So yeah. I took a month off. SUE ME!

No, for real. I was home for three weeks. The first week was pretty crazy becuase Erin was graduating and I’d just gotten back and stuff. The third week was equally as nuts because I was getting ready to move back to Kirksville into the house, and I decided that’d be a good week to work too. (I really have no good excuse for the middle week…)

Contrary to what seemed to be my apparent demise at the close of Humans vs. Zombies, I managed to survive the semester. Just barely. Things got pretty rough. I referred to this as my semester of “lasts”, as I would be escaping German, Math, and Chemistry after I’d completed these final courses. They weren’t going down without a fight though. At present, I’ve still yet to check my grades. Given how battered I was at the end of the semester, I don’t really want to see them just yet.

In other news, I turned twenty! I did.
Instead of taking the time to wonder aloud as to how crazy the past five years have been, and wonder how crazy the next five will be, I’m going to recount a lighter aspect of birthdays: GIFTS.

One gift, actually, stood out from the rest in its grandeur. Yamato is a Japanese toy company that makes products from the Macross anime series. Undoubtedly, most of you haven’t heard of that do to a big licensing quagmire related to its release and syndication in the United States as something called “Robotech”. None of that’s really important though.

What is important is that it’s the best toy I’ve ever had.
Imagine a transformer, but then make it perfect.
I present to you the YF-19 Variable Fighter!

The first few are pictures of the ‘fighter’ mode, which is a typical plane. The last one is the robot form, called ‘battroid’.

I even bought some add-ons for it (more armor, rocket booster), but I currently lack pictures of those, so maybe later. Case in point, my toy-addiction has evolved to a new level. I was looking into perhaps purchasing him a friend, but the First National Bank for Tom’s Childish Obsessions/Hobbies is a little strapped at the moment, so this is a while off.

In other news directly after my birthday, Erin graduated from high school! Goodness! Go her, being all competent and whatnot. She even gave the super-important speech at the ceremony and did the best job I’ve ever seen one of those done! And this is the third year in a row I’ve been there. So that was really cool. She also had a giant party at the house, the day I got home from school, which was a little surreal.

But there was Jackstack Barbeque, so I got over it pretty quick.

The whole thing was just another item in the long (and growing ever longer) list of things that make me feel old. It’s already been two entire years since I sulked across that stage to get my empty diploma holder. They mailed the actual diploma to me later… though now that I think about it, I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen it myself. Huh. Hope I didn’t lose it…

On a final note, before heading back up to Kirksville to move into the house (which will be another entry unto itself, with some forthcoming photographic tributes to its state of disrepair), Ethan, Kathryn, Lizz and I all saw Death Cab for Cutie in concert at City Market!

The concert was really good. The venue, City Market, always leaves something to be desired… Given that it’s you and a zillion other people crammed into this out-door space at the end of May when it’s just starting to get up to that characteristically mid-western “hotter than hell” range. Ick. But I got a shirt, and despite a few close calls and head-kicks, we all maintained consciousness throughout the show. [For more details and the set-list, check out the Kansas City Star's blog post about the concert.]

Here at the bottom I guess I should mention, for posterity’s sake, that the past few days have been pretty hard for me. I’m going through some radical changes in my social life. Things that stayed the same for so long are now suddenly different. I suppose, in spite of everything, that I’m handling it OK.

I am just in awe, truthfully, that I’m even capable of feeling so much pain.
That’s really the only surprise of the whole ordeal…

Lest I get even more DeviantArt than I already have, I think I’ll stop there. I’ve sortof made it a policy to not discuss my intimate personal life on the Blog, and this is no cause to change that. Suffice to say that today’s song says pretty much all you’d need to know to get the general idea of what a mess my life’s been the past few days (and will presumably be to degrading extents in the foreseeable future)…

I took a little break (Past Three Weeks), but now I’m getting back into the swing of things. Finished my first week of the Spring Semester, which is shaping up to be quite an undertaking.

• Modern Physics-
  We’re gearing up to pick back up where we started. Seems like things should be more applied though, which suits me more than the crazy theoretical stuff.

• Mathematical Physics-
  By some miracle, I’ve seen everything on the first half of the syllabus for this class previously. That should help to offset the fact that we move at break-neck pace, and Taner “…likes to give hard tests.” ehhhh….

