Category: Blog

Orientation

I just realized I still haven’t posted about orientation at UConn.

It really wasn’t anything special, and thats probably why. Most of the time our group of almost all guys (engineering major, what do you expect) were hitting on our orientation leader.

I spent most of my time playing cards, or killing time talking about computers.

In our whole orientation group, there were only two people (myself included) who had declared Computer Science as their major. This could make things interesting if it turns out to be a rather small major.

Uh, what else.

The cafe has an ice cream machine, which made me happy. And the Co-op has a 30″ Apple Display which made my day.

Ya, thats really it. Thats what you’ve waited a week to hear. Wonderful, isn’t it?

SJ Screening

Would something like this be feasible?

Getting SJers together to see a movie opening day or soon after. War of the Worlds is released today, which is why I had been thinking about this. Obviously, its much much too short of notice for this movie, but would something like this be possible for future movies?

How many people would be interested in something like this?

UConn

I’ll be at the UConn Freshmen Orientation Thurs and Fri this week.
No worries, somjuan will still update.
Just know if the site decides to bite the dust, I won’t be around to fix it.
Thats all.

Done. And done.

Well, we had graduation yesterday. Nothing too special, really.

I’m sorry I couldn’t hang around for longer and chat with people, but my family pulled me away for a barrage of photos. eh

Its 6:20 in the morning, and I’ve been awake since 7 am yesterday morning. :( This is gonna screw up my whole week’s sleep cycle. Oh well. Not like I was actually going to do anything this week anyway.

I really need to get to sleep. Joe wrote this really cool paragraph in his last blog entry, but when I tried to read it, my brain rejected it. I’ll try again later.

I’m gonna try to go to sleep, but its light outside, and only getting brighter, so this may prove to be difficult.

We’ll see.

I’ve said that if anyone was ever to see the inside of my mind, they wouldn’t find any gears whirring away, but they’d see a little man, running in a hampster wheel, and he’s responsible for everything. Well, that lil dude is on break right now, so I’m kinda here, kinda not. I’m amazed I was able to drive home as well as I did.

So I won’t be seeing a lot of people from my senior class for quite a long time. Some I’ll be sad to see go, others I could really care less about.

I don’t really care all that much since I know that the people who I want to keep in touch with, I will. Does that make sense? Grammar + morning = bad.

If I can’t fall asleep, I’m really in trouble. Although, sitting back in my chair, I don’t really think that’ll be a problem.

I might stay up until 7 just so I can make it a clean 24 hours. Or something.

I need a yawning smilie.

—-

I had forgotten I wanted to post my favorite quote over graduation.
Right after we were finished, everyone was walking around, congratulating each other, and I found Ben S.

“I hope I don’t have to kill you. That would suck. Just don’t piss off the government or anything.”

I thought this was pretty funny, since he would be going into the military, and he knew that I’m going to eventually take over the world.

Blast from the past

Whoa. In the mail today I got a letter I sent myself in 7th grade. I remember we wrote these in our language arts class with Ms Lyons. Very, very, very cool.

Oddly, my handwriting hasn’t improved. Thankfully my spelling has.

(here it is – exactly as it is written)

6-8-00

Dear 12th grade John

Hidy-Ho! Do you remember your sloppy hand writing that no one could read? And how you were such a bad speller? And how you anoyed the crap out of Matt Augeri asking him how to spell almost every word in the world? Do you remember listening to the radio at night, trying to go to sleep? How you liked Action and Funny movies? How you always watched cartoons whenever you came home from school? And how you dwelled on Roller Coaster Tycoon and 3D Home Archetict on the computer? By the way, I hope you have a laptop or at least a Palm Piolet. Do you remember Eric N. or Michael D. or Ryan Santi? What about Nate Simmons? How Ryan always acted like a tard? The musical minute? 7th grade lunch? The never ending destruction and mutalation of gummy bears, apple sauce, and other assoreted foods? Do you remember L.A. class with Ms. Lyons who is making you write this letter at this very moment? What do you remember about Math (ack!) with Mrs. Sones? Or science with Mr. Greenlaw or geography with Ms. Lepo? I’m hoping that you have made at least Honors every year. You should be at Xavier if all goes well! I hope you remember 7th grade and have a girlfriend. Once you gradiuate, don’t forget, you are aiming for M.I.T. In this letter you will find signatures on a piece of paper in this envelope. Good luck at collage!

