![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
"... what the world needs now..."
Jul. 13th, 2003 12:52 am... is a larger population of cute vegetarian girls who are into computers and languages. I met one tonight, actually, which was interesting, although just one part of an entertaining evening spent with Richard and Brett and some of Brett's crew from FSU.
I popped over to Richard's house after spending the morning and early afternoon with my father (we worked out at his house, then walked 'round at the Museum of Natural Science and History, aka the Junior Museum to Tallahassee locals, which is essentially an outdoor semi-zoo-ish thing populated with native Floridian fauna), which was interesting, because I hadn't seen him for a long while, maybe since Christmas. We talked about stuff and played with his dogs (he has three at his house, and they're all fluffy and loveable) for a while, which was great -- and eventually Brett came over and revealed his plans to go out and eat Indian food at Samrat with some associates. So that's what we ended up doing :)
Richard's a wonderful guy... he's sort of quiet, generally brooding, and often looks abstracted, like he's thinking about something very far away. The trivialities of life don't seem to bog him down too much -- he's the sort of fellow that forgets to go to sleep because he was just up thinking all night, or sometimes gets distracted in mid-sentence while he's talking to you. He's brilliant. When I read Crime and Punishment, I got a very strong feeling that Raskolnikov was very much like Richard, or at least like a caricature of Richard. He can do calculus like nobody's business, really enjoys it, figures things out on his own when he doesn't have the background to work out a particular math problem (he was working out the math to do 3D graphics before he knew about linear algebra, back in highschool) and can code like ... like somebody who's a really clever coder -- he was on the Maclay Programming Team (the only one there's been, yet) with Brett and myself, back in highschool :) He's doing aerospace engineering at University of Colorado in Boulder, and he's all into that sort of thing, space exploration and lift coefficients and politics and history and everything. And he plays the trumpet in the marching band and sometimes jogs, and I think independently decided to get into Christian Science.
There were seven of us at Samrat, and we had a marvelous time, and we talked about video games and films and language (English usage, particularly) and firearms and power tools ... Richard was largely unfamiliar with Indian food, but we got him hooked up with a mango lassi and some naan and something seafood-ish, and he ended up enjoying it, so that was good :) Afterwards, we headed over to Borders and hung out for a while, just looking around at books and music and talking about computers and stuff.
In the throng at Samrat and Borders was this young lady, Diana, who it turns out was the aforementioned veggie/hacker/language girl I met. She speaks Hungarian at home (and busted that out a little bit at dinner, because she was asked to) and French from learning that in school, and builds machines for fun and profit, and is looking to get her A+ certification. Sadly, she's just here for orientation (so she's a bit young) and will be headed back home to Sarasota 'til the fall... but she's all cute, clever, friendly and geeky. So it's good to know that there are people like this in the world, and aparently she knows Jed and Kelly (some of Brett's FSU friends from Sarasota) so aparently she'll have a good social network to hook into, when she shows up at FSU.
I had an interesting experience today, just driving and looking at the sunlight and the bright blue sky and listening to some reggae on V89... I was simultaneously contemplating the whole "so why is there anything at all?" (or put into Lloydian/Platonic terms, "What causes things to instantiate into the phenomenal realm?") question and thinking about animals and the amazing... innocence and sincerity in a lot of religious Rasta reggae. It all seemed very clear, at that point, from the Rasta part of my mind, at least. Why do things instantiate? Jah. God. Jehovah. And that was enough. Of course, that could just be a naming-and-personifying the answer "just because".
Why?
"Because I said so!"
Says who?
"Says I!"
Who're you?
"I am, that I am."
Well, thanks. That's great.
... there was a moment of awareness in there, at least. The mind is a very strange place...
I popped over to Richard's house after spending the morning and early afternoon with my father (we worked out at his house, then walked 'round at the Museum of Natural Science and History, aka the Junior Museum to Tallahassee locals, which is essentially an outdoor semi-zoo-ish thing populated with native Floridian fauna), which was interesting, because I hadn't seen him for a long while, maybe since Christmas. We talked about stuff and played with his dogs (he has three at his house, and they're all fluffy and loveable) for a while, which was great -- and eventually Brett came over and revealed his plans to go out and eat Indian food at Samrat with some associates. So that's what we ended up doing :)
Richard's a wonderful guy... he's sort of quiet, generally brooding, and often looks abstracted, like he's thinking about something very far away. The trivialities of life don't seem to bog him down too much -- he's the sort of fellow that forgets to go to sleep because he was just up thinking all night, or sometimes gets distracted in mid-sentence while he's talking to you. He's brilliant. When I read Crime and Punishment, I got a very strong feeling that Raskolnikov was very much like Richard, or at least like a caricature of Richard. He can do calculus like nobody's business, really enjoys it, figures things out on his own when he doesn't have the background to work out a particular math problem (he was working out the math to do 3D graphics before he knew about linear algebra, back in highschool) and can code like ... like somebody who's a really clever coder -- he was on the Maclay Programming Team (the only one there's been, yet) with Brett and myself, back in highschool :) He's doing aerospace engineering at University of Colorado in Boulder, and he's all into that sort of thing, space exploration and lift coefficients and politics and history and everything. And he plays the trumpet in the marching band and sometimes jogs, and I think independently decided to get into Christian Science.
There were seven of us at Samrat, and we had a marvelous time, and we talked about video games and films and language (English usage, particularly) and firearms and power tools ... Richard was largely unfamiliar with Indian food, but we got him hooked up with a mango lassi and some naan and something seafood-ish, and he ended up enjoying it, so that was good :) Afterwards, we headed over to Borders and hung out for a while, just looking around at books and music and talking about computers and stuff.
In the throng at Samrat and Borders was this young lady, Diana, who it turns out was the aforementioned veggie/hacker/language girl I met. She speaks Hungarian at home (and busted that out a little bit at dinner, because she was asked to) and French from learning that in school, and builds machines for fun and profit, and is looking to get her A+ certification. Sadly, she's just here for orientation (so she's a bit young) and will be headed back home to Sarasota 'til the fall... but she's all cute, clever, friendly and geeky. So it's good to know that there are people like this in the world, and aparently she knows Jed and Kelly (some of Brett's FSU friends from Sarasota) so aparently she'll have a good social network to hook into, when she shows up at FSU.
I had an interesting experience today, just driving and looking at the sunlight and the bright blue sky and listening to some reggae on V89... I was simultaneously contemplating the whole "so why is there anything at all?" (or put into Lloydian/Platonic terms, "What causes things to instantiate into the phenomenal realm?") question and thinking about animals and the amazing... innocence and sincerity in a lot of religious Rasta reggae. It all seemed very clear, at that point, from the Rasta part of my mind, at least. Why do things instantiate? Jah. God. Jehovah. And that was enough. Of course, that could just be a naming-and-personifying the answer "just because".
Why?
"Because I said so!"
Says who?
"Says I!"
Who're you?
"I am, that I am."
Well, thanks. That's great.
... there was a moment of awareness in there, at least. The mind is a very strange place...
