Bobbis.net

Gas prices in town jumped about 10 cents today. This morning I didn't have enough time to fill my tank on my way to class, gas was at $1.84. On my way back the cheapest gas was 1.92 (the station was closed for the day), everywhere else was $1.94, and I saw premium up to $2.00. Gaila, big hugs to you for traveling with this very expensive gas. I would guess that gas prices are very close to $2.00 on the way down. I have no clue why this happened, I haven't been keeping up with the news.

Anyway, back to my speech.

This time has just been flying so fast. Have you ever noticed that when you have a million things that need to get done, time will go by so fast?

It's Wednesday already. Monday I had lunch with my dad to sign tax forms and get information for filing FAFSA. Right after lunch I attended an open form on the new student organization policy. That night I introduced my parents to audio chat via Rendezvous and remote desktopping. We ended up working on FAFAS with me in the basement and my dad in the office upstairs. I have to say it was very productive, especially with audio chat going at the same time.

Tuesday I had my dental appointment to take care of some decay (yeah!, [/sarcasm]). The appointment went pretty quick. I was out in about 30 minutes and a numb lip until about 5:00.

Work this week has been all about the scholarships. Closing the applications and dumping the MySQL data into FileMaker. FileMaker really needs to make the text file import feature easier and more productive to use. Moving around over 100 fields with a mouse for an hour straight is mind numbing.

Tonight, Colin is giving a Cocoa Workshop for MUG. I grabbed a video projector for it. Tomorrow is a big meeting for MUG. We will be having pizza and pop, as well as CDs with freeware and shareware to burn. Friday I have a 6 minute speech that I haven't even started working on that is worth a good part of my grade.

I can't wait for the weekend to be able to see Gaila. Saturday we will be heading down to Simpson with Nerdig to see Man of Mode. Next week is Gaila's spring break, so she will be around to distract me from my mid-terms* (not that it's a bad thing ;) ).

Oh, I almost forgot. I found this nice article about why Mac OS X can be very productive, from the point of view of an old school unix administrator turned convert.

Anyway, I've got class now.

*EDIT: Changed finals to mid-terms. I don't know what I was thinking.

This week just smashed into me. Monday pretty much felt like an extended weekend with Gaila around. Tuesday I find out that Tom will be taking the entire week off work. Tuesday the engineering career fair. Wednesday was the business career fair followed by FUG and church.

I ended up sprucing up my resume a little bit and attend career fair to see if there would be any cool summer internship possibilities in central Iowa. The engineering fair was not very productive since they really didn't care about you, unless you knew how to build a bridge, though it gave me a chance to get used to the atmosphere of the fair and make a few minor tweaks to my resume. I ended up handing out 7 resumes at the business career fair. Looking at a lot of the stuff people were doing, it seems that ASP and VisualBasic are very common languages for Information Systems these days. I know I dabbled with VB in Com S 104 a long time ago and it wasn't very hard at all. Perhaps I should build a Windows box to learn VB and run IIS and dabble a bit the ASP and Microsoft SQL. Surprisingly, there weren't too many jobs that were looking for Java experience. I guess a lot of these place are very Windows centric and are stuck in a rut :(. Anyway, there are a few companies I am interest in, and will hopefully be calling about positions. I still have to go though and organize all the information I gathered.

FUG is seriously considering disassociating with the university over the new proposed policy for organizations. I will have to take a look at these policies and determine what AmesMUG needs to do to comply with these new regulations.

I have also been rummaging around online for apartments. I have found quite a few 1 and 2 bedrooms and varying costs. The market is putting 2 bedroom apartments between $300 and $350 per month per person. I have put together a FileMaker database that compares all the options to assist me in making a decision. Colin and I need to figure out how much we can afford considering not just rent, but also utilities, food, and other expenses. Also, Gaila and Mel, I'm willing to share what I find.

So, also this week, I have switched from Eudora to using Mail. I have to say that Mail isn't all that bad. It works immediately with Kerberos on campus, the filter system is easy to administer, and most messages are displayed right. The only problems I have is that I can't tell it to bounce the icon when there is new mail, I can't have more than one mail box or folder open at one time, and when there is new mail it only shows the number of new messages in the IN box on the dock icon. With all the filters I have, it is very common for mail to get filtered into a folder and not be represented when I check the dock icon.

