September 2003 Archives

You know, I love radiohead. I mean, they're good. But they're even better live.

Spork.

PS - yay taper friendliness

I don't know why I continually bring this up, but I love the idea of WiFi in restaurants other than McDonald's. Today I spent about three hours doing calc homework in the Evanston Panera Bread Company while surfing the web on Wifi. I meant to post this while there, but I forgot, because the purpose of my stay was calc homework not to revel over wireless internet access at Panera. They have such good sandwiches, too, but sadly I am officially a poor college student now and only purchased a small coffee (but with free refills!). I will make a conscious effort to do all my daytime/early evening studying there. This is a good plan. Had I not had a meeting for the WNUR (Northwestern University Radio) at 8:00 CST I probably would have still been there. right now. Oh, the good times. I gotta get used to this CST thing, thankfully i caught myself just now, but perhaps I should make the script save cookie preference of time zone for those people outside of EST (like me). Heh.

Spork.

PS - Yay wireless!

john's schedule
monday
 8:00 - wet dream
 9:00 - embarassing aftermath
10:00 - change pants and sheets
11:00 - brunch with "special sauce" still on hands
12:00 - anal leakage on the 4's
 1:00 - midday masturbation session
 2:00 - light genital itching
 3:00 - extreme genital itching
 4:00 - breakouts
 5:00 - bleed profusely
 6:00 -     |
 7:00 -     |
 8:00 -     V
 9:00 - nocturnal emissions
10:00 - Study
10:03 - Dissapear into the garden ...

So, I don't know that I'll fit in here at Northwestern. For one, everyone starts studying at 2 or 3 when they get home from classes. What is that? Is that for real? What ever happened to staying up till ten, eleven, even midnight, just watching movies, playing games, sports practices, talking online, and then when it gets late, finally deciding "well, i better get working on that english paper." This lifestyle of immediately doing homework might just not work for me. Or perhaps i chose the wrong dorm. My dorm, is a quiet dorm. I like this for the fact that when I do start my homework it will be easy to study. I like this because I am able to surround myself with other people who weren't looking for parties in the halls 24/7. I like this because the people here are good people. But i didn't realize that with that came the responsibility of studying. I'm used to Manual people, I guess. Although maybe not. Maybe it's just because I never surrounded myself at home with the same people I saw each day at school. Maybe all my friend's that I thought were procrastinators, like myself, really actually did secretly do their homework in their rooms afterschool. Right now even Iain is doing math homework, and he's had the same two days of school I have only at OSU.

Or maybe this is only because it's the second day of classes and people get in those mode where they're afraid they're already behind? Maybe once they get into the groove of their full week schedules and understand when they have down time for studying and when the fun activities are, they'll be a little better prone to entertainment? I have yet to see the Sophomores in my hall doing homework, this is true. Not even the seniors. I'm hoping people are just suffering from "freshmanitus" instead of senioritus. We shall see.

On another note, I have now been to all my classes. My chemistry teacher is cool, and he is involved with the nano building so I want to go talk to him about getting involved with that and the computer and electrical engineering side of things. Smaller transistors, therefore smaller and better digital cameras, camcorders, that sort of thing. I want to use my knowledge for art and photography I've decided. Then I have my engineering class. This first quarter of said class is all programming in MatLab. So I shouldn't have a problem with it, however the next couple quarters will be a different story. That's when we get into physics and other engineering disciplines and we'll see if the prestigious MST faculty provided me with a solid enough education for these (can i just bring to mind a few teachers ... zwanzig, gilbert, and albright ... yeah, thought so). I bought the book necessary for programming in Matlab, it's a required purchase, but when I look through it I relize it's just another programming book. And I own so many. They've never done anything for me in the past, so why read it now? Once you learn C, and visual basic, and java ... every language is easy to program in. all you need is a reference guide for syntax, which you find online for matlab or any other language. So maybe I wasted 100 dollars. Secondly, I need to actually purchase the matlab software, which again ... buying software?

My econ class is great. I love my professor. He's very funny. of course watch me hate him once I start receiving grades back. My math professor is the only one that sucks. he doesn't speak very good english, at all. So it's very hard to get anything from lectures and such. we'll see how that plays out. my schedule is set up so I just don't eat tuesdays thursdays and fridays. It's a shame, to be honest.

I've found though, that since I've gotten here, I haven't really eaten that much. It must be the dorm food. But I think in turn I'm losing weight. Which is good, I guess. but I just don't get hungry, that and they only offer lunch and dinner at said times, so it's like an inconveniance to eat. I need to change my meal plan and pay a little extra so unused meals turn into points.

What else. Everyone here is cool. Which is good. I love chicago, too, even though I've only been into the city once thus far.

Anyway, it's time for game three of halo. We got it set up on the network, and mike and i play. He's 2-0 right now but the last game was 8-1 and I came back and lost only 15-14. I've finally figured him out, he won't win again.

Spork.

the good ol' days, that was freshman fucking year, look at how far we've come...

OK, I guess I could tell all about new student week and all my classes, but instead we'll share some roommate stories, because of diya's site and how great hers are.

Tonight, I was an asshole. Sorry Kyle, but admit it ... we had some good laughs.

