S’Been A While
I think things are getting a lot better, all around. I'm somehow managing to keep my apartment AND put food in my belly! Granted, my main diet has consisted of peanut butter and sometimes jelly sandwiches, tuna salad sandwiches, and ramen (with ingredients, like peas and carrots and potatos and cheap sausages/hot dogs; so I'm still getting important stuffs and not wasting away on terrible food), but I figure a budget of $40-$50 a month for food for a poor college kid is NOT a bad deal.
Sold the Lumina. Somehow we got $1500 for it instead of like $200. That's how I'm gonna survive the rest of the summer, and then excess money from student loans plus work study should help me out quite well each semester.
Why things are getting better, I think:
- I'm able to monetarily survive the summer.
- I've got my own apartment, where I can do my own things, and cook my own food, and lounge around petting cats and watching Conan on hulu.
- Nicole's cats are freaking awesome.
- My new computer (by need, remember?) is performing great and is allowing me to catch up on some much needed gaming.
- I'm getting back into Animal Crossing (on the Wii now).
- Hanging out with good friends (Casey, Jeremy, Amber) quite a bit these days thanks to the Tai kids.
- Helping out again with the Taiwanese Cultural and Academic Exchange program.
- Got my first above 3.0 semester GPA this past Spring.
- Because of that, I am still allowed to attend IIT! :D
- My beautiful girlfriend comes back to Chicago in less than a month!
- In six days we'll have been together for four months (this still surprises me immensely, to be perfectly honest).
- She's bringing her ferrets back with her and they're going to stay at my place! (this has me extremely excited for some reason :razz: )
- She is learning German and this is the perfect reason to brush up on my skills with the language!
- I bought a game for the first time since... forever. I honestly forget the last game I bought prior. Last weekend Frictional Games was having a sale on the Penumbra trilogy (a survival-horror/puzzle/adventurer series). It was $5 for all three games and they were on Linux. This is not something I could pass up. I love survival-horrors (as much as they get to me), I love puzzle games that make you think (as much as they frustrate me), and I love supporting developers who release their games natively on Linux.
- I've been following the Hundred Push-Up Program and, while I've had to repeat two weeks already, I already notice a HUGE improvement in my strength and muscle mass (then again, any muscle mass is a huge improvement over none :razz: ).
- Because of this I have a greater confidence in.. me and my presentation. It's kind of surprising, really. I wasn't at all embarassed when I took my shirt off at the beach the other day, for example (I've always been kind of self-conscious about my extremely skinny and muscle lacking body, but I'm actually doing something about it now, which itself is also a huge improvement).
- Summer is flying by, despite every day being pretty much me sitting in front of my computers doing nothing productive.
I apologize that this summer isn't nearly as post-heavy as last summer. I believe there are reasons for that, though (mostly lack of generally interesting stuff to talk about that hasn't been outlined above and lack of boredom at work. Boredom at home leads to me dicking around on the web. Boredom at work led to me writing because I couldn't dick around on the web. Well, led to. Since I don't have work this summer.). I think it's also due to a lack of.. doing things. If I'm in a doing things mood I tend to think about updating the site more often.
Things with Sarah are going pretty damn well, I'd say. We had a couple of misunderstandings or little fight-type things near the beginning of the summer, but definitely nothing too serious. I'm more excited for her to come back than I am for the ferrets to come with her, than I am for everyone else to get back in the city, than I am for James to move out, than I am for.. a lot of things. I try not to let my mind think about.. much beyond the next couple of days, but sometimes it's hard (nothing more than like.. a season or two... I'm having thoughts of us just cuddling up on the couch under a blanket drinking hot drinks and just hanging out in the winter, for example.. perhaps after ice skating or something (I can't ice skate, by the way, Sarah.. It could make for hilarious times)). It's a mental defense I've set up thanks to previous relationship failures. And, really, why think too much about the future? Obviously one has to have goals and stuff for school, work, general life things; but one does not live in the future, one lives in the present, they're living NOW. I try to focus on what's going on now and make the most of it. No point in worrying about the future or lamenting the past (as much as things tend to pop up and try to distract you, it's just something one has to deal with).
