WhistlinDixie

I’m Back!

I am happy to say that I am back in Heath. It feels great to be back. On my way home, I did end up stopping by BG and seeing Chelsea and Megan. Good times. I even lost my cell phone while I was in the Student Union. Good thing someone was nice enough to turn it in to the information desk. Chelsea called it from her cell and the info desk picked up. It was on my way off campus, so it was all good. Had supper with CJ and Chief on Saturday. More good times.

I’m busy unpacking today. I also have some business to work on. Never thought that I’d be working the letter of recommendation circuit again. Trying to get a job while I’m home.

Exams sucked. When don’t they? The back to back wasn’t bad, but I wasted all of my study time moving stuff out of my room. I actually ended up taking an hour long nap before I left.

Anyway, if you want to hang, talk, whatever, call me at home, ’cause I don’t have anything better to do.

Random Ramblings

John’s away message:
YAY DRUGS!!!! Without them, I might actually experience the pain in life, and who wants that??
YAY Kettering! Without it, I might actually experience the joy in life, and who wants that??

Buyback Sucks!

Went to the bookstore to sell back about half of my books from this quarter. Had no problem with it last quarter, so I figured that everything would go swimmingly this quarter. I drop my six books on the counter and they proceed to scan them. The cashier puts one back up on the counter and says that they are not buying it back. Proceeds through the rest of the stack, makes a comment to another cashier that this book is brand new for this quarter. Places it up on the counter. Gets to the last book, says that they don’t buy back workbooks. So, I get $4 for three books that I turned in, all of which I bought brand new at the beginning of the quarter. I still have one more book from Social Science to turn in, but considering that I paid $138 for all of the books in that class and I only got back less than $4 so far and had one rejected, I have a long way to go to recoup even a small amount of the money that I spent on them. I hope that my hardback textbooks actually net my some money, otherwise I will have wasted a lot of money this quarter. At least there is still eBay. Maybe someone there will actually pay me for them.

Slow Progress

Ok, my Humanities final is due on Friday at 5:00pm. I want to have it done by Thursday night so all I have to do on Friday is take exams, pack my last few things, and clean so I can be ready to check out at 1:30. Today I got a whole two pages done out of the six that I wanted to get done. That means four more pages to write tomorrow in the midst of two final exams and packing more stuff up.

I think that my largest problem is that my BSing mechanism has run out of steam. In high school, it had sufficient amounts of time to recover between uses. Here, not only is it worked harder every time that it is used, but it is used more often. That, and that I don’t normally try to make extensive use of it during really stressful times, such as finals week. I just wish that the liberal studies profs would finally realize that all of the students here are engineering majors. We don’t really care about what Copely was trying to convey when he painted the Grand Canyon or why Thomas Jefferson was such a tinkerer. We really have no use for this knowledge in our occupational fields. What we do need to know is calc and physics and mech/ee/ce/ec/ap/am/cs related stuff so we can go out and perform our jobs correctly. If we actually cared about this stuff, we wouldn’t be at Kettering in the first place. We would go somewhere where we could get a bachelor of arts degree in some artsy (ie, useless) field.

Well, enough for now. It is 11:30 and I have to get up bright and early tomorrow for a 7:30 phys exam. Wish me luck. And to think, as soon as it is over, I get to start cramming for my 3:30 social science exam that I haven’t had any time to study for because of my stupid Humanities final paper. Ick! I can’t wait for it all to be over.

Neato

I found out today that there is a redeeming quality to Prof. Stanchev, my teacher for Discrete Math. On the last day of class, he gives everyone a die. I got a nifty d20 that is a translucent green with white swirls mixed in. (BTW, a d20 is a die with 20 sides.) I am thinking about putting it on a key chain when I get home. He then handed out the class evaluation (I got to to be the responsible student) and left. We were supposed to stay behind to watch a movie about Archimedes after we were done with the evaluation. Since he told us that he would not be coming back, almost everyone left. Only Tim McGookey and I actually stayed to watch the entirety of the movie. It was actually pretty interesting, I think.

Today happened to be the last day of classes. No more Calc III, Discrete Math, Phys I, Humanities, or Social Science for me. Of course, I still have exams to study for. I finished up my term paper today and got two more pages done for my Humanities final. That leaves Woodstock and a course summary (total of six pages) to work on tomorrow and maybe Thursday. All I need to do is stay focused (not an easy thing to do when you hate both the subject and writing in general, the two most critical parts of the class).

