A noble attempt at this crazy blogging thing..

So, as I sit here, I am listening to the strains of electric music, punctuated by a distant train whistle, the blare of my nearby fan, and the intermittent whirs of power tools; from my perch on the 5th floor of the East Parallel, I can see sparse lights in the window across the courtyard, the gently blowing tops of trees and just barely the FRED banner proudly proclaiming the pride of my new, if potentially temporary home.. its certainly been an interesting two days.

Two days ago, I woke in a room much like this one: about the same size about the same shape, but 600 miles away and substantially less sparsely decorated. I got up, showered, got dressed, and ate breakfast. Then I left behind pretty much everything I’ve ever know for the last 16 years. Though I’d consider the things I took relatively few in number.. I suppose it depends a bit on context:

In any case, with everything packed, it was onto the road…   …for eleven hours. It was a VERY long and not particularly eventful drive. I spent most of it listening to my iPod and reading a lot of The Audacity of Hope by a certain Senator Barack Obama. I must say, it is very well written and while I disagree with some of what he says, I definitely get the feeling that his opinions are, in general, pretty good and that he is altogether a pretty decent guy. He definitely has my support (and about $150 of my money in campaign donations). Anyway, enough of politics. The only break in my car ride was a stop at a NJ rest stop. I must say it is certainly an interesting experience. Both the length of this line and the sheer variety of humanity in it are worth note:

Anyway, to wrap up the less interesting day, I eventually got to Camridge, checked into the Hampton Inn with my parents, accosted and kidnapped Karen from her temp at W410, and went with her and my family to the Asgard for some delicious faux-Irish food and decor. I then randomly went to Fred Desk and got my hall and room keys and was arbitrarily recognized by the person working desk (from CPW I suppose?). Then we headed back (after getting semi-lost and driving around the Memorial->Mass Ave->Main->Vassar loop an absurd four times before going back to Ames where we started.. *sigh*) and crashed.

Now to the exciting day. This morning I got up, ate the free Hampton Inn breakfast and was whisked off to campus. I checked in at the student center to find that my carefully selected ID picture had been rejected for no good reason (nor one that was explained). I imagine it is either the hat or the resolution. In any case, it still opened the door to EC and after much heaving and sweating I got all my stuff up to my room. Karen was also awesome and helped carry and put together my fan to keep me mildly cool in the un-air conditioned halls of EC. My roommate, Santiago, was absent when I arrived (though his stuff is in evidence) and, at this writing, I have not actually yet met him :-/ (I will let you all know how he and I get on when he eventually returns.. ).

After this I played run around campus with my family, deposited some money to my student account (it will later become TechCash), got a new picture for my ID, joined the COOP, picked up some info about employment with IS&T (which I am considering), then wished my family goodbye.. it was odd seeing them go, but I am not altogether homesick just yet. Anyway, after this I decided to go see Karen’s awesome room-mural in person.. but she wasn’t home. So I walked down 41W, and was going down the staircase at the other end of the west parallel when out of the PUTZ (2W) door popped.. Karen.. who dragged me in where I heard her and some junior reminisce about Chicago. I also heard snippets of plans for potential EC craziness in REX proper. It was altogether pretty fun. Then I finally made it back to her room, saw her supposedly sexy computer and mural. Then we hung out at her room. While crossing the courtyard we got a glance of things to come:

At this point over Karen’s objection on principle, I decided to go take the swim test. After finishing the swim test, I also took the boating test because I could (10 minutes of water treading just doesn’t seem that hard). It was actually a little harder than I thought, I passed but I was pretty tired afterward. Anyway, because of the fact that I came directly from the swim test, I didn’t have my camera and therefore have no pictures of the awesome stuff that followed. Its hard to crsytalize effectively, so I won’t really try too hard. FAP
unofficially started with a gathering around W20. I tried to learn other peoples’ names cause of the fact that I usually fail. I also actually met Jess Kim for the first time in real life. After this we all went square dancing. This doesn’t sound that awesome, but I must say it was a whole lot more fun than I really expected. We did some pretty interesting calls especially the interleaved grand squares and the little experiment in hexagon dancing. Anyway, its hard to explain, but suffice it to say that afterward I was tired, thirsty, hungry, and in a pretty good mood. Luckily, next was food. We had a catered dinner of cheeseburgers or BBQ chicken, then rounded it out with a trip to JP Licks. Besides being a delicious ice cream-y affair, it also constituted my first trip across the river into Boston proper. (If I had had my camera, you would assuredly be presented with pictures of smoot marks).

