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Wow...it's been about a year since I posted an entry in here.

So...where do I start.

I graduated from North last year around in June. Had a graduation party, got some nice swag. A few weeks later I ordered an IBM Thinkpad R32 laptop with some of my graduation money. I named it Poseidon - being the first of my computers named after a Greek god.

I built Hades from some spare parts that I had around and from a motherboard and processor that I bought from Nils. Hades is a Pentium II 266 with 192 MB of RAM. At that time I installed RedHat 7.3 on it and that remained on there for a while. I mainly used it as a place to ssh to and run irssi.

My family went to Jolli Lodge in June. I shaved my head, and that was probably the highlight of that trip.

I went to Earlham in August. I did pretty well. I became a real Linux user when I installed Gentoo on both Hades and on my main box, stella. Gentoo is just awesome. I also replaced RedHat on Poseidon with Gentoo.

In the spring I got a job at Earlham as one of the Computer Science System Administrators. I am going back there later this summer to work.

I bought a few more computers. I bought an old IBM Workpad z50, which I am using right now. It is an old Windows CE Handheld Professional PC. I found a site that had instructions on installing the hpcmips port of NetBSD on it. So that's what I did. I got an IBM Microdrive and put NetBSD on it. It's just awesome. I can run X and ssh to my boxes with a wireless card. I also bought a Sun Sparcstation 5 that right now is sitting on the floor unused. I had plans to put Gentoo on it and run it as a webserver. But I made our old Compaq computer the webserver so I might have to find some other use for the Sparcstation.

I got a digital camera for my birthday this year, which is really fun to play with. I also got a film SLR camera which I used for my photography class in the spring semester. I have 2 rolls of film that need to be developed, but one of them is a color roll and I don't know how to develop that (yet). I'm hoping that the darkroom at Earlham will be open during the summer so I can develop my stuff there. If it's not I might just have to give it to Target or Walmart or some place.

I'm going to Ireland next week because my dad is going on business and my mom and I are tagging along. I'm looking forward to it because we studied the Bloody Sunday incident in Northern Ireland in our Cinema and Adaptation class that I had last semester. I was hoping that we might be able to go up there and see some of the places that we were studying. I don't know if we'll be able to make it up there, but it will still be a fun trip nonetheless.

I'm reading Lord of the Rings again because we read The Fellowship of the Ring in our Cinema and Adaptation class and I wanted to continue :). I'm currently at the beginning of The Return of the King right now. I'm hoping that I don't finish it by the time I leave for Ireland next week so I can have something to read on the plane.

The film Return of the King is just stunning. I seriously cried at the end, and when I watched it again I cried even harder. I'm looking forward to the DVD release, although I already have a DivX copy. I'll still buy it, plus the extended edition in November.

Peace.

The end of the school year is always kind of bittersweet, but I think it will be even more so this year since I probably won't ever see my friends again. I will probably take my camera to school on the last few days, and if I'm brave enough, take pictures of the girls I like, and anything else.

Let's see...it's been a while since I've written in here. I got my driver's license about a month ago, and driving has really been fun. The first time I was in the car all by myself I felt really weird, but I soon got used to it. I have to take my brother to school everyday, and he's being...let's just say "difficult" in the past month or so. Sometimes I've driven to school alone because he has refused to get out of bed.

I've been wardriving with my friends on the weekends here and there. It's been really fun, and we've been able to get on to quite a few wireless networks and get on the Internet. I hope to get a laptop for my graduation present, and I'll get a wireless card, install Linux, and then I can go wardriving with my own equipment.

One of my best friends is into Ham radio, and he thinks I should do it as well. I think it looks cool and I might try to read up on it this summer and possibly take the test. He takes his radio wherever he goes. When we went wardriving he had it with him and we could listen to the police channel - kinda cool :).

So today is the last day of school before spring break. I am going to North Carolina to some town that I cannot pronounce. We're gonna be in a condo up in the mountains. We're going to leave tonight after school. I still have to pack but that won't take long. We're going to stop at my mom's cousin's house on the way there tonight and spend the night. We hope to be on our way tomorrow morning but somehow I doubt that.

I don't really know wat we're gonna do in North Carolina. We will probably go on some hikes and look at some waterfalls; this area is known for its waterfalls.

We get back fron N.C. on Wednesday and then we lave on Friday for Chicago. My parents are meeting some friends of ours up there and they're dropping my brother and I off at my cousin's place.

Then my birthday is the next Tuesday :).

I finally finished reading Lord of the Rings yesterday. It was really great. I started it midway into December, so it only took me around 2 months to read. I really regret not reading it earlier, especially before the movies came out. Oh well, nothing I can do about that now.

Now that I've read it, I realized how messed up the movies are. The Two Towers is probably the one that is messed up more. I mean, For one, Faramir seems a lot nicer in the book than he does in the movie. In the book, Frodo doesn't even go to Osgiliath, whereas in the movie he goes there and then quickly leaves. There's a lot of stuff they left out of The Two Towers that they have to include in the next movie such as the road to Isengard and the voice of Saruman, Frodo going to Minas Morgul, and the bit with Shelob. Only then can we get into the stuff from Return of the King.

I'm deffinately looking forward to Return of the King, now that I've read the book.

Bleh, now that I've finished LOTR I have to start reading Vanity Fair and Emma for school :(.

So I'm finally beginning to learn Perl today in my independent study. The school bought me 3 books: Learning Perl, Programming Perl, and The Red Hat Linux 8.0 Bible. Once they can find me a decent computer I'm gonna install Red Hat on it.

I think I'm going to begin with Learning Perl because that sounds like a good place to start (the whole "Learning" bit).