I saw Arling (yeah, I know... all I do during break is watch movies and TV)... I saw Arlington Road today (Tuesday). That is a tremendous movie. It kept my brother and I on the edge with a slight feeling of discomfort throughout most of the movie. That discomfort I guess made it a good movie.

I've got this problem. I have a CD carrier that carries 104 cds. I have 120 odd cds that I'd like to take back to school. I've got another case for CDs that I could use, I suppose. I'm also looking at cutting and pasting tracks together to form new CDs. There's got to be a better way to take music with you.

Here's my thing. I'm not one for compressed music (come on, I'm not one for compressed anything, if I like it enough. That's why I'm taking all my CDs). So MiniDisc's and MP3s are out of the question. What I'd like is for a forward thinking company that knows how to put a lot of 1s and 0s in a small area (IBM, I'm looking at you) to create mini-drives which can hold maybe a gigabyte of data. It would include music data that was uncompressed. Track titles and artist work, videos and whatever else artists included with their releases. The artist would use a low volume version of these drives to distribute music, but you'd only carry the higher capacity mini-drives and include only the songs you wanted. It would all be managed using some snazzy-Jetsonesque computer interface. As far as copy protection goes, I guess that's a bit out of the picture. Likewise I could care less. I'll pay $20 per album, and I'm sure other music connoisseurs will too. I mean it's not as if people aren't violating protections right now with CDs. Everyone I know has burned CDs of music artists. I don't. I pay money for music I like. MP3s I use for one-hit wonders or for music that I don't feel deserves my money, but deserves my ear. That's just my philosophy on music. We'll leave it to the bureaucracy of media distributors to decide.

Good movie. Very twisted. Very entertaining.

Hands cold. ftmax.com gone temporarily.

Well my "family" celebrated Christmas this year. My sister-in-law got me an autographed picture of Darth Maul (Ray Parks) and for my brother a poster of the Empire Strikes Back signed by all that were pictured on the poster. Very cool stuff that would, I am sure, peak the interest of even Mark "Darth" Burbach. For many of you that last part of the last sentence meant nothing. This is because you have no knowledge of he that is Mark.

A plane from Kathmandu to New Dehli has been hijacked and that led me to thinking. I thought and I thought and I said, "Brain. You're a good brain. You are able to solve most problems I throw at you. Solve the problem of hijacking." My brain got to work and it came up with this idea. Airplane staff should be trained in these types of situations. Of course in a real hostage situation, no matter how much training someone goes through, they can always freeze.

So that's where beloved technology comes in. The first idea I came up with was a remotely controlled gun. That would be a on a rail on the ceiling and would fire down at someone. Unfortunately it's not a good thing to use when in the air due to the chance of missing your target and depresurizing the cabin. So my next idea was poisons or potions. If they need something to drink the airhosts can serve them some concoction that will put them to sleep. My final idea was to somehow gas the seating area of the plane with something that would put everybody to sleep. If you could somehow prevent the gas from affecting the pilots then you are set. Of course, it isn't too far from the future when planes will be fully automated. I'm sure we have the technology to control planes remotely at least. I'll find out more about this.

Merry Christmas to all who celebrate. To those who don't take advantage of the commercial benefits of the season.

I'm in "Min-ne-so-o-ta." Julie and her family were very kind in letting me spend the night and then taking me to the airport this morning. I will try to find ways to occupy my time wilst I am in "Min-ne-so-o-ta," until I go to Germany. On my list now is sketching out the next two years of my academic life.

I have no finals, so I can complain. Notice the blatant lack of customer service in any field? Hospital... assholes. Fast food... assholes. Banks... assholes. Hotels... assholes. I swear to god, everybody's got this asshole attitude in every industry. I think for this reason the Internet commerce will trive and will force people to be more and more reluctant to have person to person contact with strangers. I'm going to have to put a stop to this.

On the lighter side of things, people have been emailing me some funny crap. I'll post it somewhere, worth a read. Really in-depth stuff... funny... very funny.

I am relieved... sort of. I finished the final this morning, doing fairly well, but not perfection. It's okay. It's all over now. Happy. I get to leave campus for a month. I'm packing stuff right now. Cleaning my room and whatnot. Tonight I'm going up to Julie's home in Palpatine! Nothing can be cooler than living in a town named Palpatine! Then tomorrow early in the morning I'm off to MDW to catch my flight home. I'll be back around midday. Fun times ahead, I hope, and then off to Germany.

A- for Econ 102. A for CS 273. CS 231 is up in the air. Hindi is an A thus far, but it is pending on the final I took today. Math 361 depends on my performance tomorrow. If I do as well as I have been doing I can muster up an A. So I will attempt this. I have three hours to get write down the right stuff to get an A. Luck be with me.

I've been learning a lot this week. I keep putting information into my brain until there is too much for it to handle efficiently and then I sleep. I repeat this process. I plan to keep on learning for ever and will become the world's uber-mind. I will mediate the world's problems and propel the world into the future.

I've decided I'm going to learn everything I ever wanted to know or at least die trying. Like I really want to know about basic computer architecture, Hindi and probability this week.

People who consume batteries quite a bit... you should think about using NiMH rechargables. They do not suffer from memory problems and they last a significantly longer time than older rechargeables. Energizer sells them at Best Buy and on batteries.com. To give you an idea of the cost, I bought Scott a charger that came with two batteries and a four pack for a total of $35. So the initial investment is there, but really, it's $35. If you have any devices that rapidly consume batteries (portable cd players, walkie talkies, flashlights, robots, etc) this will easily pay off. The reason I mention the importance of NiMH is because I think people should be educated about what they purchase. Battery companies do not want you buying NiMH (although they manufacture them due to the market) because it takes away from their disposable battery market. NiMH may cost about 3 times as much than regular batteries, but they have about 1000 recharges. This means battery consumption will continually decrease. NiMH batteries will last maybe 70%-80% as long as regular alkaline (these are ballpark figures that I estimated from using CD players and walkie talkies). So their performance isn't that bad. I want there to be enough exposure of this technology that society moves on from its wasteful, pititful yet disposable batteries and into these wonderous solutions.