I thought I was done at this point, and came back here and started blogging, planning to go to bed soon after. Suddenly, however, Rachel Fong and posse and then Karen (in pursuit of misplaced sunglasses) appeared. This was followed by gathering of other EC residents (frosh and otherwise), discussions thereamongst, an impromptu tour of ECs various halls (which are now partially inhabited), and a substantial time hanging out in Chris Varenhorst’s 5W room marveling at his hydraulic door and discussing various peaces of MIT lore, apocrypha, projects, etc. It is now 12:30am .. and there is still no sign of my roommate, which is a little odd. In any case, I have some pictures of the EC constructions in progress, but I shall save them for a later entry as I am getting a little tired.

Anyway, despite the lack of work thus far, its still pretty odd being all collegiate (and perhaps a little more pleasent). Anyway, I have to get up for 8:30am breakfast ..so… night all ^_^

From MIT,

~Donald Guy

So, I am writing this entry in advance (August 8th), but for somewhat obvious reasons, I am delaying its publication until August 17th at midnight, once all the blogger apps should be in.

Okay, so, for those of you who somehow are unaware, one of the major reasons this blog exists is because I really want to be an admissions blogger for MIT (along with my general, long-held desire to keep a journal of some sort). This process is highly competitive, particularly this year. As with MIT Admissions in general, however, there is a bit of a philosophy that, just because it is important and competitive that doesn’t mean it can’t be fun. As a result, in addition to the various more serious/mundane requirements of the blogger app, there is the following short essay:

Short answer #2 (please choose one of the following).

• Option A: In a paragraph or two, describe to us a YouTube video, and why it is the single most important piece of art ever created. (Please include its URL)
• Option B: Create and submit MIT Admissions blog-related Lolcats (or Lolbeavers, or Lolsnivelys, or…). Submit a minimum of 2 and maximum of 4.

As you may have figured out by now, I decided on option B. I got a little carried away, however, and actually made 9 different designs. Choosing only four was incredibly difficult; I tried to survey many MIT prefrosh and students, but I had trouble finding ones that weren’t also applying to be bloggers. Finally after much deliberation, I settled on the following four which, while not necessarily my favorites, are probably the most directly relevant to Admissions (while also funny). They also happen to include at least one lolcat, one lolbeaver, and one lolsnively… I thought it was good completion. Anyway, without further ado, my four main selections:

This one is actually a recreation of one I earlier posted to the Facebook group. Since it was a good idea then, I still considered it a good idea for this application. Since its old hat to me, I don’t think its that funny any more, but hopefully it is still funny to the people to whom it’s new, like the blogger committee.

This is my incarnation of a lolbeaver. I believe the picture is from Battle of the Bands, CPW 2006. I forget where exactly I found it. Still .. its a true story. (Also clearly lolbeavers have slightly better grammar than lolcats).

I think this one should gain me points for being a simultaneous lolsnively and LoTR reference. It was also incidentally taken by Laura, who is on the blogger selection committee. I hope she will like the caption. I find it hilarious.

With the knowledge that Joey C. is also applying for blogger-ship, I hope he doesn’t mind terribly that I stole his picture. This is also not technically a lolthing, but I thought the motivational poster motif was a better format for this particular caption. Personally, of the ones I submitted this is probably my favorite (though the people I asked didn’t really agree). I just love it cause its a great caption for the picture, but is also relevant because with the blogs, and two-way comments.. it really is pretty interactive.

---

So, that is it for the ones I submitted, but as I said, I got a little bit overzealous and made 5 more than the four I submitted. Some of them I actually find funnier, but they are also less relevant to Admissions or are otherwise less appropriate. I present them in (my opinion’s) order from least funny to most funny:

This is a great picture, and by Lulu, but it doesn’t really work with the caption because the cat doesn’t actually look all that happy. It is also too specific. I showed it to a friend on 1E, saying they could steal it for hall rush or something, if they wanted. Sadly, it was deemed not ammusing enough for this purpose and it isn’t really.

This is the first one I did. It is a bit too obvious to really be particularly funny. Still, its a decent application of lolcat dynamics to Snively– an early test in lolsnively technology, if you will.

This is a relatively entertaining picture all by itself. The caption doesn’t really add that much and all told, an implication of bribery (which would obviously be patently false) wouldn’t reallly be appropriate. Still, some of the people I surveryed liked it alot. Again, I think its just the picture. Matt, that is an amazing float.

I’m sorry. I find this one ABSOLUTELY hillarious, both for the original picture (by Lulu) and for my own caption (</vanity>). Nevertheless, I feared this would be a bit too controversial for official submission. I don’t actually think that (all) people on west campus hate kitties.

This is quite clearly the best one ever. It also has little to nothing to do with anything. Still, it is a great picture and I was proud of myself for the irony.

