Not being a Star Wars fan I was not too excited to go see Revenge of the Sith. The movie started off with a lot of action and that’s always a good thing. It moved quickly and was not filled with all of the dialogue from Episode I. I was impressed the whole movie with how well the story flowed and the overall feel of the movie. It is definitely on my top 20 movies of all time [theoritically].

Right now I am just at home enjoying the 95 degree weather with 100% that is Sugar Land. The dogs are getting along though they don’t necessarily like each other. Jackson is just trying to get used to the weather…

I arrived in Sugar Land yesterday around 3:30pm after a long but uneventful drive from Lubbock. My truck gave me a couple of scares but everything was ok.

I start work on Monday, May 23rd and today my mom and I drove down to the location to kind of get a feel for what the traffic would be like. It will not be the most enjoyable drive but I’ll manage. If I-10 ever gets completed the traffic may actually die down a little. It’s a rather far fetched dream, but hey, it could happen.

I hate packing, well, not the packing but the actual act of moving. It is too much stress for the process and isn’t worth it. I still have not found a place to live but by the end of today I better have something because I leave for Sugar Land tomorrow morning. Everything is just a little stressful right now and I am ready to get on the road and get home (even though I haven’t decided on which way I am headed).

I received my grades today and my semester G.P.A. is a 3.4 (A’s and B’s). Not my greatest semester but I’m pleased.

I start at Shell on the 23rd of May so I will have a little time between getting home and working to get situated.

I have been listening to a few of the songs off of the new System of a Down album “Mesmerize” and I have to say that I’m impressed. I have never been a big fan of the band’s lyrics, which are extremely left wing but this album has music that just makes it too hard not to listen to.

The new single “B.Y.O.B” (Bring Your Own Bomb) is a great composition but its lyrics leave me wondering whether these guys know what they are talking about. Most of the song has the lead singer asking “Why do they always send the poor [to war]?” and “Why don’t presidents fight the war?” which are a little ignorant. We don’t always send the poor, end of story. Last time I checked our military was made up of volunteers, people who chose to be there. Whether they are poor or rich they chose to join. If it was for the education then I applaud them but they still have to do their service (that they signed up for) to get the benefits. There are plenty of service men and women who are college graduates (commissioned) who do just as much fighting and dying as those who are enlisted. The lyrics to me represent an ignorance to the facts, maybe even a knowing ignorance.

Anyway, I’m rambling… The song is good and the album should be great, check it out.

With school complete and the final grades slowly trickling in the hard part comes. The move itself should not be too hard but I still have to find a place to live for next year. There have been a few houses that I would like but they were either too much money or in such disarray that they weren’t worth renting.

I’ll continue my search today and see if there is any others I can find.

Sorry for the lack of updates, the move and finding a place to live have taken up most of my time.

Review Sessions

• Philosophy
  1. Wednesday, May 4, 6:00pm
• Political Science
  1. Friday, May 6, 4:30pm

Exams

• Philosophy – Friday May 6, 7:30am
• MIS Seminar – Friday May 6, 1:30pm
• Political Science – Saturday May 7, 10:30am

My schedule is not too bad, my Friday will just be packed with tests and a review session (which I am not sure I need). School’s almost over and the summer is almost here…

What is going on with the weather? It was beautiful last week with temperatures in the 70’s and 80’s but yesterday just turned nasty. I woke up and the temperature had dropped to 38 degrees and it was lightly raining. Turning on the TV I saw that it was no better anywhere else around West Texas. In Amarillo there was a light snow.

This just isn’t right. Every year the last winter storm has moved to a later date. Last year we had our last winter storm in early April, with a little snow and temperatures in the 30’s. The year before that we had a winter blizzard (well, to us Texas folks a blizzard) in late March with the temperature during the day hovering around 80 but that night the temp dropped to 28 and we received about a foot of snow.

If this trend continues we could have our last winter storm halfway through July. Weird stuff.

Josh installed Mac OS X 10.4 – Tiger today and already I am very impressed.

Dashboard is nice and I can already think of some very cool plugins for it. The ripple effect is a little over the top but I can live with it…

One of the coolest things is the RSS screensaver. It takes a feed that you specify and goes through each of the entries outputting them on the screen. It then gives you the option to type a number and go to the article online in Safari. Very nice…

I will probably get Tiger installed on my machine tonight so more posting on it tomorrow.

After a few weeks of not knowing what was going to happen this summer I have finally accepted an internship at Shell. I will not go into exacts about what I will be doing as I do not know their blogging policy and don’t want to violate and “non-disclosure” agreements. I am mostly looking forward to learning a little bit about the corporate world and how programming and IT work in such an environment.

Look for more updates soon, I know I have been bad about keeping things current.

Google has a new beta feature called “My Search History“. It allows anyone with a Google Gmail account (or any other Google account) to login and keep track of their searches, from anywhere.

Some people are already screaming foul over privacy issues, which, in my opinion is just stupid. I am guessing Google already tracks searches by IP, now you have access to your own searches when you are on the road instead of trying to remember what you searched for. If you don’t want Google to remember your searches based on your username just don’t sign in, it’s as simple as that.

If you have a Google account definitely check it out and see if you like it. If you’d like a Gmail account send me an e-mail at s [at] badice [dot] com.