Of course, that sounded a bit more dramatic than need be. But as I will explain, I need a reason to waste time. It’s fall break here at RIT, and I’m not going home. Why? Because my mother didn’t buy me a ticket in time before the prices went up. But I’ll save the tears for another day. So, I have a whole week to spend with my roommate and the rest of the refugees staying here. It’s going to be funnnnnnnnn. But I guess I have things that I could do, and I suppose I’ll make a list of it here:

• Learn Python
• Learn Ruby
• Watch Firefly+Serenity
• Watch Red vs. Blue
• Watch Gundam Wing
• Play all my games, (i.e. Halo, Half-Life, TF2)
• Set up email for my domain

And stuff. Maybe I’ll get a lot (and by a lot, looking at that list, I mean nearly nothing) done. Anyways.

Update: So today wasn’t too bad. Although it feels like it’s been forever since finals week (last week), I’ve been doing little to nothing. Watched The Fifth Element, had Chipotle for dinner, a microwavable sandwich for lunch, and didn’t really do much. I had the Python tutorial open, but I forgot how bad I am at learning anything from reading straight from a reference-like tutorial that doesn’t tell you to make stuff, because that’s how you learn things. So I kinda forgot about it and haven’t looked at it since. My first impression of Python is that it’s quite useful… for scripting. It’s nice but also at the same time probably not as applicable to most of the work I plan to be doing. Maybe I’ll take another look at it later, but I may move on to Ruby for now, since it’s a bit more interesting.

Another lovely thing that happened today was that I broke screen on my Ubuntu server. Like, I literally broke it trying to change the window and it froze up on me. Of course, because it’s POSIX, everything else was running peachy. I could still ssh into Serenity and do stuff, but I already missed having console access over the course of a few hours. Needless to say, I hosed 40 days of glorious uptime, which I was sorta upset about. So… on to day 2.

I suppose I have some stuff to talk about, but in the end I guess it’s really what you think, and it’d be cool to have some actual feedback. Or something like that.

So it’s fall quarter again, and things have been weiiiiiiird. First off, my best friend Meghan has been doing retarded things and spazzing out in general. And then my lovely as ever ex-girlfriend decides that she’s going to be a nice person and try to get in contact with both of us. I was less enthusiastic and summarily got reminded why, but I sincerely hope that she expires in a rapid combustion. Anyways.

Classes have been going okay I suppose. This quarter I’m taking Software Engineering, Professional Communications, Calc III, and Chem I. Chem has been mad easy so far, except for labs which my labbie is pretty strict with grading. I still expect it to be my best grade this quarter. Software Engineering is pretty important, seeing as it’s the base class for my whole major. I can’t say it’s everything I hoped for, because none of my classmates take it seriously and that detracts from the experience. My project group is doing alright, but I sometimes wonder what would happen if I wasn’t on top of a lot of things. Professional Communications is not bad, it’s basically a business class for SE majors only. The work is annoying, but it’s still learning something I suppose. As for calc, it seems that there is a trend for me getting heavily accented math professors that aren’t great teachers in fall quarter. I’m not doing too great in it, but hopefully because of his ridiculous grading scale I can still pass.

My band Sol Men has still been jamming every Friday night. Our drummer now lives in an apartment on campus, and we trek over there and set up in his living room. We’re still doing the same thing pretty much, playing a handful of songs we all know, songs we made up last year, and random things. Eventually once we scrape up enough money we’ll buy a mic and probably pass out vocal duties for songs. Recently we went to House of Guitars in upper Rochester, and it’s pretty badass. They have more guitars and music than I could ever imagine. I took my Paul Reed Smith in there to get set up, and I’ve been missing it so for the last couple of days. Hopefully before the end of the year we’ll have actually played in public… who knows how the rest of the guys feel though.

To combat being incredibly bored over summer, I started to mess around with my old iBook, which if you recall was designated for wardriving. Well, there was no wardriving over summer because I couldn’t get KisMAC to work (I think I fixed it now). So I had to relegate the iBook to something else. I figured I would experiment with Linux. I downloaded a few dozen gigs of Live CDs and installers, but what I consistently found was that my poor iBook was too slow to run modern distros, and I needed better packages than what older versions could afford me. So I decided to make it a server machine, and settled on Ubuntu Server 9.04 because the Ubuntu community had a lot of support and it really made learning about maintaining a server easy. I currently have the iBook (rechristianed as ‘Serenity’ from ‘Orpheon’) on my desk here at RIT just sitting around and hosting a small personal page at damendoza.com. For the sake of old times, I also set it up as dual-booting with OS X 10.4 and Ubuntu Server 9.04, that way I can still run it as a wardriving machine if need be. Eventually I’ll want something on it, but I can’t imagine what so far.

