Author: Gene

1-18-06

Closed

Cadbury was closed. I don’t really care. I’m getting plenty of free food at the moment. We went and saw some cathedrals instead. A broken one and a new one. It was kinda neat, I suppose.

I’m currently waiting my turn for internet in the library. I’ve noticed a lot of what the computers are being used for is internet dating… I find that weird.

Only about 1 out of every 30 people has sex on any given day. Valium is the most taken drug on the planet. Less than 7% of the population donates blood. The average Brit consumes five fish and chips a year.

I was going to comment insightfully on some observed oddities of British behavior, but I can’t remember now. All I remember is my thought about their cups are so small even if you fill them it’s still half empty to an American. How depressing.

Dinah is on Prozac, no wonder she thinks I’m funny.

Everyone should check out this site. Of special note is this number… a ukelele version of Enter Sandman.

I had a busy day today. Went to class until almost 5. The last class of mine is just me talking w/ a professor so it doesn’t end at the same time each week. But after that I had to go to senate. It wasn’t really senate this week, it was the ASLC debates. People are going to be elected President and VP soon I guess. It was pretty exciting. 😛 I hate politics, even on a small scale it seems.

After that was over I walked to the other side of campus to see a lecture by uh… David Shipler. It was about the working poor in America. He seemed like a pretty reasonable guy. He’s won a couple of Pulitzer Prizes too. Apparently, he says, the rich get richer, but the poor get poorer! I dunno, something about bad credit leading to an inability to get a good job leading to drug dealing leading to jail time leading to an inability to get a job at all… blah blah blah. I say… why don’t they get jobs?

Ok, I’m not really that incompassionate. I would like to help those poor people who actually can and do contribute to society. Plus, I think it’s bad for society as a whole to have starving, unmedicated, desparate people all over.

I think the internet will solve all problems eventually. That’s why I turn to the internet to solve this one. Someone will make a site that is like blogger only instead of making a blog, you make a disaster page. It’ll be like the Hurricane Katrina things, only for every little disaster out there. Jimmy fell down a well and his mom can’t pay for the ambulance… don’t worry, go to www.disasterhelp.com where you can quickly and easily explain your situation. Your page will be analyzed by a souless algorithym uncrackable by the minds of man and put as an ad on the appropriate web sites. Then while the unimpoverished are checking your e-mail they can simply click on the little picture of Timmy that appears in your search bar and you’ll automatically recieve a dollar. After about 255 hits, the problem is solved. Hurray! Then there are the spin off sites. Programs that make sites automatically for every medical bill filed to someone w/o insurance, and programs that allow you to donate money ahead of time for disasters that might occur. The future is going to be great.

I’ve not been doing enough London stuff. I’m sorry. Have some London.

1-17-06

Castles

So far we’ve only been to Castle Warwick but there’s another on the schedule I believe, hence the title.

I read a letter in Castle Warwick written to someone requesting troops to fight Edward. It was even more punctuated than Johnson. It was very cool. I also enjoyed swords and armor of course. I agree with some of Mikes complaints about their presentation though. They were pretty good, but they tended to have weapons spanning 500 years in one area, and no description or information. On the other hand, the guides at least those I was in contact with, were very good.

Winter time at the castle is kinda quiet. No trebuchet or jousting. I think it was a good time to go though, because I heard the guides talking about all the “queues” everywhere during the summer.

The displays span the life of the castle, so they include both medieval and Victorian eras. I have to say I prefer medieval greatly. At least I prefer the medieval stereotype and whatnot. Victorian is only cool if there are vampires.

A display said that during Waterloo there were 45,000 dead bodies within 3 square miles. I did some unintelligible calculations on the front cover of this journal that show that if each body takes six square feet then 30% of the ground was covered in corpse.

The second castle visited was Kinalworth, or something, that was sieged and destroyed during the English civil war. It was very different from Warwick. It seemed that in its hay day it was ridiculously well defended, however. Had a good time tramping around the ruins. I was impressed that original stairs still existed.

Recently viewed the play Great Expectations. I believe I found it easier to follow than some of my fellow students. I also found it quite funny. Some of the lines were quite humorous, and much of the plot as well. A strange kind of humor that doesn’t make you laugh but makes you smile for a long time. The chairs were a bit uncomfortable though. It was certainly good it wasn’t a full house

Yesterday I went to OMSI to see some omnimax movies. OMSI is the Oregon Museum for Science and Industry for those who don’t know. They have this dome theater thing that plays 35 cm film. I saw a couple short movies designed for the omnimax and then a presentation about the brain and the Tour de France. Was pretty cool. Pretty graphics. After that I saw a Pink Floyd laser show which was neat. I’m not a huge music person, but lasers are cool.

If you wanna lose weight, don’t drink pop.

Today my Jan term is having an informal reunion at the Thai restaurant. I’ve got to get some homework done before I go.

8’s still asleep. It is like 90 degrees in her room. Ridiculous.

Hours of entertainment. Probably not appropriate for work and such.

8 is missing. So I can’t go to sleep. I’m not that tired anyway. Last couple days my earliest class as been at 1 so I’ve been getting mucho sleep. It’s pretty sweet.

