8.30.2004
4:56pm

In the news... Kevin Smith is making a sequal to Clerks, the 1994 indie cult hit, but he's keeping the sequel low-budget as not to break with the first movie's tradition. It's going to take place 10 years after the original film, with the same actors as before.
Passion of the Christ comes out on DVD tomorrow. I for one won't be purchasing it, a little too gruesome to watch a second time.

Aside from classes today, I met with Diane to talk about Student Ambassador treasurer stuff. She didn't have much advice to give me, other than to stay organized. There's still a lot of procedures I'm not entirely clear on, so I will certainly be asking Adam for help from time to time.

8.28.2004
5:30pm

It's raining, it's pouring...

Florida certainly hasn't changed since I left for the summer, constantly getting small showers and thunderstorms almost daily. It is nice to have some rain to cool off the temperature outside, but it certainly doesn't help lower the humidity level. As my luck would have it, I chose to give my car a quick wash earlier today; hopefully it stays relatively dry under the aluminum covering. My UPS has flickered a couple times because of the lightning, despite my father's bickering it wasn't a bad investment at all.

Rolando left last night to go home for the weekend because his sister was having a birthday. Correspondingly, I've been pretty bored just sitting around so I watched a couple movies last night and worked on some cleaning/sorting today. Adam gave me most of the SA treasurer notebooks last night, so I've got to quickly figure out how to do everything before I get behind. I was ambitious enough to do my Circuit Theory homework, which was only ten easy questions, and also my single Prob/Stat problem.

8.26.2004
11:58pm

Pretty boring day today, just one tour and my first Modern Physics class. A new professor, Dr. Ramon Lopez, is teaching that class and he jumped right in today with relativity.

I applied to Best Buy today for a part-time job, so maybe they will call me for an interview. I'm still planning to get some applications from other places in case BB doesn't work out, because I need to have a job somewhere. I even did some shopping there today, since they had a 2 for $20 DVD sale. I got Chasing Amy, The Count of Monte Cristo, L.A. Confidential, The Rundown, Se7en, and The Usual Suspects.

8.25.2004
9:17pm
BNL - What a Good Boy

First day of classes! Woohoo! Ok, back to reality. I had Circuit Theory first, with Dr. Grossman as a professor; he seemed knowledgeable enough, although Dave says his students have a hard time catching up in Circuit Theory II the following semester. He didn't try to teach us anything today, but he did hand out a sample quiz for us to look over and ponder the method of solution. In next period I had Scientific/Technical Communication with Dr. Tolbert, who actually seems pretty strict. Dan told me last year that her class was pretty easy, so I'm riding on his recommendation. She also let us out early after giving an introductory Powerpoint presentation, so I killed some time and went to Probability/Statistics. I was surprised to see a graduate student, Andrea Resse, teaching the class since it's against Florida Tech canon, but she seemed to know her stuff and had a good method of presentation. It will be nice to have a younger, English-speaking math teacher for once, in a subject that seems to be very easy.

After prob/stat I had lunch at Evans and headed to the book store to drop $527 on books for 4 of my classes. I still have to get a Modern Physics book, but Dave said he would sell me his. Rolando had to spend $500-something so I don't feel so bad about it, but it's still a big racket. I stopped in to the registrar's office to change my address from Wilmington to Melbourne, and then headed back to the apartment. At 3 o'clock I followed Rolando over to Olin again for Soft/Hardware Design class, taught by Dr. Kozaitis. He had a pretty rushed introduction to Linux, which was review for me, but the lab GSAs will definitely have to cover the commands again.

I had dinner with Chris, Rolando, Ron, Jason, Steve, and Ginae at Evans and got to ride in Chris's new Volkswagon Jetta GLI. He just got the car yesterday so he still can't work the clutch very well. Rolando and I cringed every time he stalled the car, especially since it's brand new. He traded in his Toyota SUV and still had to finance for $7500. After that I had a 1-hour meeting with the Student Ambassador executive board.

