MightyBobX Quotage

Hehe, i forgot to eat dinner last night. our research project had a meeting, then there was a lecture, and then i wanted to work on my program. by the time i finished, the dining hall was closed. then i got distracted and play chess with kmer (turkish dude, slightly better than me), and then it was quite late.
all my scratches and bugbites are pretty healed, which is good. undoubtedly i'm going to acquire new ones this weekend, as we're going rock climbing.
hehe, i've been doing some testing to see the easiest way to start a zombie in urbandead. i've figured it out, but i keep forgetting the names of the charactes i've made. i've finally started writing them down.
and i've been reading this new webcomic, diesel sweeties. at the beginning it's pretty boring, but it gets better. it has a few of those damn "haha punchline <one raised eyebrow smirk>", but there are some pretty funny ones.
http://www.dieselsweeties.com/archive.php?s=282

saw a guy do 3 sets of 5 1,000 lb leg presses today. some day, chad... some day.
played a little pool today at The Library (local bar, whose slogan is "Tell your mom the truth... you were at The Library") with nathan and nick (a grad student from canada), and might be going back later.
math stuff is still chugging along. now that i'm not programming as intensely, i should follow along in class more. a lot of it is still hard, but my goal is just to gain a general feel for how these things go and the state of the science.

http://dieselsweeties.com/archive.php?s=1318

MightyBobX: so yeah. most lectures are pretty beyond me. like, i know... some... of the words. but... yeah.
MightyBobX: this is an "exploratory" mission for me
goldenpants78: maybe you should be in a submarine
goldenpants78: a submarine pressurized with knowledge
goldenpants78: firing torpedoes of understanding at the destroyers of ignorance
goldenpants78: dive! dive!
goldenpants78: The Hunt for Red Elliptical Curves
MightyBobX: ok, the submarine thing made me want to laugh so badly, it was painful not to. i had to pinch myself to keep from making noise. when i saw the "firing torpedoes of" i minimized it, and have been t6rying to regain control. even now i'm still fighting it. i opened this window and immediately scrolled up so i couldn't see what you wrote
MightyBobX: the lecture will be done in a minute
goldenpants78: "da snoshoyevska torpedo, kapitan!" "en kolotevyan decryption algorithm!"
goldenpants78: hehe, maybe you shouldnt talk on aim during the lecture then
MightyBobX: hehe, i can't afford to read anything you've written till it ends
goldenpants78: so, my new strategy is to come up with the most riotously funny thing i can and send it to you whenever
goldenpants78: Many languages, including our own, assign each noun a gender and sometimes a routing number. They who do not speak English may be initially confused by the lack of these things attached to English nouns. For example, speakers of another language may describe objects as thus:

Dorroile: Mary, which shall I buy, Sire Sheepcoat or Dame Walruscoat?
Mary: Dally me not, Dorroile, for I have misplaced Sire Swab deeply inside Dame Ear Canal (0227 4882) and cannot for the life of me remove it.
Such a conversation would have little meaning in English; in English, even the finest Walruscoat has no use for a lingual sex.

ugh. i'm getting eaten alive my mosquitoes here. i need to get bug spray.
played more soccer. got a couple phone numbers to prevent repeats of "where's the party".
my group is moving on to the next phase of the project, so i get to code like mad again. woo

I posted pictures from my hike. I used OFoto, and they only let me email it out, instead of having a url. so if you didn't get the email and you want it, let me know