• Ordinary Differential Equations-
  My mathematics professor from last semester’s husband is teaching my math course this semester. How odd. This stuff seems difficult, but it is probably my last hourah/foray into formal Mathematics, so I can’t help but be a little excited.

• Intermediate German II-
  Another final surge in a given discipline, this is my last German class. Thank god. I’ve progressed too far and learned too little… eventually they’re going to figure out that I don’t belong in there. Hopefully I can keep up the charade just a little longer.

• General Chemistry II-
  Speaking of “last time I will ever do this ever”, this is a similar case to the above. My last formal Chemistry course, and I don’t know quite enough to be in it. I have about a month’s worth of material to self-teach myself before I’ll be comfortably caught up with the class, by my estimate.

  Also I haven’t done Chemistry in seven months because I hate it.
  I like the new teacher though… Dr. Baughman makes the occasional Star Wars Joke, which I to respect, regardless of how it’s executed.

So we were eating some meal a few days ago, and I noticed some ROTC kid in his camouflage (a word I still rely on the computer to spell correctly for me…), and I noticed something that had kinda been bothering me for a while. When I was growing up, camo looked like this. It’s all big and blotchy, and in non-military settings, tacky as hell. (SEE: Every third patron of the Kirksville Wal-Mart…)

This guy though… he looked like he fell through a PhotoShop hackjob. His camo was all pixelated. Which seemed odd to me. I know the Army was all about being super high-tech (Thanks, Don Rumsfeld), but digitizing the camo seemed a little excessive to me, if purely for the sake of. However, a little research revealed that this is not entirely the case.

There’s apparently actually some advantage of looking like a blown-up thumbnail image, so good for them.
I still think camo’s ugly, but if it gets them less shot, maybe that’s an acceptable trade-off.
[I would like you to note here my support of the troops, for future political purposes]

In other news, since coming back with my guitar, Ian and I have been working on some songs. We’re putting together a pretty rockin’ Radiohead cover set that spans nearly all of their albums. I’m really excited about it. If we do a good enough job, eventually at the end of the semester, we’re going to give recording it a shot.

After that, who knows? At this point, the premise of our musical endeavor [please note the lack of the use of the word "band"] is do this Radiohead thing. If that goes well, we might pick another artist, and pick our favorite stuff from their catalog, and cover it. I’m really excited for it to work, plus it’s got me playing guitar regularly for the first time since before I left for college, which is a skill I’m glad hasn’t deteriorated too terribly. Not that I rocked that hard before, but I do enjoy playing.

Tonight was the Nevada/South Carolina double-header of the Primary season, which was pretty anti-climactic. I turned the TV on at around 8:30, and everything had already happened. Go Hillary, because I think you’re awesome, and you won! Go Huckabee because you’re a hillarious tool who almost won! Go Rudy Guliani for phoning yet another crucial primary in!

But more on that later.
I’ve got a gigantic political segment brewing, chronicling my journey to Iowa Caucus earlier this year, up through the present when I post it. It’s been tumultuous and pretty fun to watch, and I’ve got plenty to comment/complain on, so get excited.

Sorry for the delay again.
Once I get that next entry out, we should be getting a good pace started for the new year.
Or at least I’ll try.
Becuase it’s worked so damn well the past six years I’ve tried to make that a New Years Resolution thing.

[For future reference: This year's goals were to remove a certain curse word from my vocabulary permanently (it's a bad one I hardly ever say, but feel terrible when I do, and it never gets the hilarious reaction I'm going for, so off with it!), and to floss more, as well as previously mentioned: blogging more.]

ALSO: If my grades are really awesome by mid-terms, I’m thinking of applying for a job that I could hold through the summer when I’ll be here for additional classes. In case you were wondering: THERE ARE NO TOWER CLEANERS IN KIRKSIVLLE.

…thank heavens…

Things I dislike:

1. Burning the HELL out of the roof of my mouth… on poorly-warmed Pizza Rolls
2. PIZZA ROLLS. They’re disgusting, and impossible to properly warm.
3. Pre-Finals stress inevitably morphing into Actual-Finals stress
4. Everyone taking up all the computer labs because they put their work off ’til the last week of class
5. Not getting a computer because I put off some work until the last week of class…

It’s been a rough week. And it is only Wednesday Thursday.

