The Hanover Collaboration

Dell Lattitude D600, its been a good run.

You out-performed your predecessor in so many ways. You managed not to break in 3.25 years. You managed not to get bogged down with shitty adware. You managed not to crash at key moments in my academic career. You managed to always shut down correctly, virtually every time. In short, your service has been long and excellent. But, as you know, all things must end. Its the god-damn second law of thermodynamics, and there’s nothing we can do about it. Lets face the facts, you’ve been freezing up completely lately. I mean, I have to take the freaking battery out. Also, you keep forgetting that you have an ethernet port. Hey, we all get old, but for you, its become a liability to my cause, thus, its time for you to retire.

To be sure, you’re retirement will be honorable. You will stay in my apartment and surf the web and check email until your motherboard finally burns out. It won’t be that bad. You won’t have to do anything hard anymore. Just the fun stuff.

Now, about your replacement . I know that you wanted me to put one of your sons in your position when this day came, but the boss just won’t have it. He insists that all work be done by an OS that computers like you just can’t run. I know you think the new guy’s kind of a yuppie, and you’re right, but he’s competant, he gets the job done, and damn if he doesn’t look good.

So, you have to the end of the day to burn copies of all your important files to CD and hand them over. Then you need to clear off of the desk, and head on home. We’ll miss you around here.

This month is the videogame-pocolypse. The old world has ended and the new world has begun. The nintendo Wii has arrived.

You’ll recall that I waited in line, overnight, in the bitter rain for the Xbox 360. The 360 is a good console, but, deep down, its just an xbox with a more powerful engine. To get the Wii, I waited in line at EBgames for 3 hours about a month ago to get a pre-order, and then showed up for the midnight launch at 12 am this morning. I walked in and walked out with my console in about 30 min. No rain, no people trying to cut the line, no stress.

When we got home, Tom and some of my GRT friends and I busted out Wii sports, the demo game that comes with the system, and played until 4 a.m.

Yeah, its that fun. We played Tennis, Golf, Bowling, Baseball, and Boxing all using the Wii remote as if it were a raquet, a ball, or a club. Its simply incredible how awesome it is.

“Its like ra-y-ain on your wedding day”

ECCC Mountain bike rankings came out recently.

Here are the top 10 for DII

1. CMU
2. Saint Michaels
3. Wentworth
4. Williams
5. Tufts
6. Cortland
7. MIT
8. Dartmouth
9. Colby
10. RPI

So, the biggest dorks in the world beat the best outdoorsy school in the world…in MOUNTAIN BIKING.

This is so freaking confusing.

Maybe a team from Dartmouth will win this years MIT puzzle hunt

Congratulations to Tom for being the first of us to obtain a post graduate degree!!!

Master Temple, we salute you!

(I’m really impressed with Ned Lamont. I like outsiders who shake things up, and, quite frankly, geeks are my ethnic group).

Fictious Online Teenage Republican Girl: OMFG! This was an inquisition from the Dkos, MyDD, Howard Dean, Michael Moore, Torquemada, Osama Bin Laden, Islamunist, Dark Lord Morgoth wing of the Democratic party. The Democrats are like, so stupid: they totally split their party. Also, wtf, they are teh anti-semetic

Scott’s Response: Islamunist is the DUMBEST made-up word ever. Way dumber than even ‘Islamo-fascist’. I mean, FOTRG, you remember that the mujahedine became famous for beating the crap out of the Soviets, right? Also, Morgorth, known as Melkor amongst the Valar and Eldar, is clearly an independent. As for the actual substance of this statement, yeah, the lefties were definitely involved in this campaign, getting the word out, raising money, but the people of CT were the ones who actually made this happen. They voted for a no-name geek/millionaire as opposed to a 3 term incumbent senator who, just 2 years ago, was set to be the freaking vice president. The primary had record turnouts…like 50% of registered Democrats. I’d call that democracy in action. You’re absolutely right about splitting the party, and it may cost the Democrats victory in November, but at least now there’s a candidate they can be fired up about. I’m really proud of the lefties: instead of settling for a mediocre candidate who only kinda represented them, they worked hard to bring in someone different. Thats Democracy, baby. Way to not accept the lesser of two evils. Of course History (Ralph Nader, I’m looking at you) says that you’re probably going to get screwed for your idealism, but then again, who doesn’t.

