Happy Father's Day! In celebration of Father's Day I promised my father a dinner of "extreme" mashed potatoes. When I said it, I was just putting on a show. I didn't really have a clear idea what "extreme" meant in this circumstance, but my father's enthusiasm goaded me on to run with it. I asked my father to imagine mashed potatoes snowboarding down Mount Everest and then showed him this video .

Really, "extreme" mashed potatoes was just mashed potatoes and sweet potatoes with garlic and onion. So, I chopped up a quarter of an onion and peeled two cloves of garlic, dumped some milk, butter, cooked potatoes and sweet potatoes into a food processor. Unfortunately the resulting concoction was disgusting, even to my heartily self-serving taste buds, and I suspected the cause was the rawness of the onions and garlic. I figured I'd cook the mashed potatoes in the oven to take care of that, so I needed some cheese and bread crumbs. Cheese and bread crumbs are critical for the lovely oven-browned top of a baked mash potatoes dish, after all.

I had mozzarrella and parmesan, but bread crumbs were not so immediately available. I figured the only important part was that it could crumble, so I looked in the cupboard and found some old corn chips, which I crushed and added to the concoction, making a couple layers with the cheeses. Then I cooked my extreme potatoes for sixteen minutes and took them out. After letting my creation cool down a bit I tried some and it was still horribly disgusting. At this point however, there was no more tweaking that could be done, and so I made peace with my dish and told people to be completely forward if they didn't like it.

Four hours and a couple more minutes in the oven later, my father loved the extreme mashed potatoes. I'm not exactly sure what happened, but trying it again, I too, noticed it tasted a little better. Most likely what I was tasting was the thick layer of cheese, which I had carefully avoided earlier to maintain the "freshly cooked" image as well as possible when I was test-tasting it.

Somewhat less popular was the reduced balsamic vinegar that I put on everyone's ice cream. Reduced balsamic vinegar is made by cooking balsamic vinegar over low heat until it becomes thicker and more sweet and eventually gets so thick and sweet that it is delicious on ice cream. An animated fellow at a chocolate shop assured me it was a real thing, so I went about buying and cooking some balsamic vinegar. From the moment it started cooking, an intense wave of vinegary gas wafted up from the pot and made the whole house smell like vinegar. My first couple tries all ended up in accidental boiling and a burnt-marshmallow taste, not too bad, actually. Unfortunately boiling causes the vinegar to harden and become impossible to even pry off of a spoon, let alone drip over ice cream. Finally today I managed to, without making it into a solid, reduce the vinegar to 4x its original concentration. It was still pretty strong, but I liked it on my ice cream, as did my sister, I think. My father did not like it, however, and Father's day was very nearly cancelled on account of my ruining his ice cream, but another bowl of Mom's blueberry cobbler, and Father's day proceeded on schedule.

I still need to make sure that I didn't misunderstand the chocolate shop man.

Math Flyer is released! Get it!

www.shodor.org/mathflyer

I just got back from a sleepless retreat after a sleepless workshop in Illinois. The workshop was nice but busy, and then I flew a delayed flight to Chicago and a delayed flight to Raleigh. Throughout the first five hours of delays, my van to my retreat, like a patron saint of patience, waited for me, but then Chicago O'Hare airport tacked on another hour and it was gone. Then a few more hours of delay later I got home, slept eight hours and then drove four hours with my friend who had just returned home from Turkey and was still on his malaria medication.

On the last night of my annual Quaker retreat there's an induction ceremony that starts after a graduation ceremony that goes until an hour after it's supposed to end at midnight. The graduation ceremony celebrates participants' moving on from the high school group, and our induction ceremony celebrates their entrance into the young adult group, so there's really no way around starting it at one in the morning.

The nice thing, though, is that by the time the graduates have gone through the intense, serious spirituality of the graduation ceremony, we get to make the induction ceremony as goofy as we like. It's different every time and we keep it a complete secret from the high school group. That doesn't keep them from guessing, though. In the retelling our harmless pranks grow to atrocities so horrifying that last year the graduating seniors resolved to flee rather than join in the induction.

This year, in an attempt to foresee what we had in store, the seniors looked to Google. Some people say that Google is not always the right place to look for the answer to a question. I say that Google will always give the right answer to the question asked, but there's no telling if the question is right. Case in point, the seniors asked to know more about "hazing." A very popular method of hazing, the Google-found Wikipedia page innocently informed the hapless seniors, was to force-feed each blindfolded inductee a live goldfish, which caused much unneeded concern.

On my four hours of sleep after the induction, I drove back four hours, again with my anti-malarial friend who courteously stayed awake and kept me from nodding off and ending this blog forever. The moment I come home I check my email and see a flurry of emails announcing the release of Math Flyer and, resultantly, the immediate need for a significant update to the website, of which I am in chrge. Fortunately, the updates were not insurmountable even in my weakened state, and I managed to get them done, entertain a surprise guest, shop for groceries, and write this blog entry in time to start getting sleep only fifteen minutes late.

My friends who are eagerly awaiting their graduation movie really have Greg Euchner to thank. I had written off another movie as impossible until during our visit together he suddenly showed intense interest in contributing to one more video. I hadn't brought my equipment, so it wasn't until my next visit that I could collect the necessary footage.

I suppose that, especially for the less sentimental, a certain amount of anxiety comes with having to come up with nice or interesting things to say about one's friends. I know that I worry over my footage of myself that will be in these movies. Still, I am disappointed that some of my friends refused, pointedly or by clear implication, to contribute. As much as I hated to put them in an uncomfortable situation on their last days at Earlham, their absence leaves a conspicuous hole in the final product, much like an absent member at a reunion. The footage I did collect, however, is excellent, and will make for a good set of movies.

Yes, a set of movies. One movie would have to be an hour long, and people will likely just want to skip to the portions about themselves, so I'm instead making one movie for each graduate. That's seven movies in all, I figure everyone deserves a movie even if they weren't comfortable contributing. If they don't appreciate it now, maybe they'll feel differently in five or ten years. Unfortunately, of these seven movies I haven't had time to finish even one. I've been so busy with Math Flyer and moving that opportunities for movie-making have scarcely presented themselves. The good news is, though, that I gave myself a very lenient deadline - specifically October, Katie's wedding. I hope to have the movies done well before that time, since my Doctoral work is not likely to offer much free time either, but we shall have to see.

In terms of busy, I'm particularly busy right now. I'm flying to Illinois to teach some parallel visualization and code optimization, then right as I return on Thursday I'll be off again to the Southern Appalachian Yearly Meeting Association (SAYMA) where, by clerical error, I became clerk of the Young Adult Friends. Luckily that title so far has been a source of very little additional work for me, probably because I'm not doing what I'm supposed to, whatever that is. No telling what's going to happen when I get to SAYMA, though.

So, yeah. I've been slacking in terms of uploading images, so I'll try and use my little netbook camera to take some pictures in Illinois and at SAYMA and put them up next entry.

Thanks to everyone who signed my ad-hoc guestbook, especially the first-time commenters! I'll transfer your comments to my real guestbook when I put it together.

Well, my time living with my friend James in Shadowood has come to an end. It was particularly fun spending two months living with James, even though we were often both so busy we barely saw each other. I've known James from childhood, but in these two months I enjoyed seeing a couple sides I'd never seen before. Particulary, he now calls me out whenever I exaggerate, which is hilarious.

My house is so hot, it's really remarkable. Last night I couldn't sleep because it was so hot under my one sheet. I'm thinking I should perhaps sleep with no sheets at all, and let North Carolina's suffocating humidity be my blanket.

So, in September of last year, on a whim I registered my site with Google Analytics. I started getting a nice little picture of my blog's traffic, which I could see in any number of formats, from a timeline of the "bounce" percentage of my readers (the percentage that find my blog and leave without going anywhere else on it) to a map of the Earth showing all the countries, states, and cities from where someone has accessed my blog. It's really quite amazing to think that someone I've never met in Mumbai, India, and two people in Salvador and Vila Velha, Brazil have all taken a look at my blog. What's more, the man/woman/spam-bot in Vila Velha spent nearly six minutes on my site, and actually visited two pages! Google can even tell me from what site the person came, as well as telling me what google searches are leading people to my blog. 896 people have found my blog on a search of "House Centipede." You can read that one if you want, it's one of my better entries.

That's all well and good, but I mostly just forget about analytics and come back to it sporadically. Recently I looked at my site visits, and I noticed that just recently my visits have jumped dramatically - a usual high of 24 has been replaced in recent days by a high of 186! "Excellent!" I thought. "Indeed my friends are silently reading my blog, and with my recent advertisement, of course its popularity has spiked!" One hundred and eighty-six visits seems like a lot, though. I wonder if there's another factor at play here. In any case, my silent readers, please comment on this post! Say anything, I'd appreciate it if you identified yourself, but I understand if you don't want to. I look forward to seeing who signs this makeshift "guestbook" of mine.

So, I'm not a bad vegetarian anymore. Nope, I'm not carrying the title "vegetarian" any further - even with the "bad" disclaimer it leads people to expect more strictness than there actually is. The fact of the matter is I simply do not crave meat much. I am aware of the health benefits of not eating meat, but the way I see it, if I can cut out 80% of my meat intake with little or no effort, I may as well just enjoy the 20% that's left. So, as a "vegetarian leaning individual," I make vegetarian choices when they are immediately apparent and are not an inconvenience to myself or my company.

So, the final lingering ghost of my life as a college student has evaporated. I've still another graduation to visit, but my next visit to see off my beloved sister shall be just that, and nothing more. I have a few more friends left, but my entire core group will be gone, and with it my emotional attachment to Earlham. The physical campus is lovely, of course, but I had no nostalgic memories recur at any point in my wanderings about it. This may have been affected by the fact that I had very recently been at Earlham before, but as far as I'm concerned, while I can visit Earlham Campus again, I'll never again be at Earlham.

What a last hurrah it was, though. Aside from all the usual awesomeness, I got to have a graduation dinner with Alisa, Emily, Kelly, and all their respective families. This is going to sound like some kind of children's book or math puzzle or something, but each of the three women had one sister, each of whom was exactly four years older or younger than her graduating sister, and two of whom were named Rebecca. The other was named Laura. Katie and I were the only two without, so Katie and I were appointed honorary sisters for the evening.

As the only male related to no one present, for me the dinner unavoidably started off a little awkwardly. Clearly noticing my tendency to stand out like a sore thumb, a man introduced himself as Kelly's uncle, and in what I would like to imagine was a friendly jest said, "You know who Kelly is, right?" Fortunately no one else seemed concerned I might be some random drifter trying to cop a free meal, or at least they didn't mention it.

Beyond that the meal went splendidly. Kelly and her sister Laura were insufferably entertaining - they were constantly goofing around both physically and verbally. At one point Laura continued a three minute conversation with Kelly holding her nose closed throughout. Laura would also try to get me to side with her in the verbal arguments. In a couple minutes we determined that, according to the theory that the soul is present in the neurons of the human brain, it therefore can be assumed to approximate the shape of the brain. So, since the brain's two separate halves perform separate duties, one can presume that the brain is asymmetrical and therefore the soul, too is asymmetrical. Because the soul is inherently asymmetrical, Laura need not be troubled at Kelly's accusation of her soul's asymmetry. Kelly, having taken a neuroscience course, pointed out that while the brain's halves do indeed perform separate functions, these differences are not reflected in the brain's shape, which is, in fact, symmetrical. According to this theory, to have an asymmetrical soul suggests not a spiritual crisis so much as a brain injury.

I mentioned earlier that in all three cases, the age difference between graduate and sister was four years, meaning that the sisters were all just getting ready to begin college or had four years of graduate school or the infamous "Real Life" under their belts. Fortuitously, I was positioned at a corner between one of each. Emily's sister Rebecca was to my left represented the bright-eyed innocence of college past eagerly planning to pursue theatre at Minnesota State. Across from me the aforementioned Laura advised me on teaching assistantships and assured me that in pursuing a PhD I was not giving up my soul (she never actually said that, but she herself appeared to have a soul, and a symmetrical one no less). I had an excellent time, and by the end Kelly's uncle even seemed convinced of my authenticity, although I couldn't be entirely certain.

Also this weekend I got my most secret wish. I never really expected it to happen, but somebody actually collected interviews and made a movie for me! Ok, it wasn't actually a movie, Katie just collected the interviews and handed them to me. They were really sweet, though. I never realized that Alisa liked my laugh, and somebody likes my glasses. I crack Kelly up, which I sort of already knew, but it was nice to hear. Eddie, who like many of my male friends is loath to express any emotion when he can possibly avoid it, actually vaguely suggested that he sincerely appreciated the videos I make, I think. Then Katie, surprised at his absence of funniness, asked him what he would do if we were stranded on a desert island and had to eat each other. Like a true gentleman, Eddie refused to eat me, even if it meant he would hypothetically starve.

I would like to amend my previous statement about never being able to return to Earlham. The Earlham campus isn't my Earlham anymore, but I dare say that wherever my friends are will be.

Ps. Dude, dude, an actor from "The Office" was totally at the graduation. It was that Sabre representative whose name nobody seems to be able to remember, but I totally saw him! I didn't believe it was him at first, but eventually I noticed he was right in front of me milling in line waiting to get out. So I figured I'd just say something just vague enough to be a litmus test, "I like your work, especially this latest season." I said. Rather than the "huh?" I expected, he said "Hey, thanks! I appreciate it!" A good rule of thumb for approaching actors is that if they don't make it hard to approach them, they don't mind being approached. An actor who is constantly hounded is going to wear dark glasses and keep four bodyguards to push away fans. If that's not the case, go ahead and say hi.

The nice thing about working at Shodor, scratch that, one of many nice things about working at Shodor is that in such a small organization each member wears many hats. Lately I've mostly been programming and teaching, but now I'm in charge of something I've never done before - advertising.

Here's the thing. Our new app Math Flyer is due to be release fairly soon, and we want to generate as much interest as we can as fast as we can so that it can get into the top ten in the app store and get lots of downloads. I'm trying to organize the YouTube side of the blitz, wherein we make ads to drum up support and put them online. I'm hoping to leverage the resource that Shodor has in abundance - talented young students. Sometime soon I hope to announce a contest in which anyone may develop a short ad for Math Flyer and submit it to us. Then we'll make sure it won't get us in trouble and upload it to our channel in YouTube. The YouTube video that scores the most views during the span of the competition will win its creators a cash prize (currently $100: $50 out of my pocket and $50 more that Shodor Executive Director Bob contributed).

The beautiful thing is that there is no direction. Aside from not getting us in trouble, all we ask is that the Math Flyer logo and slogan ("change a function, change the world") be included at the end of each video. This way students can be completely free to go in whatever direction they want. I know we've got some stars at Shodor, so I'm hoping this will encourage them to sprinkle their stardust on the Math Flyer ad campaign.

Beyond simple harvesting of talent, pitting people against each other for raw views will cause them to actively advertise their own videos, getting their friends and family interested in Math Flyer. If this works out, it should be a nice boost for Math Flyer.

Ha ha! My blog has generated its first spinoff! If we define a "spinoff" as a body of work inspired by another body of work that follows one of the characters featured in the original body of work, Idil's blog, "The Life and Times of Idil, as seen on The Blog Formerly Known as 'Sam's Japan Blog'" certainly fits the bill!

Ok, you caught me, it's not actually called that. It's called "Kladfvbungmichk." No, seriously, and it's not Turkish, I asked. It's something to do with "Aphex Twin." Maybe if I had some kind of magical engine that let me search all of human knowledge I could find that out, but that's just ridiculous.

Idil's blog is pretty entertaining so far - she's already knighted her iPhone for its brave recovery after she accidentally threw it down the stairs. Boy, I remember when I started my blog back in 2008, all I could talk about were the fleas on my cat! I would never have thought of promoting inanimate objects to royalty! I don't even think iPhones existed then! Those crazy kids have it so easy these days! Way back in 2008, I had to scramble on my hands and knees and carve my blog entries in clay tablets! Back in 2008, I was happy if I could bang my flint and steel together hard enough to start an Internet connection. Yeah, dial up was hard to use.

Anyway, my point is that blogs are awesome! Everybody should get a blog! If everyone gets a blog, I won't have to write my own entries anymore! I'll just rehash other people's ideas and pass it off as my own work! My life will be so much easier, you have no idea. So everyone, go forth and make your own blogs! It's up to you to save me from having to be original!

I probably got a good nights sleep last weekend. That is to say that if you put all my sleep in the past three days together, it probably adds up to roughly one good night's sleep. I normally can't do anything when I'm short on sleep. I'd sooner contemplate a horrific death than something even as simple as taking out the trash. However, it all melts away when I'm with good friends. This weekend I visited Earlham College, and melt away my exhaustion did.

Such exhaustion does not stay away, however. Now that I'm back home separated from all my wonderful friends, my sixteen hours of forsaken sleep fly back with a vengeance, swinging reality sharply back into contrast. It's not really such a terrible reality, but the fact that it will likely include so few of these friends makes it suddenly seem unbearable. On my bicycle I flee down a path I've never been before, and follow it until it dead-ends into a street sign I'd never encountered, "Emily Rd"*.

The next road I find is "Martha Blvd," not named after any close friend of mine and strongly suggesting mere coincidence rather than divine providence. And of course, as my friend Avery would be quick to point out, it is coincidence. The entire idea that the name of a road built years previously would be at all affected by my own febrile musings is laughable. Nevertheless the concept of "signs," as my friend Katie insightfully indicated, is still a delusion entertained by many who in their rational minds certainly know better. My "Emily Rd" and all the major religions of the world are based on the same core concept. The concept that the universe in fact does have meaning, and that that meaning truly is somehow related to your life.

But upon further inspection, it is not that fiction that brings me happiness. Rather it is the facts that do. The fact of Katie's limitless energy and cornucopia of love and unbounded madness, the fact of Greg's affable good nature punctuated by sudden eruptions of raw awesome. The fact that Eddie is never at any point without something entertaining or challenging to say, and that he never at any point fails to say it. The fact that both Kellies have come together in the same house, and that one can hypnotize you with her eyebrows and the other can assume the form of the Great White Shark of South Africa with only a few moments' preparation. What makes me love life is the fact that we now can tell someone being negative to "get off the depression couch." Idil makes me happy when she tries to imitate me speaking Japanese by saying "So-so-so TAMAGOTCHI!", and Michael in several dozen ways, none of which can be adequately described in just a couple sentences. The fact of Alisa's abstract rug makes me happy. Alisa's abstract rug that when you step on it takes you to a magical land full of other people that stepped on Alisa's abstract rug. The fact of Emily's uncanny ability to miss every important part of a movie, enough that it takes the rest of the movie to explain it all over again, and the fact that no one lets her forget it, these facts remind me why I would want to live a life in a universe with no meaning.

But the universe doesn't care about that, so I have to move on, and my friends will scatter themselves about the country and the world. Katie articulates my fear: "Will I ever find friends as wonderful as these?" Certainly all the good people in the world can't possibly be at Earlham College, but the college atmosphere, and certainly that of Earlham especially, may very well be impossible to duplicate. But maybe not. Once again I find myself needing that word that sticks uncomfortably in my philosophical throat. Somewhere in this meaningless, random universe I stumbled across "Emily Rd" and I need to have faith, without proof, that in my life in "The Real World" I'll stumble again and find something new that makes me just as happy as my old friends did in college.

Until then, I'll just have to keep visiting!

*Emily one of a small number of good friends of mine from college, friends that I particularly miss.

Oh, boy, this has been another hard Sunday to get through. I have a condition that I've dubbed "reverse insomnia" that prevents me from sleeping in even when I desperately need it. I tend to wake up suddenly at seven in the morning every day, and no additional laying in bed after that time does me any good. This means that when my friends keep me up on Saturdays it means that my entire Sunday is a struggle to do anything remotely productive. My mother has the same condition, but she is of an age where staying up until midnight or one is no longer a prerequisite for anything resembling a social life, lucky her.

In any case, I'm going to do my best to bluster through the pounding headache and faltering desire to exist and tell you about a transformative experience I had during a happier day of the week.

On Wednesday morning, I, due to a complex logistical issue, awoke at my parents' house. I had accomplished my morning necessities efficiently, and, eating my breakfast in the living room, I mused about what I would do with the extra thirty minutes I had earned. In the absence of an easy way to brutally murder my extra time with television, I glanced at the shelf of books under the TV.

One book caught my eye: "Deep Wells, Dry Springs, and Crooked Creeks." "Aha," I thought, "I've been wanting to read a book about the drought."

So, I picked it up, only to be surprised that it was not a book about the dwindling water supply, but a book of "True Stories of Inspiration and Laughter from the Life of a Quaker Pastor." Ok. I was somewhat interested in gaining a broader understanding of Quakerism, and I did like laughter, so I figured I'd open it.

In three days I had all but completely devoured the little book. This W.R. Frye's stories were extremely short - seldom over two pages, utterly sincere, and wrought with a wry humor that was omnipresent even in the most tragic of the tales. It affirmed my values and challenged me to stay true to them. It met me at my level, yet was simultaneously deeply religious. This W.R. Frye derived such good from the words of the Bible as I had intellectually known was possible but had no real example of.

William Frye is an inspriration to me to gain a better understanding of the Bible. Don't get me wrong, I'm not converting. I think that The Holy Bible will be my next Kindle download, though.

The Society for Creative Anachronism is surprisingly much more creatively anachronistic than I expected. What I really like about it is the juxtaposition of the extremely formal royal court with a setting that is otherwise much more like a commune than a monarchy. Technically speaking, I missed the SCA 101 course that Morwynna was going to provide for my friend Trey and me, but I picked up a bit here and there.

The "Atlantia" SCA, which comprises most of the East coast of the United States, has a loose hierarchy, consisting of what appear to be three levels: Commonfolk, nobles, and royalty. One refers to commonfolk as "lord" or "lady", nobles, indicated by circlets on their heads, as "your excellency." Royalty consist only of the king and queen and are referred to as "your majesty." In court, various rules are expected to be followed. When approaching the king and queen, there is a specific place at which "the royal territory" begins, and one must bow a total of four times and never turn one's back on the king and queen, unless descending stairs.

Nevertheless, outside of court, titles have very little meaning, and everyone contributes their effort for events to go smoothly. The royalty fight in a tournament for their right to rule, but the fighters are elected based on contribution to the SCA, and being royalty mostly means that one has to spend even more time contributing to the SCA.

I was concerned that the SCA might be structured in a way as supports medieval values, like sexism, but as it turns out this is a very forward-thinking fourteenth century. A woman can be elected for the royal tournament and become queen, bringing her boyfriend or husband to be king. SCA is a non-profit organization and all the work is done by volunteers, like my co-worker Jennifer who brought me. She was actually on duty signing people in almost all day and missed most of the activities.

The most interesting part of the SCA is that it attracts so many artisans specializing in medieval crafts that there's something of a surplus. So much so that if it's your first time people will be handing you jewelery like it's candy. To be fair, Trey and I got there so early that we had nothing to do but helpset stuff up, and two-thirds of our jewlery came to us as a reward for our efforts. My camera is too low-resolution to capture the detail on some of this jewelery, so I'll wait until I have a better one.

It's really an excellent tactic. One that I've used many times - a simple trade, really. Use something that one has in great supply, in this case beautiful handmade crafts, and trade it for something one needs more of, in this case, new members. People specifically told me "this is so you will remember your first event." This strategic trading of resources for human good will is known as a "gift," and can be useful for giving memories physical form. As you no doubt have noticed, this event has stuck with me at least thus far, but I can't shake the feeling that from here on out there's going to be a much larger ratio of effort to showers of jewelery. As much as the numbers may suggest otherwise, though, It may still be worth going. If I have time. People say the SCA takes over one's life, and I'm going to be reluctant to give it up when a PhD at North Carolina State University is already in solid possession.

Oh, that's right. Today I accepted North Carolina State University's offer and informed University of Illinois at Chicago that I had taken the liberty of making for them the decision that seemed to be giving them so much trouble.

Listening to some new-age aesthetics and mixed minor and major key tonalities right now. When listening to new-agey music, I want to do arty, incomprehensible interpretive dance, but for your sake I won't. No need to thank me.The source of this wonderful, inspiring music is of course none other than Pandora Radio. For those of you who do not know, Pandora Radio has nothing to do with all the worlds evils nor discouraging curiosity in women. Rather, it is an engine built on the "Music Genome Project," that takes a song you like and gives you a radio station made entirely of other songs you might like.

Pandora doesn't stop there. Once you've picked the "seed" for your station, you can refine it into exactly what you want via a simple system of telling it if you liked or didn't like the song it gave you. This way of building a radio station gives a personal connection with your radio stations. You're not just manufacturing a station, you're nurturing and teaching your naive, wild starting station until it learns and becomes exactly the refined station that you want. James is currently working on raising a station that plays only video game music.

It's not a one-way road, either. I remember I had a station that I wanted to play only Japanese music, but I liked the jazzy, lyricless songs on it so much that it became a station that sometimes plays Japanese music and other times plays funky jazz. That is the beauty of Pandora. A silly Japanophile like me can in weeks become an amateur jazz head without even trying.

My friend James's current roommate is moving out - and he's still on his lease for about two and a half months. So, to help pay for costs, I'm going to be James's roommate until the summer. James's old roommate Nick sold me his bed for $200 - he said he'd bought it in July for $500, and he's currently unemployed, so I decided to make a decent starting offer. He didn't haggle at all, though, which makes me think he might have been planning to leave it to me for free anyway for convenience's sake. Like I said, though, I don't mind helping him out a little bit. He also left a table and a television set, so I think I got my money's worth.

I think that's my favorite part of this move, besides living with a good friend, is that there's very little "moving" to be done. Basically all I have to bring is sheets, clothes, and sundry items, plus electronics and laptops etcetera. Kind of like a two and a half month sleepover in a guest bedroom - except I'll hopefully be sleeping more than one does at a sleepover. Do people my age even talk about sleepovers? I think they're just called "visits."

So, I was on the bus to work. I brought out my Kindle to check my email, and found that "North Carolina State University has reached a decision" regarding my application. In order to find the decision itself, I was to log into my account. Unfortunately, I did not have the login information in my Kindle, so I had to wait on the bus until I could get to work and connect to the internet on my computer.

At work I did log in, and found that their decision had indeed been to recommend me for acceptance! Immediately I went out to tell my co-workers that I had been accepted into NC State's computer science doctoral program. After much congratulations, I returned to my office, where I resumed reading the acceptance description.

In the fine print, I saw that the decision was to admit me into the masters program, not the Doctoral. I had, in fact, mistakenly applied to the MS program and had fixed it only weeks before the decision. Nevertheless, I had also heard about someone who had applied to the PhD program at NC State and been refused but offered instead a masters position, so I didn't know what to make of the situation.

I had resolved to accept my masters admission until it occurred to me that in the case that it was a clerical error, I might end up refused from both programs. So, I called and, trying carefully to explain that I was perfectly happy with the masters program, asked if there was any error in my files that might result in my acceptance being overturned. The person on the other side assured me, and I was reassured.

No more than thirty minutes later, I received an email from another representative at North Carolina State University:

I understand you called the Graduate School here today because of some confusion about the degree program for which the Computer Science department recommended to admit you.

So just to clarify, the department is recommending you for the PhD program, which was your objective.

So, back in college I was talking with some of my friends, when one of them decided to share with us an epiphany he had. "Y'know," he said, "Hypocrisy isn't all that bad."

Much to my surprise no chorus of "What!?" erupted. Amazingly, instead one of my other friends said "Hey, that's really insightful!" I was so flabbergasted I couldn't think of a response, I said the first thing that came to mind - I suggested that hypocrisy is to claim a value that one does not really hold, not to act against a value that one does hold, which can be a relatively minor compromise. Of course that was neither true nor a meaningful distinction, and it didn't seem to convince them of anything.

If I had had my thoughts together I'd say, "Hypocrisy is always that bad. However, so much hypocrisy is built into the culture of privileged progressives that no one can be expected to stop it completely. The hypocrisy is in no way justified, but with the pressure of peers, the genuine comfort of our position in life, and simple inertia, we settle for mostly being mostly part of the problem we bemoan. It's not ok, but it doesn't make us evil. At least, I like to think it doesn't. Until things get bad enough, people don't care enough for dramatic change to happen. That's just the facts."

"Recognizing this, however, is critical. Recognizing it and lamenting it. A religious parallel is to acknowledge yourself as a sinner. If you recognize it and don't lament it, instead applauding yourself for your insight and feeling no responsibility for your hypocrisy, the incentive to improve yourself in what ways you can bring yourself to is lost. You begin down the road of unabashed, self-justified evil. Not to suggest that Hollywood represents greater truth, but how many movie villains have at some point suggested 'I am beyond good and evil?' That is what you are saying when you say 'hypocrisy isn't so bad'."

I hope this post hasn't lost me any readers, but it needs to be said, in case anyone you know thinks they've just philosophically defeated the need for ethics. I welcome alternative opinions, of course.

So, I've been teaching at Culbreth Middle School on Tuesdays and Thursdays the past couple weeks. The half-finished wall murals are still there from when I was a student ten years ago. The students are greatly enjoying making games with their agent sheets models. I promised one group I'd let them present, but I haven't had time to fit them in yet, so they keep hounding me.

