Shouzer

Yes, yesterday was my big 19th birthday. It wasn’t actually that big as far as the birthday itself. However, I did get an awesome present. I got a iRiver iHP-120, which you can look at here. It rocks the house, for those of you that can’t tell by just looking at the pictures. I have been messing with that thing non-stop, ever since I got it. It was a huge surprise, too. I had no clue whatsoever.

I also got the Two Towers Special Edition DVD to go along with my Fellowship of the Ring Special Edition DVD. Those movies are great, and the special edition DVDs (haven’t watched Two Towers special stuff yet) are supposed to be great. So I’d say it was a pretty good bday. Now all I need is to win today’s lottery. $177 mil. I like my chances.

rather than making people find the topic a few posts down, i’ll give my opinion on the siu salukis right here. in the ap poll that was just released 3 hours ago, the salukis are now ranked number 20 in the country. that’s astounding considering the odds. last year they lost rolen roberts, a candidate for conference player of the year, a big man with nba type blocking skills, and a major asset to the sweet sixteen run. but they made do and took another run at the big dance, only to fall a basket short of upsetting missouri on what may have been the worst call of the 32 first round games (it was a charge or a no call; absolutely NOT a blocking).

this year, they lost kent williams and jermaine dearman. i don’t know, but i would guess that was about 50 percent of the team’s offense last year. williams was the floor captain and clutch shooter that every team wants (also a four-year starter who holds many team and conference scoring records). jermaine was the energy, the sparkplug, the defense. he looked proud to be a saluki whether they won or lost. in the sweet sixteen run two years ago, he WAS the team. offense and defense. i would challenge somebody to show me a player who played harder during that three game span in the entire tournament. but these guys graduated (and are now in the national basketball developmental league, like triple a baseball).

and oh yeah, the coach left too. not that i could blame him. you get offered a big ten coaching job and a contract that you could retire on, why wouldn’t you take it? bruce is doing a fine job here at ui now, btw, after a shaky and criticized start. you remember when webber took the job? still yet, remember what happened the day after? they dawgs hired assistant coach matt painter. heck, i’d hardly heard of him, even less think he was the best candidate for the job. but i guess there really were no candidates, so i wasn’t technically wrong.

but everybody was wrong in how they thought siu would play this year. picked to finish in the middle of the mid-major missouri valley conference, and probably not see ncaa-tourney-dom until they caught fire in the valley tournament and got the automatic bid. let’s face it, creighton only lost 1 player, who now plays for the 76′s and has the 6th best 3 point field goal percentage in the nba, and their four returning starters are all fifth-year senious. no other team in the country has that. you want experience? creighton epitomizes experience. and wichita state. they were actually picked to win the valley this year. i don’t know much about them, but i remember the hype surrounding their first few games, especially the so-called upset losses to siu. sms was also supposed to be good, illinois state is young and talented, and no first year siu coach has ever won at bradley. so more than just the critics were against siu at the beginning of the season, the odds were too.

haha, here i’ve wasted quite a bit of writing and not even talked about the current team. but i guess that’s good. i’ve set the stage for a discussion.

what does the rest of the season hold for the salukis of carbondale?

i really don’t see them losing more than two games before the conference tourney. i only say this because they face creighton again and hawaii saturday, both extremely formidable opponents. right now on espn’s bracketology, the dawgs are predicted to be a 7th seed, which seems about right. last week, they were matched up with florida st, and this week they’re mathced up with hawaii (could saturday be a precursor?). either way, it looks like this. they’ll be playing a low seeded major conference school, maybe a fsu, a maryland (yikes), a syracuse, OR they’ll be against a higher rated less-than-major conference such as this week’s pick hawaii. i really think that is a perfect situation. it’ll be almost the same as two years ago when we upset a higher ranked texas tech in the first round (and subsequently took down georgia and gave caron butler and uconn one of the toughest tests they had seen in awhile). siu can beat one of those teams in the first round. as a former player, i can say that confidence is an underrated factor to have in your corner. if you THINK you can beat somebody, then your chances will increase exponentially (whether you DO or not). and the dawgs gots them some confidence. a number 20 rank to go along with a 20 win season. for a mid-major? yeah, can anybody gonzaga? ok, ok, carbondale isn’t spokane, but it seems to me that siu is traveling down the same path that the bulldogs took in the late nineties, early 00′s to get to where they are now, a top 10 rated team with a few ncaa tourney appearances in a row. alright, i’ve exhausted quite a bit here, what do you have to say?

