the new and the new old school

Mario Kart 64.  Man.  KB is addicted.

I love that she's so into N64 gaming.  It's the new old school.  I took it over to her house when she was tending her nephews for the night and left it there.  She has been playing ever since.

That being said, this semester is all about gaming for me.  I'm taking four classes and I think that I've had the most busy first two weeks of my college career.  Senior project is coming along nicely.  I've been working mostly on the sound and getting it to sound good.  We don't have a whole lot of good sounds to add yet (other than the ones already added, that is) so the music is very limited.  But nonetheless, I've been working like crazy to get what I can working.

My artificial intelligence class is going to be hard.  I can already tell.  Our first assignment is due in two days, and it is using python.  I have no idea how to use it, and the tutorial (homework 00 -- a non-credit assignment, but negative points if you don't do it) gave me a basic understanding, but I'm still worried.  I got my book in the mail.  1100 pages.  If I could convey sarcasm over a blog, I would tell you about how much I love carrying my book.  I have it at school with me today, and I'm not really thrilled.  Yes, class is almost over and then I'm going home, and I still haven't opened it.  Looks like other homework took priority and I didn't have time to get any of the hard class stuff done.  Awesome.  The funny thing is that the entire class is focused on Pacman.  Ha.

I have two film classes, one is a continuation of a class from last semester called Game Development 1. The unambiguously titled class (Game Development 2) is at night and is hard to stay focused after a long day.  My other film class is the only class I have on two weekdays.  Yeah.  I'm not a fan of classes all day two days a week and then ONE class on its own days each week.  I hate driving to school for one class.

And although I'm complaining, my earliest class this semester is 12:30.  Not too shabby.

So back to the fun part of gaming.  I did something crazy.  Or should I say, Krazy.  I bought a Kinect.

For those who don't know, that's for the Xbox 360.  It's made for playing your Xbox without controllers.  YOU are the controller (Microsoft's slogan for its new product).  It's pretty fun.  I played Kinect Sports and I was sore for days.  I'm excited for it to come.  

The reason that I decided to get my Xbox (which I haven't actually gotten yet) is because I wanted a console that I could play my game I'm making on.  It should be ready for me some time this week, so the Kinect should come about the same time I get my Xbox.  Now I just need to make sure that I don't waste my precious time on.  

Crap.  Now I'm sure that I'm going to waste my time.  I guess I can take it over to KB's house, but then I wouldn't be able to play my game on it for homework.  Why isn't self-control easier?

i'm tired and i want to go home

What can I say?  I've been horrible about writing.  And I know that I could just "vow to write more often" but we all know that won't happen.  I've been busy and blogging has been the last thing on my mind.

For those of you who haven't dabbled in my other blog that I have to keep for school, I would say, "why would anyone want to read this?"  So don't bother.  Sadly, it's linked up to my Google Buzz account, so everyone who is following me gets to read it.  Ha!

The last few weeks have been really hard on me and I've taken it out on those who are around me, and for that I'm sorry.  My classes are not going as well as I had hoped.  I started out this semester with an attitude that I was going to like every class.  I even told myself that about a computer systems class which is very hard.  I thought, "I'm going to be really busy, but it is going to be fun none-the-less."  Sadly, it hasn't been the case, and this week has really showed me how unstable I am in school.

I've been spending as much time as I can in my hard class, but we have a midterm tomorrow and I don't know how to do any of the problems on the practice test.

I have to build a unix shell (for the same class I have the midterm) and I don't even know where to start.

I have a film project due tomorrow and I haven't even started it yet.  I hope to get it done this weekend, but even then, that might be a stretch.

My other film class isn't going well either.  I have to have a working game by Thursday, and we can't even import the models for the player, let alone the environment, correctly.  We were put on "warning" and our game is probably going to get scrapped.

The only other class is my senior project which is surprisingly going well, but I hate being that guy who is leaning on the work of my group.

I spend so much of my time going from school work to emails to everything else.  On average I get 25+ email a day that I have read and respond to.  I'm overwhelmed.  Luckily today has been kind and I've only gotten about 10 or so, but the day is still young.  I'm stressed and I can't wait for some sort of break to come.

On top of that, I haven't been sleeping well... for weeks.  I don't remember the last time I made it through the night.  Huzzah.  I'm sure it's stress-related, but I'm almost to the point of not functioning.  I tried exercising, and KB was kind enough to come with me, but 6am was too early and I quickly lost motivation AND a running partner.

