ah, the smell of spring...

it's great. every time there's a warm day right after a cold day, you smell spring everywhere. and by spring, i mean the smell of sweaty guys (not in a good way) and girls with too much bad perfume on. because i guess exposed skin is a greenlight to wear lots of perfume, and since it's not summer yet, you don't have to stick with light scents? ugh...

doggy brand natural fertilizer?

alright, somebody explain this to me... they run this machine over the drillfield that pulls out these dirt plugs and just leaves them there. i'm sure you've seen it, if you walk across the drillfield often. it looks like fifteen million dogs shat on the drillfield overnight. what the hell do they do this for? i'd assume it's like a... tilling mechanism... but... yeah... i just hate tripping over fake doggie doo.

i am so tired. i couldn't fall asleep last night. i have no idea why. somebody shoot me.

one red freak for another

i changed my aim icon. to the red n*e*r*d wolf-dog (as seen in the bouncing heads, aka "she wants to move" video). it could pose some of the same problems as the not-bsd devil.

i chose the devil originally because it was cute, small, and evil looking. okay, maybe not evil... mischievous? anyway, it's not the bsd devil because it's nose isn't the same (not that people are expected to know this, i guess). it wasn't a problem for a long time because most people didn't even know what bsd was. and it was fine. but then people started accusing me of being a bsd freak. not that i'm against bsd, but i'm not for it, either. it was better when people read it at face value...

so now i've moved to the dog. still red. still evil-looking. not so much cute. and i doubt it looks small. but i *am* a dog, if that counts for anything. new problem. people could see the "nerd" frame (it's an animated gif) as, well... you know, nerd (as opposed to n*e*r*d). but that's not so bad. i love nerds. i am a nerd. so not reading enough into it isn't a problem. it's if they read too much into it... then they might think i'm pro n*e*r*d, the idea (noone ever really dies). again, not that i'm against it; i'm just not for it.

apparently it's just not my night...

i'm sitting here trying to do my software design assignment, and the lab's down. it gets stuck at "loading personal settings." great.

the three nba blogs that i read... haven't been updated since february/january. it sucks.

i shaved for the first time in forever. no seriously. and i shaved both legs (not just one like matt was bitching about months ago... no idea what that was about.)

issues... everybody has issues...

so i'm standing in front of my blood-covered sink with blood-covered hands and my nose dripping faster than a leaky faucet, and i'm thinking... "i'm going to blog this..."

***

anyway... went home this weekend, and we were driving down ravensworth (the setting of some of the most stupid almost-accidents i've ever experienced), and there was this cat in the middle of the road. as in, next to the double yellow. so this idiot civic going the other way swerves to miss the cat... into our lane. it straddled the damn cat when traffic in front of it did fine going around it. i mean, it's not like the civic is anywhere as wide as other cars. why the hell did this idiot have to nearly kill us?

so not all near-accidents are completely the other person's fault, though... last major almost-accident happened when the prelude in front of me had the stupidest looking altezzas... that didn't light. okay, they did, but you couldn't see them in the daytime. it wasn't until i had nearly rear-ended them that either of us could see 1) they were signaling to turn left, and 2) their brake lights were lit. so that one was partially my fault. i think. and i think i might have blogged this already...

***

alright, not that i don't love the ras in my hall (they are the best ras ever), but they seem to have missed something. there was this calendar-ish type banner in the stairwell labeled "johnson week." um, yeah. it was stolen. like, the day it was put up. so, my dear sweet ras put up another one. this time, labeled "<3 johnon week." because "love johnson week" is less likely to be stolen than "johnson week." yes.

perhaps i should reevaulate the title of my blog...

not-ranting again.

okay, so sleep deprivation and stupid decisions led me to doing my algorithms homework last night. algorithms that was due at 5 yesterday. but santos is cool and said that she'd accept anything that was under the door by the time she got into her office this morning.

braindead-ness kept me from doing anything productive on the homework except for drawing lots of pictures and scratching them out in frustration. in fact, here, i'll just cut and paste part of my away message from last night...

here's how my night went...
me:
<works>
poop...
<backtracks>
<works>
poop...
(etc.)
...
me: help!
george: well, you <blahblahblah> and the rest should be obvious...
me: ...
you've just put me exactly where i'm stuck.

yup... i got stuck on the obvious part...

