As part of the latest craze to hit the blogosphere, I asked Cel to give me five questions. Here they are, now with answers, too!

1. You’re at an ice cream bar, with every type of ice cream and topping imagineable. What do you put on your sundae?

Surprisingly, I saved this question to last. I would definaltely include chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream, and some chocolate sauce. Probably some vanilla, too. I’d skip the cherries, and whipped cream doesn’t really make the ultimate list, either. Probably chocolate chips, and maybe a caramel sauce, or a Heath shell. Not necessarily all at once, though.

2. What’s your favourite colour, and why?

Red. I don’t remember why I chose it in the first place, but I remember (at a young age) thinking that I should change my favorite color to red. Actually, I think was related to the fact that Benny, the youngest character in the Boxcar Children series, liked red. I really liked those books when I was younger.
I still like red, partly because it stands out. I have a few red knit shirts, and I like to wear them. Some years ago, my parents let me choose the color of my room, and I chose red. I liked it then, and never minded it. My room was painted an off-white color when I left for college, though.

3. How would your closest friend/family member describe you? How would you want them to describe you?

You don’t know how long I spent, trying to figure out who would know me best. I think I would be described as nice boy, book smart, it not sreet smart. A good worker, and a good friend. Perhaps a bit of a procrastinator, and maybe a bit easy to read, but a nice guy.

Obviously, I wouldn’t mind most of those descriptions. The book smart thing and the easy to read things are somewhat related. When I look at my communications with other people, I sometimes feel like I’m not getting what they mean. I understand what they say perfectly, but as soon as I try and analyze why they said that, or how they really feel about me, or something else, I feel like I’m just guessing. On the contrary, sometimes people will react to me in a way that makes me think that they can read me like a book. I actually had a rant going about this, but I left it as a draft. It’s like times when I’m nervous about making some silly announcement over the intercom at work, like announcing that a customer’s lights are on, and then I do it, and three people will compliment me on making a good announcement. I know that it wasn’t good enough to be worthy of a compliment, so it must have been that they thought I needed encouragement. As it turns out, I appreciated it right then, but I very soon got to wondering how well I can be read. There have been other instances of this, too. All in all, I’m happy with myself, and my image.

4. What tv show do you never miss? What’s the big attraction to it?

Here is one area where I differ from most folks my age. I have never been really big on television. My family hasn’t, either. We even went almost a whole year without TV, about 3 years ago, after the cable rates went up again. Basic cable now comes with about 50 channels here, and we mainly watched the news, and a few shows, maybe 3 things per week. Later, we got satellite, which was cheaper, and has more channels.

Consequently, I’ve never had a show that I would never miss. For a while, though, I was watching every episode of “8 Simple Rules For Dating My Teenage Daughter”, which I thought was pretty funny. That was before John Ritter died. I haven’t seen the show afterwards, yet. A few summers ago, TV land had The Three Stooges on every afternoon, and I often watched that, but then they stopped showing them.

I guess, actually, my family also watched “Who Wants to be a Millionaire”, and watched most episodes until ABC decided to have it on about 9 nights per week. Then we just kind of stopped watching. We aslo watched “Diagnosis Murder”, “Touched by an Angel” and “Kids say the Danrdest things” regularly, while they were on. Both Cosby and Dick Van Dyke are rather funny.

5. What are your top 5 books of all time?

If you asked top five Authors, this would have been a much easier question. I would probably list Agatha Christie, Tom Clancy, John Grisham, Mary Higgins Clark, and Stephen Coonts. Books is harder. I think I’ll just list some that I enjoyed.

Seven Dials Society, by Agatha Christie (or some similar title with “Seven Dials”)
And Then There Were None, by Agatha Christie (Also published as “Ten Little Indians”)
The Client, by John Grisham
Red Storm Rising, by Tom Clancy
The Borrowers, by someone who’s name I’ve forgotten

So there you have it, my 5. I’ve put in for another few, over at PDP, but I think the craze may be over. If you want a set for yourself, give me a holler, and I’ll do what I can for you.

(I’m too lazy to go to Celtic’s Blog and get the official ending, so this will have to do.)

