cuchillo

Last night was fun. Every Tuesday Sean Kelly's has trivia night - and it rocks. Trivia doesn't start until 8:00, but if you want a table you need to get there early. Zach, Rocky, and I got there just before seven and barely got a table in the basement.

Here are some of the trivia questions:

1. Which of the 48 contiguous states has the most shoreline?


2. What two-word musical term is used to describe the birds singing in the morning?


3. What band sings "How Bizarre?"


4. In Greek mythology, who gazed into a pool of water, fell in love with his own image and wasted away?

And here are the trivia answers:

1. Michigan


2. Dawn Chorus


3. OMC


4. Narcissus

We didn't come in last, but we were quite a bit away from first with a final score of 55. There were eight rounds of ten questions worth one point each except for the final round where the questions were worth double the points. The same team that always wins won. I think they are called Second Thought. Our team was named the Rockettes, but the best team name was Suck It Trebek.

Back in November, when Scott's car was pushed off of a mountain, I lost my keys with it, and on my key ring was my only motorcycle key. Well, the weather has been getting nicer and I really would like to start riding it, plus it gets much better gas milage than the truck.

To get it working again I needed to get a new key made. First step was getting a blank key from the Kawasaki dealer. Man, they have some nice new motorcycles in there. Next, I had to remove the ignition and take it and the blank key to the locksmith. Then they just cut me a new one. So amazing.

I put it back in the bike, jumped it, and took it out for a test ride. I like riding motorcycles. Yeah. The starter is going bad though, so I'll have to take it in and get it checked out. There's a bunch of little things that need to get fixed with the bike, but once the starter is fixed I can ride it on a regular basis once again.

Well, for all of you waiting on pins and needles: I got the paper in!

After a grueling homework session at the guys house including some great coffee, several cokes, and nabbing Zach's bed for a quick rest my paper is complete. It's not my best work, but it will do for a grade. On my way to drop it off, I ran into a couple other students who, like me, waited until the last minute to write it. I don't know what it is, but it always seems that for one reason or the other I'm finishing big school projects right before the deadline. I intended to finish this paper earlier, but I got a nasty cold over the weekend and spent most of Saturday, Sunday, and Monday sleeping. But that's all behind me now, so let's forget it.

Today I took my one and only final. It was scheduled for a week from tomorrow, but our class managed to talk the teacher into giving it today. A couple students were still allowed to take it on the scheduled date, but for most of us it was nice to get it out of the way. So now I am officially enjoying summer.

Next on the todo list: get the motorcycle working.

It's 4:28. I'm printing. The paper is due by five. Will I make it? Stay tuned, and find out.

It's four in the morning, I'm at the guys house writing my paper. Wildebeests are on Animal Planet. Zach is sleeping on one couch, Kathleen is on the other. Rocky just finished his paper and went to bed. He'll wake me in the morning if he gets up in time to get biskets from Wheat Montana. I'm glad I took tomorrow off of work since I have at least five more pages to write.

I'm going to sleep. Goodnight.

Yesterday, I helped a little bit with the Chi Alpha missions garage sale. Every year we hold one of these to help send students to Slovakia on a summer mission. This year we seemed to have quite a bit of donations. People donate stuff, we sell it, and the money goes to the mission.

Part of the fun is an all-night setup party. I didn't stay for all of it. I just dropped off my truckload of stuff from me and my parents, ate some pizza, and left. Another part of the fun is taking pictures with some of the more silly items for sale.

In other news, I'm sick of school for this semester. I ran out of steam about a week ago when the weather got nice. I just have to force myself to write the final paper for Russian Lit and I'll have the big thing out of the way. I'm going to compare Anna Karenina and Crime and Punishment. Particularly, Part Eight of Anna Karenina and the Epilogue of Crime and Punishment. These are the two best novels I have ever read. If you have a lot of extra time, read them.

In still other news, I'm sick. It figures since I have recently been saying that my extra sleep has kept me healthy. I got a sore throat, and now it has turned into a stuffed up nose too. Theraflu is incredibly expensive right now. It was over $8 to get six packets. Maybe it has something to do with the bird flu worries.

