What's going on with me?

1-31-07 - So for the past couple months, I�ve been keeping a small amount of stats in racquetball games against Chris. A month or so ago, Josh jumped in the mix. We�ve got two trophies going around: the singles trophy is my 5th grade D.A.R.E. graduation trophy from 1993 and the cutthroat (three player) trophy is a piece of flanged flex pipe that was found just hanging out in my office.

So yesterday was to be the tenth straight match that I won (I�ve beaten Josh twice and Chris seven times since we started keeping track). Chris finally beat me, though. I won the first game 15-8, and he won the next two 15-10 and 15-12. Sarah called not long before we finished playing, but I didn�t answer. I returned her call when we were done and I told her that I got beaten. After I finished talking about it, she said, �You sound happy that he finally beat you.� I replied, �Yeah, it�s about time. Besides, tomorrow�s gonna be fun since I know so many people are gonna give me a hard time about it.�

So I�m sitting in a meeting room with five other people this morning when Charlie walks in. He�s usually about 30 minutes late, but we all gave him a weird look when he showed up on time. First words out of his mouth (with a HUGE smile across his face): �I heard you got your ass kicked in racquetball last night!� I laughed and said, �I wouldn�t say that, but I did get beat.� He said that he saw Chris the night before not long after we finished playing and he asked Chris who won. Whether it�s true or not, I don�t know, but Charlie claimed the only reason he showed up on time was to give me a hard time about finally getting beat.

Ty and Kevin (two 50+ guys, like Charlie, who sit close to me at work) were sitting next to me at the table in the meeting room. They both turned and said, �What?!� when they heard the bad news. They said something about the loser buying donuts and I said, �Well, I�ve got nine dozen coming my way, then.�

Time to go into a little bit of a back story: for the past half a year, at least, Ty, Kevin, Tameka, Josh, Dick, and I (and sometimes Charlie or Elijah) will have a morning history lesson. Dick has a book called �The Book of Days� that has births, deaths, and occurrences for every day of the year. These things are predominantly British, which leads to a lot of mentions of cricket and cricket players. This led to a weird obsession of cricket for all of us which in turn caused me to bring my Jiminy Cricket that I got 8 or 9 years ago into my office. Anyway, after each history lesson, we�ll pick one birth and one death (or �croaked,� as Ty calls it) to post on the wall outside Tameka�s office. Ty types it up and we call the whole thing NCLB, which of course is �No Child Left Behind.�

So anyway, about 15 minutes before lunch, Kevin pokes his head into my office and says, �New NCLB! You have to come look! I think you�ll enjoy this one.� So I go out there and look and it says

January 31
DEMOLISHED [big letters]
Tony G__ [also big letters]
Former undefeated, self-promoting, and ego-inflated racquetballer on the hard wood courts of the Forest Ridge Complex by Chris C__.

I laughed so hard. I had to go down the hall to get Chris so he could see it, then I grabbed other people and showed them. �Twas a good day for being picked on :-)

They�re calling for lots of snow tomorrow (just like the past two Sundays, though it never happened on either). If it snows, we�ll be getting a day off from work! E-mails reminding us to call the plant�s number have already been going around. I�m excited!

I�m so awesome that I�m in over 300 Facebook groups. Friends in various circles of friends have been commenting on funny groups I�m in. Score.

It�s true, though. I�m in several �I went to this high school� or �This is my birthday� or �This is my last name� groups. I�m hardcore.

Sarah and I are talking about taking a weekend trip to North Carolina. It�ll probably happen in March, or late next month at the earliest. Next month is looking packed, weekend-wise. We have like six things to do this weekend. She�s going to Nashville for a swing dancing thing the weekend after, and we�re going to my parents� house the weekend after that. Yikes!

So right after my birthday, as a present to myself, I bought new computer parts to put together my own computer. I ended up running into several problems, had to send a few things back, things still didn�t work, I got discouraged, and everything�s been sitting on my floor for a few months now. I�m gonna bite the bullet this weekend and just take it to the Geek Squad at Best Buy and have them get it working. I don�t wanna pay what they�re asking (last time I looked I think it was $70 or so), but it�s either that or keep having stuff I bought go to waste. I�ll pay the money.

