it seems that every time i spend more than a few days in tampa in a trip, i really start thinking about people i used to know. a few of those people i have been able to track down, but others just seem to have fallen off the face of the earth. and of the few that i have been able to find, most of them seem to have changed quite a bit since i knew them. i suppose that i too have changed, but it seems a bit different when people change so drastically. i guess that people while in high school or early in college really haven't become the people they will be for the rest of their lives. some people however don't ever change, at all. though, most of the people like that are not really people i ever knew. it is strange, but over the years i have met so many different people at school. instead of coming in with one group and leaving with them, i've been in school and got to know multiple groups of incoming freshman, and managed to graduate with one of the later groups. i have had great friends in each of the groups, but the one's i've been with most recently seem to be the ones with whom i have got along with and connected to the most. unfortunately, nearly everyone from that group is now gone, and though i have finally graduated, i'm back for more schooling. this time things may be a little more difficult though, since i am no longer taking classes with any of the newcomers, aside from the very few that are in the grad classes with me. it can be somewhat depressing thinking about how difficult it is going to be to find and meet new people. i guess that brings me back to where i started, always trying to find the people i used to know, maybe rekindle some old friendships and see if anything can happen there, though it is much more difficult than it should be in this modern day. there is one person in particular who, after a long time of searching, i found and was able to contact for a few months. however, she has since apparently disappeared once again, and i wonder if i will ever hear from her again. another person who has been a shining star in my life over the last few years has recently gone a separate way, and it is quite likely that i will never see or hear from her again. it is little things like that which bother me the most, i wish people would just stay available for their friends even after they go away from where they once were. and on that note, i think i shall call it a night and go to sleep.

It has been quite some time since i have written to this blog. In fact, it has been a month or so since i have written to any of them, which is a while for me. Things ahve been pretty hectic in the last month though. I finally decided to apply for graduate school, and it seems as though i am going to be getting into it. Also, my lease expired on monday, and i moved out of the apartment on sunday, so i have been staying at the parents' place since then. Besides all that, Cody has been visiting, and he's more than a handful to deal with. Beyond that, I finally met someone who I thought could be someone with whom I could be happy. But apparently that wasn't meant to be either. I have been a bit on the depressed side with that having fallen apart like it did. I still have to figure out where i will be living for the fall semester, and what is going to be happening with school exactly. but i should be able to get that stuff taken care of in the next week or so. Though I have decided that when i do move back, i am going to rent a truck to use to take stuff from the storage area to the place i decide to live at. I made about 8 to 10 trips from the apartment to the storage area with the pickup and realized that it would actually cost less to rent a moving truck and make just one trip to get it all back to the new place when i figure out where that will be. After i get that straightened out, I will probably try to get things squared away with school, and get my schedule made up for the fall. I am looking forward to sticking with school, and if things go well, I will be able to stick with it for the next few years, and potentially go on for another degree after this. Anyways, I am getting a bit on the depressed side being back at home for the time being. I was considering just staying down here for a while if i don't get into the grad program for the fall, but i think i have pretty much decided to stay in gainesville for the rest of the year regardless of if i start school in the fall. but it does look like i will be starting, so that should solve that problem. And just as soon as i confirm that i will be able to stay at uf, then i should be able to sign a one year lease instead of one for just a semester, which generally means that i will be able to save a little money, and i should be able to find a better place to stay with that. i need to find out just how much financial assistance i will be getting before i decide on anything, cuz that will determine whether i have to live the dirt poor student life or will be able to afford something just a little better. I hope to talk with dr. bucklin about that within the next day or so to find out for sure though. once i do get back into the swing of things, i'm going to have to start a new search for someone. I've been alone far too long, and i'm tired of staying that way. Though it seems that anyone I think might be compatible with doesn't seem to feel the same way, and I just don't seem to have anyone who feels the same way about me. If there was someone, i wish they'd just say something, cuz i'm open to at least talking about it. anyways, thats about all that i am going to say tonight, maybe i'll post again in a few days, but then again maybe i won't.

