It's been more than a month since my roommate's 360 got the dreaded RRoD and he STILL has yet to do anything about it. Unfortunately that has led to having to pursue other outlets to get rid of boredom inbetween classes and studying. Mostly for me, I've just been visiting Redbox lately and just renting movies, and also giving my PC a little exercise in gaming.

I got Halo 2 on PC (I know I'm like a decade late or something... :P ) but I figured since I hadn't had a chance to finish Halo 2 since I first got my hands on it through a former roommate, that I would give it a try. Besides, at 20 dollars it wasn't too bad of a deal. But I've almost finished it and well, it's sometimes just not quite the same as playing Halo 3 on 360. :P So I'm just getting anxious and bored of watching my roommate not do anything about the RRoD.

I'm just wondering what can be done about it... anyone have suggestions?

On a random note... Beware the attack squirrels.

Beware them...

God Box as a beastly computer, of course. Firstly, no I don't want a "God Box"... but it would probably be the end all PC. :P

I've only ever bought ready-made PCs, but recently I've been looking into the whole building your pc thing - and it's actually pretty interesting. There's nothing wrong with my current PC, as in its current state it'll easily last me a few more years without becoming a total drag (it was a mid range PC back in 2007... still works pretty good with the graphics and memory upgrade I gave it).

But there's just something a little thrilling about the idea of building a custom PC from scratch and putting in a lot of really cool and powerful components together. One particular thing I found while researching all this was the concept of a "God Box"... which is utterly hilarious when you consider the sheer barbaric power and technology a computer worthy of the nickname "God Box" must have. Just read this.

http://arstechnica.com/hardware/guides/2008/09/guide-200809.ars/4

At a whopping estimated price of almost $12,000, that is a BEAST. I mean really, who the hell needs 4 Terrabytes of hard drive space? And 2(yes two!!) $500 graphic cards? And a blistering 16 GB of RAM? Forget the CPU on that thing. The thing could probably run NASA and have enough cycles to render a dozen CGI movies at once. :P (No idea if that's plausible... I'm just spouting nonsense now haha)

But anyways, it would be cool to build myself a high end PC from scratch in the next few years. It definitely wouldn't be cheap though, but would probably be pound for pound better than a comparable pre-built gaming PC.

So Spring Break definitely can't come any sooner - I have next week off from school so this week is pretty much one of the longest of the year. Though honestly, I have no idea what I'm going to do though. As far as I can remember, I haven't gone out and done something exciting for Spring Break in years... let alone now that I'm in college (Which allows for infinitely more opportunities).

Next year I'm definitely going somewhere besides just spend a week at home... it's just an idea at the moment though, I have no idea where I'd go and what I would do. :P It's starting to dawn on me as well that this is my second to last spring break. I graduate college next year (or at least, that's what the plan is if everything goes well) so that means the end of all spring breaks. There will be no such thing as spring break as an engineer. :lol:

Anyways, my roommate's bricked Xbox 360 hasn't been fixed yet. Or yet, he hasn't tried as of now. Not sure what he plans on doing but in the meanwhile I've already grown bored of playing the Wii games we have - and my search for new games to play only brought me to 50 dollar games, which I'd rather not buy at the moment. You gotta keep in mind I'm still working off the huge deficit that my TV purchase made in my bank account. (Which I don't regret getting lol)

I also thought about getting a PC game or such but I sometimes wonder if my PC can handle recent games. It's a few years old and while it's still got a few years left in its lifetime (before it falls into the ever growing pit of obsolete PCs) it's questionable as to whether or not it can play most current games. Meh, who knows. It's better that I don't know the answer to that so that I don't spend any more money. XD

So yesterday, my roommate's launch 360 finally gave him the RRoD.

*moment of silence*

Okay, so granted it WAS a launch 360 and was really just on borrowed time, but it's still sad. Now I can't play any of the awesome games that me and him have bought over the last 6 months. :(

Anyways, time to give the Wii some usage until he figures what to do with it. It's way past warranty time, and I have no idea if he's willing to get it fixed or whatnot. We just have to see.

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Besides that, I'm actually doing pretty good. Things are going pretty smoothly at my job, with the exception of last Tuesday and Wednesday where it was snowing here. Keep in mind, snow here is absurdly rare, not to mention we got over an inch of it here. But what really made things crazy was when everything, including the university, was delayed until 10 am.

The local transportation infrastructure (everything, including roads, traffic lights etc) is not designed to handle a massive exodus where everyone is trying to get somewhere at the very exact same time. Just imagine normal rush hour traffic except twice as bad, because you've got college students (all 40k+ of them), plus the local grade schools, plus everyone who has a job, trying to get somewhere at the exact same time.

Normally things are staggered, but since virtually the entire city decided 10 am was the magic hour to open (the roads weren't even icy... it was a silly call to make, as the water on the roads did not freeze overnight) it was madness. Keep in mind, this is the ridiculous mess that happens in Texas when it snows.

Then again, there was enough snow to build this:

So I was far too busy yesterday to even realize that my account has turned 6 years old. Utterly ridiculous.

I honestly can't believe I was 15 when I first came around here, and decided to make this account. :P I find it funny too because most years I'm able to catch the actual day, but not this year. I totally forgot, and didn't even notice until today. 6 years is a ridiculous long time... so to celebrate, cake for everyone!!

