Zhanga: August 2008
Entries have their own pages now. Click the date to see the entry by itself with its comments.
Sunday, August 31, 2008 (13 comments)
Last night was pretty interesting. I was on the interstate riding with Rosie, who was driving Eric's car, when all of a sudden for some reason we slammed repeatedly into the concrete divider between the two halves of the highway. We came to a complete stop in the left shoulder of the highway. We had two flat left tires touching the divider, but the shoulder was too narrow so a little bit of the car was still sticking out into the left traffic lane. We exited the vehicle and crossed three lanes of interstate to reach the right shoulder. I had three bags with me and couldn't bring them all, so I chose my camera bag. This proved to be a good choice, as the camera and lenses would not have survived what would happen next...
Here is the disabled car. You can see that all the lights worked and that the hazards were on.
A nice man, with his wife and kids, stopped to help us. He stayed with us for probably two hours, and was generally very calm and helpful. These days I never expect random acts of kindness, so I didn't/don't know how to thank this guy enough. Anyways, he and/or his wife called 911 a couple of times and got the highway patrol out. They were 24 miles away so took some time to get there (about 15 minutes), and as luck would have it, a pickup truck plowed straight through our vehicle about one minute before police cruisers began arriving. This was Labor Day weekend at ~10 PM, so there was moderate traffic.
I was standing on the right shoulder when the collision occurred. Debris flew clear across three lanes of interstate and showered me as the pickup truck flipped over, slid on its roof, and pushed our car about 300-500 feet down the road. The end result is pictured below:
The guy pictured above is the driver of the pickup. He was on his cell phone at the time of crash and was not wearing his seat belt. In addition, I found what appeared to be a pig or cow rib by the side of the highway, so he may have been eating as well. In any case, he is the luckiest man alive. He crawled out of that wreckage with just cuts on his arms! Incredible. His air bag ended up hundreds of feet away, way off in the grass.
This would be the remains of Eric's car. It is on its left side, with its front pointing to the left of the picture. The camera is looking down on what used to be the top of the car:
The next two pictures show the remains of Eric's car and the pickup truck. In both pictures, Eric's car is on the left:
The next photo is a view from behind the vehicle. The tire in the bottom right of the photo is the rear right tire. The Target bags were in the trunk.
Finally, this photo shows Eric's car from the side. You can see that large chunks of the car are completely destroyed. I bet it would have been fun to have been sitting in the passenger seat when that pickup hit... I would probably be in great shape right now.
The man at the junkyard actually told us that the officer instructed him to move the boat off the highway. Boat! That's how messed up the car got.
Besides Eric, who got screwed, all parties involved were incredibly lucky here. Rosie and I were uninjured though shaken by a collision at 60 or 70 mph with a concrete barrier. We managed to get across the highway to safety before the pickup truck smashed the car. The driver of the pickup somehow managed to walk away from the accident with just minor cuts, even without wearing a seat belt (which is the part I find most amazing). Rosie lost her keys, and her laptop suffered a broken screen, but I think that's the extent of our material damage besides the car.
I'd also like to take this moment to say that although my cheap Targus laptop bag is pretty beaten-up and has a broken strap now, it protected my laptop exceedingly well. The only thing I personally lost in the crash was a fake IBM mouse I bought for 20 RMB ($2.50 in those days), which exploded.
Hope this was a slightly more interesting Zhanga post than usual.
12:42AM
Wednesday, August 27, 2008 (0 comments)
About dorm furniture being really expensive... take a look at this bookcase. It's in the same style as the rest of the dorm furniture, so I assume it came from the same overpriced supplier:
Here's the baffling thing, though. See that sticker on the side?
So either Duke bought this for $4 from the overpriced furniture supplier, or the supplier bought it for $4 and resold it to Duke for $120 or something ridiculous.
I encountered this awesome article from Microsoft: Computer Randomly Plays Classical Music. I quote:
During normal operation or in Safe mode, your computer may play "Fur Elise" or "It's a Small, Small World" seemingly at random.
Most BIOS error codes are in the form of "one long beep and three short beeps = memory failure, three long beeps = broken CPU," etc. Wouldn't it be so much cooler if computers played more appropriate noises, e.g. Three Blind Mice for no mouse attached, or "I'm blue, da ba dee da ba die..." for a blue screen of death?
