On Friday, somehow Peter, Fernie, Kevin, Jinzhen, and I decided to plot a 5′ by 2.5′ poster of Dr. Carothers, our CompOrg professor. The printing stemmed from the fact that Dr. Carothers has a 4k by 3k resolution .jpg image of himself on his teacher website. The size is supposedly the largest the plotter in the VCC will print.

Jinzhen presents the results:

Another view of the finished product, including various other things in my dorm/apartment’s common area:

(Note that the image on the projector is the picture of Jinzhen with the poster on Facebook)

We’re unsure as to who our next plotting victim may be, but there has been the suggestion of Dr. Cutler.

While it’s been some time since I worked on stupichat, I felt compelled to add a new program to my growing set of stupiprograms. The addition is stupishell, a programming assignment from my OpSys class.

Below is an example screenshot from a stupishell session:

Do note that the prompt (penis) grows in size until the shell exits, at which point it ejaculates.

Like any good programmer, I ensure to comment my code properly:

Upon returning from Blitman tonight, I rode the elevator up with our group and noticed this wonderfully descriptive sign.

Yeah, sure, I had noticed the elevator smelled like Urine for a couple weeks now, but it didn’t really click that it could actually be urine.

There was something about the sign that I found intriguing. Perhaps it was the dubious grammar and basic formatting. It screamed parody. And parody it did receive. The first installment was as follows:

It reads, “Attention: For every time someone posts signs in this elevator, it will be urinated in for the following 48 hours. -Thank you”. Note that the size, formatting, and line returns mimic the original piece. The sign didn’t last very long though, I called the elevator back about 5 minutes later to show someone, and it was already gone… I posted another, which vanished quickly too. A 3rd sign was later found crumpled on the floor when I returned to post my magnum opus.

The third sign, suggested by Jeff and completing the trifecta, reads “Attention: For every time someone shuts down this elevator, it will be posted in for the following 48 hours. -Thank you”.

While the grammar may be the most dubious yet, it was necessary to ensure the text fit on the appropriate lines.

Arrows were added to ensure that the viewer understands the infinite loop created by the signs. I’m sure my masterpiece is long gone by now. But it is immortalized in .jpg form here.

A hidden message for AT&T customers?

Blog Movements
I spent most of Saturday Morning moving things between my two blogs. My favorite part about blogging is reading old entries, and this was a wonderful excuse to do so. Some highlights of merged posts for me include coming out in high school, telling someone via the internet, a random picture, coming out to my parents, and why I’m gay. All posts from my old blog are tagged with the x-posted category.

Reslife Tour
After working on some homework Saturday morning, it was time for a tour of all the upperclassmen housing options RPI has to offer. First up was Warren hall: identical in shape to my current dorm, yet with a completely different configuration inside. Rooms are quite a bit larger than my current double, and they are split in half with a privacy barrier. Each room also has its own bathroom. Warren also apparently has a reputation for gamers, anime fans, and sci-fan fans. Supposedly it’s one of the more social dorms. If I were looking for a double, Warren would probably be on top of my list.

After Warren was Nugent. Nugent features the Ground Zero music club in its basement. As such, its home to a lot of musicians. Nugent had a similar room setup to Nugent (doubles with privacy wall), but the building and its interior look a lot older, 70s style. After Nugent was Sharp. From what I’ve heard, Sharp is one of the hardest halls to get in to, due to a high rate of squatting and high demand. Sharp has the most desirable setup for our group: 6 bedrooms, a bathroom, and a common area per suite! It was also recently renovated.

After finishing the on-campus portion, it was time for the far-from-campus portion. This required an approximatley 20 minute walk down Burdett avenue to the Colonie Apartments. Colonie has three different setups. We got to see Colonie B, which features large (330 sq ft) singles divided into a sleeping room and a living area. Apart from their distance from campus, these looked like highly desirable singles. After Colonie we walked up the hill to the Stackwyck apartments. Each of the 5 buildings contains 12 suite style apartments with 4 bedrooms. I was impressed with the size of the living area, however the size of the individual bedrooms was rather small. I also believe these are rather highly squatted, in fact one entire building is being squatted by a sorority. These are our backup plan if our Polytech aspirations fall through. More on that later.

The tour concluded with a brief look at the RAHPs. While the housing style is similar to Stackwyck, the buildings are not. These are double story units, with each suite occupying two floors. The ground foor features a common area and kitchen, and the second floor has 4 singles. These felt really small, and I’ve only heard bad things about them. Our last resort.

