I’m not sure what’s gotten into me lately or where I’m finding mass quantities of energy (it must be all those carbohydrates from the tons of pasta I eat), but I walked to school today. All the way from my house!

It’s just about 3 miles exactly. Then, I decided to walk home from school tonight. That is 6 miles of walking I’ve done today! It only takes about 45 minutes to walk that distance though, which the bus sometimes takes that long anyway, once you factor in time waiting at the bus stop.

Anyway, since Monday (when I first walked home from school, plus my late night adventure), I’ve walked or ran a total of 20 miles!

I even have ambitions to walk to (and from) school tomorrow as well. Another 6 miles! Perhaps even a run in the afternoon and then Michelle, David, Meghan and I are going rock climbing at the gym. This has definitely been an atheletic sort of week for me.

Perhaps I’m feeling guilty for all the junk food that I’ve been eating. Or perhaps I have some subconcious desire to get into shape for later this summer, when I may climb Mount Shasta with Meghan and her dad. Either way, it’s definitely been perfect weather to take advantage of this. I’m thrilled!

Anyway, I have a quiz to study for in the morning. Hopefully tomorrow, I’ll get around to writing about Dan’s visit this weekend and posting some pictures.

Alright, I downloaded a theme from another website and heavily modified it to get the interesting look you see now. I suppose it is still somewhat bland, but at least this time our whole page doesn’t look like it is in constant mourning for someone/something.

After I get the theme for the blog working properly, I will most likely move on to re-theming the whole site in this fashion.

However, my sister still says this looks rather boring and bland. I’m not sure how I can spruce it up… (figure out a way to add more graphics I guess)

A lot happened this weekend… but before I get to that, I guess I should start off by saying (especially according to other people), that I’m “pretty damn lucky to be alive or uninjured.” And I definitely owe David and Michelle A LOT. This all happened last night (and caused me to miss my Tuesday petrology class for the FOURTH WEEK IN A ROW!).

Anyway, my roommates decided to go to a bar in the Mission. I haven’t spent much time in the Mission district, but regardless, I thought it’d be fun. After a few drinks, I wasn’t feeling that social or wanting to spend much more money, so I decided to leave at 12AM. I told everyone goodbye and walked up the street to take the BART subway home. (more…)

Update: And yet here are some more cases! Perhaps I’ll just make this a running list. Anyway, in the latest news: 180,000 people had their personal data stolen from Polo Ralph Lauren and GM Mastercards.

Also added info on data theft from DSW Shoe Warehouse in March that I didn’t originally notice. 100,000 people affected in that incident.

People Affected So Far In 2005: 1,297,000 (more…)

I really should update the design of my website to less dreary colors. It’s kind of depressing… almost as if this page is in constant mourning or something. I’ll file that plan away when I have some more free time.

Anyway, as is becoming a Tuesday tradition, I missed my Petrology class again! Oh yes. What was the excuse this time? More faulty alarm clocks? Earthquakes? Fires? Famine? Power outages or a herd of angry buffalo? Nope. I woke up at 7 AM, thought to myself, “Hmm, I think I’m going to take the day off!” Yawned and went back to sleep. Wonderful! Probably not the smartest idea in the world however. Ugh. (more…)

Well my “academic weather forecast” for the next week or so calls for calm weather. All my pertinent assignments are turned in, presentations given and field trips carried out. I have a small quiz tomorrow evening in volcanology, but I’m not too worried about that (though I should be, the last test was a bear! Still managed to pull off a “B” though).

So to celebrate, I missed my petrology class today. Oh yes! What actually happened is that my alarm clock is a rancid piece of trash. For some odd reason, the snooze button doesn’t work anymore. However, I’m not going to let a wimpy little thing like the snooze button stop me from snoozing for another 15 minutes! So I’ve taken to just manually resetting the alarm clock forward 15 minutes and going back to sleep. That is dedication for you.

