Updates
I may have, nah, I certainly did miss a few along the way. That's expected and healthy.
For Flipse.com Updates from before 2001, please go to the Old Updates.
4/7/2010-Finished my glorious bottle of Passover Coke today. Not too much else of significance to add, except that I am considering revising my practice of passive-only participation in some of the modern social networking venues.
12/18/2009-Major news story going on right now - apparently something crazy has happened with Tiger Woods. Has anyone heard any details?
2009/9/23-Five months is certainly the longest time I've ever had Flipse.com Writers Block, but I can at least take advantage of a day off to fill you in on a random series of thoughts on what I've been doing. I made it to my second year of my Emergency Medicine program, though most of it has been a blur. My job is still very fun, but is probably best summarized as making several thousand decisions every day, ranging from trivial to potentially life-alterning, and the exhaustion that comes from those shifts is hard to convey in terms of hours worked. But a day off is great in anyone's book - I'm using mine to play around a bit on the computer I built last week, currently getting Picasa 3.5 set up and trying out the "People" feature, which is about 3% done scanning the photos on my computer and trying to match and identify faces. Might be one of the more useful things to come to wrangling the huge numbers of photos I currently have stored locally. In other fun notes, Eric Dougherty and I have taken up homebrewing beer in his basement, and the hobby is a great mix of chemistry, DIY projects, and cooking, with results that so far have ranged from drinkable to very tasty. Surahbi and I went to Iceland for a short vacation, and it was awesome. As always, pictures will eventually be online.
2009/4/23-Had some time on my day off from the madness to upload a new batch of pictures. It's a whole album of stuff going back to the start of residency, though not pictures from my residency. That's a whole other show.
2009/4/12-Sorry for the extended outage. We went over budget on pencils.
2009/3/22-Halfway through my ICU rotation, here's what I look like after an overnight call, and then on the morning of a day off.
2009/3/15-Science Club - Does Drano work? We have noticed a progressive problem of standing water in our apartment shower due to an increasingly slow drain. I first filled the tub with the water running at full power for five minutes and the drain stoppered, then turned the water off and allowed it to drain. That was timed at 3 minutes at 52 seconds. I used a bottle of Drano Dual Force Foamer according to the package instructions, and repeated the same process. The tub emptied in 1 minute and 32 seconds. Future studies may be indicated and may help us understand how long this effect can last.
2009/2/23-Update in three parts-
- An article from ESPN The Magazine online - Meet Hull City - that gives a nice taste of the relegation/promotion aspect of European soccer leagues.
- Honey Mustard Chicken Breasts
Chicken breasts are cheap, and simple, but lack a little flavor. This method adds tons.
2-3 boneless skinless chicken breasts
2 Tablespoons dijon mustard
2 Tablespoons honey
Dash of lemon juice
Salt + Pepper
Bread crumbs
Vegetable oil
- Trim the fat off the chicken, then cut the meat into pieces about an inch or less thick. That's the hardest part.
- Mix the mustard, honey, and lemon juice in a bowl. Set aside a little bit of this if you want to use it as a dressing later (recommended).
- Put your chicken tenders (basically, the pieces you cut will approximate the more expensive chicken tender cut) in a container and cover with the honey mustard mix. Get everything coated and let it sit at least an hour in the fridge.
- Take the chicken out of the fridge, toss each piece individually in bread crumbs seasoned with salt and pepper. You'll get a thin coat that's a bit messy. If you have one, set these out on a drying rack for ideally 20 minutes.
- Best cooking vessel is a heavy skillet or dutch oven. I use a very thin layer of vegetable oil in my dutch oven, and set my cooktop to medium. Just as the oil starts to shimmer, it's ready to cook.
- Chicken goes into the pan, spaced far enough not to touch, and leave it alone for 2-3 minutes. You're likely to need to do a few batches. Peek at the biggest piece and see if the bottom is brown and crispy. One the first side is done, flip all the chicken and cook the second side similarly, without messing with it. Shouldn't take as long as the first side.
- Remove the chicken and hopefully place again on a (clean) rack. If you're unsure, cut a large piece to check for doneness.
We've eaten this as a man dish (with rice and another side), as the main ingredient in a burritos, and sliced up as the highlight of a big salad. I can highly recommend avocado as a sidekick. If you wanted to tweak the sauce with some BBQ or some hot sauce, that would probably be delicious as well.
- Here's a recent email I received (135K). I can only assume that this is spam. Someday, I do hope to have "Psycho Trucker" as my official title, but today is not yet that day.
2009/1/13-Thanks to everyone for the birthday wishes. Facebook has been particularly bountiful for those this year. My birthday started with working the overnight shift last night, progressed to a breakfast of ribs, meatball sandwich, and Corona, then a full day of sleep. Surabhi came home, we made cake, and now I'm heading back in for another overnight shift in the Emergency Department, wearing my Birthday Boy tshirt. Happy birthday, as usual, to all of my good friends who have birthdays around this time of year. I hope they are filled with health, happiness, and baked goods.
2008/11/24-What have I been reading? Glad you asked. Three online articles have stood out recently - Secrets of the 2008 Campaign (Of which the highlights section I've linked is great, and the full-length version spills quite a few more worthwhile nuggets), The End of Wall Street's Boom (you aren't alone if you don't understand what's going wrong with the financial markets, this article isn't a broad overview, but it does explain in stunning detail how little *anyone* understood what was happening), and the slightly more upbeat Dean Kamen's Water Purifier. On the novel side, I read one of Neal Stephenson's early books, Interface, for the first time (fun in an election year), The Watchmen (fantastic, much better that you think a "comic book" can be), and Anansi Boys (a pleasant bit of modern mythology - little gods, family matters, boring jobs - set in London and Florida). On the other side of things, what I'm supposed to be reading right now is the ATLS Course Manual and perhaps Topical Anesthetics for Dermal Instrumentation: A Systematic Review of Randomized, Controlled Trials.
2008/11/4-There have been dark times in this space and other on recent presidential election nights. There are results still to come, but I am becoming confident that I can say that's not the case today. I voted in person for the first time today, and was awed by both the large turn-out and the overwhelming positivity from all of those present. We've much of this election with one candidate's supporters trying their best to scare us all. Deep down, what scared me was that it might work. Fear has been far too powerful in our national politics for too long. If the only difference in the end is that the candidate that took the high road and tried to fill people with hope can beat out that tired, old negativity, that's a victory for this country.
(I recommend two downloads from an album that was four years ahead of its time - Mike Doughty - Move On and OkGo - This Will Be Our Year. I do recommend buying it, there are a ton of great tracks.)
2008/Rocktober/24-Got a message from Tom Smith this morning, mentioning that They Might Be Giants will be playing Flood in its entirety at a few upcoming shows, and that it'd be great to be back in 11th grade right now. At 6:15AM, I had vivid images of a series of stops in Williamsport, Mansfield, Towanda, and Corning running way behind schedule, with CDs on repeat in the Space Van, cruise control on the interstate, some fantastic technology hack and signs on the windows, following Standard Operating Procedure, catching an awesome show, losing our voices, and staying with someone we knew from the internet. Next day, definitely a meal in a diner and maybe a Salvation Army or Army/Navy Surplus store trip before the drive home. Best Buy was a novelty then, well worth a significant detour. We could kill the hours discussing the effects of portable railguns on surrounding traffic, misheard lyrics, criticizing my driving and playing the new CD on repeat. Those days when we had no responsibility gave me memories I value as some of my most prized. Seems like a nice time to thank Tom and everyone else who contributed.
Life is still good, though. My beautiful wife was sleeping while I reminisced, but she woke up soon after to wish me a good day as I rushed out the door without breakfast for a day on Labor and Delivery. Work is hard, always, but it's a privilege to continue to learn and to practice medicine on our patients, and I almost always enjoy the work, if not always the working. I don't think Surabhi and I would be getting through it as well without each other. We still have fun, a trip earlier this month to Tom Rafferty's wedding in Pensacola was a huge highlight, and with some effort we can coordiate schedules to get together with friends here in town and maybe even our families.
2008/9/17-John Tomlinson pointed out that today is a holiday called Constitution Day, also known as Citizenship Day. I can't say that I remember hearing about it before today, but I thought that a day with the purpose of (among other things) recognizing people who have gained US citizenship during their lives (as several important folks in my life have) is a pretty cool day. The other thing I'd like to mention is a new photo album covering the second quarter of 2008. That's the calendar year, not the fiscal. We managed to do a ton of stuff during that time that isn't otherwise covered (our Beach Week and Honeymoon Trip have their own albums) between April and June of this year. A short list includes New Orleans for Jazz Fest and a conference, a treasure hunt, Senior Week fun, actually graduating, Shan's graduation, home improvements, wedding reception in Williamsport, international soccer, Bonnaroo with Eric, a game at Yankee Stadium, and our very first day of work.
2008/8/2-So...I'm a doctor now. The really nice thing about my job as an Emergency Medicine resident is that in the Emergency Department, an attending is always physically present, and will hear about most decisions I make before they are put into action. I tend to spend my shifts alternating between genuinely expressing confidence to patients that I will gather the necessary data and formulate a plan of care for them, and faking the same confidence. These mental gymnastics are not always easy to cope with. For example, I am quite sure that I spent a several day stretch of last week not knowing how old I am without doing a simple bit of mental subtraction. I also definitely gave Neil Bardhan some *terrible* directions for driving through a section of Philly that I know well. FDC readers tend to be interested in statistics, and I do have a few...my shifts are generally scheduled for 10 hours, and will last between 10.5 and 12 hours once all my work is wrapped up. I also generally figure for a 20-30 minute commute each way, be it driving, riding my bike, or taking the subway. The majority of months, I'll work six of those in a row, then have 48 hours off. (Other months I do rotations outside the department, some are better, others much more punishing.) Attending conference is also a required weekly activity, for a few more hours. The four weeks I worked in July added up to 240 hours and some change - 60 hours a week is much, much more sustainable and safe for all parties than was common practice just a few years ago. The other big challenges thus far have been to enjoy the time off that Surabhi and I are lucky to share, trying to read and learn medicine outside the time I'm working, keeping the house in good order, and keeping a social life going.
2008/7/3-My hospital orientation was all day Tuesday. It mostly boiled down to the following-
LAWSUITS
(My apologies to Scrubs.)
2008/6/20-The first day of summer seems like a fine day to get caught up on what I've been doing. The biggest thing has just been waiting for residency to start. I have some orientation things, and then real shifts start on July 1st. Surabhi has had a more robust orientation, and her first shift was today. We took a trip to Boston for Shan's graduation from Harvard and had a great time staying with long-time friend of flipse.com Pat Lally. We met up with Philadelphia's Sons of Ben for an extremely raucous trip to Giants stadium for the Argentina - USA international friendly on a very hot, then very wet day. We've also been tremendously entertained by the Euro 2008 soccer tournament. It's pretty much the next biggest thing to the World Cup, the level of play is probably higher, and games are still going on every day on some TV station that you probably get at home. I took a quick detour from Philadelphia down to Manchester, TN for my second trip to Bonnaroo. Eric Dougherty and I made the trip, and in the process saw all or part of sets by Vampire Weekend, Dark Star Orchestra, Jose Gonzalez, Umphrey's McGee, The Swell Season, The Raconteurs, !!!, Rilo Kiley, M.I.A, Chris Rock, The Wood Brothers feat. John Medeski and Kenny Wollenson, Donavan Frankenreiter, Ben Folds, Jack Johnson, Pearl Jam, Lupe Fiasco, Talib Kweli, Sigur Ros, and Kanye West. On the trip back, I did all the driving while Eric ran the co-pilot gig, while my nifty new GPS told us that we spent 12+ hours with the car moving, and a bit under 17 minutes with the car stopped. Finally, Surabhi and I grabbed the trains to New York, met up again with Shan, and helped him enjoy the box seats to the Padres-Yankees game on Thursday afternoon. Long work weeks for the recent med school graduates are already here or about to arrive, but we're determined to have a good time.
2008/6/1-Surabhi guest hosts today's update - "The newly minted Flipse wife invites you all to peruse our honeymoon pictures. As Dylan wrote before, we went to Paris, Santorini & Prague. Only a portion of our photos were assigned captions; hopefully these are enough to give you an idea of the sights & the story of our travels." Those links take you to the pictures with captions, we also have a larger set available as a photo album, though nothing close to to nearly 1200 pictures we took for the whole trip. We also had a second wedding reception this weekend, hosted by my mom in Williamsport. We saw (and Surabhi met) many friends of the family, and generally had a good time. Aunt Barb also made the trip, specifically requested these honeymoon pictures, and brought us a beautifully printed and framed print of this picture from Mitkof Island, Alaska by my uncle Doug.
2008/5/28-Got this text message a few hours ago from Sam (and Liz) - Katherine Alison Corbett, 7lb15oz, 5/28 at 1:50am. Everyone is doing well. Damn glad to hear it, guys.
2008/5/23-I'm willing to quote Tom Smith, and I'm trying to graduate over here.
2008/5/3-Somehow, I've gotten into the habit of just writing travel updates. Not sure where that came from, and I'll try to break it, but here goes anyway. Much to Surabhi's semi-surpise, our honeymoon actually took us to Paris, Santorini, and Prague, though I've been assured that the Canadian Rockies are beautiful this time of year. Since then, we've been back in Philadelphia, working through our last month of medical school. (Tangential thought on that - Is the sum total of my "work" thus far basically just whatever's stored in my head and the letter offering me a contract to be Temple Emergency Medicine resident? That's not half bad, it's just alarmingly brief in summary.) Tomorrow morning we're flying to New Orleans. On Monday, Surabhi will have a poster presentation of some research she did at ACOG's annual meeting. Before and after that, we'll have a few days in New Orleans, including hopefully catching the last day of Jazz Fest. We'll return to wrap up medical school at the end of the week, then I'm going on a treasure hunt on Saturday, and to the Outer Banks with a bunch of our friends for a week on the beach.
2008/4/1-The wedding was great, thanks to everyone that showed up to party with us. So many people have asked about the honeymoon, and Surabhi never reads this site, so I figured I could safely spill the beans here. She thinks we're going to Europe, but that's not quite true. Our first stop is a brief trip to Sandusky, OH. It's the home of my favorite amusement park in the world, Cedar Point. The park won't be open till May, but we can still enjoy looking at the coasters from outside the gates. Then, we fly to Florida for a tour of the wonderful baseball spring training facilities there. Again, our timing isn't great, as spring training is over and all the teams are playing in their regular cities, but I'm really looking forward to seeing all the little towns and ballparks anyway, and I think Surabhi will really enjoy it too. Finally, we travel all the way to Banff to enjoy the Canadian Rockies. Since we don't like skiing much, this should be the crown jewel of our trip, as we enjoy watching the spring thaw in Banff National Park. Really excited about the trip, and can't wait to share our pictures when we get back.
2008/3/29-Getting married today!
2008/3/20-Today was Match Day - essentially all the graduating medical students across the country found out where they'll be doing their residencies. Surabhi and I are both doing Emergency Medicine. She's at Cooper University Hospital and I'm staying right at Temple. Those are great, great results for both of us. We're damn happy over here.
2008/3/18-I saw my last patient as a medical student today. It was my last day of this rotation, an HIV outpatient primary care clinic. We have class meetings the next two days, with the highlight being the Match on Thursday. Hopefully an update soon after will let you know where Surabhi and I will be training for the next three years. After this weekend, it's a week off, then the wedding on the 29th, then honeymoon in *classified*. In unrelated news, I've been playing a lot of Super Smash Bros. Brawl on the Wii, and it's a blast. Highly recommend, especially if you can manage to get two or more people together for multiplayer.
2008/2/28-Jacta alea est.
Yesterday was the deadline for both residency programs and applicants to submit their rank list for the Residency Match. It was a day for (mostly) quiet celebration in med student land. I went out and played Quizzo with some classmates. For most of us, the decision about where we'll spend our next three or more years is completely settled, but we just won't know about it until noon on March 20th.
2008/1/24-Now, for the second time only, a house built by Scruffydog Construction is available as the house at 858 Willard Street is now on the market. It's also now listed on the realtor's site. My dad was pretty pleased with the pictures that appear on both, though for me they show up a little distorted on the second one.
2008/1/20-Here Follows Adventures Involving Epoxy
One week ago yesterday, I had to drive to Pittsburgh, with the intention of then continuing on to Detroit on the next day, my birthday, for multiple interviews. But, the day before that, my drivers-side side mirror was unceremoniously disconnected from my car while it was parked on the street. I was able to, somewhat securely, kind of snap it back on. It was no longer adjustable by the controls in the car, but it seemed like it would stay. Surabhi of course suggested taking her car, but I overruled her, for reasons including stubbornness and also a desire to have XM radio for the 20+ hours of driving (including the lengthy Detroit-Philly solo leg I had ahead of me on Wednesday.)
Other than running behind schedule to get her to a wedding-related appointment, the trip was going well until a rest area stop halfway across I-76. As I accelerated out of the rest area, we hit several imperfections in the pavement which I believe were spaced perfectly to amplify the magnitude of the vertical travel of the vehicle on each bump. The results were predictable, with the mirror half falling just as I completed my merge, pausing just long enough for me to register what was going on, then falling off into the Turnpike.
Panic, etc.
I was able to pull over, run back, endure several sphincter-tightening moments as cars narrowly avoided hitting the mirror, then dart into a gap in traffic and retrieve it. There were now some cosmetic imperfections on the housing and a hairline crack in the mirror itself, but otherwise the thing was remarkably intact. Back in the car, we nervously resumed travel. Somewhat unnerving to glance at the mirror and see only smooth interstate concrete, but extra over-the-shoulder checks made merging left as safe as could possibly be.
The next time one of those travel plazas was available, I stopped there and looked for a suitable fixative. Gorilla Glue grabbed my attention, but it had a dismaying long setting time and the instructions were unworkable, involving wetting the surface and so on. But they had two kinds of epoxy, including one that advertised only four minutes to set. It appeared to be similar to the grey/black stuff I'd worked with before. I obtained that and two plastic spoons and took it out the the 35F parking lot. It was a messy operation. That stuff is so temperature-sensitive, it was almost rock hard, and I essentially had to rip both tubes open from the bottom to get any significant amounts out. Also very tough to mix. But I got it onto the parts of the mirror housing that appeared to match up with parts on the car, and leaned on it for about 10 minutes, and there it stuck. That I found out several days later that my old roommate Duff is doing graduate work in two-part epoxies is, I believe, no coincidence.
2007/Rocktober/18-Took Step 2 of my Boards today. Woo!
2007/Rocktober/13-I have new content! Believe it or not, when I first wrote about my trip to the Arctic Circle one year after the fact, I didn't plan on a similar (longer) break before I wrote about the second week. But there is is, Year Late - Week 2, and only some 27 months later. Please enjoy/scorn/reply at your leisure. In other news, wedding planning is going well, with Surabhi and her parents by far doing the majority of the work. People always ask about school, so I'll say that I'm studying for Part II of the medical boards. We're also in the middle of the application process for Emergency Medicine, waiting for letters of recommendation and other documents to go out and interview offers to come in. If you are in Chicago, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, DC, Baltimore, NYC, or Boston, Dylan and Surabhi's Winter Interview Tour 2007-2008 may be coming to your town, so please ready the couches. Rachel moved to Philly to start law school at Penn, so we see her quite a bit more.
2007/8/31-So many things keep me from writing on FDC. I think one of them is that I feel like I have to do something bigger or better than my last update, and in this case, how can I beat getting engaged? Well, I can't. So the quick update is that I'm still engaged, planning to get married on March 29, 2008. Mark your calenders, kids. An official FDC Wedding Page is in the works, though I am not the one working on it. We also had an engagement party last weekend, and pictures from that are forthcoming sooner than later. In the interim, I've been doing my emergency medicine rotations, liking, but not loving The Deathly Hallows (Until the final battle, which I thought was amazing. I'm a total sucker for a storyline that has people rallying for the greater good, even if it's fake wizard people.), now reading How Soccer Explains The World, and this weekend, heading to Ohio for Chetan Patil's wedding, during which I'll see lots of good and old college buddies.
2007/7/4-The big news is that I got engaged to Surabhi Gaur on Monday. Was doing that two days before Independence Day some kind of statement? Probably not, but Surabhi and I are both fantastically happy. People have asked lots of questions about wedding dates, engagement parties, and other things, and we don't really know about any of that yet, but details will be forthcoming.
2007/6/25-I've been keeping myself occupied, as always. Recent activities include completing the third year of medical school, watching US soccer beat archrival Mexico in the Gold Cup final, very grudgingly adding a smidgen more information to my Facebook profile, and the long, long moving in, then settling in process in my apartment in Chinatown with Surabhi.
2007/6/15-Doc Heaps died last month, at age 76. I wouldn't be where I am today or who I am today without him, and most of you that find yourself reading this page probably feel the same way.
2007/4/27-Tom's a tricky one, he snuck some banner ads in here without me noticing a few weeks back and broke the counter at the same time, but that's all sorted out now. I've been mostly in Danville, PA for the last month, with one week still to go on my rotation there, and I'm back in Philly this weekend to, among other things, be around while a new washing machine is installed in my new apartment. This task reeks of grown-up responsibility, and I am not fond of it.
2007/4/1-So, vacation was good, but as always turned out to be pricey. It's no big deal, but there were some unanticipated costs involved, and money is going to be a little tight for a while. Still, it was a great trip, and if I've gotta run a few banner ads so I can keep paying for the hosting, so be it. Hopefully we don't need those for long. I plan to have the album up with the Puerto Rico pictures as soon as possible.
2007/3/23-Heading out of the 48 states, but not out of the country, as Surabhi and I, accompanied by five classmates and other hangers-on, venture to scenic Vieques, Puerto Rico. Expect us back in a week, loaded with pictures.
2007/2/24-Apologies, as always, for the lag in updates. All the usual conditions applied, with the addition that venting my spleen on the war really burned me out, and took away my motivation to write about...whatever it is I'm doing. I'm done with psychiatry now, moved on to internal medicine. Tom had some hip news the other night when I was on call. He'd met Dr. Rosser, the guy behind some fancy-pants medical technology, and recently in the news, a study that correlated video game skillz to certain surgical skills. On that subject, I've been working on my surgery skills recently, with my new(ish) Nintendo Wii. We play a little ExciteTruck, mess around shooting bunnies, and otherwise have a good time before getting serious with the Wii Tennis.
2007/1/16-I turned 25 years old over the weekend. It was a good birthday, with very nice birthday wishes from many friends and family, lots of NFL football on TV, no weekend calls in the hospital, and Surabhi's All-Bacon Dinner. I never want to do this too much, but I hope as I write a few lines about my thoughts on the war in Iraq, you'll tolerate a diversion into seriousness enough to read them.