A Happy Birthday is in order for the founder of this here site, Jared Allen Russell. I believe I speak for me when I say “Happy Birthday.”

Sorry Al, this one isn’t for you.

Here’s the story I’m about to talk about.

This is great. If I had some money, I would do this too. Hopefully, when I get some money, I will do this too. Some of the notable things from that story were:

“Harding, who is a co-chair for the North American Indian Student Organization, said minority-based scholarships only make up a small percentage of all the scholarship opportunities available to students.”

That’s total BS. Maybe it just seems that way to her, but I’m going guess that 50-60% of the scholarships I looked at were unavailable to me b/c I’m a white male.

I also thought it was funny that the scholarship “requires a recent photograph to ‘confirm whiteness’”. Who would apply for this if they weren’t white?

Crap, I messed it up. Go to www.boredomsucks.net and click on “What do you see” under pictures.

Sorry about that.

Click here to see the image

There’s a picture, you have to read the caption to get it. I’ll confess that I can only find about 4-5 dolphins, and my roommate had to show them to me.

Damn, I didn’t realize that it was already 730. I probably shouldn’t have spent as much time commenting on that one post as I did.

So today I actually volunteered at the hospital, and I was looking forward to it quite a bit. The hospital is a level I trauma center and I was expecting the experience to be decently interesting. I ended up being assigned as a Transporter/X-ray job person. What they should’ve called it was transport people every now and then while listening to a bunch of chick’s anecdotes in the radiology department. While the stories were pretty entertaining, I didn’t sign up for story time. I was kinda hoping to actually get an idea of what a radiology job would be like, since the volunteer director did say that I would spend a decent amount of time in that particular department. I might end up just calling to see if I can get into a different department w/some action, b/c I got pretty bored at times. I’m also thinking a/b job shadowing a radiologist at their clinic, which would give me an idea of what goes on w/them. I’m not really sure what area of medicine I’m gonna go into, but hell… I’m pretty sure that I want to do something in medicine, and I’ve got a couple of years to figure out exactly what I want to do.

Maybe I should get my stuff together now and actually head home, instead of sitting on my ass…

The political post I made below has actually gotten some good responses, so I figured I’d give this a try. I’ve seen it done on a few different sites a read every once in a while. Basically, it’s for anyone to post about anything that might spark some conversation. So have at it. I’d like it if everybody that reads the site actually said something.

In my history discussion today, we were posed the question of whether or not America is an empire. At first, I wanted to say now, but Bush’s administration has changed my mind. In my opinion, the US is most definitely an empire, which means only one thing – it’s going to come crashing down.

I don’t think anyone can really, truly argue with the fact that the government lied to us. Bush lied to us. There are no WMDs, and there never were. On the eve of sending troops into battle, Bush asserted that “intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised.” Lies. Recently, a high-ranking Pakistani official admitted to selling nuclear weapon secrets to 3 countries, none of which were Iraq.

Bush is the only US president ever to propose preemptive war. Ever. Now there’s been two countries we’ve fought wars against, both of which we attacked first. For what purpose? To not find Bin Laden, and to piss off the rest of the world.

Gore Vidal, back in December, brought up one of the best points I’ve heard in this regard. He said, “With each action Bush ever more enrages the Muslims. And there are a billion of them. And sooner or later they will have a Saladin who will pull them together, and they will come after us. And it won’t be pretty.” Muslims around the world have already said that, one day, they will control the white house, whether we like it or not.

