iPhone

My LG enV started acting up a month ago, I brought it to Verizon and they gave me a bunch of crap that they would not replace it. I was not eligible for a discounted upgrade for another three months unless I wanted to extend my contract two years. Instead of selling my soul to Verizon again for another two years, I made the switch to AT&T and the iPhone. AT&T rocks in my area, I have yet to see "No Service" on my iPhone. So basically AT&T + iPhone = WIN.

I have been testing out many Applications on my iPhone. Top 5ish favorite apps:

• Facebook - Feeds my Facebook addiction while on the road.
• BeejiveIM - Best IM client for the iPhone. Worth every penny.
• AroundMe|Yelp - I like AroundMe more, but I keep both.
• Amazon App | Snaptell - Take pictures of books at amazon and upload to Amazon reminders, but later for cheaper. Same with Snaptell for books or DVDs.
  
• Remember The Milk - Still working with the free trial, but will be buying a year subscription when it runs out. Best GTD app for the iPhone with a nice web interface.

Other apps: Shovel(Digg App), EverNote, Last.fm, Now Playing, Shazam, Weather Bug, Google App, Urban Spoon, SnapTell, 1Password, WarcraftStat, Characters, Chest, WoWTalent, Stanza.

College

College went very well this semester. Classes I took: Comp 1, Introduction to Object Oriented Programming(Java I), Discrete Structures, Intro to Symbolic Logic, Intro to Sociology. Easiest classes were Intro to Sociology and IOOP. Finals were not nearly as bad as I expected them to be. Finished the semester with a 3.756 GPA.

Next semesters lineup is: Calc 1, Computer Organization, Foundations of Computer Science, C++, Java II. Hoping this semester will go as smoothly as the first.

World of Warcraft

Started playing WoW again the day after finals were done. Went from 70 - 80 in about 13 days. For those interested, I did 70-72 in Borean Tundra, 73-74 in Howling Fjord, 75-76 in Grizzly Hills, 77-78 in Zul Drak, and hit 80 in Sholazar Basin. Still haven't really touched Ice Crown or Storm Peaks yet. I am geared for Naxx according to be.imba.hu Getting into a group will be the difficult part. I don't for see myself quitting WoW again anytime soon. I really enjoy the new WoLK content, BC content just got boring that is why I took my break.

I will have to start balancing WoW with College in a little over a week. I hope it won't be too difficult or I will have to force myself to quit WoW and only play in between semesters which I hope does not happen.

Christmas

I asked for books this year. I hated having nothing new to read when I wanted too. This collection should last me for a bit hopefully:

• Dresden Files - Grave Peril
• Dresden Files - Summer Knight
• Dresden Files - Death Masks
• Dresden Files - Blood Rites
• Dresden Files - Dead Beat
• Dresden Files - Proven Guilty
• Dresden Files - White Night
• Watchmen
• I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell
• World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War

Most of the books I received for christmas were from suggestions from friends. My friend Snowchyld currently has me hooked on the Dresden Files. I am currently on the 4th book of the Dresden Series. After completing Summer Knight, I am going to start World War Z based on suggestion from Nelson Minar.

End

Well, Thats about it.

With one month until the expansion is released, I decided it is time to blow the dust off my WoW account. It is nice getting reacquainted with old friends and the alternative world. I am getting back into the familiar groove of dailies, farming, and questing. There are some new dailies from after I left which are exciting along with new quests. Possibly the best time of all is reworking my lovely UI. Yes, I am one of those guys who redo their UI weekly in attempt to make it perfect, which never quite happens.

Turns out Patch 3.0 is dropping tomorrow, so it looks like I came back right in time for the good stuff. Before WoLK drops, I want to get my Druid to 70 and get her her epic flight form. Still debating weather or not to buy another account and move my Druid over to it and dual box my way to 80. I think it would be worth it in the long run due to lack of time with college.

"When I get sad, I stop being sad and be awesome again. True story."

Two weeks ago, I was at Barnes and Noble looking for a new book series to get into. I compiled a list of several books classified as "must reads" by some friends and by online reviews. I spent about an hour going book through book reading the first chapter of each. None of the selection of books I had on my list caught my attention. I was about to give up hope and leave empty handed when I saw 'The Heir Series' sitting on a table next a large stack of 'The Inheritance Series' books. The cover of the books were quite impressive, I had never heard of the series or author. The cover persuaded me enough to at least pick up and book. I know people say never judge a book by its cover, but in this case it defiantly helped that the book had a cool looking cover. Reading the summary of the book was enough for me to buy it.

