Category: Current Stuff

I had One of Those Moments in the shower this morning

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

–Steve Jobs, 2005 Stanford Commencement Address

As Rafiki the baboon says, “Change is good!”

Yaaaaaay for vagueness. Actually, I was going to write a big long post about perspective on my life and stuff, and then I realized that it was just self-reflection that I’ve already done. And I’m tired. And lazy. So I won’t elaborate.

Keeping us scared

I’m tired of how everytime a large-scale disaster takes place, the only tangible change is a temporary state of paranoia, and nothing really is done to prevent the situation from happening again.

Example: Columbine High School shootings. For a few months, there was a big deal about school violence. I remember suddenly doing lockdown drills and a lot of workshops on not alienating kids.
Point of failure: Things went back to normal. I haven’t done a lockdown drill since fifth grade. And the Virginia Tech murderer directly referred to the actions of Harris and Klebold.

Example: 9/11. Remember the terrible initial fear we all felt? All of a sudden, nobody wanted to travel or go to a public place. A bunch of supposed fixes went into effect: a color-coded terrorist threat paranoia advisory system, the Transportation Security Administration, et cetera.
Point of failure: We used 9/11 for other stuff, and didn’t bother with actual protections. Somehow, in five years, we went from an attack from Muslim radicals in Afghanistan to a failed war on a country that had no connection to the attacks. It took Congress until 2007 to act on all of the 9/11 Commission’s reccommendations. I was at the airport last week, and heard over the intercom, “THE DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY HAS RAISED THE THREAT ADVISORY LEVEL TO ORANGE. PLEASE REPORT ANY SUSPICIOUS ACTIVITY.” But nonetheless, I had hastily packed and didn’t remember that there was an aerosol in my backpack. Security at DIA didn’t care, they let me through. I didn’t even know it was in my backpack until Phoenix security found it on my return flight. When they searched my bag and found the aerosol, they didn’t even bother to check the rest of the compartments of my bag. I could have walked on with materials to blow up a plane on either flight. But the important thing was that the advisory level was “Orange,” whatever the heck that means. Unfortunately, our current leadership is more worried about keeping us as scared as possible to push their unrelated agendas, instead of actually keeping us safe. If that isn’t terrorism, I don’t know what is. Don’t believe me? Believe Merriam-Webster:

ter·ror·ism
Pronunciation: 'ter-&r-"i-z&m
Function: noun
: the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion

Example: Virginia Tech Massacre. The murderer turned out to be a deranged loner, just like the Columbine shooters. Campuses nationwide are reacting to the situation, and most are being caught with their pants down in terms of handling such a problem. At CSU, there is supposedly a system in place, which is kept secret for security purposes. But what we do know is that RA’s and building proctors have received no training or instructions of how to act in such an event. And even after the Virginia Tech incident, campus officials are saying that instead of revising their current procedures, the best thing for people to do is call 911 and let them handle it.
Point of failure: This, too, will be forgotten. Everyone is paranoid and articles are being published in the school paper this week, but we’ll all forget about this once the NBA playoffs heat up. At 4:30 AM yesterday, some lunatic got on the roof of Edwards Hall and tried to commit suicide. CSU Police evacuated about 100 students from the dorm, and dealt with the situation, but no e-mail was sent about the situation until 9:30 AM, well after it was over. Had it not been for VT, no e-mail at all would have been sent.

Example: The holocaust. Some consider it to be the most horrific event in modern history, and much time is spent trying to make sure that it happens “never again.”
Point of failure: It’s happening again. As many as 450,000 have died in the Darfur conflict, but what gets news attention? The fight over a dead porn star’s child. What gets military attention? A troop surge for a war whose death toll has exceeded the deaths under the dictator it saught to dethrone.

All of these events are terrible, and since man is fallible, they will happen again. No form of government, economy, or religion will ever solve this problem. Only when Christ reigns over this world again will we be free from such tragedies. (If you’re confused as to how I can say religion will never solve the problem, but Christ will, here is what I mean: religion is man’s acts of spirituality. Manly manifestations of this will always be imperfect- every church has its faults. We can only trust someone who is not subject to our own shortcomings will be able to effectively rid us of our own imperfections.)

So these problems are gonna be around ’till Jesus returns. Does that mean that we shouldn’t try to fix these problems? No – that would accept and endorse evildoing. But just getting scared about it doesn’t fix the problem. Doing something about it does.

