i'm finally getting a chance to post some of the pictures from the hailstorm on tuesday...
it was crazy... really really crazy. tech campus actually got hit harder than the rest of the town. the largest stones were about as big baseballs, and most of them were much larger than golf balls. it only came down for about fifteen minutes, but the damage is gone! almost every roof in town needs work. all the trees are stripped of their leaves and most of their small branches. three people got caught outside in the storm and had to be rushed to the hospital. one got hit in the head, there are pictures of him in the internet bleeding, with a concussion. every windsheild is smashed, and every car has pock marks all over it. some even have holes in the body. now they're all covered in tarps and plastic bags. the glass companies are really going to make a killing.
the storm was incredible to watch. the hail was coming down so fast that it sent dirt and grass flying up where it hit the ground and terra cotta tiles falling where it hit the roof. the velocity was unbelievable. adam told me that after the storm passed, his new roommate josh (who is quite a bit more athletic than the average techie) picked up one of the stones and threw it as hard as he could at his truck- not a scratch. that means they were coming down a lot faster than that, and i really don't think that josh is a weakling.
mike had just parked my car under a tree before the hail came down, and he actually got hit in the back with one of the stones on the way inside. he's okay, but poor jules is very beat up. the tree didn't protect her, it just covered her in dents and foilage. my back windsheild had three good-sized holes in it when the storm passed, and my front windsheild is destroyed too.
but she's not the worst. all the cars parked by south hall got really hammered. mike's truck is very beat up also. he lost a mirror and a headlight. the golf course is pretty jacked, as you can see.
honestly, these pictures don't do the storm justice. going outside is depressing because there is SO much damage. all the buildings have barriers around them so people won't get too close and get hit by falling peices of the roof. a lot of tech's buildings have skylights- or used to have skylights, i should say. there's broken glass everywhere. for more pictures, check out our "official" natural disaster site.

we used to have a nice golf course

test day

there's good news and there's bad news, and both have this annoying sense of irony.

last thursday we had a thermo test, and let me tell you, i studied for hours and hours. i can't remember the last time i studied that hard for a test. dr. cal told us to study the homework and we'd be fine. i went through every homework problem with the solutions he gave us and worked through what i had done wrong and highlighted all the formulas i used and put sticky tabs all through my book. i made a immaculate cheat sheet. i really felt very prepared for this test. i worked SO hard, harder than all my study buddies. i bet you can see where this is going.

well, nothing i studied was on the test. i might as well have had a macgyver marithon and never cracked a book.

on tuesday we had a dynamics test. i was pretty wiped out from all my thermo studying, so i didn't start studying til ten p.m. the night before. i didn't even look at the homework, i just skimmed the book and wrote stuff down on the cheat sheet.

we got both tests back today. i got the highest grade in the class in dynamics, a 98. i beat jon berg, the brainiest guy in the whole school, by nine points. i was one of only two people to get the angular velocity question right, out of a class of about thirty. the averae was about a 73.

the thermo test average was an 84. that's very high. i got a 57. i know it's not the worst, someone got a 48, but i'm so upset! i worked so hard, and i have nothing to show for it. the test was graded fairly and everything. what lesson am i supposed to learn from this?

the great hail storm of '04

SOCORRO COUNTY DECLARES DISASTER AREA
Socorro County Commissioners, in an emergency meeting on Oct. 7, declared the county a disaster area. Help for uninsured property owners may be on the way, but the process is lengthy, and everyone is asked to be patient.County Manager Jody McSmith said the county today has started rounding up figures of all damages in the county to forward to the Emergency Preparedness Office in Santa Fe.
If the total damage assessment is greater than $2 million in uninsured personal property, Gov. Bill Richardson can ask the President of the United States for an emergency declaration to release federal funds to aid individual property owners.

strike two

dr jo is evil.

the concepts in vectors are pretty easy, it's all definitions and multiplying and dividing and dividing and taking square roots and derivatives. at least i think it's easy... there are some people in the class that have trouble thinking 3-dimentionally. so imagine how hard it is for them when the components we have to work with on the homework aren't easy things like exponentials, sines, and cosines, but things like log ( sec (t) ) or t*arctant. that's mean. really mean.