The students are getting along with each other, too. We paired one of the surprisingly many girls in the class with a boy that liked to say "cheese" out of context as a form of comedy, and she started saying "cheese" right with him. It's good to see these kids making nice. The only fight we've had was relatively minor, regarding one student correcting the grammar and spelling of another student when they were writing the description for their model prior to putting it on the web.

So, I heard about this subgenre of Latin music that's gaining popularity in Spanish-speaking countries. I wouldn't expect you to know anything about it about it, it's kind of a niche thing in the US. Most people are more for mainstream music, you know.

In any case, it's nice to have another station of non-English music to work to, but I'm not sure if I like the music or if I like the idea of liking the music. As the first paragraph suggested, being into "Latin Alternative" makes me feel like a hipster. It makes me want to wear plaid and pick up smoking simply for the sheer irony of it all. Irony is a core value of hipsterism, after all.

Coming from a place of relatively little knowledge of music, I appreciate that now I can whip out the term "Latin Alternative" and, hopefully, achieve blank stares from my friends who thought me a musical illiterate. So, yeah, maybe you should put "Aterciopelados" on your radio. Other countries are taking their favorite forms of music and making alternative versions just like the US and alternative rock. That's like, so ironic. Then I take a long draw of my cigarette. *cough* oh, yeah... *hack* that's good irony.

So, I just realized I've been thinking about this all wrong! I've got a revolutionary new direction to take speech and language processing! Now bear with me here. It's challenging for computers to understand human language. Challenging why? Because human language is full of ambiguities and exceptions! This issue alone accounts for the majority of challenges that language processing has to tackle! So, given that, what if instead of making computers understand human language, we make human language understandable by computers!

Here's the plan:

1. No more homonyms: Multiple words may have the same meaning, but no one word may have more than one meaning.

2. Regularize morphology: "is" "to is" "he issed." It's high time inflections started making sense!

3. No reckless invention of words: New words must be registered in an official database before they may ever be used in speech or writing. Many new words will be created as a result of rule #1, and people will be encouraged to use that as their last opportunity for creativity. Keep in mind that this includes loan-words as well.

4. Parentheses to indicate association: The Groucho Marx joke will now read "One morning I shot (an elephant in my pajamas), how he got into my pajamas, I'll never know." The joke will cease to be funny. A necessary casualty.

With these and other changes, we'll not only save time and energy by making language processing extremely easy, but we'll increase human productivity by eliminating wasteful language that causes more confusion than it needs to. 1984's minispeak is a shining example of what I'm describing! I've submitted a grant proposal to the Society for the Clarification of the English Language to get funding to continue my study in political science and social engineering.

My new coat is very nice. It's warm, has lots of pockets, and has helped me not to lose at least one out of about four pairs of gloves I have owned in the past few months. That said, my coat has at least one huge flaw - the zipper sticks.

It might not seem quite so serious to you right now, but imagine you've just left the cold outdoors and are in your office building. You're climbing the eleven flights of stairs to your office proper and you are beginning to feel hot, so you move to unzip your jacket - but you can't. Suddenly, instead of being an object of clothing that you wear by choice, your jacket is a cloth prison in which you will die of heat exhaustion before your pitiful attempts to escape eveer come to fruition. For the next few minutes you have to meticulously and deliberately figure out precisely where the cloth keeps getting caught in your zipper while simultaneously fighting to keep your sanity against your newfound sense of overwhelming claustrophobia.

sticking zippers are a serious problem.

So I'm going to a weekly games night at UNC now. For the most part it's pretty typical nerdy college student fare. Last Saturday, I had just lost on the first turn of an extremely stylish path-based game whose name I don't remember. While I waited for everyone else to finish, I noticed someone had brought an expansion to the popular game Dominion - one I hadn't seen before. I asked if I could take a look at the new cards and was shunted to the rulebook, which really wasn't the same thing. In fact the rulebook was extremely difficult to read. I couldn't figure out why I was having so much trouble until I noticed that there were no periods separating the sentences. In fact, there was no punctuation at all!

Eventually I managed to convince the owner of this Dominion expansion to play a game with my friends and me so I could look at the real, punctuated cards. As we played a group next to us was playing "Apples to Apples" and becoming increasingly noisy. Now I feel like part of the rite of passage in becoming a young college graduate is getting sick of "Apples to Apples," but these rosy-faced young baccalaureates yet have plenty of time to play the game into oblivion. In the meantime, they suddenly burst into Monty Python sketches and made incoherent jokes about confusing state universities with human body parts, thoroughly confusing those around them playing games less rambunctious.

At another table I heard someone mention a steampunk comic involving, with no satiric intent, Sarah Palin. Steam Punk, for those of you who do not know, is a sub-genre of retro-futurism that pretends that instead of dying out, steam technology continued to advance, resulting in elaborate, high-tech machinery covered in gears and clockwork that spews the high-temperature water vapor out of cracks in the metal. Really steam-punk is almost more of an aesthetic than anything that could be seriously pursued as science fiction. That's what "Steam Punk Palin" is, at least. Take a moment to google it and see what I mean.

I need to learn to trust my gut instinct when trying new shows. My gut instinct: don't trust anything made for the network that deliberately changed its own name from "The SciFi Channel" to "SyFy" (pronounced "SciFi," as much as you might want to say "Siffy"). It wouldn't be true to say I didn't know what I was getting into when I turned on the pilot of "Eureka," but it was pretty ridiculous. By the time the genius scientists were suggesting that a device somebody had created was, by disproving a generally accepted theory, was somehow "breaking" physics, which caused time to distort and blow up vans I was regretting my decision. It's really not the science, though. I've forgiven, and I continue to forgive Dr. Who's massacre of any semblance of temporal logic because it's entertaining and occasionally well-done. Not to mention the Doctor himself respects his audience enought to admit how little sense it makes, "Well, time isn't really linear, you see, it's more like... wibbly wobbly, timey wimey." Suspension of disbelief can be inspired by much more than realism, and an audience will gladly overlook an awful lot of holes in a plot if they're enjoying themselves. Unfortunately, Eureka, at least its pilot episode, did not garner itself enough star power for its wibbly wobbly treatment of theoretical physics.

Throughout the first and second classes, the students at Chewning Middle School clamored for the tower-building portion of the class. First we had to teach them some core concepts, though. They used a java-based structural simulator to learn the basics of tension, compression, and structural stability.

Before the physical challenge (tower building) we had a computational challenge, where the students put a fixed weight on their structure and tried to spread the stress as evenly as possible among their members. The object was to have the highest stress (tension or compression) on any one member in your model be the lowest in the class. Early in the class I put a structure on the board to get them started and told them they were allowed to copy this structure and it would count towards their score. It took thirty minutes for someone to even try the simple structure I put on the board. She won the competition just by following directions, admittedly an impressive feat for a middle schooler.

The actual tower-building was somewhat more complex. We had never actually tested the gumdrop candy "dots" and coffee straws as building materials, and the combination turned out to be one of the weakest yet. A serious issue with dots for the nodes is that the more members (coffee straws) you put in a dot, the less stable it becomes. This is especially an issue if, say, you're a middle schooler and you're doing everything by trial and error. We caught onto this rather quickly and I implemented a "dot exchange program" wherein students could turn in dots that had, through legitimate use, become worthless as a building material, and receive new dots. I warned the students that I would not accept dots with bite marks.

In the end many of the structures were actually rather successful. Oddly enough, the most successful structure was the most apparently haphazard. "Team Plate," as they called themselves, were clearly not working based on what we had taught them, but I theorize that they were building empirically. Whenever a node or member appeard to be supporting too much weight, they supported it directly. This led to a less than ideal structure, but one much better than those of Team Plate's competitors: Team Cup, Team Structures, The Destruction Eagles, and Team USA Fork, who generally appeared to build based neither on principals nor empiricism. Team Plate was so pleased with their success at the end of the class that they proclaimed themselves "officially engineers" and sent their structure home with one of their members to show off to his parents.

Well, starting tomorrow I go back to work. I've got a workshop every afternoon this week. I'll be teaching the "Engineers in Training" class for which I have been feverishly preparing. I think I've become at least a pound heavier dealing with excess building materials in the gumdrop-toothpick towers alone. My life is so hard.

I've finally started reading the textbook I bought for Natural Language Processing. It's a surprisingly good read! So far, my favorite part has been when the author cites Dr. Seuss as if he were a scholarly reference:"To confuse matters further, fish don't usually change their form when they are plural.*" Aside from that, the subject matter tends to be quite interesting itself.

One more thing. My family has a new compliment, adopted from a young first cousin once removed of mine. Playing my father's new favorite family game, The Ungame, Dinari had to describe the last time he complimented someone. He insisted that he had complimented someone recently, but couldn't remember what the compliment was. His younger brother Damonni came to his rescue and said "Thomas the Tank Engine."

"Oh yeah, Thomas the Tank Engine!" shouted Dinari.

"Ok," said my father, "what was the compliment?"

"Thomas the Tank Engine," Dinari insisted. Damonni nodded his head.

So, let it not be said that we can never learn from the younger generation. It's taken some work for me to get it recognized, but "Thomas the Tank Engine" is now an official compliment in our household.

*for an example, see Seuss(1960)

I got my dad a Snuggie. You know, one of those wearable blankets. You know what? I was hoping he could slip it over his head and walk around the house looking like Merlin or Friar Tuck. Well, he received it and the good news: it makes him look like Friar Tuck. The bad news: he doesn't slip it over his head and wear it around the house. He doesn't even slip it over his head at all, it's open in the back! Can you believe that!? What on earth brought the madmen and madwomen engineering this product to make it open in the back!? Not only does it make an already questionable fashion choice downright unforgivable, it gouges a gigantic hole in the concept of wearing these things for warmth!

On another note, Dr. Panoff, the executive director of Shodor, mentioned something about a Shodor Scholarship that he might give me if we make a tidy profit on these interactivate Apps on which we're working. I'm not sure how serious he is about it. It was clearly meant to be a cajolement. Apparently some of his computer science researcher friends think that this conversion is a piece of cake and we should have completed it a long time ago. I don't believe that for a moment. It's much easier to say something is easy than it is to actually do it. This is doubly true in computer science. Nevertheless I do think we can work in such a way as to specifically speed the release of our first App. My co-worker Rob has been really pushing the long-term framework, which is needs to be finished before we can release the final product, but at the moment is still not ready for presentation and is coming along quite slowly. I was working on building touch screen functionality, so our work was separate. Now it's about time to bring it together, and I'll make sure we keep short-term results in mind without sacrificing long-term extension. This won't be a problem, but the point, harkening back to the beginning of this paragraph, is that the fact the concept of Shodor giving me a scholarship even occurred to Bob in the first place is intriguing indeed.

So this one time, I was working, and an intern came and said some good news to me. I don't remember the good news, but in any case it was good enough that I said "I think that a high five is in order." The intern didn't get it, but, instead of simply brushing it off, he said, "What?"

"Just a silly joke, never mind," I replied dismissively, but he was persistent. "Explain it to me," he insisted, "then I'll find it funny."

Feeling acutely unfunny, I reluctantly explained that the intended humor of the joke derived from the juxtaposition of the formal language of saying that something is "in order" with the highly informal "high five." Then a huge smile crossed his face and he laughed a huge laugh. "Oh yeah," he said, "I'm learning about juxtapositions in English class. Ha ha, that's cool."

So, yeah, that intern is the only person I know who can find a joke funny after it is explained.

I thought that, having written three separate papers for my Fellowship application, my grad school application papers would be a snap. Oh how wrong I was. That was my entire weekend, and I'm still not finished. Fortunately, the reason it's taking so much work to get these done is because I have a professional grant writing coach as a mother, and she is dedicating a significant chunk of her time to helping me make these applications as perfect as they're going to get. I can't imagine not getting into at least some of these schools after all the work I've put in, but if I do have to try again, I'm definitely going to start earlier.

December fifth's entry has been taken down. For more information, get in touch with me directly.

I catsat for the Knafl's again this weekend. I think I've got the cats' names down: Elliot is a shorthair who sounds like somebody plugged him into a bass amp, Sally is a white longhair who doesn't need much to be happy - just give her a soft pillow and another cat to bully, and Harry is mostly black and doesn't seek out company. For your convenience, I'll refer to them as Loudspeaker Cat, Don Cat, and Other Cat.

So the other day I watched Harry Potter with my family, who then visited the cats with me. Other Cat and Don Cat enjoyed the attention lavished on them, but Loudspeaker Cat was nowhere to be found. After I came back from a visit with a friend that evening I was ready to go to bed. Unfortunately Loudspeaker Cat, having completely missed the petting extravaganza, felt left out and made his concerns known - loudly. So, I thought I'd save two birds with one box (I don't like killing birds with stones) and let him get on the bed with me while I sleep. Loudspeaker Cat was fine with this until he found out I was planning to sleep. Fortunately, he had somehow learned not to lightly rake his claws across my skin, but he kept nuzzling my hand and tickling me whenever I tried to stop petting him. Fortunately, Don Cat showed up and attacked Loudspeaker Cat, chasing him away. Then Don Cat lay on my bed and didn't bother me. Don Cat knows how to get in good with her superiors. Eventually Don Cat left, and, having learned my lesson, I shut the door behind her.

Another day, Loudspeaker Cat came to me while I was on the couch and loudly demanded I pet him. As I did so, Loudspeaker Cat pawed at my hands as I tried to type my Grad School application, cute but not practical when trying to use a text processor. Don Cat arrived and sat on the couch a little ways away. Loudspeaker Cat's tail haplessly ended up in front of Don Cat, who, without making a sound, sank her teeth into it. Loudspeaker Cat yawled and ran away and Don Cat took his place. I had to move my computer a little bit so Don Cat didn't block the keyboard, but she once again proved that she could exist around me without demanding that I devote my entire attention to her.

This may seem wrong for me to encourage this sort of behavior, but I'm not here to train these cats to get along. A hierarchy is natural among many species of animal. I know a veterinarian who deliberately establishes rank among her dogs because it reduces fights. She always feeds the eldest dog first, gives the eldest dog the first choice of treat, and gives him petting priority. Apparently this works, and, y'know, the eldest dog will die eventually, and then the younger dog will be the eldest dog, so it's sort of fair-ish. If dogs could play rock-paper-scissors that'd probably be a better system, but age-based hierarchy is simple for them to understand. In this case, the smarter cat gets the better deal. Elliot does get attention, mind you. There was a significant period of time between when he arrived and when he was chased away in both cases. I do feel like it would be nice to find Harry and give him more attention next time, though. I don't know if his shyness is Don Cat's doing, but I know Harry likes to be pet.

I don't like this term "standing on the shoulders of giants." It implies that the latest researcher is the only person benefitting from the work of people before. Really, it's more like "standing on the shoulders of normal-sized people who are standing on the shoulders of other normal-sized people etcetera." Of course, this does not represent the heterogeneous impact of researchers. Clearly the implication of giants is to correlate size with intellectual contribution. If we extend this metaphor, at the moment, my research proposal and work with Charlie probably earned me the size of a gnat, some of my more productive peers are about the size of flies, Modern researchers range between not having their feet touch the ground when they sit on a chair to having to duck to fit through doors. At the bottom of this menagerie of scientific accomplishment are the six-story tall godzillas of math and science - Newton, Einstein, Von Neumann, Descartes etcetera. Aristotle is the size of Iowa and spends most of his time laying down to relieve all the weight on his back and trying to figure out what the heck Galileo, Brahe and Copernicus are talking about. So the moral of the story is I'm standing on the shoulders of giants and lots of other people, places and things, thank you very much.

Also, I'd like to take a moment to reflect on how sometimes the USA gets it right. Yesterday, a bill going through congress to allow arbitrary censorship of the internet by the Attorney General was struck down. Next year the bill could come back, but it's controversial enough that chances are it won't. This is in contrast to Britain and France, where the government is now permitted to force internet service providers (ISPs) to halt internet service to households alleged to be violating copyright. No due process of law necessary. Americans can breathe easy knowing their internet is safe for another day or two. Our rights to caption pictures of cats, look up information on cat food, and watch videos of cats riding roombas will not be abridged for at least a couple more weeks.

GRFP is due Thursday. No update this week.

The deadline is quickly approaching for the GRFP. Fortunately all I have to do is write one more paper and polish everything to a shiny sheen. My last paper is the research proposal, and talking to an professional in the field it turns out one of my simplest ideas is actually relatively novel. My former roommate Greg agrees with me that the concept of designing a question answer system (a system that provides helpful natural language answers to a user's natural language questions) to ask clarifying questions when the user is not clear in his or her request seems fully obvious. Apparently, though, the research on the subject is not only still quite thin, but mostly in Asia, trained on and designed for asian languages.

Not only that, I haven't seen one case where a system uses the knowledge it gains in its clarifying questions to improve its own algorithms. For example, if the user asks a question the system can't figure out at all, then when the system asks him or her to rephrase asks a more comprehensible question, who's to say the system can't remember that and suggest the comprehensible question the next time a similar confusing question is asked? An even more simple application is the addition of synonyms when a user has to define a word that the system doesn't recognize.

There is one huge issue with this system. Working this way, relying heavily on user-provided content, makes a rather Wikipedia-like system, where the efficacy of the system depends on the honesty and rigor of its contributors. Even worse, most of the contributors don't even know they're contributing, so won't think twice about making a hasty answer to a clarification question.

My first research proposal will not involve any safeguards and will see how performance improves or declines as the system "learns" from being used.

BTW (modern english for PS), I really want to come up with a system that I can reasonably describe as "socratic." This system doesn't really qualify, but a socratic tutoring system would be so awesome.

It was Friday evening. I was on my way home from work, excited about making dinner with the extra miso that I had from last week. As I walked to the door of my house, I saw a package on the step, a nondescript box. Puzzled, I brought it inside, but hesitated to open it, so hungry and eager to start dinner as I was. My computer took long enough to start up, though, that within moments the package was open and its contents were distributed across the dining room table. A couple Japanese snacks and a bag of some kind of wispy fish snack. From Koji, clearly. What a strange, late birthday present, though, and with no warning, either!

It turned out the recipe for miso soup was an awful lot like the recipe for soba soup. I dumped a square of kombu seaweed into the pot of water, and tried to puzzle out how I was going to substitute for bonito flakes without getting triple my daily value of sodium. Nonsensically, I considered doing something with the fish wisps, they looked a little like they'd boil well. I looked at the box for more clues as to its origin. Apparently it was delivered from Kentucky. Koji wasn't in Kentucky. The only person I did know in Kentucky wasn't at all the type to send me gifts, especially not random Japanese foods, no that definitely sounds more like Koji. I would have to thank him as soon as I could.

I pulled out the Kombu from the boiling water, no longer dried and looking once more like a live, healthy seaweed. Delicious. I ate it directly of course. The directions don't say to eat it after flavoring soup with it, I just don't like to waste food. I spooned some mirin into the concoction, dumped a half-cup of soy sauce, and put another pot on to boil for the soba. I hadn't decided how to make the brothy part of the soup, so I further delayed adding the bouillon. I returned to my mystery package. Turning the fish wisps over, I found, to my surprise, a label. In English, no less. "Bonito Flakes," it said.

Fantastic! What a great friend, I never got that Koji any presents. But how could Koji have read my email and gotten bonito flakes all the way from Japan in such short time? It baffled the imagination until I recalled that Koji had sent the package from Kentucky. ...That cleared things up.

By the time I was filtering out the used bonito from my broth, I had come to the inevitable conclusion that Koji Hagiwara was not my benefactor. Who, though? Who in Kentucky was reading my blog and felt compelled to send me the supplies I needed in addition to random snacks? I simply did not know, but it felt like a supernatural force had sent me these snacks. God doesn't live in Kentucky, though, does he?

Finally, between sips of delicious, authentic soba soup, I rooted through the rest of the box, and found one last slip of paper. "Amazon.com," the slip announced, "Gift from Rebecca Leeman."

Well, I've been put to shame. I ran into somebody on facebook who won recognition for her blog post describing her exciting story about getting drunk, sleeping in a meth-addict's tent, and accidentally burning down an island forest. I've realized that if I'm going to be so responsible and always be exercising good judgement, it doesn't matter if I can write or not, my blog posts will have to be either fictionalized or boring. I'm reluctant to fictionalize my blog more than the occasional embellishment, and what's the point of keeping a blog if it's going to be boring, so my good judgement will just have to go.

I don't have the guts to quit common sense cold turkey, so I'll just take baby steps towards becoming someone with interesting stories to tell. This Saturday I went to the fair and, with great effort, impulsively bought loads of unhealthy food. First a fried cheesecake, then a Krispy Kreme Bacon Cheeseburger, then finally a "turkey" leg, which upon closer inspection turned out to be made of ham. The Krispy Kreme Doughnut buns were overwhelmed by the meat and cheese, and in the end the Krispy Kreme Bacon Cheeseburger was just a bacon cheeseburger guaranteed to make your fingers sticky.

My friends at the fair made sure we saw all the animals that we could. I was impressed by the petting zoo, which instead of simply the typical boring sheep and pigs had camels, llamas, and dog-sized south-american rats. All the animals were eager to eat the carrots for which I'd shelled out a whole dollar, except for the huge rats, which evidently thought the were better than us just because they were from South America. I threw like five carrots at them and they didn't do anything at all.

We also saw rabbits, unfortunately no giant rabbits, all just regular sized. The angora rabbits came pretty close, though. Eventually we found some sheep. They all just lay around until one of them, laying in a corner away from the rest, suddenly got up and purposefully strode over to the others. Then it stood there for a while like it had forgotten what it was so determined to do moments earlier. After some standing, it finally remembered that it was there to bother a particular sheep with its hoof. So it did, acting like it was trying to dig a hole, except into its friend instead of dirt. After every few "digs" it would lose its will and resume standing around, and then it would go at it again. After some time, another sheep arrived and decided to help with the digging. This sheep then pressed its snout against that of its fellow digger. Just as my friends were beginning to coo at the show of affection it reared back and rammed its "friend" in the face. The battle continued much as the digging had, brief shows of fighting separated by long periods of idly standing around. Eventually my friends got bored and wanted to go, so I never got to see the conclusion, if there was one.

On Sunday, I tried to make some japanese soba soup. I managed to find all of the ingredients but the bonito flakes. Bonito is a fish, the flakes of which serve as the base for broths in many Japanese soups. I found out any broth can substitute, but unfortunately my vegetable broth took a sledgehammer to the delicate kelp, bean paste, and sweetened rice wine flavors and the entire concoction ended up significantly off. Sometime during my future wild, drunken escapades I'll have to pick up some bonito flakes and try again.

I'm thinking of starting a little parodic organization that spends its time harboring extremely strong opinions about the English language and demanding changes to it. I want to call it SCEL, Society for the Clarification of the English Language. Here are a couple SCEL decrees.

SCEL finds the juxtaposition of the two hard syllables 'k' and 'd' "biked" unwieldy and displeasant to the tongue. We suggest that "boke" be the new past tense for "bike".

The committee members of SCEL believe that to convert a verb to a noun with the suffix -ness is an affront to nature and our mother tongue. The word "forgiveness" thus should be changed to what we believe to be its true form, "forgivingness."

SCEL finds slant rhyme to be an abomination that corrupts the minds of America's children. We move that the show 'Dora the Explorer' have its name changed to 'Dora the Explora' or preferably 'Dorer the Explorer.'

SCEL concedes the necessity of portmanteaus in today's modern society. With that in mind, "ginormous" is to be recognized as a word, but must be tempered with equally frequent use of "masslossal," "gargantutanic," and "bigast." The lattermost is not to be confused with the common slang of the same meaning, which is not tolerated by SCEL.

I would like to begin this email with a brief summary of the charming coming-of-age story Kick-Ass. Spoilers follow. Unloved nerdy boy decides the world need superheroes, buys diving suit and sticks for beating criminals. Boy attacks two crooks, gets stabbed in the stomach and hit by a car, gains superhuman resistance to pain. Boy meets other "heroes" who make it their mission to kill everyone involved with a specific crime lord. Boy breaks into girlfriend's house in a disguise, and reveal's he's been lying to her since they first met, winning her heart. Boy learns what's important in life isn't helping people, it's having sex in alleyways behind dumpsters. Crime lord wants boy dead. Crime lord's son pretends to be superhero and tricks boy into taking him to the real "heroes." Boy and father "hero" are captured and tied up. Father "hero" is beaten a little bit, gets his legs a little singed, and dies. Daughter "hero" enlists aid of boy to achieve father "hero's" dream: finishing killing everyone involved with crime lord. Daughter kills mostly everyone in crime lord's building. Emotional climax: boy learns self-worth by flying a jetpack up to crime lord's main room and shooting criminals with gatling gun. Now he is a man. Daughter "hero" and boy kill the rest of everyone in the building, shooting crime lord point-blank with bazooka, which fortunately waits to explode until it is safely out of range of boy and daughter "hero." Miraculously surviving, crime lord's son decides best course of action is to continue doing exactly what his father did, except in a silly outfit, setting up for much anticipated sequel.

Let me know if anyone figures out where this breaks down genre walls, takes a new direction on a concept, or reinvents anything at all.

Oh, and it's my birthday. Happy birthday, me. Whee.

I retook the analytical writing portion of the GRE and did much better than before. Unfortunately, however, in taking the analytical writing portion I had to take the whole test over again. I had to manually skip the verbal and math sections. I successfully skipped the verbal section, but on the math section I missed he narrow window of opportunity. I ended up on a question, which the test insisted I answer before it would let me leave. Answering the question correctly and leaving left me with a score of 200. Now according to my official report I took the quantitative GRE and got 800, the highest score possible, then, for reasons unknown came back to take it a second time and got the second lowest score possible. The good news is that the GRE apparently is willing to change accidental scores like this to No Score. I just need to wait for the GRE representative to call back.

In other news, after sinking email after email into a seeming void of no-reply, I finally got a response from a university professor. James Lester of NC State university's Intellimedia group told me outright that I had an excellent background for his research, a cross between Natural language processing, artificial intelligence, and games for learning. Then he replied again, after a couple hours and with no provocation, offering to let me visit the lab and meet with some of his current graduate students. Ironically, NC State is the only school whose minimum requiremens I may not meet. A single statistics course could come between me and this school, so I'm seeing how I can possibly satisfy that requirement by the time I turn in my application.

I never imagined I'd find a program that let me work with both futuristic AI technology and children. I can learn statistics on the fly no problem, so I really hope that I can work out something with the head of the PhD program.

UPDATE:

I received a heartening reply from the director of the PhD program.

"Probability and statistics are used in a fair number of courses, including AI courses, so you'll want to get up to speed there or you could find yourself having problems. Lack of one course won't prevent admissions, although there could be a recommendation you take a statistics course here if admitted. I hope this helps."

Through grueling GRE Analytical Writing section practice, I have exhausted all of my will to write. I will mention, however, that I will be applying for the PhD program in Computer Science. Also, I'm working on the reverse function flyer, an iPhone app in which one gets to draw a graph with one's fingers and see the function for it. Once one has drawn the graph, he or she will be able to modify it using simple multitouch gestures or by pushing the line as if it were a piece of string. I'm not sure how much of that ambitious functionality will make it into the final product, but it's pretty fun working on it.

All you car riders missed out this morning. A Triange Transit representative got on the bus today to give me a bag of candy. So there you have it. Do you want to guzzle gas and destroy the environment, or do you want to get a bag of candy? Think about it.

It's high time this blog got something new. The Earlham background is no longer applicable, the feudal-era php-xhtml-xml scripting is downright embarassing when the general adoption of HTML5 is just around the corner. If it turns out to really be as easy as they say it is to embed video, I might add some video entries. Lately, I've been working on the Japanese Jeopardy Game Question Pack Creator website, so I've been considering the latest and greatest in web development.

Also, I have been handed the exciting Shodor assignment to port a Shodor Java applet to the iPhone! The iPhone does not support Java at all, so it's looking like I'll have to completely overhaul the code to convert it to Objective C. The iPhone appears to be perfect market for quirky games made by individuals or small groups, so I don't mind at all getting a little experience with it.

Well, this has been a productive Labor Day Weekend. This weekend I, in no particular order, overcooked some cookies, attempted and failed to nap four times, got my new computer's homemade operating system to connect to wireless internet, but did not figure out how to access my desktop, tore up my hands from overexuberant rowboating, showed my friend what turned out to be a movie no one should ever watch, helped my father strategize to conquer pre-WWI Europe, won recognition for inspired tupperware sorting, and spent three hours stressing about graduate school and one hour (generously estimated) making meaningful progress figuring out graduate school.

I made a word cloud. Apparently my blog is mostly about "like," "time," "just," and "one." Keep in mind that this is excluding what the application I used thinks of as common english words. I think they need to broaden the definition. What's more, it takes three-quarters of my processor and over five minutes to compute, as opposed to my perl script which does almost exactly the same thing in a third of a second. I'm wondering if it has something to do with running it under Linux.

I'm doing Grad School research much later than I should be. At this rate, I might end up taking two gap years instead of one, which I can accept, but is less than ideal. I do have a budding interest in text and data mining, which I am pursing for everything it's worth despite a sad dearth of experience in the field (you may notice I'm trying to remedy it a little bit on my own time.) Apparently text and data mining are rapidly growing fields, so hopefully that will count in my favor applying for UNC SILS.

