More about Dan Cosley than you wanted to know, I'm sure.

At any rate, I think that everyone should take a moment every day to notice or do something a little bit out of their ordinary. I don't always succeed, but I try. Enjoy.

If you're living in my past, feel free to try the entries from 2004, 2003, 2002, 2001, 2000, 1999, or 1998. Yeah, I've been personal-blogging for eight years, I just didn't know I was doing it.

07/18/05
I'm going to give Xanga a try for a while, so blog entries will be located here: http://www.xanga.com/ForteTuba, at least for the short term future.

07/17/05
In the DQ today, a urinal cover with a little black section. Turns out when you pee on it, it goes clear and reveals the writing underneath: "Does that come in an ADULT SIZE?" Clever, sort of, but not really what you'd expect to find at Dairy Queen.

07/15/05
I can't believe someone stole my towel in the locker room and left behind a wet, sopping used mess. I'm pretty sure I know who did it, as there were only one or two other people running around in the shower, but since I didn't actually see the crime, I didn't confront. I hope he doesn't mind that I use towels over and over. Ass. In other news, the Brass gig went really well today, and I successfully transferred beer to a secondary fermenter last night, so, good.

07/14/05
Ack, the power went out at the building right around 2:00... it was like a message from God, "Dan: Go home early". But I dallied for a few minutes before going to get the bike clothes on and was walking down the hallway to leave when the power came back on. I don't really trust it, but I'm going to stick around and try to work through. Grr. Update: the power went out again -- and came back on again when I tried to leave the second time -- and since I had lost faith in the electrical system, I decided to go ahead and bike it home. Nice ride, yes it was.

07/13/05
I was loading stuff in the car for rehearsal and saw a bumblebee casually strolling down the sidewalk. Very slowly, of course, because it has little tiny legs, and slightly drunkenly, because those little bumps in the sidewalk are huge if you're small. Just an odd mini-sight. Here's hoping rest-of-day is better than the week so far. A lot of Help Others, not a lot of Help Myself.

07/12/05
Ugh, two really, really demotivating days in a row of dealing with crap. Got a blowout on the way in this morning, punctured the spare trying to get the tire back on (these narrow tires have officially failed, they're too hard to change), did a half-mile walkout to the bus stop, wasted an hour to get to a meeting that John wasn't around for anyways. I swear, this weekly meeting is cursed. Yesterday also bad, for reasons I'd just as soon not dwell on -- but, bad. At least it's likely things only go up for the rest of the week.

07/11/05
Headline: "All cows from herd with one mad cow test negative". Isn't that impossible, given that we know that one cow has the disease? Sloppy, sloppy, sloppy.

07/10/05
From Dennis as Gollum to Ray passing out, it was a pretty eventful weekend at Dekalb this year. A lot of fun, a lot of work, all good stuff.

07/08/05
Reading Usenet, I see a post that ends "thanks for that stroll down memory lane". But what I read is "thanks for that scroll down memory lane", which I thought was pretty clever for an online community although I'm sure it's been said many times before. The more worrisome thing for me is that I am, more and more, finding myself reading a word I expect to be there rather than the word that is actually there. I guess that means my neural network is finely tuned, and wrong. Sigh.

07/07/05
You know what would be a hell of a lot cooler than trucking back early in the buses from Milwaukee to Stillwater and "dropping in halfway through the parade"? Going to Great America on Sunday morning, leaving around 4 and getting back to the T.C. late on Sunday that weekend. That would be awesome, the corps actually doing something social instead of... half a parade. Granted, one earns money and one costs money, but there's a fun factor in corps that sometimes gets lost in the quest for good. I'll probably mention the idea to Brent or Dave, just for kicks.

07/06/05
It was a great night for corps. Good crowd, great weather, solid corps, companionship, and yes, I got to play the solo in the show and although I don't remember much playing it, reliable sources told me that it kicked ass. Nice.

07/03/05
Wow, today was grease/dirt/clean day. Did the lawnmower, the car, both horns, and a little bike work. Plus, got the first batch of homebrew going. Air's bubbling out of the fermenter, so I guess that's good. *crosses fingers that my sanitation was satisfactory*

07/01/05
I finally got up the nerve to buy a homebrewing kit, and was super-excited about starting up last night. Turned out the enamel pot (from WalMart) already had bare metal showing through and enamel flaking off. Stupid enamel. Stupid WalMart.

