Happy Thanksgiving everyone! At least, everyone American... you Canadians already had your fun.

Yesterday, Dr. Wingate's emergency equipment (whose purchase request was given to the purchasing department in early September) finally arrived, so I spent the afternoon with him carting boxes and equipment to secure locations. In retrospect, the white shirt was a bad idea.

This weekend, I'm going to do some major work on my history paper, my pedagogy presentation, and my string quartet. Of course, I'm most motivated on the presentation, since that has the latest deadline. I did find an example of enharmonic modulation in the Body and Soul leadsheet in my Fake book, which was kind of cool in a geeky heoretical way. I just hope I can finish everything in a timely fashion, because there's only fifteen days until the last day of classes.

Sam: "I'm Sam. He's Max. We're in a race against time."
Max: "And we're barefoot."
- Sam n' Max Hit the Road

I cleaned the hell out of my apartment this afternoon. It's shiny now.

In Florida, no one cares if you die.
Hot laptop burns scientist's penis

Yesterday in the men's bathroom, there was some visitor talking on his cellphone in a stall.

I've been keeping pretty busy with work, but have devoted most of my recent spare time with a new Warcraft 3 mod. Onslaught is a combination of Unreal Tournament 2K4: Onslaught and Footmen Frenzy, written in pure JASS which I learned specifically for this map . Give it a try if you're a fan of Warcraft mods -- Version 1.1 was just released today.

Yesterday, Florida-Mike released the stylized version of chompy.urizone.net . There's no good reason to call him Florida-Mike since I know no other Mikes at the moment.

My marathon month of hosted dinners came to an end this weekend, after hosting 24 hungry hungry hippos over three Sundays, with two hams and a turkey. I hosted a work dinner, a "friends and family" dinner, and a high school dinner, with a few lucky souls like Jack and Kim who got to come to multiple dinners, since I was unable to pigeonhole them into any one society. This increased their cheddar cheese soup quota, although I don't think it came out as well on Sunday as it did the previous two weekends -- the cheese disintegrated a little bit too far. I was going to do a "people from VT" dinner next weekend, but I'm tired of cooking and couldn't get enough people who didn't already have plans. I do think the month was a success though, and plan on starting a tradition every November. Traditions are fun. Maybe next year I'll have a bigger dining room table and can just host two enormous dinners instead of three smaller ones. Speaking of enormous hippos, did you know that you can buy a Hungry Hungry Hippo that's big enough to ride on? I rate this an excellent use of plastics.

Now it's time for the real Thanksgiving. I am now a pro at the assembly-line approach to cooking, which involves prepping all the pots ahead of time and then whipping everything together into a five course meal in under an hour like a whirling dervish. Thankfully (get it?), the real Thanksgiving will not require an iota of cooking on my part so it should be quite relaxing. I'll also be working on Thanksgiving Day, but might actually take Friday off.

The forecast does call for snow showers on Thanksgiving, which will give it an appropriately holiday-y feeling, despite the constant rain that we've seen all week, and despite the fact that I have not yet put up my Christmas lights, simply because I can't find them. I think I threw them in the giant garbage bag of "Anna's Holiday Stuff" when she moved out, because it was easier to do that than actually sort through anything. The folks two doors down have picked up my slack though, since their holiday lights cover 90% of the house and will probably throw off a few airplanes flying into Dulles from Dayton. If I miss any updates next week, it's because a 747 has crashed into my court and my house is a smoking crater of plastic Santas and UL-approved outdoor wiring.

By the way, there are only going to be three real updates this week, so you will be treated to a rare occurence of Wednesday Fragments tomorrow. This can be directly attributed to the fact that I am a lazy son of a bitch, and will not be in the mood to type anything on Friday. I will probably post a smarmy holiday picture of good cheer on Thursday and make it count as an update. Why? Because the $100 a year I pay for this site gives me certain immutable privileges. It's good to be the king.

