Blarrgh

So I go to bed nice and early, so I can wake up in time not to be rushed for my 9:30 class. If I can manage it, I try to be in bed 10 hours before I have to wake up--because it usually takes me about an hour to drift off, and I like to have 9 hours of sleep if I can get it. (8 is okay, 7 the absolute minimum.) The operative word here is try, because what with one thing and another, procrastination of this and that, I seldom make it.

The good news is, it looks like I'm going to be in plenty of time for my 9:30 class. I woke up about three hours earlier than I meant to, and I just can't get back to sleep no matter what I do. I hate when that happens. I can't even listen to music to try to lull me to sleep because the apartment walls are paper-thin and the fellow whose bed is on the opposite side of a thin wall from me (who happens to be my math professor from a couple of semesters back, oddly enough) would probably be awakened by it and get mad.

But at least there are proofs out there that my life isn't so bad. Out of curiosity, I was searching on Google on "livejournal Springfield Missouri" to see if there were any other Springfieldians writing LiveJournals, and one of the first I happened on was lloyddobbler. I don't know anything about what's going on in his life, and I hope he gets to feeling better, but reading his October 12th entry was more than a little unnerving. I get depressed from time to time, but I'm thankful I don't ever get it that bad.

Looking at other journals that appear to be from Springfieldians, I don't find...well, very much to be interested in at all. I don't know, I guess I was hoping that there would be some sort of...regional topicality to them, that they would automatically be interesting because they were by someone in the same city as I am. I'll keep on looking of course; maybe I'll even find some acquaintance of mine is LiveJournalling and I never even knew it--but what I'm finding is that whether people are interesting to me or not is more a function of who the people are than where they are. Imagine that.

Might as well go throw myself at the bed again and hope this time I don't miss...

When the Cat Comes Marching In

You can tell it's getting cold around here when the local stray cat decides he wants to come in and spend some quality time. I had to chase him out of my apartment three times this morning as I was getting ready for school. (Open the door to check the weather. Put out the cat. Get my bike out the door. Put out the cat. Go back in for my stocking cap. Put out the cat.) I don't mind having him in my apartment when I'm actually here, so I can let him out when he decides he's had enough of being inside, but I don't want to leave him here when I'm not, and come home to find a pile of cat puke on the bed or carpet.

I call this particular cat Kim, because the first time he clambered up onto the monitor where you see him there, he happened to type that word on my keyboard in passing. The neighbors call him "el Gato"--I'm not quite sure why, as they're not Hispanic themselves. He spent a lot of time in my room over last winter, then went outside and decided not to come back when the weather warmed up. Now he's acting like he wants to come back in again. Fancy that.

He doesn't seem to get along very well with any of the rest of the neighborhood strays--including the recent kittens that seem to have similar appearance and markings to him. I put out food for them, but I tend to have to be sure that his is well separated from the rest of theirs. He is just friendly enough to me that I can pick him up and wool him around a little--but after a bit of petting, he decides to get playful and starts biting whatever he can get ahold of.

He also tends to like to go behind the venetian blinds on my window and peer out at whatever can be seen beyond--usually a cat who happens to be on the air conditioner just outside it where the food dish is. If he starts doing that again, I suppose I'll have to put the Robots in Disguise Optimus Prime who is currently on top of my monitor somewhere else...

Caffeeeeeeine...

The lack of sleep is catching up to me. I don't know how I'm going to make it through that class coming up in just under an hour. It's tempting just to skip the class and nap for a couple of hours before meeting up with my brother for the trip down to the parents' house--especially since we'll probably be getting our tests back today and I get to learn just how badly I did. :P (Oh well. At this point, I'm sort of past caring. As long as I pass all these courses, and can get the heck out of here, that's all I care about by now. I am so sick of this . . .)

But no, I'd better go ahead and go, just in case. Perhaps take one of the caffeine pills I carry for such contingencies. I hate insomnia . . .

