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well today i just had my last important final exam. i have another on thursday but its for my atmosci class which will be easy, and it's a free elective so it doesn't even matter what i get in the class. so what that means is i'm pretty much done as an undergraduate student. this is big, but it hasn't really hit me yet. i'm not sure if it's going to actually hit me later, or if i just don't get hit by stuff. i'm thinking maybe the latter.. big events don't seem to have the effect on me that they should.
trying to think back on college.. first year was a lot of
fun.. meeting people, making friends.. living on my own.. lots of
readily available food and not having to clean up after myself after
eating. second year was a bit more laid back. living in sunset wasn't
all that great, probably should have tried the high rises at least one
year. wasn't bad, though. learned how to play guitar. had lots of huge
16-person dinners. third and fourth years were kind of a blur.. living
in apartments, class attendance rate falling with each passing
quarter. being more hermity. finally doing more stuff these last
couple of quarters. slow shift from student to adult with more
responsibilites. getting jobs, getting into grad school. realizing
that contact with old friends is decreasing and will only decrease
further as everyone graduates and goes their separate ways. looking at
my sister, she's where i was 4 years ago but in a pretty different
situation, living in an apartment instead of a dorm.
i can't even play my own poker game (below) anymore. i just reinstalled linux and reinstalled opera and neither flash nor java work. i can't even use mozilla/galeon for java like i used to. oh wait, now it's working. so i guess the trick is to use mozilla's plugin installer instead of the one that comes with the jdk. so i can play my own game now.
linux is cool in many ways but it's also damn annoying when it comes to things like this. another annoying thing is i can't edit the apartment excel spreadsheet without gnumeric fucking it up. on the plus side i finally patched my kernel so that dvd's play smoothly.
i've been nocturnal lately. why? i dunno. (well i do know. let's just say time suckage vortex.) i don't think it'd be hard to fix but at the same time i have no reason to fix it so i don't. instead i just sleep when i'm tired and wake when i wake. nothing wrong with that right? (well except for the little detail that the sleep time overlaps with class time and as a result i am having my worst attendance-rate quarter ever. but i'm allowed, right? i'm graduating, after all.)
car ownership is expensive. gas, insurance, registration, maintenance, (slight) mods. i just got a smog check. i was dumb and should have looked through the reams of coupons we get in the mail every day for a deal but instead i just went down to the 76 in westwood cuz the due date was coming up soon. so i paid like $60-something and then the other day i saw a coupon for another 76 for like a $30 smog. also being young and male and not on your parent's insurance sucks even with that good driver discount. (which, if you have ridden in my car, you might be thinking 'how the heck did he get a good driver discount?' well it's all about driving an inconspicuous car. cops don't notice when your maxima goes 110 but they notice when your eclipse goes 85. hehe.)
also it's almost time for 60k maintenance which is expensive. how did i rack up 23k miles on my car in a year and half without commuting? a couple road trips here and there added a few thousand i guess. at least i don't have a timing belt to change, and i think i can do a good portion of the other stuff myself. platinum plugs are expensive. just buying 6 plugs for my car is going to cost about 50 bucks if i buy online. (the dealer quoted me $90. HA.) for comparison, buying 4 non-platinum plugs for my bike cost about $8.
motorcycle ownership is cheap. gas is cheap because not only does it use less in the first place, it also doesn't demand premium. insurance is also really cheap (long as it's only liability) and maintenance is mostly do it yourself. even so i'll be selling the bike and keeping the car. i can give up riding but i can't give up driving. esp in michigan. i should get mud guards and floor mats before i go to mich.
michigan is going to be a big change in many respects. new environment (both in terms of climate and in terms of being graduate school). leaving people behind. kind of sad. but hey, it's a new chapter in life. if this chapter matches up to the previous ones it'll be all good. things work themselves out, generally in a good way.
but before michigan is summer. the fact that my break is only 2 months really limits what i can do job-wise. on the other hand i don't really want a job. but i do want money. remember all-advantage? that was kind of cool. free money. i wonder what happened to them. anyway yeah if i don't work then i'll get to enjoy probably my last slacker summer. that'd be cool.. as long as enough people stay around here (or come home from elsewhere) to hang out with.
