life

Half May

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Other than having trouble falling asleep May 13 after work (cause: momentary obsession with comparing Missouri in the After the End mod for Crusader Kings 2 to Missouri as it actually exists resulting in staying up until 4:40 AM, then not falling asleep until like 7:30 AM) I’ve had a decent few days. My mom came down to help my brother move out of his dorm room, and since she didn’t want to make the approximately 5 hour drive twice in one day she came down the 14th (the day after her birthday). My brother was an RA for the last month or so of the semester, so he was busy with checking people out of the dorms. The night of the 14th we all went out for dinner. The next morning she and I went on a walk, got coffee and gas at the gas station near my apartment, and went to campus to fill up her car with my brother’s stuff. After a couple hours of helping him move furniture and carrying stuff out to her car, Mom and I went out for lunch, she did some shopping, and she bought me a few groceries before she left about 4 PM. The morning of the 16th, my brother dropped by before he left about 10 AM, and I spent most of the day not doing anything significant. After my roommate got back from work shortly after 3, we headed across town to a small local convention. We got there about 4 PM, and had been there only a few minutes when I felt my phone vibrate. I looked and saw I had a new voice mail and a missed call from work, so I checked my voice mail and learned that I was apparently scheduled to work 4-9 PM on the 16th. The last time I checked my schedule (May 11), I wasn’t scheduled to work again before 4 PM on May 17.

Long story short, I wound up being an hour late, and we weren’t very busy for the 4 hours I was there. I’m hoping it doesn’t have any dire effects, but it’s weird that my schedule changed, probably on one of the days I had off, and my manager didn’t call me to ask if I could work on a day I was scheduled to have off, like she usually does. Yes, perhaps I should have checked my schedule more recently than Monday, but why would I do that if I have no reason to be there, considering I usually avoid my place of employment unless I have to be there (for example, to work a scheduled shift)? I can handle changes to my work schedule, particularly after a few days off, but I usually prefer to have more than -5 minutes warning, and it would have been nice before I was on the opposite side of town.

Anyway, in happier news I checked my grades and the Business Applications professor commented that I had “great answers” on my final, so that’s good (even if I felt like I wasn’t writing anything particularly original), and I had 100% on that. As of today, I have about 3 weeks until my summer class starts, and final grades for the semester will be available Tuesday. With an A, my GPA should improve (and continue to do so once I retake the Writing class this summer).

(Below the cut: early morning storms, and some pertinent thoughts on college and graduation)

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Summer!

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My Business Applications final has been available for a week, and was due by the end of finals week, which if I remember correctly is Thursday of this week. (See previous posts about online classes leading to disconnnect from campus schedule.) Anyway, I submitted my final earlier this afternoon, and according to my math even if I don’t do very well on my final I should achieve a satisfactory grade, considering I have 100% or close to it on all of the assignments, and about 90% on the two quizzes over Microsoft Excel and Access in the last weeks of April. Now I can enjoy the week until final grades are available and the 27 days until my summer class starts.

Technically, that number should probably be more like 26, considering today is essentially over due to my working from 4 to midnight tonight. Tonight is, however, the last day I work this week, and now that my spring semester is over I can (finally) return to amusing myself with Netflix, Crusader Kings 2, Europa Universalis 4, and writing.

In Chariton news, I’ve played to (if I remember correctly) 2767, and the current Duke of Chariton is in his 50s, so he probably has less than 20 years left. My current plan is to finish playing his rule. I’m not sure what will happen next, but Paradox Interactive (the company that makes Crusader Kings 2) released the first information about the next expansion, which will probably be coming out sometime in the next month or two. For my next After the End-related writing project, I’m considering playing as a Norse chieftain in the wilderness once known as Wisconsin, but that probably won’t start until after the next expansion is released. I know the After the End mod has expanded to California, and I’m looking forward to updating my version of the mod from 0.4 to 0.5 and seeing how California might impact the rest of the map (though I admit I don’t anticipate much influence from California to reach the Midwest).

