Bab Al Yemen

Wednesday, I went to the old city with some of my friends. It is Ramadan, so we went at about 10 pm. It was packed. We wandered around Bab Al Yemen for a while, and bought a cake of sugar (the red kind is best) looked at silver antiques (don't get me wrong here, they were like silver swords and guns from before the civil war and stuff like that) Then I bought fireworks. I am physically incapable of entering the old city without buying fireworks. I just can't. Unfortunately, they didn't have any corsairs... I had to make do with double charge explosives that are nowhere near as powerful... Oh well, I guess you can't have your kiyak and heated too.

YEAH!!!!

I GOT ACCEPTED TO PURDUE!!! YEAH! And as a result, after a dull day full of computer failures, I am now hyper. Once I got off of those abominable Apples everything seemed to work fine, so I am feeling good, and I can no longer type. At all. In celebration, I am going to download some more stuff by RED. I just can't get over the brilliance of their music. Regardless of my new prestige in my life as a senior in high school, I still have to take the confounded SAT again, and on Saturday, so pray that I don't batch it any worse than I already did.

Flames

In, well, my hair. I'm fine, no one seemed to notice whatever missing hair there is and Mom and Dad don't know yet. Here's what happened so you can all laugh at me with me. (I don't doubt that Jeffrey will laugh loudest). Last night the power was out and I was working on posting calculator code on my physics blog with what remaining battery power was left to me, and I had two candles lit sitting right next to my calculator so I could see what I was doing. I heard a snapping sound, and thought, 'The candles are popping.' I looked up. Sure enough, they were snapping happily away. I looked down again, as the thought, 'my hair might be burning,' passed through some dark recess of my mind (of which there are many). Suddenly, ash began to drift downwards ever so slowly and covered the desk with blackened curled up hairs. A feeling of intense alarm swept through me as the aroma of burnt hair swept past my nostrils. The next cognitive thing I did was reach up and see if it was still burning. It wasn't, so I went back to studying in a room that didn't smell quite as good as it did before and with a little more "dust" so to speak, laying around.

On a more serious note though, I have a lot of work to do for the day after tomorrow (the ninth of whatever month it is...I really should get myself a watch that tells me the month as well as the day... Unfortunately, Casio builds stuff for smart people who can keep track of things like months, and Casio is the only brand of watch I can't shred within six weeks...I should get a job working for a watch company. If the watch survives me for a year its well worthy of being sold.) And I have no clue how I am going to get it all done, so I will log off and get back to work. Prayers would be appreciated.

Math at its Muddiest

Today several fun and interesting things happened, but first and foremost we played Ultimate Frisbee as a youth group again. People are learning. Fast. Today there was much more running, throws were lower and faster, catches were more consistent, and there was more movement, less endzone sitting. We will have a Frisbee game by the end of the year, and I am looking forwards to it. In fact, despite how I hate running, I have started, so I can be in shape for Frisbee. But I digress. This is not math. Later this evening, we had a "Quiz" random facts about just about anything. We had one "Joker" we could place as we like, and being a calculus student I was saving our joker for math. What happens? Instead of being limits and derivatives and functions and all that fun stuff, its how many earrings does Denese wear, times the number of stars on the Australian flag. Irritation. Intense irritation. Not being so observant we go 20% right out of 10. Mega bad. Bleah. It was not math it was simple arithmetic and observation. Oh well. Next time I won't put it on math.

So Thats why Lawyers are rich...

My dad sent me this really funny thing about salaries I got a kick out of it.

Dilbert's "Salary Theorem" states that "Engineers and scientists can never earn as much as business executives, sales people, accountants and especially liberal arts majors." This theorem can now be supported by a mathematical equation based on the following two well known postulates:

Postulate 1: Knowledge is Power. Postulate 2: Time is Money.

As everyengineer knows: Power = Work / Time.

Since: Knowledge = Power, then Knowledge = Work / Time, and Time =Money, then Knowledge = Work / Money.

Solving for Money, we get: Money = Work / Knowledge. Thus, as Knowledge approaches zero, money approaches infinity, regardless of the amount of work done.

I'm Not Alright

Just today I got this amazing cd from a good friend who is now in America: X 2006. I loved this song so much, plus I figured it was about time to change it. I have heard this song somewhere before, but I have no clue where...This is bothering me. At any rate, wherever I have heard it, it is by Sanctus Real. Aurellentia is still open to exploration should anyone be feeling ready for what I hope will be a fantastic journey.

Aurellentia

I am trying out beta version of blogger, and it is interesting. Very simmilar to Blogger, and you have to have a gmail address to try it, but I am trying it all the same. While fooling with it (before I put all my blogs over) I am going to follow the life of a fictional character through a war in Antarctica from before the last ice age: the magical land of Aurellentia. I have linked it if you care to follow.