(Psst... the booze is under the table. But don't tell anyone.)

Rather, VERY long days and very short nights. So the last few weeks have been... interestingly challenging to say the least. Like I mentioned before, my work schedule combined with my college schedule ended up giving me a one-two punch this semester. I finally got my official, real Class B CDL in the mail this week (instead of carrying around a temporary paper) so that was pretty cool. Not to mention they change the orientation from portrait to landscape once you turn 21 (at least that's here in Texas... I have no idea if they do that in other states).

Anyways, my typical day now requires me to wake up either at 5:30 in the morning or just before 7 AM in order to make it to work at 6:30 am, or 8 am class, respectably. The main problem is, class combined with 2-3 hour long labs make it so that I go straight from about 6 in the morning until almost 8 or 9 at night with few breaks between classes and work. It's tough, but I'm handling it. It could be much worse considering I only work about 12 hours a week.

Besides that, I haven't really had much time to do anything... except finally give in to my TV woes. I bought myself an Insignia 32" LCD HDTV about a week ago at Best Buy, and boy was it worth it. It cost me $350 to get it, as well as another additional 100 dollars to get me a Blu-ray player. I know it sounds like I just spent a lot of money (which is true) but hell, it's way overdue. My parents don't have a single HDTV back at home (they have CRT's that weigh about as much as my car lol).

I think the awesomeness which is a 32" TV and a Blu-ray player in my apartment more than makes up for waking up early every single day of the week. :D :P

So something I've forgotten to mention... I've been playing lots and lots of games over the last month. Starting first with Left 4 Dead 2 that my roommate got back in November. Then I got Assassin's Creed back at home and beat that while I was at home, and now coming back to school, my roommate has bought Assassin's Creed II and Halo 3 ODST, so I'm playing those now. So at the moment its pretty much game overload, though I got most of the itch to play these games out now.

It's a good thing too, tomorrow I start once again on the cycle of classes, with ungodly horrible hours at work (see my last blog lol). That would not be a good thing if I hadn't already beat all those games except for ACII, but my goal is to beat ACII before things get too heavy for my classes. I'm sure I can do it.

That said, I'm not too sure how this semester is going to go. I'm taking 17 hours so it's the most I've ever taken, but I'm getting quite a bit better at gauging what I need to do to get a 3.0+ GPA. I managed a 3.0 last semester, and that was with no GPA fluff classes. We will see how this goes. Wish me luck!!

Aside from that, everything else is about normal, really nothing else to blog about. Just my usual shenanigans, as you can see. (Random note... I think that's the first time I've ever used the word shenanigans. :P )

I already feel it. In fact, I know it.

First of all, the classes I'm taking are finally up to the upper level of my major, meaning they're not basic anything anymore - it's the actual things I'll need to know to get my degree. Anyways, I'm taking 17 hours this semester, not all lecture hours but several are labs. On top of that, I have my new job to keep up with. The amount of hours for that will be 12, but it's not the number of hours that's the kicker.

My status as a rookie driver basically gives them permission to give me the leftover shifts that nobody else wants. All I have to say, is that semester will probably completely change my sleep cycles lol. First of all, on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday I have classes at 8 AM. And then, on Monday I have a report time of 6:35 AM for my job. O_O To make matters worse, on Wednesday I have a standby shift at 6:30 AM. Oh and I have an on call shift on Tuesday, and a night shift on Thursday. You get the picture?

Don't get me wrong, I'm really liking my job. Certainly better than most other jobs I could get right now, considering most won't take so kindly to working around your schedule. But unfortunately, they worked too closely with it lol. :P

Anyways, it's really only going to be a matter of adjusting to waking up so darn early and having my body adjust.

So it's currently snowing in Texas (gasp!!) and not just in the panhandle where it's no surprise. It's literally been snowing nonstop today, and with temperatures not going above freezing, I get treated to a white Christmas!! :D

It's a rarity here, for sure. I'm sure anyone living up north is like "Meh. We get a white EVERYTHING." but you have to understand it's pretty amazing considering that yesterday, it is in the mid 70s and then it drops down to below freezing overnight. That's quite an achievement even for bipolar Texas weather. Ahh well.

Well, that's it for now... here's a pic of my car somewhat covered in snow, it may not be too impressive but the 50+ MPH wind gusts today haven't allowed much to accumulate on my car. The ground is a different story. Anyways, Merry Christmas everyone!!

So I will say that I'm very much done with finals (and actually have been for a few days) and overall I'm pretty sure they went well. I know that I've already made an A in one class, which is good, but the rest I have to wait until next week. Anyways, after I finished finals this week, I started by bus training. It's flown by and really all I have to say is... right turns, right turns, right turns.

I'm half tempted to go around my town and shave off the curbs on all street corners to make driver's lives easier. :P They require a good deal of preparation and skill to squeeze a 40 foot bus (or any other large, long vehicle) into a space designed for a 16 foot car. Other than that, it's actually kind of fun. Oh and don't worry, the only thing I've terrorized are some orange traffic cones in a parking lot on my first day of training. :D

Anyways, besides that I'm heading home for Christmas tomorrow. I have one more thing I have to do for work and I'm free.

Oh, something interesting I noticed today. I made it to level 50 (after how many years? lol) :P