You guys! You guys! Seriously, you guys!

Okay, now that I'm done sounding like Cartman, w00t! I got a call from Amazon today, and offered me a job! Finally, I managed to get out of the casino business, and as of September 8, will be writing code up in Seattle :)

Wow. I have not gotten up this early since I helped my parents move to Eureka back in September (Yet more proof that I've not made a real update in far too long). It is currently 8:30, and I'm stuck sitting on my ass in McCarran Airport for the next hour, waiting for my flight to arrive. Extrapolating back, that means I had to get here at 7:30, which meant leaving Pahrump at 6:30, requiring that I be awake by 5:30. Why must such early times exist?

Hmmm. What could this message in my inbox be? Perhaps a message from Amazon? Why yes, it is. Apparently, they want to fly me up for an on-site interview. I believe this can be best summed up as "w00t!"

Hmm. I've not updated in quite a while, and it's been even longer since I've posted an update with more than 10 lines of text.

Goofing off in SLO:

As I previously mentioned, on March 9th, I finally completed and turned in my senior project. Once that was done, I was free to spend my time as I chose while I waited for the grade change on said project to go through. Most of this time was spent goofing off with friends, getting them to watch Buffy, Firefly, Battlestar Galactica, and part of Angel, when we weren't busy eating at Toshi's or goofing off in other random ways.

During that time, I managed to convince the Weasel that she and Bill should be the ones to pick me up. They were unable to do so until April 3, which meant that I would be staying in SLO while nearly everyone else left for spring break. Asian Ben stayed as well, and we ended up spending most of our time playing video games and eating more Toshi's. A few days after everyone returned, Jamie and Bill arrived in Bill's truck, after which we, along with Smart Ben, Asian Ben, Ilona, Richard, and Forrest, made one final trip to Toshi's.

When we arrived, the restaurant was somewhat full, and it would have been hard to fit 8 of us in a single area. We were willing to eat outside, but instead John, the owner, managed to convince several of the other patrons to move tables, in exchange for free beer and sake. We were then seated, and several of us began to stuff our faces with all-you-can-eat sushi, while the rest selected more reasonably sized meals. During dinner, Joe finally managed to turn up, and joined in our conversations, at which point poor Ilona felt the full force of a conversation among several very vocal perverts.

A Series of Trips

The next morning, we loaded all of my stuff up in the bed of Bill's truck, and returned to Pahrump. Very soon after, Jenny, our parents, and I loaded up into my dad's car to make a trip up to Oregon for a visit to the grandparents'. The trip up was fairly enjoyable, as Jenny and I both had our laptops. It was also somewhat weird, as I'm too tall to fit in the back seat, so I had to sit up front while mom sat in the back with Jenny.

After making the entire trip up in one day(!), we promptly went to sleep, and began the actual visiting the next morning. During our time up there, we ventured to a local coffee shop just about every day to enjoy their delicious coffee, as well as their delicious broadband. We also made a trip to the beach, spent plenty of time hanging out, doing random stuff, and celebrated my 23rd birthday with a cake designed to look extraordinarily like a cat's litter box.

On the way back from Oregon, we stopped in Arcata, so that Jenny could go to Humboldt's Spring Preview thing, as well as pester Julia, whom we had not seen since we moved away from Middletown. From Arcata, we proceeded through a storm, complete with snow and low visibility, to Carson City, where we spent the night, and returned to Pahrump the next day.

Soon after returning from that trip, my dad and I dead-headed a rental up to Elko, so we could retrieve his motorhome from up there. While in Elko, I finally tried a Monte Cristo, and I must say, despite their apparent weirdness, they're damn good.

My Car

Our parents have a policy of buying each of us our first car. For both Jamie and Jessica (our older, half-sister), this was a fairly normal process of buying a reasonably priced used car. I, of course, had to be different. Several years back, while I was still in high school, and we were still living in Arizona, my dad purchased a white 1988 Mazda RX-7 convertible. Some time after having moved to Pahrump, it stopped running, and sat for about a year. This was the car that I decided I wanted, originally out of convenience and cost (we already owned it, so there would be no time involved in searching for a car, nor was any purchase needed), though by the time we started working on it, it had grown on me as a fairly awesome car, complete with nerd value, primarily from its wacky lack of pistons.

