Time capsule 2000

My weekend was pretty good. On Saturday, my sister and I went to visit our friend Kevin in Miami, which was overrun with New Orleans Saints fans who had come for the Super Bowl. We had a semi-fancy lunch at Perricone's and went to some less touristy places I hadn't been to before, including Simpson Park and the City Cemetery. We also met my sister's friend Jennifer, but we didn't have much time to hang out with her because we had to get back home for our friend Mark's party. Mark will be joining the Navy in a few days, so it was good to see him one more time before he goes out.

I got back to Gainesville yesterday evening. I missed most of the first half of the Super Bowl, and I was kind of bummed about that, but I don't really know why. It's not like I watch pro football the rest of the year, and I don't even like the commercials. Well, I like to think I don't, but I have a few favorites. I wasn't rooting for either team, but I arbitrarily bet my sister (for no money) that New Orleans would win 23-17. When they were trailing 17-16 at the end of the game and then got a touchdown, I was arbitrarily ecstatic, but then they went for two and got a pick-six, and the rest is history.

Ten years ago today, I joined Where's George?, a site for tracking where your dollar bills go after you spend them. I was heavily active during the first half of the 2000s, but my interest waned after that, and I haven't entered many bills into the system since then. I look fondly on WG as my first online community and the one I've participated in the most. I figured the least I could do would be to drop by and say hello on the forums, so I just did that, and I hope to hear back from some familiar faces... I mean, nicknames.

Speaking of things that happened ten years ago, my old school's time capsule should be opened soon.

In early 2000, when I was in the fifth grade, my teacher asked me to write a message for a time capsule that our class would be making. So I wrote something like "People of the future, we are Mrs. Sgroe's fifth-grade class at St. Elizabeth of Hungary Catholic School in Pompano Beach, Florida..." Then she said that we would be making a contribution to the school's time capsule, so the extra details were unnecessary. She had me rewrite it with a couple of other people.

Later, we gathered in the school auditorium/cafeteria to seal the time capsule. But first, the principal opened the previous time capsule, which had been sealed in 1990. I don't think it was actually buried; I think it was just kept in a closet in the office or something like that. But it was probably for the better as the box contained some interesting finds: a Statue of Liberty foam hat, a Madonna poster from when she looked like Marilyn Monroe, some newspapers with articles about the cold winter of 1989-90, and a hand-designed t-shirt saying "We love the '80s, the '80s were the best!"

Oddly enough, I have no recollection of what anyone put in the new time capsule except for a picture of my class and the handwritten message. I guess the artifacts from the '90s were too banal for me to bother to remember. So when the faculty and students at St. Elizabeth-St. Joseph School, as it's now called, open that box in the office, it'll be a surprise for me and most everyone else.

(Well, I hope they still have the time capsule. The faculty suffered a large shake-up during the past decade, and it wouldn't surprise me if the new folks took their predecessors' old boxes of junk to the curb. That would suck.)

Wired writer Evan Ratliff tried to vanish. Here's an interesting article about his experiences forging a new identity and staying on the run from readers looking out for him.

A life worth remembering

I'm tired. When I'm tired, I don't want to do anything but sleep. It doesn't matter if I have to do homework or clean my room or whatever. Sleep wins almost every time, or else I don't feel good and I'm not fun to be around. (Andy, who traveled throughout Europe with me last summer, knows this. Let's give him a round of applause.) So I'll try to be brief.

On Sunday night, I got the horrible news that a girl I went to school with for many years had been killed. I was stunned. I'll be the first to say that I didn't know her very well, but I knew her for a long time. I went to pre-school, kindergarten, elementary school, junior high, and high school with her.

I just did a little fact-checking, as I like to do when I'm writing a post. I went through my pre-school yearbook (yeah, I have one) and found that she was in my sister's and my class. Now it's a little haunting to see the group picture. There we all are, captured for a moment in time. Who could have known back then her life would be cut short so soon?

She went to St. Elizabeth of Hungary Catholic School from kindergarten through sixth grade. The memories from her last year stick out most for me. It's clear to me now that she wanted little more than to be liked. She had friends, to be sure, but I don't think she got the respect she deserved.

I didn't see her much when we went to Pompano Beach High School together. Probably the last time I talked to her was at a football game in my freshman year. Later, I heard that things were rough for her, although I'm not sure how much of what I heard was true. She gave birth to a daughter and loved her dearly.

In recent years, most of what I knew about her I gleamed from friends and from her Facebook page. Her "About Me" section began:

My name is Misha and before I get into anything you should know that you know absolutely nothing. No matter what you think, see, or heard, you no absolutely NOTHING about me...

I thought it was funny at the time, but it's true. I really didn't know her. So in a way, it might seem odd that I'm going on about this terrible thing that happened, but she was almost always a small part of my life. She was always there, and then, suddenly, she wasn't. It definitely has made me think about how it could happen to anyone at any time.

