Growing Up

In what world does the computer not win over chores? In what world do I not get jealous of someone watching TV while I mop the floors?

...in what world do I mop AT ALL?!?!
This one apparently. One where I find myself considering my parent's lessons more frequently. One where I'm the one griping at other people for leaving doors open. One where I'm the one turning lights off.
It sucks growing old. I'm not even 1/4 done with an average life span, but I'm feeling like 3/4 of my life is gone. What time do I have ahead of me to travel? To learn? To be immature?
Who am I kidding, I'm still immature. I can't save money, can't cook, sleep for an average of 12 hours a night (when I actually sleep at night instead of the day)... definitely a work in progress.

Progress. Progressive. Politics. Another grown up topic that I'm learning to care about. (Note: learning. I don't actually care about it that much yet.)
I actually thought for a few weeks that Donald Trump would be worthy of a vote. He's unique among candidates in that he isn't a career politician. He knows how to run a complex system and raise it up to become a flourishing, well known entity. No corruption, no special agenda, just benefit for the country.
Then he went public and showed everyone how intolerant he is. Intolerant, racist, conservative to an extreme that I can't even understand. Fragment, consider revising.

Apparently some site says I agree 78% with Democrats and 55% with Republicans. Top voting candidate: Bernie Sanders, Democrat. Don't know a thing about him. Second candidate: Marco Rubio, Republican. Third candidate: Hillary Clinton, Democrat. Fourth candidate: Rand Paul, Republican. Ok site, which one is it, Democrat or Republican, make up your mind. Then again, I've always hated labels. Stop trying to put a label on people by saying they're a Liberal or Conservative. All it does is cause prejudice. "If you vote Democrat, you ain't patriotic and you stomp on flags." "Stop watching Fox news sheeple, wake up to the lies the government is spreading"
It's terrible. Of course, it's quite easy to discuss politics when I'm the only one speaking. Blogs can be good for that I suppose. No interruptions, the majority of people actually read what I type instead of hearing the parts they want to... Fragment, consider revising.

Thank you, Microsoft Word, for embedding that phrase into my brain so completely. Why ever did I start studying Math in college when every English teacher I ever had loved my writing style, since I can first remember learning what an essay was around the 5th grade? 5th grade, wrote about Einstein and earned a nickname from it. 6th grade, constant comments about my 'daily writing' exercises saying my style was engaging even as I rambled from topic to topic (sound familiar?). 2nd place in the school spelling bee 7th grade (damn you, chrysanthemum...) and when I actually cared about a writing piece, the teachers knew it. Letter grades represented A for Actually cared, B for BS'd it. C for Chose not to turn it in on time. <_<
I have an obvious affinity for language and communication, whether it was my half-witted attempt to learn Braille in 5th grade, my excellence at learning French in high school, or my ease at picking up coding languages. Once I learn their structure, the rest just comes to me. It Makes Sense.
I was always the logical one trying to solve arguments and relationship problems for others. Heck, one couple that I assisted in high school just got married a few days ago ^_^
My extensive vocabulary means I spend way too long thinking about the 'proper' word to use for any given situation, but I also know how to dumb it down well enough to not sound like a pretentious Stanford graduate trying to sound educated. Educated. Smart. Intelligent. Three words that have very specific meanings to me. Intelligent being one who has acquired knowledge, Smart being one who knows how to use that knowledge, Educated being one who has acquired only a specific subset of knowledge. My hard-working friends who are in the middle of their Master's Degrees? Smart. Me, the procrastinator who can do whatever he puts his mind to, yet chooses to play computer games and fail classes? Intelligent. My 9th grade awkward-as-hell history teacher that had a PhD in History and Physics, but couldn't communicate with students or teachers in any setting other than trying to teach them or inform them of something? Educated.

Well, now that I've spent a few pennies that I had for my own thoughts, I have no simple conclusion to this. Prepare for an ending that feels misplaced. I'm growing up, I hate labels, and I wish I knew a certain way that a writer could make money well. It didn't help that I wrote this in 2 sessions, the first section split when I started to list candidates. So every thought in my train when I wrote that was completely gone by the time I got back to it.

The End.

Paranoia About Sentient Ninja Bunnies

Sure, that got you to click. No, I don't actually believe that the rabbits I've seen while running are actually spies sent by one of my more devious friends, but it's an inside joke I enjoy referencing.
Running. The first step is the hardest? No. The first WEEK is the hardest. I need to stretch more, drink more water, or something, because on Wednesday, I could barely get out the door due to how sore every step was. Getting out of my chair? Better be an emergency. Getting off the couch? Nope. Nope. Nope.
However, in the 3 days I've actually gone out at sunrise to run around the university campus, I can already see improvement. I'm actually running more than half of the distance. Plus, while it took 1 hour from when I left my house to when I checked the time on return on Wednesday, I have now installed a free running app, and I can officially say that I am freaking SLOW.

