Things I wasn't prepared for

1. Parking
2. All lecture all the time.
3. Fast food on campus.
4. Parking (yes, it deserves two spots)

So far things are going well. I've got three classes, and it looks like it might stay that way, since I refuse to take any classes on Tuesday or Thursday, and the philosophy class I wanted to add is now full. Oh well, I guess I'll just have to use the extra time to re-teach myself Latin. Because it will be so useful to my Masters that I just have to know it.

I've added a Calc II for the Social Sciences class, which looks like it should be easy. They started with reviewing differentiation, which I've already finished, and will have to learn integrals, which I will be reviewing before the class gets to them. Apparently there's no trig in this class (which is sad because I love trig) and they gloss over some other topics compared to your standard Calc II class. So while I haven't taken Calc for 7 years, I don't expect any difficulty with this one.

It would appear that my initial impressions of my economics teachers are correct. One is going to waste all sorts of class time because he is obsessed with his own clerverness. This, of course, doesn't mean that he doesn't expect everybody to be in class, even though all of my learning will be done outside of it (he actually takes roll). I think I will have a lot of fun this semester relating all the tales of what he thinks is important to talk about during my precious class time. At least the subject matter is interesting, even if it looks like it might be pretty easy.

The other class is going to be awesome. Not only am I supremely interested in the subject, but it will be difficult (well, marginally), and hopefully will keep my attention. I do find it ironic that the first real topic we hit on (besides a very brief history of economics as a discipline) was the Vienna Circle and Logical Positivism. I really really hope that it is only a brief discussion topic, because if I have to hear about Logical Positivism all semester long, it is going to be very hard not to rip it to shreds every day. For those of you who don't care I won't go into what it is, but I will say that it is the most despised of all the philosophical ideas I learned. Ever.

I've located the Safeway closest to campus, so I'll have my deli food whenever I want it (I love Signature Soups). For all you SoCal people, Safeway is the north's Vons. It looks like there's really nice snow up in the mountains, but I don't think I'll go boarding this weekend. I should pretend that I'm up here to do things other than play, at least for the first week.

Hey, teacher! Leave those kids alone.

I'm officially a student again, and I have the student ID to prove it. I've already been struck by all the differences between a big state school (it's much bigger than Cal State Bako, which I knew, but wasn't really prepared for) and the small private school that I'm used to. Paying for parking and my student ID are just the beginning of it, but I think it'll be a good change.

I only had two classes today, and I'm very excited about one - both the material and the professor. She was an English and econ major in college (Jess, there's another in the world!) and is making us start with ancient philosophers in the history of economic thought, unlike most courses of it that start just before Adam Smith (late 1700's). So I get to read Aristotle in an econ class, which is very exciting. I also love that the prof told the class that this was going to be a hard class not because she grades hard, but because the material is dense, and there's a lot of writing. At the end of her little spiel, I thought to myself, "Hurrah, I'm home!"

The other shouldn't be too bad, in spite of the fact that the prof strikes me as a bit of an off-topic rambler. Of course, this is just a first impression, but I think it's a pretty safe assumption, considering that as we introduced ourselves, he interrupted almost every person with some tidbit of his own. While off-topic rambling can be fun, when I'm in class, I'm there to go over the material and not learn all about the personal likes and dislikes of my prof. If they throw them in every once in a while, that's fine, but completely taking up class time with non-pertinent facts is not okay.

Sacramento seems like a nice city, although I haven't seen much of it. The campus is situated right on the river, which is pretty cool, and there is a great bike/walk path running the whole length of the river (it's the American River, not the Sacramento River). If I had a bike, I could take the path all the way to campus from my uncle's house (about 5 miles), but I couldn't fit it in my car on the way up. Next trip I'll have to convince my dad to bring all my stuff up in the Expo.

I'll post again at the end of the week about first week impressions, and put up the biggest differences between Sac State and Whitworth, but for now I'm excited to get back into learning and procrastinating.

The Dead Zone

So I've gotten away from my series a month idea, but I thought it was time to bring it back. USA has a show called The Dead Zone which is based on characters from a Steven King novel. This novel was also made into a movie which starred Christopher Walken in 1983. This show has been around for a while (recently finished its 6th season this past summer), but I never really looked into it because with Steven King's name attached to it, I thought it would be more akin to horror than it actually is. With a name like The Dead Zone, I expected him to be seeing ghosts or something like that, but really, it just refers to the part of his brain that he uses.

