Both my C SCI 1 and C SCI 60 classes are covering Boolean logic. It's more boring than baseball. What's the truth table of the statement: "I have a beer but no beer nuts"? "[have] beer" is the "A" statement and "[have] beer nuts" is the "B" statement, sooo, if "A" is true and not("B") is true (i.e. "B" is false), then the statement is true. YAWN.

Dear baseball,

Please strike.

Sincerely,
-- Me

Ahh, Thursday. My one "off" day during the week. (I almost have Tuesdays off, but I have my C SCI 112 lab in the morning). Spent the morning at my girlfriend's house, while she worked on a puppet for her puppetry class (an elementary school teacher thing... definitely a stark contrast with my studies).

Went to the Fresno State football game tonight. Watched Fresno eek out a 16-14 victory over the not-very-impressive San Diego State Aztecs. Granted, Fresno played without their #1 QB and without their star #1 WR (who projects to be a 1st round pick in the NFL draft, if he maintains his level of play from last season). Still, it's San Diego State.

My little brother was trumpeting his NFL2K3 skills, as he's been practicing on his GameCube version of the game. Took him on after the game. I'll be damned if the little bugger didn't pull out some good defense on me. I didn't pass deep very effectively - got picked off twice in the 1st half. His offense didn't match the D, though. His passing game was OK - moderately effective but also caught a couple of lucky breaks against my dumb DBs (Fernando Bryant made the biggest bonehead move in man coverage that led directly to a Terry Glenn TD). Running game was non-existant... tried to get a few carries in but was stuffed for a loss each time. He put up 14 points in the first half, leading 14-10 at the break, but didn't score again for the rest of the game, while I drove to a 30-14 win. When he committed to stopping the pass, I ran with Fred Taylor. When he committed to stopping the run, I lobbed the ball over his D. Much different from the 1st half, where I tried to get into my old Mark Brunell run-and-gun groove. I would pick up big chunks of yardage, but would get intercepted. I went ball-control, and ended up with over 13:00 T.O.P., out of a 20:00 game.

Even still, a lesson learned: his DBs will clamp down on out routes. His DBs are rated a lot higher than mine, and it shows in this game. No excuses allowed, though, as I picked the Jags on my own free will.

Today's music:
Miles Davis - Kind of Blue
John Coltrane - Ascension
Random jazz and classical on NPR

Ascension really gets out there. Kind of Blue is nice but I don't yet see what makes it "great".

My C SCI 115 class allows us to use one of three programming languages: C, C++, or Java. So why is my instructor blabbing about Pascal?

Had my first C SCI 112 lab today, and breezed right through it. It was encouraging to do so well while other students were clearly struggling. I'm glad that the relentless struggle that was C SCI 41 was not for naught.

Listened to John Coltrane's A Love Supreme all day today, except for when I worked out, which was accompanied by Mahavishnu Orchestra's Inner Mounting Flame. Due to my History of Rock and Jazz class, I have reason to listen to all of those jazz CDs that I've bought and have neglected. I'm still struggling to get a distinct "feel" for A Love Supreme... trying to find what separates it from my generic general concept of "jazz". Just as every good rock band is distinct from the generic "rock band" model in some way, good jazz artists must have a similar distinction (at least, that's the logic I'm operating under). It's my job to find it.

Oh yeah, got my Bally Fitness membership. Took advantage of a college student deal listed on their website. It allows me to cancel anytime after four months, which is great, because their other memberships lock you into a 36-month contract. I don't plan on quitting, but I may not live convienently next to a Bally club for 36 months.

Listening to disc 1 of Can's Can Box (Live 1971-1977). This is flat-out amazing. Can's collective hypnotic experimentalism is better on this and on The Peel Sessions than it is on any studio album of theirs that I've heard. Ironic that the best Can music (in my opinion) is archival stuff being released 20+ years after that classic period. The audio quality is good for music that's mostly sourced from audience recordings of concerts.

One of my Xbox controllers seems to be dying. It's one that I bought cheap from Half.com. It has acted up before, so it's not surprising. I'll stick to buying new, boxed controllers from here on out.

First day of class was OK. I'm looking forward to getting past that awkward "just getting started into something" phase and into the "in the swing of things" phase. Especially when it comes to programming.

In my music class, I will need to write a term paper, comparing and contrasting two artists within the broad scope of rock and jazz. I'm leaning towards comparing an influencer with a more modern band that was influenced. One possible combination that came to mind was Neu! and Tortoise. Maybe King Crimson and TOOL... that'd be a fun one to explore. Perhaps Gong and some electronica band. Then there's Coltrane and Magma, which would be a blast simply because of the two individual entities. So many possibilities. I"m a little sketchy on the link between Coltrane and Magma (Vander admits a very strong Coltrane influence, but I'm not as of yet hearing it), so that'd be one to investigate.

