Halloween Excitement

Can you feel it? Cooler temperatures, leaves changing colors, and the most wonderful part of the year: Halloween. Actually, Christmas week is my top rated part of the year with Halloween in a very close second mainly because I see a lot of family.

Damn, I just noticed I forgot to buy candy corn which is my favorite staple for Halloween. I'm not too big on dressing up for Halloween though, largely due to overprice costumes. I really want to buy this cowboy costume because it resembles a "gunner," a word our class uses. This word refers to a dental student who will not help other students in class, in hoping to just get the A's by themselves. Our class really emphasizes on helping each other succeed and get through the most challenging part of our education thus far. Lucky is the word I would describe my fortunate position in being a part of this class. Not all dental and medical schools enjoy this.

Anyways, I really like Halloween primarily on the ambiance scary themes and the effort everyone puts in. I really really enjoy scary movies. It helps too if you can bring people who you know will almost defecate their pants; that really adds to the experience. Last year,the movie to watch was definitely Paranormal Activity, and thankfully, they're releasing a sequel to this year. Holla! Now I just have to convince some girls to go, but so far they've all chickened out.

What else is great about Halloween? Oh! Haunted houses, of course. I've caught word there will be a class event on that. Additionally, there might be a class costume party to somewhere. I just have to study hard for this histology test coming up and then I can fully enjoy the festivities.

Man, I'm excited.

CAUGHT SLIPPIN

OW. I got "raped" by my histology test today. School has been rather rough for the past 3 weeks. Tests continuously pouncing and today was the last and most difficult one. I did well on all the other previous tests.

Could I have prevented this tragedy? Perhaps, but more likely I could have only cushioned this violation with a condom and some lube (how's the imagery?). The amount and length of detail on the exam was more difficult than I had expected. My preparation for studying wasn't my best as I have been incrementally falling behind in my readings, bit by bit. What an eye opener.

Luckily, next week is more relaxed. Certainly, the accumulated experience from the past several weeks is just a warm-up. In the future, there will be constant tests every week beginning in January. Joy. Meanwhile, I'll try and walk off this pain.

Dave Chappelle: "Man get raped..you just gotta get up and walk that shit off....caught me slippin!"

Really?

I just quickly read an article about the new ipod shuffle, and I ask...why? Garbage.

Ipod Shuffle Specs:

Price: $49

Memory: 2 Gb

Is that great cost/benefit? Just decent.

Here's my answer:

SanDisk Sansa Clip 8 Gb

http://www.amazon.com/SanDisk-Sansa-Clip-Player-Black/dp/B002MAPS6W/ref=sr_1_3?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1283396037&sr=1-3

Price: $57

Memory: 8 gb

Features: Screen, 5 band EQ, FM radio, memory card slot

BAM!

FYI: I own a refurbished 2gb sansa clip that I bought for 20 bucks. Great little gadget.

Asus to Life

Just yesterday, I bought the asus ul30vt-x1k from amazon. The costs was 750 after tax and I received a free external optical drive. booyah.

I now have two laptops (notebooks? wtf is the difference?) but my other hp laptop isn't practical outside my apartment. It's too heavy and bulky and the battery is poor even after recalibration. What I need for school is a thin and light laptop with a great battery. The asus provides this. Today, at panera bread the laptop was on for 3 hours and the battery meter estimated it would work for another 6.5 hours! I didn't have the patience to measure but that is cool if you think about it. The advertised battery life is 11 hours if you run it conservatively.

However, there is one negative. The touchpad is not that good; it's jumpy and somewhat inaccurate. I knew of this before the purchase but this can be cured if I remove the touchpad elan software.

During my shopping, I was going to get a tablet pc so I would look cool at taking notes while everyone else was using pen and paper. However, the tablet I would buy is too expensive and with the new developments of a new generation of tablets coming this year, I knew my mind would fill with regret in buying a tablet pc.

Overall, I'm happy with this laptop. Also, I bought microsoft office professional 2010 from my school for only 10 bucks! Being able to use onenote 2010 on my laptop during class tomorrow has me excited. I can import the power presentations to onenote, and from there i can add notes, draw lines, add color, etc. on to the presentations. BAM!

If you have any tips to using onenote, please tell me!

RANT:

If you don't like rants, please close your eyes and count down from 10.

Now, I am amazed at the power of apple. Their marketing strategies have people hooked at their cheeks like a sucker fish! A few people in my class were immediately hooked into buying the macbook pro just from the influence of another classmate. Crazy.

MACBOOK PRO:

I did look into the macbook pro 13 inch for 1200 bucks. It definitely is slim and has a good battery life but the price is absurd. How could I in justification buy 4+year old intel core 2 technology for that 1200? Granted, their general pricing has gone down but not enough to compete for my money.

