Time for my semiannual blog post!

There are 6 weeks of classes left before I'm done with education, possibly for the rest of my life. (Or so the plan goes...) I knew this would happen, though... I'm finally figuring out that college actually mattered. Not that I'd want to stick around any longer than 6 more weeks anyway, but I'm simultaneously relieved, excited, and regretful about it. Just in the last two semesters, I've had two classes that have, in some way or another, changed how I look at the world. And it hit me like a lit up baseball bat, or something like that. THIS is what it's all for. It's not the money, it's not the programming classes - I could have dealt with that myself without going to school. But I don't think I ever would have had the opportunity to study under professors who really live and breathe what they teach, and are incredibly good at making it matter.

And that's the depressing part... I avoided anything that looked hard. Part of that was because I had a full time job for most of it, but... I took an HTML class which didn't teach me anything because I wanted three easy credit hours, and I hated every second of it. And that happened with probably at least two classes each semester. For the last three years, I've been going through the motions and staring straight at the end of the tunnel, but never realized that there were wonderful things on either side of me the whole time. Instead of wasting my time in an HTML class, I could have been, I don't know... getting all energized about philosophy or something.

I'm glad I had a decent job during school... it's put me in a great financial position and I now have plenty of work experience in my field. But it took so much time and completely sucked all my energy out. Another detour I should have avoided was getting all consumed by WoW for 2 years, but that is what it is, and I'm glad I dropped it when I did.

So, to anyone else to whom it's relevant... don't make the same mistake I did. Liberal arts education really is more than career preparation. You've got to take X number of classes anyway, might as well make them ones that matter.

Eh. Hindsight is 20/20.

^ That's a good thing, by the way. It feels like I have a ridiculous amount of down time this summer, even though I'm still working full-time. But, I'm not working two jobs, finishing high school until July, or raiding every night this time, and I love it. I can't believe this is what life will be like after school (in 10 1/2 months...).

I've managed to stick with about half of the activities I started last month. The whole cello thing sort of stopped when I got to the end of the "level one" book I had and didn't feel like buying another one. And programming a graphical MMORPG? Eh, not this summer, anyway. I'll likely get involved in some other kind of programming project instead. But at any rate, the chain mail shirt is about 1/2 done, I think.

Michelle is officially done with high school now. She'll be living at Malone in two and a half months. That's a strange concept... she has as much personality as the other four of us combined. It's not like I'll be around much during the school year anyway, between work and school, but the house will be pretty quiet, especially if Sarah ends up going to school or something. (Mom won't have any messes to complain about but her own!)

Well, in that order...

Finals are this week, which means that in two days, I'll be done until the end of August. I plan to study lightly for the one I have to take tomorrow (business stuff - yech) and I have to write a few pages for a take-home final, but otherwise, it's just going to Walsh to take a test for 45 minutes (after driving for 1:30) tomorrow and Wednesday. I remember when I used to get all stressed out about finals. The last time that happened was probably the first semester of my freshman year, actually. I'm of the opinion that you shouldn't have to study for finals. If you've forgotten enough of the material to have to re-read the entire book for most of a week before a test, then you won't remember any of it coming out of the class anyway. I suppose that's fine, actually... but to avoid the studying (takes WAY too much time...) I prefer to just listen every now and then in class, seeing as I have nothing better to do when I'm stuck there.

So now, I'm a little conflicted: How will I fit all my projects in this summer? I want to learn to play my cello, finish my chain mail shirt, and now program a space MMORPG. (Yeah, so I was poking at an old game I used to play a lot - Escape Velocity - a 2D space RPG sort of thing. So now I want to learn sound, graphics, and network programming in either Java or C++.) And I only have 4 months to do it all! Sigh.

Geek warning! AJAX is pretty awesome. I'm using it in a new project at work - I've got it set up so that you can just start typing part of a name, and it'll show all the matches as you type, and you check boxes and it updates without having to submit forms, and all that. I think I'm going to have to use this in pretty much everything I do now.

And, that last thing. My parents went up to Michigan to visit some great-aunts (my dad's aunts) this past weekend. I got to be the adult for a whole day... got home from work, made dinner, drove Sarah all over the place and everything. Michelle was tanning in the backyard while I'm doing all of this, too. She'll tell you she did some dishes, but would you believe that? I didn't think so. Well, ok, maybe she did a little bit. I guess I'm getting so old that I don't really care anymore, though. But making chicken linguine alfredo was pretty fun. I suppose have to start figuring out how to cook dinners if I want to move out in a year and a half.

