Book and School-Related Stuff

So, I decided at the beginning of the semester that I was going to write at least one article for the school newspaper per issue (or something like that--I was at least going to write for the paper). I contacted the person who used to be the advisor when I had my Journalism class a few years ago, who forwarded my message to the current advisor, who forwarded it to the paper's editor.

She was glad to get my message, since apparently she had been the entire newspaper staff last semester, all by herself.

Granted, with my schedule, I can't really do much in the way of hard news, and I'm terrible at that kind of reporting anyway. So, I offered to do some reviews--mostly book reviews, but I also thought about possibly attending concerts and such if they were free and I had the time.

Shannon (the editor) was enthusiastic at that idea, and told me that the deadline was this past Monday. So I wrote two reviews for the March Commuter (that's the name of the paper, The Commuter): one about The Chimes of Resdorn, and one about Temeraire. I thought of doing one about The Briar King, but it was the first book in the series, and I had just started the second, so I decided not to.

For the April Commuter, I will be writing a bit of a feature review about the works of Jane Austen (I've been meaning to read them for years, but never got around to it), which I will tentatively title, "A New Perspective on Classic Austen." I am not quite sure yet what subject I wish to pursue for the May Commuter, but I'm thinking of reviewing a few thrillers, or maybe branching off into horrror. I may even read some non-fiction, if I'm in the mood, instead.

I finished The Charnel Prince (sequel to The Briar King), and it left me wanting badly to read the next book, if there is one now. But alas, I don't have it, and if I'm to finish all six Austen novels before the Commuter's deadline near the end of March, I had to get cracking on those.

I've decided to read them from shortest to longest (as I do when I'm reading fanfiction at the Lois & Clark Fanfic Archive--because it's easiest unless there is a series). I'm just weird like that, I guess. So, this morning, I began reading Northanger Abbey, and I will persevere through until the end of Mansfield Park.

So far, I am on chapter thirteen, and it's quite interesting. I will not say more than that at this point, because I want to save most of my detailed observations for the article.

Once the semester is over, I will post each of the articles I have written for the Commuter here on the blog, in a new category, and those can serve as my literary recommendations to you.

Another Weekend at the Parents' House

I spent the weekend at Mom & Dad's again. This time, from Friday evening to Monday morning. It was mostly fun.

Anna bought a new version of Monopoly at Wal-Mart. It was the Electronic Banking Edition. No paper money, just use credit-type cards in the machine provided.

There are no magnetic strips, just one or two indicator bumps on the side that goes into the machine. Depending on how many bumps and where they are on the card, the machine can tell which player is paying/receiving money. It's really cool, and the game goes much faster for it too.

On Thursday, I asked one of my classmates if he had the notes from last Tuesday's lecture. He said yeah, and asked if I wanted him to e-mail them to me. I told him that would be great, and gave him my FCC e-mail address.

He sent the e-mail a minute or two after the teacher started class (I know, because he told me to check my e-mail), but it's been four days now, and it still hasn't shown up in my Gmail inbox--I have message forwarding from FCC to Gmail. I think he may have misspelled my FCC address or something, so tomorrow night I'm going to give him my Gmail address instead, and hope it comes through this time.

Oh, thank goodness.

I got an e-mail from my Astronomy teacher a little bit ago. He says I can make up the quiz during the lab tonight. I've done the two labs we've had so far pretty quickly, so I can definitely do both before class ends tonight.

The Absent-Minded Astronomy Student

I got home from work on Tuesday, still thinking about all the crap I'd had to deal with at work. I had the responsibility for the royalties stuff basically foisted on me when the previous person decided to go back to school full-time, and I don't really know what I'm doing most of the time, so when problems crop up (as they have been doing frequently the last few weeks), I don't really know how to fix them, but I have to try anyway--possibly screwing things up even more in the process.

Anyway, I got home, and needed to unwind. So I checked my e-mail and went upstairs to read. I was almost finished with Temeraire, and I wanted to be able to start a new book Wednesday morning. I finished the book around 9:15. I looked at the clock, and something struck me as odd.

Then I remembered--it was Tuesday! I should have been in class an hour and a half before that! And to top it off, we had a quiz on Tuesday. The teacher usually lets us out early (class is supposed to end at 10:20) if he's finished with the lecture and whatever else needs to get done, so I wasn't sure I would be able to get to class before everybody left, even though I'm only a ten-minute drive away.

