Category: Uncategorized

1-29-06

Differences between Brits and Americans.

British people buy more flowers.

British people smoke more.

British people are worse at serving in restaurants.

British people are obsessed with Big Brother.

British men care about clothes more.

British people have candy with real sugar in it.

British people drive on the wrong side of the road.

British people have just as bad of taste as Americans but don’t know.

British people pay more taxes.

Ok, I grow board. The OC is a terrible show. I’ve actually seen full minutes of it now, so I say it with new confidence.

There is nothing British… it’s all American. American’s used to have no culture, now we have it all. No one will realize it for about 200 years though.

British people have portable credit card machines.

Went to St. Martin’s in the Fields for church. It was more boring to look at and the service more like a regular church than previous weeks. Their organ was cool though.

I thought about looking for gifts for my parents afterwards but decided against it because I hate shopping and gifts. Instead I went to the Victoria and Albert Museum and saw all the stuff I hadn’t seen yet. They got nice stuff in there. Lots of it too. They have like 10,000 pieces in the glass exhibit.

Maybe I’ll get some tea for mom. I looked for some show or something for dad but they don’t have anything good.

I think I’m going to see another play tonight. Probably alone though, most people are gone, Kait’s definitely gone, and I matt’s not here.

There’s this indoor bowling type sport on TV a lot lately that is brilliant. I’m contemplating becoming a fanatic.

Tomorrow is the final. That means this is the last journal entry. I dunno what I’m going to write about for the final. *sigh*

British people have lower water quality standards.

British people can buy titles.

British people are more interested in eye care and ornamenting.

British people have less frequent commercial breaks.

British people have different ketchup.

British people cook their peas less.

I’ve got a business idea. I suppose the guys that make police badges have tricks for making them hard to counterfeit. My company will use those same techniques to make badges for all other jobs out there. My company will do background checks to insure people really have the job they buy badges for. If they are fired then the badge will self destruct. The badge could be used for identification purposes, and to prove on is not a cop. Finally prostitutes and drug pushers can work in safety.

In about eleven hours I’m going to be forced to hand over this journal. In writing it my trip I have tried to make it informative about my trip and myself, fun to read, and is in all things I do, full of commas… I mean fun. I apologize for the numerous spelling errors sand “typos”. I plan on typing this up and posting it on my websites, so I hope you made some corrections.

On to the finals.

And this is the 1118th post. Take that Maki. 😛

1-28-06

Kait was late meeting me at the Victoria and Albert Museum today. She got a little lost. We got to see the cool stuff in there and then managed to find China Town and a book store for Kait. We got some noodles for lunch and she bought some plays. I’m going to go back to the V&A Museum tomorrow.

Kait decided she wanted to see a play tonight, which is good. She has to leave her hotel at 4 am tomorrow so she considered bedding early, but changed her mind. It’s the interval to Night of the Iguana. I think I saw it at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival before. It’s gone sufficiently from memory for it to not matter though. Woody I find hard to buy as a real actor, but I suppose he’s doing an okay job. He bumbled a line or two, but I don’t constantly think of Cheers w/ him up there.

Saw Ken and wife leaving the play. They said they liked the play. That’s good. I agree. It was good. Even though nothing much happens. Although, I suppose the iguana on a leash metaphor was developed and explored, or whatever.

At the theater they said over the intercom before the show “If you would like sweets or hard candy, please un-wrap them now.” It got quite a laugh and I heard someone comment, “That’s a new one.” However, they’ve been saying that at Ashland for several years now.

Now random commentary on British life. Today subject, bathroom light switches. What reason is there to have the switch for the light in the bathroom outside the door to the bathroom? I can think of several reasons why not to. For example, some second party could darken the bathroom while one was locked inside, causing distress. Also, it makes it impossible to go to the bathroom without illuminating for some time the adjacent rooms, making it inconvenient for one’s friend and family. Stupid Brits.

I’ve realized I’m looking forward to getting back to the relative smoke free life of the U.S. I’ve always known I hated smoke, but I’ve never been so inundated for so long. No wonder these countries have universal health care.

I cry!

Also, Calc test tomorrow. EZ PLZ!

Remember that post about the college that did well at math modeling and my friend that would never respond. Well, apparently he checks facebook. He responded. These are the nerds responsible. Adam thinks I look like that guy on the left, because he’s evil.

Oh Thank God!

With all the hype about superhero film remakes, and the new surge of creative ideas coming from the video game industry, I was afraid the idea of remaking this classic would pass the studios by. My faith in the man is restored.

1-26-06

I’ve not written much the last couple days. I’m not surprised. Kait’s around so now I don’t have much alone time. I finished all my reading before she came. I don’t know what I’m going to write for my final. I wish I had the time on the plane to write. Oh well.

I’m going to the British Museum again today. I’m going to let Kait and her friends choose the exhibits since I’ve seen most everything and I’ll just look at that which I didn’t pay too much attention to last time.

Lauren looks like a desperate house wife. Sad, nervous, and her hair-do.

“I had five years of single bliss, but then I decided, well, I’d better put my head back in the noose.”

Mom is here for Mother’s Weekend. I dunno why she comes down for Mother’s Weekend. She could down any weekend and have just as much fun. All the Mother’s Weekend activities are set up for Mother Daughter combos. Luckily I’m a good sport, somewhat. Works out nice this weekend in that I have very little homework. I have a test on Thursday in Calculus, but that’s the only special thing really, and it matters very little for this weekend.