It's been really nice to get out of my apartment for hours at a time last week and this. I am going to be kind of sad when the kids leave and I really won't have a need to leave my apartment...
Anyway, four fourty-eight is kind of a late time to finish up a post and go to bed.. My sleep schedule was good for like.. a total of two weeks this summer.. not even consecutive weeks at that...
I dunno, ever since the car sold I've just felt really good about things. That lifted a huge burdon from my mind and now I'm looking around realizing that I have quite a few good things going on. I am immensely happy I asked her out. It almost didn't happen, but I forced myself to NOT think about it and just see what would happen. It was a twofold decision, really... On the one hand, it was kind of like an experiment.. in that whole "can I actually get a date with someone that I barely know? (as opposed to having been a friend for some time)" way, and on the other it was a necessary step forward, to move on. It seems like kind of a weird way to look at it, but that's how I've rationalized it out in the time since. And I've had a lot of time to think about it (four months worth, to be almost exact :razz: ).
Gah, five oh-six. I really need to get to bed.
...I mean it.
Beans at Six
Assignment three for this class consists majorly of learning how to develop Java Beans and minorly of learning NetBeans and JSP. Once I figured out what I was doing, the first two parts were easy. The second two parts look to be as well, I just really wish to get to sleep right about now, but it looks like Sarah has taken the whole bed :/
Based on how I go about it, our one month is on Wednesday (the 29th to the 29th). Her point of view is that our one month is four weeks after the 29th of March. Either way, we ended up celebrating (I guess?) today (Saturday) because doing things on a Wednesday is just kinda lame, since there's school all over the place during the week.
She was alerted to this ice cream place on the north side by the name of iCream by (a friend | TechNews | I don't know for sure, I should pay more attention). The main reason we were eager to check it out was that they offer soy ice cream in addition to regular milk based ice cream. They also offer soy and regular based pudding, yogurt, and sorbet (dunno if the last two have soy variants?). Basically, you pick your base (ice cream, etc.), your flavorings (banana and vanilla for her, mint and vanilla for me), your toppings (she: blueberries, me: oreos), and the color you want (she got green, I forgot to ask for purple). Then you can watch them inject the flavoring extract into the liquid base, stick it in a mixing bowl, and LIQUID NITROGEN. Shit was delicious. Hers tasted like some sort of candy, mine was exactly what I expected, but that does not detract from it at all.
We came back and hung out in my room and watched Firefly and talked and stuff. When she started getting really sleepy I started working on my Java.
I really don't like my writing style in this post. I blame it on general tiredness not having written in a while.
Besides some school stuff here and there.. life is fantastic.
Nicole and I move into the apartment in two weeks. That is going to be hectic and wonderful at the same time.
When did I last update? April 20th? Hawking got better.
Last real update? March 26th? Exactly one month ago? Damn.
I bought two new pairs of jeans at Target the other week. They're both size 28/30, yet one is slightly looser than the other. They're the same brand, even. These are the first pairs of pants that sit at my waist without the aid of a belt. I have always warn 30/30s in the past, often with a belt, but it was never really required. It feels better to just have them sit naturally at my waist, though. It's weird, I like it. I also really really really like the cut of the jeans, the legs look and feel a lot better on me than my other jeans' do. I think I'm finally starting to look decent with these new jeans and my small shirts (instead of baggy khakis and large shirts). I've heard several times that if one is skinny, one should wears clothes that show this, but not in a gross way (i.e. tight pants, skin-tight shirts). I like the direction my wardrobe is taking. It's neat.
What?
Apparently I installed this app called the "Honesty Box" on Facebook a while back and totally forgot about it. I don't see the point of it really, but I got this just today (it says twenty-three hours ago, but the notification popped up today):
I'd date you, if you asked. :P But you never will.
I let the person know that I feel like a jerk because of that.
This is going to bother me.. who is it?
Update 3/21/09 @ 7:40PM CDT: That message was apparently sent on Christmas Eve. That makes it less likely that it's who I thought it was. What confuses me is.. who would send that on Christmas Eve? Who would send that? What bothers me is, why did the app take so long to send me the notification?