vegas was fun. see if this makes sense: it seemed both grander and smaller than last time i went. explanation: last time i was in vegas i was around 8 or 10 years old. they've built tons of new stuff since then, hence the 'grander'. on the other hand you know how when you're little everything looks so huge, not just because of your smaller physical size but because big things are harder to grasp psychologically? i don't know if that makes any sense to you.. um, kind of like how seeing a huge skyscraper might be amazing to a kid but then to an adult you know how the skyscraper was built and what's inside it and so forth so maybe it's not as amazing. (but then maybe that isn't such a great example because knowing how it was built etc makes it seem pretty amazing too, at least for engineering types like me, but you get the idea [maybe]). anyway so that's why everything in vegas looked smaller. like i had memories of the strip being twice as wide and the buildings twice as tall, not that the strip wasn't wide and the buildings weren't tall.
my birthday this year was cool. had lots of dinners and stuff. thanks to all. i'd say i had more birthday-related fun this year than in the past several years. although in years past it's pretty much been my choice not to do much on my birthday since i don't really like artificial gift-giving events that much. ('artificial' meaning how celebrating a day on an annual basis is kind of our own construct and there's no reason why we should do it.. which yeah that argument doesn't hold much water.)
let me see what i've written in the past.
yes that psych 170A class was pretty good. the exams weren't bad. i still recommend it. that motorcycle shop on pico turns out to be pretty good. had them redo my fork seals and install a new chain. they're pretty helpful guys, they tried to help me with a weird electrical problem i was having (which turned out to be a loose battery terminal). that was a weird cell phone rant i typed. as for no skiing or road trips during winter, that didn't turn out quite true.. i did go snowboarding at both big bear and tahoe. but only one day each time so i still suck. i don't think i've been bowling since that 161. on the other hand i have been improving at pool. funny: mike calls billiard connection in granada hills "small pockets billiards" since they seem to have small pockets on their tables, making it kinda discouraging to play there. house of billiards in santa monica, however, is a good place. that douglas adams book wasn't bad but i hear the other one in the dirk gently series was better. maybe i'll read it this summer. my desk and room are still messy. my braces aren't too bad. i'm used to them. what makes eating annoying isn't the braces but the missing teeth. they kinda suck. also food is still getting stuck in the wisdom teeth holes way in the back. new york was really great, far exceeding my expectations. i'll be back there. well, that about recaps everything and ties up loose ends. woo.
wow, i wrote a lot this time. cool.
me with puffy cheeks. i think it's getting better.
i just had 6 teeth pulled and i have nothing to do but stay home, so i'm going to put up some new york pictures.
left to right: me as superman. kristin as superman. me as kristin as superman.
what i bought at times square.
a good picture. looking at manhattan from liberty island.
looking downtown from the top of the empire state building. if you look closely you can see the twin spotlights representing the world trade center. the empire state building at night is very nice.
wow, it is COLD in michigan.. i went there on my college-visiting trip. you go there thinking "eh, so it'll be cold.. i can handle a little cold, i've been skiing before, etc" but.. you just don't know what it's like until you've been there. it's COLD. the wind was a major factor too. and of course the snow. although i think the coolness of seeing snow falling (probably the 2nd time in my life) made up for it. and my friend there has a WRX which is the perfect car for that climate.
haha. i missed driving while i was gone, even though it was only like 4 days in which i didn't drive. the weirdest feeling was freshman year, when you move into the dorm and then go home for the first time in 3 months and try to drive your car. and it feels totally weird cuz you haven't driven in so long.. you haven't even so much as ridden in a car in months..
so i'm getting braces tomorrow. that's going to be weird. i've spent the last couple weeks listening to everyone's horror stories. i've had the spacers in there for like a week and a half, and my teeth are finally used to them to the point where i've been able to eat all normal food for the past several days. (they were annoyingly sore for the first few days.) but starting tomorrow i bet they're going to be sore again.
it's hard to keep my room neat. mike keeps coming in and saying he can't believe how messy this place is. it's true. i make my bed exactly once per washing of sheets, which is a rare occurrence. clothes are in a drawer or on a hanger once per laundry cycle -- otherwise they are on the floor. and i go many weeks between doing of laundry.
my desk also is messed up. i haven't seen desktop since i moved back in in september. i'll bet there are some very important papers buried down in there somewhere. let me see. ah, for example there are GRE registration materials in here. that's from last october, 4 months ago.