However, today I evidentially set my CLOCK forward 15 minutes and not my alarm clock. Unaware I did that, I went back to sleep (where I had some horrible dream about my teeth falling out). When I finally woke up, I thought “that was a REFRESHING 15 minutes of sleep! Wait… something must be wrong.” I look at the clock to see that it is now 10:05! (In actuality, it’s 9:50). Regardless, my class started at 8AM. So much for going to that.

Field Trip
This past weekend, our Quaternary Geology class had a field trip to Pyramid Lake, located in western Nevada. It probably ranks as one of the best geology trips that I have ever been on. A large class (especially for an upper division class in our program: 21 people), but everyone was just completely awesome.

In terms of stuff to see and work to do, it wasn’t bad at all. And all of it was definitely interesting, as we looked at deposits relating to an ancient lake called Lake Lahontan. Check out the photo gallery from the trip.

Also, I filmed an interesting video of us throwing a lighter into the fire. Oh yes. Probably not the smartest thing to do at 1 in the morning. Regardless, check out some looney college students. The video is a 7mb AVI file. Blowing Up Lighters

Until next time.

Spring Break is almost officially over. It’s definitely been nice to basically laze around for the past few days and be completely unproductive. That said, I still have two papers to work on that are due Wednesday, neither of which I have really started yet. Looks like that is what I’ll be dedicating today and tomorrow for!

Anyway, I flew home to my parent’s house for a few days in Southern California on Saturday and had the distinct pleasure of missing my plane! Totally my fault, since I misjudged the amount of time it’d take to BART across the bay. The person behind the counter told me I’d be put on a standby waiting list, but that all the flights for the rest of the evening were sold out! Luckily, the next plane had space (perhaps those people ran late as well?) and I was able to fly home an hour later.

I got to hang out with the gang every night I was down, so that was awesome to see them again. Of course this is the only time I’ll be able to go home this whole semester, so it’s kind of depressing that I didn’t get to spend more time there. It was definitely an awesome time of year. The orange groves are blossoming (at least what’s left of them before they’re torn down to make way for houses), tons of monarch butterflies are doing their migration as well, which was awesome to see. Just a bunch of awesome sights and smells.

I flew back up here on Tuesday and have been fairly lazy since then. We decided to hold a birthday-for-roommate/end-of-spring-break party at the place last night which was a wild success. David and Michelle came, as well as some of our friends from Southern California who were visiting. I’ll have to post some pictures later.

This past week hasn’t completely been a loss though! I applied for this internship yesterday, however it’s going to be quite competitive since there is only one spot open.

Anyway, time to start writing papers!

One more midterm to go! Got to school at 9am this morning… just got home! Oh yes. 15 hours today. Ugh. Might as well go to bed… last exam in roughly 7 and a half hours.

(Also, since a few people were curious… here is the banned page, as was described in an earlier post.)

So I’m leaving school today and walking up the platform to catch a train home. A little old lady is in front of me running up the platform. I notice that her backpack is open, so I jog up and catch her to inform her about this. As she pulls it off her back to close it, she drops a sweater and folder. Then she exclaims “OH MAN!!! I HAVE TO GET TO WORK!!!!” all while she’s trying to close her backpack (and having a bit of trouble). And then she starts wailing! “OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!! OHHHH NO. OHHHHHHHHH!” Then she picks up her stuff, gets on the train and continues to wail. And wail. And wail for the entire ride home!

Oh man! I’m sorry to have brought bad news to her life. 🙁 Good grief, just by the mere act of me talking to people, I can make them cry. That makes me feel great. 😛

I encounter the craziest people on these trains. Last year, another little old lady sat next to me on the ride to school and proceeded to tell me her life story… despite me having headphones on! And then she mentioned her boyfriend Jason. Then she would ask me “Oh! Did I tell you about my boyfriend Jason?? He is great!” Then a few moments later, “You know my boyfriend Jason? He’s great!” And then she proceeded to ask me again if she told me about her boyfriend!

So cook some popcorn and pull up a chair, and I’ll tell you about how I discovered a roommate’s obsession with downloading PORN!

Beware, this post contains massive quantities of computer sleuthing/nerdiness and might be boring to your average reader… (more…)