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January 29, 2009 - 2008 retrospective

It's my once-a-year post! Instead of a lame cop-out like I did last year though, I think I'll actually talk about the year that's just passed, mostly because it was quite the doozy. My memory is far from perfect, but I hope to at least hit the big events, in roughly chronological order. Be warned, it's long, and the first two-thirds might be kind of boring. I ask that at the very least, you skip to the big break and read everything below that. That last big section is important.

Here we go:

For the winter of 07-08, some friends and I got together and decided that we should learn to snowboard. So we got season passes up to Snoqualmie, reserved season rentals, took some lessons, and spent the rest of the winter weekends scraping our way down the hills very slowly and cursing profusely. By the end of the season (which wasn't until May!) our swearing had subsided a little bit, and we were moving a little faster and a little more gracefully on our boards. I prefer skiing, but that's mostly because I'm better at it. Snowboarding was certainly fun, and something that I'll gladly do again in the future.

In February, a couple of us from the old ISU Scuba Club went on a ski trip out to Winter Park in Colorado. Myself, Kristi, and Megan were the Scuba Club folks, and we were joined by Kristi's friend Jeremiah. We had a blast skiing all over the place for four straight days, although I did have an incident that finally convinced me to buy a helmet. Skiing through the trees at the end of the day, I tried to turn right... Unfortunately my left ski turned, my right ski didn't, and I plowed right into a tree. No serious damage done, but since I can definitely see myself doing that again, I figured that grabbing a helmet would be the prudent thing to do.

Also in February, I went back out to Iowa State to help represent Microsoft at their career fair. This is something that I've done before, and I always enjoy it. It's fun to talk with everyone, and it's especially interesting to delve into their motivation for looking for a job with Microsoft. I took some time out to meet one-on-one with some grad students studying under my favorite senior-year prof, and those were especially interesting. The biggest downside of the trip was the minus-35 wind chill. That reminded me of why I don't miss the midwest, but at least my rental car had remote start and heated seats.

Sometime in March, I took a bad spill on that snowboard that I mentioned earlier. I can't pinpoint exactly when it happened, but there was one day of boarding that was particularly rough for me. A couple days after that, I noticed that my entire left leg, from the top of my thigh to the bottom of my calf, was a giant bruise. After a little bit of freaking out and a quickly-scheduled doctor's appointment, we figured that I had torn my hamstring. So I got to experience the joys of physical therapy, ultrasound massage, and electric stim, all focused on an area that basically counts as my ass. Weird sensations for sure, but after about six weeks of that, I was good as new and was able to get back on the board for the last few weeks of the season.

While this physical therapy was going on, since I wasn't allowed to be boarding anyway, I got Lasik surgery! The preliminary appointments were very easy and everyone was very nice. The actual procedure was a little strange, and it's not for the easily spooked. Having your vision just kind of slowly vanish along with a feeling of inconsistent pressure on your eyeball, all while you're laying underneath a huge machine equipped with multiple tissue-burning lasers, surrounded by four people, and knowing that you're one of about twenty people in an assembly line for that day... Well, that's a weird experience. But the procedure was good, the results are spectacular, and I can see again! Not having to lug around glasses or fiddle with contacts is amazing. I can't recommend the procedure enough. If you've ever even thought about having it done, you should definitely pursue it. It may very well be the best decision I've ever made.

The March-April timeframe was busy for me. Another thing that I did during that time was take a bartending class, on a whim and alongside Jill and Pat. So I'm now a licensed bartender in the state of Washington. Everyone who hears that says "great, so you can make me a (whatever their favorite drink is)!" Well, unfortunately, I probably can't. See, they don't actually teach you the drink recipes in the class; the thought is that you'll either learn them on the job or you can read a book on your own time and memorize them. The class is more focused on techniques (how to pour shots, shake drinks, etc), "social management" (dealing with drunk people), and regulations. That makes it sound really boring, but it was quite a lot of fun, actually.

During that same busy timeframe, the relationship that I'd been having during the previous few months with Amy ended. I wouldn't say it ended well, but I wouldn't say it ended horribly, either. It had been awhile since I'd dated anyone, and we had a lot of fun. I find it difficult to summarize beyond that, so I don't think I'll try.

Fast forward a month or two, when suddenly things started getting crazy again. My second-biggest news of the past year is that in May, I switched jobs! I still work for Microsoft, but I moved from the Dynamics business (large, enterprise-scale business software) over to Xbox. I'm part of Xbox Live Primetime now, and I switched from being a developer to being a tester. The new group is a much better fit to my interests and my general disposition. The people are generally younger and more similar to me in terms of hobbies and personality. There was quite a learning curve for a little while, and it's still very challenging. It's been a fantastic move for me though, and I'm very happy that I took the opportunity.

I also managed to make it out to Iowa to attend Kristi's wedding. It was a fun trip, and I got to spend a couple extra days with Emily in Omaha, hanging out, going to the zoo, and shopping for all the things I forgot to pack. The only problem is that this was happening right alongside the epic flooding of last summer. Cedar Rapids, where the wedding was, was particularly hard-hit. The weather didn't affect the actual ceremony, but it kept lots of people from being there and caused lots of other headaches for folks as well. Fortunately for them, Kristi, her new husband, and both their families escaped from the weather relatively unharmed.

Forward again, this time to July. My dad managed to grab some time off of work and fly out to Seattle for the now-annual tradition of taking a big backpacking trip into the mountains. We spent a day or two in preparation, then packed our bags (and Shadow's pack) and headed up. Last year we got rained out and had to cut the trip short; fortunately, this year our luck with the weather was much better. But of course, every upside comes with a downside; in this case, it was the windstorm and massive rain that the area had been hit by a few weeks before. The road to our trailhead was blocked by a huge avalanche, a dozen or more downed trees, and a few large sections of washed-out road. That added about three very steep miles each way to our already ambitious hike. So we didn't get to go as far back in the woods as we would have liked, but we spent a couple good days up by an alpine lake and never saw another person. It was fantastic.

Remember how I mentioned that my job switch was the second-biggest news of the year? That was pretty major, but I have something that can top that. On July 12th, I closed on and moved into my house! I spent a couple months learning about the various nearby areas, determining what I could afford, and looking around at houses. It's an overwhelming experience for a first-time buyer like myself. I looked at over two dozen houses in person and way more than that online. By the end, I felt like I had a pretty good idea of what I liked and what I didn't, and at least some vague knowledge of what I wanted. I wanted to get away from the idea of the cookie-cutter suburban neighborhood where each house has the same lawn, the same perfectly trimmed trees, and one of the three available ridiculously-named floorplans. I chose an area of Woodinville that's a little older, and has custom-built houses and lots of old, large trees. It's got a very Northwest feel to it, which I like a lot. My actual house is pretty large, with four bedrooms, 2.75 bathrooms, and a fully fenced back yard for Shadow. I've got one roommate and I'm actively looking for a second one. I really enjoy the place; it's fun to be able to do things to the house, and living with people again has been good for me as well. Packing, moving and unpacking were less pleasant, but with any luck, I won't be doing that again for quite a long time.

Just a few weeks after the craziness of moving in to my new place, our family cruise happened. For their anniversary, my grandparents decided that they would like to bring the family with them on a week-long cruise to Alaska in the summertime. In the end, there were twenty-two of us on this cruise, which left from Seattle and made several port stops up in the southern part of Alaska. It was awesome to see many of the family members for the first time in eight years, and the cruise itself and the shore excursions were a blast as well. It was my first cruise, and I went in not knowing exactly what to expect. The cruise was a very interesting experience; it's half Disneyland, half country club. It was very, very nice, and I can definitely see why people like taking cruises. I think that I personally prefer vacations that are a little more "do-it-yourself" and a little less "cater to your every whim". But the net result of the trip was a ton of fun, some phenomenal pictures of some very gorgeous parts of Alaska, and...

Because the cruise left from Seattle, it gave my parents a convenient excuse to stay in town an extra week or so after we got back and check out my house. We spent several days hanging around town, showing off the house, and tracking down some of the new essentials for it. As always, it was good to hang out with the folks for awhile. And as an added bonus, they were in town during some of the best weather we'd had all summer.

Then Labor Day weekend came around, and it was time for PAX again. I repeated last year's duties as an Enforcer, and worked about 50 hours in three days helping the attendees have a good time. And this year, I recruited Drew to work alongside me. PAX is very difficult to summarize, and the Enforcers are even more so. It's a very unique convention, and an awesome group of people. After this year, I think I understood why some of the Enforcers were such a tightly-knit group, and I made some new friends among their ranks as well. PAX is among my very favorite things each year, and I'm very glad that I'm able to continue working with it.

One last fast-forward, this time to December. I was lucky enough to be selected to volunteer at the Child's Play dinner, which is a fundraiser put on by the charity arm of Penny Arcade. This was a new experience for me, as I'm not the kind of guy who regularly goes to swanky dinners and socializes with people in tuxedos. As with all things Penny Arcade-related, it ended up being a huge amount of fun, and something that I'm very glad I was involved with.

And lastly, the big year-end event was affectionately referred to in Seattle as Snowpocalypse. This is a region that shuts down when it gets an inch of snow, which generally happens once a year or so. So imagine the reaction when the city got about a foot of snow, along with a new inch or so every day. Streets were blocked off, businesses shut down, schools were closed... At one point a couple buses even slid down some icy streets and nearly fell onto the freeway. All things considered, it wasn't a catastrophe, as there were very few deaths or injuries for the magnitude of the storm. But it sure made things messy, especially up in my little corner of Woodinville. At one point, I measured 19 inches of snow on the ground, and that wasn't even the peak of it. I was snowed in for a total of seven days, although they weren't continuous. I was even forced to shovel part of my roof. If you believe all the locals, this was a once-in-a-hundred-years event. Crazy.

 

 

Busy year, am I right? And while the biggest news of the year was the house, and the second-biggest news of the year was the job, I'm afraid that neither of those was the most interesting. The most interesting is something that I'm a little reluctant to discuss, as I tend to stick to myself and be pretty reserved and private about some things, so this is weird for me. Some of you might think less of me for posting this, but I don't really care. Hopefully the majority of you will realize that this is difficult for me to write about, and respect that I'm sharing it.

The most interesting thing about this last year is that it's the year where I started to get over my depression.

Yeah, I thought depression was an excuse too. I thought it was one of those overdiagnosed quote-unquote-"conditions" that didn't have a basis in reality. Maybe it's still used that way, or maybe that's exactly what it is and I'm just weak or something. But in any event, it's been quite a journey the last couple years navigating through this. Probably compounded by the part where I never really told anyone about it; that goes back to that whole sticking-to-myself thing.

The background for me goes something like this: In November of 2006, I went to see my doctor because I was tired all the time. Not in the way that you're tired when you need an extra hour of sleep; more like when getting off the couch and cooking yourself dinner is an impossibly large amount of effort. More like when you spend hours just sitting there, zoning out, because you can't summon the energy to do anything at all. More like when you can't concentrate for five minutes on an important job-related conversation because it's too much mental work. You get the idea; hopefully the point gets through here that this was not just normal tiredness. This was seriously impairing me at work, at home, and everywhere else, and it had been happening for quite awhile now. The doctor said there are three possibilities here, and all of them are equally likely. One, there's nothing wrong, or we'll never find out what it is. Two, there's something physically wrong with you. Or three, you've got depression in the chemical-imbalance sense of the word.

We did blood tests, sleep tests, a physical, and all manner of things to try and find something physically wrong. No luck. This may be the only time in my life when it was unfortunate to get test results back that indicate there's nothing wrong.

So I was recommended to a therapist. Sorry, "counselor" is the right term these days. Boy, did I feel ridiculous. Here's a guy who, when you look at the whole of it, has pretty much everything going for him. I had a good job in my chosen field of study; I had good living arrangements that I had chosen. I had friends, I had family, I had Shadow. Nothing traumatic had happened recently. So here I marched into the therapist, whose office should be reserved for people with *actual* problems, not whatever petty little complaints I had.

We started meeting once a week. A few weeks in, I described how I felt at work on some days. I remember telling him that I felt like a caged animal. I didn't have any place to go and I didn't have any immediate threast to me; matter of fact, work is where I was supposed to be. And yet I felt suffocated, trapped, like I didn't have an out, and at times I would actually get up and pace in my office. He suggested that I would benefit from some of the standard antidepressant/anti-anxiety medications. Again, I thought, come on. Those are for people who have legitimate problems, who are described as "troubled", who can't function without them. Therapy is one thing; I'm not too proud to go in and start some therapy. But medication? That's a whole new level. But in the end, after fighting it for a couple weeks, I agreed to it.

The meds did me a lot of good, once we found one that worked for me. It was a slow, gradual transition, but I found that I had more energy and was more willing to do things. I was able to summon up the energy to move across town, thinking that a change of scenery might help. And the counseling was helping too, albeit not as much. We identified a few of the causes of my mental state: I was unhappy in my job without being miserable, I was detached from my friends while still being friendly, I was shy but not antisocial, I was reeling from the school-to-work transition, I lacked confidence in pretty much every area of my life. I read some books and focused on trying to repair some of these things. We scaled the counseling back to once every other week, and continued it for another several months.

About a year after it started, I felt like the counseling had hit a dead end, so we tapered that off. I stuck with the meds, since by this time I was doing pretty much okay and didn't want to rock the boat too much. That holding pattern continued until March or so of 2008, when several things reached a point where they combined to convince me that I could start bringing myself off the meds. I had become good friends with a couple other groups of people besides my original ones; this let me do more activities, hang out with more people, and socialize quite a bit more. Remember Amy from my bullet points above? She and I had started dating, which gave me a confidence and a general "good feeling" that I'd been without for awhile. I started looking into other jobs, and had a very good discussion with my manager about my desire to switch and how he could help me out with that.

So I went back to the doc and basically asked for permission to wean myself off of the pills. That went well too, so in April or thereabouts, I started skipping one pill a week, then two, then every other day. Things went pretty well, and to be honest, by the time I was completely off of the meds I didn't really notice a huge difference. A couple months later, I was off the meds completely and haven't been back since.

I don't think I can say that I'm 100% yet. Back in high school, I had unbounded energy, did activities all the time, had social events five nights a week, and generally went full-speed for about sixteen hours a day, every day. I'm not nearly back to that yet, although I may never be. I still decline more events than I attend, simply because I don't feel like going. I still spend too much time "wiped out" and worthless. That said, I'm happy with where I am, and I hope that I can continue to improve, as slowly as I need to.

It's been a long couple of years. I apologize to everyone whose events I've bailed on, or who I haven't picked up the phone for. It's been rough, and I haven't been honest with people about why I've been the way I have. That's going to change. It might not change completely overnight, but it'll change. I promise.

And lastly, I'd like to offer myself up to all of my friends. If you've got anything you need to talk about, anything bothering you, any feelings like I talked about here, or anything at all, I'm making myself available to you. I've been through a little bit, and I'd like to do anything I possibly can to help if you need it.

Thanks for reading, and happy 2009!

January 15, 2008 - It's been a year

Look, here's the deal. I haven't updated here in a year. My POTD is three months out of date. Various parts of my site say that I'm in my last semester, or that I'm looking to get a job when I graduate. It's pretty obvious that this place is in more than a little bit of disrepair.

Why? Lots of reasons. I spend twelve hours a day looking at a monitor. I don't have interesting activities going on much anymore. I don't feel like it's worthwhile to report on the small number of interesting things that do happen. I've got a bunch of personal stuff going on that I'd rather not discuss here. But most of all, I'm lazy. I just don't have the willpower or the motivation to create stuff for the site anymore.

Okay, great. So what now? I'm not sure, to be honest. I'm not going to take this down; I still use it for pictures, and I might come up with stuff to put here occasionally. I truly do have things that I'd like to do, but it just may not be feasible in the near future.

In conclusion, yes, I'm still alive, and no, I'm not going to be any better about maintaining this.

Thanks for reading.

December 31, 2006 - Year in review

Looking back, you can see a time when I was much better about updating this. There were no multi-month lapses, no POTD's running out. So what happened? Meh, it's a combination of things. I got a job, so school stopped happening. In turn, that means that club meetings, classes, projects, and the general excitement and buzz that surrounds college (and yes, there is some buzz even in Ames) are no longer happening. Instead, I have work, which ... is insanely boring to talk about. Also, no one would really understand most of it, even fewer people would really care, and even then, I probably can't actually talk about it anyways! Oh yeah, and I moved eighteen hundred miles, which implies a new set of friends and more, all of which takes time to adjust to. In short, I simply have fewer interesting things to write about. And after I come home from work, where I sit in front of a monitor for eight, ten, twelve hours, the last thing I want to do is sit down and type up something, when that feels an awful lot like work itself. So, in short, you shouldn't expect much from the site; not that you ever should have in the first place. This may be the point where it has long since jumped the shark. I have no plans to get rid of it or anything, but ... yeah.

With that said, let's take a recap of some of the things that happened this year!

• I was the lucky recipient of several visitors! Among them were Kristi, Pete, James, Meredith, and Emily... Always a good time!
• I left Shadow out of his crate a couple times. Chalk that up to a "learning experience".
• I came to some revelations about myself. I still haven't worked my way completely through them, but I'm working on it.
• I had a(nother) mishap involving reverse gear. Another learning experience.
• There was a major shift at work. I was re-org'ed into another team, doing different things, under a different manager.
• Unrelated to that (at least mostly), I found myself in a general dissatisfaction with my job. I'm not sure why or how to fix it yet.
• I took trips to Colorado, Cayman, Florida, Florida again, Ames, and Chicago. Most of those were vacation, and they were all very, very good trips.
• Parts of America finally came to their collective senses and voted a change of power into our government. God knows it couldn't have gotten any worse, so maybe the new Congress will actually do some good things.
• Related to that, I discovered a very deep-seated apathy within myself. This was triggered by the extreme political polarization of absolutely everything, and the general media onslaught that pervades our daily lives.
• Seattle, and most of western Washington state, lost power for about four days in the week before Christmas. In some places it was as much as a week, though I was lucky and got my power back within 24 hours.

September 24, 2006 - But wait, that's not all!

Lots of stuff to cover this time. Let's go Memento-style and work backwards...

I'm home! Which wouldn't be a big deal, except that...

At the beginning of this week, I went back to Ames for three days! It was pretty cool, but slightly weird to be back. For one thing, it was amazingly weird to see people my own age; on top of that, I kept expecting to see people I know around campus, and never saw a single person. Then, I expected to see absolutely no one I knew at the career fair, and instead I saw at least a dozen random people from random parts of my college experience. Oh yeah, I guess I should mention that I was there for the engineering career fair on behalf of Microsoft, recruiting anyone and everyone who will hand me a resume. It was a blast, with the bonus of being back in Ames for two days and change. And perhaps most astoundingly, I didn't get stuck overnight in Denver, Dallas, or anywhere else.

Immediately before I left, I put up the promised photo gallery of the Disney trip, with nearly 200 pictures of the good times. Hopefully it will convey some of the ... experience that is Disney. What an amazing place, for a variety of reasons.

I have something else in the works for the site too! And this is not idle chatter (for once...), since I have it all coded up and ready to go... I just need to get back home to be able to finish it up. Most likey, not very many of you will care at all, but that's okay, as it's something I've been meaning to do for a while now. Stay tuned.

Um, that's actually all, I think. Until I get real motivated to write up something political, not much will be going on. My traveling is done for the forseeable future, and work should get... well, real boring real soon, most likely. The short Seattle summer is wrapping up entirely too fast.

September 11, 2006 - A rundown of the last ... long time

It's time to stop putting it off and just sit and write an update for my site. An awful lot has happened in the ... ahem ... month since I've posted. Without doing an exhaustive recap, a high-level summary would include items such as:

• A week (maybe two?) of tedium and general uneventfulness at work immediately after getting back from Florida. Oh, and the fun and good times that were involved in flying just two days after the "you can't carry on the Diet Coke you just bought" rules were created at the airports.
• Then came the big one: Work sent us all to Disney World for four days. Of course, two of those days were filled up with meetings -- heinously long, buzzword-filled meetings that I personally didn't get much out of -- but it was an absolute blast nonetheless. I went to four Disney parks and took no fewer than three hundred pictures, so I should be able to make a decent photo gallery out of those pretty soon.
• Oh, and while we were trying to get to Florida, one flight got cancelled and another got diverted, so we ended up in Dallas for a night, then on a super-early flight the next morning. After one day of meetings, I was running on twelve hours sleep in the past three nights. That part was maybe not so fun.
• Then as an extension of that trip, I went and visited my folks in Chicago for about four days. It was a very nice visit; very relaxed and low-key, with lots of good food and golf. We even took the train downtown for a day. All good times, except maybe for the downpour that lasted for one hole during a golf outing. Being back in Chicago was slightly awkward in that no one else is there anymore, but I didn't really have a whole lot of downtime that could have been filled anyway.
• And then lastly, I got back home and slogged through two days of work to get to this weekend, where I abused myself by playing racquetball Friday, flag football Saturday morning, and frisbee Saturday evening. To make up for that, I was super-lazy today and watched about ten hours of football. It's back to work tomorrow, and I think I'm coming down with a cold. This will be a long week.

August 14, 2006 - Back, and less than thrilled about it

I'm typing this up ahead of time, as I'm currently stuck in the Atlanta airport because my return flight to Seattle has been inexplicably delayed. So I'm just going to write this like I'm already back.

Florida was an absolute blast. Four-plus days of bumming around, swimming, and just shooting the breeze while doing absolutely nothing of substance. I can certainly imagine doing something like that for a lot longer than just four days. Despite its short timeframe, the trip was amazingly fun, and it was great to hang out with Scott and Casie, and to meet Mike (who was the person-to-be-named-later that I mentioned in the last post). I imagine that you'll see some of the festivities in upcoming pictures of the day, as I didn't take enough pictures to make a real photo gallery out of.

All that said, of course, I am absolutely not looking forward to going back to work tomorrow. Thanks to the free internet at the Fort Meyers airport, I was able to catch up on my work email this morning, and it just reminded me of how much I don't want to be there. I really hope that the upcoming "change of scenery" that will happen within the next month will reinvigorate me, so to speak. Until this trip, I don't think I realized that I was sort of getting into a work-related rut. Now, I guess the next step is to work my way out of it. Wish me luck. But in any case, it's hardly anything to complain about yet, because in only two weeks, I am again heading out to Florida; this time it's for work, though. More details on that as it approaches.

Anyhow, from the Atlanta airport that I am pretending is home, that's it for now. Watch the POTD's.

August 8, 2006 - Heading out

Check it out, it's only been slightly more than a week. Oh, and I fixed my picture of the day. Great, now that's out of the way.

The big news is that I'm headed out to Florida tomorrow! Well, Wednesday technically, as I'm leaving at about 6am. I'll be hanging out with Pete, Scott, Casie, and one person-to-be-named-later, lazing about in the sun and generally being a bum. It's going to be rough, of course. Getting there may not be so pleasant, as tomorrow is going to be about ten hours at work, followed by a Mariners game (with rockin' fourth-row tickets, courtesy of Brad), then straight to the airport where I'm hoping to fly standby on Pete's midnight flight. So hopefully you'll hear back from me in six days or so, with a slew of new pictures.

In the meantime, it's a matter of getting to 6pm tomorrow. See you in a week.

