NOTE: If you are a prospective employer of mine, please skip the following paragraph. It is a boring story about something that reveals nothing of my ability to excel, put in a lot of hours, or work on a team.

Ok, now that we have only my confidants reading, I can speak freely. I was thinking the other day that a lot of employers like to see your web page, if you have one. I then “connected-the-dots,” and realized that if any of my prospective employers stumbled upon this page, they would immediately run my resume through the shredder. All I talk about are how many late days I take, and how bad my organizational skills are. So I figured I would “seed” this entry, similarly to how real estate dealers used to place gold nuggets in a mine that was for sale, or how Stanford University controls the weather during profro weekend to make sure the prospective frosh come. I’m pretty sure no profro in his right mind could pass up Stanford after a weekend like this. Which is why my profro might pass it up… Even as I type, he is sitting over on the couch, staring into space, which he seems to do a lot, when he’s not hurrying from one place to another with a downward stare so as to avoid eye contact. I tried to bring him out of his shell a little bit, but I guess when we locked him out of the room last night, and he had to sleep in the lounge without his sleeping bag, pillow, and stuff, I pretty much lost all influence I might have otherwise had. (It was an accident, really). Oh yeah, seeding.

Ok, glad to have you back, all you pro emps (Prospective Employers). I’ll continue with my random anecdotal thoughts that reveal elements of my character. I was thinking the other day how much I like to be productive, be self-motivated, and work well with others on large projects. Then I got this tickly feeling in my stomach, and I wondered what it was - it turned out to be creative energy driving me to succeed. Imagine that! Just the other day, I was talking to my friends Victoria, Aiko, and Anna (while we were steam tunneli.. ahh, working on a group programming project for fun). They always give me very candid evaluations of my stable character traits. So, they reached a consensus that I was goal-oriented, and did a very good job making my superiors feel intelligent and well-informed. It was a fun evening, and concluded with Victoria saying “Brad, you always get projects done on time! Bye!”

Ok, I figure employers will probably be very busy, and won’t make it to this paragraph, so I’ll return to my normal self now. I got a couple’a big booboo’s thanks to an attempted (failed) bike trick today. It was actually a routine curb jump (off the upward sloped part of a sidewalk exit), but I took it at too sharp of an angle, and landed leaning 45 degrees to one side. This resulted in the immediate expulsion of me from my bike. Fortunately, the asphalt broke my fall, and I only sustained a couple of bloody flesh wounds. I succeeded in having three bystanders ask me if I was all right (one even ran over to me!)

I drove up to hillside manor sometime after 2 AM, and talked a little while about the year. I guess the winter makes you laugh a little slower, and makes you talk a little lower about the things you could not show her…

Sometimes Stanford Administration really sucks. Like when they got the brilliant idea to try and steal the huge, beautiful palm tree that is, no, used to be, sitting in the eating clubs lawn, and which I can, no, used to be able to see from where I am sitting now. Apparently the tree was planted in honor of the birth of the eating clubs, by the eating clubs. There is a lot of history associated with the EC’s, and that tree… well, that tree pretty much summarized it all, in a grand, tree-metaphor thing. So, the university is running short on palm trees for placement in their landscaping projects, and they cost $30,000 a pop full grown. One day at lunch, here comes a backhoe, and starts digging up the tree. The eating club managers make a valiant effort to save the tree, even going so far as to wave some official looking papers in the face of the foreman, but to no avail. Next came in a weird looking machine, kind of like a huge pair of forceps. The people in the know (those operating the machine) called it the “big-tree-grabber-thing.” So they proceed to grab the tree and snap it in half. Satisfied with a good day’s work, they leave without so much as an apology. If anyone with skills in the black arts, or with their own excercise video, is reading this, please put a hex on these people!

On a final side note, please be on the lookout for my shampoo. It has been missing for over two weeks now, but we haven’t given up hope. Please also be on the lookout for ChingWin Pei, alias CWP. She is wanted in connection with a case of vandalism on Toyon’s wall (it was “tagged” (gansta’ for painted) with CWP), which had to be repainted. Housing services must have imported hand blended paint from the slopes of the himalayas, because, like everything they charge us for, we were charged something outrageous. $200 per roof tile? And they have hundreds of them just sitting in the basement? Give me a break facilities dept!

