I guess two years is the lifespan of consumer electronics in my posession. Yesterday, during a tour of the UW‘s steam power plant (quite the contraption!), I pulled out my Canon Powershot S45, only to be dismayed by a cracked LCD screen. This means that the best part of digital photography — instant gratification — is now completely missing from the experience. Furthermore, without the
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Monday morning, while cruising down Newport Way on my way to school, I heard a soft but distinct click from my truck’s engine. “What was that?” I wondered to myself. At the next turn, it quickly became aparent that all was not well with the truck — the power steering was gone. Finding nothing else in particular t be wrong, I continued on to school, partook a full days worth of classes, and then returned to the Eastside, all while yanking my steering wheel around like a madman trying to make turns that used to be easy. Before returning up the mountain, I stopped at the Eastgate Chevron to take a gander under the hood. My dad had earlier suggested that belt ight be the issue, and a quick peak revealed that he was right. The belt driving the power steering mechanism had been nearly severed and several large chunks were missing. I decided to meander across the way to the Schucks Auto Supply, where the friendly staff helped me find the right belt. I then powered my way up the mountain, where my dad was kind enough to help me replace the broken belt. Parking the truck afterwards was nearly effortless — I think power steering is a modern marvel most of us take for granted.
I just wasted 24 hours. All of which I can not really afford at this juncture. I feel a lot like my life has been derailed.
I was invited by fellow Microvision intern Nick to head out to Chopstix with him and some of his friends. I accepted and ended up enjoying my first experience at a dueling pianos bar. I escaped with a light $22 tab as well — not drinking does have its benefits. There were a number of great songs played, as well and a number that I didn’t know, and a number I didn’t know well. Three pianists took turns playing and singing on two pianos, so each got several times to rest throughout the night. The most impressive part was the huge repitoire that each of the guys had. The songs were always loud, sometimes fun, and ocasionally lewd. The food was quite good, but short of excellent (I had the shrimp and tried out some of the peanut saunce pasta as well). On our way out around 12:30, the friend who met us there discovered that his car was locked inside the garage he had parked in — it had closed at midnight. So after dropping Nick and Ariana (quite the babe) off, I ended up taking Andrew home.
After sleeping in a little too much recently, I decided I needed to rectify my alarm clock situation. Too often , was sleeping right through my alarm clock. When I had the same problem back at BYU, I set up my computer (along with the relatively nice speakers currently loaned to Bobby) so that it would play Chumbawamba’s Amnesia (“Do you suffer from long-term memory loss? I don’t remember“) at a fairly good volume. It always worked, and my roommate was good to put up with the brief morning noise for such a good cause as getting me up.
I hadn’t really considered this approach for a while because my current desktop is a little louder than oasis was, and I really didn’t want to be leaving it on all night (its also a very warm and bright machine, which combined with its noise might interfere with some sleep). However, I finally decided that waking up was too important, so I went about setting it up on Monday morning. While doing so, I came across a very cool feature in the Windows task scheduler: a check box that reads, “Wake up computer to perform this task.” Well, this was news. Apparently, I could put the computer into standby mode, where it is quiet, dark, and cool. Then it will wake up and play music at me in a loud manner at the appropriate time. After a quick test found the system to be working, I set it up. The system has been working progressively better. A couple of days ago, I tweaked the system for separate MWF and TTh wakeup times. Waking up early has made it easier to do so, so the effect is self-reinforcing. I even made it to CSE 143 section on time yesterday, something I hadn’t done since the second day of class.
Furthermore, I’m getting more sensitive. Today, I awoke not to blaring music, but to the click my desktop made as it revived itself from sleep. I was able to act quickly enough to turn the volume down to a good listening level before the startup completed and the music started. It was actually a quite pleasant way to wake up.
As I see it, I have two options when it comes to homework. I can either:
(a) start to do it earlier, preferably by about a week -or-
(b) continue to do it the night/morning before and DIE
I’m afraid I’m leaning towards option (b)…. sigh…
The issue lies in the fact that my weeks go something like this:
Monday – Tech Comm homework due (usually a paper I worked on over the weekend)
Tuesday – Chem E homework due (about 3-5 hours of problems)
Wednesday – Math homework due (about 2-4 hours problems)
Wednesday – More Tech Comm homework due (usually a smaller assignment, except for this week)
Thursday – Only one class, but work all day (last week was 10 hours at MVIS)
Friday – End of week, take a breather
Saturday – Sleep in, play frisbee, maybe catch a movie, hang with friends
Sunday – Sleep in, play flag football, do Tech Comm homework…. repeat
So ideally, with one burst of energy some weekend, I should be able to simply shift everything by a week and always be ahead by a week. Or something like that.
