Blogger, realist, clarifier, if there is such a term. Truth teller, who's not afraid to admit I'm wrong. Hellacious, renegade violist and "computer whisperer"; was once accused of practicing the Dark Arts with systems.
I'm tougher than most and survived things that would have killed most women. I still love life. I was homeless, now I'm not. No longer in the 'hood. Now, somewhere in the Carolinas. The stories are priceless and endless.
I finished "Music of the Spheres" at 20:00 E.S.T. on Friday, November 29, 2013, with 50,971 words total and a right "hot mess" it is, too! As Andi-Roo would say, "slam shit down and get that shit on paper". Or some shit.
I love the HuzzaaH!!
Seriously? I hope to never have to press a <backspace> key again. I know, dream on. T-day rocked. I cooked for my menfolk and we ate loads and loads of everything we shouldn't. Instead of turkey, I baked a chicken, with lots of dressing, mashed potatoes, my signature giblet gravy and two different kinds of green bean casserole, plus a ham. I got everything cooked and done. We ate and ate, fed Robert, the homeless guy, only one guy this year, as Kevin has passed on and I got the kitchen cleaned up and done by 8:15.
My sugar dropped to 39 at 8:45 and I had some orange juice and went to bed at 9:15. Today, I finished my novel. By way of Ernest Hemingway's instructions, that there are three things a man should do; they are: write a book, have a child and plant a tree. I've done two of the three and I have multiple "children" through the students I've taught privately, and the many, many young men I've met in SpiritZ, who I've based some of my characters on in my book. None of this is a solitary effort, nor is life. Although I am by nature a solitary creature and a contrary one. Anyway, for now, NaNoWriMo is done and won! Yippee!
First the good news; for #NaNoWriMo, I've managed to spit out 44,013 words into something that resembles a manuscript, but that I would more likely refer to as a "hot mess". If you don't believe me, here's visual proof:
I feel like I've been underground since November 1, 2013. This cannot be so, as I've typed eleventy-billion words it seems, AND I've actually played Wolf. This is going to be a mostly graphical update, because of. . . Runescape?
Wait! What? No, that's not what I meant to say at all! I wanted to tell you that all that yammering I did last summer about the NSA and FBI really, really paid off! If any of you read my ground-breaking post on how to fuc-I mean totally encrypt every day conversations on Facebook and Twitter and just waste everyone's time by running all of your stupid lolcats and chain letters that say "teh quick brown jackal jumped over the lazy capitalist" through Bing translators ten times with 10 different languages, you'd know that I am on the cutting edge of spy bullshit! Take a look at this! Apparently, I have the HOMELAND SECURITY FOLKS recruiting me for THIS:
God knows what in the hell they want me to do, but it looks totally legit, right? I can't wait to start. I am so excited! This must have been in response to a couple of letters I sent to the FBI and the SEC when I got this:
So everyone now knows I'm on my toes and fighting for the little guy or some shit out here in cyberland. I just knew if I kept pestering these people they'd offer me a job when they saw what kind of cyber-sleuthing chops I have!
Of course, I'll have to work from home. That Imaginary Trotsky fellow-traveler probably isn't going to rate me much in the way of a very high security clearance.
Anyway, 6,000 words from the finish line, at least for this draft of "Music of the Spheres". I like the title and I think it fitting for the subject. I sure couldn't have gotten here without my #ROW80 crew mates and everyone else in this new endeavor. What a great couple of years it's been. The Primodone is working wonders and I've put on over 40 pounds, since I first went into the homeless shelter. Who'd a thunk it? As my late Ma used to say. Thank you everyone!
Really a quick update just to let everyone know that no, I have not been eaten by the trolls here on Nebraskascape, or Rune Avenue, 33602, 33605, or the blue dragons, nor have I fished myself into oblivion, *ahem* like some I could mention.
The Gold Barons of Runescape
Translation. My Glorious Waste of Time is still with me, that being Runescape, and da 'hood is still a-boppin' and a-beepin' and a-screechin' outside my window as I type. I've just added to the cacophony a bit. I've put in 32k+ words for NaNoWriMo. (Honestly, I've lost count; I just type and I'm reaching the cataclysmic meeting of two main characters, so it's safe to say *fingers crossed* November 30, will see 50k words.)
