On Exams. I feel better though still stressed out. In the real world, I refer to documentation all the time even for basic stuff just to confirm things. Why do profs expect you to know everything from memory?

On Championships. Wow. I was afraid this might happen. Many of the people that I roll with during practice really want to prove themselves.

The first person I fought beat himself up for a few days afterward. I tried comforting him and instructing where he went wrong. Now he really wants a rematch even though I just want to have fun!!!

The guy who took third wanted to spar very hard Wednesday, because we didn't get to fight at the tournament. I think he wanted to know whether he could have beat me if he won his match. Instead I gather it clouded his judgement. During randori I tapped him twice. However, I was really sad and just played around for the rest of the session.

I grapple just to have fun and lose weight. That's it. I'm very worried that now I'm expected to do well at every future lesson and tourney, and everyone will be gunning for me! That is very stressful and not fun at all. :-/

On the other hand it was actually a relief yesterday when I went to the advanced BJJ practice, since I got decidedly crushed when rolling with the blue belts. I usually go on beginner BJJ day with most of the other white belts, and I was beginning to get nervous when my luck would run out!

Unexpected Consequences Odd that is felt better losing than winning. On the bright side, a clothing manufacturer wanted to sponsor me.... Methinks the advertiser is a tad too enthusiastic, or that he couldn't get Fedor to do endorce his product, or that he tipped the bottle too much. Still gave me a chuckle! :-D

Ya Drew! Thanks to a buddy of mine who also fought, you can download a quicktime highlight clip set to some funny music. Feel free to download more videos from our club if you wish.

I promise more Geeky stuff later...

I won first place in both the gi and no-gi lightweight novice divisions in the Ultimate Force 2005 grappling tournament. I fought twice with my kimono on and twice without. Therefore, I went 4-0 today. Pictures and video forthcomming.

I should feel great; however, I don't. I spent all week stressing over my weight (I was 160, now I'm 152) and having nightmares about losing in the first ten seconds. It is a relief that I don't have to worry any more!!! However, I am still a little nervous since now I must to well for now on. I will have to fight in more experienced weight divisions like intermediate or beginner in the future... I feel like everyone expects me to do good, and I keep thinking I will choke.

I even found myself rationalizing my wins. With my kimono on, the first person I defeated was a lot lighter than me and actually wanted me to go up a weight class. He is my friend and I look up him; I still feel he has better technique than me. In the championship gi match, my opponent was also a friend. I actually think fighing people I know is more fun, but he had trouble getting intense for the match. I ended up winning by scoring 12 points more than him (a technical submission).

Without the kimono I almost lost both matches; however, I won at the end partly because my opponents were wrestlers not grapplers. Their technique was very bad, and I just held out until they made a mistake. I tapped both of them; however, they were in much much better shape than me. I was very intimidated and expected to lose.

Does this take away from my victories? This is the first time I ever won first place at any sport. I want to be proud, and I bragged a little. But too much pride is often a sin (and not solely for religious reasons). I feel humbled by my opponents, yet nervous about the future. I'm even sad a little for hurting them enough to submit during the matches! (Not enough to quit, but still is worries me.)

I began studying Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu only to lose weight. Now I have, but I still feel fat. My self image is shot even though I won first place twice. Does anyone else feel not as good as they thought they would after winning?

My dark meat piece was awesome; however the breast meat of the Coq was dry. Such a shame. I'm not sure what to do when the recipe says "simmer for 1.5 hours" _ I guess at a lower temperature?

Pommes Anna could have used a tad less salt but it was great; no undercooked potato hardness.

Wife threw out the first batch of baguette dough, claiming it was too tough. Glad she did, the finished product came out great.

Apple tart was supa' sweet and the crust was perfect.

Cambria pinot noir was a good choice, too.

The Village: thank god my wife snuck it on the queue. This was a fun-ass movie. A period piece, a hero quest (with a blind girl as the hero), a commentary on communes and the base nature of greed within humans, and just a little bit of spooky thrown in. All of you who said it sucked are stupid. Like, totally! And the moment I saw the red-cloaks I fell in love. I now know what my halloween costume will be next year!

Through a Glass Darkly: I was soo not feeling this movie. What is it with "auteurs" throwing incest into a movie for no apparent reason?! Does this make them edgy? Worst place. Whats-her-faces physical performance of her hallucinations was cool. Winter Light is up for next week. Lets hope for better.

Tipping The Velvet: You can't go wrong with olde timey lesbians. There were parts where it was good, which is probably a reflection of the book. There were parts where it was cheesy, probably a reflection of the adapters (this was a bbc telly series).

the system is 6, 7 months old?

512 mb ram, 1.5 ghz processor.

so I hit the enter key, it wakes up from sleep, I type in a url, it says "your fat fingers mistyped, moron" and then I get the spinning beachball of death.

