2007

Dec282007

The Wire

I took today off as well as yesterday so I could be lazy and get my room cleaned. I spent a good part of the day watching the first few episodes of The Wire. I’ve known of the show for a while and with the free time I decided to give it a shot. So far it’s proven to be pretty interesting.Bianca came by to visit at about three this afternoon. She brought her laptop for me to take a look at. She also brought her copy for Rush Hour 3 for us to watch. To put it kindly, I’ve seen better movies. She left around six this evening, just before we had dinner.

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Dec272007

Aquarium

I spent the better part of the day with Bianca. I met her at the Canal Street ferry at noon and we went to the Audubon Aquarium of the Americas. I hadn’t visited it in several years so I was curious what state it’s in following Katrina and I wanted to try my hand at photographing the fish. Having looked up the subject I knew it would be challenging.Overall, the aquarium looked pretty good. There were no obvious vacancies in the facility. There were a lot of interesting fish to look at. They were exceedingly difficult to take pictures of though as aquariums are so dark. I thought the Gulf of Mexico tank as pretty cool. The petting pool for stingrays was clearly Bianca’s favorite. We finished the aquarium about two hours after we started.After that, we walked over to the Riverwalk to get some bad Chinese food for lunch. We left there after we ate and walked around the quarter for a couple hours. We walked through the St. Louis Cathedral because Bianca had never been inside it before. We stopped in a number of different shops and the French Market. At about five we walked over to Caf du Monde. It was exceptionally crowded there this afternoon. The only free table was inside and service was pretty slow.During the course of the afternoon we tried to get a hold of Toni to see if she’d join us in the evening. She was busy though and that never panned out. Bianca and I decided to catch a movie at the westbank palace. We made it over the river early so we went to Chevy’s for a little bit for the 6:50 showing of I Am Legend. The movie wasn’t great, but it was decent. After the movie we walked back to Chevy’s and I called a cab. Over an hour later, we were still waiting. Eventually Bianca called her mom and she was nice enough to pick us up. Later that evening after I got home, I played a couple games of NHL ’08 on the new toy.

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Dec252007

Christmas Day

Unlike Christmases past, the family spent the whole day at home without the usual trip to Metairie. There were a good handful of nice gifts to go around but a Playstation 3 was the main attraction. I’ve wanted one of these to watch Blu-Ray movies and eventually play Gran Turismo 5 and MGS4. This afternoon, we had a big dinner, very similar to Thanksgiving.That evening, I was fooling with the PS3 for a while to get the media server function to work. For me, the ability to wirelessly stream music and videos from my computer and play them on the TV through the PS3 may be the most desirable feature.

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Dec242007

Christmas Eve

I spent this afternoon in the quarter with Bianca, who is in town for the holidays. I met her at the Sheraton on Canal and we walked down to the gem and lapidary shop on St. Philip. She always goes there when she’s in town and I’m usually along. We were there for a good while. She eventually picked out a gift for someone. After we left we went to get something to eat. Bianca was in the mood for pasta and we wound up at Angeli’s on Decatur. We both had a chicken alfredo pasta dish that was pretty good. I can’t remember what we did after we ate but we must have walked around a while.Later in the afternoon, we went to Canal Place and saw The Darjeeling Limited. I liked the movie but it didn’t appeal to Bianca’s taste. Before heading home, we stopped at Caf du Monde for some beignets before hailing a cab home.

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Dec232007

Winter Break

With school out, most of my time has been spent with work and wasting time at home. I bought a copy of Unreal Tournament 3 this week. It’s a decent game but my hardware struggles with it. Having skipped a post on the 22nd, I missed the fifth anniversary of the daily log. I’m not sure exactly how long I figured I’d keep this up when I started it during my senior year of high school, but I think it will last until I graduate from college and I’m well on my way to that. I would concede that it’s odd and childish to keep such a journal, but I often find it useful when I want to remember some place I went to or something I did. Without this log, I would often frustrate myself by not remembering some mundane fact. Thanks to this I can just look it up who knows; maybe my posterity will find it interesting someday. If nothing else, it could serve as a fine sleep aid.The Sunday before Christmas, my Dad’s family came by our house for the afternoon. In all the previous years we’ve lived in New Orleans, it was always us that went to see them in Metairie on Christmas Day. After years of prodding, however, Dad got it his way. The afternoon went nicely, aside from the Saints game. We had plenty to eat and drink.I went out that evening and met Andrey, Patrick and David, who was a friend of Jeff’s. They met me at the Dragon’s Den not long after ten. There was supposed to be live music there but they never showed so we only stayed for one round. I almost fell sad for the bartender since we were the only customers in there. After walking around a bit, stopping at d.b.a., we ended up at the Spotted Cat. It wasn’t overly crowded so were able to talk and enjoy the music without any hassle. After we left there we made our way to Caf du Monde for some beignets before heading home for the evening. I thought it would be easiest to get a cab on Canal Street but it took a little while.