I can still play some mean air viola!
The viola is another revelation, some good, some not. But that was to be expected. Everything still seems to be intact; muscle memory and whatnot and I'm playing a LOT more than I thought I would. I forgot to mention that I had MOHs surgery on my left bicep over 10 years ago, and that booger STILL aches. Getting old is not for wussies! I'm not unhappy with my progress, and I need to have my stupid bow re-haired, and yes, real horse's hair. I don't have the time and I need to call my guy who knows a guy. It's like the Mafia putting out a hit. Later. But my passage work on the "G" string sounds. . . muddy. So, something to fix, if not for myself, for my muse, Beethoven.
"V" for Victory, or dit-dit-dit-daa, used during WW II and, the 4 opening notes of Beethoven's 5th Symphony, a bit of trivia, for trivia buffs.
Anyway. The usual chaos medically, sort of. My red blood cell count will NOT come up, in spite of extra iron, B-12 injections, yada yada. I feel good and am up to 112 lbs. So, a lovely colonoscopy is scheduled. Can't wait to drink all of that lemon-flavored crap and poop it out. I know what they're going to find. Zero, zilch, nada, bupkis. But, better safe than sorry. My doc is primo and knows what's up. I have this thing called "malnutrition" from the lovely childhood thing "failure to thrive". Just so long as we do this AFTER NaNo and Thanksgiving. Giving thanks for just walkin' around. I missed the Pink pumpkins this year! Damn!
These were the Pink pumpkins. You can see how bad my tremors were last year this time, by the blurriness of the picture. LOTS to be grateful for!
Have a happy rest of the week #ROW80 Crew. See you on Sunday!
Sometimes
I wonder about this whole writing thing. I'm participating in
NaNoWriMo this year and unlike last year, I'm doing well. I have over
30,000 words or 30k as we used to say in the computer biz. I'm
enjoying it and I believe that I have a pretty intriguing story to
tell and that I will be able to find a publisher, or, what is more likely, with more hard
work and or, doing possibly my least favorite thing in the whole
world, “social networking,” (gah!) will be able to do it on the
cheap. I will have done something many people will have not been able
to do, but wish they could do. So, that being the case, why am I so
just, I even hate to say it, but not excited, yet? Will that happen?
Or,
is it because, I still have my heart in a sheet of music or in an
orchestra some where, playing and singing along with all of the great
harmonies that God intended us to give voice to, sounds that are at
once angelic and in the next instance brutally harsh and cold? Were I
still able to drive and not reliant on someone else for
transportation, I believe I would be playing in just about any
orchestra that would have me, especially now, that I have my tremors
under control. Pig-headed and stubborn to a fault I am; I should be
grateful as I had two very successful careers and both were doing
things that I loved. Not everyone can say that.
This apparently ended up in a garage sale or jumble sale, or garbage heap. I couldn't tell. I had my hacker vision on.
I
do love to create and writing is another way of creating. I do not
denigrate the art of writing, because it is so exceedingly difficult
to write beautiful prose and to write it meaningfully. It is hard to
write stories for entertainment and in different genres, as I am
finding out. I am such a newbie, or n00b, as my gamer pals call me at
this, although I did win awards for writing in university, but that
is so very different than this. This is about writing something that
people actually want to read and are willing to pay for, I guess.
Although, people do buy and read some execrable crap, witness the
publication of Paris Hilton's biography, “Paris Hilton: A
Biography,” by someone I never heard of, for 35.00
19.25. I know people must buy it and read it, but who? Maybe
the deeper question is, why? Why would anyone care about this
no-talent mediocrity? Because she's rich? Or is it because her sex
tape ended up on the Internet? How salacious are we as a society that
we pander to this?
Maybe
that's one reason I write. I enjoy holding a mirror up, so we can see
ourselves as we are, not as we think we are. Because there is so much
self-righteousness in this world and so much wrong done, in the name
of right. I really like to write for fun and just write silly
articles about my life. But I, as so many others around me here, have
had to deal with judgments against them that were perceptions based
on personal agendas, preconceived notions of how we all should behave
and just plain meanness against the weak and poor. If there is no one
to stand up for these souls, they are lost. Once they are lost, then,
as the German Protestant Reverend Martin Niemöller, who eventually
emerged as a public spokesman against Adolf Hitler and spent the last
seven years lf the Third Reich in concentration camps, said so
famously, after his release:
“First the came for the
Socialists, but I did not speak out—because I was not a Socialist.
