This Day In History: 02/20
I've arranged to rent a room at the home of one of my old roommates this summer in Chantilly, since it's about eight miles from FGM in Dulles, and completely avoids the Beltway. On weekdays, I'll stay there, and on weekends, I'll drive all the way to the real homefront, which should shave forty miles daily off my commute, and allow me to work a more reasonable shift than 5:30 - 1:30. It does seem rather extravagant to rent a room twenty miles from home while also keeping my place in Tallahassee unoccupied, but I think avoiding the Northern Virginia commute is worth the extra expense. It also helps that Florida has no income tax, so I'm being crafty by heading north for summer employment.
Istarted tutoring a girl in a non-majors music theory course today. It may be a little rough getting her on the right track to start with, but I think I may just be able to help her out. I've always thought it fun to teach music theory, because while the conventions of music may not always be logical, the procedures within it tend to be easily quantifiable.
"In the first movement alone, of the Seventh Symphony [by Bruckner], I took note of six pregnancies and at least four miscarriages." - Thomas Beecham
I put in a solid seven hours of work on my MFIT project yesterday and got most of the basic data structures completed. I'm going to try and do a lot this weekend and post an applet for you all to toy with on Sunday. At this point, it will do little more than create and view XML files for fake freshmen. By the way, MFIT stands for Music Fundamentals Instructor's Tool. If my acronyms were any more ingenious I might hurt myself.
My ploy with Google worked -- the URI! Domain is now ranked second on searches for my name. Some people might say it's cheating, but really, what else could you possibly be looking for when you put "Brian Uri!" in a search engine? By the way, FSU's SCI chapter is now the top match for "Society Composers Student Chapter" on the web and I didn't even pull any fast ones. Booyah.
I've put up a few snow pictures my dad sent me on the Photos page. Expand the first collapsible menu and scroll all the way down. That's my mom, the ninja, in today's news picture.
US Army as good with acronyms as I am
Stupid Americans continue to jump on the French-bashing bandwagon
SEND IT TO THE GLUE FACTORY!!! - scrawled on a sign advertising a cat for sale in my apartment complex
It's time to play a game of "Design Brian's Living Room"! Print out the picture at this link and arrange the furniture in an aesthetically pleasing manner. If you have Photoshop, I've even made your job easier: you can download this image (682KB PSD) and drag or rotate the Layers around the floor plan instead of using archaic scissors. If you have an especially worthwhile design, take a picture or send me the PSD file and maybe I'll use it.
In the image, all the furniture is oriented towards the bottom of the image to begin, except for the end tables which point right. The couch and the chair need a little space in front to recline. The windows are 34" off the ground, so the stereo, TV, and taller bookshelf should probably not go directly in front of one. The stairs and the area directly below it should be unimpeded.
Think you can be on Trading Spaces? Put your skills to the test!
Yesterday's notable search terms:
what are four hazardous gases that can easily be captured in a jar, mike's apartment full download
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I've given amazingly accurate Oscars predictions for five straight years now, predictions made with such accuracy that the Academy called yesterday and told me to just fax over my '07 list so they wouldn't actually need to vote. As I sat down to write this year's list, I realized that I have absolutely no interest in making a sixth sequel in this series and would sooner lick a dog's nose than write all the HTML needed to format a list of movies.
Not every tradition or saga needs to be held in perpetual perpetuity, and some, like another Rocky movie or shaking your keys on the third down in college football, should be gently led out into the retirement pasture and shot down gangsta-style. Trust me, as I am an authority on this style, which generally involves replacing the -er syllable with an -a on any noun that performs some action (i.e. playa, rappa, bass fishaman).
So with the Oscas
Sorry for the delay in getting this posted -- yesterday afternoon I took a trip down to Manassas to visit Anna & Ben and parked in a visitor spot next to an ice-hump long enough to make any randy Eskimo happy. By the time I was leaving around 10 PM, someone had parked behind me, and I didn't have enough momentum to get out of my spot without the risk of hitting the guy in front of me. So with my car being a principal character on the Car-Tomb Network, I was forced to spend the night in one of Manassas' many crack dens, next to a doerdoa named Alfredo and a hobo who thought it was the Greyhound station.
Them's The Breaks
It's become a yearly tradition here at the URI! Zone to have at least one Name-That-Tune contest, with such oddball rules as "you can only hear the bass line" or "everything's from an 80s sitcom". For this year's contest, I've decided to make it a little more accessible to new players by extending the lengths of the snippets and weighting the scores for each one based on how difficult I think it is. The theme for this contest is "instrumental breaks": the parts of the song where the melody / chorus goes away and some clown solos for a few minutes to increase the running time of the song .
How well do you know your breaks?
The Complete Rules:
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all the booze that's fit to pint
♠ Rebecca says hello from Puerto Rico, where she is eating ice cream with her college friend, Alice, using up six days of leave that expire on March 1, and learning what it's like to be in a place that isn't quite a state (although this could also have been done cheaper with a trip to Alabama).