July 31, 2006 - Right, this again

So, a brief summary of the last two-plus weeks:

• Work has been insane. As an example, I was there until 2am Thursday, then ten hours again Friday. Oy. Our entire team has basically been doing the software equivalent of fighting fires for a couple weeks now. It's been tense and frustrating, and it's really getting old. Of course, once this passes, we get to work on the stuff that we should have been working on for the last two weeks. Groan again.
• Last weekend, I went with the neighbors up to some little river an hour north of here. It was quite amusing to hang out with people that I would never hang out with otherwise, but hey. I got briefly acquainted with the subculture of Nascar, big trucks, cheap beer, and general redneckery. I must say that I simply don't understand it. But that's okay, they probably don't understand me either. Interesting experience all around.
• Oh, and I got ridiculously sunburned at said river. The last three days have basically sucked whenever I'm sitting, laying down, or walking. For those of you keeping score, that's a high percentage of the time.
• And the heat has finally stopped, which means I no longer have to sleep on the couch. Huzzah.
• This weekend was pretty sweet too, with my first-ever paintball match (which absolutely rules, I highly recommend it) and my first round of golf in over a year. The golf was ... interesting, to say the least. Four solid holes played in a downpour, and about ten played in bright sunshine. I scored two pars and a twelve, and just about everything in-between. I'm exhausted.
• But most importantly, maybe you've heard a little something about the middle east. I really want to type up another You're All Wrong article about it. We shall see.

July 9, 2006 - In which he finally gets off his ass and types something

Wow. A month gone is a lot, even for me. Sorry. The problem is that I have so many things that I want to write things up about, but then one of three things happens: The issue seems trite, I don't have a strong stance on it, or I get caught up in other things and simply don't get around to it. More often than not, of course, it's the third one, where I'm too busy or lazy to do it. This needs to change; working on it.

But recently I have had a pretty good excuse, in that I've been spending a lot of time at work. We had our product launch a month ago today, and then all kinds of crazy stuff has been happening in the meantime. New development, next-version features, and more -- it's amazing how the period I thought would be the easiest has been among the busiest so far. It's relatively enjoyable, but recently I've run into some incredibly frustrating problems, so the last couple weeks have been up-and-down. Of course, when I take a step back from it, I still have absolutely nothing to complain about. It's still pretty cool.

Not much else has been happening; I've picked up a couple new games and a couple old games, so those have pretty much occupied my time recently. Oh, and today we went hiking, which was pretty awesome (pictures in the POTD soon, of course). Thumbs way way down to Mount Rainier National Park for not allowing dogs, though. We ended up wasting an hour-plus of driving time because we didn't know about the no-dogs rule. Fortunately, we found a neat, relatively easy hike up to a cool waterfall, and we got to take the dogs with us. I hope to start doing more "outdoorsy" stuff soon (gasp!), so maybe this can serve as a good start towards that.

Things around here need improvement. Seriously. My gaming section needs an overhaul, my links page desperately needs to be completely razed and rebuilt, and I definitely need more stuff for the main page. But again, expectations should be low. If I come up with anything interesting, you'll know about it.

June 8, 2006 - Improved pictures

Ahoy and such; again, gone for two weeks, yada yada. Nothing terribly interesting has happened, aside from that "birthday" thing that I try to downplay so much. My co-workers did a bang-up job of setting up muffins, pop music, and a Hilary Duff poster. Please, don't ask. Then Chad, Larry, and Matt planned a dinner and go-kart racing, which pretty much ruled.

But the actual point of this pseudo-post here is to mention that I've made all my photo galleries suck less! All the pictures are in one spot now, plus they're roughly sorted chronologically. Whee!

That's all I have for now ... enjoy the pictures, and maybe I'll get around to typing up something soon.

May 18, 2006 - Visitors!

I've been absent from here for a bit, but I have a good reason: Three very awesome people flew all the way to Seattle to visit Schneek and me! Emily, Kristi, and Meredith got up at 3am on a Saturday, and basically had a non-stop good time in Seattle until their all-too-soon departure Tuesday afternoon. A brief and incomplete summary of things we did include:

April 25, 2006 - Yet another week with no update

Yeah, yeah, I have a website. I know.

To start with, that trouble with people I mentioned? Meh, I'm (mostly) over it. I think it was a combination of being tired and cranky, along with my periodic cycles of wanting to change things I can't control, then getting frustrated when I can't. It's so much easier to just remove myself from the situation, is all. I think I may just end up taking my father's advice after all (audience groans) and try not to be reliant on anyone else for much of anything. Yes, that's all very vague. I don't plan on calling anyone specific out on this.

So what else? The past couple weeks at work have been pretty busy, which is kind of nice. Because of where we are in our cycle though, they're also pretty high-pressure. When you screw up, people let you know in pretty direct terms. That's a lesson I've learned a couple times. It's a delicate balance between "do it quick" and "do it right", and one that I've come up on the wrong side of recently. As with most things, I think this is just something I have to feel out a couple of times. It's no big deal either way, really.

Pete and Chad have found their way out here; Pete with Microsoft, and Chad with Avanade. It's already been pretty cool having them out here; we hung out pretty much all weekend, which included a poker game and my first bowling in forever. Bowling was a blast, until the next morning; I didn't eat much on Saturday, and then adding beverages to the bowling made Sunday morning not very pleasant. But that's okay, as it was still an awesome weekend altogether. It'll be great to have the two of them out here, and their timing is great since we're just starting to get some decent weather! With any luck, outdoorsy activities will be possible from now until October. That's not to say that I'll do them, of course, since the 360 is still humming along nicely!

Oh, and of course mister Shadow has been a good dog. Notice that's "has been", not "is". See, this morning on our walk, he wandered off like he usually does and found a luscious dead, rotting fish to roll around in. So he came back to me covered in the single most revolting odor I've ever experienced, and he was extremely proud of himself. One bath, forty minutes, and three shampoo cycles later, he still smelled like old trout. My apartment reeks, my hands reek, and my dog reeks. I'm really hoping that another couple washes tomorrow will help, but I'm not holding my breath. Pun intended.

That's about all, I think. I'll update this again when ... well, when I update it. Who knows when that'll be.

March 22, 2006 - Welcome Back (or) Holy Cayman Pictures, Batman!

I have returned from the glory and paradise that is Grand Cayman, and arrived once again in the cold, rainy, generally depressing Seattle area. I'm wondering why I didn't just "accidentally" miss my flight, and convince the thirteen others to do the same.

Needless to say, the place is basically paradise. It was amazing. Thirteen of my best friends, some old, some new, an awesome amount of diving, drinking, and generally just being on vacation. I can safely say that this is the single best vacation I've taken. Words do very little justice to the entire experience, so perhaps the 2308 pictures that were taken will do slightly better. I hope to go through and categorize them a little bit more in the coming weeks, but no promises. Oh, and I trumped up the pictures now, so you can see them page by page. Hopefully this will make the experience much better.

Also needless to say, I'm pretty exhausted from the trip. The eighteen-plus hours of return travel were not kind to me. So I'll be heading to bed, and hopefully you'll be looking at those pictures... for a long, long time.

March 14, 2006 - Real quick

So it's three in the morning, and in a little over an hour, I leave to go to Grand Cayman with the ISU Scuba Club for a week of diving, beaches, and generally being lazy to the max. In a word, it's going to be awesome. Of course, that's assuming that I finish packing in the next hour.

So don't expect to hear from me in the next ten days; although that's not really different than normal, now is it?

February 5, 2006 - Another hodgepodge

Yikes; what to write about? There have been so many things recently that I have wanted to write something about, plus a couple old standbys that I've been meaning to get out also. I've also wanted to do a couple things around the site as well, and have been too deep in my standard combination of busy and lazy to actually *do* any of it. Standard procedure. So, you get a compromise instead: this particular entry will be a hodgepodge of miscellany, and then hopefully I'll write up something more meaningful about a few subjects soon. So...

Remember how I said I was busy? Yeah, that's because of work. Giant surprise, I know, but it's still something of an adjustment for me, coming from school to this "job" where I'm now supposed to devote the greater part of my time and effort. But the good news is that work has started to be borderline enjoyable sometimes! I guess I feel like I've just been tolerating the job thus far, mostly because I've been so ridiculously confused. But, seven months later, I feel like I'm starting to get a handle on things. I'll occasionally answer a question, instead of just asking them. I'll complete entire bug fixes without needing to consult anyone else. And the help that I do ask of my teammates is much more "help me understand this", instead of "I don't know anything; help me". It's a very nice feeling, even if it is long overdue.

I've never been much on New Year's resolutions and all that, but I like the idea of self-improvement and all that business. I noticed that I was watching a lot of sports on TV and not really enjoying it; really, the only reason it was on was out of habit. I even have a TV card in one of my computers, hooked to a monitor that's always on. So I figured I could do something about that, and am proud to say that I've since turned largely away from ESPN and have started watching a lot of the Discovery and History channels. That seems like a small, silly thing, and maybe it is, but it's a big shift in my TV habits, and I'm quite happy with it.

And right after mentioning that I've shied away from sports, I think I'll talk about the Superbowl. Aside from not having any terribly engrossing commercials, it was a pretty poor game for the first half. I'm pretty ticked about the game, also; for one thing, I think Seattle outplayed Pittsburgh by an awful lot, and have nothing to show for it. The Steelers had exactly three good plays in the entire game, and somehow ended up getting a score out of all of them. And then every time Seattle was driving or had a big play, there was some bogus call thrown in to stop them. See the "offensive pass interference" that killed a touchdown, and the "holding" that killed a thirty-yard pass to the one yard line. Oh, and Hasselbeck getting called for a "chop block" during a tackle. Absolute garbage. I really thought this was going to be the kick that actually got Seattle some credibiity. Oh well.

And lastly, I may have quite a lot of videogames to talk about soon. No thanks to Microsoft, Circuit City, or the Seattle area in general, I have an Xbox 360 on the way! Extreme amounts of props to Scott for finding and shipping that bad boy to me. So starting about Thursday, I don't think I'll leave my apartment again anytime soon.

Hooray, that's it for now. Hopefully some actual entries coming soonish.

January 26, 2006 - Another long time without an update. Oops.

So, what's been going on since last time, when I put up ski pictures and all that business? A couple things:

First, I had a pretty crazy weekend; I managed to have three friends come at the same time! Kristi and Pete both had interviews with Microsoft, and James decided to take a couple weeks off before starting his big new job, and I somehow was lucky enough to be on his list of stops. So, along with Brad, Steph, and Jason, we all had a great time, which included a Friday night dinner complete with setting off the fire alarm, a hopeless wandering through Seattle where I got ridiculously lost, and a "raging" Saturday night party that was a hilariously great time all around. With a crowd like that, I've been catching my breath ever since.

Beyond that, I've trumped up my new pictures section slightly; it's not a huge improvement, and you probably won't believe me when I say it's taken me about three nights to do, but it was bugging me enough that I had to change it. If you're clever enough to spot the difference, let me know. It's not very obvious, but I think it's an improvement.

Yeah, that's about it. Annie linked this article on religion, which I found interesting. Be warned, it's got lots of unnecessarily big words and you might well fall asleep reading it, but it's interesting nonetheless. Cheers until I actually write another update.

January 11, 2006 - Back!

I've been lazy about updating this, but it's official; I have returned. And surprisingly, I have returned intact! Matter of fact, of twenty people on the trip, not a single one of us came away with any major injuries. One almost got arrested, and another slid a couple hundred feet down the hill on her face, but you'll have those sorts of things. I had a couple pretty good wipeouts myself: Once I accidentally went down a black-diamond mogul run in zero-visibility conditions, which led to a nice faceplant. And once I was weaving through some trees on the side of a blue run and bailed in about thirty inches of powder. It literally took me twenty minutes to dig myself out of that one, recover my equipment, and get moving again.
But all things considered, it was an extremely fun trip. It was great to see my friends again, along with some new people my own age! I have a couple hundred pictures from various people that I'm still compiling, but pretty soon -- hopefully by the weekend -- they'll be up and ready for viewing.
Not much else is new. Going back to work after a vacation sucks, that's for sure. That's about all I have to report. More when the pictures are available.

December 25, 2005 - A brief update

So maybe you're wondering where I've been for some time now. Or more likely, maybe you forgot all about me in the time since my last update. Either way, I suppose I should explain this, yes? And while I'm at it, I'll even explain in advance why I won't be updating for awhile. How's that for being on the ball, hm?
As we all know, the holiday season can be a somewhat busy time. As much as I'd like to use this as an excude, I'm afraid I can't, other than some last-minute running around and online orders. But along with the holiday season comes gatherings of family, and since my folks have made the journey out here to Seattle for ten days, the least I can do is spend some time with them and put off updating this for a while. Since they'll be leaving just before new year's, you might think you'll get another update shortly thereafter. But once again, you'd be wrong, because on January 2nd, I leave to go skiing in Colorado! That should be a fun and exciting six days, and barring travel nightmares or hardcore ski wipeouts, I should be back and ready to go again about January the ninth. Huzzah.
So there you have that. What else has been going on in the meantime, minus the parents visiting? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. I work, I sleep, I play video games, I watch football. That's it. Now I remember why I started doing posts with actual substance.
Merry Christmas to everyone!

November 28, 2005 - The transformation begins

I finally spent some time this (long) weekend and did some work on this site of mine, besides the obligatory hey-it's-been-two-weeks-so-let's-update-now. You may notice at the bottom of all the newsposts now, there are some more links. These represent categories that my news posts can fall into. Things like site updates, work, school, et cetera are encompassed in these categories, and if you click on a category name, you'll see all the entries filed under that same category. At some point these will be searchable, and I'll make them easier to get to from my archives page, but work with me for now. This is all you get to start with.
Okay, so why did I add this? Well, besides being able to see at a glance whether or not you might care about a certain entry, it nicely lays the framework for my upcoming "transition to a real blog". This way, I can keep rants and raves, video game reviews, and general updates separate, and perhaps even attract a different group of readers to each. Because let's face it, very few people are interested in the mundanities of my life, so having a way to flag my posts as largely uninteresting will be useful. Plus, since many of my posts, especially the old ones, don't fall nicely into one category, I've made it so each post can have as many as necessary. Some even have four, five, or more. Oh, and I spent probably five hours or so this weekend going through all of my old postings and categorizing them. Hooray.
So then, away from site news and into the other interesting business. First, Kelsey came back again for a day, and brought her cousin with her! Even though it was a Wednesday night, this occasion still resulted in lots of enchiladas and margaritas, as well as a trip to the local darts-and-pool bar. Good times. Then for the holiday weekend, Brad's parents took in myself and Schneekloth for Thanksgiving dinner, which was awesome of them. We enjoyed a very nice long day filled with food, drink, and general merriment, including my first experience with a deep-fried turkey. Much better than I was expecting, I must say. The rest of the four-day weekend has been spent alternating between bouts of productivity (my apartment is the cleanest it's been since I moved in) and laziness (I racked up about ten hours of video games Friday), so it's been pretty good. A trip to the dog park rounds things out nicely, although it's starting to get awfully cold to be out there for a couple hours in the mornings. I've had to scrape my car off a couple times now, and this is not a good sign of things to come. Welcome to winter, I suppose.
And to touch briefly on work, things are going pretty well there also. We have our "code complete" deadline, when everything we're doing has to be submitted, next Friday, so there may be a bit of a crunch leading up to that. Fortunately, our team is doing relatively isolated work, which means that we don't have to deal with a whole bunch of other groups, making our job much simpler and more predictable. We should be in pretty good shape for this deadline. As for what happens after the deadline, I'm not exactly sure. But I continue my slow assimilation into corporate culture, doing new and ever more complicated things as I go. It's nice to be doing some things that were originally scheduled for other people to do; it makes me feel more like it's "real work" and not "hey, this will be easy, let's give it to Jason". That sounds bad, so let me clarify: While having easy ramp-up work was a godsend for me, and a wonderful consideration given to me by my lead, there's always that nagging little sense that it's somehow second-rate stuff. I know it's not, and that it will all be included in our product, but it's a mental thing.
That's about it. Hopefully this week I should start doing some focused postings; I've had a few ideas for a while now. Of course, the track record will show that "sometime this week" usually turns into "maybe by January", but we can all pretend otherwise for now. I hope everyone had a wonderful long weekend and a happy Thanksgiving!

November 13, 2005 - Same old, same old...

So yet again, it's been a couple weeks. What else is new, right? So let's recap the last couple weeks, as has become standard:
I've worked, I've slept, and I've played video games. I went out briefly to a couple bar-type-places with people to watch football and/or just hang out. More often than not, I left early.
And yes, that's pretty much it. While work is constantly getting better - I keep doing more and more interesting stuff, and I'm constantly figuring things out more completely - it doesn't make for a very exciting newspost. And sadly, this is going to pretty much be the inevitable pattern for ... well, ever, I suppose.
So maybe I'll have to change this into a more 'traditional' blog-like site. That would involve more frequent posting (that was a joke, see), and small, isolated entries about random things -- racquetball, photography, scuba, video games, and the like. Since I live but to serve (that was another joke), you should let me know what you think by leaving me a comment or two.
The only noteworthy site news is that I fixed a small irregularity in the POTD that you probably didn't notice. Huzzah.

October 31, 2005 - Too long between updates. Again.

In work news, things are much better! My boss, who's pretty much the coolest guy ever, took me out to lunch last week and asked for feedback about my experiences so far. I'm not sure if it was because I seem like I need it or what, but he seems actually interested in what I have to say. So I prepared about four pages worth of stuff to talk about, which I think really surprised him, but it was pretty honest and pretty complete, covering a lot of things. He has some good advice for me, and I think I just have to slowly (and sometimes painfully) fall into the role I've taken. Altering a couple of my habits and a couple of my mindsets has been good so far, and here's hoping it will continue to do wonders. And amidst all of this trying-to-be-professional stuff, I went and lost my badge sometime between Friday evening and this morning. Brilliant.
Let's see, what else? Ah, I went out with Stephanie and her friend Jamie on Saturday night for Halloween after finding a purple hat and matching cane at the very last minute. We started out at a party in Seattle, which was pretty cool but kind of ... not very social, I guess. The girls didn't much care for it, so we left and went to a bar called Neighbors. Now, this was a pretty cool bar, I must say, especially if you're into the dancing scene, which unfortunately I'm not. The most distinguishing feature of Neighbors, though, is that for the most part, it's a gay bar. Going on Halloween provided a lot of interesting characters, interesting costumes, and a most interesting experience. 'Interesting' was a word I used a lot that night. Anyhow, it was a good night and the few pictures I took will be coming on the POTD shortly.
Another update with no site work. I would love to start a 'Stupidity of the Day' section, but I fear it would go the way of the Quote of the Day: Start out strong, then slowly fade into oblivion in a painful way...
And since everyone always asks about him, Shadow's doing fine. We took a couple trips to the dog park on Saturday, so he was pretty tuckered out this weekend. It's starting to get rainy here though, so there might be less and less of that as the winter goes on. He got a bunch of new toys recently, and if I can convince him to stop eating it, he might even get a blanket back in his crate when I go to work. Obedience school is almost finished, and it's been good for him, I think, though he does much better at some things (sitting, staying) than others (coming when called, not eating blankets).
And before I run out of time to say it ... Happy Halloween!

October 20, 2005 - And back to normal

Sooo... Getting back to normal after that mini-breakdown thing I had. Which, by the way, was really quite nothing... The next day I took a couple deep breaths and had a short talk with my boss about some things, which helped a lot. I think that part of the problem is that "having a job" is just so ridiculously different than "being a student". Now, pretty much everything I do relates back in some way to the job, whereas in college, everything I did pretty much involved avoiding work. It's a huge difference between the two, and one that I think I've been having some trouble adjusting to. Or maybe just identifying or accepting the change -- whatever, regardless, I think it's getting better.
So then, what else has been going on now that all that business is settled? The hard drive in my laptop died, so Dell sent me a new one, in a pleasantly surprising bit of good customer service. I've also been on the sick side of things for the last couple days with seasonal head-cold-type stuff, which of course means that I've been sleeping poorly; Tuesday morning I woke up at 4:00 and couldn't get back to sleep, so at 4:30 AM I'm sitting in my living room swapping hard drives out of a laptop, sneezing. What a sight to see.
I'm hoping to make it back to work tomorrow; I've taken a couple days at home because of this illness thing, but hopefully will feel good enough tomorrow to head back. We shall see, I suppose.
Shadow is just fine, aside from being a little restless and bored, since I've been in no shape to take him on a long walk recently. But he's been a trooper too, taking it all in stride and happily chewing his toys. I've got myself a good little dog.
Oh, and I guess I did a site thing last weekend too. Scroll to the bottom of this entry, and see on the right there, there are now a couple new links. The one labeled "(number) comments" will show you what other people have to say about this entry, and the link labeled "post comment" will let you say something. Bear in mind that these will be publicly visible, so try not to make too big a fool out of yourself when you're using them :) But please, I'd love some feedback; perhaps it will help me feel like I'm keeping in touch with people.
That's about all the news I have here -- congratulations to Marie on her recent engagement!

September 28, 2005 - The to-do list gathers dust

It's that time again. Time to count all the things I haven't done that I said I would, and make lame excuses for not doing them. Sound like fun? Here we go...

• Marie, Mindy, I have not forgotten about you. I still have all of your pictures, and they're still going to go up sometime. I'm just extremely lazy and forgetful.
• I promised some folks pictures of the recent Kelsey visit, as well as some more of Shadow. Those too are coming in About That Much Time™, and will be gotten to when I suck less. Don't hold your breath.
• I still want to redo pretty much every section of my site. I know, I know, things are out of date, believe me I know. I'm going to say that I'm working on it, and you're going to understand that when I say that, it means I'm really not. Capiche?
• The best excuse I have for not doing these things and more: Kelsey came back last weekend! Her hiking buddy ended up breaking his foot before they could go, so unfortunately for him but luckily for me, I got to hang out an extra weekend with Kelsey. This time, we actually did get around to our hike, a gorgeous place called Wallace falls about an hour north of here (actually about two hours if you drove the way I did... whoops). I started out very positive, happy to finally be out hiking in the glory of the northwest. Three miles and 1400 vertical feet later, I was quite ready to swear off this 'nature' thing forever. But the point is that we made it, it was gorgeous, and as a bonus, Shadow even got to come along!
• Work has actually started to be pretty good. It's still slow, of course, just because I'm so new and don't know anything about these four-million-plus lines of code I've just jumped into. But I have things to code up now, and it's going reasonably well, all things considered. It's certainly a step up from a couple weeks ago.

September 13, 2005 - Overdue update, as usual

Once again, it's been awhile. Meh, I have "responsibilities" or whatever now; it's kinda crazy.
So let's do a quick recap then, shall we?

• The big news: Kelsey came and visited me! We had a splendid weekend which included a lot of eating, some drinking, and a whole lot of camping-getting-rained-out-so-let's-watch-football-instead. And on the note, ISU beat Iowa! Huzzah! It was great to see Kelsey and awesome of her to visit. Now I just have to find some time to get out to Montana so we can actually go camping and hiking and all that fun stuff.
• Shadow has been doing wonderfully. Aside from the intestinal difficulties caused by getting into about a dozen Oreos and a half-dozen pieces of tupperware, he's been great. Had another vet visit just this morning and all is well. Training classes start in two weeks, so maybe we'll be able to teach the little scamp some manners. Oh, and I've put a bunch of Shadowy pictures up in my picture of the day, so be on the lookout for those.
• Work continues, of course. It's been very frustrating as of late because I just don't have anything to do. Last week was declared "design document week", which means that all you focus on is doing your design documents. That's funny though, because Tuesday morning my design documents were handed to me since they were already done. And this week, I can't start coding until my documents get "signed off", which consists only of: (1) sending an email to the team asking for feedback, and (2) waiting for Friday afternoon since no one is going to read them anyways. Gah.

August 28, 2005 - Big news...

