June 1 Don't know why I woke up early but I did. Seeing as how none of the other guys on the team did, this may have been a mistake. Spent the morning up in the old city exploring. Came back for lunch to the dorms, and sat around for a good while. We had a match with Hewlett at 4:15PM, and despite some misgivings, it turned out well for us. Then we got to watch our old friends Dorman take on St. John's. All I can say is that while they were both good, neither seemed aware that India and Afghanistan have no common border. Oops. The bombshell came after the match. First we discovered our plane tickets were non-refundable. Then we discovered that we had made the playoffs, and were scheduled for a rematch against Dorman at 10:30AM. Problem was, we had a 10:10AM shuttle to the airport to catch. The organizers of the tournament of course insisted on taking the high ground, stating they wouldn't do a damned thing for us. Nice. So we went out for dinner at a Creole restaurant, and lounged around Bourbon street for a bit (don't ask, just don't ask). Coming back I had one of those brilliant post-11PM ideas, so the score sheets magically disappeared. I think I packed after that, although I really can't remember all that well. I was tired.
June 2 Got up at (gasp) 9AM. I haven't gotten up this late in years. Finished packing and taking pictures of the campus just in time for our shuttle. Tried to smuggle my film through the metal-detector at the airport, but I beeped. So I took the film out of my pocket, they used a handheld metal-detector on me, and off I went. No they didn't bother to look in the film container. Security, anyone? First plane was New Orleans to Minneapolis. We had about an hour in Minneapolis before our plane to San Francisco boarded, and we would have been on-time but for some lightning which delayed us. I arrived, 2 books and 1 headache later, at SF, and went home. It was a good trip, but a long one.
June 3 Back to school today. Not really though, because at 8:30AM, everybody in the AP Biology class left to go to the exploratorium. We returned exactly 2 minutes before school finished. I was actually pleasantly surprised by the exploratorium. Although the entire mathematics exhibit had been taken down, I managed to stay amused for over 3 hours before getting museum-fatigue. This was no doubt due in part to a friend who came along even though she wasn't in the AP Biology class. After school consisted of desperately trying to do a poetry project on Tennyson, and getting to sleep earlier than I had during my entire trip to New Orleans.
June 4 The most boring day in a good long while. I actually went to all my classes, although I used 2 to finish my poetry project. Everything at school has basically either finished, or will do so soon, so a sense of boredom is beginning to come in. Add this to the fact that I got up quite early to work on homework, and you begin to see why this entry is short. A few minor details I forget to mention before: We left New Orleans with a 3-1 record without being able to play in the playoffs (due to our flight) we were ranked 10 out of 50 schools which wasn't bad at all. I also brought back from New Orleans 1 feathered mask, 5 strings of beads, and 1 T-shirt on which is written: "Property of New Orleans City Jail- New Orleans Parish, 8th District. No, not bad at all.
June 5 I think I'm sick. My stomach started sounding like our faucets do on a low pressure day. Aside from that, today was a nice, relatively eventful day. The last high school band concert worked out well, or would have, if it had worked out before 10PM. I'm sure some other things happened in between, but it all became a sort of blur.
June 6 Why me? Why now? Aside from acute diarrhea and dizziness I really can't complain of much. Nonetheless, I stayed home from school and laid in bed for most of the morning. I went to the doctor's in the afternoon, but all he could say was that I had a slight fever, and probably a stomach virus of some sort. He prescribed an anti-diuretic and told me not to go to school 'til I felt better and the fever passed. For my part, I felt a bit better, and ate a little yogurt for dinner. Then I took the anti-diuretic medication. Five minutes later, as I was in the process of exiting the bathroom, I passed out and began to vomit yogurt onto the floor. Ever had yogurt come out of your nose? It's not a pretty picture.
June 7 Today being the last day of official school, I went. Unfortunately, the day was, to put it mildly, crazy. Partways through first period, there was a bomb scare, and I spent 45 minutes waiting on the track and freezing. When we were finally allowed to return, I went to biology, only to realize I had missed a critical step yesterday, and couldn't do the lab. For English, I planned to play my flute for my exit project, but forgot my music at home, and so had to go back and get it. By fourth period, I felt crummy enough to warrant going home. I spent the rest of the day in bed, mostly sleeping. Sometime in the evening I went to the bathroom, and again, I passed out while in the process of egress. My neck is getting sore from all this falling down.
