Nothing to see, move along
For over a week I couldn't connect to AIM to save my own life. Now I've been connected for fourteen hours straight, without changing any settings or configurations. I hate the network here.

Calc test tomorrow. Time to burn the midnight oil. As most of you know, I'm not very good at math. Most of my problems stem from my utter lack of motivation to apply myself, but things are well past the point where "a little willpower" will fix things up nice and tidy. The worse thing is, I have a feeling that I might even start to enjoy math if I was able to do it better. How odd is that?

Fortunately, one way or another, this will probably be the last pure mathematics class I'll ever take. Good riddance.

*sound of shotgun cocking*
Finished with A Hymn Before Battle, finally. Now, onto The Diamond Age.

Um, well...
I just had the most odd moment of my week a second ago. Nestled in the middle of a bunch of difficult trigonometric integrals is the problem integral[csc(x) dx]. It's an indefinite integral, and I need to evaluate it. There just happens to be an integral identity, however, that states integral[csc(x) dx] = ln|csc(x) - cot(x)| + C. In other words, the answer was just to apply 1 (one) rule of integration, and move on. The answer in the back of the book even agreed with me. This almost certainly won't mean much to you, but it freaked me out.

On another note, I've been doing homework almost straight since 12:30 today, with breaks only for advanced writing, dinner, and one short game of Halo. I have three classes on Friday, and all of them consistently have homework due. Meaning, Thursdays suck.

WTF?
My physics lab is due in 35 minutes, and we're supposed to tear the pages out of the book and give them to the professor. However, the book built like a large paperback and there aren't any perforations. It's like tearing pages out of a magazine. Why do they subject us to such torment?

Baby, why you gotta make me hit you?
Mozilla and I have not gotten off to a good start. First, my blog displays these weird graphical glitches that disappear when you scroll down and scroll back up. Second, the "recommended" section of my book list looks messed up. Fine, I say, that's probably crappy code. So if fixed it, looks fine in the preview, so I publish and go to my page.

Messed up again.

So I view source, and the changes I'd made, saved, and published weren't present. I saved and published again. No fix. I checked it in IE. Not only does it look perfect, but the page source is fine as well. So I figure that maybe Mozilla is pulling page source from the cache. It's a dumb thing, but worth a try. I clear the cache and try it again. And it looks fine. Meaning Mozilla does indeed draw page source from cache. It doesn't bother downloading a text document. Maybe one of you guys can explain the logic of thise to me.

I'm sticking with it for now, because it seems fast and looks snazzy.

Quietness
Nobody seems to be online now, which makes me not-happy. Was there some big party that everyone but me and Lynsey were invited to?

I haven't left this building in 24 hours
Except for a 20-minute stretch where I was eating. And you know what? I don't really care. I've been busy.

Finished The Stone God Awakens, which is to say I reached the end of the book. The story, however, apparently continues, judging from the near-total lack of conclusion. It was a good book, but that's a real sucky, and might I say amateurish, way to end things. The book was pretty short, so I'm not sure why Farmer didn't just add another hundred pages, or why the editor let him get away with it the way it is. I'd assume it was a money-grubbing attempt to sell a sequel, but as far as I can tell none exists.

I just started John Ringo's A Hymn Before Battle, which is chock-full of acronym goodness in the form of military slang. Interestingly enough, unless my eyes decieve me, the writer included a cameo appearance of none other than David Weber, one of whose works graces my "Recommended" section.

I've finally got into the swing of writing again, which is nice. I never realize how much I miss it until I start again. My current project, such as it is, is the history of the character I'm running for Andy's Werewolf campaign. It's pretty depressing, actually, which I seem to have a knack for.

The internet here's been going down like a cheap whore. I can take it when it just goes down for a few hours, but this on-again-off-again stuff is really annoying.

On a final note, check out this game my roommate found. It's based on that old game Rush Hour that I remember playing in TAG.

All the Myriad Ways
I've shown some of you guys this individually, but just so we can all be on the same page, I present Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex, by Larry Niven.

Class is in session
I just got out of a 14-player dorm-on-dorm Halo match. First of all, you need to know that I hadn't really played Halo in almost five months before Tuesday. My neighbors needed a fourth for their Xbox, though, so I did my civic duty and volunteered. We're all pretty good; we were 6-0 yesterday against some guys from down the hall. So this guy from Villa, the neighboring (and sometime rival) dorm, comes over and starts talking smack, about how they've been playing since the beginning of the year and they're gonna dominate sniping and all this shit.

Whatever.

We take 'em on, 7 on 7, on the map Hang Em High. It's a hardcore pistols map, if you haven't played much Halo multiplayer, meaning that I can single-handedly dominate things on a good day. These guys from Villa join. I immediately noticed two things: first, none of them had custom profiles except one guy named "New002," so I was playing against a bunch of "Loopys" and "Hollywoods." Second, they blew. Hard. Apparently they were under the impression that bunny-hopping was still in style, and the assault rifle was the ultimate close-in weapon. We even had two Corrado guys helping them out, and the game still ended 50-32. Things only went downhill from there. I just left after three games because it wasn't even fun anymore.

