I have a real life… I realized recently that my “chronicle” life looks quite, well, anecdotal, trivial, and superficial. My life, however, is not. As a matter of fact, I have a good share of drama, sadness, wrestling with tough issues, victory, and defeat. But, in respect to those involved in these things, and also because I’m not sure I’m ready to reveal to the world all my deepest emotions and intentions, I do not include many of these things. Now, if you are a friend of mine, you may perhaps know of the bigger issues anyway… Just an aside.

Well, for the first time since I began college, I believe I can say I’m truly happy where I am academically. Every quarter up until this one has been fraught with trying to catch up, and poor performance in one area or another. But looking back, this quarter has been quite good – I’ve stayed caught up and started early on stuff. But can my life be satisfied just going along fine? Ha. I also have not had interpersonal problems at Stanford, which was nice. Well, apparently things can’t just plain be pleasant, as some of that drama I mentioned before has made a mess of things, and in several situations things have gone wrong. Ah well, such is the stuff of life, and I only hope I can avoid causing pain to anyone else besides myself in the future.

I witnessed one of the most violent scenes I have seen in person the other day. Considering the scene, I have probably been pretty sheltered from violence in the past. I was tossing grapes at a fellow dorm member, Zaid, and, figuring he would outdo my poor tosses, he wound up for a huge fastball… Well, the blazing grape was about 15 degrees off, and impacted an innocent bystander right in the eye (fortunately covered by glasses). The force of the blast sent grape shrapnel flying, but luckily no one else was injured. Jeremy, however, needed to wash his eye out, and may suffer from an aversion to grape products for years.

You know, people say that patience is a virtue, and that cleanliness is next to godliness. But what if you are all out of clean clothes, and you can either butt in and get a washer, or have to wait til tomorrow? Then, either you’d be godly but lack virtue, or be virtuous but definitely ungodly. So take a hint from me: Be nice. People may not appreciate your smell, but they will apprecite you, and you are more important than your smell (usually).

I overheard (not intentionally, she was loud) one half of a conversation the other day that literally smelled of self-honesty – the kind you don’t want to be chatting about loudly in the coffee shop. “Well, I was doing my multiplication tables by the time I was two and a half..” (Ok, bright girl, maybe not too humble…) “You know, I don’t really care about a very large set of people.” (hmm… The guy she’s talking to notices I’m paying attention and gives me a humored smile.) “People say I’m altruistic …” (got a little quieter, as I think she heard me snickering.) ” … kind of like Mother Theresa … but no …” Well, Mother Theresa can rest in peace.

I managed to get quite a bit done on the job Thursday – rewriting “Save Tonight” by Eagle-Eye Cherry to fit in with a MedIT networking theme, eating some fine chocolates in the dark of a network closet, and speaking about a trip to France whilst networking. Notice they all involved networking- I wouldn’t be working if they didn’t. Yeva and I always manage to make the ho-hum routine of cables and packets humor-filled and fun.

Speaking of France, I need to go obtain a passport now, as I plan to go in only 8 weeks, and passports can take 6 or more… And with OUR postoffice, that may be extended to 13 years or so.

Quote of the week:

Ed to Amol: “Not your feet, your feet taste good.”

Let that quote inspire you to greatness…

This may be a short Chronicle (it turns out it isn’t), but I feel compelled to put one up so as not to establish the bad habit of skipping. They say it only takes like 6 weeks to establish a habit, good or bad, and I’ve missed two weeks, although not consecutive, so maybe I might still be safe, but I really wanted a sentance with a lot of conjunctions, and this seemed the best way to do it.