Anyway, I guess if this is published, I am en route to MIT … that is scary .. but also amazingly exciting. It also means that the blogger selection committee is probably in their selction process. Thank you for making such a tough decision. Regardless of if they include me, I hope you pick awesome bloggers to represnt our class for posterity! ^_^

See you all at orientation.. some of you tommorow! :-O

~Donald

For the last hour and 4 minutes, it has been my last day at home. My last. day. at home. You know what though, I am tired of whining about leaving… I will, in fact, miss many people, but I’m about to meet a lot of other cool people. I’ve now seen pretty much everyone I know for the last time for a long time. I am about to see a lot of people for the first time that I will see often. It’s time to become an optimist. (This reminds me of a terrible joke:

A pessimist, an optimist, and an engineer walked up to a table where they observed a glass at half capacity. “That glass is half full!” exclaimed the optimist cheerfully. “That glass is hald empty,” said the pessimist gloomily. The engineer just got extremely frustrated and said nothing. After awhile, the optimist and pessimist noticed the engineer’s condition. The optimist, always one to try and cheer people up, finally turned to the engineer and said “What’s wrong?” “CLEARLY THE GLASS IS TWICE AS BIG AS NECCESARY!”

)

Anyway, today is all about preperation for leaving for MIT tommorow. ( I have packed substantially less than I ought to have). No more focus on the past. No forgetting it either, but it is time to think futureward. On the not of the future, I found out today that my HASS-D result is for 24.900 ^_^. Other than being at 9:30am on Tuesdays and Thursdays, this is awesome.

To MIT, see you in 2 days!!

~Donald Guy

P.S. The Blogger App is due today, so you can expect a pre-written/scheduled post of my lol-things tommorow morning.

In 1513, Niccolò Machiavelli wrote Il Principe. In it he famously wrote a message (though not the words) that “The ends justify the means.” Here, in 2008, by a gross turn of phrase I am facing down a different reality: I am realizing that the meaning justifies “the End”s. While admitting that was a terrible pun, it is a terribly true statment … In recent days, I have been facing down a lot of ends. This evening, for example, I had my last RSD class. On the one hand, I am glad to be free of the various injuries and arguments it seemed to lead to; on the other, its odd to not be doing it after 6 months, to say nothing of just not seeing the people, even if they weren’t my favorite people in the world.

Much more affective is the other end of the spectrum—the people that are essentially my favorite in the world, my friends and family. I realize this sort of post becomes redundant at a point, but its still crazy.. The parties also are coming to an end. Seeing my friends at all is coming to an end. Granted, I already have new friends who I am looking forward to seeing more. Its a weird trade off though. My new friends will be neither better nor worse than my current friends, and yet they will, in a manner, usurp their position (Machiavelli would appreciate this). I truly hope to and plan to keep in touch with a lot of people here, some specific people especially .. and yet, it shall inevitably change.

At the same time, as I said, there is a meaning in all these ends, it means that I am really, truly headed off to college, headed off to MIT. And as I should be, I am excited. In 3 days, probably about 67 hours, I will be in Cambridge, MA. Things are falling into place for a new beginning in the midst of the ends. And I know that before long the number of beginnings will GREATLY overshadow the number and scope of the ends and ultimately I shall be fine. And yet, all the other lives shall go on without me.. shall progress, develop, hopefully prosper. It’s very strange.. I can’t focus on just my own progress.. I’m just not Maciavellian enough.

So, to all my friends that I am leaving here in Virginia Beach, to all of those off to Blacksburg, Baltimore, Fairfax, Charlottesville, or wherever, I wish truly wish you all the best. Lets us do our best to keep in touch!

~Donald

P.S. In other news: I saw my Freshman Advising Seminar assignement today: FASAP. ^_^.

So, I’ve been in a bit of an odd mood today. As a result I haven’t really done much constructive, which includes failure to blog, despite a sense that I really ought to be. One of the things I did end up doing was trying to reorganizing my files on my computer. Probably the most cluttered part was my desktop and in looking through it I saw my “Recovered Files” folder from the time about 6 months ago when I ran rm -rf * in ~ rather than ~/.Trash (in layman’s terms, I stupidly permanently deleted nearly all my files). I actually canceled (by ^C) the operation but not before it chewed through 9th Grade, 10th Grade, 11th Grade, 12th Grade, Desktop, and part of Pictures. After this, I tried desperately to recover anything I could with a copy of Prosoft Data Rescue II. I successfully got most of the pictures and some of the school stuff, but I lost a lot.

