unsympathetic.net

Yesterday, ME and I are walking through campus, when she turns to me. “There’s something missing.”

I look around, and see it too. The campus seems emptier. Less airy. “Trees. They cut down the trees.”

Between the Library and the Business Building there are raised brick planters, perhaps three and a half feet tall. There were trees in them last week before break, but now they’ve been cut down to the planter, nearly covered with ground plants to the point that it’s hard to see the stumps unless you’re looking for them.

I take a deep breath. “Doesn’t it feel like there is less oxygen to you?”

She laughs. It’s a odd thought—that someone could feel the thinning of the air as trees slowly start to disappear from around them.

But the cut-down of the trees cuts me. It’s like a senseless murder that makes the world a victim, but no one steps forward and acknowledges it.

I miss those trees already.

After all, they were the only things masking the scent of the chlorine-corn chip smell between the buildings. Perhaps my newly-stuffed up nose isn’t such a bad acquisition after all.

I don’t know why I thought being accepted into Chico early was going to make things less stressful for me. If anything, it’s doubled it.

Ever since I’ve been accepted, I now have an even larger weight hanging over my head. I have to pass Math 120 because I have to take Math 300 to transfer, and I don’t have time to repeat anything. This makes every test we take twice as stressful as it needs to be. I’m so paranoid that I somehow read the midterm grade sheet wrong, and I followed the wrong line across the page. Even though it said “A”, I can’t be sure that that is really and truly true.

It also doesn’t help that ME has gotten her welcome packet already, and all I’ve gotten is a postcard that said “thank you for your application.” And I’ve read through her packet entirely—there is no reason I shouldn’t have gotten mine, as it has a page saying “You must verify that you’ve completed the following classes to transfer.” Granted, she’s finished with all her GE credits, but I’m nearly there. I only need to finish up my Math to transfer, and two other classes to transfer as a junior.

Also, the paranoia is setting in about, well, nearly everything. We have to find a place to live, since campus housing seems to not be an option—dorm rooms were not built for English majors, there is no place to store books—and upperclassmen are not a priority for the college to find on-campus housing for. Which means we have to find an apartment while living two hours away; neither of us has ever had to find an apartment before.

And the financial aid situation… I’m not even going to touch that until the beginning of next year. All I know is that I can’t work while up in Chico, because I’ll be doing two programs at the same time, one which necessitates an internship. I won’t even have time to work it, even if I found one. So I have to make sure I get enough in loans and aid to pay for everything. Good think I’ve learned how to live on an impossible budget this year.

So the stress is mounting, and it’s all over stuff I didn’t have to think about before I got accepted. But with my leaving for Chico in just nine months (oh God, I didn’t realize it was that close), I’m going to have to get moving on this stuff, before it starts to eat me alive.

-”More That Useless,” MmHmm: Relient K

So, this is what it feels like to not have anything on my desk.

Just in time for Thanksgiving, or perhaps in spite of it, I have managed to finish off all projects due with no time to spare. My English paper, my nutrition project, and the odd assortment of tests have consumed me for the last two weeks, and this is the first time I’ve been able to breathe. For the first time this semester, I can finally say it: it’s all downhill from here.

Today, though is a much more special day than just the day that I’ve finally caught up on all my work.

No, it’s ME’s birthday, and she’s finally reached the age where everyone hates you (oblique Blink-182 reference). Finally, I have a friend I can shop for at the bookstore, and I have managed to get her a present that I know she’ll love, even if she’s read the book before.

She’s an evil person, to be sure. Pushing books on me like a crack dealer, saying she’s concerned that I shouldn’t borrow so many books because I’ve got stuff that has to get done, but oh, here, you absolutely need to read this one too. And somehow I’ve got another ten books that I didn’t start out with that morning.

I can excuse the evilness, though, since she can mock along with the best of them—me, I mean. We’re a force in class, even more so if we’ve both done the reading, and it’s hard for others to get a word in between us.  And the snide comments we make to each other doesn’t endear us to our classmates, either.

So, Happy Birthday, ME. May you have many long years of being  a snide, obnoxious English major ahead of you. Don’t ever change.

-”What’s My Age Again,” Enema of the State: Blink-192

I’m sure you’ve notice the semi-stock K2 making an apperance, but since it’s far past October, I thought it was time to try to get back to the old theme. However, I thought I might as well update to the latest K2 codebase, so I’m doing a live redesign. Mostly because I’m lazy

Sorry for the mess.

For the love of god, can someone please explain to me why I can buy a song off of iTunes for less than a dollar, but a ten second ringtone for my phone costs $2.49?

It just doesn’t make sense to me. And even if I bought the song from iTunes, there’s no possible way that I know of to make that song into a ringtone (I have a Cingular Razr), and so I’d have to buy it again.

Also really annoying? Buying a ringtone from my phone, but being unable to preview it before buying it. Yesterday, I had a chorus from an All-American Rejects song stuck in my head, and thank got the title of the song was in the chorus, or I’d have had no idea which song it was. Also lucky was that I happened to want the chorus for the ringtone, other wise there would have been no point to buying it.

