Checksum Arcanius

Thursday Morning, I awoke around 8:30, dressed for a morning football game in the rain, picked up Scott, and headed to Newport High School’s football field. These days, Scott and I are “old” people (better than 19) so we joined forces with that crowd against the younger crowd. And it was a crowd – it was the largest turkey bowl in my memory. But the numbers only seemed to help the old people; we slammed the younger guys pretty well. So bad, that we had to switch up teams to make it resemble a competitive game again. I wasn’t too productive on the offensive side of things, with only a couple of catches and one interception-shortened series as QB (after the teams got switched), but I also had two interceptions and a very good time.

Unfortunately, I also jammed the index finger on my left hand pretty badly at the beginning of the game. It swelled up pretty well and made me less agressive throughout the rest of the day. And its still hurting, so I may have to see if there was any additional damage. While I’m at it, I might as well have my right pinky looked at too, which has never been up to par after a flag football game way back in my early high school days.

After the turkey bowl, I dropped off Scott, returned home, and made myself presentable for company. And there was lots of company. My aunt and uncle (Dad’s brother Mike and Marie) came from Florida, my sister Robin and her family (husband Dave, daughters Zoe and Thea) came from Seattle proper along with a family friend and her daughter (as an aside, the friend, whom I had never met, showed up first. I looked quizically at her as she drove up, which prompted her to ask, “Is this the right place?” Having no idea, really, I responded, “Maybe…”). Also, my cousin (Christine, daughter of Mike) and her Husband Luca and daughter Isabella were there, along with my brother and his girlfriend (soon to be fiancee) Kaylee. It was quite a crowd, with a good contingent of youngsters mixed in.

Then came the food. We are not always a traditional thanksgiving-feast family, so instead of turkey and stuffing and mashed potatoes, we had roast beef and wild duck, mashed sweet potatoes and baked potatoes (which I mashed myself, because I’m not too much of a fan of sweet potatoes), and various other misundry fruits and vegetables and other items. It was really quite good, but I sure do miss downing those perectly mashed potatoes smothered in turkey gravy. Hand-mashed potatoes in beef juice is still pretty good, though.

After dessert, we sang some songs, which the kids seems to especially enjoy, told some thanksgiving stories (Marie, as a kindegarten schoolteacher, was most excellent at this). Then we mostly hung out and talked and got tired early. Seems to happen when its pitch black by 5:00. I still managed to stay up late, though, because Theo was comign over. We managed to lock the door on him, so when he arrived about 1:00, he had to get my attention by lightly rocking my window. It finally worked, and we stayed up until 300 playing around (albeit unsuccessfully, moslty) with Linux f the Gentoo variety.

The next morning, I awoke late, enjoyed breakfast, and then people started to arrive for the party. With Scott, Dan, Colin, Theo, Ben, Kaylee, Jim, and Julie ready to go, we began to figure out how to enter GPS coordinates into our three units (it wasn’t too hard) and then we began our journey. The first Geocahce we stopped at was called Forest Drive Pipeline, and it was, predictably, by Forest Drive. We took the hard way, through woods the entire time, and then we spent a good fifteen minutes with all of us wandering around in the area until Dan found the cache itself, an ammo box hidden beneath some branches and leaves in the nook of a maple tree. I filled out the log book, and then we took a pink carribeaner and left an alligator clip (as is the custom, you take an object and leave another object).

It had been a while since I’d been out tromping through the woods, and it was good to do it again. I had a lot of fun, and even though I made my shoes and pants pretty dirty, it was well worth it. We stopped at McDonalds for lunch, then we drove to the Red Town trailhead where we started the hike for Geocache #2. This one, which I was attracted to because of its less-than-trivial difficulty numbers and pretty photo, was called Sandstone Falls. The hike only needed to be 1.5 miles each way, but we took the long way on the way there and ended up taking more like a 4 mile hike, which I also enjoyed, but along with soreness from the Turkey bowl, I was moving pretty slowly by the end of the day. Since it was getting past 4 by this point, we abandoned further attempts at geocaching and returned home for fooding.

