And more papers.

March 4, 2003

I got my take-home midterm done on time, thankfully. I started reading the material on Saturday after I wrote my last update, and then I began writing on Sunday. I worked pretty hard on it, and despite a feeling of dread, I ended up with about 6 pages, exactly where I wanted to be. I found that as I talked on instant messenger that night, I was able to explain what the paper had been about and what I’d written about, which meant that I had at least a partial understanding of what I’d just written a paper on. Of course, I get the impression that the piece we read and had to explicate and compare to Austrian economics wasn’t a right/wrong scenario, but just how we interpreted it. I hope I was able to back up my interpretation. I was pretty wired after finshing the paper, and I’d had a lot of caffeine that day. Maybe three or four Cokes plus six cups of coffee. That doesn’t bode well for good sleep habits. I knew I could get up in the morning and not have to be coherent and attentive, so I stayed up and watched a movie. I needed something boring. Something bad. Something that would lull me to sleep. I chose Godzilla, the 1998 version. Now, I paid money to see this movie in the theater when I went and visited my sister while she was living in San Jose, and I have no recollection of exactly why I bought the movie on DVD. It’s not quite as bad as I remember it, but it’s still pretty bad. Pretty much all that saves it is Jean Reno, the French actor who has been in so many good movies, The Professional to name one. I ended up getting pretty bored with it after all, so I shut it off and talked online for awhile, turning in at about 1:30 or 2 AM. I got up Monday morning, read over my paper a few more time, then turned it in just about 9 AM. I was so beat, I came back here and went back to bed, sleeping until noon.

I had come up with a system as to how to work on my bigger paper, my independent project, but I seem to have gotten off to a bad start. I needed a way to organize my actions, so I figured that I would read one day, write the next, read the following day, etc. Monday was supposed to be a reading day, but getting up about noon kind of shoots that down. I planned on working in the afternoon, but then my friend Meagan called and wanted to go for a drive to get her car abttery that had gone dead back up to speed, so we drove around for awhile, finally ending up at Wal-Mart. Of course, I didn’t have anything I needed to buy, so I only walked out of there with about five or six bags of groceries. Wal-Mart is the only joint in town that sells a lot of generic cereals. Cub Foods sells a small variety, but most of them are pretty bad. They sell Malt-O-Meal cereals, of course, but that’s ot quite what I’m looking for. Cub Foods’ generic corn flakes are pretty tasteless and the bags they come in tear extremely easily, which means I have a devil of a time getting them open and keeping them closed. Wal-Mart, on the other hand, sells decent generic corn flakes, and even better, generic Corn Chex. I love Corn Chex. If I could live indefinitely on any cereal, it wouldbe Corn Chex. My Mom used to buy if for me, two or three boxes at a time when she would go to the store, but it’s sold for $4 or $5 a box for the big ones. Wal-Mart, though, sells generic Corn Chex for $2 a box. Pretty small boxes, but I have most of my meals taken care of already. So I ended up with two boxes of Corn Chex and two of their generic but better than Cub’s generic corn flakes to add to my box of Post Toasties I already have. I also stocked up on soup, which makes for a very nice meal. Well anyhow, the point of that story was that it was about 6:15 when I got back, no way I could do any work then, particularly reading. Instead, I made some dinner and watched the rest of the movie I started on Sunday night. I was invited to a party at a house off-campus by both Meagan (who had been invited by someone who lived there) and then again by Monty, a friend who lived on the floor here freshmen year and now lives in said house, but I chose not to go in hopes of working on my paper. My friend Ali called me, though, and wanted to get togther and have a movie night, so instead I chose to do some bonding with her, her boyfriend, and a bunch of people who are left on the floor. We ended up watching Die Hard With a Vengeance, which finished around 1 AM. Scratch Monday.

But today I’ve manged to get some reading done. I’m planning on combining Monday’s work and today’s work, so I’ve been reading for a couple of hours and then tonight, barring any phone calls from friends wanting to get together, I’m going to try and write at least two pages single-spaced, giving me four or more pages double-spaced. That’s my goal for today.

I had an interesting experience yesterday, though. I came across a piece of software I wanted to download, but I needed another piece of software to extract it since it was compressed. I normally use WinZip to extract files compressed into the ZIP format, but this used another compression algorithm, RAR. To use that, I would need to download anothe rpeice of software that I’ve used on occasion, WinRAR. People have told me that WinRAR is superior to WinZip in the past, and I’ve thought about switching to it for awhile, but I would have to register it and pay $30 for the full version after using the demo. I paid for WinZip years and years ago, and I’m hesitant to stop using software that I’ve paid for, no matter ow long ago it was. Anyhow, I wrote to the company that makes WinRAR and asked them if they had any sort of competitive upgrade price or an educational discount, but the man who answered my email replied that they didn’t, and came close to chiding me for trying to get a free copy of the software. I wrote back and explained that I wasn’t trying to get a free copy, just seeing if they had any sort of discounts for college students like other software companies do, and through some additional banter back and forth, he offered to give me a free copy of the software–provided, of course, that I advertise the software on my website. So like the Runbox button to the left that I promised to display in order to get an email account with that company, I will soon display a small button for WinRAR in exchange for their software. I mean, I could have paid the $30, but the man I spoke with was so friendly and helpful it’s the least I can do. It’s not like I’ve sold out. I’ve never been IN, actually. It actually turned out that this man was an exchange student in Oregon (the company that makes the software is located in Germany, where he’s from and now works) more than ten years ago, staying in Yamhill. He questioned me about whether the Church of Elvis was still around (it isn’t, it closed a few years ago), how the Blazers are doing, etc. Talk about a small world.

That’s just a taste of the excitement that’s been happening to me this week, although the week is still young, plenty more to do, read, and write. I have to do laundry today, that’s for sure. If I can rustle up enough quarters later, I’ll wash my sheets and towels, too. After I got out of the shower today, I put on a pair of jeans, and after a few minutes I kept catching whiffs of something. I have a habit of wearing some pieces of clothing like pants for a few days, then putting them back and wearing them later. I do that with overshirts, too, when I wear a tee shirt underneath, although not for days in a row. To save on laundry, I’ll wear it two or three times before I wash it. Anyhow, I kept catching whiffs of something, and I finally figured out that my pants smelled like meat. Meat? I haven’t grilled actual meat in ages and I haven’t been around quantities of cooking meat in just as long, so I haven’t the faintest idea how they got to smell that way. I only placed the smell because when I used to eat at DK’s (the student-run grill in Pearsons) almost every day last year, my coat and clothes would start to smell like cooking hamburger meat after awhile. My coat was harder to get the smell out of, but my clothes could just be washed. Yeah, time to wash that pair of pants. I think I’ll leave it there, for I should get back to reading. Have a good day, everyone, and I’ll catch up with you again later this week.

That’s not even all of them.