Scattered Thoughts

Greetings from the Information Commons! Today has been an eventful day, but before I get into the day's happenings, let me tell you all what I've been up to this wonderful Winter Break.

Break started with me going to Happy Hour last Friday. It was a good time, and we all made plans to go see The Spin Doctors at the Bluebird. Well, the closer it got to Spin Doctor time, the more and more upset my stomach felt. So we finally got on the road, stopped by Wendy's to get me something to settle my stomach (I know, fast food, but I needed it). Snarfed down a Wendy's Double Cheeseburger and Fries before we got to the Bluebird. For those of you not from Bloomington, Wendy's is about a mile and a half down a straight road where the stoplights are all synchronized to keep you driving. Yea, it took me nearly two minutes to eat the whole freakin value meal.

We (Erin, Cardrey and I) got to the Bird and listened to the Spin Doctors, who were awesome. I got really tired, and Erin and I decided to leave. That was the end of that night.

The next day, Erin and I made it out to Staff Weekend for some interviews and whatnot. We helped with a service project then had to leave. Erin was going home to pack and leave for St. Charles and I was going home to nap before I worked the graveyard.

Sunday morning, I worked the graveyard. I made headway on my STC Mac OS X Tiger Training, and got back into the swing of graveyard tasks. It's been a few semesters since I've had a graveyard, so I had to remind myself what exactly went on during them. I do have one graveyard (Wednesday morning) next semester, so this was a good reminder.

Sunday afternoon, after I awoke from my post-graveyard slumber, I took a trip to the ville to bring my parents a new CD-RW drive for their computer and to fix the wireless internet which had been down for a few days. Turns out the only problem was that the power cord had gone bad. I left them with a new cord and took the old one back to B'ton to see if I could fix it.

Monday and Tuesday were cleaning days. I think I worked in there some, but I can't remember. Wednesday was a day for working around the house and working at the IC. Thursday was my favorite day of the week. I DID ABSOLUTELY NOTHING AND IT WAS EVERYTHING I THOUGHT IT WOULD BE!!! That brings us to today, Friday, exactly one week from the beginning of my break.

Today, I worked from noon to 4 in the Information Commons, working more on my Mac training and such. Around 2:15, the fire alarm went off. One of my tasks when there's a fire alarm is to get everyone out of the computer labs in the Herman B Wells Main Library. Well, let's just say I was lucky to have George around. He is a member of the Logistics team and took care of clearing the IC2 and the fifth floor (which had to suck because you can't use elevators in a fire).

Turns out some idiot pulled the alarm either on purpose or by accident. I'm going to bet it was on purpose. You wouldn't imagine the number of people who asked me "Do we have to leave for a fire alarm?" DUH PEOPLE! The Herman B Wells Main Library does not practice fire drills. Any alarm is the 'real thing'.

I get outside and most of the people on my side of the building are standing under the awning. I half-jokingly said "Yea, let's all stand under the burning building after we come outside to escape the burning building." I think my sarcasm was pretty thick because as I said it, everyone moved away from the building.

After we all got into the building, I got an email from Professor Camp with news about us publishing our paper. She told us that the work we've already done can be counted as a preliminary study and that the Human Subjects Committee gave us the go-ahead to do more research and come up with better findings. She also listed a couple conferences (one in New York and the other in Boston) that we would go to in order to present our findings and some publications where our work would be published. That excites me and makes me happy all in one.

After work, I had dinner at my favorite Mexican restaurant, La Charreada. I also got home in time to watch all but the last minute of IU vs. Butler, in which IU beat Butler, but not in our typical fashion. We barely were able to shoot from 3-point land; rather we pounded the ball inside and played a scrappy short-range game, just like good ol' Indiana boys know how to play. It was fun to watch, although to the non-Hoosier, it would have appeared quite sloppy.

Then I got back to work from 8 to midnight. You might be wondering about the title of the post. Well, in exactly a half hour, I have to start closing the Information Commons and thus the Herman B Wells Main Library for the Christmas Eve and Christmas Holidays. I get to kick everyone out of this usual 24-hour-a-day-7-days-a-week study haven and force them to go home. All the academic buildings will be closed Saturday and Sunday.

I'm back in the lab, bright and early Monday morning at 8 to re-open the Information Commons… Definitely not excited about that.

Tomorrow, I get to drive up to Shelbyville, open some Christmas gifts, hop back into a car, drive to Hartford City. In Hartford City, we will do the usual Christmas thing; we’ll go to mass with the Grandmother, eat dinner with the Grandparents and probably the Uncle Geoff, Aunt Tracie and cousin kids. Do the Christmas Gift thang, sleep, wake up and go home. Sunday night, I will be driving back to Bloomington from Shelbyville so that I can get a good night's sleep (hah, yeah right) before I have to be at work Sunday morning.

