updates!
finally solved the buggy solidworks part. talk about counter intuitive! kudos to tom for solving a very annoying problem through sheer persistence.

am also finally though with this week's homework! can finally relax a little. ton of stuff due mon/tues next, though, so i'd better mosey along to doing it eventually.

Stuff I wanted to talk about but didn't have the time to get through yesterday (because of rant)
Went to SF over Sat with El, and saw fun stuff! well, some of it is rantworthy, and some deserves a rave.

Raves: garlic restaurants! yay! garlic garlic garlic! isn't that just sooooo cool? it ranks up there with mushroom restraunts and pancakes at carrillon, though not as high as crepe suzette's and their amazingly good crepes. nessa's made a foodie out of me as you can tell. i remember when i was younger (and a part of me still does think this way) food was merely a means to survive, not an end to itself. i ate because i had to, not because of any particular pleasure i took from food. this obviously made dieting a snap: since i only need to eat as much as i need to live, excess food can be happily ignored. these days good food is hard enough to find (try going from 2 1/2 years of army food and then to crappy DC food) that i'll eat tons of everything i can.

case in point: steak escape. appeared once in the suntec ring. has subsequently disappeared. wonderful food. i love philly cheesesteak sandwiches. am now going to make some at the earliest opportunity. hope it's mushroom season in perth , though i doubt it.

neutral: SF tourist stuff. cool the first time, not so cool the next. tourist stuff is actually quite predictable and boring. again i see nessa's influence. these days i'd much rather curl up with a good book and my cuddly fiance. would love to prowl the streets and try stuff or do stuff - it's certainly a lot more fun than in singapore, though commercialised enough that it lacks that small town charm you always find in australia (at least perth). don't want to burn a rather large hole in my wallet though - never know when that cash will become vital. the recent heartache trying to get a flight to perth has driven that home.

rant: basic brown bear factory. there's a store along fisherman's wharf called the basic brown bear factory. the premise is that you pick an unfinished bear and the people there help you stuff it and sew it and what not. great concept, even if the bears are pretty ex, i can see the attraction. i can understand that this is a commerical operation, but i find the presentation offered really bad. first off, you get a quaint little shop, with bear stuffing machines, bright multicoloured furnishings and bears all over the place. great! it looks just like a cute bear making workshop. i can forgive the propaganda that refers to the people there as "expert bearmakers" too. i mean, what else do you want to call them that 8 year olds will understand? but the two kids running the place really threw the image off. both teens in cargo pants. the bear stuffer's in piercing heaven, looks like a punk rocker. his buddy's sitting pretty on a stool working with a bear. now, i don't care what they look like, but if you're going to work in a cute little bear shop and making bears for little girls, you act the damn part. there was a little girl buying a bear when i was there and if i was her i would be so disillusioned with some david bowie wanna-be mechanically telling me to step on this here pedal here and then half-heartedly proceding to stuff my chosen animal. (could see her face alternate between wonder as her lamb was being stuffed and blankness at the bear stuffer's attitude) it just isn't right. maybe the days of handmade toys are over and no one really cares about what they make, but there's no reason to rub it into the face of children. logically, i know the little brats probably don't give a toss, but i can't help but feel it's wrong. stuffed animals are to some extent special to children. and call me sentimental, but i still cherish mine. it isn't right to treat them with such dispassion, espcially in front of the kids. have we really all forgotten what it was like to be children? or am i just romanticising? and if i am, then what's the point of living in the first place? you're born, you suffer and you die. some things must be worth all that or life is truly meaningless. and childhood's one of those things. i guess in short i'm mad that what could have been a magical childhood experience has been turned into a commercial interest. but then, i shouldn't be surprised. this is america, after all.


LOTR 2 EXTENDED:
CCCCCCCCCCOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Mr. Jackson, why'd you go and cut those scenes???? they explain so much! make the movie so much more characterful! and they're really funny (gimli - legolas scene comes to mind). i felt that two towers was a bit too much of a massive fight scene, but with all the additions in the extended it matched, possibly surpassed the 1st movie. great pacing, delightful look at each character.... the only people i don't like are sam and frodo, but i never really liked those two bums (hey, i'd delete all the frodo-sam bits just to have more of boromir or eomer). i may actually be able to forgive the aragorn falls over the cliff bit now. El's right too: faramir does look like richard gere. i still think sean bean is cuter, though. (not serious enough a face for any other role except eomer, though.)

of course, kudos to amazon once again for delivering the product approximately a week before they said it would come. S is getting a copy of LOTR too and she ordered from amazon a month before me, but hers hasn't come. weird, non? maybe amazon realises that i am of the obsessive gamer fan type and a biblophile to boot and thus i get preferential treatment... if so, they have a good marketing department.