John

I love it when a candidate makes a commercial that slams his opponent for 30 seconds and plugs himself for two, and all it accomplishes is to tell me things about his opponent that make me like the opponent more.  "He opposed that 35 times?  Oh man, awesome - good for him." :D  Gotta love backfiring mudslinging.

Edit: A clip of their debate just came on TV, and they're STILL only talking about each other.  GEEZ, guys, give me reasons to vote for you, not against the other person!

Edit 2: NINJA'D!  The *other* candidate's commercial just came on, and he's actually talking about himself.  Man, *both* candidates' commercials are making me like him more.  This is easy! :P

Short, energetic descending cello arpeggios fading into the same theme on electric guitar = instant inspirational commercial.

Now that I have a Real Adult job, a Real Adult apartment, and am in the process of acquiring the rest of the Real Adult series of products, I figure it's time to make sure I don't get stuck in a 9-5 rut of work, come home, eat dinner, veg (video games/reading/Internet uselessness), bed, rinse, repeat.  It's my first time having cable TV or console video games (okay, maybe Rob's PS2 was kinda an exception), and the potential for wasting my life in meaningless electronic entertainment is high.  I know from experience that while routine comforts me, unchanging routine makes me deeply, deeply unhappy.  And plus, there's a ton of cool stuff I want to do.

Time for John to be a big boy, lay aside childish things, and so forth.

( Tawdry details thereof. )

Well, okay.  I think my mood's always about like this on the eve of big life changes.  I always stay up too late, get too thoughtful, and am exhausted the next day.  Oh well.  Oh, and I'm getting an iPhone tomorrow.  That's exciting. :-)

The vacation's been trotting along quietly, and has been fun so far.  We went to the beach today, which was nice and all - I've just never been much for the beach.  Too much sand, and too bright.  Give me a mountain river any day.

I almost always wind up drinking way more alcohol while here at my grandparents - they have plenty of it, all the adults drink it at dinner, and the table is just far away enough from the main kitchen that it's easier to pour another glass of wine than go to the kitchen and get a glass of water.

Hm.  I thought I'd have more to say today.  I guess I do - nothing fit for this space, sadly.


Edit: random technology dilemma.  I use Adium for my IM needs, and I never bothered to investigate how it worked (whether it was its own program or just a fancy AIM skin).  I do know that I never figured out how to change my profile through Adium - I always spun up AIM and changed my profile there, which seemed to get the job done.  Now, I've deleted AIM off my computer for organizational reasons, so I have no idea how to change my profile now.  Le boo.

Life updates abound, since I'm increasingly irregular at updating.

As of a few days after graduation, I am once again single.  The breakup was mutual and not very dramatic, all things considered.  It was excellent while it lasted, but we eventually admitted that it did not seem to have a long term future.  I think and hope we'll continue to stay friends.

My role as the lead in the summer production of Seussical successfully concluded last Sunday.  Great fun was had by all.

Work for Booz-Allen Hamilton as a Level 1 Consultant starts on August 3rd in Herndon.

I move in to a 2-BR apartment in Merrifield on August 20th.  Looks like a sweet place - keep your eyes peeled for a housewarming party in early September.

I don't foresee working this job for more than two years, three at the outside.  At that point, I'm either going to:
-go to grad school.
-go teach English somewhere abroad, whether on a Fulbright or not.
-blow some savings and travel the world, getting a local job for a few weeks whenever money runs low.
-some combination of the above.


Summer vacation started yesterday; a trip to see my dad's parents in San Diego, as per normal.  We flew out Sat morning, and it was pretty much just now that we got their wireless network working properly enough for me to use my laptop.

On the flight out (United Airlines), I noticed that it just seemed....shoddier than I've been used to, and I eventually remembered that I haven't flown domestic in quite a while, probably about two years.  They couldn't get the computer to play the right movie, so they played a different one, the service was poor, the attendant messed up two different announcements, none of the radios in my row were working, and so on.  It wasn't awful by any stretch, I was just surprised at all the little things, and decided that cost cuts were starting to hit, and hard.  There were also babies two rows in front of and behind us, who decided it was their bounden duty to wail at somewhere between half and full volume for the majority of the flight.

