The Daily Adventures of Mercat

I'm too good at it.

...Where you win if you can research obscure things? That, or I'm way too fucking stubborn and I insist upon running my results dry time after time.

Other than tracking down sold-out items from over a year ago, I have successfully tracked down a lot of things recently. It has only made me wish that databases were more comprehensive, so instead of searching 50 sites I would only have to search one. This is especially a problem with online shopping, where a small store may have exactly what you want, but it doesn't show up on Google Shopping or Amazon and their site is basically unsearchable or undiscoverable unless someone else points you directly there. BUT I DIGRESS.

Earlier this week our professor challenged us to find a slightly meme-ish image of what looked like the Michael Jackson of zebras. His head was striped, his upper torso was white, his back was striped, and his back legs were white.

First of all, don't google "half white zebra" because you get nothing but pages of "ARE ZEBRAS HALF WHITE WITH BLACK STRIPES OR BLACK WITH WHITE STRIPES LOLOLOL".

Second, in under five minutes I found the image by trying "albino zebra" and then I believe "partially albino zebra" which led me to a page about zorses. And zonies. Which are half zebras, half horse/pony, and are generally bred in Africa (much like other places get donkeys, and they are most often sterile as well) because zebras have some natural biological defenses they can pass on.

Uh and then in class Thursday we were talking about what a temple is, thematically, and for a brief few moments the prof had an image of a buddha on the screen, of course with no source. HOWEVER I realized that under this seated buddha was a script that was too familiar... A script from the old online COSI: Adventure game that was linked from their site (to LiveScience?) a while back. I think the game is still up if you have a direct link.

ANYWAY, the online game was based slightly on the Adventure! exhibit, but without a lot of the originality, probably because of time/money constraints. (I'm not complaining, it was made for 8 year olds, approximately, I'm most likely the only person who ever cared.) However, given my extensive gradeschool examination of Egyptology, I recognized that one of the... uh... sacred items? that they used in the game was a slightly photoshopped version of an Egyptian alabaster papyrus-lotus vase.

Anyway, eventually you have to crack a code, and if there's one thing about me, I LOVE CODES. I was always upset though that you never got a good look at all 26 letters, because you never used them all, and the closest you would get is the "dictionary" you would get, but since it was a very low-quality shockwave file, you couldn't look at it too closely to get a good enough idea, either.

I always assumed they found some random font (which, tbh, they probably did) and just threw it on there. That, or they made it up, which was awesome. And since I never found anything about it, I just kept on assuming it was awesome and went on my merry way. I took the character that kind of looked like a "d" (I don't know what character they used it as) and I think I have it as my random icon on a few different sites-- Twitter I know to be one.

UNTIL THURSDAY.

So I'm sitting there looking at this buddha, which I know absolutely jack shit about except that we're currently discussing stupas in terms of temple design and what they are, and under this buddha are TWO TO THREE LINES OF THIS TEXT WHERE SOME OF THE CHARACTERS LOOK EXACTLY LIKE THIS CODE

AND I'M ALL LIKE "HOLY SHIT OMG I FOUND IT" WHILE SIMULTANEOUSLY "OH FUCK NO IT'S NOT ORIGINAL I AM LE SADFACE"

And then the prof decided to not post the presentation, from which I was hoping to steal the image so I could try to tineye it. False! Hahaha, just kidding.

So I googled combinations like "seated buddha sculpture ancient stone hand raised" for about thirty minutes, pretty much ever permutation of ideas ever and then decided to try a library image database. I tried to be a bit more general and tried things like "seated buddha" and "buddha sculpture" and eventually I stumbled upon one that was SIMILAR but not exactly the same sculpture (and was much plainer, had no text, etc.). So I took one of the title words from that, not knowing what it meant and tried Googling it, nothing. Took that back to the art database, found an even closer-looking image! Took a different word from the title/description, tried Googling that, SUCCESS! So then I tried googling/wikipedia-ing that, etc. to try to find more, plus "city name of sculpture + text" and FINALLY came across a wikipedia page that had some ancient script information.

It was very close, but not quite in the ballpark enough yet. So I clicked through to several different pages, and a few more from there, and I have a few pieces here, and a few pieces there, and at this point I think I'm pretty darn close and I need an expert or to sit down side-by-side with the "code" and pick out each one individually.



