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Old Man Winter Update.

Thursday, January 28th, 2010

Yeah I suck at this lately. I guess I have gotten out of habit. Hopefully that will change.
Brief Recap:
NYE went to campus bars. Had a really good time. Didn’t see ball drop. Didn’t even watch any NYE TV. Ahh so refreshing.
School started. Blah. I’m taking a financial engineering class. And doing research. So far the class has been really lame. I’m not really sure that financial people know what the hell they are doing.
I saw Avatar. It was ok. Nothing special to me really. Cool though.

I was sick. For a long time. Just had a sore throat and congestion and generally felt like crap. It was the same thing that I had the week of finals. I’m still trying to kick things. The sore throat has lessened but is still there mostly just in the morning.
This weekend was nice and warm. So I figured I should check out the single speed PJ scored for me. I put the thing back together and found that the headset was cracked and the ball bearings were falling out so I took it to the local bike shop for them to install a new headset. Of course fate would have it that I would get the bike back when a) the temperatures were 20 degrees lower than what they were on the day that I busted the bike out and b) there would be snow on the ground. Go back to sleep Old Man Winter. I was enjoying the Spring-like weather.
I can’t think of much else to say. Um I did wreck my bike for the first time this semester on road the other day. It’s weird because it has only been on the way back that I wreck. I’m not sure why that is. I broke my dang fender (that wasn’t really doing it’s job anyway) and now need to get a replacement.
Ah I do have an engagement this weekend. I’m heading to a “Michael Jackson – Back from the Dead” party. I’ll have to dress up for that! Should be a good time.
Oh and I am going to a formal dinner to teach about etiquette Friday night. That’ll be an experience. I couldn’t pass it up for some sweet eats at the Purdue Memorial Union for $10!

Rocking the pink tie for Christmas!

Rocking the pink tie for Christmas!

I had to get a picture with these people in it at the bar on NYE.

I had to get a picture with these people in it at the bar on NYE.

The new girlfriend dressed up in my awesome gift at the Triathlon Club white elephant gift exchange.

The new girlfriend dressed up in my awesome gift at the Triathlon Club white elephant gift exchange.

Capt. Grouchy Pants Esq.

Tuesday, December 8th, 2009

Today.
I hate my life.
Well not really. Just a couple of gripes I need to vent.
Gripe #1. I hate my “Visual Analytics” class. It’s just a monumental waste of time. Instead of doing a “online course” evaluation that I pretty much translate as “no one ever reads” or in nerd talk would correspond to ” > /dev/null” I think I may be preparing a multi-page document that will be emailed to the Dean. This *may* be a bad idea. I think sometimes you just gotta find out. I’m a little too pissed off that they actually “teach” these classes.

Gripe #2. I had a final exam today. *clear throat* Err…*had* a final exam scheduled for today. So Purdue has this weird thing they call “dead week” where professors are prohibited from requiring final projects to be turned in or from having exams the week before finals start. My MA/CS 514 Professor, Dongbin Xiu (really a nice guy, good teacher), asked us if we wouldn’t mind getting done early. For the most part people were in favor of getting one more thing done early. There were a few dissenters that got us to change the date around. Well it so happens that a certain dissenter took their issue to the university. Therefore I show up to class expecting to take an exam and get the damn thing out of the way so that I can go home and relax and recover the lost sleep due to studying. Instead two schoolgirls…er ladies if you prefer, in the class show up to tell us that we’re not having an exam. WTF? Good and bad since I didn’t get to prepare as much as I wanted to because I had to finish a project and paper for the much hated “Visual Analytics” class. (Remember that whole thing about dead week??? Yeah..) So apparently (now I forget if the girls told us or the prof), someone squealed and bitched that we were having an exam during dead week. The prof was told late yesterday not to have the exam, and that he couldn’t even offer the exam to those who wanted to take it. Eventually, the prof showed up more late than usual (he’s a nice guy and the subject is interesting so I don’t mind), and tells us the situation and how he wishes that the individual would’ve come to him personally to make some separate arrangements etc. You can tell he is pissed because he keeps his hands in his pea coat the entire time like he’s got a gun in it. He talks with his hands a bit so he was flailing around his jacket. Anyway I’m not exactly happy. Sure there is a bit of Klosterman luck going on since I didn’t get to properly prepare, but now I have to study more and the torture won’t be over until next Wednesday. To make things worse it will be a more comprehensive 2 hour exam from 7p-9p at night. He was even being nice to us by heavily hinting at what to study for the abbreviated exam in class. But seeing as how he is more than a little peeved about what transgressions occurred,….well no more Mr. Nice Guy. Class is still 1:15 but that would’ve been a heck of a lot better than 2 hrs (or the 3hr finals I was used to at UIUC). I am an equal opportunity perpetrator and would like to find\
the person and kick him in his balls or punch her in her boobs or perform some other act of bodily harm on said individual if they are a hermaphrodite or transgender. Come on I’m at a university and we are supposed to be open to all kinds of people. Therefore, I have to strike down upon said person(s) with great vengeance and furious anger on all perpetrators equally.
I do have a good hunch of how to single out said individual: seeing as how they squealed they knew the exam wasn’t going to be held and therefore didn’t show up. (It wasn’t the girls as they emailed the prof late in the day asking for help and he responded about the exam delay.)
I know this threw off some people’s plans. One kid had all ready booked his flight back home (to Japan!) based on being done with everything this week.