I admit to being wrong. In 2003, I made the argument many times that our "Hunt for Weapons of Mass Destruction" was completely bogus, but we at least had a good and decent mission in the sense that Saddam Hussein was a horrible person and the Iraqi people deserved to be free of him. By the end of that year, we were hunting down terrorist leaders in Iraq, who had plans to attack the United States. In 2004, we were "fighting them there so we don't have to fight them here." In 2005, we started to talk about instilling democracy in the Middle East. I'm honestly not sure, but I guess we're "fighting terror" there now. I don't see this as a political issue, as much as I disagree with the current administration on many political issues, but I want to make it clear that we don't have some kind of "mission." Our leaders made a choice, probably motivated by some kind of misplaced rage and desire for revenge, and that alone is how we got where we are today.
We cannot change the past. But it is cathartic to admit that we were wrong. Only by doing that can we look at the present with clear eyes. And if we do that, we can see that our presence in Iraq is currently not helping anything. Are we guarding Iraq's borders, to keep out the "terrorists" and "foreign agents" our government is blaming for much of the violence in the country? No, we are mostly in a few cities, where are our troops ride out on patrols, with no mission other than to hopefully return to base safely, without being shot at or blown up. We have no mission, and our presence is like a splinter. As long as we remain, we will irritate the opposing sides, causing conflict to continue to fester. When we leave, and we will leave eventually, there will be more pain, and more blood. But we will leave eventually. Do not let anyone, Senator McCain, tell you that the only problems have been issues with tactics or troop levels. The American military and people are too good, too important to be fed that load of lies again and again. And when I say that, do not be so false and so hollow as to suggest that I should think otherwise, that I should be should be supporting our troops.
I support our troops. More than anything else, I support our troops. These are good people, and I wish that 130,000 of them were at home for Christmas, not hopelessly trying to officiate a civil war halfway around the world. More than that, I wish that 23,000 with horrific injuries and many more with horrific memories had never had to endure what they've gone through. 3019 American soldiers who have died in Iraq since the war began, and this is terrible. Soldiers are sometimes called on to sacrifice their lives for their country, but there is no mission, and this is an absolute national disgrace. Any leader who supported the war who will not tell you "I was wrong" with no absolutely no qualifiers does not support our troops. Any leader who does not support removing these men and women from harm's way as soon as humanly possible does NOT support our troops.
I started writing this for two reasons. One is the story of a friend of my family's. A mother is relieved that her son has suffered a traumatic injury, with possible lifelong loss of function, simply because he is home and will fight in this war no more. She can't explain why he or anyone else was ever put in that position. The second reason is the Iraqi people themselves. Our president brought them up on 60 Minutes this week- "Iraqi people owe the American people a huge debt of gratitude." He explained, "That's the problem here in America, they wonder whether or not there is a gratitude level that's significant enough in Iraq." There is gratitude owed, I suppose, because by the most conservative estimates, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have died violent deaths since we started this war. I can't think of a way to convey in real terms what those innocent-looking words "hundreds of thousands" really implies. Hundreds of thousands is more people that you will ever meet in your life. Iraq's population is about 1/10th the United States', so try to imagine millions of dead Americans. There is nothing so awful as war. Why does this war exist?
2007/1/4-New in Flipse Albums, I've got pictures from winter break this year. We're calling them Rocky's Horror Picture Show. It's not as scary as it sounds.
2006/12/30-As Neil and other sharp readers have noticed, the guys in the Flipse.com Tech Department didn't get any time off this year, and the final (?) piece of FDC NT is in place - our own RSS feed. I've tested it in Google Reader and Firefox's Live Bookmarks, the feed should in fact work on the RSS Aggregator of your choice. Please let the team know if it does/doesn't/burns down your house. The last few days went essentially as planned, visiting the Liz/Sam/Lily Trio, Neil delivered a pizza, Rocky and I meeting Nicole in Buffalo and making a quick trip to Niagara Falls to see the falls and enjoy a Canadian arcade, visiting with the Smiths (always mealtime, always delicious), and driving back here to State College. Just a few days off remain, though New Year's Eve in Philadelphia should be great fun.
2006/12/27-Despite most appearances, I've been hard at work, burning through my two weeks of vacation like it's going out of style. Surabhi and Dana had XROX (Christmas in Roxborough), their big annual holiday dinner party blowout. We recovered from that for a few days, tied up loose ends in Philadelphia, and I came home to State College. I finished re-reading The Baroque Cycle, which was a tremendously rewarding thing to do, and after almost 3000 pages, only left me wanting more. That may free up some time to start on the stack of books I received as presents, mostly falling into either the "for med school" or "travel" piles. Surabhi came up and attended Christmas at mom's house, and I visited with her family in Canonsburg. My kitchen received several new additions, among them a digital scale, very nice roasting pan, stock pot, and immersion blender. Rachel, dad, Pepper and I had Christmas at home, and granddad joined us for dinner, as the Eagles beat the Cowboys to complete their run for a playoff spot. Today is Flipse Family Christmas, and later, Rocky should make an appearance. Rockstar and I will eventually head north, with plans to see Liz, Sam, Lily, the Smiths, Neil, Luke, and eventually make it as far as Buffalo.
With all that, I've also been working on the website. The content of Prose (Things to Read) and Pictures (Things to See) is basically complete, though I hope to tidy up their designs at some point. This is only one part of what I'm calling FDC NT, which is a joke maybe four or five people will get. What else is new? Well...I went through almost every HTML file on the site, which is, let's say, a lot of files. Colors are now handled by CSS, META tags are now present (most pages had these), Google Analytics code is added, and I'm removing all text/link email addresses, in favor of a image, in an effort to put a dent in the increasing flow of spam in my inbox. A great number of pages got little updates here or there in the process, and I'm pretty much happy to have a simple, if inelegant, way to index all the content on the site.
2006/12/21-Happy Solstice, everyone. Is it Merry Solstice? Joyful? Anyway, pay attention, it'll be dark a lot today. I'm done with the first half of the 3rd year of medical school, and mercifully seem to have come through it all relatively unscathed.
2006/12/3-Again, this is the new flipse.com hosting, with Bluehost. I'm working on rolling out some really up to date technology, should be able to bring the site up to 2002 or so. Observant readers will notice some positive changes already.
2006/12/2-New flipse.com hotness. Welcome.
2006/Rocktober/18-Do you remember 1996? We were in the throes of puberty... or at its threshold... or just finishing those awkward, halcyon days of youth. Clinton was in office. The Pentium was brand new. And #gifted was even newer.
Friday, October 20, is the 10th anniversary of the creation of the Undernet IRC channel #gifted by Neil Bardhan (Neilshire/Knile) and Dylan Flipse(Flipper1). In the beginning, it was meant as a substitute for web chatting for a few friends from a summer camp. And it has grown into whatever it is today. A grown man? A grown channel? A blossoming social something or another?
Join us Friday for a celebration, from about 5:00PM EDT until it gets too late. (Check it! No bedtimes anymore!)
If you need more of a refresher, check out http://flipse.com/gifted.html. If you want a refresher on how to GET onto #gifted, visit http://flipse.com/getonirc.html.
Cosponsored by Neil and Dylan
2006/8/24-The fix is in, my friends. Sam and Liz had a baby girl named Lily Evalynn on August 12 at 2:14PM. Baby Lily weighed 8lbs, 14oz, and both mother and baby are said to be doing well. As for my life, I'm going to ban myself from using the b-word in this context in the future, but one last time is ok - I'm busy. The hours for trauma surgery are long and often hard. There are interesting stories and also many, many hours of tedium. I have about three weeks of surgery left, so I'll probably live. I hope everyone is is doing well.
2006/7/31-Many moons have passed, yadda, yadda, yadda. We're not here to talk about that. Liz and Sam are, of course, about to have a baby, and now that we've reached and passed the "due date" I thought I'd give loyal FDC readers the chance to enter a baby pool. Let's say $10/person, half of what's collected goes into a savings bond for the Young Corbett and half goes to the winner. Criteria will be the date, sex, time, and weight, in that order. For example, if Rocky and Bill Rogers both get the date and sex correct, the tiebreaker would be the closest in weight. Price is Right rules are not in effect, one can "go over" without being penalized. I'll take entries by email or any other means up till Liz goes into labor. Spread the word.
Addendum - My guess is August 4th, girl, 5:55AM, and 7lbs 7oz (3374 grams), just so everyone knows this is on the up-and-up. Oh, and to keep the shenanigans to a minimum, enter a max of two times per person.
2006/6/18-Week One of West North - One Year Late is up, only...let's see, one year and one week late. Not bad. I took the boards about ten days ago. It's about the least fun you can legally have for $400, but at least it's over.
2006/6/6-Got a new project. Calling it West North - One Year Late for two reasons that should be fairly obvious. My boards are in TWO DAYS so I've had no time to do much with this *yet* but that should change after Thursday.
2006/5/3-So, the deal is, I'm kind of homeless. Twice. First, in the real world, there was a fire in my apartment building, from which all men, women, and children escaped without serious bodily harm. However, the building was *quite* harmed, and quite smokey, and in general, legally uninhabitable. So, while much of my stuff remains there, I'm living with Surabhi and Friends in Manayunk. So don't cry for me, Flipse.com readers, I've got a pretty good deal going until I move into my digs for next year. Now, on to the second order of business. Google has seemingly disowned me. A Google search for dylan flipse refuses to come up to this page. Heck, I can't even find it anywhere on the results for flipse. The last time the Google Spider visited here was Jan, 2005, according to the Google Cache, so maybe that's part of the problem. And after all the good times we had. This vexes me.
2006/4/4-All kinds of pictures from the spring break trip are now available on the album page. Surabhi and I are calling it Borrowed Money, Borrowed Time. Oh, plus, I hate Tom.
2006/3/4-Hey! It's March! Crap! Wow! No time for details, but Surabhi and I are leaving in a few hours for London till Tuesday, then Rome till Thursday, Barcelona till Sunday, Alicante till Monday, and back to London then Philly by Monday night. You want to contact me? I'd recommend sending email, because I don't think I'll be answering my phone.
2006/2/22-Thanks to Sam, this one is for anyone still trying to figure out what "learning imagines you" means - Mansfield University, where anthrax infects you!
2006/1/31-Uh, sorry this is late, but I've got birthday present for Rocky.
2006/1/19-Lack of content be damned! Today, Thursday, brings us not one but two new photo albums. First, there are pictures from Rich and Heather's wedding in October. This includes not only the wedding, but the trip there and back as well. After that, check out Christmas in Manayunk 2005. It's a bird, it's a plane, it's the best potluck of the year! Learn new, exciting ways to take the trash out without carrying it through the middle of the party! Now, you'll notice that these albums are sans-caption. I decided that if I waited till I had time to put pictures up *and* write captions, we'd continue at about the old rate of...no pictures going up, ever. Then I realized, hey, other people were involved with these things, maybe they want to write captions. The solution could hardly be simpler. XMYK is already being handled, but anyone who wants to caption the pictures from the Indiana trip, drop me a line. It's really easy, you'll be typing them right onto the album page. I'd like to change topics slightly, if I could. I promise, this will be less of a dramatic change than the "Weapons of Mass Destruction" to "Democracy for Iraq" to "Fighting the Terrorists There and Not Here" reversals that have been given as our reasons for occupying Iraq. Read the full text of Al Gore's speech from Monday if you've got some time. If you don't have that kind of time, search out your own source of analysis or read this one from the Moderate Voice. I'd readily point you to numerous articles at Salon or other lefty sources, but if you're interested in that kind of perspective, you're probably already reading those kinds of things. The short story? This administration constantly says "Trust us." This administration is repeatedly wrong about big, big things, is consistently in bed with the biggest industries and wealthiest Americans (and Saudis), spies on Americans, lies again and again, and above all else, conceals, hides, and obscures what's going on. Why, again, do we trust them?
2006/1/13-Emma is wrong, it is I who is old. This is not necessarily true, but a barrage of well-wishers today have assured me that I'm approaching "downright decrepit." Thank you all very much for the kind wishes. Next update (say, sometime sooner than two months from now) - I'll have some pictures!
2005/11/3-I didn't ever really hate Rich. His wedding was a crazy good time, albeit, as I mentioned, one that was held annoyingly far from where I live. I've been, you know, doing med school things.
2005/Rocktober/21-I kinda hate Rich right now. Steve and I are up early, about to hit the road, meet Brandon and Brit, and drive to Indiana for Rich and Heather's wedding. I've got nothing to complain about, Steve's the one who had a 12 hour bus ride yesterday just to get to Philly, so he could make this trip.
2005/Rocktober/14-Back in time update. So...the server hosting Flipse.com and associated enterprises crashed last week, and through some kind of assclownery/awful luck, the most recent intact backup dated to late July. All updates, etc have been restored, but the super fancy new album from the roadtrip this summer has not been restored, and basically won't be. I'll get the pictures back up, but I don't have time to re-do the captions right now. I had three exams this week, and still have one to go on Monday, before things start heading to Indiana for Rich's wedding.
2005/Rocktober/3-Plenty of good stuff to report. Veeeerrry early on Saturday morning, Surabhi, Jon Ford, and I took part in EPEX 2005. We were assigned "injuries," received injury makeup, watched them ignite and extinguish a training airplane, then arranged ourselves on the tarmac (with the other hundred-plus victims), to be triaged, placed on backboards, and transported by ambulance to hospitals all over the Philadelphia area. Things we learned - backboards are very uncomfortable. I have picture of some of it, as always, those will be up "someday." Speaking of things that were scheduled for "someday," I found the time to finish the captions on the photo album from my big summer road trip. If you've been waiting to check those out, now's the time.
2005/9/18-Time for another installment of FDC Recommends®. This week, I'm recommending that you get to your local auto parts store and pick up a can of Fix A Flat. There may be excellent comparable products, but I can personally recommend this one. You can easily, quickly fix any kind of non-catastrophic flat tire without even using a jack. It's pretty awesome.
2005/9/8-School started up on August 15th and hit like a ton of bricks. While I was off vacationing, Dave Haeffner managed to snag the picture that's the new top logo on this page. I think it's snazzy, and I thank him. And as for that vacation, some of you might've seen a few of my photos, but I now have them all online in my new Album. I'm using Gallery, which seems slick (you guys can leave comments, etc) and I think I'll be using it for future projects from here on out. Rocky, your late birthday present will have to wait a bit longer.
2005/8/4-The Flipse.Com writing and editorial staff was on vacation for all of July, and we're all back at work now, just in time for an Airport/Mansfield/Wedding/Delaware/Beach/Demolition Derby kind of ten days in which updates will probably also be scarce. We traveled to Alaska, the Arctic Ocean, Machu Pichu, Rochester, State College, and many places in-between. We'll be sure to write all about it and show all the pictures the legal team will allow us to show as soon as possible. Also, Rocky, your birthday gift is in the works, it's all a question of getting that done right now, or leaving Tom at the airport, and the last thing I'd want to do is have the reputation of the good people at Vagabond Dog to suffer needlessly.
2005/6/29-What I really like about Northwest Canada is that a grown man can wear Tevas, black jeans, a t-shirt, leather vest with fringe, and his hair in a ponytail, all without a trace of irony. (Also, I knew I was in for it when I got into the Yukon, and I realized I could get three radio stations, all rebroadcasts of the same feed, all playing Billy Idol's "Dancing With Myself.") But, hey! We're having fun.
2005/6/2-I leave Philadelphia tomorrow and from State College (to begin the trip proper) on Sunday morning. I'll be in Pittsburgh/Cleveland on June 5, Chicago on June 6-7, Seattle on June 13, and Eagle Plains, Yukon on June 21. After that, things get fuzzy, but look for me to show up sometime in mid-July. A few updates from the road are also certainly possible. Many thanks to those who contributed book suggestions and books, snacks, advice (Yes, including those who questioned my sanity), or anything else. Emailing me your address could result in you getting a postcard, but I'll make no promises.
2005/5/24-The days just fly by, and I'm afraid I'm suffering from a bit of writer's block. Still, life is good.
2005/5/9-Just made reservations for a party on June 21st.
2005/5/2-I've heard nice things about the current logo, and I wanted to mention again that Sam made it. I, too, dig it, as well as the source material. Today brings you a quick update to the Concerts Page, but I'm afraid I don't quite have the time to do real writeups for any recent shows. At least they're catalogued. In entirely different news, I managed to get myself elected as a class rep. I'm not entirely sure why. In my spare time, I've been doing things like looking for cool places to camp in South Dakota or deciding which of, for example, Nine Innings, Middlesex, and Brock Biology of Microorganisms I'd like to read, either in South Dakota or elsewhere this summer. Oh yeah, plus I study.
2005/4/28-I love all the random shout-outs that The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy has been getting. The official ads are all over, and the long-awaited movie opens tomorrow, sure, but I think that it's even cooler to see things like articles titled, "(Fill In The Blank)'s Guide To The Galaxy" all over the place. It's great. I think that Rocky and I will be seeing the movie on opening day. Speaking of Rocky, many were left wondering what the Rocky Protocol is. Well, it's not too exciting, I'll admit, but if you're any good at clicking links, now you know. Speaking of the Rocky Protocol, that was used on my trip last weekend to some of New England's finer institutions of higher learning. I stayed with Cutter at Brown University and we spent some good times with Caitlin there and at Wellesley College. Many thanks to both of them. Speaking of that trip to Wellesley, I picked up a new friend there. Unfortunately, this "friend" was a tick. Naturally, there were hilarious antics involved in this tick's removal, subsequent bite wound, and especially the display of said wound at otherwise upstanding social events.
2005/4/14-The verdict is in - Pizza Hut Buffalo Chicken pizza does NOT match up. It's not bad, but it's just not worth your time.
2005/4/11-I present a quick smattering of pictures for you this evening, because, hey, everyone likes pictures. We begin with three of the less scandalous shots from my spring break excursion to Amsterdam. Nick Cavallaro was my copilot on the whole trip, and is a classmate at med school. Here he's checking a map with a Canadian girl we met, unless I'm mistaken they're either trying to find the Heineken brewery or perhaps a mailbox. Rob and Mike are the blokes on either side of me here, in a picture taken over one of Amsterdam's many fine canals. I can call them "blokes" (I hope they don't mind) because they're both from Manchester, England. (Extra information for you, the flipse.com reader - this trip was the first time Rob and I have met in real life, but we've known each other for a long time through email and IRC AND we originally came into contact after he accidentally found this page.) You probably recognize me, Dylan Flipse, standing in front of a coffee shop, cleverly positioned to place my head next to the word "Temple." That seemed funny, but isn't really. I look like I've been crashing in some youth hostel after a few long nights, which was entirely true. Changing gears, and in fact entire modes of transportation, we have a beeeeautiful picture of the field during pregame for Opening Day for the Phillies at Citizens Bank Park. It was also the first game ever for the Washington Nationals. JP and Matt came up from Arlington to join me and fellow Temple Med students Surabhi, Dana, Robyn, Leanne, Eric, and Frank, plus local riff-raff Jason, to witness the Nats first throwing error and three strikeout game, among other fine highlights. Finally (who knew med school was going to be this much fun?), Surabhi and I went to the Prom on Saturday night. No, we didn't crash at a high school, that was just the nickname for the Med School Formal. It was very, very nice, but I'd be remiss if I didn't point out the one slight oddity of the event, namely that the neighboring Mutter Müseum was open for us during the event. That Megacolon has to be seen to be believed.
2005/4/6-Tom was at it again, up to his usual April First tricks, but I hope no one got too upset by all that. Other quick updates are a new logo at the top of this page (inspired by possibly my favorite program, and expertly created by Sam The Fantastic.) and my new, awesome bumper sticker idea, prominently displayed elsewhere on this page.
2005/3/28-Right, right, I haven't written in forever. Amsterdam with Nick was fantastic. Weather was a bit chilly, perhaps, but it's a great city, fun to walk around, and we had a blast staying at the hostel. Rob and Mike coming over for about a day from Manchester was also very, very cool. I'll have some pictures for you sometime, though you won't be the first to see them. The US Customs agent in Detroit insisted, but that's a whole different story for me to be agitated about another time. In any case, Europe was followed by a trip to DC, where we saw JP, Matt, Dan Meismer, and Rachel. All of those shenanigans were followed by, no!, a return to real life, with an annoyingly full week of school. I can deal with that, though, as long as they keep making Arrested Development. If that stops, all bets are off.
2005/3/10-I've been on the MBTA, RTA, BART, SEPTA, the Underground, STCUM, MTA, the Metro...maybe a few others. Planes, trains, and automobiles willing, I'll add NS from Schiphol to Amsterdam Central on Saturday morning. Return trip is on Wednesday. (More clever readers have no doubt assumed, correctly, that this trip is a Vagabond Dog production. Our most clever readers stopped reading this page a long time ago.)
2005/3/1-This is the Homeland Security Flipse.com update. First, and of vastly more substantial content is this article on John Gilmore from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. I urge you not take the view, "Of course you have to show an ID to fly, this guy is a moron!" because that's not what Gilmore's actions are about. It's an incredible thing, to be governed by a law you aren't allowed to read. (Not to mention, hey, I know exactly how easy it is for idiot college freshmen to get fake IDs. How hard can it be for someone with motivation that extends beyond obtaining a few cases of Beast Ice?) Now, on a much lighter and more personal note, I'm proud to announce that, despite my well-voiced objections to the theft of personal liberties in the prevailing political climate, we here at Flipse.com are doing our part to contribute to the security of the United States of America, specifically our crops and animals. I got an email over the weekend from someone asking to use my roadblock picture from Sonic Booms and Cornfields in training material for the "National Initiative for agroterrorism with the Dept of Homeland security and the Office of Domestic Preparedness." Of course, I gave permission and the guy later sent me the page of material where he used my picture and I admit, it works quite well. The entire document is apparently "First Responder Sensitive" so I didn't see the whole thing, but ask me sometime and I'll show you the page.
2005/2/21-In the course of my travels and adventures over the weekend, I enjoyed many excellent conversations with Dave Eck. One of the things we talked about is how we don't understand how people are bored. Maybe it's different if you're not a full-time student, but neither of us could fathom how people have extended periods of time in which they'd like to do something, but can't find an activity to fill that time. Anyway, great weekend. Thanks to Eric for the accomodations, and it was good to see Cutter, Caitlin, JP, Camp (Yes, I will put those pictures up), Dave, Eric, Paul, and everyone else at the Herdic House. Now I've got a week till my Neuroanatomy midterm.
2005/2/9-Today, I was wearing Dockers Stain Defenders pants and my Gortex jacket. Almost totally waterproof. When I got out of the rain, I could shake off like a dog. Try it sometime.
2005/2/7-Well, yesterday's game was a helluva downer, but I'll be honest - I'm glad that my car and/or person weren't harmed in any of the potential riots if the outcome had been different. (That said, it would've been pretty great to see them win, and I'm sure I could've stayed with my new friends Robyn, Leanne, Dana, and Surabhi while Manayunk burned.) Notes for Neil, who has been giving me much pub as of late - I doubt you'll need a tent for a drive like that. Never underestimate the ease added to a situation by simply sleeping in your car, or overestimate the comfort offered by the floor of a tent. Plus, I'm willing to bet you can crash on couches for any trip in the PA/NJ/MD/NY area. Also, if it creates friction to tell your dad about such a trip, then don't bother. What's the worst that'll happen? He'll get a hankering for a garbage plate and decide to drop in on you unannounced? You have a cell phone. You can make something up. Addition by omission, I say.