Quote of the enlightened guru:

Professor Khuri-Yakub, on the subject of connecting a resistor in the lab to an extremely high voltage: “One femtosecond and you start to smell it.”

Danke Schoen, darlin, danke schoen. Auf Wiedersehen!

Shhhh… There is a mosquito in my room, right over there on Praj’s dentist chair. I am planning my atta.. DOH! She moved, and is now evidently making use of some camouflaged (had to look that one up) no-fly zone (she can use it because she’s a mosquito). Or maybe she left for redder pastures. Clever girl. She would not have been able to penetrate my skin, which has been made resistant to all but the biggest, meanest mosquitos, from my years in the mountains of Colorado.

So, I lied at the end of the last chronicle, saying the next one would be up that day. But I was only off by 15 days, which, when you think about the age of the universe is really not that big of a deal.

Hmm, let me share with you another anecdote from my trip to France… I cannot speak french. At all. Ok, I can say “please, thank you, and excuse me,” which basically raises me to the status of a polite monkey. So, my first (and last) attempt at venturing out to buy something on my own was one night when I was hungry, and I wanted some dessert or something. I wandered around Cannes (on the Mediterranean coast), but as it was 11pm, nothing was open. The french do not understand things like “Open 24 hours,” or “Free Refills,” or “cheap.” I finally found a chinese fast food restaurant, and saw that there was a “Coco” something on the menu outside, for 5 francs. I went inside and said “Si voo pleh, coco?” (which means “Please, cocoa?”) while pointing at the menu on the door. This elicitted a blank stare from the french-speaking chinese woman behind the counter. She probably thought I was insane. I decided to give it one more try, “un dessert!” That I figured meant “a dessert,” but from the stream of angry words she let out I think I must have insulted her father. Now I saw one of those ice cream bar freezers in the back, so I started towards it, pointing excitedly. This set all the employees in motion, one moving to block my path, and all yelling at me. Either they kept something really interesting in that freezer, or they thought I was going to do something terrible to their ice cream bars. Whatever the case, I decided to leave while I still had absolutely no shred of my dignity left. Needless to say, following this incident I tried to pretend I was a mute the rest of the trip.

There’s something wrong with my “f” key, I just noticed… It doesn’t work if you press the left half of the key, you have to consciously press the right half. Isn’t that ironic? Just a little too ironic, don’t you think?

Uh oh, my mp3 player is on random, and it just encountered “enya.” I like Enya, but it also makes me sleepy. So I might fall asleep, my head on the keyboard, producing a stream of “f’s”. Now that would be ironic. Goodness sakes! I’m awake! It’s Cake!

Quote o the week:

“I have, like, the biggest forehead in the world.”
–John Kari

And now, I’m going to read some CS, so that I don’t eel so guilty when I go speleunking later tonight. arewell!

Guess where I went over spring break? NO. Try again . NO! I’ll give you one more chance. Ha ha ha.. That’s funny, but sorry, no. Even after I gave you a hint! It’s francewere scheduled to leave from Stanford about 2, because the train for the airport left a bit after that, which got us there in time for the airplane. But one thing after another got in the way of me packing, and I ended up packing for the 10 day international trip after my ride arrived, in a span of about 3 minutes. And I found out the last day of the trip that I had done a decent job, except that I had a ton of excess underwear, and not enough socks. Go figure.

And that reminds me of the trip I made to Berkeley a while back… I was to meet Yeva at the bus station because the bus left at 1:20. So I went to get on the Marguerite, the free shuttle that runs all over Stanford, killing pedestrians and such. I had never ridden it, and I realized I didn’t know what side of the street to board on. At this point I realized with my luck, either choice I made would turn out to be the wrong one, so I saved myself a 3 meter walk and got on on the closest side. Bzzzz. Wrong. It went to the end of the line, and circled back to the stop where I had gotten on, and began towards the bus station. Unfortunately, at this point it was 1:12, and the schedule said the bus would wind around and arrive at the station at 1:25. Too late. I realized that the bus would stop at the end of palm drive, which was a straight mile long shot to the station. So I jumped off the bus there and began running, to arrive at the station about 6 minutes later, in time! So public transportation served me well, at least in respect to getting me nowhere fast.