Guess what. Drivel works with blogger as well as with livejournal, so i might start posting here more often...woot, anywho g'nite.

i felt it was time to post again, so here it is. it has been a pretty busy week, considering i had planned on doing as little as possible during it. monday i went to fort myers with amanda to visit the Edison and Ford winter residences. those were pretty neat, though i would really like to take a few days to actually go explore the area more and much more of the state. unfortunately, with gas prices being as high as they are, and the truck getting such crappy mileage, i probably won't be exploring much. anyways, on the way home, just as we were getting back into hillsborough county, we hit traffic. at first we thought it was just rush hour traffic, but it seemed to start a little bit south of where rush hour traffic should be, and was really going the wrong direction. it turned out that they had closed down the interstate north of where we were due to brush fires, and they were routing traffic a different direction. that was a pain in the neck, and added about 3 hours to our trip. anyways, once we finally got back into town, i went over to the parents' house for the night. they were to have a new garage door installed on tuesday, and nobody was supposed to be home for that, so they asked me to be there. as it turned out, dad pulled a muscle in his back on sunday so he had stayed home on monday, and was planning to stay home on tuesday, so i was going to get to sleep in. unfortunately, his back was feeling much worse on tuesday morning, so they decided to go into the emergency room. i ended up having to wake up at 7:30 that morning to wait for the garage door installer to show up, which he eventually did. unfortunately for me, he needed an area about 6 feet wide and 16 feet deep cleared in the garage, and we had thought it was supposed to be 6 feet deep and 16 feet wide, so he was unable to do the installation due to the space restrictions, and the fact that it was rainy outside and we couldn't move stuff from the garage outside. after that happened, i talked to the parents and they were going to reschedule the installation. mom had to go to work, so she asked me to wait for dad to call to go pick him up. i figured that was alright and i decided to lay down and try to get a little more sleep. well, as luck would have it, the weather cleared up, and the installer called and asked if i could get the garage cleared out by noon, which i figured i could, then did. he got there and started installing the door, though i had hoped that dad would've called by the time he got there, but he didn't. the installer had been working for about 2 hours before dad called, so i had to lock up the rest of the house, and hope that the guy was trustworthy enough to leave alone in the garage...i figured he was, so i went to pick up dad, who was hungry, so we went and got some fast food. after that, we got back to the house, and i told him to lay down and that i'd pick up his prescriptions when the installer was done. he finished up fairly soon afterwards, and i evenntually made it to the drug store. after that, when my stepmom got home, we had to take the dog to bethie's apartment. poor tasha, didn't know what was going on, but we got her over there and got some taco bell to eat for dinner. the reason we took her there was because the parents left for their alaskan cruise today, which they've been wanting to take for years. we took tasha over there a few days earlier so she wouldn't be in the way packing, and to make sure she wasn't having too many anxiety problems about being away from home for a few weeks. after we got back from taking her over, i watched a little tv, then i headed back to gainesville. the trip had fairly light traffic most of the way, but for the first time in years, i got pulled over. though i knew i wasn't speeding, and i had my seat belt on, i couldn't figure out why he would pull me over. thought he might try saying i was speeding or something, but to my surprise, it wasn't anything like that. the lights that are supposed to shine on my license plate were out, and i think he just wanted to make sure i was belted in and such. he didn't give me a ticket or anyting, just told me to fix the lights. so, yesterday i went to advance auto parts and got some new bulbs, but they didn't work at all. i ended up getting under the back of the truck once it stopped raining and dried up and found that the cable going to the lights had broken, so i fixed that up, and now they work. the reason that i didn't get to it on wednesday was because i had another extremely busy day. i did get to sleep in, but when i awoke, i decided to go to the lab to check things out. i figured i'd be there 15-20 minutes, then head home and fix the lights in the truck. well, i ended up doing some stuff there and stayed for over two hours. just as i was about to head out for the day, i got a phone call. my friends david and katrina needed some help moving some furniture. i figured thats what i have a truck for so i decided to help them out. they had quite a bit of furniture, but fortunately were only moving it about 3/4 of a mile away. the only drawback was that most of it was on the second floor of the apartment, and they were moving it to the third floor of the other apartment. at first it wasn't so bad, but after a while, it got really tiring. i did get some good exercise out of it, and drank a lot of water that day, which spawned me to want to start drinking more water once again. thats a good thing, as is the exercise. they took me out to dinner fo helping them, which i really appreciated, especially since there was free refills on beverages. got home from that, showered, and did nothing for the rest of the night. then yesterday, i went into the lab for a bit, we started running a new experiment, which will take a while to see how it goes, but should be interesting to see. i don't really remember if i did anything much after that. i know that i went to publix, and eventually watched star wars episode 3, but i don't remember doing anything else. i suppose i spent the rest of the time trying to sleep, or playing pysol and listening to music. but anyways, i went to bed after star wars, and slept pretty well. got up this morning, was going to go get my paycheck and deposit it, then get some gas then go to best buy cuz they have movies 3 for $20 this week. though i eventually ended up doing just that, i got a call from david again today, and they needed a little more help moving some stuff, so i did that first. after best buy, i came home and decided to start watching my new movies. i got batman begins, star trek: first contact, and charlie and the chocolate factory. i watched the first two, then i cut my hair and showered. now i am in the middle of chocolate factory. i was getting a bit hungry, and wanted some chocolate. i thought the only chocolate i had was the mint m&ms i've been saving, so i opened them up and ate some. but just as i was typing one of the previous sentences, i recalled that i have a bag of semi-sweet chocolate morsels in the pantry that i really should've opened, they would've been good. anywho, this weekend will likely be pretty busy too. i told erin t. that i would help her move some of her stuff, so i will probably do that tomorrow or sunday, and then david and katrina said they might be doing something fun and would call me if they did. monday starts back classes, and i only have one class on mondays, so it should be a nice way to ease back into things. tuesday i have that class, and another one, but hte second one should have plenty of people i know in it, maybe even catherine, so i am looking forward to that. after that, i am going to be meeting with the other research people from the lab, and also inka from the other lab. i'll probably be taking over a lot of her work in the coming weeks and months, so i really need to get caught up on that. so thats my life in a nutshell right now.

