Freewrite?

The Porter dining hall is a fun place. The food is okay, but the service is awesome. All the people that work there are very charismatic, and nice people. Our comment board is constantly filled up with fancy quips from the students, and even fancier replies from the head chef. It’s fun to eat there. They always play different kinds of music in the kitchen.
But today’s music was the most annoying stuff I’d ever heard. I’m sure it would have been good if I could hear it better, but while I was sitting in the hall, all I could hear was a crowd of girls screaming every 10 seconds. It was a live recording of some heartthrob musician whose name I didn’t get, since I wasn’t in the kitchen long enough to pick up the voice. I could see everyone in the hall cringing every time the girls would scream.
I haven’t written a good entry on LiveJournal for the longest time, and I think I’ll call it the LiveJournal syndrome – the sheer ease that it takes to post an entry breeds laziness. But since I’m planning on writing an essay later today, I should get my creative juices flowing… and I’ll just try to go for a stream of consciousness as much as I can.
My classes for this quarter are very good so far. I hope to get grades that will make up for my horrible performance in the previous quarter, in which I dropped a class, and the resulting plethora of free time made my other two grades fall to hell. I’m taking Composition and Rhetoric (which I will never correctly pronounce as “REH-tor-ic,” but “reh-TOR-ic”), Intro to Asian Visual Culture, and Intro to Music II.
The first, my writing class, is especially pleasing for a number of reasons. First of all, its focus is on communities. We, the students, have to choose one community that we are a part of, and write a series of essays about it and its different aspects. Being the total nerd that I am, I chose Final Fantasy XI… so that means I’ll be writing about chocobos and leveling up all quarter. This should prove to be fun. Another reason this course is interesting is because my professor seems to be well learned in the field of psychology – almost all of yesterday’s class was spent discussing procrastination, and how it is an important part of the studying process. Really! We talked about how procrastination cannot be defeated, rather, it can be harnessed, and used to its full potential, whereas the student can schedule a time right before the deadline so the mind is clear of any distractions. This way, there is still a rush to complete the assignment in an orderly yet fast manner, but no time before it was spent dilly-dallying and “attempting” to work on the assignment, because usually, work resulting from dilly-dallying is poor. My professor’s definitely on the same wavelength as her students.
My Asian Visual Culture class is pretty interesting, because it’s the most straightforward class I’ve ever taken. I’ve been in lectures before, but they were usually for classes that were concerned with math and science, and required computational skills. This class is nothing more than learning about ancient Asian cultures and taking notes. The fact that I take notes on my Pocket PC should aid my learning, since I’m so technologically focused. And so far, I’m learning a lot more about Buddhism than I ever knew.
Music II was a last-minute decision, since it takes the place of a computer engineering math class that I was going to take, but decided against because there’s no way I’ll be able to major in computer science after my poor performance last quarter. But I’m glad I took it. And for those who have been keeping track, no, I did not take Music I. That’s just how awesome I am. I told the teacher about my 15 years of piano playing and dozens of compositions, and that was pretty much enough for me to place. If I do well in this class (which is so far very hard since I’ve never learned about augmented or diminished triads, or special scales, such as lydian and aeolian), I might just go toward a music major. I’m sure I have the skills to take it on. The real question is, though, what would I do with it once I graduate? Hopefully, I would still be able to take on a job that revolves around computers…
Oh, and about that. Remember my small celebration about my summer internship at Sun Microsystems? Well as of now, that’s looking bleak. It’s not that I didn’t do well in my interview, which I think I did… the problem is that Sun just recently laid off 9% of their workforce after settling a lawsuit with Microsoft. Sun did get $2 billion from Microsoft, but there was a cost – and now with the diminished workforce, the possibility of any additional positions don’t look too hot. We’ll see… I might just be working at an ice cream parlor this summer. :\
For those of you on AIM, the constant Away messages that read “Final Fantasy XI” aren’t exaggerating – I AM playing that much. And fortunately, it’s not harming my school work… I’m just devoting the free time I’ve scheduled to the game. And it’s finally becoming really fun. You reach a point where you notice that the game isn’t just about leveling up, battle after battle – there are other important things, like crafting and merchandising, which make the game varied and dynamic. Now that I’m experienced enough to expand into these different fields in the game, I’m feeling slightly better about the way I’m spending all of my free time… although it is still just an MMORPG.
A few small things:
– I’m now mirroring the first 12 episodes of Bonus Stage, thanks to my very gracious host. I’m sure Matt Wilson is grateful, he just hasn’t said anything of the sort just yet. 🙂
– I might be animating some comics from Men In Hats, since Aaron Farber sent me his character library. Here’s a sample I’ve made!
– I’ve been making a lot of guest Fints. Not all of them are up on the site – you can see the “jefffints” I’ve done here.
– The past three things all revolve around #4toontellers on Nightstar, which I’m constantly chatting in. Those guys’re a crazy bunch.