The Agrinautica

   Internet's been down for three days. SBC said the entire area was down, but ThickAir, whom we get internet directly from (through SBC lines) said that it should be working, but I wasn't showing up on their network. Technician said he'd reset the network and it should be up in twenty minutes. That was two days ago. Situation hasn't improved, and the technician hasn't answered or returned my calls since.
   So in order to go online I have to go into the freezing study lounge. Now, temperature was pushing 98 outside today, and everyone was complaining about it, but in here, I had to go get a coat. d=

   Anyway, today is my birthday (No one would know if it weren't for Facebook. I'm not really doing anything special, though Kristy & I might go to Rock It this evening.
   On Friday, for my birthday, Kristy made me a fancy dinner that consisted of, among other things, gnocchi (which is one of my favourite things ever), and for dessert delicious nutella pizza (pictures coming soon). She also got me some real port (I've only had $5.99 port before (= )
   My actual birthday started at 12:00 last night with Kristy calling me while I was hanging out at a campfire at Lake Berryessa with Jenn Smyrnos & Nicole Farazian, two very awesome people.

   Saturday was an official-unofficlal* Φ A Δ retreat at Lake Berryessa. It was fun. It was attended by Tessie Cross, Alex Estrada, Gena Rinaldi, Jenn, Nicole, and myself.
   Now Lake Berryessa is about half an hour away, and, it turns out, directly on our own Russel Boulevard.
   Russel, the main thoroughfare of the city of Davis: leaves town to the west; becomes a small squiggle of a road between farms; becomes a main thoroughfare in nearby Winters; becomes Highway 128; and goes right past Lake Berryessa.

* I'd like to go on the record that I think the "official-unofficial" categorization of events is dumb. Its not against our rules to have alcohol at events, so thats not a problem. Theoretically it has been argued that this categorization releases the fraternity of some liability -- I don't really buy that though, if something did come up I doubt any court would be impressed by the officially-unofficial nature of things. Really its primary effect is to violate the spirit of Φ A Δ bylaws, by explicitly reserving the right to violate Φ A Δ bylaws.

Picture of the Day

The Social Sciences Building
AKA The Death Star

   As you may or may not have noticed (or noted with joy perhaps), I have neither been on AIM for the last several days or active at all on livejournal or any other recognizable online form. This is because once again technological dark ages have descended upon us here in the trees.
   The previous service provider here was Instaconnect. But a giant squid could have provided better internet access than Instaconnect, so now we're switching to another company called Thick Air. In the mean time however, our internet access has devolved from giant squid to jellyfish. The ensuing dark ages has led me to flee my personal fiefdom in #229 and actually take refuge in the study lounge. Here internet access is plentiful, I am safe from roving barbarian hordes, and I can keep my eye on the door to the room the Thick Air representative is SUPPOSED to be in.
   To underscore the significance of this exile, keep in mind that even during the ice ages caused by my broken heater I braved the blizzards and saber-toothed-ratties of my room rather than become a galut in the study lounge.


   Continuing in the spirit of technological devolution, trillian appears to have take a decisive step backwards with version 3.0. I downloaded this "upgrade" the day before internet civilization collapsed here, and promptly lost all contact with the outside world. Trillian 3 stayed up just long enough to show me: that it would no longer let me choose which of my numerous screen names I'd be messeging people from; most traumatizingly, I haven't been able to figure out how to set myself "away;" and that it had replaced my beautiful green-on-black "skin" with some hidious default apple-looking blue-on-white abomination. I'm optimistic that I'll be able to tame its feral obstinance of minor details eventually, but its refusal to connect appears to be a problem independant of the general internet anarchy here (for example I currently have a connection via ::gasp:: normal AIM)

   Also, the button for "save copy of outgoing email" appears to have disappeared from Yahoo.mail? This is a major inconvenience for me since I often need to keep records of emails I sent out as court business. Now I need to write emails, save as draft, then go to the draft folder (since in saving it it closes the email and sends me back to the inbox or something), open the "draft" of the email I want to send and send it.