I tried cooking kudzu today. So far, kudzu has been rather disappointing as an edible plant. I've spoken with my friend James Bartow, though, who immediately invented what sounded like a good recipe for it, despite having never cooked with it before. All I remember about the recipe was the garlic. That's good enough for me, though. I hope that soon we'll be able to tap into this plentiful, free source of greens whose harvesting is even good for our community.

Well, in honor of my 250th comment, from Rebecca Leeman on the post entitled "Oklahoma!" I'm going to look at my favorite comments from my blog's two years and seventeen days history. That's right, this also serves as a somewhat belated two-year anniversary! I actually wrote up a simple text-mining script, and analyzed my blog today. As of before this post, my blog is 39,344 words in pure entries. 15% of these words were being used for the first time in my blog (in other words, 85% of my blog's words are words that have already appeared in my blog). Not counting hyphenated words, the longest word in my blog is cyberinfrastructure, counting hyphenated words, it's mushroom-chicken-corn-mayonnaise. I'll keep expanding my little word analyzer and post what else I can find out about my blog on my blog. I think I'll add it to the site statistics or give it its own widget. Anyway, here are some superlatives of the comments I have received on this blog.

Naggiest / Most futilely pseudonymmed

11/29/08

Your time in Japan is coming to an end. It is now time to post sage reflections on Japan, the USA, the differences and similarities between, yourself, your learnings, your growth and emotions.

Your Demanding Public

(Sam:) Nobody talks about growth and emotions but Dad.

Most Artistically Inclined / Most Helpful to Blog Design

Hey, sam! I like the new look! I think the text color is a little harsh against the blue text boxes; maybe a very dark gray in stead of black? but either way, the blog looks so nice!

When do you head back to school?

Jimmy

(Sam:)Wendy gets an honorary mention in this category for her font recommendations

Most totally awesome

2/8/09

My life has become grotesquely, morbidly awesome since I have adopted Sam's ideal club program. The number of my friends quadrupled, I made a fortune, and the polls show that I am ahead in the race of becoming the governor of my own life. I love the ideal club! I am seriously considering forming a cult based around this concept of ideal clubs called "Idealology."

Greg Euchner

(Sam:) Seriously. I have never had my day, no, my week made quite so thoroughly as when Greg came up with the concept of being optimistic about an election to become a minor elected official of one's own life. Go Greg.

Most from Koji

10/12/08

happy birthday, Sam.

nice photos.

i like the one with mario in it. it looks like a shot from "toy story."

koji

(Sam:) Did I tell you? He graduated. Wacky ol' Koji is a regular ol' salaryman now. I hope he can come visit me in the US someday.

Most Flattering/Fontological

10/18/08

Hi, Sam.

It's Wendy (in Maine). I hope you had a fantastic birthday. Rebecca and I thought of you on the 11th. I have a nephew 3 years older than you who shares your birthday.

It's been such a treat to read your blog. I love your writing, your sense of humour, and your perspective on things. Thanks so much for maintaining this blog. I must ask: are you a fan of Times New Roman, or is that not something over which you have no control (as far as the site design)? Myself, I'm a Trebuchet, Arial Narrow, or Maiandra supporter. Actually, I hope to watch the movie "Helvetica" in the next few days. Thanks again for the excellent entertainment.

Be well,

Wendy

Most Unexpected / Least Expected

10/5/08

Wow dude the Hiroshmia museum sounds really itense. I bet it was an interesting experience though, I've been to the holocoust museum in DC but havent really sceen much in the states on Hiroshmia. The suvuvors story sounds very moving, that generation is getting older and it's so valubel to be able to here those stories first hand. Olny be preserving the history of what happend there will we stand a chance at proventing it from ever happening again.-Behm Williams

(Sam:) By this time it had been what, three years since Behm and I had said a single word to each other? That he was reading my blog at all was amazing. Never followed up on that one...

Most Frustrating

1/13/10

Are you really going to force me to look at thumbnails!? I clicked one fully expecting it to show me the full-size image, but no!

1/13/10

By the way, it was I, Casey, who posted that last comment. :)

(Sam: the system works for me and most of my readers. Casey, whichever Casey you are, please tell me on what system you're running, and your browser so I can try and troubleshoot your issue)

Least Well-Thought-Out

3/21/10

Sam, in 1990 you were at the most two years old. Could you really speak in comprehensible sentences then? And mom only has one type of coffee. I guess that does mean it's her "good" coffee...

love, Rachel

(Sam: What Rachel is failing to realize here is that this post is written by Greg, about Greg, with Greg as the main character. This was explicitly stated in the entry. I don't plan on ever letting Rachel live this one down.)

2/3/10

You call this a 100th entry?!?

Where are all the flashbacks to previous entries? Where are the guest stars and surprise endings and characters who finally talk after spending the whole blog mute? Where are all the fancy superbowl-style commercials with hilarious drunken penguins and intelligent babies?

Geez, let's hope the 125th entry will be a lot cooler than this one. If this were my blog, I'd be giving prizes to anyone who could identify the creatures in the humanity test on MY 100th entry. I'd be reprogramming the hacker bots to post profound truths about the nature of reality instead of spam. I'd hold a contest for whoever could make the best short horror film about the evils of rival blogs--and then I'd figure out how to convert the film files so they could be watched on the blog!

Don't get me wrong. This is still my favorite blog. But we have to work on this whole thing with special celebratory entries.

--Greg

(Sam: How's this for a celebratory entry!?)

All you commentors should know that I now receive email whenever you comment. Feel free to comment on old entries! Now I'll be sure to see it!

Sam

Well, back in North Carolina again. Oklahoma was a blast. Charlie and Fitz, when they're not talking about their cluster computer or how great it's going to be to go to England for four months on Earlham's dime, are tons of fun. For some reason, I've only seldom had the luxury of high-energy intellectual conversation since I graduated Earlham college.

After I presented on PetaKit, a software suite for software performance evaluation, a teacher expressed interest in it. He'll apparently give it to his students, who will hopefully get in touch with me with questions or suggestions for improvements. In any case, I'll be sure to mention on my resume that I'm now developing and providing user support for a small software suite.

Today doesn't feel like a Sunday. Not that it feels like any other day of the week. Waking up at four in the morning to fly east and teach Parallel Computing doesn't really fit anywhere in my weekly schedule. I'm glad of that. I like flying around exactly as often as I do, especially for business. Now that most of my best friends are scattered around the continental United States, I expect to do more of flying for pleasure in the future.

You geography buffs out there probably already know this, but Oklahoma is about the same latitude as North Carolina. Add to that that it has no temperature regulation from a nearby ocean and you get hot weather to rival that of North Carolina. My colleagues have been complaining, but I'm used to the heat.

I did have to miss seeing my New England relatives to come here, but it's important to my career. I've been told that someday I'm going to find something productive that I enjoy doing, so for that eventuality I should build up my resume such that I will be able to do it.

As an aspiring student of the UNC School of Information and Library science, and more practically as a soon-to-be part-time UNC post-baccalaureate program, I am disheartened by the poor organization of my home college's sprawling website. For instance, no website, no matter how pressed for time and resources, should force its users to choose between "student center" and "student central," of which the former is a useful and important tool for such things as observing bills on one's account, and one is a vestige of an earlier system, a page of confusing tables and boxes and a big red sign to the effect of "This page is no longer in use. Go to myUNC."

Speaking of frustrating systems, the GRE CAT, which I will be taking tomorrow, has been cleverly redesigned from the original paper-based GRE in such a way as to maximize stress. Getting a problem right leads to harder problems, and getting one wrong leads to easier. So, if you can't answer a problem, it means you're likely to screw up, and if you can answer a problem, chances are you screwed up earlier and they're going easy on you. Fortunately, the practice exam I took ended up giving me a relatively accurate score nonetheless, so I've made my peace with the new system.

Just last week, Blizzard Entertainment released the long anticipated sequel to 1998's masterpiece real time strategy game Starcraft, naming it, in pace with Blizzard's long history of boundless creativity, Starcraft II. Unsurprisingly, many of Shodor's employees were inspired by this release and wished to have a game night for it. More surprisingly, for seemingly no reason a number of Shodor employees had also become excited about the much less new Settlers of Catan game and wanted to make a game night out of that. So, Darian and I thought about what SCII and SoC might have in common, and planned a night based around everything with the initials SC.

We started the night with Spinach, Steak, Salami, Sausage, and Sundried tomato Calzones, made Salted Cashews and Saltine Crackers available as snacks, and for dessert served Strawberry and Snickers Cheesecake. Coincidentally, the night was also the birthday of Arnold SChwarzzeneger, but he unfortunately did not factor in the celebrations.

Let me tell you a story. Once upon a time, many moons ago, when I was your age, in a magical kingdom, the legend goes, 昔昔, there was an off-the-road hole-in-the-wall grocery store called the "East Asian Market." Contrary to popular belief, in the food industry there is a fairly stable inverse correlation between fanciness of atmosphere and quality of product. Time and time again the correlation has been verified, from half-restaurant half-grocery store La Mexicana's legendary (among me) off-menu avocado burrito to the Indian restaurant in Durham, which looks from its rear entrance like an unusually nice abandoned toolshed but serves unbelievable mango lasses to the restaurant in Maine that is almost literally made out of wine corks, looks like it was decorated by a blindfolded tornado from the late '60s, names its items after states of enlightenment (I tried to order "inner peace" once, but they were all out of pork), and is probably the only place in the world where you can have a shake that is literally a black forest chocolate cake dumped in a blender. That last one doesn't really fit, but I love it so much I couldn't help mentioning it. The point is the simplest, most humble shops are the best.

I would stop by now and then to peruse the East Asian Market's wares, usually buying a little snack and the world's best Japanese curry mix and chatting with the woman who owned the place. Unfortunately, one day I went there and found her little shop vanished. I couldn't even figure out where it used to have been. I would have wasted hours looking for it if someone hadn't confirmed the sordid news that it simply no longer was. Enveloped in a sudden cloudburst, I cursed the heavens in my consuming anguish.

Fast forward to present (my life runs on VHS). A couple nights ago, I finally stopped by a chinese restaurant that I'd been meaning to check out. I am greeted by a woman who looks startlingly like the shop owner who had vanished into thin air in months past. Hesitantly, I asked her, "hey, did you run 'The East Asian Market?'" Silently, and with a single graceful gesture, she led my gaze behind me, where scarcely three small tables were packed with all the glorious things I loved.

It turned out that she had, in fact, never vanished into thin air. What's more, she had not gone out of business either. Rather, she had been forced out of her location by a huge apartment complex. This complex, I will tell you, costs no less than one point five million dollars. I'm sorry, I misspoke. To get a single condominium in this complex costs one point five million dollars. The unassuming shopkeep, meanwhile, is forced into her friend's restaurant, and her future is uncertain. It feels a little bit like one of those "big ridiculous company tries to push out stubborn family business" movies, except as much as I'd like to be the plucky nobody who stands up and finds a way to save the amazing shop, that kind of thing doesn't happen in real life. Right now all I can do is hope for the best, hold her in the light (it's a Quaker thing), and buy much more far-east junk food than really fits in my budget.

Maybe if I hold the shopkeep in the light hard enough I can knock down the apartment complex with an earthquake. Then with regular tremors I can render the land so impossible to build on that the contractors have to sell it away for cheap. Then the shopkeep and I can rebuild "The East Asian Market" on the rubble, just the way it was before, except slightly bigger and maybe even slightly more assuming. That's how it should be.

I don't think I've mentioned this before, but a year or so ago when I worked at Shodor before (see the beginning of this blog) I had a coworker, Luke. Luke at one point found out I was Quaker and started making vaguely clever jokes, albeit repetitive, about the Quaker Oats company, a division of PepsiCo.

Now this was on par with Luke's sense of humor and the common understanding of Quakerism, so I didn't particularly mind. What worried me was that over time, Luke's jokes became less and less creative, eventually degenerating to the point that he simply would yell "Oats!" at me when I walked past. Otherwise Luke's personality and work remained stable, so I attributed it to laziness rather than some sort of brain disease and continued with my life.

Fast forward to the present. Luke has long since tired of shouting nonsense at me, and instead entertains himself by attempting to get me to change my desktop manager. For those of you who do not understand the significance of this, it it not unlike asking a poet to write on a slightly different size of paper with a somewhat fancier pen, both of which are modestly more pleasant to use. Except imagine that so few people use this size of paper that there is no folder on the market that will fit it, and when the pen breaks almost no one on the entire World Wide Web has ever heard of it, let alone has found and fixed a similar issue that you can use to help you fix yours. Also imagine that pens are very complicated instruments, especially fancy pens.

My point is, however, that I thought I wouldn't have to talk to anyone about oats again, but no such luck. Another younger intern Eric approached me one day and asked me if I could help him with oats. As it turns out, during his brief obsession with religious slurs, Luke had programmed a tool that, asked a question, would direct the asker to the nearest officemate that would be able to help. Luke had included among the tool's various knowledges that I was an expert on oats, and Eric had likely been perusing the code when he found that tidbit and thought it clever to bring that joke up again.

I've caved twice to the urge to tell the whole story of Quakers' reputation for outstanding honesty in business, and how in the eighteen-hundreds it was a public relations miracle to be associated with Quakerism. Some clever fellow founded a company and named it Quaker, and the rest is history. Likely existing for exactly the same reason, there's a Quaker chemical company, a Quaker windows and doors service, and Quaker State Motor Oil. I'm not sure I want a reputation as the guy who'll lecture you on religion at the drop of a hat, though, so I'm going to stop.

On a lighter note, a little bit of new blood has done good the otherwise stale area of Quaker-based humor. Dayyan asked me the other day if Quakers were so named because they caused earthquakes, and I told him that earthquakes were unquakerly because they hurt people. Then he asked me if it would be quakerly to use earthquakes to fight crime. My initial reaction was "no," but I thought about it, and I think extremely localized, moderate-intensity earthquakes would be good for throwing off the balance of muggers, letting the victims escape. That's just one example of how one with such powers could use them for good. I just wonder how the Quakers would go about creating such earthquakes. Would the power be granted by a recognition and honing of their inner light? Would they need to collect a certain number of Quakers, and agree to cause the earthquake via consensus? Maybe we have had the latent ability to summon earthquakes for the past 350 years, we just haven't realized it yet because it requires full-meeting consensus. Of course it could have happened several times in the past, just people were too in shock at the entire meeting agreeing on something to notice the ground shaking beneath them.

Not to aggrandize the situation, but my hapless attempt a the first vocabulary section of the GRE left me feeling less than erudite. I wonder if, by great improvidence these past few years, my taciturn, guileless nature has enervated my tendency toward prodigal devotion to esoteric terminology. Recent experiences accumulating indelibly in my mind, first reaching for a dictionary to fathom my loquacious, garrulous friend Oriana, and now finding enigmatic three critical words on my GRE, engender a burgeoning sense of equivocality in my mastery of the English language.

However, ignominious as my erstwhile flounderings may have been, this entry, although hitherto lugbrious, is by no means a eulogy. Beyond extant, my vocabulary yet flourishes! Not to prevaricate, I do wish to improve all the more, such that I can best the leviathan demands of the GRE, get into a laudable graduate school, and live a life free from both banality and impecunity.

Fortunately, my knowledge is not yet ossified, objurate, or occluded. Nevertheless, pragmatically it is infeasible to complete my linguistic repertoire before the real GRE, but I can study the necessary pedantic verbiage, and through fervid implementation of obscure wordcraft in writing a blog entry empower my understanding.

I'm housesitting for the Knafls, coworkers of my mother. As you may have guessed, she's got three cats: a tabby Elliott and two long-hairs Henry and Sally. They're friendly, but demanding. Elliot is always the first to make clear his needs - well, the first to make it clear that he has needs, at least. What he needs is left to the imagination. The first night, even after being fed and watered, he sat in front of my door and meowed - the loudest meow I have ever heard - it's not even like he's trying to be loud, it's just like someone turned his volume up to eleven. Eventually I came out and pet him for a bit and that quieted him down.

One other day I was on the couch and Elliott jumped into my lap. This was fine, but when I pet him he would knead my pants, and under my pants my soft, unprotected legs. Then when I stopped petting him he would reach out and put his paws on my hands and extend his claws. He wouldn't scratch me, but he'd drag his claws lightly across my hand, which didn't leave a mark or draw blood, but was unpleasant enought to get the message across - you are being paid to pet me, and if you think you're going to let up on your end of the bargain you've got another thing coming.

I was just helping out with the Modeling Your World workshop at Shodor. Here's a modeling lab I'd like to see.

A couple days ago, the police office received a call that Happy Hugalot Bear had gone missing. The last time Hugalot was seen was four days prior. He had a broken leg (wounded 10%), and was wearing 50% clothing (everyone knows bears don't wear pants).

Today, a jogger reported a body buried about a foot under the ground just off Care Bear Avenue. The area had received approximately three inches of rainfall over the past few days, and the humidity was a fairly constant 25%. The carnivores in the area are nothing unusual, but they're there nonetheless (15% carnivore rating).

At the lab the body weighed in at 125 lbs. At the time of his disappearance, Happy Hugalot weighed approximately 225 lbs. Using the data given and a decomposition modeling program, Should the forensic analysts report the body to Mrs. Hugalot?

Well, I'm back again, back at Shodor while I ponder my next steps. Call me pathetic and miserable, but I like having a full-time job that clearly segregates my work time from my time for myself. Actually, come to think of it don't call me pathetic and miserable. That's just mean. Also, not true. So there.

I've been cycling to Shodor, or at least to the bus that takes me to Shodor. They've got these nice bike racks built into the busses, and you can hitch up your bike for no extra charge. Then you have to figure out what to do with it while you're at work. One time I brought my bike to Shodor but left the lock at home. I'd thought that I'd left it on the bike handle and it had jostled off during the bus ride. Fortunately I got directions to a nearby bike shop, but unfortunately it didn't open until ten. So I tried to keep my bike in my office for a little bit, but the building manager stopped me. He wasn't much of a fan of bikes in his building, but I explained my situation and he agreed to let me place my bike in the twelfth floor, where they were still renovating.

When relating the story to my parents, I embellished it such that instead of believing I'd left the lock on my bike handle, I'd known I had and watched in agony through the bus window as it jostled a little bit off, then slightly back on, then a little more off, then finally the bus hit a bump and it leapt from the handle never to be seen again. Later when the bike lock that was apparently somewhere on US 15-501 turned up in the garage I admitted I'd added the cinematics for entertainment value. My mother suggested that such embellishment puts everything one says into question, but I think it's harmless as long as it's nothing meaningful.

Separately, I believe that one of the best gifts someone can receive is something that he or she would not have thought to buy for him or herself but turns out in practice to be extremely good to have. I received as a graduation gift from my friend Jimmy "My Healthy Cooking Coach" for Nintendo DS. Today I cooked my first "coached" dish, and it was really quite delicious! It was a cous-cous and lentil dish whose real flavor center lay in the sun-dried tomatoes. The voice-commands got a little bit trying, as it repeatedly interpreted any sound it heard as "go back." I found myself yelling "continue" at it much more than I should have had to. I don't really need to be led by the nose through a recipe anyway. I find "My Healthy Cooking Coach"'s best feature is by far the daily ideas it offers, which result in a constant inspiration to try cooking new things rather than just going out to eat or making spaghetti with tomato sauce.

I spent the weekend at Warren Wilson College in Asheville, North Carolina at the Southern Appalachian Yearly Meeting Association. It's a Quaker retreat mainly for people from the Southern Appalachia. When we arrived we quickly discovered that the group of Young Adult Friends, YAFs, was much smaller than usual. Only six people, only two not my close friends from Chapel Hill. Another issue was that the people who were supposed to be in charge of the YAF retreat were absent.

We did manage to get things going anyway, and it was fun after all. Aww. The traditional activity of Saturday is to indoctrinate the newly graduated members of Southern Appalachian Young Friends (SAYF). This is a little like hazing in greek life, except as Quakers we tend to err towards the side of silly rather than outright mean. I'd post details, but it's strictly forbidden. This process goes until three in the morning typically, so I'm a little tired tonight.

While I was out of town, my sister painted my room blue. I like it. I think I'll buy all blue clothing from now on. Then I'll dye my hair blue, put on blue sunglasses, buy a russian blue cat, paint my bike blue, eat only blueberries, blue corn chips, and blue cheese (only the veins of mold that actually are blue), make a habit of sitting in icy water until I turn blue from hypothermia every morning, and blast "Blue (Da ba dee)" all day. Rachel painted her own room green, so she has some more options in terms of food. Lucky.

My writing style is at its worst when I'm describing good experiences that aren't inherently funny or interesting in any way, so I'm just going to go through this as quickly as possible.

Played Ultimate Frisbee for first time Saturday. Fun. Would do again. STOP. Workshop challenging but rewarding. Hope to have more such opportunities. STOP.

In other news that's actually fun to write about, Bob Panoff, executive director and founder of Shodor (the place I interned for two summers), complimented my presentation on John Conway's game of Life. The first thing that had happened during the presentation was I lost my notes, and I spent a few uncomfortably long periods of time trying to remember what I had been planning to do next. Then I, when trying to use the audience in explaining how individual cells' behaviors were influenced primarily by their immediate neighbors, instead targeted only one member of the audience, Mike, who happened to be the quietest and shiest of the bunch, so I wasn't convinced I'd done such a good job. Bob knows presenting, though, so I was happy that he saw something he'd liked. I spoke with Mike afterwards and he didn't seem too troubled.

Also, I designed and led a lab for running Not Another Molecular Dynamics engine (NAMD) on cluster computers. Look it up, that's what it stands for. The lab was designed to highlight some of the confusing aspects and frustrations of installing other people's software on other people's clusters, so I was a little worried that the students would blame their confusion and frustration on the lab and on me instead of soldiering through and finding the solutions. Jeff said he liked my lab, though. I wasn't convinced he was being sincere until he brought it up again at dinner how much he liked it. I'm looking forward to the student feedback surveys.

Let me explain a little bit more, although I'm still quite busy, waking up at six tomorrow to help one of the interns and one of my superiors get the hang of C programming. The Undergraduate Petascale Education Program (UPEP) is the official name for what I've been doing this past year in Earlham's Cluster group with Charlie. The idea is to educate a new group of young people to harness the power of the Blue Waters cluster computer (the fastest supercomputer in the world, not built yet) when it is finally released for computational science.

Now I'm in Urbana Champaigne, Illinois at a cluster conference. It turns out this thing I've been doing this year with all the conferences and cluster stuff was the UPEP internship, and I was one of a few of the first set of Petascale interns. Now I'm helping to ready the next set.

This set is much larger, yet also much more carefully selected. It used to be the primary qualification to be a Petascale intern was to be a member of Charlie's cluster group, and the secondary qualification was ... well, there weren't really any other qualifications. This time there was actually some advertisement and fifty people applied, of which only 17 were accepted. I'm excited to work with these new Petascale interns.

Oh man, you know I'm tired when I end my paragraphs with bland statements of enthusiasm. I should get to bed so I can get work done tomorrow. Good night.

SAS campus is huge. I managed to find the R building, though. After finding the J building, the K building, the S building and the SAS daycare center. In my defense, I stopped at the daycare center for directions.I knew it wasn't where I wanted to be. Still, I wish they'd put some signs around or something.

After finally signing in at the right building, I was greeted by the hiring manager, who appeared to have something else on his mind. The manager proceeded to tell that the position for which I was applying was that of a source code control manager. Of course, I'd signed up for a generic software development position. This was the first time I'd heard it was so specific.

Fortunately I learned in the next interview with a group of my prospective co-workers that there is still an awful lot of software development, even in keeping track of all the software the other software developers are developing. In particular we discussed an elaborate system in place to allow this group to quickly and conveniently address issues raised by their clients (the other software developers). Complaints are logged into a database using preset forms that allowed the system to identify them and determine the best solution. Then the problem and its solution are emailed to the person on call, who verifies that the computer has indeed understood the problem correctly, and proceeds to implement the solution.

Even as clever as this system may seem, it has to get even cleverer. The checklist-style set of instructions sent to the human has, over the past few years, shortened from approximately twenty steps to ten steps to five steps, and will continue to shrink to a theoretical minimum of two steps: verify solution, push button to implement solution. That's what I love to do. Make things easy.

SAS is a company that makes Statistics analysis software, and it was on the Fortune 500's list of top 100 companies to work for. I applied for a software position, and didn't really expect to hear back, considering I was short two years of experience. However, just as I was beginning to forget I'd applied at all, I received a notice from the SAS office administrator that I was to come in at 9:00 Monday, May 17 for an interview. I'll write another post tomorrow after the interview.

That's it. Never again will this be the blog of an Earlham student. Now it is the blog of an Earlham Alum. It's bittersweet. I could go on and on about the places I succeeded, the places I failed, and the places I wish I'd tried, but that's all in the past, now. Now I take my liberal arts education, and all the other learning I did in those four eventful years, and move forward. Wish me luck.

For reasons of asthetics, this entry's title has been abbreviated. The acronym expands as "Great, now I can never run for public office." For reference, the abbreviation is pronounced "NickNerfPo." That's po as in "po-po." In spirit, this line was originally invented by me as something to say in response to having a picture taken when doing something ridiculous. My friend Katie Freshley eventually refined it and now it exists as its own entity.

The Gaga party was awesome. It took a little while to start, but pretty soon the house was full, and everyone was dancing to Gaga. I did not dress up as Lady Gaga, but rather wore an homage to her. A telephone wrapped around my head seemed an appropriate reference to Lady Gaga's "Telephone".

I honestly had already come up with the phone idea last week. A telephone cord, as it turns out, is perfect for wrapping around one's head. Not only does it feature the coiled design that gives it the tension required to keep the telephone attached to the head, it even has the little hook connector at the end that allows for allows for secure attachment without knot-tying. If there was one thing I would have done differently, it would have been trying different poses rather than doing the same "I can't talk right now" pose every single time. Well, at least I did something different when our local grocery store Marsh spontaneously combusted (see picture in which the background appears to be on fire. Isn't that image just totally awesome?).

I've been a Lady Gaga fan long before I knew who Lady Gaga was. I've listened through "Poker Face," I worked out to "Bad Romance," I even beat my friend Jimmy to the punch remembering the lyrics to "Just Dance." Only recently, however, did I find out that that name "Lady Gaga" that I'd been hearing and those songs that I'd been hearing were related.

Now my friends are having a Lady Gaga party, and everybody's supposed to dress up as Lady Gaga, so I innocently started researching exactly what this woman looked like. It turns out that in every scene of every music video Lady Gaga is in she has a radically different outfit. Ranging from some pink, fluffy-haired googly-eyed sci-fi lady in "Bad Romance" to some kind of blind vampire crossed with a peace-loving flower vase to a chef-waitress with a telephone receiver for hair, Gaga's choice of attire is not leaving me with a shortage of material.

On a different note, I spoke with Michael Sawan today. I'd noticed a poster advertising his student composition "Sick Sad Bear Bird." All too late, unfortunately. One of the downsides of being a recluse is that you're generally behind on the latest news. The event had recently passed by the time I learned of it. Michael seemed pleased that I was interested, anyway, and told me he'd lend me the DVD once he got his copy.

I told the man behind the kenang how much I liked his meditative trance between hitting pots, and he told me he was reading the score. Oh well, it doesn't really matter to me why he was so awesome, just that he was.

The Earlham Student Activity Board was showing Zombieland on Friday, but none of my friends could go see it with me. Then on Saturday my friends were inviting me to see the second showing, but I was the one who couldn't make it because I was watching the Gamelan Ensemble.

I don't know if you've seen a gamelan performance, but it's traditional javanese music. That's music from Java. It has nothing to do with Japan. The performance was hauntingly beautiful. Other people said it was relaxing, and Rachel actually fell asleep during it, but I couldn't have found it more engaging.

What I particularly liked were the instruments. Far different from any instrument I'd seen were what looked like short buffet tables covered in gold pots. Playing a melody was as simple as hitting the pots with a mallet, and I frequently saw people rearranging the pots between songs. This instrument came in two flavors. One had smaller pots and carried most of the tune of the song. The other interested me the most - it's called a kenang. The kenang is shaped like a squared U, and the player sits inside, like a fishmonger in his booth waiting for his next customer.

Now I don't use the word waiting lightly. You see, waiting seemed to be mostly what the kenang player did. The first song was twenty minutes long, and the kenang player probably lifted his mallet sixteen times the entire performance. That might seem to make him the least interesting performer, but it was the way he did it that made him so fun to watch.

In between hitting his pots, the kenang player would hang his head and close his eyes in a meditative trance, looking for everything like he'd dozed off. He'd remain this way for about two minutes until suddenly, via some cue imperceptible to mortal ears, he awoke, lifted his mallet, with meticulous precision hit exactly the right pot, then returned to his state of dormancy to await his next call.

Human consciousness. We each have empirical evidence of the consciousness of one person: ourself. Beyond that, there's no acheivable method of proving that anyone else feels and thinks like we do. As far as you know, I'm just a bundle of synapses cranking out these blog posts.

