The Long Road

Archives: March 2004

Wednesday, March 31, 2004

In the classic "two fives or a ten" question everyone alwasy chooses the ten.

So, what would you choose given "two fives or an eight plus a two"? (assuming you have to give the eigth and the two equal attention!)

Posted by Rayne @ 02:53 PM EST [Link] [9 comments]

Tuesday, March 30, 2004

I like the rain when I'm sitting on a porch or looking out a window and listening to it fall, the heavier the better. That's pretty much the ultimate in serenity for me. What's not so cool about the rain is when you're walking about and see that a legion of worms has decided to make its way out of the ground to explore wet pavement. They're like lemmings jumping off a cliff. Not only do you have to watch where you're stepping (Unless you like having worm gut on your boots. Ewww.) now but you're also assaulted by the terrible smell of wet worms. Worms are so gross, stinky, squishy, wiggly, slimy, little things.

It's weird to see how far the little f'ers make it this morning, at least 1/2 way through the giant parking lot. What are they thinking anyways? Maybe they figured they'd be safe from the birds that stay indoors when it rains but they'll still get crushed by cars, people, or get fried and eaten when the sun comes out. And it's not like worms have a sense of direction that will tell them how to get back to some soil when they're done bathing is it? Maybe they're really sick of playing in the dirt all day and want to be clean once in their lives so they jump onto some water and get carried away. Maybe it's one of those "you only live once" mentalities where the worms figure "well, I'm gonna die anyways, I might as well check out what pavement feels like". Argh, it is slated to rain all week.

Posted by Rayne @ 02:24 PM EST [Link] [4 comments]

Friday, March 26, 2004

but the way you play them? BULLSHIT! Crap made up by people with bad cards who're trying to make themselves feel good.

In reality, it is true that if you have bad cards you can make up for it by working harder, learning to play better and hoping that the good cards are in the hands of someone resting on their much deserved laurels, but skill can only take you so far. Sometimes those good cards end up in the hands of someone who also knows how to play, or worse, the cards are so good that a bad player doens't even need to know how to play to win. It's unfair because no matter how much you've worked, the other player can just blindly play along until it's time to show your hands and they'll win with no effort involved simply because they were dealt the better cards. This is why you should always hide an ace up your sleeve.

The ace doens't always work though. What if you're playing a game where all cards are flipped face up? Everyone knows what you've got; good hand, bad hand. There's no escaping, there's no out-playing the other guys, all you can do is hang on until that last card drops hoping that it'll do you some good. Sometimes it's so obvious you're going to lose no matter what cards are flipped next, those are the days where you just stop playing, go home, and watch some tv. I recommend "Farscape" or "24".

Posted by Rayne @ 03:11 PM EST [Link] [7 comments]

Thursday, March 25, 2004

It crashes when it starts up now! Screw you Microsoft! Hadoken! TATSUMAKISEMPUKYAKU!!!

But to its defence I think it's because of all the crap spyware that got installed, without my knowing, on top of it. Like this weird blue toolbar (I can't check what it's called cuz I can't use IE) that comes back everytime I start up IE even though I disable it. Or worse, the floating toolbar that takes almost 10 clicks of the 'x' button to close. Anyways, I've uninstalled IE completely now. It may come back, one always needs a secondary browser.

The worst is when people insist on streaming media through the incredibly invasive RealPlayer. Not only is the video quality crap but you get that stupid cycle where you can't click on "continue" during install without selecting "please email me 10 times a day and send not so anonymous user information". Poke me with a spork! I thought such things only existed in parodies of Windows!

Posted by Rayne @ 01:37 AM EST [Link] [17 comments]

Monday, March 22, 2004

We were at Phil's (a really trashy place that serves 1.75$ drinks), sharing a table with a bunch of hot girls. One of them, very obviously drunk, sits beside Joe and begins introducing herself to everyone and then asks Shawn to go dancing. They come back and go a few times. At one point the girl has her hotter friend sit on her lap and they tease us for an infinitely long time by almost making out.

