My senior NYO orchestra concert.

As much as I hate to say it:

Somehow, playing the violin with The Violin Hickey doesn't sound like a much better compromise.
Still, I'd like to remain optomistic: Maybe the one is on the level, or very tolerant.

A funny tune, a queer look, a bag of Kix, a dozen donuts, a bad joke, a bald guy, hoards of short kids, a silly face, an article of clothing, some well placed horrid notes, some beautifully placed right notes, faces across the way, Christmas music, a peculiar person, mutual confusion, mutual coherency, broken equipment, a long day, close groups, cramming, Applebees, Duncan Donuts, "refreshments", a group of four, a group of eight, a group of eleven, a group of thirty three, a great gathering

Moments and Memories too quickly gone.

Greek class is Over

Last Friday I finished two years of Koine Greek. Hundreds of vocab words, dozens of different forms, and numerous irregularities. Two years of, every Friday, sitting in a room with other people. It started with ten others, if I remember correctly. As they got married off, or wimped out (whichever was the case), the number of people was slowly whittled down to five core contenders.

Strangely, in a very odd way, it feels as if I don't know anything more than what I went in with. I don't feel very different. Maybe that is the way it is suppose to work -the information is so ingrained in me that I don't have to think about it. Just know it. There were days when there was so much information in my head that I literally couldn't keep it straight.

I can't say that I got the best grades in the world. I can't say that I couldn't have put more work into it. I don't know whether I bombed the final project or not, but I can safely say this: Whether or not I got a passing grade, I survived the Greek class of '06.

I need help

I think I have a drinking problem. You all will probably have to set up an intervention.

I've dumped water onto my mouth and down my shirt at least three times this week. It usually happens when I get cocky and underestimate the amount of liquid in the container. I get close to the end of my drink and say Bottoms Up! It's all downhill from there.

They say that the biggest step towards getting rid of a problem is first admitting that you have one...

Price gouging

I payed $4.55 for a towel. Like, the kind that you use to wipe up water. Most often, water on your body after you take a shower. This is coming from the guy who is reluctant to spend the extra forty cents to "Biggie Size it!!!11!" (Wudju-liketo Biggisize dat? Canada, many years ago).

So I decided to do some "preventative maintenance" on Saturday, and clean up one of the vehicles at the limo place. They are required to be done every time they go out on a job. Since it had rained the few days prior when it had been out, it was necessary. Though it was not slated to leave, I thought it best to finish it before it was obligated to to go out. This was, indeed, the same Saturday that we went to Purgatory and back. As you might be able to imagine, going to purgatory was a taxing experience, and I was rather wiped out energy wise for the day.

Rolling up to the office to get the keys for the (not in the same area) garage, I got distracted by my boss who had just flown down to Florida in order to pick up his new toy, which he had won the auction for just recently. The Oldsmobile 442 was the exact make, model, and color that he had wanted since he was a kid. He's got the dollars for it alright. He lowered the roof, popped the hood, and began showing me the 455cc V8 and the all leather interior. The car was a light blue color with only a few minor dings in the body that could probably be tapped out. It had brand new tires on it, and the floor looked like it was very very soft.

After he finished showing off his new toy, I went inside to get the keys. There I found out that there was a new employee. So I had to meet the new weekend dispatcher.

All of this conspired against me to slyly slip my mind into forgetting to pick up a stack of towels to bring to the other garage for hand drying the cars. Thus, when I got there and after I washed the whole vehicle down, I realized that I only had one rather small towel that I left there from the last time for just such an occasion.

It was an early closing night due to there not being much business that day. I ran back to the office hoping that it would still be open. It was closed and locked up. I headed back towards the garage where there is a Sears Essentials nearby. I dread going in there. It reminds me of a ghetto Walmart. I was lost and disoriented for a minute, trying to find the towel section. I've never had occasion to locate and browse the towel section before. Who does? Who shops for towels? For all I knew, they just "existed" in houses. Never the less, I ran into the store, found the towel section and looked for a plain simple towel.

Who would have thought that there are so many choices? There were huge towels, medium towels, super fuzzy shaggy towels, colory towels. When I think of towel, I don't think of variety. I think of, just, a "towel". Even worse, the cheapest was $4.55. I ran around looking for a cheaper towel. There was none. Trying to hurry up, I grabbed the closest one.

I always feel like an idiot going through the checkout at Walmart or Sears, because all I ever buy is a single item and a bag of Doritos. This time was no different, except that I saw that I was wearing filthy stained clothes and was holding a lime green towel. And I didn't even have the Doritos.


How on earth can a towel cost that much? The material costs absolutely cannot be that high, and they are undoubtedly hand sewn in India, so that isn't a factor. They weigh next to nothing - cheap transport. Someone is making a bundle, here. Price gouging in the towel market. I would like to know where my money is headed.

*EDIT* - I forgot to mention that the towel didn't even work. What? A towel can't work? What the heck? Yeah, it doesn't work. The stupid thing is made up of some synthetic plastic-feeling stuff, so it doesn't even really pick up water. It just pushes it around and makes it look different. Absolutely ridiculous.



*Disclaimer: I do indeed believe that Purgatory exists, but I only believe in the terrestrial version :-)

Han shoots first!

This September: The original unaltered Trilogy, as was seen in 1977.

Original. Unaltered. Trilogy.

My worldwide popularity

As you probably know, I have a hit counter on my blog so that I can watch where random hits on my blog come from.

When a user navigates through the web and links to a site, the user connects to that site's server, thus letting the server know his IP (simply, a unique internet identification for each computer). The user also transfers something called a "referral", which is the URL of the website from which the user linked from.

Since my blog is not linked from any static websites or from any blogs other than the families, the only outside hits that I generally get are those from search engines. Being diverse and having the wide spectrum topic coverage that it does, I get a number of interesting hits on a day to day basis. The kind of hits where I really wonder what on earth the person was thinking at the time.

Not surprisingly, the majority of the hits are dominated by Ramen Noodle searches. Of the most recent searches is this one from yahoo, this google. These are two among many variations.

Since the word "C++" is in my title, but the blog has nothing to do with it, I get lots of hits pertaining to C++. Primarily, I get a number of hits related to something about a wait function. I don't know what or why, but lots of people seem to think that it is important.

I also periodically get hits pertaining to Half-Life 2, usually linking to either one of the pictures in this ancient post.

Of the more interesting recent hits, I have one directly to my work on Pile Theory. A hit from someone in the local area (based on their IP) that was searching for a certain music director, of whom I have referenced here before. Hits from people in search of information on musicals that I have performed in and reflected upon here.

The strangest hit must be this one: I was browsing IPs when I found one that I wasn't familiar with. Running a search, I found out that it was from
IP: 155.178.***.***;
ISP: Federal Aviation Administration.

Hmm, maybe I have some critical opinions on here that they are just itching to get a hold of. Maybe they are in search of elite computer simulator pilots. Maybe they need an expert's opinion on manatee face-kicking. I looked up the URL referral.

It turns out that it was a google search using the terms, "paluza power". Hurray FAA! Way for the government to work for us, keeping us safe from midair aircraft collisions! What's even worse is that the link to my site is on the bottom of the second page, implying that this user was looking pretty hard for whatever he wanted to know.