Last night at around 9pm, I was mugged by a pair of 16 year olds while on the way to campus for a late-night meeting. Without going too far in to the details, I’d like to present you with seven different accounts of what happened from the local media. I find the variety of the articles, and their inaccuracies, intriguing.

Newspapers:

• Times Union – This article is a good starting point, as it probably should be given the Times Union’s position as largest media outlet in the region. It does contain an inaccuracy though. “[O]ne of the suspects threw the wallet into the woods to try to hide it, Cooney said.” They actually threw the wallet down just feet from the scene of the crime, which was in the road at 15th and Christie. There aren’t any nearby woods to throw things in to anyway. The inclusion of the maximum sentence is interesting. I’ve never really understood the reason to print the full addresses of those charged with crimes, but most of the articles include this detail.
• Troy Record – This article actually mentions my condition, which is described as “The victim was slightly injured and required no medical attention.” It’s more like I “refused” medical attention. I had several open scrapes that were bleeding and required band-aids. A couple hours later, Public Safety wanted to take me to Samaritan… Also note the incorrect spelling of “Robbery” as “Roberry”. I’m wondering if that typo will make it to print tomorrow.

TV Stations:

• WRGB 6 (CBS Affiliate) – First of all, I LOVE the image selection. This article has a bit more of a narrative, and it includes a new item that neither newspaper mentioned – “… when he noticed a group of males paying attention to him.” Indeed, I did notice them ahead of time, and I knew they were following me. I guess a narrative lends itself a bit more to a TV report.
• WTEN 10 (ABC Affiliate) – This may be the best overall article. It contains an even additional tidbit, “Police say the victim attempted to flag down several passing vehicles immediately after the alleged robbery and his efforts were ignored.” This was probably the worst part of the event — four cars drove by in the other lane after the two had fled, but before I’d gotten up, and despite my frantic waving, none of them stopped to help. The article covers everything quite nicely, providing a strong narrative and skipping out on irrelevant things like their home addresses.
• WNYT 13 (NBC Affiliate) – Not much to say on this one; it was posted later in the day than most of the others, and it’s a direct rehash of the previous stories. It also doesn’t appear on the main WNYT site, just the Troy site.
• YNN (Time Warner 24 Hour Local News) – I believe this was the first article to be published. It’s minimal on the details, stating that I had “some personal items stolen.”

Other:

• 105.7 Crush FM – I think this is my favorite, I wish I could actually hear the radio DJ read this one. The little embellishments are what make it awesome. “Sunday night was not a very good night” for me. I disagree, it was an exciting night, but what an intro. “The dynamic duo will really love this. They have been charged with robbery which is a felony charge that could net them 15yrs in prison.” Dynamic Duo? Hahaha… Good stuff.

From the aggregate, one can get a pretty good idea what happened. There’s a TON of extra details that make the story more interesting, like how I saw their shadows on the wall of a building ahead of me as a car passed, and how I felt “safe” while their were cars passing, but as soon as the road was empty, they took the opportunity and shoved me from behind. It’s interesting that none of the articles got my direction of travel correct, which was to campus. My injuries were actually pretty decent — My left knee was scraped up pretty good and was bleeding, left hip was substantially scraped (it hurts the worst, currently), right palm was punctured and bleeding, left elbow was scraped, left shoulder scraped, left cheekbone scraped, and an area above the hairline above my temple was scraped and bleeding as well. The bleeding was nothing substantial, but you could smear blood from any of the indicated scrapes.

After the incident, and after four cars had passed, I ran across the street to Joe Perchiacca’s apartment, who was thankfully there. I’m extremely grateful towards Troy PD. Their quick response was more than I could have hoped for. At least six cars were involved, and they had apprehended multiple subjects within minutes. Based on what I’ve seen from the RPI Crime Notice fliers, it seems that arrests being made on Troy muggings are rare. I’m glad things worked out for the best.

I like tracking how my ideology shifts from year to year.

In May 2008, I was: -6.25 Left and -5.64 Libertarian:

This year, I’m -5.25 Left and -4.82 Libertarian:

I attribute the shift primarily to my Global Economics class last fall.

Last night, I called Ian. The premise was that I was asking him about housing next year, but the reality was that I just wanted to talk to him.