Well, it could have been a mirror of Durandal, the computer at http://dy4.ath.cx:343/, but it went down due to a wicked motherboard failure and had to be replaced. It’s finally back up again as of a few days ago, but now I’m not entirely sure how I want things to be structured. It’ll require a bit of thought.

I’ve been trying to get involved with a couple more things on campus, but so far it isn’t working well. I sorta joined the pep band, but I haven’t committed any time to it and it’s difficult to partake because I have class at the same time as the meetings. Plus, being a guitarist in the pep band is less accepted and being a newbie means I don’t know what the hell is going on in the first place. In SPARSA I’ve volunteered to work on the Information Security Talent Search that’s being held in March. Still feeling a lot of disconnect with the rest of the club though due to the fact I’m not part of IT or NSSA.

By the end of this year, I need to get on co-op. In case you’re not familiar, co-op is full-time paid work in a position that is in your field, is made up of 10 week blocks, and 4 blocks are required to graduate from my program. After spring quarter, I’ll have done my requirements to be eligible, and then I’ll need to get a job for summer. It’s pretty important because after this year my parents are going to be more deliberate about giving me tuition. As for what I’d be looking for, software jobs in general are usually good, so as long as I can get one there shouldn’t be a problem. But why not aim high when you certainly can? So I’m definitely keeping an eye on the Apples, the Googles, and other giants. Of course, having a job at a smaller place would also be nice, but in the end I’m thinking it’s going to be down to location location location.

Anyways, there’s not a whole lot more going on. Registration for next quarter is coming up pretty soon, and I’ve had my classes laid out since summer: Personal SE, Engineering Statistics, Discrete Math II, and Chem II. It’s a pretty rad schedule (except 9ams) with no Fridays and one Wednesday class. Spring quarter will have an even better schedule, since I’ll be doing almost all computer-related courses, compared to now with math and chemistry. It’s something to look forward to.

So I guess I left off close to one year ago. Fun. Summer of 2008 was amazing. It was filled with anticipation of going to college, and the love of a wonderful girl. RIT was going to be great. As soon as housing info was released, I was talking to my then-future roomie. We had a great start and we planned all the essential stuff before leaving. Erin, my girlfriend, made it clear she wanted to spend as much time with me as possible  before I left, and I couldn’t agree more with her. My memory on how much I’ve talked about her here is sketchy, but she was a wonderful girl to me, and my first everything. To not go off about it, I would say I had found true love almost effortlessly, and I would’ve done anything to keep her. It was a beautiful summer to remember.

But all good things must end, and that summer had elapsed. I flew to Rochester with my family, we hooked up with some old family friends who showed us around Niagara Falls, and I bought all the stuff I couldn’t take with me on the plane. Orientation week hit like a cheesy summer camp, but wiped away with plenty of benefits: free food, trinkets, shirts, and hours demanded of us to be spent.  Then a funny thing happened. After the first week of classes, Erin couldn’t take it anymore and decided to break up. Long, and painfully. To this day, she hasn’t given me a legitimate reason why, but I have some things of my own to fault. The biggest was I left her with only one friend she could talk to, and so she started to turn to people that she shouldn’t have been talking to. Of course, this doesn’t help her in her defense of why she slept with a random guy that I knew from high school, when we were trying to get back together. Although, it is humorous to think about who it was that she virtually cheated on me with, because I still don’t see how that could have happened… Anyways. She started to hang out with a pretty unsavory group of substance-abusing sex fiends. Started some bad habits that to this day haunt her and make her wholly unattractive as a long-term companion.

So this all happened throughout the fall quarter, wherein things were new and shiny and difficult and challenging. My classes for the most part whipped me; my schedule was too demanding, so I fell asleep in later classes, and calculus’s prerequisites in particular needed to be reevaluated. Notwithstanding the mental, emotional, and spiritual beating I was taking with Erin, I got pretty abysmal grades for the first quarter.  But it was still interesting. By the end of first quarter, I had been decently acquainted with my floormates, and wished (rather foolishly as I would later find) to be more acquainted with this one girl who frequented our floor a lot. Let’s call her Samantha. Speaking of other girls, I was also trying to get involved online with another girl who was from my high school, but not really interested in me. This one is called Lauren. But more on these ladies after.