06/29/05
I hate going out to the garage and finding something wrong with the bike. Apparently I broke a spoke recently on the geared commuter because, sure enough, it was rubbing against the brake this morning. At least it impelled me to take the singlespeed for a real ride in to school. Kind of interesting, though hard work -- it's geared just a skosh high for me. Quiet and simple, though, especially without the speedometer. Just me, the bike, the hills, the traffic. In other news, the weather is supposed to be total crap for rehearsal tonight. The "be good" part of me wants the weather to stay at least marginally okay, but the "play hooky" part really wants to play hooky.

06/28/05
Turns out you're only as smart as your unit tests -- and the ones I wrote for user properties weren't very smart at all. At least it was relatively easy to find (and fix). And Justin did a pretty good job with the new MPAA field.

06/27/05
Yeah, looking out in the morning and seeing a beer can on the grill, felt just a little white trash, or college student, or -- God forbid -- white trash college student. Posting the classified on Craigslist for the brewing kit was a mistake, too. No one's going to offer one up and it's just keeping me from pulling the trigger.

06/26/05
So I started a couple of fires today. Apparently my aluminuminum foil wasn't heavy duty enough for the power of mesquite and fire. Also not the greatest day of disc golf ever, must have thrown six into the creek. I like the creek, but not that much.

06/25/05
It's hard to believe, but pleasing, that the in-laws bought a car on one half day's shopping. Good for them, I hope they like it.

06/23/05
No Excellence In Research Recognition Award for me. Not a huge surprise -- I've gotten one before and they might want to spread them around, plus the work is a little soft and fuzzy for CS. Still, I wonder what the decision process was and how many applicants and awards there were. I have a bad feeling that I finished in second place and everyone else tied for first.

06/22/05
Perhaps I saw the smallest rabbit ever today, perched in a very precarious place. Silly, little rabbit.

06/19/05
Jason from 1990 Northmen recognized me marching off the field at a show tonight. Drum corps is a small, small world. A small, small, very tiring world.

06/16/05
When you don't keep in close contact with people, and you go through your address book and have to delete 3/4 of the entries, it's kind of sad.

06/15/05
My birthday present: a giant ass-chewing from the corps staff. Thanks, staff.

06/14/05
Heh, nabbed for the first time by my anti-Usenet system. Thank god for csh, you can write a script that won't let you run the newsreader unless it's outside of work hours. Funny, I did something very similar (replacing "sol.exe" with a program that made the screen flash "get back to work" in bright colors) a long long time ago for a co-woker back at Progressive Medical. I wonder how they're doing. (Checks Google). Holy shit, they're doing pretty well. Congrats, guys. In other news, I could have had another $300 voucher but missed my chance (I was burned too badly on the trip out to want to bump to a later flight). Grr.

06/13/05
I have high hopes for the American Light Ale. Bottling beer is a very tranquil activity. The ocean was nice today, too -- a cool blue haze on the horizon that made the world small and beautiful.

06/12/05
New corps hat, same as the old corps hat -- very, very old corps hat, in fact. I like it. Thanks for dragging me out shopping, Lindsay.

06/10/05
You could spend a long, long time just walking the streets of New York City. Fun, but extra-tiring. The archway bassoonist may have been the highlight.

06/09/05
I _could_ have had a $300 travel voucher and gotten to New York just an hour late. Instead, I got almost nothing except drama, waiting on airplanes, and four hours of lateness. Grr. At least Lindsay bailed me out with a pickup at the airport.

06/07/05
I keep putting my cell phone near my keyboard and then grabbing it instead of the mouse to work the pointer. Arg.

06/06/05
It's sad that when your phone rings, you know it's almost certainly a wrong number. Also, got my ass totally kicked in squash this morning... by Loren. He was great, I was not so much.

06/03/05
Two squirrels getting frisky on a bicycle, changing drivers in the middle of University Ave on the way to school, putting my tea in for 44 minutes instead of 4... I have more adventures by 8:30am than most people have in their WHOLE LIVES. Well, maybe that's stretching it. Corps hanging out tonight was a lot of fun too, very nice.