(I don’t have a problem with Muslims in general. In fact, I’m pretty decent friends with one whom I had class with last semester. There are some crazy fundamentalist ones, though…)

I’ve mentioned the Patriot Act before, and I’ll mention it again. This is one of the craziest things the government has ever put into effect. Again, to quote Gore Vidal, who has actually read both Patriot Acts: “An American citizen can be fingered as a terrorist, and with what proof? No proof. All you need is the word of the attorney general or maybe the president himself. You can then be locked up without access to a lawyer, and then tried by military tribunal and even executed. Or, in a brand-new wrinkle, you can be exiled, stripped of your citizenship and packed off to another place not even organized as a country – like Tierra del Fuego or some rock in the Pacific. All of this is in the USA PATRIOT Act.”

Yeah, that’s democracy at its best… Now granted, I don’t honestly think Bush will ever do such a thing to somebody who wasn’t actually a terrorist, but that does not make it any better. There’s a reason we have limitations on the power of the presidency. Checks and fucking balances, people. Who’s to say that some future president wouldn’t use these powers? There’s a reason they’re not in the constitution.

Since Bush came into office, he’s not done one good thing. Poverty is up. Unemployment is the highest it’s been since the Great Depression. That’s fucking saying something, and yet nobody cares. The middle class is shrinking, which means the separation between the rich and the poor is becoming greater. Why? “Hm… Let’s make tax cuts, and have 90% of them work for the upper classes. Because, you know.. The upper classes, of everybody, are the people who need the money most.” This was a precursor to the fall of every empire. Responsibilities are being put on the shoulders of states (No Child Left Behind, which is imposed on states by the federal government, gets no federal funding) who can’t handle them.

We’ve gone into two worthless wars, which have done nothing for us. Does anybody feel safer now that we’ve captured Hussein? We’ve losted men for nothing and have spent billions of dollars doing it, without the consent of the American people or the rest of the world as a whole. Now that we’ve done that and we’re in the “rebuilding phase”, Bush wants to make sure countries like Germany and France, who were against the war, don’t get rebuilding jobs. Oh, that’s a great idea. Let’s further alienate those who disagreed with us. Who cares that they didn’t agree with the war? I don’t always agree with choices made by my friends and family, but I don’t ignore them because of it.

Recently, Bush put forward his new Medicare plan. You would think it’s a good idea, until you actually look at it. Republicans have been against this sort of thing forever, and it’s no wonder one of them finally pushed it forward. Read it. Honestly do it. The short story is that the majority of people who are on medicare sorts of things now are going to pay more for their medicine, and that the pharmaceutical companies and the insurance companies are going to make more money. Again, separating the rich and the poor.

And yet, with all these problems, I wouldn’t be surprised if Bush was re-elected. Why? Because you’ve got people who vote strictly on party. They look at some of the “major issues” (though I don’t think you should call them that) like gun control, abortion, and capital punishment. Who really cares? Look at what’s best for the country, and forget the petty shit like that.

I’ve heard on multiple occasions this past year things like, “I’m not sure about Bush sometimes” and “Yeah, he’s definitely not the smartest guy we’ve had in office.” Then why do you vote for him? Going stricly upon past conversations and political association, I’ve no doubt that Kyle will vote for Bush. This despite the fact that when he takes a test from selectsmart.org (You know, it’s named that for a god damn reason), he gets multiple democrats before Bush. For the life of me, I don’t understand that.

Benjamin Franklin, when speaking about the Constitution once said it will fail, as all such constitutions have in the past, because of the essential corruption of the people.

With that, I’d like to bring up the point that Bush is pushing for electronic voting in the next election. All three of the owners of the companies that make the balloting machines donated to the Bush administration. These same people refuse to let anyone look at the way they work, because it would give away trade secrets. Like Vidal said, “What secrets? Isn’t their job to count votes? Or do they get secret messages from Mars? Is the cure for cancer inside the machines? I mean, come on.”