The last time she came back to the table she talked to us again and I asked her what her name was, not really catching it the first time. Sherry? no. Carrey? no. Dairy? no. She makes a 'T' with her hands so I say "Terry?". Yes. "A very manly name", I reply (this is the direction my sense of humour tends to skew for those who don't know). Terry gives me the finger and a look of daggers. So of course I run with the joke, digging myself a deeper and deeper hole. At one point Dennis makes a joke, which may or may not have had anything to do with Terry, and I laugh so she reaches across the table and punches me in the mouth. I think I was looking at Dennis at the time, if not then that's my excuse for taking the hit.

As she sits back down I pull her arm forwards to throw her off balance (something Karate taught I should have done as she was punching, but nevermind that). The bouncer comes by and starts talking to her. I figure I'd get ejected cuz I provoked her, she's a hot chick, and he wasn't talking to me. But she's the one who got kicked out! YAY! Shawn went with her but then he came back and I told him he should have left with her and he says the bouncer didn't let him. Afterwards, a couple said the girl was probably bi since she was offering to buy drinks for a bunch of girls (that and the blatant display of almost-making-out mentioned earlier, and the groping that was happening on the dance floor).

A bit later, I went to talk to the ejected girl's friends. They didn't leave with her so it was kinda fishy. So I got the scoop on her. Turns out, she wasn't actually a friend but someone who just happened to live in the same building that they invited to Phil's and she was 27 years old and a stripper for the Huther (sp?) Hotel. I joked that I should go watch her but they informed me that Saturday would be her last performance for a while since she'd be going out on tour.

So what's the moral of this story kids? If you want to get picked up by a 27 year old bisexual stripper and possibly live out your wildest fantasies then don't bring me along!

Posted by Rayne @ 01:53 PM EST [Link] [27 comments]

Saturday, March 20, 2004

A 27 year old stripper who tried to pick up Shawn at Phil's punched me in the mouth. She drew blood!!

Posted by Rayne @ 03:04 AM EST [Link] [20 comments]

Thursday, March 18, 2004

Top to bottom:

• Hot girls who are potentials
• Hot girls
• Girls who are potentials
• Girls you can pivot from
• Guys you can pivot from
• Girls
• Guys who make you cooler just by hanging out with them (we'll call the effects of this "aura" a "positive buff". All girls give positive buffs.)
• Guys with no auras
• Complete strangers
• Guys who give negative buffs

Posted by Rayne @ 02:12 PM EST [Link] [33 comments]

Tuesday, March 16, 2004

So Warcraft 3 has taken a hold of my life. Again. The last time this happened, I was playing Tower Defense maps on battle.net until 5 in the morning every day; now I've moved on to actually playing against other humans, until 3 in the morning.

Seems like all online gamers have this impossible level of skill in co-ordinating their dozens of troops, and attending to their base contruction and tech-tree climb that I simply don't have. I thought I was a pretty decent player after having beaten the game, but the online community is a completely different animal.

My style of "build a large base then send out a huge army" just doesn't really seem to win when everyone else's finely tuned strategy is "attack and kill as quickly as possible". I don't like having the stress of managing so many aspects of the game at once so I just concentrate on one thing at a time. Obviously, this does not work. I think my "style" is simply too passive since I enjoy long relaxing games in an rts and not the focus-intensive short games that are played online.

This latest Warcraft binge started when a friend's female roomate suggested that they play the game. The curiosity factor was enough to get us all to install and check out her skillz. First game I played against her, I lost. In fifteen minutes. Second game? Lost, 20 minutes.

Anyways, I've had to read up on a lot of strategy on the game again, and practice all the hotkeying and the detailed micromanagement (which I've never really been good at), and lots of late night training, cuz godamnit I can't lose to her again!

Posted by Rayne @ 06:51 PM EST [Link] [7 comments]

Friday, March 12, 2004

This is what my schedule looks like for next term. Here's a rundown of courses.

