Erwaman's Personal Journal - December 2006

   Also, I won the junior class fundraiser raffle and received a jWIN home audio system. Sadly, it kept displaying TRAY ERR and would not play CDs. My brother looked at it and finally pointed out that I had not removed this glaringly obvious red screw on the bottom of the machine. I had removed one of the screws along with the transit lock, but not the second screw. I guess I don't follow instructions very well because there's this red label on the bottom that says "Please remove 2 screws before use" along with a diagram that shows two hands pointing to the two screws. Also, I didn't notice the suspiciously visible red screw, which looks completely out of place against the black background of the unit.

   I thought my stupidity in setting up the audio system might have been a one-time fluke. However, a printer problem caused me to think otherwise. After I replaced the ink cartridge, the printer would always print a test page when I turned it on. The first few times it happened, I thought the printer was simply aligning itself and performing a printing test. However, after it happened for the third time in a row, I thought something was wrong. My quick fix solution was to simply remove all the paper from the tray and then turn on the printer. With no paper, the printer would return an error. I would then cancel the test page and proceed to use the printer for whatever purpose. When I showed my brother the problem, he looked at the test page and pointed out the obvious instructions displayed on it. There were three comprehensive diagrams labeled 1, 2, 3 at the top of the page telling you to take the test page and scan a copy of it. It's amazing how straightforward things are when you actually follow directions.

   So far during this break, I've watched a couple 007 movies on Spike TV, tried out some N64 games, and played about 20 rounds of "the word game" with my brother. The rules of the word game are pretty simple. A word is selected. Then, all players have ten minutes to write down as many four-or-more letter words that can be formed from the letters of the selected word. After ten minutes, the players compare words. If more than one player has a word, that word is crossed off. A point is scored for every word left over, plus an additional point for each extra letter for words five-or-more letters long. That's the basic gist of the game. However, we've also come up with some technicalities such as disallowing words that make the four-letter minimum due to the addition of an "s" or by using the past tense, etc.; prohibiting proper, obsolete, archaic, foreign (esp. British and Scottish), abbreviated, shortened, and altered words; and verifying words using an unabridged dictionary.

   I've slept an exorbitant amount, but it's the only way to repay my sleep debt. This resulted in more energy and an improved mood :-). Good tidings to y'all.

   It actually started yesterday. After a week of intense sleep deprivation, including two all-nighters, I came home Friday from the 2:55 bus finally able to sleep to my heart's content. I went to sleep around 4 PM. I woke up once, probably around 7, when my dad called me for dinner, but I soon returned to sleep. The next time I awoke, it was 6 AM, Saturday, December 2, 2006. I had an interesting dream, which I recorded here.

   Today, December 2, was my brother's birthday. He's 21 now. I hope he doesn't become a dangerous drinker. After sending him my birthday greetings, I had breakfast, brushed my teeth, showered, and went to Arden Courts for a Christmas spirit event. We served fruit and cookies to the seniors and visitors, danced with them (Mrs. Hogan joined in, too!), and face painted them. The music was played a banjoist and tubaist (two weird looking words; they look as if they could be pronounced ban-joist and too-baste). Santa Claus was there, too! There was also this über-micro balloon sculpter. He was very quick at filling the balloons with helium, then tying them, then twisting them into crazy shapes. Some designs I saw him make for others included a dog, a heart necklace, and Homer Simpson. There was this one ridiculous thing he did which was rip one balloon in half and then hold the two balloons so that the air did not leak out and then tie both balloons. They also had a little 'gift-shop' section, where they sold dolls and items like Mumbles, the penguin from "Happy Feet." There was so much food there that they let us have as much as we want, too. Many of the WPHS students raved about the bagels, but personally, I thought the sausages were the best. However, they also had giant trays of croissants, muffins, pastries, crumb cakes, egg, French toast, canteloupe, honeydew, grapes, watermelon, and kiwi. I basically had lunch there and ate to my heart's content. But honestly, I helped served all the seniors and visitors first, then waited for about half an hour before taking my first bite. There was plenty of food and there were lots of leftovers. Oh yes, I also got my face painted by Jessica Liu - a red nose with black whiskers. Nick had the same thing. Sharon Lin also painted a Rubik's with the BOY (blue-orange-yellow) color scheme shown, properly oriented, on the back of my right hand. Somecommon designs on other people included snowmen and hearts. Lulu also painted a unique mistletoe on a senior. Mrs. Hogan took many pictures; we even got one with Santa.

