January 2003 Archives
Yeah, it has been a while, but I'm updating it now, so there. I was considering changing the font of the site to windings, but since my goal is to have people read, I opted to keep it with old Palatino Linotype.
I did some computer house-cleaning today, it seems to be running faster and it feels fresh and new. I love the feel of a freshly formatted computer, but I'll have to wait til I'm back in the states to do that.
I've been listening to music on loan from English Rob's collection. So far I really like the Best of Blur and the Manic Street Preachers Greatest Hits. I'm taking a liking to Cake as well.
I got some AirLetters for 40p at the post office today, it was actually a decent deal, all I have to is write my letter on this paper, then fold it up and mail it.
More tomorrow.
Ah, the week has come and gone, and the weekend that I love so much is here. It is currently raining here, but it is 3 in the morning, so it matters little... except that I was just outside! Just threw you a curveball, didn't I? I went out walking, after midnight... to Popeye's to get some food, because I was hungry, and they are open until 4 AM. Isn't this a great country that we live in? Oh, wait, I'm living in the great country,YOU are the one living in the country going down the crapper. No, I'm not "taking the piss" as my English friends like to say, America is sinking, and I would like to take time out of my busy Saturday morning to point out that REPUBLICANS ARE INCHARGE OF EVERYTHING! There should be nothing to stop the economy from bouncing back to the highest levels ever (ala the Clinton years). I thought that republicans pass laws to help businesses grow so that everybody (except the poor and blacks, and I guess gays are excluded too) can be better off. Maybe I was wrong. Shrub is cutting taxes even more, the country is losing money like crazy, the stock market is going down, and we are trying to pick a fight in the middle east. Today I saw the first sign that the war Shrubby wants more than anything in Iraq may not go down. The weapons inspectors didn't find anything at all that Bush could use to start this war. I was assured by the president and his staff that we knew 100% that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, but it seems that what I would guess to be the most funded "intelligence" agency in the world is unable to point to a map and send inspectors to see what we see.
Anyway, I got AIM finally to work, all I had to do was set the port to 6667, duh.
Well, it is really late, and I need sleep.
Well, my illness has only grown worse. I sneeze and sniff and cough, but I'll survive, hopefully. Now that I've signed up for human rights seminar, I have 5 hours of class on Tuesday, but I dropped POLI 327, which was too hard to stay in. 16 credits is enough. I feel too sick to write more, I should go to bed.
But see look at the collar, see it's fraying. Golden Boy is slowly dying. Each wash is brings him one step closer, that's what makes the T-shirt such a tragic figure.
I have the makings of a good cold coming on. I keep sniffing and sneezing, but at least I'm not stuffed up... yet. Being sick isn't cool, but I know that I'll get over it at some point. In other news, I just found out that the Lancaster University Student Union puts out a P2P system called LUSerNET and it is the best programme I've used in a long time. Kazaa sucks, and everybody knows it, with LUSer NET, one can get whatever files at really fast speeds from other computers on campus without fricking ads popping up all the time. Bush, WalMart and Kazaa all form my axis of evil.
I haven't posted anything in the past couple of days because my computer has been a little messed up, I've been having problems with Audio Codecs and the like, but I know how to fix it now, which is what matters. I'm almost sure I'm gonna drop a class since I think that 20 is too many credits, and I'm pretty sure it is going to be my hardest class that I'm gonna drop, Pols of Intl Institutions. The class is way over my head, and I'd rather take the class at UWEC instead.
I've noticed that my walls are quite empty, I should get some posters to put up or some pictures, because these yellow walls will be the end of me.
I was able to download the 2 episodes that I missed of West Wing, they were both good, and I'll need to get the latest one too, I think the show has taken a turn for the better.
Being rather late, I'm gonna head to bed, hopefully to fix this cold and get ready for class tomorrow.
FINALLY, there is a place where I can prove that I love freedom, and you can too, it takes like 4 seconds. By signing this letter, you will tell people figting for the U.S. Military that you 1) Love freedom and 2) Support them killing others in the name of freedom. Alright, I know you're dying for the link, so here you go, it's from the DefendAmerica
site that the DoD puts out, God bless them. If you want to read more about it, here's a decent article by a prof from Texas about the letter you can sign. |
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Decided to add the picture to the top for fun, so you can see my David Fincher room and workplace. I don't mind the color yellow, but painting the room that color? I think it should be a cool blue, I've always wanted to live in a room with like navy blue walls, but I'm not a huge fan of the military, so I end up with a blue that isn't anywhere near navy. I guess having dark walls is kind of depressing, but this yellow doesn't exactly cheer one up.