After a new battery, and a bit of fancy pedal work that was probably pointless, my car started, and then it was time to begin diagnosing the problems that had arisen from its long slumber. As it turns out, they were mostly chewed wires, resulting in a fairly strong dislike for the motherfucking rabbits that live around here.

By this point, I have:

• Replaced the tires, as they were shot after having sat in the sun for a year.
  
• Fixed 11 chewed/broken wires
  
• Changed the engine coolant, oil, belts, and brake pads
  
• Replaced the passenger's side window regulator, both door speakers, and the window seals.
  
• Replaced the Air Control Valve
  
• Replaced the Alternator
  
• Replaced the front wheel hubs
  

Now I have one necessary repair remaining: At the moment, my wipers will only work on Low, and not on High or the Intermittent settings. A session of googling has revealed that if I were to replace the entire switch, it would cost me $200 minimum. On the other hand, it's just a single relay within that causes such problems, and a new one costs $5. I am sure you can guess which route I will be taking. I should also probably get new shocks.

Aside from having needed some work, my car is awesome. Jamie laughs to no end when she sees me in it, as it is a fairly small car, and I am tall. However, I fit comfortably, and I have at least a little clearance between my head and the roof.

Driving

Of course, having gotten a car that I like, I now had a stronger drive to acquire my license. On April 30, I went down to the DMV to get a Nevada permit. That's number four, if you're keeping count. While there, I asked if I could take the driving test that day. The response was no. Not because of any waiting period required between obtaining a permit and taking the test, but because they didn't have any available times until June motherfucking 26th. There is apparently one woman administering the tests part time. After waiting for two months, I finally took my driving test, and almost managed a perfect score, ending up with a 97% because I forgot to use my turn signals in the empty parking lot where I was pretending to parallel park.

Since I acquired my license (in a weird bit of coincidence, I did so exactly 19 years after my car was delivered to its original owner), I have been driving a lot, as I find that I enjoy it.

Work

Figuring that it would be a good thing to be making money while I worked on my car and got my license, I once again took up my previous job of dealing. This time around, the casino had been bought out by a corporation, and has since become more retarded. With my car just about ready (the new relay should arrive tomorrow), it's definitely time for me to get a real job.

Holy shit!

I actually have a driver's license!

w00t!

What. the FUCK.

So seriously awesome. I cannot wait until season 4, because shit needs resolving.

Me: "Oh, hey, do you know what day it is?"
Kelly: "The Valentine's Day of March?"
Me: "No.... Today is March 14. How would you write that?"
Kelly: "*4/14? Is that like... pot day or something?"
Me: "*twitch* No. That would be 4/20, which, like other dates beginning with '4/', is in April."
Kelly: "Oh. *thinks* Ahh."
Me: "Yes, it's pi day."

W00tberries! Today, I turned my senior project in to the Computer Science department office. That officially marks me as being done! Now I just have to sit around and wait for the paperwork to go through.

Tags: pwnage, senior project, victory

During a discussion about how I pronounce "pen" and "pin" the same way...

Me: "Well, yeah. There's also Asian Ben, Smart Ben, and /usr/bin."
Kelly: "Who's User Ben?"
Me: *falls down laughing*

"It's drool if it ends up on my face! Besides, I'm not that flexible, Ben."

Also, I totally want a shirt with this on it.

	You scored as atheism. You are... an atheist, though you probably already knew this. Also, you probably have several people praying daily for your soul. Instead of simply being "nonreligious," atheists strongly believe in the lack of existence of a higher being, or God. </td> atheism 100% Satanism 58% Buddhism 50% Paganism 42% Judaism 17% Islam 17% agnosticism 17% Christianity 17% Hinduism 0%
Which religion is the right one for you? (new version) created with QuizFarm.com

Hahaha. Woo, go satanism! Or something like that.

Current Music: Smashing Punpkins - Disarm

Reply to this and I will:

1)Tell you why I friended you.
2)Associate you with a song/movie.
3)Tell a random fact about you.
4)Tell my first memory of you.
5)Associate you with an animal/fruit.
6)Ask something I've always wanted to know about you.
7)In return, you must spread this disease in your LJ.

pwn! I beat Freebird on Expert!

That is all. Now I return to my senior project.

me (referencing Family Guy, obviously): Well, strippers are all dead on the inside anyway.
Kelly: Wait, if someone's dead on the inside, don't they take their uterus out?