“Then, they came for
the Trade Unionists and I did not speak out—because I was not a
Trade Unionist.
“Then, they came for
the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.
“Then, they came for
me, and there was no one left to speak for me.
Martin Niemöller, postwar
The
thing about being in among the "writing
crowd” if you will, is I get to have a seat at the table here and
rub elbows with all of you. I may never sell or publish a book or an article, but I'm having a wonderful time and I have all of you to thank for this, my "seat" at the table. For the #ROW80 crew and all of the other people I've been led to and met, I want to thank you all. Because of you, I will finish NaNoWriMo this year. Maybe, next year, I'll be able to say I've published a book! If not, I'll still have had a ball at #ROW80!
I've
been so busy lately, what with #NaNoWriMo and once again, doctors,
that it seems ages since I've written a new post for #ROW80. Oh, I've
had an inspiration here or there, but writing prompts have been
overlooked. Until tonight, and I cannot for the life of my understand
why I haven't written about this before. Before I get into all that,
I want to talk about my “goals.” I've written 18,811 words for
#NaNoWriMo as of Saturday, November 9. So, yay about that. My outline
and 3 events and 30 whatsis have been a tremendous help. Anyway, back
to Sa-tur-day nights on the Avenue of Nebraska!
It's sort of like this, only without the slide, order and apparent polite behavior seen here. Other than that, Cross of Mercy, neon lights, huddled confusion. Yeah, it looks like one of Nebraska Avenue's more celebrated Saturday evenings.
Maybe,
it's because in a way, it's always Saturday night on Nebraska Avenue,
even on Sunday morning. Jimmy Buffet's line about “it's a thin line
between Saturday night and Sunday morning” doesn't apply here.
There are no lines. Nope, no sir, no sirree bob, no how and no way.
As
my good, good pal Andi-Roo, over at The World 4 Realz says about Twitter, mostly I think, but
mentions Facebook, so none of those babies get their widdle feewings
hurt, in one of my favorite posts, Cotton Swab Causes Emergency Room Visit and the Fourth of July, “We
turned to Twitter and Facebook, that
ever-present crowd of parties and advice.”
With Nebraska Avenue and “ever-present” and “parties”
(loosely defined – a party of one or two is quite common behind the dumpsters and bushes, here) and “advice” – questionable, as I had a
roommate in the homeless shelter, who upon discovering that I had not
one, but two computers stashed under my bunk, wanted to know why I wasn't on
the internet.
The "Make-Believe" help desk. I think I worked for this dolt at IBM. I jumped ship and went to Verizon, just before the mutiny.
I
explained that I had no external antenna, so that I could “steal”
someone else's internet (a popular pastime around here, and not just
bandwidth.) Said roommate told me she was a computer “expert” and
I could just download the wifi device. I kept a straight face and ran
to tell my friends who had more than 2 working brain cells about my latest conversation with the newest representative from the Planet Mongo. My good
friend Matt, another homie from Choate and Boston University (how the
hell do people with such stunning backgrounds become homeless?) said
to me, “Great, let's download dinner and save time!” So, the term
“expert” around here is used with much abandon and means whatever
the hell the “expert” wants it to mean.
. . . Is A Glorious Waste of Time
It's
like those idiots who play video games (Runescape)
for 5 minutes, decide they now know everything there is to know about
the game (Runescape)
and can level up to 99 in 15 minutes. They then proceed to write the
most meaningless guide to _________ (fish to 99, cook to 99, mine to
99, etc. It's like a job, only with better benefits, and lots more
color, too.) Here, from mithos23132, is his guide, called, fittingly, "How to Write Very Bad Guides," from the Tip.it forums and it is hilarious. He so hits the nail on the head.
The irony here is, as I was hunting up this guide, I ran across one of the the last posters, who doesn't
get it. He's just furious about this horrible guide.