I started off the conversation with the typical “how have you been” stuff, which elicited nothing more than a fine. So, I launched into my pitch about next year: we’re planning on getting 3 apartments with 4 bedrooms each; trouble is there’s only 11 of us: would you be able to join us? While this was a perfectly legitimate question, I was also asking for more personal reasons: when would I get to see him again? Unfortunately, his answer was negative. He’s unable to return to campus until Spring term 2010 (roughly 9 months from now, which as Orian put it is the equivalent of a pregnancy). Bad on both levels: we don’t have the roommate we need, and I don’t have the Ian I want. At this point, I was finished with my legitimate pitch, and was about to go deeper. “I really miss you” was on the tip of my tongue, but before I could articulate it, Ian said something like “well, thanks for letting me know, was nice talking to you.” It no longer seemed appropriate to have a deeper conversation. I told him to take care, said bye, and hung up.

Dammit, that’s not at all what I had in mind.

But my mind is running its imagination again. What happens when Ian does return? My imagination says he’ll come live/sleep in our apartments; in the common area, or maybe even my room. Seems great to me. I keep thinking of activities and things I want to do, but I’d be uncomfortable doing alone. Like I’ve said before, I really need a sidekick, a partner-in-crime.

In school news, I had my 2nd CompOrg test yesterday. It was mostly on digital logic, and it felt good. I got my first CompOrg test back. I was expecting around 90%, and I received an 85%. That’s adequate. I also received my second Calc II test back. I was expecting a 40% to a 50%. I got an 84%. Sweet, no complaints there! I also took a Calc quiz, which went swimmingly. Things are suddenly looking way up in Calc II.

Upon completion of said quiz, I went to sleep. It was approximately 2:00 PM, as I had stayed up the whole night not studying for CompOrg. I awoke from my slumber at 8:30ish. Damn, Commons and Sage had closed. I dawdled around before heading to the study room for another weekend StarCraft party. I failed pretty hard at StarCraft, losing three times to Will and Ryan. I also broke a set of headphones in anger over one of the losses. A diagram, because I can.

I had decided to canon up, as I figured Will and Ryan were going to be little shits with their Vultures and Spider Mines, and I intended on teching to air once my canon defense was established. I failed to notice that the hill to my west provided easy access to my base. In frustration, I threw my headphones: breaking them.

F1 News!
2:00 AM was time for F1 Qualifying! Its the first race of the year, and I was pumped! Tons of rule changes over the season made qualifying anyone’s game. However, I was most unsatisfied with the result. Brawn GP 1 and 2?? REALLY? McLaren 14th and 15th??? Raikkonen 9th? FUCK. I was pleased with Vettel’s performance, however. Toyota’s time were disqualified, and Hamilton changed a gearbox, so amusingly Sutil will start 16th. New this year, F1 is posting the weights of each car, which indicates how much fuel they have on board. Ferrari, McLaren, and BMW are lighter than Brawn! Imagine that… Should be a good race tomorrow morning–as long as Brawn doesn’t run away with it.

Since its inception cuttlefishtech.com has remained more of an impersonal space, a place to talk about my interests, to share wacky stuff I’ve done, and to regurgitate internet links.

Apart from cuttlefishtech.com, I’ve been blogging away on more personal matters anonymously on another site. Recently, I’ve decided that it may not be entirely necessary to keep that site anonymous. Most of it is fit for the general public, and I don’t mind my name being attached to it. It was original intended for me as an escape, a place to share feelings I hadn’t yet made public. However, as I have made said feelings public, it no longer seems necessary to hide in anonymity.

I’ve also been inspired by the content of some of my peers’ blogs, Brian Michalski and Marc Ebuna.

I’m going to investigate merging articles from this other site onto this blog. I think I can “go back in time” and fix dates to make everything fit a normal timeline.

Additionally, I hope to once again rekindle my blogging spirit and post more frequent updates. If it’s anything like the past couple rekindlings, it’ll result in a spurt of posts for a week or so, then months of silence. I’ll attempt to avoid that.

Things I’m crossposting will be tagged with the category “X-Posted” and almost certainly “Personal“.

Editor’s Note: I just finished going through and cross-posting everything. Roughly 40 articles (from the 80 or so on that blog) were carried over. Some censoring took place. Check the X-Posted category.

First of all, I know this site is really old news. I probably first took the survey 3-4 years ago. However when I took it last week, I was a bit surprised by the results. Apparently, in the last couple years, I’ve grown more and more radical. I remember previously scoring a -1 Left and -2 Libertarian. Well, to my shock I now score a -6 Left -5.5 Libertarian!

I guess my high school education has pushed me farther and farther left! Exciting!

Dismaying though is this chart of the 2008 presidential nominee seekers.

Look at all thos democrats up in the I quadrant =(. At least Kucinich, Gravel, and I are chillin’ in the III quadrant. You can also quickly tell how unusual Ron Paul is, as he’s farther Libertarian than the core democrats.

