5/12/05
The days are just blurring together into one meaningless mass. A grinding cycle of work and sleep with brief spots of goodness.

Wednesday morning I woke up and wondered if I was back home.
Yes, after four years, I still think of New Jersey as home.
Once I got myself sorted out, I realized part of the confusion came from Olympics Guy pacing overhead. I remember my father would always pace around in the morning, doing his routine, and it'd drive me up a wall because I went to bed at three a.m. and now I couldn't get back to sleep because I could hear him pacing around upstairs.

Mornings have had very little drag-ass for me. I dread facing the day but once I'm in my car, I wake up and I get prepared to do my thing. Plus I always remind myself "Today is going to be a good day" when I'm halfway up Platte.

nethack
Today I played my first serious game as tourist. Man, they make for a difficult game. Starting out with no armor class, the only weapons are enchanted darts and most of the weapon skills are unskilled at best. spivak the tourist did passably with the help of his pet dog named Ben. Unfortunately on level six, Ben stepped onto a level teleport trap and was lost for good. A melee between spivak the tourist and a grown dog was tough but things became worse when he stumbled upon a snake.
Heck, playing tourist made me think that the monk class is seriously broken and a guaranteed ascension-worthy character class.

Poor tourist, he didn't have a way to inscribe the E word and he used up a prayer to save his keister on the prior level. Trying to pudding dance without intrinsic speed is not advisable because black puddings are as quick as the game's hero.

Pudding dancing is my name for a cheap way to level up a character. Find a sink on dungeon levels one through five, map out the entire level, kick the sink until a pudding boils up from the drain. Step, kick, repeat as necessary until the pudding dies from your kicks. If you must use a weapon, ensure that it's rustproofed to prevent unnecessary corrosion from the black pudding's body. If you're not playing vegetarian or vegan, eat the corpse since black puddings are great ways to get valuable intrinsics like poison and cold resistance.

I reckon I'll try tourist again in a few days.

new york
Out here in Colorado everyone rolls their eyes and draws a deep sigh when they learn that their new neighbor is from out of state. Moreso if the individual is from California or New York, in that order.
I have the same kind of feeling when I learn about people from middle America moving to NYC or New Jersey. Not because of overcrowding or how it's more expensive than a steak dinner in Tokyo. I imagine these people being coated with that unique mixture of dust and soot then getting crushed by the lifestyle.

Please, stay in your own state. Enjoy the green Everglade hell of Florida. Find joy in the big, silent places near the mountains in Wyoming and Montana. Feel the endless rains of Washington wash the grime off your body before it sets deeper than a tattoo in your skin.

science
I reckon I'll never have an answer since I no longer have any scientific minded friends or acquaintances. Recently there was an article about exoplanets and how the majority of them have highly ellipitcal orbits.
My theory is simple, most planets do not truly perturb their stellar companion. Most exoplanets are discovered by measuring the wobble of the star caused by other, unseen companions. I say the stars have a wobble because they have large non-stellar companions who occasionally pass very close to the star. If a planet has a circular orbit then any wobble would be negligible because the gravitation's intensity will remain constant.

I hope there aren't any generalizations that most stars have substellar companions which maintain very elliptical orbits because everything found so far shows an elliptical orbit.

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