Joining us at this point were Beth and Maneesh. Clams, french dip (thanks to my wodnerful mom), and caesar salad were the main menu items, and the all were good (I am told, as I cannot speak for the clams, which I did not partake of). We also played Pass the Pigs quite competitively, followed by a few rounds of Setbefore we generally became just a bunch of talkers. Beth and I were unable to rally the troops for a game of Mafia, so I suppose that it will have to wait until next time. If I’m not too old the next time around…

Everyone was leaving around 9:00, so I got Beth and Scott to take home. After droppin Beth off, Scott and I drove all over creation (from Bellevue to North Seattle to Des Moines and back) talking up a storm. I finally returned him at 2:00 am. It’ll be good to have him back for the month of December, even though he’s taking a week and a half off for a swimming camp. Crazy man, but what else should I expect?

Saturday was another busy day, in which I made a brief appearance at a lego league session, went shopping, attended Tim‘s Eagle Scout Court of Honor, got miscommunicated with more lego league stuff, then went to Max’s birthday party at Mary and Jason’s place in Redmond. It was good to see them all again, even if Jen and I aren’t as good at Cranium as we wanted to be. I guess it makes sense that the newly expecting couple should have more of a mental connection than the rest of us. That ended with me taking home some hard drives to try figuring out what was wrong with Jason’s desktop. The drives appear to be not-so-good (aka bad). Speaking of which, my computer is giving me issues as well, but thats not for this post.

Sunday, I went to church, where Max spoke, and where I realized that my old ward (Cougar Mountain) is a lot nicer to attend than the one I was going to most recently (Singles). More people I know, more people I like talking too, better lessons, talks, environment… I think I know where I’ll be next Sunday. After all that, I worked on a linear algebra project, making a program to calculate the determinant of a matrix recursively. Its pretty fast until you get to about 8×8 matrices, and then it slows to a crawl, because recursive cofactor expansion is just about the worst way to calculate a determinant that there is.

Which brings me to today, in which I worked, spilled hot chocolate on myself, got a replacement shirt from Dave (thanks, by the way!), went to class (couldn’t concentrate – too hot, a little sick, and had the computer there to work on the project), and then came home and ate. My Miles One Platinum Visa credit card also arrived. Time to start saving up miles and traveling the world on my consumerist habits! w00t.

There has been some major sparsity over the last week, something I aim to correct here.

There were several contributing factors:

• I was feeling bad
• I was doing things
• Lego League is getting busy
• Work was getting hectic
• I was behind in math

Notably, Half Life 2 is not yet on that list.

Now, I am all caught up in Math, work is going well, TRC is decently on track, I am feeling great, work is moving along nicely, and, well, as soon as I finish my Math test on Monday, you might not hear from me for a while due to HL2.

Oh, there’s also real work going on on a site update, look wise. Don’t get too hopeful too early though.

After feeling like crap for most of the day, the 55 minute drive home (the longest its ever taken me from work) actually worked wonders on my spirit. The 3.5 hour TRC meeting with interested adults also helped. Now it is late.

The upside to being overloaded at work is, I suppose, job security through at least March, in my case. Which is pretty good, considering its double to quadruple the initial 3-6 months I was hired on for initialy. So that gets me at least most of the way towards the bike trip of 2005. And although I don’t think they’d release me at that point for any particular reason, and they might even keep me if I were to take a month or more off. But if they don’t, hey, there’s always Blockbuster. Or something even better.

Yesterday, for an unknown reason, I awoke at 6:00am. And I wasn’t going back to sleep, so I capitulated, ate breakfast, showered, and left for work. By the time I made it there, however, the anti-sleepiness had completely left me, so I scooted the chiar forward, leaned it back covered myself with my coat and got another hour and a half or two hours before work.

A lot of recent events have gone unreported or unexplained, and tonight I aim to correct that.

I will start with the most recent and work backwards, since I think things will flow out of my brain better that way, and also the order will match the descending order of cronologies that this site follows that exists whenever the newest content is always put at the top.

