DAMN Steve Jobs was a hottie.

I finally finished the 3 hour documentary "Revenge of the Nerds" about the computer revolution that we were supposed to have watched in it's entirety by the 8th (not that I'm sure more than half my class hadn't also completed it considering there hasn't been an assignment due yet). I made sure to take really good notes on the 1995 film because there were going to be test questions about it and it's going to be "open note." It was a really interesting 3 part documentary... it's unbelievable how much Steve Jobs and Bill Gates along with many, many other "computer nerds" that emerged from the 1970's hippie movement have impacted the world we live in today.

Steve Jobs was like this sexy, brilliant, charismatic force determined to change the world even if he had to steal other companies ideas to make his own product work. His manipulative skills were so strong he was able to hire a Pepsi CEO to run his company while he was busy directing his engineers mercilessly. This merciless behavior ended up being his downfall when his own CEO and board of directors selected by Jobs turned against him and kicked him out of the company in the late 80's.

Then you have the young Bill Gates that was hired by the huge leading industry IBM. He was determined himself but didn't put nearly as much pressure on his fellow engineers at Microsoft.

The contrast between the two is kind of funny. But it was because of both of their determination and brilliance that computers are where they are today. Oh yeah, and the Xerox company who both Gates and Jobs stole the graphical interface idea from.... Yeah, the Xerox copy company could have been the hugest company in the world had they been more experienced in actual computer development.

When I heard Steve Jobs died I wondered what the big deal was. Now I know. He was the Apple corporation's heart and soul and developed the first version of the user-friendly graphic interface that we're all used to today. Of course Gates wasn't far behind making his own graphic interface on top of the clunky, hard to use "DOS" software of the late 80's. Their competition and unwillingness to give up on something was what drove the fast, incredible innovation of the PC in the past 30 years.

Okay nobody cares, lol.



It's 8:15 pm. I've been up working since about 3 pm. The day started late because Marshall drove me into complete panic when he didn't show up at my window this morning to be let back in. Let me back up...

 

Marshall, my baby, bless his little adventurous soul... had gotten really bored living here the past week. To the point that he was meowing at me at late hours of the night wanting to be let out but very shortly after I'd let him out he'd want to come back in because of the snow or insecurity about his environment. Like I'd let him out my bedroom window, he'd wander off for 15 minutes, and be back meowing to be let back in. So this just became the norm.

Last night my parents came to town and delivered me some nice new furniture for my living room-- including a futon that my Dad had disassembled to get down the stairs and this heavy ass mattress with an ugly pattern that I'd ordered online. Luckily my Mom, being the decorating genius she is, had already made pillows and a seat cover for my round chair and found a brand new futon cover at Goodwill for like $6 when they're normally QUITE expensive. I just lucked out, I really like my new living room and Travis is coming tomorrow and won't have to sleep on my twin sized bed.

Last night I read my finance chapter which I don't think I would have accomplished at my computer desk. The temptation to mess around online is just too much for me to get any reading done. At around 1 am when I finished reading I headed to bed and Marshall wanted to go outside so I let him out. I had put in earplugs assuming he was gonna immediately want to come back in and whine like always but he didn't.

I kept waking up throughout the night wondering where Marshall was. Like I'd sleep for 2 hours, have weird dreams, wake up, call for Marshall, go back to sleep.... This went on until about 9 am when I started getting worried. I got up and got dressed in my robe and sweats and went out to the icey back porch to call for him. When that didn't work I decided to search around my neighborhood a little bit and BAM! I slipped on the ice and biffed it on the pavement, really hurting my knee.That didn't stop me from getting up and looking for awhile. After calling "Marshall!" up and down the sidewalk for a little while, I went home, sad, and went back to bed. I called my Mom and she said not to worry.

I got out of bed at around 11 to search again. Nowhere to be found. I changed my cover photo and captioned it that he'd ran away again and I was panicked as hell. Kelly E. commented it pretty much relating to my feelings, she lovesss cats like I do and told me to keep her posted.

