LiveJournal Project - August 2003

Another August, another year older.

Date: 2003-08-02 02:11
Subject: defcon update #2
maybe it just takes some getting used to, but it seems to me that every time i've been here, the first day always starts off shitty. and this year really was no exception. i woke up from some really fucked up dreams with a sore shoulder, managed to lose my sunglasses in the first hour at the con, and for whatever reason just felt a strange sense of uneasiness for most of the morning and early afternoon that i couldn't explain. maybe i've been reading too many weird books of late, i dunno. anyway, there was only one presentation that i really cared about seeing today, and that was "beating the casinos at their own game" by paranoidandroid. so i headed over to the con hotel and walked around, bought a few t-shirts, including one that reads "neurochemical hacker." =) i had planned to head into the presentation room early so i could ensure that i'd get a seat, but was turned back at the door by one of the defcon goons. instead, i was directed to get in a line - which went outside and wrapped all the way around the building. wtf?! i paid $75 to stand in line?!

as it turns out, apparently the fire marshal has been giving the alexis park (the hotel where DC is at) all kinds of hell about capacity of rooms and fire safety and such, and in turn, the AP is passing that shit on to the defcon staff. so now in order to ensure that their rooms are kept in line with fire codes, they have to clear everyone out of the room at the end of a presentation before they can let anyone else in. so you can't just walk into a room during a talk, and you can't stay in a room after a talk is over without getting in line and hoping that you make it back in before they declare the room to be full. this has, as one might imagine, caused a great many people to miss a great many presentations, much to their dismay. luckily, i have not yet been one of those people. i can't say i'm too thrilled with this, but i understand that they've got no choice, and given the constraints they're working with, the goons are doing a pretty decent job. i suppose i might think differently if i miss a bunch of talks tomorrow, since most of the stuff i want to see is, well, tomorrow. what really made my night, though, was hacker jeopardy. i've got some rather crappy pictures (the digital camera i brought is really a piece of shit when one needs to zoom in on something) that i'll upload when i get home, but let's just say that it's fuckin' rowdy and entertaining as all hell. there's just something that makes one smile when you see a dude at the front of the room with two pitchers of beer in hand and a bunch of plastic cups shout "who wants a fuckin' beer?!" and then proceed to dole out said beer to thirsty spectators. hell, i don't even like beer, but it was cool nonetheless. the canadian dude that i hung out with last year and got totally shitfaced with (and whose name i don't remember) remembered me and came up and said hello during HJ - i'm amazed that not only did he remember me, but he also remembered my name. probably because he wasn't the one that drank a whole fuckin' bottle of grey goose. =/

tomorrow should be a good day. _purpleglitter_ is flying in tomorrow morning to meet up with shaggy and me and then drive back with us. there's another day of hacker jeopardy, guaranteed to be more risque and have a bigger ruckus than the first. all the good talks are tomorrow as well, so hopefully i'll manage to catch some of them.

and here's my random insight for the day. defcon is largely a place where the outcasts of society come to hang out. the people who are too smart, too nerdy, too shy, etc., seem to find a home here amongst others that are like them. all over the place you see socially-challenged people, who are clearly dogmeat in the fierce social jungles of the real world, talking to each other and interacting as equals and transcending the barriers that normally stand in their way. and this is a pretty cool thing. but if you look carefully and stay observant as you're walking around, you see the outcasts of the outcasts - the poor souls that are so insert pejorative description here that they can't even manage to make a connection with those that are probably more like them than anyone else that they'll ever come into contact with. i wonder how many of them will manage to use the three day adventure that is defcon to attempt to strike up a conversation with someone who might understand them better than they think. we'll probably find out tomorrow, as it's by far the con's biggest drinking day, and also the biggest day of the year for alexis park's alcohol sales. wee!