Well, its been a while since i have posted to blogger. It isn't so much that i haven't been writing, it is that i have been writing elsewhere. I have been doing a lot of posting recently on my myspace account, but a weird gainesvillain has been cyberstalking me there, so i decided to move back to blogger. i have also done quite a bit of writing over at my livejournal accounts, and one of them i will continue posting to, but the other i will probably discontinue for some time as well. the reason for that is that the one that i am going to stop posting to is the one that i have a link to on myspace, and therefore will probably have the same problem with as i do the one on myspace. the other one is a personal journal to which i don't let people know the url. that one i will continue using, but only when i feel like it, and it really doesn't make a lot of sense to everyone else. as for whats going on in my life, things have changed a bit since the last time i posted to this account. it has been about a year and a half, and i noticed that i had said that i planned to graduate in december of 06 if possible. well, that isn't quite going to work out, but as things go, i only have to push it back by one semester. i am looking forward to graduatiing, and that will be a year from now. i can almost taste the freedom that comes with earning a college diploma, but i am also wondering what exactly is in store for me after that. i have seriously been considering going to graduate school when i do graduate, but i will have a summer between graduating and starting grad school. i will probably have to work at least part of that summer, but i would also like to do some traveling then. as things go, i will probably have to get a new vehicle before then, and i'd like to get that accomplished by september of this year. if i do that, and i can get something decent, then i will likely try to do a road trip next summer. i think that would be quite fun, and if i have a vehicle that gets better than 18 mpg on the highway, i would be more inclined to do it. right now the two models that i am looking at most are the toyota corolla, and the ford focus. in the past i have not been much of a ford fan, but i've realized over the years that they actually make decent vehicles, and the focus is one of their better ones and one of the better cars in my price range. another advantage that it has over the corolla is that it looks a bit nicer, has a slightly more powerful engine, and from what i hear handles a lot better too. the only person i know that has had one really liked it, and whenever i got to ride in it, it felt really solid. i would definitely want to get a zx3 model with a manual transmission, but i think i could probably find one of those around for a decent price. i'll probably try to get something at carmax or some other type dealership like that. but until then, i have to keep the truck running over the summer, and as gas approaches $3 per gallon, my driving time is going to be limited anyways. i will probably keep it until after i move. whether that is at the end of this month, or at the end of july, or any time in between, i should still have the truck in my posession. right now i am thinking that labor day would be a good time to actually look for and maybe get a new vehicle, but i will have to see how things are going when the time comes. aside from that, i am going to get to sleep now.

