CK's blog

At least in my book.

Now that I've been using Gmail (Gangsta Mail? hmm) for a few days, I've decided it's pretty freakin awesome and worth using. I like it a lot better than any other webmail interfaces I've used, because everything feels well laid out, and when you click a button, it just does what it's supposed to... you hardly ever have to wait for the page to reload.

In addition to their awesome search site, news site, and new mail site, Google has made some sweet acquisitions and side projects in the last year. Blogger, the site I use to write the blog you are reading right now, is owned by Google, which has helped it to become a very user-friendly and awesome site. Additionally, Orkut Buyukkokten, the same guy who created Google News, made a site (Orkut.com) for people to meet each other and hang out online. I never used Friendster, but one of my friends described Orkut as sort of like Friendster but better. Interestingly, the only way to join is to have someone invite you. So if I know you, email me at kworth@gmail.com with your first and last name and email address and I'll send you an invite.

Not much else going on... going to San Jose this weekend for 4th of July, so that should be pretty fun. Although first we're going to Warped Tour on Saturday, because Jen's brother is a roadie (roady?) for the group Yesterday's Rising. That's about all for now,

Link of the Day: 3D snowflake creator Not as gay as it is cool (according to collegehumor.com).
Random Picture:

BYOB - Bring your own booyah.

After researching sites that sell them and people who auction them I decided to do the simple thing and ask. I went to my favorite IRC channel (#gentoo on irc.freenode.org) and asked the chat room full of about 400 people if any of them had an extra invitation for gmail. Lo and behold, someone responded! A nice guy who went by the name "stuNNed" offered to send me an invite. He said he had some extras and nothing to do with them. Sweet. It pays to know where the nerds hang out (being one of them, I would know). Apparantely after using it for a while, I will get some free invites to send to whoever I wish. So if you want one email me, and if I know you or you are cool, I will send you one when I get them.

And, now, for the inevitable.

Dear Openmail,

It's time to say goodbye. You slow peace of crap that marks 1/2 my real emails as cpSPAM and takes forever to deliver my other messages. I have had quite enough. I've moved on to bigger and better things. I've moved on to a webmail interface that doesn't require me to decipher stupid ass icons that make me feel like an archaelogist trying to decipher heiroglyphics in ancient Egypt "Now I think what they were trying to express here, is that by showing a piece of paper entering something looking like a primitive mail slot, they mean 'send the email I am composing" Honestly, I'll bet they were created by the same screwball that made my.calpoly's equally cryptic icons. Really, ITS, you can just write "Reply" and "Forward" instead of trying to make us figure out which is which by having us hover our cursor across the whole damned row of buttons just to figure out what the hell to click. Well, anyway, I know you're working on that Oracle Suite thing, and I hope that works out for you... but me, I'm going to go with this new thing. I'll remember our days of using Outlook-- I still have my .pst file backed up on cd "just in case". So long.

-Kevin

Current Music: For some reason "In the Zone" by Britney Spears is playing in my head, even though I've heard the song maybe three times 6 months ago.
Link of the Day: Gmail - If you don't know what it is, you'd better learn, cuz it's gonna eat Hotmail and Yahoo all up.
Random Picture:

Things just keep falling into place.

As of sometime around May, I had no house, no summer school classes, and no job. I now have a kickass house, two classes, and a couple job leads.

The classes happened within the last couple days. They're online classes from Palomar (Jen's school) and the teachers just emailed me saying there were spots available in the classes I had emailed them about a while ago, but had filled up. So now I'm taking Psychology 100 and Economics 100 online, which should help to get some GE's out of the way.

The job I have been working on for the last week or so, but I finally got to talking to my mom's friend Sharon and she gave me the contact info for a guy who runs a computer support/repair business. She also emailed him what was basically a letter of recommendation and letting him know I'd be contacting him soon. He replied to her and sounded hopeful. Awesome.

