2.28.2005
8:41pm

Last day 'o the month. This means I'm going to have to redesign my blog index because there can't be two March's. Homecoming is finally over. SA took 2nd place in the parade (beating college players, thank you very much) and 3rd for overall & fundraising. We're trying to get the new people trained up to be tour guides next semester; with Angie gone I've been doing the Monday 2pm slot. As it turns out the SA office lost power during our heavy rain yesterday so my Win2k PC was finally rebooted after its 40 day stretch.

Chris and Cory are coming over to watch a movie, then I've got to finish up my CT lab for Wednesday. I need to write my history essay tomorrow so I can do CT homework on Thursday. Fortunately my only work day is Wednesday night, then again on Friday. My birthday's coming up on March 6th which is coincidentally during spring break. I need the break from classes, particularly to catch up on C++ and our final project that will determine our grade. Trying to learn to program in a lecture class is so worthless.

No news yet on a possible house... we'll find one when we find one I guess. Summer's approaching fast enough and I don't really want to have some stranger live with me in the apartment. Maybe Ron will stick around and room here.

Chatting with Ron on AIM is always an entertaining experience:

2.24.2005
10:09pm

The FIT Talent Show was phenomenal. I went with Adam, Julie, and some other Student Ambassadors after our alumni reunion social. We had a mixture of rock, pop, rap, and a capella music and some great dance numbers. College Players even did the swahili "One By One" from TLKoB. Dave was one of the coordinators this year and the event was sponsored by the Caribbean Students Association. The hosts were witty and had a great script worked out--they even involved the crowd with 'Lil John shouts of "yeah" "okay" and "what?" They introduced the Homecoming kings and queens for all 9 participating organizations. Derek went up on stage with a few other people after the intermission to do a limbo competition.

Yesterday I went to the career fair with Ron and talked to some potential employers in engineering and computer software. Although Boeing gave me a scholarship they didn't seem too enthusiastic when I talked to their recruiters. Harris and GE seemed good potentials, along with some smaller local companies. When I attended the FIT scholarship reception tonight I got to speak with the Boeing representative, who encouraged us to apply online and let him know when we did so.

Tomorrow I've got class from 10-1, float construction until 2, wacky wars at 3:30, CAB event, and SA dessert reunion. Pretty well booked.

2.22.2005
10:50pm

Ok, first things first. Apparently the Florida Tech ECE department nominated me and three other students for scholarships from the Boeing Company. I got a call from Dr. Kalajian around 4pm to tell me that I got a free $2,500. The Boeing representatives at the Career Fair tomorrow want to talk with us (probably about intern/job opportunities) and there is a presentation on Thursday at 4pm. Not only was this scholarship a complete shock but I didn't have to do anything to get it, other than having a 4.0 I suppose. No essays, no transcripts, no "this is where I want to be in 10 years." This did prompt me to update my resume and I'll definitely be volunteering with SA tomorrow to help set up--I can cheat and meet the Boeing people before everybody else.

But wait, my day gets even better. At Best Buy Danny finally got us access to our free jackets from the Superbowl Sales Contest. The whole home theater team gets Italian leather jackets, just in time for spring in Florida. Unfortunately we technically aren't allowed to resell them. Also, at our TPOV meeting tonight Danny asked if anybody could recite the transformation outline from memory, and I did it (with a few stumbles along the way) in front of the rest of the closing crew and our GM. I get a $10 gift card for memorizing it (yeah I know a plasma TV would have been better but I'm grateful for anything). We also had a cool demo area set up today with NFS: Underground for Xbox and a Klipsch F-2 surround system. Even Danny got in some driving time. Tito and Teddy invited me to go shoot some pool with them tonight but I declined since I need to be up early tomorrow.

Aside from this, I did manage to go to class today and helped Adam with the SA homecoming float for a couple hours. Amy came by to work some more on the mural, so it looks like most everything is falling into place. We need to get Dennis's truck outfit with a makeshift dock and I need to figure out how I want to mount my speakers. I'm going for 4 instead of 2 this year--we're the lead float and the music needs to be great. I'm a little scared about my costume this year because Melissa went shopping and got some gold wrapping paper and gold face paint; supposedly I'm going to be a statue. This week we've also got some SA reunion events, the typical homecoming fare, and new for this year we are giving abridged campus tours on Saturday after the parade and barbeque.

2.21.2005
9:51pm

Just found out from Rolo that the house bid fell through. Apparently the sellers didn't want to accept 190,000 since somebody "supposedly" offered 195,000. Time to look for something else, maybe a little bit closer to campus this time. If the sellers are bluffing they may change their mind, but that has yet to be determined.