I have a blogger blog. Apparently, i've had it for quite some time, but have just forgotten about it completely. I guess it is about time that i should start populating it, but i will likely forget about it in another week or so. anyways, i have a journal on another site that i am much more prone to update. however, you will never see it, cuz that one is just for me. as far as this one goes, i will say certain things, but won't go into nearly as much detail as i do for the other. since the last time i posted appears to be shortly after finals of the spring semester, i suppose that it is just fitting that my new posts will be right before the finals of the fall semester. i had said that i was probably going to retake chem 2 over the summer, but that was wrong. i decided to retake it in the fall instead, and i think that i am glad to have done so. i should easily get at least a C, if not a C+ or B. I haven't retaken thermo yet, but i am going to retake that in the spring. I do not expect to have any problems with it this time around though. For starters, its not going to take place at 7:30 in the morning. Also, i took a class this semester called Heat Transfer, which is really just a subset of Thermo. I enjoyed it quite well, and did pretty good in it too, so i know i will have very little problem with that part of thermo. i also did alright on my first exam in thermo in the spring, so i don't see any reason i won't do well on that part either. it is the material that comes between the first part of thermo, and the heat transfer that gave me the most problems. that stuff was the cycles part. i suspect that it will be a lot easier to understand if i am not still half asleep when i am learning it. Other classes that i am going to take are Dynamics, the next in a line of physics classes, this time dealing with motion of particles and objects. Its going to be taught by a different person than who has been teaching it. I suspect this will be a good thing, because most of the people who have already taken it have very little good to say about the current professor. the only good thing i have ever heard is that he curves it decently at the end, but i'd settle for someone who teaches it well enough that a big curve is not necessary. Thats just my two cents on the subject though. I am also going to take Organic Chemistry I and the lab for Chem 2. Orgo is going to be a struggle, but i think i can survive it. I really have no desire to drop any more classes. That would just throw my entire schedule off for the rest of my undergrad career. Which, i hope, will not take more than two more years. As things stand now, i think i will be able to graduate in December of 2006, which is exactly two years from now. Winter graduates seem to have a better time finding jobs too, i guess cuz more people opt for the spring graduation. Last, but certainly not least, i must finally take Differential Equations. I really don't want to, but i have to. At least i won't have to take any classes like linear algebra or the like. This may actually be the last pure math class that i have to take. The rest of them from here on out are more computer based, but require math and physics. Math is so much better when it is tied to physics, and i know i'm probably a dork for saying that. Then again, there are a lot of people who just live for math. Personally, i think it is very boring if you don't have a real use for it. I'm not talking about statistics and stuff like that either. I'm talking about figuring real world stuff out, like how fast a roller coaster can go before people start losing their lunch, and how much stress a femur can withstand in a car crash. Stuff like that is what makes math interesting. Once i get through the fall semester, i think things will definitely go more smoothly until graduation. I know that many of the classes that i am going to take will be tedious, and i will probably curse them at the time, but i think that the spring will be the worst yet. Something that i have been thinking about lately is a design project. I know that it will be over a year before i get to take senior design, but its never too early to start thinking about cool stuff that i can build. My original idea from when i was still doing EE probably won't apply as much to BioE, but i guess if i can't figure anything else out, that can still work. It would be pretty expensive though, and i really don't know where to begin. I'd still like to do something that either uses optics, or biomechanics. Unfortunately, unless i postpone the senior design another year, and extend my graduation date another semester, i won't have any of the BIoMech classes done before design. In which case, i may need to do some independent study. Hmm, i just got a cool idea. I could do something that uses both optics and biomechanics. Well maybe more like robotics or something similar, but i am coming to realize that there is a very thin, if not non-existence line between robotics and biomechanics. Since i want to go into designing prosthetic devices, many of them could be used interchangeably between a human and a robot. I may even look into designing prostheses for non humans. Just imagine a dog with an artificial leg or tail. Or a dolphin with a prosthetic fin. Wait, someone has already done the dolphin thing. At least i think it was a dolphin, but it may have been a whale. Anyways, thats what i want to do in the long run. Perhaps i may even study medicine, not necessarily for the medicinal part, but for the anatomical parts that could help better understand how the mind controls the limbs. This could be used to make prosthetics that can directly interface with the nervous system, and can be controlled by thought or reflex. The biggest obstacle i see right now is being able to produce motors and such that are small and powerful enough to be built into limbs, and other materials that can constantly deform, but do not lose their original properties while doing so. Power is another problem with such devices. I am also convinced that the human body already produces enough power to do this, it is just not useable in that way yet. If the thing can power real arms and legs that require a lot of energy and waste a lot, then it should be able to power an artificial device that probably wouldn't waste as much. The kind of power waste that i am talking about is things like heating and cooling, twiddling your thumbs, twitches, and stuff like that. Enough of that, i should probably look at the near future a bit. I have three exams to go, and just one day of regular classes. I still have two assignments, one that i can't get done until thursday, but its not due until friday. The other i have been working on, but kept running into a wall on, so i took a breather, and will work on it more tomorrow. That theoretically shouldn't take me too long, especially if i can compare my work with someone else's and see where i am erring. After finals, i am probably going to hang around town for a week or so. Then i am going to head to clearwater for christmas, probably not until christmas eve. And with any luck, i will be able to get the following week off, and be able to go on a road trip with dad. The only kink in my plans is that i told manda that i'd help her move on one of the days that i am supposed to be gone. She also suggested that she could postpone her move for another week, which would work out well for the road trip thing, but i may not be able to get that weekend off of work. I still have to talk to my boss and see if i can get any of that time off. Anyways, thats my current situation in a nutshell. Well, minus the emotional snippets, but they're not for you to read.