1-25-07 - So a couple days ago, Allison (the Wisconsin girl I me because of the Ben Folds MySpace concert back in October) sent me an instant message that said, �AHHAHAHAHAHA.� I asked what was so funny and she said, �You�re on the cover,� and sent me a link to the picture of the cover of the DVD from the MySpace concert. Go figure. She�s on it, too, but only her arm and a bit of her hair. A decent amount of Chris is on it, as well. There are a dozen pictures and the one I�m in shows just about all of me (I�m kinda small, though, but it�s blatantly me). The guy that was sitting next to me was in two pictures. I was just barely covered by Ben in that second one. Blast! Oh, well. I preordered my copy of the DVD and it�ll be shipping on February 20. I�m excited! Maybe I�ll autograph my own copy when I get it!

It�s been forever since I�ve played Guitar Hero, what with having to find time for a girlfriend and all the new social activities I�m now active in. I�m still gradually making more friends, too, which is gonna make things even more difficult...lordy. Anyway, so far Kylie and Carol Linn�s boyfriend Jeremy are the only people that have come close to beating me in Guitar Hero. Well, at swing dancing last night, I was talking to someone named Carly who I�d talked to a few times before and she mentioned something about the game and was telling her progress in career mode. I was impressed and I told her she could probably beat me, to which she replied, �I probably could.� She�s either confident or cocky. Knowing what little I do about her, I�d say both. But hey, when am I not one of those, whether it be genuine or in gest? We added each other as friends on Facebook (as is the style nowadays) and we�ll probably have a shred-off some time relatively soon.

Either way, yay for a new friend, yay for Guitar Hero and possibly getting smoked in it, yay for going on a date with Sarah to Bravo! tomorrow night (and being able to introduce her to Jasmine), but boo on having so little time...and at the sacrifice of sleep, too. Oh, well. You only live once, right? I�ve spent countless hours sitting around, doing absolutely nothing in my life. Though things now are completely wearing me out, it�s really refreshing to know that this many people enjoy my company � or are at least good enough actors to pretend they do. Woo-hoo!

1-22-07 - I had another nerdy math moment last night. I was trying to fall asleep and, for some reason, I started thinking about the base 2 (binary) and base 10 number systems. I think I was just trying to determine how to explain to someone why we use base 10, being that 10 itself is a special number and that multiplying anything by 10 simply causes an extra zero to be added to the end of the number. Yeah, I know everyone knows that property, but there had to be some reason we use base 10, right?

Well, I got to thinking about it and wondered if multiplying something in binary by 2 would do the same thing. Lo and behold, it does! In binary, 1101 is 13. Multiply 13 by 2, and you get 26 which is 11010 in binary! Whoa! Try base 3: 201 is 19, multiply by 3 and you get 57 which is 2010 in base 3. Math never ceases to amaze me.

Oh, and things are going so incredibly well with Sarah, too! :-D

1-17-07 - Last night, I was hurriedly cramming some rice down my throat before swing dancing when my friend JT called. He asked what I was doing and I told him I was eating. He then asked what I was doing later in the evening. Realizing that it was swing dancing night and that he and some other people I know from Cookeville are into swing dancing and were probably coming to Knoxville for the lesson, I responded with, �Probably seeing you, at some point.�

So JT, Kimmie, Jeremy (who I hadn�t seen or talked to in a few years), Scott, and Paige (who I�d never met) showed up at the swing dancing lesson. It was good times. Out of the group, I�ve really only ever been friends with Kimmie and JT. I was super excited to see them, as I hadn�t in at least three months.

