Timing is everything.

I have finally discovered, thanks to Wikipedia, the definition of "freem", the word describing Stephen Colbert during the opening sequence of the Report. It is, it turns out,

Said to be "Freedom" without the "Do" because Colbert "do[es] it all for you." Also, there shouldn't be "dumb" in Freedom.

Great! Now I know. Except now, it's useless; no longer is there an image of Colbert standing next to the word "Freem" during the opening. Now, he stands next to the far more comprehensible "Eneagled". Stephen Colbert is eneagled; I know this to be true, thanks to the Report. Obviously, the power I wield with this blog is enormous; I should get a job making predictions for the Report. Stephen's ability to "Call It" would shoot up.

In other news, I got to talk to Wendy this morning, thanks to the magic of Skype. Only, she didn't have her mic hooked up or something, so we talked in the same way I am making a speech now. It was nice to catch up a little, but she had to get to work, and I had to get off the couch where I'd just finished up another marathon sleeping session. I'm getting a little sick of these; I can't wait until summer. I don't think I'll be taking any classes this summer, so I should be able to sleep just about enough during the day. And hopefully, I will get 6-8 hours a day, instead of 3, 3, 18. Which, oddly, I think was my locker combination in middle school. This means something. Something important.

Responsibility

Last night at work, I trained someone. This wasn't too hard; she already knew how to draw blood, and that was what I'd been asked to teach her. So the night mainly consisted of me walking around with her, watching as she poked people. And for that, I got a full day's pay. Not bad.

Of course, the last part of the evening was spent trying to clean up after my boss, who'd spent the night in the "processing" part of the lab. The last time I'd worked with him, he drew blood, which was mostly all right, with a few bugs to work out in his technique. Processing is a more complicated process, though, and a lot of things simply went undone for most of the night. So that was kind of a pain. Add to that the fact that we didn't have as much staff as usual, owing to the weather (or as the people skipping work pronounced it, "illness"), and it made for kind of a busy morning.

I actually showed up for both of my classes today. This was good, because it turned out, there was a test in Biology. It also turned out there was a quiz last Friday, which I missed. I cannot help but wonder if, were this bio course to fit better into my schedule by meeting earlier in the day, I wouldn't be doing much better in it, and not be thinking about switching majors.

Tonight, I work again. I hope that it goes a little better, but my hopes are not exactly high. I don't know with whom I might be working, or what I'll be doing. On the plus side, it is my last night of work before I go on vacation. I seriously need this. I'm all but burned out, and California will be nice. I don't know whether I'll bring both my computers; probably just the mac. This is the kind of problem I absolutely love having: "Should I bring both my laptops on my trip to sunny CA, or just the more fun one?" All my issues should be this wonderful.

Once again,

Sleep became my enemy.

While I slept yesterday, three things happened:

My downstairs neighbor moved away.
My best friend left town.
My shift at work started.

I was only really prepared for the first event. Damn you, stupid body! Damn you, third shift work! I work because I need the money, not because of any inherent night-owlyness. I need to find a job where I am awake during the day, when (apparently) things happen, and sleep during the night, when nurses get angry.

Okay, I'm learning that that last bit isn't really fair; it's only the occasional nurse who gets mad at me, and I can deal with that, since they usually aren't mad at me so much as the patient who refuses to breathe on their own or something. But last night I had to deal with a nurse who called me, angrily demanding test results (which she would have gotten, had her phone not been busy with yelling at me), and it's a little irritating to get interrupted from a busy morning to field a useless phone call. This nurse needs to learn to think before she acts.

On the other hand, I did manage to have a nice little conversation with some people from other departments in the hospital during my break, and I think I improved the political status of the lab in the hospital, if only by a bit. I explained a little of what we do there to people who don't get to see how exactly the lab works, and so hopefully, they will be more patient with us in the future. And by us, I mean me, since I don't really care about phone calls I don't have to answer. And by patient, I mean not yelling.

Another thing happened yesterday: I looked up an old friend online. She is getting her PhD, so I e-mailed her to say hi and see if she was single. She was, it turns out, not. This is a girl I've known since elementary school (and the only person I've ever met who got a higher ACT score than I), and it's been about seven years since I've talked to her. Ah, nostalgia. Of course, now I don't really know how to proceed; do we suddenly become best friends? Do I politely respond to her e-mail? Do I snub her entirely? I have enough social training to nix that last option, but that's about the point where my expertise runs out. I feel woefully underprepared for interpersonal relationships of any kind, really; does everyone feel this way?

