Ricky is Gone

Ricky, my buddy from work, has gone back to Texas. He did his final presentation today and then hopped on a plane bound for the south. He was fun to hang out with, so it's too bad he'll be gone. I do sort of enjoy cooking for myself though, and it makes things a little less complicated not having to try to fit my schedule to his so we could eat together (he had no stove).
I made the tasteful but depressing decision to remove all of the incriminating photos of myself from facebook. I don't think it'll be a huge problem, and I doubt employers will really care that much, but I'd also rather not have my boss come up to me tomorrow and fire me.
I'm gonna try to spend a couple of weeks in Northfield soon. I'm back in Madison on the 5th, even though I've got a week of work left. Hopefully I'll be able to bum a ride to Carleton with some folks after Cooler.

OUT

Saturday Diversions

As we speak, I am eating beans and rice. I have been eating beans and rice for an entire freakin' week. Despite the fact that beans and rice provide a "complete protein" (thanks, mom), I feel they are slowly dissolving my insides. Regardless, I have both beans and rice in profusion, so I will continue to eat them until the beans are gone, or my interior is completely slushified.

Today is a day of intense grogginess. I feel entirely detached from everything, which made my run earlier this morning incredibly disorienting. I am at the moment waiting for my parents to complete the drive from Madison to Milwaukee, so I can hang out with them for the day. In the meantime, I've managed to take two one-hour long naps, and get invited to play basketball with a Mr. Tom Annen. Sadly I will not be able to take advantage of Tom's presence, as I will be enjoying art museums and free meals with my folks. Also, Tom is with his lady friend, so he will be busy anyways.

I have noticed a lot of atonal moaning coming from one of my suitemate's room lately, and I hypothesized that he had either discovered american pop music, or had simply begun to masturbate loudly. It turns out that he has downloaded the newest Black Eyed Peas album, confirming hypothesis A. However, he has been playing the song "My Humps" a little too frequently for my tastes, and I fear I will go mad. I surmise that every evil man, as he lays on his deathbed and contemplates the merits of his life, will hear "My Humps" playing as the background music. This, friends, is true hell.

OUT

My Job Is Designed to Destroy Me

I think my job is secretly plotting to annihilate my mind. I spent the past two hours inserting the words "small," "large," "marginal" and "in range" into incredibly long, nearly meaningless text files. Next, I had an argument with an indian coworker over which directory I should place and update a computer program. I think we almost came to fists when we started arguing over the merits of /home/akbar/opt/lscsoft versus /home/akbar/opt/lscsoft/src.
In the meantime, the theme song to the fraggles was playing in the background. I think I would most like to have a doozer as a pet, if I had to choose a fraggles character as my pet. They are clean and industrious, and build everything out of futuristic, transparent linkin logs. Those are both attributes I would enjoy in a pet. I hypothesize that they eat plastic, probably unrecyclable plastic at that. The by-product would probably be the very same plastic beams they make everything out of. If I had a cat, I think the doozers might ride the cat like a small steed (assuming they would deign to step out of their tiny construction vehicles).

Clearly, my professor is away and has given me no work. That is why we speak of fraggles.

Mono-Mute Syndrome

I just now heard about a new condition, Mono-Mute Syndrome (MMS) that is tearing through Lousiana. Apparently the syndrome disables certain parts of the vocal cords or spech center of the brain (I'm not really sure), with the result that the sufferer can speak only a single syllable. And I don't mean, one syllable at a time, I mean only one syllable. Rosetta James, pictured above, is able only to pronounce "gal."
The agent of the disease has been identified: it is a fungal spore that reproduces in the vocal cords of it's victims. The fungus is believed to have sprung up in the numerous partially flooded buildings in New Orleans and in the nearby area. At the moment the symptoms have mostly been reported in the homeless, who have tended to spend more time in abandoned houses than others, but the disease is slowly spreading to the general populace.
The method of transmission is also known. The spore requires a warm, moist, tranquil environment to multiply. By partially paralyzing the victims vocal chords, the spores guarantee certain calm areas within the vocal chords in which spores can grow. The actual transmission of the spore takes place during what is being called the "false recovery" phase. When the spores have reached sufficient numbers, the victim will suddenly and seemingly miraculously recover their speech. This is simply a mechanism to spread the spore to nearby listeners, as the new activity in the previously calm areas of the vocal chords releases clouds of the spores into the air. The victim will revert to their mono-syllabic state only minutes after their "recovery."
The biggest danger of this disease was in the first hours. People generally disregarded the strange, choked noises the sufferers made, as the majority of the victims were homeless and conceivably mentally unstable. The next victims were homeless shelter workers and hospital staff. However, now that knowledge of the disease is growing, there is little to worry about. If you spot a victim, direct them to a hospital where they can receive treatment. Without treatment, the fungus will remain in the vocal chords and the victim will continue to lack the majority of their vocal capabilities. The long term effects of the fungus are unknown, but permanent vocal chord and speech impairment is suspected.
One interesting byproduct of the disease is the new culture that has developed due to MMS. Many groups of individuals lacking the means to acquire proper medical care have banded together to combine their various syllables. Several sufferers of MMS can form a word, allow ing communication with non-sufferers. By finding new victims with new syllables, the culture slowly adds to it's vocabulary and extends it's ability to interact. The mechanism by which the spoken syllable is selected is not yet known.

