Random thoughts, 2-19-05

Despite my antisocial tendencies, I went out and saw the theater department put on Noises Off with my mysterious suitemate Phil and the internet guru Stu. It's a British comedy, I do believe. Synopsis can be found here. It was funny, with the third act hilariously paying off the setup of the first two acts.
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I first saw this on theferrett. It's that Baby got Book video, which I found mildly entertaining.
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Played some Texas Hold Em for a charity event put on by my senior honor society. It was fun, and I got two killer flops (we tend to remember the ones we win). The first involved me holding A-K, with two aces coming up on the flop. The second I held double deuce, landing another deuce on the flop, and eventually winning big with a full house.
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We held a securities forum on Thursday between administration and the students. We've had a rash of car break ins and other related problems. I'm surprised that administration actually would take the time to listen to a few students. It's interesting, though, the degree of cynicism there is. No one can take better charge of students security than the students themselves, but any program started one year isn't likely to be picked up by the next. Also, the city of Tulsa is making an effort to sweep homeless people out of the downtown area. This move will likely push those people through campus, as the campus is located near the down town area.

Not to speak in cliches, but we'll have to give this security thing the old college try.
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( special dictionary meme )

GRE Vocab prep

Okay, I admit that I'm in a bit of trouble on the GRE. On my practice test, I scored a measly 500 (out of 800). Fifty seventh percentile. That wouldn't be too bad of a score for an engineer, but I'm a history major now so I'm pretty sure that I'll need to bring that up at least 150 points. One major weakness I had was on analogies and antonyms (getting less than fifty percent correct). I remember doing some vocabulary builders in high school for the SATs, but I've regressed in that area. I suppose I could take the GRE prep class, but that's a lot of money. I'm sure I could pull up the 670 on my quantitive section by taking a bit more time.

Fortunately, while on a random trip to Borders to look through the manga section, I happened upon a GRE Vocab builder book made by the Kaplan people. It's a book full of ready-made flashcards, complete with parts of speech, sample sentences, pronunciation guide, and synonyms. It was only fifteen bucks, which I figured was worth the time I would have spent making flashcards on the 594 most commonly tested vocab words on the GRE. My mysterious suitemate wldntulk2knwwho (who bought the first two volumes of MegaTokyo while we were at Borders) and decided to split the words into 49.5 sets of twelve (they come in sheets of six). We realized how much in trouble we were with the first two sets. Sigh, I'm going to have to deal with these words as an academia sooner or later so it might as well be sooner. And I'm going to try to commit these words into long term memory.

I'd just like to note some of the words that have been used on Magic cards, linking to Star City.

abeyance - temporary supression or suspension
The baseball game was held in abeyance while it continued to rain.
synonyms: deferral, delay, dormancy, postponement, remission
Ah, the typical white card that only delays the problem.

abjure - to reject; abandon formally
The spy abjured his allegiance to the United States when he defected to Russia.
synonyms: forswear, recall, recant, retract, take back
Magic card from Weatherlight.

abyss - a deep pit or hole
I'm sure most people know what this means, and it was one of the coolest Magic cards ever.

aerie - a nest built high in the air; an elevated, often secluded dwelling
Perched high among the trees, the eagle's aerie was filled with eggs.
synonyms: perch, stronghold
The Magic card Soulcatcher's Aerie comes to mind