Those albums are listed in reverse chronological order. I was going to post my favorite pictures from the vacation, but it's rather toasty up here, so I'm going downstairs to cooler territory.
Monday, May 24th, 2010 10:32 pm It's been far too long
Current Mood:
happiness through determination
In the last month, I've written seven poems, not counting one that I haven't finished yet. All seven of them have been posted to AllPoetry - specifically, I'm referring to the poems Whispering Shadows through I embrace thee.
One of those poems, A thousand unformed thoughts, was such a fundamental change in my viewpoint that I also posted it on Facebook.
Seven poems in one month. I don't think I've ever written that many poems in such a short amount of time - let alone a group of poems where I ended up liking them all. If this keeps up, I may just start working on the novel I want to publish some day. After all, now is some day, right? Of course it is.
It's been far too long. Far too long since I've written good poetry like this. Far too long since I've actually enjoyed writing poetry. I credit Jen in part, but most of all, I credit the meditation. Meditation has changed my life in an extremely positive way, far more than anything else I've ever done.
I don't believe in perfection. I've seen enough to know that it doesn't exist. Not even the Dalai Lama, who is my idol, by the way, is perfect - and he'd be the first to admit it. But there's a Japanese word called kaizan that I do believe in. Kaizan is continuous improvement. And these days, I think I'm doing a pretty good job of it.
Sunday, May 2nd, 2010 02:45 pm From Monterey to San Jose to Seattle to Bellingham and back again
I have to say that the thing that impressed me the most on this entire trip happened before I even got to San Jose, let alone Seattle or Bellingham. When the airbus I was in was around Gilroy, I happened to look up from The Economist that I was reading and saw this big banner draped over an overpass that read: "Robert, go to prom w/ me?". It had no name listing who it was from, but even still, whoever posted that has guts. That is truly awesome.
I am here to report that the stories about Seattle being super-rainy are false. Granted, there was water falling out of the sky several times when I was in Seattle, but in such minute quantities that you really cannot call that stuff rain. Drizzle maybe, sure, but rain? No, that's not rain. I just wanted to state that for the record.
Whoever designed the streets of Seattle must have either been on crack, or really enjoyed messing with people. Maybe both. There were some parts of Seattle in Seattle Center where I swear, the street signs must have been thrown down by people playing pin the street sign on the mountain, and then arranging the streets themselves around them. It made me long for the one way streets of Monterey. I have to admit, Seattle really didn't impress me like I was hoping it would. I like NYC much better personally, although I wouldn't want to live in either city, but that's another matter entirely.
Mind you, that's not to say that I didn't enjoy my vacation. I stayed in the Green Tortoise Hostel, which is an awesome place to stay. Definitely worth booking in advance though, the four person rooms are much nicer than the six or eight person rooms, which are all that were available if you need something that day.
During my stay at the Green Tortoise, I met people from Hawaii, Rhode Island, Austria, Australia, South Africa, Italy, and England. There are probably other areas that I'm not even aware of. Almost everyone I met there was on a long term trip, I was the exception with my week long vacation in that resepect. I also learned at the hostel that at first, a South African accent sounds similar to an Australian accent. Although this was only at first blush, after a few minutes of chatting with the South African girl, it didn't sound at all Australian to me any more.
I absolutely loved what the Australian roommate of mine said to me as I was getting ready to head back to Monterey about work: "Enjoy the interval between your next travel." Okay, I don't have phonograpic memory, so that might not be an exact quote, but it's pretty close. I just loved that description of work, it's such a great one. And it is the way I'm trying to live my life; I learned that from my mom.
By far the most memorable part of my stay in Seattle was the Underground Tour. I ended up buying a book written by the Bill Speidel guy who started the tour when I finished the tour, and I am throughly enjoying it. (The book is called Sons of Profits, for those of you curious.) It was a 90 minute tour lead by a lady named Terry. We got to see, literally, the Seattle underground. The sidewalks in Seattle are hollow, there's the sidewalk up above, and an underground area down below. It was this area that we toured around. Really, no words of mine would give an adequate explanation of this tour, my pictures won't either, unfortunately. With all the humor involved, you'd need video to get a good solid feel for what the tour is like. I highly recommend it for anyone going to Seattle.
Note that I did say Seattle in that last paragraph. The most fun and memorable part of the whole vacation was Wednesday when I got to meet Jen (justplainjen) in person. I've known Jen for the past eight years now online, but this was the first time we've got to meet. I've been wanting to visit Seattle for years, and I knew Bellingham was fairly close by, so I figured it'd be only natural to work both into the trip if I could. I emailed Jen about it, she was interested, so we arranged to meet on Wednesday. I was amused by her first comment upon meeting me in person, she said, "You're bigger than I thought". Which I suppose makes sense, since while I do have pictures of myself up online, none of them really give a good indication of my height. (For those of you who haven't met me in person, I'm 6'2" without shoes on.)
Jen toured me around Bellingham, taking me to some absolutely beautiful spots. Bellingham is a beautiful city, really, I wouldn't mind living there myself. I ended up taking a grand total of 2100 pictures even on my vacation. If it weren't for Bellingham, it'd have probably ended up being half that. We went to a park along the ocean, a rock garden, two restaurants, and a boardwalk area along a different part of the ocean. Oh, and she took me to a good spot for viewing the sunset, and we took pictures there until the sun finished setting. Although I think my favorite sunset shot out of all the ones I took was taken Thursday evening on the Amtrak back to Seattle.
The rocks are clearly much smarter in Bellingham than they are in Monterey. In Bellingham, the rocks banded together and created themselves a garden, and a bunch of sculptures in the middle of the garden. That rock garden was the spot where we took a picture that's almost inevitable when two photographers get together. Jen took a picture of me taking a picture of Jen. It would have been great to have a helicopter's eye view of that to see both of us shooting each other.
It was interesting how the restaurant experience worked out in Bellingham. Somehow, I managed to get utterly an utterly messy sandwich for lunch, and an equally messy burger for dinner. They were delicious! As Ivan said, the messier sandwiches are, the better they are; I'd agree with him, this is probably true. We went to Boundary Bay Brewary for dinner, I don't remember the name of the lunch place. This was where I got to meet Ivan, Jen's husband, and Torrae, Eli, and Kris.
They're all a great bunch of people. Eli drew a monster and then gave the drawing to me, which was nice of him. Hopefully there wasn't any symbolism involved there. And Torrae did a little medidating moment which Jen says she never did before. I said it must have been osmosis from my Dalai Lama book. This particular book is called How to Practice - I finished it in Seattle, and it's an excellent book.
I was throughly impressed by Ivan's programming knowledge. I knew Jen referred to him as her computer person, but I hadn't realized that he knew programming in addition to the general computer knowledge that I had assumed she was talking about. Plus he's a Monty Python fan, so he obviously has good taste.
All in all, it was a great vacation, although I must admit I was frustrated when I had to leave Bellingham. Jen's a good friend, and it's frustrating to live a thousand miles away from one of my good friends, but oh well. I much prefer this to not knowing her at all.
Edited to add (at 7:02 PM, May 3rd): I checked my credit card bill after this and saw the bill for the lunch. The restaurant is called Avenue Bread & Deli, they've got absolutely delicious sandwiches. Highly recommended if you're ever in Bellingham.
Friday, January 1st, 2010 03:46 pm Happy New Year!
Today is 1/1/10, a binary day. Another one is coming in a little more than a week. It's strange finally being in 2010, this year seems like the kind of year always mentioned in science fiction novels.
My only new years resolution is to get my driver's license this year. Sometime before my birthday. Considering that that's still ten months away, that's probably a realistic resolution. I had to retake the learner's permit test the other day because I am not going to be ready by the time my old one expired. I passed, did one better than last time with a lot less studying, getting only two questions wrong.
One thing that will be fun about the new year will be more vacations. I'm sure looking forward to the next one: I'm going to Seattle in the last week of April. I'll be visting Jen Owen during that trip, which will be fun, and Tim said he'd be happy to show me around Seattle since he'll be moved up to Port Orchard by then, which is apparently right next to Seattle. I'm quite excited about this trip, it should be loads of fun.
Sunday, October 25th, 2009 01:31 pm Anyone want a free printer?
The catch is that it's ancient and a parallel port printer, so if you have a fairly new computer, you probably won't have a port that it'll run on.
But if you do, I'd be happy to give this to you. I'm even willing to pay shipping because I'd much rather this printer get used than get recycled as e-waste, which is what I was thinking of doing. It has ink in it still and it's not so old that you can't find ink for it when you need to buy ink.
It's not fast, but it still prints fine, and the only problem is that the paper jams occasionally. The printer model is HP Deskjet 720C, for those of you curious.
Saturday, October 10th, 2009 11:51 pm Shutterfly doesn't seem to support hotlinking
Alas, so I can't just post them directly here easily. I'll manually throw up my favorites to my website and post them here eventually. But for now, those of you who are interested in seeing the first batch, and the cutest of the pictures, can feel free to check them out:
Saturday, October 10th, 2009 10:05 pm Lameness involved in picture uploading
Well, that was a rough start. Just tried to upload my photos from NYC to Facebook, and Facebook's uploader app crashed my browser. I tried that three times, and it crashed each time, so no luck with Facebook. Then I tried Picasa and couldn't get it to add my pictures there either. That at least didn't crash my browser, so that was progress.
Eventually, I gave up on Picasa, and went with mom's favorite picture site, Shutterfly. I can see why she likes it, about 30 seconds later, I had the first part of my album uploading. It's about 200 MB worth of pictures, so it'll take at least an hour to upload, but it's at least not monopolizing the computer and worked easily.
I'm going completely out of order here and uploading my Bronx Zoo shots first even though that was the end of the week. I'm sending those up first though because they're by far the cutest of the pictures. I got some absolutely adorable shots of the Snow Leopards there, one of which I'm definitely going to have prints made of. There were some cute gorilla shots too, but I think the Snow Leopards were by far the cutest.
I'll let you all know when they're posted. Hopefully shutterfly will let me link to them from here so I can show off my favorite shots in here.