A bit of explanation about the camping trip. The Villa Bible Study, called “Stible Buddy” for reasons that go back longer than I’ve been here, decided that it would be cool to go camping for the first weekend in spring break. The plans came about on kind of short notice, so there were about 10 of us that ended up going, as well as one person from the Christie Hall Bible Study (CHUBS, but the origin of the U is unknown) who was able to make it. Five from Villa came back Sunday leaving 6 there last night.

We about 1:30 Monday afternoon. Having no major homework, I hung out with several of the people who had gone camping, and a few others that are still in Villa. We went on a quest to find a copy of “Karate Kid”, which somehow became the video everyone wanted to rent, and also got Pizza. I’d never seen the movie, but it was decent. It ended way too fast, though. The whole movie is building up to the competition, and the movie ends as soon as the final point is scored. No awards, no wrapup with the guy who lost, or the sensei, just the end credits. That bothered me.

We got to watching flash videos from the internet, and then other stuff. I’ll post more about the campout later, after I go home, and have had a chance to unpack and decide what all is interesting enough to mention. I’m leaving here late Tuesday morning, and have a bunch of stuff that I should pack. I’m looking forward to sleeping on a real mattress tonight, and going home to MY mattress should be even better.

I also asked Cel for five questions to answer, as part of the latest craze to hit the blogosphere. They are below, as a teaser. Answers will likely be posted before I resume classes next Monday.

1. You’re at an ice cream bar, with every type of ice cream and topping imaginable. What do you put on your sundae?

2. What’s your favourite colour, and why?

3. How would your closest friend/family member describe you? How would you want them to describe you?

4. What tv show do you never miss? What’s the big attraction to it?

5. What are your top 5 books of all time?

Some of these will require a bit of thinking. I will put some thought into these, though.

Later.

–Nathan

So as I compose this post early Friday morning, I am trying to remember back to the beginning of today, which sure seems like a long time ago. See, I’m not up early, I’m up late. I got up about 10ish Thursday, and wrote Jake a message on his board, about the upcoming campout. I went and worked on my EGR homework (which must be done on the computers in the labs, because I don’t have the necessary program) for a while, discussed with Eric how the formula we were supposed to use seemed to have an error, as it required the factorial of zero, and then worked some more. I was then writing the code, and forgot to include the condition that would prevent the (as I thought) illegal calculation of STUFF/0!. It returned a value, not an div by zero error, which made me wonder, and I discovered that according to both the computer and my calculator, 0! is 1. Conceptually, factorial is the product of all the integers from one to the number, so 5! = 5*4*3*2*1. Logically, 0! should be 0.

I decided that the computer probably wasn’t wrong, and left it at that. I went to lunch, and then to Calc class, and talked to Eric (who is in my calc class, too) about my discovery. We then asked the prof before class, and he explained a bit about the gamma function, and how using this function, you can get a formula for the factorial of non-integers, and for things like 0. Then he thought a bit, and realized that the question fit almost perfectly into what we were doing today, which is review for the integrals test, including integration by parts. So we covered it in class.

I came back to Villa, checked with Jake to see what he had to say about the message, and called home to tell my dad that it turns out that we were covered, and didn’t need him to come in this evening with firewood for the campout. I went to Howard hall to check out a sleeping bag, and then realized that riding my bike over there to save time might not have been the best idea. I was able to re-arrange the pad and sleeping bag so I was capable of riding back, but it took a bit of work.

I went back to the engineering building, finished my assignment a few minutes before class, but then realized that I had forgotten to account for the (somewhat lacking) speed of the printers, which are quite likely older than me. So I waited a few minutes, and then had to go to the lecture late, and without my assignment. He let me go and re-print it after class, and I don’t think he’ll deduct, as the time stamp on the printed page is about 5 minutes after the lecture ended. I wasn’t up there still working on the assignment.

I went over to the commons for dinner, and then went back to Villa. As I came back, I heard a bunch of people in the lobby, and remembered that there was the Villa BBQ tonight, and that I had signed up to have a meal taken from my plan, so I could eat there. So I had a burger. I miss breakfast often enough that I rarely use all my meals, anyway. I watched the second half of “Joe Dirt” for the second time, and then the BBQ was over.