I have big news.
Did I add those pictures from Marie and Mindy's visit like I promised I would? No. Did I put up more pictures of the day? No. Did I finally change my extremely outdated links page, or any of the other half-dozen extremely outdated sections of my site? Of course not.
So then, what's the big news?
Not that I'm keeping track, but it's been about twenty-two years, two months, and twenty-six days since I decided that I wanted a dog. And as of today, the wait is over. I went a half-hour north up to Lynnwood, to a very helpful place called PAWS, which had very nice facilities and a very good number of dogs. I looked around, talked to some people, and before I knew it, I had taken home a wonderfully calm and gorgeous nine-month-old lab mix named Shadow. A quick trip to PetCo and I was all set. You can check out a brief glimpse of Shadow here, here, here, here, or here. I'm sure that I'll be doing nothing but taking more and more pictures of the little fella as time goes on. As a sidenote, this gives everyone another wonderful reason to come out and see me! You get to play with a dog! How can you lose?
Well, I guess I did do one thing. For those of you into that sort of thing, I made an RSS feed that you can tap into. If you don't know what that is, then ignore this paragraph. Or ask, I'll be happy to explain.
I definitely have more things I'd like to do around here, but let's just say that my priorities have changed,\ slightly in the last 24 hours. And you thought I was a lazy webmaster before...

August 23, 2005 - Work update, and other not-very-profound things

Maybe we can try this every ten days instead of every fourteen? ... Don't get your hopes up.
Just so no one thinks I've forgotten it, I have many, many, many pictures to put up from Marie and Mindy's visit. I know this, and it's definitely on my to-do list. I'm going to try and make it somewhat spiffy (kind of like my Scuba pictures from the most recent trip, where you can pick the ones you want. We'll see how ambitious I get.
Hm, what is there interesting to say? No site updates, that's for sure. The majority of this past weekend was spent on Guild Wars, and hanging out with my super-cool neighbors. I've tried going to the Humane Society a couple times now to find a dog, but the pickings are slim and I have some restrictions on what I can and can't get... plus, I just plain have high standards! All this is combining to make the process of finding a dog a little on the tough side. Once I do, though ... well, I'll never be short of pictures of the day again.
I suppose I should mention work ... we're officially in "crunch mode", I guess. It's kind of funny because our product has this huge backlog of work to do, but our little team is pretty far ahead. So while everyone else is all panicky about dates and workload, we're kind of wondering what the fuss is about. Of course, we're helping other teams, but it's an interesting perspective. For example, I was in the office about eleven hours today. To take the edge off, they at least buy us dinner, which provides a nice break. Oh, and we had a pretty cool "tradeshow" thing yesterday for all of Business Solutions, so we pretty much schmoozed with people and saw all kinds of up-and-coming products all day. And, dare I say it, even though it's just business software, some of it was pretty cool.
That's about it. Not much to say, but at least it's been less than two weeks, right? New pictures (and possibly more!) soonish. Cheers.

August 14, 2005 - Visitors!

And after another two weeks, I'm back. I'm in danger of falling into this not-updating habit, I think.
So the big news around here has been the arrival, visit, and departure of Marie and Mindy. These awesome friends of mine decided to take an 1800-mile vacation before school started again and came all the way to Seattle to come see me for a week, and I have to say that it was an absolute blast. Aside from the ... interesting experience of having two women share my apartment for a week (favorite quote: "It looks like two girls exploded in here"), we had a whole bunch more fun. This included a couple trips to Seattle, an awesome dinner in the Space Needle restaurant, a touristy harbor cruise, a fun night of drinking beer in the woods around a fire, a night of camping, and a whole lot of tequila. From that list, you can probably gather that we all had a great time, and I know that Marie is already planning for their next trip out here!
So besides that, it's been pretty much business as usual here. Work, eat, sleep, Guild Wars, Halo. I have training coming up all this week, nine to five, every day, which will probably be somewhat boring after about the second day, but we can hope not. Plus, it means that I actually have to get up on time! I suppose it will be a nice change from the office though, at least partly.
So now to the good stuff: I've made changes here! Woo! Let's see... I've:

• Gotten rid of the obsolete Quote of the Day, whch hadn't been updated in two months (oops)
• Added a huge photo gallery of Bert and Toni's wedding
• Changed my Picture of the Day to be better
• Added my Portfolio to the navigation

August 1, 2005 - Back, and holy cow

I've officially returned, much wiser than when I left. The primary thing I learned: Weddings rock. Holy crap, this was such an awesome time it was ridiculous. Amazing friends (and lots of them!), good times, a happy occasion, and yes, even a little bit of dancing all add up to very possibly the most fun weekend ever. Don't get me wrong, I'm absolutely exhausted, but it was totally, completely worth it. Huge congratulations to Bert and Toni -- now officially the Johnsons -- and a very large thank you for being included in the ceremony. It was an honor and a pleasure.
Unfortunately, this brings me back to the so-called "real world". Work is not going to be a fun place to be tomorrow, although I suppose it will be busy enough that it should go by quickly. I just checked my email tonight, and I have no fewer than thirty-eight messages to dig through tomorrow, which is actually a lot less than I was guessing I'd have. Oh yeah, and then Marie and her friend come on Wednesday, and are here until Tuesday. That too will be awesome, but also probably exhausting, much in the way that the wedding was. Regardless, I'm definitely looking forward to their visit.
Perhaps a gallery of pictures and some site updates soon... Honestly, I've been trying for a month and change now to work on some of the horribly overdue parts of this site, but let's be realistic.

July 28, 2005 - Bon voyage, and stuff

It's a quarter to two in the morning, and I just finished packing for this weekend, which promises to be a weekend of firsts for me. These include:

• My first official vacation days from work. I'm taking Thursday, Friday, and Monday off.
• My first nonstop Seattle-to-Chicago flight. Hopefully this one won't get diverted to Boise and delayed for 21 hours like the one way back in January did. Not that I hold grudges.
• My first-ever wedding! I'm going to be going to Bert and Toni's wedding, and playing the role of an usher. I'm pretty stoked about it -- it's going to be a great time, and I'm going to see a lot of people I haven't seen in months, and some I haven't seen in years!
• My first time saying "Holy crap, my friends are getting married, I feel old." That one should be self-explanatory.
• My first time officially using my folks as a hotel. Since I left absolutely nothing behind and took a lot of my parents' stuff to boot, my room is going to be absolutely empty, if I even stay there. I might be relegated to the guest room, but who knows. Either way, it's going to be a very busy weekend, and I'll almost certainly do nothing but sleep at home. It can't be helped, I suppose.

July 17, 2005 - Settling into a routine

Ah yes, my website. The one I'm supposed to update. Right.
So what's been happening here, you ask? Not a whole lot of anything, to be honest. I get up in the morning, go to work around 9:30, work all day, leave around 6:30, come home, make or (more likely) go get dinner, and play Guild Wars until I go to sleep again. It's a pretty nice arrangement, actually. Without trying to repeat myself here, I'm really liking the company and the area, and everything has been great so far.
I'm finally doing real work! I did my first little bits of actual coding this last week, and managed to check in some bugfixes! So now I officially own a couple obscure error messages that only administrators will ever see in business software that you've never heard of. Woohoo! This upcoming week will be all about the coding, though. Since our team is apparently on the ball and has no bugs left to tackle, they're sending myself and a couple others over to a different team to help with their bugs. Net result: about four hours a day of meetings to identify and discuss the bugs, and about five or six hours a day to track them down and fix them. Should be fun.
We had a trip to Mount Rainier scheduled for today with my neighbors across the hall, who are the coolest people ever, by the way. Unfortunately, it didn't work out, so I spent the day playing Guild Wars and went for a short bike ride instead. It's pretty nice; my apartment is about a hundred feet from a riverside trail, and if I wanted to, I could even bike to work! Unfortunately, after a 15-minute ride today, I remembered just how out of shape I am, so I don't think I'll be riding the five miles or so to and from work every day for quite some time, thanks.
The last thing of interest that I have to talk about is my tour of the fitness club yesterday. Microsoft, as part of their benefits package, gives you a membership to this club. Check it out, if you like. The place is absolutely insane. They have five hundred full-time staff, and while you're working out in their absolutely huge facilities, you can (among other things) get your car detailed, your dry cleaning done, or have your kids babysat. And when you're done, you can buy flowers, have a beer, or go to their enormous spa and get your hair done, go tanning, or get Botox. Like I said, insane.
So I guess we'll see if I ever get off my ass and actually go to this place... One can only hope, right?
Off to another week of work...

July 3, 2005 - Officially moved!

Okay, so I'm lazy. I check dozens of websites a day, post things on mesageboards, read and send email. And I don't update this. I don't think this will surprise anyone.
Right, now some of the things that you've all (ha!) been desperate to read (ha! again):

• The whole leaving thing. Packed, loaded, shipped out, with no real problems. After a loooong but thankfully uneventful plane ride, I arrived in Seattle and picked up my (extremely sexy) rental car. Half an hour later, I was on my way to my temporary housing.
• The first thing I did when I got into my temp housing (which is quite nice, by the way) was to turn around and go exploring. I drove for two hours and change, during Friday rush hour no less, and found nothing. Offices and apartments, and that was it. Turns out I have a grocery store, a half-dozen restaurants, and a movie theater literally across the street from my apartment. So it goes, I guess. In my defense, nothing here has signs on the roads, and there are so many trees that you can't see anything!
• That's another thing! Everything here is so ... cool. Aside from the heinous and ridiculous traffic problems, of course. It's amazing to see the hills and trees and mountains and waterfalls and stuff that they have here. The weather is gorgeous, and it really doesn't rain all that much. In short, I have no idea why anyone lives anywhere else. I'll be having some pictures up soon, I am sure.
• I suppose I should touch on the "work" thing; you know, that whole reason that I'm out here. So far, it's more boring than anything, with a whole bunch of just reading, training, reading, watching videos, reading, learning policies, and oh yeah, reading. I'm going to be able to start looking at code next week, though, and from there I'm sure it will be a very rapid ramp-up, and I'll be another code monkey in no time. The atmosphere of the company is awesome, too. Everyone's nice, of course, but it's beyond that. Everything is laid-back. Developers tend to show up at about 10 or 10:30. We had a beer social on Friday. Those kinds of things. All in all, it's a pretty good place to be.
• Oh yeah, and then there's this whole finding a place to live thing, too. I went apartment-hunting, and I've found an awesome place. Two bedrooms, one bathroom, on the top floor. It's in the same building I'm in now, which is nice. Short commute and good facilities, among other things. My stuff gets here on Wednesday, so that will lead to probably a week or so of unpacking. Once that's done, I guess I'm officially a permanent resident out here!
• And then of course, I had to go and buy myself a couple new toys, too. I got a Gamecube, so expect some changes to the gaming section in ... about that much time. And the big one: I bought myself a new computer! Well, the pieces of it, anyhow. It's fully assembled and running with no problems, and it'll be nice to have a machine that actually runs games decently. So really, who am I kidding; I'm going to unpack until I find my games, and then stop. Ah well.

June 15, 2005 - New adventures

Wow, so this update is way overdue. I think I've been meaning to write something here every night for the last week-plus, but it's only happening now because my Guild Wars computer has been dismantled. What can I say, I'm easily distractable and easily entertained.
Anyhow, I have several things to cover in this update, so here we go:

• First, I've actually done something for a couple days now, and after a lot of work, I've redone the way my news posts work! They now include "permalinks" to easily reference individual entries, and my archives have been redone as well, to be much easier to work with and update. Everything should be much faster now too, and in the near future, I'll be adding the ability to search my archives. That may not happen for awhile, though, because ...
• I'm moving in ... a little over thirty hours. This is not like moving to Ames again - oh no, this is me packing everything I own -- and a lot of stuff that I don't (thanks, Mom and Dad!) -- into a truck and flying out to Seattle to live ... forever, I guess. It definitely has not sunk in that in a mere four days, I'll officially be a working stiff. Welcome to the next fifty years of your life, right? And on the subject of the move ...
• No move would be complete without a couple hassles and miscommunications, right? Well, the packers, loaders, and car-shipment folks were all supposed to come today, somewhere in the 9:00 AM range of things. About 10:30, I called my moving contact, who's on the west coast, and asked where my crew was. After a couple phone calls on her part, the short answer is that "your local dispatch has you scheduled for tomorrow, but I have you marked down for today. Sorry." Well, good thing that I'm in town for another day then, isn't it? And then about 4:00, I get a call from the auto shippers: "Hey, our driver is way behind, can we pick you up tomorrow morning instead?" ... What fun. I'm quite lucky that I have an extra day between my scheduling and when I actually leave.
• And lastly, this whole leaving thing. The last two weeks or so have been wonderful; I've seen most everyone here that I know, and spent a lot of great time with my folks and my friends. I'm not a very emotional or sentimental guy, but still, leaving all of this is going to be hard. I seem to have missed saying a proper goodbye to many people, which I'm not happy about. The good thing about this is that I'm coming back in six weeks, and the majority of people will be here then as well, when I will hopefully get around to this whole 'goodbye' thing that I try so hard to avoid.

June 4, 2005 - Overdue update

So remember how I was going to do all kinds of cool stuff with my site? I was going to make my gaming section cooler, re-do my links page, and re-organize my archives; any of this ring a bell? Yeah, well, guess what. Following my near-flawless track record of procrastination and otherwise not accomplishing what I say I will, I've done a whole lot of nothing on the site here. However, I have an excuse, and that excuse is named Guild Wars. I'd say that you should expect an update about it to my gaming section shortly, but let's be serious.
The past week or so has been relatively uneventful, which is just how I like it. With a lot of time for friends, family, and games, it's been a nice and relaxing change of pace. Oh yeah, I guess I had a birthday in there too, or something, which was also cool.
Anyhow, as usual, I have relatively little to talk about, at least until I get out to Seattle. So if you're in town, let me know, because this may be the last chance I'll have to see you!

May 25, 2005 - Fun with websites

So I'm a bad person; I seem to be bad at updating this darn website of mine. On the plus side, I just recently moved my site over to new hosting. The wonderful folks at CalCon have decided to get out of the business, so I've found a new home -- and this one has PHP and databases! What does this mean for the site? Ideally, it'll be better, faster, and all my "cool stuff" (POTD, gaming, and the like) will be redone and made even cooler. Heck, I've even made the first new thing that's New And Improved™ - I went and put up all 400+ of the Scuba pictures from this last trip. Since there are so many, it might be better to go through them by days - in the future, I might even make them searchable.
But that all serves as a wonderful transition to the ever-so-interesting discussion of where I've been for two weeks and change. Really, it's not all that exciting; it pretty much follows the schedule I gave in my last update. The Scuba trip was awesome, of course, including a full six days of awesome diving and a bunch of good friends. The drive across the state was ... interesting, with three separate stops for naps. Four days with my grandmother was great, too - and of course, being in Florida is always awesome. The flight back sucked, with a delay of about five hours, plus lost luggage to boot. Long story short, it all worked out, and I got back unscathed. Since then, I've pretty much been sorting through all of my stuff, and buying a whole bunch of new (and boring) stuff for the impending move. It's astounding how much stuff I have here, especially considering that it's not even my 'home' anymore. Finding and sorting all this stuff is quite the chore.
So yeah, now I get to do this sorting business for a couple more weeks, and then get out of here for ... well ... ever, I guess. Fun times. More postings as I come up with more revamped stuff around here.

May 8, 2005 - Alumnus. Weird word.

So, I've officially graduated. This is just a brief note, since it's 2 AM and I haven't had a decent night's sleep in about five days. I'm even too lazy to archive properly at the moment.
Anyway, just so no one thinks I've died, here's the deal:

• Tomorrow morning, I hop on a plane from Chicago to Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
• Myself and seven of the other ISU Scuba Club members go diving for a week.
• Next Monday, we all return to the airport, where everyone goes home but me.
• I pick up a rental car and drive across the state to Sarasota.
• I spend five days in Sarasota with my grandmother, visiting and doing odd jobs.
• On May 20th, I hop on a plane from Sarasota to Chicago, to come home and start my buying/sorting/packing frenzy that all leads up to my June 15th move to Seattle.

April 25, 2005 - Been awhile

Yeah yeah, it's been two weeks since I updated. Let's try for a slightly less "whiny emo kid" update this time, shall we?
I've gotten (mostly) out of my funk that I was in. I think the problem was that I had just done nothing for so very long that it became impossible to start doing things again. I also think I was watching entirely too much TV, which I've tried to put an end to. Long story short, things are peachy again. My collective apologies to anyone who I might have been snippy to.
So, what's happened in the past two weeks? We had a Scuba broomball team, which won a game before losing in the second round - I have a funny story about that if anyone cares to hear it. I went rollerblading a couple times, which is always awesome. It got real cold - below freezing a couple nights ago - which is never a good thing. I've played some decent amounts of video games. Oh, and I've been in the market for a new cell phone, as USCellular, in their infinite wisdom, decided to serve most of Washington state except Seattle. That's been kind of a chore, but I think I'm going to come away with something I'll enjoy much more than my current one. It'll be nice to only have one number and not have to deal with a land line once I'm in Washington.
Oh yeah! I went down to UIUC a couple weekends ago to celebrate Jody's birthday! It was awesome to make it down there one last time and see everyone - and of course, happy 21st to Jody! I got to see Scott on the way to and from UIUC as well, and we managed to have ourselves a fun time too. Check out some of the recent POTD's for the highlights.
That's about it. The next couple weeks are going to be mighty interesting. Not so much from a schoolwork perspective as from a "holy crap, how am I going to take a final, demo a project, wrap up senior design, attend three graduation ceremonies, entertain two sets of relatives, pack all my stuff, clean my apartment, have one last hurrah with my friends, and make it home alive, all in three days?" kind of perspective. Uh oh...

April 13, 2005 - Chronic and crippling laziness

So I really kind of feel bad about the last ... week or so. I have, almost literally, done nothing. I've gone to about half my classes, done next to no homework - and what little I've done has been late - and made absolutely no progress on anything remotely productive. Basically, I've sucked for a solid week or so. I've had a couple fun nights, gatherings with people, rollerblading adventures, a broomball game tonight, and a heck of a lot of video game time ... and yet, I'm still worthless. About four of the last seven days I've crashed in the middle of the day for a nap, sometimes as long as four hours. It's not that I'm not getting enough sleep, it's that I'm lazy and worthless. I almost hate to say it, but I think I had a better time when I was slightly busier. This is the first time in all of college when I can honestly say that I've been bored. Weird.
On to things that suck less, though. It has come to my attention that I had been neglecting my POTD for some time. You can consider that fixed, and if you haven't yet, go and check out the past POTD's as well. Standard end-of-the-month archiving as well.
Exciting news: I've officially gotten plane tickets for a Scuba trip in May! I'm heading out to Key Largo, Florida, on Monday the 9th, right after graduation, packing, and moving (which is going to be a hell of a couple days, by the way). About six days of diving later, I'm renting a car, driving across the state, and spending about four days visiting my grandmother. Obviously, I'm quite excited about both of these things. Just makes me want this semester to be over with even sooner.
Surprisingly, for about two weeks worth of not updating, that's all I have. I told you I haven't been doing anything. Cheers to the next couple weeks!

March 31, 2005 - Not just updating to put off homework, I promise...

So this week, and the next couple of weeks, suck. Senior design decided that it would be awesome if we could have our semester-long status report due, all the new development on our project due, and give our in-class presentation, all within about five days. And oh yeah, guess what, you have other classes too! Apparently no one bothered to tell our senior design professors that part, though. Speeches, papers, and programs continue to happen. And the funny thing is that this really isn't even a rough semester, compared to last fall. It's just that I ... well, I don't care anymore. Almost nothing I'm doing is relevant or enjoyable, and it doesn't affect my future at all. I just want to get through it all and get it out of the way. Man, I'm getting so burned out from this crap.
On to happier things, though - The weather is gorgeous, with a couple of days this week in the low 70's. I went and finally went frisbee golfing ... "correctly", shall we say, on one of these days, which was an awesome thing to do. A couple video game sessions, and I'm pretty much good to go for the rest of the week. This weekend will be a little bit abnormal, as my folks are coming out to pack up some of my stuff to make the May move a little easier. Between that and the speech I have to give on Monday, it'll be an interesting weekend, but it should be fun, regardless.
Keep checking those POTD's!

March 27, 2005 - Weekends rule

Look, look! An update, less than two weeks after the last one! Man, I surprise myself sometimes.
So this weekend was awesome. If you count Friday afternoon (which I do, since my class was cancelled), then this weekend included: Two high-quality naps, a game of poker, some South Park, a couple decent movies, the year's first round of golf, and my first-ever trip to a shooting range. Madd props to Adam for the vast majority of those things. The only depressing one among those was the round of golf today; after being one over for the first three holes (double, birdie, par), I ended up seventeen over for the next six holes. Extremely harsh. But since this was the first decent weather day in Ames in forever, and I managed to get out on the golf course in the first place, it's not all so bad.
Nothing much else to be reporting. I have a good deal of work to be doing, of course, but what else is new? I'll get it all done, of course, but it'll all wait until the last minute. I'm just too lazy recently to do anything ahead of time. Example: I have an essay exam due in ... six hours that I just finished. I started it earlier today, before golf - and I consider that an advance start.
It's supposed to hit 70 degrees tomorrow, so I think that some frisbee golf might be in order. I can only hope.
Oh, and be sure to check the POTD for the next week or so - some previously unreleased Spring Break pictures await you!

March 23, 2005 - Drum roll please

I finally made a little bit of time to get these pictures taken care of! So, I proudly present to you Spring Break 2005 pictures and the underwater pictures. Be absolutely sure to check out those underwater ones, as there's some seriously cool stuff in there. Man, going through all those pictures (419 of them!) made me want to go back.
But for now, I'm stuck in Iowa and have boatloads to do. Not doing anything over break or for the first couple days back might end up biting me. I'm trying to plug away at it, but I'm really starting to lose the little motivation I had. I think I'm getting more and more excited about my impending move to Washington, which also implies getting more and more excited about getting out of here. It's not as bad as all that, of course; I just wish I had more time to slack off and play games. But then, who doesn't?
Anyhow, with the major update and obligatory pictures out of the way, I might not get back around to this for a few (read: many) days. On the plus side, the POTD's are back again, and I managed to fill in all the POTD's that I missed, so check those out too.

March 20, 2005 - And I have returned

I'm offically back from Florida, and will have pictures up soonish. Bear with me if it takes a couple of days, as I'm still really screwed up from our 6:30AM (!) flight out of Miami.
In the meantime, back to it...

March 12, 2005 - Leaving!

I'm on my way out the door to gorgeous Key Largo, Florida for a week for Spring Break! There will be many, many, many pictures upon my return!
Hope everyone enjoys the week :)

March 9, 2005 - Two weeks this time

I'm going to pretend that the reason I haven't updated this in so long is because there's been nothing to say - not that I'm just lazy and generally good for nothing. Yeah, that sounds good.
So, what's happened over the past two weeks? ... Not altogether that much, truth be told. It's been wonderful, though. After getting a little bit of Senior Design stuff out of the way and finalizing a couple of other school-related things, I've been on serious cruise control. It's been awesome; I've basically sat around and played an awful lot of Grand Theft Auto. Dropping that class really turned this semester around for me, and I totally love having very little to do. Of course, I have a project due and a test in my computer graphics class tomorrow, so I'm not totally in the clear. But even with the things that I still have to do, I just find myself not caring. It's kind of refreshing.
Like I said, there's really not that much to report. Spring Break is next week, and I leave for Florida in a mere three days. I have my gear, my camera case, and everything else, so I'm pretty much set, and very excited about it. This year I have a case so I can use my camera underwater, so be expecting a lot of quality pictures when I return. I guess this is my last big vacation, per se, before heading out to the "real world", so I plan on making the most of it.
I'll try and put up one more update before I leave - oh, and enjoy the POTD's from a recent party at King's.

