Category: minutiae

We had a small power outage last week and now my alarm-clock wont stop flashing the wrong time. No, it’s not broken, it’s just that I’m so god-damn lazy.

It’s now past mid-semester, and I have almost completely checked-out. I can’t fathom how some people can keep the good-student pace for more than 3 or 4 weeks, never mind 13 weeks. Wow. A semester is 13 whole weeks! And it’s not just once a week; it’s like 3 days a week, 1 hour a day, 10 hours of homework, an endless docket of reading then multiply by x number of courses and divide by 3 or 4. God I hate school. Serenity now!

Hey guys, Derick here. I realize it has been a week or so since I’ve written anything new –actually, more than week since we had Chris guest bloging. Anyway, I have been sick since halloween, and then just when I was starting to recover, I think I got a little worse Novemeber 3rd (for obvious reasons). Something about being sick really fuddles with my mind, and it becomes a real nightmare for me to concentrate and form cogent sentences. With that said, catch me in a few days.

.. when I get better

Next week, I’ll be putting a little wrench in the way we do things here at Ariyam.Com. I will be having a guest author all week– Chris Simpkins from Millsplace.com, another great blog site. Chris is a well informed fellow pundit like myself :-), and a good friend. I’m certain you will enjoy his writings.

You can catch Me at Millsplace.com. I will be guest writing on his site Millsplace.com and Chris will be writing here at Ariyam.com. Feel free to throw your comments and heckles at Chris (he can take it). And of course, check ME out at www.millsplace.com from October 25 through 29th. The format is still mostly up in the air at the moment but will probally go something like this.

1. We will pick a topic of differing opinion to write about each day.
2. I write about it on his blog, he writes on mine.
3. So simple, this third bullet is meaningless

So there you have it! Be sure to check us both out!

Nowadays, the only people regurgitating those tired cliches about technology are people that don’t know anything about it. What cliches? You know, Technology is changing our lives, Computers will soon be a necessary appliance, in every home. Etc.. etc.. (vomit?) etc. These cliches may have been appropriate 20 years ago, but now, I’m sorry, there are no longer prophetic of something to come, it is already a reality and most of us have already adapted to it.

These same people are the ones that think it’s pretty nifty to send a 4mb picture attachment of their new baby niece to everyone at work. Where is the vacillation, the necessary hesitation, before filling the to field with EVERYONE. What are you doing to me? And is it really necessary to decorate your email with these rank, barely-supported, Outlook Themes. And please, chain letters? What are we 12?

You know, I think I’m turning into a cliche myself. The pompous IT guy– the know it all, who uses soap-boxes for shoes. Maybe I already am this guy. But at least I know the cause.

Man’s greatest deterrent to attaining his most prodigious goals is lassitude– the weighty anchor of our mortal coil. If we can overcome the slothfulness of the flesh, we can overcome anything.

A sign in a Bank Lobby reads:

“Please note that this Bank is installing new Drive-through teller machines enabling customers to withdraw cash without leaving their vehicles. Customers using this new facility are requested to use the procedures outlined below when accessing their accounts.”

*After months of careful research, MALE & FEMALE procedures have been developed. Please follow the appropriate steps for your gender.

MALE PROCEDURE

1. Drive up to the cash machine.
2. Put down your car window.
3. Insert card into machine and enter PIN.
4. Enter amount of cash required and withdraw.
5. Retrieve card, cash and receipt.
6. Put window up.
7. Drive off.

FEMALE PROCEDURE

1. Drive up to cash machine.
2. Reverse and back up the required amount to align car window with the machine.
3. Set parking brake, put the window down.
4. Find handbag, remove all contents on to passenger seat to locate card.
5. Tell person on cell phone you will call them back and hang up.
6. Attempt to insert card into machine.
7. Open car door to allow easier access to machine due to its excessive distance from the car.
8. Insert card.
9. Re-insert card the right way.
10. Dig through handbag to find diary with your PIN written on the inside back page.
11. Enter PIN.
12. Press cancel and re-enter correct PIN.
13. Enter amount of cash required.
14. Retrieve cash and receipt.
15. Empty handbag again to locate wallet and place cash inside.
16. Write deposit amount in check register and place receipt in back of checkbook.
17. Drive forward 2 feet.
18. Reverse back to cash machine.
19. Retrieve card.
20. Redial person on cell phone.
21. Drive for 2 to 3 miles.
22. Release Parking Brake.

A quick glance at the wall clock reminds me that I’m running late again. I start to accelerate the pace of my morning routine. I’m Just about ready to leave, and then prompts the question: cereal or no cereal ? I chose cereal. I shovel the entire helping in about 5-6 spoons. After, I slide my feet into my slippers say a barely audible and rushed ‘bye’ to my Grandma and start to head to my Taurus. A bunch of white envelops protruding out of my mailbox side-tracks me for a second. Mail already? A cursory shuffling reveals there are no letters for me, save one, stamped with a cornflower blue URI boilerplate. I put the rest of the letters back in the box (someone will eventually get them) and take the URI letter with me into the car. On a more thorough analysis, it seems the letter is from the Office of the Dean, so I tear it open. I am expecting confirmation of my December Graduation from the Dean. Instead, I find a highlighted reminder that I am still missing two courses in order to satisfy my Gen-Ed requirements.

I would later find out that the College of Engineering and the College of Arts and Sciences (the college I had to transfer into for my Major change–computer engineering to computer science) have slightly different Gen-Ed requirements, a big enough difference to postpone my graduation another semester. Wow.. first the fly, now this. It is certainly not my week.

QOD : Paranoid schizophrenics outnumber their enemies at least two to one.

I hate insects’especially flys. What irks me the most about flys is the excruciating Doppler effect from it zipping inches away from your ear, over and over again. There was a damn fly in my room today. I almost broke my ceiling fan as I took a careless swing at it with a T-Shirt. The fan’s chain swung over and wrapped around the moving blades; it wasn’t pretty. Learning from experience, I then turned off the ceiling fan and after another futile swing from the T-shirt, I proceeded to smash a light bulb on the ceiling fan fixture. Man I feel like such a tool. I hate Flys.

I’m taking my LSATS in about 2 weeks, so i’ve been mulling through some sample exams to study off of. As soon as I came across this questions, I wrote in big letters “HAHA”. I was so fed up with the section and questions similar that I just became out-of-the-box hysterical.

Question 25.
The end of an action is the inteded outcome of the action and not a mere by-product of the action, and the end’s value is thus the only reason for the action. So while it is true that every end’s value will justify any means, and even, perhaps, that there is no end whose value will justify every means, it is clear that nothing will justify a means except an end’s value.

Which one of the following most accurately expresses the main conclusion of the argument?
a) The value of some ends may justify any means
b) One can always justify a given action by appeal to the value of its intended outcome.
c) One can justify an action only by appeal to the value of its intended outcome.
d) Only the value of the by-products of an action can justify that action.
e)Nothing can justify the intended outcome of an action except the value of that action’s actual outcomes.

What’s your pick?

Mills showed me this neat site called cockeyed dot com . The guy that runs the site does these random pranks that are just so god damn funny.

Like…
Chad, the Cross-Country Googler Prank

There’s also this interesting subsection on the site called ‘how much is inside’ where they perform various experiments like:

How much is in a keg

and the messier, How much in a can of shaving cream

The address is: http://www.cockeyed.com (in case for some reason you missed all the imbedded links littered throughout this post ;-))