Chris' Updates

A good deal of today was spent getting more info on this whole Army Reserve idea. I liked a lot of what I heard yesterday. It wasn't anything terribly new, but I got some actual numbers. $450 a month plus tuition assistance sounds good to me, especially for the majority of the time working 2 days a month. Today after class I went down to the office again and had them give me the official entrance exam, the ASVAB. They took me down to downtown Denver to take it, and it was frickin' long! It was fairly easy though, and I got a 99 percentile of all armed forces recruits that take it. I can basically get any job opening the Army has to offer. I'm still considering the pros and cons, but I'm leaning toward joining. As a comfort to everyone (and myself), it sounds pretty difficult to be deployed, especially as a student. Even if I were deployed, I'd be in a desk job. I would not be general infantry, and would not be anywhere near the front lines. I'll keep everyone po...

I went to school this morning, slipping and sliding my way there, and I realized something. My school had finally opened up registration! I sat thru a thouroughly boring Spanish class, came home and registered. I decided to go with my earlier plan, and signed up for 3 classes. On Monday/Wednesday I'll have macroeconomics from 10 - 11:15, then calculus from 1 - 3:15. On Tuesday/Thursday, I'll have C++ from 10 - 11:50. I'm very pleased with my schedule, and I'm really anxious to start C++. Not enough to go in before the term starts, but anyway... I should get going, I'm going to go talk to an Army Reserve recruiter that called me a few days ago. I definitely won't do anything drastic today, but I'll get some information to go off of. Army Reserve could have its pros; the college money and training would be my primary focus, but the physical training would be a definite plus. We'll just have to see if those are enough to overcome my contempt for the milita...

Yes indeed, hoidays are truly the joy of life! My car came back from Cooper's running like a brand new Civic, and no more clicking while turning! The week was mostly uneventful, besides a small LAN party. I started building a new model aircraft, an A-10 Warthog. It's going together very nicely, but for most of the week, most of my tools were in New Mexico. On Thanksgiving Thursday, I had a piece of pie at Ashley's before I left for New Mexico. The drive was uneventful, except for my insanely improved gas mileage. I've started to compile the Harry Potter Book-On-CD's onto MP3 CD's that my new car stereo can use, so I can get all 10 hours of The Chamber of Secrets on to one CD! That made the trip nice. I got to spend all of Friday in New Mexico, and we had our turkey and all the usual sides, and everything was excellent! My parents and I got caught up on life and business, and we spent most of the day watching the CU-Nebraska football game and Spike TV's Bond-...

I'm doing very well, glad to say. I've gotten a good chunk of Half-Life 2 done, and it's such a sweet game! Nova Prospekt is an especially fun level; you get to storm a prison with the help of these Starship Troopers-esque bug things that like to kill enemy aliens. Right now I'm leading the resistance movement against the evil alien opressors. I still hate headcrab zombies... School's been good. I didn't do quite as well on my Spanish test as I would've liked, but a B is still good. I'm still confident of passing all of my classes with B's or better. I'm still contemplating classes for next semester; mostly thinking about whether to take macroeconomics or chem 2. The chem class would count towards my major, but so would calc-based physics next fall, and I'd rather have the physics in that slot. Besides, I have a sneaking suspicion that chem 2 would be more involved than economics. Either way I'll be full time, so I'll keep considerin...

So I ended up staying up until about 1 AM on Monday night to try and wait for Half-Life 2 to unlock, but 1) I didn't realize that to unlock it I'd need to restart the update program, and 2) I think I left about 5 minutes before it actually did unlock. But that's ok, because I had class the next morning. So Tuesday morning I turned on the computer and let HL2 unlock while I was in class. Then I raced home (as fast as the speed limit would allow, of course) and sat down and got my first taste of the finished product. The anticipation was definitely worth it! Aside from eating and class, it's been almost my sole activity for the past 2 days! Let me just add, I HATE HEAD-CRAB ZOMBIES! But its still cool. Oh yeah, I got a B on my last Spanish test that I took Monday, but I still feel pretty comfortable. I've been keeping my overall grade high enough that I should be OK. FRCC finally released their spring schedule yesterday, and aren't starting registration until the...