Saturday, June 13th, 2009 12:05 pm Excited about my upcoming vacation
I'm really excited about my upcoming vacation to NYC. Except for passing through to get to another part of New York State, which doesn't really count, I've never been to New York City. I'm looking forward to seeing Peter Fry, and irnbruise, and hopefully Harsha as well, but given where he works, that might not end up happening.
So far my plans are to see the Empire State Building, the statue of liberty and Ellis island, the federal reserve bank of new york, the natural history museum, and central park - the zoo in particular, definitely. I'm sure there's lots more places I will visit as well. I'll get to try out my new camera batteries that hopefully live up to their name of taking 500 pictures on a charge. I'll find out, because I'm sure I'll take more than that.
I got a really cheap airline ticket and I'll be staying with my aunt and uncle, so it'll be a fairly cheap vacation, which is always a nice bonus. If anyone has any recommendations on places to visit, I'd love to hear them. I'm planning on calling Thomasin, the grand world traveler who planned the Galapagos trip I went on last year to see if she has any recommendations on places to visit. Elsa says there might be a good air and space museum there too, which would be worth checking out as well.
Thursday, December 11th, 2008 09:44 pm Guam? Why not?
Current Mood:
curious
Am I REALLY mobile? Well, maybe I should be - I'm single, and unattached, so I suppose I am truly mobile right now, and with this economy, I really don't have the luxury of being too picky. Starting to look up jobs in Guam and such in USAjobs. Their interface isn't great and all, but they do have jobs available so I guess it can't hurt. And fortunately my parents aren't going to let me starve to death so I have the luxury of time.
Something also dawned on me when I was doing my workout today. Actually, two things. One, I'm really enjoying this teaching thing. Two, I did public speaking in front of 150 people yesterday and I wasn't all that nervous. I think I'm cut out to be a teacher. I think I could even be a good one. And then I remembered something: Professor Sandoe, who I probably mentioned a lot while I was still a student at Chico State, is working to setup a small environmental high school in Chico. I think I remember him saying it'll probably be up and running by 2010.
I really liked living in Chico. The only reason I'm not right now is that I didn't have a job there when I graduated and I didn't think it wise to just sit around there burning cash on an apartment until I found a job. So maybe I ought to join Liz Vallaire in getting a Credential and try my luck at teaching at Sandoe's new high school.
Sunday, November 23rd, 2008 12:28 pm Sick of this El Torito crap
Current Mood:
pissed off
I'm so sick of this El Torito crap.
Here's what happened. I got my credit card bill online on Thursday from Bank of America. A week ago yesterday, I went to eat lunch at El Torito with Sarah and a gay couple after the Rally against Prop 8 passing. We split the tab amongst three different credit cards: one of the gay guys paid for both of their food, and Sarah and I both put our own lunches on our credit cards.
...at least that's what was supposed to happen. Thursday, I look at my bill, and I always check those things to make sure they're right because you never know. And I got a nice little present: El Torito charged me almost exactly double what my receipt said: $54, as opposed to the $26 on my receipt. I'm pretty sure they put Sarah's and my lunch on my card, which is puzzling because when we left the restaurant, we got three different receipts. I got mine, Sarah got hers, and Ryan got his. So it wasn't until I got the bill from Bank of America that I knew anything was wrong.
First I called Bank of America to see what it would take to fix it with them. They said it'd be 4 - 6 weeks. I figured the server screwed up at El Torito, they ought to be able to fix it much faster than that. So I called El Torito and tried to fix it with them.
I might not have gotten around to calling them until Friday because I think I got credit card bill late Thursday. Anyway, I called them Friday and tried to fix it over the phone. They said they wanted to see my receipt. I tried to fax it over because I don't have a car and El Torito is about a half hour walk from here or so, and I didn't want to walk that far to get this fixed. Neither of our fax machines worked.
Mom was getting a hair cut in PG a few hours later, so she gave me a ride and dropped me off since Cannery Row was right on the way for her. This was Friday afternoon, I talked with the manager, and he talked with the corporate headquarters.
...This is the part that seems screwed up to me. They screwed up and charged me double at the restaurant, they ought to have been able to put the money back onto my credit card right then and there when I got there. But no, he had to talk to the headquarters for fifteen minutes or so. He agreed that they screwed up, filled out this form and got my signature. At the time, it all looked fine. He had said it'd take 24 hours to get the money back onto my credit card. Longer than it should have, but fine, that would have been okay with me.
I checked yesterday at after the 24 hour mark online and the money isn't there yet. I checked this morning and it still isn't there. Then I look at the copy of the form he filled out and realized that the last four digits of the credit card number were not the same as the last for digits on my credit card. I didn't notice this when I left Friday, or I wouldn't have left without having fixed it. So someone else probably got my money. What'd be ironic is if they gave Sarah the money back for her meal which they never even charged her for in the first place; I wouldn't be surprised.
So I called back today and tried to talk to the guy I was talking with on Friday. Naturally, he wasn't there, but another manager was. He said he'd call Sergio, the manager who was there on Friday and call me back. He called me back five minutes later and said Sergio will be in tomorrow morning and we'll fix it then. He said he's on top of it, which he isn't because if he was, it'd be fixed by now.
At this point I won't be surprised if they want me to go back in there tomorrow. I'm not mad about the fact that they screwed up in the first place and charged me double. I'm mad that their customer service is shit poor. At the worst, they should have been able to put the money back on my card on Friday right then and there without me wait 24 hours and given me a new receipt that reflects that. I've had other stores do that for much less complex situations and situations where they'd have been within their rights to not give me my money back.
If they do end up saying that I have to come back tomorrow, I'm going to ask for my money back in cash because I don't trust them with the credit cards any more. And I'm tempted to ask them for the whole $54 back. This is completely ridiculous. I can understand screwing up and charging me double, but this is terrible customer service.
Friday, November 14th, 2008 09:25 pm Tales from the Campaign Trail
It's been almost two weeks since Barack Obama has been elected President, so I thought I'd share with you all some of the more interesting tales I've encoutered in the several months of campaigning for Barack Obama that I've been involved with.
Perhaps one of the more exciting events that I particpated with in was the volunteering at the Reggae Fest back in August when our tent was right next to the drummer who was there with several drum circles throughout the day. Sarah eventually bought a small drum there and I've been thinking lately I ought to call her up and tell her we should get together and do some drumming together since drumming is so much more fun with more than one person.
Anyway, at that Reggae Fest, shortly after we setup, we got a group of three ladies who came to us to register to vote. One of them was 53 years old and had never registered to vote before in her life, but she was so excited about Barack Obama that she had finally to come register to vote.
Later on I was telling Eileen that I really want to setup a voter registration booth at MPC since it's the perfect place for it. What better place to register people to vote than at a community college? After all, most people going to school there are straight out of high school and therefore likely able to register to vote and young enough that there's a good chance they hadn't yet.
Eileen, bless her heart, got the administrative details taken care of so that we'd have a table and chairs for the duration of the time we were there. We registered students there for a full month, mostly just Tuesday and Thursday, but during the last week we added Wednesday and then Monday on the last day to register since we couldn't miss that day of course. Most days we registered 16 or 17 people in our time there. The smallest number of people we got was three people registering once. That was towards the end of our registration period so I had figured most of the Tuesday/Thursday crowd who wanted to register already had.
Our largest two days both got around 30 people, I think one was 30 and the other was 33. I estimate that we got 193 people registered total at MPC. I say we because the other people registering with me were Alex, Matt, Joyce, Delana, and Eileen herself. I was there every day we were at MPC registering people, Matt was there most days, and Alex joined us for the last couple days when it otherwise would have been just me.
We had some interesting conversations over the course of the time we were at MPC. There was one guy who came and argued against Obama with Matt because he said he wasn't Christian enough. I let Matt do most of the arguing because he's much more outgoing than I am. Then there was a lady who came later on for a couple days while we were there and argued in favor of Ralph Nader. Again, I let Matt do most of the arguing. Nader's definitely persistent, I'll give you that, but I think he really ought to find something better to do than keep running for president when he doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell of winning.
The one argument she had that I definitely agreed with was that the third party candidates ought to be allowed into the presidental debates. I've been to local congressional debates down at MIIS where they had third party candidates and it was much more interesting than it otherwise would have been. Actually, she had two arguments that I agreed with - the other one is that we ought to have an instant runoff system instead of the current voting system that we do have.
And then there was the guy who came and said that he'd register except that he was on parole. Later on he came back and apparently he was off parole but said he would rather vote for Momar Kadafi. Yeah, that guy was weird.
We as a club had a rally at Del Monte Avenue right next to the Window at the Bay the weekend before the election. That was pretty entertaining because according to Eileen, we (the Montery County Democrats) were the only ones who had a permit to rally there. However, the McCain people came and rode our coat tails with their own set of signs. Mind you, they had far fewer people in their group, and they got FAR fewer honks. We got so many honks that I could tell that Monterey County was likely to go for Obama.
There was also a bunch of people holding No on Prop 8 signs in our rally. Towards the end of the rally, a couple came up complete in their wedding dress outfit with Yes on 8 signs. Naturally, we saw them, and a huge flood of No on 8 people came to join them since they had setup at a different part of Del Monte Avenue than we were at. It was very entertaining and the guy I was with agreed that they looked quite tacky.
Then, on election day itself, I was hoping to meet with Sarah since I found out very shortly before the election that her polling place is the same one as mine. I called her that day and said I'd love to go with her so if she knew when she's going, we could go vote together. She said she didn't know when she'd vote and to go and vote. I ended up voting at around 4 PM and as luck would have it, when I was walking out of the polling place, none other than Sarah herself said "Is that Evan?". I waited around for her since I was going to go the same direction as she was afterwards as I was heading to the gym for a workout and she was going to the Democratic Headquarters to hangout until the Victory Party.
So I went to the gym and ended up counting the people who were affiliating themselves with Obama. I saw two Obama shirts, plus the lady in charge of the gym was voting for Obama as well. There was also a car with an Obama bumper sticker that I saw on the way out of the MPC parking lot. At that point, I headed back home for dinner with dad and mom and Bill Evans and eventually made my way back down to the Golden State Theatre for the Victory Party.