So, say you had proof. Not that people were all conscious but that no one was conscious. Only you ever actually felt happiness, sorrow, and pain. Your parents, your siblings, your children, your best friend, your lover, all sophisticated biological machines that, as much as they might appear to, do not feel. They do not feel the breeze on a windy day any more than they can appreciate a blue sky or feel like life is worth living when you hug them and tell them you love them. Make no mistake, they're very good at appearing to feel, but there's nothing behind it but electrical impulses and chemical reactions.

What would you do? For me, I think it depends if I just find out once, or if it's a constant reminder to the end of my days. If I just found out once it would be pretty easy to forget it and keep living life exactly the same. If it were a constant reminder, though, I would probably become estranged from everyone I know and lose my mind.

What do you think?

There I was at Harumatsuri, Earlham's rendition of the Japanese spring festival. Harumatsuri is famous among me as being the time and place of the most delicious food in all of Earlham. Crepes, sushi, yakisoba, Niku Jaga, luscious and moist, and I was eating none of it.

I hadn't even bought a ticket for the food. Why? I had something bigger planned, something for which I was painstakingly saving my stomach space. I was to compete in the rice ball eating competition.

Fasting and drinking nothing but water from eight in the morning until two in the afternoon proved to be the easy part. The preliminary competitions were split into two rounds with four people each. Only two people from each round would make it to the finals. I was in round 1.

Seven rice balls in five minutes seemed easy in theory, and indeed after fasting for eight hours the quantity of food was not so much the problem as its consistency. It was physically difficult to chew and swallow these rice balls. While they were happy to change shape to more completely fill your mouth, they didn't want to dissolve into swallowable chunks. I nearly choked on my first bite.

That was before I learned the secret. In addition to the seven rice balls we were given as much water as we could possibly drink. This proved to be more of an asset than I initially thought. At the first mouthful, though, it became painfully obvious - what better solution was there to overly sticky rice than the universal solvent? Using this strategy I got through four rice balls in the five minutes available to me, coming in first place in the first round and becoming eligible for the finals along with my friend Cory.

After blowing away the competition in the first round, Cory and I were feeling pretty good until we saw the second round. In the second round the winners ate six rice balls and five and a half. Impressive, but ultimately foolish. I could tell they'd used up more stamina than they could really afford, and would pay dearly for it in the finals just one hour and a half from the end of the second round.

In the finals we each had to eat only one rice ball. However, that rice ball was the size of each of our heads. As predicted, the round 2 victors lost steam quickly and Cory and I stormed past them, neck-in-neck for the lead and the "special prize."

I was halfway through, down to the seaweed decoration, when I felt myself starting to lose my nerve. I was feeling really, really full at this time and a little sick. I kept pushing myself, but I could tell I was taking longer between bites, and I couldn't afford those seconds lost.

At the end I finished up in second by just one bite. It wasn't at all clear to me that Cory had actually eaten more, but the way he had eaten it, by tearing off chunks with his hands instead of biting directly, had sufficiently destroyed what was left that it looked more thoroughly eaten than what was left of mine. So, Cory won the grand prize befitting such a competiton: a rice cooker. I think I'll go over to his house sometime and find out if he's recovered enough to want to use it.

Richmond winter showed up again for one last hurrah. It dumped a truckload of powdered sugar onto the ground, but it had melted into a caramel glaze by morning, and another spring shower washed it away. Now that spring has solidified its foothold, it's going to be bringing more showers to come.

I had a task to get performance statistics on one of my old programs for Software Engineering. I needed one that took input, and I ended up with a mixing tank program I scripted back in second semester of freshman year. It was really something that, of all the things to harken me back to an earlier age, it would be an old C++ script.

The assignment was to make a program that would allow the user to specify amounts of liquid A and liquid B to pour into a tank. It would then tell the user the percentages of the liquids in the tank. Little freshman Sam, who had far too much time on his hands, had felt that he needed more context, so instead of printing bland statements like "You have added 3 ml of liquid A to the tank," he invented an alchemical setting and referred to the tank as a cauldron. "With trembling hands you tenderly tip 3 milliliters of your vial of liquid A into the cauldron."

It didn't stop there. The point of this exercise had been to account for unexpected user input, so when I, modern Sam, tried to add a negative amount of liquid the program informed me that I was all out of antimatter, so I'd have to extract liquid from the concoction using "d" for draw. My personal favorite was when I tried to add more liquid than there was space for. Instead of simply refusing to add, the program responded "You fool! That's too much! Your cauldron bubbles over and reacts with components left on the table from previous experiments, creating a massive explosion! Fortunately a kind fairy rescues you and returns your lab to what it was before your grave error. 'Be sure to pay attention to the space you have left in your cauldron,' she chides."

I remember I even wrote a lab assignment in middle English. I referred to the problem I had been given as a "fierce dragon" and C++ as a "mysterious wizard." The strangest part was when Jim gave me full credit without even the slightest comment about my poetic license.

UPDATE: The first comment has indicated to me that I haven't made it clear enough. This post is written by Greg Euchner about Greg Euchner, and Greg Euchner is the main character in the fictional story portrayed.

A wise man once told me:

"Sam will ask you for a blog entry. He will ask that you--"

"Who's Sam?" I asked. I was only four years old.

"You haven't met him yet. He will be of great importance on your quest. You must--"

"What quest? Why are you in my house, drinking my mother's good coffee?"

"Never mind that." The wise man flipped his long beard impatiently. "Look kid. I'm trying to lay some knowledge on you, OK? Are you going to listen, or what?"

I had been taught to respect my elders. I listened.

"Sam will ask you for a blog entry. Give it to him. Sam will be a friend to you, an ally in you mission to save the world. These things are inevitable. Some friends blow along with the winds, others stay with you in your soul forever. Sam is one of the latter."

There was a brief silence. "Any questions now?" The wise man asked.

"Why am I on a mission to save the world? Save it from what? Why is my ally a ladder?"

"I have not been sent to answer these questions."

"Will you at least tell me what a blog is?" It was 1990.

"No."

"Get out of my house before I call the police."

--Greg Euchner

Milwaukee, cheese capitol and home of the driest hands in the US. Every restroom in the conference center had a minimum of two paper towel dispensers, one manual and one automatic. One even had three, lined up in a row. For the discerning hand drier. What conference center is this, you ask? What was I doing here? What is SIGCSE?

SIGCSE stands for Special Interest Group Computer Science Education, and it is an annual conference for computer science educators. It is not to be confused with ITICSE, which stands for Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education. There's a considerable degree of overlap between the two, so people are often confused as to which conference they should attend.

Despite being an innovator for computer science education, my instructor Charlie Peck is also specially interested in computer science education, so he took us to the latest SIGCSE conference in Milwaukee to help him show off his portable cluster LittleFe.

While in Milwaukee we all stayed in a stylish hotel called A-loft. There's not really much to describe particularly about the hotel, but the pictures should speak for themselves. On the way from A-loft to the conference center Gus and I found a Wisconsin cheese shop from whose innumerable cheeses I eventually selected garlic cheddar, which I've taken to New York to eat with Greg.

Gus and I also happened upon a robot entirely separate from the conference itself. A few people in construction worker outfits were lifting it out from a manhole. It was designed to crawl around sewers on its huge black wheels and examine them with an attached video camera. Apparently this model was too small and the sewer currents were overwhelming it, so they were going to replace it with a larger one. I'll be showing this off to my robotics class for sure.

There's a security guard among the photos. Try and see if you can figure out what's special about him.

Next up: New York

Friday, March fifth, Earlham College Richmond Indiana. Winter's dim, half-lit sun pushes its way through unending stratus. Then, someone snaps his (or her) fingers, and light floods Earlham Campus. The gray blanket coating Earlham's sky explodes, leaving only fluffy white cotton balls floating at the edges of periphery.

For the longest time I listed winter as my favorite season. Someone had had the bright idea to associate it with death and sadness, and I just thought it wasn't fair. I empathized with winter. We couldn't all be like those jerks spring and summer, making everyone happy with their long days and verdant wildlife, making flowers bloom and birds sing songs of passionate romance. I can't remember the last time a cardinal or bluejay signaled my arrival. Winter would hide at the ends of the year, coating the roads in ice and snow, backing up traffic and making cars skid off the road and crash. Winter knew people didn't like it, and it went out of its way to let them know it didn't like them either. Winter was a season with panache, and I respected that.

That was North Carolina winter. In Richmond, panache or no, winter is kind of a jerk. It has a way of easing up just enough to let spring start, then suddenly clamping down again with a week-long blizzard just to kill anything brash enough to try to start growing. What's more, this year winter at Earlham smelled like doughnuts.

To start off, I don't like doughnuts. Sure, I like to eat a doughnut, but that's it. After one doughnut I don't need to eat any more. I especially don't need to smell it everywhere from every direction, when freaking Richmond winter is dumping what looks suspiciously like powdered sugar all over me and everything else. You think I'm crazy, but I spoke with my lab partner Tom and he confirmed that this winter the outdoors smelled like doughnuts. Specifically, he said it smelled like some kind of pastry, but when I suggested doughnuts he realized that that had to be it.

I appreciate the light rain that spring brought with it to rinse all the doughnut out of the air and replace it with normal outdoor smells like wet concrete. Winter's still blowing cold air around, but spring's got the sun, and it won't be long now before I can start actually using that frisbee I got for Christmas.

I'll be off to the cluster computing conference SIGCSE this week. When I check back in I'll be on my way to New York for some well-deserved rest and relaxation with my old roommate Greg.

Well, it all worked out. I gave my presentation and it went quite well. I had my first genuine Gospel Revelations concert at Tess middle school and it was fun.

More importantly though, this week is the start of my three trips in a row. I'll be going to Iowa to compete in the Cyber Defense Competition this weekend, then I'll be in Milwaukee at the SigCSE cluster computing conference, from which I'll fly to New York. Those all ought to be rather exciting!

I'm listening to Radio Lab streaming over the internet right now. Radio Lab is an awesome radio program about science, but for some reason the radio podcast is extremely slow to load, which means what I'm actually doing is listening to five or so seconds of Radio Lab every twenty seconds. Extremely frustrating, but Radio Lab is worth it.

Some of you may have noticed that the site was briefly down. Well, down at Shodor it turned out somebody was running dangerous code that was causing serious trouble. Thank goodness, it was not me, but the quick fix until the system administrators could see to a better solution was just to shut down everyone's webspace. Fortunately they got around to the better solution before I had to find a new host for the blog.

I taught Elsyia the proper response to "What's up" this week. It turns out she wasn't just ignoring me that whole time, she genuinely didn't know what one said to "What's up?"

Uh, yeah. That's it this week, I guess.

Well, that's one way of describing it, anyway.

I had a number of things I was planning on doing this weekend. I was going to make a robot that could follow a painter's tape circle on a table and then stop where it started. I also had in mind fixing up my Japanese Jeopardy game for presentation this Thursday. Beyond that, I was hoping to write a paper for my Japanese class, study for my Japanese test on Monday, begin modifying a graphics-intensive program such that it could run on Linux as well as Windows, meeting with my Cyber Defense Competition team members to start working on our server, and of course dedicating a decent number of hours to my cluster computing job.

All of this was on my plate when another task I had - reinstall Windows so it worked - went kaput. It turned out it wasn't Ubuntu at all that had messed Windows up, it was a failing hard drive. Now, the only thing to do with a failing hard drive is replace it, so I called my Dell service representative.

"My hard drive is broken," I whined, to which the representative replied, "You sound like you need a new hard drive. I'll send you one, under warranty, overnight delivery. Is there anything else I can do for you? Do your rubber feet need replaced?"

"Uh, thank you! No, I have all my rubber feet still, but thank's for asking!"

The next day I got my drive in the mail and carefully partitioned it - effectively making it two separate drives - so that Ubuntu and Windows would never have to peacefully coexist.

This was not the end of my woes, however. As I mentioned before, I need Flash for my Japanese Jeopardy game, and my Flash making program was lost when my hard drive died. So, plan A was to go to the Earlham Media center, also known as ITAM, and use their Flash. No such luck. They no longer had the Flash program on their computers. Plan B was to redownload everything from Adobe and reactivate it with the key that I had saved in an email to myself in case something like this ever happened. Also no good. Adobe had moved on to the next version of Flash, and was not interested in letting me download my old version from them. Plan C is to download the trial version of the new Flash and use that to complete my work. So far this one seems to be working, but I won't be able to modify my program any more after the trial period runs out in thirty days. The big presentation is this Thursday as I said before, though, so this solution will be good enough for now. Special thanks to my mother for trying to find my CD to mail it to me.

I was just about ready to quit Gospel Revelations when a girl in CGI looked over her shoulder at me and said "You're that guy who carries the entire Bass section in Gospel Revs, aren't you? That's really cool." We've got our first performance this week on Tuesday. As if I don't already have enough to do.

I installed Ubuntu on my computer a few weeks ago and never looked back. For those of you not in the know, Ubuntu is a version of Linux, an operating system competitor to Microsoft Windows. I've found it to be so much more satisfying working with Ubuntu that I almost never switch back to my old Microsoft partition.

Unfortunately, I did try to go back to Windows today and found that I could not. My system was failing to start up for some reason. You may wonder why I care at all seeing as Ubuntu is so much better. Well, while Linux is faster, more reliable, and less morally bankrupt, Windows has the advantage that it is the standard. Big software vendors don't design their programs to work on Linux, and it turns out that I've committed myself to Adobe Flash for a rather important Japanese Jeopardy game maker, one that I need to present in less than two weeks. I've checked, and the clever Linux hackers don't have a solution to run the Flash builder on Ubuntu yet.

I may have to scavenge my important files off of my Windows drive and go entirely Ubuntu. Fortunately the Earlham Media Lab features Adobe Flash so I can take my files and work on them there.

... What bothers me most is that this was almost definitely Ubuntu's fault. I think it did something, deliberately or through poor programming, to my Windows partition which I had been assured would not be affected. Highly frustrating.

In other news, Tom and I got the second iteration of our bricksorter working like a charm in just two hours, but suddenly we stopped getting values from our light sensor and we became terrified that we had somehow broken it. After another hour and thirty minutes of banging our heads against the wall we realized that we had plugged it into the wrong port on the main device. Now our machine is running delightfully - it's a real industrial layout, with an arm that pushes bricks out from a hole in a covered tower, a light that blinks on and off, and even a conveyor belt! Not to mention, it sorts all the bricks properly.

I got a 94 on my first CGI exam, worse than the fictional CGI Hero, but better than the real Idil, who got an 85 on her first exam. It was interesting because so many questions were strangely worded to the point that for a decent portion I was just flying by the seat of my pants. For some questions I found I was trying to combine snippets of insight I'd gained in several different lectures into patchwork answers that sort of answered the question, if not in quite the way I thought they'd wanted. I spent the whole time dreading my score and wondering how I'd have to re-spin the whole CGI hero mess if I got less than an 85, but then I was pleasantly surprised. The legend lives on!

I'm in a bit of an odd situation in Cluster Computing Group: Gus and Aaron and I are meeting once a week for an hour to work on a script that I could write myself in forty-five minutes. They like scripting, though, so I don't want to just go over their heads and do it, and when I work with them we're always getting distracted and confused (I swear I lose at least thirty IQ points in the presence of other people) and we don't get anywhere. Now Charlie is waiting on us to get this script done so he can do something, making it even harder for me to justify letting them fumble around hopelessly with it. I think I'm going to conceptually map out the entire script ahead of time, then bring that and walk them through the scripting process so we can finally get this thing over with.

My lab partner and I have made a delightful lego brick sorter in Robotics. I'm struggling with the programming interface for the robot, though. It measures angles in "tachos," (pronounced "tacos") which, from on my experimentation, appear to be converted into a command for the motor by the following protocol:

Step 1: Take the number of tachos

Step 2: Forget the number of tachos

Step 3: Move the motor approximately five degrees.

Step 4: If you feel like it, go ahead and move the motor another 360 degrees, just for fun.

Fortunately our design is based on swinging a little arm clockwise (pushing the lego into a cup on the left) or counter-clockwise (pushing the lego into a cup on the right) and doesn't require a great deal of precision. I'd hate to be in one of the groups relying on a motor to gently and precisely tilt a platform. They'll have their work cut out for them, to say the least.

We got a whole lot of snow this weekend. Here are some pictures of that, and also a picture of one of my plants, propped by an Indonesian mask.

100 Entries. Wow, ain't that something? I remember when this blog was just a tawdry smattering of PHP scripts set in depressing purple-on-black. Now it's got a visits counter, a decently sophisticated image-viewing system, and even surprisingly effective security! Only one bot has managed to get past my cunning "Identify the animal" humanity-test!

But enough about that. What would you all like to see in this blog? Content, bugs or features, let me know! If the site looks ugly to you, comment! I try to test on a number of different browsers, but to be honest I don't try very hard. Internet Explorer and Chrome users, you have been very kindly putting up with the two extra dots in the extras section, for example. I have fixed that, but please do tell me if something doesn't seem quite right or if there's functionality you would like to see.

Ok, that's enough of my schpiel. I don't know how many of you remember the Cyber Defense Competition that we placed in last year, but it's coming time to do it again. Kay, the person who always would make it happen before, is no longer around, so I've been trying to get a trip together. At first the odds were stacked so far against me that I was sort of just enjoying the mental exercise of doing the planning and going through the bureaucracy as far as I could. I never really thought we'd actually be able to do it. Still it's a long shot, but even though he can't afford to leave his wife for another weekend (unless I can find him another one, he says) Charlie is trying to get us an exception so we can drive an Earlham van to Iowa without him or another faculty member present. We still have only three team members, and we need four to qualify, though. I've been hammering all the CS list servers to try and entice another member to join, but have had no takers yet. I think I can find a fourth member, though, if I really look.

The picture is of Barret parking lot at night. I just figured out how to use the "Night" setting on my camera properly, so I'm going to try and find more cool night shots.

It's coming fast! What is it? A bird, a plane? No! It's a bonus update!

So, on my first day of Gospel Revelations the instructor (an amazing fellow, by the way) asked all the basses to raise their hands. I raised my hand. Alone.

For the next two hours I, having never sung in a choir before in my life, carried the entire Bass part, which was rather intense. As much as I liked the idea of being one of a kind, I think it's for the best that a few people sitting next to me were unrecognized basses (who were identified after class), so I'll be on a small team from now on instead.

Once upon a time there was a weed-out course. Many young college freshman think they've got what it takes to learn the secrets of life, and the powers that be crafted this course as the gateway to this sacred knowledge. Any student with even the slightest doubt that he or she is destined to study biology will not make it through, and will have to satisfy him or herself with a subject deemed suitable for mere mortals, like Ceramics.

Two years ago this week, the teachers of the Earlham College Cells, Genes and Inheritance (CGI) class graded the first tests of the semester, hefting their red pens and lethargically marking wrong answer after answer. Years it had taken, but not one of them had the spark any longer. That sparkle in their eye in anticipation when one day, someone would get a decent grade on one of these exams, was gone, worn down to nothing by decades of failure. It was just another night of depressing Cs and Ds when one teacher, halfway through her fourth cartrige of red ink, jotted on her paper a number that she had almost forgotten existed.

"A Ninety-Six!" the teachers were ecstatic, they read and re-read the test, but there was no doubt. Later that day, a CGI student was visited by a teary-eyed TA who - his voice faltering - told her, "No one - No one has ever scored this high on a test. We had nearly lost hope that we would ever find someone worthy of the secrets of cellular biology. Thank you, thank you so much."

From then on, that student was known only as "The CGI Hero." So the legend goes.

Two years later, Samuel Leeman-Munk, a second-semester senior at Earlham College, was turned away from Oceanography a third time. "I need a science class to graduate!" he cried piteously, but Andy Moore was unsympathetic. "I see a clear opening on your schedule for CGI!" he cackled, making sure to almost scream the "CGI!" just before a thunderclap. Rejected and dejected, Sam stumbled home in the pouring rain, crying and tripping into the mud, when out of the corner of his eye he saw an old friend - Idil.

"What seems to be troubling you, my friend?" asked Idil, her raincoat shading her face like a hooded cloak.

"I have no choice, Idil! I have to take CGI! My GPA is ruined, I'll never get into grad school!" wept Sam, wiping mud off of his face.

"Ah, Sam, I always thought you more well-read. Don't you remember the tale of the CGI Hero?" counseled wise Idil.

"That's only a story!" shouted Sam, "No one could possibly have done so well!"

"As much as I hate to disagree with you, Sam, perhaps the true tall tale is that CGI is unaccomplishable." said Idil, turning around, "Come, I have something to show you."

Inside her dorm room, Idil pulled a key on a long chain from her long, flowing raincoat. "You're a smart young man, Sam. You can do well in this course."

Pushing the key gingerly into the lock of a worn, wooden chest, Idil carefully withdrew a gigantic tome and blew off a layer of dust. "Sam," she said, looking directly into his eyes, "This is the very same book used by the original CGI hero all those years ago. I now bestow it upon you. Treat it as you would a treasured friend and I guarantee you will prosper."

"So it's a magic book?" asked Sam.

"No, you still have to study and work hard." replied Idil.

"Aww, man!" Sam whined. "Well, thanks for the book," he said, shuffling out of the room.

It was not until that night that Sam opened the cover of the book, and saw the name written in the margin, the name of the legendary CGI hero, which I'm sure by now most of you can guess. "Idil Ovutmen."

Whether Sam is destined to be the next great hero of Cells, Genes, and Inheritance remains to be seen.

Based on a true story.

So, Erin got me into her room. A search for Essential Cell Physiology Third Edition brought me to Hoerner and through her door. It wasn't until that door had closed behind me that I found out hers was the second edition. Nevertheless, while I was here anyway, it was a prime opportunity to meet all of Erin's pets, starting with the most charismatic: her crayfish.

Now, I had memories as a child of crayfish, and they weren't all bad. I remember them being small, bright red, friendly mini-lobsters with whom I would hang out in my stream every Wednesday after school. Every time somebody had remarked that crayfish were creepy, I thought "Ha! That's not creepy! I must have nerves of steel!" Erin's crayfish made me realize with a start two things. One, Crayfish are creepy, and two I do not have nerves of steel. Also by the transitive property, my Wednesday afternoon stream buddies were not crayfish, and that just put my whole childhood into question. If you can't trust bright red mini-lobsters on Wednesday afternoon, who can you trust?

Erin's crayfish, which I decided must have been a different species (you know, those crazy Minnesota crayfish) were not bright red, and they were huge! They were certainly not mini-lobsters. If we define mini as "bite-sized or smaller" these did not fit the bill, even for my bite capacity. These could easily pass for juvenile lobsters, they were so big. Not only that, they were mean! They were so mean that Erin had to keep them in different containers because they were literally tearing each other apart! The poor male was missing an antennae and part of a leg because "Rosen the Bonecrusher," as Erin had lovingly dubbed her, was apparently not satisfied with his performance as a mate. Fine for her to talk, Erin told me that after the divorce she gave Rosen full custody of the kids, whom she proceeded to eat one by one as she could catch them. You know kids, though, like they'll ever go along with their parents' wishes. Ever since the slow, chubby kids got the mandible, the faster, smarter kids who are better at sports have been exceptionally skilled at evading Mommy Dearest's loving embrace. Nothing like certain death to motivate a child to achieve.

Next were the earwigs, which Erin breeds, pause for effect, in an uncovered tupperware container. I'm sure Erin knows what she's doing, and she has assured me that earwigs are lousy climbers, but it's just hard to believe they can't get over an inch of plastic. On top of that, she keeps them hidden under her bed where she can't monitor them to make sure none of them have escaped. Add to that the fact that several earwigs have been seen fraternizing with the Madagascar hissing cockroaches in the tank next door, and I don't see where one can defend the efficacy of this minimum-security terrarium.

Speaking of hissing cockroaches, they really hiss. It's not really so much like hissing, though, as growling or screaming or scream-growling or something. It's really quite unnerving. Earthworms squirm around to be hard to pick up when they're scared, ants just run away, but Madagascar cockroaches do all those things and scream bloody murder at you while doing it.

Of course, all through this Erin pointed out the little appendages and probosci and tried to explain to me why these creatures were the cutest on Earth. I could not bring myself to see it her way. Erin, I think, as the daughter of two biologists, has grown up among all sorts of creatures and learned to respect and even love creatures bearing little or no resemblance to herself. I guess I just can't see past my egocentric expectations of between two and four legs inclusive, warm-blooded and vascular circulatory systems, and, yes, endoskeletons. I expect creatures for whom I have affection to keep their skeletons inside their bodies, if it's not too much trouble. Tusks and antlers are acceptable, but let's leave it at that.

Boy, the first day of my last semester at Earlham and I start it off with a stomach virus. Not only that, but Airtran reassigned my flight and placed me in the center seat on both flights! Airtran was so intent on putting me in the center it even split up two friends who were traveling together! One in the aisle and one at the window, they loudly talked across me, when I said "hey, this is a funny setup they've got here, sticking me in between you two! You guys want to sit together?"

"Nah, that's ok." they said together, resuming their trans-Sam conversation. The good news is that I found some open seats at the back of that particular flight and moved there.

This is not only my last semester at Earlham, but the first full decade of my adult life. I plan to make the most of it. For example, After missing several opportunities throughout my lifetime to join a secular chorus, I'm going to join the next best thing, Gospel Revelations. This time I'm really doing it, although there's no doubt it's an odd match. I'm hoping to master some basic skills and join a more general choir later. I've also bought my old guitar Castanella back from Ori, and I'm going to try and learn some chords so I can give myself instrumental backup when I sing alone.

Some chinese women are staying with us while they learn English and nursing at the University of North Carolina School of Nursing. Less than half a day after the lodgers arrived my parents left to go listen to my sister sing in Cambridge, Massachusetts, so I was left to entertain and educate these women all by myself. Fortunately, these are two of the most awesome women in the world!

First off, they cooked some kind of awesome chinese equivalent to chicken and dumplings for lunch shortly before leaving for class. Then at four-thirty they came back, and at five I was already feeling hungry again and I could literally hear their stomachs growling, so I started making macaroni and cheese for them. Li Xin asked me if I needed help, and, thinking she was just being a combination of polite and underconfident in my cooking skills, I simply and directly told her "No." She then left, but came back and said "I would like to learn," to which I replied "Then please by all means do help!" and proceeded to let her grate the cheese and stir the sauce. About halfway through Zhang Xun came and started helping out as well, pouring the corn into the strainer. I told them the American way was to add as much cheese as possible, and so we added a whole bowl of cheese to the sauce, making for especially cheesy macaroni and cheese. I don't actually know if they liked it or they were just being polite, but the fun didn't stop after dinner.

As they had twice already, Xin and Xun insisted on helping me with dishes. Every time I thanked them they just laughed at me. Eventually Xun told me that since they all used the dishes they should all clean the dishes. I told them that as the person who is usually in charge of cleaning the dishes alone, my father would very much appreciate their philosophy.

Just now we're bonding over the bizarre onomatopeia choices of the Japanese language. We started on how funny it was that while every other language has some variation on "meow," Japanese says "nyan" instead. What I find especially funny is the row labeled "angry dog." Every language says "grr" "grr" "grr" until Japanese comes along, bares its teeth, and snarls viciously: "uuuuu!"

Xun says that someone told her the Japanese have trouble pronouncing things because they have big tongues. In order to properly pronounce Chinese, one needs a small tongue, this person told her. I think I've stumbled upon a fascinating glimpse of Chinese culture.

I've been looking around for jobs. After I found a few good positions at SAS I wanted to take a break and spend what I thought would be a very short amount of time programming a component of my Jeopardy game question pack editor. I ended up spending an hour trying to get PHP, which doesn't inherently support Japanese characters, to behave properly. After I finally stopped it was past eleven and I decided to leave my blog entry for this morning.

This is exactly the sort of thing I have been hoping would happen when I quit video games. While it did not quite constitute 'losing track of time' (I was quite aware of the time), I did actively want to work on this programming project even though I had already emailed my Japanese teacher and had the due date extended indefinitely. I wasn't stressed and miserable about the time I was taking as I wandered around various PHP internet manuals trying to figure out how to solve this problem; much to the contrary, it was interesting and engaging. Hopefully this will only increase in the future, both in depth of enjoyment and breadth of activities to enjoy.

I had something else to say that was really funny, but I completely forgot it. I might want to carry around one of those little notebooks that writers jot their ideas in for use later.

I've never been one to like figuring out what material posessions will best enrich my life. So this Christmas I asked, rather than for physical gifts, for donations in my honor. A wealthy benefactor happened to be matching donations to Shodor for up to $150 at a time, so for my Christmas present I requested a $150 donation to Shodor. I also got fingerless gloves and an ultimate-frisbee standard weight and size frisbee. The frisbee glows in the dark! I'm going to try and play some ultimate frisbee in the future. For Christmas I gave two more movies, one for my father and one for my mother, a LOLcat collage poster for my sister, and a pair of earrings for my aunt Lorraine.

Now it's time to get to work on my other tasks. I need to make an easy-to-use web form for making question collections for my Jeopardy game. Right now one has to edit the XML files directly. I also need to clean my room so two women from China can stay with us while they take courses at the University of North Carolina. If I have time, I would really like to do some more cluster computing work as well.