If you don't know, I live above a bar, and today is some big thing, people are dressing up and the like, and they are going to have a DJ playing music which I'm sure will be cool for them, but I doubt that it will sound that great up here, unless it is REALLY loud, then I'd be able to hear all aspects of the song, not just the thumping bass. Then again, I don't think I'd be OK with hearing that.
Just heard about finding the chemical warheads in Iraq, I'm sure Bush will demand that we go in now, but the warheads were empty, and therefore not a threat. Bush knows the war is a done deal, he's just waiting for the best time to go in. He isn't even pretending to be objective. So they tried to kill his dad, I'm sure the kids of some of the 152 people that Bush allowed to be executed in Texas are upset at Bush, but they aren't going to start a war over it. Bush is being very nice to N Korea, who have been quite hostile to the US in return, yet Bush thinks we can do this diplomatically. Whereas in Iraq we are the crazy ones screaming, Iraq is calm and we want nothing to do with diplomacy. Bush wants blood and he wants oil. Is a golden parachute such a bad idea? We give Sadaam $20 million, we tell him to move to South America with his family and tell him to never show his face again in the Middle East, and we'll let him live. That way we don't have to spend WAY more than $20 million dropping 'smart' bombs on our own troops, civilians, and sometimes actual soldiers, we get rid of Sadaam, we can put in whoever we want and claim that the people get free elections, we can drop the sanctions so that thousands of children aren't dying every month, and Bush can get the oil for really cheap, because that's what this is all about! The beauty of this plan is that NOBODY GETS KILLED. I know that Americans wouldn't die in a war over there (well, not killed by Iraqis, maybe killed by friendly fire or get cancer from DU ammo) but call me a freedom-hater, the lives of Iraqis are valuable too! I should note that I don't think that we should attack N Korea either, but we won't, they didn't try to kill Bush's dad. Sadaam isn't dumb (he may be stupid, but there is a difference), he wants to live, I know it may seem really wrong to just let a person who has done these evil things go, but it will save more lives in the longrun, as well as money.
Well, I'm gonna go to Spar and get some chicken, it is soooo damn good, I've had it almost every day this week!
OK, I'm just going to post this one bit in hopes that it actually works with the new comment thing. I am doing this cold, I have no idea how this works, so this is a first for me.
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Quick thought: I am the anti-WalMart, they hate the first ammendment (ie censorship of music) and I love it, they love the second amendment (which is incorrectly interpreted, but they don't care, they just love guns) and I could live a happy life knowing that some asshole isn't going to shoot me with some gun he got at WalMart. Also, I believe in fair wages and treating the employees that make it the biggest company in the world fairly is something a company should do, WalMart has a different philosophy. I also believe that competition, especially with small businesses, is important in the American capitalist system, it keeps prices low -- but WalMart can't handle competition so they drive everybody else out of business because they can afford to lower their prices, leaving people in many parts of America left with one choice. And it is a bad choice. Hmm, that thought wasn't that quick, well I had to say it for the record! If I could urinate on the grave of Sam Walton, I would, but then I'd have to go to Arkansas, and I don't think that anybody would notice nor really care. That's another thing, the money doesn't go back to the community, it goes to friggin Arkansas.
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Well, on with life.
So now I have all that crap finally up, I can get back to attempting to write a few times a day, but you know what it's like. I do have a lot more free time with the English school system now. I don't have any classes on Thursday because the lecture was canceled, yay for me. I think I'm gonna try to go into town tomorrow and buy a cell phone. Various things have happened in the past few days, I ate beef today, which I was going to try to avoid for the 6 months that I'm here. I got some Heinz ravioli, and nowhere on the can did it say that there was beef stuffed into the pasta except on the little ingredient label, boy that really ticked me off. Well, I noticed right away, and continued eating, I'd rather die of the off chance I get mad cow then let good ravioli go to waste. I have another can, can't throw that away either, so if I die from mad cow, we'll all know where I got it!
