Watching Office

The Office is my new addiction. I wish I had all the episodes. In HD. I'm working on it. I always feel bad about skipping episodes. Cuz i feel like I'm going to skip something important/funny.

Just got Linux Mint all set up on my laptop, still can't think up a good name for the laptop (Thought about Russia....still sucks). And I still have no stickers. Where do you get stickers? jeez.

Christmas is coming up tomorrow. Hopefully we will be having fun, and Maura and I will be going into the city on Friday/Saturday. Ice Skating/Bean/window shopping on the Magnificent Mile.
I hope that the holiday will be fun/surprising/nice.

Merry Christmas/yeah
bye

Thoughts before xmas

okay, so VLC? yeah, the icon changes. Changed on December like 18th. Added a Santa Hat to the logo. that is sweet.

also, my computer died last week.

Desktops - Laptop Screens

I just got done editing my Windows desktop, so it looks a little like this. But I couldn't get some of the things to work. I'll also post some screens of my Ubuntu desktop, just to compare.

A shot with ObjectDock----


Another shot
Feeling really really bored right now. Not in the mood for hw.

Blackest Morning

A veritable ocean of automobiles, a sea chock full of fleets of Ford, hordes of Honda, and legions of ....Nissan. Oh well. My attempt at interesting writing. Left the house this morning early, grabbed a new Mario-printed DS lite (pics to come, it's cute) and Enemy Territories: Quake Wars (Five freaking dollars! OMG best sale ever invented) at the store. Black Friday was insane. I hate Wal-Mart, but I'm sure that all the mothers were swarming.

Had a discussion with my parents about buying things, went well actually. They're thinking about getting an HDTV (small LCD for their room).

Thanksgiving was nice, got to talk to my cousin Peter about school and Linux, talk to my great-uncle Warren about politics (hah) and life, and just people in general. My school was a big topic of conversation.

Hung out with Mera for awhile tonight. We went to Stratford, talked and ate in the food court, bought posters in FYE (I got batman, Obama, and....one other...), she tried on clothes at Charlotte Russe (I had to restrain myself from helping her in the dressing room, lol).
We went over to Suzy's talked a while there. Had a bit of drama with Natalie,but everything allright in the end. I love my best girls in the world.
I miss them too much.
Suzy and I talk all the time on IM (I use Pidgin), but it's not the same all the time. Seeing her in person always brings up old feelings (always). She asked me today why I didn't get excited while talking about Maura. I think it's just the kinda person I am. I don't like super express my feelings in such a perky happy bouncy way. I actually feel kinda guilty, like I don't feel the right way. I dunno.

Linux is kinda giving me trouble lately, but I don't mind. I'll get over it. Facebook Chat is stupid anywho.

By the way, this guy is amazing, and I don't know how you can be so good at design, so good at writing, and so knowlegable about tech at large. I want to be that good when I'm older. I also want a Mac, but let's see when that happens.

This keyboard can be very loud, I hope I'm not keeping my mommy up.
Good night and sweet dreams, Internet.

Turkey.....BREAK!

Well, i'm home now, been delaying this post out of sheer laziness. The quarter ended, and my first expidition into the Rose-Hulman jungle was successful, and I emerged relatively unscathed. The ECE presentation was fairly good, and I felt that the PowerPoint slides that I put together were very professional. The Physics test threw me at first, but I had more than enough time to go back and look through the answers. I ended up completely redoing one problem, and figuring out that I had a cosine where there should only be a sine. My bad.
Then I had two days to recoup (i.e. eat cookies till i burst and not study) and I ended up cramming for the last day and a half for the chem final (which? I don't recall that one, must not be important). Which might have included about an hour of playing frisbee up on the 3rd floor hallway. But shhhh.
Chem final wasn't too bad, 100 question multiple choice. I think i did okay, which is surprising, since i expected to fail the class.

But I didn't fail anything. Final grades:

• College and Life Skills - A
• Physics 111 - A
• ECE 160 - A
• Chemistry 112 - B

I am so happy. And, since I got that B in Chem, I get credit for Chem 2 as well. Which I technically didn't need, but that's one less science elective I have to take senior year.
Wooooot!