Kelly: "He's not black, he's African."
*everyone stares at Kelly*
Tim: "Yes Kelly, because everyone knows all black people are from Georgia."

So in a response to Catherine's most recent post, a dislike of (some) religious people was likened to racism. As an atheist who probably holds views similar to, if not stronger than Catherine's, not to mention having held same for a longer period of time, I felt somewhat compelled to respond, although in a manner that is perhaps more forceful and long-winded than is appropriate in what is potentially an argument between siblings. I am instead posting my thoughts here.

It is no secret that I hold a great deal of disdain for organized religion, and yet a great deal of my friends over the years, both on the internet and in real life, have followed one religion or another. Though I may have disdain for religion, it does not carry over to the majority of religious people I meet. The general idea being "respect the person, even if not the idea".

What, then, is the difference between those for whom I do have disdain, and members of different races? In a word, Choice. Judging people based on traits over which they have no control, and for the most part have no real bearing on anything other than how they look is pure asshattery. On the other hand, people have a choice in what they believe and what they do not.

It makes no difference to me whether people believe that there is no god, one god, two gods, or even forty-two, since it is not, after all, possible to ever prove the existence of such a supernatural being. I couldn't care less if someone following one religion or another choose to adhere to tenets restricting food intake, or premarital sex, or work on certain days. Have fun. At most, it's between you and either your employer or a potential mate. I do not even particularly care if others think I am destined to spend eternity in some form of torturous hell or another, although the bringing of this particular belief to my attention is likely to result in an unwelcome and scathing rebuttal. What does earn my scorn is when religion leads to stupidity, especially when it is directed at others.

Mindlessly following old, outdated, supposedly divine texts to the point of ignoring any evidence that anything within may be wrong is not a respectable way to live, and can result in such foolish statements as "That's not evolution, that's adaptation over time." Not only will people holding these illogical beliefs almost surely pass them on to their offspring to the exclusion of all else, but many will attempt to force such things onto the children of others. The last thing we need is such people deciding what knowledge of reality is appropriate for future generations to learn.

Even worse is when people use said texts to justify their own prejudices against members of other races, religions, or people with different sexual habits. Beyond even that are those who begin to think less of different subsets of the population solely because their religious leaders and texts say that they should. Honestly, how weak-willed and wretched must a person be in order to make the choice to hate and mistreat others, merely because an ancient story tells them they should?

Many people I know and respect have exercised their abilities to make their own choices, and while they are different than those I have made, they have chosen to ignore the nonsensical and malicious portions of their religions in favour of treating others with kindness and respect. Therein lies this difference between racism and a disdain for a portion of the religious. The former is an irrational hatred that cannot be ended even when faced with evidence that it is unfounded, and the latter is primarily a dislike for those who would use religion as a means of compelling others to comply with their wills and as a means to justify their own irrational hatred.

Tags: rant, religion
Current Location: home
Current Music: Return of the King

So In the 5 months since I first booted it, I've only grown more fond of my Macbook Pro and the Mac OS. There has been one thing that bugs me though.

At the moment, I am just barely within the range of a couple of wireless networks, meaning that although I can usually connect to them, I do every now and then get disconnected, and it may take a few attempts to reestablish a connection. In order to facilitate network switching and the like, I tend to use the status icon in the menu bar. The same goes for a few other frequently used tools for which the menu bar is a convenient location, such as Bluetooth (now that I actually have a phone with said capabilities), Temperature Monitor, and Virtue Desktops.

Whenever the Airport applet is busy trying to connect to a network, it blocks, and it doesn't just block its own event loop, which would be forgivable. Oh no. It blocks the event loop shared by every menu bar applet written by Apple, including the clock and spotlight. It doesn't seem to be a shortcoming in the implementation of the menu bar itself, since I am still able to access third-party applets like Temperature Monitor even when Airport is blocking. Instead, it seems to be a fault somehow common to all of Apple's applets.

One would expect that by now, Apple might have picked up on the usefulness of multiple threads in a user interface, especially considering how quickly people tend to learn that application code in the event loop of a GUI is a bad idea (mm'kay?).

Tags: apple, programming
Current Location: Home

As usual, it's been a while since I've posted, but for now at least, I will skip past any sort of overview, brief or otherwise, of what happened since my last update, and focus solely on this past weekend. Saturday was Ilona's Birthday, leading to a set of celebratory events.

