-cough cough-
More dust around here than I thought at first...

Anyway, I figure I should make a new Journal entry what with it being summer and all. Most of the people that'll end up reading this talk to me on a regular basis anyway, so really it's just something to do while I'm bored...

What's happened, what's happened...two terms have gone by, for one. I got straight A's Winter Term. Honestly, I would've been really embarrassed if I hadn't; I was taking Freshman math and Freshman writing and my programming class seemed to focus a lot on pointers which I learned about in FALL Term.

Spring Term I actually took some more challenging classes...Discrete Math (less interesting than it sounds at first), Calculus I (taking II in the Fall, then III and alllll the way to CCXIV or however long this stupid class chain goes). Got sick during one of the Calculus midterms and tanked it, though I manage to pull a B in the end. Hopefully I'll have more luck in Fall Term, which doesn't have May in it.

I always get horribly ill in May. ALWAYS. It's like clockwork.

Anyway, I got an A in Discrete Math. Surprisingly, halfway through the term I was expecting an A in Calculus and a B in Discrete Math, but I did a lot of extra credit stuff for Discrete Math (there wasn't any extra credit available for Calculus or I'd've done it, if it would've made a difference) and they sorta switched around.

Also got an A in Intro to Unix, but...really, that's like those Freshman classes in Winter Term. No surprise, nothing to be overly proud of.

So that brings me to a total of eight A's and two B's (Japanese 102 in Fall Term being my first) and a GPA of 3.79 at the end of my Freshman year of college. Not too shabby, by my standards...especially considering how much of a slacker I was back in high school. Anybody who went to school with me then (none of you people reading this, I'm like 95% sure, and you don't count Jake because you probably don't remember my middle school work ethic and I certainly don't remember it myself) can attest to this.

What else...

I'm pretty sure I bought Dewey's Adventure between last time I posted here and now. I found an old Target gift card for twenty bucks in my dresser and bought it off of their website, figured "What else am I going to do at Target with $20? I don't even know where a Target IS." Chris also lent me a game called Shin Megumi Tensei or something like that, I have to play it over the summer...and Kingdom Hearts and whatever else I've put on the backburner.

At some point I played and beat Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings. I bought it for my brother's birthday a year or two ago, borrowed it from him, he'd never actually played it. Not a great game, but not a bad one. Interesting combat for Final Fantasy. My only real complaint is that the final boss of the game has differing difficulty levels depending on how many of the quests you complete, being nearly impossible to beat below level 85 or so at 100%. That's annoying because the game has a secret ending when you complete all of the missions. Given that I'd have to spend over fifteen hours grinding levels to get to that point, I'll never SEE the secret ending since I can't beat the final boss anymore. I'm just not willing to put that much time into a process so repetetive when I can just wait for a video to be posted on YouTube or something. I figure, I did the work, even beat Yiazmat once (you can beat him any number of times, upgrading this one weapon each time that you do), I just don't want to spend a full day doing nothing but fighting the same enemies over and over and over again. That's fair, right?

I managed to bring the number of webcomics I read up to an even 180 in the last week with a comic called Rock Paper Cynic (an interesting little comic with an intriguing banner ad that caught my interest more than anything else). Not too long ago I finally managed to add a comic starting with the letter "X" (XKCD, even if I only get half of the math jokes) meaning I now read at least one comic for every letter of the alphabet! An achievement I'm quite happy with, nerdy or not. I'm willing to share my folder of webcomic links with anybody who wishes to have it.

Nerdy...that reminds me. I saw the new Star Trek movie a while back. Thought it was okay, not great. The hype basically ruined it for me. That and the whole "series reset" thing that means that we'll be dealing with another Enterprise in a year or two. Plus what I consider to be a massive plot hole in the movie, something I won't go into any detail about to avoid posting spoilers...though, chances are, anybody reading this has already seen the movie.

My Grandma finally gave me a final "No" on co-signing on a loan for DigiPen after jerking me along for the past two and a half years. Two and a half years ago it was a "Yes," two years ago it was dropped because of my family's financial issues, last year it was "Yes, if you go to community college for a year first" and this year it was "Never." I'm still pretty bitter about it, especially after I actually got accepted a second time after cancelling my enrollment as a result of having had to defer a second time last year.

Anyway, I've pretty much given up on job searching as a result. I just have no zeal for such prospects. I should have the credit to get a private student loan for whatever additional funding I require beyond the State-provided loans by the time I transfer to PSU (the new plan of action) in...what did the advisor tell me? I think it was...Spring Term 2011 or something, since I can only take three classes a term as a result of how long it takes me to get to any of the campuses from here (two hours being the longest one-way transit).

