Think about it

Of all the signs at the World Cup, this one has to be the truest/coolest.

Working hard for the [hippy] man.

I had my first day on the job at my internship yesterday morning. It mostly involved pulling up invasive plants like blackberry bushes (ouch) and using a GPS device to map the area. It's kind of weird to do labor without getting paid, but I keep reminding myself that it's not like I have anything better to do with my time.

It's that time again: SUMMER TIME!

I got up at 6 AM and did some working out with Anna this morning. Time will tell if it'll happen again. I don't much care for the facilities in her building. I really miss Western's gym. In other news, I have an interview for my summer internship tomorrow. I'm not too worried about it, because they seem like a pretty small operation and I doubt I'd be doing much more than clearing ivy and blackberry bushes.
I also think I'm going to participate in the Windows Vista beta testing this summer. I already downloaded the 3.2 gig DVD iso and burned it, I'm just going to backup my system and take the plunge. I'll try to write about any interesting experiences (an amature tech blog? have I reached a new level of dork?).

*Update*
I ran the install program, and Vista won't recognize my RAID drivers. This means that it can't see my hard drives, so I have nothing to install the operating system on. Oh well, it probably would have been frustrating anyway. I do kind of miss the constant crashing and freezing earlier versions of Windows brought. XP just isn't exciting anymore.

Give me a break. I've been busy

Over Memorial Day weekend I attended Evenson's bachelor party. I and 14 other guys went out to a raucous margarita-filled dinner where, of course, I run into my mom. What are the chances?


Right now I'm trying to set up an internship for the summer, a job for next fall, and study for my finals (which are going to suuuck). Summer's looking pretty good.

What's in the box? Music!

The future has shown itself to be awesome once again. My latest find has been Pandora, which is a customizable internet radio station; you put in songs/artists you like, and it recommends stuff, which you rate thumbs up or thumbs down. It has a pretty decent amount of music on it, too. I really hope someone makes a Firefox plugin for this thing soon.

Way overdue

The Holy Trilogy? Released in its remastered but unaltered form? It's about damn time!

Is summer here yet?

The past few weeks have been pretty uneventful. I'm not sure how much I like my toxicology prof, who also happens to be my faculty advisor. She keeps drawing her benzene rings/phenyl groups without double bonds, which makes me squirm. She also says things like "Ok, in this slide the little smiley faces are the toxin, and the little pink box is the receptor they are trying to bond to. In this slide, the toxins are now metabolites and have been activated, as you can see by the fact that the smiley faces are purple." I guess I can't blame her for being girly, and she just isn't accustomed to teaching the chemistry side of toxicology. I probably just haven't seen her upsides yet.
On the other hand, I'm really liking my organic chemistry professor. We were making these things in lab that involved melting a small glass tube in a flame, then stretching it out. When it was my turn, I guess I impressed him with my technique, because he clapped me on the back and said "Wow, that's great! You are a master of flame." I had already known that for years, but it still made me happy to hear.

The first

Happy April 1st, everyone. I'm never sure whether to look forward to this day or not. There are always the stories that are funny and obviously false, like China buying Google and there finally being a working review of Duke Nukem Forever.
Some things, though, are a little trickier. Google Romance? It looks real, but...I don't know. Google did start Gmail on April 1st, and last year they upped our inboxes to 2 gigs. But "with Soulmate Search(TM)?" I just don't know anymore. And how about a wireless extension cord over at ThinkGeek? Apparently, it is your ticket to the future. I'm at a loss.
Below is the awesome reworking of Slashdot, just in case you see this after the first.
*UPDATE* As for the wireless extension cord, I finally noticed that the availability is "no suing." I knew that anything you would put in the path of a 100+ watt beam of microwaves would be cooked, burned, fried, and killed, but a part of me still wanted to believe it. For shame :(

