Electrical Enceladus » UW

Completely Unbiased Comics about the Husky Game

Nikky — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 01:02:29 +0000

Colonel Pudg’ums

Nikky — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 06:15:57 +0000

From time to time, I will suddenly be overtaken with the urge to “go stalk some birds” near Union Bay. Belatedly charging my camera batteries and finding my lenses, I head off across campus in search of some flight-capable animals. The initial goal of photographing them is often sidetracked by their seemingly cacophony of sounds, for I instead spend too much time tracking down the soft twittering kinglet in the bush or finding that elusive chickadee.

Today I resolved to get a wonderful picture of a Northern Shoveller, one of my favorite local birds. This noble creature resembles a mallard in many ways, except for one important difference: it has an enormous sculpted bill. As this bill is well-adapted to skimming along the lake floor and shores for food, the “shoveller” moniker is well-earned.

The walk down to Union Bay was certainly enjoyable, as I think a campus police officer started to think I was some sort of thief. They was everywhere I happened to be, and only when I pulled out my camera and began taking pictures did they actually think I had some sort of legitimate purpose. Of course, I’m being vain and they probably never actually never noticed me, but I like to think that I’m the center of the known universe from time to time.

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Alas, I can only stalk birds when completely alone and there is not a human in sight. Unfortunately on this particular expedition, there had to be an individual who I deem a “fun killer.” This fun killer was a man in his 50s who was well-dressed but slow walking and often had to remark to anyone nearby about how there was heron in the bay. I’m sure he’s very nice and the heron was quite impressive, but I simply cannot operate under those conditions. And to make it worse, he was moving at a mosey-like pace, which was just slow enough so I could easily get ahead of him and begin to scope out a shot when out of the corner of my eyes I could see him begin to wander towards me. Flanking speed engaged!

After these episodes, I resigned myself that bird pictures would not be in my agenda. On the way back through campus, I happened upon a squirrel I henceforth will refer to as “Colonel Pudg’ums.”

It’s probably a good time for an aside regarding naming of creatures and strangers, two groups I often attach semi-unique titles to. When wandering around, I often tend to name animals that I meet. My naming formula is quick and easy, and can often be applied to most anything. Here’s how to do it.

First you must choose a rank for this particular critter. This is a very important step. Popular choices are “Captain,” “Colonel,” or “Admiral.” This rank has no real importance, and is often chosen at random. Alliteration and syllable considerations are most likely the deciding factor for this choice. As you have already no doubt guessed, this squirrel shall be a “Colonel.”

The second step is to actually pick some describing attribute that makes this individual deserving of the “individual” title. For otherwise we are all soulless entities that speak in perfect English and have flawless ethics and morals. Philosophical discussion of what makes an individual unique aside, this squirrel is “Pudg’ums.” As you can tell, I am not entirely sure of how to spell this. Most of these phrases are better suited to be pronounced.

Finally, you can assign this individual a honorific surname or affiliation if so desired. Generic examples that I often produce can be “Admiral Awesome of the Fun Squad,” “Colonel Cranky of the No-Fun Patrol” or “Major Squeaky the Small.” Colonel Pudg’ums doesn’t need one of these.

Adjust the title as necessary for humor.

Getting back to the story at hand, I stumbled upon a very large squirrel excitedly chewing on something. Slowly sneaking around to view his tasty morsel, this champ was gnawing on either a very firm piece of chicken (probably from HFS) or a rice cracker. And, my friends, this was no regular squirrel-sized piece of food, but appeared to be roughly his food supply for the entire week.

I had packed away my camera and switched out my 200mm lens for the standard “walkabout” 28–75 when I left the shoreline. As I was not about to switch out lenses and risk losing the chance to photograph the Colonel, I pulled it out and slowly approached him while silently praying to the large squirrel god that it not notice me.

My prayers were rewarded.

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This is the first picture. Clearly the Colonel was aware that I was there, and I was just getting into range with my lens.

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I’LL GET YOU HUMAN. BEHOLD MY KARATE HANDS.

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He decides I’m not much of a threat and continues to munch upon this chunk of… something.

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His tail is also adorable: it was a wind vane that always pointed away from the direction of the wind.

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Resume eating. Perhaps it’s cheese?

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Just look at those widdle cheeks full of food. Also look at just how large around the waist this guy is.