We saw the peak of police work in the airport… We were shopping in a over- priced store with seven dollar wooden pens (no, they didn’t shoot a deadly laser beam, or fold out into a car), and saw some nervous looking police come into the store. They were looking around like they expected to get shot at any moment, and stuck together (they were staying close to one another, I mean, not that getting shot would stick them together, although it might). Soon their business was made apparent; they began to inspect a pile of Beanie Babies, turning them over and over in their hands, looking at the tags, and replacing them carefully. I don’t know if they suspected someone had been switching look-alikes for the real babies, or what, but they seemed satisfied after a couple of minutes, and left. Thank God we in America have this sort of protection, unlike Russia, where Beanie Babies are just left to the unwary hands of the public. I think the British have an even more developed system of protection for their Beanie babies than we do - heard of their BBC? No one’s told me what that stands for, but I figured it out - “Beanie Baby Cops.”

The guy at the boarding gate said to me as I got on, in one of those British accents that a lot of newscasters seem to have, “Thanks, nice to see you again.” Now don’t get me wrong, I like the British - they gave us the wonderful shoe line, “British Knights.” But this guy had never seen me before in his life, and he lied about it. I don’t know what his motive was, maybe to make me feel guilty that I hadn’t sent him a Christmas card, but it made me question my impression of english people. (Except Margarets).

More on France to come, I am spontaneously falling asleep here, so I’m going to go to bed, if that’s ok with you. Ah, thanks.

Quote of the nanosecond:

Me, upon beating Ed “Good-foosball-player” Froehlich for the second time, to remain undefeated against him: Woohoo!

This is Bradley, signing off, and slumping over.

Hmm… You may be wondering what happened since my last chronicle over a month ago. The short answer: nothing. The true answer: as much as happened in the entire previous 18 years of my life. Thus the multiple entries I’m going to put in in order to catch up. But its good stuff: bunnies, Italians, and starvation are some of the exciting themes you have to look forward to…

Peering back into the dark past of one month ago, I see shadowy spectres moving about in the thick mist of my sleep starved brain’s memories. These figures want to kill me; look out! They want to kill you too. What are these horrible apparitions? Ghosts? Zombies? Tax collectors? No my friend, think along more fearful lines: the murderous beasts are none other than … bunnies. Now that I have your attention, and respect, let me warn the reader with a weak stomach to consider skipping the following section. Bunnies may not have preyed upon me, but others were not so lucky…

What bunnies am I speaking of, you want to know? The bunnies of CS108, the class of infamy. The last assignment is called “Bunny World.” It involves working on a team to program a big game editor/game player with a “bunny” theme. It sounds innocent enough, but takes about 50 casualties each time the class is offered. I actually don’t want to go into too many gory details about my own experience, but suffice to say that I slept for a total of 4 hours over the course of the entire last week before bunny world was due. After 44 consecutive waking hours, I was programming next to my group members the last day, and (they tell me this, I do not remember) I fell asleep. Sleep had been foreign to me for 2 full days, and even then I had only taken a 2 hour nap after 2 more all nighters. Well, suddenly, there I was, asleep, without any decision to be in such a state on my part. Don’t ask how this is possible, I have no idea. Oh - I also only ate one real meal the entire last week, other than that, I was brought a Snickers bar and cookies. So, I nearly died of exhaustion and starvation, but we triumphed, with one of the highest grades ever.

There was some fervor over this “dragon drop” feature, so I spent hours adding a button that would insert a frightening dragon whenever clicked, and then they tell me it’s “drag ‘n drop.” Geez.

This class yielded my first, and possibly my last A+. Not because I don’t think I could excel to that level again, but because those +’s and -’s are very unasthetic on the grade sheet, and I’m going to shoot for straight letter grades from now on.

Following the experience, I slept for 19 hours in a row. Soon after, I was studying at Yeva’s, fell asleep, and woke up in delirious state, dreadfully concerned about whether “it” could be undone, did “undo” work with “it”? I haven’t figured out what “it” was…

Quote of the moment:

Whoa, did you notice “1999″ has three nines in a row?

Next edition to be up soon. (Today)