My girlfriend's mom gave me a toaster oven, with the stipulation that I bring it to her if she needs it for class (which is rare, but is the reason she has it). As I am now making all of my sub sandwitches at home (tired of paying Subway $5 for a $2 sandwitch), I tried toasting my bread, Quizno's style. Well, it turned out to taste way better than when I warm the bread in the microwave. Ten times better, at least.

Going to Bally Fitness tomorrow to get a membership. Time to beef up and get into hockey playing shape.

Last day of summer vacation. Not that I actually had one, but it's time for the semester to start. Given that I had more work on hand during the summer than I did in the regular semester, I'm not exactly experiencing anxiety over it. During my summer class, I was actually looking forward to this point. Of course, I had the last week off, which changed that perspective a bit. Even still, I'm ready to go. Even after I finished my class, I kept reading up on Data Structures, as well as trying to get a better understanding of C++ classes & templates. So much stuff to learn.

My girlfriend, Stacey, came over for a little while today. We finished playing through Maniac Mansion, which was a lot of fun. I'm under orders to find a copy of Day of the Tentacle (Maniac Mansion 2) for us to play. Works for me. There aren't nearly as many copies on eBay as I would expect. Lots of Mac copies floating around, which gets in the way too. I easily managed to land a copy of Return to Zork for $1 + shipping a week or so ago, but it appears Day of the Tentacle will take a little more work and a few more bucks.

Been listening to the soundtrack to everyone's favorite Sundance Fim Festival darling, Pi. The soundtrack is full of electronic artists, including some "big" names like Orbital, Autechre, and Aphex Twin. It's a nice continuous listen, with small clips of voice-over from the film spliced in to segue between some tracks. Haven't actually seen the film, but I'm tempted. Meanwhile, my girlfriend hated it as soon as she walked in the door. Interesting, because she enjoyed the Squarepusher album we listened to in the car yesterday. Electronica seems very hit-and-miss with her (which, I guess, is better than metal, which is pretty much all miss).

I have enjoyed my one week of freedom, wedged in-between the end of summer school and the start of the fall semester. Managed to ace my summer school class, which was a shocker and a half.

Spent most of the week with my girlfriend. Lounged around, watched TV, went to a festival, and rediscovered the joys (and occasional frustrations) of the NES via Maniac Mansion. Gotta love a girl that appreciates old LucasArts graphical adventures. Playing on a console is nice in that we can easily sit on the couch or floor and share the TV, but the controller is a poor substitute for a mouse. Trade-offs, trade-offs.

Got a ton of things to mail out to people. Need to do that Monday.

I have now integrated this log into my new homepage at EconomyOfEffort.com.

Been over a month since I've posted here. Yeesh.

Got a TON of new music in a trade with Mike Prete. 14 CDRs of albums in MP3 format, and also the following in audio CDR format:

Eskaton - Fiction, Ardeur
Nurse With Wound - A Sucked Orange, Alice the Goon, Homotopy to Marle
Bondage Fruit - II
Conventum - Le Bureau Central des Utopies, A L'affut d'un Complot
Contraction - La Bourse ou la Vie
Idiot Flesh - The Nothing Show
Sloche - Standacone, J'un Oeil
Wurtemberg - Rock Fantasia Opus V
Vortex - Les Cycles de Thantos
Eiliff - Eiliff
Il Rovescio della Medaglia - Contamination (the unreleased-on-CD English version of "Contaminazione")
Atila - Reviure
Opus-V - Séeieux ou Pas
YETI - Live at Sockmonkey, Live at the Wreck Room Volumes 1 AND 2
L'Engoulevent - L'Ile ou Vivent Les Loups
Picchio dal Pozzo - Abbiamo Tutti I Suoi Problemi

Of the things in the MP3 CDRs, I've been listening to Avant Garden, Djam Karet, and The Gathering mainly.

The metal assault continues. Add Symphony X, The Gathering, Iced Earth, Helloween, Cryptopsy, Green Carnation, and more Neurosis and Metallica to the mix. Ahh, the wonders of USENET and AudioGalaxy...

For metal reviews, look no further than the tongue-in-cheek titled "Satan Stole My Teddybear": www.chedsey.com.

Wicked. I'm watching something on MTV where Rebecca Romijn-Stamos is in a shark cage. The music in the background? "Djed" by Tortoise. Well, Tortoise has been on MTV now. :)

Been a while since I posted (don't most of my posts start with that line?). So what's happened musically as of late?

