Since it started getting cold a couple weeks ago I got ready to put the bike away, but so far every weekend has been perfect weather for taking it out for a ride. Come to think of it, this was the first year I can remember, since I was maybe nine years old, that we didn't have snow on Halloween. It's odd seeing kids actually dressed up in costumes, as opposed to wearing parkas and some face paint or mask. At this pace, I'll probably ride most of the winter, I don't mind the cold much once I get going and I can get along just fine as long as there isn't snow and ice where I'm riding.

Biking just about fits the bill for what I need as far as entertainment is concerned. I'm staying in good shape, it's cheap, and it's pretty hard to get too much of it. The cheap part is especially important, considering this month I only got paid $67. When I saw my pay stub I let out a pretty big "What the fuck?" Apparently I only got paid for my five overtime hours, and the rest of my time was ignored. Hopefully I can sort that out tomorrow, because I was supposed to get paid three days ago and I have my tuition payment due.

After the recent stories and poll about college loans and debt, I looked over my program requirements for getting a BS in computer engineering. I'm not quite 75% done with the program, and I realized the remaining classes would get checked off three at a time for another year and a half, at about $1200 a class. For some reason I couldn't help but feel like an RPG character, grinding so that I can level up. I need two more experience points before I can level up to an associates degree in electronic design. Once I get that I'll spend my XP on stamina and maybe charm, increased vision wouldn't hurt but I have an optometrist appointment soon anyway.

I'll go back to grinding tomorrow.

My friend in Iowa, who's having a great time in college, told me that he plays WoW now. After asking him, it pretty much sounds like the typical experience I've heard. Constant grinding to improve your character, not much fun besides some online socialization. Feck, I'm here trying my damnedest to actually have a life, my friend has such an overabundance of it that he's having to piss some of it away with that crap.

Anyways, the recent stories had gotten me thinking about college, but the other article that got me looking was on internships. Unpaid internships notwithstanding, the majority of them seemed to pay quite a bit more than what I'm making. On the flip side, I assume most internships only last about three months or so. I could be doing worse than I am now, but at least I have a steady, reliable job. I'm not exactly working in the same field as what I'm studying, but at least I'm working with computers and tech.

So far the research on internships around here and through my school are for military stuff. A friend of mine did a summer internship at NORAD (or whatever it's called now), and there are always positions open for stuff in the Air Force, although most of them require you to travel away from Colorado. I'll still be looking, either way.

Since signing up for an online dating site, I've found a couple of girls that I recognized from school on there. The thing that really surprised me was that they are both around my age, and neither of them have kids! That's pretty rare for the school that I go to, at night it seems like all of the women, even ones younger than me, have kids.

There's some pretty good looking girls, I figure they were the really hot girls in high school that were dumb and got pregnant before dropping out. So now they are working full time and going to school at night. It really killed my expectations of possibly meeting a girl at school after the first couple times of talking to them. While talking with a couple of girls who were pretty young, a few minutes into conversation and they inevitably say something about "my son," and I immediately think, "DAMN IT!"

It seems like anymore, it strikes me odd when I go to visit my friend at college in Greeley and come to find that the girls I see up there aren't working full time to feed some baby mouths.

But anyways, it was a strange coincidence when a girl got matched with me by the dating site's matching bot. It showed her picture and I immediately recognized her, and that night I stopped by Wendy's to get some dinner before class. Well guess who took my order?

The other girl I got matched with more recently is someone who I've seen around and never had a class with, and probably never will because her major is very different than mine.

But on to another topic: biking. Ny friend Marco and I have been hanging out a lot on the weekends, a few weeks back I was trying to get him to go mountain biking with me but his bike was broken. Then again, mine was broken too, but it's also broken pretty much after every ride. I fix it for an hour and then ride it for about 3 hours, rinse and repeat. Still, yesterday we went to a bike shop and picked up parts and tools so we could fix our bikes. We got his up and running and it's working great, and mine is now a single speed but at least ridable. I hope I find a nice used bike for a good price pretty soon, this bike has died and barely been revived three times now. But at least I'll have a beater to ride around town when I do get a nice bike.

It was probably 8 at night by the time we'd finished working up the bikes, and then I asked him, "ready to go for a test ride?" So we got on the street in his neighborhood and rode around until he got the hang of riding again. I couldn't help but feel like a kid again, of course the fact that we're 21 and 22, yet still living with our respective parents helps in that regard, too.

We biked around the streets, down some paths, and then to the high school we went to. Honestly, it was a lot of fun just going out and messing around. It's definitely a nice change of pace from the constant work/school cycle. It was around 10:45 when we got back.
Then tomorrow I'm back to work, so I can't be like a grade school kid anymore, I have to be like a preschooler :(

After about a year with nothing, I went on a few dates last week. One with a girl from the internets called slashgirl, and another with a teacher I met called teacher.

