Not much happened today

Got back home, with electricity and internet. Went to a few more parrandas (Puerto Rican caroling). and a bit of other random things... but otherwise, nothing to special...

Tomorrow I'm going to try to figure out what's wrong with the family computer. As far as I can tell (from the Dell website) it's a card error and a memory error, which might be the same thing, except I haven't the slightest idea how yet. Well, wish me luck tomorrow... Hopefully, I won't get zapped. (If it turns out, as I suspect, that we can't fix it, one of my cousin's cousins works at an IT place, and we can give him a call too.)

More on this tomorrow...

Eduardo the Golden Phoenix

The last two days: electricity and internet?

Well, here I am at the other side of the island, in the little "summer house" my parents got built over the last year. It's nice and cozy and all, and for the most part, it's not bad.

However, there have been 2 major inconveniences: no power and no internet...

When I say no power, I mean that the electricity has not been hooked up to the house yet. At the moment, we're running off of a generator, mainly because I had to write my Graduate School essays, and was able to convince my dad to let it run for a while.

And no internet... well, I managed to steal a wireless signal from one of the neighbors (thank you linksys and unsecured networks). It's not the best signal, but it's not too bad either, since I can get on the internet. However, it's not at good as having a full blown signal that doesn't cut out every now and then.

Well, the last few days have been fun. I've been to several parrandas (Puerto Rican caroling), and I've been enjoying my iPod. I just got an iHome and a sleeve thing for it, so I'll be using that as my new alarm back at school, and using the sleeve for when I go to Leid (it's one of those that wraps around the arm).

Well, I'm off.

Eduardo the Golden Phoenix

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas everyone. I hope everyone had a good day today. I myself had a good time.

Presents: 2 shirts, Prince Caspian, $40, and...

iPod!!!

Yay good music player!! Now I can listen to my 45 GB (and growing) of music all in one place (not counting my computers).

Well, I'm off. Waking up early tomorrow. Might not blog for a few days...

Eduardo the Golden Phoenix

Grades

Today I got an early Christmas present... Class grades!!

So, here's the rundown:
Philosophy of Religion - B
Philosophy of Science - A-
Thermal Mechanics - A
Quantum Mechanics - B
General Relativity - A-

So, I did pretty much as I expected, with one key exception. The grades for Quantum and Thermo are opposite what I was expecting. That was a surprise. My GPA is now a 3.75.

Eduardo the Golden Phoenix

New House

My parents had a house built on the west side of the island. They call it their "Summer Home" (it's effectively summer all year round in Puerto Rico, so they plan to go there whenever they want). So yesterday my dad got a moving truck and put a bunch of stuff in it to move over there. Riding a moving truck is interesting. Everything seems so small.

Anyway, we got there, and the house is small, but cozy. There was no electricity yet, but the electricians should come by in a few days to finalize things with the Electric Energy Authority of Puerto Rico. Also, no internet, and alas, there will never be internet there. So whenever I go there, no internet :-(

Speaking on internet, the internet here has been a bit on the fritz lately. One of the cables is slightly loose, and it's hard to get it to connect when it's loose. So looking forward to no internet days. If I have to connect really bad (A.K.A. applications), I can go to BK or some other place...

Anyway, that's all for now.

Eduardo the Golden Phoenix

Travels

Wow, what a day. Yesterday was a most interesting day, going home...

So first, we are at the Des Moines Airport, and we get in fine, and the plane's about an hour delayed..., no biggie, since we have 3 hours between flights. That flight was uneventful.

However, once in Dallas, things get hectic. First, our flight is delayed an hour, from 3:05 to 4:15. Then, once we get on, we have to get off, because one of the engines is bad. We'd been on the plane for about an hour by this point...

So, we lounge around, blah blah, and then we get our new gate about an hour after that, and we start boarding the plane... except that they tell us to get off again because we need a new crew...

Right...

By this point I'm getting a bit impatient (yeah, it took 3 hours for that). Anyway, we wait about another hour, and we finally leave...

I got to Puerto Rico at 2:30, AST (12:30 CST). We were supposed to get here at 10:00pm. So I woke up, after 4 hours of sleep, to help move things to the new house on the other side of the island (more on that later).

Yeah...

Eduardo the Golden Phoenix

Birthday

It my birthday!!!! I'm 21!!!... Which means, obviously, that I can drink legally... at least in the States (I could legally drink back home in PR when I turned 18). A group of friends took me to a bar, Welch Ave. , and I had a good time. I had nine drinks.

