The Previous Year in Review.
Jan. 1st, 2006 12:31 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
silveradeptThus was the year that passed. This is an un-cut entry that will clog friend space, but I put here for my own edification and memory when I look at it again next year.
Another year passed and gone, at least according to the Gregorian calendar. As is the tradition of this time of year, I’ll sit down to review what happened to me and elsewhere and try to figure out if it was a good year or not for me. I’m not sure I’m making any resolutions, though, other than to continue to do well with my studies. Before I get to that, though, I’ll talk a little bit about the gifts that were generously given to me for the VEWPRF. Certainly this year, I got things from more people than I had before. I still feel a little bad about not being able to reciprocate as easily (even though many have said that it’s okay, I still feel like kindnesses deserve kindnesses in return. I’m slightly hypocritical about it, I suppose, because a lot of the kindnesses I’ll give in my life, I’ll say and think strongly that they need no return. Do as I do, not as I say, I suppose.)
As a gift to myself and my sanity, I managed to repartition my hard drive correctly and install Kubuntu Linux along with Windows with no important data loss. This still is a good thing, as there were several harrowing close calls and I almost came close to nuking the whole hard drive when PartitionMagic errored in the middle of its work. But, thanks to judicious use of Knoppix, everything came through acceptably and my system feels a little bit better. It still needs to go through a considerable round of updating before it’s back to full power, but that won’t take long. Thanks are definitely due to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
getsource, who provided me with the CDs I needed to make it all work. On a slightly more aggravating note, my DVD-ROM drive may not work with my current computer - it had problems consistently reading media. I don’t know if it’s my setup or that the drive is finally dying (I doubt that, but it’s been around for five years, so it’s possible.), but I’ll investigate it later when I have time, and perhaps a spare working system that can take it on, along with someone who can diagnose it properly.
From friends, I received extraordinarily yummy chocolate truffles from Syn, and several small-but-heartwarming gifts (an entire bag of caramel Hersey kisses is a very heartwarming gift, let me tell you...) from one of the regulars of the Pocket Otaku forums, a beautiful card fromannonthemoon, urbankotq, and Tenny, to whom I send many thanks and a couple :p.
From family, I got the Trans-Siberian Orchestra’s Lost Christmas Eve album, Excel Saga OST #1, clothing (a suit and tie, a tie for my vest and other suit, a tuxedo shirt/cummerbund/jewelry combination - once I get the tuxedo itself, my formal wardrobe will be much obliged, jeans, a p-coat, which I have been desperately needing for a while now, as my previous coat was patched and falling apart anyway), a smattering of board games (that will see more use, perhaps, next academic year than this one.), a sushi kit (sort of - nice chopsticks, skewers, a cookbook, and a serving tray and sauce plates - also a promise from the one who gave it to me that we’ll try to do it sometime), a tea set (two handle-less tea cups and a nice ceramic tea-pot), a gigantor hot chocolate bowl (that had cocoa and marshmallows in it, but that got, erm, drank pretty quickly), a crossword-a-day calendar, and great things like the Return of the King 4-disc set and Xenosaga Ep. II. Mom also managed to find a set of Prismacolor markers at a price she was willing to pay for them (which I suspect is nowhere near the actual price for them). Now all I need are some art skills to match... maybe by next year I’ll actually have enough talent to touch them without being afraid. Lastly, various amounts of moneys and gift cards to book and electronic shops. Most of those funds are already earmarked (and were several months ago). It was a pretty good holiday for me. Feels a little inadequate sometimes when all you can do is send a card in return or give many hugs.
So that was that. Now, to begin the retrospective - any of you who don’t really care are free to skip over without penalty.
The year opened on a mixed note - I was in Pasadena again for the Rose Bowl game, this was supposed to be a better matchup that the debacle with USC the year before, and the Texas band was actually quite nice. Turned out the the Texas bones were of a similar mindset as our own and had a few well-crafted traditions of their own, in pursuit of the Stupid. Our team did not win the game, losing on a last-seconds field goal. Now that the year’s complete, one might almost hear some sort of ironic prophecy in it. More on that later.
January welcomed me back with a reminder that there was three months to go on a thesis that I had a draft of a mere fifteen pages or so completed. Also, LiveJournal was acquired by SixApart. There don’t seem to have been any blowups or hiccups so far, so perhaps this is a good thing. I put forward my crisis to the Model United Nations conference, where it was received with mixed results. Although, mixed results in any crisis seems to be the norm. It wasn’t my first choice, but I made it work with appropriate amounts of just-slightly over the top death, mayhem, and violence. While the advisors seemed to like it, the secretariat did not, and my request to reprise the Crisis Director role was turned down when the appointments came to be, several months later. This closed another chapter of my undergraduate education.