The Golden State theatre had also hosted a viewing party for Obama's acceptance speech several months earlier. However, the atmosphere was completely different at the Victory Party. I didn't get down there until about 7:30 PM, it started at 6 PM, but I think I arrived at a perfect time. By the time I arrived, Obama had 203 electoral votes and McCain had 136 or so. When the clock hit 8 PM and the west coast states' polls were closed, Obama's electoral vote count jumped up to 293. He needed 270 so at that point he had already won.
...Everyone was clapping and on their feet and the mood was positively electric. The CSUMB jazz orchestra was at the stage and started playing shortly after that. Jane Parker, our local county supervisor, was MCing the whole event. Apparently later on other local representatives came up to the stage, but I didn't stick around that long.
I remember watching first McCain's speech and then Obama's speech and immediately thinking that McCain had a better speech between the two of them. Which isn't to say that Obama's was bad, but rather that McCain really ought to have done more like what he had done that night throughout his campaigning. He might have done better if he did, so perhaps it's best that didn't happen.
Anyway, shortly after Obama won enough electoral votes to become president both Eileen and Sarah came up to the front of the State and then later on to the stage. They were dancing around with Obama signs and looking great. Eileen broke down with tears of joy at one point - she had been campaigning for a full two years for Obama, far longer than me. At this point, we all went out into the street and made a crowd in front of the Golden State theater, attempting to get cars to honk and generally just partying in the street.
It's been a fun campaign, and I made several new friends while I was campaigning for Barack Obama. Definitely like the result a hell of a lot better than in 2004, but then, I like Obama a hell of a lot better than Kerry so there's no surprise there. And as they often say at high school or college graduations, this is not the end. This is only the beginning.
This election was bittersweet because while I was quite excited to see Obama elected president, I was also angered that Proposition 8 got passed. Thankfully, Monterey County voted the right way - it got voted down 52% to 48% locally. There's absolutely no good reason for that proposition to exist, it's pure discrimination. Sarah sent me an invite to a protest in front of City Hall tomorrow about Prop 8 that I'll definitely be attending.
Still, it got challenged almost immediately in the courts by the ACLU and I am confident that it's only a matter of time before this ends up invalidated. I take comfort in the fact that our governor and attorney general are not only standing by gay marriage but also saying that this won't invalidate the gay marriages that have happened and that they'll fight against prop 8 themselves. Having friends in powerful places is definitely a good thing.
Monday, September 22nd, 2008 11:04 pm RIP Big Ugly Green Van
I never thought this day would come. But, at last, my dad is finally retiring his big ugly green van. That's what my sister and I used to call it at least, and I think it's an appropriate term. He says that it's held together by rust and duct tape, but apparently it's no longer safe to drive. Thus, dad's having it hauled off to the ancient van scrapyard tomorrow between 9:30 - 10:00 AM.
This van is apparently rather famous or infamous perhaps around Monterey. He hasn't been using it for work for quite a while, for the last few years, it's sole purpose in life as far as I've been able to tell has been to haul Christmas trees from the lot to our house. (We usually get those some where around December 22nd or 23rd for maximum cheapness.) I'm not quite sure what'll be used to haul christmas trees now because the blue van isn't quite up to the task, although dad may end up doing what mom was suggesting and putting a luggage rack on top.
This big ugly green van is eleven years older than me, eight years older than my sister, and has been around longer than my parents have been together. (They were married thirty one years ago.)
Since the big ugly green van will probably be gone by the time I get up tomorrow morning, I bid you adieu:
Sunday, August 10th, 2008 12:32 am The job hunt continues...
I was productive today, job search wise. I applied at three different places, RiteAid, Easy Street Billards and California Forensic Medical Group. I didn't even know Easy Street was hiring - that one was totally serendipity. I just went over there after checking out Trader Joe's to see if they're hiring to say hi to Lee since she works there and saw that they're hiring. TJ's wasn't, but they were, and a pool hall would be a pretty cool place to work, so I wouldn't mind that.
Lee wasn't there when I went by, but one of the people who works there said she starts work at 7 PM, so I went by earlier this evening again to say hi to her. I said hi and chatted off and on for an hour before heading off back home. She asked if I wanted to play pool there, but I said that while I like playing pool, it's not something that'd be fun by myself, so I passed on that. They were pretty busy, which was good to see for a Saturday night, glad to know the business is doing well.
Just finished watching another episode of Numbers on iTunes, courtesty of the gift certficate Robert and Jennifer gave me. I'll probably end up buying the rest of the season, which the gift certificate doesn't quite cover, but it makes it cheaper at least. Definitely a good show.
Monday, July 21st, 2008 07:14 pm Instructional Specialist Skills Assessment
Current Mood:
encouraged
I just had the skills assessment for the Instructional Specialist position I was applying for at MPC, and I didn't end up scoring high enough with my auditory discrimination to get the job. She had me arrange and rearrange colored blocks according to the word she said. It was an interesting test so I didn't mind it despite not getting the job and all. Actually, it was probably just as well since I learned a bit more about it during the assessment and I probably wouldn't have liked the job anyway.
However, I got a call back from Kali at the MPC HR department about my references literally right as I got back in the door here at the parental units'. I told her that I didn't pass the skills assessment and she said that there are a lot of people at MPC retiring and a fair amount of positions opening up, so she said I should keep checking back at the MPC website for new jobs every two to three days. She mentioned several of the jobs that will soon be posted and some of them sounded pretty interesting, so I'll definitely be checking back with the MPC website. I was glad she called back, it was very good timing. And if I do decide to apply for another MPC job, the district application is already all filled out from this application of mine for the job I didn't get. All I'd have to do is change the position title.
It was definitely encouraging to hear that there are a lot of positions opening up at MPC. That phone call was a good antidote to having not gotten the job I was applying for. Now I'm just waiting to hear back from Jim Hall from the NPS ITACS HR department about the systems administration position over there. I sent him my cover letter on Friday and he said he'd be in touch, but he didn't say when. I'm hoping to hear back from him sometime this week.
Friday, July 18th, 2008 11:36 pm Moving - the state of losing things
Current Mood:
frustrated
Damn it, I seem to have lost a bunch of stuff with this move of mine.
I was just looking for the iTunes gift certificate my aunt and uncle gave me last Christmas since I was wanting to buy some TV shows off iTunes. I know I had it with me up in Chico, but I looked through all of my boxes, and I can't find it.
I found the gloves I was looking for, and some long sleeve shirts I was wondering about, but no gift certificate.
This sucks, I've never lost stuff before like this when I moved. I want my $15 gift certificate. I know I had it right before I moved out of my apartment in Chico, and I can't imagine I would have thrown it away. But I looked through all the boxes just now aside from the ones that had exclusively kitchen stuff and couldn't find it anywhere. And of course, Apple says that if you lose it, they're not going to replace it.
This is why I wanted to sort through stuff carefully when I moved, so this wouldn't happen, but dad wanted me to just throw stuff in boxes. Did that, and promptly lost stuff like this. I looked everywhere I can imagine it being, but no luck.
Edited to add (at 12:07 AM): Oops, that was embarrassing. Turns out it was in the first place I looked for it, I just didn't look carefully enough the first time I looked for it. Oh well, at least I found it after all and now know where it is. It's too late to use it tonight, but I'll probably buy stuff later on this weekend. I'm glad to finally know where it is though, I suppose that's what counts, and I guess on the positive side, I found the gloves that I was looking for in the process of looking for this gift certificate.
Friday, July 18th, 2008 07:58 pm Hiding in parentville
Current Mood:
productive
So I've been hiding in parentville for the past couple months not updating, though I've been keeping track of my friends list still. Figure it's time to give an update of the highlights since Graduation, especially since I've actually done some things lately as opposed to just sitting around resting.
My job hunt is finally making some progress. I talked to Sue Higgins on Wednesday, my former supervisor for two internships and mentor. She was her usual helpful self, and indeed seems to have been very helpful with the job hunt. I've been wanting to look for jobs at the Naval Postgraduate School here in Monterey, but the problem is it's hard to look for jobs there because there isn't any job listing of jobs open on the post that I can find, and I can't easily go in there and ask since it's been closed to the public since 9/11. Sue said the security has gotten a lot tighter since the last time I was there.
I did two internships there, my first one a roughly 90 hour internship for MAOS in Summer 2001, and the second one a couple months of regular work before I went off to Chico State in Summer 2005. NPS wasn't closed at all in the first internship, so I could just walk on through a side street closest to the NPS library, which was where I worked at the time. When I went back in 2005, it was closed and they had erected a fence around it so you couldn't just walk on wherever. Initially, they had my name on an access list while I was working there, so I had to wait for a guard to look me up, but the second or third week, I got an ID card so I could just show that to the guard to get in. According to Sue, everyone has to have a badge on post now, and visitor's have to have visitor's badges.
The tightened security was a little bit of a bummer last time I was there since it meant a little more walking to get to the gate, but it was a pretty nice place to work. It was casual both times I was there, and everyone was friendly, so I enjoyed working there. It was high on my place to look for jobs when I came back to Monterey. And they pay well enough that I ought to be able to afford an apartment close by, so I wouldn't have the half hour walk I had during the first internship to get to work.
Anyway, Sue forwarded my resume to two places: ITACS, and the DLRC. Those stand for Information Technology and Communication Services, and the Distance Learning Resource Center. The second of those is where I had my first internship. Yesterday, I got an email from the ITACS human resources with a systems administration position which looked pretty interesting. I was going to write up a cover letter for it last night and send it in, but I got really tired in the evening and decided to wait until today to finish it.
Before I could get back to it today, I got a call from the guy who emailed me who was following up to make sure I got the email. I told him I had and I was working on a cover letter for it. I wasn't planning on finishing it until afternoon or evening, but I figured if he was interested enough in me to call me, I'd work on it earlier, so I finished my cover letter and sent it in.
