Guy: Is she drying off her lettuce? K______, what are you doing?
Girl: It’s too wet!
Guy: I’ve never heard that from a woman before…
Later…
Girl 2: It’s OK, K______, I like your wet lettuce.
Currently Playing: Gavin Degraw – More Than Anyone
I’m going to love you more than anyone
I’m going to hold you closer than before
And when I kiss your soul, your body’ll be free
I’ll be free for you anytime
I’m going to love you more than anyone
I’m sitting at the Boyd desk in suit pants, nice shoes, and a white t-shirt. Why? Because I realized this morning in the middle of shaving that I haven’t done laundry in about 2 weeks and, as such, have no clean dress shirts to wear to my two interviews today. Well that’s just great. Throw a shirt in the washing machine approximately 7:40. Ask Erica if she can retrieve my stuff from the dryer when it’s finished, luckily she agrees. Finish getting ready and head to the laundry room to wait for the washer to finish. Finally get things moved to the dryer around 8:05 and run across the complex to work on Boyd. Apologize profusely to Amy who’s waiting patiently for me to arrive.
Here’s the outlook for the rest of my day. When I get off work I’ve gotta go finish getting dressed, and then I’ve got my first interview with Cerner. I’m not sure when I’ll get to eat lunch because after that I go straight to class. My middle class of the day was cancelled because my teacher will be out of town, but my group decided to go ahead and use the time to work on coding. Next comes LAN where we’re reviewing for a test on Tuesday. Then I’ve got my second interview with Cerner. Around 4pm I should finally be done with the bulk of my day, but it doesn’t end there. I’ve got something else I want to finish up tonight. Maybe I’ll go out, but Amber won’t be there, so we’ll see. Don’t wanna get too hammered for the drive home tomorrow. Oh yeah, my Amazon package should come today. New music (Gavin Degraw, Everwood Soundtrack) and books (America the Book by Jon Stewart) 🙂
Well, this shift has been totally worthless. I seriously had good intentions of getting stuff done, it just didn’t happen. Maybe next time. I’ve listened to this song way too much lately. Not tired of it yet though 🙂
Currently Playing: Dashboard Confessional – Hands Down
My hopes are so high that your kiss might kill me
So won’t you kill me, so I die happy
My heart is yours to fill or burst,
to break or bury, or wear as jewelry,
which ever you prefer
Hands down this is the best day I can ever remember,
I’ll always remember the sound of the stereo,
the dim of the soft lights,
the scent of your hair that you twirled in your fingers
and the time on the clock when we realized it’s so late
and this walk that we shared together
The streets were wet
and the gate was locked so I jumped it,
and I let you in
And you stood at your door with your hands on my waist
and you kissed me like you meant it
And I knew that you meant it,
that you meant it,
that you meant it,
and I knew,
that you meant it,
that you meant it
While farfetched, this isn’t such a bad idea. I could handle John McCain as president.
Who knew it could be such a task to get it? When Amber said she wanted to move her computer upstairs so she could be more productive with less distractions, it didn’t sound like that big of a deal. Drill a few holes, pull some wire, run it around the obstacles, done. Haha, not so fast.
First of all, you need the right tools. That includes a drill, which no one had. That includes a tape measure longer than 12 feet, which I had but would have to drive 15 minutes to get.
Second, you need to know for sure how you want to get it done. And you don’t need someone to try and sell you a wireless router right in the middle of your planning. That leads to approximately an hour of wondering if that might be the best solution. Then as you think about it you realize that a wireless router is expensive (even at a discount) and you still have to buy a wireless card on top of that. So you’re back to square one. Where do you drill and run this CAT5 cable?
Well the office in Amber’s apartment has an air intake vent. It runs to the ceiling. Let’s use that. HA. You only thought you were smooth; the intake only goes to the ceiling of the main level, not to the floor of the upper level. You have no way to drill a hole inside the wall. (At this point we still had no way to drill a whole period).