I bought a gamecube today. I finally decided I really want one and I am going to get some kind of job somewhere, so I would be able to pay for it. I also had a $40 gift certificate for Best Buy, so I got a game (Luigi's Mansion) and a memory card basically for free. When I got home, I had an email from Cal Poly telling me that they wanted me to help with the summer advising program in July. I forgot I had applied for this, but it pays $45 for a few hours during the day and you get a free lunch. I am able to work for both days, so that's $90 right there. =) Awesome.

Best of all today, Jen and I bought a cookbook yesterday and today she (with some help from Matt) cooked something from it. It was a teriyaki beef dish that used top ramen for the noodles. It was super good and the best part was that we had an awesome dinner and I didn't have to make anything. I really like having her and my cool roommates here where we actually trade off on cooking and cleaning and everything works out evenly.

Well, I'm sure something's bound to go wrong sooner or later... although I did have a glitch today. When I brought the gamecube home and got it all set up the controller didn't work. A quick trip back to Best Buy for the exchange and all was well.

Current Music: Jen snoring. Just kidding.
Link of the Day: German 'Samurai' on the Loose in Woods Near Berlin
Random Picture:

I never thought I'd be so happy to see a 2.88 GPA

My grades came out a couple days ago but I've been too busy/scared to look. I took some pretty hard classes this quarter, and after the end of finals, I really wasn't sure how things were going to turn out. Apparantely I did decently, as I got B's in CPE and EE, although a C in Modern Physics. Then again, if people give me crap, I'll be like "Sorry I don't understand more than 75% of quantum mechanics and relativity, I guess I'm not the next Einstein." All I have to say is thank goodness for lab classes, with 3 A-'s and a B+ from 1-unit classes, it brought my GPA up to as close to a 3.0 as I was last quarter. At last, I can stop thinking about classes...

Until a teacher from Palomar emailed me. Apparantely they opened a new section of Economics 100 online. So now I will not be a total bum and will have one class. Speaking of being a bum I'm still in the process of figuring out place I want to apply for and getting apps.

Speaking of being a nerd, hopefully when I get back from this weekend we can start working on making an old computer into a TiVo/Movie/Music/Arcade player. I also went back to running the stable version of XFCE as I was getting tired of the panel crashing every time I came back from suspend.

Know anyone who is seling a gamecube? I'm looking to buy one

Link of the Day: Photoblog dedicated to cameraphone pictures of cleavage
Random Picture:

but totally worth it.

After spending the last two days packing, cleaning, and unpacking, my house it finally pretty much all the way done. The people who were here before us left so much stuff, which is good and bad. Good because it means we get all kinds of cool, random stuff like a blender and a foosball table, but bad because we get crap like old, nasty pillows and a bowl of tuna fish.

I am the number one rank on google if you search for "CK's blog". I have never been the #1 result on google before. Sweet. There is another site, "CK's weblog" and this guy is way more of a nerd than I am. Like in Star Wars terms, I am Anakin Skywalker, and this dude is Darth Nerd, hopefully I don't turn into to him though, as Anakin turned into Vader. Evidence Exhibit A: He has 7 computers. They have names. I would link to his site here, but that would increase his rating on google, which could defeat me! So I will just say, click the link above for the results page and his is the third one down.

Current Music: Chris trying to figure out the solution to Petals Around the Rose
Link of the Day: Nice Name - The eyepatch really adds some flava. (See quotebook listing under "Pizimp")
Random Picture:
Ebay rules.

yayyyy

Finally, I am done with school. My CPE test was pretty evil, as the test was multiple choice and that teacher likes to write tricky questions. A lot of them came down to a guess between two answers that were really similar. Oh well.

I have so much crap in my room.

Although I have quite a bit of time to get it out, I want to be done with this apartment and move in to my new house. Jen is going to be here in 45 mins and they we will be together all summer =D So awesome. Well, I had better get back to packing. Peace out.

Current Music: NIN - Deep
Link of the Day: Petals Around the Roses - This took me like 30 minutes to figure it out. Try it and post a comment with how long it took you, but don't give away the answer to other! Also, sign your freakin comments!
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Damned caffeine - It won't let my brain shut up long enough for me to go to sleep.

