My Shit

I think my Christmas is nearly over.

I had the following Christmas:
With Alex
With high school friends
With Alex's aunt (father's side)
With Alex's family (mother's side)
With my mom (my dad didn't come because he is a jerk)

I got some cool stuff and am happy. Alex did well with the gift giving. She has much more skill at giving than I do.

I am also doing very well at my over-the-break-reading list. I brought three books and a stack of journal articles about 2 inches thick. I finished the books and am now working through the articles.

Today's agenda includes picking up some parts for the Superbee at the local Mopar dealer, going to Wal Mart to get parts so that I can then install some lights at my grandmother's house, and possibly going to pick up some stuff I left at a friend's house. Woo!

Got all A's in my first semester as a PhD student! Wooo!

Things have been very slow this last week.

For one, I've had a cold and haven't felt like doing much at all.

Second, all my assignments are turned in and I only have one final ... and it is on Friday. To top it off, I don't even have to take the test to get a C in the class, or get 26% for a B or 76% for an A. It makes it hard to study since I will likely get better than 76% without much effort. Being sick hasn't helped my motivation.

I would have liked to have met with some professors this week but they are busy like something bad is going down.

I've been looking at working on the car some more. Everything I can do takes too much time and too much money. And all the parts I would ship off to have someone work on will also take too much money. I'm likely to do something, anything, anyway to keep things moving along.

Well, back to the books. Gotta get that A.

I know I haven't talked much about grad school since I started. Yeah, I've made some statements, but I haven't talked much about it in general.

So far, I love it. It takes all of my time, but it is so much fun for me.

Tonight we had a presentation from a visiting professor. That wasn't what was really exciting. The fun part was dinner afterward at a nice restaurant with the visiting professor and several individuals from the I/O psych department. One of those individuals was Ruth Kanfer. And, well, Dr. Kanfer is very well published and very well respected. She was also very nice and totally engaged in the conversations with us lowly grad students.

It is still amazing to me that these people with their publication records and name recognition will even get into a debate with a bunch of grad students. But I guess we know some stuff too, and we must be pretty smart if we can keep their interest.

What a fun evening. I hope that more of this is what being a Ph.D. student and a professor is really like.

Here's to never doing any work ever again!

Palila just bought a used PS2. I bought a used copy of Gran Turismo 4. I don't think I will ever graduate now. I've wasted two days already and I've only been working in the arcade mode, not in the Gran Turismo -- the game for real -- mode.

My damn iPod Nano took a shit last night. I tried all of the stuff on the site (except for waiting 24 hours to restart it). Finally, after about 20 hours it restarted. Now I have to let it charge today at home while I would like to use on the train and at school. I hope this isn't a regular occurrence or Apple will be getting a Nano back.