So now I'm on Thanksgiving break, with no responsibilities and no homework. Called into the school district, everybody's on vacay, so I don't have to work. I dropped by Gamestop on Friday and grabbed a bunch of cheap games.

• Metroid Prime - $9.99
• Luigi's Mansion - $7.99
• Viewtiful Joe - $2.99
  
• Jak X: Combat Racing - $7.99
• Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater - $9.99
• Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow - $4.99

Pretty sweet deals. I also grabbed The Dog Island (Wii) from Best Buy, that's gonna be a bday present for my SA, cuz I know she'll like it (I have to suck up, give me a break).

So I've been chilling here. Gotten some stuff done. Did laundry. Transferred all my files to my home comp. Reformatted my hard drive to NTFS so it'll take files over 4 gig. Then backed up my laptop settings, and partitioned the hard drive so I could dual boot into Ubuntu 8.10. Oh yeah, my disk finally came on last Monday, I was excited. Install was a little shaky at first, but has turned out okay. I actually got the Ubuntu partition to read files off the Windows side, so I don't need to boot into Windows to access my docs. I don't think I'll be using that for awhile.

Been seeing friends a lot. Going to hang with Mera and Nat (hopefully) and Suzy on friday, so I hope that we have fun (screw that, of course we'll have fun). I miss my girls.
Maura is doing okay, she pulled off some good final grades as well. I <3 my fab chica! We were trying to see each other this week, but I don't think this will happen.

I'm really looking forward to seeing my family at Thanksgiving. And the food. Can't forget about that....
....
...
Oh, who needs the family, just give me the god-damn food already!!!!

Finals, First Attempt

I have finals coming up.
List following:

• ECE 160 - Monday 10am
  
• Physics 111 - Monday 1pm
• Chemistry 112 - Thursday 1pm

After Chemistry, I will be leaving to go back home. That will be nice, as I will have no studying or hw or anything to worry about. Except my results from my tests.
Chemistry is the only one I'm worried about. Freaking out about is more accurate. I'm scared.
Physics is not fun, but not difficult.
ECE is just a presentation, which I'm working on now, meeting with my team at 4 today.
that should be a total waste of time.
Urg.

I will be studying and being annoyed till such time that I get to go home.
Bye, till then

2 Late, 2 Much

I meant to blog again last week, right after the election. But I've been backed up with homework and exams and my parents coming down. I really didn't get around to it, obviously. Although I should be content that since I'm writing about this now, my voice will not be lost in the multitude of shouting that surrounded the post-election (not that anybody reads this anyway, so I shouldn't worry about consoling myself).

The election result was no surprise for me, since I had always supported Obama and knew he was the right man for the job, and I knew that America was sufficiently mature to elect a non-white man to the Presidency. I also knew that America was sufficiently sick and tired of Bush's policies and the clusterf*#& that constituted his entire tenure.

I remember the first time I heard of Obama, when he ran for Illinois State Senate, or for the US Senate, I'm not sure (I guess I don't remember). But I thought it was an interesting name, and surely a new face in politics. I wondered where he was gonna go. Go figure, huh?

Still waiting on that Ubuntu 8.10 disk. I had my parents return my Linuxbox back home, since it was taking up valuable leg room, and I really didn't have the patience in its CPU lag or the time to screw around with it. My room is also much much cleaner, which i enjoy. I've got my round chair now, and I am happy, though slightly disappointed that Maura has a much nicer one now, which is totally unfair.

Things are fine with Maura, btw. Our relationship is progressing well.
You know what I noticed? My blog's color scheme is similar to that of Ubuntu. Huh. I didn't really think about that.
Maybe I'll skin my laptop's desktop to look like a Mac. I wish I had a Mac.

Sitting in Physics class right now, really really bored. Glad I don't have to come to class for the next two days. I'm really really looking forward to finals week. Not the exams themselves, mind (Physics Monday - 4 hrs. ECE Monday = 2+ hour presentation session. Chemistry Thursday = Thursday. I will die with Chemistry, and be very very very tired after Physics), just the freetime. I wonder what I'll do.
Probably just be bored.

