I've been studying for my 507 final since about 5pm. I don't think it'll be too difficult; just a lot of memorization and stuff. The final's not until 5:30 tomorrow, so I might do a bit of packing tomorrow morning. I also need to get some batteries for my TI-89, as its current batteries seem to have died. This is kinda weird though, since I don't think the BATT thing was lit up when I used the calculator last Thursday.

After the final tomorrow I'm supposed to do some work on our robotics project. I'm a bit burned out on robots, but I'll be there. I am a bit curious to figure out why some code Chris and I were testing last week wasn't working, so that will hopefully motivate me to work on it.

I am only weraing one shoe right now.

michael: remind me to fax that ticket thing in tomorrow.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 30 April 2002 at 1:03 AM

sigh.. so Im pretty much finished with this semester. WUgrade has been done for a while, 456 finished up on monday, money and bankings final was tuesday, and I just finished taking the machine learning final exam a couple hours ago. the only thing left is the robotics final demo, which is a week from tomorrow. theres still plenty of work to be done on that, but its work that I might actually enjoy, and its the same stuff Ill be doing all summer, so it feels a lot like school is done now.

as for the machine learning exam, Im glad its over. the exam was quite difficult, and it was pretty long, too. I at least managed to put down something for every question, though. and I think for the most part my answers were probably approximately correct.

(and to everyone reading this who happened to notice the terrible and obscure cs pun in that last sentence, Im sorry. really. sigh..)

Comments: 0 Posted by michael on 25 April 2002 at 2:21 PM

I talked to my Machine Learning professor today and got a little tidbit of information that can be viewed in both positive and negative light. First, the tidbit of information: if I get a grade between a 55% and a 95% on the final, I will have a B in Machine Learning. Since I don't really expect my grade to fall outside of this range, this pretty much means that I have a B in Machine Learning. This also means I have no motivation to prepare myself for the exam on Thursday.

The ACM Fireside Chat was tonight. (Were you there?) I thought it went pretty well, but I was a bit nervous. Would enough people show up to eat all the food? Would people ask questions? Would Dr. Roman give a good opening statement? Would people figure out that we just made up a number when we called it "The 14th Annual ACM Fireside Chat?" But, like I said, I think it went well.

All things considered, ACM did pretty well this semester. But if we use the summer to organize ourselves, things will be even better next semester.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 24 April 2002 at 12:55 AM

Another night, another Blast hockey game. But this time instead of just two in our cheering section, we had eight: me, James, michael, Amy, Amy, Chris, Bryan, and Nik. And we had a banner. But the banner contents are so geeky that I won't repeat them here. You'll have to ask one of the others if you want to know about it. Anyway, on to the game.

The Blast were, of course, playing the Eagles. The Eagles got off to a fast start, picking up two goals in the first period. The Blast fought back with goals in the second and third period, but the Eagles had picked up a third goal in the second. That was the final score, 3-2 in favor of the Eagles. But as this was the championship game, everything was a bit more intense than in the last game. More checking, more slams, more people getting upset at missed shots and missed opportunities. It was a very fun game to watch.

I'll say this now: this beginners league is a lot more fun to watch than any NHL game I've ever seen. More turnovers, more wacky skating, more fun. If you ever have a chance to go to one of these games, you should definitely do so.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 22 April 2002 at 12:41 AM

For those of you who were left a little confused by my description of a "bald mullet," I have used my considerable artistics talents to create the following graphical depiction.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 21 April 2002 at 4:28 PM

I was at the Joy Luck restaurant last night and i saw something a bit odd. It was a haircut I'd call a "bald mullet." This guy was very bald, and only had the ring of hair on the sides and back of his head like a lot of bald people. The hair on the sides was trimmed to normal length, but the hair in the back was a different story. There was a patch of hair about four inches wide right on the back of this guy's head where he had let the hair from the back of his head grow down close to his shoulders, giving him a mullet. I've never seen anything like it.