I'm sorry that this has turned into a pitty party, but I'm on my last leg...

and I can't buy lunch because I couldn't find my wallet this morning.  I'm starving.

happy flinstones day

Yeah, you heard me.  The Flintstones turned 50 today.  The amazing things you learn from using Google.

So we're (my classmates and I) sitting in class now waiting for the capstone class to start.  It seems that our game gained popularity.  More-so than we expected... or wanted.  We've been working hard to make our game look good in our presentation that we had on Tuesday, but we really don't want to work on it much longer.  It's a great idea and concept, but it's outside the scope of the class.  We could hack together a game pretty quickly, but making it fun to play and leveling out the players is going to me a ton of work.

For those that don't have any idea what I'm talking about, you can check out my other blog post (on the other blog) that I keep for the class.  So... yeah.

Other than that, life has been quite uneventful.  School keeps me so busy that I feel like I don't have a social life. Although, with the new computer, I was really sad that my pictures were lost, but I found some on the desktop in our home office.  How awesome is that?  I found some gems:

idea generator

I sometimes wish I had an idea generator.  This semester, I've been told to come up with multiple game ideas.  I had to come up with a new game idea for a class (not the senior project) and what I came up with was a Bomberman-style game.  I used to love Bomberman and I played it on consoles, computer, and even my TI-86.  Yeah.  I was a nerd even back then!

But I'm trying to be original in these ideas, but I'm feeling like my ideas are starting to get a little repetitive.  Hmm.  Maybe if I came up with an idea generator where all I would do would be to add in some confines and it would give me an idea. 

Some of the ideas from my class have been interesting.  I've actually liked some of them, but hearing pitch after pitch has been a little hard to really focus on.  I'm getting tired and it's only the second week of the semester.  I think it's time to go on vacation.

Oh wait, I have one planned!  KB's family has invited me to go down to St. George with them this weekend.  It's going to be pretty fun.  I haven't been down there since I was in elementary school and I think it's time to go back.  It's going to be nice because they boys in her family are all like me.  They love games and they love CS.  This bodes well for me. 

I'm going to have to do quite a bit of homework while I'm there, so I might not be the funnest person in the whole world, but I'm going to try and keep that boring-ness to a minimum.  I've gotten a few assignments to do over the weekend, which I think is totally lame.  I can't believe that teachers think that over a long weekend, all I would want to do is homework.  Yikes.

KB, I wish we were leaving today.   

a new semester

And thus begins one of the most fun semesters I am going to have of all time.  Saweet!

This semester is the beginning of my senior year in Engineering Arts and Entertainment.  What does that mean?  Let me tell you.  I have four classes.

Film class number one: Game development.  Our first assignment was to play old school videogames from the NES and SNES and write about what it is about that game that I love. 

Film class number two: An introduction to film development.  We are going out and just making simple movies and learning about what makes movies so interesting.

CS class number one: Capstone project where I'll be creating a videogame to port to the Xbox 360.  I've already started my pitch which is Peggle but in space where you can manipulate gravity either as the level or in certain powerups.  Although even if it isn't picked (we whittle it down from 30 proposals to 2 games) the games I've seen in the other proposals would be fun. 

Lastly, the non-fun CS class, but I'm not focusing on that one. 

Doesn't that sound awesome?  Now I just have to keep up to date with each of them and not die under the pressure.  I'm sure this is going to be a blast. 

Studying videogames.  Who'd have thought?

thought provoking questions

The frustrations of my class seem more like a fire being continually fueled by new annoyances.  Here's the one from today.

Every week or so, we get assigned study questions that we work on and usually ask good questions about the information covered that week.  I like them for the most part, but I feel like the information is good, but the questions can be AWFUL.  

While working on one this week I came across this question:

In-and-of itself it's a good question.  I admit that it was good enough that I had to look at the key to know the answer was "d."  But here's what I thought was idiotic about it.  I cut off the next question:

Yeah.  You see that?  Now can anyone in their right mind tell my why that would be an "important concept of Biology" and help me to "make connections" and "not just fly by using memorization" in a class where each of those are what she sees as important in a class like this?  It's nothing but pure laziness and what seems to be a question based on busy work!

