Evaluative Conclusion

Wow, it has been a long semester! I feel like I have come a long way in my writing ability! I think that this blog was a great writing assignment, because it was a type of writing style that required a lot of voice and personality (not to mention prayer) to get done. One thing that I noticed was really similar about all of my posts was the date published. They were mostly done yesterday or today. Haha, but really. I think I talk about food a lot. Maybe it's just me, but I guess I'm thinking about that a lot. I think my first post was the best. Maybe because I was the least stressed during that one? That, or I've just become a worse writer by being in English. I think that I had trouble coming up with inspiration for a lot of these topics. I think my goal for a lot of them was to rant about something, but I have trouble coming up with things to rant about. I usually backed up to things that I had learned about.

My biggest lesson from this has to be about procrastination. I definitely should've been working on this a lot more as I went along, but I didn't always think I had the time, or the motivation to get anything done, but now it is about time for it to be due, and I definitely don't have the time now. So I think I'm going to use this experience to stay ahead of my work a little better. I hope you enjoy my blog! I put a lot of effort into this, even if it does seem rushed. I enjoyed it a lot, and I'm planning on keeping it up even though I don't have to anymore. Thanks for being such a great teacher!

Running out of Ideas...

Okay, second to last post. Which means this is my last free post. I need to make this quick, because it is due in an hour. So I think I'm going to talk about Golden Sun. Golden Sun is a video game that I really like that I can talk about for quite a while. So it will make an easy blog topic, right? Anyway, Golden Sun is an role playing game for the game boy advance. It is all about a magic power called Alchemy, and summonable Djinn. Your main character has a magic power called Psyenergy, and he is expected to use it to protect the 4 stars in the Sol Sanctum, but some people come and steal the stars, and intend on lighting the 4 elemental lighthouses with them. It is your job to prevent them from getting to the lighthouses. Along the way, you make friends, and collect more Djinn that make you powerful. I really like this game because it has a really good plot, and awesome gameplay, not to mention captivating music, and impressive visual graphics for the time of its release. The worst part of this game is the fact that it ends on a cliff hanger, so you had better have the second game ready to play if you plan on playing this game. And if you wait too long to play the second game, you will forget a lot of important things about the plot. And I just really like this game. I'm going to play through it again after I make it through finals. So with that, I'm going to tie off this post, and send out my final evaluative conclusion. Good work Daniel :)

Ho Ho Ho!

Last Sunday, in sacrament meeting, someone in my ward bore his testimony on the secular side of Christmas. This was really interesting to me, because everything you hear over the pulpit is always, "Think about Christ this Christmas season." However, this guy expressed how this is a time when we promote a lot of unification and other values that we don't alway exercise the rest of the year. A time when Grinches get larger hearts, and when Scrooges have their eyes opened. And I guess that that part of Christmas is probably really important too. I'm going to go home and be with my family again, and spend some time with them. That probably wouldn't really happen until summer if it weren't for Christmas. I'm really happy to spend family time, and to take a break from studies. I'm also reminded of a story during World War II, when trench warfare was stopped for a day during Christmas, when Axis and Allied powers got together to share stories, and carols, and trade goods. Even though they were there to kill each other, Christmas brought them together for at least that one day. The spirit of Christmas is a really good thing. Even the secular side that is often scoffed by religion. I think we could all use this season to become better people, and love each other a little more. Drink your fill of eggnog, and play in the snow (if you must . . . ), but don't use that as an excuse to forget Christ. Just keep that in mind this Christmas season.

Enduring to the End

Is anyone else sick of work? Maybe I'm just being a whiner, but I feel like I've been working non-stop for several weeks now. And I have not been eating or sleeping healthily lately. At all. Personally, I blame C S 142. I feel like that class gives out way too much work. On top of that, I got homework over Thanksgiving that I didn't do, and I missed a couple assignments in some other classes that I'm doing my best to finish before the semester is up. I'm worried about my finals, but I don't have time to study for them quite yet. I was considering pulling an all-nighter, and getting most of my work done, but, I got a flashback of my last all-nighter, and it wasn't worth it. So I traded six hours of miserable time that I would've spent doing half an hour's worth of homework, sleeping instead. And now I'm starting to feel guilty about it, because I have a lot of stuff due today that is not yet done. But no worries. It's almost Christmastime, and I feel like I've done all that I can for this semester, and as I explained in another blog post, I feel better prepared for next semester. I am so excited to go home! I will be done with my finals on Tuesday, but my ride home doesn't leave until probably Saturday, so I have a while in Provo yet to just relax, and recoup while there isn't really any work that I could do, even if I wanted to :)

I would just like to take some space here to thank all of the people who helped me get through my semester, namely Pandora, Corn Dog Wednesday (and all involved), and my professors too, I guess (but I'm not so sure they count, seeing as they caused the problem in the first place...) And I would just like to say that it has been a great semester! Here's to a better one in Winter!