so yeah... it was slow going. i finally finished it sometime around 3. and, of course, since i don't know when santos is going to be in her office, i had to turn it in right then. which shouldn't be a problem because mcb is open 24-7... right?

well, as it turns out, that's only partially true. the basement and the stairwells are unlocked. the doors to the other floors are locked. the elevator was turned off. umm... yeah, how am i supposed to get my homework turned in?

trying every door could be a pain. normally, to poke at the doors, you could just go up one level at a time and go in a circle. but, since the doors are locked, the only way to try them all is to climb all the way up one set of stairs, go all the way back down, repeat. uugh.

well, i did that, because what else could i do? i eventually found one set of doors on the fifth floor that weren't locked. hmm... at least that'll be useful for me to try other stairwells...

the fifth floor doors on all other stairwells are locked. if i go into a stairwell, the only way to get back to the fifth floor is to go all the way back down, back to the original stairwell, and back up to the fifth floor. so, out of desperation, i try the elevator. apparently the only part of the elevator that's turned off is the call button in the basement. good to know. except...

i'd been on the phone with matt the entire time (you know... so if someone tries to kill me, he can... um... scream at them through the phone), and before i stepped in, told him that i'd call him back if i got cut off (i was stepping into a giant metal box, after all)... and if i didn't call back within five minutes, to call the blacksburg police and tell them that i'm stuck in the elevator in mcbryde. no problem, the phone didn't even cut out (i swear, there's a cell tower on top of mcb), and i made it to the sixth floor just fine.

i still don't know if i got lucky with the doors being unlocked, or if that's their alternative to giving keys to everybody with an office in mcb... but i got to turn in my hw, and that's all that matters to me...

don't ask why...

sixteen candles down the drain...
yeah, sponge is on the dc101 webcast, again. because they play old music when the broadcast is on commercial.

anyway... i've strayed off the point of the blog for a while... it's for my ranting! outlet and whatnot. so...

***

there's something called the roomer here. it's a rdp publication (now "student services") that they put up in the dorm. in the bathroom. facing you when you're sitting on the toilet.

so i've been forced to read this every time i do my business in the dorm... and it gets old real fast. but that's not even what i'm ranting about.

so... there's this block of it about the training rooms in the dorms... available 24-7, whenever dorms are open for occupation... available at the swipe of a card...

okay, okay... so we can get into the rooms with our cards 24-7... that does us no good if we can't get into the damn dorm that the room is in. so unless you live in a dorm with a room, you have to be in there by 10. mmhmm... real thought out there, people.

and then... the damn blurb ends in "work out or train whenever you want, wherever you want. the choice is YOURS!" apart from the fact that it's really not my choice (see above)... who the hell writes like that? someone watched too much captain planet ("the power is YOURS!").

and speaking of bad writing... i picked up a ct today, and on the front page, there was a story about a "9-twelve month water improvement planning process." umm... apart from this being a backwards 1-digit rule (isn't 9 supposed to be spelled out and 12 supposed to be numerical? meaning... if one is supposed to be spelled and the other isn't... it really should be the other way around), isn't consistency the only across-the board rule that you have to use? if not in the same document, in the same sentence. if 9-12 looked too shorthandish, why the hell would 9-twelve be a logical coice? it doesn't even make sense! it implies 12-month somethings, and that there are 9 of them. if you're going to break the consistency rule, i'd hope you'd at least say nine to 12. or, in their case, 9 to twelve. but no.


new topic. the weather. it's beautiful. okay, that's not a rant. but in blacksburg, weather like this brings out two things... flowers and girls and bikinis. still not convinced it's a bad thing? the flowers smell like ass, and a good chunk of the girls... should not be wearing bikinis. plus, then it's hot outside and cold inside, which makes dressing rather strange. it's better when you wear more clothes walking than sitting, 'cause at least then you can put the extra layers down. when it's the other way around... well, you get the idea.


and the last topic of the day is... the death of pope john paul ii. oooooh my god. whose idea was it to cover it every waking second of every day? even the school's flags are drooping for it.

okay, they're drooping for him... but the fact of the matter is, i was channel surfing (on not the day he died), and in the course of about four seconds, i went through five channels... and heard about the pope on each channel. granted these are the news channels, but... isn't there something else that they could be reporting? i mean... not that it's not a big story... but... there are other things going on in the world. everybody already knows that he's dead, and you're not telling us anything new... so stop beating the damn dead horse.

***

who invented haribo cola bottles, and how do i show appreciation?