Bobbis.net

Friday, I went to go see Troy with Colin. I have to admit that I was fairly tired when I went in to see the movie. I just about dozed off during a few scenes and regained my attention during the battle sequences. I really think the R rating was wasted on showing too much of Brad Pitt rather than with the gore. Then again, I may have become a little more desensitized to violence in movies. Later that night Meri called to see if I wanted to go to Perkins. I'm sorry, but I really was tired.

Saturday I cleaned out my brother's stuff from the basement and loaded the van with his stuff so that my dad can take the stuff to my brother's new home in Auburn, NY. I also managed to finish up season one of Stargate.

Today, I slept in 'til 3:00. I was woken by my mother yelling and pounding on the floor. She wonders why I don't think she doesn't stay out of my way living here. I forgot to mention that we didn't finish loading the van until 2:00 am. Yeah, I got 12 hours of sleep, but I wanted more. I have been getting a good 4 to 5 hours of sleep every day last week anyway, I needed to catch up. I mowed the lawn. I am beginning to believe that I may be developing allergies. After mowing the lawn I tend to end up with a stuffed up head and headache. I've got a headache right now. I would put on some soft music right now to help it, but I am typing this up on the couch that has my speakers are disassembled on the floor in front of me. It's a mess down here. I don't have a place to compute comfortably now that my brother's desk and comfy chair are gone :(.

Tomorrow is the first day of class. I forget exactly what time it is, but I know my Palm will go off when I need to leave for the class. Stat meets for one hour every day of the week until the second week of July. Right after that I start again with MIS 330 which, again, meets every day of the week until two weeks before Fall classes begin. Perhaps tomorrow when I get home I will work on getting the basement organized and clean. This means my "office" and room. I have a plan that should suit me quite well for over the summer.

Anyway, I'm still dirty from mowing the lawn, and I have a headache as mentioned earlier, and I'm tired. I need to take a shower and get to bed so I can be somewhat awake form my morning class and work.

Once again, it has been a while since I posted. I've been tired all week for some reason. Perhaps the reason is that I start working earlier than when I usually start school (Work starts at 7:30, but I stumble in around 8 or 8:30) and I am still staying up until 2:00 am. I am cutting down on the number of hours I sleep. I slept in today a little, but I had a good excuse for work. I'm not going to say my excuse here, but if you are curious you may IM or email me. Please don't leave comments about it.

At work I managed to create a build for a computer lab and install it over the course of two days. If I was still going to school, this would have stressed me out a lot. That type of thing usually requires a good block of time to sit down and make things work just right. Since lab computers need to be secured and have a bunch of special software installed on them it takes a little extra effort to install. Also, installing the image to the lab machines takes a bit of time.

At home, I have been getting into Stargate (one of my previously mentioned goals for the summer). That may explain why I'm not online much in the evenings. Yesterday at church the food was really good. I don't know if I will be going every Wednesday, but I may alternate between that and seeing what's going on at the FUG meetings. Next week the food will be brats and hot dogs, so I don't think I want to miss that.

I have started to go though the Cocoa tutorial in xCode during my free time at work, though I also have the bad habit of surfing the forums. Improving my blog program is not something that is a big priority, but it's something that I kind of want to do. Meri sent me some of her Excel budget files so I could get a feel for how she budgets. I will probably use some of her ideas to create my own system. I still haven't cleaned out the basement, but that will happen easily after or during this weekend as I help move the rest of my brother's stuff out of here. I have been using his desk and office chair, and I will miss them.

Earlier tonight, Colin, Gaila and I went to see Van Helsing. I don't think it was as bad as the ratings on IMDB really say it was, but there were a few things that didn't rest quite well in the movie. One thing was the secret place in the Vatican that was sort of like Q's lab in the 007 movies. Also, for some reason, the carriages are really flammable. One carriage fell down a canyon and ended up exploding like a car in most movies. Though, my overall opinion of the movie was that it was much better than The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

Anyway, that is what has been going on recently. I'm going to get an episode or two of Stargate in before I go to bed EARLY tonight.

