Newsletter

Long awaited update

My interest in keeping this newsletter seems to have waned.
While that is, largely, a valid reason for not having posted anything, the initial, and continued, intent of this newsletter is to let people know how things are going. And for my failure in that regard, I apologize.

At this point, though it's more than a little pedantic to make a note of it half a month later and rather axiomatic, I did finally leave Utah for college. In fact, the elapsed time period is more correctly nailed down by two-thirds of a month, instead of a half. I got to Minneapolis on August 30th (Happy Birthday Dad!), after having had my flight cancelled and replaced by a much more suitable flight. I stayed in my office in the physics building yet again, but this time only for 2 days rather than 2 weeks. I did pretty much nothing, and then moved in to my dormitory that Thursday, 2 days later. To continue the pattern of 2s, this was 2 days before everyone else was allowed to move in.
The reason for my early ability to move in was due to the fact that I was a member of a Middlebrook (my dorm) events planning council. My major duty was to run around and help freshman set up their computers (surprise). It was fun, and I got to meet a lot of people right off the bat.
Because I had a key to my room, I let my roommate move in early, too. So we had a head start on our neighbors to get our room set up. In fact, I have friends in high places, or just awesome friends, and we got our bed bunked another two days early.

I pretty much didn't do any homework for the next two weeks (there were exceptions).

The following is a pretty segmented collection of stories.

Instead, I've played racquetball every other freaking day or so. In fact, John and I have decided to found, apparently, the only University of Minnesota racquetball club. We have yet to write a constitution, but with our current rate of racquetball every other freaking day, and lots of expressed interest, we should be good to go. We are planning a ladder and maybe some tournaments. Woo woo.

After two weeks, the homework caught up to me and I spent a few nights up until 4:30. No big deal though, a little nap, a little racquetball, and it was all better.

I'm also pretty sure I'm going to join the Solar Car project. I've already attended the first meeting.

We have a SNES and a Sega Genesis set up that have been on pretty consistently. Mario seems to be the favorite, though I've been a pretty big fan of Ecco the Dolphin. I'm super far in it.

I initially had signed up for 20 credits this semester, 8 of which were 2 5000-level math classes, one of them an honors topics class. However, due to the fact that I don't plan to actually major in mathematics, and this topics course, since it is a topics course and follows whatever the instructor fancies, doesn't help me at all, I dropped it and picked up weight training instead. We'll see how that goes.
But with the combination of that, my bike, racquetball, and random ultimate frisbee games, I should be in incredible shape by the end of the year. I've been biking everywhere, in fact, I followed traffic downtown after a party on frat row I attended (I'm being misleading. It was a Campus Crusade party), just on a whim. I stopped at an Irish pub I know (Kieran's) that features live, outdoor Irish music, and listened for a while. I then just biked around downtown Minneapolis, got yelled at by a cop for riding on the sidewalk a short distance, hung out in Barnes and Noble until I realized I didn't have a great way of getting anything I purchased back, etc. Fun times.

Yesterday, Nick (not of the Halden variety, obviously) and I were trying to figure out where this huge university (second largest in the nation) dumps all of their partially and completely broken stuff, for example, computer components. They have to dump it somewhere. So I called the techmart that sells refurbished computers and asked them. They said there was a recycling plant on Como Avenue that sometimes lets the public in. We tried to find it by taking a secret ninja way through a grainery or something, and over a train track switch yard, and we did indeed find it, but it was closed. Shame. However, we also found a "Reuse" warehouse that was open today. Apparently starting at 8 am they were having a huge 25$/bike flat rate sale of confiscated bikes. They seem to claim they are open every Thursday to the public, and by the time we got there at 5 pm, it looked like every single bike was still there. Some of them were really nice. There had to be at least 200 or so. I plan to coax Will into driving us there next week. Not only did they have bikes, but they had like, 500+ chairs and sofas, desks, shelves, cabinets, projectors. computer components, microfilm readers, a copy of dBase, unopened, for DOS, microwaves, TVs, and tons of other crap. All for incredibly cheap. Like, 9 dollars for most chairs. It was amazing. I didn't get anything as I was again frustrated by having an inability to transport large objects on my bicycle. It was probably 5 miles or so away, so not too bad, but still.

Luckily, I didn't die. This usually isn't even a concern, but I had just received a Meningitis shot, so adverse reaction was possible.

Speaking of projectors, John has been trying to put together a projector of sorts. I'm currently looking at parts of an LCD screen he ordered from eBay, but alas, this hasn't panned out as smoothly as had been hoped. The grand scheme is to eventually build some basic surround sound system along with this projector, set up a multimedia box, and project DVDs and video games on our wall. It should be good times. If I understand right, John said he was considering ordering, I think, his third defective LCD to see if it worked right.

Once this projector is finished, and Dr. Mario for SNES arrives in the mail, my productivity will probably drop more. Actually that's not true. That won't wait for the projector. Once Dr. Mario gets here, my productivity will drop more. Actually, I've been quite productive, frankly. I'm not concerned. With the frenetic (oh how I love that word) combination of my Electrical Engineering classes, Complex Analysis, Honors Physics 3, which is currently focusing on Special Relativity, and I'm relatively quite confused as my confusion approaches the speed of light, my job, Solar Car, Racquetball club, Campus Crusade (I think I'm going to start going to their Servant Team meetings, and go to the Fall Retreat), this concert I'm apparently going to tomorrow, random runs to the Rec and McDonalds with John at 1 am, Bible study (which we're reading a book now, which I think is good), church, Vespers (which is awesome. 2000+ student worship service at Bethel University every Sunday night), websites I'm (still) working on, and various other projects, I have my hands quite full.

In case anyone's curious, I have my most recent weekly schedule I've typed up here: http://jtolds.xnet5.com/schedule/
This is actually quite accurate, as since I can't even remember my own schedule, I have to check it (and update it) rather frequently.

That was a very hand-wavy and sort of surfacy entry. I could delve into a lot of aspects of this post. If you want more info about any of it, please ask (really, like, really), but I had to catch up with a very substantial 2/3rds of a month of not updating.
I need to decide if I'm going to go hear Kip Thorne speak in person by, oh, today now. Hmmm. I'm still so unsure about what I want to do. I would have to skip some substantial class time.

I have to say that Switchfoot's new CDAwesome is really good, even if it is more Coldplay-style. Apparently that musical style sells well. Make sure you read this message from the lead singer before you try to pop it into your Windows based computer though. Click here for some extra information.

Eat at Joe's.