I am no longer Justin Ancheta...

But Justin Ancheta, FCD. Well, hey, at least I have a cool TLA to tack on to my name if I flunk out of my undergrad degree. I'd change my information on SNOG!, the message board I love to hate (or hate to love?), but that would mean that Renee and the others on there would know about this place. And I simply can't allow that to happen. I've always valued my privacy and my personal space, and sadly, she's had a history of not fully appreciating that when she's been with me. Naomi put it best during our walk: I'm the kind of person who likes to quietly walk away from situations I don't like. It's somewhat bizarre how I've ranted on about that place in the past. Leaving that place for good has always been one of the things on my to-do list, yet it's something I still can't bring myself to do. I guess it's like an abusive relationship, although that term would probably better describe me and Renee (and guess who'd be the abusive one?) rather than me and that message board.

On a more happier note, Jennie posted some pics on her LiveJournal site, pics which I dare not post out of fear that some random guy will see them and start drooling over her they way I've been since I've seen them...and she knows how jealous I can be (since she's usually that jealous herself). Really. They're that good. I saw them on the weekend (or last weekend?), so...well, that means that that's a lot of drool that I've been putting out.

Last night, I almost beat my latest record for sleep-deprivation: 3am-6am, this morning. Not quite the two hours I was shooting for...maybe next time when I have to scramble to finish one of my last papers...

6(^6) Degrees of Separation

I made a mad dash to get my Advanced Phylogenetics paper and PowerPoint presentation in. No, mad dash really isn't the word to use, more like...frantic last-minute panic. I have to say that it's not wholly my fault...PAUP* took hours, if not days to carry out most of the analyses I did. Agnes in her presentation today said that one run through her data set with a heuristic search went on for more than a month and it still hadn't been finished yet. Argh.

So I ran my ass off to class and Professor Murphy was there right behind me making a smarmy remark. Which I guess is just as well. I do take school too seriously, so much so that it's almost impossible for me to tell the difference between when they're joking and when they're being serious. Anyway, so I forgot all about the Gap Coding assignment that was due on the same day. Double-argh. But it wasn't so bad. Next door at ZOOCU they were having free quasi-Chinese food, so at least I made up for the fact that I skipped dinner the night before and breakfast and lunch. I pigged out, especially in front of Nancy, but I didn't care. I saw Anna there and talked to her for a bit. It doesn't bother me as much as it did before (not that I really was objecting to it), but it was still nice that she took the time to come to me and say hi.

I spent a good day with Naomi a few weeks ago and I really enjoyed it. It still really boggles me, just how they were able to remember me so well when I met them outside Seekers last year. God, they even still remembered my writing. Anyway, I really needed that. It was a nice time to talk to someone who wasn't from school and take some things I'd been carrying around with me off my chest, plus it gave me a chance to act all sappy and tell her about me and Jennie.

Dropping by Karen's site on LiveJournal reminded me of a most bizarre thing I'd heard when I was with Naomi. Apparently, she knows Alex, and her friends, and they met through mutual friends. Weird. It's something I never would have imagined.

Yesterday I bumped into, of all people, Wenjun, the girl who got me connected to Karen and Naomi in the first place. She looked really good, though I have to admit that I think her hair looked better when it was shorter. And she looked really happy too; well, for Wenjun anyway, but not happy enough to remove the Wenjun we've come to know and love so well...it's a good thing she's still retained her trademark jaded cynicism; I was starting to get worried there for a minute...

Christian Crusaders: Coming to a town near you!

I couldn't leave without linking to an article I read in this week's issue of NOW...Absolutely hilarious (but somewhat saddening, nonetheless -- I've been to anti-war demonstrations where only a few people showed up when we expected hundreds).

...A ripple of fear goes through the crowd. "I've been told there will be a counter-protest at the next stop. And it could turn violent," he bellows across the barren parking lot. "The police have asked us to kindly cancel our rally. Not a chance!" says Thomas defiantly. "This is war. And we need every soldier showing up for duty."

Then Thomas jumps into his black Lincoln Continental and takes off for the big demo. We follow. Twenty minutes later, we're at Immigration Minister Joe Volpe's office, across from the fab Lawrence Plaza shopping mall.

Thomas isn't kidding. The mounted horse unit is here, squadrons of yellow-jacket bike cops and dozens of uniformed police. Then I see the bus. Obviously, the brakes have been fixed, or maybe not. It floats down the street with its oddly windblown maple leaf insignia and the slogan "Defend Marriage" emblazoned on its side like a righteous brand on a sodomite's forehead. It magically comes to a stop. A stage and a red pulpit are pulled out of its guts and quickly erected.

Suddenly, in the distance, I hear the other demo. The words of Dr. Rondo Thomas ring in my ears. "This is war. We are engaging the enemy today." And there they are, about 150 activists bearing down on us. But who are they? Well, actually – OCAP, coincidentally onsite protesting for immigrant rights. The group marches past the Defend Marriage bus, looking bewildered. With OCAP gone, it's time to kick some sodomite butt.

