Look What I Made!

I'm more excited just because I can post it on here and cause I can get it on my iPhone.  A ringer.

by audiko.net — ringtones.

A Riddle

Thanks Ashley Lawther for this one:

You have two ropes. Both of them take exactly one hour to burn, but do not burn evenly (i.e. they will speed up and slow down the rate of burning). If you are given an unlimited number of matches, how can you denote exactly 45 minutes? 

"A Long Wandering and Eventful Journey"

Well it certainly was long and wandering, but I'm not sure I'd call it eventful.  I haven't seen a story that much about nothing since The Catcher In The Rye!  

Yeah today, I watched 2001: A Space "Odyssey" for the first time.  The first time.  The last.

There was more dialogue in Fantasia.  There wasn't a spoken word for the first twenty minutes of the movie!  Long and wandering is right.  More of a movie making odyssey if anything.  The soundtrack of course is landmark, and the visuals were stunning.  Which is why it'd make a better screensaver than a movie.  

I'll now be Googling things to see if there was a deeper meaning and story behind twenty minutes of apes jumping around a black obelisk, a self-aware computer who sings a song before he dies, and a pre-birth infant the size of Earth in a giant bubble.

Floor

October 1st- Moved in to new apartment, knowing that bathroom and kitchen floors needed to be redone and would be done in a couple weeks.  They tried saying they weren't taking renters because of the floor though we had already said we wanted the apartment. 

November 1st- Floors promised to be started.

Post-Thanksgiving- Floors finally started.  Kitchen finished a week later.  Its okay, I'm not stressed or anything, I mean I'm hardly home because of all the school work I've got but certainly when I do come home its nice to come home to a construction site.

First week of December- bathroom promised to be started next Tuesday.

Tuesday December 9th- bathroom quite notably NOT started.

Some time the following week while I'm in Indy- floor torn up.

Some time after Christmas- floor MORE torn up.

Tuesday, JANUARY 6th, three months after the floors would be done "in a couple of weeks", days before my Christmas break is OVER, three weeks after the bathroom was started, and a week after the maintenance guy was last here- bathroom floor finished.

Time to clean up all the dust and put some things on the walls.

Busy Relaxing

I'm almost done with my eight-day tour here at home in South Bend/Niles.  I've watched a good number of movies, which will be recapped at the end of break when I have a final tally :)  I've eaten plenty of sweets and other food and sweets.  And had probably as many beers as I had during the whole semester, which is like five.

I've accomplished lots of silly but useful things on my computer rearranging and organizing photos, music, contacts, etc.  Part of it is a means of further organizing data for use on my iPhone.  I've downloaded some apps too- so I now have German Spanish and Italian dictionaries and phrasebooks on my phone in anticipation of Barcelona.

My vacation really consists of three parts- roughly 5 days in Indianapolis, 8 days in Chicago, and the remaining 13 ish days in Chicago (save for a day and a half of coming back to Niles for family type stuff).  So I'm almost to the Chicago part- which is the toughest, because my Chicago to-do list is the largest.  First and foremost is finishing really moving into my apartment (unpacking, decorating, etc.) and spending time with Tiffany (out to dinner, watching movies, etc.).  Third is my to-do list, for school, my computer, life, whatever.  Thats for during the days.  

I've heard from a number of people recently that they actually (!) READ this blog, so it'd be nice to get more comments.  I guess what's to comment on, since I'm just blabbing, but feel free.  Maybe I should start posting questions or riddles or something.  Who knows.

Movies During Christmas

Movies Watched Since/During Finals (including some while I worked on models):

19 in total.  Only two of them had I seen before.  Success!

Get Smart

Journey to the Center of the Earth

XFiles

The Happening

Forgetting Sarah Marshall

Robots

Cars

Casino Royale

Dark Knight

Wanted

White Christmas

Cinderella Man

Quantum of Solace

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

21

all the bonus discs from The Matrix Collection

2001: A Space Odyssey

THX 1138

The Great New Wonderful

No Country For Old Men

Oops This Never Got Posted

My favorite website, as of late.  

This is kinda what my brain is like sometimes.

Hold your mouse over the comic for a sec when you're done reading it.

http://xkcd.com/439/

I.AM.FREE

This is it folks.  The moment you've all been waiting for.  Or maybe just me.  Or maybe Tiffany and Josh so I can actually hang out with them and not be stressed and busy all the time.  I'm free from school!  Thank you Newsboys for providing the soundtrack to my Christmas break.  Below you can see how I enjoyed my first day of break while cleaning my apartment:

Cut my hair...

...aaaaaaaaand cut my face.

And did a little dancing and air guitar for the camera...

I am now on the most glorious Megabus ($1* fares!) on my way to Indianapolis to visit my favorite kids in the world, and some friends.  Stoked.  I of course could be sleeping like everyone else on here, but why the hell would I waste the opportunity to surf the internet at 70mph?  Mobile wifi is sweet.  I feel so 21st Century right now.

Flash forward to the next day.  I'm in Indianapolis with the kiddies.  