I read about Pete Townshend, well I think it is impossible for anybody to not hear about it over here, it is madness. I feel really bad for the guy, I know that what he did was quite wrong, but he's such a great and talented musician, one of my favorites. I guess the Who took some pretty big hits recently, and it is a shame that he'll probably be shunned into never making music anymore. I'm not going to defend him looking at child porn, but I think he should treated fairly in the justice system, and we should all forgive him and allow him to play the music I love so much. I'm kicking myself for not going to the Who concert when they were in Minneapolis this fall, I'll probably never get a chance again :(.
Woe is my internet connection too. For some reason what I can do is quite limited. I can use IE and Opera to 'surf the net' (haven't used that term in 5 years) just fine, and I can connect to MSN IM some of the time, but no more AIM, no FTP, basically no extras :(. I hope that within the next few days I'll find somebody who will know exactly what I have to do to get that stuff working, because MSN is driving me mad! As bad as AIM is to use, that's what all my friends use, and so most of my ties are cut to the states unless they use MSN (a few do) or I send them e-mail. I'm sure the reason why it doesn't work with the proxy, or firewall, or cache whatever here is because of AOL. Ooh, do I hate AOL. Almost as much as Walmart. There aren't Walmarts in the UK... yet, thank God, but they do own a chain, and I should find out the name of it so I can boycott.
This is really a nifty Blogging Program(me), it is a lot easier than the one I made for myself with Frontpage, but I still like my older one better, which can be viewed here.
Well, I'm gonna fiddle about, like uncle Ernie, well, not like him, but I'm gonna check out some other blogs, maybe get a feel for what I should be writing.
From 11 Jan --
Well, I just found out that students can smoke in our kitchens, which isn't good news. I just guess things are different here. I think there may be only one girl who does it, but there may be more. I registered for my classes yesterday, and I have to take a lot more than I thought I would. I'm taking 5 4-credit classes, each for 2 hours a week, meaning that 10 hours of class, and all of them involve me reading a ton for each one. Some have seminars, which is like a smaller group of 6-8 students where we meet once a week and talk with the professor about the topics we are covering, I think it will be neat, but very different. All they do is give us a list of books and chapters that are suggested reading for the week in the course, and we are just supposed to learn what we need to by June when we have our test. One test and one paper for all of my classes. I think all the papers are due on March 7th, and the tests are sometime during summer break.
I finally got an adapter for my laptop, the girl who lives next to me, Natalie, was nice enough to pick one up for me when she went into town. I also had her get me a hairdryer, which I needed. It's amazing how much reading one can do when there is no TV or computer. Well, now I have computer, but there are still huge gaps were TV used to be in my life, I don't know how I'll survive. I finished both the About a Boy and the Election book in the last two days, which was good. Maybe I'll read more in the UK. I think I may have to buy a radio out here because they generally play pretty good stuff. I plugged in the digicam, so I'll spend a few minutes, and put pictures of my dorm on the site. They are both featured to the right, I hope they convey that my room is a lot like a prison cell, but I like it, only one person and the bed isn't lofted, talk about civilized. I have to go through 4 doors to get to the bathroom, but I don't really mind. I need to buy speakers because the speakers on the laptop aren't that great unless I turn the music down, and it is fine for playing music at a low level, but that isn't how music is supposed to be played, is it? I guess the pictures that I took aren't up to date. I have everything unpacked, and I moved the bed to the same wall as the desk when I discovered that I really couldn't get up from the desk because the bed was blocking the way. Perhaps I will move my bed later so that I have a better view of the other dorm and parking lot outside my window. Oh, and there's a street lamp directly out the window, I'm on the second floor, so it adds a nice yellow glow to my room, which if you can't tell by the pictures, is also painted yellow. I really don't mind, stucco is a move up from cinder block. I also like having the sink in the room, I've already had more water to drink in the past 4 days that I've been here than all of last semester, so that's an improvement.
I'll try to take some pictures of campus, it is quite cool, but it is a long walk to get to the south part. I am way north, and there was a little lack of planning when they were building Lancaster U, but I still like it.
I found out that is a lot like Eau Claire, about the same sized city, same sized school, and everybody seems to have down-syndrome... Juuust kidding, Brits aren't nearly as slow as people from Wisco. The only thing that is different is that the parties start and end later here than in Eau Claire. A typical Friday night starts at 9 PM at UWEC and ends at 10:30. Here the bars and clubs don't even open until 10, and people don't even start showing up until 11, leaving at God knows what time. But if you need to drink before that, you can always go to the bar directly below my dorm room. Yeah, I just figured out yesterday that my room is directly over the actual bar, but I can't hear the last call bell or anything like that, but it is cool to know.
