April 2002

April 03, 2002

Sleep

I love sleep.

Posted by Phil at 03:04 AM | Comments (0)

Blogger Down

Whenever I've wanted to blog in the past few days, blogger.com was down. It's quite annoying because I don't blog as often as I'd like. So, since I don't feel like starting any of my work because I only have 15 minutes before my next class, I will blog. And the site seems to be working.

Last night, I pointed out how I love sleep. I wanted to blog earlier but the site was down. I wanted to say I love people. People are cool. I need people. Well duh, we as humans are social beings. But I realize every day that I love the people in my life, and they really keep me going. I am blessed to have such great friends and family. And sometimes it's the little things that make me love people. Like strangers who do something nice or just smile to brighten your day. I love being able to talk to a friend when I need to vent, when I need to be distracted, when I need to share my thoughts/feelings, when I want to just catch up and listen. I was going to quote the song "People" but decided to just give my thoughts for once instead. However, there always seems to be a song that says what I need to. Music is loved. Great lyric is loved. People are loved. I need people.

Ok, so today I had an 11:00 meeting. And since I'm Phil, I was five minutes late for that meeting. But the meeting only lasted five minutes so I missed the meeting. There was nothing to discuss so they just left. How nice was that! More time for me to do my work. I needed the extra time. And it also gave me time to go move my car because I was illegally parked. There is never any room to park on this campus! If there is, you have to walk a mile to get to a class. Argh! Whatever! It's almost time for class; I had better jet.

Posted by Phil at 01:59 PM | Comments (0)

3 Blogs

Ok, three blogs in one day. This is definitely a record... You've got to love it when your college professor reads you a Dr. Seuss book in class. That happened today. In my concurrent systems class, my professor read the story of "The Zax" from The Sneetches and Other Stories by Dr. Seuss. The very stubborn South-Going Zax and the North-Going Zax cross paths in the prairie of Prax. They won't yield to eachother so they just stop. They're in a state of deadlock in terms of concurrent systems. I don't know, I just thought that was cool. It made me laugh and lightened the mood of the class. But it was like a bedtime story because soon after I started to doze off. Dr. Seuss is cool.

Posted by Phil at 05:13 PM | Comments (0)

April 07, 2002

Dr. Seuss

You know, I've had the Dr. Seuss, yes SEUss, quote up on the front page of this site and in my AIM profile for over a week. And only now does someone tell me I had it spelled Suess. Thanks Martha! It's not that I don't know how to spell it because I blogged about "The Zax" story and spelled it correctly. It's fixed now though.

So another less than productive weekend goes by. Though I have a three-day weekend, it seems to go by faster than the normal two-day weekend. Perhaps, it's because... well, frankly, I don't know why. Maybe because I have to do the things I was supposed to or wanted to do during the week but couldn't. It's nice to have no classes on Friday, but when everything's crammed in to Monday through Thursday, it can be overwhelming. The weekend should be a time to take a break from everything school-related and that's what I usually do. But in order to keep on top of things, you need to integrate school work into each day of the weekend so as to not be inundated with work on Sunday (and Monday). But that never happens to me and here we are again, Sunday night, and it's almost time for Alias. And since it hasn't been on in two weeks I must watch it live unlike the taping I do of my shows I need to see that are on during the week.

Posted by Phil at 08:55 PM | Comments (0)

April 09, 2002

Welcome

Welcome to philmakara.com. I finally registered the domain! The site went live earlier today. What does mean to you? No more annoying pop-up windows! I promised one day they would exist no more. This is the day. And it's a convenient, easy-to-remember address (if you can remember my name, that is). Until I get my own server set up, my friend Brett has been kind enough to host my site for me. Thanks so much! You the reader are probably not nearly as excited about all this as I am, but I think it's so cool. I have my own .com! So enjoy the pop-up free site and bookmark it today.

Posted by Phil at 09:18 PM | Comments (0)

April 11, 2002

Conspiracy Theory

I'm convinced that there's a conspiracy by those who invented daylight savings time. Ever since I did the "spring forward" (not "fall backward") thing to my clock on Saturday night into Sunday morning, I've been staying up later. And though, for the most part, it's not been by choice, I don't seem as tired as I should at, say, 3 AM. It definitely has to do with it staying light out later. This all came to me when I woke up this morning.