I’ve also been thinking lately about how I haven’t posted much about the Chariton game here lately, which I’m going to have to address now that I’m done with the spring semester. I think my writing has reached the point at which I’ve played to, but since I haven’t looked at that for at least a week or so I’ll have to look at that later. I also keep thinking about writing 25-year updates to show the state of “the world” (or at least the part on the map), which would be at roughly July 2691, 2716, 2741, and 2766. I’ve also considered playing a while in “observer mode” to see what the AI might do. So far, the current Duke of Chariton’s heir has proven to be quite lustful, considering he’s acknowledged a bunch of illegitimate children in addition to a decent number of legitimate children.

Backward and Forward

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This morning, I went to bed about 2 AM, planning on waking up around 8 for my counseling appointment at 9 AM. This was slightly delayed by my browsing the Internet via my phone until about 2:30, but I had set my alarm clock and a timer on my phone for 8 AM.

For the third time, that didn’t happen. I woke up at 8, but I turned off my phone’s alarm, rolled over, and went back to sleep until 8:50. I decided to go ahead and go, started getting ready to drive to campus, and then, about 8:55, I realized that if I left my apartment about 9, I would make it to campus at 9:15 and then it’d be a few more minutes to walk to the counseling center. I decided this didn’t seem worth it, so I went ahead and called the counseling center, talked for a few minutes to the counselor I’ve been meeting with, and for the third time we rescheduled for the same time next week (even though we haven’t actually met since April 9).

Needless to say, this was frustrating. This general mood wasn’t helped by going to campus anyway to meet my brother for lunch. While walking around campus and eating in the student union, I felt like I was enjoying people watching too much. The good news on that front, at least, is that taking classes this summer and fall should mean that I’ll have some potential for being around people that isn’t while at work. At one point I also started wondering what it would be like if I could either start college all over again, with a blank transcript, or at least have followed a more “traditional” path by going to one school, finding something I wanted to major in, and then staying at that school until graduation (4-6+ years, finances depending), as opposed to my college experience to date of going to a university I liked, majoring in something I didn’t like after the first week, leaving that school after a year, taking two years off in the work force, and then taking classes at one school before transferring to yet another university. Third time’s the charm?

I distinctly remember, the first semester of my freshman year, deciding I didn’t enjoy being a computer science major. In retrospect, I really should have talked to someone about it, instead of continuing to attend classes I disliked and, in general, not being the most diligent student. It would be nice if I had been more motivated and interested freshman year (particularly second semester – my worst semester to date), but it seems like half of college, if not young adult life in general, is learning how to navigate bureaucracy, or at least large, impersonal structures. Even if you don’t go to college, and instead go to the military or the workforce, there’s probably some element of that involved.

Anyway, it could be worse. My current Business Applications class, as I’ve written here before, is easy, and aside from two quizzes I’ve taken recently my current grade is almost 99%. I’m not too concerned. In contrast to the spring 2010 semester, where I stopped attending most of my classes by mid-February and was a mess at the end of the semester (if not earlier), this semester has been okay, disagreeable writing class and my own failings excepted. Once I take the writing class this summer, my GPA will improve, and next fall German and Accounting should, hopefully, be more interesting (or at least easy).

Non-academically, the last few weeks at work have been a bit rough between people quitting or leaving, so we’ve been short-handed. New people have been hired, though, so aside from training them (which I thankfully haven’t had to do recently) it sounds like being short-handed might be less of a problem. Tomorrow’s pay day, which will be nice until my paycheck promptly vanishes to pay rent and bills. C’est la vie. I believe I have the next couple days off, though, so that’ll be nice.

I’m not a huge fan of summer, due to not enjoying warm weather, insects, and sunlight, but the weather recently has been pleasant, even if I prefer autumn or winter. In general, it could be worse- for example, I don’t live in Nepal, Syria, or the territory claimed by the self-styled “Islamic State”, and (unlike the characters of Revolution, which I’ve started watching again) I have access to the Internet and modern conveniences.