2005/2/1-I'm very bad at mornings. If there was some morning where I both ate breakfast and packed a lunch, I think I'd throw a party to celebrate the event. Anyway, my apologies about any confusion over the Flipse.com date system. We are now ISO 8601 compliant, and Rocky is happier, I hope. I'll also be changing logos at the top of this page more frequently than every five years (hey, maybe the sunrise will make a guest re-appearance) so, if you don't like "Think flipse.com," don't fret, it'll be gone soon enough.
24/1/2005-Keeping the birthday thread going, I've got a Happy 25th to Sam (a little late, on the 21st) and a very Happy 21st to Emma (who has been waiting a very long time, so I though a little early for the 25th) wouldn't hurt. This city is nuts about the Eagles. When I was waiting in line at the grocery store last week, I overheard part of a conversation between a couple that must've been in high school. His back was to me, so all I could hear was what she was saying, and it went something like this-
Her - "What jersey are you going to wear to school tomorrow?"
Him - ...
Her - "Do you own ANY Eagles clothes?"
Him - ...
Her - (With a disgusted look) "Don't you think you should?"
I think she wanted to leave right then and there.
13/1/2005-Many thanks to everyone who wished me a happy birthday today, including many classmates, my family, Jennifer, and many friends. Double thanks to Temple Med '08 People, including Josh, Frank, Jonas, Dan, Christine, and Jon, who celebrated with me. Special thanks to Josh and Sue for making me dinner and dessert, which was really much too nice of them. It was a good day. Here's hoping for a good weekend. (And happy belated birthday wishes to Brit, slightly early birthday wishes to Neil.)
10/1/2005-I am now accepting suggestions for books to read while I'm driving around North American this summer. Of course, I won't read the books while I'm driving, I intend to stop, park, get out of the car, and read books. I have plenty of ideas, but if you have any good ones, by all means, let me know.
4/1/2005-Which is more reasonable- sticking with a system that's cleary backwards because (certain) people understand it, or switching to a logical system that will confuse people (self included) but in the end makes More Sense? The management at Flipse.com voted (unanimously, as always) for making sense. Other bits of news include my completion of a first reading of The Baroque Cycle and beginning of a second semsester of medical school, after a "break" that was not exactly restful, what with much traveling on routes 322, 15, 220, I-80, etc, fun with people too numerous to name (But I would be remiss if I didn't single out Tom and Rocky as particularly exemplary traveling companions), diverse illnesses seen, imagined, and experienced, and, of course, quality time with the family.
12/18/2004-Quicky, because I'm about to hit the road, I have two (count 'em) pieces of news. First, the good/bad news - we have a buyer for the house in Williamsport. The closing is on the 22nd. I've lived a few places, but that's the house I identify as where I grew up, it's sad to see The Flipse Compound passing on to new management. But, with the new place in State College finished, looking great, and moved-into, it was time. In recent years, that house surpassed the Arnot Mall and Corning East High School sporting events as the place where "we" would meet in the largest groups. So, don't drop by there any more, unless you'd like to meet some new people. The second (and this is just good news) is that I've finished my first semester of medical school intact. Elaboration on that subject is available upon request, but I won't belabor the point here.
12/14/2004-Coming out of my exam today, Shuffle on the iPod served up - the end of Lynyrd Skynyrd - Freebird, Moxy Früvous - The Kids's Song, Soul Couging - True Dreams of Wichita (A gem, thanks to Jodi Bunting for turning me onto that one), Violent Femmes - Add It Up, Simon and Garfunkel - The Boxer, and The Grateful Dead - Uncle John's Band. It was a beautiful, cold, sunny day. If you were trying to draw it before 1990, you would've been out of luck because you'd need that Cerulean crayon. Anyway, it was a pretty good day. If you want to waste a bit of time, I suggest checking out my photo album for the Case Camping Club. The captions are all pretty much half-assed, but that's all you get for now.
12/9/2004-Studying in cadaver lab with Jonas, Kevin, Frank, and Josh last Friday, someone decided to play Michael Jackon's "Thriller" on their laptop. You might've heard of the video for that one, it got a little publicity when it came out. Something about a bunch of dead bodies coming back to life, dancing and carrying on. That was about enough studying for that day.
12/4/2004-How long, exactly can I live on rice, my mom's chili, and my dad's chocolate chip cookies? Not much longer, I'm out of chili.
12/1/2004-We are entering The December Of Studying. Really, it's only The December of 54% Studying, as my Histo Final is on the 17th (frightening as THAT is). I'll be more than happy to take be taking December 18th to January 2nd off.
11/21/2004-Just wanted to take a moment to point out one of my favorite webpages, Flipse Dot Tom. It's pretty new, but it's so hip, I'm surprised there isn't a line outside of people waiting to get in. You can read there about the #1 thing that I'm most excited about for the next calendar year. The only question is - which of us is Calvin, and which is Hobbes? Yukon, ho!
11/18/2004-As always, I have the best intentions to write fun, exciting, and new things for the web page. Life gets in the way.
11/10/2004-I had a suggestion for last week's update. Could've just written, "Booo."
11/3/2004-A resounding vindication for Karl Rove and the politics of Fear and Meanness. A strong vote for ethocentricity and intolerance. A referendum telling us that God is with the Right. Big win for eliteism behind a veil of appeal to common folks, and for big corporations everywhere.
Rocktober/31/2004-Boo!
Rocktober/27/2004-My major league baseball season started when Dan, Rich, and I saw the Red Sox and Cardinals in a pre-season game in Jupiter, Florida. As you might've noticed, the season ended tonight with the Red Sox's World Series win. It's been an incredible thing to watch, and I'll leave any further description to those more gifted with prose. Now, I should be able to get some studying done.
Rocktober/25/2004-I voted today. Dropped by absentee ballot in the mail. For me, it's pretty much over. My contribution to the political process this year has been in the form of many discussions, a few small monetary contributions, and those votes. That is, more or less, what I imagine most of you have done or will do. Not so for one friend of flipse.com, Andy Rachlin. Here's a link to a Google news search for "Andrew Rachlin" that might be of interest. Andy got a little more involved with the effort to have Samara Berend elected. As Pat said - "Andy Rachlin, mudslinger." Good times. In almost entirely unrelated news, My Boot is back online. The website has been AWOL for the better part of a year and, in a stunning fit of hubris, I'm willing to declare that I was one of the first people on the Web to realize that it was back. Anyone that's been paying much attention knows I'm a big fan of My Boot in general and more specifically, She Hates My Futon. (Standard disclaimer - I find "Futon" very addictive, you may too. It's long, it takes a while to read, if you have something to do, now would not be the time to get into it. It is a sort of novel(la?) in progress, but while most of the chapters were posted rapidly, 23 came about a year after 22, and it's been about four years since 23 was posted. Craig put a chapter title for 23 up last year, which as very exciting, and he says he's writing it. I can see how it'd be hard. My point is, you can waste a lot of time getting yourself invested in this story and...end up stuck like the rest of us. Consider yourself warned.)
Rocktober/23/2004-Happy Mole Day. That especially goes out to Mr. Bonislawski and Mr. Poechmann, who made me love chemistry, long before I got around to hating it, sometime right around March 2001. In an entirely different note, thanks to everyone who made it to the Reunion of Sorts we had online Wednesday. I can't speak for others, but I thought it was great fun. A lot of people made it on (Peak somewhere around 28), and there was fun discussion on old times, new times, some politics that got only a little mean-spirited, and Game 7 of the ALCS provided a very exciting backdrop, as well as an ongoing topic. I ran some stats that night, and have some new #gifted stats for you today. They've done some nice things with that program. It's fun, and it's funny how you can remember a specific conversation from a few years ago, just reading some of the random quotations from that page. The nick connection file needs some work. Oh, and now that Flipse.com has been discoverd by some of my fellow first-years at Temple University School of Medicine (mostly in search of the Dylan Flipse Theme Song) I should throw out a "welcome" to all those people, as they've had no idea what any of this was about up to this point. Hey guys. Frank? Josh? Jon? Devon? Just guessing. See ya Monday.
Rocktober/12/2004-Hello. If you're reading this, you're invited to a Reunion, of sorts, next Wednesday, the 20th at 8PM. Neil Bardhan and I first had a conversation on IRC on October 20th, 1996. Next Wednesday will be the 8th anniversary of that conversation. We thought it'd be fun to be sure to meet up to talk about old times for a bit. And, as I said, we'd like you to join us. Anyone's welcome, but we'd especially like to see you (on and active) if you've ever been active in #gifted. But new people are fun, and would be welcome. (Quick primer - Download mIRC, connect to any Undernet server, join #gifted. Slighty more verbose primer - Get On IRC. It's easy, I promise. Ask if you have questions.) If, somehow, you're really lost at this point - IRC is a system for chatting online, based more on "rooms" (called "channels") than 1-to-1 conversations like AIM and #gifted is the channel started by Neil and I, which is active to this day.
Rocktober/8/2004-If you only have time for one new band this year, make it The Shins. I listen to "New Slang" or "Young Pilgrams" and I can't remember when, if ever, I've heard music before that's so good it hurts. Check it out.
Rocktober/5/2004-Early results from the Vice Presidental Debates - the whole deal is set up where I used to play IM Floor Hockey.
9/29/2004-And now, an Ode To The Bachelor Life-
I live here, alone
So I can dip soft pretzels
Right in the cheese jar
9/28/2004-I need to either get better at taking naps, or better at not taking them.
9/21/2004-Periods in which I go a long, or relatively long amount of time without writing on Flipse.com sort of baffle me. I always seem to think about the web site a consistent amount. Over the last, say, nine days, I'm sure I've thought of something to write on here at least once a day. Maybe some site maintainence thing that should've been done in 2002, or a good idea for a new page, or a bad idea for a new page, or something like that. I frequently wish I did more with current pictures. Anyway, maybe I don't always realize that me thinking about something for site is a step or two short of you being able to read it here. So, actually, I'm going to sleep right now. It's 11:30PM. People that knew me in college ought to be "shocked, shocked." (That's in quotes because I was specifically thinking of the time Joan Cusack's character says that in High Fidelity. But we digress.) I've done an awful lot of web site stuff after midnight over the years, so maybe that's a bit of a reason for occasionally sparse updates. After midnight these days, I'm either in bed or trying hard to get there. My freshman roommate, Duff, went to bed after me exactly two times in the entire school year. Class here is at 8:00 every day, and I need to step out my door at 7:30AM to walk to the subway, ride my train in, and walk to Kresge. None of this is a complaint, just a bit of an update on a major change in my lifestyle these days. I really don't have anything to complain about, being in medical school is great. I also like living by myself and cooking for myself. In case anyone was wondering, tonight I made twice-baked cheddar/bacon potatoes and a breaded, pan-fried mesquite chicken. It's good. Maybe I'll take pictures of what I make for dinner, and make a page for that...
9/12/2004-I want to be in comic books.
9/3/2004-I discovered today that I own a cookbook that includes recipies from my mother, Sally Butterfield, Margie Shaw (those two names will mean something to Williamsport-types), and former President of the United States, Bill Clinton.
8/31/2004-I got more comments on my shirt than I really expected to today. All were positive. I guess I really shouldn't have known what to expect, as I haven't really worn my Corning East High School "Hot Soup For You/No Soup For You" shirt since I played high school-league hockey at the Williamsport YMCA, which was a while ago. Med school is going fine.
8/25/2004-I live in Philadelphia now. The Contact Flipse Page has been updated accordingly. Classes haven't started yet, that happens on Monday, but we've had plenty of orientation stuff to do. I've also still have much work to do before I consider myself "settled" in my new apartment, as I showed up in town around 10:30PM Sunday. More on all that, maybe even pictures and stuff, in the future. For now, I'll just say that I'm glad Emma talked me into buying a Brita pitcher. It may even just be the placebo effect, but I rather enjoy drinking from it.
9/19/2004-Last night, I got two phone calls from people (Pat Lally and Liz) who were calling me entirely because they figured I'd be near an internet connection. In fairness, it was a reasonable assumption. In (further?) fairness, I was at least expecting Pat's call, as he'd called on a few other Wednesday nights asking me to look up the answer to some bar-based trivia question. Anyway, I was at home, but the internet connection was out. Pat's bar trivia probably wasn't life-or-death, and I'm sure someone's let Liz into her building by now, but either way, I'm sorry, Mrs. Corbett and American Man.
8/13/2004-Live image from the Flipse.com Weather Center.
8/4/2004-Well, Tom lit a small part of my jeans on fire, and I feel that pretty well sums up the events of June 29-August 1, but in between flaming trebuchets, phone calls concerning German moviemaking, phone calls concerning the location of Rich Hosler, far too much food (Thanks, Smiths), views of waterfalls, and a bit of wine, we can now refer to Mr. and Mrs. Corbett. It was a beautiful, fun ceremony, and the whole weekend, really, was a blast. I've uploaded a zip of pictures from my camera (after shrinking them to 640x480). It's an inelegant solution, but I'll leave it up till I think of something else.
7/27/2004-So, as it turns out, Liz Learn and Sam Corbett are getting married this weekend. Rose Linnell and Tom Smith will be flying to this part of the country, and we'll be getting appearances by Marshall Roupp and other luminaries. Should be a party. By the way, in case you missed it, please check out my new business, Vagabond Dog, Inc. and do yourself a favor, learn Two Ways To Avoid a Pyramid Scheme.
7/19/2004-There is no better example of serenity found in day-to-day life than the brief calm as you drive under an overpass during a hard rainstorm.
7/14/2004-Well, I have no real new content to report, but I can certainly babble here for two hundred words or so before I go to bed. First news to report is that I have secured a place to live for the next year. I shall be residing in the utterly un-fabulous Academia Suites. Places downtown were certainly a temptation, but I think that getting away from the part of the city where there's a bunch of stuff to do will be a good thing for me. I have (fairly obviously) returned from the beach in one piece. The amount of digital (or digitizable) content from that trip is quite large and fairly unsuited for distribution on the web. Erin Shaw and Catherine Liebman came over, and just between the three of us we had over four hundred pictures. A multimedia CD-ROM is in the works (doesn't that sound so 1997?) and perhaps some selected images will make their way to the web. Plans for the upcoming weekend involve time at various locales in New York state, to be spent with people who have first names like Neil, Sam, and Beth.
7/2/2004-I've got some more good stuff for you before I get the hell out of Dodge for a week. I've updated the Building a House page (and reorganized it a bit). On that note, I wanted to say Hi to Jen, Norm, and anyone else who has been checking here for updates on our progress. I might've complained about driving out to Punxsutawney, but I really like going there. Anyway, some good stuff there, check it out. Moving on, I'm about to head to Philadelphia, hopefully to find a place to live next year. That would be nice. From there, it's to DC for a night with future Transportation Secretary JP Morgan, then down to Corolla, North Carolina for up to a week at the Outer Banks with Paul Carlson and a miscellaneous crew of other troublemakers from Williamsport. Finally, while I'm gone, be sure to check out the page I made for my new business, Vagabond Dog, Inc. I'm really excited about it.
6/30/2004-I'm about to drive to Punxsutawney, just so I can get some shots. Helluva way to spend a day. New stuff for you though. I spent some time the other night writing Two Ways To Avoid a Pyramid Scheme. It's a zany Tom/Dylan adventure from our high school days, a madcap romp, if you will. Also, dropped some updates on the Concerts Page. I didn't do extensive writeups for most of the new things, but at least it's (basically) up to date.
6/28/2004-Coming soon - Vagabond Dog, Inc.
6/22/2004-I continue to get all fired up about politics. I read Salon every day (I subscribe, but watching an ad for a Day Pass takes about fifteen seconds), just saw Bowling For Columbine, try to catch The Daily Show every day (Hey, Stewart can call it "Fake News" if he wants, but he says things no one else can or will say, and he's fun to watch), and I had a number of great conversations at Piefest with people including Luke and Daniel Hollister, Danny Schmitt, and (drumroll please...) Mr. and Mrs. Jesse Brown (Though we aren't entirely sure what we'll be doing with the names. Not to put too fine a point on it, but I'd like to point out that your kids will be *pissed* if they end up with Brown-Schmitt as their last names.) As I was saying, the Jesse and Johanna's wedding was on Friday, and was quite lovely. It was personal, interesting, not boring, and fit them perfectly. I'll say once more (this time in "print") that I wish them the very best. Following that, the 30th annual Piefest was as or more fun than usual, at least till a stomach virus damn near killed me the next day. And that next day was especially rough because it included a roadtrip to Saratoga Springs to see Phish with Rachel, Eric Dougherty, John Campanelli, and "Crazy" Dave Eck. It was not an ideal way for me to see my first and last ever Phish show, but I managed to enjoy it, and everyone else had a great time. Due to my weakened condition, we took the Echo instead of the Civic and stopped for about 3 hours at a rest area overnight, so comfort was a bit of a problem all-around, but we lived. Which was nice. Back to my original point, if it wasn't clear enough, I recommend all of those sources for various political insight. My issue of the day that I'm fired up about is the senseless banning of photography in places like subways and outside government buildings. A few good reads on the issue might be this article from the Village Voice or this thread on ArsTechnica. It's a small thing, but it really pushes my "Eeeek! Protect civil liberties!" button for some reason. Finally, I apologize for the scatter-brained nature of this post, it's just the nature of my brain sometimes.
6/15/2004-Against the predictions of most professional odds-makers, Rich and I survived our trip to Bonnaroo. Even managed to have a pretty good time and catch some great music. Writing web page updates is hard when you come back to your computer after being gone four and a half hours to find 376 emails, just about all of them spam, much less after you've been gone for almost a week. Sheesh.
6/8/2004-Headed out of town today, first Cleveland, then Tennessee for most of a week.
5/23/2004-Put some new pictures of the house up. Enjoy.
5/16/2004-Not much to say. Made it through graduation without falling on my face, everyone's happy about that. The always-rewarding task of cleaning out my room awaits me. To the other grads, of course, I offer my congratulations.
5/12/2004-I like that there are people out there who keep the dust jackets on absolutely none of their books. Oh, and by the way, every time I think about it, I can't believe the results of the Presidential Election in 2000. Say what you will about Bush-Gore in November, but how the hell did Bush beat McCain in the Republican primaries? I mean really. Who has ever listened to a single sentence from each of those guys and votes for Bush? The world makes little sense to me.
5/10/2004-Watch out for vineyards.
5/4/2004-5AM update, just because I want to remember the night. The evening started with my last ever official cases as a TAC (two Sasser removal/Windows patches). I studied EECS 381 with Meismer, Mark, and Ira for about a half hour before they decided to go to the computer lab and I decided to play poker with Rich, Kevin Artista, and Jim Cole. Lost a little money, then I was able to focus my full attention on the fantastic, fantastic finish of the Red Wings-Flames game, won 1-0 by Calgary on a Martin Gelinas goal with 40ish seconds left in the first overtime, eliminating Detroit 4-2. I read some good baseball blogs and some even better reading material before deciding to get some food. So I watched the last 45 minutes of an episode of the X-Files from 1994, remembering how great that show was for its first few seasons while I hard-boiled some (I think it was seven) eggs. I'm not sure why, but my choice for a late night (3:30 at this point) meal was all those eggs, a piece of plain white bread, and a glass of Kool-Aid. Someone (Chris Bowley?) had convinced me to TiVo Arrested Development earlier this semester, and I watched one the episode I had on the TiVo. I'll be watching more, it was pretty funny stuff. Finished the night up with I Love The 80s Strikes Back 1988, which features some stuff I remember and a lot I just know about through stuff like this show. Now I'm writing this, listening to Urge Overkill's album Saturation, from 1993. I have no memory of this from the time, but I recently picked it up on a hot tip, and it's good. Listen to Sister Havana, at least. 12:30PM today, I'll take my last test in college. (Bonus content, some other stuff I've been listening to : Bob Dylan - Tangled Up In Blue, Tenacious D - Tribute, Beatles - Eleanor Rigby, Eels - Mr. E's Beautiful Blues, Boogie Pimps - Somebody To Love Remix)
5/1/2004-Happy Uno de Mayo! I took a CHEM 302 exam yesterday, effectively finishing my Chemistry major. Just two tests left, I'll be completely, totally finished as of about 3PM on Tuesday afternoon.
4/26/2004-My legs hurt, a lot. Walked (on maybe four hours of sleep) about thirteen miles yesterday with a group of Betas and a few Beta alums. But that doesn't matter, because today, my plans include, but are not necessarily limited to, my last day of college classes. Have a good one. Oh, I should explain a bit - there's nothing going on with the person mentioned below. Instead, (it was late, Friday night, nearing the end of my time in college, draw your own conclusions) I was trying to explain how wild it'd been to meet someone that's just like a much, much cooler (female) version of myself. Doesn't happen much. Kinda gave me some insight into what I might want to be like in a half decade or so.
4/23/2004-A Friday night with no plans can turn into something you'd never expect. For example, you could meet a girl you "click" with better than anyone you've ever met before, and she's 28, with an established career in Cleveland while you're moving to Philadelphia in a few months, and she's already sort of seeing a good friend of yours. You'd never see that coming.
4/22/2004-The number of "lasts" I've been experiencing is starting become pretty noticeable. Sometime tonight or in the next few days, I’m going to play in my last IM sporting event. When I see someone that I know casually around campus, I often realize it’s probably the last time I’ll see that person. Earlier today, I sat in on a class with my favorite teacher from my time at Case. Michelle Martello (call her Martello) teaches freshman English. (She refers to herself as a “rogue professor” on the grounds that it sounds a lot better than her official “part time lecturer” title.) Anyway, I probably won’t see her any more, and she’s responsible for one of my best experiences here. I’m excited about doing new things, of course, but some of the stuff I’ve been doing has been pretty good, and I’ll miss it.
4/18/2004-My last week of college classes starts tomorrow and not a moment too soon. I'm almost totally functionally useless when it comes to schoolwork right now. I'm not sure why, but I'll do things like stay up super late, reading whatever I can find online (like looking up Jonathan Richman tour dates or reading only the last chapter of She Hates My Futon on Myboot just waiting for that damned "The Stew Man Cometh" chapter") until some ungodly hour, then be good and miserable when it's time to get up for classes. As for what I have left, it's something like...EECS homework, Chem homework, Chem lab presentation, two Art History papers, Art History exam, Chem lab exam, Chem exam, Chem final, EECS final, Biology final.
4/8/2004-Well, I visited Neil last week. I was contractually obligated to visit whoever won the Spent The Night Contest. I had some fun, hung out back stage at a musical, met a girl I once called at 3AM, spent time with a turtle, and visited Jefferson Medical College somewhere in there. Awesome school visit, by the way. Recent updates lead me to be absolutely positive that I'll be in Philadelphia next year. Neil is a good person, he also provides me with good links. For your continued enjoyment, I present some people I'd likely have a lot of fun with - the Whimsy Progress Administration.
3/26/2004-And now, for your enjoyment, Jim Cole Wields A Shoe.