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Dec132007

End of the End

I had to get up earlier than usual to cover the phones this morning, although I didn’t actually take any calls. Dad left early this morning for a trade show and I had to take a cab to work. I arrived at 10:45. I worked on a little dictation this afternoon and got a chart copy requests done. Dad took me to campus for about five. I just sat around in the classroom with my laptop for a while since there wasn’t really enough time to bother going elsewhere.The final exam of Math for Information Technology was just under 30 questions. Even I found the questions comparatively easy and the test was open notes and textbook. Although I probably would have been lost without the use of my notes, I was pretty confidant I did alright on the exam. It took me a little over an hour to complete and I was the second one to finish. I hope I did well and I think I did, but my mind could be deceiving me and I finished “early” because I had no idea what the hell I was doing. I suppose I’ll find out soon enough.In spite of the fact that I may have done rather poorly in two classes this term, I was still delighted and relieved to be finished with this term. Of all my semesters at Tulane, this one had both the best and worst of times. My art survey class was downright unpleasant and the visual communications class was just pointless. My Louisiana History class was a pure pleasure. The material was interesting and Mr. Fontenot oration made state politics genuinely entertaining. Math class was a mixed bag because the subject is by far my worst and I performed rather miserably. However, Mr. Simmons was one of the most kind-hearted, accessible and understanding instructors I’ve encountered and the classes themselves were actually enjoyable. Those Thursday nights also had the added benefit of the ballroom dancing club. I still can’t dance to save my life but it was a lot of fun and has served as another small step on my hundred years’ war on introversion.With the commentary over, I can finish up with the rest of the evening. After class I walked over to the LBC to get something to eat and relax a bit before heading home. I called a cab and got home at quarter past eight. Later this evening I fought with the Zune software some more with no success and played HL2: Episode 3 for a while. I lost track of time and got to bed later than I should have.

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Dec122007

Art Survey Final

Before leaving for work this morning I had some time to yet again fool with the tags of my MP3 collection. I made the mistake of checking the “automatically update album info” box in settings, which retagged some of my tracks with erroneous information. I fixed some of them and just recopied other files from a November backup.I was at work from about 11:30 to 3:15 this afternoon. I left the office early so I could take some time to study for this evening’s exam. The final exam for Art Survey was just the last in a series of short tests. This one was on gothic art. Studying certainly paid off. This was probably my best performance but not necessarily a good one as there were about five questions I was unfamiliar with. I was done in just 15 minutes.I was just going to call a cab to go home but I called Dad first. He offered me a ride home if I waited 20 minutes for the downtown shuttle. Shortly before I boarded I got another call from Dad telling me we’d be going back to the office to get a report sent out. It was completely unnecessary and I was acutely disenchanted. We were at the office for about 20 minutes and finally made it home at 7:30, an hour later than I would have had I gotten myself home.Later that evening I watched some TV and talked to Krystle on the phone before getting to bed at a half decent hour.

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Dec112007

Louisiana History Final

With regular doses of Benadryl I was able to function normally today, although my voice is still a little off. After a stop at the post office, Dad and I made it to work at about 11:30. Dad took me downtown at about 3:00 to catch a shuttle to campus. With the time I had before to nights test I did some studying, reading chapters from the textbook. While I sat in the LBC, I saw a few familiar faces. My brother Andrew, Andrey, Sona and Shona stopped briefly to chat.I walked over to Hebert at about quarter to five. Some students and the professor were already. He made himself available to entertain any questions students may have had. The final exam was formatted like the rest of Mr. Fontenot’s tests. Unfortunately for me, a lot of the terms to be identified were unfamiliar to me. While I think I have a firm grasp on the nature of events covered by the class, I remembered almost none of the names of the people mentioned on the test, which was quite a detriment. The test covered Louisiana history from the Civil War to the Edwin Edwards era so there was a lot to cover. Since the test was so short, I don’t think it did the best job in assessing a student’s understanding and comprehension of the material.I finished the exam at 6:30. Dad picked me up from the LBC not long after that. Later this evening I watched TV for a while and studied a bit before bed.