I also applied to a part time job at Monterey Peninsula College. I'm not wild about the part time nature of the job, but the job itself sounds more interesting. It's an Instructional Specialist position, which looks like kind of a teacher's assistant kind of job. I figure that'd give me a taste of what being a teacher would be like, which would be rather nice since I'd like to become one some day. And I also figured out who was in charge of the research for the Manpower Department at NPS and asked him if they need any research assistants. He said he wasn't sure, but you never know, so he asked me to send him my resume and references for my previous work at NPS. He said he'd pass it on to a few people who might have interests that would work and would keep me updated.
Of all of those, the last job sounds the most appealing since it sounds like good preparation for grad school since I was told that research experience is key in what grad schools look for in applicants. But it's also probably the longest shot out of the three since it wasn't a formal job posting but just something I looked up because I was interested in it. It's worth a try though, and the Dean of Research sounded promising.
Anyway, that's all the latest job hunt progress. I've been hanging out with Renee a fair amount lately. Monday we went to see Hellboy 2, and then we hung out at my house for the rest of the day. And a week ago Monday, we went to see Kung Fu Panda. I enjoyed both of those movies, thought they were pretty good. And tomorrow we'll be going to see the new Batman movie, The Dark Knight. Renee tried to see that one at last night's midnight showing, but it was sold out by the time she tried to get tickets. I wanted to go to it today, but she prefered tomorrow, so tomorrow it is.
I also scheduled swimming lessons a few days ago for July 28th for myself. I went to the sports center downtown a while ago in the hopes that I could just flail about in the water and figure it out myself, but it became apparent that the do it myself method was not going to work. And it made the cold I had at the time a bit worse, so I put off trying again until just now. I called to make an appoinment a few days ago and was hoping for something sooner, but oh well. Hopefully I won't have any jobs started by then, although I suppose that'd be a nice problem to have because it'd mean I'd have got myself through the interview and actually got a job. I can always reschedule it if that does happen. Mom said something about job interviews taking priority over the swim lessons, which I agree with, but the lesson is late enough in the day that I might be able to do both if I end up getting an interview that day.
Still have a bunch of boxes in my room. I'm leaving most of my stuff unpacked in the hopes that I'll get a job and will be able to move to an apartment and be on my own again. If I end up getting that part time job, I'll unpack though, because I'm not wild about the idea of having boxes everywhere for in my room for a full year. With housing costing as much as it does around here, that part time job wouldn't be enough to pay for an apartment around here. At least not if I wanted to eat at the same time.
I really ought to call Sue back and thank her for her help in the old job hunt. I might wait a little longer until I have more information on the possibility of a position that came from her forwarding my resume, but I'll definitely do that sometime soon. He, the ITACS HR guy, seems like someone who will probably get back to me on Monday since he has been in contact with me so quickly. Which happens to be when my skills assessment is for the Monterey Peninsula College job. I still don't know where exactly I'm supposed to meet for that skills assessment, but oh well, I'll get that information early on Monday so I won't have to wander around MPC asking people where I'm supposed to go.
I'll keep you posted on the updates in the grand job hunt. Here's hoping for the problem of excess, that would be wonderful.
Yesterday, I finished my finals, finally. I ended up redoing the question I wasn't wild about the first time through, which didn't take me too long thankfully, then turning in the last of my finals for my Strategic Issues class. And then, a couple hours later, my relatives started arriving. We went out to Sierra Nevada Brewery for dinner last night, they said it'd be about an hour and fifteen minute wait for dinner, but it was really more like two hours. Much waiting abounded, but it was good food, and good company. At that point, my aunt and uncle from San Francisco were here, as well as my grandmother, and my parents, and my sister.
Then today was graduation day itself. I ended up getting to the field a lot later than I was supposed to show up; I was supposed to arrive at 8 AM, but I didn't end up leaving my apartment until about 8:20 or so, and it was a fifteen minute walk. Renee probably ended up getting to the field before I did. The ceremony wasn't going to start until 9 AM though, so I wasn't late to that, and there was waiting around before I went on to the field where the audience was even with me showing up rather late.
Renee stayed from about 8:20 this morning when she arrived at my apartment until 4:20 PM when she headed back to San Jose for fanime. It was great to see her again, that August get together seems like it was eons ago. I'm making a mental note to write down the dates she said she'd be in Monterey on my calendar from that AIM conversation several days ago on my calendar so we can get together again.
Anyway, it was a bit of a crazy day. We had the graduation until um...11:30 maybe? Perhaps it ended earlier, I don't know what time we got out of there. Then we went to lunch after wandering through the BMU for a little while, we managed to get in the earlier time slot even though we originally had a 1 PM table scheduled. Then my sister had to the airport for her Lightning in a Bottle festival, so Elsa and David gave, my aunt and uncle, gave her a ride. At this point, we had broken up from lunch and some people went back to the hotel, while Renee and I went to my apartment for a little while.
I had called Professor Sandoe while he was at lunch since he wanted to meet my parents but couldn't make it to graduation. Come to think of it, I'm not sure my parents ended up meeting any of my other teachers at graduation, we kinda just left right after. There were a lot of people graduating, so it was a fairly long ceremony and people just wanted to leave by then. Or at least it felt long. So that meeting was from 2:30 to 3:30 with Professor Sandoe at Peet's Coffee with my parents, Renee, and David and Elsa.
I just hung out at my apartment for a little while after Renee left, and then, at 6 PM, everyone who was still here came over to my apartment for dinner. I invited several friends, but Daniel ended up being the only one who made the dinner party. That lasted until about 9 PM, with Daniel leaving a bit before then, and at that time, everyone else went to the hotel. We're going to end up giving Daniel my couch tomorrow since he's not graduating yet and one of his roommates is moving and taking their couch in a week, so we asked him if he needed it, and he checked with his roommates and they said they'd like to have the couch, so he's going to come over at noon tomorrow to help us move the couch over to his place. I was originally thinking we might leave Chico on Tuesday, but with the couch gone tomorrow, dad's idea of leaving earlier sounds appealing since the apartment is frankly a lot less comfortable without the couch in my opinion.
It's been kind of a crazy day, but lots of fun. Many thanks to Renee for coming all the way up here from San Jose, I appreciated it and enjoyed seeing you again. I guess my parents and grandmother had a longer drive, but that's different since they're expected to come to this sort of thing since they're family. It's been a crazy ride getting my bachelor's degree, for that matter. Yes, I'll definitely miss Chico, but I'm ready to be done with my bachelor's degree and this major.
Well, I suppose I should go finish my last book from the Chico Library before my couch disappears tomorrow afternoon.
Thursday, May 22nd, 2008 08:20 pm Go vote in the advisory board elections
If you haven't already, you should all go vote in the LJ advisory board elections. My recommendation is legomymalfoy. I saw her a lot back when I was active in LiveJournal support and she was very active in support and in userdoc, based on her userinfo, it looks like she still is.
Well, back to my book and final procrastination. I've gotta finish this thing by tomorrow so I can take it back to the Chico library before I move out of Chico. I'm going to miss my little apartment when I have to move out, it's treated me fairly well. Needs a few tuneups, but then, so do I. Heck, for that matter, I'll miss Chico itself. Part of what I'm going to be missing is my independence, but it's not just that. I'll find a job in a month or two in Monterey, I'm sure. But I like Chico. I may find a job I like in Monterey, but that's rather beside the point as I don't really want to live in Monterey any more. Ah well, it'll give me motivation to find a job some place I do want to live, or a means to that job, like grad school.
Still can't believe I've only been in Bidwell Park three times after having lived just a fifteen minute walk away from it for two years. Oh well, I got a two and a half hour walk in the other day, I guess that counts for something.
Thursday, May 22nd, 2008 05:20 pm All my substantial finals are finished
Current Mood:
soon to be relief
Well, almost finished. I finished typing up the answers to my Strategic Issues final just now, but I can't upload them until noon tomorrow when we have the official final time.
There's one more final remaining tomorrow morning that's for my Project Design class. It's at 8 AM. My dad and I have a term for this. He and I and one of his friends walk a lot on the trails behind my parental units' house. We call the last hill before the downhill portion the final insult. I'd say that an 8 AM final the day before graduation definitely qualifies as the final insult.
However, this 8 AM final at least deserves its time slot. I was rather annoyed about all the 8 AM classes this semester, but at least an 8 AM final that goes with an 8 AM class makes some sense. All those 8 AM common finals we had earlier for 2 PM classes were just retarded. I don't think people are any less likely to cheat in common finals than in regular ones, which was their rationale for having so many of them. But oh well.
In less than twenty four hours, I'll be done with all my undergraduate finals. In less than twenty four hours, I'll be on my way to having a bachelors of science.
What a relief. Now all I have to do is avoid sleeping through my 8 AM final like I slept through my 8 AM presentation, haha. Fortunately, now I have had enough practice with the sleeping pills that I know exactly how to take them so they'll help me and not screw me over. It ended up being a three tries is a charm sort of thing.
Turns out all I needed to do was take the one half dose instead of a full pill. That and follow the directions about not eating before taking it. Who knew that following direcions could actually be useful?
Now for a break before I do my project evaluation. That, at least, will be a fun essay to write.
Wednesday, May 21st, 2008 12:36 am The perfect metaphor for honesty
Current Mood:
two more finals to graduation
I was making myself scrambled eggs for dinner today when I just realized that cracking eggs is the perfect metaphor for honesty.
Try and crack an egg too softly, and it won't crack open, at best, it'll just spiderweb a bit. Crack and egg too hard and not only will the egg come out, but the egg shell pieces will go flying all over the place. But crack it just right and the egg will drop right out without any of the shell getting in the way of the scrambled eggs you're trying to make.
So it is with honesty as well. If you're too vague, it may make sense to you, but you'll just confuse the person you're trying to talk to or have it go right over their head. If you're way too direct, you'll come off as harsh and just piss them off. I seem to do that a lot. The "just right" level of honesty explains things directly so there isn't any vagueness but also so you aren't being so direct that you piss anyone off.
Just thought I'd share that thought with you all.
