Lots of Stuff

Hmm, a lot of things to write about. First, some random pictures that I really don't feel like incorporating into anything else:



Ramya is umm.. I don't know. Confused? Really weird?
Trying to solve the rubik's cube. . . and doing pretty well actually.
FREE candy that somebody was tring to get rid of.
Abby in the dining hall.Late night studying... always improved by the introduction of food.

Moving on...

I got to host an overnight student for the first time... that was pretty cool. To make it even more cool, the guy I hosted was actually my friend from high school... he is considering Hiram, and I got paid to host him for the night! It was legitimate though, because he really is considering Hiram, and he did visit classes and meet with faculty members, etc.

The same night was the "Computer Science and Math Departments Nth Annual Donut Party." It's a strange but fun time. Basically it's an event hosted by, believe it or not, the Computer Science and Mathematics departments to give people a chance to have fun doing nerdy things. They make homemade donuts and have tons of puzzles for people to play with... some of which are fairly easy, and some of which have never been solved before.

Nerdy people hanging out, eating food, and solving puzzles.Ian.My friend Phil attempting to solve a puzzle which has never been solved before.

Some dudes.

Later that night I was working on finishing up a Calculus project.... which, though I had been working hard on it, wasn't going so well. My friend Phil actually graduated from HS with me, but is looking at colleges now because he's doing an Americorps program this year -- meaning he's taking a year off to do community service. At any rate, he took Calculus with me in high school, so he was able to help me. It was very funny because most people assumed that he was in high school, since most overnight guests are high school seniors. When he was helping me, people actually commented along the lines of "what the hell? how does a high schooler know Calculus III?" It was amusing, and probably helped boost his ego.

In the end, I had to stay up all night to type up the results of my project. It kind of sucked. However, when it was done (at 9.00 in the morning, right as I needed to get ready to go to class), I was fairly happy with how it turned out. I didn't end up getting quite the grade I wanted, but whatever.

The next day, I went to bed around midnight, without taking a nap in between. I slept for 14 hours that night. It was glorious. I woke up at around 3 PM the next day (I know this would be 15 hours.. but I was up for about an hour in between)

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Hmm, what else. Well, a few days ago someone pulled the fire alarm in my dorm. That wasn't very much fun. We were out of the building for an hour or so. I stood outside (in the rain, and the cold) for about a half hour, until I finally decided to go to a different dorm to keep warm. The fire department is required to go through and check every single room... so it takes a long time and is very annoying.

Then, a few days ago my roommate saw an offer for a "Dogbone pizza", which is basically this enormous pizza in the shape of a dog bone. He thought this was pretty cool, so we bought it and had a little party. Being from Buffalo, he didn't know that the dog bone was actually promotional for the Cleveland Browns, who he hates (he's a Steelers fan). He was EXTREMELY angry when he found out that he had bought a pizza that was supporting the Browns. All of the Browns fans made sure to rub that in his face for quite a while :) Dogbone pizza!
Me drinking cider (yes, that is my own gallon of it.. no need for a cup)
Ya I don't know what this one is... I guess my roommate likes wrestling with girls. I think he claims they were playing floor hockey in the hall.. I don't see any hockey sticks though. I decided to post it since I think it's funny, even though it's not really relevant to anything.

Another great thing that happened to me was that a friend of mine was at Walmart the other day when she saw this enormous coffee mug (well, it's not just for coffee.. and probably wasn't designed for that at all.. but that's ok). She recalled me saying that I wanted to buy the largest coffee mug that I could find, so she bought it for me! I paid her back, but it was very amazing of her and it made me EXTREMELY happy! What could possibly be better than knowing that you can carry around 52 ounces of coffee whenever you are tired (like in class)???
I've made good use of it thus far... I always get interesting looks when I go to fill it up in the dining hall. That reminds me, though: Hiram needs better coffee. I'm quite dissatisfied with the quality of the coffee that they provide. Granted, the cappucino tastes good (it's like candy), but that still doesn't cut it.

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This week is finals week. It sort of snuck up on me, and I made the unfortunate mistake of leaving all of my work to the last minute. Last monday I wrote 6 pages of a paper, mostly between the hours of 2.00AM and 5.00AM, because a rough draft of our final papers was due in my Colloquium. Probably not the best time to write a paper, but the truth is, I was quite happy with the way it turned out. I have since added more to it, and it is currently 11 pages long. It's due in a few hours... (I really should be finishing it up).

Yesterday was my calculus test... I studied fairly hard for it, and am disappointed because I totally blanked out on of the questions.... and the question was one which didn't actually involve any calculus! My grade was borderline (a 90% or so), so I needed to get above a 90 on this test in order to get an A. I don't think I did, and I'm not very happy about that because I've always been good at math and I actually did all of my homework (WELLL, by that I mean all of the things that were to be collected :), and studied for all the tests. Eh, whatever.

Today I took my Goverment test, but I don't really care how I did because the test cannot affect my grade really. I was also up until 4.30AM last night studying, which is probably a bad idea since the test was at 9.00AM. OH, and when I walked out of the room after the exam, I was talking to 2 of my classmates. Someone asked "which essays did you answer?" In discussing this, I realized that we actually were supposed to write 4 essays, and I only wrote 3. I will not repeat what came out of my mouth (though I don't remember it exactly, either).

Luckily, I went back and told the Professor what I had done, and he just let me finish it. I hadn't gained any new information while talking to my classmates, nor had I looked at my notes.. and even if I had, I wouldn't have gone back and changed any of my answers.