Housing, part III

So I am completely undecided. I have two opportunities for next year:

  1. Live in the premium 3-room unit in Durward. Pros are being right on campus (that is a BIG plus) and being around a lot of people. Cons are being in the dorms, dealing with college kids 24/7, and the random roommate draw.
  2. Live in a house with some guys I know through work. Pros are that they seem like pretty nice guys, and that I’d have a lot more space, and a room of my own. Cons are that I’d be over a mile from campus (fine except for the third of the school year where campus is covered in snow) and I might go into hermit mode from not being around tons of people.

I am trying to decide in the next day or two. Suggestions?

Apartment?

So it’s time to either snag a prime dorm on campus (current residents have priority) or go for an apartment. Most people just run to the apartments after freshman year, since they’re cheaper. I added it up… Room and board here is $770 a month. If you’re just looking at the room charge, it’s almost $400, which is close to normal rent around here… But $375 a month for food? I really don’t think I eat that much.

Money isn’t the biggest issue, for the most part. (Support candidates who support education!) But there are still ups and downs to both sides:

Apartment Benefits

  • (Somewhat) more responsible roommates / neighbors, as the worst have moved on to either fraternities or the university-magnet apartments. Since last week’s events, this is a big plus for me.
  • No evil network administrators tyin’ my torrents down!
  • Whatever I want to eat (I am getting seriously bored of Corbett cuisine.)
  • I can move in for the summer. For me, this is pretty important, since I would otherwise live at my mom’s for the summer. Mom’s is great, but it is out of the way. I like being in the middle of town.

Dorm Benefits

  • Literally 5 minutes from class or work
  • Consolidated bill- no utilities or risk of bad budgeting
  • Never have to cook
  • A lot more social, which is good since I still haven’t planted the deepest roots in Colorado yet.

Right now I’m on the fence, leaning towards apartments. But who knows?

Suggestions, people. I’d love ’em.

Arizona

I’m flying back to Colorado in a couple of hours…

I had a blast here. I didn’t do so much of the crazy I-need-to-go-hang-out-with-this-person-for-ten-minutes-now thing as I had planned. I didn’t go to ASU like I wanted… Didn’t have any way of getting there on Friday :-/

I went to McClintock early Friday morning and met up with Pat to go laugh at Drumline. It was fun… but very weird. I don’t think I’ll go back again… I’m glad to be out, and I don’t really miss it. I have good memories from there, but I have moved on. That said, I do miss doing drumline, and still plan on doing it next year.

Went to the LZ and watched several episodes of The Office… that show is addicting. We watched the first Jackass movie, too… Those guys are insane.

So yeah. Arizona was a blast…. I’ll probably have a heck of a time readjusting my sleep schedule (I’ve been up till 4 the last two nights…). And I’m ready to come back to CSU.

Oh, yeah… David and Ethan got together again, too:

100_2564.JPG   100_2565.JPG

A month…

Wow. It’s been that long already. It totally doesn’t feel like it; part of me still thinks that I’m at camp, and will be going home any day now. But I’m not, and I’m gonna be here for about 8 more months, and that doesn’t bother me at all. I haven’t blogged much in the last month, so I guess I’ll summarize a bit here.

I am definitely happy with my choice to leave Arizona, study CIS, and do so at Colorado State. I think that even though Santa Cruz was (and maybe still is) my top choice, it would have been a much harder transition to make; I wouldn’t just be around totally new people, but I’d be completely new to my surroundings as well. I know CSU like the back of my hand already, from spending about 6 months here over 3 summers, and that has helped. It’s kind of like the best of both worlds: I’m in a completely new set of people, so I can start fresh without everyone nagging me about the stuff I did freshman year, but I still feel like I stayed at home because I know the town, I know the campus, and it doesn’t feel foreign to me.

Colorado is so beautiful. CSU is a land grant campus, so there are tons of big, grassy fields that you have to cross in order to get to class. They also provide a majestic view of the Rocky Mountains, which are only a couple of miles away. They knew this when they were building everything here, too; many buildings have huge walls of glass on the west side facing the mountains. One of my favorite spots to study in the early afternoon is on the third floor of the library, where you can sit down on the balcony and watch everyone walk across the fields and just take in the landscape.