At around 3:00 I once again took to the streets to search for him, this time deciding to go door to door and ask if anyone has seen him. The first house I went to was a little old lady who lived next door. When she answered I asked her if she had seen a black tuxedo cat or one had tried to get in her house last night (something Marshall was known to do at the last apartment complex I lived at) and she said no. Low-and-behold, during this discussion I look down and see Marshall running toward our feet and sniffing this old lady like he wanted to go in her house. I was like "OMG that's him!!" and we both laughed really hard at the fact that Marshall was basically acting like he would go into her house if he had the chance.

I picked him up, relieved, but also frustrated that I'd wasted most of my day stressing out about him. He's done this crap before but since it was the first time it happened at this house with the busy road in front of us I couldn't help but be very concerned that something awful had happened. Nope. Just Marshall nonsense.

Alright guys I'm gonna go do some art.

peace.

What a freakin night, the 6 hour assignment of doom.

Forecasting is.... incredibly challenging. I don't know what I would do if I didn't have Michael's help. He saved my ass yet again on the homework.

I'll back up. As you guys know I've been working on this assignment little by little since Monday as well as try to keep up on my finance. I got about 3/4 of the homework done last night and thought I'd have no problem finishing it today. Unfortunately my forecasting homework took me 6 hours, two of which were spent correcting my code for the first problem. Like every other time I try to do anything in R, I hit a wall and wonder what the hell I should do.

This morning I woke up early to meet with Wassell and get some help on the code but he wasn't in his office when I got there.

Colby met me upstairs in the library to work on the assignment around 7:30. He had made plans with Rylan and this other guy who's got a really good grasp of the material to work on the material as well but they were MIA. It was about the point that Colby got caught up to me that I realized we were in the exact same boat and needed help. I started calling people I knew from the class and nobody picked up, except Michael G. (and you can just imagine me thinking, THANK. GOD......) He told us that he and Jessie were actually working on the assignment in Shaw and we could meet them there. Yes! Salvation! 

So here we all are in the Shaw computer lab around 8:20 and it closes at 10'. Michael pretty much instructed us step by step how to do it on an overhead and I followed along. This program is so painfully confusing to me, I'm trying to grasp how all of this syntax works the best that I can but there's so much more to it. I have a decent understanding of statistical models but choosing the right ones and making good inferences on them is an art. One that is not easily attained in 5 weeks or however long I've been in this quarter....

Wow it's getting really late.... The GOOD news is the assignment is now done (Michael and Colby actually came over after we got booted from the lab at 10 and worked for another 2 hours on it). Michael has a ton of people bugging him all the time about helping him with R so he's going to start having weekly R sessions to go through the homework.

Michael's got such an obnoxiously huge ego from all of this. I can see why, he's the center of a lot of positive attention for being so good at this and starting graduate school next year. That's fine, I'm proud of him. I'm just tired of hearing how great he is because I have to hear about it every day. He knows that he's smarter than everyone else, and that he's helping me survive this class, and thus pretty much has a free pass to say whatever he wants and be as condescending as humanly possible.

I've been listening to so much Pantera lately.

At least tomorrow's Friday. Another week I've survived. Next week is the test week for block 2, I've got my finance test on Monday that I'll be studying for a lot this weekend and Carbaugh's test on Wednesday which I will also be studying for ahead of time because I've got the next horrible forecasting assignment due Wednesday as well.

There's also one big assignment on the backburner which is my Econ 406 persuasive paper about why I believe Japan should continue to raise taxes and cut spending.

It will never be harder than this in my life. I just have to keep pushing forward. I have no choice, the time is going to go by anyway and I can't let fear keep me from doing what needs to be accomplished.


peace. 

Seeing things more optimistically

I try anyway.

Well right now I'm in the process of probably killing my poor computer again by downloading the Sims 2. I just got a new hard drive with higher capacity so I have noticed that it is running faster now then it did before.  That could be kind of short lived if I start in with the Sims junk, but whatever I'm going to enjoy my computer. This game is from what, 2006? It should be easy to download and play without problems. I'm in the process of creating a whole new town with new residents (which are always quite accurate if I do say so myself). I've got to be careful with the downloading custom content because that's what always leads to problems. Trusted sources only.