I made a point in Quaker Meeting today to, one, sit through meeting, and two, not look at my watch. It was really quite challenging. I've made a habit until now of sitting through the first fifteen minutes and leaving when the children leave for first day school. Fifteen minutes seems a long time to be sitting still in silence, but the full hour is four times that! I rather quickly lost track of time. I didn't know if I was just barely past the thirty-minute mark, almost at the end, or even five minutes past time for the children to leave. It was an interesting experience. I feel like it was meaningful, perhaps, but next week I'm going to be helping run intergenerational games, so I won't be able to do the full hour of silence again particularly soon.

I have reached a local maximum of tasks to be done. From here on out my curricular activities will only decrease until the end of the semester. How perfectly delightful. Nevertheless, that does not mean there aren't a lot of tasks that have already piled onto the task list. A few of my friends have particularly large lists of work to be done. Particularly some friends in Modern Physics have apparently taken advantage of lax due dates and have several three-week labs to do during finals week. The class's teacher John Howell put it quite vividly, "I have given you the rope with which to guide yourselves and you have hung yourselves with it."

I presented my Japanese Jeopardy game. It was generally well received. A question asking a student to politely express his or her dislike for something turned out to be worded poorly, and the question asking a student to sing a little bit of Japan's national anthem was entirely a bust. It turns out not one person could sing even the smallest fraction of it.

Jam comics are the most wonderful thing in the world. I would be a happy man if I could always find someone willing to jam comic with me. This and making movies. Making movies is a many splendid thing. Movie making and jam comics are wonderful pasttimes. Everyone should engage in them more often.

Next week I will be writing to you from Chapel Hill, North Carolina! Woo! Go NC!

Ah, Wellness Hall. I wonder how my life may have been different if I had started Earlham in the Wellness Hall rather than the Quiet Dorm. My old friends openly despied the antics of the Wellness Hall, but I never quite could bring myself to agree with them. One day I saw just one of the Wellness Hall, sitting by himself, hunched over his food in complete silence. The table at which I sat was still empty and was likely to remain so that evening, so I figured it couldn't hurt to give this fellow some company. Almost immediately, as though it had been waiting for someone to take the bait, the table filled. I stoically watched the oohs and aahs of people stunned at the sight of the fabled "Rachel's Brother" sitting among them in the flesh, but these shortly subsided and were replaced by the general clamor of dinner table conversation.

And what clamor it was! These folk spoke not of jazz concerts and popular television shows. Conversation never slowed to a halt for lack of something sensible to say. Rather they simply said whatever nonsense seemed first to come to their minds. The noise of the educated madmen was intoxicating. I was drawn in within moments, making logical extrapolations on illogical bases, debating the theory of lentils as the anti-potato, contemplating the fat content necessary for bacon to travel through time, devising a psychology experiment to determine the existential nature of the corn muffin as compared to its counterpart the cupcake. There was no air of competition. No one had to prove that he was the smartest and most articulate at the table. It was just a group of friends having tremendous amounts of fun. I would like to think I did not raise my voice loud enough to stir the ire of neighboring tables, but genuinely do not know. For the first time in a long time, I had forgotten myself in enjoyment.

Such a radical change in social philosophy is never without its consequences, however. The first few days I voluntarily immersed myself in the warm glow of the Wellness Hall table, a member of my old group with whom I had become personally close to due to a common interest in board and card games sat with me. However, this table was as foreign to him as his table had been to me, and despite honestly trying to join me in my new community, the very same community I knew he had despised only days earlier, he just sat with the same blank look on his face, reminding me very much of myself when I was trying to fit in where I clearly did not. The next day he tried again to stay with me, but was again silent and blank. It hurt me to do this to him, to bring upon someone else the same suffering that I had endured myself for two years, but I didn't know what else I could do. Such is the tragedy of circles of friends that only minimally overlap. I comfort myself by remembering that for normal people like my friend, situations like these are likely just awkward, rather than meriting the existential despair that I like to apply to them to make interesting blog posts.

This Thanksgiving break, unlike those before it, I spent in Indiana. Pleasantly, I was freed from the Earlham enforced meal plan for a week, and cooked and ate with my sister Rachel. I was glad to get to spend some more time with her, which I hadn't done recently. Whenever I told her so, though, she accused me of sounding like our father. She actually made that same accusation whenever I said anything nice. Nevertheless, I was glad we got to spend the time together.

A little over halfway through, we traveled with our parents to our aunt's in Athens, Ohio and to a farm run by a second cousin once removed. It was a nice little vacation, and I'm glad that I got the time before it to catch up on my homework.

Well, I'm back in Indiana. The conference was so busy I didn't have any time to do any of my homework, so I'm catching up on that in addition to trying to figure out where I stand on my senior project. This break I'm temporarily freed from the mandatory meal plan, so Rachel and I are coming together to cook ourselves food. Mostly beans and pasta as it turns out.

After my entry last week in Portland, the actual main conference started. This, among other things, involved a room about the size of a shopping mall, whose ceiling made the vaulted ceilings in the rest of the building seem somehow cramped. In this room one could look in any direction and see booths sprawling out as far as the eye can see. Each of these booths was peddling a technology that will likely not be in the general consumer market for years to come.

Another thing plentiful there was swag. Swag, as defined by Dunder Mifflin regional manager Michael Scott, is stuff we all get. Everything from T-shirts to small dancing robots to apparently purposeless blinking floppy things was readily available to whoever could get close enough before they ran out. Of course, there was at least one raffle per booth as well. The most interesting one was for an optical fiber booth. The object was to, simply by holding them and comparing the feel of the weight, estimate the weight saved by switching from ethernet to fiber-optics. As if that were not enough challenge, only the fiber optic cable was available. The ethernet cable was apparently wandering the conference hall, now listen closely here, as someone's hairdo. Apparently there was a woman in a red dress with green plastic ethernet hair. If we wanted the ethernet cable to compare, we had to find this woman and ask to weigh her hair. Unfortunately, I never found the woman, and had to guess. It turned out it didn't matter, though. All the drawings were on Thursday, and we left Wednesday. People absent could not receive the prize, and were thus disqualified. Also, Al Gore gave a talk on Thursday, which we missed. Ah well.

A highly unusual albeit fortuitously placed moment of reprieve has me writing this entry. I've learned a little bit more about our place in this conference. We are actually part of a subprogram within SC that focuses primarily on supercomputing education and is known as the SC Education program or SCEd. A significant part of Bradley, Aaron, and my job is more or less the behind the scenes labor to try and make sure this program runs smoothly.

Let me start describing my experience at this conference from yesterday, which started the day before yesterday in terms of the rotation of the Earth. The beginning is a little hazy. I was helping out the talented Kevin Hunter and a mysterious man known only as Skylar, when I started hearing about people leaving to go back to the hotel. I wondered when I was going to leave to go back to the hotel, and I never really got a clear answer. At one point I jokingly suggested that we might be working until the conference hall opened again. I was met with stony silence.

We had to place a copy of a particular operating system on, or "image," about one or two hundred USB drives, and we did so about fourteen at a time stuffed into hubs that began to resemble someone smoking an entire mouthful of cigarettes. I was in charge of testing the drives to make sure the copy happened correctly, so I had to watch one of these overstuffed hubs to see which drive was blinking as it was tested against a checking algorithm, and then as soon as it stopped blinking (not before!) toss the drive into a "good" or "bad" pile based on the result. For about six hours straight I sat in my chair vigilantly staring at a pincushion of blinking red lights. At about two in the morning we finished the imaging... and moved onto the next set of two hundred USBs of a different color, on which we were to put the lecture materials for the presentations. I didn't see, but apparently Aaron momentarily lost consciousness and fell over at one point. He was sent to take a nap under a table before being put back to work.

We kept helping out until Aaron, Bradley, and I finally managed to leave at nine, when we found out the bus that was making runs to the hotel until eleven in the morning in fact was not running until five in the evening. So we took the light rail to Delta park and called the hotel shuttle. Then after twenty minutes we called the hotel shuttle again. Then after an hour we called the hotel shuttle again. Then Skylar, who had left an hour and a half after us, caught up with us, and we called again, citing that we had waited two hours for a shuttle. Ten minutes later we got on the shuttle and finally ended up in our hotel where we collapsed for three hours before waking up again to present our petascale poster.

There's more to write, but no time to write it. I'll probably toss in an off-schedule bonus update sometime later this week.

This Thursday I'll be heading over to Portland, Oregon for another supercomputing conference. Unlike TeraGrid, this conference is bigger, possibly the biggest, as suggested by the fact that it doesn't bother to distinguish itself. It is simply called "Supercomputing," or SC for short. Let the other conferences come up with clever names, this is the supercomputing conference.

Sometimes it gets lonely without Greg. Not very often, mind you; I have a robust social life that hardly ground to a halt with his graduation. Once every long while though it becomes painfully clear that an empty void now sits where once was a faithful roommate and first-rate friend.

One such time was Halloween night. After getting lost in Richmond on my way home from a party and wandering the streets in the dark for about an hour, I was no longer interested in high-energy social events. Sam and Susannah invited me to go eat somewhere with them, but I turned them down to go to Japan House, where I'd been told there would be a movie. Unfortunately, after the opportunity to go with Sam and Susannah had passed, I found out that Japan house was going to a huge party at the barn rather than watching a movie. Too tired for parties, I retired to my room.

At this point everyone I knew was outside walking distance or at a party. I can't prove this, but I felt like Greg would have somehow ended up in the same predicament, and we could have spent the night making a ridiculous Halloween-themed comic.

I'm not one to get weepy and nostalgic over lost friends, though. I'm more apt to forget I'd ever met an old friend than to cry myself to sleep wondering when I'd see him or her again.

In any case, Greg and I are working long-distance on another comic. Without revealing any details, This one is more broadly themed than a barrage of inside jokes, and depending how it turns out I might put it in my extras section. I, for one, am quite excited about it.

I've been spending some time at Quaker House. They've got an extremely friendly black cat named "Henle Benle Enrique Esquire Marshall Marshall III." The Henle and Benle are pronounced "Henly" and "Benly" Also, my friend Kelly lives there.

I went to the cracker barrel the other day with a bunch of japanese people. They're on a mini-reverse-SICE trip taking them from Morioka to Richmond for two weeks, and they had just arrived in the airport. We had to split up among multiple tables because there were so many of us. I got put with Korn (A Thai Earlham student who went with me on SICE) and a student and teacher from the middle school he taught at in Morioka. The teacher insisted we call him "Hu-ru-tee," despite appearing perfectly aware that it sounded like "Fruity."

My next door neighbor Everett unfortunately likes to play loud music. I would ask him to quiet it and he usually would. One time, however, the music was extremely loud and instead of quieting it he gave me a mumbled lecture about his rights and what he has to put up with, and saying what I'm "just going to have to put up with."

Another time he had a party, and I was just going to leave, but Susannah, ever the Susannah, decided to delay our event and I was stuck listening to his racket. Unfortunately, my already bad day had left me in a self-righteous mood and I, despite the lack of necessity, knocked on his door to ask him to quiet down. Everett tried to skirt the question, asking if it was too "rumbly" and I informed him it was just too loud. Then he asked what time it was, and I replied that at all hours the rule was to quiet down when asked. Then he started to close the door in my face and I, seeing a door closing in my face, reflexively put out my foot to stop it. Everett took this as an act of aggression and said "what is this!? Don't make a scene!" Embarassed, I withdrew my foot and returned to my room where I hastily put together some things to go to the coffeeshop where I could work in peace.

The next couple days I was not feeling particularly proud of myself, and worried that Everett was angry enough that he would launch some sort of loud music counter-assault that, with Barrett's feeble supply of authority figures, I would be unable to halt. After a few days of waiting for him to be in his room without company, I knocked on his door and apologized, stating that I would try and let him party on weekends as long as it didn't interfere with his sleep. We shook hands, he said "It's ok, dawg," and then he proceeded to lecture me again. "I'll try and respect you, but you've got to understand I need to have my music loud sometimes. Sometimes I've got to play piano. Now and then it just can't be avoided that my sports games will be at full volume." I struggled not to gape at his completely uncalled-for display of awe-inspiring self-righteousness and after a moment of awkward silence I decided if it was between inflating his brain-dead ego and suffering an onlsaught of full-volume rap music, the former was more than acceptable. "Ok." I said and left.

Now it's a matter of pride to put up with him. I'm winning the maturity game by serenely letting him have both his music and his childish sense of superiority, and I'm not about to give it up. It's not really a problem, I can just go somewhere else. As long as it doesn't interfere with my sleep, and thank goodness it coincidentally seldom does, Everett can go ahead and be the king of his own loud and annoying universe.

By the way, this is not an "angry blog entry" which would suggest not so much a win as a loss of the maturity game, but rather a victorious blog entry. I have solved my problem and am merely detailing the story for those who wish to hear it.

It was just last night. I was playing a special game that, at the press of a button, changed from a mediocre platformer to a mediocre puzzle game, making it just interesting enough to maintain a steady mind-numbing level of engagement while not being strictly classifiable as "entertainment". Worse, it at no point gave any indication that it was saving my progress, leaving me to play all the way through in one night or risk losing data. At eleven at night, I finished a level and thought to put it away and go to bed, when a voice in my head said "play another level." "Please," I replied, nonplussed, (also in my head) "Is my life really that miserable that I'm better off spending another thirty minutes on this digital lobotomy?" The voice paused for a moment before replying "Yes." Convinced, I played until eleven-fifty.

At eleven-fifty, for a split second, the game's entertainment value dropped below my engagement threshold. In my moment of lucidity, knowing full-well I might never see my save-data again, I reached out my thumb and pressed the power button.

This story is embarassingly not nearly as far from the truth as I'd like it to be. For that reason, I've quit video games. As long as I can, maybe letting up at the end of the semester, I will not initiate any video gaming. That is, I will not play a single-player video game, and I will not recommend a multi-player video game as an activity. As I verified becoming pescetarian, it is tremendously easier for me not to do something at all than it is for me to do it in moderation, so I'm going to stop playing video games entirely. The exception being multi-player games initiated by others.

What will I do with all this free time? I don't know, have friends or something.

In the absence of anything else to discuss on this completely normal, boring day, I'll mention the horrifying new insect-like creature that Susannah, Sam and I have come upon this week.

I first saw it about five minutes before class. First I thought it was a huge silverfish, but silverfish's dozen or so legs don't extend out quite so far out with quite so many angles, so I really couldn't identify it beyond "horrible mutant silverfish."

With little time to spare, I grabbed the nearest container and trapped the little bugger. Unfortunately I was already running late for class, so I hastily scrawled a note on an index card, "Gross Bug: DO NOT LIFT," and left the note and container in the middle of the floor in our room and went on to Discrete Mathematics.

Fortunately, no one came in the room while I was gone, so I pushed a thick sheet of paper (I didn't want to feel that thing crawling all over my hand) under the container and lifted it up to take outside.

Of course, I wasn't giving the paper enough support, and it fell over near the edge of the container, letting the monster escape and scurry to the door, but I brought the container down hard again. When I pushed the paper under it tore off a leg, which twitched neurotically while I dashed down the stairs to get outside as quickly as I could.

Outside I tried to dump it right away, but I didn't see where it had gone, and it seemed for a moment like it had escaped mid-transit, but then I saw it standing in the flower bed, glaring at me, its remaining seventeen or so legs seemingly readied to launch it forward at me to avenge their brother. Then it spun around and dashed under the bush.

I spoke with Erin, my entomologist friend a few days later, who, with a misty, almost nostalgic look identified it as a "House Centipede." She said they're extremely common in Hoerner Hall, but she'd also seen them in Lilly Library and Dennis. She went on to reminisce about when she discovered that they weren't really grey, but clear with flecks of black and orange. I left before she could describe her many failed attempts at domesticizing them.

I looked up the term at home, and it turns out house centipedes are no threat to humans. They prey on insects like earwigs and flies, but they're not picky. They've been known to eat other house centipedes, spiders, and even small mammals such as mice.

Incidentally, Susannah now refuses to enter our room. It's taken all my restraint not to explain to her that they're actually several times more common in her dormitory.

Also, my old boss Kay Wanous is leaving Earlham. I had a party for her, and she wanted to take a bunch of my friends and me to a restaurant, but I was the only person who could go. Kay has bizarre taste in restaurants, so we went to an italian-food chain called "Fazoli's." I had been there once in my life, and wasn't thinking when I ordered what looked like an innocent, parmesan-cheese covered "sampler." Unfortunately, this "sampler" was three-quarters chef-boyardee quality meat. Kay was treating me, and I didn't want to be rude, so I ate all of it. I even ate a breadstick, and at Kay's goading ate another. In the end I felt a little sick, but not very, and I was glad that I could give Kay a nice last day.

Let's everyone list our favorite bits of Internet! I'll start!

First of all, the best best friends ever live at Nedroidcomics.com. Reginald and Beartato's outrageous adventures are as marvelous as they are nonsensical.

Next, Maru, a rotund cat with an affinity for boxes comes straight from Japan for the delight of all.

Thirdly, for those of you who have seen The Ring, this is essentially the equivalent of the video that kills you in seven days, but with cats.

Submit your great websites! Let's see what all my readers like on the intertubes!

So, there's this girl I saw a bunch of times just sitting in Saga at a table by herself wearing headphones. I really wanted to talk to her, but she was always completely alone and deathly silent and wearing headphones which, like a book, are a universal sign of "don't talk to me." Nevertheless, I eventually got my chance when she happened to be behind me on the way to the dining hall and I held the door for her. When not wearing headphones, it turns out she's bubbly and energetic. I introduced myself and she in the same breath introduced herself and stated that she was from East Timor. Then she told me East Timor was seven years old and gave me a five-second rundown of its history. Apparently it was an Indonesian colony, and then it gained its independence. Her name is Elsyia. She says I can remember it because it sounds like "Asia."

To be honest, I'm not completely sure it was the same person.

I decided on what subject to do my senior capstone! Computational English language recognition and synthesis. My project will be a computerized expert. I'll pick a narrow field and design a progam that to the best of its ability will answer questions posed in common English in that field. In the future I can add more fields and topics and eventually make it into a general purpose computerized expert. I could also have it research Wikipedia to further expand its database or use the conversations it has with users to expand its abilities. From what I can tell, the project will deal more heavily in recognition than synthesis, but the two combined should give me no shortage of material for the accompanying paper.

A pox has befallen the hapless room of Sam and Sam. Mercifully not the dreaded Swine Flu, but an inconvenience nonetheless. I got a lecture from my next door neighbor about his rights when I asked him to quiet his music. Hopefully this won't escalate because he's been very good about quieting his music when asked until now. Forgive me, but I'm not feeling very literary right now. This will be a short post.

I may have mentioned this earlier, but upon learning the joy of cooking, I rued the eventual day that I would return to the bloated drudgery of an Earlham-mandated all-cafeteria diet. While students are not technically required to eat nineteen meals a week in the grease-soaked mess hall, everyone in campus housing is required to at least pay for regular visits to the cafeteria known only as Saga.

"No," Earlham's Sodexho food-giant sponsored eating area rebuts, "You are free to reduce your meal plan to seven a week!" While this may be true, I must point out that as I reduce the size of the plan, the price decreases disproportionately. On a full plan, the cost is approximately six dollars per meal, but at the smallest plan the price increases two-fold to twelve dollars per meal, almost enough to regularly eat 2 huge feasts of delicious Indian food!

Needless to say, I am not the slightest bit interested in being price gouged, so I chose the lesser of two evils: Three times a day, I wade into the oil and fat, and make what healthful decisions I can among the fried ubiquity.

This is where my plan comes in.

Every meal I have a wrap full of hummus, chickpeas, red beans, black beans, peas, and corn. I vary the ingredients just enough to keep it fresh, but generally I've found it's very easy to eat on a regular basis. Aside from that, I have extremely moderate amounts of regular saga food and copious fruits.

In the past I've fought a losing battle for healthy eating against Saga. As much as I tried to moderate myself, I would often end up eating too much of its unhealthy foods. However, this time I have a secret weapon.

I don't eat meat.

I've been tossing around the idea of converting to pescetarianism for a while now, but it took Jimmy explaining that pescetarians are less annoying than vegetarians because they can almost always find an option at any restaurant. That convinced me for some reason, but I still didn't want to convert yet and miss out on my mother's cooking, so I waited still longer, until it was plainly clear that living on the salad bar was my only hope of surviving another year of Sodexho's tyranny. I know I'm not missing much at Saga, but I'm still considering how strict I'll be when the stakes get higher.

One Caveat:

Do not tell Rachel that I've converted to pescetarianism. I want her to read it on my blog or figure it out herself. If one day she suddenly realizes that I'm eating the same thing as she when Mom serves the rest of the family a meat dish, that's the best possible situation. Don't you think that will be priceless? I think so.

Special Sam's Blog News Alert! I was walking with my two associates from a TeraGrid research group meeting, when Aaron, looking over to the side, said "what is that squirrel doing?" No sooner did I turn my head than I saw the thought-to-never-be-seen-again Action Squirrel! Last sighted months ago gymnastically twirling through the air with his uncooperative dance partner the pinecone, Action Squirrel today was spinning himself at high speeds around a fallen tree branch. Shortly, though, he ceased his daring feats of centrifuge, and returned to being mild-mannered Ordinary Squirrel. Once again I was taken by surprise and unable to collect visual documentation, but nevertheless I now have two more witnesses to prove that Action Squirrel remains at large.

End week one. I've got three circles of friends, by my count. Sam B. 'n' Susannah, of course, and "The dinner table," including Avery, Michael, Idil, Kelly, etcetera. Also I wandered over to Japan house where I encountered a wonderful time, and was specifically asked to "come again." That could have just been a pleasantry, but it was pleasant nevertheless. I might wander over to other places now and then and mingle with other groups as well.

There's a Japanese Freshman on my floor. After I said "Hi Kazuya" about three times (over a week, not in succession), he replied "Hello, my name is Kazuya." I'll have to get to know him better.

Well, here I am at Earlham again. My first year ever without my roommate Greg. He understood me to a certain extent, and with an extra five years of life experience he helped me and guided me through my first three college years. Now, in my final year, the time has come to find out if I can make it without him. The ultimate battle, the boss-fight, the final round; call it whatever you like. I intend to make sure Greg did not graduate in vain.

This is a Monday post rather than a late-Sunday post. That will happen sometimes, but I promise never later than Monday.

Notice anything different? No, it's not a new haircut. I've redesigned the blog! You'll probably notice the new theme is more chipper than before. Wendy, I looked at all the web-friendly fonts, and now I do feel like Times New Roman is the font for me. Serifs just suit this site, I think.

I've also improved the site's cross-platform compatibility a bit. On a lower resolution display the entries will shrink so you don't have to scroll to the side. I'll try and pretty things up some more for you silly folks still using that Internet Explorer in the coming week.

You'll also notice there's a few new features and gadgets. Notably, I've had an increasing number of comments from spambots, so I've put human-checking mechanisms on all user-input. Don't worry, fellow humans. All you'll need to do is give a one-word description of the animal shown in the picture. Don't think too hard, this isn't meant to present a human being any challenge.

Robots need not apply.

Sorry, I'm late again. Jimmy's back in North Carolina, and with him is our old mutual friend Maiko from Japan. The year after I saw off Koji, Maiko joined the Condon-Malone residence as an exchange student. During her and her erstwhile host-brother Jimmy's visit, she pet our cat.

Now, this at first may not seem particularly meaningful, but our cat has a remarkably poor human-relations track record. Few of my other friends are willing to get within reach of her claws, and none of those friends, not even myself, have ever given her the love and affection Maiko showed her.

Maiko reached between Midnight's paws and rubbed her tummy, and she even grabbed a paw and shook it like she was shaking hands! Midnight seemed to genuinely enjoy all of this, and I'd like all you naysayers to take this as evidence that she's a new cat. She doesn't scratch any more.

Thanks, Maiko!

Whoops! Forgot the update! As you may have guessed, I'm in Chapel Hill. Chapel Hill's been urbanizing for a long time now, and walking down Franklin street feels a little like New York City. I really don't like driving, so all these nearby businesses and restaurants serve me well.

NOTE: The release date for the new site design has been postponed until August 17.

It's pretty easy just to hastily regurgitate some half-brained reviews of whatever drivel I happen to be numbing my mind with lately, but I'm sure that you readers expect more than that.

Umm... uh...

Ok, I've got it! I used my wok this week! My mother sent me a wok, and after a dreadful rice-frying failure I put it in my closet and forgot about it for a while. This time, though, I cooked the chicken and eggs separately and then fried them all together. It worked out quite well indeed.

Earlier this week I made Bleu cheese and parmesan macaroni and cheese with what turned out to be expired milk. I'd already used the last of the butter when I found out, and I wasn't too keen on another trip to the grocery store, so I just went with it. It was only two days over, and I could barely taste the difference (although to be fair I did taste a difference). The plot thickened when the milk separated. I thought maybe I could stir it back together just like I did with the cheese, but no such luck. I decided just to add the cheese anyway and hope for the best. The result was the best macaroni and cheese I had ever tasted. Hopefully I'll be able to reproduce these results someday without the use of expired milk. Also the pasta was multicolor wagon-wheel. Good stuff.

My sister complained to me the other day that every time I said to her something in text that didn't seem like my usual vocabulary, she went to great harship imagining what sort of expression I was wearing on my face. Apparently I have a "fake" expression that she says drives her to mental illness. This troubles me somewhat.

For the record, I watched and liked Coraline, The Rage in Placid Lake, and Barbarella. Respectively, they were a typical Tim Burton good time, a makebelieve story about some kind of superhuman iconoclast who tries to be just a regular superhuman, but decides he needs to be his superhuman self, and a movie I can definitely see my friend Jimmy liking.

Mix equal parts Ten Canoes and Three Stooges, add a romance between some forgettable European characters and a dull hostage plot, and you've got a half-fantastic movie! The Gods Must be Crazy starts out with the whimsical story of a self-sufficient african tribe that doesn't know anger or hatred until they find a coke bottle that is so useful to them that they fight over it. Finally one young man declares the bottle "evil" and vows to throw it off the edge of the world. Then the film progresses through his journey to the "edge of the world," including a wonderful mythology and many examples of adorable animal acting. Also, there are some European characters and a hostage situation (I recommend fast-forwarding through these parts). I liked it, and recommend it if you haven't seen it.

Tin Man is a sci-fi miniseries adaptation of The Wizard of Oz, but don't bother watching it. I was expecting a clever and creative reimagining, but really its only relation to the classic land of Oz is the offhanded recycling of a few old names and images. Special effects seem to come out of nowhere at all for little or no reason, especially around "The Sorceress" whom they didn't even have the decency to keep titled "Witch." "The Sorceress" eats people's souls and produces flying monkeys out of tattoos placed conveniently a few inches above her chest. There's more I could go into, but Tin Man doesn't deserve a moment more of your or my time.

Oh, right! On my way to Marsh I saw a squirrel somersaulting, backflipping, and leaping into the air with a pinecone nearly its size. This squirrel-pinecone dance team made for a simply adorable performance.

Earlham's internet connection has been exremely spotty the past few days, so rather than simply getting what I want exactly when I want it for free, I've had to suffer the indignity of walking down the block to "rent" a video from a "video rental store." Some of you may be familiar with this already, but let me explain to the newcomers: to "rent" is to pay permanent money to get a temporary possession. That's right, you give the posession back, but the "rental store" gets to keep your money. I know it sounds strange, but this business model was actually very popular for a period in our nation's history.

I rented "Big," which is about a little boy who magically grows up overnight. He can't explain his story to anyone else because no one will believe him, and it gets him into heaps of trouble. I would just like to say right here for all of you that if you encounter a magical mishap and need to discuss something that seems completely outrageous, I am here for you. I will gladly listen to what you have to say, and will take your claims seriously. If you want my money or a significant amount of my time, I'll need some sort of verifiable evidence that you are in some sort of emergency, normal or incredible, but if you just need somebody to believe you, I'm here. I've seen so many movies where no one will listen to these poor victims of improbability that it's really the least I can do.

During all this movie watching I've been doing what after my sister I've lovingly dubbed "pulling a Rachel,"* where I use a movie to occupy the rest of my mind while I perform a productive activity that is less than riveting. In Rachel's case it's usually sewing, but I hook up my computer to a separate monitor and have it play the movie on that monitor while I work on its main monitor. I edited a film for next semester's SICE program while I watched Big.

Also I watched and thoroughly enjoyed The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. I do not recommend it to people who favor short movies, though, nor would I describe it as "upbeat." It's marvelous for pulling a Rachel, if you don't mind all the death.

*other people might know it as "multitasking." I like my term better, though.

Indiana... Indi Ana...
Ana: the land of
Indi: Independent music?

Well, I've got some pictures. Some from the forest a little while back, and some more recently around campus. Some crazy pictures of my friends, and Greg and Katie graduating. Be sure to enjoy them on the new Picture Viewer 3.0! Click on a picture to see a larger version. One of a number of small updates I'll be implementing in anticipation of August fifth, this blog's one year anniversary!

