My Birthday Details

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So after I posted the last post, I had Physics, and then went to dinner with a whole bunch of people. I’m starting to become friends with this crowd, and hanging out with them is fun. After dinner, I was in my room playing a video game when Andy, Jake, and I think Michael came in and started shooting me with a little cap gun. (Jake bought a few at the dollar store the other day, and there have been several minor skirmishes in the last few days.) I think I mentioned Jake having shot at me early in the morning. Someone tosssed me a gun, shouting “defend yourself” I started shooting at them, and they ran down the hall. I chased them, and soon we were out into the lobby. Then Jake looked inside, because the doors were closed, and said something like “the obsticle course isn’t quite ready” I didn’t know anything about an obsticle course, but it sounded decent, and then Jake said that Andy and I should go in one door, and he and the other preson would go in the other. We went in, and I saw that the couches had been moved a bit. Then everyone stood up from behind the couches and said “Happy Birthday”.

It was a surprise party. All told, there were about 20 or so there, and they had a cake and a card. We ate some cake, and everyone was still shooting at one another. There was also a pillow fight. About the time the cake was served, my parents called me from San Diego on their vacation. I talked a few minutes, and returned to the party. I called them back later for a longer chat.

All in all, it was a really good birthday. Having that many people show up for my birthday really is a boost to the self esteem. I really like it here.

Happy Birthday to Me! (100th post)

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Yeah, so I could have certainly have come up with a better title, but it serves its purpose.

Registered today, so I have classes for next semester. The online registration wouldn’t accept my PIN this morning, so I went to the Engineering building and registered in person. I discovered that theology 101, a core (and thus required) class, was almost entirely reserved for freshmen, with only 10 slots left available. Kitty, the lady who does Engineering registration, was going to talk with someone to see if I have to wait until after May when they know how many freshmen we have, or if she can register me anyway. I just sent her off an e-mail.

I remember being surprised last year, but this year I more or less expected it–I’m a year older, but I feel pretty much the same as I did yesterday. Nothing all that special about 19 in the States, although everyone keeps pointing out that I can now drink in Canada. That is, of course, when I go to Canada, which could be a while. Like, more than 2 years…

Yesterday after the hall mass, I brought down the cake my mom sent me when I came back from Easter, to share it with everyone. It went over pretty well.

Today, several people have wished me a happy birthday, and I’m wondering if I should be worried about later. I was up at midnight, and about 12:15, Jake and a few others came into my room with little cap guns, trying to sneak up on me. Jake fired, and pegged me right between the eyes. (There was no chance of injury, the rubber bullets don’t really get going very fast, but it is still surprising to see it coming.) Everyone keeps warning me about my 19 birthday spankings coming, but I’m pretty sure that they’re joking serious, as opposed to really serious. Nevertheless, I’ll keep an eye out for the rest of the day.

I did have one pretty good birthday present today. I had a CS test, and after the test, the professor gives you the answers as you head out the door. I got all sis questions correct. There was one thing I forgot the syntax for, so I guessed, but I got that right, too. Not bad for a present, if you ask me. Now I just need to repeat that for my calc test tomorrow.

Not too much new to report.

–Nathan

Weeds

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—-

I’ve decided that my 100th post will be a birthday present to my self, or something. Anyway, it will be posted on my birthday, April 6. Content will likely be the same old stuff, because I’m not very creative.

Speaking of creative, it you have an hour or so to spare, go check out the Shadow Line series that Ben wrote. The screenplays are rather good, despite his disclaimers on the site. They are a work in progress, so there are a few minor parts that don’t make sense, but all in all, it’s a good read.

—-

I’ve been limping around campus this last week. About a week ago now, I was riding my bike, and noticed my knee was a little sore. I didn’t think much of it, but last Wednesday, I didn’t leave myself enough time to walk to class, so I took my bike. My knee hurt again, and when I went to sit down, it really hurt. So I’ve been trying to take it easy, avoiding stairs where possible, and not doing anything more strenuous than walking. My knee was getting better until today, when it started hurting more again. I’ve gotten a few strange looks taking the elevator up only floor, as I look fully healthy. Sometimes I don’t feel like waiting for the elevator, and so I take the stairs–I did that this morning, which is one of the things that made my knee worse. I’ll just take it easier in the future.

