It was on the recommendation of my counselor that I join the Computer Science club to benefit my transfer application. Curious to see the difference between my high school Computer Club–which turned out to be an assortment of pasty, pimply, and stale dorks who only played computer games, and the City College Computer Science Club. I had hopes that I’d be able to get together with some eager students and collaborate on fun programming projects. Within the first few minutes of the first meeting I realized this was not the case.

For about an hour the advisor (a middle-aged bachelor) was leading an argument about what to do with the Gaming Club members that want to partake in the open-for-all Computer Science Club LAN parties. I was thoroughly dissatisfied by the end of the meeting. The only thing that was established was that the Gaming Club is the Computer Science Club archnemesis. Needless to say, I probably won’t be going back. It was a lame waste of my time.

I made it a point to get up at 2:00 AM, leave the house by 2:30 AM, arrive at La Cumbre Peak by 2:50 AM, and witness the launch at 3:02 AM.  I expected to wait at least a little bit longer than 3:02 AM for the launch, but was pleasantly surprised when it launched the second my synchronized watch hit 3:02:00 AM.  Vandenberg AFB is just slightly out of direct line of sight from La Cumbre Peak so I saw a vertical flash of light swiftly make its way over the ridge to the town.  It was spectacularly bright for being so far away.  It appeared to be making a vertical path from my perspective, but it quickly layed over into it’s intended trajectory.  The initial boosting flames bore bright orange/yellow switched to a reddish orange tint and became smooth and thin, probably due to switching fuel and increased acceleration.

It was actually quite surprising to see how fast it actually accelerated.  Comparing this to the Delta launch a little while ago, this was downright fast.  It seemed like only a matter of seconds before it wasn’t able to be seen any longer.

So, I tried this with my lovely Nikon DSLR. My outdoor pictures were not that great because the wind made it hard to capture a consistent image, though my indoor delicious cookie photo did much better.

Check out the original “proper” exposure:

And the HDR:

Notice the dramatic increase in the level of detail in the HDR image compared to the original.

You may be seeing more of this.

It seems that I have to fill ‘er up with gasoline at the end of every month.  But before I do, she always acts cranky around me.  For example, she has problems starting up–most likely a loss of fuel pressure or failing cold-start injectors (or a combination of both).  To preemptively remedy this, I usually flood the engine before I turn it off, that way she gets extra fuel to play with when cranking off the ignition.

But all these problems are resolved when I fill up her tank.  Plus, I get better throttle response.  Though, with her recent weight loss, the additional fuel weight means retarded braking and lamer steering.

I suppose I should officially give her a name…  though one thing is for certain: she is a girl.

Because you know that’s how I like my women: cranky and always leaking gas.

It’s been a while that I have had my eyes on the MacBook. Fortunately, the retarded CompUSA decided to go out of business, and I got in on the liquidation. All Macs were 15% off, which is something that never happens. At this point in time, their stock was quite low, though I managed to pick up the black MacBook with only two remaining.

As a Linux enthusiast and Microsoft System Specialist, I have been continuously exposed to different environments–including their flaws and benefits. I side with Linux on this issue because things tend to work the way I want them to work. Windows tends to not work the way I want it to work, often leading to performance issues or BSoD (and Apple is aware of this: see SMB Shares icon).

With Mac being a BSD UNIX OS, strikingly similar to Linux, I see many benefits of using it. For one, the software provided is generally better than the software available for Linux, though software available for Linux tends to be ported to Mac quite often. In addition to being UNIX, the internets tend to work better, like such as, formula1.com. On Linux, this site was slow and all the features were somewhat confusing to navigate around. In Mac, it is displayed probably how it was intended to be displayed. And it is fast.

Some might ask, do you regret spending the approximate value of your left kidney to purchase a MacBook?

No. My kidneys are self regenerating.

Thank you for reading. Peace out lil’ scouts.

