Author: derick

Now isn’t she pweetty!

It’s spring (I’m sure you noticed), so I’ve been cleaning out a few things like: my cube [my cell], my room, my bathroom, the desktop icons on my computer–and my desktop was quite the disaster.In the end i decided to hire a person to help me and it turned out as a bad ideea.Please make sure you always use a certified carpet cleaning company.

I have a tendancy to throw everything on my desktop. When I find something neat online, or some quote or word, or anything textual that I’d like to not forget, I’ll create a quick “text” file on there and type it out. Ironically, as soon as I do that, the next day, the next month, the next few months, I forget it’s even there–true avouch to the notion that if you want to really hide something, put it right in front of you.
Anyway, here are somethings I dug up today from my desktop:

This is a dilbert cartoon I saved.

A Walt Whitman Poem I really liked:

Walt Whitman
When I heard the Learn’d Astronomer

WHEN I heard the learn’d astronomer;
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me;
When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them;
When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick;
Till rising and gliding out, I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

Quote from Orwell I read somewhere:

Advertising is the rattling of a stick inside a swill bucket. – – George Orwell

A word I never heard before, but liked:

mendacious: given to or characterized by deception or falsehood or divergence from absolute truth

…and the rest of the stuff is SQL code, batch scripts.. random .css files. All being cleanly recycled 🙂

Hi,

It’s Derick here this time.

I know, I know, It’s been quite the hiatus, and after reviewing my roommate’s last two posts I’ve consequently rescinded his authorship privileges on account of one (1) libelous remark regarding “sex and the city”.

Any case, I’m starting to get the reins back on my life, meaning: I’ve been in a complete lazy-rut for about 4 months now. Actually, lazy is too harsh; I have been taking classes (showing up for most of them) and working pretty much around 50-60 or so hours a week. But then again, those are excuses, and I know you don’t care either about the excuses or the minutiae that is my life– fair enough, I’d feel the same way on the other end too.

For Mardigan, Laboss, and Mills, who actually still read my website, I assure you, I’m going to start posting things on my blog a little more frequently. We need to get Laboss his own blog. And eventually resurrect Mardigan.net from…somewhere. Remember Mardian.net, in it’s heyday, with the oh-so slick animated construction worker, with the banner reading “under construction”. It kind-of reminded me of Boston. But then again, Boston was eventually finished.

As for my website in a whole, I’m still a little behind on maintenance:

• I need to update to the latest WordPress.
• Hopefully figure out a way to thwart these spam-bots from commenting up my website.
• I got a new hosting provider, which i need to eventually switch to. Benefits? Asp.Net / Sql Server –means nothing i know to everyone (aside from Mills). But with my new host, I’ll be able to actually publish my own .Net web-apps to something aside from my local network–again another empty sentence (to everyone aside from mills)

I’ve been doing a lot programming-for-fun lately (it’s kind of sad). I actually bought my own copy of Visual Studio .NET and hung the posters up on my bedroom wall. And as soon as the last one went up, I said to myself–no joke–in a breathy sigh, “wow [sigh,] this isn’t going to help me pick up chicks”.

This week I discovered the wonder that is: freeze-dried coffee; and it has completely changed my life.

What else. Oh, I’ve been meaning to read the The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe for a few weeks now. I finally have the book, but I keep telling myself that I don’t have the time.

What else, ah my tooth. This requires a little bit of a preface:

When I was a boy, I was in little league. One day a baseball smacked into my front-tooth, and it landed in my hand—the tooth that is. This was my second front-tooth, and I knew God wasn’t going to give me another. Nervously, my Dad drove me to the dentist and they called it an “emergency session” (I think the dentists were excited– they never get emergencies). Eventually they did a root canal on it (whatever that means).

Now, 9 years later, that front tooth has started to lose its color– let me not mince words here, it’s turning black. I got scared, and I was afraid my tooth might make me start looking like those bums outside my work that routinely ask me for change, or like some witch, or some Ferengi, or lil’Jon. I don’t want to be Lil’Jon. So this week, I’ve been getting my tooth bleached and insurance is calling this “cosmetic”? Cosmetic! Is preventive care from looking like Lil’Jon “cosmetic”?