Gripe #3. Saturday we had our Triathlon Club holiday party. We do a gift exchange. We also had it themed so people were to wear an ugly Christmas sweater. It was fun. There was beer. There were underage people. There were underage people drinking beer. (Shocking I know.) I took pictures. I posted said pictures on Facebook only allowing certain individuals view them. One of said individuals who has been a pain in my ass previously wanted me to take them down. In not so many words I said that I’ve taken precautions against getting in trouble. Said person has a reputation for being weird and irrational. I still stand by what I did seeing as how no one else has complained. Said person will be told what they can do to themselves if they don’t GTFO my back.

Here’s hoping your 8th of December 2009 is more delightful than mine :)

Holiday Party with me ole hearty friends.....

Holiday Party with me ole hearty friends.....

You know how someone famous said that you don’t regret the things that you DID do but those that you didn’t? Well one of the reasons that I wasn’t prepared for my math exam was because of the above pictured party. I’m glad I didn’t miss out on it because of the “non-exam.”

Minnesota. I miss you !

Friday, December 4th, 2009

Nick rocking the short shorts at Whitewater S.P. in St. Charles MN.

Nick rocking the short shorts at Whitewater S.P. in St. Charles MN.


Scoring with the ladies at the AGM...

Scoring with the ladies at the AGM...


Getting jiggy with it on the dance floor at CJ's Midtown Lounge!

Getting jiggy with it on the dance floor at CJ's Midtown Lounge!

Just putting up some pics from the recent trip up to my old stomping grounds.

Picture of the day huh….?

Thursday, December 3rd, 2009

Yeah I suck at doing this lately. Anyway…
It snow flurried today on my way in. Super excited for winter. It should be fun.
What else…oh yeah I had a nightmare, well more of a bad dream really, last night of being stuck in an airport and losing my wallet on my flight out to Turkey. Eventually I got it back but it was a weird stressful dream. I don’t know why I had such a dream (maybe I was a little nervous about my meeting with my prof this morning which went ok. And I’m glad I’m not the only one who is nervous about meetnigs with their prof as another guy in our lab confided that he is always nervous about how those 1:1 meetings will go.) I do suspect that it had something to do with not sleeping well the past couple nights. I got up at 3:30 and then at 5:30 for good to go and do a group workout. I had forgotten to turn the alarm off last night for that early wake up and so I got a nasty wake up again at 5:30 this morning when i didn’t want one. Tomorrow is another 5:30 workout so we’ll see how that goes.

If at first you don’t succeed, tri tri again….

Monday, October 12th, 2009

So just a short and quick update. Last weekend was the white water rafting trip on the Upper Gauley River near Hico, West Virginia. I think everyone saw that I got dumped out. As one of the guides said “You got a turd’s eye view of the world.” At least I made it back safe as there had been three commercial deaths in three weeks. The previous one being the day before! I had a pretty good time. I think I would’ve had a better time had I not had an upcoming math test making me think that still going on the trip wasn’t such a good idea. Due to this I went to bed early and didn’t stay up with the rest of the people partying. In the end I studied enough for the test and more studying wouldn’t have really made a difference. There were 3 gimme-ish questions and then 2 questions to make or break the curve. Had I studied more I don’t think I would’ve hit up on the right things to get those other two problems correct. Maybe some more partial credit but not totally right.

