Scattered Thoughts

Well, here I am yet again, my first day of classes. Expect a class-by-class update throughout the day. I'm taking 15 credit hours in what I hope to be my last semester, unless I missed something along the way. My schedule is great this year. I have classes Monday and Wednesday from 9:30-5:15, I work Tuesday and Thursday from 8:00-4:00 and Friday, I have one class from 1:25-2:15. I also work on Sunday but that doesn't matter.

First class of the day: BUS S305 — Business Telecommunications

This class is an intro networking class, which should be easy. We didn't do anything today, which is normal for the first day of class. We went over the syllabus, decided on groups for our group projects and wrote a short paragraph about our experience for the prof. I got out of here with an hour and fifteen minutes before my next class. It was nice and relaxing to just go sit in the library lobby and surf the web.

Second class: BUS M300 — Marketing

The prof started the class with a repeating slide show and the tune Rock the Casbah by the clash. The class ended up being extremely boring. This guy has a tendency to talk, and talk, and flirt, and talk, and talk, and make little to no connections to the subject matter.

Third class: INFO I303 — Organizational Informatics

Second try at this one. The first time I tried to take this class, the professor was a pompous, arrogant British asshole that talked down to everyone who did not have a PhD (all of his students). This year, our prof. (I say our because Erin, Will, and Kevin, as well as a couple others I know are in the class with me) seems ok. She either worked or graduated from Harvard, so her sense of humor is above the heads of most of her students. She went on some rant today about goblins and some goblin rebellion… a bit strange… whatever.

Fourth class: BUS S433 — Information Systems Security

This is going to be my favorite class of the semester, and that's exactly what I expected. Prof. Worker is definitely the most entertaining professor that I have ever had, and he's willing to find his students a job, as long as you show up to class and do well. The coursework is going to be intense, especially since I am taking the pre-requisite course (S305) this semester as well. It's going to be a great refresher in the afternoons simply because Worker tells jokes constantly. Also, if we want to win $100, all we have to do is catch him in the elevator, but to complete the contract, if he catches us in the elevator, we get publicly humiliated in class by having to wear a steel star that says "wuss" if we ride up and one that says "wimp" for going down. Didn't the Germans force the Jews to wear a star? The premise of this is that in IT jobs, we don't get much exercise, so it causes us to think about that.

Fifth class: BUS A200 — Accounting

Not looking forward to this one at all, mostly because it deals with accounting and I HATE accounting. It seems that this class, although boring, will be interesting. The prof has ADD a bit, which is good. He gets sidetracked easily lending the class to stories and other forms of entertainment.

All in all, I think this semester will go well. I am investigating a different cognate, a cognate in which I will most likely be able to graduate after this semester more easily than with business. We'll see how that works out.

I'm thinking about turning my not-used livejournal into a place where I update everyone on how my classes went. I'm not sure though, we'll see…

As for now, it's naptime before the Psi meeting.

PEACE!

The End-of-the-Blog Rundown

Song of the Day – Army – Ben Folds

Quote of the Day – They look like a chicken stepped in ink… then wandered through a meth lab… I have no idea where this stuff comes from! — Prof. Worker when talking about students' signatures last year.

Villain of the Day – The dude who sat on the end of our row in I303 today. I wanted to punch him in the face so badly that I don't even remember his name.

Hero of the Day – Prof. Worker for making my day interesting.

Current Mood – – Excited about the first day of classes.

Until the next post…

So, right now, I'm bored out of my mind in FA215. I'm working and have been since 8am and will be until 4pm. There has been a total of 2 customers in this lab the whole time, so what's that mean for Tom? Well, 1) he gets paid $10.50 an hour to sit and surf the web and 2) he's bored out of his mind. Since I'm bored, here's your update, with some random quiz results thrown in.

First of all, I thought the results of this quiz were amusing…

Your Summer Ride is a Jeep

For you, summer is all about having no responsibilities. You prefer to hang with old friends – and make some new ones.

What's Your Summer Ride?

After my first year of owning my truck, I started thinking I wanted to get a Jeep simply because then I can take it off roading. I just found it amusing that that's my summer ride according to this quiz.

What has Tom done the last week? one might ask. I've been pretty busy with all kinds of stuff. Last week, I went to my parents' house for a few days before going to Grand Ritual. I moved my stuff from my apartment to my house the week before mostly by myself. This week, I've been working, doing house chores and getting ready for classes to start on Monday. Work has been boring. I'm working consultant shifts, not support staff ones, because there aren't enough consultants to fill the shifts over the summer break, so they were opened up for support staff. It's easy work, but I now remember why I decided to move up the STC ladder. The evenings this week have been great. Every other night, Erin and Tim bring over the Hookah and we all sit around chillin' watching TV, a movie, or watching Will play Halo on Xbox Live. If the evenings all school year are like this, I will be a very happy dude.

Here's another one I thought was interesting…

This one seems pretty accurate. Not going to argue with it at all.

I also took one about what kind of slang I speak, but I hadn't heard but two of the expressions before.

Let's see, what else have I done… Our neighbors across the street came over and introduced themselves yesterday evening. They seem pretty cool. We (Will and I) have now met all of our neighbors. That's a good thing just in case we happen to have an unruly group of people over and things get out of hand. But whatever. I guess we'll see how that pans out when we get to that road.

I'm ready for classes to start, mostly because I'm bored out of my mind with working and sitting on my butt. I miss being at band camp and being in the marching band, but I'm glad I've decided to move on when I did. This semester will be a good opportunity to make my GPA as well as my transcript look better. I'm taking some pretty tough courses, but without the stress and time commitment of Hundred, I should do really well.