I've been spending a good bit of time working on my chain mail shirt (technically, it'll be a "haubergeon"). It's got about 400 feet of 16-gauge galvanized steel wire in it so far, but it'll probably end up with at least 2000 feet of wire. I've done about half of either the front or back of it - not sure which yet. I found out that I was about to build the whole thing sideways... I'm just glad I figured that out before it would have resulted in days of work fixing the thing.

There are exactly 4 days of class left when I go back on Tuesday after break. Getting out this early is great, but why can't I be a senior right now?

So, I'll come out and say it: I'm getting sick of World of Warcraft. It's not the first time this has happened... I actually cancelled my account for a while a year or two ago. But this time, it's not because I'm more interested in another game instead. I'm actually wanting to spend time not being on the computer. Wait, huh? Yeah. Like, I started reading a book a couple weeks ago - haven't had time to finish it, but it's a start. Oh, and instead of doing homework while staring at the chat window in WoW, I went outside and studied on the patio.

Maybe I'm just getting tired of computers. Maybe it's because my latest guild is a rude, abrasive bunch. But I think that even more, it's because I'm realizing, for the first time in 6 years, that there is life to enjoy beyond games. Half a year ago, I wouldn't think to attend some kind of social event during a raid night. Not so much anymore. I made dinner last week, not because I was asked to, but because I wanted to. And at the same time, I had no interest in earning some leet XP or epic phat lewt. You see, this is troubling because for most of the last 6 years, I've been telling myself that spending all my free time on the computer was OK because I had nothing better to do. Now I might actually have to regret the (significantly large number) days of time I've spent on games and not, say, learning to play my cello.

At the same time, I'm appreciating the people around me more because of this. I mean, I have amazing family and friends, and seeing as I no longer mind that spending time with them means not finishing those darned quests, I should probably do it more often. And that's something that I think I can go with.

In other news... I have a 4 page paper, two group presentations, a 6 file program, a practice newsletter, and 9 days of class left before summer break. And finals, but I don't count those. They're easy. But, I'll probably have two Bs in classes where I could have easily had As if I cared more. If junioritis is this bad, I don't even want to know what senioritis will be like.

Last week was spring break, which, coincidentally, also includes my birthday. So, you put the two of those together, and it's very hard to think about going back to school tomorrow.

Mom pulled off a surprise party on Friday, right under my nose - she set up and everyone got here while I was up in my room listening to music and messing with my computer. I guess my extremely old age has made me less sensitive to these sorts of things. We had an insane game of DICE WARS, as well as plenty of fun with denatured alcohol. No, you don't drink it - it's actually pretty toxic. You burn it, on driveways. And when that gets boring, you start soaking things in it, and burning them.

Speaking of alcohol... I may be able to buy it now, but that doesn't mean I have to buy it, or consume it, for that matter. Just to be clear, no such plans are on the agenda. Kegs full of white grape juice, however, are perfectly acceptable.

Anyway, 6 weeks of classes left for this semester. I think I can make it... time flies when you're always busy.

As I copied my old posts over, I quickly browsed each one to tag it. But, in the process, I ran across a series of posts I made when I started my freshman year. Wow, I cared a lot more about school then. I wanted to meet new people, I was excited about classes, and I was excited about working all day at the same time.

I was talking to a co-worker the other day about this very thing. She told me about how, during her freshman year, she felt very much the same way as I did at that point - sitting alone at lunch was awful, everything was new and exciting. And, like me, by the time she had been through a couple years, sitting at lunch alone was a good thing - you can do more work that way.

Wow, this mango ice cream is good... it sounds scary, though.

I can only conclude that, after two and a half years of being gone 10-12 hours/day, there is nothing fun about it. Rather than setting aside breaks in my classes to go to Mass, eat lunch, socialize, etc, I go to school, sit through three straight hours of class, then rush off to work.

But, you know, I'm enjoying this semester just as much as my first one. I've settled into a routine which seems much more like what I'll be doing after I graduate, and ultimately, that's where I want to be. I'm sure it would all be different if I was living on campus, or not working full-time. It's now much less about enjoying "the college experience" and more about "let's get this over with so I can move on and be an adult."

If we claim our concern lies with people dying from climate effects, as in the European heat wave in 2003, we have to ask ourselves why we are primarily thinking about implementing expensive CO2 cuts, which at best leave future communities warming slightly less quickly, still causing ever more heat deaths. Moreover, as warming will indeed prevent even more cold deaths, we have to ask why we are thinking about an expensive policy that will actually leave more people dead.

With Kyoto we can avoid about 140,000 malaria deaths over the century. At one-sixtieth the cost, we can tackle malaria directly and avoid eighty-five million deaths. For every time we save one person from malaria death through climate policies, the same money could have saved 36,000 people through better antimalaria policies. Which should be our first mission?