That's the distance from my front door, up the hill to the top of the campus "hourglass" as I call it, down the hill to the bottom, and returning home. With a few pauses for stop lights, walking to catch my breath, etc. No map shown because I don't want stalkers.
Considering in 11th grade Track & Field, I was able to run a mile (on a flat track made for running) in 6:05 at a race pace, I think I'm slow now.
This app isn't smart enough to understand what an average pace goal is, but I think I can reach 8:00 mile average if I keep repeating this loop every Monday, Wednesday, Friday like I have been.





Next step: learn how to cook more than just ramen, mac&cheese, rice, and whatever other junk food I find, in order to properly offset those 468 calories so I don't look like a starved rat.

Too bad MIT isn't a culinary school, I could find some classes on their OpenCourseWare on that. Now that I'm limiting my computer gameplay to 3 hours a day, free time has given me a chance to finish 2 more lectures in their public Algorithms course. Sadly, that's all the productivity I can really attest to. Facebook, some game-related forums, and general time wasting has been filling in the rest. Oh and sleep, at random times of day. Which has actually made it easier to go running at sunrise, because I'm already wide awake and don't have to motivate myself to get up as an additional obstacle. That was an odd subject-jumping rant. Good thing I'm not an English major.

I feel like this blog has become less about my "School Days" and more about my "Mental Processes" but it's summer. I'm not going to worry about it.

TheFirstCutIsTheDeepest,TheFirstStepIsTheHardest.ANewDay.TimeForAChange.ARollerCoasterOfEmotions.

