Iron Man Lives Again!

[Dave/Scott]
I’m sitting in Dr. Garver’s Foreign Policy of China class when my eyes catch movement around the doorway like they always do. Instead of being some leggy sorostitute, the leg looked to be made of metal! I excused myself and walked out of class in a manner that one would think that I was going to the restroom. Turns out someone took some time to make a metal costume in the flavor of Bender from the cartoon Futurama. Pretty hardcore, even for GT standards of nerdiness (ever see a Techie dress as Link from The Legend of Zelda? I have). I managed to snap a piss-poor picture with my phone.

♪…HEAVY BOOTS OF LEAD
FILL HIS VICTIMS FULL OF DREAD
RUNNING AS FAST AS THEY CAN
IRON MAN LIVES AGAIN!♪

Song of the Moment: “Iron Man” by Black Sabbath

Infinite Crisis [Commentary Added]

[Dave/Scott]
Let’s start at the beginning, but before I start, let me explain the situation. Last Friday I was scheduled for an essay examination for my Engineering in History class. I was planning to read the dozen or so chapters (which were to be found online) Wednesday night. That afternoon I found to my great dismay that my laptop’s screen refused to power up. Sure, I could’ve gone to the library, but it can be troublesome at times to find a computer to work at. I went to Circuit City and explained my problem, inquiring on how long it would take to make repairs. The answer was a couple weeks, which was unacceptable since I had other tests coming soon after the exam on Friday that also required much work on a computer as well. After about an hour of thinking over the options, I decided to buy a new desktop, which was something I didn’t want to do for at least another year. Thursday night involved much cramming, but I think I managed Friday’s test fairly well.
[ It's hilarious that these things happen right before important things like tests are about to happen. I made sure to purchase extra warranty with the new desktop. ]

Fast-forward to Saturday. Little Chad and I were to go see compositions by Prokofiev (think Peter and the Wolf) and Shostakovich (poor sod composed for Stalin) be conducted by Roberto Abbado at the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. On the way there I was trying to switch to the left lane, looking over my left shoulder when Chad asserts that I should stop. I look forward and floor the breaks, stopping within an inch or two of the bumper of the vehicle in front of me. We manage the rest of the trip to Woodruff Arts Center without any other real near accident. I have a martini before the start to dull my senses so that I’m not so critical of the upcoming piano concerto and symphony. I really enjoyed the overture (on Hebrew Themes) by Prokofiev and first, second, and fourth (final) movements of Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 10 in E Minor, Op. 93, particularly the compositions by the latter composer because they fit my mood. On the way back I nearly engage in a head on collision with another vehicle in an intersection near my apartment. These were the two closest times I’ve come to an accident since my brakes died going down Piedmont Avenue. These were a hard couple days, probably the most stressful since my time as an engineer.
[ Good martini. ]

♪…AIN’T NO MERCY
AIN’T NO MERCY LEFT FOR ME…♪

Song of the Moment: “I Disappear” by Metallica

The Things They Say

[Dave/Scott]
I love it when people try to describe me. It allows me to gauge how well I believe they truly know me, also providing me with insights that I might’ve missed. I feel like analyzing a couple “labels” that caught my ear or eye lately.

“The nerdy jock.” I believe I was called this by Ian when we were driving back from Oxford’s. The conversation was over what traits discern oneself from the elusive idea of a “normal person.” Ian’s rationale behind this label was someone who enjoyed going to the gym (hence the jock), yet I have a heightened interest in technology, particularly in small and portable gadgets (hence the nerd). I somewhat object to being called a jock due to the fact that my interest in sports is rather low, if nonexistent, and my ability to move weights is above average at best, at least based on performance in gyms.

“The vindicator.” I remember walking in Kroger with Joanna having some sort of discussion about her ex-roommate. She told me that I had great sense of morality, yet a harsh sense when it came to punishment. My reasoning behind this was to exact punishments severe enough to discourage the same wrong-doings from the person or persons in question in the future. Despite my attempt to explain myself, Joanna still reasoned that she’d hate to be on my bad side. I even remember someone saying something along the lines of me retaliating with cruise missiles to border harassment by a neighboring state.

“Control freak.” A couple of my friends think that I have a serious God-complex problem. I guess this is evident in my need for order and in my recent game in Civilization III. I know I’ve professed to attempting to think of many different scenarios and contingencies for how situations could potentially play out, but I know full well that nothing truly goes exactly to plan. But still, to plan is better than to leave everything to chance, right?