so went on a hike saturday. this was a large, well orchestrated hike, so we had assigned drivers and whatnot. my driver told me she didn't want to do anything tough, so if i wanted a harder hike, i'd have to find someone else. i forgot to do taht, but i figured what the hell, let's go on a little walk in the trees. boy was i wrong.
the hike is in the snowy range, the most northern of the southern rocky mountain ranges. hour or so drive there; saw lots and lots of... fields, rocks, cows, and horses on the way. passed through a town of population 100 on the way, which was comical because half the buildings we saw were resorts/hotels, implying that in tourist season, the percentage of local residents probably approached 0. stopped at a ranger station to let the group catch up, and noted the sign that said "Wyoming mountains: land of many uses". reaaally interesting, fellas.
continued driving up the mountains, and things got real purty. the whole place is rocky fields, lakes, creeks, snow, and trees. we got to our destination, and i immediately realized this was going to be more fun than i thought, because the start of the trail was a path of snow around an icey lake. continuing along, the scenery was gorgeous. walking directly below huge cliffs half covered with snow, lakes with ice flows, big rock formations to climb on. at this point, the trail was half snow-bank and half creeks, since the paths were ideal places for snow melt to travel. this was moderatley unfortunate, because my thin-soled, canvas-skin chuck taylors weren't meant to hike through snow and mud. but w/e.
things gradually got dryer and rockier, as we ascended. at some point we passed the tree line, and entered alpine tundra territory. rocky paths, a little bit of a climb. still great views; lots of really nice, perfectly still lakes, that somehow weren't gross and filled with scummy things. we threw rocks in them to make interference patterns with the waves. it was awesome.
it was nearing 12:30, so we stopped for lunch. some of us hiked quite high up the mountain while everyone had lunch below, and took some great pictures. eventually headed back down,, and back the way we came. the trail actually made a big loop around the lake, but it was a hardcore hiker trail, with climbing and snowbanks that if you fall, you fallinto that big lake.. so not for us. the total length was only about 1 1/2 miles each way, but it seemed a lot longer.
i got a few cuts and scrapes climbing things, and that evening i threw somebody's frisbee into a tree, so climbed up it to get it, and obtained some sizeable wounds there. so i'm kinda cut up right now. but it's all good
ok, i'm giving up being quiet about my roommate. i hate him. so much. his name is chad, and he's a super-loud-and-chatty guy from atlanta. he does nothing but chatter at me, almost nonstop. i don't even konw when to listen to him, becuase he's always saying something. and 75% of the tim ehe's making some stupid facetious joke in the exact same tone as normal, and asking follow up questions as if it was true, and as soon as you respond, he goes "haha, just kiddin' steve! guess i'm not that funny, right? har har!" (he calles everyone steve or susan, btw). i've taken to ignoring him best i can. saturday night i was in the middle of a warcraft game and he comes in (drunk, as obvious by odor, though he didn't hesitate to inform me of it several times) and goes "hey steve! me and some of the big dawgs went out and now we're gonna go out agian, you oughta come with!" i tell him not right now, but later, and he insists. over and over again. he won't stop. eventually he goes "alright, coming back in 5 minutes". when he does, i'm still not done, so he goes "part of coming to this thing is networking with the big dawgs! you gotta ome! i'm gonna make you! you gotta come. come on. come on. come on. now get up. come on. come on." over and over. i'm pissed as hell, but eventually get him to go away without hurting him. eventually i finish up, and go see what's going on. the "big dawgs" are just random people he was with (not like important people you need to network with) who are all in their pajamas with blankets in the rec room so we can watch a zombie movie. GAHALSJFDALSD. i stayed, in spite of noting how fucking much i hate this man, and he goes off when the movie starts. (incidentally, the movie is "28 days later", which is basically a zombie movie, though not quite. the noteworthy thing is that it actually has a happy ending, a rarity for zombie movies). the movie ends, and i head back to my room. as i open the door to the hallway, i can hear him snoring already. he passed out with the door open on his bed, and was snoring so incredibly loudly i couldn't go to sleep. i tried from 1 till about 1:45, then started yelling at him to get him to w ake up. didn't get anywhere. i played some games, then got to sleep at about 4. god, i hate him.
but yeah. aside from him, still having a good time. there was supposed to be a soccer game today, but i wandered around and couldn't find where they were playing. doing laundry at the moment, then gonna code some more. hehe, i hope i lose some weight from this. i've been eating twice a day (since i don't get up for breakfast at 7), and yesterday i didn't have any way to pack a lunch, and today i was busy talking to someone , so missed out on our limited lunch hour. i'm not hungry or anything, either. and dorm food isn't as good as ucla, but it's still good enough and pretty varied, so i feel like i'm eating ok. plus, i've been playing sports like every other day, like soccer, ultimate, or hiking, so i'm feeling pretty good.

