Ryan Morlok’s Blog

I might as well take some of the information that’s been buried deep in the comments to some of my other posts and bring them out in the open for all 3 of my readers to see.

Hill is taking on taking on Roseville this evening at the Colosseum. As Shoe pointed out, Holy Angels (the top team in the state) has already been eliminated in section play, so if Hill can squeeze their way into the State Tourney, they may well have a chance to go all the way. Keep up-to-date on their status with Shanley’s Hockey Website. His site also features the full brackets for section and state tournament play.

Once upon a time ACM@UIUC was an engineering group. They did cool projects ranging from vending machines, to computer animation shorts. Now we’re really a marketing group. Sure, there are still some cool projects going on, but it just doesn’t feel like the stories I’ve heard of the past.

This is probably just me being bitter. I’ve been working on posting flyers for events lately, and it seems like every evening there is some sort of information session or tech talk that we’re hosting. There’s no way I even have time to attend all of the events we host, nonetheless organize them. Top4 has been working to try to encourage more project work, but right now I feel like we’re the kings of corporate event advertising. It doesn’t help that I’m involved with CSGSO, which also has corporate events.

I sat down during office hours this evening (thankfully there were no students visiting) and fixed some of the problems people have been complaining about.

1. I fixed the header links. You can now get to my calendar with ease
2. I am now XHTML 1.0 Transitional compliant. Yes I had to hack the Wordpress source directly (the problem wasn’t in the theme that I had installed) and this once again affirms my belief that PHP is a HORRIBLE language.
3. I now have threaded comments on my blog. Dusty will have to find something else to complain about. Not saying they’re great, but they are threaded.

If you’ve met my wife, or most any other microbiology student/grad/PhD etc, you’ll know what I know. The longer they’ve had the knowledge, the further they deviate from normal. It all begins with hand washing. All of a sudden if you don’t wash your hands regularily, you’re going to die of the plauge. That’s just where it begins, soon you’re afraid to shake hands with people without using a hand sanitizer immediately afterwards.

Katy’s not that far along, but she has progressed to refusing the common cup at church. This one just strikes me as funny. First of all, if God wanted to kill you, I think he can come up with a lot better ways to do it than through one of the sacrements. You are the omnipotent Creator of the universe; you’ve got plauges of locus, lightning and disembowlement at your disposal. Would you really choose a dinky little cup of wine? Second, the alcohol content of the wine has to help to a degree to kill germs. Third, worst case scenario you’re going to get a few sniffles. It’s not like we have ebola roaming around the midwest.

Things got worse this week when we passed the bread around in church rather than having it distributed directly by the pastor. Way too many people touching the bread. All I can say is that I’m glad my will is in order after a near death experience like that.

I give her a lot of crap, but you have to love her. Like she say’s “I’m cute.”

Once again, I’m sitting in my BADM class, writing a blog. At the beginning of lecture, the prof called on me and asked the question of what the direction of technology will be over the next 5 years. In an effort to give a somewhat canned answer, I talked about web services and the general ideas of Web 2.0. That was a mistake. Since that time he’s dropped the term Web 2.0 about 7 times. I tell you, don’t give business people buzz words, they’ll eat’m up like candy.

We’ve been having some issues here at Morlok.net keeping the internet connection up and running. The cable modem keeps getting screwed up and we have to reset it. It’s been happening every couple days or so. Comcast’s solution to the problem: move the cable modem to a non-UPS outlet. Wow. We’ll be getting a new cable modem in a couple days when this doesn’t work.

Ben sent out this hilarious link this afternoon.

Unfortunately, there are no known plans to revive the quotes website, but in Shanely’s diligent following of the Olympics (or perhaps just Ice Dancing, who I am to judge), he did find this gem.

Katy has come down with a cold. The usual stuff, achy all over, fever, etc. Not good. It’s been going around the office, and she’s pretty much the last to have it. I’m hoping that it’s the same thing I had over the last couple weeks. I’d rather not be sick again, but I guess it’s not up to me. Oh well…

(AP) A recent study by the National Institute of Science released findings today that the intelligence required to consistently use an automobile turn signal is roughly equivalent to the average two-year old. Experts implied that this should encompass a full 8% of licensed Illinois drivers…

Ok, I’m bitter, but every time I go jogging I have to deal with some wahoo cutting me off as I’m waiting to cross the streets. I’ve taken to never trusting to cross whenever there is an automobile in the area, regardless if I’m crossing a street perpendicular to their line of motion and they aren’t signaling (OK, I’d be moving parallel to their motion, but the street is perpendicular).

And don’t even get me started about the use of horns around here. Back in Minnesota, you have a couple seconds to get going after a light turns green. People get annoyed, but it’s considered rude to honk at such a thing. If it seems the driver just isn’t paying attention, you give them the friendly barely-tap-the-horn-I’m-not-trying-to-be-rude-but-please-look-at-the-light honk. Here, the horn is a much more used instrument. It’s not as bad as other places I’ve been (bigger cities like Chicago), but the difference is noticeable. I guess I never really understood Minnesota Nice until I left.