On a slighlty related note, the Joy Luck has a pretty good lunch special right now: buffet and a soda for $5.99.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 21 April 2002 at 12:38 PM

The following only really applies to WashU students, so if you don't go to WashU you might want to stop reading now.

Sorry about harping on this so much, but the more I think about the situation with W.I.L.D., the more upset I get. Team 31 (the group on campus that runs W.I.L.D.) is accountable to no one, and seems to relish operating in secrecy. And despite this, Student Union gives them more than $100k. This wouldn't bother me as much, I suspect, if SU didn't make all the other campus groups jump through endless hoops that organizations like Team 31 are exempt from. ACM, for example, has to justify all our expenditures, and our proposed budget is available to anyone. We also have to do a certain amount of fundraising, or our allocation will be cut. Team 31 seems not to have to follow these rules. Their money is allocated by the SU execs directly, so therre is little scrutiny of their budget, and no fundraising rules apply to them. In fact, although I think I've pointed this out already, no rules seem to apply to them. There's a rumor going around campus that Team 31 donated last semester's money to charity after Wyclef backed out to perform in the Michael Jackson tribute concert. If this is true, while the sentiment is to be applauded, the actual act is very inappropriate. They were allocated money from the student activity fees to provide activities for the students, not to give the money away. And all the cloak-and-dagger intrigue surrounding Team 31's band selection process is another issue entirely.

However, in order for this to change, WashU students need to let their voices be heard. If you're interested in trying to make Team 31 more accountable to all WashU students, please send me an email. I'm thinking of starting a campaign for changes in the way certain large groups are allocated funds by SU, and I want to see if anyone is interested in participating. If I get a lot of emails on this, I'll be more motivated to actually act, so please drop me a line if you think this is a good idea (and are willing to help out).

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 21 April 2002 at 1:35 AM

A couple of weeks ago I reported on Big Trouble. Tonight I'd like to discuss The Scorpion King. But instead of doing a review, I'm just going to mention a few facts about the movie that don't really come across in the ads we've all seen on TV.

1) This movie has characters that fullfill every known movie stereotype. We've got the kid, the funny sidekick, the wacky scientist, the evil bad guy, the attractive leading lady being held captive by the afore-mentioned evil bad guy, and the good guy who can't be killed.

2) The Rock rides a camel. When asked why he didn't ride a horse, since horses were faster than camels, The Rock replied, "But camels are smarter." The camel then spent the rest of the movie proving that it was smarter than The Rock.

3) Did you see The Rock on SNL last week? Did you notice that he was always a little amused by all the skits; throughout the show he always had a bit of a smirk on his face? Well, he employed that same acting technique during The Scorpion King. You can infer one of two things from this bit of information: (a) The Rock understood that The Scorpion King was a bit corny, or (b) The Rock can't act. I'll leave it to greater minds than mine to decide between these two possiblities.

4) Did I mention that The Rock rides on a camel during this movie?

5) The Scorpion King includes a trailer for Undercover Brother. This may be the single best reason to see The Scorpion King.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 20 April 2002 at 10:47 PM

Well, today was a big waste of time. Joe and I were supposed to meet in the graders office at 11am to work on our sysadmin project, but when we showed up the office was locked. We called WUPD and asked then to send an officer over to unlock the room, but the officer didn't show up until after 11:30.

Sadly, once we got into the lab, things just kept going wrong for us. We need root access to Carbon and Chlorine to work on our project, but the password our professor gave us didn't work. So Joe set to work trying to break into the computers. He went down to his office and came back with his "break-in kit" which consisted of a floppy disk and a CD. Sadly, Joe's first floppy disk appeared to be corrupt, so he bought a new one in the CEC help center. But the second floppy didn't work either, and Joe gave up on his hacking attempts. Total elapsed time since arriving at 11am? 98 minutes. Amount of work accomplished? None.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 20 April 2002 at 3:45 PM

What a wild night. I drove to Mt. Vernon, Il this afternoon, taking my grandma halfway to Evansville. My mom met us in Mt. Vernon, we all had dinner, and then my mom and grandma went on to EVV and I came back here. But that isn't the wild part.