So... I have completion problems, I guess. Or research fascinates me too much, I don't know. Or I'm too stubborn. OR I'M TOO GOOD AT THE INTERNET.

Anyway.

On a completely unrelated note, I've noticed I've gotten more in shape this week. I call it "skinnyface" from tour but it's usually about three weeks into alldays for me when I realize that I'm exercising and eating well and I have lost weight. I don't know if I can chalk it up to bloating or something? Because it always seems to be something I notice overnight, one day and not any day before, which doesn't seem possible. But at any rate, I've also been very tired and physically worn out again this week, though not feeling sickly-tired like I did two weeks ago. So I don't know? Maybe this trying-to-eat-healthy thing is too much undereating? What I've found is that I am much better about controlling what I eat (that is, not eating too many junk foods) when I control the shopping. I'm still probably not working enough fruits and veggies into my daily diet as opposed to grains and dairy and delicious, delicious pizzas (I'm serious [Red Baron 4-Cheese]), but I'm trying to slowly edge myself into a healthful diet that I enjoy. I could eat a veggie diet that I bet would be supremely healthful but I would probably get sick of it very quickly. Not to mention hooooow fucking expeeensiiiive fruits and veggies are. Well, everything in Hawaii.

So anyway, that's what five-miles-a-day-bicycling-on-all-hills and dropping 75% of the junk food will do.

Last week I tried to make it my mission to, instead of buying lots of frozen things and eating them one day at a time, to buy some bulk food items and make enough for a long time (ignoring the fact that I still have pasta sauce in the fridge and my mom just mailed me two cans of skyline! AUGH OM NOM THE TEMPTATION). I bought shrimp and rice and all the supplies for garlic shrimp, it was STUPIDLY EXPENSIVE. Partly because I now have enough garlic shrimp-making flavorings for, uh, the rest of the year, but whatever. On day three I was already sick of garlic shrimp. What the fuck? I hate my food-moods. I've eaten almost nothing but pizza for about three weeks, this is some crap. I like pizza but I AM TRYING TO GET SOME HEALTHFUL VARIETY UP IN THIS BITCH MIX. I'm mostly pissed because it seems like a waste of money if I'm not going to eat it, WHICH I NEED TO BEFORE IT GOES BAD, and especially if I keep in this pizza-and-italian-food rut for the rest of the semester. Fuck.

So, uh... I'm kinda learning to cook? Not that I can't, given an adequate recipe, it just takes up SO MUCH FUCKING TIME and I HATE IT.

I think next up might be coco loco chicken!!!!!11! though, because ON NOM DELICIOUS but also omg chicken?! With lime curry sauce you bet your ass

It is delicious.



...Aaaaand I didn't do my pushups for this week (again), I am a failure. As much as I would like to be able to do and gain all the benefit from pushups, I JUST HATE IT and I've totally let it slip my mind this week.

Which I'll say is forgiveable since I now have to spend the entire fucking weekend in the stupid studio AGAIN. Free time on a weekend?! What the fuck is that?! I would like to fucking GET OUT ON A BIKE RIDE THANKYOUVERYMUCH

Luckily next weekend is a long weekend with no homework over it aaaaaand the student architecture club is having a sand castle building contest. FOR REALZ, Y'ALL

OMG color e-ink is coming. By the time I can afford this stuff, these systems will (hopefully) have settled a little more and be COMPLETELY AWESOME. (As if they aren't already.)

I still think it would be awesome if there were an open-source pdf textbook service that would 1) put shitty textbook companies (read: bad writers, those under the effect of legal shit like Texas' removal of non-christian religions and the downplaying of Jefferson because he was "an atheist", ripoff artists who release new editions every few years just to make money while wasting both people's money and the materials used to print them) out of business, 2) reduce the weight load of students, which would, in effect, 1) save students money, 2) [theoretically] allow for more honest writing (think about the accuracy of wikipedia here, sort of), 3) save students from weight injuries (I did my eighth-grade science fair on this, remember?), 4) save physical materials. Look, if you could buy a pdf-reader for your kindergartener and it lasted them all the way through college with the net result of no physical textbooks, wouldn't that be amazing?! It could even be a laptop or a netbook and not e-ink, if that was what you needed.

