Linkstew

My family recently bought a couple of used jet-skis, and today we hauled them the half a mile down to the lake (yes, my parents live about half a mile from a lake) and took them out for the first time.

There are two, but one is significantly more powerful than the other. Naturally, the red one is more powerful one, because "red goes faster." Unfortunately, the powerful one seems to have a bad habit where it's engine dies if you let go of the throttle -- so it made it really hard to idle out of the dock area. The less powerful one is yellow and idles beautifully, and in general is more responsive on the throttle because there's less of a range of speeds to deal with.

Rmmm BrmmmmmmmMMM wap wap wape wake hopping splashing slow and turn turn turning splashing into the wind, hair blowing back and 55! the water stings my face and my cheeks are filled with wind wap wap smack! smack stop.

It was very exhilarating, to say the least. With it's extra power, the red one handled better with the wind and wakes, so it was easy to get up on top of the water. The yellow one could get going as well, but it just wasn't quite the same. For taking tight turns, the yellow one was much nicer, because you could let the throttle completely off for a second without the engine dying. With the red one, I had to take wider turns for two reasons -- I was going faster in the straightaway, and with no breaks, I can't actually decelerate, so I had to take an easier turn. And I couldn't just idle the engine in a turn with the red one, forcing me to keep at least a little gas going.

The yellow one doesn't have a speedometer, but I got the red one up to 55 mph -- I was hanging on for dear life, because it felt like if I let go, I would fly off and hit the water and die. And if I let go, I certainly would fly off, and it would probably hurt like hell when I hit the water, but hopefully I wouldn't be permanently injured... Thankfully, I didn't actually fall off, and for sanity, I kept it between 30 and 40 most of the time. It's a heck of lot of fun, and I'm looking forward to going out again later this summer.

I turned 21 during spring break, which I spent visiting my family. My mom urgently wanted to see the look on the face of the waitress when I ordered a drink, but I wasn't in the mood to order a drink. So she wanted me to order her drink... If she was that desperate to see me order a drink, there was no way I was going to do it. So the incident passed and I returned to Berkeley.

When I went grocery shopping last week (for the first time since turning 21), I figured I might as well taunt my mom by letting her know that I bought something explicitely for the sake of having not bought it in her presence.

Not only did I go that far, but the cashier didn't bat an eye, and didn't check my id. Gee, I guess Berkeley supermarkets are used to the college crowd, while a grocery store in the Kern Valley would probably be a little more suspicious...

Last night when I remembered about Daylight Savings Time, I automatically started adding an hour in my mind when I looked at a clock. This produced a lot of sentences like "Wow, it's already midnight. Stupid daylight savings time.

It's too bad Daylight Savings Time isn't an April Fools joke. I wish it were. It just annoys me. Maybe I should move to Arizona.

"Wow, it's already 5 am! (Damn Daylight Savings Time)," I said when I looked up and saw all the clocks in the room said 4. But then everyone else in the room said "Wait, no it's not!" So we called time, and it was, in fact, only four in the morning. Every clock in the room had sprung forward automatically, making my mental addition adjustments to the time a wasted effort.

Last night I lost an hour, then I gained that hour back, strangely enough. I guess it all worked out in the end, and I didn't even really have to get annoyed by Daylight Savings Time this year.

Tonight wasn't an extraordinary evening. It didn't involve a car chase or anything. Most of the evening was pretty boring, in fact. The programmer team brainstormed at the office for a long time,I went home, put in a tape to record Ed, took a shower, and then my mom got home.

When I started doing dishes, though, suddenly things got kind of interesting. When I was about halfway through Keith and Michael showed up, so in the background they were moving things in and I was listening to my mom talk to them while I realized that the pipe under my sink was dripping and making a puddle on the kitchen floor, so I had to clean that up. Then I felt the urge to straighten things up in an apartment that has 5 people sleeping in it tonight and a lot of unpacked boxes.

And now I'm sitting here writing this instead of working on my parser for my CS project. See, Mundanely Exciting. I told you.

A piece of a baguette. A salad with cucumbers, carrots, and, well, lettuce. Some mozzarella cheese. And a glass of pink lemondate.

That was my dinner. It was reasonably good, and I was full when I finished, but when I was done, I still felt... unfillfulled. I can't explain it. Though I was full, I didn't feel done. I guess I shouldn't have just a salad for dinner, eh? Well, and cheese and bread. And pink lemonade. Can't forget that pink lemonade.