After work today, Dan had a party to celebrate his 25th birthday. Colin, Alex, Jay, Carolyn (sp?), her guy, and I all went to Jillian’s in Seattle to play some pool and eat some cheap appitizers. Pretty quickly we seperated into groups of people who knew what they were doing when it came to pool (namely, Colin and Jay, plus… well, I still can’t remember his name), and those whose only hope was deals with the devil, which at vrious times we were certain people had made after some pretty incredible shots (namely, Alex, Carolyn, Dan, and me). My best shot of the game was a complete fluke – I got two stripes in during a game of 8-ball. Although I was actually trying to get one of them in, neither one went into an expected hole. Another shot I had during a game of cutthroat saw one of Dan’s balls ricochet off of the short ends of the table twice before sinking in a corner pocket. Dan had a few “devilish” shots himself, though.

After scarffing down many plates of appetizers (I was voraciously hungry), and finishing the game of pool, we returned to Dan’s house for cake, ice cream, and gifts. Being the stud I am, I hadn’t gotten him anything yet, but that oversight has already been corrected. Among the new toys he recieved were a multi-tool screwdriver, a cordless soldering iron, a book on pool shots that he could have used earlier in the day, and a shirt and a book on poker, which he doesn’t really need because he already cleans me out easily enough.

Happy Birthday Dan!

Before the party, however, was work. I made it in at 9:02, right as the 9:00 meeting was getting under way. Then came a short respite of work before we headed off to a presentation by Slade Gorton, former US Senator and current Board member of Microvision. The topic was the 9/11 commission report, and he is quite an incredible person in his ability to articulate clearly and concisely. He talked a some about the process that led to the findings and the people he worked with, but he focused mainly on the conclusions he had. He was fairly candid while carefully avoiding finger pointing. It was a masterful presentation by any means. After his formal remarks, he had a Q&A session. I had jotted down some notes, and eventually had the opportunity to ask him a question. It went something like this:

You talked about the many massive failures of government leading up the the 9/11 attacks. Yet many of the commission’s findngs suggest that more government is needed, not less. Since the commission is a bunch of former politicians – its a lot like a group of Microvision employees saying that the way to solve terrorism is to buy more Nomads (everyone in the room laughed at this). Don’t you think that there is a conflict of interest here?

At this, the former Senator laughed and complimented my question, and then artfully dodged the meat of the question by stating that the commission didn’t suggest an increase in the overall size of government, just a reorganization. It was a skillful dodge, and although I sensed a doge at the time, it took me a while to figure out exactly how he had done it. After all, even if the commission didn’t explicitly suggest an increase in the size of government, any change in government today that doesn’t explicitly make it smaller implicitly makes it larger. And there is no denying that the size of the federal government has once again blossomed after 9/11.

After the Slad Gorton presentation (which included lunch – pizza and salad – I ate a bunch here too – like I said, I had quite the appetite today), came another meeting, after which came more work – which involved software specification writing. And as dull as it has traditionally seemed to be in the past, I actually got into a groove on it today. Its much easier to write the spec after the software is already well on its way to completion. Either that or the fact that I have worked thrugh the development process has made me much better at writing specifications. Either way, what I thought would be the height of dullness actually had me somewhat interested. Until it got close to 5:00, when I took off and headed to the party (see above…)

Yesterday, I started the day at the International School, helping the Titan Robotics Club set up a recruiting station for the schedule pickup / asb signup day. I left there around 9:30, made it into work at what has unfortuantely become a semi-normal start time. Work was pretty normal as well, until I recieved a series of calls from family members concerning moving a bunch of computer equipment from a recently vacated office space. When I heard that free monitors might be involved, I readily signed up. I left work around 3:30, went South to get the Highlander, then returned North to the building. The monitors (7 of them!) ended up being just 15 inchers, so not much excitment there, but the computers turned ot to be the real treasures. Out of six, four or five of them are P4 1.8Ghz class machines, and the last one or two are somewhat lesser, it appears. I think my Mom’s office is claiming some of them as upgrades to their current 400 MHz Celerons, but that should leave a few computers to upgrade my servers, creating a plethora of 400-600 MHz machines that need homes. I think some will go the the TRC, and some may be donated to other worthy causes (to be determined). After jam packing all of these computers and monitors and two extremely nice printers and peripherals into three vehicles, I headed back to the International School, where the 6th grader ice cream social was taking place. The night ended with me recording all the people who had signed up for the TRC interest meeting into an Excel Spreadsheet. We had 45 legible signups, so that bodes well for the club’s future, if we are able to convert a decent percentage into effectual members. It ended up being a long day, which a lot of my days recently seem to become.