In other news, magellen owes me an e-mail. She hasn't been on LJ in ages, but I caught a rare time on AIM Sunday when she was not only just online, but also not away. She's online almost all the time, but 99% of the time, she's away. She said she'd send it either Monday or Tuesday and by Pacific time, Tuesday is officially history. Ah well, she's graduating too, so she's probably busy right now. Hopefully she'll get around to it sooner or later.
This reminds me, I need to reply to Bridget's email. She said kinda what I expected, but oh well. I'll probably reply carefully because I don't want to screw up the reply and piss her off, which seems quite possible given the subject. Although I doubt she'd really get pissed off, I'm just hypersensitive these days about that sort of thing. Stupid ex-girlfriends sending my sensitivity / worrying into the stratosphere. Did I ever mention that I have way too much empathy? That's another topic for another time though.
Two classes now, I've learned that men fall in love more quickly and recover more slowly from its destruction than women. Now I've seen this contrast live and in person.
I feel robbed. I want my life back, damn it. I want to finish off my essay final exam, and granted, it is boring which makes this difficult, but my brain is so sluggish right now that I can't think at all.
I'm used to being tired, it's the price of being a night owl in the society that demands alertness at an early hour and a body that despises the taste of caffeine. But I've been so beyond tired for so long that I'm really bloody sick of it. I can't even sleep without drugs any more.
I just posted a poem about this in my AP account that I called Fatigue Amplication. I'm tempted to post it here, but I decided not to because half the effect is gone without the text and background color that I picked for that poem. The text is orange - it looks like dried blood to me, which is fitting. The background is blue, for depression. And the title is self-explanatory.
It's been five months. That's pratically the length of the entire relationship. When is this going to end?
Monday, May 19th, 2008 02:17 pm I so didn't want to answer that question
We had to choose one of three questions for the short essay question portion of the Social Psych final. I really didn't want to choose the third one because I knew I'd give a pessimistic answer to it, but I ended up answering it anyway because I couldn't think of enough to say for the other two. Naturally, for this one, I ended up writing almost a full page worth. I wasn't just pessimistic, I was downright harsh. Oh well, I blame the continuing influences of depression.
I really hate it when I find out that I've been worrying completely unnecessarily. I was really worried on Saturday because I saw the BSIS 496 final exam wasn't posted yet and I didn't think I'd have enough time to do it. I thought the exam was going to be today, but it turns out I had plenty of time because it's actually not until Friday. And Lorraine posted it yesterday morning, so even if it was today, I still would have had enough time to finish it, it just would have meant a little less time studying for that Social Psych exam. Which ended up being the case anyway because I answered two of the questions and started working on the third before I saw that note in bold in the middle of the page that says the exam will be on Friday.
Hello, brain, it really helps to read. Oh well, I did fine on the Social Psych exam and it certainly won't kill me to be ahead of the game here. I ended up deciding to finish it today anyway because I really don't want to have to do this exam on Friday and it'd be nice to have as much of finals week off as I can. Besides, I'll likely come up with better answers on it today than I would Friday since today I got up at 10 AM for my 12 PM final, and Friday I'll have to ressuruct myself at 6 or 6:30 PM for the 8 AM final. At least that 8 AM final makes more sense than all the previous 8 AM finals since it's for an actual 8 AM class.
I need to go shopping since I sacrificed my Sunday shopping trip on the altar of studying. It's too hot for that now though, so it'll have to wait until this evening.
Sunday, May 18th, 2008 09:21 pm The 60 cent discount
Current Mood:
satiated
The sandwich lady at Kona's gave me a 60 cent discount when I ordered my Destroyer with guacamole instead of cheese on the substitution. Guacamole is really an addition, not a substition, and I knew that so I fully expected my sandwich to cost more when I ordered it as such. It totally makes sense for it to be more expensive than cheese since the materials for guac are more expensive to buy than the materials for cheese.
I ordered the sandwich to go since I knew it'd be more comfortable in my airconditioned apartment than in the fanned restaurant. When I got back here and was eating it, I realized that discount was totally unnecessary and a nice thing to do. Basically, she charged me for a cheese addition instead of the guacamole addition.
Anyway, I figured I'd repay the favor and went back and gave her a five dollar tip. She earned it, the discount was a nice thing to do, she was very nice and almost apologetic about charging me more. And it was an excellent sandwich.
Saturday, May 17th, 2008 08:22 pm Finals? Whatever
So not going to study for these right now.
The only final that I'm actully truly worried about is one that I can't study for right now - my Strategic Issues for Information Professionals final. They're all essay question exams, but they're also questions that require research, which makes studying a mite bit difficult. Lorraine always posted the questions several days ahead of the exam, and she said they'd be posted last night but as of 8 PM today, they still weren't on Vista. I wasn't originally worried about this exam, but then I looked it up yesterday and found out that it's going to be Monday afternoon, which gives me less studying time than I thought I'd have.
I'm so burnt out on school and tired that I'm not going to study or work on my other two finals. Books? Pleasure reading? That sounds like a nice change of pace.
<epictetus> is <3 supposed to be a heart or an ass hat?
Blah, I so don't want to study for my finals. It sucks when you have finals looming and you're not only completely done with school, emotionally, but also utterly drained, depressed, and tired as hell. Can I get a get out of finals free card? It'd be nice.
Can you believe I'm actually thinking of going shopping as a way of procrastinating? This is a definite first, that's not something I've ever done before. But I think I will now.
Tuesday, May 13th, 2008 10:57 pm All this time it was just a matter of ergonomics
Current Mood:
huge weight off my shoulders
I think I've complained a reasonable amount in here about how much my hands hurt. It's been something I've been very worried about since it's become a constant problem a few years ago.
Anyway, after all this time, it turns out it was just a matter of bad ergonomics. I'm in a good family to have ergonomics related health problems as my mom happens to be the ergonomics queen at the hospital she works at. A while back she noticed that I type in a position that makes it so that I use all the little muscles in my hands for typing, as opposed to using the muscles in my entire arm. This was her theory for what was causing the problem. She pointed out the ideal way to type, and I agreed that it's definitely not how I type.
Turns out she's right. A few days ago, I discovered quite by accident that typing in a different position helps substantially. I think part of the problem is that I have weak wrists - actually, they're hypermobile, my whole body is really flexible in one way or another. Anyway, I ended up using a chair that had arm rests that forced my wrists into the proper position for typing. The first time I typed like this, it was a bit awkward, but I noticed that I came out of there hurting less than I thought I would.
Then today I typed again in that position for forty five minutes, usually plenty of time to get my hands hurting. But I realized an hour or so after that my hands weren't hurting at all while I was doing that.
All this time and all I needed was a better computer chair. I wish I knew this six years ago when they were just starting to hurt on a regular basis, I could have saved myself a lot of extra pain. Oh well, better late than never. This is really a huge relief to discover as this was an enormous worry for me. It's also quite good to discover because there was enough of a difference today that I know the damage I've got already isn't permanent. I definitely need a computer break, but I'm going to give myself one in two weeks when I graduate. But now I know that when I go back to typing after that break, it won't be at the expense of my hands.
My current computer chair is comfortable, I didn't realize there was anything wrong with it at all. This is such a massive relief to discover something that could fix this problem for me. I was really starting to worry before discovering this that I'd have to avoid computers altogether forever if I wanted to maintain my hands in decent working condition, which I obviously do.
Sunday, April 27th, 2008 04:09 pm It's 80 degrees inside...
And my air conditioning isn't working. I'm not looking forward to tonight's attempt to get to sleep. It took me about two hours last night to cool my bedroom down enough with my fan to get it to about 73 degrees so I could get to sleep, and that was after it had gotten up to 78 degrees inside.
Ugh. The AC technician was supposed to fix this last week, but it didn't happen. Jeff says he's planning on coming by tomorrow to fix it when I asked yesterday evening. Oh well, one more month and then I'll be heading back to Monterey. If I ever end up moving back to a hot climate, I'm going to make sure to test out the AC before I sign any leases on apartments, because this is ridiculous. I'd have thought fixing this in the middle of April when it's about to warm up substantially would be a priority, but apparently not.
On the plus side, Bill Knudsen of RW Knudsen is going to be coming to speak to Net Impact tomorrow evening, which should be awesome. RW Knudsen makes organic drinks that are really good, I'm planning on buying some at Chico Natural Foods this evening when I go shopping after it cools down a bit. Should be an interesting speech. It's a local company too, the cans all say Chico for the place where they're made.
Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008 10:29 pm It rained today - finally
It's been looking like it would rain for the past three weeks or so but it never got around to actually doing it until today. I actually felt better after it rained, oddly enough. Maybe it was some sort of weird reverse SADS thing? I dunno, perhaps it could also just be a case of me being glad to have some rain to revel in and a mirror to look into that shows the weather and not my own face.
Rock climbing was indeed awesome, though I wasn't wild about how distrustful I am or how I had to get up at 5:30 AM for it, but oh well. It was frustrating, and half way up my second climb, I could have sworn I wouldn't have made it, and said so a couple times, but I actually did make it to the top. I had lots of encouragement from Julie, who was belaying me. Unlike me, Julie is an excellent rock climber, and I shall thank her again for all the tips and encouragement on Thursday when our class meets again.
We have to do some sort of reflection about the climb afterwards, but I think I remember Barbara saying we could do a poem instead of an essay, which I'm going to do if that's an option. I wasn't sure if it'd work since poems choose me more than I choose them, but I think writing a poem about this would be pretty trivial, I'd just write it about that second climb.
I just had a fairly long phone conversation with my dad. It was kinda nice. Weird, but quite nice. I wish I had his sense of humor. Did I mention that having a long memory sucks ass and grudges do too? I suppose I just did.
Regret is a powerful thing. And I have way too much of it. Ditto for worrying, that at least, Calvaleigh was right about. That's all for now.
Thursday, April 17th, 2008 07:39 pm Rock Climbing!
Current Mood:
anticipation goodness
I'm so excited about this weekend. This sunday, we'll be going on our Rock Climbing field trip up to Bald Rock. Our teacher said it's about twice the size of the climbing wall in Acker Gym, and not too bad difficulty wise. I finally got around to using the actual climbing shoes today instead of my regular shoes, and it was a lot nicer climbing wise. Ankle hurts a bit from it, but it's worth it to be able to climb that much better.