But luckily, this past summer it was on immediately after The 4400, so I started catching episodes of it as I was getting ready for bed. I think I watched probably four episodes this way, all of which were at the end of the season, and got intrigued. So I decided to download the first season and watch it to find out what the show is all about.

So far, things look pretty good. The basic idea of the show is that John Smith seems to have the ability to experience past and future events by touch the objects or people around him. This happens because he is in a coma for 7 years, and when he wakes up, he not only has to integrate himself back into society (a lot could happen in 7 years, like your finance getting married and having a son, strangely enough named John Smith), and dealing with this ability, and people knowing about his ability. It's similar to The 4400 because the ability given protagonist doesn't try to hide them (like in Smallville or Charmed), and that leads to some fun episodes. I especially liked the one about witchcraft.

Unfortunately it's a summer series, so that means only 13 episodes per season, but that can also be a good thing, I guess, although I can't think of a reason right now.

Lack of class

There was a student in the class I was in yesterday named Sparkles. Seriously, that was the name listed on the roll print out. That is all I have to say.

And I didn't die once!

So Saturday after reffing two soccer games, I decided that it would be a good idea to head down to LA and join Rob's D&D group for some orc-slaying fun! Actually, I don't think we slayed any orcs, but we had fun running around a tower and trying to kill a spider lady. Plus, there was lots of food involved, and flashy cups.

On Sunday, Rob wanted to try out a pick-up Ultimate Frisbee game he heard about through his new Ultimate Frisbee league, so we headed out to Pasadena, and to a park in the Rose Bowl area. Now, you all may think I'm fanatical about frisbee, but you ain't seen nothing until you see these people play - very good and very intense about frisbee. It was a beautiful day, and it was great to get out and run around for a while, once we figured out the different rules and the subbing mechanism.

On Monday, I decided to pay my aunt, who lives about a mile from the Rose Bowl, a visit. Had I known she was that close, I might have made us go over on Sunday and say hi (it was literally almost on the way that we went), but oh well. I'll know for next time. It was good to see my aunt and uncle, and we went to the Norton Simon for about an hour (I had never been there before) and had Mexican.

Now I'm home and I have to start getting some things done. Only two weeks until my classes up in Sacramento start! I keep dreaming that I'm back in high school, only not high school aged, so I think I'm either worried or really excited about going back to school. I guess I'll just have to wait and see.

It's been 12 years

Drank a Dr. Pepper and nothing happened. Interesting.

Putting the "real" in RL

Here's a review of the biggest and most popular MMORPG ever. (Read it, it's actually funny.)

Click me!

Also....

Everybody should see Juno. Great movie.

Up in the Sky!

So, I think most people are aware of my somewhat recent obsession with comics. Well, actually, so far I have refrained from buying actual comics (with the exception of Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 8), but wait for the good ones to come out in book form and read them then. I just thought I'd share some of my favorites (and maybe some people will join me in my nerdness).

52 - My first encounter with this series was in book form (as in paragraphs and sentences), but it was so good that I had to find the visual version of it. This was a weekly (which is amazing in comics) comic that used a huge number of DC characters, but noticeably missing are the big three - Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman. It takes place pretty much right after Infinite Crisis, and is really good. It focuses on some of the more interesting superheroes, morally speaking, including Black Adam, who is pretty much classified as a villain, but toes the line.

Kingdom Come - This was a Christmas gift from my grandparents, and I've been hearing about it for a long time, but have never found it in Bakersfield. I read it in one sitting, and it's a 225 page book, if that tells you how good I thought it was. Basically, all of our current heroes are old, and have for one reason or another retired, but their inheritors have seriously screwed up. So the question is, should superhumans (for the most case, extra-terrestrials) even play a part in human life, or should it only be up to actual humans. Very, very good.

Marvel 1602 - This is the only Marvel comic I've read, and for good reason. While I can't see anything wrong with Marvel, it has never been my favorite of the two for some reason, but this book was different. It took a handful of the most popular and powerful of the Marvel characters, and placed them in Elizabethan England. I think my favorite character in this book was Daredevil, which was a real surprise. It's written by Neil Gaiman, which was probably most of the reason I bought it.