Back in Milwaukee

Glurr...
That is how I feel. My trip to (and back from) Carleton was very successfull. No fatal crashes, no lost limbs, etc. However, it was a little harsh on the body, abd between the frequent bus trips, the 4 hour car drives and the 95 degree weather, I'm feeling tired.
The tournament went...ok. It was a lot of fun playing with folks I knew, and a lot of fun playing with people I've never met before. We went 1-4 over the weekend, which was a little disappointing, but our team is still learning to work together. The team name, incidentally, is So Many Ducks.
I really liked getting to see friends in town, such as Yui, BJJ, Thayne, Anna Ing, etc. Also, I've learned that going to an ultimate tournament means seeing a few dozen players you've met before. I saw Bob, a bunch of GOP alumni, some CUT alums, and the general riff-raffery of players you recognize at every midwestern tournament.
I also got to see Lauren, which was really nice. She has a pretty sweet apartment with some other track folks. We wound up going into the cities saturday night and getting some food at an italian place. It was pretty awesome. We also got lost for about 45 minutes, and I almost couldn't start the car. It was really good to see her, and it made me realize how much I like being around her. Hopefully I can spend mroe time in Northfield, maybe with a little more time during the day for just hanging out.
Over all, the weekend was a little crazy. Between trying to hang out with GOPpers and Lauren, it was pretty hectic, but I'm really glad I went. I'm gonna try to get up to Carleton more often, and for longer.

Laterz

Upcoming weekend

I'm heading home after work today...sort of. I'm hopping on the badger bus so I can drive 4 hours to Northfield. I'm not a huge fan of the whole driving part, but it's going to be so great seeing everyone who is staying in Northfield this summer. I'm also pretty stoked about this tournament, although
I have no idea what to expect. I'm guessing the play will be fairly intense, but I have no idea what sort of dedication level to expect. There's already been talk of late nights tonight and tomorrow night, so clearly being well rested is not a priority for this tournament. That doesn't mean we can't play well, of course.

Also, some dude jacked (read: stole) my frisbee when I was at pickup on Wednesday. How whack is that? A tournement is one thing, but at pickup?

Laters

GOP Site

Jacob has set up a new website for GOP. It's on blogger as well. I think it'll be a good format, because everyone will be able to post on the website (also, a select few (myself included) will be given authority over the ultimate content. Sweet).
I'm heading to Carleton on Friday to go visit Lauren, the GOP boys, and also to go to MUDI. It's gonna be a pretty sweet weekend, I think. I'm not getting in until real late Friday night,so I'm not sure if I'll see what the guys are up to or just crash at Lauren's.
Yeah, still not quite sure what to do with a blog...

First Post / What is a blog?

This is the first post of my blog. I'm not really sure what a blog is meant to be, or if anyone will ever see this, but I figured it might be nice to have somewhere on the internet that I can kind of consider my own. I might try to use this while in Spain, or I might try to create things and share them...you know, whatever.

Hopefully this won't turn into a daily diary type deal, where I get all sappy cause I think I'm expressing my ideas to myself alone, and then some dude walks up to me the next day and is all "hey man, we all hurt sometimes." But maybe that's what blogs are for, I'm not sure.