Once I got home and started reading it, I couldn't put it down. I finished the first book in three days. I brought the book to college with me and read it in between classes. The day I finished the book I went back to the book store and bought the last two in the series. I don't usually buy Hard Cover books unless they are on sale, but I just couldn't wait for the last book, 'The Dragon Heir' to be available in paperback. The book was an addiction, from the start of each book, it was nearly impossible to put down.

I don't want to ruin the book for anyone by giving away too much information, here is a summary of 'The Warrior Heir' from the author of the book, Cinda Chima, website:

One March day, Jack Swift, a high school student in a small college town, forgets to take the medicine he’s taken daily since he was an infant. There ensues a cascade of events that puts him in mortal danger.

Jack discovers he carries a secret within him that has made him a target of the ruthless wizards of the Red and White Rose. Jack is a Warrior Heir, the last of a dying breed, sought after by the Roses to fight in the tournaments that are used to allocate power among the Wizard Houses. Unknown to him, Jack has lived all his life surrounded by members of the Magical Guilds: wizards, enchanters, soothsayers, and sorcerers. They are determined to save him from the Roses.

With the aid of his aunt, a beautiful enchanter, Jack desperately tries to acquire the skills that might save his life. Jack and his friends, Will and Fitch, unearth a magical sword from a cemetery and fight off the wizards who would take it from them. Jack begins training with the dark and dangerous Leander Hastings, a wizard with a mysterious past.

Meanwhile, Jack is torn between his attraction to Ellen Stephenson, a new student at Trinity High School, and Leesha Middleton, his former girlfriend, who decides she wants him back.

Discovered and besieged by treachery at home, he flees to the Lake District of England. There he is confronted by the greatest challenge of all.

If you are interested in reading the summaries for The Wizard Heir and The Dragon Heir, please visit Chimas website.

If you are a fan of Harry Potter, I can almost guarantee that you will love this series equally as much, if not more. The books have a very Magical aspect to them. You will be introduced to Warriors, Wizards, Sorcerers, and Enchanters along with different magical guilds. The names may sound ancient, but the book takes place in modern times, but history goes back to ancient times.

The book also has a great deal of magic in it along with magical artifacts and potions. The majority of magic exhibited in the book is for protection purposes and for harming enemies. The characters in each book will grow on you. It is very interesting to see how each of the main characters in each book end up together in a small town in Trinity, Ohio. Each one of the characters in the book have a specific roll to play in protecting the town from an imminent war. Each book leaves you wanting more, similar to the feel of Harry Potter. After finishing the series you will feel the same way you did after the end of The Deathly Hallows with chills running down your spine and possibly a few tears. In this case though, there may be another book after The Dragon Heir coming, Cinda Chima hints on her website that there may be another book in 'The Heir Series' coming. I need to stress that THIS BOOK IS NOT A RIP OFF OF HARRY POTTER. If anyone tried to tell you it is a ripoff of Harry Potter, they are lying or have not read the books. It is a complete different aspect of magic and wizardry. I personally preferred this aspect of magic, Cinda Chima skipped over the unimportant, filler material, and kept the book at a very high pace from start to end.

As I said before, I finished the series today. I literally couldn't put the book down until I finished it. Again, I wish I could give details to what happened, but I really do not want to ruin anything for potential readers. I can say that the end of 'The Dragon Heir' is truly heart stopping.

I have mailed the first two books in the series to a good friend of mine who is also in her first year of college. We are both huge Harry Potter fans, I wanted her to read these books because I know she would love them. She wouldn't be able to get to a bookstore easily, so I saved her the trouble by overnighting them to her.

From what I can tell, this series really hasn't caught on nearly as much as it should be. No one who I have spoken with has heard of the series. It deserves to be just as popular as The Harry Potter series. I hope in due time this series will hit its full potential and become more popular! For now, I will continue directing my friends to this book series. Maybe I should have given more details about the book, but I think the best way to find out what the book is truly about is to buy a copy and read it on your own.

The work load was one thing that really surprised me. After my first week, I have 3 quizzes, 3 tests, 1 report, and 2 homework assignments due in the coming days/weeks. I am amazed how much the workload piles up compared to high school. Also, how fast the professors go is quite impressive. Covering one chapter of a book in one lesson rather then spending a week on it in high school. Instead of dedicating my nights to WoW or hanging out with friends, the majority of my time is now spent recopying notes and studying. The only time I get to hang out with my friends is on weekends.

