Category Archives: Miscellaneous

Dear candy companies who feel the need to release peanut butter versions of their products:

KEEP IT UP.

Seriously. Peanut butter Twix cause little gustatory orgasms.

Anyway.

Am I the only one having trouble accessing the NaNoWriMo site? Every time I go to update my word count I get the “page cannot be displayed fart fart fart” message. So I think I’m still at like 420 words or something, haha. Prepare for my little graph to shoot skywards once I can actually log on.

Unrelated: I freaking love this!

Also, my stuff was “guaranteed” to come yesterday but it STILL ISN’T HERE…kinda freaking out, but whatev. I miss my books. And Giant Compy.

Vroom!

Boring Blog is Boring

I’m working on redoing an old Flash, but I’m lazy so it didn’t get done today. So…handwriting analysis! I love these things. Properties I think to be true are in bold.

Claudia uses judgment to make decisions. She is ruled by her head, not her heart. She is a cool, collected person who is usually unexpressive emotionally. Some may see her as unemotional. She does have emotions but has no need to express them. She is withdrawn into herself and enjoys being alone.

The circumstances when Claudia does express emotions include: extreme anger, extreme passion, and tremendous stress. If someone gets her mad enough to tell her off, she will not be sorry about it later. She puts a mark in her mind when someone angers her. She keeps track of these marks and when she hits that last mark she will let them know they have gone too far. She is ruled somewhat by self-interest. All her conclusions are made without outside emotional influence. She is very level-headed and will remain calm in an emergency situation. In a situation where other people might get hysterical, she has poise.

Claudia will work more efficiently if given space and time to be alone. She would rather not be surrounded by people constantly. In a relationship, she will show her love by the things she does rather than by the things she says. Saying “I love you” is not a needed routine because she feels her mate should already know. The only exception to this is if she has logically concluded that it is best for her mate to hear her express her love verbally.

Claudia is not subject to emotional appeals. If someone is selling a product to her, they will need to present only the facts. They should present them from a standpoint of her sound judgment. She will not be taken in by an emotional story about someone else. She will meet emergencies without getting hysterical and she will always ask “Is this best for me?”

Claudia tends to write a bit smaller than the average person. When a person’s letters are small and tiny, this indicates an ability to focus and concentrate. This character trait is a huge asset in careers like math, science, race car driving, and flying planes. However, if Claudia writes tiny all of the time, she will also display characteristics of someone who is socially introverted. Claudia will often sit on the sideline and watch others get the attention at parties. she might be willing to open up and be warm, but only in small groups or a select group of people. When she is busy working on a project, it is common for all other noises and distractions to just fade away and her ability to focus is incredible. When she says “she didn’t hear you”, she really means, she didn’t hear you.

Claudia will demand respect and will expect others to treat her with honor and dignity. Claudia believes in her ideas and will expect other people to also respect them. She has a lot of pride.

Claudia will be candid and direct when expressing her opinion. She will tell them what she thinks if they ask for it, whether they like it or not. So, if they don’t really want her opinion, don’t ask for it!

In reference to Claudia’s mental abilities, she has a very investigating and creating mind. She investigates projects rapidly because she is curious about many things. She gets involved in many projects that seem good at the beginning, but she soon must slow down and look at all the angles. She probably gets too many things going at once. When Claudia slows down, then she becomes more creative than before. Since it takes time to be creative, she must slow down to do it. She then decides what projects she has time to finish. Thus she finishes at a slower pace than when she started the project.

She has the best of two kinds of minds. One is the quick investigating mind. The other is the creative mind. Her mind thinks quick and rapidly in the investigative mode. She can learn quicker, investigate more, and think faster. Claudia can then switch into her low gear. When she is in the slower mode, she can be creative, remember longer and stack facts in a logical manner. She is more logical this way and can climb mental mountains with a much better grip.

