Pug’s Place

I just made a seriously awkward phone call. In essence, I was calling another student here at UF who’s probably older than me, and saying: “Hello, I work with your father. I’m told that you’re looking into joining us at Sverdrup next summer; I was wondering if you’d like to meet up with me and another Co-Op and have dinner sometime.”

Like, hey, I’m younger than you and going to be evaluating you to see if you’re fit to be a co-op at your father’s place of work. Yeah, uh huh.

Tell me that’s not an awkward thing to say to somebody. Of course, he doesn’t know how old I am, and I’m not real sure how old he is, except that he’s a Junior in Computer Engineering, while I’m a junior in Comp. Sci. Poor guy started stuttering when I said that I worked with his dad.

I’ll report back on how that goes - we’re going to meet somewhere Friday night.

In other news, last night James and I went and learned/re-learned how to Swing. Much fun, except that it was real awkward to ask people to dance after the 1.5 hour long lesson — mostly since nigh everyone came with a date. So… I’m planning to start attending the lessons on Wednesday nights regularly.

Friday night, James and I rented and watched The Medallion and Animal House. Animal House was just… ow… Ow. The Medallion was impressively stupid. Hilariously stupid. The writers were trying really hard to implement every bad cliche and every dumb martial arts movie gag. I recommend it for slapstick comedy.

Great performance. Let me quote the concert information, first:

Wrap yourself in unbridled emotion and lush melody with the Tchaikovsky Gala, performed by Russia’s prized musical treasure, the Moscow State Radio Symphony Orchestra and Chorus led by Pavel Sorokin. The 110-member orchestra and 60 member chorale have been praised since their 1978 beginnings for their extraordinary level of artistic excellence in bringing 18th-, 19th- and 20th century repertoire throughout the Russias and, eventually, the globe.

PROGRAM:

• Marche Slave
• Piano Concert
• Souvenir d’un lieu cher (Melody and Waltz Scherzo), Opus 42
• Opera Charodeika Choir and dance of Schomorocks
• Opera The Maid of Orleans chorus Long Live the King
• Eugene Onegin, Act I, Scene III
• Pique Dame, Intermezzo and Chorus
• 1812 Overture

This is the first time I’ve been at a good vantage point to watch other French Horn players. I was most amused to see these world-class professionals using the rests to take a death grip on the horn with their left hand, and then rotate it in large sweeps to get all of the water out of the numerous pipes (For those not acquainted, the French Horn, due to the intricacies of its piping, can hide a huge amount of saliva inside, that gets many many feet into the horn. There are a series of “spit valves” that let out such water, but you have to rotate the horn to get the water to the valves!).

I was also quite happy that all of the pieces started with French Horn openings within the first 8 measures or so. Woo!

As any good Tchaikovsky concert will, they ended with the 1812 Overture. I was able to replicate the (semi) correct fingerings for the Horn part through most of the work, to my astonishment, which means that were I ever to pick up a Horn again, likely the only music I could play would be the 1812 Overture… I find this somewhat fitting.

Those who know me well would probably find this fitting too: Does anyone else out there wish the French would put up more of a fight in the Overture? I want the Russian battle horn call to ring out even more… not just because it’s a French Horn moment, of course… for … other reasons… that I cannot name… Yeah…

Now that I’ve rambled a bit, I’m going to eat.

Russian troops have retrieved 10 tonnes of beer trapped under the Siberian ice after a week-long operation.

Article from the BBC

While the article does state that they tried to rescue the truck and the rope broke after unloading the beer, it’s still seriously humorous…

Thanks go to James for this catch.

Well, not anymore. That’s Katie,
but this Full Frontal Nerdity is href="http://www.gamespy.com/comics/nodwick/ffn/ffn.htm">hilarious!

Some pictures of Ruskin are up in the Travel gallery. Go look at the golf carts!

There’s a great new record label called Magnatune that was profiled in Linux Journal this month. During the traffic jam yesterday James and I read all about it. Their sub-tagline is, “We’re a record label. But we’re not evil.” These guys have the right idea! You can listen to all their music for free, and when you find something you want, you can download copies for your own use in several different formats for a price that you set - between $5 and $18 bucks for an album. They recommend you pay $8, but the trick is that 50% of the sale goes straight to the artist.

