This is a joke my dad sent me. I think it’s a pretty good one:
On the first day God created the cow. God said, “You must go to field with the farmer all day long and suffer under the sun, have calves and give milk to support the farmer. I will give you a life span of sixty years.”
The cow said, “That’s kind of a tough life you want me to live for sixty years. Let me have twenty years and I’ll give back the other forty.” And God agreed.
On the second day, God created the dog. God said, “Sit all day by the door of your house and bark at anyone who comes in or walks past. I will give you a life span of twenty years.”
The dog said, “That’s too long to be barking. Give me ten years and I’ll give back the other ten.”
So God agreed (sigh).
On the third day God created the monkey. God said, “Entertain people, do monkey tricks, make them laugh. I’ll give you a twenty year life span.”
Monkey said, “How boring, monkey tricks for twenty years? I don’t think so. Dog gave you back ten, so that’s what I’ll do too, okay?” And God agreed again.
On the fourth day God created man. God said, “Eat, sleep, play, have sex, enjoy. Do nothing, just enjoy, enjoy. I’ll give you twenty years.” Man said, “What? Only twenty years? No way man. Tell you what, I’ll take my twenty, and the forty cow gave back, and the ten dog gave back and the ten monkey gave back. That makes eighty, okay?”
Okay,” said God. “You’ve got a deal.”
So that is why for the first twenty years we eat, sleep, play, have sex, enjoy, and do nothing; for the next forty years we slave in the sun to support our family; for the next ten years we do monkey tricks to entertain our grandchildren; and for the last ten years we sit in front of the house and bark at everybody.
I finally went to a professor’s office hours. They are actually cooler than I expected. Not too many people were there, only four (including me). I definitely recommend going to them. The professors don’t tell you how to do the homework flat out, but they give hints. Who said nothing’s free anymore? Check them out if you haven’t already. You’ll be pleasantly surprised.
This one was too funny to pass up. I did a double-take while reading the headline:
The president fainted, fell and hit his head after choking on a pretzel while watching football on TV, the White House said. The Air Force physician who attended him said Bush is fine and that there was no bigger problem than brief oxygen deprivation.
Wall Street Journal (14 Jan 2002)
God bless America.
I managed to attend this game at Pauley, and boy was it a good one. Our beloved Bruins managed to defeat the number one ranked Kansas Jayhawks in a thriller by a whopping ten points. There is no doubt about it, our team is definitely top-ten caliber. They did it in style too, beating the Jayhawks in the final minute of the second half.
Idiot # 1
I am a medical student currently doing a rotation in toxicology at the poison control center. Today, this woman called in very upset because she caught her little daughter eating ants. I quickly reassured her that the ants are not harmful and there would be no need to bring her daughter into the hospital. She calmed down, and at the end of the conversation happened to mention that she gave her daughter some ant poison to eat in order to kill the ants. I told he that she better bring her daughter into the Emergency room right away.
Here’s your sign lady. Wear it with pride.
Idiot # 2
Seems that a year ago, some Boeing employees at the airfield decided to steal a life raft from one of the 747s. They were successful in getting it out of the plane and home. When they took it for a float on the river, a Coast Guard helicopter surprised them. It turned out that the chopper was homing in on the emergency locator beacon that activated when the raft was inflated. They are no longer employed at Boeing.
Here’s your sign guys. Don’t get it wet, the paint might run.
Idiot # 3
A true story out of San Francisco: A man, wanting to rob a downtown Bank of America, walked into the branch and wrote “this is a stikkup. Put all your muny in this bag.” While standing in line, waiting to give his note to the teller, he began to worry that someone had seen him write the note and might call the police before he reached the teller’s window. So he left the Bank of America and crossed the street to Wells Fargo. After waiting a few minutes in line, he handed his note to the Wells Fargo teller. She read it and, surmising from his spelling errors that wasn’t the brightest light in the harbor, she told him that she could not accept his stickup note because it was written on a Bank of America deposit slip and that he would either have to fill out a Wells Fargo deposit slip or go back to Bank of America. Looking somewhat defeated, the man said, “OK” and left. He was arrested a few minutes later, as he was waiting in line back at Bank of America.
Don’t bother with this guy’s sign. He probably couldn’t read it anyway.
Idiot # 4
A motorist was unknowingly caught in an automated speed trap that measured his speed using radar and photographed his car. He received in the mail a ticket for $40 and a photo of his car. Instead of sending in a check for payment, he sent the police department a photograph of $40. Several days later, he received a letter from the police that contained another picture, this time of handcuffs. He immediately mailed in his $40.
Another sign (though this guy might be onto something worth thinking about.
