Here is my credit card all cut up. No I didn’t cancel it, I loves my plastic, but unfortunately, I had a freak out moment yesterday when I thought I lost it, so I canceled this card (I’m gonna get a new one in the mail soon). What happened was, I accidently left my wallet at work, so when I saw that my card wasn’t in my wallet, I got scared. Not that I don’t trust my coworkers… it’s the other people in the centre that worry me… but well, yeah, it was gone right? But then, upon further examination of my wallet, I found it in a compartment I hardly ever use, which is perplexing cause… I never use it, so there’s no reason for me to put it in there. But it doesn’t matter, cause I already cancelled the card, so I just cut it up.

This comes the day after I had to cancel my debit card too… this one I still haven’t found. But I have the feeling it’s just somewhere in my house, or around my stuff… But yeah, better safe than sorry. So right now, I have about 50 bucks in cash in my wallet and my coin purse, and that’s it. It should sustain me until I can get my cards back… I’m really regretting cancelling my credit card though, cause if I don’t get a new one back soon, I won’t be able to buy some of my books… well I’m sure I’ll have it by next week…

Meh. We’re going to Q107 and Long & McQuades for a trip today, gonna show the kids how the music industry works… hehe. Like I know anything. But yeah, we even recorded a “demo” of Wild Things for the kids, we’re gonna give it to a DJ at Q107…

Fun.

I’ve been writing alot of lists lately… When I was writing my reports for the summer… When I was programming this latest week of camp… etc etc. So meh, why not…

1. As already mentioned above, I’m running another summer camp – the absolute last one for sure cause these kids start school next week. Honestly, I can’t believe these kids even want to be in camp, the week before school starts. I’d want to be at home doing nothing. Unfortunately, for me that’s not gonna work out, cause I plan to keep right on working… no stops at all until Christmas probably, but, hmph. We’ll see…

2. On that note, I’ve been looking for work. I have some pretty specific requirements right now… One of them being not the city, but lately I’ve been talking to my new boss, who just happens to be the wife of my old boss, and I think I might stick around. I could start on some Assistant Manager work at Main Square, which’ll be amazing. But yeah, we’ll see how things go, I’ve got a couple of interviews lined up, and some places I’m waiting to hear from. I think despite all of those specific requirements (too many to list, but I might blog on it later on) I might end up taking the highest paying job… But yeah, I really do want more stability than anything. So yeah. We’ll see…

3. Rebecca Gayheart (she plays Judy Nash, the annoying reporter)… I know I’ve seen her somewhere before, where I thought she was pretty cute. But in Vanished… She’s ugly. Really really ugly. There’s one scene that I was watching last week, where it looked like she had like an inch of makeup on her face…. On that note, Ming-Na… one of the FBI Agents is gorgeous… Yeah, I dunno where this comes from. But anyway, I dunno why I keep watching Vanished… some of it seems pretty stupid to me. But meh, it seems alright so far, we’ll see if it’s gonna be a hit to me for me like Prison Break….

4. Turning to that topic, (Warning: Spoiler of Prison Break…) you almost feel sorry for Pope and Bellick, you know, cause you haven’t seen how much of a jerk they’ve been before, and now they’re both fired… well Bellick got fired and Pope quit in “protest”, then Bellick almost kills himself until he hears about the reward for the capture of Michael and Lincoln. Meh. I have a feeling I’m going to be very frustrated with Prison Break all season… You know I’m someone who just wants to know the ending… I just wanna know what happens! This is why I like movies, and books… If need be, I’ll fast forward, or read all night to get to the ending. But yeah, with TV shows, you’re at the mercy of the networks, who LOVE putting in cliff hangers and crap…

5. For some really weird reason, I haven’t watched ANY movies at all this summer – well at lest the past two months of summer. Here are the movies I wanna watch… some of them are probably out on Video now (actually the first two, are either out already, or will be soon).. “Click” – Adam Sandler, “Miami Vice” – Jamie Foxx, “The Wicker Man” – Nicholas Cage, and “The Illusionist” – Edward Norton. I don’t even know now when I’ll find time to watch these, nor what priority I’ll watch them… Actually I do know the priority, it’s whatever movie my friends wanna watch with me.

6. I have a really painful zit on my earlobe. I’ve had it before, and I really really hate it. It’s so weird, cause you can feel the zit on both sides of of the lobe, which actually just makes it double the pain. Grr, I just wanna be able to pop it, but it hasn’t even gotten to that point yet.

