Originally, I had planned to write this post when I got back from Oregon. Then, I was going to write it on Labor Day, and then I was going to write it after my first day of classes. Oh well. At this point, I’m proud of myself for writing it at all. (And really, if you wanted to go back even further, I was going to write a post with this same title last fall.) I suppose what I will do is go back and recount the past couple weeks.

Oregon

As they tend to be, my trip to Oregon was great. The weather was much warmer than I would have liked, and the eighteen days I was out there for seemed like three, but I still had a great time with Michelle. I long for the day when there are no more goodbye scenes in airports.

Back to Long Island

After I got back, I had about a week and a half of freedom before classes started. I spent my first week back shrink-wrapping newspapers and earning ten dollars an hour for doing so. I also tried to relax as much as possible, knowing full well that in another week free time would be at a premium.

Classes started this past Wednesday. I have never liked fall semesters, but so far this one hasn’t been so bad. Hopefully that isn’t just the fact that I’ve only had two days of classes. I’m going to be optimistic, though, and maybe I’ll be pleasantly surprised come December.

Miscellany

As I alluded to in my last post, I upgraded from XP to Vista back in June. Most of the things I’ve heard about Vista have been negative, but I just don’t see it. Is it still Windows? Sure. Is it OS X? Definitely not. Regardless, I’ve been running it for the past couple months and I haven’t had any problems, which is something I’ve never been able to say about a Microsoft operating system. I still plan to make the switch at some point (and those new iMacs are so nice), but Vista has made me feel better about the fact that I can’t do so any time soon. Office 2007 is pretty nice, too; I’m actually writing this post in Word.

In my last post, I asked the Mets to bury the rest of their division as though they read my blog. They were promptly swept in four games by the Phillies the first week I was back, but they’ve regained all the games they’d lost since then. I’ll take it. Speaking of sports, I had forgotten how much I missed football. Today is a good day.

I had envisioned this post being longer than it is. Oh well.

Posted on 9 September 2007 | Comment

Tomorrow morning, I’m flying out to Oregon to see Michelle. I will be there until the 25th, when I return to New York. After I get back, be on the lookout for entries on my upgrade to Windows Vista (two thumbs up), my new job (selling alcoholic beverages), and a host of other topics. If I ever get around to writing them, that is.

Goodnight kids.

PS:

Dear New York Mets,

Please bury the rest of the NL East while I’m gone.

Love,
Andrew

Posted on 6 August 2007 | Comment

I have a few moments to catch my breath before I head to sleep, so I figured I’d stop neglecting my blog and do a quick update.

It’s been over a month since my last update, and even longer since my last update that wasn’t just me making excuses for not updating. In that time, school weighed very heavily on me; a paper or two would be due one week, I’d have a test next week, and so the cycle would go. It wasn’t fun, and unfortunately, I let my pledge to update slip.

Since my last post, I turned 22. Not much different than 21, really.

In just a few hours, I leave for Oregon to see Michelle for the first time since January. I’m already up later than I should be, and so this update won’t be nearly as lengthy as I’d like it to be. Perhaps I’ll do a recap when I get back.

Sorry for not updating, guys. I’m as disappointed with myself as you are, and I shall strive to do better. Be back in a week.

Posted on 29 March 2007 | Comment [4]

/me sighs

So here we are almost 3 weeks into the new year, and I still don’t have an update with “2006” in the date. I am sorry, my dear readers (reader?), I really am. As I was just explaining to The Scot, I’m not much for doing small updates, as I prefer longer updates with more substance. However, by the time I actually get to where I want to update, I can’t remember half the stuff I wanted to write about in the first place. I guess the best way to remedy that is going to be this: when interesting stuff happens, I’ll write about it, hopefully in a timely fashion. However, my life is not always terribly interesting, so I can’t promise there will be much [interesting] content. I hope you can deal with that. =o)

So yes, as promised, here is an update about my trip to Oregon.

After getting approximately 4 hours of sleep, I woke up at around 4:30 AM on December 29th, showered & dressed, made sure I had packed everything I needed to bring, and my dad and I left for JFK International Airport at around 5:30. Neither flight was terribly interesting…a little turbulent, but nothing major. (Aside: The innovative touch screen control of the Nintendo DS is not particularly well suited to turbulent airplanes.) Landed in San Francisco, dashed down to the departure gate for my connecting flight to Portland, had my carry-on randomly checked because of the Playstation 2 in my bag (Michelle’s Christmas present), boarded the plane to Portland, and touched down a couple hours later.

I was a little anxious getting off the plane…I mean, I knew for sure that I was in love with Michelle, and all that good stuff, but there was always the chance that maybe I wouldn’t like her, or that she wouldn’t like me. I didn’t see that as being the case though, so I dashed off the plane and walked around looking for her, since I wasn’t exactly sure where I’d be meeting her.

After about a minute or two of that, I noticed this really cute girl leaning against one of the poles looking at something off to her right. A second later, it registered that I’d found her. There was that moment where our eyes locked for the first time, and the next thing I knew I was finally hugging the girl of my dreams, the woman I was going to marry one day.

A good five minutes later, we walked down to baggage claim and got my suitcase, then went out to the car and headed the two-ish hours back to her house.

I can’t say there’s very much to write about concerning my time there. Most of our time was spent snuggling at her house. But you know what? The trip couldn’t have been any more perfect than it was. I mean, other than if it were longer, but that doesn’t count. I’ve never been as happy as I was for those 5 days Michelle and I spent together. Getting back home and being apart wasn’t easy for the first week, and it seems like it’s been longer than two weeks since I got back home, but I now have those 5 days to look back on, and the promise of more good times to come in the future. The future is looking very, very bright.