I'm in a hurry, trying to look up a phone number on Der Intertronn.

And that beach ball is still spinning.

So I turn to my right and boot up my win XP box; 512mb ram, 1.1ghz celery-ron processor.

Beach ball is still spinning.

I get the windowz boot up screen.

Beach ball is still spinning.

I select my WinXP account.

Beach ball is still spinning.

I get the desktop.

Beach ball is still spinning.

I double click Mozilla; Which takes FOREVER to load because even though you get the desktop, there's still work being done under the covers.

Beach ball is still spinning.

Mozilla springs to life.

Beach ball is still spinning.

I type in the address.

Beach ball is still spinning.

I get teh website, and have it search for a couple of names.

Beach ball is still spinning.

I forget an extension, so I re-look up a name.

Beach ball is still spinning.

At this point, I disconnected the powercord from the Mac.

I am LIVID. WTF is going on?!

If this were an AIX system, I'd make sure the AIX trace facility had a big ass buffer, I'd load a kernel extension (with a highly favored priority, so I always ran) that registered for the EPOW signal (or whatever signal happens to connote "wake up from sleep"), and on a 1 or 10 second period find out who the top cpu users are and log that, and then once things calmed down I'd stop trace and write it out to a file and find out who's ganking the CPU. (I suspect some stupid swap madness and the memory is thrashing, or I'm hanging on some device driver somewhere)

Perhaps there is an easier way of doing this on a darwin based system?

But yeah, I'm totally pissed.

This is a Poll:

A) Big phat 0

b) Big phat 0 because I shut off the lights and put up a sign saying "NOBODY HOME"

C) <10

D) <20

E) <25

F) <30

G) <40

H) < 50

I) < 100

J) > 100???

For me, the sweet spot woulda been 'round 25 unique kids, or 5 groups of kids (approx 5 kids in a group) instead of the big ol' goose egg I got.

I don't need to make turkey for thanksgiving this year. Because I already did and it came out great (unlike last years disappointment). (NOTE: when I say turkey, I mean turkey breast. We can't eat a whole turkey for weeks straight, thats just cruel)

Saturday was the day chosen for no apprent reason to bust out the china and do up a 5 course meal. Cooking Light October 2002 had a "Harvest Menu"; Curried Butternut Squash soup, Pears with goat cheese and fig preserves, Leek and Potato Tart with Gruyere, Pear and Gruyere Strata, and Raisin-Rosemary Rye Bread. I added in the Mahogany Turkey breast with vegetable gravy (from Cooking Light December 2002; The annual recipes book is great to have) to add some meat to the deal.

I was apprehensive; Last years turkey was a project. It simmered in a gigantic stockpot to ensure it wouldn't be dried out. It was lovingly basted. And it was dry as heck. All that hard work went to waste.

I think the key this year was that it was a smaller breast (3.6 lbs instead of 5-6). So it lived up to its mahogany name thanks to the molasses baste, and the gravy (thick with vegetables) was delightful. Whats interesting is that this 3 lbs breast cooked for as long as the instructions said for a 5-6 lbs breast (nearly eating up all the time buffer I put into the schedule!) Once the in-breast thermo-temp-popper popped up that was my queue that it was done. I tented and let it sit. But upon cutting, large swaths of the breast were still pinkish; Is that normal?. We only ate the white parts (we had so much damn food, the turkey was just there for show). And for left over sandwiches and such, I'm giving the meat a good microwave. But whats great is that its still not dry. Even in my sandwich for lunch yesterday the turkey was moist. Good show!

So this thanksgiving; NO TURKEY. We've done it, it worked* (I think...despite the pink?), and we've gotten it out of our system.

This november, it'll be Coq Au Vin!

Dario Argento sucks. Suspiria is such an insanely bad movie I want to demand my money back from netflix ($1.41). It is highly stylized. And that is all that can be said of it. It is non linear, and by that I mean the scenes don't flow, they make no sense on their own, and are gigantic non-sequitors. Upon reading Dario's very inflated bio on the dvd, I can only assume the thing that propelled its cult status back in the day was its overt violence. Which is really no great shakes.

When thinking of older movies that have aged well, I compare with The Shining and Clockwork Orange; mood and tone feature heavily. Dario's answer to mood and tone is a lot of red and green lights. This is not an oversimpification; he seems to have "broken lots of brain" over complex lighting that does nothing. It simply confuses the viewer and obscures things in a non-positive way.

The performances are un-believeable. While reading the bios apparently few of the actors spoke the same language; many were 'speaking' italian phonetically. Such beginnings don't bode well. And they aren't supported by the words that do exist in the script, nor by the inhuman actors. The "Freaky occurences" aren't really that freaky at all. Had any of us been in the movie, we'd be completely unawares that the coven of witches existed; we'd have overlooked the maggots, we'd have disauded sarah and flat out called her a crazy conspiracy theorist, and we probably would have enjoyed taking dinner laced with tranquilizers in our room. We'd would have enjoyed it more than this movie.

