Scattered Thoughts

Today while I was stumbling around the web, I made a slight change to the banner image on the top of this site. I was reading an article that was describing the meaning of some Chinese characters and identified with them.

The symbol I found intriguing was Yi. When it is used by itself, it can mean righteousness, justice or self sacrifice. It is one of the long standing Four Ethical Principles: li (propriety), yi (righteousness), lian (integrity/purity) and chi (shamefulness). It also has a stronger, deeper meaning: the code of brotherhood, i.e. personal loyalty. When used in the right context, it is the thing that causes a man to make a great sacrifice for a friend; a sacrifice that involves personal injury or hardship.

I like to think that I make these same sacrifices for my friends and I try to live my life by the "codes of brotherhood" that I have sworn to uphold and cherish. With that in mind, I modified the symbol for yi a bit by adding the symbol for qi:

When these two symbols combine, the translation is roughly "personal loyalty". I feel very strongly that we all must strive to be loyal to ourselves first, friends and family second, and everything else after that. Everyday, I work toward this ideal in the hopes that some day, it will make me a better person.

So, how was my weekend you may ask? It was freakin’ awesome. Erin and I ended up not going to Beerfest on Thursday; instead we went to Big Red, bought our own Beerfest and came back and drank it with Tim, Will, Schuyler and I think that was it. If I left you out, I'm sorry. I was really drunk that night.

Friday night, Erin, Carrie and I went to the Bluebird to see 40% Steve, who is actually now only 20% Steve, but that doesn't matter. The band is better than they were a couple years ago when I first saw them. The lead guitarist is a kid from my high school — Adam Scarzo. He's freakin’ amazing, and he's not the same scrawny little Adam I remember from High School.

Anyway, IU got their butts handed to them on Saturday at the football game, but that didn't matter. That night, we decided to have some people over to our house, not as planned. We were going to go see Mike and Joe, but decided that two nights in a row at the bar would be excessive. Jeremy Brown was down in B'ton and he came over. I also got to take apart an iBook to dry out a coffee spill. I was unsuccessful with getting it back up and running for James though. He's going to have to have it worked on for something like $700. I guess it's better to try to solve the problem for free than to have him take it to an expert and them tell him that all he had to do was something I could've done.

We had a few people over at our place and people kept coming and coming. There was hookah, beer, alcohol, cornbread, etc. It was a good time. We had probably 15-18 people in our living room at its peak. People finally trickled out of the house around 3:00am. I couldn't sleep right away, so I played some Halo until around 4:00 then went to bed.

Sunday was the PM Pumpkin Carving which was good fun. The rest of the day, I was in some strange melancholy mood. Possibly a prediction about the mood I would be in Monday night. I went to work, did my auditor thing for four hours, almost had a group buy me beer for fixing the network connection on their station, about threw the plotters out the window, you know… that old chestnut.

Monday was a decent day, although long. I missed my fourth class of the semester because I opted out of Accounting for Sleep N455, Professional Napping. Went to the psi meeting, proceeded to get pissed off at a few people, came home, drank a beer, bitched with Tim and Will, then went to bed.

I've been in the strangest mood today. I've been all loopy and crazy, while at the same time all pissed off and angry about last night. It's a strange sensation, but whatever.

Ok, enough about that. I mainly wanted to update and explain the new faded symbols in the banner and I ended up writing about my whole weekend.

This weekend, I would like to go camping. Possibly somewhere like Red River Gorge, KY or Garden of the Gods IL. I just need to get out of Bloomington and go somewhere relaxing, especially after this week. If you're interested, let me know. You'll have to have access to your own gear since I don't have enough cold weather gear to supply an entire expedition. It's expensive, and I would rather spend money on technology .

I'm outta here!

peace

The End-of-the-Blog Rundown

Song of the Day – Politik – Coldplay

Quote of the Day – "You know, I feel like I'm going to regret this. But I feel even more that I just don't care and that watching this whole thing unravel might be kinda interesting." — Church, RvB Episode #64

Today's Moment of Bliss – Watching some asian students blabbable in some asian language about where they had to go next to drop classes. This was at 3:30 and the cutoff was 4:00. There were six of them, standing in front of a lecture hall freaking out.

Villain of the Day – I better not say.

Current Mood – – Disappointed and Giddy all at the same time… What a freakin' strange mood.

