Checksum Arcanius

Another rainy day means, of course, that I went on another hike. Just two days after hiking Mount Defiance, and just hours after returning from a DotA LAN Party, I headed to Alpental with Danielle and Josh from Frisbee and Danielle’s roommate Maiko. From there we headed up from the Snow Lake Trailhead. The hike was pretty low-key compared to Thursday’s outing, but it was still a lot of fun, and it looks like this is a crew that will be up for a lot of hikes this summer, so that is pretty exciting for me.

We left the U-district a little after 9, starting hiking around 10:30, peaked around noon, and then post-holed our way back down to source lake and then back to the car for an easy 3:30 return to the U-district.

After a few days back at work, I took the day off to finish off the Spring quarter right — with a Bioengineering Juniors (now Seniors!) barbeque after Dave’s Birthday Hike with Larry and Greg. The hike was great — we officially conquered Mount Defiance. The last I went on was Mount Si back during spring break, and it rained on us pretty hard that day. Thursday, it didn’t rain quite as hard, but it was still wet. Nevertheless, we all had a great time winding our way across and sometimes straight up the mountain. We took the main trail up (until it was covered entirely by snow, when we started improvising and going straight up), but Larry and Dave knew about a semi-secret older trail that followed the stream from the lake down the mountain. We found it and took it, and the experience was nothing short of incredible. The padded ground cover on the more forested, less traveled trail was nice for coming down as well. Unfortunately, I don’t have any pictures of the second half of the trip because my camera batteries died on the way up (way to not change them Ryan!)

As far as timing, we left Sunset Elementary just after 6:00 am, started hiking not too long after 7:00, peaked around 10:30, and were out not long after 1:00. I managed to make it to the barbecue afterwards, but I was spent and fell sound asleep not long after 9:00 that night.

Intentions don’t count in this game.

Including ROV competition snapshots… Visit the May 2007 gallery for more.

The quarter is over. It was my least favorite college term here at the UW — and anywhere else, I think as well. Certainly the worst class was, by far, Bioengineering 481, but BioE 492, BioE 357, and CSE 403 weren’t very good either. The only redeeming part of the quarter was CSE 471, but I just got back from a mediocre final. The late night last night (perhaps more on that later) didn’t help at all.

My Spring 2007 grade predictions are:

BioEn 357: 3.6
BioEn 481: 3.2
BioEn 492: 3.7
CSE 403: 3.3
CSE 471: 3.8

So yeah, not too great.

Linkin Park has been my favorite band every since I personally discovered them sometime in 2002. Just about everything they did over three and a half albums (I count Reanimation as a full offering; Live in Texas gets the 1/2 tag) was golden to me. Although I did enjoy songs such as Papercut and One Step Closer, it was the more varied and softer songs that retained edge that really did it for me — Crawling, Easier to Run, My December, Pushing Me Away (Remixed).

Then something happened; I’m not sure what. Linkin Park mashed with Jay-Z in Collision Course and produced a bunch of music that had no real substance despite a few offerings having some catch. But I’ve already complained about that offering, so I will move on. Mike Shinoda made it clear that he still has what it takes to make compelling music with his Fort Minor work. So, I thought maybe Linkin Park would be back on track when they finally got around to releasing their latest album, Minutes to Midnight.

In case you haven’t guessed by the title, the album sucks. It is serious, hard core complete drivel. The first song I heard from it, What I’ve Done is dull and hopelessly boring (though I will admit that it was just a bit catchy after I listened to it a few times). Still, I knew it was not going to be a song to ever infiltrate my favorites list, which is significant because 90% of Linkin Park’s tracks are in my favorites. What makes this all so much worse is that What I’ve Done, from what I’ve been able to hear, is in fact the best song on the entire album. Linkin Park has completely lost its way. This is terribly disappointing because they are capable of making music that works with me on so many levels — more so than any other band ever — and they were able to do this in so many ways, from haunting start of Crawling to the screaming end of Faint. I fear they will never make it back there. I hope I am wrong.

I can’t believe that there is a 7:30 class that I have to take to graduate. And its already a class I know I’m not going to enjoy. Oh well, thats life. Pictured here is 18 credits, but only because my Capstone would be taking up 4 of those.