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…