Idiot # 5
A guy walked into a little corner store with a shotgun and demanded all the cash from the cash drawer. After the cashier put the cash in a bag, the robber saw a bottle of scotch that he wanted behind the counter on the shelf. He told the cashier to put it in the bag as well, but the cashier refused and said, “Because I don’t believe you are over 21.” The robber said he was, but the clerk still refused to give it to him because he didn’t believe him. At this point the robber took his driver’s license out of his wallet and gave it to the clerk. The clerk looked it over, and agreed that the man was in fact over 21 and he put the scotch in the bag. The robber then ran from the store with his loot. The cashier promptly called the police and gave the name and address of the robber that he got off the license.
They arrested the robber two hours later.
(Remind me to have more signs printed up. Give this guy his!)
Idiot # 6
A pair of Michigan robbers entered a record shop nervously waving revolvers. The first one shouted, “Nobody move!” When his partner moved, the startled first bandit shot him. (This guy doesn’t need a sign, he probably figured it out himself.)
Idiot # 7
Arkansas: Seems this guy wanted some beer pretty badly. He decided that he’d just throw a cinder block through a liquor store window, grab some booze, and run. So he lifted the cinder block and heaved it over his head at the window. The cinder block bounced back and hit the would-be thief on the head, knocking him unconscious. Seems the liquor store window was made of Plexiglas. The whole event was caught on videotape. (Oh, that smarts. Give him his sign!)
Idiot # 8
Ann Arbor: The Ann Arbor News crime column reported that a man walked into a Burger King in Ypsilanti, Michigan at 12:50 A.M., flashed a gun and demanded cash. The clerk turned him down because he said he couldn’t open the cash register without a food order. When the man ordered onion rings, the clerk said they weren’t available for breakfast. The man, frustrated, walked away.
Please note that these people are allowed to vote!
My 1960s history class, GE60B was a surprise today. We spent the whole period analyzing the life and times of Bob Dylan. Man, was it a great class. The professors fired up the DVD player and we watched part of a documentary as well as Dylan’s early music videos. Then they played numerous songs, including Tombstone Blues and Highway 61 Revisited. More history classes should be like this one.
I finally installed my Windows XP Upgrade this week, and I have to say that I’m impressed. The new OS is super-stable. I’ve only had one application crash, Internet Explorer, and I was able to Ctrl-Alt-Delete without a problem. Ironically, it crashed on the Microsoft Windows Official Home Page…hmmm. Anyway, I’ll go over a couple of themes that I think are important and how I think Windows XP holds up. By the way, I’m running the Home Edition, not Professional.
Installation
This was a breeze. I was up and running in an hour, with almost all of my applications working perfectly. The OS itself installed without a hitch. However, many applications are not XP compatible, and I had to get upgrades off of the Dell Support Site and download.com. Luckily, Dell sent me most of the CDs with the upgrade that I needed. If you are upgrading, make sure you have a copy of Norton Antivirus 2002 (2001 doesn’t work…like Symantec doesn’t already have enough money). Roxio, formerly Adaptec, Easy CD Creator must be version 5 or higher. That’s another hundred dollars down the tube. If you don’t need these programs, no big deal then. All of the drivers on my system worked fine except for the ones with WinDVD. Dell provided a patch for free though.
Interface
This part of XP has gotten a lot of flak. I have to say Microsoft really did a bang up job redesigning the interface. I’ve hated the stupid gray rectangular bars for years. When Apple came out with OS X, I was really pleased because I knew Microsoft would copy the look. And of course they did. The new interface looks remarkably similar to Aqua (the default OS X interface). My friends have complained that it is too blue. Well, you can skin the entire interface, so I don’t want to hear complaints. XP even ships with a silver skin, so you don’t have to look at blue if you don’t want to. I think it’s kind of soothing.
The start menu has been heavily revised. It’s now in a two column format, which I think works better than the old one. It just looks less cluttered. All the program menus are there. It’s also much more customizable than in previous versions. The taskbar has gotten a redesign as well. Programs are now grouped. If you have five Internet Explorer windows open, a nice little 5 will appear in the Internet Explorer taskbar icon and when you click on it, a menu appears. You can access all five windows from it. Genius.
Stability
Windows XP is now running on the NT Kernel, making the system much more stable than the 9.x platform. It just doesn’t crash. And it doesn’t crash on an upgrade. That’s unheard of, I know. If you do get a program that freezes, it doesn’t take down the whole OS with you. Microsoft’s claim is actually true.
Overall
If you have 95, 98, or ME, get this upgrade! I hate the old versions of Windows now that I have XP. If you’re on 2000, don’t rush into it. Wait for Microsoft to release XP SP1. You know it’s coming. Make sure you run the Upgrade Advisor before you install and you’ll be fine. It’s a bang-up product that is worth the $100. On one machine.