On Monday I was just poking around the internet, reading some stuff about Radiohead, and I stumbled across this:

It is the music video for the single “Pyramid Song” off of “AMNESIAC”.
I really like the way they did this, despite it being the exact opposite imagery that I had in my head when I listened to that song on my own (fire, river Styx, hella explosions everywhere but totally muted ’cause they’re so far away… that kinda thing). Watch it, it’s neat.

Speaking of neat things, did you know there is a Watered-Down-Wikipedia? It is called the “Simple English Wikipedia,” and it seems to be written for kids and people who don’t speak a lot of English. My initial reaction was “How incredibly dumb. What use does that have?” Well, the English one does squat for me when I can understand full and well the fully-fledged one. However, I had the idea to check the German one.

Which I understand almost.
Which made me shut up and realize the value that it has.

So I’ve been poking around on that, trying to hone my language skills auf Deutsch. It’s been kinda fun. I suggest you check out your language of choice and give it a spin. Es ist spass.

Most of the remainder of this deals with Evangelion comments I have.

<evangelion>

I kinda forgot about EVA for a few months there. Which is cool, because nothing’s really been happening. However, I got to wondering about it today and decided to check up on it. As near as I can tell, there is no good cut of the small preview for Rebuild 2.0. The best I’ve seen are fans who’ve seen it, and approximate what they saw with old footage from the series and stills from released production work for the new stuff.

Below is a set I dug up from some blog, and I wanted to offer some comments or speculation.

The top two frames deal, I believe, directly with Unit 05. This is one of the promised “New Mechs” we’ve heard were coming. So far, it’s been described as “provisional”. I have no clue how to interpret that. Did they just scrap it together after Unit 04 is lost and Unit 03 is destroyed by Ikari? I don’t know. Hopefully we’ll get a little more to go on than that. And the question also remains: who’s piloting it? I’ve also seen it identified as 06 in some YouTube trailers, but the description I read stated that it was the one with “extended arms”, which fits that picture pretty well.

According to what I’ve found, the other Eva and it’s pilot come from the Moon. Which is pretty wild. To give some context, apparently 1.0 ends with SELEE meeting with Kaworu on their lunar base. I wasn’t aware they even had one, but I’ll roll with it. It will certainly change the dynamic in episode 22 where Rei throws the Lance into orbit to kill Arael. It eventually lands on the Moon, which really angered SELEE in the series because they had no way of retrieving it. Maybe this will be a non-issue now that they have a base up there…

In any case. To the focus: Eva 06 (I believe pictured in the third row, left) and it’s pilot (bottom row) will come from the Moon (pictured with blood all over… which is curious, but not all that surprising, given Eva…) and land on the Earth (depicted as a cross-shaped explosion). How or why they were up there in the first place still remains to be seen.

However, I’m for it. They had to tred very carefully in making this so as to not disturb many of the original elements. (It’s interesting how well some things match up though. In the aforementioned episode 22, Hyuga mentions that the parts for partially-constructed Units 05 and 06, the ones which feature in this new segment, were scrapped to repair Units 00 and 02. Huh. I guess NERV is less thrifty in this new version) But I’m a huge fan of the lunar base. EVA in space sounds pretty rockin’ to me.

Oh! I almost forgot. The little blob-dudes are “ADAM” according to the trailer. More than one of him? I don’t know… this is all pretty crazy. Good of them to expand on Adam/Lilith though. That part always was a bit sketchy, despite numerous iterations in media and fan-formed-theories to explain them.

If you can’t tell, I’m already getting WAY excited about this, despite probably having to wait another few years before it makes its way over to the United States. It will eventually though, and it’s fun to follow this from its formative stages.

I think that’s it.

</evangelion>

So, not much else for today. I need to get some sleep, because tomorrow is the grand finale of Demo Thursdays for Sami’s class!

P.S.: How about that thrashout at the end of My Iron Lung? I like the first half of the song a lot better, but I feel like the second half getting all crazy is a nice counterpoint to offset the calm of the opening. Just a thought.

So, all types of things going on recently. I would make some excuse that I’ve been busy, but it would be a lie. I have about as much free time as ever, I just do not blog too often. As per usual, I am working on fixing this.

Tonight, I chose to work on that at 2 AM.