June 8 I was entirely bed-ridden today. I basically did absolutely nothing. I didn't go to my flute lesson. All I can remember is that I ate nothing more substantial than a bowl of yogurt. This time though, I didn't throw up. My fever hit 103 degrees in the morning. By evening it was down to 100 again, so maybe things are improving.
June 9 I measured my temperature when I awoke this morning, and discovered I had a temperature of 97.8 degrees. That's quite an improvement. I felt well enough to have a breakfast, and eventually had soup for lunch and dinner. No signs of diarrhea yet, so maybe I really am improving. I cannot walk very well though, as my head seems to spin whenever it leaves the pillow. I had to write my speech today, for the graduation ceremony, as it's due tomorrow, so there was a bit of added stress, but aside from that, I'm feeling quite a bit better.
June 10 My speech was finished until I went to school and showed it to my English teacher. Comment of the day: "you need 2 more paragraphs." I agreed, and spent the next 2 hours in the computer lab writing those 2 paragraphs. Feeling unsteady on my feet, I ended up giving the senior picnic a miss, and going home after a final deliver of my speech. I spent the afternoon doing very little, but I am now thoroughly well-rested, and my MacOS X installation on the laptop is hosed. Progress...
June 11 I began today making prints in the photography dark-room. The fumes make my unsteady head even less steady, but I evaded serious injury. Then there was 2 hours of graduation practice, followed by another stint in the dark-room, followed by a brief trip home. My grandparents from New York arrived in the afternoon, so I gave them a brief tour, and we went out for dinner at the Thai restaurant, having first dealt with all the problems of world: poverty, war and the like.
June 12 Chores, chores. First was graduation practice. A quick point: we are primarily practicing both entering and leaving the graduation area, and picking up diplomas. I can't say it's all that exciting. Next I go home and revise my speech. I just was not all that excited with my official speech, so I edited it a bit. I am pleased with the results, but not with the time taken. Finally, I started filling out a goodly number of forms for Stanford. We had dinner at the Japanese restaurant with my grandparents. Oriental food is my favorite, so I can't complain.
June 13 The big day. Began with graduation practice. After that, we practiced giving the speeches. I will have a little surprise tonight, for everyone who though they already heard my speech. Then I had lunch at San Benito House, and prepared to be graduates. By some miracle, we had 4 tickets, so my parents and grandparents were all able to attend the commencement ceremony. Being two of the speakers, my girlfriend and I led the entire line of 280 graduates into the gym where the event was held. What was happening didn't really sink in until about 5 minutes before I was due to make my speech. Surprisingly though, my speech was the first and went over well (you can read it here), and an hour later, we led the recessional out of the building, high-school students no more. We then spent almost an hour congratulating and being congratulated, and finally I drifted homeward. After that came Grad Nite, an event from 11PM to 5AM which, while well-planned and organized, did not really appeal to my exhausted brain.
June 14 Happy birthday, Karen! Karen is old enough to buy lotto tickets, drive other teenagers legally, and all sorts of other fun stuff! I came home at 5AM and had about 4 hours of sleep. Then it was up again, and after a fairly laid-back morning, I went with my grandparents to visit a family friend over in Los Altos. We had a nice dinner and reminisced about old times. Then we came back and met my newly arrived aunt, uncle and 5-year-old cousin. We ended up at the Thai restaurant again for dinner, but I didn't mind: I was to busy lighting a bonfire in my mouth with curry.
June 15 Up early to practice my flute. Then a flute lesson. Then a return and a stroll in town, followed by lunch with all my relatives at San Benito House. They are impressed, as everyone eventually is, by the size and quality of the sandwiches provided. My cousin being desirous of the beach, we went to one of the beaches south of town. There I was at long-last able to resume my sand constructions, which were mainly walls erected against the ocean. The ocean won in the end of course, and I went home with sopping shoes. After a little rest, the entire family, plus my girlfriend, went out to dinner at the Anchorage. There, I had an opportunity to taste crab-cakes which were a bit more gourmet than those served at Stanford's admit weekent dinner. Ah, the lessons of life.
