Midday update

Had my first class: Human Rights Research and Writing.
It's a practical skill class aimed on switching students from the habit of finding six articles and three books on a topic to find *everything* current on a topic and then deciding what of it is worth reading vs. worth skimming. Found out about N-Notes(?) a piece of software that records info about your sources and then well out put it in any bibliographic format your little heart desires. That's beautiful, glad it's out there. Took my laptop to class to take notes, was only one doing so, but it's basically encouraged for the future since we'll be going over sources. I am to have the assignment for this week done by tonight, save time for the rest of the week.

Been spending too much of my mental energy on my redesign of Tristat combat rules. Latest conundrum being size modifiers, but have a reasonably elegent solution basically settled by now.

General notes on victories and losses since coming here:

Victories:

• Have seven or so profs I'd consider as faculty advisors and will have classes from three of them this quarter, going to try to do more with the others too. This whole time I've really been hyper-critical and hoping to narrow the field as fast as possible, think I've done a good job.


• Course-load is great, feel good about coming here.


• Designed what I think is a schedule I can impress people with by end of first quarter (see losses).


• Already handled all the bureaucratic obstactles that arose. Nothing too tricky, but this is the kind of thing I oft slacked on.


• Got Skype and just bought a $10 desk mike. I may try for a nice headset one later, but think this baby will do me. Should have Internet calling working completely by tonight.


• Bike and furniture stuff all going fairly well, should have remaining purchases worked out by end of the week.


• Roomie is interesting, laidback, but not someone who doesn't pull his weight. Okay that's mostly luck.

Losses:

• Had to drop International Administration degree. That was likely, but I'd have prefered to give myself a quarter to maul it over. They redid it so I don't have the time anymore.


• Scholarship needs to be earned after one or three quarters, so extra pressure to get it early.


• School food is drek but I can't get off the early option until next quarter despite not having used it officially. Okay, I actually got a meal or two, but they didn't swipe my ID. :P $8 a day for one all you can eat cafeteria meal, wtf. Maybe if it was a sizzler and not a comparitively small dining hall. At least the $175 of cash for other on campus places seems reasonable if not incredibly frugal


• Couldn't access the network in class today and is having trouble now (although I got it just fine in the cyber lounge in the building in the interum). This is troublesome.


• Job prospects aren't looking so great, particularly since I only got my Fasfa in just last week, which cramps my style workstudy wise. Just barely missed the Research Assisant job application deadline, although the were pretty clear that'd it'd be quite hard for a first quarter student to get those. Hopefully I'll still be able to find something, though economics wise my priority is to Ace everything this quarter for scholarship justification purposes.


• Slightly burned my fingers by handling something too quickly after taking it out of the over. Not so swift there.