Today's been a pretty productive day, but there is no telling how this will turn out.... I went to rite aid this morning to talk to my manager and she got me set up in the computer. I can't remember her name, but I do know she's from Toronto, Canada and likes math. I already like her more than I initially liked Dana to be honest with you. Dana was always kind of feisty but I never had any real issues with her. Anyway, got into Rite Aid, met up with her.. She told me that I needed my drivers license and social security card to scan in the computer before going to get my drug test. Alright, no problems, those two things are always in my wallet, right...? NOPE. Had to run home and get the card, I knew exactly where it was too because I had just applied to JCPennies yesterday. Dad's office. If it would have been on my bedroom counter I would have spotted it this morning and wouldn't of had to make the extra trip but hey, whatevvvvver.

Coming home did give me a chance to deliver my Mom's cell phone back to her office and give my sister the debit card to go grocery shopping. I'd told her this morning that I was planning to go even though I didn't want to and my sister was like "No I'M going grocery shopping, I always do." I'm like Hey, no problems!! ha ha, sooner I could get done with my drug test the sooner I could get home and practice my guitar and enjoy a little relaxation.



Yesterday I played tennis with this guy named Lois that I've never mentioned. My mom has says numerous times that he's chill and I had heard that he was really athletic so I invited him to play tennis with me yesterday. This was of course after some brief conversation about guitar and some other things. He just graduated but he's 19. Anyway it was chill hanging out with him and like I expected he picked up tennis immediately. Some people are just good at sports in general and I was dying to get out and play yesterday.

My a** hurts... and my calves. Tennis is pretty strenuous on the body but I had a blast playing yesterday. Lois and I played a few games but didn't even finish a whole match because we both got tired. But yeah I'd never even met him before, I mean obviously because he was in my sister's graduating class and that seemed a lot younger than me but as I've gotten older I've stopped worrying about it. I'm very non-discriminatory about who I talk to and hang out with as long as they're not dangerous or very stupid.

That's all I have to say, really. Hopefully the test went well... I really do enjoy my job and what I do in my personal time should not dictate my position in the working world. I am a very hard working, honest, responsible person that gets shit done and that's what employers want. If this doesn't go well I'll have to keep looking.

peace.

The ups and downs of being home. And Goodbye Abe.

Hello everyone.

Wow, a lot has happened. I haven't had my computer because it broke down, and currently it's sitting fixed in the K Valley shop in Ellensburg. Right now I'm sitting at the kitchen table on my Mom's laptop eating microwaved peaches with sugar, it's delicious-- tastes just like a peach cobbler filling. I haven't eaten much good food since I got here, which is one of the major downsides of coming home. For dinner I had to practically beg my sister to give me some of the fried chicken and rice she was making. It was good, but extremely rich.

I did buy a loaf of black bread that I can make french toast with in the morning. I hate cooking anything here because cleanup is certainly NOT a breeze. The lack of organzation and abundance of dishes in our kitchen makes preparing food a challenge for me. I definately miss my kitchen in my apartment already as well as eating my normal diet.

I might be on break but I've still got a lot to think about. Tomorrow is Saturday and it's extremely important for me to get up early tomorrow to start doing laundry. I'm going to do laundry, play guitar and stay here in Benton city tomorrow unless Allie contacts me about partying. If so I will pack up my stuff again and go to Ellensburg.

I need to buy some stuff tomorrow, get stoked up for Spring quarter. My mom is going to buy me some of that Russian Rhodiolla stuff from Jimmy. I also got my prozac perscription renewed on  Wednesday.

So I had my party! I really want to talk all about it with you guys but I don't have a way of getting the pictures right now. I'm using my Mom's computer and I saved the pictures on my sister's harddrive.

 

Hey look!! It's 2011 Weeaboo Emily, hello!!

Finds on my Mom's computer....

Me and Eddie Schmann. Needless to say I did not upload his on facebook. Taken the weekend of Kuro Neko con at Golden Corral.

