Tag: UConn

Powerless

KaBump by Umphrey’s McGee
[audio:http://www.archive.org/download/UM2008-02-11.mk6/um2008-02-11d2t05_64kb.mp3,http://www.archive.org/download/UM2008-02-11.mk6/um2008-02-11d2t06_64kb.mp3]

On Wednesday, from 1400 to 0400 on Thursday, Towers didn’t have power. Something about a transformer exploding…decepticons…I dunno. Whatever the case, that left all of us without TVs, computers, or lights (at least in our rooms). The lights in the halls still worked, and as the sun set people started moving into the halls.

For a while there were very few of us there (5 or 6 max) because UConn was playing Notre Dame, and I guess people care about those kinds of things. Those few of us who didn’t sat in the hall, killing time. We drew on the massive whiteboard I have in my room, I did a little reading, played banjo, talked. One of the girls sitting in the hall with us was complaining how it was the worst day of her life…

Folks started coming back from the game, so suddenly there were a lot of people with nothing to do. A few people just left, going to the library or a friend’s dorm. Everyone else decided to play a board game in the hall. I read instead, since it was one of those party pseudo-board games I can’t really stand. About an hour after that game was over, I realized and said to Dan, “I’m finally out of things to do.” I started tossing a stress ball against the wall.

After a little while I moved that out into the hall. I hit a bunch of people with it accidentally, and then not so accidentally, and that was when the first event of the night started. There was a group of people on either end of our hall, and we took turns hucking it as hard as we could at the other group. No rules, no goal, just pointless fun. Like the games we used to play in elementary school. That went on for a few hours, with people coming and going and coming back again or walking out unwittingly into the crossfire.

Finally everyone was tired of that, or had tired out their throwing arm (we were really whipping it) and it dissolved. Another pseudo-board game had started up, and other people were just milling around the hall. I suggested to the people just standing around that we should rolly-chair joust. Somehow, these people had gone to school for one or more years and had never rolly-chair jousted. So Dan and I brought our chairs out, and we were the first up. We didn’t really have anything to joust with, so we just held our arms out straight in front of us. We each went to one side, and then someone pushed us to give us some speed. My favourite description of it came from someone who didn’t even see it. He saw me and Josh (who was pushing me) back up against the end of the hall, and then we started, leaving his field of vision, and after two seconds of silence, there was a massive crash. He came around the corner and saw Dan and I on the ground laughing.

I’ve gotta admit, this was the most hardcore rolly-chair jousting I’ve ever done. Dan and I were facing each other when we hit, and I got his knee right in my thigh (I was limping around for a while – it still kinda hurts now) and he got the metal part of my chair against his shin (which actually drew blood). Neither of us cared too much about the pain, and we convinced (well, maybe forced) the folks who had pushed us to take our place for a second round. I liked this, because Josh came away with a footprint on his chest. For the record, my chair dew blood again. Battle chair.

The CAs said we really couldn’t do that anymore, since apparently it was loud enough that they could hear it on the first floor. It was getting late anyway, and I had to somehow wake up for class. I went to bed, and within an hour it sounded like most people had left the halls. That Wednesday night felt more like a Friday night than any Friday has so far.

To Do:

Ain’t Gonna Work by Leftover Salmon
[audio:http://www.archive.org/download/los1996-03-16.flac16/los1996-03-16d1t01_64kb.mp3]

So after my first week of class, I’m enjoying things here. I’ve got a three day week, with four classes on Tuesday and Thursday, and only one on Wednesday. That leaves me with a four day weekend again this semester, so I’ve got to remember to do something with it this time around.

I honestly don’t remember what I used my long weekends for last semester, but that probably just means I was hanging out, listening to music or playing games. Not gonna do that again (listen to this ambitious talk). I’m going to use my weekends for productive things.

    The List:

  • Buy a bus
  • Convert the bus
  • Learn banjo
  • Get Landshark moving again
  • Write/film 4D:TVGS
  • Homework, maybe

That sounds possible, I guess.

Crunch Time

I hate crunch time. Those last couple weeks of a semester where all that work that the teachers didn’t assign or you didn’t do come knockin. Plus, right after that come finals, which are always fun. I’m putting off a 4-6 page paper right now. I don’t have much incentive to do it, because once I finish that, I get to work on another for a different subject. Not much point to this post, since I’m going to end up doing all of those things and having no fun, but I just felt like complaining for a second. That’s why I tagged this post ‘blog’.

Random

Don’t Ease Me In by The Grateful Dead
[audio:http://www.archive.org/download/gd85-03-29.oade-schoeps.sacks.23475.sbeok.flacf/gd85-03-29oade-d1t08_64kb.mp3]

A week ago I was in the library, 5 minutes before my Philosophy class started. I was printing out the homework due that day (the printer in my room doesn’t work at the moment). I noticed another dude from my class doing the same thing. We both sent out assignments to the communal printer at about the same time, but he got to it first. The way the communal printer works, is it displays the queued documents, the user selects which they want to print, then they pay for them and the document prints. Turns out both he and I printed from Google Docs, so they were indistinguishable on the screen (just the Google Docs url). So he printed out his, and went on to class, and afterwards I did the same. I noticed on my way to class that I had his paper, so I suspected he had mine. I didn’t say anything to him, and he didn’t say anything to me. In fact, we never acknowledged that the mix-up ever occured. Not before, during, or after class. As we left the room once class had ended, he handed in my assignment (I checked to make sure he had in fact handed in my assignment, and he had), and I handed in his.

Maybe he never looked at his paper, and never noticed that the name on there wasn’t his, or the answer underneath that was shorter and differently formatted than his. But I doubt that. I’m pretty sure he noticed, and just went with it. I think that’s pretty cool.

