blah blah blah

Fridat Five

I actually started writing these responses earlier thismorning before the sun came up but seeing as im not stuck in syracuse for the immediate future unti lthis snow lets up ill finish them

1. Do you enjoy the cold weather and snow for the holidays?
Absolutely. It also makes winter sports a tad easier.

2. What is your ideal holiday celebration? How, where, with whom would you celebrate to make things perfect?
Ideal holiday celebration is a nice huge dinner wih friends. When I say huge, im talking either (tenderloin or peasant) yorkshire pudding, fresh salad baked apples, eggnog, wine with everything and a roaring fire to retire to aftr people are done eating. There are certain people I would love to share this type of mean with, but because of previous committments they've never been able to make it.

3. Do you do have any holiday traditions?
we do a get together with my father's brother and his wife/children. Then we usually have the grandmother over on christmas day so she dosn't get lonly.

4. Do you do anything to help the needy?
donate some money, canned goods and some toys.

5. What one gift would you like for yourself?
quite honestly there isn't anything I really need, although a Hudson Bay Blanket would be nice, or a new slalom ski for the lake (which btw hasn't even iced over yet, so technically we could throw the boat back into the water if I could find a dry suit)

Dilbert Newsletter

I forgot that I was subscribed to this list because I hadn't gotten an email in so long, but I give it to all for the enjoyment

Dilbert Newsletter 52.0

"A Little Ray of Bitter Sunshine"

*************************************************
********** SPECIAL HOLIDAY EDITION ***********
*************************************************

To: Dogbert's New Ruling Class (DNRC)
From: Scott Adams (scottadams@aol.com)
Date: December 2003

DNRC Status
-----------

There are 674,953 members of DNRC. Non-members, the so-called In-duh-viduals, will someday be your domestic servants when Dogbert conquers the world. And that means each of you will have a dedicated Induhvidual who dresses as Sponge Bob and follows you until you look like you're about to sneeze. Then he'll fling himself in the expectorant's trajectory in the nick of time. He'll try to tuck and roll, but it won't work because he has square pants. You'll never get tired of watching it. You might even stop taking your allergy meds.

Holiday Thoughts
----------------

If you're following the news, you know that the major religions differ in their interpretation of the holy books. For example, one way to interpret God's will is that you should love your neighbor. An alternate reading of the holy books might lead you to rig a donkey cart with small mortar rockets and aim it at a hotel full of infidels. In summary, po-tay-to, poh-tah-to. Religions are very flexible, and that's a loophole that the DNRC should exploit, especially during the holiday season.

Imagine, if you will, that all DNRC members moved their holiday gift-buying from December to January to take advantage of the sales. Then imagine that the money saved on gifts is invested at 5% compounded interest for 80 years. You'll be dead by then, but your estates would be worth literally hundreds of dollars, maybe more. Anyway, the point is that it's easier to park at the mall in January, and that's something that Jesus, Mohammed and Buddha would all agree is a good thing. Especially Buddha, if you know what I mean.

Personally, I want a religion that says it's okay for me to RECEIVE gifts, while warning that I'll burn in hell forever if I try to GIVE any. Furthermore, if I open a gift that seems poorly thought-out, it would be my religious obligation to smash it against a wall while the giver watches in horror. Some people might say to me, "Hey, where did you get that religion? Did you pull it out of your @$$?" But people are polite and rarely ask that sort of question even when you think they should.

Quotes From Induhviduals
-------------------------

Observant DNRC members continue to send me true quotes of Induhviduals. As previously discovered, you can string them together in almost any order and they make an excellent story:

Example:

The phone was ringing off its hinges. I didn't want to stir the apple cart. It was so quiet you could hear a needle drop in a haystack. It was time to separate the wheat from the baby.

I usually don't put my chickens before the horse, but all is fair in horseshoes and hand-grenades. It was time to get the train out of the harbor because not everything that shines is baloney. I didn't have many bullets left in the tank and I was shooting at straws, running on exhaustion fumes, looking for a seed that would get it over the hump. I didn't want to sit in the hotbox with my fingers in my earballs. It was a huge incontinence for me, but it's water under the dam now, so I put the ball in the other shoe, and that took the steam out of my sails. No point in making a molehill out of an elephant. I mean, you can try, but it's like waiting for toast to boil. That's why I say you shouldn't let people get under your goat. If you do the legwork, you'll have all of your balls in the air. It's like six of one and two dozen of the other. Eventually the penny will come home to roost. You are the wind beneath my cheeks.