Thanksgiving is fast approaching, hopefully will be a wonderful time with lots of good food (which is something I really miss about home). Seeing my friends again will also be enjoyable. I miss them. I <3 them soooo much.

Now, a witticism to end this message.
umm......................................
Is there a mirror in your pocket?

Call of the Devil

I tested this blog on this site, got back a ranking of 17%. Fairly good score, for a blog that nobody reads. My twitter rank came back 11%. That's a bit more encouraging, just have to work to keep updating and getting more people to read it.

Now, an amalgam of thoughts and newsbites
Woke up late for both classes today. It's nice for that not to matter too much, like it did in high school.
Halloween coming up. I'm not getting a costume or nothing, just gonna chill, watch some movies with Maura, maybe have some fun. Def have some fun.

I miss Eric and Kathy on WTMX 101.9 FM chicago. I listen to the podcast ..... but it's not the same. I catch the stream when I'm up that early just doing hw in the lounge.

Trying to get to bed early...hasn't been working out too well. midnight and then 3 last night.
horrible, i need to work harder and stop blogging in the middle of the day and do my homework before 10 pm.

I'm excited for Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex) to be released tomorrow. I like having the official disks (I ordered one for Hardy Heron) and I ordered another set for the new distro. Plus, it comes with stickers. I think I'll stick one on my laptop. I'm gonna wait for the LiveCD to come before I partition my hard-drive so I can dual-boot Windows XP ServicePack3 (I'm thinking 70 gig) and Ubuntu 8.10 (around 40 gig). Trying to squeeze as much room out of my notebook hard-drive as I can so I can have more room. This new 750 gig is big enough, but the software is just useless and the disk itself doesn't want to eject. I'd like a new one, but this is fine and it's working to my needs, I suppose (still can't copy this ISO file over, don't know why).

Need to study more for chemistry, fell asleep and didn't make half of the exam

A Design Flaw (College Update Pt.2)

This post is intended to add more of my insights on the college life process, but I'd like to talk about something else for a second.

Red vs. Blue - No more Red vs. Blue Reconstruction? This sucks! I've been chewing through this series since summer and now I wake up to discover that I only have two new episodes left till it's over (for awhile, but they don't specify when they'll resume the movies). Imagine my dismay, just when the story started getting juicy (*SPOILERS* Tucker gets pregnant and Caboose kills Church.....oh wait, never mind *END SPOILERS*). In conclusion, please come back soon Red vs. Blue!!!

Now that I've finished my physics quiz on calculating force from a potential energy function....i can get back to this blog post.

Workload - School is....progressing. It's going much easier now. I was getting a D in calculus, so I dropped it. I'll see how I do next quarter, with a new teacher, not tablets, and actual notes. I'm looking forward to it.

Class - Registered for next quarter's classes. Logic Design, Software Design, Calc 3, and Physics 2. Sounds like a whole bunch of fun (especially the physics lab prof, whom apparently nobody can understand....eeek). I'm excited to actually take some computer classes. Should be interesting, hope i find that I like it and it's what I'm good at it. Otherwise, I'm screwed.

Website - Working on this website for Sustainability Club (I'm webmaster! Go me!). Suprisingly enough, I'm not like gung-ho about doing it day to day. I've been putting it off for awhile. Now that the "deadline" has passed (date they said they'd like to have it up by, only gave me 2 weeks), I think I'll actually be working on it more frequently. I'd really like to just FTP everything in through Cushy CMS, so I'll have to talk to IAIT about putting that stuff online and getting the address (besides, I don't think this AFT thing is what I want, but I'm gonna walk over there tomorrow maybe and have them talk me through it).Movies - Been getting a whole bunch of movies lately, looking forward to sorting through those, and watching every now and then

Family - My extended family has been dropping by on a fairly regular basis, which is nice. Usually on Sundays, which is strange. I've been giving each of them the grand tour, which involves a lot of walking and seeing the sights. My uncle Nick is driving up from some church conference in North Carolina on Saturday, so I am very excited to see him. It also means that I get to skip out on a Sustainability Club hike at Turkey Run (where?). And there are several people that will be going that I cannot stand be around for any amount of time. Then again, my kickass SA Peter will also be going, so I guess it's a tradeoff.