a simpl blog

here is a simple blog, i haven't much to say.

Well, it would appear that the Lightning have what it takes. They have successfully made it to the Stanley Cup finals, and should not have a really hard time against the Calgary Flames. Oddly enough, Calgary is the first Canadian team to reach the finals in 10 years. They were also the last canadian team to win it, 11 years ago, but i truly doubt they have what it takes to get the best of the 'nings. In other news, I finally found another class to take this summer, even though it is three weeks into the semester now. It is an independent study course about Industrial Hygiene, sounds exciting huh? Other than that, I've been trying to actually make it to the unofficial interstore publix softball games and such, but haven't been able to get to many. So far i've only made one game, and didn't play up to the level i believe i am capable of. Hopefully by the next game i won't look like such a spastic fool as i did in that one. I guess some of my problems have to do with the fact that i am accustomed to catching and throwing a baseball as opposed to a softball, and a baseball is quite a bit smaller and more dense, so throwing is especially different. Catching isn't that much different, but sometimes it is harder to grab the ball out of the glove with my free hand since it is quite a bit bigger than i instinctively think.

What is the deal with weblogs anyways? Personally i just use it as a form of free association writing, to help me work through some of my own problems, but i have seen others who write for the sole purpose of wanting others to read what they have to say or possibly to make others feel less adequate about themselves, even if it can be a somewhat random or ambiguous for of writing it. Aww, to hell with writing anymore of this, i am getting tired and bored, and am still not yet at the level where i will type what i really want to say about anything of any real or genuine importance. so i guess this is goodbye.