About an hour later, I went back to the lobby to watch the third preliminary match in Villa Jeopardy. I had intended to sign up, but hadn’t gotten a partner. Wednesday, I went down to watch, thinking that I might be able to recruit someone else, as I knew there to be a few empty slots. It worked, and I recruited Luis to play with me. The team that won our match hit some lucky breaks, including being made up of an avid “Family Guy” fan and a sports fan, as two of the categories were “Family Guy”, and “WCC Mascots” (our school competes in the West Coast Conference, WCC). The questions were a mix of general trivia, and stuff specific to the school and the dorm. We did well over all, and doubled our score to 6000 in the final round, but not enough to win. But as there were three qualifying rounds and four positions, there was one wild card slot, to be given to the highest scoring second place team.

The three teams competing in the third round made a poor showing overall, and our high score (second highest among all teams) put us in the finals, played immediately following the third round. We took a (small) early lead, and kept it through the end of the double jeopardy. At this point, we had 3400, and the remaining team had 2000. (Two of the four had negative scores at this point, and so were not eligible to continue.) The category was “Founders”. We went conservative, and wagered 601, which would have put us one point over the other team if we both got the question right.

The question came, and was to give the (correctly spelled) full name of the founder of the Congregation of Holy Cross, the order of priests who run UP (this school) and Notre Dame. I wasn’t expecting that question, but given the rest of the questions, I should have. We did not know, but fortunately for us, they didn’t either. That left Luis and me the victors. We will each get a $20 gift certificate tomorrow, to a local restaurant. That was an unexpected bonus, I had just wanted to compete for the title.

After Jeopardy, they started setting up for Cafe Procrastine, (slogan: “Everything else can wait.”) and as I actually didn’t have anything to procrastinate on, I helped set up a bit, and then stayed out the whole time. I helped Hendricks clean up afterwards, partially. He’s going to save the dishes to tomorrow, which I don’t mind, as I didn’t really want to do that anyway.

Several people stayed in the lounge after, including Cean who was playing guitar, and Lindsey and Sheena, who were conducting an informal survey on men’s opinions on women. The question posed to each male that entered the lounge was something like:”Imagine your ideal woman, except that she has no soul, or insides. Describe her.”, or basically, what (superficially only) was considered hot/beautiful. Answers varied, but almost always included the qualifier “and not too skinny”. Lindsey had been discussing this in a class, and was interested to hear what men actually thought. This led to a whole discussion, and then the secondary question, which is the exact opposite of the first question. Interesting topic, but one that is hard (for me) to speak on. It most likely comes from my relative lack of experience in the area.

We stayed out talking quite late, and then some of us decided to play Settlers of Catan, the game that took a few hours when we played it on the retreat. It was well after four o’clock when we finished.

I came back to the room, talked to Nik for a while, replied to a few things at PDP, and got the update on the Jonathan Maas story. See, the former administrator of Aloof, where I hosted my website, is named Mike Judge. There is another Mike Judge, famous from Saturday Night Live sketches, Beavis and Butthead episodes, and the movie Office Space. The Mike I know received a piece of fan mail the other day, and decided to reply back. The fan asked for a job as an assistant, so we’ll see how this unfolds.

As I’m writing these last few sentences, I looked outside, and realized that it’s getting light. I only have one class tomorrow (the other two were cancelled), at 11:30, and it’s just a lecture. I’m still planning on going, because it’s my Java class, and were in the thick of methods and classes, which I haven’t ever used before. I’ve heard of them, and understand the concept pretty well, I think, but the odds are if I skip, that’s the day he’ll assign something in class, and explain the secret password, that if stored as a string to a particular variable, will give an automatic A on the next assignment, or some equally critical concept. And I can’t justify skipping just because I stayed up late, when I stayed up just having fun.

It’s amazing how fast it gets light. We’re due for sunrise any minute. I think I’ll go to bed and miss it. I’ll get enough sun on the camping trip, which I just realized I never got around to explaining, and I’m not going to start now. We leave Friday afternoon, and get back Monday, so I’ll explain the details when I get back.

–Nathan

[EDIT 3/14: Cleaned up a few typos, added the Gamma Function link, as I realized that I was one of the few sites ranked on Google talking about the “factorial of non-integers”.]

