Whew, been a week. I actually don't have much to say... but I have 30 minutes before I'm due in class. I finished getting poked and prodded, I don't appear to have AIDS (whew, THAT was close =P) or any other horrible communicable diseases, so that's good. I'll have my final meeting with the doctor come Monday, so by Tuesday all the health evaluation stuff will be in the mail. That'll be a nice load off, after that all I'll have to do is wait around for my assignment.

Yesterday on the way to school I was listening to NPR and they had an interview with a band called Paris Combo. I really liked the way they sounded, and made a mental note that I would have to download some of their music from allofmp3. When I came home though Tim immediately called me in his room to "check out this sweet music". Strangely enough it was Paris Combo. He'd heard the same broadcast and evidently felt the same way. I thought it was pretty damn funny. Their music is totally sweet, by the way.

Wildflower has started its insanity already. Hard to believe it's that time of the year again already. Shane and I got drafted into committee again, which means 10 weeks of Monday night meetings (I just accidently type "beatings", very Freudian) and then the event. It's the last weekend in April for those interested. For those that don't know anything at all, Wildflower is the 2nd largest triathlon in the world (2nd only to the Iron Man triathlon, which I believe takes place in Hawaii). Shane and I are a part of the committee in charge of putting it on. Of course we have little to do with the running and biking, as we are Vol. Food. This means we are in charge of feeding the 1000+ volunteers we get from Cal Poly. That adds up to roughly 2,000 PB&J sandwiches, and a hair under 1,000 hamburgers among the various other components that make up the ad-hoc breakfast, sack lunch and barbecued dinner. Suffice to say the weekend of the event is rather hectic, but we generally have fairly hard-working volunteers which make the experience fairly fun. We leave tonight for our first (of three) lake visits. We basically do team building exercises and learn the lay of the land for the first one. It's fun.

Not much else of note. Capoeira still rocks.

A girl told me today that when she was with me it made her want to eat crab. WTF?!

Sean, Shane and me talked about a new version of ChargeTracker last year around this time. Being the lazy nerds we are it went nowhere. ChargeTracker was designed to help a student household manage expenses and generally assure that everyone got what they deserved in regards to money. My current system of passing notes around wasn't really working out (as in I myself could rarely remember who owed me what) so I went ahead and wrote IYPS (IYPS; Your Payment System). Currently it doesn't do anything more than ChargeTracker. In fact it probably does less than ChargeTracker... but I only used CT like twice... so I don't rightly remember. In any case I'm excited to have written my own version. The backend table schema needs a lot of work, and there is little to no error checking... but it'll work for a couple of weeks until I can convince Tim to make a totally sweet looking front end and I recode the back. I'll post the code at some point. Schweet.

Nothing to really blog about. I saw "A Very Long Engagement" this weekend. Very Amelie like in composition, but not at all in story. There are even a lot of actors from Amelie in AVLE, which was funny to me. Notably Audrey Tatou, the cutest actress in the universe... of course that is a topic for another discussion.

Capoeira is still cool. I hit level 30 in WoW. Classes are all right. I'm going to get poked in the butt on Friday (physical for Peace Corps)... um. Got the Shins albums off of allofmp3.com. Hmm, I bought stamps today. It's still raining.

I think that's prety much it.

You thought chain letters were bad? Chain emails? Guess what the new fad is. That's right, chain IMs. Why on earth are people so retarded? If you send me a chain ANYTHING (well, If you took the time to actually copy a letter and waste .37 on a stamp to send it I'd be almost honored, so maybe not in that case) you'll be added to the People to Punch list faster than the speed of light. Consider this a warning!

In honor of nothing and with no particular planning I decided to play with my facial hair. Had I planned ahead I would have realized the stupid trial software would expire soon and would have borrowed a digital camera rather than using my iSight. In any case, the results are below. Comment about your favorite!

For reference:


Handlebars:


Moustache:


Fuhrer:


Clean:



What's next in the exciting world of facial hair? No one knows!

While I was still in fencing some years ago (two? three years?) we had the room directly after a rather large Capoeira class. Ignorantly we called it "break dance fighting" (which I still think is a hillarious name for it). I went tonight for the first time. The numbers have dwindled, but it's free now and let me tell you it was a blast. Let me back up a little bit. I was partnered last quarter in networks with the guy who leads it. He's an awesome guy, and I had had some interest in the art since I heard a piece about it on NPR (which made me realize it's more than just break dance fighting). He invited me to come, but I was way busy last quarter. Thankfully this quarter seems to be somewhat less busy, and serendipitously they've moved the days to Tuesday and Thursday. Shane came (and was probably the driving factor of me getting off my ass and out of WoW and leaving the house =P)

The moves in capoeira are really neat, very flowing and cool. There is a big reliance on an underlying rhythm, and I think the part I like best is the musical aspect. After the teaching/practice section of the class we have "play". Everyone gets in a circle and instruments are played (although i have to confess I can't remember the names). The whole group claps and sings and two combatants enter the ring in mock-combat (well, sort of mock-combat). The singing is all in Portugese (an awesome language, and high on the list of ones I want to learn) and has a sort of African rhythm. It's really, really fun to sing at the top of your lungs, clap and watch the people duke it out all in rhythm to the music.

Suffice to say (I think I use that phrase too much) I'l be going back on Thursday. It's nice to have some physical activity, and not being in choir this quarter sucks... so I gotta get my singing in somehow. If you're reading this you should come check it out. It's TR 8-10pm in the Racquetball courts at the Rec Center. Seriously, it's awesome. And it's FREE! What do you have to lose?