Fall 2k6 - Fall 2k7

I guess I should start where I left off. The snake died. It was just a baby one, so it must not have been healthy or something. I thought I took pretty good care of it. Oh, well. In order to make use of the cage and equipment my roommate and I bought, we went to the pet store and bought a new pet. It is a Western Collared Lizard. We named him Clint Westwood. Right now he's living with my family in Texas since my new apartment does not allow pets.

At the end of the fall semester, it turns out I concentrated more on passing my other classes than on AI, and I had to retake AI. I'm doing that now. *sigh*

Something funny about Mr. Westwood. I was going to get him some crickets in January. It was a cold day, sort of misting outside. The roads seemed fine when I started driving. However, when I went over a bridge (I wasn't even really aware that I was on a bridge, actually.), my car suddenly fishtailed. I had run into a patch of black ice on the bridge. The corner of my rear bumper hit the cement rail on the side of the road, which really disappointed me. My dad fixed it up pretty nice this summer, though. Still, I wish it hadn't happened.

Oh, I did mention I got a new apartment, right? Well, I wanted to renew my lease back on Houston Street. However, the apartment had recently been acquired by Olty, LLC. The manager, David Chapman, asked me if I wanted to renew, and I confirmed that I did. However, my roommate was uncertain, so we didn't sign a lease right away. He gave me a lease, and never contacted me again about it. I never knew a deadline to find a new roommate or renew or anything. So in February, I get a call from the place letting me know that my place had been leased to other people. No one even came to look at the apartment... At least to my knowledge. Weird.

David Chapman says that it was a misunderstanding and that he tried to tell my roommate that he needed the signed lease back. I wish he would have contacted me instead of my roommate, since I was the one that was going to renew. Whatever. A huge annoyance (moving) that could have been avoided by better communication skills on his part, but I can sort of understand what happened.

However, when I move out during the summer, I have the electricity turned off. I come back this fall and tidy up the place a little bit so that it is not a dump. I haven't damaged the apartment at all. When I first moved into the apartment, I had to do a lot of cleaning, and I had to turn the electricity on, so I figure the best thing to do is leave it how it was when I got there. In the lease I signed with Olty, it doesn't say anything about needing electricity on or paying for professional cleaners. However, when David comes to check the place out for damages, he tells me that I'm required to have electricity on and that cleaners will be coming. I am to be charged for emergency electricity switch on and for the cleaning. I tell him that it's not in the lease.

We get into a huge argument about the charges, even though I'm right. Finally, this past week I receive a check with most of my security deposit. They charged me for carpet cleaning and a couple of light bulbs, but I don't think that's worth fighting over. They were going to pretty much deduct my entire deposit. They also gave me only my half of the deposit instead of the full one. I'm pretty sure they're banking on my old roommate not wanting to fight to get his half of the deposit back. What slime balls. I almost went to court with these people. Ugh.

Anyway, you've probably heard enough about the happenings that transpired here at Virginia Tech on April 16th, so I won't go into too much detail. I was on campus at the time of the shootings. As a matter of fact, I was right next to Norris Hall at the time of the second shootings. The police were not even at the scene yet. I was in my morning class when a person interrupted us and told us to evacuate the campus because of the first shootings (which had happened two hours earlier). I was about to walk out the door and right by Norris when a some people standing around the doors told me to get back inside because they had heard gun shots. I turned around and walked home the long way, avoiding campus.

I got home, signed on instant messenger, and started talking to my friend Steve that I met at MCS. The bad news just began to pour out the rest of the day. Eventually, Steve and his wife offered to come and pick me up. That's a 5 hour drive one-way, so they made quite a trip to come and get me. I'm glad I have such good friends.

Interesting thing happened on the way back to campus. I agreed to let a reporter follow us and get my perspective and thoughts on returning to campus the week after the massacre.

Over the summer I ended up with an internship at Verizon Business. My brother's girlfriend's father is a pretty important person there, so he pulled some strings to get me the internship. My position was SAP Basis, which is an administrative support position for a very popular (and expansive) ERP software suite. I basically learned how to make sure things ran smoothly on a bunch of computers without actually ever seeing the computers. I met quite a few new friends there. Jesus, Fareed, Carol, to name the ones I got to know the best. Good people. I miss them.

This semester started, and I move into my new apartment with the help of my old friend, Anthony. I get to know my new roommate, Vinh, a little bit before school starts by doing stuff like playing some softball, going to karate, going out to eat some, etc.