For some time now, Ilona had been planning on a trip to Magic Mountain for her birthday, and having her sister in town for said trip. Upon hearing this, Asian Ben asked if any of us knew what Ilona's sister was like. Suffice it to say, he was quite shocked to hear "Ilona's the only religious one in her family."

On Thursday, Ilona's sister Erika arrived, and that night, she, Ilona, and Smart Ben went line dancing. I did not go, because I was senior projecting when all of this was decided, and in any case, I suck at dancing. On Friday, a fairly large group of us went to The Olive Garden in Santa Maria to celebrate. This of course led to trouble of the most entertaining sorts, as such gatherings often do. In continuing with past celebrations of Ilona's birthday at Olive Garden, lemon wedges and packets of artificial sweetener flew across the table several times. After the battle of sweetener packets ended, we proceeded to mock Ilona for her massive consumption of cheese, as well as her immense pickiness and hatred of all things involving tomatoes. Soon after that, conversation turned to center mostly on Family Guy and video games, at least among those of us who are familiar with such things. That lasted until we tried to embarrass Ilona by making her listen to a bunch of employees singing to her.

After dinner, we decided to play games at the Bens' and Kelly's. Richard and I wanted to play Trivial Pursuit, but Ilona and Smart Ben, having played against me before, were unwilling to play unless booze was involved as a handicap to those of us who knew more random stuff. By the time we got around to starting the game, we had Ilona, Erika, Richard, Kelly, Smart Ben, and myself playing, as well as Asian Ben yelling the occasional answer from the other room. The only problem with the "booze handicap" was that neither Richard nor I drank enough, or were willing to drink enough, to impair either of us in any form. By the time we decided to call it a night, given the early morning we were planning, Richard and I each had two pie pieces, and nobody else had any. It seems that nobody has enough random knowledge to be willing to play against us more than once.

After Richard, Ilona, and Erika left, our plans for sleep were interrupted by Kelly's Tim coming over, and telling Smart Ben that the rear window of his car had been smashed in. Ben called the police, and with the exception of Asian Ben, who managed to sleep through all of this, we went outside to survey the damage. Apparently, some drunks kicked the mailbox off a nearby church, and threw it into the back window of Ben's car. After 45 minutes or so of listening to drunken neighbors telling tales of punching the guys that probably broke Ben's window, we went inside. By that point, I was no longer tired, so I stayed up until 3am. Ben ended up staying up until the police finally arrived at about 3:45.

Thankfully, our early morning was made less early by Erika's veto of Ilona's idea to not go back to Starbucks after picking us up, and we got up around 6:45. After a fairly quick shower, it was time to go, so the four of us piled in to Erika's Focus, and headed to the nearest source of caffeine. Ilona and Ben, blasphemers that they are, walked next door to Jamba Juice, rather than enjoying the sweet, sweet nectar that is caffeine. Once we had obtained our liquid sustenance, we were again on the road south to Magic Mountain, stopping at a Vons along the way to obtain sammiches, arriving at the park at around 10:18. After parking and cursing at traffic cones for being in the way of an otherwise perfectly good shortcut, we made it through the gates at around 10:30, where we were greeted by "Don't Fear the Reaper" (complete with cowbell!) on the sound system.

Upon entry, we immediately sought out coasters to ride. Our first of the day was Goliath, with almost no wait, given how early it was in the day. Ben was the only one raising his arms, and his prize for his enthusiasm was getting cut by a plastic cup that someone up front had let go of. Overall though, 'twas a fun ride, and left us all with the adrenaline rush that makes coasters so desirable. Our second of the day, Scream, had a bit of a longer line, though not by a significant amount, and was also a fairly different beast, having several loops, and being nearly bottomless. Having sat in the center, Erika and I got a footrest, because we were just more awesome. Overall, I expect that it would have been a more enjoyable ride had I not been wearing my glasses, as I kept having to concentrate on having them not fall off, rather than look ahead.