Posted by Phil at 01:02 AM | Comments (0)

April 20, 2002

Shaking Earth

"Did you feel the earth shake this morning?" So says my dad a little while ago. I thought he was joking. But there was, indeed, an earthquake this morning in Northeastern New York. I then realized that I was awakened at 4:00 AM by the incessant ring of a car alarm on the street outside my house. That would make perfect sense: the earthquake could have caused the alarm to go off, which woke me up. But no, according to Reuters, the 5.1 magnitude quake occurred at 6:50 AM and I slept right through it. When I woke up at 4 it was freezing--like time-to-close-the-windows cold. Our summer-like weather is no more. It's back to late-winter Rochester weather for at least a few days. I did enjoy the past few days of beautiful sunshine, running in the park, reading outside, and seeing the RIT campus come alive with people. It is really uplifting and energizing. I hope those days return soon.

Posted by Phil at 12:33 PM | Comments (0)

Conspiracy Theory 2

Did I just discover the cause of obesity in America? While reading Nickel and Dimed for my sociology of work class, I came across this:

It is our job as servers to assemble the salads and desserts, pour the dressings, and squirt the whipped cream. We also control the number of butter pats our customers get and the amount of sour cream on their baked potatoes. So if you wonder why Americans are so obese, consider the fact that waitresses both express their humanity and earn their tips through the covert distribution of fats (Ehrenreich 2001).

I found this quite interesting and amusing. Never knew it was that simple. Another conspiracy. Stay tuned for my next conspiracy theory.

Posted by Phil at 01:53 PM | Comments (0)

April 21, 2002

It Happens

More blog-worthy material from Nickle and Dimed:

Let's talk about shit, for example. It happens, as the bumper sticker says, and it happens to a cleaning person every day. The first time I encountered a shit-stained toilet as a maid, I was shocked by the sense of unwanted intimacy. A few hours ago, some well-fed butt was straining away on this toilet seat, and now here I am wiping up after it. For those who have never cleaned a really dirty toilet, I should explain that there are three kinds of shit stains. There are remnants of landslides running down the inside of toilet bowls. There are the spash-back remains on the underside of the toilet seats. And, perhaps most repulsively, there's sometimes a crust of brown on the rim of a toilet seat, where a turd happened to collide on its dive to the water. You don't want to know this? Well, it's not something I would have chosen to dwell on myself, but the different kinds of stains require different cleaning approaches (Ehrenreich 2001).

Sorry, if you want to know these advanced approaches, buy the book. I had to share this because I nearly shit my pants reading it. Too funny! And this book is for my Sociology class! Weird, huh? That's what we're learning about these days.

Posted by Phil at 10:49 PM | Comments (0)

April 23, 2002

Moments of Rage

.  First let me preface this by apologizing for the extra long blog, but this was more for my sake than yours. Read it while you can, I may edit it later. Today was a weird day for me--many moods, many emotions. Not to be cliché, but it was a bit of a roller coaster ride. I can't really explain it all, but some I'll try to. After eight hours of sleep, I woke up to my alarm. Snooze. Alarm. Snooze. Happens every time. I was still tired. Once I was up, I was fine. My friend Maria got her job back for the summer so that was a good starting point for the day. But then I soon realized that I still don't have something that I'm satisfied with. And this hung over me for a few hours. Walk outside: it's snowing.

During my office hours, someone was in for help so that took my mind off of things. It feels good to help. Then I had class. I'm not really "into" my concurrent systems class. My not doing as well as I would like to brought me down as we were going over the test we got back. I was hoping to boost my GPA this quarter (I still may, but just not very much). I was a bit dazed and removed for the rest of the class. After concurrent, I should have been happy because my 4:00 was cancelled for Monday and Tuesday. But I wasn't feeling well. A weird/depressing/heavy feeling had overcome my body. I looked to see if there were any new co-op job postings. Not many of interest. Still not feeling too great. Still snowing.