Dead Day

...and by the time I'd taken out the garbage and mailed a couple of letters, it was four-ten, time to go back to the job search. I paused. Four-ten was almost four-fifteen, which was just a quarter hour before four-thirty. Most people are winding down their day by then -- some even knock off half an hour early, especially those important enough to be responsible for hiring new guys. In other words, not only would I be wasting my time in applying for anything now, but I'd actually be hurting my chances by pestering people so late. -- Losing Joe's Place, Gordon Korman

Sometimes the day before a holiday is even better than the holiday itself. In the work world, everyone is highly aware that the holiday is approaching, and become loathe to start any new projects or pursue any significant work that might stretch longer than the allotted hours left before freedom. Half the work force doesn't come in at all, leaving those that do a quiet, relaxing environment in which to tie up loose ends and do their Amazon-based Christmas shopping.

Back in college, the day before a holiday was essentially a holiday itself. No one attended a single class unless you had one of those misanthropic teachers who liked to schedule tests that day just to be ornery. In my academic career, a holiday that started on a weekend generally meant I also took off the Friday before, and probably left campus to drive home on the Thursday. This was aided by the fact that I scheduled as many classes as possible for Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, since 50 minute classes were 9000% more acceptable to me than classes lasting the extravagant hour and fifteen on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Since most of my Thursdays consisted of a single sight-singing or ear-training lab in the morning, I'd be on I-81 making tracks back to Northern Virginia by noon. I'm sure my Friday professors didn't mind a bit. This was balanced out by the fact that I always came back as soon as the dorms opened, generally two or three days before classes opened. In those quiet days before the hubbub returned, I'd geek out practicing trumpet, playing games in the dorm, and eating out at McDonald's twice a day since all the dining halls were closed.

When the holiday itself arrives, it's usually underwhelming. You're supposed to be off of work or school, so the excitement of being counterproductive just isn't there any longer. Especially now that I work on holidays, I prefer the lead-up over the holiday itself.

Happy Day-Before-Thanksgiving. I hope you are all thankful that I updated my page today!

Happy Thanksgiving from the URI! Zone

The number of hungry, hungry hippos present at my dinners seems to grow linearly every year -- I should never have bought that bigger table.

It only took three attempts to take this picture . Old Paige (not to be confused with Young Paige) managed to be directly behind Becca, so she gets to suffer the ignominy of an extra picture.

Here she can be seen on a jungle safari in my office, wearing a camouflage sweater so she can get a picture of Amber in her natural habitat (the basket).

This was also the first Thanksgiving to feature a baby for desert. It took a little while for her to wake up and be cute though.

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Weekend Wrap-up

We did not get a chance to set up the fake Christmas tree this weekend, although our experiments in the lab did lead to the creation of a two-headed cat. This feline chimera occurs when you invite scary people over and then block all of the hiding places under the couch with pillows except for one. We also started watching the second season of Dollhouse, which led to interesting philosophical discussions about what would happen if you imprinted a human personality into a kitty.

On Saturday night, we went to the new Japanese restaurant in Herndon, Nippon Japanese Restaurant, whose only claim to fame so far is existing "behind the McDonald's". Our meal of soups, sakes, sushi, and sesame ice cream was delicious, and well worth the price -- this may end up becoming our go-to place for sushi (besides the cost-effective mass-produced packs at Costco). Also, unlike the neighbourhood Omia's and a hole-in-the-wall Peruvian place we went last week, there were actually other people eating in the restaurant at the same time as us, a thrilling social achievement.

Today, I'll be busy counting up all of the votes in the Museday Tuesday poll, which shouldn't take much time at all since only two people have voted so far. This is my passive-aggressive approach to soliciting more votes, and also works in any peer pressure situation.

Museday Voteday

In spite of the new computer and Windows 7's horrible support for all things related to sound and MIDI, I actually managed to complete 18 Museday excerpts this year. As is tradition, I will now take one of these "quick draw" fragments and expand it into a longer work. Vote for the one I should extend using the Poll in the right sidebar and I'll post the extended work on December 20. Any snippet with the double-thumbs-up icon next to it is eligible for your vote (these are the ones that seem to have potential for expansion, and are not necessarily the best of the bunch). If you're new here, you can get the idea of what happens by listening to last year's mendacious Mendacious expansion. Even if your musical tastes only run the gamut between T-Pain and Chris Brown, give a listen to the potential excerpts and vote for the one that charms you the most!

For added artistry, I have described each snippet with exactly seven words, which probably describe the excerpt more appropriately than the random title words that triggered their creation.

