And actually my Algebra is pretty rusty too. I’m not sure I can manage 232. For those who are wondering why I’ve been so scarce lately (and/or why there are no new Warships of the Week) that’s why.

Six years is a long time to go without doing any differentiation or integration. It’s easy to forget what you’re doing in that time.

Add that in with all the programming stuff I need to do from 3 CS classes, and I don’t really have time for sleep, much less fun stuff.

Ah well. Such is life.

So, I have my financial aid and therefore my books.

Just in time to start another course at CBC. I am going to be insanely busy for a while.

Well, Jason did end up missing Karaoke, but I did manage to spend some time with him, mostly by shirking homework and other duties. Went along with my Dad on the trip up to Spokane to get him. Hadn’t had anything resembling sleep, though, so I spent most of it in a kind of altered state of consciousness.

Wednesday night, we (Jason, Alison and I) managed to play a game of Full Thrust. NSL vs Kra’vak, with Jason playing the Kra’vak and Alison rolling my dice. It was absurd. Now, I know the NSL fleet owns the Kra’vak fleet, but Jason rolled so poorly (and Alison rolled so well) that none of my ships were even thresholded. I never even bothered to launch the squadron of torpedo fighters my Szant Istvan BDN was carrying.

We all went out to dinner for my Mom’s birthday at a Mexican restaurant in Kennewick that I don’t think I’ve seen, much less heard of. It was pretty good, but they charged per drink for soda. What a rip.

So Jason’s back in Spokane, I’m much calmer, and a bit further behind on my homework than I’d like.

I am NOT happy.

The plan was, and I had been expecting, that my brother would be coming down from Spokane tonight in time for Karaoke. There was even some talk that I might take him back up Thursday.

Apparently, all that changed last night and noone even consulted me. Jason’s staying up there tonight so that he can walk Beth home from work (he made a promise. I respect that. It’s cool, I guess. It just would have been nice to PLAN for it last week. Maybe we could have put the whole thing off for a week so he could keep his promise and I’d still actually get to SEE him. Sure, my Mom’s birthday is Thursday, but we don’t really stand too much on exact dates in my family. It could have waited.) Further, I find out he’s planning on having my mother drive him back Thursday.

The upshot of all of this is that, basically, my brother’s going to be breezing through town for a couple of days, and I’ll probably barely get to see him, if at all. That pisses me off.

It’s very hard to do highly technical homework when you’re pissed off.

Before I get too many more weeks behind, here’s what happened this week.

Sunday gaming didn’t. Levi didn’t show up for the afternoon EVE-fest (though we did have some fun running level 3 missions in Rifters) Then Alison apparently didn’t sleep and so she didn’t come to Dave’s in the evening. Dave and I ended up playing Birth of the Federation until she got up. Random events in that game suck. My Klingons were doing pretty good, but any time Dave built a fleet the Husnock or the Chodak or somebody would show up and annihilate it.

Played some Full Thrust against Alison Monday, I think. We used a hex board, and I had a devil of a time trying to explain AT2-style vector-based movement to Alison, so I eventually just told her to play it as if we WEREN’T on the hex board — and it worked exactly the same way. There was one difference — using thruster pushes to move to the side normally moves at a 90 degree angle from the ship’s facing, where I modified it to simply move the ship into one of the adjoining hexes. Came up exactly once.

I ended up getting my NSL cruiser/destroyer section slaughtered by an ESU force with an extra-special missile/torpedo ship (actually, all of her units were custom, but the other two weren’t outside the parameters of the ESU fleet doctrine) It mostly came down to luck, with some unlikely Pulse Torpedo and missile hits (she fired two P-Torps twice (needing 6s the first time), hitting both times for a total of 22 damage — that’s a whole Cruiser,) but the ESU fleet is remarkably suited to taking down the NSL fleet — heavy screens and energy guns vs no screens and energy guns. Think next time I’ll play NAC. Or design my own fleet. All told, I lost a Radetsky CE (surrendered with severe damage),a Kronprinz Wilhelm CL (torn apart by close range energy fire), a Waldburg DD (Pulse Torpedoed out of existence at long range), and a Waldburg/M (took two remarkably lucky missile salvos. onboard PD and supporting PD from the Radetsky and Kronprinz Wilhelm were remarkably ineffective) in exchange for a 6400-ton (that’s a largish CL) fast torpedo-ship, and a more conventional CL (essentially a Tibet, but a little lighter)

Tuesday Karaoke was once again rudely interrupted by Alison. I don’t know why she can’t just let me have my one night a week. Would that really be so awful? Anyway, the deal has lately been that if Alison pulls me out of Karaoke, she has to take me out for food. Since Shari’s and Denny’s are the only choices that late at night around here, we ended up going to Shari’s, where the waitress smelled rather strongly of smoke. We ended up leaving, and getting our drinks for free in compensation, but not before Alison had caught a fair whiff which left her coughing for the next few hours and a sore throat which caused her to miss…

Wednesday night gaming, which was otherwise cool. We started up a new Mechwarrior game (not run by me) We’re Knights of the Inner Sphere on Atreus in 3068 (which is to say, an endangered but still kickass species.) I’m playing the lance leader, a Lieutenant Sir Robert Marik, who is a Smoke Jaguar trueborn sibkin picked up by the Knights on Huntress and brought up in their fine traditions. We took on a Vanquisher, two Thors, three Exterminators, and two Spectors — and somehow won. I’m still not clear on that. Near as I can tell, there’s no way a Falcon Hawk, a Shadow Hawk (albeit an advanced one) and a Shadow Cat should be able to take that with the loss of only the Falcon Hawk (my ride.)

After that, Alison finally got up and we brought her PC back to my place for some botf. Apparently, she didn’t sleep Thursday, so I ended up doing laundry and playing botf Thursday night (I won a Fedulation game far too easily, partly because I blew up three Borg Cubes and that made the Cardassians really like me. The trick to that seems to be getting together about 9 Command Cruisers and 9 Destroyer IIs and just ramming the bastards. Expensive, but it actually works. Then I started in on a Ferrengi game which I’m completely dominating. Maybe I should turn up the difficulty and turn off random events.)

School is proceeding apace. I have some homework to work on this weekend. Finaid still hasn’t come through, but I’m confident I’ll get an award some time in the next two weeks. Either that or I’ll just withdraw from classes and find a job. :P