Thursday, December 21, 2006

Keeping Updated

So I was chatting with Anna--from the Europe trip--a few days ago and had an interesting thought: I should keep a journal. Now hear me out, not one of those girly journals or anything, just something to document what I've done and thought in a day so that I can look back on it and remember the good (and bad I guess >.>) memories from each entry. While I've tried to do this before (hell, couldn't we call a blog a sort of journal?), it's never really worked out since 1. I just don't keep up with it and 2. I have such crappy--and I mean horrendous--handwriting.

Even so, I wouldn't mind giving it another go, especially as to how my memory's been working--or should I say not working?--lately. I've been having such a bad short-term memory that it's beginning to affect my long-term memory, which was never something to brag about in the first place. Being able to read over what I have done will hopefully keep some memories intact, right?

Thus it comes down to one thing: execution. There are many ways to keep a journal, but how will I keep mine? Well, I already mentioned that I have piss-poor handwriting, so a written journal (unless if I work on improving it... hmm) seems to be out of the question. Typing is quick and easy, so perchance I should do that? ... not a bad idea. But, I'm thinking that until I can figure out a truly good method, I'll just use this blog here as an attempt at a journal of some sort. In other words, I'mma try to update it a bit more often with things that will be a little more trivial, but that will hopefully keep a better record of the things that I've done. Fun, neh?


So what did I do today? Well, woke up around five in the morning to call Alina and then couldn't fall asleep afterwards. Then--probably six thirty by then--sneaked (hehe, sounds funnier that way) downstairs to just watch a movie. Saw Little Miss Sunshine, which was entertaining to say the least. And to top my morning off, I fell asleep on my couch for three hours, finally waking up at eleven thirty-ish.

Laziness ensued, but eventually I decided that I wanted a new video game. Final Fantasy XII, while ridiculously fun, has to be played in long spurts, so I wanted something I could just pop in and entertain with. Ended up telling Kish to take me to Best Buy *shudders inwardly* and finally, after much debate, grabbed the fifth anniversary collection of Devil May Cry. What swayed me? Mmmm, it could be that there was nothing else to get or the fact that it was only thirty dollars for all three of the games in one!

That night I went to Berserk's (this is my friend Alex from Tech) house to play some Halo 2 with him and a bunch of his AZN friends. Quite fun, specially since he hooked up three XBoxes together for crazy LANed Halo action. That and his friends, who were hilarious. For one, his friend, who they called Fraino--his actual name was Mike--was high, and it was noticeable. Best part, however, was when we were playing capture the flag. With four players on each team it got a little hard to remember who was on what team. So through all the mayhem, Fraino ends up scoring for me and Alex's team, although neither of us even knew that he was playing on our team. Go figure. But, all in all, very fun night spent and an overall "successful" day.

... whee!

The Semester Ends

Hmm... if your wife bought some lingerie for herself, would it be a present for you? No wait, I guess if she was cheating on you then it wouldn't...

Okles, been a while, long while. But the semester's over and I have time to sit on my butt and do nothing all day once more. The good 'ol summer routine begins anew, though this time it's about fifty degrees cooler and I spend my days trying to get a third OS on my computer instead of playing video games. Hey, don't give me that look! If you were as bored as me, you'd do the same.

Actually, Linux is quite cool to mess around with. As we speak--er, as I type--I'm on Linux listening to music, chatting on Gaim and surfing the web on Firefox. These days you can do pretty much anything without being forced into the command prompt once! Well, that's somewhat of a lie, but it's significantly easier in comparison to even just a year ago. Using Ubuntu--the distribution (um, the "flavor" or kind of Linux if you will)--everything on my tablet here's been set up really easily. I've messed around with it a ton--even got Beryl working--and installed a bunch of new programs, but had I just wanted to surf the net and such, it would've already been perfectly configured to do that. Really, when it comes to ease of use and all that jazz, Ubuntu takes one hell of a cake.

On the other hand, just today I began dabbling with Arch Linux. Now that is a completely different tale. I spent over five hours today attempting to get at least some GUI (usually Gnome) and my wireless working. Of course that includes installation and rebooting, partitioning, and banging my head against the desk a few dozen times, but still. I finally gave up around 5 in the afternoon, having almost gotten my X-server working--if you don't know what it is, just google or something--and winding up near clueless on what exactly was wrong with my wireless... *sigh*
Yeah, so that's why I'm on Ubuntu now, to make myself feel better after a morning/afternoon of failure ^^;

You know, I titled this "The Semester Ends," but I've yet to actually talk about how awesome the semester ending is. I mean, I'm not working--on either school or actual work stuff--and I have all this free time. Not to mention the fact that I did pretty well in my first semester of school and am looking forward to going onto my next. (Though I'm not gonna rush it ^^)

So yeah, magically pulled off a 3.83 GPA last semester, quite spiffy. I was very (not to mention pleasantly) surprised as I had expected to get a significantly lower grade in my philosophy class, but apparently they felt like curving it a few letter slots. Got an A- in my Engineering which, while I'm pleased with the grade, pisses me off a bit. That class was too much crap to put up with... but what'll you do, it was purely a weed-out class. Did it's job damn well too. I'd say at least one hundred would-be engineers dropped as a result of the first test alone. Quite ridiculous if you ask me so really I'm just happy to have gotten the class out of the way and prep to take some real courses. *thinks back to the class* Pffft.

Every other class I pulled an A in. Really the rest were way too easy. CS was pure review, the two math courses were multiple levels below what I'd already taken, and Chem, while fun, was more or less high school chemistry once more. I mean, you really can't do too bad with that kind of course-load... ^^;

Hmm, Sbarro was fun while it lasted. I mean, in comparison to Best Buy at least. Got to stand around chilling with funny people while either making or selling pizza. Not too bad of a deal really! I got somewhat good at making pizza since I opened each Sunday morning (both a good and bad thing). But I'm actually happy that I'm done there. Working only weekends, while good since I didn't have to work during my busy and unpredictable weeks, meant that I lost ten hours of my already short weekend. Well, that wasn't too harsh to put up with. The worst part was not being able to leave on weekends without some sort of substitute, otherwise I'd be written up (always wondered where that saying came from... hmmm). However, since I'm not working next semester, I can leave every weekend and go visit people at W&M, or RM, or even--dare I say it?!--UVA. Gasp indeed.

So things be sorta looking up. Next Sunday, the 24th, Christmas Eve, me and my family will be leaving to Los Angeles. That'll be fun.. somewhat. Who knows, perhaps I'll pick up another long-distance friend ^^