I try to make everyone's day a little more surreal.
Calvin

I rest easy knowing that your revenge requires you to first outsmart someone’s mount.
Vaarsuvius

He may be rich, but all his money and power can't stop me from rubbing my hands together maniacally!
Norm Henderson

That hurt! I’m hurt? I’m not supposed to hurt. I’m a robot! Idiot people who made me programmed me to feel pain! What boneheads!
Scud: The Disposable Assassin

It has always been my goal to become supreme ruler of Earth, but lately I've been wondering if you dolts are worthy of my leadership.
Dogbert

Rosh Hashana (spelling may vary) was this past weekend, running from about 6:51 pm on September 22 to about 6:51 pm on September 24. As usual, this process was largely unpleasant, marked as it was by mandatory synagogue attendence and, just to make sure I really got to full flavour of the high holidays, a nasty chest cold which left me nearly unable to breathe for the entire weekend and nearly unable to talk on Sunday. I exagerate slightly, of course; I'm very fortunate that spending time with my family is a pleasure and not a chore, as it is for almost everyone else I know, and the various feasts conducted during the weekend were really quite pleasant despite my being ill, both for the company and because there was a lot of showing off of the new Lonely Planet Guide to Micronations, which has a very nice picture of me on page 102 or so.

I learned this weekend where the word "synagogue" comes from. Its root is from the Greek: syn, meaning "together" and "gogue" meaning "learn" or "study." So, the word for the Jewish place of worship actually translates as "that place where we study together." I find this oddly beautiful for reasons which are totally beyond me... I haven't been this deeply moved since the day I realised "genuflection" literally means "bend one knee."

In any case, the Ten Days of Repentance -- which I continue to deliberatly mislabel the Ten Days of Penance the majority of the time -- began on the 24th at the moment of sundown, and that means that for the next week and a bit, I will be contemplating the past year's sins and seeking forgiveness from the people around me. In past years, I've made a very big fuss about this, written numerous long e-mails related to the topic, and generally made a big pest of myself. This year, I plan to build on that success and once again seek to say I'm sorry for things which I really am sorry I did but with reasonable certainty can predict that I will again. To be honest, I'm not sure if this lessens the value of my apology, but as I see it, the important thing is that I feel genuine repentance for the Stuff I Done, even if I just Do It again soon after.

Of potential interest, however, is that this year will see an astoundingly short number of people receiving apologies from me. This is for two reasons. First, following my upgrade to Eric 4.2 last April, I've drastically reduced the number of people whose forgiveness means a damn to me. This time last year, I had formed a relatively large circle of people whose opinions mattered to me, but with my last build upgrade, the very first thing I did was strive to abandon all such preconceptions and rebuild my trust relationships from the ground up. For the most part, this has been a huge success and I'm very glad that I did it, but it has left me with a much smaller circle of close others, which is a distinct negative. In any case, this year I'll really only be seeking absolution from about six to eight people, and perhaps another two or three who I just want to believe that I hold them in high regard for my own nefarious purposes. I'd like to have more people in my life who matter to me, but that's the way things are right now and I can accept that even as I try to find ways to work on the problem.

The second reason that very few people will be asked to forgive me for sins is that, looking back over this past year, I really don't feel that I've sinned very much. This year has indeed seen me repeat many of the same sins as last year -- general weaselness, notably -- but I just don't feel inclined to apologize for it this year. Similarly, I've rather badly hurt two or three people this year, but I don't think that the things that happened were my fault or my sin, and neither forgiveness nor apology really seem needed. Other people would no doubt disagree, but that's how things go sometimes, and if they don't feel it's necessary to *ask* for a specific apology, I don't feel inclined to offer one. A lot of things happened since last Yom Kippur that I regret and wish that I could have changed or prevented, but very few for which I feel any need to apologise.

Before we get to the apologies themselves, first a question for people. I thought long and hard about how to host this Journal when I created it, and deliberately chose to host it on my own site and not on one of the popular websites. This was in part for stylistic purposes -- one has greater control over a personal website -- and partly good ol' elitism. However, in the past two years, several people have told me they don't read this simply because it's too much trouble to bookmark a different site when for everyone else they just visit the friends page of their LJs. Secondly, online communities offer one thing which I really feel I've missed out on by hosting my journal privately, which is that I don't have an easy comment system. Most Journals that I read get loads of feedback -- most of it brainless and foolish, but feedback none the less, and I've always been very sorry that my system isn't conducive to people making comments. Obviously, many of you are either lazy or find me boring and don't want to admit it, but either way this is a source of minor frustration. I am therefore seriously considering mirroring my Journal on an LJ account simply to give you all the added convenience of seeing my posts without having to, you know, open your favourites menu or something. So, my question to you is this: would it make your life any easier or more pleasant if I did mirror my Journal on an LJ account? Cast your vote, either by e-mail or, as a special treat, see below for a special way to contact me about this.

So... Below, you will find two things. One is a list of my public apologies for this past year, which I have made every effort to make comprehensive and complete. However, no one ever remembers every sin they commit and no one knows all the ways they've wronged someone, so you will also find a Handy Dandy Form which will allow you to inform me of any way you feel that I've sinned against you or hurt you. In the highly probable event that I didn't wrong you at all this past year -- I don't sin against the vast majority of people I know, after all -- then you can use the HDF to send me a quick, instant note saying "I forgive you" or some variant which meets your satisfaction. You can even use the HDF to answer the question about LJs versus private hosting, so get typing.

For confronting people too harsly or bluntly when Eric 4.2 told people the things Eric 4.1 had never said, which led to several people getting very uncomfortable and at least two people actually breaking down in tears...

For disapointing the people who went out of their way to tell me (or publically announce) how proud they were of me for getting into medicine, and the people who supported me and said they knew I was working hard...

For the people I upset by describing the interior of the removed uterus of an 80 year-old human female...

For taking a space in the new medical school class which could have gone to someone who actually wants to practice medicine...