   Anyway, without internet access I of course have not accomplished anything worth relating. Or if I did, I later became so depressed due to internet trouble that I forgot everything previous to that.
   What I do know however about the last several days is that Kristy made some excellent salsa soup with the crockpot, and my friend Courtney Caruso (deaconfrost224) stopped by. Courtney has already graduated from Davis but now attends Shasta Community College where she is endeavoring to get an associates degree in justice administration or something. She has some shocking stories about the intelligence level of her classmates there.


Picture of the Day

   Suddenly this weekend is just about over. Suddenly this QUARTER is almost over.
The latter hella caught me by suprise.

   I deleted kazaa and suddenly my computer is in a whole new world of betterness. Kazaa really is the root of all evil.

   A thorough discussion of "MUNcest" has developed here, in which I coined the words "cestuous," "uncestuous," "intradais / interdais," "daicest," and "chaircest."
   I also ended up defining "jock" in this conversation that for unkown reasons Diane has coded friends only. The definition as I put it: "jock, verb - to aspire to bond with. One jocks persons one has a crush on. Roughly synonymous with "like," (Ro jocks Russel vs Ro likes Russel), but unlike "like" it implies action. When one jocks someone they not only like them but aspire to do something about it (though it does not imply an actual plan, but the general asperation in an imperfect sense)."

   Not having a functioning computer of my own is getting reeaally oldd. Also the computer in the apartment complex lobby is useless (it has windows 95, an even older version of microsoft Explorer, and a dial up connection that wants a password I don't have).
   In other news, Professor Gardner of course threatened in the strongest terms to without exception drop anyone from POL121 who doesn't have the prereqs... one of which I don't have. Being the devious person that I am and NOT wanting to take "statistics for poli sci" I decided to stick it out in the class until I get dropped.. hoping that it was just a scary bluff and he's not really gonna bother.. I mean he really doesn't need to do anything now since everyone else who it applied to DID drop. Anyway, since I may or may not be taking the class I have either 13 or 17 units this quarter. Thats a problem because I don't want 13 units.
   I tried signing up for POL122 (International Law) but it told me I was waitlisted (only at number 2 though) and that was good enough for me... but then the next day I realized that it DIDN'T actually waitlist me because you have to push a button to confirm you want to be waitlisted, despite appearances... and POL122 was no longer available by that point. Then I added POL196 (Internat'l Relations Seminar) but Professor Siverson is a troll and bounced me right out of THAT one. NOW I'm signed up for Anthropology 3 (Intro to Archeology) because I couldn't find anything else remotely interesting and hey I did want to be an archeologist when I was a wee lad. But I think I'm gonna drop it and just give up on that whole operation because the class times for ANT3 are at really inconvenient times for me. The End.


   Anyone ever notice that around the 1st and 2nd week of school the new freshman run rampant and hella shopping carts appear in the shrubbery and parks near the freshman dorms?


   Quote of the day from my nuclear physics professor: "if your reactor blows its top all your emergency plans are out the window and which exit to take isn't really important anymore." So uh.. remember that kids.


   In other news: the Russian Volume II textbook has the "top ten reasons for studying Russian" on the back. Volume I had a different top ten list as well, one item of which was "the word for hello has 13 letters." Anyway, the top ten list from this version:
10. That easy and logical Russian grammer.
09. Fool your friends, make them think you're talking backwards
08. You pick up Bulgarian 15% faster! (damn, until just now I thought that said "you can pick up Bulgarians 15% faster," something I was rather excited about.)
07. Every adjective deserves a good ending
06. For when you're in an indicitive mood.
05. You can use Cyrillic as a secret code for writing love letters.
04. For those of us with perfective tastes.
03. French is passe, German isn't popular, and Spanish is just a bunch of cognates.
02. Everyone has a soft spot for a soft sign.
01. The book is cool!


   Finally, everyone should check out this strong sauce entry.