Wednesday, April 26, 2006

They only boo in new york

So, if you don't know, I'm a bit of a baseball fan. My team is the rangers, which means I'm perrenially disappointed. Anyway, their achillies heel has ALWAYS been their pitching. Pick a year, any year, and the offensive numbers have pretty much ranked in the top 10 in the majors, but their pitching staff likes to hang out near the basement....

Anyway, we have this closer... Francisco Cordero... He was pretty good for us last year. In fact, he was an all-star in 2004. He's run on a spat of hard luck lately... he's blown 4 of 7 save opportunities. It's gotten so bad that fans are BOOING him!!! BOOING!!! This is TEXAS!!! You DON'T BOO THE HOMETEAM!!! You can be less than pleased, but you don't BOO! Especially pitchers. Pitchers are such skittish creatures anyway, and if you boo them, the mental problems just get worse.

I am ashamed that people like this patronize the Ballpark.

C'mon Cordero... You can pull through this.

Screw all you fair-weather fans.

Tuesday, April 18, 2006

Jinjitsu master

I saw jinjitsu master again today. He was on the wrong side of the street riding a bike he'd obviously stole. He had some of his possessions over his shoulder. As I passed him, I heard him grumble to no one in particular (rather loudly, I might add) "I don't have any money, and that really pisses me off!"

He's one of those homeless guys you don't really want to have anything to do with. I've met a few, and some of them you can actually have a conversation with. Not this dude.

Monday, April 17, 2006

when I get my house

I will get a dog. A mutt from the pound. If it's a boy, his name shall be "Stinky Peterson". I will give you props if you can tell me where the name stinky peterson comes from. And no, it's not Arnold, it was somewhere else first. (really, give me some credit... I do not watch little kids' cartoons.)

Not sure what I will call my dog if it's a girl...

SExtractor

There's a computer and a scanner on the 16th floor which I use to scan in homework solutions for the class I TA. I was up there this evening scanning in a hw assignment. When I got done scanning the images, I had to open up the directory where it dumps the file in order to convert it into a PDF. Anyway, there's a file in that directory which made me do a double take. Yup... it's called sextractor.pdf. It took me a little bit to work up the courage to open it, but aparently, it's a manual for a program called "Source Extractor" The dude who wrote it is french, so I guess sextractor doesn't translate, but damn...

I found the following qutoe on the second page of the SExtractor manual:

"Back in the early nineties, the purpose of SExtractor was to find a comprimise between refinement in both detection and measurements, and computational speed. By today's standards, SExtractor would be more accurately defined as a "quick-and-dirty" tool."

I can't decide which would be more funny... if this guy is old and frumpy and has no idea what it translates to, or if he intentionally named it such...

UPDATE!!
-------------------------------------------------
I think we can rule out him being old and frumpy. His name is Emmanuel Bertin.



This is him. He doesn't look old and frumpy. Well, at least not old. Not to imply that all old people are frumpy. Actually, some of the un-frumpiest people I know are getting up there in age.

Hart Hall, how I miss thee

A friend reminded me via his IM away message of the Hart Hall grode yell.
I lived in Hart for three years in undergrad. It was the "pride of central side", as it was smack dab in the middle of campus. My first year there was the last year without air conditioning. I know, the texas climate in the summer is nearly unbearable, but it was doable, especially since the price was right. It was $700 a semester. I pay nearly that much right now for 1 month's rent. It wasn't so bad after you got the fans cranked up and were walking around in your underwear taking cold showers every few hours. It was one of the oldest dorms on campus, and since it was the cheapest living option, it attracted... well, shall we say, a different class of clientelle than did the modular dorms. The thing about Hart was, it had a fairly high retention rate. It kinda grew on you... kinda like the mold in the bathrooms. If you didn't manage to get out there after your first year, you were pretty much a lifer. I had some interesting roommates while in Hart, but if you've known me long, you pretty much know that.

Grode yells were a holdover from bonfire. You did them with your dorm to get yourself fired up for cut or stack or any other bonfire related thing. Your dorm was like your family, albeit a smelly one. Your dorm was the coolest, while any other dorm on campus was stupid and full of 2%-er's. Grode yells were basically the aggie yell version of the Aristocrats joke. The point was to be as rude and offensive as possible, making fun of other dorms/areas of campus. I think Hart had one of the best. Hart's rival was Walton, the other non-AC dorm on campus (at least when I entered). They were on Northside and were basically A&M's animal house. Needless to say, for those of you with delicate eardrums, I would advise not reading the rest of this post.




*DISCLAIMER!!* The following yell is VERY VERY DIRTY!!! DON'T READ IF YOU DON'T WANT TO GET OFFENDED!



Hart Hall, f*** 'em all
p****, c***, and c***.
Grab a t**, suck a s***
sure is fun, but tastes like s***
Through the ramps, into bed
give us h*** until we're dead.
F*** you Walton, suck our b****
wish you could be Hart f***'n Hall

Whoop!

Sunday, April 09, 2006

the other shoe....

So.... as I gather from the comments to my last post, there are a fair amount of people wondering what happend to the girl I was dating...

Well, to make a long story short, it never really got off the ground. We kinda mutually agreed that we were not the right people for each other. She is a sorority girl, and I am definitely not a frat guy. Now we get to see if it gets awkward. We never bothered to have "the talk" to start the relationship, so we didn't really have "the talk" to end it. So, in a way, it's like it didn't happen. I hope we can stay friends. I'd hate to not get invited to poker night anymore.

So what else is new?

Vince is coming here for Grad School. He's sawing logs on my futon right now. He's in town looking for apartments. I'm trying to convince him to live near me. Possibly with me. As far as buying the house goes, I don't know if I'll be able to actually "buy" a house, as I'm not sure if I could get qualified for a large enough loan. Mom gave me a ball park estimate for what I could qualify for, and I'm not sure I'd want to live there. Who knows... I'll keep looking, but the places I will probably end up being able to afford will probably be in some pretty shady neighborhoods. If that's the case, I think I'll try to move into a house with Mike D. and possibly someone else somewhere here in Hyde Park.

Sarah C. came down during spring break. It was nice to see her again. We went to Trudy's and drank some Mexican martinis and had a right old time. I got to meet Matt, her boyfriend, a peruvian dude in some sort of Psych grad program (I think). Sarah kept saying that she didn't want to get married, and that everyone she knows who is married is miserable. Matt and I agreed, but I don't think Sarah quite believed herself :-P

Mandy is applying to grad schools, and she wants to go to Texas State, which is just a little south of here in San Marcos. She came down to visit it and stayed with me for a few days. Luckily she wasn't three sheets to the wind on bourbon again this time.... :-)

I house/dog sat for Mike a few weeks ago. I'm glad I don't have a puppy like Zeus. He's going to be great when he grows up and chills out, but he is a holy terror right now. You have to pay attention to him 100% of the time or he goes crazy.

I got to meet the creater of PhD comics (Piled Higher and Deeper) Jorge Cham. Very funny... and yet so true.... We went out after his talk (entitled "the power of procrastination") to 6th street and shot the bull. Fergal told some funny stories about the astronomy department and the observatory. I wouldn't be surprised if some of our antics make it into the strip.

Taxes suck.

Well, not so much if you're getting money back, but filling the forms out sucks just the same.

Alright, time for breakfast.