We had a short SA meeting tonight and I went to Joe's recruiting session for Integrated Ideas--the startup company that he, Dave, Brian, and a few others are forming. I was actually the only person that showed up from his list of ten people, so I got a personalized presentation on their business plan. Right now they have a few contracts with local businesses but they want to use the revenue to fund their own entrepreneurial ideas, eventually moving away from a "for hire" model to a self-sustaining engineering business. It's obvious that they've put a good deal of thought into this but I don't think they realize the potential difficulties. In any event, I'll probably volunteer to help them out where I can.

1:09pm

Homecoming Week Begins. Campus tour in 1 hour.

Started off the day with a Circuit Theory 2 test that wasn't too bad nor was it easy. I'll have to wait and see how well I did. Rolando and Ron want to go take a look at the house tonight, since the sellers accepted Rolo's Dad's bid. They still don't know when they'll be able to move out since the guy works in the Air Force or something. Bottom line is that we will be moving into the house probably by the end of March. They figure rent will be $350 per month plus a 4-way split of utilities. If Dan moves in during the Fall semester it would lower prices even more, but I'm not sure that there's enough room for a fifth person.

I went last night with Cory and Dan to see Constantine with Keanu Reeves and Rachel Weisz. It was a great special effects movie, even though the acting wasn't that great. Tilda Swinton as Gabriel is an interesting character, as is Peter Stormare as Satan. I can't wait to see Tilda in The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe as Jadis the White Witch. The movie is also decidedly anti-smoking even though Keanu has a cigarette in his mouth during every scene. The visual imagery of hell and heaven is pretty awesome; hell looked like a hurricane of fire. The half-breeds/demons definitely come across as gruesome.

SA computer is 33 days and counting...

2.17.2005
2:02pm

I finally got to see the Director's Cut of Donnie Darko last night. I picked it up at Best Buy for $15.99 before it jumps to the normal $24.99. I actually didn't like it as much as the theatrical version, because the pacing was a little bit slower and they changed a few of the songs. It did explain more about the plot which would be helpful for somebody who hasn't seen all the deleted scenes on the original DVD.

Work yesterday was pretty uneventful. I had a few good customers but it was really slow otherwise. Danny talked to me yesterday about getting full-time over the summer, and I told him I was intersted. If I find an internship I won't have to work there but otherwise it'll be nice to have something lined up. I have work tonight and tomorrow from 3:30-close but Saturday will be devoted to the Ambassador's retreat and Fusion in Fabric event.

2.14.2005
2:10pm

Happy Valentine's Day everybody!

I'm in the Ambassador's office right now listening to some music and reading AVSForum. I checked on my Pentium 266 up here and it's chugging along just fine, earning me some BOINC credit for FIT's SETI team. As of right now its uptime has been 26+ days. I'm kinda amazed it has made it so long without a reboot.

2.13.2005
11:40pm

Another relatively boring day. Last night Rolando rented The Village and Employee of the Month. I hadn’t seen either movie before so the surprise twist in The Village was completely new to me, and Employee of the Month was unexpectedly funny. I can’t say that I’ve seen many movies with Matt Dillon in them that were decent. Dan was over here along with Havier and another one of Rolando’s friends. I went into the new Wal-Mart Neighborhood Market last night around midnight and it’s actually very nice inside; they ripped off the typical Publix layout so it doesn’t feel like a warehouse as much as a Supercenter Wal-Mart.

As far as today goes, I had breakfast around 1:30 (haha) and then went over to Dan’s for a bit to try to troubleshoot his computer. For some reason Half-Life 2 won’t install on his PC now that he reformatted Windows XP. I took him to Best Buy just yesterday to get the game and he can’t even play it yet. Seems to be some file transfer problem with his secondary IDE optical drives--his motherboard and BIOS are some of the most unusual I’ve seen recently. Grandma Cortright gave me a call today so I got to talk to her for a little while, and Dad also called me to ask about classes and to tell me my cousin was arrested for armed robbery. As they say, there’s one in every family.

Cool link for the day - RAID on the iPod Shuffle.

2.12.2005
2:14am
Watching - Chasing Amy

Interesting day...

After my serious lack of sleep last night, I woke up very tired for Circuit Theory 2. I went and turned in my homework and sat through 50 minutes of explanations from Jean-Michele. After that I demonstrated my C++ programs that I worked out previously to Heshing and left lab early. I got a call from Adam asking me to do the 2pm tour since Mike couldn't make it so I headed home and took a nap. I woke up a little late right at 2pm and hurried over to campus only to find that Mike had already started his tour. I returned to the apartment and wasted some time before work at 4:30pm. Jason had called out today so it was just DJ, Rich, and me running all of home theater. Let's just say there were probably some pissed-off people that didn't get help from anybody. Danny was around trying to help out as much as he could. We've got quite the huge collection of open-box / scratch-and-dent tube televisions, so we're running specials trying to get of all of them.