Date: 2003-08-03 22:33
Subject: defcon recap
the insanity is over for another year. cory and i got back a few hours ago from our vegas adventures, and much to our dismay, the feline inhabitants of the house had staged a protest and vomited up a hairball on the brand new carpet that was just put in last wednesday. at least the stuff really is stain-resistant, and we weren't driven into a felinicidal rage by permanently-fucked new carpet. so all is well in that respect.

as for our last day at defcon, let me just say that i think i set a new personal record for drunken rowdiness. no, not so much that i set a new record for alcohol consumed and level of drunkenness reached, but i just made better use of what i did imbibe. i caught two presentations on legal issues in post 9/11 america, one related to the patriot act and the other one on dmca/riaa stuff, and both of those were quite good. listening to the legal director of the EFF talk about the patriot act and other unpleasantries introduced to us by john asscrack made me think a lot about going to law school if i ever actually graduate from asu. this isn't a new thought for me; i've been kicking around the idea for about 8 years - but as i said in an earlier post, defcon often tends to be an inspiring experience. discussing ctf with shaggy and one of his teammates gave me a bunch of cool ideas for things i might want to work on for next year - everything from a portable electromagnet that a person could use to sabotage another team's network cables to a remotely-controlled robot that could spy on laptop screens or EMP a machine from across the room. chaos, mayhem, and destruction!

but where things really got interesting last night was during the final two rounds of hacker jeopardy. i got completely trashed on vodka and most likely managed to be the single most obnoxious and loud person in the audience. the audience as a whole tends to be pretty rowdy, particularly when the contestants fuck something up, or if a daily double comes up and vinyl vanna has to remove some clothing, but fueled by a bottle of vodka and my general "i don't give a shit" attitude, i think i took mayhem to a whole new level with my yelling and cheering and booing and all that good shit. highlights of the evening include:

one of the teams fucked up a daily double question about albert einstein's nobel prize (they said he got it for relativity, which is incorrect) and i got picked to go up on stage and answer the question instead, and with my correct answer i got the prize of being able to remove an article of ms. vanna's clothing. she wasn't excessively attractive or anything, and was lacking in the b00bs department, but it was still quite entertaining, both for me and the audience. probably half those guys had never seen a half-naked girl whose name didn't end in ".JPG" anyway.

during the finals, one of the teams actually tried to have me thrown out of the room for shouting out answers, and i did in fact get a bit of a lecture from priest, the head goon, even though i was taking some of the blame for a guy behind me who'd been yelled at by the goons earlier. i didn't, in fact, get booted out, though. what's messed up about this situation? both all night friday night and during the earlier round on saturday, people in the audience were shouting out answers left and right, and nobody really gave two shits about it. apparently, the team which was winning in the final round didn't appreciate me giving answers to another team and thus actually making the game interesting, as opposed to a lame-ass one-sided victory. so i say fuck them. anyway, after the whole thing was over (the team which was pissed off ended up losing, as it turns out) i found myself in a conversation with one billy goto, henceforth referred to (thanks to _purpleglitter_ for this one) as billy gopoop, the most vocal of the members of team nymphs, the ones which had tried to get me removed from the arena. he proceeded to piss and whine about how i cost him the game, how i should never do anything like that again, and blah blah blah. so here's my rant of the weekend:

please, you scrawny little fuckwit, for your own safety, don't go trying to intimidate someone who's probably got about 100 pounds on you and a strong dislike for posturing morons because you and your comrades weren't smart enough to answer enough questions correctly that audience participation wouldn't factor in. oh no, you lost hacker jeopardy! oh no, whatever shall you do? well, billy gopoop, how about this for starters: lighten up. it's just a bloody game, it's meant to be fun and entertaining for the audience, and if you're really that butt-hurt because you lost, then you shouldn't take things so seriously in the first place and maybe shouldn't be playing, either. oh yeah, and if you're going to attempt to make someone look dumb by asking them a question, you'd be wise to know what the right fucking answer is when it's given. because even when i'm completely shitfaced, i'm still smarter than you. asshole.

as it turns out, i think it was probably better that i was far from sober throughout the whole thing, because i was in full-on "just don't care" mode, and thought billy gopoop was just the most hilarious little hacker fuckass that i'd come across all weekend, and i couldn't have taken him seriously to save my life. if i hadn't been drinking, and he tried to start shit with me, it could've gotten quite ugly. and for next year, hopefully shaggy and i will be able to field our own hacker jeopardy team, and we'll show them all what it's like to get a mental smackdown from the 480. huzzah!

oh yeah, pictures... most of the pics i took really did NOT come out well at all, but i'll sort through them and put the good ones online sometime soon. for now, i sleep.