The weekend was pretty good overall. Saturday Ashley was at another craft fair, so I did quite a bit of nothing. I worked on more programming, and I'm actually getting somewhere now! still lots to work on. Today I did some homework, like the huge take-home test for trig. OK, its not that huge, but there's some strange problems mixed in there. I finished most of it then realized that it's not due until Tuesday and said "screw it." But you can bet I'm gonna finish it early tomorrow because... Tomorrow is the 15th, the day before the 16th, which is when Half-Life 2 is going to be released worldwide! You can bet I'll be on my computer tomorrow at midnight waiting for my copy to unlock. I splurged and bought the game a couple days ago and pre-loaded it over the internet, so when it unlocks it'll already be on my computer! And I got the deluxe pak, so in a few weeks I'll be swimming in HL2 paraphernalia! Its gonna be so sweet!

Life's been good for the past week. Nothing huge I guess. Oh yeah, the chemistry exam was tough, but I think I'll pass well enough. Turns out we didn't have a trig exam until yesterday, and it's a take-home test. Guess I'd better take a look at that, huh? The susbsitute we had in trig made it sound hard, but who knows if he even looked at it. I was planning on going to New Mexico this weekend to see my family, but the weather seems to have killed that. I'm sure I'll see them all soon, because Thanksgivings coming right up. I don't know if I'll be down there or if they'll be up here, but we'll find out soon enough. Last night, Ethel (Ashley's grandma) and I made pecan puff cookies for my trip and for the holidays in general. It was kind of fun to just sit there with her and get a cooking lesson. I think she enjoyed it as much as I did. Most of today I spent programming. I'm trying to put together a helper program for my Schedule Creato...

This is my last night as a person without broadband internet. It's almost as big as graduation! (j\k) But truly, I'm really excited. All week I've been catching myself trying to download humongous files. I'm so ready for fast internet that I think I have it already! The weekend was decent. Mom came out on Thursday and it was really great to see her. I visited with her a few times, and Saturday night we went and saw her friend's movie premier. It's an amatuer film called Solataire, and its kind of about a crazy guy with multiple personality disorder. I can't really say much more than that, because if anything is published about the film they'll be disqualified from the film festivals they've submitted to, but it was decent. Ashley was at the Nativity Craft Sale all weekend, and before that she was preparing her stock, so I really didn't see much of her over the weekend. Sunday afternoon everyone finally crashed at Kristen's house, and after sh...

So yeah, I finally decided its time to mention to grandma the serious possibility of cable internet. She didn't seem overjoyed, but I think she knows it's important to me. So yeah, she'll cancel AOL and use that money on cable internet instead, and I'll pay for installation and the rest of the monthly bill. I've been gearing up all week, and I went as far as buying a cable modem and wireless cards on eBay! So today I scheduled them to come out, and by Tuesday night I should have cable internet! (Assuming the modem shows up by then... it should.) I spent all day preparing what I can for the install. I put my wireless router in the living room, so that we can have the cable feed coming in there. The router's centered in the house so grandma's and Nancy's computers can access it, and we don't have to run the cable feed as far. Besides, if we switch to cable TV, all we have to do is put in a splitter instead of getting a whole new install. I also spent s...

Well, I guess my feelings for Ashley are leveling out again. I was pretty pessimistic at one point. Now I just feel... neutral. I love being around her, but we're still not getting any further. Not that I know where further is supposed to be. I'm still feeling.. almost bored. I don't feel as much animosity as before, that's one thing. She's fun to be with most of the time, the sex is still as great as ever, but there's no adventure. Maybe that's more than just Ashley. I don't really feel like anything interesting is happening in my life, and I rationalize that if I wasn't tied down to Ashley I could somehow seek adventure. I could try new things, new people. Somehow I know that dumping Ashley wouldn't solve this, but it sure makes sense to my subconscious. Maybe I'm depressed, I don't know.

The weekend was very refreshing, indeed. I got some much-needed R&R. Ashley and I carved pumpkins Friday, which was really fun. We even went to the pumpkin patch (in my Civic, hope I didn't lose anything bottoming out...) and picked out pumpkins from the vines. Our carvings went pretty well, but of course we cheated and used kits with patterns and knives. Halloween was really fun. Ashley and I went up to Ft. Collins for the afternoon. Jackie and Kelly wanted us to bring costumes for trick-or-treating, but Ashley had heard weather reports that it was going to snow, so we skipped. We dropped by Kelly's house, then went and met Jackie's apartment. It's not as bad as she says, really its not! We talked for a good while, and headed out to the movie theater. We split up there; Ashley and Kelly wanted to see Richard Gere's ass, and Jackie and I opted for Team America. It was pretty funny, definitely in the South Park genre of comedy. Today has been pretty uneventful. I...