Finished

So... I just finished college. Pending the grading of my last paper, I'll be all finished up. It's a pretty weird feeling, and it's safe to say it hasn't sunk in yet. I even got the paper (my last remaining assignment) turned in a full 22 hours before the deadline. What's wrong with me? The procrastinating side of myself must be very disappointed with me. Maybe it'll get around to letting me know sometime.

The biggest lesson here is this: I shouldn't start blog entries after 2am... they tend to ramble... on... and on...

What I learned at school today...

Here's an excerpt from my professor's announcement today:

If you concern about your grade, make sure your exceed the expectations for online discussions and you can get up to 5 points of extra credit.

Now I understand bad grammar is more common than hot days in the Texas summer, and normally I try to give people a break on this type of thing. However, if you post the following in your syllabus, you have to be prepared to write grammatically correct English.

From the syllabus:

Edit your message before posting it. Numerous grammatical errors and spelling errors or a "stream of consciousness" approach makes reading your message tedious.

Yup.

(Inevitably, I've written something that's grammatically incorrect in my rant... pick on me, make fun of me, whatever. I'm not the one working on my PhD and teaching grad classes...)

the post about a future post

Until now, I've kept silent (at least on the blog... in person, totally different story...) about my lovely certification/grad program. I've just finished writing a nice little post about it. However, I'm going to wait to post it until I've officially wrapped things up here in a few weeks. I like what I've written, but it's not especially nice. Also, I don't have any intentions of changing it to be so. So look for that in the coming weeks, once I've secured my bump in pay and another framable sheet of paper.

Also, fyi, I'm not ripping into people too terribly or naming names of those who should be excommunicated from the department or anything. I just may have a few things to say that would hack people off, and I don't care to invite that type of fun into my life before the class ends. Whatever. Just read the post when it gets here, and decide for yourself...

the end of an era

I took my last test of my college career this morning. It went without a hitch, and everyone in the room passed their oral exams. The guys liked what I've been working on with philosophical chairs and such. Nice to feel like I actually did some meaningful research.

On my way home I had to take evasive action to avoid being T boned by a careless driver in an F250 (could have been an F350... it was a large white Ford truck moving my way quickly... you get the idea...).

Also, I avoided getting at ticket despite my illegal parking. I really felt like I stuck it to them.

Today's mailbox surprise

If you've spent any time at all looking for deals on the web, you've likely made your way to woot.com. It's a deal a day website that offers everything from electronics to useless toys to matresses. Every so often, the holy grail of woot.com pops up, the bag of crap. On July 12th, the bag of crap surfaced again. I was one of the lucky recipients who forked over $5 for some of their junk.

Why would I want a bag of crap, you ask? Well in every bag of crap the wooter (one who frequents woot.com) will find 3 "craps" from around the woot warehouses. The best crap ever received was a 40" flatscreen. For $5. You can imagine my excitement when this was in the mailbox today:

Side note: most bags of crap sell out in less than 5 minutes...

to make this last one more widely available, woot.com sold woot lights (seen below) and picked a tenth of the customers to also get bags of crap... end side note...

What I knew I was getting:

When I opened the box, I thought it would only contain the woot lights. I was fine with that. You can imagine my excitement when I saw other crap in there. (Ok maybe you can't. Work with me...)

Crap #1

The crappiest of the craps. Seriously, what am I going to do with this Christmas stocking?

Crap #2

A little screwdriver/flashlight combo. Not bad. A nice addition to the junk already living in my truck.

Crap #3

And what's inside of this mystery bag?

High-brow comedy :)

All in all, a good first experience with the bag of crap. Hopefully I'll have a chance at a few more.

AP Summer Institute: Monday

Growing up, while several of my friends had newer TVs (with the little plugs that would allow an elementary school boy to plug in his NES), we had the same TV that my parents purchased shortly after marrying in 1979. This was the case until I was about 14 or 15. If I could find it in a landfill somewhere and plug it in, I'm confident it would look better than the "TV" that's in the cheap furniture box in my lodgings for the conference. 

For those of you looking for a little more description as to what exactly I'm seeing here, read on:

If you go to see UP, which you really should do, and you find yourself in the 3D version of the film, take off your 3D glasses at some point and imagine you are watching the movie through a green sheet of cellophane applied to a fishbowl. This should reproduce my situation satisfactorily.

tour time

To say I'm a big fan of the Dave Matthews Band is quite the understatement. With 17 shows at venues in five different states, I'm gearing up for the spring tour that kicks off April 14th in NYC. I'm catching three shows on this leg of the tour and couldn't be more excited about it.

It's really an odd time for DMB fans. Last July, Leroi Moore, one of the founding members and saxophonist, passed away after complications from surgery related to an ATV accident. This new album is the first work produced without him as a part of the creative process, but much of the work he laid down previously in the studio has been salvaged and adapted to fit into several of the new songs. Should be interesting to hear how things sound. 

Here's a little preview.