SO! EXCITING NEWS. A random lady (and by lady I just mean, a female who I would consider in an older age group than me-- she has a daughter who is old enough to have been to COSI, but she's not, say, whole generation older than me, probably in her early 30's or late 20's?) messaged me on facebook through my posts on the "I miss COSI's Adventure!" group. We are going to start a fan page for Adventure and PROBABLY end up breaking the code as a team (unless I somehow manage to stumble into the solution beforehand, which is doubtful). BUT! I am so excited.

Also, I really want to win that spend-the-night-in-Adventure contest. WOOOOO.

A geek pronunciation guide, which I actually found helpful and corrected me on a few things. (Although to be honest when I see "WYSIWYG" I just say "what you see is what you get" which is definitely easier than saying "doublyew-wy-ess-eye-doublyew-wy-gee". Don't ask me why I chose those spellings, I just did. There have to be a ton of ways to "spell" letters, and it probably changes every time I have to sit down and write-spell something.)

WOAH. You're going to want to read this.. It's an internet security issue. ANYONE can hack your social media as long as you are both signed into the same UNSECURED WI-FI. Which is most wireless. BRB trying to secure things.

So I've seen the world's largest gummy worm floating around the internet for a few weeks, and for the life of me, something about it bothered me in the back of my mind and I couldn't figure out what. But I just got it: look familiar? (Side note: I've seen those World's Biggest Gummybears in person, they look disgusting based sheerly on mass. I'm pretty sure the worm would be the same way, although it would make for a GREAT halloween food item.)

Also. I am not in a great mood, currently, with technology. My OneNote files decided to get corrupted, and it's looking like I probably won't be able to rescue them (FUCKKKKKKKK). Additionally, I just discovered today that all the quotes I've kept in my facebook application --ALL 150+ OF THEM-- are no longer accessible because the app just DISAPPEARED without warning anyone. GODDAMNIT. As much as I love OneNote I think from here on out I'm going to try to just keep everything in Evernote. UGH.

Some guy on twitter made a bot to argue anti-global-warming crap with people, originally just for the people that responded to him, but now it actively searches and starts discussion. Trolling for arguments with a chatbot might be the best method of this, because you present the same evidence without wasting your own time, which you know you're going to if you spend your own time doing this. Really. I want to give this guy a hero badge or something, shit.

The Kahiki's fireplace is for sale! If I had a real job, and I lived here, and I were actually opening the tiki restaurant I dream of opening, I would buy it. (Last time I checked it was at $1.25... I COULD AFFORD THAT.)

PROMPT TIME! I used to play softball. However, my "sport" is marching band. Specifically, drum corps. <3

A cute video:



So, more information on the 200 student cheating incident I posted yesterday. Granted, I only read the article the other day and did not watch the professor's video; I think I'm too empathetic and I didn't want to feel angry or guilty or shamed watching a video that had nothing to do with me. I get that enough in regular life, thanks. (I can't stand to see people embarassed... I, unfortunately, am readily affected by second hand embarassment, which SUCKS.) ANYWAY. It turns out the students were just studying from the publisher's testbank. Maybe it's a generational thing, but I don't see a problem with this. I study from people's notes, from answer manuals, etc. IN FACT, the books we've generally used HAVE THE ANSWERS IN THE BACK SO YOU CAN CHECK YOUR WORK. Granted, this is a test. But I do think the professor should expect students to be studying from the materials they can attain legally, and if he uses the same problems, I don't think that's the students' fault. I use solutions manuals to check my work regularly, when I can, because THIS SHIT IS HARD. I need any advantage I can get to pass these classes, and I don't consider it cheating to check my work, or, in this case, anticipate problems and study.

I'm still not watching that video, I'd probably make myself sick.

Honestly, what's with all the "Cowboys & Aliens: Ford's Comeback" crap? WAS HE EVER GONE? I say no. Choosing to do a different genre doesn't mean you've slacked off, it means you got offered different things.

SURE, just like Disney's switching 100% from 2d animation. Okay. Look, you can be creative and come up with more general-children's-films ideas, but at some point you're going to want to make "a princess movie" again. Also, WHAT THE HELL DO YOU CONSIDER ALADDIN TO BE?! If that's a princess movie, I CAN'T EVEN.

In other rage-inducing media news, there's a Mean Girls 2 coming out?! Ugh. Please.

On a positive note, I'm catching up on episodes of Chuck and they just made a Fievel Goes West reference. UH, YESSSS.