Next up was Colossus, which was running in reverse for the Halloween weekend. Being a wooden structure, it was much bumpier than the previous two, and the falling backwards was an interesting sensation, which might have been more pleasant had I not repeatedly been lifted from my seat and slammed back down at the bottom of each slope. By that point, I realized that although I am not normally affected in the least by four shots of espresso for breakfast, it probably wasn't the best thing to do before riding several roller coasters in quick succession. As a result, I wasn't really up for another coaster, so while Ilona, Erika, and Ben rode the Batman ride, I rode the standing in line ride. Following Batman, Erika joined me on the standing in line ride, while Ben and Ilona rode Riddler's Revenge. By that point, the lines had grown fairly long, and featured the people ahead of us ignoring the signs, and smoking in line. We also spent a fair portion of the time explaining my binary watch to Erika, and slowly assimilating her into nerd-hood.

By the time Ben and Ilona finished riding Riddler's Revenge, we had all grown hungry, so we rode the tram back to Erika's car, in order to obtain our food. After we finished eating in the small picnic area across from the gates to the park, everyone agreed that it had grown warm enough to go on a water ride. After waiting in line for about an hour, part of which was caused by technical difficulties of some sort, we got to ride the Log Jammer. During the ride, Ben and I splashed water at Erika and Ilona, getting them somewhat wet. By the end, however, it made no difference, as the final hill got them completely soaked. Having sat in the back, I barely got wet at all, which was probably good, since I was carrying all of the electronics.

Following Log Jammer was the Viper, in part to help Ilona and Erika dry off. The wait probably would have been quite long, but almost nobody was in line for the front seats, most likely because most people didn't realize that it was a line. Given that the Viper was another looping track, I once again chose to forgo the coaster itself and ride the line-waiting ride. Given that it was still fairly warm, we decided to go on Roaring Rapids, another water ride. After waiting in line for about an hour, without any significant progress, we gave up in search of other rides.

Upon seeing the track, Ilona and Ben decided on Deja Vu, a looping coaster that runs forward and backward. Neither Erika nor I wanted to ride it, and for that matter, I can't ride it, as I'm too tall. Once again, we rode the wait in line ride, and we all spent more time teaching binary to Erika, and she managed to catch on fairly well. After more that an hour in line, Erika and Ilona started to get cold, so Erika and I went to her car to retrieve sweatshirts and the rest of our food.

I was, as usual, wearing cargo shorts, and was able to fit Ben's sandwich in one pocket, and mine in another, without it being blatantly obvious. I then handed Erika hers and Ilona's sandwiches, which she could have easily placed in her sweatshirt pockets. Instead, she decided she wanted to bring chips as well. In order to accommodate both sandwiches and her chips, she had to stuff them inside her sweatshirt, creating the appearance that she was pregnant. Of course, she tried to creep me out by pointing out that it looked as if I were the father, an attempt that failed. Upon returning to the park gates, we tried desperately to maintain straight faces as she preceded me through the metal detectors, and in that regard, we succeeded magnificently. The security guard asked Erika what she was hiding in her sweatshirt, to which she responded "nothing". She then turned to him with a sad look on her face, rubbed the bulge in her sweatshirt, and asked "I'm here all alone, is that okay?" He eventually caught on, got embarrassed, and let her through. About 50 feet in, we could no longer hold it in, and cracked up laughing. Of course, when we met up with Ben and Ilona once more, we regaled them with the tale of Erika's immaculate conception.

After we finished eating, Ben, Ilona, and Erika rode Revolution, before we went our separate ways, as Ilona and Erika wanted to ride Tatsu, the new, seriously insane ride, where "normal" is face down. Neither Ben nor I wanted to ride Tatsu, or for that matter, wait in line for 3 hours. Instead, we went on Roaring Rapids, now that the line was a great deal shorter. Next up, we went on Jetstream, which was much less wet than Log Jammer. There was initially a small wait, while they got somebody unstuck from one of the boats, but after that, there was no delay whatsoever, so I rode a second time, this time without Ben. After that, we called Ilona, to find that they were still in line. While waiting for them to finish up, we went on the bumper cars, and laughed as some people who tried to cut ahead of us in line got cut off at the gate, and ended up having to wait as long as they should have. By that point, it was 10:00, so we went and hung out by the exit to Tatsu to wait for the girls. Half an hour later, they were finally done, and it was apparently "fucking awesome". At this point, we decided that half price appetizers from Applebee's sounded good. We asked two park employees, who were clueless, saying something about "5 or 6 back streets". Instead, I called Catherine for ground control. The directions were, I shit you not, "Take Magic Mountain Parkway, turn left on Valencia Boulevard. There you go." We ended up following the signs leading to I-5 via Valencia Boulevard, which loops around a bit. We eventually found Applebee's, but surprisingly, they closed at 11, rather than the midnight closing time for the one here in SLO, where everything closes early.