♠ With Future Wife #1 in Puerto Rico, I've spent the last couple nights adding improvements to the URI! Zone. I cancelled the Event Calendar idea because it was useless and derivative (and sites like Facebook do it better anyhow), but maybe I'll borrow something useful, like the ability to turn someone into a Vampire, or email notifications whenever someone visits the site or scrolls up and down.
♠ The most noticeable addition is the magnifying glass icon in the Comments section: . If you click on this icon next to any commenter, you will see a complete history of all the comments they've ever posted on the URI! Zone, going back as far as April 2003, which will likely be the 0th year of civilization when the aliens discover our planet in 3852 (after our apocalypse) and assign me some sort of godlike status after piecing together the last remnants of the Internet.
♠ Also, blogs which have not been updated in three weeks' time will automatically vanish from the Bloglog, but never fear, because they will also return as soon as new content appears. So if you're like Kathy, and have been too busy leaving me out of the acknowledgments section of your dissertation to update your blog, it will reappear as soon as you post something. Paige tried this out just yesterday!
♠ I have also created a BootyCam which will give you an up-to-the-minute look at what Booty is doing at any given time, as long as she is in front of the camera. If you reload the page, you might see many unexpected antics -- Booty is more exciting than any baby panda any day of the week. ♠ Remember when Tai Shan, the baby panda, was the size of a stick of butter? Now it's four years old with a dingy white coat, probably fat and surviving on handouts. That's what happens when you live in DC. |
♠ For the first time in three weeks, my weekend plans don't involve going to DC or Maryland, although that might change depending on the status of a tentative Game Night. Sunday, as everyone is full aware, is 222 Day. In celebration, I will buy anyone in the Sterling area two 22oz of Steel Reserve if they can successfully pass a ten question oral quiz. Actually, the awesomest way to ring in 222 Day would be for Rosie to pop out a baby or two, if she hasn't done it already.
♠ I plan to celebrate 222 Day by setting up the next Name That Tune contest. Depending how far I get and how lazy I'm not, it may appear here as early as Monday! If you thought that the samples from the previous contest were too cacophonous, you will be pleasantly surprised this time around.
♠ Have a great weekend!
Why you shouldn't stick an air gun up your butt
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Because it's Presidents Day and I'm still working a ton, here are some rare political thoughts:
I vomited these out in about seven minutes this morning, so my apologies if any of them read like a kaleidoscope with one of the mirrors missing. I can follow up in the Comments section!
How Companies Learn Your Secrets
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This picture was taken eighteen years ago today, on February 20, 1995. I was a junior in the marching band and we were marching in the George Washington Day Parade in Old Town Alexandria. In addition to the ludicrous design of the uniforms as you see them here, each coat also had a cape that hung from just one shoulder, like it was designed by Superman if he only flew to his right.
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There are no major spoilers in these reviews.
Parks and Recreation, Season Five:
Parks and Rec has managed to hit and maintain a consistent level of funny since it's awful first season, built on the strength of the supporting characters and the different permutations they can be mixed up in to stay fresh. There's not necessarily a lot of plot progression in this season, but for this show, that's just fine.
Final Grade: B+
Betas, Season One:
This is an Amazon original series that's free with Prime, consisting of 11 episodes about the West Coast start-up culture. It occasionally veers too far into tech jargon and venture capitalism, but can mostly be enjoyed without that knowledge through the fun set of socially awkward characters (betas) trying to release the next big social app (a beta).
Final Grade: B
The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon by Brad Stone:
This book had the infamy of being given a one star review by Jeff Bezos' wife. While I can't judge the accuracy of the personal stories within, they do make for a compelling, and generally balanced story. What I found more interesting than the Bezos biography though was the evolution of the company itself, from books to distribution to web services and beyond. Amazon has tried everything at least once, and this book gives a nice orderly look at how each area was tackled, even the failures like the now defunct diamond selector that I used to get Rebecca's engagement ring for under 50% of the assessed value. To a techie like me, these parts of the book would have been just as compelling without the personal people stories wrapped around the edges.
Final Grade: B+
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I can't wait until this area has reached ridiculous Alexandria levels of inflation so we can sell out and move to Kauai. Remember, Loudoun County is only a few years of global warming away from being the new coastline of the Potomac River. Lock in your riverside views today!
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Here are all of the Washington Post front page headlines captured in my 12 of 12 photos between 2006 and 2018. It's hurricanes and Trump all the way down!
Following a whirlwind run through the Container Store, we had dinner at Not Your Average Joe's in Reston. Unlike the last, and only, time we went to the (average) one in Landsdowne, the food was delicious.
Not Your Average Joe's has done very little to remove the style of the previous tenant (Macaroni Grill). Here, I am getting head kisses from abstract art (this was not planned).
Maia spent the weekend with her grandma and grandpa in Alexandria. Here, she is dancing on the stage at my elementary school playground.
My dad purchased a household Switch for kids to enjoy. Playing Mario Kart is serious business with all of this hardware!
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