Ruth Graham Ruth Graham died today... having more or less grown up listening to Billy Graham, I have an immense amount of resepect for both him and his wife.
John Backus died Saturday... which is sad. He invented Fortran, but I'm more familiar with him due to his work on the Backus-Naur form, which is a formal language to describe programming languages (similar to Chomsky's grammer for natural languages).
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay! Just in case you wondered, I'm now coming down with whatever Chad has. Sypmtoms are fever (I just took asprin to head mine off before it gets much higher, but Chad's has been spiking over 103 even with contant tylenol), aches, amazing headache, barking cough, conjestion, sore throat and fatigue. It is not (according to Chad's doctor) a) the flu, b) pneumonia, or c) bronchitus. What is it? They have no idea. They gave Chad antibiotics, but I'm not sure that's the answer.
and 50 million cool points to the perosn who can name where my post title came from.
Chad and I bought a house. We are now the proud owners of a gianormous house, plus the gianormous mortgage payments to go with it.
We started moving. Sort of. As in, we can't finish moving until we have Intar-Web at the new place, which will be like, Saturday.
Steve Irwin died, which was sad. (I hope the american media leaves his family alone for a while).
They finally annouced the date/time that the evanescence tickets for houston go on sale. (ironically, it when I should be at the new house waiting on the cable guy. Chad can take first shift waiting, I guess, whilst I sit on ticketmaster until they start selling).
I bought the most awesomest china cabinet eVar at a garage sale for $75.
I convinced Chad to let me paint a wall in the living room. I bought awesome blue paint for the wall... and should maybe start painting tomorrow, assuming I can find a suitable ladder (didn't think about the whole 9-foot ceiling thing ahead of time).
That is all. I mean, I'm sure it's not, but I have to be up in like, 6 hours. So it is for now.
Missed this yesterday, but i feel like it's worth posting here:
Mercury 7 astronaut Gordon Cooper died yesterday, at the age of 77. Slowly but surely, all my heros are dying. And very few of the Shuttle astronauts seem to be as charasmatic, or something like that (there are a few very notable exceptions)... Maybe as spaceflight has (had) become so routine, the people who fly seem more mudane and normal. Or maybe it's because there's just a whole lot of Shuttle astronauts, and only seven Mecury astronauts (and small numbers of Gemini and Apollo astronauts as well).
Alan Turing, one of the great pioneers of computer science (and, I might add, "The" great pioneer of Artificial Intelligence), and one of my all time favorite CS/AI role models... was gay. And committed suicide.
Don't you hate it when humanity butts in and tarnishes the pedestals you have so diligently put people on?
That being said, such things have little effect on how good a computer scientist you are (except the suicide thing... I mean, you can't make more discoveries after you're dead, right?)... And sometimes, it's nice to know that my imperfections shouldn't limit my success (at least to some extent).
At least the government isn't forcing me to take hormones because they think my lifestyle choice is a chemical imbalance. Sheesh.
Somehow, the fact that this is the last set of undergrad finals I'm ever going to have to take isn't so encouraging...
Pray for Nick (or light a candle, or keep him in your thoughts, or send him positive energy, or whatever it is that you people do)... there's never a good time for a sudden death in the family... but two days before finals start has to be one of the worst.
So i was reading in the astronaut factbook today.... and I came across this entry under "Deceased U.S. Astronauts" (among all the astroanuts who died in plane crashes, etc):
HENIZE, Karl G., Civilian
Born October 17, 1926, in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Bachelor of Arts in mathematics from the University of Virginia; Master of Arts in astronomy from the University of Virginia; Doctor of Philosophy in astronomy from the University of Michigan.
Flew on STS 51-F.
Cumulative hours of space flight are more than 190.
Died October 5, 1993, of respiratory and heart failure during a climb of Mount Everest.
So tell me... who else but a former astronaut would be climbing Mount Everest 12 days before their 67th birthday?
*BTW, Harrison Schmitt was a Doctor of Philosophy in geology from Harvard University.*
Now, about my two eaten posts. Basically, both said the same thing... I apologized for being out of whack this week, and explained part of what was on my mind. It went something like this:
One of my high school mentors, Patty Dorsett, died Friday morning. Not that it was unexpected... she had cancer. But it still hit me kinda hard. Mostly because I'm not at home, and I couldn't go to the visitation / funeral. In fact, it hit me so hard that I refused to talk about it. I don't even think I've told Chad yet. William knew it had happened, because I talked about getting my parents to send flowers... but I didn't tell anyone how upset I was. I didn't think anyone would understand. You would have to have met Miss Patty... so imaginative and full of life... you would have had to have seen her face when she talked about her hair growing back when she came off of chemo (it grew back curly... she was so excited about never having to perm it again)... you would have had to see her stop everything to be with her family when the cancer came back and she chose not to fight it anymore...
She will definately be missed, both by our church, and by our community. Things won't be quite the same, ever.... but I guess that's a mark of actually having done something with your life... there's a void when you leave.
There... now that I feel better, maybe I'l stop being so mean *grin*
I have no idea why, but for some reason Calhoun violates my sense of social normality. I have actually ended up spending some time there, waiting for class and stuff.... I don't know. Sitting in "the lobby" (which could never be The Lobby, it's too small, and it doesn't have a TV or bleachers) I feel obvious and substandard, and yet somehow superior, but very out of place... Like a half-eaten cucumber sammich on a plate of oatmeal-raisen cookies.
For example, I was sitting on "the porch" (Which could never be The Porch, despite the amount of smoke in the air and the number of freaks there)... and I heard this group (all guys) next to me, talking about roleplaying. So I listened to them for a few minutes, and deduced they were talking about 3rd edition... just swapping character stories and stuff... So I said something to them about roleplaying, and characters.... And apparently, that is a guys only group... or a smokers only group... or something, because they looked at me like I had sprouted a tail. After a couple of minutes of them staring, I was like, ok fine, I didn't want to talk to you anyway, and I left.
The entire "campus" (all one building) is weirdness.... I don;t know how to explain it. It's like, when I walk in, the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, and I get really jumpy. The only place I don't feel like that is in the physics lab... I haven't had the heeby-jeebies that bad since... the end of freshman year, right before (and after) I started dating Nidgle. (Tip: if you already are seeing things in the dark, don't date a guy all in black that creeps everyone out. Just a thought).
Speaking of Nidgle.... He's invaded my dreams the last couple of nights. I have dreamed he died three nights in a row now... which is odd. But even more odd, is that he died the same way every time (self inflicted gun shot wound to the head), but in different locations. And I've found out about it differently every time. So I wonder what's going on there... I thought about trying to e-mail him or something, and see what's going on. But I really don't care to rekindle any friendship we might have had, and I get the distinct inmpression that he doesn't want to talk to me. So I'll sit here and wonder about it until I go mad... or until Walker comes and says "Hey, did you hear about Nidgle?" Depressing.
This is my brain..... in part, at least.