4:44PM
Sunday, August 24, 2008 (3 comments)
Hi, Tim. Glad you made it here. I see that you've read the posts that I've dedicated to you, which, through the candid accounts of my dealings with you, will perhaps provide you with slightly more insight into my unsatisfaction. I think you'll find that everything I wrote was factually accurate and unembellished. Happy reading!
---
Anyways, I moved into my room yesterday. Some may say that my room has an excessive amount of pixels, but that's like saying Cho Won has an excessive amount of tasty Korean barbecue meat. The single coolest item in my room is the wooden slice of watermelon that my sister got me, to the left of the monitors.
One mouse/keyboard for all of them! Bonus points if you can tell what song is playing.
6:03PM
Tuesday, August 19, 2008 (3 comments)
I went to middle school today for open house. I felt really out of place, as 85% of the attendees were moms, 10% were dads accompanying the moms, and 5% were lone dads. And I was just roundoff error.
The 8th grade hallway at Dickerson was closed, but of the 6th and 7th grade teacher that I remember, Rae Weintraub, Ms. Sussman, and Ms. King are still around. There is a Ms. Jackson, but her room was empty so I couldn't tell if it was the same lady who hated me enough to write me up and confiscate my spelling book for drawing a slightly inappropriate flip-book animation in the bottom corner of the pages. Mr. Lyon (health) and Ms. Windhorst (home ec) are still there too.
I went to say hi to Ms. Weintraub (Sussman wasn't there, and King never had me so would have no idea who I was), and when I introduced myself she actually remembered me and mentioned that I was in her pre-algebra class. I was quite surprised, in a good way at the time, but now that I think about it she probably doesn't remember me for being a model student...
I feel old when I realize that it's been ten years since that school year (1998-99).
Coincidentally, last night (two nights ago?) I was flipping through my old stuff, including that mythical "permanent record" that school administrators always loved to threaten you with. I lifted mine right out of a cabinet at Walton... but that's another story. Anyways, there is some stuff I think it'd be fun to share...
These are my final conduct grades from 2nd, 4th, and 5th grades (3rd excluded because that teacher didn't hate me as much). Each column is one grading period, which was 9 weeks in 2nd grade and was changed to 6 weeks the next year. The check marks indicate what I suck at:
I got 13 check marks for not showing self-control and 10 for talking too much! In fact, the only thing I consistently didn't suck at was exhibiting a positive attitude. Maybe I was different back then, but these days I sure am not that positive. It gets better, though. While most teachers write really boring crap in the comments section, like my third-grade teacher who wrote stuff like, "Super job David!" every six weeks, my fourth grade teacher was the best. In fact, in the very first week of her class I got a long note sent home that I had to get signed and returned to this lady. (I don't know where that note is, but it was pretty intense.)
Anyways, the report card comment that she left for me, which took twice the alloted space even in small handwriting, is as follows:
David is an extremely bright child! His academics and skills are on grade level and in many cases above level. His maturity and behavior, however, is [sic] below grade level. Some of his conduct is directly related to his immaturity and hopefully we'll see an improvement as he matures throughout the year.
In conclusion, I was a excellently behaved elementary school student.
9:28PM
Monday, August 18, 2008 (1 comment)
Gene, do you rememeber our awesome bios for science bowl 2004?
[Name] is a junior at Walton High School. Because he enjoys science very much, he is taking two AP science classes. He has worked very hard this year for Science Bowl, and hopes to do well. Being truly Chinese, his hobbies include stepping in front of big tanks, being jailed for going to Google.com, and eating charged Ducs (+650C) and dogs.
If only Dutter hadn't vetoed them...
(Does anybody even remember the duc reference? I barely remember it myself. All I remember is that, in one of Dutter's emag textbooks, there was a hill, and on one side you had some guys wearing cap(acitor)s, there was some grass that represented... something, and there were charged (in)duc(tor)s flying overhead. The diagram was a full page or two, but I can't find it on Google...)
11:11PM
Sunday, August 17, 2008 (0 comments)
Mom: Oh, I ran into that person today. She's the mom of a girl who goes to your school. Do you know who I'm talking about?
Why, yes of course...
10:45PM
Tuesday, August 12, 2008 (1 comment)
Laundry list time.