Ok, so we decide we’re going to just try and find a spot that would be convenient to go through and end up in a corner between two doors in the hallway upstairs. But how much cable do we need? Some quick measuring and estimates say about 85 feet of CAT5. So let’s do some research: walmart.com, radioshack.com, staples.com, newegg.com…CAT5 is damn expensive unless you want to wait for it. Any local retailer it would cost at least 50 bucks to buy 100 feet of cable. Ok, let’s regroup. Home Depot sells CAT5 by the foot. How much does it cost? $.15 a foot = $12.75 for 85 feet. Sweet! But wait…you also have to put the ends on the cable which requires buying RJ45 connectors and a crimping tool. Ok, no problem. Except that the tool costs 20 bucks and you can’t buy less than 25 RJ45 connectors. Well, it wouldn’t be so bad to have my own crimper tool…
So we’ve got our cable and we’re ready to try and get through the ceiling/floor. So Amber goes door to door to come up with a drill. Three apartments and five minutes later, she’s got one. So we pick a spot upstairs, pull the carpet out of the corner and drill a hole. We straighten out a hanger and I drop it in…clink clink. Guess what? You just hit an air duct. Not the intake kind that would have room temperature air flowing through it. Ok, time to try again. Where the hell are we gonna put this hole?
The upstairs hall closet sits right above the pantry in the kitchen! There’s no light in the pantry and they back up to the stairwell, so there shouldn’t be any ducts or wiring in the floor there. Alright, try again. Pull the carpet back, drill the hole, drop the hanger…it sinks a foot! Ok, now we’re getting somewhere. Time to try and measure to get an idea of where to drill the matching hole from below. Not as easy as I’d hoped. Realize the walls don’t quite match so I’m just gonna have to try it. Drill a second hole. Make a sheetrock dust mess.
Back upstairs to drop the hanger through. Yeah right. Not that easy. Fish around, find nothing. Enlarge both holes, find nothing. Stick a pencil through the bottom hole trying to get an idea of where it is…nothing. Finally: have Amber hold a flashlight to the bottom hole while you run upstairs and try to see where the light comes from. Fish around aimlessly and with a little luck hit the spot. Wow, that only took forever.
So now it’s just a matter of routing the wire out of the way, wiring the RJ45 connectors, plugging everything in, and praying it works the first time. At this point Amber had to leave to babysit but I wasn’t about to leave without this thing getting done so I stayed and finished up. This is actually where things got a lot easier. I wired the plugs in about 10 minutes and everything worked right off the bat. Whew. It’s only 6pm so you’ve got time to sit back and revel in a job well done. Wait. What I meant to say is it’s time to catch a ride home from Amber’s roommate and begin frantically working on diagrams and screen shots for your design document for which you are meeting with your group at 9pm.
Here’s the important thing: Amber can now sit in her room with her computer and internet access, away from other tempting distractions like roommates (well, that’s the idea anyway). I can also play with her computer more often because I don’t have to go downstairs to get to it 😉 It only took a week and a half to get it done. Now I don’t want to give off the wrong impression. While this little project was a pain at times, I was happy to do it.
Currently Playing: Creed – Stand Here With Me
You always reached out to me and helped me believe
All those memories we share, I will cherish every one of them
The truth of it is there’s a right way to live and you showed me
So now you live on in the words of a song: you’re a melody
Just when fear blinded me you taught me to dream
I’ll give you everything I am and still fall short of what you’ve done for me
In this life that I live I hope I can give love unselfishly…
I’ve learned the world is bigger than me: you’re my daily dose of reality
Currently Playing: Simple Plan – Welcome to My Life
Do you ever feel like breaking down?
1Do you ever feel out of place?
Like somehow you just dont belong1
And no one understands you
Do you ever wanna run away?
2Do you lock yourself in your room?
With the radio on turned up so loud
That no one hears you screaming2
No you dont know what its like
When nothing feels alright
You dont know what its like to be like me
3To be hurt
To feel lost
To be left out in the dark
To be kicked
When youre down
To feel like youve been pushed around
To be on the edge of breaking down
And no ones there to save you
No you dont know what its like3
Welcome to my life
Do you wanna be somebody else?
Are you sick of feeling so left out?
