Sleeping Beauty

I'm tired... I came home from work, put a laundry in and passed out. Then I woke up, and ate some grapes and played free cell. Now I'm ready to pass out yet again. Not sure why you need to know this, but since it's been a while since I posted, I figured I'd post. I had a sweet, but busy weekend. Leadership retreat for church, hanging out, church, Inservice, chili cookoff (#9 was my favorite!), talking with a lady who's starting a cool ministry in DC, church again, IHOP you hop we all hop. So there you go. Thanks to all who took the time to hang out with me. You know who you are. rfttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttt. Sorry, I just fell asleep on the keyboard. Maybe I should go to that bed place. mmm, bed....

You are all great and all, but this is currently my best friend... BFF!

"Your statistics, like your Kung Fu, are weak and obsolete"

I have to do some sort of statistical test for work. I've taken no fewer than 4 stats/stat heavy courses, including one at graduate level and one that should have been. And yet my statistics are as weak and obsolete as my Kung Fu. Maybe I should have paid more attention in class, or at least attempted to retain some knowledge. Psigh. (not to be confused with Psi). But that's ok, I'm gonna dive in, and become the best Binomial Tester I can be, and then I'll play around with some Chi Squareds (not to be confused with Chi Squares. Or Chai Squares. Or Chai Tea. Or Tai Chi. Or Thai food. Mmmm, Thai food.) I have no idea what I'm talking about, so here's a bunny with a pancake on its head.

Oolong the Rabbit. Not to be confused with Oolong Tea. Not to be confused with Thai food. Mmmm. Thai food.

My Shopping List (Lost?)

This is my shopping list, as edited by Jo, Chandler and Ellen

Cranberry Juice
Animal Crackers
Wraps
Cereal (2)
Baked Beans
Chicken Thingies
Dried Fruit
OJ or JO?
Chocolate Stuff
Yummy Things
A million dollars
A house
Cars
Pizza Oven
New hair for Ellen (thanks!)
Airplane
New hat without Ellen's Cooties
I look really good in the hat!
mascara
Saved By The Bell game
mandarin oranges
Christmas tree

Two Things

Two Things:

First, I'm convinced my toilet is floating. Every time I look in it, the water is moving back and forth. It's moving slowly, but it is noticeable movement. It's hypnotic... Like a lava lamp. So today, John (yes my toilet is named John) and I were hanging out, and I noticed that I was rocking back and forth. I think I was getting sea sick from it actually. So maybe my toilet sits right on a hole in the space-time continuum, and in that hole is the ocean, and it happens to be floating on a log or something. This is of course the only possible explanation. Ever. Man, I'll rue the day the log sinks..

I fully expect John to end up like this for real. Let's hope that no one I love is on it at the time...

Second, link of the day:
From the Washington Post. This is like if you named your kid "Slomo" and he turned out to be a track star, only this is much cuter, and yet has the possibility for tragic and gruesome ending.

Maybe he's just letting him fatten up...

Eye dew knot no weather ewe no

Good news everyone! Winter is over! After months of agony, spring is finally here! It got up to 63 today, and rather than pitch black, I'm seeing hot sunsets on my way home from work. Good times all around. Wiffleball, and golfball baseball, and jedi wiffleball will soon follow. Wait, what's that? It's only January? We still have more than 2 months of winter to go? Man, that's embarrassing... For winter that is. What a lame-o. Can't even launch frozen pellets at us, much less give us igloo weather. Winter, you couldn't even freeze a cup of water! For 2006, the scorecard looks like this: Spring 1, Winter 0.

Stuff like this may happen in Switzerland, but here in America, we have a little
thing going for us called Global Warming. They're jealous of our CFCs I'm sure.

48 Hours in LA

So, I'm back. I'm sure most of you are saying, "You were gone???" And the rest of you are saying, "Who are you, and why should I care???" I have no good retort to either response. I was in LA for 48 hours for a business trip. It was sweet and a half, because I got to be a beach bum before and after my meeting. It was nice, because there weren't any crowds and it was warmish but not hot, and it was all very laid back. I got some great time just walking around, reading, praying, worshipping in the midst of sweet creation. Here's a pictorial tour of the goings on.

I rented a bike and took a ride up the coast. I was in the South Bay area (I guess that's what they call it), so this is just north of Manhattan Beach.

This is at my meeting. We're discussing the current gnarliness level of waves and new methods to increase the stokeditude factor for our estimates. Ok, fine, my meeting involved no surfing, but I wish it had. Yes, those tiny things are surfers.

This is Venice Beach pier this morning. The picture doesn't capture it, but the water was very glassy, and the reflection of the pier looked awesome as the waves went up and down. Phenomenal.

