2006

Feb082006

Tulane vs. Loyola

I went to work at the Metairie office with Dad today although I’m not sure when. I didn’t do all that much work, although the back room is largely in order now. Sometime around four or five, we went out to the west bank office to see some late patients. We stopped at Popeye’s on the way. They showed up around 6:30 and we made it out of the office around seven. Dad and I went right from the office to Fogelman Arena to see Tulane’s basketball team play Loyola. The game had been going on for a little while before we arrived. We didn’t miss too much though. The game was rather one-sided. Tulane dominated throughout. The only reason the two teams play is because they’re right next door to each other, Loyola is not even in the NCAA. The final score was 87-41. After the game Dad and I went to The Boot for something to eat. We remained there until shortly after nine. Later that evening I watched the Boston Legal episode from earlier this evening and played Half-Life 2 until about two this morning.

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Feb072006

First Speech

I don’t remember the goings-on of the afternoon, but I do remember class this evening. For the most part, all we did in class today was hear the remaining personal experience speeches. Half the class remained. I gave a speech overviewing the time I spent at Louisiana Tech. I thought it went alright, but I got a ‘C’ on it due to poor eye contact and grammer/transitions. I took the 8:20 shuttle downtown and Dad picked me up at the Sheraton. After I arrived home I got some of the red beans Dad made earlier today and watched 24.

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Feb032006

Same Old Same Old in Media Law

As this entry is late I don’t remember too much of what happened. I do know I worked today and I went to my media law class. It was another session of conversation without substance.

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Feb012006

Back to Psychology Class

I didn’t go to work today because Dad had to meet with someone from the SBA. He had to assess damage to Dad’s business. He and Don met the guy at the location of the Mid-City office. Basically I sat in the car the whole time and listened to the radio. Afterward, Dad went to pickup Andrew. Dad dropped me off on Maple Street so I could find a place to eat. I went to the Babylon Caf again and got a gyro, again this time on a pita as they were out of fresh bread. I went to the library for a while after lunch. I was there for almost an hour. I had a week of log entries to catch up on and I did that while I was there. I saw Andrey shortly before I left. He was there to study. I walked to Richardson at quarter after for my psychology class this evening. This evening’s session was essentially a basic overview about how nerves relay information neurons, axons, etc. Even though the subject matter was on a rather basic level, this took the entire class period. We were released at about 5:40 and I walked across the quad to Norman Mayer for the second class of the evening. The actual professor of the consumer behavior class, Katheryn Gates, was in attendance this evening. We had a substitute teacher for the first two classes. The professor spent some time talking about herself. Among other things, she mentioned she had some recent surgeries and said she’s been teaching this class for about 20 years. I don’t really remember the lecture and I didn’t take any notes. I believe it was mostly an overview of what was discussed the last two weeks. Class was dismissed at about 7:30, so I just missed a shuttle headed downtown. Since the next one wasn’t passing until 8:20, I decided to seen what was going on in Fogelman. Tulane’s men’s basketball team was playing SMU this evening. I got there just before half time. The score was 34-20 or something like that, they had a comfortable lead. From what I did see of the action, Tulane looked pretty decent, although their defense appeared better than the offense in my opinion. I had to leave about five minutes into the second half. When I got downtown, Dad was already waiting for me in front of the Tidewater building. We listened to the rest of the game on the way home. SMU chipped away at the lead as the game drew to a close, but Tulane managed to hang on and win by three.

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Jan312006

Tuesday

Dad and I got to the office rather late this afternoon as he had an errand to run this afternoon. Aunt Lauren’s house was sold not too long ago and dad had to stop by an attorney’s office uptown on Maple Street so sign some papers for the closing. We arrived a bit early. Since he wasn’t sure how long it was going to take, I decided to go somewhere nearby rather than wait in the office. I went a few doors down to Fresco and got a drink and some appetizer with spinach in it I think. They were done about twenty minutes past noon and we then went to the office. While we were at the office I transcribed some dictation and did a little more work in the back room, getting it cleaned up so it can be used soon. We left the office around five. By this time Dad learned he had to go back to the attorney’s office to sign one more things, and we did. We also stopped at the grocery store on the way home to get something for dinner. We left with a few frozen seafood items. The evening was rather quiet. I was on the computer for the better part of the evening. I watched Bush’s State of the Union speech and talked to Khadijah on the phone for a while later in the evening.