June 16 Today began, auspiciously enough, with the news that we'd meet my relatives at a horse ranch. My little cousin wished to ride a horse, so at length, 4 of us were atop horses. Having never ridden a full-size horse in my life, the experience was novel, but with a few twists. The horses were of course quite docile (that's what they were being paid for), but they did have their own ideas. Also, I haven't quite got the knack of the saddle, so every time we started to trot, I'd start to bounce up and down. Ow. After the horse ride, my cousin, aunt and uncle left us, and we had a lunch. I spent the late afternoon chatting with my grandparents, before running off to a LAN party. The LAN party was fun, although our group is now down to 5 active participants (the 2 dogs and 2 cats don't count, although the cats frequently interrupted me during our bouts of Descent 3
June 17 I had 3.5 hours of sleep last night. In reality, the sleep was all this morning, between the hours of 5 and 9AM. After that, I packed up my stuff and went home (I'd been asleep in a sleeping bag on the floor). The day was mostly spent with my grandparents, whom I introduced to Californian Chinese cooking. No, I wasn't impressed either. After that we puttered around Main street and surfer's beach before saying adieu and leaving them. Hopefully their 10PM-3AM PST flight goes well.
June 18 Life, as they say, moves on. Today I woke up late and didn't even feel guilty about it. After breakfast, I embarked on a desultory attempt to clean up my room. By clean up, my primary intention was to make it again possible to drop things on the floor, and be able to find them again, without too much difficult or the immediate need to brush dust off of them. Following this, I went first book-shopping, and later picture-frame searching, with a friend. All told, the visit to Border's books was more fun than the frantic search both inside and outside the mall for 11x14 picture frames of suitable aesthetics and border width. My grandparents are now home in New York.
June 19 Woke up late again today. Started cleaning up my room, and caught up on my correspondance (mostly). Visited one of my favorite teachers from middle-school today to see how he was getting along. 8th grade English may not sound like the most exciting class, but it certainly was. The saga of the picture-frame continued, and after picking it up in its new frame, we had to drop it off to have a plaque added. Unfortunately, it took nearly an hour in between to make certain where we were to drop it off. In the process the weather became quite warm, and I realized (again) that the car's air-conditioner is having issues. I had a relaxing afternoon, and then was suddenly invited to go out with friends to go to a movie. My comment about The Bourne Identity: I didn't get all of it either.
June 20 Today waking up was difficult. Went with my dad to Hewlett Packard for a day of playing with fancy computers. My main project of the day, installing MacOS X on the PowerMac G3 there, was more or less successful, but it took a heck of a lot longer than it should have, and required a complete repartitioning. I also learned that MacOS X really needs more than 128MB of RAM. Try 256. Or maybe 512. At least RAM is pretty cheap these days. Ate lunch at McHart's pizza for perhaps the 80th time in my life, and after lunch, finding myself quite tired, I started reading Robert Jordan's The Fires of Heaven. I came home very tired, and with a headache.
June 21 Well, it looks like the headache was more than just the result of staring at the screen too much. I have a slight fever as well. Whatever it is that I have, I hope it comes and goes fast (the last time I was sick, if you'll recall, I barely ate for 4 days, and didn't fully recover for over a week). What I did do was a lot of reading and nothing else. All 800+ pages of The Fires of Heaven are done. In the evening, I went to my girlfriend's ballet performance. I suppose I may have been more or less obligated to go, especially since she was the lead, Alice, in this performance of Alice in Wonderland, but I really quite enjoyed it, and she did a great job (although fortunately did not break a leg).
June 22 Ah, to be sick again. Fortunately, flute-playing was not one of the activities impacted by whatever unpleasant microbe or virus I have obtained, unlike marathon running, or cleaning up my room. Had a pleasant flute lesson in the morning, but came home pretty much right after. Seeing as how my webpage was a bit neglected (parts of it had been tagged as "more coming..." since January 21), I tried to remedy the situation a bit. I also discovered that my laptop was stuck in sleep mode. Not really a surprise, since I left the power adapter at HP on Thursday. Still, there are now two admittedly small pages of photos. Perhaps I can do a bit more scanning next week. I also discovered that some higher power is trying its darnedest to thwart all my plans for camping. I guess we'll just have to see who wins out in the end. Still no indigestion as of 10:30PM, so I must not have the same thing I did 2 weeks ago.
June 23 What a slow day. For some reason, I had a hankering to put Nautilus on my Linux box again. So I did. Except that a few things didn't work. So I decided I'd try the alpha version, 2.0.0. This necessitated an unfortunate partial upgrade to rawhide. Now everything is still functional, it's just I'm not sure how long that'll last. After a morning of this, my father and I went off to Monte Bello park for a hike. Keep in mind, I still have a fever. The hike was actually pretty good, although I realized just how out of shape I am. After our hike, we went to Stanford to take pictures (it's just past the Summer solstice and the lighting on the quad is great). One of the days greater moments came as we set up the tripod directly inside the double yellow lines of Palm Drive. Had a nice view of the traffic too (and surprised some drivers quite a bit). Had Chinese food for dinner, although I wasn't too impressed. If the beef the Mongolians ate had that much fat in it, they'd probably all die of heart attacks before the age of 40. Came home, and finally collapsed.
