I've had this in my AIM profile for a while now, never thought to post it here…
Tell me something more than what you tried
The greatest tragedy is not your death
But a life without reason, that your life had no purpose
- “Never Take Friendship Personal” by Anberlin
I have two more final exams left to go, and then I'm done with this semester. One on Tuesday (Marketing - Consumer Behavior) and one on Wednesday (Management - Organizational Theory). Don't those just sound like fun? After I finish those, I have one exam period where we can come and see our grades for the semester, including our big semester project thing. Other than that and returning my books, I'm done for the semester. Oh, yeah. We don't have to buy our textbooks, we rent them per semester. SO much cheaper. It's great. Except for the few professors who require an extra book that we have to go buy for who knows how much only to sell back for maybe $2. Oh well, still cheaper than buying all our textbooks.
Anyway, yep. Done with the semester on Wednesday, never to return. Until January. My winter break will be filled with all sorts of fun activities, like… um… work. And probably some work. Then I have to get (I think) five more volunteer hours in so I'll be able to graduate. Oh, I almost forgot, I get to work. Can't forget about that. I'll be needing the money.
In other news, had a good time at my friend Lori's birthday party last night… they even somehow managed to get me on the dance floor a few times. Seriously, the things I do for females. It's ridiculous. Thanks to everyone involved who might see this. That's all for now, just felt like posting since I'm bored. I think I'll go slide into bed and pull my fur blanket over me, since our house is frigid for some reason.
EDIT: Make that one more final. Finished my marketing final today; I think/hope I did alright on it. Really all I needed to get on it was a passing grade and I'm practically guaranteed an A in the course. A high B at the very least. So that's good.
For all the Grinches that are trying to 'steal' Christmas right from under us here in the United States, we could learn a lesson in how to handle them from Down Under.
It seems Australia's Prime Minister John Howard is defending Christmas and urging shopping centres to restore nativity scenes. He refuses to tolerate precisely what is going on here, and that is getting rid of religious symbols of Christmas.
- Continue reading The Howard That Saved Christmas at Barb's Blog
I just got back from Wal-Mart. I had to make a run to the store for something I forgot yesterday. Just a small purchase, only $2. In and out in a hurry, right? Nope. Cause I go to school in the middle of nowhere, so our Wal-Mart is stupid. During the busiest season of the year, they have five lines open. Five. And of course all of them are packed with people. One lane had a couple with three… yes three… shopping carts piled up with stuff. Board games, food, miscellaneous possible-presents galore. Ridiculous. After scanning the available lanes, I finally settled on the “Express Checkout” lane. You know the kind… “Ten Items or Less” to keep it going quick.
Except the elderly couple in front of me apparently couldn't read. They had something like 30-something things that they were neatly arranging on the counter for the clerk. Excuse me, that's clearly not less than ten items. This is the EXPRESS LANE. Meaning your checkout should be fast. Thirty items is too many for this lane. See, I'll prove it mathematically. Watch. Ready? Don't miss it.
See? Crazy, I know. Read and think, people. Read and think.
Just a quick update… I've overhauled my archive system, so you can now access the archive two separate ways. You can keep viewing it as it's been all along, just a list of links to every post. Or you can use the new links down on the left side to access specific months of the year. The month-specific archive actually displays all the posts from that month instead of a list of links.
It took me a while to do. I probably didn't need to do it at all, but it was actually fun. I thrive on problem-solving, and this gave me something creative to work through for a while. Of course, this is one more thing I have to replicate in PHP for my new server (as of March), but that's ok. I'm up for another challenge.
EDIT (16 Dec 2005, 2:12PM): I finished making the changes to my PHP version. Didn't take as long as I expected, actually. Same amount of work, but it's easier when I already did all the hard work.
EDIT: The archive is now at /journal/archive.
You've all seen it. Every once in a while, someone sends around one of those “everything you ever wanted to know about me” emails or such, where there's a ridiculous number of questions about things like “what was the last movie you saw?” or “what shirt are you wearing now?” You know, critically important things to know about someone. Well, Kate posted one on her Xanga page, and me being the dutiful little reader, I copied it and posted my own answers. I should probably have spent the time writing my management paper, but meh. Today she was reading my responses, and decided I had a trend of depressing answers.
Kate, being the awesome person that she is, felt bad that I'm generally unhappy, and offered her assistance - “if there's anything I can do to help…” That statement made me wonder. Why is it that I find myself willing to do just about anything to help out someone else, but not myself? If a friend of mine is having problems emotionally or otherwise, I'm more than willing to do whatever they need so they feel better. But when it comes to my own problems, I'm just about helpless. Why is that?
I can't count the times I've helped someone through a depression, or any number of hard times in their lives. I've always been the person to go to with problems, the rock that people can count on. But when I realize I have problems of my own, there's nothing I can do. Why? I honestly don't really know why that is. Is it because I believe I can't afford to have problems? I don't know, and that's troubling.
I'm not depressed. Really, I'm not. Believe me, I've just spent an entire semester learning about psychological problems, and I know this isn't depression. If anything, it's probably just dysthymia, although it's been quite a while since I can remember being truly happy. That's not to say that I'm constantly unhappy; there are times when I'm perfectly fine, times when I'm absolutely happy. It's just that those times are pretty rare. The problem is that I'm not sure why I'm unhappy, and I'm not sure what to do about it. If it were someone else posting this, I'd probably come up with some kind of inspirational pep talk to cure their spirits. God knows I've done it a million times before and will probably do it a million times more. But when it's me… I've got nothing. That can't be good. Hmm.
I think you'll agree that the usefulness of intelligence in humans is that it improves the odds of survival. We need all the help we can get. But this raises an even more interesting question.
Why would God need to be intelligent? …
- Continue reading Intelligence is Overrated at The Dilbert Blog
I'm probably insane for doing this, but at this point I don't particularly care anymore. In my final exam paper for International Management, I have a sentence saying that a sales message shouldn't get lost in translation… like Bill Murray.
And yes I'm leaving the Bill Murray part in. (It's a movie reference… go look it up) I'm also replacing every reference to “the salesperson” with “our salesperson friend” or some variant of that. I just dont care anymore… I've procrastinated on this paper so hardcore it's not really funny. Or maybe it is. I'm too tired to know. I think when I finish this paper tomorrow/today (it's 1am on Tuesday, and this paper is due Wednesday), I'm gonna throw in every movie reference and comedic relief I can think of. Just cause I hate writing papers.
Heard this song today on the iPod, really liked it. Just kinda meant something to me, I guess. Songs have a tendency to do that occasionally.
I'm crawling through the crowd again
And I'm looking for myself
It makes me mad
Cuz I wanna be happy so bad
It makes me mad
Cuz I wanna be happy so bad
You don't even care
Stepping out
Take it in
Starting over again
Falling out
Starting over
It makes me mad
Cuz I wanna be happy so bad
It makes me mad
Cuz I wanna be happy
It makes me mad
Cuz I wanna be happy so bad
- Happy, by Lit
I've always been interested in kanji symbols (Asian ideograms). They're interesting visual representations of words and ideas, some of which are fairly obvious. After a bit of searching, I've found the symbols for Tigerblade. I actually screwed up the first time I thought I had it. Turns out the symbols I had meant “tigersword.” Close, but not close enough.
I think it'd make an interesting tattoo, were I ever to get a tattoo (not likely). It'd certainly be a conversation piece. I'd love to get it on the back of my shoulder, but most likely not gonna happen, at least not anytime in the forseeable future. Just thought I'd share my find.