I couldn't figure out which title to use, so I just put every one I had thought of while I wrote this in my head.
In the last week, I have been content, bored, depressed, hopeless, back to content, scratching at the walls of hope, determined, content, happy, blacked-out drunk, miserable, bored, hopeless, amazed, hopeful, entertained, hopeful, stuffed, content, hopeful, hopeless, emotionally drunk, fatigued, regretful, amicable, fatigued again, hopeful, determined, prepared, and ready for the future. The ups and downs describe the motivation behind the last title option. That was the tl;dr version, so if you don't want to read an essay about my life, you can stop now knowing that my current emotional state is a mixture of the last 4.
7 days ago, I was so far down in life that I actually googled "what to do if I can't afford therapy." Life had beaten me down so far that I saw no future for myself in which I was happy with who I was and what I was doing with myself. My life was a blender of computer games, sleep, computer games, work, computer games, and more sleep. Even my friends hardly ever saw me, and I live with them. After some browsing, I found a site called http://7cupsOfTea.com which is dedicated to providing a listening ear to anyone and everyone who just needs someone to talk to.
I saved the conversation because I figured I might want to refer back to it at some point. I'm not afraid to show it to anyone, but know that I was not in a good place when it was being made.
Link
Priya, a random individual who was simply there to listen to anyone and everyone with a problem, actually gave me some hope. Some people will be surprised to know that I left the Minecraft Pokemon Server community, since I didn't exactly broadcast it. But I did it. I haven't even logged on in 10 days, and I banned myself and every alternate account I own to insure I'd have an extra layer of prevention. I was determined to start making a change in my life.
By the time Thursday evening came around though, things didn't look much different. I'd replaced Minecraft with an old game that sucked my life away in middle school, Titan Quest. So once my roommates/friends got back from a trip to Lake Tahoe, I was ready to hole up in my room and let them have their own fun. They had different plans though, so after I volunteered my little stash of alcohol for their drinking games (I know it sounds like I'm an alcoholic now, but I hadn't touched those drinks for at least a month or longer) I wasn't going to let them drink all my stuff without being involved myself. As the night went on, I was labeling my drunkenness on a scale of 1-10, with 5 being fairly tipsy, and 10 being blacked-out, won't remember this part of the night.
I reached a 10 sometime around midnight (I think, as I said, I don't remember that part) and I also don't have any idea how I got from the kitchen to my bed. Though apparently knocking over a dog's water bowl was part of that process. I'm still amazed I had the motor function to change my shirt.
Which leads me to waking up at 9am Friday morning with my very first Hangover! Yay! Not. I wasn't sick or anything drastic, but my head was pounding, my face felt fuzzy, and I was equal parts regretting drinking at all and being tempted to call in sick to my work shift in 6 hours.
However, I pushed through it, and 6 hours later I was at work with no problems at all, and telling everyone I could about my newest 'first' on the list. The day was nothing special, fairly boring really, but once the shift was over at 11, I sat at the bar I worked at with some coworkers that I consider friends now, had a shot and shared a shot, and was then bought a shot by some old guy who was out with his old friends and wanted to buy everyone a round. That man also seemed to see something in me that I still hadn't seen in myself.
That night though, my coworkers/friends invited me to a movie and sushi the next morning, and while my wallet grimaced, I was not going to let money get in the way of spending time with these people who I actually cared about. I didn't know them very well, but I wanted to, and this was the perfect way to start.
So that morning, I walked to the theatre that I always visit on my own, waited for them to arrive, saw 22 Jump Street (I liked it, but it might have just been the atmosphere or my current mood swaying my opinion) and then we all left to get sushi at the restaurant we all work in/near (the bar I work in serves all the margaritas and other liqueurs ordered at that mexican/sushi place). They kept trying to get me to try new things, but I'd made the mistake of eating breakfast before the movie, and I also wasn't as much a fan of spicy foods, so the jalapenos on half of their orders sorta turned me away. That and the cilantro on one of their rolls, which just happened to be her favorite one. Cilantro makes me grimace. Just thinking about it. It's evil. The Ceviche roll had jalapenos and cilantro, so I couldn't bring myself to get over it. If it hadn't had cilantro, I probably would have gotten over it and tried it. I hope I didn't offend her by so stubbornly refusing to even consider it.
So afterward, it was off to get ready for, then leave for work. 4-midnight is my normal Saturday, and it was a bad one. Hardly anyone tipped the bartenders, so my little 20% of their tips wasn't anything useful.
I happened to pass some time at the bar again, though I eventually headed downstairs to our Sports bar, where the bartender on graveyard shift is someone I confide in frequently. I proceeded to get quite drunk, and basically confided in anyone and everyone who happened to be looking in my direction. I really need to stop drinking in public. By the time I left, I had talked to 2 bartenders, 2 barbacks, 2 ladies who work in our other restaurant, one waiter at the Mexican restaurant, some manager of a completely non-food&beverage department, and one girl who was a complete stranger but still listened and responded. By the time I got home, I didn't want to get up to do anything that day. I also happened to dent the back of my phone as I drunkenly walked home that morning, around 5am.
So I slept. I missed a call from work asking if I wanted to come in at 9:30, but there was nothing I could do when I'd been asleep for 2 hours before they called. Nothing could wake me up. Once I woke up, I called back to make sure they had actually found someone, wandered to the living room couch as I talked, but they had the shift covered, and I probably just annoyed them by calling at 11. Oh well.
So I slept some more. So many dreams floated in my mind that day. Around 2 some girls from a church stopped by to talk about some events they were hosting. I wasn't going to be rude to complete strangers, even if they did wake me up. So I listened, I accepted their handout, and they went on their way. They asked if I knew anyone else who would be willing to talk about their work, but I wasn't going to set up anyone I knew with that kind of interaction. Most people I know probably wouldn't have the patience, or wouldn't appreciate me testing their patience with that.
So I slept again. My roommate came down once or twice, which woke me up, and I proceeded to fiddle with my phone, since he's always had a problem with me sleeping in the living room.
But I kept going back to sleep. I might have woken up long enough to text, or ponder my drunken idiocy of the previous night, but every time, I always fell back to sleep. I kept dreaming every time too. I can't recall a single one, but I know they were all good dreams.
I slept in my own room when my roommate came downstairs at 8pm. I don't even know why I was in the living room for that long.
When I woke up at 3am this morning, I tried to go back to sleep. Apparently my body had different plans though, so I was stuck in the middle of the night with nothing except my thoughts for company. I didn't want to get up, so my computer and all its games were out of the question. All I could do was think about this past week. Priya and her hope for me. The old man at the bar and his hope for me. My coworkers I hardly knew treating me like a friend. The interactions I had as I was spilling all my thoughts to people Saturday night, since I was actually listening as well as talking.
It was time for a change. I needed to stop feeling sorry for myself and do something about it. Priya was right; I am the only one who can help me.

It's funny, I was reading an existential comic on a site linked by one of my Facebook friends a few weeks ago. I've always loved thinking about philosophical puzzles, conundrums, logical loops that don't have any point except to be thought of. So browsing through this site a while back, I happened upon a strip where a logical man, Sanus had said that he would quit smoking, and his logical friend with less pleasant ideas, Amentia, found him smoking. In every plan, there are 2 parties. The Past self, and the Current self. The Past self makes the decision, decides to quit smoking, decides to improve his quality of life, decides to stop feeling sorry for himself. The Current self is the one that is tempted. Gets stressed and thinks about that cigarette. Gets bored and thinks about the computer games. Gets worn out and thinks about how much better life could be if only, if only...