3/23/2004-Sheesh. It's about time I wrote this update. I think I've been putting this off because of a combination of being sorta busy and just wanting to do an amazing job on it. Well, I'm not going to. I was accepted last Sunday into the Temple University School of Medicine. I don't want to ramble on, but it's very hard to get into medical school. About 1/3 of people who apply (often to more than ten schoos) will get in in any particular year. Many more people try for some part of their college career, but then don't even apply because their grades/scores aren't good enough, or they decide to do something else. Medical school is very, very hard. But most people that go will eventually become doctors. And that's what I want to do with my life. So, in conclusion, the day I got that letter was a big day for me. If anyone wants to sit down and watch Gross Anatomy (especially the first two scenes) with me, I'm game.
3/6/2004-In this age of Amazon and Half.com, isn't there something decadent about going to a bookstore and looking around till you find something you like, and actually buying it then and there, instead of waiting 3-5 days for UPS? Anyway, we are about to hit the road for W.H.O.O.P. Our agenda isn't exactly settled, so no matter where you are, you may be on it. Anyway, any week off in the middle of a semster is a great time. 3/6/2004-In this age of Amazon and Half.com, isn't there something decadent about going to a bookstore and looking around till you find something you like, and actually buying it then and there, instead of waiting 3-5 days for UPS? Anyway, we are about to hit the road for W.H.O.O.P. Our agenda isn't exactly settled, so no matter where you are, you may be on it. Anyway, any week off in the middle of a semster is a great time. Reports to follow.
2/29/2004-I'd always regretted missing my last chance to make a Leap Year post, and damned if I was going to miss this one. Along those lines - do we have an extra day of classes this semester on account of the Leap Year, and if so, can I use that as justification for sleeping through some hypothetical day of classes at some point in the future? Sam showed up this weekend, with slightly less damage than previous editions of that trip. No ankles were harmed in this visit to Cleveland, is what I'm saying. We did visit a variety of bars, and sample the best foods of both Cleveland and Corning. A mere five days of classes stand between me and spring break. Nothing terribly exciting is planned, but much fun is to be expected. Rich, Dan, and I will "drive around" for the duration.
2/23/2004-I've taken to wearing other people's clothes recently. It's a great way to expand one's wardrobe. Jim Cole leaves a sweater or a coat sitting around? Rich Carpenedo steals a pair of your shoes but leaves his own in their place? A strange set of circumstances leaves you with the ability to borrow any clothing you desire from the school bookstore so you can wear it in a fashion show of sorts at a school dance? All these are great examples of ways to expand one's wardrobe. In a basically unrelated note, I drove from Cleveland to Oxford, OH on Saturday with Reed Mattingly and Chris Bowley, starting at 4:30AM. It's about 4.5 hours each way, and I was there from 9:30AM to 3PM. Sunday, Rich, Tom Rafferty, and I left Cleveland at 3PM, drove with minimal time wasted to Arlington, VA then to the 9:30 Club in Washington, DC around 9:15PM to see Leona Naess, Rachel Flipse, Rob Judson, and Fountains of Wayne. Went to a diner, left down at 1AM and were back in Cleveland just a bit after 7AM. That trip was far more adventurous than I could begin to describe in a small space. Rest assured, it was unreasonable enough to make tomorrow's activities seem almost sensible. Waking up at 4AM, on the road at 5AM, Pittsburgh before 8AM, interview and tour at Pitt Med School all day, overtime in the afternoon, then 2.5 or so more hours driving back to Cleveland.
2/16/2004-Mission Return Some Shoes was pulled off without a hitch. Actually, there were many hitches at at HNMUN. Maybe I'll get around to describing them after the statute of limitations runs out...anyway, Pat Lally has dress shoes again. Ladies, if he's been using that as excuse not to take you out to dinner, the time to attack is now. As for me, on a whim, I took a series of pictures on the flight out to Boston. Not wordy, just pictures, but if you like flying, you might check them out.
2/12/2004-Mission Return Some Shoes, which includes large amounts of bravado, trickery, and a trip to Boston, is getting underway this morning.
2/9/2004-My new coat has generated more comments, compliments and concerns alike, and any other single piece of clothing I own.
1/31/2004-I know for a fact that I can eat three pounds of applesauce in a single sitting. Rich can eat four, though.
1/25/2004-I managed to get through all of Thursday eating only Cocoa Dyno-Bites, and then the first thing I ate on Friday was lobster bisque. Next weekend, I hope, will prove to be extremely exciting. Plans include a possible turducken cooking adventure and, if the weather gets a bit friendlier, a trip to see America's favorite prognosticator. Finally, a bit of a news announcement - Tom Smith has arrived in Florida. He seems to be well-established, having procured for himself modern convienences such as a cellular telephone, 1972 Chevy pickup truck, and indoor plumbing to go along with his shiny new job and friend.
1/19/2004-I just returned home to Cleveland from 1943 miles of driving since Friday afternoon. It's a bit of a story, one that I hope to relate at a later date, and illustrate with images, but Tom needed a ride to South Carolina. Dan came along for the ride and the free food.
1/13/2004-I am now 22 years of age. I can finally...
1/5/2004-Sorry if you couldn't make it to the New Year's Eve party here, I think most people had a pretty good time. Perhaps some pictures will be posted at some point in the future. I'm about to go to bed, as I have to get up early tomorrow to hit the road by 8AM to get to Temple for med school interviews. After that, it's a quick trip to Princeton to spend the night at Emma's place and then back to Philly on Wednesday for my interview at Penn. As it turns out, The Student Doctor Network is awesome as one is approaching these interviews.
12/29/2003-Christmas Break has been great, once I got over the horrible sickness that destroyed the end of my semester. Playing cards, working, and hanging out around town have been, as usual, the orders of the day. Tomorrow I'll be driving to New Jersey, taking my mom to the airport so she can fly to India. She'll be headed to one of the poorer parts of the country to volunteer her services as a nurse for a few weeks. But I'll be back! Day after tomorrow, of course, is the annual Event at my house for New Year's Eve. I checked the weather forecast, and tons of fun is predicted, so I hope to see you there. Get in touch with me for details.
12/16/2003-Tom, I hope you feel better. Clean your room.
12/10/2003-End of the semester is always kind of a blur. I want to issue the following thank yous - to Rocky, Sam, Tom, and Brandon and anyone else who helped me organize or run the LAN. To Eamon, Tommy, Bill, Lauri, Chad, Jon, Danni, Mitch, and Paul for coming. Most importantly, to Dave Haeffner, for killing Tom whenever possible. Results of the Spent The Night Contest are in. Pending review, Neil Bardhan will be the lucky recepient of a visit from me at some point in the next year. His entry of 35 was the closest (by virture of being the lowest), and it was received way before Emma Somers's 30-35 entry that might be a little closer. Anyway, I mentioned a review, I need you to go to the page for the contest and see if I've missed any in my official count of 34. Seems unlikely, but there's a chance that Katie Somers's 38 could be the real winner. 96 from Brandon, 52 from Sam, 260 from Haeffner, 42 from Aaron Young, Jeff Roberts, and Rose, and 49 from Rich Hosler probably don't have much of a chance. I'll be home on the 17th, barring unforseen circumstances. Sounds like a good day to see a movie to me. Let me know if you're interested.
12/5/2003-It's the last day of classes, it's 3:51PM, and I've been celebrating for over three hours. Raise one for me, I'll raise one for you.
11/24/2003-Beta Date Party this past weekend, organized largely by me, was a heck of a good time, I'm pretty sure. Let's be honest, though, I may not be a reliable source of information on the subject. Perhaps some pictures are to follow. Applying to medical school is going well, I have a few interviews scheduled, which is the beginning of the next step in the process. This is going longer than I'd intended it to go, but I'll take entries (just email em in) to the Spent the Night Contest for a few more days. Details in earlier updates. Finally, remember to come play computer games at my house this weekend. It'll be fun.
11/14/2003-Highlight of my Friday night - Operation Patrick. Rich Carpenedo, two girls we didn't really know, and I went to the apartment across the street from Rich's. We barged in, started talking to one of the girls that lives there, then grabbed a giant pink stuffed starfish from her room and took off running out the back door.
11/10/2003-Advice for concerts that isn't bad for life as a whole - You'll have a lot more fun when you forget that you're too cool to be having fun.
11/3/2003-Happy 21st birthday to Tom Smith. Against all odds, he's made it this far. In celebration of Tom's Birthday, we're going to have another Flipse.com Contest! Simply email me with your best guess/estimate for the following question - How many different places have I spent the night in the last calendar year? So, we're looking at 11/3/2002-11/3/2003. Sleeping on a couch and a bed in one house just counts as one, each dorm room on a campus counts as its own, each time my car/tent is parked/pitched in a very different place counts as its own, et cetera. I came up with a rough count as Finch and I were driving back from Athens, OH for Ohio University Halloween. We stayed with Caleb and Marissa, partied it up, and in general had a hell of a time. About 454 more miles on the car. Anyway, so after I feel I've collected enough entries, I'll post a list, people can help me complete it. Winner gets a complementary night of me sleeping in their dorm or home, to be cashed in at an agreed-upon date.
10/29/2003-This past weekend was an easy one for the driving, a mere 108 miles. However, it certainly wasn't a weekend where I took things easy. It was Beta Paintball and Camping in Doylestown, OH. Dallas Boyan and I were running the show - renting guns and buying paint, supplying food, organizing transportation, and so on. Dallas is awesome, by the way. Friday night, we had about thirteen guys out, nice cool weather. Saturday, some people left, a few more arrived, and we played paintball all day, with five on five much of the time. Eventually it got dark, and then it started raining. The people that left, well, they're just quitters. Those of us hardcore enough to stick it out under the tarp had a great time. More travel is predicted for this weekend, as a trip to Ohio University is in the cards. Anyway, I have real content today, too - a near doubling of the number of pictures featuring Scruffydog Construction LLC building a house. They go back to spring break, and cover quite a bit of progress, be sure to check them out.
10/26/2003-And now, the rest of the story - arriving in Las Vegas during my roadtrip resulted in quite a fiasco, as I, fresh out of three days spent in the mountains, met up with JP and his cousin in a casino bar. Problems ensued as a) I was smelly and 2) we drank a bit, then met up with JP's parents. With all the excitement of seeing Vegas and JP, basically, no one bothered to remember where the car was, in a mammoth six-story parking garage, when we walked out there with JP's belongings. Obviously, we found it eventually, but Mrs. Morgan was not pleased. Also, while watching the Giants game, Emma and I left our seats to score some garlic fries, when we came back some local kids had sat down beside our spot. An inning later, one of them asked me for a fry. A little weird, sure, but of course I'm going to give him one. Then he said, "You just cost me five bucks. I bet my friend you wouldn't give me a french fry. Thanks." Finally, it's mentioned cryptically on the page, but the karaoke singing during the camping part of the trip was at a general store/bar way, way, in the mountains, actually about two miles past the Quaking Aspen campground. It was me and four locals, one of whom was tending the bar, and as far as I could tell, most nights were karaoke night there. Gotta do something. I've only much later realized that it was one of the best chances I'd ever have to buy a round for the bar, and I missed it.
10/22/2003-Back at school, and just wanted to give you fine people the rundown on the rest of "break." Drove to State College and worked all day Monday. Met up with Mike Brion for some quick wings, went to Erin Lindsay's apartment and caught up on life and travel, met Letitia Montgomery and her friend Joel for a beer, ran into Justin Penfield, met Laura King and Kendra Westerhaus (Case people) and Kendra's friend Joe for a bit of hitting the bars. Late to bed, sleeping in a sleeping bag on the floor of the house we're building, up early of course, another day of work, and here I am. Final mileage count over the long weekend - 752. My "break" was not especially restful. On an unrelated note, #gifted more or less began on October 20, 1996, as Neil Bardhan and I met up on the long, long extinct Chicago Undernet server. That means that Monday was the 7th birthday of...the entity that is our IRC channel. As always...just downlod mIRC, point it to an Undernet server, and /join #gifted. If you haven't been by in a while, drop by some night.
10/19/2003-Easy driving weekend last week, just 594 or so as I came home, picked apples, squished apples into tasty cider, and saw the delicious Kill Bill with the likes of Katie and Emma Somers, JP Morgan, Joe Garczynski, Vaughn Mallory, and Randi Rapp. Go see it. Also, the final activity of my weekend this week was to see School of Rock. Backing up, I drove home on Friday with Jason Marr and David Bartholomew, dropped the former off at his house and waited for the latter's parents to come get him at my place. Tom, Luke, Brandon, and Rich showed up, we drove to Glen's place in Treverton in three cars. Met up with Glen, transferred some gear, and drove out to some place by a river in two cars. Then we took all the gear, but zero cars, and started walking. It was very dark, and around this time, I started complaining. We walked in the dark, crossed a railroad bridge in the dark, stumbled around what seemed to be a jungle island in the dark, and set up camp, yes, in the dark. High points here included Luke's improvised tarp and rope sleeping setup, and my beginning a smore binge that would last throughout the trip. I woke up at the crack of 10:30 the next day, and the others had already played a round of paintball. The day was spent eating smores, MREs, and food out of cans between rounds of paintball. Worst hit I took involved the palm of the hand from no more than 20 feet, which wasn't as much fun as it sounds like. Most of my best strategies involved lots of crawling around on my stomach in the mud and just generally getting as dirty as possible. Camped out again last night, played paintball again in the morning and early afternoon. Brandon went directly home, Glen stayed, and the rest of us tripped up to the Lycoming Mall, where, as I mentioned, we saw School of Rock, which rocks. Back home, hanging out with Pepper, I'll be working the next two days in State College, and back to Case on Tuesday night.
10/9/2003-Two weekends ago, I dropped about 660 miles on the Civic, pulling a quick trip home for my dad's birthday, with a Punxsutawney side-jaunt on the way back to Cleveland for some computer troubleshooting. Last weekend, it was just a smidge over 600 miles as Dan Meismer, Dallas Boyan and I went to Toronto to see The Frames and hang out with Toronto Betas. Anyway, I'm headed home again this weekend, hopefully to have some fun, see some people, and pick some apples.
10/6/2003-Ever kind-of sort-of forget that you have a website that a certain small, but very dedicated (and believe me, highly appreciated) segment of the world's population visits with high regularity? I have, once or twice. What I'm saying is, I'm still here. I thought the FlipSEE Cam was going to be up and kicking again, but that resulted in computer problems far too bizarre to describe here. I should have House stuff and some other new content available in decent time. Thanks for reading. I'll write more.
9/22/2003-I know this is a crappy update, but this is what I've been working on...for no good reason. Perhaps you can suggest one? Thanks to Reed for the idea.
9/9/2003-Camping on the Quad is going very, very well. Basically, I've taken a tent, set it up right in the middle of the Case Quad (Right in front of Strosacker Auditorium, to be precise, but if you can't find the blue tent (and possibly more, starting tonight) on the quad, you're not too swift, and may not be qualified to join the Case Camping Club. The Case Camping Club exists, inasmuch as I made a sign that says that and put it near my tent. Otherwise, the whole thing is happening mostly because I think it's funny. And we've been having fun. So if you're a Case or nearby, come out any time this week. We have beer and smores. If you like, bring a sleeping bag and if we've got room, you're welcome to spend the night. It makes it incredibly easy to get to class in the morning. I do hope to see you there.
9/2/2003-I love long weekends. Great (if short-lived, like James Dean) off-campus party on Friday, good times at the Indians game on Saturday, tasty burrito and some highly random stuff on Sunday night, and a Monday that, strangely enough, ended up with me having a very nice time with some BIOL 346 studying. Rachel, if you're reading, I hope your first day of classes goes extremely well. The Littlest Flipse (well, immediate family only) is starting today at George Washington University, in a course of study that, as far as I know, is still to be announced.
8/31/2003-As far as life accomplishments go, I may have peaked a bit early, specficially around 8PM on Friday night. We're all familiar with Super Mario World, the flagship game of the Super Nintendo, recurring guest star of Left Arm Suntan, and still one of the most fun, satisfying video games of all time. The time elapsed from the first time you can actually control Mario (as the map screen comes up) until you can no longer control Mario (after hitting Bowser for the 6th time) is, I think, a reasonable measure of "how long it took to beat the game." You might go with some other endpoints, but that's what I used, and by that measure, I beat the game in fourteen minutes and 47 seconds. I might, perhaps, be able to cut ~20 seconds off that, but it's pretty freakin close to perfect, if you ask me, and my goal all along in the Mario Time Trial was to beat 15 minutes. I'd love to see someone do better.
8/26/2003-I know I've been in Cleveland for just about nine days now, but things are just barely calming down enough for me to have some time to sit around, now that classes are starting. I don't have one of those senior year schedules you hear sophomores whispering about after 216 and before O. Chem Lab, but starting at 10:30 and 1:15 isn't half bad. Yellow t-shirts are always awesome, for what that matters, and fraternity rushing within all the rules would be really, really lame. That's all for now.
8/13/2003-Sorry, went to the beach and apparently I didn't tell enough people ahead of time. Questions concerning my whereabouts abounded. The usual family trip to Rehoboth, this time accompanied by Rob Judson, Dave Bartholomew, and Kacie Weaver. I've been back just a few days, working, trying to get my stuff together for the move back to Case, Cleveland, and all the fun, fun, fun times to be had during my senior year of college.
7/25/2003-I've been hard at work. What've you been doing? I finished (I think) my work on what I'm calling Left Arm Suntan, my wonderfully illustrated account of the recent west coast roadtrip. Questions, comments, suggestions, and corrections are welcomed.
7/16/2003-To the surprise of all, I survived. Many, many thanks to Rich, Sujal, Emma, JP, Rose, Marshall, Zerek, Bob, Reed (and friends), Charlie, Molly, Steve, and anyone else I stayed with or spent time with on my little odyssey. Details to follow before too long, I hope.
7/12/2003-If I had to name my favorite American president of the 20th century, it would probably have to be John F. Kennedy, Jr. This is simply because youth, idealism, and nailing Marilyn Monroe are all things I deeply admire. But, if I were to name my second favorite American president of the 20th century, it would be General Dwight D. Eisenhower, because the Interstate Highway System is a brilliant concept, carried out by an amazing feat of engineering. That said, I'm in Georgia, I'll be home pretty soon.
6/29/2003-The Trip, though I hope not to jinx it, is working out quite nicely. Fun with Rich, two days of over a thousand miles of driving each, sleeping in my car, great times with Emma in San Francisco, and fantastic hospitality from Sujal (my cousin's wife's cousin). Tomorrow starts camping, then Vegas and the rest of The Trip.
6/17/2003-A few quick notes. First, I'll explain last weekend, that being the one that occured about 10 days ago. Emma Somers needed to get to the airport, specifically Dulles airport, near Washington, DC, for an 8:40AM flight on Saturday morning, which presents something of a problem, when leaving from Williamsport. I'll spare the details, but just give you the starting and ending points. Start-Emma's mom will drive Emma, from Williamsport, starting at 2AM, to the airport, turn around, and drive back. End-Emma, Tom Smith, Jesse Brown, Johanna Schmitt, and I drive, from Williamsport, starting at about 8PM on Friday, to Baltimore, where we stay at Neil's place, collecting a total of about 8 hours of sleep among the five travelers, steal his roommate's Amelie DVD, take Emma to the airport after some directional mishaps, eat Cinnabons, see Emma off, directionally mishap our way into Washington, find the Washington Monument (or close likenesses thereof) a good half-dozen times, expensively park, soggily take some touristy pictures of Amelie, find the The National Museum of Natural History, part of the Smithsonian Institution, view many exciting things, including a nifty 3D IMAX Bugs movie, touch a piece of another planet, depart, eat soft pretzels, find Silver Spring, MD, eat tacos, take in the wonder that is Gigantic (A Tale of Two Johns), overhear and join a conversation on one of my favorite topics, find a Geocache, and drive back to Williamsport. As a founding member of the "More is Better" School of Planning, I can only say that the final plans were much, much better than the original ones. Second, the trip is happening. The pictoral form will soon be updated with the information I'm now providing to you. No camping on the drive west, but I will stop at Rich Hosler's place in Indiana for the first night, and perhaps in Cleveland too, as I'll have some time. No trip to Vancouver, I'll instead camp somewhere in eastern California during those days where I have no set plans, before Las Vegas. Molly West does not live in Puerto Rico, she lives in North Carolina, and that's where I will visit her. Finally, I intend to stop in on Steve Glassbrenner in Virginia on my way home. I'll be seeing some of you quite soon.
6/10/2003-I'm thinking about going for a drive.
6/5/2003-It has very much been one of those days. Everything from fun with a GPS to being involved in a conversation where the following phrase - "I will not make you give birth to the Savoir Flipse in a stable" - coming from Neil Bardhan, made perfect sense.
5/31/2003-News flash! Dylan Flipse is not dead.
4/23/2003-Sorry for no updates in a while. Putting the MCATs right at the end of a semester is a very polite Fuck You to me and the rest of the pre-meds out there from the nice folks at the AAMC. The test is this Saturday, and after that's over, I'll be a happier person, at the least for the 4-6 weeks until the scores come back and I decide if I need to take it again in August. On a vastly different subject, a few years ago, I refused to use AOL Instant Messenger. IRC has so many advantages, especially the group nature of the conversations, plus, it's so easy to hate AOL. I started to use it, though, because it let me talk to people that couldn't/wouldn't get on IRC. (I had a self-imposed rule that only girls would get this exception for quite a while.) Anyway, I sort of slid into using it just as much as I use IRC, mostly because everyone at college was doing it. I'd still prefer IRC just about any time, though. A long time ago, I identified one advantage of AIM - the profile. Some people don't bother, but for the rest of it, it's a form of self-expression entirely new to our generation. Recently, I realized the second advantage of AIM - there are so, so, so many people using it that new and interesting applications are possible. Case in point - BuddyZoo. I think that's neat, anyway.
4/4/2003-Beta Formal was last weekend, in our wonderful northern state, Canada. Niagara Falls is kind of close, fairly cheap, very pretty, the drinking age is freshman-friendly, and most importantly, it's not Cleveland, so that's where we've gone for the last five or so years. Emma Somers was my date, and this was the third formal event we have attended together. Add that to Katie Somers's total, also three, and the Somers sisters have been to six formal events with me. (You could take the total of the Learns, Baumbaughs, Lindsays, Linnells, Joshis, Dills, Dennhardts, Anistons, Pattisons, and Buntings of the world and only come up with ten events total.) Anyway, Emma and I (And all the Betas) had a great time, staying at the Fallsview Radisson, watching NCAA basketball at the hotel bar, eating at the Pinnacle Restaurant, and partying on the Observation Deck of the Minolta Tower. I have the obligatory "by the falls" picture of Emma and I, as well as the not-so-surprising "in a restricted area" picture featuring Dylan, Emma, Danielle, Eric Pace and Tommy Raffay.
4/3/2003-I really hate Tom.
4/1/2003-Hack/update by Tom. Suckers, close your CD-ROMs. Flipse.com was on a "Green" level of security, and you see where that got them.