On the drive back home, I was in the midst of the most intense elctrical storm I've ever seen. The sky would light up in front of me with a spiderweb of lightning, send bolts down to my left, to my right and in front of me. Each sustained session of lightning lasted for at least 30 seconds, followed by the deafening booms of thunder. Confronted with all this inclement weather I put my foot down a bit further on the gas (I hadn't hit the rain yet), turned my music way up, and just kept on driving. Eventually I ran into the rain.

How do you know a rainstorm is bad? When you constantly find yourself trying to increase the speed of your wipers, even though they're already going at top speed, you should probably start suspecting that things are getting bad.

Anyway, I made it safely back to WashU. I had planned on partaking of a bit of WILD, the bi-annual concert here at WashU (this year we had Jurassic 5 and Black-Eyed Peas -- blech!), but I discovered that the Dean of Students had cancelled the event. This marks the second semester in a row that WILD has failed to live up to expectations. Last semester our headliner was someone called Reese, who know one had heard of, which was a bit worse, as at least this semester the blame can't be put entirely on Team 31's shoulders.

Anyway, given the crappy bands Team 31 has been getting for WILD recently, I'm hoping this catastrophe serves to mark the beginning of the end for their organization. They get gobs of money (>$100,000), and do jack all with it. It's a bit frustrating, especially when groups that I'm in can't get more than $325 per semester.

Well, that's enough for now I guess. I'm going to head back to the apartment and try to figure out how to write Windows applications using Microsoft .NET.

Later.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 19 April 2002 at 8:49 PM

James and I had the pleasure of seeing the Cytron on Ice Extravaganza tonight. For those of you not in the loop, Ron Cytron is one of the CS professors here at WashU, and for reasons known only to him, he has taken to playing beginner's hockey at the Webster Groves Recreation Center.

It was a pretty good game. We came in halfway through the first period, because we'd had a bit of difficulty finding the place, and the Blast already had two goals. Not long after we got there, the Blast got a third goal. James claims that Dr. Cytron made the goal, but I didn't see it so that's only hearsay. Regardless, the Blast were up 4 to nothing at the beginning of the third period and everything was looking good. But the Eagles came storming back in the fourth, scoring three goals (one on a power play), and things were kinda close. But the Blast held on despite for the win despite the slightly rougher aspect (more checks -- even though they're not allowed, helmets knocked off, etc.) of the third period.

Dr. Cytron didn't slam anyone into the boards or anything, so we were a bit disappointed in that regard. But all told, a very entertaining evening.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 19 April 2002 at 12:38 AM

Alright, who is this Andrew W.K. that I've been seeing so much of? He was on SNL last weekend and his "Party Hard" video is all over MTV. In fact, its one of MTV's "Buzzworthy" videos, I believe. When Rachel was visiting michael last weekend, she mentioned that she'd heard that Mr. W.K. was supposed to save rock 'n roll or some such thing. I'm not sure how he can do much more than destroy rock, since his music sucks and his dancing, both on SNL and in his video, is laughable at best.

If anyone out there can explain the appeal of Andrew W.K., please let me know.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 17 April 2002 at 7:47 PM

if chris isnt already the number one website for "Chris Carrabba hair," he should be by the time google crawls us again. Im told that google not only takes into account text on your own site, but also the text of all the links to your site, so this should boost his ratings just a bit in the "chris carrabba hair" department.

I try to do my part.

Comments: 0 Posted by michael on 16 April 2002 at 6:52 PM

overheard:

[upon being made fun of for not knowing which one the "index finger" was]

I dont know the names of the fingers. what am I, a math teacher?!