Lulz. "Way to miss the point." Pwn3d
So,
what does this have to do with Saturday night? Why, not a damned
thing! It just amused me and I had started out with all the fun we have
here on Nebraska Avenue, 33605, 33602, 33604 and I'm always kind of random like that and digress anyway. Andi's ever-present
party is a happening thing, but on Saturday nights, it takes on that
extra-special meaning. If the Saturday also happens to fall on the
day after SSI checks are distributed, well, good times, good times!
It's a combination party-riot-search-and-rescue kinda night.
It's about this disco-y and bright, with the neighbors and their disco ball in the living room. Is this a new thing? Am I missing out here?
Throw
in some apocalyptic meltdown music, kind of a Bulgarian hip-hop
rap-off, a little hostage situation bull-horn shouting and drive by
broken woofers. Probably hooked up to 18 12-volt batteries. Why the
hell not 20 or 22 batteries? Can't they hear ya already in Moscow? I
happened to look outside one night, and saw in the upstairs apartment
to my right, a disco inferno happening complete with disco ball and
fire, it looks like inside the apartment. Dude in doorway has tin foil wrapped up in his hair like yo' momma used to
do spit curls. He's a-boppin' to the sound and movin' to the beat.
Tha's just a lightnin' waitin' to happen! Won't have to pay no
electric this month. And it's just nothin' but a thang, chicken wang. On the Avenue, Nebraska Avenue, 33602, 33605, 33604.
This was supposed to be my Sunday Check in, but I figured I'd try to do a little soft-shoe and put some seltzer down my pants for y'all! Happy Nano-ing and #ROW80ing!
I'm totally
cheating here; today for the first time since I started with the
seizures, psychotic break and tremors, which is about 18 months, I
played my viola, and surprise of surprises, I sounded damn good (for
about 3 minutes; I have my work cut out for me!) So, that right there
is an achievement. My goal for writing still stands, although I have
edited nothing, but I'm so over the moon about being able to play. I'm cheating because of NaNoWriMo. Q'uel horrores! Or somethiing...
I
wonder if these are free-range violas, because the price has really
skyrocketed!
Q:
Have you heard about the latest form of urban violence?
A:
Drive-by viola solos.
So,
here's a little number I cobbled up during the American Football
season last year as we headed into our playoff season. Enjoy!
First
off, goals, schmoals. AS OF LAST NIGHT, I HAD 10087 WORDS FOR NANO!!!!!!!!!!!! (To quote Andi-Roo, my benchmate in this furball, "there was a great tossing of glitter! "Huzzah!)
Anyway, I got a wild hair and am completely taken with
this topic today last year. My low impulse inhibition just took over. Oh well.
I'm off the streets and non-violent. Such is life.
This
is not your typical Sunday check in post. Nope, first off, it's
Monday and second off, here in the good ol’ U S of A, it is Martin
Luther King Jr.'s Birthday and President
Obama's 2nd Inaugural Celebration! So, what better way for me to
celebrate, than to write about yesterday's NFC Championship
game between the Atlanta Falcons and the San Francisco 49ers that
featuredguys
running over guys and plowing into unaware guys on the side-lines.
That’s right, “UNAWARE” guys on the side lines, during one of
two games that will decide which of two teams are going to the Hyper
Bowl, er, uh I mean, Super Bowl LXVII (is that 47 or 67? I failed
Roman Numerals in Ancient Times class.)
Sing Along: "I
see I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X, XI, XII, XIII, XIV, XV,
XVI, XVII, XVII Wheels"
Anyway, dude
got clipped below the knees and fell as if pole-axed, backward onto
that hard surface and landed backwards, head-first, with a bounce or
two and was thankfully unhurt. Apparently, he works at the Atlanta
Falcons field and this was their first ever(!) playoff event, and
really, he can’t be faulted for that part of it. The poor guy had
his back turned to the action and was most likely, looking at and
marveling at the crowd and all of their noise, hoo ha, folderol and
mostly, NOISE. And boy, howdy, there was a bunch of it, being as how,
my Google says, the Georgia Dome can shovel 71,250 people into
permanent seats.
courtesy of hollandbobolland via YouTube. Plesae visit and "like."
