행복

I PASSED A CATA!!!! IN FRONT OF LIKE FIVE PEOPLE, TOO!!!!

Okay, so in reverse order: I just got home from IMSO, which was in 4623. I showed up around 10:40, after bridge. 5th mix was in. I played a whole bunch. At the end, after eating pizza, Mike and Bayani were doing a "puke up your dinner set" of Paranoia Evolution, Afronova Primeval, and Matsuri Japan, all on Maniac. Well, actually, only Bayani played all three. Mike played PE Maniac with him, I played Afro Prime Trick, and Rebecca (who is now sorakirei) played Matsuri Japan Maniac. I was like "Hey, I want to try Matsuri Japan Maniac too, will someone keep me alive for it? Mike? I can do the gallops..." so Mike and I played it. AND I PASSED! I even got like, 260 perfects to Mike's 265. Holy shit. Wheeeeeeee! At IMSO I also got to meet ancilla and I guess bedlamboy who are both beginner DDR players but who I think will be very good very soon, they are catching on pretty quickly.

Before IMSO I played bridge with nickjong at Temple Sinai. We placed like, third from last. All of the mistakes were mine this week I think (except like one bad overall of his). I even didn't play the ace of hearts at one point which was my big mistake. Oh, the ace of hearts, my nemesis. Anyway.. I still had a decent time even though my brain was elsewhere for the three hours we were playing. I'm glad to be playing bridge since I'm sure I won't get to play anymore after this summer.

Before that... eh... I forget the rest of the day. Does anyone know what the fuck a "PCI Simple Communications Controller" device is and why it might fuck up using my USB scanner?

Oh, I went to K-mart. I bought some bras and socks and stuff like that, but I didn't manage to get a new pair of jeans because the store had ONE PAIR in the size I wanted, and I took it with me to the fitting room but didn't take it in since I was trying on other stuff, and it got stolen from my cart by the time I got back out. Fuckers. I also tried on some button-down shirts and stuff for interview clothes but they all looked like crap, so I'll have to come up with something else to wear. Boo business casual, I say. Boo. I wonder if my tan jeans still fit me.

Before that I just sat around here, looking for writing samples, playing with Photoshop to enhance the pictures from DDRFest (Rebecca will notice that the signs, for example, are not as washed out in my version of the scans, and I tried to edit the date thingies off the pictures), and trying to play with devices on my computer. Whee. I also finished reading the Jacoby Modern book. It's pretty funny shit. Tomorrow I should read C++ and Perl books to make sure I'm up on my C++ and Perl. Lately I am fascinated with scalars. For example, what would you expect the following to print out?

$foo = 1;
$foo[$foo] = $foo;
$foo{$foo} = $foo[$foo];
$foo[@foo] = $foo[$foo{$foo}];
print @foo;

Anyway... I guess all in all it was a good day. I got to see friends, play bridge, drive around a bit, and PASS A CATA, even though I did poorly at bridge and lost all of my WB data.

alligators all around

We are listening to Really Rosie by Carole King. Despite that I haven't heard this in, oh, twenty years, I still remember and love it.

I can't wait to hear the Chicken Soup With Rice song.

oh yeah, a weird DDR dream

I had this dream last night that I was disturbed to remember when I got up.

In it, there was a DDR machine at CMU (I am inclined to believe it was a 3rd mix although the details later will assume it was not). Lots of people wanted to play it. Finally it was my turn to play, and there was a big crowd around the machine. The person who I was playing alongside with was Kirstin Connors. So we put in our credits and she leaps forward to choose a song. I hang back, thinking "ok, you can select the first song, no prob". I was on Maniac and she was on Basic. She picked some song - it's a nonexistent song so I can't remember the name but it was something like "Fountain". In the dream, it was a techno song I really really hated. I did okay at it and she failed it on basic. So I moved forward to pick the second song except she moved ahead of me and picked another lousy awful song that I hated! (another nonexistent one). Again, she failed it, which meant that I had to make the effort to pass this retarded really hard Maniac song if I wanted to get to pick a song. By this point the whole crowd had dissipated because of these dumb songs. I was like "Dude, don't you understand, we BOTH put in credits, I want to pick a song." So she gave me this really nasty look but let me scroll around the songs anyway. As I was scrolling she randomly reached forward and hit Start so I couldn't pick any more. It was AM-3P maniac. At this point she laughed maniacally, stepped off the platform and walked off with some other girl (I'm not sure but I think it was supposed to be Laura Marsh). I was so pissed off I couldn't even finish AM-3P maniac (which definitely means it was a dream, since I can finish that song with no problem). I wanted to complain to the arcade manager, except since this was CMU, there was no arcade manager. Then I woke up.

Note: I have no problems with Kirstin in real life, she's been one of my friends for years, so I have no idea why on earth she was my nemesis in this dream.

So far today

I got up early to go to campus to meet up to celebrate Drew (agh)'s birthday. (Ok, so he set up an account but hasn't touched it since. Go figure.) Anyway, so I got him the Barenaked Ladies best hits CD since he likes a lot of their more popular songs and we went to a BNL concert together last summer. He seemed to like the CD. I also, since I was in Kmart yesterday, bought him a birthday card... except since you can't get cards for people turning 22, I got him a card that says "Today you're 2" and using white-out and markers I added an extra 2 to it so it says "Today you're 22" and later on "Happy 22nd Birthday" instead of 2nd. I did it so skillfully that he didn't even notice ("...I was going to ask where on earth you found a card like this!") so I am pretty proud of that. Kind of like the time I couldn't find a good graduation card for my brother so I got one for people graduating kindergarten with the Cat in the Hat on it and changed the sentence "..you'll be ready for grade school now!" to "you'll be ready to grad school now!"

Eh. So we (me, Carl, Christina, Nick, Ben, and Drew) went to Gullifty's for his birthday lunch, where we had a lot of fun (and I ate a lot of fajitas). After that I dropped off Carl, who was nice enough to help me return my video of Moulin Rouge to C. Video on the way, and then I went to the Waterfront. I bought a black button-down shirt at Filene's Basement, and I hope I can put it with an appropriate skirt or pants to make "business casual".

Then I went to Wean to print out all of the important info I need for my trip, like the plane and hotel itinerary, and a paper with references and their contact info, and the driving directions to Issaquah so I can go play DDR and other music games. You know, important stuff.

(I think I decided I would rather go back to the place I went last time, even though it only has MAX and not MAX2, because it has tons of other music games, and the place with MAX2 only has MAX2, which isn't as much fun.)

Now I am going off to D&D. When I get back I will pack. Maybe I will get some sleep, but it is unclear, since my flight is at 9am which means I have to be at the airport at 7 which means I have to catch the 28X at 6 which means I have to get up at 5 which means I might not sleep for fear of oversleeping. Yeah. Oh well, I'll just blame however I am feeling tomorrow on jet lag. Yeah, that's it.