This is going to be a crazy and adventurous blog posting. Be prepared!
An Epic Battle – Man vs. Vending Machine
I learned a nice little secret at school last week (though its actually fairly intuitive). If you want to quick and easy access to the student health office, just show them a lot of blood. I found this out by getting into a fight with a vending machine (and losing). For the second time that day, it STOLE a bag of chips from me. The first time I was able to hit the front of it and my chips fell down. Not so for the second time.
I tried hitting the front of it and the side of it. Finally I climbed on it to try and shake it, only to find that it is bolted to the floor! Evidently, while I was trying to shake it, my pinky finger caught an exposed sharp edge of metal along one of the corners and cut me deep. I didn’t realize it at first. I was scratching my nose, trying to figure out what my next move was, when I noticed out of the corner of my eye that my finger was red. I look down to find a healthy amount of blood oozing out of the cut (only then did it start to hurt of course).
I ran to the bathroom to wash up and ran down to the student health center and showed the people at the front desk. They rushed me to a back room, washed the cut up and patched it with some weird sort of super glue and tape stitches. It left me with a nice deep cut though. Here is a nasty pic of it the next day. 😉 Thankfully, it didn’t get infected at all and is well on its way to healing.
A Bad (But Good) Week!
So as far as academics are concerned, last week was rotten. I’m really not having fun in chemistry, despite the fact that I love all sorts of science. I am just not understanding it and not enjoying it. My lecture grade is going to be less than stellar unfortunately. The final is next week and I’m pretty horribly prepared. That’s what this weekend is for!
As far as the chemistry lab goes, the class can be interesting and I love the people. It’s a great group. Unfortunately I sometimes feel that I have NO CLUE what is going on in the class, despite studying and preparing for quizzes and lab practicals. A lab practical we had last week absolutely destroyed me. I really thought I was doing everything right. Then it came time to test the pH of our solutions, and not a single one matched up with what I calculated! Gah! So that put me in an amazing mood, as I spent the weekend thinking about how I was probably in danger of failing the chemistry lab.
However, I briefly talked to the instructor today and she said I currently have a B+ in the class. I am not sure how I have managed to pull that off (given the grades on the practicals and some of my quizzes), but that has put me in an amazing mood! Now if only my chemistry lecture professor would tell me the same thing (hah!).
Computers Suck
Alright, it’s embarrassing to admit, but my computer got a virus. Yes! I’m crazy vigilant about that crap, but this one was totally my fault. I tried to run some crack to unlock some software that I didn’t pay for (hey! I’m a poor college student…). Unfortunately, it turned out to be a trojan! I watched in horror as 10 icons suddenly popped up on my taskbar. I went to close the install program and run Ad-Aware and the computer locked up!
I figured it was nothing serious and just rebooted. Of course now my computer won’t even boot into Windows! After trying some various things, I just pulled out the original WinXP install disk and ran a repair installation utility. However it locked up in the middle of it and then prevented me from running it again (since the installation was now damaged)!
I pulled out an older hard drive, reformatted it and got everything running. Then I pulled the important documents and such off the old hard drive. So now I’m back in business, but what a waste of two days.
And now for some good news!
New Zealand
My New Zealand trip is now fully paid for! It kind of makes it official now. In less than three weeks, I will be off gallivanting around the countryside. I still need to book a hostel/room for the last three nights I am in New Zealand however. Our field camp ends February 7th and I’m not flying home until February 10th. So I’ll be spending a few extra days in Auckland, New Zealand before I come home. (Though from a few Kiwis I’ve recently spoken with, they find Auckland to be one of the more annoying cities to travel in).
I also received my passport last week as well! Of course I think it might
be the wrong one…
Hah, I kid. I really did get the right passport. For some reason, we have a passport from Iran lying around the house. I need to actually turn that in.
Also, a fellow geology student from SF State is going to the New Zealand field camp as well! She just signed up at the last minute. That’s quite cool, since there seems to be blocks of 2 or 3 people from different schools going. I think the number of people going on this trip is about 13.
As far as gear goes, I think I’m pretty much prepared. There might be a few more things to pick up before I leave, but I’m pretty sure that I’m set. All I have to do now is just hang in there for THREE MORE WEEKS! School is out in two weeks though (finals are next week). So close to being done.