Running

I am in dire need of exercise, so I ran a mile today and yesterday. Hopefully I can keep this up and regain my previous physical health. But MAN did I forget how hard it is to motivate myself to run.

One more thing: just in case you forgot, the word is NUCLEAR, not NUCULAR.

More vacation

Going to see the London Symphony Orchestra today! Culture FTW!!!

Lets see, a recap of my thoughts on the last few days:

-Saw the National Archives and the Declaration of Independence along with the Constitution.

-Washington monument can be seen from just about anywhere in D.C.

-People in Washington worship George Washington as if he were a god.

-Found out you can actually use the Library of Congress no matter who you are. Should have known this one, but you learn something new every day.

-The changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier doesn't really make sense. It happens ever half hour, and is pretty long. Would make more sense to have it every hour or something longer like that.

-EVERYONE in D.C. has an ipod...its ridiculous.

-Also, everyone and their mother runs for exercise.

Back to school on monday...yay.

Little Red Riding Hood

This is what would have come out if an engineer had written "Little Red Riding Hood".

http://vimeo.com/3514904?pg=embed&sec=

Picture bomb exploded!

Some pictures I took today:

There was a group protesting outside the capitol building...about not circumcising babies. Apparently its torture and not yours (as a parent) to mess with. The previous sentence was off of their signs. I am o.k. with people feeling strongly enough about something to try and make a difference; but seriously people, couldn't you find something more meaningful to complain about? Like world hunger, proper schooling, or anything other than something that is actually beneficial to males?

D.C.

Got into D.C. last night around 8:00 pm, and am staying with my mom at her best friend's sister's house (confusing?). Her husband is a rocket scientist with a masters degree in physics engineering, so we talked about technical stuff until about 11:30...really nerdy I know.

We are going into the city soon, so it should be a busy day of touristing.

spring break

SPRING BREAK!! Going to go visit Washington D.C.

Launch

I went on the chase team to recover the balloon. They apparently put WAY to much helium in the balloon because it popped at 70,000 feet instead of 90,000 and fell a lot early than it should.

As you can see from this picture, it landed in a tree. Yeah, but guess where that tree is. If you guessed that it was leaning over the Erie Canal you are correct (also that is Thor right there in the lower left corner). We were not able to recover it ourselves, but someone is going to get it later.

The chase team (Zach, Thor, and I) got back about 10:00 at night, having left Taylor at 4:00 pm. I, for some unknown reason, I stayed up until about 2:00 am and almost slept through my Public Speaking midterm.

ATAIN Conference Balloon launch

Today is the ATAIN (don't ask me what it means) Conference and I (and my engineering friends) are launching our sensors to 90,000 feet. Hopefully I will be able to go on the chase to get the payload back, but we will see. The launch is happening at 4:30 today and the balloons are going to go straight into the jet-stream... probably going to travel about 150 miles before coming down; meaning a chase is going to take a heck of a lot of time.

After the launch I will try and get some pictures up.

Tan line

So the benefits of being half Malagasy showed themselves today again. Its about 19ºC outside right now and the sun is shining, so I worked outside for a little while, felt tired and decided to take a nap for about 20 minutes. When I woke up I had a tan line on the inside of my arm where my shirt stopped. 20 minutes people, and I have a tan line. Given its not glaringly obvious, but it is still there.

So...BAM!

Homework Monkey

Homework monkey is on my back...

Hair

I recently ran out of shampoo. So I decided to shave my head again because I am too cheap to buy more (plus the weather is nice).

I must say a bald head is a comfortable head. No longer is my black hair heating up in the sun, so I stay cool longer (insert "I am always cool" pun here). Here is the fruit of my shaving labors.

I need to get out

So I have been feeling down lately. The constant presence of more homework (it always seems that I have at least 2 more things to do whenever I finish something) causes me to not get very much relaxation time, if I get any at all. I really just feel worn out, I need to just get off campus for a little while, but I really don't have time.

If I can just hold of 1 more week for spring break....

For those computer nerds...

http://nand.net/~demaria/hollywood.txt

Polka

Have you ever listened to music that you usually hate and after the song is finished, find that you like it? Well I have just found that music...Polka. I know, I was thinking the exact same thing, but apparently I now like polka...hmmmm.

