Little Blue

Everyone will always remember their first car. Some may get to say that their first car was some sports car, maybe a Mustang, perhaps a truck I don't know. I do know that I will always remember my first vehicle as well. I drive a 2003 powder blue Toyota Prius, known among my friends as 'Little Blue'.

When I began driving my parents wanted me to drive a large vehicle; my mother especially because they are safer. But at the time the only vehicle my parents had that was large was the 4x4 half ton truck; I hated that thing and still do to this day. Occasionally I will have to drive that monstrous beast and I feel completely out of control with it. The truck just wasn't for me... The only other option my parents had for me was the old Prius. AND I LOVED IT! It's small, great turning radius, and has a great mileage. The positives my parents saw in it were that it was old and so if it got damaged it wouldn't be quite as big a deal. 

A total badass drives this car!

I started to drive myself to school in junior year of high school and since then the Prius and I have gone on great adventures. One of the early memories of driving in it was one day after school my friend Jesse wanted to hang out so I told him I could just drive to his place and we could have a great time. We get in the car and I instantly turn on Billy Joel's Uptown Girl, roll down the windows, and we start driving through campus singing! So what if we got stares, we didn't care how gay it looked. Two guys in a powder blue prius singing Billy Joel, sounds like a good time to me! 

Little Blue enjoyed itself very much here.

Over this past summer Little Blue also got a good work out. Every week I would have to go down to Davis for one of my research positions, meaning about2 hours of driving that day. Along with that Charlie came in to town and we spent a day down in San Francisco; that's about 2 hours of driving each way. Later that same weekend we had to go down to San Jose to help my brother and dad move in to their new apartment. So Little Blue was loaded with stuff and got 2 more hours of straight driving. After getting back I find out that I have to meet my dad to get him some stuff he forgot, so there is another hour long journey to meet him half way, BRING IT! And Little Blue stuck through it ALL! 

And now I have brought it with me to college. Little Blue has seen so much of my life; but through all the ups and downs it was still there, as reliable as ever. I'm able to just jump in, put on some music and have a great time in that car. I think all of my friends that have gotten a ride in Little Blue could each give their own great story about riding in there, it's just full of good times.

The Great Migration has begun again!

The reason I began to think of writing about Little Blue is because it recently had another great mile stone; yesterday it went on it's first dirt road! It may be a small car but that doesn't mean it can't drive on rocks! It performed fabulously (aside from the cd player skipping every few seconds...). It now gets to come out with me on Salamander hunting trips and get all sorts of dirty. So what if it isn't a sports car, it will always be my first car and favourite car.

Catch-Up ... Again

Well a month or so has passed since my last update (as if anyone really cares), but there is a rationalized reason for this. Put simply my laptop died.

My old laptop has been naughty trying to get cancer, and finally succeeded . By this I mean it has been smoking... literally smoking. When I would insert the power chord it would spark and then release a bit of magical white smoke that smelled like burning plastic. So anyway it has since been condemned and I now have received a new laptop for my birthday (yes it was my birthday on Saturday, I turned 19 on the 19th). I have discovered some fun things about this new beastie. First off it has built in camera, but this is fairly standard now-a-days. Next up it has a nice little light next to the camera I can turn on to read the keyboard at night instead of tilting the screen down, so that's nice. The thing I find the most interesting is that it has a fingerprint scanner on it. GUESS HOW I LOG ON! Further it came with a battery extension allowing to run for about 6 hours on battery. Now I have begun the process of putting things on it.

Oh yeah, they can stand up also.

My reading list has also been modified since last time. By that I mean I finished my book In a Sunburnt Country by Bill Bryson. An informative book about the rich history of Australia as well as stories from his journeys to the Down Under. I rather enjoyed his quick wrap up of the animal diversity there, "In Australia, all the animals want to kill you." And this is so true. 9/10 of the most venomous snakes  live in Australia, the funnel web spider is the most venomous spider in the world, cane toads (introduced) can kill you with the secretions of the parotoid gland (characteristic of true toads Bufo), monitor lizards out there as big as dogs can out run rabbits due to a fun adaptation allowing them to breath and run (most reptiles can't because when they run one lung gets compressed as the other gets inflated). Box jellies are the worst though. They see you as flesh and that's all it takes to inject you with a toxin that will feel like putting your skin up to an open flame for hours. Or how about being killed by a snail? Certain cone shells in Australia have a venom that literally bursts your blood cells. So while the land may seem bad, the sea is worse.

