Yes, that last post was completely random, but true. I’m in the habit of wearing my slippers barefoot, and sometimes my feet sweat….

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As I write this on my laptop, I’m sitting here waiting for the other computer to finish reformatting so I can begin to reinstall Windows. I had the bright idea that I could reinstall it and make the computer run faster. So far, I’m having a tough enough time making the computer run as well as it did before I started. When I re-installed this morning, I hadn’t set it to boot from the CD first, and thus was unable to reformat the hard drive. I tinkered with the bios this evening, and got it to reformat, and now it’s copying setup files back to the hard disk.

My biggest concern right now is getting the antivirus installed. Earlier today, it refused to be installed, citing some sort of error. I think that was due to the fact that I hadn’t re-formatted the disk. We’ll soon see.

I’ve got a few days to tinker with it if things still don’t work, as it is now Wednesday evening, and I don’t need to be back until Monday morning. The dorms open on Sunday, though. Of course, if I don’t get it figured out by Sunday, I doubt that another few hours will help.

Now it estimates that I have about half an hour left until the install is complete. I’ll keep you posted, as I’ll likely be online for quite a while, downloading new updates. SP2 is HUGE!

[EDIT 1/16: I forgot that I hadn’t updated the status of the home computer. I was able to download SP2 on the broadband connection at the High school–I visited, and asked one of the teachers if they minded me leaving my laptop in a corner for a while, connected to the network. 30 minutes is sure better than 45 hours! Everything else came together in the end, except that Norton support seems incapable of transferring our subscription from the old installation to the new one. They asked for the new ID, which I sent, they wrote back saying they needed the old one, which I didn’t have anymore, but sent in the order #. They wrote back, saying they now had our old ID, but I needed to send in our new ID. Seems they don’t read old e-mails. Now, the program refuses to show any ID# at all… I guess my parents will just have to figure it out. At least the computer came with a 90 day trial, which works again now that I reformatted.]

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All today, I’ve been listening to music from an artist called Fishtank. It’s ambient music, written by a guy I know from online, who lives in England. It’s all written digitally. I really like it. Go check out the site, and pump up his ego, will you? He’s always complaining that no one likes his music, so if you feel inclined, leave him a comment on his forum.

…and it’s late.

As I sit here beginning another update, I’m trying to remember the three or so things I’ve thought about today that caused me to say “hmm, I should blog about that”. I can’t remember any of them, so far.

Today was a busier day. We got home from church, and my dad decided that it was a good time to take down the Christmas lights. So he and I went out and took them down. We have an arbor that we built over the summer (actually, I helped a bit, but most of the work was done after I left for college), and we had some rope lights on that, so I started there taking them off. By the time I took them off, my fingers were frozen, and I had to go get gloves before I could take off the lights on the front of the house. We have Icicles, and some of the larger, glass-bulbed sets. (C-7, I think they’re called). I just took them down as one long string, and carried them into the house to untangle and box. We actually put all the sets back into their boxes. That really used to be a pain for the icicles, but about 3 years ago, we bought some new ones, and I paid very close attention to how they were packed in the box. Now, at least the box closes properly.

After we took down the lights, determined which sets still worked, and boxed them up, the whole family tackled the rest of the house. The trees came down, the nativity set is wrapped in tissue paper, and almost all the rest of the decorations are packed in boxes in the middle of the garage, or sitting on the floor of the front room (what we’ve always called the living room upstairs. The one downstairs is the Family room.) The only thing still up is garland. We have it going down the stairs and in the hall downstairs, in three places in the front room, on the beam in the family room, and in the upstairs hall.

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My dad returns to work tomorrow (now today) and my sister returns to high school. I have another week of vacation, and will likely end up finishing the un-decorating tomorrow, with my mom. I suspect the garland is my job, as I can actually reach the ceiling. (I’m about 10 inches taller than my mom.)

I was also planning on re-installing Windows on the family computer. It’s just gotten a whole lot slower since we got it (3 years ago), and now it tends to drop the dial-up connection a lot, or never get connected in the first place. I know it’s not the ISP, because my laptop can connect the first try almost every time, and never once get disconnected over a 2-3 hour late-night internet session. Plus, I installed a bunch of programs on the computer that I won’t use anymore, as I now have my laptop. Some of those programs just never quite un-install, including the last remnants of my experience with Morpheus. (I used it for 5 minutes, wasn’t satisfied, and gave up. I read later that it had spyware included, and have since swept the computer several times, removing everything but the un-installer, which no longer works.) I’m going to begin with the data backup tomorrow, and see about the re-format. I’ll definitely get to that soon, so I have time to fix anything that goes wrong before I go back to school next Sunday.

