It's Tuesday. Just your friendly neighborhood diary post.

--Only one more day of 'Summer 1'. Don't you like when you get to the Final Exam and figure out what you have to make to get a certain letter grade? I have to make a 23 on the Final to make a 'C', a 56 to get a 'B', and a 90 to make an 'A'. See, I'm on the edge now. This is hard. Now I have to study hard to get that 'A'. Of course, as I noted (lamented) a couple posts ago, the professor is in the curving mood.

--Have you heard of the telephone tooth? No thank you. I don't carry a celphone, I'll be damned if I'll let work or telemarketers call me on my tooth anytime they want. Not only that, but I WILL NOT knowingly and willingly have something which could potentially be a tracking device implanted in my body.

--I got Fredric Lehrman's tapes, 'Prosperity Consciousness'. I didn't know he was a millionaire! I assumed since he stayed at our house (which was already overrun with guests) over Christmas that it was because he couldn't afford a hotel. He has multiple Ph.D.s. He owns several companies. He founded Nomad University. He's worked with several corporations. He speaks MANY languages. He is a friggin' unbelievable classical guitarist AND cellist! He has founded a number of Tai Chi schools all over the country. He's written two books and 'countless' magazine articles, including for some of the 'big names'. He's travelled to some of the most wild spots on earth. Not just Europe. The Amazon, Antarctica, Tibet. Incredible! This is enough for about five or six people. I think he's qualified to teach people how to achieve. I misjudged the tapes somewhat. I thought there was alot more Taoism and contentedness and freedom from desires and wealth as personal wisdom... but it's several degrees more pragmatic than that, at least in this incarnation. He teaches things like how to have a stress-free relationship with money and how to channel energy into earning potential and how to see wealth over time as a continuum. Thank you, Carla.

--I was poking around my computer the other day and decided to load up some old single-player maps for UT that I'd never tried before. OMG, the first five level 'episode' I played was amazing! It actually had a story, and lots of tension, and awesome creativity. Fun. There was a falling elevator that I was stuck in, there was a mine train ride that went dang fast, and there was that good old-fashioned Doom sense of the controls becoming transparent and actually feeling like I'm there and being startled by those bastards. Very movie-esque in places. The fly-through at the very end was a great touch. I had no clue the quality would be so high.

--Extropianism and Libertarianism. Mutually exclusive? I guess Sylvia and I have something in common: I'm tired of being a biological creature. This body is so high-maintenance. If I could extend my consciousness to a mechanical shell (without becoming a governmental 'subject'), I'd do so with few reservations. There would be caveats of course. I'd have to have preserved the senses of sight and hearing in at least reasonable facsimiles of their current acuities. I could certainly do without touch, taste, smell. Gyroscopic/inertial sense would be a big plus. But to be able to do without eating, drinking, cleaning, shaving, hair-cutting, toe-nail clipping, tooth-brushing, sprains, shooting pains, sunburn, dirt in my eyes, burns, and, well, hormones and brain chemicals and errant electrical impulses... would be fantastic.

--On the crazy man who tried to kill sixty motorcyclists on Saturday: turns out he probably wasn't a Muslim. A crazy, drug-damaged old man with a huge beard. Some people asked why nobody just called the cops. Well, it was Detroit. The cops don't always respond to calls about shootings. Average response time for a call about a firearm-related violent crime is over forty-five minutes. So calling because some guy tried to run them off the road would meet with laughter only. It's a different world. It was a miracle nobody was hurt or killed. Many of the riders were badly shaken afterward. What they should have done is tipped his little economy car over. Six or seven big tall strong dudes could put a crappy little economy car like a Geo on its side without too much strain. Slashing his tires might have been a nice touch too. The guy is going to KILL somebody.

--Sometimes I have to wait twenty minutes or more for this dial-up to connect. It cuts me off every two hours, sometimes much more often. I especially dislike having busies at two in the morning. One nice touch is that the modem upsets WinAmp each time it dials. Sounds like you're tapping on the turntable every eight seconds. It's doing that even as I type and is trying my patience.

--When did 'Vanilla Coke' come out anyway? How long has it been around? A year? Six months? One month? Is this one of those things that the rest of the country has had for years but we just got in Podunk, Texas? I didn't try it, of course. Too expensive. I just saw it in the store. I'm out of the loop. Feels kind of good, actually. I bet I could explain the Israeli-Palestinian conflict more succinctly than you, though.

--I'm actually waking up early and going to sleep early lately. Well, most nights. I'm actually waking up well-rested and full of energy and getting tired at night after sixteen to eighteen hours. Instead of waking up feeling like I just got out of surgery and then being wired at the end of twenty hours of consciousness. My diet? Exercise? Mental attitude? Dunno.

--I'm liking our weather. It feels like extended Spring instead of raging Summer. I can deal with mid 80s for the high temps. Of course, I'm sad, because I want to RIDE. And I can't. How do you decide what state you want to live in and settle down in? Do you just stay where you are because of inertia? Do you just go where the jobs are? I want to live somewhere with trees and winding roads and not alot of people. Lots of space. But I surely do not want to shovel snow or freeze my toes. I'd also like to avoid the 115� months. California is out of the question (which you know if you've read this site for very long). Is there a 'State-selector' online?