With support always,
John

And sure enough, in the letter on a piece of paper in the envelope, there was a paper with signatures from 7th grade.

Man, I totally let my 7th grade self down. I was supposed to have honors every year, and be on my way to MIT with a laptop and a girlfriend.

What happened?

Well, the internet happened. In fact, only three months and three days after I wrote this letter, I sealed my fate. On September 11th, 2000, I registered on my first online message boards. MOTL. That is the day from where I start counting my time on the internet.

Thankfully, I remember almost everything from that letter. The one thing I don’t completely remember is the musical minute. I’m sure I’ll get it eventually.

If nothing else, I’m happy I don’t say ‘Hidy-Ho!’ anymore. (at least not as much)

A big Thank You to Ms Lyons (or whoever sent this out) !

Aloha,

Juan Way

I figured I’d post a more detailed description of this event.

The idea is we get as many people as possible to voyage across the country in a convoy. Obviously something like this will require money.

One way we’ve considered funding it is corporate sponsorship (free stuff). We can probably pull this off because of a number of reasons. We’ll be using a mobile internet connection service (Verison offers one right now, but in 4 years, who knows) that gets a decent connection via satellite. They’d love someone to do something awesome with it that could give them some good press. (so internet connection: free)

Since we’ll have internet connection, we’ll have webcams strapped to random parts of the Flagship, and probably some of the people with us to film it, since it is such an epic event.

They’ll be a centralized website for all this stuff, and, being the poor college kids we are, I’ll put out an offer for product placement. Basically, if anyone wants to send us something (someone like Lays wants us to only eat their chips or whatever, they send us some free). Basically they give us stuff, they get airtime. Simple as that. (snackage, maybe some other nifty stuff: free)

It also turns out buses are pretty cheap. Who knew. I took a quick glance on eBay, and they’re decently priced.

[Most of that deals with how we’ll be actually pulling this off. Don’t forget the awesomeness that will take place once we’re underway]

I’ll be setting up a small wireless network around the bus so other cars can go online as well. Maybe we’ll even get some LANing in.

We hit whatever destinations we want to between here and San Francisco (our final destination). It’d be cool if we could time the trip so we could hit a couple conventions or even Burning Man on the way.

This is all, of course, best case scenario. The final trip will probably be much different from the one described here. We’ll see how it turns out.

Totally open to any suggestions, too. Peter suggested applying for a grant, which would be cool, because although buses are cheap, its still a good grand or so.

Thoughts?

My Plans

Alright, check this – I’m actually going to blog something about me. Not about the weather(still too hot), not about the site – about me.

Wow, I know, its crazy.

Anywise. for a while now, my long term plans for after college have been to travel across the country living out of my truck/van. Its totally internet capable, and made of pure awesome (seeing as how it doesn’t exist yet, you’ll have to take my word for it).

But there is obviously the issue of how to fund such a mission. So, SomJuan.com, you need to make me a millionaire. I know, I know, you’re only a year old, but you have time. And potential. Yes, AdSense hasn’t even made us $10, but I’m confident that you can see a way to win.

If any of you want a ride in my golden van of awesome, you should book your seats now.

Maybe thats how I’ll fund it. I’ll sell tickets. I’ll give people “rides”, and once I’m far enough out in the middle of nowhere, I’ll ditch em. They go for a bathroom break, and I’ll peel outta there.

Man, I don’t even need to go to college for this.

Roadtripology? I don’t think so.

EDIT: Joe has called shotgun, and come up with the name for this tour de farce.

The JuanWay TourYou dig?

So it begins

This is the third in my series of blog entries devoted to how much I dislike summer.

I’m sitting in my room, windows open, lights turned off, and its 81.5 degrees.
Last night, after a hardcore game of Laser Quest, I walked out into the night air, hoping it would cool me down. It was about 1 AM, and it was still warm out…:(

I’ll probably be ranting about this all summer (or until pools start opening up), get used to it.

Its starting to get dark outside, and as I finish this entry, the temp has gone up to 82

Compy

I’ve been trying to get a computer part out of my IBM Personal System/2 386 model 70 (circa 1988), but these things are impossible to open.

Just makes me think about how anyone who didn’t know what they were doing wouldn’t go near the guts of a computer. Making your own modifications wasn’t even a thought in peoples minds.

I’ll been keeping track of my progress on here.

If anyone knows of a website that shows how to get at the motherboard on these things, please point me to it.