The End

Important
---------

Make sure you get your Dilbert page-a-day calendar before they run out. Last year I got a zillion e-mails in January asking where to buy the sold-out calendar.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?tag=newsletter1-20&path=tg/detail/-/0740736531

Induhvidual Tales
----------------------

Here are some inspirational tales of Induhviduals, submitted by DNRC members. As usual, I suspect that many of them are either urban legend or lifted from past Dilbert Newsletters that I've forgotten. But that doesn't make them less funny.

---

I once read an article about a person who was against daylight savings time. She said that the extra hour of sunlight would kill the grass. I mentioned this story to my sister, laughing while I did so, and my sister replied that there WAS extra sunlight during daylight savings. I explained that congress couldn't legislate extra sunlight. To this day my college-educated sister believes that daylight savings time gives us extra sunlight.

--

One of our managers, in trying to explain how versatile he is, described himself as "multi-flaccid."

--

This morning while I was in our office kitchen, a co-worker walked up to me and asked when my birthday was. I told her November. She looked puzzled and asked if it was this coming November.

--

Some colleagues and I were out to lunch when peers from a local competitor entered the restaurant with a young engineer who was obviously being interviewed. (We eavesdropped.) When asked why he went to a local college rather than a nearby nationally ranked engineering school, the new guy said, "It's too competitive. I can't take that kind of pressure."

We hope they hired him.

--

My ex's mom took the written test to become a school bus driver. She was explaining that the whole process was very difficult. She kept talking about how hard the key-nah-low-gee test was. When I realized she was talking about a "knowledge" test I had to leave the room to avoid hurting her feelings by "laughing like a banshee."

--

One of my two bosses took the company credit card on a business trip. Meanwhile we needed the credit card number to buy a server. My other boss said, "We used to have a sheet of paper around the office that had all our company credit card numbers with their expiration dates and security codes. I wonder what happened to that. Maybe we should make another one."

--

I was working at an office supply store several years ago when I received a phone call. The caller told me that someone had broken into his office and stolen his fax machine. I sympathized. Then he asked me "How do I keep the people who stole my fax machine from receiving my faxes?"

Dilbert Gift Ideas Under $20
----------------------------

If you're stuck with buying a gift under $20 and you're too lazy to walk to a store, you can order online Dilbert books, calendars, mugs, framed comics, PDA calendars for Palm OS, hats, posters, mouse covers, mouse pads, shirts, cell phone covers, and mints.

http://dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/shop/index.html

Also check out the latest Get Fuzzy book:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?tag=unitedmedia&path=tg/detail/-/0740733001/qid%3D1067456885/sr%3D1-4

And the latest Pearls Before Swine book:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?tag=unitedmedia&path=tg/detail/-/0740734377/qid%3D1067456973/sr%3D1-1

Holiday Story
-------------

In the tradition of the Dilbert Newsletter, here is my special holiday story -- the only non-cynical thing I write all year.

Recent True Story:

Midnight, Danville California, heart pounding, sound of sneakers on pavement, sockless, sweating, adrenaline pumping. Two minutes ago I was climbing into bed. Now I'm running down a pitch-black street, full speed, fearing the worst.

Neighbor's sidewalk, dark, don't trip. KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK. Doorbell too. DING-DONG-DING. C'mon, c'mon, wake up! There he is. Open the door. I blurt:

"THE HILL BEHIND YOUR HOUSE IS ON FIRE. I ALREADY CALLED 911!"

Two houses alerted. The next one is the hardest. It's around the corner, nearest the blaze. Full sprint. Hope the fire hasn't reached them yet. No sirens. How long has it been since I called 911? Damn moonless night. I can't see anything but the fire, now only a patch of dry grass from the house. No lights. The occupants are oblivious, probably in bed. Front walkway is an obstacle course. Jump, guess, steps maybe. Got lucky, no sprains.

KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK.

"THE HILL BEHIND YOUR HOUSE IS ON FIRE. I ALREADY CALLED 911!"

He's fast with the garden hose. Does that ever work? One more house, then I'll load the car for evacuation. Legs pump harder, pick it up a notch, sprint now, rest later, make a mental list of what to take, what to leave. Cats first, then unfinished Dilbert strips and art supplies. Computers. Photos. How much can the car hold?