Coming back home on fall break was surreal. While sometimes it felt like I was alone flying with my parents (due to their lack of control), every trip after this would be me by myself. I absolutely love flying, and doing it alone was great for me. Anyways. In my absence, my parents decided it would be a great idea to move, move the farthest away that I’ve ever had to move (out of 6 times). They hadn’t moved yet, but I was able to see the place and fret about it. Moving from inland to literally 5 minutes from the beach would be nice for other people, but not for a person like me who isn’t much of a beach-goer. I would be 30 minutes away from all I had ever known, all the people that were my friends and all that was familiar. I’m still not quite happy about it. One of the first things I did when I got back home was to see Erin. I was thinking of stealing her back from her current druggie boyfriend, but when I got there I pretty much shit myself. Imagine a sweet redheaded 90′s grunge-clad teddy bear turned into an unfeeling black-haired gothic demon struggling to cope with her newfound addictions. Because that’s what I was used to and what I saw when I opened the door, respectively. We had talked, and by the end of it I was so upset with her the next day when I saw her I did the only thing a gentleman could do; and that was smear some dead skin cell particles from my hand across her face in one simple poetic motion. To be honest, I was perfectly justified, and the action was disgustingly understating of my feelings. I’d never really been angry at anybody since I was very little, up until that time. To finish this tangent up, I didn’t hear from her for awhile… until I started to notice a trend where she’d say she was sorry and ask for forgiveness, but that cycle only seemed to create bitterness for her, another reason in a montage of hundreds why I couldn’t be with her again.

Winter quarter went better. Classes were significantly better, and my schedule had a much better handle. I’ve noticed that this blog post so far has mostly been ranting about girls, and that’s not really going to change. Girls, you must know, are not in abundance at my school. However, there was a blessing of fate in my calculus class (ironically the one class I had to take over again). There was a surprisingly even ratio of boys to girls. Not to mention a handful of decent-looking ones. One of them happened to be our friend Samantha, who I was still trying (in error) to get closer to. We would go after class to eat lunch together, and it became a habit. Our friendship grew, and as it grew, I couldn’t help but feel turned off by her personality and sympathetic towards her dilemma: half the school wanted to get into her pants. Eventually I gave up on her, but she ended up wasting her time at RIT and started some worse habits than Erin did. Anyways. There was another girl in that calc class that caught my eye, beautiful in appearance and possessing an equally tempered intellect. We’ll call her Abby. I’m not sure what I can say for posterity’s sake because of my current situation with her; but there’s no reason not to mention the positive things when I don’t know how things stand now. We first met in a workshop group where she appeared to be interested in me, despite having a boyfriend at the time who she would break up with shortly. We later would spend a bit of one-on-one time “working” on a project and meeting at random places. So far all of our contact has been awkward, but I have my suspicions as to why. At the time, she was still off-limits out of respect for her, so I didn’t really pursue.

Goodness me, I need to stop talking about girls. Winter. Winter wasn’t as bad as everyone said it was going to be. I found that pretty hilarious, and while I do owe some thanks due to Rochester’s weather for no classes during the quarter, it was a little bitter 4 days out of week that I had to traverse the Quarter Mile in the morning. In the fall, a few floormates of mine acknowledged each other’s prowess in their musical instruments, and we had planned to get a band together. We would have started much earlier in the year, but we had to wait after the winter break for our drummer to bring his drumset down. Our collaboration is called the Sol Men, a play on the fact that we lived in Sol Heumann Hall on an all male floor. So far it is a 4 piece band, two guitars, a bass, and drums. Our style I guess is dictated by me and the other guitarist: he favors blues and I favor progressive. We both like each other’s stuff, or else nothing would work. A vocalist is something we have not found yet, so we’ve remained a jam band for now. We make up certain things and cover other things. Needless to say it’s a great creative outlet and I’m sad that it took so long to get one going. The guys I play with are great, it’s too bad that we weren’t able to arrange an apartment together or something like that for next year. Hopefully we can continue to play and evolve next year.