This weekend I traveled with several others to East Lansing, Michigan for the Michigan State University Spartan Sprint. This was a nice and cool race. It was in the 30s at race time and had frosted overnight! The swim was outdoors in a pool. The pool was nice and warm once you got in but standing out there waiting to get in was a bear seeing as how it was probably just above freezing. I had troubles swimming with goggles as they kept fogging over. (You see I don’t totally put my face in the water but kinda half ass that part.) Anyway for me the swimming is always a challenge. You can check out the results and see that I was 49th of 57 in the swim but ended up towards the front of the pack otherwise. I need to get my ass in gear and do some more training as my run time was pretty atrocious. Even my bike could’ve been better. All in all I was comfortable and warm enough. That was the main goal. I think I finished and looked up at the large display by the stadium that touted a balmy 40 degrees! At least it was sunny. I could’ve done without the wind though.

(l-r)John Harlow, Cameron Holman, Laura Paulsen, David Cox, Some Old Guy, James McGuidwin, Greg Sheppard, Brian Pomeroy, Stephanie Sinders and Sparty the Spartan!

(l-r)John Harlow, Cameron Holman, Laura Paulsen, David Cox, Some Old Guy, James McGuidwin, Greg Sheppard, Brian Pomeroy, Stephanie Sinders and Sparty the Spartan!

Busy busy beaver….

Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009
Spidery Thing at John Bryant

Spidery Thing at John Bryant

Snake at John Bryant

Snake at John Bryant

So if you roll back your calendars to when Mom & PJ first left for Europe, ages ago I know, I went home to visit Chris and pick up some bike rollers from PJ. On Sunday, Chris and I went for a brisk walk through John Bryant. At the bridge we spotted this snake and the spidery thing. I think I’d be much more freaked out by the spidery thing than the snake. The spider thing had to be a huge wolf spider or something. That or one of those mythical barking spiders. I’m not sure.

So can you tell what is wrong in this picture? Hint: look at the bike lock. I didn’t really test it out but thought it pretty interesting that someone would try to lock up their bike purely by the handle bars. Not that anyone would really want to steal a POS Next. I was tempted to slide the bike lock off and just leave it there for the person to find. The devil wasn’t speaking to me from his perch on my shoulder. So instead I just took a picture.

Anything wrong with this picture???

Anything wrong with this picture???

The beginning of classes came way to fast. Fortunately so did the parties.

Yours Truly and Animal Secor

Yours Truly and Animal Secor

I spur of the moment jumped in the car and headed off to Old Boys. It was a great time. I showed up just before the second half and am pissed at myself for missing the first half. Oh well. Better late than never. The normal shenanigans ensued but it just seemed so much crazier when I was in undergrad. And I know that we did party a bit harder. Some key individuals were missing and some faces I never thought I’d see again showed up.

Illinois Rugby Old Boys 2009

Illinois Rugby Old Boys 2009

On the way back from Illinois I saw this and laughed. Luckily my camera was right next to me. The damn thing has goggles and everything!

Man's Best Friend

Man's Best Friend

The following weekend after Old Boys I participated in my first ever Olympic distance Triathlon. That means 1.5 km swim, 40 km bike, and a 10k run. I was worried about the swim but overall was very happy with my time. I borrowed my friends wetsuit, which helped a lot. I predicted it would take me an hour to finish the swim. My friends were more optimistic betting around 45 minutes. In the end I finished the swim in 36 minutes. Still slow as molasses but not glacial.

Put me in coach I'm ready to go!

Put me in coach I'm ready to go!

One of the guys didn’t want to do the race and instead took pictures. There is a whole set of them here. My favorite two are this one and this one and well this one too and maybe this guy. Oh yeah and I brought home some hardware :) .
Yeah getting the originals from the guy who took the pictures is on my agenda.

Over Labor Day weekend we finally busted out a bocce ball set that I purchased years ago. I can’t say for sure that I bought them Rochester, I’m thinking it might’ve been sometime during my first year at Purdue. But more importantly we busted out the rollers and my friend Cameron

Cameron give the rollers the beer test.

Cameron give the rollers the beer test.

christened them properly.

Last weekend (the weekend of the 12th) the Purdue Triathlon team put on their own Triathlon. Things could’ve run more smoothly but all in all the race went off without a hitch. I led the bikers on my friends motorcycle.

I’ve been doing some intramurals with my fellow triathletes with varying degrees of success. Photos of my (poor) athleticisim may be found here.

This Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday I’ve been presenting some of my labs work to some HS students south of Indy. It’s funny going back to school. I enjoyed the goofiness of HS kids. I had to laugh with all the trash strewn hallways full of castoff pencils and papers littering the hallway. Leaving during class change was fun. Being back in college is enough of a trip, seeing HS again was even funnier.
Ok time to catch up on some of the schoolwork I missed today because I was gone back to HS.

Road Race and Tornado Sirens

Wednesday, August 19th, 2009

I ran the West Lafayette Farmer’s Market 5k. I came in 7th with a time of 20:24. If I calculated tihngs correctly that means that I ran a) faster than a 7 minute/mile race (although I was flagging towards the end) and b) had I been able to continue at that pace I would’ve been able to run > 10 miles in 1 hour!
Tornado sirens were going off before we started the race. The two other people that I ran the race with just made it back to our place right as the rain started!
And when I was checking my gmail for a message from PJ about some bike rollers I saw this attached to an email with a fax number :

Anyone a Free SSN for (possibly) another NAK?

Anyone want a free SSN for (possibly) another NAK?

I’m honestly thinking of signing one and sending it back. I was thinking of signing it “Are you F***ing Crazy” as well as calling the police.

Back to School…

Sunday, August 16th, 2009

This weekend was the big move in weekend on campus. I went to Wal-Mart to pick up some bike hooks for the garage and it was a mad house with all the kids and parents scurrying around trying to find sheets, trash cans, and sundry items. The good part is that a lot of the people who had left are back. Cameron’s roommates showed up today and we all went over to welcome them back. (Cameron was the squatter friend who was living with us. We moved his roommates stuff from storage for them…with the help of a couple of beers.) We then headed out to one of our hang out spots and had dinner together as a group.

First Boiler Market of the New Year: Anne Secor, Brandon Zwink Carson Budde, Kristin Gill, Scott Wilson, Alex Cosgrove, Blake Williams, Yours Truly, Cameron Holman, Ashley Keogh

First Boiler Market of the New Year: Anne Secor, Brandon Zwink Carson Budde, Kristin Gill, Scott Wilson, Alex Cosgrove, Blake Williams, Yours Truly, Cameron Holman, Ashley Keogh


We then had movie night over at our place on the monster TV and saw Kung Fu Panda.

I also managed to squeeze in a 50+ mile bike ride in today. PJ remember that weird noise my tire was making that I asked you about? Well it was the tire dying. The tire tread had delaminated itself from the threading of the tire! You could squish down on the tread and feel the gap between the tread and the core.

I’m not dead yet….the blog that is..

Saturday, August 15th, 2009

So I’d been meaning to write a new post but just haven’t.  After talking to Chris yesterday I figured I’d better write something.  I know you are waiting with baited breath so here goes….

I bought a (crappy) webcam for $5 off of Craigslist. It is crappy and doesn’t work very well.  Oh well you get what you pay for.  Here is a picture I have taken with it.

Goofing for the webcam

Goofing for the webcam

It seems like you need a million candela light for the little guy to see anything.  I bought it because I wanted to play with some Augmented Reality stuff.  I saw this video and was pretty impressed and so wanted to see if it would work on my computer. I haven’t gotten that far as I have little faith that the webcam can perform.

I bought a piece of art last week. I’ve had it on my Xmas list once or twice. Mom & PJ did get me some of his sketchbooks a few years ago. Umm actually the postmark was 2002 :) . The piece of art came really quick. I’m pretty happy with it. For $35 all told I can’t complain. The cool thing is that the guy made a video of him drawing the piece and then posted it on his website. I think that is almost as cool as the piece of art. I always like to see the drawing process of artists. Go check it out here. This guy’s art and creativity is awesome. Here is another cool post/picture Now I want to buy a whole bunch of more people’s artbooks and original art. I think it’d be cool to frame it and stick it somewhere. I have been in someone’s bathroom (a Mayo Dr’s?) that had some original cartoon strip art framed and put up.

My nifty piece of original artwork! Jake Parker's Missile Mouse.

My nifty piece of original artwork! Jake Parker's Missile Mouse.

I started a Twitter account. I don’t know why. I guess just to try it out and really see what use it would be. So far I haven’t really found a use for it. I totally don’t understand why people use this service. But hey why would you really want to listen to me babble on?

