I am part of the machine.

I guild mate posted this in our forum and I thought it was good enough to share with all of you.



I hope you all found it as entertaining as I did, especially those anthropologically inclined readers.

Rage Against the Machine

Most of you know they had a reunion concert at Cochella. What you may not know is that this has the potential to be more permanent.
Chris Cornell has stated he is leaving Adioslave. They claim the reunion was a one-shot deal but you gotta wonder.. what will these guys do for a front man? Are we going to see some third permutation of the band? If we do I hope it is better than Audioslave was. Don't get me wrong, they where pretty good, there was a lot of talent in that group. I just feel that some of the songs sounded forced. You got Chris Cornell whining singing melodically then you drop into some hard driving RAtM style chorus or guitar solo. It just didn't mesh as well as it could in some of the songs, they didn't sound as cohesive as they should have.
Granted, that is what alot of people liked about RAtM, you got the hard lined guitars then good ol' Zach comes in spitting lyrics like a pissed off rapper.
I hope these guys don't call it quits. I also hope that if Zach de la Rocha doesn't stick around permanently they find someone that was just as innovative as he was. Preferably someone that doesn't already have a well established solo career like Chris did.

good lord make it stop

So I'm balls deep into this semester. Boy, it is turning out to be a doozy. Weekends turn into 7 hour long homework marathons, weekdays are full of cramped note taking hands and mild to strong states of panic. February is "test month." This is much much better than "test week." I had 1 test last week (4% better than the mean.. I got a 70), a test this week, 2 tests next week, and a test on the 28th. I am scared of 2 of them. Matrix Algebra I understand but it takes me 3 hours to do one problem (I didn't say I understand it well) and Electro magnetics.. well.. if I could understand my instructor or the book I would be doing much better. Unfortunately the instructor copies the book into a power point presentation the reads it out loud as his "lecture." He skips the same spots the book skips (equation wise) and takes a few more shortcuts, making the "solutions" to example problems about as useful as WIFI to the Amish. To make matters worse he speaks in a rapid fire heavily accented korean english. His dialect consists of only 3 consents and 2 vowels which make differentiating between E, V, D just as impossible as L, R, and T. This makes understanding things like dE/dV (sounds like DD over DD) just as impossible as differentiating scalar and scatter (both pronounced scadrr).
Lets face it.. this shit is hard to begin with and an instructor who has only marginally more control over the english language than whoever wrote the book doesn't help much. (The author has apparently never heard about dangling participles.) Before you make a comment on the lack of grammar in my posts and the irony therein let me point out the fact that my blog is intended as a quasi-semi-personal journal, not a publish work used as instructional aides for advanced mathematical and physics concepts.

Well, I guess I should get back to my homework. I have to calculate that maximum charge the earth could hold before air starts to break down, losing its electrons, and turning into a conductor (basically until lightning starts randomly shooting out peoples asses.) BTW.. I found this to be approx 1.35 x 10^10 C and the capacitance of the earth is approx. 708 uF... not that you cared.

I couldn't have said it better myself.

I know I have been leaning towards getting a Macbook Pro. Not because "its a mac" but because it is a very small package that packs a pretty mean punch as far as notebooks are concerned. This may cause some of you to believe I have reversed my stance on all things Apple, especially with my recent iPod acquisition.
Well, it hasn't. To help support this claim I want you to read this article and know that it is a near perfect representation on my own feelings.

This guy really hates macs. I just seriously loath them, its not quite a full fledge hatred anymore. How can it now that they run intel processors and can boot Windows XP and (reportedly) Vista.

Its February

Its February. The month that got screwed. Wikipedia has a nice entry on the month, including this ever so important segment on the the pronunciation:]

Many people pronounce "February" with a round 'u' instead of an open 'u' vowel, which forces the first 'r' to be eclipsed, viz. 'FEB-yoo-air-ee' instead of 'FEB-roo-air-ee.' That is, it elides into first half of the trailing diphthong. Otherwise, the flanking mid vowel ('e') and back vowel ('u'), combined with the final -ry syllable (front vowel 'ee') make the 'br' difficult for Anglophones to pronounce in the first place. The problem does not usually arise for Scotiaphones, however. The Scottish names for the month are "Feberwary" and "Februar," the latter usually pronounced with a long "ay" vowel in the first syllable.

February brings us great holidays. Holidays like Ground Hog Day (TODAY!), Presidents Day, and Valentine's Day, a holiday created almost solely by the greeting card, candy, and flower cartels that are the true power behind the shadow government that runs the world.

As a rule my wife and I don't celebrate Valentine's Day. I don't mean we ignore it, but we try hard not to buy "Valentines Day" branded products (which is pretty much limited to cards, candy, or stuffed animals we don't need). Jewelry, flowers, and nice meals have been excluded from the "ban" list (mostly by my wife) and we try to focus on the meaning of Valentine's Day instead of its commercial components.

In other news my wife made cookies Sunday and I can't stop eating them. She also made blueberry muffins. I am eating one right now with a cup of french roast. It is delicious. I can actually relax and enjoy my morning (yes, I enjoy mornings) today because its the only day I don't have morning classes. I still wake up at 6:00 and spend half an hour coaxing my wife awake but it's nice to know I don't actually have to get up (until she asks me to go make coffee while she showers). I'm such a sucker for her. She could ask for a 5 course breakfast and I would probably get up and do it.
..mmm.. that bite had a big blueberry in it.

I almost forgot. I found the owner of the iPod. I decided that 2 weeks of no one asking lost and found for it meant they weren't really looking so I bought the dock/craddle for $30. I plug it in and find out the person used there full name to name the ipod. I searched ASU directory and pulled up a student with the name and emailed her. That was on Monday. I haven't heard anything back. I think 3 weeks of due diligence is enough and I am now claiming it as my own.