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New years was a quiet affair, just the four of us. We played board games till about 11:30, then watched the “Rockin’ Eve” entertainers, and the ball drop. We started another game, and finished about 1:00, at which time they all went to bed. I got online, and did a site-update. 🙂 Wasn’t sleepy yet, probably due to the amounts of fudge that I ate while we were playing games. We always set out some of our Christmas baking, and as a personal tradition, I always eat a lot, usually about 3 items after my mom tells me to quit eating, and WAY more than I really should eat. Not that I’m really counting calories or anything (yet), but I must have eaten a dozen pieces of fudge, and several other goodies, plus chips and cheetos.

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I think I mentioned before that my dad’s family came out to our house for Christmas. They’ve always had the family get-together after Christmas, sometimes even after New Years. It makes things easier, knowing that we don’t have to go to that side on Christmas. Two of my uncles came out, Ron and Gordon, with their wives, and Elaine (my only aunt) came with her husband. Dave and family live in Boise, and couldn’t make it. We also had 3 cousins, and one girlfriend of a cousin. All the married cousins stayed at home, and the last unaccounted cousin is currently on a foreign exchange program in Florence, Italy, but decided to visit Thailand with a group of students for the break. I’m not sure how the tsunami impacted their visit, but I know they are ok.

One topic of discussion at the retreat was the recurring topic of changing the family name. When my great-grandfather came to the US, from Italy, his last name was Oliverio. My grandpa has Oliverio on his birth certificate, but the family name was shortened to Oliver to sound less Italian, as at the time, Italians were treated much like migrant Hispanics are today. Every few years we talk about changing the name back. We discovered this time that there are only four male Olivers in my generation, none of us (yet) married. Two of them are all for a name change, except for the legal hassles (court fees, new drivers license, passport, etc.). One favors it, but doesn’t seem so enthusiastic. I’m completely mixed on the issue. I like the sentiment of changing back to the original name, and now people would know for sure that my first name isn’t Oliver, but when I think about changing MY name, I have hangups. It just seems strange. We’ll see how (if) this progresses.

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Well, that post turned out long enough, lacking any reason to write it, and thinking about it, I’ve covered at least two things I thought of today. Until later,

–Nathan

For some reason, I’m more excited about Christmas this year than I was last year. Maybe it has to do with the fact that I don’t have homework to do. My Dad and I were discussing this the other day. Last year, I had to work on my Senior Paper over break, and college applications were on the table. There were a few scholarship applications that were due right after break, too. I was working at the store, and still wanted some free time. Things got a bit busy over break.

I finished my Christmas shopping last Saturday, and so that front is covered. My sister and I went shopping for my parents over Thanksgiving break, and bought several things. Most were on their lists, but we also got one of those water fountain type things, with the rocks and different levels for the water to flow down. We don’t have anything like that yet, so we’ll see how it goes over.

One gift that I know will be a hit, is the gift for my sister. She’s always complaining about being cold, or needing extra blankets and such at night. I got an electric blanket for her, and I’m almost positive she’ll be using it tonight. (In all fairness, she put it on her list, so I didn’t actually think of the idea, but I still feel really good about it.)

We’ve always been a family to open presents on Christmas Eve, and so we’re going start cooking dinner soon. We always have some sort of dinner, tacos, hamburgers, or something before we open the presents. This year, it’s enchiladas, a recipe adapted from Home Ec class, which in turn was adapted from a student’s mother’s recipe. The recipe is called ‘Tino’s Chicken Enchiladas’, and, aside from the chicken, had red and green enchilada sauce, and a “cream of…” soup over the whole pan. This year, I think we’re using Cream of Mushroom. Then there’s cheese over the top of the whole thing. A bit of work to make them, but they’re pretty good. I’ll have to post the recipe sometime, maybe.

Anyway, after we eat, there’s always a rush to get everything cleaned up so we can open the presents. My parents have used the fact that my sister and I want to get to the presents quite constructively in years past, and when we were younger, we were VERY helpful Christmas Eve. As we got older, the excitement isn’t quite as much, but this year feels a bit better than last year.

