Lucky #12, the magic button, 2 for the price of 0, etc..

Everyone wants to know about the weekend. I've got some stories, some disturbing, all with an awesome turnout. I didn't have any homework, 'cause in English it's conference week, so I don't have it, save the 20 minute conference on Friday (which means a class-free Wednesday). {deleted} This is the chronicle of my weekend.

Lets begin on Friday night.

Lucky #12:
{deleted}
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On most nights, I prefer to be sober, because it's much easier to chill out with girls and have a great time - especially where hookups are concerned. Why is this night different from any other night?....

The Magic Button:
SO, I was rather drunk, but felt no signs of sickness - no "urge to purge" if you will [hehe I just thought of that] - and I chatted with people and had fun in back while pledge brothers were discovering their family and drink. At this point I was rather enthused about {deleted} defying probability, and when each of the brothers asked how I was feeling [they really care for everyone's wellbeing], I showed my arm and it's 11 lines, and stated that I felt like a zebra. Matt and Randy decided to have fun with me and ask me math questions. Apparently, I realized the derivative of x^2 to be 2xz (two-ex-zee), and the integral of C to be dx. Oh well. Moving on, some people started to show up, as parties around the city [Ski club's 14-keg party, for instance] were shut down by 10 pm. Some girls showed up, including some sisters and pledge sisters from KAQ showed up. I found myself in Evan's room, chatting with a bunch of people, when Dan came up just after I introduced myself to a very attractive girl named Kelly and he told her to touch my pledge pin to see what happens. She touched my pin, and he instantly said "in accordance with tradition, you have to give him a kiss." I smiled and nodded as she asked a few other brothers to confirm. Rather than kissing me, she gyrated and sorta dry-humped me for a few seconds. Dan said "Damn, Michael, that's better than a kiss!" I laughed about that and she said "Oh yeah, so this is our pledge pin," and essentially flashed me, as her pin was on her bra strap, forcing her to adjust her shirt in a way to highlight her "assets." I innocently touched the pin, merely to get a better look, "of course". At this time she knocked me backwards onto Evans bed, mounted me, and made out with me for about two minutes. Then, she got up and smiled at me. "What do you think of our pin?" she asked, to which I replied, "Oh, man! That's like a fuckin' magic button!" Her roommate and she said goodbye and goodnight, and headed out, as the 4 or 5 brothers in the room stared at me, jaws virtually dislocated as they were dropped so far. I got up and chatted with some more people. The guys later told me that I hooked up with another girl, but there's a hazy spot in my memory between the magic button incident and about 3 hours later when I found myself dancing with a group, and mesmerized by Jeff's strobe light as we moved. The party died down, and I determined that I was not in the condition to go back to the dorm, as I'd do something stupid. I tried to call my roommate Stephen to tell him not to expect me, but I couldn't navigate the intricacies of my phone. I recall at one point holding my phone to my head and saying "Call Stephen." I took my shoes off [I learned in Santa Barbara that if your shoes are on, you've passed out, and people mess with you; if your shoes are off, you went to sleep, as you were alert enough to take your shoes off] and munched on Wheat Thins. Jarred said goodbye to Jeff, and it looked to me like he wasn't down under .01% (he was totally fine, but everything looked distorted to me), so I told Jeff that I didn't think Jarred was OK to drive [I knew he drove his Subaru to the party]. Jeff ran him through a gauntlet of sobriety tests, and determined that he was OK. Then I put my head down and went to sleep.
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You ever go to sleep one night and wake up somewhere else?...

The Switch:
I opened my eyes and saw Jeff peak his head out from his hallway. I looked around and discovered the time to be 11:45am. I also discovered myself to be on Jeff's white couch, rather than the black futon-type couch. He asked why I was there, and I was trying to get the same information out of him. I concluded that at one point, I woke up and realized my pledge pin was still on. I put it in my wallet, and took my glasses off. At that point I switched couches, taking the blanket with which Jeff and Evan had covered me over, thinking "how cool of them," as the white couch is much more comfortable. I also saw a bucket on the ground, adjacent to my head, in case the "urge to purge" struck.
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Sometimes things go terribly awry....