and what is the point of that? i think if we can figure it out with easy components we understand the material. this is stuff that the teachers in calc3 and diffeqs would never give us because it's too bloody time-consuming and you never see it in the real world anyway! and when the whole class begged for an extention today, jo was all bugged and gave us a lecture about how we aren't being responsible about homework and we're not spending enough time working on it.

whatever. i spent more that five hours on the homework last night and i wasn't even halfway done. true, five or even ten hours would be a short amount of time in any other class i'm taking, but this is vectors. it's really frustrating when i completely understand the concept and i'm still up all night doing algebra.

grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.....

bigger, better, more complex brainwaves!

Devil64: i just thought of something... what if jon's obvious metal superiority is just a purposeful distraction from his actual mutant powers?
webguru: oh my goodness, that's it!
Devil64: he's just like that to really put us off his scent, so we won't try to figure out what he can actually do. it's the perfect disguise.
webguru: I think you might be onto something.

brainwaves

Devil64: it's so weird, josh and i are on exactly the same study schedule. last night we were both so brain dead... and when one of us is motovated, the other is too
webguru: funny! maybe you guys emit some sort of pheremone that makes you on the same schedule, like the whole girls period thing
Devil64: that's a disturbing thought
webguru: isn't it though?
Devil64: it may be true though
webguru: it could be
webguru: Jake and Scott and I seem to be that way
Devil64: so how does this work? if i hang around you, we'll start matching each other?
Devil64: because kat's not on this schedule, and she was there last night
webguru: I don't know
webguru: we don't have the same classes, just one class in common, so the phereomone isn't that strong
Devil64: hmmm
Devil64: and i'm in four classes with josh... and two with kat, so maybe that's something
Devil64: but that doesn't explain jon. he's in the same four as josh and i
webguru: well he's just sort of super human
webguru: his powerful brain can resist the phereomones
Devil64: that must be his mutant power!
webguru: it must be!
Devil64: today we RUSHED like you wouldn't believe to finish our thermo homework, and when the rest of us were sitting around recovering, jon pulled out his dynamics homework for NEXT week and started working on it
webguru: oh my goodness, that's sick
Devil64: and i said, "jon, don't you ever get fried?"
Devil64: and he laughed
webguru: oh my goodness!
Devil64: i know
webguru: he needs some mental help before he cracks
Devil64: he said he does get worn out, but i think he said that so i wouldn't find out about his mutant power
webguru: i knew it, he's covering!
Devil64: i wonder what his weakness is
webguru: "B"s?
Devil64: he said he's only had one "A-" since he's been here
Devil64: ....though in reality, it's probably been a lot longer than that
webguru: holy freaking cow that is sickening

i know you guys may be sick of hearing about it, but i really can't get enough of yes lately. i'm always listening to their music, and i'm probably driving jessica insane by playing "long-distance runnaround" and "i've seena ll good people" over and over again, but those are totally my songs of this month. last month music was just about anything from the de-lovely soundtrack. the month before that i think was los lonley boys, but the point is, YES ROCKS!

GRRRR!!!

last wednesday i took a vectors test, and i was really excited because i thought i had kicked butt, i felt really good about all of my answers, i thought maybe i got them all right, i knew i for sure got a better score than adam, and look at my big ol' sentance! that's how mad i am!

jo took forever to get the tests back to us. a week. that's too long. our class isn't that big. see, now i'm making all these little dumb sentances! that's how mad i am! GRRRR!

i finally got my test back, and it's an 88. i made two really trivial mistakes and lost four points, and then made the smallest mistake on another one and lost eight points. eight out of eight! no partial credit! would you like to know what i did? i used cosine instead of sine. that's all! that's a very understandable mistake! and now it's plus zero for me!

i went and argued with him about it, and no good. he pretty much told me, "yeah, you blew it! but you're above average, so suck it up." GGRRRR!!!

yes, i was a lot above average, which was a 70, and i was also quite a bit above adam, who got a 79. i don't think he's used to me being better at something than he is. true, he's usually the brain. i'm glad i get to pay him back for all the help he gave me in physics. yay for friends.

