Here we go, I finally have a few moments to sit down and output a full post.

So I’ve been in Terre Haute, Indiana for over two weeks now, taking part in Operation Catapult at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. Basically it’s a geek camp. It’s similar to the weeks I spent at SMU over past summers, but I’m not actually receiving any credit for the experience.

When I was at the airport I saw Taylor, who I had also known at SMU, he was going to the project as well. I also met Isaac, who lives in Coppell. The plane trip was uneventful except for that guy who wouldn’t stop talking to me. We arrived in Indy, and were picked up by Abby, one of the counselors and drove the hour and a half to Rose. The three of us were the first ones to arrive at Catapult, but it was still cool. The counselors offered us some really cold cheesecake and we ate it. Other people started showing up and we watched part of fight club, (which I still need to finish by the way) and then one of the counselors started a game of ultimate, and the only people who didn’t go were Taylor, myself, and a girl I would later come to know as Claire. We joked about being athletic an a nerd camp and continued watching the movie. Everybody just hung out for the rest of the day until I fell asleep.

The next day was the first real day of catapult and all the people who hadn’t yet arrived showed up. We still didn’t do much other than have an “Orientation” for the parents more than anybody else. The next day they explained to us all of the choices we had for projects, I was pretty set for trebuchet, but I was talking to Taylor and he had this nifty idea for evolutionary programming in java, I said I didn’t know anything about java but it sounded like fun, if he could get other people to join up as well. It turns out that both Isaac and Claire thought it would be fun so we signed up together.

There were various activities that happened every night through out the week, including movies and playing Settlers of Catan, this weird strategy game (more on that later), and playing of blackjack. Speaking of blackjack, there was a casino night one day and I won a big jar of pretzel sticks.

I went to see Day After Tomorrow, which wasn’t a great movie over all, but it felt weird going to a movie without Kelsey, something I hadn’t done for months. The movie theatre did have free refills on absolutely everything (even the blue slushy drinks), and that was cool.

Every week day we have intramurals, and the teams are based on those from the old early nineties show “Legends of the Hidden Temple,” I’m in the Green Monkeys! We play various sports including but not limited to Ultimate, Soccer, Kickball, and Volleyball. We are horrible at all of them with the exception of volleyball. On Saturday there ws the wacky Olympics, which had multiple events like the egg smash, condiment body art the balloon pop, and “da relay” the egg smash involved one person getting on another’s shoulders with eggs tied to their head. They then had to smash the opposing teams eggs with pool noodles. We got last place in that event. We won in the body art event by covering the back of one of our guys in chocolate sauce and then drawing a monkey on his body. We also wod “da relay” by one second, and I was part of thew wheelbarrow race, I was the guy pushing.

I’m tired of typing so I’m going to stop, but I’ll finish some other time.
  ¶ 6/28/2004 06:16:00 PM (0) comments

  I need a haircut and a shave  ¶ 6/28/2004 03:23:00 PM (0) comments

  It’s been almost a month, and I haven’t actually fallen off the face of the planet, just been spending some time in Indiana. (so almost off the face of the planet) I’m here at operation catapult, and this will only be a short update because I’m actually just using my free time during project time. Catapult’s cool and stuff and we cross state borders for field trips. Gotta go Talk at you alls later  ¶ 6/28/2004 02:46:00 PM (0) comments

  Harry Potter, yellow submarines, Operation Catapult, Enterprise, and bathrobes

Harry potter was pretty good, but they had to cut quite a bit of material to fit it into the two-hour timeslot, which wasn’t really needed, but I’m over it now. Before the movie started we hung out in line for about 20 minutes and I saw people I know, including but not limited to, Mary/Lacy and Chris. Then after going into the theatre and we get seats at the top row near the lefternmost side, and some random guy on the row inform of me gave me a high five because of my bathrobe (yes, of course I wore it) and I sat down. A little later my dad comes up from where him and my mother and Lauren’s mother, are sitting and he recognizes he guy in front of me as Joey from my troop many years ago and then we talked for a bit after realizing that neither one of us had recognized each other, mainly because I grew a foot and cut my hair, while I never would have expected to se Joey there at all.

The movie’s about to start so we get to sit through fifteen minutes of previews for movies like The Aviator, which looks like it might be ok but not great, and Thunderbirds, which could be really cool but they’re making it more of a kids movie ala spy kids or that other movie with kids doing stuff like that. Then everything gats all dark and everybody starts whooping for Harry Potter and stuff, but the movie doesn’t start for like five minutes and we just have to stare at this blank screen, then the movie does start but it’s like ten minutes in and there’s no audio. Everybody starts yelling and booing, until they stop the projector, then this guy comes in and tells everybody that it’s going to be about ten minutes before they have everything sorted out because it’s a difficult process with the projectors. He also says that he doesn’t work here, he’s just being a nice guy. He then realized what power he was holding over the crowd, and stands back up, switches from nice guy to activist, and says that everybody needs to ask for a pass from he managers, and that whoever is throwing Dots “needs to cut that s**t out!” Not of course realizing that the theater is full of a bunch of kids.

The movie didn’t end until almost three because of the delays and stuff, and when we’re walking out we see the guy again, who asks, “Did you get your pass?” We just ignored him.

I’m leaving for Operation Catapult in eight days and it’s shaping up to be loads of fun, they have a number of different dress-up days including fallback career day and favorite superhero day and they also will have a talent show and I’m going to perform “how computers work” by Dave Barry. I also started looking at the different programs they have and I’m going to have a hard time narrowing the list to my top four.

I’m trying to catch up with Star Trek: Enterprise, because I saw the last two episodes of the season and I really liked it, and now UPN’s replaying the season’s episodes in order, two shows every Wednesday.