Computer - The Linuxbox 2.0 is moving along a little worse for the wear. I've been slightly frustrated with it lately, due to it's horrible clunky freezing speed. A look inside and quick bj (by air can, get your mind out of the gutter!) did enough to stop its random shut-downs. I am furiously awaiting the release of the final version of Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex) so I can upgrade the Linuxbox 2.0 to *gasp* 3.0....it's very exhilarating. The CPU is constantly over-worked, with zero idle time, mostly due to Firefox (which i love, but sometimes goes slower than necessary) and Xorg (which i can't seem to kill). I wonder how Linux runs on a real computer, not one that can't handle any kind of gentle use like this Linuxbox. Also, the 36.29 GB harddrive definitely needs replacing, because I keep no documents on this (other than backup for my laptop, and music) and it's about 2.2 GB from full (thanks Conky).
It's for those reasons that I have decided to venture out into a new endeavor. Well, two endeavors. The harder endeavor is to replace the CPU, hard drive, motherboard on the Linuxbox, and add in a video and sound card that will handle games and sound, in order to get it in working condition. I wonder if this is just too much work/money/time. Anyway, that's a job for this summer possibly.
No, the present endeavor is to install Ubuntu on my laptop, at which point I will rechristen it the Linuxbook 1.0! Yes, i freed up enough space (almost 46 GB) on the 100 gig drive that I'm confident will be enough room. I'm definitely gonna need to buy an external hard-drive to store my files/movies/games on, since I won't have much more space on the laptop. Anyway, i preordered a Intrepid Ibex CD (don't have any cd's to burn here and I like having the actual official physical copy) and will work on installing that when it comes (release on 10.30, which is only 8 days from now).

Girls - Maura and I are doing well, it's been about a month since we started dating. The ride back home for fall break was very nice, though I wish I wasn't sick (oh, and yeah, i'm sick). We've been going through lots of movies while her roommate has been out partying (we've been having lots of fun). Something funny tho, she likes the fact that I like Star Wars. She thinks it's cute. ......she's insane, but an awesome insane, like when the crazy guy in the dorm room next to you steals a whole box of cookies from the Subway and passes them around the lounge at 4 in the morning. She hasn't seen the original trilogy, so I'll be schooling her in the ways of properly appreciating the movies (we finished A New Hope last night). She's wonderfully sweet and caring, though she is given to sudden bouts of anger towards my stupid hallmates when they are being vulgar and stubborn bitterness when I say something remotely that could be considered mean. I think we're getting much more comfortable with each other, so I think those mad periods can be cut down considerably. She is wonderful and i'm happy to be with her now.

College Life - Part First

Okay, so now I'm almost two weeks into college and I'm having a pretty good time.
Let's run through the basics.

Orientation - Drove up with the whole family (oh what a JOY) and arrived early afternoon Friday. RA's and SA's were all around, helping everybody unpack the cars and through it into the rooms. That was very nice of them, cuz instead of taking an hour to get all the stuff out of the car and another hour to get it up the steps into the room, it took less than 5 minutes. My roommate seemed very quiet, almost as if he was mad at me. Wes, he's from Maine. Seemed like such a goof on Facebook, now all quiet and shy. Orientation schedule was crazy, just throwing all of us together in an effort to get us to meet new people. Tried to get online with my Linuxbox, but they fixed it so we couldn't get online (so we would get out of the dorm and not be antisocial). Bonfire, comedians, general session, food, icebreakers, ultimate frisbee, and more. It was a lot of fun.