CS 448: Introduction to Database Management
One of the two required courses for my "Information Systems" option. It sounds like a bit of an easy course for some reason. I'm probably never going to be able to make the 8:30 session so I'm taking the 10:30 class instead, assuming that this is one of those courses where you can just go to which ever session you want. That also gives me 4 straight hours of classes on Wednesday and lots of running across campus.

CS 486: Introduction to Artificial Intelligence
Because AI is one of the coolest applications of CS and it'd be useful for, you know, games! I really like my late Tuesday/Thursday plus this is the only class I have!

MSCI 211: Organizational Behaviour
An interesting sounding "psychology in the workplace" course. Need it as one of the 10 electives for my option.

PMATH 360: Geometry
The last math course I'll ever need to take! It was either choosing between this or CO 380: Mathematical Discovery and Invention, which Mike insists I take. But Pmath fits into my schedule better and the course description says "Note: This course will be of interest to all math students." Can't pass that up! I wonder what the "lab" component of the course is all about.

ECON 344: Marketing: Principles of Marketing and Consumer Economics
The econ courses I REALLY want to take, "Political Economy 1: Microeconomics", "Political Economy 2: Macroeconomics", and "Introduction to International Economics" are all not offered in the summer. So 344 cuz marketing is cool in how you can appeal to specific types of people and it should be easy cuz Malleck is teaching it.

WEIGHTS/JOGGING/KARATE
Not giving up exercise, I'll do shorter jogs and/or weight sets on busy days or skip one day a week if things get hectic but I plan on keeping it going. I plan on stopping karate June-ish after I (hopefully) get my orange belt.

Posted by Rayne @ 05:23 PM EST [Link] [12 comments]

Monday, March 8, 2004

The best organ to eat! Because not too many people enjoy eating liver, it's super cheap to buy...something like 1$ for a pound or something equally ridiculous. If you do like it, it's a great deal. How often can you buy quality meat you like at such a low price?

Anyways, I don't really see what people have against liver, it's such a vital organ and when cooked properly it's got this delightful crunchy yet tender feel that almost disintagrates in your mouth when you start chewing. The best part has to be the bumpy/gritty texture, it's singularly unique in how it feels in your mouth. All that, plus it's good for you too!

My worst experience with liver occured when I went to one of the Irish pubs (I forget which) in "downtown" Waterloo and ordered the liver and Onions, never having had any outside of home. So the plate came, and covering half this plate was the liver, it was a pretty big liver. A bit of probing later I discovered that the liver was folded over like six times, it was a big ass liver. Huge, even. It was somewhat late in the night, so I dunno, maybe they gave me all the liver they had left. I ate the pretty much the whole thing but had my fill for more than a few months after that.

Posted by Rayne @ 04:01 PM EST [Link] [11 comments]

Friday, March 5, 2004

I hate small talk. I really do. Not only am I incoherently incompetent at it, I'm always looking down on those who try to start small conversations with me. Some of you may think that I'd probably be pretty good at talking about nothing seeing the volumes of text on this site, but I assure you, I am probably the worst person with whom to carry a meaningless conversation in real life.

Small talk just seems like an unavoidable evil since that's what meeting other people seems to be all about. Honestly, I'd rather dive into some argument about sex, religion, or polictics than try to engage someone in small talk because I would not know what to say ("Isn't the weather great today?", "yes.", "...".). But to get there, you have to go through all this garbage talk that teaches you nothing about the other person's character. Hell, even silence is better than the chitter-chatter of shallow conversation with most people.

Posted by Rayne @ 05:45 PM EST [Link] [8 comments]

Wednesday, March 3, 2004

I love the Internet, I really do. There is so much information out there (here?) that everything you need to know is just a few strokes (of the keyboard) away. But the information you get can comes from so many unverifiable sources it's impossible to know who/what to trust and everyone writes with authority.

