Two Cents and a Thousand Words

Well, I’m about to leave UMaine. I have a lot to say about this year: the highs, the lows… but I’ll be sure to do a few really long entries about specific things soon.

Of course, I’ll be busy this summer – teaching people how to use computers and the Internet at local libraries, doing my trips around Maine, working on the Portfolio Server. I want to get lots of golf in, too. But all I know is that right now I’m the happiest I’ve been in a long time. It feels great to have this year behind me. Next up: summer.

Well, right after I pack up my iMac. Goodbye, broadband Internet access.

Well, it’s officially over: my going-since-sixth-grade straight-A streak. A B+ appeared on my transcript this morning in my speech class.

This, however, is me not caring. In eight hours I’ll be on summer vacation. So if there’s anyone else out there that still cares about me getting straight-A’s (and I hope there’s nobody left like that), neener neener neener.

I went to Dairy Queen today to get one of their new Chocolate Xtreme Blizzards. It was OK. But they served it with vanilla ice cream. Why??? It’s supposed to be Chocolate Xtreme. Vanilla shouldn’t even be an option.

On a little larger front, I’ll be getting a new digital camera on Thursday as an end-of-the-year present for myself. I’m 99 percent sure it will be an Olympus C-700 Ultra Zoom, a two-megapixel camera with an amazing 10x optical zoom. It’ll run me about 500 bucks. I’ve considered getting a three-megapixel one for the same price with a smaller zoom, but I think for what I want to do the C-700 will be better. Steve’s Digicams has some great sample photos. Of course, I probably did more research for this thing than anything else in the past. But if you don’t hear from me later this week, hopefully you’ll at least get to see some pictures.

An idea I had for Megan’s list got mentioned on TSS tonight [story]. Not like I get excited or anything.

Tonight’s musical recommendation: Jeremiah Freed [MP3.com], and not just because they played at Bumstock. Again rules.

I also got my calc test back, the one I was almost certain I failed; I got a 78. I can handle that. In fact, that rocks. Score.

So tomorrow’s Maine Day, a celebration on campus devoted to beautify the Unviersity and make it a better place for everyone. Nearly everyone seems to think that the best way to help campus is not to even get out of bed in the morning since there aren’t any classes held (well, with a couple exceptions). I’ll be doing something, though: we’re going to spend a few hours in the morning working on different parts of the Portfolio Server. I think we’ll be able to get a lot done.

If you’re observant, you might’ve noticed that I’ve changed the styles of the Life pages at justinrussell.com to the style of the blog page. I’ll most likely have them all done before I’m out of here next Friday. In other news, I’m getting a new host and a new domain name in the next week, and we’ll be hopefully taking some huge strides in the Portfolio Server by the end of the month. I’ll keep you informed.

Well, I was actually bored today. It was actually the first time I’ve been bored in a while… and I forgot how to be bored. I mean, I forgot how to be productive and actually get something done while I was bored. So it turned out that I was just sitting in my comfy computer chair clicking each of the Leoville / LiveJournal links in my IE Links bar, making a cycle of the pages just about every 2 minutes. It was kind of nice, though, after the last stressful couple of days. Next week should be laid-back, too, so hopefully I can get something productive done before I get out of here on May 17.

Today’s lesson: tomato sauce from Ragu Express packs, though very tasty, clashes with a nice, white, month-old iMac keyboard. And those damn packs are hard to open.

Well, I survived today. That’s a relief.

Of course, the last two days have been two of the worst in a while. Yesterday I really got depressed about what was going on at Leoville and decided that I think I’d leave the place for a while. Fortunately, I have a lot of great online friends. That helps with something like that.

Then, of course, I was debating over that until 1:30 this morning. Didn’t leave much time for studying, which was a mistake considering the three biggies I had today. I probably failed my calc (one of those things, though, that I coulda done better if I had studied but still I wouldn’t have gotten some of it). Glad that class is almost over with. Our group speech went pretty well, even though I got soaked walking to class. We even got a pretty loud rumble of thunder. CS was acceptable; I mean, I knew a lot of the stuff, but some I just couldn’t comprehend. Probably because it was such a busy day. It was SUCH a relief to get back to the dorm and chill at 2. My stress level is so much lower than it has been over the last 36 hours; I’m just glad this didn’t happen last year when I had much more priority on doing work than how I felt personally. I’m glad to a point that I’ve developed sort of a ‘schoolwork’s not important enough to get really really stressed out over’ attitude. Hopefully I can convince myself to study for finals. Heh. I think I can manage that much.

Help out. Don’t let people make Internet radio have to comply with more than regular radio stations.