IBNeko's Journal-Nyo~!

Okay. I might have been biting off more than I can chew.

-Warbook : 130 messages to get back to. Partially slowed down 'cause facebook is a fucking failure and finds it necessary to automatically block application creators if they send too many messages. And I really can't afford to have my facebook banned - Which means I need to figure out how to create a personal backup copy of the parts I can access, without triggering their anti-script system. Ideally, I should just find something that'll watch me surf the site, and log everything I download.
Maybe some sort of proxy cache...?

-GRE : I need to sign up and take the goddamn thing, and then actually apply to colleges and stuff..
-Valentines day : Blah.
-Host club : Next week, saturday... tch.. I'll get photos tomorrow, and then website will have to go up ideally, as soon as I get the photos.
-Japan night : Need a website for that too. We have no logo for me to work around though...
-EXPO : Blah, should give my resume to people too. Should prep for interviews, what?
-ECE443wtf? : I don't know what's going on in the labs. Not good.
-ECE442 : HW due friday
-NPRE402 : HW due M/W/Fs... I should work ahead, so this last minute shit stops.
-MATH415 : due... friday?


[edit] Ok, that's wrong. I can handle this, it's well within my abilities. I just need to focus a bit more, and organize. Or I need to slice up my time into smaller chunks and efficiently micromanage.

[edit 2] I also need to fix my sleeping schedule. I am sleeping at around 3-5 AM each day, getting up around 9. I would like my 8 hours of normal sleep, so I can pay attention in class without having to rely on my laptop to not fall asleep (and... not pay attention as a side effect of using said laptop.)

Food now. Need extra food for strength to stay up.

http://www.dps.uiuc.edu/campusalert.htm => http://www.dps.uiuc.edu/alertphotos/photo1.jpg

Amazing. I though they didn't care about those cameras...

Sorry, been neglecting livejournal. Am alive, am in Maryland, and will remain here until friday noon.

To do (over break, in order of importance * 1/time required):
-Pay bills, deposit check
-Senior Design Project
-Cram wordlists for GRE, register for GRE.
-Do something about important mail received while at school.
-Say hi to Freewebs, since they're giving me money...
-Try to de-stress a bit before the final rush of chaos at the end of the semester (two weeks of classes left!?)
-E-mail Bob Conrad/Union Multimedia Director for J-net Fashion Show
-Watch Stardust, Darker than Black, Seto no Hanayome, and a number of other things I'm snagging.

Have done:
-Watched Pan's Labyrinth. Pretty, but... a bit on the depressing side. And it seemed like it was going to be so much more...
-Finished Kaze no Stigma. Started out rather promising as a nice action series, but turned into a romance...wannabe.
-Witnessed slamming doors, falling blood, and a stage covered with... playground rubber?

Bugger off, ya hear? I don't need the random showers of loneliness.

--

On a side note, didn't completely fail ECE440 exam like last year. Yay. Still below class average, but.. ugh. Meh. Need one more class for next semester...

Have cute significant other now. And new desktop wallpaper that she drew when asking me out... (and apparently I don't pay enough attention to my stuff on my desktop; she was able to download it and leave the jpg file there for a full day before she told me about it, and I looked at it. ^^;;; whoops.)

And am losing grasp of the "tralala~ I can be alone and rock my own world, 'cause I'm a lone wolfie~ rawr~" mindset. ::slightly annoyed:: Took me so long to get there... and now my mind wanders more towards hanging out with other people, which means less gets done. Drats.

--

Just freed up 50~ GB of space. Mmm. Now to move other stuff off my external hd, so I can use it as the Time Machine Backup. (Time Machine doesn't format the drive before using it, right...?)

Overall, it was a nice weekend, although stress is mounting.

Short list, since I need sleep:
-Got sick. Am still sick. Sore throat and the usual stuff that comes with the temperature changes outside. Am fighting it, rawr.
-Cosplayed as Shino from Naruto. Have pictures, will post later. The anime club did one big Naruto cosplay. Kinda boring, IMHO - I would have liked more variety.
-Jenny won the cosplay contest, despite not being dressed as any character other than "little red lolita". ::facepalm:: 20 votes to her, followed by 13 votes to some other characters...
-Built two parts of my shino costume in about an hour and a half, excluding the time it took to purchase stuff. Yay for cheapass felt.
-Kaito Kid costume is still missing: 1) white dinner jacket, 2) white magicians top hat, 3) white dinner gloves, 4) a solid red tie, 5) white dress shoes?
-Total time at JAC/Loomis: 9 hours. Damn.
-Raine followed me home. And then to Schnucks. And then there was listening to music. And she stayed the night.
-Soran bushi - yay haven't forgotten everything.
-Watched around 5-6 video lectures for my upcoming CS461 exam wednesday.

Oh, and Apple: you need to train your tier two support techs / Specialists better. We played Phone/E-mail tag for the entire week, and finally got in touch friday. He could have frigging e-mailed me! Or at least sent some sort of acknowledgment e-mail. And all he did was set up the request for a new macbook pro to replace mine, and then tell me that Customer support would get in touch with me in 48 hours.