Speaking of my impending hermitdom, my internet connection has been pretty bad lately; I can't really get a reliable connection. It's not any of the machines inside my apartment; I knew enough to set up the network, and I know enough to check it for errors. So the trouble must be with the cable company that provides my internet, right? Wrong. I have been sneaking data use from one of my neighbor's networks, and that's been going just fine. I don't know that they get internet from the same source as I do, but I'm pretty sure; they're about the only game in town. Right now I'm using a coffee shop's network. I think I may be doing that a great deal in the future, especially since coffee is the natural enemy of sleep, which I'm finding is the natural enemy of me leading a semi-normal life.

That was worth it. No, really.

So, after yesterday's fun of setting up WoW, I finally got to... sleep. I was so tired after work and installing the game that I couldn't actually play it; I just konked out and spent the next twelve hours asleep. Again. After I got up, I thought, "Finally! I'm all set up, I'm well rested, I don't have class until 8:30, I can play!" And I did. For 20 minutes. Until my internet connection crapped out on me. Stupid, evil Charter.

So I was just hanging out in my apartment for about ten minutes, when my phone rang. I noticed I'd missed a few calls from my neighbor, so I decided to answer this one. It took me about two seconds of listening to him to piece together what I'd missed out on from the earlier calls:

1. "Hey, James, how's it going?"
2. "Hey, I'm going out with some buddies, do you want to come?"
3. "Hey, I'm having a great time at the bar! I'm totally wasted!"

And the one I picked up was, of course,

4. "Hey, can I get a ride?"

Now, this guy is actually cool to hang out with, so I'm a little sorry I missed out on the earlier opportunity, but if I hadn't, I probably wouldn't be in a position to pick him up, which might have resulted in his attempt to drive while less than sober. This is not an activity I condone, as previously mentioned, so I gave him a ride home. During this ride, he upgraded my status from "upstairs neighbor" to full-fledged "friend". I would have liked to have thought we were friends beforehand, but I'll take it. It's kind of a shame that he's moving out of the state this weekend.

Well, for now, I'm in a coffee shop, so I think I'll give gaming another go. I have an hour before I need to think about class; hopefully, I can limit myself to that.

For the love of the game.

Things to do while loading any given MMORPG on your computer:

1. Have a glass of wine. You'll probably need it.

2. Put a meal in the oven.

3. Smoke a cigarette.

4. Pull a meal out of the oven.

5. Eat a good-sized meal.

6. Smoke a cigarette.

7. Have some yogurt for dessert.

8. Drive to the gas station for cigarettes. (Unless you followed step one. Drunk drivers are responsible for about 20% of my irritation about working.)

9. Pour some yogurt into your bathtub.

10. Pour some water into your bathtub.

11. Wait for the bacteria to eat the clog in your bathtub drain.

12. Watch the DVD that came with that CD you bought.

13. Resolve never to watch artists' DVDs that come with CDs. Ever again.

14. Smoke a cigarette.

15. Clean all that yogurty crap out of your suddenly messy bathtub.

16. Use your other computer to blog about installing games.

17. Insert disc 2. Out of 7.

Oh, the weirdness...

I'm starting to discover some of the quirks of owning a Mac. I can't always type in Firefox the way I would want; this doesn't appear to be a hardware issue, since it's only the one program that is buggy this way. Instead, I think there's some weirdness about the keystrokes I use that prevent me from typing what I want in the fields I want. I'll go to type something, and I will hit the keys, and nothing shows up on the screen. The only rational explanation: I have hit some combination of keys that, instead of leading to typing, leads to, I don't know, a rift in timespace.

I would not previously have thought that a laptop could cause a timespace rift, but this thing is still full of surprises. I discovered it had no microphone port, and was concerned about being able to actually talk to people through the magic of Skype. I called my brother on the subject, and he said, "Oh, I just use the built-in mic." A built-in mic. Well, damn! That's awesome! What's more, I checked the box; this little bonus isn't advertised anywhere on it. This thing is so cool, it doesn't need to tell you how cool it is.

On the other hand, there's the other edge to the no-virus sword (Q. Why aren't there any viruses for Macs? A. No one uses them!), namely: I am having trouble finding a good webcam. Another service Skype offers, you see, is video conferencing. I think it would be pretty cool to sit down to my future-style vidphone and look at people in remote locations as they talk to them, but I haven't found a single webcam that is advertised as being Mac-compatible. It may be that they are compatible, and that just isn't a worthwhile selling point, but still. I guess it's not that big a deal, though; almost no one I've talked to over the past few days (or even tried to talk to) has wanted anything to do with me. I am currently expecting a visit from Father Damien. If I can't find a good webcam, maybe I'll just go out and get a subscription to some MMORPG or other, just for the human interaction. That's right! My priorities are so skewed that a) online games seem like real human interation, b) the whopping 35 degrees Fahrenheit we got today seems warm, and c) the three hour nap I got today seems like a full night's sleep.

