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Mudrucking and Gravel

This morning two of my roommates and I got up early to dig out some dirt and replace it with gravel. The third roommate who drives, and who had indicated he would help out, made a brief appearance in his Jeep before driving off. This does nothing to help the relations between him and I, which at this point are already strained. Adam, you see, is my next door neighbor. He gave me a good initial impression when he outlined a bathroom cleaning plan with me that sounded like a good idea. Well after I did my part, and then his part, I see no evidence that he even noticed. But thats OK — I’ve gotten fairly used to occasionally cleaning up the war-zone kitchen, which is a rather thankless job. But it was a mark against him.

Over the course of the nearly two months I have been here, however, my opinion of Adam has steadily declined, while my opinion of my other roommates has generally slightly improved, or at worst stayed the same. Other incidents included him asking whose box a certain box was. It was mine, and it wasin community space, so I decided it was appropriate for me to take it outside, which I promptly did. He then replaced the box with a bag full of his books, which has not moved in over a week. He seems to think that his Jeep is too good to park on mud, so rather than park out of everyone’s way (or help turn the mud into gravel), he has on several occasions parked me in. He has by far th largest amount of kitchen cabinet space dedicated to himself. Just a bunch of little things, none of them important in the lest, but all of them rubbing m the wrong way.

So when his muddy soccer shoes showed up on top of my open Spaghetti package, I threw a bit of a tantrum. I kicked his shoes under the cabinets, threw my gum at them, and (gasp) put a roll of empty paper towels in his spacious food cabinet, because there was no room for it in the trash (and I didn’t want it on the counter). Apparently this last part made him angry, which led to him discovering that I was the culprit. So, yesterday evening he showed up at my door and asked, “Ryan, why do you have to get passive agreesive on me?”

At that point, I didn’t even know what he was talking about. I’d nearly forgotten about the “noodle incident” and it would have been a thing of the past until he brought it back up. When he mentioned the paper towel thing, I remembered the whole thing, and he mentioned that I should just be stright with him, and that he was “easy to get along with.” So I agreed, told him where his shoes were, and thats the last I heard from him. Until this morning, at about 5:00am, when he and one or two guests woke me from my peaceful slumber. I’m a pretty hardcore sleeper, so that feat alone was pretty impressive. Taking into account our earlier agreement, instead of building up quiet rage, I knocked on his door and told him to keep it down. He (or someone in his room, at least) agreed. It was quiet for about two minutes. I considered, briefly, 150 Watts of Bass directly into his ajoining wall, but settled for ear plugs, which worked wonderfully.

However, bearing in mind our agreement, I’m going to let him know, the next time I see him, that I’ll expect quiet from his room, or at the very most, I will knock once and I won’t hear him again fo the rest of the night.

–UPDATE–

I just talked to him and he has agreed.

Flip Side

While many good things have been going on recently, not everything has been hunky-dory. I missed my CSE 370 homework this week, and did pretty terribly on a very difficult (and poorly written) Organic Chemistry test. Test-wise, I’m feeling below-average vibes for myself, with an average of around 40%. I’ll let you know how that prediction pans out.

Into CSE

The word on the street proved to be true as I recieved a response from the CSE department tonight — and I am happy to report that I have been accepted into the CSE department for Computer Engineering.

I took the occasaion to accept the offer of admission into both Bioengineering and Computer Engineering.

Thank you all for your help in getting me to this point.

Late Night Robotics

After school, I headed to Honeywell to exchange the Saturn for the truck, then across the street to Microsoft’s parking garage to pick up carpet, then to IS, then to Bellevue High to pick up carpet, then back to IS, then hung out at IS for a long time meeting with leaders, then parents, then working on coding the robot, then to Ian’s to make the shooter gate a roller, then to Larry’s to drop off the robot (at 1:30 am) then back here to watch some olympics (I’m really missing out this year) and eat some food before reading some news, dealing with a bunch of emails, and generally causing havoc and mayhem. Yo.

Waiting is Hard

After submitting my applications two weeks ago, I didn’t worry about anything until I heard from bioengineering on the 15th. Now, I’ve suddenly become considerably ore worried about my admissions to computer engineering. Waiting was fine, it seemed, until I got a taste of what knowing was like. Now I have an inkling of what Dan must have gone thrugh in his months of waiting to hear back about his super secret spy job.

Johari Window

Via Carrotlife, go check out my Johari Window — a reflection of what I think of myself versus what others think of me.

Into BioE

I’m having a pretty incredible day so far. After getting a CSE 370 quiz back that I aced, I had a good chat with my Bio TA, then came down to the CSE labs to add some money to my Husky Card account (very useful for quick lunches – such as I am about to have with Marisa). Down in the lab, I ran into Alex, my CSE 143 TA from last quarter, and we got a chance to catch up on everything thats happened recently. Then I checked my email to find… (drumroll please) that I just got accepted into the UW Bioengineering program!

One down, one to go!