So mom came yesterday and took me to dinner. And then we went to a tea party. And then we got kicked out of the game room because the jerk-wad who was supposed to work didn’t. I bet it was Keston. Keston has developed a bit of a DotA habit. And we saw comedian Kyle Cease who apparently really liked the crowd and gave us an extra 30 minutes of show. I thought he was funny. He’s the slow clapper dude from Not Another Teen Movie. Why did I italicize that?

I got officially reject from my other internship thing. Mom’s mad at them, but it is ok. I will get another lazy summer, somewhat anyway. Pat, I found out, is done with school after next week. That is ridiculous. I still have a month. Stupid schedules are taking away all my friends during vacation. I guess I’ll still see him once or twice.

Dimitri is too busy to DM us this weekend supposedly, and yet there is nothing on his google calendar.

Mom’s going to come and take us away to food land soon. We are gonna see Hoodwinked later tonight for free. whooo and such. Hope it’s decent. I’ve missed a lot of the animated films. Pretty much all of them since the Invincibles or Incredibles or whatever. I dunno how the quality is being maintained.

Apparently it’s difficult to get 5 people that don’t hate each other and have more than 62 credits together. We (Mike, Keston, Kennan, John, and I) did it though, and had to compete with one other group who succeeded. We’d heard rumors of like 6 additional groups interested in the five person house, but apparently they all fell apart. Anyway, at the very beginning of housing they called up everyone interested in the 5 person house and my group and one other group were the only contestants. A murmer went across the room… not really a murmur, more of “ohhhhhh” with rising pitch, like those done after a diss on a sitcom. My group had 80 credits more than our competitors. So that means I’m living in the Lead Lodge, my first choice, next year. It should be sweet. I’m glad too, cause my backup plan was looking less secure, and my tertiary plan was not in place.

I’m going to go play Puerto Rico now w/ my current roommates and 8 and 8’s bro.

I saw two movies on Saturday. I saw Silent Hill, because it’s based off a video game and because 8 wanted to see it, and I saw Underworld Evolution because it was free and sci-fi. Silent Hill I didn’t like much. I gave it a 4 or something on IMDB. It’s horror, and horror isn’t my thing. I did enjoy some of the gore and death, but there wasn’t enough to make the movie pleasant.

Underworld Evolution was decent. I gave it a 7. Cool fighting, not completely retarded plot, vampires give you extra points. It had the obligatory sex scene early on and in a more uh… in your face manner than is typical. I found it amusing, but I think they should have just left it out.

Just got back from a comedian act hosted by the Gay/Straight alliance club on campus. He was alright. I could be a stand up comedian.

Housing is on Thursday. I got my card in the mail today that says I get to register. Keston, John, Mike, Kennan and I have hatched a plan to try to get the Lead Lodge. It’s fairly sought after, but we have a decent shot. I’ve not actually been inside the place… but so what. If it works, that’ll be cool. I haven’t figured out my backup plan yet.

Mother is coming down on Thursday or Friday for mother’s weekend. Hopefully she’ll make my blender problems fix themselves. My uber blender is sick. 🙁

I won an eBay auction to buy a box of Hecatomb booster packs. 🙂 In other nerd news I found a program that supposedly allows me to LAN with people no matter where they are. If it works it would be prekky sw33t.

Today I noticed a thing I have not noticed before. Up on the wall next to my CS professor’s office are all the awards my schools teams won this year at various CS and math contests. One of them was a modeling competition, and there was a certificate or something in the middle that listed a bunch of information about the event. It said that 798 team were in the competition, and only 12 won the top award. The schools that won this award were, Harvard, MIT, UC Davis, Univeristy of Colorado Bolder, Duke, some Polytechnic, two Chinese Schools, and Carroll College of Montana. 😛

Carroll doesn’t really fit in with the rest of the bunch. I wonder if Adam knows anything about it. Adam is my friend from back in high school, but he’s bad at responding to e-mail, and I’m sure he doesn’t read this blog… so I’ll probably not know for a while if he knows anything about the c competition. He should though, apparently there are some math/programming geniuses at his school.

I also got the second highest grade in the class on my last math tests. I woulda had the highest but the professor took of 4 of 5 points on one question where I did a more complicated task than the one he asked for. Whatever. I dunno exactly what my grade will be, since he hasn’t announced the curve, but hopefully it’ll be about %110 :P.

In cognitive neuroscience news, the record for most foreign objects in a surviving brain was broken recently by a local Oregonian meth head. Edit: I found an article… it made it up on digg. 🙂 Here. He apparently tried to kill himself with a nail gun while on meth. He shot himself 8 times, reloaded the nail gun, and got 4 more nails in before he stopped. He arrived at the hospital complaining of a headache and with no knowledge of the event. All the nails were removed, only one was near anything fatal, and apparently he’s going to make a full recovery. The previous record was held by a Japanese man who attempted suicide with a nail gun. He only got 9 nails in his brain. I wish I could link the article, but I’m not finding it quickly enough.

Oh well, that’s all the news for now. There’s no internet at 8’s, so that sucks. I’ll not be able to finish up the London stuff… or post from there if I wanna.