February was mostly un-eventful, as classes moved on apace and the thesis continued to dominate my existence. Well, excepting that I got two acceptance letters in that month, to the graduate programs that I applied to. Thus, my current woes and frustrations can all be traced back to that point. Still, I’m not trading it away yet. March followed suit - more thesis agonizing, existential quandaries, silly links. Steamboy came out and was seen, and I met, for the first time,blacktigr and girtygrin, amongst others. Still feeling things out a bit, I guess, but I’m okay with it now. And then I rediscovered a term that I had noticed and filed away before - notably, the concept of soulbonding. The Residents wave, by the way. At the end of March, the proprietor of JAMS’s hangout, Bill, died. Since then, I’ve heard the the bookstore itself closed, as well. Which would really suck if that were true.
At the tail of March, and into April, I finished the undergraduate thesis and turned it in. Thus, I emerged from my shell, perhaps a bit more grizzled than before, but chrysalised. April was an eventful month - thesis (high honors), graduation (top 10% of class), a new pope (John Paul II passed away and Joseph Ratzinger, (once?) head of the Inquisition, became Benedict XVI. And like many other months, plenty of pontification and self-examination. (One wonders whether people are sick of my second-guessing.)
May, thus, tossed me out into the working world again. This year was a bit of ups and downs when it came to place I was working at, and so my adaptive nature was exploited and lots of work for me to do was found that helped get things in order for new missions that my workplace had to take on. Graduation brought the anxieties of paying for graduate school. Self-identity began to move back to the forefront of my anxieties. I also picked up pens and pencils and started to sketch a bit, trying to emulate what I saw - I don’t know if I’ve gotten up to the point where I can sketch things of my own creation and have them come out well, (probably not) but it was a thought. May also held forth Anime Central, a highlight of anyone’s year.
There was a tsunami in that timeframe as well - deadly waves of water is not something you want to have.
June heralded the victory of my university’s softball team in the national college tournament. One coming in, one going out. Thus was my undergraduate bookended. Oh, and I did finally see Star Wars III. Let the complaints begin again and mightily so. There was Howl’s Moving Castle movie and JAFAX, both of which were excellent. Somewhere in this landscape, I also got to meet D.C. Simpson, creator of Ozy and Millie and I Drew This, who has excellent guitar and vocal skills. Had I waited a little longer, I would have missed the chance, as he moved to Seattle not soon afterwards.
July holds my birthday, nastily placed as it is in that month. There was, however, the bright ray of sunshine that was Dear Friends: Music From Final Fantasy at the end of the month - JAMS looked extraordinarily good in their suits - it’s too bad the camera used to take them crapped out. There’s also a potential rumor that there’s going to be a CD released containing many of the tracks in the concert - maybe February of next year - at least in Japan. No word about American release yet (ohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohplase!), but we’re looking forward to it.
August brought the realization that there was precisely one month to ground zero of graduate schooling. I settled into new territories of the Internet, managing not to get thrown out immediately, and have since assisted in finishing a started project and helping out with one really big and Insidious one, heh heh, although not necessarily all in August.
September brought the return of college, this time with some pretty impressive loans. All said and done, it’s likely that my total debts will be about twice the median income for the profession I’m going in to. Not bad, perhaps, for six years at one of the most expensive public universities in the country, but it does mean that I’ll still be living like a college student for the next ten years after I get my degree and job. There was also the hurricane - the effects of which we’re still feeling.
The introspectiveness didn’t abate, either - as I look over the past year, it looks like I keep revisiting the same questions and asking whether things have changed. And then I get all mopey about how they look the same, even if they’ve changed a lot. Since it’s usually subtle change rather that outright change, I don’t notice it nearly as much - or rather, I ease into it and then it becomes second nature.
There was also the part where the MMB did a Python show - highlight of highlights, believe me. It came before the stress and agonizing started, so that’s a good thing. September ended with meetings, with more meetings, with papers and agonizations and complaints and making mountains out of molehill schoolwork.
October also produced the situation where my computer’s power supply blinked twice and wanted to die, leading to the necessities of what’s going on here and now. I had my revenge, however, in that I now have two OS sitting on the same hard drive without having lost any data, having done clean installs of them both.
My self-imposed work ethic continued to try and drain my sanity as best it could, with me feverishly feeding it more and more. This continued into November. At December’s beginning, however, all of the major stuff had come down the pipe and was done and through. Which meant that I could unwind. And unwind I did. MY social side came out, I had a very happy VEWPRF with lots of things that I went squee over, and everything came out in the end to be okay. Keeping this attitude into the coming semester will be great.