Speaking of pictures, I learned an important lesson today about procrastination. With no warning, the oddly shaped tree that a friend of mine and I had admired was reduced to wood chips. I've included a picture of the wood chips, but it's really not the same thing. If I had been with it, I would have taken the picture weeks ago, and had something to remember this tree by.

Speaking of plants, that plant on my windowsill is Gwenevere herself. My friend Mandi thought I was cruel to put her on my outside windowsill, comparing it to putting a hamster on one's outdoor windowsill. I took her inside when a powerful storm knocked her over, but she pressed herself against the window as if begging to be let out again, so she's back on the outside windowsill again. She's starting to bloom!

I must be honest, I've been taking pictures, but not actually putting them on the site. I've retroactively updated some of my recent entries, including Teragrid and my Maine post.

I wandered into a wild patch of internet Family Guy a few days ago and today after two wasted evenings am trying to curb my addiction. So I'm just trying to be productive, doing some coding, keeping my mind off the show. I'm looking up PHP associative arrays when I notice that all the example code is based on Family Guy.

But seriously, Family Guy is, although I would recommend it to... hm, maybe one of my readers, my honorary brother who has apparently taken my place in the family in my absence, extremely hilarious to me. (extra points if you can locate the subject of that sentence) Three quarters of its references are far too esoteric for my limited cultural knowledge, but generally I just enjoy how bizarre it is, and when I do get a reference it's like being part of a secret club. They made fun of Monty Python (Meg recounts being tied to a chair and forced to watch their bad skits John Cleese:"I'm going to take my pet toad for a walk, and every time I put down my right foot I'm going to say 'Boing!'" Meg: I'm a girl! I don't even like the good skits!) That's got to be the first time in my life I've heard any other item of media acknowledge that british comedy group's existence! Family Guy makes jokes about everything, then it makes jokes about the jokes it made about everything, then it makes more jokes about the jokes it made about the jokes about everything else! All in the span of a few minutes!

Don't go adding it to the netflix list, though. It's much too crude for Mothers and much too violent for Rachels. As an american male aged 5-35 I'm not troubled by the somewhat outrageous amount of violence, but sometimes even I feel an urge to wag my finger disapprovingly at the other places they're willing to go. Nevertheless, even under a barrage of rapid-fire nonsense comedy the characters are remarkably consistent, and the stories are quite believable once inside the nonsense logic of Quahog, Rhode Island.

I watched a few recent episodes of The Simpsons, now deep into its dotage, and am terribly sorry to say that I could not say the same. Every episode seemed to write itself into a corner and then pull out a tear-stained cliche to put everything back how it started. When Homer loses his house to his adjustable-rate loan and good neighbor Ned buys it so they can keep living in it, I'm staying along. When Homer wants to publicly humiliate him for not helping with the repairs I'm lost a little. Homer's known for outrageous plots, though, so I'm forgiving. When Marge, generally boasting much more common sense than Homer, agrees I'm lost a lot. It's a pretty cool crisis for Flanders's character when he's driven to the breaking point and evicts them, but then three and a half minutes later he's suddenly overcome with emotion and invites them back, and I'm gone. I'm beginning to agree with those fools I decried as naysayers all those years ago. Perhaps it is time for Springfield to finally be put to rest.

Looking at this huge entry, it's a little depressing that I just found so much more to write about in television cartoons than I usually find in my own life. Then again, television has been a significant part of my life for the past few days. I feel like I'm going to take charge again tomorrow, but with attention span and impulse control like mine, it's difficult for me to predict an hour into the future, let alone as far as a day.

ps. I heard Peter Griffin (the lead character of Family Guy)'s voice in my head narrating this entire entry as I wrote it. I really need to lay off the 'Guy for a while.

I've got about twenty or so extended family back in NC, but now that I'm here in Indiana over the summer, I've got eighty more at the Indiana reunion.

The last time I saw these relatives I was maybe three, so I wasn't really certain what to say. "Nice to meet you," or "Nice to see you again?" Fortunately, Most of them didn't remember me either. They knew who I was when they got my name, though.

Dad, Bud says to tell you everyone's infuriated you didn't show.

Ok, it's time for a language paragraph! Has it struck anyone else what an odd word "forgiveness" is? It's a verb-made-noun through adding the suffix "ness." "ness" is for adjectives, not verbs! That's like calling the act or quality of dying "dieness!" How strange!

It's funny how the most interesting days I have the least time to blog about them. I'm in the Hyatt Hotel in Arlington now at a TeraGrid conference. I'll expand this entry here and there throughout the week.

Thanks to my mother for a footnote I forgot to include:

Just to bring other readers up to speed - "The TeraGrid is the world's largest, most comprehensive distributed cyberinfrastructure for open scientific research." TeraGrid resources include more than a petaflop of computing capability and more than 30 petabytes of online and archival data storage. More than a petaflop - who knew?

Let me expand a little bit. Few of you probably know what a petaflop is. FLOP stands for floating-point operations per second, or the number of decimal operations (like adding 2.5 and 7.3) a processor can calculate per second. So, in essence, it's how fast a computer can think and thus work.

As for the prefix, let me start with a more common one. You've probably heard giga in the word gigabyte, referring to data storage. A gigabyte is one thousand megabytes, each of which is one thousand kilobytes, each of those being one thousand bytes. That's one billion bytes in each gigabyte. At the moment that I am writing this, my entire blog from when I started it takes up 110 Kilobytes of storage space in my computer's hard drive. In other words, giga's pretty big. One thousand gigabytes equals one terabyte. One thousand terabytes equals one petabyte, one quadrillion bytes. So, one petaflop is one quadrillion floating point operations per second. That's all the End Of Grade tests you and everyone else in the world took back in fourth grade (those of you who did take them) in the blink of an eye, if eyes could blink that fast.

Of course, the latest TeraGrid operation is working on problems orders of magnitude more complex than doing your daughter's homework for her. Scientific questions like how did the universe form, and how do protiens fold in the human body. One percent of this mammoth is dedicated to education, and that's still more than all the other computers in the United States combined. This is what my professor Charlie Peck is having us work on. We're doing astrophysics simulations that show the advantages and disadvantages of different methods of harnessing this computer's power.

Tuesday (6/23/09)

Poring over the menu at the Japanese restaurant, looking for something that doesn't cost half a semester of college tuition. Charlie looks up from his tray of maki-zushi (costing approximately the GNP of Iceland) and says "clearly you don't know how to live on an expense account."

My roommate Aaron and I keep realizing this fact over and over again. It feels a little like we're on reality TV. "Watch when these two upper-middle class white males live the bizarrely extravagant life of a multi-billionaire!" Yesterday we ordered room service to be delivered to our room in the morning. I'm embarrassed to admit that I for some reason thought it would just be there when we awoke. In fact, at 7:18 we had to fall out of bed and toss on some clothes to welcome our omelette and pancakes. I don't want to give anyone heart failure, so I won't give the specifics of the bill, but I don't think I'm going to be ordering room service again. Even when someone else was paying for it, that much money for an egg and some pancakes gave me a bad feeling.

Thursday (6/25/09)

We won the Teragrid programming contest. $100 Amazon.com gift card for each of us.

Last night a man appeared out of nowhere at the poster presentation to invite Bryan Purcell and me to dinner. Aaron, Fitz, and I had already eaten while Kinkos was printing our poster, but I thought maybe this was something important, so I asked Aaron if he was going. Aaron replied with surprise, as if it was preposterous that he would go with this strange man to eat dinner, so I politely explained to the man that I had already eaten. "Yes," he said, "but are you coming?" I figured that he was inviting everyone to dinner, and only Bryan Purcell was going because he was the only one who hadn't already eaten, so I said "um, no." The man looked confused, and suggested that we meet sometime tomorrow, then. I said "sure," wondering why this man was so interested in meeting me. Today I got an email that my mentor had sent yesterday, saying he would meet Bryan and me at the poster session and we would go out to eat afterwards. Not one mention of the word "mentor" passed in the entire conversation the night before. This wasn't actually the first time someone I had never met had invited my group to dinner, and I really had already eaten, so I think my only fault was failing to check my email earlier that day.

I've emailed my mentor back, and am profusely checking for his reply.

I never got a reply. Bryan said they just talked about sports, so I'm not too disappointed.

I'm on my way back from Maine. The wedding I came to attend was quite nice: a "sand wedding." The bride and groom were given tubes of magenta and orange sand respectively and as the prayer was read they combined their sands in a picture frame to seal their wedding. The sands formed a lovely gradient, representing the combination of two already beautiful human beings into an even more beautiful life partnership.

Of course, sand art is notoriously impermanent. Every time the picture is moved, the sand will shift and mix until the gradients are no more. Only a solid-color (whatever color magenta plus orange makes. Let's call it morange) will remain. The sands inevitably lose their identities and become a whole.

This by no means represents the fate of this marriage. The bride's a cousin of mine and I had met the groom a few days before the wedding. I think that unlike their sand photo, these two individuals will retain their true colors, and the purely orange and magenta places in their lives will be just as beautiful as where they blend into uncountable distinct shades of morange.

In other news, I went to Maine! I went to Silly's restaurant. Twice. Now I loved the first time, and greatly enjoyed struggling with my aunt figuring out how to eat a chimichanga, but really it pales in comparison to the second in which I made not one but two great culinary discoveries. To start, I rediscovered a long lost honey mustard that I thought was long ... um, lost. When I was in middle school, I found at the school cafeteria that I loved honey mustard. However, every encounter with it afterwards was miserable and disappointing. For whatever reason, most honey mustards seem to be high on spiciness and low on flavor as opposed to the masterful tang that ruled the lunches of my youth. After several disappointments I gave up my search, and did not pursue honey mustard again until that fateful day when it came with an order of home fries. I wanted to ask the recipe, but I doubt they would have willingly parted with it.

If that wasn't good enough, I invented a Silly's favorite shake flavor! Lemonade, limeade, mandarin Orange, and mint combine to create a melody of flavors that tantalizes the tongue. You may say "Anyone can order a milkshake, Sam," but there's more. This was a fantastic milkshake! There's usually a little extra that doesn't fit in the cup, and the waiter gets to try it, and my waiter insisted upon recommending to the board that it be added as an official favorite flavor. Unfortunately, I failed to tell the poor man my name, but I did mention that I was from North Carolina and only came once a year. Maybe they'll call it the "Carolina."

I thought keeping up a blog was hard before. Now just when I think I'm getting the hang of things, another monkey wrench is tossed on my plate, or however the saying goes. Y'see, fellas, today I learned I have readers. No, no, not that imaginary horde of fans I pretended was pestering me to take on the tearer a few months back, real readers. Honest-to-goodness, flesh-and-blood human beings that sit at a computer and read these words I am typing now. Pressure's on. I guess I should get to work on that mammoth post I promised. And I will. Tomorrow. Maybe.

I am so, so sleepy. My mammoth post I was planning for this week will have to wait. Yesterday I had the bright idea that since I could sleep on the plane while traveling, I could just stay up all night playing video games. Well, lets save the mammoth post for later. I keep drifting into and out of unconsciousness while I write this, so I'm going to bed.

Celery is not as easy to wolf down as carrots are. I will have to mark it off of my list of potential snack foods. I'm struggling right now to finish a bag I bought a week or so ago. On the other hand, you know what is delicous? Well, let me put it this way: you know Cherry Coke? Cherry starburst? Jones Cherry soda? a few days ago, I found the real thing These "cherries" are, if ever there was an appropriate use of the term, "Nature's Candy." They've been on sale for a week, and I've eaten six pounds of them since then.

I wanted to make a curry sauce, but the recipe calls for "snipped chutney," which even the mighty internet is having trouble acknowledging exists. Marsh's representative told me "I don't know what that is, but I can tell you we don't have it." Chutney is apparently a mix of vegetables that is good in curry, and although there are many types of chutney, not one is described as "snipped." Doesn't that sound like a vegetable to you? Everyone thought it was a vegetable. Eventually I just made chicken with garlic herb sauce instead. It's really rather odd, because this cookbook my mother gave me is otherwise extremely thorough and helpful.

I ate a stick of butter and two cups of heavy cream this morning. Last night it was delicious alfredo sauce, but it turns out alfredo sauce doesn't refrigerate well, and by morning it was more like a garlic-butter soup with pasta. By afternoon it had separated into huge globs of fat and - well, not really, but that's how it felt when I was eating it. I'm going to lay off the carbs for a while. I would like to point out, though, that while this was a gastric nightmare, it was a culinary success. Mastering the arcane process of "simmering," I accomplished my most complex recipe to date. Nevertheless, I think I'll have cereal for dinner tonight.

The canoeing trip was an expedition to collect soil and water samples from the nearby pond to measure for heavy metals. The pond was at its deepest barely longer than my oar. There was a funny little raccoon that was sleeping on some plastic bags next to a tub of butter. It looked a little like a homeless person.

Speaking of animals, I saw for a second time what I have now dubbed "The Earlham Gopher." I saw her in the cemetery before, hiding in a sewer drain. Yesterday she was leading her baby gophers past the power shed out back campus. These gophers were better behaved than most human children. They followed obediently in single file. The Earlham Gopher stopped when she got to the tall grass and waited for all her children to catch up. Then she turned around and looked at each one of them, like she was doing a head count, and led them into the grass. In other news I saw a bird hopping up a tree. It was sort of just bouncing along the trunk like gravity wasn't pulling it down at all.

Canoeing tomorrow. Tonight's update will be postponed until tomorrow evening.

Yesterday the power was out all day. I took a shower in ice-cold water and had to use the light on my camera to navigate a pitch-black bathroom. Evidently someone had gone before me with no such light; the evidence lay in pools on the the tiled floor. Earlham has an odd habit of becoming a madhouse whenever the power goes out. The last time it happened was a Monday and people whooped and hollered and shot fireworks all night. "How can we go to sleep when all the lights are out!?" So, in honor of the occasion I jumped out the window.

It wasn't a particularly long drop, only two stories. My right foot wasn't too happy with me for a little while (Trivia junkies, I'll leave it to you to remember whether or not that was the foot with the famous necrosis). In any case, people were serving free food at the mysterious Norwich Lodge hidden in Earlham back-campus, so I made it my first order of business to limp over there.

Too early! Lunch is being served at twelve, not eleven! So, I simply had to wait it out for an hour in the cabin and (guh) socialize. An eager but underconfident physics student from China, Dee, told me about the heirarchy of CS students, and his secret fear of being judged for his coding ability. I assured him that he didn't need to worry. As a physics major, he wasn't even included in the rankings. No one expected him to code well. Cory showed up again and we discussed his cryptonomicon book, then we engaged in such intellectual topics as recounting the latest Family Guy word-for-word. My long unacknowledged ability to perfectly imitate Cleveland Brown's accent proved invaluable in this stage of the conversation.

Eventually lunch ended, and Cory and I left for home, although I mistakenly led him down the wrong path which we followed for an hour, finding a little-league baseball game but no Earlham College. After backtracking for another hour, we finally made it back to the lodge. Amazingly, I managed to convince Cory to follow me down another path, which (thank goodness) turned out to be the one I had originally intended to take and got us back to Wilson hall quickly and conveniently.

You'd think after that I'd be sick of the woods, but no, not me. Today I wandered in again and found myself in the Earlham cemetery again, which was closed again. I actually edited out the blog entry of my first encounter with the Earlham Cemetery because it ended in an only slightly bloody encounter with a rusty barbed wire fence. It was earlier in the day today, and yesterday I didn't encounter any resistance, so I thought I'd just leisurely walk along until I might be able to find a nicer exit. A man in a truck pulled up to me and gruffly informed me that the cemetery was closed. I told him I had wandered in through the woods, and he said, with furtive glances at some nearby tombstones "No, no. That won't do at all. Yeh'd best get outta here, boy. Keep along this road and yeh'll find an opening in the fence leading to I-40. Hurry, now, 'tis almost sundown!" Indeed there was a flimsy plastic fence rather than rusted steel spikes between the cemetery and I-40, and all I had to do was step over it. I think I'm going to wander in the woods earlier in the day from now on. Somehow repeatedly ticking off the souls of the deceased doesn't seem like a particularly good idea to me.

I finally found my camera - it was in my coat pocket! Here are some pictures of my room.

I've added carrots to my diet, as well as cold cuts and cheese and wheat bread. The other day I found some stuff in the freebox called "wellness blend." At least, that was the only english on the box. It was full of packets that seemed to consist mainly of powder with the occasional seed. I tried pouring it on my cereal, and it tasted a little like cinnamon and peanut butter. Not too shabby.

I sat at a table with four guys, asked their names, verified their names, and shortly forgot their names. I thought if I just put a little more effort into it it would be a piece of cake, but no such luck. I heard my roommate talking on the phone about his girlfriend and it turns out her name is not Nadia but Nadua. They were just humoring me when they insisted that I had it right the first time. "Weird foreign names" they consoled, like talking to a camera-toting tourist or a five-year-old child, "yours is nice and simple. Sam."

Supercomputing and Other Joys of an Indiana Summer didn't fit. Sorry, Dad.

The other day I found a bag of lentils in the freebox (a box of things other students don't want and give away). Probably a friendly reminder from some benevolent spirit that I shouldn't just eat pasta all the time. I haven't touched it since. I've collected enough pasta, sauce, cereal, milk, and bananas to last me a week, and I bought a reusable bag from Marsh for future trips, so I'm living the dream. I think I could live the rest of my life on wheat and dairy products.

I haven't been assigned a roommate so much as been assigned to a roommate. It turns out he's leaving in a few days, so I may end up with a double-single. May being the key word, as I won't be the slightest bit surprised if housing sticks me with a late-comer. The person whose room I'm taking's roommate left a bunch of stuff in the room that I got to buy for cheap, including a classy lamp. I'd say this is pretty nice, although it got a little awkward sitting working on my computer while he and his girlfriend talked loudly in arabic.

We're just warming up at work. Right now we're trying to get things working in the first place before we can start making it work better. Matt managed to crash the computers we were testing on by attempting to install a simple program, and they don't seem to be resuscitating quite like they should. Shortly after Matt started complaining about having nothing to do and is now rather insistently helping me with shellscript. Sometimes my job seems to teeter dangerously between being about writing code and watching Matt write code, but as long as I have a steady supply of pasta and cereal I would describe myself as content.

Well, I've bought a pot from Marsh. Now I have the means to cook the food that will nourish me through the long summer months. This will be the first time I've been completely on my own in terms of food, so I'm excited.

To be absolutely honest, though, right now my excitement is a little drowned in loneliness. The only people I know who are still here are Casey and Roy, and they have a bad habit of disappearing. On top of that, Greg is never actually coming back. My secret project was a movie for him, and he really appreciated it, but now he's gone.

On the bright side I just greeted a fellow named "Cory" or possibly "Coren," (I'm hoping he'll correct me if I get it wrong a few times) who is going to be working at the animal shelter and with one of my CS professors Jim Rogers. He wants to take CS 310 without first taking the prerequisite CS 256, so Jim's going to give him the basic foundation he needs over the summer.

Sorry I'm late again! I vastly underestimated the amount of work that still needed to go into my creative writing portfolio, and I ended up working on it until 3:00 AM. Then I went to bed and woke up at 7:00 AM and worked on it until 11:00 when I finally turned it in. On the bright side,though, That's it until Thursday (when my graphics program is due. I'm almost done with it already.) Now I can get back to my secret project (shh! don't tell!)

For now, I'm going to sleep. Goodnight.

I was enthralled with a secret project last night. I mustn't reveal its name, for the person in question reads this blog. I'm not sure he does so regularly, but in any case I can't be too careful.

I've also got a movie about Earlham to create. The one we were presenting to Iwate University while I was at SICE mostly consisted of Earlham College President Douglas Bennett mispronouncing simple Japanese, and camera pans so horrible it looked like the cameraperson had forgotten what he or she was doing and simply wandered off, taking the camera with him or her. The new video will feature the life and times of Nicole Johnson, a student of the next SICE trip. It's an oddly bittersweet sensation being part of a SICE legacy. Just scroll down, and I'll be back in Morioka again.

In about an hour I've got to pretend to be Subaru, a Japanese teenager in the television drama (or Telebi Dorama, as the Japanese call it) Jiji. Apparently we're all going to star on a talk show like "Maury" or something. As per usual Japanese class standards, no one is exactly sure what to expect, so I just studied some things Subaru might say if asked personal questions on national television. He's pretty shy, so it's mostly "Bimyou" (non-committal teenage slang used to respond to awkward subjects about which one does not want to talk) and "Hanasanakutemoiidesuka, Konokotonitsuite, hazukashiidesukara" (Could we please not talk about this? It's embarrassing).

Time's almost up. Soon school'l be out. I won't be going home, though. I'll be staying and working on a research grant with one of my professors. Upgrading some astrophysics software to use the new set of supercomputers the United States government is getting.

In other news, in Japanese we're learning such words as "fan", "Hand towel", and "Orthopedic Surgery." I'm not sure why Orthopedic surgery is on the quiz, considering we haven't done anything regarding it in class. We did read a short skit on surgery, but it wasn't orthopedic surgery.

Makin' ridiculous comics with Greg. Co-written by Sam and Greg and drawn by Greg. We just take our own alter-egos and those of our friends and parody and critique recent Earlham events and the weird things our friends do. Greg and I make a comic, and then conduct "Market Research," where we take it to people to read and eagerly listen to their words of praise.

I wanted to expand our target audience a little bit, so our latest comic, "The Death of Greg" involves each of the main characters being incapacitated in some way, and the minor characters band together to save the day. Corny, yes, but the execution is par none. That's right, I said it. Who dares challenge me?

I went to a meeting and nobody was there. I'm wondering what happened. Quinlan, a person who should have been there, claims he didn't know there was such a meeting. I called Rebecca, but the woman on the phone insisted she'd been dead for several years. Creepy.

I picked up my Fallout 3 habit again. It all started as an innocent attempt to distract myself from the horrible pain of my stomach virus on Friday. I couldn't really concentrate on anything else, but I couldn't sleep and I doubt I'd have kept my sanity particularly long if I'd just sat and waited. That went alright, and I was feeling much better on Saturday, but I still wanted to get to Rivet City. "I'll just play until I get to Rivet City," I said. Then when I did get to Rivet City I thought I'd just solve the case of the missing android, and then I noticed the woman who runs Rivet City's inn, Vera Weatherly, was the aunt of a little orphan I'd rescued from giant ants a while back, so I had to go get him and take him to Rivet city to live with her, and so on and so forth. However, my addiction to having tasks and completing tasks, if I put it in the right mindset, can be applied to productive activities as well, so I'm going to try and nip my obsession with this game in the bud, and replace it with an obsession with homework and turning in FAFSA forms. Whee.

I completed Katie's movie, and showed it to her, and she really, really liked it. If you look at her facebook status now, it just lists all the people who were in the movie and states how much she loves them. I hope whenever she misses Earlham she can look back at the movie and remember all the nice things people had to say about her.

Here's the update: an episode of Smart Talk starring yours truly. I am really tempted to write an apology for how stupid and/or poorly done my character is, but you know what? I won't. I apologize for nothing. You can listen and judge for yourself whether my character makes a good addition. Click here.

I got some stuff done this spring break. For one, I got a haircut. I also got a new driver's license, Beautiful Katamari, and a chocolate orange. I took a bus to Durham to alert my usual place of summer internship that I may not be working with them this summer, as I may be able to work with Charlie on programming for cluster computing. When he saw me, my boss gave me a bunch of postcards. The postcard Shodor is using to represent itself, as it turns out, prominently features an applet I designed, programmed, and debugged.

I also installed Skype on my parents' computer and jerry (jury?) rigged the cover for a lightbulb using paper clips. I just hooked a paper clip around the light cover, and hooked it to a striped paper clip which I twirled around the back part. It turned out a lot more stable than I'd expected.

A third picture is of a computer in Japan that apparently couldn't believe that I was going to let it shut down.

Rachel's getting married! That's the name of the movie I'm watching at least. At first it's like three times the painful social awkwardness of "The Office" with one fifth the humor, but over time it really draws you in. I recommend it, if you like unusual, artsy movies.

Man, I stayed up until five last night playing Fallout 3. You spend the whole game trying to find your father, and then when you finally do find him he's like "Great! Thanks for saving me! Now lets go fix that water purifier!" and you run across the entire world map (this is a huge map) trying to keep your father alive while he picks a fight with everything that moves. "I won't let you hurt my son" he says. First he has a pistol but that runs out after a few shots and he starts fighting things with his bare hands.

In my game he took on a giant mutant bear unarmed! Eventually he found a sledgehammer, but he just charged into a band of assault rifle-toting raiders swinging away. After nearly getting myself killed trying to protect him, I noticed his health would miraculously heal itself after every battle. Evidently the game wasn't just going to let him die, as much as he might ask for it.

We have a solution. We are going to let the tearer have his realm and we shall have ours. He may roam the halls of Barret Basement as he likes, but he shall see no Jam-Comics to tear. Our comics will be safe in a small zine in our room and on the walls of said room. This way we can save them for the people who want to see them. If the tearer needs things to tear he can tear down all the other crap on Co-op hall. Then if no one else puts anything up, he can rise from his lair to forage or simply... suffer whatever happens to a tearer who can no longer tear. That is up to him. Thank you for all your ideas, We'll be happy to share the zine with you next time we're in your area.

In other news, I'm doing well! I've pitched a character idea for Michael, Greg and Eddie's "Smart Talk" talk radio show,and Michael liked it. Lemme explain what "Smart Talk" is. Michael, Eddie, and Greg assume the personas "DJ 14QG," "Bonnet," and "Judge Gredd," and try to discuss political and philosophical topics. DJ and Gredd are both a little crazy, or more accurately a lot crazy, so they usually just end up arguing about nonsense. I may get to show up on their next show as a Smart Talk fanatic.

Spring break next week! Expect to see Samuel Leeman-Munk live in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, one week only! Lines may be long, so come early for blog signings!

To be perfectly honest, I was going to let it be and just keep our comics in a binder, but after I did not mention it in my latest Sunday blog entry, a small collection of you, my readers, have barraged me with comments demanding more information regarding Michael's and my efforts in this matter, and there's nothing I hate more than disappointing my beloved readers. We Comickers are not defeated yet! Here are three possible responses to the destruction of our reply.

1. The Raging Hydra: For every reply the tearer tears, put up two more replies. The rationale is that eventually he or she will learn the futility of simply tearing our work down, and may agree to a meeting to stop us covering the walls. Cons include a waste of paper and the fact that, as tearing something down from a wall requires less effort than putting it up, even if we just put up many copies of the same thing, we may lose motivation before the tearer does.

2. The Beckoning Hand: Place incomplete Jam comics on the wall with increasingly overt hints asking someone to complete them. The rationale is that passerby may complete the Jam comics, and gain an attachment to them. Then, they too will be unhappy when their comic is torn from the wall, and may take it upon themselves to thwart the tearer. Alternatively, the tearer himself may complete a comic, then discovering how beautiful they can be. Cons: People don't tend to carry pencils around with them, and as a general rule tend not to take things upon themselves.

3. The Wall of Shame: Place a sheet of paper reading "The person who tore down the comics from this wall is:" on the wall and write a couple silly jabs at the tearer on it. Hopefully people will be inspired to contribute to the silliness, or may offer valuable insight as to the tearer's motives. Ideally the tearer him or herself will contribute. Cons: Again, pencils and possible lack of passerby interest.

Please comment with any other idea you have to combat this menace to Jam-Comics everywhere!

Keep in mind our main goal is to flush this tearer out of hiding so that we can discuss a solution like civilized people.

So I emailed Koji before dinner, and after dinner I had his reply! Keep in mind that when it's dinner time here in Japan it's five in the morning. That Koji is impressive. Oh, man I'm tired. I stayed up until two in the morning last night for no particularly good reason. I got to see some Japanese-inspired taiko yesterday, and two days earlier a writer by the name of Andy Mozina came and I listened to a reading of his. I've got a plan in the works to make Greg and Katie each a movie wherein their friends say nice things about them. Ok, that's all for tonight. What do people usually talk about in blogs? I have a few things to rant about, but I don't really feel very motivated to rant about them... Maybe next week.

No flu. jk on the flu. It was just some kind of cold that I got when the flu was going around, hence I assumed it was the flu.

In the Cyber Defense Competition at Iowa State University, My team (Blue Team 7) was in first place for the majority of the match, due in no small part to the user-manual (designed by yours truly). When the competition ended we were in first by over 100 points (out of about 1700 total) Some undisclosed legislation happened between then and the presentation of the prizes, however, that placed us ten points behind first and four behind second for an unprecedentedly narrow-margin third place. The Iowa State team, oddly enough, was the one that managed to pull ahead and take first. Nevertheless, a hair's width from first for a first-time team is nothing at which to scoff. We now have a nice little trophy for the CS department.

Earlier this week, my friend Michael Sawan and I noticed that the Jam Comics* we had placed on the walls of Co-op hall were partially torn down. Distinctly displeased, we decided to take the rest down and collaboratively write a message to the perpetrator. Try and figure out which of us started the response and who finished it. For six (6) bonus points, figure out where it switches!

*A Jam comic is a collaborative comic in which multiple people take turns drawing one panel at a time.

