Incredible Apple Service.

I flat out love Apple's service. My cracked screen was originally going to cost $750 and I already had one genius tell me Apple would never cover it. After a second try and a small white lie, the second genius took my computer in for repairs on the screen and Apple returned it to my house within five business days, with a plastic component fixed and all the work done for free!

New screen, new top-cover, fast shipping directly to Beaverton. I am thoroughly impressed and happy. Now I just need to get some new covers and screens that will protect my Macbook. I figure Apple comes out ahead in this little deal because they now have me for 2 more years with Applecare.

In other news: I'm home for the break and quickly reminded of how lazy I get when I don't have a super tight schedule. At school I operate pretty well because I have a bunch of stuff to get done. Now at home, I have some things that I SHOULD do but continue to push them off. Time for Christmas planning.

My Wonderful Katie!

So I really hope everything works out but I might get to go home this weekend and see Katie! It will be just over a month since we've seen each other. Very very excited.

Very very excited as well to see the Vice-Presidential debate on Thursday. Can't wait to see the Lipstick Pitbull.

Reading and Residents

So I just finished Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley, which turned out t be a very good book. Disregarding the misinterpretation that Huxley predicted the future and path we are going down as a society, Brave New World described a completely neutral world driven by human predetermination. Furthermore, Huxley places character into his creation with varying degrees of compliancy. From the product of emotional and genetic engineering to the one person born outside of the constructed society. Very cool book that doesn't hint at the future, only shows us that God should still be in charge of Creation.



In other news, after almost three weeks of RA training and a hectic move in, classes have finally started and things are getting all settled in. I'm taking either 15 or 17 credits (depending on if I get this environmental class) on top of RA and Formula SAE (car club). In terms of classes I have: Chemistry, Intro to Technical Writing, Matrix Algebra, and Engineering Statics. This means I'll be busy busy busy.

As far a residents go, I have the Crew (rowing) floor along with a bunch of other really cool, mostly freshman students. I feel like the shortest person on my floor, just because most of the crew guys are like 6' 4". I'm really glad that the floor is going well, everyone seems to be finding their place.

All for now.

Why I'm an Engineering student

I like to think that Engineering is a field of study that is hard to copy or fake.
The online comic (one of my favorites) backs me up :-)



http://xkcd.com/451/

Slacklining Side notes

Yesterday my friend Mikk and I went to blow off some steam from R.A. training by slacklining in the quad. And, as usual, people stop by asking what it is and how to try it. Most people don't understand what the heck we're doing or event he point of it. For example, someone called the police on Mikk the other day because (as the officer told him) the caller had thought he was walking on air.

Yesterday produced such an interesting crowd that I needed to blog about it. While slacklining, Mikk and I first had a group of 4 Japanese foreign exchange students come over and ask what we were doing. Then, two white-shirt-black-pants Mormon missionaries who identified themselves as Elder Barrett and Elder Shmelder (I couldn't remember the other guy's name) came by.

Here's where things get weird. They NEVER talked about mormonism to us! It was actually kind of cool to see these two guys just wanting to try slacklining out, and NOT hand us brochures. And so we stood there, in the quad, with four giggling Japanese school girls and two Mormon missionaries. Just slacklining. That's one thing I love about this pastime: its power to draw people in and remove any ulterior motives.

So, to avoid awkward-turned-heated discussions with Mandatory Missionaries, set up a slackline and let people be people.

Vomiting Like Crazy

So I figured I would end my weeklong lack of blogging with a little warning about eating at Burgerville. I recently had a crispy chicken sandwich on the way up to Mt. Hood and by the time we got to our cabin I began feeling sick. All evening I had some indigestion and frequented the bathroom. Hoping to sleep it off, I went to bed at an early hour of 11 o'clock. By 12 I had woken up with that sensation.

Do you know that sensation? The one where you know this little battle between you and your digestive tract will NOT end in a victory for the allies. Anyways, I managed to hurl everything in several bouts with my head over the toilet. I blog about this because vomiting has several consequences. For one, this was the first time I had Ralphed for at least a year (which was completely made up in the volume of vomit). Also, I felt almost perfect after my upchuck adventure, just showing that I really needed to. Finally, i just realized I'm blogging about throwing up. Awesome.

P.S. Mountain was really fun.

Why I love Mac Leopard

So I was just ran into a predicament. Katie received an .xlsx file, the new format for the Excel Microsoft Office package. xlsx is incredibly annoying because Office 04, the downloadable add-on, or Google docs will not open it. Also, a mac application that promised to convert the file cost twenty bucks! Katie was frustrated and I was stumped.

Here's where Leopard comes in. Even though Excel wouldn't open the file, I was able to use the Quick View function from the Finder window. This brought up a window, allowing me to take a screen shot and print it for Katie!

This may be a cheap way to get the prints for Katie but it worked well and I'm very content with Apple's ease of use.

It's the details that makes Mac the best :-)