Well, I'm back to thinking about that paper.

April 26th was the 20th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster. Twenty years ago in Ukraine the plant suffered a nuclear meltdown. Some have described the glowing sight of the explosion as beautiful while others could feel the radiation burning their skin. Forty seven workers died as a result of acute radiation syndrome, but no one knows how many have died and will die from radiation exposure.

The area and towns directly around the reactor have been abandoned, and many nearby towns still suffer the effects of elevated radiation. My friend's neice, who was born several years after the incident, died as a result of a heart condition which is now known as "Chernobyl Heart." There are many children who suffer ill health due to the accident and the radiation still present.

There is an interesting story about a girl who rides her motorcycle through the ghost towns. Apparently, it is not all true, but the photos are still haunting, and it is worth the read.

Well, I thought that I should get something up, and what better time to do it than when I should be writing a paper that was due last Thursday? I've been busy with school stuff lately, and I've told myself that I shouldn't be blogging when I have homework to do, but now I'm throwing that out the window and giving you an update.

I just finished Anna Karenina by Tolstoy. You know the same guy who wrote the longest book you've ever heard of: "War and Peace." Anna Karenina is officially the longest novel I have completed at 740 pages, but I would say it was worth it. Tolstoy is just a master at writing emotions, the thoughts of charaters, and their relationships. Did you know that Anna Karenina was a best seller in 2004? That's right, it was on Oprah's Book Club!

Aside from reading Anna Karenina and taking vacation to read Anna Karenina, I've been building a new computer. I bought a motherboard from Pavel, ordered an AMD 64 3000+ processor, a killer heatink (Dale thinks it's cool), and picked up a new 320 GB SATA hard drive from Best Buy. Oh yeah, and a sweet Antec P180 case. It's a nice case. It is supposed to be the quietest stock case on the market. It has 3 120cm fans, and rubber grommets for the hard drives to ride on (it cuts down on the noise from vibration). I was really going for a quiet computer since my last one sounded like a jet.

Right now I'm installing Windows 2000 for the second time. I already had it installed, but I tried to run Paragon Partion Manager on it and it hosed my installation and I lost everything on the hard drive. Let that be a warning to you to always backup what you need off your computer.

Well, I think I'll finish Checkov's "The Lady with the Pet Dog" before I go to bed and just write my paper on Anna Karenina tomorrow morning. I really need to make myself get up early. I'm still working on that, but on the bright side I haven't got sick in a long time.

Apparently, Wendy's not only hires teenage instant messengers to make burgers, but to write signs too.

I don't have anything against teenagers. Heck, I even used to be one. I just never wrote an instant message or a text as one, and now that I do use those mediums, I'm responsible enough not to let the style cross over into professional or academic work.

I'm not a strict prescriptive grammarian, but I do think we need some standards to communicate well.

It's official - it's spring, and now my front lawn says that it's officially official. Monday was the first day of spring and also the first day my crocuses started appearing.

A couple of years ago I planted 200 pickwick crocus bulbs all over in the front yard. They call it naturalizing. Every year they start coming up right before spring break, and every year they are in full bloom while I am gone for spring break. That will be the case this year too, but maybe they will still be around when I get back from the Canyonlands.

Here is how to transform your internet browsing. The internet is four times better without the ads. Pages load faster and aren't nearly as annoying.

First, download and install the latest version of Firefox. Click that big green button. Save the file and run it to install Firefox.

Once you have the latest Firefox installed, get the AdBlock extension. Just click "Install Now", it's down the page a little.

Now get the latest list of sites to block. Several files will be listed on this site. Right-click the most recent adblock list (e.g. 2006-03-08a.txt) and select "Save Link As"
Save it to My Documents or anywhere else.

Now, to load this list into Firefox just follow these steps:
In Firefox, on the menu, select Tools|Extensions
Click Adblock, then click the Options button
Click Adblock Options, then Import Filters
Select the file you just downloaded and saved, and click Open
Click the Append button
Click Done

Enjoy ad-free browsing! If you do by chance run across an add, you can block it by right-clicking it and selecting "Block Images from ..."

