Hail and Farewell
(2-11 January 2002)
11 January 2002
[from Princeton, New
Jersey]
-I'm in the kinda mood to get stuff shaped
up, even if I've been unable
(migraine mostly) to fulfill any writing goals I set for
myself a couple days prior in this week. Regardless of which,
I've bitten a new
bullet & decided to get some web-hosting for my new website. Maybe it was just
Jake's urging,
or looking over all the statistics on the APDA site. Whatever it was,
I'm going to be working with
Coastland
Technologies, which may or may not be a good decision. It's 3
bucks a month, so
I'm wary, but not too worried... if it doesn't work out, it's cheap. But I have
reason to believe
it will work out. So the move of everything over there could be
coming very soon. My advice is to start getting
ready to change your links to
bluepyramid.org & its subsets. More later.
-So here we are at
the Blue Pyramid! Exciting, no? Please change all your links &
such... pretty soon everything @ Brandeis will be going away...
-Okay, now it's all
actually gone away, so those links oughta change. Friendly reminder pages are now in place
of the old Pond & its subsidiaries.
-Gotta get away from flourescent lights...
10
January 2002
[from Princeton,
New Jersey]
-Well, some interesting news from a person
of the past. The link is
running around somewhere in the Archive, & I won't call
direct attention to it now.
All I can say is that a lot of people who were really sure
they were getting married
(some day) as of this time last year are no longer together.
My sincere condolences
to the
latest breakup... these times are tough for a lot of
folks, it would seem.
-On a lighter
note, check out the fact that
Count Yourself
In is
up & running.
Only drawback is an apparent error with the e-mail thing, that
I'll have
to let Jake know about.
-Also, check
Kate's page for a really groovy link to a
documentation
of how America perceives the world (too lazy to find the link
myself right now).
-I'm
worried
that I'm getting in the way of Em's work. Granted that it's hard to build momentum
for
school when finals are after break, but I still feel a little dubious. Then again,
maybe
everyone's as
procrastinatory as I usually am. It just never seems that way in the
first
place.
-Already behind the case-a-day
pace. Shucks.
-In case you missed
it, I just did 70 days worth of archiving. The new theme is Ray Bradbury
short stories, since they're all so fantastic. After all, the project's soon
moving to BluePyramid.org, which is
itself named for a Ray Bradbury short story's
content, though not title. Anyway, the page always looks a little nicer
when
cleaned up & no longer scrolling till infinity.
-Check out what free time does for
my duties at the ol'
APDA webpage. Yeah, I'm
almost getting regular with this thing!
-Here's what
too much free time will get you:
more stats than you can shake a stick at. Assuming
tomorrow will be spent here in P'ton, these are valid for the first 670 days of the
Introspection project. Something
I may or may not keep up with, but was always
curious about...
9
January 2002
[from Princeton,
New Jersey]
-That's the way it should
be.
-I'm
really going to have to start this short story, if
it's going to get written.
I've also
promised myself to write a case a day between now
& Dartmouth because I want
new stuff for
my last semester of debate. So that's gotta
get goin' too.
-Also, I meant to write
earlier that one's taste for baklava (this is re:
Lisha, by the way) has nothing
to do
with their taste. Baklava's no good. Taste still
is.
-& another also:
is this IQ test just
really easy? I'd be
curious
to see people's thoughts. Jake especially (even though he's
not reading
anymore), since he
was joking about his place on the bell-curve earlier this week.
8 January 2002
[from
Princeton, New
Jersey]
-New
meaning to old lyrics, most
precisely
from "Raining in Baltimore".
-There was a
lot of snow on the car (Em's)
in
Hartford. Also, a lotta money to bail it outta long-term
parking. But all is
still well.
-Lauren (Cusick, not Yamane... I shouldn't have to
clarify really, but I
figure
I will anyway because it could be unclear) is much better than Em
& I at Boggle.