A good week

The day started out with an 8 AM final in my organic chemistry class, then Josh was kind enough to skip some classes and drive me an hour and a half south to SeaTac. Then, a 50 minute flight to Vancouver where I spent an hour sipping a gin and coke with some duty-free liquor I snagged (bought) back in the states and watching the Simpsons. Best layover ever.
Anna picked me up at Heathrow and we jumped on the tube. We headed back to her flat only long enough to dump off my luggage, then we headed out to London to see the sights. We first went to Parliament so I could see Big Ben, Westminster Abby, and the building where she worked. Parliament was a very good lookin' building; it was almost a shame to see it blown up later in the week (in a movie, for those of you who haven't seen V for Vendetta). Lots of gold, lots of statues, and a very ornate outside. I have to admit that if I lived in London and was dirt poor, maybe I wouldn't mind so much if someone blew the thing up.
After that, my memory gets a little hazy, but at some point we had dinner with Ms. Elaine and Mr. Gene, then we headed back to the flat where I was kept up until 2 AM by Anna's flatmate because it was her 21st birthday. Bad times, especially since I had been up since 8 AM the previous day. 6 AM roles around, and we jump up and head to the train station to catch the Chunnel to Paris. It's not as exciting as you might think, taking a train under the ocean. There are fields, then it's dark for about 30 minutes, then there are fields again.
In Paris, we met up with a couple of Anna's friends who helped us find our hotel, which was right across the river from the Eiffel Tower. A few metro stops later and after realizing that even French streets are ostentatious, we found our hotel but our room wasn't ready yet, even though it was 3 PM. I guess that's what a 30 hour work week gets you. We left our bags there and did some sight-seeing, including a church, some French students protesting, and, of course, you have to see the red-light district of any city you happen to be in.
After being approached by a French police officer and answering his questions with blank stares while huddling outside a theatre for warmth, we made it back to the hotel at about 1 AM and collapsed. We drew the curtains and relished the thought of getting a full night's sleep. Later, we woke up. The room was still dark from the curtains. We found a clock. 3 PM. Shit. We hustled out and saw what we could with so little time left and night approaching. We saw the Louvre, but only from the outside because it closed at 5. We did make it to Notre Dame, though. I thought Parliament and parts of London were ornate and grand, but they have nothing on Paris. It was way too much to take in with just a couple of days. Hopefully I can go back someday, learn some conversational French, and see everything again.
The next morning we made it back to London via the Chunnel. Anna went to work, and the rest of the day we just took it easy. On Tuesday, we went to St. Paul's cathedral--built by, designed by, and the resting place of Christopher Wren--but they wanted way too much money to wander around inside, so we just looked around the outside. We went to the Tate Britain and saw the Gothic Nightmares exhibit, which was very interesting and creepy.
Wednesday, we went to the Tower of London, which was awesome, and we went on a tour of Highgate Cemetery. Well, a tour of the east side. The west side was where Marx was buried, but we didn't feel like paying twice to see one cemetery. Anyway, the side we saw was really cool, and had some obscure but kind of famous people, like the guy who founded the YMCA and Michael Faraday. The cemetery was founded in Victorian times, which was evident from the fact that it was very overgrown and at the oldest part, the path was strewn with volcanic glass. That's right, they paved the cemetery path in obsidian. How awesome is that? Pretty awesome, I'd say.
Thursday and Friday Anna had to work all day, so I wandered around London on my own. Thursday I went back to the Tower and had some Starbucks, then I went to the Tate Modern and saw some "art." The highlights were seeing Monet's Water Lilies and Dali's Lobster Phone, both for very different reasons. There was also a very strange exhibit in the main floor of the museum, which used to be a power station, that looked like a bunch of stacked sugar cubes. I couldn't help but be reminded of a video game level, though. I was trying to figure out how to push the boxes together so I could jump from stack to stack and make it across. *Photography was allowed on this level, obviously*
Friday, I went to the British Museum and saw lots of old and shiny things. They have the largest Egyptian collection outside of Egypt, so there were a lot of mummies and bones, which creeped me out a little. There were also a few rooms dedicated to Asian, Arabic, African, Native American, and Babylon. Pretty interesting, and you can't beat a free museum. Right at the entrance, there was a huge covered area with a large reading room in the middle, apparently where Marx penned Das Kapital. Yep, so there ya go. Museums are free, but churches charge you a fortune.
Friday night, we had one last bash at a local pub, where it happened to be karaoke night. I could tell that a few of the singers couldn't actually speak English very well by the trademark way they would interject gibberish instead of words, but keep it consistent with the melody (Dane, I imagine you've encountered this a lot). I also splurged on a £10 Cuban cigar, which was oh-so-smooth, and even got Anna to take a few puffs. I washed it down with Guinness, which does definitely get better the closer you get to Dublin.Saturday, Anna escorted me to the airport and I flew home. Air Canada was nice enough to give me a couple of beers for the flight back, too. Good times.

*For more pictures, visit the London and Paris photo sets on my Flickr*

V for Victorian

Yeah, I know not putting many pictures up here until I get home is a copout, but what can you do? I just don't feel like wrestling with the pictures right now, so I just posted a few to Flickr. Ok, fine, here's the Starbucks I went to this morning, right next to the Tower of London.

For some reason the British don't believe in cream, so it's milk or nothing in your coffee. Literally, you order it either black or white. Crazy.