On Sunday, I was hanging out over at the guys' house playing the coolest game for the PS2 - Katamari Damacy. No really, it's cool. Basically your goal is to roll around a ball (your "katamari"), while you roll it around things that are smaller than it stick to it and it grows. As it grows larger it can pick up larger things. You start with tacks, memory cards, etc., and work you way up to cats and dogs and children and people and cows and cars and buildings and cities. Seriously, it's cool, but you don't have to take my word for it, check out the reviews on Amazon.

Well, while I was over there fending off the urge to do my homework, and I got a call from my dear little sister. She was on her way to Missoula! As is almost tradition, we went out for sushi. It's addicting. Then she took off for my parent's house. My dad was going to help her change her oil before she left for Portland. She's off to do some spring break snowboarding at Mount Hood. Fun, fun! I told her that she should check out Powell's bookstore while she's there. Not that I've been there, but everyone raves about it.

Yep, she's already on spring break, and we don't have it for another week and a half here at the 'ol U of M. But when we do, I've decided to go to the Canyonlands.

I thought I wouldn’t have the pleasure of shoveling anymore snow this year, and I’m not saying that sarcastically. I really like shoveling the walk. Before you ask me to shovel yours though, know that one is enough. Snow is one thing that is guaranteed to bring a smile to my face. Today was beautiful – it snowed all morning. I may just have to skip church tomorrow and spend the day up at Snowbowl.

Yesterday I did some shopping or let me say e-shopping. I didn’t really go out to a "brick and mortar" as they call them. I bought a new camera (Canon SD450) from Dell and a memory card (2GB) and reader from newegg. It pays to watch bensbargins. Girls, I’ll let you in on a little secret: guys like to shop too. It’s just that they don’t like to shop for the same things you do. Think of all the fun you have in a hardware store or the video game section of Wal-Mart. So the next time you want to get your boyfriend to go shopping with you it might help to stop by Home Depot or something. I think there are more similarities than that though too. Some guys will go shopping when they are feeling down, but instead of buying a new outfit they’ll come home with a new tool or gadget. I guess it does cheer you up some.

Well, my parents are back from their month-long RV vacation to the south, so I think I’ll head out to Frenchtown and pay them and their RV dog a visit. Look forward to my photo stream exploding next weekend with 5 megapixel photos.

I think I'm losing my self discipline. I remember the days I used to get up early and run. I remember the more recent days when I used to get up at 6:00 every morning regardless of how late I was up doing homework the night before. That wasn't fun, but I did it anyway. Two weeks ago I decided to start getting up at 5:00 every morning and cut back on caffene. I got up at 5:00 the first three mornings and once or twice since then. Today I got up at 7:30 depspite going to sleep at 8:00 last night, and I'm drinking an Americano as I write this. Seven thirty is pretty good considering there has often been 10:00 mornings.

It might be that I don't regard these things as important enough to warrant change, or perhaps I've had too much else on my mind to focus. I'm falling behind in my Russian class too.

I've also have been lacking in writing, and I'm losing readers. Thanks to the three of you who still stop by.

Yesterday, Peter and I went snowboarding at Silver Mountain. He's the one with the French fries for eyebrows. Silver Mountain is a pretty nice resort and it's about a two hour drive from Missoula, like most resorts besides Snowbowl. However, there is a convient time change on the way which saves you an hour on the way over which means you can get an extra hour of sleep which rocks. Megan the Red was going to come too, but wasn't able to afterall.

Even though Silver Mountain hadn't got much new snow, we still found nice snow in the trees and the groomed runs were nice. My brother likes Silver Mountain, because they groom black diamonds. That could have led to the two injuries we saw while we were there. One guy they loaded in a sled onto the chairlift, the helicopter came for the other. Since the only way up to the resort in the winter is by gondola (the longest single-stage gondola in the world, I hear) I bet there are a lot of helicopter rescues. I've been on it once, though as a passenger. It was my brother who needed to be lifted to the hospital. Yes, the brother who likes the fact there are groomed black diamonds, that is why we got a ride on the helicopter.