For not taking part is most occurences of spontaneous singing of "Happy Birthday"...

For being antisocial and, in particular, for long awkward pauses in telephone conversations...

For my failing to be shocked and upset by the film "Very Bad Things", thus partially ruining the film for those watching with me...

For being indirectly responsible for the near-deaths of the entire party in Andrew's D&D game more times than most of the players know...

For excluding people from the Pillow Fort-Building Night when this hurt their feelings...

For allowing important things to go unsaid for a year or more, and on a related note,

for relying on the Apotheosis File to say things to people that could mean the world to someone to know now (or could have meant, five years ago...)...

For subjecting people to boring rants about version numbers and other assorted trivia...

For the way which I plan out entire conversations in my head ahead of time so that I come off sounding rehersed and insincere...

More than anything else on this list, for failing to uphold the trust which anyone who matters put in me in any way, shape or form...

I am genuinely, sincerely, and truly sorry. I apologise. I will strive to do and be better in the coming year. I ask for your forgiveness.

This Handy Dandy Form will allow you to send forgiveness, explain why you are withholding forgiveness, suggest other crimes for which you would like an apology, and/or send comments regarding whether to would like to see my Journal mirrored on a Livejournal account (remember, this would be a mirror only; the Journal on this page would still get updated). The form will remain accessible for approximately 14 days and then go offline.

(Eric's Note: The form is, in fact, offline.)

Disinterested as I am in most of my studies, there is one great joy of being in medical school. I'm a philosopher in both the practical and the literal sense -- I love knowledge, for its own sake. I get a kick out of learning information, totally independent of how useful it is. In studying medicine, one is presented with an astonishing sheer volume of information, such that once one gets over the shock of having to actually internalize it all, one gets to experience the pleasure of just learning so much in so short a time. Furthermore, because medicine is a field practiced (and taught) by as astonishing number of people who are 1) utterly passionate about their field and 2) more than a little eccentric, a good listener will pick up all sorts of incredible knowledge which will never appear on tests. The trick is to be ready so that, in the middle of a nintey-minute lecture about flow rates and volume-determinants in dynamic respiration, one is able to catch the ten-second digression and learn the one really exciting fact from the whole morass.

Today, I learned why helium makes your voice squeaky. My life is now incomplete on a whole new level.

Lung physiology depends on a variety of several factors, but a lot of it comes down to one simple priciple: how well is oxygen moving? To this end, we consider the velocity of a moving gas. Gas elocity has two essential components: the driving pressure (for our purposes, the vacuum or expulsive force generated by expanding or contracting lungs) and resistance (which, contrary to popular myth, is rarely futile). The simple forumla reads V = change in P / resistance, which would make Robert Boyle cry. We assume that the change in pressure stays basically the same from one exhalation to the next; we ignore the posibility that, for example, midway through our experiment, somebody runs up and stabs the participant. So, if P stays constant, then for V to change, there must be some change in R.

Lung airway resistance changes constantly -- it alters significantly between when you inhale and exhale, for example. Resistance is largely due to nothing more complex than friction from the gas molecules rubbing the airway walls, many of the airways themselves being microscopic. Poiseuille, who no dout had far too much time on his hands, calculated that resistence was equal to (8 eta [length of tube]) / [pi (radius of tube)^4]. This entire forumla is actually totally irrelevant to this topic, but it was fun to write it out. The actual relevant equation is actually used to calculate flow, and whether or flow will be laminar (move straight, with all particles running parallel) or turbulent (with individual particles moving in all directions randomly). In theory, a liquid (or gaseous) flow will be laminar, and therefore run faster and more efficiently, if its Reynolds Number is less than 2000. The Reynolds number is a rather abstract, dimensionless figure which is equal to (tube diameter)(average flow velocity)(material density)/viscosity. For our purposes, tube diameter can be considered a constant, as can velocity and viscosity (the difference in viscosity between oxygen and helium being negligible). Re is therefore primarily modified by the density of the gas being inhaled; as the density falls, Re falls, and velocity of flow can be higher without disturbing laminar flow.

We now digress briefly from physics for a word from chemistry. If you recall your periodic table -- and frighteningly, in my first semester of CEGEP I was made to memorize the first 30 or so elements of the periodic table and and have somehow retained this for seven years despite losing nearly everything else -- helium is element number 2, meaning that it is composed of two protons, two neutrons, and two electrons, whereas oxygen is element 8 and has the predictable number of particles. Both elements are naturally found in paired form, O2 and He2. Oxygen quite literally weighs about 4 times as much as helium (barring the normal inexplicable inconsistencies found in chemistry) and its density is therefore significantly higher. Furthermore, oxygen is an incredibly reactive element and is slowed down as it has minor electrochemical reactions with body cells on its way through the airways, whereas helium is utterly inert and zips through without interacting with anything else in the airway aside from the occasional modest collision, quickly resolved when both molecules agree that neither has insurance and zip off their separate ways.

So: The Reynolds number of helium is lower than the Reynolds number of oxygen. Helium can therefore reach a higher peak velocity than oxygen without its flow becoming turbulent and energy-wasteful. It just goes faster. Helium goes to eleven.

Back to physics now. The pitch of sound is our bodies' way of interpreting the frequency of a traveling soundwave. There's a complex explanation for this involving the structure and function of the cochlea in the inner ear which transduce energy into sound, but I won't get into that. In essence, a higher frequency wave sounds higher pitched to us. A higher frequency is invariably associated with how fast a soundwave is moving, which leads us into the doppler effect which I also won't get into here. Speech is created when air is expelled from the lungs, gets modulated by the larynx (which is *really* weird to hold in your hand after it's been removed from the throat) and mouth, and then explodes into the surrounding air, pushing ahead of it waves of alternating pressure which fly around at a certain speed (and thus, frequency) which is basically but not precisely equal to 340 m/s. When this gas is expelled, part of what determines how fast it goes is, as has been shown, its density and the way it can flow through the airways. A person who has inhaled helium expels both of these gases (plus carbon dioxide, nitrogen, nitrous oxide, methane and whatever else). Both gases are shaped by the vocal chords and escape the mouth to go out and make sounds. Oxygen is expelled at a certain speed; helium is expelled faster.

