I'm pissed off so I'm writing in my journal thing. That's what you're supposed to do, right? Say things you might regret later in disorderly text that you will look back on and say, "I was such a loser, maybe I still am!"

I've been going to my community college for a year and a half, I'm starting my fourth semester now. Previously I was taking 'Electrical Technology', I thought it was what I really wanted to do. I changed my mind, I think, maybe it wasn't really what I wanted to do.

I didn't like my peers, the classes were too easy, it was the same stuff over and over again. I was finding citations in the NEC more than anything, answering True or False questions for God's sake. I felt insulted, this wasn't a serious program, and I was paying quite a bit for 'lab fees' that weren't buying anything! Sure, I bent a few pieces of conduit, wire nutted some conductors, but it was all just crap. The only classes I enjoyed was circuits and PLC's. Maybe I was hoping to work with the little stuff but fooled myself the big stuff was the same thing.

What's worse is my asthma has gotten worse over the last few years and I am just not cut out for construction, especially in dusty, remote sites where few people will likely know what to do if I have a really bad asthma attack.

Now, I'm in shock about how much harder my classes now are. I can handle them all, but it's taking time, and I'm working, and it's winter and my asthma is killing me. My father keeps going into the hospital, he has a pancreatic pseudocyst and I've barely known him for the last decade and now I finally get to talk to him once in a while and he's falling apart.

I have four classes right now, Elementary Algebra, Psychology, Biology, and Writing and Composition I. I'd thought this stuff would all be easy for me, but it's not what I imagined. Well, the psychology is pretty easy stuff, I can just soak up the trivial knowledge, and I find it very fascinating. And the biology is great, the teacher is incredible and I could listen to him forever.

Okay, I'm overreacting, things aren't so bad. That algebra is a bit hefty, I'm better at math than I'll ever admit to myself (98% on my GED), but there is so much about algebra I hadn't realized I didn't know. So many rules, I'm happy they all stay the same but this is going to be a pretty big helping for me.

It's Writ&Comp that's really worrying me. I mean, the real problem has already been solved, I just have to pay attention to the online thing and do the fucking work, but this teacher... she's so uncompromising, I'm already sure she won't make deals, she doesn't do extra credit, she's really hard on attendance which has always been a problem for me due to my asthma. It's much different than what I'm used to, but I love it.

I'm happy she'll nail me to the wall, I'm in bliss she'll never let my bullshit slide. The fact is, I have gotten away with a lot of giving up and screwing off, only one of my instructors yet have come even close to giving me a bad grade. It was very easy for me to be an 'over-achiever' before because either my teachers didn't care, I had prior knowledge in the subject, or just really liked me personally.

My English teacher, none of this will help me. I'm sure coming in already with perfect English could work against someone with her, she's not conceited, but she will make damned sure people will learn something. It's a little frightening for me, it makes me angry, I feel all sorts of emotions I'm not used to feeling while thinking of the challenge this class will give me. I know it's the best thing for me.

What frightens me most, though, isn't that I have to deal with her strict attitude, it's that she's a very lively and social person and she makes everyone else be lively and social. I'm coping well enough, but I learned a new term today, "introvert", and I'm starting to think I'm that most of the time. When I am prepared and when I can choose to be around people, I love it, I'm great at it, but it wears me out mentally. I start getting angry and confused, I have to step away from the college sometimes just to have a moment of peace. No matter how quiet people are, just their presence is frustrating when I'm not prepared for them.

I don't know if it's paranoia or what, I can't even sit with my back to a crowd, I have to be able to see everyone else to feel halfway comfortable. Sometimes going to Wal Mart is Hell, the mass of people, and they're not there to talk quietly, they're there to BUY BUY BUY! I am too, but it makes the experience easier when there's a lot fewer people around.

It's still hard to put what I feel and what I think together, but... I don't know. I don't know if there is a but.

For those MST3K fans out there who have adapted to Rifftrax, there is a Rifftrax Live Online Free Event tomorrow in which you can watch the crew riff live. It takes place 9pm Eastern/6pm Pacific. Afterward they will take some Q&A live from the audience.

You might recall the article from Sunday about the cost of Google's search engine on the environment. Well, the physicist that did the original research is revealing that he made no such conclusions in his research. "I have no idea where they got those statistics," he is quoted as saying. This article takes answers from him and Google on the Times Online article that was stretching his research into the realm of fiction.

New Macbook users have been introduced to another level of DRM recently when trying to watch some movies downloaded from iTunes. Ars Technica first picked up the story after a teacher complained he couldn't watch Hellboy 2 on a classroom projector. (It was not mentioned whether he intented to watch it by himself or show it to his class). Many users on the Apple Support forums have also reported this same problem. New Macbooks include HDCP, and a number of new and older movies on iTunes are flagged not to play if a non-HDCP compliant display device is attached to the notebook.

