After having watched the movie of The Wizard of Oz, reading the original book, and seeing the musical Wicked, those three stories collectively have to be the most incompatible take on the same world ever. You have characters in completely different roles, plot points that are in direct contradiction, and overall basically just three entirely different stories that happen to share a few elements in common. Sure, you can say that the book is the true story and it’s the fault of the others for being different (also since the book came first), but it’s like if you want to know the “story” of Oz, you better choose only one to go with.
We’re using SQL Server Express for my database class, and that has to be one of the hardest and most annoying installs I’ve ever had to go through. I basically had to manually install four things before I could get SQL Server to install successfully, and on top of that there were two or three restarts in the middle of all that. All this, and I really don’t even want the program on my computer! The uninstall prodecure better go a heck of a lot smoother in about four months…
Personal - Dallas
That clue I didn’t have two days ago? I so got it last night!! Long story short, the countdown widget works once again, but I still have some formatting to do before I integrate it into the site. Mainly this is because assing it where I’d want it to appear causes the Random Posts section to disappear from the homepage, and I actually like that feature of the theme. Just a tad hacking should be necessary, then we should be good to go. Man, so many things I could be counting down to, and I’ll soon be able to handle it!
I watched the inauguration this morning before I went to school, and for the most part it was a really boring event. I guess I understand the historical significance of it and everything, but I wouldn’t want to have been standing outside in D.C. this morning. Hold it in Texas on one of our 70 degree days and then maybe. Hey, I hate football and baseball games when it’s cold, and those are going to be infinitely more entertaining.
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Through my use of Pandora, I’ve recently become addicted to a song that isn’t all that new in terms of when it was released, but it’s very new as far as me hearing it. The song in question, “Lifestyles of the Rich & Famous” by Good Charlotte, came out in 2002, and I’ve only ever heard one other thing by them. Well, I say that; I’m sure that I might have heard many other things, but I’ve only heard one other song that I can readily attribute to them. I’m like that with virtually all bands though.
It had been a while since I’d watched the first HP movie in its entirety, so I’m glad that I actually refreshed my knowledge on everything rather than just assuming I’d remember enough about it. Everything left in that class is now reading; 6 books in the Wizard of Oz universe and 4 in HP. Granted, the HP ones are much longer, but I also know I can read those in a day. Assuming I can read the others just as quickly, I should have no problem with the reading assignments as long as I don’t put them off until the very last minute.
Personal - Dallas
I don’t have a clue what’s wrong (although it’s likely something screwed up in the database somehow), but an updated version of the countdown widget that I briefly used about two years ago still causes a weird, meaningless error whenever I enable. My thought was that maybe it would work now; that thought was obviously not one of the better ones that I’ve had recently. So, since I don’t really feel like reinstalling WordPress, I’ll just have to make do with not having one or find one that actually works. Heck, I could probably even write my own. Can’t be that difficult, right?? *grin*
With no school tomorrow, my day will likely be spent watching Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, playing a game of ultimate frisbee, and doing other unimportant yet entertaining holiday type activities. Right now, however, I think I’m going to rewatch the Halo machinima series that I worked on a couple summers ago since I haven’t seen it since it was released. I’d either be watching that or Alias, and neither seem to be going anywhere very quickly.
Personal - Dallas
I’ve known about Pandora for a while but never really bothered to use it. However, considering the amount of music on my computer I’ve listened to in the past 24+ hours due to my extreme boredness, I decided to actually go start a station and just let it play in the background so that I wouldn’t have to continually keep changing tracks. Turns out, it’s pretty good at playing music that I like listening to. Maybe there is something to all this Pandora publicity after all.
I kept cleaning my room today since I had nothing else interesting to do, and I actually made some pretty significant process as far as getting rid of stuff that was basically trash or just things that I wouldn’t want to take to Seattle. As a side benefit, my room looks cleaner too. Strange how that works, no?
Personal - Dallas
Although my room may not look like it at the moment, between yesterday and what I intend to do by Monday, hopefully a bunch of the worthless stuff in my room will be removed. This will make packing up all my stuff for Seattle more convenient, but really the reason I’m doing it is just part of my random desire to clean/reorganize every once in a while. A clean and organized room is a happy room!!
We (my group) decided to use C# for implementing our file sharing program, so I’ll fortunately get some good experience with it and .NET before I start my job with Microsoft. There shouldn’t be that big of a “learning curve”, but at least being more familiar with it will be a good thing. For some reason I don’t see talking in Java terms there going over too well…
Personal - Dallas
In what I can only describe as a very ironic choice for our project class, we will be creating our very own file sharing app over the course of the semester. Sure, the class doesn’t even meet for the first time until tomorrow, but he already has our website up with that info on it. The bad news for me (as expected) is that we’ll be working in teams of 3 or 4 people, so I actually have to coordinate with others on this project rather than just working by myself this time. No Japan as as excuse to get me out of doing group work this time.
Hopefully my class tomorrow won’t last for it’s full time since that will mean I get to start my three day weekend earlier!! I have no plans for this weekend, and fortunately after tomorrow, life begins to warm up again. Winter does not need to have 30 degree days; bring back the days of 60 and 70 degree weather!!
Personal - Dallas
So, tonight was the HP football banquet, and I’ve learned from past experiences that there comes a point where it skyrockets on the boring chart. It was immediately prior to this point where I left tonight by sneaking out to my car by going through the rest of the school rather than the way I initially came in. Hey, I was there for arguably the only part that anyone could argue I needed to be there for, so I fulfilled my obligation as a trainer.
I managed to squeeze in watching the old Wizard of Oz in between my class and leaving for the banquet. I hadn’t seen the whole thing in such a long time that I basically knew nothing more than the general story outline. Not a movie that I really see myself watching over and over, but hey, that’s why I downloaded it rather than bought it, right? :)
Personal - Dallas
I think I’ve decided on my next gadget purchase which will be just as pointless and get used extremely little like all my other gadget purchases, but I haven’t had one in a while. If you ask me, I’m due for one right about now. I want to get a pocket camcorder (primarily to have on our Park City trip), and the two on my list that I’m really debating between are the Flip Mino HD and the Creative Vado HD. I’d say that I’m leaning more towards the Flip right now, but whichever one I ultimately decide on I’ll probably get for the trip to Austin with the baseball team so I have a chance to really play around with it outside of my room/backyard.
My classes today were fine; I had to track down a movie for my Harry Potter one that I ended up torrenting since I couldn’t find it to rent (or even buy) anywhere, and my database class should be interesting but slightly boring. Tomorrow and Thursday get to be a repeat of yesterday and today class wise, and then Friday all I have is my project class. Overall, it looks like this semester shouldn’t be too bad which is not anything I’m going to complain about.
Personal - Dallas
Today was my last “first day of school” at UTD, and my class even went 15 minutes short due to our teacher needing to leave early. Even though I only have one class on Mondays and Wednesdays, the fact that it’s earlier in the afternoon plus the teacher seeming to be fun should make it less annoying than Machine Learning was last semester. Tomorrow I have my Harry Potter class and then Database Systems. These will be two classes that I’ll be missing at the end of February for the Austin baseball tournament, so hopefully the syllabi for each are compatible with that.
With the first 4 hours of 24 down, I now have to go into a mode of waiting a full week to only get a single new hour. With all the rest of my Monday shows perhaps that isn’t all that bad, but it’s still annoying after you get a full 1/6 of the season in just over 24 hours. There’s actually nothing currently on at 7:00 that I want to watch, but as soon as NBC brings back Chuck, that will be a problem no more.
Personal - Dallas