Oh hi. Winter is here! I mean, Winter is here :(
I normally like winter, but those instances usually come equipped with heat. Apparently we forgot to get our gas utility set up, so our apartment is running at a toasty 59F. Biking across campus to get to my morning (11:30) classes has never been less motivating. Getting up in the morning is the world's greatest injustice.

I'm improvising survival skills, so being a CSE major, I capitalized on the only plentiful source of heat: computers. I just got a new computer a month ago so my old one just sits in my room. I opened up the case and turned it on. I turned on Prime95, a stress tester pushes my computer to the limit, calculating big prime numbers. This equates to a hot computer, which is my primary heat source now. It's not doing so bad: by keeping my door closed, my room is a good deal warmer than the hallway. Between that, my new computer (which, unfortunately, runs pretty cool), and my laptop, I might be able to survive the winter.

Posted by Terence! at 11:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Whew, this has been a tough week. I don't think I've ever had this much work to do in one week, especially this early in the quarter. I guess this means real life is approaching. I came back from an information session with Electronic Arts today. It'd be a dream come true if I manage to nab an internship with them. I felt pretty overwhelmed by their selectivity for internships, which was exacerbated by the attendance at the info session. There were about 200 more attendees than they expected. I hope now that I have actual industry work experience I can stand out a bit more.

Here's a tip for you freshmen: some of your early classes matter a lot! If you are in FEH and are doing one of the big engineering projects on your third quarter, make sure you do well. It's a good resume entry and it'll probably be one of the few relevant projects that you will have under your belt when you are looking for your first internship. Not looking for one? What? Why not? Your future depends on it, and it's easy. Just sign up for ECS.

Posted by Terence! at 3:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So I was riding my bike to lunch today. My left pedal broke off last week (yay 2 week old Walmart bike). I was riding on a one-way street in the opposite direction of traffic, when suddenly my other pedal broke right off. I almost fell in front of a car, but I guess I lived. Horray.

The screws in the bike were completely stripped (or should I say, "screwed"?) so I couldn't put the pedal back in without forcing it in with a wrench. I was near Koffolt Labs, and I knew my friend Thomas would be there (he always is). I met up with him in the lab, and during the process of looking for a wrench, I mistakenly touched a big peice of aesbestos (yay chemical engineering labs). After washing my hands, I found a wrench and "fixed" my bike (read: shoved the pedal in irreparably).

So with that out of the way, I went to High Street to find food. I was planning on going to Buckeye Donuts, but as soon as I got there, the building caught on fire or something and a dozen firefighters rushed down High Street and went in. Okay, well, I can live with that. I went to Penn Station next door and got a sub, thankfully uneventfully.

I was almost back home, but when my apartment came into view instead I saw a utility truck repeatedly backing up and running into a dumpster at full speed. It did so until it pushed the dumpster across the alley.

If I don't lock myself in my room for the rest of tonight, I'll probably get mauled by a swarm of feral cats the moment I step outside.

Posted by Terence! at 5:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Well, things are back to normal.

I am in a new apartment now, which is pretty nice. Well, it is nice now. When we moved in, it was a mess. There was dog crap and pee everywhere and the doors were broken. Apparently they forget we were moving in early and so didn't clean up.

But it's 2 weeks after that mess now, and things are pretty good. This new apartment actually has windows (and skylights!) and a gigantic porch, which is excellent. The only downside is that it's far down in south campus (all the engineering classes are up north), but I bought a cheap Walmart bike and it's not too far now. Choosing a cheap Walmart bike has it's downsides too. My left pedal broke off after about the 3rd day of use. Awesome. So now I'm just pedaling off of a bare rod of metal, that's sure to grind into my shoe in a few weeks.

I just built a new computer, after 6 years of using a bad one. That took about a week and a half to get working, because our internet exploded (yay Time Warner) and service calls took about half a week (and they didn't fix anything).

But here I am, and things are falling in place now. It's hard to accept that I'm a senior now. When I was a freshman, I gave meal swipes to all my senior friends. Now it is time to turn the tables. It's kind of funny how that works out. I was basically feeding my future self by swiping for seniors.
Always feed your off-campus friends, for you will be one of them much sooner than you'd think!

Posted by Terence! at 3:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)