Anyway, I suppose I should do something productive with this afternoon at work without the boss.

Well, Gaila showed up at work around 6ish Friday night. We rented a couple movies via Wendy's. We spend most of the weekend hanging out watching movies, playing with Legos, playing pool at the MU. We rented some very good movies, all of which I recommend seeing. The first one we watched was Friday Night Lights. It was a typical everything high school football game type movie, but the ending had a very good, unexpected twist to the genre of the movie. Saturday we watched Saved!. It's about a very Christian high school where the characters have to deal with some very challenging problems, in a way that really makes fun of the super evangelistic Christians. Very entertaining and thought provoking. The last movie we saw was Eternial Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. This movie was really messed up, visually stunning and pretty though provoking. It was very easy to loose yourself in it, and being a Jim Carry movie, it was really good.

Today, Gaila had the day off from school because of President's day (lucky her). We managed to do lunch and dinner today. We went to the new Battle's BBQ location on Welch. The food was just as good, and the place was just as packed. The size of the place is just about 2 to 3 times larger than their old location, and they still had some trouble keeping up with table demand. For dinner we had a satisfying buffet at Valentino's.

We won't see each other again for two week. We have been together for 4 weekend in a row, which is amazing since she goes to school four hours away. Next week we will not be seeing each other :(. She will be back the following weekend for her spring break (the week before ISU spring break :-( ). That weekend there is also a play going on down at Simpson.

I finally got a time to get FAFSA stuff done with dad. We are going to get it done on the 28th. This is really cutting close for deadlines with scholarships (if any of the college of business scholarships go though) and financial aid.

Speaking of money, the 'rents just bought a new camper. We won't see it until mid-April, but that was something that I really wasn't expecting they were going to do.

Anyway, I should be getting to bed. I totally forgot that MUG was supposed to be putting out sandwich boards in front of Design and the Library this morning, so I have to get in at 8:00 am to get posters printed, attached to the boards, and distributed to the locations, before my 9:30 am class. I also need to be ready for career fair this week, as well as start looking for apartments. Good night.

Well, this week has been pretty busy.

Tuesday I had a dental checkup. I will have to go back on the 1st to take care of some decay that was barely visible on the x-ray. Though they did complement me on how clean my teeth were, which surprised me since I didn't brush between lunch and the appointment.

Wednesday was a normal Wednesday. After work I helped Sheng assemble hundreds of table tents for the dining halls and the Union. FUG, church. Lots of new people at church. Colin was sick so we didn't get to hang out.

Thursday was lots of fun. I was at towers by 7:00 AM to put out table tents. Sheng took care of the other dining halls. I actually had breakfast since I was out and about so early. It was really weird not being hungry and actually being awake during econ. I got a lot of work done on a survey building app in PHP that I'm working with Chris on. Deadline for that is today. I saw Stan Ethington at lunch and we discussed a few things about film festival and campus promotions. MUG was lots of fun. Brandon (Vice President) demonstrated iPod Linux. Disassembled an old iPod. We then got tracked into demoing some cool freeware and shareware apps. Brandon brought up Sogudi, a Safari plugin that allows you to do different search queries via the address bar, very useful. He also showed us PithHelmet, an ad-blocking plugin. I have to say that these two tools made me switch from using Camino to using Safari as my primary web browser. Sorry Camino, you have a very good product.

Today, I already had a test in Marketing. I have another test in Speech that I should study for quickly before I go. I also have to finish that survey thing I mentioned earlier and finish building someone's computer.

When all is done, Gaila will be in town again :). We don't have plans, but we will enjoy each other's company.

