catching up
hey-oh, I'm still alive folks. The last month and a half of my life is a kind of a black hole as far as this journal is concerned, so let me fill in a couple blanks.
First and foremost, horsemanship is awesome, I am deeply envious of anyone that gets to take bunches of these kind of classes for fun. This will be my one and only. Josh and I share a horse named charles, who has a habit of forcibly tearing his gate off his stall, with his teeth. He is also very eager to go fast, which is most pleasing. Despite the implied ferocity, he is about as miserly looking as a horse can get, apparently because of some disorder that makes him sweat and lose weight. They just put him on medication though, so he's looking better every week. It's english style, so we have to use girly mounting blocks and the stirrups are kind of high, but it's still a lot of fun. At first it was a little rough because we had the stirrups too long and it was a lot of work just to walk around; after a half hour or so my legs were done. You'd think it'd be easy to just sit on a horse, but there are a bunch of stabilization muscles you need that apparently don't get developed when you've been sitting on a couch for the past semester and a half. Go figure. But we've got the stirrups adjusted properly now and it's easier. We trotted last time and got to do some posting, I finally started to get it on the last run through. If you do it right the horse kind of throws you up into the air and you come down as he comes down, so you really don't have to do much work.
Economics is a joke, our group is the only all-guy group in the class, and we tend to be disruptive, mostly because we're bored. Contemporary Christian Belief is informative and interesting, if a little dry. Dr. Speigel is awesome though. Human Relations in organizations is kind of a joke, mostly by merit of the fact that Dr. Adkison is teaching it and he has the character of any 3 professors I know, but also because we get to do a fake project about anything to analyze our interactions as we carry it out. We're going around campus and doing Klondike bar commercial parodies, making a 10 minute video out of it all. Senior Seminar doesn't bare talking about, it is a joke, but a bad joke. That leaves Operating Systems, my one real class, which I have the good fortune of taking from Dr. Geisler so despite its difficulty it is engaging and useful. I kind of biffed the first test, but when doesn't that happen with his in-class essay tests. Slink and I have been knocking out labs like it's our job. I would never want to be a kernel programmer, it kind of sucks. So much reading, so little coding. Learning a lot about installing linux and migrating to a new kernel though, that was fun.
Dr. Speigel has done two lectures on music now, one on the top 12 songs of the 60's and 70's, and another on the history of rock and roll from 1950-2000. The first one had more older people than students I think, it was packed. He picked:
1. Strawberry fields forever (the beatles)
2. Bohemian rhapsody (queen)
3. Stairway to heaven (led zeppelin)
4. It's alright mama, i'm only bleeding (bob dylan)
5. Thunder road (bruce springsteen)
6. You're so vain (carly simon)
7. Roundabout (yes)
8. Career Opportunities (the clash)
9. Tears of a clown (smokey robinson(
10. Radio radio (elvis costello)
11. Heart of gold (neil young)
12. Respect (aretha franklin)
Everyone was a little surprised there was no Rolling Stones, knowing him. His choices were a little eclectic for me, I was only familiar with about half of the songs. But it wasn't my era afterall. He played three versions of strawberry fields at subsequent stages of development, it was really interesting to hear the original lyrics vs. the final lyrics. The final lyrics are much more trippy and psychedelic, the original song actually kind of made sense, but I guess that's not what they were going for.
The second lecture was a full 20 hours long, starting at 4pm friday, going all night, and ending at noon saturday. He played songs all throughout, so he had time to take breaks and eat. I saw him drinking a lot more coffee than eating though. I skipped out for a 7 hour chunk at the beginning, but came back at 1am for the last bit of the 70s and stayed all night. The 80s were a little disappointing, no hair bands, no metal, not face-melting guitar riffs. He played a lot of u2, ramones, sex pistols, the clash, and elvis costello. Oh and bob dylan, he loves that guy. The closest we got to hard rock was some nirvana and soundgarden later in the 90s. He ended with the top 20 rock and roll songs of all time:
1. 1965 - Like A Rolling Stone - Bob Dylan
2. 1971 - Stairway to Heaven - Led Zeppelin
3. 1975 - Bohemian Rhapsody - Queen
4. 1965 - Satisfaction - The Rolling Stones
5. 1967 - Strawberry Fields Forever - The Beatles
6. 1987 - I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For - U2
7. 1958 - Johnny B. Goode - Chuck Berry
8. 1991 - Smells Like Teen Spirit - Nirvana
9. 1975 - Born to Run - Bruce Springsteen
10. 1995 - Fake Plastic Trees - Radiohead
11. 1979 - London Calling - The Clash
12. 1967 - A Day in the Life - The Beatles
13. 1970 - Layla - Derek and the Dominos
14. 1967 - Light My Fire - The Doors
15. 1984 - When Doves Cry - Prince
16. 1976 - Hotel California - The Eagles
17. 1967 - Respect - Aretha Franklin
18. 1994 - The Day I Tried to Live - Soundgarden
19. 1968 - Sympathy for the Devil - The Rolling Stones
20. 1957 - Jailhouse Rock - Elvis Presley
Good stuff, I want to get (back) into the Everly Brothers, the Beach Boys, Bruce Springsteen, the Boomtown Rats, Squeeze, Weezer, and Wilco.
Other activities this month include learning how to use 5 forks at fancy dinners, using a real-time xray machine at ITT in fort wayne, filling out my FAFSA, leading a small group, going to a play without it being for a class, watching Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth, getting accepted to 3 schools but not an NSF fellowship, TAing for microcomputer interfacing and COS120, going to see 300 opening night, going out to dinner with a prof and grad student from U of I, and getting on last.fm and realizing I listen to a heck of a lot of 3EB. Perhaps some more to come on all that later, but it is late now and I must put my person to bed.
