3.29.2005
12:42am
Whew, nothing feels better than finishing a big assignment 8 hours before it is due. Well, except for maybe not having said assignment in the first place. My essay on Corning for basic economics is posted under compositions for anybody bored enough to want to read it. I was kinda amazed how much information they put in annual stockholder reports, guess it goes hand-in-hand with being a publicly held corporation. In any event, I hope Dr. Monari is pleased enough to give me an A on the assignment. And even if he feels grumpy and gives me a B it won't matter, I'll end up with an A in the class because of his extra-credit notebook clause.
On a slightly darker note, the Circuit Theory 2 test this morning was awful. Most every person I spoke to felt it was dubious whether they even made a passing grade. I personally got hung up on some stuff that we didn't go over in class, because Dr. Murshid loves to test on stuff he hasn't gone over. This seems like a bit of deja vu... NCSSM Calc 3 anybody? Well, my FIT buddies won't understand that one but Jenny will if she reads this.
Dad's sending me my tax return papers tomorrow; I should be getting back some money from the gov'ment after they process my claim.
3.28.2005
12:31pm
I took a break from CT2 studying last night to see the film adaptation of William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, starring Al Pacino and Jeremy Irons. I thought it was a great movie, very emotional with great acting. It's nice to get some contrast to the usual blow-stuff-up action blockbusters, where the focus is not so much on making money. As many others have commented, the profuse anti-semitism in the movie is supposed to accurately depict the Venetian conflict between the Geto Jews and Christians. Al Pacino plays a Jewish named Shylock who is a usurer, something considered a sin of Christians at the time. He makes a loan of 3,000 ducats to Antonio, played by Irons, with the promise that he would claim a pound of flesh if Antonio defaulted on the loan. After Shylock's daughter runs away and steals his money he becomes enraged and almost psychotic with a desire for revenge against Antonio, and more broadly, Christians. There's the parallel plot of romance between Bassanio and Portia, and the love between Antonio and Bassanio, and of course there's the usual Shakespearian twist at the end of the movie. Pacino has one excellent monologue and is overall one of my favorite actors ever; when Shylock gets his due justice Pacino conveys the emotion perfectly. I should really read more of Shakespeare's works, because he really is one of the most amazing English authors. The fluidity and sophistication of dialog is something you won't find today, partially due to the passage of time and evolving of communication, but also because of our current laziness when it comes to language.
3.27.2005
2:51pm
Green Day - Jesus of Suburbia
Happy Easter
Well the process of packing has begun early. Rolando and I worked on disassembling some furniture, taking down posters, etc. I got some boxes and packing tape from OfficeMax to protect the more delicate electronics; fortunately I had some left-over bubble wrap because that stuff is expensive. Rolando said his dad is coming down Friday with a trailer to help us haul stuff over to the house, so we didn't need to rent a U-haul. I got Tito to take my Friday shift so I will be able to help the whole afternoon. On the negative side, it means I won't get but 12 hours this week. It has been slow there anyway because we are out-of-stock on a lot of home theater items, particularly surround receivers. I wish they would just go ahead and send us the new models and get them deployed. We did get Samsung's new HD-upconversion DVD player and those idiots removed SACD/DVD-A support. Oh well, I guess it makes the most sense for average Joe consumer. Let the audiophiles buy the $300 player I guess.