♪…AM I WHO I THINK I AM?...♪

Song of the Moment: “Dirty Window” by Metallica

Animals, Model United Newbies, and Whiners!

[Dave/Scott]
Jack’s sister was forced to give up her bunny due to extenuating circumstances with her roommates, so Jack decided to house it here. It’s the perfect pet for our housing situation because she’s pretty quiet and was housebroken already. We all had also been contemplating getting a hamster for a couple weeks so I decided on Saturday to get one. We couldn’t name her “Houdini” because of gender but after marveling at her ability to dodge and evade my attempts to grab her, we nickname her “Regina Bush” after Reggie Bush, that TB for USC that’s too good to be true.

Wasted the Monday and Tuesday of our Fall Break again in participating as a director for Georgia Tech’s Model UN hosted for high school students in the states. I decided to take the lax road instead of going rules/gavel nazi this time around. This time around I actually had a terrific assistant, Nicole, who would take the reigns without hesitation. I was also given a page by the name of Kunj this year. Knowing full and well how boring a page’s job is, I decided to take the small, timid, Indian sophomore under my wing, grooming him to be my replacement. He essentially turned into the ultimate multi-tasker who I would even allow to call the assembly to order with the gavel on some occasions. I also gave Kunj the job of getting as many digits from the cute girls in committee, and despite his initial shyness, he had received about four after the two days of conference had finished. I urged that our secretariat recognize exemplary pages and they actually listened to me. During the awards ceremony I yelled “Kunj, you’re my boy!” in Old School fashion when the surprised kid got his award. This last conference was actually satisfying for once, and marked a fitting end to my involvement to modeling a poor system for international representation.

Classes recommenced on Wednesday, where Dr. Brecke made a proposal to the class. In a nutshell, he would drop anything done prior (case studies, midterms, etc.) if the class would allow him to elaborate on his life’s work, the class giving him feedback in return for his ideas. There would be no required readings, no papers, no midterms. There would be three possible grades, A’s, C’s, and F’s. All you would need for the top grade would be to attend class regularly and contribute one verbal contribution to the class a week. This would essentially force you to be engaged in the class in order to contribute enough to get the A, increasing learning benefits in the long run. There were a handful of naysayers, particularly those few that were regular jabbers earlier into the semester. Brecke said that he never had access to this much “brainpower” because he had never taught a class of this size before, but one of the persons going against his proposal blurted out that she did not believe that there was much “brainpower” at all. She earned the ire of around 150 people when they walked down from their seats at the end of the period, giving her angered looks. Uncommon sense dictates that one should never piss off a mob, even if they are “dumb” I say.

♪…OUT OF SIGHT OF MIND
YOU TOOK ME TO A DIFFERENT PLACE, DIFFERENT TIME
I BELIEVED IN YOU…♪

Song of the Moment: “Never Turns to More” by Corrosion of Conformity

Potential Problem Exposed!

Christine looked tired in SciTech class one day. Before I could ask, she told me why. Part of East Campus was blocked off due to a bomb threat, which prevented her from taking her usual mid-day nap. Later that day I heard that the janitor that found one of the bombs was hospitalized. I said remember guessing it was a freshman, due to it being Fall semester, where many of them are first being introduced to the stressful environment that is Georgia Tech. This semester is also when many students take the first required chemistry class, giving them weekly access to chemicals.

Here’s the campus advisory e-mail sent to all students a couple days ago:

A Georgia Tech student has indicated his involvement in the Oct. 10
incident involving a crude bottle explosive found on east campus.
The incident was not in any way the work of a "terrorist" group.

The student turned himself in to Georgia Tech police the morning of Oct. 11 and confessed to his involvement. He's facing charges for possession of a destructive device (a felony under Georgia Law) and reckless conduct (a misdemenor under Georgia law).

The freshman engineering student has been temporarily suspended pending a student judiciary ruling.

Georgia Tech Police and the Atlanta Police Department are still investigating the incident. The contents and exact nature of the bottle explosives has not been determined and is still under investigation.