Sigh. And this is the reason I hardly ever try to buy ringtones, never mind the last time I bought one it was a “polyphonic” which just sounds like crap. Why do they even bother selling those still? Are their people who like to hear that crap?

And lastly, why is it that the ringtones I pick always end up being annoyingly quiet, with no way to make them louder. I spent that cash to no hear my phone ring, apparently.

I get so frustrated with technology sometimes.

Ever since Ecto broke on my computer, I seem to be unable to get any sort of blogging rhythm going on.

It’s really quite lame, really, since one day it just stopped. I didn’t do anything, or change any settings, and still, borked. And I’ve been too busy/lazy (pick one) to actually head over to the forums and get an answer to my problem.

I don’t even know if I can think up anything good to blog about at this point. I mean, I could talk about the essay I just wrote (working title: Dante & Alice–BFF), the essay I’m about to start (working title: Why Hawthorne is a Hack–Shakespeare’s Fool in The Scarlet Letter), the group project M is doing all the work on because she’s run out of stuff to do in her other classes (working title: Jasper Fford the Genious–The Appearance of Legendary Characters in Modern Literature), or the Nutrition project I probably should spend time on (sorry, no working title).

But, all that stuff is rather boring.

Today, though, M and I were talking about a quirk unique to English majors. Imagine having someone say to you:

I just finished this book. You should read it. I really hated it.

If you’re an English major, you’ll ask them to hand the book over, and you’ll read it, trying to figure out why someone hated it when the story really isn’t half bad.

Why do we do this? To some, it may seem like we enjoy torturing ourselves. It’s a reasonable assumption, after all. We do read some stuff we hate (cough…shakespeare…cough) in the course of our studies, but it’s more than that.

You have to read what people hate, to see what makes a story so bad. I think it goes double for those who write, because they want to make sure that they don’t fall into the same trap, and have people going around telling other people that their book was horrible.

And so we read bad books. And in my case, I actively look for them. The worst, the better.

What book have you read, that you thought was absolute crap, and why?

- “Narcolepsy,” Third Eye Blind: Third Eye Blind

Notice: This post is a paid review of the Review Me service.

Oh, the things I do to make money.

I’m broke. I think everyone knows that by now. And next year, I’ll be even more broke, not working while I go to school full time. So, I’ve been looking for unobtrusive ways to make money with the blog, because I can do this at midnight, no problem.

I finally got my Text Link Ads code all set up, and this morning, I got an email from Review Me, informing me that my site was preapproved. I was a bit hesitant—after all, how many other sites were preapproved—but I thought I’d check it out anyway.
I clicked through, and I saw that it was a pay-for-review site. I signed up, of course, and I happen to like what I see. The service is split between Advertisers and Bloggers. A blogger submits their site, and their ranking is determined by Alexa, Technorati, and RSS ratings. Which totally explains why I’m only 2/5 stars. Considering that I could give a crap about those ratings.

Set up similarly to TLA, you make half of the money that your site earns. With a two-star rating, each review I write will be worth $60, and my payout will be $30. Also similar to TLA, I get to decide what I write the reviews about—sorta. Advertisers get to pick what site they want their stuff reviewed on. And then I get to decided if I want to review what the Advertiser is offering. So, I never have to write another review if I don’t want to.

Reviews must be at least 200 words long—not a problem for me and my need to be overly verbose—and they must be written within 48 hours of the blogger taking on the review. Then the review must be submitted to the Review Me site. This is important—Review Me isn’t going to go looking for the blogger’s reviews. As far as I can see, the reviews do not have to be positive, although I’m sure they would like them to be.

Review Me looks to be setting up a useful service, for people who want to get their products / sites reviewed, and matching up with people who like to review stuff (like me) who never get asked. So, I’ll be trying this service out, and I’ll let you know how it goes. And of course, I’ll be letting you know when I’m writing a paid review, so you can always skip it, if you wish.

That’s right. I got in. I’ve been doing a little happy dance all day long.

So, come Fall of 2007, I’m going somewhere I never thought I’d go–university, to get my B.A.

This feels almost as good as when I found out I was accepted to 9rules. I really wish it was next fall already.

So, I spent a good five minutes banging my head against my Nutrition book this morning.

Remember when I said it was a good thing that my test was today, instead of next week? Well, I lied.

Our tests are open book, open note, everything except open laptop. And last night and this morning I printed out everything for the chapters covered today. Class notes, the powerpoint presentations she uses in class, the quizes we took on the covered chapters. I had them all clipped together, shoved into a folder which also had my scantron forms that I needed for the test.

So of course, I left it sitting on on my bed.

Hopefully I won’t do very bad without my notes. I mean, I did remember my book, and I did read everything, take notes on everything, and take all the quizes.

But I haven’t been this irritated in a long time. I think I’m losing my mind.

Update (10:01): Maybe it was a good thing I didn’t bring my notes. I finished the test in 30 minutes–first in the class to be done–and I feel like I did pretty good on it. I won’t know my grade until tomorrow morning, though. I’m trying to be suitibly pessamistic, so that I don’t jinx myself into a bad grade.

Update 11/5/06: Ha! Without my notes, I still did far better than the class average. 90/100–which means I missed five questions–while the class average was 72.