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Personal

More Amazing Race

I just finished last week’s episode of the Amazing Race, and I’m willing to make a few adjustments.

The “hippies” came across as significantly more fake this time. Their reaction to coming in first was irritating as hell. The mom + daughter team I found even more endearing this time, and I’m getting over that initial cringe factor with the nerds.

Still, there’s just so much nerdiness I can handle.

Updated to add: I’m really pleased with Fran and Barry still hanging in at the end, while the fall of the two sisters doesn’t disappoint me much.

Categories
Travel

Bangkok Photos Online

The photos from Bangkok are now online. Check them out.

Categories
News

Death Pool

For those of you who had evil genocidal dictator next on your death pool, congratuations. Milosevic was found dead in his cell in the Hague this morning, finally sending him to the place where he belongs. May he face some form of eternal damnation for what he’s done in his life.

Categories
News

Rutgers Reorganization

While the details will only emerge over time, the Board of Governors has adopted President McCormick’s recommendations to overhaul undergraduate education. This is truly a great moment for Rutgers, as the creation of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences executed back in 1981 is finally completed. The largest single change – all undergraduates in New Brunswick and Piscataway will attend the same undergraduate college together, with a single honors program, the same degree granting requirements and admissions standards. While various specialized schools (the business school, engineering, and the land-grant programs within Cook) will still exist largely as they do today, the rather odd situation that you take most of your classes with students across all campuses yet are subject to different requirements and standards will largely come to an end.

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News

Back Online

It took two hours and a replacement of the cable line in to the house, but I’m finally back online. It has never felt so good to have access to so much useless information.

Categories
News

Optimum Offline Day 4 Crisis in the Hood

Tuesday evening I decided to double down, roll the dice, go for broke. I visited the Piscataway Cablevision office to pick up a new cable modem, and figured since I was there I would pick up a new digital cable box.

The fun started when I got home. The new cable modem didn’t work. The old cable box stopped working as well. The new cable box didn’t work either. The TV worked, in that it received a signal, but didn’t work, in that the tuner has been permanently set to channel 3.

When I was joking that if I had to choose between no TV or no Internet, I’d choose the Internet, I didn’t mean that I was willing to give up both.

Categories
News

Peanut Butter Kiss

I may have made reference to the article about the 15 year old teen who died after kissing her boyfriend who had eaten peanut butter earlier that day. An update from the coroner says it wasn’t an allergic reaction that did her in.

Categories
News

Optimum Offline Continued

Optimum Online wasn’t all weekend. All weekend my service was down. I know the tricks about cycling the cable modem, fiddling with wires, throwing electronic devices against the wall, etc., all to repair them. But this is ridiculous.

I’ll be calling them when I get home, because there’s nothing wrong within the house. Unless the cable modem itself is hosed, there’s nothing I can see that’s wrong.

Categories
Travel

Reading on the Road

I read when I’m on the road. Sometimes significantly.

Take my trip to Thailand. By my second day in Thailand I’d polished off three or four magazines and a book on Darwin. I picked up a few books along the way, reading China Doll (I think that was the title), a new book by Haruki Murakami, and finally The Glass Palace by Amitav Ghosh.

In fact, it was my addiction to the written word that amused Lek and the other staff working at Cafe@2. Every time I was there, it seemed I was reading yet another book with my meal. And of all my reading material from the trip, it was The Glass Palace that topped everything.

One of the best fiction books I’ve read in awhile, the novel presents a sweeping epic of almost 100 years of history, politics, and culture, spread over three Burma, India, and Malaysia, through the threads of three interrelated families. While the characters are fictional, the larger historical setting is largely true and very vivid.

The novel begins with the fall of the Burmese Royal Family, traces its way to India and eventually back. Slowly tracing its way out, the web of characters is spun wider and wider, with love, hatred, tenderness, and arrogance are all mixed with the whims of fate.

It’s a great novel, if you have a chance to read it. Certainly it beats this rambling, offbeat blog posting.

Categories
News

Toe-tacular

I’ve been dealing with an ingrown toenail for well over a year now.

In late December 2004, I went to a doctor in the Bridgewater area who cut it out and treated it for an infection. It hurt like hell for a day or two, but eventually mostly healed up.

And then six months later it had grown back in. I went back to him, and again he cut it out. Again it hurt like hell, but healed.

And by December of this year it was back. A third time. And I was ticked off, annoyed that it was back and afraid of having to go back to the doctor who would again cut it out and again have it hurt like hell.

I got smart and tried a different doctor. He cut it out. Except this time it didn’t hurt at all. Seriously. The only real pain was during the initial needles for the local anasthesia. After it wore off, no pain.

And now I’m hoping this will finally be the last time.