I've got to study for my CT2 test tomorrow, and then I have an Econ paper due Tuesday. We had to pick a company worth > $50 million that had laid off more than 2,000 workers in the past 4 years so I picked Corning. Lots of people picked banks and airline and such--all of them had a bad time during the .com bust and post-911 recession. Tomorrow I've got a little physics contest to potentially win $100 and a plaque, that is if I can remember everything from Physics 2 and Modern Physics--haha. Ron and I were both invited to interview for a research project next semester dealing with machine learning and speech recognition--20 people vying for 15 spots so there's a good chance of me getting picked. No news yet about summer internships, so it looks like I may end up stuck at Best Buy unless something pulls through. I did sign up for my new class schedule next semester. I will have class from 8am - 9:20pm on Tuesday, from 11am - 4:50pm Wednesday, and from 8am - 6:15pm on Thursday. Yep, three days of class, but man they are a busy three days. I still don't know how Student Ambassadors is going to fit in next semester--maybe it won't. I haven't decided yet. I do know that the fall semester is going to be extremely important in regard to my major, since every class is Electrical & Computer Engineering. If I end up doing the research project as well I'm not going to have much free time. Oh did I mention that there are 3 labs as well? It's a good thing there's superlative job security in this major to make it all worthwhile *sarcasm*
Well I tried not to write about Terri Schiavo in my blog, but that didn't work out. Conservative Christians can be so problematic sometimes, they choose to focus their efforts on the wrong things. For some reason they must not want to let her go to heaven yet; either that or they are waiting for some divine intervention miracle. I actually respect Jeb Bush a little more after he rejected pleas to intervene--he knows well enough that he can't contest a court order. Hopefully this is what Terri would want, after fifteen years in a vegetative state.
3.22.2005
2:09pm
Had two tests this morning, both of them went very well AFAIK. I spent some time studying up in the SA office before the history test, and Ryan was up there playing some tunes on the piano. Now I'm in Dr. Ports' class listening to him talk about his airplane flight back to Melbourne; very not-interesting.
I'm loving this break from work--tonight I'll have plenty of time to work on my CT2 lab due tomorrow. I do have to go in tomorrow from 5:30-9:30 but not too bad.
3.20.2005
10:56pm
Fun weekend--no work! I couldn't believe I managed to have Friday-Sunday free. I washed my car after the rains finally quit, as it had been quite a while since the last one. Friday night I went out to Outback for dinner with Jason, Jenee, Angela, Rolando, Tim, Chelsea, and a couple of her friends. We had to wait a while for a table but that's to be expected, gave us time to talk. After dinner we went back to Ron's apartment to watch some Comedy Central and hang out for a while. Ron had to work at 6am and the rest of them were planning to go paint-balling Saturday so it wasn't a very late night. I woke up at a decent hour on Saturday and watched a few movies and cleaned up a bit. Rolando and company came back from paintball around 3:30 pretty tired and exhilarated. We went to a Thai restaurant for Jenee's birthday and as a send-off for Angela who had to go back to her college. I think Rolando was sad that she had to leave, they always got along really well. Dan came over around 11 to watch Die Hard 3, as Cory and Chris were preoccupied at the pool hall.
So that brings me up to today. I woke up early at 9:30 because I had an appointment at 11, got back from that around noon. I needed to take a 4-hour online course assessment which was very time consuming but not very difficult. Got that knocked out and worked on getting some SA stuff together and study material for my two tests Tuesday. Gas is up to $2.06 here so I've been trying not to make unnecessary trips--I'll probably start walking to campus again now that it's warmer. Twelve days left until the move to the house--I'm gonna have to start taking down posters and disassembling furniture and such.
3.18.2005
6:57pm
And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good...
The heavens finally stopped pouring down rain and Melbourne was once again purified in His grace. :)
3.16.2005
12:15pm
Been pretty busy the last few days, between Circuit Theory labs and history assignments. Yesterday we talked about the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in WWII, and we had a couple essays to read before class. I was up on the 3rd floor of the library reading the two accounts, and as I was randomly looking around I noticed a bookshelf that had the memoirs of Harry Truman from 1945-1951. I flipped it open to August 1945, and sure enough there were the original transciptions of Truman's news announcements when the two bombs were dropped. About the same time I was shocked to think about all the resources we have available in the library that I will never have time to read. Somebody could read three books a day and not get through all 100,000 volumes in their lifetime, and that's just the FIT library. Every now and then we need to be reminded about the significance of written work.