Claudia is a practical person whose goals are planned, practical, and down to earth. This is typical of people with normal healthy self-esteem. She needs to visualize the end of a project before she starts. She finds joy in anticipation and planning [if I could bold this even more, I would]. Notice that I said she plans everything she is going to do, that doesn’t necessarily mean things go as planned. Claudia basically feels good about herself. She has a positive self-esteem which contributes to her success. She feels she has the ability to achieve anything she sets her mind to. However, she sets her goals using practicality– not too “out of reach”. She has enough self-confidence to leave a bad situation, yet, she will not take great risks, as they relate to her goals. A good esteem is one key to a happy life. Although there is room for improvement in the confidence category, her self-perception is better than average.

Claudia is sarcastic. This is a defense mechanism designed to protect her ego when she feels hurt. She pokes people harder than she gets poked. These sarcastic remarks can be very funny. They can also be harsh, bitter, and caustic at the same time.

Claudia has difficulty trusting anyone. In fact, she trusts no one completely. This is a result of her trust being betrayed in the past. She has closed up, thus ceasing to allow close friendships. Claudia truly wants close friends and desires physical relationships, but she fears she will get hurt, again. She is lonely, yet has a crying need for close friends. This trait can cause much unhappiness. However, it can be changed.

Claudia has a healthy imagination and displays a fair amount of trust. She lets new people into her circle of friends. She uses her imagination to understand new ideas, things, and people.

30-Day Meme – Day 30: Share what you have learned, if anything, about yourself in the last 30 days.
I learned that I liked memes that I can do all at once. But that’s about it, haha.

I wish my stuff would get here soon

Job interview in a week and a half!

That was fast.

In other news, I found out that the UI is looking for a lecturer for STAT 150 and that I’m totally qualified. Given what’s currently going on with me right now, I don’t know if I could handle a semester of lecturing (or if I’d even be good at it, who knows?), but I’m super tempted to apply and see what happens. Wouldn’t that be awesome if I got the job, though?

In other other news, all my material possessions are set to arrive anytime between next Monday and the 8th of November. I propose that our little gang gets together for some sort of Rock Band + pizza + sexiness – clothes party at some point. Especially since I wasn’t able to catch you guys over the summer. Who’s with me?

30-Day Meme – Day 29: Hopes, dreams and plans for the next 365 days.
1. Figure out what’s going on with my brain and get it under
control.

2. Develop coping skills that do not center around self-destruction.

3. Acquire money.

4. Take more classes! You know I can’t stay away.

5. Try not to die.

6. A bunch of other stuff that is contingent on point #1 (and #2, I suppose).

OH CRAP NANOWRIMO

Haha, totally just remembered that that’s happening in like five days.

Commence pulling last-minute plot out of ass!

In the meantime THREE THINGS!

1. Adventure Time is still the greatest show on Cartoon Network and Lumpy Space Princess is freaking awesome.

I still think the art/feel of this cartoon is very similar to that of Tom Deslongchamp.

2. I’ve posted this before, but I’m linking to it again ‘cause it rules and I just rediscovered it.

3. Haha, stats jokes.

30-Day Meme – Day 27: The last thing that made you cry.
Uncertainty. I don’t like things being “up in the air” like they currently are. I don’t know how long I’ll be in Moscow, I don’t know what’s going on with the rest of my educational career (‘cause it’s most certainly not over, screw that), and most of all, I don’t know what’s going on with my head. Hopefully things will start making some sense in the coming weeks. It also doesn’t help that I’ve literally only got a suitcase’s worth of stuff here at my dad’s and the rest of my things are making their way across the continent, current location unknown. If my stats books and notes get lost, someone’s gettin’ stabbed.

US-CANADIAN RELATIONS: Y U NO MORE INTUITIVE AND SIMPLE FOR SUCH FRIENDLY COUNTRIES?!

Things that are surprisingly easy to do:
– Withdraw from a Canadian university for medical reasons.
– Hire a company to pack all your apartment’s crap and haul it across the country for you.
– Love Coldplay’s new song Paradise. OH MY GOODNESS SO MUCH LOVE FIVE STARS FIVE STARS FIVE STARS.

