Goofy self-portraits in the mirror must mean I’ve got something to show off.

Welp, you’d be correct. New ultimate jerseys came in today, designed by yours truly. Tip of the hat to Spin Ultimate
for printing these up. I haven’t yet gotten the chance to sport them on
the battlefield yet, but they turned out awful pretty.

A smile both proud and slightly awkward.

This weekend finds me sidelined with academia,
chained to a desk, eyes bleeding, stinking of coffee and unshowered
body odor. For Monday, just around the weekend, I suit up to take the Security+ exam.
In the days that follow, I will wrap up my three projects and make
presentations for each. After that, just one (!!!) final will separate
me and the salvation brought by our Savior. Christmas break, that is.

You know I actually get some kind of sick masochistic high from
this? The productivity machine I become; I love a good challenge. The
hours upon hours of absolute hell add up to a genuine smile on my face
when small accomplishments and milestones come to pass. It’s
encouraging and ultimately very rewarding feeling.

It’s only just begun. This bleak tunnel extends for miles. See you guys on the other side.

Employers, professors, I ask you to shy your eyes. What follows are some assertions and conclusions I’ve gathered during my three and a half year tour of duty at this awesome life experience, collectively referred to as “college.” It has truly been a privilege, and I encourage you to share your own lessons from your college experience.

1. 80% of instutional education is appeasement.

   This one breaks my heart a little. Education is something I hold near and dear, but it seems that so much of learning involves satisficing those requests of your instructor. If you can learn to become a Yes Man (something I personally detest, and something most of those same instructors even preach against) you will find yourself pulling in some A’s you don’t think you deserve. This is particularly true in writing courses. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve written something to a professors liking, and defended it to my friends with something like, “I know I know; it’s horrible, but that’s how he wants me to write this.”
    
   I had a tough time with this for a while, especially growing up. In my infinite discipline and respect for authority, I would always argue to my mom that “because I said so” was not a valid justification for anything. I owe her big.

   Ask lots of questions. Try things on your own and do them your own way. But, tragically, be ready to compromise your creativity for the sake of a better grade.

2. What they said about how much “college professors don’t care” isn’t entirely accurate.

   Live slightly in fear of them, because it’s true that they’re not afraid to flunk you without flinching. But they are also living, breathing, human beings. They have souls and compassion (most of them) and are sometimes generous if your shoulda-been-an-A came out closer to 89 or 88. If you can appeal to them and demonstrate that you’re interested in the subject and doing well in their class, you’ll find them much more responsive down the road.

3. Speak up!

   Most of my professors have welcomed student comments & input. Raise your hand and offer some of your personal experience or insight on the topic. Heck, in some of my quieter classes, I would add my quips just to keep the lecture (err.. classroom dialogue) moving. Even if it’s a lame joke, your professor remember you next time when you have something more intelligent to say.

4. I hold firm that anybody who can last one year at college can last four.

   Once you get that first year under your belt, you get into the groove of balancing the work with all that new freedom you just fell into. If you care about your friends from high school, don’t let them take that year off to go find themselves. Encourage them to get started in school; they’ll thank you later.

5. Money is not everything; far from it.

   This, I have adapted from a cheesy email forward I recently read, put better into terms a fellow college boy might understand. Life is like a beer. Flavorful and intoxicating. And money, power, status, etc.. think of those as barware; your mugs, pint glasses, and pilsners. It’s true that somehow, the experience of a delicious beer is enriched by a frosted pint glass. But even so, the chilliest of beer mugs can’t make the cheap beer taste like anything but cold, bubbly urine. In that instance, is it even worth dirtying another glass?

November has meant three things for me: cold weather, turkey, and crunch time for the semester. The past week or two I’ve been buried with academics; tests and more specificially, projects. I’m building some interesting stuff, and it’s definitely been a learning experience so far in how easy it is to write web apps. Here’s a peek at what I’ve been up to.