This has tend to be what happened with my (family’s) computers… we aren’t known to back up much. As a result, what can be located is kinda sparse. I long ago gave up on the files lost that time, but seeing the folder I had used for recovery, I grew curious what other digital relics that I still care about are on various CDs I have burned across time. Thus, my current employment is going through my sparse “backups” and seeing what I recover. Since all the things I decide are worth saving shall surely reveal something about me, and a blog is nothing if not a random window to a person, I decided I’d archive what all I find here as I go. The following list will be/was written as I pulled them off, so I have no idea how interesting it shall be/is. Here we go:

• Recovered an MP3 of Yellowcard’s “October Nights” from a mix CD. Yellowcard has never really been a favorite band of mine, but I do generally like them. I found their album Ocean Avenue to be fantastic! Not only are several of the songs great in their own right, but the album itself has a feel of a journey from the break-out opening of “Way Away” to the closing, reflective strains of “Back Home”, it really gives the feel of a journey of self-discovery… I think its really cool. Their albums since have not measured up in my opinion. “October Nights” is from the album before Ocean Avenue, entitled One for the Kids. I’ve never listened to most of that album, but I think the ones before it are rather atrociously repetitive and cacophonous. “October Nights” was one of those tracks that just appears on a computer from a borrowed mix CD or such.. its a really nice song, though; it invokes a lot of the feeling of the then-coming Ocean Avenue, both in the reflective, semi-romantic subject matter and the heavy use of violin that gives it a stand out tone from a lot of punk/pop music of the era.
• Tons of Linux Install Media. Okay, so this doesn’t actually count as something I recovered and saved, since I am throwing most out. Still, interesting personal history. I found my original set of Mandrake 8.2 discs that I acquired at Cybercamps many years ago, several further versions of Madrake up to 9.2 at least, some of the last versions of Red Hat before it split into RHEL and Fedora, and of course, several Knoppix CDs back from when Live CDs were novel.
• An MP3 CD that either is or is similar to the first CD I burned entitled “Da Mix”. It has several “classic” tracks that I take for granted that I have, but actually don’t have a copy of on this laptop. Amongst them:
  • “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)” by Green Day
  • “The Rock Show” by Blink-182, “Fat Lip” by Sum 41
  • “Sadie Hawkins Dance” by Relient K

  It also contained a few signs of the times that I recaptured:

  • “Back Here” by BBMak
  • “Absolutely (Story of a Girl)” by Nine Days
  • a demo of “In the End” by Linkin Park (version goes “It starts with one and multiplies til you can taste the sun”).

  Further it contained some VERY dated things that I let go:

  • “Mirror Mirror” by M2M
  • “He Loves U Not” by Dream
  • “All You Wanted” by Michelle Branch

  along with a variety of Creed, Avril Lavigne, and others. Some of these were worth a listen, but not worth cluttering my HDD. Regardless, this recovery is going to clutter my iTunes Library.

• My Portfolio for the Technology Academy at Landstown High School in Virginia Beach. Though this portfolio gained me admission, I did not end up going here as I found the program to be too vocational. My portfolio was way overzealous. We were supposed to pick 3 of several “challenges” and implement them. I chose databases, web design, and a technical resume, then combined them all into a PHP/MySQL site which I ran off my own desktop, configuring it to be world viewable.I am relatively certain that everyone else who applied did the database challenge in MS Access like they expected. This is the first example of me going WAY over on an assignment with a simple technical component.The other big examples are when I wrote http://wip.donaldguy.com from scratch for my Works in Progress folder in 11th grade when everyone else used a PBwiki, and the http://english.donaldguy.com CSS/XHTML design I made for my Senior English Portfolio when almost everyone else used MS Publisher (which unfortunately only renders properly in Firefox 3 and Safari due to standards compliance).

  None of these are actually particularly impressive when compared to many projects of my future MIT classmates, but they certainly were compared to my high school classmates. This portfolio was also probably my first playing with PHP, making it in effect my first independent programming project. Also, what I considered noteworthy on a “technical resume” at the time is laughable.. I’ll leave it at that.

• A Whole Heap of 8th Grade Work: some of the highlights includes a biography on Buddy Rich, some awful compositions (though the piano theme is decent and the drum set has an interesting fill… they are not necessarily a whole lot worse than my piano composition from AP Music theory this year: Compassion ), a report and flash video on cloud seeding, a paper that explains quadrilateral categorization by a frame story about a theoretical MMORPG named “Quadwarz”, a rap about the Constitution and the role of a citizen including 10 verses on the bill of rights, and actually decent English essays on Fahrenheit 451 and The Good Earth
  
• Beginnings of several other websites including “Phoenix Central” a forum for my middle school, a website for my Boy Scout troop, a mysterious site named “Blue Steel” (which I do not believe had anything to do with Zoolander), and a begining of a site for my high school which was probably eventually realized as the “Dolphinbook” schedule matching system I ran the last 3 summers.
• Several (3) revisions of the open source text game Province that a friend and I were trying to write. We checked it into SourceForge, and its still there, but its awful..