Date: 2003-08-06 08:04
Subject: as promised, defcon pics
next year, better camera, extra battery. but for now, here ya go.
Editor's note: trying out the gallery feature of this blog platform

Date: 2003-08-07 12:30
Subject: if i only had a brain - oh, wait, i do!
one of the things i've kinda been concerned about with myself over the last few years is that i've been getting stupid. everyone knows that the brain is like any other muscle (yes, i know the brain isn't a muscle) in that if you don't use it, you lose it. and by and large since i moved back to AZ from florida in '96, i've felt like i really haven't been using it all that much. i mean, hell, i go to ASU, i have a joke of a job (at least in terms of the actual amount and difficulty of work that i do) and most of the people that i used to hang out with and have intelligent conversations with have all disappeared. so, yeah, that sounds to me like a recipe for instant stupefication - just add water.

well, with my trip this past weekend to defcon and my renewed interest in law school, and _purpleglitter_'s impending graduation, much talk has been floating around the house about the LSAT and the GRE. so, this morning (at about 4am) i was bored and decided to take some sample tests, just for the sheer recockulosity of it all. and i'm happy to discover that even when i'm sleep deprived and just killing time, i still have a brain. on the practice GRE (general) that i took via computer, i got back a score range of 2200-2340 (out of a possible 2400) and a 173 (out of a possible 180) on the practice LSAT that i downloaded from the LSAT website. looks like that damn brain is still functional after all. weee!
Mood: i am so smart, S-M-R-T!

Date: 2003-08-12 01:14
Subject: just another entry filled with random shit.
nichiyume already mentioned it, but for anyone who's still not convinced (or doesn't read his LJ)... y'all need to update your freakin' windows boxes, update your antivirus software virus definitions, and if you're running any sort of firewall software, block port 135. the latest MS DCOM/RPC exploit has been wormified and it's running all over the net.

in other news, it looks like liberia's embattled president, charles taylor, actually did step down. now, why is this something that's being mentioned in my LJ, given that it's probably a safe bet that 90% of americans couldn't even identify liberia on a map, or even figure out which continent it's on (here's a hint, kids: it starts with "A") - well, because according to liberia's constitution, the vice president takes over in the event of a presidential vacancy. and you just have to wonder about a man whose last name is "blah" - yes, that's right, Moses Blah is now president of liberia. i wonder if the "blah" as a word means the same to them as it does to us. this is a short excerpt from a cnn interview: "CNN anchor Anderson Cooper spoke with President Blah and asked him how he will be different from the former president." maybe it's just me, and i admit that i enjoy sophomoric humor, but i can't help but get a good chuckle out of that.

remodeling progress continues - they put the new windows in today. all that's left is for the paint guy to come back tomorrow and do some touch-up work, and i'll finally have my house back. and when _purpleglitter_ gets back from CT, she'll be able to unpack all her shit that's been sitting in the living room for the last three months. yay.

that's all for now. there is much work to be done.

Time: 11:46
Subject: grumble grumble
sometimes i think it's better to let people wallow in their own stupidity than to confront them and point out exactly how dumb they are. however, when said ignorami (ignoramuses?) purport to understand more about a particular topic than i do (when in fact this could not be farther from the truth), it's extremely hard to rein in the urge to mentally bitch-slap them upside their artificially-inflated cerebral cortexes. on one hand, one would be doing the world a great service by demonstrating the harsh nature of reality to those who just don't have a clue, yet on the other hand, what responsibility do we with cluepons to spare really have to lift up the unwashed masses?

and you know, the funny thing about all of this? if the person or persons that i may or may not be referring to in a rather abstract sense here had bothered to simply ask me if i'd take a moment out of my day and help solve the dilemma du jour, not only would said issue be taken care of and all once again right with the world, but i wouldn't be wasting my time writing this rant, nor yours for reading it.

some sleep might come in handy right about now.
Mood: annoyed

Date: 2003-08-13 13:53
Subject: sushi anyone?
friday night? saturday night? anyone in the mood for some raw fish at a place that's NOT kona grill? spacekadette - you know how good sekai is, you know want to go. nichiyume - so do you. so do the rest of you. that means you, djskott and xianaz, and anyone else who might be interested. let's have a little better turnout than we did last time, ok? =P