The Toaster:
Evan came out and flipped on the TV. Maid in Manhattan was just starting. We shot the breeze on the couch, munching on pretzels and surveying the aftermath of what Jeff and Evan didn't intend to be a party. "Haha! That's what we have pledges for!" said Jeff. When the movie ended, he called Alex and Frenchie [Michael, another pledge, is from France, so to avoid confusion, he's Frenchie] and told them he'd pick them up. They came over, and we cleaned the scene. I cleared all the cans and bottles into a recycling bag [an El Corral bookstore bag, which I found to be humorously ironic], then we did the dishes assembly-line style. I washed, another guy rinsed, another guy dried and put back in the cupboards. Jeff started to prepare some chicken in his mini-George Foreman grille. We vaccummed, swept, and cleaned the floor and carpet. After the first two pieces of chicken were done, Jeff decided to accelerate the process and bake another three in his toaster oven, something he has done several times. After about five minutes, we looked in to see flashes of light. Our quick deduction went something like this -"Well, it's not the moon, it's not a lightbulb, it's not a streetlamp, and it's not a banana...it must be... FIRE! Jeff turned the toaster off and unplugged it immediately. We opened the door and blew the flames out. We took the chicken out, upon which time Jeff realized that he forgot to put the solid metal pan underneath the fillets, letting the fat drip down onto the toaster's heater coils and ignite. He cleaned the toaster and we headed back to campus, 4 in the afternoon.
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Sometimes everything goes the right way. Remember SIGGRAPH, where I won that PS2 raffle, the Adobe raffle, and got all those 3D glasses?...

2 for the Price of 0
Jeff went with me to my room, 'cause we were about to head off to the football game. I called Shaina up to make sure she was going, figured out where she'd meet us, then I changed my shirt, washed my face, brushed my teeth, grabbed a Mountain Dew, and headed out again. Jeff told Shaina to meet us at Grand and Perimeter. We stood there and waited for her. Once she was in sight, I called her up and asked "Where are you??? We're about to take off!" to which she shook her head while saying "oy yoy yoy" and hung up. We went down to the game, and the rumor is true - you merely flash your ID card, and you are let into the stadium. I was handed a T-shirt saying "Go Poly!" which I later put on mid-game. After the band came out and did their diddy, this guy came out with a bazooka/mortar/cannon type thing and fired. Two little bundles flew through the air. I knew it was coming towards me. It should have been in the hands of the people behind me, but I jumped up at the last second and snagged it out of the air. 2 seats over, Dan caught the other one. I unfurled it to reveal a white t-shirt with a giant "Woodstocks" logo on the back. 2 "free" shirts for going to the "free" game. A sweet deal.
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You know how history tends to repeat itself?....

The Party:
After the Mustangs' first loss of the season [and they had the win in their hands until 18 seconds on the clock!], we headed back to the dorm to put on our costumes. I busted out the makeup and hollywoodFX stuff and after way too long, Greg picked us up to take us to Adam's house for the party. We got there at 11:30, and it was still in full swing, but it had gone dry at 9:30. We all put in a buck and they eventually got a keg. I wasn't interested, as I don't enjoy the beer thing, so I stayed sober for the night. People were loving the wound effects, 'cause they look so damn real. One drunk guy was 100% convinced that I actually hammered rebar into my forehead and out my cheek, and screwed the massive bolt into my arm just to look cool for Halloween. 2 girls, however, just wanted to pull them off of me, so I avoided them as much as I could. They were quite cute, however, so as per Jeff's suggestion, I told them that if they pulled any of the three off, it had the same effect as touching the pledge pin, and they would of course have to give me a kiss. Obvously they wanted to take the things off me even more. One thing led to another and !@(*&@#^@!(*&&&&(#$&(*@!#@^@%%$^%(%)%&@%!$^$#**!@^$))#*#$">*@!#@^@%%$^%(%)%&@%!$^$#**!@^$))#*#$&#!!! At 3:30 or so I had Dan give me a lift back to the dorm, whereupon I set my alarm and fell asleep.
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Doesn't if feel great to make a difference?