7. Another annoying commercial… That new Nike commercial with Maria Sharapova, where everyone is singing “I Feel Pretty” from West Side Story… I think the most annoying thing is just that they changed the words from “I feel pretty and witty and gay” to “I feel pretty and witty and bright”… Actually I don’t think it’s just them, cause doing a search on the internet turns up both. But yeah, obviously it’s the first one, cause it rhymes. Plus the second one sounds stupid anyway. So yeah, it’s just. Stupid, being so politically correct and everything… dictionary.com => gay: having or showing a merry, lively mood.

8. I really feel like going shopping all of a sudden. But yeah, we’ll see how much money I have first, after I buy all my books, which I’ll be doing next week, in between all the random work stuff I’m going to be doing next week.

9. I stubbed my pinky toe when I went outside just now to move the van so my bro can pull Josh’s car into the driveway (I’m first one out of the house tommorow). So yeah, that really hurts right now.

10. I really liked Call of Duty 2, but I think I was expecting too much from it, so I didn’t really enjoy it as much. Plus I’m still trying to figure out how I’m gonna replace the disc I lost from my copy of COD 1 (which is a special edition with it’s extension).

11. I was talking to my friend, Martin from Germany on MSN this morning, he’s going to BC in 2 weeks to go to Capernwray, and it relaly made me miss being in BC.

12. Throughout this whole list, I typed “But Yeah”, “Yeah”, or “So Yeah”, my favourite transitional phrase, 9 times.

LOL that was fun. Maybe I’ll do it again sometime.

Happy Birthday!

So I was just surfing around, looking through some friends’ blogs, when I came across this post from my friend, Tina’s blog. She posted something she had posted exactly a year ago from today. Well I thought that was a cool idea, just looking back in the past to see what I did at this time exactly last year, and then the year before, which is actually the year I started my blog, when I realized, my blog is exactly 2 YEARS OLD TODAY!

LOL, and this is how excited I was that first day, my first one being at 3AM, my last one at 11:14PM, I blogged 5 times that day. Hehe, talk about eager.

Wow, and I’m amazed at how far this thing has gone, from http://mav-tgif.blogspot.com (it’s still there, check it out), to two domains. Sweet.

Phew. I have a long day ahead of me… I’ll talk about it later. Phew. Happy Birthday, Blog!!!

Well you know you have one of those days when you have too much time to think, and you start reflecting on decisions that you’ve made in the past and started thinking if they were the best ones or not… Well yeah, this is one of those days. Mostly about school here… LOL, actually what brought this up is my excitement about school… yes I’m excited about school. Yes this does happen, especially when you’re actually taking what you want. Well, I’ve still got one course right now in my schedule that I *have* to take (HIS106, The Americas) and I really don’t want to take it, but meh, I figure it’ll be a good idea – an introduction to writing history papers at the University level… that and the fact that I haven’t taken History since Grade 10.

But yeah, I was excited about school, and the future, and I started planning out my 3rd and 4th years. Man it’s so hard, cause there’s so many courses I wanna take. And I don’t even really have to worry so much about requirements and stuff – my two majors complement each other really well (I might even turn it into a specialist…) So yeah, the problem isn’t so much finding courses to take, but choosing which one not to take. Enter the bad decisions. I should have been more focused in my first year, instead of take the stupid variety that I had.

Here is the review…

AST101H1 – Sun and its Neighbours
CSCA02H1 – Why and How of Computing

These two courses weren’t the best courses to take, but I needed to take science courses, and I don’t think there were any better courses… so meh, I needed to, even though I didn’t want to.

Here are the real mistakes…

MUS110H1 – Music and Culture
NMC280H1 – The Bible
RLG101Y1 – Phenomenon of Religion

Well, ok the last two were actually not so bad. I got 75 in both, which were amazing. But Music and Culture was the BIG mistake. A 56??? It pretty much ruined my CGPA! The course was just *bad*, but yeah, the other two, even though I got good grades in them, I could chosen better courses in their place, like other History courses… I couldn’t take any more Political Science courses cause all 2nd years had 1st years as prerequisites, and all 1st years have each other as exclusions (meaning I could only take 1 first year poli sci course… ever). But there are still others that would have been good, like taking french, which by the way, I don’t have room for now, so I have to figure out how to learn french in the next 3 years, without spending too much money (I need a second language proficiency to go to graduate school)…

Oh and let’s not forget the 800 dollar blunder… Greek. Oh my was that a stupid course to… start. LOL I didn’t even finish it, I dropped it to save my GPA (stupid Music and Culture).