Breathe Mojo, breathe... 

singing, "schools out for... two weeks"

Well, finals are done.  My last one was today. Yikes, that was an intense semester ("like the circus, and camping." ha!)

Things are winding down, and we all know what that means.  Yes, it's a short break before summer semester begins.  I really wish I had more time to myself to relax, but I am self-imposing these schedules so that I can graduate without killing myself.  Although, I have been running into some major snags along the way.

I got my acceptance letter from SLCC (...huzzah...) but it said I wasn't a resident of Utah.  Okay, shut the front door.  I'm totally a resident.  Jerks.  I had to call them and settle the whole thing.  It didn't take too long, but I was informed that before I could sign up for classes, I would have to come in and do their orientation.  Having been a college student far longer than I would like to admit, I didn't feel it all that important.  But, I COULDN'T register for a class until it was done.

I found out that I could do it online.  I was stoked.  It took ten minutes and I was feeling quite good when it told me that it would take up to two more days for them to process my online orientation.  And here I thought when I pressed the "Complete" button, I was done.

All-in-all I got it all set up and I tried to add the class.  Red letters sirens and all such forth were overwhelming me and I soon found out why.  The class was full.  Not only full, but TOO full.  In the books, it's a class that seats 35.  That is a great class size and I was pretty excited to have a Physics class that wasn't over 200 students.  But there were 51 enrolled.  Yeah, you heard me.  51 enrolled students in a class of 35.

I called the professor and asked if there was anything I could do.  When I didn't get a response, I emailed her.  Seems like she won't add anyone else into the class until at least 10 people drop out and she said that won't happen within the first week and she wasn't willing to let someone in after the first week.  Sheesh.

Well, So here I am, getting ready to take Physics from the U which I was avoiding in the first place.  I guess you can't always win... Maybe I'll get the time to myself to relax after all.

onward and upward

Okay readers (and Google Buzzers), it official.  I put in my two weeks.

I went in and spoke with my boss and made it unofficially official.  The unofficial comes from the fact that we're going to count the two weeks as of tomorrow.  So that makes tomorrow officially official.  

Leaving is bittersweet.  I have learned a lot from my job and I adore the people that I work with.  They are pretty awesome so I'm sad to say goodbye.

But don't worry.  (I know you were worrying.)  I have something else lined up.  In fact, I was offered the position today. (Which is why I put in the two weeks.  Both jobs would be too much for me)  I am going to have an amazing new job that I am very excited about.  Want to know what it is?  Well, I'll tell you.  Just keep reading.  It's just after this... Wait for it... wait for it...

duh ba duh ba duh ba duh ba duh ba duh ba duh ba  (That's a drum roll)

KA-TCSHHHHHHH!  (That's the symbols that usually follow drum rolls)

I'll be working for the University.  Ah yeah baby!  I'm going to be designing curriculum to promote Engineering (with an emphasis on the Computer Science Department of course) in highschools around here.  I'm going to be picking a topic that interests me, make some module (lesson) that I can share and then go and share it.  I know.  Can you imagine me teaching some aspect of why CS is so awesome?  'Cuz I can.  And I will.  

Ideally, I'll be writing it so that others can take my module and teach it themselves in the future.  I'm EXTREMELY excited about it.  

So if you have any ideas on something that I can do (and I'm sure I'm going to get 30 buzzes from my friends about making a remote fart noise maker or something similar) comment/buzz and let me know.  

Yay for an awesome new job!

japanese baseball league

What?

No. It sounds strange to me too. I'm not really sure why the Japanese Baseball League is so interesting and important when it comes to databases, but it is.

Let me explain.

So I came into the computer lab today (where I am currently, and currently avoiding starting yet another project) to finish some homework assignments that are due tonight at 11:59. It's pretty fun stuff. Databases seem to be the most captivating of all aspects of computer science. If you haven't caught on the sarcasm yet, I'm not sure I can lay it on any thicker.

Well, the assignments that I have to do is a barrage of multiple choice questions. To make sure that people don't just get the answers from answering wrong a lot of times, they have some fail-safes. (Calm down. I'll get to the JBL in a second) The first of which is the 10-minute delay before starting again. If you get it wrong, you wait 10 minutes until you can restart the assignment. Although the benefit is that you can take it as many times as you want... with a ten minute delay...