After presents are opened, it’s time to get dressed and head off to Church. This year, as it has been the past 3 years or so, I’m doing incense at both masses, so I come home about 11 from the 9pm mass, and have to be back for the 9am mass. Not that I mind that much. I’ll still get more sleep than I did some nights last semester!

I really don’t know much of what I’m getting this year. I didn’t have much on my list, and we use the lists as a starting point anyway. I can tell that one of the packages is a paperback book, and I suspect that one of the packages is some t-shirts I asked for. But there are some, including a package that has all the weight at one end, that I have no idea about. Oh well, I’ll find out soon enough.

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I was helping my mom making a plastic canvas thing that spins in the wind to give to my Uncle and Aunt at the gathering on Monday. I took a series of pictures, but once again, I’m feeling too lazy to post them. I’ll mention it on the blog when I do.

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Just informed that it’s time to head upstairs to start cooking, and I’ve been online for the better part on an hour, so I’ d best be going.

–Nathan

Been busy these last few days. Last night, several people from our church got together and went Christmas Caroling. It really is quite fun, if you come prepared for the weather. This year, the wind let up for most of the night, and it really wasn’t that cold. A good experience all around. A lot of the people we caroled to don’t get out too much, and this is a real experience for them. It really makes their Christmas. We had a group of 25 or so, plus two young ones that ended up falling asleep in the car. (we carol mainly to people from the church, so we have to drive to the houses, and the whole affair takes 2 to 3 hours.)

It was actually the second time I’d been caroling this week. At school, during finals week, it is quiet hours 23 hours a day. That leaves one hour (9-10pm) for ‘blowout hour’. Sunday they had an eggnog chug, and other assorted activities. I missed that one, I can’t remember why. Monday, there was the “Fr. Brad Social’, where the pastoral resident (Father Brad) hosts a social in his room. It’s just two doors down from me, so I decided to wander down and see what was up. They were serving root beer floats, and there were a lot of people there. It was proposed that we should go carol to the girls in Mehling, the nearby all girls dorm, and about 7 of us decided to go. Michael, (the guy who thought of caroling) had prepared a songsheet with 3 songs, and had the chords for hi guitar, so we had accompaniment. So off we went. Of course, I realized when we got over there that I’d left my wallet in my room, and didn’t have my ID, required to check in. So I just hid out behind the group, and ended up getting in without checking in. (That’s not really kosher, but don’t tell anyone, okay?)

We began caroling on the first floor, and as we passed the first three doors, two of them were slammed shut. We were wondering if we could really sound that bad. Actually, though, the girls really seemed to like it, several running to get cameras for scrapbooks, or other stuff. We went from one end of the floor to the other, then up the stairwell to the next, singing one song per floor. The three songs were: The First Noel, O Holy Night, and What Child is This. Despite O Holy Night being a hard song to sing, I think we actually sounded pretty good at it, and it was our favorite of the three.

By the time we got to the eighth (top) floor, it had been almost half an hour, but we were doing pretty well. There were four or so girls working on homework or something in the little lobby area outside the elevator, and so we ended up singing out whole repertoire to them, as well as being photographed about 10 times. Then we rode the elevator down, singing, and stopping on every floor, for a few seconds. We actually picked up a passenger or two on the way down, who didn’t really know what to make of the situation. Then we sang a carol in the lobby, and made out departure, with about 5 minutes to spare before quiet hours resumed, at 10.

Tuesday was the RA Balloon Launch, where we got a slingshot, and the RAs stood at the end of the field, and we launched water balloons at them. They were not allowed to duck out of the way on an incoming balloon. None of the RAs got hit square on, though we got several hits in the shins, and one that was just barely over one’s shoulder. I got a few good pictures. I may decide to post them later, but I don’t feel like uploading them to my computer resizing them, and then uploading them to the net tonight.

The Saturday night before finals, I was in my room and heard a loud sound come from the basketball courts below the dorm. There were several people gathered down there, I saw out my window, so I went out to see what was going on. Turns out, they had an old computer, and two monitors, and were smashing them. This was put on by Ryan Hendricks, as an official activity. The idea being to let us take out frustration and stress on the computer equipment. The bang I heard was the first monitor exploding. They had an aluminum baseball bat to hit the stuff with. The computer case was strung up to the basketball hoop with a power cord. By the end, the stuff was pretty much destroyed. I didn’t think to get my camera until after the smashing was over, but there was some videotape taken, so it’ll show up in the end of the year video. I got a few pictures of the cleanup, but nothing too exciting. I salvaged a computer chip from the junk pile, but I’m not sure what it belonged to. It’s not the processor, but other than that, I’m not too sure. But it’s kinda cool.

