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My habit of staying up late struck again last night. The most unfortunate piece of that tragedy was that I didn’t realize I wrote an entry. I was at work working, when I became confused and started to wonder whether writing that entry was a dream or reality. It was disgruntling because I had no clue if I had, in fact, been awake and articulate enough to write coherent language in this supposed entry. The last thing I want is lackluster gramur an spellin.

The original plan last night was to get to bed early. Maybe 9pm if possible, perhaps 9:30pm if it came to it. But 1am rolled around and I don’t even remember getting in bed; I was frenetically packing and becoming more disorganized in the process. With this week really pushing me around, I’ve been sleeping without rest.

I think some soothing beach sounds could be beneficial for me. MMmm… yeah, maybe some seemingly distant applause of the waves could perform wonders on this nearly unstable body. I could even mix in some of The Album Leaf and have an ambient noise party. But I suppose making a party of ambient noise is quite contradicting; unless I was unaware I was attending an ambient noise party. In which case, I would be the only person at a party that I didn’t know about.

Wait, I should be driving by now.

Reading Plato grants you a glimpse of Plato. Well, truthfully, it gives you a glimpse of Socrates, Plato’s main character in his dialogues and also Plato’s mentor before Socrates was effectively murdered by the Greek state. Some of Socrates’ views on the ideal state are, to say the least, questionable and noticable affected by his era, but the greater majority of them are striking and provoking. Particularly the point he makes saying that politicians should be just the opposite, and should have no desire for their job, lest they become ambitious. Wow. This is certainly a good read, one that supports utter logic and seeks true

Efficiency is my main goal in autos. Honestly, though, my main goal is to eliminate the need for them; but in the fantastic U.S.of.A., there is so much land that it is typically necessary to provide modes of rapid transportation. Thus fuel economy has quickly become a favorite target of mine. The Jetta diesel that I drive is handsomely equipped with a low-power engine that gets me from A to B with an average fuel economy of 45 miles per gallon. But that’s not good enough. Why not 55, or 75? There are test vehicles that currently get around 100 miles per gallon and why aren’t they being produced? Sigh, it is our government’s net of red tape that often gets in the way of alternative fuels. That’s why Europe is the only market for the Mini Cooper One D. It’s one of my favorite cars, and this version gets, on average, 60 mpg. America will likely never see this auto; again, why? All because of

Party politics is one of the forefront, yet masked, reasons for the recent attack, per se, on Public Broadcasting. Both PBS and enormous government funding reductions because House Republicans are fearing a liberal bias is being promoted with the help of gov’ment funds. This is shame regardless of your political sway. For any government to target its own media is a shame. My local NPR station will likely shut its doors if it loses its funds at the proposed amount. I never, ever, ever get political, but PBS and NPR are the only media outlets in our country that are not commercialized. If we lose them, we are surrendering ourselves to Pepsi spots, Verizon ads, and Old Navy fake smiles. Television already turns bright and questioning minds, those Socrates lauded, into supersaturated sponges of mediocrity. If you are at all interested in this topic, read this article and please contact your congressman or congresswoman with urgency. There should be no wasting

Time seems to fly during the summers. I can’t wait for VT. But in the mean time, I will travel. Tomorrow, I leave for Virginia Beach. And nearly every successive weekend will take me somewhere else. If you have a point-and-shoot camera, be on the lookout for a geek in large glasses and take your best paparazzi photo.

While I have always treasured my independence and self-reliance, there is no denying the impact certain friends have left on my life. And as all friendships go, or any level of relationship really, I tend to pick up traits and features from other people and incorporate them into who I am. Everyone does this, most people don’t realize it, but with my tortoise-shelled glasses of psychological frame I never stop my attempts at figuring out why I am who I am.

There are some traits of mine that are clearly noticed in other people. For example, it’s a fact that my habit of constantly drinking water was stolen from Derek (despite that he also drinks espresso non-stop, I had already acquired that feature). Even with my distaste for those Nalgene bottles, I still drink water with every meal and have it close-at-hand when typing/reading/wasting time/etc.

That’s a surface trait, of course, and they are easy to find correlating origins to. Personality traits are difficult to narrow down, and I would think that those are clearly combinations of certain aspects manifest in my closest friends. Additionally, I would assume that the media I allow my time plays a part; for me, that would be books, music, and film, in that order.