Right now I'm just relaxing and waiting to meet with Adam about treasurer stuff for SA.

8.24.2004
8:48pm

Finally got our RoadRunner hooked up today, so I'm back online again. In the words of Cartman, "kickass!"

This morning I went to BestBuy and bought a Sony DVD/SACD player for $130. Quite a lot to throw down on a DVD player, but it has built-in Dolby Digital, DTS, and SACD decoders which is everything I wanted. Later in the day Rolando and I went to Circuit City with Chris and bought the ESA 27" TV we looked at yesterday, which cost us $180. The picture quality was actually very nice for a cheap television, after adjusting the color settings a little with help from the THX Optimiser. I listened to Dark Side of the Moon in 5.1 surround today and it was awesome, then I put in Away From the Sun which was also in 5.1.

Classes start tomorrow and I've got four, starting at 11am. Time to get back in the swing of things, with stuff like homework and studying... eck.

I'm heading out now to play some basketball with Rolando and Ron, so I'll make my next post tomorrow night.

8.17.2004
7:35pm

I saw this on Slashdot today under the user comments for the new poll about which game to add to the 2008 Olympics; it was just so great I had to post it:

Slashbot Rhyme

I make a dash to the Slash to the D-O-T
Coz them news for nerds makes sense to me
So let this serve as a warning to the spammers and trolls
You may have a fat pipe but you ain't got bawls.

There's a new manifesto by ESR
And the stats of the watts of a hybrid car
I gots love for Perens and miguel, et al
And I voted CowboyNeal on the Slashdot Poll

I'm Microsoft bashin' like every single day
Coz the OS got holes and Exploder's teh gay
Now SCO's talkin' trash so I give firefox a ride
To reply as a Coward so I can hate on McBride

I will flame you with language I won't say to your face
And I bet you can't guess who gots all your base
There's one way to know if your server is rotting
Just post a link and you'll get a slashdotting

You can mod me down coz I'm a karma whore
And I'm a decorated veteran of a recent flame war
Where they fought about an app with a K or a G
And a heated debate on what was meant by "Free"

As a slashbot, when Linux receives a threat,
My palms begin to sweat and my evil bit is set
You best believe I'll be posting a rant
And I'll be surfin' Slashdot 'til my mom says I can't.

8.13.2004
3:41pm

Just an update on two books I've been reading: The Elegant Universe, and Rare Earth. The former deals with (super)string-theory, discussing some of the hurdles it has overcome in quantum physics and relativity. String theory suggests that rather than point particles being the constituents of all matter, there are these one-dimensional looped strings that can assume the identity of any type of elementary particle depending on their frequency of vibration. Not that these strings are possible to experimentally verify, because their biggest dimension is equal to the Plank length, some 10^-35 meters. According to string theory there must be at least nine space dimensions and most likely ten, but no more than that. When you throw the time dimension into the mix, we have a 10- or 11- dimensional universe. All but 3 of the space dimensions are tightly curled up, so they are not noticed in everyday encounters. Anyway, there's a lot of other interesting things that the book has to say that would appeal to anyone interested in physics. The latter book I have yet to get very far into, but it discusses the sheer improbablity of complex life forming anywhere else in the universe.

12:58am

Came upon a series of TLK fanfiction stories called the "Chronicles of the Pridelands" by John Burkitt and David Morris, written back in 1995-1997. Been busy reading the four installments over the past week, very well written and entertaining. I also read the online script for The Lion King 1 1/2, which looked pretty hilarious so I bought the DVD after work today. I'm probably not going to get to bed until I give it a watch. I also bought Kill Bill, Vol. 2 when it was released Tuesday, but I haven't had the opportunity to watch it again.

8.8.2004
2:36pm

I decided not to go into work today, so that I could get caught up on some things. I went to Barnes & Noble this morning to get some new reading material, a book called "Rare Earth" and one called "The Elegant Universe." I've had a taste for nonfiction lately so I'm trying to learn more about space/evolution. Education doesn't come cheap from B&N though, one of the books was $17 and the other $16. Compared to my college textbooks they're a real bargain though.