Misha had recently moved to Louisiana. According to some news articles and her obituary, she pulled over on the highway to check on another driver who had just been involved in a hit-and-run crash. After walking over to the other car, she herself was hit by a passing car whose driver has not yet been found.

I'm home now (that's how I have access to my pre-school yearbook; I don't carry it around with me at all times). I'm home because my friend Mark is joining the Navy, and he invited my sister and me to his going-away party, which is tomorrow. Misha's funeral and a candlelight vigil are also tomorrow.

I would like to go to the vigil if I can, but if not, I've at least been reminded about how fragile life can be and what a good example Misha was for all of us. In spite of all she had been through, she stayed strong and still went out of her way to a good deed that unfortunately led to her untimely death.

That wasn't brief, but I think it was just right.

Kate's visit, part five

I was tired on Monday night, the 18th, but Kate had been wanting to jam with me and Andy. She had brought sheet music for a couple of songs—"Sunshine of Your Love" and "Tears in Heaven"—and we played them in Andy's room. Kate played Andy's keyboard, Andy played his bass, and I played my guitar. Kate also sang on "Sunshine of Your Love."

The next day was the Kate's last full day with me. She and I had Krishna lunch on campus again. After lunch, she spent a while in one of the computer labs making arrangements for the last leg of her trip, a few more days in New York. Later, she joined me for my Databases class.

In the evening, Andy, Kate, and I had a good video chat with Kate's French-Canadian friend. We mostly used Esperanto, but we slipped into English sometimes because her friend was more of a beginner. After that, Kate said her goodbyes to Andy in case we didn't get a chance to see him in the morning.

Later, I tried figuring out how we would get to the Greyhound station by bus (it's conveniently not located along a bus route). After much frustration in trying to figure out the best combination of buses, which would have taken at least an hour and a half anyway, Kate suggested that we call for a taxi.

Kate woke up at 6:15 on Wednesday, January 20. Her alarm woke me up, but I lay in bed for a while, trying to go back to sleep. At 7:00, I got up and prepared her usual breakfast of bread and cheese. Even though she was packing her things frantically, I thought we would be late for our cab, which was arriving at 7:30. But somehow, she managed to pull it off, and we were early. She got another chance to say goodbye to Andy, and we went outside, where the taxi was waiting for us.

It was cold and foggy, and I couldn't remember the last time I was out that early. The drive to the bus station seemed very long. It was essentially a drive across town through some minor streets. Along one of the streets were statues of the planets in planetary order. I hadn't seen them since my visits to Gainesville as a child, and since I had moved here to go to college, I had always wondered where they were.

The cab driver made small talk, asking how we knew each other and what Kate thought of the country and things like that. I didn't really feel like answering questions, but I did my best. After all, being a taxi driver has to be one of the most boring jobs. At one point, he got a call on his cell phone, apparently from his son. "Not now," he said, "Daddy's got people in the car." I didn't ask him about it.

Finally, we arrived at the bus station. I had never been to a Greyhound station before. It was pretty much a large room with a ticket desk, some rows of benches, and a few other people. It didn't look fancy, but I should have expected as much. We were about a half an hour early, so I sat next to Kate for the last time, away from the TV that was competing for my attention.

We exchanged words. I could see the tears coming down from her eyes. I was starting to get emotional too. This was it.

The bus came. We shared one last kiss, and she got on.

She sat by the window where I could see her. I fought back tears. But she smiled.

She smiled, and I smiled back. The bus moved forward. I followed it through the parking lot until it stopped at the street. She smiled at me again.

The bus turned right and drove away.

I walked the other way, toward the nearest major road, where I could hopefully catch a bus to campus. Cars zoomed past me. It was still kind of cold.

I saw Firpo's, a diner that we used to go to when I visited Gainesville as a kid. At least, it used to be Firpo's. It was something different now.

Not far away was my bus stop. According to the bus schedule that was posted there, I had missed the bus by five minutes and would have to wait 55 minutes for the next one. I decided to keep walking instead.

One of my pet peeves is when people treat walking as a last resort, a mode of transportation for only the most destitute and desperate—worse, even, than riding the bus. People are always oddly fascinated if I tell them I spent more than 15 minutes walking to get somewhere, as if using my legs as nature intended were something I should be ashamed of. But what could be more beneficial? It's good exercise, it's entertaining, and you're actually getting something done.

So, I kept walking. I had never seen this part of town. It looked like a lot of other parts, with gas stations, small strip malls, and even some neighborhoods. I passed by a historic house. I had never heard of it, but it was apparently one of the oldest in the city, dating from before the Civil War. I never would have been able to read the historical marker if I were in a car or a bus.

