Day 5

Nothing for day 4, so now it’s day 5. I missed the fedex dropoff, they came at 11am, as if someone would be home then. They left the door slip to sign and they’ll leave it tomorrow if nobody is here. There probably will be, but you never know, so hopefully I”ll have it tomorrow.

Otherwise, nothing new. The monitor is still en route from CA, with no new tracking information, and the stuff from Buy.com has not been shipped yet, as far as I can tell. I’ve bought stuff from them before, and it hasn’t taken so long to ship, so I’m a bit bummed. It’s not a big deal really, but I would have liked to work on the system this weekend, and it is a little difficult without all the pieces 🙂

More if it happens

Posted in New Computer

Day 3

Not a whole lot new today. My packages from Newegg.com shipped. There are two packages, presumably one is the case, and one is everything else. They left CA on July 26, 12:02pm, and are currently being held in Indianapolis, IN (as of 2:04pm, so they may have moved again without the site being updated). The delivery estimate for both is July 29, before 4:30pm. The monitor is slowly moving along, but it appears to be going by mule, as it is due to arrive August 2nd. It has left CA, but I don’t know where it is now.

The items from Buy.com don’t appear to have left the warehouse yet. So far things are progressing about as expected: I’ll be waiting for the sound card. Oh well, I’ll have most of it this weekend.

I spent a little time earlier today uninstalling software from my current computer that I don’t use anymore, and making a list of what I do use so that I know what I have to do to setup the new machine when I have it built. There’s a fair amount of software to install, but it could be worse. I certainly don’t have to do it all in one sitting, there are only a few things that I consider manditory.

Until tomorrow…

Posted in New Computer

Day 2

Today I went to CompUSA very briefly, and got the video card. We didn’t waste any time in the store, just went to the case, said we wanted it, paid, and got out. There’s no reason to stay in there longer than necessary. I worked there years ago, and know first hand that most of the people that work there are not especially helpful. So anyway, I’ve got my first item sitting around waiting for the rest to arrive.

The only other update is that the monitor has shipped, so that should be here fairly soon. So that’s a pretty good day for CompUSA, surprisingly enough. Both the other sites I ordered from are still processing at the warehouse. Newegg.com says that it is sealed and ready to ship already, so hopefully that’ll go out tomorrow and be here in a few days. I predicted as soon as I put in the orders that I would be sitting around waiting for Buy.com to send the sound card once everything else was here, and I think that’s going to be correct. Hopefully it’ll all be here this weekend though, and I can spend my days off doing assembly.

More as it occurrs…

Posted in Life, New Computer

Step 1, Spend $2k

Well, I’ve finally decided to put my months of browsing computer parts to use, and ordered everything needed to build my next computer. I had hoped to be able to build 2 at the same time, so that Sabrina and I could both have one, but we decided to do one now, and one later, so that I’ll have mine ready to go when school starts up again in september.

I’m planning to document everything as I go, so here’s what I’ve done on 7/25/2004.

I bought parts from three sites, depending on what was the best deal at the time.

I also have one more purchase to make at CompUSA, but I have to wait until I can actually to the store, and use the gift card I got from CitiBank with my rewards points.

As stuff arrives in the mail, or I buy it, I will make updates and take pictures. It’s been a while since I assembled an entire computer, but hopefully it will go relatively smoothly.

Posted in Life, New Computer

NOW I’m done.

I turned in my final papers and exams friday and saturday, so I’m done with school for the summer. I’m already bored, wondering what to do since I don’t have to rush around doing school work. I’m sure it won’t take long to get back into a more relaxing pace for the summer. As far as class grades go, I got a 96.25, a 96.775, and a 97. So that’s pretty good. My final paper for humanities I got a 9.9/10, so I was pleased with that. Not bad for spending one day doing research, and one day writing. It ended up being 6 or 7 pages, I can’t remember which now. There was no set lenght, so I just ran on until I didn’t have anything else to talk about.

In the fall I’ll start taking Oracle classes, which should be interesting. It’ll be the first of many classes in it I’ll take, since they focus pretty exclusively on it for the database classes. Hopefully that’ll go well, I’m not really sure what to expect from it. I’ll also be taking a logic class, and another english class, so I’m sure that’ll be boring. One year down, three to go.

That’s all that’s new here.

Posted in Life, School

Almost done!

I’m almost done with my third quarter at Strayer. I’ve turned in one final, and have 2 more to go. One is an essay for humanities, which is due Saturday, I’ll have to pick a topic soon. I’m not impressed with the choices, so it’s a little hard to pick one of them to write about. I got a 188/200 on my the final for English, which isn’t too bad. I had a paper for that class, that was 90/100, and 98/100 on the 5 paragraphs that I also had to write. Good enough, I should have a 96 or so for a final grade. I have some programming to do too, but that shouldn’t be too difficult. Part of it is short-answer, rather than programming, and that is the hard part. It’s difficult to stretch out answers to an appropriate length.

Not much other news here, things are about the same at work as always. The only change is that I was asked to do some of the work one of the account manager usually does while he was away for a week. It isn’t terribly difficult, but I certainly have no interest in doing it for a living. I’ll let someone else fill out all the paperwork and setup jobs. The worst part is dealing with the sales people, who negotiate the jobs and the pricing. I don’t think they have much of an idea of what goes on once they get a job authorized, so they aren’t always good about the pricing. Part of the problem is that some of the accounts are worth a lot of money, so you take crappy jobs to keep them happy, so you get the big jobs. Otherwise, I’m still doing my spreadsheet, and entering the results into the online reporting system. Fun fun. It’s almost time for another quarter, but I don’t know what I”ll be doing for that yet.

Maybe I’ll remember to post when I have the actual grades for my classes. I’m not taking anything this summer, so it’ll be strange to have some free time again. Working 40/hours a week is practically a vacation compared to working and doing school at the same time. I don’t know how people do it when they have to commute to school too. I sleep little enough as it is.

Posted in Life, School

Week 1 Journal 3

I wonder if I’ll have to do 3 entries every week. If I do then I’m going to be hard pressed to come up with that many topics. There are 10 weeks in the class, so that’d be 30 entries. I’m pretty sure I can’t come up with that many topics, although I suppose if I have to I will. Maybe I’ll go for a lighter topic this time.

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Posted in ENG102

Week 1 Journal 2

One down 2 to go. I really should have done my entries spread out over the week, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it earlier in the week. My first entry was about work. What should the second entry be about? School is a good choice, since that’s what takes up most my time outside of work.

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Posted in ENG102

Week 1 Journal 1

It’s difficult to pick topics to write about in a journal, especially when you are doing it on command. It seems like writing journal entries should be something you do because you feel the need to express yourself. I’ll try to come up with something in any case.

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Posted in ENG102

Why the Humanities?

The first assignment for the humanities class I am taking was to write three paragraphs explaining:

  1. Why you are taking this course
  2. What you are bringing to this course
  3. What you hope to get out of it

This was harder than I would have thought, mostly because it is difficult to come up with what I was bringing to the class. It’s also hard to expand on the questions for more than a sentence or two. I’ve never been particularly verbose, so it’s hard to fill out a paragraph on simple ideas.

In any case, it’s the first assignment to turn in, so hopefully there will be some reasonable feedback for future assignments. It’s difficult to know what the professor expects ahead of time, which is part of why the assignment was made to begin with. The professor wanted to evaluate everyone’s writing, and give some feedback.

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Posted in HUM101