Take a look at the 15 in macbook pro with the intel i5: 1799 bucks! WTF! For half the price, I can already beat the specs with a windows build. The mac osx does have media editing software (for more additional charges) that does make a macbook appealing, but there are software applications on windows as well.

Viruses and other malware can definitely be a selling point to purchasing a macbook...for the ignorant. Certainly, I've accidentally downloaded malware when I was younger (like way back in early high school). But I used the internet to help me determine the do's and don't's to internet use. If you are so worried about malware and are rather computer illiterate, then you should buy a macbook. For now, you should be rather safe...I think.

Articles:

http://www.lockergnome.com/blade/2010/04/18/one-hacker-says-apple-and-mac-users-dont-take-security-serious/

http://www.fastcompany.com/1673499/major-flaw-in-apples-safari-browser-gives-hackers-access-to-personal-information

http://www.product-reviews.net/2010/03/29/google-chrome-web-browser-unhackable-at-pwn2own-2010/

I must be missing something about these macbooks. Tell me please.

Gadget Fiesta

If you would remember from months ago, I wrote about wanting to get a new phone. Previously, I was sporting the ol' palm treo 700wx. Besides the size, the treo was a great phone: good touchscreen, great customization (even had multiple home windows as seen on smartphones today), and great overall phone...for it's time of 2005. I have been waiting...and waiting for the right phone. Here it is:

THE DROID X! I bought this phone on release day right here to Kentucky, and it's a fun device.

SIZE:

Reading the physical specs made me worry this phone would be too big for me, but it's near perfect. I tend to like bigger things, hence, my possession of the ol' goliath palm treo. The droid x is long but very thin except for the hump at the top where the camera is positioned. Actually, the hump is welcomed by me because it makes holding the phone or grabbing the phone from my pocket rather trivial. It's the biggest smartphone with a 4.3 inch screen that is terrific because I can read articles, watch videos with more ease.

GPS/GOOGLE MAPS

The gps and google maps software is good and has helped me find my way around this town. I'll plug it into my car audio system and it performs better than my garbage garmin nuvi gps device. Not once has google maps navigation led me down any weird paths like the garmin has done many times in the past.

Battery Life:

Super! My phone could last almost 2 days if I use it conservatively or less than 1.5 days if I use it more heavily in the wireless, internet and app departments. Most other smartphones struggle in this area, especially the htc evo as I've read.

SCHOOL:

The droid x has been very helpful with school purposes. Checking email is a breeze. A few times, I've even completed some online quizzes while in a boring class! Also, I've read study guides, old tests and notes during class; no need to waste time printing and unnecessarily wasting tree resources. This morning I was at panera bread and their internet was being silly. So I whipped out out my phone and downloaded old tests and quizzes for a test I have tomorrow. Perhaps for 1.5 hours I was studying the documents from my phone. AWESOME.

APPS:

There are very many useful apps. Certainly, the android market size is nowhere in size to the apple apps market but there is debate in how many apps are useless and redundant. The essential apps for me so far are dropbox, meebo and ebuddy, facebook, google maps, yelp, file manager, adv. task killer, youtube, dictionary.com, pandora, shopsavvy, mixzing, camera 360, and colornote.

CLOSING:

I'm a bit excited for android 2.2 aka froyo to see how more efficient my droid x will run. However, I read that the adobe flash player needs improvement.

I've fallen for the game that is the smartphone. Generally, I'm for innovation and competition but for the most part I have been convinced to join the android team. Also, I use to have a wallpaper of the android eating apple:

There's A Lot of Garbage

Certainly, there's a lot to write about: apartment and kids moving in for school this week, dental school progress, diet change, new phone and laptop, and random things. I thought I would make multiple posts but let's try it in one long attempt.

As foolish as this sounds, I moved into an apartment I have never once seen beyond the internet pictures. The price/mo. is really cheap at less than 500 which includes some utilities, internet, cable tv and furniture. Also, I share the kitchen and living room with a roommate who has yet been assigned to my apartment, thankfully.

I really expected the worse of conditions but the place surprised me at how not so bad it is actually(insert harhar! ). However, the bed provided was horrific as I saw some form of dried up barf or feces on the bottom. I demanded, nicely, that I get a new bed. My new bed was a strange one: no box spring and is supported 1.5 feet off the ground. It's good because I can store lots of stuff below but the center support pole is so squeaky. I'm now trained to sleep like a ninja and remain completely still throughout the night.

College kids are now moving in for school this week and my enjoyment of an empty parking lot is over. I know I won't like it but at least I can tolerate. Last Saturday some inconsiderate and lazy kid threw his kitchen garbage bag into my balcony and that made me mad. Luckily, the maintenance staff understood my situation and told me they would take care of the trash. When I was 18, I don't remember myself as a kid who was inconsiderate and rude to other people around me. But then again, I'm not a stupid person.

This blog post is already pretty long with no visual assistance so I retract my earlier statement (no, i refuse to remove the statement), and my separate topics will be divided by different posts.