Class - Got my schedule all set. Calc 3, Physics 1, Chemistry Honors (plus Chem and Physics Labs), College and Life Skills (advisory/homeroom, just a general lame one), and Engineering Practice 160 (design class, work with a team on a LEGO robot competition). The homework freaked me out the first day, but I'm getting used to it. Actually, I'm actually kinda ahead on my work for two classes, with a lab report for Chem to work on all day tomorrow. I think I've got a handle on things. Falling asleep in a lot of my classes as a result of staying up too late doing homework, and also as a result of the subject matter being INCREDIBLY BORING AND EASY!!!!! Learning about vectors in two classes at the same time is not the best for keeping me awake.

People - I was always worried about heading off to a college where I didn't know anybody, leaving all manner of familiarity behind. For the first little bit, I was a tad lonely. Getting thrown in with all these strange people was definitely jarring, and for a while kinda depressing. Finding a group of friends has taken a little bit, but now I've got some. I met a few people that I forced myself to talk to the first night, and I've stayed friends with those people too (especially one very special person). There are a lot of really really nerdy people here (like the antisocial dirty and weird-dressing/talking nerds) but also cool nerds (people who look like normal, but are really very nerdy). In general, they are very nice, and I'm having a great time with almost everybody I meet. Mees Hall is really great, filled with funny kids who love to have a good time. I'm lucky to live there.

Girls - Okay, Rose-Hulman is definitely not known for its gender-diversity. One big sausage-fest. There are a smattering of females here and perhaps there, but on the whole (tee-hee!) it's all guys. I feel bad for them, surrounded by intelligent morons who wouldn't know how to talk to a girl if they had a map and a list of suggested response topics (Don't talk about what operating system they use, compliment them on their necklace or nails). People are actually starting to pair off, kinda. It's noticable. And I'm proud and extremely ecstatic to say that I have my eye on a certain chica, and she has her eye on me. We're taking it slow, which is very different than my normal practice, but I believe this is the right way to go and am enjoying every blessed second with her. We'll see where this goes from here (I'll post juicy details later).

Clubs - I don't know about intramurals, but I'm not doing Quiz Bowl, those kids are lame. Going to try Ballroom dancing (not the most masculine, I know, but I am actually very excited to learn how to dance. Perhaps I shall impress the lady-types!) and Sustainability Club. Not sure, I hope I find some niche to fill.

Oh, and the laptops that cost $2000? The exact same ugly-ass model that I unboxed 200 of this past summer. I knew it. I KNEW IT. Ugh.

Will continue to post updates on what I'm doing here and on Twitter.
Adios.

Linux Review/Reflections

My college post will probably be added later today, when i'm sufficiently bored.

I got an old computer from work (HP Compaq d530 base model) and was told to experiment with Linux on it. I brought it home, connected a fairly good monitor to it, some leftover speakers, and started her up. Downloaded the Ubuntu install CD, and after several failed attempts (had to use an older version 6.0.4 and then upgrade using my download) was running Ubuntu 8.0.4 Hardy Heron on my computer.

For many reasons, I became bored and busy, and did not pay much attention to my new Linuxbox. After a few weeks, finally got around to working with the terminal (very very lite work, still very perplexed) and skinning it to look like a Mac. The problem with the computer was that it was so incredibly mind-numbingly slow. Like molasses squared. It would freeze, the programs would take 5 minutes to load, it was horrible.

It was like that for most of the summer. I finally decided to do some real work on it when I figured that I could take it to college to write papers with, granted that it would perform at stable speeds.
So we went out to Best Buy, picked up some RAM and I installed it. Reboot, and reinstall Ubuntu (just to wipe all the crap and start from scratch). Now, introducing the Linuxbox 2.0, open for business!

I've been spending the past few days enjoying it, and learning a lot more than I knew before about Linux.
Here's the features I installed and my opinion on them.