We put up our Christmas trees yesterday and today. We have two, a fake one downstairs and a live one upstairs. The stove is in the room downstairs where the tree goes, so a real tree would dry out way too soon there. Michelle and I decorated the fake tree with all the glass and other nice ornaments, the tree upstairs will be decorated with all the ornaments that have been made over the years. My mom crochets ornaments, and my Michelle and I have made our share of ornaments over the years, in school and whatnot. Dad lit that tree this afternoon, and will decorate it tomorrow, I think. He’s off until after Christmas, now.

I have a dentist appointment tomorrow, and a haircut on Wednesday. I should be all ready for the holidays. We’re having the annual get together for my Dad’s side at our house this year, on Sunday. It’s tradition to do it after Christmas, so that we can spend Christmas at home. We’ll have four of the five siblings here, the last lives in Boise and doesn’t always come. It is a long trip for them, well over 6 hours of driving. My aunt from Puyallup, (outside of Tacoma) is coming down, and will be spending the night here. The other two brothers live in Portland, just an hour away.

In other news, I’m finally getting a newspaper again with some regularity, and have discovered that the Governor’s race here in Washington is still as undecided as it was the last time I heard. Except that there are now more ballots in dispute. For those not following WA politics, the current Governor, Gary Locke (Democrat), chose not to run again. The race was between Christine Gregoire, the current Attorney General, a Democrat, and Dino Rossi, a former state Senator, and a Republican. The general consensus was that Rossi was really a long shot, and that Gregoire would win easily. But Rossi did well. Washington law allows ballots postmarked on the date of the election to count, so many ballots arrived after the election night, and they didn’t have an official total for a long time. When they did, Rossi lead by about 200 votes, out of about 2 million cast. That triggered a automatic machine recount, and Rossi came out of that with a lead of 42 votes. A hand recount is now in progress, and with all counties except King reporting, Rossi’s lead has increased by eight votes.

But it’s not quite that simple. In King county, last week, they just happened to discover 576 absentee ballots that had been erroneously rejected due to mismatched signatures. Apparently, something had been done wrong when the signatures on the registration forms were scanned into the computer. Of course, King county is the county where Seattle is located, the most liberal (Democratic) county in the state. Something tells me that these ballots will tip the election, if allowed to stand. Then last weekend, they discovered another 150 ballots that had been rejected incorrectly. Republicans sued to stop the ballots from being counted, and last I heard, the court agreed that it was now too late to be adding new ballots to the count. King county, and presumably the Democratic party are appealing the decision.

I should note that the discovery of the ballots probably isn’t as suspicious as I make out. Apparently, a county executive somehow discovered his name on the list of invalid ballots, and this led to the discovery. But it was convenient that they found these extra ballots when they did. Another day or two, and the count would have been certified, making it official.

The whole mess has been going on for quite a while, and now the former Sec of State is calling for a new election, as we really don’t know who was elected. I understand that the legislature could order a new election, as could the State Supreme Court. We’ll see how this one turns out. We may not know till after February who the new governor is.

Enough for one day, even though I didn’t write this all in one sitting.

And guess what I just discovered! You can’t dial a connection when the phone cord is not plugged into your computer! It only took me a few minutes to figure it out, as I had the same problem yesterday. Wake up!

–Nathan

Finished with finals, heading home–my dad JUST got here, and I’m about to pack the computer–see you from home!

–Nathan

Okay, these have been going on for a lot more than 3 weeks, but it’s my third time doing it. I haven’t looked at the list yet, but I’m about to paste it into this post. Here goes:

1. Plot::kitten

• Farce::fake

• Unexpected::freak

• Siren::ambulance

• Ben::psychodanceparty

• Freshman::me

• Quicksand::stuck

• 24 hours::quiet

• Spunky*::brionna

• Vicious::tiger

*EDIT 12/17 I’ve come to the understanding that spunky carries a meaning that isn’t the one in the dictionary, to some. I have to say that here, I was thinking of the “peppy, lots of spirit” type meaning. Which I just discovered isn’t even quite the dictionary meaning. But now you know I wasn’t trying to offend anyone, even if I did.

