Cowbell hero would be a lame game

My cat has a bell. It might be the most annoying thing in my house now. It can sit there and paw at it endlessly. Argh. And right now it's attacking bags. Here is the cat in a bag.


And here is why I put up with it, the adorableness.

Observing the process will change it

So, day two of classes is in progress and so far, so strange. Waking up at 8:30 was somewhat rough, I did it though. Props to me. I ate a bowl of malt-o-meal cap'n crunch berries and biked to campus. Got to class at 9:05 and was starting to fall asleep again. I managed to stay awake mostly for the class, I heard everything, just couldn't keep my eyes open the whole time. I felt bad for my prof, Nic Mcfee, cause I figure I was pretty obvious. But I didn't have time to go buy a rockstar until after class. But AI was good, it should be fun and interesting. I need to find a quick and cheap way to stay awake in the mornings. I've heard apples have things that keep you awake more than a cup of coffee. So maybe I'll buy a sack of apples. Because coffee takes time and energy drinks are expensive.
After I got my drink I found out my second class, operating systems, was kinda canceled. It turns out our prof lost her visa and hasn't received her new one yet. So, she might be back next week, and if not, I'll have to switch into a different class. I don't want to have to switch because the class is after my last class of the day and so I'd be forced to stay on campus from 9 to 4. Rough, because from 10:30 to 1 I have nothing.
After Nic let everyone go I stayed behind to ask about going abroad because the cancellation changes things and I forgot that my actual advisor is having a baby about now and isn't here. So I sat around for this other kid to endlessly chat about nonsense and I played solitaire on my ipod. I wish I had a ipod touch for it's games. And wifi. But w/e. So I asked Nic and he said that actually with the way things end up being scheduled, going abroad would be best next spring. Which changes a lot. I still want to goto china, and was planning on the fall. But I feel a little better knowing I won't go from summer into china, because that seems a little scary. And it makes housing a little smoother next year as I won't have to sublease first semester.

Also, the title of this post is from a song by built to spill. It's one of my favs because the lyrics are very string of thought and almost a ramble. But it's on this mix I made while waiting for Nic, so here's the mix:

Radio Cure by wilco - this song was covered by the local jazz band the bad plus and it is ahmazing, so I wanted to hear the original again. A depressing song, but I like it.

In your Mind by built to spill - this is the song mentioned above, great guitar and great lyrics.

The sound of science by beastie boys - i love the besastie boys so much, it's comical and has some great beats. Like when they do a breakdown and one just yells, Rope-a-dope.

Fireworks by the animal collective - The only animal collective song I have on my ipod, and it's really good. 6 minutes of wonder

Um, circles and squares by Dosh - i picked this up with abunch of other music and wanted to give it a listen to, it was good.

Old Old fashioned by frightened rabbit - nice kinda folk tune

Take Pills by panda bear - a member of animal collective, it's really rythmic and white noiseish.

The national anthem by radiohead - one of my favorite bass lines, so strong and great. and tom yorkes's vocals are again strangeley wonderfull

gobbledigook by sigur ros - i love the vocals on this, la la la la la. It's great and catchy.

track 02 by signal to trust - i don't think that is actually the tracks name, but maybe. it's a local band that I saw at last years lunch show with stnnng, i got the lp for their album folklore and i like it quite a bit. it's upbeat indie rock. not too heavy, but solid. I'm trying to track down a digital version of the album.

fuck you guyses teams by ten grand - I got this in the bunch of local music i picked up off of MFR, and i heard their name in a pos song so I am checking it out, not bad.

lotreem:lotr extended edition marathon

Yesterday was a long day. It was MLK day and so no school or nufin. So what do you do with a free day in a town where everything is closed? You watch The Lord of the Rings trilogy: extended editions, (and you feel kinda crappy afterwards.) That's almost 12 hours of LOTR to go through. I watched them with meghan, and we were both really out of it all day. But I made chili the day before and that was delicious and kept us going. I guess there really isn't much more to this post. hmm. well, if you have the movies and a day free. i recommend watching them all.

Risk in pictures

hokay, so. I played risk the other night with colin, vinny, jenny, jake, and johanna. It was a lot of fun. It was probably less fun for jenny and jake as they were the first two out and had to sit around for the rest of us while they used their ipod touches and did whoknowswhat while we played the game. but for colin and vinny it was a very strategic game with thought and stuff. johanna and i thought of it more as a what do i do now kinda strategy game where we haven't played in years and don't know all the game mechanics. So, it was fun. yeah.


