First Week of Summer (Part 1 of ?)

Well, the first week of summer isn't quite over yet, but I needed to come up with a title for the post.

On Monday I went diving with dad and brother off the coast of Key Largo, it was awesome. I forget who it was, but someone asked me if I saw sharks last time I went diving. Now I can say I have, it was only a nurse shark, which is probably the least aggressive and dangerous, but whatever... I'll put up a picture when I get it developed.
Tuesday was dentist day in the morning followed by a doctors appointment. The doctor told me to go to an allergy doctor and somehow I miraculously got an appointment for today.
The doctor said they need to run some tests to see what I'm allergic to, so they did. If anyone is reading this (doubtful) and doesn't like needles, don't ever get tested for allergies. My arms when through what is equivalent to 50 mosquito bites (Some swell up more than others) later followed by 28 shots on the arm (just to make sure there were no false negatives.) The worst part is that I had to sit there and not move (scratch) for ten minutes. That was not very fun. The results said that I am highly allergic to cats and dust mites. I am also allergic to dogs, feathers, other animals, etc... Then they told me I need to come back next week for the second round of tests (food and pollen allergies.) Oh yeah, I also have to go twice a week to get allergy shots, this is looking like my best summer ever.
After the fun morning I went to Monty's with a few friends, that was (actually) fun.

I got all my grades back, I think there has been a grading mistake because I didn't get any B's. That never happened in high school, but hey, I'm not going to complain.

One Down, Four to Go!

My first year of college is officially over. This last week of finals was probably one of the worst I have had. Not because of the actual exams, but because my body decided to wake up extremely early and not fall asleep until very late. On Tuesday, I woke up nice and early at 5:30am, I took my exam, and then around 2pm or so (I don't quite remember.) I took a two hour nap. As you probably don't know, I don't work well with naps, I usually feel worse after I wake up. Unfortunately, after that nap, I didn't fall asleep until around 2am. I had an exam at 10am the next morning, so I was up around 7am, again, not by choice. I somehow managed to take my physics exam without falling asleep and later made my formula sheet for the math exam on Thursday.

Oh yeah, since it was my birthday, my roommate got some cake and a few people from the floor ate it later at night. That night I also didn't fall asleep very early, probably around 11:30. I woke up at 6am for my 8am test (I needed to get breakfast before the exam.) The exam took about an hour and a half, but when I finished, I felt so much better.
Later that day, Anel and Zhanara came over and we watched the movie Италянец (The Italian). It was in Russian, so I didn't understand most of it, but it was fun anyway (I had seen it before with subtitles.)

Today (Friday) was horrible. I had to pack everything, and I hate packing, not to mention I'm not very good at it and I take forever. It is very hard choosing what I take home and what I leave here in Rochester, hopefully I won't forget anything important (although I probably will.)
Thom (my roommate) was nice enough to let me stay in his house for the night, my plane leaves tomorrow afternoon, I'm glad I'm not spending my last day in the dorm.

I'm checking my grades online, so far it looks like I have an A in Sophomore Practicum, Beginning Russian 2 (Thanks Anel!!!), and University Physics II. The grades for Digital Systems and Differential Equations have not been posted yet. I guess I'll make a quick post when I get them.

Mid-Exam-Week Update

So tomorrow I have my Digital Systems exam at 12:30. I'm supposed to memorize some stuff for the test, hopefully it will come to me in my dreams because I am really bad at memorizing stuff. On Saturday I had my Russian exam, that one was not as bad as I expected it to be. The written portion was the hardest because it required (guess what!) memorizing all the grammar rules and words. The speaking was not so bad, thanks to my friend Anel that helped me practice the day before.