After my little shopping trip I went for a bike ride, quickly realising that in 5 weeks muslces can atrophy a lot. My legs are always so sore after work that I never get a chance to go, but I made myself do it today since I had the day off anyway.

I've started playing the game Half Life: Opposing force, which I got for free when I switched over to using Valve Software's Steam content delivery system. I paid $15 for Half Life: GOTY edition at Wal-Mart so now I can legally play CS, DOD, TFC, etc online.

8.7.2004
7:06pm

I've noticed that I'm falling behind on my blog postings. I was gone this past weekend to Newark Valley, NY where both sets of grandparents live. I drove up Saturday following Mom, Dad, and Brit in the van. We had an incident in Pennsylvania when my the serpentine belt in my Dad's Plymouth Grand Voyager decided to slip off when we drove through a pool of water. He was almost able to fix it himself, but he ended up calling AAA since we pay for the yearly subscription anyway. My parents don't know the meaning of a non-stop trip from point A to B, and we ended up stopping for dinner at a sit-down restaurant which wasted another hour or so. We finally got to NY around 10:30pm and had to stay at the Gillow's house since Aunt Brenda, Uncle Andy, Abbey and Zack were staying at Grandma Cortright's. I basically had only Sunday to visit with them, since I needed to drive back on Monday for work. We went to the Burford's family reunion on Sunday, which is my dad's mother's side of the family. As expected, I didn't know anybody there other than my own grandparents, so I had some free food and was bored for 4 hours. When we got back to Newark Valley, Aunt Barb and her kids were at the Cortright's house, so we got to see them as well. Zack and Andy had spent the day sorting/storing wood for Grandpa so they will be all set when winter comes around. My grandfather isn't doing too well these days, seemingly always recovering from some operation or treatment. He's stubborn about it as well, so he doesn't go to the doctor even when he's in a lot of pain. My grandmother is about as stubborn, obsessing more about mowing the lawn than her own health.

Speaking of mowing lawns, my cousin Zack has expanded his lawn care business to about 15 customers. He bought a $7,000 commercial mower last spring and uses his parents' pickup truck to haul all his equipment around town. He's looking to study landscape architechture in college, and it seems like he really enjoys it. At any rate, he should have a good amount of money saved up before he even starts school.

My trip back to Blacksburg on Monday was uneventful. I left around 9:30 after saying goodbye to everybody, and headed down I-81 until I got to Christiansburg. I expected to make the trip in 8-9 hours, but it turns out Expedia was right on the money when it said 10 hours. I only made two brief stops and it still took me the full amount of time.

As for the past four days, I've just been working at Corning and not accomplishing much else. I quickly discovered that the George Foreman grill is not designed for chicken breasts, unless you want char-char-grilled chicken that looks more like pork by the time you finish with it. Needless to say, I've been outsourcing my food preparation and cooking to honorable establishments such as Hardees, Taco-Bell, and Subway. Mom need never be the wiser.

I saw Collateral this afternoon at NRV mall theater, starring Tom Cruise and Jamie Foxx. The film had soaring reviews at Rotten Tomatoes, so I expected an awesome thriller. Well, apparently I don't have the same taste as most of the reviewers, because I found the movie to be quite a letdown in terms of excitement. Don't get me wrong, the acting by Cruise and Foxx was great, but the story is just so bland. There is one excellent insightful scene between Cruise and Foxx involving Foxx's character's plan to open a limo business that never plays out. It's the type of brutal honesty dialogue that Fight Club touted, and criticizes all the people who stay locked into the pattern of their lives because they are afraid to take a risk, to "roll with it" or "improvise" as the film says. If the movie had a little more to keep the viewer engaged, like less camera time in the cab and more camera time showing the assassinations of Cruise's character Vincent, it would have been top-notch. But the plot doesn't go into any details about why the victims are killed, other than that they happen to be on Vincent's hit list.