Anyway, so I come into my room and Kyle and Dina are talking on my bed. Nothing wrong with that. But I didn't want to keep them from being social with each other, cause clearly it was a two person conversation. Third wheels suck. So I go into Mike and Ben's room, take about fifteen minutes first connecting to the louisville server, figuring out my northwestern computer's ip address, connecting to my desktop, then figuring out my laptop's ip, then rerouting the data to it so that finally i can connect to my laptop, mute the speakers, turn the volume to max, and then open windows media player, open to right in the middle of a porno, and unmute the speakers at full blast. Mike was outside the door listening in to hear the reaction and said the music comes on and light moaning, and kyle says something like "ahhh, john."

It was brilliant, the whole floor was laughing. But again, I'm an ass. Luckily Dina didn't care at all, she just came in laughing her ass off. Yay good college fun.

Spork.

I'm finally online, I updated from my roommates laptop yesterday. I just got my stuff today. It's 4:00AM and I'm unpacking. Nice. He's asleep.

Alright, well, it's my second night at college already, and I'm loving it a lot, and last night I saw Built to Spill and I was literally directly below Doug Marsch and he handed me the setlist after the show (they had a notebook sheet on stage with the setlist in sharpie). yeah, but I coulnd't hear any of the words because of the accoustics and being so close to the stage. But doug's amp was blasted directly into my face, so I had the best sound with all the solos. I'll type more, but because I got the setlist and I promised somepeople I'd put it up.

I'm gonna write this the way they wrote it (abbreviated)

3 years
Plan
Stupid
Outta Sight
Untrustable
Canned Oxygen
Kicked it
Don't Try
Liar
Big Dipper
Fly Around
Carry the O
Cortez

encore (which ended with car, can't remember the first song)

Cj borught to my aetttoinn the fllooiwng:

Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a total mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.Fcuknig amzanig huh?

i maen as far as i can tlel it rlaely deos wrok, i tihnk tihs is fcuknig iencdirble. If you are hvanig torluble, try to raed fseatr, lkie at laset cnorevtasnioal seped.

tlak aoubt one hlel of a fcuknig ectryoinpn.

i wlil etulavenly witre a srpict to gearnete ptoss lkie tihs.

Srpok

I've officially decided free WiFi is the way to go. but not for mcDonalds. Sorry to get back the issue, but I definitely think Starbucks needs free WiFi, and not $6/hour t-mobile access. i'm saying free WiFi. Turns out Schlotzsky's, of all people, offers free WiFi. I did not know that. They actually ADVISE their stores to beam the WiFi through the walls into nearby anything, like hotels, parks, and college dorms. Now that is bad ass. Tell me that's not bad ass. Fiend, I think it might be time to get on that HOTLan (Highlands something something LAN (hehe)) if it's still around, the one Mike was gonna set up (did he ever?). We should all install high powered WiFi transmitters into our houses and daisychain all of them so that world can have WiFi access from anywhere. Wouldn't that be cool? Yay communism.

Spork.

Tonight we had a little Halo CTF war at Sporky's house.

Spork, little bro Jim, my roommate Dave and myself mopped up 4 guys (whose names I can't already remember- sorry fellas I'm really bad with names. Spork help me out here). They fought admirably, but in the end succumbed to our relentless assaults and team play.
I have to admit though, that we were a little deflated after losing the flag for the first point. Our team pulled together and pulled off 3 straight captures for a big 3 to 1 win.
I can't imagine losing to any team that has guys named "Cock" and "Y do I Suck" anyways.
Good time guys...thanks Spork for hosting. Maybe we can do it again sometime you decide to visit the lowly boring 'ville.
- BK

I am outraged. Why you ask?

So I leave for school Thursday. That's a day earlier than move in day, Friday. Why you ask? So I can see one of my favorite bands play that night at the Metro, Built to Spill. Incredible band, I love them, this means that much to me that I was actually planning on taking a train at 11:30 to my old neighborhood and having a friend tell their family to leave their backdoor open so I could stay there that night. This is no longer the case, some cool people I've met at Northwestern are moving in a day early, and I will be staying with them on campus now.

So anyway, where's the problem? I'm at ticketmaster.com. I see that the ticket price is only 17 dollars. Huzzah i say. Huzzah. I buy my ticket. BAM! 5.75 "conveniance charge" pops up. WTF? Now my order is 23 dollars instead of 17. Ok, I won't get upset. I know ticketmaster ass rapes their customers on service charges, so I won't complain. I figured the price would be like 21 (you know, a 4 dollar chage is more understandable, but Built to Spill rawks, right?). So I go to check out. BAM! tax (18 cents) and the standard "order processing charge" pop up ... 5 more dollars! I thought the conveniance charge WAS the order processing charge.

I am furious. 28 dollars now for a 17 dollar show. How ridiculous. But it's built to spill, and I paid 50 for radiohead, so I guess 28 aint bad. I scroll to the bottom to hit submit.

Now I'm fucking pissed.

Whatever, I bought the ticket, it's over, and as Iain said, ticketmaster is a monopoly and it's capitalism. But ... ugh, ok, I'm done. DAMN THEM.

Spork.

I believe this was initially linked on Marc Popham's website and/or profile, I loved McSweeney's and was out of date personally and so clicked it (this was some time ago) and ever since it has become one of my favorite pieces of creative writing ever. Diya recently had a post about Iceland and this made me remember it. So have fun.

An Open Letter of Apology to the Country of Iceland

Spork.

PS - Updates will be back soon, because I will be back in school and will have every need to procrastinate.

So be ready to rawk.