—-

My family is on vacation this week. Ever since my third grade year (95), when we went to Disneyland, our family has traditionally taken a bigger vacation every other spring break. This year, since I’m at college, it’s just the three of them. This year’s vacation is to San Diego.

I talked to them last night, and they’re already into the swing of things. Sounds like it’ll be fun. I really don’t miss it as much as I might sound like I do, although I wouldn’t mind coming along.

—-

I think spring has sprung on me. I have mild hay fever, and h ad taken a pill and a nasal spray daily the last few years. I stop for the winter, and I never got into the habit here. Honestly, I haven’t really needed it, and at nearly a buck a pill, I wasn’t in any hurry to start again. I have a large supply, but I’m just waiting to see if I need it at all. The past few days, my eyes have watered a bit, but only for a few minutes, and then it goes away. Today in Physics was bad–maybe there’s more flowers outside those windows than some others. I’ll keep an eye on it, but I’m not starting up on the allergy medicine until I need to.

—-

Went and saw my advisor today, got signed off to register, and got my PIN for online registration. I am allowed to register starting tomorrow afternoon, so we’ll see how full the classes are today. They were pretty empty this morning, when I was finalizing my schedule, but none of the incoming Sophomores had registered. I’m in the third group of four to register, but for the main part, I’m taking first year classes, or classes that have several sections offered, so I should be okay. If not, I go down and ask the registrar nicely. 🙂

—-

I had a stupid moment today, when I deleted about 30 of my pictures. I had transferred them to another folder, and then pressed Shift+Delete to delete the folder that I had transferred them from, as I didn’t want it cluttering up my Recycle Bin. The first thought I had was “You know, since I’ve accidentally sent the wrong file to the recycle bin while transferring photos before, I really shouldn’t use Shift+Delete.” The next thought was “Dang, I really was right–I just deleted the wrong folder.” I tried to shut down any programs that would write to the hard drive, and I though I had a recovery program installed. I didn’t, but was able to install it to a networked drive, and ran it, but it kept giving me a memory read error, at address something or other, even after a few installs. I don’t think it was designed to be run from a drive other than the boot drive, and I didn’t want to install there for fear of overwriting the deleted files. Unfortunately, they are gone, and even the tech genius from down the hall couldn’t work his Linux magic to retrieve them. They weren’t SUPER important, but were some pictures taken at the hall retreat, mainly. I had been planning to submit them to Nick for the Villa video, but I guess not.

—-

Last week, I was toying with the idea of a moustache or a beard. I didn’t shave for a few (okay, several) days, but then I wasn’t able to deal with the beard, it was just too annoying. Plus, i felt more like I forgot to shave than like I was growing a beard. I shaved it off over the weekend, but left the moustache. So for two days, i had a thin moustache. I got annoyed with that, too, so I shaved it off this morning. So I am once again back to being clean shaven. Which I will probably remain for quite a while now.

—-

My room reminds me of a Bill Cosby joke right now. It went something like this:

“I listen to a large variety in music. For example, just the other day, I was listening to rap. Not because I wanted to, mind you, but because the car in front of me had his music on so loud.”

I do listen to a variety of music, and the last few days, I’ve been listening to a lot of Michael Bublé. (Pronounced boo-BLAY) Jake just bought the CD. It’s actually pretty good stuff, and I saw him on one of the late shows a month or so ago. I think it was Letterman, but I’m not too sure. Anyway, good music, if you are into more of a old style, Sinatra type sound.

—-

Sad news about the pope, but I’m glad that it didn’t drag on forever. I’ve never seen the process for electing a new pope, so I’ll be watching the news often.

—-

Stibe buddy in 2 minutes, so I’m going to call it a night.

[Edited because A HERF doesn’t work the same as A HREF.]
–Nathan

April Fools

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I thought about posting an April fools joke yesterday, but I couldn’t think of anything clever enough, and I was too lazy, anyway.