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The colonel is quickly (for a squirrel) calculating the risk of me suddenly eating him with the reward of consuming this entire piece of protein. I don’t know if it actually is protein, but it looks protein-ish.

He finally decided to skitter away when my lens was about a food away from his little face. Clearly these squirrels are the pampered campus variety who fear not of danger and humans.

You’ll note I’m using the male pronoun for this squirrel. I’m no expert on squirrel anatomy or behaviour, but I can’t imagine a female would be such a little piggy.

Finally, an awesome car that I walked past on Roosevelt.

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Yes, those are laser guns on the hood, under the hood, and on the hood.

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Some flight-stabilizing fins behind the doors, additional laser batteries on the side, and some awesome starship exhaust ports where the license plate usually exists.

WebAlpine Easter Egg

Nikky — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 04:01:45 +0000

This is probably of interest to those who a) are currently a student, staff, or faculty at the UW, b) use UW Deskmail for their e-mail, and c) check their e-mail using WebAlpine. Regardless, while at work today I found an easter egg in WebAlpine today. To view it, follow these easy steps:

Navigate to WebAlpine
Click on “Contacts”
Hover over “More Actions”
Click on “Export vCards”
Click on “Export vCards” again
etc. etc.

The message pane will display these messages:

“vCard Export is not implemented yet!”

“vCard Export is still not implemented yet”

“Seriously, vCard support will never be implemented if you keep bothering me!”

Nikky, Lord-God

Nikky — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 07:38:42 +0000

The evil giant octopus Ecthelion

Nikky — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 07:33:36 +0000

In my Astronomy outreach class last quarter, one of our quizzes for the class contained a question where we had to make up a constellation, explain what it looked like, and created a back story behind it.

They range from the slightly tasty:

Zeus’ daughter made him his favorite cupcake one day. She wanted to surprise her dad,so she left it on the counter for him to find. When she brought him into the kitchen to show him, they caught Pisces trying to sneak a bite of the dessert. Zeus’ daughter began to cry hysterically and Zeus lost his temper. He grabbed the cupcake and threw out the window into the heavens above. And as punishment to Pisces, he threw the fish into the night sky, where he will always be out of reach of the cupcake as it sits deliciously uneaten for eternity in front of his face.

…to completely destroying a childhood movie…

The evil giant octopus Ecthelion tormented the people of Ferngully for many years. It would always steal people’s left shoes, blow out candles of birthday cakes, replace doormats with jellyfish, and other such atrocities. One day the people of Ferngully set up a catapult trap and sent Ecthelion far into the sky, where he still is today, still holding a left shoe.

…to the just plain weird…

–snip– At night of the third day he snuck his way up the tree and got into position. He put his lips to his horn in preparation, when all of the sudden he realized that STINKY POOPED ON HIS MOUTH PIECE! –snip–

…some people actually tried to make it serious…

My constellation is a small dog named Charlotte located towards the bottom left of the image. It is made up of 6 stars. Charlotte became stuck in the sky when she was running for a stick that her master threw up in the night sky for her to catch. When she jumped for it, she became forever stuck. If you look close enough above her, you can see a stick in the sky.

…to the insane…

My constellation is a gluttonous cheetah. A long time ago there was a teenage boy who thought that he was hot stuff because he was a rich Prince. To entertain himself he took up hunting and one day, despite being told not to, he went hunting alone. Late in the afternoon, he became very tired and laid down for a nap. Unbeknownst to him, a hungry cheetah had been watching him hoping he’d do just that. As soon as the boy fell asleep the cheetah ate him up. Having never tasted a human before, the cheetah found them to be quite delicious and began craving humans daily. To satisfy his cravings, he began stealing other teenagers from the Prince’s village during the night time. These very rich snacks began to (literally) weigh on his appearance and soon the cheetah became very fat. One night, the cheetah made too much noise entering the village and the Queen, the Prince’s mother, caught sight of him sneaking into the home of their neighbor. Outraged and bitter from her son’s death, the Queen ran after the cheetah with a cast iron skillet and the cheetah, too fat to run away, was batted with the skillet into the sky, far away from the village or humans of any sort. The Queen, realizing she had an amazing swing, invented the game of softball and became a world-famous batter. The end.