Today, I let Past self win for once. Past self decided that I was going to exercise today. I haven't actually been self-motivated to exercise since I was in High School. So I decided that when I saw the first hint of light out my window, I would get up from whatever I was doing, and I would run.
At 5:30am that comic hit home harder than it should have. The me of the present was sitting at his computer checking his emails and dreading that daylight. I swear I was actually having an argument with myself from the past. But the past won.
I actually got up, got changed, and left my house. I'm not physically fit enough to run for long, but I still navigated myself in a full loop around the university campus. I don't know if I ran for 1/4 of the distance, 1/5 of the distance, or even 1/6 of the distance. But I took that first step. I saw the sunrise, I saw 3 rabbits, and I felt pretty good about myself, even as my lungs and heart were complaining every 5 minutes. Who knows, I might even do it again tomorrow.

I told Priya that the only question now is, "what do I do with all this free time now?"
I still don't know. But it will lead to a better tomorrow. I won't say that I'll never feel sorry for myself again. I can't promise that. But if I ever do, I better have a damn good reason, and not my own lazy habits to blame.

A River of Thoughts and Ideas, Flowing for the Last Month.

First coming to mind is an encounter I had about 3 weeks ago on my way home from work around 2am. I'm halfway there, about to go into the campus to cross through it, when I hear something that sounded like a plastic cup full of soda hitting the concrete across the street at the gas station. I glanced over, a curious bystander, saw nothing unusual. I kept walking, then heard yelling, so I gazed back once more. I saw a group of maybe 5 or 6 college age guys in a group, and it wasn't until about 10 seconds later that I realized 2 of them were fighting. I slowed my pace, heard the other 4 yelling at one of them to cool off, to cut it out, to back away. I slowed my pace, not sure if they could handle it. The victim of the attacker broke away and started running up the street in the same direction I was (on the other side of the street still). I don't know what the fight was over, but as the other 5 followed, still trying to calm the attacker down, he broke off and started running at the first guy. After that, it was a stream of "Andrew" and "do you want to get arrested" I saw one of them put the other in a headlock, by that time I was in front of one of the dorms, still walking slowly, not certain if the police were needed or if 4 people could overpower 1 drunk person. I caught that tip by listening in, the attacker had been drinking. So I hear behind me "this guy is just staring at them" and I had to tell them, I didn't know for sure if they 4 of them could handle it, or if I needed to call the police. I was completely unsure, and didn't want to get a group of people in trouble with the law for simply being stupid with each other. If it were a random mugging, yes I would have called sooner, but this was just a group of friends out late who had 2 people disagree while one was drunk, maybe I'm just too much of an idealist... I ended up calling 911, turns out someone else had already done so and there were already units on the way. Once I saw the patrol car, I went on my way. I just don't know what to think about stupid people and the law. Who knows, maybe they were even underage. I wasn't just another mindless spectator because I was going to call the police if they couldn't handle the attacker, but I hesitated for so long because I just didn't know. I don't know if I'm trying to justify this to the reader here, or to myself.
On a more positive note, I recently was victim of someone who was generous enough to do a huge favor for a complete stranger. 2 weeks ago, I had a Core Humanities midterm, some ridiculous required course in a series of 3 that teach ancient history, renaissance, and american history which all majors must take if they want to graduate. They are all BS courses for 95% of the students in them, I think it's safe to say. So for the midterm, we had to buy some official packet to write all our answers in, a bunch of notebook paper in a blue paperback cover, for 30 cents at the school store. What a waste of money, I might add, when I can get 100 sheets for 5 cents at walmart... But I forgot to buy one, until 4 minutes before the test. Oops. So I audibly say "Oh Craaaaap." and the guy next to me, a really nice and optimistic person, has the same discussion section as me, sits in the same spot every week, just like me, hears, asks what the problem was, and when I mention I didn't bring a Blue Book, says "Oh, no problem, I brought a spare just for this."
...
...
...
...
You hardly know me, I realize it's only 30 cents, but still... I don't know what the penalty was for forgetting to bring a Blue Book, but this random, generous, incredible person saved me from it for no reason other than... what? I truly didn't know.
After getting our grades back a week later, I caught up with him and compared results (I got 80% btw, not bad for not doing any of the reading.) And he explained that someone had done the exact same thing for him last semester in one of his other classes. So I was effectively the next chain in a pay-it-forward kind of deal.