In other news, spring break has been great. I beat Resident Evil 4 for the second time on Saturday, I think. Started playing "The Mercenaries" minigame again just yesterday, first time in over two years I think (last time I remember playing it was freshman year). It's a pretty fun distraction from... lots of things. But then I found out I had a java assignment that was given to us on the day of the exam (who does that?) and is due by midnight on the last day of spring break (who does that?!). So, that's what Friday and Saturday's time will be spent doing... yay..
Well, time to get to that. I need to get some work done before dinner, hang out a bit with people after dinner (Mario Kart), and then get some more work done.
Here’s an attempt..
...at what I had typed before stupidity hit.
That last post wasn't actually me, guys. Paul complained...
I feel like shit right now. I don't know why. I think it's school related. I did nothing productive this weekend. I don't want to fail at this, I really don't. This is really bothering me, hence the interjection.
Paul (who, by the way, got accepted into Wayne State's pharmaceutical program, so please refer to him as Dr. Paul S. Douchebag from now on), complained that I hadn't updated in some time (nearly a month by now), and, as a joke, I suggested he write something under the guise of me. Far too many of you bought it. I read it over and thought that the writing style was completely different from mine, and thus found it pretty funny that nobody caught on. Most of it's out of date, but the skittles vodka thing that Ryan did is actually recent (I had talked about it with Paul) and on my list of things to try.
School has been.. actually pretty decent, relatively (I slacked this weekend, yeah... but overall... I'm not too bad off?). My semester consists of a web design class, Project Management, advanced Java, and the holy-crap-you-guys-suck-too-much-to-be-in-school-but-we'll-give-you-another-chance-because-we're-nice-like-that,-don't-fuck-it-up class. Web design so far has mostly been stuff I know, and what I don't know I can damn well pick up easily enough. Project Management shouldn't be too bad, it's mostly simple math and common sense. We've had a little bit of group work and the first assignment was due... today.. :/ The you-suck class is so easy and pointless it's stupid. Java has actually turned out to be REALLY easy. The book and the professor are mostly useless, but a little time with Google and I can finish these coding assignments up in no time (and not in the CTRL+C CTRL+V way). I am really ashamed of myself for not doing this class right the first time. I could have easily managed this class, the other class I took, work, and the other side job no problem during the summer with plenty of time to spare for Mass Effect. But no, I was dumb. It was a learning experience. A learning experience that I will take to heart this summer when I don't take any classes. I really, really should take some classes to catch/keep up, but...
I'm going to be living in an apartment with Nicole over the summer. That's going to cost money. If I work a normal job (preferably the same one I had last summer? I'm gonna shoot an email to Jon sometime near the end of the semester and see if a position would be open for me again.), as well as an on-campus job that Nicole could get me, I should be able to save up enough money for rent to last a while. Law Bulletin paid me $10/hr, and school would pay me $7.75/hr; together it would be amazing. Hell, even if I only got the on-campus job I could still cover normal two person rent (assuming I were able to keep the job during the school year and get a similar amount of hours, we'll see how well that works... this is why I plan on working double during the summer and saving saving saving). During the summer, Nicole's boyfriend James will be staying with us and thus rent will be split three ways, which allows for even more money saving.
The apartment is at 34th and Loews in the Bridgeport area. It's about $995/month and the place looks and feels a hell of a lot better than what we originally thought it would be. I'd say that the bedroom alone is about.. three-fourths the size of my MSV room? The room I share with Tim. There's two bedrooms in the apartment. There's a kitchen. A really nice main room. A back porch, and a small backyard. The place comes with a fridge AND a stove/oven. I like that, food is good. I'm more excited about the whole washer and dryer being included, though! Holy hell, I don't have to pay for laundry beyond detergent anymore!! It's pretty safe to say that Nicole and I are pretty much in love with the place. It was recently redone, with the windows still needing replacement (they will be replaced when the weather is nicer, though). The lady we're getting the apartment from is one of the higher ups in the IPRO program here at school. She was apparently talking to Linda one day (Linda knows everyone) and happened to mention that she was looking to get rid of her apartment (she's moving in with her boyfriend), and Linda knew Nicole and I were looking, and so we were pointed in each other's directions. We had planned on looking at this place... maybe looking at a few other places... but this place was just.. amazing. I'll definitely take pictures when we move in (Nicole had a few requests to take pictures when we visited the first time, but that'd've been a weird invasion of privacy for Ms. Kleppinger).
