Ridiculous.

In anycase, it looks like the people have spoken, and apparently they approve of the President’s policy of disaster and destruction in resounding fashion. Four more years of death, four more years of fighting a war that no one has ever bothered to explain if we can even “win”. How many more of our friends, relatives and innocent bystanders on both sides of the ocean will have to die for naught?

And while we’re at it, we’ve managed to strip rights from our fellow brothers and sisters in 11 states by creating laws that declare the marriage between two people who love each other as illegal. Somehow this is supposed to protect the “sanctity” of marriage, as well as protecting and preserving the family unit in the United States. Perhaps I’m just confused, but when the divorce rate in our nation is over 50% and people like Britney Spears can get a drunken marriage, only to have it anulled a mere 3 days later, it is my opinion that the institution of marriage is already completely destroyed.

It’s embarrassing. I guess I should ultimately come to grips with the fact that I live in an extraordinarily conservative country. And it appears to only be getting even more conservative.

I guess this also means four more years of being shouted down with informative remarks such as “If you don’t like it, then get out!” Perhaps it’s high time to consider that idea. Instead of UC Berkeley or UCLA for grad school, I’ll start looking at places in New Zealand, Canada or Sweden.

After debating with myself and thinking quite hard about who I will vote for, I finally cast my absentee ballot for Kerry and sent it in. I’m not all that happy with the decision, but after thinking about the other choices on the ballot, I feel that represents the best choice.

I have this sense of dread hanging over me though and I can’t quite explain it. I’ve been feeling down and I think it has to do with all the news of the election and what’s going on abroad. To quote some friends, “It’s as if there is some impending doom.” Judging by the polls that have been going on this past week, Kerry isn’t doing all that hot. Ugh.

I fail to see how the Bush administration has been good for our nation when we haven’t been this polarized and divided since the Civil War.

We’ll have to see what tomorrow (today?) brings I suppose.

Cal State system approves 8% fee hike for 2005-2006. Note: This is our FOURTH fee hike in as many years!

So what does it look like overall? Before all this fee hiking madness, the cost per semester to attend San Francisco State University was $913.00. After digging up some links and reference sources, I put together a small table showing the increase over the last few years in the Cal State system.

Net Increase (4 years): $694.44
Overall increase (percentage) from 2001-2002: 43%

References:

SFSU 2001-2002 Tuition: $913.00
http://www.sfsu.edu/~bulletin/noindex/0203/fee.htm

2005 8% Fee Increase:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2004/10/28/state1826EDT0141.DTL

2004 30% Fee Increase
http://www.calstate.edu/pa/news/2003/BOT0703.shtml

Alright, just completed a new tune. Check it out! 🙂 4 minutes, 3.8mb download.

Download “Out of Life.” Still need to lay down a vocal track at some point (I say that about all my songs) and get someone over to record a bass line. Other than that, it is complete! Check it out. 🙂

I’d like to take a quick moment by announcing the following:

These last few days, I’ve been watching some of the greatest baseball that I’ve ever seen. It was with great pleasure that I was able to watch the New York Yankees engineer one of the greatest chokes in all of sports history, blowing a 3 games to 0 lead.

I’m quite happy for the BoSox, and they definitely earned it!

Alright, in other news, my ankle is well on the way to recovery thankfully. I went to the emergency room on Friday night and got it x-rayed and they confirmed nothing was broken, then recommeded that I stay off it for the next few days. I can walk around almost perfectly fine now, but I still feel quite a bit of pain and there remains a rather large bruise on the bottom side of my ankle.

Despite the doctors orders, I “snuck” out of the house and saw Hot Water Music play on Sunday night with David and Michelle (MP3’s available on their site). That was the first time I’ve been able to see them. They put on an energetic show. I was surprised at how few people there were there. These guys are an extraordinarily talented band and it’s a shame they don’t get more respect. Next time they come around, I will definitely check them out again. I imagine the show would be quite a bit more fun without having a gimp leg. 🙂

This last week at school has been absolutely killer. Between work, writing papers, studying for insane mineralogy examinations and an endless attack of geology field trips, I have no free time! I’ve been getting 4 – 6 hours of sleep the past few nights and it is really taking a toll on me. Things should settle down momentarily after this weekend though, so I can catch up on some well needed rest, especially with the coming flu season.