Ubuntu OS - I thought the interface at the start was a little clunky and a tad kid-friendly (with the big buttons and orange color scheme), but since delving into the customization, I've grown to love the ease and vast multitude of options available to you. Solutions are relatively easy to find, and there's always cool things to discover. The Terminal functionality is intimidating, but practice has made me appreciate the integration and simplicity of it, hope to use that more and more.
Rhythmbox - A good music player, imported my songs from the external hard drive easily enough, and I haven't tried out the Podcast and Radio functions, but hope they are as simple and easy to use. Recognized my iPod (have yet to sync or add anything, we'll see if that is as easy).
Amarok - A superior music player, much better than Rhythmbox. I hear it's also on Windows, which i think makes it a very good alternative to iTunes. iPod recognition was not as easy as in Rhythmbox, but easy to figure out nonetheless. Music library compilation was soooo much quicker than the built-in player, and the interface is a lot smoother and cooler too. Album art was a cinch, and it even found pictures for albums that I hadn't found yet, which I thought was really cool (although, it did sometimes make mistakes, but those were only in albums that I didn't mind having correct art for; every time there was a mistake, the art Amarok found was too hilarious to take away. A great great feature). The logo is cool, and I'm keeping this in my dock.
Avant Window Navigator - A Macintosh-esque dock for programs and launchers. The download was simple the second time around, with my speeded up system, and I've had relatively few problems with it. I really can't get the launchers to work, and it kinda glitches in that I open a program and it doesn't open. Looks pretty cool, but the interface is confusing (not very clear about what options do exactly what, or what places I'm changing color in. A tad nicer than the ugly panels tho.
I will post up screenshots of my desktop, plus a full list of what my settings/themes are soon.

Pidgin - A very very nice IM client that combines AIM, Yahoo, WindowsMessenger, and many other IM services into one interface.  I like Pidgin, it's simple and clean and doesn't have popups out the wazoo (Looking at you Yahoo!).  I even went and uninstalled everything on my Windows machine and installed Pidgin, and it's working great.  What I really wanted was an IM client that merged all my accounts into one buddy list and just let me talk to anybody I wanted, without worrying about different accounts or anything like that.  Pidgin lets me do that very easily, and for that, I'm grateful.  An excellent service, with beautiful simplicity.  Pidgin gets a 10 out of 10!

Incredibly pumped for Intrepid Ibex. October 30th, WOOT!


God I'm hungry.

Foot Hurts

So it's Thursday. Waiting for Naruto manga to be uploaded tomorrow. Haven't been keeping up with the subbed anime, cuz of this whole sucky storyline, maybe when the Akatsuki get back into it.

My dad and i moved furniture from the library, family room and my parents bedroom so that the carpet can be cleaned tomorrow. We have a lot of heavy stuff. I put the bed headboard down on my foot, and gashed like an inch hole. Ow.

Still working on thank-you notes for my party. So boring. Just have to get them all done by next friday. Ick.
Need to stay up on GoNintendo messageboards, cuz i want to get past the 200 mark eventually.

New Team Fortress 2 update, for Heavy. Some new maps, I've played everyone but Lumberyard + Ravine, and those look good. I'm intriqued by the Arena mode, but all the matches are so small that I can't find an open one!

School starts next friday. Looking forward to meeting everybody, and starting class. These last few days are gonna be weird, what with me having nothing to do, waking up later, and all my little friends going to hs while my other friends are pretty much already left. Just trying to pack things and figure out what i'm gonna be taking.

Bought Brawl and Crazy Taxi. First impression of Brawl, not the best. Then i switched to the Gamecube controller, and I'm having a ball! The Subspace Emmissary is an addicting addition, and I'm working through the challenges to get the extras. I feel like I'm back in TF2 again, going for achievements. Haven't popped in Crazy Taxi yet, even though it's one of my favs.

Sincerely,
Too Noble For My Own Good,

Striker Jacen

Reply

I kinda abandoned this blog, as I was kinda being emo about it, and only posting every couple months or so, when i was too low to talk to anybody about it.

I'll try to repress my emo impulses, just this once.
Working on getting an actual website up, with an actual CMS and wicked sweet design, solely designed by me.
But I've been busy
I anticipate the busyness with continue through college.
We'll see where this goes.

I'll try to keep these posts down to a minimum
maybe trash the whole thing so people don't think I'm weird
I dunno
I'll work on it
in the meantime, Too Noble For My Own Good is going Twitter-style.
Thanks for stopping by!


Sincerely,
Too Noble For My Own Good,

Striker Jacen