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2004 archive

Feb. 7, 2005 Good morning 2005 (sorry I'm a little late)! Last year is now in the archive (link above). Speaking of blogs, here's the link to my dad's new blog, www.onewhit.com. New things in my life? Since last November, that is: Christmas was great, wish it still was Christmas. I got this great leopard-shaped faux fur rug for my room--it even has a head :P. I also got a beautiful teaset--it has raspberries painted all over it. We had a good time with our family traditions, break from school, and good food. Another new thing is my impatiens garden in my room--I will have to dedicate a page to it. It's very cool. Also, I had my birthday last month (the fourteenth.) My friends Laura and Laurel gave me a scruptious peanutbutter pie :D and my family gave me two beautiful sweaters and a bike part for the road bike I'm building. More on that later I am sure. My schedule this semester has two blah blah blah classes in it :( . That's a bit much. That's what we call honors classes in my house because of the way they make us write fluffy papers about nebulous topics. OK so that wasn't a very flattering description but really that's what happens in honors classes, you should read my paper about the "comparisons and contrasts in epic form within the narratives of the Illiad and Narnia Vol. 1" and blah blah blah... This semester I'm taking Chemistry second semester, Animal Genetics (cool!), Scripture (a blah blah blah class that actually seems to be quite practical and interesting), Issues in Animal Ag., Vet. Med., and in Something Else I Forget What, and finally Meanings of America--extraordinarily tedious. Oh well, you can't win on all of them. Perhaps the latter would not be so bad if I was ever fully awake for it but by 2:00 on Tuesday after a late night... tonight my goal is bed by 9:30. We shall see.

Feb. 11, 2005 Look for the garden page to come soon. I still have to get some photographs for it. On a different note, I hate being shy. You see, there's this really cool guy who eats lunch at the same time I do that I could have eaten with today (he was sitting alone aat first) but I was too shy to go sit with him :( On the plus side I waved hi to him when he walked by, and he came over and talked to me about this computer for a minute :P Totally mundane but I felt a little better about myself. So there.

Mar. 1, 2005 Wow, can't believe the weather is so bad that they closed Andrews Univ. today. That never happens! I guess it must be worse than Armeggedon out there... *wink... After all, the joke goes "Due to Armeggedon the world will be closed Tuesday, however Andrews University will remain open." I always wanted a t-shirt with a cartoon that said that on it. It is so true, Andrews has never closed for anything I can remember. They usually assume since "everyone" lives in the dorm no one will have trouble getting to school. But not today, I guess. I have no idea why.

Mar. 8, 2005 Well, I guess I'm officially a "hacker" now, I (albeit unknowingly) became the author of a trojan :) You may recall the link to "spiffyspoof.html" in last year's blog? I updated Norton, and for the first time it informs me that my computer is infected with several copies of "js.trojan.blinder", in the 2 copies of "spiffyspoof.html" that reside in two locations on my computer. I wrote the thing, for goodness sake... of course using code from a malicious email which spoofs the address bar in order to get somebody's credit card information. My version omits the malicious credit-card- grabbing webpage, and just demonstrates the address bar exploit. It's actually a simple bit of code that pastes a white box over the address bar, with text in it. However, now when I access the page on my website Norton starts yelling about "js.trojan.blinder"... so don't be suprised. spiffyspoof.html"

Mar.20, 2005Fedora Core 3 is up and running on my linux partition, next will come the tablet pen driver :D

April 29, 2005 Sorry it has been quite a while, I am finally done with school and I think I survived the semester. That may depend on the graces of certain teachers. I can't say I had flying colors in the last couple weeks, but, on the plus side I think I did well on my chemistry final. Better than in the class, actually. I needed to get a lot more sleep, and so forth. I await the return of the grade reports to know for sure. I have such a full summer lined up! It's insane. I have riding lessons (yay!), vet observation twice a week, possibly a vet kennel care job, a tutoring position, and still working at the dairy on weekends. It will be... interesting. I'm going to miss being a beach bum. I'm not going to miss home work though.
I need to clean my room.

May 2, 2005 Latest news is my first riding lesson was today! I am riding English style on a beautiful brown Thoroughbred gelding, very sweet; his name is Aladin's Magic aka Al. I learned about basic riding posture, how to maneuver at a walk, and some posting. It was awesome! I can't wait until next week. I want to have a horse :( but so does every first-time rider. Some day....

Also, the Pistons are on their way to a possible playoff win tomorrow, I hope we tape the game so I can watch it. They were so evenly matched with the 76er's (that is, with Iverson) that it made for a very exciting game on Sunday. Pistons for Champs X 2!!!!!

Oh, tablet pen works under Linux.

June 7, 2005 I forgot to tell, all A's except an A- in the class that I should have done much worse in were it not for a bit of grace on the teacher's part....

Horse riding is doing good, more or less. I hope some day I figure out the trot.