In approximate list of desirability.

Update 3/29:
No Stanford. While I didn’t expect to get it, it was still my dream school (literally, I had a couple dreams about the campus!). I’ll hear from Cornell on Monday, very excited for that!

Update 3/31:
No Cornell or Harvey Mudd, and priority wait listed at Carnegie Mellon. I still feel pretty good about the Mellon, as I can apply to different sub-colleges, and I’m on the priority wait list. And, things always seem to turn out pretty good for me! Regardless of what happens, I’ll have Rensselaer to fall back on, and they’ve given a me a TON of money, so that’s still a very good option. Though its last on my list (OSU doesn’t count), I still regard it pretty highly and would still like to go there!

Update 4/1:
I took a virtual tour of the RPI campus using Google StreetView and Microsoft Live Local. It looks nice! And bigger than I thought. I also checked out their full list of clubs, and needless to say, I’m quite excited about their DDR club. Lots of fun things to do at Rensselaer! I think I’ve successfully rationalized not being accepted anywhere else.

Update 4/27:
After visiting both Rensselaer and Carnegie Mellon, I decided I liked RPI much better. As such, I’ve withdrawn from the CMU wait list, and have alerted RPI that I intend to attend! I’m very excited, and can’t wait for the fall!

Somehow, I lost some posts from my blog. Reposting them now…

I’ve had a really exciting last couple of weeks, and I figure its about time to try and catch up!

First, Mr. NWOC! Or actually, I suppose I need to talk about Mr. Spartan first!

The entire Mr. NWOC process began in February after Cami pressured me into becoming a candidate for Mr. Spartan. The whole Mr. * program is a fundraiser for Doernbecher Children’s Hospital. I campaign for Mr. Spartan by selling KrispyKreme donuts during lunch. I ended up making about $150 dollars for the cause, an amount I was quite proud of.

On March 8th, the Mr. Spartan pageant was held at Hilhi. The pageant consisted of Spirit Wear, a Talent, an Endorsement, a Trivia question, and a short answer question. For spirit wear, I went all-out and wore a suit with a blue tie and a corny Spartan helmet thing. I explained that my blue and white tie was color symbolism that represented the boldness and audacity of the Hilhi student while the helmet signified our fighting spirit. Yep, I think I read far too into the “describe your spirit wear” question.

The second event was the trivia question. Which I failed horribly. My question was “Name the president and vice president of the student body”. I was able to name Cami Tran as the president, but completely forgot about vice president Austyn. Sorry Austyn! I pointed out to the crowd that 50% on the IB scale would be a 5 out of 7, which is a very good score.

Next, it was time for talents! For my talent, I chose to do a couple DDR songs. Other talents performed included singing, dancing, comedy, gymnastics, and rapping. But I can’t do any of those things, so I did some DDR! It started out wonderfully. I chose Twilight Zone (apparently a crowd pleaser) and passed the song easily. But for my second song, I chose Afronova! I forgot that on heavy there’s a very hard section about half-way through the song. I failed after my pad kept slipping around under me. OH WELL.

After talents, it was time for endorsements. About 3 hours earlier, I alerted my dad that I’d need someone to endorse me. He prepared a quick speech, and man was it amazing! He started off by talking about how I resembled a spartan. Except that (as he said) I didn’t really, as the Spartans were strong, fearless warriors, and I most clearly was not. According to him, I spent much of my time on a computer killing Warlocks in WoW. I was pretty amused by this point, and a bit embarrassed. But my dad continued, illustrating how the Spartans of today would use technology, and how I used technology to my advantage often. He summed up many of my accomplishments and even threw in a bit about the War in Iraq. Needless to say, it was absolutely amazing. I think it was my dad’s endorsement that really enabled me to win!

Lastly was the short answer question. I forgot exactly what I was asked, but I talked about Politics or something. Regardless, it went quite well.

The 9 of us who were competing for Mr. Spartan stood up on stage. First, the runners up were announced. I didn’t win 4th. I didn’t win 3rd. I didn’t win 2nd. By this point, I was pretty expectant that I was going to win. And sure enough, Cami read my name off the ballot. I was completely blown away by the whole thing. I received a scepter (pimp staff), a crown, and a sash!

Winning Mr. Spartan meant that I was able to compete at the next level in the Mr. NWOC pageant! A summary of the Mr. NWOC pageant is the next item on my list of things to blog, so check back soon!

As foreshadowed in the last entry, by winning Mr. Spartan I was eligible to compete in the next level of Mr ____, Mr. NWOC!