The firemen have my address. Have to meet them out front. Gotta hurry, but save some energy for the evacuation. Nah, forget saving energy. Full throttle. Adrenalin will compensate. Siren approaching. They're fast, maybe 5 minutes since I called. I wave my arms and point to the side street. The fire truck slows a beat, reads me and accelerates toward the fire.

One truck. ONE TRUCK???? The whole hill is on fire. I should have sounded more worried on the phone. It's my fault if the neighborhood burns up. Okay, the arsonist's too.

I fly up my stairs, three at a time. Quickly, survey belongings. Might not see any of this again. Pam already put two angry cats in the car; her arms are bleeding. I throw possessions in empty bins. Look out the window. I could hit the flames with a golf ball. Nothing but dry underbrush separates us. Stay calm. There's still some room in the car. Think, think. What will I miss most? What am I forgetting?

The car is only half full. It's surprising how little I "need" when it comes down to it. I sprint toward the fire to see who's winning. A second fire truck passes me. Now it's a fair fight.

The neighbors gather on the street, a ragtag theater of bed- hair, pajamas, and gym clothes, chatting, comparing stories. We watch, impressed, as the two fire crews beat down the fire one square foot at a time. They don't even seem worried. A dozen dark shapes on the hill make quick work of the perimeter and methodically mop up the smaller pockets. My pulse slowly returns to normal. I unload the car and apologize to the cats.

I often think about that fire, and about the many ghosts that visited the neighborhood that summer night. I'm sure I felt the ghosts of engineers who created a technical miracle called the phone network, that later spawned the 911 system, so I could report the fire within 15 seconds of seeing it. And I know I saw the ghosts of engineers who designed the fire equipment that allowed two small teams of firefighters to conquer a burning hill. And there were the ghosts of all the firefighters who have lived before, having bequeathed their skills and traditions to each new generation. Most notably, that night I was also visited by the ghosts of September 11th, my old friends. Almost every day they visit to remind me to be more alert, to investigate strange smells, strange sounds, as I did that night, until finding one window view that revealed the flames.

Philosophers have many views of the human soul. In the end, it's undefined, unfathomable. The only thing I know for sure is that no one really leaves.

Appreciate your ghosts, especially the ones you can still hug. Have a great holiday.

Scott Adams

turnaround

turn around is fair play, so im going to have to give Dan props for making me laugh tonight

located in his AIM profile was the following:

Top 5 names for this war we're in:
* Dubya Dubya III
* Rolling Blunder
* Desert Slog
* Mess in Potamia
* Blood, Baath and Beyond

on a separate note, the car has been filled with gas, I bought 4 bottles of wine for the family christmas dinner we have with my father's brothers family, i've begun to clean my room up and get papers done.

Thats right 4 bottles, 9 people, you do the math :-)

insomniacs unite

IN honor is the fact that my degree choice has now completely and utterly fucked up my sleep schedule I give you the following Insomnia. I was lying in bed for two hours befor I realized the futiliy of trying to sleep so I just gave up and decided to continue working on a couple of different papers

Deep in the bosom of the gentle night
Is when I search for the light
Pick up my pen and start to write
I struggle, fight dark forces
In the clear moon light
Without fear... insomnia
I can't get no sleep

I used to worry, thought I was goin' mad in a hurry
Gettin' stress, makin' excess mess in darkness
No electricity, something's all over me, greasy
Insomnia please release me and let me dream of
Makin' mad love to my girl on the heath
Tearin' off tights with my teeth
But there's no release, no peace
I toss and turn without cease
Like a curse, open my eyes and rise like yeast
At least a couple of weeks
Since I last slept, kept takin' sleepers
But now I keep myself pepped
Deeper still, that night I write by candle light
I find insight, fundamental movement, uh
So when it's black this insomniac take an original tack
Keep the beast in my nature under ceaseless attack
I gets no sleep
I can't get no sleep

I can't get no sleep
I can't get no sleep
I need to sleep, I can't get no sleep
I need to sleep, I can't get no sleep

Get the F-out

65 hours from now im going to be in one of two places

(1) in a car driving from Concord to NH or
(2) asleep in a bed at the lake house

for information about how i'll be driving see this entry

two exams, one paper, and handing in a program before I leave...I might not hand in the paper while im here, but rather email the .dvi or .ps file to the professor to deal with. Oh yea somewhere in there I'm ahving lunch with two people as well.