Philanthropy:
We got to Ner Shalom at 10:15, which was right on the money at 10:00 as seen by JST. We were put to work immediately. We thought we would be doing stupid and meaningless community service, like trimming bushes, painting a wall, organizing siddurim, etc. WRONG. We were given a quick tour of the behind of the temple, which is a 10 acre plot of land with a clay court already in place. YES, I said a CLAY TENNIS COURT!!!!! The guy who is responsible for most of the development was a silver medalist at the Maccabee games, and always wanted a clay court, so he built one. At one corner of a field, a group of us was instructed to dig 5 3.5 foot deep holes. They were for 16 foot posts that will be the framework for the backstop for their BASEBALL DIAMOND. This is truly going to be the coolest JCC out there. I took a break for water, and passed some other guys who were building a shed. On the tarp they were using was a little frog. I picked it up and carried him back to the corner, where we placed him on a cone as our mascot. We got the holes dug, and then I was reassigned to the tennis court, where I put up a new windscreen despite WAAAY too much wind. I saw a little lizard run across my path, and my Ramah instincts kicked in. After a 15 second chase, I caught the lizard, and turned it over to see that it was a blue-belly. I knew from camp that rubbing their belly relaxes them, so I made it fall asleep, then walked over to Greg, who had his camera, and had him take a picture. He took a few [I'll post 'em when I get 'em], and I was walking away when I realized that it wasn't a normal bluebelly, which has one stripe down the middle, but one that has two stripes and white in the middle. It was quickly concluded that it was an israeli flag, so we got another picture with it and my israeli flag dog tag. We finished our work and headed over to the baseball corner to hit around a bit. The field is still completely undeveloped, in fact a tractor was plowing the outfield as we played. I'm the only one that didn't wear a glove, and the only one to consistently catch thrown balls, and the only one to actually catch deeep fly balls, and the only one to CRUSH every pitch [two came within a foot of the tractor hehe]. I may not have played Baseball for the past 6 years, but I still have it in me.
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Isn't it great to just relax?

Denoument:
I chilled out for the afternoon. Dan, Malory, Steve, and a bunch of others decided to go to Jamba Juice. We got there, and the girl inside was locking up. SO, we went next door to the Starbuxes. For those that don't know, SLO has the END OF THE UNIVERSE, as described by Lewis Black, whereby there is a Starbuck's across from a Starbuck's. One of them happens to be in a Barnes and Noble store, which was where we went. They had Cheesecake Factory chesecake in one of the refrigg'ed shelves. Seeing how close it is to Thanksgiving/Halloween, they had PUMPKIN CHEESECAKE. I nixed the drink idea and got myself a slice of that heavenly goodness. It was only $3.50, making the $7.50 at the real Cheesecake Factory [back home, of course] a FUCKIN RIP OFF. We came back, and here I am.
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Halloween weekend was incredibly cool.

Peace.

a BIT "Happy"

yeah. as the title suggests....tonight was Big Brother night....I am very very happy with my asigneee....uh.....i'll post about it later....

shalom

Epiphany

I'm on my laptop right now, in the hallway, right outside my door. Actually, to be precise, my laptop is on me - as it is a lapTOP. I find it quite nice. No noise, other than the random people in rooms in the hallway, and doors opening and closing. I actually like it more than the drone of the computers, and the overpowering temptation to click to the desktop for a "quick" round of MOH:AA or GTA:VC or to pump up the bass and play an IASCA deep bass test to shake the building from it's foundation. It also gets me away from Steve, who, as nice a guy as he is, is just on my nerves.