I totally forgot that I was driving people to the airport this afternoon. I got a call from one of the people who works in the Study Abroad office, and at first I though she was calling me about a problem she was having with her computer. Then, I realized what I forgot. I got dressed and onto campus in record time of less than 5 minutes. I had to pick up a 15 passenger van with trailer, then pick up the students. We left Ames at the very latest time allotted for the schedule. Phew. Nice though, that their flight really was not scheduled to leave for another 2 hours after we arrived at the airport, so things were good for them.

I still haven't gotten any of the things done that I planed on getting done today. I've got to try to get into work by 7:30 tomorrow and every day this summer so I can make lots of good money. I also have some goals for summer to set.

Summer Goals

• Get good grade in Stat 226
• Learn basic Cocoa programming
• Improve on my blog program you are using now
• Catch up with Stargate series
• Create a budget for the next year that includes getting an apartment near campus

That is about all that I can think of right now. I may add more to the list later. At least now I have something to work towards. Some of these things are easy to do, others are a littler harder to do, but I think I will manage to accomplish most of these without impacting too much on summer fun, which is the primary goal of Summer.

Wow, what a good couple days it has been. I finished my econ final, got $216 back from the books I neglected to turn back in over the past few semesters. Cashed my coins, got my oil changed, my car washed, my hair cut, bought new shoes, and helped Meri clean out her grandmother's basement in preparation for the get-together on Saturday. I got everything I planed on getting done Friday done, and them some. I also stopped at work for a few minutes and finished up a computer that I was not expecting to get done until Monday. After cleaning the basement, Colin, Meri, and I headed over to Adrienne's for the games. Colin and I stayed there 'til around 1:00 or so. Friday was a really productive day.

Today, I slept in 'til around 2:00ish. Ate breakfast, watched a storm, and went to Meri's grandmother's to hang out there with Colin, Walter, Gaila, and for a brief time Nick and Maggie. Her basement turned into a nice hang out place after we cleaned it up a bit. Thanks Meri for hosting and not letting me think I had to bring it to my place. Because of the storms, having it at my place probably would have failed.

The storms today were nice, I like watching storms. Though, I just got my car washed, and the next day tree debris ends up on my car. Also, I guess the wax or whatever they put on as part of the free car wash caused a nice film to appear on my windshield causing lots of glare during my drive back home tonight.

Tomorrow, I once again plan on sleeping in and then I suppose I will clean up the basement, watch an episode of Enterprise and maybe start working on learning Cocoa. I will write up a list of some of my summer goals so that I have a record of what I want to accomplish.

It's late, and I am the only one left on IM, so I'm going to go to bed.

Today seemed like Friday for some reason. I worked all day instead of the two hours I was scheduled for, but I got a bunch of stuff done, and got to say goodbye to Theresa. I work all day tomorrow as well, and I plan on just taking Friday off to start my "clean slate" tasks after my last final.

"Clean Slate" is all the tasks that I intend to do to clean up after the semester and prepare for the summer term that is coming the week after next. I need to return books, clean the basement, my room, get a hair cut, get an oil change, wash the car, clean out the car, and set a few goals for summer, figure out a budget so I can get a good handle on what I can afford for apartments.

I filled up my gas tank this afternoon. It's $1.83 per gallon all over town. Took $22 to fill it. Arg!

Friday, Adrienne is having a bunch of people over for games and Saturday hopefully something will happen with the local AHS gang. Sunday, I guess I will plan on earning some bookstore credits by driving people to the DSM airport for the study abroad program.

I didn't get any studying for Econ done whatsoever tonight. Oh well. The curve in that class is amazing though. I could get 40% on the test and still get a B for the exam. I really should study though. I plan on keeping myself isolated here at home Thursday night to study for it. I should be online most of the time during the day Tuesday at work, but if you need to contact me for anything call my cell, I wouldn't mind taking a short study break.

Also, a late happy birthday to Mel. I sent her an e-card very early on the 5th, but the postmark is from Pacific time so it's dated early.

Good night.

Why am I so tired?

In case you are wondering I'll be at ULC tonight for studying around 8:00. Feel free to join me.

Also, check out the post below.

It's the middle of finals week. The air conditioning here at work gave out, and the nice weather is making it a nice work environment here. Add some sarcasm to that previous statement. We have the doors open and fans blowing around air trying to keep the servers cool. I'm rebuilding two computers today and tomorrow depending on how fussy the hardware wants to get.

