My meeting with the professor overseeing my project yesterday went fairly well I thought. I really should have been keeping on top of things before so it didn't come down to the wire like this, but all in all it wasn't bad. He generally liked what I had done and just had a few suggestions for extra functionality to add which I'll try to stuff in over the weekend. It's going to be a fairly busy weekend/next couple days for working on stuff. He also told me I had a little buffer for getting things in if I needed to take it in order to get the project finished up correctly since grades don't absolutely need to be turned in until the end of May. I should be done next week or the week after at the absolute latest.

In other news, it looks like my degree evaluation has been completed finally and I meet all of the requirements for graduation assume I pass all of my courses this semester. So it looks like the end is in sight. Hopefully. Maybe.

Something will get screwed up, I know it...

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It seems I forgot to do a post for last week, so I'm going to be doing a combined post. It's been a bit of a rocky road over the past few weeks due to stress and/or lack of time to exercise. I managed to get off my long standing plateau of just above 250 and now I've traded that in for one just below 250. But I haven't really been exercising as much as I would like to be as of late. Hopefully that will change once school is over and I have some more free time to play with. At least I'm maintaining which is a good thing in my book.

The warmer weather recently has highlighted that I need to go shopping for a couple pairs of shorts. I seem to only have size 42 and size 38, one of which is way too big for me and the other is a little tight right now. I must have either tossed the 40s or my swing in weight totally skipped a size in between a summer.

And because of the warmer weather, I've been walking outside for the past couple of weeks when I have the time to go out and walk. Partially to help build up some endurance for the trip out to Washington DC coming up in a little more than month and partially to get some more different and/or outdoor type activities going to keep things interesting.

This friday though I kinda walked a little longer than I had meant to. There's a couple of different routes I can take around where I live. I usually just do an out and back kinda thing that works out to be about 3 miles total. Friday though I decided to try walking around the loop, as there's a couple of streets that form kinda a ring. I'm in a pretty rural area, so this isn't a small loop. Roughly five to five and a half miles to be exact. So an hour and twenty minutes later, I had almost finished. I stopped into my parents house for some water because I didn't have any cold water at my place and they're just down the road from me and practically collapsed on the living room floor. That's not something I really care to do again in the near future. Maybe once I build up my endurance a bit...

New shoes would be helpful too. My current shoes are a little on the old side and really aren't terribly supportive anymore. So I just purchased a new pair of New Balance MW792's to fix that problem. They should be here Wednesday. Since my size is 13 and I need a wide, it's a little hard to find decent walking shoes in a store, so I usually have to internet order stuff. Darn genetics.  

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Another weekend, another weekend summary post! This weekend was a long time coming after perhaps one of the slowest weeks ever.

Saturday I was a nice, relaxing day of hanging out with my friends. I went out to the local zoo with Wassy (Jay was supposed to come, however events earlier in the day ran long and he wasn't going to be able to make it so we went without him) and had a nice time wandering around, viewing animals and dodging annoying children. Well, viewing some animals...some of them didn't seem to want to have anything to do with me. Like the ducks.

The zoo has a duck pond. Well, more accurately it's an alligator pond that some ducks have moved in on and the zoo put up a sign saying it was a duck pond, with bonus alligators. They have this thing set up where you can feed the ducks. Pretty standard setup, put in your quarter, get some pellets, throw to ducks, they eat the pellets and everyone goes away happy and satisfied. Except for these ducks that is. They weren't having any of this feeding stuff. So it kinda made me look stupid, throwing pellets to ducks who were totally ignoring me. So I just threw the whole handful at them. Take that jerks!

I should also mention we found a free-range peacock just wandering around. I'm pretty sure it shouldn't have been wandering because we saw them get thrown in a cage immediately after. It seems slightly disjointed that I mentioned that fact here, but I wanted to get it out of the way before I mention the human based story.

As we were trying to escape from a gaggle of kids (of the annoying variety) we walked past the place where they sell all the drinks and food and stuff of that nature. There was a family consisting of a boy, probably around 6 or 7 years old and his parents. As they approached the building, his mom said "Ok honey, we're going to have to wait in line..." The kid responded reasonably with a very loud yelling of "F--k!!" that made my head turn. It seems his parents were fine with this as well as they didn't seem totally shocked. I couldn't believe it and it made me want to weep for humanity's future.

After the zoo trip we went back to their apartment to meet up with Jay and begin the general hanging out portion of the day, watching some anime (Full Metal Alchemist) and then Sweeny Todd, a movie which will forever prevent me from going to a barber shop to get a shave. It was good though. Very artfully done and Johnny Depp is incredibly awesome in it.

Sunday was the standard day of work. I had some housework to get done, and some programming type things that needed to be taken care of. Hopefully my weekends where I need to do school work are coming to an end relatively soon here as there's only a couple weeks left in this semester which is hopefully my last.
 