There was also another thing, another girl (d’oh!). That one named Lauren. Some background: before I was set up with my quasi-exgirlfriend Erin, I was pining for this one girl who probably regarded me as a fly at the time. I was on the verge of being a retard and asking her out right before I was committed to Erin, and I’m glad that things happened the way they did (sorta?). Fast forward a year and a half in to the future: Erin had broken up with me and Lauren started to be online much more in college, contrasting how it was high school. She comforted me, and I became attracted to her again. When I told her my feelings, she expressed that she also had (some [a tiny bit {almost negligible}]) some interest in me. We wouldn’t start anything without seeing each other, and that wouldn’t happen until winter break. Female status of winter break: Erin was still being a retard, I felt so bad for Samantha I had given up on her, Abby had just broken up with her boyfriend and needed space. So I thought, okay, I was already lined up with Lauren anyway. After a week of frustrating myself, I asked her out to the movies, which was pretty awesome. We stuck around at this park afterwards, and had a nice time. I went to her New Years party, hung out with people I normally wouldn’t have hung out with, didn’t get drunk, and had an awkward time trying to get to sleep that would probably make a funnier story if I was drunk. We hung out another separate time before I had to leave back for Rochester. I myself thought a little more of what happened than she did, because she doesn’t seem to care that it happened. Which is kinda why at the current moment of time I’m like “aw lame” when it comes to her. But I digress. Nice girl but she doesn’t want anything to do with me obviously.

This is winter quarter part 2(?). Things were cool, cold actually, but not otherwise too noteworthy. After winter quarter was spring break, and my parents took me on a cruise. It was actually better than I had imagined, seeing as the previous one was sorta dull (dull, yet it was a better cruise than this one… puzzling). We went to Port Canaveral (Kennedy Space Center lulz), Nassau, and… I’m not really good at remembering itineraries. But the best part was after the fact. We sailed out of New York City, and it was the first time I’d ever been there. We only spent a day there, but it was quite amazing, more surreal than I would have imagined just walking around a city. That was the time that Erin started to latch onto me again, and I honestly didn’t mind, because I had already expressed the fact that even if we were together over summer, it would end when I left for RIT in the fall (whew). But NYC is very cool, I will have to go back many times.

Spring quarter omgwtfbbq. They say that it’s spring but it’s pretty much like winter part 2 until May. Which I didn’t mind, I kinda liked forgetting what it was like to sweat. Spring quarter went by without too many hitches, interestingly enough. My grades weren’t great, but then again I didn’t really try. At first I was excited, because Abby was going to be in another one of my classes again, but then I realized it didn’t really matter because I was a lame ass, and I was having mixed feelings about Erin and the upcoming summer. In my defense, there were not too many opportunities to present myself. My best friend Meghan transferred over, and despite the reason she did transfer (which was me), I still let her do the crazy things she does. In fact, I’m pretty sure that my grades suffered from too much hanging out with her, and then not doing my work because I needed to escape from her and play video games. Speaking of video games, I started to play a lot of them over this year. I was never too much of a computer game player, but I started getting a few because I had extra money lying around. I think the first thing I did was get CrossOver Games, because it was free during a promotion and I could use Steam without having to dual boot. I hooked myself up with the Half-Life 1 Anthology, played that entirely, and then bought the Orange Box, and played all of that. I’ve seen the beauty of Valve’s creation and I enjoy it so. Also of note: I’ve played Multiwinia (which is amazing and has tons of replay value [too bad few people play it online]), World of Goo (a nice innovative game), and Plants Vs. Zombies (just awesome).

At this point it’s taken me a few days to write this and my thinking is so segmented that I’m going to stab something. Spring quarter was okay, but it had so much more potential. There were some ups (some at which I’m not at liberty to divulge [Protip: Meghan is retarded]), and some downs. I didn’t really spend as much time with my friends on floor as I would have liked to, but for some reason I felt pretty antisocial. Most of my socializing would be with Meghan, me talking about Abby, her talking about her quasi-boyfriend, me trying to avoid her sexual advances… Anyways. I guess it’s worthy to note that the last few days at RIT were fun, and yet I was still very reflective. Good times man, good times.

