You win this round, Amanda. Amanda Wright. I bet you're the third Wright brother, except you're a sister. I'm sorry that came off as a botched lesbian joke but you have no idea the extent of my fury right now. It runs so deep that I ran to the library to blog about it and I'm literally looking over my back as I type to make sure nobody comes over to see the abominate sequences of words I will now construct regarding what you did.

Yeah, fifteen minutes ago you were leaving the CIS classroom and the teacher stopped you to commend you on your final project. You said "thanks", shrugged, and left. You ... YOU BITCH.

I stay up at night fantasizing about the kind of praise you idly discarded today, Amanda. I can't believe what you've done. You were given a gift higher than any other, and it meant nothing to you. How many times must you get commended on final projects, I wonder, to be so desensitized to something you should be endlessly proud of?

It's not only your ignorance I must question, but that of the professor's as well. What he's done today is the analogical equivalent of giving an alcoholic hobo (YOU) a crisp $100 bill and completely disregarding the famished orphan (ME). I would have assumed they have entire classes warning against people like you in teacher school.

You're in trouble now, Amanda. I'm starting my final project soon, and it's sure gonna kick the benjamins out of YOUR silly project. You will know my pain when the professor, a happily married man with 3 children, stops the class to spontaneously propose marriage ... to my brain. I hope you find this post, and I hope you cry.


This also has absolutely nothing to do with my newfound paranoia regarding failing my classes because of those nightmares I've been having lately. Not a goddamn thing.

Dear Silver Goddamn 2009 Camaro I Pass Every Time I Walk Across Campus,

I, quite frankly, hate you. How dare you taunt and belittle me every time I walk from the east building to the north building? Do you feel an innate need to remind me of how much money I don't have every single day at roughly 10:50 AM? You are an abomination and the unmitigated animosity I feel for you does not even compare with the rage of a galaxy collapse.

I will own you one day, you know. One day I'll have money to support a car that gets seven miles to the gallon and still be able to eat food at the end of the day and pay rent and buy clothes. It'll happen. Sooner than you think, cretin. I'm coming for the world, and you're my first step up. Your days of not being mine are numbered.

Ain't NOBODY has ANY business owning a Camaro at a community college, anyway. What the hell? I don't care if you're a student, a teacher, or the goddamn dean himself, nobody who goes to a community college owns a Camaro. It doesn't work like that. So quit it. Quit being on my campus. Just stop.

GO AWAY.

My business professor was really not happy with me this morning, readers. He led me on for a good minute and a half, intentionally giving me the distinct impression that I had automatically failed the exam by missing it. It became apparent very quickly that he was just guilt tripping me, which I suppose he had every right to do. But I feel pretty awesome, because I was ready to walk out of there with a zero and he stopped me to let me know I could make it up. And I DID. Pretty sure I got 90-something, too. We'll find out on Wednesday.

In other academic news, my CIS teacher is a damn suave man, readers. He has this quirk, as all teachers develop, where he'll take off his glasses and narrow his eyes to affirm a point. It absolutely does not matter what content he's dealing with or what notion he's trying to convey, if he feels that the gravity of the situation warrants it, he will pull a reverse-Caruso and remove his glasses and narrow his eyes. And by god, it works. You can feel the room leaning forward to hang on his every word, no matter what he's saying.

"And this is an important piece," he starts, gesturing towards the Whiteboard. "You will never..." he pauses, removing his glasses and furrowing his brow, "...deal with data tables the same way again."

P.S. the water main broke and the north building had to be completely evacuated just as I was sitting down to start an English exam. Coincidence? My apparent newfound psychokinetic abilities say otherwise.

I am definitely, definitely a college student, readers. It's 7:02 on a Sunday morning and I haven't yet been to bed. Moreover, I was supposed to take an exam last Wednesday, but had an orthopedist appointment -- the makeup was supposed to happen on Friday, but I slept through school. Beyond that, I had a research paper to turn in on Friday, and that didn't happen. Hopefully this week is a little more stable.

TL;DR SCHOOL BLAH BLAH HECTIC BLAH CRAZY! BLAH DANGEROUS

In other news, it snowed last night, pretty much for the first time. Midway through Autumn there was a single misplaced night of light dusting, but I feel like that was just a 'wrong left turn at Albuquerque' situation, so I wrote it off. Snow has always maintained a certain level of importance with me, and I'm glad to see it show up. I'm dreaming of a white Christmas, ladies and gentlemen.

Finals are coming up; I'm excited to be done with this semester of school, because I felt it was pretty underwhelming. I (kind of) already knew how to write essays, and I already knew how to use MS Word and Excel. I'll be happy to step it up -- next year I'm taking Psychology and programming courses, which I'm super pumped for. All this haughtiness could backfire in my face, though, because I'm also taking intermediate algebra straight out of remedial math
(e.g. 2+2=?). I might drown, I might exceed -- I'm anticipating mediocrity.

Stay tuned.

Dear Doris,

I said some things about you in a previous post that were less than flattering. I implied you were a cheating harlot, I implied you were less than sane, and I implied you were really freakin' old. After today's class, I realize that only one of these things are really, truly true. There were a few things that jumped out at me when I first met you, like how the idle expression on your face is one of distress and cynical anger, and like how that led me to believe you were a mean person.

When the teacher took you out of the classroom today to talk about how you had used a calculator, though, and you tried to keep an uplifted expression on your face as you went, I realized what a big jerk I was for secretly thinking all this stuff about you. Getting to know you more I realize that you're not a bad woman, Doris. You're actually really nice -- which only serves to affirm how much of a sh**head I am.