Once we got here, things were just fine, aside from waiting an hour for the rental car.  My aunt and uncle drove down for dinner, and we had the usual stimulating discussions with my aunt about anything and everything (that night's topics were nutrition, higher brain functions, and consumer rhetoric and information).

Today's stuff will have to wait until tomorrow - I'm getting pretty wiped right now.

I found out Monday that my DMP research (thesis work, essentially) was due Friday.  Through rapid acceleration of timelines and not a little sleep loss, it looks like I might actually make it.  Aaaaand back to work.

And dammit, I'm proud of myself.

( Dungeons and Dragons stuff that you probably don't care about )

In other news, I finished the second study of my Distinguished Major thesis Project, and it worked!  I need to do one more, which I think I can knock out in a week or two, which will leaves me a few weeks to write.  Despite having to restart a year-long-sized project in late February...I think I'm gonna make it.  Woot.

Oh yes, and I think I'm going to try to live in Arlington.  I'm starting my search in the Ballston-Clarendon-Courthose area, looking for a two-bedroom apt for under $2k/month.  I decided that
a) living close to play is more important than living close to work.
b) It's a counter-commute out to Herndon, and they have promised that I will have no control over when I work there vs. at a client site downtown
I'm contacting two different realty services, as well as playing with craigslist.  We'll see what I find - planning to move in late July.

Some nights, your pulse races fast with the cleverness of you, and everything smells like roses.  Other nights, you fall out of your orbit and wind up staring at the wall, wondering if you're ever going to be completely happy and at peace.  Hard to say, often, whether it's light sprinkled with shadows, or shadows sprinkled with light.  Even if the percentages are the same, the distinction should remain important - it shortens the margin of error on the 7-day forecast.

Oh yeah, so I figured out the Lenten resolution bit.  No sweets, no French fries is plenty harsh enough with dining hall food.

The semester is going quite well, and while I don't have potent philosophical musings or anything, I am rather pleased with myself.  I didn't take too many serious classes, so I got the chance to finally fill up on little fun things that always catch my eye that I never had time for my other nine semesters, like:
( List o' stuff )

Oh, happy news and a serious question.  I start work with Booz-Allen Hamilton in mid-summer (wee, money!).  They assigned me to their Herndon campus, but with a warning that I'd need to work in Arlington sometimes.  I plan to live with a friend who works in Merrifield.  Any suggestions as to good areas to go house-hunting?  I've been told three people is optimal for economies of scale, so we may try to acquire a third along the way.  I've also been told that central Arlington (or was it Alexandria?) is a great place for young people, and the prices are better than near the edges by the metro lines.

Home for spring break, and trying once more to make posting a bit more common.  I'm finding this time that it helps not to wait to have something momentous to write.

I'm on break for the next week, and have a reasonable slate of activities to keep me busy for my last spring break EVAR, mostly including hanging out with people I don't see enough and taking care of the little details that keep life moving along without hitches.

What I'm currently figuring out is my Lenten resolution.  I've already decided on giving up all dessert foods, but as I don't eat that many to begin with, that's pretty small.  I need something further, and the only guidelines are a) something that's actually a sacrifice, and b) something you can go back to doing come Easter (so, don't pick a vice you're trying to get rid of).  Dilemmas, dilemmas.  I gave up non-essential personal technology/electronics my first year, which more or less stripped me down to alarm clock and email, plus a few other commonsense exceptions.  It was great, but I can't really get away with it any more - too much of my life is tied up in this infernal machine.  The best resolution I heard last year was a friend who gave up her contacts, and wore her glasses instead, which she hates (mostly because she's a really active person).  Unfortunately, I don't wear glasses.  TV's also out, since I don't watch much of that, either.  Maybe sleeping in?  That could be a rough one.