Think about it, people. And I invite you to comment. Nobody ever seems to when it comes to this stuff, and I’ve always wondered why.

That’s right boys and girls. The Simpsons are hitting the big screen.
Check this story out. They say it’s not a gurantee, but that there is a real good chance. I’m willing to accept that.

Slashdot is running a story about how Microsoft is losing its case against Lindows.com. I think the whole thing is ridiculous. Lindows should, rightfully, have no case. They make a Linux-based OS that is supposed to be good for Windows users. What the fuck could the judge possible be thinking by saying that they might be right? Obviously the name is a mix of Linux and Windows. WTF else would you think? That they just threw some letters together and came up with that? That’s lame.

Click here now. Or I will pull out your fingernails. It’s a tribute a Will Hung of American Idol. Apparently this guy has quite a following. There’s a huge petition to get him the Hollywood show. I’m not entirely sure how serious these people are. Some of them seem sincere, but I don’t know how you could be. Don’t forget to get your T-Shirt.

Jared gave me a cd (via megan?) this past weekend of a band called Spitalfield. I’d never heard of them then, but after that point, their name was placed into the “band name” category in my brain’s music spreadsheet. So as I’m walking up from lunch (or what is dinner?) yesterday, I saw a sign laying on the floor, and casually walked past it, but I did a double take. Something on that sign triggered something in one of my spreadsheets. Turns out that it was the newest entry, Spitalfield, and they are going to be playing here (Illini Union Courtyard Cafe) in a couple weeks. That’s pretty neat, I say.

And coming in from the “More people will probably care about this than the former” department, Bill freakin’ Gates is going to be speaking at Foelinger Auditorium this month. That’s just pretty cool, I say. Anyways, there’s only 18 tickets for Business Majors, and you have to get in a lottery to get one. So pretty much, I’m not going to see him. At least it’s cool that he’s gonna be here.

Alright, so as most of you know, I’m @ U of I for Computer Science. That’s like a big deal or something. At least that’s what the proverbial they tell me. I’ve heard the Engineering here referred to as the MIT of the midwest. So I guess that means they learn you real good ’round these here parts. Or something.

So anyway, back to my original point. The problem with something like this–this being a “smart” major at a good school–is that you get people in your classes who have high IQs, but not much more at all. They’re not cool, and they’ve done a fantabulous job of convincing me they want you (read: me) to know it. Heh, fantabulous isn’t a word.

So yesterday in my CS lecture, some kid was like, “So if you make a program that would load before the OS and go straight to a command prompt, would it still use memory? Or would it just store everything in cache?” First of all, a command prompt is an OS. Ass. Secondly, yes it would use memory, but who cares? This is a programming class not a hardware class. That point has been reiterated many times. Third, as the kid behind me so properly stated, “What a fuckin’ douche.”

We have people ask questions like that all the time. During the first week of lecture, the professor was explaining how CPUs nowadays have certain subsystems (of sorts) dedicated to floating-point (decimals, not integers) arithmetic. Somebody asks (imagine a thick brimmed nerdy kid talking here), “Well. Um. Actually, my old Apple 2c didn’t have a dedicated floating-point processor, but it could still add decimals. So how was that possible?” It’s like… Fuck, man. Is it that hard to believe that somebody would develop software to do it? Shit, your entire fucking computer works on 1′s and 0′s, and you’re going to question how it can add floating-points?

Let’s just say it’s frustrating dealing with these people.

I got one of my short 1-2 page papers back from my history class. Those papers are graded on a “check, check plus, check minus” scale. On my last one, I got a check and the only comment was, “Well-written paper.” This time I got a check plus, and there was actually nothing else written on the paper. Hehe. I thought it was pretty funny.

So far this class has been pretty cool, minus the whole participation thing I posted about earlier. She (the TA running the discussion section) tries to make the class interesting, which I greatly appreciate. The other day we split up into two groups to try to defend and prosecute Medea, the main character in Euripedes’ Medea. Things like that are cool. I wish math would do something like that. That class blows.