February 27, 2005 - Hrm

Right, so once again we're back to the time-honored "update whenever the hell I feel like it" schedule. I think I was deluding myself with any attempt to try and keep this thing up. I always either forget about it or am just too darn lazy to update it. In conclusion, I suck. Moving on...
Let's see, last week... last week was busy. Between Senior Design, the absolute bane of my existence, and that friggin' portfolio that I had to do, I was swimming in the work. Oh yeah, and the speech on Friday that I started preparing for on Thursday at midnight. I really do suck, don't I? Ah well, the point is that everything got done, and now I'm looking to be on easy street for at least a little while. Which of course means that I'll end up having things to be doing regardless, but oh well.
This weekend was pretty quality; I did a whole lot of nothing, which included an awesome party with King and the crowd on Friday night, some quality video games and poker on Saturday, and a (most disappointing) basketball game on Sunday. It's kind of nice to relax every so often, but I always end up feeling like a waste when I do. Meh.
Oh, and then the super fun thing is that I've been having loads of trouble with one of my computers lately. I have absolutely no idea what's going on; I've found and fixed two major problems and things still aren't right. Bizarre, but it certainly gives me a project to be investigating. Man, technology is irritating when it doesn't work right.
Only two weeks to Spring Break!

February 18, 2005 - Yeah, weekly update

It's been pointed out to me that I was supposed to let everyone know that I hadn't died while skiing this past weekend. Sadly (for some of you, anyways), I must report that I'm still very much alive, and even (somehow!) intact. I had an absolute blast with it, and I can definitely see myself skiing for some time into the future. It's just so ... relaxing and challenging and exhilarating and fun, all at the same time. Now they just need to invent a way to go skiing when it's about eighty degrees outside.
This past week certainly had its interesting moments. Our Senior Design server crashed again, and bringing that back was a bit of fun. My car started making a horrible, evil screeching sound the other night, which ended up being nothing more than a slightly bent plate on the inside of one of the wheels. And just tonight, I tried to boot up my camera, and apparently it's died. Good thing I have that four-year replacement plan, huh? We'll see about getting that last one resolved, but so far it hasn't been anything that I can't handle. Of course, saying that is bound to jinx something, but whatever.
Things are a lot less stressful for me at the moment, I've noticed. Ever since getting and accepting that job offer - and dropping my video games class - I've just sort of been on cruise control. A great example of this was my speech exam today - I finally got around to thinking about it (not studying, mind you) about half an hour before it started, and I just absolutely couldn't care less. It's kind of liberating, but when I find myself with free time, I almost feel guilty and confused after not having had any for so long. Hopefully that will pass soon, and I'll be playing a whole bunch of video games in the near future.
Oh yeah, and after my portfolio gets done this week, I'll be even more free! Sure, it's dues Wednesday and it's huge, and I've almost started, but hey, it'll get done. I think.

February 11, 2005 - AWOL - and leaving again

So, long time, no update. Sorry. Those of you who might be looking for the tale of how I got heavily delayed in an airport will find that story here.
It's been a whirlwind kind of a week. I think I have spent more time on the phone this week than I ever have. Between all the calls home and all the calls out West, I'm pretty sure I've logged about two hours a day on the phone this week, which is absolutely unheard of for me. Why all the calls, you ask? Because I officially got a job offer from Microsoft on Monday. I'm not supposed to talk about specifics, but let's just say that it's a very good offer, and very hard to turn down. So, the decision is made; starting in late May or early June, I will be moving out to the Seattle area and working full-time as a software developer! I haven't exactly wrapped my mind around all of the implications yet, but I do know one thing - it gives you all an excuse you roadtrip out to the west coast and see me!
So that's been the major form of excitement for me here. Second only to that is the weekend-long ski trip in Lutsen, Minnesota that's happening this weekend. Assuming that I don't break myself, it should be a pretty fun time. Half a dozen of us hanging out in a hotel and skiing sounds like an awesome time to me. But since I leave directly after class this afternoon (as in, they pick me up as I walk out of the lecture hall), it does kind of put a cramp on the schoolwork side of things ... which is probably okay since, let's face it, all my motivation is now officially gone.
Which brings me to yet another point; refer to my current schedule as a reference point. I've mysteriously lost all passion for my video games class, and I figured out that dropping it will save me about five hours of class time a week, plus who knows how much in stress and out-of-class workload. And since I'm not getting much out of it and I'm not contributing much to it, I've decided to drop it. This will all be official once I talk to my advisers and confirm that it's not going to hurt me, graduation-wise. Hopefully this will bring the tone of the semester down a little bit, since I haven't even thought about playing Halo in over a month. How depressing.
And then there's been the mundanity of the past two weeks - the schoolwork, the meetings, the random junk. Senior design is most certainly not my favorite place to be right now; what a waste of everyone's time that class is. Add in a small speech, an exam or two, and you have a pretty full couple of weeks there. Oh yeah, and a Try Scuba night as well. You get the idea by this point.
Anyhow, I'll try and not let two weeks go by between updates again. If I'm not in a body cast, look for something after I get back from Minnesota this weekend. Should be a good time; hope everyone else enjoys their weekend as much!

January 30, 2005 - Travelling can sure be a pain

It should be said that if the last couple of days have been anything at all, they have certainly been eventful.
Let's run down the events of the past three days, shall we?

• Thursday afternoon, I walked out the door and drove to the Des Moines airport. I caught my flight at 6:00, had my two-hour layover in Denver as planned, got on my second flight to Seattle, arrived on time and in one piece, got my rental car and headed to the hotel. It was an uneventful day as travel days go, but it was very cool to get into Seattle and have actual hills and trees and all kinds of neat stuff that Iowa lacks.
• Friday was my interview. I woke up relatively early, had a quick breakfast, and drove myself over there, arriving at about 9:30. After talking with my recruiting representative for about half an hour, I was shuttled over to another building, where I spent the rest of the day. I had a small break, one hour-long interview, a lunch-slash-interview that lasted about an hour and a half, another 60-minute interview, a break, and then my last interview of the day, which was supposed to last an hour but ended up lasting two. After all that, I walked off the Microsoft campus at 7:00. I had a really good impression about the interview; I nailed all the technical questions (eventually, anyways), and everyone seemed to like me well enough. The last guy, a sort of overall project leader, said something to the effect of, "I wouldn't be taking this much time with you if I didn't think that your interviews have made you a serious candidate," which was pretty cool to hear. I suppose we'll see in a week or so.
• After my interview on Friday night, I drove for a bit around the area and had a nice dinner over at Chili's. As a sidenote, I highly recommend their current promotion - the build-your-own burger deal. Very high quality. It was neat to drive in and around Bellevue and Redmond a little bit as well.
• Saturday morning, I woke up early (!) to go have a look around Seattle. I ended up hitting the Space Needle, which was awesome and surprisingly uncrowded. Look for some pictures from that soon - possibly a new gallery, or maybe just POTD's. After that, I headed down to one of the waterfront areas and a park-slash-running-trail, where I took some more pictures. I had to leave at about noon to go and catch my 2:15 flight.
• This is where things start to get truly interesting. We load our Seattle-to-Denver flight and take off with no problems. About an hour into the flight (possibly less), the captain tells us that we have a suspected fuel leak on the left and that we're going to have to shut down that engine, so we're diverting to Boise for an "emergency landing" -- which really wasn't an emergency at all, just a necessary measure. So we land in Boise at about 4:15, taxi to the gate, and they tell us to stay put because they're going to try and fix the problem. Of course, "A customer service representative will be speaking with you shortly." Yeah, right. An hour and a half later, they finally decide that this plane isn't going to get fixed anytime soon and that we should all get off. We all get off, they find us another plane, and we end up finally leaving Boise at around 7:30 or 7:45.
• Obviously, this means I missed my 8:00 connecting flight in Denver, since we didn't even get in until about 9:30. So, naturally, the airline is responsible for me and has to put me somewhere overnight, since Des Moines is not exactly a high-traffic destination. I ot to stay in a Doubletree for the night, but ended up not getting there until about 11:00 because of some phone calls and a looong delay waiting for the hotel shuttle. I grabbed a bite to eat and a beer, and crashed (finally) at about 1:00.
• Then it's up bright and early Sunday morning to get to my rescheduled 10:00 flight. It was relatively uneventful in getting there, and I thought that perhaps this would be a better travel day than yesterday had been. Of course, things are never that easy. We finally boarded at 10:00, about twenty minutes late, and once we were on board they decided to tell us that the plane had an air-conditioning malfunction on its way here and it needed maintenance. They guessed that it would be done by 11, and let us off again to go get food or stretch our legs. At about noon, they finally conceded that this plane wasn't going to be fixed anytime soon either, and officially cancelled our flight. They told us to go get in a customer service line. At 1:30, they told us that our flight was un-cancelled, and would now leave at 3:45. At 4:15 they let us onto a new plane, and at 4:45, we finally took off for Des Moines. We got in without incident at about 6:30, and I was home by eight, twenty-one hours later than expected.

January 23, 2005 - Right

So yeah, apparently writing on your website that you're having an easy semester is a cue for the universe to call your bluff and start hitting you with stuff to do. So this last week has been quite eventful, to say the least. Some of the highlights are a (disastrous) training session I gave today, a speech I had to give, meetings galore, two assignments, and being sore for the whole week. And it was only a four-day week. Yeesh.
Oh, and my personal favorite of all of them: before giving this training session today, I figured I'd do a quick run-through, to make sure that everything would go as it was supposed to. I very quickly found that I couldn't connect to our senior design server, so I figured that maybe we'd had a power failure over break, or someone had reset it, and it just needed to be rebooted. So I head in to the senior design lab, and ... imagine my surprise when I walk in to find our server literally gone. The monitor, the keyboard, and the mouse are all there, but the tower is just sort of missing. So at 8:30 on a Saturday night, I find myself in the senior design lab, staring at an empty space, making frantic phone calls trying to figure out what the deal is. Although, I suppose it's stuff like this that makes life fun, right?
Enough with the complaining, and back to work... As for the site stuff (no, I haven't forgotten!), you're going to have to content yourselves with a few new pictures on the Pella photos section. Oh, and QOTD and POTD ... but you knew about those.

January 17, 2005 - Another small update

A short update tonight, as I have schoolwork to do. (Anyone who knows me at all should have read that as "video games to play".) The rest of this weekend was pretty nice, with a combination fondue-and-DDR party over at Emily's (huge props for hostessing that), sleeping until three again this afternoon, and general laziness abounding. I have a couple assignments due this week, a couple things to read, and a speech to prepare and give for Wednesday, but those are all things that I can worry about later.
The reason that I'm throwing this update here is to remind everyone that I'm actually working on the site from time to time! Tonight's accomplishment was putting up no fewer than 25 pictures of New Year's in the Photos section. Long overdue, I know, but hey, late is better than never, right?
I must say, I'm enjoying this easy semester so far! I'm hoping that it doesn't get much worse, but we'll have to see.

January 15, 2005 - Been lazy

Although I'm updating this like I said I would, I really don't have anything profound - or even relevant - to say. I fixed the past pictures of the POTD, and I updated the QOTD. These are not profound changes we're talking about here, people.
I've almost gotten around to starting some of the homework that I have, which includes a minor programming assignment and a two-minute 'who am I' speech to be given Wednesday. Unfortunately for me, that all sounds like a lot of work, and I would much rather spend my time sleeping or playing video games.
This weekend has been awesome, though. Last night, I went out bowling with some of the SCUBA kids, and I ended up bowling a 191 (!), which made me pretty happy. This was followed by a late-night trip to Perkins with Kristi; a place I haven't been to in far too long. Tonight, I hosted some people over here and we had a splendid time with some old-school video games. Oh, and the minor detail of sleeping until three this afternoon also helped out with today.
Hope everyone enjoys their day off - huzzah for three-day weekends!

January 12, 2005 - The first step

Well, classes have started, and I think that this is going to be a good semester. Relatively little work, relatively easy classes, and at least one class I'm excited about - all of these should make this semester bearable, at the very least. All this despite having our first 'real' weightlifting class today, and even though I didn't do very much, I still hurt. Might be a long semester in that regard.
Also, it's kind of annoying to try and get anywhere on campus recently. When it's not icy to the point of being dangerous, it's slushy, cold, or windy. Welcome to January in Iowa, I suppose. On the plus side, we have a party scheduled for this weekend, and a snowball fight is included in the festivities.
And since I promised some maintenance around here, I figured I should at leats deliver in some small form. So to appease the masses (audience laughs), I have brought the school section, with the exception of the living arrangements, and the work section, with the exception of my resume, up to date. Hopefully those last couple stragglers will follow soon, as will the rest of the things I need to do.
In the meantime though, this is the first time in months that I've updated in less than a week. Enjoy!

January 9, 2005 - New Year's resolutions

I don't usually, but I have a couple of New Year's resolutions this year. One of them is to keep this updated much better than I have been. Comments about how I have failed doing this for the first nine days of the year are not welcome at this time.
So, here we go. Home was awesome, if a bit hectic. Getting my folks set up with Tivo, cable internet, and more turned into adventures in wiring, splitters, tech support, and the art of learning new tricks. It all turned out very well, I think, which makes it all well worth it. It was really great to have some time to chill with my folks too, to catch up and all that good stuff. Heck, my dad and I even got to play some Atari throwbacks!
Hanging out with the 'old crowd' for several nights was very cool too - be it chilling until 5AM at Scott's playing Halo or restaurant-hopping and watching Arrested Develeopment DVD's at Annie's, it's always awesome to hang out with some of the best friends that anyone could ever ask for.
And then of course, there's the actual New Year's event. This year, we rented out a large conference-type room at a hotel in Champaign, and we had our Geekspotting Fiesta™ there. Pictures will be coming soon, I promise. A grand time was had by absolutely everyone, and I got to see Emily for the first time in a year!
Shortly after New Year's, I split back to Ames, just after a decently-sized icestorm, and just before twelve inches of snow. I arrived into town a full six days before classes started, fully intending to take several "me" days. And let me say, they were glorious. In six days, I left my apartment three times: once to get the mail, once to get groceries, and once to pick up my roommate from the Union. I logged almost fifty hours on my brand-new PS2, and countless more playing Halo 2 online. Lots of sleep, watching sports, and general relaxation made me into a very happy kid for six full days.
But now it's time for school to start again. With my much better schedule, I'm pretty excited about this semester's light load. And the fact that this is my last semester definitely has not sunk in yet. We'll see about this semester, starting tomorrow.
I went ahead and threw December into the archives and I updated the Links page (more comics, and removed a few dead sites), but I've got some work left to do around here. These things include: updating the Gaming section, adding last semester's project to the Programs section, putting up New Year's pictures, and bringing the school and work sections up to date. If my New Year's resolution holds, I'll be making steady progress on those as time goes on. Don't hold your breath.

December 24, 2004 - Christmas Eve

And so, on this Christmas Eve two weeks since my last update, I am finally getting around to updating this. Man, I suck at this whole 'keeping up to date' thing. Ah well. So, the noteworthy events of the (very relaxing!) last two weeks:

• When we last left our hero, he was staring down the barrel of finals week. After doing a whole lot of nothing and a whole lot of sleeping on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, I managed to get up and haul myself over to my CS 342 final on Tuesday. It must have gone reasonably well, judging by the grade I got in the class; more on that later. And then I waited until the absolute last minute on Tuesday night before making my half-assed crib sheets for my stat exam on Wednesday. So at 9:45 AM, I sat in a classroom with forty other kids, taking a final exam for the class that I absolutely hate. Once again, it went reasonably well; I found out later that I got a 77% on it, well above the 50% I was hoping to get. I walked out of that exam done for the semester, done with stat, and basically, I was one step shy of dancing in the streets. What a great feeling.
• Wednesday afternoon, I caught Buck Burgers with Lisa and a couple of her friends. It was awesome to hang out a little bit and drink a beer or two. What a way to finish up the finals, right?
• I cut out of Buck Burgers early so I could head back to my apartment and whip up dinner. For Emily and Alison, I made an actual, real dinner. None of this Hamburger Helper stuff, ohh no. I'm talking a real turkey breast, mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing, the whole shebang. It tasted excellent, and it gave me enough leftovers to last me a couple more days. I may have to do this more often.
• Thursday afternoon, I woke up at about 12:30 and staggered over to the Design building, where I had my Video Game Design final. Funny thing about this class, though - the final was about a dozen of us getting together and just playing Starcraft. Good times, and I got to hit my prof with three nuclear missiles - definitely one of my finer moments!
• I skipped out of the Starcraft festival a bit early to catch Lisa and play one last round of racquetball. A good time, and it was certainly good to get in a last little bit of hanging out with her. Oh yeah, and I got a parking ticket. What a joke.
• Thursday night, I headed up to UNI to visit Marie and Sol and further celebrate the end of the semester. I got to meet a couple new people and hang out for awhile. Good times all around.
• Friday night was margarita night at my place - big props to Kelsey, Adam, Nick, Patricia, Peter, Emily, Adam, and Dan for showing up. A quality showing of Elf and an episode of Family Guy rounded out the evening nicely.
• Saturday was spent at Adam's, after a late lunch. I helped him get parts of his website up to snuff, and showed him some other neat tricks. Then we watched three movies: The Girl Next Door, Dodgeball, and The Deep. We ordered pizza in there somewhere too... good times!
• Sunday I left Ames and hit Scott's place at Augustana. Pete joined us after a great dinner out, and the three of us played Halo 2 until 8 in the morning, when we decided it was about time to crash. Getting up at 4 the next afternoon, we played more Halo, went out to eat, then watched some Family Guy after Pete whipped up some nice Long Islands. A very high-quality couple of days.
• Tuesday, I came home, and that's where I am now. A couple of appointments and suchasmuch, but all in all, it's just been nice and relaxing to not have anything to do. I'm a huge fan.
• And just last night, I checked my grades - I ended up with a B in statistics, which I am extremely pumped about! Oh, and the rest of the classes turned out fine, too. I certainly can't complain.

December 11, 2004 - Happy December, I guess

Once again, it seems that I forgot I have a website until someone else reminded me of it. Go figure.
So, let's talk about the past (almost) three weeks - but let's do it briefly, since I really don't want to type that much and I'm certain that you don't want to read it all.
First, the week of Thanksgiving. Being home for some time was pretty nice, although not nearly as relaxing as it should have been; having four appointments and a couple other miscellaneous obligations in two days will do that to you. On the plus side, it was awesome to do the whole Thanksgiving thing, see the family, see a couple friends, and basically not be in Ames for a little bit. Of course, I was working on my project in just about every spare moment I had, but we'll get to that in a bit. Oh yeah, and enormous props to Scott for putting me up for one night on the way back - we went and saw a lacrosse game, then played Halo until 8 in the morning. Remember kids, dawn is nature's way of telling you to go to bed.
That brings us to the week after Thanksgiving, which is also the week before Dead Week. Projects and papers and such are supposed to be due before Dead Week. Basically, this means that pretty much my entire semester is due this week. So, from the instant I got back to Ames until 10:00 PM Friday when my last project was due, I worked. I did almost nothing but work on Senior Design and my CS430 project in every spare moment of the week. Oh yeah, and I had two homework assignments due and a final exam on that Friday as well. This was quite the week. Fortunately, Friday night, Emily had a very fun poker night, and the very next night, Adam hosted a big shindig at his place. Big thanks to both for some much-needed relaxation after a hellacious week.
As a sidenote, I'm quite proud of my CS430 project, and I shall be putting it up in my Programs section soon - though I may have some extra revisions for it in the future.
That brought Dead Week upon us, and none too soon. See, my 9AM class (see my schedule) is the one that had the final the previous week, so it was cancelled. My 4PM class had the projects die the previous week, so it was cancelled too. Senior Design didn't meet, although we did have to show up for a very formal presentation on Wednesday, which was no big deal. So basically, Dead Week brought a couple of small assignments and only a few classes. This is the beginning of the end for me, although I did have to complete a 25-page report for CS430 that was due on Friday. Friday night, King had a fiesta over at his place, which I throw mad props for. A good time was had by all, until we got written up, for (of all the hilariously dumb things) a quiet hours violation. But since it doesn't affect me, who cares?
Finals week is next week, and the very name strikes fear into the hearts of most people. Not me, though - for having six classes, I have a grand total of two finals, one of which I need to study for. And studying will most likely involve just making a couple of cheat-sheets and heading into the test, because I'm very much at the point in the semester where I just stop caring. It's going to be very nice to have a week or so with nothing to do, followed by two more weeks with nothing to do.
My apologies for the long, long hiatus between updates. For what it's worth, I archived November - and remember to keep checking those POTD's!

November 23, 2004 - Uberlong update

So, believe it or not, I'm writing this on a plane right now. I forgot to update this before I left today (well, that, and I didn't exactly have a whole lot of spare time), so this seems like as good a time as any to write an update.
Yeah, it's been awhile again. What can I say, I'm busy.
Let's talk about today first, though. What a day, really, although I suppose it could definitely have been longer. I woke up at ten, had an exam at eleven, came home to shower and eat, had another exam at two, came home to do some last-minute scrambling around, packing, etc, and then left at about 4:30 to catch my flight(s) down to Austin for my interview tomorrow with National Instruments. I'm quite brain fried, and I think it's just going to be worse after the technical questions that I'm sure I'll be answering tomorrow.
But, on the plus side, it's more or less officially Thanksgiving Break! This, of course, means a whole week with no schoolwork, no classes, lots of sleep, and general happiness and relaxation. Yeah. if you're a business major. For me, it means about 24 hours of traveling, four appointments, miscellaneous obligations, and getting caught up on all the projects, homework, testing, etc. that I'm behind on. Still, it beats school, so I guess I can't complain.
What about this week? Not much, really ... projects, videogames, class, homework, etc. Boring stuff. But last Friday I made the Ultimate Purchase™ - I bought Halo 2. Needless to say, it killed my entire weekend, and portions (small portions, but portions nonetheless) of this past week also. Playing it online is amazing, when it works, and I think I'm going to have a lot of fun with it. Right after these projects are done.

And now I'm writing this on a different plane. I'm on my way back now, and I didn't have time to update this while I was in Austin. To avoid confusing some of my ... more easily confused readers, shall we say, I'm posting this all togteher as one entry.
My trip was an absolute blast, though... I went in not really knowing what to expect, but not really expecting much. To be honest, I wasn't really all that interested in the company, but I have to say that that's changed. NI did a wonderful job of selling their company, and it seemed like they truly cared about recruiting us and matching our needs to theirs. Let's do a recap of the trip:

• I got in to the motel at 1:30 AM on Friday morning. A little bit of unpacking and chilling, and it was 2:30 before I got to bed. Of course, I had to be in the lobby at 7:30 the next morning, so that meant that I had to get up at about 6.
• Friday was quite the day. Up at 6, on a bus at 7:30, arrived at NI at 8. I met my host - a most exceptional fellow by the name of Dan - and had a quick breakfast before a couple of company representatives gave the obligatory "welcome and here's why we're so great" speeches. Then came an interview, the first of three for the day, each of which was an hour and fifteen minutes long. They were mostly technical questions, too, which suited me just fine. After the first interview was lunch, then two more interviews, a quick walking tour of the campus, and a goodbye speech. They took us back to the hotel briefly (where I thankfully grabbed a quick nap) before rounding us up again for a very nice dinner at a Mexican restaurant. My host was tired, I was tired, and pretty much everyone else was tired too, so Dan dropped me back off at the hotel and I crashed at about 9:30. Most excellent.
• Saturday morning, Dan came to get me and a couple other ISU'ers at about 10:45 We went over to a sports bar and watched Iowa State win its sixth (!) game of the season, a thriller over Kansas State. Oh yeah, and the company bought us lunch and drinks again, which rules. After that, the bus tour of Austin was cancelled for some reason, so another host by the name of Jim picked us up and took us to a local hangout, where we basically sat, hung out, and drank beer until about 6:00 when it was time again for dinner. This time, we went to the Spaghetti Warehouse, where we all got awesome and hugely large Italian meals. Then, Dan and Jim started doing their jobs very well. They were supposed to show us around the city, show us some of the landmarks, the hangouts, and the places to go. So basically, we went to Sixth Street and hit about half a dozen different bars. Great times, but I didn't get back to the hotel until about 1:30.
• That brings us to today, where I'm writing this on a flight from Dallas to Des Moines. Oh yeah, and my flight from Austin left at 6:00 AM. This implies being up at 4, which, after a Saturday night like the one I'd just had, is not a happy experience. Regardless, I'll be back in Des Moines by noon, and have this first on-site interview under my belt.

