Indistinguishable from Jesse

Mars was on Google Zeitgeist's "Top 10 Gaining Queries" list 3 times in 4 weeks. It was not on the "Declining" list in any of the 4 weeks.

Week Ending Aug. 11, 2003

9. mars

Week Ending Aug. 25, 2003

4. mars

Week Ending Sept. 1, 2003

3. planeta marte

Most of this interest is due to Mars being closer to Earth than it has been or will be for tens of thousands of years. But some of it is renewed interest in sending humans to Mars, triggered by the Columbia disaster.

Deep Fried Live is a cross between Strong Bad and a cooking show. DFL is "hosted" by accident-prone Tako the Octopus. The show is funny, and I might have learned something about cooking by watching it. My favorite episodes are 3: Chocolate-Chip Cookies, in which Tako confronts his fear of food mixers, and 7: Steak, in which Tako is abducted by an alien who needs cooking tips.

When I told Helen about Deep Fried Live, she informed me that "tako" is Japanese for "octopus". Helen is amazing at picking up languages. She seems to know more Japanese than I do, even though I've taken a semester and she has not.

If you have disabled Flash because you hate Flash ads, you're missing out on some great Flash cartoons and should try the Flash Click to View extension for Mozilla Firebird.

Financial Registration cards don't have a spot for a signature. Most students behind the tables say "Sign your name anywhere". This semester, Michael Vrable was behind one of the tables, and he said "Sign your name at the bottom" or "Sign your name anywhere at the bottom" instead. Michael's instructions would have saved me a second of looking for the best place to sign (important when there's a line) but wouldn't have been as much fun. There wasn't a line when I was there.

I bought a textbook, some paper, and some binders at Huntley Bookstore today. I asked the guy at checkout to put my purchase in two bags of roughly equal weight. He thought this was a strange request and expressed uncertainty about his solution, but the bags felt balanced as I walked back to my dorm.

Only later did I realize my grave mistake: I had casually asked him to solve an NP-complete problem.

I'm back at Harvey Mudd College. Yay!

Classes start on Tuesday.