So, I took the english test today. Blah. That wasn't fun but at least it's over with. I'll probably get a horrible grade on it like other people in the class hopefully will and then it will reflect on the teacher's so-called teaching and she might give us a chance to make it up somehow. Either that or it will be a clue to her that she needs to learn how to TEACH. I can't wait until we fill out the student review forms where we critique the teacher and write how we like or dislike their methods. That's always fun because I'm VERY honest about it. And the teachers do not see them until after grades are handed out.

Well, I don't have any homework over the weekend of any kind which is nice. It will be my last worry-free weekend. On Tuesday during english class, we get our huge irritaing research paper assignment. And guess what? It's based on the horribly lame book that we just read! How stupid is that?! What, the first papers on the book weren't a good enough indication that no one CARES about the book or even LIKES it?! God my teacher is DENSE. This is so going to suck.

Last night was February 27. (Actually all day was.) A disappointing day kinda. It was the two-year aniversary since my cute little guinea pig Brownie died from digestion problems. *sniffs* He was a cute little guy. He's out in the back yard under a rock in a nice little area. :) Also, yesterday was the day when the comedic great Robin Williams was last performing in this area on his first stand-up comedy tour in 12 years. He is my all-time favorite comedian and actor. I have dreamed of seeing him perform live for the majority of my life. And of course, from the second the tickets went on sale to the night he performed, they were sold out. Figures. I checked everyday and they were always sold out. So I never got to see him. How much does that suck?! *sigh* I'll just watch his upcoming movies and listen to the audio I have of one of his old routines and laugh at that. Wish I could have seen him live though.

Wednesday, February 27^th 2002 — 11:15pm Central Time
God I hate my nose. It's flaring up right now. It's twithing, half-clogged, etc. Ugh. not fun.

So, today was fairly uneventful. Not much to ramble on about really. Tomorrow's the big english test. It'll suck. No doubt about that. Blah. But oh well, I have no choice in the matter.

Tonight, for no good reason, I made an image of two Golden Spirals using the Golden Ratio from the Fibonacci Sequence. What is it? I'm too lazy to get a link for you. Oh fine. I'll get it. *roots through bookmarks* Ah, here it is. Fibonacci Rectangles and Shell spirals. Check it out, see the coolness of it and look at my lame contribution to the millions of the same type of art that have already been made. Sure, I could make something better and I might just but for now, this is fine. (Click on the image to view it at full size.)

Lisa says: Thank you for contacting AT&T Broadband Internet, my name is Lisa. I see you have a question regarding connectivity at a specific time. Can you please give me a little more detail and I'll be happy to help you!
Lisa says: In order to assist you with this, may I please have your full name, telephone number(without dashes), complete home address and primary login.
Me: My name is **** and telephone number is ****. I live in ****.
Lisa says: Thanks for the information. Please wait while I pull up your account.
Lisa says: Thanks for waiting.
Me: Sure
Lisa says: I understand you are facing connectivity issue.
Lisa says: Since how long you are facing this issue?
Me: Yes. The cable goes down every day at around 11:00am central time.
Me: For a couple months I believe.
Lisa says: Okay, I see that their is no outage in your area presently.
Me: That's correct. It only happens in the morning for 15 minutes to an hour or it fluctuates.
Lisa says: Nicholas for us to look into this issue, I request you to please chat with us at the time you face this issue.
Me: How can I chat with you at the time I am facing the issue if I can't connect to the internet?
Lisa says: As it will become easy for us to look in to the matter and then trouble shoot.
Me: My issue is that the internet access goes down and therefore I cannot connect to the internet during that time. How can I chat with you on the internet if my internet access is disabled??
Me: Can you help me my problem of my internet acess going down at the same time every day?
Lisa says: I understand this,I can only forward this issue to the concerned department.
Lisa says: So that they can see why you are facing this issue of connectivity at specific time.
Me: Then can you transfer me to someone who can help me?
Me: Hello?
Lisa says: Nicholas you can call us up at the time you face this issue so that some thing can be actually done.
Me: I have tried doing that. Even though I reside in Illinois, I've been transferred to California in the past and there is no way to actually talk to someone who can help me with my problem on the phone. I have tried.
Lisa says: I apologize for the inconvenience.
Me: So is there anything you can do at this moment to help me at all with the problem I face every day?
Lisa says: At this point in time, the best I can do is truck roll.
Me: What is "truck roll?"
Lisa says: Schedule a technician at your place, who will check and look for the reason for connectivity issue.
Lisa says: Before scheduling an appointment, I need to inform you that a $49.95 service fee may apply if the technician determines your issue is not AT&T-related. Any questions regarding a possible service fee can be answered when the technician arrives at your home.
Me: No. I did not ask for that and I do not want that. You say, Since you cannot help me, I am going to leave now.

She's good at stating the obvious isn't she?? "Okay, I see that their is no outage in your area presently." No kidding! How would I have been talking to her if it WAS down? She actually suggested that I chat online with AT&T DURING the time of my problem...my problem is the internet going down...sooooo....how would I chat with someone when the internet was down? HMM??? Talk about technician stupidity! Thoughts? Comments? Fill out that suggestion/comments box over there to the side and click Submit to tell me how you feel about this.

Sunday, February 24^th 2002 — 03:18pm Central Time
So the phone rings today. It's my dad. We say hi and talk. I give the phone to my mom. He and my mom say by and so it's time to hang up the phone. Simple process, right? You'd think so. My mom stares at the phone looking for the off button (her work phone has an off button before she hangs it up) and she kinds just stares at it for a while! I tell her, "Mom...hang up the phone." Silly silly mom. She said that phones like those had buttons. I said, "Not ones with cords!" Goofy mother...