One the way back, Peter and I stopped at the famous 10,000 Silver Dollar Bar. It's mostly a big, cheesy souviner shop. Riley says he likes it for the big, cheap knives, but Peter and I found some sweet trucker hats. I'm going to wear that one every time I leave the state.

Thing to know about Silver Mountain:
In the terrian park and elsewhere, inverted ariels are allowed, just not reccomended. Most resorts will take away your lift ticket.

Unlike Snowbowl where there have already been eight rescues this season, if you ski out of bounds at Silver and need to be rescued, you are responsible for the cost. Bummer dude.

Well, I haven't posted in a while. Here's what has been going on:

• School Started I'm taking Russian 202 (Language class) and Russian 306 (Russian Literature in English and Rocky is in my class!)


• Chi Alpha started for the semester.


• I went snowboarding with Renee (my wonderful little sister) at Bridger.


• I went snowboarding with Ryan at Lost Trail.

I just got back yesterday from a two-day training course in Helena. It was excruciatingly boring, and really not useful, but Helena is cool. Downtown Helena is really cool. They have a street that has been converted into a pedestrian-only walk with sculptures and nice landscaping. All along it are little shops, and as I discovered, a Taco del Sol. So never fear, when you are in Helena you can still get a fish taco in a burrito shell, although it will cost you 15 cents more than in Missoula.

Oh, and here is a tip for when you are in Helena: never get a fountain pop or anything else made with the local water. It is terrible - like drinking from the swimming pool.

And here's a funny little story: while Pavel and I were out buying some bottled water late at night, we ran into a group of Russians at Albertson's. We got in line behind them at the checkout, and then one guy with a long beard who I wouldn't have guessed was Russian turned to us and said in perfect local English, "Oh we're not in line. This register is closed, you'll have to go to that one." Then he went back to talking in Russian with the others in what Pavel said was perfect Russian. Like I think I've said before, my teacher says I have a knack for running into Russians. Funny.

It's a Meme!

I was tagged by precious roy, and I just realized that when I posted this two weeks ago, I only posted to draft, but now it's posted for real, obviously you're reading it. I was wondering why the four I tagged hadn't posted anything about it.

Four Jobs I've had in my life:

• Rabbit Barn Attendant at the fair (as a prank, we bought popcorn chicken from KFC, and gave it away as fried rabbit. It was pretty funny watching people's responses. Everything from "That's aweful" to "hmm, tastes like chicken")


• Making Pizza, Subs, and Mexican Food at Hot Stuff Pizza, Smash Hit Subs, and Eddie Peppers. Yes that is one job.


• Computer Programmer in the Air Force


• Computer Programmer at Missoula County

Four Movies I can watch over and over:

• Monty Python and the Holy Grail


• The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe


• Rushmore


• Le Fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain

Four Places I have lived:

• Missoula, MT


• San Antonio, TX (6 weeks for basic training)


• Biloxi, MS (3 months for tech school)


• Montgomery, AL (3.5 years permanent duty station)

Four TV shows I love to watch:

• Are You Being Served?


• Stargate SG1


• Stargate Atlantis


• Battlestar Galactica

Four Places I have Been on Vacation:

• Cuauhtemoc, Mexico


• Moscow, Russian (on a mission)


• Miami, FL


• Blue Bay on Flathead Lake, MT

Four Websites I visit Daily:

• digg.com


• blogger (usually someone has updated. I use an RSS Reader.)


• Google


• The Old New Thing (he updates every day.)

Four of my Favourite Foods:

• Quesadillas, especially in Mexico


• Fish Tacos


• Asiago Bagel from Bagels on Broadway


• Sushi

Four Places I would rather be right now:

• Snowbowl


• Lost Trail


• Home


• Mexico

Four bloggers I am tagging:

• la falda


• ed


• justin


• krysty

The other day Shannon wanted to get one of those water filters for your kitchen sink, but as usual I expanded on the idea and decided to get a whole-house filter. I've heard that the chlorine in the city water dries your skin and hair out in the shower. I don't know if that is just marketing from the filter companies, but I bought it.

