Pretty soon I will be moving my small flotilla of Burger King boxes down the street to a new apartment. One without cable TeeVee. One with Verizon instead of NTC InterWebNetTubes.

I’ve got some ideas for the place - maybe a small work area in the common room since I can never do work in my room? Add in a dining table that was a lab table in a former life, a matching couch & chair (with ottoman!), and some super antenna action (for AM/FM + TV), and I think it will be superbly livable!

…was last night, walking in the light snow, listening to the Burruss Hall carillon play The Beatles’ “Michelle.”

In other news, have you seen these?

Random acts of meta-data are afoot!

Indeed it has. A fair bit has occurred since February 2007. I’ve made more good friends, I’ve seen some graduate, I made the Dean’s List for the second time in my (going on) 5 years here at Tech. Then there was that thing that happened in April. I’m not really going to harp on that too much, other than to say that I’m dealing with it in what I hope is a positive manner, and that my friends and family have been there for me (as I have for them). Things have definitely changed - [one can only hope] for the better.

I’ve been spending the summer in my apartment in Blacksburg, working two jobs. First, I’m part of an undergraduate research team with the Mobile & Portable Radio Research Group that has been researching how to use Ultra-Wideband to improve GPS in forest environments. Second, I’ve been taking measurements for the VT VLSI for Telecommunications Group that has been working on self-monitoring structures. I’ve been having fun, learning, and getting paid, all at the same time. Plus I’ve been able to hang out with my friends more often and get a jump on WUVT work. It’s been a lot better than sitting in a cube in Greensboro programming all summer.

I hope (but can’t guarantee) to update a bit more frequently. I say that all the time, but then sometimes a little thing called an Engineering Double-Major gets in the way.

It’s that time of year again. Three finals down, one more to go. Three boxes packed, innumerable more to go. Sad thing is, I’ve been here long enough that some of the people I know are going on to parts unknown, to chart out The Rest of Their Lives (TM). Some of them I’ve known for a while, some I’ve just met.

Things have changed. A lot of things have changed. All in all I think it’s for the better.

Moving sucks, but at least all I have to do is cart a good chunk of my stuff a few blocks away into my new apartment

Sauntering home on a warm night, with dreamy bossa nova playing on the radio as rain lightly falls upon your head. Everything lit in the warm yellow glow of successive faux Victorian cast iron street lamps. The smell of thunderstorms permeates the air as the people pass by, as oblivious to you as you are to them. You have nothing to do, nowhere to be. If only for a fleeting moment, you are at peace with the world.

Dancing the night away often proves quite fun. I should do it more often.

Plus, I think it helps me with my math homework. I hadn’t been understanding it before I went out for the evening, and when I came back, it clicked. I can already see it in the headlines - “Dancing Improves Math Scores - Local School Board To Require Ballroom Dancing Lessons for Students”

Alrighty, enough of my babble
-JM

   So I get a call that the left channel on the webstream is dead. Being that I was in squires, on the third floor, and that I needed a break, I decided to go fix it. I re-soldered like 3 cables, still nothing. Found out that it was a dead equilizer, so I have the webstream 2 channels of right    However, in the process of fixing the webstream, I managed to take it, and the rest of the station down. I stepped on a crucial power cord, sending the whole engineering rack dark. Since the webserver, stream, and the microwave link to our transmitter are all in that rack, the stream disappeared along with the website, and the station went to dead air until I found what cord I had unplugged and plugged it back in. Then I had to babysit computers. fsck_ffs == devil. FFS is the *worst* filesystem ever.

Now to more project, homework, quiz, and, if I’m lucky, sleep

mad and sad and angry and frustrated and bewildered and upset and confused and tired and lonely and hungry and just kinda here.

gosh, how I *loathe* signals homework. Is there anyone out there that can tell me how to take the limit (from -infinity to infinity) of the sum of dirac delta functions? Yeah, apparently I need that. Or at least how to integrate the sum of delta functions. Or how to integrate a comb function?

yeah. I’m just going to sit here, drink my tea, and stare at this paper until I fall over dead, bleeding from my ears.

so, halloween saturday…
- spent a ton of money
- drove creatively through the wal-mart parking lot
- ate dinner next to a drag queen at Souvlaki
- saw “captain natty” passed out on the toilet after an hour
- saw E-Monster wearing Patty Smyth & Scandal makeup, a cape, a beater, and no pants besides a pair of boxer briefs, in the 30 degree weather
- saw Josh dressed as a reverend, wearing an HRC equality sticker turned sideways as a “pause button”
- saw Mister Microphone dressed as Len in 1978.
- saw Len dressed as Richard Karn.
- saw Nick wearing cat ears and a dress
- hung out with the Marx brothers
- Met Ozzy Osbourne (who was strangely coherent and female)
- changed from Robert Palmer to zombie Robert Palmer to backwards-man
- danced the night away at the plop! house