Phew. Whatever, enough about the past… on to the future!

By the way. These Philadelphia Cream Cheese are so stupid. Yoga in heaven?? Perky fake “wings”…

Well it’s very rare indeed that I get to review a laptop. At least honestly, you know, after using it and stuff… LOL. But yeah, going into my 5th day with this brand new Dell XPS 1210 (see my post below), I feel ready to express my thoughts and opinions about it.

Let me start off by saying how FREAKING SEXY it is. It’s gorgeous… to quote another review I read, most Dell laptops (including my old one, and my brother’s and my dad’s) “look like toys” but this one definately does not. It’s black and silver case is beautiful. My only beef is that the black parts get dirty easilly – that is, it gets fingerprints on it quite easilly. In fact, the first time I saw it, my dad’s oily finger prints were on it. But meh, it cleans easilly, if I feel diligent about it. hehe.

As for the size, it’s really quite nice. Honestly this is what makes sense to me, any bigger and it’s not really a laptop anymore. And I know that there were alot of complaints about the weight, and the screen size (According to CNet, the weight makes it a thin-and-light but the screen size is that of an ultraportable…). I agree, Dell could have put up for maybe a 13″ screen – there’s space on the chasis… I think. But also there is that optional webcam that I didn’t get, which may be why they decided to stick with the 12″. Either way, I don’t relaly mind… like 1″ really makes a difference. It has been an adjustment, don’t get me wrong. Especially when I was transferring my files over, and my two laptops were side-by-side. It was just like when I was moving from the 17″ monitor of my desktop to my first laptop… but yeah, there always needs to be an adjustment period.

Part of that of course is the keyboard, and the trackpad. Actually if there’s anything that really annoys me about the laptop, it’s the trackpad, and how small it is. The keyboard is actually not so bad, except for the placement of the keys – which I’m not used to yet. It’s not really specific to the laptop, I know when my parents and my bro got laptops after mine their keyboards were different, and I hated typing stuff on it. Hey, that’s expected though, right? I had my old one for 3 years – typed probably a few 100,000 words on it, even more… So yeah – the placement of the keys is my problem here, not the size, which is actually pretty good. I really can’t tell the difference between these keys and my other one. Last night was my first real test of typing on this, writing up a 2000 word report about my summer camp.

I still haven’t really figured out how to use the WiFi finder, though ok, I haven’t exactly read the manual yet – nor do I really plan to. I can see how it can get useful when I’m at school looking for somewhere to study. The buttons at the front, too, are nice, but I’m not used to it. Maybe I’ll put it to better use in the future, but yeah, my old laptop didn’t have them…

I love that there’s 4 USB ports, except that they’re all on the side: 2 on each. I would have perfered 2 on the side, for like my USB Drive and stuff, and then 2 more on the back for my mouse and the RF reader (more on that later). Also, I don’t really like how the headphone and microphone jacks are on the front. When I was playing Call of Duty 2 on my big screen TV, it was getting in the way (cause I had it on my lap). But meh, it’s only in the way some of the time… I still really wish they had thought about it some more though.

Ok hmm. I think that’s about it for the physical stuff.. Oh yeah, just the weight and height… Yeah it is heavier than it looks… It’s just over 4lbs and about 1.42″ thick, which, yeah I don’t really mind all that much… What’s an extra 2lbs and half inch, especially when it comes with a built in optical drive. I think people who complain about that kind of stuff are pretty ridiculous.

But yeah, over all, the laptop is a sweet buy, I don’t see how I’ll ever regret having bought it. Now on to performance and software…

So yeah, I pretty much split it up cause, specs are specs, and any laptop with the same specs as mine will pretty much run the same. To start off, lemme just say mine. 1.66 Ghz, Centrino Duo processor. 1Gb 667mhz Ram. 256 Nvidia GeForce 7400 Turbo Cache (64mb dedicated; 192 shared w/Ram). I have Microsoft XP Media Centre edition…

First, the Media Centre is AMAZING. As I mentioned above, I have an RF reader-meaning, I have the remote control. So yeah, that’s really sweet. I was actually going to return the remote (cause I was returning a carrying case that I bought along with it) but then I decided, meh, I really like it. The specs are pretty good, again as I mentioned above, I was playing Call of Duty 2 on it. I’ve been told that Half Life 2 will work on it, and I might get it, but yeah, I know my limits. Actually I don’t really, but you know what I mean. The graphics card really kills this purchase (and the fact that it was a free upgrade). I look forward to many years of gaming – not hardcore gaming, cause I’m not really into that, but enough to get me through. I can’t wait to try the video editing capabilities too. Oh, and the DVD burning deal, but yeah, I don’t really have anyhting to do with that right now.