Marquee

For my Systems Analysis & Design course, our group is constructing a new system to facilitate student services for our faculty advisors; adding/dropping courses, viewing major curriculum, issuing unofficial transcripts, checking graduation requirements, and a classroom full of other academic-related functions. Marquee (a poke at improving our current system, Banner) is currently in development, built entirely from scratch using PHP and MySQL databases. Being an Analysis & Design course, there’s a huge emphasis on the business side of systems development. Data flow diagrams, feasibility matrices, candidate system proposals, database schema. Death by paperwork. It’s a necessary evil, but I’m sure glad I shied away from consulting work.

Tarpr

The final project in my Advanced Business Computer Applications class beckons me to build and improve an order tracking system for a tarp company to keep record of products sold. Alone, this functionality is fairly simple to implement, but that’s where it gets interesting. Our projects will be graded “comparatively/competitively,” meaning it’s our job to go above and beyond the call of syllabus. Java’s not my forte, but I’m excited at all the creative working space this gives me. Extra features, interface design, even user manuals & packaging. This should be something worth writing home about.

The Daily Haiku Project

And, for my Internet Programming course, we have to build a CMS of some variety. I have chosen to build a Daily Haiku CMS, whereby new user-contributed haikus show up once a day. Admittedly, this is almost a direct rip-off of something Rob Weychert already has done; his actually pulls the Word of the Day from Dictionary.com and incorporates it into his haikus! How clever! Mine is built from scratch in PHP/MySQL and will hopefully improve on his good work. I’m eager to exercise my writing skills some more.

Also, I came up with a new team name AND logo for my ultimate frisbee team. The name is a little play on the name of our beloved football stadium here in Auburn. Our new jerseys were ordered today; I’ll post some photos of those when they come to fruition.

If we don’t speak again, enjoy your turkey and buy cheap stuff on Friday.

Living about eight feet from a railroad, you come to cope with the noise it produces. It’s 5,000 tons of steel bustling down the railed highway. Blaring horn, a steady pumping engine. Usually a textbook example of the Doppler Effect. Some vibrations through the desk and a proud “vrooooom” as it passes me by. Sometimes, even the squeals of gliding metallic friction, as if the engineer just slammed on the breaks waaaaaaaayyyy too late.

Hopefully, not a cause for concern.

And sometimes I get none of the extra frills. I hear that train come and go without blowing it’s horn. Humbly passing through. No ambitions of boasting it’s locomotive-dom to anyone trying to sleep. Pleasant, almost. It always takes me back to my cross-country days.

A cross-country meet is full of noise. Air horns. Starting pistols. Yelling parents and teammates. The putts of the 4×4 Gator’s diesel engine leading the pack along the course. It was only so often you’d find a quiet stretch, usually back in the comforts of forested running trails. The only sound were the feet beneath you. Yours were particularly loud and trumped only by the sounds of your lungs swelling to replace your air supply. But around you, 60 other feet thudded their way down the same dirt path. It was thunderous but at the same time, ambient. A pack of loud, juvenile adolescents all quiet now; focusing entirely on making their move toward the finish line. There’s something powerful there.

But good for trains; quiet trains. Trains could use some good publicity. I saw in the news the other day, a recent double-blind study conducted by Stanford*, people were asked to list things that trains probably do on a daily basis. A train’s itinerary, if you will. The results went something like this:

• Pass through town at peak-traffic hours, so as to make as many people late as possible.
• Help bums (and their napsacks) train-hop more effectively by leaving our car doors unlocked. Provide enough hay to sleep on.
• Pick up sacks of mail from Wile E. Coyote.
• Wait until 2am, and then (carefully, now) tug on the horn cord excessively. Just hold it down, or, challenge yourself: try to play Jingle Bells.
• Serve as a canvas for people to write and draw beautiful words and pictures in spray paint. Bonus points if those words are illegible to read by most onlookers.
• If a penny is spotted on the tracks that lay ahead, don’t think: just derail.

Hey hey, not trying to be some kind of train-hugging hippy here, just saying.. maybe trains get a bad wrap!

Reasons why I win:

Take notes, ladies and gents.

I really dig this web site stuff. I love XHTML. It’s a rich beautiful language for trying to democratize the anarchy that is the Internet. Web sites are more than just a visual experience. More than something pretty to be designed in Photoshop and looked at in a browser.

