What an eventful week! Not so much in terms of accomplishments (rarely do I have a “productive” week), but in terms of interesting stuff happening - Whammo®! Lots of thinking, playing, mischiefizing, and sulking to report on.

(By the way, these reports normally go up on Monday afternoon, when I have time to put them here, even though they have Sunday’s date. I would put Monday’s date on them, but then I’d end up putting them up on Tuesday…)

The frequency of Quake playing on Wednesday through Friday was pretty high. Life was a Quake game, occasionally interrupted by eating and sleeping. Imagine if life were really a game of Quake! Your face would be defined by only a couple of flat polygons. Boy would that make shaving easy! Josh would fit right in, as he now has dimensionless hair, or as Katrina put it, “Your head looks like a mouse.”

Thanksgiving dinner was about the most interesting I’ve ever had. Ed and I played quake right up until dinner time, then we decided to walk into Palo Alto to have a nice dinner at a restaurant (sans Amol, since he evidently forgot the plans and ate at Boston Market without us). So we walk 45 minutes in the rain, all the way to the end of University Avenue, finding only “Miyake’s” and “Sub-Par-Miyake’s” (japanese restaurants, one expensive, one imitative) open. We certainly didn’t want japanese, so we rented “Lost in Space,” and went home to order pizza. I called every pizza place in the phone book, to no avail. So, we went down to the terrace (our open kitchen), and microwaved quesadillas and meatloaf, which we ate while watching one of the lamest movies I can remember having seen.

Leah, Ed’s friend from high school visited from Friday to Sunday. Had there been any doubt that I could avoid doing work all break, she shattered it… Now there was someone who was never doing a problem set, so I didn’t have to feel too guilty. I got to express my competitive side a bit, to relieve any lingering guilt, by playing her chess, darts, and playing Matt in a rousing game of “who can unlock the door first.” She killed me in chess, I returned the favor for darts, and Matt and I remained pretty even - a good match. It started with racing to the terrace or the door back into the dorm, but progressed to him trying to steal my set of keys to open my door. We fought over those for a while, but Amol ended up opening it, causing a draw. Matt immediately sprinted for his room, but I caught him, and we wrestled over his keys for a while, when I finally capitalized by grabbing them just as he got the key in the door, then running up the stairs and doubling back to unlock his door. We shook hands and congratulated ourselves, and took care to avoid all the people standing in the hall laughing at us, as we returned to our rooms…

Saturday I walked into Palo Alto with Ed and Leah, to try and get “Risk.” We declined, as it cost as much as 3 haircuts - nearly thirty dollars! We found a dip sign laying next to the road next to, well, a dip. It had been rammed by a car it looked like, so I hoisted it over my shoulder and we started for the dorm. Almost out of a grove of trees I caught a glimpse of a nearby police car, so I promptly dropped the sign and continued walking, while Ed and Leah stopped and proceeded to look at the ground as a wanted criminal might. “Keep walking!” I forcefully intoned, nodding my head towards the cop. We decided to come back later, which we did, but I decided the whole thing was not worth the risk and trouble, so we stood the dip sign up in the middle of the field.

Finally, on Sunday, we bid Leah farewell (passing the time waiting for her ride by creating a story about a druggie smurf named Gilgamesh, each of us taking turns saying one word of the story). We saw Ever After at flicks. At one point before the show, I turned around (stupid move) during the traditional weekly paper fight. I was going to shield myself so I could look around at who was there, but right as I turned, whammo®, I was blinded by the impact of a half-pound compacted paper ball, right between the eyes. It blinded my right eye, and when I finally looked up at Ed, he informed me that I was bleeding. And no one of course volunteered themselves as the culprit, so I couldn’t even target my anger. I’m now finally getting rid of the spot I see in my right eye, and I have a bit of a scar from the cut… Unfortunately, my theory about movies and my psyche proved correct again (an inverse relationship between my mood and the happiness of the ending). Ever After ends perfectly, so I have been in a bad mood “ever since”. Should clear up soon though, after my java program is done…

This week was so eventful, I even forgot to mention I went to a Better than Ezra concert, where we were very close to the stage, and the lead singer came into the audience and acutally brushed by me. And I have two tickets to the Goo Goo Dolls concert TOMORROW, and I have forgotten to look for a co-attendee. Oops! Better get on that now.