I had a dryspell that lasted about a year, I'd say it was more like two years, but last October I did go out on a blind date. That turned out to suck more than what you'd expect from someone named "Gaytriot."
An acquaintance from school set me up on it, I figured her friend would be the same age as us (20 at the time), but she turned out to be a 17 year old high school senior. Not bad looking, maybe if she'd been mature for her age it would have gone better, but she was like a kid to me. Which was odd, considering she was only just over 2 years younger than me.

Anyways, before that gem of a date, I hadn't been on one since my last girlfriend about a year before that, nor did I really have any interest in it. Then, about a month ago, I decided I'd at least give it a shot; luckily, someone I had been talking to online turned out to be a girl :O. Not only that, but she lived in the same city and we got along pretty well :O :O. We had quite a few of the same interests, and a few different ones (wtf is j-pop? Don't answer, I googled it). We met for dinner a couple weekends ago and it went pretty well, though a little awkward. Despite the obvious awkwardness from meeting someone from the internets in meatspace, I'd really never dated anyone who I didn't already know fairly well and considered a friend (jail bait notwithstanding). Regardless, we'd decided to go out again the next weekend for a movie and then just hang out and do whatever.

Between these dates I started talking to a young teacher (I work for a school district) and a short time later we decided to go out for dinner. She is a couple years older than me (I'm 21 now) and seemed definitely above my league. Of course, my league consists of ditzy high schoolers and girls with mental issues in general, apparently. Still, dating teacher felt like dating a woman as opposed to a girl (and no I didn't actually feel her), whereas slashgirl, despite being almost exactly my age, felt like I was dating someone a bit younger than I. Slasgirl had not experienced quite as much as I have, considering she'd only ever had a job for about 4 months, hadn't started college, and wasn't really doing anything at the moment, in addition to not really having jack in the way of relationships. But, to her credit, she was planning on at least going to college, even if it was just community college, which is fine with me; I don't demand that a potential girlfriend be higher learned, but I would prefer one who isn't a dolt or ditz IN ADDITION TO not being a lying whore.

Teacher, OTOH, already has her masters degree and, obviously a decent job teachering.
(Yes, teachering, for you fuckers that modded me down for my womans comment. FYI, many womans get jobs teachering, including my favorite high school English teacher(er).)
She put me to shame, despite being just two years older than me, she seemed quite a bit more mature. We got along fine, and our date went well enough, but I wonder if she saw me the same way as I saw the high school girl. However, she did know I was only 21 to begin with, and she started it >:(

So anyways... for a short while, I'm absolutely befuddled (and pretty happy) that after a whole lot of nothing I get to go on some dates with a couple of hot girls, but that feeling only lasted a couple of weeks. I'm not sure I'll be dating slashgirl much. I wouldn't mind seeing her again, but she was getting pretty flaky. I don't think I'd want her for anything more than a friend, because I'd like someone who is a little bit more... I'm not sure if mature is the right word, but maybe a little bit closer to my personality at least. On the opposite end of the spectrum, I think teacher is too much woman for me. I'm shy to begin with, I feel a little bit intimidated by her or something. She's good looking, intelligent, and great but I'm not sure if I could really be myself around her. Who knows, though? I wouldn't mind seeing her again, anyways. Feck, I wouldn't mind seeing either of them, for that matter, it definitely beats sitting at home.

I've had a decent couple weeks. I've kept busy, at least this was being busy doing things that I want to do, which is much more preferable to the other shit I have to do.

I got a message today by my old friend Koki, a Japanese tuba player I met while I was studying trombone performance at the Boston Conservatory. I quit the conservatory after that year, though. My problem was that there were a lot of shallow, weird ass people there. But in the midst of a bunch of fakes and weirdos I'd made a few good friends, Koki was one of them. We used to play Tuba duets together, I would just play the upper part which was usually high enough to be played on the trombone easily enough. I probably learned more about playing from doing that than I did from the school. In exchange for that, I showed him Counter-Strike. We used to game some old school CS (only because our crappy laptops couldn't handle Source) in my dorm room.

We had an odd ritual on Friday nights after our last rehearsals. We would go to the cafeteria at NorthEastern Univ., since the BoCo didn't have it's own, then we would go back to my dorm room and play some serious CS and half-life coop for hours. Then we would get our horns, get into the school and chat with the security guard in the main lobby. We knew him pretty well, he would open up one of the concert halls for us to play in at night, we just had to leave by 2am when he went home.

