Geocaching

Found my second geocache today. I don't have a GPS receiver, so I just use Google Maps. Works well enough, but I think it'd be way easier with coordinates.

I think I might try to take my brother's bike out for a ride today and hit a few more if I can.

And later, I might get that sweet Garmin Edge GPS receiver, like the one Smithers uses for his Motion-Based stuff. A lot of cash, but totally worth it!

Fatty McFatfat

Every day I spend here, I get a little farther from any goals I have for my life. I've probably gained three or four pounds of solid blubber since Thursday. And I've barely done any reading or studying.

But what the hell. Life is good, at least for now.


Also,

What do you think about the US's announcement of support for Ethiopa and Somalia's joint war against the Islamic courts? I think it's a pretty smart move to draw off "Islamist" fighters out of Iraq and into Somalia. And the Somali government is brand new and internationally recognized, so you've gotta like that. Sure, Ethiopia is mildly repressive, but as long as the US doesn't hand out Scuds or anything, I suppose things should work out fine.

Simplest Google String

My friend Mike T. pointed out that if you Google "blogspot bike notre dame football awesome" my blog comes up. On the first page, even.

That is pretty amazing. So I started messing around with different combinations of words that could also bring up my blog, and what other stuff also comes up frequently. I started wondering what the shortest, most concise search phrase could bring up my blog on Google on the first page of results.

Then I realized that would likely change as I add more to the site. I think Amazon already thought of this idea though, with their Statistically Improbable Phrases. I wonder how they find those.

Home for the Holidizzle

Jeez, this place has changed. All my younger brothers and sisters are quite a bit bigger than when I last saw them.

Also, the plan to get fit over break is shot to hell. I gotta work a little harder on this. My family really likes to eat.

I'm going to try to start writing about stuff besides myself. That stuff bores me, even.

So...

What do you think about, uh... affirmative action? I think that, and abortion are the two most difficult topics these days. It's really hard to find common ground on those, even between serious, sensible people. I think it's because the answers you arrive at depend on beliefs about subjects that are difficult to get facts on. Like, what constitutes a person? Or, how racist is American society today?

That bums me out, because I like to think that policy questions could be easily resolved by proceding from the facts to logical conclusions.

Notre Dame's Ticket Policy, and Scalping

Smithers has big discussion going on about scalping.

I have always thought it is not a big deal. In fact, I think scalpers are providing a valuable service to society by making tickets easier to buy and sell.

My experience here at Notre Dame has really reinforced that belief. Any student can buy a season-ticket package of seven games for $207. You're not allowed to sell them above face value, and only a tiny proportion of students are even allowed to sell them at face value. And that's only after standing in line for a while and giving them the full name of the person you're selling them to.

Bottom line: I only ended up being able to go to three games, at an average cost of about $70 per game! I wasn't even allowed to give my ticket to some alumni association who could make sure it got in the hands of a true fan. Instead my seat sat empty for four games, one of them being the crucial loss to Michigan.

I really think this is a big reason why Notre Dame football has such a lame crowd. The people who have tickets generally don't pay as much as they would at other games. Even Georgia Tech has a more swaggering, hostile atmosphere than we do. I think a lot of that is all the empty student seats and the fact that the most rabid fans are often left out in the parking lot with no ticket, Rudy-style.

I don't think I am ever going to another Notre Dame football game as long as the Ticket Office maintains these ridiculous policies. I guess that's what they want, though. Now they have one more seat to sell at full price or more, or to allot to the fans of opposing schools.

Relaaaaaxing

Man, I am really enjoying break. Wake up when I want, do whatever the hell I feel like, then go to sleep. No deadlines, only a couple projects.

I recently bought Sid Meier's Pirates! for PC, the new version a game I played when I was a kid. It is sweet! And it's rated E for Everyone, so if you know any kids who like pirates (and who doesn't?) this game makes a great gift. $20 at Best Buy.

But I had forgotten how much time computer games can waste. I don't think I even left the house yesterday!

Monday was really nice (about 40) so I went for a spin. I took the Novara Randonee because I was worried about the rims on the BMC. It was a pretty nice 30-mile spin, but I can't charge up hills like I could when I was slimmer and on a race bike. And I think the saddle is just barely low, because I started feeling it in the left kee toward the end. But not a bad performance considering this was probably the first trip on the Randonee over 7 miles or so.

Did you know that it is a big-time crime to return out-of-state containers in Michigan? What am I going to do with this giant bag of cans now? How the hell do they know the cans are from Indiana? I was really looking forward to working the little can machine, too.

