year of anyone else in the conference. I can't wait to see them obliterate Clemson on Thursday. It's easy to be pessimistic after a loss, but we haven't had a good game yet where everything was really clicking. Maybe when GT comes to College Park next week to pay Maryland defector Ralph Freidgen a visit...

Dammit Syracuse and Rutgers!! Just stop playing so sloppy and lose already so I can watch my game!! It's already 3-3 and I missed both scores. Miami@GT has far bigger national importance than Rutgers@Syracuse. I hate bad football teams who won't just lose on time and I hate ABC for sticking with the crappy game.

I'm not sure why my post about being fat showed up 4 times, but I deleted 3 of them, and the problem is now remedied.

I joined my uncle and his family at the Blue Iguana tonight for a birthday party. He and his oldest daughter share a birthday, so we all went out to dinner to celebrate. Bobby is so much fun to be around. He's so entertaining and can always make me laugh. And Sarah invited me to join her at a play on Monday, so I hope that works out. I had a NY Strip with a sauce that had a hint of chocolate in it. It was soooo good! And the garlic mashed potatos and asparagus didn't hurt anything either. My grandmother was there too and Tommy was up from Atlanta, so it's always nice to see him. I wish Lisa would come up here more often though, she's such a blast. Oh, and Daniel and Wilson (Bobby and Susan's youngest kids) are huge now! Wilson looks like a mini version of Luke Schenscher too. Speaking of family and birthday's, my mom's big 5-0 is coming up on Monday. SinceI missed my dad's 50th birthday party because I was on Warped Tour, I wish I coudl be there for my mom's. But I'm not going to Israel just for a birthday party. I'm sure my parents will have a good time together though, and I think they're going to a spa in the mountains or something.

Friday, October 01, 2004

In the Face of Evil: The conservative's answer to Farenheit 911 and Unconstitutional. *shudder* I kind of want to see it though (now who's fair and balanced? :-p ), just to see how much higher a pedestal the GOP can put Ol' Ronnie on... I think I'll wait for the DVD though.

I've have had such a good week at work. =) I love my job. I love the people I work with. I've been busy all week and I'm finally getting to the point where I know enough about how our system works to do things on my own so I've been given some more involved projects. Yay for work!

For the record, I'm fat now. Looking at myself in the mirror, I'm not happy with my appearance. I'm developing a beer gut, and my last beer was 6 years ago! I never have any energy in the evenings, even when I've gotten a good night's sleep. Clearly, my bi-weekly stair-walking and monthly jog are not enough exercise to counteract my current dietary intake. I have been vaguely aware that in the last couple weeks I've been eating a lot. More than I need really, and I'm aware of it as it occurs, but I do it anyway. Well, the scale tonight settled it, starting in October (which means right now, conveniently), I'm getting back into an exercise regimen. I'm also going back to no more food after 10 pm, and fast food once a week max. I'm not trying to get ripped or be a weight lifter, but I feel fat, and I look fat, and my diet is awful, and all that needs to change (even if it's only a little bit at a time) or I'm going to need a entire circulatory system transplant by the time I'm 40.

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  • I'm Rev. Adam
  • From Oakton, Virginia, United States
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