Cal State system approves 8% fee hike for 2005-2006. Note: This is our FOURTH fee hike in as many years!

So what does it look like overall? Before all this fee hiking madness, the cost per semester to attend San Francisco State University was $913.00. After digging up some links and reference sources, I put together a small table showing the increase over the last few years in the Cal State system.

Net Increase (4 years): $694.44
Overall increase (percentage) from 2001-2002: 43%

References:

SFSU 2001-2002 Tuition: $913.00
http://www.sfsu.edu/~bulletin/noindex/0203/fee.htm

2005 8% Fee Increase:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2004/10/28/state1826EDT0141.DTL

2004 30% Fee Increase
http://www.calstate.edu/pa/news/2003/BOT0703.shtml

Alright, just completed a new tune. Check it out! 🙂 4 minutes, 3.8mb download.

Download “Out of Life.” Still need to lay down a vocal track at some point (I say that about all my songs) and get someone over to record a bass line. Other than that, it is complete! Check it out. 🙂

I’d like to take a quick moment by announcing the following:

These last few days, I’ve been watching some of the greatest baseball that I’ve ever seen. It was with great pleasure that I was able to watch the New York Yankees engineer one of the greatest chokes in all of sports history, blowing a 3 games to 0 lead.

I’m quite happy for the BoSox, and they definitely earned it!

Alright, in other news, my ankle is well on the way to recovery thankfully. I went to the emergency room on Friday night and got it x-rayed and they confirmed nothing was broken, then recommeded that I stay off it for the next few days. I can walk around almost perfectly fine now, but I still feel quite a bit of pain and there remains a rather large bruise on the bottom side of my ankle.

Despite the doctors orders, I “snuck” out of the house and saw Hot Water Music play on Sunday night with David and Michelle (MP3’s available on their site). That was the first time I’ve been able to see them. They put on an energetic show. I was surprised at how few people there were there. These guys are an extraordinarily talented band and it’s a shame they don’t get more respect. Next time they come around, I will definitely check them out again. I imagine the show would be quite a bit more fun without having a gimp leg. 🙂

This last week at school has been absolutely killer. Between work, writing papers, studying for insane mineralogy examinations and an endless attack of geology field trips, I have no free time! I’ve been getting 4 – 6 hours of sleep the past few nights and it is really taking a toll on me. Things should settle down momentarily after this weekend though, so I can catch up on some well needed rest, especially with the coming flu season.

For those who want some excellent reading material to put you to sleep at night, my report from the internship this summer can be found here.

Lastly, mark your calendars! Looks like I’ll be back down in California from Nov 5. to Nov 9, when I will be taking my car back up here with me! That will be awesome to finally have that up here.

Alright, 11:55pm, class in a mere 8 hours. Time to write more papers! I wonder what it’d be like to pull an all nighter and just go straight to school…

Last night I went to Berkeley to play volleyball again. Overall, it was quite a bad night. Too many egos on the court, too many people that think they are olympic caliber players and giving other people crap. We’re all there just to have fun. Regardless, I realize there are going to be ultracompetitive people in any type of sport you play, whether it is for fun or part of a league. Ultimately, I can shake that off and just ignore them.

So about 45 minutes into the night, I go up to hit a ball that is tight to the net, land funny, causing my ankle to roll. I hear a large “pop!” and on the ground I go! Oh yes, I sprained my ankle. I have never done that before and this hurts like nothing I’ve ever felt.

Despite the pain, I was able to walk on it a bit last night. Now today, I can’t even put *any* pressure on it! Luckily, David and Michelle were home and gave me a ride back to my place all the way from Berkeley. I don’t think there’s any way I could have made it home otherwise. I’m planning at some point to go to the school’s infirmary and get this thing checked out, just to make sure I didn’t break it. The only question is, how will I get to school and walk halfway across campus, all without crutches?

As luck would have it also, I should be leaving right now for a field trip in one of my geology classes. Obviously, there is no way I could have made it this weekend. I’m getting pretty good at missing these trips. Last year, I missed a major one because I came down with the flu and a sinus infection. Ugh! Go figure.

Anyway, here’s to hoping for a speedy recovery.

The past few weeks have been extraordinarily busy. There is probably a lot to write about that I will forget. Regardless, some highlights… or lowlights, of the past few days:

I had midterms last Thursday that I describe as being disasterous. Namely, it was my midterm for mineralogy that caused problems. It was a timed test where we had about 6 rocks in a tray, and we had 13 minutes to identify all the minerals in each rock before passing the trays on. About halfway through the test, I reach over to my folder and knock over a bottle of hydrochloric acid! It spills all over my desk and smites some of my notes (which start to fizz!). I had to take a few minutes to clean that mess up and didn’t end up finishing that tray of minerals. Then when the test was nearly over, I was playing with my knife (which we use to test the hardness of certain minerals) and ended up slipping, slicing my middle finger right open! The thing proceeded to bleed for the next 35 minutes until I finally managed to get home.

Luckily, those days are past. I think it’s a testiment to my klutziness. Anyway, we have a field trip for mineralogy for the next 4 days. The itinerary is to hit up the Sierras and Owens Valley. Among the stops we will be doing are Bridgeport, Yosemite, Bishop, Lone Pine and an area near Death Valley. Most of this area is like my second home, since Dan (sometimes Nic too), go there quite a bit for hiking/camping expeditions. Not to mention the countless other geology field trips I’ve been to in the Owen’s Valley. I’m looking forward to this though, almost completely packed for it. Just need to buy some food for this weekend in a little bit.

I also went to REI and with the intention of picking up a few things… and ended up buying a massive amount of crap. That place is like a drug dealer. So much good stuff! If it wasn’t for that place and Guitar Center, I’d probably be pretty well off!

Speaking of Guitar Center…

I found this interesting device made by Line 6 called the GuitarPort. Basically, it hooks straight into your computer and simulates a large number of different amplifiers and effects pedals. I figured for $99, it wasn’t that bad, and if I didn’t like it I’d just bring it back.

After playing with it for the last week, I have to say that this thing is AWESOME. Since it plugs directly into the computer, it makes it extraordinarily easy to record as well. I put together a small mp3 to show it off. The following example is about 1 minute long (1mb download) and features 4 different guitar tracks mixed together. Enjoy!

Out of the Way Demo Download. (1 minute long. 1 mb download.)

Alright, time to do some final packing and then I’m off for a few days!