This is the kind of noise that Guy Who Fell Down experienced for the FIRST TIME!
The
first time I ever faced a crowd like that was when I played for
the Moody
Blues. I was in my mid-30s and had been playing viola
professionally for about 15 years, by this time. My performing
experience went from symphony-polite-coughing and maybe a standing
ovation, or two. Occasionally, the
standing
ovations were prolonged.
Stunning,
wonderous. I love Mozzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz..... *snore*
Once,
during a Grand
Pause, or a fermata, where
the orchestra came to a screeching, abrupt halt after a fortississimo
passage and it was deathly quiet, I had the great good fortune to
hear a bellowed “I FRY MINE IN LARD…” from the back of the Hall
and then, a stunned quiet, from both the orchestra and the audience.
As one, we all swelled up like toads or horses being saddled, as not
one soul in that huge hall wanted to be the first to laugh.
The
Grand Pause fortunately, is one of those musical devices that has no
metered time, so as the Conductor stared us all down, daring us to
laugh, and we played “one potato, two potato, three potato, four…”
Concert master and Principal Second Violin and Principal Viola and
Principal Cello all sitting there, giving one another, the hairy
eyeball, becoming rather like “High Noon,” and I and my stand
partner who are on the 2nd stand, not daring to look at
one another, because we are cut ups, idiots and jokers, are puffing
up like horses around rattle snakes, we’re both holding our
breaths, because HolyMotherOfGod. . . I’mJustSoGonnaLaugh. . . I see his
viola scroll start to shake out of the corner of my eye and my eyes
start to water and my nose starts to tickle, am I gonna sneeze? And
just then. . . As I start to go eeeeeeeeeee? As the air is leaking
out?
The
Conductor gives the downbeat and off we go, probably in a swift
Presto to get to the end of this bitch, so we can all exit stage
Left, Right and Center at a dead run. To this day, I do not remember
what on God’s Green Earth we were playing, but it was probably
Rachmaninoff. I’ve been ambushed by him a number of times.
Him, and
his Grande Pauses. Well, that was a digression.
Okay, I haven't
faced Wembley and I'm sure I don't want to; actually, I probably do.
We rocked it at 1-800-ASK-GARY Field. A name like that for a Venue
just drips class. I can't wait until Kotex, or Fleet Enema buys a
sponsorship and demands to have it named after their company.
In the summer
of 1992, the Moody Blues were in a resurgence and instead of having a
summer off, we had a tour around the Midwest for a few weeks. We had
an afternoon rehearsal with their conductor who told us the basics,
miced us up and off we went. We had a full orchestra, and plexiglass
partitions between each section. I felt like we were in cattle pens.
That night, the orchestra was in place, when the Blues with Justin
Hayward took the stage.
There were
10,000 people in the audience. Up to that point, I had never played
with that many people in an audience. When that audience roared and
that sound hit the stage, the orchestra, who for the most part had
not experienced that before, was pretty well aware that this night
and this concert were going to be hella different. But first, we had to get
over the shock of all of those people yelling. If we had been zebras,
we’d have been dead ones. We all just froze for about 2 beats and
then our training kicked in and off we went.
It
was an exhilarating experience I’ve always loved the Moody Blues for their more orchestral stuff, dating back to 1967 and 1968. The conductor, Larry Greene is also their
arranger, and he had gone back and arranged some of their harder rock
stuff like “Ride My Seesaw” for strings and that was a blast to
play as well. I’ve found that I like music with a harder edge to
it. I’m sure it’s one of the reasons I don’t like Mozart and I
revere Beethoven, and he would have been down with all of this.
Mozart gets right up to an idea and then backs away. He never really
releases that full passion that lies underneath his tepid ideas, and maybe that is why; you can't push passion into a tepid idea. The idea itself has to be passionate.
Beethoven
takes a musical idea in his teeth and just ragdolls it. He wrings every
inch of emotion and pathos and exhilaration from it, until you're
exhausted by just listening to it. I love that and I love playing
Beethoven; he is so worth it. I also love the fact that he doesn’t
bore the violists to death in his orchestral and other ensemble
writing. Mozart is too precious, hard to play and there’s damn little
reward for all of that work; he’s insipid. Oops, lemme get back to
our sideline guy.