Current reading

I broke down and started reading a new book the other day " Bauhaus: Crucible of Modernism." I must say that not having an art background and then reading this book was a little tedious at the begining, it continues to grow on me. Its interesting to see where a lot of our current design concepts originated

one review: The Bauhaus is the most celebrated artistic institution of our time. In the fourteen years of its existence in Weimar Germany, the Bauhaus became a center where the ideas that would dominate art in the twentieth century clashed and became defined. The ideas forged within the school literally transformed our landscape. Almost nothing we read, wear, or live in is devoid of its influence. Yet there has been a history of the Bauhaus. For the first time, Elaine S. Hochman sets the school in the context of the turbulent times to which it was born following the collapse of Imperial Germany in 1919. The Bauhaus emerged just as radical social and political upheavals swept through Europe in the wake of World War I, a product of the convulsions of an age when the contest between ideologies was fought with the fervor of a religious war. Left was pitted against right of the streets, and these battles penetrated the walls of the Bauhaus as well. They shaped the destiny of the fledgling school and those who taught there, including some of the most illustrious names in the world of modern art - Walter Gropius, Mies van der Rohe, Lyonel Feininger, Paul Klee, and Wassily Kandinsky. Hochman's access to the school's archives, previously off limits to Western scholars, provides an intimate day-to-day perspective of the school which reveals a different Bauhaus than the one projected by its latter-day champions in the U.S. This is the Bauhaus of its contemporaries, for whom the political and cultural implications were often more important than aesthetics.

Effort

in an effort not to make my day a complete waste of time ive done the following
work on my 583 paper, watch 2 dvds, and find the foolowing website which by the way is hilarious

WasteofTime

Not for dialup

I finally got around to posting the pictures from thanksgiving break.
Dial-up users beware, these are HUGE files. Because of their size you can click on each picture individually to see what it is

pictures
more pictures

Languages

ok, im well into a second hand in terms of programming languages I know pretty well so the following comes with a fair amount of experience.

I HATE C/C++ more than words can express.

Java is such an easier language to work with. I know what you are thinking 'he just likes java because it was the first programming language he learned' WRONG. It was the 4th or 5th (I started learning two at the same time so the timeline gets a bit fuzzy).

It looks like Henry even though he is sick is going to be pulling an all-nighter to get a project done for tomorrow (even though he is sick...again). Sooooooo looking forward to the weekend and being able to stay in bed for extended periods of time.

and for those of you who don't know what syracuse weather is like:

Decmeber et al.

Well now that December has arrived we can now start doing fun wintery type shit. This means x-country skiing, downhill skiing, and doing the winter drink thing :-)

As such below are two of my favorite holiday recipies, that even idiots should be able to manage

T&B Beal Eggnog

1 Cup Sugar
1 quart of heavy cream
stir together and set aside

separate 8 eggs into two bowls (yokes in one, whites in the other)
Beat the egg-whites until they form stiff peaks and set aside
take 7 of the egg yokes and beat until they are well blended (aka light and frothy)

mix the cream and sugar mixture into the egg yokes

fold in the egg whites

add 1 table-spoon of freshly ground nutmeg

stirr in 7oz of dark rum and 3oz of cognac

refrigerate for a couple of hours or a day before serving.
make sure you stir atleast once a day or the stuff will separate.
IT MUST BE KEPT COLD. If you leave it unrefrigerated overnight, throw it out
---------------------------------------
Sugar Pecans

pre-heat oven to 225
add 1 egg-white and 1tsp of water
beat until soft peaks form

slowly add (while beating) 1/2 cup of sugar, 1 tsp of cinnamon

add 5 cups of pecans, fold together until the pecans are completely covered

spread on a cookie sheet and dake in the oven for 1 hour
turning the pecans every 15 minutes.

let cook and eat :-)

Which Threat are you?

Threat rating: Medium. Your total lack of decent
family values makes you dangerous, but we can
count on some right wing nutter blowing you up
if you become too high profile.


