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Been a long time since my last post and there's a lot of stuff! Crazy car shit and my second assessment mostly.
Car shit started started Wednesday on the way to a movie. Well, let me start with the movies. It was two nights of Oscar shorts. The first night was animated shorts. Some really good stuff (and a couple I disliked). The two best were one about a guy's mother being sick and dying and the animation style was really awesome, almost sculture-like, (probably some sculpture with) heavy paint on walls. The other best one was about this pig and it also had a nice semi-impressionist style. I think it was called The Dam Keeper. The live action shorts were Wednesday and I think they were more even (at least nothing as horrible as the couple bad animated ones). My favorite, I think, was called Butter Lamp. It was all from the perspective of a camera taking pictures of people in this rural chinese village in front of changing backdrops (you never see the real scenery until the end, and the people taking the pictures are a traveling unit). It was really good. There was another one I liked almost as much that was about a young Afghani girl in a cold European country (Switzerland? maybe they said Sweeden, but it sounded like they were speaking German...) sort of making a friend in this weird way and her money trouble and sick father back home and such. It was good.
Okay, so we're going to the movie on Wednesday and pulling into the driveway of the theater my car shakes and just dies. Luckily the space on the street right next to the driveway was empty so I was able to roll it down the incline and guide it into the spot and we didn't have to miss the movies. Got a tow truck to pick it up and take it over to Barton's after the movie was over (though stressful when the lady drove right past me waving my arms and I had to run after her to track her down) and we walked the few blocks home. I had to drive by the place in the morning to get the car opened 'cuz the towing lady said they didn't have a place to drop the key off (the people there said there was, but I couldn't find it when I had to take my car back again later). Okay so it gets fixed the next day and the price damage wasn't too bad and I picked it up Friday morning before work.
It seemed to be going fine but there was trouble when we went out on Saturday. We had a massage scheduled (or so we thought). Traffic was shit so Mary Beth called while we were on Walnut Grove to let 'em know we were running late. Turns out they didn't even have us on record as having an appointment (guess they screwed something up or whatever). Well, in this time my car starts driving pretty badly. It's really not wanting to accelerate. Kinda feels like the transmission's sticking at times, but it'll happen at speeds where the gears shouldn't be shifting anymore. It all happens in horrible traffic and then we're out on Germantown fucking road and we end up having to just drive its length and make a big circle to 40. So we're on the worst road in the damn city with a car that feels like it's about to break down at any second, but it made it back so I drove it myself to Barton's. (Here's where I'm looking for the key drop they said they had, not finding it after looking around forever). Drive up there Monday morning again to give 'em the key. They call later in the day saying they were pretty sure what it was but wanted someone else to give a second opinion before they took it all apart and rack up a bunch of money. They said this place called Redwine (weird name for a car place) had better testing equipment for the Honda. So I called triple a again and got it towed from the one shop to the other. Pretty crazy 'cuz in the entire time, I never once met anyone in person at the place that fixed my car. Didn't hear from 'em yesterday, but they called today saying it was fixed. Paid over the phone and they left it where I could get it after hours with the key locked under the floor mat. So it ended up not being cheap like I'd thought, but it could have been worse, blah.
Now blanks to fill in. We finished season two of Hannibal on Saturday and watchd Manhunter Sunday (SO weird finally seeing it after watching so much Hannibal). It was pretty good, though it didn't come close to Thief. Saturday was Jacques's birthday and I met him at Huey's for dinner. Practice was on Sunday. Paul couldn't make it but the rest of us ran through stuff. Ryan left early and then Jacques and I spent a little time working out things that might possibly become songs one day. The first one I was playing something really awesome on drums. The second I was playing guitar and synth and the same time. Less confident about what I came up with on that one, but there's a seed of something there.
Thursday and Friday we had an assignment that sort of led up to the big assessment. It was just a thing where users could log in and then change people in a database. I got a bit stuck on part of it Friday night. But I figured it out and finished by doing pretty little on Saturday. I was just worried 'cuz most people were finished by the end of the day on Friday. And our instructor said it was about a quarter to half as hard as the assessment would be. And it took me a little longer than the amount of time we'd have on the assessment to finish. So I felt I overcame a lot, but was a little worried about how I'd do.
Anyway, assessment was given Monday morning and we had until the end of lunch the next day. The assignment was to sort of make a version twitter. So I made myself a shitty little twitter! (I called it Tweeter, and people could twit.) It was ugly and chock full of what I'm sure was bad practice (and less functional than the actual twitter) but I met all of the requirements and then some! I was pretty proud considering the amount of time we had. I got stuck for a few hours a couple times. I wanted to get as much done as possible Monday night. I made myself stop in order to get four hours of sleep. At this point I only had one thing left. I spent like three hours Tuesday morning trying to figure it out, but I got it! Then I spent the rest of the time smoothing out kinks and working on a few extras. So here I am. The course is over halfway through and I've made it through the two assessments (not counting the final). So I'm feeling pretty good. Today was a little rough in class. They started letting us take our laptops home. I should spend a little time seeing if I can get this web service stuff working. Anyway, I've only been back from finally getting my car a little while ago.