&
we really thought we were good. Apparently computer Boggle
is where it's
at, & that
just trains one to kick everyone up & down.
-Ah, the
Cornell novii...
or one in particular.
I randomly found
this
old journal entry from one of our APDA friends.
Honestly, I'm just amused. Yes,
I did put majority-novice panels on all 3 NOVICE out-rounds.
I think people should be
grateful that we have these rounds at all... since all but 3 or 4
tourneys don't. If
he's
saying novii are unfit to judge out-rounds, after a semester of
debating, then fair
enough, but
I don't agree. But I hope he doesn't plan on judging
out-rounds in that
case. Also,
Em's up 19 points in
SOTY
over the
nearest
competitor. & I think Clea & Greg might have
a few things to say about
how our tab room runs too... given an accusation of this
magnitude. But I should stop
seeing everything like a debate round. It's really just very
amusing. Wanted to
share the fun.
7 January 2002
[from
Albuquerque]
-Exit the local friends.
Or more
properly, me from them. To think that I'll be a college graduate before I
see some of
them
again! Yikes. That's really more than I know how to process.
Though
I've been
wanting to graduate for some time now, so I guess the issue is really larger than
that.
-Off
to Jersey via Hartford (ah, long-term parking...); see y'all on the
flipside.
6 January 2002
[from
Albuquerque]
-Boggle is by far the coolest
game in
the
world. Maybe not the COOLest, but I'd forgotten how much fun it is.
&
quite
addictive too. Methinks there's much Boggle upcoming on tomorrow's plane
ride.
-Pete
Kamarchik e-mailed me! Lo & behold! More on this later, but
for
now I'm always
glad to hear from long-lost friends.
-I've finally had a "Meatless
Tuesday" at the
old 66.
5 January 2002
[from
Albuquerque]
-Drunk drivers are no good.
At
least
Fish, Lauren, & Gris are okay. But hit-&-run's gotta be about the worst
thing
ever.
-Well that's plenty depressing. The
whole scoop is available at the
Worlds
website, but I'll
save you some trouble... we
went from being 7th or 8th after 4 rounds to 91st
after all 9.
Good lord, that's some
collapsing! A 4 that last round was so
ill-deserved, it makes
me very sad. How'd
we lose to Haifa A in that round??! We scored 4
points in our last
5 rounds, after 10 in
our first 4.
-85th speaker is also quite poor.
-I'm
going to stop
worrying about Worlds
debate stuff, I promise. I just really thought we had
a chance at
one point & it
would've been nicer if we just hadn't had that chance at
all.
-Many folks are
doing
year-in-review things, so I'll just remind you that 2001 was probably the
best year of my
life to date. Without a doubt. Woohoo!
4 January 2002
[from
Albuquerque]
-Packing didn't take so long
after all,
& now it's time to be home again, if only briefly.
-A haphazard, but still
fun social
scene, I s'pose.
3 January 2002
[from
Toronto]
-Rob Weekes has come a long way
from his
unbreakable tie for 32nd speaker at Glasgow Worlds with me. He's now a World
Champion,
not
from Cambridge, but from NYU Law. Also, 5th speaker in the World. Well
done
there.
They definitely deserved to win the final.
-& now I want to go to
South
Africa.
Gotta find a PE class somewhere to enroll in. Just when I thought I
was
done with
academics forever after May...
2 January 2002
[from
Toronto]
-A bit of a dull day, though the
quarterfinals
round (that Em got to judge!) was highly entertaining. Still very frustrated
about not
being in this break.
-Time is flying, but still feels expensive.
-Dates can
still be fun,
even if "dating" seems an insufficient word for one's relationship
status.
Introspection, My Worst
Friend* (Current)
Ye Olde Archive (Past)
The Blue Pyramid (Source)
Tell me this is not the end...*
*-lyrics from an as-yet unreleased song, "The Same Old
Frontiers",
by SWClayton.