first post

I have decided to move my diary here, though I do not expect it to last. In fact, I am finding it difficult to write anything at all. At the moment I am chatting with Sarah via AIM, and it isn't exactly the most exciting conversation of all time. I suppose it would be useless to go into much detail on that. I did speak with one of my professors about building a distillation system today, and I got a few good pointers for it. I am not sure how long it will actually take to fabricate though, and I think that I might switch to a smaller design than the one that I have been looking at. The plans that I found basically produce a lot more than I really want or need, so scaling down would probably be a good idea. I really should be either studying or sleeping, but I don't really feel like it. Instead, I am here writing a new entry in my diary, and trying to use decent punctuation with it. I have been on a bit of an Old 97s music streak for the last 20 or 30 minutes. Its really not that impressive though, since I have only heard maybe 3 or 4 of their songs in that span. An episode of Futurama came on, so I paused the music to watch that, but it is over now. Speaking of over, the last Old 97s song on my playlist just ended and now it is on to Rolling Stones. I think I finally found a decent media player for windows called MediaMonkey. Musikcube had some nice features, but there were a lot of things about the way it searches and shows files that seem anti-intuitive. I suppose I am just spoiled from having AmaroK on linux for so long that I expect something similar on windows. However, this is the best that I have found, and it is still greatly lacking. iTunes offers some of the features that I get from amaroK, but it is very bloated and slow, and very intrusive as far as programs go. I suppose that is the nature of the beast though, for it is an Apple product. Assuming someone may someday be reading this, you're probably wondering about the odd capitalization in the word AmaroK or amaroK, but the K is capitalized on purpose, and it can really be spelled with a capital or lower case A. The reason for the capitalized K is that it was written to be part of the K Desktop Environment, or KDE for linux. Where KDE got the K from, I really don't know, but it was originally meant to be a replacement for CDE or the Common Desktop Environment, so they probably called it the Kommon Desktop Environment at one time. Thats just a guess though. Now back to the real world. I can't wait until Thursday, I get to leave Gainesville for a week. It has been a long time since I have actually gone somewhere out of state for Spring Break. I fly out of Clearwater at like 9 local time, and arrive in St. Louis at 10:15 local time there. Hopefully it won't be too cold when I get there, and I have been contemplating wearing my Hawai'ian shirt for the flight out there. I should be there for about a week, though I haven't actually made rental plans for the drive back, so that will have to wait a bit. Of course, before then I still have to worry about this exam. It is one of two exams for the semester, and I still have 1 homework due in the class. I will have to force myself to spend most of tomorrow evening and Wednesday morning studying. The exam is from 3 to 5 on Wednesday afternoon. I am planning on attending the basketball game on Wednesday evening which starts at 9pm I believe. That should be a good game. We're playing University of Tennessee, which is one of the top ranked teams right now. Though we haven't been playing the best basketball in history lately, it should still be a good and tough game. Thursday itself should be a pretty good day though. I have Advanced Structures lecture early afternoon, and I will probably spend a few hours in the lab. After that, I will drive down to the parents' place in Safety Harbor, and have dad give me a ride to the airport. Then, Spring Break! I can't wait though. It is less than 3 days away now, and still seems so far. We've got a few things planned already, but will have to do most of it once I get there. I'd also like to make time to see my aunt who lives nearby. Once I get back to Florida, I should be able to see some of my other relatives who will be down visiting for their Spring Break. The day back to school is St. Patrick's day, and my family plans to celebrate it on the 16th, which is a Sunday. I should be able to hang around Safety Harbor for that, then get back to Gainesville in time for school to start back. I was thinking earlier that it would make more sense for spring break to be a week later, since it would encompass both St. Patrick's day and the actual beginning of spring. Since then, I have decided that its better when it is, because any longer would just be too much to deal with. I really do need to get away for a while, and I think this will be the perfect opportunity. Another thing that falls during this coming week is that I will become eligible to upgrade my cell phone and sign a new contract for it. I was contemplating just waiting the extra three months and switching over to Verizon, but I realized that even then I won't be able to afford any of the cool phones and the phones that are in my price range really aren't all that great. I guess the KRZR isn't too bad, but it is stuck with the Verizon GUI, which I think is just terrible. For a similar price, AT&T offers the RAZR V3xx, which I have read many great reviews for. I don't really care much for the regular RAZR V3, but the xx model looks much better, and has upgraded versions of the features that the SLVR has. It also offers 3G HSDPA internet access, which could be nice. EDGE is a slow in Gainesville, and the SLVR is getting a bit outdated. That is not to say that it isn't one of the best phones of its time, because it is. It is just getting past its time. I got the thing nearly two years ago, and it was out for almost a year at the time. In the cellular world, it is rare for a phone model to last more than 2 or 3 years. However the model didn't really last, I am convinced that the phones themselves will last forever. And on that note, I think that I will wrap this up and go to bed.