…the oddly judgmental…

The Harvester (sickle shape on the left being held by rough face on the left). Over many years, the Harvester has swung his sickle towards the earth, when it finally reaches the Earth, then will all people be judged.

…the hilariously told…

Leonard the winking giraffe. (Not to be confused with Leo the lion) Leonard was a giraffe. However did a giraffe ever stumble his way into Greek mythology? Easy, when Darius I of Persian Empire fame rolled into Greece and got beat at Marathon by the Athenians, he brought Leonard, a docile giraffe, along for the journey. You see, Darius I was a tad eccentric, and loved things which were ridiculous. This brings me to the giraffe. Leonard could wink. In fact, Leonard the giraffe winked like Sarah Palin in a Vice– Presidential debate. Darius, for some reason, thought this was wicked awesome. Adding to the giraffe’s allure was the fact that Darius could ride him around on his flagship and see things that were far away. However, I digress. After the naval battle, the Greeks were surprised to find this giraffe washed ashore. Lo and behold if this giraffe survived, so the Greeks brought him back to Athens. There, Leonard lived out the rest of his life surrounded by Athenian scholars, who also loved the spectacle of a winking giraffe. Priceless. Zeus, who at the time seemed to look for any excuse to fling something into the night sky, thought that people throughout eternity would love to look up and see a winking giraffe. Thus he tossed Leonard the giraffe up into the heavens at the end of his natural life, making him the patron constellation of the downright-silly and randomly-awesome.

…and finally, the one written while someone was on drugs…

Story: Once upon a time there were two of the swingest Czech brothers in all of New York City. Every night they would go out and hit on foxes because they were two wild and crazy guys!!! One night they went to a club to swing with foxes in the their tight polyester pants. At this club there two swining foxes who the brother fell in love with. To win there affection they enter a disco dancing competition in the club, there were many good dance contestants and the brother got scared and went home to figure how they were going to win and attract the foxes. They went into their closet and pulled out a Czech dancing robot reserved for only the highest ranking official in the communist party. They turned ont eh robot and began to practice with it, hours and hours they swang. Finally they returned to the club for the contest, they were the last to go. They stepped out on to the multi-color floor light up with all the light changing color. Under the disco ball the bang to groove and boogie, the two swinging foxes saw them and were very impressed, the brother danced harder and harder emboldened by their success. They danced so hard that the floor could not take it any more and exploded under their sheer swinging groovey booginess. The two swing Czech brothers were thrown into the sky by the dance related explosion. To this day we can still see the two swingiest Czech brother dancing for all foxes to see because they are two wild and crazy guys!!!!

I only included about 1/3 of them on this post, you can see all of the submissions here: mythos_spr2009

ASUW Election Results: Curiosities and Amusements

Nikky — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 07:19:51 +0000

Every year after the dust settles from the insanely boring ASUW elections, “they” publish a document that contains all of the vote. While most students just don’t vote, some ditfully punch their virtual ballots for whoever is running from the Greek system. The rest will take advantage of the write-in system. Here are a few examples:

ASUW President

Hottie Sarah Chow
Homer Simpson
Jake Locker (Two Votes)
Luke Skywalker
You don’t deserve my vote

Vice-President

???
anyone but her
ASUW sucks
Batman (Two Votes)
Chuck Norris
Dino Rossi
Christine Gregoire
Dubs (The husky mascot)
m00t
Nikky Southerland (Tied for third with 10 votes!)
NOT Madeleine McKenna (Four Votes-Eventual Winner and Only Candidate on Ballot)
Ronald Reagan
Yoda

Community Relations

Jesus Christ
No Confidence
Not Tunny Vann (4 votes)
six year old would do a better job than you
Vladimir Lenin

Diversity Efforts

Black girl handed pink flyer in odegaard
Roberto, Destroyer of Men

Other Worthless Positions

A block of Swiss Cheese
Anyone Else
Jason wrote a nasty Facebook note
this whole election has been a waste of time
William Shatner
Bender Bending Rodraguez
Darth Vader
Maggie Bennett’s Mom
The fountain ducks
I am really worried…
Girl you Sexy
Random COBOL Guru
Yo, fuck Kyle Fuller

There were also votes that seemed to follow a trend:

The Simpsons Voter: Always voted for Simpsons Character
Basketball Voter: Voted for UW Basketball Players
Dubbs: Voted for The Mascot
The Complainer: This voter always made fun of the election
Batman: Every position
Campus Squirrels: Usually the second place candidate in all positions
“Andrew P.D.G. Everett” Has one vote in every position. I suspect he voted for himself.
The “NOT” crowd: They put “not” in front of whoever was running.