Quote of the week:

Leah: You really can’t say “South Dakota” without sounding dumb…

This is Bradley, signing out.

I went to see “There’s Something About Mary” last week… This movie was sick and wrong in so many ways, but I was more disturbed by my insensitivity to a lot of the movie, since it was so immoral. This means I’ve really built up a shield to improper stuff, and I don’t like that, I shouldn’t be able to enjoy it so easily. Following the movie, I sank into one of those expectant “The Moon Is Red Tonight” moods, and started walking… I randomly stopped at a curb, and turned around, and there was a trash bag, so I thought “Maybe it’s signifigant…” I opened it up, and…… It was stinky trash. Which just goes to show that when you’re looking for meaning in life, you still got to watch out for trash, even if it seems promising.

I put off learning LISP and writing the program, unfortunately, until the day it was due. Needless to say I didn’t get it done. So what did I do all Friday? I woke up at around 11, showered, and sat down to program. Twelve hours later, the program finished, I finally got up from the chair. So it was one day late, my negative third late day.

Saturday was fun - Big Game.. We beat Cal for the fourth straight year, even though everyone thought Cal was going to win this year. Boy were those bears mad - after the game, we jumped onto the field celebrating, meanwhile Cal had rushed it as well and were trying to break through to us, but couldn’t, thanks to the hundred yellow clad security people. They fought with them a bit, then decided (brilliantly) to begin to rip up their own field, for ammo. They bombarded us with sod, one projectile hit me, but they were Cal students, so they threw like girls (especially the girls) and it didn’t hurt.

You know what’s fun? Sitting in the front of the balcony during flicks (the sunday movie, if you didn’t know), ripping up newspaper into inch squares throughout the movie and putting them on the wide balcony railing in front of you… Then near the end, get a friend to help you push the 4 foot wide pile onto those below you… It doesn’t take much effort to unconsciously do this the whole movie, and its well worth the reward at the end…

Well, I put this off too long, and so I don’t believe it’s of “Grade AA” quality, but next week should be good - Thanksgiving break this week!!

Disappointment of the week:

Me: Porque no vine el viernes pasado, no sabia que tuvimos tarea.. No la tengo…
Julio: Too bad! Get out, no late work!

This is Bradley, signing out.

Boy, one minute you think something is black and white, then you discover it actually has 16.7 million shades of grey.

Case in point (among many this week): the conclusion to last weeks drama. I figured I would get it done, or I wouldn’t. What ended up happening was: I got it working minimally in a few hours, much to the dismay of those working on the same program, as it was taking a long time for most. But after I submitted it at 11:59, 45 seconds before I would use my negative third late day, I discovered that it had two immediate problems. It was supposed to print a status report at every 1000 finger requests, but it seemed to get lazy and skip one now and then. Also, I told it to only query a host four times, but it would do it seventeen, eighteen times. So I ended up mostly getting it done; it was “dark grey.”

I went to work the other day for four hours. I work doing network support in the Stanford hospital. What did I accomplish in those four hours? I pulled out one wire. The other time was mostly spent freaking my roomate out via a hacker program that controls a win95 machine remotely. I made a plethora of notepads pop up on his screen, erased the asterisks as he was trying to type his password in, and moved the mouse right before he could close the program that allowed me to do all this. Meanwhile I could look at the video of his increasingly “freaked out” expression over his video cam, Ain’t technology wonderful? Oh, by the way, the wire I pulled out was a mistaken addition I made the previous week.

Friday Ed and I drew arrows on the ground with chalk, the kind leading lost freshman and such to their appointed gathering place. Only we deviously looped the route in such a way that you could never escape the path, once you started on it. I soon expect to see haggard freshmen shuffling along in this loop, wondering where their “Getting Around Stanford” seminar is. I also had fun burning many things this week, as Ed had a box of matches in his room.

I went to a chamber chorale concert. Wow, was it good.. I love old school classical harmony with words I cannot understand; it was like listening to a piece of heaven. The best (and worst) part of the concert was a beautiful blonde girl that sat next to me, and appeared to be giving me “i-kinda-like-you” glances, which I reciprocated. We did the back and forth middle school thing the whole time, then a few long stares as I left, STUPIDLY not talking to her. I’ve regretted it ever since, as I’m sure I’ll never see her again. I have been rather preoccupied ever since. But it does mean I’ll be attending every chamber choral concert in the next three years.