Don’t rightly know if the student in question was in danger of failing or if his stunt was caused by some other stress, but this brings light to a potential problem. This school fails loads of students, a good many of who are still smart people despite their academic performance. These students go from being all A’s and B’s students in high school to making C’s, D’s, and F’s when they come here. It’s a hard transition that has a decent chance of making reasonable people think unreasonably. It’s dangerous to piss off smart people.

MIT has one of the highest, if not the highest, suicide rates in the country. They saw this as a problem and attempted to fix this by changing all freshman level courses to pass/fail. This solution took did some to alleviate the stress over grades during a students introduction to college, effectively lowering the rate of suicide. I’m curious to see if GT even attempts a fix at this new problem. They could make freshmen take something other than chemistry their first semester, like physics. Or maybe the administration will be as oblivious as its always been.

♪…I CAN TELL YOU WHY
PEOPLE GO INSANE
I CAN SHOW YOU HOW
YOU COULD DO THE SAME…♪

Song of the Moment: “Shadow on the Sun” by Audioslave

At a Loss of Words, Well, Not Really

On Wednesday I was to give a three minute talk on my stance on the SALT (Strategic Arms Limitation Talks) II conclusion for my Science, Technology and International Affairs class. I knew everyone was going to argue along the lines of policy, since liberal arts majors as a whole abhor science and mathematics, so I chose to delve into the science of nuclear weapons, to understand what is behind the creation of those unique and pretty clouds.

I spent hours looking over frighteningly detailed FAQs on nuclear weapons online, seeking to understand how the weapons work, along with pouring over the case study on SALT II we were assigned, striving to understand the different points of view on the American side of the talks. My proposal concluded something that was mentioned numerous times in the case study, though was something totally ignored by both sides for they desired broad limits which would allow for room R&D flexibility. I my conclusion was that limits shouldn’t have been set so much as equal aggregate ceilings, but more around the lines of nuclear missile throw-weights, which in a nutshell is the weight of weapon minus the weight of all the devices that carry it to the target. By limiting throw-weights, you limit either the number of missiles that can be created or how powerful they can be. To reach desired yields (or how hard the warhead goes boom), you need enough nuclear material to cause that sort of fission or fusion reaction. With a ceiling set on throw-weight, the superpower in question must then decide on whether to sacrifice number of weapons to maintain higher yields, or sacrifice yields to maintain high numbers. Unfortunately, this approach wasn’t in the best interests of either party, seeing as they sought to maintain first and second strike capability first and foremost.

Fast forward from that chilly conflict to yesterday, the day of presentation. Dr. Brecke gets up, and gives a 15 minute spiel, and I’m distraught. He then asks the class if he had treaded on anyone’s presentation, after which I give an audible anguished cry. Brecke asks me what was wrong and my response was that he gave two of my three minutes already. The professor asks me then if I want to go first, leading me to think to myself that this was great, he wasn’t going to even allow me to go second or third and allow me some time to fill up two minutes. I asked, “Should I even bother?” The professor said yes, so I stood in front of the class, crushed that I hadn’t expected this. I gave the one minute describing my stance and he asked if I had two questions for the class that each presenter was supposed to have. I looked at him and told him that he had answered the questions I had thought of the night before. I hand my paper to him and begin walking to my seat, somewhat startled by the applause I hear. I sit in my seat in shame and take delight in the fact that the two other presenters are torn to pieces and are not offered applauses for a condolence. **sigh**

“Of course, the whole point of a Doomsday Machine is lost, if you keep it a secret! Why didn’t you tell the world, EH?”

Movie of the Moment: Dr. Strangelove

God-Complex + Civilization = BAD

Bathrobe, check. Saturday, check. Sid Meier's Civilization III: Complete, check. Feinted at the beginning with seemingly peaceful intentions, focusing on expansionist strategy to stunt the growth of my neighbors. The long-term effects of this stratagem brought me startling scientific and economic growth, allowing me to enter the Middle Ages around 50 BC, the Industrial Age around 500 AD, and the Modern Age around 1100 AD.