After finishing that book, I read The God Virus by Dr. Darrel Ray. In the book he uses the metaphor to liken religion to a virus and uses numerous examples to try an get his point across. It was an interesting book, but I found that it he made his point rather quickly and then moved on without explaining very well. It felt more like, "Here it is! Get it? OK moving on." Rushed, that's the word for it. Don't get me wrong, I liked the book overall, but that just stuck to me.

Would you believe these are foxes? Breeding for tameness 

has resulted in secondary effects unforeseen by the breeders. 

I finished that book in about a week, I was proud of myself. Now I'm going through The Greatest Show on Earth by Richard Dawkins. So far it has been very enjoyable. He sets up the book as a way to, step by step, make Evolution by Natural Selection very straight forward for the general public to understand. That won't keep the public from trying not to understand though. So far nothing much has been told to me that I didn't already know, but it has been put in a very straight forward manner making it flow smoothly from one step to the next. I would recommend the book for those who don't already understand Natural Selection, and for those who already do it may give you some new insights into just how far reaching it's effects are on organisms genomes, even when selecting for a particular trait (he uses the domestication of foxes as a good example).

Now that books are done with, on to dorm life. Some may have already heard this but Sean will not be returning this year to our suite. In fact it sounds like he won't be returning until after next year. His plan as of now is to continue at community college and get a job to pay for it. So while he shall not be returning we must get a new suite-mate. So to fulfil this requirement we have recruited a guy from the second floor of our building, Tobias. We've gotten to know each other before this whole predicament and he didn't want to be stuck in his current room so we thought it a good fit. On to classes report.

So far I have heard back from the Anthro class and Math class, and they sound like B- and B+ respectively. Anthro would've been much better had I known the midterm was on Tuesday instead of Thursday as I thought it was. So keep that in mind, always make sure when midterms are the weekend before! Still need to wait for ECS and Dinosaurs. I'm hoping for B and A respectively. The ECS midterm was torture. Just when the prof says to not make programs overly complex, he goes and does that on the final... So dreadful.... Next quarter though already got my classes set up, and what a group it is, Chem 2B, Bio 2A, Wildlife 10, and Evo/Eco 12. Two of which I shall be taking with Charlie, and I think one of them with Tyler, EEB STUDY PARTNERS! What's also rather nice is the WFC class already has the lecture slides up so I can prepare way ahead of time. Finally on to more current dealings.

Finished up my last final on Saturday and am now in Bodega Bay for a week. Planning on eating plenty of seafood and expanding my pallet. Our first day here though and Snow decides to go jumping over a 40ft cliff. So yesterday was full of adrenaline and stress. Luckily she landed in some mud so it didn't cause as bad an impact. After rushing over to an emergency veterinary office, and having her checked out seems like she was spared from everything other than some bruising and a sprained ankle. She may not realize it, but she is extremely lucky after that kind of a fall. Hopefully we don't get any more nasty surprises the rest of this trip.

Some future plans to keep everyone informed on. These next few weeks I'm planning on using a nice website californiaherps.com to begin my journey on memorizing all the herps in California, their distributions, identification etc. Then I can truely call myself a (young) herpetologist.

One More to Go.

So I now have done 3 of 4 of my finals. Strangely though, I feel good so far. After the A on the astronomy final I feel like things may be going well this first quarter.

Yesterday was chemistry, which I feel went rather well. Chemistry was hard, don't get me wrong. I finally sat down and studied for that painful experience. There were a few instances when I was stuck on a problem then randomly, "THIS CHAIR IS FUN!!!!!" AND IT REALLY WAS! That stupid thought crossed my mind a few times though. I felt a little bad with my TA sitting in front of me, watching me as I randomly started to spin around in my chair. It was the weirdest thing. I had never sat on a chair that was on a swivel arm from between two chairs before. On top of that, the chair twisted on the arm! I was like," TWO DEGREES OF SPIN, OMFG, WTF!!" Back to the test though. I'll admit there were some things on there that caught me for a bit, though I think I got them for the most part. We'll see how it ends up, I figured out that I needed around 180/210 to get like 85% in the class, so with curve that should end up being an A.

