robglazebrook.com

I have this friend, Erik Brown. In some ways, he’s more than just a friend. He was my roommate my freshman year of college, and that’s an important, emotional time in one’s life.

I met Erik a couple of days before classes began, and we became instant friends. He was the guy I ate lunch with every day, and dinner with every night. He was the guy who consoled me when girls became more confusing than usual, and I was the same for him. We had our own language so that we could talk about nasty things in public. We invented reasons to skip classes, just so we could hang out together. “You going to class today?” I’d ask.

“Nah, there’s a hurricane in Florida. Let’s watch The Weather Channel.”

He’s the only person outside of my family (that I know of) that, until I was twenty years old, saw me in my underwear. I was nearly 300 pounds back then. Now -that-, my friends, is trust.

He transferred after our freshman year, and I took it pretty hard. He was a good friend, and then he was gone. A year passed, and I heard that he was back in town, that he’d transferred back to ISU. That same day, he and I went out to eat and caught a movie.

This year, he and I have had a class together each semester. French. His brother Blake was in last semester’s class, too, which was fun. We got together and studied as often as my intense schedule would allow.

He wasn’t in French class the last couple of days. Finally, today, I saw a mutual friend of ours and asked if Erik was feeling alright (not having a phone limits the number of calls I make).

“He dropped out.”

“Of French class? But it’s a required class.”

“Naw. Out of school.”

I nodded. That sounded a bit more like Erik. “Ahh. Blake still in school, then?”

“Nope. They both dropped out.”

That made sense. Erik and his brothers are extremely close. “What’re they going to do?”

“Erik, Blake and [a 3rd brother] Kirk left Wednesday. They’re heading for the West Coast. They said they’d be back around May.”

Oh. Well, okay, so I wasn’t expecting that one. I knew he wasn’t enjoying school, so his dropping out didn’t come as an enormous shock. He’s always had that ‘whatever feels right’ mentality. The fact that I wouldn’t see him again until, at the very earliest, May, did come as a shock. They weren’t really going to tell anyone. The only reason our friend (Riana) knew is because she called the day before they left to see if they wanted to hang out.

So now I feel like I’m running a little low on friends. Studying for a class is a good excuse to hang out with the people I like (because I always feel guilty if I’m enjoying myself and not studying these days), and now I have one less excuse. I see a possibility or two in a couple of my classes, though, so maybe I should stop slacking and be personable.

Have a good trip, Erik. Watch your maneuver in the desert, kack.

-Rob

PS - I hate your stinkin’ guts. :)

Did I ever mention the last updates to the ol’ page? If not, look under the little “Search At” dropdown to the right. ‘Google: Images’ and ‘Weather by Zip’ (which implies Zip codes, not some unfortunately named Meteorologist) are new to the menu. I figure they’re both pretty self-explanatory, but I’ll explain ‘em anyway. Google: Images searches the net for images based on the criteria you provide, and Weather by Zip gives you The Weather Channel’s version of what’s going on out-of-doors, assuming you give them the zip code associated with your door (the search gives you current info, a radar map, and a 7-day… perfect for those of us who live places with seasons). I do a lot of image searching, and the weather is always of interest in the Midwest, so I consider them nice additions.

And this evening’s nice addition: I finally did a bit with the top menu. As I’ve mentioned a time or two (or three), I’d planned on doing something with the top menu to make it a bit more aesthetic. I finally took a step in that direction tonight, with an image filched from the web (courtesy of Google: Images, no less) and a bit of tedious Photoshop work on a computer with less RAM and processing power than a newer PDA possesses. It isn’t complete (namely, the title part of it all needs some serious consideration: I have an idea, but need a scanner), but it’s better than the unitone theme I had going up-top.

