Alex RasmussenI make things that do stuff with computers

Cal had an honest shot at the Rose Bowl today, and we lost. We lost hard. Until the fourth quarter, we looked like we had a shot. We were keeping one of the best teams in the country in check, even if our offense was kind of slow. Then the fourth quarter comes, USC kicks on the afterburners, and we are made to look like a bunch of chumps on national TV. Again. USC goes on to glory for the umpteenth time, and we’re stuck at another second-rate bowl that (due to the team’s disappointment and shock at having not won the upset) we will probably lose. Again.

I hurt my toe. Ouch. Then I thought it would heal itself and walked around on it for several days before getting it treated. Stupid, and ouch again. Now it’s bandaged up and I have to take antibiotics and painkillers, both of which are making me thoroughly nauseated most of the time. It’s no fun. At all. You’d be amazed how many times a day you use your big toe.

I am behind on everything. The meds I’m taking for my stupid toe make me tired and shaky. I will probably spend a very large portion of my Thanksgiving break scrambling to make progress on research and applying to graduate school. Applying to graduate school is more psychologically draining than I’d care to discuss here, mostly because admissions committees might be reading this.

Let’s just say that I wish everything else was as easy and lucrative as getting a job.

“The council of ministers invites the Security Council to meet to study the Arab-Israeli conflict in all its aspects because of the failure of all efforts related to the peace process,” Reuters quoted Moussa as saying.

Whenever I turn on the news these days, I feel like I’m watching the end of the first half of one of those end-of-the-world disaster movies. Every one of those movies begins the same way. A handful of scientists and intellectuals telling Congress that the whole world is about to go to hell very, very soon. The politicians scoffing at them, saying, “Are you kidding? Everyone else is telling us that the asteroid isn’t going to hit us/it won’t be that big of a storm/the machines aren’t that intelligent yet!” Then, right at the end of the first half, the politicians and most of the scientists and intellectuals realize that they were wrong, and that the asteroid is going to hit, or it’s really going to be that big of a storm, or Skynet just dropped a nuke on Los Angeles.

Right there, you get the news story montage – news stations all over the world reporting various horrible things that are happening. If I turn on CNN or NBC or (heaven forbid) Fox News, I feel like I’m seeing that montage. Only this time it’s not a movie.

Sorry if that sounds bitter or depressing, it’s just how I’m feeling about the whole mess the human race is in lately.

So the unit in which I live and for which I work had a massive connectivity outage today. Wow did that piss some people off.

Most of the time I like my job; I get to help people out, and I do what I used to do for free and get paid for it. Today, however, I had to deal with more than one particularly belligerent resident during my phone bank answering time and it seriously got to me. I mean, generally I’m not a very angry person, but people who are unreasonable just piss me off sometimes. This was one of those times.

On a completely unrelated topic, a public service announcement:

To all people over the age of 8: when answering a question in the negative, do not use ‘Nu-uh.’ If you must, at least don’t pronounce it. It makes you sound dumb. Suitable alternatives include, but are not limited to, “No”, “Nay, yeoman! Ha-ha!”, “Not on your life!”, “(insert the question rephrased as a statement, with ‘your mother’ as the subject)!” and “That’s not true! That’s impossible! Noooooooo!”

This has been a public service announcement.