New Toys

Life has been going well, but I find myself very busy once again. Classes are starting to settle in to their norm. Homework is a continuous thing, but I'm trying to be consistent about doing it whenever I have a few moments, and staying ahead of my deadlines. In my differential equations class, I've been doing my best to read over the book before lectures and mostly teaching myself, which has been a huge improvement over what I've done in past semesters, trying to learn for the first time during lecture. My humanities class is going quite well, and I'm enjoying the material. Our first block of discussion was over the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, his first autobiography, and more generally about freedom of body and mind, and slavery's effect on society. Now we're moving on to discussions of the Greek philosophers. Currently we're focused on Socrates, and what a jerk he was. In addition to being remembered for his deep, critical thinking on philosophy, he is also known as a great debater, and regularly convinced people that they didn't know anything. From reading Plato's Euthyphro, it's plain to see that Socrates could lead a conversation by a leash, guiding it where he pleased. It's a fun class, and it's getting me to think about topics I wouldn't normally spend much time thinking about. My computer classes are both pretty good, but both of those professors are a little scatter-brained, it seems.

I'm still driving buses, for the moment. I didn't land the job at CU's ITS department, so it's my only job right now. I had many people suggest that trying to keep both jobs would be trying to do too much, and I appreciate that everyone is concerned for me. I had decided to quit the bus job when ITS hired me, but that didn't happen. So, now I can either keep looking for something else in the IT sector, or stick with the buses for a while longer. I think I'll stop the job hunt, at least for a couple of weeks; I'm settling in to my routine, and I don't want to risk going back to my old procrastination habits by upsetting that routine.

Lastly, I've been taking a little time to enjoy a couple of new toys. I had enough money left in savings from Iraq to build a new computer, and to buy a new bicycle. My old desktop computer had stopped working a couple of months before I left for Iraq, and was quite out of date (ie. 5 years), so I ordered all new parts except for the case. When the shipping box arrived last Friday, I "geeked out" and shut myself in my office and assembled the computer and started getting it working. Now it's running like a champ. It plays World of Warcraft at full settings without a hitch, and games like Team Fortress 2 and Call of Duty 4 look awesome. I haven't tried any of the more recent system hogs like Crysis or Mass Effect, but I'm eager to do so.

My new bike came out of the fact that I do quite a bit of biking around Boulder. It's very practical to ride around in Boulder rather than taking a car everywhere. Also, most of my bus runs this semester are split; they start on campus, and end a mile away at the Transportation office. For a while I was using my mountain bike. It's still in good shape, but I noticed it's difficult to ride on the street for very long. It's just not made for that role. It's got a relatively heavy frame, and it's not geared for going around-town speeds. So, I walked into Bicycle Village, and was recommended the Trek 7.2 FX. It's an around-town kind of bike. It's tires are much smaller than a mountain bike's, but still large enough to take a hard-packed dirt road or paved bike path. It has straight handlebars, which is more familiar to me than the aggressive curved bars. The frame is very light. It's perfect for what I need it to do.

Now if only I could get home more often...