After I finished my physics final, I spent some time playing the good ol' Warcraft. Once that was through, I spent most of the day doing new-house related things, like getting two couches and a desk from someone in town I know who is moving.

Current couch count: 7

We have so much free furniture it borders on insanity. Everyone seems to have a source of free stuff, so we just keep piling it into the garage. I guess better to have too much than not enough.

I am really excited about this summer, which starts tomorrow at noon, actually. In the last couple days that we've been at the house I've really wanted to start moving my stuff over. Unfortunately, the guy whose room I'm taking isn't moving out until Wednesday or Thursday. Oh well, in the meantime I will box up my stuff here and get it all cleaned out.

weird... I never noticed how much a lowercase "a" looked like a lowercase "e" upside-down. aeaeae... I guess I am pretty bored.

Vaughn introduced me to the coolness that is

Current Music: The birds chirping "it's morning!"
Link of the Day: Stikfas - Awesome action figures, thanks Vaughn
Random Picture:
These are stikfas, as you can see, they kick lots of ass. Even big wooden robot ass.

hmm

I was kinda sad when I heard this, as I thought Creed was really cool. It sucks how they were so labelled as a "christian" band. Yes, most of the singles had to do with spirituality, etc, but the song on the album are awesome. Why? Not because of the lyrical content-- the music is good. Examples? Listen to "Are you ready", "Never Die", "Bullets", "Ode", or "What if" just to name a few. I don't think he even mentions god in these songs, as he doesn't in most of their songs (only the singles). Enough ranting from me, I guess I just dislike it when people judge a band on their radio singles-- they are usually picked by the record company more than the band.

"Three former Creed members immediately announced they were forming a new band -- minus singer Scott Stapp -- but were quick to say it was not 'just Creed with a different singer." ... "Phillips described the music as edgier than Creed, with the musicians given more space to show off their chops."

Well that is pretty cool. The best part about them was their guitars, the lyrics sorta backed them up. I would love to hear something by these guys, as 'edgier than Creed' sounds good, because these guys are really awesome musicians.

Current Music: Evanescence - Tournequet (I downloaded them cuz everyone said their albums were really good... I'm still convinced 50 cent should have won the "Best New Artist" grammy.)
Link of the Day: Whiskey Makes Fishes' Balls Bigger
Random Picture:

OK, so maybe that's really every day

Not much happened today, I woke up at 1pm, studied physics for a few hours, then played warcraft for a while. Ate pizza solo for dinner then came home.

I did manage to get suspend-to-disk in linux working on my laptop, which is awesome for two reasons:
1. Now I can suspend my laptop and use zero battery, because suspend-to-disk takes all the computer's memory contents, write them onto your hard disk, and then shuts the power off.
2. Since windows has this feature too (called "hibernate"), I can now switch back and forth between linux and windows in like 30 seconds, while still keeping my current programs and documents open in each.

Yesterday wasn't much cooler, I spent all day at my new house and starbucks. Installed the CVS (testing version) of xfce on my laptop, and I must say it is pretty awesome. See pic of the day.

Physics final at 1pm tomorrow and I feel pretty ready.

Current Music: Yellowcard - Avondale
Link of the Day: Blogger. Start a blog of your own so you can be cool like me.
Random Picture:
this is what my laptop looks like in linux. ph33r.

At least for a little while.

Finally this week is over. I took my EE test yesterday and it actually went pretty well. He made it quite a bit easier than his other tests were, but that was still pretty hard (the first midterm, the average was a 48%) so hopefully everyone did about as well as I did so my grade will curve up once everything is totalled.

After I finished classes, I called up Marcos and Kevin Roberts to see if they wanted to play volleyball... I needed to do something with my friends after spending all week in my hermit-like study mode. Apparantely a lot of other people had the same idea as us, so we had to wait a bit for a court. After a 2v2 game (me and Erin vs. Marcos and Kevin), we invited some other people who were waiting to come play 4v4 with us. That was a lot of fun, because 4v4 is less running and more about teamwork.

