So I just finished my lat Final for the Fall 2009 semester. I was so lazy it is ridiculus, I really need to jump on the bandwagon of actually trying in school. In the spring semester 2010 I have signed up for 4 classes; they are Statistics, Biology II, Intro to Java, and Intro to Communications. These are some of the last core classes I need before I can take the College of Education Entrance Exam, and then apply. Hopefully it will be an easy enough schedule that it will allow me to get use to studying on a regular basis, because I have some hard stuff coming up in the future. In the next 30 days that I have to be a deginerate I will try to finish my Oblivion PS3 game, I am probably 8 hours into it and not being even 1/4 of the way through the main story line I feel it was well worth the $10 new when I found it on discount at Walmart. Other than that I am going to catch up on my tv shows and watch a couple other new series. Of the shows I am currently invested in are Top Gear, Misfits, Dexter, Californication, Modern Family, Cougar Town, It's Always Sunny In Philidalphia, The Office, Merlin, Smallville, Community, Curb Your Enthusiasm, The Big Bang Theory, The Vampire Diaries, and Sons Of Anarchy. The shows that I downloaded the series' to bang out are Mad Men, The Wire, and Deadwood. That is alot of tv when I type it out like that haha, easily the number one reason why I haven't studied as much as I should. Oh well, I think what I need to do is to collect the shows and then watch them all in succesion over breaks from school, it is always more satisfying to me to able to watch a whole season immediately instead of waiting a week inbetween episodes. Well that was alot but hopefully I will keep on remembering about this personal life blog of mine to keep it updated more frequently, and hopefully to the zero people that read it I will get better at writing my thoughts. A lyrical genius if you will.

New TV

So I just bought a new bedroom tv this morning, which is awesome because it is an LCD that has a pc input. So I can use the tv as a computer monitor and as my ps3 gaming tv. It is the bestbuy brand Dynex and is a 22" 720p LCD. What is even better about this is that it was an open box item so instead of $325 plus tax I got it for $200 plus tax and that included the 4 year bestbuy warranty. And even better was that when I set it up there was a dead pixel in the middle of the screen which means I am going to get a brand new one when I take it back. Super score for Ian. Thank ya, thank ya very much.

Driving to the motherland

Sorry I am so lame in posting this a month after the event but I really wanted to include the videos I took. So I went to set it up and my camera only shoots in .mov which is for quicktime. Problem is that file tipe is too large for this blog. Anyway, after a month of searching I came upon a free video converter online called prism and it worked fantastically so here goes. I can't remember the dates now but starting the Thursday before Martin Luther King day I drove up to Michigan to visit Jeremy, Stacy, and Andrew. The drive was excellent and I was making great time until I hit Ohio and everything was freezing over. Once I drove onto my first iced up overpass and my back end whipped out I realized I should probably slow down. Then as I was driving 35mph through the middle of Ohio at 1 in the morning my tire blew out. As I stepped outside with no coat, gloves or hat I realized why everything was frozen; it was the coldest I have been in a long time. I jumped back in the car and put on all my gear looking like Ralphie from Christmas Story. I began to change my tire in the freezing cold, pitch black. Soon after I started a State Trooper pulled up and had his lights on me and then assisted with holding the lug nuts and screwing them back in as my gloves were far to big for the task. All in all it took me maybe 25 minutes and I was back on the road. At this time I would like to thank BMW for being genius enough to making changing a tire so simple with things like full size spare tires and jacks that actually fit into the car to raise it, no guessing on where to place it. Now I had to finish the drive to Michigan. All total the drive is 900 miles and I was on par in doing it in 11 hours point to point. But as I had to change a tire and drive from the bottom of Ohio up going 35 it took me 16 hours. I arrived at 4 in the morning and promptly passed out on their couch. The trip was amazing and it worked out that I got to see William "Chilly" Dopp ,one of my best friends, on his birthday. As well as seeing Will Miller, my other best friend, and his girlfriend Sam Howard on her birthday. Being able to hang out with everyone was great I also got to eat at the Dark Horse with the Long family and Kyle. I also decided to put some new rubbers on my car, I bought 4 very nice Pirelli 5000 series tires from discount tire. The drive back was more smooth as their wasn't the freeze going down on the roads, I had learned that the temp was -20 when I had to change my tire. The time it took coming back was 12 hours, but I had come back a different way and it was longer by about 80 miles. I had drove up through SC, NC, KY, OH,IL,MI; I drove down IL,KY,TN,GA. Overall I think I liked the way up a little bit more as it wa smore country side where the way down which I did like as well was more big cities. The most important thing I realized on the trip though was that I am a driver. I loved driving alone and for such a great distance I really want to start making road trips and as corny as it sounds I would like to get a picture of myself in front of every state welcoming sign.

