HTC > Nokia

"Hello Blog, It has been a while."

"Oh, you know, not a whole lot. Just hanging out; living the life. Doing whatever."

"Yeah, I know I really should study more for the GRE. It is just really hard to get motivated to study something that I will never use again in my life. It is like learning to jump through one big, flaming hoop for one big show, then I will never do it again in my life."

So the last publication here was on the day that I broke my phone. It was a horrible day. I subsequently spent two weeks without a quality phone. At least T Mobile had a loaner program and I wasn't completely lost.

So here is the one reason I wish I had an ipad: I am currently about twenty feet away from my computer, yet because of the ipod touch, I can still write this on the computer. Is that worth the $600 for the ipad? Hell no. I am hoping that there is a killer android tablet that comes out before long. Rumors indicate that google is working on one with verizon, which pleases me not. Apple did it right by introducing a wifi version and a 3G version. I am afraid that you won't have a wifi version with this google/verizon pair up. Since I can use my nexus as a wifi hot spot, I have zero need for a data connection beyond wifi. Also, the nexus is basically a tablet computer itself. Maybe I should just invest in a new laptop.

It is Tuesday, which means tacos. I may or may not do an encore of my disappearing lime trick.

Here are some pictures for your viewing pleasure:

But it comes with a free frogurt! That's good! The frogurt is also cursed. That's bad! But it comes with a free choice of toppings! That's good!

Alright, these are the cool stories that have happened as of late:

I went climbing 4-ish times last week. It was pretty spectacular.nthrope last one was even a multi-pitch climb where I had to belay Jon and Dave from the top. Way different. Way fun. One of the other times held a great story which will be told in conversation form...

(Jon climbing, me belaying, Dave wandering)
"HEY GUYS! THERE'S POT OVER HERE!!" - Dave
"Really? Like, just growing?" -Jon
"No, in Dixie cups. Five of them." -Dave
"You sure? Bring one over. I want to see if it is" -Brian
*walk, walk, walk*
"Yup, that's pot." -Brian
"What should we do with it?" -Jon
Then all sorts of ideas evolved, none of which I shall post here. The final idea was great. Lets leave it at that.

We had a poker game on Friday night. Me, Derek, Jon, Mike, Maile, TJ, Kelli, and TJ's baby. Yeah, they brought the baby. Further, TJ brought World of Warcraft and "ran a bot" during the entire poker game. It wasn't that he was running the bot, but more of the fact that he was doing all Kelli's work (betting, blinds, shuffling, dealing...) since she had the baby, and that he was actually playing WoW more than letting it just run. Way frustrating. Also, the game was 8.5 hours long. We finished at 5:30 in the morning. I won, and it became worth it. Derek would have won if he had waited for Mike and I to call his "all in" bet before showing us that he had four of a kind...

Froyo (AKA Android 2.2) "came out" yesterday. This means that somebody found where Google was harboring it on their site, gave the world access to it, and now we don't have to wait for the OTA update. Now it can act as wifi hotspot, tethered modem, supports flash (except hulu [bastards...]) and all sorts of other bells and whistles. It is really sleek now. It runs faster and is just continuing its overall awesomeness. Last night I started downloading stuff over its wifi-ness and it got about 1.8 gigs in 3 hours. Not great, but gets the job done. What do you expect from a phone anyway?

My sleep schedule is broken. I was up until about 6 this morning, then got up at 9. I slept until 3 yesterday afternoon after going to sleep again at about 6 am. I got up at around 10 the day before (which was early), after going to bed at 4 the night before. To recap...

If I was going to bed at 10 every night, and waking up at 6 every morning, these are the time zones I lived in:

Thursday night: went to sleep in Vanuatu

Friday morning: woke up in Samoa

Friday night: went to sleep in Japan

Saturday morning: woke up in the Philippines

Saturday night: went to sleep in Japan (again)

Sunday morning: woke up in Hawaii

None of this accounts for daylight savings time. I just counted timezones. It seems like I've been spending a lot of time in the pacific.

Bombachus

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• There's an XKCD about the shifting timezones thing (which is where the idea originated) but I can't seem to find it.

Show Me Your Moves!

I have come to the realization that blog posts are replacing facebook updates as I catalogue my life. Here is how it goes up to now:

Took two finals today. Thermo and Aircraft. I did well with one, I got routed by the other. Although thermo wasn't exactly my intended course of study, I have come to realize that I am naturally pretty good with it. I got an A- in my first thermo class (last spring) and I will likely get an A- in this one too. Aircraft... I will likely get a B- or so, which isn't bad considering that the teacher was a fool who never taught us anything useful in the class. Everything I learned, I gleaned from arduous hours of homework as I battled to comprehend what the hell was going on.

I finish the semester's battle on Tuesday.

Right now, I am waiting for David to finish his business so that we can go to Walmart. He has to buy some shirts for Disney World and doesn't want to spend a load on DC/name-brand crap. My favorite shirts are the few that I have with no logos/icons/anything on them. I'm no slave to society. Speaking of which...