Our first order of business will be that I have accomplished a lifelong dream.
Please check this One Webcomic I Read to fully understand the gravity of the situation. It’s like that.

If I permitted myself to title my blogs things non-song-titles, today’s would be called “Eigenblog”.
You know not what that means, for I doubt anyone has ever said that word before. It’s OK, becuase I am going to explain: In math there are these fancy things called eigenvectors and eigenvalues. They’re special because:

If you “operate” on an eigenvector, you will always get the eigenvector back, multiplied by some number, called an eigenvalue. It’s still lost on me where this slick math business comes from, but eigenstuff is very useful. *halt: why are we talking about eigenstuff?*

It is a lifelong dream of mine to learn a single thing that will be applicable in every single one of my courses in a given semester. Think of a given semester, and try to imagine what you could POSSIBLY learn that would be the same in all classes. Crazy, huh? Well it’s always been something I wanted to happen.

Last week, it did.

Linear Algebra: We learned the formal approach to eigenvectors/values. Basically, how you make them work with matrices, and expand them into eigenspaces and such. [Refer to Wikipedia's exhaustive Eigenspace article for more information. Isn't it odd how irritatingly formal and lengthy their math/science articles are? I feel it is so.]

Modern Physics: Technically, I first learned of eigenthings in this course. They are useful in determining if a given wave function is well-behaved for a given operator. [A poorly behaved wave function is not an eigenvector, and thus gets no eigendinner before it goes to eigenbed.]

Vibrations and Waves: I think this is the first place where maybe I can make you understand about eigenstuff. Say I have three masses, linked together with springs. Say I pull one of them back, and let it go. Eigenstuff tells me how they will all slosh back-and-forth… which is useful is you’re into that kindof thing. [I am not, but that's cool, becuase the semester is almost over]

German: Eigen is the German word for “correct”, or “true”. Eigentlich is the word for “actually”. This is said frequently in German class.

At this point, you may still be like “whatever.” Some weird German math guy named this thing in German. It’s used in science. That’s gotta happen often enough, right? So why should you be impressed?

Political Science: We are learning to do linear regression analysis, which is essentially creating a line of best fit. If I have all these points in roughly one shape, what is the line that is closest to all of those points at once? A regression line. I asked one day, “What if the pattern isn’t linear. What is the distribution is parabolic, or a cubic function?” Answer? “Well, that requires matrix algebra manipulation using something called an EIGENVECTOR, so we won’t be doing that for this class.”

Flawless victory. The same concept in ALL five of my classes this semester within a week. Like I said, it was something of a dream that is now a reality, and I’m glad I could share it with you.

After that amazing sequence of events, I went home for Thanksgiving. It was good, all-in-all, but kinda weird. I wanna say “Thanks,” to everyone that came over to my house for the Plaza Lights! I like keeping that tradition alive, even if everyone seemed kinda worn-out this year. I’ll make a point to plan activities next year. Also: the mayor’s Christmas tree lighting was neat too. The tree is all wicked-tall and from Oregon… as most wicked-tall things are.

Aside from that… things are all different back home. Not in like a really awful way, but it’s just not the same. I was really trying to cling to the notion that when everyone got back from college, it would like quasi-high-school again. That expectation is now completely lost, and probably for the better.

Things are different now.
Saying more than that would do the situation an injustice, so I’ll leave it at that.

I am right now in the middle of reading a webcomic. This is a pretty bad time for me in truth. Auf Deutsch, this would be called “meine Tage,” which is a German euphanism for a woman’s menstral cycle. I guess I just mean to say that I am not entirely myself during this time.

I read a single strip from a comic, like it, and hit the “return to first” button. Next thing I know, I have 6 years of 3-comics-per-week to make it through before I’m caught up to the regular pace of production. You simply can’t take that all in one sitting. But you certainly can get sucked in for an hour or so, which is dangerous. Especially when by “or so,” I mean “three hours,” which is not something I’m really proud of.

It’s called Achewood. I really, REALLY enjoy it.
Lizz cares for it less, because she dislikes the style.

Thankfully, I am almost caught up. It has caused most of my sleep-lacking evenings.
I must also apologize if my rhetoric, vocabulary, or cadence seems off.
Reading stupid comics for hours on end gets me talking all like the characters and such.
[a personal favorite]

So here we are, coming into the home-stretch of the semester. It’s a very exciting time. Thankfully it is NOT shaping up to be like last month’s “Perfect Storm”. Same amount of work, but it’s spread out more or less evenly over the next week, which is manageable, and at the very least… fair.