I like the majority of my professors. Some of them are off the wall and interesting, some are just interesting, some are challenging, and some are just downright boring. After talking with some of my friends at different schools, I am happy to say that I do have great professors.

The lunch is good, Its a buffet style lunch. They have loads of different stuff, Asian, Pizza, Hamburgers, Italian, and much more. I can see the lunch getting a bit.. boring after awhile, but for now I am happy with it.

I would love to write more, but I have a quiz and a two homework assignments due tomorrow.

Today was really an interesting day. The highlight of the day was inventorying and unpacking 60 laptops. All laptops had to be scanned and inventoried into an Excel spreadsheet. It was very easy to do considering we used a USB barcode scanner that automatically linked up with Excel. Everything had to be separated into separate boxes: Power Cords, Floppy Drives, Firewire Cables, CDs(4 Disks per Laptop is just a waste really), Booklets (Straight to the trash). It's amazing how much room 60 unpacked and open laptop boxes take up. All the boxes had to be flattened out before throwing them away. I am now a box flattening pro.

Other highlights of the day include being able to work with an Ubuntu server, I installed Wine on the server in order to get a windows based monitoring program running on it. I am happy they are at least toying with a Linux distribution and not just sticking with Windows servers. I have experience with Ubuntu so I am happy I am able to help with some issues that arise. Also, I got to go on a few tech calls through out the day. They were interesting.

I also have a desk I get to use in the tech room, It has a laptop and docking station with 2 - 17" monitors and a compfy chair. I am not sure how much time I will actually get to use it though. I was kept very busy today.

I am hoping the 6 weeks I will be working there stay as interesting as it was today!

The first week went well, I was able to complete each day without any major issues. Next week looks a little more challenging though, it should be interesting. I am keeping a daily log of how many pushups I do, I will post the daily log after the six weeks are completed.

Day One of the event was very busy, It started off with dropping off my bags in a dorm room for the overnight stay. From there we were split into 20 groups with about 20 in each. I was lucky enough to have someone in my group who I knew from school so it made things a little less weird. We went to different buildings and heard different lectures throughout the day. The majority of Day was was just general information about the Campus and its Policies. Our group leaders tried several activities to help us get friendly with each other, they really didn't work. I have to say, I was bored most of the day until the evening.

The highlight of Day 1 was Robert Kelly coming to perform at the end of the night. He is one hallerious man, I had never heard of him before lastnight. He had me laughing so hard I thought I was going to pee my pants at times. For those who never heard of him, check him out.  After Robert Kelly preformed we had a DJ/Dance, and several Wii's and Xbox 360's setup to play along with several other board and table games. After the dance, people were either hanging in the Lounge in the dorms, or raiding the computer lab. I was one of the 20 or so kids who decided to go check their email before heading to bed. We ended up finally getting to bed around 1:30am.

Day 2 was more geared to our individual majors. After a group session in the morning we went to meet someone from our departments. I learned about different options available for Computer Science. I am considering doing the "BA Math, BS CS" double major route. I was relieved to see that the CS department seems to be incredibly friendly and very willing the help in any way they can with our schedules and classes. In my opinion, Day 2 was much more interesting and informational then Day 1.

Graduation went well, It was a long morning though. It started off at 7:30 with a breakfast for all the graduates. Quite frankly, the food sucked horribly. The pancakes were hard and the french toast wasn't editable. They had some sort of breakfast sandwich also, from what I saw most people were taking the meat off of it and just eating the bagel. I had a great friend of mine call her mom and ask her to bring us Dunkin' Donuts. She totally saved the day. We then watched our senior video and were given some "silly" awards.

Graduation itself went well. It was extremely sunny and hot out. It was about 2 hours worth of sitting long. I would have gotten a nice tan if we weren't in our gowns and hat and in full dress clothes underneath. I wish they would have gave us all a bottle of water under our seats though. Other then that, everything went smoothly. It was over by 2PM.

Project Graduation was at Funplex. Its a big inside and outside arcade with Go Karts, Mini Golf, Racing, Laser Tag, and other games. Other then some rain in the early morning, it was a fun time. We had the whole place to ourselves, and also had unlimited Drinks and Food. The food was great, there was Chicken Wings, Pizza, Salad, Pasta, Subs, Breakfast and Dessert. I spent most my time in the arcade. I love arcade games, I don't get much of a thrill out of Bumper Cars or Laser Tag.

As I said before, High School is something I know I am going to miss over the summer but I think next year when I get into College I will notice that High School was just the beginning of what is to come in my life.