This is especially bad when we're dealing with health and nutrition related topics. Everyone's got an opinion! There's always a new diet fad, a backlash against some old diet fad, a new food group that's good for you, an old staple that's now bad for you. The wealth of (contradicting) information out there is overwhelming. It's ironic that our very own bodies are something that so few people can agree about.

In researching whether protein shakes really make a difference in how quickly you can grow muscle mass I've found two wildly different theories. First is that powdered protein is super good for you, it gets absorbed into your muscles a million times faster than eating meat, and you should take it every day whether you work out or not. Of course, sites with this view are usually also trying to peddle their wares so their opinion is most likely a bit skewed. On the other end, we have those who claim that protein mix really does nothing for you at all, they're probably harmful, eat a banana instead, and get rid of those multivitamins while you're at it. Not only does everyone have an opinion, but an agenda as well! I'm either being told to binge on it or avoid it altogether.

Anyways, I suspect the truth to be something like "if you're tearing muscles today and will not be having much or any protein, a protein shake will be an effective way to help supplement your diet and promote muscle restoration", but no one says that! ARGH!

Posted by Rayne @ 06:30 PM EST [Link] [5 comments]

Tuesday, March 2, 2004

not so much the charm either.

Posted by Rayne @ 07:50 PM EST [Link] [17 comments]

So I'm taking a course this term, MTHEL100 - Business Law For Math Students. The course is pretty interesting as it doesn't only deal with the business related side of law but also gives an overview of civil law and the judicical system.

What grabbed my attention in the first few classes was how different my view and that of the prof's were regarding lawsuits. The prof, a lawyer whose name sounds like Harvey Pekar, seems much more focused on the "if you're wronged somehow, we have to make sure that we sue each and every person responsible for the full amount you should be owed". For example, if you slip and break something on someone's icy entrance, he'd probably suggest you sue the tenant, landlord, and mother nature. I on the other hand look at it more like "wow, there are like a million ways I can get sued". I'm much more concerned with being on the receiving end of a lawsuit than going after others if something were to happen to me, in fact I doubt that suing someone would really enter my mind at all. While the prof does go over ways in which you can defend yourself when sued, he's definately more interested in the suing side of things.

Is it a personality thing that causes these two different perspectives? Is it a lawyer thing? Cuz I'm sure suing is more profiteable than defending.

Posted by Rayne @ 06:36 PM EST [Link] [19 comments]

Monday, March 1, 2004

So it's a day late, I was way too busy yesterday to write this up properly. Check out the nominees list here. I'm also predicting only for catergories where I've either seen at least 1/2 the movies nominated and have an actual opinion on the matter, else it's pretty pointless. Here we go.

Actor in Leading Role: I'd give it to Johnny Depp cuz Capt'n Jack Sparrow was just so damn cool but I think the oscar will go to Bill Murray.

Actor in Supporting Role: Ken Watanabe but Tim Robbins will win because the Oscars favour the mentally handicapped.

Actress in a Leading Role: Charlize Theron, she was a completely different person for Monster both physically and psychologically; this shouldn't even be a close call.

Animated Feature Film: Finding Nemo. Triplets of Belleville was weird, right brained, and artsy but Nemo was definately more entertaining. Not sure why Brother Bear was nominated it was such a typical Disney film, Sinbad would have been a better contender.

Art Direction: LOTR: ROTK though Last Samurai would also be a good choice.

Costume Design: LOTR: ROTK, no contest. Everything had to be created from scratch and not just RECREATED to reflect certain eras.

Directing: ditto. I'd love to see Peter Jackson go up there with his wild hair, shorts, t-shirt and no shoes.

Make Up: same; how can the makeup for some seafaring men even compare to the work that went into making orcs, dwarfs, elves, and hobbits?

Visual Effects: again, but I'm somewhat surprised neither Matrix sequels made it into this category. If nothing else, they had spectacular effects.

Best Picture: Gotta be ROTK. Even if it weren't the year's best movie its gotta get the oscar just for the huge undertaking and the consistent quality across the trilogy.

Posted by Rayne @ 12:35 PM EST [Link] [20 comments]

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