Mount Athos: 04/01/2003

As a Master of Science - elect, I feel like I have a pretty good grasp on electronics technology. Throw out the fact that I refuse to learn how to do anything with a cellphone other than talk into it, and I'm willing to say I'd be comfortable with any new-fangled equipment you could throw at me.

However, I recently realized that I had no idea how a certain electronic instrument from my childhood had worked. I'm referring to the Nintendo Zapper Gun, the thing you pointed at the TV so you could kill highly-pixelated ducks. I started trying to figure out how it worked on my own, and I came up with absolutely nothing. When you think about it, it's pretty unbelievable that they had a gun that would register a real-time location on a television monitor in the mid-eighties, not to mention the fact that it only cost about 20 bucks. So I did some research and it turns out the technology behind the gun is simple yet very cool; a real incentive to pull out that old Mario/DuckHunt/Track&Field cartridge and go to town. If your curiousity has been sparked, and I know it has, you can find more info here and here.

R.I.P. Monopaddle - I banish you to the land of wind, ghosts, and Erv.

JRock's Danger Squad finally went down in the playoffs today. After a personally crap-tacular performance, I'm not exactly happy with myself, but I have one thing keeping my spirits up:

The game was:

Us - Intelligent, well-adjusted, easygoing people
vs.
Them - Cocky frat boys with uncreative nicknames on the back of their personalized T-shirts

Regardless of what the scoreboard says, we win. period.

So I finally folded and started using SpamAssassin. I used to be proud of my traditional, delete-it-yourself ways, but over the past few months my cec accout has exploded into one gigantic cesspool of refinancing information and assorted smut. At the beginning of this semester I was getting spammed about once a day in that account, but now we're talking about more than 20 a day, and the number seems to be rising all the time. I'm quite upset at the cec for allowing this to happen, because I know that personally, I'm pretty careful about where I let this address be seen.

It helps to know that there are folks out there who are doing what they can to fight this invasion, though.

It's done, its finally done.

After a (more or less) successful thesis defense, I finally feel like I can breathe easy. It's sort of funny, but it only took me a few hours after today's ordeal was over with to start getting all sentimental about leaving St. Louis in a few months, something that had never happened to me before. Not sentimental about leaving the city itself, obviously, but just the people I met and the way of life I've grown accustomed to over the past five years.

I better stop there or people are going to start thinking that my sudden departure from a more sarcastic tone is due to some kind of drug use.

Man, I'm in a good mood.....

Sorry about the sudden dropoff in posting. Things will likely stay that way until the weekend, after my thesis presentation is done and I can (hopefully) breathe easier. But for now, I will utter my one and only comment about the war in Iraq:

You gotta admit, "Chemical Ali" is a pretty cool-sounding nickname.

As of today, the whiteboard of wonders in Bryan 509 has a new addition: A list of words that aren't dead yet. Unlike the recently deceased "bigit", these words are still free to be used. This is mainly due to the fact that we operate under the assumption that they are real and refuse to verify their correctness through traditional sources, such as a "dictionary". The current list is as follows:

Hat-centric*: Primarily concerned with hats. e.g. "Gangs of New York" is an exceptionally hat-centric movie.

Robocopish: Something that would sound right at home in the Robocop movies. e.g. "Chips that Remember and Compute" (an actual publication title, by the way) sounds very Robocopish.

If you feel you have a word that belongs on this list, feel free to stop by the office. Your word's fate will be decided by a joint tribunal consisting of Chris and myself. Bribes may be useful.

*I must give credit where credit is due, and admit that this observation was not first made by me. The credit goes to my cousin Andrew, who was loitering in a movie theater with me recently and remarked that Gangs of New York was "an excellent hat movie, but otherwise not very good". Ever since then, I've been touting the film that way, and was highly dissapointed that there was no "Best Hat" Oscar Category, because, let's face it, Daniel Day Lewis's Stovepipe would have been a shoo in. Or at least it should have been. We all know that Chicago would have really won.

Another wonderful email, this time from a friendly chap named "Jay". I especially like how Jay gives you the link between each paragraph, in case you forgot where to look to find more information about his exciting news:


Hi LUCAS FOX

Have you seen this yet?

Some guy in Georgia almost died in a flood
but ended up getting rich on the Internet.

Check out his amazing story here:

http://click.offersdaily.net/sp/t.pl?id=73740:2189576

He humiliated all those "get rich quick"
guys and made over half a million dollars
from home last year. (You can even see
his bank statement at the site).

Check it out:

http://click.offersdaily.net/sp/t.pl?id=73741:2189576

I've seen what he's doing and it's the real thing.
I think he's going to take the site down soon
because of the traffic (read that somewhere...
can't remember)

Anyway- let me know what you think.

http://click.offersdaily.net/sp/t.pl?id=73742:2189576

Talk soon-

Jay