I kept walking. On the opposite side of the road, there was a real estate agent's office with a marquee in front. I expected it to say something about houses, but it said:

LET GO OF
WHAT EVER HOLDS
YOU BACK

Walking further, I made it to University Avenue and started walking toward campus. This was the way I had walked with Kate when I first met up with her 12 days ago, and now I was making the same walk alone.

I made it to campus and to the building where I work. I had been walking for a little less than an hour. The sun had come up some more, but it was still early for me; I wasn't supposed to be at work for another hour. But I got started early.

My room seems quiet and empty without Kate here. All of her stuff is gone except for a few things that now decorate my room: the monthly calendar of St. Petersburg, a few more yearly calendars printed on single sheets of paper, a New York City subway map, a tiger-shaped bag containing coins from around the world, and a couple of record albums: a Soviet Beatles compilation album called A Taste of Honey and Paul McCartney's Снова в СССР.

On my desk, she left a sticky note that she had written on early in her stay. It reads:

Life is a movie
without
a happy end.

Kate's visit, part four

Kate, Andy, and I got bus tickets to South Florida for Friday, January 15. My last class ended at 3:50, and the bus would leave from campus at 4:30, so I packed some clothes and other necessities in my backpack and carried them around with me throughout the day. After my class, Kate met up with me, and we found Andy at the parking lot where the buses were.

We got comfortable in the back row, which conveniently had three seats and inconveniently was next to the restroom. The bus got off to a late start, so we laughed and joked in Esperanto to pass the time. In fact, we spoke Esperanto during the whole bus ride, to the probable confusion of those who anyone who was trying to listen. (I doubt anyone was. Everyone turned on, tuned in, and dropped out.)

We got off at Pompano Beach, where my parents were waiting to pick up me and Kate. One of the first things we did when we got home was make some tea for Kate. I wasn't even sure if my parents would have any tea, but they did, so that was good. It was already late by then, so after making plans for the weekend, we just went to bed. My sister had let Kate sleep in her room, which was very nice of her. (Thanks, Kristen!)

On Saturday, we got off to kind of a slow start, which was fine by me. But it was going to be kind of a big day. There's a lighthouse near my home, and it's only open to the public a few days a year. I had never been there. As it happened, they were giving tours on Saturday, so my mom took Kate and me to the waterfront hotel where tour boats were departing. Soon, we were heading down the Intracoastal, on our way to the lighthouse.

I thought there would be a guided tour, but after a guide talked about the statue of Ed Hamilton, the barefoot mailman of local lore, we were left to just wander around. There wasn't a lot of space for wandering, though. There were a couple of cottages that were off-limits because they were being used as vacation homes for Coast Guardsmen and their families, apparently. That pretty much left the lighthouse.

Of course, we wanted to go up to the top, but the lighthouse had a maximum capacity of about twelve people, so we had to wait a while first. Finally, we were allowed to enter, and we made our way up the narrow spiral staircase. Soon, we were on the observation deck just below the light. It was extremely windy up there, but in spite of that, we managed to stay a little while and take some photos. I tried a couple of panoramas. This one turned out better (click for huge version). The boat in the corner is a nice touch, if I do say so myself.

After a while, we made our way down to the ground. One of the Coast Guard Reserve people hanging around the entrance saw that I was wearing a Beatles shirt, and we had a little conversation about the Beatles. The lighthouse people took our photo, and they said they'd put it in the next issue of their newsletter.

There wasn't much left to do, so we planned to take the next tour boat back to the hotel. We asked one of the lighthouse people when the next one was coming, and he said it would come at 3:30. In the meantime, we sat on the beach. Although we tried to be early for the boat, we ended up missing it because it was even earlier. Instead of waiting an hour for the next one, we decided to walk to the nearest public beach.

Our walk took us through the ritzy community next to the lighthouse. It was filled with people playing golf, tennis, and yes, croquet. After that, it wasn't a very long walk. It was cloudier and windier by the time we arrived. We had two beach towels with us; we sat on one and I covered myself up with the other. Kate didn't think it was cold, so that worked out well enough.

After that, my mom picked us up and took us home. Kate gave my parents a gift; it was another calendar with some spectacular scenes of St. Petersburg. Kate then used Google Earth to show us some of the places she's lived in and visited. After we had a dinner of steak, Kate took a dip in the pool while I watched from a safe distance. I've tried to go swimming in the winter, and it is just not fun. Again, Kate didn't think it was very cold.

On Sunday morning, Kate got to experience a Kalilich Sunday brunch, complete with waffles, scrambled eggs, sausage, hash browns, bagels, and probably other stuff (I think Kate had bread and cheese). It was a big meal for a big day. Kate had wanted to visit the Museum of Art and the Museum of Discovery and Science in Fort Lauderdale, and Andy had said that his aunts would treat him and us to dinner in the evening.