I really think this will work out well. Hell, I want it to work out and will work to making it work out. Monetarily comes to mind first, but I also mean more of the... social? aspect of it. In the past two and a half years I've found something... weird: Freshmen year, I roomed with a random roommate, Jeremy (not current-Jeremy), and it was really great. We got along well, never really stepped on each other, things were great. Sophomore year, I roomed with Corey, who I had been good friends with for some time and... after a while we started grating on each other. Hell, near the beginning of the year there was almost violence regarding a stupid as hell discussion we were having. We're great friends again, now, though. This year I'm rooming with another random roommate and it's pretty nice. We don't talk... like ever. At least with Jeremy we had some over lapping tastes and talked a bit, but with Tim it's mostly silence. Which is fine. He leaves nearly every weekend, I get the room to myself and thus usually host loud and obnoxious gaming nights with Corey and Phil and Richard or Jeremy or a couple of the girls. It's really a lot of fun. I will miss that, the "hey, let's go walk down the hall and see who's up to what" nature of the dorms. At least in the apartment, the bedrooms are seperate, and if Nicole and I start grating on each other we can at least hide for a bit. That's not a bad deal. But I hope that won't happen. She was one of my closest friends last year before we dated. It.. was kind of weird afterwards, but I'm pretty sure we've both talked it out and that there is nothing weird anymore.
She's definitetly one of my best friends again. She really helped a lot with the Jacki thing. She and Jeremy (current-Jeremy). This is why I think living with her will either be really bad or really good. I was (and still am, mind you) good friends with Corey and then we roomed and it sucked (I don't think it helped that I a) was far too sick to take care of myself at one point and stunk to high hell, and b) tried to throw humor into him coming out to me... I still feel REALLY bad for that... That can NOT have helped the situation at ALL. I mean, things are cool now.. we all joke about it, he does most of all... but... damn. That was insensitive of me.). The current order of close friends goes something like this: Nicole at the top. Jeremy very, very slightly below her. Phil and Corey together below them. These are the most important friends in my life right now. These are the people I go to in order to talk about things or take my mind off things. If living with Nicole makes things sour between us (because we'll see so much of each other), I don't know what I'll do. I am very worried about this.
Best part, the apartment is cheaper than staying in MSV for the summer and Fall/Spring. They raised the normal prices, so it's safe to say that they raised the summer prices. Currently, for next school year, MSV is about.. $5,200? Last summer it cost about $2,X00 to stay in the dorms. It's about $6,000 (rounding up to $1000, not including utilities.. :/), for me, for a full year in the apartment. Assuming James stays for three months, that comes down to $5,500 for the whole year. This should be manageable. I plan to take out as much money as I have been for these past three years of schooling (including room and board) and just receive a massive refund check that I can then apply to living in the apartment. Right now, the money that I owe later in life is not an issue. The issue is staying in school and doing well and living semi-comfortably. If that means I owe a ton of money later on, so be it. Student loans are common, people often pay them off for a long time after they get out of school. I'm not worried about that. I'm worried about doing well enough in school to get a job that will let me pay them off. I'm worried about living right now and learning how to live on my own so that it's not a shock when I enter the real world later on. College is not a time to learn just academics, it's a time to learn life. Making this apartment work is just another course in living. I really want this to work. I should go finish the previous paragraph before I forget what I was going to say.
I originally told Mom that I would be taking at least one class this summer. I really don't think I should. I really think that I need to just work my butt off this summer and save up some money. I will soon have a place to pay for. It will no longer be one lump sum of money that I never see paying for housing and food. I will now actually have to earn the money and see it leave my bank/pocket. I will now have to be fiscally responsible. It's time to grow up a little.
I am really excited for this. This was the next big thing on my to-do list. The last was "get a real job." Granted, I couldn't hold it due to school, but working at Law Bulletin last summer was really nice and allowed me to prove to myself that I WAS capable of landing a real job in a real work place doing real work. I know I can do that again; the tech sector hasn't been hit as hard as other industries with this recession thing.
