Seeing Strangers on Campus

I made sure I left extra early to attend my first school night of the semester. Went to the student union. Purchased two slices of pepperoni pizza. Had to wait for it to be cooked. It came out piping hot. Got a 32 ounce cup full of Fanta orange. Then I sat down and reviewed my notes from reading the textbook.

There were two guys hanging out at the table next to mine. Nothing out of the ordinary. Then another guy who knew one of them approached. He was wearing a suit, but no tie. He had a party style suit on underneath. The striking thing about him was his fedora on his head. He also wore some stylish dress shoes.

I think this guy was dressing up to impress the ladies. From a visual perspective, he was on point. He had a high pitched voice with a Northeastern access. That came across as a weakness. He seemed animated as he talked with his friends. The guy had a lot of confidence. He introduced himself to another person who came to that table.

Lot of people were flowing in and out of the eatery. There were tables to eat just outside of the place. I thought I saw someone who looked just like Little Kat. The buzz cut plus glasses plus unshaven face did the trick. It was obviously not Little Kat, who was at home cooking the family dinner. I did imagine that this was what Little Kat looked like on campus though.

Back to School

On Monday, I head back to school for the fall semester. I had thought that I ordered my textbook online. But that was last semester. So today I decided to visit my school to take care of business. My trip started out bad. I somehow flipped my RC soda can entirely over in my car. Luckily I had already drank more than half of it. The other half went into my cup holders.

At school, I found all the sidewalks closed. They were sealing the joints with some gray putty. Had to walk on the grass. That was a real fail for people with kids strollers. I could not find my textbook in the bookstore. An employee helped me find it. He apologized that they only had new textbooks. I told him that was fine, as I prefer new.

I decided to visit the school cafeteria for the first time. I was not impressed. There was nobody at the grill station. A guy was at the pizza place. But he was busy baking pizzas. I eventually got some pizza slices warmed up for me. The bottled sodas in the fridge were warm. I had to go ask around to find a cashier to check me out. Not good.

This semester is the last in a few years worth of studying cyber security. After all that study, I might not be able to find a project/job to take advantage of those skills. Oh well.

New Wireless Network

Previously I had paid for the Internet access in our house. Got a great introductory rate from Verizon. After that promotion ended, the price more than doubled. Fair enough. Then the price increased mysteriously again. My brother had since got us Comcast Internet. So I wanted to cancel the Verizon service. One problem - my main printer was on the Verizon network.

Finally I decided to do something about this. I wanted to remotely log into the printer, switch it to the Comcast network, and be done with this Verizon service. Used my browser to log in. I was able to specify the new network. But I did not find any place to put the network password. That seemed strange. How could the printer log into our locked down Comcast network?

Then it dawned on me. I did not reconfigure the printer. I reconfigured the Verizon wireless router. Now both the Comcast and Verizon wireless routers were broadcasting with the same network name. Had an emergency family meeting to let everyone know what was going on. Restored the Verizon network name. Then I moved the printer to the other network.

Tried to call up Verizon to cancel. Apparently their office is closed. I had to jump through many hoops in the automated Verizon phone tree. Now I recall another reason why I should cancel Verizon. Their customer service stinks.

Lunch Travels

Momoko has been going to the pool early every morning. Afterwards she gets McDonald's. She brings me breakfast. By the end of the week, it was time for me to return the favor. I was to buy her lunch. We decided to go out. Since I was buying and driving, I got to choose the place.

I decided to go to my favorite burger place. Unfortunately it is across town. On a good day, I might be able to make it there in 30 minutes. We went via the highway to try to get there fast. Unfortunately there was some traffic that slowed me down. We made it though. The place had a lot of people.

We found some burger deals. The burgers were only a quarter of a pound. They were good though. I eat them with a lot of pickles from the fixings bar. Also comes with a side of fries. I add cheddar cheese and jalapenos, which also come from the fixings bars.

There was traffic on the freeway. So we took the back roads home. Things were fine until we got a couple towns away from our house. The two lane highway came to a stop. No cars were coming from the other side. Eventually we found the problem. Somebody hit a telephone pole and cracked it. Took a while to get home. Glad it wasn't us.

Authors Need Side Jobs

I am a fan of the Reddit relationships subreddit. It is a board where you can post questions about relationships. One girl graduated from college and posted there. She lives with her boyfriend who also graduated from college. The problem is that her boyfriend thinks he is a professional book author. He is still working on his first book.

Doh! It is okay to have a hobby like writing books. It is not okay if you only work on your hobby and do not make any money. Time for this guy to get a job or get out. The economics of book writing are not too good, at least for authors. Even successful ones usually have some other way to make money.

I was surprised that Beth Revis commented on this post. Beth is a professional author. She spent 10 years teaching while writing books on the side. One of her books actually took 10 years before she was able to get it published. I know Beth has written follow on stories for the Stars Wars genre. I think she is most famous for her Across The Universe trilogy. I plan to buy book one in that series.

Intense Outdoor Heat

Things are really hot outside. Last week I cut the grass in the front yard. I bundled up the yard clipping with some tree/bush clippings. It was treacherous. I was outside maybe an hour and a half. I could not stand at the end of the ordeal.

Okay. This week I finished up the work. Ran the weed wacker around the edges until my batteries died out. Cut the grass in the back yard. Altogether spent about one hour outside. I thought I was going to die. It was not just the heat. All my strength was zapped.

Now I got some tough bushes to trim. Yikes.