3/24/2003-First, let's endorse some candidates. Maureen Holland is an old friend of Flipse.com, and I urge you, dead reader, to support Maureen and Gita if you are in a position to do so. Now, back at the Case front, we have both class elections and those for USG officers coming up. I mention this because my fraternity brother Jason Pieczonka is running for re-election as USG President. More amusingly, Bret Kiraly is running for Senior Class President. I am all for this, because this will result in some very funny things happening. Exactly what, I'm not sure, but I will laugh. I have some evidence, and I'd like to call exhibits - 1, 2, 3, 4, (Note-B.O.B. is a party Bret is throwing this Friday) 5, 6, and 7. Ok, finally, that's enough politics crap. I'm just going to briefly mention my view on the war in Iraq. As much as I feel like our leadership's stated views for this action are terrible, I'm glad it's happening. My views came together upon reading an article on Salon and listening to this audio clip. I really, really enjoy Salon. I'm a paid subscriber, and I'm working on finding the link to that article from last week. As for the audio clip, if that link breaks, let me know and I'll put the MP3 up on flipse.com. The Iraqi guy is pretty hard on the girl, but I believe what he has to say. Take a listen, you might learn something, and you'll probably laugh.
3/19/2003-I was 40 minutes late to a 50 minutes psych class today because I was getting Ben Folds tickets. Time well spent, I think. Pictures and such are likely to follow, but here's the spring break summary-DC with JP and Neil, Williamsport, Rochester, Williamsport, two days working on the house, and back to Cleveland. Dave Bartholomew (Don't call him "Fish.") was along for all 1592 miles of it. School is especially frustrating right now. I get my work done just fine, but then it's late and it's terribly hard to sneak in time to study for those MCATs. I mean, this lab or that homework is due *tomorrow* and the MCATs, well, they're off at the end of April. Anyway, go to this Duke Athletics page and vote for Nic Testerman, because if you don't, Katie Somers will be very mad at you.
3/3/2003-Ever think of cloning yourself 231,500 times, and sending those clones to work at your old summer job so you can make $500 million over the course of a summer? It's the best plan Emma and I were able to come up with.
2/25/2003-It's Tuesday. So wear a hoodie.
2/20/2003-I have a new old picture for you. It's called Satchel Paige, in honor of the man that the quotation included in the image is attributed to. Now, I don't believe an old, crusty baseball player actually said it, but he's as good a source as any. I call it a new picture because you haven't seen it before. I call it old because I made it my freshman year to print up and keep in that clear pocket on the front of my binder. If you'd like a higher resolution version that's more suitable for printing, just let me know and I'll get it to you. There's lots of Marshall Roupp in that picture, and everyone should like that. While I'm thinking of it, I'd like to say hello to Mark Burnworth, a recent initiate to the Lambda Kappa-Beta Chapter of Beta Theta Pi. Mark's name doesn't show up in nearly enough web searches, and damnit, I feel obligated to do something about that. Final note for the day-Sam is coming tomorrow. I think we'll have a lot of fun, but hopefully not the kind of fun where people steal underwear, fall down stairs, or even just pass out by the toilet.
2/16/2003-Fun stuff, real content today. The Concerts Page is now about as updated as can be, with a group of older shows and one upcoming show added. The "older" shows include Sarah Slean at Oberlin, which was a mere two days ago. My cell phone antenna has broken off. How vexing. Anyway, the other thing I have going is the Fifth (That's just a guess.) Return Of the FlipSEE Cam. So now you can see if I'm at my desk...or not. And maybe you'll see me do something really exciting, like blink or something. Have a good day.
2/12/2003-A number of you have seen the picture I cleverly call Beach and Beer. The beach in question is the roof outside my window, the beer is a pair of Yuengling bottles. Yuengling lager is probably my favorite beer, tasty enough that I like to bring a case of it from Williamsport to Cleveland (Can't get it here.) when I come out to school. On what was the last warm weekend of the fall, I spent a large part of Saturday night sitting out on the beach with someone that's been a huge, huge part of my life for almost the last six months, talking and enjoying those two Yuenglings. I took that picture the next day, and it so perfectly reminds me of a near-perfect night. I got back to school this January, and took a picture from the same vantage point. The picture itself isn't so great, but you'll get the idea in Beach and Beer 2. The other bottle is gone thanks to wind or some other, unknown force. Which, at least as I see things, is just a terrible, sick joke about my life. And this is what I see outside my window. Song playing right now - Bob Dylan - Visions of Johanna.
2/10/2003-Not so much happening on the Cleveland front, just more of this neverending damned snow. We actually had a few hours yesterday afternoon that involved honest-to-goodness blue skies. I felt like that kid in The Giver. Anyway, happy 18th birthday, Rachel Ann Flipse. Now go vote. Now. I mean it.
2/2/2003-I tried eating yogurt for the first time today. There's a possibility that I've had it before, but it would've been when I was quite young and in any case, this was the first time I remember eating it. And would you believe it, my perceptions were exactly correct. The taste, while ok, wasn't anything close to good enough to get me past my misgivings about the texture. Other interesting food stuff that happened today. I was studying developmental biology, and I took a trip down to the kitchen for a snack. Of the scores of choices available to me, which one grabbed my attention? A few hard-boiled chicken eggs, of course.
1/30/2003-I've got a ten MB zip file with 189 pictures from the New Year's Eve soiree. Thanks for those pictures (other than the ones taken with my camera) go out to Sam and Luke. Just let me know and I'll send it to you one way or another. In other news, I'd like to remind everyone that they are encouraged to visit me out at CWRU (The Flipse Compound-West Wing, as some people like to call it.) at any time during the school year. Parents excluded, I'll be having the third visitor of my collegate career tonight, as Erin Cowell is expected to arrive in Cleveland sometime around 8:00. (This follows the near-legendary Tom and Sam visit Case debacle from last January, which included large volumes of medium-grade beverages and The Ankle That Was Nearly Broken.)
1/22/2003-Tracks 3, 10, and especially 17-21 of the Violent Femmes album "Add It Up" are remarkably good listening for me right now. But I've said that before.
1/20/2003-Rich Carpenedo and I ended a losing streak in Euchre tonight. We had never won a game as partners, compiling something like an 0-12 record, mostly during the spring of our freshman year.
1/13/2003-This may be a fairly arrogant position to take, but I believe I have some of the greatest friends in the world. That being said, it may help explain my odd, near obsessive at times, interest in bringing groups of my friends together. And with THAT being said, one can only imagine how happy I was with my New Year's Eve party. Not only did Neil, Sam, Liz Learn, Brit, Pat Lally, Rocky, Brandon, Jesse, Johanna, Paul, Aaron Beaver, Dave, Lauri, and Chad make it down from my "Mansfield camp/Internet" group of friends, we had JP, Rob Judson, Dave, Katie Somers, Kenny, Erin and a whole bunch of other Williamsport people, and even Rich Carpenedo, from my fraternity out at school. Speaking of school, I'm back there now. A slight bummer, as not only the party, but basically my entire break was extremely awesome. Hung out a lot with Tom Smith as we worked on the house with my dad. Put 2600 miles on my car, driving around PA, NY, and NJ. Perhaps best of all was not having to go to classes. In any case, it's my 21st birthday today. This seems rather absurd of course, as I've had many friends turn 21, but until very recently they've always been people significantly *older* than myself. (Quick additional note on 21st birthdays - Brit was the 11th and Neil is tomorrow, if you know them, be sure to send some wishes along.)
12/26/2002-Day after Christmas and not too much to do, I've been taking care of some things around here. If you'll notice, the "navigation" area of the site has been re-worked a bit, and items that have and probably will be stagnant have been removed. Of course, one of our goals here at flipse.com is to keep all content online once we put it online, so I've moved any stuff you no longer find here to the Archives. My Christmas presents included a number of CDs and that page was a good deal out of date, so I added my new stuff and anything else I noticed was missing along the way. Anything I added to day is marked with an asterix. Updated the Links page too, mostly to reflect the things I visit on a daily basis, plus a number of random oddities and pages of friends, and I removed stuff that doesn't exist anymore. Updated some info on the Contact Dylan Flipse page as well. Anyway, finally, I've got a round of new stuff up all about how it is we build a house. In other news, if you haven't heard, there's a party at my place on December 31st, and you're all invited. (I mean, probably. Like if you're the Dark Lord of Breaking Stuff, you can't come.) Let me know if you can, but I enjoy surprises too, and if you're reading this, you probably know where I live, but if not maybe you can find some directions somewhere on the site.
12/17/2002-"We usually get a quality flipse.com update when dylan's putting off doing something really important" - Tom Smith, talking in #tmbg. Anyway, it's the truth, I'm surprised I haven't had several updates already during finals. This is the last night of them for me, and I should be back in Williamsport in 24 hours, after my anatomy lab practical tomorrow afternoon. Anyway, I'm in the midst of a serious time wasting spree. This includes a 27775 on Curveball, by all accounts a solid score on an annoyingly addictive little game. Anyway, perhaps this isn't such a quality update, but there's sure to be more of substance at some later date. It'll be nice to be not in Cleveland for almost a month. Something about the winter months here that just makes me want to stay in bed all day, every day.
11/27/2002-Flipse.com, edited as always by notepad.exe. Anyway, I'm about to head home for Thanksgiving break. I'll be in Williamsport by sometime Wednesday night, State College most of Thursday, back to Williamsport Thursday night, and headed out to Cleveland by the middle of the day on Sunday. Sometime between Thursday and Sunday I should be in Mansfield at Tom's house for about a day. Thankgiving leftovers, you know. Actually, we're going to be playing some computer games, just like old times. Anyway, last time I was home (fall break) I did some work on the house, so be sure to check out that page for fancy new pictures and whatnot (at the bottom).
11/22/2002-There are times when I think that I'd like to get some sleep. If it was at night, that'd be even nicer. Eating something like three meals a day would be sweet, especially if we can get like some cereal in before class. Showers and clothing changes, it'd be cool if those were basically daily events. Remembering everything that happens, well, I think that's just a bit too much to ask for. Anyway, I don't want to give the impression that I'm complaining. It's just been that sort of week, and I can admit that it's been a bit much.
11/17/2002-I think you need some sort of special license to have a better weekend than the one I had.
10/28/2002-I was supposed to fix this laptop for work today. Windows XP, pretty nice laptop, the girl installed Novell and it broke her network connection. Fine, so part of my plan eventually is to delete the Local Machine\Software\Novell directory out of the registry. I hit delete, click Ok, and then I get "Cannot complete deleting Local Machine\Software." I'd gone up one level somehow, and deleted most of the Software directory. Which...is very bad. I've done this operation a thousand times, and probably backed up the registry, oh, five of those. Luckily, I did it this time. So, no harm done, but that would have been easily in my personal top ten all-time computer repair screwups. School sucks, a whole lot. Bio lab report to do tonight, anatomy lab practical on muscles of the back and back of the arm, plus the heart tomorrow evening, bio exam Wednesday, They Might Be Giants (!) Thursday night, Physics homework and exam Friday morning. TMBG doesn't suck of course, but it's not the best timing.
10/20/2002-Six years ago, I figured out how to work mIRC v3.something, then Neil and I got our timing down and met for the first time in #gifted, (probably on the Chicago server) on the Undernet. I think the whole project has turned out pretty well. I had an event planned to sort of celebrate, but it fell through. I would like to say thanks if you've ever hung out there, and thanks again if you're still doing it.
10/8/2002-I knew the night was headed in the wrong direction when the conversation turned to which Spice Girl I would be for Halloween.
9/30/2002-I got pretty excited last night when I came back to my room to find an IM from Josh telling me that My Boot had been updated. It's true! But alas, She Hates My Futon has no further additions.
9/27/2002-Yeah, I had a hard end of the week. Anatomy exam on Thursday, Physics homework due, Physics exam, and Anatomy practical on Friday. Plus Wednesday was three very cool birthdays. Jodi Bunting turned 18, Matt Dudek turned 21, and my dad turned 50. September 25th just straight rocks, I guess.
9/14/2002-Take that, 1994.
9/3/2002-First of all, my Hanson tshirt was a gift from Tom Smith, and I will be getting it back from JP as soon as possible. Sooner, if possible. Second, I'm in my second week of classes. Short week, thanks to Labor Day and thanks to my schedule. Basically, I have nothing to go to on Thursdays, and it's really quite nice. It makes Wednesday night a nifty little time that combines the "Just got out of class!" feelings from Friday night with the "Nothing to do tomorrow, but class the next day" feelings from Saturday night. It's good stuff.
8/26/2002-Early morning update. It's 2:29AM and my first class of the year, Physics 115, starts in eight hours and one minute. But whatever. I'm having fun out here, but I've also got some things that I'm bummed out about. It's all a long story, I suppose, and I guess that the best thing for me to do is listen to the Violent Femmes album Add It Up, tracks 17-21. On another note, quite randomly, I did a little work on the Archives, nothing anyone is going to call a press conference about, though.
8/23/2002-I'm at work, and not doing anything, so that's plenty of motivation to update the webpage. Not just with this crap either, but I actually have fun new content in the form of Building A House. Not fancy, but some pictures and a little bit about the house building work I did over the summer. Enjoy!
8/20/2002-Hello from Cleveland. I've been here like ten days, but just managed to secure one of these fancy new network cards a few days back. I'm actually at work now, but the card installation business is really slow, so I certainly might as well catch up on all the things I need to do. Just to update real quick like, we had a killer time at Rehoboth. Wake up late, hit the water and hang out reading on the beach for a while, then eventually go out to eat and walk around the boardwalk at night, then back to the room to watch some rented movies or work on the puzzle. Anyway, after that, I pretty much came right out to school, which was pretty boring for a while, but now my room is just about set up, and it's basically pretty cool. People are fun around here this time of year, it's not for a while that everyone's just anti-social and stuff. In any case, I'm headed out to an interview at University Hospitals, in the Volunteer Services department. I think I'm highly qualified to be paid nothing to work, so it shouldn't be much of a problem, right?
8/3/2002-Here today, gone tomorrow. And yesterday. I just got back from a week on Somers Island, which is on Sharbot Lake, which is in Ontario, which is in Canada, which is supposedly part of North America. Whatever. I'm leaving for a week at Rehoboth Beach. Tom will be showing up here in the morning, and we'll be driving to Blain, PA (of all places) to pick up Erin Cowell, then on down to the beach. More importantly, just to make sure that no one has missed it, there's been important goings on in the lives of four of my friends this summer. Sam Corbett asked Liz Learn to marry him, and after some of the shock wore off when she accepted, Jesse Brown asked the same of Johanna Schmitt, who also said yes. Now honestly people, couldn't we just at least pretend for a few more years that we aren't getting old? Just for my sake, even.
7/20/2002-I was in Sheetz (Or Sheetzes - props to my western PA homies) today and I saw a few Mormon guys in there. Nothing unusual about them except that the last name of one was "Berry." And since their nametags say "Elder" and then the last name, this guy had "Elder Berry" on his nametag. Your mother was a hamster and your father...
7/3/2002-Got my XM Radio installed today. I'm pretty sure already that it kicks ass. Right now I'm actually missing a few minutes of an exclusive OAR concert. I'm just back inside to grab a few things (Clean clothes = good) and then I'll be on the road to Cleveland. There's a party. You, yes you, should show up sometime tonight or tomorrow. Back in Williamsport sometime, um, this weekend? Yes, that seems reasonable. Oh, and randomly, I think some old-time camp people should get together with me and head up to Mansfield sometime this month, perhaps on a Sunday.
6/21/2002-First, you know all those cinder blocks that make up your foundation? Just keep in mind that an awful lot of hard, hard work went into getting those where they are. Anyway, the World Cup has been great. Pity the USA lost today, but really, we outplayed the Germans in a game no one expected us to reach, and that team has nothing to be ashamed of. A solid ten people watched the 7:30AM live broadcast of the game, early this morning at my house. It's been especially fun following this World Cup, just because you have to be so extra hardcore to catch those 4:30AM games and whatnot. Anyway, today is the longest day of the year, and it just so happens that tomorrow is yet another Piefest. Mmmm...
6/8/2002-It's a great day and night for sports. It's actually early Sunday morning now. This afternoon, I listened as the Giants beat the Yankees in the 9th inning of a pretty sweet baseball game. The heavyweight fight, a Triple Crown chance, and a kickass three overtime hockey game are all over. JP, Rob, and Dave Eck are over at my house, we just ordered a pizza and some wings and we're waiting for the World Cup games to start. Graduation parties are a good time. One for Katie Somers, two for Jesse Butterfield, and earlier today one for Erin Cowell. Congratulations of course go out to all graduates, as well a wish for good luck in the future. Lots of things have been going on around here. A storm managed to knock out power at my house for 22 hours earlier this week. We've been working on the house, and it's coming along pretty well, I think.
5/27/2002-Spend most of the day in State College, as I'll spend tomorrow, and I spend two days ago. Two days ago was my first day working on the house. We made forms for the footers. I've got good plans for a pretty detailed page to chronicle the workings on the house. Laptop and digital camera equipped, it should be a fun time. Anyway, I've never been offered chewing tobacco before. That's just one of the many fun new life experiences I've had in the last week or so. The movie Fallen kinda freaked me out.
5/21/2002-Quick life update time-Worst case scenario for this semester's grades turned out to be an even 3.0. Finished school, hung out for a week, came home, saw Episode II with Tom, Sam, and Pat Lally, played poker, went to the prom with Katie Somers, went to Virginia with all the Someri (Somerses?), came home again, read Black Hawk Down and my room is still a huge mess. Moving back from school does that. I made the entire move back in my Civic, aided by the fact that my chair, fridge, microwave, and some other items were left in my fraternity house for summer storage. In other news, Google is perhaps the coolest thing ever, with Google Labs as just one more piece of proof. Moving on, while I'm waiting for my eyes to decide they'd like to accept contact lenses once again, I'm wearing glasses that some (Most? All?) people think look rather silly. On several fronts, my life is very confusing. The first season of 24 ended tonight, and Doug Blank managed to not see it. Sure, he'll watch it on tape, but we had these great plans to both watch it and keep in touch by cell phone...anyway Emma was nice enough to come over and watch with me, and even listened to me ramble for 30 minutes trying to explain everything that'd happened in the show up to that point. Construction work on the house will be starting very soon. Time marches on.
5/8/2002-About time that's over. Worst-case (and most probable, I think) I'll be out of this semester with a 3.37. In the event of several successive small-scale miracles, we could see a 3.68 or so. Not my best work, but it's done. No more screwing with Flash for MIDS, no more mandatory ENGL 256 lectures, no more all night data structures programming, no more O. chem lab quizzes and lectures, no more of Pearson's test, and no more BIOL 216. I'll be at Case for another week, so we should be able to have a little fun.
4/29/2002-I'm done with classes! About damn time, too. Get some finals out of the way and it'll be summer. I can't wait. I guess I haven't mentioned it, or maybe I did a while ago, but my summer plans mostly involve building a house with my dad. He's right about to get started on it, actually. It's in State College, and once it's done, he'll be selling it. Backing up to the IM Sports Report, Beta softball won a thriller of a championship game on Thursday night. Down 3-0, up 4-3, down 5-4, and back up 7-5 in the next to last inning. I batted three times, got three walks, and scored twice, including the game-tying run, and pitched a pretty well (no walks), but really a lot more credit goes to Alex Svilar and Andy Huss (couldn't ask for better shortstop and third baseman), Keith Kravec (played a sweet center field, and along with Alex and Andy, hit the hell out of the ball), Jason Moran, Rich Carpenedo, Devon Snook, Mike Bode, Nick Lunn, Jim Cole (it was an adventure, but made a huge catch in the last inning), Doug Blank, Chetan Patil, Caleb Krouse, Paul Serrin, Zach Yarnell, Amir Aminoshariae...there's even more people, and plus the guys that came on to cheer us on, or even just celebrated after the win.
4/24/2002-Round two of IM Softball playoffs is tonight, with Beta Theta Pi going up against Zeta Psi. We beat Deke last night. I actually had a sweet game pitching, until the last inning, when I allowed three meaningless runs. At the plate, 1-3 with a run scored isn't a great day, but it's productive. Um, otherwise, I guess there's these finals things coming up. Far be it from me to make myself do so, but this Mary girl actually made me study some O. chem and data structures for a few hours last night. So I guess that's a good start. Since my "Biology lab" today was this guy droning on about population genetics experiments that didn't really work, and how to use Excel to analyze the results anyway, I spent the whole time cleaning out my cleats and doing a crossword puzzle. School's a blast...
4/19/2002-Hey, content kicks ass. Slightly fewer than a dozen new things up on the Picture Page. Mostly stuff from Beta Formal. Fun times tonight, went out for Rich's 20th birthday and April's 21st. I also microwaved a shirt today, if anyone is keeping track of that sort of thing.
4/16/2002-Is it really possible that I'm too lazy to update flipse.com more frequently these days? What's up with that? My semester is either winding down or I'm gearing up for finals, depending on how you look at it. Either way, I don't have much to do, other than a few finals. Spent most of the later part of today with three prospective Case students. The idea of giving three high school students to a fraternity house for a night is hilarious, if you ask me, but they still do it. Misadventures ensued... Speaking of misadventures, Niagara Falls was a blast. Nothing like having Doug Blank and Devon Snook sing the Dylan Flipse Theme Song to your date. Actually, speaking of Doug singing, why does he always break out "You've Lost That Loving Feeling" at fairly random times? I mean, it's a good time, just wondering why it's that song.
4/5/2002-Nothing (well, maybe love...) makes more grown American men think they're poets than baseball. I'm going to make that statement and not back it up, because I'll be leaving for Niagara Falls (correct spelling thanks to Mr. Neil Bardhan) in about two hours, and I have no time for this nonsense.
4/2/2002-Leave it to Tom to screw with Flipse.com on April Fool's Day. It's like clockwork, I tell you. Baseball started for real today, and it's wonderful. "Baseball is like church. Many attend but few understand." - Wes Westrum. I'll just throw that out there, because I dig it. In any case, it's three short days till I'm in Niagra Falls. An oral report (What is this, Miss Mazzante's class?) on sea urchin development and a data structures test are all that stand in my way.
3/23/2002-Fun night last night, mostly in going out to BW3s with some friends. Four female friends, actually, and when we beat the three guys at the other end of our table in that trivia game in bars, they picked up a round of drinks for us. Thursday night, I managed to get drunk Alex and Doug to play Trivial Pursuit with me. Good times. Anyway, I came back here and after the usual late night snacking in the well-stocked Beta Kitchen, I pretty much went to bed. However, before doing so I set up the following songs to play in Winamp as I fell asleep - Soul Coughing - Circles, Cheers Theme Song, Lauryn Hill - That Thing, Simon & Garfunkel - The Only Living Boy in New York, Jimmy Cliff - I Can See Clearly Now, Jimmy Ruffin - What Becomes of the Brokenhearted, Steve Goodman - City Of New Orleans, Steely Dan - Reeling in the Years, and Lee Greenwood - Proud To Be An American. Good mix, I assure you. Anyway, Sam's in London. I wish I was in London. Spring just started, and Cleveland has been hit by multiple snow storms. There's even probably too much snow on the ground for my plans today, which were for some softball practice.