One side note: coming home, American decided to ‘delay’ my bag, which means I got home on Wednesday and my bag got home on Friday, and when I got it back, the retractable handle thing was busted beyond all repair. I’ve tried getting in touch with their damaged baggage office or whatever it is, but I haven’t had any luck yet, so I’m not really sure what to do. If anyone has had any experience with this sort of thing, and can offer insights, that would be a tremendous help.

Moving on.

My winter break is about over, as classes start the 23rd. With any luck, this is going to be my last full semester at Nassau; I then plan on taking 3 credits during the summer session in June, and then I’ll be done there. That raises the question of where I’m going afterwards, but I’ll figure that out. I think so, anyway.

I guess that about does it for this update. I really will try to be better about it from here on out. I’ve said that before, to no avail, so we’ll see how it goes. So yes. Stay tuned…

Posted on 19 January 2006 | Comment [3]

Is to update this regularly, something I sought to do at the beginning of this blog’s life.

Anyway.

I leave for Oregon to visit Michelle tomorrow, I will be back on the 4th of January. In the meantime, here is a brief recap of what you’ve missed:

• The semester ended on the 22nd of December, I got all A’s again. I am content.
• I got a Nintendo DS a few weeks back, and it instantly became more valuable than my PSP, which is now a pretty, shiny paperweight.
• Samurai Western is a really good game.
• Should not have had that Chateau last night.
• I saw Narnia last night. It was enjoyable.

I will post a more thorough update when I get back from Oregon, possibly with pictures. To the few of you who read this site: Happy New Year, be safe and I’ll talk to you when I get home.

Here’s to 2006.

Posted on 28 December 2005 | Comment [2]

Post previous to this one: September 16, 2005
This post: October 14, 2005

Man, you people are going to start thinking this is my Xanga if I let this happen again. I’ll try to be better about posting from now on. Wow.

Of course, the issue now is that all the ideas I had for updates in the past month are all outdated now. I’ll see if I can remember anything I wanted to say.

Classes are going well enough, I suppose. For some reason, the workload seems a lot harder than last semester’s did. I don’t know if the classes are harder, or it’s because I’m actually at school for more hours with no breaks, or what. At any rate, I’m already looking forward to December when the semester is over.

And of course, a big part of that is that in December I finally get to go see my Michelle. I bought my plane ticket last night; I’m leaving December 29th, and coming back on January 4th. I’m excited. Only 76 more days to go. It can’t come soon enough.

I had planned on doing a Serenity update (hence the post title) after I saw it opening weekend, but I guess it’s a little late for that. Oh well, this is my blog, so I’m going to do it anyway.

If you’re planning on seeing Serenity, chances are you’ve already seen it. I honestly haven’t been paying attention to how much money it’s taken in, but I’m going to go out on a limb here and assume it’s far less than it deserves to have made. Serenity is quite probably the best movie I’ve seen all year. I was pretty late to the Firefly party; I bought the DVDs over the summer, and only watched them all the week before the movie came out, but I got hooked instantly. Unlike some other science fiction sagas which I won’t name (but if I did, I’d probably say Star Wars), the characters in Firefly were nothing short of outstanding. After the first episode I almost felt like I was right there on the ship with them.

Somehow, Joss Whedon was able to translate the entire Firefly experience onto the big screen without losing a great deal. I thought the beginning of the movie was a bit slow, but it picked up very quickly. I gasped out loud when I realized the big plot twist in the middle, and I was on my seat for almost the entire movie. In the end, was Serenity worth it? God, was it ever. I’m really hoping the movie takes in enough that we can have more tales in the Serenity universe; ideally, the return of Firefly on TV, but I’ll take another movie any day of the week.

I’m going to go back to the first (real) post on this blog and talk about Apple now. Yesterday, the “One more thing…” announcement was made. The video iPod. People had been talking about it for what seems like forever, so while it wasn’t a shock that they announced it, I was surprised by how much I like it. Not just the unit itself, but the whole package.

iTunes 6. Five weeks ago we got iTunes 5, and now they’ve gone and jumped an entire version. I understand the marketing behind it—releasing the next generation of what is really Apple’s flagship product looks a lot better if it seems like you’re getting a whole new version of its companion software. (Would iTunes 5.1 have gone alongside the new iPods as well as iTunes 6? I doubt it.) iTunes has been able to play videos for some time now, but with iTunes 6, they’re much more prominently displayed; the “Videos” item in the Source list, and the video section of the iTMS. Where am I going with this? I’m going here.

What the original iPod did for portable music, the 5G iPod is going to do for portable video.

How do I know? Two words: content delivery.

Let’s look at the facts, shall we?

Portable media players with video capability are nothing new. There are a ton of them on the market. They all play a myriad of formats. Even the PSP, which Sony is touting as an iPod killer, plays videos and music. However, none of these devices have a standardized way of getting media onto the player. And no, UMD movies don’t count. I don’t care how many Sony claims have been sold; the format is worthless.

On the other hand, Apple has that means to an end. They’ve always had it; it’s just been updated. $1.99 for an episode of Lost seems a bit expensive on the surface. However, the first season of the show was 25 episodes. 25 episodes at $1.99 each works out to $49.75, and they offer the entire first season as a package for $34.99, which is cheaper than the first season DVD box set on Amazon ($38.99). And because they offer the new episodes as well, if you miss an episode, or you just don’t have time for TV, you can download the newest one and watch it on your lunch break or something.

The technology is there. We’ll see where it goes.

I’m ending this update here because it’s getting longer than I’d like. With any luck, I’ll remember to update more often, and then you’ll get a lot of shorter updates instead of one long one. So yeah, tune in soon. I hope.

Posted on 14 October 2005 | Comment [5]