Ivan didn’t aggravate enough people the first time around, so he came back for more. The storm went down the Atlantic Coast, passed over Florida, and is now once again in the Gulf of Mexico. It regained some of it’s strength and is now back up to tropical storm status. I think it’s supposed to reach land over Texas or southwest Louisiana later today.
 from the Starkville Daily News |
 taken by me near my apartment |
Ivan came, saw me, and ran. All joking aside, it wasn’t all that bad here. We got some strong winds gusts (up to 75 mph) and lots of rains. I heard that parts of the county and the campus lost power temporarily, but I didn’t experience any of it. I got drenched whenever I went outside and had to drive around some street cones that had been blown into the middle of the street, but other than that I wasn’t too incovenienced. There are pictures in today’s Reflector of people playing in the rain. I almost wish I had done that instead of working inside all day.
I know that many areas are a lot worse off than we are. I wonder how long it’ll take them to get the collapsed section of I-10 back up.
I’m starting to get tired of all these hurricanes. It looks like we’re going to feel the effects of this one all the way up here in Starkville. They are expecting tropical storm strength winds, a lot of rain, and possible flooding. A lot of schools in the area are closing, but of course MSU will be open. They didn’t even give us a day off when a tornado hurt the town pretty badly a few years ago. Anyway, I hope everybody that I know in the path of the storm makes it through ok.
If anybody is actually reading this and wants a Gmail account, send me an email at longklaw@longklaw.com . First come, first serve.
I was annoyed by how many people were on cloud nine this past week after the football team beat Tulane last weekend. It didn’t take long for everybody to realize just how much improvement we still need. Auburn beat us 43-14 today.
Last night I tried to use my dryer and it wouldn’t come on. It was working fine last weekend when I last used it. The thing is only 2 years old. That’s what I get for going with the cheap brand. Too bad I didn’t get the extended warranty because the one that came with it has expired. The repairman will be here Monday to look at it.
Next week is the beginning of the Fall Video Game Barrage. I’m looking forward to it, but I’m not sure I’ll have enough time to fully enjoy it.
I had a pretty good holiday weekend. At least it was different from the norm.
Friday night I went to a cookout at the Moorheads. Pretty much everyone that works for Dr. Moorhead was there, as well as his family, and some of their friends. I like to eat.
Saturday before the game I went tailgating with Alex, Sacha, Derek, Jean, Joel, and some of their friends whose names I can’t remember. They were friends of D, J, J and at least one of them used to work for Dr. Moorhead. We even went back there after the game for some more eating/drinking.
The game was a really good start to the Croom era. They gave away free t-shirts at the game that say “Maroon is all that matters,” which is based on a quote from his first press conference as head coach. MSU beat Tulane 28-7. We were sitting close to the visitor’s section, so I had to listen to them the whole time. It took a while for the offense to really get going, but at least it eventually did. I was happy about the low number of stupid mistakes on offense and the low number of penalties. I’m not optimistic enough to think that we can win 6-7 games, but at least we may be able to compete.
Sunday and Monday were spent playing video games and doing chores around the apartment.
Oh well, back to the grind tomorrow.
As much as I enjoyed watching the Olympics, I am glad that they are over. My favorites were the swimming events and the women’s beach volleyball (the celebration after the gold medal match was better than the match). I’m hoping that I can find some other stuff on tv this week. I think NBC has a lot of new shows debuting in the next few weeks.
Dave Chappelle has a new comedy special called “For What It’s Worth” premiering on Sept. 4, but it’s on Showtime. Unfortunately, I don’t have Showtime, so I might have to wait a while to see it.
I found out last night that the Ying Yang Twins will be at Mississippi State this Friday. They’re the ones who sing “Salt Shaker”. It might be worth checking out. Not much to do around here anyway.
A couple of days ago I reinstalled Linux on my PS2. I messed something up the first time and I never got a chance to do any real stuff on it before. I was able to get some simple OpenGL programs to run. I’ll be making the next Final Fantasy in no time.
I installed Windows XP Service Pack 2 on my laptop. It only took about 2 hours. I hope I don’t have any major problems with it.
I’ve been playing a lot of GTA 3 lately since I never beat the game and the sequel comes out soon. I’m a little behind on the video games.
Check out these links when you have time:
Halo 2 gameplay footage – I can’t wait to play this game.
How to Write Unmaintainable Code – Jason sent me this one. It’s a little long, but I thought it was pretty funny.
HomestarRunner – Really cool Flash stuff. Check out the Strongbad emails if nothing else. Thanks again to Jason for telling me about this a long time ago.
It’s been 2 weeks since I made it back to Starkville from Dayton, OH. As much as I liked being in Dayton, it feels really good to be home. Living out of a hotel room is not my ideal living situation. I missed having a kitchen, having a shower with decent water pressure, and a lot of other little things. The worst part was not having a car because I didn’t have the freedom to move around like I normally do. On the bright side, not having a car did meant that I had to interact with the other interns outside of work more than I may have in the beginning, which turned out to be a good thing. The work that I did involved visualizing radar data using VTK and Paraview, both produced by a company called Kitware. They can be good tools to have on my belt if I decided to go into scientific visualization as a career. All in all, it was a good summer. The first five weeks were really hard on me, but things got much better after that. I’m glad to be back, and I’m ready for football season to start.
I think I’m actually going to try to make it to football games this year. I used to go to almost every home, but I’ve been going to fewer games each year. Last year, I only went to one game. Our record has been 8-27 over the past 3 years, so it’s been hard for me to motivate myself to lose 5-6 hours out of a day to go out and support a team that’s probably going to lose. I could watch on TV or listen on the radio and still get other stuff done.
Our new football coach Sylvester Croom, has caused a lot of excitement for our program. He’s the first black head coach in the history of the SEC. He was a running backs coach for the Green Bay Packers before he came to our school. Hopefully, he can turn the program around in a few years. I’m not too encouraged by the fact that after every practice, he talks about how many mistakes they are making and how much improving they need to do. At least they are improving. I saw on the news the other night that Coach Croom is implementing the West Coast Offense. I can’t wait to see that! It’ll be interesting to see something new on offense. I hope our new quaterback and our receivers are up for it.
Today was the first day of classes at MSU, and campus was crazy. There were so many people, but it’s usually like that on the first day. I’m sure it’ll settle down in a few weeks. I actually rode the shuttle to the union because I didn’t think I could find a parking place nearby. It’s pretty easy to spot the freshmen. They’re the ones that look so young and don’t really know what they’re doing.
I finally started working out again today. I know that I’ll be feeling it in the morning. My goal is to lose 60 pounds in 5 days (just kidding).
MSN has a list of Top Ten Business Movies. I’m not surprised to see Office Space on the list.
I watched Cold Mountain. It’s a really good movie with a bunch of recognizable actors, but I thought it was a little too long.
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