I played Disciples II for a couple hours today. I got free time. Life is nuts when you’re not taking all science class. Wait… actually… I am. Well, life is nuts when you’re not taking anything that counts towards a bio major. 😛

Finished a program for cs today I think. It’s a pointless program. You can input times and it will display them to you in different formats. Standard, military, and in seconds since midnight. It’s nice though. It will input the 0’s if it needs to, and it says AM or PM appropriately. I think maybe eventually we’re going to make it add times together or something. We’re doing that with our similar date program anyway.

I could have done homework. Then I would have had much free time this weekend. I think I’ll be ok anyway though. 8’s ditching me tomorrow because a couple of her high school friends are coming down for the day. They don’t really like me.

One of my roommates, John, is gone too, so he won’t be distracting me. He’s watching his brother get married or something. I think that’s a stupid reason to miss classes, but he skips them so often I guess he has different priorities. 😛 He said he had lost his present for the bride and groom… wonder if he ever found it.

I was looking for some new blogs to read today with some of my free time. I didn’t find any though. I mean, obviously I found some, but I didn’t find any that seemed promising. I prefer frequent updates, good content, and the appreciation for commenters that correct you w/o any tact. Know of any?

Nobody answered my money question. /sigh Oh well.

I’m going to have to entertain myself w/ something other than the blog now.

1-16-06

Five Properties

Today we saw the five properties related to Shakespeare. Note how now it’s spelled correctly. I dunno why I couldn’t spell it before. More importantly, though, I had Crunchy Munch during breakfast, and it was ludicrously good.

The properties all kinda ran together. It’s kinda weird talking about Shakespeare all of a sudden. I didn’t find the old cottages all the impressive as the stuff in London, but that’s mostly because they focused on teaching the way of life during Shakespeare’s time, which I’m fairly familiar with. Saw a d18 that was kinda weird.

After dinner some of the girls and the other boys and I played cards for quite a while. It was pretty entertaining.

We saw rabbits outside during dinner and some falcons and owls and dogs.

Andy Kauffman was funny.

I’m afraid I don’’t know what to write.

I remember now. It was very cool that Shakespeare bought New House from a guy named Underhill. Underhill of course being the name Frodo Baggins took to disguise himself when fleeing the Wraiths, in The Lord of the Rings.

Longer than the Golden Gate – Aftenposten.no

1-15-06

Travel Day

Not much has happened today. We traveled from London to Stratford via “coach”. Stopped at Oxford. Oxford was kinda fun to wander around in. We were hunting Dungeons and Dragons stuff, but our search uncovered only a closed gaming store. Perhaps here in Stratford.

The English country side was observed on the trip. In some ways I find it very similar to parts of Central Washington. As we progressed though it became more foreign. The architecture is the most strikingly different. Castles are a dead give away, that and the thatched roofs. At one point on our journey we drove parallel to a stone wall. I think it had a very many stones in it’s construction. Not impressive to look at, but impressive if you think about it. At least for me.

Saw Shakespeare’s grave. The church was pretty neat. Modest compared to some of those London churches, but still very snazzy.

Looking forward to the all you can eat food offered by this hotel. Not looking forward to the complaints of the others which I view as nearly inevitable. They’re not too bad though. Worse would be if I’m disappointed. Let’s hope not.

I will play this game when it comes out.

I got my test back from Cognitive Neuroscience. I got a 95%, which is good. If there was a curve, I think I would have set it, but there wasn’t one because the rest of the class did well as well. Anyway, I would have gotten 99% if I would not have gone over my answers again like they tell you to do. Stupid proper test taking skills. I knew my strategy of finishing as quickly as possible and cockily turning it in w/o checking what you’d written was boosting my grades. 😛 I’m fairly certain I could argue and get it boosted to 97%, but I don’t really want to. In order to do so I would have to prove to the prof I know more about the biology and physics of membrane potential than she does, and that’d be unpleasant. 😛
My other major accomplishment today, if you consider getting a test back an accomplishment, was photocopying a chapter from my research methods book for my prof. See… research methods is just a catch all class to allow the profs to do whatever they want and the students to get some credit for it. In my case I’m reading this book and then going in every week to talk to my professor about what it said and prove that I’m understanding stuff. He has a copy of the book I’m reading, but his is an older version, and the chapter we’re on is all this stuff that nobody knew about 10 years ago. But, the impressive thing is, I figured out how to use the copy machine, and I did it to the extent that I managed to make it print front to back and staple it for me. Only wasted one piece of paper. I am so great.
In other news I have the song “Ultimate Showdown” in my head. It was written and performed by a band called Lemon Demon and is the music to a flash animation with the same name. If you haven’t seen/heard it you should google it. Wait, nm, I’ll just link you. Anyway, I enjoyed it quite a lot so I found all the other animations with music by Lemon Demon and doing so has enlightened me about the “Ultimate Showdown” animation. Earlier Lemon Demon did the music for an animation devoted to portraying the evil of Eric Baumer, the man behind Ebaum’s World. In that animation a character depicting Eric, and different character depicting some guy who beats up Eric were created. Those characters are inserted into one of the scenes in the “Ultimate Showdown” animations. I’m probably one of the few people who knows who those characters are, but now I’m sharing my knowledge with everyone who managed to follow this crazy paragraph.

Here, I’ll show you.