Saturday, February 23^rd 2002 — 12:03pm Central Time
Sudafed is my friend..................

Thursday, February 21^st 2002 — 10:48pm Central Time
Curious thing happened in english class today. Two weeks ago, we were assigned a paper to write about a subject based on E. L. Doctorow's Book of Daniel. First off, I'd like to say that I absolutely hated the book. Not even close to what I am interested in at all but it was assigned so I had to read it. Anyway, my teacher took two weeks grading our papers. Today she came in and told us that all the papers were so far from what she actually wanted them to be that she's dropping the assignment instead of giving us all Cs, Ds, or Fs. Now, my first thought was, good! I don't get a a bad grade! Then I realized that I had spent two hours writing that horrible paper for nothing. What does this tell you about her teaching methods. Not only was the paper hard to write but she never talked about the subject of the paper in class! See, we got the assignment halfway through the book. We didn't know that we were going to have to write the paper at all until it was handed to us. And the paper was based on the stuff that we already read. Since we didn't know about the paper until that moment and therefore did not know to look for the information in the first half of the book, it meant that we all had to go back and re-read the first 200 pages of the book so we could BS our way through the paper that was due in a week. Keep in mind, 90% of the class had jobs, lives, and homework in other classes so we really had a hard time finding time to write this paper. I think it really shows that the teacher we have is not a good teacher. I mean, why would you not discuss an assignment like that? Oh well. Soon, we're going to get our research paper project which is also based on the book! Why the hell do we need to write a 9-page paper on some horrible book for?? Ya got me. Yeah, so that's my ranting and raving for now. I thought I should complain about that. :)

Tuesday, February 19^th 2002 — 08:09am Central Time
Goodness...look at the time I'm making this post. Yes, I am up this early in the morning. Why? Classes. Ugh. I liked last semester where I never had class until like 10:00am or so. That was nice. I tried for the same times this semester but unfortunately, the classes at those times were filled. Darnit...oh well. I've got my busiest day today. Calculus, english, then four and a half hours of computer programming at night starting at 6:15. Not fun. Tuesdays are clearly my least favorite days. At least it's only once a week.

I had an oh-so-fun email "discussion" over the past few days with someone who couldn't seem to let an issue go. I won't mention names because I'm not like that. To make a long story short, I basically didn't like the way a person did business on eBay and I let him know it. This person buys items, then sells them right back at a higher price to make a quick profit. Gee...real nice, eh? Well, in response to my initial message via eBay's messenger service, not only did he report me to eBay but he continuously cluttered up the two guest books on my other two sites with his "responses" instead of just emailing me back like a civilized person. Finally, he emailed me and we talked via that but then he started sending copies of the emails to someone else as well as me! Why? I haven't a clue. Our conversation never involved anyone else but the two of us. At one point, I finally considered the matter closed but for some reason, he couldn't and kept emailing me. He finally stopped at my request. Strange person, eh? I know he's probably reading this right now and I have no problem with it.

Well, over the past two days, I've spent my time entirely redesigning my Practical Fractals site. I think it looks nice. Simple and elegant. Not so flashy like the other one. Though not many people seem to like it as much as I do. Oh well. I've just spent 48 hours designing it and it's staying. Besides, the other site is gone already. So, check it out and let me know what you think by emailing me. It's not hard to find my email address. It's all over all three sites.

Thursday, February 14^th 2002 — 09:38pm Central Time
Happy Valentine's Day to all you loyal readers out there. Yes, I know I haven't been rambling a lot lately. Sometimes I just lose interest in things like this and stop posting for a while. No worries though. I usually gain intrest again quickly. I'll try to post more often.

Wow. It's been 8 days since my last post. Sad. Well, remember that job I was trying to get at Office Max? Didn't pan out. Evidently, they brought in two people from another store location to do the job so I didn't get it. Figures. I got my hopes up some and I should not have done that. I know that getting my hopes up has nothing to do with me actually getting the job becuase the two are in no way connected, but it just seems that in the past, any time I ever got my hopes up, the thing that I was getting them up about never happened and it just really sucked that it didn't. So I like to believe the two are connected in some way, shape, or form just to give me a nice fantasy plausible explanation of why things don't work out. I'm not too psychologically off, now am I? ;)

My dad and I just got back from Comp USA a little while ago where he bought a nice new laptop. It's quite nice. It's a Toshiba something-or-another. It's just your average run-of-the-mill laptop. Black, thin, light, has Windows XP, all the AOL ads, and the general useless stuff that no one really wants that comes with laptops. But he needed it for his class that he started to get his Masters so it's wonderfully useful.

Well, looks like I'm actually ending on a happy note tonight. Big change, I know. I'll try not to be so negative in the future. I used to be in the past when I was younger a LOT, but I've taught myself to overcome that feeling a lot.

Wednesday, February 06^th 2002 — 06:48pm Central Time
So I haven't written in here for a while. Did you wonder where I went? I'll bet you did. Or you thought I forgot about this site. Not gonna happen. By the way, January's ramblings have been moved to the Archives now.

I went and filled out a job application for Office Max (specifically their Copy Max section which deals with copies, bindings, some art stuff) and I went back in for an interview too. I think it went rather well. I'll find out about if I got the job on Saturday. It'd be nice to have some income finally.

Not much has happened in the past 9 days. Honestly. Nothing. Well, I'm learning some more about a fractal program I'm using called Ultra Fractal. I wish there were some GOOD tutorials online for how to program your own fractals but there aren't any. If you know of any, please let me know. Or if you yourself know how to program them well and can teach me.