Wow, I am all kinds of bored. I finished my honors essay that was due today. 7.25 pages is close enough to 8 for me. My next final isn't until tomorrow at 12:30. I could study for that, but I'm trying to /decrease/ my boredom here.

I do have the Midnight Crunch Brunch to look forward to tonight. It's a fun activity the UK has every year; hot breakfast served by the faculty, free t-shirt, neck and shoulder massages. Good stuff. Also, depending on the cloudiness, I may try to see some meteor showers tonight.

As for the rest of the week, I need to sell my books back, my some of my stuff to Aunt Linda's, visit Lyn, visit my grandpa, and pack up to go. I won't be coming back to the dorm next term, so I get to haul /all/ of my stuff back. Of course, being a man, this isn't quite the problem one might think.

As for now, I may entertain myself with some Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory or Q3 Arena or other such time-wasters. Whoo!

The title sums it up. I am without my car. It is in Bowling Green, at the house of a friend of my cousin.

This weekend, while tooling about the city, the clutch cable broke. It was not without warning, but I didn't expect it to go on and snap. Fortunately I was pretty near my girlfriend's dorm at the time, and was able to drive the car back without the clutch. (Yes, I have mad skillz).

I enlisted my cousin to bring me back to Lexington on Sunday, for which I bought him dinner and paid for his gas. I now owe him another $90 for the two clutch cables he ordered through his work. I went ahead and got two so that I don't end up stranded again. Saab clutch cables have a tendency to fail soon after the first until the clutch is replaced. Hopefully that won't be required since it costs $250 for parts plus at least 6 hours of labor at $75/hr... you do the math.

But life isn't too bad. While I am without a car this week, it's not that often when I actually need it. This weekend my cousin will drive me back to Bowling Green and help me install the replacement clutch cable. Hopefully that goes smoothly.

12,000 miles on the car and this is the first problem I've had with it. And since it technically is still driveable, I won't consider it a major failure.

It's been quite some time since my last entry. I've been pretty busy, or at least entertained enough to not warrant writing an entry. Perhaps I'm tired enough now that my judgement no longer prevents it.

With regard to my last entry, I got the results back on my drug test (and background check) and both were good. I'll be starting at my new job January 4, assuming I get my housing contract canceled. I went to do that today, but the guy had already left. It was 3:00. Wish I had his job.

So far as classwork goes, I'm really sitting pretty. I had to spend some time today putting the some effort on my honors essay, as well as reading some peers' essays. This puts me in pretty good position to get the essay finished. With that behind me, all that remains is one set of Mastering Physics problems, due tomorrow and over halfway done, one more EE assignment, and an honors reaction paper.

Today was the last meeting for Discrete Math. Thursday was supposed to be, but we had to have another meeting to fill out surveys. Needless to say, they weren't very favorable.

Finals week is next week, and I only have 3 finals, none of which I'm too terribly concerned about. After that, it's just relaxation and easy street.

Except for the pesky matter of my car, which deserves its own entry.

Just recovering from a long period with too much to do. I am recuperating by ignoring things I usually do, like writing in my journal.

Went in to prospective employer today for "medical exam," aka drug screening. That was a blast. I filled up their little cup and filled out some paper work and left. Apparently I'm allowed a 20ng/mL tolerance on THC. I don't know if that's a lot, but I won't need any unless somebody has been spicing up my brownies without my knowledge.

At the moment, I am avoiding doing my Mastering Physics, which is due Wednesday. I'm also avoiding studying for my CS test, which is tomorrow. Other things I'm avoiding: reading for honors, doing reaction papers for honors--I think that's it.

Hopefully things will be downhill from here, especially after Thanksgiving. Whoo, downhill!

Most of all, I'm pleased that this election went as smoothly as it did. No legal battles, no split between the popular and electoral vote--overall, a good clean fight.

And what a fight! Bush got a hefty 4 million vote lead in the popular vote, Republicans gained in both houses of Congress as well as state governorships. Now if Bush will curb spending and cut the deficit as he's said he will, life will indeed be good. Yay for tax cuts, yay for privitized social security, yay for no nationalized health care.

Four more years of non-socialism, in other words.