My Bad

Haven't blogged as much as I would like to but school has been busy, and blogging is in the back of the line at the moment. Much to write about my place, dental school and classmates, new phone and other things. You should RSS feed this if possible; just kidding.

BTW, I appreciate sleep more now. Well, except for right now.

UK

Not the United Kingdom, uninformed reader. The University of Kentucky will be my school for the next 4+ years (and expensive too :( ).

I have just arrived from Utah on a connection flight through Detroit. This trip reminded me that I dislike long flights (3+ hours). The seats on delta airlines aren't comfortable and my butt was aching. Also, I was dozing the whole way and my sudden snoring woke up me and my neighbor on several occasions. How embarrassing.

The weather in Lexington, KY is rather humid and warm. People here are very nice and the area is more green than what I'm used to back home. Lots of farms and horsies.

I suppose I'll share pictures since my mom demanded I send her them.

Also, I would like to be on the record that the mcDonald's chicken nuggets meal made me queasy. If you share this experience, then I think we have ourselves a lawsuit.

DREAM

last night's dream:
at a dinner i accidentally spilled some water on both myself and an old man; i apologized but he punched me in the face. later, he purposely spilled water on me and i knocked him out. holla.
I'm back (for now)!

What I Want

I used to want a bunch of things: ps3, new kick'n computer, phone, mp3 player, laptop, etc. However, I don't want them anymore, except for the phone. It's definitely helpful to delay and see if I want any of these several months later.

Back at the old home, there's a piano I used to play on quite a bit. So I'm considering in getting a electronic piano. Alternatively, I might instead get a guitar to learn something completely new.

Life is just fine. I'm hitting the gym more with friends. Definitely easier if you have others to motivate each other. Bad foods like soda and fast food is being kicked aside. Now I just need to learn a bunch of easy and healthy recipes.

Snuggie sucks!

For this past Christmas, I got my parents the snuggie that is some trendy product as seen here:

Before buying this I thought the snuggie was a stupid product, but I kept reading and hearing by word of friends that it was good. My parents didn't take the snuggie home by reason of not enough room in their luggage. However, I'm sure they thought it to be stupid.

Never judge a book by it's cover. I just tried the snuggie while watching the season premier of 24. In result, I could not wear the snuggie for more than a few minutes. It really is a cheap backward robe. Worse, it kept creating static to the point I could smell ozone. Perhaps I should wash it and give it another go.

Sick Ed

Eww I'm currently sick, and have been for a few days. Congested nasal cavity and coughs that hurt my head. I told my parents and now they won't stop calling. It'll be over soon, I hope.

I just watched the Spike Lee film called "25th Hour" starring Ed Norton. Fantastic movie with a touching ending. Makes me want to read the book (sorta). I wanted to read the book from the I Am Legend movie but never get myself to do that.

When it comes to books, I most prefer to read non-fictional books that can help you in real life. Currently, I'm slowly reading "Change of Heart."(Am I correctly naming titles of books/movies? I'll find out after I finish typing this blog.) I would rather read these books today because I find them much more useful. Earlier in my life, I read fictional books for entertainment, which I'm sure is the general reason people read such literature.

Which do you prefer to read?

Cough*

RECAP

Herro,

My time back at home has been pretty well spent. I got to see a lot of friends but not everyone.

Several of us went snowboarding. For me, it was not that fun. First, I forgot to adjust my flow bindings , and I already fell behind the group. I had to readjust the bindings again mid-down the trail. So I texted a friend to go on without me, and after I sent the message, I look down and my board has disappeared. Off in the near distance I see my my board going down the mountain. Finally, I found it after some hiking down. For most of that boarding event, I was on my own doing trails of my choice. It's really nice because you can really go at your own pace. Unfortunately, I had a really hard time controlling my board, especially on alternating from heel to toe, vice versa. So several times my board caught the snow/ice and resulted in some bad falls, but luckily I wore my helmet. I don't recommend using flow bindings. They're great for getting your boots in fast, but they sacrifice too much control to be worth using.

The night before I watched the George Clooney movie "Up In The Air." It was a really entertaining movie and Clooney is a really good and suave actor.

Anyways, I'm heading back home tomorrow for a class later that night. Vacation is basically over as it should be. I'm somewhat tired of the traveling by air and road so going back to the routine student life will seem refreshing.

Iron Chef!

This is definitely one of my favorite shows of all time. Their english dubs are surprisingly acceptable and convincing. Also, I'm not talking of the terrible USA version of the show. I'm referring to the original Japanese show that was sadly ended. The theatrics and how it was run was always entertaining. Also, the concoctions the chefs "dish" out are awesome; always makes me hungry.

So I'm back home for a short period before school starts and I was really happy to see the Iron Chef show (FLN channel btw). I don't have cable in my own home so I spent a couple hours on the television.

It sure is really cold here, obviously. brrrrr