Who’s there?

Mexican scientists.

Mexican scientists who?

Mexican scientists who turn tequila into diamonds.

That’s your quote for the day, taken horribly out of context. It’s also my excuse for not updating for something like 9 months.

http://www.flong.com/storage/experience/yellowtail/

http://www.flong.com/storage/experience/meshy/index.html

http://www.flong.com/storage/experience/floccus/

http://www.flong.com/storage/experience/stripe/

and my favorite

http://www.flong.com/storage/experience/dakadaka/dakadaka.html

Here’s my harebrained scheme of the week:

Last semester, I vowed to get more bang for my buck timewise. I’d be a productive little guy, I told myself. I’d lock myself up in the library Monday through Friday, emerging at the crack of dawn on Saturday to live it up (or maybe, “live it up”). Rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat, and all said and done, I’d be a smarter, happier Panda.

Somewhere along the line, the plan broke down. I don’t need to explain; nearly everyone is familiar with life’s wild disregard for personal plans, and by mid-semester, my old (normal) habits from days past had returned, and it became clear that no smarter, happier Panda would rise from the rubble at semester’s end.

Well, this is my counteroffensive.

The plan is to spot exactly where my 24 hours go each day. Is the Internet the culprit? Other people? Blogging?

Here’s how I’m going to do this:

I’m going to write down what I do throughout the day for different time intervals in a log. 2:26 PM – 2:XY PM, for example, would be logged as “vomited on blog”. Anything that takes 2+ minutes will be logged. Each activity will also fall under a category tag:

• SL (sleep): zzzzz…
• EC (extracurricular committments): my job, for example, or class government (the category will be broken into subcategories)
• SP (social pursuits): you know, talking to other people.
• PP (private pursuits): this includes things like blogging or wasting time on the Internet or learning how to play Parcheesi
• AC (academics): what?
• RS (random shit): walking from place to place, and stuff like that

I’ll try to log things in a small notebook, and put the whole thing into an Excel file. At the end of each week, I can get a category-by-category breakdown of where my time went. If I feel extra-tool, I’ll even make a pie chart (and switch my major to Woody Woo or ORFE).

Grades not so hot? Maybe academics should take up more than 2% of my time. People hate me? Maybe I should socialize more – or maybe less. Do I need to increase academic productivity? Or should I spend a greater portion of my weekends studying? Or maybe drop an extracurricular commitment? Very soon, I will have answers.

It seems reasonable enough that knowing life is squarely beating me is the first step in fighting back. I’ll figure out where I ought to allocate my time, do it really well, and be better than the rest of you non-activity-logging fools. I’ll get a better job, earn more money, have a more beautiful wife, love snottier children, and be shoved into a more expensive casket than you. And then won’t you be jealous?

No?

Well, fuck.

Goodnight to you all,

Aditya

“Be always at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let each new year find you a better man.”

~Benjamin Franklin

There was a commercial this evening for classic Shirley Temple movies. She was an adorable gal, puffy cheeks, tap dancing, and all. Wondering what happened to adorable Shirley T (did she marry a Tilghman?), I wiki’d her. Turns out, not only did she enjoy success on the silver screen, but she’s also been rather involved in other domains:

Shirley Temple Black became involved in Republican Party politics, unsuccessfully entering a Congressional race in 1967 on a platform that supported the United States’ involvement in the Vietnam War; she had run against Pete McCloskey, who was famous for his opposition to the war, rare in a Republican and rarer in a retired Marine. She went on to hold several diplomatic posts, serving as the U.S. delegate to many international conferences and summits. She was appointed a delegate to the United Nations by President Richard M. Nixon in 1969. She was appointed United States Ambassador to Ghana (1974–76). In 1976, she became the first female Chief of Protocol of the United States which put in her charge of all State Department ceremonies, visits, gifts to foreign leaders and co-ordination of protocol issues with all U.S. embassies and consulates. She was United States Ambassador to Czechoslovakia (1968 and 1989–92) and witnessed the Velvet Revolution. She commented, about her Ambassadorship, “That was the best job I ever had.” In 1987 she was designated the first Honorary Foreign Service Officer in U.S. history by then U.S. Secretary of State, George Shultz.

Black served on the board of directors of some large enterprises including The Walt Disney Company (1974–75), Del Monte, Bancal Tri-State, and Fireman’s Fund Insurance. Her non-profit board appointments included the Institute for International Studies at Stanford University, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Council of American Ambassadors, the World Affairs Council, the United States Commission for UNESCO, the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, the United Nations Association, and the U.S. Citizen’s Space TaskForce.

And to think that, for some reason, I was under the impression she’d committed suicide!

I just discovered “Flight of the Conchords”, a two-man group that has carved out a nice little niche for itself as “formerly New Zealand’s fourth most popular guitar-based digi-bongo acapella-rap-funk-comedy folk duo”.

Curious? Here are samples:

“Business Time”

“If You’re Into It”

“Hiphopopotomus v. Rhymenocerous”

Anyway, now that I’m back in East Brunswick, eight sweet hours of sleep await. Sayonara, folks!

Eight lectures down, fifteen to go! Woo.

So it appears that after this PHI 202 exam tomorrow, a bit of packing, and a quick precept, I’ll be heading home tomorrow afternoon. Since this is pretty early, and since even I hadn’t counted on leaving on Monday, chances are I won’t be able to go around and say my goodbye’s. So in case I don’t see you within the next 16-odd hours, a Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, Jolly Hanukkah, Festive Kwanza, Cheery Easter, and Mirthful St. Patrick’s Day to you all.

On a side note, given my post [in]consistency to date, aren’t you guys happy I don’t have pets?

See you next year!

I’m not sure how I feel about the upcoming week.

I pretty much know my tasks at hand: take care of class government responsibilities, take care of statistics HW, do philosophy reading, work on CS, and work on getting that internship for the summer (optional), work at job, and work for debate tournament. The difficulty is not that I have a fuzzy idea of what the week ahead will look like. I can’t see too many curveballs coming my way (though if a curveball does come, the fact that I haven’t seen its source may mean that it’ll be particularly bad). The difficulty is that it is an outrageous amount to take care of in a week (especially the killer CS + debate combination).

In all honestly, I often prefer the weeks that are low work but high stress (with plenty of curveballs in my life), but after going through two of those before break, it’ll be nice to just strap in and just take care of the massive piles of work piling up, one by one, without worrying so much about what my next move is.

Anyway, I better call it a night. Sleep’s going to be a luxury this week.

(01:02:52) The Voice of Reason: i’ve changed my buddy alias to “the voice of reason”
(01:03:06) Abhir Adhate: ?
(01:03:30) The Voice of Reason: i figure it’ll give me more certainty as i plunge into nebulous logical debates
(01:03:44) The Voice of Reason: i can always say
(01:03:58) The Voice of Reason: “look, who’s the voice of reason in this conversation?”
(01:04:14) Abhir Adhate: wait you changed your own alias … to the voice of reason… i dont think you are qualified to make that assertion
(01:04:24) Abhir Adhate: it needs to be peer reviewed!
(01:04:50) Abhir Adhate: and needs to be indepedently tested by other peers
(01:04:57) Abhir Adhate: in extensive double blind tests
(01:05:10) Abhir Adhate: then and only then can you call yourself the voice of reason
(01:06:25) The Voice of Reason: look, that’d all make sense, but i believe in the diametric opposite of what you said
(01:06:38) The Voice of Reason: and, really now, who’s the voice of reason in this conversation?
(01:06:57) Abhir Adhate: touche!
(01:07:10) Abhir Adhate: i guess it works