The other? Random answers. There is one correct answer each time they ask, but there are multiple right answers that can show up. An example (non Computer Science):

Fill in the blank

An apple is _______ .

Okay. There are a few correct answers here:
Red
Delicious
Round
a Fruit

And multiple wrong answers too:
Black
15 lbs
Made of metal
a port for highspeed internet
etc..

Now... each time you start the assignment, it randomly picks 1 correct answer and 3 (or more) incorrect answers. Yikes. So none of that, "Well, it wasn't a, b, or c. It must be d," for this assignment.

Here's the kicker. Each of the questions (there were 12 on this assignment) started with the exact same phrase:



EVERY QUESTION. Now I don't know about you, but I really don't care about the latest Japanese Baseball League scores. I just don't care.

goodbye week 3 hello week 4

With school going on, there doesn't seem to be much in the way of excitement going on in my life. In fact, it's all been pretty boring. I rarely have time to really get out and play, and when I finally get some time, I feel too stretched thin to even WANT to go and do fun things. Yikes. And yes, the picture above IS my calendar from last week...

School this week was a little rough. I had 4 assignments and a test this week and honestly, I don't know how I'm still alive. The classes that I've been taking this semester are funny because half of them are pretty hard, and the other half look and act easy until right before a test or assignment.

I was feeling frustrated with my Biology class this week too. This is the one that the teacher sent out an email saying, "If you are not a Pre Med or Physical Therapy, etc, don't take this class." Well, sadly I don't have much choice. I'm taking the class and there is nothing you (nor I) can do about it!

We had a test on the first two chapters of the book. I was really excited about this teacher because of how she spoke the first day of class about not wanting us to just regurgitate information. She really wants us to learn. I have a lot of respect for teachers who understand that, but her test did NOT reflect that.

First of all, she had the test as the final 30 minutes of class (a two hour class mind you) after a lecture with new information. I thought that was just a crewel joke. Yes, it does weed out those who just cram before the test. What she fails to realize is how LOW LEVEL her questions are for wanting us to really learn. "Define xyz…" WHAT?!?! So after a long lecture with new information, you expect us to remember definitions? THAT is not good teaching… it's called being vindictive.

Luckily, all my classes made the assignments and test due last week, so this week is going to be a breeze. Thanks for all the great planning university! But with a week with only 1.5 assignments due, it does give me time to play "get ahead"… or "catch up" in some places…

Oh, funny conversation I overheard this week:

Girl1: Hey! How are you and Ed?
Girl2: Ed? Ed who?
Girl1: Oh. Aren't you married to Ed?
Girl2: Sorry, no.
--At this point, anyone would move off the subject--
Girl1: Are you sure?
Girl2: --pause-- yeah.
Girl1: Who are you married to then?
Girl2: --pause-- John
Girl1: --pause-- Oh.

Girl2 Leaves

Girl1: I'm pretty sure she's married to Ed.

spring semester here i come

So yet another semester has begun, and we all know what that means… time to pay lots of money so I can be poor again! Yay!

So I tried to come up with some good ways to cut costs in any way I could. I sold one of my textbooks online. It was the first textbook that I have ever sold back at any point. I got $60 for the book so it’s a wonder why I haven’t done it in the past. So I’ve got that going for me. All the other textbooks are sadly outdated because they co

me out with a new edition every year… just to screw with me…

So I’ve decided to cut cost by trying something new: Renting a textbook.

Chegg.com is a website that will rent textbooks. It’s a genius idea. I head about the website in my Biology class. One of the other students brought up the fact that you can rent from them which is perfect for my needs… I don’t need more textbooks lying

around my room for years to come. Plus, with the website, because they are trying to promote reprinting of books and going green, they plant a tree for each book that you rent. How cool is that? Plus, when I ordered, it was $20 cheaper than buying used online.

So my Biology book came in the mail yesterday.

It came with some great goodies. First, the book. Because without that, this would be a pretty pointless transaction.

Next, a small explanation about the tree that was planted for renting a book from them

Now, you’d think that was it. NO! Yes, that’s right, a FREE chegg.com pen

What? Still not convinced at how amazing this company is? Well, don’t worry, there is one more thing that just puts them over the top…

[I left it in the other car. I'll have to post a pic later.]

Yeah. My very own slap bracelet to keep forever and ever. Heck yeah. Could this be any cooler?