And that's why your voice sounds funny when you inhale helium. Anything that you need two years of education to explain is always funny.

I am the first person to admit that the Imperial calendar is lacking and incomplete; many worthwhile holidays and niftydays receive absolutely no mention in what is otherwise an excellent list. The calendar is constantly evolving, of course, as proven by the recent discussions about Saint Bill's Day. One holiday which has never been included in my calendar officially but which I still make some small effort to celebrate when I can is today, september 19th.

Today is International Talk Like a Pirate Day. Yarr.

It goes without saying that the pirate is among the most beloved archtype in all of gamer culture. For everyone who loves ninjas, there are two who worship pirates. For every character whose portrait is a print-out of Jet Li, there are eight images of Elwes, Fairbanks, and of course, Flynn. I suspect, although I cannot prove scientifically, that throughout history, more people have idolized Captain Blood than Gandalf. Even outside of the purely gamer culture, in the broader culture in which we muddle, any given pirate film is more likely to be institutionalized and go down in history than an equivalent martial arts film or sword-n-sorcery piece. In some small part, this may reflect a question of quality, acting, and storytelling, but most probably it's because we love it when people swing from the chandelier and laugh-and-then-jump-off-something.

One might reasonably argue, of course, that it is ironic for me to be writing this -- today of all days -- in normal English and not, for example, talking like a pirate. The reason for this is that I am, in fact, writing, and not talking, and today is Talk Like A Pirate Day, not write like a pirate day. Few and far between, I suspect, were the pirates who wrote quite like me, being that the majority of them were illiterate at best and would try to eat your paper at worst. There is some logic, however, to the suggestion that many of those pirates who were literate probably wrote not too much unlike me, given the time period. Some of them may have used fewer contractions, and in all likelyhood none of them made typos, and of course, a lot of them spoke Spanish in the first place, but all that aside, Sir Francis Drake probably wished he could write this well.

Why do we spend today talking like a pirate, then? There are many reasons. Most of these reasons, I do not know, since I'm not the one who initiated the holiday. There is an official website dedicated to the holiday (http://www.talklikeapirate.com) but I can't be bothered to read the whole thing. Whatever the original reasons for the niftyday may have been, however, we can make a guess at some of our own motivations. First and foremost, it's fun. If you spend all year talking like a pirate, the only thing you get is a prescription for antipsychotics, probably the second least fun category of medications to be on. We have one day a year on which we can talk like pirates so that we can then spend the rest of the week convincing people we're sane, and still have the fun of talking like a pirate. Furthermore, we make this day an international niftyday and spread the word about it so that we have strength of numbers on our side; at best we appear to be simply part of a harmless, fun group, and at worst there are too many of us for the police to round up efficiently. The second main reason why we need a day like this -- well, to be honest, I can't really think of a second reason beyond "it's fun." I don't worship or honour pirates, given the kind of men and women they really were historically, and the archtype is so beloved as to be painfully and ridiculiously overused daily. So, I suppose there's really just the one reason for doing this, and I strongly suspect that if you investigate the niftyday's official website, you'll only find the one main reason listed there, too. It's nice when life resolves into such a beautiful simplicity.

And if anybody disagrees, you have my permission to keelhaul them.

As the cold weather draws near, we who live in Northern climes (and probably everybody else too, thanks to the miracle of "planned obsolesence") face the inevitable prospect that things we have will soon begin to stop working. Heaters inevitably fail within a week of the first snowfalls which, here in Montreal, could easily be as early as mid October. Cars will fail to start in the morning, according to the famous Herschel Formula, p(failure) = (inches of snow) X 1/(time at which you need to be somewhere) + ((aggro)^2 X K) where K is a constant which is equal to the Dramatic Irony Coefficient. Computers will begin to show a greater frequency of errors and failures, not because of the cold, but simply because they can't resist getting in on the fun. Worst of all, televisions will begin to air Christmas specials. It behooves us, in preparation for these inevitabilities, to refamiliarize ourselves with some basic repair procedures. I actually conducted some quick research on Google and Wikipedia and surpisingly I could not find an authoritative (or, indeed, any) list of the famous Emergency Repair Procedures which at least ten people I know reference regularly, and so, as a public service, I have compiled the following. In is complete, in the sense that I can't think of anything else to add off the top of my head, it is authoritative, in the sense that it's written with few spelling and grammar errors, and it is exhaustive, in the sense that I'm sleepy. Since odds are excellent that similar, if not identical lists exist on other sites, brief commentaries have been appended to each item on the list to distinguish it from lesser versions.

Emergency Repair Procedures
(As inspired by Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone)
1: Kick it. There is a very good reason why this is technique number 1. A swift, sharp kick is actually a remarkably effective way of repairing most devices. A proper kick must be graded so as not to break the item in question, but with modern computers, or portable heating units, one (even enthusiastic) kick is not likely to cause damage. Physicists have speculated that, since modern electronic devices are composed of countless tiny pieces which must fit together precisely to fuction, one good kick transfers precisely the amount of kinetic energy needed to jostle any out-of-place bits back into proper alignment without dislodging any bits which are where they ought to be. A second view, adopted by some electrical engineers, is that computers simply get freaked out when kicked, and this frightens them into behaving for a short time.

2: Hit it. Similar to kicking, hitting sets up precise and controlled vibrations within any complex device which ensures that any important bits are plugged into other important bits correctly. Hitting is a less reliable method than kicking, and more importantly requires greater effort on the part of the repair technician (most modern malfunctioning devices being kept at floor height already).

3: Threaten it. It has been wisely observed that American cars are a supersitious, cowardly lot, and on average, they will respond quite favourably to a good threat. Threatening a water heater with replacement, or worse, emptying it out and turning it into a mass oatmeal-maker for orphans, has been known to frighten even the most obstinate heating element into proper functioning for months at a time.