Thursday

Ok, this is a tad late, but here goes. I had a cool last weekend. It was three days, due to Yemeni elections. Apparently, the army was used to influence voters out in the east where they still run around with machine guns most of the time, and I have heard rumors of terrorists and such, but over all its been purdy quiet...Except for last night. Ramadan started yesterday, and last night there were fireworks going off, and some one with an AK let off ten or so rounds under my window last night while I was trying to study. This morning at school, Andre was talking about the gun shots he heard last night, and everyone had their explosion stories today... At any rate, what with all the terror threats and such, youth group got cancelled on Wednesday, but when things stayed quiet, we all went out and played Ultimate Frisbee at SIS. I am out of shape. Very out of shape. I am staying after school today to run to get in shape so that I can actually play the crazy game next time. Ah well. I really should be working...

The Unending Flood

of nicknames. I thought that when Jeremy and Melanie left the tide would at least recede, but no. Kieth and Ms. Morieka have taken over for her. I am now "Bush" and "Hair" respectively. Sigh. Oh well, I guess it is simply part of the shape of the universe.

Word Recognition Software

I have done it. My calculator now recognizes three words: Yes, No, and Dunno, and responds to them. I am quite proud of it. I can program it to recognize more words, but it gets hairy fast. What I did was I assigned numbers to letters and then had the words (when multiplied together) demand responses. However, if I start doing long words and letters like z, the numbers will rack up in a big hurry and I will wind up writting a really buggy program. It works. I'm happy. Enough said.

Quasi English

After youth group this week (a lot of my life revolves around youth group, so chances are you will be hearing about it a lot) we were taking a taxi home. We found one for a reasonable price and got in. For all my Yemeni readers, we had one of those drivers that have had lessons in english, and for my non Yemeni readers, this involves bouncing back and forth in the two languages randomly. At any rate, we got about half way home before we stopped at this traffic light, and this big lalualui (land cruiser) pulls out from the right, drives around in a circle in the intersection, and then promptly stopped, hood to hood, with our taxi. I started to laugh, it was such a Yemeni move. At any rate, our taxi driver decides its time to show off his linguistic skill, raises his hands in a gesture of incomprehension, and says "What the fxxxing you?" I thought, yeah, I'm about as confused, but I didn't say it, I just laughed harder as the lalualui backed up, dodged two motorbikes in the middle of the intersection, and tore off back in the direction he had come from. I got a kick out of it. Its these little things that I live for.

Calculator Dependency

I have been developing bad habits. Lately, I have discovered that I can't do math unless I have my calculator sitting beside me with the cover off and turned on. It just has to be there for me to be able to think for some reason. Today, I turned it on and left it while I did my homework, even though I didn't use it once. Last night I tried to program it, but the manual is poorly written, so I guess I will just have to fool with it for several hours before I get it. I figured out how to do if/then functions physics this morning while I was only sorta paying attention.

Hell on Wheels

Normally I am not a car fanatic, sure I know the cls and the cls 500, several different classes of Lexus and other nice cars, but I have beheld something so massive, so incredible, so blooming fast I just had to show you: It is called the Bugatti Veyron 16.4 and is quite possibly the fastest car out there. I first saw it in an article that was titled: 1000 Horsepower. Any Questions? The rest would probably bore any one but a car fanatic, but here are some pix, to give you an idea of what the crazy thing looks like. I said I wouldn't go into details but I can't help myself. The blooming car goes over 400 kph at top speed and can last for 12 minutes on a full tank of fuel. At top speed, it can come to a complete stop in 10 seconds, but it takes it a kilometer to do so. This beast is the engine, which delivers 1001 metric horse powers, and should be made illegal except to me.
This is probably not at 400 k's, but you get something of an idea on the incredible velocity attainable by this beast. I'll quote from the magazine one last time before I conclude: To go beyond 375 kph (233 mph), the driver must stop the car, insert a special key, and go through a checklist ("Seatbelts, check; oil, check; last will and testament, check"). There are only 300 of these purdy things out, and that's it. They also run at 1.7 million us bucks, just in case anyone really wanted one, but where you would go to get one I don't know.

Dragon Slayers

Last night we had our first youth group of the year (my last year in youth group... sad. Very sad) I led (that didn't go as smoothly as could be desired) and Mr. Saeli spoke, calling us to be Dragon Slayers for Christ. He called us to fight the 'Dragon, that serpent, who is Satan, the Devil' at school, home, in our minds. I

I have just discovered something wonderful: internet radio. http://eternaltrance.temp.fm is great, provided you like euro trance, dance, house, that kind of thing.