We'd play for a while up there, and usually ended up opening one of the massive windows and sitting outside on the ledge. If we wanted company we could usually keep the window open and play, any friends walking by outside would hear the music from the 3rd floor and come up to join us. Otherwise, when we'd had enough we would pack up and go down the block to the little corner store. We always picked up a carton of Extra pulp OJ each. He had an odd affinity for OJ, he would drink it all the time and I must have picked it up from him.

Those were some good times. I enjoyed practicing, I enjoyed most of school, and I enjoyed playing in general. What I didn't like was Boston, I'm just not a big city kind of guy. Or maybe it was just the shock of being somewhere new and by myself.

Either way, now I'm back home and work is work, school feels like work, and I barely play anymore. But I got an MSN message from my friend Koki tonight and it just made me think. I wish I'd kept in touch more with my friends from Boston. A couple of them I talk to fairly regularly because they are on instant messaging every so often. Koki used to be, but after I left Boston I hadn't seen him online until tonight. He's actually going to school in Utah now, only one state over from Colorado. I'll probably make plans to do the eight hour drive out there to see him in a few weeks when I have a break from school, we'll see.

I actually look forward to it, I have a few friends here but it can often times be an ordeal trying to get together to do anything. Part of the trouble is that my schooling is year round and my breaks between terms are smack dab in the middle of their semesters. If Koki can make some time for me, I'm more than willing to do the 16 hours round trip to get out there to Utah.

I guess that's a big part of them problem with people. I can't seem to get them to make the time for me very often. I have a decent career getting started, and my school is doing well, and everything seems to be going great. But I've said it before, I'd be willing to trade that for a decent social life instead.
I think some other people already have a decent social life going on or are so busy with whatever they are doing that they don't see any point of taking extra time out for that.

Right now I feel like I'd rather work as little as possible so that I can live, but I wonder if I will end up getting so consumed with my work that it becomes my life. I don't think so, though. I think that's actually part of the reason why I quit music, too, since you really have to be passionate about it and always on the lookout for work. I'd rather not have my work be my life, even if I enjoy it a lot.

Well that's enough for tonight, I'm going to sleep.

I'm glad tomorrow is Thursday. I just finished the first three exhausting days of the week, and I have no school at night on Thursday or Friday. Wednesday is my Friday, which really makes a three day week even though I still have to work Thur. and Fri. That doesn't make it easy though, working during the day and going to school at night are hard enough by themselves. Trying to maintain my bodybuilding routine and repairing computers on the side just adds a little extra to the top.

This week was especially tough, and I had my court date for getting an expensive ticket this morning. I was doing a U-turn right in front of my house where I usually do. I know U-turns are illegal during certain parts of the day, and I knew for sure that I was doing it at a legal time so I was pissed when an unmarked police car pulled me over. It turns out, though, that I was being pulled over because my registration stickers were expired by about 5 months.

That was an $85 ticket, and I went and got registration at the DMV which cost almost $90. The cop said I had a good chance of getting the fine reduced if I went to the court date, so almost three months later this morning I went. Being a dumbass I went to the wrong court building based off of what my brother and boss had told me. I didn't bother reading the actual ticket which had the address of the proper court building.

So I early to the wrong court, I was downtown just a few blocks away so I walked over to the right place and was now running late. Luckily after going through security and waiting in line for a while my case was dismissed by the girl at the front desk. I didn't even have to step into the courtroom or anything.

I'd already taken the morning off of work for this, and despite running late I was out of there by 8:45, so I walked around downtown a bit. It was a fucking nice day today, and I wish I could go out more often especially since summer is winding down. I'd skipped a proper breakfast and was hungry so I looked around for a good place to eat. A few places that looked decent didn't even open for a while so I thought fuck it and just found my car and went to work.

By lunch I was already exhausted from not getting much sleep that last week or so, and I had a big test tonight in my Dif. EQ. class, so I took the afternoon off sick and went home with plans to sleep. I studied for about 4 hours before I slept, and ended up skipping my physics class but it was at least worth it. I did well on the test, got out about 10:20pm and now it's about 11:15pm, so I think I'll hit the sack so I can enjoy my almost-weekend.

I tracked my order for the new Acer Aspire One notebook from Newegg and saw that it had arrived late this morning. I contemplated leaving work early so I could get home and play with it right away, but I was too busy and needed to make sure I got some stuff done.

Once I did get home, though, I immediately opened the box to check out the computer. I was slightly disappointed after unpacking the laptop box from the shipping one, the laptop in the picture was a black one while I had ordered it thinking it was white. But once I opened that up I saw that it was, in fact, the white one.

Anyways, the box contained the restore CD for the Linpus Lite Linux distro, some license crap, a manual, and a nice sleeve to protect the laptop during transport. Oh, and the battery and power supply. Holding the notebook it really hit me how small the thing is, especially in my hands. Its tiny and light and feels very solid. The first thing I did was pop the battery in and turn it on, after going through a quick setup I rebooted and stood up to grab the sleeve from the box. By the time I turned back around, the OS had booted up and was ready to go.