I'm seriously hoping I'll be able to talk them into sending me a new macbook pro first, so I can transfer data directly, instead of backing things up, then restoring. I really don't want to deal with this crap during a week with three exams. :P But using the macbook pro with the flexible usb keyboard + wacom tablet mouse is annoying. And it means I can carry significantly less. Much hate at MacBook Pro right now.*

Also, I need recommendations for a laptop.. case? I dunno, I'm thinking of a padded pocket I could slip my macbook pro into, before sliding it into my messenger bag, so the amount of banging around is reduced...

(should make two other posts later, probably one about cosplaying or Raine, and the other about the macbook pro, listing my problems...)

*I'm going to pirate Leopard. :P I'm sorry, but Apple, you're not getting anymore of my money right now. You've cost me enough in terms of time and loss in productivity due to hardware issues.

Oh man, that's depressing. And there's still so much to do. Arrrrrgh.

Solid State Electronics = dislike so much. I don't know if it's because the class itself is hard, or if I'm just stupid. Probably the latter. It's too much like the non-mechanics physics, which I also didn't do too well in.

Oh well, it's over with. Hopefully. XP

--
Busey Bank has finally sent me my new ATM card. It took two walk-in naggings and three months after my first one expired. Sheesh, get your act together.

--
I think I'm going to watch a bit of anime, then sleep.

J-net lunch tomorrow with old officers, and then a meeting with the new blood afterwards. Then dinner with JAC people. Somehow, I don't see too much studying getting done. Buggers.

Then there's a free J-net BBQ sunday @ 12, Illini Grove. Yes, free. We made money this year, and people are insisting that we spend some of it.

Monday exam at 1:30 PM. Tuesday exam at 8 AM. Then I'll be done. At which point, I'll need to pack, figure out cosplay stuff, and uh, figure out what I'm going to do with my desktop... Since it's running a server, it needs to get moved home, but I don't know if I want to try to move the SVN repository home and set it up on the computers at home, or if I want to just bring the hard drive home and hope for compatibility... (damn old PCs at home.)

I'm still some 2-3 weeks behind in my readings. 50 pages. And each page goes rather slowly. Damn material for being so difficult. Stupid P/N junctions. At least stuff does makes sense. Mostly.

Back to the apartment now to finish ECE410 homework. ::whimpers:: Maybe I should just conveniently forget about the J-net barcrawl tomorrow. I'm supposed to go though, being an officer and all that. And it does still leave me with enough time to finish the reading. I'm just scared. (ECE440 exam's on thusday, 4 PM. ECE410 homework's due at 5 tomorrow, biweekly quiz at 7 PM on thusday.) Ugh. Then the rest of the time thursday night/friday morning will go towards the draft due friday... oh, wait, that's been pushed back to "e-mail TA by 5 PM". :\ Still would rather get it done before then, so I can sleep and work on Highbrow for the remainder of the afternoon. I like that plan.

Meditation is helping. Kinda. Not absurdly stressed. We think.

--

On a whole other note, I've come to the conclusion that I failed when I put my PC together - I have an AMD Athelon 3700+, and idle temps around 60ºC, which, from what I can tell, seems to be pretty high. I'm pretty sure I put way too much thermal conductive stuff when I first put it together... So I've gone and purchased Arcticlean and Arctic Silver, with plans to clean and reapply the conductive stuff between the processor and the heatsink. May also lap the heatsink (following http://www.techpowerup.com/articles/cooling/air/39), although that would mean an extra trip somewhere to pick up sandpaper.

So question for the people who are more familiar with systems building: What do I need to remember/keep an eye on when I redo the thermal stuff?

TODO:
...
[ x ] Lie on a bed of nails.
...

Yepyep. It wasn't too bad, actually - although after watching the performer lie down on it, then five audience members stand on him - I was pretty sure it wouldn't be painful. And a large number of people did it afterwards too. Reminded me of a mildly uncomfortable burning sensation. Like stepping into a bathtub filled with water that's almost too hot to bear.

(Hah, now I can say I got nailed. ^^;; )

I'm just not too sure how he managed to lie on four nails. And then one single nail (with balancing assistance from two audience members.) That was slightly freaky and disturbing.

Also got to see him escape from a (probably not too well secured) straitjacket while riding a unicycle around and around in circles. While that was pretty amazing, it's still only balancing and practice. And knowing how to get ones secured arms over the head, loosen the proper straps, and the wiggle free while keeping the unicycle in constant motion.

Time to sleep a bit more and catch up on schoolwork.

Yes, school closed on account of 6-8+ inches of snow overnight, with an estimated foot more to come.

::glee::

Seems maryland schools were silly and let school open anyways. And then announced an early closing.

On a side note:
Dear Chancellor Richard Herman,
Please send out the massmail regarding class cancelations prior to 8 AM. Some of us actually do have, and do attend, our early morning classes, and would have found it more than helpful to have been notified more than 5 minutes before 9 that classes were canceled.

Thanks,
Ben

(Yes, I trudged through the snow to the nearest intersection to wait for the bus. And stood there for a good five minutes before being informed by a passing car that classes were canceled. Doh.)