(no subject)

I've been trying to figure out exactly why I did this to myself -- it seem pretty well perverse. Just a bad habit to have hanging around, but from Thursday night to Friday, I didn't really sleep... I was up all night workin' on stuff for the Linux kernel class. Doing an all-nighter for a summer-session class at FSU doesn't seem like the most sane option, but I think... maybe it was just sort of a reaction to "well, I'm taking a CS class -- I need to do at least one, I guess" ... I really didn't need to do it. It could have been easily circumvented. Eh.

It was kinda fun :) I downloaded the RH9 disks, installed them on this old machine I'd had at dad's house (treebeard, a friendly 233mHz pentium I -- the downloading and installing was what took most of the time), tweaked the system up to satisfaction, rebuilt the kernel a few times, and then wrote some kernel modules that do interesting and Wrong things. Yay :)

Dr. Baker (and some others) seemed to be amused -- I brought treebeard over to FSU and plugged him up in the lab, and things went well from there.

Ooh, today, I got my workout schedule from this friendly guy named Sean, who works at the gym at FSU. He's Really Big, and used to be on the FSU swimteam (until he ran out of years of eligibility). He was showing me how to do the different machines (some of them looked rather esoteric, and it's not like I've never been in a gym before...), and just sort of absentmindedly lifted whatever weight happened to be there, casually hefted these rather large dumbells to demonstrate proper technique on lifting freeweights. I wouldn't have thought to do some of the exercises he'd shown me, so that's good that he suggested I do them; I'll most likely be bigger and stronger and hopefully faster in the nearish future, so yay for that too :)

Speaking of Faster... I think I've run into one of the next few years' highschool track stars. After I spoke with Sean the Lifting Instructor at the gym, I wandered over to the track and found a group of young-ish (middle-school to 20-something) black (with a sort of medium-thick AAE dialect going) guys doing some intervals and having little races, and they seemed pretty friendly, so I ended up running and chatting about track with them for a little bit. I was handily defeated in the 100, 200, and 400 by this 8th-grader named Sheldon, who apparently goes to Bellvue and new all the Really Fast people in the area. So if anybody out there happens to follow highschool track in North Florida... watch for this kid :) I suggested that we try racing the 800, but he didn't seem too keen on this idea. I think I've officially become a Slow White Distance Runner, only I'm not that good at distance races either :-\

... and since then, I've been ambiently hangin' around, missing Esther, reading some everything2 and some Nietzsche (I picked up Thus Spake Zarathustra, finally, after snagging that and Beyond Good and Evil about two years ago -- BGE was cool) and playing videogames. I'm sort of half waiting up for Natalie -- tonight's her Junior Prom...

Hrum. Perhaps it's off to read or play SF Alpha 2 or something.

Very exciting indeed!

Today's been pretty well athletically active -- I walked and did a workout video with my mother (there's just something to be said for doing an aerobics workout with one's maternal unit -- I'm not quite sure what that something is, though -- it was entertaining, with kickboxing and Power Yoga worked into it ... *laughs*), walked and ran with the Lloydinator... my Grand Scheme of Getting Much Stronger is coming along nicely... I'll probably get to bed relatively early tonight, run in the morning, and then head over to FSU for the weight training class... where I'm lined up for Upper Body Day. Oh yesh.

The Beefiest Tofu-Eater Award is coming my way, I think :) Look out for a huge vegetarian in the near future...

Ah, and I got a phone call from Esther -- she sounded really excited. She's been in Italy, and as of late in Rome and -- this was darn skippy; she was all excited whilst describing this -- today happens to be the Pope's Birthday (Happy Birthday, JP!), and she and her family happened to be there at St. Peter's, where he did today's Mass, which involved both a canonization (four new saints canonized today, two Italian and two Polish, I think), on the order of 100k people smushed into the square, and a singing, in multiple languages, of Happy Birthday To You for His Holiness. He then rode 'round in the Popemobile and blessed the crowd. We had a smallish, if Really Interesting, discussion about what that thing is called -- I could hear her brother saying "Popemobile" over the phone, but she doesn't like the name a whole bunch. My argument ran as such: "He's a really important man, so he gets his own -mobile, right? Like Batman." I think her end of things is based on a rather different idea of sacred-ness... for her, I think it might be harder for things to be simultaneously sacred and silly, and maybe it doesn't make as much sense for her to find the Pope's car to be absurd. I mean, he's a great Pope -- really funky guy. I'm all about John Paul II... but it's ... the Popemobile, ya know?

This is very possibly the same thread in her mind that finds destruction of churches in movies somewhat distressing, and the one that finds my attempts to break the English language less-than-amusing... how can we know something unless we try really hard to break it? *shrugs* People Are Different!

... speaking of Different People, Lloydus and myself showed up to the Maclay Company awards dinner/party thing tonight. It was quite informal, but it was pretty well entertaining hanging out with old (younger) friends from highschool... including Alex, Denise -- he's somewhat into contact juggling, as it turns out :) You came up when he mentioned he was on his way to Miami. Watch over Alex for us, eh? :) It was at the home of highschool homies Matt and Sarah, whose household was home to a pair of plucky, hairy hounds. Dogs are always fun :) Possibly even more fun than completely needless alliteration. *shrugs*

Tonight, I've been discussing Europe travel plans with the maternal unit... this should work out nicely :) I'm excited...