Date: 2003-08-14 09:16
Subject: random observations
i don't know if this applies to women and their locker rooms, but the last few times i've gone to the gym i've seen some really strange shit in the locker room after my workout was over. yesterday, for example, i walked into the locker room and on the bench nearest the section where my stuff was, there was a guy buck naked lying flat on his back on one of the benches. and instead of covering himself up with a towel, he had it over his head. so what's he thinking? that someone's just going to anonymously come along and suck his dick? and then today, i notice a guy shaving his ears with an electric razor. his ears?! what the hell is wrong with these people?

there are, undoubtedly, many gay cars on the road today, but perhaps none more gay than the bright yellow low-end lexus i saw yesterday with the license plate "butter". that has "i'm a flaming homosexual" written all over it. and while there's nothing inherently wrong with being a flaming fag, there is something incurably amiss with you if you choose to buy a car that color and put such a recockulous license plate on it, all the while thinking that you're some kind of hot shit.

more gym stuff... the whole point for me in going to the gym is, obviously, to get in better shape, both by losing some of that extra organic insulation and also by getting stronger. but there seems to be a rather annoying side effect that's been creeping in this week. i'm fuckin' starving, all the time. and it's not like i haven't been eating, but unless i sit down and consciously try to pork out, i just end up with an unstoppable rumbly in my tumbly that refuses to be denied. it's really a pain in the ass.

and finally, tonight is supposed to be the first arizona flash mob event. if you don't know what a flash mob is, here's the 5-second definition. a bunch of people get together in a specific place at a specific time, do some random but pre-planned action and then leave. that's it. read azjournal if you want more info or feel somehow compelled to participate. honestly, i don't understand what all the excitement is about. maybe people who participate in these things can giggle like puerile little schoolchildren as they're performing said act of mischief, knowing that anyone who's watching and not privy to the inside secret is probably confused as all fuck. but really, is there any point to this? don't people have better things to do with their time? i guess this just goes to show that it really isn't hard to get people to do almost anything.

oh yeah, and the remodelers are done. there's new carpet, new paint, and new windows in half the house, and i must say that it looks pretty damn cool. soon to come, phase 2 - the other half. wee.

Date: 2003-08-15 06:43
Subject: SUSHI... and more random gym-tastic observations.
ok, first off... sushi is scheduled for 6pm on SATURDAY at sekai sushi, which is in the shopping center on the northeast corner of gilbert and southern. nichiyume, if you want to go and need a ride, drop me a note. anyone else who's interested in going should just show up - i don't believe they take reservations, so try to be on time and we can all grab seats at the sushi bar. xianaz - you'd better go, since you asked me about it on the phone yesterday and you live closer to there than anyone else. =P

and now... things i don't understand, but seem to see a lot of..

seriously unbalanced people - no, not unbalanced in the sense of lack of mental stability, but the kind of people that seem to think that they only have one body part worth training, to the point where it's rather obvious. i don't know how many guys i saw today walking around the gym floor with big chests and tiny arms, or big arms and toothpick legs. great, so you can bench 400 pounds, now excuse me while the wind blows you over. what's even funnier is that a lot of these guys seem to be gym regulars, as i've seen them at roughly the same time each day - and you know what? they're always working the same shit. and in all the times i've been there over the last month, i think i've only seen someone using the squat rack once.

and what's up with all these dudes and their weight belts? if all you're planning to do is variations of "lie on your back and push some weight up in the air," do you really need extra back support? it seems to be the scrawniest guys that are most guilty of this, too. maybe they do it to hold their beer bellies in? or maybe they want other people to think they know what they're doing because they have more lifting accoutrements? oh, wait, maybe it's a way to pick up chicks! yeah, that has to be it.

Time: 14:18
Subject: fair and balanced meals?
in honor of fair and balanced fridays... i'd just like to say that i was quite starving. then i had some yummy food, and now my body is once again fair and balanced.

we now return you to your regularly scheduled idiocy. =/

Time: 20:16
Subject: just a pointless rant about a pointless day.
today started off well enough; i got up, went to the gym and afterwards prepared to embark on a day's full of fun and adventure, running errands which included stops at several stores and a trip to rio salado college to take a midterm. unfortunately, said fun and adventure turned into chaos and mayhem.

and the rest of the day's good and/or noteworthy events can be summed up right here:
driving to lowe's for the second trip of the day, i came across a rear-end car accident which had just recently occurred. a yuppie-carrying miata had plowed into the back of some dude's full-size ford pickup. damage to pickup? zero. damage to miata? there goes the front end, and as the middle-aged mid-life crisis fellow stands there in his polo shirt, banging on the hood of what was once his piece-of-shit car, you can just see the look on his face and know exactly what he's thinking: "oh my god, what will i tell buffy?"