I'm going to have to get up at some ungodly hour to be able to make it there in time since Barbara, our teacher, said it's about an hour and a half drive, and she wants us at the climbing site at 9 AM. It'll be worth it though, it'll be so awesome to do this out on a real rock. And I actually feel comfortable enough now that I'm not too worried about breaking an ankle or something up there from some bad fall or something.
I was climbing with Lauren today, she's at about the same skill level as I am, so it's kinda fun to climb with her because I know I'm not really keeping her waiting around for me to get the knots tied since I suck at the knot tying part. I suck at the knot tying part, and she struggled with the dressing the knots, so we helped each other out there. There was one part on the climbing wall where she slipped while she was climbing and I was belaying her, and I succeeded in arresting her fall without her sliding at all. It was a tricky part on the climbing wall where I really had an advantage when I was doing it since the part where she slipped was right where the wall curves outward and you have to get back up to the vertical part again. My height really came in handy there since I could just take full advantage of my long legs and reach up there a bit easier than she could; I probably would have done the same thing if I wasn't as tall as I am.
Anyway, that was the part where I felt confident about my belaying abilities since I succeeded in catching her fall, so I was belaying correctly here. That's the part I was most worried about really because I figure as long as I have a good belayer, I can always look around while I'm climbing for good footholds and handholds. I definitely do a lot of that while I'm climbing, and here again, the real climbing shoes will likely come in handy on Bald Rock since there I'll be able to just use friction on some parts if necessary. That just wouldn't work with regular shoes though, you need to have climbing shoes on to be able to fully take advantage of the friction of the rock (or wall) you're working with.
Really can't wait until Sunday, this is going to be lots of fun.
Tuesday, April 15th, 2008 05:10 pm That was neat to figure out
So my razor choked up on me when I tried to shave before the interview with the Fund for Public Interest Research. I think I did pretty badly in that interview, but oh well, I tried. Mainly it was just a confusion over what exactly they did, but I think that was my fault given that it looks like it was explained pretty well on the information sheet Mike gave me.
Anyway, I went to RiteAid to buy a replacement head for my razor and found out that they charge $40 for them, which is a total ripoff. I bought it anyway, but before I actually took it out of the package, when I was about to replace the razor head, I checked the old razor heads to see if they truly needed to be replaced, or were just clogged with facial hair.
I suspected the latter might have been the case since that got my shower drain clogged up to the point of worthlessness from my regular hair so I figured the same principle might be at work here. Turns out I was right, so I took it back and returned it. The clerk didn't have any problem with me returning it since I didn't take it out of the package and made sure to keep my receipt. Pretty sure that it's Norelco that's doing the ripping off here rather than RiteAid, since they list replacing it annually to keep it in ideal working condition as a suggested requirement, rather than cleaning it. It only took me maybe ten minutes to clean all three razor heads anyway. I figured that's definitely worth saving $40, so now I know for future reference not to bother buying into their scam of selling replacement heads when the original just needs cleaning.
Friday, April 11th, 2008 12:09 am Career fair tomorrow
Current Mood:
hopeful
Currrently printing resumes. I just went over the website listing which companies will be there, six of them look like companies that I can imagine working for. Out of those, I'm probably qualifed for at least four, probably five.
I got invited to an Information Session for one of these companies that's right after the career fair ends, which I'll be going to, it's interestingly a company that makes the kinds of parts my dad would use since they make doors and windows and he's a contractor.
I haven't had much luck with these career fairs in the past, but who knows, maybe this one will be different. I'm hoping so since it's likely the last career fair this semester. Hopefully I won't self-sabotage too much because of my lousy mood these days.
Sunday, March 30th, 2008 01:27 am Ecuador Pictures
At long last, I am finally getting my Ecuador pictures online. They're being uploaded as I'm typing this entry, last I checked, my album has 100 pictures in it, it'll have more than that by the time this entry is posted. I took a hell of a lot of pictures while I was there - it's a total of a bit over 800 pictures, I think closer to 900 really. They're broken up into three albums on Picasa: one for Mainland Ecuador, and two for the Galapagos. There isn't really any distinction between the two Galapagos albums, it's just that Picasa only allows you to put 500 pictures in an album, and I took 527 in the several days we were at the Galapagos.
Enjoy! And if any of you want any prints of any of these, I'd suggest leaving a comment here as the pictures I'm uploading are smaller than the ones I've got on my computer. I can upload any full size pictures to my toxic account if you're interested, but I'm not going to do that for the entire set like I am this whole album here. I took the pictures all at full resolution (6 MP), so the 800+ pictures works out to about 1.36 gigabytes on my computer, but it's substantially less than that on Picasa since they have a 1 GB limit on Picasa.
For the first time since, well, since I got back from Ecuador on January 14th, I finally had a good day. I literally haven't had a good day since then until today. I think most of it was my Rock Climbing class. Not entirely though, but most of it. I just got out of there after having partnered with James understanding the knots and belaying a lot better than I had previously, and I was thinking, wow I can actually do this stuff. Our teacher said good job to me after class when I was on my way out of the Rock Climbing gym, and that meant a lot because she's a hard nosing, no mistakes allowed sort of teacher. Which, given that it's a rock climbing class, is something that's really nice and reassuring to have.
I just ended up walking out of my rock climbing class just feeling serene. I was smiling on my way home and when I got home and I was a bit sore from the rock climbing and the belaying, but the good kind of sore, that said, I actually did something here. Just been smiling and in a good mood since then.
It had been so long since I had had an actual good day that I had almost forgotten what it felt like. It feels so good to just feel alive again and not consumed by negativity.
I had a ticket for an Amtrak bus leaving Chico at 11:30 AM today. I set my alarm for 8:30 AM, planning on leaving at 11 and figuring that two and a half hours ought to be plenty of time to get ready and pack.
No such luck. I hit the snooze alarm twice, as I usually do, getting up at 8:40, but it was my body that really fucked me over. I'm sick of all this bullshit. Anyway, I was hoping that the Amtrak bus would be late, but I didn't really expect that to be the case, and sure enough, it wasn't late.
The one time it was late, back in December (November? I'm not sure), I arrived early. I then ended up waiting forty five minutes for the bus to finally arrive a half hour late. Fortunately, I had plenty of time for my connecting train back then. Now, I arrive ten minutes late and the bus is gone already.
I had hoped that I could just reschedule to the 1:50 PM bus, but dad balked at picking me up at San Jose. Said I should just reschedule and come tomorrow. I looked into other possibilities for taking the 1:50 bus and finding another public transportation route home. But the only thing I could think of was the airport shuttle and then I was looking at not just another $30 for that, but also a taxi ride over to the airport. I'd have done that except that the only options are a 9 PM and a 10:45 PM shuttle from the San Jose airport, and since the later Sacramento train isn't scheduled to arrive until 8:45 PM, I thought fifteen minutes was cutting it a bit too close. I could have done the later one, but that'd have meant I'd have an hour and forty five minutes to kill in San Jose and wouldn't arrive in Monterey until 12:30 AM.
So instead I rescheduled to a 7:55 AM bus leaving tomorrow morning. I didn't imagine that ten minutes of extra sleep today would rob me of several hours of sleep tomorrow. Fuck.
Tuesday, March 11th, 2008 06:20 pm Sheesh, these are greedy bastards
Remember a while back when Rubert Murdoch bought out Dow Jones, the company that publishes The Wall Street?
I had a subscription when that happens. Still do - it doesn't expire until April 29th. I was debating on whether or not to renew it until just now. I just went online to suspend the delivery of my subscription for next week since I'll be in Monterey that week and thus won't be here to get the subscription. I was debating whether or not to "forward" my subscription to my parents' house, but I decided not to do that.
I have two very good reasons for that. The first one is the last two times I tried to forward my subscription, it didn't happen. I called them up, they made the change, and it never got delivered to my parents house. I even called them to complain and they read me off my parents' address in their system but it still wasn't coming and that didn't change the next day. The second reason is that in theory if I do a delivery suspension instead of forwarding, I'll get credited for the week while I'm not getting the subscription and I will have a week's more of newspapers. I figure that's my best bet since the last two times I tried to forward, it didn't happen at all, so at least this way it still won't happen and I might get a week's more newspapers than I would otherwise.
Anyway, I really don't like Murdoch and his News Corp clan. But they bought out Dow Jones while still had six months or so left on my subscription, so I figured, eh, I'll try it out with him, and if I don't like it, I just won't renew it. Which is what I'm going to do. Not only has the service gone down hill since Murdoch taken over, those delivery forwardings used to work before he took over, but they've also jacked up the price. Dow Jones used to charge $109 for a years worth of print subscription only. Now it's roughly double that at $213 for a years worth of print subscription only. You can get print and online for $260 for a year, but I don't compare prices with that typically since I never use their online edition.
So, they have more ads now, they've doubled their prices, and the service has gone downhill, and they expect me to renew? Right, not going to happen. They also got rid of a section in the C section that I really liked, it was news section with news from alternate news sources, not typically business news, so I can understand why they got rid of it, but it was almost always interesting, so I was disappointed when they got rid of it.
Oh, and their phone support hours are also less than they used to be, it used to go all the way until midnight eastern time Monday through Friday, now it's only 10 PM - or 7 PM Pacific time, which is what's relevant to me really.
I don't know, I'm almost tempted to write them a letter and tell them why I'm not going to renew. It's not even just the price increase that does it for me, it's the combination of everything I just listed that makes it so there's absolutely no chance that I'd renew. Content wise, it's still a very good newspaper, but when they're increasing the amount of ads, and cutting back on the service, I just don't feel any desire to send them any more money.
They've got an online renewal option now too, which didn't used to exist, but the online renewal deal only allows you to renew for two years both the print and the online edition, which is definitely something I'm not going to do. Ah well, it's been rather useful to have as it's made research for my Professional Reading Reports dead simple, all I have to do is read the newspaper and sooner or later I'll see a good article to use. Just used one of yesterday's articles for the third report. That report isn't due until the day we get back from Spring break, but I know myself too well to think I'll actually get any homework done over the Spring break, so I did it today so I wouldn't have to worry about have it automatically late because I didn't do it over the Spring break.