News in my life, I am on the start of a month-or-longer cold turkey cutoff from my computer game addiction. I am currently using my close friend Joey's tiny little netbook, with no ability to download programs nor install content on this user profile. I also agreed to let him put a password on my gaming laptop, rather than taking the step of repossessing my power cord, just in case I do end up needing it and I can text him with a very convincing reason for needing it.
He also helped me clean up the tornado playground known as my bedroom, and helped me buy an actual desk and chair for my room at GoodWill for all of 15 dollars, then transported it, and me, home.
This morning I asked him for help with my personal problems and shortcomings, and he was more than happy to deliver, even at the expense of taking his own plans to do housework and putting them to the side. He gave me advice, drove here and there for me, discussed the sources of my problems and what I needed to do to resolve them, and really lent a listening ear to everything I had to vent about. He even paid for a stop at Taco Bell, with no other request for repayment except that I be happy as soon as I can be and for as long as I can be.
Without sounding like some emotional mess, all I can do is thank him for his selflessness today, and try not to let him down as this month passes. If all goes well, I have a lot of changes in store for my habits, and they should all be for the better.

I SWEAR IM NOT DEAD

Not yet at least. Jeez, I just read all of my blog posts and some of them had me laughing like a crazy man... I've changed so much over 2 years. Not to mention I actually know how to spell Nicole now, without the h.
Wow. Where do I start? I left off in my 3rd semester, y'all didn't even get a breath of my 4th... Or any part of 2013 for that matter, here's to documenting part of a year over halfway done with that year. Huh. Ups and downs abound really. I'll try and cover my 3rd semester's end, what I remember of it... French ended as expected, got an A, didn't have to take the final, and the professor, upon reading an essay I had to write, suggested that I change my major because I didn't sound very satisfied with my choice when he read over my thoughts on it. Proofs ended as a ... B? C? Something like that. I think it prepared me for that nightmare of Analysis well enough. I don't even remember what other classes I was taking. Linear Algebra? The professor was too nice, I don't even remember anything from that class 7 months later. CS 135. Haha. I said the grade couldn't be recovered, I was right, got another C- and not the C that I needed to go on. I lied though. Come 2013, I retook it for a total of 4 times in that infernal class.
Oh 2013. The world didn't end, hope y'all are aware of that. If you aren't, please get out of that bunker, people miss you. I took Analysis, Probability Theory, Computer Science, and Game Theory last semester. CS 135. Guess who actually did 65% of their homework this time? This guy. Granted, I needed 70% or higher to get that C. If the homework total is under 70%, you can almost certainly expect C- or lower, barring extreme circumstances. Just their stupid regulation. The reason I've been retaking it, actually, since I am interested in the subject, and have even started branching out into programming outside of school. I got 105/100 on my first midterm, 90 on the second. The hardest part about the weekly quizzes was motivating myself to go to class on time to take them. Oh, and I also had this class at 9 in the morning, contrary to the last 3 times when it was at 4 pm. Needless to say, I was addicted to Mountain Dew toward the end of the year, as I fought to get my quiz grade back to an acceptable range. But I still only got 65% of my homework done. I was very proud of the last assignment I did, a group project that had 2 weeks to be finished. Got 90/70 on that one. After I turned it in, I stopped by my old CS professor's office and had a chat with him about my last 3 attempts, my reasons for retaking, my reasons for slacking, and what my options could be due to my 65% inadequacy. He started by telling me that, should I get a B in the class overall, not a C or C+, they might just waive the homework cutoff rule for me. An 87% on the final, and guess who is finally moving on to CS 202? I am so relieved. That shiny B on my transcript was the best thing I've done for myself all 2 years.
As for Analysis, that horrifying nightmare of brain ooze last year, it turns out that this professor taught it as if we HADN'T taken 301. Basically reviewing everything we learned last semester, and silently informing us that we literally wasted a full semester learning how to make college level proofs. Toward the end, I was kind of interested, we were finally proving concepts that I learned in Calc AB in high school, so I could remember their applications and make connections to how the proofs were relevant to math in general. However, homework was also 40% of our grade. Death to the Jeremy. I don't know how I scraped out of that class with a D. Technically a passing grade too, I might even sign up for Analysis 2. Maybe.
No, the real nightmare was Probability Theory. Jeez, was that a slap in my face. It starts out as simple as "We have 10 marbles, 4 are red, what is the percent chance that we pick a red marble?" and I leave that class bored witless and thinking I might actually have an easy class. Boy was I wrong. Mid-Semester we were going into CDF's and PDF's and discrete versus continuous random variables which only helped in finding the probability of any given event, then it got even more fun with multidimensional random variables, which could be a mixture of discrete or continuous... Mix in a few combination versus permutation functions to see what the sample size was, and I was a bundle of confusion every time I left that class. Definite retake. Here I was thinking I was done retaking classes when I finished CS 135, guess I really am that inadequate after all. The class also contributed my first official F in college. On the bright side...