November 7, 2004 - Been too long

Yeah, so it's been almost two weeks. Sorry again.
But to make up for it, I've done a good deal of stuff around here! First, I archived October; no big deal. I finally put up 40+ pictures from Halloween weekend - be absolutely sure to check those out. I made next semester's schedule, and popped it on the schedules page. And if you haven't checked out my election 2004 page from the last update, that might be worth a look too. And of course, new POTD and QOTD ... but you knew that.
So, to summarize last week: Insanely busy. Tons of schoolwork and projects, though I managed to get it all done ... if a bit on the shoddy side of things.
To summarize last weekend: Awesome. The pictures do a better job of telling the story than I ever could, but it was an absolute blast. First and foremost among the great things were getting to see some friends who I haven't seen in years (literally!) and meeting some online acquaintances for the first time.
To summarize this weekend: Also awesome. Kelsey had margaritas at her place Friday night, followed by Jackie's birthday over at King's. Then Saturday, our football team actually showed up and won our fifth game of the season! (!) It was a great game - we rushed the field at the end and everything. A great time. Sunday was mostly spent on sleep and playing tech support.
The upcoming week doesn't look too bad ... but I have a lot of work that I should do if I plan to be sane during the last weeks of the semester. So if I'm not doing anything this week ... kick me, and tell me that I should.
Oh! And happy birthdays go to James (belatedly), Jenny, Jackie, and Emily! Crazy Valentine's Day babies...

October 28, 2004 - Well, I called it

Yep, another week. Wahoo.
Honestly, not much earth-shaking has happened in the past week. It's been a lot of schoolwork, a lot of projects, and entirely too little free time. What else is new, though, right?
This past week, and the one upcoming, are really, really busy. I have three ongoing projects (Senior Design, 430, and 409), and all three of them have major checkpoints due next week; one each Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. I have at least two other homework assignments due next week as well, plus all the normal classes, meetings, et cetera. Man, I get whiny on this thing.
So, with so much work surrounding me, what am I doing this weekend? I'm heading down to UIUC to see a whole bunch of really cool people and partake in the Halloween festivities. So I lose two and a half days - at this point, I'm not sure I care. I need a break.
So until next week, hope all is well. I should have some pictures to put up upon my return.

October 21, 2004 - Oh boy

It's the old refrain: "We're back to a week between updates!" Maybe I should stop even thinking that I'll ever update again in less than a week. Oh well. This one comes at 3:00 AM, and I have a class in six hours. This makes me not happy.
So, let's talk about the last week, shall we? In absolutely no particular order:

• On Tuesday morning I had an interview with Caterpillar for either an IT or a software-engineering-based position. I thought it went pretty well; the interviewer and I got along well, and I don't think I flubbed any of the questions. We'll see, I guess.
• I got an email yesterday morning from National Instruments inviting me to an on-site interview on Friday, November 19th; that's right before Thanksgiving. They'll fly me down to Austin, Texas on Thursday and fly me back on Saturday. I think I'm going to go, because, let's face it, a free trip pretty much rules. Oh yeah, and I got a phone call today from IBM, wanting to set up a phone interview for a possible summer-fall co-op position. I guess it's kind of cool to be wanted, but it would be nice if Microsoft would get back to me!
• Last Friday, I met with Ronald, a student in the HCI program here. He's working with Augmented Reality, which is pretty cool. He showed me some videos and demonstrations of what he's working on, and I must say it's intriguing. I guess I have to decide pretty quick if that's what I want to be doing.
• This is the busy season for HKN also. Last week, we had an informal meeting for the new recruits, and last Sunday we had a formal meeting - shirt and tie and everything. Oh yeah, and in two weeks, there's an initiation ceremony that I'm supposed to go to, though I might be out of town.
• SCUBA Club had a meeting this week, too - it seems that for once, we're actually going to get shirts made! We have some planning to be starting for our Spring Break trip - and we have a Try SCUBA coming up on Monday. More fun.
• I registered for next semester this afternoon. I got into all the classes I wanted; a schedule will be up soon. More details about this when that comes about.
• This week has been absolutely heinous with homework. I've had one or two assignments from virtually every class, and ongoing projects from those that didn't give me homework. My to-do list is pretty intimidating right now.
• Senior design is quite a bit of work, especially now that we've gotten out of our documentation phase and started coding. I can't remember if I've linked it before, but check out our team's website.
• My 409 class is a lot of work, too - coding and documentation and trying to figure out a whole bunch of things that are completely new to me - graphics and sound terminology - and trying to remember things I've long forgotten - vectors, rotations, and matrices. But hey, at least this one is fun.
• And we haven't seen the sun in about three days. I've been in Iowa long enough to know what that means: We won't see it again until April. Hello, winter. How many days until the Christmas decorations come out?

October 12, 2004 - Definitely getting worse

Yeah, yeah. I keep making my intervals between updates longer. My audience is crushed, I am certain. Right.
So, about the last week and change:

• I had two tests last week. The first was in my 430 class (schedule, for reference) - for variety, we had our test in the lab. Log onto the computer, and in 50 minutes, write this program, run it, test it, and submit it. Yeah, mine didn't even compile. This is not good. Fortunately, I talked to about a dozen other people and none of theirs compiled, either. The second test was in 342 - this one, while not 'good' per se, was much better. Plus, for once I didn't have to go to 491, so that's a big plus.
• Speaking of tests, I had one today, in 322. Bad. Evil. I hate that class. Everything about it. And then the test today just made things worse. I will be thrilled if I got a 50%, and that'll only happen with some wicked partial credit. Once again, we shall see.
• Returning to last week, some of the less-thrilling items: I had two appointments with advisors to determine my schedule next semester. It's looking pretty sweet, with a grand total of 15 credits, at least 7 of which are Speech, Philosophy, and one more do-nothing course. More on that in a bit. Also, I had an interview with National Instruments, a company that I'm not sure I have any real interest in, especially since it's looking more and more like I'm going to stay for HCI here. The interview went well, up until I argued with the interviewer for several minutes about a technical question only to realize, oops, he's right. Oh well.
• Our team had another flag football game on Sunday, and - how cool is this - we won! My four-year dream of getting an Intramural Champion t-shirt has finally come true. Oh yeah, and (I guess this is the whole point of intramurals, or something?) I had an absolute blast in the several games we played. Definitely a positive experience.
• On Friday night, we had a DDR night at Emily's - madd props to her for hostessing! A good time was had by all, except Eric, who patently refuses to actually try and enjoy the damn thing. It was great to see Susan and Megan again too. Afterwards, I went over to King's place for a little while, hung out, had some pizza, and went to bed about 4:00.
• Saturday morning (afternoon, if you're going to be picky) came at about 1:00 with a phone call from King - let's go frisbee golfing. Dude, I can't, I have a million things to do and I'm tailgating later, where should I meet you? Immediately after that, I went tailgating with Kelsey, Adam, and company, and for a brief time, with HKN. Of course, that was a great time, despite our team getting brutally slaughtered to the tune of 34-3. But, as usual, what else is new?

October 3, 2004 - Weekly. Again.

So, another Sunday night, another website update, and a lot more time that feels like I should have been doing something more productive. There might not be a correlation between all of these things.
So, what to say about last week? Not much, really. More of the same boring school-type junk that no one wants to read about. And it got cold. Real cold. We had a couple of frost warnings and one night in the upper 20's. This does not make me happy.
A couple cool things, though: For one, I went to a seminar about applying for National Science Foundation fellowships for grad school - more because I had gotten the invitation a couple weeks ago when I was going through my HolyCrapWhatDoIDoNow phase than because I actually had any interest. But they fed me, so that was cool. Secondly, at that seminar, I met Melinda, who is a current HCI student, and she had some very interesting things to say about the program and her experiences in it. Cooler even than that, she invited me to come to a 'club meeting' of sorts for a semi-official HCI grad student club that they are trying to form. They had a guest speaker, and I got to wander briefly through some of their facilities, so that was pretty cool.
Skipping over the rest of the week's boringness, that brings us to this weekend, when half a dozen of us went out to Ledges State Park (about twenty minutes away - apparently it's a big thing here, but I never knew it existed) on Saturday afternoon to chill, hike a little, grill out, and make s'mores. Quite the fun time. This was followed by a showing of Napoleon Dynamite, a very unique independent film which I greatly liked, but felt that I missed something. It's not for everyone.
Big surprise, Sunday was pretty much a wasted day. Watched a whole lot of football, did some work, played a round of Frisbee Golf, and then did a whole lot of nothing. Whee.
As a sidenote, maintaining a POTD is actually quite challenging, and I am running out of pictures. I think I'm just going to have to start taking more random ones.
And as with every month, we have archived September. Until next week...

September 26, 2004 - Plodding along

So last week was absolutely insane, as predicted. Besides all the classes and homework, it turns out that I had a quiz on Thursday and a test on Friday. I ended up missing Wednesday's career fair; small loss, since the vast majority of companies that I would have wanted to talk to were there at Tuesday's career fair, which I did make it to. That's also the same career fair where I spent about four hours, handing out about fifteen resumes and talking with a whole ton of companies. I was pretty stoked to talk to Microsoft, as they at least made it interesting (and gave me a fun toy, too!), and IBM seemed interested in me but didn't have any open interview spots left.
I did, however, end up with an interview on Thursday morning with Lockheed Martin, which was kind of cool. It seemed more like a preliminary interest screening than an 'interview', per se. They gave me a little card as I was finished that says basically, "Thanks for interviewing with us! You're probably wondering, 'Now what?' Well, basically nothing. We put your resume on file and it's available to hiring managers for one year. If something comes up, we'll let you know." ... How very vague. But at the very least, it was a little interviewing practice.
And the big news of the week: I had a meeting with the head of the Human-Computer Interaction graduate program here. One of the faculty members joined us also, and over lunch I was treated to a description of what they are working on. I must say that it sounds like just about the coolest thing I've ever heard, and I'm going to try and arrange a time to check it out in person. Basically, my understanding of it is that they have goggles that you wear that superimpose images onto your vision. These images can be anything - projecting an electronic document onto a real, physical piece of paper, displaying a 3-D holographic image of something, ... really, I'm getting the impression that if you can think of it, they can make you see it. It sounds amazing, and I'm quite excited to see where this potential path leads. Once again, we shall see.
I'm trying to think of what other specific things happened last week, but it was such a blur of craziness and sleep deprivation that I don't really remember it, to be honest. :) Now that it's over, I'm very much looking forward to this week, which looks to be a little less insane and a little more manageable.
Reminder: Keep checking out the POTD, as it changes every day!

September 20, 2004 - ... And back to a week. Crap.

Yeah, yeah, I know. So I've forgotten about this again. I have a way of doing that when I'm busy, tired, and confused. None of which I am at the moment, mind you, but this past week was most interesting. I'm hoping that I can pound this update out in the twenty minutes that I have before class. Here we go:

• Basically, last week was pretty much nuts. I had homework assignments in four of my six classes, pending and long-term things to do in the other two, meetings and appointments galore, a website redesign (which you really should check out, as I am rather proud of it ... some minor tweaks still needed), and on and on. It seemed like I was awfully busy for most of the week there.
• Sleep tends to take a back seat to other things during weeks like this, and so my schedule was massively screwed up towards the end of the week. Here's the rundown: I didn't sleep much Wednesday night. Came home from a meeting Thursday and slept from 6-9 PM. Slept that night from 5-8 AM. Came home from class Friday and slept 11 AM till 2:30 PM. I think that the end of last week actually happened, but I don't really remember that much of it. Go figure.
• Fortunately, the weekend hit, and while I still had some pending things, it was pretty laid-back. I went with Kelsey and crowd to DQ for a birthday treat Friday night, but opted not to hit the bars, as I really needed to get my schedule back on track. That, and the part where on Saturday morning, I got up at 8:00 to start tailgating. Funny (long-ish) story about that, feel free to skip it:
  • Friday night I was informed that I'm responsible for bringing the beer to the tailgate the next morning. Okay, sure. So I get up at eight, go to Hy-Vee, and buy a case of Bud Light. (Note that the choice was the group's decision, not mine!) As I'm putting it in my car, the handle on the case breaks. Well, crap, now I can't carry it to the tailgate. Okay, so I need another way to get it there. So I go back home, unload the case, and put all 24 cans into my backpack. It's a little heavy, but no problem. So I start walking towards the tailgating lots (a long ways, by the by - likely a mile and change). I get maybe a quarter mile out and ... hmm, that feels kinda funny. Golly, that ... that almost feels wet on the back of my leg there. I look down and, crap, my backpack is dripping. The left side of my shorts is soaked, my sandlas are soaked, the whole deal. So I stop and start digging through the backpack... Yeah, one of the cans had broken. Crap. I fix it and move on. Well, inbetween there and the tailgating lots, I lost two more! So I'm walking through the courtyards by all the residence halls, across main roads, through parking lots filled with tailgaters, looking like an absolute imbecile with my dripping backpack, soaked shorts, and smelling like an alcoholic. Oy. Even better, after getting home from the game, I ran my clothes, sandals, and backpack through the wash, and apparently I left a black gel pen in my bag. Of course, it came to rest wrapped tightly inside the white t-shirt I wore to the game, so one whole side of the formerly clean, white t-shirt is now very permanently black and cruddy. But hey, at least I don't smell like beer anymore. :)
  So after the lovely tailgating experience, we hit the game, which was by far the best game I've been to here. Huge momentum swings both ways - at one point, we were down 15. We came back in the third quarter, and in the early fourth when we hit a very nice third-down touchdown and then the two-point conversion to tie it up, the place went *nuts*. If it would have happened more toward the end, I think that we may have rushed the field. Granted, Northern Illinois is not exactly a football powerhouse, but it was still an awesome game. The recap, in case you want a slightly more thorough and objective take on it. Oh yeah, and I came away with a scratchy voice and a sunburn, so you know it was a good game.
• A good portion of Saturday was also spent in tech support. Computer people may not want to continue reading, as it may cause actual physical pain to you. Robert's computer has been running, for three years, with Windows ME (bad enough in itself), using Internet Explorer, without a firewall, without antivirus, without spyware detection, on a static IP, on a campus connection. For the non-computer people, this is roughly as safe as riding a rusty bicycle, naked, the wrong way into traffic on the autobahn, except instead of wheels you have sawblades, and instead of a seat you have a bayonet, and instead of handlebars you have red-hot stove burners. Needless to say, his computer basically has herpes, and it finally started acting up on Saturday. So after a lot of work and a lot of frustration, I think we've restored it to a usable state, though there are some things that I can't seem to get rid of.
• And then Sunday, I slept in, went to a meeting-slash-training-session for Senior Design, and then played another Flag Football game. Man, that is a fun sport. Again, we whooped up on the opposition, something to the tune of 30-6 or so. Next week's game actually matters, though, so we'll see how it goes then.

September 12, 2004 - Ha! Less than a week!

Another Sunday night, and the prospect of another week starting. I'm not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing, though - while last week was insanely busy, it was also strangely satisfying to be feeling so productive some of the time. Yeah, I know, strange - especially for one so lazy as I. And maybe it just seems that way because right about Friday, things just sort of stopped, and I was left wondering what to do for most of this weekend.
And another strange thing about this weekend: I felt highly antisocial for most of it. I don't really know why, or what happened; I'm only reminded of my (rather extended) period of self-discovery I had about two years ago. I wonder if this whole "What do I do with my life" episode is affecting me in the same way. I hope not; I'm certainly going to be making an effort to not be so damn irritable and antisocial for some time. Although, I have a very convenient excuse: The medicine(s) I got on Friday (Prednisone and Zyrtec, for a very severe allergic reaction to something; current theories include allegries to pollen, ragweed, and life) came with warning labels that they may affect one's mood. So hey, what can I say, I was doped up this weekend.
I spent a good portion of Saturday night watching old Family Guy episodes, which suited me just fine. What a great show; I was just about rolling at several points. Highly recommended if you like the Simpsons, you like random humor, and you're impossible to offend. Of course, in that case, you probably know about it already.
The big news for Saturday was the ISU-Iowa football game, which turned out to be much closer than expected. It was actually pretty decent to watch, and we only lost by one touchdown to the twenty-six-point favorites. Perhaps this emphasis on defense might actually pay off for us; we shall see this next weekend when Northern Illinois comes to town. It should be an interesting game, at least from my perspective - Adam and Kelsey have informed me that I am going out with them to the bars on Friday night, then getting up at 8AM on Saturday to start tailgating again. It might be a long Sunday.
Back to news of today, Lisa needed another guy for her co-rec Flag Football intramural team, and it was awesome to finally get outside and get some exercise, something I have been severely lacking for a week and change now. Incidentally, we pretty much whooped up on the other team, winning in a severe fashion.
And lastly, fantasy football has pretty much embedded itself into my brain. Something so silly is awfully addicting; I was much happier than I should have been tonight when Quentin Griffin, my recent acquisition, rushed for 150+ yards and three touchdowns. Praise be for football season!

September 8, 2004 - Right, I have a website

I think I may actually have forgotten about this at some point during this last week. Things turned amazingly busy amazingly quickly there. A brief recap:

• Last Thursday I had two meetings in addition to all the normal classes. Well, almost all the normal classes; let's not kid ourselves about that 8AM recitation. One was for Senior Design, and I got a couple of responsibilities right off the bat revamping documents and looking over code. Good times.
• Friday was a good day. Take another look at that schedule, and then guess whether or not I got up for that 9AM class. After rolling out of bed at about 1, going to the one class, and whipping up some dinner, the SCUBA Clubbers and I had a DDR festival over at Emily's. Very good times, even if Jared did bust one of my pads in a fit of overzealousness. A lot of duct tape and a six-pound SCUBA weight later (no, I'm not kidding about that), it worked fine again.
• Saturday was a hell of a day. Marie and Matt came down for UNI in the morning, and met up with Scott and Renee, high school friends of theirs and fellow computer-engineering classmates of mine. Small world. The five of us did a wee bit of tailgating, went to the game, watched ISU actually get a win, got very sunburned and probably heat-strained, came back, ordered pizza, played board games, and had a make-your-own-sundae party. Then we were joined by about eight other people for a whole lot of DDR. Saturday was a good day.
• Sunday, I did a lot of work. And watched some football, too. That's about all I can remember.
• Monday I worked pretty much the whole day, but I did it in front of ESPN, watching baseball, football, the World Cup of Hockey, and more. It's amazing how much homework you can actually get done if you put half your mind to it.

September 1, 2004 - ...

So it's that time of the year again. Wait, no. It's that ... year ... again? No, that's not it either. Maybe we should just go with "It's that time."

What the hell am I talking about, you ask?

Good question. It started this morning when I had a meeting with my academic advisor. Well, no. It started yesterday in Senior Design when the person in charge of grad school for the College of Engineering came and spoke to us for an hour. This got me thinking, and I made an appointment for this morning. So I go and see my advisor today with some general, high-level questions about grad school - you know, timelines, locations, finances, benefits, and the like. Well, after close to an hour, I walk away a little more knowledgeable about grad school, and significantly more confused about my life.

See, here's the thing. I hate deciding things. I hate boxing myself in, and limiting my options. I like to be flexible in these things. To quote the old cliché, I'm afraid of commitment. (Example: I picked a major at the last possible minute, and only because the university made me.) And on top of that, I don't really have the attention span or the drive to be focused on any one thing for too long. I loved high school because I got to learn about a little bit of everything: all the sciences, programming, Spanish, even things like history and economics. And then at some point they stop letting you go to high school. I finally figured out that's the reason I came to college - not necessarily because I wanted to learn something, or because I wanted to advance my job prospects... No, no, simply because they stopped letting me go to high school. Next logical choice: college.

I'm getting way off track. The point of all of this is that now, pretty soon, they're going to stop letting me go to college too. Obvious question: What then? Well, you go to job fairs, get dressed up, pretend to be someone you're not, get an eight-to-five job, and work for fifty years as a corporate tool. Now, I've had a couple of internships - not real work, I realize this, but close enough - and I have found that I much prefer college, for a myriad of reasons that aren't important to this. And I have increasingly come to reject the idea that one's accomplishments in life - and especially how happy one is - are measured by the size of your salary, house, and car. It becomes a slippery slope: okay, you have a big salary, so what? Well, I can have a big house. Okay, so what? Well, I can afford to have my yard taken care of and have my big house cleaned. Okay, so what?

I think you see where I am going with this. I just don't see the point of it all. I suppose if you continue down that slope, you come to the questions of 'What's the point of my life' and 'Why am I here' and 'What am I doing with my life' - questions that come dangerously close to religion, which is something I most certainly am not trying to get at with this.

I'm off track again. This last question - you know, the one about what I'm doing with my life - is the one that bit me today. I asked a couple questions about grad school and find out that it's all about research. Well, what the hell kind of research can you do in the (very general) fields that I am interested in? "Admittedly, not much..." Great. A little further into the conversation, my advisor stops me and goes, "Allright, what do you want to do?" ... ... ... ... And I don't have an answer for that. I don't have a passion, a dream, a lifelong goal of any kind; hell, I don't even have short-term goals. I feel like I am just cruising along, waiting for something to happen - and yet part of me thinks that I should be out there trying to make this happen, trying to find my spark. But being the way I am, I would much rather put these things off for as long as I can, future be damned.

Long story short, (boy, I bet you wish you'd read this paragraph first!) I have no idea where I'm going. I don't have a passion, I don't have a specific enough field that I want to pursue to even talk about grad school, and almost more than anything, I don't want to fall into the mold of the corporate eight-to-five worker. All of this was tripped by this grad school process.

I guess this next nine months is what it all comes down to. This is where you decide what you're going to be, what direction you're going to go. Mess this one up, and you could be really, really screwed. Sure, there have been 'defining points' before this - pick a school, pick classes, pick a major - but never anything that seems so very irreversible as this. I don't know what to do, I don't know how to figure it out, and I don't really like either of my options. I feel lost and cornered, and I don't like it.

That's pretty much the closing of this, so feel free to stop reading and take the above for what it's worth. The rest here is going to be some rambling thoughts I'm having at the moment.

I thought of an option today, though. Going through the too-small list of things that I know, I found: I like Ames a lot, I like 'computers' in a general sense, and I like the entire atmosphere and institution of the university. I guess these things could be combined if I was to be a professor here at ISU. And then I take a look at that option and realize that it's a pipe dream. I have no ambition to be a professor, God help my students if I become one, what the hell am I going to do for research, how am I going to get my credentials, and a million other points that just make such a thing impossible. And the funny thing is, I'm not even second-guessing a goal of mine. I'm second-guessing a random, fleeting thought that I stumbled on while trying to avoid the inevitable eight-to-five, corporate tool fate that 99% of people fall into.