Today was Anthro, which I just got back from. Fun. There were a few questions that made me laugh at either the simplicity, or that they were on the practice, verbatim. The last one especially. People kept on sending emails out asking how to do it when it was a simple Hardy-Weinberg question. Not sure why people thought that was so hard... simple 1=p^2+2pq+q^2, where p is frequency of dominant allele and q is frequency of recessive allele. Remember to always mind your p's and q's. Quite possibly my favorite question on there though was about someone running for senator of Delaware in 1998 stating her ignorance of evolutionary theory. "If evolution were true, then why aren't monkeys evolving into humans?" That was her quote. It still shocks me how people holding offices of power in this country can be so ignorant, and proudly so, of high school science. Sadly, it's this ignorance that has made me less fond of a few people I know. Like they're smart, but they hold this veil to shield themselves from any evidence that contradicts their world view. Oh well. Perhaps sometime I convince them, but until then, I'm going to continue enjoying the truth.

Well, only have one more to go. Calculus. They vain of many people's existence. It's on Friday so I have time to prepare and study, I mostly just need to refrain from making stupid mistakes. Last test, the only questions I missed were due to me just over looking one little aspect of the question. As soon as I got the test back I did each question I missed in under 5 min. On one I forget to multiply an integral by y, and the other I did half of it right with the other half needing to be done in the same exact way.... How do you over look that? Clearly I was looking for that in the problem, but I didn't see it happening twice? RAGE!! Everything else, oh just dandy. Had to go and screw up those two with itsy bitsy over sights. Must not happen again.

Finally, I would like to inform people that I try not to do anymore stories on Drew. He has asked me not to because he finds it annoying. Some may say this is censorship, but I feel it's more about his rights and respecting him. But the previous ones will remain up because they have comedic value.

BAD JUJU!!!

So yesterday Drew was acting a bit more hyper than usual, to say the least. Earlier he tied his lanyard around his head to blind fold himself. From here he decided to play a round of "Bad Adventures", only instead of going anywhere he started to hunt down Jay whilst calling him "Brownie". This lasted for a good half hour. Unfortunately the video will not load here, so some fixing will have to take place, but it is available on facebook.

The second occurrence happened later in the day. Our roommate Sean decided to get everyone xmas gifts. Well... he nailed it for Drew when he pulled out a Nerf Gun. To this surprise Drew screeches out, "I've never been allowed to have a nerf gun before!" BAD JUJU! When he gets this, my first reaction is, "I'm gonna go to the bathroom (to hide)." While I'm brushing my teeth I have this horrible thought that Drew is going to come storming through the bathroom to shoot me. Every time someone comes through the door I nearly drop what I'm doing out of fear. When I make it back up to my room, I slowly open the door to have the gun pointed at me with Jay on the floor. This first video is of the next few minutes.

After that Drew decided to go all out and wrapped himself up in his sheets and towels to look like he was wearing a hijab. He then proceeds to create a "wand" by taping two pencils together. Now Drew is a wizard and Jay has the gun. So they decide to stage a battle in our room, needless to say Jay lost in the epic fight that could have claimed many lives... no, not really. I didn't edit this at all, as the first few seconds would have been taken out.A bit over half way through the video, you may hear me whimpering a bit after Drew hits the door frame. The reason for this is that while he didn't hit me, I felt the stick skim over my ear and shoulder. It was at this point when my life flashes before me during a surge of adrenaline.

This whole experience has produced some rather fun quotes. My favorite of which was when the gun had 1 empty space in it. As drew points it towards me the script went a bit as such:
"There is one blank in this gun, so the question is: Are you feeling lucky? Here let me help you (points gun down and fires a blank). Oh well there it was. Still feeling lucky?"
The answer: No I don't.
Another addition to our list of quotes was simply, "Kill shot".

Just About the End of it.

