Punishment Without Crime
(21 February - 2 March 2002)
2 March 2002
[from Charlottesville, Virginia]
-Did I really just get a good night's sleep?
-Andy Bragin: certified quote machine.
-Well,
we DID hit 4 break teams in 5 in-rounds, beating 3 of them. But will I ever win a break-round again? We shall
see. It wasn't Hybrids, but debating with Kate is always good.
-Getting along with people again is also good.
1 March 2002
[from Charlottesville, Virginia]
-Nothing more I can do. & the anger keeps growing.
-Waffle House!
28 February 2002
-Far too much of today has been spent playing
computer games of one sort or another. I'm going to call it my reaction to a week where I realized, more profoundly
than ever before, that I can't stand the educational system in this country. I know I've been a stuck record about
it, but seriously!
-I maintain that weblog-to-weblog communication is not passive-aggressive innately. It's just
communication, if somewhat indirect.
-My current FTP setup is really mandating that I archive
this page far more frequently than I'm used to. It's a little annoying on days like today when I'm leaving in half
an hour & just wanted to update, but hey, it's cheap!
-Yesterday broke the day before's records for unique visitors,
page views, & such. Craziness.
27 February 2002
-Allow me to take a few entries to respond to
some folks who are linked in my Exports section. It ain't passive-aggressive, it's direct...
-Jenny, EVERYbody
voted for "Tangled Up in Blue", not nobody! It's ranked first of all songs! I don't understand your
comment.
-Helen, there's several pros to APDA, methinks. Even though you don't read this site, as far as I know.
Maybe you do. Regardless, I think a lotta the cons can go away if one takes a less competitive approach.
It's not a new concept, & it's hard when everyone else is being competitive, but I maintain that people need to
chill. About politics especially. For Christ's sake, managing a debate organization is really nothing special.
I say this from the perspective of one on the Board.
-In other news, yesterday set all records on my website for
traffic. I think it was the Dylan site. 303 page views is quite groovy, though. After all, it was a
Tuesday. Why is Tuesday so much bigger than every other day for hits?!
-More Dylan.
-This is shaping up to be
a poor excuse for a day. Just hours after telling Brandzy how much I'm sick of school
& counting the minutes till I leave, my body volunteers me out of two classes. So now I'm in the computer lab,
trying to recover the third class & wondering if my car will be extricable from the snow when I get off work at half
past midnight. Gotta write another one-page response paper too. I don't understand the need for one-page
response papers, but I guess in the end, all I'm here for is the one-page response paper we call a
"diploma".
-Never thought I'd see Lisha cap a day of lengthy entries with "No man is an island."
I guess that's good & bad.
-The snow is so beautiful, but my shoes have holes in them. Maybe everyone's
right & it really is time for new shoes. I love the peace of snow's effect on the world, though. Sometimes
I think the prescription for this planet is a Narnian snow of about 2 decades...
26 February 2002
-Darn! Pat (find the link in BP Exports,
which is linked above) beat me to the test-idea. Except his is APDA Dinos & mine was going to be 'Deis Debaters.
Same difference. Apparently, in Pat's opinion, I most resemble Chris Park. While I never PM, that's a
comparison I find favorable, so I'll run with it.
-The Dylan List will be up shortly.
Probably shortly enough for you to actually click that link. You'll be very surprised by how many different
songs Sepdog, Jenny, & myself came up with so far. The fact that this table will look like the OTY-board reminds
me that I need to update the ACTual OTY-board sometime today.
-The water here at Windsor Village is simply non-functional.
No hope there.
-Now Steve-o's on board the Dylan train! Who will be next?
25 February 2002
-5.
-Em has a
weblog now!! Stop the presses! I'm very excited for her... go visit
many times daily! I know I'll be doing so...
-It's nice to know when I've had absolutely no impact on someone's
life, especially when I tried really hard to have
some sort of positive impact. Sigh.
-The APDAweb Forum may not be
replacing APDAnet, but at least it's finally discussing my big problem with APDAnet. Other than that virus that
went through & made me think some Dartmouth person was after me.
-Sometimes, I really feel like putting my fist
through a plate of glass. I don't feel this often, & I wouldn't act on it, but frustration really gets to me
a lot these days, especially as March approaches. Ah well, it's nothing new.
-I almost had the scariest thing
ever teach me a major lesson about backing up my files on this page. The FTP thing here in the Library computer
lab went crazy & deleted my Introspection file. Horror of horrors! February was almost lost to posterity.
Fortunately, Em had the page cached on Netscape (I must put my tail between my legs & begrudgingly admit that
Netscape has some uses) & was able to send me the source-code, intact. That was far closer than I would've
liked. From now on, there's going to be some major backing-up here at the 'Mid!!