These little piper birds kept running away from the waves, then would turn around and poke at the debris the wave brought up (I guess looking for food, but who knows why birds pick at things), then they'd run as the next one came up. Very amusing.

So all in all, my meeting went well, I got to bum around at the beach some, I got some great God time in, and I get back just in time for a 3-day weekend. Not bad in my book.

Those words are not enough

There are some crazy words in this language of ours. English is of course the one of which I speak. I like a lot of words. In fact, I just plain like talking. When I do, here are some of my favorites:

asps -- Doesn't sound that vicious, does it? It is one animal that can say its own name, however.
aardvark -- Makes use of the classic "rdv" combination. Plus the two A's put it over the top (of the dictionary). Looks remarkably like "Harvard". Watch this transformation now, watch this: Harvard => Hardvard => Aardvard => Aardvark. See? I don't know if aardvarks can say their own name, but I doubt it.
aa -- While we're talking about words that start with "aa", how about "aa"? It's lava. Rough lava.
awkward -- It looks its definition. In addition, with a little work, awkward could become aardvark too. I'll leave the details to you.
cwm -- one of the best words to use in Scrabble if you run out of vowels. It means coal, or lightning, or a cat in panama, or something like that. I forget.
critwigm -- Even better Scrabble word than cwm. Very difficult to make this one aardvark.
gimcrack -- Sounds like what you see when your plumber Jim bends down. Definition: A cheap and showy object of little or no use; a gewgaw.
gewgaw -- Definition: a gimcrack. Origins unknown (because it was the result of a sneeze?)
onomatopoeia -- One of those words you only ever use in high school English class, or if you want to prove you were awake in high school English. But fun nonetheless
rhythm -- Close friend to rhyme. I like them both, but rhythm is my favorite.
serendipity -- Not sure why, but that's just fun to say. Like Francisco. Francisco...
succinct -- awkward to say, and unlike awkward, does not fit its own definition.

See, now wasn't that fun? What am I missing?

If you saw this coming towards you, you'd say "AA!"

"The aa is heading towards the cwm with the rhythm of a critwigm, so grab your gimcracks and gewgaws and skedaddle!" the awkward aardvark succinctly said to serendipitous asps. "Onomatopoeia," he yelled to prove he passed high school English.

I don't even know who Anna Polis is...

Here's what Annapolis looks like if you put it on a poster

I went to Annapolis MD yesterday. I'd never been there. It's much closer than I expected. It's a pretty sweet town, with a quaint downtown type area, a poisoned river/bay with really big boats, and a unique local flavor. There's also a naval academy. Actually, THE Naval Academy of the US. Who knew we had one of those... We watched a swim meet in their rad pool ("Go Harvard. Stephen Stinks."). Sean Egg gave us the grand tour of the town , showing us all the buildings that had burned down and all the stair sets that were in skate videos. And we saw an 8-year old play rockin guitar. We also saw David Robinson's Navy Athletics Hall of Fame picture, mixed in with the jumping jack champion, the trophy-holding champion, the naked guy champion, and the gun-carrying champion. Things we did not do included dining at the Ninja Cafe (apparently it wasn't "cute" enough... Women...), stealing the Naval Academy anchor, diving off the 5 meter board, or jumping in the gross water. I'd have posted actual pictures of 'Nappy and our awesome time, but I neglected to take a camera. Oops. Afterward we played hacky sack with a kickball for an hour and then Brad mesmerized with a ball spinning in a bucket. Trust me, it was ... well, I'm not really sure it was, but it certainly was.

I can only guess what the Navy Trophy-holding Hall of Famer could have done with this one. He was a master.

This is what we missed out on by skipping the Ninja Cafe

Outrageous!

A certain someone, a "friend of a friend" who shall remain nameless, just committed what would be a major party foul were I the authority on such things. This FOAF just texted an F saying "I'm making chocolate chip cookies!" That would be wonderful, and worthy of praise if this were an invitation to join in the consumption of said cookies, however, FOAF lives 1000 miles away. There are some things you just don't taunt with, and choco chip cookies are near the top of my list. I love when good things happen to my friends, and I love sharing that with them even when I'm on the outside, but I just plain have a hard time sharing in other people's cookie success. It's a rule I have. So now you know, and thanks for listening.


--The Management

Oops!

Colleenn has pointed out a glaring omission in my Year in Review: AC High School reunion. It was in November, and it was a blast. It was actually easier for me to remember specifics from earlier in the year better than late in the year, which I find odd. Maybe I have that short term memory thing ... with the thing. Anyway, AC High School Hockey Rules! And hi Liz, thanks for reading my TOLAS!