I looked through all the apps that were included, it has most of the core stuff I need for school. I'm trying to load vpython on there for my physics class because we use this in our labs. I haven't had luck yet, but I'm also a relative newbie when it comes to Linux. I'm pretty sure more Linux distro must include python, I just need the IDE.

Anyways, I messed with it for about 2:30 hours w/ wifi enabled before the battery got low. Setting up the wifi on my home network was simple, installing the network printer was also easy but I had to download the linux driver for HP printers. I'm still needing to hook up to my network drives on my server, but I haven't been able to yet. I read through a guide and it looked somewhat involved to do, so I'll wait 'til I have more time and try it.

I was switching between the Acer and my desktop, so the keyboard on this thing felt pretty cramped; but, now that I'm typing on just the Acer, I've easily adjusted and have no problem touch typing.

Overall I'm extremely happy with this laptop and I think I'll stick with the Linpus Lite for a while and then maybe take a shot at installing Ubuntu or another full featured, light distro. The only problem I really have is that the 8Gb SSD could be more of a problem should I use Ubuntu. The nice thing about Linpus is that I can stick in an SD card into a specific slot and merge that memory with my SSD memory to make a bigger, unified drive. I bet I could do the same with Ubuntu, I'll have to look into it.

So I think I'll be carrying this around me for a while, it's not quite pocket sized but as far as school and work go I have no trouble making space for the computer in my backpack.

I started a journal yesterday but didn't finish it since I was hanging out late at work and needed to be getting to school. I detailed my last weekend which was one of the more eventful ones I've had, and it came after a long, boring dry spell. Part of the trouble is not having a whole lot of friends in the area, most of my good friends went away for college. I did too, but that's before I decided to change my major and came back to Colorado for school.

I have one good friend down here who, like me, keeps pretty busy. My best friend, Derek, lives about 3 hours north of here so I visit him regularly, but not often because the trip can be tiring and a little expensive for gas. Nevertheless, him and his roommate were hosting an Olympic party in their college town, having partners sign up to represent countries in the beer Olympics Friday night. Derek had already signed me up to represent Cuba before I even knew I was going, so I had to find a partner. Another good friend of mine was back in town for a few weeks from Iowa, so I recruited him to be the other half of Team Cuba.
It worked out well because his last name is Castro.

I left Thursday night to travel up to Castro's house, taking Friday off of work so I could have a long weekend. We went up to Derek's apartment the next day and learned that we were supposed to be costumed up for our country. Dustin and I were a long way away from our homes, so we had to find some props. We just ended up getting a couple cigars while picking up cases of beer at the liquor store and that was that.

Back at the apartment where the party was just getting started, teams were showing up and pretty soon about 11 or 12 countries were there and the games got started. The three events were beer pong, asshole, and quarters, none of which I played very often. Regardless, Cuba did fairly well against our opponents despite losing every game. I even resorted to playing dirty and outright cheating in quarters, but we were still the first team out of the running.

I went out with my partner Castro to smoke our cigars and talk to a couple good looking girls. It really only made me want to go to a regular college even more.

I spent my first year majoring in music performance playing my trombone at the Boston Conservatory, not exactly a regular college but I still lived in dorms and was surrounded by college aged kids. Now I'm computer engineering at Colorado Tech, where a majority of the student population are older folks, especially in the evenings. I'm on a pretty good path as far as career and making money are concerned, but I would readily trade that for a better social life.

But I digress, as the party wore on more teams were knocked out of the running and people started trickling out, probably going to sleep. Most of the people at the party were music people, predominantly band geeks of some sort. Derek is still majoring in music and most of his friends are from that college. So I get along with most of them just fine, being a former music geek myself, although slowly turning into more of a computer or science geek. Which I guess brings me to my next story.

I just ordered a mini laptop, the Acer Aspire One. I'd had my mind set on a EEEpc for some time after seeing them online and thinking how cool it would be to have a portable computer like that, especially for the price. I ended up ordering the Acer instead for about $390 with shipping. I decided to get this instead of one of the EEEpc's because it looked to be the overall better deal. I was originally looking at the $300 ones, but the tiny 7" screen was very off-putting because you'd have to scroll left and right just to view regular websites. So I bumped up my budget to $400 for one of the newer ones with the larger 8.9" screens before I learned that the new SSD's (16gb) were slow as hell. I looked in the same price range on Newegg and found the Acer with glowing reviews. It had similar specs to the EEEpc but a quicker SSD and it was only $380.
I'll hopefully get it by Friday so I can mess with it and start taking it to school.