I disappeared for an entire day from Friday afternoon to Saturday. At least that was what happened from my dormmates’ perspective… From my perspective, I actually did not disappear, I merely traveled away from campus. I went to a Harvest slumber party, where I ate a lot, described my perfect date, played Taboo, declined some “Spam-n-rice”, drew a treasure map for a Twizzler in the middle of the floor, slept fitfully (thanks to a cuckoo clock and freezing temperatures), ate a waffle, and played percussion with both an egg and a plum. I didn’t cease to exist, just because I “wasn’t there.” You see, it all depends on how you define “there” – webtser defines it as “in or at that place.” This further forces you to define “that place.” Combining the definition for “that” and “place” yields “the physical surroundings indicated, mentioned, or understood from the situation.” So now we see the problem: my dormmates can only understand things in the context of this campus; to them, there is nothing beyond – similar to how many people in ancient times believed the earth was all there was – you could try and explain Venus, and how it is very hot and toxic there, and all you would get is a blank stare. Ok, I think things are sufficiently clear now.

Saturday, I gave out approximately 30 resumes at a engineering oriented job fair. This was my first experience making and giving out a resume, so I’m curious if anyone will be interested in my minimal experience. I would like to work for Quark, both for the obvious reason (cool name), and because they are located in my home state, Colorado, and do C++/Java development. But I think with Intel, Apple, and Microsoft fighting over me, it’ll be hard to compete…

I played ultimate frisbee intramurals Sunday morning, and we won 15-5. This was after we had a 12-1 lead, and the other team added a fresh player, making it 8 on 7 (we did not feel threatened). It was great fun, especially outjumping tall guys to come down with the disc. I will continue to post the results of our games, so you can see our MARCH to victory!

I am now going to retrieve my pictures from the road trip, I hope they came out well, especially the ones I took my life into my hands to capture. I have an incredible amount of work to do, so consider this a written self-pep talk. GO GO GO! You can dooo eet!

Quote of the week:

“No, we aren’t looking for summer interns, but we can take your resume and file it in case something comes up…”

Translation: “We have a shredder under this table, so if you feel you need to give us something, we can make short work of it…”

.tuo gnignis ,yeldarB si sihT

What a busy weekend! I’m so close to being responsible. I have the framework of a good, efficient day/week set up, and I’ve followed it a couple of times… But I still seem to lack the most critical ingredient – willpower. When it comes time to do whatever needs to be done, I may or may not do it – I need to find some good advice about how to just do it. Maybe I could contact Nike?

Time sure has been flying. I think before I know it, I’m going to look back and I’ll be graduated, which scares me because I have no clue what to do after graduation. Last week went very quickly, and only the weekend sticks in memory, since it was rather eventful. Friday, we got to see a mediocre classical guitar concert – it wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t that good. The cellist in the accompanying orchastra actually checked his watch halfway through the concerto they played. “Man, hurry up you silly guitarist, I’m missing X-Files.”

Sunday was the crowning achievment of days so far this quarter. Josh, Ed, and I packed up some snacks, I borrowed Chris’s car, and we headed south, with no particular destination in mind. It started out beautiful, so Josh rode his motorcycle behind us, but in the mountains south of here, it started pouring, so we parked his bike in some little town and continued driving, to the tune of Nirvana Nevermind. What followed was a very fun, very beautiful, trip down the very coastal (very – it is falling into the ocean in many places) California Highway 1. It’s one I assume because it was the first highway ever built. I know, I know, you think it’s because it’s the westernmost highway, but maybe you have a bit to learn. Anyway, we took lots of beautiful pictures, some of which I will eventually post on my pictures page, and saw a crazy old man who was selling “pipes” for pot, which he assured us was quite good for your health. We paid him a dollar to balance his hat on its brim, on his nose – I’ll put that one up too. After many hours, we eventually hit San Luis Obispo, where we wandered around downtown, ate dinner at a little diner, and wandered some more, wondering where we were going to sleep. We drove over to Cal Poly University, hoping to find a lounge we could crash in, but after feeling very foolish wandering through a dorm, and hanging out at a bus stop for a while, we decided to try to make it back home.