went to check out a new martial arts school - they teach the korean art of hwarang-do, and in talking to the instructor about the style, it sounds a lot like a korean version of much of the stuff i was doing at the shao-lin school, but with more grappling thrown in. so i'm going to head back on monday and observe a class - we'll see how it goes.

and now, for the ranting and blathering on
step 1- take midterm. no problem, right? well, as far as the mental aspect of it, sure, it was a piece of cake (save for one mutliple choice question which i know she's going to mark as wrong even though i put the correct answer), but all the fucking writing was a pain in the ass. my hand kept cramping up every second sentence, and i almost ran out of paper in the exam book. yeah, minor complaints, comes with the territory - at least that's what i'd normally say. but then as i was handing in my exam, the testing area secretary handed the girl behind me a printed-out copy of an essay which she'd apparently written while in the testing center. and upon inquiry, i discover that instead of writing out pages and pages of shit, i could've typed it all up at one of the computers and had it printed, thus saving myself about an hour's worth of rapid hand movement. yeah, whatever. moving right along...

the rest of the errand running goes smoothly, and after my final stop i realize that despite the fact that i'd eaten just three hours ago, i'm starving yet again (see previous post on this week's gym-related side effects) so i decide to make the drive out to sekai (yes, the same sushi place that we're all supposed to be going to tomorrow - it's that good) and grab some lunch. tried the spicy tuna roll and the vegas roll (which is different from a kona grill vegas roll) for some variety, and was definitely not disappointed.

upon return home, i proceeded to return to the various home improvement projects that i've been fucking with all week - specifically, replacing the electrical outlets in the part of the house that's been painted / carpeted, getting real speaker mounts for the home theatre/surround speakers, redoing the shelving in my office so that i can turn the closet into a network/server closet, and mounting network jacks in all the new rooms and running cable into said network closet. none of these projects are particularly difficult - IF one has all the right tools / equipment.

so i spent a bit of time fucking with the closet stuff, because i had bought the wrong supports from the last time i'd gone to lowe's, spackling up the old holes and making sure not to spill any on the carpet, and then i went on to mounting speakers.

an important lesson was then learned. one cannot, despite best efforts of hammering, fit a 5/16" drywall anchor into a hole that's only 1/4" in diameter, particularly when there's a hidden stud back in the wall somewhere that your bloody studfinder failed to beep at.

i've also come to the conclusion that the dual-fry principle also applies to lowe's and home depot and other such stores. the dual-fry principle, named here for the first time but discussed many times in the past by _purpleglitter_ and me, is the statement that one cannot go to fry's electronics without having to make a second trip the same or next day. usually this happens because you bought the wrong item, forgot a key accessory that accompanies said item, or, in the worst case, the damn thing just doesn't work. i've been to lowe's 5 times in the last two days, and the latest trip was to solve the aforementioned dimensional problem. if one needs a 5/16" hole, one had better have a 5/16" drill bit. well, now i have one, and i can drill all the 5/16" diameter holes i could possibly want. yay me. oh yeah, and my speakers are mounted.

tomorrow, we finish up the closet shit, the electrical stuff, and move all these damn servers out of my bedroom so i can get a decent night's sleep. wee.
Mood: blah

Date: 2003-08-20 16:36
Subject: it's a gas!
that's right, dear readers, it was only a matter of time before yours truly would have some input on the current gas situation in phoenix. overall, i'd have to say that i agree with spacekadette in that i'm really quite amused by the whole thing. most likely this is due to the fact that i really don't drive that much and enough gas in my tank to last another week or so. however, i do have a few messages that i'd like to pass along to various individuals and groups involved in the whole mess.

