Personal

I’ll be visiting Ithaca this weekend so I may not post until Sunday (unless I have something super important to post). I’ll see you all then.

I visited Amherst to spend some time with Scott and to see bob’s new apartment. Friday night’s plan was to do a little drinking in the dorms and reminisce. Well, one beer begot two, two begot three, and so on until I finally finished all twelve beers I had. I was feeling great at that point, but that didn’t last. I woke up in the middle of the night feeling sick, but I was barely awake and still quite intoxicated. Because of my recent troubles with my blog here and the fact that my host suggested it was the PHP code, I was having a dream about dealing with some troublesome PHP code. ...

My friend Scott (yes, I know his blog is empty, I’m trying to get him to change that) moved into his new room at U-Mass today. He’s staying in the same building, Field, but he’s moved down to the second floor. That, first of all, made moving him in ten times easier than normal. In fact, we spent most of the day wandering around Amherst. We even had time for a stop at Amherst Brewing Company (ABC), which is a great place to stop if you’re ever in the area. They even have sampler packs so you can try a variety of their beers. I’m going to stop now because I could go on all day about beer. ...

For the first time in my life, I will not be going back to school at the end of the summer. My parents asked me if it felt weird. As of yet, no, it feels perfectly natural going to work every morning and come home every evening. Perhaps it’s too early to judge how I will feel, but I’ll say this: I’m feeling fine. I won’t have to return to the world of academia, with its self-imposed sense of importance, lack of real world relevance, and absurd idealism. I can finally interact with other people in a real way. I’m not saying I hate school. I’ll probably start on a graduate degree sometime soon. It’s just that after 16+ years of education, every little bugaboo about its culture has turned into frustration. They become all you focus on. I’m sure the “real world” will be the same way after some time, but I’m hopeful that its downfalls will cause less friction with my personality. ...

The week after next I’ll be working in Woburn instead of Bedford. This makes for a longer commute from my home. My parents will also be selling this house and moving up to Maine. This adds up to me needing a new apartment of my very own. I’ve never gotten an apartment before so this will be a new experience. My friends that have gotten an apartment have done so through people they knew at school. ...

Building up hours to prepare for some mandatory vacation time next week is sucking up my time this week. Working 10 hours a day sucks up most of my free time and drains any energy I have to post anything. Making matters worse, today was a slow news day in the Mac world. We probably won’t see anything too major until September when the new iMac is introduced.

A large part of my time is spent reading and responding to posts at Macworld’s Forums. I enjoy learning new things, helping others, and generally raising the level of knowledge. It’s all very fulfilling. All except a few select kinds of posts. Some of my personal pet peeves are fairly evident, cross-posting, repeatedly posting “It’s not working” and nothing else, calling a (forward) slash a backslash, etc. Much less evident and I don’t mention because most people would interpret it incorrectly. That is the fabled “Windows does this” line. To give a little perspective, let me give an example: ...

I’m going to show my inner geek tonight and see AvP tonight. I’ll probably post a review later on tonight if I’m feeling up to it.

After another week of work and 5 hour nights, I got to sleep in this morning. I woke up at the early hour of 11 AM, but went back to sleep another 3 hours. I can’t articulate how wonderful this is (well, except essentially losing the entire day). I had dreams I could remember for the first time this week. Maybe it’s because I still have the collegiate habit of staying up too late, but weekends are better than peanut butter and fluff.

It is my firm belief that our society’s high quality of life level has resulted in two things: an entitlement complex and a lack of responsibility complex. This is particularly easy to observe in teenage kids. You don’t even have to leave your home. Log onto the net and see their poorly spelled, grammatically incorrect, incoherent ramblings about everything! This is evident in every aspect of life. “I bought a harmburger, so I’m entitled to fries. It’s my right.” It’s spread to software as well. Users are content to commit software piracy, downloading and using software with a clear conscience. To them, Microsoft Office and its thousands of features is a right. They need that software and as a human being, they deserve it. Some outright steal it, while others simply buy the academic version of Office (when neither a student or a teacher) and attempt to justify it with the fact that Microsoft Office is expensive. That is not justification, only a rationalization. Further, they have the audacity to claim that Microsoft actually wants users to abuse the fact retailers do not verify academic status when selling this software. Office is a product, a ubiquitous product yes, but a product nonetheless. Its common usage does not make it a right. ...