Everyone has that type of person that seems all the same to them, I think.  For to not expose the types of people that I find flat and without variability from other people like them, let's just say that I have a type like that.  I don't have friends like that mainly because I find that type of person uninteresting.  My friends, by and large, are people I find fascinating, and there's just no draw to be friends with them - which to be friends with, when it doesn't seem to matter?

Anyway, the point is not to go on about stereotyping people, which is not a topic I generally endorse.  The interesting thing, to me, is to find that an old friend you haven't been in touch with for some years has become one of those people, and you wonder what about them changed.  Where along the line did paths diverge, did they become someone else and you develop preferences in friends that don't include them.  Was that developing in them already - is that why you grew apart to begin with?  Likely so.  Still, odd and disconcerting to browse their facebook page five or six years after you last talked and realize they've become exactly the type of person you would never be interested in getting to know.

You know, I'd get one.  I honestly would - it looks cool, and I think the world is moving out of the era of having physical collections of things that could be digital (iPod for music, Apple TV for movies/shows, and now the Kindle).  And I read so fast that I have to take an entire backpack of books on vacation to not run out (more annoying than the reading speed is cool, I promise), so just taking the Kindle would be nice.

But...I really like turning pages.  Dilemma!

I'm curious what writer1985  thinks, since I know she's a big reader, too.  And robyrt  and zoatebix  are usually up to date on tech stuff.  Hmm, this doesn't notify people when you tag them, does it?

I checked out 19 books on the first day of the year, knowing I'd have a lot of reading time on the bus for the U-singers tour.  Today, two weeks later, I got my first overdue notice by email.  "That's odd", I thought...books are checked out for three weeks.  I log on to the library system to figure out what happened, and discover I can't even renew them, because fines on 19 books go into the stratosphere too quickly.  Then it gets weirder - the books' apparent checkout dates were in June 1995, and the due dates two weeks later.  Phone calls to the library ensue, and after routing myself through about 4 unsympathetic employees who just wanted me to come in to deal with it, I got to the supervisor, who immediately acknowledged the weirdness of the situation, changed my due dates appropriately, and wiped the fines.


When you've checked out books from the same library for nearly 15 years, and read far too fast (aka read a ton of books), you eventually discover some flaw or another in the system.  Given that I get books out over the summer, and then pay no attention to the library once I return them and go back to school, I got a debt collector called on my once because the library thought one of the books in my last set over the summer was never turned in, and the fines mounted way up 'cause I was at school and not getting overdue notices.  When I finally got home, I walked into the library and produced the book off the shelf for them in about a minute - they'd just forgotten to check it off after filing it.


Anyone else have interesting library stories?

..in wake of my recent resolution to cut out in-browser games for the rest of the semester.

After staying up till 4am on a night I had no business doing anything but work AND should have been in bed by midnight (a la http://xkcd.com/484/), I resolved as I hit the sack to, if you'll pardon the French, cut that shit out.  Swore off in-browser Flash/Java gams until the end of the semester, because really, I always have something productive I could be doing, and I don't have enough time as is.

Woke up at 8:30, despite having apparently set my alarm forward to 10:30 when it first went off at 8. (which would have been me sleepily deciding to go to the later Mass).  Woke up as rested on 4 hours as I've ever been on 8, and even got to Mass on time despite the extra half hour sleeping in - I have no idea how.

Randomly got to get brunch with Lindsay afterward, despite knowing I was behind on work and having planned to go straight from Mass to hmwk.

Finished my Algorithms hmwk in half the time I thought it would take,  just as my partner for my German project arrived, so I don't have to use a late day for that now.

German meeting finished so early that I have both time to shower AND write this before running off to 4-11pm rehearsal.


So....yeah.  I think God approves of the resolution, slash has perhaps taken pity on me.

:-)

(Dammit, that'll teach me to write long things in a fickle browser window)
Let's see, we'll need section for Classes, Research, Choir, Drama, Jobs, Graduate School, Politics, hmm....Personal, and Miscellany.

