Wednesday. So this is the last day I'm posting. The computer is staying home, as mandated by the Gods of Vacation. The comments section is finally worked out, so I can finally figure out if anyone is reading this thing. That being said, I am going to post this top ten list of my self-proclaimed Top Ten Songs I've Been Listening To Lately. Email me if you want to hear them, or just grab them off of your favorite file-stealing service (though I'm not condoning that in any way). Wish us well on our trip, and I'll talk to you all when I get back. Oh, to all you Bay Area people, turns out my trip out there got postponed, so I won't be able to hang with you all. I'll see you when you get back, though!

The List(in no particular order)

1.) "Friends in High Places", Micah Green
2.) "Third Planet", Modest Mouse
3.) "Drown" (acoustic version), Son Volt
4.) "New York City", Moe
5.) "Ballad of Carol Lynn", Whiskeytown
6.) "Get Over It", OK Go
7.) "Farther Down", Matthew Sweet
8.) "Reasons Why", Nickel Creek
9.) "Back to You", John Mayer
10.) "Little Kids", Kings of Convenience
posted by Rich at 11:36 AM Comments

 
Tuesday. Two rants for today. The first is on design classes. While I don't mean to offend my comrades in the interaction design program at CMU, or those with a design background, are there ANY grading criteria for these classes? I was taking what I believed to be a rudimentary class in typographic design. I figured out the way to do well in this class early: just do whatever the teacher says when she critiques your work. I followed suit, and apparently it worked. Much better than on the first assignment when I ignored a few criticisms and got the lowest grade in the class. Imagine the hit my ego took. So I check my grade in this class today, and I got a B. Its not earth-shattering. It was more of an "Oh" feeling. Guess I just can't get those fonts right. My second rant is on Ryan Adams, who has been proclaimed by Willie Nelson and Elton John to be the coolest person alive. Michelle and I were listening to a track off of his new album "Demolition" yesterday and she said that she liked it, but it was annoying how he pronounced certain words and phrases. I told her he could pronounce them anyway he damn well pleased because, well, he is Ryan Adams, and he's the coolest person alive. She said "I thought that was you, though". I told her that in the recent rankings I had dropped to number two because of my blog. This is apparently the source of much criticism from her family, who are not the blogging type (i.e. geeks). I digress. Time to hit Subway for $3.99 Footlongs!
posted by Rich at 12:09 PM Comments

 
Monday, I think. So we have reached a milestone with this pup of ours. Bilbo is now consistently sleeping through the night, which after two and a half months of waking up three or four times a night is a welcome event. Of course, we found him to be completely resistant to our crate training attempts, and thus he sleeps on a towel somewhere in between Michelle and I. This is fine and all, except there is an overwhelming fear that we will crush him. In other news, I am trucking along on a lot of work for Ovo, as I intend to do very little work in Singapore (actually, no work). Oh yeah, my professors in HCI Methods decided to play a nice prank on me. They posted grades for our final on the internet a few days back. The final was worth 25 points out of what was originally 105 points, and has steadily dwindled to a mere 90 points. This makes the final worth about 35% of my grade. So you can imagine my surprise when I signed on to check my grade, and found I had earned 12.91 points out of 25, for a percentage of 52 or so. My aspirations for MIT and a 4.0 GPA came to a crashing halt. Pardon? "Blasphemy!", I exclaimed, though only the pooch could hear, and he did not reply, surprisingly. After a number of hours of making my classmates feel bad for me, I investigated the matter with my professor, Bonnie John, and found it to be nothing more than an addition problem on their part. My "A" being saved, I went home and passed out.
posted by Rich at 9:41 PM Comments

 
Sunday Morning. Relatively Early. This weekend has been somewhat uneventful. I got a new electric razor yesterday. I almost succumbed to the marketing vehicle of "007" and bought the Norelco Spectra, better known as James Bond's Official Electric Razor of Choice. I instead settled for an 80 dollar one that made me think "why am I spending 80 dollars on a razor?". In other news, four days until Singapore! Get your orders in now :)
posted by Rich at 9:00 AM Comments