Allright the semester is done, so to wrap up I'm posting a few pictures from my photography portfolio. Very time consuming class, but it was a lot of fun.

I've come to a strange point in my life: in just about 60 hours, I am done with school. Not for the semester. Not for the school year. It's not summer break or spring break or christmas break or thanksgiving break. No, this isn't a break at all. This is the proverbial it.

I'm done. Assuming I manage to pass my history exam (which shouldn't be a huge struggle) I will never again be required to take another class. Or At least, I won't feel obligated to sit in classes just to get a little piece of paper that says I'm not dumb.

Instead, I'll have a little piece of paper that says "I gave Hope College lump of money that I could have used to buy a small house and all I got was this lousy piece of paper", gigantic loans, and the sense of accomplishment that goes with a job that is at the very least, done.

In 60 hours I join the real world. That scares the shit out of me. I don't know if I should be more scared of the real world, or if it should be more scared of me. I think it wins- it weighs more and I'm afraid it will sit on me.

Over the last few months I've been coming to grips with my own mortality somehow. And my solution to my fears regarding my imminent death has been vitamins. Specifically I've now got calcium, magnesium, and a vitamin B complex. These things are all supposed to be good for circulation (my family seems to have a history of bad circulation). For kicks, I think I'm going to start randomly trying whatever herbs I can get at the grocery store and see what, if any effect they have on me. Fortunately my brain treats all substances in a wonderfully psychosematic way. If I think I'm taking something good for me, I feel better. I'm gonna buy me a big jar of Vitamin Placebo next time I'm at the store. Sheesh I'm messed up. But this is a lot better way to deal with stress then shooting school children as they pass by my window during the afternoons. Besides, I'm a terrible shot, I'd just wound them, and wounded kids would tell.

I dunno if watching Armageddon again this weekend brought this on, but earlier today I was eating a bag of O'Boises 'Potato Crisps' when it began to bother me that they were called 'Crisps' and not chips. I debated with nate. At first we considered that the thing that defines a chip is the presence of potatos. But that isn't right- because O'boises aren't chips, yet are obviously made with at least some potato. Plus there are Corn Chips which have no potato in them, but yet still are labeled as 'Chips'. We concluded that chips come in bags and crackers in boxes, but that still doesn't explain these o'boises yet. I worried about this so much, that it became extremely apparant that I'm really working too hard to avoid finishing my paper on propaganda & art that is due before thanksgiving. ugh.

Last week my car died (again). have I ever mentioned that my car and I share a psychic link- it knows when I need to leave town for something, and it dies explicetly to make my life hell. Anyway, last week I had a massive project that needed work at the art building on campus. Damn thing wouldn't start. Had to pick a friend of from the airport later that day so I was pissed as hell. Anyway the damn thing wouldn't start, so I walked (more like stomped) over to campus in freezing slush. I was decidedly uncheerful. First thing I did was hop over to a computer to email the GH2 roommies and see if I could borrow anyone's car. While writing email a girl walked in. Artsy chick. Hot as hell. I obviously looked a little cranky (she probably was clued in by my muttering and swearing every third word I typed) and she asked what was the matter. I explained that my car died and commented 'murphy's law strikes again'. The cute art chick replies 'what's murphy's law?'.

I guess if you're cute art chick, ya don't have to know much.

This entry doesn't have a point- its just an observation. I've noticed that I seem to have to many ways to change the volume of my computer. My laptop has an internal thing where I can hit a special little key, and PgUp & PgDn to adjust the volume. My speakers have 3 little knobs on them. My woofer has a little knob and a button. I can run any one of a zillion applications that involve sound, and most provide a mixer. I have 3 such programs running right now. I even have special programs that are just volume controls, they used to be on my Wharf, then my Dock, now swallowed onto my Panel. All this, and it still is a pain to get my in hardware 'beep' sound be a reasonable volume while I'm listening to MP3s. So I either get blasted, or I can barely hear the tunes.

I bought a new candle last night. This one features a huge picture of Jesus on it. I wouldn't normally buy something so silly, but, well, this one was displayed at the grocery store adjacent to the taco mix. Does anyone else find that as disturbing as I do? They ought to sell little Buddha statues by the indian food too. If they made it out of wax and stuck a wick on it, I'd probably buy that too.

the ISDN line is working. We moved to a different neighborhood just so we could get some bandwidth. Between ISDN line problems (courtesy of the mutants at the telco) and ISP problems, and router config problems (courtesy of everyone and their brother that looked at our router and failed miserably) it was a long painful journey. But a journey that has ended with a house with its own subnet and finally a phone line that doesn't need to be dialed out 24/7. Life is good. Gimme a beer, I've earned it.

As my neverending quest to avoid doing homework continues, I decided to scan in some random stuff from my sketchbook and post it. Nothing spectacular, but I think one of them has the f-word in it, so at least I'm not rated PG for once... These are the first cartoons I've posted since creating Rob's World once upon a time, when I first got some web space. Anyway, click if you want to see some jpegs of dumb cartoon charachters created usually when I should be taking notes, or otherwise doing anything useful.