To the Tearer of our Beloved Jam Comics

Your actions have inspired in us feelings of not anger so much as general disappointment and a little concern. Also, much confusion. In your tearing we have noticed three facts remain generally consistent.

1.You have torn our comics roughly from the wall, often leaving bits of tape behind.

2.You have torn nothing but comics from the wall. Our non-comic compositions have thus escaped your wrath.

3.You have not torn all of the comics down at once. Rather, you seem to tear down approximately one or two at a time, choosing the ones furthest to the left to tear down before moving right.

This would suggest that you have not been offended by the content of any one comic in particular, for then why would you not tear down just the offending comic or all of them down at once?

It would also indicate that you are not acting out of a moral indignation against the uglification of Co-op's walls with nonsensical comics, for, again, you would take them all down, as well as the compositions, and you would certainly not leave the ugly tape behind. You might even have been so kind as to keep the comics intact, perhaps finding their owner and returning them.

Thirdly, you cannot simply be in a drunken rage destroying everything you see, because the method and pattern behind the tearings betray a certain level of conscious (albeit inscrutable) thought.

Our best guess is that occasionally you, sir or madam, have powerful emotions with which you find it difficult to deal, and gain a vicious desire to destroy and to maim which you take out on our vulnerable and easily destroyed comics. However, you have realized your occasional impulse and that there are a limited number of comics, so you have decided in order to extend your pleasure as long as possible, you will limit the number of comics you take down at a time. In this manner, you can enjoy the tearing while still having more to enjoy tomorrow. A sort of "farm" of destruction.

You, tearer of our beloved Jam Comics, are a very particular person; perhaps you have a large amount of excessive, disturbing, aggressive rage. You have a bad day, think to become even with this world that punishes you, and thus destroy the root of happiness in your surrounds.

You may be the possessor of a child-like sense of humor; in your mind, everyone thinks it is astoundingly hilarious how you semi-randomly tear down art.

Most frighteningly, you may be a sociopath; whenever the urge surfaces, you act, destroying and punishing the things around you, the things that would otherwise bring joy and love into your heart.

As the creators of joy and love, we urge you, dastardly destroyer of our comic designs, to channel your efforts into more wholesome fun. Perhaps you could partake in the making of Jam Comics. Whatever rage, humor, or dark urge you feel, put it into comic form!

But, please, destroyer of our beloved Jam Comics: do not tear this notice down. You have already destroyed several pieces of our work. You have challenged our creativity, trust, and faith in the kindness of of others, and we have answered that challenge. Your move, hotshot.

But I didn't. This week my friend Katie confided that she always wanted to receive a package in the mail, so I had Michael draw a hand turkey (Michael has an odd association between hand-turkeys and valentine's day), had Sam, Sam, Eddie, Idil, Michael, Avery, Kelly, Alisa, Emily and Greg sign it, placed it in a box and gave it to the post office to put in her mailbox. The next morning we all insisted that we check mail together after lunch. Katie didn't realize what was going on until right when she saw the card. She was very pleased.

I'm very, very busy as opposed to very busy, so this one is going to be short again. I'm trying to get a lot of work done so I can go to the Cyber Defense Competition this Mid-semester break. Compounding the challenge, I have the flu, so wish me luck!

Virtual Hug for the Homies

Sam

I would like to preface this entry with the following interjection: "woo!"

I got into horseback riding! I meet at 4:00 in front of the stables! Alright!

The following are instructions for creating an ideal club:

So you want to start a club so you can hang out with your friends and do stuff, but you don't want the hassle of appointing clerks, paying dues, and "following rules?" Just follow these simple step-by-step instructions and you will have all the good parts of a club and none of the bad parts of a club in no time at all!

1. Think of something fun. Preferably something laid back and silly, a sort of guided goofing around. Jam-comics and free-writing are two examples.

2. Collect people, preferably people whom you like and who like the activity you chose in step 1.

3. Figure out a time to meet weekly. (daily gets annoying, monthly people will forget)

4. Do that thing you chose in step 1 at the time you picked in step 3. If someone doesn't show up, it's no problem. If someone does something else while hanging out, it's no problem either. Remember, having to be responsible and make commitments are bad parts of a club.

5. Repeatedly remind your friends that this is the ideal club because it has all the good parts of a club and none of the bad parts.

6. Comment on my blog and describe how seriously awesome your life has become now that you have an ideal club in it.

I worked all weekend to barely get my homework done enough that I could finish it this morning. This is the easy part of the semester... Japanese gives me plenty of work as usual, and now includes speeches to memorize and present and paragraphs to read smoothly and fluently. I can't work that way, I keep losing my focus and have to start over. I spent five hours this weekend trying to record a fluent reading of a Japanese paragraph, just one of my five japanese assignments that weekend. Ok, I've got to find an item of Japanese news to present in Japanese today in class.

Sorry, I forgot to update tonight. I'll update tomorrow morning.

It all started on Monday. I attended the Martin Luther King Jr. presentation by Aaron McGruder, creator of the hit TV show and comic strip "Boondocks". Rather than simply a dull lecture as I had been expecting, there was more of a question and answer session. McGruder insisted that it meant nothing that we now had a black president, that this was just a ploy to keep us quiet. He went on to explain that if we ever needed to get Al Sharpton off our backs, just don't show up to his show. Apparently he can't keep an audience's attention unless he has someone with whom to argue. Someone from the audience above me explained to McGruder that he was half black, but he looked caucasian, and asked whether McGruder would say he's black or white. McGruder said he would describe him as "lucky." When asked why there were no strong black women on his show, McGruder pointed out that there was only one strong black man on the show. Everyone else was crazy. I would have left it at that, but he went on to say that they would include more women, but black women "just can't take a joke." I think that what sums up McGruder's session is when he said "It's easy to have an opinion. What's hard is making people laugh."

I later learned that everyone had expected McGruder to have a speech prepared, which he did not, so a question and answer session was hastily put together. Phyllis, a strong black spanish teacher, voiced disappointment that McGruder did not say anything original. "He merely sounded like all the potheads she knew in high school," paraphrased one of my friends that took her class. James Logan, my teacher in Criminal Justice and Moral Vision, has not brought up the subject. I wonder whose idea it was to invite this guy to speak. What I really wonder, though, is why someone thought a cartoonist would be able to alleviate his racial identity crisis.

Remember when I said "Criminal Justice and Moral Vision looks downright scary?" Well, it is downright scary. The first homework assignment was one extremely vauge question that I stressed a few years off of my life trying to answer, but the second homework assignment was different. It was five extremely vague questions that I stressed a few dozen years off of my life trying to answer. I think I'm just going to have to grit my teeth and think about how glad I'll be once my Domestic Diversity credit is fulfilled.

Japanese is intense as usual. Five assignments ranging from somewhat challenging to incredibly difficult all due on the same day in the same class I got nice comments on my creative writing, and Computer Science has its usual anesthetic quality of easiness. Horseback riding finally got the schedule out to me, which I filled out and returned promptly. I expect to get into the class.

I've been working out for fifteen minutes four times a week. I just go to the gym after my afternoon classes and get on machines and lift weights until fifteen minutes have passed. I don't know why I've never noticed this before, but it really does feel good. Those wacky endorphins.

To be perfectly honest, "Freethinkers' Alliance" is a little disappointing. Mostly they seem to just watch movies about religious people, and then make fun of the religious people, often repeating verbatim the movie's jabs, and other times centering around topics completely unrelated to atheism or religion (A full two minutes was spent discussing the rattail of one of the evangelical children.) Even if the jokes were topical and clever it still wouldn't be right. It strikes me as a weekly meeting of like-minded people to reinforce their own beliefs and belittle those of others. Of course religion's basis is absurd. Anybody who didn't know that already wouldn't be in the club. Yes, there are powerful forces in the world controlling people through religion, but I'm not interested in sitting around laughing at the victims. If this is the Anti-religion club, count me out. I'm looking for an alliance of free thinkers.

Back in college. Things haven't quite settled into ordinary routines, yet, though. It turns out my copy of Imaginative Writing is the wrong edition, which is exactly the same as the right edition except everything that is actually necessary for the class is completely different. So far I've managed, but Greg's copy (he took the class last year) is at home, and his mother doesn't seem to be able to find it, so it's looking more and more like I'm just going to have to bite the bullet and shell out fifty bucks for a bookstore copy.

As usual the general stress of college is back in full force. If I'm not doing something directly related to work I feel like I need to get it over with as quickly as possible so I can get to real work. Even this blog it hurts to fill out, but I'm not going to give it up to just a little stress!

I tried out for concert choir. The director said I had "a beautiful instrument," but I need to work on pitch matching. He suggested gospel revelations this semester, but I think maybe I'll just master pitch matching over the summer. I don't really want to put too much more on my plate right now. Creative writing and Japanese may be challenging, and Criminal Justice and Moral Vision looks downright scary.

I've determined making new friends is easy, it's just keeping those friends and deriving something useful from the relationship that's difficult. I mostly forget the names of everyone I meet, and then carefully avoid them so they never find out. For this reason it may be that name memorization would greatly assist in my accumulation of friends... but what to do with these friends once I have them all? That is the question.

I checked with financial aid and accounting; my loans have gone through and my student accounts are all clear. It was quite easy. I went in and told them my number, and they looked at their computer and told me everything was clear. I blinked and asked them if the name on the account was "Samuel Leeman-Munk." They said it was. That worked out well.

I checked my mail, and I've received two of my textbooks and the power supply for my digital camera. I also received Rachel's quilt. Yes, the one she meant to send to someone who had paid her for it. I don't know who she thought the address said it was for, but my name and Earlham address were written pretty clearly several times all over the whole box. I didn't see another address or name.

Yesterday evening, I mentioned that something we were talking about was like Michael disliking Toby for no reason. Greg replied, "Yeah, Toby's pretty annoying, though. Didn't he leave?"

Surprised, I said, "Oh, I didn't know you'd been keeping up! He left just this last season! Do you really think he's annoying?"

Greg and I were both very confused at this point, until I finally realized that while I was thinking of Michael Scott and Toby Flenderson, characters on The Office, Greg was thinking of Michael Sawan and Toby Whats-his-name, friends of ours from last year. In my immediate family, anyone hearing of Michael or Toby would immediately think of The Office. Obviously, this indicates our possibly excessive interest in this television show, but it is also one of many unities that tie our family together. In any case, in the future I should start mentioning in conversations about The Office that I am talking about The Office.

This is my first blog entry from Earlham College! It's hard to believe, but it's true. Casey's here at Earlham, but otherwise very few people I know have returned yet. My roommate Greg arrived just after I wrote that sentence. I've got two omiyage for him; an oversized novelty Hello-Kitty pen and Bo-bo-bo bo-bo-bo-bo, a nonsense manga about a superhero who fights with his nose-hairs.

Happy 2009! I sent another email to my host father and received another reply. I always send my emails in Japanese and he replies in English. I'm trying to keep in contact by doing this every month. It's also good for my Japanese.

I finished Catcher in the Rye today. I think I am in the group of people who quite like it. Cauffield certainly just whines all the time, but I don't really mind listening to whiny people so much. Somehow something, possibly finishing Catcher in the Rye, has enabled me to actually write. Usually I get a couple words in, and then worry myself to death over whether my writing is good enough to amount to anything more than felony-grade literary pollution.

This one's a little short because I started late.

My mother informed us this year that the family's Christmas would not be based around the exchange of expensive gifts. I think my sister put it quite well, though "For a giftless christmas, we sure got a lot of great gifts!" Specifically, my late watch was resurrected and given to me again as a christmas gift.

I received this watch from the family of my best friend when I graduated high school. I wore it every day for the next year, so much so that the strap eventually broke. So, I kept it in my pocket as a pocket watch until it stopped telling time, probably due to a dead battery. I went to Cameron's (the store from which I bought it) who told me to send it to Skagen, the manufacturer, who would repair it for free. I looked on Skagen's website and it said "Skagen will repair all issues not related to strap or battery." At this point, the remains of my beloved watch went into my desk drawer and laid forgotten, my hopes of restoring it lost.

But one day while I was out, my mother took it upon herself to clean my room. In doing so she found my pitiful watch. She gave it to my father and asked him to see about fixing it. Later she asked him again. After being asked a few more times, my father saw about fixing it. He went to Cameron's again and insisted that they fix the strap and battery. Then, my once again working watch was presented to me on Christmas day! What a great gift! Now I can tell the time again! (It's a nice watch, too!)

We've been taking care of my friend's dog as well. Sabrina is the color of a grizzly bear, the general body shape of a pig, and has the head and tail of a dog. My friend Jimmy and I call her "Pig-Bear-Dog." Usually she lays on the floor like a sow feeding her piglets, but when it's time for a walk she jumps up and starts bouncing around on her short little legs. It looks really funny.

She's not nearly as well-behaved as Maggie (who was frightfully well-behaved), and takes every opportunity she can get to run away. If the door's open and you're not looking, or even if you pull too hard on her leash she can sometimes slip out. Fortunately, in addition to having stubby pig-legs, she's lazy and kinda flaky even as a fugitive. Usually she'll run away for about fifteen seconds before slowing down or stopping to sniff something.

She's smart, though. She hops on the couch as soon as we leave. On the other hand, she seems to think that we won't take seeing her getting off the couch as indication that she was on the couch. Also, she didn't even bother getting off the couch when I came downstairs after being upstairs long enough for her to think she was alone. I guess she isn't that smart.

Well, uh, here I am in Chapel Hill, North Carolina still. The burritos are really big, and everyone speaks English. I've gone from being jet-lagged to just regularly not sleeping well, and one of my best friends is finally back in town. He read and remembers every one of these entries. He even looked at all the pictures. Every single one. Including the infamous shinkansen pictures. That is dedication.

I seem to be continuing my blog so far, although maybe more for my own benefit than that of anyone else. I don't really expect anyone to maintain interest in "Sam's amazing journeys between his bedroom and the kitchen." Obligating myself at least to an imaginary audience ought to keep me from just relegating it to decrepitude, though.

Ok, good night.

After a twenty-seven hour trip from Japan, I'm back home in North Carolina. I had some trouble dealing with jet-lag at first, and even now I'm not quite on the right schedule. Waking up naturally at six this morning, by 9:00 in the evening I'm struggling to keep my eyes open enough to see the screen so I can write this post. I promised you some sort of sage reflection, though, and I shall give you one.

Here are some reflections. Whether or not they are sage is really up to your personal preference.

The Japanese are good at recycling. They really take it seriously. On Japanese TV they had beautifully rendered computer graphics-enhanced visuals touting the slogan: "Recycle More: We Can." It's been over a decade since I saw a recycling ad in the US, and even then a singing green triangle seemed to be the best we could do.

The Japanese are good at receiving unexpected gifts, especially edible gifts. In Japan I have extra candy that I want

to give away and people actually accept it. People just thank me and enjoy it. Sometimes I even get a gift back! On the other hand, in the United States people seem to have trouble grasping the concept of giving something away just to be nice, and worry themselves to death trying to deduce my ulterior motive. It's rather frustrating.

I haven't decided yet what will happen to my blog. I might continue it as "Sam's Regular Blog," I might take it down, or I might just let it collect dust in the forgotten corner of the web. In any case, I think next week I'll take down the "days in Japan" and "times mistaken for Dan" information boxes next Monday. I'll leave them up for now, though. For posterity, the final records were One hundred and nine days in Japan and eight times mistaken for Daniel DeGrasse.

Ok, I'm losing this "stay awake until 10" battle. Goodnight.

Tomorrow I leave for home.

It has become common opinion that I am the "King of Omiyage" (Omiyage = Souveniers), so I have plenty to spare. Everyone who reads this blog is eligible for an omiyage, so be sure to mention it! I can't enforce this, but please don't just tell all your friends that I have lots of omiyage, or I might run out before I can give each and every one of my real readers an omiyage. I'll not be discussing souveniers that I might give you (you know who you are), but let me describe a few of the souveniers that I've already given or will give to people who I am relatively certain do not read this blog. Julie dressed up as Totoro (a Japanese movie character) for halloween despite having no idea who Totoro is, so when I saw a small stuffed Totoro in a shop I bought it for her. Totoro is an icon of Japan, and this little doll is quintessentially japanese, so I hope she'll be able to remember her visit to Japan every time she looks at it. She said she was going to put it on her desk at Earlham. She also said that Michael was horrified when he discovered that I gave his mother a gift but not him, so I've bought him a Doraemon (Japanese Manga and Television character), which I will give to him tomorrow morning (or possibly to Julie if Michael doesn't come with her to see me off.)

See you soon, some of you!

Well, last Friday was my last day of host school. After eating instant yakisoba (yakisoba is a type of Japanese noodles) so often I learned to hate it, I received a bag full of instant yakisoba as a parting gift from the owner of the school shop. He said he was sad to see such a good customer leave. Then my students gave me more instant yakisoba as well as some yakisoba-based snack foods. Looking back, I wish I had made clear my interests beyond yakisoba. My principal asked me if there was anything I wanted, and I told him I wanted a signature stamp (In Japan instead of having signatures, they use stamps with their name on them). After earnestly assuring me it would be impossible in such a short time, he set to work making it happen.

On a similar note, my host father took me to eat more pizza. On the way we saw twenty apples being sold as a set for $200. My host father tried to assure me that the apples were delicious enough that they were worth ten dollars each, but I don't believe that such deliciousness is physically possible in an apple.

Well, I've read your requests, but I don't really think "Leon with Pizza" is going to be particularly dramatic. How about "Leon with Sam?" I don't have time to make sage reflections about life, the universe, and Japan right now, but I'll be sure to do that next update after I've gotten back, or maybe on the way. I've completed 101 Bichon Frise, but the image is much too large and detailed to work well with my primitive image viewer. If you want to see it in its glory, go ahead and email me at Leemasa@earlham.edu and I'll send you a file that you can download and look at in whatever viewer you please. I know some of you could just as easily download it from this site, so it's right here if you'd like to do that instead. Leon is a male dog, by the way. The wankosoba pictures last week were of the finished bowls. I may or may not have a Japanese final exam tomorrow. I'm really not sure, so I should get to studying. See you soon, those of you whom I will see soon.

Today I was told that the brass band we were seeing would take two hours, but it ended up being more along the lines of four. Even after we arrived an hour early, the band itself decided we wouldn't mind if it decided to play for an extra hour. We were watching this band because Daniel was in it.

I've finally figured out what to make my host family for the "thanks for letting me live with you" gift, and boy is it hard! I'm making the case for a fictional movie called "101 Bichon Frise" in which Leon plays all 101 Bichon Frise. Unsurprisingly, trying to do much of anything with an image of a dog as fuzzy as Leon is a challenge. Not to mention, Leon's talent for inconvenience makes things harder as well. See if you can find the two pictures where he drops the ball just as the picture goes off. However, it's coming along quite well so far, and I think they'll like it. Of course I'll put up an image of it when I'm done.

By the way, I finally got to eat crazy Japanese pizza. For everyone who likes to try crazy food, though, be forewarned that this food is, rather than crazy-delicious, just crazy. Given the high price of cheese in Japan, rather than being a powerhouse of mozzarella, the Japanese pizza throws in myriad other flavors to hide the limited cheesy goodness. While this may be acceptable in Japan, as a proud citizen of the United States of America I was disappointed. In any case, the pizza did fulfill every expectation of craziness. I had corn pizza, broccoli pizza, and some mushroom-chicken-corn-mayonnaise pizza. The crusts alternated cheese puffs and detatchable hotdogs.

Oh, and I ate Wanko-soba recently. Wanko-soba basically involves eating as many bowls of Soba as possible. I was feeling a little sick that day so I stopped at one hundred. That night the street lamps looked like they came straight from the set of "It's a Wonderful Life." I'm really trying to refine which pictures I upload. This time there are only fifty. I know an awful lot of them are of Leon, but you should have seen how many were of Leon before I refined them. I am making a gift out of pictures of Leon, after all, so it should come as no surprise that I'm taking a lot of them. I hope people aren't overwhelmed and deciding not to look. Is there anything people would like pictures of or would like to read about?

Well, he tried to, anyway. I caught him before he could get much further than the "instructor comments" section of my art history final paper. Leon has also figured out how to throw his squeaky toy over the little fence that keeps him in the living room. He then whines and paws at the fence until we get the toy for him. His talents don't extend far beyond annoying Chieko and me, though. For example, it's not unheard of to see him trying to get a toy through the bars of his cage even though the door is wide open.

Many of you may have heard of the strange pizzas available in Japan. Well, I am here to tell you that despite how much people complain about it, strange pizza is actually very hard to find. So far I've only been able to have strange pizza once with my host family. They served me pepperoni and corn pizza. One time I found something that the restaurant advertised as a "Salad Pizza." It really would have been more accurately termed, "Salad placed inexplicably on top of a plain pizza crust." This unfortunate soul may once have been pizza, but by the time I saw it it was already much too far removed from pizza-hood to really be counted as anything but a monstrous mockery of pizza-kind. This was unfortunately before I got my camera, so I didn't take a picture of it.

Speaking of pictures, I've taken to weeding out the worst ones, so you won't have to wade through pages and pages of unrecognizable blurs to see good images. For example, I've uploaded more monsters created by my students.

Please allow me to explain the monsters, as I've realized I failed to do so when I first began to upload them. For Halloween my friend Jenny (shown sleeping with her mouth hanging open in the pictures) had the idea of describing monsters to her students in English and having them draw them. I borrowed this idea, and added a voting system for each class to pick a monster that I would put on my information board. My favorite monsters have been uploaded to this site. Also, I gave my students comic strips devoid of dialogue and asked them to complete them in English. First I tried a Penny-Arcade strip, but it proved too confusing for them, so I switched to Dinosaur Comics. Mostly you'll find the ones I liked were Dinosaur Comics, but one student did succeed with Penny Arcade, so that's there, too. Penny-Arcade and Dinosaur Comics are two comics found on the internet.

I found my way to the used manga store that Damon told me about. He warned me that it would be easy to spend too much money there, but I find I can't spend enough money. After stuffing my basket until it was overflowing with Manga, I was thinking to myself that I would have to put something back if the total exceeded $100, but it turned out to be less than $50.

Oh, I think I'll answer a few questions raised in comments I've received. I have tried neither Ginkgo nuts nor crab guts. I have eaten breakfast out of a crab head, though. Grandmother, your request is not specific enough, so I'll be sure to make you a nebulous and inscrutable Japanese meal this summer. Just kidding, that's a plenty specific request, I'm talking about "how was Japan" kind of stuff. I'm not sure I know any Japanese recipes, but maybe I'll figure something out. Mostly what I've learned that can be applied to american cooking is the use of american ingredients in novel ways. Think ketchup.

Yes, Rebecca, that was a fruit tart with candles in it. It was delicious.

Alex, Shodor is an organization dedicated to promoting math, science, and computer science education. It does so through both online applets and classes within the building itself. The applets are for all ages, and primarily focus on math and science the applet section of Shodor is known as "Interactivate," and it is where I have been most productive. The classes themselves are for middle-school students and focus more on how to use computers to learn math and science. There is also an apprentice program which leans heavily toward computer science, although the basic skills needed to be employable in a white-collar position are also taught. After apprenticeship, successful students are offered positions as interns. An intern continues to learn, but more as a young employee than as any sort of student. I am currently at the intern level.

Finally, my mother mentioned that after the passing of the family dog Maggie, the family cat Midnight suddenly became much more affectionate, almost to the point of being annoying. This is intensely bittersweet, as it indicates that despite giving every indication since Maggie's arrival that she found her little more than a dull and troublesome housemate, she actually did appreciate her presence. Indeed, Maggie was the only creature in the whole house that was always there for Midnight. Even as the rest of the family shut themselves in their rooms or went to work and left her alone, Maggie would be right there with her. Now with Maggie gone, she no longer has that friend to brighten her loneliest hours. I really think that everyone should hold our cat Midnight in the light and show her affection whenever possible. I swear she's significantly mellowed out since those old scratchy days of yore.

Thank you very much, loyal readers, for your helpful feedback on last post. In addition to my u-key sticking and failing to register the "u" in "vague," a number of other issues arose from my rush-update. I have corrected the date and the subject, and I have updated my information box to the current count of days in Japan. Thank you again for reminding me that you're all paying attention. I will be especially sure to try and put together an extra long post this coming Sunday in order to meet the stringent demands of "The Public."

For the record, for all of you who may be doubtful that my u-key is unreliable, please feel free to check it yourself when I return to The United States. You will find that it has a distinctly different feel from the other keys on my keyboard.

Nothing particularly interesting has happened recently. I'm kinda busy, though, what with the end near approaching. I like Japan, but it will also be nice to be home. By the way, I have been keeping this blog for the purpose of fielding generic questions about my trip, so please be specific! Upon my return, vague questions will receive answers somewhere between nebulous and inscrutable! Consider yourself warned!

For one, I discovered that I had, in fact, not fulfilled my theoretical arts requirement, which means that Julie May's wacky art class is, rather than nonsensical and infuriating, is delightful and fortuitous. Not to mention, it was not quite as difficult as I first thought. Especially since the questions on her homework assignments have changed from specific, closed ended questions such as "According to Anderson's definition, is this art?" to open ended questions that I can reasonably spend a page answering, usually not questions at all, just asking me to "discuss" something. I have received full credit on the last three.

Ikkun and Machiko made a surprise visit this weekend. I suspect it was only a surprise to me, though. This time Machiko's husband Kazuya came as well. We went to a fish restaurant where a huge tank full of fish surrounds the eating area, which is shaped like a giant ship. Anyone who wishes may fish in the tank, and staff clean the caught fish and make it into the customer's order. Ikkun caught a tuna ("Maguro" in Japanese) and, about fifteen minutes after seeing it pitiably gasping for air in the waitress's net, I was eating tuna sushi under the baleful glare of its ornately carved corpse. Hopefully this is as close as I will ever get to the horror stories I've heard about eating live animals in various parts of Asia. I don't have a picture of it alive, as my camera sometimes likes to pretend it's out of batteries before it actually is.

I plan to collect a great deal of Japanese manga (comic books) so that I can continue my independent japanese study in the states. Manga is an excellent source of new vocabulary. So far I've learned the word for "pirate"(Kaizoku) and four new rude ways to say "You!" (Kimi, Temei, Omae, and Kiisama). I think in the future I'll keep track of the new words in a notebook or something. Right now I've just been looking things up as they come and moving on. This gets me through a book, but it doesn't result in any long-term learning. Learning Japanese will expediate my reading of manga which will expediate my learning of Japanese. Unfortunately at the moment I'm quite busy, so I haven't been reading manga much.

Oh yeah, there was a halloween party. Masks were made, candies were eaten, and Bomberman masks were worn. Damon went as a Japanese gangster, and Kevin went as a nerd, which has no equivalent in Japan. Nevertheless, he was funny enough that he won first prize in the costume contest anyway.

Yesterday marked the bittersweet end of an era. The large, universally beloved dog that once was omnipresent in our household is no more. That's right, Marmaduke printed its last strip yesterday. Never again will that wacky great dane outwit his shakily-drawn owners. No more will he bark at that stupid mailman. His burying of bones in the neighbor's yard is at a close. He has chased his last cat, eaten his family's last dinner, terrified his last lunch guest. Let us all say goodbye to our dear friend Marmaduke.

Whoah, hey, calm down. It's just a joke. Marmaduke's fine, geez. Really it's my large beloved dog Maggie for whom the end has come. She lived a full and happy life, so this isn't so much a tragedy as a sad inevitability. Nevertheless, my world is now short one wonderful dog, and I was not present to say goodbye. I cannot think of a better descriptor than tragic, although to compare it to real tragedies in recent memory seems at best inconsiderate and egocentric. It is sad. Very, very, very sad. Sad for me. I am sad. Goodbye, Maggie.

Deaths in the family aside, that's no reason to deprive you nice folks of a big, juicy post replete image collection.

This weekend was hardly a weekend at all. We spent from eight until four manning a rice-krispy treat booth. Profits were $200. $200/16 hours = $12.50 an hour. Not bad wages, if it weren't split between ten people, making it $1.25 an hour. The work was fun, though, and money is not an issue.

We were part of an international festival at Gandai. Our America booth was, in a demonstration of the planning committee's poor knowledge of world events, next to France and Vietnam. France's vegetable soup and ratatouille quickly met a sound defeat against our mighty legion of rice krispy treats. With France as a protective buffer between us and them, Vietnam just spent the whole time singing loudly in Vietnamese. I'm not sure if they came to sell things or just to annoy us. They did turn a burner on once, but they forgot to turn it off again, and the whole tent smelled like kerosene for a while.

We took our $200 and ate at a tex-mex/irish pub style restaurant where I got a mug of water about the size of my head. Yuki tried some of the spicy chicken wings, and then to ease the burning pain took some of Julie's regular chicken, which, as it turned out, she had put hot sauce on. Yuki then ate Damon's salad for relief, only to realize he'd put habanero sauce on it. Fortunately Yuki had by this point finally learned her lesson about stealing other people's food and just drank water until she recovered.

Um, I guess this post wasn't as big and juicy as I had expected. Well, it is kinda juicy, but not very big. Sorry about that.