Car shit started started Wednesday on the way to a movie. Well, let me start with the movies. It was two nights of Oscar shorts. The first night was animated shorts. Some really good stuff (and a couple I disliked). The two best were one about a guy's mother being sick and dying and the animation style was really awesome, almost sculture-like, (probably some sculpture with) heavy paint on walls. The other best one was about this pig and it also had a nice semi-impressionist style. I think it was called The Dam Keeper. The live action shorts were Wednesday and I think they were more even (at least nothing as horrible as the couple bad animated ones). My favorite, I think, was called Butter Lamp. It was all from the perspective of a camera taking pictures of people in this rural chinese village in front of changing backdrops (you never see the real scenery until the end, and the people taking the pictures are a traveling unit). It was really good. There was another one I liked almost as much that was about a young Afghani girl in a cold European country (Switzerland? maybe they said Sweeden, but it sounded like they were speaking German...) sort of making a friend in this weird way and her money trouble and sick father back home and such. It was good.
Okay, so we're going to the movie on Wednesday and pulling into the driveway of the theater my car shakes and just dies. Luckily the space on the street right next to the driveway was empty so I was able to roll it down the incline and guide it into the spot and we didn't have to miss the movies. Got a tow truck to pick it up and take it over to Barton's after the movie was over (though stressful when the lady drove right past me waving my arms and I had to run after her to track her down) and we walked the few blocks home. I had to drive by the place in the morning to get the car opened 'cuz the towing lady said they didn't have a place to drop the key off (the people there said there was, but I couldn't find it when I had to take my car back again later). Okay so it gets fixed the next day and the price damage wasn't too bad and I picked it up Friday morning before work.
It seemed to be going fine but there was trouble when we went out on Saturday. We had a massage scheduled (or so we thought). Traffic was shit so Mary Beth called while we were on Walnut Grove to let 'em know we were running late. Turns out they didn't even have us on record as having an appointment (guess they screwed something up or whatever). Well, in this time my car starts driving pretty badly. It's really not wanting to accelerate. Kinda feels like the transmission's sticking at times, but it'll happen at speeds where the gears shouldn't be shifting anymore. It all happens in horrible traffic and then we're out on Germantown fucking road and we end up having to just drive its length and make a big circle to 40. So we're on the worst road in the damn city with a car that feels like it's about to break down at any second, but it made it back so I drove it myself to Barton's. (Here's where I'm looking for the key drop they said they had, not finding it after looking around forever). Drive up there Monday morning again to give 'em the key. They call later in the day saying they were pretty sure what it was but wanted someone else to give a second opinion before they took it all apart and rack up a bunch of money. They said this place called Redwine (weird name for a car place) had better testing equipment for the Honda. So I called triple a again and got it towed from the one shop to the other. Pretty crazy 'cuz in the entire time, I never once met anyone in person at the place that fixed my car. Didn't hear from 'em yesterday, but they called today saying it was fixed. Paid over the phone and they left it where I could get it after hours with the key locked under the floor mat. So it ended up not being cheap like I'd thought, but it could have been worse, blah.
Now blanks to fill in. We finished season two of Hannibal on Saturday and watchd Manhunter Sunday (SO weird finally seeing it after watching so much Hannibal). It was pretty good, though it didn't come close to Thief. Saturday was Jacques's birthday and I met him at Huey's for dinner. Practice was on Sunday. Paul couldn't make it but the rest of us ran through stuff. Ryan left early and then Jacques and I spent a little time working out things that might possibly become songs one day. The first one I was playing something really awesome on drums. The second I was playing guitar and synth and the same time. Less confident about what I came up with on that one, but there's a seed of something there.
Thursday and Friday we had an assignment that sort of led up to the big assessment. It was just a thing where users could log in and then change people in a database. I got a bit stuck on part of it Friday night. But I figured it out and finished by doing pretty little on Saturday. I was just worried 'cuz most people were finished by the end of the day on Friday. And our instructor said it was about a quarter to half as hard as the assessment would be. And it took me a little longer than the amount of time we'd have on the assessment to finish. So I felt I overcame a lot, but was a little worried about how I'd do.
Anyway, assessment was given Monday morning and we had until the end of lunch the next day. The assignment was to sort of make a version twitter. So I made myself a shitty little twitter! (I called it Tweeter, and people could twit.) It was ugly and chock full of what I'm sure was bad practice (and less functional than the actual twitter) but I met all of the requirements and then some! I was pretty proud considering the amount of time we had. I got stuck for a few hours a couple times. I wanted to get as much done as possible Monday night. I made myself stop in order to get four hours of sleep. At this point I only had one thing left. I spent like three hours Tuesday morning trying to figure it out, but I got it! Then I spent the rest of the time smoothing out kinks and working on a few extras. So here I am. The course is over halfway through and I've made it through the two assessments (not counting the final). So I'm feeling pretty good. Today was a little rough in class. They started letting us take our laptops home. I should spend a little time seeing if I can get this web service stuff working. Anyway, I've only been back from finally getting my car a little while ago.