After observing over the course of thousands years that my fellow civilizations continued in small petty squabbles over trivialities, I realized that action needed to be taken for they were getting in the way of progress. I began pushing back each civilization individually back with military might (think of tanks clashing with ancient legions) until the civilization was left one city. After some thought I actually likened this to the United States forcing Native Americans into reservations, minus the small-pox infected blankets. The plan was to scale back each civilization to the point of one city, and after this objective was completed, I would dispense all of my civilization’s technological ideas upon each of the surviving cities, aiding my formerly squabbling neighbors in modernization at a rapid rate. France, somehow the far second most powerful civilization, challenged me, taunting to give them tribute lest they destroy me. Unfortunately for them, I had ICBMs in the 1500s, and after they had declared war, I nuked Paris. Every civilization declares war on me after the bombing. I see that though the Parisian population was devastated by the nuclear bombing, there were survivors, so I bombarded the city four more times with ICBMs. At this point every civilization was asking for peace with no extra terms from my side. In the 1700s I looked at the world and believed it FUBAR, launching my civilization to the Alpha Centaury system in hopes of making a better world there.

m s dont panic: you wont rest until you're God
m s dont panic: which is a little frightening
Dantes Entreri: LOL

Game of the Moment: Sid Meier's Civilization III: Complete

Like on TV, ma!

I ate mussels yesterday. They were good, cooked in garlic and white wine.

One of them had something kinda hard in it, and I thought I might have eaten a piece of shell.

I spat out a pearl.

I didn't know before then that mussels were capable of producing pearls, but I suppose all those clam-like creatures must do them.

Its a very tiny pearl, maybe 1/8 of an inch across, tops, but I'm gonna try and hold onto it for a while.

D

Sanctuary Compromised

I came up to my usual lonely haunt on campus to find people already up there. This was supposed to be my place away from the noise and the chaos found in the student center, but word must have gotten out about this area. I’ll have to find somewhere else to sit alone and plot world domination from, now that this quiet place has been polluted with the likes of obnoxious imbeciles that Georgia Tech passes for engineers.

“The walls are breached!”

“The fortress is taken. It is over.”

Movie of the Moment: The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

Modern Art [Warning: Explicit Content]

My brother and I are very cultured, we are. Really. Yes, really. We are seriously cultured. To demonstrate why to you nonbelievers, I will post to you what is a normal conversation between us siblings, the topic of this particular discussion being modern art.

nathanp1118: bubba
Dantes Entreri: mojo
nathanp1118: i just took a dump
Dantes Entreri: lol
nathanp1118: and it totally looked like mickey mouse eating apple pie
Dantes Entreri: **blinks**
nathanp1118: it was by far
nathanp1118: the most awesomest thing i have ever seen
nathanp1118: matter of fact
nathanp1118: it was borderline modern art
nathanp1118: so therefore
nathanp1118: i didn't flush
Dantes Entreri: **blinks again**

No need to thank us, we believe it our duty to culture this world of shortening attention spans and diminishing tastes.

“This world need dreamers to give it a soul.”

“And it needs realists to keep it alive.”

Song of the Moment: “Symphony No. 6 In F Major, Op. 68 'Pastoral': Allegro Ma Non Troppo” composed by Ludwig van Beethoven

A Legend Returns, the Search for Serenity, and Other Non-Related Madness

I made the mistake of purchasing X-Men Legends 2: Rise of Apocalypse the week before four tests. Oddly enough, my roommates played the more than I did with Matt even beating it last week. I made up for lost time this weekend, playing the game in my bathrobe, only leaving the living room chair to shower (yes, sleep and food were optional). The bastards at Raven Software took a Diablo II approach with this sequel, making it annoyingly addicting and re-playable.

Saw Serenity this weekend and was very satisfied with how it turned out. Joss Whedon’s pacing with the movie was perfect; the situation growing so tense at the climax where you seriously doubted anyone was making it out alive. Definitely a better Sci-Fi movie than Episode III, that’s for sure.

On Sunday Matt was begging me to invite people over for dinner. He wasn’t in the mood for his gay friends, so he was asking me to invite straight people over to our apartment. I managed to lure Jessie and her roommates over for a torturous affair of listening to Matt run his mouth as we ate fake Chinese. He was behaving pretty well. It only took him two hours to scare them off.

I came to work today with the knee brace on. The coworkers thought my knee was hurt running from angry boyfriends of girls I hang out with (on occasion). I’m not a bird-dogger, damn you.

♪…TAKE MY LOVE
TAKE MY LAND
TAKE ME WHERE I CANNOT STAND
I DON’T CARE
I’M STILL FREE
YOU CAN’T TAKE THE SKY FROM ME…♪

Movie of the Moment: Serenity