• kinder morgan: you didn't HAVE to shut down the pipeline; you could've just turned down the flow of fuel as was recommended by the government regulators. and how often do you imbeciles actually check up on your pipeline, anyway? it's the same situation as the east coast blackout from last week - aging equipment that nobody ever bothers to update finally gives out and the shit hits the fan. as _purpleglitter_ said - "these things aren't meant to last forever, why do you think the egyptians aren't around anymore?" maybe if corporations would consider the long-term benefits of making capital improvements on a slow and consistent basis, it wouldn't all fall apart all at once.
• people who're continually bitching about the high price of gas: get over it. shit happens. and remember, we DO live in a capitalist society, which means that people are free to charge whatever they want for the products they sell. it's called the law of supply and demand - the gas companies control the supply, so they can demand whatever prices they want, and if you don't like it, you're more than free to vote with your pocketbook and refuse to buy some. there's no law against jacking up the price during a time of scarcity or perceived scarcity, at least not in arizona. and you can conserve gas by consolidating your trips, riding with friends, or, if you really need to fill that tank, drive down to casa grande where the gas flows freely and cheaply.
• people who bitch about the long lines at the pump: see above. shit happens. if you really want some gas, you gotta do what you gotta do, at least until this fiasco has been resolved. now, it has been said that many of the people in line for gas these days don't really NEED gas - they're just topping off their tanks, and this seems to be pissing others off. but you know what? those people are the SMART ones, and here's why:

we're all told that as a part of disaster-preparedness we should keep on hand a few days worth of food and water, some flashlights and some batteries, and so on and so forth. now, nobody knows what's going to happen with this gas situation. maybe the pipeline is going to reopen this weekend as planned and the gas will be flowing again. maybe it isn't. maybe they're going to pressure test the damn thing for a second time and it's going to spring another leak. therefore, in light of that uncertainty, it makes much more sense to attempt to buy gas now, when you've got a safety cushion of a half of a tank than to be down to your last gallon and hoping to whatever gods you choose that the pump doesn't run dry while there are still 20 cars in front of you fueling up. it's called being prepared. maybe some of you who are pissing and moaning and spouting off holier-than-thou solutions ought to look into it.

• people who are offering inane solutions to gas conservation issues: there's an interesting concept you should check out - it's called REALITY. i've heard all kinds of crackpot schemes here, but probably the most recockulous comes from those who make comments like "people don't have to live so far away from their jobs" - hello, dumbass! people don't always have the option to live near their places of work, nor the option to work near their places of residence, particularly in a massively spread-out area such as phoenix. mass transit? sure, if we had something that actually qualifies. it continues to boggle the mind that a metro area this large still does not have a decent public transportation system. sure, we've got the bus, but the operative word in the previous sentence is DECENT.

ultimately, this situation will be resolved and gas prices will drop back down to somewhere under two dollars a gallon, and everyone will breathe a collective sigh of exhaust as their cars are fueled up and back on the road, happily smiling to themselves and thinking that the problem has been fixed. but the truth is, we're only examining the symptoms of a larger problem, and i can guarantee that when it's all said and done, the real disease will still be present, lurking in the background. and you know what that is? a complete lack of any sort of coherent energy policy in this country. i've heard talk about trying to build a gas refinery in mobile as a solution to the problem. it isn't. if we really want to make sure that shit like this doesn't continue to happen, then we need to press for alternative energy to become truly mainstream - and by that i mean pervasive and affordable. we need to force auto manufacturers to develop more fuel efficient cars - and not listen to the bullshit excuses when they say that they can't do it, and if they don't, then we need to require the government to force them to do it. the technology has been around for at least 20 years, it's time to make use of it and stop being slaves to the big oil companies. and as an added benefit, we wouldn't be as dependent on foreign oil - and then shrubya wouldn't have to bomb arabs to keep our SUVs on the road.

Date: 2003-08-21 21:36
Subject: the daily gripe
this is old news, but i saw something about it online today and it jogged my memory, so here's today's rant...

kobe bryant has been accused of sexual assault by a 19-year-old resort employee. now, i'm sure everyone who follows the news and even people who don't follow it have probably heard something about this case. but how many of you know who the accuser is? unless you've specifically looked for that information, chances are that you don't know, because of the way colorado's rape laws are written to allow the name of the accuser to remain private. while i can understand the logic behind that sort of provision in a law, i think that it smacks of star chamber tactics and is absolutely contrary to principles of fairness, justice, and the right to a public trial. if you're going to accuse someone of a crime, ms. katelyn faber, then stand up and show some fucking honor.