Let the Countdown Begin!

I’m sooo happy. I get to come home on Friday. The only things standing in my way are finals and my Humanities term paper. I have my Phys final at 7:30 am Thursday, my Social Science final at 3:30 Thursday, my Calc III final at 7:30 Friday and my Discrete Math final at 10:00 on Friday. I also have my term paper and final paper (at least nine pages) due by 5:00 on Friday. On other words, lots of work to be done before I leave.

I actually took three loads of stuff down to my car yesterday. I prefer to spread the work out over a few days. Easier on the legs and less time commitment at any one time. It’s also a great diversion.

On my way home, I am going to stop by Bowling Green to see Megan and Chelsea. Might have dinner while I am there. Who knows? I’ll probably get home around 9 o’clock. Then, I will have supper with CJ and Chief on Saturday at LaPaloma.

If I can get a job somewhere around home or in the Columbus area, I might pay a bunch of you a visit. After all, Chief is the farthest away at UC, and that is only a three hour drive. It’ll be great to be back home. Work will be a drag, but I plan to cherish my free time before I start working again.

Procrastination

Well, I have a term paper to revise and a final paper (something like seven pages) to write for Humanities, all due on Friday. I really don’t feel like doing either of them. However, both are required to pass the class. That leaves me no choice… I must procrastinate!

I was just taking a break from my revisions to watch some March Madness. Unfortunately, my bracket is hopelessly busted already. Two of the four teams that I picked for the Final Four are already eliminated. I figured that a three and a four seed would make it pretty far. I didn’t plan on an upset by a 13 seed or a total collapse in all facets of the game either. All this means that, barring an upheaval of major proportions, there is no chance of me winning $10,000 from ESPN. There’s always next year.

Another thought on the tournament… Why did they do away with the easily identifiable regions (ie, East, South, Midwest, and West) and replace them with cities instead (this year we have Chicago (Midwest), Syracuse (East), Austin (South), and Albuquerque (West))? First of all, the old regions were a lot easier to spell. I believe that most Americans would have difficulty spelling Albuquerque. Also, the regions are hardly regions anymore. Now part of the Albuquerque bracket plays their games in Cleveland. Of course, we all know that Cleveland is right next door to Albuquerque, right? Actually, there are 1602 mi between the two cities according to MapQuest. Why do they even try to call them anything anymore? It is now nothing but a humongous bracket that has ties to nothing geographically. There are no more advantages to being placed in one bracket or another. No more "Illinois should have been placed closer to home that the West. The tournament committee should have recognized their accomplishments this season more." Now it really doesn’t matter which region a team is placed in, except for which teams are in the region with them (ie, the Syracuse region is considered by many to be stacked the year.)

Well, I guess that I better get back to Humanities. These papers will only get done if I work on them. All I can say is that the distraction was welcome. Maybe now I’ll crank my music to keep my mind occupied.

Enough Already!

Ok, who out there is tired of the snow? I know I am. Just when I thought that the weather was going to turn half way decent for the rest of the quarter, it went and snowed something like an inch last night. It really needs to stop. I really don’t like waking up to traffic reports every ten minutes.

Oh My!

I heard from my friend CJ that a former teacher of mine’s house burned a few months ago. I was a little surprised since one never expects a house to burn down. I just got an email from my mom with a link to a story in our local newspaper, the Newark Advocate. It turns out that now she and her husband are being accused of setting fire to their own house, and, in turn, causing danger to the firefighters fighting the blaze. That’s a first-degree felony in Licking County. She has been put on paid leave for the time being. All I can say is that this is a very startling development.

Licensed to Kill

OK, so maybe I don’t actually have a license to kill, or even a ninja license, which would be sooo cool, but I am dangerous. Tonight marked the first time that I ever came out on top of a deathmatch. Don’t laugh. I’d like to see you be first out of six when you’ve only had the game two days. Of course, everyone else that I was playing with had been playing for at least a week, all against eachother. What can I say? For someone who hasn’t played any DM at all since the summer of 2002, I’m not doing too bad. BTW, in case you were wondering, we were playing Half-Life 2: Deathmatch. The ": Deathmatch" part is important because it is actually a separate game from Half-Life 2. All I can say is you better watch out before I put a red-hot length of rebar in your back with a crossbow.