class. freemason music? other stuff.

[scholarly endeavors]
well, one final down. my studying was pretty weak since i calculated my grade beforehand and found that i only needed 30/80 to get a B. somehow i was worried about failing the class. i did get near perfect on the last big project and perfect on the lab exam thing.. two things i wasn't really counting on. i guess this happens every semester. self doubt much? anyway, i didn't know any of the formulas, so i had to guess on half of the questions. good thing it was multiple choice and i know how to make educated guesses.

spanish isn't looking quite as good. i have a high C in there at the moment, however the grading is stacked pretty heavily on the final, which is stacked heavily on grammar.. ew. probably my weakest part. to stay with a C, i just need 35 out of 170, however, if i want a B, i'd have to get 135/170. i really don't know if i'm capable of that.

[nerd talk]
so i saw this thing on slashdot yesterday... apparently some guy and his son cracked a "code" thats built into the rosslyn chapel in scottland. for the non-nerds, rosslyn is a preported freemason edifice holding all kinds of weird imagery, and by some accounts, there is a treasure of sorts burried beneath it. anyway, one of the sets of symbols built into it's decor are these little patterned cubes. there are 13 different patterns. turns out that the patterns actually correspond to standing waves created to various sound vibrational frequencies. so these dudes picked out the notes.. then noticed that one of the cherub statues is holding a musical staff and pointing to the three fundamental tones that start the sequence. interesting. they then proceded to gather all the symbols around hte place, and then recorded the "song". i haven't heard it yet, because you have to buy it, but i'm half tempted to.
check the video. it will make it make sense. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cy2Dg-ncWoY
this might help too: http://www.rosslynchapel.org.uk/htm/education1.htm
this is neat and all, but to me it has greater implications. the fact that someone had enough knowledge of acoustics to do this in the 1400's is pretty amazing. i mean, i don't ever doubt that a _massive_ amount of technical knowledge has been lost in the time of man on earth, but we so rarely see good proof of it. things like this renew my hope that we will find other lost know-how and technology in the future. i guess the question in this case is whether this code is _just_ a means to writing down a song, or if there's anymore to it that that.

[I grew selfish and unneighborly...]
i don't remember if i wrote before but there are neighbors on both sides again. they both have noisy dogs. i love dogs, but i have a hard time with poorly socialized dogs who are left in small fenced yards all the time. shannon had an interesting link on his blog a while back about beef flavored prozak for dogs. his quote: "Why are dogs depressed? Because they're slaves, active outdoor animals trapped in small, sterile environments. If you want your dog not to be depressed, move to the country, or at least spend a ton of time with your dog. If you can't do that, then you shouldn't own a dog." i tend to agree.
it looks like three cars at each house. i presume that means students, but who knows. one of them has this 70's monster truck thats louder than my trans am and is parked right next to my bedroom window. fun.

[don't get a mortgage. seriously]
oh, and get this. i was reading that indiana is jacking up property taxes or something. it's supposed to go up by an _average_ of 24%. TWENTY FOUR PERCENT!!! this is not cool. i had to refi just to cover the extra cost when we had that ridiculous reassesment a few years ago. i have even less money now. so this means i am _really_ motivated to sell this piece. it's still the same delimmma. i owe 92, and it's worth like 85. take off the realtors cost and other associated fees and i'm even worse off. chris tells me i can try to talk my bank into doing a "short sale" where they will take a lower amount to kill the loan. apparently it will be bad on my credit though. not as bad as forecloseure though. i just don't know what to do. i didn't expect property values here to consistantly fall.



my batteries are discharged. i need a vacation. i think i'm going to french lick this year. it's the week of may 19th apparently. i've not gambled ever. i think the penny slots will have my name on them. but really, i still just want to see the impact of the gambling on the community.

this is why i hate politics in the united states. - aka: at this point, i think obama can suck it.

..because it's all a scam.

first lets rewind to my back story. laugh all you want, i haven't voted since ross perot. that dude had a solid plan for fixing a lot of things. it would have been a rough go, but (i feel) the country would have been better afterward. he obiviously didn't win. and granted, for all the mass media reasoning, he really wasn't an ideal candidate. (short, ugly, stupid voice, excitable)
then before, during and after clintong(who i thought was fairly ok), i kind of realized that with the whole bipartisan system, we're destined to constantly be in a state of reactionarianism. (yes, i'm making up words now) - you know, one step forward, two steps back. it works out really well for the rich, who happen to generally end up in the two steps back department and making money with every shoe drop.
THEN, with the booshes, i realized that the rich just keep getting bolder with the stupid self benefiting crap they do.

so basically, i think the US's system of democracy is total crap. old, fat white men with old money make decisions for everyone. AND then we give them our money on top of that. i mean, our country was started by a bunch of CRIMINALS wasn't it? not that i dont' respect those guys. civil disobediance is a concept that i value, but they were, for the most part, a bunch of rich guys who were mad because the government wanted a cut of their money.. so they turned around and became the government!

anyway, back to obama. i was down. if for no other reason than i wanted to see someone other than a white male in office. then i just read this deal where he and his campaign shook down some poor nerd who had created a campaign myspace site for him like 3 years ago, built it up to 160000 users, and dropped 10k to get it in some preferential area of the site. i guess even to me it seems kind of silly for myself to be upset about this, but i still am. if a guy can't at least be civil to a supporter who actually did a lot of work to help him out, then what the hell is he going to do to the general public?

things like this just make me feel so misrepresented, and i know there are millions and millions of other people in the same boat. it's just like the price of admission to getting to run for office is being an idiot though. and that doesn't speak to me.

anyway, thats all. i'm still not voting. perhaps i'll rant about my reform ideas at a later date.