Well, it’s been a great time away from school and I’m saddened to see it go. I’m having dinner with my friends at the Buckeye tonight, and then I think I’m going into the city tomorrow to take Howard on a tour. I will be leaving on Sunday morning either by plane or car (not sure yet). Expect me back at school in the evening sometime.
Canon EOS Rebel 2000
Here’s a picture of my new baby. I’ve already been experimenting with the camera and I’m getting pretty good with it. It has a ton of features, and I especially like being able to play with the ISO film speed as well as the aperture and shutter speed. Good stuff. The camera has dual automatic and manual focus modes, which is a plus. I will definitely take a lot of campus shots with this baby. I highly recommend it.
I got a lot of other great stuff as well. My parents got me a sharp looking outfit from Banana Republic, including new khakis pants, which I needed desperately. I got some other nice clothes also. My floormates, namely Mark and Suzanne, hooked me up with some decent stuff too! Wow this was a great Christmas.
Here at the Steinbaugh residence it was a really quiet one, with just the family celebrating the holiday. It was nice, and dinner was really laid back.
I’m still not ready to go back to school though…yet.
The jolly fat man in a red suit has been tracked by a non-profit United States government outfit since 1954. Do you doubt his existence? Well, be sure to visit the NORAD Santa Sighting Project before you make such a claim. Merry Christmas to all!
Is it good to be home! For the first time, I get a lovely three week vacation with absolutely no school attached. No papers, no books, no fear! High school was never like this. I’m definitely never going back. As of now, I have only tenative plans, including hanging out with some of my friends, especially Will, who wants to trade CD’s. Maybe I’ll get around to seeing Evan, Sung, and my numerous other Mill Valley buddies. I might even take Howard, one of my floormates (he lives in the lounge) on a tour of San Francisco. He’s staying at the Chinatown Holiday Inn. So hopefully that will be cool.
Also, a big thanks goes out to Quinn, my roommate, for saving my butt. He’s mailing me back something I forgot in my room that I need.
Happy Holidays everyone!
Finals are the hardest academic experience I have ever been through. I had them nicely spaced out, with at least a two-day interval between each of them, and I was still sweating it. To compare, some of my friends on campus had two finals on one day, and they got an hour of sleep before. I slept like a baby before my finals, getting at least eight hours. It can be tough to physically sleep before a final, with all the stress, but I was at least in bed for eight to nine hours every time. Be sure to get your sleep — I seriously think it paid off when I needed some extra thought power during my tests. Of course you can cram, think you know everything, and get an hour of sleep. Then you will go to your test, the professor will throw something new at you, exactly like my chemistry professor, and you will have no clue how to do it because you can’t use an algorithm to solve it.
That’s exactly my point. No matter how much you read concepts in a book, some tests will hit you with material that you haven’t seen. It’s just not possible to know everything. You just have to know how to do everything. That’s extremely difficult on a test. For example, also during chemistry, I got stuck looking at a combustion reaction that I didn’t know how to solve for over thirty minutes. I kept plowing through and I think I finally got it. It was a good feeling, but I know that if I had been drained, with no sleep, I wouldn’t have known how to do it.
Sleep is not as important as knowing the basic concepts, of course. I didn’t put anything off for my test, so I didn’t have that problem. However, one of my floormates didn’t do any of his statistics for the entire year, and he crammed from 12 PM-12 AM before his final. That would take it out of you.
Just keep up on the work and you’ll do fine. I think I did.
Well, Quinn and I got into an arguement earlier this week over a number of things. I’m writing about this now because I think we’re back to being able to talk to each other. First, I asked him about some mysterious phone numbers and he got really defensive. I now know to never do something like that again. Second, he yelled at me for being too loud one night. In fact, it wasn’t me being loud at all. He really got mad at Nancy, which was not fair at all. She had some of her math papers in my room and had to get them out. She was really quiet about it and honestly, Quinn didn’t act in a responsible manner.
We got into a verbal grudge match at night, where Quinn simply lost it. For the sake of decency, I will omit the swear words from the weblog, but let’s just say that there were plenty thrown about. I told him that if he says something like that to me again, he will regret it. That really made things tough.
However, I got mad myself when he woke me up twice during the night before my final. At school, you can close the door and have it stay partially open by extending the deadbolt from the door. Well he did that but let the door slam twice. No man can sleep through that.
Anyway, I believe we have resolved our conflict. We had breakfast together this morning and talked about the holidays, including the Chinese New Year. Things are looking up, I think.
