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My Bio Hobbies & Interests Miscellaneous Info What I Think... Books I Think You Should Read Updates Pictures Links and Such
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December 2003 10: Okay, so I made this updates page...I suppose I should put something on it right??? Well today I took the first of my 5 finals, the Vector Calculus (calc IV) final. I studied for 4 and a half days for it...and I mean STUDIED. So how did I do? Well, I think I did better than most of the people in my class but that remains to be seen. I really need an A in this class to bring my GPA up to a 3.85. I will put up my grades later. At least it's over. BAH. I'm going to go play pool now. 11: What is the meaning of life? Is it to ride my bike every 5 minutes or is there more? I guess school figures in somewheres, but its all aboot the ride. ALL ABOOT THE RIDE. 12: I am a robot. I am a robot progammed to SMASH. I do not smash randomly. If I smash you it is for your own good. Geez i am so tired of finals. 13: Magnetic fields. They are absolutely fantastic! No amount of sparring can prepare you for a real fight.
14. So, apparently, when I become busy and thoughtless, I like to write strange sayings/phrases on my website. That's kind of strange. But there could be worse things to do when one is busy and thoughtless, I suppose.
15: So there are some movies I need to remind myself to buy. One is "Equilibrium" with Christian Bale in it (geez he be hot). Another is the "Battlestar Galactica" miniseries which I watched three hours of tonight and it was quite good/addicting. Also the 2002 Japanese film "The Returner" comes in with high marks from me. It's like "The Matrix" meets "The Terminator." And finally I really gotta go out and buy some Stargate SG-1 episodes. That show is so cool, but I think the only way I'll be able to watch it is if I buy DVD's of it and watch them during holiday/summer breaks. I don't watch too much TV when I'm in school. Except as a break or two during finals.
17: Bad news. My dumb DUMB Vector Calculus prof really screwed up my GPA. But that's ok. I am studying hard for my Japanese exam on January 20 and I intend to get 10 hours of A's in one fell swoop.
22: My break is going well. I built a 920-piece International Space Station model in a day. I'm also into my third chapter of Japanese. So far, so good. It's all just review for me, except for a view phases and vocabulary, which is a problem easily recified with notecards and stuff. I saw "The Return of the King" yesterday. It was awesome!! I was so glad--it was so true to the books. I started to realize how long it was, though. By the time it was over I had been itching to look at my watch for about 15 minutes. But it wasn't a bad 15 minutes. I just have problems sitting still. I make up excuses during the middle of movies that I "need to go to the bathroom" just so I can get up and walk around a bit during a movie. 23: Well, I started "learning" kanji today. They are all kanji I already know. But that's ok--it's fun to study Japanese again. I added lots of little book cover pics, along with over ten book reviews to the book page. I need to think of some new stuff to add to this site... 24: yap yap yap...Mint chocolate is worth killing for. Renae done stol' some from work. She be eatin' it, and I be eatin' too. That's some GOOD SHIT.
25: I can't believe I got up at 10:00 today. Dummy Renae gots to go wakin' me up and stuff. I haven't gotten up that early (and not immediately gone back to bed) in a long time. I rode my bike for a whole HOUR yesterday! Woohoo! Renae and I just about got run over by maniacs driving around just after sunset. It was fun, though, if not a tad bit closer to Absolute Zero than I would've liked. 28: Renae and I are supposed to be going to Mississippi either sometime today or tomorrow. She has an off-road mountain biking time trial today, and I'm over at her place (about an hour east of Shreveport) with all of my stuff packed up and ready to go. The reason I say "supposed" to be going to MI is because her friends, who are putting the trip together, haven't gotten in contact with her/us yet. That's kind of annoying, but since I didn't expect to be going in the first place until about a week ago I would not be too disappointed if we didn't get to go. We went riding with the local bike club Friday. Renae was so slow I had to literally push her lard-ass down the road to catch up with the group. Then I got told by one of the other guys there (as in he kicked my butt cycling), but I don't think it was a fair little competition since I had been pushing Renae around at about 21-22 mph and was pretty tired from the effort. BAH.