Writing this makes me feel like I need a “mental health” or “venting” tag. “Life” suddenly seems way too broad as a category and tag.

Contemplating dreams

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The impending end of one month, and the start of a new month, has made me want to start a new “project” (writing, gaming, writing about a game, etc.). This momentary urge is absurd, because I already have 3 ideas I’m more or less currently working on (really, 2 plus one I’ve barely touched). The good news is that my semester is almost over, and since my Business Applications class is absurdly easy (almost certainly the easiest college class I’ve taken, or am likely to take), this means that, at least in theory, I’ll have slightly more time in which to write, game, etc. In practice, I’m not sure how much more time I’m actually likely to have, considering how much time I (don’t) spend working on this class. I suppose every hour helps, though.

For the past week or so, I’ve had a somewhat irregular sleep schedule. Last Friday afternoon I made the mistake of drinking coffee, so after finishing my coffee around 4:30 PM I was unable to fall asleep before roughly 7:30 the next morning (after spending 3 or 4 hours trying to fall asleep). Other than that, I’ve mostly been going to bed before then – I remember at least one day (Monday?) where I was going to bed about 5 AM (and really, my working until midnight doesn’t help in this area), but last night/this morning I was almost proud of myself for going to bed at 2 AM this morning after getting up about 11:30 AM Tuesday and spending most of my day off in front of my computer, which sounds really pathetic and boring when I say it like that.

After going to bed about 2 AM, I think I fell asleep relatively quickly. After having a couple dreams, I woke up about 5:30 AM, wrote down what I could remember about my odd dreams, and then spent some time looking at stuff on my phone before I finally decided to not bother with trying to get back to sleep. I have far too much experience with sleep deprivation, which is only aided by coffee, that magical elixir that seems to completely eliminate any symptoms of sleep deprivation and fatigue. Maybe I’ll be able to fall asleep before 3 tomorrow morning.

I usually think my dreams are interesting, in either the “fascinating” or “bizarre” definition of the word. I’m not sure how much I want to write here about them, honestly – I could dissect and explain everything, but (as unlikely as it seems) I’m also hesitant about divulging too much detail. At the same time, I don’t want to be completely vague (“People were involved”). Continue reading →

a heady cocktail

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I haven’t posted anything here in a while, and now seems like a good time to change that.

I’ve been texting a girl since late February. I don’t remember when Myers-Briggs types first appeared in our conversation, but I thought it was quite interesting to learn that she is also an INTJ with a weak Judging/Perceiving preference. INTJs are among the rarest Myers-Briggs types at 1-3% of the population, and female INTJs are especially rare, being something like 0.5 to 1% of the population. This is relevant because my recent recreational research topics (i.e., recent Google queries) have included things like “INTJ-INTJ relationships” (of which I’ve read all of the first few pages of Google results), “typical relationship timeline”, and the meaning of the emoticon 😉 in a text message. I suspect I’m currently forgetting others, but if there are any they’ve been generally along those lines due to the heady cocktail of what I suspect to be oxytocin and whatever other “feeling”-related chemicals that have been flooding my brain lately.

Earlier this week, while reading about “typical relationship timeline”, I thought it was quite interesting to read people saying that they typically preferred to “define the relationship” and discuss exclusivity after about 2 or 3 months of dating. Suddenly, my previous experience with (pseudo-)dating made sense – last summer, after asking a friend that lives in another city if she’d be interested in going on a date at some point, we corresponded via Facebook chat and text message for just under two months (after previously corresponding via those media for two or three months prior) before mutually agreeing to be just friends. I don’t remember now if I had previously conducted any research along these lines, but suddenly that particular conversation made sense. I distinctly remember that for some period of time I had considered the date as being in the future, at least until this friend made a Facebook post about how she had only dated INTJs and tagged me as being among that number, which was something of a pleasant surprise since I hadn’t considered us to be dating before then. I suppose that’s what I get for being completely uninterested in romantic relationships until my freshman year of college and having no experience in that arena.

