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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.

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 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 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 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 27, 2005 - Leavin'

This is just a quick update as I head out the door, more or less. I'm heading off to Microsoft for an interview tomorrow, and needless to say, I'm quite excited. More than a little nervous too, of course, but you'll have that. I'll be back on Saturday night, and I hope to post my exploits and adventures then.
In the meantime, you'll notice that I've made some recent changes in the Gaming section - the holiday season will do that! Oh, and there will be some fairly neat and snowy POTD's coming up. Enjoy.

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.