GRRRRR!!! for dr. jo! i'm totally going to rip him on the class evaluations in december.

here's a picture i took on campus a few weeks ago. what do you think about it?

yes indeed

last night i had SO much fun! i went to the sandia casino with mike to see a concert. not just any concert, my friends, oh no... we went to see yes.

yes, yes, yes!

this is probably my favorite band, except for the beatles, but really, who could beat the beatles? anyway, they were awesome! the venue was beautiful and the sun was setting and the sound was crisp... i loved it. our seats were great, but there really aren't bad seats in the place. when the show got going i went down to the front and stood on the lawn in front of the stage and just stared up at the band. it was so cool.

it was also really nice to go to a concert and not have to get sick of the people that just go to be seen or to act snobby or to crowd surf. the fans were all happy and friendly and there to enjoy the music. it was very refreshing. it was also different from other concerts i've gone to in that most of the crowd was over forty, since yes was popular in the 70's and 80's. that was nice too. when the show was over, it was middle-aged women, not teenage boys, that were standing next to me chanting "encore!"

that's another thing. these guys are old. this was their 35th anniversary tour. at one point, jon anderson introduced a song as one they had written in 1957. yikes. but it didn't affect their show by any means, they rocked. the band was awesome. steve howe is the most talented person i think i've ever seen. his acoustic solo was probably the highlight of the show, except of course the performance of "owner of a loney heart." that's not my favorite yes song, but it's high on my list and my favorite that they played last night. the band honestly seemed like they were having lots of fun, and the crowd was very appriciative of them. jon anderson started talking about the beauty of new mexico and how they can't really pin down what it is that makes up the american spirit. the band came back for one encore, a cover of an old beatles song. it was a great ending.

right now i'm wearing a black hat that says "yes" on the front and "35" on the back. rock and roll.

five movie reveiws (reviews?)

i watched five movies this weekend, all that i hadn't seen before. if you haven't seen them either, no worries, i won't give away the ending. i really hate it when people do that.

The Butterfly Effect- this movie completely blew me away. it was by far the best one i saw this weekend. i should metion right now that i saw the director's cut, which i'm told has a totally different ending from the theatre version. some nudity, too. but the plotline was so awesome, i don't know how people come up with brilliant stuff like that.
the movie starts out with a flash-forward to the end, with ashton krutcher's character, evan, running through a building and hiding from people. he writes a note about trying to save a mysterious "her". it then goes back to his childhood, when he's seven and when he's thirteen, and begins the story. little evan seems to have a problem- he blacks out events in his childhood and can't remember what happened while he was out, even though others don't notice a difference in his behavior. his mom gets concerned about him, thinking that he had inheirited a mysterious "father's illness", and makes him start keeping journals and writing everything down so he can remember it better.
after a messed-up childhood, evan discovers that he can revisit events in his past by reading about them in his journal, and can even change what happened. of course by changing the past he changes the future, and he gets stuck going back and forth between his childhood and the alternate presents he creates, trying to find the perfect future for everyone he loves. you see the problem here i think.
like i said, the plotline was great, maybe just a little disturbing. i was very impressed with the versitility of the actors. one that went to particular extremes was william lee scott, who played adult tommy.
one thing that did bug me about this film was that the directors made it seem like a horror movie at first. the first half hour or so makes you think that little even is very psychotic, sadistic, murderous, etc, but that's really not how it is at all. there were definitely some not-so-pleasant scenes, but this was in no way a slasher movie, contrary to the initial vibes.
the butterfly effect is definitely a thinker. it's got some nudity and a lot of language and a lot of violence, even among the seven and thirteen-year-old characters. it's disturbing... but you have to see it!