At this point, we’re pretty close to present day. My family friends that took us to Niagara came to pick up my stuff to keep over the summer. I had 9 boxes, they had a Subaru sedan. Despite the fact that I would never usually make that joke, I felt like playing Tetris and wanted to call over a Packaging Science major. But I flew uneventfully back home, back to my new pad in Laguna Beach. It was in a lot better shape than when I was here for winter break. I was damn excited to get my car back again, but then my mom was retarded and didn’t put insurance on it until after the weekend, so I was all sadface. It’s nice to be back with all my possessions, as materialistic as that sounds. I have two rooms basically now, a bedroom with nothing in it, and then an office with a desk for my computers, my amp setup in a corner, my two keyboards on a dual rack, guitars hanging from the walls, and a new addition that makes it so much more complete: a leather recliner. It’s my own little sanctuary, but I think that’s negatively affecting me, because I have gone outside very little since I’ve been here. I’ve had a family party, hung out with my friend Justin, saw Erin once or twice, and… not much else. It’s tricky you know. There must be something wrong with me, because even though they all may have been friends at some point, all my friends hate each other. I can’t hang out with more than any given person or else hellfire will ensue.

And now yes, you thought you had avoided it, girl time. I first saw Erin again since fall break, under some pretty horrible circumstances in which we didn’t even really have direct communication. She had told me all this yadda-yadda about spending time with me over the summer, lo and behold, this is the only thing that she’s actually made contact with me about to see her with. I had to ask her to give me back something of mine to see her the second time. True, I had given her a reason for her to be angry at me, but there’s no reason in spreading a bunch of jive for 3 months, then pretending like I don’t exist when I actually come back. Besides, what I did to made her angry was benevolent in comparison to her misdeeds (even less, I didn’t get angry at her when she did what she did). So in a word, I’m upset with her. In other (somewhat happier?) news, in light of Erin’s being rude, I finally grew a pair and started talking to Abby online. I had only really talked to her in length once, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. And even then, it was Facebook Chat of all things. I’m still not sure if I should talk to her on AIM, since she’s never on Facebook Chat… I can’t tell whether or not sure thinks I’m a nuisance, so I have to be careful for now. The only thing that is certain is that I’m trying too hard. I’ve noticed for years that I would fail things that I thought too much about, and do relatively well in things that I put no effort into. I only made this hypothesis recently, and although I have it backed by a lifetime of experiences, I’m still going about it cautiously. I know I’m blowing it with Abby, there’s 7 months of too much effort put into that.

Anyways, I’m almost out of stuff to say. Right now, I am looking for a job, even though I already sorta have one. I picked up a job at RIT developing an online tool for making reports… but to be honest I’m not sure what I’m doing. Uncertain in that I’m unfamiliar with the technology being used, and uncertain in what I should be doing in the first place. I think the biggest problem is that I have a conscience, combined with being too shy makes me a ghost in this project. Needless to say, I still need to find a job. There are plenty around, it’s just taken me two weeks to get serious about it, and now I’ve sorta doomed myself into putting too much effort into it… but eventually I’ll have one, eventually…

I guess that means I might have to get a haircut. Rats.

So, let’s begin where we left off on Oh well. I parted with a little blurb on my Eagle Scout project, and before the suspense kills you, everything was in before my 18th birthday (I guess that means happy birthday to me). So here’s how it went. I got the project approved, and went over to one of the adults in my troop. He has an infamous detached garage that was converted into a complete wood-working shop. We asked him if it was alright to use it for my project, and he said alright, but he had a limited timetable. Surprisingly we were able to get lots of people to help only 5 days before the event. Everything in terms of cutting wood and assembling went down smoothly. We had a second day to stain the boxes, and then my family and I finished them up. Spent a lot of time slacking on them since Polycrylic needs to dry, but they were delievered, I got the project signed off and turned in. The boxes were nice and so were the school kits, if I may say so myself. I was also able to finished off the last two merit badges I needed and once again turned in everything 2 days before my birthday. Exciting, no? As of the moment I’m waiting for my personal “Candidate Appraisal Forms” to be returned to the council so I can schedule a Board of Review, the last thing I need to do before becoming an Eagle Scout.