why don't i clean up? it would be nice to have a clean room, but the effort isn't worth it. this is probably related to how, last year, before our apartment had a rotation system for doing dishes and it was "do the dishes if you want to," i NEVER did them. i did them maybe twice in the entire year. i guess i'm not a neat person. but then, i have some neat-person qualities -- i put dishes in the sink and stuff. put stuff back in the fridge, put the cordless phone back on the stand, put the guitar back on its stand, put my pens back in the pencil holder on my desk, refill the toilet paper, etc. i dunno. i'm rambling.
i wonder if this book, the long dark tea-time of the soul by douglas adams, is good. i liked his hitchhiker's guide series. this one seems good so far. but i did one of those things where you read part of it, then you don't read it for a while and when you start reading again you're lost cuz you don't remember what was happening. for me this "while" is extremely short. if you know me you know that, for whatever reason, i cannot remember the contents of things like movies, books, TV shows, and so on, even as soon as right after (or, in one well-known case, during) a movie that i have seen. this makes it hard to discuss movies and stuff with people because i'll say, "hey i saw that too" and then they'll be like "did you like the part where.." and i'll have no idea what they're talking about. except if it's a movie i have seen like ten times, like heat. like, like, like. that sounds funny.
i used to email people. as in, back-and-forth with fairly lengthy emails with interesting (at least to me) content. i don't do that anymore, haven't felt like doing that for months. i wonder why. those people probably think i don't want to talk to them anymore, which isn't really true. well it is, but not because of anything they did.
I bowled a 161 the other day.. that's good for me. i'm pretty sure it's my best ever. i could have been in the 170's though.. if only i'd finished the spare in the 10th frame. oh well. it seems like my bowling is improving just as my pool is getting worse (or at best, not improving).
hm, i am bored and therefore it is time to update stuff.
these are some comic strips that i like: calvin and hobbes, the far side, foxtrot, dilbert. i was going to write something about why i like them but i don't really know what it is exactly. they're just good.. they're funny.
ah. end of a quarter. it's winter break now. this winter break i seem to be doing the least in terms of vacations etc. when compared with previous breaks. no skiing this year.. no road trips planned. but i don't feel like i'm bored or anything. (at least not too much.) i'm just reveling in the freedom of having nothing to do. (though in reality i suppose i should work on finishing up my grad school apps that are due in january.) i took the opportunity to read a couple books and rent some movies i had been meaning to read/watch.
cell phones - i don't have one. this is getting to be more and more rare among college students, although among my 6 roommates only 1 has one. i used to be quite anti-cell-phone. cell phone users were rude, it was annoying when they would go off at inappropriate times, people have cell phones who don't really need them. so on and so forth. but now everyone and their dog has one so i'm pretty used to them. i no longer care when a phone goes off during a lecture or in a movie -- i hardly notice anymore. but i still don't have one.. primarily because i don't think i really need one. people don't call me that much. also for some reason US cell phone technology is really backward. half of my friends don't get reception in their own homes. my dad just went to china and was telling me that cell phone technology there is like 2 generations ahead. and i've heard about cell phones in europe being generations ahead in technology as well. almost every time someone calls me from a cell phone there is some kind of static or distortion and communication is quite difficult. i don't get why technology hasn't advanced past where it was 2 years ago yet. you'd think with the proliferation of phones that there would be enough demand to put in more infrastructure stuff, if that's the problem. shrug.
hm, found a motorcycle shop on pico. maybe i'll go there next time i need something. why are there so few motorcycle-related shops around here? there was one every few blocks where i was living up north this summer.. you'd think motorcycles would be pretty useful in LA.
for UCLA students: take psych 170a with prof Lovaas. i'm taking it now, and it's one of those classes i look forward to going to. Lovaas is extremely interesting to listen to - he tells lots of personal anecdotes and he has the whole huge class laughing several times every lecture - and the topic is pretty interesting too. i haven't had any of his exams yet so i don't know how those are gonna be.
another good class i had a while ago (winter '99 i think) was english 3 with Sherman. i don't generally like english since i'm an engineer, but Sherman was great - very engaging, good storyteller, good sense of humor. he took us hiking and took later classes bungee jumping and whitewater rafting. cool.
so many boba places around now!
funny quotes:
Calvin: "Mom, why are you crying?"
Mom: "I'm cutting up onions."
Calvin: "It must be hard to cook when you anthropomorphize your vegetables."
As the snow started to fall, he tugged his coat tighter around himself. Too tight, as it turned out. "This is the fourth coat crushing this year", said the sergeant as he outlined the body with a special pencil that writes on snow.
-- Jack Handey