Jim’s Piece of Space

Spent Christmas in Colorado, USA and wow. I love snow at Christmas, especially this nice light fluffy stuff and not the icy crap that we get in Fredericksburg. The two day drive, yes I said drive, out here is a bit long and starts to grind on the nerves around noon the second day. Had loads of fun with my uncle and grandparents (on my dad’s side). Most of my presents were left at home, in fact all of them aside from the ones that my sister (who went to college / uni out here), my uncle and my grandparents got me stayed in Virginia. Really had a great time out here, I miss Colorado and all the beauty that there is up here in Louisville. The drama that exists between some people I could really live without and was the only downside to this entire trip. Luckily I had my laptop and headphones, 12 Stones is a hell of a lot better than the bickering and fighting. Most of the stuff I got was cards, since I’m old and all the stuff I want is expensive. Did end up with a new video card for my computer and a SATA controller card which I am very happy about, now I can use that 700 GB of space that has been rotting on my computer for about 6 months. Plan on using the cash I received to purchase some programming books, which I’m not sure quite what I want yet. Looking to get a book on Perl, C++ and Unix / Linux shell programming. Also got a copy of ‘Das Boot’ on DVD. One of the greatest submarine movies ever produced and I can’t wait till I have a chance to watch it.

Vacation out of the state is really wonderful, especially when you can spend it with family that you don’t see often, but I’m kinda starting to miss home and all the things there are to do there. Still will have a week off of school after we get home, late Sunday night, which is a good thing since I didn’t bring any of my schoolwork that I have to do with me :p

Until next time, hope everyone had a happy holidays and will have a good new year.

I never actually thought I’d say this and until I started at ITT Tech, don’t think I actually ever did say it; but….I LOVE SCHOOL. No, I haven’t lost my mind, but I’m probably getting there. The classes aren’t all *that* exciting; not like I walk out every day and go WOW! I’m so glad I showed up. Half this stuff will probably be forgotten in a year or so and yet every morning I still look forward to going. Don’t really know how to explain it; there’s just something cool about going and learning now. Lots more I’d like to add to this tonight / this morning (yea, it’s 3:30am…probably going to see a lot more posted at odd hours) but I’m not ready to say some of it and there’s people who might read this (HI people) that I don’t want to read it yet

12 Stones - Hey Love.mp3 <- great song <3

I decided that since I wasn’t working, might tell that story someday, that I wanted to get 4 classes at ITT Tech this quarter. Went and talked to my representative ( counselor, whatever you want to call him ) and asked what I needed to do. He said to just talk to my Program Chairman, didn’t seem too hard to do, right? Just explain that I wasn’t working and ask for a fourth class. Wish it had been that simple.

I went and talked to him, after talking to the dean, who had said that my 3.17 for last quarter / 3.00 cumulative was good enough…guess what, I can’t get a fourth class unless I have a 4.0. He did mention that if the Dean thought I could handle four classes then the Dean could call him to approve it. First words that almost came out of my mouth were “Fuck that bullshit.”, instead I thanked him and left his office quietly. Next thing I did was walked back to the deans office. His reaction was about the same as mine, so he called up my program chair and said to give me the class I wanted and that if my GPA dropped below a 2.75 I would not be allowed to take four again. Feel like I went over his head to get what I wanted, but oh well. I will pass.

Of all the classes I could have gotten, they decided to put me in Composition I. Oh well, English isn’t so bad and I rather like writing usually. Really hoping that the teacher doesn’t hold anything against me, had her my first two quarters ( semesters ) for my ‘Strategies for the Technical Professional’ class…which I failed once and got a D+ in the second time. She said she was looking forward to not seeing me this quarter. She’s in for a big surprise Tuesday morning.

My revised course schedule:

Monday (8 am - 11:24 am) College Mathematics II
Tuesday (8 am - 11:24 am) Composition I
Tuesday (6 am - 10:20 pm) Microsoft Desktop Operating Systems
Thursday (8 am - 12:20 pm) Structured Cabling

Still can’t come home Tuesdays, talk about time to waste.

Went and signed up for the new quarter today, well…I call it a quarter because it’s only 12 weeks long and to me a semester is longer. Currently in my 3rd quarter as a student at ITT Technical Institute in Springfield, Virginia, USA. So yea, here’s a brief description of the classes I have this time around and what days / times.

