Mindless Star Trek Humor, via MeFi.

Sigh. Four more years. Protest photos from inauguration day.

The whole mess disgusts me. A number of my family members voted for Bush. As Christians, his position on the so-called "moral" issues drove their vote. My assertion has always been that Bush, et al., were pushing these issues for political gain, thereby getting religious voters to vote for a platform that, in the case of lower- and middle-class voters, is fundamentally against their best interests. Furthermore, it was my view that the administration would never really take agressive measures to act on the issues, leaving them on the table as long-term political wedge issues on which they had a huge advantage over the Democrats.

Well, it looks like my assertion has some validity: According to a recent Washington Post article, apparently Bush has said he won't be aggressively pushing for the amendment. From the article:

Social conservatives who helped stoke record turnout for Bush in the 2004 election expressed concern that he is dropping the issue he passionately touted during the campaign now that he has been reelected.

I don't mean to sound anti-religion (though I am), but when you explicitly reject reason, it's pretty easy to get hoodwinked by politicians.

Had to prove that I was nerdier than Paul:

Also, my score on the 500 Question Nerdity Test comes to 58.2%, which I believe is higher than it's ever been. Huzzah.

Well, the first day of classes went... interestingly. I walk on over to FPAT for CS 470, Operating Systems. Now, the room was packed. Packed far beyond any CS class I've ever had. And there were a ton of people I hadn't seen before. For other classes, that wouldn't have been unusual. But at this point, I've probably had at least one class with every senior in the CS department. So it was a little odd.

Turns out, 470 had been moved to another building like an hour before the class and no notice had been posted! All the other people in the room were there for Fluid Mechanics or something, and we didn't find out where our room was until some College of Engineering secretary came by to figure out what was going on. Apparently, Dr. Baxter, the 470 prof, had called someone wondering where all his students were. Then we all walked over to the new room and had a cursory intro lecture. La de da. Operating Systems looks to be a somewhat-tough, but not-terribly-exciting class. As expected.

After 470, I ran around campus trying to get some advising info and officially declaring my second major. Woo. I couldn't get any official advising help from A&S, there was like a 400 hour wait. So, I just went home and enjoyed my long afternoon break. Three hours between morning and afternoon class. Nap anyone? :)

So, I head back to campus for PHI 270: History of Modern Philosophy II. Philosophy is fun. This class is packed, too, but it's the right room this time. The professor comes in and less than 5 minutes into class demonstrates two questionable habits: he speaks extremely quickly and his handwriting is atrocious. But he seems interesting, and I think the class will be just fine.

Check back tomorrow for a look at NSD Part Two.

Well, turns out the search for WMD's is over. Total weapons found: zero. Yeah, somehow this doesn't surprise me.

MacMini. It's so freaking small. And I have to say, this is probably the computer I'm going to have to recommend to everyone who asks me what kind of computer they should buy. What a sweet little machine.

After way too much time without a working AC adaptor, I finally got around to calling in the problem. And now I have a new adaptor. Yay. As such, I'm ceremonially blogging from the iBook. So there's that.

Interesting article over at Wired News, courtesy Slashdot about what happens when we play too many video games, or even spend too much time in front of the computer screen in general.

It's a common phenomenon for me. I'm one of those folks who, after a marathon Halo session starts judging if I'm close enough for a melee attack when approaching others, sometimes catches myself wondering why CTRL-Z doesn't undo mistakes in real life. Although I've never actually tried to press CTRL-Z, or executed a melee attack on innocent passers-by. That's mapped to B, and I have no B button in real life. Duh.

School starts back up soon...

Yeah, I haven't posted in a while. My sleeping has been really weird lately (trying to forcibly put myself on a semi-normal schedule before the Spring semester begins). As a result, I've been extremely lethargic and entirely unmotivated to post.

So, to make up for it, here are a couple of links that most anyone who reads this probably isn't that interested in. But I thought they were cool. That's right, kids! It's Language Blogs!!

• Languagehat. Found via MeFi link. Interesting reading from a fellow language geek.
• Language Log. Via Languagehat's links sidebar. More interesting tidbits from a group of linguists.

Despite the esoteric nature of the links, I'm contractually obligated to say "Enjoy!"

The post-holiday season tends to be a time when I'm rather, shall we say, swamped with new video games to play. This year is no different. Despite having a backlog of Metroid Prime 2, GTA: San Andreas, with some Alien Hominid thrown in for good measure, I've been spending more than a proportional amount of time playing the demo version of Half-Life 2.

I know, the games been out for ages. But I've never been prompt when it comes to video game journalism. Nevertheless, I must say, I'm floored. The graphics are amazing, the physics engine is mind-blowing, and, in general, what I've played of the game is a blast, with a very slick, Resident Evil sort of survival-horror feel (including what to me feels like an absurd shortage of ammunition). Heck, I'll probably end up buying the full version. Making it the first PC game I've purchased since SimCity 3000! :)

So, I slept literally almost all of Sunday. At one point I think I switched the TV to the Lexington Public Library channel and fell asleep to the soothing sound of some old British man reading The Silmarillion or something. Then I woke up at like 3 AM!

So now, having installed my FireWire card, started a re-format of my removable hard disk, cleaned up my desk a bit, and realized that I haven't blogged since last year, I thought I'd point out that I'm currently watching Imus in the Morning on MSNBC and posting a blog that in no way references the fact that it is now 2005.

Doh.

Happy New Year!