Thickset: Transylvanian shopkeeper prices will bleed you dry. Usurious: Wasn't as steep when I started rolling. Trumpery: Anton the Piggy forages for some truffles. Plenteous: Chick Corea's later works aren't as good. Asunder: Can't put all genres in one song. Slinky: Oh lordy, isn't it a grand day? Coequal: They get things done down in Accounting. Superannuated: Pub songs, some years before Sweet Caroline. Iodized: Sydney Bristow has run out of costumes.

Emollient: This camel takes forever to get anywhere. Mercurial: Had a nightmare that I forgot something. Leonine: This song really should have had trumpets. Jouncing: Pee before you drive the bumper cars. Scurfy: Why are all of the futures dystopian? Slouchy: Could dance recitals get any more depressing? Felonious: Fat, drunk monk shouldn't try to mambo. Fusty: Coasting the moors in my little dory. Whelked: Frogger and Kermit have a battle royale.

You can also go back and listen to all of the historic Museday fragments:

• 2007
• 2008
• 2009
• 2010
• 2011

Which Museday excerpt deserves a full composition?

Iodized (2 votes, 50.0%)


Jouncing (1 vote, 25.0%)


Scurfy (0 votes, 0.0%)

Slouchy (1 vote, 25.0%)

Thanksgiving Day

or "Thursday", according to Brianne

For the first time in nine years, I did not have a separate Thanksgiving Dinner every Sunday throughout the month. This year, we just had one quiet one with the Ahlbins on Veterans Day, to be followed up with two Family Thanksgivings during the rest of this week. Apologies to anyone who was desperate for cheese soup!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Vacation Kick-off Day

In the spirit of undergraduate education, I have taken off the entire week of Thanksgiving. To kick off said vacation, I have updated the Photos pages with a new photo browsing plugin, Colorbox, which seems to require less babysitting and bug-fixing than the old one. You can also navigate through the photos with the left and right arrow keys.

Here are some other things I have planned for the coming week:

• Resume work on Auricle.
• Read my Learning from Data textbook and get farther than the third page.
• Play the new 3DS Zelda game which looks like it will suck less than Skyward Sword.
• Thanksgiving with the Uri clan.
• Put up Christmas junk.
• Play some trumpet.

There may not be a URI! Zone update every day next week, but I will try. If you would like me to create another Photoshop mashup on one of the days, leave your suggestions in the Comments.

Review Day

There are no major spoilers in these reviews.

Silicon Valley, Season Three:
This was a pretty successful season with minimal retread of earlier story lines but all of the original characters finding some way to remain relevant in the story. I felt like the character of Erlich Bachman was slightly overused, and the weirdness of Jared was used just enough.

Final Grade: B+

Patton Oswalt: Annihilation:
This stand-up special gets all of the Trump jokes out of the way at the beginning and gets better from there. A large portion dives into the recent death of his wife, but the special never drags or gets too somber. Free on Netflix.

Final Grade: B

Mindhunter, Season One:
This show is based on the book about serial killers by John Douglas, but even David Fincher can't keep the pilot from being slow and overly dialogue-y. That is really the theme of the venture, as the characters and plot are really just flat ciphers for the hugely interesting behaviorial crime knowledge originating from the book. The show is pretty uneven (I did finish it) and most people will probably get bored pretty quickly -- better to just read the original book. Free on Netflix.

Final Grade: C+

The Insistence of Memory by Susan Quilty:
This sci-fi thriller about the concept of memory is written by one of Rebecca's yoga teachers. Though the back cover blurb is reminiscent of an episode of Black Mirror, the book immediately and effectively carves its own space out of the subject matter. It's a fast-paced read with a good blend of mystery plot and open-ended questions about where technology will lead us.

Final Grade: B+

Thanksgiving Day

Data Day: Websites I Visit On a Daily Basis

Data Day: Family Letters

Here are all of the letters you need to spell our family's names.

REBECCA prevents this from being a pleasing shape. Had I married a MOIRA, we could have made two perfect bunny ears!

Thanksgiving Retrospective

pictures from Thanksgivings past

Since we apparently vanished from 2017 - 2020, here is a bonus picture.