Homework

Well this should be an interesting weekend, fun with homework...

Also, watching Monty Python's Flying Circus, a great use of my time, I know.

Measurement of Beauty

Found this on Wikipedia!

Helen of Troy (from the Iliad) is widely known as "the face that launched a thousand ships." Thus, 1 millihelen is the amount of beautyneeded to launch a single ship.

According to The Rebel Angels, a novel by Robertson Davies, this system was invented by Cambridge mathematician W.A.H. Rushton. However, the term was possibly first suggested by Isaac Asimov.^[9] The obvious reference is Marlowe's line from the play The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus, "Was this the face that launched a thousand ships...?" ^[10]

Negative values have also been observed—these, of course, are measured by the number of ships sunk or the number of clocks stopped. An alternative interpretation of 1 negative Helen is the amount of negative beauty (i.e. ugliness) that can launch one thousand ships the other way.

Since the original quotation was "Was this the face that launch'd a thousand ships and burnt the topless towers of Ilium", a more accurate definition of the millihelen might be the amount of beauty required to launch a single ship and ignite a wastebasket.

David Lance Goines has written a humorous article^[11] describing various Helen-units. It has a chart with the fire-lighting and ship-launching capability for different powers of "Helens". For example, a Picohelen (ph) (10^-12 helens) indicates the amount of beauty that can "Barbecue a couple of Steaks & Toss an Inner Tube Into the Pool".

Thomas Fink, in The Man's Book^[12] defines beauty both in terms of ships launched, but also in terms of the number of women one women will, on average, be more beautiful. One Helen (H) is the quantity of beauty to be more beautiful than 50 million women, the number of women estimated to have been alive in the 12th century BC. Ten Helena (Ha) is the beauty sufficient for one oarsmen (of which 50 are on a ship) to risk his life, or be the most beautiful of a thousand women. Beauty is logarithmic on a base of 2. For beauty to increase by 1 Ha, a woman must be the most beautiful of twice as many women. One Helen is 25.6 Ha. The most beautiful woman which ever lived would score 34.2 Ha, and 1.34 H, the pick of a dozen women would be 3.6 Ha, and 0.14 H.

Doh!

I deleted the folder containing the files for a research paper I wrote last year that I am trying to get published. Luckily I e-mailed it to someone and it was in my sent folder in my g-mail account! *phew* I did have to recreate my sources page as, for some idiotic reason, I decided to have it as a second file...thank the Lord I kept all the hard copies of my sources.

Yay!

so

I had this really really hard test for Intro to Computer Systems. The class name makes it sound easy and fun. The class is fun, but it SHOULD NOT be a 200 level course!!! The class is hard as heck, but fun. I always feel really stupid when I tell people I am struggling in a class called Intro to Computer Systems. Anyways, we had this really hard test that I was, rightfully, freaked out about. I went away knowing I failed it two hours in (which is actually not bad, my friend stayed for six hours). I came to class today and he handed our test back. I got a 122/185, which, for you non-math-y people comes out to a 65.9% which is an F. This test is so hard however that he curves the grades...a lot... He told us that a 155 is about an A, a 125 is a B, and a 110 is a C. This turns my F into a B (-ish). I can handle that.

But other than that I got absolutely nothing done today....

Much Ado About Nothing

We had a group of 5 British actors come to Taylor this week, who, on Friday and Saturday performed William Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing. It was amazing. I have never seen a play or movie that hilarious in all my life! To fully comprehend the sheer genius of it all you had to have seen it, but still try and imagine it. In this play there are 20 different characters...played by 5 actors...some of which were males playing females. Words cannot describe how utterly hilarious it was. These were all well accomplished actors, mind you.

All in all, it was an amazing and unforgettable show.

Brand new blog

So, I have decided to start a blog. I don't know how this is going to turn out as I usually get bored with this kind of stuff rather quickly; so bear with me.

This blog is as much for me as it is anything else: I am really bad with remembering things, and get annoyed at journalling, so this is a test to see if I can journal if I use technology.