I have sent in my ballot, which is good because Dan told me that anyone eligible who wasn't voting and was in punching range would be punched. By him, I assume. Speaking of Dan, when he was with the Mori's Leon wasn't around, so he spent all his time with Ikkun, who had not yet moved to Sendai.

Also I got a new cell-phone. My old cell-phone's screen got a big crack in it. When I went to Softbank myself, they told me my warranty was invalid and repairs would be $150. So I went again with Yuki, who they told that I could buy the new model for $58 and they would transfer all of the data over. My new cell-phone is pretty cool.

Jenny and I went to a children's museum fairly near my middle school. There was a sign on the way that claimed to lead to the museum, but it was pointing the wrong way. The museum itself was quite nice, and even included a planetarium! The planetarium used its surround-image advantage to greater effect than I had ever seen before! Before that day, the most impressive special effect I'd ever seen in a planetarium was about power-point caliber (i.e. an image of a dinosaur moving statically across the screen). The 3D effects were delightful and fun. It almost seemed like one really was flying around in Egyptian tombs.

I took some pictures at Josei. The students thought it was hilarious for some reason. I have included pictures of Mr. Doughnuts Doughnuts as well as the infamous Melon Soda. We went to a craft village where I made a cookie and ate it. I also bought some more omiyage. We also got to foray in iron-working. I made an incredibly ugly design (not deliberately), but the iron-working guy said he would try to fix it. I should get it in about a month.

What better way to celebrate my birthday than to take dozens and dozens of pictures with my new digital camera and post them up on my blog? I'll take pictures of everyone and everything, and I'll try and make an image-viewer so you don't have to just keep hitting refresh to see them all. Or rather I'll make a better image viewer. I have one, but it's not so good. I'll expand this post later today and add the images.

Here we go! Included are some bad photos of some Mario action figures I got at a flea market, pictures of Ikkun (my host-nephew) climbing over people and posing for photographs, images of doughnuts from Mr. Doughnuts, and pictures of my friends, family, and me. Clicking on an image will bring up the image viewer if it's from a folder. If an image takes you nowhere, it's just that image and not a folder. Internet Explorer users will still find it much uglier and harder to use than Firefox users, but that's what you get for using IE.

Thanks everyone for twenty great years! (Well, for the ones in which I knew you, at least.)

Ps. After a few long weeks of collecting dust, my TMFD (times mistaken for Dan) meter has shot up to a record seven times! Twice Ikkun called me Dan. He was corrected by family members both times.

Hi, every one. This is Koji.

As Sam has previously announced in this blog, I will write a little bit about my recent life.

I am a junior at a university called Keio University in Japan. It is one of the oldest universities in Japan.

My major is Economics. It is not what I initially wanted to learn. I wanted to learn theoretical physics like quantum mechanics or super string theory. However, they have something in common. That is, they both try to explain matters in the world by using mathematics. So, now that I think about it, learning economics is not so bad after all. I actually am enjoying it.

Right now I am busy writing my diploma thesis. The paper is on the global food crisis. It is really difficult, but sure is fun and worthwhile.

I miss the Leeman-Munk family. I miss James, Oriana, Eli, Ty, and all the other friends from the Quaker meeting. I miss monopoly, settlers, stratego, and other fun games I played with you all. I miss a lot of things.

I wish there was a way to go back in time.

Kindest regards, Koji

I think that it is interesting that my trip to Japan is so large that it contains another sub-trip to different parts of Japan. I suppose that that makes Morioka more of a home-away-from-home than just a travel destination. Pretty strong relationships can form living with a host family for four months. The Moris even flew to Earlham to see their last host son's graduation. Of course, that was Daniel.

As for Koji, he's still working on that little description of how he's doing*. Staying with him was truly an adventure. Specifically one in dining for the fabulously wealthy. I already described to you the Spanish dinner, but the next day we had a Chinese dinner and on Monday a yakitori (Japanese Barbecue) lunch. We consistently ordered too much, although only on the Chinese dinner did we need to take food home. After we barely fit down the dish of sweet and sour ribs, two plates of fried rice, and eighteen dumplings, we remembered that we had also ordered an entire duck.

Now back in Morioka I'm at Josei Junior High again. I just discovered that the many times teachers had dashed off without me and then sent a student to come get me wasn't because they had wanted a little time to prepare before I showed up as I had thought. In fact, they were apparently in such a hurry they just didn't have time to let me know it was time to go for class, and I was supposed to get up and look for class myself all those times. Highly embarrassing, but I'm glad that I now know the proper action to take in these circumstances.

Occasionally, my students burst into applause for me. They do it either when I speak English extremely rapidly (which I shouldn't do) or when I speak Japanese properly. Anything that indicates that I have keen abilities in English or at least a remedial knowledge of Japanese thrills these children to no end. Also, a group of girls keeps introducing the same girl to me over and over. I think this may be one of those "so-and-so has a crush on Gaijin sensei (foreign teacher)" things.

*meaning he probably hasn't started yet.

Ha ha! Ha ha! I have completed a rudimentary comment system! Please feel free to provide your keen and well-thought-out insight or your crude, poorly spelled sexual slurs*. Whichever feels right to you. I would like to repeat that this system is rudimentary. Let me provide a short list of tips to help you get the comment you want.

1. Please include your name on your comment if you wish to be identified. I am aware that people will be able to use this to impersonate others, so do not fear. I will assume that anything stupid said in your name was forged. Let me know if there is a comment in your name of which you do not approve and I will delete it.
2. The comment system supports html. If you use this to make an ugly comment, I might try to make it pretty or I might just delete it.
3. The date of your comment will be automatically included.This is according to the Shodor server, which is in the New York timezone.

*Please do not bump up the PG-13 rating on this site. I will delete anything inappropriate, regardless of how well or poorly it is spelled. Seriously, guys. Shodor is federal webspace, and there are legal limits on what can be put on federal webspace. Please don't get me arrested by the feds.

Well, I made it to Tokyo on a night bus yesterday. Very fun, not very restful. When I got there it suddenly became apparent that I had forgotten to copy Koji's number from my Gmail to my computer. As such, it was direly important that I find wireless internet of some sort. Apparently the center of technology Tokyo is now so advanced now that that ancient dinosaur wireless internet is a thing of the past. After some fruitless attempts at various coffeeshops, I was directed to a wireless-enabled McDonalds. After selling me a sausage egg McMuffin and a hashbrown for four hundred yen, the clerk told me that it wasn't the McDonalds itself that had wireless, just occasionally one could catch a passing signal from the outdoors. When I failed to catch a passing signal, he helpfully asked me please to stop eating the banana Starbucks sold me before telling me they didn't have wireless. Fortunately, Julie happened to have Koji's number on a travel plan I'd been asked to submit earlier, so I called her and got it. After only another short fifteen minutes of wandering around we managed to find each other.

I'm sure you're all wondering about how Koji is doing. However, rather than misrepresent his recent exploits with one of my harebrained rants, punctuated by the occasional half-witted joke and awkwardly long sentence, I've commissioned him to describe it himself in a special entry of my blog.

Now, to continue with my harebrained rant. If you don't like it, you can go read the blog of some guy who doesn't wildly overuse appositives, or maybe someone who cares whether or not his readers know what an appositive is. Obscure grammar aside, those of you still reading get to hear about how delicious Tokyo spanish food can be. Very delicious. Koji and my dinner last evening was as follows(and these names are crudely translated from Spanish) delicious Mushroom Salad, not-so-delicious oysters soaked in delicious butter-like olive oil, mysterious yet delicious egg chaos, extra delicious Spanish fried rice, and finally oranges soaked in delicious deliciousness. I later learned that the delicious deliciousness was liquor.

Koji tried to convince me that Tokyo was exactly like New York except worse in every way, insisting that every building in Tokyo was just a smaller, shabbier replica of one in New York. He also told me that New York is the center of world culture. His argument was that since artists tend to be liberal, and New York tends to be liberal, all the artists flock to New York. I can't believe I ever forgot how much I love Koji.

We then went on to discuss Japanese politics. Let me go over Japanese politics in a nutshell. The Democratic Party is liberal. Sound simple enough? Good, let's move on. The Liberal Democratic Party is conservative. Please use this sentence as an opportunity to reread the previous sentence. The Liberal Democratic Party, being conservative, practices liberal economics. Confused? I don't really get it either. Hold on, though. If you think that Japanese politics are stupid, remember that here in the United States our bitter rivalries apparently stem from the fact that we can't decide whether we belong to a democracy or a republic.

Koji's father, Seiji Hagiwara, has left local government and now works in the Japanese Diet. Unlike in America, where this would put him somewhere between a hard-boiled egg and a ham sandwich, In Japan the Diet is a critical part of the Federal government.

Trip! There were many very friendly deer on the island of Miyajima yesterday. They rather aggressively begged for food, but would settle for maps and flyers when donated, voluntarily or involuntarily. We took a gondola to the top of the mountain on the island, and despite the promise of monkeys, saw none. Jenny reflected that if she were a monkey she wouldn't show herself to us. She certainly wouldn't take us to her magical land of bananas.

Today we visited the Hiroshima museum. I don't think I could do it justice with a verbal description, so I won't insult it by trying. It was very striking, though. The survivor's story was deeply moving, especially the after-effects long after the explosion. Not only health effects, the survivors were actually discriminated against. People apparently thought she would give them cancer, so it was very difficult for her to get a job, and even more difficult to get a husband. At 76, she was still single, not by choice. She was incredible, though. Even without the debilitating effects of radiation gradually but noticeably weakening my body, I wouldn't be able to go out and relive my hardest memories daily for the sake of world peace.

I presented on LOLcats yesterday. Everyone enjoyed my presentation, and I think I even managed to get the complex concept of a meme across. We then went to a nomikai (drinking party) with Gandai (Iwate University) students that helped us with our presentations. The non-alcoholic beverages were relegated to a tiny rectangle in the corner of the menu. As it turned out, a quarter of these "soft drinks" were actually wine. I'm not sure how that works out, but I had a Gandai student help me not to accidentally inebriate myself.

There is a small office shop run by one of the teachers in the teacher's office in my school. A few days ago I bought, in the absence of any better drinks, a small glass bottle bragging about the presence of 3000mg of something in it. My next class was in two hours, so I figured I could shrug off any adverse effects before that class started. After finishing the liquid in the bottle (cough medicine consistency, tastes like smarties except a lot stronger) I was told by an apologetic teacher that she now needed me for an immediate class, not only that, Julie and Yuki would be watching my performance. Well, as far as I could tell, it was an energy drink, so I was a little bit jittery, but I managed to handle the class just fine anyway.

Oh right, a trip. The SICE group is going on a trip for the next couple weeks (until October 6). I'll be in Kyoto, Hiroshima, and Tokyo. In Tokyo I'll be staying with my old exchange student Koji Hagiwara. It's been approximately four years, so I'm excited to see him again.

Uh, ok. Now for a special edition of "Stuff I should have said before, but will say now instead!"

• My host family consists of a host father, a very nearly omniabsent host mother, two host sisters, only half of whom are regularly present, and a dog.
• Before we started working on our presentation, we had a short "manners in Japan" class, in which we were taught how properly to enter a room and handle shoes, etc. Most of us had already learned this in our Earlham Japanese classes or earlier, so it was generally rather pointless. However, at one point we watched a video made by Japanese to teach manners in the host house. I suspect it was made by Japanese because we were taught proper manners by watching a woman with an eerie resemblance to Carrot Top repeatedly violate ones that hold true even in the most slovenly of American households. Among other things, she 1. drank milk straight from the carton, 2. loudly washed and ate apples at midnight, and 3. played music at full volume at 6:00 in the morning. This ghastly young woman, with her terrifyingly large triangle of curly, bright orange hair, would, rhythmically nodding her fish-white head at each syllable, belie her pitifully inadequate knowledge of Japanese culture in maddeningly slow, horribly intoned, but gramatically perfect Japanese. Damon and I wondered how she could have learned so much of that country's language and so little of its culture.
• Calling my envelope an ordinary box ended up being more confusing than interesting. The teachers themselves actually got confused, and further confused the students by saying to them (in Japanese) "It may look like an envelope, but it's an ordinary box." In order to keep things weird, but reduce confusion, I have changed the title to "The Envelope called 'An ordinary Box'"
• I photoshopped Ultraman and The Yellow Power Ranger into a picture of me in front of a Totem Pole in Morioka park. I have included this picture.

Dogs. I'm going to talk about dogs. Today I met a fifteen year old dog who couldn't see or hear, and was understandably not comfortable being touched by the silent darkness. This Helen Keller dog was wandering off when an old man gave a little girl and I a quest to bring it back. Obviously, this was a challenge, considering the dog couldn't hear when it was called, couldn't see where its master was, and was liable to bite anything that touched it, as we discovered when trying just to pull it back by the collar. Fortunately, the poor old dog would start wandering away from whoever was touching it (just touching it slightly didn't make it bite), so I sheperded it fairly close to the old man's seat and borrowed the leash, gingerly hooking it to the dog's collar. No rare items, but a generous XP bonus. I don't think I gained a level, though.

I've been living with a 7-month old dog named Leon who is rather rambunctious. He's an indoor dog, which apparently in Japan means he never, ever goes outside. He doesn't even go for walks. He pees on a little paper mat that we then throw away and replace. He drinks from a hamster bottle. Everything one does with this dog inevitably becomes the "don't let Leon bite you" game. People are so happy about their Japanese grade schoolers, but I'm learning Japanese with Leon, too! I now know how to say "Don't bite," "Don't bark," and "The inside of my nose is not an OK place to lick," all in Japanese. I'm still working on "Stop deliberately putting your ball where you can't get to it. I'm not going to get it for you again."

One of my SICE mates had a beloved pet die yesterday. My dog back at home is at that point in her life that every time I leave there is a distinct and significant possibility that she won't be there when I get back. That would be sad if I wasn't there for her in her last days, but I spend so much time away from home now that it's almost inevitable.

On the bright side, I put lots of effort and thought into my last Art History assignment, and just glancing at it Julie said that it was exactly what she was looking for. Wary of false optimism I asked her not to congratulate me until she'd actually gone over it, but agreed that even superficially this homework was notably different from the previous two.

On the dark side again, my first ever cell-phone broke about a week after I got it. I used it while my hands were slightly wet, at which point it pulled a Wicked Witch of the West and the screen's colors became permanently screwed up. I'm almost surprised it didn't scream "I'm MELTING!!!" I went to the Softbank shop, and the lady behind the counter's first question was "did you use it with wet hands?" Apparently that's a violation of warranty, so it would be $400 to fix. Fortunately I can still use it, I just have to suffer intense agony while doing so.

I'm late. Sorry. I know it's been more than a week. I'll write an extra long post.

I went to a festival with my family today. We were going to go see Dan sing, but we accidentally missed it. Nevertheless, a great majority of the festival seemed to center around Dan. At one point they suddenly focused on me, but it turned out that they had momentarily confused me for Dan. Nevertheless, I had a chocolate banana and managed to enjoy myself.

However, over the next few days it became increasingly apparent. As a white bespectacled male with brown hair, my claim to fame in Japan is a passing resemblance to a prefectural celebrity. In order to keep track of the number of times I've been asked for Dan's autograph, had someone ask me to sing Rakugo (as it turns out, Dan is very good at Rakugo, contrary to a previous post), or had my hand shaken in reverent awe, I have added a new counter to the info box. There are still one or two aspects of my life that don't reside in Dan's voluminous shadow fortunately, so I will discuss a few of the events of yesterday and the day before.

Carrying a Mikoshi (Japanese Shrine), if it ever was, is no longer my idea of a good time. Especially when the event is hosted by the Morioka Yakuza. Fortunately, rather than being dragged back under the hard, painful slats of the shrine over and over again until I fainted from exhaustion and lack of air, my ignominy offending the Yakuza so much that they kill me, I managed to go in only once, which was plenty. As it happened, that once was between Caitlin and Christine, both significantly shorter than me, me being significantly taller than everything else. So, even in my hunched over position I carried the brunt of the shrine, surrounded by hot, sweaty, yelling people and being repeatedly pushed into the proper Mikoshi carrying position by the quintessential mob-boss (Elvis haircut, Dragon tattoo from the neck down, smile that looks like it would keep smiling while a bunch of burly guys in dark sunglasses and tuxedos break your legs.) Fortunately there was a system that cycled people out, after which I carefully stayed ahead of the shrine, so as not to get grabbed and shoved in again. Julie decided that the kami (gods) were probably pleased enough with my gaman (obedient suffering) that they wouldn't mind if I didn't go through again.

That was the day before yesterday. Yesterday I hauled a dashi. A dashi is rather like an American parade float except that it's not motorized. Rather, about a hundred people pull on two long ropes to take it around town. This was about a fraction of the intensity of the previous night. In fact, it was downright boring at first, pulling that thing around for about three hours. After the break though (an hour and a half long, now that's a break!) it was dark, and the float's lights came on. The subsequent parade was quite pretty, and was much more fun. It turns out that one of the radio towers in Morioka (maybe the only one, I don't know) is lit up at night. The color changes about every fifteen minutes.

Speaking of pretty stuff, I found a bike path behind Josei (my middle school) that's gloriously scenic and goes on for a really long time. Eventually it becomes just a regular road, but it's beautiful the whole way through. Also, a number of people take their little dogs to walk on the path, so connosieurs of small canines should check it out. There's a children's museum nearby, too. I'm going to check that out sometime. Not this week, though. I've got to figure out how to analyze art properly and get an A in art history. Wish me luck.

I've been walking backwards down stairs for the past two days. Up is fine (well, tolerable), but forwards down seems to offend my thighs, which have no qualms vocalizing their concern. While on Iwatte, I could clearly hear my back grumbling loudly. Unfortunately, it used various words that are not appropriate for my PG rated blog. My feet have been very polite about the whole ordeal generally, although they do occasionally yelp with pain when I put on my sneakers.

I decided against bringing my laptop with me, and I don't have any other camera, so here are some pictures Eric took. Eric is Julie's husband. You probably are all wondering why I don't have a picture-viewer yet, and the answer is I do but it's still much too buggy for the site. Internet Explorer mysteriously decides that it is no longer interested in paying attention to CSS positioning scripts, for example (Even 7.0!).

These pictures really don't capture the majesty of Iwate-San, which is a way of saying mount Iwate in Japanese, by the way. Sorry that some of you probably got an ugly page. I didn't realize that a few of the pictures were vertical and would be too tall for an entry this short, so I'm lengthening the entry. Lucky you!

When preparing for Iwate-san, I didn't think to bring candy and chocolate. My family asked me if I wanted to bring candy and chocolate for the trip, but I had no clue what candy had to do with mountain climbing. All of my friends brought candy, though and were happy to share. The candy ranged from interesting chocolate-cracker cakes made by the Pocky company (if you don't know what pocky is, it's little cracker sticks coated in chocolate) to literal blocks of sugar. No joke. Those, by the way, were brought by someone from Japan who happened to be on the same hike as us.

As it turns out, Dan was on TV because he was leading the float-building committee, the first foreigner ever to do so. Every time I see him on TV, I want to apologize to my family for not being fluent in Japanese and famous across Morioka (Geez, that guy sets the bar high). I'm joking by the way, when I made this joke with Julie Sensei (The SICE program leader this year) she tried to give me a pep talk. Sometimes dry humor can backfire, story of my life.

This post isn't about Dan, though. This is about my junior High School, Josei. So far in the classes I've just been a human tape recorder that occasionally introduces himself. My last time there I was given ten milk boxes. I recently figured out that they probably had the surplus because the entire second-year class was on a field trip. Today in one of my classes a student was so impressed by my English that she would repeatedly whisper to herself "Suge! Sugoku pera-pera desu ne!" (Wow! He's so fluent!). She would also say "Yosh!"(Awesome!) when I told her "yes, I do like X" where X is whatever she asked me if I liked. This continued until the teacher reminded her "Of course he's fluent, its his native language!" I might have pointed it out myself, but I really liked her enthusiasm, silly as it may have been.

Today I put up my first English poster about The United States, and I put up my mailbox. My mailbox is actually an envelope, but I put a Japanese label on it saying (in Japanese) "This is an Ordinary Box". Under it in English, I put "Obviously, this is not a box at all." Then I put instructions for mailing me and promises of a secret prize for three mails. The instructions are in English, but the way I see it, they're so well-connected that only one needs to figure it out, and he or she'll tell the rest how to do it. I certainly hope this works. Absurdism as an education tool would make my SICE trip, as if it hasn't been made already by...

A presentation on LOLcats! That's right, we were asked to pick and present on an aspect of our culture, and so in a couple of weeks I'm going to tell my Japanese class all about the internet meme known, among many other names, as LOLcats. For those of you unfamiliar, when one takes a cute or strange picture of a cat and puts a silly, internet-language (ie: I can haz cheezburger) caption on it, a LOLcat is born. I'll be explaining the various permutations and sub-subcultures within the subculture of LOLcats, as well as other LOLs such as LOLdogs, LOLpeople, and the infamous LOLrus. Included is my current wallpaper: a LOLpanda.

Ps. It couldn't have come at a more opportune time.

Well, I never would have thought it possible, but Japanese Aflac commercials (the one with the talking duck) are actually weirder than American Aflac commercials. When the commercial occasionally pops up, it consists of little more than a girl in front of a mirror grooming the Aflac duck. It's set to an incscrutable soundtrack of ducks quacking. Today on TV (my family watches a lot of TV) we saw one of my family's previous SICE students, Daniel DeGrasse. The news segment was, as far as I could tell with my limited knowledge of Japanese, about him being bad at Rakugo (Japanese performance art involving fans).

Seriously, though, Daniel's Japanese is fantastic. Though I certainly do not know, given my Japanese ability, I would guess that he is fluent. Obviously he did something worth televising. In addition to flubbing his Rakugo lines, it showed him teaching children English, dancing, and saying some things in really (really) good Japanese. Although this does not make it any less impressive, he lived in Japan for a few months as a small child, which I've heard may have contributed to his talents.

I must apologize for my lack of updates until now. Many thanks to my mother for defending me under the claim of technical difficulties, but really that was just the catalyst that started a fit of laziness. In any case, I have resolved the technical difficulties, and am now ready to commence regular updates. Weekly at the very least. Please allow me to start by going over the events of the past fortnight.

Upon arriving in Japan, we stayed at an american style hotel for one night. The next day we took the Shinkansen to Morioka where we stayed in a Ryokan (traditional Japanese-style hotel). The included pictures (of which you will see one randomly every time you load the page, Someday I might add an image-viewing page where you can scroll through them at your leisure.) are of the outside looking through the Shinkansen's window. There's also one picture of Korn, short for Supakorn. He's a fellow SICE student from Thailand. We stayed at the Ryokan for about a week, being oriented and enjoying the hostess's excellent cooking until we were ready to head out to our respective host families.

My host family consists of my host mother, my host father, two host sisters, and a host dog. Both of the sisters are my elder sisters, and one of them is married and living with her husband and my host-nephew. The other, Chieko-san, works at a school for children who refuse to go to public school because of excessive bullying. My host mother works all week, and is only home for sporadic bursts of time, even on the weekend.

My family is a veteran of the SICE program. Nothing fazes them. I never have anything to contribute when people start talking about all the crazy stuff their families asked them. Well, I do have one thing, but I can't contribute that same thing over and over again. I'll tell you guys once, and then you can read it over and over again if you really want to.

When I first met my host family and came into their house, their dog, Leon, barked viciously at me from his little pen in the greeting area. I considered trying to pet him, but decided against it when informed that he would bite. When we came into the main living room, my family said to me (in Japanese) "When Leon comes in, he is going to bite and attack you. Is that ok?"

"Um, yeah, I guess?"

So they did, and Leon has only drawn blood from me three times since.

Ok, that's it for the narrative. Now I'll just do another list of highlights.

• Ooh, just got my box from the US!
• Going mountain climbing this weekend.
• There is a Japanese band called "Quaker Meeting" I'm going to try to get a bunch of their CDs for more omiyage.
• Melon Fanta, not available in the US, is radioactive green. Officially my favorite soda.

Judging by the clock on my computer, it has been seven hours since we departed the Earth's surface. My personal experience of time at this point is measured primarily in the aches and pains of my knees from my cramped position. My cabin-mates, or those of them that I can see, have lost all desire to see the world outside. I cannot blame them. After so long in the dim quarters, the once beloved light of the Sun has become cruel and unforgiving. Those foolish enough to crack open our windows' protective shades are rewarded with half a minute of searing sightlessness, but only those who immediately retreat are so lucky.

One of my fellow passengers claimed to have withstood the pain long enough to see heaven. Upon intense inquiry, he finally explained that heaven apparently looked just like the mountains of Alaska. An hour or two later I was saddened to learn that he had been rushed to the sick bay for severe tremors and incoherent babbling.

On a lighter note, our celestial prison, in addition to being mind-bogglingly vast, is equipped with all of the finest luxuries. We even have our pick of enough in-flight movies to entertain us for the next week at least. By the way, I strongly recommend Kung-fu Panda. I could probably go on a few paragraphs about how incredibly awesome it is, but long story short, It is not anywhere near as unimaginative as the title would suggest. I strongly doubt that this will also apply to the upcoming movie "Space Chimps," but good movies can surprise you.

My aisle-mate either does not speak much English or simply doesn't feel like talking much. Occasionally he will be clearly having trouble deciphering some bit of English. At these points I will try to explain to him that "Dijonnaise" is just the name of a brand of spicy mustard, and he will smile broadly and say "spicy mustard, thank you, thank you." I tried to tell him in Japanese how fancy I thought it was that we each got our own movie screen, but he didn't seem to take to that, either.

Not my first botched attempt at using Japanese, unfortunately. Waiting for my flight to Chicago, it occurred to me that a number of the people may be there for the connecting flight to Tokyo. I found evidence for this when I saw one family speaking japanese, then my hypothesis was further confirmed when I heard another family speaking Japanese, and so when I was in line I tried to help a confused asian family using my Japanese skills, but they turned out to be Korean.

Ok, I'm off to Chicago, where I'll catch my flight to Narita. I saw three Japanese families in the RDU airport waiting for this flight. I wonder if I'll see any of my fellow SICE folks in the Chicago airport.

I think I promised some of you that I would give you the location of the blog today. If you're reading this, good job! If you're on my home page wondering where the link is, shame on you. I was too lazy to put the link on my homepage yet, so you should just have followed the link I sent you in the email. (shame on me, too for being lazy.)

Anyway, today is Friday the fifteenth, and that means I have two days left in the United States of America. I feel like my trip to Japan has gone very suddenly from the distant future to the immediate, no-more-time-left kind of future. Fortunately, I have most of my packing done, but still this is making me quite apprehensive.

I'm back from the retreat. Some highlights:

• A new committee was created specifically for the purpose of organizing our scattered webcontent into a single site. Philip, Elaine, Mark, and I are on this committee. We are called "The Tube Committee."
• We argued for three hours about whether one member, who technically did not meet the requirements, could come, only to be subsequently informed that he had never thought he could come in the first place, and had had no intention of coming, anyway. All that hubbub did get a lot of important legislation sorted out, though.

My last day. I head out for a retreat in about an hour, and then spend a week getting ready to leave for Japan. It's nice working at Shodor, I'm going to miss everyone. Of course, I'm going to come back next summer, and if my schedule permits it work remotely from Earlham (not at Japan, my schedule definitely will not permit it).

I got a second letter from my host family. They thanked me for the letter I sent them, and sent me a photo of their dog, Leon! He's one of those white, fluffy dogs with extremely curly hair. Bichon Frise, that is. I'm going to try and scan in the photo of Leon and put it up.

UPDATE: I don't know if I have my host-family's permission to upload their photos, so here are some Creative-Commons non-copyrighted photos of the breed. Leon looks quite (if not exactly) like these.

UPDATE 8/31/08: New picture! There are three pictures now. One of them is picked randomly each time you load the page. See if you can guess which one is the real Leon.

UPDATE 9/9/08: Something is wrong with the random number generator. For some reason the pictures picked in older posts are notably less random than newer ones. Sorry guys.

Today is Thursday, the day of the office potluck. Unfortunately, half the office thought it was going to be Friday. Hilarity ensues. For example, I made the mistake of suggesting to Hun that he make his banana into banana chips to serve at the potluck, and spent the next hour trying to convince him that the office toaster oven would not be able to cook them properly. Luke would have loved a situation like this, but apparently he left last week. :(

My cat is no longer crazy! It all started when she bolted out of the house and under the porch.Now, this is the same cat that before would only faintly venture outdoors untilsomeone saw her, at which point she would slink back inside as if we had yelled at her. So, this was understandably strange, but we didn't really get worried until she started hanging out under the porch for hours at a time. One night she actually sat under there all night, only coming out the next morning for food.

Next this elevated to her simply leaving the house and wandering who-knows-where, coming back only at food time. One time she broke through a screen window to get outside. Finally she would sit in her litterbox for hours at a time, when confronted, she'd act as if it was completely normal for her to be living inside her toilet.

Eventually I took the top of her litterbox and shook it, scaring her out. While being pet she rolled over, and I saw scores of fleas crawling on her belly! Evidently the flea medication was insufficient. So we gave her some anti-flea pills, and in the absence of the fleas she eventually settled back down to normal. Yay!