06/02/05
$740 for the car, although it does drive better now. Also, there's a family of rabbits one building over. Dad, mom, and baby rabbit were all running around last night as I was heading home. I bet there are more baby rabbits, but I only saw the one.

06/01/05
Yeah, they worked us pretty good at rehearsal tonight with the parade coming up on Friday. Hard to believe.

05/31/05
What happened to May? On May 15 it looked like a month of limitless research potential. Now it just looks like it's gone.

05/29/05
Beautiful 20-miler today. Hearing the electricity crackling on the overhead power lines while biking down County C was very cool. Though perhaps I should say, "cracklin'", since a couple of the signs I saw today were suffering from a St. Paul G Shortage. A bar advertised "more parkin" on a sign, which is okay, after all, it's a bar. But a rental property said "now leasin", which seemed a bit informal for an office park.

05/27/05
Walking home from giving blood today, I see a cat run out of an alley across the street. In the other lane is a driver who is not paying enough attention, hits the cat full on, and just drives off. Very disturbing -- the cat's mangled leg twitched for about 20 seconds and stopped. However, as I found out when I went to pull it off the road, it was not yet dead. Still purring. Nothing to do for it, except put it on the grass and pet it until it stopped purring. Sad. A lady who stopped her car knocked on a couple of doors and found the owner. I got to hand the body over, also pretty sad. I've never been around something with good brain function that died before.

05/26/05
Wow, today's ride was really, really hard. Sure, I haven't done exercise in 5 days in a while, but still -- pushing to reach 13 mph on a bike is way below normal.

05/25/05
Heh, thinking that no one has passed me on the bike recently leads to immediate come-uppance the next day, being passed left and right.

05/23/05
Driving down the parkway to work, a goose starts to cross the road. I patiently wait. As a reward, the goose pauses for just a moment to deposit a turd right in front of me, then moves on. Thanks, goose.

05/22/05
I went down to the Root River Trail again today, since it was so nice last time with the wildlife, etc. I rode a different section of the trail where I didn't see anything larger than a squirrel. Very disappointing. It was super-windy on the way back, too... I could have had a really tough ride with no wildlife without the five-hour drive, arg.

05/20/05
There'd probably be more in the diary if I haven't been falling asleep around 8pm every night.

05/17/05
Official notifcation received on the DDF, but still not from any of my advisors. At least Georganne was willing to give me the letter.

05/14/05
You'd hope that giving lots of extra credit and a ridiculously generous grading policy would help forestall the grade begging. But nooooooooo.

05/12/05
Searching the web to see if there is any news about the UMN doctoral dissertation fellowships for this year. Apparently, someone else has received one and there's a notice on her blog -- and it's already indexed in Google. But, no official notice on the grad school site. Still, you'd think someone in the CS department would have told me if I'd gotten it. *sigh* A funny way to find out, though.

05/11/05
Interesting -- the trees along the Washington Avenue bridge are full of rubber ducks and especially shoes. Very visible in the winter, but now that the leaves have popped out they're a lot more discreet. Kind of like fruit. Stinky fruit.

05/10/05
I totally didn't expect to get anything in return for loaning Pam that book. Very sneaky way to elicit a tea preference last week, that was.

05/05/05
So weird. No, not "5/5/5". Having no absolutely critical deadlines for the first time in six weeks. I really had no idea what to do.

05/02/05
"Writing a grant proposal is like getting the hardest take home final ever. You have a week or two, it has to be in the top 10 percent of all proposals written by the smartest and best-connected people in your field. If you win, you get $700,000. If you lose, your career is toast." At least it's over -- though now we frantically prep for class for a couple of days. Exciting, sort of.

05/01/05
Yeah, we had camp in 40 degrees, 15 mph winds, and snow. We learned the ballad. It was fun. Envious of Lindsay's bike ride through New York City, though.

04/29/05
Happy Birthday to Sue. Light on the exciting presents but still a pretty good day.

04/25/05
Why is a newspaper called "Food Consumer" reporting on a headline "Airplane hits skydiver to death in Florida"?

04/24/05
And so begins the transition from teaching taking all of my time to corps taking all of my time.

04/21/05
Not once, but twice in three minutes, I tried to move a mouse pointer from my left desktop monitor to my laptop, which happened to be sitting on the desk. Apparently, having a multiple monitor setup has conditioned me to think that it's possible.