Anyway, we had the intermediate lesson, then the beginner lesson, and then the dance started. For the past couple times, I�ve told Sarah (and a couple other people) that I hate that I only know a few moves. Sarah says that even though that may be the case, the dances aren�t boring. That�s a good thing, but they�re boring to me. I just hate only doing the very basic stuff. If I could just expand the number of moves I know then I could maybe start thinking of how to just randomly come up with things like the better people do.

So I was getting all bummed about it and I was ready to leave. Sarah said I had to dance with her one more time before I left, so we danced and I think she did what she could to cheer me up and it seemed to help a little. Then Kait came up and danced with me (and Sarah laughed and made a face since I�d been acting all dumpy and wanting to leave) and she really made me feel better about the situation and gave me a couple little tips.

I then went back and started talking to JT and Emily. I was saying that things were going a bit better and they were happy about that. Then Mary came up toward us and apparently started looking at us (she was beside me and I barely saw her), so JT smiled really big and started pointing at me. So she asked me to dance and he started laughing. She gave me a pointer or two and they helped a bit as well.

It�s not like I�m wanting to be a super expert or anything right away. I know that getting to that point, should I choose to stick with this, will take a long time. I don�t mind that. I just feel that the lessons are kinda lopsided in that the beginner lessons are SOOOO slow and the intermediate lessons tend to be a bit faster, but sometimes they try cramming a million moves into one lesson. While I can usually do everything that they teach us, it doesn�t stay with me since they fly through it.

Last Monday was the first lesson in about three weeks due to the holidays. I felt completely useless during the dance. I felt it last Wednesday, too. Maybe it�s just taking a little while to get out of that slump. I hope so. If that�s the case, then I�m guessing that next week will be pretty much the end of it. After dancing with Sarah, Kait, and Mary I started having fun.

Heh, so Lacy showed up last night, as well. I walked up to say hi to her and she was talking to someone named Jennifer and she asked if she and I knew each other. She introduced us and Jennifer made a comment about my dating Sarah. I asked if we�d met before and she said, �Nope. I just know you from that.� Sarah knows everybody. She met SOOO many of my friends before I met her, and every time I go to introduce her to someone, they�re like �We�ve met before.�

In fact, when JT said they were coming to the lesson, I said, �Well, you can meet my girlfriend.� His response? �We�ve already met her.� Wtf?

1-17-07 - So early December hasn�t been good for me the past couple of years. On December 10, 2004, I think, I wrote an entry to an unnamed pair of people. On December 11, 2005, I think, I wrote a very long entry to an unnamed person. In that entry, I also said something about how I had written a similar entry the year before, if I�m not mistaken.

In the weeks leading up to the December 10th-ish time, I was wondering if it would happen again. I seriously don�t get super pissed at people very often. When I do, though, it lingers, as much as I don�t want it to.

The 2004 incident happened because of two people I�d barely ever talked to. I became friends with one of them less than a month later. The other is someone I came to be on good speaking terms with, but I think he was not-so-secretly disapproving of my presence for, well, ever.

I don�t remember how things happened after the 2005 incident. I do know, however, that I got very irritated with the person involved a couple weeks later and I�ve only recently felt the desire for at least some sort of reconciliation. I�ve barely spoken with this person, who I considered a best friend (or close to it) for probably close to a year. Whether it�ll happen or not, I don�t know. And if it does, there�s no guarantee that it will remain that way.

So I was thinking a week or two ago, �Wow, it didn�t happen this year. Oh, wait. It did.� It happened on December 6, 2006. This isn�t something I wrote about. Between being a social butterfly and other things, I haven�t updated this thing much at all in that past few months. I have no plans to write about it in detail, though sometimes it does feel nice to vent at someone who will probably never read it.

Either way, I had become fairly good friends with this person and she chose to ruin it. It hurt initially, but I realized within minutes of the occurrence that I didn�t need someone like that in my life. In the past couple weeks, I�ve been able to joke around with this person a little bit and while I miss the good times, I won�t tolerate those actions � at least without an apology. That now, though, would be too little too late. It�s a shame.