Now that I’ve finished the pile of things that I needed to do by Friday, I’m back to being busy, as opposed to really busy.

To recap, there is one week left until spring break, but for some reason, the crunch week was this week. I had the normal homework, in Physics, Calc and Engineering, and a Java program for CS, and the usual English reading. I also had to read the first 200 pages or so of “Saturday Night and Sunday Morning”, and take an turn in notes on the reading. Also due in English was a one page paper about two poems. None of this had been done by Sunday.

I surprised myself, and was able to pull it off, and finish it all. I may not have gotten all the calc homework done, but the rest of the work was actually of good quality, and I even had time to do all the extra-credit Physics problems that there were. Which is good, because I tend to lose points in the homework category.

Today, I’ve been catching up on all the non-critical things I’d ignored the past few days, like laundry. I should have done it Monday evening, or Tuesday. But I didn’t have time, and so today it became critical–I’m wearing my last pair of underwear, and no socks at all. Later last night, I was cleaning up the room, although I still have a dish or two to wash. I plan on doing some of my calc later today, so I can keep from getting in the same boat again next week.

I did accomplish some really non-critical things, though, like clean the dust out of the fan, and I did a bit of a website update Sunday, before I realized the extent of my crush. I think I’m only an associate member of Structured Procrastinators Int’l.

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Speaking of the website, I’ve been moving things around a bit. I slightly modified the navbar script so it could do another thing, which was necessary to get the galleries looking the way I wanted. I also have applying what I learn about Java to JavaScript, and have streamlined the code a little bit–it’s now a bit smaller, although 15k is still big for a script. It should run slightly faster, though.

I took down the JavaScripts section of the site, all that was there was a page with a bunch of scripts on it. It was nice for my senior project demonstration, but not really useful after that. I put the Great Expectations part back up, but as part of the high school section. It’s really just a listing of figures of speech, some from the book, and some from elsewhere online. But I feel like keeping it up, so I updated the code to match my new page, and it’s back.

When I organized the galleries, I also posted a few pictures of the whirligig that I made for my Uncle and Aunt at Christmas. It’s on this page.

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Nik has had another problem with debit cards. Earlier, a store clerk confiscated the one from his Kansas City bank due to a goof in the Visa computers. Thursday, he got a letter from his bank here saying that he had a negative balance, due to his cash ATM withdrawal of $354 and change. He didn’t have that much in the account, and so he was charged a overdraft fee. The only thing–he didn’t make an ATM withdrawal.

He contacted his bank, and discovered that the withdrawal happened in Romania, so they believe him that he wasn’t the one that made the withdrawal. He’ll get his money back, but the bank needs to do some sort of investigation. As near as he can figure, it was hackers who got his number from some sort of online transaction.

It just occurred to me, though–he picked up a computer virus last Friday and OCIO, the tech people here, shut his computer off from the network due to excessive traffic. He removed the virus as soon as McAfee found it, but there must have been a window where the virus was free to do it’s stuff. The ATM charge happened on Tuesday… I wonder if there is a connection.

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It’s international week here, and the big production happens tonight at 6:15, in the commons. I’m not sure what all it is, but from what I hear, it’s been okay in previous years. Dinner is served from 5-7, so I think I’ll head over that way later this evening. I’ll find out how well it goes.

We’ve been having ethnic foods at dinner this week. Japanese Sushi Monday, but I didn’t make it over in time. Thursday was Chinese, including a lion dance during dinner. It was fairly interesting, but the space wasn’t really cut out for it, and the drums made it nearly impossible to hear anyone talk, even from a few feet and when you were on the other side of the room. They had a Chinese dragon, too.

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I’ve been getting a fair number of Google hits to my site. Some are more interesting. I got one yesterday, for “pictures of footie socks”. Interesting what people search for. I’ve also been getting a few hits on my blog post dum dum da dum, dum DUM da dum. Apparently, people try and search for using some combination of DUMs and DAs. They wind up with my interpretation of “Here Comes the Bride”.

And on that note, I’ll leave to start doing other stuff.

Later
–Nathan

[Edit 2/27: Fixed a bunch of typos, left to wonder what I was thinking when I wrote ” there is now week is spring break,”, instead of “there is one week left until spring break”.