Today Abe and I went out to school despite the fact that its a weekend here and worked on the scorpion project from last year. That is the coolest class I have ever had. I mean, how many of you people out there know even the theory behind welding without having to look it up, and how many of you have actually used a welder for hours on end making something out of metal? And fiberglass? How about bondo? all awesome. I now have fiberglass all through my left forarm, and it itches, but that's fine, a price paid for a cool class.

The End of the Beginning, and the Beginning of the End

Well folks, that was the last day of our first week of school. Guess what? I'm dying. By the end of the school year (just another 172 days away) I am going to have lost it completely and will be terminally insane. Despite all that, I am learning how to play classical guitar. While practice is boring, the results are quite exciting. I may actually become something of a proficient musician by the time I die, or loose it, whichever comes first. Looking at the year, chances are leaning strongly to the latter.

Murder

There is a difference between your senior year and all the rest of highschool. Your teachers are all trying to kill you. Research, Econ/Gov, British lit, Physics, AP Lit, AP Calc, and Music are all these huge classes that I really want to do well in, yet they rain down busy work on me. In addition to that I have Year book, and that looks like it will just consume time without really doing anything of profit. I have had more homework in this first week than I had in a month last year. This does not bode well, in fact, I should be doing it now. Drool later dhogs.

School and Rain

Yesterday, school started. In ways this is good, others, it is bad. I am now a senior. It feels no different, we are not special in any way, we just get to take cool classes like AP Calculus. Shiver. I got Jeremy's old book, I hope I can live up to his legacy. I am also one of three students responsible for putting together the yearbook this year. I am afraid that things might fall apart ever so slightly. I am also unsure as to our advisor (homeroom teacher person) because he doesn't do anything until after the bell has rung for us to go to our classes, and so Andry and I didn't get our scedules because a certain irate physics teacher wanted all his students in class imediately.

It has also been raining. To all you non Arab/arab afeliated types out there, in Yemen, this is viewed as a good thing, a blessing, because it happens so infrequently, and the land needs it so badly. It looks like it might even rain twice today! Once before school this morning, and the skies are gray and it smells like rain again now.

Explosions and Such Like

Well, our trip back from America was exciting! We were three quarters of the way over the Atlantic when the port engine burst into flames! Fortunately for us, we had a brilliant pilot and there was a aircraft carrier directly under us, and we crashed into the water and they pulled us out (those life jackets ARE hard to take off...) and then, to get the rest of the way, we went jetskiing...
you can't see it, but all our bags are tied on in the plume behind the aircraft. After that daring (and very fun (well, mom didn't like it)) adventure, we had very little layover time in Germany, but the next airplane also had issues, and we wound up splashing into the red sea, and were attacked by pirates! But, living in the ends of the earth, they fell off the edge:
I am not quite sure how we got out of that one, but mom is really quite good with her camera. Then there was a forty day hike over the mountains of the west side of the Arabian peninsula with nothing to eat but airplane food. (I hope this paints a dire enough picture for you...) before we made it back safe if not quite mentally sound.

U want the really story? Well, that one is much more boring. We got on an airplane flew to Germany, had a 6 or 7 hour layover, flew to Cairo, and then here to Yemen. No pirates, no jetskiing, no edge of the earth, but it is good to sleep in my own bed and use my own amp with my guitar.

The Twenty First

At least it might be. What month is it anyway? Moving on, I became a chimney sweep today! Sounds exciting, right? Well, folks, hate to break it to you, but its pretty dull. Basically, there is a mess in the chimney, so you knock it out by beating a heavy chain around on the inside of the chimney for 10 minutes or so to knock all the soot and gunk out, but, you guessed it, the mess is not gone, it just moved. Now it is in the fireplace and you have to clean that out, and you have to fool with the thing halfway up the chimney that controls airflow and all that, not a lot of fun. Then, you have to get the broom out and sweep it all out of the fireplace, and it can't touch anything, cause it will get black gunk over it, but supposedly it is now good luck to either shake my hand or to have me blow you a kiss, but the latter haven't been acquirable, even on the black market, for the past several years or so...

At any rate, I think that Andrew and I managed to deduce not so mathematically and logically that the fifth dimension is the multiverse, but that leaves very little for the sixth... And the multiverse is so two dimensional, but to understand it, you have to know just enough quantum mechanics to confuse you, and we know less, so we don't get it either.

Hey, if you guys want cool backgrounds for your computers, go to google images, and type in fractal flames and see what you get.

Ill-M-I

Jeremy, this song goes out for u man! (I am not sure that it uploaded right, I am on dial up, I'll check it when I get on a beter conection)