January 2004 The company Renae and I had was not so great, to say the least, but we managed to have fun; by the time we left, though, we were itching to get the hell away from them (well, most of them. some of them were pretty nice. in fact, now that I think about it, only three of them really got on my nerves. but it was enough to make me want to leave). We went hiking--and saw some nice waterfalls--and skiing, and went go-cart riding. I rode this thing called the Slingshot. Its name is pretty self-explanitory; it has a seat hanging from these two ropes, and you get pulled down and then shot up into the air at 90 mph. I thought it was great. I also spent a good bit of time studying Japanese. I just finished the first chapter of what would begin the second semester of Japanese. I must say, it's gotten pretty hard pretty fast. There are so many grammar rules that I wasn't exposed to in high school, and it's hard to learn them when I don't have anyone to speak Japanese to. The language CD's I have are helping, but it's still pretty difficult. Especially since I've given myself a whopping three days to learn each chapter. 6: Well, today is the first day of add-drops, and naturally, I forgot about it completely. That's not a big deal, really. I can register for Modern Physics tomorrow. I don't think it's the kind of class that will fill up quickly! Still studying Japanese. It's crazy cold here in Shreveport. I think the low tonight is supposed to be 23 F. I rented a movie called "The Sea is Watching." Supposedly it's the last movie written by acclaimed Japanese director/writer Akira Kurosawa before he died. Well, I thought it was pretty good. It had the feel of one of those Victorian love stories (think "Pride and Prejudice") except it was of course in Japan/Japanese. OK, this movie was better than one of those love stories, but there were a few similarities. I liked it though. There's a show on the Mars rover landing on TV tonight. I'm going to tape it. Yay! We got to Mars in one piece (for once)! Too bad the European Space Agency didn't do quite so well. But 2/3 of all Mars missions (by all countries) have failed so it kind of makes sense. 8: Whoops. I didn't update anything yesterday. Oh, well. I think I was too busy...ummm...uhhh...doing...something else? Well, today is turning out pretty much like yesterday. I'm going to study Japanese, and--the big difference between today and yesterday--I'm going cycling instead of lifting weights! Oh what a variety. I watched the show Star Trek: Enterprise yesterday. Quite a change from when I last saw it. First of all, they didn't used to have "Star Trek" in the title, but now they do. They changed the Vulcan lady's uniform into something perhaps a bit more skin-tight than usual (but with brighter colors!), and they changed the theme song! I'm sorry guys, but they never changed the theme song on any of the other Star Treks. Let's stick with what we've got, ok? I may be flipping through the channels one day and completely skip Enterprise simply because I didn't recognize that theme song (and what a song it is)! Can't wait to go back to school! 9: So...President Bush wants to go to back to the Moon. And then he wants to go to Mars after that. What do I think about this idea? I think this warrents a new topic in the "What I Think" section of this site. I'm ambivalent about it, to say the least. I have a 70+-mile bike ride tomorrow, and lots of Japanese to study. I will go do that. At least, I'll do that after I bash Bush and his ridiculous ideas about going to the Moon as a way to go to Mars. 10: Owwowwowowowowoww....my legs hurt. I haven't ridden that long of a ride in a long time. We stopped and ate burgers at the 40-mile mark. Getting back on the bike in 50-degree weather after a burger and slice of pie is quite hard. So cooooold.....! But fun. I enjoyed the company of a couple of the local cyclists, as usual. I'll miss the (relatively) flat land when I go back to Austin. I'm going to see "Calendar Girls" tonight with my Mom and Renae. It outta be...fun. I'm in mood for explosions right now, but that's ok. Anybody heard about that new movie that's a sequel to "Pitch Black" with Vin Diesel?? That looks like it will kick butt. 11: First of all, Calendar Girls had a lot more substance than I thought it would. It wasn't just a silly movie about old women, it had some serious stories related to the characters that showed that their lives weren't all happy-pappy. So I think it was good. No explosions, but still good. I went to Mount Driskell this morning (at 6:00 AM). The hike was about 20 minutes long going out, and 10 coming back. It is the easiest hike I've ever done. But when I got to the top, the lack of oxygen started to get to me. I'm really not sure how I made it down. After that we went to the place where Bonnie and Clyde died. There was a very, very weathered tombstone (people probably chipped pieces off of it to keep, which is sad). It just mentioned that they were killed by law enforcement in January(?) 1934. Some idiots spray-painted their names on the front. Anyways, it was neat. You could see where the cops were hiding when they shot the two of them to death. The aura of the place was serious, which I hadn't expected. Then again, how often do you see a random tombstone on the side of the highway in the middle of nowhere? 13: I finished the last chapter of the Yookoso! Japanese 506-507 textbook. Now comes the desperate final hour, wherein I try to perfect (in a relative sense) my ability to understand the language. Also I need to start studying Spanish. I've decided that I can probably test out of two semesters of that, too. I looked over my first-year Spanish textbook from high school and there was nothing there I didn't know. I looked over my second-year textbook and I think I have some studying to do there. But not too much. I got my hair trimmed today. I told the lady to cut off an inch, and it looked like an inch of hair covering the floor after she was done cutting...but it still looks kind of long in the mirror. I need to get back to school. I can't believe I've deteriorated to the point where I write about getting my hair cut.