We saw V for Vendetta last night, and I agree that it was awesome. Not sure how I feel about the end, though, but a good movie for sure. Also, it was awesome to see while in London because they were very faithful to local scenery, including the tube station right by Parliament. Twas quite creepy.

Back in London

Paris was a trip. Craziness. Full of French people. Stunning and ornate. I'll write more when I figure out how to describe it. I'll also put some photos on Flickr soon, as I think that they would best describe my experience here. Not now, though. I'm going to watch some Lost while waiting for Anna to get off work. Then, most likely some Indian food (and I'm trying to work out a time with her to see V for Vendetta. I found a local theater where it's playing! Theatres here are expensive, but I think it would be worth it, judging from Josh's review).

Horrible moments in history: Braden's Finals

Low points in my finals career:

Spring, 2004.
Wake up 20 minutes after the final started, fight traffic on 112th, and arrive with an hour left to take the final. Fortunately, Vanison is a god among men, so it took me about half an hour to finish it. Come home, realize my clothes are on inside out.

Winter, 2005.
At the beginning of my general chemistry final, the low battery light comes on my graphing calculator. 49 questions to go. Not looking good. I make it, but only by doing a lot of multiplying/division by hand.

Winter, 2006.
Biostats final at 3:30. Kickin ass, done studying by noon, mess around and do other work until I leave for school. After a slow walk on a wonderfully sunny day, I realize I left my 4 pages of notes at home under my keyboard. The point of notes in this class is that there are too many long, complicated formulas to memorize, so we can write them down and bring them in on the tests. I talk to the teacher, tell him I left my notes at home, try to have pathetic expression on face.
"Hmm, you should probably go get them."
"Yeah, um, I live a 30 minute walk away from campus. One way."
"Better hustle then."
I guess I don't know what I expected him to say. I guess I expected him to think of something I didn't. So, I ran home (halfway, actually, then walked breathlessly the rest), grabbed my notes, and made it back with an hour to go. And I'm fighting a cold. I thought that walking to school everyday might put me in good shape, but I assure you it doesn't. Anyway, that sucked ass. I still finished before some people, which freaked me out and now I'm sure I did something wrong. I must have missed a page. Bah.
At least I got off work hella early. I'm not someone that uses hella a lot, so you know it must have been pretty early. That rocks, though, because my legs are freakin' killing me and I'm tired as all hell.

Review: Paranoia Agent

The Netflix recommendation system showed itself to be pretty trustworthy with this 4-disk anime series. If you liked Perfect Blue, you would most likely also find Paranoia Agent enjoyable. First, it has the kind of opening that you don't mind watching before each episode; great song, great visuals. Then, each episode follows the stories of different characters, sometimes linking them up (yes, one of those). It's entertaining at the beginning, entertaining and confusing in the middle, and the final episode doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but it ties everything together and wraps up the series quite nicely.
So, liking it really just depends on what you usually look for. If you like a good story, good direction, and excellent style you'll probably like this anime. If you are pretty stuck on believability, I don't know why you are watching anime in the first place.

Braden and the Poo Factory

Tuesday my water quality class took a field trip. First, we went to the water processing plant which takes water from Lake Whatcom and distributes it to all the college students and old people in the area. According to my water quality professor, the algae in the lake produces organic compounds in the summer which arne't filtered out that give the water an odor, which some locals described as "earthy" and "musty." Ok, good to know.
Here is our guide Bill showing us what they use to filter the water. As you can see, it's basically a giant Britta filter with anthracite coal at the top (Brittas actually use charcoal) and coarse gravel at the bottom. This seems a little backwards, but after a filter is clogged with the crap that's filtered out, they run water through it backwards at a high rate and it stratifies everything, as seen here. Clever, no? The dirty water looks kind of like the chocolate stream from a certain chocolate factory and just like that stream, swimming in it is bad. The waste water is pumped through 60 inch pipes directly to the waste water treatment plant, where we went next!

Time to guess what this stuff is. Here's a hint: those yellow specks are corn, and there's a lot of rice in there, and, OH, some beans. Gross. I have a close up picture, but I'm still trying to scrub it from my memory. I'll let you guys enjoy this instead. Zoom in at your own risk. Any-dang-way, our tour guide was really funny. He was wearing cowboy boots, chewing gum, and making jokes about his ex-wife. It seems that the personalities of our tour guides really fit where they worked. Pretty funny, if you ask me.
There were only a few rooms that really stank, and for the most part it wasn't too bad. Looking at these, I ask myself why I took so many pictures of poo. Trust me, I'm not posting the worst stuff. Maybe I'll put it on my Flickr someday.