With VT only two months away, I’m sweating bullets that no aquatic janitor could keep up with. I am so, so, so very, very ready to get back to school. I want to learn. And I want to learn as much as I can. You can call me competitive, and I am, but that’s not the whole story. My self-motivation has been built on the examples of people I’ve spent time with. They wouldn’t know it just by talking with em, but I glean from them their perseverance and make it my own. I scrutinize what makes them tick, excel, and achieve, and I store it away without any outward sign of having grasped it.

One of the best things to happen to me in the last year has truly been my roommate from the fall 2004 semester. We knew each other vaguely going into the semester, but I see that our personalities played a round of racquetball that complimented both of our fortes. Having two mega-motivated people in a 10 by 12 room for five months does wonders, or miracles, if you wish. My GPA didn’t skyrocket, but I blasted through the semester with a vigor and intensity for education that I’ve never had before in my life. And it. was. amazing.

Now, I am ready to return. I want to tackle classes, have late-night study sessions, and spend endless hours with my Bollo’s regulars. There are times when I am so anxious to return that I physically feel my body temperature increase and I get antsy. Yes, antsy. Like… bugs. Or, more specifically, ants.

If you want to know the basis for my accelerating passion, understand that I follow the rule that being crazy-go-nuts will take you very far. Perhaps, this entry can be considered my late, respectful JF graduation speech to those who walked this past weekend. Yeah, sure. Congrats to them.

Most of the high schools in the area graduated their classes this weekend. As a popular member of the area, I was invited to attend several parties. I use the term “popular” very lightly, very, very lightly. Almost as light as Splenda or helium. Or a mix of the two; which I think is actually a defined and manufactured drug. But anyways.

I certainly made it to the JF graduation because that was my high school of the good years. High school graduations are, in some respects, an unofficial reunion for prior graduates. I saw many people from my graduating class, but less from earlier classes. The “reunion” aspect much dwindle through the seniority of classes - I suppose people who graduated twenty years ago from their high school don’t continue to attend the commencements. I would hope not. That’s almost the same type of bizarre commitment that some people exhibit when then tirelessly turn up at high school football games, even though they graduated years ago long past. Even I never actually went to high school football games when I was in high school; and I certainly don’t plan on making a habit of that now that I’m a VT student, no matter how much it is pressured upon me.

Of the parties that I visited today, one brought back an ole’ time trait and generic responsibility that I thought was forever gone. It was at BRCC with a bunch of people, and there was a sound system set up, and there was no music playing. And it was suggested that I play some music. Me?! What…why me? Naturally, they were thinking back to my days of DJ-ing, as it may be, and just assumed that it’s something that stuck. Well, you don’t call people “fat” just because they were fat babies. Or you don’t try and hand crank your engine to start just because in the past that was the practice. However, with technology now on my side (and the days of hauling around 20-30 pounds of CDs long gone), I grabbed my iPod, found some soft dance music, and put it on as an ambient background. People were pleased, and I was clear of anxiety. It’s good to have an iPod.

But my luck was soon to fade. On the way to another party, I came to a stoplight. A four lane halt in my direction - one for left turn, one for right turn, and two straight lanes. I was in the left straight lane. There was a large, service-esque truck driving behind me, the kind that have double rear wheels and have tool boxes covering the truck bed. It was still approaching the light I was waiting at. Still approaching. Hey, it doesn’t look like this truck is slowing down. Of course, this is all happening in slow motion and the important and meaningful points in my life were flashing before my eyes. I started to lean into the clutch to ready it for evasive action. Then the gear gets ready in first, and I’m just about to rev and jump into the intersection which, by the way, had moving traffic in it but still had some open spots I could surprise people with. In the faintest of the last second, the driver slammed his brakes and slid into the lane beside me, conveniently dragging himself to a stop directly beside me.

I looked up at him. He was trying to light a cigarette. Lovely. I just looked at him and he never returned my soft and comforting gaze. Perhaps, it was totally soft and comforting, but it wasn’t an aggressive gaze. Then he was muttering something to himself. The kind of mutter that makes the cigarette jump up and down at the end while never launching from the lips. It must take true control to manage that. I just wished he had managed his driving abilities at that same tier. Oh well.

It was a good day of party hopping. To be sure.