I haven't been sleeping well lately. I thought it was a problem with me falling asleep, so I went and bought some Unisom. That's apparently not the problem. I can fall asleep just fine, but around 2am, I wake up and go from awake to asleep in fifteen minute intervals all the way until 5am. At 5am, I seem to be able to fall asleep well for a good three or four hours. After that, you can kiss sleep good-bye because it’s starting to get light outside. I can't sleep well when it’s sunny. I just pray for my sanity that every Wednesday next semester, it is very, very overcast so I can get some sleep.

I think that's about all I want to spew onto the internet right now, so I'm going to leave you all and start kicking people out of the IC.

peace out!

Merry Christmas to those of you who celebrate it, Happy Hanukah, Happy Kwanzaa to those of you who don't, and for anyone I missed, Happy Holidays!!

The End-of-the-Blog Rundown

Song of the Day — Round Here — Counting Crows

Quote of the Day — "The gate… Something has happened to the gate… It's horrible!" — Tracie when talking to someone on the Logistics staff about the broken Student Building gate.

Current Mood — — Excited and Hyper for some reason…

Until the next post…

Hey all, just a few quick things.

1. XHTML — My blog is finally compliant with the W3C's XHTML 1.0 Transitional specification. It took me an hour and a half today to get that taken care of. Most of my errors were burried in dynamically generated portions of the site. That meant I had to dig through thousands of lines of PHP to find them… literally.
2. Spotlight – I added an AJAX implementation of Apple's Spotlight search to my page. It's at the top of my sidebar right next to the blue magnifying glass icon. Just start typing and it will search my blog for the entries that match the words you type.
3. Buttons — I made some image buttons that you all are free to download and use. I just ask that you don't deep link to them because that's not cool.
4. And lastly, I'm not going to re-design this site over break, just fix some of the things that are broken with this one.

And also, the bus driver on my way home from campus today kept farting making the bus smell like a toilet.

Keep reading, there are two posts for today!

…with exams…

So I am now done with exams for this semester, and it feels good. The only thing I have left to do is write my part of a paper about wardriving for my Organizational Informatics class. It is the one class that I despised this semester, but it turns out that it might give me something extremely valuable in return.

After Erin, Will and I presented our project to the class last Friday, Professor Camp asked us to come to her desk so we could talk to her. At first I thought it was because we missed the point of the final project, so I was preparing myself for the worst during those three steps to the desk. To my surprise it was quite the opposite. She asked us "Have you guys started your action plan yet?" We replied no, because we weren't actually planning on implementing it. The then told us that we were really on to something and should pursue it a little further by meeting with the Human Subjects Committee, having our methods reviewed and then publishing our final findings.

For those of you without much university experience, getting published is big news. It means that you've proven that you have some knowledge and some research that hasn't been done before or that you have approached it a unique way. It puts your work out all over the world and gives others a chance to review it and write about it. Every student who pursues a degree above an undergraduate degree must become published in their field. Being published as an undergraduate is pretty rare and hard to find, so we would be ahead of the curve. It also looks great on a resume.

So, the one class I have hated so much this semester has become one of the most valuable of my college career. The only problem is that we don't know what we have to do to become published, but on the bright side, Professor Camp has offered to help us along our way to becoming published scholars.

In other exam news, my Information Systems Security final was definitely eight pages long. EIGHT PAGES! It had 108 questions, 75 multiple choice and the remainder short answer. It was supposed to be three pages longer, I'm assuming more short answer, but Professor Worker didn't want to grade that much, and probably wouldn't be able to get it all graded until after the date that final grades are due. This monster of an exam took me an hour and a half to complete. We get two hours for each final; however, my other finals took me forty-five minutes at most. This one was a beast, but it wasn't too bad. Some of the multiple choice questions raped me, but that's to be expected in a 400 level class.

Now that that news is out of the way, on to the more boring news about my life.

So I have a couple plans that I want to put into action over break. The first and most important is to find a second job for next semester. I'm looking for anything that will let me work anywhere between 10 and 2o hours a week. It needs to pay well (read: at least $8 an hour) and they need to be flexible. I have both days on my weekends free and have a lot of free time throughout the week, so this shouldn't be hard. Special preference is going to be given to a job that will provide some benefits, i.e. I am going to need health insurance since I will be off my parents' insurance at the end of this month.

The second plan is some sort of workout plan. Now that I'm going to be having all kinds of free time, I'm going to get back to the whole swimming three times a week, climbing a couple times a week and doing some weight training/climbing conditioning a few times a week. I have really been inactive the last semester and have gained back some of the weight that I lost over the summer, so this should be a good way to get myself back into shape. I'm actually looking forward to spending some time in the water and at the gyms (both climbing and regular). I really do miss the times that I would go running/play basketball/go climbing/whatever during the week. It always made me feel a lot better and a lot less lazy. If you are interested in coming along with me, shoot me an email/comment/call whatever.