Also, another issue of similar importance: college. It appears that I have since made a decision about which school I will attend. In fact, if you’re reading this right now, I’m sure you already knew that I am going to RIT. Now, there’s a lot to this. Let’s start off by noticing how much I limited myself. I only applied to 5 colleges, RIT, UCI, Cal Poly SLO, UC Merced, and Kettering. I got into all but Cal Poly, largely because they are fail, and they probably think I am too good for them. Anyways, by limiting myself I knew that I would be able to make the decision-making process easier, but now I realize that I may have limited my opportunities. Blast. Anyways. RIT has a plethora of pros, and about two or three cons. Goodies: First Software Enginerring major (which is what I’m doing), co-op, a far away land, new facilites, chock full of nerds, dorms, unlimited seconds, same price as the second most expensive option, renowned, awesome, and generally cool. Bad: no girlfriend, plane trips are expensive, cold. The cold, no problem. Just because I’m a warm-blooded native Southern Californian doesn’t mean I can adapt from my climate. The cost of the plane? I doubt that the cost of gas will be any much cheaper driving to say, UC Irvine every day. So perhaps, it’s maybe a pro. And of course, my girl. We’ve managed to talk about it (over a period of weeks) and we are fine about keeping the same relationship we have now over the next 5 years. Of course, it won’t be easy, but in the end I think we’ll come out a lot stronger and a lot closer. So that’s that. Heading off to Rochester, and looking forward to it.

Gas rose in price a lot since February, and I can imagine that it’s only going to increase during the summer. So then recent and current endeavors have gone alack, for I just haven’t been doing any wardriving. It’s expensive and slow, plus there’s the liability of having my computer in my car.

However, I don’t really care about that. So far I’ve mapped all my normal routes, and that has gone well, and now I’ll be looking to wardrive routes I haven’t done before. Originally I had a plan to cover my local town and expand outwards, but again resources limit when I can do this.

My car Zero was recently in the shop because of some massive fail: the brake pads were nonexistent and the rotary assembly was just about shot completely. I guess that’s what you get for towing a trailer much too heavy for 3 years and then letting it sit in a driveway for 4. It’s been fixed, but there’s apparently a coolant leak that isn’t a major problem, but it’s still not 100% then.

I recently got some decals for my beloved Zero, a Rush Starman logo, and two decals that say ‘hacker’ in Japanese (I have an additional one for my computer). As soon as the weather clears up I’m planning to give old Zero a wash and throw these lovely decals on. Then after that I’ll take some long-needed pictures of said automobile so I can post them on here. Of course, if my parents hadn’t lost their camera, I wouldn’t have to use the one that’s 7 years old, but meh.

I still need to fetch me a USB hub so that I can reduce two cables in my car to one, but right now I’m stuck as to which bargain I should get. Obviously it needs to have the power, but I can’t have it powered externally… oh well.

My jaw hurts from wisdom teeth extraction. Rawr.

So, stuff happened. Lots of stuff. Let’s see, early February I was intent on getting a new guitar, as I had received a 20% off coupon from Musicians Friend. They gave it to me as a comp for the “inconvenience” I experienced last summer due to them moving their distribution center. It had a deadline of Feb. 29th and a $1,000 cap. Hence, new guitar time. At the same time I got a new catalog from them, this time with a guitar I had long sought after since its discontinuation. The Fender Deluxe Fat Strat. In white, of course. This guitar is an icon for me, for it’s a near stock replication of Alex Lifeson’s (of Rush) first Hentor Sportscaster, it was used on two Rush albums and extensively on the Exit… Stage Left tour and such would be awesome to have. They discontinued that model in 2005 I believe and have been vying for it since. It’s special simply because it’s a black on white Fender strat with the bigger 70′s style headstock. However, a few trips to Guitar Center later and reasoning that I wouldn’t be taking full advantage of the 20% off, I later found myself ordering a Gibson Les Paul VM. I figured it’s one of the best reviewed guitars on MF.com, it played and sounded good, was light, and Lifeson used Les Pauls forever, this was just the cheapest (Gibson) I could afford. Good enough justification for me. Plus, it comes with a good case, which would cost around $150. Buying the Strat would not be cost-effective. To make a long story short, they kept sending me guitars that had holes in the box and breakage of the case (one of them had damage on the guitar). This has happened twice, but the third one was good. Even though now I’ve noticed there is a drop of finish in between the tone knobs, I don’t want to have to wait to get another one and maybe more, because they might as well be damaged. Also, they seemed to have sent me a fourth one for no reason at all. It hasn’t arrived yet, but I don’t think I should keep it.

