Wild horses

The past two years, I've attended the NCACS conference with my school. This year, the conference is being held in Colorado, which is too far for my school to get to. Next year, after I graduate, the conference is actually going to be held at my school. Of course.

To replace the trip, we tried to plan an outreach sort of thing, where we'd travel around and say hello to some of the other alternative schools. For whatever reason, all the plans lost momentum and eventually fell through. Finally, one stuck. A two-night trip to a state park.

So it is that tomorrow I'll be speeding towards Maryland with a few of my friends, and a few kids I go to school with. There are some cool people going, so I think it should be a pretty good time. My biggest fear is that somebody gets caught doing something stupid and everyone gets stuck in meetings.

But yeah. I'll take photos and stuff. I'll have my cellphone with me, but I don't know if I'll get a chance to recharge, so I'll only have it on for a few minutes a day to check my messages and such. I'll also check my email, and I'll probably twitter some too.

The title comes from where we'll be camping. Apparently it's got wild ponies running around. I may try to ride one.

More college stuff

At this point, I've heard back from all of the colleges I've applied to. Of the five I applied to, I got admitted to three and waitlisted at two. I'd name names, but that would probably be a little unwise since I want to see how these waitlists play out.

Of the three choices I know I have right now, I have decided which one to put my deposit down for. Earlier today, I RSVPd for the admitted student's thing they have this Friday. It's a good school, and I'd be very happy with going there if the waitlists don't go my way.

Again, I don't want to give too much detail, just in case. I've been surprised and really pleased with things so far. I was really worried about my applications; the only thing not sketchy about my transcript were my admittedly good SAT scores. Besides those, everything I had to show was really all over the place.

I was also lucky to get some excellent recommendations from some excellent teachers. It's unlikely they're reading this, but I really owe them a lot of thanks. It's also lucky that colleges are looking more kindly upon homeschoolers.

Getting that first letter saying I was admitted was a little mind-blowing. The impact of the knowledge that, regardless of what else the mail brought, I would, for certain, be going to college in September really struck me - and still does. Even though I've had some college experience already, I wonder if I'm prepared.

I'm lucky because I know I'll be able to handle the work. I know that, like at previous schools, I'll gravitate to the awesome people. It even looks like I'll be going to a school within weekend-commute distance of Rachel, which rocks. But I've never really lived on my own before for more than a week's time. I've never had a roommate, or had to deal with living in close proximity to a bunch of college "dudes".

Despite all of that, I do think I'm up to it. I'm anxious, of course, and somewhat apprehensive. My mind is naturally drawn to think of all the ways that things could go wrong, and makes the best-case scenario look increasingly unlikely. I know everything will be all right; if the past four years have taught me anything, it's that I can bounce back from a lot. I'd still like the least amount of non-academic strain.

I only have two credits to make up to get my diploma. Graduation is approaching terrifyingly fast. I have some trouble dealing with the feeling of time running out - I do feel like I haven't gotten enough done during high school. I just have to make the most of the next four and a half months and look back on everything that I have accomplished.

Meet the Grandparents

I spent Thursday through Sunday in Cape Cod with Rachel. Her grandparents live up there and Rach's parents joined us Saturday.

Things got a bit of a rocky start. We wanted to have more time up there than we if went with her parents, so we decided to take a greyhound out of Philly. We managed to get on the 8:30 bus, but that where things stopped going our way. Basically it was just a run of misinformation and bad luck that had us sit in NYC for four and a half hours.

I was pretty nervous about things, to be honest. I have met Rachel's grandparents before, but seeing people at dinner is different from living with them for four days. Most of the anxiety was from that I knew her grandparents are fairly devout Catholics, and even though I'm always pretty careful on the subject of religion, I was afraid of a misstep.

Fortunately, there weren't very many awkward moments. Though of course I absentmindedly ordered a sausage-and-egg breakfast sandwich Friday morning. I tried to hide the meat in the egg, but it didn't really work. Other than that it was a good time.

Mostly we just drove around and looked at beaches. It was extremely cold and windy, but many of the views were breathtaking. The food was also delicious. The highlight was undoubtedly when I bought my tiny red accordion. Rachel saw how much fun I was having with it and had to pick one up for herself.

It was a great weekend and I'm really hoping I get invited up again. Maybe when it's not so cold.

Getting things on track

Things have been happening recently. Good, life-affirming things. I finally got my high school transcript together and sent off to colleges, and as part of working to do that, I got reenrolled at school. I'll be finishing the year out there, not so much for the last credits I need to graduate, but just to keep me from stagnating alone in my room.

