Author Archives: Nathan

Back Home, Small World

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There was an AudioBlog here, but I wasn’t that impressed with it, and so I dissapeared it. 🙂 It’s still around, so if you want to hear it, let me know.

I came back from Youth and Gov today. I had a good time, all in all. I got there about 11:30 Thursday, and saw a few sessions, talked with Brionna in the Governor’s Office for quite a while, watched debate on several bills, and generally just hung out.

They were in the capitol building this year, after two years in temporary facilities. Normally, they use the Capitol, but in 2001, there was a serious earthquake, and the Capitol sustained some pretty serious damage. The 2001 session, the year before I joined, was at a college because they were still assessing the damage, but the capitol was open for the 2002 session, and we were the last to use it before they closed it for a long overdue renovation, which forced the last two sessions to use the same temporary quarters that the legislators were using–they were a bit tight on space, though. Anyway, it was good to be back in the Capitol Building.

I went up to Nathan R.’s house for the night, which worked out well. It was a bit more of a drive than I anticipated, and there was road construction by his exit, and although traffic wasn’t that bad by city standards, there were still a lot of cars to deal with, so the trip up there was a bit interesting. I made it safely, though, and Nathan and I ended up disassembling his computer and then putting it back together, and trying to install a new motherboard in between. It didn’t boot properly, but we’re not sure what was wrong, other than the computer never even displayed the BIOS on the screen. I’ve never taken a motherboard out before, so it was a learning experience. Good thing for Google, though, as we disconnected the wires to the front panel, and then realized that it wasn’t as simple as it looked to re-connect them. And they are important–they connect to things like the power button.

This morning, I discovered that it is a small world. Nathan’s next-door neighbor stopped by for a few minutes, and we discovered that he had gone to high school with man that works with my dad. Weird the way things work out like that.

I went back to Olympia today, with mainly a repeat of yesterday. The Governor’s Office was busier today, but also better organized. I watched the Governor’s press conference, and then decided to leave (it was about 3) so I wouldn’t hit the Friday night traffic too bad. I got really tired on the way home, so I pulled over, intending to take a short nap, but I couldn’t sleep at all. I got some food from a convenience store, and was not sleepy the rest of the trip home (2hrs). Traffic wasn’t bad for me, with the exception of a 2 mile stretch of Highway 14, from I-205 to 164th, which crawled at about 5-10 mph.

I’m glad I went, I got to talk to a lot of people that I remembered from previous years, and see the program continue on. It’s not as exciting when you’re not a participant, and if I’m not some sort of an advisor next year, I probably wouldn’t go. I’m hoping something can be worked out, though. I don’t know if there’s any way I could attend any of the events before the real session, though. Of course, I don’t know why I’m worrying about that before the session is even over.

When I got home, my mom had me call a man from church, who apparently is looking for someone to move a bunch of wood chips and debris left over from having two trees cut down. He wanted me to work on it, as he can’t do it all himself, so I’m going to be working on that tomorrow. I’m not sure how big of a project it is, but I guess I’ll find out when I get there.Speaking of work, I stopped by the store on my way home, and got my schedule–I start working there again Thursday. For some reason, I’m almost dreading it, although I never had that feeling when I was working there last summer. We’ll see if this continues after I actually get started. I’m currently scheduled on one freight shift, which means that I get to arrive at 5 in the morning on Monday to unload the semi and stock the shelves. And once you get set in a pattern, Troy usually sticks with it. This part, I’m really not looking forward to.

Seeing as it’s nearly 11, and I was falling asleep earlier, and I’m going to be working tomorrow, I wish you all a good night.

–Nathan

Youth and Gov.

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As I’ve been mentioning over the last week or two, I’m planning to go on a bit of a road trip starting tomorrow. I was hoping to stay with Cean for the night, but he called me back last night, (actually, while I was on my bike ride) and it was just too short of notice for him to work out. I was online, intending to get a hotel reservation, when Nathan R. messaged me, and he ended up looking at my site, and saw the earlier post about Cean. I told him that it hadn’t worked out, and he offered to let me stay at his house. Plans were made today, and so that’s where I will be tomorrow night. It’s a bit further than Cean’s would have been, about 40 minutes drive, it looks like, but it should be fun. I’m looking forward to seeing some of the Y&G people, and to setting off on my first solo road trip. Should be fun.

Had a bit of a disagreement with my mom about how much I can use the internet, mainly becuse I stayed up until after 2 last night. We had a talk, and I’m a bit limited on the time that I’m supposed to be online, at least until “I prove that I can stay up late and still get up in the morning”–I’m supposed to be off by midnight for the next few weeks, but I expect things will get better in time. I may stay up late now and again, but when I start needing sleep, I will start turning in earlier, if I can’t sleep in. Now that I know what she thinks of as “get up in the morning”, I should be able to do so with pretty good regularity. Of course, starting work again, with my shifts early or late, should serve to jumble up my clock a bit. And get me off my mom’s nerves. 🙂

Well, off to bed, so I can get up in the morning.

–Nathan

Summer

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I’ve started several posts talking about the last few days of school, after finals were done, but I can’t motivate myself to talk about it. Must mean that it would be too boring to read, so I guess I won’t post it. I’ll just say that I had mixed feelings about leaving for the summer, and will certainly be glad come August 28 when I get to see everyone again.