Things that are surprisingly difficult to do:
– Cancel your Canadian credit card.
– Transfer Canadian funds to a US account.
– Terminate a Canadian cell phone contract.
– Send medical info from the US to Canada.
– Figure out how much money you’re getting for being  a TA for part of a month.
– Doing all of the above in the exact appropriate order so that it all works out in the end.

Hooray stress! Perhaps today’s meme entry will alleviate anxiety.

30-Day Meme – Day 22: Your deepest fear.
Haha, nope, no stress relief. I’m afraid of failure. Failure defined on my own terms. I’d go into more detail but I’m getting really
distracted by the slot machines behind me (I’m stuck in the Las Vegas International Airport for four more hours) and I’m super tired of traveling, so I’m just going to leave things off here.

Sorry.

Lawl, Republicans

The Republican Debate should have been broadcast on Comedy Central.

Here’s some more frivolity to round out your day.

30-Day Meme – Day 18: Tell us about your best friend.
I don’t have one! HaHA!

Short blog!

Blog 1,988: Miscellany

POINT ONE!
Big changes forthcoming. Bittersweet. Details at 11.

POINT TWO!
Though I doubt anyone who reads this blog utilizes the “random post” button thingy, I’ve very slowly being going through all my old blogs and updating the format so that things are consistent across all the posts. Pretty soon everything will be beautiful and happy and I will be at peace with my archives even though no one will ever read them.

POINT THREE!
I got myself a Gmail account, does that mean I’ve lost my soul?

POINT FOUR!
2,000 blogs. Happening soon. Get ready for excitement.

POINT FIVE!
I don’t remember what Point Five was!

The end!

30-Day Meme – Day 9: A photo you took.

It’s Big Ben! I took this back in 2003 when my dad, grandma, and I went to Stockholm/Helsinki/London. In related news, apparently the giant clock is tilting—almost to the point tourists can see it with the naked eye—due to the ground shifting beneath it. Haha, The Leaning Timepiece of London.

Crappity Crap Craptastic Crapperton

Blaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah I want death.

You get 30 Day Meme and ONLY 30 Day Meme before I pass out in a heap of neurosis.

30-Day Meme – Day 2: Your favorite movie.
I’m not a movie person. There are approximately seven movies in existence that I would willingly suggest watching if I were in the position of HAVING to suggest a movie for lack of better alternative ways of wasting time.
But one movie I could watch again and again and again (and have) is Apollo 13. Why?

1. Tom Hanks. He’s badass and, in my opinion, one of the better actors out there.

2. Kevin Bacon. See above, plus the fact that he also starred in Tremors as a random cowboy makes me laugh every time I see him as an astronaut in this movie.

3. I have a thing for movies about space. From the more “accurate” movies like this one to the all-out corny “AMERICA, FUCK YEAH!” movies like Armageddon, space movies have always been of interest to me.

4. The soundtrack. Particularly the track “The Launch.”

Listen and chill.

Of course someone’s always pushing the envelope. Otherwise it’s just stationery.

Stuff:

a. One can gauge my level of depression by how much of a disaster my apartment is. On a scale of 1 to 10 with 1 being “life rules!” and 10 being “just let me curl up in a corner and die,” my apartment will remain immaculate from 1 to 9. At 10, you’ll be lucky to be able to see the floor.

b. Claudia + stringed instruments = disaster.

c. I need to update my CV.

d. Hume is a sex pot, but still not on Leibniz’ level.

e. I’m slowly going through all my old blogs and fixing the format so that it’s uniform throughout and replacing all the old broken pictures. The Great WordPress Migration screwed things up a bit. Tweaking things is fun.

f. This reminds me of my first year of college when I found it during finals week, haha.

Waiter! There’s a Y in my Vowels!

Three points of interest today.

1. So CNN has an article on Jonathan Taylor Thomas, who apparently reappeared out of nowhere and has just turned 30. The only reason his name has any significance for me is because when I was younger and the fun thing to do with your friends was to have random sleepovers, my friend Lara used to “sleep talk” about dating JTT. I think we all knew she was faking it, but it was fun to mess with her.
Whenever she’d start her sleep dating, I always pretended to be JTT’s “little brother,” Timothy. Lara’d be having this romantic sleep-talk and I’d jump in with “HI, WHATCHA DOIN’, WANNA PLAY?” in a super obnoxious voice. She’d always respond with a disgusted, “ugh, TIMOTHY…Jonathan, your brother is SO annoying…”
Yeah. That news just dredged up that memory for whatever reason.