Udder n’dat, I dunno. Classes are, homework is, and leisure is a concept from a past long gone. My idea of a fun night these days is giving up on the homework a bit early and having some popcorn before bed. *grin* Which I’ve done, and am now getting ready to do. Have a good evening for the last fifteen minutes of it. :)

Yeah, I apologize for not updating over the weekend. To be honest, I didn’t even ~look~ at this site over the weekend. I was a lazy, stinky bum. I got more sleep than usual this weekend, though. Saturday in particular. I slept from 11am until shortly after 5pm on Saturday, which meant I was fairly well refreshed before work that night. I only had an hour or two of sleep Sunday, but I didn’t think I needed much more than that. Any more than that, and I wouldn’t have been able to fall asleep last night.

Mornings come earlier now. I’ve set my alarm to wake me up at 6:30am, and it doesn’t get changed (I just turn it off, if I remember, on the weekends for poor Megan’s sake). That gives me between two and a half and three hours in the mornings before my first class, which works out to between two and two and a half hours before I have to be at the bus stop. I’ve done this for two reasons:

1) Physical - I needed to start working out again. I’d stopped exercising sometime during the latter half of last semester [due to school-related stress, methinks], and was starting to look a tad bulgier than I like about the middle. I’m sure no one I know agrees with me on that one, but nyah on all of ya: I noticed a difference. :) I don’t think it’ll effect my weight any… in fact, I may gain a bit by way of muscle mass. I’m hovering between 170 and 175 mostly these days, with occasional jumps to near-180, and occasional dips to 165-ish. At 165 I feel a bit weak, and when I hit 180 my self-confidence takes a nosedive, so I try to avoid the two extremes. But anyway, I got side tracked. I’ve worked out near-daily again (forgot last Saturday) since the 18th.

2) Mental - I want to start writing again, but I’d feel bad if I started skimping on my homework to do it. So I’m hoping to squeeze a bit of creativity out of my pores pre-sunrise. So far, no luck. I’ve been using the extra time to do homework instead, because I’ve been skimping on -that- in the evenings to play with programming. *grin* If you’re brave, Click Here to see what I wasted a few hours on this weekend. IE users, at the very least, will see a nice little fading random background color effect. Netscape, I dunno, because the alpha blending doesn’t work right there, last I knew. The program used to be a LOT more complex and a LOT more painful to view than it is now. It used to be a 40×40 table (that’s 400 cells), and each cell had a different background color chosen from a randomly generated list of 4096 possibilities, updated just as fast as the computer could handle. *grin* It was absolutely horrendous to behold. The worst part: that program started as an attempt to pass form information through a test script before sending it on to another page. I got frustrated, and started playing with md5(microtime()), which essentially produces a random 32-character hexadecimal in PHP (HTML color codes are 6-character hexadecimals).

Okay, enough randomness. :) That’s just more proof as to how easily distracted I am these days. I think that’s what happens when I get roughly enough sleep. My demonic mental washing machine gets set to ‘Super’ and starts to shimmy its way across the floor.

Hey, ma! I need a lamp for the living room after all. *grin* I’ve found that I like to do my homework on the couch, but there isn’t enough light over there by 5pm or so.

Because I can’t concentrate, more randomness:

1) gonna need a new computer soon. The one I’m borrowing from works freaks out if I try to play an MP3 and read my email at the same time. And I’m not going to scare you with tales of using Photoshop on this thing. :)

2) I wish DTN would hurry up and gimme my W-2. I want to do my taxes and get em over with. I wonder if I’m dependant this year?

3) I’ve made a promise to myself to fill out the FASFA (Free Application for Student Financial Aid) for this coming year. I really hope I do it.

4) I miss my friends. :( I wanna ‘hang out’ with someone again. Someone I don’t live with (no offense, love).

5) I noticed this morning that I let my ‘Upcoming’ schedule fall horribly out-of-date. Who’s surprised? I’m going to use this opportunity as an excuse to teach myself how to use the Windows Scheduler. Yeah, it doesn’t make sense to me, either.

Maybe I should post more later, when I’m clear-headed. If I’m clear-headed later. If clear-headedness is more than just a figment of my cloudy-headed imagination.

