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September 1, 2003 - Labor Day!

It's nice to have a day off school; really, it is. But, I wish it was later. It seems kind of pointless to have the only 3-day weekend that we get be the first weekend of school. Regardless, I've spent today using my time productively; sleep and DOA3 have taken most of the day. I'm slated for a (free!) dinner at Red Lobster later on, and maybe some DDR after that.
Wow. One week, and I'm already eschewing schoolwork in favor of fun stuff.
Anyhow, I finally got it together and made a page about my apartment. Check it out if you remotely care about my living arrangements for the semester. I also archived August, and threw a small update onto the school page.

September 3, 2003 - Back into the thick of it

Yes, yes, school has started in earnest. Does this mean I am doing homework? No. Reading textbooks? No. Getting up at 7:00 AM every day? Yes, and it sucks so very badly.
Funny story about this semester. The instant I got to Iowa, way back on the 20th of August, I started sneezing. For all practical purposes, I haven't stopped since then. So last night, after sneezing to the point of getting a ridiculous nosebleed, I finally got fed up with it, and I acquired some Allegra from Student Death. I think I'm improving already; that, or it's the placebo effect. We'll see tomorrow.
The previously mentioned DDR did, in fact, happen on Monday night, and a good time was had by all... Or at least those who participated. That, and playing racquetball tonight about rounds out the non-school-or-computer-related activities. We had elections for our honor societies, and so my stint as Webmaster is officially over. I just have to pass things off as smoothly as possible.
As for site improvements (*gasp*), I finally got around to making navigation buttons that suck less. They're still incredibly simplistic, but at least they weren't done in Paint. That about rounds out the update; halfway done with the week.

September 7, 2003 - It begins again

Our football team won again, in a much better performance than last week. And tailgating was awesome too. A full Saturday, to say the least.
Then, this morning afternoon, I didn't even bother to get up until about 2:30. Since then, I've watched the Broncos win, the Bears lose, and some of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon on TV. And done a whole bunch of homework, since I didn't really bother to do any for the first two weeks.
Speaking of school, I have my first 'quizzes' this week. One is in Religion, where I'm guessing three questions will be on the difference between Monotheism and Polytheism. And the second is in EE, which I'm also thinking will be easy - and if not, we get to drop the scores for two out of our seven quizzes, so who cares? :)
Played racquetball tonight - that's five times on the year - and reorganized, added, and changed the links page. Weblogs and comics are among the new features. Enjoy.

September 9, 2003 - Slack, don't slack, slack, don't slack

Remember how I did a lot of homework this weekend? Well, Monday sort of cancelled that out. The day went something like this: Up at ~7:15, off to class. Back at about 9:00, turn on the computer, check email, go to bed. Get up at about 1:50, head to class. Get back about 4:00, play videogames until about 12:30, go to bed. These are the good days. :)
Of course, that means that tonight, I have to do a boatload of stuff, but that's fine. The fact that this update is coming at 3:00 in the morning notwithstanding.
So I learned today that AIT shut off my second computer from the internet. Bastards. Of course, this is the machine that I need to have on and accessible, because it has all the files and such for the work I'm doing. Words will be exchanged tomorrow. And speaking of tomorrow, I have a whole list of stuff to do; hopefully, it includes a round of Frisbee golf in the evening. The list currently stands at about eight things - and that's not counting classes, the quiz I have tomorrow, or finding time to feed myself. Hrm.
Anyhow, there's a small new addition to the links page; enjoy it.

September 11, 2003 - Some statistics

It seems like, with my love for random and meaningless numbers, I should provide some statistics for the schoolyear thus far. So here we go:

September 14, 2003 - Sadness reigns over Ames

What can we say? We got destroyed this weekend. And man, was it an ugly game. Sure, we lead in just about every statistic, but when I left at the beginning of the fourth quarter, it was 33-7 and we had just turned it over on downs after having first and goal from the six. In about five minutes, we had two punts blocked and we threw an interception. Ugly, ugly, ugly.
The Game was just a precursor to the rest of the weekend, though. I came home, ate some food, took a nap, watched another college game, and played some videogames on Saturday. Then on Sunday, I finally decided to get up about 2:00, and proceeded to watch football more or less straight through 10:30. (Good news though: Broncos won and Bears lost!) I'm hoping this is going to be an easy week for me :)
I have nothing in terms of site updates, or anything interesting to say. So there!

September 16, 2003 - Sleep deprivation

8:00 AM classes are the work of the devil. Really.
But aside from that uplifting (and extremely common) complaint from me, things are going pretty well. I've had some time to dink around, some time to do some work, etc, etc. I really should be doing more work, as I have a couple things planned for the next few days/weeks. I'm planning to hit the Scuba club's Try Scuba event, where you strap on Scuba gear and they throw you in a pool and take bets on how long you'll last. I'm going to try to hit the DDR Club's meetings starting next week, and I'm trying to get in with a computer-security-slash-information-assurance club that's starting out.
Classes are still going fine, despite the timing. Not as challenging as I expected them to be ... at least, not until I tried some of my homework earlier tonight. Heh.
The apartment still rocks, too. I'm really digging on this whole cooking for myself thing. I had my first experience tonight with Hamburger Helper, and I must say I was rather impressed. Should yield three solid meals for me... And it's much better than my last attempt, which yielded some tart, dry, awful chicken. Live and learn.
Again, no site work. Tough proverbial bananas.