Before we left for our big day out, I tried to get my photos off my camera and onto my dad's computer. "Tried" was the key word. My trusty memory card, the one I had used throughout most of my camera's life, was corrupted and unreadable. I remembered Magic Rescue, which I reviewed here a year and a half ago, and installed it on my dad's Ubuntu machine (I didn't have my computer with me for once). Magic Rescue recovered 67 of the 72 files. After that, I resigned myself to using my last good memory card, capable of holding a whopping 8 (yes, eight) photos.

We went to the Museum of Art first. They happened to have an exhibition of Norman Rockwell's artwork, which I figured would be good for Kate to see: what could be more American? There were a lot of his earlier works, and also some well-known later works such as Triple Self-Portrait and The Problem We All Live With. There was also a huge wall with every one of his Saturday Evening Post covers.

We proceeded to the rest of the museum, which was more modern and less traditional, and after that, we went to the Museum of Discovery and Science, which was just a few blocks away. I had fond memories of going there as a little kid, so it was fun to go back. It was full of little kids running around everywhere, though.

Kate had wanted to go to the museum's IMAX theater, but the showings were all sold out, so we just checked out the museum. They must change it up periodically because I hardly recognized anything at all. Still, it was fun to see all the exhibits about marine life, space, geology, and so on. There was a section of the museum devoted to brain teasers. I solved the Towers of Hanoi puzzle with six discs. I wouldn't have known how to do it if I hadn't learned about a recursive solution in one of my previous programming classes.

After going through two museums, we were pretty tired, so we sat by the New River and then went over to Riverwalk, a shopping area by the river. That's when Andy came to pick us up. The three of us went to Lincoln Road in Miami Beach, where we would have dinner with two of Andy's aunts. (The preceding statement should not be taken to imply that Andy has more than two aunts; in fact, I don't know how many he has.)

We ate at an Italian restaurant called Da Leo Trattoria. One of Andy's aunts, the one who lived in Miami, told me about how she and everyone in her office would read my blog over the summer to find out what Andy and I were up to in Europe. From the blog, she already knew about Kate, and she said she felt as if she already knew her.

The food was very good, and so was the dessert. I was actually the only one who didn't order dessert, but after the waiter gave everyone else their desserts, he inexplicably had a slice of Key lime pie left over and asked if I wanted it. How do you say no to that?

After dinner, we thanked Andy's aunts for treating us to dinner. Andy drove Kate and me to South Beach and then went to his aunt's place for a little while. Kate and I pretty much spent the whole time sitting on the beach. It was pitch dark, and there weren't many people around, but there were a lot of flickering lights from boats on the water.

Later, Andy picked us up took us home. Thanks, Andy!

On Monday, we got off to another late start, I think because I was taking a long time to pack my things (even though I had hardly brought anything). My mom drove us to Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge, where we had about twenty minutes to walk around and see the River of Grass before we had to go to the rest stop on the highway where the bus would pick us up.

At the rest stop, we met up with Andy. The bus came and whisked us away to Gainesville. It was a newer bus than the previous one; the back seat spanned the whole width of the bus, which was more than enough room for us all to be comfortable. The bus ride, of course, took forever, but it didn't seem quite as long as before.

It was a national holiday, so there would be no local bus service to take us back to our apartment from the bus stop on campus. Andy called ahead for a cab, and it arrived right after we did. By the time we got back to the apartment, it wasn't late, but I was tired, so I didn't think we did very much.

Congratulations for reading this far. Here's a link: The Same-Sex Marriage Debate, Greatly Simplified. It's a sort of crazy flowchart.

Kate's visit, part three

It was Tuesday, January 12. (I'm really falling behind here.) I went to work/school, and Kate met up with me for lunch. We had the infamous/not-really-infamous Krishna Lunch, served on the Plaza of the Americas outside my workplace, Peabody Hall. Fortunately, Kate liked the food.

After lunch, Kate sat in on my classes. First, there was Numerical Analysis (<sarcasm>fun!</sarcasm>), and later, Databases. Kate actually works with databases and stuff like that, so as the professor was giving a lecture on the basics of SQL, Kate told me that she could probably give the lecture herself. I wouldn't doubt it.

Tuesday evening was our Esperanto Club meeting in which we would introduce a real Esperanto speaker from an exotic land. I invited 100 people on Facebook, and only one showed up. I blame myself for not promoting the event more, but I didn't promote it very much because I didn't have enough time to reserve a room. So I blame myself for not reserving a room before winter break, although I'm not sure if that was possible, so maybe I shouldn't beat myself up over it. Anyway, the show went on, and we explained to the one guy there how Kate learned and had used Esperanto.

I think it was that night that Kate gave Andy and me a primer on the Russian alphabet. Andy was interested in learning Russian (or maybe just the alphabet, I'm not sure), so we went over the vowels and then the consonants. It took a while—there are a lot of them, and Andy and I were struggling to pronounce some of them. I thought it might be hard to learn a new alphabet, but surprisingly, in the weeks that have followed, I've been able to sort of pronounce Russian words that I see.