As for claims of anti-semitism, let me propose a truce. Lefties, no more calling Bush Hitler or Republicans Nazis (or fascists) and Righties, no more calling Democrats anti-semites just because they voted against a Jewish guy.

Porter Sqare Star Market, what’s up? I’ve been shopping at your store every weekend for like 3 years now, but I’ve never been so betrayed as I was yesterday. I mean, its summer, you know hot and humid, and my small, ridiculously overpriced one bedroom apartment does not have central air. What’s my point? I need copious amounts of frozen treats to make it through. So I show up at the store yesterday looking for freezepops, those wonderful plastic pouches of icy cool refreshment, and what do I find… BOLIS!

BOLIS!!!!! What the fuck are you thinking? Do these look like anything to you? Think hard…ah, I can see by the mortified look on your face that you’ve figured it out. What? No, I most certainly do not have a dirty mind! I’m just, um, not used to my frozen deserts be so overtly…phalic. I mean, look, its like someone filled a condom with fruit flavored syrup and put it in the freezer. And what’s with that image on the back? Dude, Sigmund Freud would have a field day with that shit.

Sigh. Well, of course I’m going to buy them. I mean, what choice do I have?

Check it out on my own blog

There are pictures!

Generic News Commentator: “OMFG! Did you guys see it? We pwn’d Zarqawi! We like, blew him the fuck up. Owned, bitch!”

Ok, this may be an exaggeration, but the commentary on Zarqawi’s death has sounded to me suspiciously like the commentary from an Xbox Live game of Halo 2. Add corpse humping and the picture would be complete. Is anyone else concerned by the fact that people are so excited that we killed this guy? I mean, yeah, he was definitely a bad man, and given our military situation, maybe we did have to kill him, but I don’t think that means we should be ecstatic about it. Our country should never rejoice in killing; when we are forced to take lives, even lives that are evil and murderous, we should do so with some measure of gravity and professionalism. Otherwise we may come to worship Aries and enjoy war as some sort of grand sport.

Should that come to pass, then truely we will have lost this war.

Location: Craigsville Beach, Hyannis, Cape Cod, MA
Event: Hyannis I Sprint Triathlon
Date: June 10, 2006

Its been roughly 3 years since I last competed in a triathlon, and that was somewhat evident in saturday’s race. Still, I had a good time, and the race was certainly a good time. The story begins Friday evening, were I braved the epic Boston-Cape Cod traffic to make it to Hyannis around 7:00. A word of warning: Mountain Dew + Boston Traffic = lots of profanity. After I popped in my Fellowship of the Ring (unabridged) on tape, I calmed down considerably. My parents decided to come up to watch the race, and were generous enough to get me a hotel room. My father spends about half his time now in Marriots on business, so, he has an butt-load of rewards points. Score! I had dinner with them at the harbor, and got to watch some World Cup action on TV.

I woke up at 5:00, suited up, and got in the car. My dad drove us down to the beach and when we got there at 5:40, the primary lot was almost full. I jumped out, checked in, and then hauled all my crap over to the transition area. I should point out, this event was well run especially since there were 850 racers. My transition set up, I jogged a little, and then sprayed cannola oil all over my arms and legs to facilitate the entrance to and removal of my wetsuit. The threating rain had not materialized, but it was cold and windy, so the race director had shortened the swim to 1/8 mile. I thought this was kinda lame, but we shall soon see it was probably a good call.

I managed to get the wetsuit on, and ran down to the water to swim a bit. Damn, was that water cold. I can’t imagine going without a suit. The swells were also pretty big, maybe 2-4 feet. The start was delayed by maybe 10 minutes, so, I swam a bit, and jogged on the beach a bit, and laughed at the poor guys with farmer john wetsuits who were freezing outside the water. Finally the first wave, composed of elite racers, and also people under the age of 24 started. Those of us in the 2nd wave, that is people ages 25-28 got down to the waters edge and waited for the horn. Then we were off!

