Newsletter

Non-trivial update :)

It appears this 'newsletter' is actually becoming more of a newsletter. About a month ago was my last substantial update.
Hooray for periodicity, even if it isn't predictable.

Update: I completely forgot to mention that my siblings are my favorite people on the planet. They're so great. My brother is my hero and my sister is definitely the coolest girl ever. By far. So there.

To begin, I'd like to point out that although I mentioned the Audio Adrenaline concert I went to, I must say that my all time favorite concert so far was the one I went to about a week after. Caedmon's Call is awesome. Their replacement for the recently departed (as in, he's solo now) Derek Webb, Andrew Osenga, is a pretty funny man. I shook his hand. I also have to say that singing God of Wonders and Step by Step (Rich Mullins tribute) with Cliff Young (Caedmon's Call lead) himself was definitely super amazing.

I also mentioned I was getting Dr. Mario for Super Nintendo. I surmised this would lead to a decrease in productivity. This hasn't actually been the case, though it's been really fun. I would have to say that the real decrease in productivity came when I bought Dr. Mario for Gameboy. It's hard to pay attention in class. So luckily, I ran out of batteries. I ran those batteries down really fast.

The racquetball club John and I are (still) going to found has not happened yet. We have all the paperwork filled out, but when it comes down to someone taking them into the Student Activities Office, it hasn't happened in weeks. We'll see how that goes. We haven't even been playing every other day any more, so I don't know what's up with that.

John gave up on the projector project. His reasons for this are many and varied, none of which I can say I understand.
I've nominated myself in his stead to finish this.
Turns out the only real part left is to get an LCD (we've had a few, but they've all seemed to be predisposed to unfortunate accidents). So I've been looking around. I found a store that repairs them that I plan to check in with on a regular basis to see if they have any parts, but as of now, I'm 1 LCD short of an awesome projector.
The pinnacle, of course, of this search for LCD monitors happened upon me quite unexpectedly.
I recently received a Dell machine for the lab I run in the physics building, and I needed some simple brackets to mount an extra hard drive into the case. I went to OnTheGoPC (the local computer hardware and repair shop I plan to pester for LCDs) to ask them if they had anything like what I needed. They said I didn't, but if I were to go to General Nano, I might find what I was looking for.
On the way to General Nano, on my recently mangled bicycle, I rode by another, smaller establishment called Trans Micro. I'll try to spare you these silly computer store names from this point forward. I went into this store and talked to (apparently) the only Caucasian guy there, as the rest were of some Oriental descent (I assumed Japanese, but my roommate assures me they are, in fact, from Vietnam Taiwan). He got me the brackets I needed, and as I was about to leave, I decided to ask if they had any broken LCDs I could purchase.
He said he had one in the back, and they were going to throw it away, but that (and he had to check with his manager on this) he figured it would be cheaper for them to just give it to me instead of paying the monitor disposal fee.
So he called for his manager, and this energetic little man excitedly comes over to see what he was needed for. On hearing about the monitor, he exclaims something along the lines of "Ah yes, LCD! No power!" and takes off for the back room. When he returned with a very, very nice, very large LCD, he proceeded to try to plug it in.
This is a funny story in and of itself. Both he and I were baffled at the fact that we couldn't find the connection on the monitor to attach the power cable. We spent about 5 minutes looking all over the monitor trying to find where to connect the power. He couldn't find it, I couldn't find it. He was about to give up (he was telling me that if I took it home and took it apart I might find the connection) right when he saw where the connection was. The people who had designed this monitor decided it would be a good idea to have the power connection attached to the end of the monitor cable, so that only one cable ran out of the monitor. I would say that's idiotic myself, but I suppose the interference from the power line would be negligible. So he found it, and pointed excitedly extolling the virtues of how great it would be if the power adapter he had would work.
He then spent the next 5 minutes running around his shop looking for a similar monitor to try and switch power adapters. None of the LCDs on display were what he wanted, so again he gave up and told me the monitor was mine.
This nice monitor was mine. Free.
So I was all rung up, and I had this awesome monitor in my hands, and I had a DC power adapter at home that was exactly what it needed.
I could walk out the door and would have done nothing wrong.