On Wednesday, Kate got ready in time to go with me to work and class. Wednesdays are kind of frantic for me this semester, so we grabbed a quick lunch at the KFC Express on campus. Kate didn't really like the food, but I could have guessed as much. I'm glad she tried it, anyway. After that, she sat in on my other classes, Software Engineering and Accounting.

We stayed on campus for dinner because Kate was interested in attending a lecture. We ate at Pollo Tropical at the Reitz Union, and she loved it, which made me happy. (Wikipedia has some bare facts on Pollo Tropical for those of you unfortunate enough not to be graced by its presence within a reasonable distance.) After that, we went to the presentation. A professor from UC Irvine talked about the history of criminal identification technologies, including the rise of fingerprinting and then DNA.

On Thursday, I had my weekly lunch with my sister. We eat at a different place each week, and this week, it was Moe's. She brought along her friend Nathalie, and I, of course, brought Kate. We didn't have much time, but Kate and my sister chatted it up.

Kate had been wanting to take an official tour. She had looked into it and said that there would be one starting at 2:00, so we hurried over to the Welcome Center after lunch. I was going to be late for Numerical Analysis, and I wasn't sure if they gave tours to non-prospective-students, but I thought we should give it a shot. When they asked about her potential relationship to the university, I just told them that she was a junior computer-science major at PBCC looking to transfer, and when asked why I was doing most of the talking for her, I just said her English wasn't very good (even though it is, I hasten to point out). We had to give her contact information, so I wrote a fake address, and we hurriedly parted ways: my class had just started, and her tour had just started.

Later, while I was at work, she said she had gotten lost from the tour group and would meet me at my Databases class. So she met me there, and afterward, we had a little bit of time to grab coffee (well, she grabbed coffee and I helped her drink it). After that, we went to the Gator Freethought meeting. Kate had asked about any student organizations she might be interested in, so I suggested Gator Freethought, which promotes science, skepticism, and critical thinking. The topic of the meeting was logical fallacies, which I thought was kind of interesting, but the discussion was pretty chaotic, so I wasn't sure how much of it Kate could follow.

So that was Thursday.

Back to the present for a moment. Today (well, yesterday, since I'm writing this after midnight) I found out that J.D. Salinger had died.

I first read The Catcher in the Rye in my freshman year of high school. It was influential on me, as I noted at the time:

(As a side note, my writing may seem unusually informal today. That's because I have to read The Catcher in the Rye for English, and it's written in very informal speech. It's a good book, if you really want to know. I was actually reading it today while I was waiting for about five hours for my sister to get off the lousy computer. I was that much into the darn book. I mean it.)

Ha ha. I didn't say "damn."

Anyway, The Catcher in the Rye instantly became one of my favorite books, and it's one of the few that I still reread with any regularity. In fact, I was just thinking of picking it up again the next time I go home, which will probably be soon. After recent re-readings, I've wondered whether I can still identify with Holden Caulfield. I'm older than him now, after all, and I'm in college. Who's to know? I guess I'll have to keep reading to find out.

The Onion has responded to the news in the style of The Catcher in the Rye: Bunch Of Phonies Mourn J.D. Salinger. It actually works well if you think about it.

Kate's visit, part two

Let's continue this story.

Sunday, January 10, got off to a slow start. I hadn't been online much in the past few days, so I was surprised to hear that Ocala and other relatively nearby cities had recorded snow. Gainesville didn't get so much as a flake.

On my list of places to visit was the Florida Museum of Natural History, located next to the Harn Museum of Art, where we had gone the day before. This time, we made it a group thing, with Andy's dad driving Kate, Andy, and me to the museum.

I had been looking forward to seeing the museum's butterfly garden, which is probably the star attraction of the whole place. I hadn't been there since 2005, before I even considered enrolling at UF. I remember my first visit fondly, but apparently I didn't actually like it that much. I noted at the time that I

could see butterflies flying around everywhere and stuff. Some were small, some were big, some were bright, dark, old, young, whatever. But there were a whole lot of them. I wasn't at ease with the whole situation. Butterflies and colleges scare me.

This time, the weather meant that our trip to the butterfly garden was kind of a bust. The plants were all covered up due to the cold. Also, the butterflies were going into quasi-hibernation, said a random worker who was so bored that she decided to act as a tour guide for us. They were just lying around on the ground. She would pick one up and open its wings to show us, but some of them broke when she did that. They were dead.

To make up for the freezing-cold walk through the covered garden with dead butterflies lyin' all over the place, they let us go into the Rearing Lab, where the butterflies (and moths, to be politically correct) are reared. It was there we encountered the mighty Atlas moth, the world's largest. I remembered seeing one during my last visit, but I think it was a specimen. In the lab, there were a few just hanging out, and one was flying around. You could hear its wings flap. It was intense.

