Comments on life, entertainment, and mathematics by a guy with nothing better to do.
I really wish I was in class for all the lectures that were over the topics of my test today. I guess I take for granted that the topics in class mention the topics that will be more likely to show up on the test. Reading the textbook and Wikipedia gets me an understanding of many different areas of the class, but I guess I don't have a list of his favorite topics.
I guess I'll just have to see how this goes. I should stop being so lazy.
Yesterday, I got in a car accident. No human injuries to date, including me, Katie, and the old lady driving the other car. I don't even have the morning-after whiplash people talk about. However, my car is not in good shape and is probably totaled.
I was driving 27th street south. I was in the right lane of two, passing a line of cars waiting for someone to make a left turn. When I was about to get past them, an old lady traveling north decided to turn in front of me. I braked, turned slightly, and our corners collided. No injuries that I know of. The cops gave her a ticket for failure to yield and gave me nothing, which pretty much places fault directly on her. I feel sorry for the old, senile lady, but she is a danger on the road.
Her car had some chunks taken out of the passenger's side front corner. Her 1990 Dodge Dynasty was built to keep the frame's shape. My driver's side front corner is crumpled in right at the headlight. This includes damage to the hood, quarter panel, wheel, and bumper. However, there is probably some inner frame damage, because the passenger's side door doesn't open. The driver's side door opened just enough for us to get out.
I'll be calling the insurance company tomorrow to figure everything out. I'm glad I have a bike to get around, at least.
I decided that I'm going to make a T-shirt for Luke. He's going to get one for sure, and I'll want one. The way I attempt to make it may differ depending on how many people may want one. Here's the basic design:
The portrait and first text would be on the front. The second set of text would be on the back. Here's a visualization of the front:
Let me know if you may be interested. I may get Cafe Press to do it, or get my own silk screening kit. One of these will be cheaper and another will have better results.
Luke Schmitz is the more hardcore guy I know. What I heard about his ordeal last night did not surprise me at all. Supposedly, what saved his life was him tying his own tourniquet. That's right. After stepping on a land mine, this crazy guy doesn't even get knocked out, pulls out something to tie around his leg, and stops the bleeding enough for his buddies to get him on the road and call for a helicopter.
Here's a couple pictures of the guy. Some of you may know him. He's visited me twice in Nebraska, so quite a few of the Kauffman people have seen him around. Keep up the prayers, he's supposedly already to Germany and will soon be reaching home.
A very, very good friend of mine, Luke Schmitz, is stationed in Iraq and recently lost his leg. By recently, I mean I just found out. Supposedly, his hummer got hit with a carbomb and they got out running when he stepped on a land mine. I don't know all the details, but everyone is pretty shaken up by it. He should be getting out of surgery soon, and then he'll be headed to Germany for a little bit and then back home.
Pray for him if you do that sort of thing, or just keep him in mind if you don't. Also, his girlfriend, Tina, is pretty shaken up about it, as are his family and friends (me included). This guy is one of the best you'll find out there. Though as nails, a big joker, and just an all around good guy.
Amazon.com has a bug that has been bothering me. The plurality of the "<name>'s store" has been capitalized:
Today, I had the urge to listen to classical music as I read. I'm doing a lot more reading, and I think that listening to classical music would not be as distracting as the music I currently have, and more enjoyable than silence.
If anyone has some classical music they are willing to share with me, or recommend, I really would appreciate it. Perhaps I can regain the basic understanding of the great music of days gone by.
Sometimes I hate CSS. Mostly, I hate Internet Explorer, but I can sometimes deal with it. I apologize to those who use IE, for you need a better browser and my stylesheet somehow messed up between me checking it on my computer (in IE, even) and getting some comments today. I don't remember making any style changes since my last test, but anything is possible.
For some reason, I couldn't get the header back to normal, so I just made it 100% instead of having side borders and margins. I think I can deal.
My trick for getting the angled border is really cheap, and only IE users will notice the orange border splitting the main section and the sidebar at certain resolutions, depending on the site's content. Deal with it. I already admitted that Safari doesn't get the borders of the <li> element right, so you can sacrifice something as well.
I got sick of my template again, so I made a new one. Now, I have more links to parts of my site. I hope to fill these in more later. I apologize for Safari users, the hover border isn't quite right, but get over it. I may play with the colors on the CSS for a while. I know I haven't improved the comments section quite yet, so that's next.
Be sure to give me some tips on this, since you're the one looking at it.
None of this dream has any basis in reality. None of the characters I will reference actually exist. I wasn't even myself. Keep that in mind.
The dream started by me and my friends taking a trip to a remote apartment building that my dad went to as a kid. It was run by a friend of his, so he let us stay in one of the vacant buildings. However, when we got there, the place was set up as a trap. There were killer stuffed bunnies in the cabinets. We immediately knew about the bunnies because of the incessant giggling coming from the cracks in the old wood, and got worried due to all the easter candy strewn about to coax them out of hiding and into a murderous rage.