This evening, night, and tomorrow should be interesting. Tomorrow, I have to turn in a one page “Microtheme” on two poems, and my notes on the first 200 or so pages of a book. I have Physics homework due, and I have to e-mail a CS program to the instructor by midnight. Today, I wrote three programs for my Intro to Engineering lab class.

I’m a good way into the book, and the CS program is complete, and slightly above the requirments, but I haven’t fully tested it. I’m told the Physics HW really isn’t that hard, and I understand this concept much better than the last one, so It should be easier than some assignments. At least I have some time between classes tomorrow.

I should be able to get most of it done, if I work at it. Sleeping is what will be cut short tonight…

So last night was a lot of fun, and rather interesting, too. It was Junior Parents Weekend, so that means that they planned a big activity on campus last night. We had a ‘mentalist’ on campus. Craig Karges is just amazing. He appears to have mental abilities. He was blindfolded, and had members of the audience bring up objects, which he identified. They just held them near his hand. He identified a pair of sunglasses, which wasn’t that impressive. Then the next woman brought up a relative’s blood donor card. Not only did he identify that, but he got the name and blood type correct, too. He needed to handle the card for that, but there’s no raised printing on a blood donor card. Then he had someone bring up a unit of currency. He identified that the guy had brought up a foreign currency, and then read the Serial number, and identified it as a 5 euro bill. I don’t see how it was done. He was blindfolded with two coins taped to his eyes, more tape, and a cloth blindfold over the whole mess. If he had an assistant in the audience somewhere, it’s hard to believe that he could have gotten the serial number. And he offers $100,000 to charity if anyone ever finds out that he uses stooges or hidden cameras/radios in the show.

Later in the show, he levitated a table, with a scarf on the surface between his hand and the table. Then he went into the mind reading portion. He had people concentrate on their initials, a piece of personal info, and a random thought. He then would pick a thought, or set of initials, ask people with those initials to stand, and he told two people their phone numbers, read several of their random thoughts, including “Brady is hott!”, “lime jello”, and “frogs”. HE knew the names of the people they were sitting next to, and their signs. One girl thought she knew her sign, and he informed her that given her date and year of birth, which she hadn’t told him but he got correct, she was a cusp person, born between two signs. ]

Then he had three people write a number in a book, and had a fourth add them up. He got a hinged chalkboard, put a small piece of chalk inside, gave it to an audience member, and told them to hold it horizontal. After a few seconds, it was reopened, and the number inside matched the sum of the three numbers.

He asked four audience members to assist in creating a car, each in charge of a different component. Then he pulled out of a zipped pocket in his wallet, which was inside his jacket, a sealed envelope with a piece of paper, on which was written the exact make, model, color, license plate number, and cost of this car. It’s possible that this was sleight of hand, but unlikely.

He borrowed three rings from audience members, and linked them in a chain, and unlinked them. The owners of the rings were onstage to see them unlinked.

He asked for his check, had an audience member put it in an envelope, and seal it. The volunteer then sealed blank pieces of paper in two more envelopes. They were then numbered, and then the volunteer chose an envelope to give to Craig. From the remaining two, the volunteer chose one. Craig shredded, on the spot with a shredder, both the envelopes he was holding, and lo and behold, it was the check.

Wow, I’ve been ranting for quite a while about it, but he was good. It just blows your mind. He claims to have no supernatural powers, and reminds us several times, that it was a show, he was just an entertainer. He’s one heck of an entertainer, I’ll tell you that!

Shortly after we got back from the show, several people decided to make a Cove run, and I went along. While everyone was at the cove, it was decided that there should be a game of sardines in Franz Hall. (Franz has classrooms, and staff offices, as well as a few common areas, and a coffee bar. There are several alcoves in which to hide, all over the building, which is four floors and a basement.) So once everyone had eaten, off we went. We’d picked up a few extra people by then, and numbered 18. So we played a few games of sardines.

For those who have never played sardines, there is one person who hides somewhere, and the rest try and find the person. But when you find the person, instead of ending the game, you hide with them. Depending on the hiding space, that can be interesting, although people tended to pick good, large hiding spots. The first person to find the hid hides the next turn.