4: Curse at it. Like threatening, this procedure depends on making a curse sufficiently intimidating and horrfying to frighten the malfuctioning device back into proper behaviour. It can be difficult to properly curse at foreign built electronics; because English may not be their first language, many of the subtle nuances of the common swearwords can be lost in translation. If one cannot find domestically built DVD players, it may save considerable time and effort in the future to take the time to learn some handy Japanese phrases at the time of purchase.

5: Drop it. A combination of the principles behind prodecures 1 and 3, taking a disobedient device and dropping it from a short height can be quite effective as a later repair technique. This procedure should rarely be employed as one's first procedure because many devices will be damaged more by a small drop than by a swift kick, and furthermore, many devices will be more frightened by a threat of violence, which is open to their imagination, than to an actual act of violence, which may drive them to reciprocate. An enraged vacuum cleaner is a terror to behold, although to be fair, it does usually begin to suck up dirt once more, in addition to loose change, clothes, carpets, and small pets. In the field of computing particularly, procedure 5 is often taken to an extreme to accomplish a repair job, where the words "short height" may be replaced by other words, such as "window." This will rarely fix the problem, but will put the fear of god into one's next computer.

6: Shake it. Again combining procedures 1 and 3, this time with a greater emphasis on the latter than the former, many objects will be effectively repaired by a brisk, vigorous shaking. The weakness of procedure 6 is that shaking is repeateded for several seconds, and so there is a strong probability that components which are shaken into their proper alignment may simply shake back out again, and furthermore, those which were in proper alignment to begin with may be newly misaligned. Procedure 6 should be used only on fairly study devices which use solid components rather than electronics or delicate circuitry; procedure 6 is contraindicated on computers, television sets, and small children.

7: Open it up and close it again. Procedure 7 is a general all-purpose repair technique with a very high rate of success. Quickly and efficiently, albeit imprecisely, procedure 7 combines strategies from procedures 1 (through gross physical trauma) and 2 (consider the equivalent, opening up a human and closing it again without changing anything). Procedure 7 jostles things around to a small degree and also freaks the hell out of the device in question, and has the additional added bonus of giving the technician the opportunity to see how Stuff works. Highly experienced technicians may occasionally opt to actually change some of the things inside a device, but it is highly contentious whether such barbaric fiddling actually has an effect on most devices.

8: Turn it around. It is generally acknowledged that the functioning of any complex equipment depends strongly on which way it is facing. Druids and ancient Chinese mystics alike have recognized the importance of which way stuff faces and have created extensive and complex rules explaining how best to align even the most esoteric devices, such as stone circles, jars of flowers, and pinball machines. To the average technician, of course, such complex and encompassing rules are uneccesarily complex, and most repair jobs using this procedure require only rotating the device in question in face different cardinal points and see which way the object works best. One weakness with this procedure is that, commonly, any unidirectional device, such as a television, will work best in its least convenient direction, such as facing the wall.

9: Fiddle with the cord. As any electrician will tell you, electricity is a fickle thing. On the one hand, you can get it to run as easily as sticking something absorbent between two buckets of saltwater or setting up an imbalance of charged ions across two poles, but try getting it to run from the wall socket to an LED display with just one little circuit out of place and you get no end of frustration. When electrons are feeling temperamental, as they often will when taken for granted, they will often hide within the copper wire and hope no one notices that they aren't there. Often, simply jiggling the cord will get the electrons back on their way, or at least, let them know someone's watching.

10: Turn it off and turn it on again. Simply put, the most effective and reliable of the procedures and the solution to nine out of ten computer-related problems. No one knows why... perhaps when your cognitive processes are measured in picoseconds, two minutes of rest feels amply relaxing and leaves them ready to start work afresh.

When I've got a gag going, I have a hellish time hiding it from people. The urge to tell people about my lastest scheme is often close to overwhelming. I've learned to cope with this over the years, naturally, as evidenced by the fact that I've got a half-dozen long-term scheme in place right now, many of which have been running for at least one month and none of which will come to fruition before this coming April, and nobody knows what they are except me. It can be very hard to keep something to myself, though, especially when my Entry schedule predicts that I'll have a post due on the same day as a significant event comes to pass. It takes a supreme effort of will to refrain from, if not writing an Entry related that the day, at least hiding a gag or two or a taunting line somewhere in the text, or reprogramming the fnord! pop-up to say something about it. I've always had a strong will, though, and I managed. Last Entry was utterly unrelated to the date on which it fell and I didn't hide even one obscure, cryptic easter-egg in it. There was no dramatic countdown and no shock and awe. The people who knew the significance of the date knew it on their own without me poking them, which made it that much more special when they remembered.

On September 10th, 1999, somewhere between 8:30 and 11:30, Eric Lis was Reborn. I have worn him well for seven years and brought honour to our name. Henceforth, this date shall be celebrated with raspberry pie, because I was treated to one this year and I know a good tradition when I eat one.

I don't hold it against anyone who didn't know. I'm sure some people out there remembered but didn't say anything, which is fine. More importantly, I believe that if I don't tell people about a date in close proximity to that date, I can't blame them if they forget. Few people keep a faithful and comprehensive calendar of the birthdays (and other significant dates) of their friends; I do, but I'm different and no human can justly be held to the standards to which I hold myself. This is exacerbated because most of the people who understand the significance of my Rebirthday to me would probably assume that I'd post an Entry of some sort prior to the date, reminding them, which just goes to show that they don't know me so well. I *did* deliberatly turn this into a manipulative, under-handed test to see who would take note of the date without a reminder, but it was a "good for you, you're extra special" test as opposed to a "you're not really my friend, you fail" kind of test. My thanks and warm feelings go out to those (few) who remembered on their own, and to the rest of you... better luck next year, and may you get better at this sort of thing before you get married. Mind you, those of you who forgot this wonderous day should certainly feel free to make up for it with a nice letter now; warm wishes, even late, are always welcome.