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Jan302006

First Speeches

This is another later entry. I think I was at the office from noon to about five this afternoon. Doc had a late new patient. Dad got me to class this evening with about ten minutes to spare. Class started ‘late’ at six this evening as Professor Hanemann was late to arrive. He acknowledged that he won’t be able to arrive on time at 5:45 so he changed the start time to six. He started the class by having everyone do an short, impromptu speech on some off-the-wall subject written on an index card. I kinda made an ass of myself, I’ll leave it at that. After lecturing for a while, some students gave their prepared speeches on a personal experience. Only half of the students gave their speech tonight. The rest, including myself, will go next week. Dad was waiting to pick me up after class. I know he worked late but he must have been waiting for quite some time. After I got home I got some dinner, white beans, and watched 24 with the family. I don’t remember what I did later that evening, probably nothing.

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Jan292006

Moving a Table

As this post is nearly four days late, my memory of the weekend is now a blur, which usually means I didn’t do anything. I do remember doing something on Sunday though. I went with Dad to the storage facility that’s been holding Aunt Lauren’s dining room table and stuff from grandma’s house. We helped a couple ladies take home Lauren’s rather nice, but flood damaged dining room set. They had a pickup truck which we managed to get the table and chairs into with one trip. The table was easily disassembled wish we’d known that when Dad and I moved the table out of Laruen’s old house.

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Jan272006

Andrew's Birthday

I didn’t go with Dad to the office today because he wanted me to be home for a satellite technician that was coming by the house today to install another dish. I did have work to do at home but I never got around to it. The motherboard and video card that I ordered arrived last night and I was anxious to get them installed in my case, even though I still don’t have a new CPU yet. I spent the better part of the afternoon emptying and cleaning my PC case, which had an extraordinary amount of dust inside, even though I do keep up with regular cleanings. With the case clear and clean, I installed the new motherboard and video card as well as all of the other components I will continue using. With the power requirements of the new card, I had to lose one of my optical drives. The only loss is being unable to do quick disc to disc copying, and I no longer need a PCI IDE controller card. I’ll probably upgrade the 400 watt power supply in the distant future however. I was rather proud of myself at the immaculately neat job I did with the cabling. With less cables in the middle of the case and fewer PCI cards, I removed one of the case fans and will try going with three for the time being. I may cut it down to two later depending on how the new CPU and cooler affects the ambient case temperature. Today is Andrew’s birthday and Mom and Dad took him out to dinner. We went to eat at the House of Blues. Unlike the restaurants in Metairie, you can actually get seated without much of a wait in the quarter. Mom, Andrew and myself had po-boys and Dad got a rack of ribs. It took a good while for us to get our food, as the restaurant is likely short of staff like every other New Orleans establishment. We got home not long before nine, with time to spare before Battlestar Galactica started. This evenings episode was decent, although not quite a gem like so many other episodes.

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Jan262006

More Rambling

This evening’s media law class was very much like the first class last week. There was plenty of conversation among the class and barely any covering of class material, whatever that may be. I thought I’d be able to get away without buying the book, but I’ll certainly need it if the instructor doesn’t lecture. A lot of the rambling regarded local and national political goings-on. After class I caught the 8:20 shuttle downtown that showed up at 8:15. When I got off the bus on Canal Street, a young lady asked me to walk with her to a building just by Tulane Avenue. After escorting her, I walked down to the Sheraton to wait for dad. He arrived not too longer after I got there to take me home.

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Jan262006

One Class

Before leaving the house today, I started spaghetti for dinner to be slow cooked. I also did a little bit of work at the house. Before Dad dropped me off this afternoon, he picked up Andrew at school. After I got dropped off, I went to the bookstore to have a look at the texts for the my classes this term. I didn’t buy any, as they’re all pretty expensive, I’m not sure they’ll be necessary and I didn’t really have the money at the moment anyway. After leaving the bookstore I decided to find a place to get some lunch. I know there are some places on Maple Street to I walked down there and ended up in the first place I saw that was open, Babylon Caf, a little middle-eastern restaurant. I got a gyro on bread, a sandwich with lamb and beef. It was pretty good, although surprisingly messy to eat. After lunch I went to the library for a pretty good while and remained there until after 5:30. There was no psychology class today because the professor is out of town. There were a lot less people in this week’s Consumer Behavior session. I’m sure a lot of people were turned off by the permanent instructor being gone for the first few weeks. This week’s session was about the many facets of culture materialism, the value of work, tradition vs. change, etcetera, etcetera. Unfortunately, I didn’t find the discussion was sufficient tied to the subject matter of the class maybe next week. Ms. Ogden said our permanent teacher would be starting next week. On the way to the shuttle stop, I stopped in PJ’s and got a Coke and a brownie. I caught the 8:20 shuttle downtown. Instead of enjoying my Coke and music as I usually do on these rides, I spoke with a young lady named Olivia, who I believe is a member of the Newcomb Senate. She told me about a rally to save Newcomb college that will take place on Friday and about the circumstances surrounding the dissolving of Newcomb and Tulane Colleges. While getting rid of the Engineering program at Tulane makes some sense on paper, getting rid of Newcomb seems pretty pointless as Olivia described it to me. I walked to the Sheraton after being dropped off on Canal St. Dad picked me up not long after. When I got home I got myself some dinner. I had the spaghetti I made earlier and ate in the living room while the family was watching Lost. I watched a little TV later in the evening and got to bed at a decent hour.