For some reason I thought there was more I was going to write on this topic, but now that I can’t think of it, and feel like I’ve met my self-disclosure quota for the week (month?), I’ll close with a brief description of this morning’s dream. Last night the text message conversation with Current Correspondent ended abruptly just before 1:30 AM, which has led me to assume that maybe she fell asleep. At any rate, immediately before I woke up this morning I dreamt that I woke up because she sent me like 5 text messages, which (if I remember correctly) featured apologizing for falling asleep last night, a few potential names of future children (I think they were supposed to somehow be combinations of our names, though the few I remember definitely weren’t), and suggesting meeting in person. Other than vaguely discussing future plans, like a few 80s movies I apparently need to see, we haven’t really made anything resembling firm plans. I think it would be weird if someone texted me names of our future children before we even met “in person”, to say nothing of doing so before any kind of exclusive relationship was established. Honestly, I haven’t even decided if I want kids yet, and I generally feel like I should gain some experience with dating, at least (to say nothing of getting a better job, and maybe finishing college) before I even consider reproducing.

Overall this entry seems simultaneously way too personal and acceptably vague. I don’t expect this (by which I mean “talking about my current or former relationships”) to become a regular thing, but I suppose we’ll see. I’ll have to post more about other recreation and recent events later.

Springing

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Have I really not written here for over two weeks?

I requested last Friday, Saturday, and Sunday (April 3-5) off from work, expecting to get only those three days and hoping to be able to go home for Easter with my brother. To my pleasant surprise, I instead got nearly 2 weeks off work, which ends tonight. Tomorrow and Saturday I work until midnight, and Friday (my 24th birthday[!]), I only work until 8 PM. It being a Friday night, however, I wouldn’t be surprised if I ended up having to stay at least a few minutes late.  Continue reading →

clouds lifting

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I just dropped the writing class that I’ve had issues with this semester (and my freshman year and last summer, but I digress). My semester is looking much better, if only because I enjoy how easy my business applications class is. Doing the week’s assignments in an hour on campus? Sure, it seems futile and absurd to expect Excel and Access 2013 to apply whenever I manage to get a job that actually involves using “productivity” software (as opposed to cooking utensils, like my current job), but who knows, maybe after I graduate I’ll have an IT job with a company that’s still using a ten-year-old Microsoft Office version.

Of course, before that happens, I still have like another 60-odd hours left before I graduate.

(laugh track)

Considering the vital place the aforementioned writing class holds in the requirements and curriculum, I’m currently thinking about trying to take it this summer, or at least during a future semester (next spring?) in a “traditional” classroom setting. Continue reading →

writing about my problems

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Mid-term grades came out today, and there were no surprises. There have been previous semesters where I don’t really know how I’m doing until I’m pleasantly (or unpleasantly) surprised by my mid-term grade (I’ve never really been an academic perfectionist, and this has been particularly true in college), but this semester, I was pretty sure that my grades would reflect the effort I’ve been putting into my classes. Being able to do my business applications assignments for the week in about an hour at the library works a lot better for my underdeveloped study skills and inconsistent motivation than the much more open-ended assignments for my writing class (which I believe I’ve written about here before). Now I don’t know why I didn’t just suck it up and do most of the assignments for the first half of the semester, but a very consistent theme in my education, since at least kindergarten, is that I have a low opinion of and interest in anything that seems stupid, which is effectively synonymous with anything I’ve already learned. Continue reading →

and it started so well

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Today was going well until I decided to restart my computer after installing some updates.

I slept in till about 11, had scrambled eggs with sausage, onion, and green pepper for brunch, got some homework and laundry done, had spaghetti for lunch, and decided to go ahead and restart my computer to finish installing updates.

Something was apparently messed up, because I then wasn’t able to boot Ubuntu properly, and after fiddling around trying to delete an old version of the kernel I apparently deleted (or otherwise rendered inaccessible) everything I had accumulated in the last month since my last drastic computer problem(s).

