31 December 2005

Failed Experiment

Well, I gave it a chance. After my first appointment with the chiropractor, my back didn't hurt. After the second (first follow up) appointment, my back didn't hurt. For all of two days. That was five days ago, and now it's been hurting quite badly, worse than it has in quite some time. I think I'll cancel the final appointment for the end of January. No point in wasting any more money on this failed experiment. Time to get me to a real doctor.

30 December 2005

My New Year's Resolution


So who wants to get me a 23" Cinema Display?

24 December 2005

We <3 Katamari

A thousand paper cranes, that's the killer app.

23 December 2005

I've Been Adjusted

As many of you know, the upper right region of my back has been hurting me for some time. The earliest I can remember it hurting was junior year of college, making it at least two years. Recently I was convinced to see a chiropractor about it, despite my being convinced that chiropractors aren't real doctors or even remotely useful, so I made an appointment for today. Things started off well, when I was 20 minutes late due to unexpected Christmas traffic. When I finally arrived, I went through an exam reminiscent of scoliosis checks in elementary school. My back was declared to have a very slight curvature, probably caused by the (second) time a Civic thought it would nice to rear end me. A few minutes later he performed an adjustment, which was an incredibly weird sensation. Theoretically, my back should stop hurting, or at least not hurt as much. As of now, it has barely bothered me at all tonight. I have a follow up appointment for this Tuesday, so we'll see what happens between now and then.

20 December 2005


For the past week or so, the faucet in Matt's bathroom leaked unless you really pushed on the hot water knob. Earlier this evening, I attempted to turn off the water. I kept pushing on the hot knob, and eventually both the hot and cold knobs, trying to get the water to stop flowing. Then the cold water knob gave up all resistance and went past the stopping point, allowing it to rotate about 220 degrees, instead of 95. Normally that's not so bad, excect now water flows fairly heavily at the former off point. And for some bizarre reason, it's hot water. If you turn the cold knob on and leave the hot knob off, you still get comfortably warm water. Over three hours later, it is still leaking at a fairly high rate and both knobs are almost too hot to touch. Perhaps someone will answer the maintenance line tomorrow morning. Hopefully.

19 December 2005

I'm Still Alive

The quarter is over, and I have regained most of my original status as a human being. Recent things of note:

1. Somehow I managed to get a parking permit for the Winter and Spring quarters. This was nothing sort of a miracle, considering that I live down the street from a bus stop and that it involved being on line at the Transportation Cashiers Window at 8 am this morning.

2. My new printer is awesome (aside from the intrusive drivers that add a "Supplies..." button to every print dialog box, and no, not every print dialog box is the same - many applications have their own). It is the HP Photosmart 8250. What makes it especially awesome is that every ink cart is separate. And there are six of them. And somehow the ink is cheaper this way, especially if you get the 150 photos pack, which has 150 4x6 sheets of photo paper and enough ink to print 150 photos. Even if you don't include the photo paper, since I don't plan on using it particularly often, the ink is still cheaper. Oh, and it prints ~30 pages per minute, color and black and white, has an LCD, and has various memory card slots. But most importantly, it is shiny and has blue LEDs.

3. One of my new towels, that I purchased in September at Bed Bath & Beyond, dissolved in the drier. It went into the drier as one solid, continuous piece of cloth, but came out as one and a half. Stupid towel.

4. My chocolate mousse cheesecake was a success. It only took five hours to make, during which time Matt almost exploded from not being allowed near the chocolate.

5. It looks as though I'm going to have to take CS 51A. Not just an undergrad class, but an intro undergrad class. It's bascially digital logic, but since I never actually took the class at Columbia, I'm going to get pinned for it here. Moop.

6. Parking in general sucks around here. A lot. Holy fuck does it suck. I still haven't gotten over the whole "validation" thing, and now there aren't even enough parking spots, so you lose [5,30] minutes of your free time (and life) trying to find a damn spot. It completely baffles me that a shopping mall (Westfield-owned) would have the first 3 hours of parking be free, then immediately jump to $7.00 for [3, 3.5] hours, then tack on and additional $1.50 for every half hour after that. Am I the only one that thinks it is incredibly dumb to have a parking policy that encourages people to leave so they won't get ass raped by parking? Sadly, this parking policy is almost sane compared to Bel-Air Camera. They give you 20 minutes free, with purchase and validation. After that, it is $1.20 per 20 minutes. Considering that they sell incredibly high-end equipment, you'd think that a validation from a purchase would give you free parking for at least an hour, but alas. There are so many more ridiculous examples, but I won't subject you to further rants.

06 December 2005

Today's Word of the Day

denier: noun, the weight in grams of 9000m of the specified fiber