Checksum Arcanius

So, I took this quiz (just 20 questions) and it told me that “You are a GRAMMAR GOD.”
It went on to say, “If your mission in life is not already to preserve the English tongue, it should be. Congratulations and thank you!”
Wow, if only all godhood were so easy.
If you want to try to become a Grammar God as well, hop on over to the “ How grammatically sound are you?” quiz at Quizilla.

And that was my break between cleaning the deck and cleaning the bathroom. If it weren’t for music, I could never clean anything. Yay. Also, it appears that the strange crash my computer suffered last night erased all my bookmarks. Good thing I don’t use them extensively.

A week ago, my ping in Counterstrike started sucking like a well-paid whore. It came to a head (pun not unintended) around wednesday, when the cable modem would reset about every five minutes, and pings were between 80 and 3000 milliseconds, when the pakcet made it at all (over 25% packet loss). So I called Comcast and made an appointment. The next few days were smooth sailing. Including earlier today. And since there is a possibility the technician would have charged us money if he found nothing wrong, I cancelled the appointment. Not one minute later, my ping went back through the roof. I am holding my breath in anticipation of the packet loss (which is now starting I notice, taking a look at HLSW), the 2.1k/s downloads, and the complete loss of all internet for a couple of days, just like last time. The scary thing is, it started happening immediately after I cancelled the appointment. I’m serious. I was playing counterstirke before, and no problems. Pings of 30-50, with the occasional spike that everyone experienced. Then I found a phone and cancelled the appointment. Then I played CS again, and my ping was never better than 100 and it averaged 200-300. CS is unplayable like that at the level I play, at least. The timing makes me think conspiratorial thoughts… One has to wonder….

Now on to the next topic, girls. So, last week, on tuesday, I’m sitting in the L-lounge after my tennis class and before my DiffEq class, reading my book because there was a quiz. In comes a girl from my photography class last quarter. I didn’t get to know her very well during the quarter, but we were friendly, so we wave. She comes and sits near me, and we talk until our 10:30 classes. On thursday (the next day of my tennis class) I head into the L-lounge again (since thats what I do) and she’s sitting there. I pull up a chair and the scene repeats itself. Everyone is happy.
So, over the weekend I get to thinking, this girl and I get along, she seems interested (she did, after all, come up to me in the first place, wehn we didn’t even have a class together any more) , and she’s friggen hot. That same weekend, my mom comes and tells me about how good the showing of “Man of La Mancha” is at the Village Theater in Issaquah. So I put 2 and 2 together, and decide that I’ll be a gentleman and give the girl almost a full week’s notice instead of springing the idea on her on the weekend. Sure enough, the next tuesday, she’s there, and we talk. Right before class, I pop the question. We’ve been talking about work through in the rest of the conversation, and she’s working a lot that weekend, so I’m not put off when she tells me she has to check her schedule and will let me know on Thursday. I’m cool with that, I’m pretty flexible, and I figure she’ll probally say yes, since we’re getting along so well. Well, clearly, that is not what happened. I could have handled a No. I wouldn’t have minded. I would have backed off, gone back to friendly conversation, just enjoyed her company if she wasn’t interested in anything more. No. Its a one syllable word. Its easy to say. She probally said it a lot when she was 2. That was 18 years ago. She shouldn’t have forgetten.
But… appreantly she did. On thursday, I was a little nervous, but I figured, a no wouldn’t be so bad. I was ready for it. But instead, she wasn’t there. Poof. Gone. She changed her entire everyday routine just to avoid me. I can handle rejection, but I’m not sure what I should make of this. I don’t think I’m that revolting. Maybe I’m wrong, but I could handle even being told that. But what the hell is this avoidance routine? I think my good friends at Nada Surf said it well in their song “Popular”:

“Three important rules for breaking up
Don’t put off breaking up when you know you want to
Prolonging the situation only makes it worse
Tell him honestly, simply, kindly, but firmly
Don’t make a big production
Don’t make up an elaborate story
This will help you avoid a big tear jerking scene
If you wanna date other people say so
Be prepared for the boy to feel hurt and rejected
Even if you’ve gone together for only a short time,
And haven’t been too serious,
There’s still a feeling of rejection
When someone says she preferres the company of others
To your exclusive company,
But if you’re honest, and direct,
And avoid making a flowery emotional speech when you brake the news,
The boy will respect you for your frankness,
And honestly he’ll apeciate the kind of straight foward manner
In which you told him your decision
Unless he’s a real jerk or a cry baby you will remain friends”

Sure, we weren’t breaking up, but the same rules apply. I don’t know about other guys, but for me this is scripture, the absolue truth. I may feel hurt and rejected, but I’ll get over that. Well, I’ll get over this too, but its harder. Dumb, dumb, dumb. Combine this anecdote with evidence that Dris will soon post in a comment (don’t let me down) and I think we will have proven that women are evil. Hah!