What threat to the Bush administration are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

courtesy of kyle

New toys

well technically these arn't new, but They've been inactive for the past year...now they are hooked up to the stereo downstairs :-)

thanks to reid for the picture

Other new and exciting developments in the land of henry:

(1)Batteries finally were in stock for the UPS. Currently my room has
1440Va,300Va and 350Va UPSs :-) bring on the power outages
(2)A faculty member asked me to proctor a final exam for him. This will be
interesting. I never took the class and the exam is next monday from
715-10pm (ouch)
(3)Added some stuff to the windshield fluid to lower the freezing temperature

iTunes update

update on the iTunes battle. I think I finally might have made it my bitch (at least I would like to think so). I finally relabeled all the crap the it decided to mislabel. I have now found out about the cool feature which allows me to insert a CD into the drive and then iTune will rip all the songs, label them, and insert the relevant info in the IDv3 tags. WOOT :-)

My next major project will be going through my entire cd binder (which I finally managed to locate after 3 1/2 months...turns out I had made it into my bed at home)....200 CDs is going to take a long ass time though. Someone who knows the difference, what are the differences between ACC and MP3?

Everything and then some

As promised a longer entry about the Turkey Massacre Break

Tuesday:
Dropped a friend off in Rome (NY) and started the long freaking drive back to Concord. Things I observed along the way:

Students with Mass plates will set a speed around 80 when they initially start out, however the closer they get to the MA border, the faster and faster they go. Do people from Massachusetts really hate NYState all that much….my conclusion after talking to people the answer is YES.

Massachusetts drivers get more and more aggressive the closer they get to the MA border. 6 words for all of you: Don’t Get In Our Fucking Way. They don’t call people from Massachusetts MassHoles for nothing. We take our nickname and earn it

Ok back to the story. The exit from the Pike to Worchester was backed up for about a mile, normally this wouldn’t piss me off all that much, but when I finally got around the corner to the toll-booth, the fucking fast-lane had no one in it…WTF??? I waited in 15 minutes of traffic because people couldn’t get out of my way so I could my fast-lane pass (I hate all of you fuckers…for NY people FastLane=EZpass).

Off the Pike now, Worchester was initially fine then after I got ½ way through and the traffic stopped. If I got out of my car and walked on my hands I could have gone faster. This happened again when I was trying to get onto 495 (except this backup lasted for about 5 miles).

Home, food, bottle of wine, bed.

Wed:
I don’t remember what I did this day, and that is probably a good thing. I probably was working on my Graphics project, but once again that’s a bit of a guess. Foods, wine, phone with friends, bed.

Thursday:
This is the day I dread. Getting together with my father’s sister’s family. Its not his sis and the husband I mind so much, its their oldest son and his wife. They won’t accept the fact that they are wrong. She is a vegetarian and makes everything miserable for the rest of the family because we can’t use recipes we normally use. They talk about everything that they are doing and won’t let anyone else get a word in edgewise. Dad’s sis picked out the wine for the meal…one word CRAP. I’ve tasted wine that cost less than 5 dollars a bottle that was better than the piss they served. Next time I BRING THE DRINKS.

Friday:
Again I can’t remember much of this day. There was probably a long fire though

Saturday:
I’ve looked forward to this day for the past week. Getting together with Evan, Phil, Meg and Meg’s boyfriend. We spent a couple of hours at the MFA looking at the Rembrandt exhibit and then wandering through the permanent collections. If anyone has a free moment and you are in Boston go see the Rembrandt exhibit (in the middle of the week, its crowded on the weekends). Dinner at some awesome Sushi place I should have taken a picture of the sign (Meg what was the name of the place). Back to Meg’s BFs apartment for some talking, games and then I had to go back to Concord .

For the record, Phile Evan and I went to the same highschool(boarding) for three years, Loomis Chaffee. Actually we lived in the same dorm for those 3 years so we got to know eachother pretty well. Technically Evan spent four years there, but who really cares. For this reason, conversation during dinner was a trip down memory lane :-)

Sunday:
More time in the fucking car. That more or less sums it up.

I can’t find my Photoshop CDs, so until either (1) I buy a new copy (2) I ‘borrow’ someone else’s copy or (3) I find my copy, pictures won’t be up. They just take up too much space. They are about 2MB a piece, and I don’t think Reid who is hosting my blog would appreciate it if I started dumping 100MB of pictures onto his server.

Quote of the Weekend:
"I'm a member of P.E.T.A....People for the Eating of Tasty Animals" --Phil