4Are you desperate to find something more
Before your life is over?4
5Are you stuck inside a world you hate?
Are you sick of everyone around?
With the big fake smiles and stupid lies
While deep inside youre bleeding5
No one ever lies straight to your face
And no one ever stabbed you in the back
You might think Im happy
But Im not gonna be ok!
Everybody always gave you what you wanted
You never had to work it was always there
You dont know what its like
What its like!
Welcome to my life
1We’ve all been here. This is the first year I’ve been at K-State that I’m starting to feel a little out of place. Like it’s time to move on. It’s not that out of place like I’m lost, just ready to move on.
2All the time. Well, not so much anymore because I have 2 roommates who are almost never both gone at the same time, but I used to do this all the time. I loved to escape to my room and turn up a good song really loud and sing at the top of my lungs. Or scream. Whatever my mood was.
3This was me middle of last semester. I mean I knew that things could be worse, but there were days when I had a hard time convincing myself that was true. I really was on the edge of breaking down. Luckily, I was able to get past it. I think it’s human nature to assume that no one could possibly understand where you’re coming from and how you’re feeling at any one given moment. I also believe that sometimes people really do have a pretty good idea of where you’re coming from. And as annoying as it might be when they try to help you, it’s important to remember that they really are just trying to help. Is that really such a terrible thing?
4This is a feeling I’ve felt a lot in the last few years. I think I’ve had a pretty good life overall. I haven’t been the most popular kid in school or the smartest or the most athletic or the best at anything. But it’s been good. Still, I’ve really felt like there is so much more to life. Like something is missing and I was afraid I was never going to figure out what it was. Now I know I’ve got a long ways to go before my life is over (at least I hope so), but that doesn’t mean a person can’t worry about stuff like that. I finally feel like I’ve found something more important in this life. I don’t know what I’d do without it.
5Unfortunately, I feel like this entirely too often. The world is such a cynical place and it can be so incredibly ugly. Just watch the news. Besides the cheesy uplifting story about puppies at the end of the newscast, when’s the last time you saw a significant story that wasn’t about tragedy, terrorism, or deceit? There is so much hate in the world it makes me sick. Even the things that are meant to bring people together (take religion for example) seems to do a great job of driving people apart. Moreover, it annoys me how fake some of the people around me can be. So many put on a face every day when they wake up, I wonder how often I actually get to see who they really are. So what if the real thing isn’t perfect? No one is. When’s the last time you let someone see who you really are?
Edit: I meant to put a little note at the bottom here that this hardly applies to me at all right now. But I’ve been there in the past, and I know people that are there now. Just because I’m not there now doesn’t mean I can’t relate.
I only need to take nine hours next semester to finish my degree in Management Information Systems. However, I’d like to stay a full time which means I need to take 12 hours. At least I need to start the semester with 12 hours. I don’t really wanna take anything too difficult or stressful, so I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions as to what I should take next semester. I figure I have a few options:
Anyway, I’m looking for serious feedback here, so if anyone has thoughts on what I should do next semester, leave me comments. I enroll in about a week and a half, so the sooner I figure it out the better I’ll feel.
Ahh, new Simple Plan on the Radio. Gotta love it. I’ll save that for my next post.
It’s gonna be a busy weekend. I’ve got page layouts to design for my group project and most of our second assignment still to program, not to mention the probably inevitable homework that will be coming my way in class today.
The football gods decided to place the OU game smack in the middle of my shifts on Saturday, meaning I get to give up yet more hours. Anyone wanna trade? Wait…I don’t think any CAs read this. Dylan, you don’t count.
Only one thing remains constant: Thursday night will not be spent doing homework! Come eight o’clock (or so), I put everything away and do something fun. Can’t I just skip the rest of today?
Yeah, the quality of this post is lacking. Sorry it sucks. Maybe I’ll have time for a good one in the next few days. Or maybe not. Don’t hold your breath.
Still waiting on that email.
Currently Playing: Black Eyed Peas – Where is the Love?
What’s wrong with the world mama?
