It's a good way to put it, I'm sure. Time hates everyone. You never have enough time when you need it, and you'll have way too much of it when you don't. When it counts that time goes by fast, it goes by slow. You want to enjoy something, it flat out disappears. It's a cruel, abstract quantity. Something that well, I'm definitely learning to treasure more and more.

I posted a blog about a week ago, as I was in severe distress. Me and my girlfriend were having a rough patch and it was seriously getting nasty, to the point of losing more than just her, nasty. Lots of drama was going on, but as I sat and thought about it, it really didn't have a place here. Or really anywhere, for that matter. The last week and a half has been real tough for me, but what matters is that now everything is alright.

By some miraculous effort I actually made it on here during E3 week, even with everything going on. As I did that though, I realize more and more that time is really, extremely precious. Technically, my summer is basically 2/3's over. In about a month it'll be back to business, and no more long days of leisure. I'm not too worried though... things worked out last year, and I'm hardened by my experiences.

So for now, I'm enjoying every last second of this.

I got lazy with the title, obviously. First things first. No, step away from the shotgun people.

I've been gone on well... nothing all that interesting. I will start by saying that my last fiasco with the cable company ended well... a few days later we got bored with their crappy service, and well, canceled it. That was well, kind of foot in mouth for me seeing as I had just gotten my internet back only to have it get taken away again.

A few days later, new connection, new company, new everything. But that's not what I've been up to. In between that and now, I've simply been hunting for a job, only to realize that the part time job market is completely screwed up in my area. I applied at 4 different places, no job, no call back, no interview. Absolutely nothing. Granted, I have zero job experience, but I have to start somewhere right?

Anyways, as my money slowly trickles away, my parents aren't necessarily swimming in it. Last week the air conditioning system broke... for the final time. Not sure if I ever mentioned it here or not, but the system here has without fail, broken every single summer since we moved in. It means that for a few days we always spend hot days and nights in the sweltering humidity and never ending heat.

Only thing is, this time it broke last week, and it got fixed yesterday. That's another thing, it always stops working on a weekend, and AC services make it virtually impossible to get anything fixed on a weekend. So on Monday, there's this erratic scramble to find someone to fix it... fast. Deciding it was the last straw for the cursed AC system, we opted for a totally new one... and the soonest anyone could get it installed was Thursday. So well, I spent most of the last week out of my house. In all it was an expensive turnout... around $6250.

So here I am, back at my house. Thankfully, air conditioned.

As for today, which is the 4th of July... a good excuse as any to have some fun. See you around people!! (Yes I'm back if you can call it that)

Well, I pretty much died there for a time didn't I?

Yeah well, as soon as I said in my last blog that I finally got some higher speed internet (rated at 5 mb/s) it proceeded to turn to 0 mb/s. The stupid thing stopped working hours after the cable guy left, and it took those lazy bums nearly 2 weeks to finally send a guy out to fix my internet. There was a short overlap with my old service, but once that was gone, I was internetless.

But you see, this is the worst part: everyday I would call and they would always say "A technician will be there today to fix your internet." And so, believing them, I waited another day. Another day goes by, no one comes. Call again... "Sorry for the inconvenience, but a technician will definitely be there today." Okay, someone actually comes this time!!! They "fix" the problem, which was supposedly down the street on their lines.

Fast forward to the next day, the internet stops working again. Call again, the cable company says that there's been a power outage and it will take some time for the service to start again. They feed me that crap for 2 days, and then I call again saying it's still not working. "Alright, we'll send someone over tomorrow." No one comes the next day... Memorial Day. Okay, fine, good enough excuse.

Monday-Thursday, they said "Someone will be there today." No one ever came. But please tell me why the hell it then took you 6 days of calling your sorry customer service to get them to finally say "We guarantee someone will be there on Friday by 8 PM." And this is after threatening to cancel because the bill for the service is due the next week already. But Guess what? No one shows up Friday. *slaps forehead*

About to give up here, we wait until Saturday when at 3 PM someone finally shows up, and promises to have the stupid internet working by the time he leaves, for good. About 4 hours later, he comes back saying it's up and running, and after a restart, it does indeed work. You can imagine, there are 2 conflicting reactions after this happens.

REACTION 1 - Pop a cap in this technician's head

REACTION 2 - Worship the technician at his feet

Neither happened just so you know, but well... my internet works, and this debacle is over.

After that rantish Calculus based blog before this one, I bet some of you are like "Well, did he get out of school or did he die or something?" Well, to answer that, no I haven't died or been grossly incapicated by some freak accident. Or well, you can call my Calculus final a freak accident but I'm not getting into that... not at all.

Anyways, things are generally good for me, the last two weeks have been really busy though. I had to pack my things and move out of my dorm, and then go back home. That wasn't too bad though, except carrying all the things to the car... not really too much fun. It was kind of odd leaving my university, because I had spent the vast majority of the last 9 months there... and yet not have any sort of longing for it.

As for what I've been doing for the past few weeks... as for getting a job, Best Buy essentially pleaded the whole cold shoulder thing, and never called me back about my application. In fact, neither did they for my girlfriend... who had way more of a chance of getting a job there than I did. So that quickly became a dead end, and I've yet to apply elsewhere. But every day I realize more and more that I can't really hold myself up with little to no money. Even living with my parents, it's just not the same anymore.