Game Theory was the most interesting class I have ever taken, no competition. Learning about the math behind decision making, when all the options are visible, was extremely cool. Everything from the optimal strategy to take if your country is getting threatened by nuclear attack, to the ideal mate for a set of 10 guys and 9 girls, who each have individual preferences. A variation of the "marriage game" is also the "college admissions game" which gives a result based on a set of applicants and a set of colleges, each with their own individual preferences on where to go and who to accept. Turns out that an interesting pattern pops up too, when you switch who is applying/proposing to the other. The percent of people who got their "best choice" is always greater when that group of people were proposing. If the groups switched around, suddenly the first one was only 'satisfied' and the second one suddenly had a lot more 'best choice' results in it. It's a very cool concept that proves that being proactive is the ideal choice, rather than waiting for someone/something to approach you. Especially in a human on human interaction, such as, say, dating? By the end of that class, I was agog with information, though I had only done maybe 4/9 of the homework assignments. The final was worth 50% of the total grade however, which probably contributed massively to my overall grade of B- at the end of the semester. I'm very excited to have yet another class with that professor next semester, Graph Theory and Combinatorics (sorry blogspot, but that is actually a word). Turns out, a lot of things can be represented by graphs, especially when we break out of the standard representation of a line or plane representing 1 variable's relation to others. For example, in Game Theory, we used graphs to represent house owners who wanted to trade houses and couldn't figure out the optimal set up to trade and get their best choice out of the remaining options.
So summer comes with my GPA of 2.408, not nearly high enough to grab a tutoring job at the school or anything. I can't afford summer classes, being jobless and all. Yeah. Jobless. About that. I didn't get desperate until I realized I wouldn't be able to afford rent on August first if I didn't get some sort of income. Only Kyle's dad saved my hide by intervening and offering to help me get a job nearby. Did I mention he's the General Manager at Circus Circus in Reno? Which is only a 22 minute walk away from my house as well. So he tells me to call him the morning after we visit his house for dinner, Kyle, Kyle's brother, Nicole, and I use it as a sort of family time, with how close we've all gotten, and even gotten to his dad. That next morning, I make the call, and he tells me that he will see what he can find in their total job listing, for which I would meet the requirements. 30 minutes later, I pick up, and he gives me a list to apply for. So I go for it, I am honest with everything I write, there seem to be no problems, and he says he will let them know they should look it over. 20 minutes later, he calls me and tells me that my application was reviewed as incomplete. Missing my address and phone number? How did the system even let me submit it? Those are required fields, I don't even... Whatever. I fill those in, and resubmit. 40 minutes go by, and then I get a call from the Human Resources Department at Circus Circus, they want me to come in for an interview for the BarPorter position. Tuesday, I get a hair cut and buy some decent looking pants that don't have holes in the back pocket from an oversized wallet. Then I spend 2 hours looking around the area trying to find the HR department so I don't spend 2 hours looking the next morning. That was not a fun jaunt. Especially when we had a severe heat warning for the area, with temperatures expected to be around 100 during the day until Wednesday. So Wednesday comes, I head off to the interview and arrive 30 minutes early because I'm crazy like that. They tell me the manager wants to see me in the sports bar, and she will probably be late due to a meeting she had. They give me a copy of my application printout, and I go on my way. While I'm waiting, I read the application. Name, Address, Work History, and there at the bottom, the 3 spots I applied for.
Status: REJECTED
Status: REJECTED
Status: REJECTED
Well. That's... Pleasant. I can only assume those 3 labels were there because of that hiccup with the incomplete application, but I have to admit I was nervous after reading that. I do fairly well under pressure though, and I am a smooth talker, so the interview went fairly well. Turns out I got the position, and based on the way she was talking, they need me more than I need them. I'll be getting a lot of hours, and possibly even reaching 40 per week until the school season starts again. It's only a little more than 7.60 but as long as I get more than 20 hours per week I'll be fine for rent and bills. We even get tips sometimes. All I have to worry about now is paying for school semester 5. I start when I meet their requirements for the job, which are a drug test, background check, alcohol awareness training, gaming license, and appropriate dress code, which include black slacks, a black or white undershirt, and "polishable" black shoes. No idea where to start on the last bit. So now its July 9th, 6 days after that interview, and all I can do now is buy the clothes and shoes, then wait for that call. Thinking back to those 3 status markings though, I can only imagine the lost opportunity had I not known Kyle's dad, and he had the faith in me to make them take another look at my application. Best second scenario: walking 1 hour every day to go flip burgers at Jack in the Box.
So that's my life. My forseeable future. School starts the 21st of August. I have a few FAFSA-generated loans waiting for me to accept them, since I'm not scholarship worthy in my work ethic. Something my old CS professor actually suggested was talking to a counselor about my work habits. Who knows what they'll say, but maybe it'll help me. I do want to succeed, I have not only myself to let down, but everyone who relies on me to stay here. I know I should be self-motivated, but I don't put enough stock into my own being to give that motivation any value. I live for my friends because I see them as being worth more than I could be. So when I have their pressure under me to succeed, it is stronger than my own fear of failure. Heck, I'm not even afraid of failure, I just laugh at it. I hope this job and the coming semester mark a turning point in my life. I'm gaining weight, I'm going broke, and I'm really not seeing a future for myself if I keep walking this path. I need a jolt, a cataclysmic change in my life to point me another way, and I hope that I'm looking right at it.