2. Apart from Facebook’s inane layout changes and Google’s obvious attempts to take over the world, there aren’t that many things that bother me about the internet. But one thing that really gets under my skin is when parents post excessive pictures of their children online. Some parents are able to do this fairly tastefully, but a great number of them aren’t. Of course, if your kids are no longer kids and have given you some form of consent regarding the posting of their lives on your Twitter/Facebook/Tumblr/blog, no big deal. But when you have pictures of babies, toddlers, kindergarteners…hell, even grade-school-age children plastered all over your site and it’s obvious that they are unable to give consent for this, it’s a problem. Ever heard of privacy?
And it’s not just the pictures. Regardless of whatever silly nickname you assign your child online (usually something like “Peanut” or “Mini Mom” or “Donut Boy” or “Daddy’s Little Marketing Tool”), blogging about personal stuff relating to your child is probably not the smartest move. Sure, little “Mommy’s Big Toe Lookalike” is not going to be known by that moniker once he hits puberty (hopefully), but it’s not unlikely that someone who knows your child—another parent or a teacher or even a classmate—could come across your blog, very easily connect the dots, and discover who that embarrassing story involving diarrhea and Disney’s Haunted Mansion was about.
I don’t know if parents just don’t realize this or if they just don’t care. If I ever, by some divine intervention, wind up with spawn, I will do my best to keep them out of my blogging life. Sure, I might post a (non-nude) baby pic or two and maybe something like a family Christmas pic, but Little Claudia will most certainly be sheltered from the blogging publicity that almost every other aspect of my life undergoes.

3. Is this really necessary? I mean, okay, I get it; we spend an exorbitant amount of time on the web and thus would like a way to document our time spent there, especially if a lot of it involves correspondence with friends (heck, I save my MSN Messenger conversations). But to call it “Egobook,” while descriptive, is kind of…distressing.

That is all.

Boom, Boom, Pow

That was one crazy thunderstorm.
The sky literally looked like a giant strobe light.

Evidence:


My crappy video does not do justice to the insanity that was going on in the sky. This went on for about 45 minutes.

Also, I appear to no longer require sleep.

QR: The New PR

I made myself a QR code, ‘cause I’m currently quite bored. And I found this.

It’s currently 1 AM; my mom’s leaving in approximately four hours, then I’ll be alone on the other side of the country.

Strange.

Party time!

YAY, my thesis has been submitted and approved for publication. It shall now be available to the public within 4 or 5 days (edit: here it is!)

Rockin’.

In other news:
– My family is extremely strange.
– My internet addiction is not as bad as I thought it was.
– My father, on the other hand, is severely addicted to Facebook. It doesn’t help that he’s also Captain Hunt n’ Peck when it comes to typing and therefore takes an hour and a half to write a single wall post.
– Eggplant hummus from Trader Joe’s is phenomenal.
– Broccoli may be the best food ever.
– Eggplant hummus from Trader Joe’s + broccoli = OMG TASTE BUDS ASPLODE
– I suck at swimming.
– I finally found The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow, a book that has been perpetually checked out at every library I’ve ever been to.
– I will perhaps make a video log of the cruise, I’m not sure yet.
– It is SO SUNNY HERE. My body doesn’t know what to do with all this vitamin D.
– The end!

GETTIN’ OUTTA DODGE

And by “Dodge” I mean “Vancouver.” This morning my father and I packed the last remnants of my life in Vancouver into a white cargo van and drove away from Vancouver for the last time.

I have absolutely no reason to go back.

Ever.

Good feeling, my friends. Good feeling.

Banana, Peel Thyself

Question 1
How weird would our world be if the majority of random variables did NOT follow the Gaussian (or normal or bell-curve) distribution? Think
about it. Take human height, for example. It follows a curve like the one shown in this post. Normal, right? What if that curve were of an exponential
distribution or a gamma distribution? How weird we’d all look.