For those who want some excellent reading material to put you to sleep at night, my report from the internship this summer can be found here.

Lastly, mark your calendars! Looks like I’ll be back down in California from Nov 5. to Nov 9, when I will be taking my car back up here with me! That will be awesome to finally have that up here.

Alright, 11:55pm, class in a mere 8 hours. Time to write more papers! I wonder what it’d be like to pull an all nighter and just go straight to school…

Last night I went to Berkeley to play volleyball again. Overall, it was quite a bad night. Too many egos on the court, too many people that think they are olympic caliber players and giving other people crap. We’re all there just to have fun. Regardless, I realize there are going to be ultracompetitive people in any type of sport you play, whether it is for fun or part of a league. Ultimately, I can shake that off and just ignore them.

So about 45 minutes into the night, I go up to hit a ball that is tight to the net, land funny, causing my ankle to roll. I hear a large “pop!” and on the ground I go! Oh yes, I sprained my ankle. I have never done that before and this hurts like nothing I’ve ever felt.

Despite the pain, I was able to walk on it a bit last night. Now today, I can’t even put *any* pressure on it! Luckily, David and Michelle were home and gave me a ride back to my place all the way from Berkeley. I don’t think there’s any way I could have made it home otherwise. I’m planning at some point to go to the school’s infirmary and get this thing checked out, just to make sure I didn’t break it. The only question is, how will I get to school and walk halfway across campus, all without crutches?

As luck would have it also, I should be leaving right now for a field trip in one of my geology classes. Obviously, there is no way I could have made it this weekend. I’m getting pretty good at missing these trips. Last year, I missed a major one because I came down with the flu and a sinus infection. Ugh! Go figure.

Anyway, here’s to hoping for a speedy recovery.

The past few weeks have been extraordinarily busy. There is probably a lot to write about that I will forget. Regardless, some highlights… or lowlights, of the past few days:

I had midterms last Thursday that I describe as being disasterous. Namely, it was my midterm for mineralogy that caused problems. It was a timed test where we had about 6 rocks in a tray, and we had 13 minutes to identify all the minerals in each rock before passing the trays on. About halfway through the test, I reach over to my folder and knock over a bottle of hydrochloric acid! It spills all over my desk and smites some of my notes (which start to fizz!). I had to take a few minutes to clean that mess up and didn’t end up finishing that tray of minerals. Then when the test was nearly over, I was playing with my knife (which we use to test the hardness of certain minerals) and ended up slipping, slicing my middle finger right open! The thing proceeded to bleed for the next 35 minutes until I finally managed to get home.

Luckily, those days are past. I think it’s a testiment to my klutziness. Anyway, we have a field trip for mineralogy for the next 4 days. The itinerary is to hit up the Sierras and Owens Valley. Among the stops we will be doing are Bridgeport, Yosemite, Bishop, Lone Pine and an area near Death Valley. Most of this area is like my second home, since Dan (sometimes Nic too), go there quite a bit for hiking/camping expeditions. Not to mention the countless other geology field trips I’ve been to in the Owen’s Valley. I’m looking forward to this though, almost completely packed for it. Just need to buy some food for this weekend in a little bit.

I also went to REI and with the intention of picking up a few things… and ended up buying a massive amount of crap. That place is like a drug dealer. So much good stuff! If it wasn’t for that place and Guitar Center, I’d probably be pretty well off!

Speaking of Guitar Center…

I found this interesting device made by Line 6 called the GuitarPort. Basically, it hooks straight into your computer and simulates a large number of different amplifiers and effects pedals. I figured for $99, it wasn’t that bad, and if I didn’t like it I’d just bring it back.

After playing with it for the last week, I have to say that this thing is AWESOME. Since it plugs directly into the computer, it makes it extraordinarily easy to record as well. I put together a small mp3 to show it off. The following example is about 1 minute long (1mb download) and features 4 different guitar tracks mixed together. Enjoy!