I'll try to start blogging more, at least once a month, if not more. 9 months of silence was really too long, and most people don't like to read essays.

Ok. So. Here's Earth...

I love that video, ze end of ze world.
On another note, here's a video I just recently love because I literally just saw it in someone else's Facebook feed.

It has me quite excited for 2013, and hoping that December 21st 2012 doesn't mean the end of the world that everyone doesn't think it does.

Speaking of that date, on that particular day, I will have gone 1 full year without a hair cut. I am actually not sure if I have the determination to make it that long. I just passed the 10 month mark, and it is seriously turning into a battle of willpower.


So what's going on in my life? Um. Good question. About a month ago I went up to Alaska for a weekend (Surprise!) and had a blast. Maybe not as much fun as I could have, but definitely the best I could considering the circumstances of why I was up there and people's schedules. Where did I upload those pictures to... Oh yeah, Facebook. Not sure how in depth I should go on that trip. I've forgotten the minor details, like the order in which everything happened... Oh well.

More recently, I've been involved again with the Lincoln Haunted Basement, an annual charity event done by a couple of the local dorm halls. Such a stressful event, since we meet every Thursday night, and since the second meeting, we haven't known heads or tails what the theme of the basement would be. It seemed pretty stable on a creepy, dusty, dead silent museum. Then some kind of creature got involved. Then the basement had no sense of whether it was a museum or an animal control project. Finally, it got completely redone into the Virginia Street Sewer Project, a haunted sewer system that has secretly been under Reno the entire time, and is now getting re-connected to the main system, with the help of eager volunteers who happen to pay the entry fee of $2 or two canned foods. We start construction this Friday, and I cannot wait to put our plans into action. My long hair will also be playing a part in it.

I played soccer with one of my house mates, Bandar (from Saudi Arabia) last Thursday, before the meeting. I'd forgotten how out of shape I was, my lack of obesity defies logic and makes people think I can still do sports well. I had a cramp after 30 minutes, and the grass was so slick I was falling after every kick. The group was nice though, one member of the opposing team even helped me up off my butt after I almost crashed into him.
On the soccer topic, I have officially joined an intramural co-ed soccer team, scheduled to play every Monday night, with one random Friday thrown in. Considering tonight is our first game, and we had snow in the forecast, I expect to lose a couple fingers, or be running across the field with my hands in my pants. At least the meager crowd will be entertained, if we have one. Maybe it'll entertain the referees, poor souls.

Classes are fluctuating, my Proofs class is proving (pun intended) to be the most difficult at the moment. When [2][6]+[11]^10 = [6], there is a problem with the world. Granted this was in Z_13 because you all know what that means. I fully expect to get a 60 or lower on this coming test Wednesday.
On the test topic, my midterm for Computer Science (yeah that class I'm taking for the third time) came back with a perfect 90. I'll see tomorrow what they didn't like about my test. I think I already know, but we'll see. I'm still not likely to pass the class with the required prerequisite for the next level, and thus will take it again next semester screw that, I'm done with it. I'm not wasting any more time and money in that class. If I can afford to audit the level 202 class, THAT'S what I'm going to do, I don't even care about credit anymore. I'm switching my major to a Bachelor of Arts in Math, and removing my need for Computer Science completely. I can teach myself whatever I need to if I can't audit 202.It's funny, I actually did my very first Design Assignment and Programming Assignment EVER during my wait in the airport heading up to Anchorage. I was proud of myself. Too bad it's still to late to recover my homework grade. Oh well, some things aren't meant to be. Seems to be a theme recently.
French is a joke still. Although I did manage to make a fool out of myself because we had to do a research project on Normandy, and I hate history almost more than Computer Science, so all my notes were "skimpy" by the professor's description. I replied that my care for the topic was equally skimpy. The people who heard me laughed.
I can finally say that I'm starting to understand why Linear Algebra has the word Linear in it, regardless of all the blooming matrices it uses to perform its convoluted actions.The test on that shouldn't be too rough, and I actually took notes in class today, so that's an even better upside. The homework is still ridiculous though, skipped about 4 of the 9 problems because they simply didn't make sense to me.