Urine in wine

I didn't really have any strong feelings towards the Sex Pistols one way or another, but then I read the note they sent to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame when they were almost inducted. Ok, now they rock.
In other news, I've been delivering pizza for 5 years. Tonight, a girl FINALLY answered the door in her underwear. I think this means I can quit now.

Today in class...

My biostatistics class went to Larabee State Park
today. Yay! It was windier than hell and even colder, but it was a nice excuse to see the ocean. Of course, it had to be ruined by teachers insisting we had to "learn" something. So, we had to measure tidepools and count organisms inside, then do a correlation/regression analysis to determine whether the size of the tidepool had any impact on the life inside. Still a little interesting I guess.
On my way home from work tonight, I stopped at the store and bought myself a big-beer and treated myself while watching Appleseed. I give it my seal of approval. It wasn't the greatest anime ever, but it was very enjoyable. I got an i/o error while trying to copy it, so I think my DVD-ROMs might be going out, or worse, my IDE controller *shudder*.

The Archer

So there I was, minding my own business, alternating between studying for five minutes then checking to see if there was anything new on the internet, when Chris knocked on my door. He asked if I wanted to go to a pub in Fairhaven called the Archer and see a Celtic band play. It wasn't a hard choice. They were really good, plus I had a Guinness and some French onion soup, then I won a game of darts by hitting the bullseye. So, that's how my night off went. I should probably go back to studying now. Internet bad!

The future is now!

Do you ever have one of those moments where you realize that you are, in fact, living in the future. That eureka moment happened to me today while I was at Fred Meyer. Prepare yourselves, folks, for the hallmark of our time: The Mach 5! (Actually, it's the Gillette Fusion, but who cares)
I had to buy this thing because it's just THAT insane and wonderful at the same time. It has FIVE BLADES! Plus, my Mach 3 was broken by the infinitely helpful bag throwers at the Philadelphia Airport (TWO count-em TWO people breathed through their teeth and gave me their condolences when they found out I had luggage going through Philly). Have you seen that Mad TV skit with the Mach 10? "The 9th and 10th blades scrape your teeth clean!" We are halfway there, folks. Who knows where this razor war will end. Now for the review: In my years of shaving, I have cut myself maybe four or five times. I nicked myself twice when shaving today. This is a dangerous razor, people, but isn't that exactly what I was looking for? (The answer is YES!)

Now, for some random things. When I was looking for a picture of this bad mother, I came accross some Czech page with crazy/awesome inventions:











Take that, guy minding his own business!

What the hell would anyone do with this table? Is it for home defense? Fighing off barbarians? Would it even get through +1/20 damage reduction?

I guess it's best this way

The guy didn't show. He for sure didn't work at the Taco TIME in the mall, and there wasn't a Taco Bell I could see in the area around the mall. Oh well, I guess this was the best outcome possible. At least he doesn't have my real phone number.

Tonight at work...

Ok, here's what happened:
I had a delivery to Spyglass Lane. If you can't tell by the name, it's a pretty swanky part of town with lots of nice houses. A guy in his twenties with his eyepod earbuds in his ears answers the door. While he writes the cheque, he says....
"So, are you looking to make some extra money?"

I think: "Porn."

I say "no thanks, I'm pretty busy at school right now." He makes some chitchat, then says that he's looking for some ambitious people and he's working for a "very wealthy guy down the street 'doing internet stuff.' It's not a sure thing, but if you are interested you could make a lot of money."

I think "Gay porn."

So I decline again, and he gives me the pitch that he'll "come by Pizza Hut anytime and give me the rundown. It'll only take 15 minutes at the most."
I relent, and ask if he can come before 5. Maybe at 4:45?
He checks his datebook and says "Well, if you can meet me at MY end of town, that'll be great. Do you know where Bellis Fair is?"
I say, "The Mall? I deliver pizza. So, yes I do."
He says "Yeah, just meet me at the Taco Bell in the food court."
Ok, so I guess all of B'ham does their business in the food court of the mall. He didn't even pause when he said Taco Bell, so I'm guessing he works there. So, my final guess is it's some kind of pyramid internet scheme.
I've been thinking about ditching him because there's no way this can turn out well for me. I'm the PIZZA MAN. Doesn't this guy have friends? I assume I'm playing the role of chump in this, but I have to show up and find out what his deal is. At least I'm meeting him in a public place, and I saved the ticket from his house so I have his address and phone number (if I disapear, it's under my keyboard.) I gave him my name and he knows I work for the Hut, but when he asked for my phone number I gave him mine but with a couple digits switched around.
I'll post back and let you guys know what was up. OH, also, he tipped me $1.50 in loose change, so this guy isn't exactly rolling in the dough. Plus, there's all that other shit that makes this insane.

-end transmission-