People living like ain’t got no mamas
I think the whole world’s addicted to the drama
Only attracted to the things that bring you trauma
Overseas yeah we tryin’ to stop terrorism
But we still got terrorists here livin’
In the USA the big CIA the Bloodz and the Crips and the KKK
But if you only have love for your own race
Then you only leave space to discriminate
And to discriminate only generates hate
And if you hatin’ you’re bound to get irate
Yeah madness is what you demonstrate
And that’s exactly how anger works and operates
You gotta have love just to set it straight
Take control of your mind and meditate
Let your soul gravitate to the love y’all
People killing people dying
Children hurtin’ you hear them crying
Can you practice what you preach
Would you turn the other cheek?
Father Father Father help us
Send some guidance from above
Cause people got me got me questioning
Where is the love?
I feel the weight of the world on my shoulder
As I’m getting older y’all people get colder
Most of us only care about money makin’
Selfishness got us followin’ the wrong direction
Wrong information always shown by the media
Negative images is the main criteria
Infecting their young minds faster than bacteria
Kids wanna act like what the see in the cinema
Whatever happened to the values of humanity
Whatever happened to the fairness and equality
Instead of spreading love, we’re spreading animosity
Lack of understanding, leading us away from unity
That’s the reason why sometimes I’m feeling under
That’s the reason why sometimes I’m feeling down
It’s no wonder why sometimes I’m feeling under
I gotta keep my faith alive, until love is found
People killing people dying
Children hurtin’ you hear them crying
Can you practice what you preach
Would you turn the other cheek?
Father Father Father help us
Send some guidance from above
Cause people got me got me questioning
Where is the love?
“There was this one time, when I hooked up my lawn mower to my nintendro. And after that, I got the high score every time!” It’s hard to believe those voices come from him.
Recap: I’ve had a great weekend. Amber and I headed out for Albion, Nebraska Friday afternoon. I was a little nervous about meeting her parents, but I had a good time. We ended up coming back Sunday night through some rain and just lazed around yesterday (kinda). Most of you probably don’t care about every detail, so I’ll hit the highlights:
Currently Playing: Switchfoot – On Fire
I’m standing on the edge of me
I’m standing on the edge of everything I’ve never been before.
And I’ve been standing on the edge of me
Standing on the edge
And I’m on fire
When You’re near me
I’m on fire
When You speak
(Yea) I’m on fire
Burning at these mysteries…
These mysteries…these mysteries
Ah you’re the mystery
You’re the mystery
We should be leaving in a few minutes. Don’t have time to write a whole lot, but I’m getting a little anxious. This weekend should be a nice break from all the tests and projects though. Wish me luck. Some details when I get back.
So this post was originally going to be about how I felt pretty good about my Quant Management test yesterday when I left, but that kind of got overshadowed when I checked the scores for my two tests last week. One low B, one low C. Definitely not my best work, and not the way I was hoping to start off this semester’s tests. What makes it a little more annoying is that this semester I’ve probably been making the biggest effort of my college career to actually be ready for class and tests. I’ve actually been reading (most) everything required for class and I’ve studied more this semester than most all of last semester. Apparently it’s not enough. (Suck)
Now I know some people reading this would be thinking, “so he got a B and a C on two tests; so what? That’s average and above average, what’s wrong with that?” Well, nothing. Except that I know I can do better. I’ve been doing better all my life and I didn’t suddenly become average. I’m not trying to sound egotistical or arrogant, but the fact is I know that I’m capable of A’s, and so when I don’t get them I feel like I’ve let myself down. Now, of course, life will go on. I won’t beat myself up over it, but it’s still annoying. And you can bet that I’ll study harder next time. The only thing that sucks about that is that I already feel like I don’t have time to do the things I want to do outside of class…lets take away a little more time. Boo. Hiss.
I’ve got one more test before Fall Break, so I guess that’s my chance to redeem myself. Speaking of break, I’m really looking forward to it. Four whole days with nothing school related, and I’m even leaving the state. I’m going to meet Amber’s parents for the first time, so I’m a little nervous but pretty excited at the same time. I hope I can live up to expectations.
Well, I’ve wasted enough time here. Back to work.