Alright, I've resolved to stop popping my knuckles. These days, about once a week, I wake up with the joints in one or more fingers stiff and not entirely mobile. The second joint of a given finger'll look a bit fat and hurt to bend very much. Most people don't pop this joint; I don't know really know how or why I came to do it myself. But yea, so I pop (most) fingers in two spots each- I suppose if you didn't know what I was doing and sat there and listened counting the pops, you'd think I had more than 10 fingers or something, haha. Anyways, since it's a hard feat to just suddenly stop popping altogether one day, I'm gonna use the step-down method (kinda like those tobacco patches or something). My plan is to first stop popping all second joints (the site of the immediate pain). If that goes well, then I'll step it up and try to quit cold turkey, but at this point that sounds like a hell of a lot to ask my subconscious.

And subconscious it is- I start popping when I get nervous or otherwise antsy, without even thinking about it. Like I decided to quit this morning, and two or three times today I caught myself mid-sequence (cuz every habitual popper has got a routine that they go through to make sure they don't miss any fingers). It's like the hands move without the mind commanding them to. Hell, I've had to stop myself about 5 times during the span of time it took me to blog this entry, hahaha. Oh wait, make it 6, hahaha.

But yea, maybe that pain is rheumatism that's aggravated by coming rain; like I've read books where old people can tell when there's a storm a-brewin' cuz they feel it in their bones. I haven't made like a log of joint pain vs. weather, so I can only hypothesize. But yea, maybe that'd be like a mixed blessing/curse in the old days. They'd think old people were like shamans (shamen? shapersons? Shah Reza Pahlavi??) cuz they could predict the weather. Haha, if I could go back in time... I would rule with an iron fist! hahaha =P

"I bet a fun thing would be to go way back in time to where there was going to be an eclipse and tell the cave men, 'If I have come to destroy you, may the sun be blotted out from the sky.' Just then the eclipse would start, and they'd probably try to kill you or something, but then you could explain about the rotation of the moon and all, and everyone would get a good laugh."
~Jack Handey

This past Thursday, Robert from wushu invited me over to his place for crawfish. Good stuff. Man, living here on campus deprives you of so many things you're used to from your home life, namely good food. I also had an O3 but wasn't impressed; I think Smirnoff Ice is still my "wussy drink" of choice.

While I'm on the topic of foods: watermelon! Uggghhh... this is one food that has very strong negative associations from my childhood. I was really young at the time, but I think it was my uncle who told me something like, "yea, you gotta be reeeeeeeaally careful not to swallow any seeds, otherwise a watermelon'll grow in your stomach! It happened to me, and that's why my gut is so big!" And being the naive child I was, I believed him (cuz he did have the beer-belly to back up his claim). So from then on, I put so much time into digging out the seeds that eating watermelon just ceased to be pleasurable (marginal cost exceeding marginal benefit, so to speak). But yea, that completely ruined the experience of eating watermelon for me for years to come. I hated the taste of watermelon- couldn't even stand watermelon flavored candy. This lasted for years- probably about a decade. It wasn't until the popularization of seedless watermelons that I gradually started to eat watermelon again. I still have a little bit of subconscious [suspicion] every time that taste hits my mouth, but hopefully (maybe in another 10 years or so) I'll eventually make my peace with watermelon. So yea, moral of the story is: be careful what you tell young and impressionable children, lest you should scar them for life!

Anyways, I watched Being John Malkovich on Friday night with Rex, Pearl, and Louise. Confusing... trippy... don't know what else to say. Then this Saturday was Forty Acres Fest. It was whatever. I had more fun last year. And I didn't know any of the musical guests this year; I stopped by Gregory and listened to the concert for a bit, but it was just too black, so to speak. Afterwards, I played poker with the guys again and won for the first time ever. Still not that big a fan of poker, but everyone seems to play, so I guess "When in Rome..."

So in my infinite wisdom, I decided that I'd like to take a grad course next semester (Structural Dynamics). I talked to the professor of my favorite class this semester to get feedback on what electives to take, and the idea came up of taking the graduate verson of the class I'm in now. It sounded good, and to my untrained eye, it seemed to fit into my schedule perfectly. Then I started to working on the paperwork to make it happen, and that's when stuff started getting crazy on me. Turns out that if you take any graduate courses, you're not allowed to take more than 15 hours- no exceptions. In order to satisfy this requirement, I'd have to drop a 3 hour course (and probably the 1 hour lab that goes with it), putting me at 14 (or possibly 13 hours). But yea, the only class I can afford to not take this upcoming semester is Advanced Spacecraft Dynamics, which is only offered in the Fall, so I won't get another chance to take it for a whole 'nother year. Bah, this is screwing up my 4-year gameplan that I'd so meticulously arranged. grrrr....