as soon as i can collect them from the people who had cameras, i'll post the photos from the hike. some pictures online of where we were are this one and this one

this place continues to be weird. it has a bar every other building around the campus, but there is jesus-based grafitti everywhere. i've begun circumventing the "one-entree at a time" rule by getting a plate, putting it down on a nearby table, then getting more.
i've been programming a LOT. like i said, i was thinking i might be able to help out with the experiment by doing a little c++. so i spent a day coming up with something, and i expected to present it to the group and have it contribute a little to the final design. but when i presented it, they were all amazed; they thought it was great, and couldn't believe i'd done it all in one day. seriously, i was instantly popular. before then, no one knew my name. now they all wanted to have lunch with me and invite me to sports and talk about the project with me. it was weird. so for the last few days i've been engaging in some pretty fun stuff; they ask or i come up with features to improve the experiment, i implement them, i fix bugs in previous versions (i have version numbers, and readme files, and everything!). some of them aren't the most computer savvy, so i comment heavily in my source code, have a nice list of updates/todo list, compile everything in windows, then transfer stuff to our unix server and compile everything again, and have everything appropriately distributed so people can find the versions they need and know how to use them. it's kind of funny, because i probably know th eleast about the math involved. but hopefully i'll pick up this whole "research" thing from them, and we'll all make a good team. but i think this is GREAT experience, because it's what real coding is like, at least at some level.
sides that, the lectures are slowly getting harder, and i haven't been doing much review of algebra or number theory becuase of all the coding. but this weekend i should have time to dig in. we're going hiking this weekend, too. that should be fun.
soccer on thursday was much better than on tuesday; had some more dedicated people, and i was doing better, so i guess i'm adjusting to the air and getting back in the groove. hehe, 75% of hte people here speak in an accent, sometimes severe, so it's funny. there's this girl muberra from turkey who plays soccer with us. she mostly stands near the goal and flails when the ball comes (she's actually good at it; she reacts quickly, so if youkick it at her, she shoots in the direction of hte goal, and she is aware enough to pass when appropriate). when she shoots, she goes "ees theese goal? goal, ya?" and makes a weird turkish yelp when someone runs in to her. it's funny. in general, playing sports with mathematicians is pretty funny.
there's another phase in the experiment coming up, but it should mostly just be a modification of the first version. if that doens't end up keeping me busy, i'm gonna start doing the java stuff with nathan. and reviewing math, of course.
it's hard to be social with people who don't speak english well. conversation just seems like so much effort,and i feel like i can't really connect.
2 more weeks to go

hehe, from my Zombie game:
CoffinKnail said "Water Boy, its called a *revive point*, you ignorant fool; don't shoot the zombies and don't deny it because I was the one you shot!"
there are certain locations called revivepoints that you respwan at, and supposedly you're not supposed to kill people there. in the above quote, coffiknail was a zombie atthe revive point, got shot by water boy, then got revivved to a human, came to our hide-out post, and said the above statement.

day 2
lectures continue to be somewhat intelligible; i can generally follow logic, but they reference a lot of things i don't know, but that are self-evident to them. our project leader guy explained our first experiments: we'll be seeing how a certain unexplored algorithm varies with certain varying parameters compared to a known approximation. it seems like something i could help with, though (as usual) my c++ is rusty. for those of you interested in the details, they're confusing
the administration organized a dinner picnic today; most the conference came (size 90ish) so it was pretty good. had some good food, and attempted to play soccer. i sucked for some linear combination of the following reasons: 1) high altitude 2) i haven't played in 5 years 3) weight lifting has taken its toll on my quickness/agility. like, i wasn't any worse than anyone else there, but to rank yourselves among mathematicians isn't saying much.
i bought a bunch of gatorades with the gift card michelle's mom bought me, to ward off the horrible dryness. apparently it's always super windy in the evenings.
no one here locks anything. bikes, cars, homes. and yet there are more lockers on this campus than i've ever seen.
the dorm chairs are little rocking chairs; i always feel lke i'm falling backwards.