So, some things I learned about myself: I seem to “back up” music a lot more than anything else; I have a lot of odd, unlabeled CDs (Hiren’s BootCD, a disc of Windows optimizing utilities, combination Panic! at the Disco album/High School Musical soundtrack, and Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon to name a few); some of my 8th grade work was actually half-way decent; and in middle school, I liked to start a lot of “technical” projects and not finish them.

Well .. I’ve been at this for a couple hours now. I hope this random window into my life was moderately interesting.

Until Next Time,

~Donald

So, as I contemplate the encrouching liveline (deadline is inappropriately negative) of college (ZOMG <11 days!), there are about a thousand things on my mind. Since I can’t discuss a thousand things on my blog I will pick an overarching theme that I think sums it all up pretty well: Quantum Mechanics.

Now, before you go running away screaming AHH PHYSICS, NO!! I promise I am interpreting the theme in a way free of equations or word problems (at least ones you have to solve). In fact, its probably a way that will make actual physicists angry. Basically, I’m thinking of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. While the literal statment is about the fact that its ” physically impossible to measure [both] the position and momentum of a particle,” and I am clearly not a particle, I also feel like while my position is relatively clear, my “momentum” is immeasurable at this point.

I haven’t actually yet observed my role, my wavefunction has not collapsed; I am Schrödinger’s prefrosh.

To dispense with the abstraction and nerdiness, I am basically saying what I said before: I still feel like my possibilities at MIT are limitless. Therefore I have no idea where I am heading and what my role will end up being.

Let us consider some specific examples. One point that has been confusing me is what I shall do for a math class. I have a 5 on AP Calc BC, so 18.01 is right out. I feel fairly competent with it, so 18.01/02A is also eliminated. This leaves “only”: 18.014, 18.02, 18.022, and 18.023. (To my non-MIT friends who are now lost, here is the catalog of math classes with normal titles/descriptions: http://student.mit.edu/catalog/m18a.html ). This would be a complicated enough decision (the main conflict being between taking 18.02 on the strength of Aroux’s reputation and 18.022, since I already have a good familiarity with Multivariable Calc from a class last year), but it is further complicated by the fact that, out of boredom I have been reading a calc book I won from a competition and, as a result, feel that I might actually be able to pass the 18.02 ASE. This would leave me deciding between 18.03 or 18.06 then .03 or .034 in the spring. If I wanted to go really crazy, I could try to go straight for 18.100B.. but thats highly unlikely.

Anyway, I have whined about math class choice long and hard elsewhere, and while I still appreciate advice if you have it, this is not really the point of this post, I simply mean it to be illustrative of my class choice uncertainty. I have similar conflicts between 8.02/8.022 and 3.091/5.111/5.112, anyway.

Alas, my indecision does not end with classes; extracirriculars are also a source of uncertainty. I really want to audition for an a capella group, as I love them, but I’m not even sure if I’d rather be a member of the Logs or Resonance (I may even audition for others, but I’m pretty sure these are my top 2). On top of this, I know what kind of comitment these groups are. Meanwhile, my mind wants to hatch plans about Roadkill Buffet, Musical Theater Guild, and even UA. All of these plans are of very time consuming things and all together are not possible. At some point, I WILL have to make a decision, and the wavefunction WILL collapse. And I am really curious about what I will pick and how I will make these decisions.

But of course, a huge part of the aforementioned uncertainty principle is the so-called “observer effect,” the fact that to observe somthing is to change it. Even in writing this blog entry, I may be changing my future (perhaps even by becoming an admissions blogger ^_^). Certainly when I have to make these decisions final, it will change what other decisions I can make.

Still, its so odd to think that at this point my college life is essentially a (metaphoric) wavefunction, all of the possibilities coexist in some sense. Even things that I am relatively certain of (my inteded major: VI, my intended dorm: EC) could easily be different. If I have a great time at some Senior Haus event during REX, I could live there and end up being significantly different than in relatively similar EC. In more extreme variation, I could even end up living in Baker :-O!! With all this talk of Physics, I could switch from VI to 8.. anything could happen!

And then of course there are even more remote possibilities. For example, a timely allusion is the activation of the Large Hadron Collider 21 hours, 4 minutes, and odd seconds from the time of this writing. As has been well-established by press and lawsuits, there is an incalcuably small chance that the LHC could produce micro-black holes or a “strangelet” that could devour the Earth or even the entire universe. While I personally expect neither, I can concede that until they don’t occour, they are still technically possible.

Perhaps my college career is of less importance than the LHC activation, perhaps it is more. Point of fact, both are possible. And in both, there are so many possibilities.