Anyways, so the form you gotta get filled out to take grad classes is a freaking pain in the butt. They make you walk all over campus and get the signatures of 5 advisors/deans/teacher. So much bureaucracy- yecchhhhh. I think they should cut it down to a single signature blank (for you) that's like, "I, the undersigned, take full responsibility for whatever unfortunate consequences and repercussions that should occur as a result of me taking this course. X_____" Well, and maybe a teacher signature to affirm that you're not a complete idiot.

But yea, man, it seems like the deeper I get into my major, the less I like it. =( It really leaves me depressed and confused, cuz I honestly have no idea what else I'd like to do with my life. I trudge through the coursework, cursing it every step of the way. Each semester, there's only about one class (maybe two) that I find at least bearably interesting- on rare occasion, I'll actually like it. I mean, I guess I'm not quite deep enough into aerospace engineering to be saying that the whole curriculum was a letdown, but I'm also getting (or have already gotten) in too deep to change my mind and try something else. But seriously, what the heck is up with these engineering curriculums? They make you take so many mindless prereq's that you get bored and end up forgetting why you wanted to go into that major in the first place. And soo many of the prereq's aren't even worth it, I think- like I sat through an entire semester of introductory chemistry for what? So I'd know a single equation "PV = nRT" for thermodynamics? Pointless. Ugghhh, at this point, it's kinda like whatever, just put up with it for a couple more years so I can get that almighty piece of paper, then maybe I'll find something I really enjoy to do for grad school. Seriously, disillusionment abound. *sigh* I suppose even "the best-laid plans of mice and men go oft astray." ~Robert Burns(?)

Man, I spent from 8pm till 5:30am in the water tunnel of WRW this past Thursday working on my fluids final lab. And then after that, I spent till 6:30 transferring video from camcorder to my computer back in my dorm. But yea, dang that was an experience I don't hope to duplicate anytime soon. But seriously, it must be some sort of rite of passage for engineers to spend the night working in their respective buildings. Bonus points if that building is locked to the public afterhours. I guess I can proudly say that I've crossed over and joined the ranks of the hardcore, heheh.

But man, in order to meet my group (or actually just Daniel D.), I had to skip out early from Silko Mangos' Big Show. It was a good show too, bah. =/ But I guess I felt particularly guilty cuz I actually knew one of the cast members this year and didn't get to stay and see her doing anything significant. Well, props to Jinny for all the hard work anyways. =/

Saturday afternoon, I went and checked out the Austin Asian Film Festival. They were conveniently showing on campus, so I figured what the heck. I watched two documentaries in the RTF building: "Sunrise over Tiananmen Square" and "Japanese Nightmare." I was not particularly impressed with the first, but the second was rather interesting. Don't feel like blogging about them though.

Then today was Quadfest- like a semi-annual outdoor party type thing that they host for the honors dorms. They had a pedestal joust and a bouncy castle- fun stuff. They also had an improv comedy show by the Gigglepants troupe that was pretty good. Later, I went to wushu practice for the first time in about a month today- very painful, hahaha.

Ok, so I was doing laundry, and I had the machines just about loaded and detergent, softener, and bleach all poured and everything. Well, a sock drops on the ground, so I bend over to pick it up, and my hair just coincidentally flops into the little bin for bleach! Hah, so I came back to my room pretty fast and washed my hair out a bit, but I wouldn't be surprised if I find a light spot in my hair tomorrow, hahaha.

*Hair turned out fine.

Blarg, so my fluids final lab project started today. We have 3 days to do an experiment that we thought up ourselves. We picked to do flow visualization over (a scale model of) an F/A-18 in a water tunnel. But yea, I guess part of the reason why I'm not so hyped about this experiment is that with flow visualization, all your data comes in the form of pictures and occasionally video. And I guess I'm just a lot better with quantitative data than with qualitative- I prefer analyzing numerical trends as opposed to just being like, "As seen in Fig. 1.2, the object is very pretty..." "It is evident to the most casual of observers, that the cool-itude is proportional to the pretti-tude. It is my intention to sit down and play video games for several hours. (Strongbad reference)" Heh, but seriously, I guess my main concern is that we're not gonna have a whole lot to say about what we see. But yea, other groups have spent till 5 in the morning(s) doing their experiments. Dunno if we'll have to do the same- we'll see. At any rate, the water tunnel is my life for the next couple days. =/

While I'm on things I actually learned in school: you know that thing about how in the Northern hemisphere, the water in your toilet is supposed to spin one direction, and in the Southern hemisphere, it's supposed to spin the other? It's a crock of BS! Nothing but an urban legend. The common pseudo-science explanation is that it's caused by the Coriolis force- a result of the Earth's spinning. Well, I learned in fluid mechanics class that the Coriolis force is absolutely tiny- basically everything overcomes it. The swirling you see when fluids drain is due to residual motion of the fluid that hasn't dissipated. To see the Coriolis force even begin to affect anything, you'd need a perfectly still body of water (roughly the size of a swimming pool) draining at a fairly piddly rate, and after a couple hours, you might see the beginnings of a Coriolis-induced vortex. So yea, in conclusion, the water in a toilet or bathtub spins a certain way when it drains cuz of something you did. And that reminds me:

"If a kid asks where rain comes from, I think a cute thing to tell him is 'God is crying.' And if he asks why God is crying, another cute thing to tell him is 'Probably because of something you did.'"
~Jack Handey

On Alternative Fuels. Today in thermodynamics (on one of the rare occasions I'm actually paying attention), the professor was talking about the concept of efficiencies. And as a supplement to the lesson, he brought up the topic of automobile well-to-wheel efficiency. He showed us results from a study on alternative fuel options (featured in "Mechanical Engineering Power 2003"), and long story short: hybrid vehicles are a lot more viable than fuel cells (from both the economic and engineering standpoints).

There's a lot of hype surrounding fuel cells because the reaction at the heart of it is like: 2H₂ + O₂ -> 2H₂O +(energy). But the part that most people don't know about is where that H₂ comes from. It's not just like, hey, let's grab some H₂ out of the air! Yea, you either gotta zap it out of water through electrolysis (which requires other energy), or they gotta make it out of hydrocarbons (i.e. fossil fuels), so truth be told, it's not truly a pollution-free process. And plus, to distribute the hydrogen necessary to pull this whole thing off would require almost into the trillions for infrastructure (by the estimate of the article I read). So yea, fuel cell vehicles probably aren't gonna be prominent for several more decades, at least.

The Politics of Energy. Yet Bush is pushing for fuel cell vehicles and got some props from environmentalists for it too. But the lesser told story is that funding was diverted from hybrid technology to fuel cell technology. I tend to believe that this was meant in some way to help the oil industry. Dump money into a fuel technology that's not gonna show results for a long time to come, to keep the cars dependent on oil. And also, remember that bill in congress this past year to raise the fuel economy that didn't pass? Fuel economy regulations haven't been changed since the 80's, even though the technology exists today to raise the mpg a hefty bit and do it cheaply. I can't help but think that that's the work of oil industry lobbyists as well. Opposition to raising fuel economy standards often decry the loss of automotive power in doing so, but hybrid technology can increase power as well as mpg. And also, what is the deal with ethanol? You know, that fuel substitute made out of corn? It's both less powerful and more polluting than gasoline (*edit: depends who you ask), yet year after year the government dumps funding into it- obviously to get the support of Midwestern states by appeasing the corn farmers.

But anyways, back to the oil industry. Let's talk about the war in Iraq. Only in the past couple months has it become evident that WMD's were not a real reason to go to war at all. Now, I never really thought that was what the war was about, but I read an article maybe half a year ago that I found particularly interesting. It pointed out that on the global market, oil is traded in American dollars- and this is supposed to give us a hefty bit of financial leverage somehow (don't ask me, my understanding of economics is shaky at best). Anyways, immediately prior to the war, Iraq decides that it wants to start trading in the increasingly popular Euro. Lest other nations should follow suit, we bomb the hell out of and invade Iraq, and lo and behold, Iraq trades oil in American dollars again. Heh, that'll teach them- let's see if any other OPEC countries wanna try pulling the switch to Euros, heheh. (*edit: haven't found other sources corroborating this theory, so dunno how true it is, but I still believe it.)

But yea, there's always talk that we're gonna exhaust the global supply of oil in the next couple decades. I dunno, seems like they keep pushing back their guess of when that's supposed to happen. But I mean, CO₂ and other greenhouse gases too. It's my belief that global warming is no joke- it's happening, and it's happening cuz of us. Now, I don't think it's gonna be as drastic as the trailer for that "Day After Tomorrow" movie or whatever, but I can't forsee anything good coming out of it. Yea... something to keep an eye on I suppose.

Chilled with Kevin for like the first time all school year this past weekend. Played poker on Friday- it was whatever. Then Saturday, we went and watched Hellboy. I was rather amused: not necessarily impressed, but amused. I'd read the comic before, so I guess I was a little biased in its favor. I thought it was pretty interesting to see certain scenes ripped straight out of "Hellboy: Seeds of Destruction," and then have other parts of the story completely butchered. But I guess I was pleased to have odd points of the story somewhat explained. Like for instance, I musta completely missed the part in the comic where they said he filed his horns- certainly explains those stubby little bumps though. And how come the uber-assassin guy (in any story) always uses swords? Hah, I'm not complaining, but it's rather... [quaint], no? Anyways, we went to the Jimmy John's on Red River afterwards. Good times.