Formula 1
After sleeping and eating, it was time for the opening race of the Formula 1 season, the Australian Grand Prix! The race started off with a bang! Barrichello’s extremely slow start resulted in a clusterfuck as the field approached the first corner. Barrichello, Webber, Kovalainen, and Sutil were damaged. All continued but Kovalainen. Button ran away with it from the poll. There was much quabbling behind him. I’ve never seen a non-wet race so up-in-the-air. Mid-race, Nakajima crashed (FIRE HIM ALREADY). Safety car. Massa ran 3rd most of the race before something died. Raikkonen spun off into a wall, but continued until something else died. With 3 laps to go, the fucking moron Kubica tried to pass Vettel on the outside of a right-left corner. While he was alongside Vettel, he left Vettel nowhere to go. The resulting collision damage all sorts of bodywork and suspension. They both attempted to continue, but both spun out again. This we terminal for Kubica. Vettel continued under the safety car with a completely broken left front, wheel dragging along the ground, until it came to a halt a lap and a half later. The race ended under safety car, with Barrichello taking second thanks to Raikkonen, Massa, Vettel, and Kubica’s fail. Brawn 1-2 on their debut…

CounterStrike
Jeff, Ryan, and I played CounterStrike for the first time this year early Sunday morning. We played on a pub server, some 24/7 de_dust2. Twas good fun. I went rougly 1.1:1, using almost exclusively the FAMAS as CT and Dualies as T.

Rock Band
Sunday evening I played guitar a bit by myself. I tested out some of the newer DLC that I hadn’t played on Guitar before, and filled in some gaps in scores from RB1 songs I’d never played in RB2. Nothing too hard, nice and relaxing.

Hall Band
At some point, I decided that a longer headphone cable would give me more mobility about the room. I attached a couple cables together, and quickly I was able to play guitar from the hall way, and even in Joe’s room! When Peter returned and saw the nonsense, he decided to join in. A couple 3.5mm to RCA adapters and some RCA lesbians later, we had a cable that stretched down the entire length of our hallway. However, since the screen was in my room, the headphone long cable proved pointless. Besides, the wireless on the guitar couldn’t reach anyway. 4 USB extender cables daisy-chained together allowed the wireless receiver to be placed in the hall way. This didn’t solve the screen problem, however. No matter, I can play songs by ear no problem! The song: Blitzkrieg Bop, which mostly consists of GY chords intersperesed with some YB and YO. Unfortunately, I failed when the song did some unexpected stuff with some RB chords…

Of course, I didn’t intend to give up! A small crowd was going, and we discussed methods to get the screen into the hall. Mirrors? No one could find one. What about a couple of zoomed in video cameras? We only had one. What about the video camera connected to a laptop? So crazy, it might just work! And it did. With ~600ms of video lag. Unfortunatley, Rock Band only allows calibration of 300ms of lag, leaving the other 300 ms to screw with us. Oh well, it was worth a shot. Once camera and laptop were positioned properly, I attempted to avenge my fail on Blitzkrieg Bop. And I did! With a paltry 3 stars 88% notes hit! 300ms of video lag is a bit much for anyone! Hungry for more, I attempted to complete That’s What You Get, however that ended badly about 80% of the way through the song. Hoping to prove that it was really hard, I offered my guitar to Kevin. Kevin accepted the challenge, but not before I decided to bring the drums out in the hallway as well!

Now, there were two of us, struggling with 300ms of lag. Since we didn’t have a headphone splitter, I turned up my speakers. This, however, introduced a bunch of audio lag, as I sound travels at 1 ms per foot, the game was callibrated for headphones, and we were ~50 feet away from my speakers around a corner. Thus, our venture on Maps went poorly. I failed on drums at about 30% the first time. Unfazed, I adjusted for the perceived audio lag, and we made it much further: 55%. A song with less drum notes would’ve probably helped things. Due to the advent of quiet hours, and complaints from the RA, we packed everything up, and most of us went to Fathers. Peter took some pictures of the setup, which I’ll link when they become available.