I moved out of my apartment last Saturday and drove up to DC to stay with Tiffany for the weekend. I left there at 8:30 in the morning Monday. I stopped at Duke for about ten minutes to drop off some stuff, stopped for gas twice, and didn't eat. Arrived home at 7:20 ish.
The moral of the story is that sunflower and watermelon seeds are amazing. Not only do they kill hunger (and thus get you to your destination quicker), but they also are an excellent anti-sleep aid. Whenever I stopped eating for five minutes or more, I would start falling asleep. Good thing I stocked up right before the trip.
A few hours after I got home, I went with people (Dragos is alive!) to go an hour north of here to watch the Perseids. It was pretty cool. We saw around 60 of them before I was overtaken by sleep, and some of them were nice bright streaks. The three photos I took... sucked. Caught a bunch of random noise and didn't get a single meteor.
I got home at 7:30ish, slept for two hours and had to go to the (far away) dentist at 10:30. So that's like seven hours of bed in 60 hours... hey that sounds like junior year of high school! Except I never drove 11 hours by myself...
Going to sleep now. See you Thursday.
10:45PM
Friday, August 8, 2008 (4 comments)
Hanif, you can have the big room this year if you can meet just ten conditions. This should be easy...
- Do not sit outside, open the door, and let out all the AC because "it's pretty hot out here." And if you must, don't do it every evening 6-10 PM for three weeks.
- Please do not walk around butt-naked.
- Do not waste 60 gallons of water every time you want to defrost a piece of chicken by running tap water over it for 25 minutes.
- Please stop speaking to your girlfriend in a voice that suggests she is a two-year-old with Down syndrome.
- If I go to sleep at 12, and you sit in the kitchen area until 1 or 2, that means you have to turn off the kitchen lights! It's fine if you forget once or twice, but after the tenth time, you really should have figured out that we don't have automatic lights.
- Do not put water in my shoes. I know my shoes have excellent drainage due to the giant holes on their undersides, but it's still not funny. (Note: this one is speculation. I have no evidence that this actually happened, besides having wet shoes one morning.)
- If I take out the trash 1-2 times a week, you have to do it more than once a month. (Actually, now that I think about it more, I think it was three times in two months.) When you do take out the trash, take it all, not just one or two bags...
- Please don't make me clean an inch-thick rug of lint off the filter whenever I have to use the dryer. (This would go double for Hanif because of his rug-making ability, but luckily we won't have a dryer.)
- Don't leave your dirty dishes/pans (most of which I am generously letting you use) in the sink for several nights in a row until I finally give up and do them for you.
- When you do wash things, please do not leave a layer of egg crust on my pans or cooking implements (spatula etc).
- And finally, this one is not really required for you to get the big room, but for the love of god don't eat popcorn every day and then buy a 24-pack of Slimfast.
In other news, I hate Indians and Eastern Europeans except Dragos (if he's still alive). I signed up on this site odesk.com, which is a site where buyers who need computer services (software/IT/random crap like data entry, etc) post jobs and providers like me can bid on them. You can put stuff on your profile like your skills, history, etc. There's also some interesting stuff like competency tests in various areas, like PHP or data structures or Linux. As you can imagine, most of the people looking for jobs on this site are foreign, mostly Indian it seems, so a major metric is English ability.
I took the competency test in English to prove to buyers that I do in fact know the difference between a cafeteria and a "Translate server error", and among this sea of Indians and Eastern Europeans I only got a 91st percentile. Sad. (Worse, I got a 79th percentile on PHP5.)
Anyways, the point is, these stupid Indians and people keep underbidding me by so much. One guy posted a fairly straightforward PHP/MySQL project that got nine bids. I sent him a cover letter, and my credentials look pretty good. My bid was for $22.50/hr. The guy who got hired is charging $7/hr. Come on, seriously!? I can't imagine how conservative I'm going to become in the next decade or so.
7:06PM
Thursday, August 7, 2008 (0 comments)
MY ROOMMATE TOOK OUT THE TRASH! I think this is the second time! I am so happy today that I will wash his dirty dishes and pan (which have been in the sink for three days...) and not even be passive-aggressive about it!
6:29PM
Friday, August 1, 2008 (2 comments)
I washed my sneakers in the washing machine last night. They turned white like new, but that was the only thing new about them. Here's where the shoelace ended up when I took it out of the washer:
8:07PM
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