   I had practically eaten lunch at Arden Courts, so I didn't eat lunch when I got home. I spent the afternoon reorganizing my room. Originally, my setup was like this:

That's the general idea, but the proportions are a bit off. Also, the overall effect is a little different when you take in height. Books = bookshelf. Hybrid is a mix of drawers and shelves. Bureau has three drawers. The colored desks are roughly those colors. After reorganizing, my room looks like this:

   My main problem was that the black desk prevented me from scooting my chair under the table:

Without this ability, I had to scoot my body forward in my chair and lean forward significantly. I had no back support, so I was quite uncomfortable. The brown desk is like this, eliminating the problem:

I also moved my printer on top of the brown desk, on its roof.

   After moving all the furniture around, I had tons of stuff lying around. I decided to sort through some of it. Now begins the main portion of my journey into the past. I discovered my 6th grade technology project, the strand of wire that you had to direct a wand through without letting it touch the wire. If you did touch the wire, a circuit would be completed and a light and buzzer would turn on. I had to fix some circuitry and find a 9V6 battery, but after that, everything worked fine :-).

   I found a yellow Pain Management Solutions zippered bag. Inside was my Halloween candy from God knows how long ago. One of the giant Hershey's Milk Chocolate bars had a hole in it, so the bottom of the bag is now filled with chocolate dust.

   One of the most memorable discoveries of this afternoon was finding six packaged CDs from my family's Japan trip. There were two CDs each showcasing clarinet, pan flute, and piano. As of now, I've only opened and listened to the clarinet CDs. On one of the CDs, the clarinetist, Richard Stoltzman, even played my audition piece for the area band audition one week from today! This is the third different artist I've heard play this piece. I spent about half an hour just lying on the floor and listening to Stoltzman's rendition. Those were a very soothing and relaxing thirty minutes.

   As I was shifting around some books, I discovered my passport buried under one pile. I had put it there after my trip to Mexico after they had gone through both the washer and the dryer in order to flatten it out a bit.

   I discovered an unopened package with an introduction to the Johto League Pokémon trading cards. Inside, I found Marill, #183, my first and only Johto League Pokémon thus far. It was a promo version, so there was no rarity rating. I revisited my Pokémon collection and spent about fifteen minutes rearranging my cards.

   I found four nail clippers. Don't ask me why I have so many. Three were small and one was large - the kind designed for cutting toe nails.

   I was taking some packaging material (to absorb shocks) down to the basement, and when I got there, I saw my Carbine Rifle rubber band gun. I spent a while testing it out and analyzing why it was jamming sometimes even though it did not have the horizontal pegs that red-orange tipped rubber band guns have. I also studied why sometimes it would fire two rubber bands when I only pressed the trigger once. I shot myself in the leg and foot a couple times for fun ^__^.

   I found my Fifteen Puzzle. I found it arranged from 1-15 spiraling outward from the center. I changed it to its normal solved state of 1-15 in order from left to right, top to bottom. The quality of my Fifteen Puzzle was sordidly wretched, jamming and high-in-friction on every movement. I even had a pop! I was thinking about lubricating it with some silicone spray, but after realizing my can was all the way downstairs in the playroom (while I was in my room), I decided I was too lazy, and to justify my indolence, I told myself that this cheap plastic and the cruddy joints weren't going to be helped with silicone spray meant for real joints and better-quality plastic like in Rubik's Cubes. Anyways, it wasn't like I was going to speedsolve the Fifteen Puzzle, oh gosh.