Another year passed and gone, at least according to the Gregorian calendar. As is the tradition of this time of year, I’ll sit down to review what happened to me and elsewhere and try to figure out if it was a good year or not for me. I’m not sure I’m making any resolutions, though, other than to continue to do well with my studies. Before I get to that, though, I’ll talk a little bit about the gifts that were generously given to me for the VEWPRF. Certainly this year, I got things from more people than I had before. I still feel a little bad about not being able to reciprocate as easily (even though many have said that it’s okay, I still feel like kindnesses deserve kindnesses in return. I’m slightly hypocritical about it, I suppose, because a lot of the kindnesses I’ll give in my life, I’ll say and think strongly that they need no return. Do as I do, not as I say, I suppose.)
As a gift to myself and my sanity, I managed to repartition my hard drive correctly and install Kubuntu Linux along with Windows with no important data loss. This still is a good thing, as there were several harrowing close calls and I almost came close to nuking the whole hard drive when PartitionMagic errored in the middle of its work. But, thanks to judicious use of Knoppix, everything came through acceptably and my system feels a little bit better. It still needs to go through a considerable round of updating before it’s back to full power, but that won’t take long. Thanks are definitely due to
getsource, who provided me with the CDs I needed to make it all work. On a slightly more aggravating note, my DVD-ROM drive may not work with my current computer - it had problems consistently reading media. I don’t know if it’s my setup or that the drive is finally dying (I doubt that, but it’s been around for five years, so it’s possible.), but I’ll investigate it later when I have time, and perhaps a spare working system that can take it on, along with someone who can diagnose it properly. From friends, I received extraordinarily yummy chocolate truffles from Syn, and several small-but-heartwarming gifts (an entire bag of caramel Hersey kisses is a very heartwarming gift, let me tell you...) from one of the regulars of the Pocket Otaku forums, a beautiful card from
annonthemoon, urbankotq, and Tenny, to whom I send many thanks and a couple :p. From family, I got the Trans-Siberian Orchestra’s Lost Christmas Eve album, Excel Saga OST #1, clothing (a suit and tie, a tie for my vest and other suit, a tuxedo shirt/cummerbund/jewelry combination - once I get the tuxedo itself, my formal wardrobe will be much obliged, jeans, a p-coat, which I have been desperately needing for a while now, as my previous coat was patched and falling apart anyway), a smattering of board games (that will see more use, perhaps, next academic year than this one.), a sushi kit (sort of - nice chopsticks, skewers, a cookbook, and a serving tray and sauce plates - also a promise from the one who gave it to me that we’ll try to do it sometime), a tea set (two handle-less tea cups and a nice ceramic tea-pot), a gigantor hot chocolate bowl (that had cocoa and marshmallows in it, but that got, erm, drank pretty quickly), a crossword-a-day calendar, and great things like the Return of the King 4-disc set and Xenosaga Ep. II. Mom also managed to find a set of Prismacolor markers at a price she was willing to pay for them (which I suspect is nowhere near the actual price for them). Now all I need are some art skills to match... maybe by next year I’ll actually have enough talent to touch them without being afraid. Lastly, various amounts of moneys and gift cards to book and electronic shops. Most of those funds are already earmarked (and were several months ago). It was a pretty good holiday for me. Feels a little inadequate sometimes when all you can do is send a card in return or give many hugs.
So that was that. Now, to begin the retrospective - any of you who don’t really care are free to skip over without penalty.
The year opened on a mixed note - I was in Pasadena again for the Rose Bowl game, this was supposed to be a better matchup that the debacle with USC the year before, and the Texas band was actually quite nice. Turned out the the Texas bones were of a similar mindset as our own and had a few well-crafted traditions of their own, in pursuit of the Stupid. Our team did not win the game, losing on a last-seconds field goal. Now that the year’s complete, one might almost hear some sort of ironic prophecy in it. More on that later.
January welcomed me back with a reminder that there was three months to go on a thesis that I had a draft of a mere fifteen pages or so completed. Also, LiveJournal was acquired by SixApart. There don’t seem to have been any blowups or hiccups so far, so perhaps this is a good thing. I put forward my crisis to the Model United Nations conference, where it was received with mixed results. Although, mixed results in any crisis seems to be the norm. It wasn’t my first choice, but I made it work with appropriate amounts of just-slightly over the top death, mayhem, and violence. While the advisors seemed to like it, the secretariat did not, and my request to reprise the Crisis Director role was turned down when the appointments came to be, several months later. This closed another chapter of my undergraduate education.