I'm finishing up an analysis of the first presidential debate, which I watched again earlier this evening. I must say, I'm very unimpressed with both of them. The entire debate was about Iraq, although Kerry was the only one smart enough to remind the world that Iraq didn't attack us, and that this should all be focused on Afghanistan. These brilliant words only lasted a minute or so, as he went right back to talking about Iraq, forcing him to walk a tight line later in the debate as Bush called him on his statements, which taken at face value, appeared to be dangerously close to the infamous "flip-flop."

HERE IS A LINK to the commentary. You may notice that I stole content directly from this blog, as I wrote them concurrently. By the way, I sent in my Absentee Ballot yesterday. Kerry got my vote. Ugh. As said on yesterday's southpark, "You almost always have to make a decision between a giant douche and a shit-sandwich

Goodnight from the hall of Tenaya Hall.

Asking for criticism?

Can it possibly be a good idea? My ENG134 teacher thinks so. She asked us to critique the class, and give her a paper with criticisms regarding the class style and teaching format. What a brilliant idea. The following will have been submitted to her at 9:30AM by the time you read this:

This class “ties” for first, rivaled only by my eighth-grade English class. However, I’m not sure how much my skills will have improved by the time I finish the class. You have offered your opinion on my essays, but they have been rather ambiguous, like “strengthen your thesis.” Perhaps some additional commentary, like how I could strengthen it would be more efficacious in my writing development. I do enjoy the story sharing at the beginning of class, as it lets us get to know each other much better in such a short quarter. Maybe you can even do individuals a favor and single out their particularly poor essays and have the class as a whole, via discussion, correct and bolster the essay’s content and structure.

I’m sure you will be able to figure out who wrote most of these commentaries by sentence structure and writing style, but don’t lose too much sleep over it.

It may not be exactly the way my “perfect” English class would be, but it doesn’t need to be. Thank you for the hours of work you dedicate to the class ‘behind the scenes’ grading papers and reading ramblings like this one. We all appreciate it.

While we're talking about English, the following are the first and second drafts of my 'division and comparison' essay. The first was peer reviewed on monday, and corrections have been highlighted in red.

First draft
Second draft

On another note, I think I consume too much Mountain Dew.

WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!

From an AIM profile:

"My drinkin club has a skiing problem"

I just thought that was funny. The parents are here this weekend, and I've gotta get up at 9am for a 10am Greek Life seminar put on by ASI.

| pWn3d t3# |\|4zi5 51 times

So I was sitting there at 12:45 deciding what to do. Sleep wasn't an option 'cause I only have SCOM in the morning tomorrow, and I'm not even presenting, so alertness is not a factor. Having not played Medal of Honor: Allied Assault in about 9 months, I found myself browsing the MOH:AA server list when I came across one saying "PRO - All Weapons Allowed." Pro. Professional.

Hmm, I thought, i've seen videos of pros, but have never really seen 'em first hand. Now's my chance. I joined the game, and saw Remagen for about 2 seconds before the match switched to Stalingrad. Anyone who has played, and subsequently died, against me in MOH:AA knows full well that Stalingrad is my favorite map.

If you have never played against pros, let me tell you they're good. Very good. There's no time to think. There are too many players in the buildings, and since the buildings are all interconnected, you can't just sit in a corner and be safe. I kept playing and playing, and I was getting plenty of kills, and was getting killed plenty of times. I ended up with 51 frags, including one at the VERY end, just before the map switched. If you look at the screenshot, you can see "Capt NoSprm was sniped by TR_mac_h8r1 in the head". I'm quite proud, seeing as though I came in second on the Allies, and tied for 4th overall [5th if you factor deaths]. Everyone with a mastery of a game should go and play a group of professionals, given the opportunity.

Click here to see the final kill count.

Off to sleep, a proud American. What could be better than personally killing 51 nazis then leaving with the knowledge that nobody was actually hurt?

