Omnifarious: September 2006 Archives

I was reading my textbook, of all things, today and I found a quote that I wanted to share.

We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it - and stop there; lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove lid again - and this is well; but also she will not sit down on a cold one any more.

- Mark Twain

Alex and I spent Saturday evening and yesterday at "The Lake", my mom's place in Indiana. I had a good time but I missed most of the party on Saturday because I had to work 'til 5 and it takes roughly 2 hours to drive there after I got home. My mom had a "Chili Party" and they watched the Ohio State game. Well it was mostly an OSU party, but there are a few Michigan, Wisconsin, and Notre Dame fans around the place so it was really just a football party.

By the time Alex and I got there, most everybody was pretty blitzed, Saturday was a still a blast though. I don't think I've laughed so hard in my life as my mom and Doug were talking about this "true redneck" they met at the bar the night before. Oh my gosh, was that hilarious, especially Doug's impressions...

My mom, despite the fact that she couldn't remember much of the night before, promised to wake up and make us breakfast/brunch, and by golly she did! She was thrilled because not only could Alex and I make it but so did my brother and my sister with her son. It's not too often she can get all of us up at The Lake at once.

What I found the most amusing, though, was the presentation of my belated birthday presents on Sunday morning. My mom usually gets me an item of OSU clothing...this year she went on a shopping spree. My new OSU clothing consisted of a nice long sleeved t-shirt, a sweatshirt, some lounge around pants (which I did desparately need), a hat, and a sweatshirt. My brother then presented me with his gift which was a nice OSU zippered sweatshirt/jacket type thing. Now keeping in mind I live in Ann Arbor, much of my OSU clothing does not get worn in public around here. I usually end up taking it to The Lake when I visit, like this weekend, in addition to the new clothes I got I also brought an OSU sweatshirt of my own, and a long sleeved t-shirt that I got as a previous birthday present.

Yesterday I was decked out in my new clothing most of the day...good thing it was chilly outside because I had on about 7 layers of Ohio State. I spent most of the day outside by the fire...that's probably why my nose is stuffy and my cough is getting worse, but it was worth it :)

I wasn't ready for it to be Fall yet, but now I think I'm ready!

Alex told me about this whole "Ladies Bible Study" mail storm that was going on at Michigan some time last week. He told me this morning that somebody made a wikipedia page on it. I just checked it out, it's great (and informative for those of us who weren't a part of it). Here's what it's all about though:

"Ladies Bible Study- tonight!" was a 'mail storm' that was created on September 11, 2006 and has still not abated. The original message was sent by a student in Sociology to almost every student organization email list at the University of Michigan.

The original spam message had started several parallel threads: hate mail, comical parody, debate on first amendment rights, science vs. humanities, and even entrepreneurship.

I love the t-shirt somebody created and put on CafePress.

Tags: spam, mail storm, university of michigan, ladies bible study

I realized today that I haven't been posting much in my blog...not unusual for me, but I have been pretty busy these last few weeks. I think once school settles in for me then I'll be back to business as usual.

So this is what I'm up to these days:

1. Work...when I'm not there I'm thinking about it. I just had my performance evaluation and I'm all hyped up on that. I got some great feedback on projects that we were considering doing or want to do and I've really been letting those things settle in my brain.

2. School...I have class today, my first class was last week. I'm taking Access to Information this semester which is really just the intro reference class. I had a small library visit project last week which will eventually lead up to a more major project at the end of the semester. This last project will require me to spend a lot of time observing the reference desk at two libraries...this will consume a lot of my precious free time. Today I'm meeting with my advisor to square away the rest of my classes at WSU...I'm pretty excited because I think I'm going to enjoy most of these classes. Next class project though is the encyclopedia assignment...which requires me to compare a variety of online and print encyclopedias. I think I'll be going to UMich's library on Thursday to complete this one.

3. Orchestra...the work I'm doing with the orchestra right now is actually frustrating me some and I wish not to speak about it at this time.

4. My Computer...I took it in on Thursday to see what was up. After they ran the diagnostics they found that the sound card is shot. By the way, the people at the computer place I went to were super nice! I like these guys a lot. Anyway, my computer is still not fixed, I decided on getting an external sound card (cost of replacement reasons mostly) and when they went to order it they said that it was on back order at all the major vendors they use...even the internet places had them on back order. I suggested that maybe everybody who owns my computer needs new sound cards about now :) Anyway, I have my computer back and they'll let me know when a new sound cars comes in...in the meantime I have to use Alex's computer if I need to watch any videos for school or anything like that. The guy at the computer place did fix some 600 registry errors on my computer though and he also mentioned that there is a power management issue with it but everything else is working excellently. The registry and power management errors don't surprise me much though. I try to take care of my computer the best I can but I have to admit it's mostly because I know I'm rough on it. My good friend jokes about my computer because it's huge...he calls it my "space heater" (can't complain it keeps my coffee warm in the morning), but the reason I went with this computer was because I tend to run a lot of memory intensive programs all at once. It's a good computer though, minus a few software issues I have with HP, I'm not dissatisfied with it. If I were to get a new computer I wouldn't mind a smaller, more portable one, but to be honest with you I think it would be hard for me to trade in the power of the one I have now.

That's all for now I suppose. I've been keeping a list of things I wanted to post about but I don't know when I'll be able to get to these. I haven't been reading my feeds much these days either, there's too much in my head and I don't really want to put any more in there right now.