the very definition

Current Mood: apprehensive
Current Music: "Live And Let Die" by Wings

Show: Spring 2006 Callout
Venue: good 'ol Beering 2280
Audience: ~60 groupies, fans, and curious parties
Fools: Wes, Cowboy, Tripod, Ryan, Ashley, Paul, Benji, Stu, Andy, Matt
Comments: What a great callout! There was much more audience than I expected, including three ladies from BAS (from our Corporate Gig last semester). We did a short show for the callout to show everybody what we're about, with many sundry games and jokes. John and I kicked things off with a Two Person Story of "Moby Einstein", the relativistic space whale hunter, and Wes stepped into a world of Robot Worms and moving people. Somehow, audience volunteers helped us get 2 of 3 Chain Murder Mystery items (something that us Fools rarely manage), and Benji, John, and I rocked Three Things like it was no big deal (building Lego Britney Spears, and cleaning the bathroom with vaseline, and ice-skating on magma with T-bone steaks). There were human pyramids (*always funny*) and Paul as Chuck Norris, inventor of Strip DDR. I was extremely happy to hear that some of the Fools thought I "carried the game of Countdown 2.0" when things were rough. Hopefully many people will come back, including red shirt guy.
Unofficial winner: Up-and-comer Stu "BO" Ogle. Between filling in for Spanke for Irish Drinking Song and his determined workshop scenes, he is truly one of the Fools with a great sense of humor.



*Other than some unexpected trouble with Key Bank (mainly them not bothering to give me ANY DOLLARS for this session and canceling my registration for the semester, erasing my class schedule and spot in my classes, prompting me to flip out and call home, panicking to my parents to stop fighting long enough to fix this because, frankly, I don't know how to deal with it. So the 16k or so I owe for housing, food, and my classes is currently being "dealt with" as I nervously go from class to class wondering how the heck I'm going to manage dealing with all this math), I'm enjoying this semester so far.

We're pretty much finished with all the introductions, rules, groups, and whatnot. Time to roll up our sleeves and get down to business. Time to start acting like an aero. In my design class (Team Minutemen) we're using MATLAB to model the atmosphere for aerodynamic studies, reviewing vectors in 203 (and some really funky dimensional math), and learning all about matrix operations and plane/vector equations in math(s). My easiest class by far is my history class. I just hope I do not underestimate the papers because I know most of the material. I do not want to think about how soon exams will be popping up.


*Apparently my linear algebra teacher thought it was a good idea to have the students teach class on Friday. We were to prepare a section of the material on matrix properties and the groups, chosen at random, sent up representatives to teach. The students speak better English, but we're not the ones being paid to teach math. At any rate, she called our group up and they immediately voted me to go up to the board. I suppose Jack told them all I was in improv. So, grabbing the handwritten notes, I quickly studied exponential restrictions and triangular determinants walking to the front of the room.

I surprised myself, actually. I really had no clue what I was talking about (perhaps I should've glanced through the book) and here I was in front of twenty of my colleagues looking at me to teach them about powers of matrices. I cleared my throat, grabbed some chalk, and without pause just started writing on the board. I wrote "MATRIX POWER!" on the board and proceeded to make up my examples on the spot. I even got a few laughs. I improv-ed a math lesson. I was not nervous, and even when I made a mistake I just turned it into a joke. It reminded me of speech class last semester, where I was one of a handful of people who did not read verbatim from notecards.


*A short story:

A while back last semester in CS 158, indie Brad Urso and I discussed how painful our final lab practical was going to be. Neither of us had much confidence, to be honest, and it quickly degenerated into an argument of who would do worse. We finally settled on a gentleman's agreement- whoever had the better score had to treat the loser to food. Brad wanted Starbucks, I was getting McD's breakfast.

We found out that we both earned a 41/50 on the test.

Now that we're back in action, we finally met one morning before class to square away the deal. We first grabbed his latte with vanilla from Starbucks, and then headed over to McD's before they switched to lunch. We ordered my #2 combo (bacon egg and cheese biscuit) with an extra hashbrown and waited patiently.

We found out that they both cost exactly $3.71.

It was pretty creepy, I must say. We spent some time catching up, discussing changing Purdue's mascot from the Boilermakers to the Purdude, and renaming the Tech. center the Tron Building. Hooray for friends that don't go away when the class ends. Don't be a Walsh!


*Also,
Happy Birthday to Brad, who turned 15 yesterday. His new turtle is "Stockholm Von Powerhausen", which rules ass. He's going to be driving soon...