04/20/05
I saw white smoke coming out of the school's coal power plant and thought that they had elected a new superintendent.

04/19/05
It turns out that if the light comes through the water bottle in just the right way, the shadow is an eerie yellow color. Cool.

04/18/05
Spring has officially sprung here. Now the (heh) perennial question: plant some veggies?

04/17/05
Today was an absolutely stellar ride. The Lake Wobegon Trail, very nice indeed. Although people have thrown a lot of trash along the trail, kind of West Virginia-ish. And on a deer crossing sign, someone drew a big red dot on the nose. Pretty funny.

04/12/05
Mmm, solid food. Even plain chicken is pretty exotic when you haven't had anything like it in three days.

04/11/05
It took an entire day to eat a bowl of soup -- and I considered it a big win. Perspective, I guess.

04/06/05
I don't know if the edible user interfaces talk was worth $850, but it was pretty damn funny.

04/05/05
Another conference, another good talk. Wish I would have remembered the "hire me" part, though.

04/04/05
I don't know if the homeless lady by the river who said "I hope you hate yourself" was talking to me. She wasn't looking at me, but I was the only one around. Of course, as Sara pointed out, maybe there were lots of people around for her.

04/02/05
"More than 60 percent of the adults in this country are statistically overweight", said the newspaper story. They're saying compared to something called the BMI, but it just sounds wrong -- a bit like all the kids in Lake Wobegon. Also, RIP John Paul II.

04/01/05
Excellent, after working like a dog on class all week I wake up to unhappy students. Nice way to start the day. At least donating blood helped reduce the blood pressure a little bit. In other news, it's bad to advertise a sale "Was $109, now $139!", and finally, good luck to Lindsay and her mom on the long haul move to New York. Drive safe.

03/29/05
Who would ever, ever, EVER want to save a game of Spider Solitaire? It's solitaire, not the freaking Da Vinci code.

03/28/05
"Freak basketball accident" and "triple amputation" should never be mentioned in the same sentence.

03/27/05
*laugh* I'm not sure there _is_ a dying-for-sins kind of Easter bunny. That seems like it would be a little morbid. "Now, kids, not only was the Easter bunny a horrible genetic colored-egg-laying freak, but you remember when you hit that kid on the head with that rock? Yes, you, Danny. Well, that killed the Easter bunny too. Because he died for YOUR SINS, you little miscreants!"

03/26/05
Coach Carter, walking in Communiversity Park, Hockey, and toilet repair. It was a good way to spend some bonus time, even the toilet repair. I just hope we sealed out all the Noxious Gases. And I hope the upcoming frantic week of packing goes great. I'll miss having you nearby, my friend, but I know New York is going to be a great experience.

03/25/05
Why yes, if you smash a rock into a giant puddle of slush, it will splash the crap out of your pants. Thanks for asking.

03/24/05
Hee... Lindsay's surprise party, a night I hope she remembers with great joy forever. As for me, it was good to be almost socially normal. It only took ten years or so, but at least I'm getting there. Would have been good to have that at the conference Monday night too, but hey.

03/22/05
I can't believe I got the "are you a woman?" argument in the context of talking about why females often drop out of CS classes. Absolutely, positively crazy.

03/21/05
A pretty terrible day of conference, but at least I got through and ended with an excellent meal at Celia's. (I originally typed that "Cilia's", which makes me think of a restaurant for paramecia, which is unbearably geeky so I'll stop now.)

03/20/05
I was totally embarrassed about the idea of going to a wine tasting, but I got a little prodding from Sue, and it was good. I need prodding, I guess. I'm not as sure about the buying a $50 bottle of wine thing, as I have no idea when to drink it, but it was interesting to do it. Burned money like drinking water on this trip so far. You can see why people decide to do that but I fear fiscal consequences.

03/19/05
Silly weather forecasters, if we didn't think it was going to rain maybe I would have ridden my bike out in SF. Or maybe not. For some reason I'm not as excited about it this year. I hope it comes back as the weather around here warms up...