The good news is that I still had an older version of Ubuntu installed on the other hard drive, so I still have all the data from before the motherboard in my old computer failed, but now I have a hard drive that may or may not still have other stuff on it and nothing works properly with my old hard drive.

On the one hand, I want to fiddle with it until it works properly, but on the other hand I’m already sick of messing with it and I just want everything to work perfectly.

Long story short, looks like I’ll have to restart my attempt at writing about the Crusader Kings 2: After the End mod game.

frustration

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As anyone who has paid attention to my various social media accounts is probably aware, and as I’ve probably already said multiple times here, I really don’t like the writing class I’m taking this semester. On the one hand, I like talking about myself (or my problems, as appropriate), but on the other hand I also don’t like feeling like I whine too much, which is probably why I’ve almost exclusively limited my complaints to social media, my parents, and other mostly textual media. I could make whiny posts on Facebook every day, but I don’t, because I see enough boring/stupid/mundane posts (on a side note, I might be a slight Facebook addict) every day, and my posts that seem to most consistently get “likes” and other interaction generally seem to be puns, humor, and other relatively innocuous fare. At work, if anyone asks me how I’m doing or what’s going on, I generally reply with something vague and uninformative like “nothing much”, because I’d rather not extensively talk about my problems, nobody cares (or so I’m convinced), and it’s innocent small talk.

Getting back on topic, some reading about motivation and study habits has given me a few ideas for potential solutions, or at least things to try. One thing I read recently suggested having separate areas for “work” and recreation, which I think merits investigation. I know I’m easily distracted (as is evidenced by habitually keeping many browser tabs open, among other things), and when working from my desk in my room it’s all too easy to open a new tab and check Facebook (for example) if I get bored (which, with this writing class, is frequently). I seem to remember hearing this suggestion from at least one (and probably both, realistically) of my parents during my freshman year of university, though I don’t remember doing so. I do seem to remember visiting the library at least once, but I think I usually tried to just do my homework in my dorm room (and we can see how well that turned out).

Another solution I’ve been considering that I’ve read (and also probably been told before) is scheduling time to work on classes. There may be people who are disciplined enough to do their online classes right after waking up at sunrise, get everything done at once, and then enjoy their day, but realistically speaking I am not one of them (and not just because I’m a night owl who dislikes having to sleep at all). Time management, organization, and a few other things are, historically speaking, among my weaknesses. (See also social interaction, empathy, and non-verbal communication, but I digress)

I thought there were a few other things I wanted to try, but between my counseling appointment this morning (which mostly seemed to focus on being involved on campus, and not so much my recent lack of interest in my boring classes) and now, writing a blog entry some fifteen hours later (almost two hours after I got off work), I seem to have forgotten them. Making to-do lists was something discussed this morning, I can remember at least that much. I know I’ve tried it before, but my problem is generally that I then proceed to ignore the to-do list after making it, as if I’ve achieved something simply by writing it down, and writing it down will make it happen. Sadly, I’m afraid that works better for fiction than to-do lists.

I’ve also been thinking lately that I spend too much time on Facebook, or at least look at it too frequently – if I only looked at it once a day, or even less, it would no doubt be more interesting than my current practice of looking at it at least a few times a day, if not at least once every couple of hours or so.

I remember being frustrated at work tonight while I was thinking about my frustration with myself and how every class I’ve taken at my current university has been easy, but (for the most part) I haven’t really been applying myself. Of course, as I may have written here before, I’ve noticed there’s a very strong correlation between my grade in a class and my interest in a class (easy and/or interesting? A! Relatively easy, but requiring lots of study and memorization? B or C, maybe). One of these days (if not this semester), I’m going to exhaust the gen eds and start taking upper-level courses, which will, maybe hopefully eventually, be more interesting.

I’m beginning to run out of things to say, and it is, after all, 2 in the morning, so I should probably go get ready for bed. This week I’ve been fighting a cold, and after being congested today I’m hoping that it’s on its last legs. Maybe tomorrow, or the next day, I’ll wake up and this rhinovirus will have been defeated.