 

 

 

There's a lot of stuff on this computer that I've saved as far back as 2008 that I'd like to get rid of. Thanks to facebook there's about 6 of this same picture with slightly different smirks on my face. 

So I will talk about the party another time, maybe tomorrow, who knows. I don't have anything going on tonight and I'm sure there's raging parties all over Ellensburg. I bet Abe is having a GRANDDDD time. Blugh, so frustrating. We're done, he wants nothing to do with me. I probably did freak out on him a little bit after not seeing him for four weeks but all of my friends say it was reasonable.

I'm not looking back. I know that Abe is attracted to me physically but he doesn't want what I want.  He has other things on his mind being 20 years old than having a girlfriend. I wasn't expecting him to be my boyfriend but I like consistancy. My love life is very interesting because I don't seem to ever consistantly interact withone person. Guys tend to like me initially for one reason or another but the circumstances in our  lives are always wrong.

Maybe if I went after guys that had more similar backgrounds as I do I would have better luck. I don't really understand why my choice in men has always not gotten me very far dating wise. I am aware that I have a very strong personality that not many people can fully understand or cope with on a day to day basis, I believe. It's not that I turn people off, actually people tend to gravitate toward me because my problems with relationships are relateable and not many are willing to vocalize on it.

But my own relationships don't go very well. Granted, 2012 was much better than 2011, in every way shape and form and it all boils down to having a higher self esteem thanks to the guitar and having something to funnel my time and energy into. I'm now in my twelveth month playing and I will now be able to tell people I've been playing "1 year ___ months" etc instead of just "5 months" or whatever. I can say that my life has gotten a lot better over the past year, including in my dating life because I've stopped settling for garbage.

However not settling for what I'm not totally attracted to has left me sort of lonely this last year. Of course we're now coming to the end of the first quarter of 2013. 2012 ended hard with stress and anxiety but most of that has alleviated itself by now. That alone is all I can ask for. Prayer has helped me a lot over the past few months too. I've also been trying to meditate more often which can be very challenging.

I need to play more guitar. Jacob gave me an entire hour and a half lesson yesterday which was awesome because he was really able to help me with Invention. It's a brilliant piece, I'm super excited to have it learned. Jake told me that if I get this down my playing will improve immensely. He's such an incredible teacher I really hope give my own students the same quality Jake has given me.

peace.

Grades! Spring break, Stuck in the library.

"Sample Photo." I'll put this as my cover photo on facebook. Hey guys look how cool this picture is that you also all had on your windows computer when you bought it.

 

Why am I wasting my picture bandwidth on this. I've got to be getting to my maximum of available uploads on this site....

The f am I going to do with myself until Monday.

So did I tell you guys that my computer's busted? I'm in the library right now trying to get my fill and maybe print out some tabs before I go back. It's really hard to be in my room without the computer because it's so quiet and I do like youtube, netflix, etc while I play guitar. Guitar Pro is on that computer too, which is another thing I don't want to lose.

It's definately worth it to spend some money to get that computer fixed instead of trying to fix it myself and potentially making things worse. It's going to cost about $110.

I woke up today feeling really lazy. I was up late last night because I was thinking about Abe and how I really don't think I'm going to see him again. I just feel like he's avoiding me or something and I don't want to bother him but it's still a depressing thought. It's been 4 weeks, officially, since we've hung out together.

Right now I have $1,400 in my account that I live on. I feel like I've been depleating my funds at a relatively steady rate. I haven't been splurging on anything really, I pay my $80 a month for guitar lessons, money for gas, groceries, occasional makeup and other beauty stuff... I really need to buy some clothes, though. My clothes are lose fitting and funky now, it's like I've worn them all too many times. I honestly haven't bought any new clothes for myself at all since I've moved here. Like I'll get clothes when I go home. My clothes are starting to bother me and I'm just too damn lazy to do anything about it.

I'll try to get a few new things when I go home on Tuesday.

Anyway, woke up late today, got in the shower at about 7:15 for my class at 8'. Needless to say I didn't get out the door on time, intentionally, because I had realized that we were going to have to write a paper in class today for some diagnostic thing. It's not graded, my mind was so effing exausted from the days of studying finite math for hours on end.

