Why Hello New Calculus Class!

Reilley found out it was me... It's alright. He's going to keep finding those until the day he moves out (that's not exaggeration. It might actually be an underestimate).

So for the past two weeks I've been watching Reilley get up early to go to his organic chemistry class, while I lounged around till I finally had to leave for my Matlab class at noon. He's been working hard. He even joined a study group and studied diligently for his first quiz for the week before. I've been glad I didn't have to worry about anything like that.

Today was my first day in Calc III. I got up and left at 8:30, instead of my previous 11:30, and one of the first things our professor told us was that we shouldn't be taking any other classes, because we were going to do in six weeks, what we would normally have over two months to do...

So I've joined a study group. I'm currently trying to organize our first meeting over phone.

An Interesting Forty Eight Plus Hours

Reilley thinks it was Thor who hid all those butterscotch candies in various places around his room.

cannot remember how it began, but suddenly we were all heading out to see X-Men: First Class at, what, 6 pm? It was Reilley, Tom (whom we met through Reilley), Thor, Mirra and myself. The whole group agrees that First Class is easily the best X-Men movie that has been produced so far. Reilley loves to mention that it's so good that it actually overwrites the movie cannon established by X-Men III and by that Wolverine movie.

I think it is thoroughly enjoyable by both geeks in love with the comic book as well as laymen, as I'd like to think I fall somewhere between the two. It really is a beautifully well written movie, that puts its attention on the characters more than anything else. If you go and watch it, I recommend that you specifically pay attention to how they deal with Erik Lehnsherr (Magneto) and Charles Xavier (Professor X). They spend their time building up both characters, and then do an amazing job of showing how the two influenced each other. Charles changed Erik from a renegade loner into a leader, while Erik took away some of Charles idealism and gave him a bit of a ruthless bite. I have to stress, that this is all done over the corse of the movie, rather than as a cheesy, sudden realization due to the twist at the end of the movie (which I'm certain we all already know). Rather, the main 'plot' of the movie (which I won't spoil here) is used as a catalyst and a background for the interplay between the characters, and that makes this movie as good as it is. That and Wolverine's scene (but I won't spoil that either).

So that happened, and afterward we all ate a midnight breakfast at Denny's (Reilley also thinks it was the waiter who thought to serve his hamburger, disassembled and on three separate plates. We all tipped well after that). It was three by the time we got back to the apartment. Tom and Reilley stayed up later than I did, but when I woke up (at eleven the next morning, sadly) Tom was asleep on the couch. Then Clinton arrived at our door to tell me that the WSU surplus store was having a patently ridiculous sale on computers, and if we wanted to upgrade our server, we would have to get over there before they closed in an hour. I woke up Thor and Reilley, and we all headed over there (letting Tom continue to sleep on the couch). We ended up getting two $80 computer that had been marked down to $30 each, figuring to split the cost between the three of us. Twenty dollars for two fairly good computers is an extremely good deal, and we plan to network them with our (my) current computer and set up some sort of networked computing dealie to improve our Minecraft server (which we've also set up to work over the internet, so my friends will be able to get on that eventually as well).

By the time we got back Tom was awake (for certain definitions of 'awake'), and was emphasizing the need for pizza. He offered to pay (having been excited about recently getting a job) so we all agreed. Then Reilley got a text asking if we wanted to go to see the Green Lantern movie. Coincidentally, this had been a point of discussion after we saw the trailer for the Green Lantern movie before the X-Men movie came on. Everybody except for Thor and Mira, that is Clinton, Tom, Reilley and I, decided to go.

Reilley made a point to have a pessimistic view. He thought (still does) that the Green Lantern's outfit looked like it was made of green and black bacon. I cannot disagree. He was expecting it to be another expensive movie going for an easy audience that wouldn't really be worth it. He was also unhappy that we were going to watch it in 3-D (he doesn't like how 3-D tends to turn out, and it's more expensive). I don't know how he'd respond if you asked him, but I'd say it was a great movie. He'd probably say it was good, and then go into an explanation as to why, but that doesn't change the fact that during the movie, he was enjoying it as much as I was. It was funny, it made fun of itself and the whole movie genra ("I've known you your whole life! I've seen you naked! Do you think I wouldn't recognize you just because your cheek bones are covered?!"), I NEVER found myself bored or tortured by any of the scenes, and though it was not necessarily faithful to the comic cannon, it WAS faithful to the comic's IDEA, and it felt like a Green Lantern story. It was very well done. Our only complaint about the movie was the teaser at the end of the first credits (before the scrolling credits), but I won't get into that until you've seen it for yourself (even though we all were expecting that particular twist).