While I was at Lowe's, I asked the guy in the plumbing department what he thought about whole-house filters. I told him that it seemed like a good idea, but I thought it was a waste to flush my toilet with filtered water. He told me that toilet flushing generally isn't a large part of your daily water consuption. He said that the average person uses 300 gallons of water a day. Wow, and the toilet only takes 1.6 gallons per flush.

I had to rent some PEX crimpers to install it, and once I got it in I remembered that I hate plumbing. It leaks. So I'll have to re-do it one of these days. In the meantime I put a bucket under it. It's only about a drip a minute.

In other news, I've been working hard on the Chi Alpha website. I want to make it so that Bible study leaders can upload the studies and stuff like that, and then I think it will be ready for launch. The U of M doesn't support ASP.NET 2.0 right now, so I may look into hosting it somewhere else (besides my house) until they do.

I'm sitting in the coffee shop in Walmart right now, listening to the radio snow report. It sounds like there has been quite a bit of snow in the mountains. That's good. I'm hoping to go to Big Sky in a couple weeks.

That's all for now. Have a great day.

Hey, so I know it has been a while since I wrote up a "real" post. Let's catch up.

School got out! Yeah, I passed both my classes, Russian 201 and Russian Literature. I got a B in Russian Lit, but I guess that's what happens when you turn in all your papers late, except one which never got handed in. I probably had time to do it; I just never got around to it. Oh well. It's over, and I'm glad.

Christmas was good. I am always glad to spend time with my family, and get a fruitcake from my mom. She told me I was a scrooge because I didn't go to the hassle of setting up a Christmas tree. Of course, she was just kidding, but my decorations consisted of taking the coil of rope lights to the porch, but never hanging them or turning them on. In fact, I just sent out the last two Christmas cards today. That's what happens when school gives you an excuse for procrastination.

One of my favorite writers is C.S. Lewis. You should check him out; he's that guy who wrote "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe." Every Christmas, I like to read a couple of essays that he wrote in the collection "God in the Dock." They are titled "Xmas and Christmas" and "What Christmas Means to Me." You can use the search inside feature at Amazon to preview the essays (i.e. read the full text). You should get the book. You won't be disappointed.

Our (mine and Shannon's) New Year's Eve was pretty uneventful. We did get new (to us) furniture and Rocky helped me move it. Thanks! Shannon's coworker, who we were buying the sofa and love seat from, had left a message for us. Since she wasn't feeling well enough to come to town she just left us a key and told us to take the furniture out the window. Well, I kind of forgot about the whole window thing, and Rocky and I did a good job banging up the freshly painted doorways. After our fair share of frustration, I saw and remembered the window. The couch went out it so easy. Oh, I just forgot, Rocky told me that it's a sofa, not a couch. He used to work at his dad's furniture store and they're more precise about such things. I guess I could get used to the phrase "sofa potato." Tired out from all that excitement, we waited until 12:00 said "Happy New Year," and went to bed. We did think about going to First Night to see Peter's dad play in his Latin Jazz band, but we didn't feel like shelling out thirty bucks for tickets.

Then on the first, I drove over to Bozeman to see my sister Renee. I got to see her new apartment, and we went snowboarding at Bridger the next day. It was great. Her friend Claire came along, or rather I came along with them. We did end up going home a little early because Renee hit her head kind of hard.

Then earlier this week, I hung up some new blinds in the living room, because the old curtains clashed with the new furniture. They will go to the dining room. Exciting, eh?

Now, I am working on the new Chi Alpha website. You can check it out on my personal computer turned web server here. No guarantees on how long that link will stay active. Check it out, and let me know what you think.

One last thing, I wanted to dispel a common myth that Xmas is "taking the Christ out of Christmas." This isn't quite true. X or chi stands for Christ or more so the Greek "Χριστός". So just like XA is short for Chi Alpha which are the Greek letters abbreviating "Christ's Ambassadors", Xmas is short for Christmas. I suppose you could say Chi-mas (sounds like kie-mas) to be all Greek and stuff.

If you are the first one to guess what this is, I'll mail you one.