Being still hungry, we went to Denny's, which was fairly crowded, resulting in things going a little slowly, but not overly slow. In the process of waiting for food, Erika fell asleep at the table. After we finished eating, Erika went out to the car to continue sleeping, while we boxed up our leftovers and paid. Given that our driver was too tired, Ilona got stuck with driving, as I still don't have my license, Ben doesn't have much experience with manual transmissions, and in any case, Erika won't let anyone driver her car unless they're related to her, or she's sleeping with them. Now, had I thought about it, I could have mentioned that as a minister in the Universal Life Church, I can perform marriage ceremonies, and could then annul one a 3 hour drive later.

After a quick stop for gas, we were on our way back to SLO, at nearly 1 am. About an hour later, Ilona was experiencing the diuretic effects of the soda she was drinking to maintain proper caffeine levels, so we ended up stopping at a gas station, where somebody inside was being arrested. While we were stopped, I cleaned the windshield, and it was at that point that we discovered that Erika had not fastened her seat belt before falling asleep. Thankfully, nothing happened during that time, and she had her belt on for the remaining two hours. During the ride back, Ben and I managed to keep enough of a conversation going to help keep Ilona awake, though I still maintain that music with more of a beat would have helped as well.

Thanks to the end of Daylight Savings Time, we managed to get back in town at 3am, after which we promptly fell asleep. For as little sleep as I'd gotten over the past few days, I actually managed to wake up, without the aid of my alarm, a whole two minutes before noon. Later on, I got a call from Ilona, offering me food that her mom had sent down. Not being the sort of person to turn down free food, I headed over to Ilona's, only to get roped into helping her hang her new curtains.

Next time, I'll have to not wear my glasses on the rides, in order to better enjoy them. I'm also thinking that I'll ride Tatsu, as I need to experience the "fucking awesome"-ness of such an insane ride.

Hmm... Lately, I've been seeing that LJ interests meme floating around, and decided I needed to be a sheep.

( My Interests Collage )

Current Location: Home

Bleh. Work has been fairly boring, and somewhat obnoxious lately. It has, for the most part, been dead, leading to long hours of standing at the craps table doing nothing but twirling the stick, or playing with a puck, depending on where I am at the table. When we do have players, they are more often than not obnoxious ones.

A few weeks ago, on a typical boring Tuesday, Jamie and I actually had a couple of players on the craps table. Now, on weekdays, there is rarely enough demand for craps to require the extra dealer to have both sides of the table open (if standing, as craps players should, the table can easily accommodate eight players on a single side), and so the other side of the table will have signs saying "No action this side. Please use other side." On this particular night, we had a guy walk up to the dead side of the table, pick up the sign, look at it, flip it over, and then throw his money down onto the layout. Jamie and I both immediately called "no action" on his money, prompting him to pick up his money and flip the sign back over. He was apparently angered at our refusal to deal to him on that side of the table, because as he was walking over to the blackjack tables to continue his assholery, he went out of his way to bump into the roulette table, trying to knock the ball out of its track as it spun. Unfortunately for him, the pit boss was at the roulette table at the time. She thought he was merely drunk and stumbling, and had him cut off from further consumption of booze. When he continued his assholery, he got kicked out.

There has been plenty of other assholery, but I'll save that for a different post.

A few weeks back, Ilona came to visit for a few days, an experience that surely corrupted her a great deal, especially since she shared a room with Jenny, my younger sister. On one of our days off, Weasel, Bill, Ilona and I went to the Star Trek Experience at the Hilton. On the way there and back, Weasel and I made Ilona listen to good music, as well as the horror of the two of us singing along to russian pop and german heavy metal. Combined with the usual brand of perversion to be found in my family, I'm sure Ilona was scarred by her visit.

As mentioned in my previous post, I do indeed have a very awesome new computer, a 15" MacBook Pro, ordered through Catherine, as she has an internship at Apple this summer. It is the most awesome computer I have ever used, and although I paid for the computer myself, I think I'm in linux-support debt to Catherine for quite some time.

Like Aaron before me, I have decided to never go back. Linux will continue to suit my needs for servers, but as far as laptops go, I'll stick with Apple.