February was mostly un-eventful, as classes moved on apace and the thesis continued to dominate my existence. Well, excepting that I got two acceptance letters in that month, to the graduate programs that I applied to. Thus, my current woes and frustrations can all be traced back to that point. Still, I’m not trading it away yet. March followed suit - more thesis agonizing, existential quandaries, silly links. Steamboy came out and was seen, and I met, for the first time,
blacktigr and girtygrin, amongst others. Still feeling things out a bit, I guess, but I’m okay with it now. And then I rediscovered a term that I had noticed and filed away before - notably, the concept of soulbonding. The Residents wave, by the way. At the end of March, the proprietor of JAMS’s hangout, Bill, died. Since then, I’ve heard the the bookstore itself closed, as well. Which would really suck if that were true. At the tail of March, and into April, I finished the undergraduate thesis and turned it in. Thus, I emerged from my shell, perhaps a bit more grizzled than before, but chrysalised. April was an eventful month - thesis (high honors), graduation (top 10% of class), a new pope (John Paul II passed away and Joseph Ratzinger, (once?) head of the Inquisition, became Benedict XVI. And like many other months, plenty of pontification and self-examination. (One wonders whether people are sick of my second-guessing.)
May, thus, tossed me out into the working world again. This year was a bit of ups and downs when it came to place I was working at, and so my adaptive nature was exploited and lots of work for me to do was found that helped get things in order for new missions that my workplace had to take on. Graduation brought the anxieties of paying for graduate school. Self-identity began to move back to the forefront of my anxieties. I also picked up pens and pencils and started to sketch a bit, trying to emulate what I saw - I don’t know if I’ve gotten up to the point where I can sketch things of my own creation and have them come out well, (probably not) but it was a thought. May also held forth Anime Central, a highlight of anyone’s year.
There was a tsunami in that timeframe as well - deadly waves of water is not something you want to have.
June heralded the victory of my university’s softball team in the national college tournament. One coming in, one going out. Thus was my undergraduate bookended. Oh, and I did finally see Star Wars III. Let the complaints begin again and mightily so. There was Howl’s Moving Castle movie and JAFAX, both of which were excellent. Somewhere in this landscape, I also got to meet D.C. Simpson, creator of Ozy and Millie and I Drew This, who has excellent guitar and vocal skills. Had I waited a little longer, I would have missed the chance, as he moved to Seattle not soon afterwards.
July holds my birthday, nastily placed as it is in that month. There was, however, the bright ray of sunshine that was Dear Friends: Music From Final Fantasy at the end of the month - JAMS looked extraordinarily good in their suits - it’s too bad the camera used to take them crapped out. There’s also a potential rumor that there’s going to be a CD released containing many of the tracks in the concert - maybe February of next year - at least in Japan. No word about American release yet (ohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohplase!), but we’re looking forward to it.
August brought the realization that there was precisely one month to ground zero of graduate schooling. I settled into new territories of the Internet, managing not to get thrown out immediately, and have since assisted in finishing a started project and helping out with one really big and Insidious one, heh heh, although not necessarily all in August.
September brought the return of college, this time with some pretty impressive loans. All said and done, it’s likely that my total debts will be about twice the median income for the profession I’m going in to. Not bad, perhaps, for six years at one of the most expensive public universities in the country, but it does mean that I’ll still be living like a college student for the next ten years after I get my degree and job. There was also the hurricane - the effects of which we’re still feeling.
The introspectiveness didn’t abate, either - as I look over the past year, it looks like I keep revisiting the same questions and asking whether things have changed. And then I get all mopey about how they look the same, even if they’ve changed a lot. Since it’s usually subtle change rather that outright change, I don’t notice it nearly as much - or rather, I ease into it and then it becomes second nature.
There was also the part where the MMB did a Python show - highlight of highlights, believe me. It came before the stress and agonizing started, so that’s a good thing. September ended with meetings, with more meetings, with papers and agonizations and complaints and making mountains out of molehill schoolwork.
October also produced the situation where my computer’s power supply blinked twice and wanted to die, leading to the necessities of what’s going on here and now. I had my revenge, however, in that I now have two OS sitting on the same hard drive without having lost any data, having done clean installs of them both.
My self-imposed work ethic continued to try and drain my sanity as best it could, with me feverishly feeding it more and more. This continued into November. At December’s beginning, however, all of the major stuff had come down the pipe and was done and through. Which meant that I could unwind. And unwind I did. MY social side came out, I had a very happy VEWPRF with lots of things that I went squee over, and everything came out in the end to be okay. Keeping this attitude into the coming semester will be great.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-12-24 05:39 am (UTC)Maybe they should check the Scientologists' meeting places while they're at it, eh? (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4557224.stm)
Merry Christmas to you, dude. :)
no subject
Date: 2005-12-25 06:59 am (UTC)Enjoy your time at home, bud. If all else fails, you can always swing by my place and make me feel like an ass since I'm still without work.
no subject
Date: 2005-12-25 08:30 pm (UTC)