Random Drivel

Great night at the bars tonight… Happy birthday to Luke!

I am done with finals now, and woke up today at around 12:30. It was definitely great, 10 hours of sleep. Haven’t had that in forever. I did some work on the computer because I actually had free time to fix it, and I went over to 6th street tonight. The guys had bought a keg. Played some beer pong and some bismark, had a great time. Around 11, went over to Sonka’s to see Krystal and some of her friends, then went back over to sixth street. At midnight, we all took Luke out for his 21st. We went to Ballyhoo and got him some shots. He definitely had a good time. I am glad that finals are over and that I got to have a great night hanging out with some awesome friends. I hope to do it again tomorrow night! I’m glad to have such great friends.

The president of Harvard University, Lawrence Summers, has been chastised by the media (generally the left media, because the conservative media has actually stood up for him), for being sexist. In fact, they are asking for his job. They want to fire him. He must have done something horrible. What could it be?

He said that on average, girls aren’t as good at math as boys.

ABC news has an article about it, which talks about the faculty wanting to proceed to a vote of no-confidence in the president, and concludes that maybe what he said was correct but he still shouldn’t have said it. Well of course, I’d generally steer away from something that would piss people off, no matter how true it is.

His actual comments, which were released Friday, show that all he had to say were theories that maybe biological reasons came into play when you see more men than women in the fields of engineering. The range of aptitude for men is greater, with men spanning from the top of the class to the bottom of the barrel, whereas women seem to occupy the middle region.

Its no surprise to me that women choose not to become engineers. The option is clearly available to them, they just go to Liberal Arts Schools instead. How else would you explain how Rose-Hulman has a 75-25 ratio of men-women, and Butler University has a 30-70 ratio of men-women?

Plus, he pretty much said that boys weren’t as good as girls when it comes to the arts. Where is the backlash from the Men’s groups of the world in regards to that comment? Maybe we were too dumb to argue about it. Or maybe we just didn’t care.

Read more about it: http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=513293

Yesterday was the ECE361 Engineering Practice Robot Competition. Our robot, Herman the Ball Eater, performed admirably. We shot and scored 56 times in the four minute period, earning a total of 112 points and securing second place. We were the only other team to score over 100 points. Our robot consisted of a simplistic design that shot the 2-point ball repeatedly. We scored a goal on average every 4.3 seconds, but there were quite a few times where the referee inteferred with our robot’s shooting and we missed. We were fine with that, because we predicted a score of 70-96, allowing for error. 112 definitely exeeded our expectations.

The whole competition was a lot of fun, and seeing the designs that other project groups came up with was interesting. Our group and my roommate’s group (his team landed first place) got interviewed by the school paper, so we’ll probably see that tomorrow morning.

Update: The interview article was posted on Rose-Hulman’s website. Read my blog post about it and then go read the article.

I upgraded the blog tonight to the latest stable release version. I need to work on my themes, so for now I’ve got the default theme installed. I’ll probably have my old theme working by the end of the night, and then I can work on getting something else that takes full advantage of new features. Other than that, I guess, carry on!

UPDATE: I got a new theme, I kinda like it, but we’ll see how long it lasts.

UPDATE: I’ve been working on the theme a little bit more, and added a picture to the top and the blog description to the header. I’ve also done some minor editing to the footer and the post layout… nothing major, but just little things. I really like the new system for the templates. Also, there is now an image authorization to post comments. Hopefully this cuts down on comment spam immensely, because I’ve been having a problem with it. If you hate it (or don’t really care), let me know.

I went to Bloomington this weekend to hang out with Jenny and her friends. Friday night, we were going to eat at Olive Garden, but they had an hour wait so we went to O’Charley’s instead. Later that night we went to a party at one of Jenny’s friend’s Fraternity for a little while. Saturday, we went to the IU - Minnesota basketball game and left right before the end (because IU was up by about 11) so that we could get a table at Scotty’s Brewhouse. The wait ended up being over an hour anyway because we had a party of six, but it was really good food. I got a BBQ bacon cheeseburger and loaded fries and drank two 22oz beers in a collecters cup. We also got two of the Scotty’s pint glasses.

Later that night we went to Kilroy’s with her roommate and some friends, because Afroman was playing. Afroman! Haven’t heard from that guy since 8th grade or something like that. And yes, he did play “Because I got High” at the end, around 2:45. We didnt listen to the whole act because we went upstairs to dance. The whole bar was pretty crowded the whole night. Went to Taco Bell afterwards for a snack and it was crazy. I’d hate to work at Taco Bell on a Saturday night at 3 am when drunk people are bossing you around. We saw this dude and this girl sitting at a booth and it looked like they were arguing, and as we walked out the door the dude goes “Hey man, which way you headed?” and I was like, “back to campus, why?” He said “I need a ride, bro.” Our car was full, or I guess we might have given him a ride. They both had whipped out their cell phones and were calling people. It looked kinda like they had just broken up, kinda sad, really.

Went to see “In Good Company” at the theater before eating dinner at the AGD house, then I drove back to Rose. Now I gotta finish writing this paper due tomorrow. I wish Terre Huate had good bars…

My friend Joe, in his infinite quest to have new and exciting things, has decided that he wants a hedgehog. But, as one might discover, hedgehogs are not free. Therefore, he wants to sell things that cost money in order to buy other things that cost money. So, he’s selling his Microsoft XBox on eBay. He’s also selling a bunch of games, and controllers, and XBox live. Plus more accessories. Check out his auction:

Xbox Console + 4 games + 2 controllers + Online + accessories

He’s not asking for much, and lots of people love Xbox. He loves it too, its just that we go to an engineering school where we have negative amounts of free time to play video games. So help him get a hedgehog. You know you want to. And, as long as I am shamelessly plugging things, you might as well sign up for FreeFlatScreens.com, because I only need two more referals before I get one. I totally got my walkie talkies from Great Fun, and a friend of mine got the digital camera (which he said isn’t half bad for a free digital camera). It costs like a buck.

http://www.FreeFlatScreens.com/?r=7939967

So if you’re bored and want a free TV or monitor to play that XBox on, then help me out. If you want help on one of your free site thingies, I’ll do that, too. I already got my iPod back in October.

9th week blows. Next week is 10th week… Dead Week. Week after that is finals.

Rose-Hulman will consume us alive.

Oh no! Another Iraqi group has taken a hostage and has threatened to behead him. This is horrible… Special Ops Cody, why??? Why did it have to be you? CNN has an article about this horrible tradgedy. If we don’t release Iraqi prisoners, they will be forced to execute our friend, Special Ops Cody. Read more about the untimely capture of one of our nation’s bravest.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/02/01/iraq.hostage/

I can’t honestly believe that anyone would fall for that. It would have been smarter for them to have maybe used grainier footage when they posted it on their website instead of crisp clean digital pictures of a GI Joe. In response to this, Comedy Central’s The Daily Show has done a special report about our fallen comrade. I hope the link works, if it doesn’t I’ll try and host it somewhere for ya. Let me know if itstops working. For the video clip: GI D’oh