At the same time, my dad has been forcing me to work on my Eagle Project a lot. Now, it doesn’t make sense to do it this late before the cutoff date of my 18th birthday, but it doesn’t make sense to waste 6-7 years of my life for nothing either. There is a domestic violence organization that I’m helping out, and I’m making for them some toy boxes and school supply kits. I suppose I’m drawing it out to take too long, but I don’t feel good about doing this when it’ll cost a little over $1,000 at the first projection. Either way, I think it’s a good idea to do it, and so I’ll be working on that as it progresses. Slowly.

I’ve been at work a lot. Yeah, I didn’t get Saturdays off as planned, however, now I have every day off. The other day I was told I wasn’t being put on the schedule, so now that’s over. I’m pretty happy that I’m not there anymore, because I’ll be too busy with my Eagle project and colleges and school and life. They said they would want to rehire me after awhile, but like I said I’ll be too busy until my 18th birthday, so I figure I’ll be purposely unemployed for two months to catch up on me time.

College. Woohoo college! February was fun-filled with college. I’m not sure when I got accepted into Kettering University or if I said anything about it here, but that was the first one I got accepted into. They gave me a $15,000 scholarship and $500 off going to an open house, so I’ll be checking them out in April. They seem to be a little seedy barring their new admissions campaign, but with a co-op program the fact is I probably won’t be paying more than a dime after 4 years of tuition. It’s in Flint, Michigan, which is a multiple-time winner of “Worst Places to Live In The U.S.” contests. I suppose it won’t be so bad living there since it’ll be on campus and I won’t have a reason to leave campus and enjoy the “desolation” of downtown, but Flint’s unemployment and crime rates aren’t anything to scoff at. I suppose that my scholarship comes from Flint’s mayor, as he apparently invested quite a bit of cash into universities hoping he could turn his local into a college town (I only say this because I didn’t really fit into the eligibility of the award tier I got). I figure if the next place I mention will be too expensive, Kettering may be my second choice. I also got accepted into Rochester Institute of Technology, which is sorta my first choice school. I don’t know why they attract me, but out of all the colleges I applied to I see it as the most ‘adventurous’ one, plus they obviously are centered on science and engineering. Why go to college to take lots of liberal arts classes you aren’t interested in when you can get your major without them? That’s why I did those two private tech schools. I’ve only gotten $6,000 gift aid there, so it’ll be a lot harder to justify going there, especially if I stay with my intended major, which is a 5 year program. They cost the same as Kettering roughly ($33,000); but $150,000 is a huge difference to $60,000 for the full education. Before you go off saying “Well it’s not about cost”, yeah I know, but so far all I have is brochures and pricetags. In April I should be able to visit all the schools I’ve been accepted into before choosing one. Last and by all means maybe least, I was accepted into UC Merced. This was my fallback and reference point I think in terms of level of education. Merced has a CS/CE program which is interesting, and the prospect of attending a school that’s brand new leads some possibilities of legacy, which would be very cool. I figure it’s not going to be as great as UC Irvine, which I applied to, but maybe more interesting than Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. So I’m waiting on those last two schools, and by the looks of other people getting their SLO letters last week, I think I’ve been wait listed. No matter, they are near the bottom of my list. So far until I visit some places my list stands as RIT > Kettering > UCI > UCM > SLO. Also, Saddleback CC, but it’s not worth it to stay here and get my GEs. It’s just not worth it. I think I have a general idea of how each one will be like, so in the end I think it will come down to price and the program. More later as I get letters.

I guess the last topic of the post will be my wisdom teeth. I’m getting 4 out on Friday, which should be fun (general anesthesia ftw). I’m going to miss the Ides of March, but that’s okay, I’ll probably be too busy with my Eagle project anyways. Now, if only I bought a Wii earlier with Super Smash Bros. Brawl, then I could enjoy that for the weekend. But noooo, I’m unemployed and have to rely on my savings to make it through gas and food for a couple of months. Bollocks. There’s always my birthday though.

Anyways, gotta go not fail some college prep courses. I’ll get back on wardriving later.

I went around on my way home after filling up ($3.02 a gallon? !@#$% YES), and decided that I should check out a few neighborhoods on the way. So I checked out my grandma’s neighborhood a bit, looked at a portion of the neighborhood above Arroyo Vista Elementary, then went home. Total body network count? 513. As they used to say on good old MacAddict, UN FREAKIN’ BELIEVEABLE. Estimated driving time? 40 minutes. I’ve got the map here.