Comments: 0 Posted by michael on 16 April 2002 at 3:28 AM

Hey everyone, don't forget to go to http://homepage.mac.com/wumug/ and vote for the "Making of a Flop" movie that michael and I made. The voting closes Tuesday at 5pm, so you'll need to hurry.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 16 April 2002 at 12:09 AM

Today's a busy day. I'm having lunch with my grandma (and possibly my cousin and her husband) at 12:15, then at 2 my robotics group is going to work on our occupancy grid code. And sometime today I need to go to Joy Luck and get a catering estimate for the ACM Fireside Chat, call my parents, and work on my Machine Learning. Although if I make some good progress on the Machine Learning today, the rest of the week won't be too horrible.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 14 April 2002 at 11:18 AM

Those of you in St. Louis should head over to the Art Museum in Forest Park and check out the John Singer Sargent special exhibit. I saw it about a month ago and was blown away by it. Most people only know Sargent for his portraits, but in this exhibit they're showing his landscapes and sketches. It's really rather cool to see how easily he could move from medium to medium and style to style.

The Art Musuem is going to charge you to get it to the Sargent exhibit (the rest of the museum is free), but it is definitely worth the money. But you don't have to take my word for this. In every issue of The Week, the editors select a special exhibition of note from anywhere in the country. This week's recommended exhibit was the Sargent exhibit at the St. Louis Art Museum. This is pretty cool, as the Art Museum here usually seems to struggle to get good travelling exhibits. And The Week usually selects shows at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York or the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and other museums of that caliber, so this is a big endorsment for the St. Louis Art Museum. Anyway, you should definitely head over there the first chance you get (except on Mondays, when the museum is closed).

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 13 April 2002 at 6:09 PM

I am sleepy, and yet I cannot sleep. I am inclined to blame the two hour nap I took early this evening. it seemed like a good idea at the time, but now I think I am having regrets. sigh..

the weather lately has been really beautiful. I have to say that I really like spring. I dont know. it just feels good. it rained today, a miniature storm actually, and I had been needing that for a while. you know how sometimes its raining but sunny at the same time? well, it was like that, and you could smell the wet concrete, and things just felt clean and good.

sometimes I wish I were made of air.

Comments: 0 Posted by michael on 13 April 2002 at 3:52 AM

I think I've mentioned here before that I ordered an essentially free (after rebates and things) scanner from staples. Well, in order to get my order over $100 so I could apply a $20 off coupon, I ordered some paper clips (17 cents for the one box I ordered). My paper clips arrived a few days ago. The paper clips were standard paper clips, about 100 or so in a box about 2 inches wide, an inch deep, and 3/4 of an inch tall. However, staples decided to ship this tiny box of paper clips in a much, much larger box. Imagine my surprise when I open a box that was about a foot wide, 9 inches deep and 4 inches tall, only to find a bunch of paper shoved into the box in order to keep the single box of paper clips from rattling around. The best part of all this? Staples paid the shipping on my order. So for the 17 cent box of paper clips, they must have paid in excess of a dollar or two to package and ship them to me.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 12 April 2002 at 1:33 PM

once people die, they stop buying things..

this amuses me.

Comments: 0 Posted by michael on 12 April 2002 at 1:12 AM

The following was in the gossip column of The Week, so its probably not true, but I thought it was funny anyway.

Ozzy Osbourne has snubbed Russell Yates. The husband of convicted child killer Andrea Yates was excited to learn that he and heavy-metal star Osbourne were going to be interviewed for the Today show in the same day, says the New York Post. While waiting in the green room, Yates sang several Black Sabbath songs. But when Osbourne was told that Yates wanted a photo with him, he responded, "I will burn his eyes out with a hot poker."

