FJ Blog

I have neglected my blog.. I know, I know, I know. I finally have stuff to blog about.

I'm at work right now, and let me tell you I hate people who expect these machines to work just magically for them. They want the machine to read their frieken minds. I put part of the blame on poorly documented "molded to the looser" interfaces. For example, we use blackboard quite a bit here at the U of Nebraska. Well, the site was http://blackboard.unl.edu .. So many people put a WWW before that that they added it. So now it's both. A student just asked me a question... I knew it was trouble from the start.. when she walks up to the desk here, and says I have a question and starts to turn around. (she expects me to follow her.) I don't move an inch and immediately ask her what she's trying to do.. She tells me and well I have to go see what the heck she can't figure out. Her problem was that she was trying to submit a file through blackboard but it wasn't working for her. She was typing in the name of the file, without extensions and not including the path. (ARRRGH!) So, I tell her (while still trying to not sound condesending) That her problem is that she's not specifing the file extension let alone the directory path the file is in. This obviously means nothing to her.. and looking back I maybe should have told her that the computer can't read her mind (in kinder terms). She says "So um what do I do then?" I reply "click on browse... " When we get to her directory (her floppy disk) She says something to the effect of "Um, which one do I want?" As if I knew what file she was submitting to her instructor. I reply by telling her whichever one she wants to submit. She figures it out and submits her file. UGH I hate the attitudes these people have. Some of them, like this example., are worse than most. "Point, click, and read my mind."

In other things I'm doing fairly well in my Statistics class. I'm gona be realy short on cash... I'll have to borrow a couple hundred bucks from my parents. I should be able to pay them back. I have about $400 (I got paid again today) total, and I need $800 by the 10th. bleah.
Update: Money is pretty well figured out.. I will have to borrow $400. luckily I will have earned that by the first thursday of august. (yay) Thats in 6 weeks. After that point I'll all good. (provided I pass all my classes) I will be back in the green. About $500 in the green. hmm I better find out when the rest of my housing deposit for fall is due. If only I had that money now. oh well "Its not having what you want, it's wanting what you got." - Sheryl Crow.

Ok, let a lesson be learned. Mixed messages are just that; mixed messages. Due to a combination of bad timing and perhaps coincidence, I learned a valuable lesson about how people interact with each other. I'm not quite sure what this lesson is though. My mental state was in a certain position the weekend before the new class started. meeting this girl seemed to be exactly the thing to completely turn my life around. Now, I wonder.... was this encounter part of the grand scheme of things? Was I supposed to learn a great lesson of life here? If that's the case ... hmm yeah.. thinking to myself I think I may have just figured it out.. ok.. now.. in a way this is like a nuclear power plant. exactly what I needed at the time.. but um there's some waste left over.. waste that needs to be handled with carefully.. and like nuclear waste I should have known better than to create it in the first place.

I have learned several practical things this summer. One. NEVER, NEVER, try to cook an egg, while in the shell, in a microwave oven. It is common knowledge that it will explode, however it takes life experience to know that it will explode violently enough to blow the door open and totally F@#$ up the microwave. Two: Don't waste any time what-so-ever with girls in the greek system. They're well groomed, intelegent, and very good at talking. They tend to be good looking, and are probably dating some frat boy. Tread lightly my friends.