so yeah. i'm in wyoming. this is my story...

it all started when i was trying to find summer work. i talked to some of my prof's, and one of them introduced me to nathan ryan, a number theorist post-doc at ucla. i talked with him, and found out that he is going to be teaching the crypto class at ucla next year, and wanted help writing java programs to use in the crypto class. at the time, i was waiting on my pittsburgh job, so i told him i was interested but still waiting. eventually the pittsburgh thing fell through, so i contacted nathan and we decided to work together. it's a pretty sweet deal, as he's very comfortable with me haivng to learn java on the way, and we'r eworking well together. we talk well, and he likes king of the hill and futurama and whatnot.
anyway, he told me he was going to this crypto conference for 3 weeks, and that he'd bring back crypto problems to work on. later hes like "uh, why don't you apply?". it was after the deadline, but i did anyway, and got in with funding. at first i was hesitant, because it meant i was going to lose my last month with michelle, and miss sara's ranch trip, and spend half the summer in wyoming. but work before play, so i decided to go with it.
so now i had to schedule this, subject to the following constraints: 1) classes start 8am monday, june 19th. 2) graduation was sunday morning, june 18th, and i had family plans until 3pm. 3) laramie has a very tiny airport, so no real flights in. 4) a plane flies from denver to laramie, and a van from UWYO was leaving cheyenne for UWYO, both of which left at 9:30pm sunday night. the final solution was the following: have michelle bring me to the airport at 6 with her family, and take a 7pm flight that stopped in vegas and arrived in denver at 11:20pm, for full price because it was such short notice. then i had to take a shuttle from the airport to the greyhound station in downtown by 12:15am, when the bus for laramie left. take the bus and arrive at laramie at 3am, then take a taxi to the dorms, check in, and wake up at 7 for classes.
my plane left late. it managed to catch up by denver, which was good, because the airport makes you take a train to the exit, so that added 10 minutes i didn't have. i'd contacted a shuttle company about 5 times and had them promise each time they'd be waiting for me and that they could get me to the bus station on time. i arrived, called the guy, he said everything was fine, i got outside, i called, he said he wasn't there. i found another shuttle guy and told him to get me to downtown pronto. i paid for an extra seat to make him leave immediately. he told me he wasn't sure we'd make it, because they'd shut down the major freeway in denver, but we'd try. we ended up having to take backroads, many of which he was guessing on the right way to go. we got to the busstation as the bus was loading, so that was barely ok. i dozed in and out through the ride (i'd only gotten 3 hours the previous night), and arrived at laramie to the waiting van of UWYO (they'd sent a van, because i'd called htem earlier in the week and they told me laramie didn't have taxis). got to the dorm and checked in. my roommmate was awake, cuz he was suffering from bus lag (he took a 30 hour bus ride from atlanta to "see the country". he now knows the country conists of plains and trees). we chatted a little and i crashed.
first day of lectures started at 8. they varied in difficulty; some topics i already knew, but mostly i only kind of knew topics and could mostly follow, even though i clearly didn't have the background many others did. at 3 we go to our research project groups. this was actually pretty good; the guy (recommended to me by nathan because he teaches well) taught really well, and i felt pretty comfortable with this brand new topic (NTRU lattices and LLL algo).i dunno how much i'll be able to contribute, but i feel like i'll be able to keep up. the difficulty of everything is ok, since i'm not graded on anything. this is just a chance to get exposed to new developments and hopefully start learning what i need to learn to do this stuff later.
laramie is interesting. the stoplights turn off at night; they figure there isn't enough traffic to make people wait at red lights. everything is closed on father's day; everything. most stores close at 9, some bars stay open till 11 or so. it's really dry, becaue of heat, wind, and altitude (7200 ft).things have a strange, bluish tint, except when the plains south of us are on fire (like today), so everything had a red tint. the buildings are really nice, but really small. their student union is as big as my house, and all the stuff is closed atl ike 4.the gym is big, and they won't let me lift weights over my head.
i've been trying to be more social than i normally am. this means not reading at meals by myself, and not listening to my wonderful michelle-bought ipod all the time, to the exclusion of conversation. most people seem cool. found out nathan played rugby and that he's a kettlebell lifter (a very cool pavel-based exercise). natahn's getting cooler by the minute; besides the cartoons and kettlebells, we joke pretty well about this place together. like how crappy the dining hall is. the food is way worse than ucla, and they only let you get one entre at a time. and this math thing isn't the only camp here. i can honestly say, without hyperbole, that there are more teenage girls here for sports camps than there are atoms in the universe.
yeah. pretty tired; got like 3 hours the night before, and 4 hours tonight, so i've been dozing in and out all day. mrrrrrh

