Vacation is over. :( I had a good time in the Atlantic, though. The water was colder this year, and the body surfing wasn't as good, but on Friday the wind really picked up and a totally awesome riptide made for a very enjoyable -- and tiring -- swim. The waves were so powerful that they reminded me of being at Ocracoke with my brother and Mike. My two-day, pre-beach obsession with Dance Dance Revolution had a chance to spill over into South Carolina when my family found a DDR Extreme machine in the corner arcade in Garden City, just blocks away from where we were staying. My brother Alan and I went up there three or so times to spend money on jumping around, getting sweaty, listening to cool music, and attracting sizeable crowds. At first, I was incredibly nervous about playing in front of so many others, but it didn't take long to get used to it. The pads were very responsive, which helped. By the end of the week, I managed to pass Holic on Standard difficulty, which is a major breakthrough for me. :) On Friday night, Alan, my cousin Maggie, and I went up to the corner and ended up watching this kinda scary Nazi-ish kid (~18 years old?) go up to the machine, put in some tokens, and totally blow the rest of us away. He had little trouble passing hard songs on Heavy in double mode. It was amazing. So amazing that the immense crowd gathered around him and his lightning-quick feet starting clapping when he was done. Talk about making you feel inadequate! Read a lot of Cryptonomicon. Overall, it's an enjoyable read, although somewhat inconsistent... sometimes riveting, sometimes more boring than watching paint dry. I do believe that it has inspired me to get ahold of the book Applied Cryptography though. And perhaps buy a WWII-era submarine game or simulation, along the lines of Silent Service II. We'll see. 380 new e-mails when I got back, 190 of which were junk.