madpwnage

Funny story.

Last week I went home for Thanksgiving break. Got home Tuesday night, worked all day Wednesday, and of course Thursday was Thanksgiving. A regular Thanksgiving day for me entails waking up late, futzing around for a few hours, eating dinner with the folks, sleeping dinner off, then watching football or generally just screwing around the rest of the night. This time around I had a paper to work on, so I grabbed a nap and went back to reading about the relationship between imperial era China and the nomadic and semi-nomadic peoples in the outlying areas. Watched some of the Texas/Texas A&M game while I was at it too.

This went on until about 4AM, right about the point where I started sleeping more than studying. Pulled myself off the couch and went to the bathroom to clean up for bed, and… blacked out. Don’t ask me how or why. Probably a mix of being drowsy and stuffed full of Thanksgiving dinner. Either way, what do people do when they black out while they’re standing up?

They fall.

I woke up a minute or two later wondering what the hell happened and why I was sleeping on the bathroom floor. I stood back up, looked in the mirror, and saw a trail of blood running down my face from a pretty cool-looking zig-zag-shaped cut. Like the skin was torn open rather than just cut. I gathered I hit my head against the sink on the way down, because there was a drop of blood right underneath the sink right about where my head would have hit it.

End result – a partial black eye (not Jimmy Clausen got punched at the bar black eye), a huge bruise on my arm from where I landed, and a hilarious “what did you do for Thanksgiving break?” story.

I guess that’s three nights in a row, for the first time in… well, ever? Not sure what the scoop is tonight though, and I’m not sure I actually have anything to ramble about this time.

I actually worked this afternoon, for the first time in a week. The more time I spend getting our internet service database to line up with our billing database, the more I wonder if it wouldn’t just be easier in the long run for the kind folks who built our billing system to provide (or otherwise give me the keys to) an API that we can use to provision all our services out of. It makes sense, or at least it does to me considering it’s 4am. Somebody upgrades their speed, the order goes through the billing system, and bam it’s done. No losing the sheet of paper as it makes its way to the next room where the internet guy fills the order, and theoretically changes the speed. Somebody cancels or doesn’t pay their bill – turned off right away.

I’ve actually been able to roll some stuff I learned in this semester’s computer science class into the big project I worked on all summer. (You know, the project that was my life for 3 months, then 12 hours before it was supposed to go live we noticed the hardware we were going to upgrade at the same time didn’t work. So it got pushed back to Labor Day, then to fall break, then to…) This way in 3 or 4 years after I get lost in the wrong section of San Francisco and wind up dead at the hands of a deranged homeless person, the next person can come in and do whatever the hell they want without needing to worry about the heavy lifting database-type activities.

Ok, I guess I had something to ramble about this time.

I’m so awake that Benadryl couldn’t put me down. That’s sad.

Halfway through the second round of tests for this semester. Had a Japanese test last Thursday which I did pretty good on, an east Asian civ. test on Monday which I did pretty good on, and still to come are a Chinese history test in a couple hours, a music history test on Friday, and a comp sci test next Wednesday. The Chinese history test has eaten up the lion’s share of study time as I had to read two pretty good-sized books cover to cover. I guess I’m ready for the test, but I’m not quite sure what the outcome will be just yet. As for the remaining two tests, I’m not worried about them, but I’m not overlooking them either. Beyond that, I have three papers to write this month, one of which is a Japanese research paper and an accompanying oral report. All are due in about four weeks, then it’ll be about time for the last round of tests. I think I can get out of here in December with decent grades, although I suspect there will be a slight drop from last spring.

Last week I had to go ahead and get signed up for spring classes in Lincoln. Even though I’m still planning to study abroad, the application process is taking long enough that we won’t have the final yes or no from the other school until well after registration here has opened. Next time around (and forever onward, I suppose) I’ll be taking a lighter class load. Studying for five tests has cut far enough into my schedule that while it’s technically still possible for me to work, the coursework leaves me not wanting to waste the spare time I do have on further activities which require actual thinking. This a problem considering I need the money to keep going to school, and my overall GPA isn’t quite high enough yet to apply for the upperclass scholarship. At this point it’s almost worth it more to take the path of least resistance and risk setting graduation back a semester rather than drive myself broke (already done) and insane (getting there) just to finish school.

One thing I will be doing starting next spring (or this fall if I somehow end up not studying abroad) is getting an apartment off campus. The convenience factor is starting to lose ground to the desire for things like my own shower and the ability to eat breakfast before 1030 on weekends.

Also, I would like to add that Windows 7 is excellent. Probably even more excellent is the fact that I bought it for $17 at the school bookstore. That’s how you stop software piracy on a college campus – make the product so cheap there’s no reason not to buy it. Too bad the CDs are the bookstore are still way too expensive. I was around here when Napster was a big thing, and if you’re still selling music at the same jacked up prices now as you were ten years ago, even if those prices are technically cheaper due to a decade of inflation (how the hell does a Snickers bar cost a dollar?), you’re pretty much begging for people to not buy CDs you paid money to be able to stock.

I’m up late. Again. Same reason as last time, too.

Well..

Same cause, but different reason.

In the interest of being as vague as possible, I’ll just say I left something undone over a decade ago, and it’s one of those things you think about for years and kick yourself for not taking care of it when you should have. Maybe one of these days I’ll get a chance to tie up the loose ends… or maybe I won’t, and it’ll keep resurfacing every so often to bother the hell out of me for hours or days at a time – long after we’ve all gotten our flying cars. Come to think of it, that whole time frame where this issue originated wasn’t that great for me personally. I was teetering on the edge of being a full-blown basket case, and actually had somebody tell me later on that I came off like I was going to snap at any moment.

Wouldn’t that have been a trip.

Been extremely busy the last week due to the recent round of tests. Had an Asian civ. test last Friday which was a rehash of material from last year, a comp sci test on Wednesday which I’m fairly certain I did good on, and a Chinese history test tomorrow – technically later on this morning – which I’m not entirely sure about just yet. I misjudged how much time I actually had to get ready for the test, and as a result I ended up putting off reading the two books I had to read until last week. In the end I read about 80% of both of them, taking ridiculous amounts of notes along the way. My experience with the tests the professor in this class gives tells me that should be enough. Oh, and there’s a Japanese test next Tuesday.

If anybody’s going to take a song where a wildly flailing guitar solo couldn’t be more out of place and make it sound awesome, it’s that guy.

Before:

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