Hello again folks,

I hope your collective Thanksgivings went well. Mine was nice: good food, good company, etc.

Also, I’m sorry for not posting for you folks earlier. I’ve been working 4 ten hour days with no lunch break, so I leave home before the sun rises and leave work after the sun sets. So officially, sorry folks.

Final grades have been posted, and while I did not do as well as I would have hoped, I did not do too bad either. So that’s good. And while I suspect next term will either be just as hard or harder than the term previous, I’m hoping an increased level of organization will help me out.
I am going to try, for the… fourth time in a row now… to maintain and use a planner properly. It’s one of those things that I try because I know it will be helpful, but every term I try and fail miserably because I never take the time to write in it. So here’s hoping for this time.
Things have noticeably quieted down since I last wrote, now that finals are over and all I am doing is working. I’ve hung out with a few folks already, which is good, since all too often I think folks go ‘hey we should hang out over interim’ and then never do. So awesome.

I’m hoping to have a meeting with the Cardinals on Wheels exec. board, so we can schedule some of next term’s events more concretely. It looks to be a really good term for COW, as I’ve mentioned here before, so I would like to make sure everything possible is set up so that, when the term begins, folks have to do as little work as possible for the events and such.

So all of that’s good. And in addition to all that, I’m also really excited about something called the Android Developer Challenge.
Essentially the idea is that Google is putting out this open source mobile operating system (yes, I understand the last five words could be construed as technical jargon) and they’re saying to developers (a.k.a., anyone who has the time and expertise to write code) ‘make whatever you want! and for the top bunch of programs, we’ll hand out $25,000 each.’
Soon after I heard about this (I read an article online) a friend of mine brought it up to me, and suggested that North Central should enter, and the Computer Science and Interactive Media Studies programs should launch a joint effort to submit something, with the IMS students designing an interface, and the CSC folks writing the code.
I am not aware whether anyone has brought this idea up to a professor. In either case, I am hoping to do some significant research into the Android platform over break with the hope that I can (if the school does decide to do something) contribute what I’ve learned and / or submit something on my own.
Open source software it where it’s at.

And now for my second official apology: no picture this week. I know, I know. But on the plus side, I’ll gush about photography next post (and will post a picture or three) so take that.

Also, I lost my scarf that I knit myself last year. Which is annoying, so I’ve been meaning to make another one, but I’ve been lazy. C’est la vie, I’m afraid.

Greetings readers!

This will have to be relatively short because, honestly, finals have been killer. Well, stress-wise. Difficulty-wise they were all extraordinarily reasonable, which makes me think something is going on. Some sort of conspiracy to administer tests that are a fair judge of what you learned! Zounds!

A digression: I could not imagine, before this moment, that I would ever use the word “zounds” in a post.

Anyway, this brings me to a quick note on finals that I’d like to mention and focus this post about: finals are (at least for me, and I know for fair few other people) never quite as bad as they seem to be before you take them. I studied for six or seven hours yesterday for a test last night. I was extremely worried that the professor was going to test on everything and anything we had learned and that it was simply not feasible for me to remember it all, and, as is standard for any final, I was worried I wouldn’t do well. This was, of course, tempered with the knowledge that no final has ever been as bad as I make it out to be (did I say never? Some of them have been pretty bad), but regardless, I felt it. But after all that studying yesterday, and all the studying before that, I spent an hour and twenty minutes on the final last night, and while it was challenging, it was based on concepts that we had learned and was (as previously stated in my conspiracy theory) reasonable.

So my quick note is this, if you can take it. Study, naturally, because that helped. But don’t incapacitate yourself over the stress. Because it is only (at most) two hours of your life, and it often turns out to be not so bad.

I want to write more, but alas, I need to work on some things.

So I bring you a picture from my archives for this week. I took this when I went to Ireland the summer before my freshman year here.

So happy Thanksgiving, and I look forward to keeping in touch over interim. D-term. Winter break. You know.

So finals are next week. And quite a few projects are due this week. Am I nervous? A little. But again, I’m officially declaring to be optimistic (better than my other options, I feel).

*jump in thought* In what is becoming a traditional program, this last Friday was the Commuter Assistance Program’s Pancake Dinner, where we – as Commuter Assistants – cook pancakes and other breakfast foods for folks as a evening meal (you know, as the name might suggest). And this is nifty because folks can say ‘hey our student leader people are cooking for us, sweet,’ and we additionally play games and hang out and such.

Last year we held this program in the multipurpose room of one of the residence halls, and people mostly just hung out and listened to music. But a lot of fun nonetheless.
This year I think we may have had a smaller crowd – by a little – but it was SO much fun.

Let me, for a moment, digress. I think that college, like most other things in life, is largely what you make it. And if folks (the Commuter Assistance Program, say) put on a fun program, but you sit at home and watch TV, well, it’s a lot less likely you’ll have fun (I believe). Additionally, I think that it’s just as bad if you went to a program and let social stigma keep you from participating in something that turned out to be really fun. I make this digression not because we had anyone like this, but rather because the game we played may sound… well… weird, for college kids (of all four years) to play.

I believe the way this started was someone, idly, was walking around going ‘duck… duck… duck’ to folks whole tapping people’s heads. This turned into a full-fledged game of ‘Duck Duck Goose,’ which none of the folks in the room had played since Kindergarten, and which turned out to be a lot of fun. People were running around and having a blast playing, so that was really cool. And folks were able to unwind a little from the stress that collects around people near the end of a term.

We also played Uno, which too was a lot of fun. And someone got a hold of the chocolate chips we’d been using to make pancakes, and were just eating those by themselves, which was mildly hilarious.

I do not have my own picture of the week this time, because of finals. But I do have a picture of someone being chased during duck duck goose. Enjoy.

I would like to announce that I’m bad at the ’subject line,’ let alone the ‘title.’
I suppose, writing creatively, I’m not terrible at creating titles, but there’s a process involved therein. When I write an email, nine times out of ten, I write it, look up at the subject line, and stare blankly for another five minutes. I guess I’m just really bad at them. And so it goes with blog titles! At least for now.

Finals are drawing ridiculously near at a speed that (you’d think) would need a lot of funky exponents to express. And while I am concerned, of course, I think that everything will turn out all right. Well, that’s the hope. But enough about the future!

A couple of significant things have happened since my last post (well, to me anyway). The first of which was Trick or Treat for the Homeless (see below post for an explanation on the event) which was last Wednesday night. It went really well, I thought, and I know a lot of people had fun. We got a lot of food to donate, and when I went to drop everything off (the first trip) the folks at Loaves and Fishes were really happy. Coincidentally, Loaves and Fishes is where I and my CREW went for North Central’s Into the Streets program during Welcome Week, so it was doubly nice to see some friendly faces again.

The other major thing (non-academic) that was weighing on my mind was the meeting of Finance Committee, where student organizations present their next term budgets to the FC (in the hopes of being funded). COW presented our budget, and while some things were cut (Finance Committee can’t give everyone everything) we kept our cooler events, including Laser Tag and a trip to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Taking folks to the CSO (keeping up with the acronyms? They get brutal) is a new idea this year, so I’m hoping it goes over well.

Also, as I did mention I have an interest in photography, I figured a weekly picture would be a neat element. You know, so that no one calls me a thief, or liar, or demands that I spend an eternity on this ship (catch all the references there?).

So, weekly picture 1.