All that being said, at the dawn of my eighth year of existence, it rather felt as though there was only one appropriate thing to write about.

Who are you?

What do you want?

Why are you here?

Where are you going?

Who do you serve?

Who do you trust?

And for this year, that's who I am. It's better than most alternatives that come to mind.

I've been learning Portugese.

There are many possible motivations to learn Portugese. I've always felt that it's a very beautiful language, retaining more of the charm of Latin than Spanish and less coloured by cultural perceptions than Italian. I'm never going to be able to consider French to be a pleasing language because of the hell I went through trying to learn how to speak it when I was younger, and the fact that I've learned Quebec French, as opposed to the theoretically much lovelier Fance French or the inexplicably charming Acadian/Cajun French means that the French I do have is pretty far from qualifying as "beautiful" in the first place. Aside from aesthetic reasons, Portugese is a useful language; Brazil and other primarily-Portugese Latin American countries may be an even greater up-and-coming cultural and economic force than the Spanish-speaking nations, and a working grasp of Portugese could therefore be quite useful to me in the future. Finally, Portugese is, for whatever reason, a very common language in the Micronational arena, and while Italian, Polish and German are widely represented in the microworld, Portugese is the language of choice in many of the foremost states, so if I want to be able to glance over their site to make sure they aren't calling me funny names, I need to have a working knowledge of the language. These are three excellent reasons for me to get a basic grasp of Portugese, and therefore, none of them are the reason why I've been picking up the tongue.

I've actually been learning Portugese because for some reason, in the last year or so, somewhere between fifteen and twenty Portugese-speakers have added me to their MSN lists thinking I'm someone else. I'm galled by this, not so much at the disruption or the confusion but moreso by the knowledge that someone else with a very similar name is more popular than I am.

I wish I was making this up, but I'm not; if I'm exagerating the number, which I don't think I am, than it's not by much. The fellow who added me last night and required half an hour to be convinced that I truly did not speak his language (as opposed to simply being a bad writer -- apparently BabelFish translation is good enough to pass for Internet-level Portugese) was certainly the tenth name on my list right now, and I've deleted at least three to five more when they began to get annoying. I can't fathom this in the least. I could understand it if one or two people mistakenly added me to their contact lists; these things happen, and it's not impossible to imagine that somewhere out there is a man named Eric Luis or something whose friends are poor typists. Around the fifth time that it happened, though, I began to feel there was something weird going on. Around the tenth, I truly became puzzled. Now it's been going on for, quite literally, a year or more; the mind boggles, but only because "boggles" doesn't translate into Portugese.

The truly astounding part is that I'm fairly certain they aren't even all looking for the same person. The people who have contacted me so far come from at least two different age demographics and four countries split across two continents. Two have been looking for their cousin, while the rest have been trying to find one of their friends, but at least two different men whose e-mail addresses are similar to mine seem to be being sought. It makes me wonder if any of the people who add me to their lists ever find the man they were initially looking for, or if somewhere there's a tall, dark, and handsome Latin superman who sits and cries himself to sleep every night because he never hears again from anyone who promises to add him to their MSN.

I take some comfort in knowing that roughly 80% of the people who have contacted me this way probably do not deserve to ever congregate together. At best, they are careless, but evidence gathered from conversations with them suggests they are also at least marginally stupid. While I'm on the topic, let me just say that I don't care how cute your emoticons are or whether you're forty years old or four; if you program your MSN Messenger so that emoticons replace individual letters, turning everything you write into an unreadable morass of bouncing animated graphics, you deserve to be beaten severely. I'm not kidding. If you honestly think that such text is cool, charming, or stylish, you deserve, not merely beating, but probably also death, unless such a death would be merciful, in which case I prescribe more beating.

There is some logic which suggests that for these poor souls, getting a creature like me onto their contact lists may be punishment enough. I prefer to err on the side of caution. Caution and unecessarily harsh punishment. It's the only way they'll learn.

As always, we must ever try to remember the positive side of things. First, these events just give me one more strange story I can tell, one more thing which I can happily file away under the heading of "things which just don't seem to happen to other people." Second, at least two of the people I've met this way were genuinely nice, interesting people who it was a pleasure to speak to. I don't speak to them any more, of course, because we barely understood each other and, quite frankly, they weren't *that* interesting, but it was nice to chat with them once or twice, just for the experience. And, third, last, and most, when all else is said and mocked, Portugese really is a beautiful language.

I recall, from time to time, my brief time spent studying the art of the Maesters. There was never any great probability that I might follow the path into that august profession, but since I can expect to one day inherit my household, if not my House, it was felt that I ought to have some measure of proper education, if only to distinguish me from the steel-clad oxen paraded proudly by the other noble houses. I like to think that I took my lessons to heart and I did learn much in those short months, but one lesson which I never took to was the encouragement that I keep a diary, so that in my later years I can relive my days of glory and, in the meantime, have a written record of my thoughts and actions, the better to wield power wisely. At the time, I found this a supremely foolish notion to have come from so wise a Maester as my teacher. When one is a lord, even a minor one, the very last thing one wants is to have a legible and stealable record of one's thoughts and plans. The blood of House Lannister is near to the throne in these days and none who stand for that house can have such obvious and avoidable weaknesses. I have since, however, revised my opinion. While I have no intention of filling these pages with my private thoughts, as I sit here preparing my belongings for the journey North with His Majesty Robert, I feel it might profit me to bring order to my thinking. It would not hurt, as well, to have some record of this trip, which I hope to be an experience unlike any I have yet seen.

So. "Hear me roar" indeed.