I think something psychosomatic happened. I think it is Anne’s fault (I know you are reading this as well)! She asked if my hands ever peeled like they use to when I was growing up.  Of course I said no, well, because they haven’t. Well just this week they DID peel.  Here they are at the end of their snakeskin shedding.

Hand snakeskin shedding

Hand snakeskin shedding

I went and saw G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra this week.  Well it was entertaining but not a very good movie.  Too much computer graphics porn.  So much so that it made it a bit campy and cheesy.  Anyway it was obviously made to have a sequel.  I can say that the two lead females provided some excellent eye candy.  Two thumbs up (for the ladies that is). If you must go get the student discount :)

Were they this hot in the cartoon? Hubba hubba.... :)

Were they this hot in the cartoon? Hubba hubba.... :)

So I’m more or less settled into my place. There are a few boxes that need to be dealt with. Now that Cameron has moved all his crap out of the garage I don’t have much of an excuse. It will be nice to have a spot for my car again. I’m happy about that. I still bike so much that the car doesn’t get very many miles on it. Really I think that there have been less than 3K miles put on the thing all year. I can’t say I’m all that disappointed in that. But I do need to get her out to stretch her legs and get the fluids flowing every now and again.

Ercan and I just tooled around on Sunday. We grilled out. That was something he really wanted to do.

Ercan about to enjoy his hamburger

Ercan about to enjoy his hamburger

We then also hit up Best Buy and some other places for him to do some shopping. We even hit up Wal-Mart. He was truly amazed at how low their prices can be. He bought a pseudo dress shirt for $7.

I think I am slowly breaking myself of my twitch reaction to noises when my room door is open. I caught myself a while back hearing a noise and thinking a cat had snuck into my room and was going to get into my stuff. Ahh….it’s nice to not have furballs tearing things up as well as their fur polluting the place. No more vacuum canisters full of their icky hair!

Last night I hooked up one of my old hard drives and gleaned all the valuable pieces from it and deleted everything else. One of the more valuable pieces is this little gem. I’m partial to the bottom two frames.

Andy in the CMU Dungeon early 2000s

Andy in the CMU Dungeon early 2000s

I also think I destroyed a different hard drive by unplugging power from it. Meh. I knew more or less what was on there and it wasn’t anything special. This is another good one gleaned from the HDD.

Evan Dorkin's Milk & Cheese dispense some wisdom
Evan Dorkin’s Milk & Cheese dispense some wisdom

Ok. The next post will be sooner. No more 1.5 months in between posts.

New Arrivals

Monday, June 29th, 2009

I got mine and she got hers. Hopefully mine will be a bit better behaved than hers.  Em got a new kitten.  I decided to call it Nuke as in “new kitty.”  Well it has turned out that Nuke is quite apropos because the damn cat is destroying everything and just well being a kitten I suppose. Damn thing is a pest.  I’ve removed her from my room using her tail as a handle to throw her by.  Tonight Em got home late and discovered that Nuke had knocked over a plant from the window sill.  This was after yesterday which we spent cleaning house. Sorry I don’t give a shit enough about the cat to post a picture.  Do a google image search for a kitten. I’m sure it looks just like the ball of terror we have here.

I on the other hand am sure made a much wiser decision.  My new arrival a) is all ready house trained b) doesn’t tear shit up (except asphalt hopefully when I’m on top c) in the long run will probably cost considerably less and d) will probably cause me a hell of a lot less headaches than the damn cat will.  Granted my initial outlay was $700 and there will be some more expenditures down the road, I believe they will decrease in time. Furball on the other hand I believe will only increase in maintenance over time.

My new black and white Quintana Roo.  QR is the state in Mexico where Cancun is located. Oh yeah the new furball is black and white as well.  About same proportion as the bike too.

My new black and white Quintana Roo. QR is the state in Mexico where Cancun is located. Oh yeah the new furball is black and white as well. About same proportion as the bike too.

So it looks to be a pretty sweet ride.  After hemming and hawing over it I figured I was stupid to buy the bike even thought the Litespeed slipped through my fingers.  It has a bike computer on it, pedals (yeah it has Look KEO and I have Shimano cleats right now :( ), and a ~$120 set of tires on it.  There was no way I would be able to build up the other frame for that little money.  Yippee.  I hit 21.5mph riding it home…in sandals.  I can’t wait to test it out.

The frame I *think* is carbon fiber. I’m not sure but it weighs a crap ton less than my 1998 Cannondale road bike!