Over the week, I polished up my resume (not posted here yet), and got 9 free iTunes songs from Mt. Dew. I still have to kick my dad to make sure we get taxes and FAFSA done REAL SOON! I also need to talk to Colin about what he might like for an apartment if we become roommates. I also should be inquiring about apartments. I also found that a headlight on my car went out, so I have to fix that before I get pulled over for it. Plus, I should probably find the time to get the car a thorough look-over and some other odds and ends fixed. Perhaps, next week, if I have the money, I will take it in for a tune up. It has been about 5 years since it has been seriously looked over. Next week, I will be converting from Eudora to Apple's Mail.app so that I can conceivably convince Tom that Mail would be so much better to support (I have a hunch it will be, especially with Kerberos support here on campus). My brother got a new iBook. I should probably set up a time with him when he has access to broadband to help him out with that via remote desktop. It would be interesting controlling his computer from 1,000 miles away :D.

I should be getting work done.

I had a really nice weekend in South Dakota. Gaila has the rundown of what we did. I gave her some M&Ms, a book, and a nice card to celebrate our 3 month anniversary and V-day (both being today). I also found that from Yankton to my driveway is 222.2 miles. Just interesting.

Today seemed to be one of those Blah days. I did a bunch of stuff, but really didn't put too much effort in it, nor was I very motivated to do anything. I enjoyed my walks to and from classes. We even had class outside for speech. All my classes got out early. Marketing class was interrupted for a few minutes while an all-female quartet sung a couple songs to some guy setting next to me. Somehow, embarrassing romantic moments happen somewhat close (proximity not emotionally) to me. Last summer there was a marriage proposal at an I-Cubs game. The couple was perhaps only 10 seats away in the same row. Close enough to see the ring. Hehe, while I was writing this, Lonely by Akon started playing on my iTunes. I got it as part of a free download a while ago from the iTunes music store. I like how parts of it sound like Alvin from Alvin and the Chipmunks (I guess the sample doesn't include the chipmunk part :( ).

Anyway, there are a bunch of things I need to remember to do in the very near future. One is to get taxes and FAFSA done, update my resume and prepare for job fair, actively look for apartments starting May (both one and two bedrooms [no, not with Gaila]), and a bunch of work, school, and MUG related things.

Now my book is probably worth what I paid for it. Click the picture for more, larger pics.

Yesterday I found myself being productive, for the most part, at work. I fixed a couple problems, installed some AV software, plugged in a computer that was difficult to figure out how to wire around the desk. After work, Adrienne invited me to Cazador for dinner with a bunch of church people. After that, I met up with Colin and DeeJoe at Mol. Biol. for FUG. There was confusion as to where the meeting was going to be held, so some people showed up at the Stomping Grounds. After FUG was Ash Wednesday service. Then off to home to watch the 1 hour episode of SG-1.

Today I am finally getting around to installing Tiger. I went to Bali Satay with Tom for lunch and saw Gila's mom there. On the way back I picked up a copy of America (The Book) at the bookstore so that I can get it signed tonight by Rob Corddry.

Tomorrow, I will probably be heading up to South Dakota to see Gaila. So my weekend will start with a 4 hour drive starting at 4 PM Friday. I hope she will be feeling better by tomorrow so that 1. we can enjoy each other's company, and 2. I won't catch it.

Anyway, I should do something productive.

Well, I got the gallery upload problem and the off campus email working again :D.

I haven't been feeling the greatest this afternoon / evening. I hope I didn't get what Gaila got. Anyway, here are the links to the gallery stuff that I have been meaning to upload for quite a while:

Colin, Gaila and I play around with a 1000 piece Lego Set

Mac mini and iPod Shuffle at the AmesMUG meeting on February 3rd.

Some nice things out of Google lately.

One, I have now sent off 100 GMail invites since I came home Sunday. 50 at a time. All of them went to the GMail spooler. Last I checked there are just about as many available invitation as invitations given since last September. This is just making the invite process kind of stupid now.

Also, Google has launched their new beta maps service. Very, very nice mapping. Smooth scrolling and pretty intuitive design. I have already decided to switch from mapquest to google for maps.

In other news, Gaila isn't feeling well. Sort of a stomach flu. Get well soon hon.

Also, things I need to get done on this server yet:

• Off campus e-mail


• Gallery upload problem


• Quote display and acceptance problem


• Crazy backspace/delete behavior in terminal (very annoying)

Then there is a bunch of stuff to do at work, and MUG.