New theme. Woohoo.

The semester has apparently started, seeing as how I’m writing this while working on a lab in physics. I’m taking 16 credit hours this semester, in four classes:

• Japanese 102 (5 credits)
• Physics 151 (4 credits)
• Calculus 3 (Math 272, 4 credits)
• Technology and Society (Sociology 334, 3 credits)

I was originally registered in Japanese 101; even though I’d taken up to 202, there was a two-semester gap between when I took 201 and 202, and another two-semester gap since when I took 202, and both 201 and 202 were taken on top of a full load of classes in high school, so I didn’t feel like my actual level of ability was much higher than 101. But the teacher wanted me to take the placement assessment, and I ended up in 102 anyway. At least I’m not totally bored or totally lost, so I guess I’m in the right place now.

My actual schedule is what impresses me: I have all four classes on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, with physics, Japanese, and calculus all in the morning and early afternoon, then a few hours’ break before Tech and Society; Tuesday I only have Japanese and calculus, and Thursday I only have Japanese. I think I’ve achieved the perfect balance of workload, class load and free time.

I’ve replaced Windows XP on the designated Boot Camp hard drive in my Mac Pro with Vista Business 64-bit on about 500GB of it; the other 200GB (it’s a “750GB” drive, with about 698GB usable) I plan to use for Ubuntu 64-bit. This is partially so that I can play a legal, less-buggy version of Halo 2 on my computer (Vista), so that Windows can use all 4GB of RAM in my computer (64-bit), and so that I can jus have another Linux installation handy (Ubuntu). How I did the Vista installation was interesting, though; I (ahem) otherwise acquired an unmodified, uncracked Vista 64-bit installation disc, and installed it first on a VMWare virtual machine without activating it using the Vista Business license on the label on the bottom of my laptop, which hasn’t been used since I got the laptop last April (I almost immediately wiped it completely off in favor of Ubuntu). It installed and updated fine in the virtual machine, and I deemed the media safe to use on a live system, so I then successfully installed it on the partition I made for Windows. The only thing was I had to activate it by phone, but the automated phone activation system worked fine. I haven’t been able to get Neverwinter Nights to run yet, but other than that no problems so far (knock on wood) other than the fact that I may just have too many computer games.

(Finishing up in the Society of Physics Students room before my last class today.) Other than school, pretty much just random stuff going on. My best friend Rebecca now has a blog of her own, which of course I would say is worth checking out; and I will be uploading my vacation pictures soon, I just need to settle on how thoroughly to go through and edit and index them. Of course, there’s still the high probability of games intervening…

I’ve started using Flickr for online photo sharing and backup, partially influenced by the fact that I took almost 600 photos on vacation and don’t want to put the stress of uploading gigabytes of images on my server. I did have to spring for Flickr Pro, which is an extra $25/year, because the 100MB/month upload limit on a free account was too small, but I asked around and the general response was that it’s definitely worth it. Currently I’m using a trial version of Aperture to sort through and edit my vacation pictures, and as I finish with each day’s pictures I’ll upload them to my photostream (with FlickrExport for Aperture) and post them here.

In addition to mass quantities of photos, I now also have real furniture. My grandmother and I made a trip to Ikea one afternoon and I got a dresser, a TV stand and a bookcase; unfortunately my roommates were both gone when I got back, so I had to carry the boxes all in by myself. A little rearranging was needed to get everything inside and have room to assemble it:

The TV stand was the first thing I put together, and definitely took the longest.

It does look pretty cool though, and lets me keep all the cables for everything neatly out of sight.

My tentative setup, before I’d assembled the dresser:

Only minor injuries were sustained in the entire process. My arm was rather bruised after carrying in all of the boxes:

While building the TV stand I dropped one of the back panels on my finger, but other than that I managed to get everything assembled and remain unscathed.

Next was the dresser a few days later—considerably easier to build than the TV stand.

The finished product:

The finished setup for my electronics: TV and speakers on the TV stand of course, cable box and modem on one of the shelves below, and stereo receiver and router on the dresser.

It was another several days before I got the bookshelf put together; a cold, my general laziness and the fact that there was still lots of stuff on the floor in my room intervened, but I did finally get it put together. It was by far the easiest to assemble; the instructions actually said one person could do it, and I did it while fighting off a nasty cold.

Like I said, I’ve been fighting off a cold for most of this week. Yesterday was definitely the worst of it, but I’m on my way back to being healthy. I even did the dishes, which my roommates are too lazy to take care of—while sick. By hand (with hand sanitizer on hand). Take note, ladies.

I’m kind of giving the Danny Choo photoblogging style a shot here. Probably won’t be a regular thing, but I’ll at the very least post thumbnails or links to new photosets if I have more than just a handful of pictures to share.

All things other than the weather considered it’s good to be back in Tempe, on my own computer again with my anime collection and epic internet pipes and digital cable.

But DANG it gets hot here. Seriously, holy frick.

In any case, vacation was fun. Lots of driving on Monday (yes, we drove from Tucson to LA, in the daytime); stayed at the Residence Inn by Marriott in Los Alamitos. Tuesday, Disneyland; we had a reservation at the Blue Bayou Restaurant there, which was well-timed with the earthquake happening not long before. We didn’t feel anything, but all the rides were closed for inspection for a couple hours. We didn’t go on too many rides anyway; this was the third time in just over four years (second time with my family) that we’d been to Disneyland, so I think it was all still old news right then. Another year or two’s wait might have been better.

Wednesday, California Adventure; pretty good, it was my first time going. Muppets 3D was definitely the highlight of the day; the Animation Workshop was interesting too, and the Monsters, Inc. and Soaring Over California rides were pretty good. Then ESPNZone in Downtown Disney that night for dinner. There are televisions at eye-level above the urinals there. Best restaurant of the trip.

Thursday, a bunch of different things: Aquarium of the Pacific in the morning; Seal Beach in the afternoon; and Dodger Stadium, believe it or not my first Major League Baseball regular-season game outside of Phoenix, in the evening. We were in the vast minority of people not wearing any Dodger Blue, and I didn’t see anyone wearing anything Diamondbacks (even though the D-backs won, 2-1). I did have a Dodger Dog though…you have not tasted an excellent hot dog until you’ve had a Dodger Dog with the works.

Friday, Universal Studios. Much smaller than Disneyland actually, which I wasn’t expecting but much to the delight of my legs. The tour is really the highlight of the park; it’s half real sightseeing, half totally contrived (but passingly fun) theme park fun-tram ride, but fun nonetheless. We opted to pass on The Mummy Returns and Jurassic Park rides; the Shrek 4D show was amusing, the special effects demonstrations were enlightening despite being punctuated by really dry attempts at humor, and the Simpsons Ride was totally worth the 45-minute wait spent watching an about as long Simpsons “Best of Krustyland” video loop.

Saturday, more driving. All in all I took a good several hundred photos, which I still have to get into iPhoto and sort out the good ones before uploading them, but I’ll probably get working on that after I (finally) get some furniture and clean my room.

Oh yes, and it was much—MUCH—cooler in Los Angeles.

Forget translation; this restaurant sign in China didn’t even make it that far, and shows why you really shouldn’t rely on the internet for translating into languages you can’t read:

I don’t post just plain links very much, but when I find one that reaches as far into the realm of Epic as this I just can’t help it. I don’t even know how to categorize this.