An interesting point is that out of all the votes Hillary, Obama, McCain and others got last year, Obama was the only one with one vote. And I mean one vote!

As usual, you can check this document for yourself: 2009_Election_Output

IMAP Creator vs. UW: The Hidden Tale?

Nikky — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 07:00:00 +0000

From: [redacted]
To: Alpine-info 
Subject: [Alpine-info] The saga of Sir Crispin vs the UW (maybe)
Date: Fri, 12 Jun 2009 10:14:58 -0600 (MDT)
Sender: alpine-info-bounces@mailman2.u.washington.edu
User-Agent: Alpine 2.00 (OSX 1167 2008-08-23)

I was reading a Slashdot RSS article entitled "Extracting Meaning From
Millions of Pages" which turns out to be about Googles contribution to
the UW project called TextRunner.

I can just Sir Crispin being accosted by some friggin CS Dean or Head
of IS at UW with the assertion that UW will soon be going to bed with
Google, and would he and his compadres like to jump into the sack as
well? HOWEVER..... it means that you boys will have to give up Pine,
cuz we will need all the bodies we can get a hold of, to pull this
off.

Sir Crispin proceeds to tell him/her/they to fuck their hats --- that
he's not interested in playing nice with an assholin', monopolistic
outfit like Google --- and anyway what's wrong with a kick-ass project
(used world-wide) like our own IMAP?

They say too bad! so sad....

Sir Crispin quickly responds with, "Fuck you and the computers you
hack on", and walks out into the limelight -- but not before hacking
Alpine, "in memoriam".

They say: Wait! We'll show that old hacker a thing or 2 -- we'll take
his personal UW web-pages away from him. That'll fix his hacking ass.

NOT!!

:))

Any semblance of truth in the above fantasy, Mark - or would you
rather not say?
--
Duke

Mythological Battle for uw.edu

Nikky — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 06:57:11 +0000

As seen on the tech-support mailing list:

uw.edu?
[redacted]
Thu Jun 18 22:18:53 PDT 2009

Once upon a time, there was waged a great battle between Educause and (then)
C&C, the result of which was the acquisition of uw.edu. There was much
hemming & hawing and mad twinkles in mad eyes. Win this one victory, it was
uttered, and the floodgates would be open! Forever would the precious .edu
domains flow freely, as ambrosia from Olympus! In our hubris, we thought we
would walk as gods on the internet, striking down any who stood in our way
with a flurry of Es, Ds, and Us.

Alas, it was all for naught. For while uw.edu was indeed won, in so doing
was earned the wrath of Educause, and the tap forever closed. And as we
lay ragged with our ill-got prize, we felt falling upon us the hungry eyes
of the University of Wisconsin; though whether their terrible attentions of
those who dream of cheese were really ever drawn our way, or it was simply
fear and loathing and paranoia induced by our mad lust for forbidden TLDs,
we shall never know.

Lessons once learned, and as quickly forgotten.

-adam

Concrete Bench

Nikky — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 02:18:43 +0000

The lawn in front of the oldest building on campus contains greying concrete benches of old. Slowly eroding away and sinking into the Earth, the smattering of benches on the hill might resemble tombstones to a distant eye. A weary student might take a break on one of these moss encrusted relics. Perhaps looking around, they might spot an inscription carved into the back of the stone. Brushing away debris, one of them faintly but clearly reads “Class of 1910.”

1910. An average graduate would be around 118 years old now. I wonder how many of them are left.

“Huskies for Israel” = “Tree Killers”

Nikky — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 22:45:05 +0000

So the geniuses at the group “Huskies for Israel” seem to be blanketing the campus with their flyers, which I don’t really have a problem with.

Until I noticed two of the priceless cherry trees on the Quad. Covered with little blue 4“x5.5″ flyers. That are stapled to the trunks.

I’ll repeat that. Stapled to the trunks.

What a bunch of idiots.

Note: I forgot to take a picture of this I was so angry. If you snag a shot, hook me up. :)