Fight!

Today is homecoming, a university holiday. That means there were no classes, and (since I work for the university) no work. Tonight is Gator Growl, the aforementioned less-than-spectacular pep rally. It's going to be in the football stadium, which is down the street from my dorm. In fact, if I open my window tonight, you'll probably be able to hear me not care!

So how have I spent my homecoming day? First I slept. A lot. I went to bed relatively early last night and woke up late, for a total of 10 or 11 hours. I can't remember the last time I slept that long. It was amazing.

In the afternoon, I went to the student gym. "Whaaa? Jordon going to the GYM??????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" !!!!! Don't worry, I wasn't there to exercise. I was meeting with some people from my Tech Writing for Engineers class. We have a project where we have to pretend to plan an expansion for the gym, so we thought we'd go there to check out the place. I don't think I'd been there since my tour of the campus two years ago. I remember the building being about twice as big and the parking lot in front of it being at least four times as big. But all my memories of that tour are messed up. I had no idea where I was. Plus, I saw some places then that I've never seen since, and I have absolutely no idea where they might be.

Anyway, after that I was due at Flavet Field, which is this field near my dorm. That's where they were attempting to break the record for the world's largest water balloon fight. Get Carded, the organ donor awareness organization I volunteer with, had their tent there, so I had signed up to help out. We were also invited to participate because they needed as many people as they could get (the previous record was 2,800 people or something like that). It was definitely a big deal. ABC was taping it for Good Morning America.

Anyway, they had the field divided in two. Each side had a huge crowd of people and a seemingly endless supply of water balloons. There was a "no man's land" in between. After some waiting, the fight began. I was toward the back of the crowd, so I didn't get many balloons, but I threw a few and got hit by a few. Nate from Get Carded was able to scramble into the pile of balloons and get some for himself and me.

So what does the world's largest water balloon fight look like? Imagine a colorful hail of watery bullets being shot across a large field for several minutes. There were a lot of water balloons; people had spent all week filling them up, I think. To break the record, they had to have more people and more balloons. They said they definitely had broken the balloon record with something like 57,000. They were still counting the people at the time of the fight. Even if the record wasn't officially broken, the event was for a good cause (breast cancer awareness). And it was crazy fun.

This is pretty cool. DOTGO allows you to read some web sites by text message. For example, text "theworldofstuff" to DOTCOM (368266) and you'll get a listing of the posts on the main page of this site. Each one is numbered, so you can text "theworldofstuff 1" to read the first post, and so on. Well, you can start reading it, because it cuts off after three text messages. This might be useful if you don't have Internet access on your phone but you do have unlimited texting and you want to read the first few sentences of my blog posts. You can also text DOTNET, DOTORG, DOTEDU, and DOTGOV as appropriate. Here's an online version if you want to try it without using your phone.

Poe's Law states, "Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is uttrerly impossible to parody a Creationist in such a way that someone won't mistake for the genuine article."

Really awesome: Hubble Finds Unidentified Object in Space, Scientists Puzzled.