First of all, my car. I actually have one this summer, and well that means one thing: gas money. I know you're tired of hearing people groan about them, but it becomes a vice around my neck because as a poor, non-working college student... well, you're about as poor as you can get without actually being poor. And filling up a tank once every 2 weeks or so, at about 45 bucks a pop... yeah.

Aside from money troubles, nothing else is really plaguing me right now. I'm pretty much taking things day by day, not really giving much of a certain part of a rats anatomy about the fact that I have to go back to school this fall. Earlier today, I actually got some faster internet installed at my house (*sigh*, again my parents house... fine) via cable, and it's decent. DSL was beginning to not be able to cut it anymore, plus my DSL provider was beginning to get greedy and kept raising rates on things...

My current connection is rated at about 5 MB/s, which isn't too bad, but not lightning fast as one would hope. Now, I guess it's time I use this faster internet on something a little more worthwhile than babbling on this blog.

One quick thing though: I can't promise too much on activity. I come on everyday but my life is getting more erratic at the moment (in a good way though!) so who knows how long this "dead" state will last. Just know that I continue lurking!!!

So I'm currently sitting here, procrastinating my studying for my Calculus 3 final exam tomorrow morning. Don't worry, I've spent the vast majority of the weekend studying for it but I thought it might be helpful for my brain to actually rant about some things. Specifically, the purpose behind this is to hear from the intellectual minds of GameSpot (or rather, just see if anyone besides cell knows what the hell I'm talking about) and to see what my take actually is on this craptastic set of courses and their overall meaning.

If you were expecting a regular blog, just skip to the bottom of this section... haha.

First of all, I wonder... why does Calculus have such a negative vibe to it, especially when referred to outside of high school/college c*assooms and supposedly, in a workplace that needs to use it? (I say supposedly because as much as everyone tries to convince those undergoing Calculus courses, it doesn't form a clear picture as to how it actually has real life applications) Well, I guess you first have to handle the whole plethora of people who are just not math oriented.

Besides that, why does even the word Calculus strike fear into even math oriented people sometimes? Well, I guess we take a look at what learning Calculus really means. In essence, what it's about is starting with simple, mathematical properties discovered by (essentially, a bunch of intellectual dead guys) and making them more complicated. And what prompted these old dead guys to want to make things more complicated? What's his face, Newton and whoever else decided you needed to explain why an apple falls from a tree... things like that.

So by this point, you can imagine what's happening. These guys then go in, and over the next few hundred years, psycho-analyze every single theory, hypothesis, and hunch ever spewed out by those before them, coming up with their own to eventually carve out what we know as Calculus. Doesn't sound too hard right? Wrong. Nowadays, you gotta take in, absorb, and use these discoveries, cramped together and vomited back up in the form of textbooks, in order to accomplish... what?

I know I can't list every profession that will use Calculus in their lifetime. Supposedly, it's a lot of them. However, look at the difficulty surrouding learning it all. First of all, try high school. It's hit or miss, you'll either get it, have to work at it to get it, or will be eaten alive. Then try college... your greatest second chance to learn it, complicated by language barriers, crappy textbooks, and the ever present procrastination and laziness bug. Fail at that, then what?

You either contribute to the "I hate/can't understand Calculus" crowd, or become another math nut who's life goal is to have another theorem or something named after them, to make up for their failures in undergrad studies. Okay, enough of the crazy one sided rampage... I think I'm just trying too hard.

Point is, sifting through what others have learned in the form of a textbook or something else, is pretty much the basis of learning in life. So Calculus really isn't all that different from everything else... you're just learning things from someone else, which is what you do your entire life. It's just that Calculus is optional. XD

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After saying that, I can relax now. I realize that in life, there are some things that you don't ask questions about. Like seriously, tell me when I'd use these certain Calc 3 techniques/properties/insanities in real life: the curl operator, a gradient vector, the divergence theorem, LaGrange multipliers, Green's Theorem, Stokes' Theorem... etc.

What's the best answer for that?

Some day.

So here I am on the eve of the infamous "dead week" here. The week before I plunge into death. No not really. It's a term simply given to a week of insane cramming and stressful (or, if either you are THAT prepared, or so unprepared that you're doomed, that you don't stress over it) studying before final exams. Enough on that though, if I barely seem alive for a week or two, you know why.

As soon as they're over though, I have to move out of my dorm and go back home. I will say though, this semester has really redefined my definition of "home-sweet-home". Particularly, it's because of my girlfriend, and the long distance relationship behind it. Not to get all mushy on that (that should be reserved for a whole different blog) but it changes everything on how I look at this summer.

First of all, I just applied for a job at my local Best Buy. This wouldn't be worth blogging except for the fact that it's actually the first time I've applied for a job. Yes, gasp all you want. A 19 year old who's never had a job? Never even applied for one? Quite seriously though, it is but I have had my reasons. Those reasons however, are quickly disappearing as I shed off every limitation of my teenage years.

What does this really mean for me? It means that if I accumulate enough money from this and that I don't go insane with spending this summer, that I might actually be able to afford a console!!! I think at this current moment in time, I'm amazingly unbiased in my opinion of the 3 current consoles. Only time will tell what I actually end up getting, but hopefully sometime this summer I'll get my hands on something.

Of course, that equals a bit less time here. But no big deal right? I've come to terms with myself that I'm a lurker 2/3 of the time, and a poster 1/3 of the time. So no fears... if I know myself, I'll be here someway or another just as much as I normally would.