Charles McVety, traditional marriage's grand fromage, steps up to the podium. The only thing standing between the world and the impending end of life as we know it: 19 people, if you include the guy setting up equipment. They've cancelled the demo, McVety says, because they didn't want trouble, but came anyway in case their people showed up. Some of the reporters look confused. And it's strange that the the protest could have been "cancelled" when it was still advertised on Defend Marriage's website days later. Hmmm...

I think in a way, this scene sums up the right-wing/Christian Conservative movement so well...a myopic point of view forwarded by a select elite few individuals who see themselves as leading whole armies of only a handful of people to charge at windmills, only to pronounce them as "rousing victories". Don Quixote would be proud.

In high school, be sure to check your intellect at the door (along with your guns and knives).

I got a hold of this link by way of Pharyngula, who I've been trying to read less and less of lately because of the fact that reading his accounts of right-wing zealotry, Creationist dishonesty and general fundamentalist Christian insanity is liable to get my blood pressure to critical levels. His anti-religion comments sometimes bother me too, but hey, the poor man's got a right to an opinion, and given his own experiences, he's got a right to be hopping mad. Sometimes, I need to remember that not everyone's been privlidged enough to live in a cosmopolitan city and a cosmopolitan country where diversity and tolerance are (well, for the most part) widely embraced.

Anyway, check out One Good Thing's account of how she got the short end of the Fundamentalist stick back in high school. It's a good counterpoint to David Horowitz's insane ramblings on how conservatives are opppressed in academia that Pharyngula had to suffer through.

Eureka!

Well, I finally figured it out; Katherine and Alex sent me some pointers in the right direction (thanks guys!) but by that time I'd already figured it out, thanks to a trip to Blogger's help section. It's kinda cool that you can go right into the code of your template and essentially muck around with it to your heart's content, but it would have been useful if they made it a little more explicit...like "To put in links or buttons to other websites or blogs, simply..." Instead you have to sort of stumble on it by mistake. Or maybe it really is that simple and obvious, and I'm just plain stupid. Still, it's kind of odd how LiveJournal makes it easy and intuitive, but Blogger's a little more obscure.

I also put in buttons in the sidebar; one for Team Mac OS X, and two for Mozilla Foundation projects: Firefox and Camino. I don't use Camino or Firefox that much (I mainly use them for times when Safari chokes on a website), but I do have a tremendous respect for their work and for the blood, sweat and tears that went into what are arguably some of the finest examples of open source software available. I've got the G4 and G3 optimized builds of Firefox, and, really, if only they put in Quartz rendering, native OS X interface widgets, and iApp interconnectivity, I'd be totally sold...doubly so if Camino finally gets to the 1.0 stage and overcomes some of the bugs it has. (Then again, I'm just like the other 99.9% of Mac users who've used Firefox and made much vocal brouhaha over that.)

If you're an IE user on Windows, I really can't emphasize it more; drop IE and use Firefox. It simply is the best web browser availble on the PC. Period. It's faster, more secure, and has better features. MS has been talking about IE 7 recently, but really, why stay on a buggy, insecure browser that will give you viruses and spyware and wait for MS's next version of IE (which is coming in...well, God knows when), when you can have that browser right now, as Firefox? It's a no brainer, in my opinion.

And yes, that means you, Jennie!

There *is* a light...

Sorry, Katherine; I just couldn't resist. But I promise that I'll have your money for your Cuts for Cancer pledge. Anyway, welcome to Katherine, who's finally seen the light (okay, I'll stop now, I promise) and left that wretched hive of scum and villany to join the more enlighted bloggers on Blogger.

And speaking of enlightenment, just how the @#$%^&*!? do you get a link section to display on your journal?

Pairing Up and Crossing Over

So I found out today from Jen (in Advanced Phylogenetics) that Russell and Anna are now an "item" -- whatever that means. Well, okay. They're now a couple. Which I found at once extremely disconcerting since Anna and Russell are the last people on earth who I would have thought would wind up together. I never pictured Anna really pairing up with anyone -- she always struck me as being someone who wouldn't really be attracted to the idea of being attached to anyone on any sort of level, I guess what I'm trying to say is that she'd be far too independent, though it's obviously not something I'd say in a bad way. As for Russell, I could easily picture him being with someone, just not someone like Anna. Or maybe on second thought, it's really not so much a stretch after all. Anna's a pretty quiet, reserved person -- at least, she's not terribly loud or boisterous. And God knows Russell isn't anything remotely like that. So, well, who better for him then, than her?

It's not like I disapprove of all this, it's just that it makes me feel kinda awkward. I'm happy for the fact that two of my friends ended up together, but now I feel like I've lost them both as people I could feel really comfortable talking to -- especially Anna. I know that it'll feel a little more lonely on the train without Anna to talk to and hang out with, since she and Russell will undoubtably be spending more and more time together, at least. And speaking of which, it's kinda funny that I didn't catch on sooner. The times Anna spent having dinner or lunch with Russell, or the time Russell slept at her place...it did kind of seem strange that they were spending so much time together -- but I digress, I suppose. It'll be interesting tomorrow when we all meet up for class, to say the least.