So, I've been watching Fox News all day. Anybody who knows me knows I'm hoping Bush will win (despite having voted for Badnarik). Frankly, I'm pleasantly surprised at how the election is going. It seems that Bush is doing much better than the exit polls predicted in the battleground states. Bunning barely pulled it out in the KY Senate race, but did. So far, so good.

I imagine I'll be up pretty late watching the results come in. Tomorrow morning might be a mixed one (pleasant if Bush wins, but unpleasant because I'll be up all night).

In related news, valwig and I have made a friendly wager regarding the election. If Bush wins, she has to vacuum my dorm room and give me 6 oreos. If Kerry wins, I have to give her 3 caramello bars and play BS (the card game) with her. Seems to me I have a pretty good deal going, so I'm not about to complain.

Back to the news...

Man, I could not get myself out of bed today. It's a good thing I didn't have any classes until 12:30. I set my alarm for 9:30, hit the snooze button once, got up for like 15 minutes, got back in bed and slept until 10:30 when my alarm went off again, turned off the alarm, and finally got up a little past 11.

Well, most of this crappy day is over with, but not all. CS and Honors went pretty well. I finished the homework (due a week from today) in class during CS. Honors dragged by pretty well. Nothing exciting in either place.

Lab was lab, except more trouble than usual today on account of my forgetting the workbook. I had to make copies of the data tables and will have to turn in my lab report tomorrow, but I shouldn't loose points or anything.

I guess I'll go get something to eat in a few minutes (current stomach contents: 4 soft-batch cookies and some milk). At 7:30 I have to spend another hour or so doing practice for the ACM programming contest. With any luck I won't fall asleep.

and thumbing my nose at what has to be done. Stupid honors class. I should read Kleist and write a reaction paper, but instead I'm going to write programs for CS275 that weren't even assigned! Mwahahaha.

Seriously, aside from honors I'll all sorts of caught up. With school that is. I really should do the laundry, vacuum the floor, probably work a shower in somewhere. *Shrug* What can /I/, as an /individual/ do?

No interesting transpirations today. I've been strangely tired despite getting 8 hours of sleep. Classes were generally boring, though I managed to read a lot of the textbook in CS.

valwig just sent me a song that I have been looking for, however she didn't know that. It's from some movie trailer, and it's kind of techno-y. The name of the song is "Ready Steady Go" by Paul Oakenfold. Yay for finding good songs.

So I just got back from Bowling Green a few hours ago, and have been pretty good at getting necessary things done--or at least giving the appearance of getting things done. I printed my honors reading for Tuesday, starting working on my part of the lab report, and proofread a paper for valwig. I also caught up on /., my email, and the various RSS feeds I subscribe to.

Left to do is complete CS, which I plan to work on before bed tonight, read honors for Tuesday and gather some biographical information on the author of the reading, then Mastering Physics for Wednesday and Lab for Thursday. Also is the ever-present honors reaction paper. Again there is a noticeable concentration of work in honors.

And... breathe.

It's been a busy week, yesterday and Wednesday in particular. Thursdays already sucked, what with having discrete math, honors, and physics lab all together in the afternoon. For the next couple of weeks, I'll also have a programming competition practice to go to right after lab. At least I like programming. whoo.

So I wrote a reaction paper for honors. Good. I'll write another one either today or tomorrow. I'm in pretty good shape in that respect. It's 3 weeks until a draft is due for the final project. I probably need to gear up for that. Current assignments: mastering physics (not started), discrete math (halfway done), and honors reading.

Other projects: Coding. Practice for the competition mostly, but those impractical problems can get boring. I wrote an automated RSS generator for my sister's website last night, so now I'll know when she puts up new pictures.

Now to just burn a few hours until it's Bowling Green time.

Now that I've finally woken up, I guess I'll write a quick journal entry. Physics went well this morning. We got out early, and he answered a question I had on the homework, with which I am now finished.

In a few minutes I leave for CS. I probably wouldn't go except I've been spacing out in there lately and am a little behind, and there's an assignment to turn in. I was up until like 1:30 last night finishing it. After CS is honors, which I've done probably 3/4 of the reading for, and will probably do more of during CS. I still need to do a lot of those reactions papers. Maybe I'll get my act together and write two this week.

For the record, the two tests yesterday were a big let down. Neither one took more than 30 minutes, and at the end I thought, "that was it?" Good thing I didn't waste my time studying.

Well, off to CS.