Sleepy-time.

Yesterday, I slept for twelve hours. Everyone to whom I've recited this fact has been supportive and impressed. "Good job" seems to be the statement of consensus. I feel a little differently. There were things I needed to do yesterday, and I'd have liked not to have missed the whole day just because my stupid body needed stupid sleep. Yeah, yeah, I know sleep is important. But I'm not just talking about trivial things I needed to do yesterday, like blogging and shopping and laundry. I'm talking about things like eating and going to the bathroom. Have you ever gone twelve hours without a bathroom break? You'd think my body would have woken up for that, at least. I'm pretty sure I didn't pee in my pants, since they didn't smell like stale urine (and working in a hospital, I know from stale urine). Also, I had to pee really badly when I woke up.

And then there's the food issue. It turns out, even though you don't use up much food while sleeping, you still wake up pretty damn hungry. So you're thinking, "Wow! He must have eaten a lot right after waking up!" Well, no. I only woke up because my downstairs neighbor called me, and in my sleep-induced stupor, I told him I'd hang out with him. Now, he's a decent guy, but hanging out with him is a little time-consuming, and while I made a few politely insistent attempts to leave his apartment, he either would not take the hint, or is so desperate for company that he will take me captive, whether I give my consent or not. (Which of those options makes him out to be the better person? Your answer may reveal a lot about yourself.) I was a few minutes late for work because of him, which always bothers me. To be fair, he did offer me food, but I had to turn him down- I was already running late, and couldn't hang out any longer.

So it ended up being about 23 hours between meals for me. I made up for it by going out for breakfast this morning, but there's something sad about going out for breakfast alone. Especially if the sort of out-of-the-way, obscure little breakfast and lunch place you pick for a quiet, lonely meal happens to be invaded by a post-Saturday night party sorority. I am so glad I wasn't drinking last night; I don't think I could've handled that with a hangover.

And now I am doing laundry. So I guess it all worked out, except I really want to get into World of Warcraft, but I don't know if I can even budget for it, which I guess is a nonissue since I'd planned to buy it yesterday, before I decided to offer my neighbor money in exchange for the couches he offered me. He felt a little bad about accepting funds in exchange for goods and/or services, so he threw in a coffee table. I though I'd lowballed him on the price, so it was a pleasant surprise. Yay furniture! Damn. I've done a lot in the past day, considering I spent half of it asleep.

Why does no one tell me these things?

They're out there. They're warmer than I am. They have more money. They have animators. And they are making a movie about Flatland.

I don't even know when I first read this book, but it is awesome. I haven't heard anything about it yet, except what's on the imdb page. If it's already in post-production (and I so hope that it is), It should be coming out some time in the next year and a half, right? According to the infinite wisdom that is Wikipedia, there are four movies based on Flatland (as well as a role playing game); I must see them all. In rapid succession. Tell me, what would you say to a sphere?

Noted day.

It's not really a "holiday", is it? I mean, most people have dropped the "St." from "St. Valentine's Day", it's not really observed by any religious ceremony I've ever heard of, and frankly, the activities most associated with the holiday are distinctly not church-like. Well, unless you're catholic...

Anyway, I was poking around Yahoo's Valentine's site, and I noticed a list of five favorite romantic movies. Clearly, you want to hear my thoughts on each of those movies.

#5. Harold and Maude. Damn. What's more romantic than candles, wine, and a love story between a suicidal fifteen year old boy and a postmenopausal hippie chick? Answer: Candles and wine. Or candles, wine, and electricity. Or anything.

No. 4. Eternal Sunshine blah blah blah. I can just see it now. The two of you have finished a romantic dinner, you're wearing exciting underwear, and you lean over and whisper sexily into your lover's ear, "Hey baby, let's do something we'll never remember." Yeah, nothing like a little neurosurgery to get the ol' motor running, right? Especially when you know that you'll never have to deal with the consequences of forming an emotional relationship with another human being. Until you run into them on the street. And have flashbacks. And die.

Third movie. When Harry met Sally. Okay, it's a Meg Ryan movie. But it's also a Billie Crystal movie. But she does that orgasm scene. But she's faking it. This one is pretty much a wash.