Summary: Life is good, if extraordinarily busy.  I'm getting done everything I need to and looking forward to this paying off in the form of an easy semester in the spring; daily drawing closer to defining and reaching my goals, and generally not having a lot that I can complain about (which doesn't mean I don't try to sometimes, or that I don't have plenty of stuff still to work on).

( Classes )
( Other )
Okay, I'll do the rest of this later.

So I don't do sitting still very well.  I'm either shifting position frequently, fiddling with something with my hands, or both.  Makes it difficult to look professional in presentations, but I find it intensely uncomfortable to sit still once I've been in the same position for more than about a minute.  This has two interesting effects.
1) Things disappear when I touch them.  My dad especially was the one who brought this to my attention, 'cause I'd keep losing his tools when we'd work on a project.  I'd pick it up to have something to fiddle with, then be thinking about something else by the time I put it down and have no idea that I'd done so, or where I was when it happened.
2) More recently, I'll get lost when I'm on the phone.  I absolutely can't stand still when I'm on the phone unless I force it, and now I live in a condo complex where I don't get reception in the actual building, so I have to walk outside when on the phone.  This is usually pleasant, as there's a decent amount of greenery around the place, and I enjoy walking around the sidewalks getting fresh air while I talk.  However, if I get involved enough in the conversation, I lose track of what my feet are doing.  Usually doesn't matter, 'cause the complex isn't too huge and I know my way around.  But twice now, I've hung up and had no idea where I was for a moment.  Very amusing.

Weee summer!





Okay, that's all for now.  I have nine characters waiting for their next move, so I' m off to write. :-)

Yeah, I'm not giving up on this just yet.  I just wanted it to lie dormant for a few months so that all the adults I gave the link to will stop checking it. :P

Ok, last post was nearly five months ago, so recap of spring semester at Super Speed (tm)!

-first week was really disorienting, having missed both experiences of the fall semester AND all the new first years
-audition and got into U-singers for the third time :P
-was invited back onto exec when there was an opening
-starting hanging out with different people a lot more
-started going out with Lindsay again on March...14th, I believe
-got accepted to do a DMP research project next year to attempt to measure height perception as a psychophysical function using virtual reality
-obtained an internship with Lockheed Martin in Rockville to work with their CHI (Computer-Human Interface) engineers on interfaces for the next generation of air traffic control systems
-rented an apartment for the summer in Gaithersburg, living with a pair of middle-aged Texan Republican businessmen who travel a lot
-work started May 12, and has been going swimmingly
-I will be working with another intern from UVa, who starts next week
-I'm going camping this weekend in West Virginia with my brother and some friends
-I'm taking a trip next week down to William and Mary to meet with their lab there and learn from them so I'll be ready for my own research next year

Whew. :-)  Questions?  I don't think I missed anything...

Home.  Been home for a week now, and still waiting for culture shock to set in.  I didn't really have too much trouble with it on the way out, and it's seemed to be a similarly small problem now.  This is my first actually free Christmas break since the beginning of college, and I'm enjoying it immensely.  But enough of mundane stuff, and on the end-of-Austria portion of your programme this evening.


Also, I edited the class reviews - they're oh, about two-three posts down, if you feel like scrolling.

I guess...well, I guess that's all, folks.  It was a crazy semester, and I hope you all felt informed and enjoyed keeping up with the latest stuff.  The Facebook photo application still hates me, but I'll get the photos up as soon as possible and put links in.  As a preview, the albums will be:
Vienna, take 5
Vienna, take 6
Vienna, take the last
Ball der Tanzer (Dancer's Ball)
Innsbruck
Various and assorted videos!

I declare victory.  Of course, we'll still have to see if it holds up at home, too.

Before the final entry, I figured I'd throw in an entry about my day in Innsbruck.  I went on the 17th, in between two exams.  Pictures will be up as soon as the Facebook uploader stops hating me.



That was Tuesday afternoon.   I went to the Nutcracker at the National Opera House that night.  It was amazing.  The rest of the week has already been chronicled.  I came home on Saturday.