Well I had my math final yesterday, and it was quite an experience. I was amazed at how much time I had during the test. It really isn’t like a midterm at all, which is nice. During a midterm, you have to scramble to get your answers down because you simply don’t have enough time to play with the problems. In math, you need to experiment with solutions because that is the only way to solve them. So, I was really thankful for the large block of time. Three hours is almost excessive, since I only really used two of the hours to write down my work. The last hour I spent checking. Here’s hoping that I did well…
Today for my GE60A 1960s history class, I was required to go watch the Graduate at the Northwest Campus Auditorium. The auditorium is like a mini-theater. I have been there many times for history movies, but this is the first movie I am actually writing about.
The movie was excellent. Benjamin Braddock, played by Dustin Hoffman, ends up having an affair with a woman named Mrs. Robinson, the wife of his father’s business partner. Inevitably, Ben falls in love with Mrs. Robinson’s dauther, Elaine. Elaine leans of Ben’s secret affair with her mother through Ben himself. However, her mother manipulates the story afterwards so that it appears to her that Ben raped her mother. Elaine naturally grows to detest Benjamin.
Elaine is a student at UC Berkeley. Benjamin decides one day that he is destined to marry Elaine. He even tells his parents. Shortly after, he drives up to Berkeley in an attempt to propose to her. He ends up repeating this proposal what seems as daily. Elaine admits that she is engaged to another man, Carl Smith. The two have a wedding ceremony in Santa Barabara.
In the conclusion, Ben drives down to Santa Barbara from Berkeley and stops the wedding by shouting her name from behind a large class window at the back of the church. Elaine shouts, “Ben!,” runs away from the ceremony at her parents’ distgust and hops a bus with Ben toward happiness.
The end.
It was an awesome movie! I even noticed that in Wayne’s World II they spoof the ending of this movie. Definitely a film classic. Go rent it.
I’m already read for some vacation. While Christmas break is two weeks away, I feel the holiday season coming on. Most of the spirit is from the stores, with their Christmas sales already in full swing. Nothing like good old commercialism. Last week, the week after Thanksgiving, came and went extremely quickly. I was amazed. This week is flying by as well. That I am not so happy about. I really need to start studying…and stop weblogging…for the time being.
I decided over the weekend that I needed more hard disk space. 140GB of storage just wasn’t doing the trick. I then proceeded to go to Best Buy, where I thought I was going to buy 60 GB more. The idea was simple: buy a cheap 60 GB EIDE drive, pop it in my computer, and I’m ready to go. However, I noticed a great deal in the store. Best Buy had priced the 60 GB hard drives at $170. The 80 GB was priced at $250. And low and behold, the 120 GB was priced at $200! The specs were the same on every hard drive. I thought that maybe it was defective, but then again I can always return it. So I took the chance and bought the drive. It works like magic. I got it installed and partitioned in about half an hour. Now I have 260 GB of storage. Joy.
Well well well, Week 10 has finally arrived. It’s the devil in disguise. I’m convinced of it. Why do I say that? Well, first off, we all know that Week 10 means the end of the quarter! NO MORE SCHOOL! BUT it also signifies that finals are only ONE WEEK away, AND the dorm is under a 22 hour Quiet Hours lock-down. Nathan, our wonderfully lax RA, has threatened to write people up for once without so much as a minor warning. ::sigh:: Week 10 also means all term papers are due (maybe I should start mine soon), projects to wrap up (I really should start that chem project), and finals to study for (I guess that can wait til Sunday…). So yes, people are starting to stress out completely…I’m not sure how to handle this anymore! Thank god for MP3s and WinAmp…I can listen to wondefully peppy Christmas tunes and think of the days until I return to good ol’ PA…well, the state’s not that great, but I get to go home and see my friends! But how ’bout I pass my courses first? “I’m dreaming of a White Christmas/Just like the ones I used to know…” Right…I should stop procrastinating and get back to this last math assignment so I can have the rest of the week to do the paper and chem project. To all you Bruins out there: GOOD LUCK!
Woo hoo! I went over to the CTO (Central Ticket Office) around 12:00, since I had a little bit of time to spare before Chem, and I managed to get student tickets to the show! Student tickets are unbelievably hard to get, since there are only 67 per show in Royce Hall. Nevertheless, I managed to get them for $20, and I’m going to the show on Friday.
Ibrahim Ferrer and his orchestra will be performing, and I am so psyched. I have all of their albums and I know it will be an awesome show. May January come soon…
I think I did a lot better on this one than I did on the first. I’m feeling a “B” or an “A.” We’ll see, but I definitely think it will be my 25% midterm and not my 20%. Here’s hoping. The test covered Molecular Orbitals, Periodic Trends, Spectroscopy, and Hybridization. It was not a test that you could slack for. I studied my butt off this weekend and I think it paid off.