Oh, the cylon is great. I'm pretty sure that Zeus descended from Mount Olympus, created LeBron James, programmed and compiled Pandora, and promptly went back. I stream Pandora roughly 6 hours a day, which over a month comes to 180 or so hours. Recently, more attention has been paid to rating (thumbs up or thumbs down) the music that it selects for me. Like SkyNet, it is slowly learning who I am and what I approve of. Every time I add a new artist to my current "Radio Station," I have to make sure that it doesn't pollute my ears with garbage, but it has been doing really well lately. There is usually only one or so "Who do you think you are?" moments per hour.

Alright, so we went to Walmart and then to Hillier's. We had another "Finals Olympics" event. Hillier and I purchased some herring filets and sardines. The event was simply to eat them. Everybody who did won a gold medal. I won; Hillier won; Dave gets an honorable mention.

Current medal count

1. Brian: 3 Golds
2. Hillier: 2 Golds, 1 Bronze
3. Isaac: 1 Silver
4. Forbes: 1 Plastic Case with Poo inside

Bombachus

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Nexus Post

Right now I'm laying on my floor waiting for it to become 2:30 so that dwill and I can go get fish tacos from Rubio's for half price. Also, I've come to realize that I can't "compose" posts from my phone. I have to HTML edit them in. Dumb. I wonder if I can upload pictures...
Okay, I cant embed from my phone, but here...


If it worked, its Mark tickling a bear up by the jazz game.

Xdest = T0Sgen = T0(se - si + qout/Tb,out...

Well, I'm sitting at school, with not much to do again. I've done all my homework that is due through Monday. I don't really know what to do with myself, so I'm sitting in the computer lab, writing a blog post.

Why is it so easy to get behind when it is so hard to get ahead?

Here is a picture of Liv when she discovered that there was no Big Mac in a box clearly labeled to contain one.

I've got a load of tests this upcoming week. I've started studying for my Aircraft one, where I'm unequivocally screwed. The beginning of the semester was all differentials and crap, and I'm "not good" at those. So, I guess I'll have to get good at them between now and next Friday. Also, a kinematics test which involves a bunch of computer programming. Not excited for either. Also, a lab next week in Fluids that won't be fun. Also, another Thermo lab and a Thermo test the following Monday. Also, school isn't as fun as I was hoping this semester.

There is a robocop sitting to my left. I took a picture and was going to upload it, but then decided that I'd best not upload a picture of a guy as he is sitting adjacent to me. I've sent it to Picasa (since I'm breaching my Flickr limit) so that I can upload it next time... if I remember. I likely won't.

In my efforts to absorb as much data as possible through the cylon, I've found a 2 hour long youtube video of Majora's Mask. Oh, I don't watch it. I just let it run all day yesterday as I had my phone plugged in. Since 2/10/10, I've used 305 MB. Not too bad. I kinda want to see the data bill for last month, but I can't find it online yet.

I'm gonna try to be productive for a few minutes. We'll see how it goes.

Nothing to do at School

So, I've run out of homework to do. I don't have enough stuff with me to get my Monday Fluids done; I don't have my Aircraft syllabus with me, so I don't even know what the assignment for Monday is. I've done my Thermo assignment for Monday, and the Kinematics assignment for next Friday hasn't been posted yet. I don't have any tests or quizzes next week that I need to really study for, so I'm at a loss. I still have two hours between me and my next class, so I've plugged in the cylon and I'm just listening to Pandora.

tan(previous paragraph):
Pandora is great. First off, it is free. You can stream loads and loads of music and not pay for it. I've got an "Anberlin Radio" that I've had running for about the last week and a half non-stop. Secondly, it lets you just suck 3g data like mad, which is beneficial if you're trying to consume as much as possible since you pay 30 bucks a month for a new data communication plan.

Since I've been coding a lot of stuff this semester, I've been wanting to make some sort of an ascii signature image that I can embed in the code of each assignment. Any suggestions, right now, the winner (in my mind) is Boba Fett. I haven't started working on it yet, and I don't think I can make it huge. I know that there are all sorts of ascii image converters on the internet, but I'm going to make it myself.

I went down to Hillier's last night to kick it with him an Isaac. I haven't seen either of them for about a week and change. We went to Walmart and I purchased some cookies and later realized I should have purchased Cheez-its. The cookies got old after about 5. Cheez-its never get old.

Every time my phone starts to run out of energy, it gives me a little status report of how the batter was used. So it turns out that more than 50% of it is getting sucked up by the screen, which makes sense. Today I was going to try to keep the screen off as long as possible to see if it lasts longer, but decided that I was just going to hook it into the USB on the computer here to feed it instead. Back up to 100% now, so I should be able to consume more data today.

Slight entertainment for the day comes via Tom. This video was taken last May when we went to Disneyland. Tom was in the bathroom and somebody got the ingenious idea to take a picture of Greg's bare ass with Tom's phone and make it his background. The deed was committed, and here is a video of the result. As with the previous post, I don't know if the embedded video will work, so here is a link.

Cylon

I was going to do the new post from the new phone, but decided that it would be too much work. Last Tuesday, I got a Nexus One, which is glorious beyond comprehension. Here is a video uploaded from it.

Gotta get back to homework... kinda...

*Edit: If you can't click on the video, try this link