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Well, today was busy in a way, but just long overall. I'm here at 8:35 with lots of things undone that I had wanted to get done, but overall it was worth it.

When I woke up this morning, the ground was covered with snow, as was my car... Perhaps it doesn't look like that much, but the wind had blown it up and it was probably about 6 inches deep in places. I scooped it off all the windows with a piece of newspaper I pulled out of my trash.
I warmed up the car properly and left in what I thought was enough time to make it to campus early, but part way there I realized I had left my class schedule back at home and since I'm still not familiar with where all my classes are, I needed it! I could have checked on the school computers but using Internet Explorer that they have there... well that would definitely have taken more time than just going back and getting my paper (insert clever Firefox advertisement here).

So I picked up my paper and now I was going to be only 10 minutes early, if that. When I got to campus it was packed with cars, I had to go up by the overflow on the other end of the track and ran to class. I made it in time (with a few minutes to spare actually and they started late anyway) but breathless and having slight wheezing spasms every few minutes. Whenever I exert myself in cold weather and then suddenly stop, that seems to happen for some reason....
Have I ever mentioned how I secretly enjoy (in a way) students dropping out during the semester? It sure helps the parking situation later on!

The Physics professor was a stout, grandmotherly lady with smoothed down, pepper grey hair that was tied in a short pony tail. She wore her white lab coat and limped around up by the projector. She seemed nice but got mixed up when talking. For example, she said that a centimeter was 100 meters. Now I was able to understand what she meant (probably 1/100th of a meter) but to those who might not be as familiar with such a thing, it might confuse them! Another thing she said was that 4.500 had 4 significant figures. On that one though, she corrected herself and said it only had 2. I was getting confused myself for a moment because she had just been telling us something different a few minutes ago. She kind of rambles as though talking to herself when she is going over the slides at the projector and makes lots of little mistakes like that but doesn't catch herself. It's almost frightening in a way! But she seems like a very nice lady, I hope the semester goes well....

About a half hour after that class I had to go to my Digital Logic class. I had almost an identical class about 2 years ago and I still remember it pretty well so this should just be a refresher course. I was required to take this particular course at this particular college though, so that is why I have to retake it. There is going to be a lot of paperwork and writing for the class I understand, I've already got two assignment due for next week and today was the first class meeting!

Then I had a large span of time where I went to the Student Union and sat in a corner by the bookstore, waiting for my "customer" who was to buy my Economics books to arrive. I was an hour and a half early though so I had plenty of time to sit and read and observe.....

There was a girl who was supposed to be putting posters up inside one of the recesses in the wall, that have windows over them. However, she climbed up into one of them and spent about 20 minutes "Modeling" inside while her friends were around, laughing and talking about some things. That's a lot of wasted time, I hope she wasn't being paid to do her job of putting the posters up.

A guy I knew from last semester (in my Computer Science class) walked past and said hello, it just happened that we both had our DS (small, awesome, handheld video game system) so we fired up Animal Crossing and I went over and visited his town. It's a very "cute" type of game, basically you live in the town, earn money, shop at the store, do errands for your neighbours, participate in fishing tournaments, and the whole game is in real time, so when it is the Fourth of July in the real world, it is in the game too, and they start up fire works at 8:00 p.m. It's pretty neat actually. When my brother and I first started playing, it was weird because I'd be playing at 7:45 in the morning and keep glancing at my alarm clock, waiting for it to be 8:00 because that's when the store opened! Anyway, he gave me some new types of fruit to plant and grow trees and a golden shovel to aid my gardening. I'm fairly poor so I wasn't able to give anything in return :( He had to leave after about 15 minutes. I named my town "Narnia" so I could pretend I was living there ;)

Shortly before my "customer" was to arrive, I went over to the computer lab in the neighbouring building so I could see if he had e-mailed me saying he couldn't come, or could come, or whatever. There was no message from him but there was a message from a guy who wanted to buy my Computer Science textbook, so that was good! If I can sell just these two books then I'll be happy. Hopefully I'll sell all three though.