September 21, 2003 - Weekends are great

So, yet again, I haven't updated in ages. So sue me, etc, etc.
This last week was pretty long, though I can't really pinpoint why. I didn't have any exams, nothing went overly wrong, and yet it just seemed ... long. Maybe it's because of my Computer Science class; it's irrelevant, it's theoretical, it's inexact, it's peculiar, it's counterintuitive, it's complicated, and it's meticulous. Yeah, yeah, tell me what you really think.
The Scuba club's event was really fun; I have to say that I am seriously considering spending the dough to get certified and go on trips with these people. They're all great people, and the diving itself was incredibly fun ... even just in a pool! The next Try Scuba event comes highly recommended from me, to any interested Iowa State parties.
As for this last weekend, it rocked. A hockey game, some DDR, some Trivial Pursuit, a whole lotta football, and watching a friend of mine swing around the stripper pole she and her roommates put up in their apartment about sums it up. And yes, you read that right.
It seems like I should mention that I also recently switched to use Mozilla Firebird as my standard Web browser. It just seems better; not to mention it hasn't crashed on me yet. Tabbed browsing is far and away the coolest feature I've seen recently. If you're good enough with computers to switch browsers, I highly recommend checking it out.
Anyhow, I'm checking out for the evening. Going to go see Cats tomorrow, so that should be fun. I'll update again about that .... sometime.

September 23, 2003 - Weeks, not so great

A semi-regular update. Huzzah!
My schedule is so screwed up. For example: Saturday night I went to bed around 4. Sunday afternoon, I got up around 2. Sunday night, bed around 3. Monday morning, up at 7. Napped 11:30-1:30. Monday night, bed at 4. Tuesday morning, up at 7. Tuesday evening, napped from 8:50-9:50. And now it's just shy of 2, and I'm hoping to crash soon. Ugh.
Anyhow, Cats was awesome. A very catchy show, great music, great acting/prowling/dancing, etc, etc. I can see why it's been playing forever. But, the best part about going to see Cats was that Robert and I decided that we should go and see more things. So we got ahold of the year's schedule of events, and ticked off a bunch that we want to hit. These include the drummers of west Africa, the Sound of Music, a Scottish Christmas, Saturday Night Fever, Othello, and Rockapella. Also, Stomp is coming in April, and Rent is coming to the Des Moines Civic Center in April also. Those should be fun, and maybe they'll give me some small amount of culture. ... ... ... Nah.
This week is getting pretty crazy ... The Career Fair was today, and I think I may have gotten a couple solid leads ... Pella and Kingland Systems are the ones I feel the best about. We'll see what turns up, though I got a lot of responses like "Oh, summer intern? Yeah, come back in spring."
Hopefully I can squeeze in a game of Frisbee Golf tomorrow... Though I'm sort of bummed, since I haven't played racquetball in two weeks; this is a situation that needs rectifying in the near future.
More details about this upcoming weekend will be posted as I get them... It might turn out to be very interesting.
Oh yeah, and check out the Quote of the Day - it's a good one.

September 26, 2003 - It's official

Oh yes, ladies and gentlemen, I am very much headed out to Lake Okoboji this weekend to do my certification dives for SCUBA basic open-water training. (I think I got that right... I'm still not clear on how the system works; I just do what I'm told to do for now :)) It should be a blast, despite eating up a whole weekend. Maybe I can put up some pictures when I return; we shall see.
Since the week's almost over, it seems pointless to mention that it's been long and tedious. So, who cares? :)
In other news, I *hate* my Algorithms class. Stupidest material ever.
I hope everyone enjoys their weekend as much as I'm going to!

September 29, 2003 - Back, dry, and warm

Wow. I really can't say enough great things about this weekend's SCUBA trip. It was a blast, the people were great, and a whole lot of fun was had by all! I'm really looking forward to completing the rest of the work to get certified to SCUBA dive... That way I can start getting stoked about the Spring Break trip that I'm going to hitch along on!
Being away wasn't too stressful, as I had busted pretty hard last week to finish up a bunch of homework. So I didn't have a whole lot to do when I came back, which was nice. I was way too stoked to do homework. :)
But now, it's back to the grind of school. Well, it should be. I sort of skipped my 8:00 AM class this morning. My alarm went off and I sort of thought, "Ehhh.... NO.", shut it off, and went back to sleep until noon. Small loss, I hope.
Anyhow, with the semester's first real test this week, and a couple of small things to do, it should be busy but not overwhelming. I'm scheduled for racquetball later in the week, and I'd like to get in one last Frisbee Golf before it gets too cold... We shall see.
In case you missed the first link, be sure to check out the page about this weekend, but that's all the site work. Finally, shoutouts to Kristi for integrating stylesheets into her site.