Top 11 Geek Pick-Up Lines

11. You had me at "Hello World."
10. Mind if I run a sniffer to see if your ports are open?
9. You make me want to upgrade my Tivo.
8. By looking at you I can tell you're 36-25-36, which by the way are all perfect squares.
7. Jedi Mind Trick: "This is the geek you're looking for." *waves hand*
6. You can put a Trojan on my Hard Drive anytime.
5. Have you ever googled yourself?
4. How about we do a little peer-to-peer saliva swapping?
3. With my IQ and your body we could begin a race of genetic superchildren to conquer the earth.
2. What's a girl like you doing in a place like this when there's a Farscape marathon on right now on the Sci Fi channel.
1. I'm attracted to you so strongly, scientists will have to develop a fifth fundamental force.


Yes, I stole them. Sue me. Off to lunch.

Booyakasha Part 3.

Wow, I'm thoroughly impressed. I just got a call from FrozenCPU.com. They confirmed that I got the purple cathodes instead of the UV ones, and that they were sending the replacements. I asked how I'd get the purple ones back to them, and they said "don't worry about it". They pulled themselves out of their rut. ResellerRatings will get a great review.

Booyakasha Part 2.

Mark-FrozenCPU.com to jeff, me, support


Got it.........

Jeff- please send this gentleman the correct parts

Booyakasha

Hello,

I recieved my package for Order #0069909 today. Brief visual inspection showed two purplish cathode tubes, which I assumed to confirm that they were UV tubes. I just finished installing them, and turned them on to find a very bright purple light flooding my system. At first, I thought they were just VERY BRIGHT, but upon realizing that my UV-reactive IDE cables were not reacting to anything, I grew a bit suspicious. I took a look at the CoolerMaster packaging to find a little red sticker next to a purple square labeled "DFL-UD1-EP 300mm". EP appears to stand for "purple", not UV. Turning the box around, I found in the lower right corner a sticker reading "Purple".

SO, it appears as though I have been shipped the wrong part. I can provide photographic proof, if desired, but for the time being, the barcode number is 8-36837-00534-1. I assume and essentially expect that the UV cathodes will be shipped immediately, after being prepared with the UV-reactive blue sleeving and black heat-shrink. I don't mean to be brusque, but this was my first time ordering from FrozenCPU.com, although I have been visiting the site for many many months, possibly more than a year, to see what the latest and greatest modding tools are, and I would like to have the bitter taste washed away.

I assume your policy requires me to send back the purple cathodes, which is perfectly fine, but I request that you send packing materials along with the correct cathodes, as it is very difficult for me to access a packaging facility.

Should you need my shipping address again:
Tenaya 212
Cal Poly
One Grand Avenue, 110
San Luis Obispo, CA
93410-1600

It is 3am here on the west coast. I hope that when I awaken at 9am [12pm EST], I will have an appropriate email, and hopefully, when I get out of class at 11am, I'll have a shipping notice.

Thank you for your time and effort, I'm sure it was just a mixup.
Have a nice day.
Sincerely,
Michael David

AEP, Baby!

It's official! As of today I'm a Pledge brother of AEP, SW Chapter. That's Alpha Epsilon Pi, Sigma Omega Chapter [SO=San Luis Obispo] for you not-so-greekly-adept people out there.

I am so overwhelmed with joy that words escape me. I have, of course, been invited to the invitation-only dinner tommorrow night. In addition, I have been told to keep Sunday, most likely the afternoon, free of plans. Something is going down, and I'm not complaining.

>>listening to the collection of classical music I picked up at home. I was playing Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture, and Lowell came into the room and said "What?!?! Taste?!?! Class?!?! At College?!?!

Good times.

Hell has fucking frozen over.

I had English at 9:30 this morning. At 10:30, I was done with class for the day. I swung by the Alpha Epsilon Pi booth and hung out with the guys, then came back to the dorm. After a 2 hour nap and lunch, I decided that it was time to tidy up. The shocking evidence is as follows. Please take into account that I had not cleaned my room at home for about two and a half years. [Click the pictures for a larger image]

The room.


The bed.


The Desk.


Yes, Katherine Heigl is my girlfriend, although she doesn't know it yet. And yes, in the third picture you can see the taquitos from VG's that I had purchased minutes earlier, and consumed minutes later. It just so happened that when I walked into my room, the tidyness struck me incredibly hard, and I had to take pictures.