A guy in my class is from Grosse Pointe, Michigan, so maybe he will have tips on how to smuggle cans into the mitten state.

Stupid laptop

I got a free laptop as part of my GLOBES fellowship, but haven't really had time to make it do anything besides answer email and do math.

Yesterday I went to Best Buy to pick out a game to play now that I have some free time for that sort of thing. I picked out Medieval II: Total War because I liked its prequel Rome: Total War an awful lot.

But it doesn't seem to want to play. It installed fine, and the intro cutscenes worked fine, but when you go to actually play a battle, the whole thing freezes up.

What really sucks is that it's hard to get support for this sort of thing because once you open a video game, you can't take it back due to copyright crap. So they have no incentive to make the game actually playable, except that you might tell your friends how weak the game is.

So everyone: Don't buy Medieval II unless you have a really sweet graphics card and a desktop computer. This game has some pretty serious system requirements.

In other news, the BMC cleaned up pretty nice, but the cleats were slipping on my new Sidi's, so I had to cut it short. Maybe I will try again today, but I think I will probably take out the Novara Randonee instead, even though it has platform pedals.

I think I will hook it up with some mountain pedals and shoes later on. I'm hoping to get some shoes that I can walk around in and wear to class too. Weight isn't such a big deal as walkability. I'm thinking maybe something along the lines of the Shimano MT31, but I'm under a strict moratorium on new bke spending until after Xmas.

Done! Break plans.

Finally done with finals! I passed at least two of them for sure, and probably passed the other two as well. So it is looking likely that I will in fact be back for another semester of fun!

So I spent yesterday cleaning the BMC and getting it road-ready. Today I will take it out for a spin and see how it feels. I've gained about six or seven pounds over this past semester and I'd like to have most of it off before school starts again in about a month.

I also spent some time back on the trainer. That was nice. I am hoping to get into some kind of routine with that. I need to work on finding my maximum heart rate and figuring out what an optimal heart rate is for fat-burning. I'm not too worried about the muscle loss as I am about the extra poundage.

The break also gives me the opportunity to really focus on one or two things that kinda got glossed over in the actual semester and really get them down cold. I am used to learning things inside and out, but his semester my grip on most concepts has been kinda slippery. That makes me more than a little uncomfortable. But maybe after break I will be able to say I have a few things mastered.

Sara is working until Thursday next week, and then we are going down to Peoria to hang with my family. Then on the 30th, up to central Minnesota for a family ski vacation. I am hoping to stop by the Cities for a day or so to maybe see some friends, pick up some old bike parts and frames I had to leave behind, and maybe hit the Mall Of The Free World.

Directly after that (circa the 7th) I will be back on campus to see a few of the department's job talks. We are hiring like crazy here and it is always neato to see what kind of stuff people are coming up with straight out of school. Gives you some ideas for your own research, and you learn what makes a good presentation and what parts really suck to sit through.

Play the game.

I got this from Smithers. Diggit:

www.lost.eu/f468

It has nothing to do with the TV show, but it is kinda neat anyway.

Another neat site I just discovered: Wikimapia

blergh

I hate mornings. I like to get 9 or 9.5 hours of sleep. When that doesn't happen, I can usually still function okay for most of the day, but it takes a few hours to get going.

Here's what Seinfeld has to say about it:
[From The Glasses, originally aired 5/30/93]

I never get enough sleep. I stay up late at night, cause I'm Night Guy. Night Guy wants to stay up late. 'What about getting up after five hours sleep?', oh that's Morning Guy's problem. That's not my problem, I'm Night Guy. I stay up as late as I want.

So you get up in the morning, you're exhausted, groggy, oooh I hate that Night Guy! See, Night Guy always screws Morning Guy. There's nothing Morning Guy can do. The only Morning Guy can do is try and oversleep often enough so that Day Guy looses his job and Night Guy has no money to go out anymore.

Damn! I can only hope that this kind of punishment makes me get to bed a little earlier.

If Allan can post, so can I

I found out recently that my friend Allan is blogging again. So I am inspired to give tis mother another try.

He is also getting married to G, who is a pretty awesome dudette. I know you are all bummed that they will be permanently unavailable, but wish the happy couple Congratulations! anyway.

In other news, my own lovely lady got a job recently here on campus. She is working for the tax department until March or so. I think she is really bored, but it pays better than my job. And it keeps her busy.

Plus, she works in the building right across from me. So we can eat lunch together and whatnot. Which is nice.

Okay, I better stop writing before I use up all my news and have nothing to post about later.