This is amusing on so many levels, but I'll just mention one. The day that Yates was being interviewed for the Today show was the same day that his wife's sentence was being handed down. And he chose to go to New York to be on the Today show rather than be in the court room for his wife's sentencing. There's something wrong about that, I think. Almost like he's trying to profit from his wife's horrible act. So even if Ozzy's statement is made-up, the sentiment is right on the money.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 12 April 2002 at 12:05 AM

As many of you know, michael and I made a movie last week. Now you can view both it, and all our competition. But before I give you the link, you have to promise to rate our movie as highly as possible, and to rate our competition as far down as you can. Have you promised? Good. Click here to view the movies. You can view our movie by clicking on the movie called "Making of a Flop."

The movie is rather funny; I think you'll like it. Bill Smart told me it was best of the lot, but he ranked Kevin's movie ("Curse of the Car Monster") higher than ours because Kevin actually used the footage of Bill that he filmed, and we just threw our footage of Bill out. I should note that Bill did tell us to burn the tape after he filmed it, so I think he was being a bit unfair.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 11 April 2002 at 4:57 PM

hiddeninput: I want a bonsai tree

nothingtobedone: you should build one

nothingtobedone: they sell kits.

hiddeninput: where

hiddeninput: ?

nothingtobedone: home depot.

hiddeninput: no they dont

hiddeninput: you are a liar

hiddeninput: liar liar

hiddeninput: liar

hiddeninput: liar

hiddeninput: liar

hiddeninput: liar liar

nothingtobedone: boooom!

hiddeninput: umm.

hiddeninput: what?

Comments: 0 Posted by michael on 11 April 2002 at 2:32 AM

Harsh words for ab9, Chris.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 10 April 2002 at 7:33 PM

I forgot to mention this last night, but I have exciting news. thats right.. theres new gloompuppy! I dont know if it was really worth the wait, but Im really going to try and stay on top of it for a while. one a week. really. well, maybe. I dont know. anyway, I am sleepy and have work to do tonight, and bleh bleh bleh.

Comments: 0 Posted by michael on 9 April 2002 at 5:49 PM

I don't think I've mentioned this here before, but if you know me in real life you have probably heard me complain about parking here at WashU. The combination of gestapo meter maids and not enough parking anywhere near where I want to park makes for an unhappy situation. Combine this with the fact that I routinely get tickets for parking next to my building, in a lot I paid $350 for the privelage of parking in, and the fact that many people without the proper permits quite often park in this same lot and never get tickets, and you find me not too favorably disposed toward WUPD or the parking masta foolyfools.

Now come the further developments that have caused me to wage war on WUPD.

Further development 1: the Thurtene Carnival is this coming weekend and this year it is being held in the parking lot near the AC. This is not a major problem, except that the parking lots near the AC, B-School, and Law School are all closed, and it seems that the spillover has been redirected into the blue lots near Millbrook, which are the only lots I can legally park in. So finding parking this week has been a major, major hassle.

Further development 2: according to signs posted on orange and white barriers placed around the parking lot near Millbrook 2 (my building), the lot that I normally park in will be closed for a special "Law School event" on April 12. This means that I have to move my car out of the lot by 9pm on April 11th or they will tow it out for me.

Combing these two developments together, I am left with the following thought. If there already isn't enough blue permit parking because of Thurtene, and they close a blue lot with over 100 parking spots, where the f*** am I supposed to park my car?

Now, I mentioned above that I am waging war on WUPD. For a normal person, this might involve sending a letter or email to the Transportation Dept., or perhaps going and complaining in person, but as many of you already know, I am not a normal person. Instead, I have devised a multi-part attack designed to let me leave my car where it is. Step one, which will be implemented tonight, involves removing all of the signs indicating that we aren't allowed to park in the lot on the 12th. Further steps involve finding the parking spot that will make it most difficult for them to tow my car, and then leave my car parked in such a way as to compound their difficulty in towing.