Facebook is Watching

Facebook is really smart. Not only does it know all the things you tell it (Which is often quite a bit more than you should), but it also seems to know what websites you've been to, and other random information like that. Because it does. Sometimes this seems rather creepy (Okay, it is), but it can be really convenient sometimes. And sometimes it isn't so convenient.

One feature in Facebook is personalized ads. Facebook will advertise to you based on which websites you look up on the computer. Your web browser will download a "cookie" (you know, like the ones the dark side has?), which will help your computer perform faster on that website. Facebook can then use that cookie to recognize that you have been to that website (where else would you get that cookie?), and then presume that you are interested in the things on that website, and then give you advertisements for similar websites. This is usually fine and dandy, but I have recently started getting ads in Korean and Japanese (but not Chinese, for some reason) in excess, and I cannot figure out where I've been that would give me these obscure ads that I can't read.

Another feature of Facebook that I discovered just this morning, is that it will recognize a changed password. It turns out that an old password won't get you into your account no matter how many times you try it. And Facebook will tell you that you are trying an old password. And when you changed your password. At first, I thought that Facebook was just sassing me: "You changed your password at 9:38 last night. Duh." But then I realized that that was a really cool feature. If someone else got onto your account and changed the password without you knowing, you could see that there was a new password, and you weren't just having a typing error.

Probably my favorite feature about Facebook is creeping. You don't need to know a person to know everything about them! Although, depending on security features, a mutual friend helps. Seriously though, I have looked up so many people that I have never met before by using Facebook, and it's a little bit creepy. But oh so useful. Your roommate has a new girlfriend? Facebook stalk. You conveniently saw the name on the top of the paper of that cute girl in your biology class? Facebook stalk. Everyone does it, so of course it is socially acceptable! Right? ....Right?

Corn Dog Wednesday

During the semester, my roommate and another guy and I started a tradition called Corn Dog Wednesday. It is a weekly event that we hold (usually on Wednesday) where we make corn dogs from scratch. As in we mix up batter, and put it on the hot dog, and fry them ourselves. We don't actually kill the animal or any of that. But we have developed some mad skills for creating corn dogs. And it's actually pretty fun, so I'm going to make a link to the recipe I use. I take out the pepper, and add a bunch (to taste) of honey, but other than that, I just follow the recipe. There are a lot of intricacies to the process, but after a couple of tries, it get's pretty easy, and the corn dogs are pretty good. We have even been investing in various types of sauces to better enjoy our corn dog experience. We recently got some J Dawgs special sauce, and some Famous Dave's sweet and zesty barbecue sauce.

Corn Dog Wednesday has because a highlight of my week. There's nothing really special about our corn dogs, and it's really more work than it's worth to make them from scratch, but it's an awesome excuse to put down work for a while and just relax. I get to catch up with my friends and actually feed myself, which is nice in the middle of the week. Those are luxuries I usually reserve for my weekends. The downside to Corn Dog Wednesday is that I don't usually work any more during the day that we have it. The upside is that I'm usually refreshed and ready to get more work done for the rest of the week. I am particularly excited for Corn Dog Wednesday this week, because I have been so stressed with deadlines and finals lately.

Moral of the story? Corn dogs are beautiful things, if only for the fact that they let me take a well earned break from work once a week. I'm fairly certain that everyone needs a Corn Dog Wednesday in their life, whether it's a knitting club, or reading a book. Making time for yourself is just as important as making time for your studies.

Fun With Technology

The other day, all of the printers on campus were down, so I asked my friend if I could borrow his printer. He agreed. So I went over to his place, and plugged in the printer into my USB port. The printer said that it needed to download some software (Okay, so it didn't really say that. A box popped up on my computer screen.). They were drivers. Of course it needs to install software. I told it to download them. The estimated remaining time started at three hours. Then it went to four hours. Then five hours. Then 28 minutes. And from there, it bounced around everything from 2 minutes to an hour for the next 5 minutes. After which it became apparently stable on 8 minutes. At that point, I turned to my friend.

"Do you think we've earned ourselves 15 minutes of Tetris before we go back to work?"

"I want to say no, but I really want to!"

And thus we played Tetris for 15 minutes. The most glorious 15 minutes that have occurred in my life since Thanksgiving. I won, of course. We returned to the printer, and saw the estimated remaining time sitting at 14 minutes. After another 5 minutes or so, it was done. I saw the download box disappear, and went to add the printer to my computer. When I did that, it asked me if I wanted to download the software for that printer. Didn't I just do that? Apparently not.

"You know, we've been stupid," said my friend. "Just email it to yourself, and we'll print it off with my computer." I had already emailed it to myself, so I just plugged the printer into my friend's computer, and downloaded the paper. And then I went back to my computer to change the file format, so I could open it on his computer. After that, I tried printing off the paper. And halfway through the paper, my friend's computer ran out of paper. So we had to get his power cord, and plug it in, and restart the computer, and then re-download the paper, and then print off the two pages that didn't come out.

That was by far the most work that I have ever been through to print a single paper.