Until the next post…

I have just wanted to scream the last couple weeks and I don't know why. The only thing I can figure is that I'm under some sort of stress.

That's something strange for me. I'm the kind of person who doesn't get stressed out and who doesn't worry much about anything. I don't know what would be causing it; my classes aren't too difficult, in fact I actually enjoy them. For most people in college, class is the number one cause of stress, but I've noticed recently that by attending class, I fell better, so if this screaming feeling is stress, class seems to relieve it.

I guess I could just be flat out frustrated. I've been frustrated or aggravated by something before, but I've never felt like having to scream for hours to feel better. There shouldn't be anything going on in my life that is frustrating. Things between me and Erin have been good, I haven't had a problem with my school work, I've been able to have me time just about every day this semester.

This is truly a strange feeling, and I don't think I'm comfortable with it.

I've also been having some strange sleeping issues. Lately, there have been a few nights where I've slept for 12+ hours. I completely slept through a Psi meeting and two PM meetings; I've napped for so long that when I wake up, I realize that I've missed a discussion I wanted to go to or I've missed an optional lab that I was signed up for, etc. I'm kinda freaked out by this, I'm not going to lie. I feel like it's only a matter of time before I find myself sleeping through an exam, or what's worse, sleeping through work. Ok, so I don't know if work is worse, but whatever.

Maybe that's what's bothering me. Maybe I'm just afraid that I'm going to sleep through work or class. I mean, the first two meetings I've missed, I missed them because I set an alarm and apparently I turned it off without even waking up. I now have two alarms in my room, but one of them is gaining time so fast that each morning I wake up and it's an hour earlier than it's supposed to be. I guess I could use my iTunes Alarm widget, but that would mean I have to find a playlist that will wake me up, which I don't think is possible.

I don't think this sleeping issue is caused by not getting enough sleep. I've been getting the same amount of sleep each night since the beginning of the summer. I've been going to sleep around 11 or midnight each night, sleeping soundly until 6 or 7 each morning then getting up to get ready for work or class. I spend a little over 8 hours a day on campus each day either at work or in class. I've been working out on my hangboard every other day and every time I'm working or in class, I've been walking a good seven miles a day…

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

I just don't get it.

That was probably the most random spewage of crap that I've ever written in this blog. If any of you can remember a time I wrote something more random, let me know.

::sigh::

Now that I got that rant out of my system, on to something more interesting.

Tonight is BEERFEST!! Over 300 different beers to taste, only one hour to taste in and only $25 to get in! Erin and I will be visiting the Bloomington Convention Center today after she gets out of Hundred rehearsal and we both eat a modest dinner, hopefully at the expense of some freshman's meal points.

Tomorrow night, 40% Steve is playing at the Bluebird. Erin, Carrie and I are planning on going for some good music and (moderately) good beer. Saturday night is Mike and Joe at the Bluebird… Guess who's going…

…that's right, Me and Erin, and possibly Will Petersen, and I'm going to try to convince Will to go too.

Saturday is also IU vs OSU. And I think Jeremy and Ben might be coming down to hang out, which I'm looking forward to.

Anyway, this is arleady a long post because of my above vent. So here's the end.

peace

The End-of-the-Blog Rundown

Song of the Day – A Boy Named Sue – Johnny Cash

Villain of the Day – Cold rain

Hero of the Day – Whatever freshman buys me dinner.

Current Mood – – Stressed… or something…

Until the next post…

Ok, so here's a substantial post for once. Here's my dilemma: I need a new phone. If I weren't such a techie, I would say any phone would do; but since I'm a technology oriented person, I need to have a technology-oriented phone.

Here are the requirements:

1. It must be a GSM ¹ phone. At least a tri-band GSM model, but preferably a quad-band phone.
2. It needs to be stylish. I'm an Apple user, I can't have a nasty-looking run-of-the-mill phone, it needs to be something that is identifiable.
3. The phone must be Bluetooth² capable. I know that this possibly opens me up to becoming infected by a Bluetooth virus, but said virus would only be isolated to my phone. Phones are easy to clean, you just flash the OS back onto them. It won't be transmitted to any of my computers because 1)I'm an Apple user. There are only a handful of OS X viruses out there and all of them are theoretical in nature, just proof-of-concept viruses, and 2)My PCs don't have Bluetooth capabilities.
4. This goes without saying, but it has to be compatible with Cingular's network.