My personal muse, from birth. We share the same birthday, some say, just not the same year.
I’ve
enjoyed my rock ‘n’ roll violist career, which has also veered
off into blues, metal, blue-grass, country, pop, motown and a bit of
rap and hip-hop, believe it or not. But, back to our poor dude, man.
Did I feel for him. Guy stood up; I was so relieved, he fell hard. As
he was turning around, the Fox Team, (Terry, Howie, Michael, Jimmy
and Whoever) were helpfully pointing out that this was the Falcon’s
first playoff Event ever. The guy who had been knocked over was
wearing a jacket that said “Event Team” on it.
As
the man turned and looked at the camera you could tell he was
thinking, “Oh dear, can I move to Saturn? Maybe to Pluto. Pluto
isn’t far enough away… My wife is going to divorce me. What was I
thinking? My grandkids are going to be talking about this and wanting
to hear this story, forevah!. This is going to be on AFV, isn’t it?
Geez, on National TV, no, INTERNATIONAL! Gack! Did my Aunt in Outer
Slobovia see me? I hope I don’t get fired. I would have been better off shitting my pants, or throwing up. At least farting, maybe. You can't smell that over the air. I'm so dead”
Relax,
guy, if I hear you got in trouble over this, I’m writing a letter.
I’ve done so much stupid stuff in front of the public, it’s not
funny. I’ve fallen off stages, fallen out of chairs. Fallen off
risers. I very gracefully draped myself across 3 people once, along
with my viola and bow, held up over my head and rolled like a barrel
down to the floor, protecting my baby, my viola, my honey, my Wolf. How I managed
that, I will never know. I’ve taken bows wearing Taco Bell on
formal, black velvet unknowingly, after playing a triumphant
Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. To make matters worse, my stand
partner’s fly was open during the whole performance. I don’t
think Beethoven would have minded.
The
point is, a roaring crowd is pretty impressive; I was awed by it when
I was on the “receiving” end of it the first time. It does take
some getting used to. So, Guy Who Was Knocked Down and Was
Embarrassed, don’t be. I hope you get a chance to get used to it as
more Falcons playoff games come your way. I hope you are okay. You
made my day.
SETI
(Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) is a scientific area whose
goal is to detect intelligent life outside Earth. One approach, known
as radio
SETI,
uses radio telescopes to listen for narrow-bandwidth radio signals
from space. Such signals are not known to occur naturally, so a
detection would provide evidence of extraterrestrial technology.
Radio
telescope signals consist primarily of noise (from celestial sources
and the receiver's electronics) and man-made signals such as TV
stations, radar, and satellites. Modern radio SETI projects analyze
the data digitally. More computing power enables searches to cover
greater frequency ranges with more sensitivity. Radio SETI,
therefore, has an insatiable appetite for computing power. Previous
radio SETI projects have used special-purpose supercomputers, located
at the telescope, to do the bulk of the data analysis. In 1995, David
Gedye proposed doing radio SETI using a virtual supercomputer
composed of large numbers of Internet-connected computers, and he
organized the SETI@home project to explore this idea. SETI@home was
originally launched in May 1999.
FUN WITH SETI
I've been keeping abreast with my writing for NaNoWriMo. Which reminds me: Q: What is this? (besides a really bad joke, and an even worse drawing):
A: 2 Men Walking A Breast. I could riff on this, with "2 Men Walking a Brest," although how you'd walk a whole European city is beyond me, or "2 Men Walking a Beast," but living where I do I see this every day. "2 Men Walking a Beast," either of the 4-legged or the 2-legged variety a-lenty, so this is not a novel enough thing to disregard around here. This is Nebraska Ave., 33605, 33602, after all. So too are "2 Men Walking a Beat;" the law enforcement kind, or the hip-hop kind to be found here pretty regularly.
