Checksum Arcanius

Via Daniel at Carrotlife

1) Four Jobs:

Pacific Landscape Management
Polaris Resturant Server Assistant
Blockbuster Video CSR
Microvision Intern, Software Test

2) Four things I wish I had done earlier:

Made a plan
Found the truth
Broke the habit
Learned how
(And I’ve only done one)

3) Four places I have lived:

Bellevue, WA
Issaquah, WA
Provo, UT
Seattle, WA

4) Four countries I have been to:

South Korea
France
Mexico
Italy

5) Four countries/places I would like to visit:

New Zealand
Australia
China
Mars

6) Four of my favorite foods:

Lightly grilled copper river salmon with pepper and lemon juice
Carnal Tacos!
PBJ Sandwhiches
Nachos!

7) Four sites I visit (almost) daily:
google.com
gmail.com
Craigslist Seattle
Checksum Arcanius

8) Four software applications I cannot live without:

Firefox
Thunderbird
foobar2000
putty

9) Four things I’ll never forget:

Geysers of Flame in Orlando
The kindness of my friends
The fallibility of humankind
My own unworthiness

10) If you read this, you are tagged.

Yesterday I skipped out of work early to play a game of ultimate at the UW. The other team was down a person, and they were all graduate Bioengineers, and they had some hot girls, so I volunteered to join their team. Well, good impressions were not exactly made. I played sloppy — missed some easy catches and throws — and before the end of the shortened half, I found myself quite out of breath. I couldn’t really figure it out. Afterwards, I discuessed the possibility of Asthma with my teammates. Later on that night, I decided that the more likely culprit was a food allergy (perhaps chicken, or something else on the chicken sandwhich I ate for lunch). At any rate, I didn’t die, and later on that night I went around greenlake with my roommates on bikes, and I was breathing well once again. When going hard, I’m managed a single lap averaging 18.8 miles an hour, and over the last two laps I barely missed 18 mph average. So I’m pretty happy with that.

I have never been terribly fond of Seattle proper. From traffic jams to panhandlers, it has never evoked a positive image from me. Indeed I live here merely as a convenience while I finish school and I fully intend to live quite happily in the glorious suburbs thereafter. The latest installment in Ryan’s ongoing drama of life reaffirms this desire.

Last night, someone decided it would be a good idea to rummage through my car and take anything that looked valuable. There wasn’t much in there, but there was certainly more than I would have liked. Among the lost items were my radar detector (they took the detector but apparently thought it would be a good idea to detach and leave the cord that powers it), and a box full of miscellaneous electronics including a soldering iron, very crappy night vision monocular, Prometheus Jr (a mini-sumo robot that won 2nd place at Robothon 2004), a bunch of miscellaneous electronic parts (resistors, capacitors, LEDs, distance sensors), and I’m sure a few other things that I didn’t remember. Annoying me much more than the goods lost, though, is the fact that there are still these people that view taking this stuff as ok, and that the Seattle Police don’t give a damn. Sure, they take the report, but they don’t take fingerprints, they don’t ask around for witnesses, they don’t do anything else. And they wonder why Seattle — and every other major city — has a crime problem? With this kind of enforcement, it might as well be legal to commit minor robberies.

My view — perhaps tainted again by these most recent events — is that people that knowingly commit crime that hurts others do not belong in the society at large. Indeed, such people should be removed from society until they are no longer going to commit such crimes. A slap on the wrist doesn’t stop a thief — but cutting off said wrists can help. Since we’re not so much in the dismemberment business in this society, it seems to me that the logical choice is to simply deny criminals the right to walk freely, forever or until cured. People like me dealing with this kind of crap on a semi regular basis is just not right.

I drempt this morning in the murky twilight of my sleep that I has missed my Physics 123 final, causing me to flunk the class. I was even ready to declare that now I knew what I would be taking with that final open slot left in my two-year schedule, until my mind cleared and I realized that I wasn’t taking Physics 123 this quarter, and that I’ve had credit for it since my first quarter here at the UW. Funny how the real and imagined can blend together so flawlessly in dream.

After a lazy morning wake up and watching some soccer, housemates Adrien, Kunlun, and I went out for a Sunday bike ride. We headed down to the Burke-Gilman Trail, which we took to Gasworks Park, only two miles away (and mostly downhill at that). There, I ate a peanut butter sandwich and some chips with salsa. After enjoying the view for a while longer, we decided to head into Ballard and ended up at the Ballard locks. It has been quite a long time since I was last there, and it was a lot of fun to see them in action again.

After the locks, we headed back, then jumped in Kunlun’s car to hit up the food and fine women at an open house potluck for the graduating Patricia, a family friend. After a good time was had by all, we headed to my parent’s place for a walk and chilling out before arriving back here. In all, it was quite a good amount of biking with lots of good food and a few fine women.

Another boyfriend.

While walking a Bioengineering classmate Christine home tonight after a night full of solving homework problems, we saw ahead of us some sort of strange tussle between a couple of girls. Since we were on greek row, I wasn’t sure quite what to think — was it some sort of catfight over something trivial? I think I even asked “Is this for real?” Well, it turns out it was for real — right before we got to where the problem was happening, one of the grls threw the purse that she was trying to steal into the bushes and ran off while the other girl, quite distressed, went to retrieve it.

We made sure that the girl was ok and had everything — both purse and person were ok, thankfully — but in hindsight, I sure wish I had gone after the purse-snatcher. Not only would it have made a much better story, but I also would have had the chance to fight some crime for real. Oh well, there is always next time.