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Jan242006

First Patient in Metairie

I went with Dad to the Metairie office at about 11 this morning. On the way, Dad stopped at McDonalds so I could get some lunch. I spent most of the early afternoon sorting through things in the back room, where a good deal of stuff from the Metairie office is being stored. I had to go through a lot of various papers, a lot of which is trash. Dad met with an architect at one to discuss a future office on Carrolton. Doc arrived sometime around two. The clinic, which isn’t quite open yet, saw its first patient today. Dad and I left around three. Dad made a couple stops downtown to a couple attorney’s offices before we made it all the way home, over an hour after leaving the office. I made pizza and pasta salad for dinner and watch a new episode of Boston Legal this evening. I watched Adult Swim for about an hour before bed.

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Jan232006

Persuasive Public Speaking

I don’t really remember what happened before my class this evening, but it probably involved me sitting with my laptop for a while in the Library. This evening I went to the first session of Persuasive Public Speaking, a required class a Tulane. The professor spoke for a good while about the class, what it entails and how he goes about teaching it. He spent a lot of time trying to put the class at ease, as speaking in front of an audience is a real big deal to some people. Later, each student had to get in front of the class briefly and introduce themselves. There are about 20 students in the class so this took a bit. The professor spoke briefly again before dismissing the class shortly before eight. The next shuttle downtown didn’t leave until 8:20 so I decided to peek into the first College Republicans meeting of the semester. I left with enough time to get back to Freret and McAlister. I stopped to get a Coke on the way. Unfortunately, I ended up missing the bus my just a few seconds, it passed five minutes early. I ended up waiting about a half hour for the next one in front of the Reily Center. I walked to the Sheraton when I got downtown and waited for a bit until Dad picked me up. I got home not long before ten.

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Jan222006

Weekend

Saturday and Sunday kind of blurred together, as my weekends often do, since both days usually have an equal amount of inactivity. The only event of circumstance on Saturday was repairing my ‘new’ flip clock, again. Friction on the alarm dial was still a problem and my previous attempts made no significant improvement. The last two times, I just lubricated the alarm dial to try and prevent it from moving and subsequently changing the alarm time. On Saturday, however, I did some more serious disassembly and removed to the alarm dial to reveal a broken part. I’m not sure how to describe it, but a spring loaded ‘tooth’ catches indentations in the dial and holds it in place unless the setting is being changed. The spring was out of place, apparently from a previous operation on the clock made by someone else. My best guess is that it was screwed up when someone replaced the small bulb that illuminates the dial, which is incredibly dim as the inside of the bulb looks to be largely coated with a black paint. Anyway, after a good deal of fiddling, I was able to get the ‘tooth’ back on the spring and fixed the problem. The spring was bent out of shape though and I had to idea how it was supposed to look having never examined a perfect specimen of this clock. I had to just force the spring into a position that worked. On Sunday night, Dad and I went to see Paul Varisco and the Milestones at the Rock ‘n Bowl in Mid City. After the hurricane, I wouldn’t have expected to see the cover band again. They’ve been around since 1960. It was a pretty decent show, and it was just nice to see the band together again after the storm even though I have no particular emotional attachment to them. It's always nice to see some pre-Katrina fixture of New Orleans in operation again.

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Jan202006

Rainy Day

I don’t recall doing any work today, home or away. It was gloomy and wet outside all day. We left the house before three this afternoon. We first went over to Lusher to pickup Andrew, and then we stopped in front of Gibson Hall and Dad dropped me off. I don’t remember if I went to the library or not, but I do remember going to Richardson to find the second floor computer lab closed. It was raining pretty good at the time and I didn’t want to walk all the way to the library so I ducked in Gibson and found that the UC lab was closed as well. I was invited to just hang around in the office, and I did. I had my laptop and a couple of the staff for company. I remained there until about half past five and then went back to Richardson for class this afternoon. I had another session of Introductory Psychology. This evening’s class dealt with the scientific method. It’s certainly not a new subject to me, although it was discusses within the context of the course. I walked to Freret and McAlister after class. The shuttle stops there at 5:50, five minutes after class is supposed to end. I caught the shuttle with two other people. Again, when I got to Canal Street, I walked to the Ferry to find it closed, even though it was just after six. Dad came downtown again and picked me up. I got home in time for dinner. I think we had spaghetti for dinner, which was pretty good. Battlestar Galactica and the Stargate shows were the order of the evening.

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2006

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