THIS IS THE CHECK IN PART. I WROTE ACTUAL WORDS AND SENTENCES, COHERENTLY, AND FORMED PARAGRAPHS, TOO! Anyway, I am 4,432 words into this year's NaNoWrimo for 2013, as of day 2 and today looms, No biggie. I have my outline, beat sheet, the next segment plotted in my head (sort of) and all of that happy-crappy. Once again, poor #ROW80 has taken a hit, once AGAIN (remember the A-to-Z blogging challenge last spring?) and I owe her so much. Without #ROW80, none of this would be happening. I'm going to be checking in for Alex J. Cavanaugh's #IWSG this Wednesday (why do we not pronounce that Wed-nes-day? Just askin') In spite of the fact that I have spent the week feeling great, I have the WORST ABSCESSED TOOTH EVER. My left front central incisor is so badly inflamed, the infection had pushed up into my nasal cavity and has warped the roof of my mouth. Penicillin has stopped that pain. No pain pills, 'cause I'm on so many other things, I'd probably go on some weird acid trip, and I have an exceedingly high threshold to pain. Now the pain is gone, so it won't ruin the fun of my eating everything in site, whilst I write. Yay! Thank you, rotten oranges or whatever you are, dear penicillin!
I go through all of my SETI stats about twice a year; once in late spring and once in the autumn. Usually, I just print out my certifications to see how I'm doing. I stay off of the forums, because there is an über-bitch, who in the disguise of a helpful admin, delivers scathing lectures to the innocent lambs who want to know why their uploads failed. I'm a fairly adept practitioner of the Dark Arts, so I don't need any help, but I sure feel sorry for the poor unweaned, who start their posts with, "I just received a message that said Upload Failed..." The few times I read these threads, UB blasted back with something related to the user's fallibility as a computer user, insulted the user's children and also mentioned that the user's pets were ugly. Yikes! No help to be had there.
Anyway, after I printed my stats, which show I've process astronomical amounts of data received from the Arecebo Telescope in an attempt to find E. T.s. . . wait, what? Never mind. Which would make sense in the astronomical department, because it is after all, the universe we're scoping out. What a hash of sentences there. So, I printed my stats and then for grins, I went to the website that shows where my team fits in with all of the other teams.
This is my team, highlighted in green. There are 64 members of my team, but only 10 of us are active. I guess the rest are out on missions. The standing joke is that everyone was once CIA, or DOD; some kind of spook for some alphabet agency or another. They're probably doing piece-work for the NSA. NASA is only 5 slots ahead of us. I love the randomness of "Get off my lawn!" This whole project is full of stuff like this.
Even with all of their brain power, we're still ahead of UC Berkely, UC Davis and BooYah! This Man's USMC! Our team consists of people with cats who puke on keyboards, but can do some mean hacking and cyber-spying, so I was a natural fit.
Number 69 is Marquette University, one of my mom's alma maters and I like that University of Florida is number 52. Keep it up! Go Florida. Maybe we'll win the Inter-species Regionals this year!
The number one spot is held by Team USA *yawns* but I was thrilled to see that the U. S. Air Force is number three, behind the U. S. Navy (boo.) GAY USA is number 5, which is great, because the universe is not only about radio frequencies, it is about transmitting in the Ultraviolet all the way to the Infrared. So, we've got rainbows covered. SQUEE!
An explanation of how radio frequencies and the color spectrum fit can be found here.
Team number 4's team name is some kind of random code. Way to go. My next team name is going to be "dice = std::bind ( dist]" and then everyone will think I'm some kind of either great genius, or crackpot. Except for "Get off my lawn." That team will totally get it. O How I Hate Ohio State is at the 21 spot. I don't really hate 'em. it's just what Michiganders say. It's a knee-jerk reaction. Oh, and "The Pirate Float" at number 16, is going great guns. I bet they say, "Aargh! I'm a pirate!" a lot at String Theory and GUT (Grand Unified Theory) conferences.
Rounding out the top 100, of over 500 teams, are University of Michigan and Michigan State (not shown,) and EMU in Ypsilanti, Michigan. I love the "Master Strategy Group." This is vague and sinister, yet kinda creepy. More spooks? To be a good spook, you have to have a great cover, like the Villages. The crazy cat people get overlooked every damned time, but you never know what we're gonna do. Number 94 are the University of Florida GATORS. I can damn-guarantee you that if they were number 94 in FOOTBALL, they would be rioting up in Gainesville. At number 95, we have "ShallowThought." What a great name for a team.