These guys rock, and there’s even some pretty cool celtic stuff on there. Go check them out today and become customers like James is, and I’m going to be! This is the model that needs to be supported, not the Recording Industry Jackasses at the RIAA.

James and I arrived in Ruskin about 7:00 Friday night after getting caught in heavy traffic in Brandon / Volrico, FL while dropping off my other roommate Demetrius. Friday night was pretty uneventful, James and I basically ate dinner and did some amount of collapsing, after watching a bit of Stargate SG-1.

Saturday morning we woke up, loaded a small arsenal into the back of James’ Mothership, and drove with James’ father to a public shooting range about 20 miles south of Sarasota, FL. There I was taught the fine art of pistol and rifle shooting, using all sorts of guns and all sorts of ammunition! I apparently have a bit of my mother’s innate accuracy, so be afraid of my hand-eye coordination! I can’t keep track of all the different guns I shot, but James should be able to give me a hand with the list later (and this entry may see an update). I’ll give a shot at listing some of the firearms I discharged:

• Ruger .22 pistol
• Ruger 9mm pistol
• .44 Magnum revolver
• M1A .306 (7.62mm) rifle
• Marlin 39-A .22 rifle
• A cap and ball rifle
• and more that we don’t want the government to know about…

All I can really say is that I went through a lot of ammo!

After that, the Saturday was spent lazing about and watching Spielburg’s
Minority Report, a movie I really like, which is good since that was my
3rd time seeing it.

Sunday revolved around food: Breakfast, Dim-sum (which is a sort of brunch
of steamed food), and dinner at Outback, with a trip to Target and Toys-R-Us
thrown in, and a game of Pop Culture Trivial Pursuit tossed in there. I did
remarkably well at the trivial pursuit - I knew a lot more of the answers than
I ever thought I would, a big departure from Katie getting a bunch of points
for me while playing at Sam’s, while I moved the piece across the board!

And Monday we just packed and took off… and spent 6 hours going from
Ruskin to Gainesville, what should be a 2 hour drive! The traffic was
outrageously bad — there must have been a terrible accident.

Anyway, back now! I’ll get pictures up soon.

I’m back, though the 2 hour trip on I-75 took more than 6 hours yesterday. That meant I had 4 hours too few to get homework done, and thus I was up until a little past midnight finishing stuff up that I wanted done over the holiday.

I did a lot of stuff, including fire a bunch of firearms. Fun! I’ll write all about it later, as well as post some pictures of the fabled road-legal golf-carts.

Totally us.

href="http://www.unitedmedia.com/comics/getfuzzy/archive/images/getfuzzy20040146392116.gif">

Heh heh heh…

AP, New York - At New York’s Kennedy airport today, an individual later discovered to be a public school teacher was arrested trying to board a flight while in possession of a ruler, a protractor, a setsquare, a slide rule, and a calculator.

At a morning press conference, Attorney general John Ashcroft said he believes the man is a member of the notorious al-gebra movement. He is being charged by the FBI with carrying weapons of math instruction.

“Al-gebra is a fearsome cult,”, Ashcroft said. “They desire average solutions by means and extremes, and sometimes go off on tangents in a search of absolute value. They use secret code names like “x” and “y” and refer to themselves as “unknowns”, but we have determined they belong to a common denominator of the axis of medieval with coordinates in every country.

“As the Greek philanderer Isosceles used to say, there are 3 sides to every triangle,” Ashcroft declared.

When asked to comment on the arrest, President Bush said, “If God had wanted us to have better weapons of math instruction, He would have given us more fingers and toes.

“I am gratified that our government has given us a sine that it is intent on protracting us from these math-dogs who are willing to disintegrate us with calculus disregard. Murky statisticians love to inflict plane on every sphere of influence,” the President said, adding: “Under the circumferences, we must differentiate their root, make our point, and draw the line.”

President Bush warned, “These weapons of math instruction have the potential to decimal everything in their math on a scalene never before seen unless we become exponents of a Higher Power and begin to factor-in random facts of vertex.”

Attorney General Ashcroft said, “As our Great Leader would say, read my ellipse. Here is one principle he is uncertainty of: though they continue to multiply, their days are numbered as the hypotenuse tightens around their necks.”

Taken shamelessly from A. Coward at Slashdot.