Techno-Rules

No, I'm not refering to the bass pounding, XTC promoting environment of Springfield's Rave Scene.* I'm talking about Rules of Technology, most of these are learned first hand and I wanted to share my top 4 with you right now.

1. The swift kick has been replaced with a swift reboot. Back in the day when something didn't work, all you had to do was kick/hit it and it would probably fix it**. But those days are almost gone with less Mechanical stuff (gears and chains and the like) and more Technological stuff (chips and... well... chips). Ask any tech support person, a reboot is the first responce for any of these devices: Computer, Cellphone, Modem/Router, iPod, etc.

2. Technology lies. Often things that offer assistance or troubleshoot themselves, have a very limited knowledge of what's going on, and just because the Card Swiper at Best Buy says "Swipe your card at any time" lies. You really need to wait for me to say to go.

3. Never buy technology.
a. It will be out of date before you're halfway home from the store. I broke down and got that iPod recently, just to hear about this.
b. The newest technology will be buggy and they will have pushed it out before it was ready.
c. Marketing for technology is amazing, they assume (and correctly so) that the consumer has NO IDEA what the numbers and catchy features they put on the box really means. So 95% of it is all BS***.

4. Don't buy "nice things" from Walmart. I shop at Wally-World a lot, but never buy a big ticket item there. Walmart has low, low prices on technology for two very easy reasons. One, they're the cheapest, non-name brand stuff they can get their hands on. Or two, if it is a quality company, it's 3 generations old. So if you go to walmart to buy a "Brand New" Digital Camera for $200, opposed to the $400 one at Best Buy... that's because the $200 camera is actually 2 years old.

And yes, I totally stole the footnote idea from Tim, blatently, and unashamed. Lets face it, he hasn't posted on here in weeks and will probably never find out.



*Springfield has no rave scene that I know of.
** Ask Josh how well this worked on his bike.
*** Bullshit

Death of Spam and Loss of Hair

Alright, I'm probably not going to keep this... but just showing what things might have to come to in the future. You know Spam in Email used to just be a slight... "Where'd this come from?" sort of thing, but its not uncommon for people to have to change email addresses because its so bad. So if you'd like to see the temporary fix against spam in blogging, just post a comment. Let me know what you think. I'm not going to keep it for now I don't think, but it might come back if I start getting more junk comments. (Now if there was only a way to stop Jake from posting...)

I hope everyone had a good week. I know it was a big one for me, and I know that Rowela has been quite busy as well... 19 credit hours at college is a tad ridiculous. 12 hours makes you a "full-time student," 15 is average and for more than 18 you have to get permission from the school. But hey, that's just how my girlfriend rolls. And while we're on the topic of my overachieving signifigant other, it looks like she's going to donate her hair to Locks of Love. And most everyone knows about my personal hair preferences, there's no argueing against a good cause. So I'll miss her hair like hell 'till it grows back, but lets face it... that's just who Ro is. The very things that I like most about her often totally go against my own selfish wishes (i.e. cutting off her beautiful hair, leaving me for the entire summer, etc). I'm proud of her reguardless. Also check out the pictures of donors and recipients if you get the time.

Back to School

So I've noticed some changes between Grad School and my previous college experience. For one (and perchance a big ONE) is the demand for papers. As a Computer/Art major, intense papers were never really part of my classload, huge projects: yes, papers: no. So not only will I have to write a nice handful of them this semester, but they'll all have to be much longer than previous requirements. I believe the quote from the syllabus was, "Lets just say less than 5 pages would be drastically inadequate attention to the topic."

Secondly, and almost hand in hand, is the excessive amount of readings I have to do. Our assignment in one of my classes was this: read chapter 1 & 3 from Book A, Chapter 1 from Book B, and the whole Book C. In my other class we have lengthy articles to read and just the titles of some of those are enough to make a grown man cry. But hey, I'll handle it. I've already read my Book B (sample here) readings, I had to read it 2-3 times and take notes, but I got it.