Ok, here are the phones I have narrowed the search to. I will show you an average customer review³ and give you my reason for choosing.

So, in no particular order, I present to you my three finalists <— Drumroll —>

Motorola Rokr	Average Review: The only real draw for me to this phone right now is the fact that Apple was involved with it's "development". It's a non-flip phone, which is a plus. I'm not a fan of flip phones, but I think I'm going to have to go with one. The iTMS capabilities of this phone are attractive, but I probably won't use them. I would most likely just be using the camera, Bluetooth, and actual phone functions. Now for all those reasons, this phone is at the bottom of my list. My Rating:
Motorola Razor	Average Review: Like I mentioned above, I'm not a fan of flip phones. This model has been out for a while, so its price has dropped considerably from where it started. I'm drawn to this phone because of its ultra-slim design. I like the way the keypad looks, the metal body and the black color. It's a bit wider than the phone I have now, but that's not a major issue. Motorola also has a deal going on right now where if you spend a certain amount at their online store, you get a discounted Bluetooth headset — BONUS! Anyway, this is currently the front-runner in the "Race to My Pocket". My Rating:
Sony Ericson S710a	Average Review: This phone is an interesting one. I got to see one up close and personal today in the IC. The face of the phone swivels around revealing the keypad. It has a camera built in, is Bluetooth capable and meets all the requirements. Mostly I'm attracted to it because of its innovative design and large display. The only downside to this phone is that I have to buy it from a provider, which is a MAJOR turn-off. This one is a middle-of-the-road phone for me. My Rating:

Well there you have it, my top three picks. If you have a phone that you like a lot and it meets my requirements, feel free to suggest it to me. I won't be actually making a purchase for a week or so. Also, let me know what you think about these phones. If you have one, let me know if they're worth it or if they're just duds. I'm looking to buy a phone that will last me for a while, not one that will crap-out in a few months.

Now that that's done, time for an update on my life.

Everything has been going fine lately. My current obsession is my Dell Inspirion 8200 with an install of SuSE Linux 9.3. I've been hacking together the laptop so it can be used in my Wardriving project this semester. It's also my current villain because I don't know too much about Perl and some of the utilities that we want to use are Perl based utilities. Anyway, I'm really looking forward to attaching my GPS to the laptop, putting the wireless antenna on the roof of my truck and driving around Bloomington looking for open networks. It's going to be great fun. So much fun, in fact, that I might purchase the equipment I borrowed from camp for my own and pick it up as a hobby.

We'll see about that… I need a phone first.

I have my first Accounting exam tomorrow, followed by a quiz in my ISS class on Monday. I have to memorize all of the commonly used ports as well as know the TCP/IP stack inside and out along with other things. It'll be an experience, especially since there is no possibility for a curve. Prof Worker believes that it should be a test of proficiency, you either know it or not. Can't say I disagree with him.

This weekend is Homecoming here at IU. We play Illinois on Saturday, there is a parade on Friday and all kinds of other festivities throughout the week. Erin's family will be down for the game and such. I'm really looking forward to hanging out with Kevin since I haven't seen him in a while. It's always good times when he comes to visit. And, she's going to make her parents take me to dinner one night this weekend. Yay free food!

I'm sure you're all tired of reading me ramble on about my life, so I'm going to end it now.

I will be posting in the Photoblog as soon as I get home from work since my photos are on my iMac and not some remote server and I may post in my Sideblog if I get the chance in the last two hours of my shift.

Peace out, boy scout!

The End-of-the-Blog Rundown

Song of the Day – Take Me Out – Franz Ferdinand

Quote of the Day – "I wanted to be blue too, that's the real reason for my hair color. I thought so hard about it one night I woke up the next morning with blue hair!" — Willow in the chat today talking about how Matt's color had been changed to Blue, the color for Support Staff.

Villain of the Day – The Net::Pcap.pm module in Perl

Hero of the Day – Jeff and Matt for letting me borrow camp's wardriving equipment.

Current Mood – – Tired because I haven't been sleeping much lately… Don't really know why…

Until the next post…

1. Global System for Mobile Communications — more information can be found at the Wikipedia. [back]
2. Bluetooth is an industrial specification for wireless personal area networks (PANs) — more information at the Wikipedia. [back]
3. Reviews are from Amazon.com [back]