Campus Housing Lottery
Upon return from Fathers, the hall was in an uproar. Lottery numbers had been posted a bit early, and everyone was checking them. Quickly, a whiteboard with everyones names and numbers was produced. Things didn’t look good; our top 3 were #122, #225, and #231 (out of 767). After several more visits from the RA, we moved headquarters to a vacant study room. The mood was fererent. I haven’t seen so much action and excitement of out Crock 3 before. I began spreadsheeting away. Turns out that while our first three numbers were much higher than a statistical average, the remaining 8 numbers fared far better than statistics and probability would predict. Unfortunately, it’s only the top 3 that really matter for us. More spreadsheeting produced the number of occupants of each of the Suite style housing options: Sharp, Polytech, Stackwyck, and RAHP. Estimates of the current number of squatters were produced (from my ass), resulting in the approximate number of open suites available. More spreadshetting, more voodoo math, and more estimates resulted in an approximate total number of rooms available on campus of all varieties. From this, I produced a breakdown of what would happen next Monday, on the room choosing day. The last Polytech apartment would be chosen by number 258. Since our top 3 numbers were below this, I declared our chance of getting 3 polytechs to be “workable”.

Now that a bit of our concern had diminished, we turned to the Roommate problem. 11 people to be split between 3 rooms. First problem: we needed a 12th. No one could think of anyone right away. People will be asked throughout the week if they’d like to join in our coop. Then, the actual roommate choosing. I rigged up a little graphical tool to drag-and-drop people into rooms in Fireworks. Initial configurations were selected by the room “captains”; those with the lowest numbers. Swaps and adjustments were made. People’s futures were converted into pixels and molested by the cursor. I was rather unsatisified with the result, but nothing was declared anywhere near final. The brouhaha wound down, and people we to bed. Afterward, I printed “Create your own housing setup” forms to gather more input from the denizens of Crockett 3.

We’ll see how it goes. I’m quite excited about next year, and the opportunity to live together once again. The thought of Polytech still excites me. Hopefully it’ll become a reality.

Last night, I called Ian. The premise was that I was asking him about housing next year, but the reality was that I just wanted to talk to him.

I started off the conversation with the typical “how have you been” stuff, which elicited nothing more than a fine. So, I launched into my pitch about next year: we’re planning on getting 3 apartments with 4 bedrooms each; trouble is there’s only 11 of us: would you be able to join us? While this was a perfectly legitimate question, I was also asking for more personal reasons: when would I get to see him again? Unfortunately, his answer was negative. He’s unable to return to campus until Spring term 2010 (roughly 9 months from now, which as Orian put it is the equivalent of a pregnancy). Bad on both levels: we don’t have the roommate we need, and I don’t have the Ian I want. At this point, I was finished with my legitimate pitch, and was about to go deeper. “I really miss you” was on the tip of my tongue, but before I could articulate it, Ian said something like “well, thanks for letting me know, was nice talking to you.” It no longer seemed appropriate to have a deeper conversation. I told him to take care, said bye, and hung up.

Dammit, that’s not at all what I had in mind.

But my mind is running its imagination again. What happens when Ian does return? My imagination says he’ll come live/sleep in our apartments; in the common area, or maybe even my room. Seems great to me. I keep thinking of activities and things I want to do, but I’d be uncomfortable doing alone. Like I’ve said before, I really need a sidekick, a partner-in-crime.

In school news, I had my 2nd CompOrg test yesterday. It was mostly on digital logic, and it felt good. I got my first CompOrg test back. I was expecting around 90%, and I received an 85%. That’s adequate. I also received my second Calc II test back. I was expecting a 40% to a 50%. I got an 84%. Sweet, no complaints there! I also took a Calc quiz, which went swimmingly. Things are suddenly looking way up in Calc II.

Upon completion of said quiz, I went to sleep. It was approximately 2:00 PM, as I had stayed up the whole night not studying for CompOrg. I awoke from my slumber at 8:30ish. Damn, Commons and Sage had closed. I dawdled around before heading to the study room for another weekend StarCraft party. I failed pretty hard at StarCraft, losing three times to Will and Ryan. I also broke a set of headphones in anger over one of the losses. A diagram, because I can.

I had decided to canon up, as I figured Will and Ryan were going to be little shits with their Vultures and Spider Mines, and I intended on teching to air once my canon defense was established. I failed to notice that the hill to my west provided easy access to my base. In frustration, I threw my headphones: breaking them.

F1 News!
2:00 AM was time for F1 Qualifying! Its the first race of the year, and I was pumped! Tons of rule changes over the season made qualifying anyone’s game. However, I was most unsatisfied with the result. Brawn GP 1 and 2?? REALLY? McLaren 14th and 15th??? Raikkonen 9th? FUCK. I was pleased with Vettel’s performance, however. Toyota’s time were disqualified, and Hamilton changed a gearbox, so amusingly Sutil will start 16th. New this year, F1 is posting the weights of each car, which indicates how much fuel they have on board. Ferrari, McLaren, and BMW are lighter than Brawn! Imagine that… Should be a good race tomorrow morning–as long as Brawn doesn’t run away with it.