So it’s been a while since I last posted. I went home last weekend, for Easter, and that was nice. The knowledge bowl team at my high school was competing at state last Saturday, and my sister is on the team, so my parents and I went along to watch.

I was in Knowledge bowl last year, and the team did really well then. Actually, the previous year, the old advisor quit, and there was a mixup over who would be an advisor, and the league ended up being told that we didn’t have a team. Due to that mixup, and the lack of experience of the new advisor, last year, we only had a JV team for the regualr season. We rocked the JV teams, winning all four meets by a lot. For regionals, one of the schools with a lower scoring Varsity team offered us their spot, probably more to improve their chances at a JV championship than as a nice gesture. We came into the championship round in 1st or 2nd place, and 3 made it to the championship round. However, only 2 teams advanced to the state level. Aftr the 60 question round, we were tied for second place. A tiebreaker round was held, and the other team won the tiebreaker by a considerable margin (6-2 out of 10, or something). So we never went to state.

This year, my sister has joined, and they also have a freshman on the team, as well as the genius that carried the team last year, Ray. The whole league is afraid of him. He is very smart, has been to the state geography bee twice, can do math in his head faster than I can do it on a calculator, and is pretty good historically. He has a few chinks in his knowledge, but they aren’t very deep.

This year’s team advanced to state, and went into the championship round in first place. After 59 of 60 questions in the championship round, it was 12-12-12. Whichever team got the point on the final question won the state championship. Unfortunately, another team rung in just a bit faster than Stevenson, and answered correctly, taking the championship. Once again, Stevenon found themselves in a tiebreaking round. Unfortunately, once again, they were unable to take the victory. Stevenson took third place in state. An immense improvement from the JV team last year, and from the team’s performance my freahmn and sophomore years.

After I got back to UP, I returned online, and discovered there had been a bit of a dustup in one of the forums I visit frequently. (I’m not going to bother with details, but rather post an oversimplification) One of the longtime posters stepped a bit out of line in one forum, and other things had been happening. The person who runs the website was offended by the posts, and told her so. Another person took offense, and left in a huff, only to be banned by the owner of the site. I don’t totally agree with the reasons for all this, but I don’t deny Ben’s right to kick people off his site, and Velvet was indeed a bit out of line.

I’ve been typing this in small bits all day, it is now about midnight, so the title is now even less appropriate.

At school, we are in the middle of registration. I’m still not sure what major I want to be, but I’m thinking that I probably don’t want to major in CS. A minor or something, perhaps. I’ m still debating between mechanical and electrical, which has the computer and the electrical tracks. Computer track electrical engineering is actually kinda similar to CS, and I’m leaning that way if I do decide to go electrical. However, now that I’ve decided that I’m not doing CS, i discovered that I have at least next semester, and maybe even until Junior year before it makes any difference which way I’m going. EE and ME have several common classes, so I don’t have to make a decision yet.

I’m tired of blogging right now, and so I declare this a complete post. Until next time.

–Nathan

5000 Hits, milestones

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I had my 5000th hit on my website at 4:27 (Pacific) today! (I first created my site sometime in late January or early February 2004, but had less than 300 hits, including my own, when I moved to Statcounter in May 2004.) Not bad, considering the ammount of content on my site! And I just discovered I have another e-milestone coming up! < This is my 99th blog post, which means (obviously), that whatever I post next will be my 100th! Edit: Upon recounting, I realized that I counted one post twice, and messed up the mental math by one, and this is only my 97th post. I guess I have a bit more time to think up something fitting.