The first thing I did was pile directly into the dude in front of me, and get tangled up. Swimming was hard through the waves, and we were getting pushed around a lot. The field opened at the first bouy, and I tried, as best I could, to set a good line for the second. I failed miserably, and swam a less than optimal route. Rounding the second buoy, I set a course for the transition area gate, and, again, failed miserably. The current kept pulling me off course. I finally made it to the beach and was supremely disoriented, but I made it to the transition area in more or less one peice.

One apon a time, I could fly through a transition in like 30 seconds. For this race, not so much. I put on socks, because I though it would be cold, and that turned out to be just plain ruinous. In the time it took me to get out of there, I probably could have made a sandwich or something. I finally wheeled my bike out and started pedaling. I wasn’t turning hard gears, but I was making pretty decent speed, and I dualed with some dude on a tricked out Kestrel for most of the race. Course was decent. Rolling, with no real climbing, but interesting with lots of twists and turns. I broke the yellow line rule passing a couple of times before I remembered that that was forbidden. The course was only 10 miles, so the bike was over pretty quick, although, not before I got trapped in a “no passing” zone behind some guy on a mountain bike. I rode back to the transition area and racked my bike, threw on my racing flats and hit the run course. This transition was again slower than it should have been because I didn’t get my feet out of my shoes before the transition area.
The run started out pretty painful, but I think I built to some decent speed by the end. I was passing a lot of people from the wave before me, but only a few in my wave. The run course was pretty good; there was a little bit of climbing, and then downhill to the finish. The actual finish was on sand, which makes sprinting not too fun. I crossed the line in 1:02:53.

Overall, I’d say the race was well run, even by Cosmo’s high standards . The shwag they gave out with the number packet was first rate! My level of fitness is ok right now, but my level of speed is crap. I’ve got some work to do, especially on the bike, if I’m going to make any showing at the Boston Tri in September.

Results are posted here.

Pictures to come!

MIT stole Caltech’s Cannon!!

Currently girls in swimsuits are posing on it!

Work in building 18 has ground to a halt.

Apparently there was a big Christian-Right shindig recently in Washington. Salon has some coverage and, as always, the sheer ludicrousness of these people’s views makes for entertaining reading. Personally, I’m psyched that there individuals in our governing body who like to consort with Christian Reconstructionists. I bet “biblical law” would be about as sweet as Shari’a. We could have televised apostate stonings on right after survivor!

You should read Brayton’s account of the birkie on his blog. My story was somewhat different.

I stayed with my aunt at her house in Hayward. She retired two years ago from being a high school calculus teacher and has spent the intervening time traveling to Europe for Worldloppet races and bike tours, racing inline marathons, and other classic retirement activities like sea kayaking. She and I are very similar, and so its always a fun time to visit her. Her buddies from school, who haven’t gotten their retirement on yet, were also staying with us. They consisted of two couples, both in their late 50’s, who race with my aunt a lot and were also pretty fun.

My aunt and I woke up at 5 a.m. to make my 8:40 wave 2 start. That might seem awful early, except that we had to drive 1 hour to the parking lot, and then get one a school bus for another 15 min to get to the start (Brayton, being an Elite, got to park at the actually starting area). I had Red River for breakfast, which basically consists of preprocessed grains and has 1×10^5^ % of your suggested lifetime intake of fiber. It is also delicious. We got in the car and drove to the parking lot while the radio played all sorts of songs about racing the Birkie, including, for whatever bizzare reason Louis-Louis in Russian. We got to the start at about 8:00, and my aunt went into Telmark lodge to stretch (she was in Wave 5 starting at 9:10). I got my boots on and skied around the warm up loop. My skis weren’t fast (HF Tan fast wax covered with Toko Helx cold) but they weren’t slow either, especially given the soft, cold conditions. I got to see Brayton start, and then I got all my gear together, put it in the enormous garbage bag, and made my way to the race start.

