When Life Gets in the Way of Living

School is starting to get rolling again; no more coasting through the first few weeks. I haven’t done much this week except for school and work. My car has been giving me problems for the past month or so and I haven’t been able to figure out what it was. Monday I went and got an oil change then had them do a fuel injector cleaning thinking that might be the problem, but that didn’t help any. Thursday night my brother came down and graciously loaned me his car for Friday so I could put mine in the shop. They found out it was the EGR (Exhaust Gas Recirculation) Valve which was stuck open. So when I was at idle, non-combustable exhaust fumes were recirculating in my engine preventing the pistons from firing correctly. I did get it fixed, but it cost around $450. One of my friends mentioned that it might be under warranty, and sure enough it is a known defect in Honda Accords and the warranty has been extended to 8 years of 80,000 miles. Hopefully I can get Honda to reimburse me for most of it.

I’ve started looking more seriously for jobs. As most of you know, I’m planning on moving to Utah after graduation, so I’ve been looking in the Ogden, Salt Lake City, and Provo areas primarily. There is also one company in Colorado I’d like to work at, but it will depend how much they offer over what I get in Utah because it is located in a little (pop. 5,000) ski resort town (Avon, CO) that has an extremely high housing market and cost of living. I think it would be a really great place to work, though, so I’m going to apply for several positions and see what they offer.

James called tonight and we talked for about 45 minutes. I hadn’t heard from him since he left Austin last December, so it was nice to hear where he was working and what his plans are. I’m glad he finally gave me a call because I don’t do a very good job of taking the initiative for reconnecting with my friends that have moved away or I have lost touch with. I’m usually so busy with my own day to day commitments I neglect staying in touch with my friends who I really enjoy talking with.

Fewer than three months are left in the semester and I really need to make sure I take care of everything to graduate this semester. Because I didn’t retake a class at UT that I took through the community college in high school, I didn’t have the required 1 hour of Texas Government, so I have to take it through correspondance. I finally got them to activate my account this week, but it looks like a lot of work, so I’m going to have to make a big effort to get everything done in time. I’ve also got to do some stuff for my internship class to get credit for that.

I’m going to use this weekend to finalize my resume, get a detailed one up online, and write some cover letters. I’ll start applying to several places this week and see where everything turns out. I really like to plan and research everything before such a big life event, and with a job being a big question mark, choosing where exactly to live and everything is impossible. I’m looking forward to sleeping better after so much uncertainty is resolved. I also need to make sure that wherever I go, I don’t make the same mistake I tend to make everywhere else – overcommitment. Both prospective places allow me to take more time for what I really enjoy – skiing – but if I end up working 90 hour weeks, I’m really not going to have time to go skiing, try new things, and explore my new home.

America, the Delusional

This is somewhat old news, but with the anniversary of 9/11 being today, I felt a need to share this:

“A third of Americans suspect 9-11 government conspiracy”:http://www.scrippsnews.com/911poll

Let me summarize:
In a recent Scripps/Howard poll, 36% of respondents overall said it is “very likely” or “somewhat likely” that federal officials either participated in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon or took no action to stop them “because they wanted the United States to go to war in the Middle East.”

How delusional can this country be? Where are people getting this stuff? Have Americans been so brainwashed by the media or some other influence that they believe the US government would 1) blow up an icon of American beliefs and kill 3,000 of its own people, and 2) blow up its own military command post, the Pentagon?

It gets worse…
The poll also found that 16 percent of Americans speculate that secretly planted explosives, not burning passenger jets, were the real reason the massive twin towers of the World Trade Center collapsed.

People are still finding ways to look past all scientific evidence to believe crazy stores like that. The source? In addition to all the benefits of meaningful communication, technology allows for easy and cheap diffusion of pie-in-the-sky ludicrous ideas that previously wouldn’t have made it past the first mailroom clerk in an editorials department. Cheap video production and distribution also gives propaganda an easy outlet. “Case in point”:http://www.preferrednetwork.com/html/9-11_videos__dvds__books.htm

I understand many people blindly hate Bush and I know this emotional outrage can not be fought with reason; it just spreads and spreads. I also know that most of those, on both sides of the aisle, who are name calling and bashing are primarily concerned with how much power they can usurp from the people. But when people are so dense that they blindly believe what their closest talking head says, our country is in dire straits.

A resolution

For far too long I have been one to procrastinate on everything. From starting 10 page research papers 6 hours before they are due to waiting to pay for registration until it was due and missing the due date, I have always waited until the last minute for absolutely everything. It’s not so much that I forget but I usually (in my mind) have more pressing issues to deal with at the moment. Most of this stems from never really having a need to get organized or do much planning in advance. Those papers that do wait until the last minute tend to turn out as A’s, vacations planned at the last minute turn out great, and tests I forget to study for usually turn out alright.

However, in my quest for continual life improvement I am resolving to become more organized and procrastinate less. I realize that it would be impossible for me to become completely organized or even make sure everything was done the day before it is due, but I’m going to make an attempt to _improve_ at least. I’m going to start with school. Unfortunately, there isn’t a satisfactory system of keeping track of schoolwork in my opinion. I’ll just have to create one… In the coming weeks I will begin the first steps of what I hope will allow countless students to improve their performance, learning, and future application of classes taken in whatever level of school they may attend.

A new beginning

I decided to revive my blog after reading “An Army of Davids by Glenn Reynolds”:http://www.amazon.com/Army-Davids-Technology-Ordinary-Government/dp/1595550542/sr=8-1/qid=1157936573/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-2380695-6771249?ie=UTF8&s=books. I can’t say enough good things about this book; once I started reading it Saturday night I coulnd’t put it down. It was a very inspirational and empowering read – emphasizing how technology has allowed the small guys to act big. No longer are large corporations or governments the most efficient organizations for production. With the distribution of computers and the internet, Reynolds envisions a return to a sort of cottage industry of creative production dominating the economy. Just as so many Web 2.0 startups have proven, possibilites for regular Joes (or Davids) are endless with cheap computing power and other resources previously only attainable by large organizations.