Well, I guess if I didn’t have to get a textbook… but let’s stay positive.

nightmare

Have you ever had that nightmare where you go to your class one day and when you walk in, you don’t have any of your books or anything else. It is only after you sit down that you realize that your teacher is handing out an extremely hard test that you had completely forgotten about? Then, as you look at the test, you realize that you have no idea what is going on and everyone keeps talking to you about how easy it is.

You then, in a panic start to write your name at the top and then read the first question. Then the horrible words spewing forth from the mouth of your teacher:

“Everyone, hand in your test. You’re time is up.”

As you realize that you haven’t written anything except your name, you slowly walk to the front of the room. And turn in your exam. You know that it’s going to get no credit and all you can think about is dying right then and right there. Suddenly a cool breeze comes wafting past. It’s colder than it should be, like someone opened up the door to the outside and some winter winds came rushing in, although you know that it’s not that cold.

Oh great. You’re naked. In front of the class, and for some odd reason, they only now are beginning to notice that you are naked. Luckily, you are in a class of 95% males (I’m a male, so that makes sense) but that seems to make you more nervous because all the guys you know from the class start pointing and whispering… then laughing historically at you.

As you run outside, you see all the girls you ever dated (who knows why they are all in the engineering building) and they all want to come talk to you, somehow oblivious to the fact that you are naked running from a class. After a calm conversation, where you step lightly as to not let them know that you are naked, they then want to introduce you to their boyfriend.

Yeah. Those dreams suck. So guess how my day went today…

Well, I guess this whole story starts on Monday. I hadn’t looked at the schedule the week before so I didn’t know what days I as working. As I gazed on the organization of my life dictated by those who seem to be in charge of even the most minor details of my life such as where I’ll be every morning at 8:15, I found something that I thought might be a discrepancy.

I brought it up with my coworker who makes the schedule.

“Hey, I have a final at 1, and I don’t get off work until 1 on Wednesday.”

“Are you sure,” she replies, “because I gave you Tuesday off for your final on Tuesday.”

A sudden rush of doubt creeps into my mind. I pull out Grete (the handy G1) and start to look up the class website. At the bottom of the Schedule page, I saw in clear, bold letters,

Final Exam: TUESDAY Dec. 15, 1:00 PM - 3:00 PM

It was then that I decided I needed to plan my day to get everything done so that I could get some studying done.

Go to work… check.

Get home and eat

Go to the Service Auction

Be back with enough time to study. Perfect

Well, the Service Auction went later than I expected. I was in charge of getting all the audio set up (which I did and I totally rocked the audio system’s world) so I had to stay till the end so I could put everything away.

I got home at about 10:30. That’s not to late, well, except if you are feeling sick and have a deep desire to go to bed so that you can be alive for the test the next day.

Tuesday:

Wake up, and study

Eat Breakfast

Relax for an hour to calm the nerves.

Head to the test.

To maintain the calm relaxed exterior, Mojo needed some sweet music to rock out to all the way to school. Grete gets plugged in (how cool is she?) and Pandora starts. Well, I must have been listening to some more mainstream (who? Mojo?) calmer music because a familiar, Mojo-wishing-it-was-forgotten song came on the air.

Hands Down (Acoustic) by Dashboard Confessional

Now, why would this song want to be forgotten? Oh, that’s right. It’s the song that reminds Mojo of the first (and probably only) girl to break his heart.

Awesome.

Now to the test itself, let’s just say I didn’t feel as good about it as the last test. And the last test I felt pretty good about… and didn’t do “pretty good.”

Yikes.

I think I may just change my expected graduation date to 2019.

art attack!

So I've been doing some work with Charcoal in my art class. I'd say I'm getting pretty good. I've only done three drawings so far in the medium. The first was only three hues: white, shadow, black. I decided not to take pictures of that one 'cuz it's not quite as interesting. So here was my first attempt at a whole range of hue:


I sadly was unable to finish Pooh Bear, but what can you do, right? Next, one especially for Halloween:


They were teddy bears with Halloween masks intermingled with baby dolls.

going places

Here is Mojo's daily attire (due to work dress codes):


Here's Mojo's mode of transportation across campus:


Yes, it's quite the sight to see. Although what is more interesting are the looks from people watching me streak past them in a blur of solid colored shirt and striped tie. There are mainly three different looks that I tend to see. All of which, I saw today. To make the explanation of easier to understand, I refer to NBCs The Office:

Firstly, there is the Jim Halpert. This normally comes from non-longboarders:


Secondly, the Dwight Schrute. This comes from those who walk in the bike lane:


Lastly, my personal favorite. The Michael Scott. This look comes from longboarders, especially the longboarders that I know personally:


Not too long ago, I was leaving my art class and someone in the class came up to me and asked, "Hey, do you longboard." My class is at night and the materials are to cumbersome to carry while longboarding so it doesn't come with me to class. I responded with a resounding yes. She then told me that she had seen me longboarding across campus that day and thought to herself that it was so funny to see someone dressed like a businessman riding a longboard across campus... twice.

I somewhat like being that type of spectacle on campus. I'm hoping that I get some sort of nickname like, "Longboarding Business Guy," or "Necktie Boarder." Something like that. Readers, see what you can do about that.

mega mega megaman

Readers, I've started a new blog. Well, to be honest I started the blog a a few weeks ago, but now it's getting interesting.

I'm writing a blog for one of my classes. It's all about the project I'm working on for my 3d modeling course. It can be found here. (http://mojoschool.blogspot.com/)

3D Megaman is coming along. I'm actually pretty proud of my artistic ability. Those are sketches which yes, line-up nearly perfectly.

welcome back jerk

I'm sitting in the computer lab waiting for my next class. I feel congested. Not nasally though. Timely. I've had so much to do before noon today that all of yesterday and the beginning of today was nothing but sheer congestion of time and things.

One of my classes (CS 4400 Computer Systems) is pure hell. The information is somewhat interesting, but I'm not seeing any applicable information to me. I like learning about some of this stuff, but it's hard to buckle down especially when the homework is very one-answer oriented. A + B = = C. It's tiring. We went over the homework that we had just turned in. It wasn't looking so good. Let me give you an example:

Is this always true? If not, give an example that would prove it wrong.




Note: What you are looking at is True = True.

Mathematically, yes. It's true. Computer-Sciencely, no. What if y is the Max_min? Negating an already extreme negative maintains its negativity. Mojo got that one wrong.

One after another like that too. Arg.

Ah to be the SOEP again... sigh.



So long SOEP. You're already missed.

don't let school get in the way of your education

Readers, it's been a little while since I've written. The vacation was awesome!

Boston rocked
New York rocked
Niagra Falls rocked
Connecticut rocked
DC rocked

Yeah. You heard me. We went EVERYWHRE! In fact, in NYC, we ended up walking more than 23 miles in one day. Yeah. That's borderline "hardcore," although I'm just "core."

For teh most part, there were about five to eight people just gallivanting round the touristy areas. I more my SOEP shirt as much as possible, but you can only wear a bright yellow shirt with a squirrel on the front so often before the stares and shaking of heads from absolute strangers seems to weigh you down. But I got some quality ones like me at Fenway Park (Go Reds!) and Yankee Stadium (Go Yanks!).

Now, back to school. If I can get through the next week or two unscathed, I'll see that as a great omen of luck and prosperity.

rain, rain, go away

(Cincinnati, OH) Day two may have started a little rainier than we had expected... Oh well. I guess you can't win them all.

Although I think we are running into this storm a lot on the trip. And when I say run into a lot, I really mean, get in the middle and follow it all the way to Boston. It rained at the hotel last night while we were sleeping and then we drove right into the heart of it.

I'm a little worried about the baseball game in Boston though. We have tickets for the Sox Vs. Yankees game in Boston (Fenway Park) on Saturday. As you can see, with the whole "driving with the storm" party we are having, I'm scared the extremely expensive tickets are going to go up in smoke... or rainy haze as the case may be.

I'm pretty amazed at how much rain there is here. And it comes with NO WARNING. About ten times today alone, we have been hit with sudden POURING rain. It's so bad that we can't really see out the car. It's amazing. I was Google Talking with Sallee while in the smooshed (Spell check is really angry with that, but offers no real help or suggestions) back seat of Grant's car and she too reminisced on the awe of how quickly they come and how mysteriously they seem to appear AND vanish.

Notable Landmarks passed today? Well let's see...

Iowa: None, although there was quoting of Field of Dreams ('Is this Heaven?' 'No, It's Iowa.')