Question 2
Now let’s disregard distribution shapes for a minute and think about percentiles instead. Specifically, would you rather always be in
the 5th percentile for everything or the 95th percentile for everything? By everything, I mean everything: height, weight, intelligence, blood pressure,
running speed, test scores, etc.
There are obviously upsides and downsides to both extremes, but that’s what makes it so interesting, eh?

Sorry for the weird blog. Been busy with thesis stuff and if I see the acronym “CFI” one more time today I’m going to start stabbing people.

Seven Small Points

You know your research is fun when part of it involves multiplying infinity by zero.

I got free groceries today ’cause they couldn’t get the card reader to work. I don’t think I should feel guilty about that, but I do.

Lady Gaga’s “Bloody Mary” has one sick bass line.

I’m homesick. I miss the familiarity of Moscow.

My housing came through for Western this afternoon.

3 more weeks.

Short blog.

I feel crappy

Solution: apartment temperature cranked to 78 degrees, Top Chef, making pretty graphs for my thesis, and not going to campus.

Why isn’t there a MyLifeIsPathetic.com yet?

I’m still here

Hey all. I’m not dead. Yet.
Sorry for not getting any blogs up since…um…March…
But this past month has been one of the worst of my life—no exaggeration—so that’s the excuse I’m going with.

Assuming I don’t die of sleep deprivation in the meantime, Sunday = 5 years of blogging. Get ready for stats, ‘cause they’re going to happen.
Or a mental breakdown.
That could happen, too.

I need to get out of this city.

Is a theorem about pickles called a dill lemma?

Tell me, CNN, what about this story makes it business-related news (at least the booze one was semi-business-relevant)? Are circus careers making a comeback? Should we invest in human cannons? Is Apple releasing the iCannon this summer? TELL US WHY THIS IS CATEGORIZED THERE FFFFFFFFFFFFFF

Can you tell I’m feeling better? I guess I don’t get physically sick, I just mentally screw myself over every few days.

ANYWAY ONTO BUSINESS.

I’m slowly revamping my whole blog design, seeing as how my 5 year anniversary is coming up in a little over a month. My additional pages (those ones up in the tabs there) could use a bit of work, my layout might need a work-over, and I’m not sure if I like my header again, haha.

Also, once I run out of malls, this west- to-east walking tour of Vancouver (and Burnaby and Coquitlam) is happening. 40 kilometers, baby!

I Can Has Intelligent Rhetoric?

I’m not one to argue against the evolution of language. I know languages are fluid beings, constantly being reshaped, parts of them being phased out while other parts grow with use.
But when the dictionary starts adding symbols (other than actual letters) as words, you know you’ve got issues.

You’ve possibly heard the news already, but the Oxford English Dictionary’s latest additions include such words/phrases/acronyms as rusticle, party-crasher, OMG, LOL, gnasher, and ♥.
Yup, that’s not a typo. ♥ is now apparently considered a word.

I can understand the addition of “OMG” and “LOL” and other such phrases, as they have permeated the language enough to mean something slightly different than “oh my god” and “I’m laughing out loud right now!” due to the way in which they’re utilized. My question, though, is this: why do we need the heart symbol, the actual symbol ♥, to be defined? When has ♥ EVER had to be defined? OED has it defined as the verb form of “heart,” as in “to heart,” a “colloquial synonym of ‘to love.’” How the hell else would you define it? How else would you even use it? When has anyone read “I ♥ New York!” as “I left ventricle New York!” or anything equally as wrong? The use of “I ♥ [insert object of affection here]” is certainly wide-spread enough to warrant some attention to the phrase, but why in the hell define the symbol? Why not just denote a new verb, “to heart,” and leave it at that?

What’s next, “I ♣ seals?” “David ♠?” “David ♠ ♣s seals?”

