Where’d our yard go?!
I finally decided to break out the camera that I had won at a company party and take a few pictures with it. The quality is pretty crappy in my opinion, but you get what you pay for right? We’re currently re-landscaping our yard, so here’s a couple “in-progress” photos.
The back yard:
The front yard:
Summer 2008 Schedule
My schedule for the Summer 2008 semester:
| Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 9:00 | Work MVIS |
Work MVIS |
Work MVIS |
||
| 9:30 | |||||
| 10:00 | CS 300 Al-Kwarismi |
||||
| 10:30 | |||||
| 11:00 | |||||
| 11:30 | |||||
| 12:00 | CS 300 Al-Khwarismi |
||||
| 12:30 | Work MVIS |
||||
| 1:00 | |||||
| 1:30 | |||||
| 2:00 | |||||
| 2:30 | |||||
| 3:00 | |||||
| 3:30 | |||||
| 4:00 | |||||
| 4:30 | |||||
| 5:00 | 5:30 | 6:00 | GAM 400 Al-Khwarismi |
GAM 400 Al-Khwarismi |
6:30 | 7:00 | 7:30 | 8:00 | 8:30 |
Spring done.
I promised elaboration, so here it is.
I passed 2/3 of my classes, grades on the graduation plan. The class that I failed, an elective, was because I sacrificed it to do better in CS250 and ultimately pass that one, which is a required class. All three classes were required really, but CS381 wasn’t required to progress in my graduation plan. I will replace CS381 with CS370, Image Analysis, in the Fall. I will make a page in the next few days that will contain the last projects from CS250 and MAT300, they are interesting to look at/play with.
Almost done.
!
(Elaboration to come after many hours of sleep. Oh, and hi! *wave*)
To Theo
First off, I apologize for not posting a little more often, things have been very busy of late.
Secondly, my good friend Theo is being sent back to Iraq. He’s currently in New York doing some training. So, to Theo, come back living and whole. I’ll see you in a year or so. Also, happy early birthday.
Update: Theo is back, welcome back!
Happy New Year!
Happy New Year to you all! Hopefully you were feeling better than I was and out partying.
Movie reviews
I’ve watched a lot of movies in the past couple weeks (in my opinion.) Some of them were new, some older. Here’s what I thought of them.
Since I’ve never done this before, here’s my legend:
0 - This ain’t heaven!
0.5 - Am I dead yet?
1 - Snore
1.5 - Yawn
2 - Microsleeps
2.5 - Eyes twitching
3 - It’s alright
3.5 - Good
4 - Really good
4.5 - Edge of the seat
5 - Top notch!
That’s out of the way, let’s begin:
I Am Legend, 3.5/5
This movie kept me jumping, but other than not following the book at all, it had one other problem for me. The closure was too fast. Neville meets Anna and child, they stay at Neville’s house for a while, Neville sacrifices himself for the greater good, end. All in about 25 minutes.
Sweeney Todd, 3/5
If you like musicals, which I do, then this was a good musical. It’s a very gory musical too, which is interesting and different. It failed to capture my attention the entire time though and I found myself looking around the theater a few times. The music was well done, and Johnny Depp didn’t do a bad job at singing. His monotonous singing felt true to the mood. Unfortunately, it also felt a bit boring because of that. It was a good Tragedy though, but probably better on Broadway (which I’ve not seen.)
I Am David, 5/5
Another book turned movie, this is the story of a boy caught up in a Communist concentration camp in Bulgaria. He escapes and travels across Europe to get to Copenhagen. He’s very mistrusting of everybody given what he’s been through. He meets some good people on his journey which teach him to smile, trust, and love. Of course, he also meets some bad people who may or may not be trying to help him. One of them was hard to pin down exactly.
Ratatuoille, 5/5
A most excellent Pixar film. I watched this for the first time last night and I loved it. I’m sure most people have seen or heard of it already so I’ll spare the details. The animated short, Lifted, was entertaining also. In the DVD version there is another short, “Your Friend, The Rat”. Remy and Emile explain rat history to humankind. It was also entertaining and informing whether all of it was true or not, but some of it certainly was.
Stardust, 4/5
A fantasy movie about a man who goes off on a trek to bring a fallen star back to his love. He falls in the love with the star, who is a person in the magical realm and only a rock in the mundane human realm, and there you have it. Robert De Niro in a dress was hilarious as well of course and probably worth the entire price of renting the DVD, possibly also buying it.
That’s it for this round.
The semester is officially done
After taking the final for my single Physics class (Sound and Wave motion) at BCC yesterday I was extremely happy, feeling that I had done very well. Well, as they say, hard work pays off. Or something like that. I ended up with an A- on the final and a B+ in the class. I am now officially finished with BCC, and can relax for a few weeks.
Happy Chanukah
Happy Chanukah my friends, even though most of you aren’t Jewish, that’s ok. Just enjoy the lights. 
A lot of people in America spell Chanukah in English in different ways. Here to clean that up from yours truly, a little lesson:
In Hebrew, the holiday is spelled as such: חנוכה (Het Nun Vav Kaf He, right-to-left folks, get with the program)
Alright, got that out of the way. So, here’s how I see it. First up, we have Het. Normally I would spell this Chet, but Charmap is silly stupid, I’ll go with it for ease. This letter is pronounced like you have a furball in your throat basically. Back of throat rolling sounded along with an H. The proper way to spell this in English? Ch
Nun is just N.
Vav here is silent but what you can’t see in the spelling above is the vowels, called Nikudot. This particular vowel here is under the Vav and has the OO sound like pool. Of course, U can also be pronounced like this, so we use that in the spelling.
Next up is Kaf, this is basically a K, unless it’s a Chaf, but this one isn’t. 
Finally, there is He. The letter name is actually pronounced Hey or Hay, but Charmap spells it He. Meh. It’s silent at the end of a word, which this one is at. Normally, it’s just your regular H sounding letter though.
Put all those letters together and what do you get? Chanukah. End of story.
Here’s a list of annoying spellings I found on the web:
Chanuka
Chanukkah
Channukah
Hanukah
Hannukah
Hanukkah
Hanuka
Hanukka
Hanaka
Haneka
Hanika
Khanukkah
All of those are wrong for one reason or another. I’ll let you figure it out.
A little note on vowels since I mentioned them above. They’re rarely ever written out except for a few cases. Children’s books, prayer books, and the Torah. There might be a few other special cases too, but mostly you won’t ever see a vowel (which aren’t actually letters in the Hebrew alphabet anyway.)
New name
My friend Theo over at the Well of Mimir (who is apparently out of the blogosphere for the time being, how sad) came up with a great tagline for my blog, so I used it. <3.
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