I got a few requests to explain how my classes actually went yesterday because the vlog didn’t exactly show or describe any of my classes. It did have a short segment at the end where Ed was complaining about his speech instructor, but that was it.

For those of you who are not already aware, I am taking Abnormal Psychology, Shakespeare, and Natural Hazards & Disasters.

My psychology course has not introduced anything new yet. We haven’t even touched on anything specifically related to abnormal psychology, and the stuff we’re learning now can be deduced with a fundamental knowledge of science. I’m pretty sure this “advanced” psychology course at my community college is being taught at a lower level than my introductory basic psychology course at my university was taught.

My Shakespeare class has been a little odd so far. The instructor heavily emphasizes the Socratic teaching method and uses a textbook that he himself wrote. The only problem is, the textbook really isn’t much of a textbook, but a collection of essays he wrote, Shakespeare sonnets, and quizzes he made. He also said that Shakespeare was meant to be seen, not read, so we watched the movie version of Macbeth for a large chunk of our class period.

And finally, my physical science class is an online class that has all the information available right from the beginning of the semester. We have a textbook that we had to purchase as well as PowerPoint presentations that our instructor has uploaded onto the website. It’s convenient that we get to go at our own pace; I finished the introductory assignment and read through the first PowerPoint so far, and I don’t really have that strong of an opinion about it yet.

Picture of the Day

This Bush is Not a Hedge

Why this person thought it was a good idea to trim this bush like a hedge, I do not know.

(Taken with an Apple iPod Touch 4th Generation)

My first day of class for summer 2011 at my local community college starts tomorrow morning (for those of you south of the equator, that’s winter 2011, or in general, intersession 2011). I still have to buy a handful of textbooks, activate my computer account for wireless Internet, and find out how the building is laid out so I can find my classes, so my buddy and I are going about an hour early.

I can see the questions bubbling up in your minds, so I’ll answer them now.

I still have to buy a handful of textbooks from the college bookstore because there were a handful of books on Amazon where the shipping costs were greater than the actual cost of the book, and it would take far too long for the book to arrive. I would save about $10 by buying the books in the bookstore rather than on Amazon simply because of the shipping costs. These books are Shakespeare plays and cost about a dollar each anyway.

I have to activate my computer account before using wireless Internet on my iPod Touch (which I use significantly more than my cell phone for communica­tions) because you need to have your first account log-in on a wired computer in a computer lab; only then will your log-in information enable you to receive wireless Internet.

The buddy I’m going with is Ed Lam – if you’ve been around since the beginning of 2011, you might remember him from a few of my videos. He’s the other Asian person who likes to film my vlogs for me. He’s taking classes at the local community college as well, and his class schedule timing matches mine exactly.

This means that I’m going to have to wake up at about 6:30 AM tomorrow morning and leave my house by about 7:30 AM. I like to sleep, so I’m going to go to bed now.

Quote of the Day

Justin White: ACT tomorrow, gotta get up at 6

Parkzer: That’s earlier than Rebecca Black

Picture of the Day

My Dog’s Not Dead

I got this card in the mail today from my pet’s veterinarian office showing sympathy about the death of my dog.

The only problem is, my dog isn’t dead.

As a matter of fact, he’s quite healthy, energetic, and alive.

(I censored out the signatures so you guys can’t Google the names and find out which vet I go to.)

The Daily Post at WordPress.com

Topic #152: What’s the stupidest thing you’ve heard this week? Maybe online, or a work, or from a friend or family member?

The stupidest thing I’ve heard this week is actually something that I heard about today, and it’s contained in this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PcV4LVhSRLg

If you’re really impatient, you can skip the first 12 seconds, but the rest of the video is worth watching in its entirety.

Basically, a group of people manage to come across a hatchet. Apparently, when deciding “what should we do with this axe,” they decided, “let’s go steal that bike locked to that tree.”

They proceed to literally chop down the tree to get a hold of the bike. One of the men pull the bike off from the tree trunk and rides it around a little bit, realizes that it’s not really that good of a bike, and throws it back down before leaving.

I’m a bit short of time today, so I’m going to keep the blog post short. I have to wake up early tomorrow morning and don’t want to stay up much longer.

Picture of the Day

Writing Your Name Fail

Thank you for writing your name legibly so I can actually do this survey for you.

Oh wait…

(Taken with an Apple iPod Touch 4th Generation)

Earlier this afternoon, I opened the garage to find a tiny aquatic turtle sitting on the outside edge of our garage where it meets the driveway.

My dad decided to bring it inside and make it a temporary home because he said that this was a domestic turtle that probably escaped from somewhere and most likely wouldn’t be able to survive very long.

For lunch, my parents and I went to a Mexican restaurant with a Restaurant.com coupon. We ended up ordering too much food; this was what was left over from our meal.

During the evening, I did my second session of doing martial arts again (the first being last Thursday, if you missed my tweet or blog post about it). I thought I was better prepared for this session because I already did one session last week, but I was equally as tired as last week.

-__-

In other news, the Dell replacement laptop that I got already has a small problem. The headphone jack is either damaged or isn’t wired very well, so everytime I plug in external speakers or headphones, I hear static. I had this problem with my old Dell Inspiron 1764 as well and had to get it fixed, and my new Dell Inspiron 17R (N7010) has the same problem.

Also, for some reason, Dell said that they would send me a 9-cell battery separate from my laptop rather than just taking the 6-cell battery from this laptop, swapping it out with a 9-cell battery, then sending it to me in the same package. I was thinking about just using the 9-cell battery from my Inspiron 1764, but the battery slots are drastically different and my 9-cell battery doesn’t fit.

Keeping Track

Local Disk: 45.8 of 410 GB
External Hard Drive: 74.3 of 931 GB (+2.8 GB)

My replacement laptop from Dell arrived via FedEx today, and I’ve been spending a good chunk of the day today configuring everything on my new laptop. My previous laptop was a Dell Inspiron 1764, and the replacement I received is a Dell Inspiron 17R (N7010).

Spec-wise, this one is noticeably better – it has a slightly better processor and two more gigabytes of memory. I also installed a 64-bit operating system onto this one, which leads me to my tip of the day.

If your computer or laptop has more than 3 GB of memory (RAM), use a 64-bit operating system.

I thought the most memory 32-bit operating systems could handle was 4 GB, not 3 GB, so I had a 32-bit operating system installed on my previous laptop. I realized today that my laptop detected all 4 GB but could only use 3 GB, which meant that for the past 9 months, 1 GB of memory was just sitting in my laptop idly doing nothing.

I also installed Ubuntu 11.04 on a separate partition and actually got it to work. I remember trying to install Ubuntu a handful of years ago, but gave up because I couldn’t get the Internet to work. I had the same problem with the Internet not cooperating very much, but I somehow managed to get it to work. I’m actually blogging from Ubuntu right now.

In other news, it was really hot today, and the fact that my room is on the second floor and I have two laptops running at the same time with processor-intensive tasks like compressing .iso files to .daa files to save space on my external hard drive on one computer while installing tons of software on the other made it worse. If you want some fried eggs, feel free to stop by my room and crack a raw egg over my desk; I’m sure it’s hot enough in here to cook it.

I’m going to head off to bed early tonight; I have some work to do tomorrow, and I’m waiting for another package. I will be at the family business tomorrow for a good chunk of the day, so I’m sure I’ll find plenty of time tomorrow to post some more content on my blog.

And, no “Keeping Track” section today – I’ll do that when I’m done setting up my new laptop.