So these are the videos that I made. I am pretty delighted by my camera and what I did. The camera is a 10 megapixel Kodak that also takes video in 720p, which is awesome and for only $250 is a deal you can't beat.

New House?

So the housing market sucks down here just like the rest of the nation but I think I have found a deal. If you take the ammount of money I would spend on rent and times it by 12 for the year then multiply that by the 4 years I will be at college, with a low average of $400 a month that turns into 400*12= 4800*4= $19,200. With 500 a month that figure turns to $24,000. Those numbers are astounding and yet for all that money going out after the 4 years I will have nothing to show for it. Here is my point, I have through looking around on the internet come to have found run down houses in the ghetto on the cheap. The house in particular that I have planned as my dream home is a 1,150 square foot house listed for $6,000. The house is in no way livable condition at the moment but I figure if I can live with my parents for another year and put in $10,000 into renovating the house it will be a pretty slick 2 bedroom 1 bathroom bachelor pad. And the golden nuggett of it all is after college not only have I saved $3,000 - $8,000 but I have an extremly nice property paid for and ready to sell or to rent. This is the brilliant part, if I decide to sell the house anything I do for will be profit based on the renting scenario. However, if I decide to rent it out (which I am leaning heavily to) at $300 per month in a year that is $3,600 in the bank and after the time I would be retiring 30 or so years later that small investment will net me close to $100,000 (this is all without figuring in interest, but also not considering taxes and improvments so I consider them a wash). This could end up putting my chidren through college or better yet if I don't have kids will buy me a Ferrari. In all seriosness I am very intrigued by this opurtunity but I plan on playing it to my best interest. I am going to wait until the end of the summer and offer $3000 cash to buy it outright if not the $6000 is still a good deal to me. But I am not going to be impashent because I can live with my parents and while this is not the sweetest of circumsatnces it is not bad by any means.

Happy Martin Luther King day.

I looked upon my school calendar and realized that the only two breaks I have this semester are Martin Luther King Day (Jan. 19) and Spring Break (first full week in April). This is kind of a shock for me because I am used to having random 4 day weekends and different holidays off. But I have decided to skip some days around the good Dr.'s day and give myself a road trip. I get out of class around noon on Wed. the 14th and will drive to Michigan to see friends and family. On Fri. I will then go to Grand Rapids to see more friends and then back to Marshall the next day. I will have to take off on Tuesday the 20th to make school on that following Wednesday. This is a rather long trip (13 hours each way) and considering the longest I have driven by myself was from the U.P. to Marshall (5 hours) I will be in for a fun time. I think I am going to stop over somewhere for the night, preferably somewhere cool that I have never been so I can take a look around before I fall asleep. However on the trip back I will have to drive all day to be at class the following morning. But I am definitely taking my camera and have decided that along with pictures along the way that I might take some video's guerrilla style in my car while driving to talk about stuff as I will probably be bored and sore. Anyway I hope I have fun and that I won't have any hiccups (metaphorical as problems or I guess literal because I don't like hiccups the more I think about it).

Starting in again with school.

I am excited for this semester of school as I am now starting to take the classes that are the core of my major. However this does mean that my brain may shut down from over exposure to new stimuli, ha ha wait no that would be sad. So my classes are as follows Biology 1107 which is what was explained to me by my adviser as the class the department likes to weed people out with, Math 2120 which is a statistics course and 1 of 2 math classes that I will need for my degree the other being Calculus, History 2237 is American history through 1877 with a strong emphasis on slavery and federalism (this class is not needed by my major but is 1 of 2 "learning about Georgia" classes required by the state), and the last 2 are wellness classes that are also required by the school the first being weight lifting and the second is a soccer course.

Fall Semester is over

So I had 4 finals and all of them were relatively easy. But I do have two funny stories. The first was in Education 2120 a multicultural teaching course. In the class I speak up a lot but I always get the professors points and add constructive points to what he is teaching. For the final it was decided to be a collaborative exam and everyone cheered. We counted off into groups of 4 and the three girls stuck with me cheered again. That was until they waited for me to start answering questions and I informed them that I didn't study for the final. The deflating enthusiasm on their faces was awesome. I explained to them though that the way my brain works is to connect pieces together so if they started me off I would hit the home runs, which I did. The second story was just a couple of hours ago. I have this really lame class called orientation that all incoming students must take their first semester. The class is at 7 pm Tuesdays and Thursdays. So I roll in at 7 for the exam to find out that it started at 6. But the best part was that I was finished in about 20 minutes and was the first one out the door. Again seeing the faces scowling at me as I walked out having finished the test they had been working on for almost an hour and a half was priceless. So now the Christmas season shall start, I am finished with shopping and cannot wait for my brother and his family to arrive. In the mean time I will be playing the latest World of Warcraft Expansion: Wrath of th eLich King and watching tv and movies that I will be downloading off of the interweb. Have a great Holiday.