Out of the Way Demo Download. (1 minute long. 1 mb download.)

Alright, time to do some final packing and then I’m off for a few days!

Back up in the Bay Area after the conference this weekend for the Southern California Earthquake Center. That was a pretty great experience. With all the free food and drinks, I think I’m definitely going to become a scientist for that reason alone! It was also great seeing many of these people again. My friend Brandee even got to meet my parents. The conversation with my mom afterwards went something like this:

Mom: “She is very pretty! And she’s so much nicer than your other girlfriends.”
Me: “Yeah, but she isn’t my girlfriend.”
Mom: “You know, you always go for the exotic looking ones!”
Me: “But I’m not going for her!”

I told Brandee and she got quite a kick out of that! Anyway, it was definitely a fun time, though I kinda tweaked my damn knee when we were playing volleyball. It is still sore. I still want to play volleyball tomorrow night over in Berkeley though. We’ll have to see how I feel.

Anyway, regarding the subject of this post, I bring you the following pictures. This one was taken last week while there were wild fires burning in Northern California.

And this second one, taken when I was flying home on Saturday evening.

It feels like every muscle in my body is sore, making today most unenjoyable. How did I reach this sorry state of affairs? It all begins with volleyball.

I haven’t played a serious game of volleyball since I left high school some 4 or so years ago. I’ve been yearning to play lately, especially after watching the olympic teams compete. The problem is, I’ve had no one to play with up here. Interestingly enough, Michelle recently found out about these open court volleyball sessions they have once a week at the Berkeley YMCA. She told me to check it out, so I went last night! After not playing for 4 years, I played for 3 hours last night!

It was completely fun, and I felt ecstatic afterwards. I am definitely going to go back and play next week. They play 6 vs. 6 and many of the players are just awesome! I got some pretty good advice yesterday and quickly fell back into the groove. David and Michelle watched me play for a bit and they were impressed. That made me feel great. It also helped that I nailed a kill within the first 30 seconds of the game! Hah, awesome!

Anyway, flying home tomorrow! Have to present a poster at SCEC meeting in Palm Springs on Sunday and Monday. A poster which isn’t completely finished yet! Ack! Quite a lot to due before then. I am also taking a writing proficiency test tomorrow for SFSU and am somewhat nervous. No reason why I should be, but regardless.

Anyway, off to packing stuff!

Oh yes, from the creator of the original “It’s raining people” comes a new sequel! This time, it involves geology students, cliffs and paragliders!

Eh. We had a geology field trip along the coast and beach today. This is an area near a place called Ft. Funston, where there are massive cliffs overlooking the ocean. People take advantage of this by para-gliding and hang-gliding off of them. Anyway, we were looking at sedimentary deposits down on the beach all day today.

About midway through the day, we’re sitting at the base of a cliff when I hear one of my fellow students exclaim, “Whoa, oh shit!” I look up in time to see a paraglider coming into the cliff’s above our head. If he was a few feet lower, he would have smacked right into the side of them. Fortunately, he was able to catch a ledge that was directly over our heads. However, by “catch a ledge,” I mean crash land into it and slide across the top of it, nearly falling 50 feet down off the other side.

A shower of cobbles, pebbles, dirt and dust came raining down on our heads and we bolted out of there, leaving some of our notebooks and things to get buried. We all just kind of looked up in stunned silence. After a few minutes, he finally got up, precariously close to the edge off the cliffs. Luckily, it appeared he was physically okay, besides being a little shaken up. Unfortunately, the ledge he landed on had no way to get down to the beach and no easy way to get back up to the top of the road. A few people yelled up to him and asked if he was okay or needed help, but he waved to us and declined. We resumed walking up the rest of the beach examining stuff for our class.

Still, that was an incredible sight, and I couldn’t believe I was seeing it.

Anyway, here is a pic I took afterwards to scale everything. He wrapped up his parachute and threw it over his back while he tried to scale the cliff back up to the road. Note how high these cliffs are, especially compared to him!