Summer Classes Start Tomorrow

by   •   General
 

This post is over 15 years old and may contain information that is incorrect, outdated, or no longer relevant.
My views and opinions can change, and those that are expressed in this post may not necessarily reflect the ones I hold today.
 

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.

 

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I’m Not Dead Either

by   •   Daily Post, What I'm Watching
 

This post is over 15 years old and may contain information that is incorrect, outdated, or no longer relevant.
My views and opinions can change, and those that are expressed in this post may not necessarily reflect the ones I hold today.
 

 

What I’m Watching

Continuing my trend from last summer of watching movies starring Kristen Bell, I watched a 2010 movie titled You Again.

Kristen Bell plays the role of Marni, a young woman who is successful now but had a terrorizing high school career. She was the acne-faced girl with braces who everyone liked to make fun of. Years after leaving high school, she finds out that her older brother is planning on marrying the girl who bullied her the most during high school, and retaliates to help her brother find out what kind of person his future wife really is.

Although this movie wasn’t as attention-holding or thought-provoking as other movies I’ve watched, it was still a good laid-back comedy. It reminded me of the antics of high school and gave a humorous representation of both the bully and the victim’s side of the conflict. As the movie progresses, we find out that Marni isn’t the only woman who has had problems with the family of her older brother’s fiancée, which is where the title You Again comes from.

 

The Daily Post at WordPress.com

Topic #155: If you knew you were going to die in 20 days, what would change?

Quite obviously, if I knew I was going to die in a specific short period of time, I would no longer live to prepare for the future and instead start living to prepare for my death. I would make sure that everything under my responsibility would end up having a smooth transition to someone else after my departure.

On a slightly related note, I actually don’t really like being asked what I would do if I was going to die in a specific amount of time. I’ve been asked this question so much that I already know exactly what I would do if something like this were ever to happen. In addition, thinking about this is quite an unoptimistic way to live – and that’s coming from someone who takes a relatively pessimistic approach to everything in general. I think that thinking excessively about your own death or demise will distract and impair you from achieving what you could or what you want to do.

 

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My Dog’s Not Dead

by   •   General
 

This post is over 15 years old and may contain information that is incorrect, outdated, or no longer relevant.
My views and opinions can change, and those that are expressed in this post may not necessarily reflect the ones I hold today.
 

 

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.

 

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Writing Your Name Fail

by   •   General
 

This post is over 15 years old and may contain information that is incorrect, outdated, or no longer relevant.
My views and opinions can change, and those that are expressed in this post may not necessarily reflect the ones I hold today.
 

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

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)

 

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Flying Roof Shingles

by   •   What I'm Reading
 

This post is over 15 years old and may contain information that is incorrect, outdated, or no longer relevant.
My views and opinions can change, and those that are expressed in this post may not necessarily reflect the ones I hold today.
 

Fun fact of the day: I got attacked by a flying roof shingle because of the high winds during the tornado watch in Illinois.

 

What I’m Reading

Within a day of finishing Snakehead, the seventh novel in the Alex Rider series, I also finished Crocodile Tears, the eighth novel.

The fourteen-year-old spy Alex Rider promised at the end of the previous novel that he would never get involved in another mission with MI6 again. Unfortunately, that ended up not becoming the case after a reporter finds out too much about Alex Rider and shows up at his house, prompting Alex to go to MI6 for assistance. In exchange for protection, Alex has to do one small mission for MI6 – to go into a genetic engineering plant during his school trip and seize information from a computer.

Alex was told that this would be a piece of cake, but it ended up becoming complicated, especially after this mission got tied in with a completely different and unexpected criminal. Eventually Alex ends up thousands of miles away from home, and once again, must save the world.

Like any other Alex Rider novel, Alex encounters a series of unbelievably fortunate events that helps him get through this mission. If you’ve been keeping up with the Alex Rider novels, this novel is definitely worth reading.

 

Picture of the Day

Strawburry Fruit Snacks

Strawburry Fruit Snacks

Hey look, I’m eating strawburry fruit snacks.

@Strawburry17

(Taken with an Apple iPod Touch)

 

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I Don’t Want to Invite a Friend

by   •   What I'm Reading
 

This post is over 15 years old and may contain information that is incorrect, outdated, or no longer relevant.
My views and opinions can change, and those that are expressed in this post may not necessarily reflect the ones I hold today.
 

Just letting you know, I went to FedEx to send out my old laptop back to Dell to complete the exchange.

I haven’t received any emails, tweets, or messages reminding me to do that, but I’m just putting that out there, just in case. Because apparently at least one person is already stalking my to-do list closely enough that they know when I receive particular charges for payments (read yesterday’s blog post if you don’t know what I’m talking about).

Yes, I’m still a little intrigued about that.

In other news, as I was tidying up my GMail, I noticed that the “Invite a Friend” box is still there in my sidebar. I remember trying to get rid of it a long time ago. The solution I found was to send out all my invitations, but that only ended up working for about a day, and it came back.

I tried Googling it again but didn’t find any obvious answers except for installing more Firefox hacks (which is what I’m trying to avoid – the reason I was trimming down my GMail is to make it load faster and use up less memory).

If you know how to get rid of that invitation box (such as emailing Google Support a top-secret code, which is unlikely), then you should share it with me. If you’re a Google employee working in GMail development (which is also unlikely but would be awesome if a Google employee was reading my blog), then you should implement an option for people to get rid of that box if they’re not interested in inviting people.

 

What I’m Reading

Earlier today I finished reading the seventh book in the Alex Rider series, Snakehead, by Anthony Horowitz.

If you’re unfamiliar with the series, Alex Rider is a fourteen-year-old British spy working for MI6, the Secret Intelligence Service. He keeps telling himself that he will end his involvement with MI6, but he somehow keeps on getting dragged into more missions, forcing him to risk his life to save others and find important information about criminals’ plans.

This book starts off right after Ark Angel ends – Alex has landed back down to Earth from space and is recovering in Australia near where he landed. His plan was to fly straight back home to the United Kingdom and live a normal life as a normal schoolboy, but the Australian government picked up Alex and asked him to do a favor.

Alex intends on rejecting the offer, but there’s a twist. If Alex was to take this mission, he would get an opportunity to meet up with his godfather and possibly find out more about the death of his parents. Simply because of his desire to learn more about his dead family, Alex agrees to go on the mission.

By the end of the novel, Alex finds out exactly how his parents died, and it’s not at all how he expected.

I chose to read this book obviously because I’ve been keeping up with the Alex Rider novels since the original Stormbreaker and wanted to read the novels through until the end of the series. I still think Alex Rider is unrealistically lucky and probably the most clever teenager in the world, and this trend continues on through Snakehead. This book was targeted at young adults so it was less sophisticated than other books I’ve been reading lately, and it was nice to dive into an action-packed novel for a change. If you’ve liked the previous Alex Rider books, then this one will definitely not let you down, and will answer many questions raised from the previous novels.

 

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