It's always weird when I'm here on the weekends, because I feel like I have nothing to do. Normally I'm with Jen, so I'm never alone or bored. When I'm home I just sorta call everyone I know and see if they wanna hang out. Unfortunately, last night everyone was off doing other things, so I ended up just trying to get some things in linux to work and I started my "Learning C++" book.


Current Music: Mindless Self-Indulgence
Link of the Day: Ducks have accents
Random Picture:

Eat that, school.

Beside the fact that I had to wake up at 7:30am, the morning went really well. I turned in my IME project and for a 95% AND got to eat cookies. Yeah, that's pretty sweet, since it was like 50% of my grade.

Then I came back home at 11 and started studying for my physics midterm. I studied for 2 hours straight, covered all of the topics on our "study guide" sheet, and made a notecard of equations and values that we are allowed to use.

I got the test and the first problem was something I hadn't studied. It was 9 (of 100) points, and it was multiple choice. Almost a full letter grade resting on a 1/4 chance. I took my best guess and turned the page. From then on, it was stuff I had studied and blasted through it in 40 minutes. The cool thing about this test was that she gave us the solutions sheet as we walked out, so that we can study for the final. I got the first problem right, and I'm pretty sure I got 100% on all except one 15-point derivation that I'm not sure if I did the right way. Either way, the worst grade I think I possibly got was an 85%, but hopefully partial credit will bring it up to an "A". Sweet.

My CPE lab test went well, so I'm pretty sure I'll have an "A" in that. Although, I forgot we had to do an experiment today, so I wasn't out of there as soon as I thought I might be. Afterwards, I went to the study room in the library (first time!) and did the "take-home" part of my EE test. I think I did pretty well, and that's 25% of my grade right there.

I came home, took a break and messed around with linux, trying to get SpeedStep and Suspend-to-Disk working. No dice. Oh well. By the time I started to get a little tired, I studied EE for a while. I'm not super-worried, only a little bit. I'll just do my best and see what happens.

I know all my posts have been about school lately but believe it or not, reader, keeping myself sane and organized is more important than being entertaining. I know, with that attitude I'd never make it in showbiz. OR WOULD I?!?

Current Music: Chemical Brothers - Block Rockin' Beats
Link of the Day: Find people with your name doing things you don't
Random Picture:

Getting there...

After much effort I have all my homework and projects finished. Now all I have to do is take my physics test (tomorrow) and EE test (friday) and I'll be done.

A friend of a friend is giving us two couches and a desk because he's moving out soon. He even has a truck so he can bring the stuff over. Pretty cool. At this point, I just want to get through the next couple days and do decently on my tests so that I can be finished with school and move into my cool new house and get a job.

Current Music: Ludacris... Just downloaded all his albums. Woot.
Link of the Day: Microsoft Patents the "double click", world continues on its way to Hell.
Random Picture:

look at it go!

This weekend was really cool. Jen humored me and went to the lake with me. Although she didn't like certain things (namely tubing and allergies), I think she actually had some fun somewhere in there. It was really cool of her to go, even though she was pretty sure she didn't like lakes. I had a great time and it was really relaxing for me, even though my muscles are sore from wakeboarding.

Like the great works of Shakespeare, the story becomes the most peaceful and cheery right before everyone gets stabbed and poisoned.

This week is crap. I have two lab finals, an IME final, a physics midterm, and an EE final all over the course of four days. It is nice that this week will be over, but thursday and friday are going to suck. Fortunately, once this week is over, next week I only have two finals (Physics monday and CPE wednesday), and then I will be done. I just want to be done and move to my new house.

Things aren't as bad as they seemed today, as I finished everything I have to get done except my PSPICE (circuit simulation program) assignment, and my EE homework. Hopefully I can get them done and get to studying.

In other news, my brother has actually been online lately. It seems the world has gone mad.

Current Music:
    Local H - OK
    Rage - Darkness
Link of the Day: Ban Comic Sans
Random Picture:
a tribute to Karl