Sunday, February 24th, 2008 12:34 am Windows Vista?
I am, at long last, looking for a new computer. I was hoping I could squeeze enough life out of my current computer to last me through this semester and thus the end of my bachelor's degree, but alas, no such luck. My main reason for that was that I had hoped to get a Mac as my next computer, and as long as I'm in school, that just wouldn't be practical or a smart thing to do, so I wanted to wait. But I'm in need of a program that my current computer won't run, and it's pressing enough that I can't wait until the end of the semester.
Anyway, I'm wondering if any of you have Windows Vista, and if so, what you think of it. I'm debating on whether to get Windows Vista or Windows XP. I'm not really sure which I prefer, I'm leery of getting new Windows OSes since I figure it's best to wait until they get the bugs worked out. But on the other hand, I don't really see the point in getting an OS that's already obsolete.
Is Vista likely to run slower than Windows XP on a new computer? And how likely is it that my current programs will break with Vista? I'm currently running Win XP Pro. The only real program I'm a little worried about not working is the SAP client, although SAP probably has a Vista version out already by now, I'm just not sure if it's something I'd have to pay for or not. But given that I got that one with one of my classes, I could probably get a Vista version from Chico State if necessary.
Sunday, February 3rd, 2008 12:16 pm Being a teacher?
I just had this weird idea of becoming a college teacher someday. I'm rather liking this Social Psychology class I'm taking and I really do think I make a mistake in not switching to a Psych major when I changed majors two years ago. Still, I remember Elsa said that Grad schools don't really care what you majored in as an undergrad so it wouldn't really matter that I wasn't a psych major if I wanted to go into teaching it because I'd still have to go to grad school. I'm not entirely sure, but I'm getting the impression that you need a Master's to teach at a community college, and a doctorate to teach at a four year college. I'd probably go for the latter since that gives you more flexibility - you can go either way with that degree, rather than just for a community college.
I just see a lot to like about the idea of possibly becoming a college psych teacher some day. It's a subject that I really like and public speaking doesn't really faze me like it does a lot of people, so that wouldn't really bother me. And I've noticed all these things about academic life that teachers have that I'd like. There's pretty much no dress code at all here at Chico State and there wasn't one at MPC either, I'm guessing that's pretty normal at colleges. That I really like, as I've never really liked the idea of going to work in a suit or tie. There's also the fact that I'm really not a morning person and there's no way I'd avoid 8 or 9 AM jobs in the regular work world. I can imagine doing that for a few years, but it would be nice to not have to be up and working at that hour for my entire working career. This semester and last semester I've had 8 AM classes, but aside from these two classes and summer classes, college has never started earlier than 10 AM for me.
Then there's the more long term schedule of semesters and breaks that's also really appealing. I remember a while back Heather said enjoy your breaks while you can because you won't get these nice long breaks when you're in the work world. Which is true in the regular work world, but there are long breaks in the academic world, summers here at Chico State last about three months and winter breaks last for five weeks. I can't imagine any kind of job aside from an academic one that would have breaks like that. It probably wouldn't be all free time as I'm sure there's some preparing for the next semester that goes on, but after a while, that probably wouldn't take too long. And I'm also really attracted to the idea of writing novels, and these long breaks would allow for that like normal jobs wouldn't. I'm sure there's things like politics that would be a drag, but that'd be true regardless of where I get a job. I couldn't teach K - 12 though, I'm just not really a children person at all, and I'd rather teach people who want to be there as I would hope would be the case in college. But college teachers have a lot more power than high school teachers, and a lot more flexible schedules, so the age of the students and atmosphere of the school would be a lot more to my liking.
This isn't something I'm going to do straight out of Chico State. I'm tired enough of college that I want to get a regular job for several years, but this is more of a long term possibility that could be neat to go to grad school several years down the line and then become a teacher. There's also the issue of money since my parents have paid for my undergraduate education, which has been greatly appreciated, but if I do go to grad school, I'd really like to pay for it all myself.
In other news, I'm starting to see the bright side of the breakup of that relationship I was in. We had the person in charge of the career center come and talk to my BSIS capstone class and I was suddenly realizing on my way out of class that I'm single and unattached again. So I can go anywhere out of college. Seattle and Washington in general has this really strong draw to me for several years now, so I might see if I can find a job I like there and live there for a while, seeing what Washington is like since I've lived in California all my life. A few of you live near Seattle. Can you tell me what the atmosphere of Seattle is like if you've been there? I'm especially curious about caladri's opinion since I know she used to live in California and thus knows what the weather is like in Washington versus California.
Friday, February 1st, 2008 03:54 pm Well, that's a relief
A bit of a pain too, but it's a solution that's easier than the reformat I was worried I'd have to resort to. Apparently WebCT doesn't like Firefox anymore. It used to work okay last semester, but now every time I go there it crashes my browser and freezes the computer for several minutes. Fortunately, it works just fine in IE 7 so I'll just be doing my Vista using in IE from now on.
Thursday, January 31st, 2008 05:48 pm Suggestions for speeding up a computer?
Anyone have any ideas for speeding up an ancient computer short of reformatting? I bought a new hard drive last summer and another 512 megs of RAM and that helped for a while, but it's back to creeping really slowly. Conveniently, it bogs down the worst any time I need to use WebCT Vista, since that uses Java which is slow as hell.
I *could* reformat again, but I'm rather tired of doing that at this point and I'm hoping for something faster. Tried a defrag, didn't help the speed problems at all. Any and all advice would be welcome.
Monday, December 17th, 2007 08:10 pm Today is the day of misplaced mail
Today I got one letter addressed to some other family sent to my address, and in the digital realm, I just got two youtube videos sent to me from some Barbara Stone lady claiming to be my mom. How weird.
Apparently I have a mom named Barbara Stone and my name is Barry. News to me all of that really. I know she's not my mom because mom has way better grammar and actually capitalizes stuff in e-mails, aside from the obvious name issue and sending to an e-mail account I'm pretty sure my mom doesn't know about.
I had my first and probably my worst final for this semester today. It most definitely sucked, but it's over and done with so no more worrying about that one. I was in a really foul mood yesterday so I didn't do any final studying at all, so today I have the joy of reviewing all ten chapters for Business Systems Analysis, instead of something more reasonable like half that. I'm done with seven of them now with my super quick chapter skimming, I have no clue if it's actually useful studying, but I don't really care anymore.
I'm getting the distinct impression that my girlfriend is ignoring me and has been since Saturday. That was the main reason for my foul mood yesterday and it certainly isn't helping now either. I finally got tired of wondering whether or not this is the case earlier today, so I sent her an e-mail asking her if she is ignoring me as diplomatically as I could. Really tired of school. Tired of long distance relationships too, but I suppose I better get used to that since it's the only arena where I seem to have any luck in the relationship realm. Oh well.
Edited to add(at 10:20 PM): Apparently my impression came from my paranoia and cell phone problems my girlfriend has been having rather than having. This is good to know; this is one of those times when I'm really glad to find out that I was mistaken.
Programming was exceedingly frustrating today because I was finishing up a program that I tried to finish at home yesterday but couldn't because something was screwed up with my NetBeans configuration at home. Hopefully I'll be able to figure out what and fix it or I won't really be able to get any studying in for the practical pat of the final.
Anyway, the exceedingly frustrating part was that while I was finishing the program, the computer I was working on was excruciatingly slow. I expect that with my computer at home since it's almost 8 years old, but I shouldn't have to deal with that crap on school computers, they ought to be fast enough to do what we need to do in a reasonable amount of time. Every time I compiled the program, it took like five minutes. At least it felt like five minutes, it might have been less than that, but the computer was useless at anything else but that since it was using a lot of virtual memory at that point so I couldn't multitask to distract myself. Right now I'm uploading the zipped up finished program to toxic so I can e-mail it to Connolly, which is taking a while too, but that's to be expected since it's a 12 meg file.
It's Friday, but the wrong Friday, it ought to be the 21st now because then I'd have finals finished and would be on my way to see my girlfriend. This whole distance crap sucks ass.
Friday, December 7th, 2007 12:43 pm Sick of school
Current Mood:
fed up
That was just the icing on the cake for me.
Today I "finished" the lameass programming assignment that was assigned Wednesday but wasn't due until today. That's in quotes because there was still something wrong at the end but I was sick of it so I just thought screw it and turned it in anyway.
...anyway, while I was working on it and fed up with programming, I was in the class after my programming class, which is BSIS 301. I'm not taking that class and don't have to because the MINS 301 class I took substitutes for it. Thankfully, since Sager's class seems like it's likely easier than this stuff they're doing is. Right when I was fed up with programming and just wanting to be done forever with it, not just for this semester, but period, the teacher of the other class mentioned what he called the capstone class for MIS majors, MINS 450. He said it involves really hard programming but businesses like it since that's exactly what they do apparently.
Meanwhile, I was swearing under my breath as I heard this, because I'm going to have to take that hardass class next semester. It happens to be my 8 AM Monday/Wednesday Friday class. So not only will it be really hard, but I won't be awake for it either because it's at 8 AM. Fuck.
Why isn't it May yet?
Right, time to do some shopping then veg out for the rest of the day.
What used to be my default icon seems to have disappeared for some bizarre reason which eludes me. I switched it into a non-default icon status since it's inexplicably been replaced with a Yahoo! image, which is quite bizarre as it's hosted on LiveJournal, not Yahoo! Think I'll have to file a support request for that as I rather liked that icon, but ah well, not the end of the world I suppose.
In other news, I was ridiculously tired this afternoon - more so than I thought I was. I knew I was tired as that's why I took a nap, but I didn't realize just how tired I was, I had set my timer for an hour and attempted to sleep for that long but apparently slept right through it and ended up sleeping for four hours and thus waking up at 7:15 rather than 4:15. Which sort of screwed up my studying plans, but oh well - I'm not sure studying would do much good for the pratical part of the midterm anyway, that's the sort of thing that the only kind of studying that is useful is actually creating programs. You don't learn anything about programming by staring at code, you really have to go through the process of making it, screwing up, and having to fix it to really understand how it works. I'm not worrying about being so awake that I won't be able to get to sleep at a decent hour as I'm still relatively tired, usually that's the case when I'm so tired that I end up sleeping a lot longer than I think I would like that.