Nothing special happened on Tuesday. After work, I think I went to Costco to return some shirts that were too big in exchange for the next smaller size. The shirts are very nice; I wore one today to work (today being the day of the post, not the day of that the post is talking about). It is comfortable and it seems to be reasonably good looking too. Not a bad combo, I guess. And, speaking of Costco, I called that girl Stephani that I met there on Sunday and left a message. Haven’t heard back yet. I figure I might try again, but seriously, women are so flaky (at least in my recent experience).

I don’t remember anything special happening on Monday either, but that may simply be because my memory fails me. I think I ate chili with cheese and chips, but thats a fairly safe guess this week anyway. (Backtrack! I already completed the following paragraph when I remembered this: I donated a pint of blood on Monday – In a quick but not record time of 6:15. I believe, although I don’t have the records to verify, that I’ve donated in under 5 minutes before. Since I’ve started carrying my Palm m500 around again, I should be able to keep better track of it, since its really such an important part of my life…

Sunday, however, was fairly special. I drove the Highlander because the truck was more or less running on empty and probabally not capable of making it all the way to Mercer Island and back. At church, my brother taught the final lesson he will be teaching in a while, having transitioned fully into his new position. It won’t quite be the same with him not teaching and most of the hot women returning to BYU. Oh well. Anyway, after that, I returned home and made one of my famous Caesar salads for a family dinner. Christine, a cousin on my Dad’s side (the one who got married in Rome last summer) and her husband Luca have moved into the area after Luca got a brand-spanking new job at Microsoft. Its the first extended family to live in the same metropolitan area as us ever, I believe, so that should be cool. After the dinner, which included my first meeting of the newest addition to the family, Isabella, we went out and about to look at possible homes that they might be buying. It was while looking at the second neighborhood that I made the as-of-yet-unreturned call to Stephani that I mentioned earlier, somewhat out of order. At least my two neices had some good screams to let out about that time (albeit for a completely unrelated apparent scream contest). Bah.

Now we’re getting near a week old. On Saturday, there was Frisbee (it seems to have died on Tuesdays, which I suppose is just as well, because there’s not enough light anymore anyway). After frisbee came a hack session, with the usual attendence of Justin, who was extremely produtive, finishing the circuit board and hacking two servos for full rotation. We should have a mobile robot in not-very-long (thats an official time unit now). Genevieve made an appearance too, to work on logo stuff. Erik, of Freedom Down (see links, above right, because I’m on too much of a roll to link it here now), returned Saturday night as well. While he was returning, I was missing a wedding reception that may have not happened, and watching K-19, in which the fake Russian accents really didn’t help a decent but underachieving movie.

That brings us to Friday, which I don’t remember, which is a good sign that its time for me to stop.

Except for one more thing, because I’m just that cool. I noticed, as I prepared to post, that every category was covered except for “school.” So, to cover that, I will mention that I am signed up for linear algebra at BCC, the only math class that they offer that I haven’t already studied. I’ve heard horror stories, but I will remain confident that I can handle it until I am proved otherwise.

There, a complete sweep of categories. Now there is no excuse not to read this post!

One of my resolutions this year was to be “early to bed, early to rize.” Yes, I spelled it with a ‘z’, I don’t really know why. I haven’t really kept that resolution, but today it actually happened. The boss is doing a demo, and I wanted to make sure everything was together before he left – so I came in at 6:00 to meet him as he picked up the material thatI prepared yesterday. It seems like everything is hunky-dory, and I’m fulfilling a resolution to boot.

In other news, Gmail seems to only update every 10 or 15 minutes , which is plenty fast unless you are expecting something. So IM it ain’t. And speaking of Gmail, why haven’t I seen any invitations in, like, 10 years? I mean, comeon, I have a faithful public to service.

Otherwise, things are going well. FlicConf rocks my socks, and now it has a contact form too (thus the 10-15 minute delay in Gmail was discovered).