Okay I lie. There was that exciting part where I-80 turned slightly to the right, but it was fleeting and we were back to going in a strait line.

Although we did pass one awesome place of note on our trip today...

Yes, the exit for Knox College. Ah, the memories... *Sallee's Memories plus the one time I came out to visit*

We're staying with Eric and Kate whose picture I stole from their blog. They are totally awesome for letting us stay with them. We even got a tour ("tu-er" NOT "tore". "Uuuu" sound, like in pOO). This is the first time we've seen them since the move to Cincinnati: A city whose name I learned how to spell today while trying to find it in the GPS... after about 30 incorrect spellings. They have a great place and live in a very lively city. It seems like a huge place (with 2 Million people, it should) but the area they live in is quaint enough to still be labeled as comfortably rural-urban.

leavin on a jet plane

Boston here I come!

Grant is heading off to school and I'm road tripping with him to Boston. It's going to be freakin' sweet!

There is one little problem though. I seemed to have bought my ticket online, and the moment after I placed my order... I looked at my calendar. Yay!

So I'll be returning from Boston the Monday AFTER school starts. Yes, you heard right. I'll be missing the first week of school. I was nothing but thrilled to find that I had forgotten to make considerations for, well, you know, the whole GOING BACK TO SCHOOL THING!

Although I'm not too worried. I have already emailed my professors to explain my idiocy. I've heard back from two of them and they said not to worry at all about it. In fact, one just said I could meet him the week before and we could go over the stuff that I would be missing. Here is the really nice thing about being in the Computer Science department. I wrote an email to all four of the professors that I'll be taking classes from this upcoming semester. Within 10 minutes of sending, I had already gotten a response from BOTH the CS teachers, and in once instance, had already emailed her with one more question and gotten a second response.

Awesome.

I'm still waiting to hear from the Art and Writing teachers. Seems that in other departments, professors seem to not check their email compulsively. Sad really. Think of all the fun internet playing they are missing out on while they do their "interacting-with-other-people-in-real-life" thing. Virtual communication seems so much easier...

a long long time ago... was the last time I wrote

Okay, Marcey makes a good point. I really haven’t written in a long time, and to be honest, a lot has happened. I guess I’ll have to get the blogging world back up to date with my life.

My team for Machinima has been “working hard” on our video. We thought we were done before Spring Break (which sadly ended yesterday) but our teacher wanted us to add some other stuff to make it look a little better. I think that we are going to work on that today and tomorrow in the lab. So that’ll be fun. [huzzah!]

So other than school (and the lack of school last week, sorely needed) not a whole lot has changed in my life, well, except the new love Grete (For those, like me, who were amazed at how that name is spelled, it’s “Greta” but more European.) We’ve been together for a few weeks now, and life is good. Now, the first two weeks were outstanding, but I still had the “new relationship goggles” on. I’ve found some things with Grete that bother me. Now, they are NOT deal breakers, but there they are notable. She knows that I love her so I don’t feel bad about listing the problems that I have noticed on my blog:

1- There is a problem with communication. I just can’t listen to the music she has because she won’t communicate correctly with my other things, so I sit with headphones…
2- Movies are a pain, and it takes a lot of editing and converting to watch movies with her.
3- She has a very low memory threshold
4- This also goes along with the headphones thing. She has no dedicated port…

I’m feeling a little confusion from you my lovely readers. Maybe a formal introduction is in order?

Grete, meet my readers. Readers, meet Grete.

Yes, Mojo spent a ridiculous amount of money on a new fancy-shmancy phone. And yes, I fell in love. Grete is the new (-to-me) phone from Google sold via T-mobile. Grete the G1 (the manufacturer HTC calls it the HTC Dream) is the iPhone equivalent, which for me, has a lot of perks above the iPhone but also Apple knew what they were doing and HTC somewhat missed the boat on. ie

iPhone: Limited on programs that you can install and use
G1: You choose whether or not you want “Google Non-approved” apps on the phone (use discression)

iPhone: Dedicated headphone port (you can charge it and listen to music at the same time)
G1: Only one input port (mini USB – so charge OR listen on headphones via USB to headphone jack converter cable)

iPhone: Sexy
G1: Sexy

iPhone: AT&T [gag]
G1: T-Mobile and unlocking capability for use on most wireless networks. [huzzah]