New Year

Holiday season completed! Go team!

I will dispense with the minutia of holiday and just say that I went on my first cruise. It was a week long to the Caribbean and it was a lot of fun. I got to see Chichen Itza, coral reefs in Roatan, and Caves in Belize. All the while getting fat on a boat. Good times! (go America!)

I've not produced any resolutions this year. I'm waiting on my new moleskine. To record them, kinda a habbit of sorts... I may actually make a rule not to let anyone touch my book this year. Though, last year a friend took it out of my pocket while she was drunk and it got torn up when I tried to get it back. So 2010's book is a bit "eff'ed" .

School starts back up next week. I'm only taking one class, though it's the first graduate level course I will be taking. The previous two courses were undergraduate classes that the department thought I should take first. O, and I made an A last semester!

It's important to note here that I made a promise not to buy any fancy Apple products unless I made an A. So, yay consumerism!

I've finished both practice tests for my GIAC REM (GREM) certification. I will likely schedule to take it in a couple of weeks.

Final is over.

So my final was last week. In general it went very well. Though I realised after the test that I misinterpreted part of one of the questions. In my haste I wrote down trigonometric identities instead of Euler's equations for sinusoid. I really am a boob sometimes.

It's nice to be done with class for a while though!

'Bout 2 weeks till the cruise! Will be my first time cruising, should be pretty fun.

On that note, the Dept. of State forced me to get a new birth certificate. Because the one I've had my entire life is apparently not "long" enough... Some of you that know me will appreciate the irony in this story.

Now I've got to worry about getting my passport in time and wrapping up Christmas shopping. I've nailed down pretty much everything I want to get for people. Though, I've not necessarily ordered it all; Most of it can be had locally.

Went to the tamale festival at the Pearl brewery this weekend. Was good fun! The day was surprising hot for the middle of December! Was a good event, only managed to eat at 4 of the stands before being full. However parking around Pearl is somewhere between a cluster-fuck and all out chaos.

Which reminds me the Josephine restaurant located here wouldn't allow anyone to park under the highway. The entire area between josephine and greyson on the map. Mind you the that area could park probably park at least 10 times the number of people that could sit inside the maybe 1000 sqrft. restaurant. I understand needing to protect parking for your customers. But, you will never have that many people wanting in your establishment; And I sure as hell won't be going there now.

If it were my restaurant I would have saved the number of spots for maximum occupancy and then handed out coupons and menus to get the people parking in all those other spots to become customers. NOVEL IDEA.

Trials

I have a test today.

I was discussing with my girlfriend last night my current state. How I find having to study and do homework inconvenient, but that I also have a hard time seeing myself doing anything else right now. All in all, I think that's a good sign. Really all this says is that "hard things are hard", and that what I'm doing I actually want to do. It was just an odd perspective at that moment.

This last year certainly has included a bunch of changes: New job, new city, started graduate school, girl friend, house shopping. Though with all this in mind, I'm still resolute not to be too much of an adult.

Wikileaks is all in the news right now. I have mixed opinions on the subject. I think it's important for 'journalists' to uncover scandal or corruption, but I'm not so convinced that is what this is. This doesn't appear to be much of a focused revelation about anything, so much as someone just dumping over a filing cabinet in hopes of finding something good. However, the animosity being directed as Assange doesn't seem warranted. Too many politicians are throwing around the word 'terrorist' too liberally these days and it's not like he stole the documents personally, in all likelihood the person that did could have just sent them to any of the news agencies himself.

Anywho, back to studying...

Being right

I recently had a test for my communications class. I lost points on the second question. When I inquired as to why, the professor said he wanted the integral written out for the relationship. Which makes sense, except that there is a special symbol for the relationship (convolution) that I used instead. The question didn't specifically ask for the integral, it just wanted us to show the relationship. I, of course, used the symbol. I challenging the professor on this, but he was not swayed. I pointed to questions one and three where he used the word "Define" explicitly for other equations.

I suppose in the end it's up to him to decide how he grades his tests. But, I'm also bound by his grades. I also have to question how much I want to fight with him about it, in the event he curves and I've pissed him off such that I don't get my A.

Perhaps I should just be happy with being right.

Nah...

Honestly, just stop already

I'm going to start punching people around me that use the term "Lameduck". I'm sure you've heard it on the radio lately. If you haven't, and are curious, it is a reference to the congressional term after the election and before the new guys arrive. The implication being that nothing will happen... BECAUSE THIS IS APPARENTLY DIFFERENT FROM ANY OTHER TIME.

The semester is going well. I've definitely learned a lot from this class on wireless communication. Good Stuff! Looking forward to some new ventures at work, hopefully we can make some good things happen. Some people despise change, and I guess there is a question of degree, but I like switching things up now and then. At least for right now. Maybe when I'm old I'll just be upset and shake a stick at the kids on my lawn...

Mid terms...

foamfoamfoamfoamfoam.

Who are the people that really consider some of these current 'issues' actually important?

It's a building in New York. Shut the fuck about it already.

Christianity has extremists too. You wouldn't consider it fair to blame everyone. In fact, when it comes to atheists telling you to jam it and pointing to all the atrocities that have happened under the banner of Christianity, you would make the same argument Muslims are having to.

This is of course despite the fact that most of you 'Christians' fail to understand the tenets of what Christ taught.

Eating again

So my fasting only lasted four days. I gave in to social convention, that was the hardest part of not eating for me. It was very interesting to see how much of a part consumption is to our, or at least my, "social fabric".

I may try doing it again at some point. I wasn't really planning to start when I did. I just didn't eat one day for breakfast, then lunch, then I decided to roll with it.