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Just some quick school updates in case anyone was interested. First, statistics. I ended up getting a 90 on that test I took last week, despite finishing about 30 minutes before everyone else. So that's a definite plus!

Also, I was finally able to get my project sponsor to acknowledge my presence (also mentioned in my post last week) which is another definite plus. I'm supposed to swing by his class on Tuesday and show him what I have done. Hopefully he likes it and doesn't make me totally redo it because that would mean one very, very long week for me next week, and I'd rather do more constructive things with my time.

So, as promised, a couple of quick school updates for you. I have some musical stuff that I need to write about too later if I remember. I've just been (again) too busy to post anything recently, so I've got a backlog of things that need discussing.

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As the April 15th tax filing deadline looms, many gay couples are facing higher tax bills because they do not get the federal tax benefits that accompany marriage. The same is true for heterosexual couples who chose not to get married. Do you think this is fair?

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This weekend was a very relaxing one for me, with a side of getting lots of stuff accomplished. Kinda a rarity these days. It seems like everything is either one or the other.

This was supposed to be the weekend I was going to go out to a LAN Party thingy that was going on in the local area with some of the guys I play Team Fortress 2 with because there was a TF2 tournament happening and it would have been fun to play it there. Unfortunately, it's coming down to the end of the school semester so I didn't think that taking myself out of commission for an entire weekend was going to do very much to help me get my schoolwork done, so I skipped it and hung out with Wassy on saturday.

We went out to the gym in the morning and did a little working out and then out for some shopping just to get out because it was supposed to rain yesterday (which it never did). Then we hung out for a bit, listening to music while I did a little bit of my homework and while she was making dinner (roast chicken...mmm). Then we did some more general hanging out stuff, watching some anime and then the MST3K-ed Manos: The Hands Of Fate which is always good for a laugh. I left earlier than I had wanted to because I developed a headache, but overall it was a very, very relaxing day.

Me And The Puppy

Sunday was split between playing Final Fantasy X and working on my various projects. I also spent some time over at my parents playing with their new puppy. I'm not really a dog person, but she's pretty cool as far as dogs go. I have included a picture to prove that I was indeed playing with the puppy and actually allowed it to sit on my lap.

She's a purebred Maltese named Beasley. She ended up falling asleep on my legs because we tired her out while playing around with her. She's very cute, with a lot of personality. Not that I'd ever get a dog of my own (without being forced to), but she's ok in my book. She was sleeping prior to this picture, by the way...but the flash kinda freaked her out a bit.

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Show us something bizarre.

Symmetrical Crossword!

Funny this should come up now because I've been waiting to use this picture somewhere...

I was working on a crossword puzzle the other day when I realized that the answers I had filled out were symmetrical without even trying to make it like that. Struck me as kinda neat. And since I'm a strange kinda person, I decided to take a picture of the occasion.

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Show us a key.

Nissan Rogue Key

Here's the key to my 2008 Nissan Rogue. It's an intellikey, so I don't need to actually physically touch it in order to use it. There's a button on the door that unlocks the car if the key is within 3 feet of it when it's pushed. It also won't start unless there's a key inside the vehicle but once there is one, it starts by just turning a knob thingy.

Also a major plus is the fact that it detects when the key is in the car with the doors locked and the engine off without any people in there and it immediately unlocks the doors and throws a beeping hissy fit. It's physically impossible to lock my keys in my car now.

I love this thing. It sounds so small, but it's one of the things that makes me really love my Rogue.

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I had my third test last night in my statistics class. I think I did OK on it, but it was one of those situations where I finished the test approximately 30 minutes before everyone else. Normally, I'm a fast test taker anyway, so I'm probably the first person done. I just don't like being the first person to hand something in, so I usually hang out and recheck my work to make sure everything looks good. This time though, I kept checking and checking and checking and checking...so I'm really hoping everyone else was just slow and I didn't totally miss a question or 6.

One more to go and I'll be done with that class and, hopefully, classroom instruction as a whole. However, this project thing is another matter entirely. I e-mailed my advisor/project sponsor again requesting when his office hours were so that we could meet up and I can show him what I have done. But despite suggesting that we meet up early last week, he's yet to respond to ANY of my e-mails since then. Warning...mini-rant incoming. Take cover.

I think he's intentionally trying to make this as hard as he possibly can for me and it's starting to piss me off royally. I'm getting awfully tired of being jerked around by professors here. Even when I started working on this project and asked him how it generally worked, he didn't tell me anything as far as what was expected of me. I'm just flying blind here and hoping that whatever I get done with will meet his expectations, which it probably won't and then I'll be forced to stay back another semester here so I can do it the right way. If that happens I can assure you I'll be marching straight to the deans office because I'm getting tired of this red tape crap. I want out.

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Night Mare (Xanth Novels)

Piers Anthony

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