Yeah I’m just really excited for school. Phew. Aiyeeh. I love it. Whheeee..

Well… I’m blogging from my new computer. WOHOOO. And as promised, here are some pictures…

Here are some comparison pictures with my old laptop. It’s so small! But it’s like 5 times more powerful LOL. It’s not so light, but meh, I don’t mind so much…

And of course, here is my smiling… well, more like grinning face beside it. Whoppee.. LOL. More to come later, I’m still actually setting it up. Haven’t had alot of chances because I got it on the third last day that my work ended.

GRR. Stupid estimated shipping date… It said today, so I expected it yesterday, but actually it won’t come until tommorow. And I set my schedule too so I could come home early today. LOL. Meh, it’s still alot earlier than the original shipping date – August 21st. So I’m still happy. Just anxious.

Anyway, I did accomplish something today… I’ve completely finalized my school schedule. I dropped a course and added another one.

Here is my schedule now…

HIS106Y1 Y – The Americas
HIS263Y1 Y – Intro to Can History
HIS271Y1 Y – Amer Hist Since 1607
POL203Y1 Y – US Govt & Politics
POL208Y1 Y – Introduction to I.R.

I was considering taking a sixth course for a while, but I don’t really want to. I didn’t even take 5 last year, so I might get a little shell shocked by all the work. The change is that first year History course, “The Americas”. I added that and dropped Medieval History – which I might still take, but because HIS106 is considered a “full premodern” course, I don’t need to take Medieval History anymore. Before, I needed to because the original course I was going to take, HIS103 (Statecraft and Strategy) was only a 1/2 premodern course… Anyway, there was a waitlist for HIS103, so I didn’t bother. Besides I already took one first year international-related course, and I’m taking International Relations right now. So it looks like I won’t even need to take summer school next year.

This is it now, though, finalized for sure… I’m really hoping that course packages don’t cost too much. I’m not dropping anything – can’t really afford to. But yeah, they’re all course I like anyway.

Ok well I think that’s about it. Tommorow I’ll be blogging on my new laptop. Horay!

Continuation of the picture from yesterday… Explanation to come soon LOL

Hell’s Kitchen is over… and Heather won… I’ve had that figured out since like the 4th episode… But yeah. She deserved it, definately… even though Virginia aperantly had a really amazing pallet, she didn’t have great leadership skills. That prediction was being confirmed all throughout the episode – it’s like they were trying to make Heather look a little bad so that it wouldn’t be obvious that she won. LOL.

Anyway, the show ending does tell me that I’m about to enter into another limbo-time when we’re waiting for new seasons or new shows start… Except, the thing is, I hear that Prison Break is going to start again in a week (August 21)… Which is weird to hear. cause it’s starting really early. We’ll see though… maybe they’ll go like 12 weeks and end. Meaning I’ll still be in this situation in like December or something. Although I don’t think that’s such a bad thing…

The thing is, I haven’t been reading much at all. Maybe it’s cause I’m not going to the library as often.. er actually I haven’t been at all since school ended. I did read one book: The Da Vinci Code, but even that was long before I started my summer job. And you really hardly call the Da Vinci Code enlightening. Anyway, I really do miss reading, and I think I should start really soon. In fact I think I’ll pick up To Kill A Mockingbird or… Count of Monte Cristo! I still haven’t read the copy that I have… or ooh. I’ve been wanting to read The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe or something. Hmph. I should make a “Books To Read” list.

Fuunnn. My laptop didn’t come today.. wasn’t really expecting it. Just really wanted it. The website said 08/15 as “Estimated Delivery Date”. Which actually is the same date as the carrying case and remote, so that’s pretty cool. Oh yeah and all the courses open up tommorow. So it’s time to get myself on the waiting list for HIS103… I really need to get into that course, or I’ll need to take 2 FCEs during summer school next year.