Time to sum up the semester.  Hardest I've worked for that amount of time.  People say architecture is hard.  And then there's being given loads of work over the weekend "because you have two full days to work on it".  Great.  Its okay, I don't need sleep, food, or time to bathe myself.  If I could live with a beard, I could certainly use that lost shaving time back.  Geez.  I just hope I got good enough grades to continue my quest to go to Barcelona.  Which is to say (which is the department chair's favorite phrase) I'm trying to maintain a 3.0 so I'm in good standing and not kicked out of school.  My 3.67 first semester was hurt by the 2.89 I got the following semester, due to (as far as I'm concerned)an  unappreciative six-credit C in my Studio class.  Hoping to not repeat that this semester.  Will know soon.  I worked my ass off, within reason.  Still need time to be a human being.  Shop for groceries, slowly unpack my belongings, spend time with my girlfriend and roommate.  

This semester was an urban design studio, designing a library for the currently library location in downtown Chicago.  We spent weeks researching, weeks doing other research, and the rest of the time building models it seems like.  Oh and then there were three other classes- lord knows when I have time to devote to those.  Here's some model pictures below.

Tiffany and Josh came to my final all-day review (part of it) before we went out for AH drink that turned into many drinks since the bartender knows my regulars classmates and was pouring us tasty girly shots all night on the house.  Okay, sounds good to me.  

The following morning I began my one-month quest to regain my humanity.  It began with having three days to plan a magical birthday for Tiffany and clean up my apartment enough to have some guests (my brother and his friend).  And spend the afternoon playing Super Nintendo as well.  Tiffany's pre-birthday and birthday went well, complete with my brother and his friend winning tickets in the Wicked drawing they do every day.  We did some shopping, did some Tex-Mex food, saw a wonderfully depressing WWII movie to end the night on a high note.  Even the weather wasn't too bad.  Until it went from 53 on Sunday to 6 on Monday.  Thankfully I was off for warmer climes (Indianapolis).

So I'm well on my way so far.  Changed my address with all the places in life that have my address, two months after moving.  Cleaned the bathroom for the first time since I moved in.  Not meaning we cleaned it when we moved in.  Visiting some friends and family here in Indianapolis.  Onward and upward.  Cleaning up this semester's files on my computer, messing with my music library.  

When I get home home, to SB, will be the real activity.  Cleaning out or at least organizing all my garbage thats still there, helping the family clean/arrange the basement.  Creating a website with Chris.  Playing some guitar.  Doing Christmasy things like making cookies, drinking egg nog, sitting by the fire, eating cookies, sitting by the fire, eating chocolate, sitting by the fire, drinking cider...you get the idea.

So more blog entries will come as I continue my tri-state travels over vacation and continue firmly grasping my sanity for a few weeks until it is stolen from my desperately clutching fingers.  And now for some completely different pictures.

A model I made for mid-term that was universally hated (~2 feet long):

The model I build next, with a grassy roof.  Same-ish size.  Took days.

Me and my pal Shubair, Tiffany's friend from Baylor.

Me and my pal Tiffany :)

Tiffany's brother Wesley.  We went to NASA Space Center in Houston over Thanksgiving- fulfilled a lifelong dream to go see all the rockets and space shuttle and stuff...

Tiffany's sister Karen and some large rocket engines...

Cockpit of the space shuttle!  Cool.  Airplane nerds might like this.

Tiffany celebrated her early birthday!

Snow-covered world from the air- neato.

My newly much larger class sitting around at a review, where we pin our garbage up on the wall and talk about it one by one.  Usually takes all day :)

My final model in the giant model of Chicago we built.  This model may come to South Bend with me if you wish to see it there, family members.  Its about 2.5 feet long.

Another closer photo.

A large model that was just a small section of my whole building.  Chris spent half a weekend in November helping me with this, Tiffany helped me make furniture and place people.  Then I borrowed people from many people in the Studio and populated my auditorium for a photo.

And then I knocked all the people down.  On purpose, this time- they fell down a few times on accident before I got them all up for the picture.  Couldn't glue them down since I hadta give em back!  This model was about three feet tall.  Maybe four.  It got throwed away.  After I rescued the people.

Inside of the model decorated and furnished by Tiffany :)

The whole thing.  Its tall.

Some of my classmates' models sitting on the ground waiting for their presentation.  Neat.

Hell Hath Descended

I don't have time for a real post.  I was gonna write about Thanksgiving and my time in Houston, while I was there, but suddenly I'm back, its snowy and cold, I have a sh-ton to do, and this is the best I got.

Observations from my flight to Houston:

-I greatly underestimated the number of people at the airport pre-6am the day before Thanksgiving

-They want us to turn our electronics off for takeoff because that's when most accidents happen

-Southwest airlines either buys their snacks on the cheap or is given them as advertising- every time I fly the snack is different

-there is a lot of farmland and river tributaries in the midwest

-people really look vulnerable and helpless when they're sleeping on an airline tray table

-getting five hours of sleep before a flight is a bad idea, made much much better by having beaten Wario's Woods the night before

-i have a tendency to get micro-crushes on middle-aged flight attendants.  they're saucy.

I will see many of you over Christmas Break.  Until December 11th consider me dead to the world.

Burnt Out

I'd rather be doing the following than doing more school work:

many many things.

1st   semester: Architecture rocks!!

2nd semester: Architecture is cool, and a lot of work.

3rd semester: This sucks.

(anticipated)

4th semester: I wanna die.

5th semester: BARCELONA!!!!!

6th semester: just get me out of here.