cteno4

21 "run" in just over two months

Sat, 18 Oct 2008 04:33:30 GMT

I bet I'm the only person you've ever known to spend his twenty-first birthday at gay square dance lessons! It hasn't happened yet, but I have been in those lessons for a bit over a month now and they'll keep going through sometime in February. It's actually a lot of fun! Never mind that I'm twelve years younger than the next youngest person there...

Apparently straight callers will show up to shout out the moves at the dances from time to time and it completely baffles them when they realize how so many of the dancers choose to dance in roles that don't match their physical sex. I won't bug them, though, as I "dance boy". Being unable to tell left from right (or, for that matter, reft from light as I had once so shamefully said by mistake!), I figured that I didn't need to try and teach myself directions while also having to remember that I was a "girl" for the purpose of dancing!

But yes, if you happen to have any interest whatsoever (and you don't have to be GLBT to join the gay square dance club! We have a married couple who show up every week and blend in quite nicely with the rest of us), the address is http://www.puddletowndancers.org

</plug<

Textbook Buyback.

Thu, 21 Aug 2008 19:08:41 GMT

WTF.

I can't sell back my complete works of Shakespeare because they have come out with a new edition!

BEST NOOZ EVAR

Tue, 05 Aug 2008 16:17:52 GMT

Ω
ΩΩΩ

I HAVE FOUND A WAY TO NOT HAVE TO TAKE PHYSICS IN THE FALL. THIS MEANS I WILL BE DONE WITH STUPIDLY LARGE LECTURES AND H-ITT CLICKERS FOREVER!

iTunes 7.7 bug

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 00:20:13 GMT

Read THIS if you're upgrading to the new iTunes and have any track names with non-standard characters in them (characters such as é, ü, ø, î, ï, û, ß, and any characters from outside the Latin alphabet, are ALL affected):

http://community.livejournal.com/macosx/5768986.html

If you don't change an advanced setting early then your tracks will be automatically renamed into something that isn't comprehensible. ANNOYING.

Now to manually rename the mauled tracks that were auto-renamed since the "upgrade"...

zOMG

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 05:10:10 GMT

I went to Cirque de la Symphonie with Miko last night. Now I'm thoroughly convinced that Gerard Schwarz needs to step down as principal conductor -- it was the best I'd ever heard the Symphony perform and it was under their associate conductor, AND all their principal string players (plus several stands' worth of other players in most sections) had left for the summer chamber music festivals.

The performance was AMAZING. ZOMG. Acrobats, a juggler, a contortionist, and strongmen were all there. And with the student discount, a pair of tickets set me back only $10 when the seats would have ordinarily retailed for $43 apiece in advance. I think my plugging of the event at the RC worked quite nicely as when I arrived the pair of seats next to mine were taken by two EEPers.

so I had a good weekend.

Also, I am in the process of convincing Sarah the class(ic)ist that it's worth her time to go to the Emerson String Quartet concert in October. Student tickets are cheap, and that ensemble has won eight or nine GRAMMY awards in their time together. She's a sponge for anything you can get her to believe is "culture" (although she doesn't use "culture" as a biologist might -- "learned behavior". She is only concerned with "civilized" culture), and right now she's entirely convinced that classical music is culture of interest. It probably stems from watching the classically trained musicians in the RC talking about composers or whistling/humming melodies at each other and playing the guess-what-this-is game. She probably feels a bit left out when the girl next to her can pick out a theme from Dvorak's "American" quartet when it's idly whistled at the bus stop.

In any case, I've now lent her two of the Emerson Quartet's GRAMMY-winning albums (the complete Shostakovich quartets, 2001 winner for best chamber music album and best classical album; also "Intimate Voices" which was the best chamber music album of 2006, featuring Grieg, Nielsen, and Sibelius) for the weekend and will probably hear her opinion of these tomorrow. If she's listened to ALL of it then she's probably crazier than she's shown herself to be as that's six CDs' worth, but you never know with a girl like Sarah.

so there's my update. I should do this more often.

... odd

Thu, 12 Jun 2008 20:34:59 GMT

Yesterday I actually logged into Facebook. I almost never do this, by which I mean that lately I've been updating my LJ more often than logging onto Facebook. But I logged in and I checked on my event invitations. Among them was one to a wedding for a guy in my high school graduating class.