I had a good weekend. I got to Beemer around 9:00 on friday. The husker game was on the radio, it was on TV but we don't get ESPN2. We lost. We played again yesterday, and I don't know what the score is.. as soon as I update my blog I'm gonna go look. The game was on TV but I only saw the first 3 innings. We spent the good bulk of the afternoon visiting my grandparents. My grandpa has has a rough week. The congestive part of congestive heart failure refers to the fluid buildup in the body. With this condition your heart is not pumping the blood well enough for fluid in your body to stay evenly distributed. As a result his ankles swell up with excess fluid and, though you can't see it, his entire body is affected. With this condition fluid can also tend to build up in the lungs, and other parts throughout the body. Yes, there is medication that assists with the fluid problems, but their are side effects, and it's not fun to take 5-6 pills a day for 5-6 things just to keep going. Blood also does not get to the brain in the quantity that it should. In my grandpa's case his mind is still sharp, but as you can imagine things can be dificult for him. The bottom line is that his body has aged. His mind is healthy. In a way, this is a curse. He sees that he's dying, life is not a lot of fun. I don't know if he knows the end is so near for him. We have not told him. He may not live another month. My grandma is doing allright. Allright for her condition I suppose. As I mentioned in an earlier post she has Alzheimer's disease. As an after-effect of brain deteration, her body has also deteriorated. She is no longer able to walk steps. She has trouble sitting up strait. She weighs less than 100 lbs. Her hands shake. She says things that don't make sense. However, as bad as it may sound, she is able to carry a conversation and laugh and joke around. This is on a good day.

I just got back from class.. The girl I mentioned in the previous post was there. I don't know what to think of her yet. it's not easy to talk to her.. between not being able to hear and getting tounge tied (its a curse that I get tounge tied around pretty girls .. ) having a conversation is a challange. We got our quizes back today. I got a 30/30 she got a 29/30. She stuck her tounge out at me teasingly. This is a good sign. I just smiled back at her acknolegeing her playfull behavior. I owe the perfetct score to her. I had written down the wrong answer to one of the questions and she caught it. (it was a copying error not a computational error)
After class she obviously made an effort to talk to me. Another good sign. We got a new quiz today, it will be due on wednsday. hopefully we'll be able to work on it together. We have our first exam on
Thursday. I noticed last week that she wears a red ruby ring. I susspect that ruby is her birthstone. That means her b-day is gonna be in july. This is good because I'll be able to score big points with her by spoiling her on her b-day early in the relationship ( keep in mind here I'm realy going out on a limb. -- there is no "relationship" at this point.. but a guy can dream can't he?)
My cousin Allen will be coming up from OKC this weekend. He's 10 years older than me... we get along pretty well. I have not seen him in ages. As you may have guessed he's making a point to visit to see our grandparents while he still can. I think I'll head home to Beemer saturday morning.. unless I have plans. but. considering that it's my grandparents who are dieing and not the cute blonde, I should give them priority.

I'm sitting in the student union right now. I'm using one of the laptops that are available for checkout freely by all students. These are nice machines. Gateway 1Ghz PIIIs. Running windows XP. I want one of my own so badly. If I go to Gallaudet then I'll seriously want to buy a laptop. I should start working on game plan if i'm going to seriously consider taking a semester there. Money is the big issue though. I need to pay for school this summer, and my desktop machine needs to be fed before I go buy a laptop. Also I would realy love to go to Merc and Ong's wedding. I will be free that weekend, but I don't currently have the means to get there. Things are ok for me right now. sure, it'd be nice if I had lots of money. I'd be able to do more cool stuff. but I think I will be happy as I am. so if any of you want to do an experiment, give me all your money, and you'll find that you're just as happy without it.

What a long day this has been *ooohhhff* I woke up around 5:30 this morning. I've been on some kind of high. it's interesting. I also havn't eaten any thing in the last 20 . hours. Oddly I feel fine. I woke up in time to watch some of the USA vs Poland game. I watched the first 15 min or so. Long enough to see Poland score two against us.

I tried to get some software loaded on my TI-86 with the graphlink cable. No dice. The thing has never worked with win2k and now it's not working with win98. My windows 98 partition has many other issues though. *sigh* I need to reformat but it'll be a real pain to bring it back.. well.. considering I only plan to use Linux and win2k I should be able to skimp on the time I take bringing win98 back. The only reason I use win98 at all has been because the Video-in only works under win98.

I talked to that girl in class again today. She is really something. I can say this because I doubt that she'll read my blog. She is a classic example of why I don't understand women. In what way could a girl like her possibly be interested in a guy like me? maybe she's not interested.