So it has come, the end of my first quarter in college. Oh how time does fly. I have already had one final but it was not much, just astronomy lab. But this week is all about the big 3; Anthropology, Chemistry, and Math


Unfortunately, due to my background as an IB student, I feel that the finals aren't really going to challenge me that much, so I feel I can get away with procrastinating. Like when I try to study I can't focus on it because I look at the material and think to myself, "I know this shit. So why am I trying to read what I already know?" I'm sure this kind of thinking will get me in the end, but it's been almost trained into me thanks to IB (for those who don't know what IB is, I'll do a post about it some other time). My friend Charlie already got the punishment today after his math test, which he did study for. Here I am thinking that I've got it all figured out for my classes so I put off the studying. This is one part of my psychology I really don't like, among many other things. Here I sit on my laptop while in the other room two roommates are studying for chemistry, which is tomorrow, and I feel like I know the material. After all my last test I got one of the highest grades in the class. I should feel good about that, no? At the same time I didn't really study for that test either, I thought it was all fairly straight forward. So I agonize over not studying, but when I do try to study I can't focus. It's almost like a double edged sword and I'm about to swing it in one way or another.


I have learned about myself here in college though, and how to make it so I can study. No it's not use drugs. It's an aspect of myself I rather enjoy actually. When I move around I get into the material more. This might be one of the reasons I enjoy doing math. I do math homework on a white board to allow myself more freedom in motion. I begin to exaggerate strokes, making it more active and by doing so I activate my brain. Now I can't do that in class, so sometimes I'll talk to myself (a bad habit of mine some may claim), but it really does help me think about the problem at hand. I'm glad I'm realizing this about myself now at the start of college, otherwise I may be in for a world of hurt when it comes to the harder classes. 


If this post seems to change directions frequently, well... too bad.

I Want to Meet People, I Really Do

Having just gotten back from lunch with some friends I noticed the seating arrangement compared to social interaction ratio and have concluded that a good group size is about 6 people. The seventh person just isn't within the group enough to be able to be a part of the conversation so just seems like a spare tire on a big rig. Even if someone does leave they still sit awkwardly on the side not really being a part of anything because they can't hear what's going on. An 8th person helps a bit, but at that point it's still worse than even two people eating together. One side of the table will be trying to pay attention to the conversation, but can't hear it very well. If a conversation gets striked up between the two on the lonely side, it doesn't last very long because they're still trying to pay attention to the main discussion between the center 6 people. So bring in a 9th and the equation settles itself out because three on one side will just start up their own thing because the one on the very outside can't hear squat.

While I'm on this topic, those of you who are going to college I have a suggestion, get one of the larger buildings. I'm in one of the small buildings, and people just aren't social at all here (it doesn't help that Drew just closes the door every time he's in). I know more people in even one of larger buildings than I know in my own building. In those buildings the floors have more people than my building even does. In that kind of environment floormates all know each other and do everything together. But in my pathetic little slice of the population people have their doors closed making you feel unwanted in the desolate hallway. In those larger buildings it's the exact opposite, all the doors are open, people just come and go as they please, just so much more friendly than in my gloomy den.

MATH TEST GRR!!

So today finally got our calculus midterms back, only took them 2 weeks to grade it (compared to chemistry that finishes them on the day of the test), but got 104/140 due to curve I got like A-/B+, damn... should have done better. When I got it back though, I look at the problems I got wrong and then instantly see what I screwed up on and did them in 3 steps... HOW DID I NOT SEE THIS!! Don't you hate it when that happens? It feels like you're looking for your keys and remember they're in your room, but you can't find them. Coming back a few minutes later you see them right there on your desk. At that point... mm I'm gonna go hide away so no one see's that stupidity.
What I find even worse about these two is that I had to split it up in two points, to bring them together for the final answer. So I do one split and then forget to put in the second, which is in the same freaking style as the first split.... BUT, I guess it's not too bad overall. Still have the final so time to stu- procrastinate on YouTube.
Some may have noticed I'm keeping from swearing. Personally I don't care about swearing, but I know some people do, so for those who don't care, just replace the soft words with the real ones. Next time I'll just bleep them out and the message still gets across.