eawr: October 2004 archives

East Alton Blows

[ rakaur on Sun Oct 31 at 03:29 PM // category: eawr, life, school ]

So, we’ve had zero water pressure for the last two days. As it turns out, it’s so bad now that the toilet won’t fill itself. This I learn after taking a nice steamy dump. My life just keeps getting more and more interesting I tell you what.

Went hiking at Pere Marquette today for the first time in a while. To my surprise, I wasn’t even tired afterwards, which is pretty odd considering I haven’t gone for a while.

I’m going to go out for Track in March, so I’ll start running a few miles and such every night with my friend that ran Cross Country this year. I regretted not doing so, so I might as well go for something.

Anyway, back to doing nothing.

-- rakaur // 2004.10.31 @ 03:29 PM

Football for the Lose

[ rakaur on Sat Oct 30 at 09:26 PM // category: eawr, programming, school, technology ]

So, we lost 20-28 today in the first regional game. It sucked. Pana was much more fun. I wouldn’t have regretted staying home.

In other news, I still find myself unable to find even basic documentation on Ruby that isn’t outdated. I really want to get all the information I can on this language (even though I believe Python to be the “right choice,” which I’ll go into). I need to get my hands on the second edition of Programming Ruby: The Pragmatic Programmer’s Guide but it seems as if no one is.. ahem.. distributing it. I don’t have the $30-45 to shell out for it.

I still believe Python to be more elegant. Maybe it’s just me, but:

[x for x in li if os.path.isdir(x)]

just looks more natural than:

li.collect do |x|
    x if File::directory? x
end

And even so, with the first you’d wind up with everything that’s a directory. With the second you’d wind up with everything that’s a directory, and everything that’s not a directory replaced with nil. I see no way to prune this, either.

Update: You can apparently prune it with this:

li.delete_if do |x|
    x.nil?
end

But that’s still an extra step. A filter iterator would be more apt than collect/map in this case.

Update: Okay so I was tired when I posted that. Obviously you could just do:

li.delete_if do |x|
    !File::directory? x
end

My bad.

Anyway, back to having nothing to do.

Someone buy me this.

-- rakaur // 2004.10.30 @ 09:26 PM

Holy Shit, I Went to a Football Game and Enjoyed It

[ rakaur on Sat Oct 23 at 11:49 PM // category: eawr, life, relationships, school ]

So, last night was the last season football game. It was roughly 100 miles away, in a rural ass town surrounded by cows. There’s no way I was going to drive, and figured I just wouldn’t go as none of my “friends” wanted to go.

But then I talked to the girl I want…

<me> hey
<girl> hey
<me> going to pana?
<girl> .. are you?

So I went to Pana (and, despite what all logic and reason tells you, it’s pronounced “PAIN-ah”). Yes, I went 200 miles round trip on a bus full of cheerleaders on the obscure chance that the girl I like might be there. She was there.

Unfortunately, the other kid that wants her was all over her the whole time. So I guess I lose. Yeah, that’s new.

So anyway, I had fun with some friends that were there and enjoyed myself generally. We spanked them 36 nothing. So, we went undefeated.

When we got back into town, half of the city was parked in an abandoned parking lot (K-Mart sucks) and we pulled in and everyone was honking and, being on a bus full of cheerleaders, there was a lot of noise. They all started screaming and cheering and banging on the bus and such. It was really fun.

The football player buses got there, and it was even more crazy. We left and police cars and firetrucks escorted us through the town, with a ton of people cheering us on throughout the streets. It was neat. Unfortunately, I had to piss like a race horse so I didn’t really stick around after we got to school.

In the long run, it was great, and I’m glad I went. It forced me into a social setting that I really need to learn to deal with. Unfortunately, I’ll still be madly depressed because of the girl thing. Hopefull I made some new friends though.

So here it is
The feeling you heard about, can't do without
If winter has fled and sadness has gone away
A moment can overthrow the gray
Lift up your head and say, only today

And on it goes
The motions can be escaped, so celebrate
If you turn aside the image will reappear
Accusing exactly as it fits
Lift up your heart and say, only today

Today, if winter has fled and sadness has gone away
Lift up your head and say, only today

So here it is
The feeling you heard about, can't do without
If winter has fled and sadness has gone away
A moment can overthrow the gray
Lift up your head and say, only today

Lift up your head and say
Only today

-- rakaur // 2004.10.23 @ 11:49 PM