However, it will stand in stark contrast to the past week, when I did virtually nothing.
Which was rockin’. I’ve gotten really good at enjoying my fleeting periods that lack work.

If I’m not stressing over something though, it seems like everyone else is.
Glad break’s coming coon.

A week from today, I’ll be on my way home to enjoy a 5-day weekend, complete with seeing friends and family, culminating in the Plaza-Lights-Lighting which somehow turned into kindof a big thing over the years. I’m really excited. I just read in the paper today that they’re going to have, for the first time in my recent memory, new lights! They’ll be under the bridges, and made from LED lamps, making them way more efficient, which is great for everyone.

After that though… it’s back to work. We have one week of class left, in which I have a gigantic project due, and after which is finals. Which I should maybe study for. But then… CHRISTMAS BREAK. I won’t have to think about a mathematical proof, a Gaussian wave packet distribution for a normalized wave function, the Eigenvalue equation for an oscillating system with n degrees of freedom, mein kopf schmertz von ein Deutsch Professor, oder whether or not a given set of variables has a strong association and is statistically siginificant.

I’m sick of that crap, no joke. I have occasional moments where I’m really interested in my classes, but they’re quickly crushed beyond recognition by the fact that I, for all my intuition and clever wit, have to work really hard to stay on top of stuff. I’ll do what I have to, but I get tired just like everyone else, and so I’m looking forward to a) No Class, and to a lesser extent b) Different Classes at semester, which I recently registered for:

• Phys 251: Modern Physics II
• Phys 382: Math Physics
• Math 365: Ordinary Differential Equations
• Chem 121: Chemical Principles II
• Germ 231: Intermediate German II

Some curious news about what’s happening to me long-term: I will, in a matter of days, be signing a lease for a house in which myself and four other persons will live! I’m going to be the first one to live there because I’m going to be taking courses and *fingers crossed* doing research here over the summer.

For my parents, I took a few pictures of the place:

• The upstairs on the “boys” side
• The upstairs bedroom on the “boys” side
• The upstairs closet, etc. on the same side
• The bathroom/laundry room combo, on the downstairs side
• There’s a short list of things that are better and a refrigerator
• This is the outside. And Rob.

I didn’t take pictures of the bedrooms, because they had occupants, and taking pictures of them seemed particularly creepy, especially on the girl’s side. So sorry about that.

I should clarify: When I say “side”, I’m referring to the fact that our house is an ex-duplex, in that they just knocked down the wall in the middle and leave the other front door locked all the time. There’s five of us, so the two girls will take one “side”, and us boys will take another.

So more info on that as it comes. It seems crazy worrying about this in what was October, but I’m glad it’s done.

Back in the present, this last week was witness to the exciting game “Zombies vs. Humans” on Truman’s campus. It’s a pretty cool concept. Everyone signs up and gets a bandanna on their arms because they’re Human. One person is selected as the initial zombie, and they infect other people by touching them. Then those people put their bandannas on their head recognizing their now status as Zombies.

Humans can fight back by stunning a Zombie for 15 minutes using either socks or Nerf guns. Yes. Nerf Guns. It goes without saying that I am now obsessed with this game: the prospect of getting to sneak around campus in an ultra-paranoid state packing Nerf heat in order to combat the undead is VERY enticing. I’ve already got my Nerf gun purchased and am working on some modifications to make sure that I can give the undead their due when I get to play next semester.

[By The Way: There is an insane amount of literature in the form of archived forum posts concerning the ways and means of modding nerf guns into some pretty powerful armaments. Not like getting them to shoot rocks or anything, but more like getting them to shoot custom-made foam darts 100+ feet in good weather conditions. I mean... damn.]

While I’m here, I want to throw up a couple of other pictures.
The other day Lizz had a hairdo that just screamed to me, “Hey! I look like Princess Leia.” And I felt like sharing that with you. (Isn’t she cute? In a really “gallaxy far, far away” kinda way?)

So. That was a little longer than I meant for it to be, but there you go.
I hope everyone else can hang in there long enough to make it until Thanksgiving.