The Burrito Bash kicked off a bit earlier than expected, as I was able to locate a burrito outlet in Dulles Airport in Washington D.C. during my layover. One could say the Bash started on Thursday with my purchase of a burrito from the Mc Neil room, but it was more of an precursor, an exhibition burrito so-to-speak. Irregardless (my favorite non-word word), here’s the first entry in my Burrito Log, or BLog for short. Damn, BLog is such a cool word! AND STOP AUTOCORRECTING ME, WORD—I know the L is capitalized.

Outlet: California Tortilla
Location: Gate C22, Dulles Airport, Washington DC
Items Ordered: 1 Veggie Burrito ($6.29), 1 Combo #2 (regular drink, chips, and salsa, $1.79), 1 Side Guac ($.99)
Total: $9.07, $9.52 with tax
Means of Consumption: Ordered from counter to go (only option)

Initial impressions: Immediately, I was skeptical of the name, especially given that Washington D.C. is not located in California. However, my fears were assuaged when I arrived at gate C22 and took a gander at the menu. This wasn’t your typical crappy airport place, this was a Mexican chain with an airport franchise. They had a good variety of traditional favorites and unique specials.

Ordering: My clerk spoke English fairly clearly. After ordering the burrito, she asked me if I wanted cheese and sour cream in it. I found this very responsible, as how else we should know if I wanted it vegan or just vegetarian. However, she then asked whether I wanted to upgrade to a combo, but I had trouble understanding this the first time. I then explained that I wanted chips with guac, and she explained to me that it was cheaper to get the combo, which included chips with salsa and a drink, then add the guac separately. I agreed to this proposition, selected my drink, and paid obediently.

Waiting: There were 7 or 8 people standing near the counter waiting for food. I had been assigned #757. I was temporarily worried that I would have to be waiting for a while. Things progressed pretty rapidly, #755 was called almost immediately. #756 followed a minute later, then #758, then #757. I was very impressed with the speed of the construction of my burrito, and I believe the delay that caused #758 to cut was due to my chips and guac.

The Unwrapping: I had to walk all the way down the C concourse to the D concourse (which annoyingly were in the same building, not really unique concourses at all. My mouth was watering with the thought of a good burrito. I sipped intently on my lemonade as I negotiated the throngs of people in Dulles. When I arrived at the waiting area, I set my belongings down, and peered inside the bag. On top was a stack of napkins (5 to be exact) with the phrase “IT’S A PARTY IN THAT DISPENSER, LET ME TELL YOU”. I was initially boggled by the use of the word “dispenser”. What was this dispenser they were referring to? Is a styrofoam clamshell carton considered a “dispenser”? I suspended my disbelief, and read the smaller text below, “If you’re having a party outside of this dispenser, call us to cater it or go to californiatortilla.com.” Hmm, so maybe the whole bag is a dispenser? Then it clicked. I was supposed to have removed the napkin from a napkin dispenser. However, the placement of the napkin in the bag without my interacting with said napkin dispenser ruined the effectiveness of this phrasing. Okay, enough with this dispenser nonsense. I noted that the side of guacamole was outside of the clamshell, and that there were no other items in the bag. I opened the clamshell and was greeted with an assortment of tortilla chips, a black cup of salsa, and a rather large burrito wrapped in tin foil with a green “Veggie” sticker on it. I paused my explorations to take a quick photo.

In order to make room for the burrito, I moved the chips into the top of the clamshell. I then grasped the burrito, and began unwrapping. I was surprised that the foil was actually paper backed, meaning it ripped like paper rather than tin foil. Upon opening, I was quickly impressed by the scale of this burrito! While not very long, it had a massive radius. Briefly, I was worried that I would be unable to eat this burrito without the assistance of utensils. I paused once again to take a picture of the naked burrito.

The First Bites: Perhaps I was simply famished, but the first couple bites were pure bliss. I encountered a large pocket of guacamole mixed with delicious, somewhat spicy, black beans. Yum, I thought, this is a lot like a Chipotle burrito! I continued taking healthy bites from my prey, encountering a mix of sour cream, Mexican rice, and black beans.

