The Station

Can The Spam!

Spam needs to stop! The stuff is everywhere, and I'm tired of dealing with it. Even my school email account, the long-lasting lone bastion of web purity, has succumbed to an unceasing deluge of advertisements for everything from software to viagra. I'm even receiving things with titles like "Britney Spears Nude on Scandalous Pics" or "FW: Real MILF cheating on her paretnr [sic]." Seriously, how did I get on the list for these things?

What sickens me the most, however, is that some non-negligible amount of recipients must surely be responding positively to this smut. If they didn't, the spam would cease. Disgusting.

I know I'm an idealist, but would it really be that hard to curb span once and for all with a law? They put an end to telemarketing, why not this?
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For Detecting Extra Large Beta Particles

Right now there is an extremely strange and loud sound coming from my neighbor's apartment. It almost sounds like a Geiger counter, but a very big one. Yes, a Geiger counter as big as a house. Certainly, that must be what's going on.
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Must...Stay...Awake

This is far too early in the semester for an all-nighter.
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Egad!

There's lot's to do!
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Lock Up Brian

When I was about seven, my mom was looking for a new way to punish me when I misbehaved. So, during my next visit to the doctor, she asked him what she should do.

I must go off on a tangent here. Growing up, I got the impression that my mother relied on a medical doctor's opinion like it was the word of God or something. She would ask for him advice about all sorts of child rearing problems while he treated me for chicken pox, pneumonia, etc. I thought it was foolish of her to seek advice about my behavior from someone who doesn't know me personally. The worst part about it was that they spoke like I wasn't even in the room. Perhaps my mother thought her seven-year-old son was too enraptured by the Winnie the Pooh wallpaper to pay attention to the ongoing conversation on child psychology. About the only time the doctor ever acknowledged that I was a human being capable of logical thought was at the end of the visit when he asked if I liked to read. He would suggest that I read Lassie because that was a favorite when he was a boy. Well, sorry, Doc, but I was a bit too sophisticated for Lassie. I preferred books about robots.

Alright, back to the story. So the doctor suggests putting a lock on my door so that I can be locked inside. I tried to hide the smile on my face; stupid adults didn't realize that my room was where all my toys were at, and I was far too smart to forget that fact and go into a fit of rage over simply not being allowed free range of the house. Still, I couldn't let them get away with it.

My dad put a hook on my door and the eye in the frame next to it. It only took a week or so for it to be put to the test. I misbehaved and got locked up. I soon discovered that I could still open the door just a crack before the hook held it back. It took me about 30 seconds to find a thin piece of plastic to raise the hook through the crack and open the door. I didn't leave my room, though. I had already proved my point. So I hung out in my room for about half an hour then walked right out. My parents were both home, so when one saw me free, they just thought the other one let me out. It was a good plan that worked for quite a while.
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I Blame It On My Cold

Tonight, as I was doing some work, I decided I was hungry enough to make dinner. I opened a can of soup, put it in a pot on the stove and went back to studying. I studied for a while, then my mom called, then Christina called. I completely forgot about the soup. Meanwhile, I start smelling something delicious but I thought, "my neighbor must be cooking, I wonder why I can smell it." Wishing I also had something tasty to eat, I went to the kitchen to look for food. That's when I noticed the soup I left on the stove an hour earlier. It didn't look so good, and a lot of it had evaporated, but I ate it anyway. Yummy.
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What's The Difference?

The other day a friend wanted to know the difference between a civil engineer and a mechanical engineer. Before I could answer her question, another friend of mine explained "Civil engineers build targets; mechanical engineers build weapons." It's a surprisingly accurate, yet humorous assessment.
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Typing Practice

Seventh grade was about the time that I developed an attitude of superiority. This often lead me to challenge the means and motive of authority - often getting me into trouble. One day, I said something that really made the PE teacher angry. As punishment she told me to write, about a hundred times, something like, "I will not disrespect the teacher in front of the class." Yes, it was seventh grade and I had to write lines.

Not willing to let her get away with this, I thought of a clever plan. At home, I fired up our brand new Macintosh LC II and started Claris Works (ancient Mac equivalent of MS Office). I typed out the sentence once and then applied a new technique I recently learned - copy and paste. Yes sir, it took about one minute to type and print that out. The next day, I handed it to the teacher with the explanation, "I wanted to practice my typing, so I hope you don't mind my not writing it by hand." She gladly accepted it thinking it must have taken much longer to type than to write.

The best part, though, was that in addition to her being the PE teacher, she was also the librarian and computer instructor. That's right. She was in charge of teaching students about computers. Unfortunately for her, the school was still using Apple IIe technology. It was 1991 and she, the person in charge of technology, had never even heard of "copy and paste."
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