Maid in Manhattan- i was a little bit prepared for this one... alicia of course told me how it ended several months ago, so there was no surprize. i really hate when she does that. but i guess it didn't ruin much since it says "cinderella story" on the tagline.
anyway, this movie was very enjoyable. i think jennifer lopez is extremely beautiful, especially when she's not in one of her music videos. there are a lot of great dresses in this film. the kid that played the son was great! he was funny and believable and really cute! he reminded me of my little brother. he was my favorite, along with the make-shift fairy-godmother, who was really the heroine's troublemaker co-worker.
the "prince charming" character didn't impress me too much. he wasn't very likeable or dreamy, in my opinion, and i didn't understand why she fell for him. it was because he liked her kid i guess. okay. it's true, girls are suckers for guys that like kids. guys, take note of this but don't abuse it.
all in all, this movie was interesting as movies go, but it wasn't very believable in the plotline. it was very predictable, not just because i knew the ending or because the end of cinderella is common knowledge anyway, but because there was no suspence. a nice little chick flick, but nothing special.

The Prince and Me- (a.k.a. cinderella story # 2) i liked this one better than maid in manhatten, but i still didn't get it. what's so great about the guy? it's frusterating.
this is the story of edward, the spoiled, perverted, lazy prince of denmark and the hardworking, movated, focused, sensible, independant, wisconsin college girl, paige. and that's just it! there was no kid to speed up the process in this story. i can't understand it when these goal-oriented intelligent women fall for these total guys. no offence guys, but really, what is the deal? that's why i never really liked the music man. the songs are great, to be sure, but the sensible librarian falls for this lying, cheating con artist. i hate that.
anyway, this film was a little too multi-faceted for me. there were too many stages of the relationship. they were strangers, enimies, friends, and lovers, in several different locations. and those categories were visited more than once each. it's like this movie crammed what might be a believable romance into... well, into a movie. it didn't work in my head.
what also didn't work is why she fell for him. he's very dreamy-looking, but she had her goals and he had no character, and i just don't see it.
i did enjoy this movie, even though it may not seem like it. there were some beautiful locations, very nice dresses, incredible palaces, and a handsome couple. but i don't think i'd watch this one again.

Knockaround Guys- i wanted to see this movie because i really like barry pepper and seth green, even though vin diesel doesn't inpress me much and i really can't stand john malkovich. i just think he's the worst actor in the whole world. i liked this movie a lot. there was a lot of language and a considerable amount of violence (the worst part was in the first ten minutes), but i did like it. i liked that seth green's character flew an airplane.
this really isn't a light-hearted movie, as it's about a mob kid trying to prove himself to his uncle and father. the movie starts out with the uncle telling the 12-year-old kid to kill one of the mob targets in the basement of the family restaurant. it has a lot of honest suspence, and i really like that about movies. i love the feeling that i don't know what's going to happen, for some reson. this one's not a waste of your time.

When Harry met Sally- okay, i never thought of billy crystal as attractive before, but in this movie i thought differently. he also does that lonely, lost-puppy look very well. i still kept thinking of him in an old man face saying lines from the princess bride, which messed me up for a while, but didn't spoil anything. meg ryan freaks me out, i'm not sure why, and this movie was no different. i see a lot of her, however, since she is one of mike's favorite actresses.
but about the movie... i really liked that they kept meeting at several year intervals, that made it interesting, and the initial 70's style was fun. billy crystal is so funny! and carrie fischer in her role as the quirky best friend was hilarious as well. i never knew that about her.
this movie is about two very different people who are looking for love and not really finding what they want. as they keep running into each other, they become good friends. of course a weird romance blossoms. the movie has serveral interruptions, so to speak, from old couples sitting on the couch telling the stories of how they met. it's very sweet. i'm not one to really like romantic movies, but i liked this one. and it was funny! but honestly, what did i expect, watching a film by the creator of the princess bride?
i took a quiz online once that said this was the movie i belong in. naturally i was very curious, but i just don't see it. i really don't. can you explain this to me?

here's to many more

i'm sure none of you know this, but last night marked five months to the day that mike and i have been together. since he bought me like twenty roses and a milk shake last month (and i forgot), i figured i'd better be on top of things this month. i wanted to get a coloring book, but the only one in the store was vandalized. i went with twelve peach-colored roses and a bottle of sparkleing bubbly.