Panicking, I sent an e-mail to the teacher, explaining my absent-mindedness (I hadn't even realized it was Tuesday, much less time to go to class), and practically begging to be allowed to make up the quiz. I'm hoping I get a reply before class tonight though, because I'm not sure he won't be going over the quiz tonight. If he does, I'll just have to take the zero. I can't remember how many points each quiz is out of the 1,000 for the semester, but I hope it's not a letter-grade's worth if I'm not allowed to make it up. I've also set my phone to alert me when it's time to leave for school on Tuesdays and Thursdays now.

This whole situation irks me, because I'm usually so good with getting to class on time (in fact, I'm usually early, so that I can sit in the hallway to read for a while).

I started a new book yesterday called The Briar King by Greg Keyes. It's one of two books by him given to me by one of my visiting teachers (Temeraire was also a gift from her). So far, it's very intriguing, and also somewhat confusing. At first, I had trouble figuring out what the heck was going on (for longer than usual), but now that I'm almost halfway through it's easier to follow.

It's interesting though--the maps included look like the northeast quadrant of the United States, from the bottom tip of Virginia, up to the tip of Lake Michigan or so, but with a lot of distortion, and only water south of Virginia. I keep having to look at the maps again as I read, so that I know what places they're talking about. The names of people and places are kind of weird too.

PPKM Updated!

I've finally finished writing Chapter Six of The Pitfalls and Pleasantries of Kryptonian Multiplication. My betas have had their turn as well, and the result is at the link below. Enjoy, and leave me feedback!

The Pitfalls and Pleasantries of Kryptonian Multiplication: Chapter Six - Marriages and Mayhem

Plugging for a Former Roommate/Current Friend . . .

Hey everybody (if there's more than one of you reading), check out Kayla's new blog! She's a former roommate of mine, currently living at my parents' house--ironic, no? Well, her blog is even moreso: Still Confused

Didn't Quite Get Things Finished, but Had Fun Anyway

After setting up the modem and such on Friday night, I found out that my DirecTV receiver had already been delivered (three days before that). So I set it up in my room, but apparently the installer guy who did the first receiver didn't hook up the satellite to the whole house--just that one receiver. So, they're sending another installer guy to hook up the satellite to my room and Stacie's room on Wednesday.

Because I didn't know the receiver had been delivered (and didn't know the cable hook-up on my wall wasn't connected to the satellite yet), I missed both Psych and Smallville. There was no episode for Numb3rs last week.

Saturday, I did my financial figuring, paid the bills, got groceries and gas, then packed up to go to Mom & Dad's house. I've decided that I'll probably end up spending at least Saturday nights there every week, now that Kayla's moved out of the townhouse.

I got to Mom & Dad's around 4pm with all the stuff I'd brought: clothes for Sunday, the novel I'm reading, my Astronomy spiral and various accoutrements so that I could do homework, my flashlight, my glasses case, my vitamins, half-a-case of Lipton Green Tea with Citrus (to share with Anna) and six games.

• Buffy the Vampire Slayer - the board game
• Lord of the Rings Trivial Pursuit
• Aggravation
• Skip Bo
• Harry Potter Uno
• Phase 10

I put my stuff up in Anna's room, and we played the Buffy game with Kayla and Jason. I was Willow and Xander, Kayla was Buffy, Jason was Oz, and Anna played the evil side. We played two games--one with Adam as the villain, and one with the Judge--and Evil won both times. Then I watched last week's Psych episode. It was fun (of course), and I like the fact that Chief Vic is no longer just the interim chief anymore.

By that time, it was around 7 or so, and we were all deciding what to have for dinner. It took us about an hour to decide where to go (Arby's), then Dad, Jason and I played Skip Bo while we waited for Anna, Kimba and Kayla to get the food. After dinner, Anna played with us and Jason went to bed.

About 10, Kimba, Anna, Kayla and I went to the house of one of Kimba's friends and hung out. The only other people I really knew there were Amber and her boyfriend Chris (one of three guys by that name in the house that night).