Still thinking about that Youth and Gov trip. I had been hoping to travel along with the high school, and be some sort of an “advisor”, but the state office for the program mandates that “advisors” have been out of high school for a year at least. Maybe next year. I still want to go, and have been thinking about driving up for a day and just being a random visitor. Cean, my roommate for next year, lives about 10 minutes from the capitol campus, so I’ve been trying to call him today to see if I can maybe spend Thursday night with him. Makes things a bit easier, and I can spend a night without paying for a hotel. He hasn’t been answering his cell, so maybe I need to look up his home number and try him there. I think I’ll call Sunday afternoon. I’m just a bit concerned about the short notice. I really didn’t think of staying with him until Friday, so we’ll see how this progresses. My mom’s not terribly wild about me setting off on a trip all by myself, but I’ve gone there three years in a row, so I know the area, and I’m old enough to wander Portland on my own if I so choose, and she realizes that. If I’m staying with Cean, I think she’ll be more comfortable about the whole thing, and I still haven’t decided for sure that I’m going. If I get a hold of Cean, and they’re ok with me staying the night, I’m going, otherwise I’m not totally sure.

Not a whole lot else going on. Unpacking continues next week, and I intend to sort through the stuff that has been sitting unused in my room all year and see what I really need. Other than that and Y&G, my week is pretty empty. I start work at the store again on Wednesday the 11th or so, but until then, I’m mainly poking around the house, setting up and sorting out my room, and generally being lazy. At least until Mom decides that I’ve had enough.

Cape Kiwanda

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this is an audio post - click to play

An Audio post about last Friday–I would post more, but I’m tired of typing, and AudioBlogger limits you to about 5 minute posts, and I ran over once already. Finals week is nearly over for me, I have the paper and one final down, two finals left to go.

As you can see in the title, the name of the beach where we went was Cape Kiwanda, the name escaped me while I was talking.

Dead Week

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Being that finals are next week, I probably won’t be doing much with the website in the next few days. I have a project due Thursday for my engineering course, but it is simply to turn in corrected versions of three assigments done over the course. They were done on computer, so it should be pretty simple.
Then on Friday, I have a 5-6 page paper about the book we read in English. He mentioned earluer in the year that he would push it out until the time alloted for that class’s final, which is next Monday, but last Monday, he seemed to have changed his mind.
Also on Friday, I have due the last CS program, but it looks like it might be pretty complicated. The paper is due by 5pm, and the CS program is due by midnight, via e-mail.

Then the exams. Monday at 8:00 is english, but the paper is the final for that class. At 10:30, I have the Physics final. 8:00 Tuesday is my Calculus final, and the CS final is at 10:30 Tuesday. At 12:30 Tuesday, I am done with all work for the semester.

Not sure how long I am staying on here–I don’t want to leave too early, so maybe wednesday or thursday. I still have to pack up everything in the room, so I do need some time, and I will probably want to sleep sometime. Of course, if I get packed, I can sleep at home too…

At any rate, I best get to bed so that I can get a good start in the morning. I may post updates as things get completed, if I feel like it.

Until next week,
–Nathan

English usage

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I did this test a few weeks ago, and drafted the post for some reason. Cel did the same quiz, and I had to go back and figure out where this one went.

English Genius
You scored 92% Beginner, 100% Intermediate, 93% Advanced, and 88% Expert!
You did so extremely well, even I
can’ t find a word to describe your excellence! You have the uncommon
intelligence necessary to understand things that most people don’t. You
have an extensive vocabulary, and you’re not afraid to use it properly!
Way to go!

Thank you so much for taking my test. I hope you enjoyed it!

My test tracked 4 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender:
You scored higher than 43% on Beginner
You scored higher than 77% on Intermediate
You scored higher than 61% on Advanced
You scored higher than 96% on Expert

Link: The Commonly Confused Words Test written by shortredhead78 on Ok Cupid

Categories Working

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This post relates to the categories I was trying to set up on my Blogger blog, which I have since abandoned.

I have now made the categories work. It took a bit of fooling around, and anyone who came by in the middle would have seen quite a mess. At one point, blogger posted a message to my blog informing me that it thought that my post-by-mail post was spam. It didn’t reply to my e-mail, it just posted it straight to my blog. I also posted some of the things more than once, as anyone reading my blog by RSS probably knows. Now, it works satisfactorily, the only thing that is a bit odd will be the double “posted by” line at the bottom, but there’s not much that can be done about that.

Anyway, now that categories are up, the Photos link over to the side will have the photos I post, and nothing else. Everything will still be posted on the main blog, though. I could do a few more categories now that I have it figured out, but all I was trying to do was to be able to automatically have a list of all the pictures I post to the blog.

I also have been posting the pictures to the galleries section of my website, if appropriate. I set up a new “Around Campus” page for those pictures, too.

[Edit 4/19: For some reason, a few of the ones I forwarded through my computer seems to have gotten stuck in Outlook, and every now and then, it decides to forward them to my blog again. I’m in the process of stopping this, and will remove them as they happen, but if you see strangely formatted posts with e-mail addresses in them, that’s what happened.]