I don�t know what it is about that time of the year for me. It�s a trend that I�m not fond of, but at least it�s something I can prepare for now. I can�t wait to see who tries to ruin my friendship with them this year!

Oh, and yay for confusion.

1-8-07 - So a couple weeks ago, I decided to read about the Fibonacci sequence on Wikipedia. Why? I�m a nerd, in case you were unaware. One interesting fact that I saw about it is that if you take any two consecutive numbers in the sequence (starting after the 14th, or so), the ratio of the small to the bigger is 0.61803, which is also known as the golden ratio. This is a number that, like e, pops up in various places in nature, mathematics, etc. It�s also got the neat property that its reciprocal is one plus itself.

What amazed me even further about the two seed number recursive series (such as the Fibonacci, in which any number in the series is the sum of the previous two, therefore giving it a recursive rule that governs it) is that using any two seed numbers yields the golden ratio as the �magic� number that the numbers converge to. I�m sure there�s better terminology used for my coming explanation of seed numbers and other such things, but I�m gonna use what seems to make sense in my head as I type this.

A seed number is a number that is used to originate a recursive series. For the Fibonacci sequence, the seed numbers can be called either 0 and 1 or 1 and 1. Whichever ones you use, you end up with a series 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, ... . It amazes me beyond explanation, though, how quickly the ratios between two numbers in a two seed number recursive sequence (2 SNRS) converge to the golden ratio and that it does so regardless of choice of seed numbers. They can be the same number, different numbers, huge, small, positive, negative � it doesn�t matter. Starting with about the 14th number, the ratio between any two consecutive numbers in a 2 SNRS will ALWAYS be 0.61803. So that�s what I read on Wikipedia and proved to myself through the use of Excel.

I decided to give it a try with a 3 SNRS. All the same rules applied: ANY numbers could be used and within a few iterations of the series, the ratios converged. They converged to a different number, but they converged. The special number in this case is 0.543689. As far as I know, this number means nothing in the world of mathematics...but who knows?

So I tried this deal with a 4 SNRS, a 5 SNRS, all the way up to a 17 SNRS. The ratios for these series are as follows: 0.618034, 0.543689, 0.51879, 0.50866, 0.504138, 0.502017, 0.500994, 0.500493, 0.500245, 0.500122, 0.500061, 0.500031, 0.500015, 0.500008, 0.500004, 0.500002. See a pattern? They converge on 0.5. There�s probably a reason, and I�m sure this was discovered many a year before my existence on this planet. Either way, I�d never seen or heard of such a property of these recursive series, and I�m quite proud of myself for discovering this.

And now, here�s a complete change of subject. I�ve had good and bad luck with relationships. I�ve dated several people, but I�ve only had five official girlfriends prior to two days ago. The relationships lasted, in order, 6 months, 2 1/2 years, 3 weeks, 9 days, and 8 days. These times only include the times we were officially boyfriend and girlfriend, so the �dating� time is excluded. The Sarah from swing dancing that I mentioned in my last post became my girlfriend yesterday. This is day 2 and we�re already 25% of my shortest relationship. If we make it to next Tuesday, we�ll have beaten my last two relationships. The end of the month will put it in the top 50% of my longest relationships.

There�s a lot of hope for this one. All of my relationships have had fundamental flaws right from the beginning, but especially the last three. They were, in no order, I was dating a Christian that had a problem with my not being one and we decided to give it a shot anyway, it was a terrible time for both of us given school and my impending graduation and moving, and though we liked each other we just flat out weren�t anywhere near right for each other.

Sarah�s a Christian, but she has no problem that I�m not. I�ve got good morals and that�s what matters to her. We both like each other immensely and things just seem like they�ll work. We�re both finished with school, have steady full-time jobs, and aren�t moving anywhere any time soon. We have the same goals in life and can see each other as being a huge part in them. We�ve each met a good number of the other�s friends and everyone loves everyone. Life is grood...I mean good...and great...great and good.

And Season 6 of 24 starts on Sunday! Holy crap, I'm gonna wet myself!