mike gave me a watch. and drew me a picture.

the picture is of tinkerbelle, and she's really cute and surrounded by stars and the words to one of the songs from the musical, Peter Pan, in mike's pretty caligraphy handwriting. the watch has a thick brown leather band with pretty pink flowers and stars, and the face is all shiney and pink and square. it's perfect. there's no way i could have picked out a better watch for myself. i was bragging about it to everybody today.

aww, he's so cute! what a good boyfriend i have. :)

meet jessica

so i bet you're wondering by now... what's the new roommate like? as you may or may not know, kim graduated last spring (but no use, she's back doing undergrad, civil engineering this time), so i got a new freshman. last time i got a freshman it ended disasterously, we never spoke to each other and i ended up moving out. this time, however, i think it'll be fine. meet jessica.

jessica is an undeclared engineering major who plays the clarinet and bassoon who was drum major at her school for the last two years. we were emailing this summer, and when i got that information i formed a jessica in my mind. i figured short, long-haired burnette, athletic, and mean, loud, and in-your-face enough to be a drum major. i was really surprized. wrong on all points.

jessica is tall with short blond hair (although not as short as mine, since i cut off eleven inches this summer). while she must have incredible endurance to be a drum major, she doesn't have a particularly athletic build. the most surprizing part is that she's very soft spoken. she's not mean at all, not even sarcastic. she's very nice and already has several friends here, and she's from farmington, so she knows a lot of the same people mike knows. one thing that really impressed me is that she's not trying really hard to present this image like most freshmen do (and like i did). most of them are trying to be cool or crazy or impressive or snobby or rebelious or whatever. and she doesn't go that way.

and one more thing, she's totally cool. she brought these pretty cork boards that she made, and she has a desk calander that has a shoe for every day of the year. and she brought sparkley power-puff- girls handsoap. that's awesome!

we haven't been like super-bonding or anything, but i think we'll be just fine.

revenge becomes me?

the "funniest" thing happened in economics on thursday...
ghosh was giving us some sample problems and then working through them, which took forever of course, because he read all of them out loud. no body was really listening. people fell into two categories; sit-back-and-dose, which i joined, or race-dr.-ghosh-to-finish-the-problem, which almost everyone else joined. josh was sitting between me and ben. he didn't have his calculator, so he kept trying to get ben's, which ben was still trying to use, and you see the problem.

since i was sitting back and dosing, i gave josh my calculator to use. he turned the screen on and laughed. the screen said "I HEART YOU HOT HOLLY!"

that could only be from mike. i think i blushed.

then dumb ol' josh passed it to ben. who passed it to the next person. and so on. soon the whole row was laughing. i KNOW i was blushing then.

it's cute that mike left me a calculator message... but josh is going to get it.

back to school

confound and bebother this slow dorm connection! man did i get spoiled this summer with steve's wireless internet.
it's the first day of classes, and yes, i do have a lot of catching up to do on the twenty days you didn't hear from me. i promise it'll come soon. this semester i'm taking dynamics, engineering economics, thermo, fluids, vectors, and junior design, yay! i had to get my advisor dr. reilley to sign off on that one, because he controlls my life and happens to be the teacher. every time i go talk to him i feel like i've won a battle. he's so intimidating.
everyone and their dog is taking dynamics, including mike, jd, josh, kat, jeremy, and jon. in fact... josh and jon were in all my classes today, and we're already in the same project group for economics. we have ghosh for that class, the same teacher i had for statics. i guess this time we'll be prepared for a butt-kicker final. his stuttering seems to have gotten better, but he still has the craziest accent i've ever heard.
i have jr. design in one hour. i'm a little worried about dr. reilley. josh told me he wants to get an a in that class just so he can throw it in reilley's face.
yeah, speaking of josh... what a pain! in thermo i was playing with my bracelet and he whispered, "i bet if dr. zeman was teaching you'd pay attention." he still thinks i have a crush on him. i told him that if i was the flipping off kind of person i would totally flip him off.
and i had a thought today. an army of one. talk about an all-time recruiting scam. yeah sure, be an individual, join the military!