Nigg.

Yeah, so since school started nearly two weeks ago, I haven't written anything about it or complained yet. Not that it matters...

So I hate my math class because it's so early and keeps me from staying up late Sundays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays. Other than that, it's the same class I had last year with more explanation and less Ish. My TA looks like a high school student.

If it's a Tuesday or Thursday, I go home now. If MWF, I have TWO FREAKING HOURS in which there is nothing to do. Meh. Really screws up a routine... None of the food places are open except McCrapper and Chick-Fil-A so I usually get my lunch from the breakfast menu at the less communist of these establishments, read the newspaper, and nap for an hour.

Film! Good class. British professor. Interesting curriculum and movie showings every Monday evening. But there's a "unit" on Stallone, Norris,, and Reagan and the "remasculation" of America: "The worst film I'm making you watch for this class, without a doubt, is Rambo: First Blood Part II."

ENES100 is okay. The task is to build a hovercraft that maneuvers autonomously a special course. It's like botball without LEGOS (except for the RCX... and sensors...). We've been broken into teams and subteams and on mine is a Chinese guy just as cynical as I am who has taken programming the past 4 years, and two girls who I don't think know much about rigging the sensors or programming the controls. But whatever. I spend 4 hours a week doing this stuff and 1 hour in a lecture taking real notes on fluid mechanics and thrust/propulsion and electricity.

Programming. It all seems vaguely familiar... could be that it reminds me of this class I took four years ago that covered the exact same material but was taught by better teachers, but I don't know. So we're using Eclipse, which those of you from Coggins' AP Programming course will remember as the worst needlessly-complicated piece of shit compiler that we've ever used (In order to NOT use it, I wrote a few of my programs in NotePad and compiled it from the Command Prompt). But the desks in the room have electrical outlets built-in, which allows me to watch anime during class without draining my battery.

What else... Inventis? This "Prestigious program" thing is the wierdest "class" I have. It lasts for one hour every week, except this week (we have a two-hour dinner in the Student Union), a few weeks from now (we spend two hours in TerpZone occupying half the bowling lanes and a number of pool tables). There is no final, but we are required to create a poster with markers and glue and magazine clippings and present it to the class.

Yeah so that's about it. I have so much free time now that I can actually work on my movie (by "work" I mean, "sit around doing nothing because I'm too lazy to make").

Powerage (with a few more letters)

A recent call to Pepco revealed that as of around mid-day Friday, "There has been a power outage in the Colesville area". But driving around in the Colesville area, I learned that the automated phone message could have been more, much more specific. So far as I know, there was only one street without power, and you can probably guess which one.

Friday I missed one of my classes because I couldn't find the building. And I spent nearly an hour and a half walking through rain and cold. Funny thing is that I approached two campus police in the Kim engineering building and asked if they knew where the other engineering building was (a fallacy in itself: UMCP has maybe 5 engineering buildings) and they replied that they didn't know. One of them went out to his car and got on the CBS, and the other alked to me a bit before also wandering out to his car. I did gather from him that I should try the engineering building behind Hornbake Library, so out I went. Turns out he was mistaken; it wasn't Engineering but Plant and Animal Sciences. Oops! And being 30 minutes late, I figured two more 10-minute walks couldn't make up for 10 minutes of class. I promptly resigned myself to the Student Union where I played DDR for the next hour.

At Bubble Bubble I got the call alerting me to the electricity-less status of my street and came home in the dark. I fell asleep at 8.

Saturday morning I ate McCrap for breakfast and Chipotle for lunch, and damn, I feel like a Korean (I'm such a fatty =( ). But from the nastiness of fast food I snatched a temporary victory. I saw three movies consecutively: Snakes on a Plane (4th time), Crossover, and Crank. Ask me about them later; I shan't detail the experience here.

Early this morning as I was falling asleep I noticed the digits on my clock had lit up and my fan was whirring away. No sooner had I sighed in relief than I heard a freaking explosion at the end of the street and the blinking and whirring stopped. A few dozen truck rumblings later, it returned at approximately 5:20 AM.

Moral of this entry: Campus Police don't know shit about campus, and Pepco is a big fat doodyhead.