Month: May 2007

Moving In

Last Friday I moved out of my Corbett dorm and into a house less than a mile south of campus. There’s a lot of different stuff to get used to, both good and bad.

Bad:

  • It’s still kind of a shock to walk across campus, see my wing of Corbett, and not think “that’s home”.
  • It’s weird to think that I can’t run down the hall and freak out over the latest development in Lost or The Office with the guys.
  • I can’t roll out of bed and be at work/class four minutes later.
  • People don’t cook meals for me 3 or more times daily.

Good:

  • No sharing a room (If you have access to my protected posts, you’ll understand just how important that is!)
  • Nowhere near as much noise – 45 less people to wake me up
  • I don’t have to fit my belongings in one shared room. I keep forgetting about this one, and have to remind myself when I start thinking, “Where in my room will the fridge fit?”
  • My bike isn’t exposed to the elements. (Nice since it’s pouring outside)
  • I get to start cooking again, which I actually enjoy.

I’m also transitioning into my summer mode… I still work on campus, and I’m taking Calculus for four weeks. This will be my fourth summer at CSU, since I spent a lot of time there when mom was at work, or when I was at band camp. It’s kind of a shame- Colorado State is definitely the nicest in the summer, right when everyone takes off. Half of the normal school year was under snow. But the summer is nice because everything is more laid-back, and there are so few people around.  Then again, most of my friends are from Littleton, Castle Rock, or Arvada, so not having a car is definitely hurting. Oh, well.

Overall, I’m happy to be where I am. I’ve got some good stuff in store for this summer, and more might unfold if I’m lucky.

Ending the First Year

Tonight will be the last night that I sleep in my Corbett dorm room. Tomorrow, I will be packing all of my stuff into a friend’s van and moving into a house about a mile south of campus.

As usual, it’s a bittersweet time. I’ve come home to these people every day for the last nine months, so in a way, they’re like family. Sure, I didn’t hang out with each one of the 50 people on my floor every single day, but I made some very important and lasting bonds here this year.

Today, some of us went up to Horsetooth lake and had a barbeque for a last get-together before heading off in our different directions. I’m really happy I went. I got some pictures to remember some of these great people by:

The ladies (including Nick)


Kyle and Ben contemplating


Danielle


Terry and Nick “enjoying” each other’s company


Nick has a few well-chosen parting words

C3 Barbeque

I was really lucky to have such great people on my floor, and to have an RA that actually wanted to make the year enjoyable. I can’t really put into words how blessed I was to be in such a great environment.

So I guess this ends my first year at CSU. I’m going to hit the “Publish” button on this blog post, and pack my stuff to get ready for the Next Chapter.

Leave the debugging to the user!

Today I was writing a final paper in Microsoft Word on my laptop. It was really light-duty… Just a word processor open, nothing crazy working in the background. All of a sudden, I get a message that Windows Sidebar had crashed and was “gathering more information.” About five minutes later, I got this dialog:
Sidebar

Really? You want me to try and guess which gadget caused the crash, and that’s your best way of resolving the issue? I wasn’t even doing anything with Windows Sidebar, it just crashed in the background as I tapped away some commentary on 17th century Spanish poetry.

Recently I’ve become really anal about user interfaces. It has to Just Make Sense to any old user. I believe that about 70% of the confusion that people face with technology are due to user interfaces that are more complicated than necessary.

In terms of computer desktop environments, the Mac has always had the upper hand in this arena. It’s easier to understand if you have one button on the mouse, one button to close the window and program, and minimal menus and dialogs that hide settings. Windows and the major Linux GUIs have come up short of this for a long time, and it makes sense – the system is written by technical people, and technical people think very differently from the average Joe. The trouble is, Joe has to be able to use the $400 operating system that you want him or his boss to buy.

Things have gotten a little better. The GNOME Desktop is making serious headway on making a truly easy and user-friendly user interface for Linux / UNIX systems. Windows Vista minimizes a lot of the nonsense that has confused 93% of the market since 1995, and Microsoft is planning a complete rebuild of their operating system in 2009 – say goodbye to the taskbar and Start menu, kiddies.

I definitely would like to learn more about the psychology of the average computer user.  I hope that as I get more in depth with the technical layers of software, that I don’t lose touch with what makes sense to normal people.

1 down, 2 to go.

I had my BD240 (Application Development) final today. It is definitely my strongest class, but I didn’t do so hot on the final… We had two hours to write four applications, and I messed up my pacing and only finished three. I know it hurt me, the question is just how bad… I really would like to get the A in the class. Oh, well 😛

I started packing today. I’m about 75% done already. Usually it takes me forever to pack, because I have a lot of stuff, and I’m too scatterbrained to do it without getting distracted. But somehow, I pulled it off this time. My room still feels like home, so it’s not barren enough yet. But I should be able to take it pretty easy if I get my take-home Spanish final out of the way tomorrow.

I’m starting to look back at all of the good times I had in Corbett this year. The dorms were definitely a good thing for me socially, because of the move from Arizona. I feel ready to move on now, but it’s going to be weird not having fifty people to come home to every night.

But I can’t wait to have a room to myself. I’m gonna go naked for like… three weeks straight.

S’mores!

I had my last day of real classes today. I feel really relieved. All I have from here out are three finals, only one of which am I worried at all about (my Business Law final is worth 33-40% of my grade, is 1/3 true-false, and means the difference between a D and a C). So starting tomorrow, my main focus switches to moving out of the dorms and into the house. I am a slow packer, and I have a lot of crap, so I had best get a move on with it.

Tonight we had our last floor meeting in the dorm. It’s definitely getting to that awkward “we’re all leaving each other” phase, but not nearly as bad as high school was because we’ve only known each other for 8 months here. After the meeting, we went out to the courtyard and had tons of s’mores… And I did more picness:

Corbett C3 S’mores

So it was fun. Whee. But at the same time, I have that crappy “I’m only going to keep in touch with about five of you” feeling. Meh.