Poor all my life I’ve always been poor
I keep asking God what I’m for
And he tells me “Gee, I’m not sure”
Sweep that floor kid
Oh, I started life as an orphan
Child of the street
Here on skid row
He took me in gave me shelter
A bed, crust of bread, and a job
Treats me like dirt, calls me a slob
Which I am
  ¶ 6/04/2004 09:10:00 PM (0) comments

  Oh yeah.

Harry Potter #3 opens tonight at Midnight plus one. Kathryn and two of her friends planned out this super fun night of partying stuff for everybody. And by that I mean that there are lots of people going and we'll be dressing up in costume. I'm gunna be Sirius Black, on the run from the Ministry of Magic. I even have all of my back story planned out, and I’m hoping that there’ll be reporters there so I could be interviewed by them and it would have this little caption under my picture which said something like “Crazed Fan attacks reporters” and then there would be the interview itself and it would go like this:

Reporter: Ok so I see you’re wearing a green bathrobe, who are you supposed to be?

Me: I’m Sirius Black on the run from the Ministry of Magic.

Reporter: Well wouldn’t the bathrobe make you more conspicuous?

Me: Not really, because if you go around wearing a bathrobe all the time people are less likely to talk to want to talk to you, so they pretend not to notice you at all.

Reporter: But haven’t most of the non-magical folks been made aware of your presence?

Me: Sure I was on the news for a while, but people like to believe that bad things don’t happen near them, so most people just forgot about me.

Reporter: Wouldn’t coming out at a movie premier like this draw unnecessary attention from the people your running from?

Me: Not at all, the Ministry completely ignores things like this; they don’t want to even acknowledge the fact that Harry’s story got out at all. And besides at stuff like this there’s so many people who pretend that they’re me, the ministry would have a hard time finding the right me in the crowds of look-alikes.

Reporter: Why did you pick this particular movie theatre to come to?

Me: well, I was in the area and I just couldn’t miss an opportunity to be at the premier of a movie that has my name in the title.

Reporter: But you said your name was Sirius.

Me: Hello? Does “the prisoner of Azkaban, ring a bell? That’s me. Honestly, for a reporter you could use some more fact checking.

Reporter: Thank you for your time.

Oh yeah, and I also saw Les Mis last night at the Bass Hall. It was really cool and I was singing the songs all last night after the show. I did have a little trouble getting home because we had some serious storms happening but it wasn’t too bad except for the part where I took the wrong exit and almost ended up in Dallas.
  ¶ 6/03/2004 03:22:00 PM (0) comments

  Lots of funny today.

Here’s some funny links I’ve gathered recently

The "Funniest Cat Videos" (Compliments of Mrs. Phancy)

Kenya and Live Action Kenya

something that really messes with your head

The Shining in 30 seconds, re-enacted by bunnies

And because it had to be posted WonderKaci

I was walkin' in the wholesale flower district that day
and I passed by this place where this old Chinese man
he sometimes sells me weird and exotic cuttings,
'cause he knows, you see, that strange plants are my hobby.
  ¶ 6/03/2004 03:08:00 PM (0) comments

  Woo and Hoo!

This is the first post from the new improved, same but completely different computer Achilles! (Formerly Jeff of the ninja pirate space monkey fame) She’s up and running, but she needs a bit of work still. The 250 gig hard drive is awesome, but my old video card got broke, so I’m having to use the one that came with the new motherboard, it’s a piece of junk. It’s got 6 fans in it and five of them light up. But enough about my computer, lets talk about me.

I’m going to go see Les Mis at the Bass Hall tonight and it’ll be lots of fun,m but I have to manage to make it there and back. I was feeling bored because I started getting up at like eight in the morning and finishing all of my daily stuff before noon, so I went out and bought Splinter Cell for ten buckaroonies. It’s a pretty good game but I’ve just started playing it. Over the holiday weekend I went to four, count ‘em four different parties, including but not limited to one cast party for cheaper by the dozen, with some of the best barbecue I’ve ever eaten, provided by Mr. Dan-d-cue himself, Dan Duncan.

I also found this nifty link for this thing that makes you into a barcode here Barcode Yourself - Scott Blake aparently my barcode is worth $9.11, huh.

I’ll be leaving for Operation Catapult in Terre Haute, Indiana in like just over a week and a half. For those of you who don’t know or care, Operation Catapult is this summer program for people who are about to enter their senior year of high school, and are interested in the engineering field for college. (That’s me all right)

Last time I was at work, they were stripping sci-fi books (that’s where the cover gets torn off and sent back to the publisher, as proof that it wasn’t sold, but the books themselves are just trashed, so anybody that works at Barnes and Noble gets to take some of the coverless books home), and I got a couple books by Harry Turtledove, he’s the guy who writes books about alternate histories but with a sci-fi twist. I also got a book of short stories called “Men Writing Science Fiction As Women” it’s based on the whole idea that in the early days of sci-fi most women authors had to disguise their names or use pen names so that young boys (the target audience of early sci-fi) would still read their stuff. So this guy contacted a bunch of women sci-fi authors to write a short story from a first person male perspective, and also as if the authors themselves were men. Then in the spirit of fair play, the guy did the same thing with a bunch of male writers but with the rules flipped. Thus the book I mentioned earlier was born. It’s kinda interesting at parts even if the stories overall aren’t ground breaking.

Now I’m tired of typing.

We're Knights of the Round Table.
We dance whene'er we're able.
We do routines and chorus scenes
With footwork impeccable.
We dine well here in Camelot.
We eat ham and jam and spam a lot.  ¶ 6/02/2004 01:42:00 PM (0) comments