Next Year

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Well, it’s official. I’ve signed a contract for my room next year. WE ended up with the room I wanted. I would say “room we wanted”, but Cean decided that it was my decision to choose the particular room. I had been pretty open about which wing, and he declared that he wanted to room in 2B/C. He said several times “I picked the wing, you pick the room”, and “I’ll be happy with whatever you pick”. It wasn’t so bad when he was planning to be gone, but plans changed and he was there after all. I had a signed form naming me as his proxy, which would have allowed me to sign his contract for him, and thus pick a room on my own. (All roommates are required to be present when picking a room, unless they have a proxy.) I feel like he would have preferred a different room, but didn’t want to say anything. I was thinking that we wanted a room in B wing, with the modular furniture, which allows more flexibility in how the room is arranged, and allows changes any time you feel like dragging the furniture around. He said something about wanting a river view, but when I asked him if he wanted one, he backpedalled and left the decision to me. As the view is not particularly breathtaking, and would have required a C wing room, I decided to go with room 227, which happens to be the room directly above Cean’s current room. Because I felt like it, here’s a diagam of Villa:

Villa layout.This year, I live at the green star, on the first floor (which is actually one story above ground level in C wing. The red letters are the wing designations, and I marked where the RA rooms are. The hall director is on the first floor, the AHD on the second. Next year, I will live at the blue star, on the second floor. If you hadn’t guessed, the front door is right where it says lobby. There is another door you can enter downstairs by the parking lot. The river runs roughly parallel to C wing, and off the bottom of the image. Obviously, scale is a bit off, as the halls are all about the same width.

I expressed an interest in being on the welcoming crew, and will find out about that next week. The welcoming crew moves in a week early, and assists the freshmen in getting their stuff to their rooms, as well as doing all the decoration for the move-in. There is a contest among all the dorms to have the most/best decorations at move in, and welcoming crew is a coveted position. I suppose it is partly because you get to come back (or leave home) earlier.

Not much new to report.

–Nathan

Housing Selection

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The other day, I mentioned to Celtic that I was in the process of picking my room and roommate. Earlier this evening, she left me this comment:

wait – you get to choose rooms and stuff? You’re going to know before you even leave for the summer? Huh? How does that work? Is it one of those schools where every single student lives in residence the whole entire time they’re a student there?

This sounds so incredibly odd to me.

If the process is confusing to her, it is undoubtedly confusing to others, too, so I will attempt to explain it here.

The process begins a few weeks ago, when everyone decides where they will be rooming next year. If you will be off campus, then you are done with the process. Those who wish to room in the row housing (townhouse style) submit their applications just before spring break, and choose rooms the week they get back. You choose the group you would like to room with, and each group gets a point total, based on the number of credits passed, the number of transfer, AP, and IB credits, and the number of semesters previously lived in the row housing or on campus. There is a big selection night, and the group with the highest total picks first, until all the rooms are filled. Anyone who didn’t fit, or anyone left over (if a group of 7 winds up with a room for 6) can go for singles there, and anyone left over at the end has about 2 days to fill out an application for the traditional halls (dorms). Again, points re awarded, 50 for coming back to the same hall the first year, and 25 for each additional year you come back, as well as 10 points for each semester lived in University owned housing, one point per credit passed, and per IB or AP credit, and half a point per transfer credit. It is heavily weighted to people who are returning to the same hall, and to upperclassmen living on campus. Tomorrow night is selection night. They go down the list of people in order of points, (which has been posted, along with a map of rooms that are available), and when your name is called, you and your roommate(s) choose a room. It is done by highest individual point total, not group total.

If you are going to be a Junior or above, you have the option to “squat”, which means that if you can find enough roommates to fill your room, you can keep it out of the general pool.

This leads to quite a bit of figuring how high you (or your roommate) are on the list, and who is going for triples, and who wants to room in which wing, and so on. Cean, my roommate, probably had quite a few AP credits, as he has 10 more points than I do. He is ranked 19, and the list starts at 6, (due to people wanting singles and squatters), and counting out triple contenders, we are ranked 8 or so. We have our eyes on a few rooms in particular in B wing, and would certainly like to be in 2B/C. It is rumored that Jake will be in that wing next year. He is my RA now, and I really like him. In honesty, though, it’s not that I dislike the other RA’s, just that I don’t know them very well.