-Me

The Bad News: It seems that Verizon has a new policy about their T720’s: they’ve quit just replacing them in the stores. They were losing too much money that way. *g* So… I had to send it in to be repaired. My phone, tomorrow morning, is on it’s way to Texas. There’s a 90% chance (probably closer to 99% in my case) that they’ll end up replacing it anyway. But they want to try first, now. Average turn-around for this is two weeks. So I don’t have a phone, for the next two weeks.

The Good News: I changed my calling plan to a family plan, and added Megan to it. So, Megan has a cell phone now. :) This way, you all can still stay in touch with us, and when I get a cell, it becomes ultra-convenient for Megan and I to stay ahold of one another.

That to the left is the phone Megan went with: the Samsung a310. As I’m sure you guessed, I got to help a bit in picking it out. *grin* As she said, she would have been happy with the 1-cent brick Nokia. But what’s the fun in that? The phone is $100, but it comes with a $50 mail-in rebate at the moment, so long-term it’s a really good deal. Not all the bells and whistles of my phone, but a nice solid phone nonetheless. And I bet one can use question marks to ones heart’s content on that phone. :)

Her new number (and the only way to call me for the next two weeks or so) is:
(515) 231-9840.

Another quick update:

I think I’m going to forget about wapjaw (again, yes) for a while. Maybe forever, who knows? I’ve decided that, if I’m going to focus that exclusively on anything right now, it should be my writing. I’ve been worse than a slacker when it comes to my writing. I’ve been downright neglectful. So if I’m going to waste creative energy somewhere, that’s where it should be going. I think so, anyway.

Homework calls. G’night. :)

Pwah, I’ll talk about the move (which has been completed) some other time. Right now, I feel I must lament the ignoble passing of my phone.

As of yesterday, the ‘fix’ for the T720c has been released. I downloaded it (actually, I’m a distributor, so it was sent to me early… I just didn’t know it because I didn’t have internet access until last night), and ran it. Once I found my data cable, it worked perfectly. I had a lovely picture of Iowa State as my background (which was soon replaced with a picture of Megan… aww…), an animated gif as my screen saver (a dancing hula doll… lol), and a dozen or so new ringtones uploaded, including (among others) “Hard Knock Life,” “Ain’t Nuttin But a G Thang,” and VOICE ringtones of Strongbad and Homer Simpson.

I was about ready to wrap it up and call it a night, when I decided my voice ringtones wouldn’t be complete without Homestar Runner. I found a nice wave file of him saying, “I know! Can you buh-weeve it?!” converted it to ringtone format, and uploaded it. It sounded great. I named the file “Believe It,” and started to shut stuff down to go to bed. Then, I decided that the name wasn’t very accurate, so I renamed the ringtone “Can You Believe It.” But that still didn’t look right. I renamed the file a final time, this time to “Can You Believe It?”

I couldn’t believe it. An error popped up on the screen, letting me know I’d chosen an invalid filename. I guess the phone didn’t like my question mark. I hit okay, figuring a question mark wasn’t the end of the world, and that I could live without it.

My phone, however, couldn’t live -with- it. It had already changed the filename to incorporate the question mark, even though it was an invalid filename. I tried to change it, but the phone locked up. Frustrated, I restarted my phone.

And now it won’t come back on. I press the power button, and the backlight lights up, waits five or so seconds, and powers back off. Five seconds later, the backlight is on again. It continues in this pattern no matter what… even if the phone is closed (meaning backlighting should be impossible). Even if I press the power button to turn the phone off. I ended up having to pull the battery out last night to stop it from flickering.

So now, I have to try and get a new phone (or at least this phone flashed with a new, clean copy of the software), because mine is totally hosed. Not because of the hack, mind you. The hack works wonderfully. The phone is hosed because I stuck a question mark at the end of a sentence, and the phone didn’t know what to do with it. Nothing more, nothing less. And for those of you counting, this will be my third T720c, assuming they choose to replace it. I know of people who have made it through six or seven copies of the phone, simply because the software is so buggy in some places. So buggy, a simple question mark can render the phone useless.

I know! Can you buh-weeve it?!