I did not know that a 4x4 pickup truck jackknifed your sedan in the middle of the road three months ago. I did not know that the resulting impact caused you to hit your head very hard, which now serves to impair your ability to efficiently comprehend things -- things like remedial math. I did not know that this injury causes you spontaneous short-term memory loss, and I did not know that you really thought the teacher said we could use calculators.

While we're talking about things I didn't know -- hey, I didn't know your son died of cancer. That's wild, get right outta town! Wh-... you're the head and president of your own cancer charity society? YOU DON'T SAY.

I am a terrible person, Doris, and I apologize. You are a modern day saint. I think about how nice the people are at my table and I'm really grateful that I didn't sit down at another one, like, for example, the table with all those frat guys, or the one with all the fat girls. The only other table I wouldn't have minded sitting at, I think, is our neighbor table with all the babes sitting at it. We have a MILF at ours, so at least it's not a sausage fest, am I right? Yeah, I'm right. See, Doris? We can laugh about this.

I also don't know if your name is really Doris.

I'm really sorry.

Sitting in CIS class today, I feverishly worked to finish a spreadsheet "challenge" issued by my teacher -- usually I wouldn't be so pumped to get one done, but the professor said that if anyone finishes before he shows everyone how to do it, they could have Wednesday off. Now, I'm a great student in CIS class; I was exempted from the last exam, in fact, because my homework was just that good. I enjoy the class, but I also enjoy time off.

When I figured it all out with 10 minutes to spare, I wished I'd been within range of a mirror, because I would have shot myself a knowing glance, nodded, and wordlessly affirmed that I was a modern day techno-stud. I beckon the teacher like a celebrity beckons his valet parker, point to the screen, and sit back like I own the classroom. He squints, shakes his head, and promptly destroys me. He eagerly points out mistake after mistake in a volume audible to the entire class -- I furrow my brow and my jaw falls agape.

"I was on the right track, though, right?" I ask, hoping for a consolation prize. He denies me, making an uncertain noise from the back of his throat and giving a "so-so" gesture with his hands. Thanks, 'teach. Five minutes later he goes over to the table of a girl at another desk, because she thought she'd finished too. He nods, going on to talk about how well she did. She didn't get 100% and therefore didn't score the time off, but damned if her evaluation wasn't a whole lot better than mine.

This blog post is for you, woman. I don't know your name, I don't know who taught you how to be so good at spreadsheets, but I loathe and lust for you. I fear, hate, respect, and love you. I acknowledge you as a superior and I hope one day to share a bed with you so that you might impart some of your innate technological talent unto me in our glorious, passionate union. I DESPISE you.

Hi readers. Can we talk for a minute? I just wanted to chat about an application that makes my life a hell of a lot easier. Maybe you've heard of it -- Dropbox. I would easily put this program up with the giants, like MS Word, and AIM. It is one of the greatest achievements of the new millennium, and I use it multiple times daily.

What is Dropbox? At its core, it is a storage, backup, and sharing utility. What makes it special? Okay. Rather than being browser-based (i.e Rapidshare), one actually installs Dropbox on their computer. Once they've done that, a folder appears, entitled "My Dropbox". One can simply drop files into their public folder, and they begin to upload to the Dropbox servers. After they're finished, a green check-mark appears on the icon of the file, and they can right-click it to copy a URL to their clipboard that they can share with their friends.

It doesn't stop there, no. You can install Dropbox across 3 computers with the same account, and your documents will always remain synced. Here's a scenario: you're working on a spreadsheet on your home computer for the big meeting this afternoon. You save it, and leave. That's right, you just leave. You don't put it on a thumb drive, you don't e-mail it to yourself, you're just out the door. Then, later, you hop on one of your business computers and pop open your Dropbox folder -- there's the spreadsheet you saved half an hour ago, primed and ready to go.

Maybe the boss comes by and wants to see the spreadsheet, but it's not on your cubicle's computer and you don't have Dropbox installed. No big deal, you can access all of your uploaded files directly from the website through an interface similar to (but a whole lot more convenient than) Rapidshare or Megaupload.

Say, for the sake of example, that Jimmy - your cubicle mate and incidental arch rival - gets into your spreadsheet and messes it up irreparably before saving it to your Dropbox. The CFO is coming to take a look at it himself in 10 minutes. Relax, one of Dropbox's most awesome features is to keep every saved edit of a document for the past 30 days. You could have saved 4500 edits of that spreadsheet to your Dropbox and you'd be allowed to go back and revert to any of those 4500 any time you wanted through Dropbox's convenient History page.

The best part? It's all completely free. You don't pay a cent for all of this. Dropbox does have upgrade options -- you start with 2 GB, and for 9 dollars a month you can bump it up to 50 GB, and for 20 dollars a month you can get 100 GB. If you're an enthusiast with a whole crapload of files to keep uploaded, the upgrade options are cheap and easy to keep up -- but let's be frank. I've been using Dropbox for just under a year and a half, and I've never gotten close to my 2 GB size limit. I could not even imagine having 100 GB. That's a freakin' hard drive! They also offer a paid service called Pack Rat that gives you unlimited reversions.

Well, that's my shameless Dropbox plug. Go get it -- in fact, let me invite you, so we both get 250MB of additional space.


In other news, I got a pretty boss haircut. There's not a whole lot to say about it besides DAMN it is nice to be able to style my hair again. I really don't know how to have long hair, despite having had it twice. Oh, and just before the hot stylist cut my hair, she washed it for me. Twice. It was quite frankly amazing and I highly recommend the experience.

And that's that.