Long story short, this is going to cost me a fortune. Don’t expect any great gifts from me this Christmas.

HOW embarrassing. Today, I dropped my keys down the tiny gap between the elevator door and the ground floor. There was at least 5 seconds of silence before my keys finally splashed onto the hard concrete.

Mr. Building Manager, a surprisingly pleasant and affable chap, said it’s quite a process getting my keys back. He needs to call the elevator people. The “Elevator People”?

Anyway, it’s 3pm right now. No word yet from the Elevator People. Still no keys.

Overall, it’s been kind of a Monday-like Wednesday.

This enchanting scent has been following me all day. “Is it me?” I ask myself. Well there is no body else here, it must be me. Could it be my cologne? But you know, it doesn’t smell quite like my cologne, and I’ve been wearing the same cologne for a year now: Davidoff Cool Water–and it’s redolence is somewhat fading. But evenso, it can’t be my cologne; I distinctly remember forgeting to put it on this morning. I take in another loud full whiff of the air around me, smells absolutely divine. Why do I smell so great today? I assure you this is not pretension. Whenever I’m surprised at a smell I’m emitting it’s almost never something particularly agreeable; but today, quite the contrary.

Eventually as the day progresses I discover the source of this alluring scent. My underarms. It’s the new deodorant I purchased: Old Spice Fresh Gel.

It may just be deodorant, but it’s Heavenly.

I noticed that after my post on Sadie and Maud (which I thought no one would read), I started to receive dozens of search engine referrals for that post. I assume they’re all from English students looking for a critical analysis or essay of some sort on that poem. Hey, honestly, before I even started to write that essay, I plugged away at a few websites myself towards the same end and I think I left the internet disappointed from finding nothing. So, for posterity, and particularly for other desperate English Majors out there looking for an essay to steer them clear on John Donne’s cryptic little poem Death Be Not Proud, I leave you the essay I wrote for class on this poem. Keep in mind, it’s another last minute hack I put together, but hey, it passed, whatever.



Analysis on John Donne’s “Death Be Not Proud” (doc | html)

Death Be Not Proud
by John Donne
(1572-1631)
DEATH be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not so,
For, those, whom thou think’st, thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleepe, which but thy pictures bee,
Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee doe goe,
Rest of their bones, and soules deliverie.
Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poyson, warre, and sicknesse dwell,
And poppie, or charmes can make us sleepe as well,
And better then thy stroake; why swell’st thou then;
One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.

Imagine this: For next class, you have to give a presentation on two Greek plays: Electra and Philocetectes.

Now imagine this: Almost a week has passed and it is now 5pm, the day before your presentation, and you still haven’t read these two plays. But, there is still time. Class is not until 9am the next morning, and you still have the rest of the evening to read and come up with something to present—piece of cake/cup of coffee.

But then…(donnt-da-daa) your roommate tells you that his sister is having an off-campus house-party at the ol’alma mater. What do you do?

Stupid question, I know. You go to the party; but impose a stricture limiting how long you will stay. Say it’s 6pm now, being back home at 10pm would be worst-case-scenario, and even then you may have enough time to read 100 pages or so, and get a decent night of sleep.

So, now you’re at the party, and you’re having fun and time sprints past you. It’s already 11pm and past your self-imposed curfew. The thought of dropping the class skirts across your mind. But guilt overwhelms you, so you leave. Home is an hour away so you get in close to midnight.



You’re exhausted, too torpor to think about them Greeks and there twisted drama, but you persevere, you muscle it through. And you finish your reading and it’s now 2 am. Class is at 9am, but you haven’t quite finished yet. There is still the matter of preparing a presentation. Do it in the Morning! You set the alarm to 6am, (4 hours, that oughta do it).

The piercing shrill of the alarm wakes you up 4 hours later, which seem like 4 minutes later. It’s cold, the sky is still dark, but you again, persevere, shower, and make tea alongside a small repast. Your mind is clear and you start jotting notes, and come up with all sorts of crap to talk about for your presentation.

You go to class on time, and nail that presentation.

Moral of this story:

Learn from experience. Whenever something needs to be done, wait till the very last minute, and then hold off for a few more seconds. Or as Mark Twain more eloquently puts it “Never put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow.” Wise man.