We got back to Mom & Dad's around 1:30 or so in the morning, and then Anna and Kayla and I played some more Skip Bo on Anna's bed. Then we played Lord of the Rings Trivial Pursuit. Kayla won, and none of us could really remember anything all that well since we hadn't watched the movies in a while. Throughout the game, Kayla kept saying that if it was Star Wars Trivial Pursuit, we wouldn't have been having so much trouble remembering things about it. Anna and I agreed, even though I had had slightly less trouble than they had--I still remembered some of the more obscure character and place names. We watched the first half of Comedy Central's Roast of Jeff Foxworthy before we fell asleep.

Yesterday, I finally woke up all the way about noon (the dogs were crawling on me long before that), went downstairs, got some breakfast, and then waited for everybody else to get up while I called Stacie so that we could order a DirecTV receiver for her--I used Mom's computer to login to my account to do that. A little while later, Kayla, Anna, Jason and I were playing Phase 10 on Anna's floor when Kimba came in to tell us that one of her clients, his mother and his sister were coming over in about an hour. We were all like, "Okay, we'll finish this game and then get dressed."

That lasted about five minutes, when her client's mother called again to ask for directions--they were already on their way! So we had about 10-20 minutes to get dressed and such before they got there. I still needed a shower, so I took my clothes down to the bathroom and got one.

That was the fastest shower I've even been able to take in over a year! Seriously. I mean, the water pressure in my house sucks, so it takes so long to rinse all the soap/shampoo/conditioner/whatever off. The shower at Mom & Dad's was so much faster than that, it was awesomely refreshing.

The people came and left, and then it was almost dinner time. The five of us "kids" played Phase 10 until dinner. Since it was such a hit last week (and there were still plenty of ingredients leftover), Dad had decided to make pizza again--yum! Camille and Betsy came over too, and they both loved Dad's original pizza--the ballpark.

Seriously, that is the best special-topping pizza I have ever had, including the ones we get at work from Vocelli's. It's basically what you'd get at a ballpark, only on a pizza: hot dog, mustard, ketchup (well, it's pizza sauce in this case), and a bun (crust). Dad also made a hawaiian and a meat lover's (plus ¼ cheese only) pizza. The hawaiian was completely gone by the time everyone was full, there were only two slices of ballpark left, and about 3/4 of the meat lovers.

Camille and Betsy stayed to play Imaginiff. There was one extra name space on the board, so we put in Darth Vader, which was kind of funny, because one of the cards which he got picked for said, "Imagine if Darth Vader was a 70's movie. Which would he be?" and then one of the six choices was Star Wars. After the game, Camille and Betsy left.

Dad, Anna, Jason, Kayla, Kimba and I played 90's Trivial Pursuit (three teams of two--Kayla & Jason, Me & Anna, and Kimba & Dad) before Jason had to go to bed, and then when he and Kayla won we all kind of broke up to go separate ways: Dad to the living room; Kimba to her room; and Anna, Kayla and I to Anna's room.

I asked Anna if we could watch the Smallville episode from last week, but she wanted to play Buffy instead. This was around 10:30, and I was thinking I'd have to go home within the next hour and a half so that I could sleep before work this morning, but either Anna or Kayla lent me some clean pajama pants, Kimba lent me her MNDC tee shirt to wear today, and Anna asked Dad to copy the Smallville episode onto a DVD so that I could watch it at home today instead.

The three of us did play Buffy one more time then, this time with me playing evil, Kayla playing Oz and Willow, and Anna playing Xander and Buffy. The villain was the Mayor, and good won. We had a snackage break in the middle, during which I ate the last slice of ballpark pizza (someone else had eaten the other one earlier).

We decided then (about midnight) to watch the rest of the Jeff Foxworthy roast to go to sleep by. I turned off my cell phone for the night, since my charger was at home and I didn't want to be stuck with a dead battery at work. The show was finished around 1:30 am, but none of us were quite ready to sleep yet, so Anna started this other Comedy Central special by Mike Burbiglia called What I Should Have Said Was Nothing. Anna and Kayla fell asleep in the middle at about 2, so I paused it, turned off the TV, and went to sleep myself.

The alarm went off at 7:30, I got dressed, had breakfast, turned the cell phone back on, picked up the DVD Dad had made for me from the dining room table, and asked Jason to help me put everything I'd brought (minus 4 out of 6 bottles of Green Tea with Citrus) back into the Bug. I left the house at 8:05, and I've been at work since about 8:15.