So now the question becomes, why am I putting this up here? I don't know the answer to that. I tend to be a pretty private person, and I usually try to keep things like this to myself. I'm not expecting anyone to have any answers for me, and I'm not asking for help or anything. This whole thing probably sounds really depressed and defeatist - and the funny thing is, that's not even close to how I'm feeling in general. I guess I just felt like throwing this out there. Thanks for reading.

August 29, 2004 - Definitely not keeping up-to-date

So I haven't been updating this. Yeah, yeah, I know. Sorry, et cetera. And so I haven't finished up my RAGBRAI section. And so I haven't made it so you can see the past Pictures of the Day. But what I have done is made the navigation bar and the footer a bit smaller. And I updated my resume. And you should all be very happy with that.
Let's talk about school a little bit, shall we? Firstly, my schedule stinks, as I have four hours a week where I am supposed to be in two places at once. Naturally, this is very difficult to do and I often find myself in only one place, when I should obviously be in two. That said, though, the professors have been very agreeable and willing to accommodate my circumstances, so thanks to them. As for how this week went, I think my classes are going to be enjoyable ... with the caveat that they're also going to be a lot of work. At least three classes don't have finals, but instead have massive semester-long projects that will be far more work than a final would be. Senior Design is more or less a two-semester-long, start-to-finish project that I get to work on. We got to put in a request for which projects we want, and depending on what I am assigned, this course will be either very fun and exciting or an excruciatingly painful experience. We'll find out in two days. Many of the other courses involve programming projects, which again, are fun and enjoyable, which means that I will do them and enjoy it, but they're also a lot of work, and I'm guessing that I'm going to find myself with little to no time by the end of this semester.
But for last week and this one, I have contented myself with playing massive amounts of video games, doing a little racquetball, hitting up Buck Burgers at a bar in Campustown (a first for me!), and other general slacking off. I should have an update to the gaming section in the works soon, detailing what I've been working on.
Hope everyone enjoys the week. I suppose I'll actually start getting assignments and the like pretty soon - and I am most unhappy about this.

August 24, 2004 - And it begins. Again.

Yep, school is back in force. Classes so far have been fine, I suppose - though three of my five profs said "This class will be the most important class of your college career" in their opening lecture. For those keeping score at home, that means a lot of work, and probably little fun. But I've managed to work around the conflicts thus far, and I got to sleep in until ten this morning, so it can't be all bad, right?
Not much around here to report. Ran some errands, cooked some food, did some work, etc etc. I spent some time mucking with the site yesterday, since I know I'm not going to be able to when the classes kick in, and I made everything (almost everything, anyway - some of the scripts need a bit of work) standards-compliant. If you're curious what that means, click the little buttons at the very bottom to find out. Basically, it's better, and more uniform across browsers. Some things might look a tad different, but it shouldn't be too bad.
You really should keep checking out the Picture of the Day section, since it actually changes every day. And eventually there will be a way to get to all the old days' pictures, too. I'm working on it.
Another 9AM day tomorrow. Bring it on.

August 16, 2004 - Wow

Allright, I haven't been a good boy and updated this is awhile. But I have some very good reasons ... at least I think they're good reasons. So, the highlights of the last week go like this:

• Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday were crazy days at work. I gave eight separate training sessions in those three days, trying to teach 100+ people to use the new system that I put together this summer. Some people were more enthusiastic than others, of course, but hey, now I don't have to deal with them anymore. I kinda feel bad for Nate and Travis, who I hung out to dry - "If you have any questions, call Nate or Travis" was at the end of all of my training sessions.
• Thursday we had our Intern Appreciation Banquet at Pella. They treated us all, and all of our managers and mentors, to a very nice lunch, a couple good speeches, and they gave us all a nice picture frame with a group photo of all the interns and co-ops. And then was the big event: the presentation of the $5000 grant awards. Pella gave out five this year, and Solomon, my RAGBRAI-training partner and fellow IT buddy, got one of them!
• Our remaining group of six (myself, Sol, his wife Jessie, Janet, Lisa, and Mike) had made previous arrangements that if one of us won an award, that person would buy drinks for everyone that night. So we raced out of work Thursday, went golfing at Bos, then headed over to Dr. Salami's for dinner and drinks. Huge props to Sol for buying the drinks - and I must say, I very much enjoyed my first couple Jagerbombs.
• Friday was awesome, too - Travis and the team took me to lunch out at Bos, and then we left work at 3:00 to go golfing! Madd props to Travis for covering the round of golf and the beverages - even if he and his brother destroyed Nate and me in our improvised best-shot competition. I'm glad we made it out to golf at least once, though.
• Friday night brought a whole ton of cleaning and packing - note to self: Next time, start packing sooner. I crashed at about 2:00, and was up again at 7:30. Saturday was a long day.
• I rented a minivan from Enterprise to move myself, which worked out wonderfully. I left Pella at about 11:30, got into Ames, unloaded all my junk, ran over to Emily's house, got my junk from there, unloaded that, and then headed back to Pella to grab my car, the last of the stuff, and do a little bit of cleaning too. Finally got completely out of Pella at about 5:30, tagged Ames real quick to drop my stuff off, and then headed up to UNI to hit Marie's birthday party. Stayed there a couple hours, then headed back to my apartment, which had nothing but boxes everywhere. I slept on the couch in my sleeping bag because my bed was covered in boxes. It was mighty interesting; all told, I drove well over eight hours on Saturday. Like I said, a long day.
• And then yesterday was a whole lot of unpacking. I got up at nine, and twelve hours later, I pretty much had my apartment in working order. With any luck, pictures will be forthcoming.

August 7, 2004 - More pictures

Since not only did I not put up any more pictures last night, I also didn't even have the common courtesy to put up a message about it, I decided to put up two days' worth for you. So do check out Day Four and Day Five of RAGBRAI 2004.
Marie moved out today, and Ryan left last night. Those are the first true signs that this summer is coming to an end. It's been awesome though - I don't think that there was a dull moment the entire time. I basically did nothing but have fun every moment I wasn't at work - and much of the time that I was. I met some awesome people and did some amazing things... it's kind of upsetting to see it come to an end. But, this is what happens with everything I suppose.
Oh, and Solomon and I golfed today. I was horribly inconsistent; one birdie, one par, two doubles, a triple, and a nine. Yes, that's nine strokes on the same hole. Oh yeah, and two twenty-plus-foot putts. And two missed three-footers. I felt pretty good about the round, and it was a perfect golfing day; I just wish I could be more consistent. Oh well.

August 5, 2004 - Major picture action

Allright, a slight 'life update' here:
Yesterday, I went golfing with Marie, Jeff, and Mike. It was ... rather soggy, shall we say. It had rained Armageddon-style on Tuesday night, and then it had rained most of the day yesterday too - it was even raining when we got to the course! And of course, we played Bos Landen, so it was a losing battle from the start. This was one of those days where you just didn't keep score; I got my one par for the day and I was happy. Funny story about that par, though: 115-yard par 3, way downhill. I hit my 9-iron, and it lands about 15 feet from the pin ... and sticks. Not 'sticks' as in, hits the green and moves two inches. No, 'sticks' as in, hits the green and buries itself halfway into the green. Never have I had such a ball mark.
This week is crazy at work - it's hella crunch time for me. Every aspect of my project is coming to a head, and I'm having some trouble keeping up. To make things even better, the entire team (who I need to talk to regularly for miscellaneous wisdom) has all-day training Tuesday through Friday of next week, and I have to give no fewer than eight training sessions next week to people I don't know on how to use this new tool that I'm providing. Problems: I don't know what I'm going to cover, who's going to be there, or how long it's going to take - and we don't have any of the data we're going to need to do this. And training starts promptly at 8:30 AM on Tuesday.
Oh well. We all know the real reason you're here, and that's for pictures of Day Three of RAGBRAI 2004!
And while you're at it, check out the pictures of the food drive and the RAGBRAI water bottles on my Pella Interns pictures site.
And for reference, I archived July.

August 3, 2004 - A bit more

I did a little bit more tonight. Check out day two of RAGBRAI 2004!
And back in the real world, going back to work sucks. I'm for sure not a fan. Fortunately, only eight more days of it until I'm done for the summer. It's just too repetetive, and I don't have the attention span to work from 8 to 5. But, like everything else, I'll slog my way through it.
I had to give a presentation yesterday morning to all the uppity-ups in IT, and I think it went pretty well. Our CIO wasn't there - something to do with a surgery for his son, so I think that lessened the pressure a little bit. Then Ryan, Solomon, and I got taken to a 'thanks and goodbye' lunch, so that was pretty awesome. Oh, and this Friday I give my Friday Forum presentation - five minutes to all the other interns explaining who I am, what I do, and why I'm here. It should be cake, so I'm not worried.
Hope everyone enjoys the week; I'm going to try and keep putting up more RAGBRAI pictures as the week goes on.

July 23, 2004 - It's here

Well, ladies and germs, it's time. RAGBRAI is upon us. And we all know what that means. In short, I'll be gone until August the second or so. I'll be taking lots of pictures, and I'll be sure to throw an update out there when I return. Until then, go check out the Des Moines Register's coverage of it.
Got three minutes and speakers? Go watch this. Worth your time, I promise.

July 19, 2004 - Serious slacking

So it's been awhile. I've been busy, or asleep, or lazy. Funny how that works.
First order of business: I promised some RAGBRAI links, so check that site, or hit these: Route overview, Daily maps, and Daily mileages.
Next, recapping things since last weekend. Well, this past week was pretty much crazy-busy, both at work and not. I don't remember the exact specifics (I'm tired and have a headache at the moment), but it involved a lot of good times - among others, seeing a NASCAR show car at work. Then came this last weekend, which was just crazy. On Saturday morning, the interns did a food drive of sorts, which ended up with us collecting a lot of food. Then we went out to breakfast, hung out at the clubhouse for awhile, did a little computer troubleshooting, took a nap, and headed golfing. Didn't do so well - after starting with a par and three bogeys, I finished with two doubles and three triples. But after golfing, we went to Marie's and had Thanksgiving dinner! It was awesome, complete with turkey, pie, and much more. Sunday brought 46 miles of bike riding, a brief visit to the pool, leftovers, and an unfortunate accident: At the end of the trail, Solomon's wife Jessica flipped over the handlebars and injured her left wrist. They went and had it X-rayed, and the doctor doesn't think it's broken, but it's wrapped and swollen, and with just six days until RAGBRAI, the timing couldn't have been worse. We'll have to see how she comes out in her next X-ray on Friday.
This week involves more fun at work - another critical week for my project, and I don't know how it's going to go. We have an IT department picnic scheduled for tomorrow, a birthday party tomorrow night, a bike ride Wednesday, a farmer's market and town festival-thingy Thursday, and on Friday I leave for Des Moines to start my first RAGBRAI adventure. In short, I'll throw one last update out before I leave; until then, enjoy the fading days of summer.

July 11, 2004 - Washed away

It has done nothing but rain here today. Armageddon-style rain for a long time, too. Without having any basis, I'm guessing we got at least a couple of inches. It had to be going all-out for at least half an hour, plus a couple solid hours of normal, non-apocalyptic rain.
But anyways. The trip to Minneapolis was pretty neat. In a nutshell, we went up there, saw the Twins beat the Tigers 7-1 (which felt so strange - it's just not baseball if it's inside), went back to the hotel, got up at 6:00 the next morning, toured the Pella sales branch, toured a couple multi-million-dollar homes that happen to have Pella windows, toured a plant in Story City, and came back. Start to finish, about 30 hours - five of which were spent sleeping, and at least twelve of which were spent on a bus. So while it was a cool trip to take, it was very tiring, and everyone was kind of crabby at the end after being on a bus for so long. But hey, it's still better than work.
This weekend has been exceptional. I have basically done a whole lot of nothing. Yesterday I got up at eleven and got my hair cut, then came back and watched The Ninth Gate, Nick of Time, a soccer game, The Negotiator, and G.I. Jane before crashing at 9:00 with a headache. What an eventful day. And then today, I woke up at ten and have done little but some coding as I sit here on the couch. Another relaxing, if incredibly unproductive, day. The biggest thign I have done all day is adding next semester's schedule to the school section.
This next week at work is going to be serious crunch time - here's hoping I can get everything I need to taken care of real quickly. Since I have to wait on a database administrator, though, I'm thinking that might not be so likely. Who knows.
Two weeks until RAGBRAI!
Oh yeah, and be sure to check out the new intern pictures from the corporate challenge and this week's trip to Minneapolis.

July 6, 2004 - Wow, tired.

Man, I'm so tired. Solomon and I rode the whole Volksweg Trail tonight, in just under two hours. That's 28 miles and change round-trip, stopping only once at the end for about fifteen minutes. So yeah, I can't move.
Let's see, this weekend was a good time. It was awesome to be home for some time and to see the family and the friends - though it was kind of weird, too. I haven't been home since Christmas, so hanging out with the friends again was kind of like ... so ... what now? But, on the other hand, it was also just like 'old times' too - we did some of the same stuff, made the same jokes, and it was like nothing had changed. So, slightly confusing, but certainly a good thing on the whole. Saw a couple movies, played a round of golf, chilled some, fixed a computer, and now I'm back in Pella for a two-and-a-half day work week. hursday at noon, all the interns are going up to Minneapolis to see a Twins game, stay the night, and then tour a sales branch and a factory the next day. That should be fun too, especially considering I'm rooming with Solomon, Ryan, and Mike. Throw me in and you have about the four most random, different people you can find.
Since I'm tired, this is short. Happy Tuesday.

July 1, 2004 - I'll archive when I get back

So things are more of the same. Pella pretty much rules. Prime examples: Monday, we went out to eat, followed shortly by Ultimate Frisbee, and a movie. Fortunately, Marie, Janet, Lisa, and I had some artsy-crafty things to be working on while we watched Win a Date With Tad Hamilton, so I didn't actually have to watch it.
Tuesday night, Solomon and I went for a twenty-mile ride north of town; we just took main street north until we got tired. It was pretty cool; We went down a hill that brought us to 34 miles an hour. Of course, coming back up it sucked, but you'll have that. It was also an interesting and far more RAGBRAI-like experience, riding on the county roads, and not having a sidewalk, and coming within two feet of a car going 60+ miles an hour. Good times. Oh, and then I made an interesting cajun chicken dish for the girls for dinner - and peach smoothies on Dan's new blender. I'm sure everyone reading this is absolutely hungry for these meaningless little details.
Wednesday night was pretty sweet; Lisa got a voucher for two eighteen-hole rounds and a cart from Bos Landen, which we instead cashed in for four nine-hole rounds. Bos is a hella tough course, for those keeping score at home. I shot a 55, and lost at least seven balls. The course has no leeway at all; you hit a second shot ten yards to one side, and it's gone. We're talking long gone. On one hole, i got an eleven. Yes, eleven. Gorgeous drive, second shot ten yards right and lost. Penalty out. Fourth stroke duffed. Fifth into the bunker. Six, seven, and eight to get out of the bunker, and nine, ten, and eleven to putt. And then on the next hole, I got a straight-up birdie on a 160-yarder. Ah, golf.
And tonight, Marie, Solomon, Sarah, Neil, and myself participated in the City of Pella's Corporate Challenge, which entailed such activities as a three-legged race, water balloon toss, carry-a-ball-between-four-of-you-down-the-road, and much more. I have pictures to be put up at some later date.
Speaking of pictures, you should all definitely check out the intern pictures mini-site I made. Check out the pictures from the ropes course, the intern olympics, the Iowa Cubs game, and then the scavenger hunts we went on last week. They were definitely fun, and we came out with some good pictures from them too. Don't miss it.
I'll be gone for some time now; tomorrow, I'm leaving work at noon to go home for the long weekend. I'll be coming back sometime Monday night. Should be cool to see the friends, family, etc. Until then, hope everyone enjoys their holiday weekend!

June 26, 2004 - Activities

I'm leaving that placeholder up - with the exception of the last hour, we've had probably 5% uptime on our internet this week. Yes, five percent. Way to provide crappy service.
But, that aside. Life out here is more of the same; go to work, come home, do a lot of fun things, go to bed, do it again. It's really a quite enjoyble thing; this summer is pretty much my ideal life, I think. Some of the highlights of this week include a couple Ultimate Frisbee games, two nights of grilling out, a photo scavenger hunt (pictures pending), volleyball, cards, and a whole lot of DDR, since I got my new pads in on Monday. And then today, Marie, Ryan, Katie and myself took part in the Pella golf outing at Edmundsen in Oskaloosa, a four-person best-shot tournament. We had a lot of fun, shot a 66 (that's four under, with five birdies and a bogey), and beat the two other intern groups soundly. Good times, even if I did have to get up at 7:00 on a Saturday to do it.
Work was interesting last week. They put me on a BPI team - that's Business Process Improvement - with a dozen other people, sat us down in a room for the week, and had us analyze and improve a process that happens somewhere in the company. The whole point is to get some outsiders in on it too, so they can have an objective look at things and point out some obvious inefficiencies. It was pretty cool - we worked with the Lowe's credit process, from the point that a damaged or wrong shipment arrives at a Lowe's store, through the communication and processing, to the point where Pella issues a credit to the store. It did get a bit tedious near the end of the week, but we got free breakfast and lunch every day, and a really nice shirt at the end. It was awesome to be more or less fed for a week, and to be up and on my feet, going to and from peoples' desks, through the factory facilities, etc. A very unique perspective on another aspect of the company that I would otherwise never have thought about.
As a sidenote, I'd like to mention that some of my friends' websites need to be updated. *ahem*
I'm thinking the color scheme needs an update for summer, but I don't have any ideas, really. Hook me up if you do. Until then, get outside and enjoy summer!

June 16, 2004 - Recreation abounds

So, probably my favorite things about this summer are the forty-some-odd fellow interns and co-ops who live in the same apartment complex that I do, and all the stuff we get together and do. Prime examples: Monday night, we all went out to eat, then after coming home, a dozen or so of us played four games of sand volleyball. Lastly, after a quick shower, we played a solid hour or so of peanuts before giving up for the night at 11:30 or so. Tuesday, Marie and I went golfing (back to Edmundsen again; shot a 46 this time, which was splendid, save about three shots) and then ate dinner. Today, seven of us played an awesome game of Ultimate in the rain, which was a massive amount of fun, and then six *different* people got together, hung out, and ate Lisa's very good homemade pizza. And on the docket for tomorrow, we have Marie, Chris, and myself working at a booth at Thursdays In Pella, a 'family-friendly' party that happens every week in the square. Saturday we're slated to golf and then work 'community outreach' (not sure what that means, but hey) at Juneteenth in Des Moines.
So I've certainly been keeping myself busy, and it's been great. I am really digging this summer.
Oh, and you should really check out the QOTD, too.

June 13, 2004 - Some actual work!

Hey hey, check this stuff out. In addition to updating this with my normal, inane stuff, I've managed to bust out a little bit of legitimate site work! I've made a much-needed, long-overdue change to the About Me page, and I updated part of my work section with some more recent information. Enjoy those; actual site work is becoming a bit rare around here, it seems.
This weekend has been awesome. Most everyone I know real well around here left, so I basically sat on my ass the whole weekend. And let me just say that it was awesome. With the exception of the 17-mile bike ride I took (by myself, no less!) on Saturday, I almost literally did not get up this weekend. I took a much needed nap on Friday night from 5:30-8:30, then slept until noon on both Saturday and Sunday. Right now, it's midnight Sunday night, and I still haven't eaten dinner.
On the plus side, I did manage to do a little bit of work for B & B this weekend, and it was nice to fall back into that routine a little bit.
But this is the first five-day work week we've had in awhile, since last Thursday was an all-day intern event with speakers and diversity activities, followed by a "here's how to eat" etiquette dinner. Good times, though it makes five consecutive days of work look real long.

June 7, 2004 - So busy

So things have been insanely busy around here since the last update. I have some pictures to post, hopefully soon, but since I'm on my laptop right now, it's 10:30 at night, and I'm insanely lazy, it's not getting done this update. But day by day, let's give the breakdown for those who care:

• Tuesday, June 1 - Solomon and I went for a 20 mile bike ride ... man, was I sore the next day. This RAGBRAI thing is going to kill me.
• Wednesday, June 2 - This is my birthday! My folks came out here, which was awesome of them, and took me to dinner at a place called Udder's where you grill your own steaks. It was awesome, although I have to admit that it was a little strange to drink a Coors Light in a restaurant. But yeah, my folks did the whole birthday thing to an awesome degree, with decorations and champagne and cake and the the whole shebang. Again, very cool of them to come out.
• Thursday, June 3 - After a long and semi-boring day of work, Marie, Solomon, and I hit up Edmundsen golf course in Oskaloosa. It's a real nice course: very open, very forgiving, a little on the short side, a par 71. I really enjoyed it, though; somehow I managed to rack up three pars (which is really good for me) on the way to a 48. Take out some of those three-stroke chips and four-putts and it'd be a bit better, but I'll definitely take a 48.
• Friday, June 4 - Pella reserved the "leadership ropes course" at the YMCA camp in Boone, IA for us for the whole day, and we took a company-sponsored trip up there for the day. It was actually a lot more fun than it sounds, despite being a lot of work. There were a lot of different things to be done: leadership excercises, teamwork stuff, trust stuff, etc etc. Quite a workout for all involved, and again led me to being a bit sore the day after.
• Saturday, June 5 - Nick Williams, our head intern/co-op organizer guy, put together an awesome series of stuff for all of us to do on Saturday morning, collectively called the Intern Olympics. With a lot of teamwork-based challenges spanning a whole range of disciplines, it was quite a workout for all of us. After the four-hour event, about a dozen of us stayed and played a couple of extra hours of snad volleyball, which was an amazing time. Then after a quick lunch and a shower, it was time to leave for the I-Cubs game, which Ryan joined us at, which was also awesome. We volunteered a bit before the game and helped put Pella logo temporary tattoos on kids as they came in the gates; that was a good time. And when we got back from that, it was Tiffany's 21st birthday, so there was a bit of a party for that also; definitely a good time.
• Sunday, June 6 - After getting up at noon (yes!) and doing some of the necessary things (you know, bills, emails, phone calls, yadda yadda), a dozen of us played an hour or so of Ultimate Frisbee before Marie, Jeff, and I hit up Edmundsen again, this time for 18 holes. I hacked my way to a 95 (that's 46/49), with five pars along the way. I have to say, I'm pretty happy with the way I've played the last 27 holes; four-putts notwithstanding, of course.

May 31, 2004 - Happy Memorial Day!

The official start of summer is here, and with it, a chance to put off archiving yet another month's worth of entries, and to satiate all three of my readers with an update. (Yes, I know it's not the official start of summer. Work with me here.)
Both of my roommates have moved in, and they seem like pretty cool guys. It should be a good time out here this summer. And as a bonus, Dan brought a GameCube, so I'm totally hooked on Mario Kart Double Dash. Perhaps an update to the Gaming section soon? You never know...
Now I suppose I should blather for a bit about work at Pella... So for those of you that don't care, skip this paragraph. I'm on the Data Warehouse team - basically the point of which is to house and analyze all the data that comes through this company. Sure, no problem, right? Wrong. I never realized how much data making windows generates. And I just work with quotes, sales, and shipping; this is to say nothing of manufacturing, receiving, payroll, HR, pricing, documentation, customers, parts, units, installation, returns... It's mind-boggling. But anyway, my job for the summer is basically to recreate the system that Customer Service uses to look up order information when someone calls in with a problem with their window(s). You know, basic information: Here's what's on the order, prices, how and when it was shipped, who bought it, yadda yadda. The current system pulls data from an old database, and my job is to make a new system that pulls from the Data Warehouse databases instead. This wouldn't be bad... if it wasn't for a woman who is not even in my department and most assuredly is not my boss. This woman is absolutely militant that I will use a tool called Oracle Install Base to do my project. Now, Install Base tracks individual parts, using Bill Of Materials data. It can tell you everything about every last screw that went into each window. This is great - but it's not even close to what I'm trying to accomplish. She has an intern under her whose job it is to get this up and running, and so obviously I need to use the same tool. I have this analogy: She is giving her intern and me a set of hedge trimmers; she's telling her intern to trim the hedge, and telling me to dig a ditch. A perfectly valid tool being used for the flat-out wrong thing. So until we get that resolved, I'm not really doing much of anything; just trying to "research" this tool that I know isn't going to work. Bureaucracy.
And now I should wrap this up. Huge props to King for throwing an awesome barbeque and football game for Memorial Day today, even if I did miss my interchange and take the long way home. Hope everyone enjoyed their long weekends, and now it's back to work. *audience boos*
Oh yeah, and check out the finally updated QOTD!