First and foremost, horsemanship is awesome, I am deeply envious of anyone that gets to take bunches of these kind of classes for fun. This will be my one and only. Josh and I share a horse named charles, who has a habit of forcibly tearing his gate off his stall, with his teeth. He is also very eager to go fast, which is most pleasing. Despite the implied ferocity, he is about as miserly looking as a horse can get, apparently because of some disorder that makes him sweat and lose weight. They just put him on medication though, so he's looking better every week. It's english style, so we have to use girly mounting blocks and the stirrups are kind of high, but it's still a lot of fun. At first it was a little rough because we had the stirrups too long and it was a lot of work just to walk around; after a half hour or so my legs were done. You'd think it'd be easy to just sit on a horse, but there are a bunch of stabilization muscles you need that apparently don't get developed when you've been sitting on a couch for the past semester and a half. Go figure. But we've got the stirrups adjusted properly now and it's easier. We trotted last time and got to do some posting, I finally started to get it on the last run through. If you do it right the horse kind of throws you up into the air and you come down as he comes down, so you really don't have to do much work.
Economics is a joke, our group is the only all-guy group in the class, and we tend to be disruptive, mostly because we're bored. Contemporary Christian Belief is informative and interesting, if a little dry. Dr. Speigel is awesome though. Human Relations in organizations is kind of a joke, mostly by merit of the fact that Dr. Adkison is teaching it and he has the character of any 3 professors I know, but also because we get to do a fake project about anything to analyze our interactions as we carry it out. We're going around campus and doing Klondike bar commercial parodies, making a 10 minute video out of it all. Senior Seminar doesn't bare talking about, it is a joke, but a bad joke. That leaves Operating Systems, my one real class, which I have the good fortune of taking from Dr. Geisler so despite its difficulty it is engaging and useful. I kind of biffed the first test, but when doesn't that happen with his in-class essay tests. Slink and I have been knocking out labs like it's our job. I would never want to be a kernel programmer, it kind of sucks. So much reading, so little coding. Learning a lot about installing linux and migrating to a new kernel though, that was fun.
Dr. Speigel has done two lectures on music now, one on the top 12 songs of the 60's and 70's, and another on the history of rock and roll from 1950-2000. The first one had more older people than students I think, it was packed. He picked:
1. Strawberry fields forever (the beatles)
2. Bohemian rhapsody (queen)
3. Stairway to heaven (led zeppelin)
4. It's alright mama, i'm only bleeding (bob dylan)
5. Thunder road (bruce springsteen)
6. You're so vain (carly simon)
7. Roundabout (yes)
8. Career Opportunities (the clash)
9. Tears of a clown (smokey robinson(
10. Radio radio (elvis costello)
11. Heart of gold (neil young)
12. Respect (aretha franklin)
Everyone was a little surprised there was no Rolling Stones, knowing him. His choices were a little eclectic for me, I was only familiar with about half of the songs. But it wasn't my era afterall. He played three versions of strawberry fields at subsequent stages of development, it was really interesting to hear the original lyrics vs. the final lyrics. The final lyrics are much more trippy and psychedelic, the original song actually kind of made sense, but I guess that's not what they were going for.
The second lecture was a full 20 hours long, starting at 4pm friday, going all night, and ending at noon saturday. He played songs all throughout, so he had time to take breaks and eat. I saw him drinking a lot more coffee than eating though. I skipped out for a 7 hour chunk at the beginning, but came back at 1am for the last bit of the 70s and stayed all night. The 80s were a little disappointing, no hair bands, no metal, not face-melting guitar riffs. He played a lot of u2, ramones, sex pistols, the clash, and elvis costello. Oh and bob dylan, he loves that guy. The closest we got to hard rock was some nirvana and soundgarden later in the 90s. He ended with the top 20 rock and roll songs of all time:
1. 1965 - Like A Rolling Stone - Bob Dylan
2. 1971 - Stairway to Heaven - Led Zeppelin
3. 1975 - Bohemian Rhapsody - Queen
4. 1965 - Satisfaction - The Rolling Stones
5. 1967 - Strawberry Fields Forever - The Beatles
6. 1987 - I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For - U2
7. 1958 - Johnny B. Goode - Chuck Berry
8. 1991 - Smells Like Teen Spirit - Nirvana
9. 1975 - Born to Run - Bruce Springsteen
10. 1995 - Fake Plastic Trees - Radiohead
11. 1979 - London Calling - The Clash
12. 1967 - A Day in the Life - The Beatles
13. 1970 - Layla - Derek and the Dominos
14. 1967 - Light My Fire - The Doors
15. 1984 - When Doves Cry - Prince
16. 1976 - Hotel California - The Eagles
17. 1967 - Respect - Aretha Franklin
18. 1994 - The Day I Tried to Live - Soundgarden
19. 1968 - Sympathy for the Devil - The Rolling Stones
20. 1957 - Jailhouse Rock - Elvis Presley
Good stuff, I want to get (back) into the Everly Brothers, the Beach Boys, Bruce Springsteen, the Boomtown Rats, Squeeze, Weezer, and Wilco.
Other activities this month include learning how to use 5 forks at fancy dinners, using a real-time xray machine at ITT in fort wayne, filling out my FAFSA, leading a small group, going to a play without it being for a class, watching Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth, getting accepted to 3 schools but not an NSF fellowship, TAing for microcomputer interfacing and COS120, going to see 300 opening night, going out to dinner with a prof and grad student from U of I, and getting on last.fm and realizing I listen to a heck of a lot of 3EB. Perhaps some more to come on all that later, but it is late now and I must put my person to bed.