hehe, saw a police car and some other car on the side of the road, but for some reason the non-officer was leaning in the window of the officer's car. irony!

saw Serenity last night. pretty good scifi. for a long time i've been wondering where i know the lead actor from, and after none of his movies from imdb ringing a bell, i realized he looks/acts/sounds like brendon fraser. anywya, serenity's space combat was good, the hand-to-hand combat was... ok. it looked alright, maybe a little slow, but it had people taking sword wounds to the stomach then continuing to fight (and eventually win the fight). the funniest part of the movie relates to "the reavers", a race of ex-humans. they used to be human, but somehow they turned into crazy space savages that are nothing but pure hatred; all they do all day long is rape, pilliage, and eat people alive. their ships are covered in corpses, blood, and junk from enemy ships. and they use giant crossbows (called "cannons") instead of guns and lasers like everyone else. oh yeah... most of their ships have giant claws and arms, too... they capture enemy ships, bring them back to the homeworld, and rip the ships open in space, and for some reaosn you can hear all the people screaming as they flight out. and they do things like flay people and hang them outside their ships, etc. it's kind of excessive. and everytime you see these guys, they do nothing but wave their arms around and scream, with bloody faces and bodies covered in scars. it makes you wonder exactly how a race that does nothing but scream, flail,a nd eat people manage to have a massive unstoppable space fleet. like, so when they see an enemy ship, the bridge must go like

captain: "gruaaaaah! *slobbering* afffthhher zheeehhm!"
pilot: *flailing wildly* "wrrrruuaaaaaah! wooorhuaaahruuuuaaaah!*sets coordinates*"

while all the other ship guys just run around screaming, clawing at each other.
but yeah, besides that (or maybe because of it) it's decent enough. as usual, the hero pays lip service to altruism, but ultimately is actually pursuing selfish values (apparently wanting to save the world from monsters and oppressive dictatorial regimes constitutes selflessness; because you obviously have nothing to gain from stopping that!)

hehe, saw a police car and some other car on the side of the road, but for some reason the non-officer was leaning in the window of the officer's car. irony!

saw Serenity last night. pretty good scifi. for a long time i've been wondering where i know the lead actor from, and after none of his movies from imdb ringing a bell, i realized he looks/acts/sounds like brendon fraser. anywya, serenity's space combat was good, the hand-to-hand combat was... ok. it looked alright, maybe a little slow, but it had people taking sword wounds to the stomach then continuing to fight (and eventually win the fight). the funniest part of the movie relates to "the reavers", a race of ex-humans. they used to be human, but somehow they turned into crazy space savages that are nothing but pure hatred; all they do all day long is rape, pilliage, and eat people alive. their ships are covered in corpses, blood, and junk from enemy ships. and they use giant crossbows (called "cannons") instead of guns and lasers like everyone else. oh yeah... most of their ships have giant claws and arms, too... they capture enemy ships, bring them back to the homeworld, and rip the ships open in space, and for some reaosn you can hear all the people screaming as they flight out. and they do things like flay people and hang them outside their ships, etc. it's kind of excessive. and everytime you see these guys, they do nothing but wave their arms around and scream, with bloody faces and bodies covered in scars. it makes you wonder exactly how a race that does nothing but scream, flail,a nd eat people manage to have a massive unstoppable space fleet. like, so when they see an enemy ship, the bridge must go like

