I bought a SSD and it got here yesterday. I was thinking about the last HDDs I bought, and I always seem to buy hard drives when they're around $100. I bought a 200gig years ago when it was 100, then I bought a 500gig when it was 100, and the last drive I bought was a 1TB for $100. Now this 128gig SSD was also $100 which I think seemed like a fair price and 128GB is not too small at all. Just thought that was kinda interesting.

Also I want to install it and everything but I really don't feel like opening up the comp and fucking with cables and shit. I also kind of know it's going to be dusty as fuck in there, so I might hold off until I can get some compressed air to blow it out. I've been meaning to stop by wal-mart or something to pick up some silicone lubricant for my rubik's cube, so I might just get both.

Yeah I've been rubik's a lot lately. A few months ago I was like "damn I want to learn to solve a rubik's cube for real", so I bought one and practiced a lot. It's actually really easy, you can learn the "beginner's method" in like a day, no joke. There's only like, 6 algorithms you even need to know, I had them memorized after the first day. Now I can solve it in like 1:30 on average pretty consistently, which isn't really a good time at all, but it's kind of the lower limit for the beginner's method. So now i'm moving on to some speedcuber's methods, I think the most popular is the Fridrich method, which is what I'm learning, but it kind of takes a while because you basically have to solve the first 2 layers (first step of Fridrich is called "F2L" which is "first 2 layers") intuitively, there's not really any algorithms to use (there are but it's better to learn how to do it intuitively). I'm getting the hang of it, there's a couple cases where it takes me some thinkin' to figure out a way, but I can almost always eventually solve the first 2 layers.

If you don't know how to do a rubik's basically you form a "cross" on the bottom (this is really easy to do), but normally you'd use a specific algorithm to get the corners in place, then another 2 algorithms to get the edge pieces of the middle layer in place, but with F2L you form the cross, then solve the corners and edge pieces together in one step. It's kind of a mind-fuck just because I'm used to using algos to solve those which is really easy but time consuming, since you have to repeat one algo like 2-6 times per corner, and the edge pieces are an 8-step algo that sometimes need to be repeated twice. I dunno I think rubik's cubes are pretty interesting and fun. Also people who don't know how to solve them think you have to be super smart to do it. When I show people I can solve it in like 1:30-1:50, they are always super impressed even though it's not hard at all, it's just memorized algorithms.

But the Fridrich method is a bit more impressive, just because you can eventually get sub-1 minute times pretty easily. The hard part of the Fridrich is the last 2 steps, which are more algorithm memorization but there are like 53 unique cases that all have an algo for them. Crazy. I don't know if I'll ever go that far but, maybe. I mean I'm sure someday I will. But ANYWAY it's just weird because at the moment I'm only focusing on doing F2L, and it takes me a few minutes, sometimes 5-10 to do it and considering I'm used to solving a cube in 1:30 it's like "damn..." but, it's quite a bit more fun thinking about it then just rote memorization of algorithms.

I did not intent to write so much about rubik's cubes.

every day that passes I hate reddit more and more. the only subs worth going to are like, /r/askscience because it's so heavily moderated that there's no joke posts and only real scientific answers with citations are allowed. it's the worst.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnum_effect

I liked this one.

AGH. WTF is up with arachnids and my god damned bed? I just put my hand on my leg to feel a hairy thick legged spider on it in the pitch black of my room. I instantly crushed it with my fingers (which I only figured out after searching around and later finding its curled up body under earlier discarded pants, apparently I only mortally wounded it because it couldn't have landed there)

FUCK. I can't sleep again.

EDIT: at least I learned something: Spiders are cold to the touch. I half wondered if it was in my imagination and it was just some leaf stuck to my leg that I crushed because of the cool touch.