I can scarcely wait to leave. It galls me that I must yet wait two more days before we depart, when I can ready all of my own necessities within a few hours. I can only assume that the knights traveling with us have a lengthier list of supplies to ready, and since they are the ones who have traveled before, I suppose I should trust in their judgement. I have little idea what we are likely to need for the road; I have traveled to King's Landing before, but only in the warm weather, and this journey, so far North that there may be snow even while Lannisport sees summer sunshine, is beyond my ability to prepare for. Come to that, given the years it's been since the Westernlands had freezing air, I'm likely to be more than a foot too tall for my own old cold-weather gear. No doubt this is being taken care of by the attendants who also ready our food and such. For my part, my packing is simple: clothes suitable for one travelling in the company of the king, some coin (for emergencies, or should we pass through any villages where the money might be well-spent), my sword and crossbow (I cannot imagine there will be any danger on the road which the knights might require my aid to deal with, but it would not do to go so long with practicing), and this diary, as well as some quills and ink. I shall not be able to write daily, given the amount of ink I can carry with me. Perhaps this is one item on which I will have to spare a few coppers on the road.

The road. It is the vision of the road which excites me. I haven't yet traveled enough to know if I enjoy it, but I think I shall. I am eager to see the villages, and more-so, the people. I do not know if King Robert will deign to stop in smaller communities or if he will choose to parade his royal self before as many people as possible, but I for one hope to meet as many of the peasant as I can. If my dreams of improving the lot of the common people are to come to fruition, I will have to actually meet the common people. I have gone out among the masses many times at Casterly Rock and Lannisport -- I cannot imagine that any wonder we see on this journey will rival the marvelous docks of Lannisport -- and it is, perhaps, well past time that I meet and speak to the commoners elsewhere in the Westernlands, to the East towards King's Landing, and if His Majesty's itinerary permits, even the people of Winterfell itself. I have studied much of the history of the rivalries between the great Houses, and I am eager to see if it is only the nobles who fight amongst themselves or if the commoners who live in their lands feel the same rivalries. It is the commoners, after all, who do much of the marching and fighting when banners clash.

It is battle, I suspect, which motivates the King's journey North now, or perhaps, the dream of preventing it. It is no secret that there is discontent between House Lannister and House Stark. There is too much blood of the Northmen in the Stark line, and they are hot-headed and violent. The king (and most likely his noble queen even more) no doubt hopes that bringing my sister and I to Winterfell on his good-will trip will engender some, dare I say it, warm feelings between our houses. I have little hope of this, given our history, but peace is surely a desirable alternative to war, if not for the lives lost (as many of my kin seem to place little value on) than the disruption of commerce and trade that war brings. A part of me would welcome the chance to march forth and test my sword-arm against a noble foe, but the other part of me dwells upon the words of the knights who speak the word "battle" as though it is a curse. Perhaps one must have fought to the death to lose one's feeling that battle is romantic and exciting; if so, I hope not to lose such illusions for a long time to come. But I ruminate... surely as things stand now in Westeros, with King Robert traveling the breadth of the kingdom and a calm Lannister queen at his side, war is an impossibility.

Curses. If I am to make regular use of this diary, I shall have to learn to deal with this writer's cramp. Enough of this for today, then... I shall pack this book with take it out again soon enough.

Right, this sucks. Just erase the whole bloody thing and we'll start over, eh?

From The Book of Contrivance, chapter 1, final verse

By an astounding coincidence and a sequence of events which were defintely totally and completely not planned or contrived, on Onliner's Day two days ago, I began to laborious, stressful, and trying experience of reformatting my computer. As some of you alreday know, this past year saw me get my own private computer for the first time in my life, and by group consensus (including my own vote) I got a hand-me-down computer (the one I'd gotten used to using for years and love deeply) while my brother took the more advanced, newer, and really not that great computer. It's been a pleasure to have this computer for my own sole use, but there have been a few difficulties. For example, this is an old-ish computer, dating back to something in the area of 2000. Over the years it's had thousand of programs installed and uninstalled (often incompletly), countless viruses, gigabyts of adware, close to a terabyte of short-term held data, and all the other slings and arrows that come to a computer with time. Even as I carried the computer down the hallway to my laboratory, I knew that one of the very first things I was going to want to do would be a complete and absolute reformat to wipe away all the old, corrupt data and form a shiny tabula rasa for my own nefarious purposes. Sadly, nothing's ever easy, and it ended up taking me close to half a year (or is it longer? I've lost track) to be in a positon where some very sensitive and delicate files were at last removed safely and transferred elsewhere, and at long last, I could begin the formatting.

I say *begin*, and not *do*. While I did start backing up my files on September 2, I couldn't actually format the computer until the 3rd. This is because, when all of my files are put together, including incomplete downloads, all my writings and photoediting, and all the assorted crap I've accumulated in my countless hours online, the files that required backing up weighed in at something in the area of forty gigabytes, only two of which were music. Making the backup was easy -- I have a Maxtor portable 120 gigabyte hard drive specifically for this situation -- but, as I said, this is an old computer and it still has USB 1 ports, which means that transferring these 40 gigabytes took me just a little bit less than 20 hours of near-continuous dataflow. This was further slowed down because I take no chances with many of my files. Writing is my greatest pleasure in life and it would be a genuine tragedy to me to lose some of the work I've come up with over the years. Many of my files are backed up redundantly, copied onto 2 CDs and kept in a safe place. My very most sensitive and important files are additionally backed up online, with copies sitting on two different servers in two different cities; if my house burned down, I'd lose my computer and my back-up CDs together, but it'd take a worldwide thermonuclear war or a magnetic pulse simultaneously blanketing all of North America for me to lose everything. Obviously, I did not do this with 40 gigabytes, but it still added to the overall time.

The formatting itself was much easier than I expected. Once I quadruple-checked that everything I needed had been saved, wiping the drive was simply a matter of sitting patiently for a couple of hours, and a combination of embryology and biochemistry notes (and Preston & Child novels) kept me occupied for that amount of time. The reinstallation was a little trickier -- it was Windows, after all -- but the whole process itself was generally painless, simple, and fast.

It then took another 16 hours to get all my files back onto the computer, but in retrospect, this was actually rather faster than I'd expected.