He's either 19 or 20 right now. I haven't seen him in four years, and I barely knew him to begin with (hooray for Facebook and self-labeling as "friends" with people who are very nearly strangers... or who actually are strangers, in some cases). THIS IS REALLY WEIRD. Early marriage and electronic mass-mailed invitations.

Italians eat giraffes for breakfast.

Fri, 11 Apr 2008 14:36:30 GMT

Please note the amazing WIN that has happened against Austria-Hungary in Diplomacy. By that I mean that Austria-Hungary has been completely shanked in the first year and lost two of its three home supply centers; it's poised to lose its third in 1902.

Germany => Magna Germania. Russia, France, and Italy are likewise performing quite well indeed.

http://students.washington.edu/sbroger/diplomacy.html

Three days into it and Diplomacy is becoming a rather obsessive and delightful part of my life. Hellz yeah.

Things I have learned from becoming a hopeless Scrabulous addict:

Mon, 07 Apr 2008 15:52:53 GMT

1. The TWL ("The Word List"?) dictionary is a near match of the Official Scrabble® Players' Dictionary, but it has some strange omissions of words you'd think would be there. For instance, UDON (a heavy wheat noodle) is recognized as a word but GOUDA (a variety of cheese, much more well-known among speakers of English) is not. IFF (mathematical <i>abbreviation</i> for "if and only if") is recognized as a conjunction, but XOR (Boolean logic conjunction "A or B, but not both A and B") is not. So far I haven't noticed and remembered any other big surprises.

2. The program has a couple of glitches. Once it gave my opponent another turn immediately after swapping tiles, and neither of us could make sense of it. In the endgame scoring, if nobody clears their rack entirely the computer still adds to your score the value of your opponents' tiles.

3. THE PROGRAM LAGS LIKE THERE TRULY IS NO TOMORROW!

Mystery #3: Sonata Pimpante

Thu, 27 Mar 2008 04:03:07 GMT

Sonata Pimpante is the name of a work by Spanish composer Joaquín Rodrigo, and I'm trying to figure out what exactly it means. The word "pimpante" could conceivably be either Spanish or Italian, and although people tell me -ante is not a Spanish suffix, it exists more frequently in Spanish-English dictionaries than in Italian-English dictionaries.

Some of the early translations include:
(from Spanish): calm, unconcerned, self-contained
(from Italian): lively, FULL OF BEANS

LMAO at FULL OF BEANS.

Does anyone know what the definitive answer is for this? kthx.

Mysteries

Wed, 26 Mar 2008 20:21:26 GMT

Mystery #1:
I'm seriously starting to wonder about the content I send in my text messages. The predictive text message software draws upon words I've typed out (and sent) in the past and suggests them for possible spellings as I type them out. It just suggested "franc", and now I'm wondering why I ever made any comments about obsolete French currency.
Mystery #2:
A week or so ago I was at the Central Library (Seattle Public Libraries, not UW Libraries) rummaging through their CDs and came across one with the wrong Dewey Decimal number. It was a recording of a Schubert piano sonata and a few of his art songs for piano and tenor, but the CD was numbered as (and filed as) an orchestral recording. The location was right for the Dewey number, but the Dewey number was incorrect for the CD's content. So... which is sadder: that the Seattle Public Library attached the wrong Dewey Decimal number to one of its CDs, or that I actually <i>found</i> that CD and noticed it?

On a completely separate note, I have finally upgraded the RAM on my MacBook so that it has 2 GB instead of the 512 MB it came with. Soon I will probably figure out how to switch out the keycaps and re-label it so that the key labels actually represent their output on my screen. It's not like I ever look at the keys when I'm typing, but I don't know the QWERTY/Dvorak position equivalences all that well and that turns out to be somewhat problematic when I'm doing command + _____ functions.

HOLY SHIT. An actual post!

HAH!

Wed, 19 Mar 2008 20:58:40 GMT

That made me grin from ear to ear.

So I went to the downtown library yesterday...

Tue, 18 Mar 2008 04:12:52 GMT

... and I'm not sure which is sadder: that the Seattle Public Library had the wrong Dewey Decimal number on one of their CDs, or that I found this CD and brought it to the attention of a librarian.