3/14/2002-I'm pretty sure that the biggest thing wrong with my life is that I'm not Indiana Jones. That being said, life is pretty decent right now. Spring break is just sorta sliding by. If you see me sometime, ask to look at my photo album, and I'll be very happy. I spent literally the whole day today going through, well, most of the pictures I've ever taken. Even got a bunch of digital pictures printed up, cause prints are just that cool. Also watched some TV, both NCAA tournament games and The Temple of Doom. I read 0 pages in my Physiology book (either of them) and boy can I just hardly wait till that test right after spring break. Earlier during break, Luke, Tom, Sam, Chad, Rusty, Brandon, and I had a good time shooting at each other in the woods by Luke's house...paintballs of course. More to come, whenever I think of it.
3/6/2002-Flipse Dot Com updates...by request of Liz Learn, direct from London. First, the Beta Theta Pi sports report. We finished the regular season of floor hockey with one win, a 1-0 thriller over Phi Kappa Theta. Dallas Boyan and Jim Cole tied for the regular season goal-scoring lead. I personally had games in which I allowed zero, one, four, five, and six goals. Back on the home front, Luke, Sam, and I are trying to plan a day of paintballing for Saturday. Everyone is welcome, though the game doesn't work well without a CO2 supply, and that's highly questionable right now. We do have more than enough paintballs, for what that matters. Maybe we can throw them at each other. Anyway, I was up all night last night learning organic chemistry, and I've been up most of tonight for a stupid English midterm tomorrow. Wish me luck...not that luck has anything to do with it.
2/26/2002-Update time on Beta IM Floor Hockey. Sunday night game, the season opener, we lost to ZBT 1-0. We played pretty well on defense, but created about two scoring chances all game. Tonight, we lost 4-0 to the Delts, in a game that was a lot better for us in most ways. The first half, I wasn't on my game, and I probably could have stopped all of those goals. We didn't allow any goals in the second half. That was partly because we generated a lot more offense, and partially because of one of the best saves of my life. I was down on the ground on one side of the goal, and the ball went right to their best shooter, no more than five feet from a wide, wide open goal. I lunged across with my glove, and flicked my arm into the air right as he shot, and the ball went into the glove. I'm still having fun playing. We'll get our offense going one of these days.
2/24/2002-Without making too much out of nothing, I had a good night last night. I like that people still read the silly things I put on the internet, and I hope to not go so long without an update in the future. Been having fun and doing lots of work here, made it home for a weekend, and I'm a mere ten school days away from spring break. During spring break, I hope to see many people from home and take it very, very easy. I also plan to hang out with Pepper, an exceedingly cool individual. If anyone out there feels like doing O.chem, Biology, or English reading for me, I'm not sure how that'll work, but it'd be welcomed.
2/6/2002-Getting things done makes me happy...mad updates to the Concerts Page today. It has my TMBG shows and other misc stuff from last semester, and even a G. Love and Special Sauce concert that'd I'd forgotten about from two semesters ago. Today bit hard, with an O. chem II test and a biology lab report due, plus another biology lab to go do. Nothing like playing with frog hearts when you're hungry and tired. I love living in a fraternity house, because it's rare to have another living situation where it's likely that someone will randomly hand you a plate of cheese nachos with black bean salsa. Tasty. Anyway, Dan Meismer, Kenny McDermott, Stacey and I were all on hand for the fun and spectacle of Groundhog Day in Punxsutawney, PA over last Friday night, all night into Saturday. We were cold. There were tons of people. I'd recommend that everyone with a bit of spirit of adventure in them go do this at least once.
2/1/2002-I'm off to see Phil.
1/30/2001-It's 3AM and I want to go to bed. That's about what time it is, and that's what OAR is singing. I'm so frequently struck with the want to do so much work on this site, to get the Concerts Page up to date, to add a ton of pics to the Pic Page. It never happens. I have a dozen and one things demanding my attention. Luckily, I've managed to get breakfast before my first class two out of three days this week. Today was the day I missed, and I made up for it by making myself a half package of bacon, along with three scrambled eggs cooked in the bacon grease, and a bagel with cream cheese. I just finshed reading My Antonia by Willa Cather and, as usual with an excellent piece of fiction, found it was pretty easy to see myself in some of the characters. In any case, I just went downstairs to find three of my brothers plastic-wrapping the pool table. Like Dylan Flipse Memorial Parties, many things seemed to make sense at the time.
1/23/2001-I'm not sure why, but whenever I end up going bowling, I always find myself reporting the results here. Tonight was a pretty good night, though it had so much more potential. A 113 followed by a 120. In the first game, I wasted a strike by getting only one pin on the next frame. I almost rescued that on my final frame. A look at the scoreboard on my 10th frame showed me down by 20 pins to Andy Huss. So I went out and rolled a strike. This left me with two balls to knock down ten pins. On my first, I left the 6 and the 10. After my second, the 10 was still standing, and I lost by 1 pin to Andy Huss. My second game was marred by an awful start, before I put together a nice run with a lot of spares. Unrelated tidbit for all you Biology types out there - I think "Node of Ranvier" is a really cool term. Moving right along, Tom Smith and Sam Corbett are showing up to rock Cleveland this weekend. More likely, we'll sit around a bunch, but they are showing up. I'm 1 for 2 so far this week on eating breakfast before my first class. The last thing I have for the evening is that the reason this section of the site is called "Updates" is because it was originally where I would announce that I'd made this change or that change to the other features of the website. That's really not its primary function anymore, and I occasionally have thoughts of changing it to "News." I think that'd just be flattering myself, though.
1/18/2001-First week of classes is over, and I'm one for five in my goal of eating a decent breakfast (nothing fancy, a bowl of cereal and some juice is all I want) before I go to my first class. I suck, bigtime. On another note, I am having fun, and I'd like to say hello to Mrs. Collins, Nicole's mom. Apparently she likes the web page, and it's always good to have another fan.
1/13/2002-It's my birthday. I'm no longer a teenager. I'm back at school and plenty depressed about the fact that classes are starting on Monday. My car ended up with over 1500 Tom-Miles after some more roadtripping, including another stop in Baltimore (dropped Rose off, hung out with Neil, saw Tom's sister) and one more trip to Rochester (Buffalo Wild Wings = awesome). I've spent a large part of my time at school playing NES, I highly recommend many hours of Mario or Mega Man to anyone needing to kill a few days.
1/3/2002-First time typing that "2002" and I almost screwed it up. Anyway, I dropped Tom off at his house earlier tonight. I'd picked him up a week ago, on the 27th of December. He was with me as I put 935 miles on my Civic during that time. Quality stuff. Rose was along on this jaunt to Mansfield also, naturally. She'll be heading back to New Mexico on Saturday, after an unreasonably early drive to the airport. Good things went on around New Years. JBXP was a good, good time. Had just over a dozen people over at the Flipse Compound on the night of the 31st. Movies, foosball, food, you know how it goes. Slightly different story the previous night, as (I think) lots of fun was had by most of the 42 people that were here for at least some of the night. I personally had fun, anyway. Need some sleep now, more updates to follow.
12/25/2001-Merry Christmas, everyone.
12/22/2001-Too long since the last update. Basically, finals can be a lot of no fun at all. On Monday night, I pulled an all-nighter with Rich Carpenedo and Tom Rafferty, split between the Med School Library and the hospital atrium, and didn't end up with an A in O. chem. The grades this semester were good, though, and I'm glad it's over. Home sweet home till the 9th of January. In the last 28 hours (Writing this around 7:30PM) I've managed to hang out with Tom Smith, Liz Oakden, Sam Corbett, Liz Learn, Scott Foreman-Murray, Jesse Brown, Luke Hollister, Danny Schmitt, and Johanna Schmitt. Plus I've talked to Brittany Loughlin, Neil Bardhan, and Laine Stager. None of those people lives in Williamsport. Williamsport people have been fun, at least when they aren't donating plasma or playing setback(all night every night, you fools). Anyway, it's great to see people, and I'm loving the inter-semester break. Once again, party here on New Year's Eve. If you're interested, you probably know how to contact me.
12/11/2001-So I've spent some time today "studying." Not sure how I feel about this. Really, I'm not at all concerned for any finals I have this week. Bio and Astronomy, no big problems there. Now, O. Chem and Digital Logic next Tuesday, that's something to at least make you look over some notes. Let's compare and contrast my most recent and upcoming Friday night. Last Friday, I tagged along with Doug Blank and Mike Bode, as Doug's friends Kim, Raquel, and some guy named Matt picked us up and we went to Howl At The Moon in The Flats. It's a bar with two guys on stage, playing piano, taking requests for pretty much anything you can think of, as long as you send a few bucks or a shot of tequila along with the request. They also do special-order stuff, like custom embarassment. My first time there, so I didn't know this. Kim took a request up as soon as we got there. We got drinks, most of the songs they play are songs everyone knows, so there's lots of singing along, fun stuff. Probably a half hour after getting there, the guy says "I'd like to invite two people up on stage. These guys are sharing a very special weekend. Would Doug and Dylan come and join us?" We didn't really know what was going on, but got up and sat down on the pianos. He continues "Doug and Dylan are coming out of the closet this weekend, and this song is just for them." The song was funny, all about how all the ladies want us...but really we just want each other. Ended up being a pretty fun night, that's probably the most amusing place I could think of to take a girl on her 21st birthday. Continuing on to the future, specifically, this upcoming Friday night. I'll be attending my third Williamsport Area High School Winter Formal. Make fun if you will, the some of the guys in the house have, but I wouldn't go back to them if they weren't a good time. In any case, Katie Somers is taking me, which gives the Somers family a comfortable 4 to 2.5 lead over the Learn family in the "Going to High School Formal Events with Dylan Flipse" game. (The .5 for Liz comes from the night in question in semiformal. We arrived together, but if I remember correctly, Tom was my date.) Oh yah, I added that picture and another kinda old one, groupvan to the Pic Page.
12/4/2001-The couch thing this weekend was fun. I'm supposedly attempting to work at at this school business for the next few weeks. Party at my place on New Year's Eve. Oh, and just to make Jeff Roberts happy, I ran stats for #tmbg and #gifted.
11/30/2001-I recommend checking out the FlipSEE cam all this weekend. There's this couch in the downstairs of my fraternity house, it happens to be stacked on top of two other couches, and it's facing the wall. The gist of it is, I'm gonna spend the entire weekend up here. I get bathroom breaks. I've got some food, I figure people will be nice enough to bring me more when I need it. I bet it's fun. I'll be done at 6:45PM on Sunday.
11/27/2001-It's late. I'm playing the part of the stupid, stupid college student/IRC-for-lifer/web page guy who stays up all night trying to get his fix of all three. IRC happened to waste an hour of my time around three AM, on topic including the Reverend Bruce, modnar.mp3, roadtrips (Especially Droogfest. Check out the Archives page if you want to read about some roadtrips. The Archives page is has some really freakin cool stuff, I can't stress this enough.), and the music scene in Baltimore and Cleveland, to include Dan Bern. Probably...ten people in the world can easily see how those things go together. You people are awesome. Moving on, I spent an hour or so finishing off the post-event ThanksLANing^3 page, complete with pictures and comments from me. Before that, I was reading the usual random crap like ESPN.com, Salon, and Drunken Losers. Prior to that, I was at Jillian's for a while, to help my brother Andrew Rassi celebrate his 21st birthday. I watched TV before that, to include Cheers, 24 (I'm hooked, I admit it), and That 70s Show. I went shopping for the house with Chetan before watching TV, we dropped a cool $570 on food at Sam's Club. Aside from that, there was just the usual three classes, including two quizzes, and even a small amount of studying to fill in some of the gaps in the day.
11/22/2001-I'm back home now, finished up Thanksgiving dinner with my family and finally had enough energy to plug in my computer. Got here around 3:30AM on Wednesday, bringing Rich Carpenedo and Jason Marr with me from Case. I got to hang out with Kenny, JP, Nowell, multiple Somerses, my sister, and pretty much the Williamsport crew in general. It was pretty cool to see everyone, except really for JP, as I managed to run into him Saturday night. Took that pledge trip to DC (Leave Cleveland 11AM arrive 6:30PM) hung out with Betas there, met up with JP and his friends, decided to come home the same night. (Leave DC 12:30AM, arrive in Cleveland 10PM, after breakfast at Perkins and some time spent on the side of I-76 watching the meteor shower.) Anyway, I've been having fun, lots of good times and buffoonery at the house that I'll try to get up here sometime. Oh yah. And ThanksLANing^3 is in, oh, 20 hours or so. Hell yah =)
11/16/2001-School makes me too busy. Rocked a Bio exam on Wednesday, got rocked by O. chem today. I guess you win some and you lose some. Around dinner time, I went to the Civil Engineer happy hour with Doug Blank, Kim, Jim Burton, and Martin Nowicki. Doug and Kim are the only actual civil Engineers out of that bunch, but that doesn't change the fact that I played flip cup for free, with professors. After that, Chuck E Cheese's mixer with Phi Mu, which was (ok, so maybe this sounds dumb) tons and tons of fun. We played games, ate pizza, crawled around in the tunnel thing, and generally had a good time. After that, the plan was to go to the Alpha Chi Omega initiation party. However, after getting back to the house and getting acquainted with some sangria, the plan changed into going to the Uptown Bar and Grill to meet some of the Phi Mus. Doug, Dallas Boyan, Andrew Rassi, two of Rassi's friends, and I all went and did that instead. Doug kinda set it up, and that ended up being pretty sweet...hanging out for a few hours with a buncha senior Phi Mus, girls totally out of my league. I need to get some sleep, pledge trip to George Washington University tomorrow.
11/8/2001-When making scrambled eggs and bacon, there are two schools of thought. One school would have you make the eggs in one pan, and the bacon in another pan. If your timing is right, and you can cook both at once, this does ensure that both are hot when it's time to eat. However, I prefer to make the bacon first. Then, without draining the grease, you make the eggs. This eliminates butter or some other non-stick agent as a necessary component of the meal (though, seriously, you'd better have butter for the toast) and it cuts way down on the amount of cleanup you have to do. More importantly, though, I really like the way the eggs taste when you do it this way.
11/5/2001-Yah, shooting at your brothers is a ton of fun. The camping was on some private land near Doylestown, OH. We got out there Friday evening, just in time to start a fire in the dark, while it's raining and everything is soaked. Got it going, though, and by the time about 20 Betas showed up (yah, including a keg) we had enough of a fire going to keep people nice and warm. About half of the guys left Saturday morning, but the rest of us played paintball all day. Don't believe the hype, it really doesn't hurt that much. That night, much more sitting around the fire, makin campfire food and takin it easy. Yesterday, I watched sports all day. Starting with the idiotic Steelers game, followed by the moronic Browns game, followed by the brilliant Game 7 of the World Series. I hate Arizona (They're wearing purple, for cryin out loud) but I just didn't want another Yankees World Championship right now. Plus, Shilling and Mark Grace getting rings is pretty sweet. After the baseball ramblings...oh yah, that ThanksLANing^3 thing keeps truckin along, only 18 days away now. There's a spool of 1000' of cable sitting at my house. After that, there's this thing called JB02. A certain Robert Morris is already planning on being there. (In case you hadn't guessed, it's planned for Dec 31, 2001 - Jan 1, 2002, plus...say, the week or so before and after, at my place.) Nuts, the Concerts page is getting out of date.
11/1/2001-To fill in for the end of last week. I met Marshall and saw TMBG in Pittsburgh on Thursday, then I met Sam, Liz Learn, Brit, some guy, Dave, and some other (less uptight) guy at Tom's apartment in Rochester. We saw TMBG there. Someday when I don't have 75 minutes to write this and do my astronomy homework, I'll get some more in-depth details up about those shows. Anyway, a day where you go to class, class, class, work, do dishes, eat a ton of chili then leave right away to play and lose a soccer game, ask out a girl who turns out to be engaged, then do homework till 4:30AM isn't a real solid day. But when it's also Halloween? That just sucks. Maybe this weekend will make up for it. I'll be going camping and paintballing with most of my fraternity. I'm not sure what could be more fun that shooting at your brothers.
10/31/2001-Boo.
10/25/2001-Just time for a quick update, before I run to class, then Pittsburgh to meet up with Marshall and see They Might Be Giants. Christa, the missing girl in the notice I posted a few days ago, has been found and is back and safe with her family. I'm out.
10/23/2001-Back safe and sound from Princeton, New Jersey. I forgot to mention that Katie Somers and I got stopped at one of those sobriety checkpoint on Rt. 15 Friday night. Didn't even get to walk a straight line, though, they just waved me through. Saturday, I met up with Emily, then Erin, then Emma. Drove to Princeton. Met up with Dan, Bode, Jason, and Tommy on Sunday and we went to New York city. Pretty much just walked around Manhattan, but that was fun. Monday wasn't much, other than hanging out with Emma a bit more and meeting up with Martin. Oh, it turns out I don't like sushi. Not too surprised. Today, woke up, breakfast at some semi-famous pancake place in Princeton, and then eight hours on the road (With Dan and Martin) to get back to Cleveland. The above missing person posting isn't anyone I know, but someone I know asked me to put it up. Plus, that girl is around the age and may be in the same area as most of the people reading this.
10/20/2001-It's a bit after midnight on Friday night, and I sometimes date these updates with the previous day, but I think it's pretty reasonable to put October 20th on this one. Five years ago today, Neil Bardhan and I connected to Undernet servers and met up in #gifted for the first time. It's kinda sweet that I'm home tonight, because it's at this desk that I spent much of my free time during high school, hanging out with my friends on IRC. I guess if you aren't someone who does it, that might sound like a pretty lame way to spend your time, but if you've taken the time to make yourself at home in the channel, you know how great it can be. I feel like I have some of the best friends in the world in there, and #gifted means that we can still hang out with each other, no matter where that inconvienent "real world" puts us. There's slow nights, slow weeks, slow months, and even some years are slower than others, but it just keeps going. I mean, I won't even be on all day today, though you know I'd like to be. If you've ever hassled me to run stats, stayed up late on a school night planning #gRR, had W access, annoyed people in #funfactory, quoted or misquoted someone in the topic, bluhed, talked to yourself in the channel until someone else showed up, received SOP email, chatted with me via /notice, talked to someone about a TV show you're both watching, IRCed with someone who was sitting at a computer right next to yours, or been idle for a few hours, only to jump right into a conversation with an awesome one-liner, well, I just want to thank you for being around during the last five years. Now, why won't I be around today? I'm meeting my mom for breakfast, Emily Cowell in Lewisburg for pumpkin picking and carving, hopefully some combination of the following - Erin Lindsay, Jack Foust, Rocky McCumbee, Mike Brion - in State College, and then Emma Somers, also in State College, sometime late tonight. Sometime after that, we are going to drive to Princeton, NJ, getting there before noon. That's the plan anyway.10/16/2001-Dan Blackburn is 18 years old. Earlier tonight, he started and won a game as the goalie for the New York Rangers, beating the Montreal Canadiens 2-1. Tonight, I've been studying such Organic Chemistry topics as nucleophilic substitution, structure and nomenclature of ethers, the role of the solvent, and the rearrangement of carbocations. I've also been studying Biology topics, including photosynthesis, the structure of DNA, and patterns of inheritance - beyond Mendel. I am 19 years old. (Oh yah, I've been updating the ThanksLANing^3 page with lots of stuff, most importantly the ever-growing list of expected attendees.)
10/12/2001-Beta soccer had a big win today. Down 1-0, then Jim tied it up on a beautiful kick into the corner from 20 yards out. Phi Delt took a 2-1 lead, but Keith put in a sweet header off a throw-in. It went directly at the goalie, but just under the crossbar by a few inches, and it was out of his reach. The game ended 2-2 and went to a sudden-death shootout. We had the first shot, and Dallas easily buried a shot into the right side after the goalie guessed wrong and committed to the left. So now Mike Bode was faced with stopping their best shooter for the win. The guy aimed at the left side and rifled a shot about waist-high. Bode lunged that way and got enough of a hand on it to knock the ball away. It was awesome. Anyway, since no one actually cares about that, here's some stats for #gifted. Enough whining about that, you ingrates. Plus, I finally made the ThanksLANing^3 page. All the basic info is there. I'm fired up for a LAN. Email me.
10/11/2001-So I've been doing a lot of work. ECES 281 is a class on Digital Logic. So basically, it's all about how 1s and 0s interact get thrown together at pretty much the smallest detail level in a computer, a traffic light, a watch, that sort of thing. Working mostly with Dan Meismer, I finished up some homework for that last night. It took tweleve pieces of notebook paper. Plus 8 pages showing different states of a circuit that were printed out. With 20 pieces of paper, I figured my professor might have trouble finding a particular problem, so I included a table of contents. Anyway, we also had our midterm in that class today. He told us it wouldn't be too hard (compensate for the homework, maybe?) and I pretty much agreed with him. That was cool. Beta finished up third in IM football, that was pretty cool. We lost our first soccer game, though. Another one of those is coming up in a few hours. Maybe I'll get some more time in goal. Seriously, nothing's funnier than that, as anyone who saw my attempted Willie Mays impression turn into an own goal during the first game could attest to. Soo, other stuff has been going on around here...oh yah, there was a really sweet Everclear concert in one of the gyms last Friday. Not a huge fan of the band, but it's a good, energetic show, with good music, and when you go with a bunch of your brothers, it can end up being a really sweet time. That and more on the Concerts Page sometime soon.
10/2/2001-So I went home for the weekend. Saw lots of cool people there. Picked apples and made cider at the Somers house on Saturday. Spent some time at Jesse Butterfield's cabin on Friday night. Had people over at the FDC# on Saturday night. Pictures may show up from that, at some point. Anyway, school isn't so bad. I turned in the homework I'd forgotten to do in Astronomy and took an O. Chem test last week. Last night, Dan Meismer, Kevin Artista, and I spent about six hours on Digital Logic homework, but we got it done. Also last night, Beta football won our quarter-final game to make it to the semis. Another game tonight, but we've been having fun so far. There's some pictures and even a little video from that also. Anyway, I just decided that I should add one thing to the Pic Page today. Those of you that don't go to school with me probably aren't aware of a major change in my life. Yes, the rumor websites are all true, I got a haircut. Sunday night, I told one of my brothers, Tommy Raffay, just to do whatever he wanted to with it. This is what I got. I'm kinda enjoying it. Anyway, since I just typed it out for Chris and Brandon's edification, here's the list of the stuff sitting on my desk - two Beta Theta Pi pint glasses, a spindle of CD-Rs, my front speakers, my Beta Theta Pi membership badge (pin), a KVM, 8 port switch, ATM transceiver, a plastic cup, two disposable plastic cups, a paper cup, TMBG bumper sticker, TMBG window sticker, Moxy Früvous sticker, assorted papers, digital camera, tape measure, two binders of CDs, a Palm Pilot cradle, one computer, monitor, keyboard, and mouse. Have a nice day everyone.