I went back and sat down, reading my textbook (earlier I had been reading "The Holy Spirit" by A.W. Pink, a very good book) for Digital Logic and waiting. I was just getting up to look for him, thinking perhaps he was around a corner somewhere, when he showed up, apologizing and saying he wished he had some way to let me know, he was about 5 minutes late, which isn't bad at all considering how most students are these days. He seems like a really nice guy, he gave me his e-mail address and asked if perhaps we could meet sometime. I don't know if he is new here or not, he's rather short but not "small" if you know what I mean, he had glasses and his baseball cap and an unquenchable smile. He wrote me out a check and I handed him the books. I sent him a long e-mail today and we'll see if there is any kind of correspondance. What I'm really interested in is finding out about his religious beliefs!

Then I went around, paid off what was due for my college tuition this semester, picked up a copy of MathCAD that I had reserved last semester (and was never notified to pick up) and then went downtown to the bank and deposited all the checks I'd been collecting. I'm notorious for having checks sitting in my wallet, sometimes for a couple of months before I finally get to the bank. I dislike banks for some reason, I keep my cash on me preferably and just go that way as long as I can. Hopefully no muggers are reading this blog. I'll have to be careful walking to class tomorrow. Actually, I've only got $20 right now.....
The money I deposited took my balance quite a bit over the beginning balance of last semester. It's always a good feeling to put more in than you started with, you know? I'm glad I was able to earn a little money over break. Or, perhaps not a little money, it was a lottle money in many ways!

After spending a few minutes back at my camper, writing some e-mail.... do you ever have those days where you send a bunch of e-mail to many, many different people and you feel like you've done so much correspondance and then you patiently (or impatiently I guess) keep checking your inbox for new messages but none ever appear? With me, I have a notifier that lets me know the instant I get new mail (that is why often I'll reply within a minute to someone) but I keep wondering if it is broken so I go and log into my e-mail and sure enough, none is there. Just one of those days I guess..... I like to respond to almost everything I get, even if it's just to let the person know that I actually did receive it! Of course if it's something like "great, I'll see you then." then I don't have much to respond to, do I?

Long rabbit trail. After spending a few minutes back at my camper, I headed out again to go to my Digital Logic Design Lab (DLDL). They had a poster on the wall that said
"students in lab section 3234, there will be no lab this week due to a sudden infestation of man-eating pirahna in the lab."
The poster next to it said "students in lab section 3233, regardless of what you may have heard about man-eating fish, you will have lab this week."

I got a chuckle out of that. The teacher for the class seems very, very nice (he was actually the one whose class was competing against mine in the projectile meet last semester) and I believe I'm going to like him. He has a sense of humour. The TA's for some reason, were all short. I went over to ask a question and they are all rather short for guys, (5'6"- 5'8" being the tallest) and I felt almost like I was towering above them, though I guess I'm scarcely three inches taller. Anyway.... the lab was fine, they went over some very basic boolean logic, AND, OR, XAND gates, Inverter gates etc. All stuff that I already knew. We had to set up four different circuits based upon some word problems they gave us, most set it up one at a time but I set up all four of mine (it was supposed to be different machinery in a fast food restaurant) and they came by and tested all of mine at once (and thankfully it worked). I also was able to help a student out who was next to me and couldn't figure out why something wasn't working. He had left out a wire going from his output on his inverter to one of the input gates on his LS7804 (AND) chip if anyone is interested...... *crickets chirping*.......

Nope, didn't think so.

Anyway, after that was over, I came home and found a friend from California was online and wanted to play a game, which I had hoped to do sometime as well, so we tried but I had too weak of a signal and had to retire. I was able to hook up with another friend with Animal Crossing, over the Internet and I visited her town and looked at her museum she is donating things to, saw her house (very nice and large!) and I bought a few items at her store (which was much larger than mine) and we had a good time sharing different things. She also let me have some apples and a peach and a cherry so I could grow my own fruits! Oh, exciting stuff, let me tell ya!

Well, I'm feeling rather sleepy and I've still got some stuff to do, though it's past my bedtime, so I'll say good night and go to bed.