Anyhow, in a couple hours, my dad is going to come pick me up and I'm going home for Thanksgiving!

As soon as I turn this paper in, I'm officially done. It'll be nice to go home, I'm sure.

--David

Pajamas


Coming from a private school which enforced a strict dresscode, starting college was quite a bit different! One of the joys is that I'm allowed to wear whatever I want. So, a little bit ago, I got in the habit of wearing my pajamas to class and what not. After a few days of wearing those, I decided that they are very comfortable and that I had no desire to change out of them.

At any rate, I'm not going to give any specific numbers, but I will comment that I am still wearing them, and it has been over a month.

(People might be skeptical, seeing me wearing formal business attire in the pictures fromthe Model UN Conference... however, I did keep the PJs on under the khakis)


Me and my PJsPJs

This dude from my floor named Dan, who randomly came in to my room and layed down on my couch as he was talking on his cell.


Below are some more pictures. The bottom ones are just a few people hanging out and talking... one of them shows my buddy Zack playing his guitar. The top ones, however, are accompanied by an interesting story.

Basically, I was hanging out with some individuals on Saturday night and we noticed that my roommate had bought an enormous box of Gatorades. We thought it would be funny if we were to, um, move them around a bit. So (JUST AS A JOKE), we took 23 of his 24 Gatorades and hid them in various places around the room.

We ever duct-taped one of the bottles to our loft, in full sight.

It was pretty funny. I did end up helping him locate them, because it's likely that he would have otherwise been unable to find some of them. I think we ended up finding 22 of the 23 hidden Gatorades:)

Zack, hiding a Gatorade Me, cutting down the Gatorade which was taped to the loft
Zack and his guitar
Zack and Katie chilling on my couch.

Fun times.

--David

All Nighter

I'm pulling an all-nighter at the moment... it's currently 530AM. I'm working on a calc project which really isn't very much fun (at least not anymore). I could probably get a little bit of sleep tonight if I wanted, but I'm not going to bother... it is often easier to get no sleep than to get very little sleep.

Pulling an all-nighter really isn't a very big deal... although it is a bit more difficult than me than for other people, because I have 3 classes a day on Monday, Wednesday, Friday... and they are all consecutive. Most people do not have consecutive classes. On the bright side, though, I have no class or Tuesday or Thursday.

At the same time though, I think my body is a bit more resillient towards lack of sleep than some people's :)

I will just shoot myself up with tons of caffeine tommorow. After classes, I will either collapse for several hours, or I'll just stay up until midnight or so and sleep for 10-12 hours tommorow night. The last time I pulled an all-nighter, I had no desire to nap the next day. I just stayed up.

We'll see.

--David

Halloween, Home, and Hilarity

So last week was Halloween. It was a lot of fun. My floor decorated our lounge in honor of the event, and there were a lot of Halloween parties and such. Every year we also host a trick-or-treat for kids around Hiram... they go around the dorms and get candy. I believe the school supplies candy to anyone who volunteers to pass it out.

On Wednesday, I went home (because I was going to be in Cleveland from Thurs-Sunday anyways... as I'll explain in a moment... and I figured I'd go up a day early so that I could see my friend/family). It's interesting what college does to you.... such as making you want to spend time with your parents! For the past couple years I've gotten along with my parents quite well, but living away from them does make a big difference still.

I fed my pet snake, too. He hadn't eaten in a month.

I also got a chance to eat at Chipotle which -- as many of you probably know -- is awesome.

On thursday, I had a Model UN conference in Cleveland. Our Model UN team is supposed to be pretty good, and we sent 10 people to compete at this conference. The rest of our team came to Cleveland on Thursday, and I met them at the hotel.

I had never competed in Model UN before, but it's a form of debate, and I love to argue. For anyone who doesn't know, the point of Model UN is to (as it sounds) simulate the discussions of the United Nations. The particular event that I was in was the "Historical Security Council", which means that we role-played a past Security Council -- the one from 1979.

My roommates at the hotel (some with really bad facial expressions):

I represented China (which was fun, because it meant I was powerful and held veto power). Unfortunately my knowledge of history is very limited, and I also knew nothing about UN procedure (I didn't read the 10 page packet of rules). I didn't research the 1979 issues enough, and was expecting to make a fool out of myself, but it ended up being a lot of fun and I even won an award.

Oh, and one fun point: I decided to veto a resolution that took everyone 2 hours to write. Seriously, this resolution was REALLY STUPID. Then it took them another hour and a half to fix it such that I would allow it to pass :-)

Above are some pictures of the Council in action, our Committee room, and some of my fellow delegates, including myself.

Myself and the Honorable Delegation from the Kingdom of Norway perform a karaoke rendition of Billy Joel's "Piano Man."

We take a group picture after the event is over.

Anyhow, overall it was a good experience, and I'd definetely consider doing it again. I recommend it to anyone who enjoys public speaking and politics/international affairs. You also get to meet some cool people (and I even ran into a kid that I was friends with starting in Kindergarten!).

Today is election day, and in 45 minutes I'm going to go and do some phone-banking or door-to-door work in the dorms to get people to vote.

--David

I really should do my homework earlier. Ahh, sigh! Class tommorow at 930.

Tommorow I will write about my weekend (I went to Cleveland with the Model UN team for a conference), and about Halloween at Hiram.

--David