Now, may I direct your attention to WeFi. I’m going to work on the honor system with this one and tell you about their contest. It’s to see who can get the most number of networks. The prizes include your choice of an iPod touch, a Wii, or a $300 Amex card. Simply put, I don’t know how well known this WeFi service is, but judging from the current scoreboard, there isn’t too much competition. I may be completely wrong, and everyone is doing what I’m doing and waiting towards the final days to make a submission, but seriously, if nobody big knows about this contest, and I can get 500-1,000 networks an hour, there is a very real reality that I could win this. I’m already 200 networks over the leader right now, and that leader is doing the WeFi portion of the contest (There’s two contests, one for WeFi, one using NetStumbler or Kismet logs, which thankfully, KisMAC exports to). Let’s hope nobody knows about this and I can make a silent killing.

To start off, the centerpiece of my newest additions: an Edimax EW-7318USg, a USB Ralink-based wifi card. I like this card alot, it’s small, lightweight, and just works. I bought it instead of the usual D-Link DWL-g122 that KisMAC people use a lot because it’s got an RP-SMA connector that can be used to exchange its 4dBi antenna with something more powerful.

Which leads me to my next purchase: a 15″ 9dBi rubber duck antenna. This omnidirectional bad boy came with its own magnetic mount, although it’s not incredibly strorng so there goes mounting it outside. I haven’t done any real definitive testing with it yet, but I can just taste that I’m getting an exponential number of routers with this sucker compared to my iBook’s internal patch antenna.

Also in my mail came a USB extension cable for great justice and a magnetic window suction mount. The USB cable I thought I would use if any of the cords at this point were too short, but the only one that was is the Edimax card and that surprisingly came with its own cable, so that fits. The magnetic mount is a mixed blessing though. While it’s a double suction, it can’t hold my antenna on its mount. The antenna is just too big and long, the mag mount too lightweight to keep it from swaying while I drive. So eventually it starts to rip the suction off and everything falls down. Everything including the GPS unit, which is too small and powerful enough to make a difference on the mount. So I’ll have to find a better place to put the antenna right now or mount it somewhere else inside the car. Perhaps I could attatch the card with the antenna directly plugged in to the mount or secure the antenna somehow. It’ll get fixed eventually.

That is one of the things bugging me in the physical realm of the car, but there is also a problem with the integral box. Originally I thought it would be neat to have it open sometimes to see where I’m going or look at some maps or something. However, the door to the box is on really weak springs, so if one is driving and makes the slightest of stops, the thing whams forward and hits the computer.

This, I don’t know how to fix. Like, how does one fix that? I can’t take the door off or else stuff will go flying when I put it back up so someone can sit there. The only solution is that I close the box when I’m driving. Ah, but then how does the computer not go to sleep if the box has to be closed? I did a quick search and found InsomniaX, for all your closed-shell computing needs. Thankfully the breakage of KisMAC in 10.5 didn’t prompt me to update this computer, so InsomniaX works as well. I love this app. You can run the system with the lid fully closed and it won’t go to sleep. At least, I did some testing in class and found that it didn’t go to sleep for one hour on battery power. One hour is good enough methinks if I’ll just be using this in the car. I could also be using it in my bag too, which I think if I use the EW-7318USg’s original 4dBi antenna it’ll fit and have no complications. So now I don’t have to worry about my car beating up my computer, or getting busted by the cops for having an open computer.

I did a test run awhile ago on my way to school. I think it was mostly successful. I was in a bit of a hurry so I used a small map, but I think if you look at it it’s pretty effective. Here’s my lovely trip before civilization ceased and there were no wireless networks anywhere. Setting up my rig was surprisingly simple. I already had gpsdX running, so all I needed to do was open up the box, plug the GPS and wifi card in, pull up KisMAC, then hit start scan. KisMAC was already set to take coordinates from gpsdX and I didn’t need to set waypoints.

Overall I think this is going to work out. I still need to get the antenna problem fixed, and I will most likely have to Dremel out a part of the integral box so that the USB cables can fit, if the top is going to be closed and I can’t keep it angled out of the box like I did the first time. Also, a cheapy little USB hub might be in order, so I don’t have to Dremel out a lot of space or plug in two cables and worry about something getting damaged. Also, even though it would be unnecessary unless we were talking roadtrip, a power inverter would be helpful in making sure my iBook wouldn’t die on me.