I'm in the dorm where they put about half of the exchange students, probably because it is so far away that regular students want nothing to do with it. So far, the only food that I've made for myself was sandwiches, with a really good salami, mayo and a really spicy mustard, and I learned after my first one that you can only put a tiny amount on or I'd kill my tastebuds.
There is a coach (bus) trip tomorrow to some town a couple of hours from here, and I think I'm gonna go, even though I forgot to sign up, although it shant be a problem.
Since I have the pleasure of having a parking lot view, I've noticed that aside from students, most people in Lancaster have rather new, rather nice cars. I wonder why because anywhere in America you go you are bound to see that most people have cars that I'd never want to drive, but about 90% of them here look really cool.
From 9 Jan --
Well, the first day went really well, we had an orientation of sorts, and we register tomorrow. I know fully understand what the summer term is for. They are mostly for writing papers and studying for the final exams from the term before. I'm not sure exactly what I'm gonna sign up for tomorrow, but I'll work it all out tonite. Still no internet yet, I have to get a LAN cable and get an adapter for the comp as well as my network/e-mail password. Hopefully all by tomorrow.
We tried shopping today with little success, but atleast I got soap, the one thing I really needed. I'll still have to get a few other things, but I'll try tomorrow. It is so far so good here, but it gets dark so early here, I guess we get the same amount of sunlight as most of Canada, which isn't much. I found out today that my floor is inter-gendered, which will be different and probably pretty nice. So far I haven't seen a single guy on my wing, what a shame... I have all my stuff unpacked, and I'll upload pictures of the room as soon as I get the internet hooked up. We went to an Italian place for dinner, it was quite good and rather cheap, they had a happy-hour dinner special. We took the bus, it took about 20 minutes each way, for 1.50 pounds roundtrip. I'll figure out what I'm gonna do for classes tomorrow, then I think I'll meet some of the natives on my floor. I forgot that I brought my Smallville poster, I think I'll put that up now, I wonder if they get that show out here. I also saw that there is a TV in the kitchen down the hall from me, but I still don't know exactly where my room is.
From 8 Jan --
Well, the trip is so far so good. I left at 8.30 this morning, and I am writing this as we are flying over the Atlantic. The guy I'm sitting next to is great, he insisted that I have my first legal beer with him, then with dinner he insisted on another. Needless to say, I found out he was an alcoholic. He must have had 8 or 9 little bottles of Vodka and a couple of beers, and he bought a couple hundred dollars worth of hard liquor duty- free. I found out that his name is Tommy Nelson and he's from Belfast. He wasn't the most cheerful guy, but he did make this the best flight I've ever had. The plane was packed, and it took forever to be served, but I had the best airline meal I've ever had. Thanks Air Canada. My flight from Minneapolis to Toronto was just a 52 seater, and there no more than 15 people on the flight, so no wonder Air Canada is having problems. The Toronto airport wasn't as nice as I thought it would be, but the London airport is great, it is clean and looks really nice. It is snowing out now, quite a bit. It was really cool flying into the city, and Dublin looked really nice right before sunrise. I am totally wiped out, I could hardly sleep on the flight from Toronto, and it feels like it is 4 AM, but it is really 10. I'll sleep an hour on the British Midlands flight to Manchester, and another hour on the train. I am getting rather sick of travel. There is an English family here that I overheard was kept two extra days in the states because American overbooked their flight, and they received no compensation at all. The flight attendants for BMI wear the strangest hats, kinda like bullfighter hats. Not very appealing. I love hearing the natives speak, they're a very plain people, and there ain't no shame in that! I love walking by the Asian groups touring together and they all have the EXACT same bag. Like 20 of them lined up in a row. They were nice bags too. Things seem quite costly in the airport, but what airport is cheap? I got $7 worth of duty-free chocolate on the flight, the Toblerone stuff, never tried it before, but I have a lot of it now! I really want to just go to bed right now, but I have at least another 3 or 4 hours of travel ahead of me, I hope I can take a nap before the orientation tonite. Everybody here has a cell phone, and they all play games on them. Hmm, maybe I should eat now, but I really don't know if I'm hungry. It should be noted that I used a trolly and rode a lift today, how exotic! I got sick of the whole French thing in Canada, EVERYTHING took twice as long. They had to show the news twice once in English, then in French, why don't they just dub it? Eh, doesn't matter. I'm going to eat!