We didn't play Uno or Aggravation the whole weekend, and I didn't do any homework or reading either. I've been procrastinating the Astronomy for too long, which surprises me because I actually want to do it. I should know better than to bring books and homework to Mom & Dad's house on the weekends, I guess.

Yay DSL!

Well, after nearly 2½ hours (at least half an hour of which was pure frustration), we now have not only our DSL internet set up, but our wireless network as well.

I started out trying to hook up the modem to Stacie's desktop computer, but I couldn't find an Ethernet port. So I took it up to the common room and hooked it up to Kayla's computer, like the old one was. I figure, I'll give Kayla my old computer, then Dad can fix it up for her (I'll pay for a new hard drive, if neccesary) and we'll just keep the modem on the current computer and not use it for anything else. I'll have to talk to Kayla about it.

Anyway, the modem got set up without a hitch after that, so I started trying to figure out how to set up the wireless network.

It took me at least half an hour to find the "site" to go to for configuration (http://dslrouter), but then it asked me for a password. I spent 5-10 minutes trying to guess, with no luck, before I decided to try the verizon.net Live Chat support.

In less than the time it had taken me to find the "site," I was in. It was just a generic administrator's username and password, but it was one I hadn't thought to try.

Anyway, after that, I logged off the chat, set up the wireless network, then connected my laptop to it before I left notes for everyone else about the network name and key.

It's nice to have reliable internet access again.

No Studying This Weekend!

I called FCC yesterday to see if school had been cancelled on Tuesday due to the weather. It hadn't, but it had closed at noon! I wouldn't have had class even if I hadn't been at the election.

When I got to class last night, the teacher said that he was just going to give everybody 35/35's for the lab we were supposed to do (so as not to screw up his grading), and go over the lecture from Tuesday instead. I sat for most of the class just listening, since I'd already taken notes on chapter four. But as soon as he got to chapter five, I started taking notes.

Last night's class went for the full time, because people had lots of questions--some related to the material, some not. I didn't mind though; it was fun.

Our DSL modem came yesterday, finally. And this morning when I checked my e-mail, I saw that our DSL service is ready to be hooked up, four days early! That is one of the first things I am going to do when I get home after work today--set up the internet.

It's Singles Awareness Day Again

Tuesday, I spent at church (luckily, I only had to walk across the street), working as an election judge. The Board of Elections decided to keep the polls open an extra hour and a half, because the weather was so bad, so they wanted to give people a chance to get there later. Didn't make sense to me; I'd have closed the polls early, for safety's sake, not kept them open so even more people could risk their necks!

Wednesday, my nerves were pretty much shot from the long day, and the roads weren't looking very much better than they had the night before. Not to mention, Weather Bug predicted more bad weather for the day. So I stayed home from work. I managed to get about half of my new book finished (I'd finished The Chimes of Resdorn on Monday night).

The new book is Temeraire: In the Service of the King, and it's actually an omnibus for a trilogy of books: His Majesty's Dragon, Throne of Jade, and Black Powder War. It's by Naomi Novik. I hesitate to call it fantasy, despite the presence of dragons, as there isn't really much (or any) magic involved at all so far.

It just seems to be a tale of what might have happened in the Napoleonic era if there were dragons in the world--which, I have to admit, is extremely cool. I've never been much interested in history, but this book has me wondering what actually happened during that time period, and what the author has changed with her addition of dragons to the mix.

It's that day again. I seem perpetually single on February 14, but oh well. I'll probably just read while I eat dinner tonight, go to class and do the lab, then come home and read some more (if I don't watch A Valentine Carol--I can't remember if I actually got to record it all the way through last year or not) before I go to sleep tonight.

I also have to finish studying this weekend. Since I was at the election all day Tuesday, I missed the Astronomy lecture for chapters 4 and 5. I managed to get through chapter 4 and take notes during the election, but I still have to go through chapter 5. I'll do that on Saturday.

DirecTV Update

So, I looked at the FAQ on the DirecTV website, and it looks like only DirecTV equipment can be used with the DirecTV subscription. In other words, even if our TVs, VCRs and DVD recorders are satellite compatible, they won't work with the DirecTV service. We have to get a separate receiver for each TV in the house.

