01/30/08 - Mysterious Beer Ball, CS99, MATH226, and Octopus Prime arrives at last!

Bryce hanging out

Shayna and Tony sit on the big chair

Sleepy time

What is this mysterious ball I've found?

Hmm, this could be a clue

This guy says it's full of beer

Looks like he might be right!

They lived in the suite down the hall, so I followed them to take pictures

Carefullly pouring beer out of the ball..

Taking a sip! Ok.. that's a little gross

This is how they got at the beer, they just smashed a hole in the top

Professor Morris marks off some exercises for me to do

Chapter 9?? Gah!

Professor Chou with CS99 again, this time in a classroom

The CS99 people

Row 1

Row 2

Row 3

Row 4

Row 5

Row 6

Row 7

Row 8

And this guy, who was late

There were a lot of fire engines outside of Uncle Sam's, which give Clark James and I a real scare

One of the guys who works at Uncle Sam's has a pretty messed up phone

Apparently it still works well!

Despite the.. pencap.. antenna

DS and cola, doesn't get much better than this, folks

Bryce's consciousness briefly slips completely in to the DS

James and I were watching the State of the Union address

This building is shooting out steam and water!

Professor Morris in action

Talking about dihedral groups, pretty interesting stuff

Mike looks suspicious as he eats his sandwich

Tony washes a few dishes

What's up, Mike?

I finally broke down and bought a cheapo espresso machine

It's pretty nice

The espresso box actually came with garbage in it..

Yes. Real garbage. We figure that someone stole a razor and threw the packaging in here to.. hide it?

FedEx is here!!

See? FedEx. With proper white balance, even

Mike signs for a package from the FedEx dude

What could be inside, Mike?

Looks to be a pretty sizable package

Live fish?

Mike seems pretty psyched about something

Cutting open the box

Another box! Styrofoam this time

Let's take off the lid..

No! Mike wants to take his own pictures first

Now let's take off the lid

Mike takes a picture of his mysterious styrofoam box

Time to cut open this box

What's inside?

Peanuts!

So many peanuts

And a bag!

A bag with black plastic around it

Well there's only one thing to do..

Rip open the bag!

It's a live octopus!

Mike and I knew it all along, I just wanted to build up the suspense

It's Mike's first pet octopus

Clark James suggested the winning name: "Octopus Prime"

"Prime" for short!

Before letting him loose in the tank, Mike allows the temperature of the water to equalize

The bag is kind of funny just floating there

Octopus Prime up close

Those are his eyes in the middle, sticking out of his head

Lots of stickers

Mike takes a few pitures of his own

Mike seems enthralled

Prime was much bigger than we expected

His head is about the size of your thumb

Prime stares me down

that's his eye, that little rectangular opening

Eye horns! He does this sometimes.. we think he does it to scare us

Prime in the drip bucket, getting used to the pH of the tank

He doesn't really look this gross, it was just hard to get a picture of him in the bucket. He kept trying to explore.. outside the bucket!

In other news, I got 143 lines in Tetris and got the Buran!!

The Buran was Russia's answer to the space shuttle, but it only flew once and wasn't even manned. Still pretty cool though

Bryce cruises the internet looking for Smash Brothers updates

Rosie checks out the octopus situation

What's up, Bryce?

Time to transfer Prime! Mike was hoping he'd hold onto his rock

No such luck though

Mike decides to transfer him in a large cup

Bryce suggested drinking him and coughing him back up like a gold fish... that's gross, Bryce

Mike tries to pour Prime into the smaller tank

Prime decides he likes the cup

So he won't come out

We eventually got him out of the cup by submerging it

Prime kind of sits on the floor. He looks so neat!

Mike lowers the small tank into the big tank

Prime will stay in the smaller tank for a few days to get used to the surroundings and learn that Mike gives him food

A pretty awesome pet, all in all