One of the guys at the rearing lab gave us some fun behind-the-scenes facts. He said they were keeping a lot of the butterflies and moths in the lab instead of letting them go out into the butterfly garden, where they might freeze to death. In lieu of fruit, many of them fed on sugar from Q-Tips soaked in—what else?—Gatorade.

After going to the museum, Andy's dad treated us to dinner at Olive Garden. Kate seemed to like it, so that was good. I think it was a lot of food for her, so she took her leftovers home and I helped her finish them later.

The next day was Monday. Kate wasn't ready by the time I had to go to work, so she decided to stay behind and meet me on campus for lunch. When lunchtime rolled around, she said she wouldn't be able to make it (I think she was catching up on sleep), so she agreed to meet me when I got off of work. That would have been all fine and good, except I had to stay late because I'd just received the files for the new Multicultural and Diversity Affairs web site, and they had to go up that day.

So Kate met me at work while I was working late and got to see some of the typical things I do. She works with databases and programming and stuff like that, so it wasn't unfamiliar to her. I was worried that she would be bored though, so we looked up things to do. It turned out that they were going to screen The Invention of Lying at the student union, so we decided to go to that. On the way there, I called my friend Natasha to wish her a happy birthday.

I liked the movie, and so did Kate. After that, she got an ice cream cone, and I helped her eat it while we were waiting for the bus home.

Kate actually posted this link on my Facebook page a while back. It's a quiz called "Can You Guess Where My Accent Is From?" See if you can beat my score of 23.

Here's a CPU-hungry but cool Flash animation about planetary orbits. (Via The Presurfer)

Kate's visit, part one

I have returned. Actually, I didn't go anywhere. Well, actually, I did go somewhere for part of the time, but that doesn't really have to do with it.

I met Kate at an Esperanto event over the summer. I didn't think I'd ever see her again, but we stayed in contact, and she came to visit me. I had her as a guest for some twelve days, which I'll try my best to recount over the next two, three, or however many posts.

On Friday, January 8, she flew from Washington to Orlando and took a bus to Gainesville. We had agreed to meet at the Bo Diddley Community Plaza downtown sometime after 4:00, which was when her bus arrived and my last class got out. I walked downtown. It was cold, and the sky was gray. I was hoping we could do something downtown because there were some interesting things to do there.

I got to the plaza and waited there for a while, taking inventory of the sketchy folks hanging around and making sure none of them were going to sneak up on me. Clearly, this wouldn't be a good place to go for a stroll. On one turn-around, I saw her approaching on the plaza from the opposite direction I was expecting. We greeted each other in Esperanto and hugged. She had a large backpack and was dressed more warmly than I was.

It was cold and there was nothing to do there, so I figured we should just go back to my apartment. We walked back toward campus, and I reminded her to take pictures of anything she thought looked interesting. We talked about how her trip had been so far and how pleasantly surprised we were to see each other again. We made it back to campus, where I gave a mini-tour in which I talked about everything we saw. Then we took the bus back to my apartment.

Once she got settled in, or maybe even before, we exchanged gifts. Mine were a Florida Gators sweater for cold weather (she had said that she was terribly cold in New York) and a Gators tank top for the hopefully but not actually warmer climes of North Central Florida. (Yeah, I know: "Boo," "Gators suck," etc.) Kate presented me with a monthly calendar of St. Petersburg, where she currently lives. I hung it up right away. It's in Russian and English, and I have it directly above my computer, so I can see that this month is Январь.

We did a lot of things, and it's been kind of a while now, so there may be some gaps or question marks in the narrative. As I recall, Andy was there to say hello to her (he was traveling with me when I met Kate, so he had already met her too). She wanted some tea, and, as I expected, Andy was there to provide. He didn't have the exact kind she most wanted to drink, but she drank the regular Lipton stuff anyway. I mentioned that I didn't exactly know how to make tea, and they joked about it. I would soon be making lots of tea for Kate, who bestowed on me the nickname "Mr. Teamaker."

Later, Andy's dad came over and got to meet Kate. I hadn't heard Kate speak much English, so it was interesting to hear. Andy and his dad went out to eat and made a run to the grocery store after. They asked if we wanted anything, so Kate asked for some things like bread, cheese, and fruit. Later, they brought back the food, and Kate enjoyed her bread and cheese.

On Saturday, I believe it was, Kate surprised me by saying that she wanted to speak Esperanto and English on alternate days so she could practice both. Saturday was an English day. I had made a list of things to do in Gainesville, and we thought about what might be best for that day. After a slow morning, we went to the Harn Museum of Art on the UF campus; it was open, easy to get to, and free. Also, I had never been there, so it would be a new experience for me as well.