So, now I sit, typing away at what is, in many ways, a brand-new computer. This thing really is a beautiful machine -- remarkably error free as PC's go, heavily customized relative to a normal HP tower, precisely set up to my exacting specifications and eccentricities, and while the hardware is upwards of six years old, it all works beautifully and new software updates make it feel like it's been majorly upgraded. Sure, there's the odd annyance -- Internet Explorer doesn't want to display certain links, for some reason that I haven't yet figured out, and my copy of Norton seems to be missing a dll file despite being freshly-installed right off of an official and legal CD -- but as with people, it's the eccentricities that we fall in love with, grow comfortable around, eventually start to despise, and finally put to rest with a large hammer. For now, I sit comfortably and enjoy the feeling of New Toy Syndrome, my music collection playing on the latest version of Media Player, while a processor that feels twice as fast as it was yesterday hums happily at my feet like a warm, drugged puppy. I love my computer.

Ironically, as I go to upload this, I find that my new IE refuses to let me access FTP...

I am, one is forced to admit, an academic. A significant portion of my life has been spent in academic institutions of one quality or another, and the entirety of my life in my current incarnation has been spent in post-secondary education studied advanced sciences at various levels. I have a bachelor of science degree, for which I had to conduct a thesis-level research project and which I obtained with honours. I have spent the last summer employed by one of the world's foremost children's hospitals doing nothing but read academic, scientific, peer-reviewed research papers and summarizing the important bits. The summer before that I worked at a pharmaceutical company in a post where the minimum job requirements were a BSc in a health related field and an advanced knowledge of organic chemistry. For four years prior to that, I was employed by a university psychology department where I worked at various ranks of the totem pole but was always a full-fledged research assistant, outranking various other employees and even some part-time professors. I know how to format a page of references in the APA and AMA styles by heart, I understand advanced statistical analyses, and I'm qualified to evaluate research papers on most any topic from anthropology to zoology. I'm studying medicine, and even if I'm not doing it well, merely getting in required more knowledge than most people I know learned in their undergraduate careers. I am an academic. I am a person is academic in background, outlook, and methods. I also use Wikipedia. Many would consider these two ideas to be inherently contradictory.

September 2nd is Onliners' Day, which commemorates the activation of the first functioning modem and, in a roundabout way, the first ever activation of the internet. This therefore seems like the perfect time to take a moment and consider Wikipedia, which is today listed as one of the twenty most widely-used websites in existence, although a significant portion of that if autospiders and bots. On a more personal note, Wikipedia is fascinating for a few reasons. First, the entire system is a practical application of the Silinist belief that whatever enough people believe becomes the truth; Wikipedia is an example of a system where, if enough people support the idea that something is accurate, it therefore is. Second, Wikipedia is interesting as an academic, because it exists in an odd, paradoxical state of being both accurate and useful and innacurate and useless at the same time. This is related to the third reason it's fascinating, which is as a Discordian. The Goddess teaches us that all things are true in some sense, false in some sense, and meaningless in some sense; Wikipedia is simultaneously all of the above, which is koan-like in its poetic and chaotic beauty.

I have used Wikipedia to help me write no less than eight papers in my life, including one honours thesis and one paper which was eventually submitted for publication to the Journal of Personality and Neuroscience (although, to be fair, it hasn't been accepted yet). That said, I have never *cited* Wikipedia as a source in any of these papers, instead citing the sources that Wikipedia's own editors used to write their articles, after checking to make sure there was an intelligent basis to these citations. This summarizes nicely the great contention about Wikipedia: it is at once a tremendous repository of knowledge and information but, because it is publically accessible and the public is made up of a large number of stupid people, the entire website is suspicious at best whenever someone considers using it as a reliable source. In point of fact, despite the fact that I often use Wikipedia as a reference source, I would never tolerate someone using it as a reference or a source in an argument wih me unless it was only one of several more reputable sources. Anything could conceivably make it on to Wikipedia, and in fact, a tremendous amount of crap has over the years. Consider, however: the peer review process in academic circles was created because it was assumed that, given time and wide readership, good solid truth will eventually win out over baseless inaccuracy and stupidity, and aside from a few notable exceptions in history, this process has worked. Wikipedia relies on a similar principle -- over time, enough intelligent people post enough intelligent material to make it a trustworthy source. This is, of course, assuming you know how to read critically, and if more people knew that, the world would be a more intelligent place anyway.

Wikipedia has one major thing going for its accuracy: idiots, vandals, and ten-year-olds can only ever stumble upon certain articles. Articles which cover, for example, cutting edge but obscure science, are in theory safe from innacuracy because the only people who could possibly stumble across the articles are those with a huge education and a vocabulary that's mostly Latin and Greek. For example, this past week, I was given the task of researching information about lipid rafts and glycoproteins in cellular membranes, what implications they have for the Fluid Mosaic Model of cell function, and what diseases are associated with lipid raft disorders and mutations. I had a brief and largely useless text included in my course pack and some assigned pages in my textbook which were largely irrelevant to the assignment. I went to look at Wikipedia. Not only does Wikipedia *have* an article on lipid rafts, it's more comprehensive than the source distributed by the professor, better written and more easily read than my textbook, and, because it's accessible to anyone interested in the topic (which is restricted to only a tiny group of academics and doctors), this article had more up to date research and references than any other source available to me, including links and abstracts to papers listed as still in press and not yet published. I had enough knowledge on my own to be able to evaluate whether the article was accurate, which it certainly appeared to be, and its accuracy was supported by my professor's answers to the questions the next day. Had anyone asked me, of course, I would never have admitted to using Wikipedia to do the assignment, but on the other hand, I would have been hard-pressed to do the assignment without it. If I was researching George W. Bush or looking for hard solid facts about Israeli-Palestinian politics, I wouldn't dare check Wikipedia, because any moron with an opinion can go in and spew. But, if I'm looking for references which discuss the conspiracy to keep school children from learning that Christopher Columbus was one of history's greatest monsters, or for information about the molecular structure of Type IV collagen, or looking up a biography of an obscure comic book character, Wikipedia is not only a valid source -- it's often the best or only source available. But I still wouldn't tell a professor I'd used it to help write my term paper.