Double Shot of 100 proof Absolut (never doing that again)
Washington Apple (tasted like a Jolly Rancher)
Pissed-off Japanese Minnow Farmer (fruity)
Disgusting (that's the name... and it was disgusting)
Slippery Nipple (Sweet and creamy)
Cement Mixer (gross...)
Snake bite (not bad)
B-52 (by far my favorite, but I've had it before)
Jager Bomb (an interesting one... I hate Red Bull, but mixed with Yagermeister it's not bad)

By the time I was out of there, I couldn't walk straight unless I focused myself... but I didn't want to.

Anyway, then we had cake, and I went to sleep (after drinking a lot of water). I woke up fine...

That was last night.

A tonight we went to Fuji and ate sushi. Yum. I had a mojito, but it wasn't as good as my dad's...

Anyway, going home tomorrow. 10am plane ride!!

Eduardo the Golden Phoenix

Finals, GRE Scores, Packing, and Birthdays

Well, today had a lot of things going on. I woke up EXTRA early today for a 7:30am final. Which, by the way, I totally BOMBED!!! Yeah, 40% is optimistic right now, but from what I heard, a lot of people had issues, so the curve might be really good. Plus, I have my other tests and homework to raise the grade a bit...

I also called the GRE service to get my scores, because apparently 4-6 weeks to mail my score means 6 weeks... right... just because it's the end of the range, doesn't mean you should sent it at the very last minute. Anyway, I had to pay $12 to get my score via phone so I could put it on the U. of Texas application. 740!!! That's awesome!! I did not expect to get such a high score. I was thinking somewhere around a 600 or so.

Well, I was feeling pretty good then, so I played Fallout 3 for a while... until I realised I still hadn't packed... oops. I'm leaving Sunday to go home for Christmas, but I'm leaving my room tomorrow (residence kicks us out), so I'm staying at Kristin's for a bit.

The reason for this late going home is due to.... *drum roll* my 21st Birthday!!! I'm getting a bunch of people and we're going out to the bars. I'm actually kind of nervous. I want to drink, but not get drunk... so I'll have to be careful how much I drink... I think I'll set Kristin as my guardian.

Well, I have to continue packing... More posts over break, maybe. If not, next semester definately. I don't know how much time I'll actually be at my computer over break. I know I won't be much for tthe first 2 day, and not much for the 2 after that (Christmas Eve and Christmas day). So, if I don't post again...

Merry Christmas(Christian and Orthodox), Happy Hanukkah, Happy Kwanza, Season's Grettings (for the athiests and agnostics), Happy Occidental New Year, Happy Three Kings Day, and any other Holidays that happen to occur around this time of year. And Happy Chinese New Year if I don't write until February or March.

Eddie, the Golden Phoenix

P.S. If I got something wrong on the holidays, I'm truly sorry. I do not mean to offend anyone.

Kubuntu

So, I installed Kubuntu on my computer last night, and I do have to say, it's impressing me so far. It hasn't broken like Fedora KDE did. There are a few minor annoyances, but every operating system has those. I got it to compare it to Ubuntu, and see whether I prefer the Gnome or KDE desktops. I can say, however, that the KDE desktop is much more flashy. Time will tell if it's more efficient.

Dvorak

So, recently, I ran into the Dvorak keyboard setup, and I do have to say, it does seem a bit quicker than qwerty, just from the initial trying. It will take a while to type faster, bet I think once I get used to it, my typing will be much faster. In fact, this post was typed using Dvorak.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dvorak_Simplified_Keyboard

yeah, I have no life...

Eddie

Upcoming Exams

Well, exams start soon, and that means it's time for studying, studying, and... yeah, you get the idea....

Anyway, I've already taken 2 of my exams: Philosophy of Religion, and Philosophy of Science. They went pretty well, I think.

So, two exams and a paper left...

Actually, I finished my paper, so that's one more down. Now I have to do my quantum homework and study for the test, which is Monday (homework due at test). I actually like quantum, so it shouldn't be too bad...

Thermo will be the hard test. I have to study a lot for that one. Well, here goes nothing...

Blog's on Facebook

I was able to put my blog into facebook. Since I'm not on Facebookt much, but like for people to read my blog, it seems like a perfect matchup. Of course, like before, my updates will be random and sporadic. But maybe I'll write more now...
right...

The Golden Phoenix

EXAMS!!!

Again, it's that time of the year... I hate exams...
This year, it's more writing papers than anything, which is a change for me. It's odd, since I really havn't written papers since high school.

Work goes on, and it's ok...

I'm going to be turning 21 soon. That'll be fun...

and... THE BIG ANNOUNCEMENT!!!

I'm the leader of YATOL. YAY

Yeah, I don't fell like writing all that much. But that's that.

Eddie