anfin’s Blog

Don’t buy them.

As I was getting ready to leave lab yesterday evening, I unexpectedly found myself unable to unlock my laptop. The combination was correct, or at least it was the one that I had set the lock up with. However, the combination must have mysteriously changed as the button would not press and so my laptop was firmly and undeniably stuck to my desk. I did several Google searches of “laptop lock reset” and the like, but it seems that laptop locks are, in fact, designed to stay locked unless you enter the intended combination. It didn’t seem like it was going to be easy to steal my own laptop.

Eventually I noticed that the lock had “DEFCON CL” engraved into it, so I changed my search to “Defcon laptop lack reset” and found that I was not the only person with this problem. Apparently, these locks often randomly decide to reset their combinations. Sneaky. With no other options available to me, I decided to start trying out all the possible combinations. It’s a four digit lock with possibilities of 0 through 9 for each digit giving 10000 possible combinations. I started out by keeping the first two 1’s and only changing the other two numbers. That’s only 100 possibilities so it was a little less daunting than 10000. After the first few tries, it occurred to me that the lock probably reset to wherever I had changed it to lock it. With that in mind, I reset it to my combination and twisted it in the way I always do to lock it. This gave me a 9 as the first number and only 1000 possibilities. I tried all combinations of 9-9-x-x and 9-0-x-x and got to 9-1-6-7 when finally the stupid thing opened. Success in less than 300 tries! Hooray! Had I gotten through all the 9-x-x-x’s then I suppose I would have moved on to the 0-x-x-x’s and the 8-x-x-x’s, but thank goodness I didn’t have to.

Long story short: Defcon CL laptop cable locks are stupid.

Hello to all my faithful readers (i.e. Mom, Dad, and maybe Jonathan and Michael). I’m am currently sitting in lecture for the General Chemistry class I am TAing for this semester. It seems that I will be doing so twice a week. These classes last almost two hours and aren’t exactly full of new information for me to get excited about. I do, however, have a computer. Perhaps I shall use this time to update interested readers (i.e. Mom and Dad) about the current happenings in my life. So here we go:

Yesterday morning I woke up bright and early so I could get a good parking spot on campus (no bus service on Labor Day, but also no parking restrictions). While in lab and near the Internet, I finally bit the bullet and bought a Flickr subscription. With my new ability to go over 200 photos, I uploaded the last of the England Album photos. After completing a meager amount of lab work, I decided to head on home. It was Labor Day after all, and no one else was in lab anyway. It was thus that I had the whole afternoon to consider taking part in the 7:00pm Singin’ in the Rain audition at the Gainesville Community Playhouse. I was thoroughly convinced that I wasn’t going to try out for many weeks. In fact, I would still be convinced that I’m not going to try out if not for the simple fact that said event has already occurred. Anyway, to make a short story shorter, I decided to audition at around 5:00, unsuccessfully went to the book store in search of sheet music, successfully procured sheet music from my dear Floridian brother and sister-in-law, and arrived at the theatre only barely on time. The likelihood of my actually getting a part is rather low for the following reasons:

• The number of conflicts I had to list is abnormally high. This wouldn’t be the case if the show was happening during any other semester, but no, they HAD to do their only decent show of the season during fall semester.
• There were way too many extremely all-around talented 20-something girls at the audition. I was not one of them.
• I had no dancing shoes or even any shoes that could be reasonably be used for dancing. I thus wore flip-flops intending to just go barefoot for the dancing part of the audition. They require you to wear shoes and really prefer that you wear actual dancing shoes. You try tap dancing in flip-flops and tell me how it works out for you.

The good news is, I will in no way be upset it I don’t get a part. I now have a good idea of how auditions work there. Thus, when they do a decent play that works better with my schedule, I will be able to be better prepared. Huzzah! Anyway, the cast list will be posted today so I’ll find out soon.

The actual photos will trickle in as I see fit. Unfortunately, I will have to make a decision regarding whether to actually spend money on my Flickr account before I get to uploaded photo #200 which will happen before I’m through attaching all the necessary links to this post. Do I really want to spend $25 on an Internet account that I’m really not capable of using to its full capacity? Hmmm. This is a pickle. If you actually care about me posting my low-quality photos online, let me know.

• The London Eye
• Russian Egg
• Canterbury Cathedral
• Changing of the Guard at Windsor Castle
• Journey to the Wallace Monument
• An utterly ecstatic Michael standing next to the Wallace sword
• The view from the top of Wallace Monument
• Oben
• The beautiful island of Iona
• Staffa
• Rizzio’s Blood Stain
• Arthur’s Seat

This album consists of a single picture–but that single picture actually holds a lot of meaning.

King Street an Market Street were basically where the other Governor’s School students (also called Guvies, but that sounds rather silly–don’t you think?) and I spent all of our time outside of classes and the dorms. Additionally, they were a major part of my daily running/walking route (yes I still ran back then). The picture was actually taken my last day on this route.

The closely-packed buildings in the background, the Italian Ice stand, and the one-way sign also scream of Charleston. You may also notice the pi symbol painted on the one-way sign. We saw these things all over the place sometimes along with the phrase “Knowledge is Power,” and decided to attribute them to a possibly fictitious Charlestonian “smart-people gang.”

This picture would make me even more happy if that studid garbage truck wasn’t in the way, but it’s none-the-less one of my favorites.