I decided to call my "father" to help out, to which he got very worried. Apparently, that apartment was built over the burial ground of some evil spirit him and his friends had defeated as children and that demon now is resurfacing as killer bunnies in the cabinets. He went to tell his friend who owned the building, who apparently decided it would be a good idea to enlist a film crew to watch the carnage from a Big Brother view instead of trying to do anything about it. My dad wasn't happy, but couldn't do anything about it because he didn't own the building.
A couple of my friends decided to go to the north pole and enlist the help of Santa, who happens to be a deranged psychopath, but has the proper technology to battle demons from beyond. But instead of coming right away, he needs to run some tests on some experimental weapons first.
So, we just waited in the apartment, mostly out of the kitchen, hoping they didn't escape from the cabinets. At one point, the bunnies started talking. They started pleading to be let out. They tried all sorts of reasons, mostly involving easter candy. One actually said "Let us out so we can eat your souls!" to which another replied "You idiot! Now I'm going to eat YOUR soul!" followed by a sound I can't completely describe, but somehow was immediately recognized as the sound that would be made if a stuffed bunny was eating your soul.
After discovering what threat these cabinet dwellers could provide, we started watching a movie when some family members randomly stopped by for a visit. For some reason, they were obsessed with cooking for us and constantly ran around the kitchen. I tried to shuffle them away from the cabinets, which were beginning to shake and glow in the cracks. They eventually left, just in time for Santa to show up in his Santamobile. The santamobile was really a hover car that had a detachable set of skis. I don't know why he had the skis if he could already fly with the thing. Anyways, he reported that he failed to find the proper weapon to battle these things and we were screwed. He left us to sit in wait of our impending doom when my alarm went off.
Last night, I had a dream that I was going on a trip with some friends, for sure Jordan and Stevenson were there. They were playing their Nintendo DS systems and having a blast. I apparently owned one and was absolutely unable to play it for more than a minute at a time. I just wasn't interested at all. Maybe it was too confusing or something.
I think I used the phrase "overpriced brick" multiple times.
I have just finished Philip K. Dick's 1977 novel, A Scanner Darkly. This story about the life cycle of a drug addict and an undercover agent has recently been adapted into film, which I look forward to watching.
This novel was a difficult read. The narration itself flows with the organization of the characters' state of mind, moving between sensible to high to burned out. It takes determination to weed through the confusion before being rewarded with later clues that make sense of things. The confusion of the characters is presented with little dramatic irony. The reader is usually more confused than the characters themselves, regularly being deceived by the paranoid fantasies of the protagonist and his friends.
The best feature of Dick's writing is the gradual way he slips between these states of mind. It is so gradual and fluid that you don't notice the change until you mimic the state in your own thoughts. Finally, when you think the story has fallen apart, fizzled into nothingness and confusion, the final page concludes the adventure in the most satisfying way possible.
I am looking forward to the film adaptation quite a bit. They made it animated for very specific reasons, most notably the "scramble suit" that is used to hide a person's identity that is implored by narcotics agents. Also, some of the hallucinations presented in the novel would be very difficult to pull off in live-action. It could also be a stylistic decision, representing the loss of perception of reality. The visual aspect should just be fine, but I am worried about how they can translate the narration that so well defines the paranoia and loss of identity in the main character without copious amounts of voice-over. When the release extends to Lincoln I'll find out and let you know.
It seems as if current legislation against fireworks is simply a ruse. Almost every non-explosive state has another bordering it such that the citizens of one can gain access to the necessary goods with a short drive. A drive is the important word there, you can't simply walk or ride your bike to these places.
Why do these laws exist? Are fireworks routinely used as weapons? No. Bans on fireworks are meant to stop children from blowing their hands off due to improper supervision. No one would care if some college student or middle-aged person blew a leg off. They would just be labeled idiots. Think about the children.
By requiring the travel to a different state, someone over 16 must be responsible for accommodating such needs to a youth. If the kid blows a hand off, it's that older person who is responsible, so proper supervision is given.
Thus, I offer that every state should allow for the sale of fireworks and explosives to all except their own citizens. Everyone who wants to buy fireworks must travel to a different state to procure them. Not only will this be an automatic safety system, but it will spur inter-state economy as money will be imported and exported fluidly.
I am insane enough to come to work on a holiday. I work by the hour, so every day I don't work is a day I don't get paid, no matter what day that is. Walking to work this morning (for clarification: at 8 AM), I noticed the traffic was lower than I'd expect downtown to have at 4 AM. I'm not the only person in the building today, but the other person has their own office. I am luckily placed directly under one of the few emergency lights, so I can see my desk perfectly.
I'll be leaving early today, at least. Mom and Grandma B. are coming to visit.