So yeah, that's the schooling update, more to come as things progress. In the meantime I came across a really interesting article on Digg.com about Crocodiles and HIV. The short of it is that Crocs live in one of the most disease and bacteria ridden environments in the world. They get in nasty fights, get torn up and even lose limbs but almost never get an infection. So scientists are studying the blood and do little Virus Celebrity Deathmatches... In this corner Staphylococcus "Staph Infection" Aureus, and in the red corner, the returning champion... Croc Blood!!! So yeah, even up against tough opponents like HIV, croc blood is kicking butt. They haven't figured out how to utilize it with human blood but its a serious step in the right direction.

Money Matters (part 2)

So yesterday I had to go shopping. I decided that some of my clothes were pretty ratty, and debated driving up to ISU to have Ro help me pick some stuff out. But I had class in only 4 hours and losing the better part of that to driving didn't seem to smart to me.

Rob Goes to the Mall
I walked into The Gap and PacSun and some other trendy store who's name I don't remember and got pretty frustrated. I was trying to decide which had more numbers: The Customers or the Mannequins wearing Pink shirts with the collars popped. Eventually I wandered into one of the big stores at either ends of the mall (like JCPennys or Famous). I almost turned and walked out of them as well, until I found the clearance racks. I was pretty proud of walking out with 2 Perry Ellis shirts for 67% off ($22), another shortsleeved one 75% off ($16) and a cool reversible belt ($19). All in all, I still spent over $100 when you add in the new pants... did you know there's a such thing as pants without frays at the bottoms?

Classes
Also I went to my first Illinois Politics class yesterday. It was mostly an introductory class. We were told about papers and take home tests and speakers and the like. Leaving after just over an hour in what should be a 3 and a half hour class is pretty good in my opinion. Future classes promise to take up much more of my evening. How long/often are your class Phil? I've got a Monday class and a Wednesday class that each go 6:00pm - 9:30pm. And I don't have access to a computer in mine... eh, probably for the best.

Nickles: Worthless or Effencient?

So I wanted to splurge a bit today and work and utilize the vending machine at BUNN today. Those little chocolate donuts were just calling my name for some reason and I went on a mission to collect the 75 cents required. I went to my car and found I didn't have much change to speak of... execpt for a stack of nickles and a cupholder with pennies at the bottom.

I've heard people mention that we should get rid of the penny and just round it off. Well this isn't about the penny and how much more we'd get ripped off on gas prices if we lost the penny. It occured to me why I had a stack of nickels in my coin holder. You NEVER need more than one nickle at any given time. Who needs a stack of nickels? No one. I've decided the jumps in between our coins is all jacked up. I think we should have Pennies (1), Nickles (5), Fifths (20) and Halves (50). I also think they should bring back the 2-dollar bill... those were pointless but awesome. Come to think of it, we could lose the 10-dollar bill as well. Did you know the guy on the 10 dollar bill was shot by a vice president?

Anyways, First class tonight. I'll let you know how it goes tomorrow. And I got to see Ro this weekend, so that was awesome too. She's still perfect. Later!

Busy as Hell

No seriously... my schedule is something to make Dante himself cringe (we're talking about whole new circles here). Next week I'm scheduled for 33 hours at Best Buy. I'm pulling at least 30 at Bunn as of late. Grad School starts on Monday, so we're now over 70 hours, not counting possible homework. The icing on the cake is that this weekend is the weekend Ro gets back. I have no idea how I'm going to work this out, but you better believe I'm not going to wait another week to see her. Scott says to call in sick, but that's just not my style - I'll make it work. Besides, the money is good for me. Maybe someone should get me a Time Turner... only a real one.

I think I'm going to steal something from those Xanga bloggers. For those of you who aren't familar, Xanga is like Blogspot, just another blogging service. Although Blogger (Blogspot) is better (I mean, it is owned by Google). Anyways at the top of most Xanga accounts you tell everyone what song you're listening to at that moment. I'm going to do that and take it a step further, I'm going to provide a snippet of the lyrics from the song I'm listening too. I've currently got 1904 MP3s on my iPod, so we should should see quite a nice range of songs. I promise to name whatever random song is playing and not "look for a good one."

Jimmy Eat World - Sweetness
I was spinning free, woah...
With a little sweet and simple numbing me.
What a dizzying dance, woah...
This sweetness will not be concerned with me.

I didn't say the lyrics would always make a lot of sense, but I think we'll get some good ones pretty soon. I just promised not to pick "a good one" even for the charter song. So deal with it.