I would also like to point out that the Villa guy we were talking with was a member of my ROTC squad way back when, and was a total choad.

Sometimes, one just isn't enough

My insulting name is Zebra bastard zebra zebra zebra zebra fucker Essence of sheer vile!
What's yours?

Dork Storm
New webcomics link over on ye olde sidebar: Dork Tower!

Soft brain perfect for crushing
My advanced writing class has a 3-9 male/female ratio. Most of them are attractive. 'Nuff said.

After class today, I hopped downtown to hang out for awhile, then went to a dinner with Luke, the guy who runs an RPG group I've been involved with at PSU, as well as most of the other members of that group. We racked up a hefty tab on his parents dime, had some nice conversation, then headed back out. I noticed as we were leaving that we were the only people in the restaurant (at about 7:30 PM) who were wearing t-shirts. Mine was even potentially insulting. I take pride in my counter-culture-ness, if that's what you call it. Once we got back to PSU, we played a Steve Jackson game, called Munchkin. If you are into the whole RPG culture, it's hilarious. If not, it's really, really confusing.

Once we left, I had to stand out in downtown Portland in the cold for half an hour waiting for the bus to come. Such is my exciting life.

BACK IN SCHOOL YAY!!!1!1!!
Or not. The point is, I've moved back in to the dreaded University of Portland Corrado Hall. Nothing's changed, really. Even my classes are mere echoes of the ones I had last semester. My calculus professor swears a lot (for a 60-year-old guy), and my physics professor sounds like she belongs on some sort of edu-tainment program. Computer Science is looking to be a real easy A. And I mean real easy. For the intro class, we covered (get this) the difference between hardware and software, and what all the standard hardware on a computer does. Duh...

The only class I haven't had yet is advanced writing. It could be cool, or it could suck, and I am not encouraged by the fact that one of the books I had to buy for it is the exact book that I used in Mr. Scott's writing 121 class not 8 months ago. It's that Simon & Schuster Handbook for Writers that we all grew to love over the course of the year. Yay.

On an unrelated note, I picked up the PC version of the Morrowing GOTY. First, I have to say that both expansions are extremely well integrated into the first game. If I hadn't played the "virgin" Morrowind, I would be hard-pressed to say where original ended and expansion began. My character this time is a pretty typical mage, except that she uses marksman weapons (i.e. bows) rather than swords. It makes the game interesting, to say the least.

Regarding playing females in computer RPGs, from Benjamin Turner's FFXI column on GameSpy: "On a pragmatic note, if I'm going to be staring at a character's behind for a number of hours, it might as well be a female one, tail or not."

*sound of minigun firing*

Which Colossal Death Robot Are You?

The continuing adventures of...
It has been really cold and really wet, and quite frozen. At the beginning of the storm on Wednesday, when universities began closing, Andy trudged over here to hang out, followed by Charles in the evening. They were basically stuck here for three days, since it was nearly impossible to drive, or even walk anywhere. So we spent the time doing another one of our binge roleplaying sessions, this one with quite a bit of variety. First, we started off with some Star Wars, playing a one-shot Sith campaign set during the Hyperspace Wars. Deciding against Kindred of the East, we instead started a Werewolf game, which was cool, despite the fact that my lack of experience with the setting meant I was basically running blind through the whole thing. Then, we played some Mage (sort of), which quickly degenerated into 45 minutes of penis jokes after Charles suggested naming the building that we were supposed to infiltrate the "Howard Stern Building."

On Thursday, we tried to walk to McDonalds. It was easy for the first two thirds of the trip, where the packed ice over the snow wasn't very thick, and we could easily punch through. Eventually, we got to an area where there was no snow, just ice, and the adventure truly began. We had almost no traction, leaving us at the very mercy of the wind, even when we crossed a major avenue. We had to carefully pick our way over to McDonalds, where it became quite clear that we were some of the only customers they received that day.

On an unrelated note, I go back to school tomorrow, and classes start on Monday. Last semester at old UP, and good riddance. Next fall promises to be much more interesting.

The usual nothing
Turns out, school was good for updates. Maybe it was more interesting than I thought. Or, maybe I just have less to bitch about.
So, because I know you're interested, here's a recent update on my life.
1. Got and beat Call of Duty. Great game. Nuff said.
2. For those of you who don't know, my extended family owns a cabin near La Pine, Oregon, and we went down there over New Years. For the first time ever, I was too tired to stay up. All those early work shifts must've caught up with me. Also, there was over two feet of snow. Snow's really annoying if you actually have to work in it.
3. Playing in Charles' one-short Star Wars RPG adventure. It's pretty cool, even if there have been a few clashes over Star Wars minutiae.
4. In the process of moving across the hall, into Lisa's room. Right now, we've just piled all of our stuff into boxes and switched. The "fun" is yet to come, since I have to unpack. Turns out, I have over 300 SF-related books, which I think is cool. I plan to amass an even larger collection, making it even more difficult to move.

That's about it. Note, my "to read" section over there is not very accurate, since I'm jumping around like crazy.