Seth Kinast’s Blog

This has really been a very good week. But that just doesn’t rhyme.

I’m getting into the swing of my classes. I think I’m going to enjoy all of them, and this semester just isn’t as scary as last semester, which had 18 hours of pure and applied sciences. This semester, I have:

• Physiology of Microorganisms (hard)
• Ecology and Pathogenics Lab (squishy)
• Immunology (funny)
• World Music (worthless)
• Applied Logic (fun)
• Byzantine Art Survey (the teacher = rocks)

Add that to four hours of ZAP a week, and some RA stuff, and you have a pleasantly full but not exploding schedule. And this week has been extra fluffy. With the beta release of ZetaBoards last weekend, things have been EXPLODING with all the people who have been going to see it. There has been tons of good feedback and suggestions, and of course the small set of morons for whom nothing is good enough. I’ll be posting a series soon about the making of ZetaBoards, and my participation in it.

My copy of Vista arrived today. It’s not in a retail box, but it’s a retail DVD with a real orange-sticker serial number. Super exciting ^_^ and now I’m really ready to go on building my computer. I imagine I’ll begin buying parts in February.

There really just isn’t that much to say, though. So unfortunately, lest I ramble, I’ll stop here.

Hi.

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[...]

Congratulations, you’ve learned how to build well-connected, visually stunning applications with Windows Vista, and now your free, full-licensed copy of Windows Vista Business is on its way.

Hello, $800 that I didn’t have to spend on building my new computer…

I’ve been back for RA Training for 2 days. It was much improved this year; they held several sessions for only the new people, freeing me up to prepare other stuff without having to listen again to how to looooooooooove everyone and how to be a good listener and such. Sam got hired as an RA for this semester, so it has been good having her with me, too!

We have one new SafeWalk this semester in Couch. His name is Remy; he’s from Nigeria. It was about 40 degrees during training and he was freezing, poor guy It is nice to be back and settled into the dorms, if for no other reason than that I have a thermostat, a real live honest-to-goodness thermostat that I can control myself and set to 80 degrees if I feel like it! It was so cold in our house the entire break… something like 65 degrees in the basement :’(

I get 4 new residents this semester! Bringing me to a grand total of… 8. I had 7 last semester. For context, most of the RAs in the building have about 60 residents. I have upperclassmen, which is why their numbers are so limited.

My schedule for this semester is looking really good; not as crazy as last semester, I think. This is the first semester ever where I haven’t had 8:30 classes! Of course I had to compensate by adding office hours and other things early so I didn’t feel like I was wasting my day Here’s a tentative peek at my schedule as it stands now.

I had a computer job today for a family for whom I’ve worked for several years. I hadn’t been back to see them since the summer, since I’ve been away at college. The symptoms seemed pretty innocuous… a couple of the computers on their wireless network (which I set up for them) couldn’t connect to the Internet, their e-mail address book had gone missing, and a few other bits and bobbles. I arrived and started working on their issues, but something seemed off. The computer was sluggish, icons weren’t where I had put them the last time I was there, and when I clicked on the Firefox icon, Internet Explorer popped up :-/

As I delved deeper, more and more things were weird. Where was the free AVG AntiVirus I’d installed? Indeed, where was Firefox? I asked the lady if she knew anything about the changes. Well, apparently they had called someone else to come out once when their Internet was down and I was away. And this guy was responsible for the trials I was about to face.

Read the rest of this thought »

I drove to Fayetteville, AR today with Nate, to deliver a computer I bought and Sethified* for Sam‘s grandma. It’s a lot shorter trip than the trip to OU… about an hour and a half versus close to 4 hours. While it was definitely nice not to have to drive as long, I did find it marginally annoying to have to pass through a lot of small towns with stop lights and 45-mph speed limits instead of being able to zip along a turnpike.

We met at the mall and wandered around for a bit, but couldn’t find anything too interesting. Maybe it’s just me, but I’ve never found a mall that’s actually worth shopping in; all they ever contain are niche stores and tchotchke stalls. The only reason I ever go to the mall in Joplin is to eat at Chick-fil-a, since it’s the only Chick-fil-a in town

I grow closer to a redesign, but ZetaBoards’ skin is still looming over my head. I just want it to be done. I found an amazing site with a lot of good ideas for layout though, so I have a lot clearer idea of what things should look like, and it’s going to be good if I can pull it off (I’ll definitely need a lot of Nicola).

*Sethified = install Firefox and Thunderbird, remove a bunch of preinstalled junk, update everything, preset bookmarks and wallpaper and such, and just generally make the computer the way you wish it were when you turned it on. Yay.