The Fate of Internet Jokes

Fri, 29 Feb 2008 00:47:54 GMT

LOL is excreted by humans and carried (via river input) to the ocean. Once in the ocean, LOL is taken up as a food source by phytoplankton and incorporated into organic compounds, becoming Particulate Organic LOL. As these phytoplankton are consumed and parts of them excreted as fecal pellets, the Particulate Organic LOL sinks to the interior of the ocean and some of it is ultimately buried in the sediments.

Now, an interesting thing occurs when Particulate Organic LOL reaches the sea-sediment interface: It spontaneously converts to Particulate Organic ROFL while it is swept over the ocean floor to its final resting place!

Who knew that such a cycle existed?

SEE WHO I GET TO GO HEAR IN CONCERT NEXT WEEK? :D :D :D

Tue, 12 Feb 2008 05:57:50 GMT

ZOMG. This is awesome.

Also, I am amused that you can indicate the level of adult content in your LJ posts.

My entries are getting less noteworthy every time.

Obama rhymes with yo mama.

Sun, 10 Feb 2008 22:08:52 GMT

I went to the caucus yesterday and ended up voting for Hillary. DON'T KILL ME! If Obama gets the nomination, I'd still vote for him over McCain any day.

Also, this is a spectacular product. Don't you agree? "Take the work... out of your workday!"

Wed, 06 Feb 2008 21:29:31 GMT

themodpoet: Obama has the ability to bring people together
themodpoet: So does farting in an enclosed space

In other topics, I love my Chemical Oceanography course and am kicking butt in it. w00t! Lise de la Salle is coming to town on February 20, and I have my ticket to see her.

Also, I made a quasi-ASCII art drawing of a stick figure using Greek letters. It isn't genuine ASCII art, though, because I used an omega as a head shape and put other letters inside it for eyes (phi, theta), a nose (lower-case delta), and a mouth (lower-case sigma). I call that figure Helen.

Subliminal message?

Sat, 26 Jan 2008 20:35:09 GMT

Please tell me that Betelgeuse is not code for "Beat All Jews".

WTF.

Wed, 23 Jan 2008 19:04:44 GMT

This just in from the "Help Wanted" section of classified ads in The Daily:

HISTORIAN SEEKS SINGLE Asian woman to help research, travel, and form a friendship. Must be bilingial (sic), have passport, and will need a resume. Salary negotiable. Please respond to PO Box 1105 Issaquah, 98027, Attention: William

*** *** ***

Is anyone else wondering about the "single" and "form a friendship" parts? It sounds like a wonked-up personals ad.

SO MUCH AWSUM

Thu, 17 Jan 2008 21:29:15 GMT

I HAVE SO MUCH AWSUM THIS QUARTER.

Three classes, and they are as follows:
GERMAN 351 - 5 credits - Vienna in 1900 (taught in English)
OCEAN 400 - 4 credits - Chemical Oceanography
OCEAN 450 - 4 credits - Climatic Extremes

Chemical Oceanography is especially nice because it abbreviates to ChemO... so if it frustrates me too much I can claim that chemo is making my hair fall out. And my Climatic Extremes course has two professors who are both named Paul and prefer that we address them by their first names. My Vienna in 1900 course is going to have me present a short talk on Alban Berg in about three weeks, and I've also opted to submit a final paper (on the Second Viennese School of Music) for the course instead of taking a final exam. We're reading some spectacular modernist German literature in translation, but it's a bit beyond me at times. Hence the value of live class discussions and a class blog.

On a completely unrelated note, I am highly amused at the event Tribeta is sponsoring tonight. It's a talk by a Department of Pharmacology professor, and the topic is science of body weight regulation. They're serving free pizza at the event. GUILT TRIP.

My favorite palindrome

Sun, 13 Jan 2008 08:41:52 GMT

ALOHA HOLA

(This post is pointless, but it's kinda fun in a stupid way.)

By the way, zestythelemon, I LOVE YOUR DANCE SUITE AND THE GAVOTTE ESPECIALLY. But you knew I loved Baroque dance suites. Yay counterpoint.

I WILL NOT VOTE FOR YOU, BARACK OBAMA!

Sat, 12 Jan 2008 22:26:23 GMT

There seriously is something VERY WRONG with Barack Obama and his supposedly "green" politics. He only has one more recorded vote than abstained votes on environmental issues. It's true that he voted the same way I would have in many of the environmental bills, but I'm looking at where his real statements are being made -- in the legislation bills he has sponsored.

