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benjanke


ARCHIVES - September 2003
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9/30/03, 12:32 a.m.: Transportation issues
For some of you this is old news, but over the last week and a half I've had some rotten luck as far as transporting myself around town is concerned. First, on the Thursday before last (the day it rained a lot and was cold) my bike got a flat AFTER I had biked all the way to campus. So I pushed it back to the apartment in the rain, but it wasn't that bad, I guess. Took it home and replaced the inner tube and re-secured the handbrake which had also managed to come loose somehow. All this I did last Friday. Also, last Thursday, my car battery decided to crap out on me, leaving me on Friday with no form of transportation except *gasp* CyRide. I have been driving the Cavalier ever since, and in all honesty, it's been kind of fun. It's so old-school =) So currently the Avenger's battery is being charged on the floor of my room...not sure how safe that is, but I didn't want to leave it outside for someone to steal. Andy has maintained no less than a 30-ft distance from my room since I brought the thing in, however. Hopefully it will work tomorrow. Finally, to top things off, I rode the bike to class this morning for the first time since repairing it last Friday, and what happens? It gets another flat--once again, AFTER I got to class. I think this means that I was a real dumbass when I replaced the inner tube and forgot to check the tire for rocks/glass/nails/whatever, because whatever caused the first flat is still in there and popped another tube for me. I am awesome.


Safety first.
9/24/03, 8:30 a.m.: The Day is Mine
Ross, Steve, and Sam -- did you guys enjoy NOT going to the meat market (aka Career Fair) yesterday as much as I did? Mwahahahaha... I swear, for me anyway, nothing good has ever come out of the career fair. The two engineering-related jobs I've had over the last two summers were gotten in some other way. This leads me to believe that: a) the Career Fair is a complete and utter waste of time, and b) I suck at making good first impressions on strangers. Oh well. Someday I will probably need the meat market to come through for me and get me a job, but for now I can wait...

Also, for those who care, there is still some good football being played by ISU Cyclones out there somewhere this fall. For example, ex-Cyclone Reggie Hayward got himself 2.5 sacks on Monday Night Football this week. Go Reggie.
9/22/03, 12:20 p.m.: "This team runs on love."
Colorado was awesome, and we made it back in one piece, somehow. It was quite the adventure, both locating our hotel at 2am on Friday, and driving back last night after one car broke down in Lincoln, but I think all but two of my team mates are back in Ames now =P It was a good trip, but the 22+ hours in the car was a waste of time. I also regret not taking any pictures (even though I had the camera), nor sampling some of Colroado's finest brew, Fat Tire (sorry, Andy.) Boulder was beautiful, though -- we played our first game at a really nice complex that sat right next to the mountains. It was definitely sweet. I also got a chance to walk around Boulder's ped mall area, and over near the CU campus, though it didn't look like there was a whole lot going on. I've decided that it would be a really sweet place to live, at least for a little while, until the novelty of the whole alpine environment wore off. Oh yeah, and for the record, we beat CU's B team 5-2, and tied their A team 2-2 (though we lost in the last minute of the second overtime, which we grudgingly played at the request of their coach. We have always left games as ties before, but I guess their coach really thought his team should win. Shady...)
9/19/03, 1:15 p.m.: Weekend!
Well, I'm off to Boulder for a couple soccer games. Have a wonderful weekend =)
9/18/03, 11:30 a.m.: "I need a vacation."
Yikes. I hate to put up another rant, but it has been another one of those weeks where a ton of little things seem to be going wrong. The first couple days of the week were really busy, as I spent a lot of time studying for a test which I ultimately bombed on Wednesday. Then I go to soccer practice yesterday evening and get all beat up; my legs hurt like hell and my shins are sore, and I was so tired that I went to bed before 1 am =) Then today, after my first class, I realize that my bike's rear tire has been blown out somehow and is completely flat (and hence, unusable.) My bike now has a handbrake that fell off (also on Wed.) and a flat tire. How the heck am I supposed to get home now? Hm, guess it will be a long walk...
9/15/03, 12:50 p.m.: Untitled
Yup, just as I thought, it was a crazy weekend. Soccer went pretty well; we finished the weekend 1-1-1, beating UNI, tying Nebraska and getting pounded by Minnesota. It was fun, but 3 games in one weekend is just too much--I'm so sore this morning I can't even walk properly. Next weekend should be pretty sweet, though once again it will be a complete blur. We are supposed to go to Boulder and play a couple Colorado schools, and although it will be fun to be out there, I'm not looking forward to 22 hours on a bus in three days... Oh, and by the way, our football is not very good, in case you missed the big game this weekend. It's looking like it will be a VERY long football season... =(
9/12/03, 12:20 p.m.: Go Cyclones
Wow, it's going to be a super busy weekend, and I'm not so sure that that's a good thing. First of all, there's the big Iowa State - Iowa football game, which I have my doubts about but should (hopefully) be a good game. Unfortunately, the powers that be scheduled a "conference" soccer tournament for this same weekend =( This means that even though the tournament is here in Ames (our only real home games for the whole season), because of 2pm and 6pm games on Saturday I can only catch about the first half of the big game. Lame. And the last game is at the unhealthy hour of 8:30am on Sunday morning, too. Of course, on top of all this, I have two tests next week that I should start studying for this weekend... Oh well. If the last two ISU football games are any indication, I feel like the game on Saturday could be out of hand by halftime anyway. But hopefully not. Yeah... Go Cyclones!
9/11/03, 10:26 p.m.: "I know some 'little girls' that could kick your butt."
I realize this is old news by now, but I *finally* got FF Tactics Advance on Tuesday. I have only managed to play it for a few hours thus far, but it is certainly promising. The cute and colorful sprite-based graphics are awesome, and the game has a very addictive quality. It's taken every bit of self-discipline I have to not just blow off all my homework and play it constantly =P I'm really looking forward to digging in once I have some free time ... which will be like, never.