In order to be totally fair, I should mention that I've heard a rumor that blue permits are valid in yellow zones in the Millbrook garage for the duration of this week. Of course, yellow spots are rather hard to come by as well, so this doesn't fully solve my problem and will only anger yellow permit holders. Anyway, I'll update you on this situation as the week progresses.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 9 April 2002 at 11:59 AM

speaking of ninjas, a random gloompuppy fan contacted me this week, and in exchange for the comic goodness that I had provided him, he sent me a link to realultimatepower.net, a very informative ninja website. and I, finding it amusing, am passing it on to you.

Comments: 0 Posted by michael on 8 April 2002 at 1:50 AM

I saw the most god-awful previews before Big Trouble yesterday, but the absolute worst was for a movie called Country Bears. I don't even know how to describe it except as the biggest mistake in motion picture history, EVER. Whoever thought this concept up needs to be severely punished, but I can't think of a punishment horrible enough to be suitable.

(Want to know a secret? I think the DW mentioned on ab9online is me. But I could be wrong.)

Despite my promise earlier today, I never got around to doing any more cleaning than washing a few dishes. And the DVD player I wanted to get was sold out at CompUSA. I did put some new posters up in the ACM Lounge, so that's something I guess. But all things considered, not the best day for me.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 8 April 2002 at 12:11 AM

Around 4pm today I'm going to head out and buy a DVD player. I found a pretty good bargain on one, and I've been wanting one for a while so this seems like a good idea, especially given my recent subscription to netflix. When I get back, I'm going to do some massive spring cleaning. So if you see me on AIM after 6pm or so, please remind me to do some cleaning. This place really needs to be cleaned up. We have action figures and papers and other random things all over, and I'm tired of walking on them.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 7 April 2002 at 3:16 PM

Have you seen Big Trouble yet? If not, you should stop reading this website and go to your local movie establishment and watch it, as you will laugh your spectacles off.

I was browsing through Ben's Bargains today (as I do every day) and noticed that they had a link to a *free* scanner at Staples. All of you who know me in real life know of my obsession with finding bargains, so I'm sure you can predict exactly what I did. Yes, I ordered the scanner. I already have a scanner, but it's old and requires me to have a SCSI card in my computer, so I can't use it with my laptop, so this is a fairly good purchase for me. And it was free. Well, not really free. It's going to cost me 9 cents. But that's very close to free. Arbitrarily close, even.

My teeth are feeling a bit icky, so I'm going to go brush them now. Later.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 7 April 2002 at 2:13 PM

rachels cat is probably the most adorable animal I know of. I was sitting here trying to think of what to post about when out of nowhere he ran up to me, made a high pitched cooing noise, and dropped one of rachels hair rubber bands onto my lap. it was the cutest thing ever. see, he has this game he learned recently where you shoot the hair band across the room, and then he runs and brings it back to you. over and over and over again. he loves it. I dont know who said cats dont play fetch, but I think eliot would play fetch 24 hours a day if you let him.

anyway, I remembered what I wanted to post about: I saw "zwan: the people of the turntables" last night. at least thats what they were called this time. all and all, it was a good show. I cant say I enjoyed all the waiting (there was an hour and a half waiting outside, then another hour waiting for the opening band, then another hour waiting for zwan), but in the end the look on rachels face was worth it. we were about 6 feet away from billy corgan throughout, and it was pretty neat. also, to my great relief, billy corgan seems to heading back to more of his earlier style. actually, it was a lot like seeing siamese dream era billy. he was wearing a sort of 70s looking shirt that he said had been in his closet for the last 7 years, and since he wore a knitted stocking cap for most of the show I was even able to pretend he still had hair. plus, most importantly, the music was excellent (even if the vocals were almost impossible to hear). I kind of hope zwan decides to release an album, though, so that I can hear studio versions of some of those songs. I think they would be really good.

anyway, thats enough content from me for one night. Ill talk to you tomorrow.