I had my campus tour Monday during a heavy rain; most everybody got pretty soaked and it wasn't the best situation to talk about how great Florida is. On the positive side, it did stop raining just as the tour was ending. Since then we've had rain every day, so I'm wondering where the sunshine has gone. Maybe somebody can figure out a way to change rainwater in gasoline, since prices have hit $2.05 and climbing.
I've got work tonight, then it's back home to work on history and electron devices. Tomorrow will be circuit theory and software/hardware. Doesn't everybody just love homework? I go in again Friday night and then I have Saturday off, thankfully. I need the time to study for my two tests next Tuesday.
3.11.2005
1:03am
Had to share a great quotation I read while perusing reviews on Epinions. Truer words have never been spoken, er typed I mean.
"Nothing promotes literacy quite like cinematic garbage."
3.10.2005
10:18pm
Watching - Charlie's Angels (Superbit)
I've been so tired lately... I think the absense of classes caused my brain to shut down. Whenever I'm not at work it seems like I'm just lounging around watching movies or browsing web sites. Ron hasn't been available to do anything and I haven't seen much of Dave either. Chris, Dan, and Cory are coming back tomorrow morning so hopefully I can do something with them this weekend. Chris's apartment is supposed to be cleaner now which is a plus. I had dinner with Steve at the Rat, and he and a friend rode their bikes to Daytona. Yes, Daytona. Apparently it was "Bike Week" and they thought it would be funny to ride up there. He said it took them about a day and a half to get there, then they took a break for a day and came back. I've been on some long bike rides before, but nothing as extreme as this.
3.8.2005
1:06pm
Wallflowers - Everybody Out of the Water
Rolando just told me this morning that the house sellers accepted his dad's offer. The close date is now April 8th unless they change their mind again. So if everything goes to plan, Chris and Cory will take our apartment for the duration of our 12-month lease and Ron and Jason will cancel their lease since people are waiting to move in there anyway.
Oh, I found out a couple days ago that my parents are going to Hawaii in April for 2 weeks. Grandma and Grandpa Gillow will also be going for their 50 year anniversary. I'm a litte jealous, but then again Florida isn't too bad either :)
3.7.2005
11:55pm
Watching - Pearl Harbor
Another long day at work. I helped open at 9:45am and didn't leave until 7:30pm. Danny was going over our performance reviews today to see what areas we needed to focus on; he seems to be pretty happy with my work habits. After work I headed home to eat some more cake and work on my PC, which got itself a reformat. I can't think of too much to write now; maybe later. Tomorrow is my free day so I need to get some schoolwork done.
3.6.2005
12:05pm
Yay it's my birthday. Unfortunately we had our morning meeting at Best Buy so I had to get up at 6am for that, and I have to go back this afternoon at 3:45. Good news is I got a $100 gift card from Best Buy for reciting my teachable POV in front of the store. I have no idea what I'll use it for, maybe some DVDs. I called the grandparents and now I'm going to take a nap. Tonight I'll probably get a cake and see if Ron and Dave want to come over. Ron has his community service this week at 7am every day, so I can't complain too much about one early day.
3.3.2005
5:12pm
Pink Floyd - Money
I never believed people when they talked about how awesome it was; now I know and understand. Forgot those "find your old highschool classmates" spam ads, this thing is the real deal. It was interesting to look back at my 2001-2002 class from Hoggard High School and I was surprised how many faces I recognized and how many names I didn't. What can I say, I was never much of a social person. I've added most of my NCSSM hallmates that have profiles, and even found my cousin CJ on SUNY's listing. Just imagine where social networking would be without the Internet.
I got my birthday card from my grandparents today along with my $10 Fujifilm rebate check, but of course with the good comes the bad: an interest bill for my CFI Stafford loan. I'm still waiting for my free Monster license frames so I can show off how much of a HT geek I am. I've been spending more time on AVSForum and I really need to focus on more important things like studying.
3.2.2005
12:00am
Just added a new blog menu to accomodate March 05. History essay on Andrew Carnegie and Henry Ford is due tomorrow; not even close to being finished. All-nighter? Hopefully not, but we'll see how it goes.