I can only assume that the performance of the blind pianist was supposed to be comic relief; his un-believably bad impersonation was so overwrought and outright incorrect that while being berated by the head mistress he kept not facing her, despite being 8 inches away. But it subtracts from the drama of the moment; Dario has sabotaged himself. (regardless, fans of industrial music will recognize the sample)

Now the demise of the pianist does show some skill and we have a bit of hope for our boy Dario. The chiaroscuro light work has something; we almost start to believe. However the overtness of the dog attack snaps the spell; its an itriguing idea to have his own dog betray him but we're back in our living rooms. The magic is gone. Had all previous lightwork been this effective the movie would get a much higher rating from me.

The Mod/Bauhaus 70's fashion and architecture are really the only reason to watch the film. That, and for the hysterical video of an italian goth-bands take on the theme music. Oh man, that was a howler.

F--.

See me after class!

This chat has been hit by the dreaded /. page-wideners!!!

ACtually, thats not the case. The lame host has posted a HORRIBLE, login-only nexis link (air head!@) and it breaks firefox 1.0.4.

IE has it looking good!

Open source; you can't compete.

Today, I got second place in the novice lightweight weight class at Mark Shrader's Third Annual Grappling Tournament. First, congratulations to the first place winner: Jay Morris. He is an awesome wrestler and grappler, and I wish him luck with his MMA career (no, we weren't fighting MMA).

Despite losing I shouldn't feel bad. In nearly six months of training I worked hard enough to lose 45 pounds (I'm 154 now); clothes that were too small for years are now too big. That was why I started grappling, after all. I only entered the tournament for the experience and not to place. I fought a tough opponent and still came out with a medal.

However, those are rationalizations. The only reason I got a metal is that there were only two people in my weight class: the champion and me. In other words, I lost and still received a metal. I was beaten in skill and strength. Even worse, during an exhibition later on, I tapped out to exactly the same submission from the same opponent. They weren't short matches, but they weren't especially long either. I'm angry at myself for losing in that way.

Every fight is won before anyone steps on the mat through how they prepare. Instead of dwelling on the past, I should direct my energies on the future.

• Deluding myself, I though I was improving against the people I usually train against. I guess my pride was hurt a little. I need to train against different people so I don't get used to anyone.
• The submission that got me was a guillotine. I need to learn to master, avoid, and counter them.
• I also have to work on initiating things from the guard. My confidence with guard work was virtually nill even before the tournament.
• I was out wrestled, so improving my stand-up is also a priority.
• I did not feel winded or tired at all during the match, instead I was simply overpowered. I need a better lifting routine to get stronger. However, I should maintain this weight at least (154). Therefore, I still need to do more jogging and cardio as well to lose the dead weight.

I was debating throwing the silver metal away (which says made in China on the back). However, I'll keep it to motivate me to work on these goals.

So my wife mentions this in passing in the morning. She heard about it weeks ago from the Going Out Guru's web chat. So I'm thinking "yeah, I can't wait for this to open." Which is apparently today. So I didn't even get a chance to wait. Damn. Perhaps I was a bit too hasty in my previous JE and the Brickskeller will no longer be "Teh Sopt!"?

We shall see.

The Deep End: it sucked.
Love is the Devil:I actually enjoyed to artsy-fartsy camera work at first. Wife did not. Ignoring the biographical nature of it, it is a very simple story and there is nothing to make it endearing. We don't care about cruel fags.
Croupier: What is with that gawd-awful stupid hat?! Great flick.

An old chum was in DC and we got together for a bite to eat. Figured we'd wander around Dupont and pick a spot. Somehow wandered in front of the Brickskellar. It had everything we wanted and more. Great "authentic" atmosphere. Ashtrays on the table (my friend still smokes), good beer (big up the Racer X IPA), and good music (smiths, morrissey, pixies, joy division, depeche mode, q and not u, talking heads, clap your hands say yeah, blah blah blah blah blah), and a burger with caraway seeds in it (I've been totally craving caraway seeds. Seriously).

It gets an A++++++++++ and its the new spot.

oh, and on the Home Cider Consumption front: George Hardy's Hard Apple Cider (NOT to be confused with the Draft Cider) tastes like green apples. Highly recommended.

Unexplicable. Non-explicable? De-explicable.

In-explainable.

U3 Smartdrives, USB flash drives that conform to the U3 standard, are due to arrive in October. This standard will make developing and deploying portable applications that run stand-alone on USB drives a snap. Full article here.

Damn. Who was I kidding, wearing a short-sleeved polo shirt? By noon, I was so frozen I got in my car and drove around with the heater on. Don't worry, I brought along some reading re: Hypervisor and SMT so work could occur.