Checking In From the Sticks

I'm down at my parents' farmhouse now, messing with their computer. I don't know why, but it seems to be slightly messed up. I mean, it had Internet Explorer 5, Netscape 4.78, and Netscape 6.1 on it when I started. What's more, the Internet Explorer version seems to be one of those funky ones that doesn't notice when you define a proxy. So I've installed Guidescope, but I can't seem to make it work with this proxyless MSIE.

Anyway, I've removed the two Netscapes and I'm now yanking down Mozilla 0.9.5...but when you've only got a 33.6 modem connection to the 'net, there's only so much you can do so fast. I'll have to burn a CD with more recent MSIE, Windows Media, and other important installers on it for next time I come down. The thing can't even play DivXes properly; clicking on The Playa gets me a "The THEPLAYA.EXE file is linked to missing export DDRAW.DLL:DirectDrawCreateEx." I'm suspecting that it needs a slightly more recent MediaPlayer or DirectX or something. Grr. It peeves me that I went to the trouble of burning the DivX installer onto this CD, brought it down here, installed it, and it still doesn't work. Neither does Windows Update, but even if it did, this thing would still be downloading into the early morning.

35 more minutes to go before Mozilla finishes downloading...I don't even know that I'll be able to post this journal entry from here with all that downloading going on; I may have to email the text to myself and back-date it when I get home.

I hate this keyboard the parents have. It's one of those "oh, I'm soooo ergonomic that I make it hard for anyone who learned to type on a straight keyboard to get used to it" models...the kind where the left and right hands are separated by a couple of inches and twisted around at a funky angle to each other. I'm sure it's as ergonomic as anything, but it throws my rhythm off. And I type about 100 words per minute, so my rhythm is kind of important to me.

Anyway, the folks live about an hour away from me, at the old 80-acre farm/ranch where I spent my life from 4th or 5th grade up 'til I went away to college. Then I spent more of my life here after I got out of college the first time and tried to find a job...and now, finally, I'm about to graduate with a second, hopefully more salable, degree and hope that it will let me find a position somewhere that I won't ever have to live here again. Unless I want to, later on, if the parents have moved out of it by then. It's not a bad place, but for its position in middle-of-nowheresville. It's pretty country, anyway. But by golly they'd sure better have affordable high speed Internet access out here by that time!

Huh...this is pretty neat. The Mozilla intstaller has a "pause" function. So it looks like I can post this thing after all.

I expect to be back in my room within a couple of hours, and I can't wait. For all that it's messy, it does have a decent computer and a high speed 'net connection.

And my DVD-ROM drive--because as it happens, I picked up the Phantom Menace DVD today, too. More on that as I have the time to look it over.

Home, home again...I like to be here when I can...

Back in, and it's 11:15. I need to be in bed soon...because I have a test tomorrow, and what with sleep and work and all, I won't have much time to study for it. I'm not too worried--this is just Java, and most of it is stuff I've had in the past. Stuff I hardly even had to think twice about. Still and all, there are a couple of parts that worry me a little--things like Java's calendar function and vectors, neither of which I've worked much with before. Also, there's some drawing of diagrams that is necessitated by the method of development on which this course focusses, which I've never had to do much before.

But what worries me the most is perhaps that I'll just forget the basic tenets of Java syntax without the book to refer to (and crib from). The proper keywords to open a class, where I put the brackets, little things like that. It's sort of foolish of me, perhaps, but the worry is there. I want to be sure and do as well as I can, so that if I mess things up toward the end of the class, I'll still be in good enough shape to pass--and I don't just want to rely on my innate test-taking skills here.

Should have allowed myself more study time, I guess. Probably should have done that instead of going home tonight. But Java is one of my stronger subjects anyway; in the end, I'll probably do okay.

And then after that, I just have a midterm in that annoying training course, and my test stress will be over for a few days. Heaven! Then I can concentrate on watching some movies and stuff. :)