May 23, 2004 - Regularly Scheduled Programming

Right, so we're back to updating this once a week, apparently.
Things at Pella have been going swimmingly. The work is, admittedly, not what I would like to be doing for the rest of my life (at least not yet), but the people and the company itself is awesome. That, and the part where there are about thirty or forty other interns and co-ops, all of whom live in the same apartment complex as me, make living here quite a bit of fun. The eight-to-five thing every day is kind of a drag, but on the other hand, it's really nice to go home at 5:00 and forget about work entirely. Not something school lets you do.
Anyhow, I've started keeping Old Man Hours™ again (which for me, is bed before midnight), so I'd better wrap up here. Wishing everyone a good week!

May 15, 2004 - Oh boy

Right. So, where to begin, hmm? Well, I like bullet points, so:

• Dead week passed relatively uneventfully, if busily. Part of that is probably the part where I spent almost all of my downtime doing absolutely nothing and watching a lot of hockey. I worked a ton on those group projects. We gave two demos in dead week, and the final one during finals week. Again, to make a long, boring story that you really don't want to read short, everything went fine after a lot of work.
• That brought finals week onto us. But since the projects had been done since the Thursday of dead week, and my finals didn't even start until Thursday of finals week, and on top of that, I really didn't care about them at all in the first place ... well, finals week wasn't bad at all. I played a ton of frisbee golf, a little racquetball, helped Erin move, and had a hilariously fun night at King's (big belated props, by the by!). My two exams went fine on Thursday, especially for having spent a grand total of about an hour studying for them. Then the one on Friday morning (At 7:30 no less; how cruel is that?) went fine too, again, considering I spent about twenty minutes of "studying" for that. What can I say, it's Senioritis. Mine is chronic.
• The rest of Friday (and some of Thursday night now that I think about it) was spent packing up all my crap. Getting to bed at 3:30, then getting up at 6:30, then packing for a day is not necessary fun. All things considered though, it went surprisingly well. My folks helped a lot with the whole packing endeavor too, which was awesome. This was followed immediately by another late night, this time about 5:00, involving our annual tradition of going to Perkins at 3AM. This year had a slight change; we yoinked a couch, put in the bed of Plummer's truck, and rode it to and from Perkins. And then we left it in a parking space. Hilarious!
• That Saturday (after another three-hour night) was the big move to Pella. More or less uneventful, getting settled into the apartment (which is very nice; pictures pending) was kind of a chore, since there is nothing there. I don't know why that surprised me so much, but ... yeah, not something I had thought through all the way. Anyhow, it worked out.
• And on Monday, I started my job at Pella! A couple days of brainwashing orientation went just fine, and now I'm in my little half-cube for twelve (perhaps fourteen?) weeks. I have a project, though some of the details are kind of nebulous. More pending.

April 22, 2004 - The aftermath

Again, a week with no updates. What can I say, I'm a bad person.
I feel like I'm so far behind in a lot of non-school-related things. Specifically, people. I owe a whole bunch of people an email or three (Patty, I haven't forgotten about you, I promise!) and it feels like I'm losing touch with some friends of mine, mostly the ones I only get to talk to now over Instant Messenger and the like. Yeah, I know this happens, and it sucks, and there's nothing you can really do about it, but ... yeah. That's about it.
My laptop came on Friday! It's awesome and I love it. I will never pay attention in class again.
You may have noticed our university in the national news as well as the local news after some 'extracurricular' activities this past weekend. On the one hand, I'm kinda ticked that I wasn't down there watching (how cool would that have been?), but on the other hand, I'm going to be really pissed if they straight-up cancel VEISHEA because of this. I guess we'll see.
I saw Stomp this past week too. It was amazing; if you ever get the chance to go, I highly recommend it. Very Blue Man Group-ish, if you're into that sort of thing.
School-wise, this week sucks, and next week is going to be worse. I have a group project due on Monday. I have a group project due on Tuesday. I have a group project due on Thursday. I have a paper due on Thursday. I have a lab due on Tuesday. I have four finals the following week I'm supposed to study for. Crap.
Maybe this whole Pella thing isn't going to be so bad.

April 15, 2004 - VEISHEA is here!

Well, ladies and germs, it's time for that lovely festival of getting drunk, pretending you're not drunk, and watching a parade: It's VEISHEA time again. For anyone who doesn't know, I'm working security this year. What this means is basically, my partner and I walk around in our bright orange "Please Make Fun Of Me"™ t-shirts, tell people to put their beer down, and get laughed at. But hey, we get a t-shirt out of the deal, and we get to feel important and break the kneecaps of people we don't like. At least I think that's what they said; I was pretending not to be drunk.
This week has been full of work and projects. Whee. It's been a decent amount of work, but I think the projects might actually turn out pretty well. Oh yeah, and I had a quiz Monday, a test and quiz today, and another quiz tomorrow. Also whee.
But, with any luck, I plan on hitting the VEISHEA production of Fiddler on the Roof this Saturday and having some fun in the meantime. Here's hoping it goes well.
Oh yeah! And my laptop is in the mail!

April 11, 2004 - Happy Easter!

Firstly, happy Easter to all!
This past half-week or so has been pretty awesome. After Wednesday's awesome weather, it's stayed steady at about 60 degrees, which is just fine by me. Wednesday evening's SCUBA event went well (props to Kristi for coming!), and it was nice to swim around for an hour or so. Hard work, though. Then later that night, we had a broomball game; my first one ever, actually. For those who don't know what this is, picture this: 5 on 5 hockey, played lengthwise on half a hockey rink, in shoes instead of skates, with a ball about five inches in diameter, and instead of a stick you have basically a long ice-scraper like you would use on your car. It's amazingly fun, but you fall down and hurt yourself a lot too. So after Wednesday, I pretty much hurt all over.
Then on Friday, I played about 90 minutes of quality Ultimate Frisbee with King and the gang; our first Intramural game is tomorrow at 5:45. I think we'll have a decent chance if we play well. Friday night I hung out with King, Jackie, and Adria and just played some cards and ate some pizza. Saturday, I most definitely slept until 2:45, which ruled, and then played some quality video games with Ryan and Kevin. All in all, a good weekend.
But this week, we have a 362 quiz tomorrow, a 309 test Thursday, and a 308 quiz Friday (Schedule for reference), plus an assignment or three, and the ongoing three group projects. Crap. Three weeks plus finals until all this school crap is done.
And next weekend is looking to be pretty much gone, too; it's VEISHEA, and I get to work security duty for four hours on Friday night, five hours Saturday morning, and four more Saturday night. Ah well.
Anyhow, happy Easter to all, and here's hoping this week is kind to me. Oh yeah, and you too.

April 7, 2004 - Been a week. Again.

Right, so I'm bad about updating. Not as bad as, say, Kristi or Ryan, but still pretty bad.
Regardless! It's April, and that means it's amazing outside. The last couple days have been 70 degrees or more, and I've worn shorts around for both days. It's been amazing. SAA had some free food on central campus today, which when supplemented with a couple of friends dropping by, a little bit of frisbee, and an amazing amount of laziness and chilling, makes for quite a good afternoon. The part where I'm sitting in a Coover lab and updating this because I have, literally, nothing else to do right now notwithstanding. Sad how we get let out of my 485 class after about 20 minutes every day because there's nothing to go over. Ah well.
Last Thursday night, Emily, Ryan, and I went to see Rent down at the DMCC. It was an awesome show, and I'm really glad to have seen it. Highly recommended.
Oh, and last weekend, Raina came out to see us! We had a great, if incredibly lazy, time just hanging out and mostly eating. Huge props to her for making the drives!
Let's see, what else? The group projects are coming along, if slowly. I'm actually in much better of a position that I thought I would be at this point; maybe I'll actually get to enjoy VEISHEA in ten days. Tonight is a Try SCUBA event, so I'll be able to get back under the water for at least a little time, which is awesome. Beyond that ... spring's arrival makes everything seem better, so I can't complain too much about anything, really.
Oh yeah, and I ordered a laptop last night! Details pending.
Hope everyone enjoys their week, and check out the brand new March archive. Word.

March 31, 2004 - Busy and yet somehow satisfying

I discovered the coolest thing ever today. Academic InfoTech, long my nemesis for things such as crappy Internet connectivity and network restrictions, has redeemed themselves in stellar fashion. It turns out that any old student can walk in there, and for the low, low price of free, check out a laptop for three business days. So, in return for showing my ID card and signing a piece of paper, I have a laptop until Monday afternoon. What does this let me do? Well, my primary reason for getting it is so I can do actual work in my classes, where I usually don't pay the best of attention anyways. I'm really liking it thus far... and I have discovered anew my desire to have a laptop.
But, that aside, I have more SCUBA pictures to display! Check out the gallery of underwater pictures from this break, taken by Eric Smith. There are some amazing pictures in there ... especially for someone like me, to whom all this is still a new and incredibly awesome experience. I still can't get over the trip, and some of the awesome things we saw. With any luck, some of the other members' pictures will get scanned and put up here at some point, but we'll have to see about that one.
Switching gears back to school, the group projects are still chugging along. We have much work to do for them in the upcoming weeks, but I think if we can stay relatively on top of it, it should be a reasonable load. Again though, I guess we'll have to see how everything comes out. Heck, if they're any good, they might even get thrown onto my Programs page.
Check it out too, I redid the bottom props section! I've been wanting to do this for some time. Let me know if it looks strange or wrong in your browser, please! Otherwise, please send me any suggestions for things to put on here!

March 28, 2004 - Five weeks...

I'm wishing I was still in Florida.
Remember that lovely Sea bathers' eruption that I had? Yeah, it's getting better, but it's still definitely present on such difficult-to-scratch areas as my ankles, feet, and the backs of my hands. With any luck, it'll be completely gone in another three days or less. Oh, and I seem to have gotten a cold about Tuesday, which is currently working its way through my system. Lots of fun that is, also.
But, physical discomforts aside, this past week wasn't too bad. This is likely because we didn't meet for any of my three impending group projects: all due in five weeks or less, none of which have been started, and only two of which have been thought about. So if those come into play this week, it could be a loooong week.
This weekend was nice, though. My folks came out for an honors ceremony, and it was great to see and hang out with them. Plus, you know, a little free food never hurt anyone.
But now, with this short and utterly uninformative update, I'm going to bed, because I'm very, very tired. Here's hoping tomorrow's exam goes well.

March 22, 2004 - I'm back!

I've returned from Spring Break... and I am not happy to be back. It was incredibly nice to not think about work, school, classes, projects, roommates, deadlines, registration, ... anything for nine solid days. And now we come back and are immediately thrown back into the thick of it; this doesn't sit well with me.
But enough of that. This trip was seriously the most amazing thing I have ever done. Seven of the SCUBA club's members (Adam, Eric, Emily, Brendan, Megan, Susan, and myself) rented a Suburban and trailer and drove the 1700-plus miles to Key Largo. We had rented a house there, and lined up a boat to do some quality SCUBA diving. The weather didn't cooperate with us in the beginning of the week, leading to one dive in the marina, one terrible dive, and four cancelled dives. However, it cleared up and we had excellent diving for Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. I can't wait to get my underwater pictures developed and scanned; for now you'll have to settle for the above-water photo gallery I put up tonight. In short, the trip was awesome, we had an incredible group, and it was probably the most amazing experience I've had. I can definitely see myself getting way into the tropical SCUBA stuff.
For an amusing story in which I suffer, I ended up with a pretty nasty case of what I think was Sea bathers' eruption last night. It basically involved me being covered with a lot of red, extremely itchy bumps. Not a fun experience, but thankfully it was gone this morning.
I'm sure I'll gush some more when I finally put up some underwater pictures from the trip, but for now I'll try and contain myself.
Back in Ames, things are pretty standard. That is to say, they're insanely busy. I have a list of running around to do that fills a page, and all the professors have suddenly just realized that there are only six weeks left in the semester. I have three group projects to do by that time, and none of them are started at all. This could prove to be a very large problem.
And I have my registration for next semester figured out: 18 credits, in six courses. We'll see how it goes, since I have time conflicts that I can't get out of. Hopefully this will end up working out, though, since there are one or two courses in there that I really, really want to take.
So for now, I'm going to bed, since sleeping in a Suburban isn't the easiest thing to do, or the most restful. Perhaps the million things to do can wait until I'm well rested. *waits for laughter*
Oh, and you might notice one small change in the links page.

March 11, 2004 - So yeah. A week. Sorry.

After an awesomely relaxing weekend, consisting of movies, parties, racquetball, and other things, we're back to the week. It all seems so long ago.
Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday were about the busiest days ever. I spent the majority of all three days running around campus, trying to figure out such things as class schedules for next semester, group meetings and projects, homework assignments, intramural results, donating blood, meetings and flyers for HKN, and the like, which is to say nothing of the homework, websites, updates, etc that needed to be done at home. Case in point: I was printing off HKN flyers at 2:30 in the Computer Science building. Wow.
In summary: I had two advisor meetings on Monday. It looks like, through some fancy scheduling maneuvers and loopholes in the system, I am in fact going to be able to get out of here in four years, and I am going to be able to take the video game design course I desperately want to take, and I am going to be able to take it twice. This puts me having eighteen credits in the fall, and fifteen in the spring, which includes three-fourths or better technical courses, and senior design. I guess those will be two rough semesters, but since my absolute number one goal is to take this game design course, it's just something I have to do.
Those tests last week turned out quite well; I got a 94 on both of them and that's fine by me. There's somewhat of a fiasco with the Sociology test though; apparently our cool professor thinks that giving half the students an extra hour (mind you, the test was only 50 minutes in the first place) to finish, but not letting the other half have this time, is completely fair. She says "she doesn't have any control over our schedules, so if we have a class afterwards and can't stay to work on the test, it's our fault." After a rather large uproar about this, she's trying to figure out a way to even the grades, and she said, "The most fair thing would have been if everyone opted to take the extra time." Fact that some of us had required classes immediately after notwithstanding, I guess. You have to be kidding me.
But on to the more fun stuff. We're heading to Florida for Spring Break this year, and we're doing it right. A 27-hour drive each way, leaving at 4:00 on Friday and coming back on Sunday night. With seven or eight people in a Suburban, plus all their stuff, plus all the SCUBA gear, it's going to be mighty cozy. I promise there will be some pictures when I return, but you're going to have to wait until after the 22^nd.
So I hope everyone has a great week and a half! And finally, a shout out to Patty for a happy birthday!

March 4, 2004 - T-e-s-t-s a-r-e o-v-e-r spells Relief™

So this week has been ... not fun. Some of that stems from my slug-like state recently (big surprise), some of it stems from my inability to study or work when needed ... and a big portion stems from the two tests that happened this week.
Wednesday was Sociology; the first test of the year, all essay questions, in which we were expected to write five pages in fifty minutes. To study, we were given the pool of all possible questions. Two long essays were on the exam; we were given twelve possible ones. Five short essays were on the exam; we were given forty-nine possible questions. Patently ridiculous.
Then Thursday was Computer Science, also the first exam of the semester. This one had more material to cover, but the material also sucked a lot less. The test itself was allright, nothing exceptional either way.
So now I have to write a paper for Sociology for Monday, and then I am home free. But, since I really, really don't want to write this, it likely won't get done until Sunday night. You'll have that.
This week hasn't held much in the way of interesting stuff; I've taken more naps than I should have, played racquetball once, and found time for a few video games, but that's about it. Oh, and props to King for a showing of Super Troopers tonight!
We'll see what the weekend holds; no plans as of yet, but you never know. Oh yeah, and I archived February. Whee.

February 29, 2004 - So apparently we're doing weekly updates now

Last week seemed awfully busy as I was going through it. Looking back on it, though, I can't really remember what exactly was so captivating. Go figure.
Let's see. I had a test in one of my Computer Engineering courses; whoopee. I did a lot of work, too. For the first week in a long time, I went to all of my classes (I usually skip at least one of the Computer Engineering classes in the afternoon - see the schedule). I took at least three naps, and played some Final Fantasy 3.
Coming up this week, I have a test in Sociology on Wednesday, a test in Computer Science on Thursday, and a Sociology paper due on Friday. It's not looking to be a fun week, but the rest of the classes shouldn't be that bad.
This weekend was quite fun. Friday night, I stayed in and did a whole bunch of work, which I didn't really mind. Saturday, I watched us lose to Nebraska, then King and a whole bunch of people came over to play Halo. Huge props to Jackie and Adria for an awesome dinner, as well! After that, Kristi hosted a very entertaining game or two of Outburst. That brings us to Sunday, when I decided to get up at about 3:00. I did a whole lot of work, then headed to Ryan's for some quality Secret of Mana, which was a grand time.
So we're back to Sunday night. Hope everyone enjoys their respective weeks.
Happy Leap Day to all, and to all a good night.

February 22, 2004 - Long hiatus

Right, been slacking on the updates again. Feel free to berate me.
Last week, simply put, sucked. I spent the majority of the week doing schoolwork. I had very little time for any real work, and very little for much in the way of recreation. And our group presentation we gave on Friday sucked. Apparently the cool thing to do in group presentations now is to stop (twice!) in the middle of your section of the report (which you are reading directly off of note cards), lean to a fellow group member and ask, "How do you say that word?" This not only proves that you haven't practiced this at all, it shows you have no idea what you're talking about, and it proves that you copied things directly from the book, since you obviously don't know what they mean. Terrible.
But then this weekend came around and all was good again. Friday night I decided to go to bed early (after seeing a high-quality performance of Saturday Night Fever), and came away with a solid twelve hours of sleep. Saturday, I got in some racquetball, some videogames, and a showing of Elf before being ditched for a Perkins run by those weaker than I. Sunday morning brought a second consecutive week of breakfast ... this one without any griddle hassles! I did manage, however, to injure myself with both a grater and a peeler; quite an accomplishment, if I may say so. Later on Sunday, I hit the presentation of Othello, which was greatly enjoyable. Lastly on Sunday, I got a call in the evening begging me to join an Intramural bowling team, which I happily did. Fun times, and three free games of bowling, with the possibility of winning a T-shirt; how can you go wrong?
But, sadly, this brings us to yet another (manic?) Monday, which has a bad habit of leading into four other days that also have classes I'm supposed to go to. Blech.
I leave you with a description of the house we'll be staying in over Spring Break. Sweet.

February 16, 2004 - Weekend, weekday. Day, night.

The computer is back up and fine. Huzzah.
So, this weekend was great. I did a ton of work (*gasp*), had a ton of fun, and managed not to let the lack of sleep affect me too much. All this in spite of Singles' Appreciation Day on Saturday... Not that I even thought about it. To me, it just meant cheap candy on Sunday!
First of all, on Saturday I went to the best basketball game ever. It was back and forth the whole time; really a great game. I had a front-row seat, courtesy of King, which was amazing by itself. Then, as we were up by one with 5 seconds left, and their 81% free throw shooter getting two foul shots, the arena practically collapsed from the noise. It was absolutely insane... And when he missed both shots, and both putback shots, the place went nuts. We all stormed the court, the whole deal. Absolutely insane.
Oh yeah, there was some racquetball on Saturday morning too, and then some madd fixing of some Internet outages on Saturday night.
Sunday we were scheduled to go sledding, but upon waking up and finding it to be minus-four degrees outside, we decided maybe that wasn't such a great idea. So instead, four of us had breakfast here, then we all went back to bed.
Funny story about breakfast. So we're cooking the bacon on this new skillet my folks got me for Christmas, right? King mentions that it smells funny in the kitchen; I tell him not to worry about it, since, in our apartment, it always smells funny when you turn on a burner. Five minutes later, I walk past the stove and notce what looks like a half-burned page of a book on the stove. I lift up the griddle ... and ash goes everywhere. Everywhere. Apparently you're supposed to take the label off of the griddle before you use it! Who would have thought it??
Anyhow, this week is looking kind of hectic. I've been doing a lot of academic work already, and have gotten a lot done. But we have a group oral presentation on Friday that we haven't even met about ... and more. But I spent about four hours tonight doing an assignment I thought was due Wednesday ... Yeah, turns out it's due next Wednesday. Stupid, stupid.
Yeah, I know I haven't done anything to the site in a long time. I've been hella busy. I'll get around to it ... maybe. Suggestions?

February 13, 2004 - Bad mojo

Remember how I mentioned that my computer had been running four straight weeks? Yeah, so on Thursday, it crashed. Hard. To make a long story short: It took six hours, dozens of blue screens, three Windows reinstalls, and a lot of my patience... but the machine is back up and running. Sure, I lost all of my not-absolutely-critical files, but since I managed to back up the work- and school-related items, and resolve the crash fairly well fairly quickly, I'm not terribly upset over it. Things happen, I suppose.
So let's go back to the more normal news, shall we? It's Friday the Thirteenth for one thing, which means that there's a basketball game tomorrow... And knowing our team, it's anyone's guess how it'll go. I have big plans to go sledding on Sunday with a group of people, and that should be a blast. Other than that, this weekend will likely be spent asleep or doing some sort of work; academic or otherwise.
I had my first exam today, in a Computer Science course. I'm thinking it went allright, but it's one of those where you never really can tell... So I guess now the waiting begins. I'm certainly not going to stew over it; I have projects and assignments to more than fill my plate until I get that test back.
So I guess it's just another weekend, to be enjoyed until Monday comes around and classes start again. Whee.

February 8, 2004 - Balmy!

Check it out, it's a whole ten degrees here. I actually wore shorts for the last two days ... But maybe that's because I was busy playing DDR. (Props to Emily for hostessing on Friday night!) Whatever, it's still a comparative heat wave.
This weekend was pretty fun. I have this real bad habit of making Fridays and Saturdays my days of fun, in which I do no productive work whatsoever. That, of course, makes Sunday my day of never-ending work, by which I really mean that I sit around and procrastinate all day because the amount of stuff I have to do seems so daunting I can't seem to start on it. Ah well, I get by, I guess. I spent the majority of today working on a project for one of my Computer Engineering courses; despite it being a rather large pain, it's pretty cool to see the results. Sure, maybe it's pointless, but it's still cool.
I'm down to two ridiculously overdue things on my To-Do list, so I'm improving. I'm very proud, especially considering one of them says "Read four chapters." Oh, and it was due two weeks ago. Damn.
An upsetting note: We got stomped on Saturday. I'm talking seriously, 100%, outright, hardcore stomped. Bad times.
In place of doing any work on the site, or anything productive at all really, I'm just going to mention that my computer has been up and running for four straight weeks now, and expect you all to be satiated. So there.