Flick the second. Say Anything. Ione Skye is cute, John Cusack is cute. He ends up with a boombox held over his trench coat bedecked form. I think she leaves for Europe in the end. It's set in the '80s, which is when it was also made. It'll do, but I've gotten more play to Breakfast Club.

El video primo. The Princess Bride. Hells yeah. It's got a pirate, a giant, another pirate kinda, a hot chick, Wallace Shawn kicks it in an amusing fashion, Miracle Max, "As you wish", and ROUS's. This belongs on any Valentine's, Christmas, Labor Day, National Coming Out Day, or Thursday movie list. Good job, Yahoo. You've managed to state the obvious.

Well, my Valentine's is just beginning. I have a lot of classes today, but when all that's over, I can come back home to be with my lover, Al. Last name: Cohol. Alias: Ethan Ol. Alias: I have some beer in my fridge. But then, there are some cute chicks in my bio class; maybe I'll use my years of experience and wisdom to prey upon them sexually. (Dear FBI agent: I do not endorse preying on people sexually, and would never actually engage in such an activity myself. Please don't arrest me.)

Later that morning...

So, it turned out there was one adverse effect to plugging my iPod into a foreign computer: when I plugged it back into my other computer, it felt the need to update the whole library. All 700 songs. It only took about 15 minutes, which is cool, but still.

Then I read about the doings that were a-transpiring at BGSU. Clearly, life in academia is hard for a thug. You should really click that link. Really.

Experimentations.

So, I tried to hook my iPod up to my new iBook. I didn't load any software (the computer came with iTunes, of course); I just sat there, turned the computer on, and plugged the iPod in, just to see what would happen. First off, nothing exploded, and don't think I wasn't a little disappointed. Then, the computer offered to replace the library that was already on my iPod with the library that is on my iBook. There aren't any songs on my iBook. At all. No photos, no videos, nothing. I opted not to switch the iPod over. Maybe, if I had a super-convenient way to transfer my entire music library from one computer to the other (and I'm working on finding that path), I would do it, but for right now, things will stay the way they are.

My downstairs neighbor is moving away in a couple of weeks, to make his fortune in Chicago. He offered me his couches, and I gladly accepted. Hooray couches! But now, I will have to go out to Target or somewhere and pick up shelves, which will make more room in my bedroom for my current couch solution (a futon), which will make more room in my living room for my new couches. Hooray incentive to clean up my apartment!

I took last night off work, because I've been kind of ambushed the past three nights with doing blood draws, instead of sitting in the lab organizing specimens to be tested. I can't do phlebotomy every night of the week. It's not only exhausting physically, running all over the hospital on the whim of any nurse or doctor who wants a test, but also emotionally; in case you hadn't heard, hospitals are full of sick people. And to look a sick person, a person who is in pain already, a person who may well be dying, right in the eye and say "I'm going to poke you with a needle now", that's what drains me. About a third of the time, I can barely understand what my patients are saying to me, because they've got some sort of apparatus in their throat that lets them breathe or something. I'm not really good at distancing myself from their plight, and I don't want to be- I keep hearing how nice it is to have someone actually care about the patient, instead of treating them like your average coffee shop customer. If I distance myself, and just treat them clinically and with cold professionalism, I'm afraid I would lose that for them.

I just don't know!

I'm watching the Colbert Report, and I noticed one of the words that appears during the opening is "freem". What is freem? Is it a noun? An adjective? I'm so confused! What might it mean? I must know! Here are some possibilities; there's even a website. The site makes about as much sense as I expected.

According to Steven's guest, Barack Obama isn't an African American, because he is an American whose father came from Kenya, a country in Africa. He is, evidently, an African African American. So this is a ratio thing; if a man is black and his family has been in America for three hundred years, he is equal parts African and American. But if he was born and raised here, and has a job (senator) that is about as American as can be, but his father was born in Africa, he is twice as African as he is American. My brother married a Korean woman; is he an Asian American American? But as a Democrat, I am contractually obligated to pray to my pagan gods that 2008 features a presidential bid by the Clinton/Obama camp. So, to recap, 300 years of residence in North America equals one part American. Politics are so confusing.

I probably shouldn't blog about this (I am the very definition of cracker-ass lily white), but I am a little offended by this line of thought. I'm uncomfortable with the idea that a man isn't an African American because he is both of those things. But then, I'm all full of rage at the moment; I saw a commercial for "Truth" that complained that tobacco kills 20 times as many people as murder. A) Good to know tobacco companies aren't murderers. B) Obviously, American public schools aren't meeting the challenge of producing more mass murderers. Think about it: that number (20) goes down as the number of murders goes up. The good people over at "Truth" are pro-murder. Of course, what would you expect from a group that is funded primarily by Philip Morris?