Clinic observation is exciting. It can be tedious at times because the clinic is so busy with routine heartworm serologies that when there's nothing else going on I don't get to see anything except blood draws (which can be interesting but there's a lot of lag time) and they're too busy to let me observe in the client rooms. But when there's emergencies or interesting cases, it's great. The vets are cool, the techs are very nice and fun to talk to. I like shadowing Dr. Merle, Stacey, and Angie especially because they're always ready to explain things. I love the hospital setup (although the lab room's a bit narrow and I'm always getting in the way ;) ), they have nice equipment and a good layout for watching surgeries, dentals, and diagnostic procedures in a nice open back room. There's a wall of cages there which usually seems to have the most current patients in it that I can watch when nothing else is happening. So far I've seen some interesting surgeries, ranging from the usual spays and neuters (including one suprisingly difficult spay on an older dog) to tooth extractions to biopsies and mass removals (one of the later was interesting because the site began bleeding after closure and had to be reopened); a number of diagnostic and treatment procedures such as cystocentesis on a cat, x-rays, canine anal gland expression (everyone loves that one--smelly!), nasal flush on a cat under anaesthesia, and lab work; and various methods of restraint for various animals. I even got to help hold a dog today that was giving a bit of trouble with a blood draw. I don't like feeling useless all the time, so that was a good feeling. Last but not least, one of the tech's has an adorable kitten who stays over for daycare and I played with it some today. He's sooo cute!!!

Pistons are the finalists, Pistons are the finalists!!! I can't say "champions" yet. I watched the last game of the finals, and had a knot in my gut the whole time, it was so close. I'm glad we "beat the Heat," I don't like how we're always denegrated even when we're evenly matched. And I'm not fond of Shaq, whereas our guys--they're cool. Great, humble guys. Can't decide who's my favorite, Rip or Prince. Or maybe the Froh. Or Billups. No, I have to admit to a fondness for the Human Victory Cigar, it's so cute the way Darko runs out there in the last two minutes or so and stands there awestruck... I'm giving him a couple more seasons before he'll be able to touch the ball. ;)

Actually I have to admit I'm predicting Spurs in six, but I'm still rooting for Pistons for Champs X 2!!!! First game is on Thursday, and we're driving all the way to Detroit to see it. No, it's not at the Palace, it's in San Antonio, but we will be in Detroit for my Grandpa's birthday party, so I can tell people I drove all the way to Detroit to watch a Piston's game ;) . Sad part is I probably won't get to see the first half, I'll be in the car. Oh well.

June 17, 2005 Go Pistons!!! Last night's game was COOL. We skunked the Spurs so bad they didn't know what hit them. Thirty-one point lead, seven of our players in double digits, more than 5 consecutive quarters ahead, and so on and so on. I don't know how many records we broke. But anyhow, we tied the tournament at 2-2, which, if we win will be only the fourth(?) time a team as won that went down 2-0 originally. But of course we have to win some on the road before that happens. By the way, although of course I want us to beat the Spurs, Gino is so cool. But we're better.

Jun 22, 2005 Go PISTONS!!! We had a great Game 6. I wish I could have watched it. Game 5 was awful of course. We were two to two, then the Spurs pulled ahead in overtime to win because of a mistake made by one of our team members. But he (and the team) made up for it in Game 6, to tie us three to three. Talk about suspense! I can't wait for Game 7, I wish I could watch it but I'm afraid I'll have to be content to follow online. Oh well. I'm glad my Spurs-in-6 prediction didn't come true, I have to change to a Spurs in 7 prediction and hope for Pistons in 7.
I wrote a shell script ('utility') to automate my blogging. It's cool.

Jun 22, 2005 I just wanted to tell you how cool my blogger utility is. It runs under linux, and I just type a command and bang, here's some space to type. Then it's date- stamped and what-not. And you see it here! Now isn't that cool?

Jul 22, 2005 Hey guysHey everyone, I guess it's been a month or so since I've checked in here. Justhis month (I think) I had an interview with the vet's office that offered me a job. That was my first "official" job interview! Scary stuff. But even though I was nervous it went pretty well. I got the job, and it's a lot of fun. I just need to get faster at it. I love working with the animals, and the people are nice too. Especially the vet. Hmm... other things in my life include lots of math tutoring I've been doing. Several kids have been learning (I hope :D ) math from me this summer. The two boys I've been teaching algebra to are done now, although I'll probably meet once more with one of them. Good luck, guys!! (Not that they're likely to read this.) W went up to my mother's family reunion last weekend, it was fun as usual. This year we took Bobby with us. Five of us in the car plus the dog and no air conditioning made for a very hot drive, but we ate icecream (well, Micky-D's is more like coolwhip :P ) and had a lot of fun playing games and singing. In fact we drove Mom and Dad a little nuts I think. I got a nasty rope burn falling off a climbing/swinging rope in the barn. I also got a sunburn but luckily it didn't peel:D Well, so much for now till later. Happy Sabbath!

July 27, 2005Here's a Link to a little gripe of mine about academic writing.