Can't think of much else really. Oh, I dumped salsa on my $1200 laptop, and after taking it apart using the knowledge my brother imparted upon me, I determined the keyboard was ruined, so I ordered a new one from dell. Hoping that everything works well when I get that added in, I really do fear for the damage that was done during those moments where the computer was on and the red goo was seeping into every part it could. My laptop is going to have a faint aroma around it forever... Typing this on my basic couple-years old laptop now. It's taken the brunt of my usage now.

Until I think of something else to write about, happy reading, and let's hope I have fingers left to use when this soccer game is over. Happy Reading, and Happy earlyHalloween.

The Interesting Points

Yeah, I don't think I'll be blogging daily like I was last year, too much seems mundane. Go to class, walk home, go to sleep, do things in between.
However, some people seem to think I write well, so I'll keep them entertained and feed their hunger for good literature.
Last thing I remember was Tuesday, I went to my Computer Science Lab, where we always have our 10 minute start-of-class quiz. That's the only reason I went, because we have to face the facts and agree that the lab itself won't teach me squat when I've already diligently sat through It twice, especially when the Teacher Assistant who leads it has an (Indian?) accent so strong I don't know what his name is. So I sat and made sure my computer login hadn't expired since last year, and got my paper out for the quiz. The TA put it on the projector, and I wrote down the crap I had to. In 3 minutes. The time it took the lead to get onto the paper. That might be why I got 18/20, I'll have to check that out when I get it back. So it's 4 minutes in, and the guy sitting in front of me starts shuffling about in his chair. Then he cups his head in his hands. Then starts breathing hard, like he was very frustrated. I heard him mutter under his breath, "why won't it compile?" (for the non-nerds, this means, "why is there an error popping up and stopping the computer from making this a program") so I assumed he was done with the quiz and frustrated over his homework as he was using his free time to work on it in the lab. I was wrong. The TA announced the 10 minutes were done, and everyone starts passing papers to the middle row, and the frustrated one looks up in surprise. "I thought we were supposed to do it on the application on the computer...? What...?" When the TA responds that all quizzes are on paper, the frustrated one stands up, and with a groan, SLAMS HIS HEAD INTO THE WALL. TWICE.  I couldn't help but feel sorry for his situation, since it was obviously his first time in the class, and that kind of misunderstanding sucks, but another part was just wondering what motivated him to make a scene of it. The TA tried to calm him down, but he just sat and started muttering about dropping the class, and I even told him its 1/16 of 1/5 of his final grade, one quiz wouldn't break him, he starts saying that I don't understand, if he messed up anything with his current scholarships he's out on his ass, and I just dropped out of the conversation and let the TA take over. I can't convince someone so deeply rooted in despair that such a small mistake wouldn't break him. It's literally 1.2% of the total grade. In addition, hoping for an A in this class without obsessive dedication and innate talent on the first try is extremely optimistic. To put it lightly. I left when the TA started going over the stuff in the lab, not sure if I got any funny looks for ducking out or not.
So Wednesday came and went. I started playing League of Legends. More on that later.
Thursday, the day I have no classes, I was rudely awakened at 8:40 in the morning by a smoke detector's shrill announcement. It sounded like it was legitimately going off, not just a low-battery chirp. Then it stopped. I opened my eyes, saw nothing, waited, heard nothing, then decided to pass out again. Not TEN minutes later, it did it again, sounding for maybe a half second longer. So I actually get up this time, see nothing wrong with it, look in the common area of the house, nothing, look out the front window to see... Nothing. So I just plopped back in bed and wasn't disturbed until I woke up normally at 11 or so. Don't know what the rest of the day consisted of, except when I played League of Legends with some online friends at about 8. That game. I find that it either tells you how much you suck at it, or your teammates suck at it and you lose anyways. The computer-controlled players are idiots, even though they troll you to death, but when you start facing actual humans, even on lower levels, you just can't win. There are so many advanced players that make new accounts for the novelty, that when you play "low" level people, you're playing people with 8 months+ of experience, and can't win. You either study the game until you can recite every character, how to equip them, what moves to use, what a combo is for them, and where they are supposed to go on the map, or you die because you don't know one of those details. I am not going to study a game that intensely this soon. No game should have a learning curve THAT steep. Typically a learning curve for a game looks like an exponential one, or an arc of small-big-small. Not 1/x, starting at infinity and slowly getting less information to take in.
Friday, today, I overslept by 50 minutes so got nothing to eat until after my first class. Bright side, I'm still hanging on in there, although the inequalities are looking like they will be my enemy the entire time. Why can't everything be equal? (Don't answer that)
So food was good, mail was empty, job still absent, bills paid, loan status questionable, bank account crying. Hooray?