So that happened. It was getting late again, but Reilley needed to get his bike back from Tom's place (I recall now that Thor and I had to pick him up from there before going over to the X-Men movie the previous day), so we all walked over there. Once there, Clinton got called back by his girlfriend, and we watched Hero, because Reilley had never seen it before. The last time saw Hero, I couldn't understand what was going on. This time I'm glad to say that I understood it perfectly, but I found myself constantly irritated at it. I cannot recall exactly what it was, but I found the fight scenes patently silly. Yes it's a Chinese kung-fu opera so all the characters are going to be over-the-top with melodrama, ridiculous kung-fu moves and patently stupid mistakes, but I found myself laughing at the characters more than sympathizing with them. It's an amazingly beautiful movie, and the fighting WAS cool (wire-fighting and all), but it was up it's own asshole with melodrama, and the philosophical twist wasn't all that amazing. I know that many people enjoy it immensely for better reasons, but that's my opinion.

So that happened. Afterward, we just kind of hung out and talked for a while, before randomly starting an role play game that Tom ran for Reilley and I. Once that petered out, Reilley and I walked back to the apartment, only to find Zack sitting on our couch playing videogames. Apparently he had gotten off work to start his free day, and headed over here, expecting to find Reilley eventually. When that didn't happen, he just kind of hung out with Thor. By this time it was five in the morning. I realized I should just stay up to reset my sleeping schedule, but I haven't gotten anything worthwhile done in a while, and I've been slipping with my Japanese studies again. I wanted to be productive today, and I realized that if I reset my schedule, I would be a vegetable all day long. So I decided to take a two hour nap, and just keep napping periodically to keep myself productive. Either my alarm didn't go off, or I just slept through it, because when I woke up this morning it was noon again.

It's been a goo two days, but just thinking about it makes me want to just crawl back in bed and go to sleep...

Late Again

I've been planning a few pranks for Reilley. I need to think of some for Thor. More as the situation develops.

We finally learned how to write script in Matlab this week. I'm rather excited because I've got a couple ideas for projects that would work better in Matlab than, say, Grapher. Of course, already I'm mostly ignoring what's going on in class, choosing instead to play around with what we learned in order to glean a better understanding of it. What really irritates me about Matlab right now is how Matlab defaults the working directory to wherever the Matlab app is every time it starts up. I then have to use it's rather poor user interface to pick the folder I WANT it to use every time. So far this hasn't been an issue because we haven't been doing anything that would use it (like logging commands), but it's a little annoying. Still, I'm enjoying the class, and I expect that a number of my daily posts will regard it.

Week Late

If it's only been a week and I'm already late, does that mean I'm ahead of schedule?

So I've successfully moved back into my college apartment. Reilley moved in and Clinton moved out shortly after I left, which worked out well for Reilley as he would otherwise have no place to stay during summer session, but Clinton bemoans the loss of free access to the apartment so he can hang out whenever he likes. Personally, I'm happy with the switch. Reilly is much easier to get to do things like clean up or do dishes, though I realize I've still had to curb my nagging.

It looks like Reilley and I will also be able to figure out a meal plan, mostly because I've figured out how to cook in a way that facilitates this. Unlike me, Reilley tends to eat very little, which does not agree with my previous cooking habits. Originally I would cook a large dish, then proceed to munch on the leftovers (provided I didn't just eat the whole thing that night, which happened often). When I do this with Reilley, however, he tends not to eat the leftovers, and I devour the whole thing in a day's time anyway. Reilley is a much more picky eater than I am, which he is well aware of, so it's sometimes difficult to find things he will eat. The plan that I've adopted is to fry up some chicken, usually with some sort of simple seasoning like chili powder, and then just add some kind of starch and vegetables. This works well, and I think I can come up with enough variety of seasonings or other cooking techniques that it won't get boring too soon.

I've mostly been concerned with productivity this last week. Grannie was right, summer school has a completely different feel to it. I've only got one class, Matlab, and this is really easy, so I've usually got a plethora of free time, and I'm trying to be careful not to let that go to waste, more because doing so drives me crazy than any concrete necessity (I've inherited my mother's psychosis). The problem is that living with my friends, and having so many distractions so close at hand, makes it very easy to waste the day doing nothing but digging virtual holes in Minecraft. Furthermore, I had hoped to do a number of things with Reilley, most notably starting our respective webcomics, but Reilley seems to have no ability to actually buckle down and do the things he and I agreed upon. This has been a problem before we were living together as well, when he would frequently ignore prearranged meetings, without contacting us, because he got distracted by something and didn't feel like it.

As an aside, I realize this is going on the internet, where Reilley can stumble upon it (however unlikely), and I'd like to say that he's a really cool guy to live with, and also more than a little creatively inspiring, but I think he has dependability issues.

So that's life right now, caught up from the last week or so. I still need to call Crissy and talk to her about the HPPV as well as driving lessons (which I have to admit I'm dreading a little), and while I've started studying Japanese a little every day, I haven't started pushing myself regularly, which is the only way I can catch back up. Hopefully I'll also start making quick entires every day, but I'm afraid most of them will start to look a lot alike.