Well, I know I must seem boring, writing a blog post once every blue moon. It must be my personality that keeps me from consistently putting my thoughts down into writing. However, I will try again, hopefully this time I won’t forget that I have a place to put my ramblings. So let’s start anew, shall we?

If I were better at checking email, I would have found out about a week ago that I got a Google Wave invite. I had forgotten that I had even requested one, but now that I have it, I have absolutely no idea what I’m going to do with it. I think that the Wave would be a great email alternative. However, even email has lost it’s footing, as I only use it for university related things. Thanks to Facebook and Twitter, I don’t have to bother with sending email to my friends anymore.

Since I’ve gotten started talking about tech, let’s talk about Windows 7. I’ve had the RC running on a separate partition on my desktop since it’s release and so far I love it. I feel a little hesitant to make it my primary OS, however, since I’ve been having to rely on my Vista partition for word processing, games, music, etc. I will migrate eventually, but I’ll just hold off for now.

I could ramble for hours, but I’ll leave some of it for tomorrow.

As of right now, I have two more finals to go before I’m done with the semester. Yay! This semester’s gone by really fast, hasn’t it? Strength of materials could have gone by a little faster, but I’m not really complaining. This semester really got me thinking about what I want to do with my education.

First of all, I want to work with technology in my career, whether it be medicine or engineering. Secondly, I want to do something hands on, something where I can see a physical product of my work (as opposed to analysis, research). Finally, I want to do something fun. My classes this year were not fun at all. Strength of materials and fluid mechanics kicked my ass, and my other classes bored me.

What happened to fun classes? Does the fun stop as soon as you leave the freshmen level classes? All I can do is hope for some class to break the mold in the next few semesters.

I noticed that Grooveshark has changed a lot since I first signed up. You can’t buy music anymore but you can stream it for free. Check it out, it’s pretty cool.

Well, it’s been a long time since my last post. I’m not giving up on the whole blogging thing just yet.

What to write about, what to write about….hmmm…..

I’ve been in a pretty gloomy mood lately. I need some excitement in my life. It seems like that when I try to do something fun, it just feels like a chore. It’s not that what I’m doing isn’t fun, I think it’s just the mood I’m in. My last class this week ends tomorrow at 3:45. Anybody up to go out and do something? Movie? Rock climbing? Anything?

I purchased Bioshock a few days ago and let me tell you one thing: it’s gorgeous. I loved the visuals on my crappy 17″ TV, but when I put it on the 54″ HDTV, in 1080i, the game  was just beautiful. I probably won’t get much time on the big TV, though, as I’m going to start working day shifts, but at least the gameplay is fun enough, even on the tiny TV.

Speaking of the gameplay, it’s just so open ended. There are a ton of ways to complete an objective, even with the linear storyline, e.g. killing a Big Daddy. You can blast away with your shotgun, hoping to kill him before it kills you, or you can get behind cover and use telekinesis to throw back the grenades he throws at you, or you could even lure him into a pool of oil and light it on fire (granted, fire doesn’t do much damage when they’re in gigantic diving suits).

Bottom line: great game, you should get it if you’re into FPS’s and/or the Resident Evil series. It’s a ton of fun. If you have a lot of time devoted to gaming, you could probably beat it if you rented it.

Well, I’ve been busy today. First of all, I sent off my laptop to be repaired this afternoon. I had to back up all of my important files, including my music, which took quite some time. I also had to call Microsoft and see if they would have a hissy-fit if Circuit City installed Windows with a different license.

I also managed to integrate a lot of stuff with my Facebook page. I’ve gotta give props to Mark Zuckerberg for allowing third-parties to make applications for Facebook. I’ve got my new Twitter account and this blog hooked up to it now, so I can still use this and I can change my status remotely.

Also, I think I’m going to get World of Warcraft in the next few days, so anybody who plays, let me know which server you’re on so I can get playing!

Ciao!

-T

The other day, I decided to look at my desktop computer at home and see what upgrades I could give it. Right now, it has an Intel Pentium 4 520 (2.8GHz multithreaded) CPU, integrated graphics, 512 MB of memory, and a 40GB hard drive. The motherboard has 1 PCIe x16 slot, and can be expanded up to 4GB of system memory, but there’s just one problem. The motherboard doesn’t support processors after the Pentium 4 570, which nobody sells anymore. Also, Dell (the brand of desktop that I have) makes their cases incompatible with other motherboards, so I’ve decided to build a new computer, though I’ll probably wait until next spring or summer to do so.

Any opinions? Ideas? Please leave a comment!

-T.

I know it’s been a while since my last post. Since then, I have almost posted several times. Each time I came to write, however, I couldn’t decide what to write about. I didn’t want to write about my life (cause, frankly, who cares?) but I didn’t want to write about video games again. I guess I could write about school, but that’s almost over now (by the way, there’s only nine more days until I’m done for the semester!! I don’t really have any strong opinions that I’d like to share, so what should I write about? I guess that I’ll write about not finding anything to write about, that might work…

Damn, this game is addictive. Being pretty good at it doesn’t help either. Now I want to play the other two.

I just signed up for Grooveshark, a music site that sells songs that other people host through a P2P network. The catch is that half some of the price goes to the user who shared the song, and the other half some goes to the artist who recorded the song. I like the idea (mostly because it’s like saying ‘up yours’ to the record companies). They’re in beta right now, and so far I’m impressed.

Browsing around, I noticed that if you look up, say, ‘Idioteque’ by Radiohead, you’ll find 9 different listings. Same song, different users (and possibly different file formats or bitrates). I decided to leave some feedback, suggesting that they consolidate those different versions of the song into one listing, then branching out from there into the different versions, formats, etc. I left the feedback at 2:12 PM PST. At 4:17 PM PST, I received a personalized response from the head of Grooveshark’s help desk, saying how my feedback is appreciated and how they are already working on the very problem I described. In my personal experience, I have never received anything but an automated response from my feedback.

So my hat is off to you, Grooveshark. Thank you for taking the time to read your feedback and reach out to your users. If I am worth your time, then you are definitely worth mine.

-T