I had "The or" typed here when my music went all wonky and by the time I got back to it I have no idea what word I was going to type that beings with "or."
Oh.
The original post that got eaten mentioned that I had nothing to write about, really... Well, you know how that goes. Current word count is 1900.
I am learning to mouse left handed because of pain in my right hand/arm/shoulder from these desks and the height of my chair in regards (they're far too low to the ground, I prefer to tower above the desk and rest my arm on the table instead of propping it up on the table). My mouse is not made for left-handed/universal mousing
I Need Some Work
Update (09:37 1/25/08): I might be doing 33rd Street Productions' website, we'll see what pans out come next board meeting. (33rd is IIT's theatre group.)
Update (17:11 1/25/08): Becky and Aunt Marilyn have both come to me with website propositions. If anything, I could just do one for the class project and then do the other ones over the summer or something (again, most likely for free since I would still be building my portfolio). Thanks for the interest, guys!
Update (01:35 1/26/08 Happy Birthday too me): Add Linda's dad to the list as well.
The Request: Anyone need a website? Or know someone that does?
For my ITM461 class we are going to be doing a big project throughout the course of the semester, adding to it as we learn new things, and the professor wants this project to be for someone or a group that needs either a presence on the web, or a better looking / more functional presence on the web.
During the semester, I will be learning:
- HTML and CSS
- Graphics, design, and navigation
- Javascript and AJAX, javascript frameworks
- Google web services, Search Engine Optimization , analytics
- Small amount of PHP
- "Other fun stuff" (I do not know what this means, but the professor really knows what she is doing so I don't doubt it will be useful and cool information)
The professor has said that if we are interested in something beyond the scope of the course and would like to try it out in our assignments or projects, that we would get the equivalent of bonus points (she doesn't have a grading scale, per se). Personally, I'm interested in learning more than just a "small amount" of PHP, so that would definitely be one area I would be expanding upon (perhaps in relation to MySQL databases). She has also stated that she would ensure us not only a functionally sound website, but also a well-designed (read: pretty; or handsome for those of you who don't like "pretty" things) website that will not turn off customers and clients alike.
What would the cost be to you, the client? Zero dollars. I am doing this as a class assignment, but more importantly this would be the first real piece upon which I would feel comfortable building a portfolio. I do not feel it would be right to charge a customer money when they have no idea what the quality of my work will be (this website was not designed by me, it was a free theme I downloaded months and months ago; when I get more confident I will redo this to reflect my own abilities). Besides, you, the customer, get a free website and I get a free addition to my portfolio. It works out well for both of us.
There is only one "problem" that potential clients may have an issue with: The project will be completed somewhere around the end of April or the beginning of May. Since this is a semester long project and we will be applying what we learn in class to the project, it is inappropriate to say that the project will be done before I have learned everything that I need to complete said project.
About me: I have been doing web design in bursts since I was roughly ten years old. I am currently a twenty-one year old (well, I will be twenty-one two days after this is posted; it is just easier to round up at this point) junior at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago. Because I have been fooling with web design for so long, I am incredibly comfortable with playing around with various tools and technologies as well as trying new things. I enjoy learning about new techniques on my own, but other aspects of my life have been pulling me away from web design, so this class is a great excuse to get back into it. The way that my major and minor are taking me, I would most likely end up working in some sort of systems administration type role. Systems administration does sound like a neat job: to be responsible for making sure possibly hundreds of machines and servers are not going to blow up just sounds fun; but to be able to freelance web design for clients on the side (or eventually as my main source of income) is my ultimate dream. This is the kind of work that I love.
If you or anyone you know are interested, please contact me via one of the following methods:
- Email: satoshi@sugardeath.net
- AOL Instant Messenger: itstonylol
- Google Talk: satoshi1@gmail.com (this should work no problem, since I log onto Google Talk with Pidgin using the Jabber protocol (since it's the same thing in the end), but I've never actually talked to anyone on Google Talk :razz: )
- Jabber/XMPP: satoshi@sugardeath.net
If a phone number is required, please contact me through one of the previous methods first as I do not feel comfortable putting my number on the public web.
Again, if you don't have a need for a website, but know someone that does, please send them to this post.
Thanks,
Tony