Tuesday, 30th of April, 2002
This is the funniest picture I've seen in a very very long time. Someone has a chimney out the back of his car.
Sunday, 28th of April, 2002
I went to Ballet Midwest's production of Swan Lake this afternoon at the Art Museum. It was really nice, and the music was sooo Tchaikovsky. It's leading me to the conclusion that Tchaikovsky is very dance-oriented music in general - thinking about the 3rd movement of the violin concerto, it's definitely very dance-like.
Satruday, 27th of April, 2002
I went to Ladue's prom tonight, which was at the America's Centre this year. It was awesome, as the theme was nice and not overdone, "Around the World". Food was awesome, as there were fancy appetizers and the Chicken Pasta I had was superb. A Latin band played for the pre-dinner reception, which was perfect for the mood, and they hired the same band that played in Prom 2000 for this year's dinner dance. They were awesome, and still are.
The afterprom activity was starlight bowling at the Brunswick bowling centre, and that was tons of fun! Starlight bowling is the way to go, with a DJ, good music, video screen, flashy lights, and steam. Glow-in-the-dark bowling balls are cool too. After bowling we went to First Watch for breakfast, which was just breakfast, and nothing else worth mentioning.
But in general, it was a great night, I got to spend time and see many of my best friends and enjoy each other's company in a formal and fun atmospheres.
Tuesday, 23rd of April, 2002
Oh yay, ITEC is going to be here again in May, and this time I should be able to actually go. The seminars are still interesting, but if I remember correctly there were better ones last year.
Monday, 22nd of April, 2002
Cingular Wireless is great, they really live up to their promises, and I've had nothing but excellent service from them, both over the phone and in their stores. They battled the whole vibe-adapter issue with me, getting me like 3 replacements until we concluded it was a problem with Ericsson. And over the phone, they really made me happy by giving me the free promotional on wireless internet as an existing customer, because it was vaguely stated on the website that it applies to new customers. And they're also committed to letting us change our service plan any time, which is awesome!
I took my car in to get the distributor cap and wires replaced, and it turns out that while they were replacing them, the spark plug broke off and fell into the headers. Woah. They somehow managed to fish it out without taking anything apart though, which was impressive.
Sunday, 21st of April, 2002
I received a letter saying I'm officially accepted into the Masterworks Festival. So I'll be spending 4 weeks of summer doing cool music stuff in rural Indiana.
Friday, 19th of April, 2002
Wow, we had some heavy rains today. Big Bend just south of Shepley Drive was heavily flooded, the worst I'd ever seen by far. The Clayton cops closed off the outside lanes too. I noticed some serious misfiring in my car after driving through a puddle though, and I thought I've fixed every vaccuum hose connection so it's nice and tight. I think I might actually have to get the distributor looked at, since I really can't see it well cause it's down kinda far in the engine bay.
Thursday, 18th of April, 2002
I watched Westminister High School's production of Fiddler on the Roof tonight. It's a funny musical, the first time I've seen it.
Tuesday, 16th of April, 2002
I found out today for a fact that two cars can successfully merge side-by-side onto US40 East from I-170. I was just minding my own business as I exit I170 onto the 270-degree cloverleaf ramp, and right before the ramp separates from the rest of the highway, this lady in a black late-model Sebring convertible pushes in beside me. She was obviously a good driver, as both of us were too stubborn to back off for the other, so we continued our drive up the ramp side by side! Admittingly, the ramp will easily fit 2 cars as it is, but then we proceeded to merge onto US40 side-by-side! I guess interstate lanes are big enough to accomodate two cars - carefully. I drove away from that incident rather annoyed, and in fact, scared and shaken, because I had just made a 270-degree ramp at 30 mph playing a game of logrolling with a lady with our cars a couple inches from each other. But now that I think of it, it's pretty hilarious, even though I had to accomodate for a driver that probably would have initially hit me had I not darted around a little.
Wednesday, 10th of April, 2002
They keep coming out with great new roller coaster ideas. Six Flags over Georgia just opened the Superman: Ultimate Flight ride, which has a unique parallel flying position! Themeparkreview.com took a camera up, and this thing looks very impressive. I missed Six Flags over Georgia by one year, cause I went last year! Six Flags also has a computer animation of it. Wow!
Tuesday, 9th of April, 2002
So I'm sending an audition CD off to the MasterWorks Festival, and on the way to the post office, I pop the CD into my portable Panasonic to double-check it plays. It hardly does at all. I had burned it 12X on 74min Mitsumi Silver media, so I was really confused. Of course it played on my computer and my roommate's mini-system, cause those things tend to play just about anything. Taking it back to my room, I pop it into a Sharper Image shower CD player, only to get it to work on the second track only. Well that's useless. Popping in an 80min Imation burned at 12X a while ago into both the Panasonic and the shower player, I realized that Mitsumi CD-R may not be so great after all, only in theory, but not in practice. But I decide to try burning a 74min TDK anyways, thinking that that's the other brand that seems to be lauded by CD-R specialists as one with the lowest bad-block-rates. The TDK did slightly better, and played fine in the Panasonic, but the shower-CD player had difficulties. So finally, I try the Imation, and it worked again, and that's what I ended up sending. Mitsumi might have the lowest bad-block-rates, but something about the combination of Mitsumi and my Lite-On burner doesn't go quite right. I stuck an audio CD that I burned at 4X into the shower-CD player, and it couldn't even read the TOC. Hmmm... I wonder, in the end, what the trade-off between readability and bad-block-rates ends up being.
Monday, 8th of April, 2002
I made a discovery tonight while I was eating chips. So, already, about 3 times in the past 6 months, I'd been eating french fries from Bear's Den and suddenly this overwhelmingly horrible taste would just appear near the end of the serving, and I'd been attributing it to bad fries or something. But it happened again tonight while eating chips. I had just practice violin for 1.5 hours, and it suddenly struck me - I have silver all over my hands from the strings! I washed my hands, and that solved things. What a discovery.
Sunday, 7th of April, 2002
Well, we had our final concert, the chancellor's concert. The totally amazing program consisted of Mozart's Requeim and Saint Saens' 3rd Symphony. I am totally in love with the Requiem, it's one of my favourite pieces in the world.
Supercar makers have gone insane. Koenigsegg in Sweden has made a supercar that will do 0-100km/hr in 3.2 seconds, and top speed 240 mph. The supercharged a 4.6L Ford V8 to get 655 hp. Check out those doors...