I've got a Geo final tomorrow, so I'm thinking tonight would be a nice night for a study session. Ideas on where to go? As I mentioned before UDCC was not a very good place for me to keep my concentration.

Anyway, I got a $200* bill the other day. It was humorous. Here are pictures of it.

Interesting I could find some stuff on the web about it. I do not intend to redistribute it as currency though.

*fake

Quote from a recent PC to Mac convert on SA:

"I'm cruising the information highway in the OS equivalent of a BMW 760iL, watching Bloomberg on the seatback LCD and snorting coke in the backseat while millions of dollars of laundered money are being transferred to my Swiss bank account. This is computing with style."

Well put guy.

This evening, I started to hang out with Colin. Adrienne called and invited us to play games over at her place. We played Apples to Apples again, but it just wasn't as fun with only three people. So, we broke out the Monopoly game. Monopoly always seems to take a long time to play. We didn't finish the game, but it was fun.

Tomorrow I have to mow the lawn before it rains, but it's already 2:40 or so now so I don't think I'll be happy getting up in the AM. Plus I have to hunker down and study this weekend. Colin said that he would be going to either UDCC or ULC tomorrow. I asked that he call me if he wanted any company. I will be quitting my mail program and shutting off my Internet access over the weekend so I can focus on work. If you need to contact me please CALL.

Good Night.

Paul Dressel's Definition of a Grade:

"A grade is an inadequate report of an inaccurate judgement by a biased and variable judge of the extent to which a student has attained an undefined level of mastery of an unknown proportion of an indefinite material."

I've been meaning to get this up here for a while. With finals coming and people stressing about grades, I though it would be appropriate.

Last night was a productivity session at UDCC with Colin, and later with Meri. I have to say, that place was NOT very good for studying. At least not until after the c-store closed. Every 4 minutes someone with flip-flops came stumbling down the nearby stairs as loud as possible, the blender in the store going off, the ATM machine beeping button acknowledgements for the deaf, and people laughing and talking loudly. Plus the chairs were not very comfortable and there wasn't much room on the table for several people to spread their stuff out. Rabble! Yeah, headphones might of helped, but the ones I have around are designed to get noise to your ear and not to keep other noises out.

Meridith really exhibited the mother hen mentality that night as well. She questioned me about how my studying was going a lot. She really felt like a mix between nagging mother and a study hall attendant. Though she was cool for bringing cookies her cool (to me) mother made. Good luck on the philosophy statement and the job hunt, Meri!

I'm going to try to do something fun tonight, either hang out with myself at home or go out and do something with someone. If you want to do something give me a call. Then I will hunker down the rest of the weekend studying for my Soc final on Monday.

Gaila and I talked tonight. She is going to a small school.

ME: one of the teachers was smart and wrote her name on the board before leaving the room for evals to be filled out :D
HER: lol
HER: always helps
HER: that's where you lean over to the person beside you and whisper at them
ME: most of the time they don't know either
HER: yeah, but if it makes it far enough down the row, eventually somebody will know, and it will make it back.

Big schools are such a mystery to people going to small schools, and small schools are such a mystery to people going to big schools.

Productivity time last night was somewhat fruitful. Sara can be very distracting sometimes. I realized when things got quiet that it's difficult for me to keep a good focus on something when there is no music in the background or something. When I'm being productive on my computer, I usually have something going in iTunes. I don't actively listen to it unless a good song comes up. Just having something there helps me a lot. I figure this is true with a lot of people.

I tried to get a few people together for a flash study session after church. I was perhaps the only one there who had my study materials there, and nobody else really wanted to study. But now I'm at home talking with Gaila and writing in my blog not being productive. I am requesting a productivity time again tomorrow evening/night. I have a test on Friday that I need to study for. This weekend is going to be devoted to Soc study. I have not read the book, and a result of me not reading the book has caused me to get C- grades on my previous test. I like the subject, but I need to work at it because the tests are heavy in the book material that is not covered in the class. I'm used to the classes being preached out of the book, this one threw me a loop. I should have paid attention to that.

Anyway, I'm wasting time and not doing my work. I'm going to say good night now..... Good night.

PS: Finals schedule