Five Hundred Twenty Five Thousand Six Hundred Minutes (and an extra leap second)

So, 2005 is officially over. One year ago today, I was a graduate student (kind of) with half of a one month break remaining. Here's a recap of some of the stuff that happened this year.

I didn't get a part time job at Stanley Works, which was a good thing considering I ended up pretty busy with school and job search.

I completed a thesis in industrial engineering entitled "Optimization of WiFi Access Point Placement." Not just a snazzy title, I actually did some (a lot of) work, looking at the technological limitations of WiFi (they interfere if they're too close) and created a tool (as in computer program) in Excel and C++ that told you where to put APs (little router things) to cover a large building. I made a mad cool Modified Greedy Add heuristic (... umm, code that says "put APs here"). I wrote a big paper thing in like 2 weeks. Ahhh, thesis.

I learned all about Math Modeling and Advanced Manufacturing; Two classes and a thesis gave me much more work than I ever had in college, even in my 20 credit semesters. But I loved all three of them. For three classes, I used 5 programming languages: Visual Basic for Applications, C++, Maple, Matlab, and something for a welding simulator. This got pretty confusing at times, and I forget all of them.

After rejecting an offer that would have been a bad fit, I searched for many full time job for post graduation. I looked applied IBM, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Booz Allen Hamilton, the CIA, the US Patent Office, a bunch of small acronym companies (IPA, IDA, APT, RCI), and some companies by the name of Criterion and Avtec, plus probably 10 other places. Most of my resumes must have gotten lost in cyberspace, since I never heard from most of these companies again. (Actually, one of my resumes legitimately got lost in the mail, as the top portion with my name and contact info was returned to me with the same-size portion of the envelope around it, decapitated from the rest of the package. It was awesome; it wasn't ripped but it wasn't cut. It looked kind of it had been frozen and shattered, but in reality it was probably just shot with a death ray.) Finally, in April, I got an on-site interview, presented my thesis, wowed them, and got a job offer. Good times!

On the non-academic front, I lived Fort Fun for the second semester, this time minus Maria, but often plus KT and Daryn. Rob, Dan, Matt and I had a rockin house. We played Mario Kart and Test Drive 5. We did donuts in Goodman parking lots. Matt sledded down the stairs. We witnessed the Patriots trounce the Eagles in the Superbowl (sorry matt) for the second Boston championship in 3 months (Go Sox!). Rob's arm doubled in size and spewed goop for a few days. We learned the joy of dominoes. Dan got little motor cars. I got fish: King Boo and The Citrus Blast (I'm sorry guys. I am :-( ). We all went to Rita's. We had a rocking graduation party weekend. And a good time was had by all.

Chris and I found a phat pad in DC with a big thanks to God.

Then we graduated for the second time.

In June, I was a bum for what might be the last time in my life. I kinda wish I had done something, but my bummin' days are over.

In July, I moved to DC with Chris. My mom helped. Stephen, Brad, Chris and I learned the joy of wiffleball, and then of cutoff man wiffleball, then Jedi wiffleball, then Slow motion wiffleball, then golfball baseball, then the Rootbeer Mile. Oh yes, and of course Bip. Darn you Stephen. Steph visited, and we didn't go to a Scottish festival. Poor Brad. Oh yeah, I also started work. August consisted of more of the same as July, plus hanging out with the LBGs (they are actually g-i-r-l-esses!). Chris started work, we had a Lord of the Rings marathon, Scotty came to visit. We started going to National Community Church in the local movie theater, which is sweet. The church, not the theater. September had Birthday parties (Thanks for the birthday card!), a visit from Gene-o and the start of the Greenhouse group, where more very cool people reside and where we studied Christly Confidence, which rocks. Ian moved down here and started working! October included a visit from KT, trips to Boston and Lehigh, and good times with awesome friends. Sam moved down here (the weekend we were in Lehigh, ironically!).

November was highlighted by a David Crowder concert, a trip to the art museum, and a visit from Rob and KT (with the saltiest Pesto ever, giant jet engines, dominoes, THE American Indian, and Brad biting into an onion just to make himself cry (He failed)). Also had the Granddaddy of holidays, Thanksgiving. November/December included meeting MORE awesome people at church, a trip to the national Christmas tree (and a zig-zagging run through the empty streets of DC at night), a rockin Christmas party or two, Old Man Jazz, Danny and Lou Malnatti's Pizza, and many other good times. Also included Christmas in MA and all sorts of new clothes (thanks mom!). And finally, I just got back from Onething, an awesome conference in Kansas City where we worshipped-in the New Year.

So that was my year, and I'm sure I've missed many other cool things, but goodbye 2005, and here we come 2006!

Does anyone else think the whole leap second thing is awesome? I just think it's crazy that it takes us 365.25 days to get around the sun, and then it's off by only a second. God is in control.