Two Cents and a Thousand Words

So this week will be pretty much spent studying for Friday, when I have a computer science test, a calculus test, and a group speech presentation all in one day. Tomorrow my group is meeting to put together our information for our speech, but that means I’m spending time tonight researching it. Kind of makes me wish I had a higher tolerance for facts and history: I haven’t been researching it for long, and McCarthyism is already getting old.

The one thing that’s saving me is my obsession with music. I’ve started my end-of-year buying spree, where I try to catch up with all the music I’ve downloaded by getting the albums. Sure, I have to pay for them, but it suprises me when I’m able to hear the other great music on the CD other than the hits. Today I got 4 CDs, and I’ll be going everywhere from MP3.com to BMG to buy them as cheap as I can. Luckily, I found that Circuit City has some really low prices (all less than $13.99) for CDs, when everywhere else goes up to $20. Darn my strong code of ethics. But hey, I get a lot of rockin’ music out of it.

Oh, and Jimmy Eat World still rocks.

Woke up this morning to this out my window:

Oh, well. Guess I should know better than to expect spring in April in Maine, even though we’ve already had a couple of 80 degree days.

I’ve decided to change the layout of the blog a little, because I was getting really fed up with how it looked on my iMac. Soon the whole site will probably follow this format (with the links at the top instead of along the left side). Be sure to tell me what you think of it.

A couple days ago I had a roll of one-time-use camera photos developed, and I used Snapfish.com. The photos looked good, and they uploaded them so I could see them before I actually got the prints. The scanned photos, however, really didn’t look like the prints, but this one looked especially good uploaded. So…

I really should be working on that speech. Will I? Doubt it. I have until Tuesday.

Tonight I found this. It’s big, so it might take a while to download. But if you can watch it, it’s very cool.

Three new favorite songs: The Middle by Jimmy Eat World, Don’t Let Me Get Me by Pink, and A Thousand Miles by Vanessa Carlton.

That is all. Now to do some research for my group speech.

A few random things.

1. I really, really, really want it to be summertime.
2. I wonder if I should take medication for this stomachache. Hopefully it will be gone tomorrow.
3. There are too many things online to try to keep up-to-date with. If you don’t believe me, one word: blogs.
4. Stefanie is just such an unbelievably incredible person. Because of her, I have a LiveJournal.
5. I should really go to bed now, stop working and start dreaming about my speech tomorrow. Oh, goodie. At least it’s on a topic I know a lot about: procrastination.

This has to be one of the busiest months I’ve had in a long, long time. Some of it is by choice, though.

Thursdays are usually my laid-back days. I don’t have class until 3:30, and I get out at 5 for the day. Usually I try to get my homework for Friday done (it always seems that instructors assign homework due on Fridays) before 3:30. Well, that didn’t happen again today. It really never does. I was able to complete my new media homework before class, but the CS and my speech preparation had to wait until afterwards. After new media one of the new faculty candidates spoke to a group of new media students (including myself) and answered questions. I want to make as many of these as I can; I’d like to hear what they have to say and I’d really like to stay involved with the program. On top of that, Matt from next door convinced me that I should go to the Student Film Festival being held at 6:30. I did that, too, and didn’t get back to the room until 9:00. Luckily, I’m already done my CS so I can just practice my speech after I watch a little TSS.

The Film Festival was good; there was a large variety of short films, skits, and videos, and it was really amazing to see the talent and humor everyone who submitted the films had. There was even an entry by the Hampden Academy computer club (why there wasn’t one when I was there, I’ll never know). I like amateur films, especially those of my UMaine-mates. I’d love to get something set up along those lines in new media; maybe a showcase of student work of some sort. Stay tuned.

Pictures from my family’s yearly hike up Mount Battie in Camden on Sunday. Great weather, very scenic. Click them to make them get bigger.

When it comes to web design, why can I never be satisfied?

I’ve started to think about justinrussell.com omega. That’s right, just another Greek letter project. Another overhaul of the site. You know why? There are a lot of Greek letters left. Well, really, I’ll never be happy with what I come up with, of course, because there’s no way to include my entire life in a few pages of HTML. But I keep coming closer. This design is a little too bright, and it doesn’t work on a lot of browsers. I don’t want to exclude people from seeing things my way. That’s the whole point of this page, after all.

So anyway, yeah, omega. I’ll work on it if I have time. Who knows when. It looks dull now. But hey, ya gotta start somewhere, right?

It’s raining outside. It was fun to hear people come out of psychology moaning and complaining about how they didn’t have umbrellas or how they’d get all wet while they ran to their next class. I just walked normally to the Union for lunch. A lot of people don’t like the rain… I’m not one of them.

I liked hearing the thunder in the sky as I walked through the puddles in front of Stevens. We haven’t really had a good rainstorm for a long time, and a good thunderstorm for even longer. It’s nice to listen to it, and rain looks great on-campus.

In the past two days I’ve worn shorts twice, one day with sunglasses weather and one day with rain. It can’t get any better than this.