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Dec102007

Beginning of the End

I was still under the weather today. I was only at work for a couple hours before Dad took me downtown to catch the shuttle to campus. With the spare time I had before this evening’s test I took time to study for tonight’s and tomorrow’s test.This evening’s visual communications final wasn’t bad at all. I don’t know if I got an A or not, but I did breeze through it with no trouble. The test comprised of 70 multiple choice questions. After class I caught a cab home. Dad was still in Metairie was going to be there for a while longer and I didn’t feel like waiting.

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Dec102007

Weekend

This Saturday and Sunday were especially uneventful for me. I developed a cold or allergy problem or whatever so I felt like crap throughout the weekend. I spent my time in front of the computer, TV or studying for exams coming up this week. On Sunday night, I spoke with Mylena online. I had not talked to her in at least a few months.

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Dec062007

Last Math Class

Dad and I left the house a little early this morning because we had to make a stop at the Gretna post office. This afternoon, I did a little work with the plethora of initial reports waiting and got the stack of discharges ready to mail out.Dad dropped me on campus at 5:15. This evening math class started with a review of the take home test we just turned in. Later on, there was a lecture about XOR gates, a subject that luckily will not be on the final exam. I had trouble following along.After class I caught the 7:20 shuttle downtown to meet dad. He was still on the east bank running errands. Later this evening, I finished playing MINERVA: Metastasis. I was surprised just how good this mod is.

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Dec052007

Bad RAM

Dad and I made it to the office just before 11 this morning. I spent the afternoon finishing up the outstanding discharge reports and getting them ready to send out. I left the office before I had the chance to actually do so, however. Dad dropped my downtown to catch the 4:40 shuttle this afternoon. This evening’s art class, the last one, started with the class filling out the student evaluations. Afterward, Mr. Bayer lectured for about an hour about gothic art, mostly painting and sculpture rather than architecture. The lecture was only about an hour this evening. Before dismissing class he mentioned some things that would be on next week’s test. On my way out I picked up the test I did last week. I didn’t do as well as I thought I did, which almost never happens. I usually predict my grades rather accurately. I always know when I don’t know.Dad picked me up from the LBC about 30 minutes after class ended. When I got home I started testing the other stick of RAM in my computer which was rife with errors. I used my computer for a while without the defective RAM and there were no problems so I’m practically certain this was the problem. A software problem would have been cheaper but I’m actually somewhat relieved because I thought the video card could be failing much more expensive. Before bed this evening, I finished the take home math test.

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Dec042007

Costume Change

I went with Dad to the viewing for Uncle Joe this morning at 11. On the way we had to stop at the Mid City office because the nurse was late. Several familiar and unfamiliar faces were there. I was there until about one when I left with Mom. She took me to the office for the afternoon. I didn’t get much tangible work done today.Dad returned later on and took me to campus for class this evening. Tonight’s final Louisiana history class was about Louisiana politics from about 1965 to the eighties. In the first half of the class though, we discussed our last book we read. Having not read the book, I only know it had to do with the civil rights movement as it related to Louisiana. The class discussion, as directed by Mr. Fontenot, was much more abstract. In large part, the class discussed the failings of public education including cultural issues like parent apathy. The second half of the class was about politics since the sixties, mostly discussing Governor John J. McKeithen and Edwin Edwards.Dad picked me up after class. That evening, I watched Boston Legal and fought with my computer some more. It has been crashing more frequently, suggesting a hardware issue. I went to bed early with Memtest86+ running.

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Dec042007

Weekend

There was nothing spectacular about work on Friday, although Mom got a flat tire that broke some of the routine, both before and after work. I did a little homework this weekend, watched football on TV and generally wasted my time. Having finished playing Half-Life 2 again, I downloaded and played the better part of MINERVA, an HL2 mod that’s been pretty fun. I had some trouble with it though since my computer has been acting up.

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2007

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