   Ah, there was the Boogey Ball lying on the lowest shelf of my bookcase. I had found four AA batteries while cleaning and reorganizing my room, so I put them in the Boogey Ball and started playing. I probably spent about an hour playing the six games and reading Hasbro's complete instruction manual. I like how the manual says on the second page in the second column, "DO NOT RETURN THE BED TO THE STORE." Even in context, it takes a moment before you realize that they are referring to the electric bed that the batteries lay on. I still do not get how to play Game 5. I think I understand the rules they lay forth - that you're supposed to position various lights in different ways - but when I actually play, the light jumps all over the place with no consistent pattern. How are you supposed to determine which way is horizontal and which way is vertical when there is no consistent pattern to the location of the lights?

   Hmm...don't ask me why, but I disassembled two pocket flashlights. And I mean cheap slide-lid-back-and-forth-to-turn-on-and-off flashlights. They were both "broken." The lid-sliding mechanism no longer worked on either, so I pulled the lids off. On the larger of the two flashlights, I snapped some plastic as I fiercely jerked off the lid. I disemboweled both flashlights, ransacking all electrical wiring, batteries, electrical beds, and lightbulbs. I then experienced intense enjoyment as I created my own circuits with the batteries, wires, and lightbulbs I had salvaged. A complete circuit is a fairly elementary concept, but I felt like getting the lightbulb to glow wondrously was an astounding achievement. At first, I couldn't get any lightbulb to shine. I actually shocked myself when I held the copper metal part of the wires in a complete circuit. Fortunately, I was only using one AA battery at the time. I soon realized that in order to activate the lightbulbs, I needed to use more than one AA battery. Thus, I tried two and got a momentary flash of glory. I could not repeat it again, so I tried three batteries. Finally, there was constant light. Success at last. A simple task that produced great endorphin rushes in my brain.

   Among the rest of the stuff I uncovered included a whopping dumpster-load of stationery (Today, my mother asked me how to spell stationery, and I learned the difference between stationEry and staionAry. Actually, I'd like to think I already knew but simply made a fluke blunder when she asked me.). This included scissors, pens, pencils, highlighters, rulers, erasers, and manual pencil sharpeners. I found enough stuff to fill my deluxe-size pencil case several times over. Also, I discovered several large packs of markers and crayons, many quality pen/pencil sets, and also a water color set.

   I uncovered a couple packages of origami paper that could prove useful in my next Kocot extra credit project. Furthermore, I found several pencil cases that I think I might start using.

   I'm $2.10 richer after finding a dime and two Sacajawea dollars. I found yet another box of Legos. Oh, how I obsessed over Legos when I was younger! I found some old baseball cards, some Dragon Ball Z cards, and some Pokémon character cards (different from the trading cards).

   Now, I found a whole bunch of other stuff. I can't begin to tell you what slish-slosh I found: random electronics to thumb tacks, paper clips to binder clips, action figure toys to ointments and creams, a couple photos to board game accessories. I even found objects that I could not identify. All I could classify them as were three-dimensional masses.

   I was able to fully solve and understand one more problem on the Seton Hall math competition test exam participants got to keep. I attempted to do another problem, but then realized I needed to learn more about geometric sequences. This led me to hunt for an algebra book, and in the process, I discovered two more calculus textbooks in my brother's room!

   Tonight, I watched my first Devils victory of the 2006-2007 season. The first three games I watched were part of the Devils' disappointing 4-game winless road trip that they just returned from two games ago. 4-3 shootout win. Devils tied with Rangers for first in Atlantic division now. While watching the game, I had my 2x2x2 with me and I really honed in on my algorithms and execution style. I had several revelations and discovered some useful move sequences.

   Even though my furniture is all over the place, my room is still a mess because there are books and papers strewn everywhere, piled over one feet high in some places. But as long as my keyboard and mouse space is clear and so is my bed, I'm good to go :-).

   In other news, I got my first varsity letter from cross country the past Thursday at our banquet =]. ˇHuepa!

   Happy Birthday, Ray. Godo nacht.