thehowe_v7.1

Around this time of year, I'm always looking for good Christmas music. I've never listened to much music, so I don't really own any CDs or online music subscriptions. My usual staple of remixed video game music doesn't really cut it when it comes to my thirst for traditional Christmas music.

This year, I've finally found a good solution. I've played with Pandora Radio before, but I've never really got a station out of it I really liked until now. For those not in the know, Pandora is a free online music service linked to the Music Genome Project. To use it, you tell it a few example songs, and it starts playing other songs similar to the ones you suggested.

Well, it turns out Pandora is really good at finding not only all the good old classic Christmas songs, but some really neat modern interpretations of some of the old favorites too. I've really enjoyed it over the past few days, as I've started gearing up for Christmas.

So I thought I should put something up here, since it's been awhile. This summer while I'm at Amazon I think I might do another site redesign. I'm not sure yet - I've got some cool ideas I'd like to prototype first that require PHP 5, which my web host hasn't upgraded to yet. Maybe I'll get Brock to give me a sandbox on one of his servers. If that happens then I probably won't try to port all of these old blog entries over to the new system; the changes I'm thinking about are fairly large even on the database level, and I don't feel like trying to manually convert ~4 years of old entries.

While I'm on the subject, it's interesting how long I've been doing this whole "blogging" thing. There are 3 years, 7 months worth of old blog entries in my archive, going back all the way to freshman year of college when I still called them "rants". You should go back and read them sometime - I've moved all of the depressing ones to be hidden unless you're logged in, so it should make for a fairly entertaining read.

Anyways, back to the topic at hand. I'm also hoping to get started on my online version of Overpower this summer. I've learned a lot over the past two semesters that I think will really help me in implementing this. I feel like I'm at the point now where this is doable, if I can find the time. Realistically I probably won't be able to get a version out this summer, but I would like to get some more of the design worked out in my head.

As a final note, thanks a ton to everybody who wished me a happy birthday today. You made my day.

All the rest of you suck ;).

Well, seeing as how I'm back at school with some time to spare, I thought I'd to a quick & boring housekeeping update. Break was nice, got to do lots and lots of nothing (as my dad said, I was "decompressing"). Read some good books, watched some good movies, generally just had a good time. Christmas was nice, as always. Got a bunch of DVDs, a few books, and a gargantuan Star Wars lego set. No complaints there. Troy got an mp3 player, but I had to help him pick out which one. We ended up choosing an iPod - it's overpriced and toolish, but it's fairly idiot-proof, so that worked out fairly well.

I thought I should make official mention that I've instituted a new site feature. I like to call it the "Angstblocker." Or maybe "Angstblocker 6000," I haven't really decided yet. Anyways, the way it works is, I mark the entries that I deem too full of angst to unleash upon the general public. From that point on, in order to view said entries, you need to be logged on as a member. Not a big deal, but worth mention.

My class schedule is looking to be quite nasty - my worst semester yet. I've got sixteen credits of upper-level computer science classes, with three separate groups to juggle for group programming assignments. On the plus side, the time-schedule my classes fit into is probably one of my best yet. We'll see, but I suspect I'm not going to have much free time this semester.

Well, today was my birthday. For all of you who wished me a happy birthday, you made my day. (As for the rest of you, you're on my list). The whole family stopped down to visit me yesterday. I got some kickin' presents - a new bluetooth keyboard/mouse combo, traded in for a new 1 gig mp3 player, and ordered a kick-ass digital camera that I'm definitely going to use this summer. So, yesterday was great. Today - not so great. I got done with class at about 2, as usual. I then started on homework. I stopped for dinner from 5:30-6, and took an hour break from 7-8. I got done at 11:30. That's 8 hours of homework. On one problem. And this time, it wasn't even due to my own stupidity.

So, that was my birthday. And no, I didn't go out drinking. Nor do I intend to. My underage friend who shall remain nameless insists he's going to take me out and get me "wasted". I told him "we'll see", but he doesn't know me well enough yet to realize that "we'll see" always means "not a chance in hell". It's not that I have anything against drinking - I just don't see the attraction in poisoning myself just for the sake of poisoning myself.

• In 1hr 10min I will have eaten dinner.
• In 8 hrs I will be asleep.
• In 25 hrs I will register for next year's classes.
• In 5 days 6 hrs 10 minutes it will be my birthday.
• In 5 days 16 hrs 10 minutes will be my first final.
• In 1 week I'll be done with classes.
• In 1 week 2 days I'll be done with finals.
• In 3 weeks 5 days the first new episode of Family Guy will premiere.
• In 4 weeks 6 days I'll be in Seattle for my internship.
• In 3 months 4 weeks 6 days I'll be done with my internship.
• In 1 year 1 month I'll graduate.

w00t.