I got a 7 on my last midterm, and a 90.5% overall in the class. Isn't that great? My goal this quarter was to get two A's and I think I did well enough in my English class to maybe make that grade as well. If not, it's because I did bad on a couple reading quizzes which is lame.

I got an 85% in Carbaugh's ecomonics class overall. That I was pretty happy about. That class wasn't the hardest class I've ever taken but business class material is sometimes so dry it's hard to stand. I learned so much in that class this quarter, though.

OH! And I got a new student. My student Hassan refered his friend Abdull to me. I might have already mentioned that but that is really exciting to me.

I really have learned a lot these past couple quarters and I feel accomplished enough that I'm trying to just enjoy it instead of worrying about whatever else is bothering me. Things are pretty damn close to ideal for me. I just wish I knew if Abe and I were going to see eachother again or if I'm just going to hang around here until Tuesday when I go home. I'm excited for my party on Wednesday, it's going to be really fun.

peace.

YOU'RE THE ONE WHO'S REALLY A LOSER, THIS IS WHERE I FEEL I BELONG...

Alright, my title has no relevance to what I'm going to write what-so-ever, but it's a really awesome line in "Snowblind" that I always sing in my car when it comes on. Right now, I'm downloading the Zune software onto my new computer and then hopefully I'll be able to get my two new CDs onto my Zune and listen to them tomorrow morning.

I got a couple great, but totally different from one another CDs. Babylon by Skindred and The Greatest Hits of Canned Heat. But yes, before you ask, I DO STILL buy CDs. Why? Well, for a number of reasons...

Emily's List of WHY I Still Buy CDs (when I have the computer skills to download songs online):

1. I don't trust anything illegally downloaded online. In the past I've destroyed computers with trying to download music with Limewire, MP3Raid, etc... Fact of the matter is, no matter what site you're using, there's always a risk that you're gonna download a virus and when you buy music legally you don't have to worry about it.

2. I'm too lazy to download tracks individually. Honestly, the only time that I do that is when I'm desperate to hear a certain artist but I'm too broke to buy a CD. Typically, if I like an artist enough to want an entire album, I'll buy one. Plus, if you download tracks sometimes you don't know if you're getting the full song. Like for instance, I downloaded "Nobody" by Skindred individually a few months back, and I'm listening to the track on the CD and it's like 2 minutes longer...

3. I like to support the artists themselves. Simply put.

 I've used about 5 gb of my 30 gb Zune. The thing is though, if I ever even come close to filling the whole thing, I can always delete some of the albums on there that I never listen too. Like somehow I ended up with like... six albums of Opeth from Robert's computer. Opeth IS pretty cool but that's just-- a lot. Usually the only time that I discover music on my zune is when I have it on shuffle, but with Opeth there songs are so long that I'm rarely in a mood that I want to listen to an eight minute metal song... Unless I'm on a road trip or something. And even then... Lately, I just like listening to more upbeat music.

There's something very satisfying about owning the CD itself. It's like, if my computer crashes or something, I'll at least still have it. Now that I've discovered buying CDs on Amazon, I'm gonna buy more of them when I can.

Today was pretty long... studied math for about three hours, for the first hour and a half or so being completely confused and ready to quit. But, I stuck with it, got help, and figured out chapter 10. I'm proud, now I just need to review and study and then I'll be good to go for the chapter 10 test not this next monday but the following one. Lots of time to review. I also need to step up my japanese homework. Sensee actually counted an assignment half credit for being late. I didn't even realize that she kept track of it because I've turned in so many assignments late that have never been docked. I really need to get all of it in by next monday. Next thursday is already the Chapter 11 test! Yikes! So yeah, that's obviously on my mind too. Seems like Japanese tests and math class come at the same time.

My mom called me weird for buying a Canned Heat CD. lol. I don't really care, I think they're cool.

Anyway, it's  almost 1. Me and Ryan errm-- WERE gonna hang out tonight but plans fell through somehow. That, and my phone is shut off. Lovely..

yours,

Emily