The school's changed from when I was there last year. There are a lot of new kids, way more than usual, and a lot of the pivotal people graduated last year. Maybe it's just me, but the atmosphere is just different. More closed, somehow. It could just be me; but I'm having a harder time feeling like I belong. I've still got friends and all, but they don't seem to be around like they used to.

That's not to say it isn't a great feeling being back. This place has been a second home to me, and I'm getting to play music with people a little bit again. I don't know if it would be different if I had been here from the beginning of the year. Maybe I could have helped keep things awesome. But I probably would have just changed with everyone else.

Aside from school, the other good thing that happened is that I got my voter registration card. I wanted to register Independent, since that would have been honest, but more than that I wanted to vote in the primary this year. Thus it is that I am a registered democrat.

The new dilemma in my life, or at least more prominent that it was, is that my driver's permit expires on Friday. I've certainly clocked enough experience to pass a driver's test, except that I've never parallel parked. I also feel like it's a little pointless getting licensed, because even if I do, I still won't have a car of my own to get around in. But I will renew my permit next week, as I am reluctant to relinquish the small amount of liberty it bestowed.

In like a lion

March has started off all right.

Footloose was pretty good. It dragged a bit at the beginning but picked up pretty hard and was down right impressive. Not as good as last year's production, but definitely worth the price of admission. The problem was just that it's not that great of a musical. But they did an amazing job with it.

The Gogol Bordello concert was, well... Mixed. The opening band, some shitfest called Skin Dred, was bad enough that it made me consider just leaving then. I'm also not much of a fan of the mosh pit. I'm just not okay with people touching me without advance notice and me being able to see them. It was okay at first, people shoved, I shoved back.

When GB finally took the stage, it was a different story. They are really good live. It's obvious enough that everyone in the band is up there playing because they love doing it. Eugene is one hell of a showman.

Sunday I went into the city with Rachel. She's got a huge school project coming up, and being the stand up fellow I am I volunteered to help. The project is to do a (condensed) claymation version of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. I didn't do much of the actual sculpting, but I helped take photos and some other grunt work. It was a surprising amount of fun.

Not much has happened this week. Just sorting some stuff out with college apps, making sure colleges have everything they need. I can't wait to be able to move on from this stuff.

Leap day

It's the last day of February, thank goodness. I've hated this month for a good many years, and it seems this year it's been especially bad. Not even just for me, but also for those around me. I guess that's why it had to be a day longer this year.

Last weekend I hung out with Rachel and on Sunday went over to Gus' to hang out with him and Ben. We had planned to play some music and some D&D, but we ended up just playing D&D. It was a lot of fun though, it's been about nine months since the last time I played. I'm out of practice, but my velociraptor-riding halfling ranger is getting me reacquainted.

I've been in a bit of a slump this week. Just feeling pretty tired and lackluster all the time. General symptoms of depression, they'll get better as I get back into actually doing stuff. I've been too idle. I did hang out at Chris' yesterday and had a very nice time, it helped a lot to lift the monotony.

Hopefully, today should break the streak. I'm going to go see Rach's school's production of Footloose with her. It should be a good experience, even if it can't hope to match the awesomeness of last year's performance of Sweeney Todd. Tomorrow we're going to get to see Gogol Bordello at the Electric Factory, which should just be super awesome.

Valentine's Day was okay. I meant to blog sooner afterwards, but never did. Rachel was feeling pretty under the weather and traffic was terrible so it wasn't all that it could have been. Better than last year, but there's some room left for improvement. I'm just glad I got to spend it with her. We saw Atonement which I thought was just terrible but Rachel seemed to like it.

I recently picked up Super Mario Galaxy and Guitar Hero III. Both have been affording decent entertainment, and it's good to be actually playing my Wii after about a year of disuse. I am just getting more and more excited for Super Smash Brothers: Brawl. I preordered it through Amazon, I don't know what that means vis à vis delivery times but it'll be good enough for me.

Weird things

So in the time between my last post and this my attitude towards where I go to college has changed a bit. That is to say, I'm now constantly worrying about where I'm getting in. Every college I applied to I did so because I want to go there, but what if I just don't get accepted? I know at least one place is a sure thing, but still.

A couple weeks ago I had to update GmailThis! to reflect some changes that Google made. While I was at it, I had some time to waste and added a PayPal donation button. To my immense surprise, somebody actually gave me $5. Man, if I had added that three years ago, maybe I'd actually have some cash. So I just wanted to thank that awesome dude who did that.

The weekend wasn't amazing. Friday didn't turn out really like I would have liked. Rachel and I went over to Gabo's to model for her. We went out afterwards to see some live music that wasn't terrible but wasn't stunning either. It could have been a decent enough time but the timing of the whole thing was terrible. Personal stuff that it's not my business to go into. I definitely feel responsible since I sort of planned it.