Last year I was in wave 3, seeding for which I got from the time of my 1999 Birkie debut (3:40 on a fast day). When last year I arrived at the start line, people took one look at the Dartmouth uniform and made space for me at the front. I arrived for my wave 2 start this year 5 minutes early, and couldn’t get any closer than 5 people back from the line. Not good. These people must have been camping out all night or something. Anyway, I resigned myself to a slow start, and, indeed, thats exactly what happened. I double-poled in vicious (even by Boston standards) traffic for 1k before I took my first step. By the power line trail, things were open enough to skate, although the hills were granny-skating slow. In the past I had double-poled uphill in the tracks to get by people, but that tactic had proved too exhausting, so I used it only once or twice. Wave two skiers are much feistier than wave 3 skiers. The women are all pretty good, and the men are mostly strong, if not very skilled masters. The men, however, were all real pansies about the start. People were yelling and screaming at fellow racers to stay off their poles and skies. At one point I was like “Dude, this is a mass start, what were you expecting. Bring the alulites instead of the avantis next time”. Anyway, by the time we hit 10k, the pack was pretty thin, and I could ski at my prefered pace, which I did for the next 30k.

Brayton made his move on Bitch Hill at 40k. At that same hill, I made my bonk. It was a prodigious bonk, including both low blood sugar levels and blocked quads, from which there was no return and no second wind. I hobbled through the next 10k somehow. I don’t really remember much of it except the endless stream of people passing me. On the lake before the finish, had a pack of wild and ravening wolves been chasing me, I could have done nothing to thwart them. Indeed, I might have welcomed them and thanked the for their trouble as they tore me to shreds. Brayton said mainstreet was nice, which was true, but in the intervening 800 people, the connection between the lake and mainstreet had become 6 inches of sugar. Finally I made it through this snow of death and I summoned up some dignity and at leasted tried to V2 down main street. I crossed the finish line after skiing for 3:12.

I then went to the changing tent, put on all the clothing I had which, due to fatigue, took like half an hour, and went out to look for Brayt. I realized, after walking down main street a few times with no success, that he had probably gone home already since he had finish something like 1:15 ahead of me. So I grabbed a brew and a brat and waited for my aunt to finish. She skied the course in 4:15 doing classic, thus finishing her 24th Birkie

So, that was my Birkie experience. Its a sweet race, and always an adventure.

What? a winter olympics sports video game

You’re fucking kidding me, right?

or not

I hope I can play as Carl Swenson.

I’ve been keeping an ear on the Alito hearings, and I’ve come to the following conclusions:

1) These hearings are a big fucking waste of time. Alito’s not going to tell us anything meaningful about his views; it would be political suicide for him to do so. He’s just going to say: “I’ll review the matter carefully, like a good judge, and then answer at that time” Great! A fucking robot or sign-language trained chimpanzee could have provided the same answer.

2) When I start padding my resume, I’m going to make sure NOT to include controversial groups that I never actually belonged to, but that my future employer might find attractive. Hopefully the Dartmouth Tolkien Society doesn’t count as controversial.

3) When inferring that someone is racist, sexist, homophobic (or anti-gay), and/or anti-semetic, one should have some pretty solid evidence. Else, its easy for the opposing party to make you look like a jackass, especially when they’re skilled at using the media. I don’t think I need to name any names.

4) The most brilliant play of the week, choreographed or not, goes to Martha-Ann Bomgardner (aka Mrs. Alito). Her tears, more than anything else, were able to garner sympathy from the audience, and make certain adversarial senators look like dicks. Bravo. I predict that next we’ll see judges brought before the comittee to bring their young children, to cry when daddy’s honor is assaulted, and be comforted by sympathetic and stoic/determined/angry looking wives. The media will love it.

After almost buying it at the bookstore a zillion times, I finally picked up Neal Stephenson’s Zodiac last weekend and I finish it this morning. Its a fun read and though it doesn’t quite have the full ridiculous power of his prose that one finds in his later works, Stephenson’s unique style is still present, if not quite perfected. The main character is twenty-something, nitrous abusing chemist/enviromental activist, self described “asshole” who lives in Boston. Yeah, its a pretty sweet book, and you should read it.

Of course, if you haven’t yet made it through the ~3000 pages of the Baroque Cycle you need to sack up and get moving.