Luckily, Jenn's dad has a receiver he's not using, and while DirecTV recommends that receivers from others' previous subscriptions not be used with a new service, it looks like there's a number you can call to see about installing such a device. So, if it works, that's one receiver we won't have to get.

The first receiver was free with the service subscription, but for each additional new receiver we get, we'll need to pay a $69 set-up fee, plus $4.99 per month. If we want someone to come install the new receivers for us, there will be an $80 installation fee too.

I've already ordered a new receiver for my room, and I'm going to set it up myself, so they're just going to ship me the box. I've also asked Stacie if she wants one in her room, and everybody to vote on whether or not we get one for the living room, or if we want to just use the living room to watch movies.

I had considered getting the DVR services as well, but we'd have to upgrade our subscription ($199 fee there), and we'd have to pay a monthly fee of $5.99 for the DVR service, as well as the $4.99 for the monthly DVR receiver lease. So not going to happen.

I miss my cable TV . . .

We got our DSL startup kit on Thursday, but Verizon had forgotten to order a modem/wireless router for us, so we got the whole kit minus that. The modem is supposed to come today sometime, but we won't be able to hook it up until Verizon e-mails me to say that the service is set up and ready to be used.

I returned the cable modem to Comcast on Friday evening. Except for finding a way to get to the place in all the one-way traffic of downtown Frederick, it was a piece of cake. I had disconnected it on Thursday evening when I got home from work, so I didn't get to record Smallville, since the modem was what gave us our cable TV.

I spent practically the whole weekend at Mom & Dad's house. At 1:00pm on Saturday, Kayla and I went to the stake center to watch Jason's basketball game. We saw Anna there, and decided to meet her at her house after the game, since she had to go to the pet store and we had some more of Kayla's stuff in the car to take to the house.

We got to the house and met Anna's new puppy, Mandy, then I watched Psych with Dad. She's a beagle and fox hound mix, and she's so cute! If Bambi were a dog with beagle coloring, he'd look like Mandy. Seriously, her legs are so long, and her neck is too, but she's got a beagle's coloring and soft, floppy ears.

Anyway, Anna got back a little later with Jason, and all of us (minus Jason and Dad) decided to watch Buffy and Angel for a while. Around 10 or 11pm, Anna asks, "You guys want to stay over?" and since I was already thinking about it, we decided we were going to do just that. So Anna dragged out the air mattresses (Jason's twin-sized one and Kimba's full-sized one) and some blankets and pillows. She lent me a pair of pajama pants too.

Sometime during the late night hours, my dad decided that he was going to get rid of some of the books on the shelves in his den--including his entire Star Trek novel collection. He got rid of a few others (most of which I took--not the Star Trek) and rearranged what he had left to his liking.

Once we were all settled, we watched some more Buffy and Angel until about 2:30, when we decided to go to sleep. That's the first time I've slept in that house since I moved a little more than a year ago. The somewhat-strange part is, Anna's new room is my old room.

We woke up between 9 and 11 yesterday morning and had some breakfast all around. After the beds were put away (or at least stood up against a couple walls so they wouldn't get in the way of rambunctious dogs) we watched Smallville, and then some more Buffy and Angel. (Are you seeing a theme here?)

Around 3, I went home to take a shower and pick up Jenn after I set up the phones that Kayla had given us. We now have a phone in the kitchen, one in Jenn and Amit's room, one in the 2nd-floor common room, and one in my room. Turns out, I didn't need a phone jack in my room, because I can use the extension of the one in the common room.

The DirecTV guy came to the house last Friday morning. I wasn't there, but Jenn and Amit were. Apparently, the guy asked if there was a main TV, and Jenn and Amit weren't sure what to tell them, since Kayla is going to be moving soon and the main TV is going with her. So the guy installed the DirecTV receiver in Jenn and Amit's room. The dish is on the roof (back left corner), and it looks like the cable for it goes over the roof and down the front right side (tucked into the corner our building makes with the one next door), into the ground somewhere.

Since the receiver is hooked up to Jenn and Amit's TV, the rest of us still don't have any cable at the moment. I asked Dad if a splitter and amplifier after the receiver would work, but apparently it wouldn't. Everyone would be forced to watch whatever Jenn and Amit were watching, since the receiver only has one tuner. We've been trying to figure out where the cable comes into the house from the dish, so that we can split and amplify it to the rest of our TVs if we need to. If we can just plug into the jacks with satellite-ready TV's and VCR/DVD players, that would be great though (especially if we actually have satellite-ready equipment).