Tuesday (8:00am - 12:20am) College Mathematics II (GE192)
Tuesday (8:00pm - 10:20pm) Microsoft Desktop Operating Systems (IT109)

Thursday (8:00am - 12:20am) Structured Cabling (IT113)

As you can see, on Tuesdays, I won’t be home…hardly at all. With the drive being 40 miles and taking an hour with no traffic, and up to 4 hours with traffic, there’s just not time. It’s really a bummer that they have blocked the IRC ports at the school, and MSN is really temperamental as to weather it will work or not. At least I’ll have my laptop so I can get some work done during those 5 hours or so.

College Mathematics II (GE192):

This course will include, but is not limited to, the following concepts: exponential and logarithmic equations and functions, graphs of trigonometric functions, trigonometric equations, polor coordinates, oblique triangles, vectors and sequences.

Microsoft Desktop Operating Systems (IT109):

This course introduces general knowledge and skills required in installation, configuration and management of popular Microsoft operating system(s) for standalone and network client computers.

Structured Cabling (IT113):

This course provides the study of industry standards and practices involved in wiring a computer network, including media and protocol specifications, connection topologies, installation, testing and troubleshooting.

Those are my classes, if anyone reads this and is in those feel free to drop me a line, maybe we can hook up for lunch on Tuesdays or something :p

Today was a great day, for the most part, but then my body had to decide that I was having too much fun. Maybe I don’t deserve to have “good” days anymore. There’s nobody I can or will blame for this. Unexplained medical conditions sometimes suck, big time.

I’ve had this…condition…for as long as I can remember, my parents said when I was really young it was worse. Their child of two or three lying down crying and not being able to explain where it hurt, and any contact making it all worse. Eventually I could sort of explain where it hurt, and learned when it was going too. I can be sleeping, eating ice cream, running, doing homework, watching a movie, driving…it doesn’t matter, there is no one *cause* for this, but my hands and feet hurt more than anything describable. Some activities seem to make it happen more often, odd things…sitting “indian style”, objects that vibrate (ie. lawn mowers, car steering wheels, etc) and semi-strenuous physical activities. Which means really anything I do can set it off and nothing will make it go away. The only things that…help…in any way are sitting in the shade (but not on something hard, lying down helps more) and drinking something cold.

Have you ever wondered what real pain is? Not the “ow I got a paper cut.” or “damn, I shut my hand in the door” kind of pain. I’m talking about true, pure pain, the pain that makes you honestly wish you would die right then. This is that kind of pain, and a few times I did wish I would die so it would go away. No words will ever be able to describe to you how it feels, suppose I’ll do my best though…don’t read the rest of this paragraph if you don’t want to. Don’t know how many people have accidentally cut themselves with an x-acto blade, but it feels a lot like a very bad paper cut. Now, imagine having hundreds of thousands of those, if not millions, slicing your skin away from your bones and into pieces…but from the inside out. At the same time your bones feel like they’re exploding, exactly the same as those migraine headaches that make your vision fade a little. Touching either hand or foot multiplies this pain by about 30 times. Best description I have ever come up with really, and it’s not even close to how it really feels. A few times I start shaking, like a full body seizure, sometimes it’s just my hands, a few times I’ve actually passed out from it just hurting too much.

Used to just take 800milligrams of Ibuprofen or 1000milligrams of Tylenol and everything would be okay. These days I have a prescription for Darvocet (650mg of Acetaminophen and 150mg of propoxyphene) which doesn’t really do anything for me anymore. Is it a drug addiction or have I taken so many that I’m “immune” to it? Probably the latter if anything, but I doubt it. Only part about this whole thing that truly bothers me, is not that I may be addicted to narcotic pain meds, but that nobody knows what causes it and there seems to be no cure or method to repress it.

Is being addicted to not being in pain the same thing as being addicted to pain medication? I would have to say no, but they can be very closely related. If you’re not careful one can turn into the other. Do I plan on being careful about not becoming addicted to my pain meds, especially if I get the stronger ones like I want to? When I’m not in pain, I’ll say yes, but when things start hurting that badly…I take what I have to and hope that it goes away.

But yea, the rest of my day was mildly productive. Got my room floor cleaned up some, my desk could use a little work still. >.> Also spend an hour or so talking to the most amazing person I know, made my day worth living

So yea, I finally got around to starting a blog. Been saying I was going to do this for a while, seems like it finally happened. Read it if you like probably end up just as a place for me to rant and complain about my not quite so interesting life. Comments will always be appreciated =)