The people here are really great, too. I don’t feel like I have to be in a gifted program or an advanced group like band to find good people. Everyone here is really down-to-earth and genuine, and they don’t have to be in honors classes or anything to be that way. Part of this surely is because it’s college, so everyone who is here wants to be here, so there is none of that high school crowd that’s like, “I’m legally required to be here, but I don’t want to be here, so I’m just going to be a jackass and make everyone else’s time here suck.”

Living on my own is nice, too.  It doesn’t feel like something drastically changed and now I’m suddenly making tons of decisions for myself- I was so all over the place my senior year that sometimes home felt like it was just the place I came home to sleep in every night. But being completely in charge of my time and activities is nice. My floor turned out to be a really good one, and everyone is very outgoing. We just leave our doors open all the time and one can easily spend an entire day without leaving Corbett hall, and not get bored.

Classes here are interesting… It is just class, so it feels a lot like high school in some respects, but it’s a lot more relaxed. I’m in class for 15 hours a week instead of 30, and the profs are way less restrictive; they don’t treat you like a criminal or someone who needs to be tied down to their chair and pay attention. Instead, they actually figure that you’ll either take responsibility for your education, or you’ll fail. They don’t care either way.

I feel like I have a good balance of my logical and creative sides, doing a Business Administration major (that’s the one with the CIS concentration) and a Spanish major. I miss a lot of the fun liberal arts-type classes that I’ve taken before… I still miss Pullen’s history classes. A lot of the fun Honors classes would be great to take, but my AP credits already covered their degree requirements, so it would be a waste for me to take them.
I’m not really enjoying the business core classes, though. I decided to do Computer Information Systems, which is 27 credits of programming, instead of Computer Science, which is 60, because the CIS program provides a good business background (read: My job will not go to India and I won’t have to sit in a box all day writing code.) But I am honestly dreading all of the accounting, marketing, and business law classes… There are 34 credits in the core, meaning that it’s more than the actual programming classes themselves 😛
But I’m going to stick with it. At least for now. If I want to take more programming, I’ll get a Masters degree in Computer Science.

I miss drumline and band. Not terribly, but just playing electric drums in my dorm isn’t the same. I think it’s just a need for more musical involvement, not necessarily at school. I need to find people to jam with. Especially a bassist. Someone who can competently improvise melody would be AMAZING, too.

I’ve been listening to a lot of different music now. Here are my current favorites:

  • Regina Spektor
  • Louis Armstrong
  • Bill Bruford’s Earthworks
  • Acoustic Alchemy
  • Wendy Woo
  • The Mars Volta (like I’ve said before, Amputechture is amazing)

An interesting observation before I go: Colorado is much less diverse than Arizona. I think McClintock was something like 50% white, 30% hispanic, 12% black and maybe 8% asian. CSU is a LOT more white overall. But in the minorities that are present, however, I think that there is a lot less interracial tension here. People just happen to be different, but there aren’t huge cliques centered around race, which are definitely present in Arizona.

First Impressions

So I’m pretty much moved in… The room’s set up, the drums are running, and it doesn’t look like a sea of boxes any more. We actually have a good bit of floorspace going for us.

So since all of the freshmen have moved in (I’m technically not a freshman, but whatever…. “first-year student”) they’ve been doing lots of orientation activities. I’ve gotten to know some of the guys on my floor, and they all seem pretty nice and cool. Overall, though, It’s really hard going around a crowd of thousands of people without really knowing one of them. I’m glad that everyone on my floor is outgoing, but a lot of these kids are from Colorado- so they already have their friends here. I’m bad at being outgoing, so it’s awkward. I’ve felt this before- moving to Arizona. Or Fort Collins for 8th grade. It’s uncomfortable, and I know that it’ll pass, but it’s frustrating for the time being. I miss the guys in Arizona. I don’t like being bored.

Got my books today…. a couple of them are tiny paperbacks that cost over $100 each. Grr. But it’s coming out of my financial aid, so it won’t hurt me (much.)

Also found out my work schedule:

  • Sunday 8pm-midnight (BLARRRR… including this coming one, right before my first day of class!)
  • Tuesday Noon-4pm
  • Thursday 7:30am-1pm (I can do 7:30. I think…)
  • Friday 2pm-4pm

Overall, not a bad schedule at all. I only close once, and I think that Sunday isn’t a bad night to do it- tests would be at the end of the week, right? I also have saturdays completely off. This is the same schedule every week, too, which will be a welcome change from the ever-changing Taco Del Mar shifts.

So I’m a little bored, still. Oh, well.