By midnight, we were pretty much burned out on the game, having been playing since 10:30 or 11:00. It’s just as well, as P-safe comes to lock up the building at midnight. So we all went outside, and decided that we should watch a movie. Somehow over the course of the game, the movie “The Princess Bride” was mentioned, and they were rather surprised/outraged that a few people, including me, hadn’t seen it. So we ended up watching it. It’s an interesting movie, I wouldn’t call it a classic or anything, but it wasn’t nearly as ‘chick fickish’ as it sounds. I enjoyed it. So I came back to the room late, and wound up going to bed somewhere after 3.

I got up earlier this morning, to go over and see the College Bowl thing. As part of Junior parent weekend, they set up college bowl as Students vs. Parents. At our last meeting, before Christmas, the man in charge of College bowl invited us back to help, as he wasn’t sure how many students would be there. I ended up competing in two of the five rounds, one of which we won by a large margin, the other we lost 95 – 0. Which is only about 3 questions worth, but it was still bad as it was the tie-breaker round. I guess the parents are smarter than the students. Or maybe just older. Some of the questions they got just because they lived through the events. I couldn’t name the five summer Olympic locations in North America, but I bet they remembered reading about them as they happened, mostly. Anyway, it was fun.

On the way back from the College bowl, I was riding my bike back to Villa. I decided to go a longer route, around a few buildings, to avoid all the people walking from the building. I was outside Swindells (a building), near the road to get to Waldschmidt and behind Kenna. The sidewalk is pretty wide, and can be used as a road if you need to get to some of the buildings. TO keep people from driving places they don’t want them to, there are several black steel posts which set into holes into the pavement. The holes are about a foot in diameter. The posts can be removed, to allow vehicles to pass. I was riding, and wanted to pass between the poles and turn onto the sidewalk just beyond. I rode right between the two poles, and started my turn. I wasn’t going super fast, but I wasn’t just coasting, either.

Anyway, what I failed to notice was that this particular sidewalk was set up for three posts, and one had been removed. I rode right over the hole, and as my wheel was turned, fell over the bike. I wasn’t hurt, except for my palm, but I’ve scraped it worse just falling while walking. I went to get back on my bike, and discovered that my handlebars must not have been totally tight, and were rotated about 30 degrees. So I had to pull on them to get them back towards straight. I rode back to Villa, and straightened them back out the rest of the way.

So that’s been my last 24 hours or so. Not a lot happening here…

I just got a Google hit on one of my blog archives. The hit was from Iran! And they were searching for the word “brofe”. I think that must mean something to them, but to me, it’s just what happens when you carelessly try and type “broke” and confuse the K for the F. I’ve always had that problem occasionally, switching those two characters when typing. Don’t ask why, I can’t tell you.

I think I’ll start using the spell checker more often….

I remember seeing this on someone else’s blog, and I thought I’d try it here.

Tell me a few things you want to see pictures of, and I will post them. My desk, Franz Hall, my bike, my left shoe, whatever. In all honesty, I’m interested to see what (if aything) is requested.

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Yesterday seems to have been the day for my site ot hit it big with the search engines. I got 2 different hits on “Nathan Oliver” from google, and discovered that nathan oliver, even without quotes, is the number 10 page returned by Google, putting it on the first page. I also got 3 hits in my joke pages, including (strangely enough) two people searching on the exact text of the joke. I even got a hit on the search nathanoliver.com, which isn’t my address. Not quite sure how that happened. The last hit was a search for the name of one of the people I mentioned in the Track it Down piece.

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I hate laundry. I did 5 loads today. All my clothes fit into 3, and then I washed my sweatshirts in the 4th and my sheet and towels in the 5th. We actually have a linen exchange here, but the bath towels are too small, and they don’t have fitted sheets. If I don’t have a fitted sheet, I have to completely re-make the bed every other day or so, and that’s impractical for a loft.

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I’m not feeling particularly inspired today, so I’ll call that the entire post. I may do an Audioblog again, but I think I’ll need to think up some content. I can’tjust ramble on about it being my second test, and when speaking publicly, I need to develop a script to be coherent. Yes, I consider the phone to be public–I’m horrible at leaving a message unless I’ve planned ahead what the message will say. Anyone that’s gotten a clear message from me has had a hang-up as the caller just before.

But enough rambling….