I have fallen victim to a habit I never expected to surface, at least not at my age and during the summer. If anything, you’d think a college student like me, tireless in study and exhausted with working out, would not fall prey to something like this. Recently, in my efforts to get to bed and get a reasonable six or seven hours of sleep, I’ve neglected the idea that the extra hours will do me any good. So I stay up late. Generally, I am reading books or online articles and I send out my day’s worth of email.

Last night, I felt it wise of me to forget about sleep and watch the Quicktime stream of the WWDC 2005 Keynote. Yes, of course I had heard the Apple/Intel rumors. I was actually in one of my not-gonna-sleep states when the CNET article first announced the official rumblings late Saturday night. Being a viable source for technology news and recalling the previous talks of Apple & Intel, I simply trusted what I read and went to bed expecting big news at the Monday Keynote.

Thus, blah blah blah; Monday Keynote; Apple officially announces a two-year switch over to Intel processors; yadda yadda; die-hard Apple users feel “betrayed” or something of the nature; internet columnists write a myriad of articles praising, decrying, whatever. After a long day Monday, I read some of the initial reactions that night. I wasn’t in the mood, however, to watch the Keynote stream just yet, so I went to bed. Tuesday came and went, never watched the Keynote but still read more articles. Then was Wednesday with more articles with “What is Apple doing?!” and “Could this be the next Time-Warner?” ::sigh:: Oh well. Thus, last night, I finally decided to watch the Keynote for myself.

Once it was done and the stream stopped, I immediately amazed at how impressed I was by Jobs’ decision to make this move. The PowerPC line is fading and won’t stack up in the years ahead; a G5 PowerBook just would not happen if Apple tried to stick it out with IBM. Of course, I had no clue of the underlying things going on with this issues at hand, and frankly I don’t use a computer’s processor speed that intensely to necessitate top-notch performance, but I think this is a fantastic move.

I really don’t want to go into detail on this because you never know when my Apple geek inside (Geek Inside) would kick in. Sometimes that is not a pretty sight. Kind of like watching the Icarus’ bittersweet flight. Poor, poor, Icarus. At least he was ambitious.

So, I am full of anticipation for the first Macs to begin shipping with Intel processors around, as Apple affirms us, pre-WWDC 2006. If you have a fury and passion over this issue, I urge you to watch the Keynote and maybe that will soothe your ailments. If not, go buy a VAIO.

My fall semester is looking fairly light, or fairly light in comparison to last fall that turned me into the freak I am today. With the extra time that I will likely have available, I thought it wise to look ahead and apply for a job around campus. Around campus is the key; there’s no way I’d be seen working on campus unless I was a grader/proctor again. Hmm, I suppose if I was an Apple Campus Rep, then working on campus would be viable as well. But I’m losing focus here.

Despite the abundance of people who loathe the Math Emporium (noticed by such facebook groups as “Haters of Matlab and the Emporium”, “F*ck the Math Emporium”, and “Never Been To the Math Emporium and Never Will”), I adore it. I heart math and the presence of 555 iMac G5s. My relentless pursuit for logic and reason continually draws me into mathematics which has no inconsistencies.

I guess you could say that I’m the type of person who studies differential calculus over the summer. I mean, not that I am…um.. waita… I’M AWESOME!

On that note, I received the wonderful news yesterday that I was being offered a well-paid position at the Emporium this fall.Fantastique! Even though there are several other employment areas I could look into around Blacksburg, I was curious as to how this experience would turn out. Yes, I do enjoy the Math Emporium (but, honestly, may hate it after this fall), but I’m also curious about what it will be like helping out students with online math courses/quizzes/tests.

My past attempts of helping other people with studying haven’t been very successful, as some may attest to, but last fall semester taught me quite a bit in the realms of patience. Specifically, that I was given and had to give enormous amounts of it. There is a humility born when you require someone else to teach you a few things on their own time. Were it not for my roommate, I likely would have dragged through C++; his knowledge and ability to communicate to me concepts was pivotal for my understanding in that subject.

So, anyways, I’m going to give the ole’ study buddy spot a try. My SEC mentoring experience is likely a nice diving board for the Emporium job. After answering questions like “who’s the hardest eng chem professor?” and the like, I think I’ll be able to handle less svelte questions like “How am I supposed to minus this?” and “Where is the other mouse button?” You can be sure that I’ll jot down the best, stupidest, and oddest questions/comments I receive while working there.