Comments: 0 Posted by michael on 7 April 2002 at 1:49 AM

Last night, after getting my hair cut at 'A Cut Above the Rest' I decided to do a bit of grocery shopping. In order to mix things up, I thought I would check out the new Dierbergs over on Eager. It's a pretty nice store, and they had some reasonable prices, but what I was really really impressed by were the automatic checkout lanes. Instead of having cashiers, customers scan and bag their own groceries. It seems like more work for the customer, but its pretty nice. I did a better job og bagging than the people who usually bag my groceries and it didn't take that long to get through the line. Are automated checkout systems the wave of the future? I would think so, so you should get used to them.

I've been doing some thinking about ACM recently, and I've decided that a few things need to change. I'd go into more detail, but James is on his way over to pick me up so I need to wrap this up. Anyway, I'll finish this thought later tonight.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 6 April 2002 at 4:41 PM

michael and I were up to almost 9am workin on a movie for the iMovieContest. We ended up with a mildly amusing video, but I suspect it wasn't good enough to win us one of the prizes. Anyway, we didn't have time to download a copy of the movie last night, so you'll have to wait a bit before we post it here.

I hope michael made it to Columbia without any major incidents. He only had a couple hours of sleep last night, and he seemed very tired when he left. But I got my second wind this afternoon and was motivated enough to run some errands. Hopefully the same thing happened to him before he drove home.

I'm watching th Osbournes on MTV right now. It rocks; you should check it out. When this is over, I'll probably watch a DVD (I joined NetFlix last weekend, so I have a few DVDs to watch) and get some sleep.

Oh, Chris, michael, and I got an apartment today. It's not really big, but it's a good location and a good price. I'm pretty happy with it.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 5 April 2002 at 7:55 PM

There may be some good news on the apartment front; we'll know for sure tomorrow. Tonight michael and I are working on a movie for the Apple iMovie contest. We've had a lot of false starts and wasted time, but we might get something done. Tomorrow we have a meeting with Dr. Grimm to discuss how the WUgrade project should proceed. We presented the project to the faculty on Wednesday. They had some concerns about security, but I think the overall reception was pretty good. There have even been some rumors about getting paid for working on it; that would be very cool.

On an unrelated note, Aaron, I think the anger you expressed in your most recent post came from the fact that the 'Yonsei' kid bested you in the duel of swords. But I could be wrong.

Oh. I forgot about Gosford Park. James, michael, and I saw Gosford Park at the Tivoli tonight. michael claims he only understood about every other word because of the weird accents, but I really liked it.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 5 April 2002 at 4:49 AM

After waking up every morning for the past three weeks and hurting myself by walking on something (empty suitcase from spring break, textbooks that I've put on the floor, etc.) on the floor of my room I've decided that tonight will be "Clean the Apartment" night. Maybe I'll even get my desk clean enough that I have space to put my laptop on it.

In other news, michael, Nick, Chris, and I found out yesterday that WUgrade did not win the Micorsoft contest. We're still hoping the CS department will adopt it though. In fact, we're presenting it at the faculty meeting today at noon. Hopefully they'll be impressed.

When michael and I were talking to Dr. Smart on Monday he told us about a very amusing website called Lego Death. He said it was probably "inappropriate" to show it to us, but he did so anyway. Regardless, it's a very amusing website, and I recommend it highly. (Thanks, Dr. Smart.)

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 3 April 2002 at 10:55 AM

Good afternoon, sports fans. As many of you know today is April Fool's Day. I'm sure that many of you are wondering what michael and I did for our April Fool's joke, so I thought I'd tell you. michael and I spent all of last night spray-painting metal trashcans in our common room. The results of our labor is displayed below:

For those of you who can't tell the difference, the one on the right is Dr. Smart's research robot, and the one on the left is the fake robot michael and I made last night. We hid Dr. Smart's robot and put our robot in its place. Apparently, when Dr. Smart showed up in the morning, he tried to check and see if his robot was plugged in before he realized that it wasn't his robot.

Anyway, we think this is pretty funny. If you'd like to see some more pictures, point your browser here.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 1 April 2002 at 7:17 PM