Continuing Onward: Around the 10th bite or so, I encountered an onion. What an outrage! Onions were nowhere on the list of purported ingredients! I continued eating, and encountered more undesireables. Lettuce was on the ingredients list, so I can’t really complain about its presence, but I don’t like lettuce, so I will complain anyway. The worst was about 1/3 from the end, when I excavated a humongous hunk of zucchini. ZUCCHINI?!?!?! In my bean burrito? Angered, I removed the large, green, invasive vegetable from my burrito and dropped it in the clamshell. I soldiered on, determined to like this burrito. My efforts were for naught though, as I encountered more large chunks of onion and another large zucchini piece. Discouraged, I gave up. The reward was no longer worth the hassle. Result: roughly ¾ consumed, ¼ remaining. In retrospect, I don’t believe there was any sour cream in the burrito.i

Post Burrito: I turned to my other food items: chips with guacamole. At a glance, the chips looked bad—somewhat like your run-of-the-mill Tostitos chips. However, a closer look and taste revealed that they were quite tasty! The taste was equivalent to Baja Fresh chips, however, the texture was a bit more crunchy. Some chips showed uneven amounts of grease. The guacamole was quite good, as well. It was a bit saltier than my preferred guacamole; however it was not offensive to me in any way. It featured well ground avocado and small, cube sized chunks of tomato. I noted the lack of chunks of avocado, which dinged it a couple points in my scoring system. I finished the guacamole before I was half done eating my chips—proof it was pretty damn good. I didn’t touch the cup of salsa. I ended up not finishing the chips, as the meal filled me up.

Closing thoughts: Things started out great, California Tortilla, then you betrayed me. The first half of the burrito was pure, unadulterated burrito bliss. But, why did you have to include the things! I hate things! Especially when things appear in my burritos that aren’t on the list of ingredients on the menu!

And now some arbitrary ratings!

OVERALL EXPERIENCE: 3.5/5 – Fast shipping, excellent seller, product not as described, might buy again.
Ordering Experience: 4/5 – HABLAN INGLES! Y me ayudan mucho.
Waiting Experience: 4.5/5 – Quick, prompt
Presentation: 3/5 – confusing slogan, crappy foil wrapper, ugly black clamshell
Quality of Lemonade: 4/5 – typical fountain minute maid
Size: 5/5 – This was the black penis of burritos
Build Quality: 3/5 – some ingredients were spilling out, some tears occurred in the tortilla
Burrito Taste: 4/5 – Good balance of spicy and delicious
Burrito Texture: 1/5 – GTFO ZUCCHINI
Ingredient Quality: 4/5 – Quality all around
Ingredient Mixing: 2/5 – Highly unbalanced
Chips Taste: 4.5/5 – nearly flawless
Chips Texture: 3/5 – Bit too crunchy, too mainstream Tostitos
Amount of chips: 4/5 – Could’ve used a bit more
Guacamole Quality: 4/5 – solid taste, missing yummy avocado chunks
Amount of Guacamole: 2.5/5 – Maybe I just love guacamole, but it really didn’t last
Burrito cost in terms of value: 3.5/5 – Not a bad price for such a huge burrito
Drink cost in terms of value: 5/5 – Combo #2 was an amazing deal
Chips cost in terms of value: 5/5 – Combo #2 was an amazing deal
Guacamole cost in terms of value: 3/5 – Not enough! But I understand Guacamole is expensive
Number of napkins supplied: 5/5 – I had just the right amount of napkins
Location: 4/5 – Mighty convenient, I didn’t even have to change concourse
Outlet Interior: 3/5 – doesn’t really apply, but it was bright and cheerful on the outside

According to RPI public safety, at exactly 18:37 EDT, student Liliana Rivera choked and died on a piece of garlic bread. An unnamed informant who was familiar with the situation reported that Rivera had just sat down to eat in the North West corner of the hall. She proceeded to take 4 bites from her cheese pizza before deeming it unfit for human consumption. Rivera then focused on her garlic bread, which was smothered in butter. While the first two bites went as planned, the proceeding bite of garlic bread manager to plant itself in Rivera’s trachea.

The first to arrive at the scene was RPI Public Safety officer Steve Williams. Said Williams of the incident, “It couldn’t have occurred at a better time. I was stationed merely 25 feet away, meaning that Liliana’s death set the new record for the fastest response time!” Regardless of the reaction time, this is the first report of someone who has died in a bread accident. Sodexo, the hospitality services provider at RPI who operates Russell Sage Dining Hall, could not be reached for comment.

Editors Note: This was a proof on concept article that worked in about 8 hours.

My roommate and I set up all 7 of our screens to loop the “Never Gonna Give You Up” video. It was loud, annoying, but pretty sweet.

These sprung up on campus last week, and I think they’re complete genius!