03/17/05
I think I've mentioned those paper towel dispensers, "Intuisense" or whatever, that make you wave your arms around like a marionette rather than letting you, say, pull a towel down. Not a fan, especially because the interface is not intuitive at all. But, today's comment: the one I saw had a label, "In case of emergency, turn knob on side." As far as I know, there are no paper towel emergencies, anywhere, ever.

03/15/05
It was too nice not to walk across the bridge yesterday. Plus, I actually got some research-related work done. Not much, but some.

03/12/05
Hm, I just gave 12 bucks to a total stranger who just asked. 1) Apparently drinking beer opens my financial tap. 2) Maybe we should sponsor a couple of the Brass kids going off to other corps.

03/11/05
Slow week for diary entries... the emotional weather has been mostly grumpy, with a chance of major grumpiness and grump out of the northwest at 10-15 grumps per hour this week. Not so good.

03/07/05
I remember when five points really mattered on an assignment. Wow, I was young. Something about the way we do grading and use it as an incentive for directing effort isn't quite right. For example, points for comments. Just seems wrong. But, what's right?

03/06/05
Grumpy, grumpy, grumpy all weekend. Damn ankle. Damn lack of motivation. Damn that I can't think of fun things to go out and do.

03/03/05
Being called a "gifted" teacher by one John Carlis, who cares a _lot_ about the education side of the biz -- that's like a whole big ego cookie. Mmm, cookie.

03/01/05
Research "progress" for the last couple of months has been various flavors of reporting things already done and half-formed plans to do other things. This is mildly annoying -- I want to _go_. But, getting money and reporting results is also important.

02/27/05
Another Sunday partly full of fun, and partly worrying about class. Never having Sunday assignments again. But -- plenty of fun as well.

02/26/05
When they say "pride goeth before the fall", I'm not sure they had skiing in mind. Lindsay lent me her short skis, and they felt great for a couple of runs, so I decided to take a jump relatively big. I fell relatively hard, and my ski got relatively in front of me, and my ankle folded relatively in half.

02/25/05
Wow, the Adler Brau got bought out. Food and beer was still good but, not quite the same. The world slowly changes under us, I guess.

02/24/05
For some reason making a to do list right before you go on a mini-vacation seems like a terrible idea.

02/23/05
Which would you rather see tromped into the snow: a smiley face, "I Love Julie", or "RATMAN"? Fortunately for me, I don't have to make this choice -- they're all available on campus at the moment. I wish I weren't anxious about all the things I should be doing, but at least I can take amused comfort in the efforts of others.

02/22/05
As I read back through the entries, I note that just about every one is about teaching. Hm. Also, I got some mail from a sperm bank asking me to open an account. Apparently, the well-spermed can make a lot of money fathering children anonymously.

02/21/05
John Riedl has a hypothesis on the Tuesday/Thursday lecture thing: people are just tireder later in the week. He assures me it gets worse as the semester goes on. Grrrreat.

02/20/05
I just can't pull the trigger on that $800 ibook. C'mon, Dan. Spend like nobody's going to care what you owe when you die -- especially you.

02/18/05
For being the Association For Computer Machinery, the ACM's renewal interface really stinks. Not as bad as Travelocity (even worse, it turns out), but pretty darn bad.

02/17/05
Anyone have hypotheses on why Thursday lectures aren't as good as Tuesday ones?

02/15/05
Lindsay got some spyware, and I could just kill the unethical twits who write that kind of stuff.

02/13/05
Watching high school kids sing South Pacific was a lot more fun than I expected. Not a good pit, but some decent singing and acting, and some nice production elements. Big Buddha. I do wish I hadn't been so worried about team 4061 getting the assignment done.

02/12/05
One nice thing about being a teacher is the free textbooks: I can hardly turn my head without staring at yet another copy of UNIX Systems Programming.

02/10/05
A bit of a lull the last few days, I guess, trying to find a rhythm that lets teaching and research and exercise and home all get the right amount of time. Challenging.

02/07/05
How did someone throw a bicycle into the campus shoe tree? Very impressive. Oh, and I saw someone taking a whiz while reading the paper. I guess it beats doing either or both of those things while driving, but still...