I'd seen some pretty crappy art galleries in my time, so I was pleased when the art they had was not so crappy. There was a collection of stuff by American artists, mainly from the early 20th century. New York came up in a lot of the paintings, and I asked Kate if she had been to the places they showed. There were also some African and East Asian artifacts.

By the time we got out of the museum, it was cold. We stood around for a few minutes waiting for the bus when Kate mentioned that she wanted to stop at the supermarket along the way. Being the American that I am, I at first scoffed at her suggestion that we take the 10-minute walk there instead of waiting for the bus. Then I caved, realizing that we could spend up to an hour in the cold while waiting for the bus.

At the supermarket, Kate bought some of her favorite things, including yogurt. I was hoping we could have pasta for dinner with Andy, so I got some tomato sauce. We made it back to the apartment and got cookin'. Actually, Kate and Andy were kind enough to do most of the work. I insisted that Kate didn't have to do anything because she was the guest, but she wanted to help out.

We enjoyed our dinner in what might be called the dining room, a small area outside Andy's room that he had just decorated (the dining room, not Andy's room, although he had just decorated his room as well). We somehow got on the subject of animal onomatopoeias, and I learned that Russian dogs say "guff." We also practiced our own animal noises, and that's how barking (guffing?) became a running joke among us.

I didn't expect to use up that many bytes describing just two days, but this post is getting long and it's almost midnight, so I'll stop here for now and continue the narrative later. In the meantime, enjoy these links.

Here's a chart explaining How to Use an Apostrophe. (Via Lifehacker)

Here's another chart: Where Should I Eat? Fast Food Edition.

How to Buy A Space Shuttle With Duct Tape

I'll be back to a regular posting schedule soon, but in the meantime, here's another guest post from Peter Hurford. Are my "Links At The End of the Post"^TM really that famous?

It's me again; the Greatplay.net Peter Guy. Jordon is busy "entertaining" -- whatever that might mean -- so he told me specifically to, and I quote, "[f]eel free to be TWoS's first repeat guest poster." So, while Jordon may be coming back on Tuesday, I can sneak this guest post in before he gets back.

But what should I blog about? I warn you that it's very dangerous to blog without "A Concrete Idea"^TM beforehand. Otherwise you end up with rambly posts like this one, instead of cool things like Monkeys on Typewriters.

-

So, instead I'm going to tell you a little story. Here you go:

How to Buy A Space Shuttle With Duct Tape
by Peter Hurford

First, head down to your basement and into your time machine. The reason the time machine exists in your basement will be explained later -- you should not actually need a time machine to complete this journey. You only need Duct Tape.

Operate your time machine and travel into the future until you get to an era where time machines have been invented. Use your $1 million to buy your own time machine. Send this time machine back in time to your basement, present day. This accounts for the time machine in the previous paragraph. Like the time machine, the $1 million will be explained later, and are not needed to start the journey.

After you have your time machine, go back in time to 1920 and open a bank account. Find someone and offer to trade your duct tape for a penny. They will definitely accept, as duct tape had not yet been invented, and thus is an unseen wonder. Deposit your penny into an account with 3% interest, compounded annually. By the time you get back to 2010, you should end up with $0.14 in 1920s money, which, due to interest, is now worth $1.44. Offer to buy money dated before 1920 on ebay, using your new $1.44.

Now that you have $1.44 in 1920s money, go back in time and redeposit that in your account along with the penny you found on the ground. Going back to 2010, you should now have $167.39, with interest and adjusted for inflation. You will have to repeat this process two more times to get $1 million -- specifically, you'd have $3,610,088.83. You can then use to buy the time machine in the second paragraph, which will account for the time machine in your basement in the first paragraph.

NASA says that a space shuttle costs about $1.7 billion. Assuming the time machine costs $1 million, you should have $2,610,088.83 left over. Going back and forth between 1920 and 2010, starting with $2,610,088.83, you should need to make two trips to get $1.7 billion -- specifically, you'd have $56,291,504,222.13.

So buy the space shuttle. You lose your duct tape in the process, but you get a space shuttle, and you should have enough money left over to launch it. If not, one more trip with your remaining $54.6 billion should net you an additional $7.9 trillion.

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Since this is the website that requires "Links At The End of the Post"^TM, here's the compounding interest calculator and the inflation calculator I used for the math in my story.

If Jordon were writing this post, he probably would have linked to stuff off of The J-Walk Blog. The comparison of the Big Mac and Burger King Burger seems interesting, seeing if that commercial is really true. And here's a picture of the world's tallest man and the world's smallest man.

If I were writing for the World of Stuff, my go-to link site would probably be Digg -- today there's this picture of a door, this failure at the FBI, this retrospective about buying drinks for girls at a bar, and how to spot bogus user reviews.