And now, the game through pictures:
Martin: Green
Jenny: Red
Jake: Blue
Johanna: Black
Colin: Yellow
Vinny: Gray or Grey

it started with (from my perspective mostly, cause that's what i cared about ) jenny and i had mostly all of the america's. so mostly every turn for us was fighting each other until jenny lost south America to me. You can see us in the america's. Then she got attacked by vinny and wiped out. I felt bad, but that didn't count for anything I guess.


This is the board after vinny wiped jenny and colin wiped vinny from north america. Scary for me, but I had S. America so I was happy.


Then I got North America to complete my western domination, oooh yeah. Somewhere before this, Jake got cleaned out by I think Colin. Sad day for him. But you can see Johanna massing her units in Europe and colin and I in an arms race. Johanna and colin were also fighting in europe and johanna was dislodging colin's pacific hold on australia.
Then something happened in between these pictures. I remember sending a blitzkrieg on australia. And i ended up taking it. Then I used my cards and got about 25 units i believe and bum rushed johanna. I was going for wiping her off the face of europe and it all came down to western europe where I was outnumbered but ended up having to stop with my one unit to her four. If I had killed her, I would have gotten her cards and it would have been game over for colin. But she rolled like a pro and kicked my ass. I think I lost 10 units on my attack of iceland alone. Sad.



Then colin had a free reign at johanna's four units and cleaned her out easy. So that gave him about 30 units to use against me. He took it all but australiia in one go. I fought, but ended up losing it all. Here's colin after winning:


(The black pieces are because he didn't have enough yellow to represent all the units he controlled. It was an epic sight.

Pre post

I kinda ignored this when it first came out, but I finally got around to looking at the Palm Pre. And verdict is, it looks great. I had originally thought it ran on Windows Mobile, but no, Palm created webOS which is based on linux. So thats a plus for sure. It doesn't have all the info out about apps and hardware but it all looks very promising. This will be a definite competetor with an android phone. And I'm kinda torn. HTC doesn't have an android phone announced for sprint yet this year and depending on what it will be, hopefully the Touch HD (b-e-a-utiful), I will have to make the decision between android and webOS. But I'm looking forward to either and hopefully the competition will cause things to be better rather than not.
Overall I just can't wait to have a phone with wifi. Having played with Ben C's ipod touch and talking to Jake about it all, I'm very excited.

A horse is a horse of course of course

So, here are some of the first pictures I've taken. I'm loving my camera though. I don't have my sd card yet, so only onboard memory.

Selfish Shellfish

So, I was talking to Meghan at this awesome Tea Shop that has an overwhelming amount of tea options. Great story huh? No! Sorry. But we got on the topic of being selfish and it led to a deep analyzing of what selfish means. The overall verdict is that everyone is selfish. No one is completely selfless. That seems like a good end to the conversation, but it doesn't end there. There are two kinds of selfishness, good and bad, positive and negative, light and dark, good and evil, and last but not least, up and down. Wait, up and down, never mind that one.
(The following is very string of thought and relies on vague definitions of selfish, so if you don't agree or whatever, don't blame me. I just like finding and getting into confusing conversations that I don't necessarily agree with. Sorry in advance)
Anyways, going off of the idea that everyone is selfish, it's not that simple. You can be selfish in a good way and in a bad way. Good selfish is when no one gets very hurt or offended by the selfish action. If I buy a camera for myself. The money could go to so many other things, like college or charity, but I spend it on a camera. The gain to me is greater than the gain to others and I still bought it. So it is selfish, but not really that bad is it? It's hard to describe good selfish, really. But if we take the opinion that any action is dictated selfish or not, most actions turn out to be selfish. It's a extremely vague definition, but bear with me. Bad selfish would be if I was using someone to get what I want, and the other person is not aware of my intentions and will get hurt by the results, and I know this. Wow, good examples are hard to come by. I guess I should've expected that, but yeah.
There are somethings that are hard to classify and really depend on the person. But one extreme example I like toying with is relationships. If you take the definition of selfish as taking an action on something you want for your personal gain, all relationships start out of selfishness. Boy likes girl, boy asks girl out, boy is selfish. It makes everyone that has asked someone out guilty. But then all the people who sit by and don't take action on anything are not selfish. But what if they would be happier in the relationship. If being selfish results in personal gain in the way of being happier, is it so bad? And so is being selfish really bad in any way? Well, sure. But I think people see being selfish as a bad thing, and we avoid practicing it. But we are all selfish. So we make a natural behavior into a sin and give it negativity. I dunno, it just doesn't seem healthy. So I practice the guide of cartman: "whatever, whatever, I do what I want." Because life is short and all that talk about enjoying it while it lasts.