As with the LHC’s physicists, however, my plan is to accept the minor catastrophic potential, swallow the facts of the unlimited possibilities, and forge forword. I doubt it’ll be the Higgs Boson, but I am certainly excited to see what the reality of my college experience shall bring… ^_^

Until Next Time (assuming the LHC doesn’t kill us all),

~Donald Guy

P.S. Monday’s Penny-Arcade is totally relevant, and totally hillarious, but I felt it wouldn’t fit in the mostly serious entry above. Still .. check it out: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2008/8/4/

Well, I thought I would throw up some more party-related photos from a recent party (Saturday afteernoon), as a supplement to my earlier entry about such parties.

For somewhat arbitrary reasons the theme of this particular party was H.P. Lovecraft and the horror mythos he created. Just as with the Shark Week party, my artistic friends provided theme-related food:

I would like to take a second to inform you that none of us actually ate any of the Cthulhu melon. Perhaps  we were restricted by some unearthly, ancient force; perhaps we were simply too frightened,or perhaps we were actually just frieghtened by the sheer size watermelon that originally came from (look at the diagnol picture and consider the scale given by the cup of straws and cake nearby). I can not say that the King in Yellow got off so easily.. leading to this terrible joke o_o:

Anyway, the primary reason for this party’s theme was because one of the main events was playing Arkham Horror. To those of you who don’t understand the horror of Arkham Horror, or mistakenly think it is simply due to the Lovecraftian elements.. there is also some horrible, as with the melon, in the sheer size of the undertaking (again, my phone doesn’t do a great job of capturing scale.. but consider the size of people, and my hat .. and the sheer number of pieces)

*nerd talk, feel free to skip*
If anyone is interested about the actual specifics of this game itself (assuming you are already familiar with the rules, which are much too complicated to go into here): We were playing with an Ancient One ( I believe Glaaki whose attack was simply to raise the terror track, defeating and devouring all if it reached 10. Due to a complete lack of Elder Signs and failure to get places quick enough, 6 gates opened with only 1 being closed. Thus with 8 players, we faced an awakened elder god (with a full doom track, though I’m still not sure that it should have automatically filled with the awakening) with a need for 8 hits per counter. At -5 bonus and a physical resistance (half off bonuses for physical weapons), this meant that we had 10 turns to roll 8 x 12, which is to say 96 positive fight checks (in layman’s terms, out of approximately 280-320 d6 rolls, 96 had to be a 5 or a 6 … before you throw in random factors caused by other game elements). Against (or right at, by my probably incorrect math) the odds, we successfully defeated the GOO (with the help of a sacrifice by one player giving us 3 extra turns), and Arkham, Dunwhich, and Kingsport were returned to safety. .. in other words, we somehow managed to win! ^_^
*end nerd talk*

Log story short, after a couple hours of playing, we all won… except for the game’s owner, who got devoured by an ancient god… meh, it happens.

Anyway, it was fun and I was glad to get to hang out with all my friends again. I really am going to miss them..

~Donald

EDIT:

Here is a picture of my friends.. also, another edition of the great game entitled “how many people can we fit on the couch?”:

So, I am up like, “early.” I put “early” in quotes because this entry is being written at 11:56am, but that’s AM as in BEFORE noon. In any case, I woke up “early” this morning at 9am. This is considered early because I also went to sleep around 5am, as has unfortunately become my norm this summer.

Anyway, while you might think that I would be too tired to function, I have actually been surprisingly productive thus far. Firstly, I actually read all of my Friday webcomics, Slashdot, and Digg in like a half hour. Then I ate breakfast. Next, I finally finished my thank you notes for graduation money, and now I am blogging! Okay… so perhaps I should have written “productive.”

In any case, they are interesting subject to consider: our conceptions of early and late. Just as I earlier mentioned the subjectivity of interesting and routine, I think it is also illustrative to consider the different way we perceive this. There are the very real differences of time zones, for example—a fact we sometimes forget. For example, my friend Karen had told me that, bored at work, she might see fit to text me from her (ZOMG) new phone. Kind of bored and remembering that she had work at 4, I texted her around 4:50 wondering where these promised messages were. To which, of course, she replied “Chill out! I just got to work and I’m early!.” That’s when I was like “right … time zones”.

Of course, even time zones aren’t truly definitive. It has been said, for example, that while, by all reports MIT lies in the Eastern time zone, many of its students actually function on Hawaiin time (of course, it could be worse). Of course, some MIT students have given up on normal timezones completely. I speak, of course, of Random Standard Time; to quote a now removed edit from Wikipedia:

“Random Standard Time,” [is] a special timezone in effect only within Random Hall, used to avoid the inconvenience of dealing with day changes at midnight when most residents are awake. Random Standard Time uses 24 hour notation with a 6 hour offset, such that midnight becomes 2400h and 1 am of the following day becomes 2500h of the same day, which continues until 2959h when it rolls over to 0600h the following day.

See.. you (might have) learned something!