The painting came out pretty nicely though.

Saturday was okay. I spent some of the day in a Starbucks that I'm starting to have weird feelings about. I always run into people there. I didn't mind this time because it was a pretty cool person to bump into. Still, given that I never seem to bump into people I know, I feel like that place is some sort of odd nexus in my life.

Sunday was also not so great. Rachel got sick and felt pretty terrible all day. I was happy that I got to be there for her and fetch water and so on, but I hope she gets better soon. Her mom's having a party Wednesday that we're going to be waiter-ing at, and I certainly don't want to be carrying around those plates of shrimp-on-a-stick by myself.

I got my voter registration mailed recently. I wanted to register Independent, since that would be honest, but I ended up registering Democrat so I can vote in the primary. I had been previously supporting Edwards because I thought he was just adorable, but with him dropped out I guess I'm an Obama man. Truthfully I get more nauseated by Hillary every time I see her. She unsettles me on an Uncanny Valley sort of level.

Valentine's Day is coming up and I'm feeling a bit hesitant about it. I think right now my official policy is going to be "I don't need a greeting card holiday to mandate when I express affection to my significant other" but I've got a few tentative things planned that would make that seem marginally hypocritical. Shh, don't tell.

College post

I finally got my college applications in on the first of the month. It was the super ultra final deadline for most of the places I'm applying to. Actually, it was two weeks late for some, but they had offered me an extension so it was okay. The application process has been pretty interesting and I'm hoping I never go through it again.

I'm not going to go through every step, but I basically did all of the necessary work the day it was due. I hate doing that but that just always seems to happen. I was lucky enough that Rachel came over after school and helped keep me on track. She saved me a lot of stress; if she hadn't been there I probably would have hit submit a few minutes before midnight totally stressed out.

At this point, only one of the colleges I was originally planing on applying to stayed on the list. I'm still so relieved just to have the thing done that I hardly care where I get into, so long as I get into someplace. Of course, I say that now, but I'm going to be a nervous wreck when those envelopes start coming.

It's really taken a lot of my mind to have this done with. Now, maybe, I can get on with all of that other stuff that I have to get done without getting paralyzed by anxiety. That would be pretty nice. I'm done in Pennsylvania staying at my dad's place for a bit and I'm hopinh the environment is more conducive to me keeping it together.

Some Macworld '08 Thoughts

Everyone's doing it, so I figured I'd jump on the bandwagon.

First some background. My primary computer for the past six and a half years has been my 500MHz G3 iBook with a 12" screen and something like 768 MB of RAM. Decent enough specs when it came out, but I guess it became officially obsolete when Leopard came out and dropped support for G3 processors.

I have done pretty much everything one can do with that computer - it's run every version of Mac OS X up to 10.4.11. I've done video/photo/audio recording, editing, producing, playing. It's been to several different countries. Its display died, its battery went to 3% efficiency, its motherboard died, and for a few months one summer the spacebar didn't work.

It has a lot of sentimental value, in other words. However, a bit after Christmas I gained possession of a black MacBook. 2GHz Intel Core Duo, 1GB of RAM (not maxed out). And a 13.3" screen. It's too big.

I've had a fair amount of time to try to get used to it, and I've adjusted to the keyboard, I quickly learned to enjoy the two-fingered scrolling, and I'm a big fan of the built-in iSight. But I can't get used to the overall size of the computer. It just seems unwieldy.

There was one thing, and one thing only, that I wanted out of this year's Macworld. I figured, like most everyone else, that they'd release an ultraportable. Awesome, I thought to myself. They'll finally restore the 12" notebook that's been missing from their line-up.

So what do they do? They release the MacBook Air (or AirBook as I'll inevitably refer to it). Thinnest notebook ever. No optical drive. 1 USB port, line-out, and micro-DVI. Okay, I can deal with that. And then the slap in the face.

A damned 13.3" wide-screen display. Exact same as in the MacBooks.

I get that Apple is really pushing ubiquitous media distribution. I understand that they're trying to print money off of movie sales and rentals. But, damn it, what is this?

There are other reasons I'm not a fan of the AirBook (see?). I rip, and burn, a lot of CDs for one thing. Okay, fine, with the $99 USB SuperDrive I could cope with that. I could also deal with the reduced speed and relatively small hard drive capacity. But if it takes up the same amount of space, in most terms, as a MacBook - Why? What would the point even be?

I get it. It's thin. It fits in an envelope. It's also very light. And has some other fancy things in the multi-touch trackpad. No, that's great, I guess. Maybe I just need to see it in person. But I'm not going to notice a difference when I have to use the same size laptop case.