14: After seeing coverage of George Bush's plan to go to the Moon and Mars, my dad told me he doesn't want me to go to either of them. Leave it to him to figure out what my life's goal is and try to step on it. Here's the URL of the "details" of the Moon plan: I beat Halo (X-Box) in five days. 18: I'm back in Austin. Looks like it just about flooded here like it did everywhere else. I went to NASA Thursday, and that was great! I really think I can work there now. My hopes are so much higher than they used to be. I saw the Vehicle Mockup Facility, which I had never seen before. What was great was that, while I was actually in the Johnson Space Center, my Mom and sister Renae were on a tour of the facility (they had gone to Space Center Houston, the tourist center next to the real JSC). Anyway, at one point I was inside of the Historic Mission Control, where some of the Gemini and all of the Apollo missions were controlled. There's a glass barrier in the back of that room, and behind the glass there are chairs where--ahem--tourists and reporters and the like can sit. What is great was that, while I was down there next to the controls and whatnot, they (my Mom and Renae) were on a tour, and they were right behind that glass! They didn't wave to me or anything, but they should have! I'd have waved back. :-) I also raced in the Collegiate Conference Cyclocross championships yesterday. I shared a bike with one of the guys (our races were at different times). It was fun, but awful at the same time. I crashed, and then I kept getting my front brakes FULL of this clay/mud that had formed from the heavy Houston rain (the race was held by U of H). So I ended up getting 3rd out of 3 women. But I got a bag of nice goodies, and a team placing of second (even though we only had 4 people show up!), so it ended rather well. Now I'm sore in all kinds of places. But that's ok. 19: I went to lift weights with Kim and Will and Nick and Arick. That was fun. I realized I can do more than a 10-lb. bench press as long as I keep myself from laughing. I don't know why I used to crack up doing that....oh well. Now my pecs are sore. And my triceps a little bit, but not my biceps. Today is the last full day I have to study for my Japanese exam. I know my kanji like a mo-fo, but I am still a bit shaky on the listening aspect of the language. So I'm going to spend the day with my Japanese CD's, at least until I go lift weights and go to a bike club meeting. I only have one class tomorrow. It's probably my easiest class. It's at 8am, though, which sucks. Also, I was planning on making my rounds of the campus (or certain parts of it) trying to beg for permission to hold an on-campus bike race. But I forgot that today is Martin Luther King Day at all of the University offices are closed. So I have to wait until classes start before I can deal with that. Blargh! 20: My first class: Engineering Design Graphics. It seems like a pretty cool class, with lots of drawing and computers and stuff. The prof is cool. The highlight of my day? UT Cycling is officially on the books to hold an on-campus race the last Sunday of Spring break!!! I am so excited that it worked out the way it did. We also got the course around the stadium, which is a huge plus. 22: I went to my other classes yesterday. All of my profs are awesome. Well, my modern physics prof seems kind of dull, but not an ass at least. I'm so glad I got good profs...I was afraid they would all suck. I got my Japanese placement test results back...I got C credit for first-semester Japanese, which I think is bull$#!%. Anyways, I also got my Spanish test results, and the news was much better. I tested out of all of the lower-division Spanish! That's 4 semesters! The first 3 were A credit, and the 4th was B credit, which I didn't accept the grade for, of course. 23: Class...errands...class...class...class...Co-op...weight lifting...engineering stuff...study...study...study................................. 24: It rained today. I rode my bike inside for an hour and a half. The only way I could bear it was, naturally, to watch Equilibrium for the 80 millionth time. What a movie. Christian Bale is awesome. 28: I will be adding an FAQ to the site. So many people keep asking me these silly questions, I thought I'd go ahead and answer them on the internet first. Oh yeah, I think I have a new favorite subject: Thermodynamics! Woohoo! (and no I'm not kidding.)
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