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Happy Cinco de Mayo!
I'm feeling very five-y today... on 05-05-05.
So it's been a while since I've updated, mainly because I've been busy with graduating from college! I didn't think it'd be that exciting since I'm just going right back to classes in the fall for grad school. But it is pretty cool to officially be an engineer finally, something that I had always figured I'd do since about 6th grade. Other career options before that: garbage man, astronaut (actually I still want to do this one, but my eyesight is too poor. Thank goodness for civilian spaceflight), and astronomer. So now I am the official holder of a Bachelor of Science in Computer Engineering from the University of Florida. This also means I actually have to know stuff now, and can no longer say "Oh I have no idea why that works, you'd have to ask an engineer". I really liked my major, and was very atypical in that I've known I wanted to do computer engineering since middle school and I still don't think I would have been happier studying anything else. And that companies pay (very very) well to do the things I love doing is even cooler. Speaking of which I start working for Intel in Oregon in a little over a week, and I'm really excited about it. They gave me some more info on what I'll be doing, and it'll use a lot of the things I've learned in my favorite classes, as well as a lot of Linux things. Fun stuff!
Graduating!
Me and a few others in my department. I think about 450 total graduated in Engineering that day.
And a few of my friends who also graduated Spring 2005 with me:
Me and my roommate Ryan (he's going to Med School)
Me and my very good friend Sarah (she's going to Tibet for a few months, how freakin cool is that?)
Me and my friend Alyson (also staying at UF for grad school, hooray!)
If anyone wants to get me a graduation present, may I suggest some Tetris bookshelves? A tad pricey yes, but so cool.
I also got my drivers license renewed today, since it was about to expire. I got to get the organ donor designation on my license, but I forgot to tell them to change the height (I've grown 3 inches since 16). And so far I have yet to get pulled over or in any accident, and I drive a fair amount, so here's to hoping my luck continues.
My luck has not continued with T-Mobile however. My phone broke a week ago, and while I was told I would get a replacement phone within a week, I called back after not recieving it and was told it would not ship until May 13th, over 3 weeks after the order was placed! And since I was told it would take under a week, I had it shipped to Gainesville where I am no longer at, and now they can't change the shipping address of a package that won't be shipped for another 2 weeks! Update: But after a sternly worded letter to their customer service, I just got an email saying they shipped it today, so I should get it pretty soon.
I've been making a ton of backups the last few days, since now is when I actually have time to do things like that. Looking through my old burned CD's, almost every single one either has a date in late December or early May on it. I've got a lot of stuff.
Oh, and in case you didn't see it, try high lighting the links on the last update. That third picture is just juice.
And dont' forget that tomorrow, May 6th, is No Pants Day!
I finally broke 3,000 songs, so a music update is in order. Almost 12 GB's and 200 hours of musical goodness. I love putting everything on my playlist and listening on random since I hear all these tracks I completely forgot about. Like this Para Para Paradise one I'm listening to as I type this. Good ol' super happy Japanese techno pop.
If I could have waited a few more months, my license could have looked like this. Uglier yes, but lots of cool features.
Sigh. Lets go attack a country that wasn't any threat to the US, and ignore the country that actually does have weapons of mass destruction. Thanks Bush!
I've been playing a bunch of Gran Turismo 4 lately, since I'm at home with nothing to do all day. I picked it up last week, and been playing around with it off and on since then. It lets you take pictures of your replay's, and then download them to a USB stick, so I got a shot of the Chrysler 300C, which we also own in real life. It's cool to race a car I actually drive, and see what's its like to go 150 MPH down a straight away. Racing has always been one of my favorite videogame genre's, though in recent years music games have overtaken it. But I still love GT, and GT1 was the whole reason I got a Playstation originally.
I'm in Oregon! It hasn't rained... yet... but with a 90% chance today I don't think I'll be able to say that much longer.
It's been a busy end of the week though. Thursday I went to the most authentic redneck country music club in Tampa, where I had a lot of fun line dancing. Then Friday I went to Medieval Times in Orlando to watch knights joust each other on horses and eat a lot of really good food with our hands (as there was no silverware in the middle ages apparently). The net result of this however was I didn't get very much sleep, so while waking up at 3 AM Saturday to catch my plane wasn't too hard, staying awake during the rest of the day was. I slept a little on the flight but it wasn't a very restful sleep. I also got personally searched because I set off the metal detector twice, because I forgot I had batteries in a small pocket in my jeans. My suitcases were also searched, TSA left me a nice little note about that. Then me and my huge amount of suitcases took the awesome light rail from the airport to a station where my manager picked me up to take me to the house I'm staying at for a little bit before my lease starts for my apartment. The light rail went right through downtown Portland, so I got to see quite a bit of that, and everything is really green here. There's also a TON of spiders up here, I've killed four already and it hasn't even been 24 hours yet. But I had heard about the spider problems, and luckly I'm not as scared by them as I used to be when I was younger.
How donating organs saves lives.
Only four more days till the last Star Wars!
So after seeing Episode 3 three times already, I can easily say that it's the best of the prequels, though still not as good as the original trilogy. The theatre's been packed everytime I've gone, and I saw a few people dressed up, but since I missed the midnight showing I'm sure I would have seen more then. I've been waiting for the showdown between Obi Wan and Anakin for years, and it definitely met expectations. And to think the whole idea started out as The Star Wars with Annikin Starkiller.
As far as Oregon goes, it's pretty cool. I haven't gotten to see or do much yet because this week's been so hectic, but there's a lot to do here. My project for work is also interesting, and if the first week is any indication, I'll be really busy. The two hardest things to adjust to is the cold weather and the time change. Being three hours behind everyone means that when I'm done eating dinner, everyone on the East coast is heading to bed. And my free cell phone minutes don't begin until midnight Eastern time, so everyone's already asleep by then, at least on the weekdays. I think it'll be a really fun summer though, and it's nice to be able to explore an entirely new region of the country for a few months.
Burger King is getting creative in their advertising.
Someone really doesn't like dimes. I've heard of getting rid of pennies before, but the dime is a new angle. My favorite reason on there is "The March of Dimes may have cured Polio, but a march of Quarters would have cured it 250% faster."
Only two more years till space. Sure it costs a quarter of a million dollars, but that's totally worth it. I can live on ramen for the rest of my life, it's ok. Anything for a chance at the stars.
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