Not much new, on account of my life being extremely boring. Plans are starting to get finalized for this summer - the flights should be booked in the next week or so, and I'll be getting the final details on where I'll be living soon after that. Today is Easter, which I didn't realize until Friday. The highlight of my day was getting my Easter candy from my mom.

"Bronzium! The metal is Bronzium!"

"I guess you'd call it an implosive/explosive sub-molecular device! Or, a nuclear bomb! Yes, I like that - it's catchy!"

Sorry about that. I'm watching The Shadow on SciFi right now. It's such a cheesy movie, I love it. Anyways, I thought I'd be working until 10 tonight finishing the latest databases project, but we got done a lot earlier than I expected, so that was a nice treat. What else... My birthday's coming up in two weeks, so that's exciting. I'm hoping to get some good presents - I am turning 21 after all. Plus, my parents owe me for carting Troy around all spring break.

Where to begin? Last week was our "spring break". I went home to a snowstorm. Stupid Michigan. Then I didn't even get to sleep in late. Between a dentist appointment, an allergist appointment, and chauffeuring my little brother around, it really wasn't much of a break at all. On the other hand, I did get to have lunch with Ashley, which is always a blast. I know I say so every time I go home, but it's true. I did feel kind of bad - she was on a diet and couldn't eat any real food, and she had to skip class to fit me into her schedule. Hopefully I was entertaining enough to be worth it.

But on to the big news - I'm going to be living in Seattle for three months this summer, because I scored an internship with Amazon.com! I don't know exactly what I'll be doing yet, but the projects interns work on are all actually used on the website or infrastructure, meaning that I'll actually be writing code that will be used in a professional setting. I know, sounds boring, but I'm really excited about it.

I had this whole thing written earlier, but then I had some technical difficulties. Since I'm too lazy to write the whole thing over again, here's the condensed version:

• Break = too short
• Xmas = good; got shirts, Live, book, DVDs
• Had dinner w/Tom & Killer, ate "garbage" burger with guacamole = better than it sounds
• Had lunch with Ashley; yummy yummy homemade lasagna and chocolate cake that tasted like cherry. Tons of fun, as always.
• Saw lots of movies (Blade 3, Life Aquatic, Unfortunate Events), none of which I would see again.

Well, here I am again. It's the weekend before finals and, as usual, I don't feel like studying. My exams aren't too bad this semester - there's only one that I'm worried about, but I'm going to devote a full day and a half to studying for it, so I should be okay. Overall, this was a pretty easy semester. I'm going to be paying for it in spades next semester, though. I have 16 credits, half of which are 400-level EECS courses. Not fun stuff.

Christmas is shaping up to be pretty uneventful this year. All I asked for was some shirts from ThinkGeek and Xbox Live. I won't even be able to play on Live until I get back to the dorm. I might get a few other games, but nothing mind-shatteringly good. Hopefully Dahlke will do an alumni swim meet over break like he has the past few years. Those are always fun. I'll probably also get lunch or something with Ashley, which is always entertaining.

Damn. I'm out of stuff to ramble on about. Guess that means I have to go back to studying.

Gee, it's been awhile. Let's see, I managed to make it through Thanksgiving break without getting any work done. As usual. That, combined with mounds of mouth-wateringly good food, made me a very happy camper. I ended up not taking the ole Xbox home over break - I'm blasting through Legendary on Halo 2 faster than I thought as it is, and I'd like to leave some for Christmas break.

So my DVD/CDRW combo drive on my laptop broke, and the company I bought it from has since gone out of business. One of the prices you pay for buying cheap from a small company, I guess. On the downside, this means I'm going to have to spend between $80 and $150 of my own money to get the damn thing replaced, which is definitely not cool. You really have to pay for the slim design on those internal drives. On the other hand, I now have a fun, broken toy to take apart. I plan on attacking it Tuesday after my Latin exam.

In other news, I've played enough Halo 2 by now to come to the conclusion that it's not as good as Halo 1. However, with a few new maps and some bug fixes over Xbox live, it has the potential to be much better. I'll write up a more detailed review sometime over Christmas break. I won't really have time before then; the semester's winding down. Two full weeks of classes left, then a final week during which I have two days of classes, four exams, two projects, and a paper due. Fun fun. (Of course, on the plus side I'll be home a whole week before some chumps. Ha ha.)