Gearing up

It's just starting to hit me how many things are whirling around at the moment. For starters, school begins in just under a week. I'm going to be taking Beginner's Arabic 2, Calc 3 and Computers as Components. I've been trying to collect the books I need, and there's good news and bad news. The good news, for calc I already have the main text, all I need is the student solutions manual. And for Arabic the only new requirements are a new dictionary and a grammar book. The bad news is CompAsComp: the textbook is $135 new, and the cheapest I've found used is $90. Oh well, such is life. Before school starts I need to finish Oustad Aissa's holiday assignment. It's not worth credit, but I need to get back up to speed before class starts again.

Physical fitness has been progressing. I've met with my new trainer, Keith, who just got out himself. We've set up a strength training program that he will oversee, but his biggest suggestion was to come to the gym and run on the treadmills as much as possible. I'll start at 3 miles, and by the end he'd like to work me up to 7 miles. Seven miles! I've never run that much at one time. The theory is that by the time I can run 7 miles, coming back down to two miles for the test will be a piece of cake. I tend to agree, but I wonder if I can really get that high? And will it improve my running speed? After all, I'm not going to be running a 6-minute mile for seven miles! That would take a lot longer than a month to train.

As for my working life, I interviewed yesterday for a student bus driver position at the Transportation office. I thought I would continue working in the office and just pick up more hours as a driver, but I was just informed today that I will be a driver exclusively. So that's a bit of a transition. For yesterday's interview I actually got a chance to drive a standard bus on the side roads for a little bit, just to see if I had the nerve to do so. I did quite well if I may say so, having zero training and all. I need to get a physical and drug test, then take 3 written tests at the DMV, just so I can get a permit and start training! Lots of fun!

And Cameron's brother Kyle just renewed my interest in building a PVR system to record TV shows. He's trying to build one himself, and was looking for advice with his system. We solved a number of small issues with his, but still couldn't resolve the main problem with his choppy video. Prompted by this, I got my own Linux system back up and running, and after a little finagling, have it running! I've never had it working properly until now! I can start tweaking and optimizing, and it's really damn cool!