Wikipedia has evolved into more than just an encyclopedia; it's also a status symbol. People talk about minor celebrities in terms of who does and does not have an article, which bands' entries have been marked for deletion, and so forth. I've gotten very involved in some such debates in the past, notably when my article was being argued. on the one hand, it doesn't earn me much to have that article up; on the other hand, through-traffic from Wikipedia is our single biggest source of citizenship applications, typically two or three new people per month plus another twenty or thirty through-clicks who don't fill in that form. God only knows how, but my article somehow attracts visitors. That's part of Wikipedia's incredible power. Of course, because any one of these fools could erase my article on a whim, I have to log in daily to make sure the article is still there and unchanged, but it's never been vandalized before and, meanwhile, I keep getting traffic. Can't complain.

This is why the Internet is a remarkable thing, and why I celebrate Onliners' Day. The Internet brings me things like this. It's been a long time since I've been able to remember what it was like to live in a world where I didn't have Webster's Dictionary and Wikipedia available to me at a moment's notice to answer my smallest and most meaningless questions. Like the Net itself, I don't trust Wikipedia and I'm not proud of the fact that I frequently use it, but it's served me damn well and I'm glad to have it at my disposal.

Prior to starting classes this year, I took the time to arrange for some general health checkups, particularly a series of blood tests. One might easily see a trace of paranoia in a medica student being concerned about health at the start of a new year, but the truth is that most physicians that I know recommend that everyone, even invulnerable young adults like myself, have a full blood workup done every four or five years at least, and the number of people I know who sufferer from some form on anemia, malnutrition, osteopenia or other blood/nutrient-related illness is really quite high. Such tests may be particularly important in my case; I've got a family history of brittle bones, I eat a diet unusually low in fruits and vegetables, I have a personal history of being dangerously underweight, and given my variant physiology and, in particular, my digestive system, it can never really be taken for granted what important chemicals are or are not getting where they ought to be in my body. People who read this Journal already know of my interest in vitamin B12 in particular, a vital nutrient required for formation of both red blood cells and neurons, and which is normally absorbed through a short stretch of the small intestine which, in my case, was removed and incinerated more than two decades ago. Finally, since I've now gone through much of medical school (and before anybody makes snarky comments, I actually did well on the nutrition and hematology portions of the last year), I can actually understand the significance of it when my doctor requests, for example, that my AST/ALT levels get checked, so having this bloodwork done was of some scientific interest as well.

And, of course, as much as I consider myself to be a mental lifeform which just happens to be stuck using a meat body by necessity, I'd be a fool to fail to recognize that part of Who You Are is, inevitably, how your body works (or doesn't).

Let me just take a moment to say how much I despise blood tests. I've got an extremely low pain threshold, which means that I find even a simple needle to be extremly unpleasant. On top of that, I've got a minor phobia of syringes, due in large part to being exposed to them so much while younger. It doens't help that I've got very puny arms, which have as a corrolary fairly puny veins. At best, a talented and practiced technician will typically need at least two tries to get a decent bleed rate out of my veins; I choose to assume that the nice lady at the CLSC where I went *was* talented and practiced, but none-the-less I'm fairly certain that she missed the vein entirely and was simply drawing intramuscular capillary blood, which entered the tube at roughly one cubic ml per second and took better than half a minute to fill each of the four tubes needed for the large number of tests I was having done. The worst of it wasn't even until a few days later; there was neither wound nor bruise by the time I got home, but three days later when I did my weekly sword workout there was a rather unpleasant sensation accompanied by a large and painful bruise that appeared and stayed with me for the next week, so *something* certainly wasn't as it ought to have been. It's all worth it to have an official clean bill of health, of course, but still not happymaking at all. Fortunately, no repeat needed for another five years or so.

Routine bloodwork looks at a few fairly basic things: Liver enzymes (to make sure it's working properly, less important for a teetotaler like myself but still worth checking), kidney function (slightly more significant than average for me given that my water metabolism is abnormal), blood proteins (which is mostly just another liver test but which also helps measure if there's unusual cell death or internal bleeding or anything), blood cell count (because without blood, it's dreadfully hard to do that important weekend demon-summoning) and INR (a measure of blood clotting, also not really important for me, but what the hell, I'm bleeding already anyway). In addition to the routine stuff we also checked out such things as cholesterol and glyceride levels (not really essential in a 24 year old but, again, the needle's in the arm anyway) and a few other little things, few of which were of any significance.

As I've already said above, of course, the only test which was of much interest to me personally was the B12 assay. I had no reason to assume that anything else would come up with an undesired result, given that I'm pretty much in the best physical health of my life. B12, though, is the little nagging worry that's frequently at the back of my mind, doubly so in the last year. This is the first test I've taken in close to a decade which has really investigated what the levels of the vitamin are in my system, so in some ways, it's actually a bit of a worry off my mind now. To remind the non-biological amongst you, a deficiency in B12 leads to anemia, which would be really annoying but not catastrophic, and to cognitive slowdown, which terrifies beyond necessary limits. The test results show that my levels of the vitamin are not only above minimum but actually respectably high, so not only do I absorb the vitamin, I'm actually absorbing it with higher efficiency than might be expected. Implication: The part of my digestive system responsible for absorbing B12 was removed and so, quite naturally, the intestinal tissue "upstream" has adapted itself on the molecular level to take on that important task. I may not like humans, but I've got a grudging respect for the tremendous adaptive powers of humanoid bodies. As Ian Malcolm and a couple of my professors are wont to say, "nature finds a way."

Downside: If there *had* been something wrong with me physically that had been previously undetected, I could have happily blamed my poor outcome from last year on some infirmity. Mild anemia might have been an excellent candidate, in fact. As it stands, I'm very nearly the picture of health for my height/weight/activity level, and while that might be a disapointment on one dimension, I certainly don't feel inclined to complain. It is, as always, damn good to be me.