Current Music: My espresso machine.

w00t! What do I have sitting on the table in front of me? A MacBook Pro! This is so cool I have to go to the bathroom! Except not really...

HAHAHAHA! *Dies laughing*

So, I was talking to Ilona after she read my last update, which resulted in the following conversation:

Ilona: "I can't believe you posted that sheep thing."
Me: "What? It was funny!"
Ilona: "I guess. I still don't get how the sheep is supposed to be a date."
Me: *dies laughing* "The implication is that people from Nevada have sex with sheep."
Ilona: "Oh. Ew."
Me: "I am so blogging this."

So I've had an interesting couple of weeks since my last update. After our last all-nighter, Ilona, Ben, and I had selected Sunday, May 21st as the date of our trip to the beach. This led to a trip to Farmers' the Thursday before, so that we could purchase strawberries and other delicious things. While there, I also purchased a pair of swim trunks, the color of which (black) apparently displeased Ilona.

After nice weather all that week, Sunday came around, and it was raining. Despite their previous plans to go into the cold ocean water, Ilona and Ben were both too weak to go to the beach in the much warmer rain. Instead, we all hung out at Ben's place, where we played a couple of rounds of Skip-Bo, where I was twice pwned. We then called Aaron, and got him to join us so that we would have enough people to play Taboo. After Ilona and I proceeded to kick the collective ass of Aaron and Ben, Aaron decided that he needed to work on his Security project, so the three of us not burdening ourselves with homework for the moment decided to play Trivial Pursuit.

The nice thing about Trivial Pursuit is that it relies on random, normally useless knowledge, something of which I have quite the overabundance. This led to my kicking ass until it was time to answer my final question. Ben and Ilona kept picking evil sports questions, delaying my eventual win. Said win never occurred, as Ilona decided she was not willing to forgo sleep before going to work the next day.

The next weekend involved a great deal of academic slavery of sorts, mostly the completion of my senior project specification. After completing that, and turning it in on Tuesday, I stayed up way too late completing the paper for my security project, for it was due the next day. I managed to get it, along with the proof-of-concept Intrusion Detection System on time. That Friday, we all had to show off our projects at a poster session.

At the poster session, I ran into Richard, who suggested "booze and donuts" afterward. This led to a large gathering that eventually made it to Ben's place. We invited Aaron along, and after some waffling, he decided to join us, but claimed he would not drink. We laughed. On the way to Ben's, we stopped at Albertson's to pick up some tonic water, where Aaron decided that he would, after all, booze it up with a bottle of champagne. Once we were all situated, we watched Waiting..., during which Aaron drank his bottle of champagne. I, on the other hand, had a single gin and tonic, at about 1/8 the "recommended" strength, because tonic water is good.

The next movie in the queue was Just Friends. Upon seeing the description, Aaron decided he would need more alcohol, so he got himself another bottle of champagne. Richard and I bought candy, as well as cheap soda and mentos, to re-create the chemical reaction that has become so popular on the internet in the past few weeks.

After creating a few fountains of soda, it was time to start the movie, and let me say, it was bad. So bad that most of us were laughing, and Aaron was consuming booze at a greatly increased rate. Once he finished his bottle of champagne, he switched to drinking straight gin. Richard and I proceeded to cut him off, by locking all of the alcohol in Richard's trunk, and then proceeding to Sunshine Donuts, according to tradition. Upon our return, we encountered Catherine, who agreed to join us for a ritual burning of the posters from the aforementioned poster session.

Catherine, Aaron, Richard, and I proceeded to walk down to the miniature park in the middle of Mustang Village in order to use the large barbecue pit, so as to not light anything on fire by accident. While Richard and I burned the posters, Catherine explored, and Aaron to fell asleep at one of the nearby picnic tables. Once the fire was out, we prodded Aaron awake. He then took two steps, and face planted into the dirt. We got him back to his room, and after leaving him a note telling him just where he had thrown his glasses, we all called it a night.

The next day, Saturday, was to be the night of the quarterly trip to Denny's to goof off before finals. Given that Ilona now lives in Morro Bay, she decided to hang out with me for the time between getting off of work and the start of the gathering at midnight. Ben soon joined us at Jamba Juice. While there, Ilona managed to obtain three free tickets to a choir concert. After the concert, we all proceeded to Denny's which was far too full to fit the large group of which we were a part. Instead, we went to the other Denny's, where we told many stories of Aaron's past drunken antics. There was also a minor war of artificial sweetener packets between myself and Ilona.