Perhaps I should explain a few of those. But I don’t feel like it–if you want to know what was meant by some of these, post a comment. I’ll say that #1 and 5 will be known to Aloofers, and a college student would probably get #8.

List provided by :

Almost to the end of the semester. I’m done with classes. Finals are next week. I have two real test finals, one Tuesday (Physics) and one Wednesday (Calculus). I have take-home essay finals due Wednesday afternoon (Philosophy), and Thursday morning (History). Or, in place of the History essay, I can come to class and take a real essay final Thursday.

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Last week, I mentioned the Design competition. On to the results.

Our team did pretty well, the paddle wheel worked good, and we had about 30 points worth of whiffle balls. Then disaster struck. Well, it wasn’t that bad, but it was the end of the competition for us.

Our device used two motors, one for each of the rear wheels. This was the drive system, but it also was the steering. Bu going forward on the right wheel, adn backward on the left, the device would turn to the left. By manipulating the power to the two wheels, the device was very maneuverable. However, about 30 seconds before the end of the competition, the small set screw in the right motor fell out. (Left) The screw holds the spinning gear in the motor to the axle. After it was gone, the motor still turned, but the wheel didn’t turn with it.

That meant that the motion our device could make was a bog circle. We were close to out area, and Martin, the guy driving, almost got it arround the barrier infront setup area, where we were trying to get. If we’d had anohter 15 seconds or so, we might have gotten back. As it was, time ran out, and we, having returned 0 balls to the startup area, got 0 points.

Other teams did better, although some did worse. One team had their frame built entirely of balsa wood, and it was basically a jail cell without a bottom. That is, all the supports were vertical, with no cross bracing. They bumped into someone else, which kind of damaged their device, and then were accidentally rammed by another team–the picture is of their device after the competition. Surprisingly, after their device was destroyed, another device accidentally knocked a ball into their startup area, and they got a score of 2 points.

Another device was built to stand up, about 12 or so feet tall, and then fall down over the arena. It has two towers, and a cross bar between them at the top. After it fell, the cross-member would be pulled towards them, sweeping up all the balls that were inside the device. If it worked, it would have been a major point scorrer. However, as i said several times before the competition, it will either work perfectly, or not at all. There were so many things that could go wrong, all of them vital to the success of the deveice.

Did I mention that the device was probably 12 feet tall, when standing? And that the room where the practice board was set up had only about 10 foot ceilings? They never had tested a start from vertical. And did I mention that you only had two minutes to set up? THIS is what got them. When properly set up, the posts should be vertical, and parallel. This is so when it falls, they are the same distance apart the whole way back, rather like a train track. Imagine a train track where all of a sudden, it got narrower. The train would get stuck. They set it up with the bottoms of the posts too close together. I could instantly see that they would get stuck on the way back. However, their failure was more spectacular than that.

They had two lengths of 50# fishing line running to the top of the device, to stabilize it. Each length ran to one of the two posts. You may recall, the rules stated that once the time started, you could not touch teh device, and before the time started, the device had to be within the startup area (which had no upper limit). This meant that they had to use a remotely controlled mechanism to cut the strings. When they set up the device wrong, it caused the strings to not have as much tension on them as they should have. When they went to cut them, it took a bit longer than they epected, and then it cut one of the strings. I was talking with one of the team members afterwards, and he said “As soon as if cut only one string, I knew what was going to happen.”

The side that had had the sting cut started to fall, but was still supported on the other side. This caused the device to start twisting, and then the whole thing fell down, with the rails twisted, across each other. It had been a bit controversial if this group should be allowed to compete at the same time as other groups, and had been decided that as there was one extra goup, they would compete solo. So after their device collapsed, they decided to use the remainder of their time to give a demostration to the audience of how it would have worked. Unfortunately, the twisting had damaged the device, and it would no longer pull all the way in. Another score of 0.

If you want to see further results (just numbers, not pictures or commentary), see the course website. My team was E1, the team with the tower was E2, and the destroyed device was Team E7. All were in my section of the class, hence the E.

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I happened across a quiz, today:

Which File Extension are You?

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Got to run if I’m going to make it to lunch before it closes.

–Nathan