9/22/2001-I went swing dancing today. Just barely, mind you. Alpha Chi Omega, a sorority at Case, had a "Grab a Date" event. The idea here is that most of the sisters don't know that it's happening until say, 45 minutes beforehand. They find out, for instance, that instead of a "sisterhood event" they're going to be getting swing dancing lessons. And the idea is that they have very little time to make a bunch of phone calls and try to find a date. One of my brothers dates one of these girls, and so he got the call (totally contrary to the spirit of the event, she warned him a week in advance). I happened to be sitting around the house, watching football. She knew someone who still needed a date, so I got recruited. It wasn't bad. I didn't even drop anyone. That, plus a long trip to Applebees, plus several rounds of Crossfire on the pool table pretty much took up my whole evening. Now I'm sitting here eating mini-marshmallows by the handful. Last night did involve quite a bit of social activity. I hit up two parties and got home pretty late. I have all this work to do but I never quite find the time...
9/15/2001-I hope everyone out there is doing well. My fraternity threw a great, great party here on Friday night. I'm not sure how it happened, but we had a ton of people and almost all of them were having a lot of fun. Dancing, music, one of my computers + our projector puttin crazy Winamp visualizations up on the wall, crazy numbers of people all over inside and outside the house, secondary and tertiary beverage runs, Chetan makin Beta punch all night, Rich ending up on my couch, and Dan whacked out on everything. And no one got hurt. This update has been extremely delayed by problems with AITCom. On Tuesday, for some reason, they shut off my FTP access, so I couldn't change anything on the site. They called my house to tell me about it. So my dad passed the message along to me. Two phone calls inquiring about it later, they turned it back on. Still not sure why it was turned off, though. I'm a busy, busy guy. Especially when you assume I'll spend a few hours a day doing absolutely nothing. After that, figure I spend a few hours doing things like this, talking on IRC (which I'd like to be on more), AIM, and reading my daily set of web pages. I spend some time doing stuff for the house, and then I have homework and studying.
9/11/2001-No updates for a while, but sometimes it's necessary. Many people that read this know that Luke Krauss is in the Air Force and has been stationed in Saudi Arabia. He did return to the United States about two days ago. Most people right now are assuming there will be a response to these actions, no one yet knows what. But right now, I think that Luke being here rather than in the middle east is a good thing. I talked to my dad on the phone and he said something along the lines of, "We don't exactly have FDR in charge right now." If you can help with these disasters in any way (blood donations may well be of vital importance over the next few days) I hope you're already doing so. I hope that everyone you care for comes through this safely.
9/3/2001-FDC updates are a hassle without a registered copy of CuteFTP. Things are good here. I now have a couch in my room. The FlipSEE Cam should pretty much be on, though I make no promises on the lighting. Went to Rochester for my cousin's wedding. Actually, since I was only around for the dancing on Saturday night and the actual ceremony on Sunday morning, I only caught about 1/3 of it. I'll put the odds of me having a wedding like that at about .01 percent. (And falling.) On Friday night, we hung two bed sheets off the side of the house and projected the football game (and then Pulp Fiction) onto them. If you have the means, I highly recommend it. I get to eat a lot of chicken wings tomorrow. I got to see Tom and Sam when I was in Rochester this weekend. I ended up with Tom's sweatshirt and a dozen Krispy Kreme donuts.
8/28/2001-All the usual frustrations of my life still exist, I'm sorry to report. But things aren't that bad. I'm extremely busy. Class (and work for that hasn't really started yet), working two jobs (a few hours a week each, and they're for the same boss), and Beta responsibilities. Plus, right now, I've gotta go to Rochester this upcoming weekend for my cousin's wedding and do things like get my books, notebooks, and other crap. I also need to find a bank around here. My room needs some re-arranging. I really like the way one of my brothers did his room, and I'm determined to copy it.
8/19/2001-I've worked over 20 hours the last two days, it's been a blast. Strangely enough, you wouldn't think carrying computer and plugging them in would be a good time. But it is. School is a pretty good time, despite my last update. I was in a goofy mood, I think. Hmm, so pretty much working and hanging out here. Classes start in a week. I hate classes.
8/15/2001-I knew the day would come. It had to. But that doesn't mean you're ready for it when it actually gets here. It was the smell that tipped me off. It smells like a really hot day, but it might rain and possibly snow later. There isn't a whiff of estrogen, but the scent of exhaust from cars in a place where inspections aren't required hangs heavy in the muggy air. Thousands of power supply fans whine on as thousands of faceless hermits type away at computers much like this one. It's true...I'm back at Case. Heh, anyway, I've been here since Sunday night. Didn't scam the network gear I needed until earlier today, so my net access was limited to the computers in the lab, and they're a pain to update FDC from. I'm living in my fraternity house now. My brothers are starting to move in, and that'll continue through next week. I'm also in training for my job(s) here at school. That stuff is easy enough, I know how to fix computers and such (sort of a requirement for the job, eh?), so I'm really just learning how the department works. In other news, Katie Somers passed along the info that the Dawson's Creek kids will be going to Duke in the upcoming season. That's probably not going to get me to watch the show, but you may feel otherwise. In still other news, a bunch of people came over to my house for a little going away soirée on Saturday night. Let's simply say that good times were had by...most.
8/11/2001-I made a pretty unplanned trip to Corning earlier tonight. Met up with Neil, Pat Lally, and some Tom kid. We saw American Pie 2, where we ran into all sorts of people, including Jesse "Return of The" Mack, Chris "Don't Call me Brian" Wilson, and "Dandy" Andy Rachlin. Those nicknames are stupid, and I apologize. I leave for Cleveland in less than 36 hours.
8/4/2001-I'd like to say hello to Alex Svilar and to anyone else who's getting paid to read this. Keep up the good work. Thanks also to Alex (along with Doug and Keith) for letting Emma and I crash at their place on Thursday night. This might be a good time for you to wonder why I was in Cleveland on Thursday night. Here goes my ultra-quick recap of the events of the last few days. 7:45AM Wednesday - wake up, find that JP Morgan, Kenny McDermott, and Brandon Hall spent the night at my house, arriving after I went to bed. We shower, get dressed, get Rob Judson, eat breakfast and meet Paul Carlson, Cutter Wood, Erin Shaw, Briana Meacham, Luke Neidermyer, Shawn Fahl, Seth Day, Dave Eck, and Molly Shenberger at Perkins. We met Kenny's friend Stacey at a highway interchange and got to Hershey Park a bit after noon. Rode such roller coasters as the Great Bear, Lightning Racer (twice), Wildcat, and the Sidewinder. We left the park to chill in the parking lot for a bit. I had some Skittles while we were there. Erin's van was discovered to have a flat tire. All the guys lept into action, and that was changed. In the evening, we went to the Dave Matthews Band concert. For reasons that I'll happily get into if you just ask me, I felt it was very, very mediocre. Perhaps I'll write them up for the Concerts page. It ended around 11:30. It was well after 12:30 that we got out of the parking lot, almost having to offer someone a bag of Skittles to let us into the line. Before we got three miles from the park, Stacey's car was rear-ended by some other person leaving the concert and she hit Brandon's van. No damage on the van, the other two cars couldn't be driven. It was well after 2:30AM that we got going again. I got perhaps two and a half hours of sleep in the van on the way home. I got here at 5:30, called Emma Somers, and picked her up. We drove until we reached Cedar Point around noon. We rode the Raptor, Corkscrew, Disaster Transport, Cedar Creek Mine Ride, Antique Cars, White Water Landing, Gemini, Magnum XL-200 (twice), Mantis, Mean Streak, and the Millennium Force (twice). All day, I ate one and a half soft pretzels and Skittles. We drove to Cleveland, where (as I mentioned) we spent Thursday night. Slept from 1:30 till about 7:15. Got up, got really soaked in some fun Cleveland rain, went to Presti's and drove to Elysburg, PA by 1:30, where Emma works at Knoebels. I was also there Tuesday night, and I rode the Phoenix at that time. Until that point, I'd eaten a donut and, you guessed it, Skittles. You also noticed there were no more showers mentioned until this point.
7/30/2001-Spent most of the evening with Emma Somers, one of my favorite people. I've been teaching her to drive stick in my Civic all summer. I was doing that mostly because it's fun and it's something to do, but partially because her dad had offered to let anyone who taught Emma to drive a car with a standard transmission (and they had to have the car) would be allowed to go out some evening in his Honda S2000. So I got some quick lessons on the stereo, putting the top down, the push-button starter, the six-speed manual transmission, and other fun bits and we were off to DiSalvo's for some dessert. After eating I took it out on the highway and had a bit of fun. With two seats and a trunk you'd have trouble getting one dead whore in, it's not too useful, but I don't think people buy those cars for their utility. Got onto some local back roads also, where we had the bad (and odd) fortune to have an owl take off from beside the road and fly into the side of the car. No damage done, thankfully. Did the whole LAN party thing this weekend, but with far better food than usual. Lots of Quake 3 proved to be a lot of fun, as well as UT with the Monster Madness Mod, and two forms of automotive tag - MCM 2 Tag Ball and Ultimate Racer Pro Bunny Mode. Also hung out with the hippies yesterday, at Luke Hollister's "Welcome back from France" party. Playing volleyball out there has got to be among the top 50 things to do in Pennsylvania. Also real cool - my dad hung a hammock up in the back yard.
7/26/2001-It's too late at night for me to be installing Olympus stuff so I can get pictures off my camera, then installing Photoshop so I can crop/resize them, the actually doing the cropping and resizing, not to mention working them into Sonic Booms and Cornfields. That would be my writeup of events of this most recent Monday. I'm still working on the writeup of the Montreal trip. Other bits of information, I was in Mansfield today so Jesse Brown could work some of that web designer magic for my fraternity. (Oh, and Microsoft/Internet Explorer must die. Seriously, wouldn't mind doing the job myself, if such a thing were possible.) Did that, happened to see Mike Brion, which was very cool. I'm thinking of making a page of just simple one-line entries for every time I drive somewhere. (Maybe an hour or more away, something like that.) I could fill in most of the history except for Mansfield/Corning trips. I was trying to estimate that recently, as I was talking to someone about the driving I've done (thus giving me the idea for the above page), and I have no idea. My best guess was something like 50 round trips to Mansfield and 30 to Corning. Hard to say, hard to say. Anyway, gonna be at HomeCooked LAN in Mainesburg most of the weekend. Oh, and I hope some of you people got hooked on that damn She Hates My Futon business.
7/24/2001-When you read certain good (and even some bad) fiction you see an amazingly large amount of your life in it. Um, I'm working on real content, that'll show up sometime.
7/19/2001-I've said it before, I might say it again - I love Google. And this time, it didn't even come through for me. When I need the number of a business in Williamsport and don't feel like leaving my desk, I'll often search for "Williamsport Thomas Lightfoote Inn" or something like that. In preparation of our trip to Montreal, I wanted the number of Anniello's in Corning. So I searched for it. Didn't quite get it, but dig the results. And yes, I'm going to Montreal tomorrow. JP Morgan, Rob Judson, Kenny McDermott, Dave Eck, Brandon Hall, and (95% sure) Sam Corbett will also be there with bells on, so to speak. Transportation sorta depends on the van being in working order tomorrow, which it is supposed to be. (Update - the reason google dind't find it is that Neil and I both spelled it wrong. It's "Aniello's" and there's all kinds of good results if you search for that.)
7/14/2001-I keep on wasting these summer days, one after another, and it's a real good time. Party last night at Jesse Butterfield's cabin, scheduled to start about 6 hours after his plane left for Brazil. As the driver, I had a real good time playing Asshole with some people who'd been at the game for a bit too long. Anyway, around 2AM, Jesse showed up, having been turned away at the airport because his family didn't know they needed visas to go to Brazil. He caught word of the party somehow and headed out there. Haven't been doing much else...really. I saw The Natural today and saw Taxi Driver a few days ago. Check either one out if you're interested in a movie sometime. Oh, people ask me from time to time, so I thought I'd give a little update on the car. First, it's not (as of yet) going to be named. Nothing really seemed to stick, though there were a lot of good entries. Second, it's got a bit over 4800 miles on it. Trip to Georgia, lots of driving around Williamsport, and a good number of trips to Mansfield/Corning add up to that many miles, apparently. Also, it's a bit damaged. A serious, serious storm blew through here a few nights ago and it included the worst hail I've ever seen/heard. It now has a large number of small dents, especially on the hood, but they're only noticable when the light hits them in the right (wrong?) way. Oh, trip to Montreal coming up next weekend. And it's gonna be Space Van-style.
7/6/2001-It's really 4AM on the 7th, but I get editorial control, so I say this is the update for the 6th. First off, I'd just like to toss in a bit of nostalgia for those days when we just rode around in the Space Van talking about all the cool stuff we'd do if we had a rail gun. I'm pretty sure there are between 0 and 3 people who will read this and remember those conversations. Anyway, I've been up to all sorts of whatnot. The trip to Georgia happened in a big way. Pretty much just me, the Civic, and talk radio for 12-14 hours in either direction. I stopped by Punsxutawney to see my dad on the way out to Pittsburgh, had a good time hanging out with Marshall and his roommates once I got there. The next day got me to Athens, GA where I met up with Charlie, the rest of the Millers, Dani, Charles, and assorted others. Used For Comparison played a great set, the rest of the music was so-so and I ended up at the Miller household around 3:30 AM. Other than some minor havoc-raising with Charles, nothing big of note went down while I was in Georgia, just a very chill good time. I (with a partner) won a game of Trivial Pursuit. Stayed till Monday, made the usual 37 or 38 miles per gallon all 806 miles back to Williamsport. The whole trip clocked in at 1806 miles, it was at exactly 1000 when I left Charlie's place Monday morning, to the nearest tenth of a mile. Tuesday, for lack of anything better to do, I made my way to Mansfield. Tom, Jesse, Johanna, and I saw The Fast and The Furious. Really good time with fast cars and no plot. I snagged Tom, brought him down here for a few days. Had some fun on the 4th when, along with Kenny, JP, and Brandon Hall, we went to the Agway parking lot to view Williamsport's fireworks. We had a football, a baseball (three of us had mitts), a foxtail, a kickball, a Vortex, and Laine's frisbee. Basically the area around my car turned into a flurry of flying sporting equiptment, so everyone else who came into the lot was pretty much pushed off to the sides to avoid messing with us kids and our toys. Took Tom back to Mansfield last night, didn't do much besides read Zodiac. I'm in the process of coordinating a melee of RMAing hard drives whose long-term data-worthiness I suspect, formatting, and installing both familiar and unfamiliar operating systems. Hard drive that's getting sent in is a big one, 60GB, and I'm get to back up my stuff on probably most of the computers in the house. Events conspired to cause me to aid in the making of some pretty tasty Fettuccine Alfredo a bit earlier tonight. My room is a gigantic morass of 11th grade chem notes, van window signs from roadtrips long past, rarely-worn tshirts, college advertisments, vintage Easter candy, years of magazine subscriptions, and old computers. Some of that may have to change.
6/26/2001-Dig the date. I briefly rode in the trunk of a 626 once. Wasn't bad. Along those lines, we had four people in the trunk of my car last night, in an attempt to figure out how many dead whores could fit in there. We figure probably five dead whores, cause you can pack em in tighter. Shortly before that, we'd needed to get some canoe paddles out of a locked house. I climbed onto the roof, pushed open a window, and went inside. This happened in Eagles Mere, PA. I'm hoping to visit Knoebels tomorrow. Thursday, I plan to go to Pittsburgh and see Marshall. On Friday, it's on to Georgia so I can see Charlie and Charles perform, along with others, as Used For Comparison. I'll come home a few days later. There's still a chance Jesse and maybe Johanna are going with me. I've obviously got loads of stuff to figure out. At times like this, a New Text Document.txt usually shows up on my desktop. I'll make it just to hold one piece of information, and then it becomes an ever-changing to-do list, then it's where I put all my important information for a while. I save a lot of them, eventually, they're quite interesting.
6/23/2001-Ok, what have I been doing? The last update (yikes, a week ago, my bad) of course referred to my departure for Piefest. If you're hip to the scene, it's about as good a time as there is to be had. And I'm hip to the old hippie/children of old hippies scene. What else has been going on? Right now I'm trying to get over what I'm pretty sure is strep throat. Feeling ok now, last day or so was miserable. I slept for some stretches of unprecedented length. But it was poor, somewhat bad dream filled sleep. Not a super time. I took a little drive today, that got me feeling a good bit better, and I've eaten a few things. I was listening to All This Useless Beauty by Elvis Costello in the car. I'm a big fan of the first song, "The Other End (Of The Telescope)." Aaanyway, I need to somehow get my CDs page up to date. I'm thinking of making another movie, but I can't really think of anything worthy of being the subject of one of my movies. I spent most of the day watching Seinfeld episodes and otherwise killing time right here in this very chair. Not such a bad gig.
6/16/2001-Why live a lie when you can drive and...pie?
6/13/2001-Hmm, summer leaves me with not much to do. I finished re-reading Snow Crash today and started re-reading Cryptonomicon. Katie Dill, Katie Somers, and Nowell Strite came over and we watched Office Space, despite unexplaned computer crashes. I had my regular visit to the dentist, only notable because apparently I no longer need flouride and because the dental hygenist was the mom of someone I knew in high school, which gave us something to talk about. The LAN last weekend was good. Our crew pretty much sat together and played Total Annihilation and Ultimate Racer Pro (or something) and mocked the Digital Jedi. "We brag better!" and so on. There was some business with going to a dance club in State College last night. Yeah...
6/7/2001-"This girl walks in and the universe kinda stopped" - Estelle by Dan Bern
"Don't I have the right to be over you yet?...don't I have the right to be loved?" - Don't I Have The Right by Mono Puff
"Your new boyfriend's a bit of a right wing shit" - Your New Boyfriend by Moxy Früvous
"Cause maybe I don't love you all that much" - Jerusalem by Dan Bern
"I'm not gonna get too sentimental...Alison, my aim is true" - Alison by Elvis Costello
"Always wonder why your eyes are closed, don't you want to see me closing mine?...You're afraid of what I'll do to you, recall the taste of something sweet, between a thousand sheets of memory, I cannot be blamed because you're weak" - High by Sarah Slean
"Baby please, leave the biker, leave the biker, break his heart" - Leave The Biker by Fountains of Wayne
"The impossible is possible, tonight, believe in me as I believe in you, tonight" - Tonight Tonight by the Smashing Pumpkins
"Was it just a fool's impression? Such an antiquated passion" - Fly by Moxy Früvous
Clearly, a really good night tonight. I attended, and actually took yearbook pictures at, the graduation of the Class of 2001 at the Williamsport Area High School. Went to a pretty cool party afterwards, but we Class of 2000 types left rather early. Bigtime LAN all weekend in Corning.
6/6/2001-Let the record state that Dylan Flipse Memorial Parties are Bad News. But it all works out in the end.
6/2/2001-Happy birthday Liz Learn. I've got all cotton, faded, mostly light blue plaid with red, white, and light brown stripes. Gold stars if you picked that one up. I updated the Concerts Page with some info on the last two TMBG shows I saw.
5/29/2001-I'm working on it.
5/25/2001-It's Towel Day, a tribute to Douglas Adams. I hope you're carrying your towel. I'm awake early, despite going to bed nice at late. I got up to eat breakfast with Rob Judson, Big Joe, and some other high school types at Perkins. Last night found me at the Publications Banquet at the high school, the Lycoming Valley Mall, the Somers household, walking around downtown and eventually getting pizza, watching The Wonder Boys and playing Super Mario World in Amy Downling and Zach Ritter's apartment, and finally hanging out on my back porch. Today, I think I have plans to play catch in about six hours. Sunday, though! Sam's house...sometime. Come get your BBQ on. Bring meat, if you want to. It'll be fun. If I have my way, we'll blow up some cars.
5/23/2001-Entries to the Name That Car contest are rolling in, and many of them show tremendous amounts of creativity, research, and imaginitivity. Not to say that any have been any good, which they may or may not have been. Uh, I did new stats for #gifted (hah, negative progress, tibbs) and #tmbg.
5/20/2001-Announcing the Name the New Car contest on Flipse Dot com. First prize is one magical night with Tom Smith. Last prize is one magical night with Tom Smith. So I got that car, a 2001 Honda Civic EX, with a manual transmission in black. It's quite nice. But, when you've spent three years with the Space Van as your main ride, you become accustomed to having a fitting name for the car. So send your best idea for a name to me at namethatcar@flipse.com. All decisions I make are final. Anyway, had a real good time at the prom last night. Katie Somers took Class Of 2000 member John Morgan (after Friday night spent at the Flipse Compound playing all the way through Serious Sam on multiplayer co-op and Thursday night spent staying up late for no reason and getting up early when Luke showed up to install a CD player). I was invited by Emma Somers. That group of four dined at the Thomas Lightfoote Inn, went to the prom at Williamsport Area High School, and ended up at Kenny McDermott's house for a bonfire/campout that was attended by quite a few other random characters. There are some pictures up already (love the digital camera) on the Pic Page.
5/17/2001-It seems most unreasonable for me not to mention a rather tragic event of last week. Douglas Adams died last Friday of a heart attack, suddenly, at the age of 49. Most anyone reading this won't need me to explain what his works, most notably The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, mean to a great number of people. It's a good thing too, because my explaination is sure to be lacking, though not from lack of effort. If you aren't with me at this point, buy or borrow that book and read it. You'll at the very least understand all this business about towels and the number 42. That being said, I just wanted to mention some personal details. I obtained my copy of The Hitchhiker's Guide probably 7 or 8 years ago. There was some big book sale in State College, I picked it up, my dad mentioned something about it being a classic, so I got it. In my opinion, there is none finer. Being a fan of this book, its four sequels, and other works by Douglas Adams is something I share with an extremely large percentage of my friends. Someone who *doesn't* grin when 42 pops up somewhere, or is taken aback by referring to something as "hoopy" is more than likely going to be viewed as the oddball. My very first attempts at reaching an audience larger than one person online, the mass-emails known as the Fun Facts of the Day indeed all contain small bits from a relatively obscure Adams book. Though it is rarely intentional, I feel that my written and verbal humor has been strongly influenced by the Guide (And the other four books in the trilogy). Charlie Miller and I had an amazing day several years ago, when we were surprised to find Douglas Adams and Terry Jones responding to several questions from each of us during an online chat preceeding the release of Starship Titanic. Guess what my first choice is when I'm writing a program and I need a default value for an identifier. I don't give towels as graduation gifts to be funny, but because it's always good to know where your towel is, and I'm trying to look out for my friends. I'm saddened when I realize that we'll never find the true question or the real fates of Arthur, Ford, and the rest, and that a man who brightened the lives of so many had to go when he did.
5/15/2001-I'm long done with school (Seems like forever ago, anyway) and I arrived at home on Sunday night. The time between those two events was spent at the Beta house, carrying on and whatnot. Home is pretty slow, but I've been seeing a few people. Plan on playing a little volleyball later on this evening. More excitement has come in the "car purchasing" game. Dad and I test drove a few this morning. I was fairly iffy on the Subaru I drove. The Golf was real, real nice but they're a bit pricey and a little less reliable. The Civic was a very nice test drive, expect it to last forever, and the price was nice. Cars Direct had that price, and I'm in the process of buying a 2001 Honda Civic EX, 5-speed manual from them. Should be sweet. Anyway, I'm one of those people that hangs on to files forever, and, well, this (216K) isn't that old but it sure is random enough. Blame Dave. He's the one did this for some school assignment.