We ended up going to a movie with a couple of his friends, Anthony and Thien. I ended up really liking Thien. Even though I wasn't looking for a relationship at all...

So now I have a girlfriend. A great girlfriend. I guess will spare you from any further mushiness for this post, and just give you a picture:



Really looking forward to going to Busch Gardens with Thien, Steve, Stephanie, and Vinh next weekend. Hope everything works out well. Also going to go to Thien's family's place the weekend after that. Kind of nervous about that one, but I think I will end up having fun.

Other than that, right now I'm taking a bunch of difficult classes and trying my best to get a good enough GPA to graduate in December.

I think that's enough catch-up for now. It feels good to get that out of the way. Until next time...

Movies and Mustangs

"I am a slug!" Behind the Scenes!

Why was this story written? Well, I was waking up from a nap all groggy-like. I haven't been doing much of anything lately. I was feeling much like a slug, so that's what I wrote.

I am a slug!

That's all that was on my screen. Then I decided to type a completely random story based on that. It was rather fun if you ask me.

Anyways, I'm back here in Blacksburg. I'm really struggling in Circuits to the point that I am going to have to retake it. I really don't know how the other classes are going because I have been in such a difficult struggle with Circuits. I think I'm doing pretty good in most everything else except C++, in which I am only doing bad because the teacher is absolutely horrible and grades based on his own opinion.

I have been putting resumes into Northrop Grumman, and I'm going to a Raytheon career thing on Wednesday. I really want an internship this summer.

I have a Linux assignment due Wednesday, and a Circuits homework due Friday (hah!).

This weekend I went and saw Dawn of the Dead up at Valley View Grande in Roanoke after going to a gun show. Dawn of the Dead was pretty cool, despite what ppl say. All I can tell you is don't go see a zombie movie if you don't want to see a zombie movie. There's never a plot (why should there be?), and it's gonna be slightly scary with a bunch of running and blowing off of zombies' heads. The gun show, however, was a waste of seven dollars. I am not very knowledgable in the field of guns, so I go to these things for the knives, whenever I go (that was my 3rd one I think). There was only ONE place that had folding knives there. Ugh.

Over spring break, I got to drive the Mustang again, first time since Thanksgiving Break. Boy do I miss that thing. I mean, it's not anything fancy, it's not V8, but I don't need it to be. When I was looking for a car at the end of the summer, I was looking for a car in good condition that I wouldn't have to spend a fortune on for maintenance, and that wouldn't break down on me all the time. I was actually looking more for something like a 90's Civic. I wasn't looking for a racecar or a fancy sportscar. I am just happy b/c my Mustang is a good-looking car (yes, there are more stylish things out there, but that doesn't change the fact that it looks good) that is in awesome condition that is an awesome ride! What can I say?

If you didn't already know, I wrecked this thing over Thanksgiving Break. I didn't get a citation, because there wasn't jack I could do to stop it except follow no less than a quarter mile behind any given car on the road or assume that there wasn't a car in the right lane. Basically I couldn't see this car stopped in the middle of the road until it was too late, and I slammed on the brakes and got into the right lane as soon as I could, which was a second too late. I took off the corner of her rear bumper, and the front left fender and driver side mirror of my car were all screwed up. As a result, a whole slew of things had to be fixed...a whole headlight unit, something having to do with the front wheels, the mirror twice because they didn't do it right the first time, etc etc. Good thing is that the person that did our repairs was a friend of the family's and he fixed it up real nice, and it now looks better than it did when I got it. Bad thing is it has been in the shop for over 3 months, it's been over 4 since I've been able to drive it really, and it cost half of what we payed for the car.

It looked like my insurance was going to be too high for me to drive it anymore at all, but I talked to my dad over break, and he said that it is actually about the same insurance as any other car I would be able to drive, and that if I didn't take the car back to school with me, he could save on like 5 month's insurance and would be able to pay for it and let me have it when I came back to school after summer. Which will be awesome because I will actually drive it then. I never really got to drive last semester cuz the cage (the name of our parking lot) is a 20 minute walk from here. I hated driving places just because of the 20 minute walk to that stupid cage. And I didn't even get to drive at all my freshman year! I think I'm gonna have to do some refreshing of my driving skills over summer and I'll be good to go next year cuz my car will be parked right outside my apartment. w00t!

Ooh, I need to talk to Anthony about some moving stuff. So good night!