Now first, we had a bit of fun – we weren’t in a hurry, so we proceeded to drive 3 miles an hour down a road that had a 40 mph speed limit. Cars would pass and honk, and we’d yell at them for driving so fast. We had a couple close encounters, such as when I barely swerved around a parked car (I accidently had gotten up to 6 mph). Well, we made it quite a ways, saw “Bradley, next exit”, so I had to stop there. The weird thing was, it was the most empty road I have ever seen – I drove down it for several miles, but NOTHING was there. (Eerie, eh?) I’ll try again when we hit San Diego in February… Didn’t make it home, I was sleeping part of the time that I was driving, so we stopped in Greenfield, crushed Ed in the backseat by reclining (prematurely-quote from Ed), and slept most uncomfortably for a few hours, then woke up at 6 to completely fogged and dripping windows, and made the trip back home. Josh had to ride his motorcycle through pouring rain again (it only seemed to rain when he needed to ride).

Well, since then, life has been good to me, although busy. Today, I almost accidently hugged a girl from behind that I didn’t know, because she looked like my friend who was meeting me at that spot. How would I have explained that? On the other hand, maybe I would have made a new friend… Maybe I’ll try hugging some people randomly and saying “Oh, thought you were someone else. Sorry…”

Quote of the week:

Anonymous SImp (Stanford Improv): “Bozaaarthh!” (Old English Accent)

Esto es Bradley, hasta la semana proxima…

Ok, so maybe it looks like I missed another week. But don’t you think it’s more likely that you just experienced an extra week? I thought so.

I am exhausted right now. I’m actually quite used to that feeling, as this was hours spent sleeping in the last week or so: 6, 6, 5, 4, 3, 4, 5. And this is the first week of the quarter! But I haven’t had any homework really yet, it’s just starting now. I’ve been in a strange mood of late, maybe because of sleepiness, maybe because of pre-work hope, but I have felt this strange weight that my actions now are both trivial and important simultaneously. Now, don’t get me wrong, I know I have crazy hopes for epiphanies and such all the time, but this has a new flavor, more mellow. Oh well, it makes life interesting.

On the way out to Stanford, I had to run to catch my connecting flight in Denver, so I was a bit concerned my bags wouldn’t make it. I asked the attendant at the boarding door, and she said “Oh, sure – they probably beat you to the plane!” I wasn’t so sure of this, but it eased my worries a bit. Well, sure enough, none of my bags popped out in San Jose, and I didn’t get them until three days later. It inspired some creative uses of Umbros. Monday morning I had to sign up for Social Dance, as more people want to take it than can fit – I arrived at 5:50 am for the 9 am sign up, and was like 100th in line. By 7:30, there were about 250 people there probably. But I got in, and danced the first day with a girl over a foot taller than me. I was ok after a little self-pep talk. I’m good enough, smart enough, and gosh darnit, somebody must like me.

Ed gave me a good idea, since I had such interesting pre-chronicle days, full of mischief and danger and fun. I may begin to build some background stories, sorted for your enjoyment. I have almost got the about page done, with background info on people and places, that will be up soon. I can picture it now – “Brad’s Driving Adventures”, “Brad’s Pyrotechnic Adventures”…

This last weekend I went on my dorm’s ski trip. I snowboarded for the first time, falling incessantly for the first few runs, just about figuring I wouldn’t get it that day, then, poof, it clicked, and I was able to s-turn back and forth down the hill. Tre fun, and I’ll be doing that instead of skiing in Colorado now, no doubt.

I don’t know how or why, but my trip into Old Union (University offices) today dropped me into another, taller world. By some strange coincidence, everyone I seemed to encounter (especially females), were quite tall, taller than me. Now, I don’t claim to be some kind of giant, but I’m normally about average in a given group of guys and gals. It was sure weird to feel so towered over, and watched by everyone. Well, I think that last bit was just a little paranoia, but the rest was rational… I’m not sure exactly how it fits in, but Anne just told me that I am taller than I look. I guess I’ll take that as a compliment.

Well, getting back to school has been hectic, and thought-provoking, both of which sap my days’ anecdotal content, but things should settle down here soon, perhaps I won’t be plagued by so much reflection and consideration.

Quote of the week:

Ed: I would need teats…

This is Bradley, signing out.