Story Time

Tornado Warning by Codename
[audio:http://www.archive.org/download/codename2006-08-19.flac16/codename2006-08-19.d1t02_64kb.mp3]

I’ve been wanting to create this category for a long while now. In fact, I’ve wanted to make it since Grey Fox this year. The idea is that I’ll write stories of long ago in here, so that I’ll actually remember them. A perfect example of this is making this category. I mention that I’ve wanted to make it for a while, because its true. But whenever I’m on my blog I don’t remember it. The only reason I remembered it today is because someone reminded me of something that happened to us which I had forgotten about, and I thought about writing it on here. Which made me remember the Stories category. So here it is. I’ll probably go back and apply it to older posts that fit in. If there are any.

Anyway, the story I wanted to tell today is one that happened to me freshman year of school. Many of my friends and I were in ENGR 100, which is the Intro to Engineering class. It was only worth one credit, and was more or less a joke class. Everyone in the School of Engineering had to take it at some point, so we had to take it as well. There was no final exam, but there was a final project that we had to complete. We had to Reverse Engineer something. Meaning, we had to break something down and explain how it was put together and how it worked. We were allowed to work with other people on this, so I worked with my friend Eric.

For some reason we chose a microscope. Seemed simple enough: two lenses, a long tube, and a tray for stuff to go on. And we were right, it was pretty simple. There was only one problem. When we went to go take pictures of us taking it apart, and pictures of individual parts, we found ourselves without a microscope. I had thought I had one at home, and Eric did as well, but neither of us could find one. We didn’t want to waste money on this one credit class, so didn’t want to buy one. Instead, we managed to get a friend to take pictures of his microscope, and email them to us. We managed to make a almost presentable project, Which we got a D- on.

Now, I say we got a D-, but as far as we were concerned it had been a perfect score. Not only had we done our project without the object the project was about, but we had passed. I make a point of that because there were many, many people who didn’t pass. Many. Including some of our friends, who had worked longer, harder, and actually had the thing they were reverse engineering. I’m still proud of that, and I’m glad Eric reminded me of it.

John Rush

JohnRush.com
Cool dude, that John Rush. Played at UConn tonight in the student union. Had good tunes, so we stuck around. Much better option than studying. So after the show we got to talking to him, and he’s a pretty interesting dude. Says he tours about 150 days out of the year, which is insane, but it is pretty much the only way to make any money as an independent artist.

I’d suggest listening to some tunes from his site, and if you’re particularly into his stuff, buy a CD. I like his song Time Wasted a lot. I’d embed it here, but his site won’t let me hotlink. Oh well, go find it for yourself. Free download, good tunes.

This probably doesn’t deserve its own post,
but I just left feeling so good, I had to try and share it.

Focus

DF Tram’s set from Chillits
[audio:http://music.cloudfactory.org/chillits05/chillits05-dj-dftram.mp3]

I’ve got two papers to write tonight, both due tomorrow, and I’m having a really difficult time focusing. This is the first day back to school over break, and that certainly doesn’t make this any easier. It is not even the things happening around me which are distracting…even when the tv is off, and when the music is silent, I still can’t focus on this garbage.

I take that back. It isn’t garbage, and I’d normally be interested in at least one of these topics. But not tonight. Too restless. I couldn’t focus last night either. I need to take some time to re-orient myself, but I don’t have that time under all this schoolwork.

Fuck it, no sleep until its done.

Loss

Bad news folks. Lots of bad news.

Firstly: my external hard drive for music fell off of my computer, and onto the ground, which is a pretty nasty, unsoft fall. I haven’t been able to get my computer to recognise it yet, so thats no good. I might have lost 200 gigs of music. FUN

Next, my computer is dying on me too. For one reason or another, music now only comes out of the right speakers, or right headphone. That ain’t right, and I know its some sort of hardware issue (balance is correct everywhere).

Lastly, Firefox doesn’t like me anymore. I updated to 1.5.0.3, and now I can’t get to anywhere on the web. It is probably an extention that doesn’t play nicely with the new firefox update, but I really don’t want to uninstall all of them only to find that wasn’t the problem in the first place.

SO, this is the deal. Since this is finals week for me anyway, and I’m forced to use IE (I’ve forgotten how trashy it is), I’m not updating the site. I’m just not happy that this place is killing all of my comp parts.
Even my laptop got messed up by a powersurge up here.

I should return to this site on Monday, and I’ll be officially done with freshman year :)

See you all then.

2nd Semester

Well, second semester finally kinda started for me. I had a bumpy start switching majors and choosing classes, but its all worked out, like it somehow always does.

Overall, this semester is looking 100 times better than the first. Not only do I have teachers who are interesting and passionate about what they teach, but the subjects they are teaching are interesting. Good combination. There is one exception, English. My professor is the most straitlaced and dull peron I have met to date. I think the class has the potential to be interesting, but I know it will never achieve it.

Eh.

PagCam is back online. Always fun.

Couple things about the site in general. If you haven’t noticed, I’ve removed Google’s AdSense ads from the site. They weren’t bringing in any money, and they made the pages load slower, so byebye. Also, as I mentioned in the shoutbox, I made the word of the moment link to a google search for that word(s). This is mainly because I ended up doing this anyway with weird words or phrases, just to see what came up. And being the lazy person I am, I decided to make my life easier with code. w00t

End transmission.

Finals Week

If you’re curious why there have been little/no updates to somjuan, this should only be until Friday. This is finals week at UConn, and much of my time is devoted to studying (I need to learn math tomorrow).

In the meantime, if you keep submitting articles, they’ll keep getting posted (I do notice and appreciate those).

Pity me, and all fellow students who have to wade through this mess.