New Computer post!

This is officially my first blog post from my new iBook! Hooray! What's more, I'm posting through my wireless network, which my IBM Thinkpad used to use, but I dropped it on its wireless card one too many times, and the new one doesn't play so nicely with the wireless. But this one is just old enough to work really well with it!

Anyway, I've discovered something. Around here, there are two major NPR stations; one from the local college, and one from farther away. The one from the local college suits me just fine during the week, but on the weekends, I'm going to start listening to the farther of the two; it's got a 3 hour block of:

Car Talk: If you don't know its awesomeness, you're living under a rock on Mars.
Wait, wait, Don't Tell Me!: "NPR's news quiz" is hilarious, with Paula Poundstone and Mo Rocca as frequent panelists, and
This American Life: Ira Glass just has a knack for finding the kickass stories that are going on around the country all the time. La vita e bella, as they say.

And what makes me even more happy? I just checked to make sure I conjugated the Italian verb "esse" properly using my Mac's "Dashboard" thingy. I can't wait until I can program widgets and things. Hooray computers!

Strange days starring Ralph Fiennes.

Okay, it's not really that movie. I've never met Ralph Fiennes, and if I did, I'd be an idiot around him. As I am around most reasonably attractive people, which explains why your opinion of me goes up when you read my blog and down when you meet me in person.

That's right! Today's post features audience pandering! Yay!

Clearly, having joined the cult has lifted my mood and made me happy. Just this morning, I discovered a built-in program that allows me to code in Mac. If only I knew how... Although it does surprise me. After all, the commercials would have you believe that Macs are all about the fun and PCs are all about the work. Coding is my idea of fun work, but work nonetheless. Plus, I found out how to change my desktop image with every startup; I will make more use of that when I've had the computer a while, and I can reliably store images and things. Maybe tomorrow.

Frozen schedule.

I had two tests scheduled this week at two completely different schools. The test I had scheduled yesterday got cancelled; school was closed due to extreme cold. The test for today? Same thing. If I can keep this streak up, I may ace this semester without actually attending class. Sure, it'll be hard to have a snow day in mid-April, but I think that if we, as the great state of Michigan, really pull together, we can make this happen. For me.

I'm also looking to buy a new computer. There's someone here in town selling a year-old iBook; I'd be very happy with a Mac. It seems to be a nice system, but that's just what I'm told through e-mails; I haven't actually met the guy or seen the computer yet. I've offered to meet him this afternoon, and with any luck, we'll be making a deal. Monty Hall would be proud.

Not Taxes.

I just found out that January 12 was a sad, sad day in American history. It's a little belated, but I'm going to drink a toast to an inspiring author.

Not death.

Today, I dealt with the other great certainty in life: Taxes. I was surprised; Michigan's state website offers free tax preparation. I highly recommend this route; if I'd filed my taxes myself, I'd have paid the federal government something like 85 bucks. Going through one of their services, I got a refund of $100 or so, instead. Nice.

I've been giving more thought to this Scott Adams blog. I do tend to agree with some of the theories Adams states other people have about him, especially that he doesn't really know what he's talking about. That's one of the reasons I have a little trouble clearly explaining what's wrong with his reasoning process; he uses terms like "intelligence" and "has" with what seem to be shifting definitions. They appear to mean one thing early in his blog, but mean something else later on. It can be hard to spot this sort of thing when using terms that are already pretty hard to define; even harder when (as Adams does) the writer says that our definition of "intelligence" may not be adequate, but fails to offer a solid replacement.

He proposes his own theory of himself which includes the phrases "wants... to make the world a better place" (which I can accept) and "brilliant philosopher" (which I cannot), but he dismisses that theory just as readily as he states it.

To be fair, I've often compared Mr. Adams to a first-year philosophy student, and I hold to that based on those philosophical writings of his that I've seen, but I only mean this as an insult when he starts to think he's better than that. The truth is, he's got some potential: He is vaguely familiar with logical thought processes, he likes to write, and he's curious about the sorts of ephemera that grip philosophers' minds and don't let go. He really ought to consider studying philosophy formally. I think it'd be good for him. Maybe I'll e-mail him on the subject, if I don't think he's already gotten a hundred e-mails of the same type. Eh, what's a hundred and one?