June 24 Rather than whine and complain that not a whole lot happened today (and the weather didn't cooperate either), I think I'll just put in a placeholder entry. The sun may well have been smiling, but it smiled about 40 miles too far south, and so plans for a nice day at the beach had to be jettisoned. Instead, I completed some menial tasks, went out to lunch, came back after it was realized that all the benches in town were wet, ate a large avocado-and-egg-salad sandwich without spilling any on my carpet, went to a beach where the temperature with windchill was probably less than 10 (celsius), built a sandcastle, and came home to relax for the remainder of the afternoon. Still have a slight headache, but my fever is gone. Not sure what I'm sick with. Oh well.
June 25 Today was geekhood day. Feeling the need to reassert my geekhood, I manually upgraded/downgraded my rawhide/redhat 7.2 system to RedHat 7.3. Bottom line: everything seems to work, and I didn't have to reboot (uptime has now hit 108 days!). Next task was to try to replace KDE with GNOME as my desktop environment. I don't know why, but every so often I just have an urge to do that. The fact that GNOME, installed, is about 1/2 the size of KDE and GNOME apps launch much quicker than KDE apps might have something to do with it. Broke galeon first, then nautilus. Nautilus still can't do web browsing, but oh well. Evolution was a pain in the rear to compile, but I now have a full calendar/mail program a la Outlook. Yeah, that was my day ... Oh, and I listened to the most hilarious women on the radio at 8PM: Fran Leibowitz. She expresses opinions almost identical to mine, but a helluva lot more vociferously.
June 26 I thought today was working out fairly well for a while. I cleaned a bunch of gunk out of the car, made a brief visit to the bank, and did a good bit of reading in the afternoon. I also made a pretty good start at fleshing out the various webpages I've been promising to put material in for ages and ages. Still, I began to feel rather rotten around 6PM. Well, I suppose it shouldn't have been a surprise, since my fever had returned with avengeance. My body temperature was exactly 5 degrees more than it should have been, which, considering I'm supposed to be endothermic is a bad sign. It also gutted my plans of picking up computer equipment tomorrow.
June 27 When some people are sick, they sleep. When other people are sick, the watch T.V. When I'm sick, I read. The upshot of it all was that I read for nearly 8 hours today, completing Robert Jordan's The Great Hunt. The practical upshot of course is that by the time I went out for dinner with a friend, I couldn't figure out what I'd done all day. Still, my fever has dropped, and that is a comfort. I also watched "The Matrix" for the first time, and despite some distractions, I found it a very interesting movie.
June 28 Today was much like yesterday. Today I completed The Dragon Reborn. If I'm sick for another week, I may be able to complete the entire Wheel of Time series (those that have been written) for the second time. I like Jordan's fantasy partly because they allow escape, and partly because the characters are so eminently human. Hey, heroes do stupid stuff too! I still don't know what I'm sick with, but it seems to leave me with a mouth that tastes awful after everything I eat. Even Progresso soup couldn't fix that (38 fl. oz., no less).
June 29 Shoot. Not feeling so well this morning. I missed my flute lesson. Equally discouraging is the persistence of my headache in the face of 4 aspirins in the last 2 days. Today, my tasks were more varied. I read. I talked on the phone. I played around with the computer. I managed to get access to an 800MHZ Alpha and a 750MHZ PA-RISC box to calculate pi, and the results sure blow every x86-compatible box out of the water. At this stage, the only thing that may be faster is Itanium, and that only if they up the clockspeed. Pacbell e-mail was having issues for much of the day, so I don't quite know what to expect next. On the other hand, birds have been coming down our chimney with surprising regularity, so little is surprising me as much as it should.
June 30 That was quick. I got up this morning and had (1) no fever and (2) no headache. Something must finally be going right. I spent the morning reading and listening to the radio. It was so nice in the afternoon that I went out with a friend for a walk. Admittedly, at no point during my illness could I not walk, but it is a change from sitting around. Very atypical of the coastside was the clear blue sky and slightly warm weather. I'm sure it can't last for too long.