Even so, when I checked my email and saw a job offer for a Gaming Intern (literal title) at Intel today, I figured that if I were going to get a job over the summer that something like that would be more than acceptable. I still get all the Computer Science job offers in my email since I'm still enrolled in the PCC CS Internship program thing. I don't expect to GET the job (why should I be that lucky now after applying for dozens/hundreds of jobs before without a single reply?), but if I did it'd be perfect, even if I do have to go all the way to Jones Farm to get to it.

After much pestering, I finally started the Dragons of Pern series back in Winter Term...not bad, not bad at all! I was in tears at the end of All the Weyrs of Pern, so McCaffrey must be doing SOMEthing right. A large series, though...I'm still working on it.

That reminds me; Daisy, my dad's parrot, died. It actually happened before my last Journal entry, but I seem to have forgotten to write about it. I hated that bird something awful, and apparently it was justified; I had a hearing test in March and apparently my high-frequency hearing loss, which put my hearing at the same level of a 55-year-old, had gone away. My hearing wasn't PERFECT at that point, but still, within normal boundaries. Only thing I can think of to explain it is Daisy's frequent screeching finally being gone. It may seem horrible, but I really did hate that thing and its noise. Like, truly hated, more than I've hated all but a couple of human beings.

Lemme think, what else...Washington Mutual became Chase, I'm not too happy about that...I LIKED Washington Mutual. Their mascot was a guinea pig! Guinea pigs are awesome! And apparently, as I just found out a moment ago, Chase doesn't clear charges completely until like the week after you make them, so even if you buy something Thursday morning it won't hit your account until the following Monday. That's really lame, managed to hurt my already-small budget a bit as a result of this discovery. Washington Mutual always had the charges posted to your account same-day if you charged it in the morning or the next afternoon if you charged it in the evening (except, obviously, on weekends when it'd have to wait until the following Monday).

I've had three game nights since I last posted here...March, during Spring Break (not that I can remember anything about it except that Zach left a bottle of mostly-empty Mountain Dew which was still here when he came on Friday), May (which was aborted as Aaron had to go to school on Saturday, Zach and Megan ended up stranded at home in Hillsboro due to car troubles and beach plans and Jake decided to go home after he took David home rather than being the only one to stay the whole night) and just last Friday. Usually I space these things two months apart, but I figured after the May meet crashed and burned I should make it sooner.

Played (won) a lot of Brawl, played two games of Emperor Magic (won both, one with my dreaded Lifeline/Time Sieve combo), one game of free-for-all Magic (lost that one, can't remember why), some Mario Strikers Charged (I played by myself against all comers and once with Aaron and Jake against Zach, won all of them) before sitting down to watch everyone else play Wario Ware Smooth Moves. I would've joined in, but I always hurt my index finger somehow playing Mario Strikers Charged and this time was no exception. I also showed off my Virtual Boy a bit, everyone seems to agree with me that it's actually a pretty good system despite all signs to the contrary. We watched Nightmare Before Christmas on VHS and played a round of Settlers of Cataan (which I won by pulling a hat trick, stealing the Harbormaster card and playing a Palace).

Unfortunately, the shelves holding my collection of dragon figurines fell out of the wall and most of them ended up in tiny pieces, especially the three glass ones. I've been working on repairing them with super glue, but it's a slow and possibly pointless process. I play Studio Ghibli movies on my computer to pass the time while I piece them back together (Spirited Away and Whisper of the Heart so far). I've actually made a lot of progress! Two of the glass ones and one of the ceramic ones are all that are left that I couldn't simply put back on display with their slight amounts of remaining damage (chips in the pain, horns broken off, etcetera). I'll still try to find the missing parts and fix them completely, of course, but the other three are notably higher on my priority list.

I've been playing a lot of Age of Empires II and Warcraft III lately. Only because my online friends are playing them online with me, really, but still, they're neat games. I like to build towers and walls...only the former existing in Warcraft III, unfortunately, but I'll make due when the time comes to play online.

Anything else..? Not really. I taught Chris how to play Magic, with Demonet's help, Andrew stopped by for his birthday back in April (I gave him a copy of Kidz Bop and a download code for an interactive Bone game slipped into the CD case), I'm most of the way towards being nocturnal (as the posting time of this Journal should reveal) and baked some chocolate cookies last night, I have an appointment with an oral surgeon later this week to discuss what will have to be done about my wisdom teeth...there's really nothing more to say.

I guess that means I'm done for now. I'm really considering picking up the pen once more as the summer goes on, but details on that are sketchy and undependable. Is "undependable" a word? I'm not sure. I must be sleepy...another sign that I should quit both the internet and the waking world for the day. I'll get up at three or so, gauge the temperature and decide whether or not to start the air conditioner going, turn on my computer and work from there...pretty simple, really.

I'd best be off before I start rambling some more. I mean, this Journal is already plenty long enough. Congrats to any of you who actually read the whole thing.

Anyway, it's 4:44am, so I'd best be off to grab myself a bedtime snack and go to sleep.

*flees the internet to his kitchen*