Quote(s) of the Week:

Me: “…”
Beautiful Blonde Girl at Concert: “…”
Me: “…!”

This is Bradley, signing out.

I think time is speeding up.

I sit here writing at nearly 4 AM Monday morning, surveying the past week, and feeling convinced it couldn’t have lasted more than three days. Oh, you may disagree I’m sure, but try explaining how I can get so little done in so many days. I have a CS107 program due tomorrow at midnight, and have been working on it since two in the afternoon. I now have negative two late days left to spend, and that probably means I shouldn’t feel at liberty to just “take some more.”

I saw our football team take a pounding yesterday, after being assured they would come close at worst, win at best. And I had to hear that annoying USC band jingle 40 times.. At least that was how many times they had played it when I left, as our band was keeping a running total.

I was sprayed by windshield wiper fluid for the second time in my life today. I rode through the parking garage on the way home from work at the hospital today, and “inconvenienced” a woman in a Bronco, since she had to drive slowly behind me for a moment. I made room as soon as I got onto the street, but was going almost as fast as the Bronco anyway. As she passed me, I felt a rather wide spray of fluid hit me in the face, and I realized it was her wiper fluid. We came to a stop sign shortly after, and as I looked in the window, I’m almost sure she smirked. Women.

Julio, my crazy spanish teacher (I’m not exaggerating) made us dance again on Friday. It was supposedly the “salsa” (me bouncing vaguely along to the beat, attached to a girl bouncing along to an apparently unrelated beat), and the macarena (evidently the “extended” mix, ugh).

I find that I have a lot of trouble thinking of interesting stuff, let alone sounding interesting, at 4 AM. Please excuse me, and mail me encouraging letters so that I’ll start at a reasonable time next week.

And now, for the quote(s) of the week.

Me, 2:00 PM: “I hope to be done by 10, so I can go to the movie tonight”
Me, 10:00 PM: “I hope to be done by midnight, so I can sleep well tonight”
Me, 3:00 AM: “I hope to die in my sleep, so I don’t have to face debugging tomorrow”

Will I get done by the deadline, midnight Monday? Tune in next week for the exciting conclusion.

This is Bradley, signing out.

Enough funny things happen every day I’m bound to forget some of them… But since this is the first online journal entry, I feel volumes of anecdotes are being left out. Oh well. Maybe it’ll improve my awful short term memory. Like, I just realized I forgot to pay my outstanding Stanford University bill. Apparently I owe about 3 pico cents. So, I better pay before they kick me out.

I’m hoping that this journal along with some other “self-improvement” efforts will improve my organization and motivation. Even if no one reads it, I might someday, and realize what a lazy fool I was in college. Except when it comes to riding my unicycle, or listening to music - I’m a champion at that stuff. Although my pedal just got stripped and fell off, so that’ll kinda delay that.

Cosmetic improvement .. er, cosmetic alteration has been a big factor in my life lately. I bleached my hair BLONDE the other day, and have gotten quite a few compliments, and a lot of shocked looks. I put up all 400 christmas lights and the room size halloween spider in our room, so it looks “awesome” according to a passerby who had to visit… A passerby, who, like all but one person now, knows I’m from Colorado. The one exception is Jill, a girl who believes I’m from Pennsylvania - Pittsburg. Why, you ask? Dunno, but I think it went something like this:

Jill: “Where are you from again?”
Me: “You don’t remember?”
Jill: “Oh.. Are you from Pennsylvania too?”
Me: “Um, yes!”

So, accordingly, we have had a lot of fun with that since then. It’s a good thing I said Pittsburg and not Philly - she’s from Philly so I’d probably slip up quickly.

I had to pay 13 cents for a page of paper with a single small “9″ printed on it… I don’t know why my 8 page assignment felt compelled to expand itself to 9 pages, but it cost me big. Oh, that reminds me - I really wish I weighed 13 pounds (or less), but still had the same strength. Think of the jumping you could do!

I think I need some kind of weekly “you-can-count-on-it” features. Well, rather than count on keeping the exact format of the first entry, maybe I’ll try a few things. I’m thinkin’ a quote of the week for starters:

Me: “Ahh.. That’s spit!”
Alex, my RA: “No, its static electricity.”

This is Bradley, signing out.