therosser.com

Song of the Week: Stevie Wonder - Superstition

August 24, 2003 - g. w. joe

Back at the dorm now, had a pretty rockin' weekend with the gang. I spent last night with Brian and Chris, discussing the world's most pressing questions, such as, "If you make a cow inhale Helium, will its moos be more high-pitched?" It was an enjoyable night, one of the last of its kind for the time-being. As for today, I spent most of my time sitting in my dorm... Despite the fact that I'm surrounded by students, I can't help but feel a bit lonely. Maybe I just need some better people-skills.. or maybe I'm holding on to my high school friendships and not making room for more. I dunno, whatever the reason, I'll ponder it later. I'm off to bed since I start class tomorrow. Adios.

Image of the Day

Action figures of actual people somehow weird me out... this one especially. See full product description here.

Quote of the Day - Ernest Hemingway

When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen.

August 25, 2003 - i've got class

Well, despite the fact that it's Monday and I have Monday's update completely ready, I won't be able to upload it, because Case's "superior network" is down yet again. I had just enough time to send one e-mail off, and then I was off. Anyways, I'll still leave this update for today, and I'll just upload it Tuesday. I went to my first college classes today. They weren't bad at all... My math teacher reminds me of just about every math teacher I've had... Psychology seemed interesting enough... and as for Sociology, it seems like it will interest me a lot more than I originally thought it would. Tomorrow I start off with Astronomy, then I have more math, then Wellness, and finally computer programming. As long as I do my homework, read what I'm told to read, and listen in my lectures, I don't see any particular class posing too much of a problem. And hell, if it does, there are tons of ways to get academic help around here, as well as many policies which ensure academic success for Freshmen. Well, alright, I guess that's all for now.

Image of the Day

This image has been lovingly posted in the spirit of Case classes starting and nerdiness in general.

Lyrics of the Day - "I'd Rather Be In Love" by Michelle Branch

Turn out the lights now
To see is to believe
I just want you near me
I just want you here with me
And I'd give up everything only for you
It's the least that I could do.

August 26, 2003 - out of this world

Had my second day of classes today... It went pretty well overall. My computer programming class is extremely cool, and not nerdy at all... there are like no geeks in that class, not even the teacher. The class is so cool, in fact, that as an ice breaker, we went around the room stating our name, hometown, favorite programming language (I said TI-83), and our favorite Star Trek character. Heh, anyway... As for my Wellness class, I was right; there is no physical activity at all. It's like a health course, focussing on nutrition, maintaining physical and emotional health, and learning how to be "well" as a whole. The class is complete with tests and a final, so that's good news for me. I'd rather take a test than play football or something any day. I don't mind physical activity as much as I mind competitiveness, or heat...or sweatiness. Gross! As for my next semester Phys Ed class, I'm hoping to take Archery. Well, alright, I guess that's all the news for now. College life is alright; I'm not really being very social still, though I did hang out with a few of my wellness classmates for a bit. But yeah, more tomorrow.

Image of the Day

We looked at this photo close up in astronomy today... It's a 2-week exposure of a dark spot in the night sky, the area now known as the "Hubble Deep Field"... The majority of those little dots and colored shapes are all galaxies. See full story here.

Quote of the Day - Mrs. Moore, my Wellness class instructor

"If a friend needs you to help them get through a crisis, be there... That's what it's all about."

August 27, 2003 - adding ads

Gah! Why are there ads on my pages!?!? This problem must be rectified... since I can't really host my own site here, I think I may have to pay the $60 a year to not have ads on here. How obnoxious. Anyway, enough of that for now; my day today was alright. I didn't do a whole lot, really. I went to my classes, which so far haven't been too much work, but that's probably because the professors want us to ease into the year. After that, I came back here, and have pretty much been here since. I had an enjoyable conversation (as they usually are) with Becky while Steve-o played Megaman 5. So yeah, that was my day. As for tomorrow, I have my doctor's appointment to see how I'm doing after that surgery and hellish hospital stay I had to deal with. I have another catscan thing in a week, and I'm kind of nervous; I'm hoping that things will be fine and I won't have to spend anymore time in the hospital. But whatever happens, so be it... Sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do. Alright, done for now.

Image of the Day

A somewhat poor-quality shot of orientation last week... that stick-looking "I" or "l" at the end is supposed to be an exclamation point. See more pictures here.

Comic Strip Dialogue of the Day - Dilbert, by Scott Adams
(unfortunately, I can't find the image version of this one...)

Dogbert: "Well you know what they say, when life gives you lemons, make lemonade."
Dilbert: "But I'm allergic to citrus."
Dogbert: "Well you know what they say, when life gives you lemons, swell up and die."

August 29, 2003 - moving on up

Although I didn't update the main page of my site yesterday, I did update--or upgrade rather--my membership to angelfire. Hopefully now I won't have any problems with ads on my page... Also, Angelfire Premium allows users cgi access, so once I figure out exactly how to enable that and whatnot, I'll hopefully have a new guestbook without the 500 character limit or whatever it is. As for school, everything's going fine... Today, my math class was rather awesome; the classroom was locked, and the teacher had no key, so he told us all he'd see us next week. So now I'm sitting here killing time before my psychology class. After that I have sociology, which is actually a very intriguing study to me... I never thought I'd be saying that. Nevertheless, after sociology, I'm heading back to Euclid for the weekend, to work and hang out and whatnot. I have more to ramble about, but not a whole lot of time to do it in, so I'll write more later. Have a good one.

Image of the Day

To the unknowing eye, this probably looks like a picture of just a normal day... However, given the facts, it's understandable that this day is far from normal. In fact, it's not a day at all... This is a shot taken in the middle of the night in Fairbanks, Alaska. It was taken at 1:01:54 AM back on June 21. Near the beginning of summer, arctic folk have many days of virtually 24-hour sunlight... Fun, eh?

Image via ArcticCam.

Quote of the Day - Raymond Lindquist

"Courage is the power to let go of the familiar."

August 30, 2003 - choosing my own adventure

Despite the fact that I moved away to college, I really have yet to feel this "big change" I've been thinking about. That is, I haven't come to a point where I feel like my life has changed and whatnot. Perhaps it's because a good amount (but not all) of my friends are still around, and I see them pretty often. I dunno... Maybe it just needs time to set in. Maybe in a year, six months, one month from now, it will hit me that the group of people at Ashley's house a week ago are never going to be the same together again. In a way, it's like those "Choose Your Own Adventure" books I'd read as a kid. All of my friends and I have been on the same part of the book for a while... yet we're each reading the book alone. Now, we're finally coming to the bottom of the page where it says, "If you want to open Door A, go to page 62. If you want to open Door B, go to page 117." The big difference though is that there aren't just two options, there are dozens... And to top that off, page 62 and 117 are blank. We are each writing our own chapters now. For the past four years, we may have all had slightly different characters and general plot differences, we all had the setting in common. We all had different perspectives on many of the same events. But not anymore. We now will have completely new characters and completely independent plots... We'll still have different perspectives, but those perspectives will also be on different situations and different events. So while we all collectively wrote the high school chapter of our stories, we now become the sole writers of our respective college narratives. Perhaps I'm a bit closer to that "big change" than I thought...

Image of the Day

Quote of the Day - Elbert Hubbard

"The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing that you will make one."