Since my move I have been looking into getting another cellphone, preferably a Blackberry or Palm.

During my first trip to Fry’s last night I talked to a salesperson who talked about how good T-Mobile’s network is in the local area. They do have cool phones but their data transfer stuff just isn’t what I want.

Sprint seems to really have what I want with the ability to Bluetooth highspeed internet into a laptop (something else on my “To-Buy” list). Their rates are pretty good and their customer service has definitely improved.

The one thing that keeps drawing me back to T-Mobile is the fact that I can take the phone to pretty much any country and it will work with a simple changing of the SIM card. Ah well, other things to worry about right now I guess…

I have finished the move to Dallas from Lubbock and finally had the cable company come out and hook up my internet.

The move went surprisingly well with no truck problems on the five hour drive out here. Where I am living is smack dab in the middle of Dallas. My apartment is near the outer marker for D/FW Airport, which means I will spend a lot of my time just watching the planes come and go.

I will post some pictures as soon as I can.

I am now officially a college graduate.

Just thought I’d let everyone know.

On May 11, 1970 an F5 tornado hit downtown Lubbock killing twenty-six people. Following the tornado, Dr. Ted Fujita traveled to Lubbock and used the catastrophe to learn more about tornadoes and eventually develop the Fujita scale.

Tomorrow I take the my last final of my undergraduate career. At 10:30am I will sit down, pick up a pen, and complete possibly the last test of my life. Exciting? No. A little anti-climatic if you ask me.

After the test, all of the seniors must fill out a graduation survey and enjoy refreshments. If the refreshments are pizza and other junk food, I’ll stick around, otherwise I’m outta there. (4 years and a whole lot of money and we can’t even get pizza?!)

If you cannot tell, I am in a weird mood. I have a lot to do tomorrow, a lot of stressful things, I guess this is how I am choosing to deal with it.

I am two finals away from being done with college forever, or at least until I go into grad school. The only two left are Strategic Management and Managerial Economics.

Economics slightly worries me because it is a cumulative exam, but I really do not think the professor is trying to keep anyone from graduating. I take that one tomorrow at 4:30pm and my Strategic Management at 10:30am on Monday.

Getting down to the wire and I’m still not nervous like everyone thinks I should be. Weird.

In other news, it’s my mother’s birthday. Happy Birthday Mom!

During a conversation with a friend the subject of me not watching VH1, MTV, or channels like that came up. I replied, stating that I enjoy the History Channel, Discovery channel, and TLC more and think they have more value. To my surprise, my friend told me that they had a theory as to why I liked those channels.

“You like to know more than people. You want them to know that you know more than they do”. At first, I just kind of sat there, dumbfounded by being so abruptly told that basically, I’m a know-it-all. Then I thought about it for a second and decided I would explain why I watch those stations more and why I continually will.

I have always been a reader. I’ll read anything you hand to me. When I was young I read everything I could. I would go to the library and check out stacks upon stacks of books and read all of them. My intention was not to make people feel lowly or dumb, it was to learn. As I got older I moved from fictional books to non-fiction and was particularly interested in history, especially WWII history. I read all that I could find on the subject (I still do).

We did not have cable until I was around 14 or 15 and when we had it installed I was glued to the History Channel. I was amazed that there was so much that I didn’t know and the detail that presented about certain subjects. Now, I do not have cable anymore but I still read like a mad man. It’s my personality. I will take book suggestions from anyone, even if it’s on a subject that I am not necessarily interested in and read them.

What is wrong with this? I told another friend about this conversation and they said that they could explain what the person was saying, to a point. They informed me that I am a fairly blunt person and sometimes I come off harsh and demeaning. When someone brings up a subject that they know little about, especially current events or history, I unknowingly rip them apart. It is not intentional, it just happens. I have to make myself aware of it so that I do not scare people away.

Back to the main topic here. Is there something wrong with knowledge? Don’t we have a social responsibility to learn as much as possible so that we are aware of what is going on around us. Oil prices are a great example. Most Americans do not understand why prices are high outside of the reasons stated in newspapers, which just lightly touch on the subject. Do we not have an obligation to understand something before we anger over it or protest it? The more we know, the more we see and understand the world around us.

After explaining this, my friend told me that it isn’t just knowledge that makes us strong, it’s experience. I disagree. I think it’s both knowledge and experience that make us stronger people. And to experience something you must be knowledgeable about it to take an interest in it.

I am still a little offended by the comment for the simple reason that this person knows very little of my past and my life and yet makes wide and vast assumptions about why I do things. Reading and learning is who I am, it’s who I have always been, and it’s probably who I always be. Sorry.

My truck bit the dust yesterday. Coming out of class and getting into my truck, I turned the key and just got continuous revving, no turnover. I try again, nothing. I go to the back of my truck and pull out my trusty hammer.

Laying underneath the truck and give the starter a few whacks, hoping that just maybe, it was caught. I try starting it again, nothing. So, I do some more narrowing down of what the problem could be and then call a friend to come pick me up.

Around 8pm I leave my group meeting and walk back to the parking lot to have the truck towed. The tow truck arrives and because of the closeness of the parking lot we have to push the truck out. A student who had been working out at the rec sees what we are doing and runs over to help. We talk for a while and he says, “Are you going to need a ride?”. I was a little shocked and told him that yes, I needed a ride to the place where they were taking my truck.

On the way to the car care place I tell him that he needs to give me his number so that I can pay him back for his gas (or something to say thanks). He tells me no and doesn’t let me insist, instead he says to me, “Where I’m from we have no problem dropping what we’re doing to help others”.

There are still some good folks in the world.

To save up some money for my move to Dallas I have taken a temporary job at a local college bookstore. It is interesting to see the way that things work from the inside and how chaotic the book sorting process is.

A lot of work goes into keeping books that will be used in the summer or next semester and processing those that will not be used again until next spring. It is a somewhat convoluted process with, in my opinion, a few too many steps.

On top of the process, the prices at which we buy books back from the students is outrageous and insulting. A girl came in yesterday with an organic chemistry book that was priced in our computers as selling for $250. The computer’s buy back price? $40. Not only is that wrong, it’s highway robbery. I understand that the bookstore is trying to make a profit but a $210 one? Seems excessive to me.

It seems like it isn’t just happening to me.

Over the last few days I have received close to 1,000 unique hits from the phrase “305-503-8068” across different search engines. If you are looking for an answer as to what that phone number is, it is an illegal, unsolicited number. You can ignore the calls or contact the provider using Telcodata.us