I'll have to look a little closer this evening when I get home from my allergy shots (and before I go across the street for the preliminary voting machine setup). I think there might be some sort of splitter in Stacie's room, or somewhere near where the cable looks like it ends.

Heck, I might even be looking at the wrong cable--it might just go through the roof into the attic crawlspace, and then I'd have to look up there to see anything at all.

Verizon and New Roommate Update and a Little Common Sense

Unfortunately, Verizon does not offer FiOS service in my neighborhood, so we're getting DSL instead. Not too shabby. I've signed up for the e-mail update when they do offer it. Also, since we can't get FiOS, we're not getting the new TV--it was part of the FiOS triple-play bundle. Bummer. Guess I'll just have to fork out a couple hundred in the next month or two so we can get a new TV for the living room (the one there now is Kayla's, and is leaving with her).

The phone line is officially working. We just need to get phones set up around the house. Kayla's leaving the few phones she has for us, since she won't have a line in her room at my parents' house. I might pick up a couple more at Wal-Mart after my next pay check comes in. I looked for phone jacks in my bedroom, but the dresser, the bed, and the nightstand were in the way and too heavy to move, so I couldn't see certain parts of the walls. I'm hoping that there is a phone jack in there somewhere, but if not, it's no big deal.

Monday night, I set up our voicemail, plus a sub-mailbox for each of us who are staying. I also typed out instructions for each of them to set up their sub-mailboxes, and on how to check the voicemail.

The DirecTV people are supposed to set up our house for service on Friday, if I remember correctly. But the DSL service won't get setup until the 19th at the latest. They've shipped the equipment necessary for it, but we're not supposed to install the equipment until they e-mail me and tell me that the service is ready, which hopefully won't actually take until the 19th.

We haven't found a new roommate yet, but there's a girl coming tonight to see the house, and we've had a different girl come to see it with her social worker who liked it, but I haven't heard back from her yet and I wanted to meet her before deciding whether or not she should move in. I'm hoping either the girl with the social worker or the girl coming to look tonight will be able to move in.

Somewhat-funny story:

Friday or Saturday night, I was sleeping, right? Well, Kayla was bored, so she decided--at four o'clock in the morning--that she was going to try and take her bed apart so that she could move it out of the house. She sleeps on the couch most of the time anyway, so she won't be needing the bed until she moves into my parents' house.

She woke me out of a sound sleep, and I couldn't get back to sleep either. You'd think she'd realize that since taking a bed apart makes noise, you shouldn't do it at four o'clock in the morning.

So, I decided I wanted to read, but in case I started getting sleepy again, I didn't want to turn on the main light in the bedroom.

Then I remembered the book light I'd bought a few years ago. I thought it was either in my desk, in the storage tub in my closet, or in the storage container on the floor at the foot of my bed--no dice. So, I just grabbed my flash light out of the desk and read with that.

I got half-way through my grandma's book (The Chimes of Resdorn by DonnaLee Wheeler) by about 6:30. Considering I was probably less than a quarter of the way through when I started, that's saying something.

I guess I'll just have to buy another book light.

Comcast Sucks, Verizon Rocks!

So, my roommates and I have all been rather unhappy with the service we've been getting from our cable company since Comcast took over Adelphia. I'd be on the phone (my CELL phone, which I only get 300 minutes for every month) for at least 20 minutes, usually more, whenever I needed to make a service call. Plus, our internet pretty much sucks.

Then I looked into getting a different service.

Verizon was offering a bundle with FiOS (pretty much the fastest internet service you can get right now), a land-line phone (yay!), and cable TV (with DirecTV CHOICE), all for less than we've been paying Comcast for just the TV and internet. Plus, a free 19" television to go with it.

You'd better believe I signed us up for that! Then, we cancelled our Comcast services, effective sometime later today. The Verizon people are supposed to be there sometime tomorrow to hook everything up, and the DirecTV people should be there on Wednesday to do their thing.

I told my dad about it last night, and he was all like, "You're lucky. Out here, I have the choice of Comcast or nothing."

Yay for Verizon!

I'll let specific peeps (you know who you are) know what the home phone number is when I have that information. I forgot to write it down while I was setting up the account.