I maintain such bad sleeping schedule. I also found this song I’ve been wondering about and looking for forever – its teh Alan Parson’s Project’s Sirius (Listening to it right now). I think its the best anticipation music ever.

Soo tired.

Perhaps the best part of the new computer is that I’ve been able to use my Sound Blaster Audigy again. While I haven’t gotten around to setting up the 4.1 surround sound again yet, the sound quality is so much better with the Audigy than the poor, poor amps in the laptops that it is truly a different experience both in headphones and on the Stereo.

Work has been good, but it is hard to get into a homework mode afterwards. Angeringly, but perhaps fortunately, Comcast is sucking it up in the ping and packet loss department (I ran some ping tests last night to confirm that it wasn’t a wireless link on my side), so counterstrike is a pain for me and those playing me with all my teleportation.

I started work on a scouting database program for nationals. I hope I’ll get it done in time; If not, there is always the plane ride and wednesday and thursday before the finals begin. T miunus one week until we leave. I can hardly wait.

But before then, I have three photography assignments to complete and probably a bunch of computer programs to write and lots of diff.eq. to study. Fun stuff!

Last night I enabled Magic Quotes so Bobby’s Uberblog-powered site would work properly. Its unfortunate that Dris doesn’t instead use the “addslashes” function, but until that time, I’m willing to compromise.

The nieces are over for another day it looks like, and I’m pretty tired – thats what I get for my inconsistent sleep schedule I guess.

I’ve been neglecting some things recently and also more in general. I’ve neglected my athleticism – I’m trying to combat that with my tennis and soccer classes, but a more fundamental change will be needed for the long term. I’ve negelected silverfir.net, since I keep planning on doing the “real thing” with oasis. I’ve neglected my brain, studying only as hard as I need to to do well. But things might be changing on this front with my diff eq class. Or maybe thats jsut because I need the book to pass the class. I don’t really know.

I do suppose that its better to have too much to do than not enough. Nevertheless, I think another prohibition on CS or a hard limit would be good, so I can get mroe done with my limited time.

I’ve neglected you all for a few days, sorry! (although, I never know who you are because you never leave comments… lurkers!)

Today, I learned about differential coffee, painted a cookie can black, and scanned many barcodes at work (can you believe they pay me to do that!?). That was all before I got home. Then I got home, ate, and played CS. I was on tonight. In fact, for the first time, I maintained, long term, a 4:1 kill:death ratio. And
I did it on Seattle T3 CS 1.5 #2 to boot.

Then I looked at pictures of the UW’s Trash Can Robot. Then I wondered how it is that KIRO will come to interview a trah can, but they don’t even mention that a local team won the entire Pacific Northwest Region in a national robotics competition. Sigh.

Speaking of the dumbness of the media, toight on the news there was a segment on how this movie called “10.5” showed the Space Needle falling over. How dumb is that. Seriously, that is the least important thing ever. Well, not quite ever, but tis so unimportant its ridiculous, and here’s this 5 minute news item on it. The media is so dumb.

Next up, I talked with Bobby abut Color Spaces, and then I thought that maybe I should do some homework. Then I ate graham crackers and decided to write this post instead. Well, the order is a little mixed up there, but thats the general idea.

Rich signed my fmaily up to clean the building tomorrow, and since its conference week, we get to do it at 7:45. Hurray for friends.

Obviously I didn’t write this one in Word.

Yesterday, I went to Creighton’s, got my comuter working, then watched the Passion of the Chirst with Scott, who went home today. The movie was extremely well done and is the first movie of this type that I’ve seen that doens’t back away from the violence involved at all. I didn’t sense anti-semitism. I handled it alright, and thinking about it, I think I may want to see it again.

Today, it was a relatively busy Sunday – Missed some church, but made it in eventually. I dressed up a little more than usual. Next, i went to a LAN party at Tim’s to try out the new computer. It worked well. Then I helped out with the “Behold the Man” Production at my church. Then I returned home to play some CS and found the performance of my machine significantly downgraded. I thought maybe I got a virus at the lan party. So i reinstalled from scratch since I didn’t have much time invested into the computer yet. But that didn’t’ solve the problem. I checked for overheating, for loose cards, etc. But its even stranger. The problem is that whenever my mouse is plugged into my USB hub, the computer takes about 70% of its cycles when i move the mouse. If I move the mouse to any other USB port, no CPU cycles are consumed. Its extremely confusing – I’ve never heard of this happening before. If you have, let me know!

School starts again tomorrow, and I’m up way too late already, especially since I still need to by books. But first, some CS with a framerate that doesn’t drop below 99.9 even with smoke grenades…