You may wonder what exactly happens to a site when Slashdot sends its legions of page requests to it. Well, The Metric System blog has an analysis of what happened on November 6th when they received 31,218 page views. You see the breakdown by site and you also see an increase in traffic by 89,094%. While this may by anecdotal, it's the first time I've seen hard numbers on the Slashdot/Digg effect.

One of my favorite series has released its third movie, "Bender's Game." Wired has an interview with some staff from Rough Draft Studios (The Simpson's Movie, Ren & Stimpy) that was entertaining. Get out and buy Futurama to support the show!

Obama was brutally attacked by MPAA lobbyists mere hours after his acceptance speech today. Who else is already pandering to the president elect?

A-well-a everybody's heard about the bird B-b-b-bird, bird, bird, b-bird's the word A-well-a bird, bird, bird, the bird is the word B-b-b-bird, bird, bird, b-bird's the word A-well-a bird, bird, bird, the bird is the word B-b-b-bird, bird, bird, b-bird's the word A-well-a bird, bird, bird, the bird is the word B-b-b-bird, bird, bird, b-bird's the word A-well-a bird, bird, bird, the bird is the word B-b-b-bird, bird, bird, b-bird's the word A-well-a bird, bird, bird, the bird is the word B-b-b-bird, bird, bird, b-bird's the word A-well-a bird, bird, bird, the bird is the word B-b-b-bird, bird, bird, b-bird's the word A-well-a bird, bird, bird, the bird is the word! EVERYBODY KNOWS THAT THE BIRDS IS THE WORD!

From the mouth of John Cleese, it's official: Sarah Palin is funnier than Michael Palin!

I hate to sound like an Amazon fanboy ... what with their 1-click patent crap and all ... but if you've read my comments related to anti-DRM you know I love their MP3 service. It's completely DRM-less (unlike Apple's) and has quite the selection. Well, today I discovered that the yet to be released David Byrne & Brian Eno album has a free MP3 listed for download on Amazon.

This excites me as I hope to see all music distributors (labels, retailers, sites, etc) move towards a model similar to that of Afternoon Records site where the artists pick one or two songs from each album to be distributed for free. Although this doesn't satisfy the N'Syncs and Britney Spears of the music world (where one pop single should sell an entire album of 95% filler), it completely draws me into purchasing more and more music from artists that write their own music.

These selections still seem few and far between on Amazon (Brian Setzer, Ted Nugent & The Apples in Stereo are the only others I can find at the moment) but let's hope this spreads.

I can't tell if this is legit or not but Torvalds may be blogging. It's just inane enough that it might be him though it doesn't have the same feel as his posts that I've read at the KernelTrap.

For example, he seems to use _exclamation_ on kernel threads instead of exclamation like the blog has.

If you're a coder who uses .NET, I recently came across some new neat tools by ItJustWorks. The four tools are:

• IJW Profiler for .NET & Java
• Corfu Text Editor
• IJW Framework
• IL to Native Compiler

There's a worthwhile This American Life episode about 419 scammers (Act I just past the intro).

Quite interesting (and I must admit it's a more than a little amusing). It begs the question: Do 419 scammer scammers take their anti-scamming too far?

I want to say something profound and witty that no one's ever said before, but everything's been said before and better than I can say it. I'm so uninteresting, I hardly ever have an original thought... that is, I've thought I've had original thoughts, dispositions, but I realize painfully over and over again that all I really do is put what other people say in different words.

Sometimes it feels impossible to make my own educated decision. I'm not entirely lacking in free will, I can make the more obvious choices, though to my point I can't even think of any good examples right now. It's where I have to choose things for myself is where I get hung up. Do I want the cheeseburger or the chicken sandwich? Soup or salad? The red one or the blue one? Have I had too much caffeine today? Should I care how I dress?

It's hard to care about myself. I feel like a machine and if someone isn't telling me what to do I can't get anything done.

I got an air mattress and I finally got some sleep last night, I feel refreshed and I can really keep up today, but I still feel blank. Maybe this is how people are supposed to feel, but I still feel like I don't have identity, like I used to have more and now I've forgotten it somewhere. It makes it hard to be happy when I'm alone.

A developer posted a brief blog outlining the libraries that Google Chrome uses. Since it's open source, you can see how many (and which) libraries they chose to use. Interesting stuff if you want to get an idea of what is needed to start an open source browser like Chrome. Another blog talks about the security implications of this.