1. Linkin Park - In addition to "In the End", I also like "Crawling". I have received much ridicule from the music snob circles. :)
2. Kylie Minogue - Damn you, Kelly. Damn you for making me download "Can't Get You Out of My Head". Now I've seen the music video too. It's more than I dare to think about.
3. METAL - Metal, metal, metal, MEEETALLL. Fates Warning, Iron Maiden, Metallica, Queensrÿche, TOOL, Spiral Architect, Dream Theater, Neurosis, Therion, Black Sabbath, and I need more. I've had to use some hard-rock (even The Who) for more fix. I've been in a major metal mood. I think some later Iron Maiden would be cool. This one (The Number of the Beast) is a bit silly at times. The style is great but maybe some of the cheesiness is left off on later albums. Powerslave is next on my Maiden to-get list.
4. Krautrock - My Faust box set is always nearby. I recently got Can's Ege Bamyasi, downloaded some Electric Mud and Amon Düül II.

It seems one of my friends and one of my online music buds are conspiring against me. And my friend's trying to drag my girl into it too. Like I told her (the friend), with friends like these, who needs enemies? I gotta admit, though, it's WAY more fun than last semester when I didn't really know anyone around here.

Ooh, and my best friend is coming to Fresno next semester after spending this semester in Monterey. Now maybe I'll finally be able to teach him an instrument. Hmm, I'm getting a bigger apartment now too... I should take my brother's drum kit (The World's Least Used Drum Set).

I'm also playing my guitars far more than before, even writing some music. Usually when I'm supposed to be doing homework. :)

So, what's happened between my last post and now? Well, I'll tell you... CLASSES started. WORK started. Bluh'y hell. Let's review Hell, CSU Fresno style:

First level of Hell: Work. Work requires me being up at 6:00am every morning (yes, it takes me that long to get to an 8:00 job, and yes, it's still a struggle to be on time). Work isn't as bad as it was last semester, as I'm alone in the office now and I'll have my own Ethernet connection, and can play my own music (albeit at low volume levels).... but I'm still being given the same pointless crap to do. If my job only revolved around PRODUCTIVE work, I'd have two free hours a day. :)

Second level of Hell: Women's Studies 110. Representations of Women. Male Bashing 101. Let's put it this way... I would wipe my arse with this week's readings, but I fear for rectal infection. Making matters worse is an instructor that lacks organization.

Third level of Hell: Computer Science 41. Introduction to Data Structures. Now, CompSci is fun. Programming is fun. But this class is the class that weeds people out of the CompSci major. The highest dropout rate of any lower-division class in the university. In the entire university. Over 70% dropout rate. Some people take the class with a clean schedule - no other classes. Well, I need to pass it this semester. Need only pass.

Fourth level of Hell: Math 76. Calculus. A repeat. It was crappy before. It promises to live up to last semester's crappiness.

Fifth level of Hell: Economics in Film. Looks to actually be a decent class. Only bad things: it's from 6-9pm, and it'll run late some nights... that's LONG. Plus, the room we're going to watch the movies in don't allow food, so no munchies during the films. Like, what's up with that?

Sixth level of Hell: History of Rock and Jazz. Only thing about this class is that I need to officially get into it (gotta show up tonight - the first class session). Another 6-9pm night class, but this one shouldn't run late like the film class will. The hard part about night classes is taking them seriously - it's not easy to pay attention to academics at that hour.

So basically, things at the University suck. As they do at most academic institutions, I would imagine. Keeping nice company after work/school hours makes it much more tolerable, though.

My next post will include some actual music content.

At 250 pounds, I walked around all year in shorts and shirts, never once complaining about a chill.

Now, at 205 pounds, I am FREEZING MY A** OFF!!

Interestingly, I've been in more of a music buying mode than a music listening mode over the last couple of weeks. Last night, however, something "clicked" back into place, and I was enjoying my hobby much more than I have recently. I attribute this to a few things:

(1) Bought a new pair of headphones. They're Koss TD-61's. Not audiophile by any stretch, but they are light, yet still the padded ear-encapsulating style. I have a pair of Sony's that sound great but are uncomfortable as hell. These Koss 'phones are about as good as you can ask a $20 pair of headphones to sound (and more so, if you ask me).

(2) Slowing down on the music acquiring and revisiting some old albums. My escapades into electronica, jazz, and so forth have been exciting and intriguing, but taking a break to take in some more good ol' post-rock, while also checking out a little bit of newer post-rock, has done me good.

(3) Jim Mora. Just by being alive and on TV, Jim Mora makes me feel better.

I like a Linkin Park song.

I'm going to music hell.