The bill that rubs me the wrong way strongly enough to make me say NO to Obama is his "Coal-To-Liquid-Fuel Act of 2007", which promotes independence from Middle East gasolines by mining and converting domestic coal resources. Unfortunately, coal-derived gasolines produce around 50 pounds of CO₂ per gallon as contrasted to oil-derived gasolines' 27 pounds of CO₂ per gallon. Of course, the difference is due to the refinement technologies, not a twofold increase in the density of liquid fuels produced from coal versus from oil. And that doesn't even start on the water problems with coal-derived gasolines: the process of refining coal produces highly acidic toxic waste and is eventually dumped into freshwater bodies, usually groundwater.

Gay rights and even withdrawing troops from Iraq can wait; the environment is the critical issue that absolutely cannot. Even if we stop emitting CO₂ entirely today, the CO₂ that we've already released into the atmosphere will warm the planet an additional 3-4ºC within the next 100 years... which is the same average temperature difference as exists between the height of the last Ice Age and now. Bear in mind that with Earth's the astronomical cycles being what they are, we're actually supposed to be in the early parts of an Ice Age right now, and anthropogenic climate change is forcing temperatures in the opposite direction. I don't even want to think about what would happen if we elected a president who called himself green and then proceeded to increase our production of CO₂, we could approach upcoming elections with greater environmental damage to deal with AND a voting public who thinks that we've actually done something to solve our problems.

I'd be happier with a presidential candidate who said, "NUCLEAR WINTERS STOP GLOBAL WARMING! WITHDRAW TROOPS FROM IRAQ AND BOMB THE MIDDLE EAST!"

SOURCES:

http://www.vote-smart.org (politicians' voting records since 1994)
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c110:s.154: (the text of Obama's Coal-To-Liquid Fuel Senate bill. The colon at the end is part of the link even if the computer doesn't show it that way)
http://beyondoil.nrdc.org/news/gas-from-coal.php (an article and a cutesy Flash video about the horrors of coal-to-gas fuels)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/09/AR2007010901503.html (Washington Post commentary on Obama's coal bill).
http://courses.washington.edu/ocean450/figures_08/Outreach_Talk_HPJ_08.ppt (data on global average temperatures now, during the last Ice Age, and projected for the year 2100)

Lacking direction.

Tue, 08 Jan 2008 01:35:59 GMT

The concept of "East Antarctica" and "West Antarctica" seems a bit silly to me. It makes some sense that you might choose to divide the continent into "eastern" and "western" segments using the Prime Meridian and the International Date Line, and as it turns out that division roughly corresponds to the division made by the Transantarctic Mountains. But "Greater Antarctica" and "Lesser Antarctica" seem to make more sense visually, geologically, and geographically.

2008 resolution

Mon, 31 Dec 2007 20:45:53 GMT

This year I resolve to stop writing in parallel tritones.
kthxbye.

Cooper's Calcium-Enriched Barnacle Crackers!

Mon, 24 Dec 2007 17:50:58 GMT

While talking to zestythelemon the other day, I decided that the world could use a line of animal crackers showcasing the underrepresented or forgotten animals because the current animal cracker manufacturers highly overrepresent mammals. I could make ones shaped like barnacle geese, goose barnacles, ctenophores, medusa jellies, snails, and geoducks!

The goose barnacles, snails, and geoducks would have to be specifically calcium-fortified crackers (in honor of the composition of their shells).

And given how my cell phone number happens to look like it should belong to a business (and for those of you who don't have it, ask me and I'll send it to you), it just might be worthwhile making this into a cute little cottage industry %^)

Veggie Tales, just a little fruitier.

Tue, 18 Dec 2007 21:13:38 GMT

I have decided that Veggie Tales ought to make a show featuring Baroque dances. They could call it the Sweet Suite! Here are the movements:

1. Almond Allemande
2. Currant Courante
3. Apricot Gavotte
4. Fig Gigue

Any ideas to add a similarly-named Sarabande, Minuet, Siciliana, or Bourrée?

Also, today I am twenty years old. Quick! Tell me what stupid teenager things I still need to take care of! I don't truly turn twenty until 7:55 PM!