Chaos
Yes, chaos. But a good kind! A ton of stuff has happened in the past week or so. The main one, which is a good thing - I got a job! Woo! I finally got one, at a place called Metris. I'll be doing programming. Hopefully I can wow them with my skills, maybe get some good experience. Sadly, now that I have a job, I've been getting many more job opportunities. Today ALONE I've been contacted five times about job openings. Ugh. And some of them offered hefty wages, but I'm already committed. I just wish they could have decided to contact me earlier. Maybe if I hear of one that just sounds too lovely, I might take it. But for now, I'm happy to work at Metris.

So there's been that, and I've been doing side work, as well. Computer educating, as well as spyware removal. Man. I went to a friend of my mom's to work on fixing up her computer - she doesn't use it at all, but her cousin and daughter use it regularly. It had over 4000 pieces of spyware on it. I'm surprised it was still functioning at all. I tried fixing it as best I could, but to do a full job on a case like that would take a lot more time. It took me a good four hours to do what I did, as it is. It should be a lot better now, though.

Ooh! And I signed up for a couple of mystery shopper places. Although I haven't gotten any chances to try it out, yet. Might be a fun way to bring in extra income, who knows. Who wouldn't want to get paid to go out to eat, or to watch movies?

So I got into Google Talk, since it's Google, and Google is cool. I got a few people on my list, and I especially like the VOIP capabilities. It comes through very cleanly, and it's easy to use. It's like opening up some sort of portal to your friend, so you have a space in between that you can talk through. It's very, very clean, and it's almost like just having them there in the same room. A slight bit of lag, but that's expected. I did get to try it (VOIP) out with my friend Amy, and I think she liked it. You might try it out! Anyone with a gmail account can use it, free of charge. It's still beta, so they're going to add a ton of stuff, I'm sure. The actual IM part of it is pretty good, too.

Oh, I caved in and signed up for Blockbuster's DVD for delivery thingie. I canceled my other thing I had with them, where you actually have to GO to a location to pick up movies. Man! Who does that anymore, really? So much work. Anyway, I signed up, you get three movies at a time, unlimited rentals, under $20 a month. Not too shabby. The part I like the most is that you can actually find movies you WANT to see. Not like the crap they stock at their stores. And they'll recommend movies to you, based on what you "rate". Their choices they recommended me are consistent with the quality of movies they keep on their shelves, which means maybe one in twenty gets me thinking, "Hmm, maybe..." I'm finishing up Season 1 of CSI, which is cool, and I've got many more movies in my queue, just waiting to be delivered. Like the Karate Kid! Yeah! Wax on, wax off.

That was my advertising section. They're not paying me for THAT. Yet. Ooh! But another product I've been using is something called Guitar Pro. And for anyone who plays guitar and can read tablature, it's pretty freakin' sweet. I used it to learn a couple of songs already. I've had it for a while, but I never got into it - when I tried using it was when my other drive started going bad, so I guess I just made associations of negativity with it. But in reality, it's quite nice. You can put in your song by just typing in the tab with the correct notation for timing, and then you can play it back in MIDI, adjust the timing as necessary to practice, and just set it to repeat. Even a couple of measures at a time - just pick a number of beats per minute, a number of repetitions, and then how many BPMs you want to increase it by each time it repeats. It helped me a bit. And you can export MIDI files, too! So I've tabbed a few songs. Like this one. Yeah, midi isn't very good, and the voice could be a lot better, but with the limited resources I had, I think it turned out okay. Hopefully you do, too.

Ooh! I found a picture, and I liked it a lot, I had to share. I'm really tempted to make this into a t-shirt.

Maybe it's a little not right, but it made you smile, didn't it?

I did get to go on a float trip this last weekend with Newman - it was a lot of fun. Got some sun, got to meet people. We had a good mix of ages, so I wasn't the only alum there. I think getting out and getting into the sun is something everyone can use. Except make sure you use sunscreen if you're not used to it - a certain Jon somebody (I won't say who it is, except that his last name is Peyton) turned a nice rosy RED from the sun. I hope he's not losing multiple layers of skin.

And the hurricane has hit, which isn't such good chaos. I can't imagine having a home there, having to go through all of that. I just hope people are okay, even if their residences might not be so well. Several cities were hit hard, some more than others.

Okay, that's sad. So here's a joke to make things balanced! This one's an old story I've heard - I don't know if it's true or not, but it's still interesting:
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Introductory Chemistry at Duke has been taught for about a zillion years by Professor Bonk (really), and his course is semi-affectionately known as "Bonkistry". He has been around forever, so I wouldn't put it past him to come up with something like this.

Anyway, one year there were these two guys who were taking Chemistry and who did pretty well on all of the quizzes and the mid-terms and labs, etc., such that going into the final they had a solid A. These friends were so confident going into the final that the weekend before finals week (even though the Chem final was on Monday), they decided to go up to the University of Virginia and party with some friends up there.

They did this and had a great time. However, with their hangovers and everything, they overslept all day Sunday and didn't make it back to Duke until early Monday morning.

Rather than taking the final then, they found Professor Bonk after the final and explained to him why they missed the final. They told him that they went up to UVA for the weekend, and had planned to come back in time to study, but that they had a flat tire on the way back and didn't have a spare and couldn't get help for a long time and so were late getting back to campus.

Bonk thought this over and then agreed that they could make up the final on the following day. The two guys were elated, relieved and very proud of their story. So, they studied that night and went in the next day at the time Bonk had told them. He placed them in separate rooms and handed each of them a test booklet and told them to begin.

They looked at the first problem, which was something simple about molarity and solutions and was worth 5 points. "Cool," they thought, "this is going to be easy." They did that problem and turned the page. They were unprepared, however, for what they saw on the next page...

WHICH TIRE? (95 points)
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Okay - I've got to go to kung fu! Time for class! I'll tell you more about kung fu stuff later. For now - a random link! It's a game I am TRULY excited about. The same company that did ICO is releasing this. Just look at it - it is beauty.
- posted by Pootenheimer @ 6:48 PM | 2 comments