-Hopefully, Sep is okay with
the following idea. I just think it would be cool to make a master list of Dylan
fans' opinions of the best of his songs. Steve-o? Gris? Fish? I'm looking at you guys...
24 February 2002
-The all-Boston all-the-time bus (with BU,
Harvard, & MIT) was rather fun. Even if Pat didn't eat 40 Slim-Jims. & we waited for a while in Harvard
Square's coldness. Ah, home.
-A few good things from last weekend, in spite of the horror. I guess you
could call this my defense to Kate & Jenny for not going to American, though my actual defense is that it's really
far away (& the next 2 weekends are going to be even farther away) & that Yale is where my whole team was going.
But here's extra good things in the midst of otherwise no fun: (1) Emily won the tournament!; (2) I talked to
some relatively random people who I never knew that well, but have proved themselves to be quite cool; (3) I won a coffee
maker (!!) & a cassette player instead of trophies. I actually traded a rice cooker to Steph for the coffee
maker, since I am not a rice addict. Also, I guess I'm the only person left on the planet who listens to tapes.
No one wanted the other cassette player, either.
-Also, I initially wondered who
Helen was talking about, but then I remembered what GBJ stands for.
23 February 2002
[from New Haven,
Connecticut]
-There are but 2 people in my life whose presence I cannot deal
with.
-Well, a perfectly fitting end to the worst debate weekend I've had in at least 2 years. I had 5 utterly
abysmal rounds of debate, where I almost forgot why I debate at all. This was followed by not breaking due to a
3rd round drop & tanking from a judge I forgot to scratch after he tanked us last year. I love losing rounds
that the other team concedes. Did I mention this may have been the worst debate weekend in 2 full years?
-After
last night, combined with the ultimate fate of the weekend, I feel March closing in quite suddenly. This is
distressing.
-People on APDA really seem to think religious people are all complete idiots. How is this more
logical than having faith? It's the same blindness on both sides & yet each sees the absurd flaw with the
other.
22 February 2002
[from Princeton, New
Jersey]
-From the random but extremely frustrating file,
someone from Dartmouth (still can't tell who, but the e-mail's originating from the D'mouth
campus) is hijacking my e-mail account &/or re-labelling their own to look like my Brandeis
account! I keep getting messages about "sending mail from off-campus" & last
night Em got a phantom e-mail not from me. Apparently they tried this once for Em's
account too. People are really silly that they don't know about full headers on e-mails
revealing where an e-mail ACTually originates. However, this is still really random &
annoying... so check your origination IP addresses if there seems to be something really random
from "me".
-Yale today... I hope Drew has some new case ideas. Though I guess
I really do have plenty of old cases, though I doubt we'll haul out Les Miz again! Should
be a fun time, though.
21 February 2002
[from Princeton, New
Jersey]
-& we're back online! I already e-mailed
my administrator about the approximate 3-hour suspension of service here @ BP, but I guess I'm
a little more conscious of this stuff than I should be.
-Also, thanks to all who remembered
my birthday yesterday. Even though I'm not TECHnically 22 till 2:56 this morning Eastern
time, since it was 4 minutes till midnight Pacific time over at the Carson-Tahoe Hospital in
1980. So I've got 2 more hours, really! Or something. Either way, I'm just
old.
-I swear I'm going to do something productive later today. Even if it is only play
more Civ-3. Yes, the game's a wee bit addictive, but I'm also aware of my graduation
requirements, thanks much. Fun stuff is planned for this evening anyway.
-So I was
sitting in Whig's main room (with the big TV & the pool table) watching some old SNL
reruns with Pton folk, when they announce Ben Folds Five & said band starts playing
"Brick". Immediately I was transported to the last night of the Emory tourney
my senior year, hanging out with Floridians at some hotel & pulling up to a parking garage
when that song came on the radio. Chris Pezon & I started screaming along with the
song, playing at decibels to bring down half of Atlanta. Then he & Leslie Rumbaudt
& I talked till dawn, when I spent the "best dollar I ever spent", ripped up &
given to the most expensive car I could find, with an accompanying anti-capitalist note under the
windshield wiper. Always wondered what that person thought of the note, littering pieces
of dollar-bill over his/her car. Regardless, that talk was a night I thought I was on the verge
of insanity, & I really appreciated two people who ended up having virtually no impact on the
remainder of my life. A little sad. But I wish I could send some message back to that
kid that was me 4 years ago, & tell him that it worked out, that I ended up making it, despite
some setbacks & trials. & maybe I wouldn't have to have such pain in my voice
singing along, or memory looking back.
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.