Another interesting piece of information I found out while working today. You can no longer flash the PRAM on the Macs on campus. On the old OS 9 build, flashing the PRAM was somewhat of a necessity, but now you can't even do that. One of the problems I had today would have been much easier to solve would I have been able to flash the PRAM and reset the VRAM in the open firmware. I wasn't expecting to be able to do anything in the open firmware, but at least the OF came up when I pressed Command-option-O-F at startup.

Whatever though, I think that's all for now. I'll update again soon.

peace

The End-of-the-Blog Rundown

Song of the Day – Blow Me Away – Breaking Benjamin

Quote of the Day – The gem cannot be polished without friction, nor a man perfected without trials. — Ancient Proverb

Villain of the Day – Boredom, I'm going crazy in here.

Hero of the Day – Schuyler for sounding exactly like Frylock when he talks… hahahaha

Current Mood – – Bored Silly and not enjoying it one bit.

Until the next post…

I realize that I'm a couple days late on this post, but whatever. It's been a hectic couple of days here in Bloomington. I figured I would put in a couple cents about this whole Pat Robertson thing, mostly since I'm bored here at work and have nothing better to write about. If you are reading for an update on my life, you'll get one of those, most likely on Friday.

On August 22, Pat Robertson, a conservative Christian minister with a TV show, made an outrageous and ridiculous claim on The 700 Club. He advocated the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez saying, "You know, I don't know about this doctrine of assassination, but if he thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it. It's a whole lot cheaper than starting a war." While I was watching the evening news yesterday, I couldn't believe what I was hearing. At first I thought it was some strange story about how Robertson's words were misinterpreted, but he definitely plain as day said that American Covert Ops should assassinate President Chavez.

Now I realize that Chavez isn't the best world leader and that he has completely depleted the Venezuelan economy, but to have a conservative religious figure call for the assassination of a world leader is just flat out dumb; not to mention how revolting and inappropriate most Christians must feel his comments were. Right now, the way I understand it, is that Venezuela and Chavez pose no huge threat to the United States, its citizens and its foreign interests, so I don't understand why it was even mentioned on The 700 Club.

I don't know if Robertson realized this at the time, but with this comment, he has mildly damaged the perceived strength of our government to outsiders. Venezuelan Vice President, Jose Vicente Rangel, has challenged our government to take action against Robertson: "What is the U.S. government going to do about this criminal statement made by one of its citizens?" What he doesn't realize is that the statement that was made was not a criminal statement here in the US, rather an expression of our First Amendment rights as American citizens. Just because Robertson said it doesn't mean it reflects the beliefs of American policy makers and/or military planners.

Amid all this ridiculousness, last night on The 700 Club Robertson told viewers, "I didn't say 'assassination.' I said our special forces should 'take him out.' And 'take him out' can be a number of things, including kidnapping; there are a number of ways to take out a dictator from power besides killing him." Now not only has a conservative Christian minister called for the assassination of a world leader on national television, but also now he's lying about what was said. Upon review of the tapes, anyone can see that he outright advocated assassination… and he even called it that (see above).

Not only has he caused a stir around Central America, but also he has stained his image as a conservative Christian minister here in the United States. Way to go, Pat Robertson.

The End-of-the-Blog Rundown

Song of the Day – B.Y.O.B. – System of a Down

Quote of the Day – JUICE!

Current Mood – – Bored

Until the next post…

And here I sit, at the end of yet another amazing summer. It hardly feels like it should be over. I've been back in the real world for a little over a week, and I feel out of place. I feel like there should be another week of campers, another week of memories waiting to be made. This summer's schedule has thrown me off; there's one extra week off before school and there was one less week of break before camp started.

Anyway, on to the End-of-the-Summer post. I'll try not to make it too long because nobody likes reading long posts, but keep in mind it is an update from the last three months of my life…

I don't know where to start, so I'll start at the beginning, in January.

I had my interview and honestly started worrying about the summer. I knew I would be without Mojo and Will, so I was skeptical about how good the summer would be. May rolled around and I started working for Keith along with Murph, Tim, and a few others. It was a good time, as always.

When the staff showed up for set up weekend, I was all excited. Although the weekend was wet and nasty, I had a good time. I met some of the people who would make my summer great while working on tent crew. We all got wet, worked hard and, by the end of the weekend, camp was mostly set up.

When the staff showed up, I was short staffed by three people. That didn't make for a very relaxing staff week like last year's. At the end of staff week, I had a bare bones staff, shortly to be filled by HA 2005's sixth staff member.

Then campers showed up and the summer got tons better. As the weeks went by, things got better and better. One group of kids left and would think "How could it be better than this?" And the next week, it was better. This continued throughout the summer, until the end.

The end of the summer was saddening… Not knowing if I'm going to come back or not complicated by leaving everyone who I've lived with and become closer to throughout the summer made it hard to say goodbye. It's always hard to say goodbye because it's saying goodbye to all the good times, but not the never-fading memories. It was the last summer for so many of the people I have become so close to over the years, but I can confidently say that I didn't waste any moment, every chance that I had was a chance that I seized.

All and all, it was a great summer. I was sad to see it end, but all good things must come to an end. And I think that's all I really want to say tonight.

"I never will forget those nights
I wonder if it was a dream…"

The End-of-the-Blog Rundown

Song of the Day – Prince of Spades – Dispatch

Quote of the Day
Me: Hey Luke, what kind of bird is that over there? It's got a red body and black wings.
Luke: I don't know. a Red Winged Blackbird?

Current Mood – – Blah

I can't wait until Grand Ritual this weekend…