If you find yourself in a situation where, for some reason, thinness is absolutely vital, then okay. Get an AirBook. I just don't see why you would when for less money you can get a MacBook and actually get a faster computer with more capabilities. In my head, thin just doesn't necessarily equate with smaller or more portable.

I'm not addressing things like the optional solid-state hard drive, because I'm not really informed enough to comment. I guess it's supposed to be faster? I haven't really felt hindered by regular hard drives, but maybe some people do.

That was a totally unnecessarily long rant on the AirBook, what with everyone on the internet doing it. Now I'll briefly comment on everything else.

iPhone firmware 1.1.3: I guess it's a good thing. I loaded it onto my mom's iPhone and it's pretty cool. I don't plan on getting an iPhone until it has 3G and can do all of the things that my Sony Ericsson W810i can do.

New iPod Touch software: Irrelevant to me, but I definitely don't approve of the $20 upgrade price. If I had one, I'd immediately shell it out, but I wouldn't like it. The stuff that got added are good additions.

iTunes Movie Rentals: This is also a good thing. I wish you had more than 24 hours to finish a movie after starting it, and maybe that'll change eventually. If I manage to pick up a mini-DVI to video adapter for my MacBook, this could be huge for me. I'm not much into buying movies. When I do buy one, it's a pretty big compliment to the movie. My Netflix account also got cancelled today, so this comes at a pretty convenient time.

AppleTV v.2: I didn't care when the first AppleTV came out, I don't particularly care now. I think the changes they made are good ones, but I still can't see any scenario in which I could be persuaded to get one. If the price were much lower and it was subsidized by commercials or something, that might help, but I probably still wouldn't since there's not really anything I could do with it that I can't with my laptop. High-def means nothing to you when your TV is a 13" TV/VCR combo that you bought because you could plug it into the cigarette lighter in a car.

Time Capsule and the new Airport Extreme: Pretty cool. I'd never buy one unless my current Airport Express mysteriously and spontaneously combusted, but I like the idea. What would be nice is if they released new firmware for the Express so I could just plug a hard drive into that USB port and use Time Capsule that way.

Annnd I guess that's it. I felt pretty let down by the announcements this year, just because I didn't feel like any of them really meant anything to me. A new iLife or something would be exciting because that's something I'd actually end up using. Oh well, there's still the WWDC to look forward to.

Year's End

2007 has been a most messed up year. Probably the most, at least personally. Here's hoping 2008 is a little more stable. Seems unlikely, but it would be nice.

My mom turned up a week and a bit ago. She still hasn't given me the story on what happened, and I'm a little hesitant to ask. I'll find out sooner or later though. I'm glad that she's back, even if I'm mad about other things.

Christmas was mixed. I spent the morning with Rachel and her family, and that was very classic and nice. Then I went with my dad and visited my grandmother in the hospital. I saw my sister and mom there and then we went back to my dad's place.

It was the kind of Christmas it's supposed to be, I guess. Not much emphasis on presents, more stress put on "hey at least the family's together." Aunt Patty and Uncle Chris were there too. Our tree was a series of wreathes hung on the skeleton of a dead potted plant.

I mostly got a lot of books. That works for me; I love books, and I always need more. I also got two mugs, caffeinated chapstick and soap, and a super-awesome guitar that promises to be very good for rock.

My mom also tried to give me her iPhone, and I'm probably the only person who's ever turned away one. It's not that they aren't awesome or fantastic. Partly it's because I'm really happy with my phone, and I'm not ready to move on. Partly it's because I have issues with taking people's old electronics. I actually put my SIM card in it and got it to work and tried it out for a day. The iPhone just isn't for me, not yet.

Feature-wise my w810i is comparable. Opera Mini is completely fantastic and the iPhone can't even run Java apps. I'm also faster with the keypad, data-entry-wise, than with the virtual keyboard. My phone can take video. Maybe after a generation or two I'll be wetting myself to get one.

Yesterday I went to see Juno with Ben and Lindsay. I'd already seen it a week or two prior with Rach, but it's such a good movie I didn't mind seeing it again at all. I felt a little like a third wheel, but it wasn't as awkward as it could have been. It was good to get out of the house, especially with people I enjoy seeing.

Tomorrow I'm going to go play as bassist with Tigers in the Sun (Evan, Ben, and Gus). I've been hoping to get in on the band for a while - my old band replaced me pretty fast, and went Celtic fusion without me to hold them back. I'm hoping for a more rock atmosphere.

New Year's Eve I'll spend with Rachel in some capacity. No definite plan yet, we might go to some party or another. It should be good.