5/8/2001-Halfway through finals. Anthropology yesterday was a little bit trickier of beast than I'd been expecting, but it was dealt with. Programming later today is expected to be of little concern. Econ tomorrow, perhaps just slightly more of a concern. Then it's fun and relaxation at the Beta house until Sunday and on to Williamsport (via Corning).
5/4/2001-Three years and one day after getting all soaking wet and seeing TMBG at Cornell, I intend to see TMBG right here in Cleveland. Along with going to see a show tonight, I'm wearing a shirt that's older than me. I'm sure some of you know what I'm talking about. Three more finals coming up, one each on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. Some studying required for each, but nothing too serious. Hmm, minor changes on this page, as suggested by Luke. That's it for now.
5/3/2001-Well that sucked. Two afternoons ago, I was dismayed to find flipse.com extremely non-functional. Old credit card expired, wasn't paying the bills, I wasn't getting notified. Wallet's a little lighter from the re-activation fee, but things are up and kicking. Well, on to real life. I was up all Sunday night writing a history paper. I was up all Tuesday night finishing up my programming final project. Speaking of that...here it is, Euchre by Purple Cow, Inc. That's the web page, a required component of the project, and there's links for the program, the source code, and much other good info. This coding and writing papers and whatnot threw my sleep schedule out of whack...which isn't all bad. I've also been having nasty, nasty allergies and/or head cold stuff going on. That is all bad. My chem final was today. Didn't ace it, but I got the grade I needed for a B. Afterwards, to the Winking Lizard (sort of accidentally) with some of my brothers, and then later on to the store for fresh strawberries and sugar. Considering that I already have a blender and ice and...well, you know, it's been a fun night. I'd like to thank my 12th grade Calc teacher, Mr. Welsh. He got me ready for the AP test, which got me out of Math 125 here, so I've already taken 126...so I don't have a final tomorrow, like most everyone else around here. That's about enough for now. And, really now, try Euchre!
4/27/2001-Love these AM updates. Thursday was a bleh day. It contined the Dylan Flipse Is Getting Stupider movement. It's over now, and that's a good thing. New stuff up on both the Pic Page and Quick Pic Page. At Sam's request, we also have the super-cool Classic Style Pic Page. The picture of me sneezing was given to me by Jesse Brown. Shortly after that, he got a picture of me reacting to the original picture. He said he was feeling rather existential at that momement.
4/25/2001-I'm feeling the need for "a FDC update of some sort." Hmmm. School sucks. I'm about to head to a chem review, test tomorrow, and finals start (with my chem final) next Thursday. I've been doing a fair amount of programming on Euchre. If you're slick, you can grab a recent build off the Flipse.FTP. Buncha people from Denmark, Singapore, Canada, Mexico, and other such places were all over the FTP recently, so I took most of the movies off. That was getting to be a bit much, is all. I think I've been surviving mostly on Thin Mints recently. Messes with ya.
4/21/2001-It's been a good weekend. Things that are fun include - all night softball tournaments, with music, people (including girls, at Case, I swear!), and plenty of coolers. Also, Euchre coming along nicely is very fun. My group kicked it into team mode, one guy has been going hardcore on the graphics while the other two of us tweak the engine. Anyway, the softball was Friday night. Saturday night ended up being cool as well. Saw Trainspotting at the campus theater, then we (Duff, Rich, Dylan) were pretty much headed back to the dorms when we ran into some people who convinced us to go to a party. We bounced back and forth between two parties, split up, found some Betas, found some other people, got back together, split up again, went to two different parties (Turns out there were at least six parties here that night...insane). Anyway, good stuff, this weekend.
4/19/2001-Long week. All nighter due to history paper on Tuesday night. Lots of programming leading up till today. This is, in fact, one of those, "didn't go to bed yet" updates, and it's coming at an unreasonably late hour on Friday morning. But the good news is- if you want to play Euchre at a DOS prompt, I can hook you up. Keep checking this spot for the download. Uh, what else happened this week? The San Francisco Giants played and won two sweet baseball games at home against the Dodgers to start a three game series. (Game three wasn't as fun, we won't mention that one.) Related to that, I purchased a baseball glove today. Gotta love that. On a more important note, I had a job interview Wednesday morning (yes, I was allllll tired, but it was cool). It's for a campus job for next fall, though. It would be kind of cool to live in Cleveland with a few guys from my fraternity for the summer, but living at home has advantages that include being much cheaper and getting to hang out with folks from home. Anyway, a little more coding then sleep is for the me.
4/13/2001-Ooooh, Friday the 13th, like I'm all scared or something. Really tame night here. Sat around, eventually went to see The Right Stuff at the campus theater. It was a...different kind of movie-going experience. I enjoyed it. (If you plan on checking it out, just know that it is three hours long.) On a related note, I want to be a pilot.
4/9/2001-I'm coming off of a superb weekend. I borrowed a car from a guy in my fraternity, and drove up to Niagra Falls on Friday night. We got to the Sheraton Fallsview around 9:30, checked in, and scoped out the view from my room. I took another one of my brothers and his date. About 2/3 of the Betas going for Formal went Friday night, the rest arrived the next day. My date, Katie Dill, met me up there late-ish Friday night, so we didn't do much other than hang out with some people. Saturday, everyone slept in, bunches of us went out to eat, some people hit the casino, saw all the fabulous Niagra Falls sights, and then went back to the hotel for Formal. We got all dressed up, had a really excellent dinner, and the parties started. Most people started drinking, hanging out in various rooms throughout the hotel, and progressed downstairs after a bit. The bar downstairs was a blast after a bit, because this band called "Who's Your Daddy?" came on. They had huge fake afros, were wearing all manner of sequins and other assorted crazy clothes, and were playing covers of all the really cool 70s funk songs. A bunch of Betas (and dates) partying in a situation such as that one is sure to be a damn good time. And then Kris Dornan showed up in a cowboy hat and pleather pants, and it was all over. Well, not really. Less importantly, we met a very drunk man from Sweden. He was taking our pictures, claiming to a be a priest, and saying he'd be happy to marry us. He was also buying people drinks. Anyway, Katie left before I got up on Sunday, and I brought Amir, his date Sapna, Tommy, and Sarah-Jane back to Cleveland with me. It was a sweet trip, but 5/23/1999 continues to hold painfully true. After getting back, I pitched for the Hitchcock softball team. That went an extra inning, tied 15-15, but we got the side out in the extra frame and won it in the bottom of the inning. Hitchcock is now 2-1, and Beta softball is 2-0, with a game tomorrow.
4/6/2001-Going to Niagra Falls. Beta formal. Be back on Sunday.
4/2/2001-Every freakin time. April Fool's Day shenanigans around here, as always. But we're back. I'm up too late, but I'm actually being pretty productive. Until just now, when I stopped to make this update. Uh, I also think I'm done catching my Stuff Page up to speed. (Awkward usage in that sentence. Don't feel like fixing it.) I think that page is pretty boring, but that it might as well be up to date if it's there. One more note, I want to point out that Neil Bardhan is my editor-for-life. I love that kid, because no matter where or when I make a typo or spelling error (Most likely, make the latter and claim it's the former), he's bound to notice and to tell me. (For instance, the first time I uploaded this page, it said "he's bound to notice tell me." Half the time, I don't catch this stuff.) This may sound like sarcasm, but it is not. I appreciate it.
4/1/2001-Dylan's first error was incorporating 100% lossey compression on the CONF.H security file. This is a documented vulnerability in the Apache 3.0 web server, and allowed me read access to all files, most notably, the normally inaccessable server-side scripting. Dylan had written a few shoddy attempts at a hit counter before he just downloaded one from another site. To wrap this up, of his first attempts left me with write capabilities for the entire server. I bet the guys in the server room were pretty confused when I played this sound on a loop via the AGP soundcard in the server computer. Anyway, if Dylan is really nice to me, and gives me another used wallet next time I see him, I just may give him the password to his web server back. - Update by Tom
3/31/2001-Jeff has been bitchin at me for stats, so here they are, for #gifted and #tmbg. It's Greek Week here at CWRU. The Lambda Kappa-Beta chapter of Beta Theta Pi is continuing our tradition of participating in just about everything, but caring about pretty much nothing. You can go read about all the stupid events (some are fun, I'll admit) if that sort of thing interests you. I watched Rounders today. The movie says, "If you can't spot the sucker in the first half hour at the table, then you ARE the sucker." I figure I'm probably the sucker, so it's best that I avoid being at the table. Yah, that's it for now.
3/25/2001-I really need to get my head out of my ass with this whole webpage thing. Like I need to write things here. I had and up and down week. This included staying up all of Tuesday night to write a history paper...very, very slowly. That wrapped up about 17 minutes before it was due. I'm listening to Sarah Slean and her voice is beautiful. Let no one tell you otherwise. The baseball season starts in a week (By the time anyone reads this.) My brother Alex Svilar has been kind enough to send out baseball quotations to myself and others. I will now share some of these. "With those who don't give a damn about baseball I can only sympathize. I do not resent them. I am even willing to concede that many of them are physically clean, good to their mothers and in favor of world peace. But while the game is on, I can't think of anything to say to them." - Art Hill That's a good one, so is this- "People ask me what I do in winter when there's no baseball. I'll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring." Rogers Hornsby, Hall of Famer. I'm not really sure how many people read this page. And of that uncertain group of people, I'm not sure how many of them are too interested in those quotations. But man, I really enjoy this game, and things like that can send chills down my spine. Enough of that- I spent the weekend sleeping, playing (and losing) Euchre, and watching TV that included the NCAAs and Saturday Night Live. Right now, I should be studying/doing CHEM 106, CHEM 113, and/or HSTY 113. I, however, am clearly not. I think. Remember this wallet, anyone? I was cleaning out the wallet I got to replace that one, in preparation of moving to my brand new wallet, and I came across some fun things, including an 11-22-1997 ticket stub for a Corning East High production of See How They Run. Ok, here's the big news. (Anyone still reading, anyone?) I updated the Picture Page with fun stuff from JBME and other winter break fun stuff. Enjoy, if that's your bag of tea.
3/20/2001-First day of spring today, and Cleveland was pretty nice about it. Most of the day was sunny and probably up in the 50s. Anyway, to recap travel over spring break- Cleveland-Williamsport (Friday) Williamsport-Shamokin-Williamsport-Corning (Saturday) Corning-Williamsport (Sunday) Williamsport-Niagra Falls-Rochester-Williamsport (Monday) Williamsport-Pottsville-Williamsport (Wednesday) Williamsport-State College-Williamsport-Corning (Thursday) Corning-Williamsport-Baltimore-Williamsport (Friday, on into early Saturday morning) Williamsport-Pottsville-Williamsport (Saturday) Williamsport-Cleveland (Sunday). The Shamokin and both Pottsville trips were to boys' state basketball playoff games, to watch the Williamsport Millionaires. As previously mentioned, the first trip to Corning was of the LAN style, at Sam's house. I went to State College to see my grandparents, and then I visited Jack, saw Erin Lindsay, had some dinner, and drove to Corning to spend the night at Sam's. Friday involved getting Jesse and Johanna in Mansfield, my sister in Williamsport, and going to Baltimore to see They Might Be Giants at the Recher Theatre. Oh, and that trip to Niagra Falls. JP Morgan and I were bored just after midnight on Monday morning, so off we went. We gambled, lost a little cash, visited Katie Dill in Rochester, and came home. Didn't sleep that night. Anyway, on this first day of spring, I am writing a history paper. I am not enjoying it. But I do enjoy updating Flipse.com. So there you have it.
3/13/2001-So I've been on spring break for a few days and I'm having a great time. I went to see Williamsport Area High School's boys' basketball game win one playoff game on Saturday and I'll be going to see another tomorrow. I've seen some Mansfield/Corning types and also several people from my high school. On Friday, a group of us is going to see TMBG in Baltimore. You can read about all the concerts I've been to on my Concerts Page. Wanna see some of the West Coast Roadtrip that we went on last summer? Booga has a good number of pics with the sort of commentary you'd expect from our time spent in Huntington Beach. Oh yah, went to a LAN at Sam's house on Saturday night. Beav pissed on it, that was kinda a downer, but we were wrapping things up anyway.
3/7/2001-Early morning update, but I'm not going to write any haikus. (Though I think that was really good.) First off, Tom Smith is 6'4", slim, and enjoys things that hot chicks enjoy. Second, I'm glad to be going home for over a week (starting Friday!) as the vibe around here isn't as good as it usually is. My friend Lars Lieberman left school last week. He lived next to me all year. He went on a trip over the weekend, came back on Tuesday, and then slipped his key under the door and left to go home to Long Island. We all got an email from him, that pretty much told us he was going to miss us, but that he had some stuff to work out. Anyway, we miss him and hope he's doing alright. Another thing that I wanted to point out is the case of Lisl Aumen, who has the distinction of being in prison for life for committing a murder that occured while she was handcuffed and in the back seat of a police car.
3/5/2001-Time flies when you're at college. It seems like just yesterday that I made the last update, but it's been the better chunk of a week. Anyway, while many of you enjoy the Fourth(!) Annual #gifted Snow Day, I'll be going to class and taking history and economics tests. Have fun in the channel, folks, that's what it's there for. And good news for the Undernet is that channel services are back and seem to be better than ever. Have fun, and I'll be home Friday night.
2/28/2001-Spit out some new stats for #gifted and #tmbg tonight. Used a new version of mIRCStats, and I must say, they're lookin pretty cool. Just more proof that anybody who's anybody has at least ten thousand in #gifted. One more thing. One of those people with quite a bit more than ten thousand is John Tomlinson. John was in a car accident two weeks ago. He's out of intensive care now, and he's improving, but he's still unconscious. He's been around the, uh, loosely-affiliated group of people that make up 95% of the flipse.com readership for a long time. He's a good guy. I just wanted to make sure everyone knew what was going on, because I know that several people were just hearing about it today.
2/23/2001-Not the best few days. With the curve, I pulled an 88 on my programming test from Tuesday. Not bad, but I should have had almost a 100. My chem test yesterday sucked, coming in at an 81. Worse still, I went to this banquet last night, and while this ex-astronaut guy was giving a pretty cool speech about the work he's done on the X-33 and RLV, I started getting really cold. I couldn't stop shivering by the end of the speech. I came home and went right to sleep (11PM!) without doing my programming homework. So I woke up, worked on that for an hour, came back, basically finished it up, and went to my recitation to turn it in. I just didn't have time to polish it up, so I'll be losing some points there. I've still got a headache and a chest cold kinda thing, so I might be sitting around quite a bit this weekend. Whatever, maybe I'll get some work done on FDC. :) (I was wearing "Dylan Flipse - flipse.com" on my nametag at the banquet last night. Got some laughs from my friends. I was hoping to attract some venture capital.)
2/19/2001-Man, early morning updates are weird. I did something productive on FDC today, specifically the creation of a Contact Dylan Flipse page. The Get On IRC page still exists, but the link for it has been moved off the main page. Finding time for even little "projects" like that is pretty tough, I'm sacrificing some sleep to put that one up. That being said, look for some new stuff to be appearing on the picture page sometime in my lifetime. There's a good chance it'll happen.
2/15/2001-Again, early morning updates to keep me from working on other things. This time, I wrote a haiku in response to a very recent conversation.-
No naked weddings
With snowball fights, in winter
Because we'd be cold
2/14/2001-It's early, early in the morning and I'm working on my dumb, dumb history paper. Actually getting some work done, but then I happened to realize something and had to make an update. Over the past few days, my baby pictures have proved endlessly fascinating to me. I've got two albums scanned, and I've looked through those pictures a few times. I even have this portrait on my desktop. What I realized is that in these pictures I'm between zero and three years old, I am 19 now, and my dad was 30 when I was born. So, I'm closer to his age in these pictures than my age. This seems trivial, and it is, but it was still a surprise to me. It seems also like I had a lot to smile about back then. My life certainly isn't bad, but it just seems quite "bleh" much of the time. Today is a fine example, as I'm awake because of too much wasted time earlier, will continue to be awake as I keep wasting time, and am generally grumpy thanks to St. Valentine.
2/11/2001-So, my night last night was a lot like Tom's day on RaddisLAN day, only moreso and with karaoke. We had a lot of fun.
2/5/2001-I drove (seemingly randomly) around Ohio for most of the weekend. I recommend it. Actually did a lot of fun Beta Theta Pi stuff, including going to a party with and staying with the OSU Betas on Friday, meeting Betas from chapters all over Ohio on Saturday, checking out the sweeet Alpha Chapter House and administrative offices in Oxford, OH (Miami University). Hmmm, in addition to that, I'm kind of sick. Also, let it be known that I still hate Chem Lab, but I don't have to go tomorrow cause I finished my stuff up last week. So instead of 7:15, I'll be setting my alarm for noon. On that note (Not really, but, whatever) I'm doing laundry right now. So I'm wearing my shower slippers, some gym shorts, and a t-shirt I got in elementary school that details the evolution of "Sharkman" on the back of it. Doing laundry in dorms sucks ass. I'm listening to Eyes of The World by the Grateful Dead, which certainly does not suck ass. Someone at some point suggested posting my cell phone number on FDC, so some people know it. 570-419-4641 it is. Calling after 9PM and before 7AM is virtually free for me, because of the number of minutes I have. Calling during the rest of the day is also cool, we just can't chat very long.
1/31/2001-In Which The Author Plays Mean Tricks, Has A Brush With Fame, And Wakes Up The Neighbors, None Of Which Should Be Without Interest To The Readers Of Flipse.com-Apologies to Neal Stephenson for stealing his section headers from Mother Earth Mother Board. Anyway, mean tricks I played did include some duct tape, a door, some paper, and a Sharpie which, when combined with a visiting female in a nearby room, is enough to produce some kind of reaction. Anyway, I went out to a club/bar/grill near here that I'd never been to before. They had a DJ and all that good stuff, but I was just sitting around with some friends at a table. A large amount of wings had recently arrived at the still empty table next to us, and my friend Rich was contemplating nabbing some until we pointed out the bouncer within eyeshot. So this group of guys sits down, a few minutes later one of them leans over to us and explains that the guy across the table from him is in Bone Thugs-N-Harmony. Normally you'd blow off a comment like that, but Bone hails from East Cleveland, and it turns out that we're in East Cleveland. Also, they'd just played a song that no one recognized. Turns out that song is from some upcoming Bone Thugs recording. So we finally came back here, and I found the lock to my door taped over, and along with some other random annoyances, that my 19" Princeton monitor had been replaced by a 15" AST monitor. About that time, I saw the suspected perpetrator of this plot (In an interesting sidenote, this individual had a female visitor earlier in the evening) and we talked about the night. I mentioned the Bone Thugs stuff. He mentioned that the female actually had a healthy sense of humor. A few minutes later, I decided that the best way to get my monitor back was to create a Large Commotion. So I spent about 20 seconds screaming my lungs out in the hallway. And a few seconds kicking a door. This attracted some attention. I subsequently heard stories today about how I "flipped out" last night. All in good fun.
1/25/2001-I just spent a few minutes throwing Jelly Belly jellybeans into the air and catching them in my mouth. Thirteen in a row is the best string I had. I really enjoy the buttered popcorn flavor ones. Previous to that, someone looking into my room (The door was open, or perhaps you could be watching the Webcam might have noticed three guys trying to lick their own nipples. My roommate Duff and Tom Rafferty (Thinks he lives in this room, but that's cool.) both can do it, I can't. That being said, I watched Temptation Island still earlier tonight. There was a part that involved body shots, to include licking salt and lime juice off someone else's nipples. From this we concluded that both Duff and Tom could do solo body shots, but that'd be really awfully lame. Anyway, the show, as far as I can tell, is hilarious, due to just how cruel the producers of the show are. That's funny to me. Anyway, I also spent a fair amount of time thinking about the hot tub we're going to make for our dorm room. Should be pretty sweet. I rode in a car to Sharon, PA (That's about an hour and a half from here) for a meal at Quaker Steak & Lube. It was unlimited wing night, and this is the place with the "Best Wings In the USA®." I'm not really sure that that phrase is a registered trademark of the Quaker Steak folks, but it's best to cover all my bases. A while ago, I got an email from this random guy giving me a pointer on Internet Explorer. I have complained in the past that IE users don't see the 404 Error page if they don't turn off an option called "Friendly Error Pages." Turns out you can get them to see the error page supplied by your server if the page is over a certain size. It seems that Microsoft thinks that being over an arbitrary size means that it's a "well-designed" page. Kinda sketchy, but now anyone that mis-types a flipse.com URL will see the error page I put there. Eh, various updates will appear when they appear.
1/23/2001-I hate chem lab. Oh, and I've been putting "2000" for the date in these updates. How silly. I fixed that now.
1/18/2001-I'm pumped as all hell cause I just bowled a 128. By far my best game ever. Neil was also kind enough to point out that I'm 19 now, so the bottom of this page was a little inaccurate. I spent a minor amount of time updating some of my Links. They still aren't very interesting.
1/14/2001-Traditional Week is going well (I'm alive). Updating FDC right now is a rightous hack if ever there was one. Spent some time gambling in Windsor last night. Hope the IRC thing is going well, I've seen the updates on the Undernet page. Hang in there, things will be sorted out and I'll be back tomorrow evening.
1/8/2001-My house is not (more or less) empty as Charlie flew out of Williamsport yesterday and Rose and Drew left from Baltimore the day before. A little bit boring, but I've got some things that I need to get together before I head back to Case in two days for some fraternity-related activities. I ran some stats for #gifted and #tmbg. Oh, and the game No One Lives Forever rules, in case you hadn't heard.
1/2/2001-First update from the real "new millennium." JBME went off without any serious hitches. Might have liked to see some more people there but we certainly weren't lacking for a crowd (20+ peeps) or lacking any fun. Wrestling in the attic, 2001:A Space Odyssey, fooseball, ping pong and music in the basement, mad CD burning and games on the second floor, TV watching, food, Trivial Pursuit and chilling with Pepper on the first floor, and a post-midnight, below-freezing, fake-champagne-spraying celebration in my front lawn were some highlights of the evening. Tom showed up on the 26th and left on the 1st. Sam, Liz, Tom and I got Rose and Drew from the airport on the 26th. There was about an hour and a half to kill because their flight was delayed, so we filled the time taking pictures of strangers in the airport, doing headstands, and playing Euchre. Charlie was to fly into Williamsport on the 29th His flight out of Pittsburgh happened to be the last one of the night, but the propeller fell off the plane or something, so he ended up in a hotel for the night. Tom and I found this out around 11:30PM (his expected arrival time) and my immediate thought was to drive the four hours to Pittsburgh and get him, but Tom was right for once in assuring me that the best thing to do was to wait till the following morning, so we came back to the FDC# and played NOLF till late enough that we were asleep around the time Charlie's rescheduled flight landed the next morning.
For Flipse.com Updates from before 2001, please go to the Old Updates.
flipse.com
By Dylan Flipse, 