I've been slaving now for a few hours to finish a few art projects that I've got due tomorrow in photography. I needed to take a break for a minute, so I've decided to save off some jpegs of what I'm farting around with and upload them. One is a picture of nate happily shooting a pistol at the firing range from a few weeks back. The other is a picture of my little brother (little in the age sense- he's a good 6 inches taller then me, but I'm 3 years older and a much faster typer *grin*). So I do call this crap art? Yeah- depressing, isn't it?

Following up on all the fun I had with my new scanner yesterday is a challange, but I'm up for it. This time I scanned in a half a roll of pictures of me and my roommates. As with yesterdays post, this probably won't interest you in the slightest, but what the hell. It amuses me to death to do this. Hopefully this weekend I'll scan in some of my photography projects too. Don't bother clicking on unless you want to see a bunch of jpegs of geeks.

I'm face with a terrible dilema: I acquired a new scanner, PCMCIA SCSI controller, configured SANE, and wrote code to handle automated image uploading and attaching to Slash stories. All of these need testing. And I have this stack of pictures that we took of our old house before we moved last July. So click the link below to view a truckload of jpegs, plus my descriptions, of the place affectionately known as GH1.0. Really, this won't be of any interest whatsoever except to the handful of you who visited the place, but some of you may want to come along for the ride.

I bought a patch cable today. I bought it. I've never been at a point in my life where I wasn't working at an office that I couldn't just "borrow" a patch cable. So I had to go to the local racket place and pay an arm and a leg for the damn thing. It ought to be illegal to charge for patch cables. Networking should be free. Bandwidth should be free. Hardware should cost money, but the network should be free. It should be built into every house like cable and electricity. When can I live in that world? I drove most of the way to the store behind a car with a bumper sticker stating 'I don't call 911, I call .357'. I'm not sure, but I think that might have something to do with it.

I put gas in my car again today. For first time since the end of august. Since I quit my old job I just don't drive any more. I walk to classes (usually) and seem to only drive on sundays when I go visit whichever parent's turn it is to feed me food that isn't microwavable. I hate driving, so I normally ride with other people when I go somewhere. Course I don't usually go anywhere so I don't really think it matters. I think I need either a bigger gas tank, a more efficient car, or I need to drive less. I think it is important that I can fill up my gas tank quarterly simply so that I can track my gas usage in terms of my "4th Quarter Gas Tank". Maybe I should go outside more. Or maybe I'm environmentally minded. Naaah.

I've crossed a major threshold in my life: for the first time in history the hair on my chin is longer than then the hair on my head. This doesn't mean I've somehow became more masculane lately, its just that I haven't really trimmed my goat in 3 months, and I've been shaving my head fairly short. Frankly, there were girls in my high school that could grow better facial hair then me. I'm sure they still can.

So today I fired guns. I'd never done it before. Once, when I was a Cadet, in perhaps 4th grade, we went to the Police Station as a Cadre and watched a cop shoot his pistol as part of our Tour of the dept. Definately not worth my entertainment dollar. Not compared to this...

So I have nothing to say. But I need to test some new code, so I have to submit a story. Maybe I'll sing. Or hum. Or play a kazoo. Naah.

So my x key is still screwed up. But thats the least of my concerns, as I've learned to compensate by hitting the key three or four times really hard. But now I have even more fun in my life: This morning in my design class, I was cutting a sketch out with an exacto knife, and (those of you who have ever seen these knives know where this is headed) decided that it would be fun to slice off a nice chunk of my left forefinger. So now, not only to I have a key that doesn't work, but I'm down to only 3 working fingers on my left hand. And since I don't typically type with my left pinky, I have only 2 2 usable digits to type with. At least I have tons of homework to do. Ugh.

So we've played Civilization. We've played Sim City. We've played WarCraft, WarCraft II, StarCraft, Command & Conquer, Rebellion, Xcom, Diablo, and Grand Theft Auto. And finally now I realize what we need: SimHood. It fakes an inner city neighborhood. With an interface somewhere around WarCraft II meets Grand Theft Auto, you can choose to play the Cops, The Gangstas or the Mafia. You can train the boyz in your hood to deal drugs (more points for selling to children!) as the Mafia you can extort "Protection" in your neighborhood while controlling lucrative monopolies in various industries. And as the cops you can embezzle from the state, while raising a corrupt army of boys in blue, specially trained to do your will. It's all about creating environments populated with cheezy stereotypes anyway. Just imagine head to head gameplay! After watching several room mates lose their lives to playing Grand Theft Auto, I figure its either going to be SimHood, or else they'll wait until when GTA2 comes out, supporting exciting new features like 'Rape' and 'Dismember'. What ever happened to tetris?

So what is life like without the X key? Lets be honest, you don't use it much. But who knew I used it as often as I did. I've got a 1 in 3 success rate with the X key now. That isn't so bad, but its pretty annoying when I need to type 'Linu' or 'Uni' or '11'. Ever trying sending a message in pine? Ctrl-X! Wanna delete a charachter in vi? You guessed it. X! How about doing a 'cut' in netscape? meta-X it is! I can't log out of telnets because like it or not, 'eit' is != 'exit'. I could alias it, but it just seems dirty. I can't run xterms, xcalc, rxvt, xon, but this matters very little since I also can't run startx.