++Don't forget you can all comment on the blog by following the "comments" link somewhere over there >>>>>>>

Sunday Night

Circus Animal cookies are good. Just thought I'd share that. I do believe, however, that once you open the package, it is imperative to eat all the pink ones, else they revolt against humanity.

Just finished the schematic for the Power Supply I'm designing and building in IME156. I got bored and decided to spruce it up, as he said "be creative". You can see it by clicking these very words. {file size ~1MB}

the trickle of P2P has finally allowed Beethoven's 4th symphony in it's entirety to emerge on my hard drive. it's quite nice.

Peace.

I miss it.

There are two things I have found myself truly missing.

The first being Adat Ari El's High Holiday services. The choir truly is incredible, and I had to force myself to imagine the melodies as a single woman sang them at Ner Shalom.

The second is classical music. I was fortunate to have ripped Beethoven's 5th and 7th a few months back, but I don't have anything else. They don't let us use P2P networks, although I've found one, called Ares, that works mildly well. However, Classical music is hard to come by on that as well. I found a portion of Beethoven's 9th, and the beginning of Pastoral, but I want to hear both of them so badly. Tchaikovsky's 1812, as well, as the only one I can find has what sounds like looney tunes cannons; not the thundering explosions of the CD at home. When I go back, i'll be doing some ripping.

Shabbat Shalom v'hag sameach

So, how has everyone been? Life is good around here. Last night, I helped the AEPi guys build the booth for rush. We started construction at 12:45am. It was incredibly frustrating, but it was really good times with some of the guys. It is very poorly constructed [they built it and drilled holes while it was on uneven ground] so when we built it on level ground, the holes did not match up. My Maglite flashlight lived up to it's name and served as a hammer to pound the bolts into the holes, only suffering minor surface scratches. Durable little suckers. We finished construction at 4:15am.


Moving along, tonight was the Sukkot celebration with Hillel. It was shabbat also, of course, so we had a quasi-ma'ariv service. It was singing a few songs [l'cha dodi; eli, eli by request] then saying the barchu, shema, that ghetto song for "Adonai Tzfatai Tivtach" before the Amidah [no actual amidah], and mourner's kaddish. Then was dinner, which was quite good, italian genre. After that, another of the AEPi guys had a party at his place. That was a TON of fun. Met a bunch of new people [although I don't remember a single name], had fun dancing. One of the AEPi guys made it his goal to get me completely smashed, hammered, wasted, inebriated, etc. tonight, but I paced myself as i have done in the past, and stopped when I felt that more drinks would bring me closer to that magic threshold than I wanted.

That being said, I am definitely not sober as I type this, but to anyone that reads this and is "disappointed" in me, I ask if you really expected otherwise. One of you adults in particular, as you were saying goodbye to me, said "Just be careful". I think I did just that. I stopped myself when I felt it necessary, took responsibility [especially in tracking down one of the 3 DDs to get back to the dorm], and continue to take care of myself as I munch on food and chug water to ward off the evil hangover. Those of you that truly did expect otherwise, I am here to tell you that you are being quite naive [not enough focus/energy to look up that fancy 'i']. Moving on, a few of us went into the garage and discovered darts. We then discovered the dartboard. An hour later, we left the house. We never kept score from teh dartgame, but I counted each person's total across the four darts that they threw each turn.

I want to come down to LA over a weekend sometime soon, and am thinking the weekend of the 15th, 'cause KenTo [I will be calling you that from now on] is coming down from Berkeley. Rush week starts Monday, so I will officially be an AEPi rushee as of then, and hopefully an AEPi pledge a week after that. Then comes a 5-week pledge period, and finally initiation.

****EDIT****
I thought homecoming was the weekend of Nov. 15, which wouldn't make sense, 'cause that's pretty late. I guess I'll try to head down this coming weekend [time to pull the internet out and look at the Greyhound and Amtrak schedules].
********

I think I covered everything....i'll post other stuff I forgot later.

Shabbat Shalom,
Michael