Meh. Here’s a funny picture from my first year at Capernwray… I’ll show you how it turns out on my next post…

Phew… So this was yeah, a pretty crazy weekend – and we were just guests at the wedding we went to. It was Kat and Andrew’s wedding, and it was really nice, and quite fun. We left on Friday – heading to Belleville, about an hour east of Toronto. The plan was to drop off Joyce and head on to Kingston (another hour east of Belleville), but we left so late and got caught in traffic, so we ended up spending the night in a hotel in Trenton (just West of Belleville.. LOL). That was a great idea, I would say… cause we partied… most of the night. LOL. I was pretty much out of it after a while… I was up at 6AM on Friday, and worked all day… But yeah, I finally got to sleep at like… 4AM… And woke up at like 8AM or so.

I had breakfast… 3 times. LOL. It was the hotel manager that actually took notice of that… cause she kept seeing me at the breakfast place. Then we cleared out and got ready for the wedding…

I was playing the piano for most of the ceremony – one of the song, while Joyce was singing… The ceremony was really nice, it was at the Officer’s Mess at CFB Trenton, so it was really elegant.

Then after the wedding we kinda hung out a bit until the reception started…

That is most of the College Kids of of tGif… only Eman is missing… but added is James Ocampo and of course… Tito Rick on the side there.

Uhmm, what can I say about the reception… except… COUNTRY :S. LOL for most of the night at least – then when most of the older people were gone, the DJ finally started palying some more of “our” kind of music. LOL. Too bad I was pretty beat by that time… but it was still fun.

When finally headed off to Kingston that night, moved some stuff into Tim’s house so we had places to sleep… and just crashed. The next morning, around 8AM I woke up with some serious shoulder pains, so I went to Shoppers Drug Mart to get some Tylenol, forgetting that Dave brought some with him… Meh. But then, I also got some ice… well actually, frozen orange juice… to dull the pain.

We checked out Kingston a little bit… by which I mean we drove around Queens University, and downtown, then ate lunch at a japanese restaurant and headed on home.

Quite a full weekend… I’ve confirmed 1 extra week of camp with South District – they told me that it doesn’t matter what our registration is like, the first week will run for sure, so that’s good news… in some ways… I’m really tired of camp… I just wanna rest. But hey, money is money.

On that note, I just got confirmation that my laptop is SHIPPED already!! AYIEEEHHHHAAA…. It might be here on Monday… but Tuesday for sure. YYYYAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

Ok so I really should wait until it actually gets delivered, but I couldn’t… My New Laptop… WHOPEEE. The Dell XPS M1210…

When it’s delievered (expecting it next next week… but hey if it comes early I’ll be really happy…) I’ll take a picture of my smiling face beside it, but for now, here’s some generic pic from some website somewhere…

Anyway, I bought it last Saturday – actually I should say, my dad bought it. Call it an extended, 0% interest, financing… or well with my parents it’s more like a line of credit. LOL. But yeah, I’m determined of course to pay them off – as I’m sure they’re determined on collecting. I already have a “payment plan” down.

But yeah, it is a 12.1″ laptop – which is supposed to mean it’s an “ultraportable” however, it’s thick – 1.2″ (most ultraportables are below 1″ thick) but that’s because it has a ton of ports (4 USB Ports?!?!? Sick…). I didn’t do much upgrades – even though all the reviews I’ve read kept saying you should upgrade. Hey. I’m a poor college student – I actually felt faint as my dad and I were walking away from the Dell place. It’s processor is a 1.66 Ghz Dual Core… 1Gb of 667Mhz RAM (the fastest around right now…). The best feature is the 256mb NVIDIA GeForce video card… which isn’t that great – as I’m learning more and more. First of all, even though it’s 256mb, only 64mb is actualyl dediccated memory. Which is plenty for the games I wanna run, but yeah… the rest of the memory is shared with the RAM (which is why faster RAM was a really smart choice for me). A guy in CNET.com told me that I could still run Call of Duty 2 if I wanted – it’s pretty much the only game I really want at the moment. But I shouldn’t look too much towards high end gaming.

I’m pretty happy with it – even though it’s not been delivered yet. But from what I read, it’s a pretty amazing laptop. Really portable, so I won’t struggle bringing it to school, but it’s still powerful enough for the kinds of games I wanna play (again, nothing too powerful). So yeah. YAY!!!

Phew. Now I’m excited.. I’ll be checking it like twice a day at least to see the progress… hehe.