So by this time tomorrow, I will know which room I am in next year, and will have signed a contract and meal plan. I think we have a good shot at one of the better rooms, but if everyone else is looking at one of the same rooms, then we’ll have to go somewhere else. Cean wants to go to another event that night, and has signed a letter to let me choose our room for the two of us. We’ve come to the conclusion that we’ll room somewhere in 2B/C, and that any room is okay with him. I’ll try and get one of the ones in B wing, because they are the modular rooms, and if that fails, one of the larger ones in C wing, where the desks are built in. This means that if you want to loft/bunk the beds, you need to build the loft yourself, which means that re-arranging the room later in the year is out.

On the off chance that someone is really interested in the process, the Office of Res. Life has a website devoted to explaining the details.

I started a post today in CS lab, while I was waiting for the professor to get a chance to verify that my code worked correctly, but about that time, she finally got there, and I only wrote a sentence or so. It turns out that the lab instructions were written for an older version of the program, and part of the lab involved selecting an option that was no longer on the “Tools” menu. She was trying to figure it out, but ended up giving up. She had done it successfully on the computer her office, but she must have had a different version. I eventually did figure it out, with a bit of experimenting, and some help from Google, but it didn’t matter anymore. Oh well, I showed her that I’m capable of figuring things out, I guess. You know, half of the computer stuff I learn is from Google. I don’t know what I would do without it.

Being a Catholic school, we get a 4 day weekend for Easter, which is next Sunday. Classes end at 4pm Thursday, and don’t resume until Tuesday. I’m going home for the weekend, but were I not, I’ve had 2 other invitations to Easter dinner, one specifically to me, and one blanket invitation. But I want to go home, and we’re having some company over there. Not that I have to go home, but that’s always nice, at least for a few days. I can see why some people are so anxious to get back, though.

I’d better get back to work, so that’s all for now.

–Nathan

Apathy?

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Time for another content update. I know that if I don’t do it tonight, I won’t get to it for another quite a while. There’s a bunch of stuff going on this weekend, and I need to sit down and finish an essay for a scholarship application. I’ve already got someone working on a letter of recommendation, so I definitely have to get this off. That and my mom is threatening me if I don’t. I need to get a good quality essay, too. There’s also an all hall (but optional) service project tomorrow morning, which I may attend, and my uncle has invited me to his house for dinner Sunday. Which reminds me, I need to remember to call him back about that. I told him that I was interested, and he mentioned picking me up here, but we never finalized a time or location.

I’ve been doing a lot of writing this week. I have a partial draft of the scholarship essay, and Monday, I got my first essay back from my English class. He didn’t like the paper terribly well, partly due to paragraph structure, partly due to a thesis he thought was too specific, and partially because it was about 4 lines short of filling the third page. I got a C-, with instructions to resubmit the paper on Wednesday. He suggested I visit the writing center to get help on the paper, which I did Monday evening. Rewriting the paper was made more difficult by the fact that I got the paper back exactly one month after I last turned it in. On the flip side, I was able to look at the paper from a new angle.

I turned it in Wednesday, and I now have the potential to score as high as a B-. The paper is one of two shorter ones for the class, and there is one longer paper for as the take-home final. He has said that a good second paper and final leaves open the possibility of an A- in the class, but it looks more likely that I’ll get a B or lower. While I’m told is not unusual for college, I still prefer getting an A to a B.

As a side result of all this thinking and writing, every time I tried to answer Kitten‘s five questions I just didn’t feel like doing them. So no, they aren’t forgotten, just greatly delayed.

The last few weeks, I’ve been suffering from some sort of laziness disease. Sometimes, I just don’t want to do my work, and I feel like I should just go to bed. This happens more often in the afternoon, so perhaps, I’m just down on sleep. It’s not spring fever, because I don’t want to go outside, although I do like getting out in the nice weather. It can’t possibly be senioritis, as I’m nowhere close to graduating. It’s spilling over to other things, too. I would like to get a decent blog post going, but I just don’t feel like it. Midway through this post, I just got up and left, going to the Cove for a snack. Then I got back, and talked to people for a few minutes, and finally got back. All I can muster the urge to write is this last paragraph. I’m warning you now, future updates may be a while on coming. (Of course, by posting this, I virtually guarantee that I will have 2-3 posts in the next week.) At any rate, it’s off to bed for me.

–Nathan