So this is my story on Tuesday morning, before class…

I had full intentions to arrive at school earlier than normal so I could go to the bookstore to purchase an atlas of the Middle East, so I left home at around 8:30 (class starts at 9:35). It took about eight minutes to get to the Pershing Park parking lot, which was perfectly normal. Once in the parking lot, I began to realize how wasteful my previous luck with finding parking spots had been (taking less than two minutes to get a spot, or even spotting a vacant spot and beating traffic). I got fed up with Pershing Park and headed to the two lower lots, but had no luck. Several minutes later I decided to go back to Pershing Park with a fresh hope. How quickly hope fades. It seemed like forever. The temperature was starting to rise, now about 90 degrees in my car with no A/C or fans. There it was, the legitimate glory. I spotted a green Jetta with reverse lights in the ideal row, right next to the stairs to the campus. I hurried toward the car with my blinker on, but saw another car in the opposite direction also hurrying. I definitely had my blinker on first. And I was there first. I took a look at the opposition: a fat girl wearing a sweater (probably using her stupid A/C) in a modern Honda Accord. Time seemed to be at a standstill, but eventually the Jetta’s reverse lights illuminated and backed out in the direction favoring the fat girl’s entry, where she could just follow the Jetta’s path right into the spot. Knowing with a conviction that this spot was mine, I could not let that happen. As soon as the Jetta started to drive away, I quickly released the clutch with a careful right foot, then immediately (and intentionally) braked, and then continued into the spot like I meant it. When the fat girl saw my darting right as she started to go, she backed off and went defensive. I clearly let her self-preservation instincts prevent her from being hit by a rusty German machine. I was proud. I am proud. I have no regrets.

The fat girl drove off clearly befuddled and frustrated. She even did a vicarious victory lap for me, though I’m sure she was making some obscene hand gestures at me, but I pretended not to notice.

And here is my visual representation of the action. Not drawn to scale.

Nevertheless, I was unable to purchase my atlas of the Middle East, and I was late to class by about ten minutes.

So, I publicly make this resolution to increase my SAC average purchase rate by buying more with the money I get from sales and returns.  Yes, I know it is retarded to return gear to buy more gear, but due to the impulsive nature of SAC, I have made some pretty retarded purchases–mostly because I can’t try things on over the internet.  Some things like a ZOIC Sportwool biking shirt which still has the cardboard tag on it, or my Arc’teryx delegate shorts which is too short for even Canadians.

And if any of you were wondering about the return policy, I had a great chat with Gearhead which, as a friendly mountain goat, told me that I could return and exchange anything for a full refund including items “30 years old and dragged through the mud by a camel”.  How nice of the goat.  I have a feeling I will be taking more than a few extraneous items when I go to the MLK SLC get together.

Some items I am contemplating purchasing with this steady income are:

• Deuter Futura Vario 50 + 10 L backpack
• - or - Osprey Atmos 50 L backpack
• - or - Mountain Hardwear Trance 55 L backpack
• - or - Arc’teryx Needle 55 L backpack (only on sale, or SAC if possible)
• The North Face Lifty GTX 400
• Black Diamond Winter Bivy
• - or - Mountain Hardwear Conduit SL Bivy

And that is only part of my Winter 2007/2008 list…

Anyway… That’s what I’ll be doing.

Doing nothing particularly useful, I found an interesting site… Apparently this guy makes armor for various things. As my favorite aunt noted, this would be an excellent Christmas present for the dogs, Linus and Rigby. With this, their barks would actually mean something.

The following is an example of a search engine:

a) Newspaper

b) CPU - Central Processing Unit

c) Google

d) HTML

e) ARPANET

or

Something that specifically tells the program what to do is called a(n):

a) bug

b) implementation

c) instruction

d) remote

e) calculator

and so on… I’m pretty sure the latter question was repeated at least five times in the exact wording.

On the subject of the Political Science final, I had a large gap from 11:11 AM to 2:00 PM, so I studied a bit, walked around for a while, studied a bit more, walked a bit more, until it was time for my doom. This final required two blue books, and the subject matter was not discussed at all in the lecture, so we had to know everything about everyone we studied. Luckily for me, I articulated Aristotle and Plato while writing my 9 page paper last week, so I had a decent amount of knowledge on the roots of political thinking. Anyway, unlike the CS final, it took me nearly the entire allotted two hours to write about both prompts. But, in the end I managed to survive, though I actually had a better feeling on this final than on the midterm, on which I got a 95%. Assuming I get at least 85% on my paper, I will need to get 70% or better on the final to get a B. The rest is up for speculation I suppose.

Now I only have three midterms left. Whee.