I started talking about this with valwig, and now I'm all riled up, so I figured I'd vent the remainder on here.

We started by discussing the war in Iraq, where she agreed and said that she strongly supported the war initially because of the shabby treatment of the Iraqis by their dictator. Naturally, I feel that every liberal should support the war in Iraq, as it is a war to liberate an oppressed people. Last I checked, this was Dogma #1 for liberals. Seems that all those who dislike the war are merely Grade A hypocrites, who only like to "help" their brother when it benefits this. I'd like to back this claim up with a few examples.

Christopher Reeves: "Everybody support stem cell research so that I can walk again. I'm loaded and could give money, but it's easier if you do it. Also, don't give money to any other types of research that are equally valid, because I don't need them."

Any government social program. Sure, they look nice. I bet Social Security looked real nice back in the 40's. And look what it is now? A big source of money for the federal government to blow on subsidies to tobacco farmers, to pay them not to grow any tobacco. Real productive. And don't argue that it's a fluke. Whenever the government acquires more power (ability to tax incomes), it will come to abuse sooner or later (very usually sooner). And social programs are just that: federal government power grabs.

What happens when I, a liberal congressman, arrange passage of a big juicy social program? I get to give all my liberals buddies jobs. And what else happens? I get to enslave a whole swath of poor/lazy people to the government. Once they're dependent on the social program, they have to vote for me and other liberals forever, or risk losing their precious free money. But really, those liberals who are "benevolently" trying to provide "charity" for their "down-trodden brothers", are doing it out of the kindness of their hearts, and the fact that they get a huge personal benefit that society doesn't share is purely coincidence.

I promise. Vote Kerry.

Ah, the corollary to this is that even though hardcore conservatives don't claim to be the savior of society, their values do society far more good than any liberal. Rather than feeling that it's somebody else's job to take care of me, which results in everybody doing nothing, they believe that it's solely their responsibility to take care of themselves. Therefore everybody is productive.

Further, it is all those "greedy" "lucre-loving" "corporate bastards" who create the jobs that are everyone else's sole source of income. Sure, I bet you do feel like your entitled to a chunk of you're neighbors money. And I bet it makes you feel good to pretend like he somehow wronged you by earning it while you sat idly by. Just keep on thinking that while you wonder why you're get poorer, and your neighbor is getting richer. But consider where you'd be without that greedy corporation: no job, no money, and nothing to buy with it anyway. Whoo, Soviet Russia, here we come.

Just back from Bowling Green, so I guess I'll summarize my weekend, probably in reverse-chronological order. I just finished Ender's Game a few minutes ago, which really was fabulous in a lot of respects. Interesting plot the whole way through, brilliant characterization, some interesting social commentary, and a breath-taking ending. I'm looking forward to reading the others in the series.

Drove the girlfriend back down to Bowling Green and dropped her off. We watched "The Hudsucker Proxy" whilst we were there, which is a very good movie, and also ate dinner, followed by a nap.

Last night took the girlfriend out to dinner at Joe Bologna's, which is a local Italian restaurant. Before that we just hung out in my dorm for a few hours, watching a few episodes of Futurama Volume 3 (which I also purchased yesterday). Earlier in the afternoon we visited High Bridge, which is as the name suggested, a tall rail-road bridge over the Kentucky river. The foilage is starting to turn for autumn, which made the view very nice.

Friday I made the trip down to BG to pick girlfriend up, and then drove back here. Didn't do much else. Classes hardly bear mentioning. EE and Physics were reviews for the tests on Monday. I went to EE, read Ender's Game the whole time, then skipped physics entirely and played SNES instead. Whoo!

That pretty much sums things up. Current items on the agenda: honors readings, honors reaction papers, honors final project (yes, that's all one class), 2 or 3 problems for Discrete Math on Tuesday, and 2 physics problems for Wednesday. Stupid honors class.

Slide rules
vernier calipers
Casio fx-260 solar calculators

I think I get a cheap thrill out of skipping class. I just got back from my physics recitation. I took the quiz, then as soon as he turned around from taking it up, I got up and left! Teehee! Shut up, I'm having fun.

So now I have about two hours until my next class, during which I plan to read more of Ender's Game. Then I'll have honors, for which I actually read the entire assignment. Hopefully that all means that today will be an easy day (the rest of the week, too, God-willing).

Mmmm, root beer.