I have only opened one present from my mother so far. It is a digital camera. six megapixels, takes videos, obtaining videos from the camera is as easy as a flash drive, only 20MB onboard, though there is room for an SD card. need to get one, since videos are currently limited to about a minute and a half, if there are no pictures on the camera.

Here is a picture of said camera.
Here is a picture of me approving the camera with the screen flipped back around.
And here is a picture of Mary and I in the bright sunshine. Though it is not obvious, my shirt says “I [heart] Rubik’s Cube and Air Bud” in rebus form. made this for me.

As proof of my hearting of the cube, here is a video of me solving it. This shirt says “Taxi Boy Drive ’em” in the style of Souljaboytellem. Mary’s sister made this for me.

My backpack was stolen from my car this weekend. It contained nothing of notable resale value, but plenty of tremendous personal value to me. The bag itself was a JSS backpack which I bought from a friend immediately after he’d won it in a tournament. I think I payed 5 or 6 dollars.
The front pocket contained a pocket knife my dad gave me about 15 years ago, and a bag of toothpicks Mary bought me 8 months ago. The next pocket back contained a TI-89 calculator(replaceable on ebay for ~$10, plus this one was old and quite worn), about 40 – 3×5 cards, some assorted and mechanical pencils, a stapler, some cellophane tape, and an eraser. The slim pocket behind the straps contained some books, I don’t even remember which, but I know there was a US constitution booklet in there. The large pocket contained:
-my journal for movie class(although everything written in it had already been graded)
-my “textbook” for workout class, though as it was a half-sem class, it’s already done.
-my much beloved fake-leather portfolio that I’d gotten for free through student governement last fall. in this was lots of irrelevant papers, such as a printout of a monty python sketch and some Rubik’s cube algorithms. Also there were some papers that contained random notes I’d taken that served as reminders of things, such as the height of the arch(630 ft), the height of the tallest building in this city(593 ft), what ykk on zippers stands for(Yoshida Kogyo Kabushikikaisha), what wile E coyote’s middle name is (Ethelbert), and what you call those signs that are staggered messages on the side of the road(burma shave signs). Also inside this folder was a presonal reflection I had written, some thoughts of myself I needed to put down on paper. I’d intended to transcribe it to lj, but that won’t happen now. I might be able to recreate a rough approximation at some point. There were also a few things in this folder which could be classified as “important.” Probably none of them as important however, as what was in
-my binder. This contained every shred of paper I had received from or produced for class this semester. Ever assignment sheet, every syllabus, every paper I’d written. There were no completed ungraded assignments, which was lucky.
-Inside my binder, of particular note was the birthday card that Mary made for me this year. It was awesome, S/A never saw it, and now it’s gone.

So, in the end, the thief came away with a backpack, some school supplies, and . . .a rather noticeable chink of my heart. I have another backpack, and another binder to take up the slack, It’s no big deal really, but it’s pretty fucked up. Whatever they were after, they got lots more than they bargained for, and on the whole, it’s pretty clear that I lost a lot more than they gained.
I suppose I should remember the Socrates quote also written on a slip of paper in the portfolio:

“He is richest who is content with the least”

Sometime in the future I plan on writing about how this event makes me think about crime, and the odd thing that the theft prompted me to do.

Your one-stop shop, for all needs.
I cut this, dunno why

I got this from
1. Go to Career Cruising, http://www.careercruising.com
2. Put in Username: nycareers and Password: landmark.
3. Take their “Career Matchmaker” questions.
4. Post the top 40 results (This used to say twenty but I decided not to do that.)
5. Put the careers you have seriously considered in bold
Read more »

But I thought maybe somebody else might think it was neat.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:NOT

I just watched B is for Bomb on youtube. I would like to say that I disagree with the video. Vroman got me to see the light on the positive side of nukes a few years ago, and I haven’t heard or come up with any significant contrary evidence since. Here’s what I believe:

Nuclear weapons might be the greatest instrument of peace ever devised.
We would probably be safer if every country on earth had nukes.
We certainly would never want to un-invent nukes.
Nuclear disarmament is a mistake.

long, boring

Others may feel it deeper than I. I am not speaking of the issue I am linking to in particular, though I do identify with it. Especially the mouse-over text.

http://xkcd.com/302/

I think this is cool. physics