Anyway, its an interesting concept. What defines time? I don’t know, according to Einstein, it’s something that changes with velocity; according to RENT, it is best measured not in daylights, nor sunsets, nor midnights, nor cups of coffe, but, in fact, in love; according to others it is actually a cube! Maybe someone taking the “Time of Your Life” seminar can fill me in, but in the meantime, it is a fascinating thing to contemplate.

Its all about perception, I suppose. There are those with very odd perceptions, like Clive Wearing or the fictional Leonard of Memento, or Merlin in White’s Once and Future King, but in genereal we accept the concept that some people may experience things oddly. Truly, though, we have no assurance that the rest of us “normal” people are actually experiencing it the same.

I must say, my mind has certainly been in a bit of a strange place. As my time here dwindles to just 16 days or so, I find myself hanging out much more with my friends than there was time to in the school year and probably more than I have in former summers. I am becoming much closer friends with some of these people at the most inconvenient of times, and I fear this is because, in some sense, I don’t fully recognize the fact that I will actually be gone soon. Maybe it is simply a gut reaction, digging in as I find myself pulled by circumstance in another direction (albeit a direction I have wanted for a long time), but is certainly causing more than its share of confusion in me and others.

With the people whom I could hardly get closer, my family, things seem buisness as usual, but I suppose it is a bit of a facade. I know that it certainly is confusing to me that I won’t live here, that for 4 months this will not be where I return, and in a way, it will never truly be my home again. And its scary .. but also invigorating.

At this point possibilities at MIT and beyond seem endless, but at the same time the possibilities here are quickly coming to an end. And I’m in the middle. :-/

Anyway, if you made it this far, thanks for reading. ^_^

~Donald

The following is part of a series of “miniposts” about the routine things of my summer that, since they are less routine to others, I hope are therefore interesting. More on my skewed logic and decision to do this can be found here:

I have awesome friends. Now I know that we all think we have awesome friends, but oh well, I just wanted to get that out of the way. Though this entry series is ostensibly about “routine” things, and parties are not actually routine for me, being the anti-social one that I am, I think the fact that there were two in the last week make it totally legit!

Anyway, first I wish to clarify what I mean by “party”. According to the M-W dictionary a party is (amongst other things) “a social gathering”, there is no problem with this definition for my events. Urban dictionary however describes a party as first “something I never get invited to”, since I went to these, NO! .. it second defines it as “When everyone gets together at someone’s house, get drunk, consume illegal substances like weed and coke, and trash the place completely.” This is equally, if not more wrong than the first definition!!

My friends and I party in a different way. In fact, I’d say the only constant is probably houses and couches. There are no drugs (except caffiene, on occasion) and only sometimes music or dancing. Also, some of the dancing may be in absence of music.  Anyway, some select activities from two parties of last week:

• A seated airsoft battle. Yes, I did just say that I was a pacifist, but I have to say I am against real violence. And truth be told though I may have had a bit to do with starting this, I soon sat it out. Anyway, long story short.. my friend left out his Airsoft guns and so he got shot with them. Thats karma for you.
• A first grade style story time. In addition to being awesome, my friends are a bit odd, and while this manifests in many ways (other “games” this day: how many people can we fit on the 3 person large couch? 9 how many feet can we fit on Donald’s face? .. apparently 8 .. though that was something I could have done without knowing), one way it manifested was that a friend brought this book to the party :When this book was thrown at me and I was told to read, I did so, with feeling, and a different voice for big foot, and showing the pictures to everyone. It was definitely odd, but also very fun. I highly recommend this book for a laugh. If you want to know what it is like, there’s an excerpt on Amazon and a page spread shows up on google image search.
• Watching Mythbusters, specifically the Shark Week episodes of Mythbusters. This is to say, we used Shark Week as an excuse to party, and its a perfectly good one. Okay, so we didn’t actually pay that much attention to Mythbusters, but we did sit on a couch (this couch is huge!! it can comforably fit 9 people (if you are curious 2 people were different than on the other couch)) facing vaugely in the direction of the television. Anyway, in the spirit of shark week, some of my friends, who are better artists than I, made shark week foods.
  

  Seal Melon

  

  ...with a shark wound

  

  Possibly from this shark-o-melon

  

  ..with its teeth!!

  

  Sadly it could not be satiated on these fish heads (which were full of salmon)

• Finally, we watched the 3 acts of Dr. Horrible which is most excellent. To those of you who missed it, it was a short (42 minutes) musical written during the WGA strike, directed by Joss Whedon (of Firefly, Buffy: the Vampire Slayer, etc. fam) staring Neil Patrick Harris (of Doogie Howser, Starship Trooper, and Harold & Kumar fame), Nathan Filion (also of Firefly fame), and Felecia Day (best known for roles on Buffy and her popuar online series The Guild). If you are still with me after that sea of parentheticals, I highly reccomend you check out Dr. Horrible. You can download all three acts from iTunes for $4 or you can watch it with commercials at: http://drhorrible.com/mushortio.html ). It is hilarous for the majority, and then has a bit of an artistic turn at the end. Anyway .. that is all I will say about it, but check it out!