The Mr. NWOC pageant was held in a similar, but simpler format. It consisted of spirit wear, a question on “what makes your school special”, the talent, a serious question, and a funny question.

Here’s the rundown of things went down!

I approached the Spirit Wear piece in much the same fashion: a simple suit with a blue tie. But I took it one step further: I wore the head from our Spartan Mascot, Sparty. I presume I looked like a fool, but I was told it was awesome anyway.

Next came the question about our school. I thought the question was “What makes your school unique”. But instead the host asked me “What makes your school great”. As you’ll shortly see, my answer didn’t fulfill this second question very well. I started by briefly talking about our academics (the IB program) and athletics (swimming and wrestling) before hitting my main talking point: the location and design of our campus.

“If you’ve ever been to Hilhi, you’d know that its located between a water treatment plant and a landfill. So you can imagine the all sorts of wonderful aromas that drift onto our campus when the wind blows just right. Aside from the geography, our campus is unique as well. It was designed by a California architect, who apparently didn’t realize that not only is Oregon rather cold, but that it also rains a lot too. Each subject area has its own building, and we have to walk outdoors between classes. Up until around 10 years ago, the school didn’t even have covered walkways!”

Yep, it went something like that! There was much applause, laughter, and cheering.

Third in line was the talent. Again, I was doing DDR. But I learned from my previous mistakes. I brought a different pad that didn’t slide around as much, and I chose to dance Burning Heat rather than Afronova as my second song. Burning Heat is a cooler song anyway, and it has arguably more impressive steps. What really made my talent awesome this time around is the ending to Burning Heat. It ends with two <- -> jumps, and for these notes, I spun around and faced the crowd, not even looking at the screen. It was epic, and everyone went nuts.

Finally, it was time for the part that worried me most: the interview questions. First up was the serious question “If you could meet any president, who would it be?” “That’s simple,” I responded, “But the president I’d meet isn’t president… yet. If I were to meet any president, it would definitely be Barack Obama.” I launched into a “why I love Obama” type speech throwing in the key words hope, change, audacity, and YES WE CAN! I ended by reminding everyone to take part in America’s political process. I couldn’t have imagined a better question. Except there was one better. The funny question. “If America were to add a 51st state, what would you name it?” Without a pause whatsoever, I answered “Iraq.” I backed this up by explaining that making Iraq a state would solve a multitude of problems, including ending the war, and serving as the launch point to acquire the 52nd state, Iran. The crowd loved it, and I couldn’t have imagined two better questions.

Once the judges deliberated, the result was in! I had won! Easily, I imagine. In total, all the Mr ___ events raised $38,000 for Doernbecher! Congratulations to everyone in the NWOC league, and a big special thanks to all those from Hilhi who turned out to support my venture!

Fact: The clock in my room is set an hour ahead.

Last time Daylight savings rolled around, I was too lazy to update my clock. And I still haven’t updated it. I’ve mostly gotten used to it, though I still ocassionallu freak out before school, as it appears that I’ll be quite late!

Fact: I have a large poster of Bush in my room.

When Mr. Cleveland retired at the end of last year, he had a stack of posters that he was giving away to students. Being the most political, I lay claim to the Bush poster. I inteded to give it to a friend, or burn it, or something like that. But when I got home I noticed a big bare spot on my wall. Now it hangs overlooking my bed so that every morning when I wake up and light my head, the first thing I see is our president. It’s quite humorous.

So, something happened this past week that tripled my Spam intake…

Up until this point, I didn’t use any junk mail filtering, because I never really had enough to warrant it. But this week began driving me crazy. Since I have my own email, something simple like junk mail filtering isn’t readily available. My webhost uses SpamAssassin, but apparently it hasn’t been updated in aeons and it was still only catching about 1/3rd of my spam. Which was quite annoying. And for some reason Outlook doesn’t like to filter email from IMAP hosts (which is the only way to check your email). So, I was left with few options.

I had previously been forwarding all my Gmail email to my cuttlefishtech.com address, but with the recent spam outbreak, I decided to switch and go the other way around. Now my cuttlefishtech.com forwards to my Gmail and gets filtered there. It makes virtually no difference to me, as I can rig Outlook to fetch spam from Gmail. It’s actually nicer, because I set up a whole bunch of IMAP folders that are filtered instantly by Google rather than by Outlook. The only problem I see is my current method of retrieving email at school may need to be updated (though on the plus side, anyone else that wants to check their Gmail at school will be able to). Oh, and there also seems to be a bit more latency, which is odd. Could just be Myspace is hella slow tonight.

Quoth Granma in Grapes of Wrath, “Pu-raise Gawd fur vittory!”