I thought the spice of life was cumin

Poor Japan, man. The videos on CNN are terrifying. There are a lot of Japanese individuals here in Vancouver, and I’ve heard quite a few conversations today regarding people not being able to get through to their families in Japan due to the loss of cell service in areas affected by the quake/tsunamis/chaos.
Vancouver Island was on a tsunami warning late last night too owing to the after effects of the giant quake, but I think that’s lifted now. 

Well.

I’m posting my 101 in 1,001 list here on my blog as a tab, because who knows when/if the website will ever go down again, and I’d feel more secure having it in more than one place. YES I KNOW I’ve got fewer than 50 goals as of right now; I’m trying to think of more meaningful goals than things like “buy new pants” or “try not to hate rain with all of my soul.”

Tab’s up at the top with my book list and info tab.

OOH, OOH, and I have a new plan. An expensive plan, but a plan nonetheless: since I’ve already got a song for every day of 2010 and am on my way for doing the same thing in 2011, why not try to get a new song for every day of the decade? That’s 3,652 songs.
I’M SO AWESEOME IT’LL HAVE TO WORK!

I’m also hyper. I have broccoli and M&Ms.

Quiet Riot…In My Pants

Are you serious?

REALLY?

http://www.economist.com/blogs/gulliver/2011/02/liveability_ranking

As it has done for the past two years (WHY??), Vancouver holds the top spot as being the most livable city in the world.
“The ranking scores 140 cities from 0-100 on 30 factors spread across five areas: stability, health care, culture and environment, education, and infrastructure. These numbers are then weighted and combined to produce an overall figure.”

Um…have any of the people in charge of creating the ranking actually been up here?
Hastings Sunrise is terrifying.
The rain! THE RAAAAAAAAAAAIN!
I pay $1,000 a month for my rent, and that’s like the lowest low end price for a 1 bedroom place.
People up here are cold, man. I’ve both experienced this and heard the same from a lot of others who are not from Vancouver but who live here now.
The Vancouver CTV website mentions an assault/rape/murder about once a day.

Yeah. Excellent place to live.

Here’s my favorite comment from the comments section, by the way:
“Vancouver also scored well in the following categories:
– 100 out of 100 in: “Does it ever stop raining here?”.
– 99 out of 100 in: “If I don’t get out of this rain, I swear to God I’m gonna lose it”.
– 98 out of 100 in: “So, when does summer arrive around here anyway?”
And –
– 97 out of 100 in: ‘Forget this crap, I’m movin’ to Arizona.'”

No timezone and no sleep make Claudia something something…

Blaaaaaaaaaah what day is it?

I like Arizona. The concept of “75+ degrees in February” is so ridiculously foreign to me, so this state, despite all its governmental issues, gets a plus from me so far.
My mom and Kurt live like 15 miles from anything, so we drove around a lot today.
It’s nice not being in Vancouver and/or doing school stuff for a change. I didn’t really get a break over Christmas, so I’m kind of doing that now.

Yeah.

Sorry these are all kinda short, I’m just chillin’.

I’m adding a new post!

WOAH I think I just figured out why this SEM fit index is acting so weird.

Rock on.

That’s like the first good thing that’s happened this year, how pathetically sad is that?

Touch sexy angles here.
Read an interesting expose on suicide here.

 

Please don’t hate me, sometimes it’s hard to come up with a blog.

I’ve been doing this for 1,724 days, people.

Alive Beyond Reason

Well, today was interesting.

1) Snow! Snow makes everyone freak out up here.

2) The bus Twilight Zone. I got on the 8 bus and it went completely not where it was supposed to go. We were all yelling, the driver just kept driving, it was really quite freaky. Then I got on the 10 bus and it did the same freaking thing. What.

3) This afternoon involved a good fifteen minutes of duck-and-cover cautionary behavior due to a psychotic gentleman who had a knife and was hell bent on finding someone and “motherfucking MURDERING” them. Quite frightening indeed. No, this wasn’t on campus.

 

And now I’m watching Team America: World Police and remembering how hilarious their portrayal of Kim Jong Il was. “Hans Brix! OH NO!”
And puppet sex. So much puppet sex.

Sorry these blogs suck as of late; it’s been a rough start to the year for reasons I’m not going to go into right now.

Okay? Okay.