I decided to tag along with Tito and DJ from Best Buy to Teddy's house after work. A bunch of people were having dinner at TGI Fridays so they headed over about the same time. Brian had his birthday today so they had been doing all sorts of fun stuff. We talked about work and girls and Brian's new home theater system which I have yet to hear. Supposedly it's quite the impressive system, but I know for a fact it won't come close to touching the theater I experienced at Chris Spell's in Wilmington. Tito and Teddy are training to become customer service rep level 2's which means they will roam all over the store helping out people. I didn't stick around for the drinking games but it's not as fun when you're drinking Pepsi and everybody else has beer.

2.10.2005
2:51pm

Test post using VI on the new Olin server.

2.8.2005
11:34pm
Stereophonics - Have a Nice Day

You know that camera trick in movies where they truck in while zooming out to create a weird compression effect (like in FoTR when the black rider shows up)? That's kinda what I feel like tonight. I've got a lab due tomorrow that I worked on earlier, and I have a test in both economics and American history on Thursday. Then to top it all off I have another Circuits homework due Friday, and best of all I have work tomorrow night, Thursday night, and Friday night! My goal was to get as much done tonight as possible, but the lab took longer than I thought and studying for history is a slow and painful process. I gave econ a quick run-through but I will have to spend some more time on that tomorrow after work. Hopefully I'll be able to take care of the circuits homework between 10pm - 2am on Thursday night.

The good news is that Saturday is open as of right now. By then I will need a break.

2.7.2005
2:35pm

Ahh, such a great weekend. I got to work Friday, Saturday, and Sunday so I racked up some hours at Best Buy. I left at 7pm yesterday so I got home in time for the start of the second quarter of the Super Bowl. Ron and Jason were having a party over at their place and Dan, Steve, Dave Kincaid, Joe, Brian, and were over there watching the game. Dave left shortly after I got there, but JB showed up with Risk so we played that while half-paying attention to the game. A little after midnight I left with Brian, Steve, and Joe still playing. We did get to see a preview of the new show American Dad after the Super Bowl. The creater of Family Guy also wrote this new show, but it has entirely new characters and was not very funny at all. Hopefully they dump the idea and go back to the Griffin family.

2.4.2005
11:43pm
Sammy Hagar - Sympathy For the Human

Bored on a Friday night... nobody around to play Halo with and hang out. Jason went home for the weekend with Jenee and Rolando went home as well. Ron tried to organize something with the remaining people but it didn't come through. I've already watched two movies tonight so there's not much left to do besides read or gaming. One of the movies I saw was a rental from Blockbuster called Winged Migration, a 2002 documentary about bird migrations. Now this may sound like the most boring topic for a movie but it had some of the most spectacular filmography I've ever seen. The soundtrack was also very excellent, as the movie revolved around the music with very little commentary. It was interesting to watch the "making of" featurette where they detail the process of "imprinting" the newborn birds to their human trainers. It reminded me a lot of the movie Fly Away Home in the way they had to get the birds to follow their lightweight airplane & hang glider. I also watched Working Girl, of which I got a copy for free. It was kinda amusing to see a bunch of famous actors in a late 80's movie--Harrison Ford, Sigourney Weaver, Joan Cusack, Alec Baldwin, Kevin Spacey, etc.

1:22am

Not much in terms of writing for today, just a little sketch I made a few minutes ago:

Homework for Circuit Theory 2 involves teaching oneself the material first, then spending time trying to figure out the solutions. Dr. Murshid claims our class is still moving through the material pretty slowly, but you might get a different response if you ask the students. Oh well, I'll still manage to make it through the class. I got an email from Cindy Schmitt today telling me to pick up an outstanding student application for the ECE department because of my 4.0 GPA. When I was in her office she also told me about some of the places looking for 4.0 students for summer research... things are looking a little better in that regard now that I'm sorta a Junior. She said her daughter had an internship with the United Space Alliance at $17 per hour. If I could get something anywhere close to that it would be awesome. I also checked in again with the Career Center and got an application for a GE internship, and they told me Boeing would be conducting interviews after the career fair on Feb 28th.

2.2.2005
12:26pm

Software/Hardware Integration has got to be the most boring lecture of all the classes I'm taking... it's impossible to concentrate on Dr. Kepuska's monotonous drone and slides full of example code. I could learn this all much more quickly from a book or in an interactive lab, but for some reason they require a lecture. After this class I've got a 3-hour Circuit Theory lab and then work from 5:30-10pm. At least my cold seems to be going away, now I'm just down to the occasional cough.

My Electron Devices book arrived from India today. It's the paperback "International Edition" that is identical to the US hardback version except for b&w photos, but it only cost me a total of $32.49 instead of $124. Ebay is awesome. Now I will have something to study with for our quiz tomorrow.