Oh, how long I have waited...
9/09/03, 9:15 p.m.: =)
Happy Birthday, Ross!
and Sam! (sorry, sam!)
9/08/03, 7:00 p.m.: Ugh
Today was definitely one of those days where it may have been better just not to have even gotten out of bed this morning. I'm not saying it's been a bad day, but it certainly has been pretty crazy, and I'm about to go nuts. Twice today at work I had one of those "duh" moments where you realize that everything you've been doing for who knows how long has been completely wrong. Or in my case, you overlook something very simple. Twice. In my hydraulics class I got my quiz/test back from last friday, and although I thought I'd done fairly well on it, I ended up with a well-earned D (20/30). That certainly didn't get the day off to a good start. Also today, I tried to track down Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, which according to teh intarweb (which never lies) was supposed to come out today. Evidently that meant everywhere but Ames, Iowa, as I scoured every store I could think of before breaking down and going to software etc at the mall. It will be here tomorrow morning, and I can't wait =) On a positive note, we evidently have good internet at the apartment now courtesy of mediacom. Never thought I'd ever see "good" and "mediacom" in the same sentence...
9/05/03, 12:12 p.m.: That didn't take long
It's only the second week of class, and already I'm starting to feel the hurt from school. Had a test/quiz this morning in my hydraulics class, which I can already tell is not going to be as much fun as I had hoped =P Homework is starting to pile up because I haven't had any motivation to do any thus far...but I guess that's my fault. At any rate, I had noticed that most of my recent updates had been video game-themed, and was therefore trying to make this one more different, but there's not a whole lot going on of any interest right now. I did get my new digicam a couple days ago, though. I won't bore you with the details, but it's a pretty sweet Canon A70. (it even meets Andy's approval!) I will post some pics as soon as I can find something worth photographing.
9/02/03, 1:08 a.m.: Lizardman!
My time over this 3-day weekend was pretty much evenly split between soccer and soul calibur, and I truly hope the time spent doing one justifies the time spent on the other =P As of roughly 30 minutes ago, we finally acquired the final hidden character in SC2--Lizardman! I realize that this really only means something to me, since I might be the only person that enjoys pummeling folks with the giant lizard, but I greatly appreciate the obscene hours put into this quest over this long weekend by my apartment-mates (and even Sam, too.) I think the only casualties of this endeavor ended up being the countless hours that no doubt could have been spent doing something more worthwhile, and my poor wavebird, which bore the brunt of a brief fit of rage no doubt resulting from some since-forgotten injustice earlier this evening, and now no longer has a completely funtional analog pad. At any rate, three cheers for Lizardman, and may a more productive week be had by us all now that we have this quest behind us...
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