Today was another Saturday spent mostly at work, and yet, I'm really not very bitter about it. I had intended to go to the grocery store early this morning, but since it was raining, it's probably better that I slept through my alarms. I got to the office by about 3, and I started in on the code, along with another programmer who is now working on a project built on the engine I've written.

A lot of progress was made on things today, and it's a shame it got so late so fast, because I was really on a roll when I went home at 11 pm. In fact, when I got home I was in such a hacking mindset that I wanted to work on the new linkstew engine, but there's still no sense in doing that because my web host doesn't yet support xsl in php.

When I got home I played a few rounds of Mario Kart 64, in anticipation of the Game Boy Advance release this summer. It's reassuring that I still kick ass at Mario Kart after all these years, and was able to win the 150cc Special Cup on my first play of the game in six months.

I'm feeling the overwhelming urge to clean and sort and organize everything, only that would take far longer than the half an hour or so that I have to kill. I've moved a few little things around, but I really want to take everything off of my bookshelves and organize them. I want to set asside random bits of hardware that I don't use at all and plan to sell them on eBay. I want to box up some things that I want to keep for now, but don't have time to think about right now (which probably means I'll never have time to think about them, and they'll end up being the category where I want to sell them on eBay someday). But I don't have time to do that, because I have to cook some food, and then study for a Japanese Test I have tomorrow, and for my weekly cogsci report, and for my Geography Midterm Monday.

At least I got around to cleaning up my desk a little, though. There's still crap shoved way back in out of the way corners, but that's where there's a hole in back, I think: So the crap will fall out the back (and into a tangle of wires) instead of being forgotten back there.

And, oh yeah, we still don't have net and cable TV at the same time.

It's currently 6am on Thursday, September 28. What a shitty time to be up. I'm currently working on my paper for philosophy 132, after I went to sleep at around 1:30 am, having been relatively unproductive to that point.

What I'm not mentioning is the part where I have a sore throat, a bit of a fever, stuffy throat and nose, and the kind of headache where the more you move, the more you hurt. And on top of all those symptoms I've got allergies, which only amplify several of the symptoms. Whine. Complain.

Back to the allegory of the people in the cave by the greek guy no one understands. Oh wait, wrong class. Back to the allegory of the bats with no sensations by the the weird guy that searle -- I can't remember if searle disliked or liked the bat guy. I guess my first guess would be dislike, knowing Searle.

Behind the Stew is the site I made for the Behind the Curtain Project. Basically, it's pictures of all the things I did on Sunday, September 17th. It's too bad that was a really boring day. Some of the pictures came out cool though. Check it out if you're bored and have bandwidth to waste.

I was vaguely aware I had shin muscles, but tonight I was very aware of them. You see, I went Ice Skating tonight for the first time in something like four or five years, and, well, whatever muscles I had in place to do that went away, and so I was in a fair amount of pain. Odd thing was, it was only pain while I was turning. My feet and ankles were fine, but the outside of each of my shin muscles -- right near the bone -- was really aching. It felt kind of crampy. It made it rather no fun. I'll have to go again soon so I can build up some muscle there again, or else I'll never be able to have fun ice skating.

What was somewhat fun, though, was watching all the Junior High kids out ice skating. Boy are Junior High kids silly. If only they knew... Boy did I feel old.

Well, I've made it to 1pm, which is a fair accomplishment, considering I got up at 6 freaking AM. And then I couldn't go back to sleep, because it was muggy, and I couldn't do anything useful, because I found that my net was down. So I tried to pick out some clothes to wear, but that turned out to be impossible, because it's not that hot today, but it's very humid. So here I find myself at 1am, tired, sticky, and generally annoyed. Maybe tomorrow will be better.

On Sunday night, I was coming back from Weldon via Kernville after an appointment, and I was pulled over by a cop. Yikes. I was going 65 in the 50 mph zone between Kernville and Wofford Heights. I was in the truck, and the truck goes much much much faster than the tracker. The tracker settles into about 45 on flat road, meaning it's work to go faster than 45 in Bakersfield, let alone in the hills. The truck, on the other hand, settles into around 70, even in the hills, meaning it's work to not speed. Bugger.

The nice officer, however, let me go with a warning. So I drove the half a mile home very very slowly. Well, I drove the rest of the way home at 45, which seems really really slow in the truck. Oops.