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today’s random thoughts (at my own request): quantum mechanics is wack. and i mean that seriously. but at least i’m finally learning matrix arithmetic and eigenvectors. only 4 of 90 people in my buddy list are online right now. an all-time low. i feel as if the world ended but they forgot to tell me. my world ended today when the stanford post office again proved its infallible inefficiency. cds sent out priority mail on monday still haven’t arrived. my weekend of new music i’ve been looking forward to all week is now shot. peterson’s sunset breeze is an amazing tobacco, especially when smoked in a peterson standard system pipe. in the absence of port, scotch, brandy, or some other legitimately refined liquid, mountain dew serves as a wonderful aperitif. is it just because i’m extremely narcissistic that i want my “perfect” girl to be like me in so many ways? (for instance, if i found someone who was a cigar connoisseur, a lover of good indie music, into rock climbing and/or running, a decent guitar player, deep-thinking enough to take well to philosophy [among other things], and appropriately stunning [we might as well add christian to the list, it being rather important], i would probably die of shock while running to ask her hand in marriage). and if that is so (meaning, if it is just because i am narcissistic), should i not actively try to disenforce my natural dissatisfaction with the women i found around me (dissatisfaction due to the fact that they’re not carbon copies of myself, basically)? but then what’s the difference between that and ‘settling’ for something i’m not really really excited about? if we agree that my current standard for deciding whom to like is just plain dumb (and it is), then we run into the problem of coming up with another (since having no standards gets really dangerous). and as far as i can tell, any standard other than my current will fail to motivate me emotionally, and i’d feel i was liking someone out of duty. then again maybe that’s just what kant would approve of. minidiscs are beautiful. small, but with the promise of so much information. little sci-fi packets of aural goodness. why is it 3 am? i am in trouble now that i’ve discovered the joy of collecting dvds. cds is bad enough. i can’t spend the other half of my income on movies. what will i do when i graduate? i have no idea. what will my degrees get me? not sure. not true love, probably.

we’re now over a week into spring quarter, and i’ve surprisingly little to show for it. academically, i’m pretty much nowhere to be seen–i skipped all but the first day of classes. socially, i’m the new kid in the eating club and so i sit alone. welcome to high school. physically, the only thing keeping me in shape is washing dishes for hours a day (oh, that’s what kitchen managers do…), and eating a lot of those whiskey-filled mini chocolate bottles. somehow running 20 miles a week didn’t even come close to making the radar screen. mentally, i’m not sure i’m all there. i spend way too much time sitting in front of the computer trying to think of things to put in my task list and not enough time working on the things already there. spiritually, i’m inspired but weak and too lazy to get anything helpful started for more than a second. so i get into nice little cycles where it takes all my effort to break out of the tunnel vision, leaving no strength to actually change paths once i realize i’m on the wrong one. ...

“the shorter end of a long week” or “the continuation of the last really long post which you should read if you haven’t already, and don’t forget to look at the pictures” i’d like to point out, in response to imagined complaints over the length of part I, that this spring break’s blog had only 2 parts, not 5, like that of last spring break (some parts in march, some in april, in the archives). speaking of those posts, i went back and read them yesterday, and was struck in particular by the fact that it’s now been over a year since emily and i broke up. i felt a pang of remembered sadness as i looked over that day in particular, and a fresh sort of guilt in realizing what a bad, or more accurately, non-existent, friend i’ve been to her since then. being fully and purposely occuppied with life here has that disadvantage for my non-californian friends. anyway, a lot has happened in this year of singleness, and i think i’ve certainly grown in a lot of ways because of it. but back to now… ...

“a week of adventuring”, or “a somewhat non-uninteresting blog entry” note: i will include links to pictures throughout the extremely long narrative. you will recognize these links because they will be within brackets–square brackets, like “[” and “]”. there may be no other designation that these are links, so keep an eye peeled. pictures are at 35% size and are in .jpg format another note–“the crew”, “the guys”, “us”, or other similarly first-or-third-person plural designators usually refer to: dan urban, joey carucci, and myself. dan you all should know already–he is my suitemate, was my roommate last year, really likes weezer, and can make cool crap with metal using lathes and stuff. joey carucci has long black hair, is the most inquisitive/challenging person i’ve met, and is without a doubt the most italian-looking of the three of us. lastly, i, of course, am simply me. ...

i am back in the states! everything went fantastically. i’ll write an extremely long blog entry about the aforementioned week of adventuring soon. for now, i am off to mt. hermon in the santa cruz mountains to stay with some family friends for the night. ah, the glories of having my own car.

well, i’m off to the UK for a week of adventuring. see you when i get back, and everyone, be safe.

hello, war. it’s been a long time. and cnn’s technical advances will bring you that much closer. “Tune into CNN: you can have the war, narrated by the indefatigable Dr. Sanjay Gupta at camp Iwo Jima somewhere [he can’t say where] in the northern Kuwaiti desert roughly 2km from the borders of Iraq, broadcast live into your living room! Hear about the mysterious possibly-chemically-or-biologically-armed missile which made a noise and caused camp Iwo Jima marines to put on gas masks until the all clear was given! See live pictures of a random street in Baghdad where nothing happens! More false alarms and top-secret U.S. war plans to be internationally blabbed to God knows who [and we don’t care!], after the break. [Closed Captioning provided by Flonase: ‘Flo, for your every nasal need’]” ...

as of today, winter quarter 2003 is over. this marks the end of my 8th quarter of instruction as an undergraduate at stanford, and my 2nd as a graduate student. without a doubt, this was the hardest quarter of my stanford career, and possibly my life. tonight i stood outside in the cold with dan, smoking tobacco mixed by an old man in st. augustine, florida [memories of home], in a pipe bought years ago in oxford, england [rite of passage]. i put my hood over my face and allowed the beautiful scent from the pipe to drift up and be caught in it, obscuring my vision with an aroma that did its best to take me far away from here. i looked back over the quarter, and saw a bleak landscape that i never realized was so heartless. ...

the show on thursday went well. i feel that i played at least as well as i usually do. i only broke one string and it was while tuning, so disasters were kept to a minimum. i was touched also that many of my friends showed up for the cd release party, who might not usually come to one of my shows. of course, i only sold 6 cds, so i’m not really well on the way to paying back my investors. still, i have hope. ...

i am now officially done with 2 out of the 3 classes i am taking for credit. in order to reach this end, i spent all day “working” on the term paper for my Kant class (had to be around 15pp, due tomorrow). in reality, i didn’t even start thinking of a topic until after lunch. then i read the portion of the book which spoke to that topic (for the first time). then i took a nap. then i had a dinner meeting. by the time i put virtual pen to virtual paper, it was 7:45 pm. understand, at that point no planning or thought had been given to the argument. ...