Other than the usual spam comments consisting of repeated forms of viagra, links and porn pasted over and over again, I’ve noticed some fringe comments that seem to border on spam but are obviously real people. I’m not sure how I feel about this — on one hand, I can tell they are legitimate comments but their links and names are usually spammy and not what I’d call typical at all. I’m happy that I get comments and that people care what I write but I get the gut feeling that they’re not necessarily commenting for that reason but instead to advertise their blog by hammering out comments at various sites to up their search engine rankings (hence the spammy names instead of a real name).

Some would say that I should just be happy that I’m getting comments but to be honest I just don’t care any more about that stuff. I’m a sophomore in college with a week until my final exams

I’m thinking I might decide to start deleting those types of comments — despite being legitimate discussion I feel like it makes the comments look spammish, which is bad. So please use your real names, spammish people.

I’m going to be moving into an apartment soon, and I thought that I’d help out any incoming freshman (at any university) who may be considering staying in the dorms. Here’s my top reasons why I cannot wait to get the hell out of here. This is based upon dorms that are set up in what I’d consider the “classic” way – you share a single room with one other person with community bathrooms.

1. No matter what they tell you, your room will not be that big. Especially when you consider that you are sharing the room with another person, and more than likely you will both bring lots of crap, and all of these things will result in a very limited amount of space.
2. You will have to deal with another person who will, unless you’re very lucky, have a schedule unlike your’s and you will have to deal with them waking up much earlier than you, trashing the room, coming back to the room drunk (and I’ve heard stories of drunken roommates barfing all over the room). In my case specifically one of my former roommates was a theatre major who, forgive me, was obviously in a much easier curriculum than me, who is in the college of engineering.
3. Your roommate will probably not have the same standards of cleanliness as you. My theatre roommate that I mentioned previously was especially nasty – and I have photos to prove it. She would leave pizza containers and food on her desk for literally months, and only cleaned up when she had to before breaks when the RAs would check the rooms.
4. Your roommate will probably not have the same standards of decency as you. For instance, my theatre roommate liked to sit around the room with only a shirt on. She also liked to talk loudly on the phone about her sex life, and proclaim that all women felt like she did. Hmm.
5. Your roommate will probably not like the same music as you. Since my theatre roommate is making such a good example, I will use her again. She absolutely loved musicals. I think musicals are the spawn of satan. I would be listening to my music, she would come into the room and start blaring her shit at top volume with apparent disregard for whatever I was doing.
6. Most dorms are completely overpriced, no matter what they tell you at orientation, tours, whatever. I found out that my dorm equates to about $800 a month (but this includes food and all utilities except for TV). However, I can get an apartment for $200 a month that includes all utilities except for electricity. Unless I’m eating $600 worth of food or using $600 electricity, I fail to see how that’s a bargain.
7. Dorms force you out on breaks. Nevermind that you’ve already paid the monthly ‘rate’ in the form of a massive prepayment at the beginning of the semester. This makes it hard to get a job if they know you won’t be there for a month over Christmas break, and Thanksgiving break, etc.
8. The cafeteria is hardly ever what it’s cracked up to be. Our cafeteria in particular has okay food, but you have to wait in horrendous lines and deal with crappy hours. You end up scheduling your whole day around what time you can manage to go and eat there, and get the food you had already paid for. I should also mention that the food is grossly overpriced: a meal at our cafeteria equates to $8. For a ham sandwich, milk, Koolaid, and chips. What a bargain.
9. Freshman congregate in dorms. I don’t like to stereotype by age, but there are a larger number of freshman in the dorms who have their parents pay for everything and this generally equates to them being spoiled brats who care nothing about others around them. No, RAs will probably not come to your rescue when they decide to rampage up and down the halls at 4 a.m. screaming, and when you ask them to be quiet because you have a 7:30 a.m. class or work, they won’t give a shit – or at least the spoiled brats in my hallway never did.
10. The dorms reek of the same sort of crap you’d have to deal with if you had stayed at home to go to college. I have to ask permission to use the kitchen, I have to sign in guests (it’s my room that I’ve already paid for, why do I have to ask permission if I can have someone in the room???), I receive a penalty if I lock myself out of my room too many times (nevermind the fact it costs them nothing to loan me the key so I can get my key out of the room, as long as the spare is returned there is no cost involved), the entire floor gets called into a meeting if a few people decide to do something stupid like smoke weed in the trash room, and if I come back to the dorms too late I have to “check in” with the front desk even if I was just gone for 10 minutes to get something from the quick shop. Oh, and we have to have all pets registered with the front desk, we have to have our computers registered before we can connect to the network, and you’re supposed to get permission from your roommate before you have any friends over to the room. If I wanted to deal with so much permission-asking and general crap I would have stayed at home.

Some people have tried to tell me that the dorms are a “learning experience” that is or will be very valuable later. Total bullshit. Having to put up with the crap listed here inhibits doing what you came to college to do – learn about your field. The stress I’ve had because of this stuff only makes it harder to focus on your classes and do what you need to do. The only thing the dorms have that is positive in my opinion is that they make it easier to meet new people. However, you can do that at the student union any day and not have to pay upwards of $3,000 to do so.

I’ve just upgraded to Wordpress 2.7.1. The new admin panel was and still is a bit shocking whenever I log in. I’ve just been with the old one for so long. It does look rather nice, though, and hopefully I’ll get used to where things are. Sooner or later.

PS: On April Fool’s Day I always look forward to seeing Google’s joke/prank. This year’s was pretty awesome in my opinion:
http://www.google.com/intl/en/landing/cadie/index.html
The previous link wasn’t quite as hilarious as the blogspot page they made for CADIE:
http://cadiesingularity.blogspot.com
Just picturing the Google techs working on that blog is priceless…

I was really going to include photos in this and the last post, but I wasn’t able to find my logo so I could watermark them. I’m hoping I didn’t forget to back it up someplace, because I recently reformatted my computer and if I can’t find it then I’ll have to remake it.
Read the rest of this entry »

I’ll have to update this later with photos because I’m too tired to crop and resize my photos at the moment. So someone remind me, okay?

We arrived on Monday and things have been pretty good. We’ve been to see Fisherman’s Wharf, rode the trolleys and shopped at various places around the city like Chinatown and Union Square. We got to eat at the Hard Rock Cafe which is something I always love to do when I get the chance. I was trying to gear up to write a lengthy post about what’s been going on since then but I find that I don’t really have a lot to say. Read the rest of this entry »