February 4, 2004 - Snowy update

So remember that snow we were supposed to get? Well, for once the weathermen weren't wrong, and we did in fact get pounded with a solid nine or so inches of snow. One would think this would yield a snow day ... but one would be wrong. Apparently, if CyRide goes, the university goes. And apparently, CyRide never stops going.
Oh yeah, and we're supposed to get about 5 more inches tonight. Thing is, it's supposed to be snowing pretty hard already ... and there's nothing. It's anybody's guess, I suppose.
Reading. I have reading to do. Still. And yes, I am still complaining about it. Some deadlines got pushed back, though, and I just don't care about the four chapters of (thrilling) Software Engineering that I'm supposed to know, so I'm thinking I'm good so far. The programming assignments are providing a measure of enjoyment, though, so that's always good. We're doing some work with Linux in one of my Computer Engineering classes, which is neat because I have wanted to get more into that for some time now. And two classes focus on Java, which is yet another interest of mine. At least some of them are interesting.
Outside of class, I've been busy too, of course ... though I am having a hard time remembering with exactly what. Ah well; suffice it to say that I'm busy, and leave it at that.
As for the site, I archived January. I also redid the color scheme somewhat; I was getting bored with the green, so the links, clock, and logo are now blue and orange-ish instead. (If you still see the green logo or clock, clear your history and cache, and try it again.)
The week is more than half over. I love Thursdays and Fridays ... guess why.

January 31, 2004 - We live for the weekends

Taking a cue from Emily, I realized I could put off archiving January if I updated today. Awesome.
So I went to our basketball game today... between this and the Iowa game, I've seen some pretty intense ball recently. We won, thankfully, after one heck of a game. Extremely fun to be involved in.
So lately, it seems like I've been involved in about a million and a half things, very few of which are academically-oriented. Besides the 22 hours a week I spend in class, I work with King a couple hours a week helping him with his Electrical Engineering class. I've been playing a ton of racquetball recently. I have dinner once or twice a week with friends. I go to HKN meetings once a week, and will soon start sitting at their helpdesk for an hour or two a week. I go to SCUBA club meetings every other week, and have two-hour SCUBA lessons every other week also. I recently started getting photography-type lessons so I can take Night and Nature Photography courses from the Workspace later in the semester. I just applied to be a VEISHEA Security Aide in April. I'm sure there are things I am missing, too. In short, it's been crazy.
And I still hate reading! I only mention this because I have a written and oral report on a 300-plus page book of boring, dry, awful sociology studies due in ... two and a half weeks. And I can't bring myself to read it. Or, for that matter, any of the other several readings I should be doing. But to make up for it, I'm way ahead on all my other work... so it all balances out, right?
Anyhow, SCUBA-Adam is having a Superbowl shindig tomorrow, so that should be a good time. Assuming I find the time, and more importantly, the willpower, to do anything, I should be in pretty good shape this week. But, as always, it remains to be seen.
Oh, and we're supposed to get six or so inches of snow Sunday night. That will make Monday morning incredibly fun!

January 28, 2004 - Brr!

Yeah, so it's cold outside. Really, really, freaking, cold. This is the third straight day with minus-twenty wind chills or worse, and I for one am starting to get sick of it. When does May get here again? (Yes, I know May gets here on May first. It was rhetorical. Thank you.)
I've discovered recently that I hate reading. I've had about two dozen items come onto my to-do list since school started, and eighteen have come off. The six that remain are reading assignments, and the eighteen that I've done have had no reading involved whatsoever. Notice a pattern? I do, and it really bothers me when I'm in a Sociology and Religion class... And both of the professors think the only way to learn anything is to read. Booooooring.
On a positive note, I am really enjoying the couple programming classes I am in, however. I really did miss having things to code. As soon as I get an assignment or something that involves coding, it's pretty much the first thing I do, even if it's not due for ages and I have much more pressing matters. Not sure what to make of that, but hey.
I changed my current schedule page a bit, to reflect a change in the lab time for my Computer Engineering class. Yeah, that's about it.
Basketball game tonight; we'll see if we can keep up the decent play at home.

January 25, 2004 - Ugh.

Been awhile since an update. Excuse du jour: I've been sick. No, really, I have, ever since about Thursday. I've been increasingly lethargic as the weekend has progressed; basically I have done nothing but sit and play Final Fantasy 8 the whole weekend. Scratch that; the last four days.
Yeah, on Thursday I went to my 9:30 class, which let out at about 10:00. Seeing as my next class didn't start until 11:00, it was cold, I was sick, and even if I did go to class it would have been worthless, I opted to go home instead. Friday morning I had an appointment over at Student Health, which I forced myself to go to, got some antibiotics (which, since the symptoms have changed from a strep-throat-like condition to more of a general cold, I'm thinking will be largely useless, but whatever), and went home to sleep. So, in four days, I have been to half an hour of class. Rock.
Anyhow, I changed the good old links page just a tad; check out the new weblogs.
Here's hoping I recover soon from this.

January 19, 2004 - Nice long weekend

You know, you really can't complain about having a long weekend. But it would be really, really nice if we got the one long weekend for the semester at a time when we actually need it, instead of after the first week of classes. Still though, it's better than a two-day weekend.
So what did I do with this long weekend, you ask? Well, I did a smidge of work, played a lot of racquetball, saw two movies, slept a lot, and played a boatload of Final Fantasy 8. What a weekend! The part where I have very little homework thus far helps a lot, too.
No big changes or anything else around here. This week is when school kicks back in with full force, so I guess we'll see how I handle it.

January 13, 2004 - And so it begins... Again.

Yes, classes have begun. Which means that I now have a whole lot less free time than I did when there was nothing to do but laze about all day and play racquetball. Funny how that works.
Even so, classes are allright, and I'm thinking that they should be okay through the semester. I only have one difficult-to-understand professor, and at least two classes have homework that will be enjoyable. The only thing I'm leery of is the projects; many of the courses seem project-based rather than homework-based like I'm used to, and I'm hoping that they won't all be due at the same time. Ugh.
I forgot a couple of important things in the last update. For one, we moved! We switched apartments at semester, moving from a 4-person, 2-bedroom apartment into a 4-person, 4-bedroom apartment, which is really nice. Robert came with me, but Eric and Lee both got spring-summer co-ops, so they'll be coming back in August. The two new guys, Paul and Justin, are great. Pictures will be up ... in about that much time.
And, I forgot to mention that I added a Computer Science degree, which makes me officially a "Double-degree student in Computer Engineering and Computer Science with a minor in Sociology." Blech, I just think of myself as a kid who likes computers, but whatever. Resume updates will reflect the change ... again, in about that much time.
But, check it. I went through and did the pictures from New Year's! Be sure to take a look at those for a glimpse of the craziness that was the evening.
I gotta get back into some video games, too ... I'm thinking this is my semester project. You know, the one that really matters.
Hope everyone has a good week!

January 9, 2004 - Oh boy

It's definitely been two weeks or more since an update. Crap.
So, I suppose that means that I should say what I've been up to. (pause) Want me to say it again?
No, seriously though, break was awesome. It was great to get home, spend some time with the folks, with the friends, and with the pillow. New year's eve down at the University of Illinois was incredible, and an awesome time. (Pictures coming soon; Wicked-madd props to Jody for hostessing; For some glimpses, see certain pictures on the new link I put on my links page) I did a smidge of work, didnt play nearly enough games, and got together with people a lot. That was pretty much the entire three-week break.
Oh yeah, and the small detail of me getting a car! A white, 4-door, 1997 Honda Civic to be exact. Her name is Montecore; ten points if you can tell me where that comes from! Took her down to UIUC for new year's eve, took her back with me to Ames, and she runs smooth as butter. Couldn't be happier with her, and now I don't have to gank Ryan's or Kristi's cars anymore!
Anyhow, now that I'm back, updates should be semi-regular again. I'm looking forward to this semester, or at least some of the classes. We shall see.
Oh yeah, I archived December and added a link. Check 'em.

December 24, 2003 - Merry Christmas

No matter how much it doesn't feel like it, I suppose Christmas is here nonetheless. Here's wishing the best to everyone!
The last several days in Ames rocked. Huge props to Eric for turning 21 on Saturday night! An extremely good time was had by all.
We switched apartments on Monday into Tuesday, now having a four-bedroom setup instead of a two-bedroom. The rest of the apartment is laid out very similarly, though. Pictures will be up once I return.
Oh, and returning implies I am gone, so I suppose I should mention that I am back at home right now, until sometime in early-ish January. So, if you are also home and know of anything happening, be sure to let me know... until then, it's going to be sleep, video games, and maybe a bit of work (!) for a couple of weeks. Awesome.
As for pictures of the crazy Perkins story from the last update... Check out Plummer and myself as we hang out of the windows.

December 18, 2003 - Done and finished

Ohh yes, I am done. Took my last final last night, and it went about like the other one - averagely (?), but since there were 120 points and the test is out of 100, I am not concerned. So as of last night at 8:30 PM, I am offically done. Among other things, this means:

• No more English classes, ever.
• No more EE classes, ever.
• Five days of complete freedom await me.
• I still hate CS 311, even though I am done with it.

December 16, 2003 - I love finals week

Why do I love finals week, you ask? Hmm, maybe it has something to do with me having only two tests. Or maybe it's that I'm not studying for either of them. Perhaps it's finally sleeping for more than eight hours multiple nights in a row. Or it could be the twenty-five-plus hours of Final Fantasy 7 I have played since Friday afternoon. You pick; they're all equally good to me.
Speaking of, one final is in the bag. I took Computer Engineering this morning at the unholy time of 7:30, and while it wasn't exceptional, it wasn't terrible either. I'm glad I didn't spend any time studying for it, though, since it's one of those tests where no matter how much you studied, it really wouldn't have helped. Oh, and it was also awesome how for a comprehensive exam, there was exactly one question on material from the first two-thirds of the year. Next up is Computer Science tomorrow at 7:00 PM, and then I am officially on cruise control until mid-January.
So to celebrate being half-done with finals, I did some 'routine maintenance', if you will, around here. I tweaked the logo in the corner; now the What's New tag gets updated correctly. I made some new graphics (finally!) for the curves, so the sinuous black line that's on every page looks much smoother now. I redid the line itself, also, turning it into a border-line instead of an image. And I made the titles of the gaming, QOTD, and individual photo scripts reflect their content.
So enjoy the new smoothness of the site, and I hope everyone's week is going well!

December 12, 2003 - So sue me

Yes, it's been a week since I've updated this. Yes, I'm comfortable with that.
This past week, being Dead Week (ie, the week before finals, in which classes are still held normally, but there aren't supposed to be large assignments due or tests to be taken), was quite the week. With one or two assignments due every day, I certainly had my work cut out for me over the majority of the week. But since it's all been done, turned in, and already forgotten about, I'm footloose and fancy-free, so to speak.
Which brings us to finals. Astoundingly, this year, finals are being good to me. I only have two: One Tuesday morning at 7:30 (!), and one Wednesday night at 7:00. And since I have long stopped caring enough to study for either of the classes that have a final (Computer Engineering and Computer Science, respectively), I'm pretty much on cruise control from now until January 12^th, which is insanely awesome. Video games and sleep await, for the first time in ... ages!
So with all that free time, I actually did a couple of things to the site. (*audience gasps*) The primary change is that i completely redid my school section, to make it more professional, like the work section that I changed not too long ago. Hope everyone enjoys that. Oh, and there's also now a little "what's new" kind of tag on the logo in the upper-left. The goal is that whenever I change something, even as minor as a Quote of the Day change, I will also update this little tag, which will let you see at a glance if there's anything new on the site. I'm hoping it proves helpful.
And now, with my semester (for all practical purposes) complete, I am going to take a long, triumphant sleep. Well, right up until 11:00, when I will get up for our basketball game.

December 6, 2003 - Holy hell

This week sucked so hard.
On the plus side, our Computer Engineering semester project is done! And I suppose I really can't complain when we end up getting a B+ for a project that doesn't even work like it's supposed to. Huttah. So I basically celebrated the completion of the project all day today by not doing a damn thing. It was awesome. I played some videogames for the first time in forever, then went bowling, which turned into a reunion of sorts between the SCUBA kids whereby we went to a coffee shop until they closed, then cruised around Ames before settling on a movie at Adam's. The part where I inadvertently ditched some other people while this was going on (oops...) notwithstanding, it was a good time.
So with the advent of this project, you'd think that my workload would be over, at least until finals. But boy, would you be wrong. I have one or two assignments due each day next week, all but one of which I have yet to start on. Of course, I only have two finals (!) this semester, which rules, so I guess that makes up for it? At any rate, it'll be back to the workload for me tomorrow. Fun times.
Needless to say, no site work. Oh, and I have heard back from neither Pella nor Pioneer yet. Weak sauce.

December 1, 2003 - Back to the proverbial grind

Thanksgiving break was great. It was awesome to head home for a while, see some friends, see some family, eat a lot, sleep a little, and generally not care about school for a little while. Unfortunately, though, that's all over and done with .... welcome back to Ames, and welcome back to the seventeen projects and assignments and other crap hanging over your head. Here's hoping that I can accomplish some or all of it before it's all due, but who really knows, right?
I don't really have much to say at the moment, other than to throw some shout-outs to Peter and Scott for hosting a mini-LAN and a hell of a weekend, respectively. Once I get on a keyboard whose 's' key works, I'll throw November into an archive and do that whole deal. Hooray for our Engineering department and their ever-so-functional keyboards.

November 20, 2003 - What a week

Wow. This week ... well, it pretty much sucked.
Monday, our group gave our presentation (20 minutes or so) in Technical Writing, and King and I started our semester project for Computer Engineering. Tuesday, I had a Religion quiz and small paper due, and more project work. Wednesday, I had an Electrical Engineering quiz, and we did more project work. Thursday, I had a Computer Engineering test and an Electrical Engineering lab. Not to mention all the other crap that comes in the course of a regular week. Woohoo.
But! The good thing is this: For Friday, my Electrical Engineering (8AM) is cancelled. My Technical Writing (3PM) is cancelled. And somehow I think it's an exceptional idea to simply not go to my Computer Science (2PM). So, no classes! An extra day of my break! What am I going to do with it? Hopefully either sleep or do some of the work that will be due when I come back, but we'll see. Oh, yeah, and maybe pack for the upcoming ten-day hiatus from Iowa. Technicalities.
So, other news. My roommates and I got emails today from the DOR, and it's looking like we'll be able to get into a four-bedroom at the semester change. This is a very good thing for all involved parties, though we don't know who (if anyone) we'll be stuck with for roommates, since Eric is 99% sure he's going to take a Spring-Summer co-op he's been offered, and Lee is about 80% sure of a similar situation. More on this as it develops.
I'm still waiting for final word on the summer internship from Pella, and in the meantime trying to get in better touch with Pioneer, the end goal of which is to stay in Ames for the summer. Of course, it would be foolish to turn down an offer from Pella, if they extend me one, on the possibility of something in Ames. So here's hoping I can drag out the timeline for awhile. I think I'll be calling Pioneer again tomorrow.
I have yet to do anything with my school section like I want to, but I did take and post a new twilight picture that I really like. That might have to hold everyone over until December, when I get back here. We'll see about updating from home, but it's not something I'm counting on. So, Happy Thanksgiving to everyone, and enjoy any and all days off you may or may not get! (Sorry Annie...)

November 16, 2003 - YAPOTMTTDLWNU

That's "Yet another period of time more than two days long with no update".
Right, about that. Things have been relatively busy. Friday, Ryan and I went to see Ruddigore over at Fisher Theater, and I have to say, I was very impressed. Right next to Kiss Me Kate as the most entertaining of the semester. Immediately after, we played some racquetball, then came back here, where he and my roommates got into a multi-hour political discussion that I for sure stayed well away from. Then Saturday, I woke up early to go tailgating, then watched us get destroyed, not that any of us were surprised. It's high time to can our offensive and defensive coordinators. After that, I played another round of racquetball in the evening, and then went and watched Finding Nemo over at Emily's. What a quality flick. Sunday, I basically got up at three and sat around all day, watching various combinations of football, my schoolbooks, and the insides of my eyelids. A good weekend.
But all those good vibes are about to change, see. I have a test Thursday morning, but more important than that, I have a huge final project due the week after Thanksgiving break ends, and my partner and I really need to buckle down and do something on it this week so we don't get hosed at the last minute.
In the meantime, though, you could take a look at some pictures Annie has taken over in Europe!One Two Three Four Five Six Seven Eight Nine Ten Eleven Twelve
And with that, I dive into the week. Huzzah.

November 11, 2003 - As promised

I said I'd update after my Pella and Computer Science endeavors, and so I shall.
First off, the whole Pella deal. I think the whole day went really well. First of all, wicked-madd props to Ryan for use of his car to cover the 150 miles or so needed to pull the whole thing off.
I managed to get there on time, despite blowing past several exits on the way there (Note: when providing directions, also provide mileages and/or exit numbers!), and met with Christina, the woman who helped set up so much of the day for me. She gave me a crash course on the company and the day's schedule, and then shuffled me fof to my panel interview, which consisted of me and three various IT-type managers. They were all very cool guys, and I didn't feel at all intimidated or nervous with them; heck, at one point we found ourselves talking video games and sports. I'd like to think that my interests and qualifications fit the criteria they seemed to be looking for, but that remains to be seen.
After that, I got shuffled over to a first-year, straight-out-of-college employee by the name of Leslie for lunch, and we talked about her experiences and such for quite awhile. She was incredibly nice, too, and had some good things to say about working for Pella and living in the town.
Then we came back and I had a short one-on-one interview with a different IT manager, who (notice a pattern yet?) was also very nice. He talked for awhile about what he does, and the goals of the project he is working on, and then asked some questions, which again, I would like to think I matched up well with.
That pretty much concluded the day. One more small wrap-up with Christina and I was out the door, feeling pretty good about the day. Big thanks to Pella for the day, and one more huge shout-out to Ryan.
Next comes the Computer Science adventure. This, not so good. I'm expecting a B on the test, which certainly isn't terrible, but it was not a fun experience to be put through. I find myself not caring about this class more and more; as long as I don't have to retake it, I will be a happy camper.
As for this crazy week, it just keeps getting more so, but it's turning into the good kind of crazy. (Does that make any sense?) Tomorrow, Emily and I are going to the Union to score some free chili and cake. Then, with any luck, I will be seeing the new Matrix movie tomorrow night as well! Thursday, I have some lab time scheduled for Computer Engineering, less because I need it and more because I simply didn't feel like doing the lab today during my lab time, so I just sort of didn't.
Oh yeah, that may have something to do with me coming down with a cold lately. I woke up this morning with a sore throat, and by tonight, it had turned into a runny and stuffy nose also, so that may make this week even more interesting.
No site work tonight, but I sorted through a bunch of those pictures I took recently, and I will be adding several fairly soon. I'll be creating separate galleries for twilight shots and night shots, also. I'll let everyone know when that happens.

November 9, 2003 - Uh oh...

Right. So this got real ugly, real fast.
Monday: Class, 8:00. To/from/in Pella, 9:00 until about 4:00. HKN helpdesk: 4:00 - 5:00. Computer Science Test (note, I have studied for this about one hour thus far...): 8:00 - 10:00. Computer Engineering homework, due Tuesday at 8:00 AM.
Then for the rest of the week, I get to bust my ass on a Technical Writing presentation (yes, a presentation in a writing class, I don't understand it either) which we are doing on the following Monday. Agh.
So, about lighter things. This weekend was awesome, though of course I didn't do any studying for my CS test (damnit!). Friday night I accidentally fell asleep from 7PM until 11PM, then went down to Larch and watched The Bourne Identity with some friends. Saturday, I got up at ten to go tailgating and watch us get obliterated on that big green thing with the chalk marks. Apparently our team was supposed to "play", or something, when they went out onto the big green thing? They obviously didn't know, and I'm not sure either. Anyhow, after that I hit the grocery store, then went and took over eighty pictures of campus (which I will hopefully sift through and put some up soon-like), then played some racquetball, then had some video game action over at Ryan's. Sunday I got up at two, studied a bit, then went to the HKN induction ceremony, came home and went to Emily's Inner-Tube Water Basketball game, which was ridiculously amusing to watch. Home again, study and miscellaeous chores, and now it's bedtime and I am feeling thoroughly screwed.
So, I will likely post something here on Tuesday describing my (mis?)adventures in Pella and in Computer Science. Until then, here's hoping I stay sane.

November 5, 2003 - I'm a slug

I swear, I haven't done a damn thing for about three solid days now. Schoolwork-wise, anyhow. A big part of that is that I seem to not have anything to do, believe it or not. So, I have been enjoying my free time by taking a couple extra naps, playing a couple more videogames, and goofing off on the computer a lot more.
However! I did manage to actually do something for this site, though it's nothing incredibly large. I just added a couple of new games to my gaming section. This is the easiest of the things I was hoping to accomplish, so we'll see if I can muster up the energy to revamp my school section (like I did to the work section) or add the hobbies section I've been talking about. We'll see.
I have been making progress on another Super Secret Project™ of mine, and with any luck, it will be up and active by the end of the year! I'll be sure to keep updates on that one coming as they happen.
Anyhow, nothing else is happening here until I go to Pella on Monday, which happens to be the same day as my next Computer Science test. I'll throw an update about both of those events here after they happen.

November 3, 2003 - Another week begins

This weekend was a good one. As I said to one of my roommates earlier tonight, it seems like I was either working hard or playing hard the entire time; there seemed to be very little 'downtime'. Of course, that's probably good, but still.
I busted out a full assignment from each of Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, and Computer Science. I also did some more work on random little things, ran some errands, made an English website, etc. On the play side of things, I played a couple solid rounds of DDR this weekend, watched Van Wilder with a whole group, scored tickets to Stomp in April, played some quality Halo, and slept a lot. Hooray for great weekends!
As for the site work, let's see. First, I archived October. Then, I went through and completely re-did my work section! I'm much happier now with its layout and function; be sure to check it out.
That's it. This week is looking to be below-average in craziness, but as always, it remains to be seen.

October 31, 2003 - Happy Hall

I'm getting really good at this whole updating every four days thing, instead of every two. Go figure.
So yeah. Remember how I said this week looked to be not too busy? (At this point, you should be laughing, because I am.) Well, after the Eta Kappa Nu meeting and quasi-initiation-thing on Monday night, things just went all to hell. I went over to Coover to try and fix my Computer Engineering lab that absolutely refused to work, and ended up spending nigh on two hours staring at it and making changes that only screwed things up worse. Fun times.
(It might help to review my schedule for the rest of the week here.)
Tuesday, I went to class bright and early, then hit the blood drive and donated my fair share. Of course, not having eaten anything in about sixteen hours or so, I didn't exactly feel so well afterwards, but that passed in time for my 12:40 class. This was immediately followed by my Computer Engineering lab, which (miraculously!) worked this week. Then at 7, a SCUBA Club meeting, and at 9, a round of racquetball.
Wednesday was actually fine; Emily came over for lunch, and that was a good time. There was a comedy performance at the Union that I was going to go to, but I elected to sleep from 8-11 instead.
Thursday was an absolute blast. It's a long day anyway, but when Eta Kappa Nu has you volunteer at the blood drive from 10-12, it sort of kills that morning timeslot. So I left the apartment today at 7:45 AM and returned at 6:15 PM. Long day. Oh yeah, and our Electrical Engineering lab completely destroyed both me and my partner; never have we been so clueless. Whee.
Oh yeah. Did I mention that Eta Kappa Nu made me dress up for three days this week? So during those three ridiculously hectic days, I was waltzing around campus in khakis, a dress shirt, tie, and dress shoes. Ugh.
Tomorrow should be allright, I guess, despite having a couple hours reserved for homework. As for what this weekend is going to bring ... aside from a lot of homework and a lot of sleep, who knows? Although, my roommate is gone, so ladies, start filling out those applications.
As for site work, I put up a new program that I wrote (finally!), and I also made a small new photo gallery of a couple campus shots at twilight. I'm hoping to add to this gallery from time to time. Now I just need a better (read: more than eight inches high) tripod.
Anyhow, enjoy that, and Happy Halloween!