I have not been updating my blog lately... I blame my wacky sleep schedule. I woke up about 7:00 today... so I think I'm sleeping "normally" now.

Today is Thursday. First week of the 1st 5-week session. I'm taking a very easy class.. well two classes actually. I'm taking this required "library 110" class. We met in a classroom once, got the syllabus, and now we don't meet again. The whole thing is taught at our own pace, and it's taught online. The "tests" are also online. It's open book basically so that makes it very easy. Not only that but we're allowed to take the first 5 tests as many times as needed to pass. (I really don't see the point of failing the test and taking it again, I mean it's called having two browser windows open.) The final test is to be printed out and handed in. This last test consists of one question, and we have to use what we've learned in the previous 5 units to answer it. We can only turn this in once, but again it's open book, and if we're unsure we can ask questions. This course is available pass / no pass only. To be honest I think the whole thing is a dumb idea, now I know why the college of Engineering and Technology does not require this thing for graduation.

The other class I'm taking is also very easy. It's STAT 180... statistics... *yawn* The instructors grading policies are very um liberal... meaning that a 90% score is an A.(yay) the trend, since minuses are pretty new, is to make a 90% an A-. This blows because an A- is a 3.67 on the 4.0 scale. So, when 90% used to be 4.0, it's not any more... anyway,, the point is that to get an A all I need is a 90% !! In addition to this, our quizzes are take home quizzes. He gives two days to complete them. He hands them out on Wednesday, and they are due at the very beginning of class on Friday. There are 5 of these quizzes.. and there are also 3 exams, These exams are on Fridays, and they're open note. (not open book) . The final exam we are not allowed to use our notes, but we are allowed to use two whole sheets (front and back) for questions. That's gonna make the exam much easier.

In addition there are several cute girls in this class :) . There's one girl in particular who has caught my attention. She's blonde, blue eyes, and left handed. of course there are other features but lets move on to the one that intrigues me the most.. her personality. We were assigned a quiz yesterday, and I had finished most of it this morning before class. I took this opportunity to break the ice.. and asked her what she thought of the quiz. That was a smart move. The material is pretty easy and we discusses practically every thing in the first two and a half days of class .. and one who had taken good notes should have had no problem completing it. She had not started it yet, I mentioned that it was fairly easy and we had covered about all of it in class. Later in class we also had a chance to talk... in this class we do a lot of calculator stuff... and the instructor is odd about it ".....No. Only with TI-83+...." Well, the two of us both have TI-86's (way way back in my blog I have a post about how TI calcs) anyway, I think it's gonna be nice helping her (well us helping each other) get out calculators to do the the things in class :). We also talked after class :) There's just one little problem. I can't always understand what the heck she's saying to me. In class I didn't hear her even though I was looking right at her.. having to repeat what she said did not faze her. this is quite interesting, because when this happens at my job, I get totally weird reactions. Some times at work I have even said things like "you need to repeat that I read lips.. " (I'm polite about it though) I don't dare say things like "I'm nearly deaf.. yada yada.., " I just hope that they get the idea themselves. Once in a while I think I totally freak people out. which brings me back to this girl in my class. How do I prompt her to help me understand her, without freaking her out? What am I gonna do a year or two from now when it's even worse? I find it interesting that I come to this topic in this post because last night I was looking at the Gallaudet U website, thinking about how much I'd like to go there for a semester. If it doesn't happen I don't think I'll be heartbroken, it's just an option that I want to keep open, the experience would be priceless.

Today is Mondy. I have not blogged in some time. Not a whole lot to blog about realy. I'm in the 3rd and final week of the class I'm taking durring the summer "pre-session" I have to write a report by class time tomorrow. it's worth 16% of my final grade. I dozed off in class a couple of times today. My sleep schedule is so messed up.

I don't know why, but I'm feeling like crap today. well I can list off a lot of things that make me feel like crap.. but why do I feel like crap today and not other days?