captain: "gruaaaaah! *slobbering* afffthhher zheeehhm!"
pilot: *flailing wildly* "wrrrruuaaaaaah! wooorhuaaahruuuuaaaah!*sets coordinates*"

while all the other ship guys just run around screaming, clawing at each other.
but yeah, besides that (or maybe because of it) it's decent enough. as usual, the hero pays lip service to altruism, but ultimately is actually pursuing selfish values (apparently wanting to save the world from monsters and oppressive dictatorial regimes constitutes selflessness; because you obviously have nothing to gain from stopping that!)

Michelle got me an ipod nano! hooray for michelle! this is pretty crazy, cuz, those aren't cheap, and neither of us are swimming in dough. <is happy>

hehe, my algorithms prof talked about np-completeness today. he started by decribing P, then NP, then what NP was, and the whole way was building up this series of NP problems with A < B < C = D < E, so when he showed A was NP-Complete, he's like "and therefore A=B=C=D=E, so they're all NP-complete. solve any one of these, and you've shown P-NP and youv'e solved all NP problems; show you can't solve any of these, and you've shown P!=NP and that you can't solve any NP-Complete problem". at this point he should have paused and said "Gentlemen... these are the enemy. find them. destroy them". then the whole class would have jumped up and given a battle cry, and rushed down the halls of the engineering building, looking for a traveling salesman to beat the shit out of.
"hey! that graph doesn't have an independent set! let's lynch the edges till it has one!"

Lioness in zoo kills man who invoked God
Mon Jun 5, 8:31 AM ET
KIEV (Reuters) - A man shouting that God would keep him safe was mauled to death by a lioness in Kiev zoo after he crept into the animal's enclosure, a zoo official said on Monday.
"The man shouted 'God will save me, if he exists', lowered himself by a rope into the enclosure, took his shoes off and went up to the lions," the official said.
"A lioness went straight for him, knocked him down and severed his carotid artery."

haha! i killed my first man in UrbanDead (the browser-based mmorpg i play). Bret Riverboat III has been added to the armies of the walking dead, thanks to me.

hehe, from the wiki article about UrbanDead:

Zombie characters have very limited powers of speech, and, until mastering a certain skill, move more slowly than human characters. While zombies tend to form hordes spontaneously by following one another's feeding groans (a skill which enables zombie players to emit a noise audible to other players within up to six blocks when there are humans present), several large groups are coordinated through out-of-game forums. An example of this is the "Mall Tour '06," in which several hundred zombies converged upon the malls of Malton, overrunning most of them quickly.

submitted the following to the bruin today:

There’s only one thing more disgusting than watching students march and chant like savages to protest against the non-crimes of an outstanding corporation like Coca-Cola: watching UC officials take it lying down.
That’s what I saw Wednesday morning behind Ackerman Union as the Coca-Cola delivery truck arrived to find students with red shirts and loud mouths blocking its entry. Several UC officials, along with security guards, sat idly by and did nothing more than politely ask the protestors to leave, which was obviously met with a “no”. Eventually the truck driver put it in reverse and drove off, hopefully as disappointed as I was.
But the ones who deserved the most condemnation were the UC officials that let it happen. If students don’t like UC policy, they can petition and pursue any non-coercive means they like to change it, just like the rest of us. But they can’t forcibly prevent others from going about their business. The UC officials should have immediately called the police and had them remove the protestors for being a public disturbance. “It’s our university,” the protestors cried. Yes, but it’s mine too, so you can’t just force your will upon UC policy makers. UC officials need to stand up for themselves and not let these petty thugs infringe upon the rights of the rest of the student body.

i really hate these people. they're so wrong, and so stupid about it. i would love to be the police chief who gets to arrest them, or the chancellor and come down to each and every instance of such force-intiating protesting and tell the police to remove them.

hehe, there's some guy named "ghost-face killa", which is disturbingly similar to homestar runner's "goat-face killa"