But I still felt wrong about it for two reasons. First, if it was true that the only thing wrong with the monitor was the power adapter, then I was taking about $300 worth of equipment off this guy (it was a really nice LCD monitor. Really nice) simply because he didn't have a dongle. Sure, it was his choice, but it seemed silly.
And secondly, I had just noticed that the cash register computer LCD was the exact same brand and model. If I were to say absolutely anything about this new revelation, my chances with this LCD were forfeit.
Ah well.
So I pointed this out to him, and he hurried over and seemed quite thrilled with this new discovery. He quickly fiddled with connections, and found the power adapter for this working LCD and excitedly checked and rechecked connections to the supposedly broken LCD, and promptly had me turn it on. Which it did.

So I said to him, "see, this is a working monitor. You can't give this to me for free." To which he said, "Yeah, you're right, Better take it back," which he did.

As I was leaving the store the other guy said something along the lines of "you were so close to gold, you just had to ruin it."

Oh well. To be honest, I felt a lot better leaving the store knowing that I didn't let that little man hose himself instead of leaving with a freaking sweet monitor. Stupid conscience. It's all a shame really. I was so close.

So if any of you know where I can find a broken LCD (broken in the fact that the backlight is bad, as the plan is to replace it with an overhead projector), I'm in the market. I know, I know, Ebay. I distrust Ebay and their sneaky PayPal subsidiary, so I'm, well, hesitant.

My sleeping schedule is rather lackluster. I mentioned I was up until 4:30 am rather frequently Monday nights in a shorter post, and this indeed has not changed. In fact, I didn't get to sleep last night until 7 am. I have a tendency to procrastinate on homework, and as my homework load has been changing from lots of little assignments to a few large assignments, I am finding that my ability to stay on top of them is less than I would like. People kept telling me this would hit me hard in middle school, and then high school, and now college, but I'm still staying afloat, if only barely.
Obviously this has serious repercussions on my health. I woke up last Saturday incredibly sick; Sunday was horrible, and I still have a horrible cough. My family, specifically, my mom, has been very supportive in sending me things, but when it comes down to it I just need clean sheets and sleep. I plan to remedy both of these issues real soon now.

The hurricane situation has, in the past, been quite heavy on my mind, so when I was offered the opportunity to go to Mississippi to do hurricane relief, I guess you wouldn't say I jumped at it, but I did sign up. I was pretty excited. If I had gone, I would be on a bus right now. Instead, after careful discussion and, apparently, some deliberation between very nice Campus Crusade members and, I take it, FEMA, it turns out that due to my possession of severe food allergies and Mississippi's currently lack of suitable, immediate health care, it seems too risky. I guess not everything can work out, right? I get the feeling this is working out for the best, but I can't place my finger on just how yet. Maybe I won't be there when Wilma hits and everyone going dies.
</joke>
That was a very poor joke. Uhhhh, yeah.

Our University employs a system called "Grab 'n' Go" to distribute lunch to students who have class during one of the dining hall's lunch periods. Basically you sign up online the day before and tell them what you want and they have a sack lunch waiting for you the following morning. It's overpriced and gross, but I'm already paying for it. I've been growing increasingly fond of my sourdough and 1 slice of meat sandwiches. It's not so bad.
However, the sign up process online is implemented very insecurely, and
Update: That's actually just blatantly not true. I had a paragraph here about 'hacking' and some such, but I caution instead that one should always verify their claims in different conditions and situations before posting them on the internet. Bah. I was so excited, too.

It also turns out that riding down stairs on a bike is not in the best interest of either you or the bike, regardless of how confident you feel you can accomplish doing so while standing and holding a racquetball racket. Needless to say, the bike landed on top of me, bent the handlebars somewhat awkwardly, and screwed up the gear shifter a little. I escaped with only a minor scrape on my arm and back. Wooo.

I doubt Milon (highschool) reads this, but I just want to say that he's way awesome. I was talking to him at 2:30 in the morning (today? yesterday?) about topics I had no idea he was interested in and somehow missed during high school. I guess it's not a big deal, but it was just really cool, as he's a funny guy.

I've developed a fascination for semicolons; semicolons are pretty dang awesome. I've been trying to use them properly in more situations, so if you find I've misused one or could have used one, let me know! I've just been really excited about them. Who knows why?

Okay, so until next time I feel like updating, don't go changin'!