On Sunday, we finally made our trip to the beach. We all spent a fairly significant amount of time in the water, for it was nice and cold. After we finished, we returned to Ben's to make Ilona watch Firefly before she had to run off to do other things. I stayed there, hanging out with Ben and Kelly. During that time, Ben discovered that he had in fact gotten sunburned, as he was turning red. Eventually, both Ben and Kelly had to return to studying (studying is for the weak!), so I headed back to my apartment to resume packing.

On Monday, I resumed work on my Soxhlet extractors, and later received a call from Ilona, asking me if I wanted to go with her to Arroyo Grande while she bought herself a vacuum. Having little else to do, I agreed. After purchasing a vaccum and a new pair of work shoes, Ilona decided she wanted to go bra shopping as well. Being considerate, or at the very least pretending to do so, she asked me if I minded. I did not, and I got a trip to Starbucks out of it, so I can't complain. Later that night, Aaron and Catherine joined us for dinner, and then I made Ilona watch more Firefly.

The next few days consisted mostly of working on my soxhlet extractors during the day (I even got up early), and packing during later times. By Friday, I managed to get two fairly decent extractors made, as well as a third, not so decent one to bring home and show off.

That night, Aaron returned from home, and so he, Tim, Ilona and I, along with two of Aaron's friends from high school hung out at Tim's place, mostly playing Guitar Hero. Around midnight, Tim booted us out so that he could participate in the annual bad singing up at the P on the hill behind the school. Aaron, Lucas, Shelly, and I returned to our apartment, where we spent some time playing Password ("You....") before an obviously drunk neighbor whose computer we had previously fixed barged in. She proceeded to try to convince Aaron to get drunk (there are sober children in Africa, after all), and then gave Forrest some relationship advice. According to the drunken wisdom of our neighbor, if you tell your girlfriend that you're lucky to have her, you get to play with her breasts.

On Sunday, my dad came down from Pahrump to haul me back the next day. While we were sitting outside, Ilona showed up, and once again, proved just how sheltered she is.

Dad: "In Nevada, you have a colt on your hip, a camel in your mouth, and a sheep in your lap."
Ilona: (confused) "Okay, the colt is a gun, obviously, and the camel is a cigarette, but what's the sheep for?"
Dad: "A date."

I got hit for laughing at that, but it was well worth it.

Monday morning, we got all my stuff loaded up in the truck, and took a short trip to the California DMV so that I could once again obtain a permit. After more than an hour there, I walked away victorious, and after a quick detour to say goodbye to Ilona and drop off a CD for Ben, we were on our way. We made fairly good time, but still got back to Pahrump at 7pm, too late for me to start work that night. Instead, I just pestered the Weasel a bit.

On Tuesday, I went down to the Nugget to fill out paperwork, and at 5pm, started work for the summer. 'Twas an awesome first night back. I am officially scheduled as a Craps dealer, rather than a blackjack dealer that begs to go over to craps whenever possible, and since there were four craps dealers that night, we picked up Roulette as well. Beyond that, I made $165 in my first seven hours of work.

Given my plans to purchase a MacBook Pro, I have been scheduled to work 6 days a week, meaning that I worked on Wedesday night, even though Weasel was off. I ended up working with two fairly grumpy dealers, a potentially bad combination with a relative n00b like myself. I managed to hold my own without problems though.

Today (by now yesterday, really) was my day off, and the day of our weekly family dinners with Weasel and Bill. Some time otherwise dedicated to goofing off was spent searching for the dogs after a part of our fence blew down. Much of the rest of the time was spent laughing at the wrongness as Jenny finally got her sim-versions of Weasel and Bill to get it on.

That was quite long. This is why more frequent updates are good, mm'kay?

Current Mood: tired
Current Music: Sarah McLachlan - Full of Grace

So recently, Catherine got hooked on Buffy. This weekend, we have been watching it while we work. Forrest has occasionally wandered into the room, where he has been confused. The result of the last such bit of confusion is as follows:

Forrest: "Are there woman vampires?"
Me: "Yeah..."
Forrest: "Pinocchio would be really good..."

Current Location: The Living Room
Current Music: "Band Candy"