Well, with that, I'm off.

See you around, stuffers!

What TWoS Means to Me

While I'm busy entertaining a guest, Peter Hurford satiates your hunger for stuff with this site's first guest post in two and a half years.

Hi! I'm Peter Hurford. I run the amazing website Greatplay.net, which Jordon sometimes links to -- for example in this post and then in this post, and in that fancy blogroll in the sidebar.

I actually asked Jordon to let me guest post because I was bored, but apparently he is -- quote -- "not sure when [he'll] have time to write a post next". So you ended up with me or nothing. And I'm hoping you prefer me over nothing. Feel free to compare me to the other guest posts if you want to know how I'm doing.

Actually, that was more of a demand. You WILL prefer me over nothing. I'm hoping the lack of any serious competition (from Jordon during this week, not from the other guest posts) will get my demand off the ground.

Anyways, the fact is that I like The World of Stuff a lot, and it really motivated me to bring my own blog off the ground. I vaguely remember stumbling upon it because of The Ultimate Cool Characters back in 2005ish, about 2 or 3 tWoS web redesigns ago. I had my own Greatplay.net back then and it was about 50% more personal and 75% less updated than it is now.

I got involved with The World of Stuff directly when I asked for a link exchange, back when friendly link exchanges were considered "cool". I ended up in his sidebar (which now contains many blogs), and he ended up in mine (which used to contain two blogs, and now doesn't exist.) For some reason, Greatplay.net was then doing very well traffic-wise (something that I can't seem to recapture) while tWoS ended up staying about even. Jordon then asked me for advice! (Of course, today, the tables are turned.)

In 2007, I was behind in technology in keeping up with TWoS. Jordon had this cool thing called PLAPS which, while no longer defined on the site anywhere (as far as I can tell) used to be a script that would allow you to write posts ahead of time and then suspend them, scheduling them to not appear to the public until later. This allowed one to develop content on a regular schedule while secretly writing nearly everything on weekends, or seem to post while secretly on vacation. I wanted to try to use PLAPs. But by then, Jordon had already discovered Wordpress, something I had never heard of!

I then sat around for some more years and then relaunched my site with Wordpress on March 2009, more or less the way it is now. For those that don't know, Wordpress is a blogging software that lets you run a blog on your site without having to script the entire system by yourself (which would take weeks). I also got the idea for Ask Jordon, pretty much stolen, but with a nice link on my site. I, however, gave Jordon the idea of "Jordon Asks You" (except he gave it the cool Russian Reversal name). So I guess it's pretty much even, assuming "Jordon Asks You" still ran, which it does not.

But the end of the story is that if it wasn't for Jordon, I probably would never have Wordpress, I would never have Ask Peter, and I would likely never have the blog I have today.

Therefore, I blame Jordon entirely for my lack of success.

And you can blame Jordon for the existence of this post.

Thank you.

Cheap books are OK

So, yeah. I got back to Gainesville on Monday, and the first day of classes was Tuesday. This week's been pretty good so far except for the cold weather, which I'm not too fond of. It's supposed to rain tomorrow and Saturday, and apparently people have heard that there's a very slight chance of snow flurries and are blowing it out of proportion. In Florida, we get excited about the possibility of snow.

My classes are all okay so far because I haven't done too much in them yet. Two of my four classes are taught by professors whose classes I've had before. Neither of them are really great, but I'd rather have a mediocre professor than one who might be terrible. I am risk-averse.

I'm not sure why, but I wasn't allotted any textbook money from the great State of Florida this semester, so I had to fend for myself. Buying my books from the university bookstore would have set me back $500, even if I got as many of them used as possible. Fortunately, I found much better deals online with Book Burro.

The books I did get were so cheap because they're all international editions. Apparently textbook companies sell identical copies of their books for lower prices in South and Southeast Asia. They all have warnings on them saying they're not authorized for sale outside those regions. For example:

If you purchased this book within the United States or Canada you should be aware that it has been wrongfully imported without the approval of the Publisher or the Author. [emphasis added]

"Wrongfully," in the eyes of the publisher, but not illegally. The first-sale doctrine prevents from publishers from dictating how their books can be sold after they are sold for the first time. This is why secondhand bookstores exist. The publishers would shut them all down in an instant if they could, but they can't, and the rest of us are better off for it.

Tomorrow Katja will be coming to Gainesville. I've been looking forward to this day for a while now, so I'm pretty excited. I've made a list of some things that we can do here in town, but it seems that she'll want to do a lot of relaxing. I'm good for that, too. It makes things less hectic for me. But who knows when I'll have time to blog next? Hopefully soon, but not too soon.

Peter over at Greatplay.net explains Why 2012 Will Not Be The End of the World.

Quizipedia is a fill-in-the-blank game with sentences taken from Wikipedia articles. (Via J-Walk Blog)