Some highlights:

• Lots of scenery photos again.
• Me feeding a monkey. For whatever reason, I was very excited to know that Miss Margie was able to snap this photo of me with my camera. I was equally distraught when, just a few minutes later, I accidentally opened the film compartment and exposed the film. Evidence of this incident can be seen on the photo.
• The entire group eating at McDonald’s after an 11 mile bike ride.
• A nice reflection across the large pond at which we had our small worship services.
• I’m not sure why, but this is one of my favorite pictures from this trip–along with the reflection.

I did not really have any good people pics from this trip (except one really happy joyous one of Mom holding one of Tea’s (sp?) puppies, but she doesn’t like pictures of her so I didn’t figure I should post it), but here’s what I’ve got:

• A few scenery photos
• A Yugo
• An ostrich
• Copernicus!

Mount Rushmore and The Corn Palace!

Snoopy, Carrie, Shadow, and Rusty.

The end

The only pictures I have from my involvement in theatre are ones from plays in which I actually had decent supporting roles. This means that I really don’t have that many pictures, so this album won’t last as long as the Skiiing Bear Album. In fact, this post is it. Here are the roles I’ve played and some samplings of the photos involved:

• Susan in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. This was the first “big” part I ever got, and boy was I excited when I saw the cast list. I was also very proud to have the very first line in the whole show (”What an exciting old mansion!”), and if you’d asked me 4 or 5 years ago, I probably could have still told you the exact number of lines I had. The only thing that unsettled me during the whole show was that I always felt like I was getting boos when I popped out of the wardrobe for curtain call. In fact, the boos I was hearing were only residual boos from the evil White Witch’s bows which were immediately before mine–at least that’s what everyone told me. At any rate, my parents and both sets of grandparents seemed to like it well-enough seeing as how they all gave me flowers on opening night. Sorry, but I don’t know who gave me which flowers. My memory’s not as good as it used to be…I don’t have any pictures of me in full costume, but I do have this one of me getting ready. Additionally I had a thick navy blue sweater which was sometimes covered with a large brown fur coat. The costuming made for a very sweaty me on stage under all the lights in the theatre with no air-conditioning.
• Nancy in Oliver!. Many, many years later I got my biggest role to date. I wasn’t able to go to the real audition, but then again, neither did any of the other major characters besides Dodger. Mom suggested the people who ended up playing Fagin and Oliver, and Bill Sykes was played by Jonathan who also wasn’t at the audition. At any rate, when I did audition, it was just me and Myra with Sonja and Mom sitting in the back of the theatre. According to Myra, she had not been able to find anyone who was the right age, could sing in a belt voice, and who could speak and sing in a decent Cockney accent. Luckily for me, I was and I could (sort-of…). The reading for the audition was the scene where Dodger and Oliver meet and the song was “Consider Yourself.” After singing, I mentioned that I had tried all of Nancy’s songs and that they were in my range. Myra’s reply was something to the effect of, “That’s what I wanted to know.” At that point, I was pretty sure I had the part. A couple of days later, I was even more certain after Mom told me that Myra had asked her if Jonathan and I would mind playing “opposite” each other. In other words, would we mind playing Bill Sykes and Nancy? Seeing as how nothing happens between Bill and Nancy besides him slapping her face, throwing her to the ground, and beating her to death, it was not a problem. So I got the part. Throughout the run of the show almost every main character, including myself, came down with a sore-throat-involving illness, but we made it through all right. Sadly, however, the one night during which I cracked was the night they were taping the show. Unfortunate. I don’t remember whether that was the night I had a 102 temperature or not… Overall, however, I think that the show was a great success mostly due to our great cast including the best Fagin ever. Again, my Grandparents liked it so what more could I ask?
• Ronnette in Little Shop of Horrors. Great fun. I don’t feel like writing any more so that’s all you get.

The Knoxville Zoo is a wonderful and happy place. I went there every summer for many years and never got tired of it. Some memories:

• During the earlier years, I always wore my “zoo dress” when we went. The zoo dress was really a animal print covered skirt with a matching vest. I inexplicably always wore a long-sleeve turtleneck shirt underneath the vest along with white tights and my black cowboy boots. I do not understand how I did not burn up on those hot summer days, but I seem to be enjoying myself well enough in this picture of me and Michael on the tortoise statue. Aren’t we adorable?
• One of my favorite parts of the Knoxville Zoo was the petting zoo. Mostly I liked the llamas, and even more mostly I loved Lilly the Llama. I did not particularly like the goats. My general goal in the petting zoo was to avoid the ambitiously hungry goats and feed all my 25 cent handfuls of sweet feed to Lilly the Llama. Sometimes I did not succeed, and was forced to retreat to a rock in order to not become completely overwhelmed by the goats.
• The most memorable part of Zoo Camp was making large cardboard and paper mache animals for the use of giving real large animals something to attack. My group clearly displayed expertise in this project. I mean, have you ever seen such a perfect representation of a giraffe made from cardboard in you life? The zebra made by one of the other groups was pretty good, too. However, it’s very clear that the winner of the which-cardboard-animal-figure-gets-picked-to-get-mauled-by-a-lioness-and-her-cubs-this-week-while-you-campers-get-to-watch award was not chosen by the proved skill of the cardboard animal designers seeing as how the whatever-it-is won. If I remember correctly each group was told to pick one of the numbers 1, 2, or 3 and the whatever-it-is group picked the predetermined number. Lucky ducks.

And that brings us to the close of the Skiing Bear Album given to me by my Grandma Allen. She took all of the pictures therein except the ones of her and me on the Ferris Wheel at Dollywood. Granddad always took those every year.

Stay tooned for Theatre Album!