i don't give a shit how bad the supposed crime against you is - being able to make accusations against someone, thus causing that person, his reptuation, and his actions being subject to intense public and media scrutiny while you and your allegations (which may or may not have any validity in the final analysis) remain largely confidential is a travesty of justice. we, the public, deserve to have access to ALL THE FACTS, not just some of the facts, and thus be able to make up our own minds. we can't do that when the spectre of secrecy haunts the proceedings.

and for the record, do i think kobe's guilty? i don't know. i wasn't there. if i had to decide, i'd say that he's probably not. did he have sex with the girl? probably - he's a professional basketball player, and very few of them can keep it in their pants. but was it felonious sexual assault? i doubt it. with all the money and prestige that kobe bryant has, i can't imagine why he'd have to use force to get some pussy. either way, he's fucked.

Date: 2003-08-25 14:13
Subject: skule daze r hear agin
yep, that's right ladies and gentlemen, the fall semester has begun, and so far i've managed to make it through the first day without falling asleep or skipping class, but it's definitely been a challenge. there's something that's most likely inherently sick and wrong about having one's first class at 7:30 in the morning and not being done until 12:30. but i guess that's what happens when one is actually making an effort to try to graduate sometime in the near future. so, this semester's lineup is... JPN 101 (japanese 101), POS 494 (the arab/israeli conflict), MAT 443 (intro to abstract algebra) and POS 471 (constitutional law 1). as of this point i'm only expecting that one of these classes (POS 494) is going to require a substantial amount of work, because there's a lot of writing to do. the rest of them are going to fall under varying degrees of cakewalk. that's ok, though, because i'm still finishing up two internet classes at rio salado and probably will add on one or two more. but, for now, i think it's time for an afternoon nap. getting up at 6am is going to take some adjustment.

Time: 17:31
Subject: sho yano: is young too young?
while we're on the topic of school, i saw this on cnn.com today. it's the story of a 12-year-old kid who's starting his first semester at medical school in chicago, after already graduating from college in three years summa cum laude. i don't really know how i feel about this. i mean, obviously anyone who could score a 1500 out of 1600 on his SAT at eight years old and do all the stuff that he's done is clearly brilliant and has an intellect which should be nutured and given the space to become all that it can become. and if his parents are supportive and he's doing what he wants to do and the financial resources exist for him to pursue these sorts of things, then that's all great...but... i can't help but wonder how well his social development is proceeding. sure, he might be able to point out every nerve and major artery in the human body and explain in painstaking detail the difference between the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems, but what about growing up, socializing with his peers, that sort of thing? the few people i've known with anywhere near this level of intelligence have undeniably been quite lacking in the social-skills and common sense departments. it's as if one is designing a role-playing character and only has a certain number of ability points, with all of them going into intelligence and only the minimum into every other attribute.

so, mr. sho yano, good luck in your studies, but make sure to get your head out of the books once in awhile and learn from the real world. and throw a few snowballs at other kids your age. it's fun and enjoyment for the whole family.
.......
all that being said, it does lead me to musings... if you've got a mentally-normal (and by this i mean not developmentally-disabled or otherwise retarded) child in the right environment, surrounded by books and people who love teaching and learning, and can build on the things that the kid is interested in, how far can that kid go? for example, when i was a kid, i was all about learning new stuff - and i was a few grades ahead of my class in math and reading, and i went to the library and read books on stuff that interested me, and blah blah blah. but, there wasn't anyone in my family who was particularly well-versed in any of the things that i enjoyed. my mom would drive me to the library, help me carry the books to the car, but if i found myself nose-deep in an astronomy book, i wouldn't be able to go ask her (or anyone else) questions about the nature of the universe. so looking back on it, some 20 years later, i sometimes wonder how much more i might know or how much farther i might've gotten in a shorter amount of time had the environment been different. then again, maybe i'd have lost my mind and gone insane sometime around 15 and columbined my high school even before columbine. who knows?

Date: 2003-08-29 13:57
Subject: another year over...
yeah, so yesterday i turned 28. thanks to everyone who remembered. and for those of you who i couldn't legitimately expect to remember, since you don't know me that well or at all, you're off the hook until next year. =)

in other news... _purpleglitter_ and i are off to vegas for the weekend for some fun and insanity. we're going to check out the new cirque du soleil show, zumanity, and see if we can get the bellagio to give us lots of brightly colored round pieces of plastic that we can then exchange for pieces of paper with dead white men on them. woo!