In the middle of planning my 24th birthday party right now. I think I'll be having that on a nice lucky number this year - October 13th. A bit earlier than my actual birthday, but the weekend before my birthday this year, I'll be going to a Bill Cosby show at the Laxson Auditorium. I could have the party on Sunday I suppose, but I like doing these things on Saturdays so that they can last as late as my friends are willing to stay without having to worry about getting up for classes the next morning, which is of particular concern this semester now that I've got a full schedule of 8 AM classes. Which, combined with going to sleep at around midnight, is why I've been so tired lately. It's worth it though, been getting in some absolutely lovely conversations that I wouldn't give up for the world, and I've got the time to take naps in the afternoon, so it's not really a problem anyway.
Don't think I'll be doing the labor intensive cheesecake that I made last year again this year though. I have a cheesecake pan that I bought and an angel food cake pan that my great aunt gave me so I think I'll be making the latter this year since Angel food cake is still pretty good but far less work than cheesecake. I'm probably less likely to screw it up as well, which is really the main reason for the switch. I wouldn't mind all the work involved with the cheesecake if it was a wonderful cheesecake, but it really wasn't. Who knows though, I may change my mind and decide to go for the full gonzo cheesecake, I'm not going to make the same mistakes I did last year so it'd likely be a better cheesecake than that one was, suppose I haven't really decided yet. Cheesecake is a lot more work to make than Angelfood cake, but I also like it a lot better than Angelfood cake, so I have mixed feelings about this really. Suppose I'll see, mom suggested making a pratice Angelfood cake this weekend, which I'll probably do if I'm up for it, and then if I really miss the cheesecake I'll go for that instead.
Monday, September 24th, 2007 06:18 pm Does anyone know how to remap drive letters?
I bought and installed a new hard drive last summer since my old one got ridiculously slow due to the fact that my computer is ancient. For some reason, when I swapped out the drives, it mapped the hard drive to drive E, which is a bit annoying since I'm so used to the hard drive being the C drive that seeing it as something different is a bit confusing. I looked in the hard drive properties and control panel to see if there's any way to remap the drive letter, but I didn't find anything.
Any suggestions would be appreciated - but if it entails reinstalling Windows or the hard drive, I'm not going to bother. It's annoying, but definitely not that annoying.
Thursday, September 6th, 2007 10:16 pm Well, that didn't last long
This is odd. My computer sped way up after I got the RAM installed and running. But now, several hours after I installed it, the opposite happened. It's now actually slower than it was before adding the RAM. At least with Putty it is, it's not with Firefox, but e-mail on putty is ridicuously slow now. No clue what changed, but I'm hoping it's temporary, I'm getting tired with fucking around in there.
I don't get it, RAM is supposed to be an easy upgrade. All you have to do is pop open the case, pop in the new RAM and start him up again. It sure isn't working that way though. I'm really hoping this just temporary and it'll end up being all better and fast again tomorrow. Said that already, but it seems worth emphasizing.
Thursday, September 6th, 2007 03:31 pm Wow, it's like I've got a whole new computer
I just tripled my RAM with the upgrade that arrived last week. Went from 256 MB of RAM to 768 MB of RAM, the max my motherboard will support.
And I must say, this is so much nicer. The only thing that isn't faster is the startup process, that seems to take slightly longer, but it's still pretty quick. Loading programs is much faster, and even my internet connection runs much faster than it used to run. I was worried a while ago because I was hoping that I could get this computer to last me until I graduated and it was really slowing down, but after the new hard drive and this upgrade, I have no doubt in my mind that it'll last me that long at least.
I had to call tech support to get it working though. Tried last week when it arrived on Thursday and I couldn't get it to go in all the way. I thought at first that it didn't fit, but the pins lined up so it seemed a bit weird. So I tried starting the computer up without it all the way in and that did not work at all. I got off talking with the tech support a half hour ago and he suggested applying uneven pressure - first to one end, then the other. Apparently you have to apply 20 pounds of pressure to get it to go in all the way. I didn't think you were supposed to force this stuff so I didn't try pushing really hard originally.
My main reason for getting this is my Intermediate Business Programming class - I'm assuming that we'll eventually have assignments in there that we'll need to work on at home. Or maybe not need to, but it'd be a heck of a lot easier to be able to do so since that way I can work at whatever hours I want and on my computer that's setup just the way I want it, unlike the crappy school computers.
But I have to say, now that I see how much faster this is, I should have done this a year ago when I was taking the first Business Programming class. Oh well, better late than never.
Friday, August 31st, 2007 01:23 pm The seven mysterious normals of zombie boy
I don't normally do memes, but I've been tagged for this one by dergerm and it looked like one that would be interesting for me, so I think I'll go for it myself.
Rules:
List seven habits/quirks/facts about yourself.
Tag seven people to do the same
Do not tag the person who tagged you or say that you tag "whoever wants to do it."
Now for the seven things you may or may not know about me:
When I get into things, I can focus on them for long periods of time. Really long periods of time - I once read an entire book cover to cover on an airline flight from California to France. This is useful at times, but not as useful as you might imagine it would be as I suspect my hands would be in much better condition than they are now if I didn't focus on the computer stuff I do and stay on it for such long periods of time. I'm working on that though.
Part of the reason for reading that book cover to cover in one sitting is that it's ridiculously difficult for me to get to sleep. (It didn't hurt that the book, My Ishmael was ridiculously good and hard to put down.) I can't sleep on flights, trains, pretty much anywhere where there is lots of noise. I've also recently found out that I can't get to sleep when it's too hot either, which has proved problematical in this climate I'm living in, but I'm managing.
My apartment/room may not look super neat, but I do have everything in it's place so I can pretty much guarantee you I can find anything I want to find in five minutes or less. Less most likely now that I'm living in a much smaller space than my parents' house.
I get really annoyed when I see books that are all marked up with pen and/or highlighter. I know a lot of people use this as a study habit, but I've never been able or had any desire to do this because it offends my sense of aesthetics to see books all written over.
I tend to fidget a lot when I'm nervous. I don't do it as much as I used to, but still do occasionally, and this has always bugged the hell out of my mom.
I used to have double jointed thumbs and could do really weird cool looking things with them. I couldn't do this any more when I got older, although I'm told that I can still bend my fingers back farther than normal, so apparently I've got loose joints.
Lots of people are afraid of spiders, but not me. I love spiders, I think they're some of the most fascinating creatures on our planet. I've heard that spider webs have a tensil strength that's far stronger than steel, and they would be used to make silk instead of silk worms except that you can't have a "spider factory". If you put a thousand or so spiders in a factory in the hopes of getting nice silk out of them, you'll end up with one spider left over in a few days.
Their webs fascinate me, and I think they're really pretty creatures. Also, I must say I'm biased in their favor because they eat mosquitoes, and I despise mosquitoes. I once saw a spider web that looked like an iridescent dome. It was the prettiest one I've ever seen, but alas, I did not have my camera with me, so I couldn't take pictures of it. Also, as an example of how strong their webs are, I saw a spider web on the outside of my parents' car once and it was still there after we got home from our vacation after going freeway speeds most of the way back.
Wednesday, August 29th, 2007 06:58 pm Well, that sucked
Current Mood:
frustrated
I was all excited when I checked the tracking number for the RAM that I bought a few hours ago and saw that it's in Chico already. That was when I knew I'd be getting it today, and sure enough, I did at about 5 PM. I tried installing it at 6 PM and puzzled for a bit since it didn't seem to fit in the socket. Figured I'd try it anyway so I left it without the clamps secured and tried turning on the computer, which naturally didn't work with the RAM that's not the right kind for my computer. So I took it out and sure enough that was the problem; I've e-mailed Crucial about this since they said to contact Tech Support about this if the moduel didn't seem to fit, which mine definitely didn't.
I don't seem to be having great luck with electronics lately. I tried to buy myself a headset for my cell phone a couple weeks ago and that didn't work either. When I talked on it, I couldn't hear anything, though apparently the speaker part was working since Calvaleigh informed me that she could hear me. Not much of a headset if I can't hear her though. That's on it's way back to Think Geek to be replaced. Likley I'll be doing the same with this RAM tomorrow, which sucks since I paid extra for fast shipping in the hopes that I'd have it ready before we start programming in my Intermediate Business Programming class. My computer's been running slow anyway so I figured more RAM would help, and I have vivid memories of it being excruciatingly slow when I was in the Business Programming class, so I wanted to avoid that happening again.
I'm rather frustrated by this since they even gave us a customization menu on Crucial's website and I went all the way through to the series my computer is in, and they listed several kinds of RAM as "compatible", though apparently this one wasn't despite what they said. Hopefully they'll at least have decent customer service like Think Geek does and allow me to ship it back to them for free.
Almost every single semester so far here at Chico State ended up with me having 8 AM finals. Up until this semester, I haven't had any 8 AM classes, now I've got 2, which alas gives me a full week of 8 AM classes.
Now, of course, when I'm actually going to be in class at 8 AM all semester for a change, it doesn't look like I'm going to have any 8 AM finals. I'm not complaining about that, mind you, but it just seems ironic that my 8 AM classes all have 10 AM finals while earlier I had 2 PM and 3 PM classes that had 8 AM finals.
justplainjen) in person. I've known Jen for the past eight years now online, but this was the first time we've got to meet. I've been wanting to visit Seattle for years, and I knew Bellingham was fairly close by, so I figured it'd be only natural to work both into the trip if I could. I emailed Jen about it, she was interested, so we arranged to meet on Wednesday. I was amused by her first comment upon meeting me in person, she said, "You're bigger than I thought". Which I suppose makes sense, since while I do have pictures of myself up online, none of them really give a good indication of my height. (For those of you who haven't met me in person, I'm 6'2" without shoes on.)