As you may or may not know, I am going to Russia over the summer to study (Russian of course), I can't wait! I'm supposed to keep a journal while I am there, so I will just put it all here instead. What use is a journal if only one or two people read it? (I don't know, I'm sure there is one.) [Actually, thats probably as many people as there are reading this blog, but hey, it's ok to hope]
I will be living with a host family (how cool is that?!), I still don't know who they are, but I'm really looking forward to it. I'll try and take a picture or two if I remember. I always take my camera in trips but forget to take pictures...

I don't know what to call this, it is more like a bunch of unrelated sentences put together, hopefully they make sense, if not, oh well, they made sense in my head as I was writing this... Now I'm going to start performing the best pre-test preparation, sleep. (I don't care what people tell me, I still believe getting a good night sleep is more important than staying up studying, at least in my experience it helps my grades more. Actually, I do care what people tell me, it's just that I believe in this case I am right. I always welcome new suggestions, what's the point in thinking I'm right if I'm not?)

New Phone!

So after almost three years with my Nokia 6800, I finally upgraded to a Samsung BlackJack!
I don't have much time to write, but in summary, the phone is amazing! I have it now syncing with my Google Calendar, I still need to get my contacts over from the old phone, but that's just minor stuff. The screen is great, it has a full QWERTY keyboard, and many many many other features.
I found a cool site http://www.i607.org where they have all sorts of information for the BlackJack. I already disabled the startup animations and hopefully will be adding my own later.
Anyway... I need to get some sleep, I have a lot of work to do tomorrow.

Slow Weekend

This weekend wasn't very eventful. On Saturday I went to a place called Jines to get breakfast with Tom, Gray, and Kevin. I had the Eggs Michael which are “two poached eggs over an English muffin with ham and cheddar cheese.” I think that is one of my new favorite breakfasts. (Is that even correct English?) I'm not sure why I'm writing this, but hey, if I ever forget the name of the thing, I can check here!
Later I went to Target and got some boxes so I can store my stuff over the summer. Other than that I didn't do much. I watched a movie or two and went to bed.
Sunday was even less eventful, I woke up at 7:59am thinking it was noon, I still don't know why that happens. I had breakfast and later did some homework (I know, I was amazed too!) I've been making flash cards for Russian for the past few days, I don't know if they help, but I sure hope so because the final is next Saturday at 9am.
Umm... Yeah, boring weekend, boring post, and that's it!

Finally!

I am currently writing this in my new laptop, it is an HP DV2200 my dad got me for school. It came with Windows Vista Business 32-bit, after a month or so of pure misery, I was able to get a 64-bit version, but it ended up being Vista Home Premium, oh well. Maybe I will write a very detailed post about my very disappointing experience later on.

That's not the point of this post though, as you may or may not know, I use Fedora Core as my main operating system on my desktop. I have been using it for years now, and that's why I installed it on this laptop. Unfortunately, the linux drivers for my Intel 3945ABG wireless card don't like to play nice. After a few weeks of getting no results, I had a very enlightening day. This morning I could see wireless networks but not connect to them, in the afternoon, I could connect to open unprotected networks, and now I am connected to a WPA2 secured access point!

This might not sound like a big deal, but I have been trying to figure this out for a while. Even though I have to use the command line and type a lot in order to connect to a network, I'm sure there is some program that will do it for me. I tried one called NetworkManager, but all it did was tell me what networks were available, when I tried to connect, it just sat there. Now I can start messing around with more interesting things like syncing my laptop and desktop files automatically. I've done all these things before, but they were with another laptop, another desktop, and over a year ago, so I don't remember a thing.

In other news, today I finally got my Public Storage space thing to keep all the dorm stuff over the summer. It's not very close, but oh well, at least it's cheaper than the storage options RIT recommends. It's a 5x10' room, it's the smallest they had. If anyone is reading this (which is unlikely) and has some extra stuff to store over the summer, I'll be happy to put it in there. Just make sure it's not explosive, illegal, alive, etc...

Well, that's it for today.... and yes, I am posting this wirelessly from my laptop through an encrypted connection while using linux. (I just wanted to say that again.)