I want sugar and I want it now! Luckily it was free cone day at Ben & Jerry's. We have one on campus. One Sweet Whirled. Yum! A minor upper. I go home. Plop myself on the bed. Start to think. Feeling down. In one of my moments of rage (apparently this is quotable, hehe), I decided I should cut my hair off. I am now bald! Nooo, just kidding. But I did give myself a haircut. It took me quite a while but I think mommy would be proud. No, I didn't use clippers; it was all scissor. Now this wasn't a major haircut, but I took enough off for it to be noticeable. It was just getting too long. I was hoping to cut my worries away. Didn't work, but it felt good in the moment.

Change of pace. It's getting late and I'm sure you're all sick of reading this. I'm sick of writing it. But it feels good to get it out... The hair upper didn't last long. And it's still snowing (the weather and its correlation with my mood is a whole other story best saved for another blog). Back to feeling moody and my mind begins to think random thoughts. It helps to get things off your mind, even if it's just in an email. Time for food. Rosie makes me smile. Reading is good, stimulates the mind. Reading is fundamental. (Hopefully it'll help me write better!) It's hard to get started doing homework. I worried that I wouldn't get anything done tonight. But once I got started, I acquired some momentum and then it was smooth sailing. Now the brain activity was making me feel good. The best I had all day. I felt I put in some quality effort. Setting goals and accomplishing them is awesome. Being in a good mood made me want to talk to people and talk about it; that is a good thing. As for the roller coaster, "at least it's ending up." I'm not the only quotable one.

Posted by Phil at 01:16 AM | Comments (0)

April 28, 2002

Only in Wilkes-Barre

I came across this discussion on Slashdot about a situation at City Hall where their 20 year old IBM mainframe containing tax data crashed on, get this, April 15! It gets better: the city did not renew a maintenance agreement with IBM, which could have made repairs and restored the data, because it would have cost to much. Those cheap bastards! But, of course, if they had renewed the maintenance agreement, it surely would have been payed for by taxpayers and that wouldn't be good. The opted, however, for a cheaper solution--a PC network. Yeah, like that'll be more stable. Now city hall employees have been "typing more than 25,000 names, addresses and tax information onto two personal computers" (Times Leader article), making the city the laughing stock of techies around the Northern Hemisphere. Looks like they're having some other problems too. Hmm... I wonder why I wanted to get out of such a place. That said, I still love all my family and friends stuck back there. I won't hold any of this against you.

Posted by Phil at 09:59 PM | Comments (0)

April 30, 2002

Off to NYC

"All my bags are packed / I'm ready to go." I'm going to New York City tomorrow with my sister, Allison. We're going to see the Rosie show for one last time and have some fun for the day. I'm driving home tonight right after my class, which is over at 8. I can't wait. I need a break from the craziness of school. However, this trip may also sound rather crazy. I won't be getting home until around midnight tonight. Then we're taking a 4:05 AM bus to the city and going right to the show. Then after 11, we have the whole day to do whatever we want. We'll probably see a broadway show (hopefully 42nd St.) and then take a bus back home to Wilkes-Barre sometime before 12:30 AM, which is the last bus. Then I have to drive back to Rochester and get here for a 12:00 PM class. But I'm contemplating skipping that class or at least half of it. Yikes, what am I thinking?! We'll see how it all works out.

I started this post before I left for my 4:00 class. I got to school and was heading toward the classroom and I just walked right by it. Oops, I think I just skipped. Shh... don't tell! I'll be skipping the same class tomorrow and there's a test on Thursday. But he's lecturing from the book, so I'll be ok. Well, that is, if I get a chance to study. That'll depend on what time I return from the city tomorrow. And the way I am with New York, it probably won't be till later because I won't want to leave. In less than 12 hours I'll be on my way (hopefully catching some sleep on the bus). I'm glad I'm getting the opportunity to see Rosie one last time because the show is done May 22. So sad! Tomorrow will, without a doubt, be a blast and just what I need to lift my spirits amidst a quarter of busyness and uncertainty, carrying me through the bittersweet end.

Posted by Phil at 03:43 PM | Comments (0)