Anyway, that is just a selection of the activities that went down at parties with my friends in the last week. Personally, I think our varied definition of party is far superior to the urban dictionay one. We never know what will happen, but because we are pretty awesome its pretty awesome.

</ “Minipost” >

~Donald

P.S. I hearby define “minipost” to mean “post of arbitrary length but more than likely containg a bulleted list of some sort”

The following is part of a series of “miniposts” about the routine things of my summer that, since they are less routine to others, I hope are therefore interesting. More on my skewed logic and decision to do this can be found here:

Every week, three times a week for the last six months (Mondays @ 7:15pm, Wednesdays @ 7pm, and Fridays @ 6:30pm), I have been engaging in a class known as “Realistic Self-Defense” taught at the local Taekwando dojang. Though I did take Taekwando here as a kid (3rd grade – 6th grade or so) and hold a 1st Degree Black Belt according to the ATA, this class has nothing to do with taekwando.

Whereas Songham Taekwando (the style taught by the ATA) is a martial art grounded in self-discipline and perseverance, practiced by a series of progressively more complicated set forms and structured with a series of belts, RSD is based on Krav Maga, a martial art invented by Imi Lichtenfeld in 1930s to kick Nazi ass. It is practiced by a lot of punching, kicking and structured by who can kick you the hardest.

Krav Maga is a martial art that assumes “no quarter” which is a military way of saying “dude is trying to kill you,” as such mercy, fairplay, and rules of engagment are not matters of high importance. Though I am taught to a civillian standard, removing killing strikes, lets just say one of our routine drills is aptly entitled “front kick to the groin.” yea. (Also, the fact that this class lacks any killing strikes has not dissuaded by mother and sister from reffering to it as my “killing people with pencils” class).

If you are starting to think, “hmm.. this doesn’t particularly sound like relalistic self-defense,” I would tend to agree. The philosophy here is clearly “the best defense is a good offense.” The class generally runs as follows:

• we arrive and line up for the opening (the instructor says “kida” as far as I can find online this is hebrew for “bow”; we bow and say something to the effect of “ush” .. which I have yet to find a translation to (unlike the korean words we used in taekwando, no one has seen fit to explain to me what these mean)).
• After the opening we run in a circle and do calesthetics of various sorts (pushups, situps, flutter kicks, toe-touches, jump squats, etc). On occasion we stretch.
• We proceed to do many partner exercises, usually begening with straight punches. This means, to put it simply, that for 30 seconds to 2 minutes, you wail on the partner your partner is holding (often directly against their body), then you switch and they wail on you. Thus you go quickly from hard activity to mostly resting .. except that you are being hit.. often hard enough that new-comers vomit their first class.
• There are often large group exercises where either two lines form and you do the same partner exercise 5-10 times down the line and then hold for 5-10 times or circles are formed and each person does something in the middle while everyone else holds. These mean respectively, that you completely exhaust yourself over a line of exercises and then have to recuperate, or that you completely exhaust yourself in ONE exercise and then have time to recuperate.
• On rare occasions there are exercises that involve one person holding a pad at the end of the room, one person lying on the floor, and everyone else lying on top of him/her. Person on the floor then has to get up (while people lie ontop of him/her), run across the room (sometimes with yet further people preventing this), and then proceed to do the drill (punches, kicks, knees, elbows) with the person holding on the pad for 30 seconds to  1 minute.
• On even rarer occasions, there are actual defense (blocking, gun disarming, etc.) drills

This sort of class tends to attract a certain type of person. This type of person is in or planning to go into the military, thinks “hope” is a word for quiters (I’ve had to defend Barack Obama to these people many times), and loves to watch UFC fights. This person is not .. me.

Interestingly, I am actually a pacifist. I do not seek fights, to my best not to praticipate fights, and in the event of a military draft would refuse to serve. It is an interesting clash of cultures which I enter weekly. *sigh*. Still, it is an excellent work out and has put me in much better shape than previously.

All told, though, the contrary natures of pacifism and practicing such a martial art are probably a bit more cognative dissonance than I like to handle, so, at MIT I will either switch to a less violent one ( I am interested in akido), or possibly jump all the way to dance (which is very different, but uses similar muscles).

Oh and don’t think about making fun of me for wanting to do dance, because while I am morally opposed to it, I totally am trained to beat you up!

~Donald Guy

P.S. I am aware that my “minipost” is longer than the one introducing it… what can I say? I am a bit voluable.