02/04/05
It's beginning to feel a lot like bike ride -- 50+ degrees today _and_ tomorrow? Woo. Update: I actually went out, 12 miler. Not much, but fun. Really tiring, and I thought I was out of shape, until I remembered the blood-giving this morning. Half a gallon. :)

02/03/05
The bad news: the two hours of reading I did today was the first two hours of research I've done all week. The also bad news: I wound up spending about 15 hours total on the quiz. Probably a bit much. The good news: at least it appears that the quiz, though flawed, was fair and that people had some chance of performing well on it.

02/01/05
It is often better to tell people why you would like them to do something before you ask them to do it. Lesson learned. Not super happy about the way it was learned, but in the long run I suppose that doesn't matter.

01/28/05
I sure hope this undergrad research experience works out for both Justin and me.

01/27/05
Spilling tea into the projector as you're setting up for class: not cool. Not being able to get your laptop working, also not cool. Finding out it was because the projector was broken before you got there: not really cool either. Having your entire lecture planned aroud showing code examples, but not having a laptop: extra not-cool. Having that turn out to be the best lecture of the semester so far: pretty cool.

01/26/05
Yesterday, walking across the Washington Ave bridge, someone walking the other way, licking a metal fork. The most plausible mental vignette is someone who lifted the fork from a dining hall, but you wonder what other stories might be out there. In other news, I saw a guy talking about needing to lose weight because he "needs to lift the hood in order to see the engine" these days. That's a first-class euphamism.

01/25/05
Hm, I am noticing some distinct weaknesses in my teaching here. Some because I'm relatively new with the material and we're trying to pull together assignments, etc., early on; some from trying the notes format instead of slides; some because I'm over-emphasizing the "teach yourself" angle of the class. At any rate, it leaves me in a pretty bad mood. Good thing the punching bags and weights await at home.

01/23/05
Went ice skating today for the first time in maybe 15 years. Weak, cold, and ankle-twisting... but still, not bad. *ponders doing it more*

01/22/05
Heh, it's nice being registered for _thesis_ credits, as opposed to pre-thesis credits.

01/21/05
"Doctoral Candidate Cosley" isn't an exciting title, but it's a title I'm willing to run with. It's not fun having your weaknesses exposed as questions during a thesis proposal talk at the time, but in the long run it's a good thing to have had happen. Especially if I go do something about it.

01/17/05
Heh, I went out and bought a bag stand, heavy bag and speed bag today. I must really like the punching things kind of exercise. They were going to ring it up an extra 25% off by accident, too, but I was too honest (read: stupid) to let them do it. I bet I could have used that thirty bucks a lot more than Galyan's.

01/14/05
Hm, I must not have had much to say yesterday. Today, on the other hand, I scheduled my prelim oral for next Friday. Eep!

01/12/05
Yi, jogging and kayaking on the same day. Tiring but fun. It was a little weird flying back and seeing snow on the ground and thinking "8 hours ago I was kayaking in sunny skies". Plus, now I need to seriously start thinking about school again.

01/11/05
Strangely, I'm having a lot of fun being sociable. I wonder if I'm getting ill.

01/09/05
Good thing they they have the Program for Infant Toddler Caregivers here at the Catamaran Resort at the same time as the IUI conference. For gender-balancing, and everything. In other news, I wish I'd known the weather was going to clear today, I might have tried the boat rental instead of the "flop down tired on the bed for lunch" plan. Still have high hopes for Tuesday, though.

01/08/05
Las Vegas is crazy-looking. Really pretty, though. The beaches at San Diego, also very very pretty, even in the rain. Wish I were in a better mood, though, and that the weather had supported the half-day bike ride I had planned. C'est, comme ils disent, que.

01/07/05
Some people, when they want to send a message to a company, write a nice letter. Other people file giant lawsuits. They suck. In other news, Sheridan Printing seems to be doing its best to suck the joy out of having the CHI paper (almost) done.

01/06/05
Well, maybe not quite "done". But very, very close. In other news, the CS department had a mail outage such that they knew who was sending mail but lost the contents. So, they tell me who tried to send mail. "equalizersjeotebn@schubert.nu". I think I won't try to ask them what they wanted. I figure it's my money.

01/05/05
Holy crap, I think I'm going to get my final CHI paper and my thesis proposal done on the same day. Kick-ass.

01/01/05
You're not supposed to get lightning when it's 25 degrees and raining ice, are you? In other news, I just made my first ebay purchase ever. Hello, cheep bike tires.

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Personal notes from 2005