The beauty is the content; we web designers assign meaning and relevance to drab text that would otherwise be bombarded with bland span tags. We put list items inside lists. We put headings into heading tags. We omit unncessary words with the del tag. To use the same tags over and over again would be such a waste of the vivid language we’ve been given. It’d be like describing everything as “amazing“.

I wrote a paper on it for my Telecomm class this past Spring. I would love to distribute it in pamphlet form around the world to help everyone understand why the Internet is such a truly awesome thing. It’s really that incredible. I love this stuff that much.

So it’s really a pity to sit through my Server Side Internet Programming class. One thing about teaching PHP is that, you must inherently know at least a little HTML. My poor professor has been trying hard to convey HTML over to my class for a couple days now, mostly unsuccessful. It’s hard to listen to someone foul up something you love.

What’s really a shame is that he know these languages like his tongue knows the inside of his own mouth, but he’s missing the point. He knows standards and W3C and seems to know how to write good code, but doesn’t understand why at all.

The dream is no more: another Louisville summer draws to a close.

I feel so disconnected from this leaving process. Usually I get in a few heart-felt goodbyes to the people I won’t be seeing till Thanksgiving, but it’s like I don’t believe it’s actually happening. When packing, I’m not thinking about everything I’m really gonna need down there. I’m just going back to what I always bring on trips. Another standard-procedure pack job… man I’m not ready for this school crap yet.

Although, it was a helluva summer by most accounts. I took on my first ever lead role after a two year hiatus from acting. Another successful tour of duty at Jefferson National. I finished a couple sites and laid out a nice set of blueprints for more to come this fall. I played some frisbee. I even started buying CDs again.

But the gauntlet has been thrown to have another sweet semester. Two goals:

1. 3.7 GPA this semester
2. And this one is a doozie… Five minute mile by December 31st. Going to be tough. Practicing five days a week in high school, all I could muster was a 5:15, but damn it felt good. I could definitely use the exercise. This will also keep me running through Christmas break, when everyone starts getting fat and comes back in January out-of-shape. Not me, Jack! I’ve got mile repeats and tempo runs to get to! This may also save my hide next summer when I go bull runnin’ over in Spain.

New photos, too. Bring on the tailgating!

Well friends, I’ve done it. I’ve saved you from ever eating poorly cooked microwavable foods again. Nine Hot Pockets out of ten I’ve eaten in my life were piping hot on the outside. Orange greasy cheese usually blurts out of one corner. But inside, cold morsels of still-frozen cheese to remind you just how much cheap college dining sucks.

Nevermore! Last week I discovered the way to eat kick ass frozen foods from your microwave. The secret is in the Cook Power option: knock it down to 80 percent. The buttons usually go [COOK POWER] [8], then set the time for about 25% longer. Out comes culinary delights: savory taste, juicy food, hot temperatures evenly distributed, no more chewy rubbery breads or cold surprises. How soon till I get my own cooking show? Ya know, between all of this web site design and this cooking advice, I am pretty DOMestic! Ho-hah!

In other news, the new Jamili Brown site went live today. If you’re not familiar, they’re a bitchin’ little rock/hip-hop group from Louisville. But this ain’t your daddy’s rock/rap group; these guys have got some serious talent. If you are familiar, keep an eye on them. They’ve had a lot of good things happening recently, and plenty more is coming their way soon. The new site is just the beginning.

July 19th can only mean one thing: another birthday at the Culver house. Twice a year, my brother and I construct gifts for eachother instead of actually buying one. Actually, that bastard has missed my birthday three years in a row now… but who’s counting? This ritual is affectionately referred to as “Arts & Crafts.” It’s usually pretty last-second, and usually pretty shoddy construction, and usually a pretty humorous endeavor.

Well late in the afternoon, my Arts & Crafts idea finally hit. Kudos to the incomparable Jessica Otwell for saving my ass by suggesting… the Jump to Conclusions Mat!

(more…)

Feast your eyes on… Butterbox!

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gently slide in from the top of your page. Read more about Butterbox.