I do have some bad news. A few months ago, if you'll remember, I decided to go on an anti-fast-food binge. Well, I broke that binge a few days ago. Erin and I went to Wendy's and I had a double cheeseburger with fries. It was most delicious; however, I don't foresee myself actually eating fast-food for a long period of time again. I felt pretty ill after eating it and I'm not sure if it is to be blamed on my illness or if it is to be blamed on my fast-food feast. Either way, I'm going to steer clear of fast-food for a while again.

On the sickness front, things are getting better but they are not cured. I have been on a steady regimen of Nyquil (Thank you Vicks!) and Green Tea. I've been drinking the tea warm and it's helping break up the mucus that has been coating my throat and the Nyquil has been helping me relieve my symptoms so I can sleep through the night. Granted it's been making me pass-out while talking to Erin before bed, but I hope she understands. It's not been too long since she too was sick.

I think that's about all I really have to update about here. I'm going to update the Sideblog and the Photoblog at some point today, so expect them soon.

I hope everyone who is traveling anywhere over winter break has a safe trip and comes home safely!

later all!

tm

The End-of-the-Blog Rundown

Musical Experience of the Now — Led Zeppelin IV a.k.a. Zoso

Quote of the Day — "I got your email, but there wasn't an email address for me to reply…" — Deer Park Management

Today's Moment of Bliss — Watching a short, larger-than-average lady run across 10th St. half way then make a b-line to the corner on the opposite side of Jordan Ave. during the few seconds that traffic is stopped in all four directions while carrying a pile of books that most likely weighed more than she did.

Villain of the Day — Money woes… Every college student goes through it; I just seem to never be able to get away from it.

Hero of the Day — INFO I303 for giving me an opportunity to be published.

Current Mood — — Relieved that exams are over, happy about live and excited to write the rest of this paper for I303.

Until the next post…

This is what I did at work today. Thought I would share.

That is my Pansy Tank Army attacking Lindley Hall 026 and enforcing the Ten Minute policy!

Ok, now to tell what's been happening to me lately.

Not that much has been happening, really. Group project hell is almost complete and that's possibly the highlight of the recent time period. Other than that, things have been pretty normal.

Erin and I went to see Walk the Line the other night, and it was amazing. I was skeptical at first, but as the movie went on, I was more and more engrossed. Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon really brought Johnny Cash and June Carter back to life in this film. I give it . Everyone must go see this film.

My Information Systems Security group did our security audit of Gentry Group last Sunday. It went well. There were some things we found that made us scratch our heads and wonder "what were they thinking?", but I can't really go into that here, mostly because it's not right and also because they trusted us to look for flaws in their security. It was definitely a good experience.

I'm sick.

There, I said it. It's true. I hate being sick, but I am. I've got some strange mucus growing on the inside of my trachea that I keep coughing up. When I wake up in the morning, I cough for a good 45 minutes so I can breathe quasi-normally. My body also aches, and I've been suffering from headaches on and off. It's just great that the week before finals, I get sick.

I will be here over winter break working and trying to find another place of employment for next semester. I think in the interim, I'm going to see if I can get a job with TIS for break. It's spring book rush time and I'm sure they could use some help plus I'm only working about 30 hours over break for STC, so an extra job would be nice.

It's snowing today… a lot. I went out the other day and bought bags of pea gravel to put in the bed of my truck. I think I added about 500lbs. to the weight of the bed of my truck over the wheels. I'm definitely not going to drive for a couple days in hopes that the idiots who have never driven in snow are off the roads. I know it's wishful thinking, but I really hate the first snow… and frankly every snow because people down here don't know how to drive in it. We're scheduled to get 4 to 8 inches by tomorrow. Pretty as it may be, it's going to cause inconveniences.

I think that's really about all that's been going on in my life lately. If you want to hang out over break, let me know. I'm pretty much free almost all of it.

peace

The End-of-the-Blog Rundown

Song of the Day — Wizard in Winter — Trans-Siberian Orchestra

Quote of the Day
Thea — …and you'll be exacerbated.
Tim — That's a big word!
Thea — Exacerbate… I took the GRE yesterday.

Co-Quote of the Day
Tim — Douches and flour… That's all I'm going to say.
Jason — You can't just throw that word around without an explanation.
Me — What word? Flour or Douche?

Today's Moment of Bliss — Posting no way!!1 its goin 2 sno!!!1 OMG!!!11 in the chat while everyone is freaking out about the snow and watching as the chat gets silent — definitely today's moment of bliss.

Villain of the Day — Whatever virus/bacteria have invaded my body causing me to feel like ass all the freakin time.

Hero of the Day — This guy 'cause this is cool.

Current Mood — — I've been in a crazy mood the last day and a half. I hope this keeps up 'cause it's freakin' awesome!

Until the next post…