I'm sure most of you have heard of the hoopla surrounding a recent publication in Details magazine titled "Gay or Asian?" (alternate link), and the ensuing petition against it. I first heard about it a couple weeks ago, and yea, of course I was outraged. But then I did a little big of digging on the internet and read somewhere that Details is a publication targeted at a gay audience (*see correction), and that they'd published other articles such as "Gay or Jesus?" and "Gay or British?" And I dunno, finding that out kinda made my rage subside. I mean, obviously, it doesn't make it right, but I think making fun of all groups equally makes it slightly less wrong. As long as you don't single out any single group, you're an equal-opportunity hater, right? And I mean, I think gay people can make fun of gays all they want, and no one can say anything. It's like there's an inherent rule that you're allowed to make fun of groups you belong to without coming off as a total bastard. Kinda like how black people shamelessly call each other the N-word, or how every once in awhile I make a comment about the slantiness of my own eyes.

But yea, I'm reminded of how when Yao Ming first started in the NBA, Shaq made a comment like: "Tell Yao Ming, 'ching-chong-yang-wah-ah-soh.'" And there was a big uproar in the Asian community over that remark, but Yao made a public statement like: "I believe Shaquille O'Neal was joking but I think that a lot of Asian people don't understand that kind of joke." I thought that showed a lot of maturity on Yao's part. I mean, no one likes being made fun of, but does it seem like sometimes we have a tendency to take things a little too personally? Take it in stride, turn the other cheek, right? ...but then you're just perpetuating the passive/submissive Asian stereotype, aren't ya? Hah, either way you lose if you frame everything in terms of racism and get too defensive.

But yea, I dunno. I'll admit forthright that I love me my racist jokes. I think they're funny; what more can I say? But obviously they must be told with a little bit of tact: you always have to know your audience, and often they have to be told under your breath. You don't go telling hispanics your jokes about Mexicans, much less publish them in a magazine. I guess if someone ever overheard, I'd tell them they were entitled to tell me a racist joke against Asians or something, haha. But yea, I guess the reason I can't hate on this Details article too much is cuz in a sense, it feels like karma. I've made fun of other races so much that I guess I had it coming. =/


*ok, correction: I found out that Details isn't a gay magazine. Now I'm angry again! grrrr... That violates the "inherent rule."

My week in recap:

Had a week and a half of utter hell. 3 tests (well, 4 if you count the test in ballroom dance). Every night of last week was spent at the UGL, usually till about 3 in the morning- on the better nights. Saw the sun rise on sleepless nights two or three times, I can't even remember (one of the most hated sights/feelings in my life). (Last) Monday morning was the first time this semester that my alarm clock failed in its sole duty. There was a slight bit of guilt, but missing my Monday morning class wouldn't kill me. The next day, I intentionally skipped my fluid mechanics class, so I could sleep in. HW was due in that class, and I hadn't done it, so I figured it was pointless to go. But then it comes around and bites me in the butt: there was a pop quiz, and I wasn't there to even get the pity grade of a 40 (that I've gotten on the previous 2 pop quizzes). =( Dangit, I'm so screwed in fluids, haha- I really can't say that enough. A single C has the power to jack me of my scholarship(s) (I think), and I'm shooting for a B in fluids- let's just leave it at that.

Went to the Honors Day ceremony. It was pretty whatever. Coulda just gotten my cord and left, and no one would've known the difference. And yea, I think I'll be bitter about that medal thing for life, hahaha.

Stephen L. came down from Harvard and chilled for the weekend. Didn't really do a whole lot. We went to a club party that was pretty sad. We played poker another night- me, Tony, Michael, Frank, Stephen M., and Stephen L. It was really fun(ny). We (well, actually, mostly just me) decided to refer to the small blind as "Mr. Magoo" and the big blind as "Helen Keller," since she's both deaf and blind. Hah, I got a big kick out of that. That's about all the fun I get for the week. After this, it's gonna be more hardcoreness...

*Sunday night was an all-nighter also. Spent like 8 hours on my fluids lab- 4 hours or so trying to figure out what the hell the experiment was even about, and the other half actually writing it. Felt like a freaking zombie afterwards.

mother#*@%! I just busted my clock! I was adjusting the time, cuz of daylight savings and all. So I hang it back on the wall, and walk back to my desk; then it just falls right off the wall, the glass pane shatters, and scatters glass all over the fricking place. I swiffered and used the sticky part of some post-it notes to pick up the shards. Hopefully that did the trick.

*Upon further inspection, it seems that the tack fell out of the bulletin board thingy; therefore, my investigation and panel (of one) review pins the blame solely on the bulletin board and not on myself, heheh. On the bright side though, turned out the clock still works (apparently) when I popped the battery back in- I'll have to watch it carefully these next few days to see if it loses minutes or anything though.